Chapter XII

Father Hilary smiled, not in the least ironically, but with an engaging frankness.

" I'm quite sure you needn't be scrupulous about that," he said. " You tell me you want to be a Religious. Well, no Religious Order in the world would accept you until you'd been at least a year or two a Catholic. So there's no kind of reason to distress your people yet You see you may easily change your mind yet. And your people have been so good to you, in giving their consent to your coming to me for instructions, that you mustn't upset them still further."

" I shall never change/' declared Percy.

" All the better," smiled the priest. " But I assure you that no one can be certain of that, least of all yourself.... You were telling me about the Vicar, though. Tell me what he said, after the time you had with Mr. Railton."

"Oh! it was just as I thought," cried the boy. "Certainly he gave me one or two things to read that I couldn't exactly answer. But he kept on patting me on the shoulder, and telling me to cheer up and that I should be all right soon! He... he was awfully kind, you know; but of course he can't bear my becoming a Catholic. I've brought one or two things on paper I want you to answer for me, if you'll be so kind."

They were sitting in the same bare little parlour round which Percy had rolled his eyes so expectantly a month ago. Things had gone with him extraordinarily smoothly,

Digitized by Google considering the position: he had had his interview — in fact three or four interviews with the Vicar, besides the fateful one already described — and at least a dozen serious conversations with his parents. But everyone had behaved beautifully: they had shaken their heads at him, telling him that he was too young to judge of such matters, that he had been influenced by a subtle priest, that it was all an emotional fit that would pass; but they had " played the game " as Percy expressed it to Reggie. The Vicar had put controversial points before him with an air of sublime assurance, telling him that no scholars — literally no scholars at all — could defend the Papal position; but then, obviously this was what he believed; and, if so, equally obviously it was his- duty to say so. Mrs. Bennett had smiled at him regretfully and spoken of the beautiful services of the Church of England; Mrs. Main had eyed him with sharp-eyed interest once or twice; a choirman had asked him whether the report was really true. Helen had regarded him with wide-eyed amazement. But they had all "played the game"; and Percy was sincerely grateful. It seemed to him astonishing that so great a transformation could have taken place in four weeks. Then he had known nothing and faced nothing but an emotion. Now the world's scenery had shifted as if under some invisible and gigantic force; and he sat here for his first instruction. It was exactly as Mr. Bennett had feared. The violent scene with the ex-priest had increased, instead of diminishing, his resolution.

He pulled out his papers.

"One thing more before we begin, father. How long will the instructions take? "

" That depends entirely on yourself," said the priest. " How often can you come? "

"As often as you can have me, father."

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" Twice a week? " "Why, certainly."

" Well, if you can keep up twice a week, and meantime go to mass on Sundays — in fact, live as a Catholic — I should say five or six months would see the end of you."

Percy's face fell.

"As long as that?"

"Yes.... You see it isn't simply the instructions themselves, though these take a good time. But it's the testing of your perseverance. You must make perfectly sure that it's more than a fancy."

« But "

" My dear boy, don't think I think that. I don't, for a moment. I'm as convinced as I can be that you're a perfectly genuine case. But, you know, I'm not infallible; nor are you. We must test ourselves well, in such a big thing as this.... It is a big thing, you know. The biggest."

There was a pause.

" Well, let's have the Vicar's objections," said the priest, smiling.

Father Hilary had been very agreeably surprised indeed by Percy's account of the interview with the ex-priest.

It had seemed to him extraordinary that the boy should have been so affected, and, still more, so enraged by such an encounter.

" I... I can't understand it, father," Percy had said in a sudden burst of confidence. " I... I felt as if I was drunk or drugged. It seemed to me so mean to use such a man; but that wasn't all. There was something in the man himself.... Who was he? Was he really ever a priest? "

" Oh, yes," said the friar tranquilly. " He was a priest. He left the Church about eight years ago."

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" Are the stories true about him? 99

" I think it's best not to say too much/' said the friar. " It is true that he married a week after he... he left the Church."

"But his vows!"

"Yes?"

• He broke them? "

"Why, yes. It's a free country/' said the friar.

" And he lectures against the Church? "

" He began lecturing a month after his marriage. He makes his living by it, I suppose."

Percy sat silent looking vaguely out at the dull London sky, against which stood out the brick gable-end of the poor church.

Then the friar suggested a little Catechism.

Sensational incidents happen, as often as not, without even the rumour of a warning. Occasionally, indeed, they are led up to: the orchestra begins to gather its forces, the kettle-drums to throb, the strings to tremble, the double-basses to roar, till the supreme bellowing crash is inevitable. But in at least as many cases there is no warning at all. The thunderbolt falls on a spring-morning; or the gun goes off as it hangs on the wall.

