The Slave of the Lamp Part 29

Then for the first time did the priest appear to remember that this was not one of the sailors.

"I beg your pardon," he said, rising from his knees. "You are right; it is better. But I am afraid the men will not a.s.sist me. They are afraid of touching the dead when they are afloat."

"I will help you," said Christian simply, "and that man also, I think, because he proposed it."

With a motion of the head he indicated Hoel Grall, upon whom the command of the little vessel had now devolved. The man was better educated than his companions, and spoke French fluently, but in the Breton character superst.i.tion is so deeply rooted that generations of education will scarcely eradicate it.

The priest looked into the Englishman's face with a gentle wonder in his eyes, which were shadowy with the fervour of his recent devotions. The two men were crouching low upon the deck, grasping the black rail with their left hands; the water washed backwards and forwards around their feet.

It was the first time they had seen each other face to face in open daylight, and their eyes met quietly and searchingly as they swayed from side to side with the heavy lurching of the ship. The Englishman spoke first.

"You must leave it to us," he said calmly. "You could do nothing in this heavy sea with your one arm!"

The gentle blue eyes were again filled with wonder, and presently the priest's intellectual face relaxed into a shadowy smile, which did not affect his thin red lips.

"You are very good," he murmured simply.

Christian did not hear this remark. He had turned away to call Grall towards him, and was about to move towards the body lying on the hatch, when the priest called him back.

"Monsieur," he said.

"Yes."

"Tell me," continued Rene Drucquer quickly, as if in doubt, "are you Christian Vellacott?"

"Of course!"

The priest looked relieved, and at the same time he appeared to be making an effort to restrain himself, as if he had been betrayed into a greater show of feeling than was desirable. When he at length spoke in reply to the Englishman's obvious desire for some explanation of the strange question, his voice was singularly cold, and modulated in such a manner as to deprive it of any expression, while his eyes were fixed on the deck.

"You are not such as I expected," he said.

Christian looked down at him with straightforward keenness, and he saw the priest's eyelids move uneasily beneath his gaze. Mixing with many men as he had done, he had acquired a certain mental sureness of touch, like that of an artist with his brush when he has handled many subjects and many effects. He divined that Rene Drucquer had been led to expect a violent, head strong man, and he could not restrain a smile as he turned away. Before going, however, he said:

"At present it is a matter of saving the ship, and our lives. My own affairs can wait, but when this gale is over you may rest a.s.sured they shall have my attention."

CHAPTER XX

WINGED

Beyond this one allusion to their respective positions, Christian was silent regarding his captivity. After the gale subsided the weather took a turn for the better, and clear skies by day and night rendered navigation an easy matter.

With characteristic daring the young Englishman had decided to offer no resistance and to seize no opportunities of escape until the termination of the voyage. The scheme half-formed within his mind was to see the voyage through, and effect his escape soon after landing in France. It was not without a certain adventurous fascination, and in the meantime there was much to interest him in his surroundings. If this young Abbe was a typical member of the Society of Jesus, he was worth studying. If this simplicity was an acquired cloak to deeper thought, it was worth penetrating, and if the man's entire individuality had been submerged in the mysterious system followed in the College of Jesuits, it was no waste of time to seek for the real man beneath the cultivated suavity that hid all feeling.

The more the two young men saw of each other the closer grew their intimacy, and with growing intimacy the domination of the stronger individuality was more marked in its influence.

To the frail and nervous priest this young Englishman was a new experience; his vitality and calm, straightforward manner of speech were such as the Abbe had never met with before. Such men and better men there were and are in the Society of Jesus, otherwise the power of the great Order would not be what it is; but Rene Drucquer had never come in contact with them. According to the wonderful code of laws laid down by its great founder (who, in other circ.u.mstances, might have prepared the world for the coming of such a man as Napoleon the First), the education of the young is entrusted to such brethren as are of slower parts; and from these honest, but by no means intelligent, men the young Abbe had learnt his views upon mankind in general. The creed they taught without understanding it themselves was that no man must give way to natural impulses; that he must restrain and quell and quench himself into a machine, without individuality or impulse, without likes or dislikes; that he must persistently perform such duties as are abhorrent to him, eat such food as nauseates him, and submit to the dictates of such men as hate him. And these, forsooth, are the teachings of one who, in his zealous shortsightedness, claims to have received his inspiration direct from the lips of the Great Teacher.

Rene Drucquer found himself in the intimate society of a man who said what he thought, acted as he conceived best, and held himself responsible, for word or deed, to none on earth. It was his first mission after a long and rigorous training. This was the first enemy of the Holy Church against whom he had been sent to fight, armed with the immeasurable power of the greatest brotherhood the world has ever known, protected by the shadow of its blessing; and there was creeping into the young priest's heart a vague and terrible suspicion that there might be two sides to the question. All the careful years of training, all the invisible meshes of the vast net that had been gathering its folds round him since he had first donned the dress of a Probationer of the College of Jesuits, were powerless to restrain the flight of a pure and guileless heart to the height of truth. Despite the countless one-sided and ingenious arguments instilled into his eager young mind in guise of mental armour against the dangers of the world, Rene Drucquer found himself, at the very first contact with the world, unconvinced that he was fighting upon the righteous side.

