In the middle of breakfast a card was handed to Sidney Carew. He glanced at it, nodded his head as a signal to the servant that he need not wait, and slipped the card into his pocket. Mr. Bodery and the Vicomte d'Audierne were watching him.
Presently he rose from the table and left the room. Mrs. Carew became suddenly lively, and the meal went on unconcernedly. It was not long before Sidney came back.
“Do you want,” he said to his mother, “some tickets for a concert at Brayport on the 4th of next month?”
“What sort of a concert?”
Sidney consulted the tickets.
“In aid,” he read, “of an orphanage—the Police Orphanage.”
“We always take six tickets,” put in Miss Molly, and her mother began to seek her pocket.
“Mr. Bodery,” said Sidney, at this moment, “you have nothing to eat. Let me cut you some ham.”
He moved towards the sideboard, but Mr. Bodery rose from his seat.
“I prefer to carve it myself,” he replied, proceeding to do so.
Sidney held the plate. They were quite close together, and Hilda was talking persistently and gaily to the Vicomte d'Audierne.
“The London police are here already,” whispered Sidney; “shall I say anything about Vellacott?”
“No,” replied Mr. Bodery, after a moment's reflection.
“I am going to ride over to Porton Abbey with them now.”
“Right,” replied the editor, returning to the table with his plate.
Sidney left the room again, and the Vicomte d'Audierne detected the quick, anxious glance directed by Hilda at his retreating form. A few minutes later young Carew rode away from the house in company with two men, while a fourth horseman followed closely.
He who rode on Sidney's left hand was a tall, grizzled man, with the bearing of a soldier, while his second companion was fair and gentle in manner. The soldier was Captain Pharland, District Inspector of Police; the civilian was the keenest detective in London.
“Of course,” said this man, who sat his hired horse with perfect confidence. “Of course we are too late, I know that.”
He spoke softly and somewhat slowly; his manner was essentially that of a man accustomed to the entire attention of his hearers.
“The old Italian,” he continued, “who went under the name of Signor Bruno, disappeared this morning. It is just possible that he will succeed in getting out of the country. It all depends upon who he is.”
“Who do you suppose he is?” asked Captain Pharland. He was an upright old British soldier, and felt ill at ease in the society of his celebratedconfrère.
“I don't know,” was the frank reply; “you see this is not a criminal affair, it is entirely political; it is hardly in my line of country.”
They rode on in silence for a space of time, during which Captain Pharland lighted a cigar and offered one to his companions. Sidney accepted, but the gentleman from London refused quietly, and without explanation. It was he who spoke first.
“Mr. Carew,” he said, “can you tell me when this monastery was first instituted at Porton Abbey?”
“Last autumn.”
The thin flaxen eyebrows went up very high, until they were lost to sight beneath the hat brim.
“Did they—ah—deal with the local tradesmen?”
“No,” replied Sidney, “I think not. They received all their stores by train from London.”
“And you have never seen any of the monks?”
“No, never.”
The fair-haired gentleman gave a little upward jerk of the head and smiled quietly for his own satisfaction.
He did not speak again until the cavalcade reached Porton Abbey. The old place looked very peaceful in the morning light, standing grimly in the midst of that soft lush grass which only grows over old habitations.
One side of the long, low building was in good repair, while the other half had been allowed to crumble away. The narrow Norman windows had been framed with unpainted wood and cheap glass. The broad doorway had been partly filled in with unseasoned deal, and an inexpensive door had been fitted up.
The bell-knob was of brass, new and glaring in the morning sun. The gentleman from London, having alighted, took gently hold of this and rang. A faint tinkle rewarded him. It was the peculiar sound of a bell ringing in an empty house. After a moment's pause he wrenched the bell nearly out of its socket, and a long peal was the result. At last this ceased, and there was no sound in the house. The fair man looked back over his shoulder at Captain Pharland.
“Gone!” he said tersely.
Then he took from his breast pocket a little bar in the shape of a lever. He introduced the bent end of this between the door and the post, just above the keyhole, and gave a sharp jerk. There was a short crack like that made by the snapping of cast iron, and the door flew open.
Without a moment's hesitation the man went in, followed closely by Sidney and Captain Pharland.
The birds had flown. As mysteriously as they had come, the devotees had vanished. Bare walls met the eyes of the searchers. Porton Abbey stood empty again after its brief return to life and warmth, and indeed it scarcely looked habitable. The few personal effects of the simple monks had been removed; the walls and stone floors were rigidly clean; the small chapel showed signs of recent repair. There was an altar-cloth, a crucifix, and two brass candlesticks.