Percy was as normal as a proselyte under instruction ever can be, as he went home that Saturday evening. He had all his plans serenely fixed: he was to hear mass in St. Joseph's at half -past ten, and to go to Benediction with Reggie, at the Oratory, in the afternoon. Then Monday would begin again as usual with the City; he was to go to Father Hilary again on Wednesday after office

Digitized by Google hours; and so on, and so on, for six months. And about Easter he would be received into the Church.

His fervour had lasted quite satisfactorily. It was perfectly true that the world had changed for him in the most fundamental way possible. Things were still entirely different, because the centre of them all had shifted from himself to someone else. The bewilderment had almost wholly left him, but the Fact remained. He continued to act from this new centre; and the difficulties that in nine cases out of ten besiege such a transference were practically abolished for him by the smoothness with which, on the whole, his friends had accepted it.

He thought sometimes of the girl he had met in the train, and had had, indeed, a day or two in which he had to adjust his thought of her to his new ideal of the Religious Life. But even this was not a severe struggle: he was not, so far as he knew, at all in love with her, and he was very completely in love with the life of a friar. He wanted to see her again; and he assured himself that he could help her more than ever now; but, so far, she had not written; and he was helpless.

It was not at all extraordinary that the life of which he had caught a glimpse in the Friary had attracted him so violently; chiefly, because it was completely the opposite of the life he had hitherto unwillingly led. But this, honestly, was not the only reason. In the midst of the clean silence of the place, the austere dignity of the friars, the unanxious poverty, he perceived a Presence that was its heart. Religious matters, and doctrines, and all the rest, fitted in now with a completeness he had never before perceived: choir-practices and parochial activities and early celebrations and Gadsby in C — all these things were good and harmless enough, natural expressions and accompani-

Digitized by Google ments to the sober moral religion he had known in Han-stead; but he felt there was a great deal more here in Kensington. The difference between the two was as the difference between the imitative life of a child and the self-originated life of a man, between liking and loving, between gentle warmth and a fiery heat. The change for him, therefore, was not merely an interior one; but he had found, he thought, an exterior frame too for the new passion of his life.

Here then was Percy Brandreth Smith, as he stepped out of the train at Hanstead. Certainly great things had happened to him; the world had opened to him like a flower from a bud.... He was changed inside and out; he was to be a Catholic about Easter; he would begin to prepare himself, still in the same old setting at home, for the further life that in a year or two would be his in the Franciscan novitiate. That was his programme.

Ill

He put his latch-key into the door, and stepped in.

The first thing he noticed was that the drawing-room was dark. This was quite unusual. He lit the gas himself, and looked vaguely round. Then he went across to the dining-room. This too was dark; but the table was laid. Then he wondered whether everyone was up in his father's study; so he went up there, and there was no one. He called for Helen^ but there was no answer.

As he came down again, a little uneasy, he heard the door from the yard into the house open, and then the swish of a servant's dress.

" Alice," he called.

She whisked up from the back, looking rather guilty.

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"Where's everybody?"

"I don't know, sir. Mrs. Smith said they'd be back for dinner."

"Are they all out?"

"Yes, sir; they went out after the mid-day post — the doctor and Mrs. Smith and Miss Helen, all together." She hesitated.

" I think there was a letter, sir."

There was evidently nothing to be done; but it seemed exceedingly mysterious. He went back to the drawing-room and walked about a little, relieved that, at any rate, nothing serious had happened — at least nothing that his own imagination could conceive. But what in the world could it be, that had suddenly snatched all three of them away without a word or message left for himself? It didn't seem as if it could be illness or death of any kind.

But he had not very long to wait.

He was beginning to doze over the Nation, when he heard the latch-key in the door; and he was in the hall to meet all three of them as they came in.

"What's up?" he said.

No one answered him for a moment. There was an air of intense and suppressed excitement in the faces of his mother and sister so far as he could see them. His father was still detaching his key from the door: then he turned.

"Ah! my boy," he said heartily; "come into the drawing-room and we'll tell you."

With his own heart beating, Percy followed the three in. His mother had drawn off her gloves and was warming her hands at the little fire. Her face had a very odd tense look, and Helen was radiant.

" It's a piece of very astonishing news," said the doctor, smiling too. " Can't you guess? "

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Percy shook his head.

"Well, you know who your old great-uncle James was?'< " Yes."

"Well; he's died. Last week. And your mother inherits everything." " Everything?"

"Yes. That adopted boy of his disappointed him, it seems. So the lawyers told us this morning. And your mother comes in for the lot."

"What does that mean?" asked Percy.

"Well — Marston Park; a house in Wilton Crescent and from ten to twelve thousand a year."

Percy sat down.

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