Richard Englefield listened to the Abbot’s assertion that making of inner vessels of gold for heaven’s use was of more import than were dishes for abbot’s table and for gifts. He agreed, but his mind said, “Since when did you find that out?”

Moreover, he would miss his work. He missed it.

When he came to confession he met another change,—namely, severity in penance. Heretofore he had been the severe one with himself. Now his spiritual fathers took it over. “Why?” asked his mind, but his hunger for holiness and his will harnessed to that hunger rebuked his mind. “Have we not agreed that they are our masters in heavenly law? Then learn the lessons they give! Cease to cavil and question! Did you so with Godfrey the Master Smith?”

He accepted penance, watched, fasted, scourged himself. He grew very thin, less strong of frame than he had been. Sleeplessness, even when he was given or gave himself leave to sleep, fastened itself upon him. It was as though his soul ceaselessly walked a dungeon. “O God, where is thy heaven? If I might see it or feel it!”

The great picture in the church lost its mystery and enchantment and power. It was a dead canvas to him. “O my soul, come thou forth!”

He was kept solitary in his cell. Solitude did not appal him, seeing that he had ever been artist, able to people it. But one day when a strong sunbeam came through the window his mind said loudly, and as it were it shook him by the shoulders. “Why this straitness with thee? What are they about?”

But he was afraid to listen,—Richard Englefield, fearing for his soul. Fear, casting about for aid, found Vanity in a small hidden chamber, sitting there with closed lids, somewhat faint and unnourished. He brought her forth and sent her up, strengthening as she came. “It is seen that I begin to light this monastery! They would trim the lamp.”

Fear, Vanity, Pride and Old Credulity!

At Martinmas the Abbot sent him to Westforest. It was heavy penance for monk to go to Westforest that was small, hard and bare beside Silver Cross, that had rude living, that owned a Prior could give tasks, set one to heavy and distasteful work. Brother Richard Englefield was not put to handwork, but again to watching, fasting, cries to all the Saints, to Jesu and Mary Mother and God the Father.

He fell ill at Westforest. He was not laid in hospital but left in the Westforest penitential cell, though they spread a pallet for him where had been bare stone. Prior Matthew visited him here. He came in the day, and he came, taper in hand, by night. He had a medicine which he gave Brother Richard. He himself dropped a few dark drops into a cup of water or of milk and held it to the monk’s lips. “Drink!” After the first time Richard Englefield tried to put it away. “On your obedience!” said the Prior sternly. The monk drank.

He began to recover from the illness that had prostrated him. But something seemed to have gone from his life and something seemed to have come into it. One night in this cell he heard a voice. “Richard! Richard!” it cried. He could not tell whence it came; it seemed above him. He sat up. “Who speaks?” But when it said “Willebrod, who was martyred,” he stared incredulous. Sunshine and mind and his old workshop in the old high-roofed town flooded back to him. “Is voice from heaven twin pea to voice of earth? I have even heard better voices of earth!” He seemed again to be working in the red, pleasant light of his old furnace, knowing good and not-so-good when he met them. He thought, “If I do not go to sleep I shall be seeing, hearing, like any madman!” He turned, drew the scant covering over him and slept.

But the next day Prior Matthew said that he was not so well, and, on his obedience he drank again the dark medicine. The taste of it was stronger, there was more of it. Again he heard voices. “Are they true voices—or what?” But he was dull to them, uncaring of them. “Surely I would know the ring of gold!”

He grew better, rose from his pallet and moved about the cell, was permitted now to go, when rang the bell, into church. Sent there for penance one winter eve between vespers and compline, he suddenly, at a turn of the stone corridor, dark, chill and deserted, saw what he must suppose to be a vision. There was a great patch of light and in it a man standing who must be Saint Willebrod because he was dressed and coloured and more or less featured like Saint Willebrod in the painting on the wall, and he carried a silver cross. Brother Richard stood still. Then, making to advance, his foot struck some obstruction. Weakened as he was, he stumbled and fell. When he could rise the vision was gone.

Only Vanity could explain why the Prior should become his confessor. The fact of the voices and the vision was drawn forth. “You are greatly honoured, my son! If greater favour yet comes to you, forget not humility—”

But he told of his own honesty how cold voices and vision left his heart, how unamazed his mind, and that he could but think them dreams of his sickness somehow bodied forth. The Prior looked sternly and shook his head. “They come truly, we hold! But it is seen that thou art as dull as ditch water—black ember that will not respond—tongue that hath lost taste—soul that will not be fervent! Scourge thyself into meekness to heaven—into that glow that will take whatever cometh!”

