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 lay, all dressed, on the narrow bed. His eyes were half closed, and the ruddy brown of his cheeks had faded into an ashy grey. His clenched hands lay numbly at his side. Through his open, swollen lips meaningless words came in a hoarse whisper.

Presently the door opened with a creaking sound, but the sleeper moved no limb or feature. Rene Drucquer entered the cell and ran quickly to the bedside. Behind, with more dignity and deliberation, followed the sub-prior of the monastery. The young priest had obtained permission from his Provincial to see Christian Vellacott for a few moments before his hurried departure for India. Thus Rene had received his mission sooner than he had hoped for. The astute and far-seeing Provincial had from the beginning intended that Rene Drucquer should be removed from harm's way without delay once his disagreeable mission to St. Mary Western was performed.

"My father," exclaimed the young priest in alarm, "he is dying!"

The venerable sub-prior bent his head over the bed. He was a tall, spare man, with very sunken cheeks, and a marvellous expression of placid contentment in his eyes such as one never finds in the face of a young monk. He was very learned in medicines, and in the administration of such simple herbs as were required to remedy the illnesses within the monastery walls. Perhaps some of his patients died when they might have lived under more skilled treatment, but it is a short and easy step from life to death within a comfortless cell, and his bony hands were as tender over his sick brethren as those of a woman.

He felt the Englishman's pulse and watched his ashen face for some moments, touching the clammy forehead softly, while Rene Drucquer stood by with a great sickening weight of remorse and fear upon his heart. Then the sub-prior knelt stiffly down, and placed his clean-shaven lips near to Christian's ear.

"My son," he said, "do you hear me?"

Christian breathed less heavily, as if he were listening to some far-off sound, but never moved a feature. Presently he began to murmur incoherently, and the sub-prior bent his ear to listen.

"Much good would a blessing of mine do you, Hilda," observed Christian into the reverend ear. The old gentleman raised his cadaverous head and looked somewhat puzzled. Again he listened.

"Look after Aunt Judy—she cannot last long," murmured the young Englishman in his native tongue, which was unknown to the monk.

"It is fever," said the sub-prior presently—"one of those terrible fevers which kill men as the cold kills flies!"

No thought seemed to enter the monk's mind of possible infection. He knelt upon the cold floor with one bare and bony arm beneath the sick man's head, while the other lay across his breast. He was looking intently into the veiled eyes, inhaling the very breath of the swollen lips.

"Will he die, my father?" asked Rene Drucquer in a whisper; his face was as pale as Vellacott's.

"He is in the hands of the good God," was the pious answer. The tall monk rose to his feet and stood before the bed thinking. He rubbed his bony hands together slowly. Through the tiny window a shaft of sunlight poured down upon his grizzled head, and showed up relentlessly the deep furrows that ran diagonally down from his cheek-bone to his chin.

"You must watch here, my son," he continued, "while I inform the Father-Provincial of this."

The venerable sub-prior was no Jesuit, and perhaps he would have been just as well pleased had the Provincial elected to live elsewhere than in the monastery. But the Prior—an old man of ninety, and incapable of work or thought—was completely in the power of the Society.

When he found himself alone with the Englishman, Rene Drucquer sat wearily upon a small wooden bench, the only form of seat provided, and leaned his narrow face upon his hands.

The prospect that he saw before him as he sat staring vacantly at the floor of the little cell was black enough. He saw no possible outlet, and he had not the courage to force his way through the barriers erected all round him. It must be remembered that he was a Roman Catholic, and over a sincere disciple of the Mother Church the power of the Jesuits is greater than man should ever be allowed to exercise. The slavery that England fought against so restlessly is nothing to it, for mental bondage is infinitely heavier than physical service. He had determined to accept the Provincial's offer of missionary work in Asia, but the sudden horror of realising that he was a Jesuit, and could never be anything else than a Jesuit for the rest of his days, was fresh upon him. He was too young yet to find consolation in the thought that he at all events could attempt to steer a clear, unsullied course through the shoals and quicksands that surround a priest's existence, and he was too old to buoy himself up with the false hope that he might, despite his Jesuit's oath, do some good work for his Church. His awakening had been rendered more terrible by the brilliancy of the dreams which it had interrupted.

He had not looked upon Christian Vellacott as a victim hitherto, for the bravest receive the least sympathy, and the young Englishman's cool way of treating his reverse of fortune had repelled pity or commiseration. But now all that was changed. Whatever this sickness might prove to be, Rene Drucquer felt that the blame of it lay at his own door. If Christian Vellacott were to die, he, Rene 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.

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.

In this, Rene Drucquer was right. The Provincial was fully aware of the presence of this spirit of antagonism, and, moreover, he knew that it extended to the taciturn sub-prior who accompanied him. But this knowledge in no way disturbed him. The spirit of antagonism had met him in every turn of life. It was so familiar that he had learned to despise it. Hitherto he had never failed in any undertaking, and he had never been turned aside from the execution of his purpose by the fear of incurring the enmity of men. Such minds as this make their mark in the line of life which they take up, and if they do not happen to win the love of their fellow-beings, they get on remarkably well without it.

The Provincial came into the cell with a singular noiselessness of motion. His pale face expressed neither surprise nor annoyance, and his eyes rested upon the form of the sick man with no sign of apprehension. He approached, and with his long white finger touched Christian's wrist. For a few moments he watched the uneasy movements of his flushed face, and then he turned aside, without, however, leaving the bedside. Here again there seemed to be no fear or thought of infection.

The sub-prior stood behind him with clasped hands, while Rene, who had risen from his seat, was near at hand.

"This man, my father," said the Provincial coldly, "must not die. You must take every care, and spare no expense or trouble. If it is necessary you can have doctors from Nantes. I will bear every expense, and I shall be grieved to hear of his death!"

Then he turned to leave the cell. He was a busy man, and his visit had already lasted nearly three minutes.

Rene Drucquer stepped forward hurriedly. He was between his superior and the door, so that he was in a position to command attention.

"My father," he pleaded, "may I nurse him?"

The Provincial raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly; then he waved his hand, commanding the young priest to stand aside.

"No," he said softly, "you must leave for Nantes in half-an-hour," and he passed out into the noiseless corridor.



CHAPTER XXIV

BACK TO LIFE

One mellow autumnal evening, when the sunlight reflected from the white monastery walls upon the fruit trees climbing there was still warm and full of ripening glow, the Provincial was taking his post-prandial promenade.

It is, perhaps, needless to observe that he was alone. No one ever walked with the Provincial. No footstep ever crushed the gravel in harmony with his gliding tread. Perhaps, indeed, no one had ever walked with him thus, in the twilight, since a fairy, dancing form had moved in the shadow of his tall person, and footsteps lighter than his own had vainly endeavoured to keep time with his longer limbs. But that was in no monastery garden; and the useful, vegetable producing enclosure bore little resemblance to the chateau terrace. In those days it may be that there was a gleam of life in the man's deep, velvety eyes—perhaps, indeed, a moustache adorned the short, twisted lip where the white fingers rasped so frequently now.

The pious monks were busy with their evening meal, and the Provincial was quite alone in the garden. All around him the leaves glowed ruddily in the warm light. Everywhere the fruits of earth were ripe and full with mature beauty; but the solitary walker noted none of these. He paced backwards and forwards with downcast eyes, turning slowly and indifferently as if it mattered little where he walked. The merry blackbirds in the hay field adjoining the garden called to each other continuously, and from a hidden rookery came the voice of the dusky settlers, which is, perhaps, the saddest sound in all nature's harmonies. But the Jesuit resolutely refused to listen. Once, however, he stopped and stood motionless for some seconds, with his head turned slightly to meet the distant cry; but he never raised his eyes, which were deep and lifeless in their gaze. It may be that there was a rookery near that southern chateau, where he once had walked in the solemn evening hour, or perhaps he did not hear that sound at all though his ear was turned towards it.

It would be hard indeed to read from the priest's still features the thoughts that might be passing through his powerful brain; but the strange influence of his being was such as makes itself felt without any spoken word. As he walked there with his long hands clasped behind his back, his peculiarly shaped head bent slightly forward, and his perfect lips closely pressed, no one could have looked at him without feeling instinctively that no ordinary mind was busy beneath the tiny tonsure—that no ordinary soul breathed there for weal or woe, seeking after higher things in the right way or the wrong. The man's cultivated repose of manner, his evident intellectuality, and his subtle strength of purpose visible in every glance of his eyes, betrayed that although his life might be passed in the calm retreat of a monastery, his soul was not there. The man was never created to pass his existence in prayerful meditation; his mission was one of strife and contention amidst the strong minds of the age. One felt that he was living in this quiet Breton valley for a purpose; that from this peaceful spot he was dexterously handling wires that caused puppets—aye, puppets with golden crowns—to dance, and smirk, and bow in the farthest corners of the earth.

