“What is there to say?” said Barthrop.  “He is just there—­the biggest fact on the horizon.  Oh yes, there is one thing; he is tremendously devoted to music.  We have some music in the evenings very often.  You saw the organ in the gallery—­it is rather a fine one, and he generally has someone here who can play.  Lestrange is a first-rate musician.  Father Payne can’t play himself, but he knows all about it, and composes sometimes.  But I think he looks on music as rather a dangerous indulgence, and does not allow himself very much of it.  You can see how it affects him.  And you mustn’t be taken in by his manner.  You might think him heavy and unperceptive, with that quiet and rather secret eye of his; yet he notices everything, always, and far quicker than anyone else.  But it is hard to describe him, because he can’t do anything much, and you might think he was indolent; and yet he is the biggest person I have ever seen, the one drawback being that he credits other people with being big too.”

“I notice that you call him ‘Father Payne,’” said Vincent.  “Does that mean anything in particular?”

“No,” said Barthrop, smiling.  “It began as a sort of joke, I believe—­but it seemed to fit him; and it’s rather convenient.  We can’t begin by calling him ‘Payne,’ and ‘Mr. Payne’ is a little formal.  Some of the men call him ‘sir,’ but I think he likes ‘Father Payne’ best, or simply ‘Father,’ You will find it exactly expresses him.”

“Yes,” I said, “I am sure it does!”

I did not sleep much that night.  The great change in my life had all taken place with such rapidity and ease that I felt bewildered, and the thought of the time ahead was full of a vague excitement.  But most of all the thought of Father Payne ran in my mind, I regarded him with a singular mixture of interest, liking, admiration, and dread.  Yet he had contrived to kindle a curious flame in my mind.  It was not that I fully understood what he was working for, but I was conscious of a great desire to prove to him that I could do something, exhibit some tenacity, approve myself to him.  I wanted to make him retract what he had said about me; and, further on, I had a dim sense of an initiation into ideas, familiar enough, but which had only been words to me hitherto—­power, purpose, seriousness.  They had been ideas which before this had just vaguely troubled my peace, clouds hanging in a bright sky.  I had the sense that there were some duties which I ought to perform, efforts to be made, ends to fulfil; but they had seemed to me expressed in rather priggish phrases, words which oppressed me, and ruffled the surface of my easy joy.  Now they loomed up before me as big realities which could not be escaped, hills to climb, with no pleasant path round about their bases.  I seemed in sight of some inspiring secret.  I could not tell what it was, but Father Payne knew it, might show it me?