At that moment entered bruit of the arrival of Abbot and Prior. “Yes, yes, let us see them!” said Montjoy, and who knows what hope sprang up in his heart. He believed Richard Englefield, but there pressed against his belief all the weight of old, loved Silver Cross, and the weight of the priest and the weight of Mother Church. Things happened, vile things, as they happened in Kingdom, in Nobility and Knighthood. But for all that Knighthood was heroic and Holy Church holy. Child could not go against mother, lover against beloved. Let us at any rate hear what this Iscariot Abbot and Prior shall say! And with that rolled for the first time upon Montjoy’s mind Saint Leofric, and he heard the joy of Hugh who was not discovered. “That this vileness that he saith were not true!” cried Montjoy within. “O Isabel, that it were not true!”
Morgen Fay! The Lord of Montjoy was dead ember there, and all the breathing of Morgen Fay might not relume. “O High God, I would live cleanly! That harlot, wherever she is, doth always only evil!”
Silver Cross—Silver Cross! The church, Isabel’s tomb and the great picture. He saw that Morgen Fay could have played it because she had the height and faintly, faintly the face. Isabel was the true likeness and Morgen Fay the false, the evil. “Let her burn, who deserveth it if ever any did!”
Silver Cross, and cold wretchedness and grinning, mocking Satan if it were no better than Saint Leofric! Mark a kinsman, too. All honour smirched!
Again his eyes were for Richard Englefield. To have believed that Heaven had singled you out—to have had vast raptures of mind and heart, all fragrance, all flavour, all light, all music, all warmth, all lifting—to have fallen at the feet of the Brightest Star, to have had the honey of touch and the honey of word and the honey of smile, and knowledge that all was immortal and holy, all was heavenly true!—to have had that and believed it eternal—and then to have fallen, fallen, gulf upon gulf, dreary world by dreary world, to last mire and stubble, nay, past that into caverns of hell—
Abbot Mark came into the hall, he and Prior Matthew, and behind them Brothers Anselm and Norbert with Walter the leech and six besides. Out of these monks five at least knew only that the fiend had made sortie against and taken and poured madness upon the holy man, yesterday the pride, the boast, of Silver Cross. Abbot Mark—large, authoritative, stately—showed pallor indeed, but also concern and innocency and high unawareness that Silver Cross did or could stand in any danger. As for Prior Matthew, he stood and moved, red, dry, cool, collected, always a man with a head. Abbey monks, drawing together, looked trustingly upon their Superiors and pityingly, it was seen, upon Brother Richard, standing very gaunt and ghastly white, with blazing eyes.
Montjoy faced that entry. All Silver Cross with long venerableness and power, great church of Silver Cross, the jewel windows, the picture, the sculptured Isabel upon her tomb entered also castle hall and drowned it into vaster space and into significances otherwise and potent. Something of rigidity went out of the lord of Montjoy. Trust—trust!
Friar Martin, the Black Friar, saw it go—clouds again mounting against Saint Leofric. And all the hall full of people, hanging divided in wish and thought! He felt it running through, “Was it not monstrous, unthinkable—were there not explanations—was it reasonable now—and if it was all a cheating show, where was Middle Forest? Why, left holding a great bag of Loss!” The Black Friar felt, as though he were Leofric’s Hugh, stricture about the heart. Good Chance was quitting, the fickle jade!
Yet when Montjoy stepped toward the Abbot, pale Accusation stepped with him. “Lord Abbot—Lord Abbot, you are in time! You have fouled Christendom—oh, if you have fouled Christendom!”
But the Abbot seemed not to notice words and mien. He cried, “O Montjoy, the holy man, good Brother Richard, hath gone mad! Yesterday he broke into a frightful babbling, the fiend at his ear, the fiends within him! The morn, Walter the leech leaving him awhile, thinking that loneliness might do somewhat, he burst window, broke cloister! Whereupon we ourselves follow him, not knowing what harm he doth to himself and to all! For alas! he now doubteth the happening of the Great Miracle and clamoureth that it was the demon. We know, alas! how at times it happeneth! Overmuch light, the weak soul bending aside from Heaven-grace, the fiends gathering to torment and perplex, and were it possible, to defeat light! The warder faints. Madness enters. Poor soul, alas! yet Heaven did use him! Heaven-grace and the miracle persists, though for him be madman’s cell—”