Presently the Jesuit heard footsteps upon the gravel at the far side of the garden, but he did not raise his head. His interest in the trivial incidents of everyday life appeared to be quite dead.

"Softly, softly!" said a deep, rough voice, which the Provincial recognised as that of the sub-prior; then he raised his eyes slightly and looked across the garden, without, however, altering his pace.

He saw there Christian Vellacott walking by the side of the hard-faced old monk with long, hesitating strides, like a man who had forgotten how to use his legs. It was exactly six weeks since the young journalist had passed through that garden with Rene 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. Nothing seemed to matter much. There was an all-pervading sense of restful indifference as to whether it might be night or day, morning, noon, or evening. All responsibility in existence seemed to have left him: his ready pride of self-dependence had given way to a gentle obedience, and the passage from wakefulness to sleep was very sweet.

Through all those dreamy hours he heard the soft rustle of woollen garments and the suppressed shuffle of sandalled feet. Whenever he opened his heavy eyes he discerned vaguely in the dim light a grey, still form seated upon the plain wooden bench at his bedside. Whenever he tried to change his position upon the hard bed and his weary bones refused their function, strong, hard hands were slipped beneath him and kind assistance freely given. As a rule, it was the tall sub-prior who ministered to the sick man, fighting the dread fever with all his simple knowledge; his hands smoothed oftenest the tossed pillow; but many clean-shaven, strong, and weary faces were bowed over the bed during those six weeks, for there was a competition for the post of sick-nurse. The monks loved to feel that they were performing some tangible good, and not spending their hours over make-believe tasks like a man-of-warsman in fine weather.

One frequent visitor, however, Christian Vellacott never saw beneath his lazy lashes. The Provincial never entered that little cell unless he was positively informed that its inmate was asleep. The inscrutable Jesuit seemed almost to be ashamed of the anxiety that he undoubtedly felt respecting the sick man thus thrown upon his hands by a peculiar chain of incidents. He spoke coldly and sarcastically to the sub-prior whenever he condescended to mention the subject at all; but no day passed in which he failed to pay at least one visit to the little cell at the end of the long, silent corridor.

"Softly, softly!" said the old sub-prior, holding out his bony hand to stay his companion's progress, "you are too ambitious, my son."

Christian laughed in a low, weak voice, and raised his head to look round him. The laugh ceased suddenly as he caught sight of the Provincial, and across the potato-bed the two strong men looked speculatively into each other's eyes in the peaceful twilight. The Jesuit's gaze fell first, and with a dignified bow he moved gently away.

"I am stronger than I look, my father," said Christian, turning to his companion. Then they walked slowly on, and presently rested upon a wooden bench built against the monastery wall.

The young Englishman leaned back and watched the Provincial, who was pacing backwards and forwards where they had first seen him. The old monk sat with clasped hands, and gravely contemplated the gravel beneath his feet. Thus they waited together within the high, whitewashed walls, while the light faded from the western sky. Three types, as strangely contrasted as the student of human kind could wish to see: the old monk with his placid bloodless face and strong useless arms—a wasted energy, a mere monument to mistaken zeal; and the younger men so widely severed by social circumstances, and yet resembling each other somewhat in heart and soul. Each had a strong individuality—each a great and far-reaching vitality. Each was, in his way, a power in the world, as all strong minds are; for in face of what may be said (and with apparent justice) respecting chance and mere good fortune, good men must come to the top among their fellows. They must—and most assuredly they do. As in olden days the doughtiest knights sought each other in the battlefield to measure steel, so in these later times the ruling intellects of the day meet and clear a circle round them. The Provincial was a power in the Society of Jesus; perhaps he was destined one day to be General of it; and Christian Vellacott had suddenly appeared upon the field of politic strife, heralding his arrival with two most deadly blows dealt in masterly succession. From the first they were sure to come together, sooner or later; and now, when they were separated by nothing more formidable than a bed of potatoes, they were glancing askance and longing to be at each other. But it could not be. Had the sub-prior left the garden it would have made no difference. It was morally impossible that those two men could speak what they were thinking, for one of them was a Jesuit.

The Provincial, however, made the first move, and the Englishman often wondered in later days what his intention might have been. He walked on to the northern end of the garden, where a few thick-stemmed pear trees were trained against the wall. The fruit was hanging in profusion, for it was not consumed in the monastery but given to the poor at harvest-time. The Provincial selected a brown, ripe pear, and broke it delicately from the tree without allowing his fingers to come in contact with the fruit itself. Then he turned and walked with the same lazy precision towards the two other occupants of the garden. At his approach the sub-prior rose from his seat and stood motionless with clasped hands; there was a faint suggestion of antagonism in his attitude, which was quite devoid of servility. Christian, however, remained seated, raising his keen grey eyes to the Provincial's face with a quiet self-assertion which the Jesuit ignored.

"I am glad, Monsieur, to see you restored to health," he said coldly to Christian, meeting his gaze for a moment.

The Englishman bowed very slightly, and there was a peculiar expressiveness in the action which betrayed his foreign education, but the cool silence with which he waited for the Provincial to speak again was essentially British. The Jesuit moved and glanced slowly beneath his lowered eyelids towards the motionless figure of the sub-prior. He was too highly bred to allow himself to be betrayed into any sign of embarrassment, and too clever to let the Englishman see that he was hesitating. After a momentary pause he turned gravely to the sub-prior, and said:

"Will you allow your patient, my brother, to taste of our fruit? it is ripe and wholesome."

Then, without awaiting a reply, he presented the pear to Vellacott. It was a strange action, and no doubt there was some deep intention in it. The Jesuit must have known, however, from Rene Drucquer's report, and from his own observations, that Christian Vellacott was of too firm a mould to allow his feelings to be influenced by a petty action of this description, however sincere and conciliatory might have been the spirit in which it was conceived. Perhaps he read the Englishman's character totally wrong, although his experience of men must have been very great; or perhaps he really wished to conciliate him, and took this first step with the graceful delicacy of his nation, with a view to following it up.

With a conventional word of thanks, Vellacott took the pear and set it down upon the bench at his side. Whatever the Jesuit's intention might have been, it was frustrated by his quiet action. It would have been so easy to have said a few words of praise regarding the fruit, and it was only natural to have begun eating it at once; but Vellacott read a deeper meaning in all this, and he chose a more difficult course. It was assuredly harder to keep silence then than to talk, and a weaker-minded man would have thanked the Provincial with effusion. The manner in which Vellacott laid the fruit upon the bench, his quiet and deliberate silence, conveyed unmistakably and intentionally that the Provincial's society was as unwelcome as it was unnecessary. There was nothing to be done but take the hint; and in the lowering twilight the solitary, miserable man moved reluctantly away. With contemplative hardness of heart the Englishman watched him go; there was no feeling of triumph in his soul—neither, however, was there pity. 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.

The sub-prior had seated himself again, and with his strong hands meekly clasped he waited. He knew that something was passing which he could not understand: his dull instincts told him vaguely that between these two strong men there was war-fare, dumb, sullen, and merciless; but unused as he was to the ways of men, unlearned in the intricacies of human thoughts, he could not read more.

"You have not told me yet, my father," said Vellacott, "how long I have been ill."

"Six weeks, my son," replied the taciturn monk.

"And it was very bad?"

"Yes, very bad."

Christian slowly rubbed his thin hands together. His fingers were moist and singularly white, with a bleached appearance about the knuckles. His face was thin, but not emaciated, his long jaw and somewhat pronounced chin were not more bony than of old, but the expression of his mouth was quite changed; his lips were no longer thrust upward with a determined curve, and a smile seemed nearer at hand.

"I have a faint recollection of being very tenderly nursed and cared for; generally by you, I think. No doubt you saved my life."

The sub-prior moved a little, and drew in his feet.

"The matter was not in my hands," he said quietly.

The Englishman, with some tact, allowed this remark to pass in acquiescent silence.

"Did you ever think that ... I was not ... going back to England?" he asked presently, in a lighter tone, though the thought of returning home brought no smile to his face.

The sub-prior did not reply at once. He appeared to be thinking deeply, for he leaned forward in an unmonastic attitude with his knees apart, his elbows resting upon them, and his hands clasped. He gazed across the prosaic potato-bed with his colourless lips slightly apart.

"One night," he began meditatively, "I went to sit with you after the bell for matins had been rung. From midnight till three o'clock you never moved. Then I gave you some cordial, and as I stooped over you the candle flickered a little; there were strange shadows upon your face, but around your lips there was a deeper shade. I had seen it once before, on my brother's face when he lay upon the hard Paris pavement with a bullet in his lungs, and his breath whistling through the orifice as the wind whistles round our walls in winter. I held the candle closer to your face, and as I did so, a hand came over my shoulder and took it from my fingers. The Father Provincial had come to help me. He said no word, but set the candle down upon the bed, and I held you up while he administered the cordial drop by drop, as a man oils a cartwheel."