The gentleman from London noted these items with a cynical smile. He had instinctively removed his hat; it is just possible that there was another side to this man's life—a side wherein he dealt with men who were not openly villains. He may have been a churchwarden at home.
“Clever beggars!” he ejaculated, “they were ready for every emergency.”
Captain Pharland pointed to the altar with his heavy riding-whip.
“Then,” he said, “you think this all humbug?”
“I do. They were no more monks than we are.”
The search did not last much longer. Only a few rooms had been inhabited, and there was absolutely nothing left—no shred of evidence, no clue whatever.
“Yes,” said the fair-haired man, when they had finished their inspection, “these were exceptional men; they knew their business.”
As they left the house he paused, and closed the door again, remaining inside.
“You see,” he said, “there is not even a bolt on the door. They knew better than to depend on bolts and bars. They knew a trick worth two of that.”
At the gate they met a small, inoffensive man, with a brown beard and a walking-stick. There was nothing else to say about him; without the beard and the walking-stick there would have been nothing left to know him by.
“That is my assistant,” announced the London detective quietly. “He has been down to the cliff.”
The two men stepped aside together, and consulted in an undertone for some time. Then the last speaker returned to Captain Pharland and Sidney, who were standing together.
“That newspaper,” he said, “theBeacon, is word for word right. My assistant has been to the spot. The arms and ammunition have undoubtedly been shipped from this place. The cases of cartridges mentioned by the man who wrote the article as having been seen, in a dream, half-way down the cliff, are actually there; my assistant has seen them.”
Captain Pharland scratched his honest cavalry head. He was beginning to regret that he had accepted the post of district inspector of the police. Sidney Carew puffed at his pipe in silence.
“Of course,” said the detective, “the newspaper man got all this information through the treachery of one of the party. I should like to get hold of that traitor. He would be a useful man to know.”
In this the astute gentleman from London betrayed his extremely limited knowledge of the Society of Jesus. There are no traitors in that vast corporation.
Sidney and Captain Pharland rode home together, leaving the two detectives to find their way to Brayport Station.
They rode in silence, for the Captain was puzzled, and his companion was intensely anxious.
Sidney Carew was beginning to realise that the events of the last three days had a graver import than they at first promised to conceal. The now celebrated article in theBeaconopened his eyes, and he knew that the writer of it must have paid very dearly for his daring. It seemed extremely probable that the head and hands which had conceived and carried out this singular feat were both still for ever. Vellacott's own written tribute to the vast powers of the Jesuits, and their immovable habit of forcing a way through all obstacles to the end in view, was scarcely reassuring to his friends.
Sidney knew and recognised the usual fertility of resource possessed by his friend; but against him were pitted men of greater gifts, of less scruple, and of infinitely superior training in the crooked ways of humanity. That he should have been so long without vouchsafing word or sign was almost proof positive that his absence was involuntary; and men capable of placing fire-arms into the hands of a maddened mob were not likely to hesitate in sacrificing a single life that chanced to stand in their path.
As the young fellow rode along, immersed in meditation, he heard the sound of carriage-wheels, and, looking up, recognised his own grey horse and dog-cart. Mr. Bodery was driving, and driving hard. On seeing Sidney he pulled up, somewhat recklessly, in a manner which suggested that he had not always been a stout, middle-aged Londoner.
“Been telegraphed for,” he shouted, “by the people at the office. Government is taking it up. Just time to catch the train.”
And the editor of theBeacondisappeared in a cloud of dust.
The Vicomte d'Audierne was thus left in full possession of the field.
When Christian Vellacott passed out of the drawing-room window in answer to what he naturally supposed to be a signal-whistle from Hilda or Sidney, he turned down the narrow, winding pathway that led to the moat. The extreme darkness, contrasting suddenly with the warm light of the room he had just left, caused him to walk slowly with outstretched hands. Floating cobwebs broke across his face, and frequently he stopped to brush the clinging fibre away. The intense darkness was somewhat relieved when he reached the edge of the moat, and the clear sky was overhead instead of interlocked branches. He could just discern that Hilda was not at her usual seat upon the rustic bench farther towards the end of the moat, and he stopped short, with a sudden misgiving, at the spot where the path met, at right angles, the broader stone walk extending the full length of the water.
