1388	----	PADRE IGNACIO Or The Song of Temptation By Owen Wister I At Santa Ysabel del Mar the season was at one of those moments when the air rests quiet over land and sea. The old breezes were gone; the new ones were not yet risen. The flowers in the mission garden opened wide; no wind came by day or night to shake the loose petals from their stems. Along the basking, silent, many-colored shore gathered and lingered the crisp odors of the mountains. The dust hung golden and motionless long after the rider was behind the hill, and the Pacific lay like a floor of sapphire, whereon to walk beyond the setting sun into the East. One white sail shone there. Instead of an hour, it had been from dawn till afternoon in sight between the short headlands; and the Padre had hoped that it might be the ship his homesick heart awaited. But it had slowly passed. From an arch in his garden cloisters he was now watching the last of it. Presently it was gone, and the great ocean lay empty. The Padre put his glasses in his lap. For a short while he read in his breviary, but soon forgot it again. He looked at the flowers and sunny ridges, then at the huge blue triangle of sea which the opening of the hills let into sight. "Paradise," he murmured, "need not hold more beauty and peace. But I think I would exchange all my remaining years of this for one sight again of Paris or Seville. May God forgive me such a thought!" Across the unstirred fragrance of oleanders the bell for vespers began to ring. Its tones passed over the Padre as he watched the sea in his garden. They reached his parishioners in their adobe dwellings near by. The gentle circles of sound floated outward upon the smooth, immense silence--over the vines and pear-trees; down the avenues of the olives; into the planted fields, whence women and children began to return; then out of the lap of the valley along the yellow uplands, where the men that rode among the cattle paused, looking down like birds at the map of their home. Then the sound widened, faint, unbroken, until it met Temptation in the guise of a youth, riding toward the Padre from the South, and cheered the steps of Temptation's jaded horse. "For a day, one single day of Paris!" repeated the Padre, gazing through his cloisters at the empty sea. Once in the year the mother-world remembered him. Once in the year, from Spain, tokens and home-tidings came to him, sent by certain beloved friends of his youth. A barkentine brought him these messages. Whenever thus the mother-world remembered him, it was like the touch of a warm hand, a dear and tender caress; a distant life, by him long left behind, seemed to be drawing the exile homeward from these alien shores. As the time for his letters and packets drew near, the eyes of Padre Ignacio would be often fixed wistfully upon the harbor, watching for the barkentine. Sometimes, as to-day, he mistook other sails for hers, but hers he mistook never. That Pacific Ocean, which, for all its hues and jeweled mists, he could not learn to love, had, since long before his day, been furrowed by the keels of Spain. Traders, and adventurers, and men of God had passed along this coast, planting their colonies and cloisters; but it was not his ocean. In the year that we, a thin strip of patriots away over on the Atlantic edge of the continent, declared ourselves an independent nation, a Spanish ship, in the name of Saint Francis, was unloading the centuries of her own civilization at the Golden Gate. San Diego had come earlier. Then, slowly, as mission after mission was built along the soft coast wilderness, new ports were established--at Santa Barbara, and by Point San Luis for San Luis Obispo, which lay inland a little way up the gorge where it opened among the hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land, through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that were too distant behind the hills for ships to serve--a rough road, long and lonely, punctuated with church towers and gardens. For the Fathers gradually so stationed their settlements that the traveler might each morning ride out from one mission and by evening of a day's fair journey ride into the next. A lonely, rough, dangerous road, but lovely, too, with a name like music--El Camino Real. Like music also were the names of the missions--San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey de Francia, San Miguel, Santa Ynes--their very list is a song. So there, by-and-by, was our continent, with the locomotive whistling from Savannah to Boston along its eastern edge, and on the western the scattered chimes of Spain ringing among the unpeopled mountains. Thus grew the two sorts of civilization--not equally. We know what has happened since. To-day the locomotive is whistling also from The Golden Gate to San Diego; but still the old mission-road goes through the mountains, and along it the footsteps of vanished Spain are marked with roses, and broken cloisters, and the crucifix. But this was 1855. Only the barkentine brought to Padre Ignacio the signs from the world that he once had known and loved so dearly. As for the new world making a rude noise to the northward, he trusted that it might keep away from Santa Ysabel, and he waited for the vessel that was overdue with its package containing his single worldly luxury. As the little, ancient bronze bell continued swinging in the tower, its plaintive call reached something in the Padre's memory. Softly, absently, he began to sing. He took up the slow strain not quite correctly, and dropped it, and took it up again, always in cadence with the bell. [musical score appears here] At length he heard himself, and, glancing at the belfry, smiled a little. "It is a pretty tune," he said, "and it always made me sorry for poor Fra Diavolo. Auber himself confessed to me that he had made it sad and put the hermitage bell to go with it, because he too was grieved at having to kill his villain, and wanted him, if possible, to die in a religious frame of mind. And Auber touched glasses with me and said--how well I remember it!--'Is it the good Lord, or is it merely the devil, that makes me always have a weakness for rascals?' I told him it was the devil. I was not a priest then. I could not be so sure with my answer now." And then Padre Ignacio repeated Auber's remark in French: "'Est-ce le bon Dieu, oui est-ce bien le diable, qui veut tonjours que j'aime les coquins?' I don't know! I don't know! I wonder if Auber has composed anything lately? I wonder who is singing 'Zerlina' now?" He cast a farewell look at the ocean, and took his steps between the monastic herbs, the jasmines and the oleanders to the sacristy. "At least," he said, "if we cannot carry with us into exile the friends and the places we have loved, music will go whither we go, even to an end of the world such as this.--Felipe!" he called to his organist. "Can they sing the music I taught them for the Dixit Dominus to-night?" "Yes, father, surely." "Then we will have that. And, Felipe--" The Padre crossed the chancel to the small, shabby organ. "Rise, my child, and listen. Here is something you can learn. Why, see now if you cannot learn it from a single hearing." The swarthy boy of sixteen stood watching his master's fingers, delicate and white, as they played. Thus, of his own accord, he had begun to watch them when a child of six; and the Padre had taken the wild, half-scared, spellbound creature and made a musician of him. "There, Felipe!" he said now. "Can you do it? Slower, and more softly, muchacho mio. It is about the death of a man, and it should go with our bell." The boy listened. "Then the father has played it a tone too low," said he, "for our bell rings the note of sol, or something very near it, as the father must surely know." He placed the melody in the right key--an easy thing for him; and the Padre was delighted. "Ah, my Felipe," he exclaimed, "what could you and I not do if we had a better organ! Only a little better! See! above this row of keys would be a second row, and many more stops. Then we would make such music as has never yet been heard in California. But my people are so poor and so few! And some day I shall have passed from them, and it will be too late." "Perhaps," ventured Felipe, "the Americanos--" "They care nothing for us, Felipe. They are not of our religion--or of any religion, from what I can hear. Don't forget my Dixit Dominus." The Padre retired once more to the sacristy, while the horse that brought Temptation came over the hill. The hour of service drew near; and as the Padre waited he once again stepped out for a look at the ocean; but the blue triangle of water lay like a picture in its frame of land, bare as the sky. "I think, from the color, though," said he, "that a little more wind must have begun out there." The bell rang a last short summons to prayer. Along the road from the south a young rider, leading a pack-animal, ambled into the mission and dismounted. Church was not so much in his thoughts as food and, after due digestion, a bed; but the doors stood open, and, as everybody was passing within them, more variety was to be gained by joining this company than by waiting outside alone until they should return from their devotions. So he seated himself in a corner near the entrance, and after a brief, jaunty glance at the sunburned, shaggy congregation, made himself as comfortable as might be. He had not seen a face worth keeping his eyes open for. The simple choir and simple fold, gathered for even-song, paid him no attention--a rough American bound for the mines was but an object of aversion to them. The Padre, of course, had been instantly aware of the stranger's presence. To be aware of unaccustomed presences is the sixth sense with vicars of every creed and heresy; and if the parish is lonely and the worshipers few and seldom varying, a newcomer will gleam out like a new book to be read. And a trained priest learns to read keenly the faces of those who assemble to worship under his guidance. But American vagrants, with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit Dominus. He listened to the tender chorus that opens William Tell; and, as the Latin psalm proceeded, pictures of the past rose between him and the altar. One after another came these strains he had taken from operas famous in their day, until at length the Padre was murmuring to some music seldom long out of his heart--not the Latin verse which the choir sang, but the original French words: "Ah, voile man envie, Voila mon seul desir: Rendez moi ma patrie, Ou laissez moi mourir." Which may be rendered: But one wish I implore, One wish is all my cry: Give back my native land once more, Give back, or let me die. Then it happened that his eye fell again upon the stranger near the door, and he straightway forgot his Dixit Dominus. The face of the young man was no longer hidden by the slouching position he had at first taken. "I only noticed his clothes at first," thought the Padre. Restlessness was plain upon the handsome brow, and violence was in the mouth; but Padre Ignacio liked the eyes. "He is not saying any prayers," he surmised, presently. "I doubt if he has said any for a long while. And he knows my music. He is of educated people. He cannot be American. And now--yes, he has taken--I think it must be a flower, from his pocket. I shall have him to dine with me." And vespers ended with rosy clouds of eagerness drifting across the Padre's brain. II But the stranger made his own beginning. As the priest came from the church, the rebellious young figure was waiting. "Your organist tells me," he said, impetuously, "that it is you who--" "May I ask with whom I have the great pleasure of speaking?" said the Padre, putting formality to the front and his pleasure out of sight. The stranger's face reddened beneath its sun-beaten bronze, and he became aware of the Padre's pale features, molded by refinement and the world. "I beg your lenience," said he, with a graceful and confident utterance, as of equal to equal. "My name is Gaston Villere, and it was time I should be reminded of my manners." The Padre's hand waved a polite negative. "Indeed, yes, Padre. But your music has amazed me. If you carried such associations as--Ah! the days and the nights!"--he broke off. "To come down a California mountain and find Paris at the bottom! The Huguenots, Rossini, Herold--I was waiting for Il Trovatore." "Is that something new?" inquired the Padre, eagerly. The young man gave an exclamation. "The whole world is ringing with it!" he cried. "But Santa Ysabel del Mar is a long way from the whole world," murmured Padre Ignacio. "Indeed, it would not appear to be so," returned young Gaston. "I think the Comedie Francaise must be round the corner." A thrill went through the priest at the theater's name. "And have you been long in America?" he asked. "Why, always--except two years of foreign travel after college." "An American!" exclaimed the surprised Padre, with perhaps a tone of disappointment in his voice. "But no Americans who are yet come this way have been--have been"--he veiled the too-blunt expression of his thought--"have been familiar with The Huguenots," he finished, making a slight bow. Villere took his under-meaning. "I come from New Orleans," he returned, "and in New Orleans there live many of us who can recognize a--who can recognize good music wherever we hear it." And he made a slight bow in his turn. The Padre laughed outright with pleasure and laid his hand upon the young man's arm. "You have no intention of going away to-morrow, I trust?" "With your leave," answered Gaston, "I will have such an intention no longer." It was with the air and gait of mutual understanding that the two now walked on together toward the Padre's door. The guest was twenty-five, the host sixty. "And have you been in America long?" inquired Gaston. "Twenty years." "And at Santa Ysabel how long?" "Twenty years." "I should have thought," said Gaston, looking lightly at the desert and unpeopled mountains, "that now and again you might have wished to travel." "Were I your age," murmured Padre Ignacio, "it might be so." The evening had now ripened to the long after-glow of sunset. The sea was the purple of grapes, and wine-colored hues flowed among the high shoulders of the mountains. "I have seen a sight like this," said Gaston, "between Granada and Malaga." "So you know Spain!" said the Padre. Often he had thought of this resemblance, but never till now met any one to share his thought. The courtly proprietor of San Fernando and the other patriarchal rancheros with whom he occasionally exchanged visits across the wilderness knew hospitality and inherited gentle manners, sending to Europe for silks and laces to give their daughters; but their eyes had not looked upon Granada, and their ears had never listened to William Tell. "It is quite singular," pursued Gaston, "how one nook in the world will suddenly remind you of another nook that may be thousands of miles away. One morning, behind the Quai Voltaire, an old, yellow house with rusty balconies made me almost homesick for New Orleans." "The Quai Voltaire!" said the Padre. "I heard Rachel in Valerie that night," the young man went on. "Did you know that she could sing, too. She sang several verses by an astonishing little Jew violin-cellist that is come up over there." The Padre gazed down at his blithe guest. "To see somebody, somebody, once again, is very pleasant to a hermit!" "It cannot be more pleasant than arriving at an oasis," returned Gaston. They had delayed on the threshold to look at the beauty of the evening, and now the priest watched his parishioners come and go. "How can one make companions--" he began; then, checking himself, he said: "Their souls are as sacred and immortal as mine, and God helps me to help them. But in this world it is not immortal souls that we choose for companions; it is kindred tastes, intelligences, and--and so I and my books are growing old together, you see," he added, more lightly. "You will find my volumes as behind the times as myself." He had fallen into talk more intimate than he wished; and while the guest was uttering something polite about the nobility of missionary work, he placed him in an easy-chair and sought aguardiente for his immediate refreshment. Since the year's beginning there had been no guest for him to bring into his rooms, or to sit beside him in the high seats at table, set apart for the gente fina. Such another library was not then in California; and though Gaston Villere, in leaving Harvard College, had shut Horace and Sophocles for ever at the earliest instant possible under academic requirements, he knew the Greek and Latin names that he now saw as well as he knew those of Shakspere, Dante, Moliere, and Cervantes. These were here also; but it could not be precisely said of them, either, that they made a part of the young man's daily reading. As he surveyed the Padre's august shelves, it was with a touch of the histrionic Southern gravity which his Northern education had not wholly schooled out of him that he said: "I fear I am no scholar, sir. But I know what writers every gentleman ought to respect." The polished Padre bowed gravely to this compliment. It was when his eyes caught sight of the music that the young man felt again at ease, and his vivacity returned to him. Leaving his chair, he began enthusiastically to examine the tall piles that filled one side of the room. The volumes lay piled and scattered everywhere, making a pleasant disorder; and, as perfume comes from a flower, memories of singers and chandeliers rose bright from the printed names. Norma, Tancredi, Don Pasquale, La Vestale, dim lights in the fashions of to-day, sparkled upon the exploring Gaston, conjuring the radiant halls of Europe before him. "The Barber of Seville!" he presently exclaimed. "And I happened to hear it in Seville." But Seville's name brought over the Padre a new rush of home thoughts. "Is not Andalusia beautiful?" he said. "Did you see it in April, when the flowers come?" "Yes," said Gaston, among the music. "I was at Cordova then." "Ah, Cordova!" murmured the Padre. "Semiramide!" cried Gaston, lighting upon that opera. "That was a week! I should like to live it over, every day and night of it!" "Did you reach Malaga from Marseilles or Gibraltar?" asked the Padre, wistfully. "From Marseilles. Down from Paris through the Rhone Valley, you know." "Then you saw Provence! And did you go, perhaps, from Avignon to Nismes by the Pont du Gard? There is a place I have made here--a little, little place--with olive-trees. And now they have grown, and it looks something like that country, if you stand in a particular position. I will take you there to-morrow. I think you will understand what I mean." "Another resemblance!" said the volatile and happy Gaston. "We both seem to have an eye for them. But, believe me, Padre, I could never stay here planting olives. I should go back and see the original ones--and then I'd hasten on to Paris." And, with a volume of Meyerbeer open in his hand, Gaston hummed: "'Robert, Robert, toi que j'aime.' Why, Padre, I think that your library contains none of the masses and all of the operas in the world!" "I will make you a little confession," said Padre Ignacio, "and then you shall give me a little absolution." "For a penance," said Gaston, "you must play over some of these things to me." "I suppose I could not permit myself this luxury," began the Padre, pointing to his operas, "and teach these to my choir, if the people had any worldly associations with the music. But I have reasoned that the music cannot do them harm--" The ringing of a bell here interrupted him. "In fifteen minutes," he said, "our poor meal will be ready for you." The good Padre was not quite sincere when he spoke of a "poor meal." While getting the aguardiente for his guest he had given orders, and he knew how well such orders would be carried out. He lived alone, and generally supped simply enough, but not even the ample table at San Fernando could surpass his own on occasions. And this was for him indeed an occasion! "Your half-breeds will think I am one of themselves," said Gaston, showing his dusty clothes. "I am not fit to be seated with you." But he did not mean this any more than his host had meant his remark about the food. In his pack, which an Indian had brought from his horse, he carried some garments of civilization. And presently, after fresh water and not a little painstaking with brush and scarf, there came back to the Padre a young guest whose elegance and bearing and ease of the great world were to the exiled priest as sweet as was his traveled conversation. They repaired to the hall and took their seats at the head of the long table. For the Spanish centuries of stately custom lived at Santa Ysabel del Mar, inviolate, feudal, remote. They were the only persons of quality present; and between themselves and the gente de razon a space intervened. Behind the Padre's chair stood an Indian to waft upon him, and another stood behind the chair of Gaston Villere. Each of these servants wore one single white garment, and offered the many dishes to the gente fina and refilled their glasses. At the lower end of the table a general attendant wafted upon mesclados--the half-breeds. There was meat with spices, and roasted quail, with various cakes and other preparations of grain; also the brown fresh olives and grapes, with several sorts of figs and plums, and preserved fruits, and white and red wine--the white fifty years old. Beneath the quiet shining of candles, fresh-cut flowers leaned from vessels of old Mexican and Spanish make. There at one end of this feast sat the wild, pastoral, gaudy company, speaking little over their food; and there at the other the pale Padre, questioning his visitor about Rachel. The mere name of a street would bring memories crowding to his lips; and when his guest told him of a new play he was ready with old quotations from the same author. Alfred de Vigny they spoke of, and Victor Hugo, whom the Padre disliked. Long after the dulce, or sweet dish, when it was the custom for the vaqueros and the rest of the retainers to rise and leave the gente fina to themselves, the host sat on in the empty hail, fondly talking to his guest of his bygone Paris and fondly learning of the later Paris that the guest had seen. And thus the two lingered, exchanging their enthusiasms, while the candles waned, and the long-haired Indians stood silent behind the chairs. "But we must go to my piano," the host exclaimed. For at length they had come to a lusty difference of opinion. The Padre, with ears critically deaf, and with smiling, unconvinced eyes, was shaking his head, while young Gaston sang Trovatore at him, and beat upon the table with a fork. "Come and convert me, then," said Padre Ignacio, and he led the way. "Donizetti I have always admitted. There, at least, is refinement. If the world has taken to this Verdi, with his street-band music--But there, now! Sit down and convert me. Only don't crush my poor little Erard with Verdi's hoofs. I brought it when I came. It is behind the times, too. And, oh, my dear boy, our organ is still worse. So old, so old! To get a proper one I would sacrifice even this piano of mine in a moment--only the tinkling thing is not worth a sou to anybody except its master. But there! Are you quite comfortable?" And having seen to his guest's needs, and placed spirits and cigars and an ash-tray within his reach, the Padre sat himself comfortably in his chair to hear and expose the false doctrine of Il Trovatore. By midnight all of the opera that Gaston could recall had been played and sung twice. The convert sat in his chair no longer, but stood singing by the piano. The potent swing and flow of rhythms, the torrid, copious inspiration of the South, mastered him. "Verdi has grown," he cried. "Verdi is become a giant." And he swayed to the beat of the melodies, and waved an enthusiastic arm. He demanded every note. Why did not Gaston remember it all? But if the barkentine would arrive and bring the whole music, then they would have it right! And he made Gaston teach him what words he knew. "'Non ti scorder,'" he sang--"'non ti scordar di me.' That is genius. But one sees how the world moves when one is out of it. 'A nostri monti ritorneremo'; home to our mountains. Ah, yes, there is genius again." And the exile sighed and his spirit voyaged to distant places, while Gaston continued brilliantly with the music of the final scene. Then the host remembered his guest. "I am ashamed of my selfishness," he said. "It is already to-morrow." "I have sat later in less good company," answered the pleasant Gaston. "And I shall sleep all the sounder for making a convert." "You have dispensed roadside alms," said the Padre, smiling, "and that should win excellent dreams." Thus, with courtesies more elaborate than the world has time for at the present day, they bade each other good-night and parted, bearing their late candles along the quiet halls of the mission. To young Gaston in his bed easy sleep came without waiting, and no dreams at all. Outside his open window was the quiet, serene darkness, where the stars shone clear, and tranquil perfumes hung in the cloisters. But while the guest lay sleeping all night in unchanged position like a child, up and down between the oleanders went Padre Ignacio, walking until dawn. Temptation indeed had come over the hill and entered the cloisters. III Day showed the ocean's surface no longer glassy, but lying like a mirror breathed upon; and there between the short headlands came a sail, gray and plain against the flat water. The priest watched through his glasses, and saw the gradual sun grow strong upon the canvas of the barkentine. The message from his world was at hand, yet to-day he scarcely cared so much. Sitting in his garden yesterday, he could never have imagined such a change. But his heart did not hail the barkentine as usual. Books, music, pale paper, and print--this was all that was coming to him, some of its savor had gone; for the siren voice of Life had been speaking with him face to face, and in his spirit, deep down, the love of the world was restlessly answering it. Young Gaston showed more eagerness than the Padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing Trovatore in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, before he took his leave, to help rehearse the new music with the choir. He would be a missionary, too: a perfectly new experience. "And you still forgive Verdi the sins of his youth?" he said to his host. "I wonder if you could forgive mine?" "Verdi has left his behind him," retorted the Padre. "But I am only twenty-five!" exclaimed Gaston, pathetically. "Ah, don't go away soon!" pleaded the exile. It was the first unconcealed complaint that had escaped him, and he felt instant shame. But Gaston was too much elated with the enjoyment of each new day to comprehend the Padre's soul. The shafts of another's pain might hardly pierce the bright armor of his gaiety. He mistook the priest's entreaty, for anxiety about his own happy spirit. "Stay here under your care?" he asked. "It would do me no good, Padre. Temptation sticks closer to me than a brother!" and he gave that laugh of his which had disarmed severer judges than his host. "By next week I should have introduced some sin or other into your beautiful Garden of Ignorance here. It will be much safer for your flock if I go and join the other serpents at San Francisco." Soon after breakfast the Padre had his two mules saddled, and he and his guest set forth down the hills together to the shore. And, beneath the spell and confidence of pleasant, slow riding and the loveliness of everything, the young man talked freely of himself. "And, seriously," said he, "if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I should long for--how shall I say it?--for insecurity, for danger, and of all kinds--not merely danger to the body. Within these walls, beneath these sacred bells, you live too safe for a man like me." "Too safe!" These echoed words upon the lips of the pale Padre were a whisper too light, too deep, for Gaston's heedless ear. "Why," the young man pursued in a spirit that was but half levity, "though I yield often to temptation, at times I have resisted it, and here I should miss the very chance to resist. Your garden could never be Eden for me, because temptation is absent from it." "Absent!" Still lighter, still deeper, was this whisper that the Padre breathed. "I must find life," exclaimed Gaston, "and my fortune at the mines, I hope. I am not a bad fellow, Father. You can easily guess all the things I do. I have never, to my knowledge, harmed any one. I didn't even try to kill my adversary in an affair of honor. I gave him a mere flesh-wound, and by this time he must be quite recovered. He was my friend. But as he came between me--" Gaston stopped, and the Padre, looking keenly at him, saw the violence that he had noticed in church pass like a flame over the young man's handsome face. "That's nothing dishonorable," said Gaston, answering the priest's look. And then, because this look made him not quite at his ease: "Perhaps a priest might feel obliged to say it was dishonorable. She and her father were--a man owes no fidelity before he is--but you might say that had been dishonorable." "I have not said so, my son." "I did what every gentleman would do." insisted Gaston. "And that is often wrong!" said the Padre, gently and gravely. "But I'm not your confessor." "No," said Gaston, looking down. "And it is all over. It will not begin again. Since leaving New Orleans I have traveled an innocent journey straight to you. And when I make my fortune I shall be in a position to return and--" "Claim the pressed flower?" suggested the Padre. He did not smile. "Ah, you remember how those things are!" said Gaston: and he laughed and blushed. "Yes," said the Padre, looking at the anchored barkentine, "I remember how those things are." For a while the vessel and its cargo and the landed men and various business and conversations occupied them. But the freight for the mission once seen to, there was not much else to detain them. The barkentine was only a coaster like many others which had begun to fill the sea a little more of late years, and presently host and guest were riding homeward. Side by side they rode, companions to the eye, but wide apart in mood; within the turbulent young figure of Gaston dwelt a spirit that could not be more at ease, while revolt was steadily kindling beneath the schooled and placid mask of the Padre. Yet still the strangeness of his situation in such a remote, resourceless place came back as a marvel into the young man's lively mind. Twenty years in prison, he thought, and hardly aware of it! And he glanced at the silent priest. A man so evidently fond of music, of theaters, of the world, to whom pressed flowers had meant something once--and now contented to bleach upon these wastes! Not even desirous of a brief holiday, but finding an old organ and some old operas enough recreation! "It is his age, I suppose," thought Gaston. And then the notion of himself when he should be sixty occurred to him, and he spoke. "Do you know, I do not believe," said he, "that I should ever reach such contentment as yours." "Perhaps you will," said Padre Ignacio, in a low voice. "Never!" declared the youth. "It comes only to the few, I am sure." "Yes. Only to the few," murmured the Padre. "I am certain that it must be a great possession," Gaston continued; "and yet--and yet--dear me! life is a splendid thing!" "There are several ways to live it," said the Padre. "Only one for me!" cried Gaston. "Action, men, women, things--to be there, to be known, to play a part, to sit in the front seats; to have people tell one another, 'There goes Gaston Villere!' and to deserve one's prominence. Why, if I was Padre of Santa Ysabel del Mar for twenty years--no! for one year--do you know what I should have done? Some day it would have been too much for me. I should have left these savages to a pastor nearer their own level, and I should have ridden down this canyon upon my mule, and stepped on board the barkentine, and gone back to my proper sphere. You will understand, sir, that I am far from venturing to make any personal comment. I am only thinking what a world of difference lies between natures that can feel as alike as we do upon so many subjects. Why, not since leaving New Orleans have I met any one with whom I could talk, except of the weather and the brute interests common to us all. That such a one as you should be here is like a dream." "But it is not a dream," said the Padre. "And, sir--pardon me if I do say this--are you not wasted at Santa Ysabel del Mar? I have seen the priests at the other missions. They are--the sort of good men that I expected. But are you needed to save such souls as these?" "There is no aristocracy of souls," said the Padre, again whispering. "But the body and the mind!" cried Gaston. "My God, are they nothing? Do you think that they are given to us for nothing but a trap? You cannot teach such a doctrine with your library there. And how about all the cultivated men and women away from whose quickening society the brightest of us grow numb? You have held out. But will it be for long? Are you never to save any souls of your own kind? Are not twenty years of mesclados enough? No, no!" finished young Gaston, hot with his unforeseen eloquence; "I should ride down some morning and take the barkentine." Padre Ignacio was silent for a space. "I have not offended you?" asked the young man. "No. Anything but that. You are surprised that I should--choose--to stay here. Perhaps you may have wondered how I came to be here at all?" "I had not intended any impertinent--" "Oh no. Put such an idea out of your head, my son. You may remember that I was going to make you a confession about my operas. Let us sit down in this shade." So they picketed the mules near the stream and sat down. IV "You have seen," began Padre Ignacio, "what sort of a man I--was once. Indeed, it seems very strange to myself that you should have been here not twenty-four hours yet, and know so much of me. For there has come no one else at all"--the Padre paused a moment and mastered the unsteadiness that he had felt approaching in his voice--"there has been no one else to whom I have talked so freely. In my early days I had no thought of being a priest. By parents destined me for a diplomatic career. There was plenty of money and--and all the rest of it; for by inheritance came to me the acquaintance of many people whose names you would be likely to have heard of. Cities, people of fashion, artists--the whole of it was my element and my choice; and by-and-by I married, not only where it was desirable, but where I loved. Then for the first time Death laid his staff upon my enchantment, and I understood many things that had been only words to me hitherto. To have been a husband for a year, and a father for a moment, and in that moment to lose all--this unblinded me. Looking back, it seemed to me that I had never done anything except for myself all my days. I left the world. In due time I became a priest and lived in my own country. But my worldly experience and my secular education had given to my opinions a turn too liberal for the place where my work was laid. I was soon advised concerning this by those in authority over me. And since they could not change me and I could them, yet wished to work and to teach, the New World was suggested, and I volunteered to give the rest of my life to missions. It was soon found that some one was needed here, and for this little place I sailed, and to these humble people I have dedicated my service. They are pastoral creatures of the soil. Their vineyard and cattle days are apt to be like the sun and storm around them--strong alike in their evil and in their good. All their years they live as children--children with men's passions given to them like deadly weapons, unable to measure the harm their impulses may bring. Hence, even in their crimes, their hearts will generally open soon to the one great key of love, while civilization makes locks which that key cannot always fit at the first turn. And coming to know this," said Padre Ignacio, fixing his eyes steadily upon Gaston, "you will understand how great a privilege it is to help such people, and how the sense of something accomplished--under God--should bring Contentment with Renunciation." "Yes," said Gaston Villere. Then, thinking of himself, "I can understand it in a man like you." "Do not speak of me at all!" exclaimed the Padre, almost passionately. "But pray Heaven that you may find the thing yourself some day--Contentment with Renunciation--and never let it go." "Amen!" said Gaston, strangely moved. "That is the whole of my story," the priest continued, with no more of the recent stress in his voice. "And now I have talked to you about myself quite enough. But you must have my confession." He had now resumed entirely his half-playful tone. "I was just a little mistaken, you see--too self-reliant, perhaps--when I supposed, in my first missionary ardor, that I could get on without any remembrance of the world at all. I found that I could not. And so I have taught the old operas to my choir--such parts of them as are within our compass and suitable for worship. And certain of my friends still alive at home are good enough to remember this taste of mine and to send me each year some of the new music that I should never hear of otherwise. Then we study these things also. And although our organ is a miserable affair, Felipe manages very cleverly to make it do. And while the voices are singing these operas, especially the old ones, what harm is there if sometimes the priest is thinking of something else? So there's my confession! And now, whether Trovatore is come or not, I shall not allow you to leave us until you have taught all you know of it to Felipe." The new opera, however, had duly arrived. And as he turned its pages Padre Ignacio was quick to seize at once upon the music that could be taken into his church. Some of it was ready fitted. By that afternoon Felipe and his choir could have rendered "Ah! se l' error t' ingombra" without slip or falter. Those were strange rehearsals of Il Trovatore upon this California shore. For the Padre looked to Gaston to say when they went too fast or too slow, and to correct their emphasis. And since it was hot, the little Erard piano was carried each day out into the mission garden. There, in the cloisters among the jessamine, the orange blossoms, the oleanders, in the presence of the round yellow hills and the blue triangle of sea, the Miserere was slowly learned. The Mexicans and Indians gathered, swarthy and black-haired, around the tinkling instrument that Felipe played; and presiding over them were young Gaston and the pale Padre, walking up and down the paths, beating time or singing now one part and now another. And so it was that the wild cattle on the uplands would hear Trovatore hummed by a passing vaquero, while the same melody was filling the streets of the far-off world. For three days Gaston Villere remained at Santa Ysabel del Mar; and though not a word of restlessness came from him, his host could read San Francisco and the gold-mines in his countenance. No, the young man could not have stayed here for twenty years! And the Padre forbore urging his guest to extend his visit. "But the world is small," the guest declared at parting. "Some day it will not be able to spare you any longer. And then we are sure to meet. But you shall hear from me soon, at any rate." Again, as upon the first evening, the two exchanged a few courtesies, more graceful and particular than we, who have not time, and fight no duels, find worth a man's while at the present day. For duels are gone, which is a very good thing, and with them a certain careful politeness, which is a pity; but that is the way in the eternal profit and loss. So young Gaston rode northward out of the mission, back to the world and his fortune; and the Padre stood watching the dust after the rider had passed from sight. Then he went into his room with a drawn face. But appearances at least had been kept up to the end; the youth would never know of the elder man's unrest. V Temptation had arrived with Gaston, but was destined to make a longer stay at Santa Ysabel del Mar. Yet it was perhaps a week before the priest knew this guest was come to abide with him. The guest could be discreet, could withdraw, was not at first importunate. Sail away on the barkentine? A wild notion, to be sure! although fit enough to enter the brain of such a young scape-grace. The Padre shook his head and smiled affectionately when he thought of Gaston Villere. The youth's handsome, reckless countenance would shine out, smiling, in his memory, and he repeated Auber's old remark, "Is it the good Lord, or is it merely the devil, that always makes me have a weakness for rascals?" Sail away on the barkentine! Imagine taking leave of the people here--of Felipe! In what words should he tell the boy to go on industriously with his music? No, this was not imaginable! The mere parting alone would make it for ever impossible to think of such a thing. "And then," he said to himself each new morning, when he looked out at the ocean, "I have given to them my life. One does not take back a gift." Pictures of his departure began to shine and melt in his drifting fancy. He saw himself explaining to Felipe that now his presence was wanted elsewhere; that than would come a successor to take care of Santa Ysabel--a younger man, more useful, and able to visit sick people at a distance. "For I am old now. I should not be long has in any case." He stopped and pressed his hands together; he had caught his Temptation in the very act. Now he sat staring at his Temptation's face, close to him, while then in the triangle two ships went sailing by. One morning Felipe told him that the barkentine was here on its return voyage south. "Indeed." said the Padre, coldly. "The things are ready to go, I think." For the vessel called for mail and certain boxes that the mission sent away. Felipe left the room in wonder at the Padre's manner. But the priest was laughing secretly to see how little it was to him where the barkentine was, or whether it should be coming or going. But in the afternoon, at his piano, he found himself saying, "Other ships call here, at any rate." And then for the first time he prayed to be delivered from his thoughts. Yet presently he left his seat and looked out of the window for a sight of the barkentine; but it was gone. The season of the wine-making passed, and the preserving of all the fruits that the mission fields grew. Lotions and medicines was distilled from garden herbs. Perfume was manufactured from the petals of flowers and certain spices, and presents of it despatched to San Fernando and Ventura, and to friends at other places; for the Padre had a special receipt. As the time ran on, two or three visitors passed a night with him; and presently there was a word at various missions that Padre Ignacio had begun to show his years. At Santa Ysabel del Mar they whispered, "The Padre is not well." Yet he rode a great deal over the hills by himself, and down the canyon very often, stopping where he had sat with Gaston, to sit alone and look up and down, now at the hills above, and now at the ocean below. Among his parishioners he had certain troubles to soothe, certain wounds to heal; a home from which he was able to drive jealousy; a girl whom he bade her lover set right. But all said, "The Padre is unwell." And Felipe told them that the music seemed nothing to him any more; he never asked for his Dixit Dominus nowadays. Then for a short time he was really in bed, feverish with the two voices that spoke to him without ceasing. "You have given your life," said one voice. "And, therefore," said the other, "have earned the right to go home and die." "You are winning better rewards in the service of God," said the first voice. "God can be better served in other places," answered the second. As he lay listening he saw Seville again, and the trees of Aranhal, where he had been born. The wind was blowing through them, and in their branches he could hear the nightingales. "Empty! Empty!" he said, aloud. And he lay for two days and nights hearing the wind and the nightingales in the far trees of Aranhal. But Felipe, watching, only heard the Padre crying through the hours, "Empty! Empty!" Then the wind in the trees died down, and the Padre could get out of bed, and soon be in the garden. But the voices within him still talked all the while as he sat watching the sails when they passed between the headlands. Their words, falling for ever the same way, beat his spirit sore, like blows upon flesh already bruised. If he could only change what they said, he would rest. "Has the Padre any mall for Santa Barbara?" asked Felipe. "The ship bound southward should be here to-morrow." "I will attend to it," said the priest, not moving. And Felipe stole away. At Felipe's words the voices had stopped, as a clock finishes striking. Silence, strained like expectation, filled the Padre's soul. But in place of the voices came old sights of home again, the waving trees at Aranhal; then it would be Rachel for a moment, declaiming tragedy while a houseful of faces that he knew by name watched her; and through all the panorama rang the pleasant laugh of Gaston. For a while in the evening the Padre sat at his Erard playing Trovatore. Later, in his sleepless bed he lay, saying now and then: "To die at home! Surely I may be granted at least this." And he listened for the inner voices. But they were not speaking any more, and the black hole of silence grew more dreadful to him than their arguments. Then the dawn came in at his window, and he lay watching its gray grow warm into color, until suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked at the sea. Blue it lay, sapphire-hued and dancing with points of gold, lovely and luring as a charm; and over its triangle the south-bound ship was approaching. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of this same window. "Merciful God!" he cried, sinking on his knees. "Heavenly Father, Thou seest this evil in my heart! Thou knowest that my weak hand cannot pluck it out! My strength is breaking, and still Thou makest my burden heavier than I can bear." He stopped, breathless and trembling. The same visions was flitting across his closed eyes; the same silence gaped like a dry crater in his soul. "There is no help in earth or heaven," he said, very quietly; and he dressed himself. VI It was still so early that few of the Indians were stirring, and one of these saddled the Padre's mule. Felipe was not yet awake, and for a moment it came in the priest's mind to open the boy's door softly, look at him once more, and come away. But this he did not, nor even take a farewell glance at the church and organ. He bade nothing farewell, but, turning his back upon his room and his garden, rode down the canyon. The vessel lay at anchor, and some one had landed from ha and was talking with other men on the shore. Seeing the priest slowly coming, this stranger approached to meet him. "You are connected with the mission here?" he inquired. "I--am." "Perhaps it is with you that Gaston Villere stopped?" "The young man from New Orleans? Yes. I am Padre Ignacio." "Then you'll save me a journey. I promised him to deliver these into your own hands." The stranger gave them to him. "A bag of gold-dust," he explained, "and a letter. I wrote it at his dictation while he was dying. He lived hardly an hour afterward." The stranger bowed his head at the stricken cry which his news elicited from the priest, who, after a few moments' vain effort to speak, opened the letter and read: My dear Friend,--It is through no man's fault but mine that I have come to this. I have had plenty of luck, and lately have been counting the days until I should return home. But last night heavy news from New Orleans reached me, and I tore the pressed flower to pieces. Under the first smart and humiliation of broken faith I was rendered desperate, and picked a needless quarrel. Thank God, it is I who have the punishment. By dear friend, as I lie here, leaving a world that no man ever loved more, I have come to understand you. For you and your mission have been much in my thoughts. It is strange how good can be done, not at the time when it is intended, but afterward; and you have done this good to me. I say over your words, "Contentment with Renunciation," and believe that at this last hour I have gained something like what you would wish me to feel. For I do not think that I desire it otherwise now. My life would never have been of service, I am afraid. You am the last person in this world who has spoken serious words to me, and I want you to know that now at length I value the peace of Santa Ysabel as I could never have done but for seeing your wisdom and goodness. You spoke of a new organ for your church. Take the gold-dust that will reach you with this, and do what you will with it. Let me at least in dying have helped some one. And since them is no aristocracy in souls--you said that to me; do you remember?--perhaps you will say a mass for this departing soul of mine. I only wish, must my body must go under ground in a strange country, that it might have been at Santa Ysabel did Mar, where your feet would often pass. "'At Santa Ysabel del Mar, where your feet would often pass.'" The priest repeated this final sentence aloud, without being aware of it. "Those are the last words he ever spoke," said the stranger, "except bidding me good-by." "You knew him well, then?" "No; not until after he was hurt. I'm the man he quarreled with." The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon. Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the strange. "I thank you. You will never know what you have done for me." "It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set great store on a new organ." Padre Ignacio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge. When he had reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he resumed to the mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the garden. But it was with another look that he watched the sea; and presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it had rounded the headland. With it departed Temptation for ever. Gaston's first coming was in the Padre's mind; and, as the vespers bell began to ring in the cloistered silence, a fragment of Auber's plaintive tune passed like a sigh across his memory. [Musical score appears here] For the repose of Gaston's young, world-loving spirit, they sang all that he had taught them of Il Trovatore. After this day, Felipe and all those who knew and loved the Padre best, saw serenity had returned to his features; but for some reason they began to watch those features with more care. "Still," they said, "he is not old." And as the months went by they would repeat: "We shall have him yet for many years." Thus the season rolled round, bringing the time for the expected messages from the world. Padre Ignacio was wont to sit in his garden, waiting for the ship, as of old. "As of old," they said, cheerfully, who saw him. But Renunciation with Contentment they could not see; it was deep down in his silent and thanked heart. One day Felipe went to call him from his garden seat, wondering why the ringing of the bell had not brought him to vespers. Breviary in lap, and hands folded upon it, the Padre sat among his flowers, looking at the sea. Out there amid the sapphire-blue, tranquil and white, gleamed the sails of the barkentine. It had brought him a new message, not from this world; and Padre Ignacio was slowly borne in from the garden, while the mission-bell tolled for the passing of a human soul. 