"Ah!" said Christian slowly and suggestively, "he was there!"

The monk made no reply. He sat motionless, with a calm, acquired silence, which might have meant much or nothing.

"Did he come often?" inquired the Englishman.

"Very often."

"I never saw him."

This, again, was met with silence. Presently the sub-prior continued his narrative.

"When daylight came at last," he said, "the shadow had left your lips. I think that night was the worst; it was then that you were nearer ... nearer than at any other time."

Christian Vellacott was strong enough now to take his usual interest in outward things. With the writer's instinct he went through the world looking round him, always studying men and things, watching, listening, and storing up experience. The Provincial interested him greatly, but he did not dare to show his curiosity; he hesitated to penetrate the darkness that surrounded the man's life, past, present, and future. In a minor degree the taciturn sub-prior arrested his attention. The old monk was in a communicative humour, and the Englishman led him on a little without thinking much about the fairness of it.

"Did your brother die?" he asked sympathetically.

"He died," was the reply. "Yes, my son, he died—died cursing the tyrant's bullet in his lungs. He threw away his life in a vain attempt to alter human nature, to set straight that which is crooked and cannot be set straight. He sought to bring about at once that which cometh not until the lion shall eat straw like an ox. See, my son, that you do not attempt the same."

"I think," said Christian, after a pause, "that we all try a little, and perhaps some day a great accumulation of little efforts will take place. You, my father, have tried as well!"

The monk slowly shook his head, without, however, any great display of conviction.

"I was not always a monk," he said, as if seeking to excuse a bygone folly.

It was nearly dark now. The birds were silent, and only the whispering of the crisp, withering leaves broke the solemn hush of eventide. The two men sat side by side without speaking. They had learnt to know each other fairly well during the last weeks—so well that between them silence was entirely restful. At length Christian moved restlessly. He had reached that stage of convalescence where a position becomes irksome after a short time. It was merely a sign of returning strength.

"Where is the Abbe Drucquer," he asked abruptly.

"He left us some time ago," was the guarded reply.

"He spoke of going abroad," said Christian, deliberately ignoring the sub-prior's tone.

"The Father Provincial told me that the Abbe had gone abroad—to India—to spread there the Holy Light to such as are still in darkness."

The young journalist thought that he detected again a faint suggestion of antagonism in the sub-prior's voice. The manner in which the information was imparted was almost an insult to the Provincial. It was a repetition of his words, given in such a manner that had the speaker been a man of subtle tongue it would have implied grave doubt.

Christian was somewhat surprised that Rene Drucquer should have attained his object so quickly. He never suspected that he himself might have had much to do with it, that it had been deemed expedient to remove the young priest beyond the possible reach of his influence, because he was quite unconscious of this influence. He did not know that its power had affected Rene Drucquer, and that some reflection of it had even touched the self-contained Provincial—that it was even now making this old sub-prior talk more openly than was prudent or wise. He happened to be taking the question from a very different point of view.



CHAPTER XXV

BACK TO WORK

Day by day Christian Vellacott recovered strength. The enforced rest, and perhaps also the monastic peacefulness of his surroundings, contributed greatly towards this. In mental matters as in physical we are subject to contagion, and from the placid recluses, vegetating unheeded in the heart of Brittany, their prisoner acquired a certain restfulness of mind which was eminently beneficial to his body. Life inside those white walls was so sleepy and withal so pleasant that it was physically and mentally impossible to think and worry over events that might be passing in the outer world.

Presently, however, Christian began to feel idle, which is a good sign in invalids; and soon the days became long and irksome. He began to take an increased interest in his surroundings, and realised at once how little he knew of the existence going on about him. Though he frequently passed, in the dim corridors and cloisters, a silent, grey-clad figure, exchanging perhaps with him a scarcely perceptible salutation, he had never spoken with any other inmates of the monastery than the Provincial and the sub-prior.

He noticed also that the watchful care of the nurse had imperceptibly glided into that of a warder. He was never allowed out of his cell unless accompanied by the sub-prior—in fact, he was a state prisoner. His daily walks never extended beyond the one path near the potato bed, or backwards and forwards at the sunny end of the garden, where the huge pears hung ripely. From neither point was any portion of the surrounding country visible, but the Provincial could not veil the sun, and Christian knew where lay the west and where the east.

No possible opportunity for escape presented itself, but the Englishman was storing up strength and knowledge all the while. He knew that things would not go on for long like this, and felt that the Provincial would sooner or later summon him to the long room at the end of the corridor upon the upper floor.

This call came to him three weeks after the day when the two men had met in the garden—nine weeks after the Englishman's captivity had commenced.

"My son," said the sub-prior one afternoon, "the Father Provincial wishes to speak with you to-day at three."

Christian glanced up at the great monastery clock, which declared the time to be a quarter to three.

"I am ready," he said quietly. There was no tremor in his voice or light in his eyes, and he continued walking leisurely by the side of the old monk; but a sudden thrill of pleasant anticipation warmed his heart.

A little later they entered the monastery and mounted the stone stairs together. As they walked along the corridor the clock in the tower overhead struck three.

"I will wait for you at the foot of the stairs," said the monk slowly, as if with some compunction. Then he led the way to the end of the corridor and knocked at the door. He stood back, as if the Provincial were in the habit of keeping knockers waiting. Such was, at all events, the case now, and some minutes elapsed before a clear, low voice bade him enter.

The monk opened the door and stood back against the wall for Christian to pass in. The Provincial was seated at the table near the window, which was open, the afternoon being sultry although the autumn was nearly over. At his left hand stood the small Venetian mirror which enabled him to see who was behind him without turning round.

As Christian crossed the room the Provincial rose and bowed slightly, with one of his slow, soft glances. Then he indicated the chair at the left-hand side of the table, and said, without looking up:

"Be good enough—Mr. Vellacott."

When they were both seated the Provincial suddenly raised his eyes and fixed them upon the Englishman's face. The action was slightly dramatic, but very effective, and clearly showed that he was accustomed to find the eyes of others quail before his. Christian met the gaze with a calmness more difficult to meet than open defiance. After a moment they turned away simultaneously.

"I need scarcely," said the Provincial, with singular sweetness of manner, which, however, was quite devoid of servility, "apologise to you, Monsieur, for speaking in French, as it is almost your native language."

Christian bowed, at the same time edging somewhat nearer to the table.

"There are one or two matters," continued the Jesuit, speaking faster, "upon which I have been instructed to treat with you; but first I must congratulate you upon your restoration to health. Your illness has been very serious... I trust that you have had nothing to complain of... in the treatment which you have received at our hands."

Christian, while sitting quite motionless, was making an exhaustive survey of the room.

"On the contrary," he said, in a conventional tone which, in comparison to his companion's manner, was almost brutal, "it is probably owing to the care of the sub-prior that I am alive at the present moment, and—"

He stopped suddenly; an almost imperceptible motion of the Jesuit's straight eyebrows warned him.

"And...?" repeated the Provincial, interrogatively. He leant back in his chair with an obvious air of interest.

"And I am very grateful——to him."

"The reverend father is a great doctor," said the Jesuit lightly. "Excuse me," he continued, rising and leaning across the table, "I will close the window; the air from the river begins to grow cool."

The journalist moved slightly, looking over his shoulder towards the window; at the same moment he altered, with his elbow, the position of the small mirror standing upon the table. Instead of reflecting the whole room, including the door at the end, it now reproduced the blank wall at the side opposed to the curtained recess where the bed was placed.

"And now, Mr. Vellacott," continued the Jesuit, reseating himself, "I must beg your attention. I think there can be no harm in a little mutual frankness, and—and it seems to me that a certain allowance for respective circumstances can well be demanded."

He paused, and opening the leather-bound manuscript book, became absorbed for a moment in the perusal of one of its pages.

"From your pen," he then said, in a businesslike monotone, "there has emanated a serious and hitherto unproved charge against the Holy Society of Jesus. It came at a critical moment in the political strife then raging in France; and, in proportion to the attention it attracted, harm and calumny accrued to the Society. I am told that your motives were purely patriotic, and your desire was nothing beyond a most laudable one of keeping your countrymen out of difficulties. Before I had the pleasure of seeing you I said, 'This is a young journalist who, at any expense, and even at the sacrifice of truth, wishes to make a name in the world and force himself into public attention.' Since then I have withdrawn that opinion."

During these remarks the Provincial had not raised his eyes from the table. He now leant back in the chair and contemplated his own clasped hands. Christian had listened attentively. His long, grave face was turned slightly towards the Provincial, and his eyes were perhaps a little softer in their gaze.

