CHAPTER V
When consciousness came to my eyes again, everything around me was altered and strange. The very air I drew in with my faint breaths had a taste of the unknown about it, an impalpable something that was not before, speaking of change and novelty. As for surroundings, it was only dimly that any fashioned themselves before those dull and sleepy eyes of mine that hesitated, as they drowsily turned about, whether to pronounce this object and that true material substance, or still the idle fantasy of dreams.
As time went on certainty developed out of doubt, and I found myself speculating on as strangely furnished a chamber as any one was ever in. All round the wall hung the implements of many occupations in bunches and knots. Here the rude tools of husbandry were laid aside, the mattock and the flail; the woodman’s axe and the neatherd’s goad, just as though they had been suspended on the wall by some invisible laborer after a good day’s work. Yonder were a sheaf of arrows and a stout bow strangely shaped, a hunting horn, and there again a long withy peeled for fishing, and a broad, rusty iron sword (that truly looked as if it had not been used for some time) over against a leash for dogs, and a herdsman’s cowl, with other strange things festooning the walls of this dim little place.
Among these possessions of some many-minded men were shelves I noted with clay vessels of sorts upon them, and bunches of dried herbs and roots and apples put by for the winter, and, more curious still, in the safest niche away in the quietest corner were stored up in many tiers more than a score of vellums and manuscripts, all neatly rolled and tagged with colored ribbons, and wound in parchments and embroidered gold and colored leathers, forming such a library of learning as only the very studious could possess in those days. Beyond them were flasks and essences, and dried herbs, and ink-horns, and sheafs of uncut reeds for writing, with such other various items as astonished me by their incongruous complexity and novelty.
All these lay in the shadows most commendable to my weakly eyes. As for the center of the room, I now began to notice it was a brilliant golden haze, a nebulous cloud of yellow light, to my enfeebled sense without form or meaning, whence emerged constantly a thin metallic hammering, as though it might be some kindly invisible spirit were forging a golden idea into a human hope behind that shining veil.
I shut my eyes for a minute or two to rest them, and then looked again. The haze had now concentrated itself into a circle of light, radiating, as I perceived, from a lamp hung from the low roof, and under that pale, modest radiance, seated at a trestle table, was a venerable white-bearded old man. Never, so far, perhaps, in long centuries of intercourse with brave but licentious peoples, had a face like his been before me. It was restful to look at, a new page in history it seemed, full of a peace which had hitherto passed all understanding and a dignity beyond description or definition. Before him, on the board, was a brilliant mass of shining white metal, and, as he eagerly bent over it, absorbed in his work, his thin and scholarly hands, wielding a chisel and a mallet and obeying the art that was in his soul, caused the rhythmed hammering I had noticed, while they forced with loving zeal the bright chips and spiral flakes from the splendid dazzling crucifix he was shaping.
And all behind that lean and kindly anchorite the black shadows flickered on the walls of his lonely cell, and his little fire of sticks burned dimly on the open hearth, and the shining dust of his labor sparkled in his grizzly beard as brightly as the reverent pleasure in his eyes while the symbol before him took form and shape.
So pleasant was he to look upon, I could have left him long undisturbed, but presently a sigh involuntarily escaped me. Thereon, looking up for the first time from his work, the recluse peered all round him into the recesses, and, seeing nothing, fell to his task once more. Again I sighed, and then he arose without emotion or fear, and stared intently into the shadows where I lay. In vain I essayed to speak—my tongue clove to my mouth, and naught but a husky rattle broke the stillness. At that sound he took down the lamp and came forward, wonder and astonishment working in his face; and when, as the light shone on me, with a great effort my head was turned to one side, even that placid monk started back and stood trembling a little by the table.
But he soon mastered his weakness and advanced again, muttering, as he did so, excitedly to himself, “He was right! He was right!” And when at last my tongue was loosened I said:
“Who was right, thou gray-bearded chiseler?”