61187	----	ALL THAT EARTHLY REMAINS BY C. C. MACAPP Rumor said devils lived in the cave. The truth was even more appalling! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Breathing a little heavily in the Andean air, and still dazed at the urgency with which he had been whisked southward (via jet bomber), Dr. Luis Craig walked across packed earth toward a powerful-looking helicopter which, he had just been told, was to take him on the last leg of his trip. He listened tiredly to the unctuous words of his escort, a Lieutenant Rabar who wore the uniform of this Latin American nation's Air Force and who was to fly the helicopter. Shouts erupted behind them, at the edge of the field. Something snarled at his left ear. The sound was familiar, though not recently so: the crack of a rifle. He hit the dirt. Another bullet came searching, but now the shouts got themselves organized into crisp Spanish. Sidearms and at least two automatic weapons blatted. There were no more rifle shots. Cautiously, he raised his head to look at the knot of uniformed men where the sniper had been. Rabar stepped forward, offering a hand. "Are you all right, Doctor?" Craig ignored the hand and got up without help. "Quite, thank you." He had disliked Rabar from the moment of introduction; and now it was in his mind that Rabar had stepped carefully away from him _before_ the first bullet came. As casually as he could, he walked to the aluminum ladder hung upon the helicopter's side and hauled himself up. He stopped in the hatch, dignity forgotten, startled at the disparity of the three men already in the ship. * * * * * Directly across the cabin sat a gaunt scarecrow of a man in a black priest's cassock. An oxygen mask dangled on his thin chest, suggesting a bloated crucifix. The long, swarthy face was pockmarked, dour and without animation at the moment, except for fierce black eyes that burned steadily into Craig's own. Craig thought of a condor, perched near some nearly ready meal. He was immediately ashamed of the thought. Forward of the priest sat a brown Indian. His face mirrored dignified resignation to being carried in this hellish contraption to horrible death, or worse. Occupying the only seat on the hatch side was a tautly uniformed man who eyed Craig coldly. The priest spoke. His voice was deep and gently strong, caressing the Spanish syllables like a great soft bell. "We are abject, Doctor. We had tried very hard ... but there are fanatics." "Eh?" said Craig. "Oh. Well, I am unhurt, as you can see." "For which, thanks to the Almighty. Our humblest apologies. You speak Spanish exceptionally well, Doctor." Wondering if there were a question behind the compliment, Craig said, "My mother was Mexican." He did not think it necessary to add that he'd grown up near the border, and had once spent two years as an exchange Professor of Physics at the Mexican university. The priest nodded once. "I see. It was thoughtful of your government to choose you. And more than kind of you to come. But, forgive me; the shooting has made me forget my manners. This--" indicating the uniformed man--"is General Noriega." He laid a hand on the shoulder of the Indian. "And this one prefers to answer to the name Dientes." Craig looked at the brown face with interest. Archeology was one of his hobbies, and in this part of the world ... 'Dientes' was Spanish for 'teeth,' he mused. Abruptly, under his gaze, the immobile face split into a wide nervous smile revealing the source of the nickname. They were large, even and very white. "And I," the priest was saying, "am called Father Brulieres. Won't you seat yourself?" Craig tensed in surprise. The name Brulieres had been very much in the news of late. A priest by that name had led the movement which put the present government in power--and was still reputedly, the man who actually ran it. Craig realized he was still perched awkwardly halfway into the cabin. Mumbling something, he squeezed his bulky mountain gear through the hatch and took the empty seat beside the priest. * * * * * Rabar came in, closing the hatch behind him, and went forward to the pilot's seat. He glanced around at his passengers. It seemed to Craig that he was more interested in faces than in the condition of seat belts. Rabar worked at switches and buttons. Engines coughed, then roared. From overhead came the rising "whoosh" of the vanes. The craft shivered and lifted. They went on oxygen at once, and Craig, under the eyes of the other passengers, was glad to put the breather over at least part of his face. Imitating the others he pulled down the earflaps of his helmet. It seemed to have built-in radio, as he could hear Rabar advising them to strap in. A moment later, clearing his throat, he discovered that his breather contained a mike. He was surprised at such advanced electronics here. They were quickly closed in by mighty cliffs. Below them, a river tumbled wildly. Where it could find root-holds, fantastic greenery burgeoned, but it did little to disguise the menacing rock. The cabin's plastic windows gave all too clear a view. Turning from the window beside him, Craig found his eyes wandering to the insignia pinned to the priest's cassock. Of elegantly wrought gold, it was the same emblem he'd noticed on buildings, vehicles and other government property here. It looked like a set of football goalposts with the uprights moved in close together, leaving the crossbar extending to the sides. The priest caught his look and gave him what might be intended for a smile. "You wonder about our emblem? It represents the Church and State standing--what is the expression in your own language?--'four-square' together." "Oh." Craig realized that the symbol was simply a cross with two posts instead of one. He felt a little annoyed. His own government had told him enough to make him eager to come on this job, but they'd also warned him emphatically not to discuss politics or religion. He supposed the United States needed friends wherever they could be found, but a dictatorship wasn't his notion of a good alternative to Bolshevism. He realized that the warning had point. He didn't know how ruthless these people might be, but the shooting back at the airfield hadn't been any game of marbles. For that matter, the whole country, or what he'd seen of it, had an armed-camp air. He decided the thing to do was to concentrate on the scientific reason for his visit, and now was as good a time to start as any. He leaned toward Brulieres, then realized that wasn't necessary. "Er--are you at liberty to tell me anything about the explosion?" Brulieres eyed him for a moment, and again there was the hint of a smile. "We could hardly be secretive with _you_, Doctor. You are the expert. How much were you told?" "Just that there'd been a nuclear explosion of unknown origin. They said there was something spectacular about it." "Spectacular? _Si!_ Your government was gracious enough to accept our request for technical help without demanding details. Security is very difficult, as you comprehend." Brulieres looked absent for a moment. "The explosion occurred at a spot famous in pre-Christian legends, which is why friend Dientes accompanies us. He is considered _experto_." The intense eyes turned upon the Indian, with a hint of mischief. "Not that he fails to be a good Christian as well." The Indian crossed himself nervously. "The explosion," Brulieres went on, "seems to have uncovered some very ancient tunnels. We wish to explore them, but we felt we needed a nuclear physicist along. Especially since there appears the possibility that the explosion originated from the tunnels." Craig heard Noriega clear his throat. Brulieres glanced at Noriega. "It has also been suggested," the priest said, "that the uncovering of the tunnels is coincidental, and that the explosion was of foreign origin." Craig thought that over, and was annoyed. "That does not seem likely," he said, a little stiffly. "Nobody is tossing live warheads around." Noriega spoke for the first time. His voice was crisp and rather high. "You can perhaps speak for your own nation, Doctor Craig; but others too possess missiles." Brulieres interposed, "You no doubt know, Doctor, that a communist putsch very nearly took over this country. The present government has been compelled to very strict measures against a further attempt. Therefore we are not popular with the communist nations." Craig waved a hand impatiently. "Yes, I know that, but...." He realized he was being careless. "I only wish to approach my investigation with an open mind. You say the tunnels were ancient? Incan, perhaps?" Brulieres shook his head slowly. "They were hardly capable of anything on this scale. One cannot speak so surely of those who preceded the Incas in this place." Craig pondered, and felt his pulse move faster. "How much have you learned so far?" "What can be seen from the air. We will be the first to land, if you decide it is safe." II They rose with the canyon, and its upper ramparts began to display patches of snow. Ahead loomed solid whiteness. They strained upward and emerged over a snowfield glaring white in the sun, its jagged peaks casting crisp blue shadows. The copter's own shadow danced along beneath them like a crazy gnat. They aimed for a cluster of five or six peaks dominating everything else. Dientes, twisting nervously in his seat, mumbled something about "_puesto de los demonios_." They flew between two of the peaks and were in a basin formed by the roughly circular cluster. Zero ground of the explosion was as obvious as an ugly dark blotch on white cloth. Snow had been melted away from an oblong area on the inner slope of one peak, leaving naked rock. Craig stared at what lay revealed. A plateau was carved out of the mountainside, so flat and so precisely oval that there wasn't an instant's doubt that it was artificial. The uphill wall was vertical, following exactly the curve of the ellipse. The wall was in shadow, but Craig could make out the five black tunnel mouths, all of a shape and evenly spaced. He let out his breath in a grunt as he remembered that this was a blast area and that they were getting close. Hastily, he unhooded one of the instruments, his fingers awkward with excitement. He watched the dial. No serious radiation yet. Rabar looked at him, and he nodded his head to indicate they could go closer. The radiation increased a little but was still mild. He pondered. The blast had been very clean, and of a low order, melting the snow without even scarring the rock. Apparently it had occurred not far above the surface and over the center of the plateau. He didn't know of any existing warheads that fit the explosion, nor could he believe that either intent or coincidence had placed the blast so exactly. The copter was hovering now, the other passengers watching him silently. He met Rabar's eyes, and glanced away, uncomfortable. If the priest's eyes reminded him of a vulture's, then Rabar's made him think of a wolf's. They had an odd yellowish tinge, and were at one time alert and devoid of expression. Craig couldn't know where the man fit into things, but he didn't ring true as a simple pilot. Craig needed no diagrams drawn for him, so far as his own position went. In the first place, the opposition might assassinate him simply to embarrass the government. On the other hand, if he seemed to stand in the way of Noriega's project of making political capital of the explosion, and if Noriega represented a strong faction in the government, that faction might think it worth while to let something happen to him and blame it on the communists. But the hottest potato of all would be whatever he learned at the spot of the explosion. He could imagine all sorts of fabulous things. So would others, and some of them would go to considerable lengths to know. * * * * * An instrument, dangled at the end of a line, showed no bad radiation, so Craig said they could land. When he stood on the plateau the tunnel mouths seemed like converging black stares. Nevertheless he itched to explore. Impatiently, he led the unloading and stacking of his equipment. When that was done the group stood for a minute, evidently all feeling the awe Craig did. Dientes was first to break the silence, muttering something under his breath. Brulieres fixed the Indian with a look that was not entirely severe. "_Christian_ prayers, _hijo_, if you please." He turned to Craig. "What can be learned where we stand?" "I should be able to determine the type of explosion. I will have to take rock samples, and set up some apparatus." "How long will that require?" "Less than an hour, with luck." Brulieres was thoughtful for a while. "In that case, I believe we shall begin reconnoitering the tunnels while you work. But first, let us hear from our expert in demonology." Dientes squirmed guiltily in his mountain clothing. "I know only what the old tales say, Padre." "Tell us, if you please. We will decide later whether you have been guilty of _paganismo_." "Si, Padre. This place is the home of the Fire Devils. There is no question of the fact. It is precisely as described when I was a small boy sitting at the feet of _los viejos_." "Well, then. What manner of devils were they?" "Creatures of fire, Padre, such that the eye could not behold without being blinded. Brighter than the sun." "Did they make war upon your people?" "Those who approached this place were punished with spears of fire. It is told that in ancient times, they were often seen flying through the sky, trailing long tails of white feathers. Sometimes they visited the villages, demanding strange things and frightening the people." "Do the stories mention these tunnels?" "No, Padre. The Fire Devils lived beneath the snow. They were seen to vanish into it." "Without melting it?" "They could turn off their fire, perhaps. In any event, Padre, who knows what is possible with demons?" * * * * * "I know that you need and will receive many hours of strict Christian instruction. How is it that men returned to tell of these things if the devils pursued them with spears of fire?" "Some escaped." "Is it definitely told of individuals who were killed?" Dientes looked thoughtful, and disappointed. "I do not recall the names of any who were slain." "Bah. Why have there been no reports in recent years?" Dientes shrugged. "_Quien sabe?_ Perhaps the arrival of the true religion has driven away the devils." "Perhaps," said Brulieres, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. He turned toward the tunnels. "I think, General, that I will ask you and the lieutenant to explore a little way into one of the tunnels. Come out at once if you see anything that might be dangerous." Craig opened his mouth to protest, but held back the words. He did ache to get into the tunnels, but he wasn't a free agent here. He watched as the two uniformed men disappeared into the middle tunnel. Their flashlights were quickly lost as they rounded some turn in the tunnel. Brulieres said to Dientes, "The doctor and I must take some samples of the rock. Will you be good enough to remain here and guard the helicopter?" He laid his hand on the Indian's shoulder. "I see that you are not comfortable in your helmet. You may remove it if you wish. We will call to you if we need you." Craig realized Brulieres wanted to talk to him alone. He went with the priest. The Indian squatted, apparently quite comfortable without his oxygen. "He is used to high altitudes," Brulieres remarked. "You or I could hardly remain conscious here. I wished to talk to you, Doctor." "About what, Padre?" Craig felt a little awkward with the title. "About certain things in our country of which you do not approve." Craig hesitated. "I ... am here on a scientific mission." "Nevertheless, you have ideas in the field of politics? I hope we can be frank with each other." "Well ... I have no intention of being critical. As you know, we--that is, in the United States the Church is separate from the government." The corners of Brulieres' mouth quirked. "What you mean, perhaps, is that you do not understand how the Church can support a totalitarian government. Oh, do not protest; the facts are obvious. We have been called worse names than 'totalitarian.' You do not think it right that the Church should take up actual arms." "I--yes. Since you put it into words. We have a different concept of religion." * * * * * The priest nodded slowly. "_Si._ Once I visited your land. In a way, I envied the priests there. Here, we have had more to contend with than the christening of fat babies and listening to trifling sins of appetite. We are in the front line of battle." Craig said stiffly, "Do you mean a spiritual battle, or an ideological one?" This time Brulieres nearly smiled. "Are you so certain, then, that they are not the same battle?" Damn it, thought Craig, I know better than to argue with a priest. He did not answer for a minute. Brulieres said gently, "Please forgive me if I am too direct. You do not believe that Evil is a real force?" Craig could not meet the penetrating eyes. The old doubt edged into his mind: what if he's right and I am wrong? What if there _is_ a personal God? He pushed the thought away, telling himself as he always did that it was just the exposure he'd suffered before he was old enough to think for himself. He said, "I'm a scientist, Padre." "But not, unless I misjudge you, an atheist?" "I call myself an agnostic, if you must classify me. I recognize the possibility of some force behind life and mind. I do not believe in a God who is a man with a beard. Nor do I believe in a Devil with hooves and horns." Brulieres nodded again. "We are not so far apart as you may suppose, Doctor. Myself, I have always thought that one who claimed perfect faith without the trace of a doubt, was either an idiot or a liar. God surely has his reasons for not removing all doubt. In any case I wish to make my position clear to you. It was not happily that I took up what weapons were at hand. Had I the choice, I would choose quite differently." He eyed Craig directly for a moment. "The battle is very real and very clear to me, Doctor. I have done what I must. I hope you will believe that." Craig's skeptical mind told him that this was just a play for a good press when Craig got home. His emotions though, wouldn't go along. They cried out that he was looking upon sincerity. III The first tests confirmed what Craig had already presumed; that the explosion had been absolutely clean. What radiation existed had originated from molecules in the rock itself or in the vaporized snow. There was no way of guessing at the type of blast; he only knew that mass had been transformed virtually one hundred per cent into energy in a very short period of time. No process Craig knew even approached it. He stared again at the tunnel mouths. He was sure now that something had come out of them, risen about seven hundred feet above the plateau and released the blast. He trembled with eagerness to get inside, danger or no. He had turned impatiently to Brulieres, when somewhere deep in the tunnels, shouting broke out. Two pistol shots echoed hollowly. There was a clatter of running footsteps. Craig found his right hand fumbling at his hip, and felt foolish. He hadn't carried a sidearm since Korea. Lieutenant Rabar burst through the tunnel, stumbling in the sunlight, his face contorted. He ran straight across the plateau and threw himself over the edge. Dientes, who had jumped to his feet, was only a step behind him. Craig, eyes fastened on the tunnel, realized vaguely that the two must have landed in deep snow, since there was no sound of their falling. A glow appeared in the tunnel. Craig fought the panic that seized him; stood his ground and was aware of Brulieres beside him. The glow brightened. Its source came into sight--a ball of dazzling brilliance, oval and about the size of a man's torso. It emerged into sunlight and Craig saw that it was solid. It looked like incandescent metal, but he somehow felt that it wasn't hot. It seemed to move at will and to hover without support. It acted alive. It moved a little way toward Craig and Brulieres, then stopped. A tentative rumble came from it, like the beginning of thunder. Something like a tentacle lifted, clutching an object that resembled a flashlight. A blinding lance of heat shot from the object and struck the rock a few yards in front of the two men. A sound came from the rock like ice pressed upon a hot stove. Smoke puffed upward. The beam lasted only an instant, but it left a long curved scar in the rock. The thing rumbled again, and flashed so brightly Craig threw an arm over his eyes, and heard his own voice cry out wordlessly. His legs tensed to run, but something about the behavior of the thing held him where he was. It seemed unsure of itself, and not really threatening. When he looked up again, it was moving laterally and up the face of the wall. He saw the flashlight-like object on the ground where it had evidently been dropped. * * * * * The oval thing, no longer glowing, lifted fast toward the mountain top. He saw that it _was_ metal, not rusted or corroded but dull with age, and he saw the two ragged holes near the middle of it. He strained his eyes for more detail but it grew tiny in the distance and he saw no joints and no protuberances other than the one tentacle. He lost it in the shadows of the mountain's brow, then saw it flash momentarily in the sun as it curved up and over. After a moment he turned dazedly toward Brulieres. But before he could say anything there was a sun-dimming flash of light from beyond the mountain. The ground danced. Sound, echoing from the other peaks and battering its way through the solid rock of the mountain, beat about them like monstrous punishing wings. As the vast thunder dwindled away, Craig, squinting, saw a tenuous, rapidly dimming mushroom cloud tower above the peak. He flinched, but knew that this would be another clean explosion. Most of the cloud was steam. He was sure they were seeing a re-enactment of the blast which had cleared this plateau. His mind worked in simple patterns: the thing was destroyed; it had dropped its weapon. He started toward the tunnel mouth, but he had hesitated too long. Brulieres, moving very agilely, was ahead of him. The priest picked up the weapon and turned toward Craig. Craig, still befuddled, wondered mildly at his own detached state of mind: is he going to kill me; I'd love to get that weapon home to the labs; so that's how he keeps warm. (The latter in reference to the heavy underwear he'd glimpsed beneath the priest's cassock as the padre bent over). But Brulieres' voice was mild. "Please forgive me for taking possession of this, Doctor. Later, I hope, you will be able to examine it; but I must think first of my own responsibilities." He looked at the thing briefly, started to stow it in some fold of his gown, then hesitated. As if unable to resist the temptation, he aimed it at the rock wall and put his thumb on something. The incandescence squirted out. The rock cried out and yielded up a curl of smoke. Brulieres turned the thing off at once and turned back to Craig with an expression half guilty, half delighted, like a child with a forbidden toy. Then he sighed and put the weapon away. Craig had observed what details he could. The thing was an inch or a little more in diameter, perhaps ten inches long. All except one tip was dull and apparently knurled to give a good grip. The tip looked like quartz or some crystal, translucent except the end, which was darkly transparent when not emitting the beam. The trigger was apparently a spot of different color on the body, over which the thumb could be pressed. Craig thought of the energy stored in that slender cylinder, the necessary insulation, the efficiency of whatever system was used to direct and control the beam. He felt a chill shiver of awe. Then another thought struck him and he looked wide-eyed at Brulieres. "A flaming sword!" Brulieres gave him a quick glance, and nodded. "Primitives might describe it so." * * * * * Rabar climbed back into sight at the edge of the plateau, looking pale. A moment later Dientes poked his head into view. "Where is the general?" Brulieres demanded. "_Muerto_," said Rabar shakily, "in the tunnel. The creature killed him." The priest's face twitched. "Who shot at it?" "The general, Padre. He had the only gun." Brulieres sighed. "Then that is why he is dead. The creature would not have harmed him." Craig had the same idea. It had used the weapon more as if in bluff, and had apparently carefully gone beyond the mountain to die. He wondered if the two bullet-holes had killed it. But how many more of the creatures (or machines) waited in the tunnels? He looked at Brulieres. "Are we going in?" "By all means. Unless we are stopped." The priest looked thoughtful. "They may be coming out of hibernation or something like it. Can you tell how old this plateau is?" "Not without taking samples to a geological laboratory. Perhaps not even then, with accuracy. But I would say, some thousands of years." Rabar was not happy at re-entering the tunnel, but set his jaw and came. Craig stood aside to let the lieutenant go ahead of him. Rabar hesitated, then stepped by. Dientes, crossing himself and muttering, evidently preferred coming along to being left alone outside. He followed Craig. Brulieres swept his flashlight along the tunnel walls, revealing a turn ahead. They rounded it. After a little way it seemed to Craig that the flashlight dimmed. Then he realized that there was other light in the tunnel; the arched ceiling was aglow. It got brighter and Brulieres turned off his flashlight. "Evidently," he said, "we are expected. Have you noticed the air?" Craig had not, but he did now; it was warm and the pressure was higher than outside. "One moment," he said, puzzled. He went back to the mouth of the tunnel. As he stepped outside, he felt a gentle resistance as if some force were pushing him into the tunnel. He re-entered, and felt warmth radiating from the ceiling. He rejoined the others. * * * * * The floor of the tunnel sloped up gently for a while, then leveled, then turned downward. The walls were vertical and perfect, with a smooth glazed look. The ceiling curved from wall to wall in a perfect arc. There was room for two men to walk side by side by crowding. Craig walked a little behind Dientes. Soon he took off his oxygen mask and breathed normally. He would have liked to remove his jacket, but there were too many things in the pockets to spill out. He had counted one hundred seven paces when the tunnel turned again. It was just beyond the turn that they found Noriega's body. The tunnel branched here; or at least, a narrower tunnel angled up and off from each side. These tunnels were dark, and, Craig found, cold and with low air pressure. The same mild resistance guarded their mouths. The General lay sprawled loosely just inside the right-hand branch, his head and torso in shadow. He looked simply and peacefully dead. "Will you lend me a hand, Lieutenant?" Brulieres said. The two of them dragged Noriega into the light. Craig could see no burns nor any other kind of wound except an abrasion on one cheek which might have resulted from a fall. He started to ask Rabar exactly what had happened, but checked himself. Better not appear suspicious. He wondered what had happened to the general's pistol, and began to look around for it. But again Brulieres was ahead of him. The priest was eighteen or twenty yards farther into the tunnel, picking up something. It was the pistol. It went into the cloak as the heat-weapon had. Craig was watching Rabar and he thought the man looked disconcerted. Craig thought, How's this for a theory: Rabar killed Noriega, took his pistol and started up the tunnel. Maybe he just wanted to learn for himself what was in the mountain, or maybe he planned to murder the rest of the party and make it look like an accident. He met the glowing creature, panicked, put two bullets into it, then dropped the gun and ran. Craig wondered if the priest shared his doubts about Rabar; but if he did, he didn't show it. The priest was already starting on. Craig lost count of his steps, but judged they'd gone over a quarter of a mile when the tunnel took a final right-angle turn and opened into a great high-domed chamber. IV Immediately all question as to the nature of this place vanished. It could only be a military base. There's something recognizable about weapons, Craig mused, no matter how unfamiliar. Here were gathered great vehicles of war, bristling with the outsize cousins of the heat-tube Brulieres carried and with a myriad other menacing shapes. Yawning black tunnels led away at angles--probably, Craig thought, to hidden exits. Repair machines, some with their work partly finished, were scattered everywhere, silent and with a long-unused air about them. Nearly all of the aerial dreadnaughts (Craig was sure they were that) showed terrible wounds. The group stared about the chamber in silent awe. At one place, beneath a trio of round tunnels that aimed steeply upward, was what Craig took to be the main launching area, with ramps for loading ... what? The litter showed clearly where great ships had rested, and that the departure had been hasty. Craig drew in deep trembling breaths and imagined the vast alien argosies lifting upon their mysterious legs of force. He could see the avarice in Rabar's eyes, and edged closer to the lieutenant. He wasn't going to let the man overpower Brulieres and take the weapons, nor was he going to let him pick up any that might be lying around. Not that Brulieres was being careless. Craig noticed that he kept his distance from everybody, and did not turn his back for long. They must have stared at the alien machines for quite a while before the priest's deep voice echoed in the chamber. "Come. Another tunnel beckons." Craig looked where the priest pointed. He saw a tunnel like the one they'd left, about a quarter of the way around the chamber. It glowed with light. All the rest were dark. He looked again at Brulieres, and was startled at the man's face. It wore a look of glory. Craig shivered. Why, he thought, the man thinks God arranged this for _him_. Apparently _someone_ was arranging things, unless the tunnels and the lights were completely robotic. Craig, ignoring the edge of panic that cut at him, followed the priest toward the entrance to the lighted tunnel. It was short, with two bends in it (probably, Craig thought, to contain possible explosions). It opened into a smaller, lower-ceilinged chamber which had evidently been an assembly hall for troops, or possibly a mess hall. Dark openings led off it which might lead to barracks. In the far end, a single tunnel glowed with light. They entered that tunnel, which was another short one, and found that they were indeed in the living quarters. These, if the analogies applied, had been the officers'. There was a small assembly hall, and upon one wall of that were the pictures. * * * * * The lighting was arranged to fall mostly upon that side of the chamber. The rock had been smoothed to take the murals. The first glimpse shook Craig so that he walked mechanically toward that wall, momentarily forgetting his companions. A part of his mind admired the basic technique. Outlines in low relief had been cut into the rock, details delicately etched in and colors brought up, apparently, by altering the composition of the rock itself. As for the style it was somewhere between realism and impressionism. Craig was no expert, but he thought the hand was defter, the viewpoint more penetrating, than any he'd ever seen. The slight alien air only increased the charm of the work. Whatever sort of beings the aliens had been, they hadn't been an unfeeling race. Emotion leaped from every line of the murals. The first few told concisely of the establishment on Earth of this outpost, of the local defeat and abandonment. There were some heroic scenes there, but Craig hurried through them, drawn to the next series of paintings, yet unwilling to turn his eyes to them. They were Biblical and as stunningly familiar as if he'd lived with them all his life. Feeling churned at his insides again. One of the first immortalized Noah, or whoever had been the actual hero of the first version of the Flood story. The painting of the sea and the dark doomsday clouds over it was so real that Craig took a step backward. Mountainous wave masses were battered white by an incredible rain. Heaved aslant, decks tumbling water, dwarfed by the seas, was the wooden ship. A few half-drowned domestic animals stared in terror, lashed to their pens on deck. The bearded man who stood on wide-planted giant's legs, rope-like fingers gripping a tiller that strained to escape, was bedraggled but staunch and muscled to meet the sea. A woman clung to one arm. She had been painted not delicately, but with a strong beauty that spoke in thunder of the artist's piercing compassion. There was the crossing of the Red Sea, and the painting showed clearly how some force held aside the water. The artist had evidently been fascinated by the still-puddled seabottom. There were more, but Craig passed them, drawn like a fish on a line to the painting of the man on the cross. The body, more cruelly punished than the Bible recorded, strained in an agony that communicated itself to Craig's own. The face, twisted with pain, sagging with exhaustion, the tortured soft brown eyes, held no bitterness, no accusation. The accusation was the painting itself. The bitterness and rage (and remorse?) was the painter's own. * * * * * Craig, frightened and miserable, looked at the others. Dientes showed only awe and humility. Rabar was holding himself tautly, but terror showed in his eyes. Brulieres shook with overflowing emotions, his face mirroring worship, glory, worry and doubt. He met Craig's eyes. His voice higher-pitched and cracked with feeling, he said, "Have you noticed--this?" He was standing before a vertical slab of rough stone which had obviously been used to close up a tunnel. The sealing had been done with melted rock, roughly, leaving a groove around the edge. The job suggested haste. Craig's insides writhed at what might lie behind the slab. He gripped himself, walked over beside the priest. He could make out only a few of the characters of the inscription burned into the slab. He heard his own voice asking, as if from far away, "Do ... you read Hebrew?" Brulieres let out a trembling sigh. "With difficulty." He moved slowly closer to the slab, put his fingers to the inscription like a blind man feeling for Braille. Craig saw that his eyes were full of tears. The thin lips mumbled inaudibly. After a long time Brulieres quit reading and stood there, unmoving. Then he started to speak. His voice was lifeless now, a low uncaring monotone. "Scholars will translate it better, but here is the gist of it." TO THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE WITH WHOSE DESTINY I HAVE BRIEFLY MEDDLED: WHEN YOU READ THIS, YOU WILL HAVE ATTAINED A TECHNOLOGY OF YOUR OWN WHICH WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE USE OF THE DEVICES LEFT HERE. ASIDE FROM THEM I LEAVE YOU MY GOOD WISHES, MY APOLOGIES, AND MY LOVE. WHEN MY RACE ABANDONED THIS PLACE I HID FROM THEM AND STAYED BEHIND BECAUSE I HAD FALLEN IN LOVE WITH YOUR PLANET AND YOUR RACE. I HAVE TRIED TO HELP YOU. I AM NOT SURE I HAVE DONE WELL. LOOK UPON MY REMAINS IF YOU WILL. Craig gripped the priest's arm, heard his own words tumbling out: "It proves nothing, Padre! There can still be a God!" He found that he meant it desperately. The priest turned, stared at him, then looked faintly amused. "Conviction? _Now?_ You are a more fortunate man than I." "No, Padre! Your work! Religion is deeper than...." Brulieres' eyes flashed with some of their old vitality. "My work? This is the God in whose name I have schemed and, Heaven help me, killed." Slowly, mechanically, Brulieres drew the heat-weapon from his garments. He aimed it at the groove around the slab and thumbed the trigger. The rock skirled, and ran to solidify in waxlike lumps. The smoke was acrid in Craig's nostrils. When the slab was mostly cut around, some inner seal gave way and air sucked loudly into the crack. With a wrenching sound, the slab tore loose. It tilted under some power of its own, and lowered itself to the floor. Lights, harshly angled and dramatic, flashed on in the small room beyond. It was bare except for the stone platform on the floor, and what rested upon it. Mechanically, Craig stepped in and moved aside to make room for the others. Brulieres went to the opposite side of the platform and Dientes crouched beside him. Rabar stood hesitantly in the doorway. * * * * * The creature was larger than a man and like nothing earthly; many-limbed, built as if for a higher gravity. There was no apparent decomposition or dessication. The atmosphere of the chamber had evidently been chosen to preserve. There was still a pungent, half-unpleasant smell, being rapidly drawn away through ducts in the ceiling. There was a face of a sort, and two closed eyes. The face was recognizably strong. The thing might have been called ugly, but Craig found a handsomeness about it too. He recognized the drama with which the body was arranged and lighted, and somehow for this last small vanity he loved the creature even more. Dientes clutched at the priest's robe. "It is a lie, Padre!" And, as the priest remained silent, Dientes turned desperate eyes to Craig. "Mother of God! Will no one say it is a lie?" Craig felt emotionally depleted. Inside him were a sick regret and a hollowness where something had died, but cold reason remained. If there is no God, he thought, we're just intelligent animals, and we're free to live by our wits. If there is no God, then there is no Devil either. He pondered that ... and decided with grim amusement that there was Devil enough. And, in any event, there were needs and desires, friends and enemies. He stepped swiftly around the alien and took the heat-weapon from the priest's limp fingers. He turned toward Rabar, who was (beyond any worthwhile doubt) an enemy, and who was standing in the doorway with an annoying mockery in his eyes. Of _course_ he's happy, Craig thought; he's a Bolshevik agent and an atheist. There'll be damned little religion anywhere, now. He raised the weapon calmly, every nerve and muscle alert, like an animal ready for action. He watched the triumph fade from Rabar's eyes. As his thumb felt unhesitatingly for the trigger, he watched the growth of fear. 
62949	----	GOOD-NIGHT (BUENAS NOCHES) BY ELEANOR GATES AUTHOR OF "THE PLOW-WOMAN" ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR RACKHAM [Illustration] NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1906_, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS _Copyright, 1907_, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. [Illustration] To MABEL ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "Good-day to thyself," retorted the padre _Frontispiece_ He carried a canary at his shoulder 16 Advancing by soft steps came Tomasso the cat 38 Fanning her wings in one lightning stroke 44 Another frown and he passed on 50 GOOD-NIGHT I Scarlet fuchsias on a swaying branch freckled the 'dobe wall behind Loretta's perch. The parrot, her claws wide apart, her brilliant rudder tilting to balance her gray body, industriously snapped at the blossoms. One secured at last, she turned slowly about and, with infinite care, let it drop upon the open pages of Padre Alonzo's book. The padre brushed the flower away and glanced up. "_Buenos días, señor!_" clacked Loretta; "_buenos días! buenos días! buenos días!_" "Good-day to thyself," retorted the padre. He spoke in Spanish, shaking a stout finger. "And tear not the flowers again. They be the last of the kind till after the New Year. So take warning, I say, lest thou find thyself thrust without the garden." Loretta recognized displeasure in his voice. She mumbled an inquiring "_Ga-a-wk! ga-a-wk!_" and shifted thoughtfully from foot to foot. But, presently, the padre having resumed his reading, she turned once more to catch at the swaying branch. When a second fuchsia came fluttering down to his hand, Padre Alonzo uncrossed his sandals and rose. "Oh! oh! oh!" he cried, wagging his close-cropped head so vigorously that the very beads of his rosary tinkled together. "Thou art the naughtiest bird in all of California! What if Padre Anzar finds thee despoiling his plant? He will put thee again where thou must fight to keep thy feathers--in the kitchen with the cats!" At the mention of cats a startling change came over the parrot. Her plumage ruffled, her eyes began to roll, she straightened on the perch, uttering hoarse cries of fear and defiance. "Then be good," he counselled, "be good. Or off thou'lt likely go. Me-e-ow! me-e-ow!" And now Loretta moved nearer, anxious for friendly terms. "_Dame la mano_," she suggested; "_a-a-aw, dame la mano! A-a-aw! a-a-aw!_" She balanced tremblingly on one leg, curling the other under her. Padre Alonzo put the stout finger into the proffered claw. "So, so," he said. "And I shall not tattle. But tell me: What would make thee forget to use thy sharp pruning shears? An apple? or seeds? or one of Gabrielda's sweet bis--" Loretta perked her head to one side. "_To-o-ny, To-o-ny, To-o-ny_," she droned coaxingly. The padre thrust his thumbs under the white cord of his girdle and broke into a guffaw. "Thou jade!" he teased. "Wilt have Tony, eh? Well, I go to find him." He gathered in his brown cassock, preparatory to stepping over the cacti here bordering the garden path. "But look you, if he comes, scrape not the gilt from the wires of his pretty cage." Another threatening shake of the finger, and the padre crossed the low, spiked hedge and waddled away through the sun. When he came into sight a moment later round the dun wall of the mission, he carried a canary at his shoulder. "E-oo, e-oo," he cooed, pattering forward. "Loretta wishes thy company. Sst! sst! She is bad after thee, Tony! But be wary, little one, be wary." The advice was wholly ignored. For, spying the parrot, Tony was instantly transformed from a silent, dumpy ball of yellow to a slim, dapper songster with a swelling throat. Loretta greeted him with uproarious laughter, and a jargon of Spanish, patois, but triumphant. She paced the horizontal piece that gave her perch the form of a cross. She _pu-r-red_ and _gu-r-red_. She swung by her curved beak and one leathery foot, shrilling her "_Buenos días, señor!_" Then, as the padre hung the cage to a nail in the trellis built against the wall, she changed her performance to the clamorous repeating of a mass. Padre Alonzo was shocked. "Sst! sst!" he chided; "thou wicked big-ears!" The noon angelus was ringing. He caught up book and gown. But before going he pulled at Loretta's gaudy tail, not unkindly, and chuckled as she edged toward Tony with many a naïve and fetching cock of her gray head. [Illustration] II High at the garden's centre, nailed to a massive tree of wood, stood out the Sacrifice. From behind, fir and pine thrust their long green boughs, as if eager to screen that torn and unclad shape. From below, jasmine and geranium, carnation and rose, sent upward an unfailing incense. That way, in the heat of mid-afternoon, came Padre Anzar. Thin-lipped he was, and hollow-eyed. In one hand he held a trowel, in the other a knife. Down the front of his brown cassock, mingling at knee height with red brick-stains from the chapel floor, were touches of fresh earth. Anzar the priest was for the moment Anzar the gardener. He walked slowly, here stooping to right a stalk or jerk a weed, there stretching to pick a fading orange leaf from where it marred the glaucous sheen of its fellows. Fronting the figure, he paused long enough to whisper a prayer and make the holy sign. Then he rambled on, busy with trowel and blade. But presently he came to a full and startled halt. He was beside the trellis up which climbed his treasured fuchsia. The cross-like perch of the parrot was beyond the bordering cacti, and unoccupied. Near by, upon its nail, hung the canary cage, with Tony going up stairs and down untiringly, eying his visitor with no uneasiness, greeting him, on the contrary, with saucy chirps. While underneath, spotting the ground in some profusion, and cast as it were at the feet of the garden's singer, were scores of scarlet blossoms! The padre's look travelled from the scattered flowers to the vacant perch, from the perch to the naked branches swaying against the trellis, from the branches to the wide, warm top of the 'dobe wall. And there was Loretta, patrolling in unconcealed apprehension. The instant he caught sight of her he knew her guilt. He pursed his thin lips. Then, letting fall trowel and knife, he straddled the hedge. "I'll wring thy neck for thee!" he vowed. A sandal in the trellis, a light spring, and his head came even with her. She backed away, raising her wings a little, and _gawking_ in protest. He took a fresh grip on the wall, reached out and caught her like a chicken--by both legs. Wild screeches rang through the garden, screeches that put the sparrows to flight and set the canary cheeping in fear. These were punctuated next by raucous appeals for "_Tony_" or gurgley parrot language. The padre was down now, and standing on the path again. But he was not fulfilling his threat. Instead, he was viewing his captive angrily, yet in considerable indecision. Loretta, on the other hand, was at no loss for a course of action. Between cries for the canary, demands for a handshake, and reiterated "_Good-days_," she was vigorously trying her beak upon the padre's fist. But now a new factor upon the scene. Round the mission wall, waddling fast and propelling himself by his swinging arms, appeared Padre Alonzo. "Is't the cats?" he asked as he came on; "oh, la! la! is't the cats?" Padre Anzar half turned, scowling. For answer, he only pointed to the severed fuchsias. The other looked, covering any regret with simulated astonishment. "These were dropping of themselves yesterday," he began between breaths. "They--they fell fast in the night--eh?" He came beside the other now, partly to support the suspended Loretta in his hands. "I saw them--truly." "Bah!" And Padre Anzar gave Loretta such a shake that she tumbled, squawking and sputtering, from the other's hands, and again hung, heels above head, like a chicken caught for the block. "She did but what the wind hadst done," faltered Padre Alonzo. "Sst! sst!" (This to the parrot.) "Such language from a lady!" "Ah-_ha_!" grunted Padre Anzar, "I _told_ thee not to buy a bird that was raised in a garrison town." "_To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_" pleaded the parrot. "_A-aw, To-o-ny!_" "Yes," he went on solemnly, addressing her, "and thou art of the devil, and hast as many tricks. Twice I forgave thee--once for shouting 'Fire!' on St. John's Day, as the censer passed; again, for pulling the feathers out of Señor Esteban's choice hen. But thou wilt not escape now. Now thou'lt go to the kitchen and be shut in with Gabrielda's black mouser. There thou shalt shed some quills." With this dire threat, he departed along the path, Loretta still hanging head down at his knee. Scarcely a moment later a commotion sounded from the distance, a commotion muffled by 'dobe wall. First came the voice of old Gabrielda, then the clatter of an over-turning pan, next the terror-stricken shrieks of Loretta. Presently, Padre Anzar appeared, his jaw set, his eyes shining with the look of duty done. "She will be nicely scared this time," he told Padre Alonzo. "She will match her busy peak with Tomasso's claws, and she will remember hereafter to let my blossoms alone." "Perhaps," began Padre Alonzo, deprecatingly, "perhaps 'twere as well to take her out of temptation's way, to--" Padre Anzar raised his shoulders, strode over to knife and trowel and caught them up. "Move her as thou wilt," he said grumpily, "and the farther the better. Tony is proper for us, pretty and songful. But that parrot,"--he shook his tools as if they were Loretta--"how altogether useless and ugly and noisy and blasphemous and good-for-naught!" With this he departed into the shrubbery. Sounds were still coming from the kitchen--Gabrielda's cracked voice, Loretta's cries, the sullen yowling of a cat. Nodding sadly, Padre Alonzo waddled to the perch, vacant and formed like a cross. This he lifted and bore to a place along the wall opposite the great crucifix, where climbed no flowers. Then, smiling gently, as if with some tender thought, he waddled back to the trellis, took the cage from its nail, and, returning to the perch, hung Tony close beside. III Late that night, on coming out of the chapel, Padre Alonzo discovered a little black something blocking his way along the moonlit path. As he paused, leaning forward to peer, the black something sidled nearer him, and saluted. "_Buenas noches!_" it said, its voice monotonous and human with grief and weariness; "_buenas noches! buenas noches!_" The padre bent lower and lifted the parrot to the level of his face. "Aye, good-night truly, as thou sayest," he repeated proudly. "Thou hast some wicked words of a garrison town, but thou knowest the difference between sun and moon." "_Aw, Lora_," murmured the parrot; "_aw, Lo-ra! Lo-ra!_" "Yes, Tomasso has used thee badly." Padre Alonzo patted her head. "I shall put thee on thy perch," he went on; "though I trust good Anzar will not know it. But the moon is up, and my heart is tender. Alas! one does many things when the moon is up. And the next day--one does penance." He thrust the parrot into a fold of his cassock, made along to where was the perch, and placed her upon it. Then he stood back, folding his arms. "To-morrow is Christmas Day, Loretta," he said. "And what wilt thou give to Tony? What can the cactus give the golden poppy? Thou hast only love, eh? Well, that is much, though it grows from naught, as a China lily blooms from a bowl of rocks." He turned, and found himself before the Tree. Fir and pine massed their branches behind it, making a background of plushy green. Against that background, showing full, hung the torn and unclad shape. The moon glinted upon it, haloing the head of the Crucified. The padre sank, bowing, and touched himself in the sign. "_Aw, To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_" came a sleepy croak at his back. The parrot was settling herself for the night. Padre Alonzo rose and turned, reaching up to stroke her. "Good-night, Loretta," he said fondly. "There were none too lowly for His gift of love. It was spared to thee, a yawping fowl, a talker after the manner of the lazy Mexicans that bred thee." He turned back upon the path, sighing and raising his eyes once more. "But for high or low," he said, musing aloud, "the fruit of that love is sacrifice." IV Out of the chapel came the sounds of the noon service--the level intoning of prayer, the rumble and swell of the padres' voices. From her place before the great crucifix Loretta mocked it, only ceasing now and then to answer Tony's warbles with little whistles of delight, or to run her open bill up and down the bit of vertical pole dividing her perch. Yesterday's bout in the kitchen, yesterday's hunger and fear, the lonely night ramble along the path, the lack of her preening friend--all these were forgotten in to-day's safety, sunlight, plenty, and companionship. And so she _gurred_ and _purred_, _a-a-awed_ and _ga-a-wked_, shrilled her "_Buenos días!