Ardath | Page 2

over the tall iron Cross that surmounted the roof,
as though bent on striking it down and splitting open the firm old walls
it guarded. All was war and tumult without:--but within, a tranquil
peace prevailed, enhanced by the grave murmur of organ music; men's
voices mingling together in mellow unison chanted the Magnificat, and
the uplifted steady harmony of the grand old anthem rose triumphantly
above the noise of the storm. The monks who inhabited this mountain
eyrie, once a fortress, now a religious refuge, were assembled in their
little chapel--a sort of grotto roughly hewn out of the natural rock.
Fifteen in number, they stood in rows of three abreast, their white
woollen robes touching the ground, their white cowls thrown back, and
their dark faces and flashing eyes turned devoutly toward the altar
whereon blazed in strange and solitary brilliancy a Cross of Fire. At the
first glance it was easy to see that they were a peculiar Community
devoted to some peculiar form of worship, for their costume was totally
different in character and detail from any such as are worn by the
various religious fraternities of the Greek, Roman, or Armenian faith,
and one especial feature of their outward appearance served as a
distinctly marked sign of their severance from all known monastic
orders--this was the absence of the disfiguring tonsure. They were all
fine-looking men seemingly in the prime of life, and they intoned the
Magnificat not drowsily or droningly, but with a rich tunefulness and
warmth of utterance that stirred to a faint surprise and contempt the
jaded spirit of one reluctant listener present among them. This was a
stranger who had arrived that evening at the monastery, and who
intended remaining there for the night--a man of distinguished and
somewhat haughty bearing, with a dark, sorrowful, poetic face, chiefly
remarkable for its mingled expression of dreamy ardor and cold scorn,

an expression such as the unknown sculptor of Hadrian's era caught and
fixed in the marble of his ivy-crowned Bacchus-Antinous, whose
half-sweet, half-cruel smile suggests a perpetual doubt of all things and
all men. He was clad in the rough-and-ready garb of the travelling
Englishman, and his athletic figure in its plain-cut modern attire looked
curiously out of place in that mysterious grotto which, with its rocky
walls and flaming symbol of salvation, seem suited only to the
picturesque prophet-like forms of the white-gowned brethren whom he
now surveyed, as he stood behind their ranks, with a gleam of
something like mockery in his proud, weary eyes.
"What sort of fellows are these?" he mused--"fools or knaves? They
must be one or the other,--else they would not thus chant praises to a
Deity of whose existence there is, and can be, no proof. It is either
sheer ignorance or hypocrisy,--or both combined. I can pardon
ignorance, but not hypocrisy; for however dreary the results of Truth,
yet Truth alone prevails; its killing bolt destroys the illusive beauty of
the Universe, but what then? Is it not better so than that the Universe
should continue to seem beautiful only through the medium of a lie?"
His straight brows drew together in a puzzled, frowning line as he
asked himself this question, and he moved restlessly. He was becoming
impatient; the chanting of the monks grew monotonous to his ears; the
lighted cross on the altar dazzled him with its glare. Moreover he
disliked all forms of religious service, though as a lover of classic lore
it is probable he would have witnessed a celebration in honor of Apollo
or Diana with the liveliest interest. But the very name of Christianity
was obnoxious to him. Like Shelley, he considered that creed a vulgar
and barbarous superstition. Like Shelley, he inquired, "If God has
spoken, why is the world not convinced?" He began to wish he had
never set foot inside this abode of what he deemed a pretended sanctity,
although as a matter of fact he had a special purpose of his own in
visiting the place-a purpose so utterly at variance with the professed
tenets of his present life and character that the mere thought of it
secretly irritated him, even while he was determined to accomplish it.
As yet he had only made acquaintance with two of the monks,
courteous, good-humored personages, who had received him on his

arrival with the customary hospitality which it was the rule of the
monastery to afford to all belated wayfarers journeying across the
perilous Pass of Dariel. They had asked him no questions as to his
name or nation, they had simply seen in him a stranger overtaken by
the storm and in need of shelter, and had entertained him accordingly.
They had conducted him to the refectory, where a well-piled log fire
was cheerfully blazing, and