Chapter the Seventh.
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, Cleanse the foul bosom of the perilous stuff That weighs upon the heart. MACBETH.
What betwixt cold and fright the afflicted Sacristan stood before hisSuperior, propped on the friendly arm of the convent miller, drenchedwith water, and scarce able to utter a syllable.
After various attempts to speak, the first words he uttered were,
"Swim we merrily--the moon shines bright."
"Swim we merrily!" retorted the Abbot, indignantly; "a merry night haveye chosen for swimming, and a becoming salutation to your Superior!"
"Our brother is bewildered," said Eustace;--"speak, Father Philip, howis it with you?"
"Good luck to your fishing,"
continued the Sacristan, making a most dolorous attempt at the tune ofhis strange companion.
"Good luck to your fishing!" repeated the Abbot, still more surprisedthan displeased; "by my halidome he is drunken with wine, and comes toour presence with his jolly catches in his throat! If bread and watercan cure this folly--"
"With your pardon, venerable father," said the Sub-Prior, "of waterour brother has had enough; and methinks, the confusion of his eye, israther that of terror, than of aught unbecoming his profession. Wheredid you find him, Hob Miller?"
"An it please your reverence, I did but go to shut the sluice of themill--and as I was going to shut the sluice, I heard something groannear to me; but judging it was one of Giles Fletcher's hogs--for soplease you he never shuts his gate--I caught up my lever, and wasabout--Saint Mary forgive me!--to strike where I heard the sound, when,as the saints would have it, I heard the second groan just like that ofa living man. So I called up my knaves, and found the Father Sacristanlying wet and senseless under the wall of our kiln. So soon as webrought him to himself a bit, he prayed to be brought to your reverence,but I doubt me his wits have gone a bell-wavering by the road. It wasbut now that he spoke in somewhat better form."
"Well!" said Brother Eustace, "thou hast done well, Hob Miller; onlybegone now, and remember a second time to pause, ere you strike in thedark."
"Please your reverence, it shall be a lesson to me," said the miller,"not to mistake a holy man for a hog again, so long as I live." And,making a bow, with profound humility, the miller withdrew.
"And now that this churl is gone, Father Philip," said Eustace,"wilt thou tell our venerable Superior what ails thee? art thou _vinogravatus,_ man? if so we will have thee to thy cell."
"Water! water! not wine," muttered the exhausted Sacristan.
"Nay," said the monk, "if that be thy complaint, wine may perhaps curethee;" and he reached him a cup, which the patient drank off to hisgreat benefit.
"And now," said the Abbot, "let his garments be changed, or ratherlet him be carried to the infirmary; for it will prejudice our health,should we hear his narrative while he stands there, steaming like arising hoar-frost."
"I will hear his adventure," said Eustace, "and report it to yourreverence." And, accordingly, he attended the Sacristan to his cell. Inabout half an hour he returned to the Abbot.
"How is it with Father Philip?" said the Abbot; "and through what camehe into such a state?"
"He comes from Glendearg, reverend sir," said Eustace; "and for therest, he telleth such a legend, as has not been heard in this Monasteryfor many a long day." He then gave the Abbot the outlines of theSacristan's adventures in the homeward journey, and added, that for sometime he was inclined to think his brain was infirm, seeing he had sung,laughed, and wept all in the same breath.
"A wonderful thing it is to us," said the Abbot, "that Satan has beenpermitted to put forth his hand thus far on one of our sacred brethren!"
"True," said Father Eustace; "but for every text there is a paraphrase;and I have my suspicions, that if the drenching of Father Philip comethof the Evil one, yet it may not have been altogether without his ownpersonal fault."
"How!" said the Father Abbot; "I will not believe that thou makest doubtthat Satan, in former days, hath been permitted to afflict saints andholy men, even as he afflicted the pious Job?"
