Читать книгу Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century - G. J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Of all armies on earth, there is none with a discipline so perfect as exists in the ranks of the Jesuits. No similar brotherhood embraces so extensive a scheme; no society spreads its ramifications so wide and deep. The soldier who enlists under that black banner abandons at once and for ever his own affections, his own opinions, his own responsibilities; nay, his very identity becomes fused in the general organisation of his order. Florian de St. Croix, with his warm, impulsive disposition, his tendency to self-sacrifice, and his romantic temperament, had better have hanged round his neck any other millstone than this.

As he walked rapidly down a long perspective of paved road, between two lofty rows of poplars, his head bent low, his hands clenched, his lips muttering, and his swift unequal strides denoting both impetuosity and agitation, he seemed strangely and sadly altered from the bright enthusiastic youth who sat with Abbé Malletort under the limes at Versailles.

His very name had been put off, with every other association that could connect the past life of the layman with the future labours of the priest. He was known as Brother Ambrose now in the muster-rolls of the order; though, out of it, he was still addressed as Florian by his former friends. It was supposed, perhaps, in the wisdom of his superiors, that the devoted knight could fight best under a plain shield on which no achievements might ever be emblazoned, but which, in theory at least, was to be preserved pure and stainless, until he was carried home on it from his last field.

For Florian, indeed, the battle had already commenced. He was fighting it now, fiercely, under that smiling summer sky, between those fragrant meadows, fringed with flowering hedges, amongst the clustering orchards and smiling farms, the green nooks, the gleaming waters, and the free, fresh range of wooded hill and dale in pleasant Normandy. Little thought the buxom peasant-woman, with her clean white cap, long earrings, and handsome weather-beaten face, as she crossed herself in passing, and humbly received the muttered benediction—how much of war was in his breast who proffered peace to her and hers; or the prosperous farmer riding by on his stamping grey stallion, with tail tied up, broad, well-fed back, huge brass-bound saddle, and red-fronted bridle—how enviable was his own contented ignorance compared with the learning and imagination and aspirations running riot in the brain of that wan hurrying priest. The fat curé, thinking of his dinner, his duties, and the stone-fruit ripening on his wall, greeted him with professional friendliness, tempered by profound respect; for in his person he beheld the principle of self-devotion which constitutes the advance, the vanguard, the very forlorn hope of an army in which he felt himself a mere suttler or camp-follower at the best; but his sleep that afternoon over a bottle of light wine in his leafy arbour would have been none the sounder could he have known the horror of doubt and darkness that weighed like lead on his brother’s spirit—the fears, the self-reproaches, the anxieties that tore at his brother’s heart.

Yet the same sun was shining on them all; the same glorious landscape of wood and water, waving corn and laughing upland—gold, and silver, and blue, and green, and purple—spread out for their enjoyment; the same wild-flowers blooming, the same wild-birds carolling, to delight their senses; the same heaven looking down in tender pity on the wilful blindness and reckless self-torture of mankind.

Florian had entered the order, believing that in so doing he adopted the noblest career of chivalry below, to end in the proudest triumph of victory above. Like the crusaders of the Middle Ages, he turned to his profession, and beheld in it a means of ambition, excitement, influence over his fellow-men, purchased—not at the sacrifice—but in the salvation of his soul. Like them, he was to have the best of it both for earth and heaven; like them, he was to submit to labour, privation, all the harassing exigencies of warfare; but, like them, he was upheld by the consciousness of power which springs from discipline and cohesion, by an unselfish sentiment of professional pride, not more peculiar to the soldier than the priest.

He took the vows of obedience—the blind, unreasoning, unhesitating obedience exacted by the order—with a thrill of exultation. As a Jesuit, he must henceforth know neither friendship nor affection; neither sentiment, passion, nor self-regard. His brain must be always clear, his eye keen, his hand ready; but brain must think, eye see, and hand strike only in conformity with the will of a superior. He was to preserve every faculty of nature except volition. He was to become a galvanised corpse rather than a living man.

And now these hideous vows, this impossible obedience, must be put to the test. Like the demoniacs of old, he writhed in torture as he walked. It seemed that the evil spirit rent and tore the man because it could not come out of him.

