Perhaps if the boy who was now to repeat the vow that the other boy dictated had known at this juncture all that its keeping was to involve, he would have taken it all the same. Here before him lay his chosen friend, brought to the verge of that grave of which he spoke, laid low in the flower of his youth, in the pride of his strength, by the hand of him who loved him; the bright wings of his ambition clipped, the prosaic, sedentary life of a theological student unrolled before him instead of the alluring, vari-colored career of soldierly adventure, his well-loved researches in War-chemistry tabu forever by that pale, prohibitory reflection of the priestly tonsure.... Do you wonder that his will was as wax in the molding hands?
De Moulny’s Rosary, disinterred at the commencement of his wound-sickness from among the cake-crumbs and bits of flue at the bottom of his dormitory kit-locker by Sister Edouard-Antoine when searching for nightcaps, hung upon one of the iron knobs at the head of his bed.... He reached up a long gaunt arm to get it; gave the blue string of lapis-lazuli beads, with the silver Paternosters and silver-scrolled and figured Crucifix, into Hector’s hands, ... bade him, in a tone that already had something of the ecclesiastical authority, kiss the sacred Symbol and repeat the vow.
“‘I, Hector-Marie-Aymont-von Widinitz Dunoisse, solemnly swear and depose’—where did de Moulny get all the big words he knew? ... ‘swear and depose that I will never profit by one penny of the dowry of three-hundred-thousand silver thalers paid to the Prioress of the Convent of Widinitz as the dowry of my mother, the Princess Marie-Bathilde von Widinitz, otherwise Dunoisse, in religion Sister Térèse de Saint François. So help me, Almighty God, and our Blessed Lady! Amen.’”
He kissed the Crucifix de Moulny put to his lips, and de Moulny took the oath in his turn:
“And I, Alain-Joseph-Henri-Jules de Moulny, solemnly swear to be a faithful, true, and sincere friend to Hector-Marie-Aymont-von Widinitz Dunoisse, through Life to the edge of Death, and beyond Death—if that be permitted? In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”
IX
The Crucifix was duly saluted, the Rosary hung back upon the bed-knob.
“Embrace me now, my friend,” said de Moulny, his blue eyes shining under a smooth forehead. Hector held out his hand.
“We will shake hands as English boys do. They ridicule our French way of kissing, Miss Smithwick says.”
“And we die of laughter,” said de Moulny, “when we see them hand a lady a cushion or a chair, or try to make a bow. If I had not this basket on my stomach I would get up and show you how my cousin Robert Bertham comports himself in a drawing-room. He is certainly handsome, but stiff! His backbone must be a billiard-cue, nom d’un petit bonhomme! Yet he can run and jump and row, for if he has not the grace of an athlete he has the muscles of one. He was stroke of the Eton Eight last year; they rowed against the School of Westminster in a race from Windsor Bridge to Surly and back, and beat. They have beaten them again this year, Bertham tells me in his last letter. He writes French with a spade, as M. Magne would say.”