TONSURE AND THORN

THE following weeks dragged along in hopeless monotony. The last night of Francesco's novitiate had come. There would not be a loophole of escape for him now. On the morrow, the eternal vows were to pass his lips. This night he was to spend in the chapel of the saint on his knees, supposedly in prayer. It was a solitary vigil, for no companion could be granted him. A dangerous thing for a novice it was, had the monks but realized it:—putting one for ten hours alone at the mercy of his thoughts. And Francesco shuddered as they left him, kneeling upon the stones before the solitary shrine.

Could he have seen himself he would have staggered! How old and emaciated, shrunken and hopeless he looked, as he knelt there in his ungainly garments. The face which had formerly borne an open expression of happiness, was hard now, unreadable and impassive. His hands, once white and well cared for, had become almost transparent. As he held his body straight from the knees upward, it was difficult to perceive how much weaker this body had grown. There was a pathetically haughty poise to the head still; but the skin was colorless.

The love for Ilaria, her witch-like face, her witch-like eyes, had remained with him. He had hoped against hope, that by some human, or divine interposition, the yoke about to be imposed upon him would be shattered, that it would prove but a period of probation, a horrid nightmare forsooth, which would be dispelled by some divine ray, give him back to earth, to life, to love, for which his heart yearned with a feverish longing that was fast sapping his strength. His prayers had been in vain: the moments were fleeting fast towards the consummation of his destiny.

It suffered him no longer in the incense-saturated gloom of the chapel. Escaping from his solitary vigil he traversed the courtyard and almost unconsciously reached the spot whence on the night of his arrival at the cloisters he had looked down upon the mountain world of Central Italy.

Above, space soared. Glancing below, he was seized as with a sudden dizziness. All idea of limitation seemed to have ceased in this infinity, for he looked down upon a firmament of cloud. And even as he looked, it was vanishing dream-wise, revealing in widening rifts the world, that gave it birth. A world,—how flat for all its serrated mountain ranges, how insignificant for all its far horizons, compared with that immensity of the starry vault above.

As he gazed with wide, longing eyes, slowly the consciousness of physical existence seemed to widen, till it extended to the horizon and in the very extension was transfigured. Francesco tried to summon images of devotion. But the images mocked the vast concave. He only saw the deep eyes of Ilaria Caselli. Was not the universe his prayer? Sharp summits, glistening and far, were better cries of the soul than he could use.

Long he stood there on the moon-steeped height and gazed to southward where the winding road led into the plains of Apulia to Avellino, the cradle of his destiny. And as he gazed, thoughts, or impressions rather, began to float through his spirit Heaven, like fleecy clouds which, having withdrawn to the horizon begin to return slowly, wandering as it seemed at random, yet shepherded steadily by the wind towards the central upper deeps of the sky.

Faint, clear, a melody, recalling things long left and lost, throbbed through the silence of the night. He listened, then gazed, spellbound. Below him the swift waters of the Liris were smitten to tawny light. Son of the earth once more, he was once more slave of his thoughts.

Far above a world of compromise, conflict and delusion, a world that was soon to be upheaved by mortal strife, his destiny had lifted him into this high sphere of purity and peace. No purity save in isolation. Yet the mass of men were never meant to climb. Should he take his patient place with the slow, ascending throng,—would not the old story repeat itself, the old turmoil, conflict, failure?

Turning suddenly, Francesco gave a start.

By his side stood the Prior.

He was not slow to read the distress in the face of the youth.

"This great peace of the world above and about us—does it not reconcile your soul?" the Prior spoke with a slow sweep of his hand. "Is there anything greater than isolation above the herd?"

A great bitterness welled up in Francesco's heart, and his eyes filled with tears, as he turned to his interlocutor with the protest of his soul.

"You would reject the very affirmations of existence! You cry to the imperious demands of Nature to create, to propagate, a mere perpetual No! Let those like-minded betake themselves to monasteries and to cells. As for myself—"

He broke off with a sob. Had he not lost the clue to Life?

The Prior regarded him quietly.

"The Church does not discourage the actions of the individual,—as long as they do not conflict with the eternal laws. As for herself—who must subdue men for men's sake,—she does reject them."