He was hurrying on foot to the convent of our Lady of Succour. He knew every stone in that paved road as he knew the fingers on his own hand. His superior had lately installed him confessor to the establishment; him, young, handsome, impressionable, with his dark eyes and his loving smile. There was another confessor, too, a stout old man, with a rosy face and a kind heart, altogether, as it would seem, a far more judicious appointment; but Florian’s duties brought him little in contact with the nuns and lay amongst the young ladies, several of whom were daughters of noble families, receiving their education in a pension attached to the convent.

Of these, Brother Ambrose had been specially enjoined to turn his attention to Mademoiselle de Montmirail; to obtain all the influence in his power over the frank, innocent mind of that engaging girl; to win her affections as much as possible from earthly vanities, to which, as she was on the verge of womanhood, it is probable she was not disinclined; and to lead her gradually into a train of thought that might at last bring her home to the bosom of the Church as a nun. That Church would at the same time protect her from temptation, by relieving her of the earthly dross with which she would be encumbered, and which would pass into its holy keeping the day the heiress should assume the black veil.

Besides the reversion of her mother’s wealth, she would inherit considerable property of her own when she came of age. Had it been otherwise, it is possible the same interest might not have been shown for the insurance of her salvation, and Brother Ambrose might have been making fires of camel’s dung in Tartary, or bearing witness by martyrdom in Morocco, instead of hurrying through the shade of those quivering poplars in homely, happy Normandy.

But as he approached the convent of our Lady of Succour, Brother Ambrose—or Florian, as we shall call him for the present—reduced his walk to a much slower step, and became conscious of a hot feeling about his eyes, a cold moisture in the palms of his hands, that had no connection with theology, polemics, or the usual duties of a priest. There are proverbs used in the world, such as “Tit-for-tat;” “The biter bit;” “Go for wool, and come back shorn,” which are applicable to ecclesiastics as to laymen. It is no safer to play with edged tools in a convent than in a ball-room, and it is a matter of the merest hazard who shall get the best of an encounter in which the talents and education of a clever but susceptible man are pitted against the bright looks and fresh roses of girlhood at eighteen.

Florian had been enjoined to use every effort for the subjugation of Mademoiselle de Montmirail. He was to be restricted by no considerations such as hamper the proceedings of ordinary minds, for was not this one of the fundamental principles of his order—“It is lawful to do evil that good may come”? He had not, indeed, swallowed this maxim without considerable repulsion, so utterly at variance, as it seemed, not only with reason, but with that instinctive sentiment of right which is often a surer guide than even reason itself; but he had been convinced against his will by those under whose feet he had chosen to place his neck, and had at last brought his opinions, if not his feelings, to the necessary state of control. A few interviews with Mademoiselle de Montmirail in the cool dark convent parlour—a few calm, still evenings in the quiet convent garden, under the shade of the trellised beeches, amidst the fragrance of the flower-beds and the heavy perfume of the syringa, waiting for the rustle of that white dress along the gravel-walk—a few questions and misgivings from the penitent—a few phrases of advice or encouragement from the priest—and Florian found himself wildly, hopelessly, wickedly in love with the girl whom it was his duty, his sacred duty on which his soul’s salvation depended, to persuade, or lure, or force into a cloister. These things come by degrees. No man can complain that timely warning is not given him; yet the steps are so gradual, so easy, so imperceptible, by which he descends into the pleasant flood, that it is only when his footing is lost he becomes really aware of danger, or knows he is sentenced, and must swim about in it till he drowns.

Florian’s task was to obtain influence over the girl. Thus he salved his conscience till it was too late, and thus excused himself for the eagerness with which he caught every glance of her eye and drank in every tone of her voice. It was only when his own looks fell before hers, when he trembled and turned pale at the sound of her step—when her image—serene, and fair, and gracious—rose between him and the Cross at which he knelt, that he knew his peril, his weakness and his sin.

But it was too late then; though he wrestled with the phantom, it overcame him time by time. Prostrate, bleeding, vanquished, he would confess with something of the bitterness of spirit and plaintive proud self-sacrifice of a lost angel, that he had given his soul to Cerise and did not grudge her the gift.

Not even though she refused to love him in return. Perhaps, after all, this was the poisoned edge of the weapon—the bitter drop in the cup; and yet had it been otherwise, it may be the young Jesuit could have found strength to conquer his infatuation, self-sacrifice, to give up freely that which was freely his own.

