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.”
Brother Richard Englefield did not work in field or garden. He had
worked so for two years. Then Abbot Mark making discoveries, there had
been given him a stone room with a furnace, goldsmith’s tools and two
Brothers for helpers. If you had a master maker among your monks waste
him not in digging, sowing, weeding and gathering! Now he made lovely
things for the church, and for the Abbot’s table. He made presents for
the Abbot to send prelates and princes. The Abbot bragged of his work.
When great visitors came they were shown him in his smithy.
Not only so, but because he was silent--brown-blond, tall and still,
like King David in the picture--and evidently a hunter after God,
and scrupulous to do all the Rule demanded, and all that it allowed
of austerity supererogative--he had fame as monk. Some of his brethren
wished him well and leaned upon his presence, taking as it were his
sunlight, valuing him in and for Silver Cross. Two or three who also
hunted God met him and understood him. Others found in him a reproach,
and others were indifferent or secretly laughed. Silver Cross was much
like the world. Brother Richard continued his struggle and his hunting,
under an exterior still as the church, stripped and simple.
Work this day--work on a rich silver salt cellar for the Abbot to
give to a bishop. As he worked in his stone room with his hammers and
gravers it was coming across him with a breath of mockery--it was
coming with a breath of mockery like a wind from a foggy sea--“Above
and below the salt at a bishop’s table. Above and below the
salt--Christ’s table. Nicodemus above the salt--blind Bartimeus and the
woman of Samaria below?”
He shook off phantasy. The Abbot was his spiritual father whom he
had undertaken to obey, not criticise. True monk must obey and not
question,--not question, not doubt, not compare, not judge. He
must kill Imagination, wagging so. Oh, Truth and Beauty--Truth and
Beauty--Truth and Beauty!
The sun on Gethsemane. The sun on the Blessed among women sitting on
her doorstep, behind her the sound of the carpenters working.
Sext. The chanting, and the windows ruby and emerald, sapphire and
amethyst glass, the glowing patterns, the rows of small figures. The
dark vault of the church and the shafts of gold dust. The cool, the
sense of suspension. The great picture burning forth--the Blessed among
women!
For long now the picture had taken his heart. She was so glorious--she
was so sure--she was an ardent flame mounting with a golden passion
upward! And yet she was tender, compassionate. None might doubt that,
looking at her lips and the light and shadow, the modelling, beneath
the eyes. She was so tall--did she turn her head, so and so would be
the exquisite long line of the throat. Almost at times he thought she
turned her head. She was alive--splendidly so, with glory. “Blessed
among women--Blessed among women--hold me more fully--take me with you
into heaven--take me--!”
Afternoon and work still. The sun going down. Vespers. The Magnificat.
The red-gold light on the picture, uncertain, making her to seem to
move. So would she stand in the round. “Blessed among women--Blessed
among women, I am here, thy child and lover! Make me whole--take me
with thee. Speak, speak to me!”
Night. He did not sleep in the dormitory. There were six cells of
privilege, established when Abbot Reginald of old had made certain
alterations. Brother Oswald who was writing the Chronicle of Silver
Cross, Brothers Peter and Allen who illuminated the great Psalter,
Brother Timothy who had been longest monk of Silver Cross and was
growing like a child, Brother Norbert who was the Abbot’s kinsman had
the five, and Brother Richard who made wealthy things in gold and
silver the sixth. So was not the Rule, but in many things nowadays
abbots modified Rule.
Compline. Night in his cell. “Ah, if the noble and rich visions were
but more real! Ah, if I had the power to move and make move! Ah, if the
picture would become Herself--for me, for me!”