Kabanata Kabanata 22 · THE HOLY FOUNTAIN

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.

At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it.

Not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does

not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous

thing; but the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places;

the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth

repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they

disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This language

is figurative. Those islanders--well, they are slow pay at first,

in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end

they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.

I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchanting

away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not in

a pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contract

was a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and

cursed like a bishop--French bishop of the Regency days, I mean.

Matters were about as I expected to find them. The “fountain” was

an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up

in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie

that had created its reputation was not miraculous; I could have

told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in a

dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose

walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would

have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative

of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when

nobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they are always

on deck when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get put in

the picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company;

look at the old masters.

The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn

with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which

delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel--when

there was water to draw, I mean--and none but monks could enter

the well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authority

to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate.

But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantations;

he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and used

his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured

the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in

the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who

believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is

handicapped with a superstition like that.

I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the

wall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures that

allowed the water to escape. I measured the chain--98 feet. Then

I called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and

made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out,

the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the

wall was gone, exposing a good big fissure.

I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was

correct, because I had another one that had a showy point or two

about it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, many

centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to

blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well

dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people most

nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite

bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was

plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot have

everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to

be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his

mind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no

hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too.

When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down

a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there

was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:

“How deep is the well?”

“That, sir, I wit not, having never been told.”

“How does the water usually stand in it?”

“Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth,

brought down to us through our predecessors.”

It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witness

to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty

feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn

and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other

time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and

mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had

discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed

the well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, and

these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled

their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew

away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop

a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was

really the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things

to get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physical

form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea

that his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion

of being illegitimate. I said to the monk:

“It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we

will try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a very

passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may

not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that should

be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do _this_ kind of

miracle knows enough to keep hotel.”

“Hotel? I mind not to have heard--”

“Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do this

miracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I shall do this

miracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle

to tax the occult powers to the last strain.”

“None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for

it is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and took

a year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that end

will we pray.”

As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around

that the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been made

large by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled up

with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others.

In two days the solicitude would be booming.

On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had been sampling the

hermits. I said:

“I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is there

a matinee?”

“A which, please you, sir?”

“Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?”

“Who?”

“The hermits, of course.”

“Keep open?”

“Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do they knock off at noon?”

“Knock off?”

“Knock off?--yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off?

I never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all?

In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires--”

“Shut up shop, draw--”

“There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. You can't seem

to understand the simplest thing.”

“I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow

that I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel and taught of

none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of

learning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of

that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to

the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that

great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol

of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the

pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief

do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the

darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery,

these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is

but by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind that

can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-sounding

miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humbler

mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then

if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true,

wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and

may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this

complexion of mood and mind and understood that that I would

I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might

_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage

turned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault,

and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good

my master and most dear lord.”

I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got the

general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was not

fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the

untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she

couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best

drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't

fetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meandered

pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse

together, and better friends than ever.

I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence

for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station

and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless

transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that

I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German

Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she

began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took

the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words

had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the

German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a

mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war,

she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary

German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see

of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his

verb in his mouth.

We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most

strange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be,

to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous

with vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expression

of complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's pride

to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister

him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day

long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims

and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;

it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out,

eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when

he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there

were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of

age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with

forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazing

pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost

in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which

these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven.

By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was

a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; the

noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe

to pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part

of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds.

His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on

the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day

for twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly

almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a

stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and

46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste.

It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal

movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some

day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing

machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got

five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out

upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which

was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,

the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power.

These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the

materials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been right

to make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a

dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or

a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect

protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights

everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that

there was not a cliff or a boulder or a dead wall in England but

you could read on it at a mile distance:

“Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the Nobility.

Patent applied for.”

There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with.

As it extended, I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings,

and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down

the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch

to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up with

a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets.

Yes, it was a daisy.

But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken to

standing on one leg, and I found that there was something the matter

with the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking

Sir Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of his

friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saint

got him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him.

When I saw him that first time--however, his personal condition

will not quite bear description here. You can read it in the

Lives of the Saints.*

[*All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from

Lecky--but greatly modified. This book not being a history but

only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too

strong for reproduction in it.--_Editor_]