ANDREW-- Tush!
SOLOMAN--And hung it upon a sea-cliff.
ANDREW--Tush, tush, lad!
Don't make game o' the old man. If he's bent,
It's with prayer. (_He comes back to the window._)
SOLOMAN-- Sing me a sea-song.
ANDREW-- It's too raw
A night, lad.
(_He holds his taper up toward Soloman's, when
suddenly some one carrying a light appears at
the farther corner of the dormitory. Soloman
jerks back his candle._)
Eh? It's Bill-o'-the-wisp!
God save us, man! Moving! It's a torch.
(_The light passes behind the chapel. Andrew walks
back in the court._)
How the wind blows! There's blood in it. Caw, rooks,
Chatter and caw. Villainy is abroad.
There's blood on the stones somewhere, fresh blood.
(_He stands looking in the direction whence the
light disappeared._)
It's the new deer-man fastening up the dogs.
He hunts in the night when the brockets o' the wood
Come to the stream to drink. And none to tell them
O' the foul spear. No abbot-stag to say--
Standing to his belly in the stream--
"Drink will be the death of you." It's a foul world.
(_Returning toward the window._)
The hunter's at the kennel wi' his pups.
What's his name? He's been here now a sennight.
SOLOMAN--Macias.
ANDREW-- Macias; that's a good name.
SOLOMAN-- (_Giving Andrew a light._)
It's a lean name.
ANDREW-- Lean name? Fat, man, fat.
An it was lean we'd have to cast our skins,
As the snakes do, and sleep at breakfast time.
I tell you, Soloman, there a hunter for you.
He's for a beast, he fronts it i' the dark,
Blazing its pretty orbs wi' his big torch.
His eye's a rook's eye and his spear as true
As the bolt o' the buskined hussy what you say
Drops from the moon i' the dead o' night and hunts
Naked i' the woods. She's a--I'm a monk, though.
An you could see him coming through the copse,
Shuffling the dews away, zooks, you would say
The burnt faced fellows of Libya were for sure
Making a revel feast for the big god.
The game! the game! Sweet, tender prickets,
Stags and chamois calves, pheasants and geese,
Turtles and loaches and toper horse-fish
Wi' fins as red as blood. God bless us, though.
An the Abbot finds the oratory dark,
There'll be thin food for sheep on Andrew's grave.
Water and bread.
(_He starts toward the chapel, humming to himself._)
SOLOMAN-- What's the song, Andrew?
ANDREW-- Sh!
The Abbot hears me trill that heathen song,
I'll get no chick-weed. It's a foul song.
(_He comes forward and looks round the corner of
the dormitory, then returns to the window._)
A cricket chirped it from a chink i' the wall
As the old man dozed dreaming o' green fields,
Up there. (_He sings._)
_The grass is food for the ewe_
_And the ewe is food for man_
_And man is food for the green, green grass_
_And the grass for the ewe again._
The foul song makes goat's food of us all.
Old Andrew's shoots, gowan, and aigilops
For filthy goats to browse on. (_He starts away._)
Sfoot, I'll fast
'Fore I'll be carried around in a goat's udder.
(_Suddenly around the farther corner of the chapel
the light reappears. Soloman snatches-to the
shutter. Old Andrew blows out his taper and
gets down upon his knees by the wall. Macias,
the hunter, carrying a pine torch, comes
forward across the court._)
ANDREW-- (_Telling his beads._)
_Adeste, sancti_; villainy is abroad.
MACIAS-- (_Holding down his torch._)
Ay, monk, you're right. Are all the brothers in?
ANDREW--_Abi_, fiend! Out with the sooty torch!
Old Andrew's prayers can fly to heaven i' the dark.
MACIAS--I meant no harm, monk. I was passing by
And heard you say there's villainy abroad.
I thought perhaps you'd heard the blind bitch howl,
As I did, mournful. Did you? Did you hear her?
ANDREW-- (_Looking up._)
Who breaks old Andrew's mass? Zooks, it's the Devil
Thrusting his grimy face through censer smoke.
(_Turning to the wall._)
_Adeste, sancti_; villainy is abroad.
MACIAS-- (_Reflecting._)
It may have been in my dream. (_He walks out in the court._)
A few white stars
Still burned above the village. (_Looking up._) Not a star
In all the heavens. (_He returns right. Andrew has risen._)
Are all the brothers in?
ANDREW--Up there behind the clouds?
MACIAS-- Did you hear the howl?
ANDREW--Ay, heard it in the pines.
