in the great windows; he saw the gems—the gems that he had given among them—sparkling in the golden box that held the silver cross. He saw the people on holy days flooding the famous church. They warmed with eyes of life the stone mother and father, the stone Isabel. The many people’s bended knees, their recognition, helped to assure eternal life in the Queen of Heaven pictured in the great painting—and surely so in Isabel, the picture was so like her! The more people the more life—Isabel surely safely there in the eternal Bride and Mother—and if Isabel then surely he, too, her lover and husband, he, too, Montjoy! The people must flow there still, recognising life when they saw it and as it were, giving life, increasing life.
Anything that turned the people away from Silver Cross became in that act the enemy of Montjoy; anything that kept them flowing there, that made them more in number, the friend of Montjoy.
But Abbot and Prior, lodged in connecting chambers and speaking together before they laid themselves to sleep in huge beds, shook their heads over him. Or rather the Abbot did so. The Prior was not liberal with sighs and gestures. “He’ll agree to no shift that smacks of the lie, however slight, necessary, simply defensive, pious it be—”
“Are you sure? I am not,” answered Matthew. “But if he will not—keep him blind like other men, blind and usable! He may indeed prove more usable for being blind.”
CHAPTER III
That same night the monk, Richard Englefield, lay upon his pallet in his cell at Silver Cross. The moon shone in at the small window. He was addressed to observing with his mind’s eye a round of other places upon which she shone. The grange where he had been born and had spent childhood and somewhat of boyhood, rose softly. The mill water caught light, the gable end of the house stood, a figure like a silver shield enlarged—shield of Arthur, shield of Tristram, shield of an old enchanter! The fields spread in moonlight where he worked. He smelled the upturned clods and the springing corn, and he smelled the sere fields under October moon. The moon shone on the town, that was not Middle Forest, where he had been apprenticed to a worker in gold. The moon made the roofs that mounted with their windows, and the plastered house with the criss-cross of timbers, into a rood screen for a giant’s church. Beyond lay the sea, and the moon made for herself a path across that.
Stella Maris—
The sea under moon. He had been across the sea, to France and to Italy, but that was after the rood-screen town. It was when he had become a master workman, a skilled goldsmith, working for princes, working as an artist works, and when he had come to books—to books—to books.—The moon on the sea, on the coasts of Italy!
The moon on the graves of kindred and friends—the cold moon. The moon above weariness and sighing—nights unsleeping, walkings abroad—plans spun and plans torn apart and shredded to the winds. The moon upon sins, the moon upon sorrows.
The moon shining down on the sea, on the coasts of Italy!
The moon upon the hours after work, when he read by the candle, when he put it out and looked upon the night.—Moonlight streaming in at the old room’s window, the window so high in the high roof of the tall, old house.
Thought and thought and thought!—Conviction that there was some adventure—
Warfare, warring and sinning, lusting. Pride that beset him. Pride of being proud. Very love of self-love. Very care of self-care. Self!
The moon on the coasts of Italy!
Men he had known, out of many men, and talk with them. The old priest.
The moon on the coasts of Italy!
The old priest.—Illness. Long illness when death’s door had seemed to open. The priest still. Recovery—and still the priest.
Wickedness again. Self-will and self-laudation. Self! Longing, longing and discontent, and ashes in the mouth. Longing and naught to still it. Not work and not thought!
The priest again. Longing. One thing laid down and another taken up and laid down. Hunger—hunger and thirst—cold and hunger and thirst. If you were in warm taverns, if you were in palaces, yet cold and hunger and thirst. You must hunt warmth, you must hunt bread, you must hunt water. And when you thought you had found came the snow in at the door, came the harpies and snatched the tables away!
God—Christ and His Mother—heaven. They had the food—the water that quenched thirst—the inner fire.
Where were you nearest, nearest?
Work fallen away because he must hunt. Cronies and those whom he thought friends estranged.
Hunt and hunt and hunt. Dig inside, and outside serve—
Where was the outer land that was nearest inner?
God and Christ and His Mother and heaven. They dwelled in the inner that he was hunting. Holy Church was the nearest land.
The moon on monastery fields—the moon on the coasts of Italy!
The rising moon in the dark wood where he walked and tried to talk to God and his soul—and at last shut his hands and buried his forehead upon them against an oak tree, and said, “I become a monk.”
The moon on the garden of herbs, the moon on Silver Cross cemetery.
He had been thirty then, and the dark wood was six years ago.
At first had seemed quenching—but now was cold, hunger and thirst again!
O God—O Christ—O Star of the Sea, shine forth! Oh, heaven, appear!
The moon on the coasts of Italy!
They were fair, with rock and olive, with gray and creamy and rose-hued towns, and over the towns sky that was heart of blue, and in the towns Italian life.
He must tell in confession how all that was coming of late to haunt him. When he plunged into these towns the hunger vanished for a time. But it came again. And in his heart he knew that he wished it to come. “O All-Knowledge and All-Beauty, let me not cease to be driven and to be drawn until I find thee—until I find thee!”
The bell rang for the office of the night. He rose and presently stood chanting, with his brother monks, in the church of Silver Cross. The candles burned, the windows were lead against the starry sky. He knew the stars that were behind them, he saw them in their clusters.
The candles showed in part the great painting of the Blessed among women. He could piece out here also what they did not show. There was splendour in the figure and face, a magic of beauty, and he loved it.
The chanting filled the dark hollow of the church.
The Abbot had dispensation from the night office. The sub-prior was in his place. Moreover, the Abbot was away, having ridden on his white mule, with attendants, to Middle Forest, to the castle of Montjoy.
The office ended, the cell again and sleep. Dawn. Lauds. Breakfast. The reader for the day reading from the life of a saint. “And an angel came nightly to his cell and showed him the scenery of heaven and the Blessed moving there. And his brethren began to know of this, for the light shined out of his cell.”
