It was Father Anselmo’s custom, while digesting his supper of meat pasty and chocolate, to pace the garden, whose beauty seldom failed to inspire him with poetical images, and to add each evening some dozen lines to his panegyric ode on Saint Francis. Anselmo was, in fact, a poet,—but a poet whose strictly regulated fancy never openly strayed beyond the confines of the cloister. His gentle muse sang consecrated themes alone. And if, surrounded by an indolent, veiled fervor of tropical nature, apt to long, arid trances, and to sudden outbursts of fierce luxuriance, his imagination was sometimes troubled, these secret vagaries were repressed or found no acknowledged utterance. In his black, shapeless robe, above which his placid face showed like a sickly moon, the father, whether meditating on the pasty or Saint Francis, seemed no prey to the poetic ardor; its afflatus left him undizzied and peaceful. Yet the mystery of the night, the garden’s magic, must have struck some responsive chord within him. For how else should his bodily eyes have beheld beneath the shadow of the acacia bushes a creature not human, surely not divine; no spiritual vision, but an apparition born of the earth and evil. It sat half-visible, buried to the chin in flowers, motionless, its face a mere pale shimmer, its great shadowy eyes fixed upon him. These eyes were terrifying.
Anselmo retreated some steps upon their discovery; then, after much hesitation, advanced again, extending the cross of his rosary and muttering with trembling lips certain words of proved potency. But neither holy symbol nor exorcism availed against the evil spirit. It refused to flee; sat dumb—it seemed to Anselmo disdainful. Suddenly, wrathful, he took another step forward; the creature drew in its breath sharply, with an audible sound; its lips parted, showing a row of gleaming teeth. Anselmo paused.
This was, he perceived, the spirit of the garden, and it was plainly hostile. Was he, then, the intruder? Vaguely a sense of helpless fright invaded his soul. Yes, the trees were in league with this being; they bent towards him threateningly! The air was full of veiled alarms. What of the rosebushes which even now reached out clutching hands to detain him? An overblown white rose broke and fell in a soft shower about his shoulders, and he started; a bat swooped down with swift, filmy wings, just grazing his head; he shrank back.
Could it be that he was in danger, that his wandering thoughts were known, that his sinful fancies had thus taken shape to confound him? Anselmo crossed himself. It was true—moved by the garden’s spell he had sometime in reverie invoked the animating principle of this beauty of earth, which he knew well was soulless and evil—and behold it incarnate!
Yet the apparition did not menace him overtly, perhaps it felt his spiritual armor proof. Nevertheless, it was his part to fly possible danger, to deliver over the unhallowed domain to its true possessor. What part had he in these caresses of the breeze, these wooings of flowers, these marriages of insects, this glamour of nocturnal magic?
Knowing, as he did, the evil power of the moon at its full, how had he been persuaded to walk in debatable ground where that demoniac glory, rising warm and wanton above the trees, could mock and threaten him? Under the branches of the acacia the shadow sat still in deeper shadow; save that the rays of the moon fell upon two slim, naked feet, which the short grass could not cover. It had taken, then, the form of a woman, that the garden and its tradition might be doubly desecrated! Anselmo’s indignation was not fierce enough to nerve his soul, weakened by mystic terrors. He turned to fly, but, instead, uttered an exclamation, calling in a trembling voice:
“Brother Emanuel!”
“I am coming,” was the answer.
Another black robe, another pale face, appeared beside him, and, like him, started back at perceiving the strange figure. After consultation in whispers the bolder monk approached the acacia.
“This is no spirit, Brother Anselmo—it is a woman!” he cried.