The Cottage By The Cathedral

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Title:     The Cottage By The Cathedral
Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles [More Titles by Charles]

Close under the walls of the Cathedral, nestling against one of its buttresses, leant the Cottage in which the little crippled Marie lived.

Time and weather had stained and shaped the rude timbers of which it was built, and tender mosses had woven their fine tapestries over its roof, so that it seemed as little out of harmony with the stately building which looked down on it and sheltered it, as the mosses and lichens on its own stones.

For all the grandeur of the Cathedral being the grandeur of a house of God, only made it, like the everlasting hills themselves, "the hills of God," so much the more the shelter and refuge of the smallest of His creatures.

Moreover, the Cathedral, for the very reason that it was a house of God, being also a home and refuge for men, having also been designed, arch by arch, by loving human thought, and raised, stone by stone, by lowly human hands, had necessarily a twofold kindred: allying it, on the one side, with the great temple of the Creator's own building, vaulted with its infinite depths of starry worlds; and on the other side, with the lowliest dwelling in which human creatures toil and suffer. Indeed, its kindred with the cottage was closer than with the stars, because He who was adored in it became, for our sakes, Himself the greatest Sufferer; who, while He had made the stars, was made Man, and Himself lived in a very lowly cottage once for thirty years.

All this little Marie felt, as she lay hour by hour alone on her pallet; felt, not thought, for the roots of true thoughts in after-life lie deep in the feelings of the child's heart, which the child cannot utter even to itself, and which some lips indeed are never opened in this life to utter to any one: a silence not of much moment, since this is the world for learning rather than for uttering, and many of our most eloquent utterances here would seem but as babes' lispings there; while many lips which have but lisping or stammering speech here, will be opened in very glorious singing there.

For are not reverence and love the highest religious lessons of childhood; and indeed of all this life, which is but a childhood? a reverent uplooking sense of Love and Power unbounded, above, yet very near us, such as happy children learn from a holy mother's looks and tones; and little motherless Marie received, in some measure, from the Cathedral, interpreting to her, with its music and its beauty, the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed which she had learned from her dying mother's lips, when too little to understand anything but the sounds.

Marie was very much alone. Her father was a water-carrier, and was bearing water all day to the thirsty people in the hot streets of the city, or taking it to their homes. He had to leave quite early to draw the water fresh from the spring in the cool of the morning. And one of Marie's two great wishes was that one day she might go with him to the fountain, and drink the water fresh from the spring. Every morning he used to place all the things he thought his little girl would need within her reach; a little white wheaten loaf, a cup of milk, a jug of water, and, when he had had a prosperous day, some fresh fruit.

Marie thought her father's calling a very high and beautiful one, although she knew it was not considered glorious in the city, nor one that would make his name known and honoured. But that she thought little of; for her father had often told her no one in the city knew the name of the Architect of the Cathedral; and if his name had faded away from the memories of men who counted his work the chief glory of their city, it was plain, Marie thought, that the records of the city must be very imperfect and very little worth caring about, and that, probably, there were better records kept somewhere else on quite a different plan.

Water-carrying, besides not being a glorious calling in that city, was not a lucrative one; so that, in order to eke out the daily bread, Marie had learned to plait straw for fruit baskets. Agatha, the old woman who sold fruit by the Cathedral porch, bought them of her; and in return did, not without many grumblings, all the little household work Marie would have done with such deft fingers and such a glad heart, had she been able.

Sometimes, moreover, especially on a rainy day, Mark, Agatha's little orphan grandson, would spend his play-hours with Marie, and she would mend his poor ragged clothes as well as she could, and make him wonderful little toy-baskets of straw lined with orange-peel, and balls of rags; and in return he would sing her little songs, and the multiplication-table, and sometimes hymns about Paradise, and the Living Fountains, and the Temple and the Singers there.

This was Marie's visible world; her father and the Cottage, Agatha and her fruit-stall, and little Mark, and the Cathedral.

To interpret it, she had the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed. Or rather, she had them to interpret each other; His invisible things being understood by the things that are seen, and our visible things by the things that are not seen.

As to how this interpretation went on, I could say more another time. My story now is simply of the Cottage and the Cathedral.

From the window by which Marie's bed lay, she could see Agatha's fruit-stall, and the Cathedral. By propping herself up she could command the fruit-stall, and see a great deal of the world, though not in its highest circles. By leaning back as far as she could in one corner, she could see to the top of the Cathedral tower, with its wonderful crown of fretted stone; common stone sculptured by man's heart and hands into a beauty greater than that of any diadem of gems.

