The Firebrand. Crockett Samuel Rutherford
from the earth, and Rollo, not yet fully convinced, stamped here and there with his foot and battered the walls with the basket of his sword, till he added a dint or two to the tasselled hilt of "Killiecrankie." All in vain, however, for the walls were solid, and the floor beneath his feet rang dull and true.
"Firm as the Rock of Peter," said the Confessor grimly, "on which Holy Church is built. Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram – !"
"I know that verse," cried the Scot, getting quickly in front of him; "but I can show you in a quarter of an hour that the Romanist argument from these words proceeds upon a misconception – if you will do me the honour to follow me – !"
"Follow me!" said the sepulchral monk curtly, and pointing upwards as the sound of a bell was wafted down to them faintly. "That is the hour of midnight. Let us attend the call!"
So for that time Rollo's argument against the Romanist doctrine of the Rock of Peter was shut within him. It was not long, however, before he had other matters to think of.
They followed their guide through a maze of dark passages, till, with a sudden "Attention!" he halted them before a door, from the other side of which came a sound of voices.
The door opened and all the world seemed suddenly filled with clear singing and glorious light.
Without the least preparation or preface Father Anselmo ushered the three young men into the great chapel of the order of the Virgin of Montblanch.
To Rollo it seemed almost an indecency to be thus transported from stuffy cases of doubtful relics and the chill darkness of earth-smelling passages, to this place where unseen suppliant voices assailed the Deity with a perpetual song.
The three youths blinked at the sudden light as they stepped within, and each of them glanced at their dress, apprehending with the instinct common to those who find themselves unexpectedly in crowded places, that it must be disordered. They followed their guide mechanically to the Holy Water laver. Etienne made the necessary signs and a low reverence towards the altar. Rollo's devotion to the Presbyterian form of worship did not prevent his imitating his companion with the easy adaptability of youth to place and circumstance, but quite unexpectedly they ran upon a rock in the matter of John Mortimer.
"Do as I do, you obstinate ass!" hissed Rollo in his ear. "Take some of the water on one finger and make the sign of the cross – that is, if you want to sleep in an unpricked skin this night!"
"Be hanged if I do," muttered John Mortimer, between his teeth. "I am not much given to religion myself, but my father is a Primitive Methodist, and built them a church in Chorley. And I never could look the old man in the face again if I dotted myself all over with their heathen holy water!"
"It's little of the Abbot's Priorato you'll ever ship then, my good friend," muttered Rollo; "but please yourself!"
The Englishman had rooted his heels to the pavement and squared his hands by his sides as one who would in nowise be dislodged from his resolve.
"I do not care if I never put a drop of wine into cask," he said, doggedly. "I won't go back to Chorley after having denied my father's brand of religion, even if my own vintage is of the poorest."
"There's more ways of killing a cat than choking her with cream!" growled Rollo; "take this, then, you stiff-necked English deevil!"
And bowing towards the altar, and again towards the Father Confessor, who had been regarding them with a sinister curiosity, with the utmost gravity Rollo made certain gestures with his hands, and dipping his fingers again in the laver, he made the sign of the cross on his friend's forehead and breast, before the Englishman had time to protest.
"In fulfilment of a vow!" he exclaimed in a whisper to Father Anselmo. "My companion has promised to St. Vicente Ferrer of Valencia that he will not make the sign of the cross upon his person till he can do it at the Basilica of holy St. Peter at Rome. He hath a mortal sin still upon his conscience."
"Then let him come to me," said the Confessor. "I will deal with him in a more summary fashion!"
It was the season of pilgrimage, and many were the penitents who availed themselves of the monks' three days statutory hospitality. These were seated about the dark church on chairs and stools supplied them by the sacristans, and on two of the latter John Mortimer and Rollo presently found themselves, while Brother Hilario went off to the gallery reserved for novices of his standing. Now and then a woman would steal forward and add a tall candle to the many thousands which burned upon the altar, or a man kneel at the screen of golden bars beyond which were the officiating priests and their silently-moving acolytes.
The church lay behind in deep shadow, only the higher lights shining here on a man's head, and there on a woman's golden ornament. The Abbot sat to the right in his episcopal robes, with his mitre on a cushion beside him. A priest stood by this chair with the crozier in his hand.
The brethren of the Order could be seen in their robes occupying the stalls allotted to them. There was another organ and choir far down the church, high to the right of the pillar by which the young men sat. The presence of this second choir was betrayed by a dim illumination proceeding from behind the fretted balustrade of the loft.
With the quick sympathy of his nature, Rollo, forgetting his sometime devotion to his native Presbytery, which indeed was chiefly of the controversial sort, permitted himself to be carried away by the magnificent swing of the music, the resonance of the twin organs, now pouring their thunder forth so as to shake at once the hearers' diaphragms and the fretted roof of blue and gold above them, now sweet and lonesome as a bird warbling down in Elie meadows in the noon silences. Anon Rollo shut his eyes and the Chapel of the Virgin of Montblanch incontinently vanished. He was among the great Congregation of all the Faithful, he alone without a wedding garment. The place where he stood seemed filled with surges of aureate light, but the night lay banked up without, eager and waiting to envelop him, doomed to be for ever a faithless wandering son of the great Father. Snatches of his early devotions came ramblingly back to him, prayers his mother had taught him, Psalms his old nurse had insisted on his learning, or mayhap crooned about his cradle. Such were the first words which came to him —
"That man hath perfect blessedness,
Who walketh not astray,
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners' way."
The impressions, hitherto vivid, blurred themselves at this point. Rollo Blair was kneeling at his mother's knee. He thought of his first sweetheart who had nearly made him a minister, and, perchance, a better man. The night that was waiting imminent outside, silently overleapt the barriers of golden light. Rollo Blair's head fell forward against a pillar – and, while the music thundered and wailed alternate, and the great service swept on its gorgeous way, the wild unhaltered Scot, soothed by a lullaby of sound, slept the sleep of the young, the tired, and the heart-free.
How long he slumbered he could not tell, but he was awakened by a violent thrust in the ribs from the elbow of John Mortimer.
"Great jimminy! what's that? Look, man, look!"
Rollo opened his eyes, bleared with insufficient sleep, and for a long moment all things danced weirdly before them, as gnats dance in the light of the moon. He saw dimly without understanding the swinging altar lamps in a blur of purple haze, the richly-robed priests, the myriad candles, the dark forms of the worshippers. But now, instead of all eyes being turned towards the brilliance of the golden altar, it was towards the door at the dark end of the chapel that they looked.
He could distinguish a tumult of hoarse voices without, multitudinous angry cries of men, the clatter of feet, the sharp clash of arms. A shot or two went off quite near at hand.
"Seize him – take the murderer! Hold him!"
The shoutings came clear now to Rollo's brain, and rising to his feet he half drew his sword, as though he himself had been the hunted man. But with a smile he let the blade slide back, which it did as easily as a stone slips into water. For though Killiecrankie's hilt might be battered, without ribbon or bow-knot, Rollo saw to it that Robin Fleeming's blade played him no tricks. His life had depended too often upon it for that, and might again.
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