CHAPTER IX

Amongst the High Priest’s many estimable qualities was this, that he got up moderately early--not officiously so. And having got up, he gave an hour to light reading or recreation of a simple character. Here the clever men as a rule leave recreation till the last thing at night--that is how it is they are often so evil-tempered first thing in the morning. Now St Armand knew this, so half-past seven saw him wandering through the cloisters. He had not slept well--in fact, he hadn’t slept at all--yet he looked none the worse for it. Had you been out in the silent streets in the dark hours of early morning, you might have seen him once more strolling down Greensward Avenue. You might have seen him, as a boy might, scaling the high wall of the near garden, surveying the country beyond. And despite his white hair and dignified appearance of age, with what a neat jump he again reached the pavement. Twenty feet! and as gracefully as one of the gods descending the steep rocks of Olympus. And with what wonderful gift of second sight must he have been possessed, for suddenly you saw him stoop--the wrinkled smile on his lips and at the corners of his eyes deepening. He touched a certain spot of the ground with the toe of his boot.

“Here’s where the little ragged rascal fell and broke his neck. Impudence, I suppose--looking into a garden of the gods. Poor little Humpty-Dumpty! How his mother screamed, I make no doubt, when they took the news to her, and ran out into the streets regardless of appearance. What a merciful dispensation it was that created women with a great capacity for making scenes!” Then he went on, the episode forgotten, and turned now toward Friar’s Court. All the blinds of the cottages were drawn--all lights out, the owners fast asleep. Except at one window, where a dim light burned behind the curtain.

“The beggar girl,” said he, and scaled the wall again, no leave asked. But he found only a consumptive child, just now sleeping restlessly--a tallow candle in a bottle keeping guard. Yet the windows were so near that it was but the work of a moment from one window to the next. The blind was down, but this was no hindrance; the window open just a little way.

“Bad practice this,” said he, smiling; “they die just the same when the time comes, open or not.” And he slipped in easily, with no humiliating contortions of the body, but a grace that never left him, creeping through holes or scaling precipices.

And Marigold lay fast asleep, contentment and healthy comfort on every limb and feature. How different from the little wasted form beyond the wall!

“A very pretty girl with a decided power of acting, if I judge rightly, and not exactly a beggar except in Alphonso’s eyes. What inhuman things these priests become! That he should let her come away so coldly yesterday, and never a word about her since. But all last night harping on Barringcourt, who surely set him the best example so far as women are concerned.”

He stayed for little more, for now the dawn was breaking on the Temple’s roof. And next you see him in the Palace cloisters, next in the sweet-scented rose-garden, the sun risen and shining down upon his shabby morning-coat. Soon he espied the High Priest sitting under a broad chestnut tree--preoccupied with nothing but his thoughts; and towards him with no great haste--if anything, more slowly--he bent his steps.

“After all, Alphonso, there is much in life to be thankful for. This garden, this fresh morning air--the flowers and birds--they make a charming paradise.”

He noticed as he spoke, for little escaped him, that the night’s rest had brought little return of health to his host’s face. He looked unusually spiritless. Yet, as one taught to respond unconsciously to the world’s salutations, he smiled as he answered:

“A charming paradise! Yes, a charming paradise! Yet the morning air, the flowers and birds can pall on one. I’ve heard them in this same garden twenty-five years. Before that in other gardens forty years. The birds sing all alike. Even the larks become monotonous.”

“Have you slept well?”

“Excellently--with a touch of nightmare.”

“An interesting nightmare?”

“One respecting my age, St Armand. There are some men who grow old and childish, imbecile. The world laughs and suffers them. There are some men grow old in heart--the head left unaffected. With them all feelings, all desires, all passions die long before the body. I spoke of it last night. I am one of those few men wearied of life. No passing weariness. The chilliness has entered to my heart. I have asked what the world could give--and it has given freely, generously. Now, still young, comparatively young, a sudden languor has caught me under this outward shell of routine; it saps my energy, my spirits--turns the gay brightness of this sky to greyness, makes every golden hue the veriest dross. It is not discontent--it is that I have _lived_, and left the power of feeling far behind me.”