He was on the point of whistling softly the familiar refrain, when there was a rustle in the bushes behind him. A rush, a sudden shock, and a pair of muscular hands were closed round his throat, dragging him backwards. But Christian stood like a rock. Quick as thought he seized the two wrists, which were small and flat, and wrenched them apart. Then, stepping back with one foot in order to obtain surer leverage, he lifted his assailant from the ground, swung him round, and literally let him fly into the moat—with a devout hope that it might be Signor Bruno. The man hurtled through the darkness, without a cry or sound, and fell face foremost into the water, five yards from the edge, throwing into the air a shower of spray.
Christian Vellacott was one of those men whose litheness is greater than their actual muscular force; but a lithe man possesses greater powers of endurance than a powerful fellow whose muscles are more highly developed. The exertion of lifting his assailant and swinging him away into the darkness was great, although the man's weight was nothing very formidable, and Christian staggered back a few paces without, however, actually losing his balance. At this moment two men sprang upon him from behind and dragged him to the ground. He felt at once that this was a very different matter. Either of these two could have overpowered him singly. Their thick arms encompassed him like the coils of a snake, and there was about their heavy woollen clothing a faint odour of salt water. He knew that they were sailors. Recognising that it was of no avail, he still fought on, as Englishmen do. One of the men had wound a large woollen scarf round his mouth, the other was slowly but very surely succeeding in pinioning his arms. Then a third assailant came, and Christian knew by the wet hand (for he used one arm only) that it was the smallest of the three, who had suffered for his temerity.
“Quick, quick!” this man whispered in French. With his uninjured hand he twisted the scarf tighter and tighter until Christian gasped for breath.
Still the Englishman struggled and writhed upon the ground, while the hard breathing of the two sailors testified that it was no mean resistance. Suddenly the one-armed man loosened the scarf, but before Christian could recover his breath a handkerchief was pressed over his lips, and a sweet, pungent odour filled his nostrils.
“Three to one,” he gasped, and quite suddenly his head fell forward, while his clutch relaxed.
“He is a brave man,” said the dripping leader of the attack, as he stood upright and touched his damaged shoulder gently and tentatively. “Now quick to the carriage with him. You have not managed this well, my friends, not at all well.”
The speaker raised his cold hand to his forehead, which was wet, less perhaps from past exertion than from the agony he was enduring.
“But, monsieur,” grumbled one of the sailors in humble self-defence, “he is made of steel!”
The pale light of a grey dawn was stealing slowly up into the riven sky, lighting up the clouds which were flying eastward on the shoulder of a boisterous wind. The heavy grey sea, heaving, surging, and hissing, threw itself upwards into broken spray, which flew to leeward at a sharp angle, blown from the summit of the wave like froth from an over-filled tankard. After a night of squally restlessness, accompanied by a driving rain that tasted brackish, things had settled down with the dawn into a steady, roaring gale of wind. In the growing light sea-gulls rose triumphantly with smooth breasts bravely facing the wind.
In the midst of this a dripping vessel laboured sorely. The green water rushed from side to side over her slippery, filthy deck as she rolled, and carried with it a tangled mass of ropes, a wooden bucket, a capstan bar, and—ominous sign—a soaking, limp fur cap. The huge boom, reaching nearly the whole length of the little vessel, swung wildly from side to side as the yawl dipped her bulwarks to the receding wave. It was certain death for a man to attempt to stand upright upon the sopping deck, for the huge spar swung shoulder high. The steersman, crouching low by his strong tiller, was doing his best to avoid a clean sweep, but only a small jib and the mizzen were standing with straining clews and gleaming seams. Crouching beneath the weather bulwarks, with their feet wedged against the low combing of the hatch, three men were vainly endeavouring to secure the boom, and to disentangle the clogged ropes. Two were huge fellows with tawny, washed-out beards innocent of brush or comb, their faces were half hidden by rough sou'-westers, and they were enveloped from head to foot in oilskins from which the water ran in little rills. The third was Christian Vellacott, who looked very wet indeed. The water was dripping from his cuffs and running down his face. His black dress-clothes were clinging to him with a soppy hindrance, while the feet firmly planted against the combing of the hatch were encased in immaculate patent-leather shoes, and the salt water ran off silk socks. It would have been very funny if it were not that Fortune invariably mingles her strokes of humour most heedlessly with sadder things. Christian Vellacott was apparently unconscious of the humour of the situation. He was working patiently and steadily, as men must needs work when fighting Nature, and his half-forgotten sea-craft was already coming back. Beneath his steady hands something akin to order was slowly being achieved; he was coiling and disentangling the treacherous rope, of which the breaking had cast the boom adrift, laying low a good seaman.
