The boy, for his part, was grown at last full of misgiving. He ponders how he may get the Prior away, or escape by himself, find his way back to the convent and report his master's condition, his strange loss of memory for names and the like, his illusions about himself and [166] others. And he is more than ever distrustful now of his late beloved playmate, who quietly obstructs any movement of the kind, and has undertaken, at the Prior's entreaty, to draw down the moon from the sky, for some shameful price, known to the magicians of that day.
Yet Apollyon, at all events, would still play as gaily as ever on occasion. Hitherto they had played as young animals do; without playthings namely, applying hand or foot only to their games. But it happened about this time that a grave was dug, a grave of unusual depth, to be ready, in that fiery plaguesome weather, the first heat of veritable summer come suddenly, for the body of an ancient villager then at the point of death. In the drowsy afternoon Hyacinth awakes Apollyon, to see the strange thing he has found at the grave-side, among the gravel and yellow bones cast up there. He had wrested it with difficulty from the hands of the half-crippled gravedigger, at eighty still excitable by the mere touch of metal.
The like of it had indeed been found before, within living memory, in this place of immemorial use as a graveyard—"Devil's penny-pieces" people called them. Five such lay hidden already in a dark corner of the chapel, to keep them from superstitious employment. To-day they came out of hiding at last. Apollyon knew the use of the thing at a glance; had put an expert hand to it forthwith; poises the [167] discus; sets it wheeling. How easily it spins round under one's arm, in the groove of the bent fingers, slips thence smoothly like a knife flung from its sheath, as if for a course of perpetual motion! Splendescit eundo: it seems to burn as it goes. It is heavier many times than it looks, and sharp-edged. By night they have scoured and polished the corroded surfaces. Apollyon promises Hyacinth and himself rare sport in the cool of the evening—an evening however, as it turned out, not less breathless than the day.
In the great heat Apollyon had flung aside, as if for ever, the last sorry remnant of his workman's attire, and challenged the boy to do the same. On the moonlit turf there, crouching, right foot foremost, and with face turned backwards to the disk in his right hand, his whole body, in that moment of rest, full of the circular motion he is about to commit to it, he seemed—beautiful pale spectre—to shine from within with a light of his own, like that of the glow-worm in the thicket, or the dead and rotten roots of the old trees. And as if they had a proper motion of their own in them, the disks, the quoits, ran, amid the delighted shouts and laughter of the boy, as he follows, scarcely less swift, to score the points of their contact with the grass. Again and again they recommence, forgetful of the hours; while the death-bell cries out harshly for the grave's occupant, and [168] the corpse itself is borne along stealthily not far from them, and, unnoticed by either, the entire aspect of things has changed. Under the overcast sky it is in darkness they are playing, by guess and touch chiefly; and suddenly an icy blast of wind has lifted the roof from the old chapel, the trees are moaning in wild circular motion, and their devil's penny-piece, when Apollyon throws it for the last time, is itself but a twirling leaf in the wind, till it sinks edgewise, sawing through the boy's face, uplifted in the dark to trace it, crushing in the tender skull upon the brain.
His shout of laughter is turned in an instant to a cry of pain, of reproach; and in that which echoed it—an immense cry, as from the very heart of ancient tragedy, over the Picard wolds—it was as if that half-extinguished deity, its proper immensity, its old greatness and power, were restored for a moment. The villagers in their beds wondered. It was like the sound of some natural catastrophe.
The storm which followed was still in possession, still moving tearfully among the poplar groves, though it had spent its heat and thunder. The last drops of the blood of Hyacinth still trickled through the thick masses of dark hair, where the tonsure had been. An abundant rain, mingling with the copious purple stream, had coloured the grass all around where the corpse lay, stealing afar in tiny channels.
[169] So it was, when Apollyon, reduced in the morning light to his smaller self, came with the other people of the Grange to gaze, to enquire, and found the Prior already there, speechless. Clearly this was no lightning stroke; and Apollyon straightway conceives certain very human fears that, coming upon those antecedent suspicions of himself, the boy's death may be thought the result of intention on his part. He proposes to bury the body at once, with no delay for religious rites, in that still uncovered grave, the bearers having fled from it in the tempest.
And next day, fulfilling his annual custom, he went his way northward, without a word of farewell to Prior Saint-Jean, whom he leaves in fact under suspicion of murder. From the profound slumber which had followed the excitements of yesterday, the Prior awoke amid the sound of voices, the voices of the peasants singing no Christian song, certainly, but a song which Apollyon himself had taught them, to dismiss him on his journey. For, strange or not as it might be, they loved him, perhaps in spite of themselves; would certainly protect him at any risk. Prior Saint-Jean arose, and looked forth—with wonder. A brief spell of sunshine amid the rain had clothed the vale with a marvel of blue flowers, if it were not rather with remnants of the blue sky itself, fallen among the woods there. But there too, in the little courtyard, [170] the officers of justice are already in waiting to take him, on the charge of having caused the death of his young server by violence, in a fit of mania, induced by dissolute living in that solitary place. One hitherto so prosperous in life would, of course, have his enemies.
The monastic authorities, however, claim him from the secular power, to correct his offence in their own way, and with friendly interpretation of the facts. Madness, however wicked, being still madness, Prior, now simple Brother, Saint-Jean, is detained in a sufficiently cheerful apartment, in a region of the atmosphere likely to restore lost wits, whence indeed he can still see the country—vallis monachorum. The one desire which from time to time fitfully rouses him again to animation for a few moments is to return thither. Here then he remains in peace, ostensibly for the completion of his great work. He never again set pen to it, consistent and clear now on nothing save that longing to be once more at the Grange, that he may get well, or die and be well so. He is like the damned spirit, think some of the brethren, saying "I will return to the house whence I came out." Gazing thither daily for many hours, he would mistake mere blue distance, when that was visible, for blue flowers, for hyacinths, and wept at the sight; though blue, as he observed, was the colour of Holy Mary's gown on the illuminated page, the colour of hope, of merciful [171] omnipresent deity. The necessary permission came with difficulty, just too late. Brother Saint-Jean died, standing upright with an effort to gaze forth once more, amid the preparations for his departure.
NOTES