The Prior was a saintly man, big of frame, simple and wise. The second morning the two stood before him to give him thanks and say farewell. He looked at them somewhat long before speaking. “You are goodly to look upon,” he said. “I see that you have been through much and will go through more before heaven is complete. But you are bound for heaven and Who dwells therein. Take and give blessing!”
The wold was silver, the sea blue, the sky blue crystal. The road shown, they went forth from the Carmelites to come to Brighthaven. They walked hand in hand. “How beautiful is the world!”
CHAPTER XXXI
The Lord of Montjoy returned from his second and greater pilgrimage. This time he had seen Jerusalem. He was palmer. Bit of palm was wrought into his sleeve, stitched into his hat. The Lady of Montjoy held his castle for him, his son-in-law, young Isabel’s baron, giving advice across five leagues. Montjoy had been gone nigh three years, for once, taken prisoner by the Turks, he had been held three months in noisome prison, and once fever had taken him captive, and once shipwreck and a desert strand had held him long. Now, returning, he had come through Italy and through France, alone and afoot, for that was his pilgrimage. Now he moved across Brittany. There were many shrines in Brittany, and it held him while he went from the one to the other. But he neared the sea coast and the port where he would take ship for England.
A slight dark man with earnest seeking eyes, wrapped in palmer’s grey with palmer’s hat and staff and scrip, walked a Brittany road, and pictures of his travels walked with him. They were many, as though a lifetime had been spent between castle of Montjoy and Jerusalem wall and back again. So many that they must come like a breadth of the earth between him and the pictures of three years gone, or five years gone, or more. That was true, but now and then breadth of earth became cloud merely; cloud parted, and there were ancient pictures fresh again.
Now for days they were English pictures. “Because I am nearing home! They come out to meet and greet me.” But while they were clear they came also into company of later pictures. His castle knew thousand other castles, his town multitude of other towns; Silver Cross and Westforest many and many abbeys and priories. And the palmer, having grown, could in a measure hold all together and look out upon and through them. So with the palmer’s whole life.
Montjoy travelled seaward. The day was bright and Brittany had to him a flavour of home. Moreover at dawn had come Isabel. She seemed now to float by his side, her feet just above the grey road. Twice it had been so in Italy, thrice in the Holy Land. It had been a small thought, that holding her confined to castle there above Middle Forest, or to church of Silver Cross where lay only her old robe, or to this or that faint ring in time! She was everywhere and every time. She was living, she was with him, here, now!