Farther forward upon the hatch lay the limp body of a very big man. His matted head was bare, and the dead, brown face, turned upward to its Maker, jerked from side to side as the vessel heaved. The stalwart legs were encased in greasy sea-boots, deeply wrinkled, and the coils of a huge scarf of faded purple lay upon his broad breast, where they had been dragged down by a hasty hand in order to see more clearly the still features.
At the dead man's side knelt upon the deck a small, spare figure clad in black and wearing his left arm in a sling. With his right hand he held a crucifix to the blue lips that would never breathe a prayer to the Virgin again. The small mouth and refined features of the praying man were strangely out of keeping with his tempestuous surroundings. Unmindful, however, of wind and waves alike, he knelt and prayed audibly. Each lurch of the vessel threw him forward, so that, in order to save himself from falling, he was obliged to press heavily upon the dead man's throat and breast; but this he heeded not. His girlish blue eyes were half closed in an ecstasy of religious fervour, and the pale, narrow face wore a light that was not reflected from sea or sky. This was the man who had unhesitatingly attacked Vellacott, had dared to pit his small strength, more of nerve than of muscle, against the young Englishman's hardened sinews. Violence in itself was most abhorrent to him; it had no part in his nature; and consequently, by the strange tenets of Ignatius Loyola's disciples, he was condemned to a course of it. Any objectionable duty, such as this removal of Vellacott, was immediately assigned to him in the futile endeavour of subjecting the soul to the brain. A true Jesuit must have no nature of his own and no individuality. He is simply a machine, with likes and dislikes, conscience and soul subject to the will of his superior, whose mind is also under the same arbitrary control; and so on to the top. If at the head there were God, it would be well; but man is there, and consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even though it amount to blasphemy.
René Drucquer, the man kneeling on the slimy deck, was as nearly a religious fanatic as his soft, sweet nature would allow. With greater bodily strength and attendant greater passions, he would have been a simple monomaniac. In him the passion for self-devotion was singularly strong, and contact with men had cooled it down into an unusually deep sense of duty.
Personally courageous, his bravery was of a high order, if the spirit of self-devotion called it into existence. In this his courage was more akin to that of women than of men. If duty drove him he would go where the devil drags most people, and René Drucquer was not by any means the first man or woman whose life has been wrecked, wasted, and utterly misled by a blind devotion to duty.
When throwing himself upon Christian Vellacott, no thought of possible danger to his own person had restrained or caused him a moment's hesitation. His blind faith in the righteousness of his cause was, however, on the wane. This disciple of St. Ignatius might have lived a true and manly life three hundred years earlier when his master trod the earth, but the march of intellect had trodden down the “Constitutions” years before René Drucquer came to study them. An ignoramus and a zealot who lived nearly four centuries ago can be no guide or help to men of the present day, and this young priest was overshadowed by the saddest doubt that comes to men on earth—the doubt of his own Creed.
While Christian Vellacott was assisting the sailors he glanced occasionally towards the kneeling priest, and on the narrow, intelligent face he read a truth that never was forgotten. He saw that René Drucquer was unconscious of his surroundings—unmindful of the fact that he was on board a disabled vessel at the mercy of the wild wind. His whole being was absorbed in prayer: this priest remembered only that the soul of the great, rough, disfigured man was winging its serene way to the land where no clouds are. Christian was not an impressionable man—journalism had killed all that—nor, it is to be feared, did he devote much thought to religion; but he recognised goodness when he met it. The young journalist's interest was aroused, and in that trifling incident lay the salvation of the priest. From that small beginning came the gleam of light that was to illuminate gloriously the darkness of a mistaken life.
Chance had capriciously ruled that the hand that had dislocated the Abbé's arm should set it again, and the dead sailor lying on the sticky, tarred hatch-cover had helped. The “patron” of the boat, for he it was whose head had been smashed by the spar, had held the priest's trembling, swollen shoulder while Christian's steady hands gave the painful jerk required to slip the joint back into its socket. The great, coarse lips which had trembled a little, with a true Frenchman's sympathy for suffering, were now blue and drawn; the stout, tender hands were nerveless.
The priest prayed on, while the men worked near at hand seeking to restore order, and to repair the damages made by sea and wind. They had got over their sullen, native shyness on finding that Christian could speak French like the Abbé and was almost as good a sailor as themselves. One offered him a rough blue jersey, while another placed a gold-embroidered Sunday waistcoat at his disposal, with a visible struggle between kindness of heart and economy. The first was accepted, but the waistcoat was given back with a kind laugh and an assurance that the jersey was sufficient.
