CHAPTER XXII
THE HOLY FOUNTAIN
The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acteddifferently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and nowwhen the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the mainthing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do ashorses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done--turn backand get at something profitable--no, anxious as they had beforebeen to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as fortytimes as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be.There is no accounting for human beings.
We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stoodupon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness, and our eyesswept it from end to end and noted its features. That is, itslarge features. These were the three masses of buildings. Theywere distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructionsin the lonely waste of what seemed a desert--and was. Such a sceneis always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks sosteeped in death. But there was a sound here which interruptedthe stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faintfar sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on thepassing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knewwhether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits.
We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males weregiven lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. Thebells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smoteupon the ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despairpossessed the heart of every monk and published itself in hisghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled,tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared,noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny.
The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even to tears; buthe did the shedding himself. He said:
"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An we bring notthe water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good workof two hundred years must end. And see thou do it with enchantmentsthat be holy, for the Church will not endure that work in her causebe done by devil's magic."
"When I work, Father, be sure there will be no devil's workconnected with it. I shall use no arts that come of the devil,and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlinworking strictly on pious lines?"
"Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oathto make his promise good."
"Well, in that case, let him proceed."
"But surely you will not sit idle by, but help?"
"It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither would it beprofessional courtesy. Two of a trade must not underbid eachother. We might as well cut rates and be done with it; it wouldarrive at that in the end. Merlin has the contract; no othermagician can touch it till he throws it up."
"But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and theact is thereby justified. And if it were not so, who will givelaw to the Church? The Church giveth law to all; and what shewills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. I will take itfrom him; you shall begin upon the moment."
"It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say, where power issupreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poormagicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magicianin a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. Heis struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not beetiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it."
The abbot's face lighted.
"Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuade him to abandon it."
"No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say. If he werepersuaded against his will, he would load that well with a maliciousenchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret.It might take a month. I could set up a little enchantment ofmine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out itssecret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block mefor a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?"
"A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have itthy way, my son. But my heart is heavy with this disappointment.Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting,even as I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thusthe thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward signof repose where inwardly is none."
Of course, it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to waiveetiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never beable to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time;which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him hisreputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody butMerlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowdaround to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle inthat day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there wassure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucialmoment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retirefrom the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectivelymyself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot,and that would take two or three days.
My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal;insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first timein ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforcedwith food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began togo round they rose faster. By the time everybody was half-seas over,the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so westayed by the board and put it through on that line. Matters gotto be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that madethe tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the roundbellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed outin a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells.
At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it.Not right off, of course, for the native of those islands doesnot, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorousthing; but the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places;the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfthrepetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth theydisintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This languageis figurative. Those islanders--well, they are slow pay at first,in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the endthey make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.
I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchantingaway like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not ina pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contractwas a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue andcursed like a bishop--French bishop of the Regency days, I mean.
Matters were about as I expected to find them. The "fountain" wasan ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned upin the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the liethat had created its reputation was not miraculous; I could havetold it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in adark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whosewalls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that wouldhave made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorativeof curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters whennobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they are alwayson deck when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get put inthe picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company;look at the old masters.
The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawnwith a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs whichdelivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel--whenthere was water to draw, I mean--and none but monks could enterthe well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authorityto do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate.But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantations;he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and usedhis eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have curedthe well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle inthe customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician whobelieved in his own mag
ic; and no magician can thrive who ishandicapped with a superstition like that.
I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of thewall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures thatallowed the water to escape. I measured the chain--98 feet. ThenI called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, andmade them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out,the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of thewall was gone, exposing a good big fissure.
I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble wascorrect, because I had another one that had a showy point or twoabout it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, manycenturies later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used toblast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this welldry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people mostnobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamitebomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it wasplain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot haveeverything the way he would like it. A man has no business tobe depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up hismind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in nohurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too.
When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let downa fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and therewas forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:
"How deep is the well?"
"That, sir, I wit not, having never been told."
"How does the water usually stand in it?"
"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth,brought down to us through our predecessors."
It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witnessto it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirtyfeet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unwornand rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that othertime? Without doubt some practical person had come along andmended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he haddiscovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyedthe well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, andthese children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolledtheir bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blewaway, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to dropa fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what wasreally the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest thingsto get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physicalform and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an ideathat his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicionof being illegitimate. I said to the monk:
"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but wewill try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a verypassable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he maynot succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that shouldbe nothing to his discredit; the man that can do _this_ kind ofmiracle knows enough to keep hotel."
"Hotel? I mind not to have heard--"
"Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do thismiracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I shall do thismiracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracleto tax the occult powers to the last strain."
"None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; forit is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and tooka year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that endwill we pray."
As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion aroundthat the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been madelarge by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled upwith the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others.In two days the solicitude would be booming.
On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had been sampling thehermits. I said:
"I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is therea matinee?"
"A which, please you, sir?"
"Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?"
"Who?"
"The hermits, of course."
"Keep open?"
"Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do they knock off at noon?"
"Knock off?"
"Knock off?--yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off?I never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all?In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires--"
"Shut up shop, draw--"
"There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. You can't seemto understand the simplest thing."
"I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrowthat I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel and taught ofnone, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters oflearning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh ofthat most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state tothe mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of thatgreat consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbolof that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to thepitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of griefdo lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in thedarkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery,these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it isbut by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind thatcan beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-soundingmiracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humblermind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, thenif so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true,wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage andmay not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted thiscomplexion of mood and mind and understood that that I wouldI could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantageturned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault,and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, goodmy master and most dear lord."
I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got thegeneral idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was notfair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon theuntutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because shecouldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest bestdrive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn'tfetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meanderedpleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable conversetogether, and better friends than ever.
I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverencefor this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the stationand got her train fairly started on one of those horizonlesstranscontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me thatI was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the GermanLanguage. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when shebegan to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously tookthe very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if wordshad been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly theGerman way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether amere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war,she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literaryGerman dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to seeof him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with hisverb in his mouth.
We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a moststrange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be,to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperouswith vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expressionof complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's prideto lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blisterhim unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all daylong, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrimsand pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out,eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down whenhe slept, but to stand among the thorn-
bushes and snore when therewere pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair ofage, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel withforty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazingpilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lostin reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity whichthese pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven.
By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He wasa mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; thenoble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globeto pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest partof the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds.
His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform onthe top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every dayfor twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidlyalmost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with astop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste.It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedalmovement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing someday to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewingmachine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and gotfive years' good service out of him; in which time he turned outupward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, whichwas ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power.These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for thematerials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been rightto make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at adollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows ora blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfectprotection against sin, and advertised as such by my knightseverywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch thatthere was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England butyou could read on it at a mile distance:
"Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the Nobility.Patent applied for."
There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with.As it extended, I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings,and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles downthe forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitchto leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up witha half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets.Yes, it was a daisy.
But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken tostanding on one leg, and I found that there was something the matterwith the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, takingSir Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of hisfriends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saintgot him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him.
When I saw him that first time--however, his personal conditionwill not quite bear description here. You can read it in theLives of the Saints.*
[*All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are fromLecky--but greatly modified. This book not being a history butonly a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were toostrong for reproduction in it.--_Editor_]
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends