第79章 THE ABBEY MASON(1)

(Inventor of the "Perpendicular" Style of Gothic Architecture)

The new-vamped Abbey shaped apace In the fourteenth century of grace;

(The church which, at an after date, Acquired cathedral rank and state.)

Panel and circumscribing wall Of latest feature, trim and tall, Rose roundabout the Norman core In prouder pose than theretofore, Encasing magically the old With parpend ashlars manifold.

The trowels rang out, and tracery Appeared where blanks had used to be.

Men toiled for pleasure more than pay, And all went smoothly day by day, Till, in due course, the transept part Engrossed the master-mason's art.

- Home-coming thence he tossed and turned Throughout the night till the new sun burned.

"What fearful visions have inspired These gaingivings?" his wife inquired;

"As if your tools were in your hand You have hammered, fitted, muttered, planned;

"You have thumped as you were working hard:

I might have found me bruised and scarred.

"What then's amiss. What eating care Looms nigh, whereof I am unaware?"

He answered not, but churchward went, Viewing his draughts with discontent;

And fumbled there the livelong day Till, hollow-eyed, he came away.

- 'Twas said, "The master-mason's ill!"

And all the abbey works stood still.

Quoth Abbot Wygmore: "Why, O why Distress yourself? You'll surely die!"

The mason answered, trouble-torn, "This long-vogued style is quite outworn!

"The upper archmould nohow serves To meet the lower tracery curves:

"The ogees bend too far away To give the flexures interplay.

"This it is causes my distress . . .

So it will ever be unless "New forms be found to supersede The circle when occasions need.

"To carry it out I have tried and toiled, And now perforce must own me foiled!

"Jeerers will say: 'Here was a man Who could not end what he began!'"

- So passed that day, the next, the next;

The abbot scanned the task, perplexed;

The townsmen mustered all their wit To fathom how to compass it, But no raw artistries availed Where practice in the craft had failed . . .

- One night he tossed, all open-eyed, And early left his helpmeet's side.

Scattering the rushes of the floor He wandered from the chamber door And sought the sizing pile, whereon Struck dimly a cadaverous dawn Through freezing rain, that drenched the board Of diagram-lines he last had scored -

Chalked phantasies in vain begot To knife the architectural knot -

In front of which he dully stood, Regarding them in hopeless mood.

He closelier looked; then looked again:

The chalk-scratched draught-board faced the rain, Whose icicled drops deformed the lines Innumerous of his lame designs, So that they streamed in small white threads From the upper segments to the heads Of arcs below, uniting them Each by a stalactitic stem.

- At once, with eyes that struck out sparks, He adds accessory cusping-marks, Then laughs aloud. The thing was done So long assayed from sun to sun . . .

- Now in his joy he grew aware Of one behind him standing there, And, turning, saw the abbot, who The weather's whim was watching too.

Onward to Prime the abbot went, Tacit upon the incident.

- Men now discerned as days revolved The ogive riddle had been solved;

Templates were cut, fresh lines were chalked Where lines had been defaced and balked, And the work swelled and mounted higher, Achievement distancing desire;

Here jambs with transoms fixed between, Where never the like before had been -

There little mullions thinly sawn Where meeting circles once were drawn.

"We knew," men said, "the thing would go After his craft-wit got aglow, "And, once fulfilled what he has designed, We'll honour him and his great mind!"

When matters stood thus poised awhile, And all surroundings shed a smile, The master-mason on an eve Homed to his wife and seemed to grieve . . .

- "The abbot spoke to me to-day:

He hangs about the works alway.

"He knows the source as well as I Of the new style men magnify.