Gordon’s eyes, following him, saw the worn motto deeply cut in the stone above it.
“O Solitudo, sola Beatitudo.”
Was it solitude that had brought that look of utter peace to the friar’s face? Or was it rather the belief that made him bow before the niche yonder?
His gaze wandered back to the shrine. Prayer to him was a fetish—a plastic rigmarole of symbols and formulæ—the modern evolution of the pre-Adamite, anthropomorphic superstition. It was far more than that to the friar. He knelt each day to that little leaden image. And before such an image she, Teresa, whose pure soul had been wounded last night, had laid that written petition.
A singular look stole to his face, half-quizzical, half-wistful. He took a leaf of paper from his pocket. He hesitated a moment, folding and unfolding it. He glanced toward the gate.
Then he went to the niche, stooped and lifted one of the loose flat stones that formed the base on which the image rested. He brushed away the sand with his hand, put the paper in the space and replaced the stone over it.
As he stood upright, a voice called to him from the gate. It was the padre, and he turned and followed him in.
CHAPTER XXXI
AT THE FEET OF OUR LADY OF SORROWS
George Gordon, at the monastery of San Lazzarro, looked out of washed eyes upon an altered condition. He was conscious of new strength and new weaknesses. The man, emerging from the slough of those months of lawless impulses and ungoverned recklessnesses, had found no gradual rejuvenation. After weeks of remorse, temptation had flung itself upon him full armed. The memory of a prayer had vanquished it. In that instant of moral resistance, conscience had been reborn. It was the sharp sword dividing forever past from present. The past of debauchery was henceforth impossible to him. What future was there? He had not only to bear unnumbed the despair he had tried to drown, but an anguish born of the newer yesterday.
The wholesome daily life of the friars, their homely occupations and studies, varied by little more than matutinal visits of fish-boats of the lagoon, aided him insensibly. His thought needed something craggy to break upon and he found it in the Armenian language which he studied under the tutelage of Padre Somalian, aiding the friar in turning into its rugged structure the sonorous periods of “Paradise Lost.”