Matthew of Westforest was another sort. Tall and shrivelled and reddish, he had another manner of wit.
The three supped in the castle hall, at the upper end of a table accommodating a half-score above the salt and thrice that number below. Beside Montjoy sat Lady Alice, his wife. There were likewise a young girl, his daughter Isabel, and his sister, also young, married and widowed, Dame Elenore.
Abbot Mark talked much to these three, benevolently, with gallantry looking around corners. The Prior maintained silence here. The features he secretly praised were the beautiful features of Outward Advancement. Montjoy at supper talked little. After a life of apparent unconcern he was beginning to think of soul’s life. Perhaps once a day he felt a shift of consciousness. Now it came like a zephyr from some differing, surely sweeter clime, and now like a clean dagger stroke. After these events, which never took more time to happen than the winking of an eye, he saw some great expanse of things differently. He was learning to lie in wait for these instants. Laid one to another, they were becoming the hub around which the day’s wheel ran. But truly they were but instants and came but once in so often, taking him when it pleased them. And the lightning might have showed him—perhaps did show him—that there was an unknown number of things yet to change. They might be very many. He knew in no wise definitely whence came the fragrant air and the dagger strokes.
At the moment when the chronicle opens, he had turned back, in his questing, to the broad realm of Holy Church. Holy Church said that she sat, acquiescent, wise, at the door through which such things came. In fact, she said, she had the keys. Montjoy, being no fool, saw, indeed, how much of the portress was lewd and drunken. But for all that surely she had been given the keys! Given them once, surely she could not have parted with them! He rebuked the notion. And truly he knew much that was good of the portress, much that was very good. He thought, “I will better serve Religion”—conceiving that to be Holy Church’s high name. But he was bewildered between high name and low name, between the saint there in the portress and the evident harlot. Between the goodness and the evil!
He was led by a longing for union and he only knew that it was not for old unions that once had contented. He could have those at any time if he willed them again. But he knew that they would not content. The longing was larger and demanded a larger reciprocal. He was knight-errant now in the interior land of romance, out to find that reciprocal, visited with gleams from some presence, but wandering often, turning in mistake now here, now there.
Supper ended. Abbot Mark had come to the castle for counsel, or at the least, for intelligent sympathy. It was too general in the hall. The withdrawing room would be better. They went to this, but still there was play, with a fire for a cool June evening, with lights and musical instruments, Dame Elenore’s hands upon the virginals, young Isabel’s fresh voice singing with a young knight, man of Montjoy’s, two gentlewomen serving Lady Alice murmuring over a tapestry frame—and the Abbot soothed, happy, in the great chair near Dame Elenore. Prior Matthew shook himself. “Business! Business!” was his true motto and inner word. He spoke in a low voice to the Abbot, deferentially, for the Priory deduced from the Abbey, but monitory also, perhaps even minatory. Abbot and Prior alike knew that when it came to business the Prior had the head.
The Abbot sighed and turned from Dame Elenore to Montjoy who was brooding, chin on fist, eyes on fire. “We must ride early to Silver Cross, Montjoy! Counsel is good, they say, taken in the warm, still hour before bedtime.”
Dame Elenore lifted her hands from the virginals. Montjoy’s wife spoke to her women and, the song being done, to her daughter. “We will go, my lord. Give you good night! Your blessing, Lord Abbot!” She kneeled for it, as did young Isabel and Dame Elenore and the two gentlewomen and the young knight and Gilbert the page. The Abbot blessed; the women and the young men took their departure. Montjoy and Silver Cross and Westforest had the room and the fire and through the window the view, did they choose to regard it, of the town roofs and twisting, crack-like streets, and of the river, now under the gleaming of a rising moon, and a line that was the bridge, and a mound on the farther side crowned by a twinkling constellation, lights of Saint Leofric’s monks. The Abbot did so look, walking heavily the room and pausing by the window. It was with peevish face and gesture that he returned to the great chair “Do you hear each day, Montjoy, louder news of what Hugh is doing?”
“Is it Prior Hugh, or is it Saint Leofric? If it be Hugh, I say that long since we knew that he was ambitious and glory-covetous. If it be the saint—how shall you war against him?”
“If Saint Willebrod would arise to war—”
“Would they war—two saints?”
“Would he not come to aid of St. Robert, St. Bernard, St. Stephen and Abbey of Silver Cross? Just as Montjoy would draw blade for his suzerain? Chivalry, loyalty and fealty must hold in heaven,” said the Abbot.
“If there is One behind Saint Leofric—”
“Never believe it!” The Prior spoke hastily. “Moreover, my son, it is certainly not Leofric. It is Hugh!”
Montjoy sat brooding. His guests watched him. Presently he spoke. “Two days ago, returning from hawking in Long Fields, I met a man who had sat and woven baskets from his youth because he could not walk, being smitten in both feet. He was walking, he was skipping and running. ‘Saint Leofric! Saint Leofric!’ he kept crying out, and those with him cried, ‘Saint Leofric! Saint Leofric!’ I halted one of them. ‘The right hand and arm—the right hand and arm that were found, lord! He touched but the little finger—and look how he leaps and runs!’ ”
The Abbot groaned.
“I rode on farther and I met a stream of folk on their way to the bridge. They had made themselves into a procession and were chanting. I remember easily and I can almost give you their chant. It ran something like this.”
He began to chant, but not loudly.
“ ‘They were found through a dream,
They were shown to Brother Paul,
A saintly monk,
Where they rested
Under a stone
In a place prepared of old
In Saint Leofric’s great church!
The white bones,
The right arm and the right hand,
Miraculous!
In the monk’s dream
They shone through the stone
Making a pool of light.
Saint Leofric painted in the window
Came down and kneeled over it.’ ”
Again the Abbot groaned. “So saith Hugh!”
“ ‘Good Prior Hugh made to dig.
There in sweet earth,
In spices and linen,
The right hand and arm
At last!
Yea, it shineth forth—
Saint Leofric smileth in his window!’ ”
The Abbot groaned the third time. “Sathanas smileth!”
“ ‘Now are the bones together,
They shine with a sunny light,
Working miracles!—
From the four corners come
The sick and the sorrowful—’ ”
“Aye! Bringing gifts!”
“ ‘Saint Leofric’s name is in all mouths,
His glory encreaseth over Silver Cross!’ ”
“I should not have said it—I should not have said it!” cried the Abbot. “But with the inconstant