"I endeavoured," he said, "some weeks ago, to explain my position."

The Jesuit inclined his head. Then he raised his long white finger to his upper lip, stroking the blue skin pensively.

Presently he raised his eyes to the Englishman's face, and in their velvety depths Christian thought he detected an expression which was almost pleading. It seemed to express a desire for help, for some slight assistance in the performance of a difficult task. He never again looked into those eyes in all his life, but the remembrance of them remained in his heart for many years after the surrounding incidents had passed away from memory and interest. He knew that the Soul looking forth from that pale and heartless face was of no ordinary mould or strength. In later years, when they were both grey-haired men whose Yea or No was of some weight in the world—one speaking with the great and open voice of the Press, the other working subtly, dumbly, secretly—their motives may have clashed once more, their souls may have met and touched, as it were, over the heads of the People, but they never looked into each other's eyes again.

The Provincial moved uneasily.

"It has been a most unfortunate business," he said gently, and after a pause continued more rapidly, with his eyes upon the book. "I am instructed to lay before you the apologies of the Society for the inconvenience to which you have been put. Your own sense of justice will tell you that we were bound to defend ourselves in every way. You have done us a great injury, and, as is our custom, we have contradicted nothing. The Society of Jesus does not defend itself in the vain hope of receiving justice at the hands of men. I am now in a position to inform you again that you are at liberty—free to go where you will, when you will—and that any sum you may require is at your disposal to convey you home to England ... on your signing a promise never to write another word for private or public circulation on the subject of the Holy Order of Jesus, or to dictate to the writing of another."

"I must refuse," said Christian laconically, almost before the words had left the Jesuit's lips. "As I explained before, I am simply a public servant; what I happen to know must ever be at the public disposal or I am useless."

A short silence followed this remark. When at length the Provincial spoke his tone was cold and reserved.

"Of course," he said, "I expected a refusal—at first. I am instructed to ask you to reconsider your refusal and to oblige me, at the end of a week, with the result of your meditations. If it remains a refusal, another week will be accorded, and so on."

"Until—?"

The Jesuit closed the book upon the table in front of him and with great care altered its position so that it lay quite squarely. He raised his eyebrows slightly and glanced sideways towards the Englishman. At that moment the bell began summoning the devotees to their evening meal, its deep tone vibrating weirdly through the bare corridors.

"Until you accept," suggested he softly.

Christian looked at him speculatively. The faintest suspicion of a smile hovered for a moment in his eyes, and then he turned and looked out of the window.

"I hope, Monsieur," continued the Jesuit, "that when I have the pleasure of seeing you—a week hence—your health will be quite re-established!"

"Thank you!"

"And in the meantime I shall feel honoured by your asking for anything you may require."

"Thank you!" answered Christian again. He was still looking over his shoulder, down at the brown river which ran immediately below the window.

"Please excuse my rising to open the door for you," said the Provincial, with cool audacity, "but I have a few words to write before joining our brethren at their evening repast."

Christian turned and looked at him vaguely. There was a peculiar gleam in his eyes, and he was breathing heavily. Then he rose and, as he passed the Jesuit, bowed slightly in acknowledgment of his grave salutation. He walked quickly down the length of the room, which was not carpeted, and opened the door, closing it again with some noise immediately. But he never crossed the threshold. To the man sitting at the table it was as if the Englishman had left the room, closing the door after him.

Presently the Provincial glanced at the mirror, from mere habit, and found that it was displaced. He re-arranged it thoughtfully, so that the entire room was included in its field of reflection.

"I wonder," he said aloud, "when and why he did that!"

Then he returned to his writing. In a few minutes, however, he rose and pushed back his chair. With his hands clasped behind his back he stood and gazed fixedly out of the window. Beneath him the brown water glided past with curling eddy and gleaming ripple, while its soft murmur was the only sound that broke the pathetic silence surrounding this lonely man. His small and perfectly formed face was quite expressionless; the curve of his thin lips meant nothing; all the suppressed vitality of his being lay in those deep, soft eyes over which there seemed to be a veil. Presently he turned, and with lithe, smooth steps passed down the long room and out of the door.

Instantly Christian Vellacott came from his hiding-place within the recess. He ran to the window and opened it noiselessly. A moment later he was standing upon the stone sill. The afternoon sun shone full upon his face as he stood there, and showed a deep red flush on either cheek. Slowly he stooped forward, holding with one hand to the woodwork of the window while he examined critically the surface of the water. Suddenly he threw his arms forward and like a black shadow dived noiselessly, passing into the depth without a splash. When he rose to the surface he turned to look at the monastery. The Provincial's window was the only outlet directly on to the river.

The stream was rapid, and after swimming with it for a short time he left the water and lay down to recover his breath under the friendly cover of some bushes. There he remained for some time, while the short October twilight closed over the land. A man just dragged from the jaws of death, he lay in his wet clothes where he first found shelter without even troubling to move his limbs from the pools of water slowly accumulating. Already the monastery was a thing of the past. With the rapid forethought of his generation he was already looking to the future. He knew too well the spirit of the people in France to fear pursuit. The monks never ventured beyond their own walls except on ostentatious missions of charity. The machinations of the Society of Jesus were less to be feared in France than in England, and he had only to take his story to the nearest sub-prefecture to raise a storm of popular opinion in his favour. But this was not his project. With him, as in all human plans, his own personal feelings came before the possible duty he owed to the public. He lay beneath the bramble undergrowth, and speculated as to what might have taken place subsequent to his disappearance. At that moment the fortunes of the Beacon gave him no food for thought. What Mr. Bodery and his subordinate might, or might not, think found no interest in his mind. All his speculations were confined to events at St. Mary Western, and the outcome of his meditations was that when the friendly cover of darkness lay on the land he rose and started to walk briskly across the well-tilled country towards the north.

That portion of Brittany which lies along the northern coast is a pastoral land where sleep occupies the larger half of man's life. Although it was only evening, an hour when Paris and London recover, as it were, from the previous night's vigil and brighten up into vigour, the solitary Englishman passed unheeded through the squalid villages, unmolested along the winding roads. Mile after mile of scanty forest land and rich meadow were left behind, while, except for a few heavily-breathing cattle, he met no sign of life. At last he came upon a broader road which bore unmistakable signs of military workmanship in its construction, and here he met, and passed with laconic greeting, a few peasant women returning with empty baskets from some neighbouring market; or perhaps a "cantonnier" here and there, plodding home with "sabots" swinging heavily and round shoulders bent beneath the burden of his weighty stone-breaking implements.

Following the direction of this road his course was now towards the north-east, with more tendency to the eastward than he desired, but there was no choice. About eight o'clock he passed through a small village, which appeared to be already wrapped in stupid slumber such as attends the peasant's pillow. A cock crowed loudly, and in reply a dog barked with some alarm, but Christian was already beyond the village upon the deserted high road again.

He now began to feel the weakening effect of his illness; his legs became cramped, and he frequently rested at the roadside. The highway was running still more to the eastward now, and Christian was just beginning to consider the advisability of taking to the country again, when it joined a broader road cut east and west. Here he stopped short, and, raising his head, stood quite still for some moments.

"Ah!" he muttered. "The sea. I smell the sea."

He now turned to the left, and advanced along the newly-discovered road towards the west. As he progressed the pungent odour of seaweed refreshed him and grew stronger every moment. Suddenly he became aware that although high land lay upon his left hand there was to his right a hollow darkness without shadow or depth. No merry plash of waves came to explain this; the smell of the sea was there, but the joyous tumble of its waters was not to be heard. The traveller stooped low and peered into the darkness. Gradually he discerned a distant line of horizon, and to that point there seemed to stretch a vast dead sheet of water without light or motion. Upon his ears there stole a soft bubbling sound, varied occasionally by a tiny ripple. Suddenly a flash of recollection appeared to pass through the watcher's mind, and he muttered an exclamation of surprise as he turned towards the east and endeavoured to pierce the gloom. He was right. Upon the distant line of horizon a jagged outline cut the sky. It was like the form of a huge tooth jutting out from the softer earth. Such is Mont St. Michel standing grandly alone in the midst of a shallow, sullen sea. The only firm thing among the quaking sands, the only stone for miles around.

"The Bay of Cancale!" reflected Christian. "If I keep to the westward I shall reach St. Malo before ten o'clock!"

And he set off with renewed vigour. From his feet there stretched away to the north a great dead level of quicksand, seething, bubbling, and heaving in the darkness. The sea, and yet no sea. Neither honest land nor rolling water.



