

E-text prepared by Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif, Josephine Paolucci, and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



THE RAVENS AND THE ANGELS:

With Other Stories and Parables.

by

MRS. RUNDLE CHARLES

Author of
"The Schoenberg-Cotta Family," &c. &c.







London:
T. Nelson and Sons, Paternoster Row.
Edinburgh; and New York.
1894
All Rights Reserved.




Contents.


   THE RAVENS AND THE ANGELS,                      7

   ECCE <DW25>,                                     33

   THE COTTAGE BY THE CATHEDRAL,                  59

   THE UNKNOWN ARCHITECT OF THE MINSTER,          69

   ONLY THE CRYPT,                                74

   THE SEPULCHRE AND THE SHRINE,                  80

   THE CATHEDRAL CHIMES,                          91

   THE RUINED TEMPLE,                             98

   THE CLOCK-BELL AND THE ALARM-BELL,            106

   THE BLACK SHIP,                               109

   THE ISLAND AND THE MAIN LAND,                 125

   THE JEWEL OF THE ORDER OF THE KING'S OWN,     137

   THE ACORN,                                    148

   PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A FERN,             153

   THORNS AND SPINES,                            158

   PARABLES IN HOUSEHOLD THINGS,                 161

   "THINGS USING US,"                            166

   SUNSHINE, DAYLIGHT, AND THE ROCK,             170

   WANDERERS AND PILGRIMS,                       172

   THE ARK AND THE FORTRESS,                     175

   THE THREE DREAMS,                             178

   THOU AND I,                                   183

   WHAT MAKES THINGS MUSICAL,                    187

   THE SONG WITHOUT WORDS,                       192




_The Ravens and the Angels._

A STORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.


I.

In those old days, in that old city, they called the Cathedral--and they
thought it--the house of God. The Cathedral was the Father's house for
all, and therefore it was loved and honoured, and enriched with lavish
treasures of wealth and work, beyond any other father's house.

The Cathedral was the Father's house, and therefore close to its gates
might nestle the poor dwellings of the poor,--too poor to find a shelter
anywhere besides; because the central life and joy of the house of God
was the suffering, self-sacrificing Son of Man; and dearer to Him, now
and for ever, as when He was on earth, was the feeblest and most fallen
human creature He had redeemed than the most glorious heavenly
constellation of the universe He had made.

And so it happened that when Berthold, the stone-carver, died, Magdalis,
his young wife, and her two children, then scarcely more than babes,
Gottlieb and little Lenichen, were suffered to make their home in the
little wooden shed which had once sheltered a hermit, and which nestled
into the recess close to the great western gate of the Minster.

Thus, while, inside, from the lofty aisles pealed forth, night and day,
the anthems of the choir, close outside, night and day, rose also, even
more surely, to God, the sighs of a sorrowful woman and the cries of
little children whom all her toil could hardly supply with bread.
Because, He hears the feeblest wail of want, though it comes not from a
dove or even from a harmless sparrow, but a young raven. And He does
_not_ heed the sweetest anthem of the fullest choir, if it is a mere
pomp of sound. Because, while the best love of His meanest creatures is
precious to Him, the second-best of His loftiest creatures is
intolerable to Him. He heeds the shining of the drops of dew and the
rustling of the blades of grass. But from creatures who can love He
cannot accept the mere outside offering of creatures which can only make
a pleasant sound.

All this, or such as this, the young mother Magdalis taught her babes as
they could bear it.

For they needed such lessons.

The troubles of the world pressed on them very early, in the shape
little children can understand--little hands and feet nipped with frost,
hunger and darkness and cold.

Not that the citizens of that city were hypocrites, singing the praises
of God, whilst they let His dear Lazaruses vainly crave at their gates
for their crumbs. But Magdalis was very tender and timid, and a little
proud; proud not for herself, but for her husband and his babes. And she
was also feeble in health. She was an orphan herself, and she had
married, against the will of her kindred in a far-off city, the young
stone-carver, whose genius they did not appreciate, whose labour and
skill had made life so rich and bright to his family while he lived, and
whose early death had left them all so desolate.

For his dear sake, she would not complain. For herself it had been
easier to die, and for his sake she would not bring the shame of beggary
on his babes. Better for them to enter into this life maimed of
strength, she thought, by meagre food, than tainted with the taint of
beggary.

Rather, she thought, would their father himself have seen them go hungry
to bed than deserve that the fingers of other children should be pointed
scornfully at them as "the little beggars by the church door," the door
of the church in which she gloried to think there were stones of his
carving.

So she toiled on, carving for sale little devotional symbols--crosses,
and reliquaries, and lilies, and lambs--with the skill she had learnt
from him, and teaching the little ones, as best she could, to love and
work and suffer. Only teaching them, perhaps, not quite enough to
_hope_. For the lamp of hope burnt low in her own heart, and therefore
her patience, not being enough the patience of hope, lacked something of
sweetness. It never broke downward into murmurs, but it too seldom
soared upward into praise.