MACIAS-- The bitch, I mean.
ANDREW--Carnus is dog. Bitch is a carnal thought.
I've been at prayer.
MACIAS-- Within?
ANDREW-- The prayer was in;
Andrew was out.
MACIAS-- Here in the gale? How long?
ANDREW--Till a soul jumps from the big windy world.
MACIAS--Jumps from the world? Whose soul?
ANDREW-- The monk's.
MACIAS--(_Aside._) The monk's!
There, there it is, the howl of the hound!
Death has been here.
ANDREW-- Shook and refused to jump
Till he was driven off.
MACIAS-- What! Driven off?
ANDREW--Ay, by the winds.
MACIAS-- He died not in his cell?
ANDREW--He died here by the wall.
(_He walks back in the darkness._)
MACIAS-- Monk, beat the brush;
I fear some crime is crouching in the dark.
ANDREW--Ay, that there is; there's villainy abroad.
(_He stands listening._)
MACIAS--Why are you silent? Tell me how he died.
(_Andrew returns gloomily and lights his taper at
the hunter's torch._)
ANDREW--His soul was calm until it sniffed the gale
And saw the wild-fire grazing in the sky.
And then you should have seen him. When he heard
The roar of the wind and saw the lean moon
Rush through the clouds, tearing them with her horn,
Zooks, then he fluttered like a gull on a mast
When a big barque is poppling up and down
I' the foam. And all the while devils' grimy hands
Plucked at him through the dark.
(_The hunter turns away mumbling to himself._) Eh?
Mad? You're right.
An you'd a seen 'em you'd a said they're mad.
MACIAS--Where will I find the Abbot?
ANDREW-- Legions of them.
They'd seen me sponge him twice with a good shrift.
As soon as ever the third foul sin appeared,
They pounced him and pitched him down over the world
To where the big deep dashes up the sky
Spraying the stars of heaven. Down, down, down!
(_He walks back in the court and stands listening._)
Hear it? Blood on the stones, fresh blood. (_Calling._) Mother!
MACIAS--Chattering to himself. It must be he,
The ancient acholyte they told me of.
Gray hairs and staff--
ANDREW-- Mother!
MACIAS-- His ears are keen
From listening to the crickets in the stones,
Year after year. Jesu, that's a long time.
The eagles that were young upon the crags
When he came here are gray. God, fifty years!
For fifty years to watch the lizards spawn,
To feed them, name them, miss them then and see
In the green crevices of the old wall
Another brood come forth. Each rook that haunts
These musty gables here, he knows them all;
Knows every tomb-bat in the coffin'd crypt;
Can tell the spiders, where they cast their webs
In the dark corners, where and how and why;
The rere-mice, when they breed; the vermin--God!
Fifty long years, fifty! And all that time
To count the days like beads and feel them black!
I'd rather be a fox. I'd rather be--
Never to have chased the chamois up the cliffs!
Never to have felt the thrill of stag at bay,
Or heard the pheasant in the wild brown brake
Whir! (_Walking right._) I'd rather be a chipmunk free to--
ANDREW--You got the dogs shut in?
MACIAS-- (_At the corner of the dormitory._)
They're shut in. Why?
ANDREW--Hear it.
MACIAS-- I hear nothing.
ANDREW-- Far down in the dark.
There, groaning in the wind.
It tries to rise.
Some stag or something's fallen from the rocks.
Are the dogs in? Is Twinkle in, and Spot?
(_Macias walks back._)
There's something moving round it.
MACIAS-- Stag, you say?
ANDREW--It's not a stag. Its foot sounds like a paw.
Hear it? It's dragging off the carcass. Hear?
MACIAS--Old man, your ears are at the gates of death.
What is it that you hear in this wild night?
Awake you strike the trail I struck in sleep.
I have just had a dream in which I saw
A stag out on the mountain there dragged down.
ANDREW-- (_Abstractedly._)
Its foot sounds like a paw.
MACIAS-- 'Twas in the dream.
I am just from a dream in which I saw
A snow-white talbot pull a stag down.
ANDREW-- Dream?
MACIAS--And when the talbot had pulled down the buck
A pair of hands, small as a fairy's are,
Reached through the leaves and--
ANDREW-- Mother Mary! Hold!
I will wake Daniel.
MACIAS-- Are all the brothers in?
(_Andrew beats upon the shutter._)
Do what?
ANDREW--You're right. He'll read it as easy
As the old fellow what ate pulse and got
Lean as the kine he saw. He knows them all.
