Day by day, year by year, the sheep nibbled the tender springing grass. Yet the green sward continued to be decked with orfrey-work of many hues—buttercups, violets, rose-campion, speedwell, daisies—defiant little bright heads not three inches from the roots. His fancies would come up in spite of everything, like the flowers.
But would it always be so? Was he to spend his life in copying these bulky volumes of theology and history—the same old phrases, the same authors, the same seat by the same window? And some day, would he find that his dreams had vanished forever? Might he not grow to be like Brother Peter, who had kept the porter’s lodge for forty years and hated to see a new face? This was the doubt in the back of his mind, and it was very sobering indeed.
Years ago, when he was a boy, he had read the old stories of the missionary monks of Scotland and Ireland. These men carried the message of the Cross to savage tribes, they stood before Kings, they wrought wonders. Was there no more need for such work as theirs? Even now there was fierce misrule in Ireland. Even now the dispute between church and state had resulted in the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the steps of the altar. The Abbeys of all England had hummed like bee-hives when that news came.
Brother Basil discovered just then that the ink was failing, and went to see how the new supply was coming on. It was a tedious task to make ink, but when made it lasted. Wood of thorn-trees must be cut in April or May before the leaves or flowers were out, and the bundles of twigs dried for two, three or four weeks. Then they were beaten with wooden mallets upon hard wooden tablets to remove the bark, which was put in a barrel of water and left to stand for eight days. The water was then put in a cauldron and boiled with some of the bark, to boil out what sap remained. When it was boiled down to about a third of the original measure it was put into another kettle and cooked until black and thick, and reduced again to a third of its bulk. Then a little pure wine was added and it was further cooked until a sort of scum showed itself, when the pot was removed from the fire and placed in the sun until the black ink purified itself of the dregs. The pure ink was then poured into bags of parchment carefully sewn and hung in the sunlight until dry, when it could be kept for any length of time till wanted. To write, one moistened the ink with a little wine and vitriol.
As all the colors for illumination must be made by similar tedious processes, it can be seen that unless there was a demand for such work it would not be thrifty to do it.
Brother Basil arrived just in time to caution the lay brother, Simon Gastard, against undue haste. Gastard was a clever fellow, but he needed watching. He was too apt to think that a little slackness here and there was good for profits. Brother Basil stood over him until the ink was quite up to the standard of the Abbey. But his mind meanwhile ran on the petty squabblings and dry records of the chronicle that he had just been copying. How, after all, was he better than Gastard? He was giving the market what it wanted—and the book was not worth reading. If men were to write chronicles, why not make them vivid as legends, true, stirring, magnificent stories of the men who moved the world? Who would care, in a thousand years, what rent was paid by the tenant farmers of the Abbey, or who received a certain benefice from the King?
As he turned from the sunlit court where the ink was a-making, he received a summons to the Abbot’s own parlor. He found that dignitary occupied with a stout and consequential monk of perhaps forty-five, who was looking bewildered, snubbed, and indignant. Brother Ambrosius was most unaccustomed to admonitions, even of the mildest. He had a wide reputation as a writer, and was indeed the author of the very volume which Brother Basil was now copying. He seemed to know by instinct what would please the buyers of chronicles, and especially what was to be left out.
It was also most unusual to see the Abbot thoroughly aroused. He had a cool, indifferent manner, which made his rebukes more cutting. Now he was in wrathful earnest.