It was not so, however. The very innocence that guarded the girl, while it lured him irresistibly to destruction, was the most insurmountable barrier in his path; and so he hovered on, hoping that which he dared not realise—wishing for all he felt he would yet be unwilling to accept; striving for a prize unspeakably precious, though, perhaps I should say, because impossible of attainment, and which, even if he could win it, he might not wear it so much as an hour. No wonder his heart beat and his breath came quick, while he passed with stealthy gait into the convent garden, a pitfall for the feet that walked in innocence—a black sheep in a stainless flock—a leper where all the rest were clean.

But Cerise, radiant in her white dress, crossed the sunny lawn and came down the accustomed path with more than their usual light shining in her blue eyes, with a fresher colour than common on her soft young cheeks. To him she had never looked so beautiful, so womanly, so attractive. The struggle had been very fierce during his solitary walk; the defeat was flagrant in proportion. He ought to have known a bitter disappointment must be in store to balance the moment of rapture in which he became conscious of her approach. Some emanation seemed to glorify the air all around her, and to warn him of her presence long before she came. To the lady-superior of the convent, to her elders and instructors, Mademoiselle de Montmirail was nothing more than a well-grown damsel, with good eyes and hair, neither more nor less frivolous and troublesome than her fellows, with much room for improvement in the matters of education, music, manners, and deportment; but to the young Jesuit she was simply—an angel.

Cerise held both hands out to her director, with a greeting so frank and cordial that it should have undeceived him on the spot. The lady-superior, from her shaded windows, might or might not be a witness to their interview, and there is no retreat perhaps of so much seclusion, yet so little privacy, as a convent garden; but Cerise did not care though nuns and lay-sisters and all overlooked her every gesture and overheard every word she spoke.

“I am so pleased!” she burst out, clapping her hands, as soon as he released them. “Wish me joy, good father! I have such happy news! My dear kind mamma! And she writes to me herself! I knew the silk that fastened it even before I saw her hand on the cover. Such good news! Oh, I am so pleased! so pleased!”

She would have danced for pure joy had she not remembered she was nearly eighteen. Also perhaps—for a girl’s heart is very pitiful—she may have had some faint shadowy conception that the news so delightful to herself would be less welcome to her companion.

He was looking at her with the admiration in his heart shining out of his deep dark eyes.

“You have not told me what your good news is, my daughter,” he observed, in a tone that made her glance into and away from his face, but that sobered the effervescence of her gaiety like a charm.

“It is a long letter from mamma!” she said, “and a whole month before I expected one. Judge if that is not charming. But, better still, I am to go back to her very soon. I am to live with her at the Hôtel Montmirail. She is fitting up my apartment already. I am to quit the convent when my quarter is out!”

He knew it was coming. There is always consciousness of a blow for a moment before it falls.

“Then you have but a few more days to remain in Normandy,” replied the young priest; and again the change in his voice arrested her attention. “My daughter, will you not regret the happy hours you have spent here, the quiet, the repose of the convent, and—and—the loving friends you leave behind?”

He glanced round while he spoke, and thought how different the white walls, the drooping branches, the lawn, the flower-beds, and the walk beneath the beeches would look when she was gone.

“Of course I shall never cease to love all those I have known here,” she answered; and her eye met his own fearlessly, while there was no tinge of sorrow such as he would have liked to detect in her voice. “But I am going home, do you see! home to my dear mamma; and I shall be in Paris, and assist at operas, and balls, and fêtes. My father! I fear, I shall like it—oh! so much!”

There remained little time for further explanations. The refectory bell was ringing, and Cerise must hurry in and present herself for her ration of fruit and chocolate; to which refreshment, indeed, she seemed more than usually inclined. Neither her surprise nor her feelings had taken away her appetite, and she received her director’s benediction with a humility respectful, edifying, and filial, as if he had been her grandfather.

“I shall perhaps not visit you at the convent again, my daughter,” he had said, revolving in his own mind a thousand schemes, a thousand impossibilities, tinged alike with fierce, bitter disappointment; and to this she had made answer meekly—

“But you will think of me very often, my father; and, oh, remember me, I entreat of you, in your prayers!”

Then Florian knew that the edifice he had taken such pains to rear was crumbling away before his eyes, because, in his anxiety to build it for his own habitation, he had laid its foundations in the sand.