Chapter II

"Ah!" said Father Hilary as lie came into the parlour, holding out his hand. "How are you, Mr. Main?"

It was the evening of the Servants' Ball at Marston; but of course neither of them knew anything about that. It was a fortnight since Percy had been to the Friary; and he happened not to have mentioned it

Mr. Main looked more dreary than ever, now that he was no longer in clerical clothes; he bore a faint resemblance now to a very respectable man-servant who had fallen on bad times. He was in a dark grey ready-made suit, with a stick-up collar and a black made-up tie that hid all trace of a shirt below; his boots creaked a little as he stood up, and had a curious crease across the toe, as if they were an inch or two too long. He smiled bleakly as he took the friar's hand; and the smile disappeared again instantly. But he did not look wholly unhappy.

" How have things gone with you? " said Father Hilary, sitting down and spreading his hands over the fire.

"Well, father; I went to all those addresses you gave me. And I'm sorry to say they hadn't anything for me."

" Let me see — you've been in the Church a month now? M

"Yes, father. I'm very anxious, you know "

The friar nodded.

" I quite understand," he said.

Mr. Main rubbed his long hands together between his knees.

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" There are one or two things I didn't explain before,"

he said. " May I "

The friar nodded again.

" Why certainly," he said. " Tell me everything." Mr. Main put his lips together once or twice before speaking. Then he began.

"Well, father; I told yon I had saved a little money. That was true. But it's very little. Not more than thirty or forty pounds when all my bills were paid. I found that there were one or two that my wife — that I hadn't settled when I left Hanstead. They're settled now....

" Then I didn't tell you that my wife had written a book "

The friar looked up sharply.

"A book? Why "

"Yes, father. It's a very clever book too, I'm told.

I've not read it "

"Not read it?"

Mr. Main seemed to have a difficulty in speaking.

" It... it was accepted at once: and my wife was paid pretty well for it. But it... it was a book I could not approve of, father. It... it was a very unpleasant description of some of our friends."

Father Hilary glanced at him.

"Yes, father; there is no question about it. I... I read enough. My wife brought it out in the face of my express wishes."

He paused.

" Yes?"

" Well, father, that's one of my difficulties. I've ruined my wife, she tells me, by... by becoming a Catholic. She has no sympathy with my views." (His face twitched grotesquely once or twice.) " And... and yet it seems

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I shall have to live on her writings, and... and on the little money she has."

Father Hilary drew a breath, and remained motionless, staring at the fire.

Father Hilary was still quite a young man, but he had that extraordinary quickness of intuition that so often comes to those who have sifted themselves to the very bottom of their souls. If a man has no reserves towards himself, he frequently finds that others have no secrets towards him.

This man had come to him a couple of months before; and in a very short time he had learned to what type he belonged — to the clumsy, slow, sensitive, obstinate type, whose sense of duty is their sole motived Little by little, too, he had learned some of the circumstances in which this man was placed, the really extraordinary difficulties he would have to face, and the astonishing heroism with which he would face them.... And now he suddenly perceived that the difficulties were ten times greater than he had dreamed, and that this dull man had borne them in silence, and would have continued so to bear them, had he not been forced to tell them at last.... The priest's face grew even more tender; and for a full minute he did not speak.

" Tell me," he said at last. u I gave you four addresses to apply to. Two were scholastic agencies."

" Yes, father. They told me I was too old for their vacancies; and I had no athletics. And the lady you sent me to said that she would remember my name, but that the demand for secretaryships was very great. And Mr. Barlow, the business-man, told me that he was very sorry, but that he had no vacancy in his office.... You see my difficulty, father, don't you? I have been trying to look

Digitized by Google at it from my wife's point of view; and, of course, in one way I understand it. It's quite true that when we were married, I thought that, as a clergyman, I was justified in doing so; and that I should always he able to provide my wife at least with a home. And now you see, father — Well; it's the other way."

He spoke quite quietly and unresentfully. Father Hilary had seen only this afternoon a horse fall in Church Street, under a heavy load, and lie there, with patient, uncomplaining eyes. He remembered this, now.

And yet he dared not pour out his sympathy; for he knew perfectly that it would not be understood.

This kind of man simply was not looking for sympathy; he took his burden as an obvious and inevitable thing; he must just struggle with it; and if he fell he did not expect to be sympathized with, but, if possible, to be lifted to his feet once more and be allowed to go on pulling. If not, he must just lie there.