So it happened that one frosty night, about Christmas-tide, little
Gottlieb lay awake, very hungry, on the ledge of the wall, covered with
straw, which served him for a bed.

It had once been the hermit's bed. And very narrow Gottlieb thought it
must have been for the hermit, for more than once he had been in peril
of falling over the side, in his restless tossings. He supposed the
hermit was too good to be restless, or perhaps too good for the dear
angels to think it good for him to be hungry, as they evidently did
think it good for Gottlieb and Lenichen, or they would be not good
angels at all, to let them hunger so often, not even as kind as the
ravens which took the bread to Elijah when they were told. For the dear
Heavenly Father had certainly told the angels always to take care of
little children.

The more Gottlieb lay awake and tossed and thought, the further off the
angels seemed.

For, all the time, under the pillow lay one precious crust of bread, the
last in the house until his mother should buy the loaf to-morrow.

He had saved it from his supper in an impulse of generous pity for his
little sister, who so often awoke, crying with hunger, and woke his poor
mother, and would not let her go to sleep again.

He had thought how sweet it would be, when Lenichen awoke the next
morning, to appear suddenly, as the angels do, at the side of the bed
where she lay beside her mother, and say,--

"Dear Lenichen! see, God has sent you this bit of bread as a Christmas
gift."

For the next day was Christmas Eve.

This little plan made Gottlieb so happy that at first it felt as good to
him as eating the bread.

But the happy thought, unhappily, did not long content the hungry animal
part of him, which craved, in spite of him, to be filled; and, as the
night went on, he was sorely tempted to eat the precious crust--his very
own crust--himself.

"Perhaps it was ambitious of me, after all," he said to himself, "to
want to seem like a blessed angel, a messenger of God, to Lenichen.
Perhaps, too, it would not be true. Because, after all, it would not be
exactly God who sent the crust, but only me."

And with the suggestion, the little hands which had often involuntarily
felt for the crust, brought it to the hungry little mouth.

But at that moment it opportunely happened that his mother made a little
moan in her sleep, which half awakened Lenichen, who murmured, sleepily,
"Little mother, mother, bread!"

Whereupon, Gottlieb blushed at his own ungenerous intention, and
resolutely pushed back the crust under the pillow. And then he thought
it must certainly have been the devil who had tempted him to eat, and he
tried to pray.

He prayed the "Our Father" quite through, kneeling up softly in bed, and
lingering fondly, but not very hopefully, on the "Give us our daily
bread."

And then again he fell into rather melancholy reflections how very
often he had prayed that same prayer and had been hungry, and into
distracting speculations how the daily bread could come, until at last
he ventured to add this bit of his own to his prayers,--

"Dear, holy Lord Jesus, you were once a little child, and know what it
feels like. If Lenichen and I are not good enough for you to send us
bread by the blessed angels, do send us some by the poor ravens. We
would not mind at all, if they came from you, and were _your_ ravens,
and brought us real bread. And if it is wrong to ask, please not to be
displeased, because I am such a little child, and I don't know better,
and I want to go to sleep!"

Then Gottlieb lay down again, and turned his face to the wall, where he
knew the picture of the Infant Jesus was, and forgot his troubles and
fell asleep.

The next morning he was awaked, as so often, by Lenichen's little bleat;
and he rose triumphantly, and took his crust to her bedside.

Lenichen greeted him with a wistful little smile, and put up her face
for a kiss; but her reception of the crust was somewhat disappointing.

She wailed a little because it was "hard and dry;" and when Gottlieb
moistened it with a few drops of water, she took it too much, he felt,
as a mere common meal, a thing of course, and her natural right.

He had expected that, in some way, the hungry hours it had cost him
would have been kneaded into it, and would have made it a kind of
heavenly manna for her.

To him it had meant hunger, and heroism, and sleepless hours of
endurance. It seemed strange that to Lenichen it should seem nothing
more than a hard, dry, common crust.

But to the mother it was much more.

She understood all; and, because she understood so much, she said
little.

She only smiled, and said he looked more than ever like his father; and
as he sat musing rather sadly while she was dressing, and Lenichen had
fallen asleep again, she pointed to the little peaceful sleeping face,
the flaxen hair curling over the dimpled arm, and she said,--

"That is thy thanks--just that the little one is happy. The dear
Heavenly Father cares more, I think, for such thanks than for any other;
just to see the flowers grow, just to hear the birds sing to their
nestlings, just to see His creatures good and happy, because of His
gifts. Those are about the best thanks for Him, and for us."

But Gottlieb looked up inquiringly.

"Yet He likes us to say 'Thank you,' too? Did you not say all the Church
services, all the beautiful cathedral itself, is just the people's
'Thank you' to God? Are we not going to church just to say 'Thank you,'
to-day?"

"Yes, darling," she said. "But the 'Thank you' we _mean_ to say is worth
little unless it is just the blossom and fragrance of the love and
content always in the heart. God cares infinitely for our loving Him,
and loves us to thank Him if we do. He does not care at all for the
thanks without the love, or without the content."