The Englishman knew too well with whom he was dealing to harbour any ill-feeling against the ignorant fishermen or even towards the Abbé Drucquer for the rough treatment he had received. The former were poor, and money never was beaten by a scruple in open combat yet. The latter, he rightly presumed, was only obeying a mandate he dared not dispute. The authority was to him Divine, the command came from one whom he had sworn to look up to and obey as the earthly representative of his Master.
At length the deck was cleared, and order reigned on board, though the mainsail could not be set until the weather moderated.
Then Hoel Grall came up to the young Englishman and said:
“Monsieur, let us carry the 'patron' down below. It is not right for the dead to lie there in this wind and storm.”
“I am willing,” answered Christian, looking towards the spot where the dead man lay.
“Then, perhaps—Monsieur,” began the Breton with some hesitation.
“Yes,” answered Christian encouragingly, “what is it?”
“Perhaps Monsieur will speak to—to the Abbé. It is that we do not like to disturb him in prayer.”
The young Englishman bowed his head with characteristic decision.
“I will do so,” he said gravely. Then he crawled across the deck and touched René Drucquer's shoulder. The priest did not look up until the touch had been repeated.
“Yes,” he murmured; “yes. What do you want?”
Christian, guessed at the words, for in the tumult of the gale he could not hear them.
“Is it not better to take him below?” he shouted.
Then for the first time did the priest appear to remember that this was not one of the sailors.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, rising from his knees. “You are right; it is better. But I am afraid the men will not assist me. They are afraid of touching the dead when they are afloat.”
“I will help you,” said Christian simply, “and that man also, I think, because he proposed it.”
With a motion of the head he indicated Hoel Grall, upon whom the command of the little vessel had now devolved. The man was better educated than his companions, and spoke French fluently, but in the Breton character superstition is so deeply rooted that generations of education will scarcely eradicate it.
The priest looked into the Englishman's face with a gentle wonder in his eyes, which were shadowy with the fervour of his recent devotions. The two men were crouching low upon the deck, grasping the black rail with their left hands; the water washed backwards and forwards around their feet.
It was the first time they had seen each other face to face in open daylight, and their eyes met quietly and searchingly as they swayed from side to side with the heavy lurching of the ship. The Englishman spoke first.
“You must leave it to us,” he said calmly. “You could do nothing in this heavy sea with your one arm!”
The gentle blue eyes were again filled with wonder, and presently the priest's intellectual face relaxed into a shadowy smile, which did not affect his thin red lips.
“You are very good,” he murmured simply.
Christian did not hear this remark. He had turned away to call Grall towards him, and was about to move towards the body lying on the hatch, when the priest called him back.
“Monsieur,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Tell me,” continued René Drucquer quickly, as if in doubt, “are you Christian Vellacott?”
“Of course!”
The priest looked relieved, and at the same time he appeared to be making an effort to restrain himself, as if he had been betrayed into a greater show of feeling than was desirable. When he at length spoke in reply to the Englishman's obvious desire for some explanation of the strange question, his voice was singularly cold, and modulated in such a manner as to deprive it of any expression, while his eyes were fixed on the deck.
“You are not such as I expected,” he said.
Christian looked down at him with straightforward keenness, and he saw the priest's eyelids move uneasily beneath his gaze. Mixing with many men as he had done, he had acquired a certain mental sureness of touch, like that of an artist with his brush when he has handled many subjects and many effects. He divined that René Drucquer had been led to expect a violent, head strong man, and he could not restrain a smile as he turned away. Before going, however, he said:
“At present it is a matter of saving the ship, and our lives. My own affairs can wait, but when this gale is over you may rest assured they shall have my attention.”
Beyond this one allusion to their respective positions, Christian was silent regarding his captivity. After the gale subsided the weather took a turn for the better, and clear skies by day and night rendered navigation an easy matter.
With characteristic daring the young Englishman had decided to offer no resistance and to seize no opportunities of escape until the termination of the voyage. The scheme half-formed within his mind was to see the voyage through, and effect his escape soon after landing in France. It was not without a certain adventurous fascination, and in the meantime there was much to interest him in his surroundings. If this young Abbé was a typical member of the Society of Jesus, he was worth studying. If this simplicity was an acquired cloak to deeper thought, it was worth penetrating, and if the man's entire individuality had been submerged in the mysterious system followed in the College of Jesuits, it was no waste of time to seek for the real man beneath the cultivated suavity that hid all feeling.
The more the two young men saw of each other the closer grew their intimacy, and with growing intimacy the domination of the stronger individuality was more marked in its influence.