Says he: "Dreams sleep under the dog-wood blooms
And love to hear the patter o' the rain."
Why, he knows the color o' their beards, man.
Says he, one day, telling me of a dream--
Onar was its name, gray-beard like a king--
Steals into a tent: "Now you can get the girl;
Wake up and fight; now you can get her."
(_A low voice within._) Eh?
A dream, God bless us, fire-wing. (_The shutter opens._)
He.
SOLOMAN-- Tell it.
(_Farther back, a second shutter opens._)
MACIAS--First tell me this: Did either of you monks
Hear Fever howl?
SOLOMAN-- I heard no howl.
MACIAS--(_Flashing back his torch._) Did you?
LEO-- (_In a thin voice._)
What?
MACIAS--Hear Fever howl.
LEO-- What's Fever?
MACIAS-- The bitch.
LEO-- Shame!
MACIAS-- (_To Soloman._)
A while ago I started up from sleep
And hurried to the kennel, thinking sure
I'd find old Fever sick again; but no;
The bitch was sleeping. And yet I heard a howl.
It may have been the white hound in my dream.
I seemed to be out on the mountain there.
'Twas early morning; a few stars still shone
Above the village. Soon, far down the road,
I heard a baying as of hounds. Thinks I:
"A deer has passed and waked the village dogs.
Now for a chase." There must have been a slot
Of fresh blood on the road that fired the pack,
For on they came like mad. Around the cliff
Long bodies swung like shadows through the mist,
And tore on up the mountain. Farther up
A stag plunged from a hazel copse, and then
A snow-white talbot, following close behind,
Shot smoking from the brake. "Abloy!" I cried,
And leaped upon a rock. The after-pack,
Nosing the vent along the mountain road,
Heard the loud challenge of the leading hound
And, breaking trail, came crashing through the brush
And spied the quarry, and with their heads in air
Sprang after up the scree, their steaming mouths
Ringing the mountains round. The pretty deer,
With nostrils flaming and with dappled flanks
Torn by the furze, came skirting round a rock
And turned to dash under some low-hung boughs
When over a near knoll the hot, sinewy hound,
Like to a cat-o'-mountain from a limb,
Shot through the air. Crash through the boughs he went.
Sprinkling the earth with leaves. Out jumped my knife,
And, leaping from the rock, I hurried down
To slit the poor brute's throat and save a steak
From the mad, hungry pack. The pretty buck
Staggered beneath the hound, while the beads of blood
Dripped from the quivering hocks. The head fell back,
The tender haunches sank on the soft turf,
And death was closing up the eyes, when lo,
Sancta Maria, what a miracle!
(_He pauses a moment, then proceeds with more and
more animation._)
A gale had risen and the clouds that hung
Gray in the heavens when the chase began,
Foamed, and, flying black before the winds,
Grappled the woods and threw his thick, green hair
Into the swirling rack of livid sky.
Lightnings and thunders, winds and tumbling rocks
Charged on the pack of dogs as though they were
Devils come up from Hell, and hurled them down
Into the pit again. Under the beech
Where the white talbot had pulled down the buck
Behold the miracle the Virgin wrought!
Out of a dallop of green boughs that hung
Close to the haunches of the hart appeared
A pair of small pink hands that with one wrench
Tore the hound's jaws apart. The deer rose up
As from a sleep, shook his brown coat and browsed
The succulent green twigs, then wandered off
Up the dark mountain side, whilst like a star
Between the dim, dissolving antlers shone
A crucifix of silver, dripping blood.
(_Several shutters in the second story have opened
and faces are seen white in the glare of the
torch. Old Andrew, frightened, has drawn back
in the shadow against the wall._)
Lo, then a sight such as I hope our Lord
Will visit to these dying eyes of mine
In their last hour. The louring mountain brows
Brightened beneath a drift of golden feet,
And wings waved in the air, and faces bloomed
In the edding sky, and the dark towering ridge,
Lifting its weight of crags above the storm,
Sloughed off its shadow, and the field of pines,
Like a green army climbing to the clouds
Out of the darkness of the dale below,
Shook their victorious plumes, and every rock,
Tree, bush, and vine, and weed, and flower sent up
Voices of joy till all the mountains rang.
LEO--"I say unto you that joy shall be in heaven over one
sinner that returneth."
VOICE-- (_From the second story._)
Who is the sinner?
MACIAS--(_Calling up._) Are all the brothers in?
VOICE--(_Calling._) Oswald!
ANOTHER-- Ask Pierre.