The dull booming of the sulky Atlantic was almost drowned by the cheerful clatter of the headlong brook. Antonio drew near to the vociferous waters as if to compel an answer to his question. Hardly an hour before those waters had leaped down the mountain above the guest-house, they had danced through the monks' vineyard, they had plunged along the dark tunnel which led them under the refectory, they had resounded strangely in the vast kitchen, they had emerged into the Abbot's garden, and at last they had tumbled headlong down the slopes to seethe and shout at Antonio's feet. He would fain have demanded of them, "Is all well?"
But it was needful to possess his soul in patience until the rising of the moon: so Antonio returned to his saddle-bags and drew forth a supper of bread and dried figs. From time to time he would mount the knoll and would peer vainly through the darkness in the direction of the monastery. Once or twice, to kill time, he wandered back along the road: but he soon returned, for the moaning of the Atlantic made itself drearily insistent whenever he got out of hearing of the merry torrent.
As the hour of moonrise drew nearer the monk's heart beat faster. Deep down in his soul there was still a calm confidence that all was well: but the surface of his mind was tumultuous with myriad hopes and fears. He tried to groom his horse and left the work half done: he began to say his rosary and broke off half-way through the second Mystery: he sat down, rose up, and sat down again twenty times. Perhaps the monastery had escaped desecration: but who could assure him that winter gales and summer heats and spring floods had not torn off roofs or shrunk up timbers or whirled away walls? For all he knew the moon would rise upon a ruin.
At length a smear of watery light along the horizon showed that the moon's orb was urging up into a bank of mist. Antonio turned and ran to the top of the knoll in time to see a vague luminosity blanching the leaden waters of the ocean. Near objects became visible. He could make out the white oblong of the farmstead and the white flanks of his horse. But the further landscape and the tops of the hills seemed withdrawn into denser shadow than before.
The suspense was hard to bear: but Antonio knew it could not be prolonged. Above the bank of cloud stars were shining in a clear heaven. He waited. Now and again he uttered fragments of prayers.
The cloud-bank went on sinking slowly into the sea all the time the moon was mounting out of it, until the rim of the round shield gleamed like a piece of old silver-gilt through the last smoky veil. Then the rim of the shield pushed up clear, shining against the blue as cold and sharp and bright as a scythe. Antonio yearned towards it, trembling all over: but he did not turn round till the entire white orb was floating free before his eyes.
He gazed down the knoll and saw, as clear as noon-day, the old camp of the monks and the troopers. He saw the extent of the farm, its house and buildings, its fields and vineyards and orchards. He saw the Atlantic, firm and shining, like a field of ice. He saw his horse, tethered to a tree and grazing softly. He saw the swirling brook, like liquid jet, bearing curds and suds and bergs of snow. He saw the straight pines, the jeweled orange-grove, the white road, the violet heavens. Then, with the Name upon his lips, he turned round.
High on her holy hill, with a rich curtain of pine-woods drawn out behind her throne, the abbey chapel looked down upon Antonio all white and fair and inviolate. The rains which had burst around her and the suns which had burned upon her had only enhanced her whiteness, till she shone like her Lord, transfigured upon Mount Hermon. A cry burst from Antonio's lips. His heart sang Tola pulchra es amica mea: "Thou art altogether fair, my love." The chapel seemed a glorious ark, newly borne to rest upon her Ararat by the floods of silver moonlight. Like Saint John on Patmos Antonio could have cried: "I see the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, from God, arrayed like a Bride adorned for her Bridegroom." In Antonio's ears, as in John's, an angel seemed to say: "Come, and I will show thee the Bride, the spouse of the Lamb."
Antonio had planned to wait until daybreak before he sought entrance to his old home. But the Spirit of God bade him re-enter the sacred place in the first ecstasy of his vision. "Spiritus et sponsa dicunt, Veni: The Spirit and the Bride say, Come,'" Antonio murmured; and he began to climb the hill.