Henry Seton Merriman

“ In his active life there had been no time for thoughts beyond the present, no leisure for dreaming. He could not afford to be absent-minded. Numbers of men are so situated. Their minds are required at all moments, in full working order, clear and rapid—ready, shoes on feet and staff in hand, to go whithersoever they may be called.
Although he was going to the saddest home that ever hung like a mill-stone round a young neck, Christian wasted no time. The glory of the western sky lay ruddily over the river as he emerged from the small streets behind Chelsea and faced the broad placid stream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was exactly six weeks since the young journalist had passed through that garden with René Drucquer, and those weeks had been to him a strange and not unpleasant dream. It seemed as if the man lying upon that little bed was in no way connected with the wiry, energetic Christian Vellacott of old. As he lay there semi-somnolent and lazily comfortable from sheer weakness, his interest in life was of a speculative description, as if he looked on things from afar off. ”

“ The Jesuit had chosen his own path, he had reached his goal, and that most terrible thirst—the thirst for power—was nearly slaked. If at times—at the end of a long day of hard mental work, when men's hearts are softened by weariness and lowering peace—he desired something else than power, some little touch of human sympathy perhaps, his was the blame if no heart responded to his own. Christian Vellacott sat and wondered dreamily, with the nonchalance of a man who has been at the very gates of death, if power were worth this purchase-money. ”

“ Christian Vellacott lay upon his bed in unwonted idleness, gazing vaguely at the flying clouds. The window was open, and the song of the distant sea rose and fell with a rhythm full of peace. But in this man's mind there was no peace. In all probability there never would be complete peace there, because Ambition had set its hold upon him. He wanted to do more than there was time for. Like many of us, he began by thinking that Life is longer than it is. ”

“ The priest was of those men to whom love and brotherly affection are as necessary as the air they breathe. His wavering instincts were capable of being hardened into convictions; his natural gifts (and they were many) could be raised into talents; his life, in fact, could have been made a success by one influence—the love of a woman—the one influence that was forbidden: the single human acquirement that must for ever be beyond the priest's reach. This Christian Vellacott felt in a vague, uncertain way. ”

“ For a moment—and a moment only—the Vicomte's profound gaze rested on the Englishman's face. Mr. Bodery was evidently absorbed in the enjoyment of his cigar. The smile that lay on his genial face like a mask was the smile of a consciousness that he was making himself intensely pleasant, and adapting his conversation to his company in a quite phenomenal way.
“Ah!” replied the Frenchman, with a neat little shrug of bewilderment. “Who can tell? Probably there is no meaning in it. There is so often no meaning in the action of a Parisian mob.” ”

“ Christian Vellacott soon descended the dingy stairs and joined the westward-wending throng in the Strand. In the midst of the crowd he was alone, as townsmen soon learn to be. The passing faces, the roar of traffic, and the thousand human possibilities of interest around him in no way disturbed his thoughts. In his busy brain the traffic of thought, passing and repassing, crossing and recrossing, went on unaffected by outward things. A modern poet has confessed that his muse loves the pavement—a bold confession, but most certainly true. Why does talent gravitate to cities? ”

“ In the midst of this walked man—the lord of all—humbly, silently, with bowed head and unadmiring eyes—man whose life was vouchsafed for the enjoyment of all these things.
A little square patch of sunlight lay on the stone floor of the small cell allotted to Christian Vellacott. The thick oak door deadened the sounds of life in the monastery, such as they were, and the strong, laboured breathing of the young Englishman alone broke the chill silence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In splendid, solitary grandeur he lay awaiting the end of all things—the call of his Creator—in the grey ice-fields of the North. The darling of his ship, he had died with a smile in his blue eyes and a sad little jest upon his lips to cheer the rough fur-clad giants kneeling at his side. Time, the merciful, had healed, as best he could (which is by no means perfectly) , the wound in the younger hearts. It is only the old that are quite beyond his powers; he cannot touch them. Mrs. Carew, a woman with a patient face and a ready smile, was the only representative of the vanishing generation. ”