_" across the garden, laughed uproariously, or droned the familiar mass. In reach of her pacing, in touch of her very tail, was the gilded cage, with Tony darting up stairs and down, yet sparing time now and then for a sip or a seed or a saucy chirp. But of a sudden the happy cries of both birds were changed to notes of alarm. The canary, its round eyes starting like two polished shots, fluttered high and low, beating its yellow wings against the wires; while Loretta squared her rudder, spread her pinions and squatted belligerently. For on the ground, advancing that way by soft steps, and with the gloating look of the hunter fixed upon the cage, came Tomasso, the cat. [Illustration] Quickly the parrot rallied from her panic. As if she knew that her arch-enemy was not seeking her now, but the precious bit of fluff at her side, she began a series of terror-inspiring performances learned in the profane garrison town of her hatching; she gave tongue to dire words that had long since gone out of her repertory. Ruffled to twice her size, she strutted along her perch, shrieking angry orders to mount, flinging out "_Vuelta! vuelta! vuelta!_" in husky trooper tones, and whistling the bugle calls. It failed to scare Tomasso. Within the cage, as it gently danced from its spring, was a tempting morsel, one that lured all the more through its effort to escape. The cat crept steadily forward, velvet foot following velvet foot, across the shifting dapple before the great crucifix, across the packed gravel of the garden path, to the near shade of a gold of Ophir. There, under the roses, he paused, amber eyes glowing, whetted claws slipping in and out expectantly, muscles rolling and flexing with the measurement of the leap. Then, with the cunning of the wild mother, Loretta adopted new tactics, seeking to divert him. She wobbled upon her perch, giving vent to bursts of hysterical laughter; she got between him and the cage and railed at him. His unblinking eyes did not leave his quarry, his muscles kept their quiver of preparation. At the end of his sleek body, touching the path, his long tail swept, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro, like a furry pendulum marking off the dread time. By now other inmates of the garden were alarmed. A blue jay scolded from the terra-cotta roof of the chapel. From the cross-piece of the tree a line of sparrows gave over their squabbling to look down. Loretta's excitement grew wilder. Out of her beak poured phrases not of mass or military, not of good-days or--nights. For under the gold of Ophir the furry pendulum was standing out straight and the moving muscles down Tomasso's length were tight and still. Her instinct knew the signs, and again and again she quavered out the "_Fuego!_" that had disgraced St. John's Day. No one heard. From the chapel still sounded the intoning of prayer, broken by the rumble and swell of the padres' voices. A moment, and she acted. With a "_Ga-a-wk!_" of defiance, she aimed her flight for the ground, took it in all but a somersault, and landed herself directly before the astonished Tomasso. Then once again she spread her wings and squared her rudder, making ready for a clash. Tomasso's eyes fell to her, he relaxed, body and tail, spitting resentfully. Quickly emboldened, she came a hand's breadth nearer him, snapping at the black tip of his nose. He retreated to his haunches, but directed a swift cuff her way. To this she responded with hoarse laughter and yells of "_To-o-ny!_" as if she summoned the canary to witness the encouraging progress of the fight. Then she stalked forward once more. Tomasso wrinkled his face. Their positions were unpleasantly reversed. In Gabrielda's domain it was she who backed off or sought the safe places, and he who sallied out from his cozy nook by the range to scare her into noisy protests. While here she was bristling to him. His paw poised itself in mid-air. Loretta grew reckless. Fanning her wings, in one lightning stroke she bit him between his flattened ears. The pain of it enraged Tomasso. With a jump, he met her. Then ensued such a scene as the kitchen knew. There was mewing and spitting and yowling; there was _gawking_ and squalling and a rending cry for "_Tony!_" All the while, close to the gold of Ophir, the cat and the parrot went dizzily around and around, a whirligig of gray, scarlet, and black--that tossed off fur and feathers. It was over in a moment, when Tomasso fled, over path and grass, and into a dusky recess between the trunks of fir and pine. There he lay down, sulking and grumbling and licking his paws. But Loretta stayed where she was a little, holding her head sidewise in the attitude of a listener. [Illustration] "_Lora_," she murmured presently, her voice inquiring, "_Lora, Lora_." Then, slowly and clumsily, she made her way to the base of the perch, and with beak and talons climbed it. V It was past the noon angelus when Padre Alonzo came waddling along the path, and he found the garden still--still, and filled with the sun-drawn incense of trees and flowers. "Sst! sst! Tony will be too warm, I fear," he was saying aloud as he neared the cage. "The little one shall go to a cooler spot." And with this conclusion, he halted beside the perch of the parrot and lifted the chirping canary down to his knee. "Buenos días," he said to Loretta, pausing a moment; "a good day, truly, but over-hot, so that my cassock makes of me a living olla, for I am beaded with water drops from top to toe." The parrot shifted a little, and again set her head sidewise, as if she were puzzled and listening. Next, she edged toward him, and uncertainly, putting a foot down, clasping and unclasping the pole, trying it cautiously. Against the vertical piece that made her perch like a cross, she teetered awkwardly and stopped. "Loretta," said the padre, in some concern, "hast anything in thy craw? Well, gulp down a stone and grind thy grist. What one swallowest that must one digest." The gravel crunched behind him. He glanced back, to see Padre Anzar advancing, brown cowl shading hollow eyes. [Illustration] Padre Alonzo colored guiltily. "Tony must go to the shade," he said. "The sun is hot to the cooking-point." Padre Anzar paused a moment, glowering up at Loretta. "Then may it singe the plumage of that vixen," he answered. "She desecrates our garden." Another frown, and he passed on. Padre Alonzo watched him out of sight before he again addressed the parrot. "I fear thou must mend thy ways, Loretta," he said. "Here it is Christmas Day, and yet Anzar has no good words for thee. But see,"--he held up a plump hand, displaying one of Gabrielda's sweet biscuits--"riotous as thou art, I have remembered. And now tell me, what hast thou given Tony?" As though in mute answer, the parrot suddenly lowered her head toward him, and he saw that over the gray of her feathered face was a splash of scarlet, as if a vivid fuchsia petal had fallen there. "Loretta!" he cried anxiously; "Loretta! thine eyes!" She lifted her head until her beak pointed past the giant crucifix and straight into the glaring sun. "Buenos días," he prompted tenderly, alarmed now at her unusual silence and the indifference shown his offering; "Loretta, buenos días." But she was settling herself upon her cross-like perch as if for the night. "_A-aw, To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_" she returned with a little sleepy croak; "_buenas noches! buenas noches!_" The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. Transcriber's Note: Italicized words in the original book are denoted by underscores (_) bracketing the word. 
38377	----	THE CHARACTER OF A PRIEST By Philanthropos London: Printed And Published By R. Carlile, 55, Fleet-Street 1821. Price Twopence THE CHARACTER OF A PRIEST Nature pregnant with equality, with justice, and generosity, has given all men the same organization, the same functions, the same powers; she has neither created higher nor lower, superior nor inferior, master nor slave; inequality would imply monopoly; monopoly, partiality; and partiality, divine injustice; all the operations of Nature are simple, just, equitable, and invariable: nothing is done at random, nothing is effected by chance, nothing is the result of uncertain laws. The operations of Nature, the physical laws of men and of morality are as uniform as the revolutions of the solar system; every action is consistent with the essence of the acting body; nothing can act inconsistently with its elements. All Nature acts in conformity with universal laws; man forms an integral part of Nature, and must act in unison with his elements; the laws of Nature are beyond human controul, they are independent of man, unchangeable by any power less than the contriver; the laws of Nature are neither arrested, interrupted, biassed, or controverted by venal, bigoted, fanatical Priests. A Priest has the same essence, is composed of the same elements, endowed with the same organization as other men; he has no more natural command, no greater power, no greater right; Priests do not come into the world with crosiers, or with, mitres, or with rosaries; the revolutions of matter create and destroy them; they are decomposed as a cow or a cabbage. It is not Nature, but the folly of man that has given consequence to the Priest; all the wealth, all the advancement, all the power the Priests enjoy, are acquired by hypocrisy, by perjury, by extortion, and by swindling: the trade is founded in fraud, in blasphemy, and impiety; matured by cupidity, by venality, and by masked villainy. The impostor pretends to have exclusive access to exclusive favour from the Deity. It is by inflexible truth, by the invariable laws of Nature, that the impostor will be analyzed; bring him to the shrine of reason, denude him of his robes, of his mask, of his hypocrisy, he is not more than man by Nature, but worse by morality, inasmuch as he is covered by infamous offences; however intention may operate, however simplicity may be deluded, there cannot be one honest, one independent, and one intelligent man among the whole body of Priests; bigots by education, dishonest by trade, ignorant of the first principles of science, they must necessarily be superstitious, cruel, and vindictive; whatever purity, whatever humility, whatever candour, the Priest may profess, is resolvable into individual interest; he has no parent but avarice, no God but money. Although the Evangelists, the Priests, the sacred impostors, are similar by nature, similarly educated in chicane and hypocrisy, they do not agree in any one religious profession: the Bonzes, the Muftis, and the Priests, have different churches, different Gods, different creeds. Religious impostors uniformly coincide in plundering the people; there is no other symptom of similarity, no atom of cohesion, but rapine, among Priests: God is made something and nothing, every where and no where; he is one thing at Ispahan, another at Constantinople, and a third at Rome; what is religion at one place, is blasphemy at another. If truth was as mutable, as liable to change, as subject to variation, as the dogmas of Priests, conflicting opinions would act to mutual destruction. God, acting always through Nature, always by universal and self-evident laws, would not permit a thousand sects of ignorant, profane, impious, blaspheming Priests, to mislead, impoverish, and barbarize the people. If God manifested himself through the medium of Priests, of churches, and of creeds, it would be by means as self-evident as universal, and as candid and invariable as the rotations of the solar system; it would not be by starvation at one hour, and gluttony at another; or kneeling, tenths, pilgrimages, exorcisms, sprinklings, crosses, sacraments, ablutions, circumcision, and gibberish. Religion is a matter of imagination, of fiction, an hypothesis, and not of fact: the multifarious dogmas of sectarians, demonstrate the multiplicity of vapours and conjectures; while men reason from false principles, religions will multiply to infinity. Philosophers have only one God--the God of Nature; but roguish Priests, old women and fools have an endless number; every arch-impostor has profanely made a God of his own; Priestly genius, pregnant with extortion, and cogitating more effectually to pick pockets, with his own new trap, than with the stale tool of other men, has given rise to a multitude of diurnal Deities, if we witnessed as many variations in the laws of Nature as in the Priest-trade, the Priests might insist that some attention should be given to the business of fraud and cant. Every Priest differs from every other Priest, and all differ from the truth; the Deity does not operate by stealth, he does not work clandestinely in holes and corners, as the miracle-mongers attest, but generally, openly, in the face of day, before all the world, in his works: he does not skulk in mosques, in churches, or in wildernesses, but is equally every where; he knows no more of the cross, the crescent, or the crosier, than he does of a tobacco-pipe, a mile-post, or a broom-stick. If there is one man more wicked than another it is the impostor, and the lying, cheating Priest--the misleader of innocent, inoffensive, unsuspecting men; the more the Priests profess to believe, the greater is the iniquity, and impiety, and hypocrisy--the more religion they believe, the less morality they practice. The people should believe the Priests when they profess principles consistent with Nature, and scorn them: when they claim belief in inconceivable and false enigmas; attention is to be given when assertion is demonstrable by collateral facts and not to matters of faith, mystery and superstition; the Priests are more likely to tell lies, swindle and deceive the people, than the Deity is to be cruel, inconsistent, impotent, and enigmatical; believe nothing out of the order of Nature; the assertion of even one thousand honest fanatics would be inadequate to induce any sensible man to believe that the course of Nature was changed for one moment. The Priests knew it would be useless to spend their time in declamation, in anathemas, in denunciation, against such as would not from mercenary motives, or good sense, pay tithes, and feed the idol of superstition; to enforce their doctrines, to support their extortion, to effect their unholy rapine, they fallaciously promulgated posthumous torture; they invented a Hell, to agonize, to rack, to torment such as would not help to support the imposition. The Priests know their Hell is not a place of actual existence, but a bugbear, and the Devil, the head master, is invented, is used as an emptying-pocket tool; such as do not believe this pick-pocket machinery, such as do not suffer themselves to be duped, misled, and plundered, by hypocrites, swindlers, rogues, and extortioners, are reproached as criminals, as sinners, as blasphemers, as infidels, and as lunatics, and doomed to suffer everlasting torture. Is it likely that a just, wise, and benevolent Deity would thus unmercifully punish innocent men for refusing to contribute to the lasciviousness, licentiousness, and drunkenness, of a vagabond, blaspheming Priesthood? there is no greater impiety than attributing such enormity to a wise and parental God! The profanity of Priests cannot be sufficiently deprecated for alledging such monstrous injustice to the Deity, and asserting that he has more horrible powers, principles, and actions than the Devil; the latter is generous, brave, and forbearing, compared with their God, to whom they attribute malice, revenge, cruelty, fallacy, and persecution to a whole race of people because a poor, ignorant, exhausted woman happened to rob an apple-tree, as he permits school-boys to do with impunity daily: even the Priests must allow he does not think so much of his apples as formerly. The Priests should build altars and offer apples to the Lord to act consistently. The Priests are famous mathematicians; they can demonstrate that one is equal to three, or that three equals one; three eternals is equal to one eternal, and one holy equal to three holies! To please the Deity is to act consistent with his ways; his desire, his intention, his object, is manifested in the organization of nature, and as independence and equality are the predominating features in nature, so those who most strenuously advocate those principles are the most religious, the most patriotic, the most praiseworthy among men. The contrary policy of Priests, destined solely to aggrandize their trade, is debasing the Deity, degrading man, and trampling upon his creation. Whatever the Deity values, Priests despise; with a vandal ferocity they attack whatever does not tend to secure, enlarge, or multiply the emoluments of the mosque and the church; it is not, in fact, about the church they bicker, nor about souls and religion, but about tithes and offerings: the conduct of men is immaterial, they have a licence to commit any crime, so long as they will pay money for absolution and subscribe to the sanctity of tithes. There is no competition among Priests who shall do the utmost degree of good, but who shall have the power of tithing and deceiving the people: if the people had sufficient sense they would treat all Priests as the different kinds of Priests treat each other--as hypocrites and impostors; constant in jealousy, constant in acrimonious opposition and mutual abuse, every order, every genus, are contending for the spoil of credulity. The Priests are the enemies of liberty, the adversaries of free discussion, and the opposite of equality, constantly conspiring against a people enjoying the blessings of freedom, constantly fettering, debasing, and insulting the slave. While the Priest is too weak to be intolerant, he is flattering, deceitful, mean and servile; but when fraud has elevated him to power, he is arbitrary and domineering, inflated with despotism, with insolence, and with vanity. The multitude of assassinations, of massacres and of wars--the avarice, the villainy, the bigotry and bloody-mindedness of Priests have occasioned, exceeds the powers of calculation; the number of religious murders is lost in figures; every field has groaned under an altar of immolation; the vegetation of every country has been fertilized, and the streets of every town deluged with blood shed by the machinations of Priests; look at that fact, for the benefit of your religion, you followers of the cross and the crescent; cant no more about your justice, your generosity, your forbearance, your humanity, your meekness, or your candour. The Priests have been, for selfish purposes, the orators and fomentors of most of the mischiefs that have disgraced, paralyzed, and disfigured the fair character of human nature: it is disgraceful to any man to be seen in a dispute between Priests and kings; as hypocrites, as impostors, as common rogues, men of wisdom will never participate, never be interested, never be duped by the quarrels, and the envious animosities of the swindling trades. All the Priests--all that live by the trade of hypocrisy, all that live by sacred imposition, are blasphemers, are infidels, are perverters of the truth, are the distorters of the will and object of the Deity; and such as most assiduously attempt to dispel the delusion, are most religious in the eyes of God. Blasphemy is not an offence against truth, but the offence of truth against Priestcraft. Notwithstanding the bickering, the animosity, and the jealousy the Priests entertain towards each other, they are consistent, they are unanimous, they are combined in prosecuting any man who has ability, who has honesty, and who has independence to attack the fraud and hypocrisy by which they live; whoever attempts to analyze the farce, to unveil the imposition of revealed religion, is sure to be attacked by Bishops, by Imans, by Bonzes, and by Muftis; truth acts upon these animals as light does upon the organization of bats and owls, and other reptiles, at mid-day. 
42011	----	PABO, THE PRIEST A Novel BY S. BARING GOULD Author of "Domitia," "The Broom-Squire," "Bladys," "Mehalah," Etc. NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1899, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. GERALD 1 II. NEST 14 III. THE SEVEN DEGREES 23 IV. A HWYL 38 V. THE FIRST BLOOD 48 VI. THE SCROLL 58 VII. GRIFFITH OF RHYS 66 VIII. PREPARING FOR THE EVIL DAY 74 IX. WHAT MUST BE 83 X. THE CELL ON MALLAEN 93 XI. A MIRACLE 104 XII. GORONWY 117 XIII. IT MUST BE MAINTAINED 129 XIV. THE FALL OF THE LOT 140 XV. TWO PEBBLES 152 XVI. A SUMMONS 162 XVII. BETRAYED 172 XVIII. CAREG CENNEN 183 XIX. FORGOTTEN 194 XX. THE BRACELET OF MAXEN 206 XXI. SANCTUARY 217 XXII. IN OGOFAU 228 XXIII. AURI MOLES PRÆGRANDIS 238 XXIV. THE PYLGAIN OF DYFED 251 XXV. THE WHITE SHIP 261 PABO, THE PRIEST CHAPTER I GERALD King Henry sat in a great chair with a pillow under each arm, and one behind his head resting on the lofty chair-back. He was unwell, uncomfortable, irritable. In a large wicker-work cage at the further end of the room was a porcupine. It had been sent him as a present by the King of Denmark. Henry Beauclerk was fond of strange animals, and the princes that desired his favor humored him by forwarding such beasts and birds as they considered to be rare and quaint. The porcupine was a recent arrival, and it interested the King as a new toy, and drew his thoughts away from himself. He had occasion to be irritable. His leech had ordered him to eat salt pork only. By his hand, on the table, stood a ewer and a basin, and ever and anon Henry poured water out of the ewer into the basin, and then with a huge wooden spoon ladled the liquid back into the receiver. The reason of the proceeding was this-- He had for some time been troubled with some internal discomfort--not serious, but annoying; one which we, nowadays, would interpret very differently from the physicians of the twelfth century. We should say that he was suffering from dyspepsia; but the Court leech, who diagnosed the condition of the King, explained it in other fashion. He said that Henry had inadvertently drunk water that contained the spawn of a salamander. It had taken many months for the spawn to develop into a sort of tadpole, and the tadpole to grow into a salamander. Thus the reptile had attained large size, and was active, hungry, and rampageous. Beauclerk had a spotted salamander within him, which could not be extracted by a forceps, as it was out of reach; it could not be poisoned, as that medicament which would kill the brute might also kill the King. It must, therefore, be cajoled to leave its prison. Unless this end were achieved the son of the Conqueror of England would succumb to the ravages of this internal monster. The recipe prescribed was simple, and commended itself to the meanest intelligence. Henry was to eat nothing but highly salted viands, and was to drink neither wine, water, nor ale. However severely he might suffer from thirst he could console himself with the reflection that the sufferings of the salamander within him were greater--a poor comfort, yet one that afforded a measure of relief to a man of a vindictive mind. Not only was he to eat salt meat, but he was also to cause the splash of water to be heard in his insides. Therefore he was to pour water forwards and backwards between the ewer and the basin; and this was to be done with gaping mouth, so that the sound might reach the reptile, and the salamander would at length be induced to ascend the throat of the monarch and make for the basin, so as to drink. Immediately on the intruder leaving the body of the King, Henry was to snap it up with a pair of tongs, laid ready to hand, and to cast it into the fire. Although the season was summer and the weather was warm, there burned logs on the hearth, emitting a brisk blaze. There were in the room in the palace of Westminster others besides the King and the imprisoned salamander. Henry had sent into South Wales for Gerald de Windsor and his wife Nest. These two were now in the chamber with the sick King. "There, Nest," said he, "look at yon beast. Study it well. It is called a porcupine. Plinius asserts--I think it is Plinius--that when angered he sets all his quills in array and launches one at the eyes of such as threaten or assail him. Therefore, when I approach the cage, I carry a bolster before me as a buckler." "Prithee, Sire, when thou didst go against the Welsh last year, didst thou then as well wear a bolster?" "Ah," said the King, "you allude to the arrow that was aimed at me, and which would have transfixed me but for my hauberk. That was shot by no Welshman." "Then by whom?" "Odds life, Nest, there be many who would prefer to have the light and lax hand of Robert over them than mine, which is heavy, and grips tightly." "Then I counsel, when thou warrest against the Welsh, wear a pillow strapped behind as well as one before." "Nest! Thy tongue is sharp as a spine of the porcupine. Get thee gone into the embrasure, and converse with the parrot there. Gerald and I have some words to say to each other, and when I have done with him, then I will speak with thee." The lady withdrew into the window. She was a beautiful woman, known to be the most beautiful in Wales. She was the daughter of Rhys, King of Dyfed--that is, South Wales, and she had been surrendered when quite young as a hostage to Henry. He had respected neither her youth nor her helpless position away from her natural protectors. Then he had thrust her on Gerald of Windsor, one of the Norman adventurers who were turned loose on Wales to be the oppressors, the plunderers, and the butchers of Nest's own people. Nest had profuse golden hair, and a wonderful complexion of lilies and roses, that flashed, even flamed with emotion. Her eyes were large and deep, under dark brows, and with long dark lashes that swept her cheeks and veiled her expressive eyes when lowered. She was tall and willowy, graceful in her every movement. In her eyes, usually tremulous and sad, there scintillated a lurking fire--threats of a blaze, should she be angered. When thrown into the arms of Gerald, her wishes had not been consulted. Henry had desired to be rid of her, as an encumbrance, as soon as he resolved on marrying Mathilda, the heiress of the Saxon kings, daughter of Malcolm of Scotland, and niece to Edgar Etheling. At one time he had thought of conciliating the Welsh by making Nest his wife. Their hostility would cease when the daughter of one of their princes sat on the English throne. But on further consideration, he deemed it more expedient for him to attach to him the English, and so rally about him a strong national party against the machinations of his elder brother, Robert. This concluded, he had disposed of Nest, hurriedly, to the Norman Gerald. Meanwhile, her brother, Griffith, despoiled of his kingdom, a price set on his head, was an exile and a refugee at the Court of the King of Gwynedd, or North Wales, at Aberfraw in Anglesey. "Come now, Gerald, what is thy report? How fares it with the pacification of Wales?" "Pacification, Lord King! Do you call that pacifying a man when you thrash his naked body with a thorn-bush?" "If you prefer the term--subjugation." "The word suits. Sire, it was excellent policy, as we advanced, to fill in behind us with a colony of Flemings. The richest and fattest land has been cleared of the Welsh and given to foreigners. Moreover, by this means we have cut them off from access to the sea, from their great harbors. It has made them mad. Snatch a meal from a dog, and he will snarl and bite. Now we must break their teeth and cut their claws. They are rolled back among their tangled forests and desolate mountains." "And what advance has been made?" "I have gone up the Towy and have established a castle at Carreg Cennen, that shall check Dynevor if need be." "Why not occupy Dynevor, and build there?" Gerald looked askance at his wife. The expression of his face said more than words. She was trifling with the bird, and appeared to pay no attention to what was being said. "I perceive," spoke Henry, and chuckled. Dynevor had been the palace in which Nest's father, the King of South Wales, had held court. It was from thence that her brother Griffith had been driven a fugitive to North Wales. "In Carreg Cennen there is water--at Dynevor there is none," said Gerald, with unperturbed face. "A good reason," laughed Henry, and shifted the pillow behind his head. "Hey, there, Nest! employ thy energies in catching of flies. Methinks were I to put a bluebottle in my mouth, the buzzing might attract the salamander, and I would catch him as he came after it." Then to Gerald, "Go on with thine account." "I have nothing further to say--than this." He put forth his hand and took a couple of fresh walnuts off a leaf that was on the table. Then, unbidden, he seated himself on a stool, with his back to the embrasure, facing the King. Next he cracked the shells in his fist, and cast the fragments into the fire. He proceeded leisurely to peel the kernels, then extended his palm to Henry, offering one, but holding his little and third finger over the other. "I will have both," said Beauclerk. "Nay, Sire, I am not going to crack all the nutshells, and you eat all the kernels." "What mean you?" "Hitherto I and other adventurers have risked our lives, and shed our blood in cracking the castles of these Welsh fellows, and now we want something more, some of the flesh within. Nay, more. We ask you to help us. You have done nothing." "I led an army into Wales last summer," said Henry angrily. "And led it back again," retorted Windsor drily. "Excuse my bluntness. That was of no advantage whatsoever to us in the south. Your forces were not engaged. It was a promenade through Powys. As for us in the south, we have looked for help and found none since your great father made a pilgrimage to St. David. Twice to Dewi is as good as once to Rome, so they say. He went once to look around him and to overawe those mountain wolves." "What would you have done for you?" inquired Henry surlily. "Not a great thing for you; for us--everything." "And that?" "At this moment a chance offers such as may not return again in our time. If what I propose be done, you drive a knife into the heart of the enemy, and that will be better than cutting off his fingers and toes and slicing away his ears. It will not cost you much, Sire--not the risk of an arrow. Naught save the stroke of a pen." "Say what it is." "The Bishop of St. David's is dead, a Welsh prelate, and the Church there has chosen another Welshman, Daniel, to succeed him. Give the see to an Englishman or a Norman, it matters not which--not a saint, but a fellow on whom you can rely to do your work and ours." "I see not how this will help you," said Henry, with his eye on the hard face of Gerald, which was now becoming animated, so that the bronze cheek darkened. "How this will help us!" echoed Windsor. "It will be sovereign as help. See you, Sire! We stud the land with castles, but we cannot be everywhere. The Welsh have a trick of gathering noiselessly in the woods and glens and drawing a ring about one of our strongholds, and letting no cry for assistance escape. Then they close in and put every Englishman therein to the sword--if they catch a Fleming, him they hang forthwith. We know not that a castle has been attacked and taken till we see the clouds lit up with flame. When we are building, then our convoys are intercepted, our masons are harassed, our limekilns are destroyed, our cattle carried off, our horses houghed, and our men slaughtered." "But what will a bishop avail you in such straits?" "Attend! and you shall hear. A bishop who is one of ourselves and not a Welshman drains the produce of the land into English pockets. He will put an Englishman into every benefice, that in every parish we may have a spy on their actions, maintained by themselves. There is the joke of it. We will plant monasteries where we have no castles, and stuff them with Norman monks. A bishop will find excuses, I warrant you, for dispossessing the native clergy, and of putting our men into their berths. He will do more. He will throw such a net of canon law over the laity as to entangle them inextricably in its meshes, and so enable us, without unnecessary bloodshed, to arrogate their lands to ourselves." Henry laughed. "Give us the right man. No saint with scruples." "'Sdeath!" exclaimed the King; "I know the very man for you." "And he is?" "Bernard, the Queen's steward." "He is not a clerk!" "I can make him one." "He is married!" "He can cast off his wife--a big-mouthed jade. By my mother's soul, he will be glad to purchase a bishopric so cheap." "He is no saint?" "He has been steward to one," mocked Henry. "My Maude postures as a saint, gives large alms to needy clerks, washes the feet of beggars, endows monasteries, and grinds her tenants till they starve, break out into revolt, and have to be hung as an example. She lavishes coin on foreign flattering minstrels--and for that the poor English churl must be put in the press. It is Bernard, and ever Bernard, who has to turn the screw and add the weights and turn the grindstone." "And he scruples not?" "Has not a scruple in his conscience. He cheats his mistress of a third of what he raises for her to lavish on the Church and the trumpeters of her fame." "That is the man we require. Give us Bernard, and, Sire, you will do more to pacify Wales--pacify is your word--than if you sent us an army. Yet it must be effected speedily, before the Welsh get wind of it, or they will have their Daniel consecrated and installed before we shall be ready with our Bernard." "It shall be accomplished at once--to-morrow. Go, Gerald, make inquiry what bishops are in the city, and send one or other hither. He shall priest him to-morrow, and Bernard shall be consecrated bishop the same day. Take him back with you. If you need men you shall have them. Enthrone him before they are aware. They have been given Urban at Llandaff, and, death of my soul! he has been belaboring his flock with his crook, and has shorn them so rudely that they are bleeding to death. There is Hervey, another Norman we have thrust into St. Asaph, and, if I mistake not, his sheep have expelled their shepherd. So, to support Bernard, force will be required. Let him be well sustained." "I go," said Gerald. "When opposition is broken we shall eat our walnuts together, Sire." "Aye--but Bernard will take the largest share." CHAPTER II NEST King Henry folded his hands over his paunch, leaned back and laughed heartily. "'Sdeath!" said he. "But I believe the salamander has perished: he could not endure the mirth of it. Odds blood! But Bernard will be a veritable salamander in the rude bowels of Wales." Before him stood Nest, with fire erupting from her dark eyes. Henry looked at her, raised his brows, settled himself more easily in his chair, but cast aside the pillows on which his arms had rested. "Ha! Nest, I had forgotten thy presence. Hast caught me a bluebottle? My trouble is not so acute just now. How fares our boy, Robert?" She swept the question aside with an angry gesture of the hand. "And what sort of housekeeping do you have with Gerald?" he asked. Again she made a movement of impatience. "Odds life!" said he. "When here it was ever with thee Wales this, and Wales that. We had no mountains like thy Welsh Mynyddau--that is the silly word, was it not? And no trees like those in the Vale of Towy, and no waters that brawled and foamed like thy mountain brooks, and no music like the twanging of thy bardic harps, and no birds sang so sweet, and no flowers bloomed so fair. Pshaw! now thou art back among them all again. I have sent thee home--art content?" "You have sent me back to blast and destroy my people. You have coupled my name with that of Gerald, that the curses of my dear people when they fall on him may fall on me also." "Bah!" said the King. "Catch me a bluebottle, and do not talk in such high terms." "Henry," she said, in thrilling tones, "I pray you----" "You were forever praying me at one time to send you back to Wales. I have done so, and you are not content." "I had rather a thousand times have buried my head--my shamed, my dishonored head"--she spoke with sternness and concentrated wrath--"in some quiet cloister, than to be sent back with a firebrand into my own land to lay its homesteads in ashes." "You do pretty well among yourselves in that way," said Henry contemptuously. "When were you ever known to unite? You are forever flying at each other's throats and wasting each other's lands. Those who cannot combine must be broken." Nest drew a long breath. She knitted her hands together. "Henry," she said, "I pray you, reconsider what Gerald has advised, and withhold consent." "Nay, it was excellent counsel." "It was the worst counsel that could be given. Think what has been done to my poor people. You have robbed them of their corn-land and have given it to aliens. You have taken from them their harbors, and they cannot escape. You have driven away their princes, and they cannot unite. You have crushed out their independence, and they cease to be men. They have but one thing left to them as their very own--their Church. And now you will plunder them of that--thrust yourselves in between them and God. They have had hitherto their own pastors, as they have had their own princes. They have followed the one in war and the other in peace. Their pastors have been men of their own blood, of their own speech, men who have suffered with them, have wept with them, and have even bled with them. These have spoken to them when sick at heart, and have comforted them when wounded in spirit. And now they are to be jostled out of their places, to make room for others, aliens in blood, ignorant of our language, indifferent to our woes; men who cannot advise nor comfort, men from whom our people will receive no gift, however holy. Deprived of everything that makes life endurable, will you now deprive them of their religion?" She paused, out of breath, with flaming cheek, and sparkling eyes--quivering, palpitating in every part of her body. "Nest," said the King, "you are a woman--a fool. You do not understand policy." "Policy!" she cried scornfully. "What is policy? My people have their faults and their good qualities." "Faults! I know them, I trow. As to their good qualities, I have them to learn." He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "You know their faults alone," pursued Nest passionately, "because you seek to find them that you may foster and trade on them. That is policy. Policy is to nurture the evil and ignore the good. None know better their own weaknesses than do we. But why not turn your policy to helping us to overcome them and be made strong?" "It is through your own inbred faults that we have gained admission into your mountains. Brothers with you cannot trust brothers----" "No more than you or Robert can trust each other, I presume," sneered Nest. "An arrow was aimed at you from behind. Who shot it? Not a Welshman, but Robert, or a henchman of Robert. On my honor, you set us a rare example of fraternal affection and unity!" Henry bit his lips. "It is through your own rivalries that we are able to maintain our hold upon your mountains." "And because we know you as fomenters of discord--doers of the devil's work--that is why we hate you. Give up this policy, and try another method with us." "Women cannot understand. Have done!" "Justice, they say, is figured as a woman; for Justice is pitiful towards feebleness and infirmity. But with you is no justice at all, only rank tyranny--tyranny that can only rule with the iron rod, and drive with the scourge." "Be silent! My salamander is moving again." But she would not listen to him. She pursued-- "My people are tender-hearted, loving, loyal, frank. Show them trust, consideration, regard, and they will meet you with open arms. We know now that our past has been one of defeat and recoil, and we also know why it has been so. Divided up into our little kingdoms, full of rivalries, jealousies, ambitions, we have not had the wit to cohere. Who would weave us into one has made a rope of sand. It was that, not the superior courage or better arms of the Saxon, that drove us into mountains and across the sea. It is through playing with, encouraging this, bribing into treachery, that you are forcing your way among us now. But if in place of calling over adventurers from France and boors from Flanders to kill us and occupy our lands, you come to us with the olive branch, and offer us your suzerainty and guarantee us against internecine strife--secure to us our lands, our laws, our liberties--then we shall become your devoted subjects, we shall look up to you as to one who raises us, whereas now we regard you as one who casts us down to trample on us. We have our good qualities, and these qualities will serve you well if you will encourage them. But your policy is to do evil, and evil only." Henry Beauclerk, with a small mallet, struck a wooden disk, and an attendant appeared. "Call Gerald Windsor back," said he; then, to himself, "this woman is an offense to me." "Because I utter that which you cannot understand. I speak of justice, and you understand only tyranny." "Another word, Nest, and I shall have you forcibly removed." She cast herself passionately at the King's feet. "I beseech thee--I--I whom thou didst so cruelly wrong when a poor helpless hostage in thy hands--I, away from father and mother--alone among you--not knowing a word of your tongue. I have never asked for aught before. By all the wrongs I have endured from thee--by thy hopes for pardon at the great Day when the oppressed and fatherless will be righted--I implore thee--withhold thy consent." "It is idle to ask this," said Henry coldly, "Leave me. I will hear no more." Then taking the ewer, he began again to pour water into the basin, and next to ladle it back into the vessel whence he had poured it. "Oh, you beau clerk!" exclaimed Nest, rising to her feet. "So skilled in books, who knowest the qualities of the porcupine through Plinius, and how to draw forth a salamander, as instructed by Galen! A beau clerk indeed, who does not understand the minds of men, nor read their hearts; who cannot understand their best feelings, whose only thought is that of the churl, to smash, and outrage, and ruin. A great people, a people with more genius in its little finger than all thy loutish Saxons in their entire body, thou wilt oppress, and turn their good to gall, their sweetness to sour, and nurture undying hate where thou mightest breed love." "Begone! I will strike and summon assistance, and have thee removed." "Then," said Nest, "I appeal unto God, that He may avenge the injured and the oppressed. May He smite thee where thou wilt most painfully feel the blow! May He break down all in which thou hast set thy hopes, and level with the dust that great ambition of thine!" She gasped. "Sire, when thou seest thy hopes wrecked and thyself standing a stripped and blasted tree--then remember Wales!" CHAPTER III THE SEVEN DEGREES The river Cothi, that after a lengthy course finally discharges into the Towy, so soon as it has quitted the solitudes of moor and mountain, traverses a broad and fertile basin that is a gathering-place of many feeders. From this basin it issues by a narrow glen, almost a ravine. The sides of this great bowl are walled in by mountains, though not of the height, desolation, and grandeur of those to the north, where the Cothi takes its rise. The broad basin in the midst of the highlands, once probably occupied by a lake, is traversed near its head by the Sarn Helen, a paved Roman-British road, still in use, that connects the vales of the Towy and the Teify, and passes the once famous gold-mines of Ogofau. At the head of this oval trough or basin stand the church and village of Cynwyl Gaio, backed by mountains that rise rapidly, and are planted on a fork between the river Annell and a tributary, whose mingled waters eventually swell the Cothi. The lower extremity of the trough is occupied by a rocky height, Pen-y-ddinas, crowned with prehistoric fortifications, and a little tarn of trifling extent is the sole relic of the great sheet of water which at one time, we may conjecture, covered the entire expanse. At the time of this story, the district between the Towy and Teify, comprising the basin just described, constituted the sanctuary of David, and was the seat of an ecclesiastical tribe--that is to say, it was the residence of a people subject to a chief in sacred orders, the priest Pabo, and the hereditary chieftainship was in his family. And this pleasant bowl among the mountains was also regarded as a sanctuary, to which might fly such as had fallen into peril of life by manslaughter, or such strangers as were everywhere else looked on with suspicion. A story was told, and transmitted from father to son, to account for this. It was to this effect. When St. David--or Dewi, as the Welsh called him--left the synod of Brefi, in the Teify Vale, he ascended the heights of the Craig Twrch, by Queen Helen's road, and on passing the brow, looked down for the first time on the fertile district bedded beneath him, engirdled by heathery mountains at the time in the flush of autumn flower. It was as though a crimson ribbon was drawn round the emerald bowl. Then--so ran the tale--the spirit of prophecy came on the patriarch. His soul was lifted up within him, and raising his hands in benediction, he stood for a while as one entranced. "Peace!" said he--and again, "Peace!" and once more, "Peace!" and he added, "May the deluge of blood never reach thee!" Then he fell to sobbing, and bowed his head on his knees. His disciples, Ismael and Aiden, said, "Father, tell us why thou weepest." But David answered, "I see what will be. Till then may the peace of David rest on this fair spot." Now, in memory of this, it was ordained that no blood should be spilled throughout the region; and that such as feared for their lives could flee to it and be safe from pursuit, so long as they remained within the sanctuary bounds. And the bounds were indicated by crosses set up on the roads and at the head of every pass. Consequently, the inhabitants of the Happy Valley knew that no Welsh prince would harry there, that no slaughters could take place there, no hostile forces invade the vale. There might ensue quarrels between residents in the Happy Land, personal disputes might wax keen; but so great was the dread of incurring the wrath of Dewi, that such quarrels and disputes were always adjusted before reaching extremities. And this immunity from violence had brought upon the inhabitants great prosperity. Such was a consequence of the benediction pronounced by old Father David. It was no wonder, therefore, that the inhabitants of the region looked to him with peculiar reverence and almost fanatical love. Just as in Tibet the Grand Lama never dies, for when one religious chief pays the debt of nature, his spirit undergoes a new incarnation, so--or almost so--was each successive Bishop of St. David's regarded as the representative of the first great father, as invested with all his rights, authority, and sanctity, as having a just and inalienable claim on their hearts and on their allegiance. But now a blow had fallen on the community that was staggering. On the death of their Bishop Griffith, the church of St. David had chosen as his successor Daniel, son of a former bishop, Sulien; but the Normans had closed all avenues of egress from the peninsula, so that he might not be consecrated, unless he would consent to swear allegiance to the see of Canterbury and submission to the crown of England, and this was doggedly resisted. Menevia--another name for the St. David's headland--had undergone many vicissitudes. The church had been burnt by Danes, and its bishop and clergy massacred, but it had risen from its ruins, and a new successor in spirit, in blood, in tongue, had filled the gap. Now--suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, arrived Bernard, a Norman, who could not speak a word of Welsh, and mumbled but broken English, a man who had been hurried into Orders, the priesthood and episcopal office, all in one day, and was thrust on the Welsh by the mere will of the English King, in opposition to Canon law, common decency, and without the consent of the diocese. The ferment throughout South Wales was immense. Resentment flamed in some hearts, others were quelled with despair. It was not the clergy alone who were in consternation: all, of every class, felt that their national rights had been invaded, and that in some way they could not understand this appointment was a prelude to a great disaster. Although there had been dissensions among the princes, and strife between tribes, the Church, their religion, had been the one bond of union. There was a cessation of all discord across the sacred threshold, and clergy and people were intimately united in feeling, in interests, in belief. In the Celtic Church bishops and priests had always been allowed to marry--a prelate of St. David's had frankly erected a monument to the memory of two of his sons, which is still to be seen there. Everywhere the parochial clergy, if parochial they can be styled, where territorial limits were not defined had their wives. They were consequently woven into one with the people by the ties of blood. Nowhere was the feeling of bitterness more poignant than in the Happy Valley, where the intrusion of a stranger to the throne of David was resented almost as a sacrilege. Deep in the hearts of the people lay the resolve not to recognize the new bishop as a spiritual father, one of the ecclesiastical lineage of Dewi. Such was the condition of affairs, such the temper of the people, when it was announced that Bernard was coming to visit the sanctuary and there to initiate the correction of abuses. Pabo, the Archpriest, showed less alarm than his flock. When he heard that threats were whispered, that there was talk of resistance to the intrusion, he went about among his people exhorting, persuading against violence. Let Bernard be received with the courtesy due to a visitor, and the respect which his office deserved. A good many protested that they would not appear at Cynwyl lest their presence should be construed as a recognition of his claim, and they betook themselves to their mountain pastures, or remained at home. Nevertheless, moved by curiosity, a considerable number of men did gather on the ridge, about the church, watching the approach of the bishop and his party. Women also were there in numbers, children as well, only eager to see the sight. The men were gloomy, silent, and wore their cloaks, beneath which they carried cudgels. The day was bright, and the sun flashed on the weapons and on the armor of the harnessed men who were in the retinue of Bishop Bernard, that entered the valley by Queen Helen's road, and advanced leisurely towards the ridge occupied by the church and the hovels that constituted the village. The Welsh were never--they are not to this day--builders. Every fair structure of stone in the country is due to the constructive genius of the Normans. The native Celt loved to build of wood and wattle. His churches, his domestic dwellings, his monasteries, his kingly halls, all were of timber. The tribesmen of Pabo stood in silence, observing the advancing procession. First came a couple of clerks, and after them two men-at-arms, then rode Bernard, attended on one side by his interpreter, on the other by his brother Rogier in full harness. Again clerks, and then a body of men-at-arms. The bishop was a middle-sized man with sandy hair, very pale eyes with rings about the iris deeper in color than the iris itself--eyes that seemed without depth, impossible to sound, as those of a bird. He had narrow, straw-colored brows, a sharp, straight peak of a nose, and thin lips--lips that hardly showed at all--his mouth resembling a slit. The chin and jowl were strongly marked. He wore on his head a cloth cap with two peaks, ending in tassels, and with flaps to cover his ears, possibly as an imitation of a miter; but outside a church, and engaged in no sacred function, he was of course not vested. He had a purple-edged mantle over one shoulder, and beneath it a dark cassock, and he was booted and spurred. One of the clerks who preceded him carried his pastoral cross--for the see of St. David's claimed archiepiscopal pre-eminence. In the midst of the men-at-arms were sumpter mules carrying the ecclesiastical purtenances of the bishop. Not a cheer greeted Bernard as he reached the summit of the hill and was in the midst of the people. He looked about with his pale, inanimate eyes, and saw sulky faces and folded arms. "Hey!" said he to his interpreter. "Yon fellow--he is the Archpriest, I doubt not. Bid him come to me." "I am at your service," said Pabo in Norman-French, which he had acquired. "That is well; hold my stirrup whilst I alight." Pabo hesitated a moment, then complied. "The guest," said he, "must be honored." But an angry murmur passed through the throng of bystanders. "You have a churlish set of parishioners," said Bernard, alighting. "They must be taught good manners. Go, fetch me a seat." Pabo went to the presbytery, and returned with a stool, that he placed where indicated by the bishop. The people looked at each other with undisguised dissatisfaction. They did not approve of their chief holding the stirrup, or carrying a stool for this foreign intruder. Their isolation in the midst of the mountains, their immunity from war and ravage, had made them tenacious of their liberties and proud, resistful to innovation, and resolute in the maintenance of their dignity and that of their chief. But a certain amount of concession was due to hospitality, and so construed these acts could alone be tolerated. Nevertheless their tempers were chafed, and there was no graciousness in the demeanor of the bishop to allay suspicion, while the contemptuous looks of his Norman attendants were calculated to exasperate. "It is well," said Bernard, signing imperiously to Pabo to draw near. "It is well that you can speak French." "I have been in Brittany. I have visited Nantes and Rennes. I can speak your language after a fashion." "'Tis well. I am among jabbering jackdaws, and cannot comprehend a word of their jargon. I do not desire to distort my mouth in the attempt to acquire it." "Then would it not have been as well had you remained in Normandy or England?" "I have other work to do than to study your tongue," said Bernard with a laugh. "I am sent here by my august master, the fine clerk, the great scholar, the puissant prince, to bring order where is confusion." "The aspect of this valley bespeaks confusion," interrupted Pabo, with a curl of the lip. "Do not break in on me with unmannered words," said the bishop. "I am an apostle of morality where reigns mere license." "License, my Sieur? I know my people; I have lived among them from childhood. They are not perfect. They may not be saints, but I cannot admit that a stranger who is newly come among us, who cannot understand a word that we speak, is justified in thus condemning us." "We shall see that presently," exclaimed Bernard, "when we come to particulars. I have heard concerning you. My lord and master, the Beauclerk Henry, has his eyes and ears open. Ye are a dissolute set, ye do not observe the Seven Degrees." Then aside to his chaplain: "It is seven, not four, I think?" "I pray you explain," said Pabo. "Seven degrees," pursued Bernard. "I must have all the relationships of the married men throughout the country gone into. This district of Caio to commence with, then go on through the South of Wales--through my diocese. I must have all inquired into; and if any man shall have contracted an union within the forbidden degrees, if he have taken to him a wife related by blood--consanguine, that is the word, chaplain, eh?