the thick rust cracked on the
hinges, and the strokes tolled forth betimes, with a hundred querulous,
quaint creatures, bats and owls, circling stupidly in the waves of
sound, but allowed to settle back again undisturbedly into their beds.
People and priest, the Prior, vested as well as might be, with Hyacinth
as "server," come in due course, all alike amazed to find that frozen
neglected place, with its low-browed vault and narrow windows, alight,
and as if warmed with flowers from a summer more radiant far than that
of France, with ilex and laurel--gilt laurel--by way of holly and box.
Prior Saint-Jean felt that he had never really seen flowers before.
Somewhat later they and the like of them seemed to have grown into and
over his brain; to have degraded the scientific and abstract outlines
of things into a tangle of useless ornament. Whence were they
procured? From what height, or hellish depth perhaps? Apollyon, who
entered the chapel just then, as if quite naturally, though with a
bleating lamb in his bosom ("dropped" thus early in that wonderful
season) by way of an offering, took his place at the altar's very foot,
and drawing forth his harp, now restrung, at the right moment, turned
to real silvery music the hoarse Gloria in Excelsis of those rude
worshippers, still [162] shrinking from him, while they listened in a
little circle, as he stood there in his outlandish attire of skins
strangely spotted and striped. With that however the Mass broke off
unconsummated. The Prior felt obliged to desist from the sacred
office, and had left the altar hurriedly.
But Brother Apollyon put his strange attire aside next day, and in a
much-worn monk's frock, drawn forth from a dark corner, came with them,
still like a Penitent, when they turned once more to their neglected
studies somewhat sadly. See them then, after a collect for "Light"
repeated by Hyacinth, skull-cap in hand, seated at their desks in the
little scriptorium, panelled off from their living-room on the first
floor, while the Prior makes an effort to recover the last thought of
his long-suspended work, in the execution of which the boy is to assist
with his skilful pen. The great glazed windows remain open; admit, as
if already on the soft air of spring, what seems like a stream of
flowery odours, the entire moonlit scene, with the thorn bushes on the
vale-side prematurely bursting into blossom, and the sound of birds and
flocks emphasising the deep s
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