The Slave of the Lamp Part 37

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 circ.u.mstances can well be demanded."

He paused, and opening the leather-bound ma.n.u.script 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 Since then I have withdrawn that opinion."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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sing 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 acc.u.mulating. 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 pa.s.sed 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 workmans.h.i.+p in its construction, and here he met, and pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed through a small village, which appeared to be already wrapped in stupid slumber such as attends the peasant's pillow. A c.o.c.k 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d. 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 pa.s.sage 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.