To the frail and nervous priest this young Englishman was a new experience; his vitality and calm, straightforward manner of speech were such as the Abbé had never met with before. Such men and better men there were and are in the Society of Jesus, otherwise the power of the great Order would not be what it is; but René Drucquer had never come in contact with them. According to the wonderful code of laws laid down by its great founder (who, in other circumstances, might have prepared the world for the coming of such a man as Napoleon the First), the education of the young is entrusted to such brethren as are of slower parts; and from these honest, but by no means intelligent, men the young Abbé had learnt his views upon mankind in general. The creed they taught without understanding it themselves was that no man must give way to natural impulses; that he must restrain and quell and quench himself into a machine, without individuality or impulse, without likes or dislikes; that he must persistently perform such duties as are abhorrent to him, eat such food as nauseates him, and submit to the dictates of such men as hate him. And these, forsooth, are the teachings of one who, in his zealous shortsightedness, claims to have received his inspiration direct from the lips of the Great Teacher.
René Drucquer found himself in the intimate society of a man who said what he thought, acted as he conceived best, and held himself responsible, for word or deed, to none on earth. It was his first mission after a long and rigorous training. This was the first enemy of the Holy Church against whom he had been sent to fight, armed with the immeasurable power of the greatest brotherhood the world has ever known, protected by the shadow of its blessing; and there was creeping into the young priest's heart a vague and terrible suspicion that there might be two sides to the question. All the careful years of training, all the invisible meshes of the vast net that had been gathering its folds round him since he had first donned the dress of a Probationer of the College of Jesuits, were powerless to restrain the flight of a pure and guileless heart to the height of truth. Despite the countless one-sided and ingenious arguments instilled into his eager young mind in guise of mental armour against the dangers of the world, René Drucquer found himself, at the very first contact with the world, unconvinced that he was fighting upon the righteous side.
Brest had been left behind in a shimmering blue haze. Ahead lay the grim Pointe de Raz, with its short, thick-set lighthouse facing the vast Atlantic. Out to sea, in the fading glory of sunset, lay the long, low Ile-de-Sein, while here and there black rocks peeped above the water. The man holding the tiller was a sardine fisher, to whom every rock, every ripple, of these troubled waters was familiar. Fearlessly he guided the yawl close round by the high cliff—the westernmost point of Europe—but with the sunset the wind had dropped and the sails hung loosely, while the broad bows glided onwards with no sound of parted water.
The long Atlantic roll was swinging lazily in, and the yawl rose to it sleepily, with a long, slow movement. The distant roar of the surf upon the Finisterre coast rose in the peaceful atmosphere like a lullaby. The holy calm of sunset, the hush of lowering night, and the presence of the only man who had ever drawn him with the strange, unaccountable bond that we call sympathy, moved the heart of the young priest as it had never been moved before by anything but religious fervour.
For the first time he spoke of himself. The solitary heart suddenly broke through the restraining influence of a mistaken education, and unfolded its sad story of a misread existence. Through no fault of his own, by no relaxation of supervising care on the part of his teachers, the Jesuit had run headlong into the very danger which his Superior had endeavoured to avoid. He had formed a friendship. Fortunately the friend was aman, otherwise René Drucquer were lost indeed.
“I should think,” he said musingly, “that no two lives have ever been so widely separated as yours and mine, and yet our paths have met!”
Vellacott took the cigarette from his lips. It was made of a vile tobacco, called “Petit Caporal,” but there was nothing better to be had, and he was in the habit of making the best of everything. Therefore he blew into the air a spiral column of thin blue smoke with a certain sense of enjoyment before replying. He also was looking across the glassy expanse of water, but his gaze was steady and thoughtful, while his companion's eyes were dreamy and almost vacant. The light shone full upon his face, and a physician—or a mother—would have noticed, perhaps, that there was beneath his eyes a dull shadow, while his lips were dry and somewhat drawn.
“Yes,” he said at length, with grave sympathy, “we have drifted together like two logs in a torrent.”
The young priest changed his position, drawing in one leg and clasping his hands round his knee. The movement caused his long black garment to fall aside, displaying the dark purple stockings and rough shoes. The hands clasped round his knee were long and white, with peculiarly flat wrists.
“One log,” he said vaguely, “was bound for a certain goal, the other was drifting.”
Vellacott turned slowly and glanced at his companion's face. The smoke from the bad cigarette drifted past their heads to windward. He was not sure whether the priest was speaking from a professional point of view, with reference to heresy and the unknown goal to which all heretics are drifting, or not. Had René Drucquer been a good Jesuit, he would have seen his opportunity of saying a word in season. But this estimable desire found no place in his heart just then.
