Colin II: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

“Oh, once a priest, always a priest,” said Colin. “No man nor any body of men can take from you the power that has been given you of doing the great miracle at the altar.... You were a priest, Mr. Douglas: and you know that perfectly well. I’m not the least inquisitive, and I don’t want to hear why you no longer wear priest’s dress, unless you care to tell me. You hate the priesthood now, I saw that for myself the other day, and perhaps you hate that which makes a priest a priest....”

Colin summoned all that gave him his charm, and all that gave him his force.

“Aren’t you wrong not to trust me?” he said. “Hasn’t our meeting, and what I hope will be our friendship been wonderfully contrived for us?... How can I make you trust me? I am building, I may tell you, what my ancestor left undone.”

At that he saw the man’s soul leap in fire to his face, and not only without shame, but with pride, as to one who would appreciate, he told his story. Ever since he was a boy, he had been conscious of his secret love of evil just for its own sake. His own profanities horrified him, and yet below his horror there was love. Under the whip of his horror he had striven to mortify that lust for evil within his soul, and yet all the time that he tried to suppress it he looked on himself not as a sinner but as a martyr. He had taken orders in the Catholic Church, had joined an English community with vows of obedience and chastity, and the joy of sins, secret and abominable, became all the sweeter because, in the name of all that was holy, he had renounced them. He found himself like a spy in the camp of the enemy, talking their language, practising their manœuvres, and making war on the powers to which his heart’s allegiance was given. Only a few weeks ago, exposure had come, and he left England for fear of a criminal prosecution....

All this came out in gasps and jerks of speech. Sometimes there was a pause, and the pause would be succeeded by the pent, exultant torrent of what had never been told yet. At the end, Colin got up.

“I see we shall be friends,” he said. “I will show you the book I spoke to you of....”

All these things were welded together like links in a chain, the discovery of the plan of the Sanctuarium, and then of the missal, and then of the priest. Each linked on to the next. Indeed it would be an imbecile who saw in these events a mere grouping of fortuitous circumstances. And there was more, too, a chiselling and chasing of these links, decorative detail you might say....

Nino, in spite of persuasions and threats, had gone, so soon to sicken of the fever, and Colin had let it be known that he wanted a servant to take his place. There were many applicants, for it had been seen how Nino, just a barefooted boatman’s son, had become almost a signor himself with fine clothes to wear and money to spend, and the friend and companion as much as the servant of the marvellous youth rich and noble and beautiful as a god, for the sake of whom, Capri made no doubt, the English lady had popped herself over the high cliff. Among them was a young Neapolitan, employed during the summer season as waiter at one of the hotels, shrewd and monkey-like in face, some incarnation of pure animalism. Hugh Douglas was with Colin when he came up to be interviewed, and the boy made his obeisance as to a priest.

“Why do you do that?” asked Colin. “Why do you behave as if this gentleman was a priest?”

The fellow looked at him once more and smiled. When he smiled his ears moved, and Colin noticed how pointed they were.