Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/69

Rh or ivory, he had watched his opportunity and, seizing it unperceived in his brawny hand, waited until nightfall and threw it into the convent well with the words, "Vade Retro! Satanas!"

One day, as he passed through the corridor into which opened Sebastian's cell, his steps were arrested by the murmur or voices which floated through the half-open door. He leaned against the Gothic bay of the marble pillars that looked into the cloister below, uncertain whether to go or stay. The hot sunlight filled the dusky corridor with a drowsy sense of sleep and stillness. The swallows flitted about the eaves, chirping as they wheeled hither and thither with a throbbing murmur of content. The roses climbed into the bay, lighting up the dusky corridors with sprays of crimson; they brushed against his habit. He beat them off contemptuously. The eavesdropper could see nothing, hear nothing, but what was framed in, or came through, that half-open door.

Suddenly the two friars, the Prior and Fray Sebastian, were startled by a tall figure framed suddenly in the doorway. Blocking the light, it loomed on them like the gigantic and menacing image of Elijah on the painted retablo of the High Altar. Its face was livid. From underneath the black bushy brows the eyes burned like coals of fire. The figure shook and the hands twitched for a moment of speechless, unutterable indignation. In that moment Sebastian turned, and placed the canvas, which stood in the middle of the cell, with its face against the wall, and the two men quietly faced their antagonist.

Fray Matthias strode forward, as if to strike them.

"By Him that cursed the money-changers in the temple," he thundered, "what abomination is this ye have brewing in the House of the Lord? What new-fangled devilries are here? This Rh