The priest readjusted his cloak, throwing an end over his shoulder.
“Well, why don’t you go ahead?” he remarked carelessly. “I give you my word I shall never mention it. But see—you haven’t the will to do it. You yielded yourself for a moment to the absurd hallucination that your life was a complete and finished thing, but it is not; I take it upon myself, my dear Craighill, to say that it is not. There are many rough edges; the design is incomplete. You will have to wait a little, my friend. The will of God has not had its divine way with you yet.”
“The will of God!” cried Wayne, hardly knowing in his anger that he was following the priest away from the precipice; “do you think I believe any of that rot?”
“Then,” the tall priest replied, speaking brusquely, as was his way, “we will say the way of the devil, if that pleases your humour better. The devil, then, hasn’t made a very good job of you yet. He has his sense of artistic completeness, and he can hardly look upon you as one of his chefs d’œuvre. Even the devil requires time. It doesn’t strike me off-hand, from my observation of his patterns, that he’s made much headway with you. He would undoubtedly accomplish more in time; but you are not ready for his collection yet. Let’s continue our walk. We must have a good many ideas in common. In your day at St. John’s did they afflict you with roast veal every Thursday? They did in my time and it was always a trial to me. I remember——”
A light way, indeed, to treat the heroic impulse of a man ready, a moment before, to plunge into the dark; but Paul Stoddard was not without his wisdom.
He wrote a note to Paddock that night in which he said: “Craighill is a good fellow and there is hope for him. He is a man in search of his own soul and he will find it in time. Pray for him.”
The days passed. At the end of a week Wayne expected to leave; but the freedom and peace were sweet. He was enjoying a luxury of unhappiness. Christmas came, but it brought him no joy, only unhappy memories. He kept clear of the oratory, where the recitation of offices was interminable. The priests were happy souls to be able to believe in such things! Brother Azarius, the sailor, asked him to walk to the village for the mail after the midday meal, which was amplified into a feast by gifts from the farmers of the valley. A novel Christmas this, for Wayne Craighill, dining with priests in a mountain monastery, but they were cheerful, wholesome fellows and he liked their talk, which was utterly unaffected and interesting. He set out with Brother Azarius for the village in the valley soon after dinner. When the mail-bag was handed out at the general store Wayne felt a pang of homesickness—his first—at beholding this tie between the quiet hills and the throbbing world below. He had sent no message of any kind to Fanny, who had always included him in the Christmas celebrations at her house; she was still South when he left and unless Wingfield had told her, she did not know his whereabouts. He wrote a telegram in the railway station wishing her and her household a merry Christmas. “Don’t trouble about me; I am perfectly well.”
He began a message to his father, paused uncertainly when he had written the address, and tore it up, the old resentment on fire again. He left the station but paused in the highway and went back. “Best wishes for a happy Christmas,” he wrote to Jean at her boarding-house address. He could not for the life of him add a word to this, though he wasted half a dozen blanks in futile trials, while Brother Azarius tramped up and down the station platform. Poor Wayne! Too bad life isn’t all spelled out in the nursery picture books that we might know the worst at the beginning and be done with it! It was well that Brother Azarius had that capital story of his shipwreck off Martinique up his sleeve for emergencies like this or Wayne might have found the memory of Jean’s hand on his cheek too much for him—that dear, brave hand that had known labour!
The brothers cut their own fuel and the next morning he found an axe and plunged into the snowy wood. The priests had scattered widely and only two remained at the house. Stoddard had gone West to be absent a month, but Wayne was beginning to enjoy his security and isolation.