" I understand perfectly," said the friar as unemotionally as the other, striving to say the plain thing as he knew the other would wish. " I see that it must be very painful and difficult for you to be supported by your wife.... You say that she has no sympathy at all with Catholicism?"

" No, father. I tried to explain to her once or twice, but she would not hear me. So I followed your advice and said no more. I left one or two books about too; but she put them away at once."

"How have your old friends treated you?"

The bleak eyes blinked once or twice.

" They have not been very kind, father. It... it was said that I had taken to drink."

The friar smiled.

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" They haven't said you have had a fall off a bicycle, then? "

"Why, no; father. I don't ride a bicycle."

" That's all right then. The last clergyman convert I had was supposed to have injured his brain by a fall. Unfortunately, it was quite true that he had had one. You see, they must say something, mustn't they? 99

A glimmer of a pained smile went over Mr. Main's face and passed again.

" Are you still in your old lodgings? 99 asked the priest.

"No, father; the rent was too high. We live in two rooms now, in Chelsea. I will leave you my address before I go. My wife is hard at work on another book, too; she tells me."

Again the whole vision broadened and deepened before the priest's mind. He saw the miserable household of two — the snarling, reproachful, clever wife, that would not listen; the desperate shifts they were put to; the dull honest heroic man who had followed his conscience exactly at the most inconvenient moment conceivable. And he perceived too that there was very little hope that the circumstances could ever be otherwise. Who in the world would take a personal interest in a man like this? And himself — what could he do for him? He sighed.

" Mr. Main," he said, " I simply don't know what to suggest. But I want to say this..."

He hesitated.

" Yes, father?" said the patient voice.

An uncontrollable emotion of pity seized the friar's heart, at the sound of the voice, and at the sight of the long solemn face that looked at him.

" Mr. Main," he said, " Christ is laying His Cross on you — It is a great honour "

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There was a pause. He could not go on.

" Thank you, father," said the patient voice. " I will try to remember what you say. I have tried to think it was that."

It seemed to Mr. Main, as he walked southwards towards Chelsea, that he was being on the whole very prompt and businesslike. He had done all the things recommended to him, and regarded them as so many steps towards success.

A man cannot be refused for ever.... Well; he had got through half a dozen of the failures: that was half a dozen steps towards victory.

Meanwhile his present life had to be borne; and it was not very easy. It seemed to him singularly painful that he should have to live on the proceeds of a book of which he entirely disapproved; and yet it seemed that this would be inevitable within a very few weeks. He had opened the book once, covertly, when his wife had been out; and had closed it again more horrified than ever, yet more at his own sense of guilt than at anything he had seen.

His rooms were in a little lane off Beaufort Street; and on his way he turned in to the little bare French chapel for a few minutes. A dozen candles in white-painted stocks rose above the poor altar; and beside two shrouded kneeling figures beyond the screen rose two more. In the midst of the candlesticks above glimmered a white disc in a gold frame....

When he came out again, he had an idea; and the prospect quickened his steps a little. He had not yet heard from the boy who had once consulted him on spiritual matters — the boy whose own convictions had perhaps hastened him in his own resolve. Mr. Main had

Digitized by Google suffered from what some people call " Roman fever " for a considerable time before Percy had been to see him; he had been tormented, that is to say, with the doubt as to whether the Roman Church were not the one and only Church; and Percy's visit to him in order to speak on this very point had been one, at least, of the goads that had driven him to action. He remembered often in these days the circumstances under which that doubt had first come to him — years ago, soon after his ordination to the ministry. It was a tiny incident, wholly insignificant in itself — simply his suddenly calling upon a new family in his district and finding the priest there. It was nothing that had been said; the priest had been courteous and begged him to sit down; and he had done so, in confusion. And then, in the five or ten minutes that followed he had been amazed by the relations that appeared to prevail between this curious clergyman — (the first priest he had ever spoken with) — and those radiant ramshackle Irish. There was not the faintest touch of that air of constraint which he himself regarded as inevitable between a minister and his people; and yet there was a reverence, coupled with this extraordinary familiarity, of which he had known nothing in his own experience. That had been absolutely all; yet it had startled him. He had wondered what the secret was.

Well; all that was long passed now. Meantime here were other problems to be solved. Why then, he asked himself, should he not write to Percy, announce his own conversion, and at the end — perhaps in a postscript — inquire whether there were any prospect for him of work in the cocoa-business. It could do no harm; it might conceivably lead to something — more especially as the thought had come to him just now during his prayers....

