“Stung! Kidnapped and smuggled into a monastery! Well, Jimmy Paddock, you have your nerve! It’s all right with me, but how about that big fellow—what is he, the abbot?—if he knew what an outlaw had got into his joint he’d probably drop me into the valley down there. Are you going to leave me here alone with nothing to do but say my prayers?”
“Sorry I’ve got to go, but I’m off to-night.”
“So you’ve brought me here to lose me! How long am I in for?”
“You can leave any time you want to and you can do as you please while you’re here, just as Stoddard told you.”
“Thank you,” mocked Wayne. “I’m going to fool you by staying.”
The novelty of his situation, the strangeness of the life of a religious house, and the quiet good fellowship of the men who gathered at the common table of the refectory, clad in their brown robes, interested Wayne in spite of himself. The brothers were all young graduates of American colleges, vigorous, manly fellows, who did not discuss religion to-night, but social and political questions just then before the world. Stoddard asked Paddock for an account of his own work at Ironstead and the minister described the general social conditions of Pittsburg, throwing out questions to bring Wayne into the talk.
Wayne’s presence was accepted as a matter of course; no particular importance attached to him as a guest, and he had not for a long time felt so wholly at ease as among these young priests, whose aims were utterly different from any idea he had ever entertained of religious work. There were only ten of them and they had assembled for a period of rest and discussion with their leader before separating to continue their work in various parts of the country immediately after Christmas. One of the brothers who particularly attracted Wayne had been a sailor. He had spent his summers sailing in coastwise ships to earn his way through college. Another had been a ranchman in Colorado and was to leave shortly for work in Montana. At the end of the meal as at the beginning they stood in their places and recited prayers, making the sign of the cross. All but Stoddard, the Superior, went about their affairs at once. He asked his guests into the library, a comfortable lounging room where they continued the talk of the table until a brother appeared to carry Paddock to the station.
Wayne rode down with them, returning to what seemed to be a deserted house; but as he stood uncertainly in the hall he heard from the little oratory the deep voice of Stoddard reciting compline. He went to the door and peered in upon the brothers at prayer. The room was quite dark and there were no lights for this service on the tiny altar. Stoddard’s voice boomed through the little chapel; the kneeling priests in the rough choir stalls responded in the antiphonals with deep, hearty voices. There was nothing spectacular or theatrical in the scene; the setting was too bare for this; and these men, Wayne reflected, were seriously commending their souls to the mercy and protection of a God in whom he did not believe. He went out into the night and followed the rough road that climbed farther into the mountains, pausing now and then, where breaks in the woodland offered clear, moonlit vistas, to gaze across the valley to the hills beyond.
In the depression following his latest plunge into the depths, while his head ached and his hands shook, a dark thought had crossed his mind and it came back upon him now. A slip on the edge of one of these iron crags and he would crash into oblivion, and that would be the end of his troubles. If Paddock had lodged him here with the idea that he might be won to a belief in religion he had made a stupid blunder. The religion of emotion might in certain circumstances have appealed to Wayne Craighill, but the religion of service as practised by Stoddard and Paddock struck him as vain and futile.
The road followed a sharp defile and the sheer depths below invited him. It would be quite decent of him to free the world of his wretched self, that had given him no joy and that had become a byword and a hissing wherever his name was known. He wondered why he had delayed so long. Life was a prison-house and the labour was hard; below, there in the snowy ravine, lay peace. He stopped abruptly by a clump of cedars, clutched them and bent over to scan the depths. He could see no bottom, and the place was so lone that they might not find him when it was over. He felt that he had never before been so wholly master of himself, and the thought steadied him; if he had ever been sane it was now, when he was about to take French leave of a dreary and unprofitable world. The moon looked down upon him coldly; the snow-clad hills were indifferent; the wind lay still, waiting for this life to slip away like a pebble into the gorge. The place was fitting; he chose his spot and made ready for the leap.