Richard Englefield plied the scourge. He was weak now and his eyes dazzled, and truly phantasies pageanted before him in sound and line and colour. He saw images, and sometimes they were beautiful and sometimes deadly. He heard sounds, and some were honey-sweet and others grating or mocking. But still said his being, “They come from no High Reality. Have I not, being artist, always in some sort heard and seen? O God, O God! help thou me who am dead!”

Prior Matthew regarded him darkly. Westforest rode one day to Silver Cross, talked there with Abbot Mark. “There has been mistake! He is not your Friar Paul kind!”

The Abbot’s pride arose. “For three years Silver Cross hath seen him one apart!”

“Perhaps! He would not,” said Matthew sourly, “have far to go, as monks are in these days, to stand apart and above. My point is that you cannot make him ecstatic. So far it is beyond me to set the mill running! He hath been ill, and his body hath arrived at emaciation. I have given him that elixir you wot of. Usually it sets the fancy skipping, brews a kind of wild readiness at seeing, hearing! And, if I read him aright, he wants heaven to descend upon him. I provided him to hear and see one who told him he was Saint Willebrod. Brother Anselm, you know, whom I took from among the players, and is—God pardon us!—as dog to my hand—” He spread out his hands.

The Abbot groaned. “The end that we propose is good!”

“Assuredly it is! It all goes into the homely bag of homely deceits necessary in this poor world. But the end is that as yet we have done naught!”

The Abbot sighed. “Could we take him into counsel?”

“No!”

“Then what shall we do? You have heard that Saint Leofric healed the French Knight? He gave candlesticks of pure gold. Shall we give it all up, Matthew?”

“Not yet. If I could find his true heart and mind—then might we beckon appearances that corresponded. He seems interested in a far land and in somehow going there—and going has to be bodily, all of him! What appears will have to strike him down, like Saint Paul on Damascus road—clean him of doubt, be a blaze to him, a burning bush!”

The Abbot sighed. Prior Matthew sat fixed, with cloudy brows, seeking inspiration.

He returned to Westforest. The next day, sitting in Prior’s stall in the cold, small church, he kept his eyes fast upon the monk Richard. He noted his turning, he noted his uplifted, now bloodless face, and his eyes directed to the copy of the Silver Cross picture. Prior Matthew half closed his own eyes, covered, as was his wont when he was playing chess, his mouth with his hand.

Again the Prior sat as confessor. The kneeling monk met gathered subtlety and old skill. Deep, recessed matters, loves and longings, must come forth.

The Prior listened, questioned, listened, and at both was skilfull. He imposed penance, and in part it was to be performed at Silver Cross, “—returning there as you do, my son, this week.”

The monk bowed his head. He had not known when, or indeed if ever, he should return to Silver Cross. It was among his efforts at self-crucifixion not to care. As it was his effort here and at Silver Cross to withdraw attention from outward happenings, outward talk. No other of his brethren knew so little as he of the flare and clang about Saint Leofric.

He returned to Silver Cross. The bell rang for the noon office. He went into church with his brethren. With them he bowed, stood, chanted, kneeled. It was nigh to Christmas tide, a clear winter day. The sun dwelled in each jewel pane of the windows and shot thence arrows of love. The sun blessed nave and aisles and high groined roof. The candles stood like angels, the great picture glowed. It was a home-coming. Warmness wrapped his heart that had been naked and desolate. All grew fair, honest, friendly. He was glad to see the Brothers, even those he had most distasted, glad to see Abbot Mark, cloister and church, all things! Out of topaz and amber a beam touched the carven tomb of Montjoy’s wife. It warmed the Lady Isabel, lying in robe and mantle with a half smile upon her face. Not Montjoy only, but also Richard Englefield thought stone form and face had strange likeness to those of the Glorified in the picture. Now the light warmed her, too, the pale, golden lady, so still, so still, waiting for the Resurrection.

Amber light, topaz light. But on the great picture every heart-red, every heavenly blue, every rose and every lily, the upward flowing amethyst and the diamond light above, where no more might be seen. His heart bowed, his heart grew alive. “Ah, Blessed among women, I am come back!”