Brest had been left behind in a shimmering blue haze. Ahead lay the grim Pointe de Raz, with its short, thick-set lighthouse facing the vast Atlantic. Out to sea, in the fading glory of sunset, lay the long, low Ile-de-Sein, while here and there black rocks peeped above the water.

The man holding the tiller was a sardine fisher, to whom every rock, every ripple, of these troubled waters was familiar. Fearlessly he guided the yawl close round by the high cliff--the westernmost point of Europe--but with the sunset the wind had dropped and the sails hung loosely, while the broad bows glided onwards with no sound of parted water.

The long Atlantic roll was swinging lazily in, and the yawl rose to it sleepily, with a long, slow movement. The distant roar of the surf upon the Finisterre coast rose in the peaceful atmosphere like a lullaby. The holy calm of sunset, the hush of lowering night, and the presence of the only man who had ever drawn him with the strange, unaccountable bond that we call sympathy, moved the heart of the young priest as it had never been moved before by anything but religious fervour.

For the first time he spoke of himself. The solitary heart suddenly broke through the restraining influence of a mistaken education, and unfolded its sad story of a misread existence. Through no fault of his own, by no relaxation of supervising care on the part of his teachers, the Jesuit had run headlong into the very danger which his Superior had endeavoured to avoid. He had formed a friendship. Fortunately the friend was a _man_, otherwise Rene Drucquer were lost indeed.

"I should think," he said musingly, "that no two lives have ever been so widely separated as yours and mine, and yet our paths have met!"

Vellacott took the cigarette from his lips. It was made of a vile tobacco, called "Pet.i.t Caporal," but there was nothing better to be had, and he was in the habit of making the best of everything. Therefore he blew into the air a spiral column of thin blue smoke with a certain sense of enjoyment before replying. He also was looking across the gla.s.sy expanse of water, but his gaze was steady and thoughtful, while his companion's eyes were dreamy and almost vacant. The light shone full upon his face, and a physician--or a mother--would have noticed, perhaps, that there was beneath his eyes a dull shadow, while his lips were dry and somewhat drawn.

"Yes," he said at length, with grave sympathy, "we have drifted together like two logs in a torrent."

The young priest changed his position, drawing in one leg and clasping his hands round his knee. The movement caused his long black garment to fall aside, displaying the dark purple stockings and rough shoes. The hands clasped round his knee were long and white, with peculiarly flat wrists.

"One log," he said vaguely, "was bound for a certain goal, the other was drifting."

Vellacott turned slowly and glanced at his companion's face. The smoke from the bad cigarette drifted past their heads to windward. He was not sure whether the priest was speaking from a professional point of view, with reference to heresy and the unknown goal to which all heretics are drifting, or not. Had Rene Drucquer been a good Jesuit, he would have seen his opportunity of saying a word in season. But this estimable desire found no place in his heart just then.

"Your life," he continued in a monotone, "is already mapped out--like the voyage of a ship traced across a chart. Is it not so? I have imagined it like that."

Vellacott continued to smoke for some moments in silence. He sat with his long legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the rail, and his rough blue jersey wrinkled up so that he could keep one hand in his pocket. The priest turned to look at him with a sudden fear that his motives might be misread. Vellacott interpreted his movement thus, for he spoke at once with a smile on his face.

"I think it is best," he said, "not to think too much about it. From what experience I have had, I have come to the humiliating conclusion that men have very little to do with the formation of their own lives. A ship-captain may sit down and mark his course across the chart with the greatest accuracy, the most profound knowledge of wind and current, and the keenest foresight; but that will have very little effect upon the actual voyage."

"But," argued the priest in a low voice, "is it not better to have an end in view--to have a certain aim, and a method, more or less formed, of attaining it?"

"Most men have that," answered Christian, "but do not know that they have it!"

"_You_ have?"

Christian smoked meditatively. A month ago he would have said "Yes"

without a moment's hesitation.

"And you know it, I think," added the priest slowly. He was perfectly innocent of any desire to extract details of his companion's life from unwilling lips, and Christian knew it. He was convinced that, whatever part Rene Drucquer had attempted to play in the past, he was sincere at that moment, and he divined that the young Jesuit was weakly giving way to a sudden desire to speak to some fellow-being of his own life--to lay aside the strict reserve demanded by the tenets of the Society to which he was irrevocably bound. In his superficial way, Christian Vellacott had studied men as well as letters, and he was not ignorant of the influence exercised over the human mind by such trifling circ.u.mstances as moonshine upon placid water, distant music, the solemn hush of eventide, or the subtle odour of a beloved flower. If Rene Drucquer was on the point of committing a great mistake, he at least would not urge him on towards it, so he smoked in silence, looking practical and unsympathetic.

The priest laughed a little short, deprecating laugh, in which there was no shadow of mirth.

"I have not," he said, rubbing his slim hands together, palm to palm, slowly, "and--I know it."

"It will come," suggested the Englishman, after a pause.

The priest shook his head with a little smile, which was infinitely sadder than tears. His cold silence was worse than an outburst of grief; it was like the keen frost that comes before snow, harder to bear than the snow itself. Presently he moved slightly towards his companion so that their arms were touching, and in his soft modulated voice, trained to conceal emotion, he told his story.