The spell of the vast, the stupendous silence fell upon us. Somehow, Molly drifted from me to Jack as we walked noiselessly on, led by a silent guide, as if she craved the warm comfort of a loved presence, and for a few brief moments the veiled Mercédès paced step for step beside me. But we did not speak to each other.
What a tragic, tremendous silence it was! Yes, I wanted the Boy. I should have been glad of the touch of his little shoulder. Thinking of him thus, by some accident the sleeve of Mercédès's coat brushed against mine. Still, not a word from either of us. I did not even say, "I beg your pardon," for that would have been to obtrude my voice upon the thousand voices of the Silence; dead voices, living voices; voices of passionate protest, voices of heartbreaking homesickness, of aching grief and longing, never to be assuaged. Poor monks—poor banished men who had loved their home, and belonged to it, as the clasping tendrils of old, old ivy belong to the oak.
How dared we come here into this place from which they had been driven, we aliens? I had not known it would grip me so by the throat. How full the emptiness was!—as full to my mind as the air is of motes when a bar of sunshine reveals them.
It was the Palace of Sleep, lost in the mountain forests, but here there was no hope coming with the springing footsteps of a blithe young prince. The sleepers in this palace could not be waked by a wish, or a magic kiss, for they were ghosts, ghosts everywhere—in the great kitchen, with all its huge polished utensils ready for the meal which would never be cooked, and its neat plain dishes on shelved trays, waiting to be carried to the grilles of the solitaires; in the Brothers' refectory where the egg-cups were ranged on long, narrow tables, for the meal never to be eaten, where the chair of the Reader was waiting to receive him; in the Fathers' refectory next door; in the dusky corridors, their ends lost in shadow, where only the sad echoes and the running water of the unseen spring were awake; in the chapels; in the cemetery with its old carved stones and humbler wooden crosses; and most of all in the wonderful cells (which were not cells, but mansions), and in their high-walled gardens, the most private of all imaginable spots on earth.
Wandering on and on, alone now, I felt myself the saddest man in a twilight world. Why, I could not have put into words. Had the brotherhood still peopled the monastery, I should have yearned to join them, partly because I was sad, and partly because the so-called cells were the most charming dwelling-places I had seen. Each comprised a two-storied house in miniature, and each had its garden, shut irrevocably away from sight or sound of any other. Into one of these solitary abodes I went alone, and closed the door upon myself and the ghosts. In fancy I was one of the order, in retreat for a week, my only means of communication with the outer world of the monastery (save for midnight prayers in the dim chapel) a little grille. There was my workshop, where I carved wood; there the narrow staircase leading steeply up to my wainscoted bedroom, my study, and my oratory, with windows looking down into the leafy square of garden, planted by my own hands. Standing at one of those windows, I knew the anguish of parting and loss which had torn the heart of the last occupant, before he walked out of the monastery between double lines of Chasseurs Alpins.
The Fairy Prince's Ring
"Rub the ring, and the Genius will appear."
—Arabian Nights.
Down, down a winding and beautiful road we plunged, on leaving the Grande Chartreuse, while the afternoon sunlight was still golden. The monastery sank out of our sight as we went, as the moon sinks into the sea, and was gone for us as if it were on the other side of the world. Ah, but a sweet, warm world, and I was glad after all that I was not a monk in carved oak cells and walled gardens, but a free young man who could vibrate between the South Pole and the Albany.