And linking his arm in that of Francesco, the Prior drew him back into the dusk of the deserted chapel and pointing to the form of the crucified Christ above the high-altar said:

"Look up! Nails would not have held him on the cross, had Love not held him there!"

And Francesco sank upon his knees in a paroxysm of grief. The Prior watched the scalding tears that streamed down the pale, wan face; then, when Francesco had sobbed himself into a state bordering almost on apathy, the Prior retraced his steps and left him to himself.

The moonlight streamed through the windows, and lay in broad patches upon the marble floor. Francesco staggered at last from his kneeling posture. Keeping in the shadow of the pillars, he crept softly towards the chancel and paused at the altar. There he knelt again. Deep silence reigned. Then came deep, heavy, tearless sobs. He was wringing his hands as one in bodily pain.

The sound of his own voice re-echoing through and dying away among the arches of the roof filled him with fantastic terror as the phantom of some unknown presence. For a moment he swayed and would have fallen. It seemed to him as if he had seen Ilaria's face in the purple dusk. His heart stood still.

He stared spellbound. But it had vanished. He was conscious of nothing save a sickening pressure of the blood, that seemed as if it would tear his breast asunder, then it surged back, tingling and burning, through his body.

It was on the following day.

The ceremony had been accomplished.

Francesco stood before the high altar among the monks and acolytes and read the Introitus aloud in steady tones. All the cathedral was a blaze of light and color, from the holiday dresses of the peasants to the pillars with their flaming draperies and wreaths of flowers. The religious orders from the adjoining monasteries with their candles and torches, the companies of the parishes, with their crosses and pennons, lighted up the dim side-chapels; in the aisles the silken folds of processional banners drooped their gilded staves and tassels, glinting under the arches. The surplices of the choristers gleamed, rainbow-tinted, beneath the colored windows; the sunlight lay on the chancel floor in checkered stains of orange and purple and green. Behind the altar hung a shimmering veil of silver tissue, and against the veil and the decorations and the altar-light, the Prior's figure stood out in its trailing white robe like a marble statue that had come to life.

The light of a hundred candles shone in the deep still eyes about him, eyes that had no answering gleam. At the elevation of the Host the Prior descended from his platform and knelt before the altar. There was a strange, even stillness in his movement. The sea of human life and motion seemed to surge around and below him and die away in the stillness. A censer was brought to Francesco, he raised his hand with the action of an automaton and put the incense into the vessel, looking neither to the right nor left. Then he too knelt, swinging the censer slowly to and fro. He took from the Prior the sacred golden sun, while the choristers burst into a peal of triumphal melody:

Francesco stood above the monks, motionless under the white canopy, holding the Eucharist aloft with steady hands. Two by two passed the monks, with lighted candles held left to right, with banners and torches, with crosses and images and flags, they swept slowly down the broad nave past the garlanded pillars, the sound of their chanting dying into a rolling murmur, drowned in the pealing of new and newer voices, as the unending stream flowed on and yet new footsteps echoed down the incense-laden nave.

One by one the visiting brotherhoods passed with their white shrouds and veiled faces, the brothers of the Misericordia, black from head to foot, their eyes faintly gleaming through the holes in their masks; the mendicant friars with their dusky cowls and bare brown feet, the russet Benedictines and the white-robed grave Dominicans. They all bore testimony to the irrevocable step the son of the Grand Master had taken. A monk followed, holding up a great cross between two acolytes with gleaming candles. On and on the procession passed, form succeeding to form and color to color. Long white surplices, grave and seemly, gave place to gorgeous vestments and embroidered pluvials. The roses were strewn, the procession filed out.

When the chant had ceased, Francesco passed between the silent rows of the monks, where they knelt, each man in his place, the lighted candles uplifted. And he saw their hungry eyes fixed on the sacred body that he bore. To right and left the white-robed acolytes knelt with their censers, as peal after peal of song rang out, resounding under the arches, echoing along the vaulted roof.

Wearily, mechanically, Francesco went through the remaining part of his consecration, which had no longer any meaning for him, prayer eluding him as a vapor. After the Benediction he covered his face. The voice of the monk reading aloud the indulgences, swelled and sank like a far-off murmur from a world to which he belonged no more.