Marie liked to think how each stone in that beautiful crown, which glowed above her in the sunsets and sunrises, and at night was itself crowned with stars, had been once a common gray stone like the fallen ones which lay on the ground outside, useless and shapeless.

Of these stones Marie did not like to think. She hoped none of them had ever been in that glorious crown. She did not think it anything but a glory for any stone to be made the lowest stone in the uttermost buttress of the Cathedral. Indeed, the greatest glory, perhaps, for any stone was to be a hidden stone; altogether hidden, deep beneath the earth, from human eyes. For such were the very foundation and corner stones themselves, on which, as on the Unknown Architect, the whole visible glory rested. But to be a fallen stone, chipped, and marred, and useless, and crumbling into dust, when it might have been a resting-place for sunbeams, and for birds to sing welcomes to the sunbeams from, was a thought which made Marie very sad, and gave a tremulous depth to her tones when she prayed, "Lead us not into temptation," or tenderly coaxed little Mark not to render railings for his grandmother's railings, or to use the rough words which he learned in the streets.

The painted windows of the Cathedral were rather a distress and perplexity to Marie. Sometimes, it was true, the upper panes glittered a little in the noontide sunbeams; but, for the most part, they looked dark and confused. If they had not been painted, she sometimes wistfully thought, she might have caught glimpses of the glories inside. But then, of course, they were painted for the people inside, not for those without.

If she could only once creep Inside to see and to listen!

That was the great longing of her life.

If only once she could feel the great roof bending over her, and the walls embracing her; if, instead of straining to catch some clear melody which she might sing over in her heart, out of the dim labyrinth of those sweet and solemn sounds which reached her where she lay; if she could only once be among them, hearing the music, knowing the words, making melody in her heart among the worshippers! Marie thought she could live happy for the rest of her life on the remembrance; on the remembrance and the great Hope it would light up.

She did not speak of this longing. She lived, poor little one, with so keen a sense that her life was necessarily a burden on every one around her, partly awakened by Agatha's very unconcealed complainings, and much more by her father's weary looks when he came home at night with his water-jars and his few hard-earned pence and sat down to his scanty meal, that she could never bear by look or word to express a wish for anything that was not absolutely needed or freely offered.

All the more, because she knew so well that the father's love (which was mother's and father's love to her, and so interpreted to her the Our Father) would hold any burden light and any sacrifice possible to gain the motherless child a pleasure or an alleviation of suffering.

So the longing lay deep hidden in her heart, but never came from her lips, until, one autumn when she seemed to grow brighter than usual, and a flush came on her pale face sometimes towards evening, one morning her father, looking fondly at her, said,--

"Child! by Christmas, who knows but we might have thee singing the Christmas hymns inside the Cathedral!"

Then her whole face was lit up as he had never seen it shine before, with the streaming out of the long-hidden hope; and drawing his face down to her, she stroked it as she had been wont when a very little child, and kissed him, and said,--

"Oh, father, do you think God will give me the joy of going Inside?"

"Why not, darling?" he answered cheerily; "nothing is too good for Him to give; and what was the Cathedral built for, but for such as thee to sing His praises inside?"

Yet, even as he spoke, there was something in the light of the wistful eyes, and in the touch of the feeble feverish hands, that made his accents falter.

Christmas Eve came. All night the snows fell. In the morning the sun shone, but the air was keen and cold, and little Marie knew there was no going Inside for her that day. But she thanked God for making the outside so beautiful, just as if the angels of the winds had been all night decorating every ledge and angle and quaint familiar bit of carving, and all the fretwork of the stone crown, with alabaster and crystal, or some heavenly blending of glories impossible in earthly material.

As her father left her for the service, he looked fondly back, and said,--

"At Easter, darling; inside at Easter!"

But there was no ring of hope in his tones, cheerful as he tried to make the words; and when he had left her, and the soft dim music floated in broken cadences to her on her solitary little bed, for once the child felt not merely alone but lonely, and a few hot, rare tears fell through her thin fingers as she pressed them on her face.

But she was not alone. And as she lay quietly weeping, sacred words came into her heart, borne on the sacred music, like the scent of violets on the winds in spring.

"Thy will be done on earth."

She said it, she wept it, she wept it to her Father in heaven. And softly, as from the other side of the choir, came back, as from above, the glorious antiphon--

"As it is in heaven."