"God forbid I should make question of it," said the monk, crossinghimself; "yet, where there is an exposition of the Sacristan's tale,which is less than miraculous, I hold it safe to consider it at least,if not to abide by it. Now, this Hob the Miller hath a buxom daughter.Suppose--I say only suppose--that our Sacristan met her at the ford onher return from her uncle's on the other side, for there she hath thisevening been--suppose, that, in courtesy, and to save her strippinghose and shoon, the Sacristan brought her across behind him-suppose hecarried his familiarities farther than the maiden was willing to admit;and we may easily suppose, farther, that this wetting was the result ofit."
"And this legend invented to deceive us!" said the Superior, reddeningwith wrath; "but most strictly shall it be sifted and inquired into; itis not upon us that Father Philip must hope to pass the result of hisown evil practices for doings of Satan. To-morrow cite the wench toappear before us--we will examine, and we will punish."
"Under your reverence's favour," said Eustace, "that were but poorpolicy. As things now stand with us, the heretics catch hold of eachflying report which tends to the scandal of our clergy. We must abatethe evil, not only by strengthening discipline, but also by suppressingand stifling the voice of scandal. If my conjectures are true, themiller's daughter will be silent for her own sake; and your reverence'sauthority may also impose silence on her father, and on the Sacristan.If he is again found to afford room for throwing dishonour on his order,he can be punished with severity, but at the same time with secrecy. Forwhat say the Decretals! Facinora ostendi dum punientur, flagitia autemabscondi debent."
A sentence of Latin, as Eustace had before observed, had often muchinfluence on the Abbot, because he understood it not fluently, and wasashamed to acknowledge his ignorance. On these terms they parted for thenight.
The next day, Abbot Boniface strictly interrogated Philip on the realcause of his disaster of the previous night. But the Sacristan stoodfirm to his story; nor was he found to vary from any point of it,although the answers he returned were in some degree incoherent, owingto his intermingling with them ever and anon snatches of the strangedamsel's song, which had made such deep impression on his imagination,that he could not prevent himself from imitating it repeatedly in thecourse of his examination. The Abbot had compassion with the Sacristan'sinvoluntary frailty, to which something supernatural seemed annexed,and finally became of opinion, that Father Eustace's more naturalexplanation was rather plausible than just. And, indeed, althoughwe have recorded the adventure as we find it written down, we cannotforbear to add that there was a schism on the subject in the convent,and that several of the brethren pretended to have good reason forthinking that the miller's black-eyed daughter was at the bottom of theaffair after all. Whichever way it might be interpreted, all agreedthat it had too ludicrous a sound to be permitted to get abroad, andtherefore the Sacristan was charged, on his vow of obedience, to say nomore of his ducking; an injunction which, having once eased his mind bytelling his story, it may be well conjectured that he joyfully obeyed.
The attention of Father Eustace was much less forcibly arrested by themarvellous tale of the Sacristan's danger, and his escape, than by themention of the volume which he had brought with him from the Tower ofGlendearg. A copy of the Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue,had found its way even into the proper territory of the church, and hadbeen discovered in one of the most hidden and sequestered recesses ofthe Halidome of Saint Mary's.
He anxiously requested to see the volume. In this the Sacristan wasunable to gratify him, for he had lost it, as far as he recollected,when the supernatural being, as he conceived her to be, took herdeparture from him. Father Eustace went down to the spot in person, andsearched all around it, in hopes of recovering the volume in question;but his labour was in vain. He returned to the Abbot, and
reportedthat it must have fallen into the river or the mill-stream; "for I willhardly believe," he said, "that Father Philip's musical friend would flyoff with a copy of the Holy Scriptures."
"Being," said the Abbot, "as it is, an heretical translation, it may bethought that Satan may have power over it."