CHAPTER XXVI

SIGNOR BRUNO

Silas Lebrun, captain and part-owner of the brig Agnes and Mary of Jersey, was an early riser. Moreover, the old gentleman entertained peculiar views as to the homage due to Morpheus. He made no elaborate toilet before entering the presence of that most lovable god. Indeed he always slept in his boots, and the cabin-boy had on several occasions invited the forecastle hands to believe that he neither removed the ancient sealskin cap from his head nor the wooden pipe from his lips when slumber soothed his senses; but this statement was always set aside as unauthenticated.

In person the ancient sailor was almost square, with short legs and a body worthy of promotion to something higher. His face was wrinkled and brown, like the exterior of that incomprehensible fruit the medlar, which is never ripe till it is bad, and then it is to be avoided. A yellow-grey beard clustered closely round a short chin, and when perchance the sealskin cap was absent yellow-grey hair of a similar hue completed the circle, standing up as high from his brow as fell the beard downward from his chin. A pair of intensely blue eyes, liquid always with the milk of human kindness, rendered the hirsute medlar a pleasant thing to look at.

The Agnes and Mary was ready for sea, her cargo of potatoes, with a little light weight in the way of French beans and eggs, comfortably stowed, and as Captain Lebrun emerged from what he was pleased to call his "state-room" with the first breath of a clear morning he performed his matinal toilet with a certain sense of satisfaction. This operation was simple, consisting merely in the passage of four very brown fingers through the yellow-grey hair, and a hurried dispersal of the tobacco ash secreted in his beard.

The first object that met the mariner's astonished gaze was the long black form of a man stretched comfortably upon the cabin locker. The green mud adhering to the sleeper's thin shoes showed that he had climbed on board at low tide when the harbour was dry.

Captain Lebrun gazed meditatively at the intruder for some moments. Then he produced a powerfully-scented pipe of venerable appearance, which had been, at various stages of its existence, bound in a seaman-like manner with pieces of tarred yarn. He slowly filled this object, and proceeded to inform it in a husky voice that he was "blowed." The pipe was, apparently, in a similar condition, as it refused absolutely to answer to the powerful suction applied to it.

He then seated himself with some difficulty upon the corner of the low table, and examined the sleeper critically.

"Poor devil," he again said, addressing himself to his pipe. "He's one of them priest fellows.—Hi, mister!" he observed, raising his voice.

Christian Vellacott woke up at once, and took in the situation without delay. He was not of those who must go through terrible contortions before regaining their senses after sleep.

"Good morning, Captain!" he observed pleasantly.

"Oh—yourn't a parlee voo, then!"

"No, I'm an Englishman."

"Indeed. Then you'll excuse me, but what in the name of glory are you doing here?"

Christian sat up and looked at his muddy shoes with some interest.

"Well, the truth is that I am bolting. I want to get across to England. I saw where you hailed from by your rig, and clambered on board last night. It seemed to me that when an Englishman is in a hole he cannot do better than go to a fellow-countryman for help."

Captain Lebrun made a mighty effort to force a passage through his pipe, and was rewarded by a very high-pitched squeak.

"Ay!" he said doubtfully. "But what sort of hole is it? Nothing dirty, I'm hopin'. Who are yer? Why are ye runnin' away, and who are ye runnin' from?"

Though a trifle blunt the sailor's manner was not unfriendly, and Christian laughed before replying.

"Well," he said, "to tell you the whole story would take a long time. You remember perhaps there was a row, about two months ago, respecting some English rifles found in Paris?"

"Of course I remember that; we had a lot o' trouble with the Customs just then. The thing was ferreted out by a young newspaper fellow!"

Christian rubbed his hands slowly together. He was terribly anxious to hear the sequel.

"I am that newspaper fellow," he said, with a quick smile.

Captain Lebrun slowly stood up. He contemplated his pipe thoughtfully, then laying it upon the table he turned solemnly towards Christian, and held out a broad brown hand which was covered with scales in lieu of skin.

"Shake hands, mister?" he said.

Christian obliged him.

"And now," he said quickly, "I want to know what has happened since—since I left England. Has there been a great row? Has ... has anybody wondered where I was?"

The old sailor may have had his suspicions. He may have guessed that Christian Vellacott had not left England at the dictates of his own free will, for he looked at him very kindly with his liquid blue eyes, and replied slowly:—

"I couldn't say that nobody hasn't been wonderin' where ye was, but—but there's been nothing in the papers!"

"That is all right! And now will you give me a passage, Captain?"

"Course I will! We sail about eleven this morning. I'm loaded and cleared out. But I should like you to have a change o' clothes. Can't bear to see ye in them black things. It makes me feel as if I was talkin' to a priest."

"I should like nothing better," replied Christian, as he rose and contemplated his own person reflectively.

"Come into my state-room then. I've got a few things of my own, and a bit of a slop-chest: jerseys and things as I sell to the men."

The Captain's wardrobe was of a marine character and somewhat rough in texture. He had, however, a coat and waistcoat of thick blue pilot-cloth which fitted Christian remarkably well, but the continuations thereof were so absurdly out of keeping with the young fellow's long limbs as to precipitate the skipper on to the verge of apoplexy. When he recovered, and his pipe was re-lighted, he left the cabin and went forward to borrow a pair of the required articles from Tom Slake, an ordinary seaman of tall and slim proportions. In a short time Christian Vellacott bore the outward semblance of a very fair specimen of the British tar, except that his cheeks were bleached and sunken, which discrepancy was promptly commented upon by the blunt old sailor.

Secrecy was absolutely necessary, so Tom, of the long legs, was the only person to whom Christian's presence was made known; and he it was who (in view of a possible berth as steward later on) was entrusted with the simple culinary duties of the vessel.

Breakfast, as served up by Tom, was of a noble simplicity. A long shiny loaf of yesterday's bread, some butter in a saucer—which vessel was deemed entirely superfluous in connection with cups—brown sugar in an old mustard-tin, with portions of yellow paper adhering to it, and solid slices of bacon brought from the galley in their native frying-pan. 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.

When the meal had been duly despatched Captain Lebrun produced his pipe and proceeded to fill it, after having extracted from its inward parts the usual high-toned squeak.

Christian leant back against the bulkhead with his hands buried deeply in Tom's borrowed pockets. He felt much more at home in pilot cloth than in cashmere.

"There is one more thing I should like to borrow," he said.

"Ay?" repeated the captain interrogatively, as he searched in his waistcoat-pocket for a match.

"Ay, what is it?"

"A pipe. I have not had a smoke for two months."

The Captain struck a light upon his leg.

"I've got one somewhere," he replied reassuringly; "carried it for many years now, just in case this one fell overboard or got broke."

Tom, who happened to be present, smiled audibly behind a hand which was hardly a recommendation for the coveted berth of steward, but Christian looked at the battered pipe with sympathetic gravity.

At ten o'clock the Agnes and Mary warped out of harbour and dropped lazily down the Rance, setting sail as she went. Christian had spent most of the morning in the little cabin smoking Captain Lebrun's reserve pipe, and seeking to establish order among the accounts of the ship. The accounts were the bete noire of the old sailor's existence. Upon his own confession he "wasn't no arithmetician," and Christian found, upon inspecting his accounts, no cause to contradict this ambiguous statement.

When the Agnes and Mary was clear of the harbour he went on deck, where activity and maritime language reigned supreme. The channel was narrow and the wind light, consequently the little brig drifted more or less at her own sweet will. This would have been well enough had the waterway been clear of other vessels, but the Jersey steamer was coming in, with her yellow funnel gleaming in the sunlight, her mail-flag fluttering at her foremast, and her captain swearing on the bridge, with the whistle-pull in his hand.

Seeing that the Agnes and Mary had no steerage way, the captain stopped his engines for a few minutes, and then went ahead again at half-speed. This brought the vessels close together, and, as is the invariable custom in such circumstances, the two crews stared stonily at each other. On the deck were one or two passengers enjoying the morning air after a cramped and uncomfortable night. Among these was an old man with a singularly benign expression; he was standing near the after-wheel, gazing with senile placidity towards St. Malo. As the vessels neared each other, however, he walked towards the rail, and stood there with a pleasant smile upon his face, as if ready to exchange a greeting with any kindred soul upon the Agnes and Mary.

Christian Vellacott, seated upon the rail of the after-deck, saw the old man and watched him with some interest—not, however, altering his position or changing countenance. The vessels moved slowly on, and, in due course, the two men were opposite to each other, each at the extreme stern of his ship.

Then the young journalist removed Captain Lebrun's spare pipe from his lips, and leaning sideways over the water, called out:

"Good morning, Signor Bruno!"

The effect of this friendly greeting upon the benevolent old gentleman was peculiar. He grasped the rail before him with both hands, and stared at the young Englishman. Then he stamped upon the deck with a sudden access of fury.

"Ah!" he exclaimed fiercely, while a tiger-like gleam shone out from beneath his smooth white brows. "Ah! it is you!"

Christian swung his legs idly, and smiled with some amusement across the little strip of water.

