The King's Achievement

or some years after their profession, Chris continued his work of illumin

superseded the need of manuscript, but in some Religious Houses it was stil

ary that had its borders and initials left white; and he carried the great loose sheets with a g

igns. It was a great step in that life of minute details when now for the first time he was permitted to follow his own views, instead of merely filling in with colour outlines already drawn for him; and he found his scheme for the decoration a serious temptation to distraction during the office. As he stood among the professed monks, in his own stall at last, he found his eyes wandering away to the capitals of the round pillars, the stone foliage and fruit that burst out of the slender shafts,

He was still warm with sleep, and the piercing cold of the unwarmed cloister did not affect him, but he set his feet on

ack and red ink lay with the scissors and rulers on the little upper shelf of his desk. There were the pigments also there, which he had learnt to grind and prepare, the crushed lapis lazuli first calcined by heat according to the modern degenerate practice, with the cheap German blue beside it, and the indigo beyond; the prasinum; the vermilio

*

border. These medallions on the first sheet he purposed to fill with miniatures of the famous relics kept at Lewes, the hanging sleeve of the Blessed Virgin in its crystal case, the drinking-cup of Cana, the rod of Moses, and the Magdalene's box of ointment. In the later pages which would be less elaborate he would introduce the other relics, and allow his humour free play in designing for the scrolls at the foot tiny portraits of his brethr

*

the long dormitory, believing that he had laid on gold-leaf without first painting the surface with the necessary mordant, or had run his stilus through his most delicate miniature. But he made extraordinary progress in the art; and the Prior more than once stepped into his carrel

*

hat was above all others worthy of an immortal soul. The whole day's routine was directed to one end, the performance of t

in the great church. Christopher remembered pleasantly a morning soon after the beginning of his novitiate when he had been in the church as a set of priests came in and began mass simultaneously; the mystical fancy suggested itself as the hum of voices began that he was in a garden, warm and bright with grace, and that bees wer

renthetical concession; and after Terce and the Lady Mass followed the Chapter, in which faults were confessed and penances inflicted, and the living instruments of God's work were examined and scoured for use. The martyrology was read at this time, as well as some morning prayers, to keep before the monks' minds the remembrance of those great vessels of God's household called to so high an employment. It was then, t

it domus ista Pancrati memoru

followed was a religious ceremony; it began by a salutation of the Christ in glory that was on the wall over the Prior's table, and then a long grace was sung before they took their seats. The reader in the stone-pulpit on the south wall of the refectory began his business on the sounding of a bell; and at a second stroke there was a hum and clash of dishes from the kitchen end, and the apron

escribable dignity of the prior's little table, the bowing of the servers before it, the mellow grace ringing out in its monotone that broke into minor thirds and octaves of melody, like a grave line of woodwork on the panelling bursting into a stiff leaf or two at its ends. There was a strange and wonderful romance it about on early autumn evenings as the light died out behind the stained windows and the reader's face glowed homely and

t time of study, they re-assembled in the cloister to go to Vespers. This, like the high mass, was performed with the ceremonial proper to the day, and was followed by supper, at which the same kind of ceremonies were observed as at dinner. When this was over, after a fur

d softly by the organ overhead after the bare singing of Compline, seemed like a kind of good-night kiss. The infinite pathos of the words never failed to touch him, the cry of the banished children of Eve, weeping and mourning in this vale of tears to Mary whose obedience had restored what Eve's self-will had ruined, and the last threefold sob of endearment to the "kindly, lovi

h holy water as they left the church, up to the dormitory which ran over the whole

*

re. It too had its varying climate, its long summer of warmth and light, its winter of dark discontent, its strange and bewildering sunrises of Christ upon the soul, when He rose and went about His garden with perfume and music, or stayed and greeted His creature with the message of His eyes. Chris began to learn that

down from a castle-garden on to humming streets five hundred feet below; and the old life at Over

sitive as those which had distressed him before. Dom Anselm Bowden's way of walking and the patch of grease at the shoulder of his cowl, never removed, and visible as he went before him into the church was as di

se unnecessarily draughty. And until he learnt from his confessor that this spiritual ailment was a perfectly familiar one, and that its symptoms and effects had been diagnosed centuries before, and had taken him at his word and practised the remedies he enjoined

*

was accused in chapte

great and shoc

he refectory; and then leaned back on his heels well content with the insignificance of his list, to listen with a discreet complacency to old Dom Adrian, who had overslept himself o

s were done, the others

d his own

don of not keeping the guard of

in plans for incorporating it into his illumination that he had let a verse pass as far as the star that marke

eping the guard of the eyes at Terce

r spoke with a tinge of sharpness, inflicting the penances, and g

it petulantly, and administered his own puni

r made him a sign, and took

the Rule," he said. "It must not happ

n eyeing him again. It seemed too as if a fiend suggested bitter sentences of reproach, that he rehearsed to himself, and then repented. But on the third morni

*

t seemed he must have willed them; it was not often that he was tempted to sin in word or deed-such, when they came, rushed on him suddenly; but in the realm of thought and imagination and motive he would often find himself, as it were, entering a swarm of such things, that

too; for to conquer a motive or tame an imagination was at once more arduous and more far-reaching in its effects than a victory

of the world. A monastery was a place where in a special sense the spiritual commerce of the world was carried on: as a workman's shed is the place deputed and used by the world for the manufacture of certain articles. It was the manufactory of grace where skilled persons were at work, busy at a task of

undominated by its principles and out of love with its spirit; but in another sense they must live in its heart. To use another analogy they were as windmills, lifted up from t

, feeling impatient with the poor to whom he had to minister, in sneering in his heart at least at anxious fussy men who came to arrange for masses, at troublesome women who haunted the sacri

to forget that England was about him and stirring in her agony; and he

*

aware of an unusual stir in the court. There were a couple of palfreys there, and half-a-dozen

two prelates came out with Dom Anthony behind them-tall, stately men in monks' habits with furred cloaks and crosses. Chr

er. He looked at him now and again during Vespers with a reverential awe, for the Abbot was a great man, a spiritual peer of immense influence and reputation, and

the Prior on the dais; and afterwards the monks were called

to say to them, and then sat down; his troubled eyes ran over the face

t of Supremacy, and the serious prayer that was needed; he said that a time of testing was close at hand, and that every man must scr

ld have to be seriously dealt with, and third, that there was nothing really to fear so long as their souls were clean and courageous. The Abbot was a melting speaker, full at once of a fatherly tenderness and vehemence, and as Chris looked a

King had thrown aside all restraints, and that the civil breach with Rome seemed in no prospect of healing. As for the spiritual breach the monks did not seriously consider it yet; they regarded themselves as sti

more white and troubled,

y to a kind of angry despair, tell them that all was lost, that every man would have to save himself; and then for days after such an exhibition he would be silent an

at he had news from London that made his presence there necessar