While He Was Thus Near The Subject, The
Good Father Asked Me If I Were A Christian; And When He Found I Was Not,
Or Not After His Way, He Glossed It Over With Great Good-Will.
The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had made
with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a corner, and
showed us some white buildings a little farther on beyond the wood.
At
the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the
monastery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped
me.
'I must not speak to you down there,' he said. 'Ask for the Brother
Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go out again
through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made
your acquaintance.'
And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out
twice, 'I must not speak, I must not speak!' he ran away in front of me,
and disappeared into the monastery door.
I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my
terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why should not all be
alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as
Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would
permit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had
not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form,
though with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaller, and
a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me a
while. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled
the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it
to the Father Prior. But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the
idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on
strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no difficulty as to
my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I
and my pack were received into Our Lady of the Snows.
THE MONKS
Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty-
five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me
until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my
prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit
with a thing of clay. And truly, when I remember that I descanted
principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more
than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I
can well understand that he would find an earthly savour in my
conversation. But his manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious;
and I find I have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michael's past.
The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery
garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and
beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of
the Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it four-square,
bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and with no other
features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white,
brothers in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when I
first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their
prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood
commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off
and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if
they stood in Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings
themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my
part, on this wild September day, before I was called to dinner, I felt
chilly in and out.
When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty conversible
Frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the liberty to
speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building which is set
apart for MM. les retraitants. It was clean and whitewashed, and
furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late Pope,
the Imitation in French, a book of religious meditations, and the Life of
Elizabeth Seton, evangelist, it would appear, of North America and of New
England in particular. As far as my experience goes, there is a fair
field for some more evangelisation in these quarters; but think of Cotton
Mather! I should like to give him a reading of this little work in
heaven, where I hope he dwells; but perhaps he knows all that already,
and much more; and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and
gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, to
conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of regulations for MM. les
retraitants: what services they should attend, when they were to tell
their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go to rest. At
the foot was a notable N.B.: 'Le temps libre est employe a l'examen de
conscience, a la confession, a faire de bonnes resolutions, etc.' To
make good resolutions, indeed! You might talk as fruitfully of making
the hair grow on your head.
I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose returned. An English
boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. I professed my
willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young, little Irishman of
fifty, a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing
on his head what, in default of knowledge, I can only call the
ecclesiastical shako.
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