Ernest Oldmeadow

“ He saw innumerable loves ever ascending, like golden mists, out of the love of God. He saw those innumerable loves returning into the love of God again, like rivers into the sea. And with every return of love he saw the love of God growing richer and sweeter, like a fruit ripening in the sun. It seemed as if even God himself were waxing greater and as if, in the act of creation, the Creator took as well as gave. Without creation God must still have been perfect; but even God could rise from the lower perfection to the higher. ”

“ At the sight of the gold and silver and precious stones the Viscount's eyes glittered like glass beads. He would have taken the holy vessels in his fat hands to fondle them had not the Prior sternly repelled him. By way of revenge, as well as to mislead the captain, the Viscount then set himself to depreciate everything. The triptych was not Limoges, and he had his doubts about the rubies. The vestments were falling to pieces. As for the Gran Vasco, who was Gran Vasco, after all? He was a painter whom not one collector in a thousand had ever heard of. ”

“ He is nothing but grandeur and majesty. He will have no rebellion, He insists on everybody's homage all the time."
"He is Love, everlasting Love," said Antonio warmly, "and if any words of mine have made you doubt it, may He forgive me. I see the world's unbelief, first and foremost, as Love rejected; and if I am a monk it is in the hope that my whole life's prayers may perchance be one poor drop of balm poured into Love's wounds. But these matters are too weighty to be talked of like this. The origin of evil, the mystery of free-will—you have raised the problems that none can solve." ”

“ Everybody was gazing curiously at the mysterious Senhor Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha, the man who had trod the golden streets of London, the man who caused bottles of wine to be worth three milreis each by standing them upon their heads, and, above all, the man who was going to marry Margarida dos Santos Rebolla.
The counting began. To the blindfolded man it had an uncanny sound; for nine-tenths of the onlookers were chanting the numbers with Luiz in a subdued, expectant sing-song. But he kept his senses about him. ”

“ My heart bled for her as it never bled for the Abbot, or for you, Sebastian, or for this place."
"It bled for her, not for yourself," Sebastian explained. "In profane love, the lover who thinks he is grieving for the beloved is only grieving over his own loss of her, over his own short bereavement, or over his own humiliation and discomfiture. With you, Antonio, it was not so. You did not wish to take; you wished to give."
"Do not make me out a saint when I know I am a sinner," said Antonio, almost sharply. ”

“ Instantly a handsome woman, whom Antonio remembered as one of the belles of Senhor Jorge's serão, held up a puzzled, big-eyed child and said, in eager tones loud enough for the monk to hear:
"Look, little one, look! It is a saint that is passing by!"
At the same moment a rough young farmer bent forward and clumsily kissed the hem of Antonio's chasuble. The monk recoiled and almost let the sacred vessels fall. The man's touch and the woman's words had cut him like knives. A saint! He, Antonio the hard, the proud, a saint! All the selfishness of his life rose up before him. ”

“ Hundreds of times in the past, especially at seasons of abounding faith and high ecstasy, he had prayed that the Blessed Virgin would fly to his relief if ever he should weaken in this most perilous of his vows. "Pray for me, O Mother of mothers, O Virgin of virgins!" he had cried again and again. "Pray for me whenever I cannot, or will not, pray for myself." And, as Isabel parted the branches behind the mimosa, those hundreds of old prayers were answered. ”

“ Finally he said:
"Home is not built in a day. I myself was not bred and born in this part of Portugal. At first every face was strange. But it is home now. This torrent is the stream that runs through the kitchen of the abbey where I used to work. It is the brook that refreshes my little farm. Once it was no more to me than so many gallons of water. Now it talks and sings to me like a friend. Little by little you will learn to love this place."
"I loved it as soon as I saw it," she retorted. "But I don't love it now. ”

“ Senhor Jorge, genuinely desirous of promoting Antonio's happiness as well as Margarida's, chaffed him with rough heartiness.
"Come, come," said he. "Your head's full of cobwebs. You've been hiding yourself too long in holes and corners. Don't be a fool. It's all very well while you're young and healthy; but, when days and nights of sickness come, who will nurse you then, and put up with your foibles? And who will carry on the wine-making when you're dead and gone? Come, you don't want to let the grand old family of Da Rocha die out? Besides ... a man without a woman is only half a man." ”

“ At the sight of him a white flash of memory blazed across Antonio's mind. Those tigerish eyes, those hunched shoulders, those great, terrible hands outspread upon those clumsy knees—he had seen them all before. By this time his eyes were used to the dusk and mist, and he knew he was not deceived: for he could discern a wound on the peasant's cheek. Before the other had time to make his pounce, the monk cried out in imperious tones:
"Hold. I know you. We are friends!"
"Friends?" hissed the stranger. "Pretty friends! I don't make friends with thieves and atheists." ”

“ Antonio could not unlearn in a single moment his old habits; and therefore, when he took his broa from Margarida's hand, he thanked her with the softly strong tones and the momentary boldness of the eyes which, without his knowing or intending it, had captivated more than one high lady in England. If Donna Perpetua or the farrier's wife or the spinner had offered the broa, he would have expressed his thanks in the same way. But poor Margarida found in his voice and glance a lover-like reverence, meant for herself alone. ”

“ Antonio sat down on the cork bench where he had mused on the night of his ordination, just before he heard the chink of steel. The November moonlight was not less gracious than the May dusk. The cross in the monks' graveyard uprose as white and slender as a taper on an altar, and all the earth seemed consecrated ground. And there the young priest sat for a long time, without moving, while he recalled, beginning with the march to Navares, the motley events which had filled the one-and-forty months of his exile. Finally he lived over again his last night in the abbey. ”

“ On so soft and gracious a night even a pagan would have found something alluring in the thought of death. After the day's glare the dimness was like a veil for tired eyes, and the scented air was like caressing arms, wooing one to everlasting rest. Antonio was no pagan and no voluptuary. He wanted to live strenuously for God, according to the Holy Rule: but it was good to feel that whenever the body should be worn and weary even unto death, there would be this plot of hallowed earth for its repose. ”

“ Emitte lucem tuam, said Antonio in fervent prayer and thanksgiving, as he breasted the weed-grown slope. "Send forth thy light and thy truth: they shall lead me to thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles, and I will go unto the altar of God." And when an opening in the trees once more showed him the glistening chapel his mind swung from the Psalter to the Apocalypse, and he thought once more of Saint John's vision of the Bride habentem claritatem Dei: "having the clear-shining of God, and her light like a precious stone's, like a jasper's, like crystal." ”

“ Even in the nave, where it was impossible to hear Antonio's voice or to see his face, the poignancy of the monk's Confiteor made itself felt. Like ripe corn bowing before a wind, the most hardened and careless bent lower and yearned forward in an anguish of contrition for forgotten sins; and when Antonio pronounced the words indulgentiam, absolutionem et remissionem the whole chapel respired one great sigh, as if a merciful king had just ended the suspense of a culprit condemned to death. ”