He determined to try.

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A smell of oil greeted him as he pushed open the door of the sitting-room; and he saw his wife's back at the little writing-table between the fireplace and the window; an ill-trimmed lamp stood on the corner of the mantelpiece. She was writing.

" Well, my dear? " he said as he closed the door.

She turned round, her face vacant with thought; a pen was poised in her fingers. Her brows closed down disagreeably. She jerked her head towards the table.

" I've had supper," she said. " You're late."

Then she turned back to her writing.

He took off his coat and hung it on the door-peg with his hat, and propped his umbrella in the corner: it slid down at once and crashed to the floor. The woman turned with a swift hiss of displeasure.

" I wish you could be more quiet," she said.

" I'm sorry, my dear. Are you writing? "

" Looks like it," she said.

" May... may I know what it is? " he said tactlessly, with the best intentions. (He had not even now learned that silence is the best treatment for overstrained nerves.)

" I'm afraid you wouldn't approve," she said icily, still with her back to him. " I've begun my new book at last."

He said nothing. Her mood was apparent even to him. He made a careful sign of the cross, glad that she was not looking at him, and sat down to the cold meat and cheese that was laid with a few plates and a tumbler at the central table. The position of the lamp was excessively inconvenient; but he dared not remonstrate.

It was a typically dismal room of the lodging-house type. There were disused gas-chandeliers, trimmed with pink paper, on either side of the spotted gilt framed

Digitized by Google looking-glass that crowned the mantelshelf. The mantelshelf itself wore a kind of short petticoat of dark magenta pinked at the edges and embroidered with a yellow wreath-There were three or four oil-pictures on the walls, representing snow-mountains at sunset, and waterfalls. Tall rep curtains, depending from a gilt tin cornice, shrouded the windows: and the opposite wall was chiefly occupied by immense folding doors of deal painted to represent walnut: these divided the room from the bedroom at the back. There was a set of horsehair furniture, with antimacassars pinned on the backs of the two armchairs.

He had finished supper, and still sat brooding over his plan of writing to Percy, before she moved or spoke again. Then she pushed back her chair suddenly and came and stood by the Are. He turned and was astonished to see a kind of friendliness in her dark eyes; but her face looked white and pinched.

" Well, old boy," she said; " had a good supper? 99

His own face lifted a little with pleasure.

" Excellent, thanks. All I wanted, anyhow.... How's the book?"

Her eyes contracted and then lightened again.

" It's going," she said. " Pull your chair up to the fire, and talk to me."

These sudden moods came on her sometimes; and they were as welcome to him as sunshine. Each time he hoped that it was to be permanent; each time she relapsed again sooner or later into her nervous bitterness. But he continued to hope.

He wheeled his chair round now, and put his feet on the fender. She continued to stand over him, leaning on the mantelpiece.

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" Well, my dear," he said, " I've been to Father Hilary again. He'll write to me later, I think. But he hasn't any more suggestions just now."

She moved suddenly to the armchair that was on the further side of the fire.

" Tell me about Father Hilary," she said. " All about him — what he looks like: what time he gets up in the morning, what he has for breakfast, what he does all day. All about him."

She nestled down into the slippery lap of the chair, and stared at him.

A great flush of pleasure swept over him. It was the first time she had ever invited information of the kind; and in a minute or two later he was in full career. He described all that he had seen of the friar, the parlour, the monastery, the church: he attempted to sketch the Religious Life to her so far as he understood it.

"Tell me some more," she said; and he saw her blackeyes gleam in the firelight.

" My dear, I know no more."

"Well, tell me some more about your Church. Did you go anywhere else after seeing him? " He hesitated.

" Well, I went into the French chapel just now "

" Ah! tell me about that. Could I go there too? "

"Certainly, my dear. The doors are open all day. They have — " he hesitated — "they have Perpetual Exposition there, you know."

" Perpetual what? "

He repeated it. And then he tried to tell something of what it signified.. •. He was overcome with pleasure. It seemed to him an astonishing answer to his prayers that she should so question him. She listened in silence — intent and attentive....

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" That's all?" she said.

" That's all I could say in a few minutes, my darling; but "

Then she jumped up; and the terrible elfish light which he knew so well — indescribably terrible and pathetic in this faded thin woman — shone in her eyes. She clapped her hands slightly.

"That's just what I wanted/' she said. "Just what I wanted."

" My dear, why do you want "

" Why, for my book, of course," she said. " It's going to be about all that kind of thing."

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