The office ended, the cell again and sleep. Dawn. Lauds. Breakfast. The reader for the day reading from the life of a saint. “And an angel came nightly to his cell and showed him the scenery of heaven and the Blessed moving there. And his brethren began to know of this, for the light shined out of his cell.”
Brother Richard Englefield did not work in field or garden. He had worked so for two years. Then Abbot Mark making discoveries, there had been given him a stone room with a furnace, goldsmith’s tools and two Brothers for helpers. If you had a master maker among your monks waste him not in digging, sowing, weeding and gathering! Now he made lovely things for the church, and for the Abbot’s table. He made presents for the Abbot to send prelates and princes. The Abbot bragged of his work. When great visitors came they were shown him in his smithy.
Not only so, but because he was silent—brown-blond, tall and still, like King David in the picture—and evidently a hunter after God, and scrupulous to do all the Rule demanded, and all that it allowed of austerity supererogative—he had fame as monk. Some of his brethren wished him well and leaned upon his presence, taking as it were his sunlight, valuing him in and for Silver Cross. Two or three who also hunted God met him and understood him. Others found in him a reproach, and others were indifferent or secretly laughed. Silver Cross was much like the world. Brother Richard continued his struggle and his hunting, under an exterior still as the church, stripped and simple.
Work this day—work on a rich silver salt cellar for the Abbot to give to a bishop. As he worked in his stone room with his hammers and gravers it was coming across him with a breath of mockery—it was coming with a breath of mockery like a wind from a foggy sea—“Above and below the salt at a bishop’s table. Above and below the salt—Christ’s table. Nicodemus above the salt—blind Bartimeus and the woman of Samaria below?”
He shook off phantasy. The Abbot was his spiritual father whom he had undertaken to obey, not criticise. True monk must obey and not question,—not question, not doubt, not compare, not judge. He must kill Imagination, wagging so. Oh, Truth and Beauty—Truth and Beauty—Truth and Beauty!
The sun on Gethsemane. The sun on the Blessed among women sitting on her doorstep, behind her the sound of the carpenters working.
Sext. The chanting, and the windows ruby and emerald, sapphire and amethyst glass, the glowing patterns, the rows of small figures. The dark vault of the church and the shafts of gold dust. The cool, the sense of suspension. The great picture burning forth—the Blessed among women!
For long now the picture had taken his heart. She was so glorious—she was so sure—she was an ardent flame mounting with a golden passion upward! And yet she was tender, compassionate. None might doubt that, looking at her lips and the light and shadow, the modelling, beneath the eyes. She was so tall—did she turn her head, so and so would be the exquisite long line of the throat. Almost at times he thought she turned her head. She was alive—splendidly so, with glory. “Blessed among women—Blessed among women—hold me more fully—take me with you into heaven—take me—!”
Afternoon and work still. The sun going down. Vespers. The Magnificat. The red-gold light on the picture, uncertain, making her to seem to move. So would she stand in the round. “Blessed among women—Blessed among women, I am here, thy child and lover! Make me whole—take me with thee. Speak, speak to me!”
Night. He did not sleep in the dormitory. There were six cells of privilege, established when Abbot Reginald of old had made certain alterations. Brother Oswald who was writing the Chronicle of Silver Cross, Brothers Peter and Allen who illuminated the great Psalter, Brother Timothy who had been longest monk of Silver Cross and was growing like a child, Brother Norbert who was the Abbot’s kinsman had the five, and Brother Richard who made wealthy things in gold and silver the sixth. So was not the Rule, but in many things nowadays abbots modified Rule.