"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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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, rea.s.suring 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 prompt.i.tude the journalist was already seeking a remedy without stopping to think over the pathos of this mistaken career.

Presently Rene 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. a.s.suredly 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 G.o.d--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 mult.i.tude 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."

CHAPTER XXI

TRUE TO HIS CLOTH

With the morning tide, the _Deux Freres_ entered Audierne harbour.

The rough sailors crossed themselves as they looked towards the old wooden cross upon the headland, facing the great Atlantic. They thought of the dead "patron" in the little cabin below, and the joyous young wife, whose snowy head-dress they could almost distinguish upon the pier among the waiters there.

Both Christian Vellacott and the Abbe were on deck. They had been there the whole night. They had lain motionless side by side upon the old sail. Day vanished, night stole on, and day came again without either having closed his eyes or opened his lips.

They now stood near the steersman, and looked upon the land with an interest which only comes after heavy weather at sea. To the Englishman this little fishing-port was unknown, and he did not care to ask. The vessel was now dropping up the river, with anchor swinging, and the women on the pier were walking inland slowly, keeping pace and waving a greeting from time to time in answer to a husband's shout.

"That is she, Monsieur L'Abbe," said Hoel Grall, with a peculiar twitch of his coa.r.s.e mouth, as if from pain. "That is she with the little child!"

Rene Drucquer bowed his head, saying nothing. The _Deux Freres_ slowly edged alongside the old quay in her usual berth above the sardine boats. A board was thrown across from the rail to the quay, and the priest stepped ash.o.r.e alone. He went towards the smiling young wife without any hesitation; she stood there surrounded by the wives of the sailors on board the _Deux Freres_, with her snowy coiffe and spotless ap.r.o.n, holding her golden-haired child by the hand. All the women curtsied as the priest approached, for in these western provinces the Church is still respected.

"My daughter," said the Abbe, "I have bad news for you."

She smiled still, misunderstanding his calmness.

"Ah, mon pere," she said, "it is the season of the great winds now. What a long voyage it has been! And you say it is a bad one. My husband is no doubt in despair, but another voyage is sure to be better; is it not so?

I have not seen Loic upon the deck, but then my sight is not good. I am not from Audierne, mon pere, but from inland where we cannot see so far."

The priest changed colour; no smile came into his face in response to hers. He stepped nearer, and placed his hand upon her comely arm.

"It has been a very bad voyage for your poor husband," he said. "The Holy Virgin give you comfort."

Slowly the colour vanished from the woman's round checks. Her soft, short-sighted eyes filled with a terrible, hopeless dismay as she stared at the young priest's bowed head. The women round now began to understand, and they crossed themselves with a very human prayer of thankfulness that their husbands and brothers had been spared.

"Loic is dead?" she said, in a rasping voice. For some moments she stood motionless, then, in obedience to some strange and unaccountable instinct, she began turning up the sleeves of her rough brown dress, as if she were going to begin some kind of manual work.

"The Holy Virgin comfort you, my daughter; and you, my little one," said the priest, as he stooped to lay his hand upon the golden head of the child.

"Loic is dead! Loic is dead!" spread from mouth to mouth.

"That comes from having ought to do with the priests," muttered the customs officer, beneath his heavy moustache. He was an old soldier, who read the newspapers, and spoke in a loud voice on Sunday evenings in the Cafe de l'Ouest.

The Abbe heard the remark, and looked at the man, but said nothing. He remembered that no Jesuit must defend himself.

The girl-widow stepped on board the untidy vessel in a mechanical, dreamy way. She dragged the little trotting child almost roughly after her. Christian Vellacott stood at the low cabin door. He was in the dress of a Probationer of the Society of Jesus, which he had a.s.sumed at the request, hesitatingly made, of Rene Drucquer, and for the very practical reason that he had nothing else to wear except a torn dress-coat and Hoel Grall's Sunday garments.

"Bless me, mon pere," lisped the little one, stopping in front of him.