Under False Pretences: A Novel

by Adeline Sergeant

The Prior was an austere man, but not devoid of compassion, nor even of sympathy. He received Dino with no relaxation of his rather grim features, but told him to eat and drink before speaking. "I will not talk to you fasting," he said; and Dino felt conscious of some touch of compassion in the old man's eyes as he looked at him.

Dino sat, therefore, and tried to eat and drink, but the effort was almost in vain. When he had swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread and water mixed with a little wine, which was all that he could touch, he stood up in token that he was ready for the Prior's questions; and Father Cristoforo, who had meanwhile been walking up and down the room with a restless air, at once stopped short and began to speak.

Let it be remembered that Dino felt towards this rugged-faced, stern-voiced priest as loving as a son feels towards a wise father. His affections were strong; and he had few objects on which to expend them. The Prior's anger meant to him not merely the displeasure of one in authority, but the loss of a love which had shielded and enveloped him ever since he came to the monastery-school when he was ten years old. He seemed to have an absolute need of it; without it, life was impossible to go on.

Father Cristoforo was not without visitings of the same sort of feeling; but he allowed no trace of such soft-heartedness to appear as he put Dino through a searching examination concerning the way in which he had spent his time in England. Dino answered his questions fully and clearly: he had nothing that he wished to hide. Even the Prior could not accuse him of a wish to excuse himself. He told the story of his interview with Hugo, of the dinner, of Hugo's attack upon him, and of his sojourn in the hospital, where Brian had sought him out and convinced him (without knowing that he was doing so) of his innocence with respect to Hugo's plot. Then came the story of his intercourse with Brian, his discovery that Brian's happiness hinged upon his love for Elizabeth Murray, and his attempts to unravel the very tangled skein of his friend's fortunes. Mr. Brett's opinion of the case, Brian's letter to Mrs. Luttrell, Dino's own visit to Scotland, with its varied effects, including the final destruction of the papers—all this was quietly and fully detailed, with an occasional interruption only from Padre Cristoforo in the shape of a question or a muttered comment. And when the whole story was told the Prior spoke.

Everything that Dino had done was, of course, wrong. He ought never to have seen Hugo, or dined with him: he ought to have gone to Father Connolly, the priest to whose care he had been recommended, as soon as he came out of hospital: he ought never to have interfered in Brian's love affairs, nor gone to Scotland, nor sought to impose conditions on Mrs. Luttrell, nor, in short, done any of the thousand and one things that he had done. As for the destruction of the papers, it was a point on which he (Father Cristoforo) hardly dared, he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, to touch. The base ingratitude, the unfaithfulness to the interests of the Church, the presumption, the pride, the wilfulness, manifested in that action, transcended all his powers of reprobation. The matter must be referred to a higher authority than his. And so forth. And every word he said was like a dagger planted in Dino's breast.

As for his desire to be a monk, the Prior repudiated the notion with contempt. Dino Vasari a monk, after this lapse from obedience and humility? He was not fit to do the humblest work of the lowest servant of those who lived by the altar. He had not even shown common penitence for his sin. Let him do that: let him humble himself: let him sit in dust and ashes, metaphorically speaking: and then, by-and-bye, the Church might open her arms to him, and listen to the voice of his prayer. But now—Father Cristoforo declined even to hear any formal confession: his pupil must wait and prepare himself, before he was fit for the sacrament of penance.

To Dino, this was a hard sentence. He did not know that the Prior was secretly much better satisfied with his submissive state of mind than he chose to allow, or that he had made up his mind to relax his severity on the morrow. Just for this one night the Prior had resolved to be stern and harsh. "I will make him eat dust," he said to himself, out of his real vexation and disappointment, as he looked vengefully at Dino, who was lying face downwards on the ground, weeping with all the self-abandonment of his nature. "He must never rebel again." The Prior knew that his measures were generally effectual: he meant to take strong ones now.

"There is something more in it that I can understand," he murmured to himself, presently, after he had taken a few turns up and down the room. He halted beside Dino's prostrate form, and looked down upon it with a hidden gentleness shining out of his deep-set eyes. But he would not speak gently. "You have not told me all," he said. "Rise: let me see your face."

Dino struggled to his knees, and, after a moment's hesitation, dropped his hands to his sides.

"What else have you to tell me?" said the priest, fixing his eyes on the young man's face, as if he could read the secrets of his soul.