Suddenly the old man plunged his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat. He appeared to be tugging wildly at some article which was caught in the lining of his clothes, when a remarkable change came over his face. A dull red colour flew to his cheeks, and his eyes gleamed ruddily, as if shot with blood. Then without a word he fell forward with his breast against the painted rail, remained there a second, and as the two ships passed away from each other, rolled over upon his back on the clean deck, grasping a pistol in his right hand.

Christian Vellacott sat still upon the rail, swinging one leg, and smiling reflectively. He saw the old man fall and the other passengers crowd round him, but the Agnes and Mary had now caught the breeze and was moving rapidly out to sea, where the sunlight danced upon the water in little golden bars.

"Apperlexy!" said a voice in the journalist's ear. He turned and found Captain Lebrun standing at his side looking after the steamer. "Apperlexy!"

"Do you think so?" asked Christian.

"I do," was the reply, given with some conviction. "I seen a man fall just like that; he was a broad-built man wi' a thick neck, and in a moment of excitement he fell just like that, and died a'most at once. Apperlexy they said it was."

"It seemed to come over him very suddenly, did it not?" said Christian absently.

"Ay, it did," said the captain. "Ye seemed to know him!"

Christian turned and looked his companion full in the face. "I have met him twice," he said quietly. "He was in England for some years, I believe; a political refugee, he called himself."

By sea and land Captain Lebrun had learnt to devote an exclusive attention to his own affairs, allowing other men to manage theirs, well or ill, according to their fancy. He knew that Christian Vellacott wished to tell him no more, and he was content that it should be so, but he had noticed a circumstance which, from the young journalist's position, was probably invisible. He turned to give an order to the man at the wheel, and then walked slowly and with some difficulty (for Captain Lebrun suffered, in a quiet way, agonies from rheumatism) back towards his passenger.

"Seemed to me," he said reflectively, as he looked upwards to see if the foretopsail was shivering, "as if he had something in his hand when a' fell."

Christian followed the Captain's gaze. The sails were now filling well, and there was an exhilarating sound of straining cordage in the air while the vessel glided on. The young journalist was not an impressionable man, but he felt all these things. The sense of open freedom, the gentle rise and fall of the vessel, the whirring breeze, and the distant line of high land up the Rance towards Dinant—all these were surely worth hearing, feeling, and seeing; assuredly, they added to the joy of living.

"Something in his hand," he repeated gravely; "what was it?"

Captain Lebrun turned sideways towards the steersman, and made a little gesture with his left hand. A wrinkle had appeared in one corner of the foretopsail. Then he looked round the horizon with a sailor's far-seeing gaze, before replying.

"Seemed to me," he mumbled, without taking his pipe from his lips, "that it was a revolver."

Then the two men smoked in silence for some time. The little vessel moved steadily out towards the blue water, passing a lighthouse built upon a solitary rock, and later a lightship, with its clean red hull gleaming in the sunlight as it rose and fell lazily. So close were they to the latter that the man watching on deck waved his hand in salutation.

Still Vellacott had vouchsafed no reply to Captain Lebrun's strange statement. He sat on the low rail, swinging one leg monotonously, while the square little sailor stood at his side with that patient maritime reflectiveness which is being slowly killed by the quicker ways of steam.

"My calling brings me into contact with a rum lot of people," said the young fellow at last, "and I suppose all of us make enemies without knowing it."

With this vague elucidation the little skipper was forced to content himself. He gave a grunt of acquiescence, and walked forward to superintend the catheading of the anchor.



CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE RUE ST. GINGOLPHE AGAIN

One would almost have said that the good citizen Jacquetot was restless and disturbed. It was not that the little tobacco shop left aught to be desired in the way of order, neither had the tobacconist quitted his seat at the window-end of the counter. But he was not smoking, and at short intervals he drew aside the little red curtain and looked out into the quiet Rue St. Gingolphe with a certain eagerness.

The tobacconist was not in the habit of going to meet things. He usually waited for them to come to him. But on this particular evening of September in a year which it is not expedient to name, he seemed to be looking out into the street in order that he might not be taken by surprise in the event of an arrival. Moreover he mopped his vast forehead at unnecessarily frequent intervals, just as one may note a snuff-taker have recourse to that solace more frequently when he is agitated than when a warm calm reigns within his breast.

"So quiet—so quiet," he muttered, "in our little street—and in the others—who knows? It would appear that they have their shutters lowered there."

He listened intently, but there was no sound except the clatter of an occasional cart or the distant whistle of a Seine steamer.

Then the tobacconist returned to the perusal of the Petit Journal. Before he had skimmed over many lines, he looked up sharply and drew aside the red curtain. Yes! It was some one at last. The footsteps were hurried and yet hesitating—the gait of a person not knowing his whereabouts. And yet the man who entered the shop a moment later was evidently the same who had come to the citizen Jacquetot when last we met him.

"Ah!" exclaimed the tobacconist. "It is you!"

"No," replied the other. "It is not. I am not the citizen...Morot—I think you call it."

"But, yes!" exclaimed the fat man in amazement. "You are that citizen, and you are also the Vicomte d'Audierne."

The new-comer was looking round him curiously; he stepped towards the curtained door, and turned the handle.

"I am," he said, "his brother. We are twins. There is a resemblance. Is this the room? Yes!"

"Yes, monsieur. It is! But never was there such a resemblance."

The tobacconist mopped his head breathlessly.

"Go," said the other, "and get a mattress. Bring it and lay it on this table. My brother is wounded. He has been hit."

Jacquetot rose laboriously from his seat. He knew now that this was not the Vicomte d'Audierne. This man's method was quite different. He spoke with a quiet air of command, not doubting that his orders would be obeyed. He was obviously not in the habit of dealing with the People. The Vicomte d'Audierne had a different manner of speaking to different people—this man, who resembled him so strangely, gave his orders without heeding the reception of them.

The tobacconist was essentially a man of peace. He passed out of a small door in the corner of the shop, obeying without a murmur, and leaving the new-comer alone.

A moment later the sound of wheels awoke the peaceful stillness of the Rue St. Gingolphe. The vehicle stopped, and at the same instant the man passed through the little curtained doorway into the room at the back of the shop, closing the door after him.

The gas was turned very low, and in the semi-darkness he stood quite still, waiting. He had not long to wait; he had scarcely closed the door when it was opened again, and some one entered rapidly, closing it behind him. Then the first comer raised his arm and turned up the gas.

Across the little table, in the sudden flood of light, two men stood looking at each other curiously. They were so startlingly alike, in height and carriage and every feature, that there was something weird and unpleasant in their action—in their silence.

"Ah!" said the last comer. "It is thou. I almost fired!"

And he threw down on the table a small revolver.

"Why have you done this?" continued the Vicomte d'Audierne. "I thought we agreed sixteen years ago that the world was big enough to contain us both without meeting, if we exercised a little care."

"She is dead," replied the brother. "She died two years ago—the wife of Prangius—what does it matter now?"

"I know that—but why did you come?"

"I was ordered to Paris by the General. I was near you at the barricade, and I heard the bullet hit you. Where is it?"

The Vicomte looked down at his hand, which was pressed to his breast; the light of the gas flickered, and gleamed on his spectacles as he did so.

"In my chest," he replied. "I am simply dripping with blood. It has trickled down my legs into my boots. Very hot at first—and then very cold."

The other looked at him curiously, and across his velvety eyes there passed that strange contraction which has been noted in the glance of the Vicomte d'Audierne.

"I have sent for a mattress," he said. "That bullet must come out. A doctor is following me; he will be here on the instant."

"One of your Jesuits?"

"Yes—one of my Jesuits."

The Vicomte d'Audierne smiled and winced. He staggered a little, and clutched at the back of a chair. The other watched him without emotion.

"Why do you not sit down?" he suggested coldly. "There are none of your—People—here to be impressed."

Again the Vicomte smiled.

"Yes," he said smoothly, "we work on different lines, do we not? I wonder which of us has dirtied his hands the most. Which of the two—the two fools who quarrelled about a woman. Ha? And she married a third—a dolt. Thus are they made—these women!"

"And yet," said the Jesuit, "you have not forgotten."

The Vicomte looked up slowly. It seemed that his eyelids were heavy, requiring an effort to lift them.

"I do not like to hear the rooks call—that is all," he said.

The other turned away his soft, slow glance, the glance that had failed to overcome Christian Vellacott's quiet defiance—

"Nor I," he said. "It makes one remember."

There was a short silence, and then the Jesuit spoke—sharply and suddenly.

"Sit down, you fool!" he said. "You are fainting."

The Vicomte obeyed, and at the same moment the door opened and the tobacconist appeared, pushing before him a mattress.

