He fell ill at Westforest. He was not laid in hospital but left in the Westforest penitential cell, though they spread a pallet for him where had been bare stone. Prior Matthew visited him here. He came in the day, and he came, taper in hand, by night. He had a medicine which he gave Brother Richard. He himself dropped a few dark drops into a cup of water or of milk and held it to the monk’s lips. “Drink!” After the first time Richard Englefield tried to put it away. “On your obedience!” said the Prior sternly. The monk drank.
He began to recover from the illness that had prostrated him. But something seemed to have gone from his life and something seemed to have come into it. One night in this cell he heard a voice. “Richard! Richard!” it cried. He could not tell whence it came; it seemed above him. He sat up. “Who speaks?” But when it said “Willebrod, who was martyred,” he stared incredulous. Sunshine and mind and his old workshop in the old high-roofed town flooded back to him. “Is voice from heaven twin pea to voice of earth? I have even heard better voices of earth!” He seemed again to be working in the red, pleasant light of his old furnace, knowing good and not-so-good when he met them. He thought, “If I do not go to sleep I shall be seeing, hearing, like any madman!” He turned, drew the scant covering over him and slept.
But the next day Prior Matthew said that he was not so well, and, on his obedience he drank again the dark medicine. The taste of it was stronger, there was more of it. Again he heard voices. “Are they true voices—or what?” But he was dull to them, uncaring of them. “Surely I would know the ring of gold!”
He grew better, rose from his pallet and moved about the cell, was permitted now to go, when rang the bell, into church. Sent there for penance one winter eve between vespers and compline, he suddenly, at a turn of the stone corridor, dark, chill and deserted, saw what he must suppose to be a vision. There was a great patch of light and in it a man standing who must be Saint Willebrod because he was dressed and coloured and more or less featured like Saint Willebrod in the painting on the wall, and he carried a silver cross. Brother Richard stood still. Then, making to advance, his foot struck some obstruction. Weakened as he was, he stumbled and fell. When he could rise the vision was gone.
Only Vanity could explain why the Prior should become his confessor. The fact of the voices and the vision was drawn forth. “You are greatly honoured, my son! If greater favour yet comes to you, forget not humility—”
But he told of his own honesty how cold voices and vision left his heart, how unamazed his mind, and that he could but think them dreams of his sickness somehow bodied forth. The Prior looked sternly and shook his head. “They come truly, we hold! But it is seen that thou art as dull as ditch water—black ember that will not respond—tongue that hath lost taste—soul that will not be fervent! Scourge thyself into meekness to heaven—into that glow that will take whatever cometh!”
Richard Englefield plied the scourge. He was weak now and his eyes dazzled, and truly phantasies pageanted before him in sound and line and colour. He saw images, and sometimes they were beautiful and sometimes deadly. He heard sounds, and some were honey-sweet and others grating or mocking. But still said his being, “They come from no High Reality. Have I not, being artist, always in some sort heard and seen? O God, O God! help thou me who am dead!”
Prior Matthew regarded him darkly. Westforest rode one day to Silver Cross, talked there with Abbot Mark. “There has been mistake! He is not your Friar Paul kind!”
The Abbot’s pride arose. “For three years Silver Cross hath seen him one apart!”