"No, no, wait a bit; let me finish what I've got to say, now I've begun. I've had it on my mind for some time; I meant to save it up for when I got out, but as it seems I shan't have the chance then I'll do it now. You've been very decent to me, and you've kept me going through a rather beastly time, and I don't forget that, and I don't want to let it all lapse, and I rather think you don't either; but I won't be patronized. I may be in prison, but I've done nothing I'm ashamed of, and I do not consider myself disgraced. Got that?" The words were not bluff, they were plain truth; very telling was his vigorous independence. "Well, then, if I pay you deference here it's because discipline has to be maintained, and incidentally because I should get it hot if I didn't. For that reason, and for no other; certainly not because I feel deferential. Deferential! You wait till you've cut your wisdom teeth, my son, before you start preaching to me. There; I've done. You can report me if you like—sir."
Roche had colored up; he looked very haughty and very angry. "I think you forget yourself," he began, and then his mobile face changed. "I beg your pardon, Gardiner; you are perfectly right. I have no business to patronize you. I don't mean to do it; but it's the more or less official manner, and one slips into it—to tell the truth, that's one reason why I want to get away."
"Oh, that's all right, lots of parsons have a turn for magniloquence," said Gardiner, with a laugh, "and if you do it again I shall tell you again, that's all. You inevitably will. And so you mean to enlist? Ho ho!" His smile broadened as he ran his eye over Roche's handsome figure. He did not say, "You won't like that, my friend," but he thought it.
"The French priests take their places in the ranks," said Roche, "why not we? I put that to my bishop. He refused to release me. One must act on one's own conscience in these matters. I am a priest, it is my duty to lead men; when peace comes, how can I expect them to follow me, if during the war I have been skulking behind my cloth here in England? I would not follow such a man. If the clergy shirk now, they will be digging the Church's grave."
"Very sound sentiments. I have an old daddy, and if he were thirty years younger—thank goodness he isn't, for he'd certainly get shot. Well, I congratulate you. Mind my finger, I'm still rather frail." Roche had wrung his hand with more fervor than discretion. "Funny beggar you are!" Gardiner added, with the laugh in his eyes that was often there when he talked to Roche. "You won't get shot. Bet you what you like you come out with the V.C.!"
"Priests don't bet."
"Privates do, though. Not that you'll stay a private. You'll be offered a commission—"
"I shan't accept it," Roche declared.
"More fool you, then, for you're just the sort they want. You lucky beggar—oh, you lucky beggar!"
The hunger of envy peeped out. Roche, at times self-absorbed and blind, had at other times an Irish quickness of perception.