‘But will this father, as you call him, see my face?’
‘Oh, no; he sits behind a grating and you seem to be quite alone with God. You must put your mouth close to the grating and whisper low, but he will hear every word you say. And then the happiness of absolution! You won’t know yourself afterwards. I feel to-day as if I could dance and sing.’
‘Thank you, thank you, but I only asked for curiosity. You are very good to have told me so much. Good-afternoon!’
And, raising his hat to her, Hindes went on his way. He had not meant to take advantage of what he had heard, but somehow, whenever he went out, his feet seemed drawn to the same little church, until it became quite a habit of his to go and sit there and watch the penitents. And one day, almost before he knew what he was doing, he had lifted the baize curtain of one of the confessionals and walked inside.
CHAPTER V.
Frederick Walcheren had passed through his novitiate, and been ordained. The die was cast. He was a priest. At first his duties were much the same as they had been during his stay in college, with the exception of ministering at the Mass. But, as he settled down into his new position, they became more various. The church to which he was attached was a very small one, belonging to his own sect of the Servite fathers. It had only two priests attached to it, one of whom was presently bound on a mission to the East. When he left, Frederick Walcheren (or Father Walcheren as we must henceforward term him) was to take his place. The novice entered on his new sphere of action, dully, almost sullenly. He knew he was unfit for the office he had undertaken, and was mad with himself for not having had more moral courage than to accept it, and more moral fortitude to brave the sneers, or the reproaches which would have accompanied his relinquishment of the sacred office he had once believed himself able and willing to fill. As he glanced round at his companions during their hours of privacy, and read the indifference on one face, the weariness on another, the melancholy on a third, and listened to the stilted speech they considered it a sign of their calling to adopt, he felt like the startled novice in Gustave Dore’s famous picture, who has his eyes opened all at once to the earthliness of his surroundings—to the truth that, Church or no Church, man’s nature is the same, and God can subdue it just as well whilst he remains in the world, perhaps better, than when he has given up the outward and visible sign of participation in it.
One of Frederick’s first duties, naturally, lay amongst the poor of his parish, and, in this department, he received a severe rebuke before long, from his superior, Father Henniker, for not adopting a more distinctly clerical form of speech when speaking with them of their various ailments and troubles. In this dilemma, Frederick had recourse to the counsel of his other priestly companion, Father Grogan.
Dennis Grogan was an Irishman, a man several years younger than Frederick Walcheren, but who had entered the ministry some time before. He was a genial, good-hearted young fellow, though somewhat unrefined, as Irish priests are apt to be, and Walcheren felt less difficulty in talking to him than to his superior.
‘Brother Grogan,’ he said one day when they found themselves, for a few rare minutes, alone and at liberty, ‘how did you feel when you first became a priest? Was it not all very strange to you?’
‘Strange!’ echoed Grogan, without raising his eyes from his missal, ‘how could that be, when my thoughts had been fixed on nothing else for years beforehand?’