Dreamy and drowsy I lay back and thought and wondered, for how long I know not, but for long—until the dim aisles had grown midnight-silent and the moon had set, and then an owl hooted on the ledges outside, and at that sound, with a start and a sigh, I awoke once more.
“Fools!” I muttered, thinking over what I had heard with dreamy insequence—“fools, liars, to set such a date upon this rest of mine! Drunken churls! I will go at once to my fair Saxon, to my sweet nestlings—that is, if they be not yet to bed—and to-morrow I will give that meager acolyte such a lesson in the misreading of his missal-margins as shall last him till Doomsday. By St. Dunstan! he shall play no more pranks with me—and yet, and yet, my heart misgives me—my soul is loaded with foreboding, my spirit is sick within me. Where have I come to? Who am I? Gods! Hapi, Amenti of the golden Egyptian past, Skogula, Mista of the Saxon hills and woods, grant that this be not some new mischance—some other horrible lapse!” and I sat up there on the white stone, and bowed my head and dangled my apostolic heels against my own commemorative marbles below, while gusts of alternate dread and indignation swept through the leafless thickets of remembrance.
Presently these meditations were disturbed by some very different outward sensations. There came stealing over the consecrated pavements of that holy pile the sound of singing, and it did not savor of angelic harmony; it was rough, and jolly, and warbled and tripped about the columns and altar steps in most unseemly sprightliness. “Surely never did St. Gregory pen such a rousing chorus as that,” I thought to myself, as, with ears pricked, I listened to the dulcet harmonies. And along with the music came such a merry odor as made me thirsty to smell of it. ’Twas not incense—’twas much more like cinnamon and nutmegs—and never did censer—never did myrrh and galbanum smell so much of burnt sack and roasted crab-apples as that unctuous, appetizing taint.
I got down at once off my slab, and, being mighty hungry, as I then discovered, I followed up that trail like a sleuth-hound on a slot. It was not reverent, it did not suit my saintship, but down the steps I went hot and hungry, and passed the reredos and crossed the apse, and round the pulpit, and over the curicula, and through the aisles, and by many a shrine where the tapers dimly burned I pressed, and so, with the scent breast high, I flitted through an open archway into the checkered cloisters. Then, tripping heedlessly over the lettered slabs that kept down the dust of many a roystering abbas, I—the latest hungry one of the countless hungry children of time—followed down that jolly trail, my apostolic linens tucked under my arm, jeweled miter on a head more accustomed to soldier wear, and golden crook carried, alas! like a hunter lance “at trail” in my other hand, till I brought the quest to bay. At the end of the cloisters was a door set ajar, and along by the jamb a mellow streak of yellow light was streaming out, rich with those odors I had smelled and laden with laughter and the sound of wine-soaked voices noisy over the end, it might be, of what seemed a goodly supper. I advanced to the light, listened a moment, and then in my imperious way pushed wide the panel and entered.
It was the refectory of the monastery, and a right noble hall wherein ostentation and piety struggled for dominion. Overhead the high peaked ceiling was a maze of cunningly wrought and carved woodwork, dark with time and harmonized with the assimilating touches of age. Round by the ample walls right and left ran a corridor into the dim far distance; and crucifix and golden ewer, cunning saintly image, and noble-branching silver candlesticks, gleamed in the dusk against the ebony and polish of balustrade and paneling. Under the heavy glow of all these things the Brothers’ bare wooden table extended in long demure lines; but wooden platter and black leathern mugs were now all deserted and empty.
It was from the upper end came the light and jollity. Here a wider table was placed across the breadth of the hall, and upon it all was sumptuous magnificence—holy poverty here had capitulated to priestly arrogance. Silver and gold, and rare glasses from cunning Italian molds, enriched about with shining enamels wherein were limned many an ancient heathen fancy, shone and sparkled on that monkish board. On either side, in mighty candelabra, bequeathed by superstition and fear, there twinkled a hundred waxen candles, and up to the flames of these steamed, as I looked, many a costly dish uncovered, and many a mellow brew beaded and shining to the very brim of those jeweled horns and beakers that were the chief accessories to that pleasant spread.
They who sat here seemed, if a layman might judge, right well able to do justice to these things. Half a dozen of them, jolly, rosy priors and prelates, were round that supper table, rubicund with wine and feeding, and in the high carved chair, coif thrown back from head, his round, ruddy face aflush with liquor, his fat red hand asprawl about his flagon, and his small eyes glazed and stupid in his drunkenness, sat my friend the latest Abbot of St. Olaf’s fane.
He had been singing, and, as I entered, the last distich died away upon his lips, his round, close-cropped head, overwhelmed with the wine he loved so much, sank down upon the table, the red vintage ran from the overturned beaker in a crimson streak, and while his boon comrades laughed long and loud his holiness slept unmindful. It was at this very moment that I entered, and stood there in my ghostly linen, stern and pale with fasting, and frowning grimly upon those godless revelers. Jove! it was a sight to see them blanch—to see the terror leap from eye to eye as each in turn caught sight of me—to see their jolly jaws drop down, and watch the sickly pallor sweeping like icy wind across their countenances. So grim and silent did we face each other in that stern moment that not a finger moved—not a pulse, I think, there beat in all their bodies, and in that mighty hall not a sound was heard save the drip, drip of the Abbot’s malmsey upon the floor and his own husky snoring as he lay asleep amid the costly litter of his swinish meal.
Stern, inflexible, there by the black backing of the portal I frowned upon them—I, whom they only deemed of as a saint dead three hundred years before—I, whom lifeless they knew so well, now stood vengeful upon their threshold, scowling scorn and contempt from eyes where no life should have been—can you doubt but they were sick at heart, with pallid cheeks answering to coward consciences? For long we remained so, and then, with a wild yell of terror they were all on foot, and, like homing bats by a cavern mouth, were scrambling and struggling into the gloom of the opposite doorway. I let them escape, then, stalking over to the archway, thrust the wicket to upon the heels of the last flyer, and glad to be so rid of them, shot the bolt into the socket and barred that entry.