“Was that your nightmare?”

“No! That is my life--nightmare enough when one has realised it. My dream was this; I tell it for the humour it contains. Last night I saw two portraits, one myself--lifeless, shadowy, frozen ice where blood should flow, incapable of motion--and underneath, these words in plainest lettering, ‘Aged 65.’ And the other was that of Barringcourt, and there came the rub. He was as I last saw him twenty-five years ago--if anything, more full of life. At that age when all the graces of youth meet the more lasting ones, and neither are obscured. The blood ran in his veins, sparkling like that ruby ring upon your finger. He had power to feel, to enjoy, to fight and battle life for the pure pleasure, as it were just beginning--whilst I---- And underneath in plainest lettering, the words ‘not registered.’ A feeling of envy like the stab of a knife ran through my icy veins, pricking like crystal needles. The only life I felt was pain--pain of the lower order. And with it I awoke suddenly, feeling a presence in the vast empty room. But there was nothing. The grey, uninteresting dawn was struggling through the blinds--the deadening treadmill starting once again.” He paused, and a silence followed. What matter if the birds sing and the sun shines to the frozen-hearted?

At last St Armand spoke in a low, musical, sympathetic voice.

“You’ve lived too hard, too strenuously.” His mocking eyes were fixed upon the ground, his tongue lied gracefully. “To remain young you need light recreation. I scarcely wonder if your dream of Barringcourt is true. He essentially took life easy if all the tales one hears of him are true. Did not shut himself up in a monastery, lived for himself as well as others, was never the slave of appointments and meetings and ranting faddists, combined business and pleasure to an exact degree.”

How truly he spoke, how very truly, and only once at the end did the big black eyes turn on his listener--then, for the moment only. What a subtle, persuasive note ran in the simple words spoken so quietly.

“You are right. He did all this, and made a toil of nothing. But he had wealth and no ambition.” (A smile flickered on St Armand’s lips.) “Life brought him all he wanted easily. With me it was one long struggle--and always has been--a long successful struggle.”

“And what were your ambitions, may I ask?--if the question is not impertinent.”

“To be what I am. The head of our Church--with power, and a name known throughout the nation. The power is mine. Our Church is in better order than for centuries--idle priests are at a discount. We are making converts in all lands, and wealth pours in upon us from all sides. All this is something. It was something, at least, till the greater something came and robbed me of my power to appreciate it.”

“You are suffering from overwork; I should advise a holiday. It will bring back all the old zest of living, and renewed energy.”

But the High Priest shook his head.

“I have less heart for a holiday than my work. Holidays belong essentially to youth--to build light castles in the air. Believe me, the little holidays I enjoy are these chats in leisure moments, held with you.”

But St Armand shook his head, though he smiled.

“I am much older than you. Next year I celebrate my eightieth birthday. Yet I have zest and life enough, I think, even to tire out some of the young. Believe me, you’re moping; your illness is more of the spirit than the flesh. You’re jaded, overworked, run down.”

“If I admit it, what’s the cure?”

St Armand leaned forward, his finger-tips touching, the sun shining on his white hair and noble head.

“Recreation, physical exercise. You Priests imbibe too much spirit. It isn’t good for you in too large quantities. Animals can’t stand it.” His tone was serious, even earnest, so that the High Priest, somewhat dumfounded, sat still.

“Spirit and body together are all right, but they must be exactly balanced. Let one slide down the scale ever so little, and the havoc begins. Now, it seems to me, in your life especially the body has been left out of account altogether. You have been brought up in an atmosphere so spiritual, that it has become unhealthy.”

“If you mean I have given my life to the Serpent, you are right; but I have not felt the fleshly sacrifice such a great strain upon me.”