The sob of submission came back, as it so often does, in a song of praise, from the land where the Amens are transfigured into the Hallelujahs.

"As it is in heaven."

"It will be all Easter there," she thought. "I shall be Inside there at last!"

When her father came back, and looked anxiously at his darling as he entered the door, her smile met him like a song of victory and welcome.

"At Easter, darling! Inside the Cathedral at Easter!"

"Yes, father," she said; "one Easter I shall be Inside."

But the hidden fount of joy, from which the smile came, he did not know. She would not tell him, because to him, at first, she knew it must be a bitter well of tears.

Slowly she faded away.

The Cathedral, her great stone Poem, her Paradise, rose before her, and spoke to her, day and night.

But with new readings.

For she had learned that this whole visible world, with its earth and its heavens, its cities and its cathedrals, this whole transitory life, is but as the little timber Cottage nestling against the everlasting walls of the Temple whose builder and maker is God.

Day by day old Agatha grumbled over her household work, yet day by day more tenderness began to mingle with her complainings.

Day by day little Mark came, attracted irresistibly, he knew not how, by the gentle voice, although the feeble fingers could mend or make for him no more. And unconsciously he unlearned the rough lessons of the streets, and learned a loving reverence from the dying child.

And day by day the father laid the little white loaf, and the milk, and the water-jug by his darling's bed, only showing his anxiety by never missing any day now to bring some little gift of fruit to add to it, were his labour prosperous or not, taking it from his own scanty meal. And little Marie dared not remonstrate or refuse; she knew the memory of those little sacrifices would be so precious.

Beyond this tacit understanding, the two did not confess to each other by word or look that both knew what was at hand.

Only one morning, as he was leaving home, she said to him in a faint voice, but with a bright smile, "Father, I think God has given you beautiful work to do--to carry water to those who thirst. Is it not just what His only Son, our Lord, is doing always for us? He does not stand at the fountain; He brings the water home, does He not? home to every one of us, to our very hearts."

Then she added,--

"Father, you will come back early. I think our Lord is coming to take me to the Fountains of Waters. We shall drink together one morning, father, fresh from the spring. I think I am going Inside at last."

He did not leave her again.

Days of suffering came.

But before Easter she had exchanged the little Cottage for the Cathedral. The child had entered in, and was joining in the songs of the Temple, which is the Father's house, wherein are many mansions.

And Agatha said,--

"We have had a saint with us, a saint of God,--and I did not know it!"

But she grew gentler and kinder. The Cottage where the gentle child had lived and died had grown as sacred as the Cathedral, and a hush of reverence was on it which seemed to make harsh words impossible where she had suffered and entered into rest.

Little Mark said, "My friend is gone." But when he said the Our Father she had taught him, he understood a little what a heaven it must be where all the voices were as gentle as Marie's, and all the hearts as true and kind.

The father said nothing, except to God.

"Our Father which art in heaven," he said, "mine and hers, Thou gavest me a saint of Thine to be an angel in my home. I thank Thee I knew it while she was here with me; not first now that she is Inside, at home with Thee."

But a glory came down on his lowly work from her memory, her words, and the sense he had of her immortal life, until he too should be called to the Living Fountains, to hear once more the dear familiar voice, then long at home in the Hallelujahs, but sure never to forget the tones of welcome it had on earth for him.

* * * * *

"Sic hat ihren Sprung gethan. Ach wollt' Gott dass ich den Sprung gethan hätte. Ich wollt' mich nicht sehr herwieder sehnen."--MARTIN LUTHER (Watchwords for the Warfare of Life, p. 304).

Say not they sank to rest,
As a wave when its force is spent,
As a weary child on its mother's breast,
So it seemed; but not thus they went.

Not thus it seemed to those
Who watch by our side alway,
And through the calm of the last repose
See the dawn of the endless day.

As a stream the frosts enchain,
By the touch of Spring set free,
Vocal and strong bounds forth again,
Springs forth to meet the sea;

As a bird of some sunny land,
Caged in the darkness long,
Freed by the touch of a friendly hand,
Springs into light and song.

We are the feeble, and bound
In fetters of night and frost;
Winged, but chained to the ground,
In fevered slumbers tost.

The dying, the dead are we;
The living, the living are they;
Ever living, from death set free,
To praise thee, Lord, this day.

Say not they sank to rest,
As a wounded bird on the sod;--
As a waking child to its mother's breast,
They sprang to life and to God!

[The end]
Elizabeth Rundle Charles's short story: Cottage By The Cathedral

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