“Your life,” he continued in a monotone, “is already mapped out—like the voyage of a ship traced across a chart. Is it not so? I have imagined it like that.”
Vellacott continued to smoke for some moments in silence. He sat with his long legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the rail, and his rough blue jersey wrinkled up so that he could keep one hand in his pocket. The priest turned to look at him with a sudden fear that his motives might be misread. Vellacott interpreted his movement thus, for he spoke at once with a smile on his face.
“I think it is best,” he said, “not to think too much about it. From what experience I have had, I have come to the humiliating conclusion that men have very little to do with the formation of their own lives. A ship-captain may sit down and mark his course across the chart with the greatest accuracy, the most profound knowledge of wind and current, and the keenest foresight; but that will have very little effect upon the actual voyage.”
“But,” argued the priest in a low voice, “is it not better to have an end in view—to have a certain aim, and a method, more or less formed, of attaining it?”
“Most men have that,” answered Christian, “but do not know that they have it!”
“Youhave?”
Christian smoked meditatively. A month ago he would have said “Yes” without a moment's hesitation.
“And you know it, I think,” added the priest slowly. He was perfectly innocent of any desire to extract details of his companion's life from unwilling lips, and Christian knew it. He was convinced that, whatever part René Drucquer had attempted to play in the past, he was sincere at that moment, and he divined that the young Jesuit was weakly giving way to a sudden desire to speak to some fellow-being of his own life—to lay aside the strict reserve demanded by the tenets of the Society to which he was irrevocably bound. In his superficial way, Christian Vellacott had studied men as well as letters, and he was not ignorant of the influence exercised over the human mind by such trifling circumstances as moonshine upon placid water, distant music, the solemn hush of eventide, or the subtle odour of a beloved flower. If René Drucquer was on the point of committing a great mistake, he at least would not urge him on towards it, so he smoked in silence, looking practical and unsympathetic.
The priest laughed a little short, deprecating laugh, in which there was no shadow of mirth.
“I have not,” he said, rubbing his slim hands together, palm to palm, slowly, “and—I know it.”
“It will come,” suggested the Englishman, after a pause.
The priest shook his head with a little smile, which was infinitely sadder than tears. His cold silence was worse than an outburst of grief; it was like the keen frost that comes before snow, harder to bear than the snow itself. Presently he moved slightly towards his companion so that their arms were touching, and in his soft modulated voice, trained to conceal emotion, he told his story.
“My friend,” he said, intertwining his fingers, which were very restless, “no man can be the worse for hearing the story of another man's life. Before you judge of me, listen to what my life has been. I have never known a friend or relation. I have never had a boy companion. Since the age of thirteen, when I was placed under the care of the holy fathers, I have never spoken to a woman. I have been taught that life was given us to be spent in prayer; to study, to train ourselves, and to follow in the footsteps of the blessed Saint Ignatius. But how are we who have only lived half a life, to imitate him, whose youth and middle-age were passed in one of the most vicious courts of Europe before he thought of turning to holy things? How are we, who are buried in an atmosphere of mystic religion, to cope with sin of which we know nothing, and when we are profoundly ignorant of its evil results? These things I know now, but I did not suspect them when I was in the college. There all manliness, and all sense of manly honour, were suppressed and insidiously forbidden. We were taught to be spies upon each other, to cringe servilely to our superiors, and to deal treacherously with such as were beneath us. Hypocrisy—innate, unfathomable hypocrisy—was instilled into our minds so cunningly that we did not recognise it. Every movement of the head or hands, every glance of the eyes, and every word from the lips was to be the outcome—not of our own hearts—but of a law laid down by the General himself. It simply comes to this: we are not men at all, but machines carefully planned and fitted together, so as to render sin almost an impossibility. When tempted to sin we are held back, not by the fear of God, but by the thought that discovery is almost certain, and that the wrath of our Superior is withheld by no scruple of human kindness.... But remember, I knew nothing of this before I took my vows. To me it was a glorious career. I became an enthusiast. At last the time came when I was eligible; I offered myself to the Society, and was accepted. Then followed a period of hard work; I learned Spanish and Italian, giving myself body and soul to the work. Even the spies set to watch me day and night, waking and sleeping, feeding and fasting, could but confess that I was sincere. One day the Provincial sent for me—my mission had come. I was at last to go forth into the world to do the work of my Master. Trembling with eagerness, I went to his room; the Provincial was a young man with a beautiful face, but it was like the face of the dead. There was no colour, no life, no soul, no heart in it. He spoke in a low, measured voice that had neither pity nor love.