--or connected by marriage, affine--am I right, chaplain?--or having contracted a spiritual relationship through sponsorship at the font, or legal relation through guardianship--then such marriages must be annulled, made void, and the issue pronounced to be illegitimate." "My good Lord!" gasped Pabo, turning deadly pale. "Understand me," went on the bishop, turning his blear, ringed, birdlike eyes about on the circle of those present, "if it shall chance that persons have stood at the font to a child, then they have thereby contracted a spiritual affinity--I am right, am I not chaplain?--which acts as a barrier to marriage; and, if they have become united, bastardizes their issue. Cousinship by blood, relationship through marriage, all act in the same way to seven degrees--and render unions void." "Are you aware what you are about?" asked Pabo gravely. "In our land, hemmed in by mountains, marriages are usually contracted within the same tribe, and in the same district, so that the whole of our people are more or less bound together into a family. A kinship of some sort subsists between all. If you press this rule--and it is no rule with us--you break up fully three-fourths of the families in this country." "And what if I do?" "What! Separate husband and wife!" "If the union has been unlawful." "It has not been unlawful. Cousins have always among us been allowed to marry. No nearer blood relations; and the rule of affinity has never extended beyond a wife's sister. As to spiritual relationship as a bar, it is a device of man. Why! to inquire into such matters is to pry into every family, to introduce trouble into consciences, to offer opportunity for all kinds of license." "I care not. It is our Canon law." "But we are not, we never have been, subject to your Canon law." "You are so now. I, your head, have taken oath of allegiance to Canterbury. Thereby I have bound you all." Pabo's cheek darkened. "I rely on you," proceeded the bishop. "You, as you say, have lived here always. You can furnish me with particulars as to all the marriages that have been contracted for the last fifty years." "What! does the rule act retrospectively?" "Ay. What is unlawful now was unlawful always." "I will not give up--betray my people." "You will be obedient to your bishop!" Pabo bit his lip and looked down. "This will entail a good deal of shifting of lands from hand to hand, when sons discover that their fathers' wedlock was unlawful, and that they are not qualified to inherit aught." "You will cause incalculable evil!" The bishop shrugged his shoulders. "Lead on to the church," said he. "My chaplain, who is interpreter as well, shall read my decree to your people--in Latin first and then in Welsh. By the beard of Wilgefrotis! if you are obstructive, Archpriest, I know how to call down lightning to fall on you." NOTE.--The seven prohibited degrees were reduced to four at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). By Civil law the degrees were thus counted,-- 0 | +-----+-----+ | | 10 10 | | 20 20 \----\ /----/ 4 But by Canon law-- 0 | +-----+-----+ | | 0.....1.....0 | | 0.....2.....0 CHAPTER IV A HWYL A Welsh church at the period of the Norman Conquest was much what it had been from the time when Christianity had been adopted by the Britons. It was of wood, as has been already stated. The insular Celt could never apply himself to the quarrying and shaping of stone. The church of Cynwyl was oblong, built of split logs, roofed with thatch. The eaves projected, so as to shelter the narrow windows from the drift of rain, as these latter were unglazed. Only in the chancel were they protected by sheep's amnion stretched on frames. A gallows of timber standing at a short distance from the west end supported the bell. This was neither circular nor cast, but was oblong in shape, of hammered metal, and riveted. The tone emitted was shrill and harsh, but perhaps was on this account better suited to be heard at a distance than had it been deep in tone and musical in note. Rude although the exterior of the church was, the interior was by no means deficient in beauty, but this beauty was limited to, or at least concentrated on, the screen that divided the long hall into two portions. There were no aisles, the only division into parts was effected by the screen, that was pierced by a doorway in the middle. This screen was, indeed, constructed of wood in compartments, and each compartment was filed with an intricate and varied tracery of plaited willow wands. It was the glory and the delight of the Celt to expend his artistic effort on the devising and carrying out of some original design in interlaced work--his knots and twists and lattice were of incomparable beauty and originality. If he took to carving on stone, it was to reproduce on the best tractable material his delightful lacework of osiers. The patterns of the compartments were not merely varied in plaits, but color was skilfully introduced by the flexible rods having been dyed by herbs or lichens, and a further variety was introduced by the partial peeling of some of the wands in rings. Moreover, to heighten the effect, in places flat pieces of wood like shuttles, but with dragons' heads carved on them, were introduced among the plait as a means of breaking continuity in design and allowing of a fresh departure in pattern. Within the screen a couple of oil-lamps burned, rendered necessary by the dusk there produced by the membrane that covered the windows. Here, beneath the altar, was preserved the abbatial staff of the founder--a staff invested by popular belief with the miraculous powers. On the last day of April every year, this staff was solemnly brought forth and carried up the river Annell, to a point where rested an enormous boulder, fallen from the mountain crag, and resting beside the stream, where it glanced and frothed over a slide of rock, in which were depressions scooped by the water, but superstitiously held to have been worn by the Apostle of Caio as he knelt in the water at his prayers and recitation of the Psalter. Here the Archpriest halted, and with the staff stirred the water. It was held that by this means the Annell was assured to convey health and prosperity to the basin of the Cothi, into which it discharged its blessed waters. Hither were driven flocks and herds to have the crystal liquid scooped from the hollows in the rock, and sprinkled over them, as an effectual preservative against murrain. The bishop occupied a stool within the screen. On this occasion he had nothing further to do than proclaim his inflexible determination to maintain the prohibition of marriage within the seven degrees for the future, and to annul all such unions as fell within them, whether naturally or artificially, and to illegitimatize all children the issue of such marriages. It was the object of the Norman invaders to sow the seed of discord among those whose land they coveted, to produce such confusion in the transmission of estates as to enable them to intervene and dispossess the native owners, not always at the point of the sword, but also with the quill of the clerk. The villagers had crowded into the sacred building, they stood or knelt as densely as they could be packed, and through the open door could be seen faces thronging to hear such words as might reach them without. Every face wore an expression of suspicion, alarm, or resentment. Pabo stood outside the screen upon a raised step or platform, whence he was wont to read to or address his congregation. It sustained a desk, on which reposed the Scriptures. The bishop's chaplain occupied the center of the doorway through the screen. He held a parchment in his hand, and he hastily read its contents in Latin first, and then translated it into Welsh. Pabo was a tall man, with dark hair and large deep eyes, soft as those of an ox, yet capable of flashing fire. He was not over thirty-five years of age, yet looked older, as there was gravity and intensity in his face beyond his years. He was habited in a long woolen garment dyed almost but not wholly black. He was hearkening to every word that fell, his eyes fixed on the ground, his hands clenched, his lips closed, lines forming in his face. It escaped Bernard, behind the lattice-work, and incapable of observing such phenomena, how integrally one, as a single body, the tribesmen present were with their ecclesiastical and political chieftain. Their eyes were riveted, not on the reader, but on the face of Pabo. The least change in his expression, a contraction of the brow, a quiver of the lip, a flush on the cheek, repeated itself in every face. Whilst the lection in Latin proceeded, the people could understand no more of it than what might be discerned from its effect on their Archpriest; but it was other when the chaplain rendered it into every-day vernacular. Yet even then, they did not look to his lips. They heard his words, but read the commentary on them in the face of Pabo. They understood now with what they were menaced. It was shown to them, not obscurely. They knew as the allocution proceeded what it involved if carried out: there were wives present whose sentence of expulsion from their homes was pronounced, children who were bastardized and disinherited, husbands whose dearest ties were to be torn and snapped. Not a sound was to be heard save the drone of the reader's voice; till suddenly there came a gasp of pain--then a sob. Again an awful hush. Men set their teeth and their brows contracted; the muscles of their faces became knotted. Women held their palms to their mouths. Appealing hands were stretched to Pabo, but he did not stir. Then, when the translation was ended, the chaplain looked round in silence to Bernard, who made a sign with his hand and nodded. In a loud and strident voice the chaplain proceeded: "By order of Bernard, by the grace of God, and the favor of his Majesty the King, Bishop of St. David's and Primate of all Wales--all such as have contracted these unlawful unions shall be required within ten days from this present to separate from the women with whom they have lived as husbands, and shall not occupy the same house with them, nor eat at the same board, under pain of excommunication. And it is further decreed that in the event of contumacy, of delay in fulfilling what is hereby required, or refusal to fulfil these lawful commands, after warning, such contumacious person shall forfeit all his possessions, whether in lands or in movable goods, or cattle--his wearing apparel alone excepted; and such possessions shall be divided into three equal portions, whereof one-third shall be confiscated to the Crown, one-third shall fall to the Church Metropolitan, and, again, one-third----" He raised his head. Then Bernard moved forward in his seat that he might fix his eyes upon Pabo; there was a lifting of his upper lip on one side, as he signed to the chaplain to proceed: "And, again, one-third shall be adjudged as a grace to the Informer." A moan swept through the congregation like that which precedes the breaking of a storm, "To the Informer," repeated the chaplain; "who shall denounce to the Lord Bishop such unions as have been effected in this district of Caio within the forbidden degrees." This last shaft pierced deepest of all. It invited, it encouraged, treachery. It cast everywhere, into every family, the sparks that would cause conflagration. It was calculated to dissolve all friendships, to breed mistrust in every heart. Then Pabo lifted his head. His face was wet as though he had been weeping, but the drops that ran over his cheeks fell, not from his glowing eyes, but from his sweat-beaded brow. He turned back the book that was on the desk and opened it. He said no words of his own, but proceeded to read from the volume in a voice deep, vibrating with emotion; and those who heard him thrilled at his tones. "Thus saith the Lord God. Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle. Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad; therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle----" "What doth he say? What readeth he?" asked the bishop of his chaplain, whom he had beckoned to him. Pabo heard his words, turned about and said--"I am reading the oracle of God. Is that forbidden?" A woman in the congregation cried out; another burst into sobs. Pabo resumed the lection, and his voice unconsciously rose and fell in a musical wail: "I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them." At once--like a rising song, a mounting wave of sound--came the voice of the people, as they caught the words that rang in their hearts; they caught and repeated the words of the reader after him--"One shepherd, and he shall feed them." And as they recited in swelling and falling tones, they moved rhythmically, with swaying bodies and raised and balanced arms. It was an electric, a marvelous quiver of a common emotion that passed through the entire congregation. It went further--it touched and vibrated through those outside, near the door--it went further, it affected those beyond, who knew not what was said. Pabo continued--and his voice rolled as if in a chant--"I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them--even my servant DAVID." "David! He shall feed us--even he, our father--our father David!" Those kneeling started to their feet, stretched their arms to heaven. Their tears poured forth like rain, their voices, though broken by sobs, swelled into a mighty volume of sound, thrilling with the intensity of their distress, their hope, their fervor of faith--"Even he shall come--God's servant David!" At the name, the loved name, they broke into an ecstatic cry, "And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it."[1] The chaplain translated. "He is uttering treason!" shouted Bernard, starting up. "David a prince among them! We have no King but Henry." Then from without came cries, shouts, a rushing of feet, an angry roar, and the clash of weapons. [Footnote 1: "A minnau yr Arglwydd a fyddaf yn Dduw iddynt, a'm gwas Dafydd yn dywysog yn eu mysg; myfi yr Arglwydd a leferais hyn."--Ez. xxxiv. 24.] CHAPTER V THE FIRST BLOOD "What is this uproar? What is being done?" asked Bernard in agitation. "Look, Cadell! Is there no second door to this trap? Should violence be attempted I can obtain no egress by the way I came in; this church is stuffed with people. Shut the screen gates if they show the least indication of attacking us. 'Sdeath! if it should occur to them to fire this place----" "They will not do so, on account of their own people that are in it." "But--but what is the occasion of this noise? How is it I am here without anyone to protect me? This should have been looked to. I am not safe among these savages. It is an accursed bit of negligence that shall be inquired into. What avails me having men-at-arms if they do not protect me? Body of my life! Am not I the King's emissary? Am not I a bishop? Am I to be held so cheap even by my own men that I am allowed to run the risk of being torn to pieces, or smoked out of a hole like this?" "Do not fear, my Lord Bishop," said Cadell, his chaplain and interpreter, who was himself quaking, "there is a door behind, in the chancel wall. But methinks the danger is without; there is the disturbance, and the congregation are pressing to get forth." "Body of my life! I want to know what is happening. Here, quick, you clumsy ass, you beggarly Welshman; Cadell, undo the clasp, the brooch; I will have off this cope--and remove my miter. I will leave them here. I shall be less conspicuous, if weapons are being flourished and stones are flying." The bishop speedily divested himself of his ecclesiastical attire, all the while scolding, cursing his attendant, who was a Welshman by birth, but who had passed into the service of the conquerors, and knew very well that this would advance him in wealth, and ensure for himself a fat benefice. When the bishop had been freed of his vestments, the chaplain unbolted a small side door, and both emerged from the church. Outside all was in commotion. The populace was surging to and fro, uttering cries and shouts. An attack had been made on the military guard of the bishop--and these, for their mutual protection, had retreated to the sumpter horses and mules, surrounded them, and faced their assailants with swords brandished. About them, dense and menacing, were the Welshmen of Caio, flourishing cudgels and poles, and the women urging them on with cries. Bernard found himself separated from his party by the dense ring of armed peasants, infuriated by the wrongs they had endured and by the appeals of the women. He could not see his men, save that now and then the sun flashed on their swords as they were whirled above the heads of the crowd. No blood seemed to have been shed as yet--the Normans stood at bay. The Welsh peasants were reluctant to approach too nearly to the terrible blades that whirled and gleamed like lightning. At the same instant that Bernard issued from the church, the bell suspended between two beams was violently swung, and its clangor rang out above the noise of the crowd. As if in answer to its summons, from every side poured natives, who had apparently been holding themselves in reserve; they were armed with scythes, axes, and ox-goads. Some were in leather jerkins that would resist a sword-cut or a pike-thrust, but the majority were in thick wadmel. The congregation were also issuing from the west door of the church, thick on each other's heels, and were vainly asking the occasion of the disturbance. It was some minutes before Pabo emerged into the open, and then it was through the side door. He found the bishop there, livid, every muscle of his face jerking with terror, vainly endeavoring to force his chaplain to stand in front of and screen him. "I hold you answerable for my safety," said Bernard, putting forth a trembling hand and plucking at the Archpriest. "And I for mine," cried the chaplain. "Have no fear--none shall touch you," answered Pabo, addressing the prelate. He disdained even to look at the interpreter. "If any harm come to my men, you shall be held accountable. They are King Henry's men; he lent them to me. He sent them to guard my sacred person." "And mine," said Cadell. "Our father in God cannot make himself understood without me." "You are in no danger," said Pabo. Then the Archpriest stepped forward, went to the belfry, and disengaged the rope from the hand of him who was jangling the bell. With a loud, deep, sonorous voice, he called in their native tongue to his tribesmen to be silent, to cease from aggression, and to explain the cause of the tumult. He was obeyed immediately. All noise ceased, save that caused by the Normans, who continued to thunder menaces. "Silence them also," said Pabo to the bishop. "I--I have lost my voice," said the frightened prelate. At the same moment the crowd parted, and a band of sturdy peasants, carrying clubs, and one armed with a coulter, came forward, drawing with them Rogier, the bishop's brother, and a young and beautiful woman with disheveled hair and torn garments. Her wrists had been bound behind her back, but one of the men who drew her along with a great knife cut the thongs, and she shook the fragments from her and extended her freed arms to the priest. "Pabo!" "Morwen!" he exclaimed, recoiling in dismay. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded the bishop. "Unhand my brother, ye saucy curs!" But, though his meaning might be guessed by those who gripped Rogier, they could not understand his words. "What is the cause of this?" asked Bernard, addressing the Norman. "Rogier, how comes this about?" The Norman was spluttering with rage, and writhing in vain endeavor to extricate himself from the men who held him. It was apparent to Bernard that the right arm of the man had received some injury, as he was powerless to employ it against his captors. The rest of the soldiery were hemmed in and unable to go to his assistance. "Curse the hounds!" he yelled. "They have struck me over the shoulder with their bludgeons, or by the soul of Rollo I would have sent some of them to hell! What are my men about that they do not attempt to release me?" he shouted. But through the ring of stout weapons--a quadruple living hedge--his followers were unable to pass; moreover, all considered their own safety to consist in keeping together. "What has caused this uproar?" asked the bishop. "Did they attack you without provocation?" "By the soul of the conqueror!" roared Rogier. "Can not a man look at and kiss a pretty woman without these swine resenting it? Have not I a right to carry her off if it please me to grace her with my favor? Must these hogs interfere?" "Brother, you have been indiscreet!" "Not before your face, Bernard. I know better than that. I know what is due to your sanctity of a few weeks. I waited like a decent Christian till your back was turned. You need have known nothing about it. And if, as we rode away, there was a woman behind my knave on his horse, you would have shut one eye. But these mongrels--these swine--resent it. Body of my life! Resent it!--an honor conferred on one of their girls if a Norman condescend to look with favor on her. Did not our gracious King Henry set us the example with a Welsh prince's wench? And shall not we follow suit?" "You are a fool, Rogier--at such a time, and so as to compromise me." "Who is to take you to task, brother?" "I mean not that, but to risk my safety. To leave me unprotected in the church, and to provoke a brawl without, that might have produced serious consequences to me. Odd's life! Where is that Cadell? Slinking away?" "My lord, I have greater cause to fear than yourself. They bear me bitterest hate." "I care not. Speak for me to these curs. Bid them unhand my brother. They have maimed him--maybe broken his arm. My brother, a Norman, held as a common felon by these despicable serfs!" "Bishop," said Pabo, stepping before Bernard. "What have you to say?" asked the prelate suddenly. The face of the Archpriest was stern and set, as though chiseled out of alabaster. "Are you aware what has been attempted while you were in God's house? What the outrage is has been offered?" "I know that my brother has been so light as to cast his eye on one of your Welsh wenches." "Lord bishop," said Pabo in hard tones, and the sound of his voice was metallic as the bell, "he has insulted this noble woman. He bound her hands behind her back and has endeavored to force her onto a horse in spite of her resistance, her struggles--look at her bruised and bleeding arms!--and to carry her away." "Well, well, soldiers are not clerks and milk-sops." "Do you know who she is?" "I know not. Some saucy lass who ogled him, and he took her winks as an invitation." "Sieur!" thundered Pabo, and the veins in his brow turned black. "She is the noblest, purest of women." "Among broken sherds, a cracked pitcher is precious." "Bishop, she is my wife!" "Your wife!" jeered Bernard, leaned back, placed his hands to his side, and laughed. "Priests have no wives; you mean your harlot." In a moment the bishop was staggering back, and would have fallen unless he had had the timber wall of the church to sustain him. In a moment, maddened beyond endurance by the outrage, by the words, by the demeanor of the prelate, in forgetfulness of the sacred office of the man who insulted him, in forgetfulness of his own sacred office, forgetful of everything save the slur cast on the one dearest to him in the whole world, the one to whom he looked with a reverence which from her extended to all womanhood, the incandescent Welsh blood in his veins burst into sudden flame, and he struck Bernard in the face, on the mouth that had slandered her and insulted him. And the bishop reeled back and stood speechless, with blear eyes fixed, his hands extended against the split logs, and from his lips, cut with his teeth, blood was flowing. Then, in the dead silence that ensued, an old hermit, clothed in sackcloth, bareheaded, with long matted white hair, walking bent by the aid of a staff--a man who for thirty years had occupied a cell on the mountain-side without leaving it--stood forward before all, an unwonted apparition; and slowly, painfully raising his distorted form, he lifted hand and staff to heaven, and cried: "Wo, wo, wo to the Blessed Valley! The peace of David, our father, is broken. Blood has flowed in strife. That cometh which he foresaw, and over which he wept. Wo! wo! wo!" CHAPTER VI THE SCROLL The young, the thoughtless, were full of exultation over the rebuff that the Normans, with their bishop, had encountered, but the older and wiser men were grave and concerned. The Normans had indeed withdrawn in sullen resentment, outnumbered, and incapable of revenging on the spot and at once the disabled arm of their leader and the broken tooth of their prelate. The old men knew very well that matters would not rest thus; and they feared lest the events of that day when the party of foreigners penetrated to the Blessed Valley might prove the most fruitful in disastrous consequences it had ever seen. Native princes had respected the sanctuary of David, but an English King and foreign adventurers were not likely to regard its privileges, nor fear the wrath of the saint who had hitherto rendered it inviolable. Bishop Bernard had at his back not only the whole spiritual force of the Latin Church, the most highly concentrated and practically organized in Christendom, but he was specially the emissary of the English King, with all the physical power of the realm to support him; and what was the prospect of a little green basin in the mountains, isolated from the world, occupied by three thousand people, belonging to the most loosely compacted Church that existed, with no political force to maintain its right and champion its independence--what chance had the sanctuary of David in Caio against the resentment of the English King and the Roman Church? Neither, as experience showed, was likely to pass over an affront. One would sustain the other in exacting a severe chastisement. The hermit, who after over thirty years of retirement in one cell, far up the Mount Mallaen, had suddenly, and unsolicited, left his retreat to appear once more among his fellow-men, and then to pronounce a sentence of wo, had sunk exhausted after this supreme effort of expiring powers, and had been removed into the Archpriest's house, where he was ministered to by Morwen, Pabo's wife. The old man lay as one in a trance, and speechless. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing on earth, and no efforts could induce him to take nourishment. With folded hands, muttering lips, and glazed eyes he continued for several days. Pabo and his wife looked on with reverence, not knowing whether he were talking with invisible beings which he saw. He answered no questions put to him; he seemed not to hear them, and he hardly stirred from the position which he assumed when laid on a bed in the house. The hermit of Mallaen had been regarded with unbounded reverence throughout the country. He had been visited for counsel, his words had been esteemed oracular, and he was even credited with having performed miraculous cures. That he was dying in their midst would have created greater attention and much excitement among the people of Caio at any other time, but now they were in a fever over the events of the bishop's visit, their alarm over the enforcing of the decree on marriages, and their expectation of punishment for the rough handling of their unwelcome visitors; and when one night the old hermit passed away, it was hardly noticed, and Morwen was left almost unassisted to pay the last duties to the dead, to place the plate of salt on his breast when laid out, and to light the candles at the head. It was no holiday-time, and yet little work was done throughout the once happy valley. A cloud seemed to hang over it, and oppress all therein. Shepherds on the mountain drove their flocks together, that for awhile, sitting under a rock or leaning on their crooks, they might discuss what was past and form conjectures as to the future. Women, over their spinning, drew near each other, and in low voices and with anxious faces conversed as to the unions that were like to be dissolved. Men met in groups and passed opinions as to what steps should be taken to maintain their rights, their independence, and to ward off reprisals. Even children caught up the words that were whispered, and jeered each other as born out of legitimate wedlock, or asked one another who were their sponsors, and shouted that such could never intermarry. So days passed. Spirits became no lighter; the gloom deepened. It was mooted who would tell of the relationships borne by those who were now contented couples?--so as to enable the bishop to separate them? Who would see selfish profit by betrayal of their own kin? The delay was not due to pitiful forbearance, to Christian forgiveness; it boded preparation for dealing an overwhelming blow. The Welsh Prince or King was a fugitive. From him no help could be expected. His castle of Dynevor was in the hands of the enemy. To the south, the Normans blocked the exit of the Cothy from its contracted mouth; to east, the Towy valley was in the hands of the oppressor, planted in impregnable fortresses; to the west, Teify valley was in like manner occupied. Only to the north among the wild, tumbled, barren mountains, was there no contracting, strangling, steel hand. The autumn was closing in. The cattle that had summered in the _hafod_ (the mountain byre) were returning to the _hendre_ (the winter home). Usually the descent from the uplands was attended with song and laugh and dancing. It was not so now. And the very cattle seemed to perceive that they did not receive their wonted welcome. Pabo went about as usual, but graver, paler than formerly--for his mind was ill at ease. It was he who had shed the first blood. A trifling spill, indeed, but one likely to entail serious results. The situation had been aggravated by his act. He who should have done his utmost to ward off evil from his flock had perpetrated an act certain to provoke deadly resentment against them. He bitterly regretted his passionate outbreak; he who should have set an example of self-control had failed. Yet when he looked on his wife, her gentle, patient face, the tenderness with which she watched and cared for the dying hermit, again his cheek flushed, the veins in his brow swelled, and the blood surged in his heart. To hear her insulted, he could never bear; should such an outrage be repeated, he would strike again. Pabo sat by his fire. In Welsh houses even so late as the twelfth century there were no structural chimneys--these were first introduced by the Flemish settlers--consequently the smoke from the wood fire curled and hung in the roof and stole out, when tired of circling there, through a hole in the thatch. On a bier lay the dead man, with candles at his head--his white face illumined by the light that descended from the gap in the roof. At the feet crouched a woman, a professional wailer, singing and swaying herself, as she improvised verses in honor of the dead, promised him the glories of Paradise, and a place at the right hand of David, and then fell to musical moans. Morwen sat by the side, looking at the deceased--she was awaiting her turn to kneel, sing, and lament--and beside her was a rude bench on which were placed cakes and ale wherewith to regale such as came in to wake the dead. And as Pabo looked at his wife he thought of the peaceful useful life they had led together. She had been the daughter of a widow, a harsh and exacting woman, who had long been bedridden, and with whose querulousness she had borne meekly. He had not been always destined to the Archpriesthood. His uncle had been the ecclesiastical as well as political head of the tribe; but on his death his son, Goronwy, had been passed over, as deformed, and therefore incapable of taking his father's place, and the chiefship had been conferred on Pabo, who had already been for some years ordained in anticipation of this selection. Pabo continued to look at his wife, and he questioned whether he could have understood the hearts of his people had he not himself known what love was. "Husband," said Morwen, "there is a little roll under his hand." Pabo started to consciousness of the present. "I have not ventured to remove it; yet what think you? Is it to be buried with him? It almost seems as though it were his testament." The Archpriest rose and went to where the dead man lay; his long white beard flowed to his waist, and the hands were crossed over it. "It is in the palm," said Morwen. Pabo passed his fingers through the thick white hair and drew forth a scroll, hardly two fingers' breadth in width; it was short also, as he saw when he uncurled it. He opened and read. "Yes, it is his will. 'To Pabo, the Archpriest, my cell--as a refuge; and----'" He ceased, rolled up the little coil once more, and placed it in his bosom. A stroke at the door, and one of the elders of the community, named Howel the Tall, entered. "It seems fit, Father Pabo, to us to meet in council. What say you? All are gathered." "It is well; I attend." CHAPTER VII GRIFFITH AP RHYS The council-house of the Caio tribe was a large circular wooden structure, with a conical thatched roof. There was a gable on one side in which was a circular opening to serve as window, and it was unglazed. As Pabo entered with Howel the Tall, he was saluted with respect, and he returned the salutation with grave courtesy. He took the seat reserved for him, and looked about him, mustering who were present. They were all representative men, either because weighty through wealth, force of character, or intellect. Among them were two officers, the one Meredith ap David, the Bard, who, in his retentive memory preserved the traditions of the tribe and the genealogies of all the families of the district from Noah. The other was Morgan ap Seissyl, the hereditary custodian of the staff of Cynwyl, and sacristan of the church, enjoying certain lands which went with the _baculus_, or staff, as well as certain dignities. Howel stepped into the center of the building and addressed those present, and their president. "Father Pabo, we who are gathered together have done so with one consent, drawn hither by a common need, to take counsel in our difficulties. Seeing how grave is the situation in which we stand, how uncertain is the future, how ignorant we are of the devices of our enemies, how doubtful what a day may bring forth--we have considered it expedient to meet and devise such methods as may enable us to stand shoulder to shoulder, and to frustrate the machinations of our common foe. By twos and threes we have talked of these things, and now we desire to speak in assembly concerning them. "And, first of all, we have considered the threats of Bernard, whom the King of the English has thrust upon us by his mere will, to be bishop over us; a man of whom we hear no good, who cannot speak our tongue, who despises our nation and its customs, and mocks at our laws. A man is he who has not entered the sheepfold by the door, but has climbed in another way." His words were received with a murmur of assent. "And the first time that this intruder has opened his mouth, it has been to provoke unto strife, and to fill all hearts with dismay. He erects barriers where was open common. He prohibits unions which the Word of God does not disallow. He creates spiritual relationships as occasions and excuses for dissolving marriages, where no blood ties exist. He proclaims his mission to be one of breaking up of families and making houses desolate. Now we are sheep without a shepherd, a flock in the midst of wolves. We are neither numerous enough nor strong enough to resist the over-might that is brought against us. By the blessing of David, we have been ever men of peace. Our hands are unaccustomed to handle the bow and wield the sword. We have no prince over us to lead us. We have no bishop over us to advise us. The throne of our father David is usurped by an intruder whom we will not acknowledge." He paused. Again his words roused applause. "And now, it seems to me, that as we are incapable of opposing force to force, we must take refuge in subtlety. It has pleased God, who confounded the speech of men at Babel, that we should preserve that original tongue spoken by Adam in Paradise, in his unfallen state, and that the rest of mankind, by reason of the blindness of their hearts, and the dulness of their understandings, are hardly able to acquire it. Now it has further pleased Providence, which has a special care over our elect nation, that our relationships should present a perplexity to all save unto ourselves. I am creditably informed that the English people are beginning to call themselves after their trades, and to hand down their trade names to their children, so that John the Smith's sons and daughters be also entitled Smiths, although the one be a butcher, and another a weaver--which is but one token out of many that this is an insensate people. Moreover, some call themselves after the place where they were born, and although their children and children's children be born elsewhere, yet are they called after the township whence came their father--an evident proof of sheer imbecility. Again, it is said that if a John Redhead, so designated by reason of a fiery poll, have a dark-haired son, though the head of this latter be as a raven's wing, yet is he a Redhead. One really marvels that Providence should suffer such senseless creatures to beget children. But there is worse still behind. A Tom has a son George, and he is called Tomson. But if this George have a son Philip, then Philip is not Georgeson, but Tomson. Stupidity could go no farther. Now we are wiser. I am Howel ap John, and John was ap Roderick, and he ap Thomas. There were assuredly a score of Johns in Caio when my father lived, and say that each had five children. Then there be now in the tribe a hundred persons who bear the name of ap John or merch John. Who is to say which John begat this lad or that lass, and therefore to decide who are consanguineous, and who are not? There is one man only whose duty and calling it is to unravel the tangle, and this is Meredith, the genealogist. Should the bishop come here again, or send his commissioner, we have the means of raising such a cloud of confusion with our Johns and Morgans, or Thomases and Merediths, with the _aps_ and our _merchs_, as will utterly bewilder his brains. I defy any pig-headed Englishman or Norman either to discover our relationships unless he gets hold of the genealogist." This was so obviously true and so eminently consolatory that all nodded approvingly. "This being the case," pursued Howel, "as there is but a single man to unravel this tangle, Meredith ap David, and as he would consider it his sacred duty conscientiously to give every pedigree if asked--therefore I advise that he go into hiding. Then, when the bishop comes we take it upon ourselves to confound his head with our relationships--consanguine, affine, and spiritual--so that he will be able to do nothing in the matter of dissolving our marriages. A child who is ill-treated lies. In that way it seeks protection. An ill-treated people takes refuge in subterfuge. It is permissible." This long speech was vastly approved, and all present, even the bard himself, voted with uplifted right hand that it should be carried into effect. Then Jorwerth the smith stood up and said-- "It is well spoken; but all is not done. The chief danger menaces us through our head. It is at the head that the deadly blow is aimed. Griffith ap Rhys, our prince, is not among us. A true bishop is not over us. We have none but our Father Pabo; and him we must do our utmost to preserve. It is he who stands in greater peril than we. It is true that I struck a fellow on the arm because he molested the wife of our chief; but that was naught. Blows are exchanged among men and thought lightly of. But our Father Pabo smote the bishop in the mouth and broke his teeth. That will never be forgiven him--never; and the intruder Bernard will compass sea and land to revenge on him that blow. If our head be taken, what will become of us, the members? If it be thought expedient that Meredith the Bard should go into hiding, then I give my voice that our chief should also seek out a refuge where he may not be found." This opinion was met with murmurs of approval. Then the tall Howel rose and said, "You marked what I said before, that although we approve not deception, yet must the weak take resort unto trickery when matched against the strong. So be it--our Archpriest Pabo shall disappear, and disappear so that the enemy shall not know that he be alive. Leave this to me. An opportunity offers--that Heaven has given to us. Ask me not to explain." "It is well. We trust thee, Howel." Then they heard a distant murmur, a hum as of a rising wind, the rustle of trees, the beating of waves. It drew nearer, it waxed louder, it broke out into cries of joy and shouts of exultation as at the bringing in of harvest, and the crowned sheaf--the _tori pen y wrach_. The elders of Caio listened and wondered. Then through the door sprang a young man, and stood where a falling sunbeam from the one round window rested on him. He had flowing golden hair that reached his shoulders in curls. He was tall, lithe, graceful, and beautiful. In a moment they all knew him, as those had recognized him on the way and had accompanied him to the churchtown. The old, the gray-headed, strong iron men, and those who were feeble at once encircled him. They threw themselves at his feet, they clasped his knees, those who could kissed his hands, others the hem of his garment. "Griffith, our Prince! Our heart and soul, our King!" CHAPTER VIII PREPARING FOR THE EVIL DAY As Nest was the most beautiful woman in Wales, so her brother Griffith was the handsomest of the men there. His face was open and engaging. The blue eyes were honest, the jaw resolute. His address had a fascination few could resist. Moreover, the story of his young life was such as enlisted sympathy and fired the hearts of the Cymri. His gallant father, a true hero, the King of Dyfed, South Wales, had fallen in battle, fighting against the Normans under Robert Fitzhamon and some turbulent Welsh who had invited the invader into the land. The fall of the great chief had left his country open, defenseless to the spoiler. His eldest son and his daughter had been carried away as hostages, the Prince to die in his captivity--whether wasting with grief or by the hand of the assassin none knew--and the Princess, dishonored, had been married to the worst oppressor of her people. Griffith, the second son, had effected his escape, and had committed himself to his namesake the King of Gwynedd, or North Wales, and had married his daughter. The crafty Beauclerk was ill-pleased so long as the Prince remained at large to head insurrection in the South, perhaps, in combination with his father-in-law, to unite all Cambria in one mighty effort to hurl the invader from the rocks of that mountain world. He accordingly entered into negotiations with the King and invited him to visit him in London. Griffith ap Cynan, the old King of North Wales, flattered by the terms in which he was addressed, pleased with the prospect of seeing more of the world than was possible from his castle-walls in Anglesea, incautiously accepted. Arrived at Westminster, he was treated with effusive courtesy: King Henry addressed him as a brother, seated him at his side, lavished on him splendid gifts, and still more splendid promises. Not till he had made the Welshman drunk with vanity and ambition did Henry unfold his purpose. Griffith ap Cynan was offered the sovereignty over North and South Wales united with Cardigan, the Prince of which had fled to Ireland, to be held under the suzerainty of the English Crown, and the sole price asked for this was the surrender of the young Prince, his own son-in-law and guest, a man whose only guilt consisted in having the blood of Rhys in his veins, and who confided in the honor and loyalty of his wife's father. The King of Gwynedd consented, and hasted home to conclude his part of the contract. Happily, but not a moment too soon, did Griffith the younger get wind of the treachery that was intended, and he fled before the arrival of the old King. When the latter discovered that his son-in-law had escaped, he sent a body of horsemen in pursuit. The fugitive, nearly overtaken, took sanctuary in the church of Aberdaron, and the baffled pursuers, not venturing to infringe the rights of the Church, returned unsuccessful to their master. The King, angry, blind to every consideration save his ambition, bade his men return on their traces, and, if need be, force the sanctuary and tear the Prince from the foot of the altar, should he make that his last refuge. The executioners of the mandate were not, however, free from the superstitious awe which surrounded a sanctuary. The clergy of the church and of the neighborhood rose with one consent in protection of the pursued, and of the menaced rights, and again the Ministers of the King were baffled. By this means, time was gained, and the clergy of Aberdaron succeeded by night in securing the escape of the Prince, with a few faithful followers, into the Vale of the Towy. There he had no alternative open to him but to prepare to take up arms. He at once entered into communication with his sister, on whose fidelity to the cause of the royal family of Dyfed, and of her country, he knew he could calculate. He found the people impatient to fly to arms. Their condition had become intolerable. Wherever they went the barons had introduced the system of feudal tenure, which was foreign to the laws and feelings of the people, and they vigorously resisted its application. Moreover, foreign ecclesiastics, the kinsmen or clients of the secular tyrant, seized upon the livings. Where a fortress could not be established, there a monastery was planted and filled with foreigners, to maintain whom the tithes and glebes were confiscated, and the benefices converted into vicarages, which were served by English or continental monks. Added to this, the King had created the Bishop of London Lord of the Marches and President of Shropshire, and this astute and unprincipled man devoted his energies to the setting at rivalry of all the native princes, and the goading them to war with one another. Such was his policy--let the Welsh cut each other's throats and make way for the Norman and the Fleming. The wretched people, betrayed by their natural leaders, the princes, deprived of their clergy, subjected to strange laws, with foreign masters, military and ecclesiastic, intruding themselves everywhere, and dispossessing them of all their possessions, felt that it would