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Updated: July 19, 2025
The priest exchanged a few words in a low voice with one of the servants who had leapt down from the box, and then turning to Vellacott he said in a curt manner "Follow me, please." The Englishman obeyed, and leaving the road they turned along a broad pathway running at the side of the water. Christian noticed that they were going upstream.
The mention of his name possessed a new suggestion: and all this, forsooth, because Christian Vellacott opined that the benevolent old face was known to him. She began to entertain exaggerated ideas concerning the young journalist's thoughts and motives.
He knew this Vicomte d'Audierne by reputation; he wished to hear more of him; and so he feigned ignorance listening. "What has he written about?" inquired Hilda. "To ask if he may come and see us. I suppose he means to come and stay." Vellacott looked what the French call "contraried." "When?" asked the girl. "On Monday week." And then Mrs. Carew turned to her other letters.
In his superficial way, Christian Vellacott had studied men as well as letters, and he was not ignorant of the influence exercised over the human mind by such trifling circumstances as moonshine upon placid water, distant music, the solemn hush of eventide, or the subtle odour of a beloved flower.
He did not know that its power had affected Rene Drucquer, and that some reflection of it had even touched the self-contained Provincial that it was even now making this old sub-prior talk more openly than was prudent or wise. He happened to be taking the question from a very different point of view. Day by day Christian Vellacott recovered strength.
"In teaching I have learnt." Vellacott merely nodded his head. "Do you know why I sent for you?" continued the missionary. "No." "I sent for you in order to tell you that I burnt that letter at Audierne." "I came to that conclusion, for it never arrived." "I want you to forgive me." Vellacott laughed. "I never thought of it again," he replied heartily. The priest was looking keenly at him.
Once inside he closed the door without unnecessary sound and stood for some moments in the dark little entrance-hall, apparently listening. Presently a voice broke the silence of the house. A querulous, high-pitched voice, quavering with the palsy of extreme age. The sound of it was no new thing for Christian Vellacott. To-night his lips gave a little twist of pain as he heard it.
Perhaps he read the Englishman's character totally wrong, although his experience of men must have been very great; or perhaps he really wished to conciliate him, and took this first step with the graceful delicacy of his nation, with a view to following it up. With a conventional word of thanks, Vellacott took the pear and set it down upon the bench at his side.
Only ten hours earlier her nephew had bid her farewell for the day. Christian began an explanation in a weary, mechanical way, like an actor tired of the part assigned to him, but the old ladies would not listen. Aunt Hester interrupted him promptly. "Your shallow excuses are wasted on us, Nephew Vellacott.
It was many years later that Christian Vellacott found himself in the presence of the Angel of Death again. A telegram from Havre was one day handed to him in the room at the back of the tall house in the Strand, and the result was that he crossed from Southampton to Havre that same night.
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