"Vain is the help of man!" the priest retorted sternly, and with a
gesture of sublime dismissal. "I turn from you to a mightier than you!"
And, leaning his head on his hands, he covered his face.
The Archdeacon and the churchmen looked at him, and from him their scared
eyes passed to one another. Their one desire now was to be quit of the
matter, to have done with it, to escape; and one by one with the air of
whipped curs they rose to their feet, and in a hurry to be gone muttered
a word of excuse shamefacedly and got themselves out of the room. Lescot
and the printer were not slow to follow, and in less than a minute the
two strange preachers, the men from Paris, remained the only occupants of
the chamber; save, to be precise, a lean official in rusty black, who
throughout the conference had sat by the door.
Until the last shuffling footstep had ceased to sound in the still
cloister no one spoke. Then Father Pezelay looked up, and the eyes of
the two priests met in a long gaze.
"What think you?" Pezelay muttered at last.
"Wet hay," the other answered dreamily, "is slow to kindle, yet burns if
the fire be big enough. At what hour does he state his will?"
"At noon."
"In the Council Chamber?"
"It is so given out."
"It is three hundred yards from the Place Ste.-Croix and he must go
guarded," the Cure of St.-Benoist continued in the same dull fashion. "He
cannot leave many in the house with the woman. If it were attacked in
his absence--"
"He would return, and--" Father Pezelay shook his head, his cheek turned
a shade paler. Clearly, he saw with his mind's eye more than he
expressed.
"Hoc est corpus," the other muttered, his dreamy gaze on the table. "If
he met us then, on his way to the house and we had bell, book, and
candle, would he stop?"
"He would not stop!" Father Pezelay rejoined.
"He would not?"
"I know the man!"
"Then--" but the rest St. Benoist whispered, his head drooping forward;
whispered so low that even the lean man behind him, listening with greedy
ears, failed to follow the meaning of his superior's words. But that he
spoke plainly enough for his hearer Father Pezelay's face was witness.
Astonishment, fear, hope, triumph, the lean pale face reflected all in
turn; and, underlying all, a subtle malignant mischief, as if a devil's
eyes peeped through the holes in an opera mask.
When the other was at last silent, Pezelay drew a deep breath.
"'Tis bold! Bold! Bold!" he muttered. "But have you thought? He who
bears the--"
"Brunt?" the other whispered, with a chuckle. "He may suffer? Yes, but
it will not be you or I! No, he who was last here shall be first there!
The Archdeacon-Vicar--if we can persuade him--who knows but that even for
him the crown of martyrdom is reserved?" The dull eyes flickered with
unholy amusement.