be better to die among their burnt farmsteads than live on dishonored. At this juncture, when they looked for, prayed for a leader, Griffith, son of their King, suddenly appeared in their midst, with a fresh story of insult and treachery to tell--and make their blood flame. "I am come," said the Prince, still standing in the falling ray of sun. "I have hasted to come to you with a word from my sister, the Princess Nest. Evil is devised against you--evil you are powerless now to resist. It comes swift, and you must bow your heads as bulrushes. The enemy is at hand--will be here on the morrow; and what the Princess says to Pabo, your chief, is, Fly for your life!" "That is what has been determined among us," said Howel. "It is well--let not a moment be lost!" Then, looking around, "I--my friends, my brothers, am as a squirrel in the forest, flying from branch to branch, pursued even by the hand that should have sheltered me. There is no trust to be laid in princes. I lean on none; I commend my cause to none. I place it in the hearts of the people. I would lay my head to sleep on the knee of any shepherd, fearless. I could not close my eyes under the roof of any prince, and be sure he would not sell me whilst I slept." None answered. It was true--they knew it--too true. "My brother," said Griffith--and he stepped to each and touched each hand--"I commit myself and the cause of my country to these hands that have held the plow and wielded the hammer, and I fear not. They are true." A shout of assurances, thrilled from every heart, and the eyes filled with tears. "My brothers, the moment has not yet arrived. When it comes, I will call and ye will answer." "We will!" "My life--it is for you." "And our lives are at your disposal." "We knew each other," said the prince, and one of his engaging smiles lighted his face. "But now to the matter in hand. The Bishop Bernard claims the entire region of Caio, from the mountains to where the Cothi enters the ravine, as his own, because it is the patrimony of David, which he has usurped. And forthwith he sends a mandate for the deposition of your Archpriest Pabo, and his arrest and conveyance under a guard to his castle of Llawhaden." "He shall not have him." "Therefore must he escape at once." "He shall fly to a place of security." "And that without a moment's delay." "It shall be so." "Furthermore, the bishop sends his chaplain, Cadell, to fill his room, to minister to you in holy things." "He shall not so minister to us." "And to occupy the presbytery." "My house!" exclaimed Pabo. "He shall not set foot therein," said Howel; "leave that to me." "I go," said Pabo sadly; "but I shall take my wife with me." "Nay," answered Howel hastily, "that must not be." "But wherefore not? She must be placed where safe from pursuit as well as I." "She shall be under my protection," said Howel the Tall. "Have confidence in me. All Caio will rise again were she to be molested. Have no fear; she shall be safe. But with you she must not go. Ask me not my reasons now. You shall learn them later." "Then I go. But I will bid her farewell first." "Not that even," said Howel, "lest she learn whither you betake yourself. That none of us must know." Then Meredith the Bard rose. "There is need for haste," he said. "I go." "And I go, too," said Pabo. He looked at the elders with swelling breast and filling eye. "I entrust to you, dear friends and spiritual sons, one more precious to me than life itself." He turned to Griffith: "Prince, God grant it be not for long that you are condemned to fly as the squirrel. God grant that ere long we may hear the cry of the ravens of Dynevor; and when we hear that----" All present raised their hands-- "We will find the ravens their food." CHAPTER IX WHAT MUST BE Howel the Tall walked slowly to the presbytery, the house of Pabo, that was soon to be his no longer. The tidings that an armed body of men was on its way into the peaceful valley--whose peace was to be forever broken up, so it seemed--had produced a profound agitation. Every one was occupied: some removing their goods, and themselves preparing to retire to the hovel on the summer pastures; those who had no _hafod_ to receive them were concealing their little treasures. A poor peasant was entreating a well-to-do farmer to take with him his daughter, a young and lovely girl, for whom he feared when the lawless servants of the bishop entered Caio. But all could not take refuge in the mountains, even if they had places there to which to retire. There were their cattle to be attended to in the valley; the grass on the heights was burnt, and would not shoot again till spring. The equinoctial gales were due, and rarely failed to keep their appointments. There were mothers expecting additions to their families, and little children who could not be exposed to the privations and cold of the uplands. There were no stores on the mountains; hay and corn were stacked by the homes in the valley. Some said, "What more can these strangers do than they have done? Do they come, indeed, to thrust on us a new pastor? They will not drive us with their pikes into church to hear what he has to say! They are not bringing with them a batch of Flemings to occupy our farms and take from us our corn-land and pasture! The Norman is no peaceful agriculturist, and he must live; therefore he will let the native work on, that he may eat out of his hands." And, again, others said: "There will be time enough to escape when they flourish their swords in our faces." But even such as resolved to remain concealed their valuables. The basin of the sanctuary was extensive; it was some seven miles long and five at its widest, but along the slopes of the hills that broke the evenness of its bottom and on the side of the continuous mountains were scattered numerous habitations. And it would be an easy matter for those on high ground commanding the roads to take to flight when the men-at-arms were observed to be coming their way. Howel entered the presbytery. Like every other house in Wales, excepting those of the great princes, it comprised but two chambers--that which served as hall and kitchen, into which the door opened, and the bed-chamber on one side. There was no upper story; its consequence as the residence of the chief was indicated by a detached structure, like a barn, that served as banqueting-hall on festive occasions, and where, indeed, all such as came on Sundays from distances tarried and ate after divine service, and awaited the vespers which were performed early in the afternoon. There were stables, also, to accommodate the horses of those who came to church, or to pay their respects, and to feast with their chief. With the exception of these disconnected buildings, the house presented the character of a Welsh cottage of the day in which we live. It was deficient in attempt at ornament, and, unlike a medieval edifice of the rest of Europe, lacked picturesqueness. At the present, a Welsh cottage or farmhouse is, indeed, of stone, and is ugly. Although the presbytery was lacking in beauty, of outline and detail, it was convenient as a dwelling. As Howel entered, he saw that the body of the hermit still lay exposed, preparatory to burial, with the candles burning at its head. But Morwen was the sole person in attendance on it, as the professional wailer had decamped to secrete the few coins she possessed, and, above all, to convey to and place under the protection of the Church a side of bacon, the half of a pig, on which she calculated to subsist during the winter. By the side of the fire sat a lean, sharp-featured boy, with high cheek-bones; a lad uncouth in appearance, for one shoulder was higher than the other. He stirred the logs with his foot, and when he found one that was burnt through, stooped, separated the ends, and reversed them in the fire. This was Goronwy Cam, kinsman of Pabo, the son of the late Archpriest, who had been passed over for the chieftainship, partly on account of his youth, mainly because of his deformity, which disqualified him for the ecclesiastical state. He lived in the presbytery with his cousin, was kindly, affectionately treated by him, and was not a little humored by Morwen, who pitied his condition, forgave his perversity of temper, and was too familiar with ill-humors, experienced during her mother's life, to resent his outbreaks of petulance. "Go forth, Goronwy," said Howel. "Bid Morgan see that the grave for our dead saint be made ready. They are like to forget their duties to the dead in their care for themselves. Bid him expedite the work of the sexton." "Why should I go? I am engaged here." "Engaged in doing nothing. Go at once and speak with Morgan. Time presses too hard for empty civilities." "You have no right to order me, none to send me from this house." "I have a right in an emergency to see that all be done that is requisite for the good of the living, and for the repose of the dead. Do you not know, boy, that the enemy are on their way hither, and that when they arrive you will no further have this as your home?" "Goronwy, be kind and do as desired," said Morwen. The young man left, muttering. He looked but a boy; he was in fact a man. When he had passed beyond earshot, Morwen said, "Do not be short with the lad; he has much to bear, his infirmities of body are ever present to his mind, and he can ill endure the thought that but for them he would have been chief in Caio." "I have not come hither to discuss Goronwy and his sour humors," said Howel; "but to announce to you that Pabo is gone." "Whither?" "That I do not know." "For how long?" "That also I cannot say." "Is he in danger?" Morwen's color fled, and she put her hand to her bosom. "At present he is in none; for how long he will be free I cannot say, and something depends on you." "On me! I will do anything, everything for him." "To-morrow the sleuth-hounds will be after him: his safety lies in remaining hid." "But why has he not come to me and told me so?" "Because it is best that you know nothing, not even the direction he has taken in his flight. Be not afraid--he is safe so long as he remains concealed. As for you and that boy, ye shall both come to my house, for to-morrow he will be here who will claim this as his own. The bishop who has stepped into David's seat has sent him to dispossess our Archpriest of all his rights, and to transfer them to Cadell, his chaplain." "But it is not possible. He does not belong to the tribe." "What care these aliens about our rights and our liberties? With the mailed fists they beat down all law." "And he will take from us our house?" "If you suffer him." "How can I, a poor woman, resist?" "I do not ask you to resist." "Then what do you require of me?" "Leave him no house into which to step and which he may call his own." "I understand you not." "Morwen, say farewell you must to these walls--this roof. It will dishonor them to become the shelter of the renegade, after it has been the home of such as you and Pabo, and the Archpriests of our race and tribe for generations--aye, and after it has been consecrated by the body of this saint." He indicated the dead hermit. "But again I say, I do not understand. What would you have me do?" "Do this, Morwen." Howel dropped his voice and drew nearer to her. He laid hold of her wrist. "Set fire to the presbytery. The wind is from the east; it will cause the hall to blaze also." She looked at him in dismay and doubt. "To me, and away from this, thou must come, and that boy with thee. Thou wouldest not have Pabo taken from thee and given to some Saxon woman. So, suffer not this house that thou art deprived of to become the habitation of another--one false to his blood and to his duties." "I cannot," she said, and looked about her at the walls, at every object against them, at the hearth, endeared to her by many ties. "I cannot--I cannot," and then: "Indeed I cannot with him here,"--and she indicated the corpse. "It is with him here that the house must burn," said Howel. "Burn the hermit--the man of God!" "It would be his will, could he speak," said Howel. "He, throughout his life, gave his body to harsh treatment and treated it as the enemy of his soul. Now out of Heaven he looks down and bids you--he as a saint in light--do this thing. He withholds not his cast-off tabernacle, if thereby he may profit some." "Nay, let him be honorably buried, and then, if thou desirest it, let the house blaze." "It must be, Morwen, as I say. Hearken to me. When they come to-morrow they will find the presbytery destroyed by fire, and we will say that the Archpriest has perished in it." "But they will know it is not so. See his snowy beard!" "Will the flames spare those white hairs?" "Yet all know--all in Caio." "And I can trust them all. When the oppressor is strong the weak must be subtle. Aye, and they will be as one man to deceive him, for they hate him, and they love their true priest." "I cannot do it." "It may be that the truth will come out in a week, a month--I cannot say; but time will be gained for Pabo to escape, and every day is of importance." "If it must be--but, O Howel, it is hard, and it seemeth to me unrighteous." "It is no unrighteousness to do that which must be." "And it must?" "Morwen, you shall not lay the fire. I will do it--but done it must be." CHAPTER X THE CELL ON MALLAEN At the back of Caio church and village stretches a vast mountain region that extends in tossed and rearing waves of moorland and crag for miles to the north; and indeed, Mynedd Mallaen is but the southern extremity of that chain which extends from Montgomeryshire and Merioneth, and of which Plinlimmon is one of the finest heads. The elevated and barren waste is traversed here and there by streams--the Cothy, the Camdwr, the Doeth--but these are through restricted and uninhabited ravines, Mynedd Mallaen, the southernmost projection of this range, is a huge bulk united to the main mountain system by a slight connecting ridge, between the gorge of the Cothy and a tributary of the Towy. North of this extends far the territory of Caio, over barren wilderness, once belonging to the tribe now delimited as a parish some sixteen miles in length. On leaving the Council Hall, Pabo tarried but for a few minutes in converse with Howel, and then ascended the glen down which brawled the Annell. The flanks of mountain on each side were clothed with heath and heather now fast losing their bells, and were gorgeous with bracken, turned to copper and gold by the touch of the finger of Death. He pursued his way without pause along the track trodden by those who visited the rock of Cynwyl, where annually the waters were stirred with his staff. But on reaching this spot, Pabo halted and looked into the sliding water that swirled in the reputed kneeholes worn by the saint in the rocky bed. A pebble was in one, being eddied about, and, notwithstanding the distress of mind in which was Pabo, he did not fail to notice this as an explanation of the origin of the depressions. Dreamy, imaginative though he might be, he had also a fund of common sense. The spot was lonely and beautiful, away from the strife of men and the noise of tongues. The stillness was broken only by the ripple of the water and the hum of the wind in the dried fern. The evening sun lit up the mountain heights, already glorious with dying fern, with an oriole of incomparable splendor. The great stone slept where it had lodged beside the stream, and was mantled with soft velvet mosses and dappled with many-colored lichen. It was upon its summit, doubtless, that the old Apostle had knelt--not in the bed of the torrent, although the folk insisted on the latter, misled by the hollows worn in the rock. Pabo, moved by an inward impulse, mounted the block, wrenched, like himself, from its proper place and cast far away, never to return to it. Never to return. That thought filled his mind; he need not attempt to delude himself with hopes. The past was gone forever, with its peace and love and happiness. Peace--broken by the sound of the Norman's steel, happiness departed with it. Love, indeed, might, must remain, but under a new form--no more sweet, but painful, full of apprehensions, full of torture. Discouragement came over him like the cold dews that were settling in the valley now that the sun was withdrawn. Where the Norman had penetrated thence he would have to depart. The sanctuary had been broken into--and the Angel of Peace, bearing the palm, had spread her wings. He looked aloft: a swan was sailing through the sky, the evening glory turning her silver feathers to gold. Even thus--even thus--leaving the land; but not, like that swan, to return at another season. Pabo knelt on that stone. He put his hand to his brow; it was wet with cold drops, just as the herbage, as the moss, were being also studded with crystal condensations. He prayed, turning his eyes to the sunlight that touched the heights of the west; prayed till the ray was withdrawn, and the mountain-head was silvery and no longer golden. Then, strengthened in spirit, he left the block and resumed his course. Without telling Howel whither he would betake himself, Pabo had agreed with him on a means of intercommunication in case of emergency. Upon the stone of Cynwyl, Howel was to place one rounded water-worn pebble as a token to flee farther into the depths of the mountains, whereas two stones were to indicate a recall to Caio. In like manner was Pabo to express his wants, should any arise. The refugee now ascended the steep mountain flank, penetrating farther into the wilderness, till at last he reached some fangs of rock, under which was a rude habitation constructed of stones put together without mortar, the interstices stopped with clay and moss. It leaned against the rock, which constituted one wall of the habitation, and against which rested the rafters of the roof. A furrow had been cut in the rock, horizontally, so as to intercept the rain that ran down the face and divert it on to the incline of the roof. The door was unfastened and was swaying on its hinges in the wind with creak and groan. Pabo entered, and was in the cell of the deceased hermit, in which the old man had expended nearly half his life. A small but unfailing spring oozed from the foot of the rocks, as Pabo was aware, a few paces below the hermitage. The habitation was certain not to be deficient in supplies of food, and on searching Pabo found a store of grain, a heap of roots, and a quern. There was a hearth on which he might bake cakes, and he found the anchorite's tinder, flint and steel. The day had by this time closed in, and Pabo at once endeavored to light a fire. He had been heated with the steep ascent, but this warmth was passing away, and he felt chilled. At this height the air was colder and the wind keener. There were sticks and dry heather and fern near the hearth, but Pabo failed in all his efforts to kindle a blaze. Sparks flew from the flint, but would not ignite the spongy fungus that served as tinder. It had lain too many days on a stone, and had become damp. After fruitless attempts, Pabo placed the amadou in his bosom, in hopes of drying it by the heat of his body, and drew the hermit's blanket over his shoulders as he seated himself on the bed, which was but a board. All was now dark within. The window was but a slit in the wall, and was unglazed. The cabin was drafty, for there was not merely the window by which the wind could enter, but the door as well was but imperfectly closed, and in the roof was the smoke-hole. What a life the hermit must have led in this remote spot! Pabo might have considered that now, feeling this experience, but, indeed, his mind was too fully occupied with his own troubles to give a thought to those of another. Shivering under the blanket, that seemed to have no warmth in it, he leaned his brow in his hand, and mused on the dangers, distresses, that menaced his tribe, his race, his wife, and which he was powerless to avert. Prince Griffith might raise the standard and rouse to arms, but it was in vain for Pabo to hug himself in the hope of success and freedom for his people by this means. The north of Wales was controlled by a king who had violated the rights of hospitality and betrayed his own kindred. Thus, all Cambria would not rise as one man, and what could one half of the nation do against the enormous power of all England? Do? The hope of the young and the sanguine, and the despair of the old and experienced, could lead them to nothing else but either to retreat among the mountains and there die of hunger and cold, or perish gloriously sword in hand on the battlefield. Pabo lifted his head, and looked through the gap in the thatch. A cold star was twinkling aloft. A twig of heather, got free from its bands, was blown by the night wind to and fro over the smoke-hole, across the star now brushing it out, then revealing it again. The cell was not drafty only, it was also damp. Pabo felt the hearth. It was quite cold. Several days had elapsed since the last sparks on it had expired. The wind moaned among the rocks, sighed at the window, and piped through the crevices about the door. A snoring owl began its monotonous call. Where it was Pabo could not detect. The sound came now from this side then from that, and next was behind him. It was precisely as though a man--he could not say whether without or within--were in deep stertorous sleep. Again he endeavored to strike a light and kindle a fire. Sparks he could elicit, that was all. The fungus refused to ignite. The cold, the damp, ate into the marrow of his bones. He collected a handful of barley-grains and chewed them, but they proved little satisfying to hunger. Then he went forth. He must exercise his limbs to prevent them from becoming stiff, must circulate his blood and prevent it from coagulating with frost. He would walk along the mountain crest to where, over the southern edge, he could look down on Caio, on his lost home, on where was his wife--not sleeping, he knew she was not that, but thinking of him. Wondrous, past expression, is that link of love that binds the man and his wife. Never was a truer word spoken than that which pronounced them to be no more twain, but one flesh. The mother parted from her nursling knows, feels in her breast, in every fiber of her being, when her child is weeping and will not be comforted, though parted from it by miles; an unendurable yearning comes over her to hurry to the wailing infant, to clasp it to her heart and kiss away its tears. And something akin to this is that mysterious tie that holds together the man and his wife. They cannot live an individual life. He carries the wife with him wherever he be, thinks, feels with her, is conscious of a double existence fused into a unity; and what is true of the husband is true also of the wife. It was now with Pabo as though he were irresistibly drawn in the direction of Caio, where he knew that Morwen was with tears on her cheeks, her gentle, suffering heart full of him and his desolation and banishment. The night was clear, there was actually not much wind; but autumn rawness was in the air. To the west still hung a dying halo, very faint, and the ground, covered with short grass, was dimly white where pearled with dew, each pearl catching something of the starlight from above. But away, to the south, was a lurid glow, against which the rounded head of Mallaen stood out as ink. Pabo thrust on his way, running when he could, and anon stumbling over plots of gorse or among stones. At length he came out upon the brow, Bronffin, and looked down into the broad basin of Caio. Below him was a fire. It had burned itself out, and lay a bed of glowing cinders, with smoke curling above it, lighted and turned red by the reflection of the fire below. Now and then a lambent flame sprang up, and then died away again. The sound of voices came up from beneath: it was pleasant to Pabo to hear voices, but in his heart was unutterable pain. He looked down on the glowing ruins of his presbytery--where he had lived and been so happy. Hour after hour he sat on the mountain-edge, watching the slowly contracting and fading glow, hearing the sounds of life gradually die away. Then above the range to the left rose the moon, and silvered the white ribbon of the Sarn Helen, the paved road of the old Queen of British race who had married the Roman Emperor Maxentius, and illumined the haze that hung over the river-beds, and far away behind Pen-y-ddinas formed a cloud over the two tarns occupying the bottom of the valley. But all the while Pabo looked only at one and then at another point--this, the fiery reek of his home, that a spot whence shone a small and feeble light--the house of Howel the Tall, beneath whose roof watched and wept his dearest treasure, Morwen. When midnight was overpassed, and none stirred, then did Pabo descend from the heights and approach the ashes of his home. At the glowing embers he dried the tinder. Then he caught up a smoldering brand, turned and reascended the mountain, with the fire from his ruined hearth wherewith to kindle that in his hovel of refuge. CHAPTER XI A MIRACLE Had one been on Bronffin, the mountain-brow overhanging Caio, on the following morning, strange would have been the scene witnessed. Those of the inhabitants who had not fled were engaged in the obsequies of the hermit who had been burned when the presbytery took fire, and whose charred remains had been extricated from the ruins. The corpse was borne on a bier covered with a white sheet; and men and women accompanied, chanting an undulating wail-like dirge, while the priest from Llansawel--a daughter church--preceded the body. Simultaneously arrived a number of armed men, retainers of the bishop, under the command of his brother, with the chaplain Cadell in their midst, accompanied by the Dean of Llandeilo and his deacon. Rogier had recovered the use of his arm, which was, however, still somewhat stiff in the joint from the blow he had received. Their arrival disturbed the procession, for the newcomers rode through the train of wailers manifesting supreme indifference with regard to the proceedings. "Put down yon bier!" ordered Rogier; and then, because none comprehended his words, he made imperious gestures that could not be mistaken. He was obeyed by the bearers, and the mourners parted and stood back, while the armed men filled in about the chaplain and their leader. Cadell rose in his stirrups and called in Welsh for silence, that he might be heard. Then, addressing the inhabitants in loud tones, he said: "It is well that ye are present, assembled, without my having to call you together. Ye shall hear what has been decreed. Proceed with the interment of the dead after that. Draw around and give ear." All obeyed, though slowly, reluctantly. When Cadell saw that all those of Caio who were gathered to the funeral were within earshot and attention, he said, speaking articulately, in sharp, distinct sentences, raising himself in his stirrups: "His fatherliness, the Bishop of St. David's, by the grace of God and the favor of Henry King of England and Lord Paramount over Wales, in consideration of the disloyal and irreligious conduct of the people inhabiting the so-called Sanctuary of David in Caio, but forming an integral portion of the patrimony of the see when he, their father and their lord, visited the place but recently, and above all, because the Archpriest did resist him, and further, did not shun to lift up his sacrilegious hand against him, his father in God, and inasmuch as in the divine law communicated to man from Sinai, it is commanded that he who smiteth his father shall surely be put to death, therefore he, their Lord and Bishop, in exercise of his just and legal rights, doth require _imprimis_: That the said Archpriest, Pabo by name, shall surrender his person to be tried and sentenced by the Court ecclesiastical, then to be handed over to the secular court for execution; and, further, that he be esteemed _ipso facto_ and from this present inhibited from the discharge of any sacred office, and shall be destituted of all and singular benefices that he may hold in the Menevian diocese, and that he be formally degraded from his sacerdotal character, by virtue of the authority hereby committed to me." Then Howel the Tall stood forth, and approaching the chaplain, said, "Good master Cadell, this matter hath already been decided and taken out of the province of thy master. Pabo, Archpriest and hereditary chieftain of the tribe of Caio, hath, as saith the Scripture, escaped out of the snare of the fowler. We are even now engaged in the celebration of his obsequies. You have interrupted us as we were about to commit his ashes to the ground." "How so!" exclaimed the chaplain, taken aback. "Pabo is not dead?" "Look around thee," answered Howel. "Behold how that fire hath destroyed the presbytery and at the same time hath consumed him who lay therein." "It was the judgment of God!" cried Cadell. "The manifest judgment of God against the man who lifted his hand against his spiritual father. Did the lightning flash from heaven to slay him?" "That I cannot affirm," said Howel. "Heaven has manifestly and miraculously interposed," said the chaplain, dismounting. In a few words he informed his attendants of what had taken place. "It is to be regretted," said Rogier. "I had hoped to carry a fagot, wherewith to roast him." "It soundeth passing strange," said another. "It is a miracle," persisted Cadell. "God is with us and against those who resist the bishop. This shall be everywhere proclaimed." "I do not see that as a miracle it was necessary," said Rogier. "For we would have burnt him all the same." "But," said the chaplain, "it was the will of Heaven to reveal that it is wroth with this people, and is on our side." Rogier shrugged one shoulder. "I will have a look at him and satisfy myself," said he, strode to the bier, and plucked aside the sheet. All recoiled at the object revealed--a human being burnt to a cinder. "By the soul of the Conqueror," said the bishop's brother, "methought he had been a man of more inches." "He is shrunken with the fire," explained the chaplain. "I would I could be certain it is he," said Rogier. "We will subject them to an oath," said Cadell. "If it be he, then, assuredly, his wife--that woman whom he called his wife--will not be far away." "She is the chief mourner," said Howel. Then he took Morwen by the hand and led her forward. "She is here." "Ah, ha! my pretty wench!" said Rogier, "praise Heaven that thou art released from thy leman. We may find thee a better man, and not one that wears the cassock." "Come hither," said the chaplain; "I desire thee to take the strictest and most solemn oath that he who there lieth charred as a burned log is none other than Pabo the Archpriest, whom thou didst call thy husband. What be the chiefest relics here?" he asked, looking round. "We have but the staff of Cynwyl; but that is mighty and greatly resorted to," said Howel. "Where is it? Bring it hither." "I am the custodian of the relic," said Morgan ap David. "But it is not customary to produce it unless it be attended and treated with all reverence." "Take with you whom you will," said the chaplain impatiently. "Faugh! cast again the pall over it." Morgan chose Howel and another, and they departed towards the church. After a few moments' delay they returned, Morgan in the center, bearing the staff. "Lay it on the corpse," said Cadell. "Have a care," said Howel, with a curve in the lip. "That staff has been known to have raised the dead to life again." "It were well it did so now," laughed Rogier, when Cadell, somewhat dashed, interpreted what had been said. "I' faith, I would be glad to have a hand in the second burning of him." "Hath it really done so?" asked the chaplain. "There was Ewan, the son of Morgan ap Rees, who fell from a tree," said Howel, "and he lay stone dead. Then, full of faith, his mother cried out for the staff of Cynwyl, and lo! when it was laid on the lad he opened his eyes and spoke." "Hold it above the body," said the chaplain, "one at each end, so as not to touch, and in such wise let the woman take oath." Again was the linen sheet removed, and now Morgan and an attendant sacristan held the relic--one at the head, the other at the foot--that it was above the body, yet not touching it; only the shadow fell upon it. "Go thrice round it," enjoined Morgan, signing with his head to Morwen; "thrice from left to right, with the sun, then lay thine hand on the staff and take the required oath." Morwen shuddered, but she obeyed, though pale as death. When she had made the third circuit she was forced, shrinking and with averted head, to approach the dead man. Then Cadell said in a loud voice, "Lay thy hand thereon and say these words: 'I take oath before God and Cynwyl, before the saints and angels in heaven, in the face of sun and moon and all men here present, that this is the dead body of Pabo, late Archpriest--whom thou didst esteem as thy husband.'" Then Morwen repeated, mechanically, the first words of adjuration, but added, in place of what Cadell had recited: "I take oath that if this be not Pabo, the Archpriest, and my husband, I know not where he is." "That sufficeth," said Cadell. "And now," he spoke aloud, turning to the assistants, "seeing that this man hath manifestly died by the just judgment of God, and to the notable confirmation of the authority of Bernard, the bishop, I declare that he be treated as one excommunicate, and be not buried within consecrated ground." The people of Caio murmured and looked at one another disconcerted. Then Howel went among them and whispered a few words. Cadell did not observe him; he was intent on speaking once more. That he might be the better heard, he remounted his horse. "Inhabitants of the sanctuary and of the tribe of Caio," said he, in the same distinct and sharp tones as before. "I have something further to add. _Secundo_: Inasmuch as the Archpriest Pabo hath manifestly perished by the interposition of Heaven, thus obviating his deposition as purposed, now his fatherliness, Bernard, Bishop of Menevia, is graciously pleased to nominate and present me, unworthy, to fill his room; in token whereof, the Dean of Llandeilo accompanies, so as straightway to induct me into all the offices, benefices, spirituals that were possessed by Pabo, the late Archpriest. _Tertio_: And inasmuch as the people of the territory and tribe of Caio did resist and mutinously assail the servants of the bishop, he imposes on them a fine of a mark in silver per house, great and small, to be collected and paid within one month from this day, until which time his attendants now accompanying me shall have free quarters and entertainment for themselves and their beasts among you." His words filled all with dismay. None answered. Then said Rogier laughingly: "I' faith, while Providence punished the late Archpriest, it did not mightily favor the incomer, for it hath consumed his presbytery." "The hall still standeth," said Cadell sternly. "Are we to question the ways of Heaven!" "'Ods life," pursued Rogier mockingly, "who would ever have considered my brother a saint, and one to be sustained by miracles; and he, but the other day, as great a Jew in grinding the peasants, and wringing the blood from their noses, as any son of Abraham. By the paunch of the Conqueror--and taking tithe and toll therefrom to his own benefit! Well! If Heaven be not nice in whom it proclaims as saints. There is good hope for such as me." Somewhat later, the new Archpriest indited the following letter to his ecclesiastical superior-- "Cadell, Archpriest of Caio, to Bernard, Lord Bishop of St. David's, sendeth humbly greeting, with much filial affection. "This is to inform your fatherliness that it has pleasured Heaven--which is wondrous in the saints, to vindicate thy sanctity in a very special and marvelous manner. It is now many hundred years ago since David, the holy, founded the bishopric of Menevia, and primacy over all Cambria; and it is said he was thereto ordained and appointed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Now it is a notable fact that there was a certain Boia, a chief of the land, who mightily opposed him. Then fell fire from Heaven in the night, and consumed Boia and his wife and all that he had, in witness thereto remaineth the Cleggyr Voia, his ruined and burnt castle, unto this day. Since then many have been the bishops who have sat in the seat of David, and many also have been those who have opposed them. The Northmen have slain some, and have expelled others, yet did not Heaven interfere in their behalf. Nevertheless, no sooner art thou, Bernard, appointed and consecrated to this see, than have thy right and thy holiness been vindicated miraculously in the sight of all. For the Archpriest and chief Pabo did oppose thee even as did Boia oppose David. And each was smitten in the same way. Manifestly in the sight of all men, fire fell from Heaven and consumed him who sacrilegiously lifted his hand against thee, him and all his house, whereof we are witnesses--to wit, thy brother Rogier, the Dean of Llandeilo, and all thy servants and the people of Caio, as well as my unworthy self, thy servant, who beheld him--the transgressor--burned as a charred log, blasted by Heaven. And forasmuch as he perished by the judgment of God, I have bidden give to him but the burial of an ass. "Be this known unto all men, and it will mightily extend the fear of thee, and dissuade men from temerariously resisting thy just authority, whether in the diocese or throughout Wales." When the chaplain had written this, as he sealed it, he said to Rogier, "It is so wonderful, he will hardly credit it." "My good Cadell," replied the Norman adventurer, "I know my brother better even than do you. He is so inordinately vain that he would believe if you told him that the sun and moon had bowed down to worship him. But I--whether I believe this, that is another matter." "But I believe it--that I solemnly affirm," said Cadell. "And, further, do you not recollect that his fatherliness, the Bishop, did threaten as much, when he was here, and the Archpriest resisted him? Did he not say, can I not send lightning to consume thee?--and lo! it has fallen, even as he said." CHAPTER XII GORONWY The Blessed Valley, which for nearly five hundred years had enjoyed the "Peace of Dewi," which had remained untroubled in the midst of the most violent commotions, was now a prey to the spoiler. Throughout the whole basin all was trouble. The armed men, servants of the bishop, for the most part Normans or Englishmen, but some Welshmen who had taken service under the oppressors of their countrymen, were dispersed through the district. Ostensibly they were engaged in numbering the hearths, for the exaction of the fine, but with this they did not content themselves. They entered every house, and conducted themselves therein as masters, aware that they were not likely to be called to order for the grossest outrages by either Rogier or by the bishop. They demanded food and drink, they ransacked the habitations and plundered them. They wasted what they could not consume, and destroyed what they did not take. The men they treated with contumely and the women with insult. A farmer who had a _hafod_, a summer byre, as well as a _hendre_, a winter residence, must pay for both. The poorest squatter would be forced to contribute as well as the wealthiest proprietor. "A mark of silver for a house," said Rogier; "settle it among you how the money is to be extracted. The rich will pay for the poor. In a fortnight we shall have every hearth registered." One wretched man, whose hovel had been broken into, set fire to it. "This," said he, "shall not be counted. I have no house now, no roof, no hearth. Therefore it shall not be reckoned in." "It was recorded before you set it in flames," was the answer. "It pays all the same." A father attempting to defend his daughter against one of the dissolute soldiers received a blow on his head which cut it open and cast him senseless on the ground. He lay in a precarious condition; and the girl had been carried off. A lone woman, aged, and a widow dependent on the charity of the neighbors, through their dispersion, or through forgetfulness, had died in solitude, by starvation. Several well to-do men, landowners, in attempting to resist the plunderers had been unmercifully beaten. It was an open secret that Rogier was seeking in all directions for the beautiful Morwen; but Tall Howel had the cunning to evade his search, by moving her about from house to house. On Sunday, with the exception of some of the soldiers, hardly any natives appeared in the church. The few who did show were some old women. It transpired that the inhabitants of the Caio district had gone for their religious duties to some of the chapels, of which there were at least six, scattered over the territory of the tribe, where they had been ministered to by the assistant clergy. When this came to Cadell's ears, he had his horse saddled, and attended by some of the men-at-arms, rode to the residences of these vicars, dismissed them from their offices, and had them removed by the bishop's retainers and thrust over the borders, with a threat of imprisonment should they return. On the following Sunday the church of Cynwyl was as deserted as before. "He has deprived us of our pastors," said the people. "He cannot rob us of our God." Then as Cadell learned that they had assembled in the chapels, and had united in prayer under the conduct of one of the elders, he rode round again, and had the roofs of these chapels removed. "This is better," said the people. "There is naught now betwixt us and God. He will hear us the readier." The day arrived for the benediction of the waters of the Annell. Then it transpired that the rod of Cynwyl had been abstracted from the church. In a rage, Cadell sent for the hereditary custodian. Morgan appeared with imperturbable face. "Ah!" said he, "this comes of having here such godless rascals as you have, foreigners who respect nothing human and divine. You brought forth the staff to lay it on the body--and this before all eyes. These rapacious men saw that there was gold on the case, and that stones of price were encrusted therein. Had they stolen the case and left the wooden staff, it would not have mattered greatly. But what to them are the merits of one of our great saints? They regard them not." Rogier now considered that it were well to hasten matters to a conclusion. He accordingly sent round messengers to every principal farmhouse to summon a meeting of the elders in the council-house, that he might know whether they were ready with the fine, and what measures they had taken to raise it. Cadell was dissatisfied and uneasy. He sat ruminating over the fire. The hall that had escaped being burnt had been accommodated for his occupation without much difficulty, as such articles as were needed to furnish it were requisitioned without scruple from the householders of Caio. But Cadell was discontented. In a few days the bishop's servants, who had brought him to the place and had seen him there installed, would be withdrawn. Then he would be left alone in the midst of a hostile and incensed population. Although they might not overtly resist him, they would be able in a thousand ways to make his residence among them unendurable. He might wring from them their ecclesiastical dues, but would be unable to compel those many services, small in themselves, which go to make life tolerable. He had already encountered reluctance to furnish him with fuel, to supply him with meal and with milk, to fetch and to carry, to cook and to scour. To get nothing done save by the exercise of threats was unpleasant when he was able to call to his aid the military force placed at his disposal; when, however, that force was withdrawn, the situation would be unendurable. If there had been a party, however small, in the place that favored the English, he would have been content; but to be the sole representative of the foreign tyranny, political as well as ecclesiastical, under which the people writhed, was beyond his strength. And the situation was aggravated by the fact that he was himself a Welshman, and was therefore regarded with double measure of animosity as a renegade. He was uneasy, as well, on another head. Rogier had let drop a hint that his brother intended to reduce the Archpriesthood of Caio to a mere vicariate on small tithe, and to appropriate to himself the great tithe with the object of eventually endowing therewith a monastery in the basin of the Cothi, probably by the tarns at the southern end. "We shall never crush the spirit out of this people," said Rogier, "unless we plant a castle on Pen-y-ddinas, or squat an abbey by those natural fishponds at Talley." If this were done, then he, Cadell, would have been inadequately repaid for the vexations and discomforts he would be forced to endure. The troop sent with him, Cadell could not but see, had done their utmost to roughen his path. They had exasperated the people beyond endurance. As he sat thus musing a young man entered cautiously, looked around, and sidled towards him. He was deformed. The chaplain looked up and asked what he required. "I have come for a talk," said the visitor. "May I sit? I know this hall well; it belonged to my father. I am Goronwy, son of the former Archpriest Ewan or John, as you please to call him." Cadell signed to a seat. He was not ill-pleased at a distraction from his unpleasant thoughts, and he was not a little gratified to find a man of the place ready to approach him without apparent animosity or suspicion. "You do not appear to me to have a pleasant place," pursued Goronwy. "I saw a beetle once enter a hive. The bees fell on him, and in spite of his hardness, stung him to death, and after that built a cairn of wax over him. There he lay all the summer, and every bee that entered or left the hive trampled on the mound of wax that covered their enemy." "Their stings shall be plucked out," said Cadell. "Aye, but you cannot force them to furnish you with honey, nor prevent them from entombing you in wax. They will do it--imperceptibly, and tread you underfoot at the last." Cadell said nothing to this; he muttered angrily and contemptuously, and drew back from the fire to look at his visitor. A lad with a long face, keen, beady eyes, restless and cunning, long arms, and large white hands. His body was misshapen and short, but his limbs disproportionately long. "I should have been Archpriest here," pursued he; "but because I am not straight as a wand, they rejected me. In your Latin Church, are they as particular on this point?" "We can dispense with most rules--if there be good reason for it." "Do you think, in the event of your getting tired of being here, among those who do not love you, that you could make room for me?" "For you!" Cadell stared. "Aye! I ought to have been chief here, only they passed me over for Pabo. I have a hereditary right to be both chief and priest in Caio." Then Cadell laughed. "You are a misshapen fool," he said; "dost think that Bishop Bernard would give thee such a place as this--to foment rebellion against him?" "He might give it to me, if I undertook to do him a great service, and to bring the place under his feet." "What service could such as you render?" "Would not that be a service to bring all Caio into subjection. See! I doubt not that a good fat prebend would be more to your liking than this lost valley among the mountains, traversed by the Sarn Helen alone, which was a road frequented once when the Romans were here, and the gold-mines were worked, and Loventum was a city. But now--it is naught. Few use it." Cadell mused on this astonishing proposal. It was quite true. He would rather far be a canon at St. David's, with nothing to do, than be stationed here in this lonely nook surrounded by enemies. Caio, however, with Llansawel and Pumpsaint, its daughter benefices, was a rich holding, and not to be sacrificed except for something better. Yet he feared the intentions of Bernard with regard to it. "You see," continued Goronwy, "that the people are so maddened at what has been done and so bitterly opposed to you that were I appointed in your room----" "But you are not a priest." "Was not Bernard pitchforked into the priesthood and episcopate in one day? Could not something of the sort be done with me?" Again Cadell was silent. Goronwy suffered him to brood over the proposal. "If you were to leave for something better they would hail me as one of themselves, and their rightful chief. And I would repay the bishop and you for doing it." Still Cadell did not speak. Then Goronwy drew nearer to him. His small eyes contracted and his thin lips became pointed as he said, "Pabo is not dead." Cadell started. "Dead! I know he is dead! I saw his body!" Goronwy broke into a mocking laugh. "I saw him--charred; and I had him buried under a dungheap outside the church garth, as befitted one struck down by the judgment of Heaven." "Pabo is not dead," repeated Goronwy jeeringly. "He is dead. It was a manifest miracle. I have told the bishop of it. It would spoil everything if, after I had announced it, he were found not to be dead." "Yes," said the young man, rubbing his large hands together, "it would spoil everything." Then, seized by a sudden terror, Cadell exclaimed, "It was threatened--the staff of Cynwyl would raise the dead. It has done it before." "Oh! the staff of Cynwyl had naught to do with it." "Merciful heavens, angels and saints protect me! If that burned lump is raised, and walks, and were to come here, and--come to me when in bed----!" In the horror of the thought, Cadell was unable to conclude the sentence. But he broke forth: "It is not so. If he be alive, he is no longer under the dungheap where he was laid. I will go see." "Go, by all means," said Goronwy, and laughed immoderately. "Tell me more. You know more." "Nay, go and see. I will tell nothing further till I have a written and sealed promise from the bishop that he will appoint me Archpriest of Caio." Cadell ran from the hall. Filled with terror, he got together some of the men of the bishop, and they searched where the burnt body had been laid. It was not there. Back to the hall came the chaplain. Goronwy still sat over the fire warming and then folding and unfolding his hands. "He is gone. He is not where we buried him," gasped Cadell. "Oh, he is gone! I told you Pabo was alive. He is walking to and fro--when the moon shines you may see him. When it is dark he will come on you unawares, from behind, and seize you." Cadell cowered in alarm. "I would to Heaven I were out of this place!" he gasped. "Now, mark you," said Goronwy. "Get the promise of this Archpriesthood for me, and I will deliver Pabo, risen from the dead, into your hands, and, if he desire it also, Morwen into the arms of Rogier." CHAPTER XIII IT MUST BE MAINTAINED Rogier broke into a roar of laughter, when Cadell, with white face and in agitated voice, told him that Pabo was not dead. "'Sdeath!" he exclaimed. "I never quite believed that he was." "Not that he was dead?" cried the chaplain. "Did you ever see a man burnt as black as a coal and live after it?" "That was not he. I doubted it then." "It must have been he. He was buried as a dog in a dungheap, and"--Cadell lowered his voice--"he is no longer there." "Because these fellows here have removed the body and laid it in consecrated ground. It was a trick played on us, clever in its way, though I was not wholly convinced. Now I shall let them understand what it is to play jokes with me. I can joke as well." "But what do you mean, Rogier?" "That these Welsh rogues have endeavored to make us believe that the old Archpriest is dead, so that our vengeance might be disarmed and he allowed to escape. He is in hiding somewhere. Where is that fellow who informed you?" "Nothing further is to be got out of him." "We shall see." "I pray you desist. He may be useful to us; but it must not be suspected that he is in treaty with us." "There is some reason in this. I shall find out without his aid." "Do nothing till I have seen the bishop. He will be very distressed--angry. For I assured him that a miracle had been wrought. It was such an important miracle. It showed to all that Heaven was on our side." Rogier laughed. "We can cut and carve for ourselves without the help of miracles," said he. "I shall go at once," said Cadell; "the bishop must be communicated with immediately--and his pleasure known." Bernard of St. David's was at his castle of Llawhaden, near Narberth. He was there near his Norman friends and supporters. He had no relish for banishment to the bare and remote corner of Pembrokeshire stretching as a hand into the sea, as though an appeal from Wales to Ireland for assistance. Moreover, Bernard was by no means assured that his presence where was the throne would be acceptable, and that it might not provoke some second popular commotion which would cost him a further loss of teeth. Llawhaden lay in a district well occupied by Norman soldiers and Flemish settlers. The residence there was commodious in a well-wooded and fertile district. The castle was strong, secure against surprises, built by architect and masons imported from Normandy, as were all those constructed by the conquerors throughout the South of Wales. In Llawhaden Bernard lived like a temporal baron, surrounded by fighting men, and never going abroad without his military retinue. It was said that he ever wore a fine steel-chain coat of mail under his woolen ecclesiastical habit. In his kitchen, as about his person, no native was suffered to serve, so suspicious was he lest an attempt should be made on his life, by poison or by dagger. Happily, he was not required to perform any ecclesiastical functions, for he was profoundly ignorant of these; but the situation was such that he was not required to ordain clergy or consecrate churches. Clergy were not lacking. The ne'er-do-weels of England, men who were for their immorality or crimes forced to leave their cures, hasted to Wales, where they readily found preferment, as the great object in view with the invaders was to dispossess the natives of their land and of their churches. "So you are here," said the bishop. He spoke with inconvenience, as one front tooth had been knocked out and another broken. Unless he drew down his upper lip, his words issued from his mouth indistinctly, accompanied by a disagreeable hiss. "Hah!