The Jesuit laid aside his hat, revealing the tonsure gleaming whitely amidst his jetty hair, and helped to lay the mattress upon the table. Then the two men, the Provincial and the tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe, lifted the wounded aristocrat gently and placed him upon the improvised bed. True to his blood, the Vicomte d'Audierne uttered no sound of agony, but as his brother began to unbutton the butcher's blouse in which he was disguised he fainted quietly. Presently the doctor arrived. He was quite a young man, with shifting grey eyes, and he saluted the Provincial with a nervous obsequity which was unpleasant to look upon. The deftness with which he completed the task of laying bare the wound was notable. His fingers were too clever to be quite honest. When, however, he was face to face with the little blue-rimmed orifice that disfigured the Vicomte's muscular chest, the expression of his face—indeed his whole manner—changed. His eyes lost their shiftiness—he seemed to forget the presence of the great man standing at the other side of the table.

While he was selecting a probe from his case of instruments the Vicomte d'Audierne opened his eyes.

"Ah!" said the doctor, noting this at once. "You got this on the Boulevard?"

"Yes."

"How did you get here?" He was feeling the wounded man's pulse now.

"Cab."

"All the way?"

"Of course."

"Who carried you into this room?" asked the doctor, returning to his case of instruments.

"No one! I walked." The doctor's manner, quick and nonchalant, evidently aggravated his patient.

"Why did you do that?"

He was making his preparations while he spoke, and never looked at the Vicomte.

"In order to avoid attracting attention."

This brought the doctor's glance to his face, and the result was instantaneous. The young man started, and into his eyes there came again the shifty expression, as he looked from the face of the patient to that of the Provincial standing motionless at the other side of the table. He said nothing, however, and returned with a peculiar restraint to his preparations. It is probable that his silence was brought about by the persistent gaze of two pairs of deep velvety eyes which never left his face.

"Will Monsieur take chloroform," he asked, unfolding a clean pocket-handkerchief, and taking from his waistcoat pocket a small phial.

"No!"

"But—I beg of you———"

"It is not necessary," persisted the Vicomte calmly.

The doctor looked across to the Provincial and made a hopeless little movement of the shoulders, accompanied by an almost imperceptible elevation of the eyebrows.

The Jesuit replied by looking meaningly at the small glass-stoppered bottle.

Then the doctor muttered:

"As you will!"

He had laid his instruments out upon the mattress—the gas was turned up as high as it would go. Everything was ready. Then he turned his back a moment and took off his coat, which he laid upon a chair, returning towards the bed with one hand behind his back.

Quick as thought, he suddenly darted forward and pressed the clean handkerchief over the wounded man's mouth and nose. The Vicomte d'Audierne gave a little smothered exclamation of rage, and raised his arms; but the Jesuit was too quick for him, and pinned him down upon the mattress.

After a moment the doctor removed the handkerchief, and the Vicomte lay unconscious and motionless, his delicate lips drawn back in anger, so that the short white teeth gleamed dangerously.

"It is possible," said the surgeon, feeling his pulse again, "that Monsieur has killed himself by walking into this room."

Like a cat over its prey, the young doctor leant across the mattress. Without looking round he took up the instruments he wanted, knowing the order in which they lay. He had been excellently taught. The noiseless movements of his white fingers were marvellously dexterous—neat, rapid, and finished. The evil-looking instruments gleamed and flashed beneath the gaslight. He had a peculiar little habit of wiping each one on his shirt-sleeve before and after use, leaving a series of thin red stripes there.

After the lapse of a minute he raised his head, wiped something which he held in his fingers, and passed it across to the Provincial.

"That is the bullet, my father," he said, without ceasing his occupation, and without raising his eyes from the wounded man.

"Will he live?" asked the Jesuit casually, while he examined the bullet.

"If he tries, my father," was the meaning reply.

The young doctor was bandaging now, skilfully and rapidly.

"This would be the death of a dog," said the Provincial, as if musing aloud; for the surgeon was busy at his trade, and the tobacconist had withdrawn some time before.

"Better than the life of a dog," replied the Vicomte, in his smoothly mocking way, without opening his eyes.

It was very easy to blame one woman, and to cast reflections upon the entire sex. If these brothers had not quarrelled about that woman, they would have fallen out over something else. Some men are so: they are like a strong spirit—light and yet potent—that floats upon the top of all other liquids and will mingle with none.

It would seem that these two could not be in the same room without quarrelling. It was only with care that (as the Jesuit had coldly observed) they could exist in the same world without clashing. Never was the Vicomte d'Audierne so cynical, so sceptical, as in the presence of his brother. Never was Raoul d'Audierne so cold, so heartless, so Jesuitical, as when meeting his brother's scepticism.

Sixteen years of their life had made no difference. They were as far apart now as on one grey morning sixteen years ago, when the Vicomte d'Audierne had hurried away from the deserted shore of the Cote du Nord, leaving his brother lying upon the sand with an ugly slit in his neck. That slit had healed now, but the scar was always at his throat, and in both their hearts.

True to his training, the Provincial had not spoken the truth when he said that he had been ordered to Paris. There was only one man in the world who could order him to do anything, and that man was too wise to test his authority. Raoul d'Audierne had come to Paris for the purpose of seeing his brother—senior by an hour. There were many things of which he wished to speak, some belonging to the distant past, some to a more recent date. He wished to speak of Christian Vellacott—one of the few men who had succeeded in outwitting him—of Signor Bruno, or Max Talma, who had died within pistol range of that same Englishman, a sudden, voiceless death, the result of a terrible access of passion at the sight of his face.

But this man was a Jesuit and a d'Audierne, which latter statement is full of import to those who, having studied heredity, know that wonderful inner history of France which is the most romantic story of human kind. And so Raoul d'Audierne—the man whose power in the world is like that of the fires burning within the crust of the earth, unseen, immeasurable—and so he took his hat, and left the little room behind the tobacconist's shop in the Rue St. Gingolphe—beaten, frustrated.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN VELLACOTT

"Money," Captain Lebrun was saying emphatically, as the Agnes and Mary drifted slowly past Gravesend pier on the rising tide. "Hang money! Now, I should think that you make as much of it in a month as I do in a year. You're a young man, and as far as I know ye, ye're a successful one. Life spreads out before you like a clean chart. I'm an old 'un—my time is nearly up. I've lived what landsmen call a hard life, and now I'm slowly goin' home. Ay, Mr. Vellacott, goin' home! And you think that with all your manifold advantages you're a happier man than me. Not a bit of it! And why? 'Cause you belong to a generation that looks so far ahead that it's afraid of bein' happy, just for fear there's sorrow a comin'. Money, and lookin' ahead, that's what spoils yer lives nowadays."

The skipper emphasised these weighty observations by expectorating decisively into the water, and walked away, leaving Christian Vellacott with a vaguely amused smile upon his face. It is just possible that Silas Lebrun, master and owner of the Agnes and Mary, was nearer the mark than he thought.

An hour later, Vellacott was walking along the deserted embankment above Westminster, on the Chelsea side of the river. It was nine o'clock, for which fact Big Ben solemnly gave his word, far up in the fog. The morning was very dark, and the street lamps were still alight, while every window sent forth a gleam suggestive of early autumnal fires.

Turning up his own street he increased his pace, realising suddenly that he had not been within his own doors for more than four months. Much might have happened in that time—to change his life, perhaps. As he approached the house he saw a strange servant, an elderly woman, on her knees at the steps, and somehow the sight conveyed to his mind the thought that there was something waiting for him within that peaceful little house. He almost ran those last few yards, and sprang up the steps past the astonished woman without a word of explanation.

The gas in the narrow entrance-hall was lighted, and as he threw aside his cap he perceived a warm gleam of firelight through the half-open door of the dining-room. He crossed the carpeted hall, and pushed open that door.

Near the little breakfast-table, just under the gas, stood Hilda Carew. In his room, standing among his multifarious possessions, in the act of pouring from his coffee-pot. She was dressed in black—he noticed that. Instead of being arranged high upon her head, her marvellous hair hung in one massive plait down her back. She looked like a tall and beautiful school-girl. He had not seen her hair like that since the old days when he had been as one of the Carews.

As he pushed open the door, she looked up; and for a moment they stood thus. She set down the coffee-pot, carefully and symmetrically, in the centre of the china stand provided for its reception—and the colour slowly left her face.

"You have come back at last!" she said quite monotonously. It sounded like a remark made for the purpose of filling up an awkward silence.

Then he entered the room, and mechanically closed the door behind him. She noticed the action, but did not move. He passed round the table, behind Aunt Judy's chair, and they shook hands conventionally.

"Yes," he said almost breathlessly; "I am back; you do not seem elated by the fact."

Suddenly she smiled—the smile that suggested, in some subtle way, a kitten.

"Of course—I am glad ... to see you."

