six went away as though they had moth wings, and now with no light—”
“Yet they give forth that right hand and arm doth shine, giving light whereby a reading man may read! Wherefore—oh, Hugh!—shone it not by Damson Hill?”
Said Montjoy, “All this is enough to father Suspicion, but the child must be named Certainty.”
“Then listen further!—Proceed, my son. You two and the hermit followed?”
“We followed, reverend father. Under Damson Hill those six parted, and three went by divers ways, belike to their own dwellings. But the three with the bones they had digged went Saint Leofric’s road. We followed Blackfriar and his fellows who would be lay brethren. The moon shone out. We followed to Friary Gate and saw them enter.”
“And then?”
“Gregory the hermit turned and went again to Damson Wood, and we with him. When we came to his cell there was red east.”
“What did you think of what you had seen?”
“We could conceive naught, lord. We did not know that which was to be proclaimed in Easter week. But the hermit said thrice, ‘Villainy! Villainy! Villainy! A shepherd hath turned villain!’ ”
Brother Barnaby came in. “He said besides, ‘I see what you cannot see, good brothers! But dimly, and I cannot explain to myself what I see.’ ”
“I had forgot that.”
“He said also. ‘Talk not, till you know of what you are talking,’ and he took from us a promise of silence.”
“I was coming to that, brother.—We are not gabblers, reverend father. We left Damson Wood and came down to the bridge and crossed river to our own side. We said naught, remembering, ‘Talk not till you know of what you are talking.’ Two days went by, and then near Little Winching, up the Wander, down lay Brother Barnaby with a fever, and I must nurse him for a month. He, being very sick, forgot, and I being busy and concerned, nigh forgot Damson Graveyard and Saint Leofric’s Gate. Then, Brother Barnaby getting well and we walking in a fair morning to Little Winching, there meets us all the bruit!”
“And still”—Brother Barnaby came in again—“we said nothing. But it burned our hearts. So said Brother Andrew, ‘We will go take this thing to Prior Matthew of Westforest.’ ”
“And so they did, according to right inner counsel,” said the Prior. He turned in his chair. “You may go now, my sons. But on your obedience, speak as yet to none other of these things!”
Brother Andrew and Brother Barnaby craved blessing, received it and vanished. There was pause, then, “If we check not Hugh,” said the Abbot, “we shall have loss and shame, being no longer the first, the pupil of the eye, to this part England!”
“If they spoke,” said Montjoy, “none would believe them against the miracles. Nor do I know if I would believe. Say that one saw the robbed grave—what then? One travels not much further! I would believe, I think, the hermit.”
“Then will you ride, Montjoy, to Damson Wood?”
“Yes, I will go there. But my believing and yours and Gregory’s and the friars’ make not yet the people’s believing. Here is stuff for splendid quarrel with Hugh—but in the meantime go the folk in rivers, touch the relics and are healed!”
“What we need,” said the Prior, and he spoke slowly and cautiously, “is counter-miracle.”
“Yes, but you cannot order the Saints!”
“No.”
It was again the Prior who spoke and apparently in agreement. The Abbot sighed. “Well, let us to bed!—Go to Damson Wood, Montjoy, and then ride to Silver Cross.”
“I will do that. I see,” said Montjoy, “the mischief that this thing does you—”
Even as he spoke he had a vision of the Abbey church of Silver Cross. He saw the tombs and the sculptured figure of Isabel whom he had loved, and the great altar painting of Our Lady done in Italy. Under the breath of his mind he thought that that form and face were like Isabel’s. So like that almost she might have been in that Italian painter’s mind when he painted this glorified woman standing buoyant, in carnation and sapphire, among clouds that thinned into clear blue that passed in its turn into light that blinded. He saw the glowing glass 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