--have the bumpkins paid up so readily that you are here with the money? How many marks have they had to disgorge?" "Your fatherliness," said the chaplain, "I have brought nothing with me save unsatisfactory tidings." "What! They will not pay?" "They can be made to find the silver," said Cadell; "that I do not doubt. For centuries those men of Caio have prospered and have hoarded. Other lands have been wasted, not theirs; other stores pillaged, theirs have been untouched." "It is well. They will bear further squeezing. But what ails thee? Thou lookest as though thou hadst bitten into a crab-apple." "I have come touching the miracle." "Ah! to be sure--the miracle. I have sent despatches containing complete accounts thereof to his Majesty King Henry, and to my late gracious mistress, the Queen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who consecrated me at Westminster, looked as sour as do you. He would fain have had the consent of the Pope, as father of Christendom, but the King would brook no delay, and the Archbishop was not so stubborn as to hold out--glad in this, to get a bishop of St. David's to swear submission to the stool of Augustine. I have sent him as well a narrative of the miracle; it will salve his conscience to see that Heaven is manifestly with me. Moreover, I have had my crow over Urban of Llandaff. _He_ has not a miracle to boast of to bolster up his authority." "My gracious master and lord, I grieve to have to assure you that there has been some mistake in the matter for which I am in no way blameworthy." "How a mistake?" asked Bernard testily. "There has been no miracle." "No miracle! But there has. I have it in your own handwriting." "I wrote under a misapprehension." "Misapprehension, you Welsh hound! You misapprehend your man, if you think I will allow you to retract in this matter." "I really do not know what to say, for I do not know what to think about the circumstance. It is, I fear, certain that Pabo lives." "Pabo lives! Why you saw him burnt to a coal! I have your written testimony. You invoked the witness of the Dean of Llandeilo, and he has formally corroborated it. I have it under his hand. You declared that there were hundreds who could bear testimony to the same." "Lord Bishop, I cannot now say what is the truth. It is certain that your brother and we all were shown the charred relics of a man, whom the inhabitants of Caio were proceeding to inter with the rites of religion, as their late Archpriest. When I learned that he had died by fire, by the judgment of God, then I stayed the ceremony, and bade that his body should be laid under a dungheap." "You did well. It is there still." "It is not, my Lord Bishop." "Do you mean to declare that he is risen from his grave?" "Your brother is of opinion that we have been deceived by the tribesmen of Caio, so as to make us suppose that this their Archpriest and chief was dead, and that he is now in concealment somewhere. He further saith that the people have secretly removed the dead man from the place where cast, and have laid him in the churchyard." "But--who can he have been?" "I know not." "And I care not," said the bishop. "Pabo was struck by fire from heaven, because he opposed me. Why when Ahaziah sent captains of fifty with their fifties against the prophet Elijah, did not lightning fall and consume them and their fifties twice? Is a ragged old prophet under the law of Moses to be served better than me, a high prelate under the Gospel? I see but too plainly, Cadell, you, being a Welshman, would rob me of the glory that appertains to me. What grounds have you for this preposterous assertion?" "There is a young man, the son of a former Archpriest, who has been slighted and overpassed, and has harbored resentment against Pabo. He came to me secretly and told me that we had been deceived--they used subtlety so as to be able the more effectually to conceal their chief from your just resentment." "I do not believe a word of it. I have written and sent certified testimonies that Pabo was burned by fire from Heaven. Where is this alleged Pabo?" "I know not. The young man I speak of is ready to assist us to secure him." "I do not want him. I want and will have my miracle. Did you not hear me? When I visited Caio, I said to Pabo that I would call down fire from Heaven upon his head. I take you to witness that you heard me." "But what, my dear master and lord, if he were to appear, and all men were to discover that there had been no miracle?" "I _will_ have my miracle," persisted Bernard in petulant tones. "I have gone too far with it to retract. Odds' life! I should become a laughing-stock all through Wales; and I know well the humor of his Majesty. Over his cups he would tell the tale and burst his sides with laughing; and he would cast it in the teeth of my gracious mistress, the Queen. I have gone too far--I will have my miracle. If there be a man who is going about calling himself Pabo the Archpriest, let him be arrested as an impostor." "There will be talk concerning it." "There must be no noise. By the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, we must hush it up! As a minister of the Truth, a prelate of the Church, it is my sovereign duty to put down all imposition. Go now! I will even send a letter to Gerald of Windsor, who is at his castle of Carreg Cennen, in a retired vale away from every road, and from most habitations. I will bid him receive this false Pabo, and take such measures that the wretched impostor trouble us no more. As to my brother, bid him, if he lay hand on this dissembler and deceiver of men, this lying rogue, to get him away unnoticed, and with no noise, out of Caio, where he may be observed, and to send him under escort and by night to Gerald at Carreg Cennen." "It shall be so. And--with regard to the young man of whom I spake?" "That young man is a pest. Why should he have disturbed us with his suggestions?" "I venture to remind your fatherliness that he has but allowed us to see what is at work behind our backs. He tells us what is known to all men in Caio. Pabo might come forward at any time and show that he is alive." "That is true. What further about this young man?" "He offers to be the means of putting Pabo in our power." "And his price?" "In the event of your fatherliness transferring me to some other place of usefulness, such as a canonry at St. Davids, he protests that were he named to the Archpriesthood, he would in all ways subserve your interests. As he belongs to the chieftain's family, he would be well received by the people, and their suspicions disarmed." "Well, well, promise him anything--everything. I shall not be bound to performance. But hark you, Master Cadell! If this miracle be a little breathed upon, then you must contrive me another that cannot be upset by scoffers. Find me a paralytic or a blind person whom I may recover. That would go mightily to confirm the miracle of the burning of Pabo. And bid my brother act warily and proceed secretly, require him to treat this dissembler as what he is--a personator of a man who is on sure warrant dead, slain by the judgment of God." "I would fain have it under your hand and seal," said Cadell. "Your brother Rogier acts after his own will, and is not amenable to my advice." "You shall have it--also a letter to Gerald of Windsor. Get you away now. The epistles shall be ready by night, and you shall ride at cockcrow. And, mind you this, Master Cadell, if you lust after a canonry, provide me a new miracle. As to that already wrought, at all hazards it must be maintained. Not on my account. I am a poor worm, a nothing! But for policy, for the good of the Cause; lest these Welsh should come to crow over us." CHAPTER XIV THE FALL OF THE LOT The elders of the Caio tribe assembled as enjoined. Some few were not present, risking the anger of Rogier rather than appear before him. But the majority conceived it advisable to attend; and, in fact, a gathering of the notables was necessary for the apportionment of the fine that had to be raised. Although a mark in silver was what had to be exacted from each house, yet, as the majority of the inhabitants were too poor to pay such a sum, the richer would have to supplement the deficiency. The fine was imposed on the district as a whole. The amount was calculated by the hearths, but each householder was not expected to pay the same fixed sum. This was well understood, and the adjustment of the burden had to be considered in common. There was, so it was generally supposed, no exceptional cause for further uneasiness. The tax must be raised, and when the silver had been paid, then the valley would be rid of its intruders--with the exception of the renegade Cadell, forced on the tribe as its ecclesiastical chief. That Rogier had any fresh cause of complaint against the inhabitants was not suspected. They assembled accordingly, and entered the council-hall. It was not till all were within that the young men and women without were filled with alarm and suspicion by seeing the men-at-arms slowly, and in orderly fashion, close in and completely surround the edifice, and a strong detachment occupy the door. Rogier had remained outside, and gave directions. Presently he stepped within, attended by two men, one of whom served as his interpreter. The sun was shining, and it had painted a circle on the floor through the opening in the gable. Then the Norman took his sword, and drew a line in the dust with it from the president's seat to the doorway. "I give ye," said he, "till the sun hath crossed this line, wherein to discuss and arrange as to the payment of the fine. Till then--no one leaves the hall. After that--I have a further communication to make." The men looked in one another's faces and wondered what this meant. A fresh impost? They were not aware that occasion had been given for this; but who could be sure with one so rapacious as Rogier! It was the case of the Wolf and the Lamb in the fable. The Norman now left the court-house and sauntered about outside, speaking to his men, looking pryingly among those of the natives who, in an anxious, timorous crowd, remained in every avenue between the houses, ready at a threat to escape. After the lapse of approximately an hour the Norman reentered the hall and walked directly to the principal seat to take it. Then up started an aged man, and with vehement gesticulations and in words of excitement addressed him: "That seat is taken by none--save of the race of Cunedda. It belongs to our chief, who is of the blood royal. None other may occupy it." "I take it by the right of the sword," answered Rogier. "And let me see the man who will turn me out of it. I take it as deputy to my brother, the bishop." He laughed contemptuously, and let himself down on the chair. "Well," said he, looking round, "have you settled among yourselves as to the contribution? The round gold patch touches my line. I give you till it has passed across it to conclude that matter." Then Howel ap John stood up. "We have considered and apportioned the charges," he said, and his cunning eyes contracted. "Amongst ourselves we have arranged what each is to pay. But, inasmuch as we are nothing save tribesmen of our chief, and as the right over the land was at one time wholly his, but has since suffered curtailment, so that portions have become hereditary holdings of the chief men, yet as still the common lands, as well as the glebe and the domain, belong to the chief, it has seemed reasonable and just that he should bear one-third of the fine, and that this shall be levied on his land and homesteads, and two-thirds upon us." When this was translated to Rogier, he laughed aloud. "I see," said he, "the holder of the benefice is to bear a third. What will Cadell say to that?" "It is a decision according to equity," said Howel. "I care not. Cadell is not here to protect himself. So long as I have the silver to hand to the bishop, it is indifferent to me whether you bleed your own veins or fleece your pastor. He has been put in a fat pasture by my brother; it is right that he pay for it." "In two days the silver shall be brought here and weighed out." "It is well." Rogier looked at the sun-patch. "That is concluded; now tarry till the sun traverses the line. Then we will broach other business." All sat now in silence, their eyes on the soil, watching the patch of light as it traveled. The men of Caio were aware that the doorway was guarded. But what was threatened they could not conjecture. They had endured intolerable provocations without resistance. They were anxious at heart; their breasts contracted at the dread of fresh exactions. Some looked at Rogier to endeavor to read his purpose in his face; but his, as well as the countenances of his attendants, was expressionless. The sun-round passed on. Then a cloud obscured the light, a fine and fleecy cloud that would be gone shortly. All tarried in silence, breathless, fearing they knew not what--but expecting no good. Then the sun burst forth again, and the circle of fire appeared beyond the line. At once Rogier stood up. "You men of Caio, you have thought to deal with a fool, and to deceive me by your craft. But I know what has been done, and will make you to understand on whom ye have practised your devices. Pabo, the chief and Archpriest, is not dead. It was not he who was consumed in the presbytery. Ye played a stage mystery before our eyes to make us believe that he was dead, and that you were burying him. Pabo is alive and is among you, and you know where he is concealed." The interpreter was interrupted by outcries of, "We know not. If that were not he, we cannot say where he be. We found a man burned to a cinder. Were we in error in supposing him to be our chief? Show us that it was so!" Rogier remained unmoved by the clamor. "Ye are like a parcel of lying, quibbling women," he said. "Pabo is in hiding. Ye are all leagued together to save him. But have him from his lurking-den I will." "We cannot say where he is. There is not one of us who knows." "You will admit that he whom ye pretended to be Pabo was some other?" They looked doubtfully at each other. "We could not tell. The dead man was found in the ruins of the burnt house. We thought it was Pabo." "Ye did not. Ye contrived the device between you." "We will swear that we know not where he is. Bring forth the staff of Cynwyl." "The staff has been stolen. But I will not trust your oaths. Did not the wife of Pabo swear thereon?" Then Rogier laughed. "She was crafty as the rest of you, and deceived us in her oath. Nay, I will trust no oaths. I will place my reliance on something more secure. Hey! bring forward my bassinet!" At his order, one of the attendants went to the door and received a steel cap from a soldier without. "In this bassinet," said Rogier, "there are short willow twigs. There are more twigs than there are householders and notables here assembled. Of these twigs all but six are blank; but on half a dozen a death's head has been scored with a dagger point, rubbed in with black. He who draws such a figured twig shall be hung on the gallows, where is suspended your church bell--one to-day, a second to-morrow. On Sunday, being a sacred day, none; on Monday a third, on Tuesday a fourth, on Wednesday a fifth, on Thursday the sixth. And on Friday ye shall all assemble here once more, and again draw the lots. I shall hang one of you every day till Pabo be delivered up to me, alive." Then there broke forth cries, protests, entreaties; there were hands stretched towards the window through which the sun entered, in oath that the whereabouts of Pabo was not known; there were arms extended to Rogier in assurance that Pabo was actually dead. Some cried out that they had had no cognizance of any plot to deceive. Many folded their arms in sullen wrath or despair. Then Rogier lifted his sword and commanded silence. "No word spoken," said he, "will move me from my purpose. One thing can alone rob the gallows of its rich burden--the delivery of your late chief, Pabo." "We cannot do it. We know not where he is." "Then let justice take its course. This I will suffer. When each has drawn his lot from the cap, he shall bring it in his closed fist to me, and open it where I stand in the ray of sunlight. If he have an unmarked stick, he shall go forth by the door unmolested. But he who shall have the death's head in his hand shall tarry here. And when all six are selected, then will I suffer each in turn to be conducted to his home, there to bid farewell to his family, and so to dispose of his worldly affairs as pleaseth him. I will allow each one hour to effect this; then he will return hither. The first man who draws the bad lot shall be strung to the gallows to-day. If ye be wise men, he will be the only one who will go to make a chime of bells. If Pabo be delivered to me before noon to-morrow, then no second man shall hang. If he be given up on Monday before mid-day no third man shall swing. But--if you remain obstinate, I will go on hanging ye to the last man. Come, in your order, as ye sit; draw to the bassinet and take out your lot. I lay the steel cap on what ye call the seat of your chief." Then the old man advanced, he who had protested against the occupation of the chair, and said--"I am ready to die, whether in my bed or on the gibbet matters little to me. God grant that I be the man taken. My time at best is but short. Another year to me matters not a hair." He walked to the bassinet, without hesitation drew his lot, carried it to the Norman--who stood in the sun-ray--and unclosed his withered hand. In it was an unmarked stick. "Pass forth," said Rogier. "Nay," said the old man. "My son comes after me--let him draw." A tall, well-built man walked boldly to the cap, drew, and approached the sunbeam. "Open!" ordered Rogier. He held a marked stick. "On one side--food for the crows," said the Norman. Then the old man fell on his knees. "I beseech you take me and spare him. He has a young wife and a child. He has life before him, mine is all behind." "Away," ordered Rogier. "The lot decides--the judgment is with heaven, not with me." "Father," said the young man, "I am willing to die for my chief." Then followed several who went free, and escaped into the open air, where they drew long breaths, as though their lungs had been cramped within. The next who drew the death's head was a mean little man with pointed, foxy face and red hair. He fell into convulsions of terror, clung to Rogier, implored for life, promised to betray whatever he knew--only, unhappily, he did not know where Pabo was concealed, but undertook, if pardoned, to find out. The bishop's brother spurned him from him with disgust. Then came three with blanks and were sent outside. The third taken was Howel. "One can but die once," said he, and shrugged his shoulders. "My old woman will have to look out for a second husband. May he be better than the first." He stepped aside without the exhibition of much feeling, but avoided the whimpering wretch who had drawn the death's head before him. "Hah!" said Iorwerth the Smith, as he opened his palm and disclosed the marked twig, "I thought something would fall to me for striking that blow which disabled the captain's arm. Would to heaven I had aimed better and broken his skull! He did not know me, or I should have been hung before this." Singularly enough, the very next to draw was also one who drew an unlucky stick, and this was Morgan the Sacristan. "Since the Sanctuary of David has been invaded, and the wild beast of the field tramples on the vineyard, I care not; and now the secret of where is hid the rod of Cynwyl will perish with me." Next came a whole batch who drew blanks, and gladly escaped with their necks. The last to draw the death's head looked steadily at it, and said: "She is always right. I thought so; now I'm sure of it. My wife said to me, 'Do not go to the meeting?' I said, 'Why not?' Like a woman, she couldn't give a reason; but repeated, 'Do not go.' I have come, and now shall swing with the rest. It's a rough way of learning a lesson. And having learnt it--can no more practise it." CHAPTER XV TWO PEBBLES Tidings of the blow to be struck, reaching the hearts of many families--six only at first, but with prospect of more afterwards--had spread through the tribal region. Those who had drawn the unmarked sticks hurried to their homes, not tarrying to learn who were all the unfortunates; and, although relieved for the present were in fear lest they should be unfortunate at a subsequent drawing. All knew that Pabo was in concealment, and that his place of concealment was known to none, not even to his wife or to Howel. They had not a clue as to where he was. Some supposed that he had fled to the mountains of Brecknock, others to Cardigan; some, again, that he had attached himself to Griffith ap Rhys, who was traversing South Wales, stirring up disaffection and preparing for a general rising of the Welsh against their oppressors. Yet hardly half a dozen men desired that he should be taken, and thus free themselves from death. The great and heroic virtue of the Celt lies in his devotion to his chief, for whom he is ready at once to lay down his life. The hideous prospect that lay before the unfortunate people of Caio was one of illimited decimation. Would Rogier weary of his barbarous work? Would it avail to send a deputation to the bishop? It was doubtful whether the latter was not as hard of heart as his lay brother. Gwen, the wife of Howel, was as one stunned. She leaned with both hands against the wall of her house, her head drooping between them, with dry, glazed eyes, and for long speechless. Morwen was now in Howel's house. She had returned to it. She was pale, and quivering with emotion under the weight of great horror, unable to speak. Her eyes were fixed on the despairing woman, from whose lips issued a low moan, and whose bosom heaved with long-drawn, laborious breaths. Morwen was well aware what sacrifices the tribe was making and would have to make for her husband's safety, and this gave inexpressible pain to her. The moans of the poor woman cut her to the heart. At length, unable to endure it longer, she went to her, put her arms round her, and drew her to herself. Then, all at once, with a cry, the wife of Howel shook herself free, and found words-- "Monday! It is on Monday that he must die, and that is our thirtieth wedding-day? For all these years we have been together, as one soul, and it will tear the heart out of my body--and to be hung on the gallows--the shame, the loss--and Howel so clever, so shrewd! Where has been his wit that he could not get free? He always had a cunning above other men. And on our wedding-day!" She ran to a coffer and opened it, and drew forth a knitted garment, such as we should nowadays call a jersey. "See, see!" cried the wretched woman. "I have been fashioning this; a thought of him is knitted into every loop I have made, and I have kissed it--kissed it a thousand times because it was for him. He feels the cold in the long winters, and I made this for him that he might be warm, and wherever he was remember me, and bear my kisses and my finger-work about him. And he must die, and shiver, and be cold in the grave! Nay, shiver and be cold hanging on the gallows, and the cold winds sway him. He shall wear my knitted garment. They will let me pass to him, and I will draw it over him." Then in at the door came the old man, who had been left when his son was taken. He was supporting that son's wife, and at the same time was carrying her child, which she was incapable of sustaining. She was frantic with grief. "I have brought one sorrowful woman to another," said the old man. "This is Sheena. She must not see it. They are taking my son now to ----. Keep her here, she is mad. She will run there, and if she sees, she will die. For the child's sake, pity her, make her live--calm her." She had been allowed an hour with her husband in their house, and then the soldiers had led him away, bound his hands behind his back, and had conducted him towards the church. She had followed with the child, crying, plucking at her hair with the one free hand, thrusting from her the old man who would hold her back, striving to reach, to retain her husband, her eyes blinded with terror and tears, her limbs giving way under her. The five men confined within the court-house heard her piercing cries, her entreaties to be allowed once more to kiss her husband, her screams as she was repulsed by the guards. They shuddered and put their hands to their ears; but one, the foxfaced man, whose name was Madoc, burst into a torrent of curses and of blasphemy till Morgan the Sacristan went to him in reproof, and then the wretched man turned on him with imprecations. "Come now, man," said the smith, "why shouldst thou take on so frantically? We leave wives that we love and that love us; but thy old cat, good faith! I should esteem it a welcome release to be freed from her tongue and nails." On nearing the gallows, where stood Rogier, that captain ordered the removal of Sheena; and when she saw a ladder set up against the crosspiece that sustained the bell, her cries ceased, she reeled, and would have let the child drop had not her father-in-law caught it from her. "One kiss--one last kiss! I have forgot something to say--let him bless his child!" she entreated. Rogier hesitated and consented, on the condition that she should then be at once removed. Thereupon the desolate woman staggered to the foot of the gallows, threw her arms round her husband's neck; and the man who acted as executioner relaxed the rope that bound his wrists, that he might bring his hands before him and lay them on his infant's head. Then the death-doomed man raised his eyes to heaven and said, "The benediction and the strength of God and the help of our fathers David and Cynwyl be with thee, my son, and when thou art a man revenge thy father and thy wronged country." At once the cord was drawn again, and his hands rebound. The old man took his daughter-in-law in one arm whilst bearing the babe in the other, and seeing that consciousness was deserting Sheena, hurried her to the house of Howel. There, after a moment of dazed looking about her, she sank senseless on the floor. Morwen flew to her assistance, and Howel's wife somewhat rallied from her stupefaction. At that same moment in burst Angarad, the wife of foxfaced Madoc. "Where is she?" she shouted, her eyes glaring, her hair bristling with rage. "She is here--she--the wife of our chief. Are we all to be dragged to the gallows because of him? Is every woman to become a widow? He call himself a priest! Why, his Master gave His life for His sheep, and he--ours--fleeth and hideth his head, whilst those whom he should guard are being torn by the wolves." "Silence, woman!" exclaimed the old man wrathfully. "I joy that my son has given up his life to save his chief." "But I am not content to surrender my Madoc," yelled the beldame. "Let us have the hated Saxon or the worst Norman to rule over us, rather than one who skulks and dares not show his face. My Madoc will be hung to-morrow, as they have hung Sheena's man now. I have seen it. They pulled him up." "Be silent," shouted the old man, and tried to shut her mouth. "I will not be silent. I saw it all. They drew him up, and then a man sprang from the ladder upon his shoulders and stamped." A cry of agony from the wife of Howel, who flung out her hands, as before, against the wall, and stayed herself there. Sheena heard nothing--she was but returning to consciousness. "Why do you not bring him back?" asked the hag, facing Morwen with fists clenched, fangs exposed, and eyes glaring. "Why do you keep him hidden, that we all may be widows--and you be happy with your man? What shall I do without my Madoc? Who will support me? Am I young enough to maintain myself? Is the whole tribe to be dragged down, that you and your husband may live at ease and be merry?" "Woman," said Morwen, trembling, "I do not know where he is concealed." "Then find him, and let him come forward to save us all. Shame, I say, shame on him!--the false shepherd--the hireling--who fleeth and careth not for the sheep!" The rattle of arms was heard, and at the sound Morwen slipped out of the room into the inner apartment that she might not be seen. Immediately two men-at-arms entered, leading Howel between them. "He is granted one hour," said the man who could speak a few words of Welsh. "On Monday he dies." "Clear the room!" said the old man; and to the soldier: "Remove this frantic woman." He indicated Angarad; and he himself, with their assistance, drew her--swearing, struggling, spluttering with rage--from the house. Sheena remained where she had been laid--as yet barely conscious. Howel's wife dropped into her husband's arms, moaning, still powerless to weep. In the inner chamber, dimly lighted by a small window covered with bladder in place of glass, on a bed sat Morwen, with her hands clasped between her knees, looking despairingly before her. Every word of the cruel woman had cut her heart as the stab of an envenomed poignard. Did Pabo know what was being done at Caio? No--assuredly not. She who had read his thoughts and knew his heart was well aware that he would readily die himself rather than that any of his people should suffer. He knew nothing. They, with a rare exception only, would meet their fate, the men give their necks to the halter, the women submit to be made widows rather than that their master and chief should fall into the hands of his enemies. Brave, true, faithful hearts! But was it right that they should be called on to endure such sacrifices? She shuddered. What, would she have him taken and die an ignominious death? Him whom she loved better than any one--with a one, soul-filling love? Could she endure such a sacrifice as that? Then she heard the step of Howel coming to the door. He entered and was with her alone. "Morwen," said he, in a low voice, "I shall be able shortly to do no more for my dear chief. Should you ever see him again, tell him from us all--all but perhaps one who is beside himself with fear--that we die willingly. But with him I can no more communicate. That must be done by you. It is expedient that he should fly farther; search will be made everywhere for him. Where he is, that I know not, though I may have my suspicion. Do this--at nightfall mount the valley of the Annell till you come to the stone of Cynwyl." "The stone of Cynwyl," repeated Morwen mechanically. "Take a pebble out of the brook and place it upon the rock. That will be a sign that he is not safe, and must fly to other quarters." "What other tokens be there?" "Two pebbles was to be the sign that all was safe and he was to return. That is not the case at this present time. Remember, then--One pebble." "And two calls him hither?" "Two pebbles. But remember, One only." "Two pebbles," said Morwen, but so that none heard it: it was said to her own heart. CHAPTER XVI A SUMMONS The days spent on the mountain had not been as cheerless as that first night. The fire burned now continually on the hearth, the light peat smoke was dissipated at once by the wind, which was never still at the fall of the year at the altitude where was planted the hovel of the hermit. The supply of food was better than at first. One night Pabo had found a she-goat attached to a bush near the stone of Cynwyl; and he had taken her to his habitation, where she supplied him with milk. On another night he had found on a rock a rolled-up blanket, and had experienced the comfort at night of this additional covering. But no tidings whatever had reached him of what went on in Caio. This was satisfactory, and his anxiety for his flock abated. But he knew that the enemy was quartered in the valley, because no call had come to him to return to it. At nights he would steal along the mountain-top that he might, from Bronffin, look down on the sleeping valley, with its scattered farms and hamlets; and on Sunday morning he even ventured within hearing of the church bell, that he might in spirit unite with his flock in prayer. He concluded that one of the assistant priests from a chapelry under the great Church was ministering there in his stead. He knew that his people would be thinking of him, as he was of them. During the day he made long excursions to the north, among the wild wastes that stretched interminably away before his eyes, and offered him a region where he might lie hid should his present hiding-place be discovered. None could approach the hut unobserved, a long stretch of moor was commanded by it, and the rocks in the rear afforded means, should he observe an enemy approach, of getting away beyond their reach into the intricacies of the wilderness. At first Pabo was oppressed by the sense of loneliness. No human face was seen, no human voice heard. But this passed, and he became conscious of a calm coming over his troubled heart, and with it a sense of freedom from care and childlike happiness. The elevation at which he lived, the elasticity of the air, the brilliance of the light, unobstructed, as below, by mountains, tended towards this. Moreover, he was alone with Nature, that has an inspiriting effect on the heart, whilst at the same time tranquilizing the nerves--tranquilizing all the cares and worries bred of life among men. It was a delight to Pabo to wander through the heather to some brow that overhung the Ystrad Towy or the valley of the Cothi, and look down from his treeless altitude on the rolling masses of wood, now undergoing glorious change of color under the touch of autumn. Or else to venture into the higher, unoccupied mountain glens, where the rowan and the rose-bramble were scarlet with their berries, and there he seemed to be moving in the land of coral. It was a delight to observe the last flowers of the year, the few stray harebells that still hung and swayed in the air, the little ivy-leafed campanula by the water, the sturdy red robin, the gorse persistent in bloom. He gathered a few blossoms to adorn his wretched hovel, and in it they were as a smile. The birds were passing overhead, migrating south, yet the ring-ouzel was still there; the eagle and hawk spired aloft on their lookout for prey; the plover and curlew piped mournfully, and the owl hooted. The insects were retiring underground for the winter. Pabo had not hitherto noticed the phases of life around him, below that of man, now it broke on him as a wonder, and filled him with interest, to see a world on which hitherto he had not thought to direct his observation. There is no season in the year in which the lights are more varied and more beautiful than in autumn, the slant rays painting the rocks vermilion, glorifying the dying foliage, enhancing the color of every surviving flower. But the fall of the year is one in which Nature weeps and sighs over the prospect of death; and there came on Pabo days of blinding fog and streaming rain. Then he was condemned to remain within, occasionally looking forth into the whirls of drifting vapor, charged with a strange dank scent, or at the lines of descending water. He milked his goat, collected food for it, and heaped up his fire. Then it was that sad thoughts came over him, forebodings of ill; and he mused by his hearth, looking into the glow, listening to the moan of the wind or the drizzle of the rain, and the eternal drip, drip from the eaves. He had thus sat for hours one day, interrupting his meditations only by an occasional pace to the door to look out for a break in the weather, when there came upon him with a shock of surprise the recollection that there was more in the hermit's scroll than he had considered at first. Not much. He unfurled it, and beside the bequest of the hut, only these words were added: "For a commission look below my bed." What was the meaning of this? It was strange that till now Pabo had given no thought to these concluding words. Now he thrust the fire together, cast on some dry bunches of gorse that lit the interior with a golden light, and he drew the bed from the place it had occupied in the corner of the chamber. Beneath it was nothing but the beaten earth that had never been disturbed. The bed itself was but a plank resting on two short rollers, to sustain it six inches above the soil. Nothing had been concealed beneath the plank, between it and the ground--no box, no roll of parchment. Nothing even was written in the dust. Pabo took a flaming branch and examined the place minutely, but in vain. Then he threw off the blanket and skins that covered the pallet. He shook them, and naught dropped out. He took the pillow and explored it. The contents were but moss; yet he picked the moss to small pieces, searching for the commission and finding none. Then he drew away the logs on which the plank had rested. They might be hollow and contain something. Also in vain. Thoroughly perplexed to know what could have been the hermit's meaning, Pabo now replaced the rollers in their former position and raised the plank to lean it upon them once more. At this something caught his eye--some scratches on the lower surface of the board. He at once turned it over, and to his amazement saw that this under side of the pallet was scored over with lines and with words, drawn on the wood with a heated skewer, so that they were burnt in. The fire had sunk to a glow--he threw on more gorse. As it blazed he saw that the lines were continuous and had some meaning, though winding about. Apparently a plan had been sketched on the board. Beneath were these words, burnt in-- Thesaurus, a Romanis antiquis absconditus in antro Ogofau. Then followed in Welsh some verses-- In the hour of Cambria's need, When thou seest Dyfed bleed, Raise the prize and break her chains; Use it not for selfish gains. The lines that twisted, then ran straight, then bent were, apparently, a plan. Pabo studied it. At one point, whence the line started, he read, "_Ingressio_"; then a long stroke, and _Perge_; further a turn, and here was written _vertitur in sinistram_. There was a fork there, in fact the line forked in several places, and the plan seemed to be intricate. Then a black spot was burnt deeply into the wood, and here was written: _Cave, puteum profundum_. And just beyond this several dots with the burning skewer, and the inscription, _Auri moles prægrandis_. Pabo was hardly able at first to realize the revelation made. He knew the Ogofau well. It was hard by Pumpsaint--a height, hardly a mountain, that had been scooped out like a volcanic crater by the Romans during their occupation of Britain. From the crater thus formed, they had driven adits into the bowels of the mountain. Thence it was reported they had extracted much gold. But the mine had been unworked since their time. The Welsh had not sufficient energy or genius in mining to carry on the search after the most precious of ores. And superstition had invested the deserted works with terrors. Thither it was said that the Five Saints, the sons of Cynyr of the family of Cunedda, had retired in a thunder-storm for shelter. They had penetrated into the mine and had lost their way, and taking a stone for a bolster, had laid their heads on it and fallen asleep. And there they would remain in peaceful slumber till the return of King Arthur, or till a truly apostolic prelate should occupy the throne of St. David. An inquisitive woman, named Gwen, led by the devil, sought to spy on the saintly brothers in their long sleep, but was punished by also losing her way in the passages of the mine; and there she also remained in an undying condition, but was suffered to emerge in storm and rain, when her vaporous form--so it was reported--might be seen sailing about the old gold-mine, and her sobs and moans were borne far off on the wind. In consequence, few dared in broad daylight to visit the Ogofau, none ever ventured to penetrate the still open mouth of the mine. Pabo was not devoid of superstition, yet not abjectly credulous. If what he now saw was the result of research by the hermit, then it was clear that where one man had gone another might also go, and with the assistance of the plan discover the hidden treasure which the Romans had stored, but never removed. And yet, as Pabo gazed at the plan and writing, he asked, was it not more likely that the old hermit had been a prey to hallucinations, and that there was no substance behind this parade of a secret? Was it not probable that in the thirty years' dreaming in this solitude his fancies had become to him realities; that musing in the long winter nights on the woes of his country he had come on the thought, what an assistance it would be to it had the Romans not extricated all the ore from the rich veins of the Ogofau. Then, going a little further, had imagined that in their hasty withdrawal from Britain, they might not have removed all the gold found. Advancing mentally, he might have supposed that the store still remaining underground might be recovered, and then the entire fabric of plan, with its directions, would have been the final stage in this fantastic progress. How could the recluse have penetrated the passages of the mine? It was true enough that the Ogofau were accessible from Mallaen without going near any habitation of man. It was conceivable that by night the old man had prosecuted his researches, which had finally been crowned with success. Pabo felt a strong desire to consult Howel. He started up, and after having replaced the plank and covered it with the bedding, left the hut and made his way down into the valley of the Annell, to the Stone of Cynwyl. Notwithstanding the drizzle and the gathering night, he pushed on down the steep declivity, and on reaching the brawling stream passed out of the envelope of vapor. The night was not pitch dark, there was a moon above the clouds, and a wan, gray haze pervaded the valley. As he reached the great erratic block he saw what at first he thought was a dark bush, or perhaps a black sheep against it. All at once, at the sound of his step on the rocks, the figure moved, rose, and he saw before him a woman with extended arms. "Pabo!" she said in thrilling tones. "Here they are--the two pebbles!" "Morwen!" He sprang towards her, with a rush of blood from his heart. She made no movement to meet his embrace. "Oh, Pabo! hear all first, and then decide if I am to lose you forever." In tremulous tones, but with a firm heart, she narrated to him all that had taken place. This was now Sunday. Two men had been hung. On the morrow Howel would be suspended beside them. These executions would continue till the place of retreat of the Archpriest was revealed, and he had been taken. She did not repeat to him the words of Angarad, Madoc's wife--now widow. "Pabo!" she said, and tears were oozing between every word she uttered, "It is I--I who bring you this tidings! I--I who offer you these two pebbles! I--I who send you to your death!" "Aye, my Morwen," he said, and clasped her to his heart, "it is because you love me that you do this. It is right. I return to Caio with you." CHAPTER XVII BETRAYED A congregation exceptionally large under existing circumstances assembled on Sunday morning before the church of Caio. Fear lest the Normans and English quartered in the place should find fresh occasion against the unhappy people, were they to absent themselves as on previous Sundays, led a good many to swallow their dislike of the man forced upon them as pastor, and to put in an appearance in the house of God. They stood about, waiting for the bell to sound, and looked shrinkingly at the hideous spectacle of the two men suspended by the bell, and at the vacant spaces soon to be occupied by others. At the foot of the gallows sat Sheena moaning, and swaying herself to her musical and rhythmic keening. Around the Court or Council-House stood guards. All those standing about knew that within it were Howel and three others, destined to execution during the week. They spoke to each other in low tones, and looks of discouragement clouded every face. What could these inhabitants of a lone green basin in the heart of the mountains do to rid themselves of their oppressors and lighten their miserable condition? Griffith ap Rhys, the Prince, had appeared among them for a moment, flashed on their sight, and had then disappeared. Of him they had heard no more. Some went into the church, prayed there awhile, and came out again. The new Archpriest had not put in an appearance. It was then whispered that he had left Caio during the week, and was not returned. Sarcastic comments passed: such was the pastor thrust on them who neglected his duties. But Cadell was not to blame. He had left Llawhaden, and had made a diversion to Careg Cennen by the bishop's orders. The road had been bad and his horse had fallen lame, so that he had been unable to reach his charge on Saturday afternoon. To travel by night in such troubled times was out of the question, and he did not reach Caio till the evening closed in on the Sunday. It was not, however, too dark for him to see that the frame supporting the bell presented an unusual appearance. He walked towards it, and then observed a woman leaning against one of the beams of support. "Who are you? What has been done here?" he asked. "There is my man--I am Sheena. They have hung him, and I am afraid of the night ravens. They will come and pluck out his eyes. I went to see my babe, and when I returned there was one perched on his shoulder. I drove it away with stones. There will be a moon, and I shall see them when they come." "Who are you?" "I am Sheena--that is my man." "Go home; this is no place for you." "I have no home. I had a home, but the Norman chief drove us out, me and my man, that he might have it for himself; and we have been in a cowshed since--but I will not go there. I want no home. What is a home to me without him?" "Who has done this? Why has this been done?" asked Cadell. "Oh, they, the Saxons, have done it because we will not give up our priest, our chief. And my man was proud to die for him. So are the rest--all but Madoc." "The rest--what do you mean?" "They will hang them all, down to the last man, for none will betray the chief. They will go singing to the gallows. There was but Madoc, and him the devils will carry away; I have seen one, little and black, slinking around. I will sit here and drive devils away, lest coming for Madoc they take my man in mistake." Cadell was shocked and incensed. He hasted at once to the house in which Rogier was quartered. He knew that he had turned out the owners that he might have it to himself. Rogier and two men were within. They had on the table horns and a jug of mead, and had been drinking. Said one man to his fellow, "The Captain shall give me Sheena, when she has done whimpering over her Welshman." "Nay," quoth the other, "she is a morsel for my mouth, that has been watering for her. He cannot refuse her to me." "You, Luke! You have not served him so long as have I." "That may be, but I have served him better." "Prove me that." "I can interpret for him, I know sufficient Welsh for that." "Bah! I would not dirty my mouth with that gibberish." "You have not the tongue wherewith to woo her." "But I have a hand wherewith to grip her." "The captain shall decide between us." "Be it so. Now, captain, which of us is to comfort Sheena in her widowhood?" "It is all cursed perversity of Luke to fancy this woman. Before long there will be a score of other widows for him to pick among. There is even now that wild cat, Angarad." "I thank you. Let the captain judge." Then said Rogier. "Ye be both good and useful men. And in such a matter as this, let Fortune decide between ye. There is a draught-board; settle it between you by the chance of a game." "It is well. We will." The men seated themselves at the board. The draught-men employed were knucklebones of sheep, some blackened. While thus engaged, Cadell came in. "Rogier!" he exclaimed, "what is the meaning of this? There be men hung to my belfry." "Aye! And ere long there shall be such a peal of bells there as will sound throughout Wales, and this shall be their chime: 'Pabo, priest, come again!' By the Conqueror's paunch, I will make it ring in every ear, so that he who knows where he is hidden will come and declare it." "Consider! You make the place intolerable for me to perform my duty in." "Thy duty! That sits light on thy shoulders, I wot. Here have the poor sheep been waiting for their shepherd all the morn, and he was away." "I have been with the bishop." "I care not. I shall find Pabo ere long." "But his fatherliness holds that Pabo the Archpriest was burnt." "And we know that he was not." "If there be found one calling himself Pabo--and