DOM GALORS
Next day, as soon as the Countess had departed for High March, the
Abbot Richard called Dom Galors, his almoner, into the parlour and
treated him in a very friendly manner, making him sit down in his
presence, and putting fruit and wine before him. This Galors, who I
think merits some scrutiny, was a bullet-headed, low-browed fellow, too
burly for his monkish frock (which gave him the look of a big boy in a
pinafore), with the jowl of a master-butcher, and a sullen slack mouth.
His look at you, when he raised his eyes from the ground, had the hint
of brutality--as if he were naming a price--which women mistake for
mastery, and adore. But he very rarely crossed eyes with any one; and
with the Abbot he had gained a reputation for astuteness by seldom
opening his lips and never shutting his ears. He was therefore a most
valuable book of reference, which told nothing except to his owner.
With all this he was a great rider and loved hunting. His _Sursum
Corda_ was like a view-holloa, and when he said, _Ite missa est_, you
would have sworn he was crying a stag's death instead of his Saviour's.
In matters of gallantry his reputation was risky: it was certain that
he had more than a monk, and suspected that he had less than a
gentleman should have. The women of Malbank asseverated that venison
was not his only game. That may or may not have been. The man loved
power, and may have warred against women for lack of something more
difficult of assault. He was hardly the man to squander himself at the
bidding of mere appetite; he was certainly no glutton for anything but
office. Still, he was not one to deny himself the flutter of the caught
bird in the hand. He had, like most men who make themselves monks by
calculation, a keen eye for a girl's shape, carriage, turn of the head,
and other allies of the game she loves and always loses: such things
tickled his fancy when they came over his path; he stooped to take
them, and let them dangle for remembrances, as you string a coin on
your chain to remind you at need of a fortunate voyage. At this
particular moment he was tempted, for instance, to catch and let
dangle. The chance light of some shy eye had touched and then eluded
him. I believe he loved the chase more than the quarry. He knew he must
go a-hunting from that moment in which the light began to play
will-o'-the-wisp; for action was his meat and dominion what he
breathed. If you wanted to make Galors dangerous you had to set him on
a vanishing trail. The girl had been a fool to run, but how was she to
know that?
To him now spoke the Abbot Richard after this fashion. "Galors," he
said, "I will speak to you now as to my very self, for if you are not
myself you may be where I sit some day. A young monk who is almoner
already may go far, especially when he is young in religion, but in
years ripe. If you prove to be my other self, you shall go as far as
myself can push you, Galors. Rest assured that the road need not stop
at a mitred abbey. In the hope, then, that you may go further, and I
with you, it is time that I speak my full mind. We have our charter, as
you have seen--and at what cost of sweat and urgency, who can tell so
surely as I? But there, we have it: a great weapon, a lever whereby we
may raise Holy Thorn to a height undreamed of by the abbots of this
realm, and our two selves (perched on the top of Holy Thorn) yet
higher. Yet this charter, gotten for God's greater glory (as He knoweth
who readeth hearts!), may not work its appointed way without an
application which poor and frail men might scarcely dare for any less
object. There is abroad, Galors, dear brother, a most malignant viper,
lurking, as I may say, in the very bosom of Holy Church; warmed there,
nesting there, yet fouling the nest, and grinding her tooth that she
may strike at the heart of us, and shiver what hath been so long
a-building up. Of that viper you, Galors, are the chosen
instrument--you and the charter--to draw the tooth."
The Abbot spoke in a low voice, and was breathless; it was not hard to
see that he was uncommonly in earnest. Galors turned over in his mind
all possible plots against an Abbey's peaceful being--tale-bearing to
the Archbishop, a petition for a Papal Legate, a foreshore trouble, a
riot among the fishermen of Wanmouth, some encroachment by the ragged
brethren of Francis and Dominic--and dismissed them all as not serious
enough to lose breath about.
"Who is your viper, father?" was what he said.
"It is the girl Isoult of Matt-o'-the-Moor; Isoult whom they call La
Desirous," replied his spiritual father. The heart of Galors gave a hot
jump; he knew the girl well enough--too well for her, not well enough
yet for himself. It was precisely to win the woeful beauty of her that
he had set his snares and unleashed his dogs. Did the Abbot know
anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl
something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and
dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood
stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of
surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle that
dead surface. He commanded his voice to ask, How should he find such a
girl? "For," said he, "in Malbank girls and boys swarm like dies on a
sunny wall." The deceit implied was gross, yet the Abbot took it in his
haste.
"Thus you shall know her, Galors," he said. "A slim girl, somewhat
under the common size of the country, and overburdened with a curtain
of black hair; and a sullen, brooding girl who says little, and that
nakedly and askance; and in a pale face two grey eyes a-burning."
All this Galors knew better than his Abbot. Now he asked, "But what is
her offence, father? For even with power of life and member the law of
the land has force, that neither man nor maid, witch nor devil, may be
put lightly away."
For this "put away" the Abbot thanked him with a look, and added, that
she was suspected of witchcraft, seeing Mald her mother was a notorious
witch, and the wench herself the byword and scorn of all the
country-side. Sorcery, therefore, or incontinence--"whichever you
will," said he. "Any stick will do to beat a dog with."
Galors had much to say, but said nothing. There was something behind
all this, he was sure, knowing his man by heart. He judged the Abbot to
be bursting with news, and watched him pace the parlour now struggling
with it. Sure enough the murder was out before he had taken a dozen
turns. "Now, Galors," he said, in a new and short vein, "listen to me.
I intend to do what I should have done fourteen years ago, when I held
this girl in my two hands. I let slip my chance, and blame myself for
it; but having slipt it indeed, it was gone until this charter of ours
brought it back fresh. You know how we stand here, you and I and the
Convent-all of us at the disposition of her ladyship. A great lady, my
friend, and a young one, childless, it is said, without heir of her
own. Morgraunt may go to the Crown or Holy Thorn and Gracedieu may
divide it."
"She may marry again," put in Galors.
"She is twice a widow," the Abbot snapped him up, and gave his first
shock. "She is twice a widow, once against her will. She will never
marry again."
"Then, my father," said Galors, "we should be safe as against the
Crown, which the Countess probably loves as little as the rest of her
kind."
"The Countess Isabel," said the Abbot, speaking like an oracle, "is not
childless."
Galors understood.
"Do not misunderstand me in this, Brother Galors," said the Abbot. "We
will do the girl no unnecessary harm. We will slip her out of the
country if we can get any one to take her. Put it she shall be married
or hanged." Galors again thought that he understood. The Abbot went on.
"There shall be no burning, though that were deserved; not even
tumbril, though that were little harm to so hot a piece. There shall
be, indeed, that which the Countess believes to have been already-a
sally at dawn and a flitting. There will then be no harm done. The
tithing will be free of a sucking witch, and the heart of our
benefactress turned from the child of her sin (for such it was to break
troth to the earl, and sin she deems it) to the child of her spiritual
adoption, to wit, our Holy Thorn." He added "You are in my obedience,
Galors. I love you much, and will see to your advancement. You have a
great future. But, my brother, remember this. Between a woman's heart
and her conscience there can be no fight. There is, rather, a triumph,
wherein the most glorious of the' victor's spoils is that same
conscience, shackled and haled behind the car. That you should know,
and on that you must act. Remember you are fighting for Saint Giles of
Holy Thorn, and be speedy while the new tool still burns in your hand."
So with his blessing he dismissed Dom Galors for the day.