The Holy Fountain THE pilgrims were human beings.Otherwise they would have acted differently.
They had come a long and difficult journey,and now when the journey was nearly finished,and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist,they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done --turn back and get at something profitable --no,anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain,they were as much as forty times 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 stood upon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness,and our eyes swept it from end to end and noted its features.That is,its large features.These were the three masses of buildings.They were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert --and was.Such a scene is always mournful,it is so impressively still,and looks so steeped in death.But there was a sound here which interrupted the stillness only to add to its mournfulness;this was the faint far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the passing breeze,and so faintly,so softly,that we hardly knew whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits.
We reached the monastery before dark,and there the males were given lodging,but the women were sent over to the nunnery.The bells were close at hand now,and their solemn booming smote upon the ear like a message of doom.A superstitious despair possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his ghastly 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;but he did the shedding himself.He said:
"Delay not,son,but get to thy saving work.An we bring not the water back again,and soon,we are ruined,and the good work of two hundred years must end.And see thou do it with enchantments that be holy,for the Church will not endure that work in her cause be done by devil's magic.""When I work,Father,be sure there will be no devil's work connected with it.I shall use no arts that come of the devil,and no elements not created by the hand of God.But is Merlin working strictly on pious lines?""Ah,he said he would,my son,he said he would,and took oath to 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 be professional courtesy.Two of a trade must not underbid each other.We might as well cut rates and be done with it;it would arrive at that in the end.Merlin has the contract;no other magician can touch it till he throws it up.""But I will take it from him;it is a terrible emergency and the act is thereby justified.And if it were not so,who will give law to the Church?
The Church giveth law to all;and what she wills to do,that she may do,hurt whom it may.I will take it from him;you shall begin upon the moment.""It may not be,Father.No doubt,as you say,where power is supreme,one can do as one likes and suffer no injury;but we poor magicians are not so situated.Merlin is a very good magician in a small way,and has quite a neat provincial reputation.He is struggling along,doing the best he can,and it would not be etiquette 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 were persuaded against his will,he would load that well with a malicious enchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret.It might take a month.
I could set up a little enchantment of mine which I call the telephone,and he could not find out its secret in a hundred years.Yes,you perceive,he might block me for 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 it thy 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 thus the thing that is called rest,the prone body making outward sign of repose where inwardly is none."Of course,it would have been best,all round,for Merlin to waive etiquette and quit and call it half a day,since he would never be able 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 his reputation,always had the luck to be performed when nobody but Merlin was present;he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see;a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine;there was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything.But I did not want Merlin to retire from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively myself;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 time in ten days.
As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced with food,their spirits began to rise fast;when the mead began to go 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 we stayed by the board and put it through on that line.Matters got to be very jolly.Good old questionable stories were told that made the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round bellies shake with laughter;and questionable songs were bellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells.