he is in no mighty desire that such should be discovered--then let him be esteemed an impostor--a false Pabo." "How so?" The chaplain looked at the men and did not answer. "But none has as yet been discovered," said Rogier. "Do not press to find one--not in this manner." "I shall not desist till he is given up. I have said so, and will be as good as my word." As he spoke, a face looked in at the door, then, after an inspection, a body followed, and Goronwy approached stealthily. He stood before Cadell with his eyes twinkling with malevolence, and his sharp white face twitching with excitement, nodding his head, he said-- "He is here--he, Pabo, and she also whom the great Baron, the bishop's brother, desires; they are both here. Know well that it is I who have told you this, and it is I who claim the reward." "The reward!" "Aye, the Archpriesthood, which thou wilt resign for a rich benefice. Let me tell thee--here thou canst not live. They will hate thee, they will not receive the Sacraments from thy hand, they will baptize their children themselves rather than commit them to thee. The word of God, coming from thy lips, will have lost all savor. They will die and be buried on the mountains under cairns, as in the old pagan times, rather than have thee bless their graves. No--this is no place for thee. What the captain has done has driven barbed iron into their souls; they will have none of thee. But I am of the stock of Cunedda--me they will welcome, and I will be the bishop's henchman." "Pabo here!" exclaimed Cadell, and looked round at Rogier, who had understood nothing that had passed in this brief colloquy, as it had been spoken in Welsh. The man who did understand the tongue was too deeply engrossed in his game to hearken. "Aye, aye, Pabo is here--he and Morwen. I have just seen them; they came together down the glen, and are in the house of Howel ap John. Be speedy and have them secured, or they may again escape. Pabo is for you--and for him," he pointed to the Norman captain, "for him the comely Morwen, whom he has been looking for. Say, didst thou obtain for me the promise from the bishop?" "What says this misshapen imp?" asked Rogier. Then the young man sidled up to him, and, plucking at his sleeve and pointing through the door, said: "Là--Pabo! Morwen, là!" "By the soul of the Conqueror," exclaimed the Norman, "if that be so, Pabo shall be strung up at the door of his church at daybreak!" Turning to his men, with his hand he brushed the knucklebones off the board. "Ye shall conclude the game later--we have higher sport in view now." The men started to their feet with oaths, angry at the interruption, especially he who considered that he had won an advantage over his fellow. "I would have cornered him in three moves!" he shouted. "Nay, not thou; I should have taken thy men in leaps!" "Another time," said Rogier. "The man we seek has run into our hands." Then to the boy: "Where is he hiding?" Goronwy understood the question by the action of his hands, and replied in the few words he had picked up of French, "Là--maison, Howel." "He shall be swung at once," said Rogier; "and then the first object on which the eyes of all will rest when they come out of their houses with the morrow's sun will be this Archpriest they have been hiding from me." "Nay," said Cadell, "that may not be. I have orders to the contrary under the hand and seal of the bishop." He unfolded the instructions. Rogier cursed. "Well," said he, "Pabo to me matters but little--so long as I lay my hand on Morwen." CHAPTER XVIII CAREG CENNEN Before dawn Pabo was on his way, bound to Careg Cennen, riding between four soldiers. He had been taken in the house of Howel. It had been his intention to deliver himself up early on the morrow; but he was forestalled. He regretted this, for more reasons than one. He had been unable to make final arrangements for the protection of Morwen, and he had been unable to communicate with Howel as he desired, relative to the secret of the treasure in the Roman gold-mines. The owls were hooting and night-jars screaming as the cavalcade proceeded along the Sarn Helen towards the broad valley of the Towy by that of its tributary the _Dulais_. As they reached the main river, the dawn was lightening behind the Brecknock Mountains, and the water sliding down toward the sea shone cold as steel. With daylight men were met upon the road, and occasionally a woman; the latter invariably, the former for the most part fled at the sight of the armed men. But some, less timorous remained, and recognizing the Archpriest, saluted him with respect and with exclamations of lamentation at seeing him in the hands of the common enemy. At Llandeilo the river was crossed, and Pabo was conveyed up a steep ascent into the tributary valley of the Cennen. But this stream makes a great loop, and the troopers thrust their horses over the spur of hill about which the torrent sweeps. Presently the castle came in view, very new and white, constructed of limestone, on a crag of the same substance, that rises precipitously for five hundred feet sheer out the ravine and the brawling stream that laves the foot of the crag. After a slight dip the track led up a bold stony rise to the castle gate. The situation is of incomparable wildness and majesty. Beyond the ravine towers up the Mynydd Ddu, the Black Mountain, clothed in short heather, to cairn-topped ridges, two thousand feet above the sea, the flanks seamed with descending threads of water; while further south over its shoulder are seen purple hills in the distance. A solitary sycamore here and there alone stands against the wind on the ridge about which the Cennen whispers far below. The bishop had already arrived at the castle. He had followed up his emissary pretty quickly, anxious that his own view of the case should be maintained in the event of the capture of Pabo. He and Gerald of Windsor were on excellent terms. Between them they were to divide the land, so much to the crook and so much to the sword; and whom the latter did not consume were to be delivered over to feel the weight of the crozier. In the subjugation of Wales, in the breaking of the spirit of the people, church and castle must combine and play each other's game. The staff of the bishop has a crook above and a spike below, to signify the double power that resides in his hands, that of drawing and that of goading. The time for the exercise of the curved head might come in the future, that for the driving of the sharp end was the present, thought Bernard. No sooner did he learn of the arrival of Pabo than he bade that he should be brought into his presence, in the room given to him by his host on whom he had intruded himself--a room facing south, overhanging the precipice. The weather was mild, and the sun shone in at the window. There was no fire. "So!" said the prelate, fixing his gray dark-rimmed irises on the prisoner, "you are he who give yourself out to be the Archpriest of Caio?" "I am he," answered Pabo. The bishop assured himself that the strongly built upright man before him was bound and could not hurt him; and he said to the attendants, "Go forth outside the door and leave this dissembler with me. Yet remain within call, and one bid Gerald, the Master, come to me speedily." The men withdrew. "I wonder," said Bernard, and his words hissed through the gap in his teeth, "I wonder now at thy audacity. If indeed I held thee to be Pabo, the late Archpriest of Caio, who smote me, his bishop, on the mouth and drew my blood, there would be no other course for me but to deliver thee over to the secular arm, and for such an act of treason against thy superior in God--the stake would be thy due." "I am he, Lord Bishop, who struck thee on the mouth. The insult was intolerable. The old law provided--an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. If thou goest by the law of Moses deal with me as seems right. What the Gospel law is, maybe thou art too recent in Holy Orders and too new to the study of the Sacred Scriptures to be aware." "Thou art insolent. But as I do not for a moment take thee to be the deceased Pabo----" "Lord Bishop, none doubt that I am he." Bernard looked at him from head to foot. "Methinks a taller man by three fingers' breadth, and leaner in face certainly, as also browner in complexion, and with cheek-bones standing out more forcibly." Pabo hardly knew what to think of the bishop's words. It occurred to him that the prelate was beating about for some excuse for pardoning him whilst saving his dignity. He smiled and said, "If it be a matter of doubt with thee, whether I be indeed Pabo----" "Oh! by no means," interrupted Bernard, "I have no manner of doubt. On the surest testimony I know that the Archpriest Pabo was consumed by fire from heaven. This is known far and wide. His Majesty the King is aware of it; it is a matter of common talk." "Yet is it not true." "It is most assuredly true. I have the testimony of credible eye-witnesses." "Yet," said Pabo, "my own wife knows me." "Of her I can believe anything," said Bernard, thrusting his seat a little back, to give more space between himself and the prisoner. "Hearken unto me," said the bishop; "I have heard say of these Welsh that they keep their King Arthur somewhere, ready to produce him in the hour of need, to fight against their rightful lord and sovereign the King of England. And I warrant ye--they will turn out some scullion knave, and put a tinsel crown about his head, and shout 'God save King Arthur!' and make believe it is he come from his long sleep to fight against us. But we are prepared against such make-believes and mumming kings. And so, in like manner, when Pabo, Archpriest of Caio, is dead, burned to a cinder, as it has been most surely reported to us, then up starts such as you and assume to be what you are not, so as to fan the flame of discontent among the people, and inspire them with hopes that can never be fulfilled; and so persuade them to resist rightful authority. Have I not appointed my late chaplain to be Archpriest in the room of that unhappy man who, for temerity in lifting his hand against his ecclesiastical father, was evidently, before the eyes of all men, smitten by Heaven? I, of all men, I, who was struck in the face, and thereby lost my teeth, have a right to recognize the impious man who smote me. But I tell thee I do not identify thee. Further, I am ready to declare, and if need be, to swear, that thou art not the man. Thou art but a sorry makeshift. Who should know him, if not I?" "My dear people of Caio, whose pastor I have been, among whom I have gone in and out, will know me well enough. Confront me with them and the matter will be settled at once." "Nay--the word of a Welshman is not to be trusted. They will combine to bolster up a lie. Thou art an impostor, a false Pabo. That is certain." Then he turned his hands one over the other: "If thou wert the real Pabo, then be very sure of this: I would deliver thee over to the secular arm to be burned in verity--and only Norman and English soldiers should surround the fire, and they would see that thou wast in truth this time burned to a coal. But as I do not and will not hold this, I ask thee, for thine own sake, to acknowledge that there has been a plot to thrust thee forward--that thy people are in a league to accept thee as their priest and chief, knowing very well that their true priest and chief was burned in his house. Confess this, and I will use my endeavor to get thee thrust away into some distant part, where no harm shall come to thee. Nay, further," the bishop brightened up, "I will even keep thee about myself and advance thee to honor, and I will put thee into a fat benefice at the other extremity of the diocese, if thou wilt constantly affirm that thou art not Pabo, and never wast Pabo, neither ever knew him--but hast been mistaken for him through some chance resemblance." "Although a Welshman," said the Archpriest, with a curl of the lip, "and, as thou sayest, ready with lies, I will not say that." "Then take the consequences," exclaimed the bishop. "I give one minute in which to resolve thee. Admit that thou art an impostor, and I will do what I can for thee; refuse--and--and----" "Do your worst," exclaimed Pabo indignantly. "What your object is I cannot devise; but, be it what it may, I will not help with a falsehood. I am Pabo, still Archpriest and head of the tribe of the land of Caio." "Then," said the bishop, with harshness in his tone but with no alteration in his mask-like face, "be content, as simulating the Pabo who struck his ecclesiastical father in the face, and knocked out one tooth and broke another, to receive such punishment as is due to so treasonable an action." "If we two met as plain Christian people, living under the Gospel," said Pabo, "I would say the act was done under provocation; but it was an unworthy act, and I, who committed it, express my regret and ask for pardon of my brother Christian." "And I," said the bishop, "as a Christian man and a prelate of the Holy Roman Church, do cheerfully give forgiveness. Yet inasmuch as it is unwise that----" "I see," said Pabo; "a forgiveness that is no forgiveness at all. The transgression must be wiped out in blood." "The Church never sheds blood," said Bernard. "She hands over stubborn offenders to the secular arm. Here it comes--in at the door." The hand of Gerald of Windsor was thrust in, followed by the man himself. "See here," said Bernard, addressing the Baron and pointing to Pabo, "this is a man who sets himself up to be a leader among the rebellious Welsh, and is stirring up of hot blood and fomenting of intrigue." "Aye," said Gerald, "I have tidings come this day that the beggars are rising everywhere. They have among them their Prince Griffith ap Rhys." "And here," said the prelate, "is one of his agents. This man gives himself out to be a certain person whom he is not, and he has come among the people of Caio to bid them take up arms. But happily my brother Rogier is there." "What shall we do with him?" asked Gerald. "Beau Sieur," said the prelate, "with that I have nought to do. Sufficient that I place him--a dangerous fellow--in your hands. And mark you, a priest as well as an agitator, one to arouse the religious fanaticism of the people against the Church as well as against the Crown." "What shall be done with him? Cut off his head?" "Nay, I pray shed no blood." "Shall we hang him?" "I think," said the bishop, after musing a moment, "that it would be well were he simply to disappear. Let him not be hung so that, perchance, he might be recognized, but rather suffer him to be cast into one of the dungeons where none may ever cast eye on him till he be but bones and there be forgot." CHAPTER XIX FORGOTTEN? Pabo was hurried away, along a corridor, down a flight of steps, through the courtyard, and was thrust into a dungeon at the base of a tower on the east side of the castle. He had to descend into it by steps, and then the heavy oak door was shut and locked. The floor was of the limestone rock, with some earth on it; the walls new, and smelling of mortar. One slit, far up, admitted a ray of light, and beneath the door was a space of as much as two finger-breadths between it and the stone sill. No preparations had been made for his reception. No straw or fern was littered for a bed, nor was a pitcher of water set for him, that he might quench his thirst. Pabo was hungry; he had partaken of nothing since he left Caio save a crust that had been given him at Llanwrda on his way. At Llandeilo the soldiers had purposely avoided the town, and they had halted nowhere on the way except at the place Llanwrda, where they had given him a portion of their breakfast. Pabo supposed that he was to remain in confinement as long as suited the convenience of the bishop. He was far from fathoming the purpose of the prelate in endeavoring to cajole or frighten him into a denial of his own identity. Had he known the figure Bernard was endeavoring to cut at his expense, he would have laughed aloud and made his dungeon walls ring. He cast himself in a corner against the wall and waited, in the expectation of his jailer coming in before long with a truss of straw, some bread and water, and possibly chains for his hands or feet. But hours passed, and no one came. From where he sat he could see feet go by his door, and it seemed to him that towards evening these were the feet of women. No sentinel paced the court outside his doorway. He heard human voices, occasionally, but could distinguish no words. The evening closed in, and still none attended to him. Feeling in his pouch he found some dried corn from the hermit's store. When wandering on the mountains he had been wont to thus provide himself, and happily there remained still some unconsumed. With this he filled his mouth. He waited on as darkness settled in, so that he could but just distinguish his window and the gap below the door, and at length fell into a troubled sleep. During the night he woke with the cold, and groped for the blankets he had been accustomed to draw over him in the cell on Mallaen, but here in the prison of Careg Cennen none were provided. He felt stiff and chilled in his bones with lying on the bare rock. He turned from side to side, but could find no relief. Surely it was not the intention of Gerald of Windsor to detain him there without the modicum of comforts supplied to the worst of criminals. He had not offended the Norman baron. If he were not Pabo, as the bishop insisted, why was he dealt with so harshly? He had not done anything to show that he was a fanner of rebellion. Against him not a particle of evidence could be adduced. The thought that he carried with him the great secret of the hermit also troubled him. It is said that no witch can die till she has communicated her hidden knowledge to some sister. It was to Pabo a thought insupportable that he was unable to impart the secret deposited with him to some one who could use the knowledge for the good of his oppressed countrymen. Hitherto the attempts made by the Welsh to shake off their yoke had been doomed to failure, largely because of their inability to purchase weapons and stores that might furnish their levies and maintain them in the field. It was not that in the Cambrian Mountains there had been deficiency in resolution and lack of heroism; but it was the poverty of Wales that had stood no chance against the wealth of England. For himself Pabo cared little, but he was deeply concerned that he had no means of conveying the secret that had been entrusted to him to those who could make good use of it. He dozed off again in cold and hunger, and fell to dreaming that he had lit on an ingot of pure gold, so large and so weighty that he could not himself lift it, and opened his eyes to see a golden bar indeed before him, but it was one of sunlight, painted on the wall by the rising orb as it shone through the slit that served as window. He waited now with impatience, trusting that some one would come to him. Yet time passed and none arrived. He moved to one of the steps, seated himself thereon, and looked at the light between the bottom of the door and the sill. Again he saw what he conjectured to be women's feet pass by, and presently, but after a long interval, return; and this time he knew that the feet belonged to a woman, for she stopped where he could see, set down an earthenware pitcher, and exchanged some words with a soldier, one of the garrison. He could see the pitcher nearly to the handle, but not the hand that set it down and raised it. Yet he distinguished the skirts of the dress and the tones of voice as those of a woman. Presently he again heard a voice, that belonged to a female, and by the intonation was sure that what she spoke was in Welsh. She was calling and strewing crumbs, for some fell near his door. Immediately numerous pigeons arrived and pecked up what was cast for them. He could see their red legs and bobbing heads, and wished that some of the fragments might have been for him. He had hardly formed the wish before a crust, larger than any given to the birds, fell against his door, and there was a rush of pigeons towards it. Pabo put forth two fingers through the opening, and drew the piece of bread within. He had hardly secured this, before another piece fell in the same place, and once more, in the same manner, he endeavored to capture it. But unhappily it had rebounded just beyond his reach, and after vain efforts he would have had to relinquish it wholly to the pigeons had not feet rapidly approached and a hand been lowered that touched the crust and thrust it hastily under the door, and then pushed in another even larger. After this the feet went away. But still the pigeons fluttered and pecked till they had consumed the last particle cast to them. Pabo ate the pieces of bread ravenously. He was not thirsty. The coolness and moisture of the prison prevented him from becoming parched. What he had received was not, indeed, much, but it was sufficient to take off the gnawing pain that had consumed his vitals. Now for the first time he realized the force of the prelate's words when he had bidden Gerald of Windsor to cast him--Pabo--into a dungeon, there to be _forgotten_. Forgotten he was to be, ignored as a human being immured in this subterranean den. He was to be left there, totally unattended and unprovided for. Of this he was now convinced, both because of the neglect he had undergone, and also because of the attempt made by some Welshwoman, unknown to him, surreptitiously to supply him with food. This she would not have done had she not been aware of the fate intended for him. He was to be left to die of cold and hunger and thirst, and was not to leave the prison save as a dwindled, emaciated wreck, with the life driven out of him by privation of all that is necessary for the support of life. He was now well assured of what was purposed, and also, and equally assured, that he had in the castle some friend who would employ all her feminine craft to deliver him from such a fate. Slowly, tediously the day passed. Still, occasionally voices were audible, but no feet approached the dungeon doorway. Overhead there were chambers, but the prison was vaulted with stone, and even were any persons occupying an upper story, they were not likely to be heard by one below. It was, perhaps, fortunate that for some time on the mountain Pabo had led a very frugal life and had contented himself with parched grain, or girdle-cakes of his own grinding and making. Yet to these had been added the milk of a goat, and for this he now craved. He thought of his poor Nanny bleating, distressed with her milk; he thought of how she had welcomed him when he returned to the cell. Poor Nanny! What would he not now give for a draught of her sweet sustaining milk! Another night passed, and again in the morning there ensued the feeding of the pigeons, and therewith a fall of crusts within his reach by the door. During the day he heard a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard, and by seating himself on the lowest step in his vault, leaning one elbow on another, and bringing first eye and then ear near to the gap below the door, he saw and heard sufficient to lead him to suppose that the bishop was leaving Careg Cennen, to return to his own castle of Llawhaden. He could even distinguish his strident voice, and catch a few words uttered by him, as he turned his face towards the dungeon-door, and said: "My good friend Gerald--is, humph! the impostor forgotten?" "Forgotten, as though he had never been," was the response, in the rough tones of the Norman Baron. Then both laughed. Pabo clenched his hands and teeth. Presently, a clatter; and through the gateway passed the cavalcade. There was no drawbridge at Careg Cennen for there was no moat, no water; but there was a portcullis, and there were stout oak-barred doors. After the departure of the prelate, the castle fell back again into listlessness. No sounds reached the ear of Pabo, save the occasional footfall of one passing across the court with the leisurely pace of a person to whom time was of no value. On this day the prisoner began to be distressed for water. The walls of his cell, being of pervious limestone, absorbed all moisture from the air, so that none condensed on it. In the morning he had swallowed the dry crusts with difficulty. He now felt that his lips were burning, and his tongue becoming dry. If food were brought him on the morrow, he doubted whether he would then be able to swallow it. But relief came to him in a manner he had not expected. During the night rain fell, and he found that by crouching on the steps and putting his fingers beneath the door, he could catch the raindrops as they trickled down the oak plank, and convey the scanty supply by this means to his mouth. But with the first glimpse of dawn he saw a means of furnishing water that was more satisfactory. With his fingers he scraped a channel beneath the door to receive the falling drops, and then, by heaping the soil beyond this, forced the water as it ran down the door and dripped, to decant itself in a small stream over the sill. By this means he was able to catch sufficient to assuage the great agony of thirst. He was thus engaged when suddenly a foot destroyed his contrivance, and next moment he heard a key turned in the lock. He started from the steps on which he was lying, the door was thrown open, and before him stood a muffled female figure, against the gray early morning light, diffused through thick rain that filled the castle yard. Without a word the woman signed to Pabo to follow. She made the gesture with impatience, and he obeyed without hesitation. "Follow me!" she whispered in Welsh, and strode rapidly before him, and passed through a small doorway, a very few steps from the tower, yet in the south face of the castle. She beckoned imperiously to him to enter, then closed the door on him, went back and relocked that of the dungeon. Next moment she was back through the small door. Pabo found himself in a narrow passage that, as far as he could judge, descended by steps. The woman bolted the door behind. The place was dark, but she led on. The way descended by steps, then led along a narrow passage, with rock on one side and wall on the other, till she reached a great natural vault--a cave opening into the heart of the crag on which the castle was built. And here the passage terminated in a wooden stair that descended into darkness, only illumined by one point of red light. Still she descended, and Pabo followed. Presently she was at the bottom, and now he saw in a hollow of the rock on one side a little lamp burning with a lurid flame. She struck off the glowing snuff, and it sent up a bright spire of light. "Forgotten," said she, turning to Pabo, and throwing back her hood. "Forgotten! Nay, Nest will never forget one of her own people--never." CHAPTER XX THE BRACELET OF MAXEN "Look at me," said Nest; "I am the daughter of Rhys and sister of your Prince Griffith. How I have been treated God knows, but not worse than my dear country. I have been cast into the arms of one of its oppressors, and I welcome it, because I can do something thereby for those of my people who suffer. Griffith is about. He will do great things. I sent him with warning to you. And now I will even yet save you. Know you where you are? Whither I have brought you? Come further." She led him down among the smooth shoulders of rock, and showed him pans scooped in the limestone ledges that brimmed with water. There was no well in Careg Cennen. It would not have availed to have sunk one. In the dry limestone there were no springs. Gerald the Norman would not have reared his castle on this barren head of rock had he not known that water was accessible in this natural cave. But this cavern had been known and utilized long before the Norman adventurers burst into Wales. At some remote age, we know not how many centuries or tens of centuries before, some warfaring people had surrounded the top of the hill with a wall of stones, not set in mortar, but sustained in place by their own weight. And to supply themselves with water, they had cut a path like a thread in the face of the precipice to the mouth of a gaping cavern that could be seen only from the slopes of the Black Mountains, on the further side of the Cennen River. In this vault water incessantly dripped, not in rapid showers, but slowly; in wet weather more rapidly than at times of dryness, yet even in the most burning, rainless seasons, there never was an absolute cessation of falling drops. To receive these, bowls had been scooped out in ledges of rock; and hither came the maidens daily with their pitchers, to supply the wants of all in the castle. What the Norman builders had done was to broaden the path by cutting deeper into the face of the cliff, and to build up the face towards the precipice, leaving loopholes at intervals, to prevent accidents such as might happen through vertigo, or a turn of an ankle, or a slip on the polished lime-rock. The whole mouth of the cavern had also been walled up, so that no one unacquainted with the arrangements within the castle would have suspected its existence. To fill the pitchers the water-carriers were furnished with wooden spoons and shallow ladles, with which they scooped up the liquid from the rock-basins into their vessels. Hither Nest, the wife of Gerald of Windsor, had brought Pabo. She had learned what was the doom of the Archpriest so soon as the interview was over between him, the bishop, and her husband. Nest was a subtle woman. Lovely beyond any other woman in Britain, and with that exquisite winsomeness of manner which only a Celtic woman possesses, which a Saxon can ape but not acquire, she was able when she exerted her powers to cajole Gerald, and obtain from him much that his judgment warned him he should not yield. For a long time she had induced him even to harbor her brother Griffith, but he did so only so long as the young man was not in open revolt against King Henry. She had not on this occasion attempted to induce Gerald to mitigate the sentence on Pabo. She reserved her cajolery for another occasion. Now, she had recourse to other means. With a little cleverness, she had succeeded in securing the key of the dungeon; but for her own good reasons she did not desire that her husband should learn, or even suspect, that she had contrived the escape of the prisoner. Now Pabo stood by her in the great natural domed vault in the bowels of the mountain, crowned by Careg Cennen Castle; and by the flicker of the lamp he saw her face, and wondered at its beauty. "Pabo, priest of God!" she said, and her face worked with emotion. "Heaven alone knows what a life I lead--a double life, a life behind a mask. I have a poor, weak, trembling woman's heart, that bleeds and suffers for my people. I have but one love--one only love, that fills and flames in all my veins: it is the love of Wales, of my country, my beautiful, my sovereign country. And, O God! my people. Touch them, and I quiver and am tortured, and durst not cry out. Yet am I linked to one who is my husband, and I belong to him in body. Yet hath he not my immortal soul, he hath not this passionate heart. Nay! Not one single drop of the burning Welsh blood that dances and boils in every artery." She clasped her hands to her heart. "Oh, Pabo, my lot is in sad quarters! My life is one continuous martyrdom for my country, for my people, for their laws, their freedom, their Church! What can I do? Look at these women's fingers! What gifts have I? Only this fair face and this golden hair, and a little mother wit. I give all to the good cause. And now," she became more calm in tone, and she put forth her hand and clasped the priest by the wrist, and spake in measured tones, though her finger-ends worked nervously. "And now--learn this. For reasons that I cannot speak plainly, I would not have my husband know that I have contrived thy escape. And I cannot contrive to pass thee out through the gates. There is but one way that thou canst be freed. See--the women come hither to draw water, and the door creaks on its hinges whensoever opened. When thou hearest the door cry out, then hide thee under the stair, or yonder in the depth of the cave. None of the wenches penetrate further than these basins. But after they have left--and they come but in the morning and at eve--then thou hast this place to thyself. Know that there is no escape downwards from the eyelet-holes. It is a sheer fall--and if that were adventured, thou wouldst be dashed to pieces, as was one of the Normandy masons who was engaged on the wall. He lost his foothold and fell--and was but a mangled heap at the bottom. No--that way there is no escape. I have considered well, and this is what I have devised." She paused and drew a long breath. "There stands a stout and well-rooted thorn-tree on the crag above. I will tarry till supper-time, when my lord and his men will be merry over their cups, and then will I swing a bracelet--this." She took off a twisted serpent of gold, quaintly wrought, from her wrist. "This I will attach to a string, and I will fasten the other end to the thorn-tree. Then shall the bracelet be swung to and fro, and do thou remain at one of the loopholes, and put forth thine hand and catch the string as it swings. Hold it fast and draw it in. Then I will attach a knotted rope to the string, and do thou draw on until thou hast hold of the rope. Thereupon I will make the other end fast to the thorn-tree, and as thou canst not descend, mount, and thou art free." Pabo hesitated--then said, "It seems to me that these eyelet-holes are too narrow for a man's body to pass through." "It is well said," answered Nest, "and of that I have thought. Here is a stout dagger. Whilst thou canst, work out the mortar from between the joints of the masonry about the window-slit yonder. It is very fresh and not set hard. But remove not the stone till need be." "I will do so." "And as to the bracelet," continued Nest, "it is precious to me, and must not be left here to betray what I have done. Bring it away with thee." "And when I reach the thorn-tree then I will restore it thee." "Nay," rejoined Nest, "take it with thee, and go find my brother Griffith, wherever he be, and give it to him. Know this: it was taken from the cairn of Maxen Wlledig, the Emperor of Britain, whose wife was a Welsh princess, and whose sons ruled in Britain, and of whose blood are we. Tell him to return me my bracelet within the walls of Dynevor. Tell him"--her breath came fast and like flame from her lips--"tell him that I will not wear it till he restore it to me in the castle of our father--in the royal halls of our ancestors, the Kings of Dyfed, and has fed the ravens of Dynevor with English flesh." Again she calmed down. A strange passionate woman. At one moment flaming into consuming heat, then lulling down to calm and coolness. It was due to the double life she lived; the false face she was constrained to assume, and the undying, inextinguishable patriotic ardor that ate out her heart, that was so closely and for so long time smothered, but which must at times force itself into manifestation. Pabo, looking into that wondrous face, by the flicker of the little lamp, saw in it a whole story of sorrow, shame, rage, love, and tenderness mapped out. A strange and terrible life-story had hers been--even in young days. She had been taken from her home while quite a child, and committed as a hostage to the charge of Henry Beauclerk; he had done her the worst outrage that could have been offered--when she was helpless, an alien from her home and people in his power. Then, without caring whether she liked the man or not, he had married her to Gerald of Windsor, the spoliator, the ravager of South Wales. Once, Owen ap Cadogan, son of the Prince of Cadogan, had seen her at a banquet and eisteddfod given by her father at Aberteiri, to which the kings, princes, and lords of Wales had been invited. Among all the fair ladies there assembled none approached in beauty the young Princess Nest, daughter of King Rhys, and wife of Gerald of Windsor. Owen went mad with love. On the plea of kinship he visited her in Pembroke Castle, set it on fire, and while it was blazing carried her away into Powys. Nor was she an unwilling victim: she accompanied him, but only because she trusted that he would rouse all Wales and unite North and South in one great revolt against the power of England. And, indeed, at his summons, like a wild-fire, revolt had spread through Dyfed, Cardigan, and southern Powys. Only North Wales remained unmoved. The struggle was brief--the Cymri were poor and deficient in weapons of war, and were unable to withstand the compact masses hurled against them, in perfect military discipline, and securing every stride by the erection of a stronghold. Owen, carrying with him plenty of spoil, fled to Ireland, where he was hospitably received, and Gerald recovered his wife. She was disillusioned. Owen sought no nobler end than the amassing of plunder and the execution of vindictive revenge on such as had offended him. His ferocity had alienated from him the hearts of his people, for his sword had been turned rather against such of his own kin who had incurred his resentment than against the common foe. Into Cardigan, the realm of Owen's father, Strongbow had penetrated, and had planted castles. Presently, harboring treachery in his heart, Owen returned from Ireland and threw himself into the arms of Henry Beauclerk, who flattered him with promises and took him in his company to Normandy, where he bestowed on Owen the honor of knighthood, and had converted him into a creature ready to do his pleasure without scruple. Pembroke Castle had been rebuilt, Carmarthen was girt with iron-bound towers; in rear, Strongbow was piling up fortresses at Aberystwyth and Dingeraint. "See!" said Nest; "poorly hast thou fared hitherto. I have laid in a store of food for thee under the stair. Be ready just before nightfall. Lay hold of the golden bracelet, and retain it till thou encounterest Griffith, then give it him with my message. Let him return it me in our father's ruined hall of Dynevor, when it is his own once more." CHAPTER XXI SANCTUARY Rogier was pacing up and down in the house of which he had taken possession. On the table lay, heaped in bags of woven grass, the fine that had been imposed on the tribe. All had been paid. The elders had endeavored hard to induce him to accept two-thirds from them and to levy the remainder on Cadell; but he bade them squeeze their Archpriest--he was not going to trouble himself to do that--and the rest of the silver was produced. The men hoped to be able to recoup themselves later by deducting this third from their payments to the pastor thrust upon them. As Pabo had been secured, Rogier had released those who were detained in the court-house; they had returned to their homes. It was anticipated that now the Norman would withdraw along with his men; he had no further excuse for remaining. But he gave not the smallest token of an intention to remove. Cadell had entered. He also wished to know how long the foreigners would tarry in the place. So long as they were there it would be impossible for him to come to friendly terms with his flock. Yet, though he desired that the bulk of the men-at-arms, along with their captain, should withdraw, he did not by any means desire to be left completely alone in the midst of a population that regarded him with a malevolent eye, were unwilling to receive his ministrations, acknowledge his authority, and even show him ordinary civility. He had accordingly entered the house in the hopes of arranging with the bishop's brother terms whereby he might have two or four men left in Caio to support him in emergencies without being ostensibly his servants. A plea might easily be found in the refractory humor of the people for a small guard to be left till they proved more complaisant. Near the door, against the wall, Morwen was seated, pale but resolved, with her hands folded. "You seem to be in a vast impatience to see my back," said Rogier, "but let me tell you, Master Chaplain, I like this place. It lyeth well to the sun, the soil is fertile and amply watered. It is suitably timbered, and methinks there is building-stone here that might serve to construct a stronghold. I have looked about me and fancied Pen-y-ddinas. It crieth out for a castle to stand upon it--dominating, as it doth, the whole valley." "A castle for the bishop?" "Oh! save your presence and clergy. It is well for one to feather one's own nest first. As to the Church, hers is downy enough without needing to pluck more geese to make her easier." "Then for whom?" "For myself, of course. This is a fair district; it is girded about with mountains; it has been occupied for centuries by a thrifty people who have hoarded their silver. Methinks I could soon contrive to make of it a barony of Caio for myself." "But," said Cadell, aghast, "these be Church lands. You would not rob the Church?" "By no means are they Church lands. This is tribal land, and it so chances that the head of the tribe has been for some time--how long I know not--an ecclesiastic. But that is an accident." "It is the sanctuary of David." "But not the property of the see of David. It is the sanctuary of Cynwyl, I take it; and it has so fallen out that the inheritor of the chieftainship has been for some years--it may be centuries--in priestly orders. But as to belonging to the see, that it never did. Now I take it, there shall be a separation of powers, and I will assume the secular rule, and constitute myself Baron of Caio--and thou, if it please thee, shalt be Archpriest, and exercise ecclesiastical authority. It will be best so--then I and my bull-dogs will be ever hard by to help thee in thy difficulties." "The bishop will never agree to this." "He must. Am I going to fight his battles and not be paid for it, and fix my price?" "Does he know of thy purpose?" "I care not whether he do or not. I shall take my course, and he cannot oppose me, because he dare not. By the soul of the Conqueror, Sir Chaplain, these fat farmers ooze with money. I have but given them a little squeeze, and they have run out silver--it is yonder, dost mark it? Hast thou seen cider made? They make it in my country. The apples are chopped up and cast into a broad, stone-grooved trough, and a lever is brought to bear, laden with immense weights, to crush them. You should see, man, how the juice runs out, and you would say that there was never another drop of liquor in them. Then the lever is raised, and the weight shifted; next with a knife the apple-cheese is pared all round and the parings are cast up in the middle. Again the lever is worked, and out flows as much as at first, till again it appears that all is drained away. And this process is renewed to five times, and every time out pours the generous and sweet must. It is not with apples as with grapes. These latter once well pressed yield all--apples must be pressed to six and even seven times. My Cadell--these peasants are juicy apples. If I send this first squeeze to my brother, I reserve the after outgushes for mine own drinking." Cadell looked down disconcerted. He knew very well that Rogier's scheme would mean the shrinkage to but little of his power and profits. "You do not understand this people," said he, after some consideration. "You will drive them to desperation with your rough treatment. They are a kindly and a gentle folk that are easily led, but ill driven." "Well, now," said Rogier, and laughed. He halted, leaned against the table, and folded his arms; "it is so; but I have a scheme such as will reconcile the tribe of Cynwyl to my rule. And thou art come here suitably at this moment to assist me in carrying it out." "What wouldest thou?" asked Cadell sulkily. "It is even this," answered Rogier, and again he laughed. "Dost see? I have been courting a pretty wench. But it is bad wooing when I cannot speak a word of Welsh and she as little of French. Now, Sir Priest, be my go-between, and say sweet and tender words to her from me, and bring me back her replies of the same savor." "I cannot! I will not!" exclaimed the chaplain indignantly. "I ask of thee nothing dishonest," said Rogier; "far otherwise. I have a fancy to make the pretty Morwen my wife--and Baroness Caio. Tell her that--all in good sooth and my purpose honorable, the Church shall be called to bless us." "She is another man's wife!" "Nay, nay, a priest's leman--that is all. And if that stick in thy throat, be conscience-smoothed. By this time Pabo is no more. I know my brother's temper. He is a man who never forgives; and the loss of a pair of teeth is not that he will pass over." "But he does not hold that this man you have sent him is Pabo." "Pshaw! he knows better. Whether he be Pabo, or whether he be not, Bernard will never suffer him to live a week after he has him between his two palms. Therefore, seeing Morwen is a widow, and free, now, all is plain, my intent is good. If I marry her--who has been the wife of the chieftain of the tribe, I enter upon all his rights so far as they are secular; those that be ecclesiastical I leave to thee." "Not so," said Cadell sharply. "She is no heiress. She is not of the blood." "Oh! she shall be so esteemed. Scripture is with me--man and wife be no more twain but one flesh, so that she enters into all his rights, and I take them over along with her. It will smooth the transfer. The people will like it, or will gulp down what is forced on them, and pretend to be content." "This is preposterous--the heir to the tribal rights is Goronwy, the cousin of Pabo." "That cripple? The people would not have him before to rule over them. They will not now. Let them look on him and then on me; there can be but one decision. If there be a doubt, I shall contrive to get the weasel out of the way. And, moreover," said Rogier, who chuckled over his scheme, "all here are akin--that is why there was such a to-do about the seven degrees. It hit them all. I warrant ye, when gone into, it will be found that she has in her the blood of----. What is the name?" "Cunedda." "Aye, of that outlandish old forefather. If not, I can make it so. There is a man here--Meredith they call him--a bard and genealogist. I have a pair of thumb-screws, and I can spoil his harping forever unless he discover that the pretty wench whom I design for myself, to be my Baroness Caio, be lineally descended from--I cannot mind the name--and be, after Goronwy, the legitimate heir to all the tribal rights. Cadell, you can make a man say and swear to anything with the persuasion of thumb-screws. A rare institution." The chaplain said nothing to this. It was a proposition that did not admit of dispute. A good many of the Norman barons had taken the Welsh heiresses to them as a means of disarming the opposition they encountered, perhaps feeling a twinge of compunction at their methods of appropriation of lands by the sword. Gerald of Windsor, as we have seen, was married to a princess of the royal race of Dyfed, though not, indeed, an heiress. A knight occupying a subordinate position, if he chanced to secure as wife the heiress of some Welsh chief, at once claimed all her lands and rights, and sprang at once into the position of a great baron. "Come, sweetheart!" exclaimed Rogier boisterously, and went up to Morwen and caught her by the chin. "Look me in the face and say 'Aye!' and I will put a coronet of pearls on thy black hair." She shrank from him--not indeed, understanding his words, but comprehending that she was treated with disrespect. "Speak to her, you fool!" said Rogier angrily. "She must be told what I purpose. If not by you then by Pont l'Espec, whom I will call in. But by the Conqueror's paunch, I do not care to do my wooing through the mouth of a common serving-man." Cadell stood up from the seat into which he had lowered himself and approached Morwen. "Hark y'!" said the Norman; "no advice of thine own. I can see thou likest not my design. Say my words, give my message, and bear me back her reply--and thrust in naught of thy mind, and thy suasion." "What, then, shall I say?" "Tell her that I am not one to act with violence unless thwarted, and in this particular thwarted I will not be. Tell her that I desire that she shall be my wife; and say that I will make myself baron over this district of Caio--King Henry will deny me nothing I wot--and she shall rule and reign the rest of her days by a soldier's side, instead of by that of a cassocked clerk." Cadell translated the offer. Morwen's large deep eyes were fixed on him intently as he spoke, and her lips trembled. "I must give an answer," said the priest. Then Morwen rose and replied: "He will surely give me time to consider." "Aye, aye, till to-morrow," said Rogier when her words were translated to him. Thereupon Morwen bowed and left the house. Rogier took a step towards the door, but Cadell stayed him. "Give her till to-morrow to be alone." "Well," said he, "to-morrow shall settle it." Cadell left, and instead of seeking his lodging he went into the church. There, to his surprise, he saw a woman--it was Morwen, clinging to the wicker-work screen. "It is sanctuary! It is sanctuary!" she cried, as she saw him. "They shall not tear me hence." "Nay," said Cadell; "that they dare not. I will maintain thy right to sanctuary. It is well. To Cynwyl thou hast appealed. Cynwyl shall protect thee." CHAPTER XXII IN OGOFAU In the darkness, Goronwy was lurking about the church. He was the first to communicate to Rogier that Morwen had taken sanctuary. The Norman, angry, bade him watch and not suffer her to leave without informing him whither she had betaken herself. She could not remain there indefinitely. It was a custom that sanctuary held for seven days and nights, and that if the clergy could not send away a refugee during that time, the right of protection afforded by the sacredness of the precincts ceased in that particular case. Rogier was wounded in his vanity, but not greatly concerned. He was certain that she could not escape him eventually. A hand was laid on Goronwy's shoulder; he started with terror, and his alarm was not lessened when Pabo addressed him, "What are you doing here, Goronwy?" "Oh, Pabo! we have feared you were lost." "As you see--I am returned. What are you doing here?" "Alas! I have no proper home--no more than you. Do you ask then why I am about at night?" "Poor boy! poor boy! Well, I would have you do me a commission now. I must not be seen here; yet would communicate with my wife. Where is Morwen?" Goronwy hesitated but for a moment, and then answered, "I do not know." "She is not now with Howel?" "No, sent elsewhere. Perhaps to Llansawel." "You must find her, and bid her come to me." "Whither shall I bid her go?" "Bid her come to me in Ogofau." "In Ogofau?" echoed Goronwy, shrinking back. "There is one thing more I desire," pursued Pabo. "Go into the church and bring me thence one of those coils of taper that hang in front of the screen." "Taper!" in all but speechless astonishment. "Yes; I am going to enter the old mine. I do not hesitate to tell you, as one in blood, in hopes, in sufferings with me. I am going to enter the mine, and would fain have a consecrated light." "I will get it at once," said Goronwy, and went within. What could this mean? What was Pabo's object? Within the church two lamps burnt in the sanctuary, but without all was dark, yet in the darkness he could see Morwen crouched against the screen. A