And as she spoke these words, Mother Magdalis was preaching a little
sermon to herself also, which made her eyes moisten and shine.

So she took courage, and contrived to persuade the children and herself
that the bread-and-water breakfast that Christmas-Eve morning had
something quite festive about it.

And when they had finished with a grace which Gottlieb sang, and
Lenichen lisped after him, she told him to take the little sister on his
knee and sing through his songs and hymns, while she arrayed herself in
the few remnants of holiday dress left her.

And as she cleaned and arranged the tiny room, her heart was lighter
than it had been for a long time.

"I ought to be happy," she said to herself, "with music enough in my
little nest to fill a church."

When Gottlieb had finished his songs, and was beginning them over again,
there was a knock at the door, and the face of old Hans the dwarf
appeared at the door, as he half opened it.

"A good Christmas to thee and thy babes, Mother Magdalis! Thy son is
born indeed with a golden spoon in his mouth," croaked old Hans in his
hoarse, guttural voice.

The words grated on Magdalis. Crooked Hans's jokes were apt to be
as crooked as his temper and his poor limbs, and to give much
dissatisfaction, hitting on just the sore points no one wanted to be
touched.

She felt tempted to answer sharply, but the sweet Christmas music had
got into her heart, and she only said, with tears starting to her
eyes,--

"If he was, neighbour, all the gold was lost and buried long ago."

"Not a bit of it!" rejoined Hans. "Didn't I hear the gold ring this very
instant? The lad has gold in his mouth, I say! Give him to me, and you
shall see it before night."

She looked up reproachfully, the tears fairly falling at what she
thought such a cruel mockery from Hans, who knew her poverty, and had
never had from her or hers the rough words he was too much used to from
every one.

"The golden days are over for me," was all she said.

"Nay! They have yet to begin," he replied. "Your Berthold left more
debtors than you know, Frau Magdalis. And old Hans is one of them. And
Hans never forgets a debt, black or white. Let the lad come with me, I
say. I know the choir-master at the Cathedral. And I know he wants a
fine high treble just such as thy Gottlieb's, and will give anything for
it. For if he does not find one, the Cistercians at the new convent will
draw away all the people, and we shall have no money for the new organ.
They have a young Italian, who sings like an angel, there; and the
young archduchess is an Italian, and is wild about music, and lavishes
her gifts wherever she finds it good."

Magdalis looked perplexed and troubled.

"To sell the child's voice seems like selling part of himself,
neighbour," she said at length; "and to sell God's praises seems like
selling one's own soul."

"Well, well! Those are thy proud burgher notions," said Hans, a little
nettled. "If the Heavenly Father pleases to give thee and the little
ones a few crumbs for singing His matins and evensong, it is no more
than He does for the robins, or, for that matter, for the very ravens,
such as me, that croak to Him with the best voice they have."

At these words, Gottlieb, who had been listening very attentively,
gently set little Lenichen down, and, drawing close to Hans, put his
little hand confidingly in his.

"I will go with neighbour Hans, mother!" he said, decisively. "The dear
Lord Himself has sent him."

"Thou speakest like a prophet," said the mother, smiling tenderly at his
oracular manner, "a prophet and a king in one. Hast thou had a vision?
Is thy will indeed the law of the land?"

"Yes, mother," he said, colouring, "the dear Lord Jesus has made it
quite plain. I asked Him, if we were not good enough for Him to send us
an angel, to send us one of His ravens, and He has sent us Hans!"

Hans laughed, but not the grim, hoarse laugh which was habitual to him,
and which people compared to the croaking of a raven; it was a hearty,
open laugh, like a child's, and he said,--

"Let God's raven lead thee, then, my lad, and the mother shall see if we
don't bring back the bread and meat."

"I did not ask for meat," said Gottlieb, gravely, "only for bread."

"The good God is wont to give more than we either desire or deserve,"
croaked Hans, "when He sets about giving at all."


II.

There was no time to be lost.

The services of the day would soon begin, and Hans had set his heart on
Gottlieb's singing that very day in the Cathedral.

The choir-master's eyes sparkled as he listened to the boy; but he was
an austere man, and would not utter a word to make the child think
himself of value.

"Not bad raw material," he said, "but very raw. I suppose thou hast
never before sung a note to any one who understood music?"

"Only for the mother and the little sister," the child replied in a low,
humble tone, beginning to fear the raven would bring no bread after all,
"and sometimes in the Litanies and the processions."

"Sing no more for babes and nurses, and still less among the beggars in
the street-processions," pronounced the master, severely. "It strains
and vulgarizes the tone. And, with training, I don't know but that,
after all, we might make something of thee--in time, in time."

Gottlieb's anxiety mastered his timidity, and he ventured to say,--

"Gracious lord! if it is a long time, how can we all wait? I thought it
would be to-day! The mother wants the bread to-day."

Something in the child's earnest face touched the master, and he said,
more gently,--

"I did not say you might not _begin_ to-day. You must begin this hour,
this moment. Too much time has been lost already."

And at once he set about the first lesson, scolding and grow