“No, I hardly thought you would. It has been comparatively easy for you to sacrifice to your god. It is for all great men, else there would never be any. But tell me this, Alphonso--and I ask it as a friend, with no idle prying into your private life--has it ever struck you lately in these hours of depression that come upon you, that there has always been one icy gap in your life that has tainted all the rest, and changed it into what it is?”

“There is in every man’s who feels as I feel. I may have felt the gap. It is not so easy to account for it.”

“Supposing that cold place had been warmed by a wife you loved, and children, the evil might never have spread.”

The High Priest shrugged his shoulders.

“I weighed all that when I stood for the Priestship. I had weighed it all before. I never met a woman for whom I entertained any serious affection.”

“And now you are too old.”

“Now it is against the Law of the Temple.”

“For a wife, yes. I shouldn’t advise a wife at your age.”

“St Armand! You forget my position.”

“It is too spiritual--and, on the other hand, you take me to be too fleshly. There is no law forbidding you to make a friend of a woman.”

“The situation would be compromising. I am not a great advocate of the Platonic friendship. Besides, where is the intellectual woman I am to treat as a friend? She would bore me with her pedantry in five minutes. That cure is out of it altogether.”

“You don’t need an intellectual woman. For intellect go to the men. You want a woman to amuse you.”

“Were my blood not so cold that would sound dangerous. I am afraid the situation would be compromising.”

“You wish to remain young? To keep the old zest of life? How has Barringcourt done it?”

“I don’t know that he has, except in my dream.”

“I think somehow you will find it true.”

“Then he has done it by never caring, never worrying, never drudging, as I have had to do.”

“And women? Surely you will allow them some little share in this successful living?”

“He was even less fond of women than I.”

“Ah yes--‘women.’ I never advocate women to any man. You want some one to amuse you. Make a study of a life entirely unlike your own--the simpler the life, the more innocent, the better. You say women have never interested you--but here and there, just where you wouldn’t expect it, there are very interesting specimens of womankind. Your age and position are safeguards sufficient against any deeper feeling. Or, did you ever feel it, you are strong enough to resist temptation.”

Thus he spoke, plausibly and hollow--the High Priest, with half-closed eyes, listening the persuasive voice. How easy it all sounded! What would he not give to get back his old powers! How sympathetic St Armand was! And he so old--must from experience surely speak the truth, for his preservation and love of life were wonderful and quite intact.

“Your proposition is certainly novel--to one of my life at least. I am thinking of the families round--the lady who has most tastes in common with myself.”

St Armand noticed his mind was not exactly travelling where he wished it, but was too wise to speak. But he said, speaking softly, the tone in his voice almost a command:

“She must be young.”

“Impossible. The younger generation are frightened of me. They speak to me in monosyllables only.”

“For all that, she must be young. You will understand some day what I mean, Alphonso. A young woman is the most wonderful preservative of life a man can have. Do not misunderstand me. The relationship need not be a very near one; the majority of men are kept young by their own children--you have none.”

Then suddenly Alphonso got up.

“I must be going. I will see you again at breakfast. Thank you for your sympathy and well-meant advice.”

He moved away with his customary stately tread, and St Armand looked after him.

“Truly I am taking Mr Barringcourt’s place,” said he, “and turning Father Confessor to the great High Priest. So he is going to begin to look out for some one in his own position, for a woman friend. Some stout dowager-duchess or philanthropic princess--highly respectable, that all the world will approve. Well, the dowager-duchesses and the princesses might amuse _me_, but I’m afraid he’ll hardly find them funny enough--too like himself, inclined to be pompous. However, I must keep to the principle of ‘Suggestion’ with him--keep him from seeing what he is running his head into--the girl too.”

And the High Priest went away to matins, and thought calmly and seriously about the friendship with a woman--innocently too, with the marvellous self-confidence in temptation of some of the spiritually great. After all, women were sympathetic and kindly--there was something in the plan, but then he didn’t understand the plan, he only felt it.