"Ay!" said Father Eustace, "it is indeed his chiefest magazine ofartillery, when he inspireth presumptuous and daring men to set forththeir own opinions and expositions of Holy Writ. But though thus abused,the Scriptures are the source of our salvation, and are no more tobe reckoned unholy, because of these rash men's proceedings, than apowerful medicine is to be contemned, or held poisonous, because boldand evil leeches have employed it to the prejudice of their patients.With the permission of your reverence, I would that this matter werelooked into more closely. I will myself visit the Tower of Glendearg ereI am many hours older, and we shall see if any spectre or white womanof the wild will venture to interrupt my journey or return. Have I yourreverend permission and your blessing?" he added, but in a tone thatappeared to set no great store by either.
"Thou hast both, my brother," said the Abbot; but no sooner had Eustaceleft the apartment, than Boniface could not help breaking on the willingear of the Sacristan his sincere wish, that any spirit, black, white,or gray, would read the adviser such a lesson, as to cure him of hispresumption in esteeming himself wiser than the whole community.
"I wish him no worse lesson," said the Sacristan, "than to go swimmingmerrily down the river with a ghost behind, and Kelpies, night-crows,and mud-eels, all waiting to have a snatch at him.
Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright! Good luck to your fishing, whom watch you to-night?"
"Brother Philip," said the Abbot, "we exhort thee to say thy prayers,compose thyself, and banish that foolish chant from thy mind;--it is buta deception of the devil's."
"I will essay, reverend Father," said the Sacristan, "but the tunehangs by my memory like a bur in a beggar's rags; it mingles with thepsalter--the very bells of the convent seem to repeat the words, andjingle to the tune; and were you to put me to death at this very moment,it is my belief I should die singing it--'Now swim we merrily'--it is asit were a spell upon me."
He then again began to warble
"Good luck to your fishing."
And checking himself in the strain with difficulty, he exclaimed, "It istoo certain--I am but a lost priest! Swim we merrily--I shall sing it atthe very mass--Wo is me! I shall sing all the remainder of my life, andyet never be able to change the tune!"
The honest Abbot replied, "he knew many a good fellow in the samecondition;" and concluded the remark with "ho! ho! ho!" for hisreverence, as the reader may partly have observed, was one of those dullfolks who love a quiet joke.
The Sacristan, well acquainted with his Superior's humour, endeavouredto join in the laugh, but his unfortunate canticle came again across hisimagination, and interrupted the hilarity of his customary echo.
"By the rood, Brother Philip," said the Abbot, much moved, "you becomealtogether intolerable! and I am convinced that such a spell could notsubsist over a person of religion, and in a religious house, unlesshe were under mortal sin. Wherefore, say the seven penitentiarypsalms--make diligent use of thy scourge and hair-cloth--refrain forthree days from all food, save bread and water--I myself will shrivethee, and we will see if this singing devil may be driven out ofthee; at least I think Father Eustace himself could devise no betterexorcism."
The Sacristan sighed deeply, but knew remonstrance was vain. He retiredtherefore to his cell, to try how far psalmody might be able to driveoff the sounds of the syren tune which haunted his memory.
Meanwhile, Father Eustace proceeded to the drawbridge, in his way to thelonely valley of Glendearg. In a brief conversation with the churlishwarder, he had the address to render him more tractable in thecontroversy betwixt him and the convent. He reminded him that his fatherhad been a vassal under the community; that his brother was childless;and that their possession would revert to the church on his death,and might be either granted to himself the warder, or to some greaterfavourite of the Abbot, as matters chanced to stand betwixt them at thetime. The Sub-Prior suggested to him also, the necessary connexion ofinterests betwixt the Monastery and the office which this man enjoyed.He listened with temper to his rude and churlish answers; and by keepinghis own interest firm pitched in his view, he had the satisfaction tofind that Peter gradually softened his tone, and consented to let everypilgrim who travelled upon foot pass free of exaction until Pentocostnext; they who travelled on horseback or otherwise, contenting to paythe ordinary custom. Having thus accommodated a matter in which the wealof the convent was so deeply interested, Father Eustace proceeded on hisjourney.