In a peculiar dreamy way she began to add milk to the coffee. It seemed as if this were mere play-acting, and not real life at all.

"How is it that you are here?" he asked, with a broken, disjointed laugh. "You cannot imagine how strange an effect it was ... for me ... to come in and see you ... here—of all people."

She looked at him gravely, and moved a step towards him.

"Aunt Judy is dead!" she explained; "and Aunt Hester is very ill. Mother is upstairs with them—her—now. I have just come from the room, where I have been since midnight."

She stopped, raised her hand to her hair as if recollecting something, and stood looking sideways out of the window.

"There is something about you this morning," he said, with a concentrated deliberation, "that brings back the old Prague days. I suppose it is that I have not seen your hair as you have it to-day—since then."

She turned quite away from his hungry gaze, looking out of the window.

After a pause she broke the silence—with infinite tact—not speaking too hurriedly.

"It has been a terrible week," she said. "Mother heard from Mr. Bodery that they were very ill; so we came. I never dreamt that it was so bad when you spoke of them. Five years it has been going on?"

"Yes; five years. Thank you for coming, but I am sorry you should have seen it."

"Why?"

"Every one should keep guard over his own skeleton."

She was looking at him now.

"You look very ill," she said curtly. "Where have you been?"

"I was kidnapped," he said, with a short laugh, "and then I got typhoid. The monks nursed me."

"You were in a monastery?"

"Yes; in Brittany."

She was idly arranging the cups and saucers with her left hand, which she seemed desirous of bringing under his notice; but he could look at nothing but her face.

"Then," she said, "it would have been impossible to find you?"

"Quite," he replied, and after a pause he added, in a singularly easy manner, "Tell me what happened after I disappeared."

She did not seem to like the task.

"Well—we searched—oh! Christian, it was horrid!"

"I wondered," he said, in a deep, soft voice, "whether you would find it so."

"Yes, of course, we all did."

This did not appear to satisfy him.

"But you," he persisted, "you, yourself—what did you think?"

"I do not know," she answered, with painful hesitation. "I don't think I thought at all."

"Then what did you do, Hilda?"

"I—oh, we searched. We telegraphed for Mr. Bodery, who came down at once. Then Fred rode over, and placed himself at Mr. Bodery's disposal. First he went to Paris, then to Brest. He did everything that could be done, but of course it was of no avail. By Mr. Bodery's advice everything was kept secret. There was nothing in the newspapers."

She stopped suddenly, and there was a silence in the room. He was looking at her curiously, still ignoring that little left hand. Only one word of her speech seemed to have attached itself to his understanding.

"Fred?" he said. "Fred Farrar?"

"Yes—my husband!"

He turned away—walked towards the door, and then returned to the hearthrug, where he stood quite still.

"I suppose it was a quiet wedding," he said in a hard voice, "on my account; eh?"

"Yes," she whispered. He waited, but she added nothing.

Then suddenly he laughed.

"I have made a most extraordinary mistake!" he said, and again laughed.

"Oh, don't" she exclaimed.

"Don't what?"

"Laugh."

He came nearer to her—quite near, until his sleeve almost touched her bowed head.

"I thought—at St. Mary Western—that you loved me."

She seemed to shrink away from him.

"What made me think so, Hilda?"

She raised her head, and her eyes flashed one momentary appeal for mercy—like the eyes of a whipped dog.

"Tell me," he said sternly.

"It was," she whispered, "because I thought so myself."

"And when I was gone you found out that you had made a mistake?"

"Yes; he was so kind, so brave, Christian—because he knew of my mistake."

Christian Vellacott turned away, and looked thoughtfully out of the window.

"Well," he said, after a pause, "so long as you do not suffer by it—"

"Oh—h," she gasped, as if he were whipping her. She did not quite know what he meant. She does not know now.

At last he spoke again, slowly, deliberately, and without emotion.

"Some day," he said, "when you are older, when you have more experience of the world, you will probably fall into the habit of thanking God, in your prayers, that I am what I am. It is not because I am good ... perhaps it is because I am ambitious—my father, you may remember, was considered heartless; it may be that. But if I were different—if I were passionate instead of being what the world calls cold and calculating—you would be ... your life would be—" he stopped, and turning away he sat down wearily in Aunt Judy's armchair. "You will know some day!" he said.

It is probable that she does know now. She knows, in all likelihood, that her husband would have been powerless to save her from Christian Vellacott—from herself—from that Love wherein there are no roses but only thorns.

And in the room above them Aunt Hester was dying. So wags the world. There is no attention paid to the laws of dramatic effect upon the stage of life. The scenes are produced without sequence, without apparent rhyme or reason; and Chance, the scene-shifter, is very careless, for comedies are enacted amid scenic effects calculated to show off to perfection the deepest tragedy, while tragedies are spoilt by their surroundings.

The doctor and Mrs. Carew stood at the bedside, and listened to the old woman's broken murmurings. Into her mind there had perhaps strayed a gleam of that Light which is not on the earth, for she was not abusing her great-nephew.

"Ah, Christian," she was murmuring, "I wish you would come. I want to thank you for your kindness, more especially to Aunt Judy. She is old, and we must make allowances. I know she is aggravating. It happened long ago, when your father was a little boy—but it altered her whole life. I think women are like that. There is something that only comes to them once. I am feeling far from well, nephew Vellacott. I think I should like to see a doctor. What does Aunt Judy think? Is she asleep?"

She turned her head to where she expected to find her sister, and in the act of turning her eyes closed. She slumbered peacefully. The two sisters had slept together for seventy years—seventy long, monotonous years, in which there had been no incident, no great joy, no deep sorrow—years lost. Except for the natural growth and slow decay of their frames, they had remained stationary, while around them children had grown into men and women and had passed away.

Presently Aunt Hester opened her eyes, and they rested on the vacant pillow at her side. After a pause she slowly turned her head, and fixed her gaze upon the doctor's face. He thought that the power of speech had left her, but suddenly she spoke, quite clearly.

"Where is my sister Judith?" she asked.

There are times when the truth must be spoken, though it kill.

"Your sister died yesterday," replied the doctor.

Aunt Hester lay quite still, staring at the ceiling. Her shrivelled fingers were picking at the counter-pane. Then a gleam of intelligence passed across her face.

"And now," she said, "I shall have a bed to myself. I have waited long enough."

Aunt Hester was very human, although the shadow of an angel's wing lay across her bed.

* * * * *

It was many years later that Christian Vellacott found himself in the presence of the Angel of Death again. A telegram from Havre was one day handed to him in the room at the back of the tall house in the Strand, and the result was that he crossed from Southampton to Havre that same night.

As the sun rose over the sea the next morning, its earliest rays glanced gaily through the open port-hole of a cabin in a large ocean steamer, still panting from her struggle through tepid Eastern seas.

In this little cabin lay the Jesuit missionary, Rene Drucquer, watching the moving reflections of the water, which played ceaselessly on the painted ceiling overhead. He had been sent home from India by a kind-hearted army surgeon; a doomed man, stricken by a climatic disease in which there was neither hope nor hurry. When the steamer arrived in the Seine it was found expedient to let the young missionary die where he lay. The local agent of the Society of Jesus was a kind-hearted man, and therefore a faithless servant. He acceded to Rene Drucquer's prayer to telegraph for Christian Vellacott.

And now Vellacott was actually coming down the cabin stairs. He entered the cabin and stood by the sick man's bed.

"Ah, you have come," said the Frenchman, with that peculiar tone of pathetic humour which can only be rendered in the language that he spoke.

"But how old! Do I look as old as that, I wonder? And hard—yes, hard as steel."

"Oh no," replied Vellacott. "It may be that the hardness that was once there shows now upon my face—that is all."

The Frenchman looked lovingly at him, with eyes like the eyes of a woman.

"And now you are a great man, they tell me."

Vellacott shrugged his shoulders.

"In my way," he admitted. "And you?"

"I—I have taught."

"Ah! and has it been a success?"

"In teaching I have learnt."

Vellacott merely nodded his head.

"Do you know why I sent for you?" continued the missionary.

"No."

"I sent for you in order to tell you that I burnt that letter at Audierne."

"I came to that conclusion, for it never arrived."

"I want you to forgive me."

Vellacott laughed.

"I never thought of it again," he replied heartily.

The priest was looking keenly at him.

"I did not say 'thou,' but 'you,'" he persisted gently.

Vellacott's glance wavered; he raised his head, and looked out of the open port-hole across the glassy waters of the river.

"What do you mean?" he inquired.

"I thought," said Rene Drucquer, "there might be some one else—some woman—who was waiting for news."

After a little pause the journalist replied.

"My dear Abbe," he said, "there is no woman in the whole world who wants news of me. And the result is, as you kindly say, I am a great man now—in my way."

But he knew that he might have been a greater.

THE END