“When that door closed behind me an hour later the scales had fallen from my eyes. I began to suspect that this great edifice, built not of stones but of men's hearts, was nothing less than an unrighteous mockery. With subtle, double-meaning words, the man whom I had been taught to revere as the authorised representative of Our Lord, unfolded to me my duties in the future. The work of God, he called it; and to do this work he placed in my hands the tools of the devil. What I suspected then, I know now.”
The young Englishman sat and listened with increasing interest. His cigarette had gone out long before.
“And,” he said presently, in his quiet, reassuring voice, which seemed to infer that no difficulty in life was quite insurmountable—“And, if you did not know it then, how have you learnt it now?”
“From you, my friend,” replied the priest earnestly, “from you and from these rough sailors. They, at least, are men. But you have taught me this.”
Christian Vellacott made no answer. He knew that what his companion said was true. Unconsciously, and with no desire to do so, he had opened this young zealot's eyes to what a man's life may be. The tale was infinitely sad, but with characteristic promptitude the journalist was already seeking a remedy without stopping to think over the pathos of this mistaken career.
Presently René Drucquer's quick, painful tones broke the silence again, and he continued his story.
“He told me,” he said, “that in times gone by we had ruled the Roman Catholic world invisibly from the recesses of kings' cabinets and queens' boudoirs. That now the power has left us, but that the Order is as firm as ever, nearly as rich, and quite as intelligent. It lies like a huge mill, perfect but idle, waiting for the grist that will never come to be crushed between its ruthless wheels. He told me that the sway over kings and princes has lapsed with the growth of education, but that we hold still within our hands a lever of greater power, though the danger of wielding it is proportionately greater to those who would use it. This power is the People. Before us lies a course infinitely more perilous than the sinuous paths trodden by the first followers of St. Ignatius as they advanced towards power. It lies on the troubled waters; it leads over the restless, mobile heads of the people.”
Again the priest ceased speaking. There was a strange thrill of foreboding in his voice, which, however, had never been raised above a monotone. The two men sat side by side, as still as the dead. They gazed vacantly into the golden gates of the west, and each in his own way thought over these things. Assuredly the Angel of Silence hung over that little vessel then, for no sound from earth or sea or sky came to wake those two thinkers from their reverie.
At last the Englishman's full, steady tones broke the hush.
“This,” he said, “has not been learnt in two days. You must have known it before. If you knew it, why are you what you are? You never have been a real Jesuit, and you never will be.”
“I swore to the Mother of God—I am bound....”
“By an oath forced upon you!”
“No! By an oath I myself begged to take!”
This was the bitterest drop in the priest's cup. Everything had been done of his own free will—at his own desire. During eleven years a network of perfidy had been cunningly woven around him, mesh after mesh, day after day. As he grew older, so grew in strength the warp of the net. Thus, in the fulness of time, everything culminated to the one great end in view. Nothing was demanded (for that is an essential rule), everything must be offered freely, to be met by an apparently hesitating acceptance. Constant dropping wears the hardest stone in time.
“But,” said Vellacott, “you can surely represent to your Provincial that you are not fitted for the work put before you.”
“My friend,” interrupted the priest, “we can represent nothing. We are supposed to have no natural inclinations. All work should be welcome, none too difficult, no task irksome.”
“You can volunteer for certain services,” said Vellacott.
The priest shrugged his shoulders.
“What services?” he asked.
The Englishman looked at him for some seconds in the fading light. In his quick way he had already found a remedy, and he was wondering whether he should propose it or hold his peace. He was not afraid of incurring responsibility. The young Jesuit had appealed to him, and there was a way out of the difficulty. Christian felt that things could not be made worse than they were. In a moment his mind was made up.
“As you know,” he said, “the Society has few friends and a multitude of enemies. I am afraid I am an enemy; but there is one redeeming point in the Jesuit record which we are all bound to recognise, and I recognise it unhesitatingly. You have done more to convert the heathen than the rest of the Christian Church put together. Whatever the motive has been, whatever the results have proved to be, the missionary work is unrivalled. Why do you not offer yourself for that?”
As he asked the question Christian glanced at his companion's face. He saw the sad eyes light up suddenly with a glow that was not of this dull earth at all; he saw the thin, pure face suddenly acquire a great and wondrous peace. The young priest rose to his feet, and, crossing the deck, he stood holding with one hand to the tarred rigging, his back turned towards the Englishman, looking over the still waters.
Presently he returned, and laying his thin hand upon Christian's shoulder, he said, “My friend, you have saved me. In the first shock of my disillusion I never thought of this. I think—I think there is work for me yet.”