The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin

and end in such tremendous weepings. And I know, despite your faults, how warm and impulsive is your nature, making you run, with a quick and shamefaced blush, towards someone you have hurt … unconsciously. I lie awake thinking of you, of the look in your eyes, the tender pathos of your collar bones above your small round breasts…’
    Francis broke off here, and with a sudden flush scored out the last line he had written. Then, conscientiously, he resumed.
    ‘Secondly, I am selfishly concerned about my future. I’m now educated above – here again Fr Tarrant would agree – my station. I’ve only another term at Holywell. Am I to return gracefully to the beer-pulls of the Union? I can’t continue to be a charge on Ned – or more justly Polly, since I recently ascertained quite by accident that my fees have been discharged, out of her modest income, by that wonderful woman! My ambitions are so muddled. My fondness for Aunt Polly, my overbrimming gratitude, make me long to repay her. And it is her dearest wish to see me ordained. Again, in a place like this, where three quarters of the students and most of one’s friends are predestined for the priesthood, it is hard to escape the inevitable pull of sympathy. One wants to line up in the ranks. Tarrant apart, Father MacNabb thinks I should make a good priest – I can feel it in his shrewd, friendly provocativeness, his almost Godlike sense of waiting. And as Principal of this College he should know something about vocations.
    ‘Naturally I’m impetuous and hot-tempered; and my mixed upbringing has left me with a schismatic quirk. I can’t pretend to be one of these consecrated youths – our college library teems with them – who lisp prayers throughout their infancy, make boyish shrines in the woods, and sweetly rebuke the little girls who jostle them at the village fair. “Keep away, Therese and Annabelle, I am not for thee.”
    ‘Yet who can describe those moments that come to one suddenly: alone upon the back road to Doune, waking in the darkness in one’s silent room, remaining behind, quite solitary, when the scraping, coughing, whispering mob has gone in the empty yet breathing church. Moments of strange apprehension, of intuition. Not that sentimental ecstasy which is as loathsome to me as ever – Query: why do I want to vomit when I see rapture on the Master of Novices’ face? – but a sense of consolation, of hope.
    ‘I’m distressed to find myself writing like this – though it is for no other eye than mine. One’s private ardours make chilling stuff on paper. Yet I must record this inescapable sense of belonging to God which strikes at me through the darkness, the deep conviction, under the measured, arranged, implacable movement of the universe, that man does not emerge from, or vanish into, nothing. And here – is it not strange? – I feel the influence of Daniel Glennie, dear, cracked Holy Dan, feel his warm unearthly gaze upon me …
    ‘Confound it! And Tarrant! I am literally pouring out my heart. If I am such a Holy Willie why don’t I set out and do something for God, attack the great mass of indifference, of sneering materialism in the world today … in short, become a priest? Well … I must be honest. I think it is because of Nora. The beauty and tenderness of my feeling for her overfills my heart. The vision of her face, with its light and sweetness, is before me even when I am praying to Our Lady in church. Dear, dear Nora. You are the real reason why I don’t take my ticket on the celestial express for San Morales!’
    He stopped writing and let his gaze travel into the distance, a faint frown on his brow, but his lips smiling. With an effort, he again collected himself.
    ‘I must, I must get back to this morning and Rusty Mac. This being a holiday of obligation, I had the forenoon on my hands. On my way down to post a letter at the lodge I ran into the Headmaster coming up from the Stinchar with his rod and without fish.