“ Again he felt the thrill which men cannot but experience at the sight of a man, or even of a dumb beast, fighting bravely for life. Again he saw the dull gleam of the uplifted ice-axe as the man dealt scientific blow after blow on the frozen snow, attempting to arrest his terrible career. And again in his mind's eye the pure expanse of spotless white lay before him, scarred by one straight streak, marking where the taciturn mountaineer had vanished over the edge of the precipice to his certain doom.
Christian lay like a half-drowned man upon the shelving ledge, slowly realising his position. ”

“ We usually feel so on hearing that a pretty and charming girl is engaged to be married. We think that she might have done so much better for herself, and we grow pensive or possibly sentimental over her lost opportunity when contemplating him in the mirror as he shaves. Like all so-called happy events, an engagement is not usually a matter of universal rejoicing. Some one is, in all probability, left to think twice about it. But Christian Vellacott was not prepared to admit that he was in that position. ”

“ It was one of those brilliant summer days when it is quite impossible to be pessimistic and exceedingly difficult to compass preoccupation. The light breeze bowling over the upland from the sea had just sufficient strength to blow away all mental cobwebs. Also, Christian Vellacott had suddenly given way to one of those feelings which sometimes come to us without apparent reason. The present was joyous enough without the aid of the ever-to-be-bright future, and Vellacott felt that, after all, French politics and Frederick Farrar did not quite monopolise the world. ”

“ Whatever this sickness might prove to be, René Drucquer felt that the blame of it lay at his own door. If Christian Vellacott were to die, he, René Drucquer, was in the eyes of God a murderer, for he had forcibly brought him to his death. This was an unpleasant reflection for a young devotee whose inward soul was full of human kindness; and the presence of the strong man who lay gasping for breath upon the narrow, comfortless bed was not reassuring. ”

“ For so old a man the pace at which Signor Bruno breasted the hill that lay before him was somewhat remarkable. The Vicomte d'Audierne, on the other hand, was evidently blessed with a greater leisure. He looked at his watch and strolled on through the dew-laden meadows, wrapt in thought as in a cloak that hid the sweet freshness of the flowery hedgerows, that muffled the broken song of the busy birds, that killed the scent of ripening hay. Thus these two singular men parted—and it happened that they were never to meet again. These little things do happen. We meet with gravity ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 moon, being well upon the wane, would not rise for an hour or more, but the heavens were glowing with the gentler light of stars, and on earth the darkness was of that transparent description which sailors prefer to the brightest moonlight.
Christian Vellacott had worked out most problems in life for himself. Taken as a whole, his solutions had been fairly successful—as successful as those of most men. ”

“ The faint hope that it might prove to be a coastguard was soon dispelled. The heavy clothing and loose thigh-boots were those of a fisherman. The huge “cache-nez” which lay in coils upon his shoulders and completely protected the neck and throat, was such as is worn by the natives of the Côtes-du-Nord.
The sea boomed forth its melancholy song, far down in the black depths beyond. The tide was high, and the breeze freshening every moment. Christian could have crept up to the man's very feet without being detected. ”

“ It was only natural that those thoughts, coupled with the realisation of the aimlessness of his own existence, should have bred in the young Jesuit's heart a dull fire of antagonism against the man who was in immediate authority over him, and when the Provincial noiselessly entered the cell a few minutes later, he felt a sudden thrill of misgiving at the thought that his feelings were sacred to none—that this man with his deep, inscrutable eyes could read the face of his very soul like an open book. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Such slight drawbacks, however, as there might have been in the matter of table-ware disappeared before the sense of kindly hospitality with which Captain Lebrun poured the tea into a cracked cup and a borrowed pannikin, dropping in the sugar with careful judgment from his brown fingers. Such defects as there might have lurked in the culinary art as carried on in the galley vanished before the friendly solicitude with which Tom tilted the frying-pan to pour into Christian's plate a bright flow of bacon-fat cunningly mingled with cinders. ”

“ 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. ”