Celtic church had buildings connected with it--a guest hall in which the congregation could assemble and take a meal after divine service, stables for horses, and even sleeping apartments. All were surrounded by the privilege of sanctuary; yet Morwen remained in the church, fearing lest these adjuncts should not meet with the same respect as the main building, the house of God. Against the screen were hung a number of twisted wax tapers, forming coils. These were employed on vigils and at the Pylgain, or Christmas Eve service at night. One of these Goronwy took down. He said no word to Morwen, but went out as silently as he had entered. "I thank you," said Pabo. "I would not enter myself lest Cadell should be there, and he recognize me." "You need not have feared that," laughed Goronwy. "He is not one to spend hours in prayer. He is not there." "Then will I enter and pray." "Nay," Goronwy interposed. "There are others there who it were well should not see you." "Be it so," said Pabo. "And now--find Morwen, aye--and speak with Howel also. Tell him naught of Ogofau. I shall have something to say shortly that will make the hearts of all Welshmen dance." "And will you not tell me?" "All in good time, lad. As yet I cannot say, for in sooth it is an expectation and not a certainty." Then he departed. Goronwy leaned against the church wall, looking in the direction he had taken, perplexed and not knowing what he should do. Pabo took his course over the brawling Annell, below the church, and mounted a spur of hill, among woods, till he came to a hollow, an incipient glen that ran west, and opposite rose a rounded height crowned by a camp, the Caer of ancient Cynyr, the father of the Five Saints. It was thence these holy brothers had descended to place themselves under the tuition of Cynwyl. It was when these five had disappeared into the gold-mine that the father had surrendered his principality to the missionary who had come among them from the North, and thus had constituted the Archpriesthood, holding a chieftaindom over the Caio district. And now Pabo descended among stumps of trees and broken masses of stone, and all at once stood on the edge of a great crater, into which the silvery light of the moon from behind a haze flowed, and which it filled. Out of this circular basin shot up a spire of rock, called the Belfry of Gwen--of her who dared to enter the mine to spy on the Saints in their magic sleep. Cautiously Pabo descended the steep side, where the rubble, sifted for gold, sloped to the floor. On reaching the bottom he looked around him. He was in an amphitheater of rock, here abrupt, there buried under slopes of detritus. The moon came out and sent the shadow of Gwen's Belfry across the level white floor of the mine. What the Romans had done was to scoop out the interior of a nodule of hill, much as we now dig out the inside of a Stilton cheese, and leave the walls intact. But there existed this difference: that the walls were not like a cheese-rind, that could be pierced through. They were but portions of the mountain, into which, by adits from the crater, the miners had burrowed. Most of these old tunnels were choked, some hidden under slides of rubble, but one gaped black, and it was into this that the Five Saints had entered according to legend, and Gwen also. And now Pabo was about to penetrate as well. Doubt of the reality of the discovery made by the hermit had departed. He was fully convinced that he would light on the hoard. His sole fear left was he should forget the directions he had seen traced on the plank. There was little wind now, below in this bowl. He struck flint and steel together and obtained a light. Then he kindled his wax taper, signed himself with the cross, and entered the cave. For some way in, the floor was covered with stones that had been thrown in. The roof was higher than his head and was arched. This was no natural cavern like that under Careg Cennen. This was cut by man's hand, out of rock very different in character, color, and texture from the limestone. The light from his taper glittered in the water that trickled over the sides, and in the pools that here and there lay in the footway. There were no stalagmites. Pabo could distinguish the marks of the picks used to excavate the adit. All at once he was startled by a rushing and whistling. He drew back, and past him swept legions of bats that had hitherto lived undisturbed in this cave. They came back, flickered near his face, threatened his light, and he shouted and threw stones. Then--he saw, heard them no more. They had issued from the portal and had gone to hunt under the open sky. Now the ground rose; there had been an accumulation of soil, and he was forced to bend low to pass on. But presently the floor sank and the vault was loftier, and he pursued his course erect. The ground now was hard rock, not earth, and it rang under his steps. It was also dry. The air was intensely still. The candle cast but a feeble light, and that but imperfectly illumined the way before him. He could best see by holding it above his head, yet was able to do this only where the arched roof was high, and he ever feared lest it should strike on a rock and become extinguished. The passage bulged and became a hall, and here it seemed to him that he saw some blue object before him. He stood, uncertain what it was, and whether to venture towards it. Presently he discovered that it was a patch of light, a reflection of some of the moonlit vapor in the sky falling through a small orifice far, far above in a dome, the height of which he could not measure. In contrast with the yellow flame of his candle, this feeble spot had looked blue as a turquoise. He tried to recollect the plan sketched on the board, and he did remember that this hall was there indicated, with _Ibi lumen_ scrawled beside it. He traversed this hall and entered another passage, or a continuance of the same, beyond. Then he put his hand to his brow, and endeavored to recall the sketch of the mine--and felt that it was gone from him. While lying in prison at Careg Cennen he had recalled it distinctly--he now, indeed, remembered that there was a direction _in sinistram_ or _ad dextram_, he could not now say which, and where the turn was to be made. However, there surely could be no mistake--as he had the way open before him. Hitherto he had felt no fear. Possibly his incarceration in partial darkness had accustomed him to some such places; he pushed on, moreover, animated with hope. And he placed some confidence in his blessed taper from the church of the patron of his family and tribe. But suddenly he sprang back, and only just in time. In front of him, occupying the whole width of the passage, was a hole. How deep it was he had some means of judging by hearing the bound and rebound of a stone dislodged by his foot. "_Cave puteum_;" now he recalled the warning. He crept forward cautiously, and extended his light over the gulf. It illumined the sides but a little way down. Judging by the time a stone took in falling before it plashed into water, it must have been about fifty feet in depth. The well was not large at the mouth. And now Pabo distinctly remembered that the _Thesaurus_ was not far beyond it. It did not occur to him to return. He was so near the goal that reach it he must. He examined attentively the sides. Not a thread of a track existed whereby the abyss might be skirted. There were no pieces of wood about by means of which it could be bridged. The well's mouth was but four feet in diameter. Surely he could leap that! He stepped back two, three strides, and bounded. He reached the ground beyond, but in the spring his light was extinguished. The snuff was glowing, and he blew on it, but it would not flame. "It matters not," said he. "I have my tinder and steel; I can relight it. Now on, on to the gold!" He stepped forward in the dark, but holding the taper with the smoldering snuff. Then his steps sounded as though he were in a wide chamber. He held out his hands; the walls had fallen away. A few steps further, and he stumbled, and stumbling, dropped on his knees, and saw by the expiring light of the snuff--the glint of ingots of gold. The last spark went out, and he was in complete darkness. CHAPTER XXIII AURI MOLES PRÆGRANDIS Pabo rose to his feet at once. He had seen, he had touched the gold. The wax taper had dropped from his hand as he fell. He groped for it and soon found it. Then he put his hand to his pouch for flint and steel. They were not there. He searched the breast of his tunic. They were not there either. Then he passed his hand over the floor, thinking that he might have dropped them from his pouch when he fell. As yet he was not alarmed, rather concerned, as he was impatient to see the treasure. Kneeling, he groped on all sides of him, but could not find what he sought. His hand touched ingots; that he knew by their shape, and that they were of gold he was assured by the yellow glint when his wax light fell. Still bending on one knee, and with a hand on the ground, he began to consider what could have become of flint and steel. Was it possible that he had left them outside the "Ogof" when he lighted the taper? He racked his brain. He distinctly recalled the kindling of the wick. He could not remember having replaced the flint, steel, and tinder in his pouch. It might have occurred that flint or steel had fallen out when he stumbled, or even when he leaped the chasm, but not that tinder as well should have gone. He knew that whilst engaged in kindling the taper he had placed the now missing articles on a stone just within the entrance. There they might be still. He must have forgotten to replace them in his purse. Forgotten those things most necessary to him in the mine! Only conceivable through the occupation of his thoughts over the treasure, in quest of which he was venturing. He had found the treasure, but now was without the means of mustering it, even of seeing it. Again he groped about the floor, in desperation, hoping against conviction that the flint, steel, and tinder might be lying there. His hands passed over the cold damp rock; it was in vain; and weariness at length compelled him to desist. Now only did the whole horror of his situation lighten on him. The chasm lay between him and his way back. He might, possibly enough, by feeling, find the passage by which he had entered; but how could he traverse that awful abyss? He was buried alive. He sat in the darkness listening. He heard no sound whatever, save at long intervals a drip of water. He stared into the blackness of night that surrounded him, but could see not the faintest trace of light. And yet--not at any great distance was the hall into which a pearly ray fell from an orifice above; but between him and the spot of light lay the well. Were it not better to essay to return, and risk the headlong fall into that gulf, than to sit there in darkness, in solitude, till death by starvation came on him, and hear the slow ticking of the falling drops? What chance of rescue had he? True that he had sent word to his wife to meet him at the Ogofau--the caves, in the plural, not to seek for him in the one Ogof, in the singular, that was specially dreaded as the haunt of Gwen, and the place where slept the Five Saints. Would his wife think of seeking him therein? Could she possibly venture so far from the light? It was not credible. He tried to rise, but his limbs were stiff, and he shivered as with cold. Cautiously, with extended hands, he groped for the wall, and finally reached it. Then, passing them along, he felt his way towards the opening to the passage. But as to his direction, of that he knew nothing, could form no conjecture. While searching for his kindling tools, he had turned himself about and lost every inkling as to the course by which he had entered. After a while his right hand no longer encountered rock, and stepping sideways, he held with his left hand to the wall and stretched forth the right, but felt nothing. Letting go, but with reluctance, he moved another step sideways and now touched rock again. He had found the passage, and he took a few steps down it, drawing his hand along the side. He put forth the right foot, feeling the floor lest he should come unawares on the chasm. So he crept on, but whether he were going forward in a straight line or was describing a curve, he did not know. His brain was in a whirl. Then he struck his head against a prong of rock that descended from above, and reeled back and fell. For a while, without being completely stunned, he lay in half consciousness. His desperate condition filled him with horror. What if he did find his way to the ledge of the well? Could he leap it? If he made the attempt, he did not know in which direction to spring; he might bound, dash himself against the rock, and go reeling down into the gulf. But even to make such a leap he must take a few strides to acquire sufficient impetus. How measure his strides in the pitch darkness? How be sure that he did not leap too precipitately and not land at all, but go down whirling into the depths? And there was something inexpressibly hideous in the thought of lying dead below, sopping in water at the bottom of that abyss--sopping till his flesh parted from the bones, away from the light, his fate unknown to his wife, his carcass there to lie till Doomsday. Partly due to the blow he had received, partly to desperation, his mind became confused. Strange thoughts came over him. He seemed to acquire vision, and to behold the Five Saints lying in a niche before him, with their heads on a long stone. They were very old, and their faces covered with mildew. Their silver beards had grown and covered them like blankets. One had his hand laid on the ground, and the fingers were like stag's-horn lichen. Then the one saint raised this white hand, passed it over his face, opened his eyes, and sat up. "Brothers," said he, in a faint small voice, "let us turn our pillow." Thereat the other four sat up, and the one who had roused his brethren said: "See--we have worn holes in the stone with our heads. We will turn our pillow." And in verity there were five cup-like depressions in the stone. Then the old Saint reversed the stone, and at once all four laid their heads on it again and went again to sleep. The fifth also relaid his head on the stone, and immediately his eyes closed. Then it was to Pabo as though he saw a white face peeping round a corner of rock; and this was followed by a form--thin, vaporous, clad in flowing white robes. "Gwen! Gwen!" he cried, starting up. "You--you know a way forth! You leave in thunder and storm. Let me hold to your skirts, and draw me from this pit of darkness!" But with his cries the phantasm had vanished. His eyes were staring into pitch darkness, in which not even a spectral form moved. And still--he heard at long-drawn intervals the drip, drip of water. Again he sank back into half-consciousness, and once more his troubled brain conjured up fantastic visions. He thought himself once again in the cave at Careg Cennen, and that the beautiful Nest came to him. Somehow, he confused her with Gwen. She seemed also to be vaporous--all but her face and her radiant golden hair. What eyes she had, and how they flashed and glowed as she spoke of the wrongs done to her country and to her people! He thought she spoke to him, and said: "Oh, Pabo, Pabo, I have trusted in thee! My brother, he is raising all Cymraig peoples. Take to him the treasure of the old Romans. With that he will buy harness, and swords, and spears, and will call over and enroll levies from Ireland. With gold he will bribe, and get admission to castles he cannot break up. With gold he will get fleets to sail up the Severn Sea and harass the enemy as they venture along the levels of Morganwg. See, see, I have given thee the bracelet of Maxen the Emperor! It is a solemn trust. Bear it to him; let it not be lost here in the bowels of the earth!" And again he started with a cry and said: "Help, help, Princess Nest! Me thou didst draw out of the dungeon. Me thou didst bring up out of the cave. Deliver me now!" And again all was blackness, and there was no answer. Still continued the monotonous drip. Then Pabo bit his tongue, and resolved by no means to suffer himself to fall away into these trances again. With strong resolution he fought with phantom figures as they rose before his eyes, with drowsiness as it crept over his brain, with whispers and mutterings that sounded in his ears. How long the time was that passed he knew not. He might have counted the drips of water, yet knew not the length of each interval between the falling of the drops. He forcibly turned his mind to Morwen, and wondered what would become of her. Howel he trusted to do his uttermost, but Howel would have been hung but for his opportune return. Then his mind turned to the prospects of down-trampled Wales; to the chances of Griffith--to the defection and treachery of the King of North Wales; to the discouragement that had followed the abortive attempt of Owen ap Cadogan. But Owen had been a man false of heart, seeking only his selfish ends; without one spark of loyalty to his nation. Far other was Griffith. His beauty, his open manner, his winning address, were matched with a character true, brave, and sympathetic. In him the people had a leader in whom they could trust. And yet what would be his chances against the overwhelming power of England and Normandy? Before Pabo's eyes, as they closed unconsciously, clouds seemed to descend, overspread and darken his beautiful land. He saw again and again devastation sweep it. He saw alien nobles and alien prelates fasten on it and suck its resources like leeches. There passed before him, as it were, wave on wave of darkness, fire, and blood. And then--suddenly a spark, a flame, a blaze, and in it a Welsh prince mounting the English throne, one of the blood of Cunedda--the ancestor of the Saint of Caio, their loved Cynwyl. The lions! the black lions of Cambria waving over the throne of England! Pabo started with a thrill of triumph, but it was to hear a shriek, piercing, harsh, horrible, ring through the vault, followed by crash, crash, again a dull thud--and a splash. Thereon all was silent. Dazed in mind, unaware whether he were dreaming still, or whether what he had heard were real, with every nerve quivering, with his blood fluttering in his temples, at his heart, he shut his eyes, clutched the ground, and held his breath. And then--next moment a flash--and a cry--"Pabo!" He opened his eyes--but saw nothing, only light. But he felt arms about him, felt his head drawn to a soft and throbbing bosom, felt warm tears dropping on his face. "Pabo! oh, my Pabo! it was not you!" By degrees his faculties returned. Then he saw before him Howel bearing a horn lantern; but he felt he could not see her who had folded him in her arms and was sobbing over him. "We have found you," said Howel. "But for her I would not have dared to enter. Yet she would have gone alone. She saw thy flint and steel on a stone at the entrance. She was full of fear, and left me no rest till I agreed to accompany her. Tell me, what was that fearful cry?" "I know not. The place is full of phantoms." "Was there none with thee?" "None. Were ye alone?" "We were alone." "Then it was the cry of Gwen, or of some evil spirit. And oh! Howel. _Auri moles prægrandis._" "I understand not." "Come and see." Pabo started to his feet now, disengaging himself gently from the arms of his wife; but not relaxing the hold of her hand which he clasped. A few steps were retraced to the hall, and there lay the fallen wax taper, and there, piled up, were ingots of gold. "See!" exclaimed Pabo. "For Griffith ap Rhys. With this--at last something may be done." Howel passed his lantern over it meditatively. "Yes," he said, "it is just what has been the one thing that has failed us hitherto." "Not the only thing; the other--a true man." "Right. We have here the means of success, and in Griffith--the true leader." "Come!" said Pabo. "I must to the light. I am weary of darkness." He rekindled his wax taper at Howel's light, and all proceeded on their way; and before many minutes had elapsed were in the domed chamber, traversed from above by a tiny ray of moonlight. Pabo stood still. His head spun. "But the well! the well!" His wife and Howel looked at him with surprise. "How came you to me? How did you pass the chasm?" "There was no chasm. We have returned as we went." Pabo clasped his head. "There is a well. I leaped it. I feared to fall into it." Then all at once, clear before him stood the plan as drawn by the hermit. From the chamber where light was there were two passages leading to the treasure--one had it in the well--that was the turn to the right, and the direction had been to go to the left. He who had seen the map had gone wrong. They who had never seen it went right. But, we may ask, what was that cry? From whom did it issue? All that can be said is this: Goronwy, after having given the message, watched curiously, and saw Morwen go to the house of Howel. Had he not been inquisitive to know the meaning of the meeting in Ogofau, he would have betrayed her at once to Rogier. As it was, he resolved to follow and observe, unseen. He had done so, and at a distance, after Howel and Morwen, he had entered the mine. More cannot be said. Goronwy was never seen again. CHAPTER XXIV THE PYLGAIN OF DYFED Like an explosion of fire-damp in a coal-mine--sudden, far-reaching, deadly--so was the convulsion in South Wales. All was quiet to-day. On the morrow the whole land from the Bay of Cardigan to Morganwg, was in flames. The rising had been prepared for with the utmost caution. The last to anticipate it were the soldiery under Rogier, who were quartered in Caio. Notwithstanding imperative orders from the bishop at Llawhaden to return to him, they had remained where they were, and had continued to conduct themselves in the same lawless manner as before. They scoffed at the tameness with which their insolence was endured. "They are Cynwyl conies--des lapins!" they said. "Say 'Whist!' and nothing more is seen of them than their white tails as they scuttle to their burrows." For centuries this had been an oasis of peace, unlapped by the waves of war. The very faculty of resistance was taken out of these men, who could handle a plow or brandish a shepherd's crook, but were frightened at the chime of a bowstring and the flash of a pike. Yet, secretly, arms were being brought into the valley, and were distributed from farm to farm and from cot to cot; and the men whose wives and daughters had been dishonored, whose savings had been carried off, who had themselves been beaten and insulted, whose relatives had been hung as felons, were gripping the swords and handling the lances--eager for the signal that should set them free to fall on their tormentors. And that signal came at last. On Christmas Eve, from the top of Pen-y-ddinas shot up a tongue of flame. At once from every mountain-side answered flashes of fire. There was light before every house, however small. The great basin of Caio was like a reversed dome of heaven studded with stars. "What is the meaning of this?" asked Rogier, issuing from the habitation he had appropriated to himself, and looking round in amazement. "It is the pylgain," replied his man, Pont d'Arche, who knew something of Welsh. "Pylgain! What is that?" "The coming in of Christmas. They salute it with lights and carols and prayers and dances." "Methinks I can hear sounds." "Aye! they are coming to church." "With torches--there are many." "They all come." Then a man came rushing up the hill; he was breathless. On reaching where stood Rogier, he gasped: "They come--a thousand men and all armed." "It is a river of fire." Along the road could be seen a waving line of light, and from all sides, down the mountains ran cascades of light as well. "There is not a man is not armed, and the women each bear a torch; they come with them--to see revenge done on us." Then up came Cadell. He was trembling. "Rogier," he said, "this is no pylgain for us--the whole country is stirring. The whole people is under arms, and swearing to have our blood." "We will show these conies of Cynwyl that we are not afraid of them." "They are no conies now, but lions. Can you stand against a thousand men? And--this is not all, I warrant. The whole of the Towy Valley, and that of the Teify, all Dyfed, maybe all Wales, is up to-night. Can you make your way through?" Rogier uttered a curse. "By the paunch of the Bastard. I relish not running before those conies." "Then tarry--and they will hang you beside Cynwyl's bell, where you slung their kinsmen." Rogier's face became mottled with mingled rage and fear. Meanwhile his men had rallied around them, running from the several houses they were lodging in; a panic had seized them. Some, without awaiting orders, were saddling their horses. "Hark!" shouted Rogier. "What is that?" The river of light had become a river of song. The thunder of the voices of men and the clear tones of the women combined. And from every rill of light that descended from the heights to swell the advancing current, came the strain as well. "They have come caroling," said Rogier disdainfully. "Carol, call you this?" exclaimed Cadell. "It is the war-song of the sons of David. 'Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered: let them also that hate Him, flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt Thou drive them away: and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish----'" "I will hear no more," said Rogier. "Mount! And Heaven grant us a day when we may revenge this." "I will go too," said Cadell. "Here I dare not remain." Before the advancing river of men arrived at the crossing of the Annell, the entire band of the Normans had fled--not one was left. Then up the ascent came the procession. First went the staff of Cynwyl, not now in its gold and gem-encrusted shrine, but removed from it--a plain, rough, ashen stick, borne aloft by Morgan ap Seyssult, its hereditary guardian, and behind him came Meredith, with his two attendant bards, all with their harps, striking them as the multitude intoned the battle-song that for five hundred years had not sounded within the sanctuary of David. The women bore torches aloft, the men marched four in breast, all armed and with stern faces, and Pabo was there--and led them. The Archpriest, on reaching the church, mounted a block of stone, and dismissed the women. Let them return to their homes. A panic had fallen on those who had molested them, and they had fled. The work was but begun, and the men alone could carry it on to the end. Rogier and his men did not draw rein till they had reached the Ystrad Towy, the broad valley through which flowed the drainage of the Brecknock Mountains. And there they saw that on all sides beacons were kindled; in every hamlet resounded the noise of arms. At Llandeilo they threw themselves into Dynevor, which had but a slender garrison. But there they would not stay; and, avoiding such places as were centers of gathering to the roused natives, they made for Carmarthen. The castle there was deemed impregnable. It was held mainly by Welsh mercenaries in the service of Gerald of Windsor. Rogier mistrusted them; he would not remain there, for he heard that Griffith ap Rhys, at the head of large bodies of insurgents, was marching upon Carmarthen. Next day the brother of the bishop was again on the move with his men by daybreak, and passed into the Cleddau Valley, making for Llawhaden. In the meantime the men of Caio were on the march. None were left behind save the very old and the very young and the women. They marched four abreast, with the staff of Cynwyl borne before them. Now the vanguard thundered the battle-song of David, "Cyfoded Duw, gwasgarer ei elynion: afföed ei gaseion o'i flaen ef." They sang, then ceased, and the rear-guard took up the chant: "When thou wentest forth before the people; when thou wentest through the wilderness, the earth shook and the heavens dropped." They sang on and ceased. Thereupon again the vanguard took up the strain, "Kings with their armies did flee, and were discomfited; and they of the household divided the spoil." Thus chanting alternately, they marched through the passage among the mountains threaded by the Sarn Helen, and before the people went Pabo, wearing the bracelet of Maximus, the Roman Emperor, who took to wife that Helen who had made the road, and who was of the royal British race of Cunedda. So they marched on--following the same course as that by which the Norman cavalcade had preceded them. And this was the Pylgain in Dyfed in the year 1115. The host came out between the portals of the hills at Llanwrda, and turned about and descended the Ystrad Towy, by the right bank of the river; and the daybreak of Christmas saw them opposite Llangadock. The gray light spread from behind the mighty ridge of Trichrug, and revealed the great fortified, lonely camp of Carn Gôch towering up, with its mighty walls of stone and the huge cairn that occupied the highest point within the enclosure. They halted for a while, but for a while only, and then thrust along in the same order, and with the same resolution, intoning the same chant on their way to Llandeilo. There they tarried for the night, and every house was opened to them, and on every hearth there was a girdle-cake for them. On the morrow the whole body was again on the march. Meanwhile, the garrison had fled from Dynevor to Careg Cennen, and the men of Ystrad Towy were camped against that fortress, from which, on the news of the revolt, Gerald had escaped to Carmarthen. By the time the men of Caio were within sight of this latter place, it was in flames. And tidings came from Cardigan. The people there had with one acclaim declared that they would have Griffith as their prince, and were besieging Strongbow's castle of Blaen-Porth. But the men of Caio did not tarry at Carmarthen to assist in the taking of the castle. Only there did Pabo surrender the bracelet of Maxen to the Prince, with the message from his sister. They pushed on their way. Whither were they bound? Slowly, steadily, resolvedly on the track of those men who had outraced them to their place of retreat and defense, the bishop's Castle of Llawhaden. Now when Bernard heard that all Caio was on the march, and came on unswervingly towards where he was behind strong walls and defended by mighty towers, then his heart failed him. He bade Rogier hold out, but for himself he mounted his mule, rode to Tenby Castle; nor rested there, but took ship and crossed the mouth of the Severn estuary to Bristol, whence he hasted to London, to lay the tidings before the King. And with him went Cadell, the Chaplain. It was evening when the host of Caio reached Llawhaden, and Rogier from the walls heard the chant of the war-psalm. "God shall wound the head of his enemies: and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his wickedness ... that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies: and that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same." He shuddered--a premonition of evil. Pabo would have dissuaded his men from an immediate assault; but they were not weary, they were eager for the fray. They had cut down and were bearing fagots of wood, and carried huge bundles of fern. Some fagots went into the moat, others were heaped against the gates. The episcopal barns were broken into, and all the straw brought forth. Then flame was applied, and the draught carried the fire with a roar within. By break of day Llawhaden Castle was in the hands of the men of Caio. They chased its garrison from every wall of defense; they were asked for, they gave no quarter. Those who had so long tyrannized over them lay in the galleries, slain with the sword, or thrust through with spears. Only Rogier, hung by the neck, dangled from a beam thrust through an upper window. CHAPTER XXV THE WHITE SHIP The rebellion extended, castle after castle fell; those of the Normans who remained maintained themselves within fortresses, like Pembroke and Aberystwyth, that could receive provisions from the sea. Powys was seething--a thrill of excitement had run through Gwynedd, and the aged King there quaked lest his people should rise, dethrone him, and call on Griffith to reign over them, and combine north and south in one against the invader. It was in the favor of the Welsh that King Henry was out of the country. He was warring against the French King in Normandy, and the malcontents in the duchy. In order to punish the Welsh, he had sent Owen ap Cadogan at the head of a body of men into the country. Owen was furious because the people of Cardigan had greeted Griffith as their prince. Cardigan was the kingdom to which Owen laid claim, but he had done nothing to maintain this claim against Strongbow. Yet no sooner did he hear that a cousin, Griffith ap Rhys, had been welcomed there as its deliverer and prince, than in uncontrolled rage he gathered a troop of ruffians, and aided by the men afforded him by King Henry, he invaded Dyfed, and took an oath that he would massacre every man, woman, and child he came across till he had cut his way, and left a track of blood from the Usk to the Atlantic. Thus a Welsh prince, with a mixed host of Welshmen and English, had come among the mountains that had cradled him to exterminate those of his own blood and tongue. The horrors he committed, his remorseless savagery, sent men and women flying before him to the wastes and heaths of the Brecknock mountains, and they carried with them the infirm and feeble, knowing well that Owen would spare neither the gray head nor the infant. Enraged at not finding more food for his sword, he marked his onward course with flame, destroying farms and homesteads. An appointment was made for the host of Owen, another led by Robert Consul, and the disciplined foreigners under Gerald of Windsor, who had been reinforced from the sea--to converge and unite in one great army for the chastisement of South Wales. It so happened, while thus marching, that Owen, with about a hundred men, detached himself from the main body to fall on and butcher a party of fugitives on their way to the fastnesses of the mountains. Returning with their plunder and their blades dripping with blood, Owen and his ruffians came near to where Gerald of Windsor was on his way. Then up flamed the rage of the baron, and he resolved on using the opportunity to discharge a personal debt of honor. It was this Owen who had penetrated as a friend into Pembroke, and had carried off Gerald's wife, Nest. At once he turned and fell on Owen and his murderous band, cut them to pieces, and slew the man against whom he bore so bitter a grudge. Henry had returned from Normandy; he was triumphant. Peace had been declared, and his son William had been invested with the duchy. The King hastened to Westminster as soon as he had landed, expecting his sons, William and Richard, and his daughter, Matilda, to follow him in a day or two. As he was about to embark at Barfleur, there had come to him one Thomas Fitz-Stephen, the son of the man who had conveyed the Conqueror to England. At his petition, Henry accorded him the favor of convoying the princes and the princess across the Channel in his splendid new vessel, the _White Ship_. The crew, greatly elated at this honor, after having received their passengers on board, begged Prince William that he would order drink to be supplied them, and this he imprudently granted. A revel ensued, which was kept up even after the King and his fleet had put to sea. Owing to this, Henry arrived in England without the _White Ship_ remaining in sight and forming a portion of the fleet. He was not, however, in any concern, as the sea was calm and there was little wind, and he made his way at once to Windsor. Almost immediately on his arrival, Nest appeared before him. The King was in a bad humor. He was vexed at his children not having arrived. He was very angry because his porcupine was dead. The servant whose duty it was to attend to the natural rarities Henry collected, assured him that this death was due to the porcupine's licking himself like a cat, to keep himself clean, and he had accidentally swallowed one of his own quills, which had transfixed his heart. "And, Sire," said the man; "when I saw him licking himself, I blessed Heaven, as I thought it to be a token of fair weather while your Majesty was crossing the sea." "You should not have suffered him to lick himself," said the King angrily. "Sire, I believed he was cleaning his spines, that he might present his best appearance to your Majesty." "Take him away!" ordered Henry, addressing a man-at-arms, "and say he is to receive fifty stripes at the pillory for his negligence. Well, what are you here for, Nest? This is a cursed bad augury on my return to find my porcupine dead and you here with a complaint." "Sire," said the Princess, "at one time my presence was not of ill-augury to you." "Times have changed. I am driven mad with rebellion. First in Normandy, then in Wales. One has no peace. But I have beaten down all opposition in the duchy, and now I shall turn my attention to your country. What do you want? To threaten and scold, as once before?" "No--only to entreat." "Oh, you women! you plead, and if you do not get what you ask, then you menace. What one of all your threats and denunciations has come true? What single one?" "Oh, my Sovereign," said Nest, "hearken to me but this once. Now there is an occasion such as may not present itself again of pacifying Wales and making my dear people honor you and submit to your scepter." "What is that?" "Owen ap Cadogan is dead. He entered his native land slaying and laying waste, so that every Cymric heart trembled before him--some with fear, others with resentment. And now--he is dead, Gerald my husband, who had some wrong to redress----" Henry burst into derisive laughter. "Gerald killed him; and now the Welsh people hail him as having delivered them from their worst foe." "Then let them submit." "But, Sire and King, their wrongs are intolerable. Oh, let there be some holding of the hand. Lay not on them more burdens; meddle not further with their concerns. I speak to you now, not for the princes, but for the people." "It is well that you speak not for the princes. The worst of all, a rebellious dragon, is your brother Griffith. Him I shall not spare." "I speak for the people. Sire, there is one truth they have taken to heart now by the fall of Owen. It is that given in Scripture: Put not your trust in princes! Those we have known have failed; and fail they all will, because they seek their own glory, and not the welfare of the people. Our Cymri know this now. Griffith of Gwynedd and Owen of Cardigan have taught them that. Therefore, they are ready to bow under the scepter of England, if that scepter, in place of being used to stir up one prince against another, be laid on all to keep them in tranquillity. What my people seek is peace, protection, justice. Sire, you are mistaken if you believe that the Welsh people rise against the overlordship of your Crown. They rise because they can obtain no peace, no justice from the Norman adventurers sent among them, and no protection against their best lands being taken from them and given to Flemings. Sire, trust the people. Be just and generous to them. Protect them from those who would eat them up. All they rise for, fight for--are the eternal principles of justice as between man and man. Your men snatch from them their lands; their homes they are expelled from; even their churches are taken from them." "Ah, ha, Nest! I have the sanction of Heaven there. Did not your British Church resist Augustine? Does it not now oppose our See of Canterbury? And as Heaven blesses the right and punishes the wrong, so has it marvelously interposed to silence evil tongues. When my Bernard was resisted, fire fell from heaven and consumed those who opposed him, in the sight of all men. I believe a hundred men were suddenly and instantaneously burnt." "You heard that from Bernard." "It has been published throughout England. I have spoken of it myself to the successor of the Apostles, to Pope Callixtus, at Rheims, and he was mightily gratified, for, said he, I ever held that British Church to be tainted with heresy. And he reminded me that when the British bishops opposed Augustine, they were massacred at Bangor. Which was very satisfactory. So now with my Bernard----" "Bernard!" exclaimed Nest, boldly interrupting the King, "Bernard is an arch liar! Sire! a priest named Pabo struck the bishop in the mouth, and knocked out one or two of his teeth." "I noticed this and rallied him on his whistling talk. But he said nought of the blow." "It was so. And he pretends that Pabo was smitten by lightning for having thus struck him. But, Sire, I have seen this priest since the alleged miracle; his hair is unsinged. He has a hearty appetite, and good teeth--not one struck out by lightning--wherewith to consume his food. The smell of fire has not passed upon him." The King broke into a roar of laughter. "That is Bernard! Bernard to the life! A rogue in business. He cheated my Queen, and now tries to cheat me with a lie, and sets up as the favored of Heaven. You are sure of it?" "Quite sure; Bernard endeavored to huddle the man out of the way lest the lie should be found out." "Famous!" The King had recovered his good-humor. "And to see the solemnity and conviction of the Holy Father when he heard the story." Again he exploded into laughter. "I must go tell the Queen. It is fun, it will put her in a passion." "And, Sire! about my people--my poor Welsh people?" "I will see to it. I will consider--what did I hear? You have brought your young child with you?" "Yes, Sire, he is without." "Let me see him--has he your beauty or Gerald's ugliness?" "Your Majesty shall judge." Nest went towards the door, but turned. "Oh, Sire, forget not my entreaty for my people." "Away--fetch the boy. I will think on it." Nest left the room. In the ante-chamber all present were in obvious consternation, pale, and dejected. She had left her little son with a servant, and she crossed the chamber. Then the Chancellor, who was present, came to her, drew her into the embrasure of a window, and spoke to her in awestruck tones. At his words her cheek blanched. "None dare inform him," said the Chancellor. "We have instructed the child. Suffer him to enter alone and tell the tale." For a moment Nest could not speak; something rose in her throat. She signed to the boy to come to her. "Do you know what to say?" "Yes, mother; that the _White Ship_----" "Cast yourself at the King's feet, tell him all; and when you have said the last words, 'The princes, thy sons, be dead; thy daughter also, she likewise is dead'--then pause and say in a loud voice, 'Remember Wales!'" The child was dismissed. He passed behind a curtain, then through the door into the royal presence. All without stood hushed, trembling with emotion, hardly breathing, none looking on another. Then, in the stillness, came a loud and piercing cry; a cry that cut to the hearts of such as heard it like a stiletto. In another moment Henry staggered forth, blanched, and as one drunk, with hands extended and lifted before his face, and in a harsh voice, like a madman's shriek, he cried: "It has come. The judgment of God! I am a dry and a branchless tree, blasted in the midst of life--blasted in the hour of victory." Then he reeled to a table, threw himself on his knees, laid his head on his hands, and burst into tears. None moved. None ventured near him. The Bishop of London was there--but he felt that no words of his were of avail now. So they stood hardly breathing, watching the stricken man, who quivered in the agony of his bereavement. Presently he lifted his face--so altered as to be hardly recognizable, livid as that of a corpse, and running down with tears. He turned towards Nest and said--"Go, woman, go--it shall be as thou hast desired. I am judged." What had occurred needs but a few words of explanation. When the _White Ship_ started the captain assured Prince William that such was her speed that she would overtake the King's ship, and even pass it and leave behind the royal squadron. The signal was given, and the _White Ship_ left the harbor, impelled to her utmost speed by fifty excited rowers; but she had not proceeded far before she was driven violently against a reef, which stove in two planks of her starboard bow. Prince William was put into the boat, and was already on his way towards the land when, hearing the cries of his sister from the sinking vessel, he ordered his rowers to put back and save her. He was obeyed; but on reaching the wreck such a rush was made by the frantic passengers to enter their boat that she was swamped, and the whole crowd was swallowed in the scarcely troubled sea. William and Richard, the two sons of Henry, and their sister Matilda, and three hundred others, chiefly persons of exalted rank, perished on this occasion. Nest returned to Wales. She had gained all that she desired. She went at once to Dynevor. There was her brother, Griffith, who had done much to restore the ruinous castle of his fathers, the kings of Dyfed. "Griffith," said she, "I have done what I could. For thee, free pardon and reinstatement in thy principality--yet is it not to be a kingdom, only as a great chiefdom. The King undertakes to suffer no more English or Normans to enter our country and carve out for themselves baronies therein. Nor will he send into it any more Flemings. But such as are here shall remain, and Norman, Fleming, and Welshman alike shall be under his scepter, and be justly ruled, the English by their own laws, the Welsh by those of Rhodric Dda." She looked round and saw Pabo, "and for thee--return thou to Caio and thy Archpriesthood--and to thy wife. Let Bernard look to it. The King will not forget the story of thy being consumed with fire from Heaven for having knocked out one of the bishop's teeth. And now, Griffith, give me the armlet of Maxen Wledig. We have both deserved well of our country." THE END. 
11304	----	Project by Jon Ingram THE LAKE BY GEORGE MOORE 1921 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN ÉPÎTRE DÉDICATOIRE _17 Août, 1905._ MON CHER DUJARDIN, Il se trouve que je suis à Paris en train de corriger mes épreuves au moment où vous donnez les dernières retouches au manuscrit de 'La Source du Fleuve Chrétien,' un beau titre--si beau que je n'ai pu m'empêcher de le 'chipper' pour le livre de Ralph Elles, un personnage de mon roman qui ne parait pas, mais dont on entend beaucoup parler. Pour vous dédommager de mon larcin, je me propose de vous dédier 'Le Lac.' Il y a bien des raisons pour que je désire voir votre nom sur la première page d'un livre de moi; la meilleure est, peut-être, parceque vous êtes mon ami depuis 'Les Confessions d'un Jeune Anglais' qui ont paru dans votre jolie _Revue Indépendante;_ et, depuis cette bienheureuse année, nous avons causé littérature et musique, combien de fois! Combien d'heures nous avons passés ensemble, causant, toujours causant, dans votre belle maison de Fontainebleau, si française avec sa terrasse en pierre et son jardin avec ses gazons maigres et ses allées sablonneuses qui serpentent parmi les grands arbres forestiers. C'est dans ce jardin à l'orée de la forêt et dans la forêt même, parmi la mélancolie de lat nature primitive, et à Valvins ou demeurait notre vieil ami Mallarmé, triste et charmant bonhomme, comme le pays du reste (n'est-ce-pas que cette tristesse croit depuis qu'il s'en est allé?) que vous m'avez entendu raconter 'Le Lac.' A Valvins, la Seine coule silencieusement tout le long des berges plates et graciles, avec des peupliers alignés; comme ils sont tristes au printemps, ces peupliers, surtout avant qu'ils ne deviennent verts, quand ils sont rougeâtres, posés contre un ciel gris, des ombres immobiles et ternes dans les eaux, dix fois tristes quand les hirondelles volent bas! Pour expliquer la tristesse de ce beau pays parsemé de châteaux vides, hanté par le souvenir des fêtes d'autrefois, il faudrait tout un orchestre. Je l'entends d'abord sur les violons; plus tard on ajouterait d'autres instruments, des cors sans doute; mais pour rendre la tristesse de mon pauvre pays là bas il ne faut drait pas tout cela. Je l'entends très bien sur une seule flute placée dans une île entourée des eaux d'un lac, le joueur assis sur les vagues ruines d'un réduit gallois ou bien Normand. Mais, cher ami, vous êtes Normand et peut-être bien que ce sent vos ancêtres qui out pillé mon pays; c'est une raison de plus pour que je vous offre ce roman. Acceptez-le sans le connaître davantage et n'essayez pas de le lire; ne vous donnez pas la peine d'apprendre l'anglais pour lire 'Le Lac'; que le lac ne soit jamais traversé par vous! Et parce que vous allez rester fatalement sur le bord de 'mon lac' j'ai un double plaisir à vous le dédier. Lorsqu'on dédie un livre, on prévoit l'heure où l'ami le prend, jette un coup d'oeil et dit: 'Pourquoi m'a-t-il dédié une niaiserie pareille?' Toutes les choses de l'esprit, sauf les plus grandes, deviennent niaiseries tôt ou tard. Votre ignorance de ma langue m'épargne cette heure fatale. Pour vous, mon livre sera toujours une belle et noble chose. Il ne peut jamais devenir pour vous banal comme une épouse. II sera pour vous une vierge, mieux qu'une vierge, il sera pour vous une demi-vierge. Chaque fois que vous l'ouvrirez, vous penserez à des années écoulées, au jardin où les rossignols chantent, a la forêt où rien ne se passe sauf la chute des feuilles, à nos promenades à Valvins pour voir le cher bonhomme; vous penserez à votre jeunesse et peut-être un peu à la mienne. Mais je veux que vous lisiez cette dédicace, et c'est pour cela que je l'ai écrite en français, dans un français qui vous est très familier, le mien. Si je l'écrivais en anglais et le faisais traduire dans le langage à la dernière mode de Paris, vous ne retrouveriez pas les accents barbares de votre vieil ami. Ils sont barbares, je le conçois, mais il y a des chiens qui sont laids et que l'on finit par aimer. Une poignée de mains, GEORGES MOORE. PREFACE The concern of this preface is with the mistake that was made when 'The Lake' was excluded from the volume entitled 'The Untilled Field,' reducing it to too slight dimensions, for bulk counts; and 'The Lake,' too, in being published in a separate volume lost a great deal in range and power, and criticism was baffled by the division of stories written at the same time and coming out of the same happy inspiration, one that could hardly fail to beget stories in the mind of anybody prone to narrative--the return of a man to his native land, to its people, to memories hidden for years, forgotten, but which rose suddenly out of the darkness, like water out of the earth when a spring is tapped. Some chance words passing between John Eglinton and me as we returned home one evening from Professor Dowden's were enough. He spoke, or I spoke, of a volume of Irish stories; Tourguéniev's name was mentioned, and next morning--if not the next morning, certainly not later than a few mornings after--I was writing 'Homesickness,' while the story of 'The Exile' was taking shape in my mind. 'The Exile' was followed by a series of four stories, a sort of village odyssey. 'A Letter to Rome' is as good as these and as typical of my country. 'So on He Fares' is the one that, perhaps, out of the whole volume I like the best, always excepting 'The Lake,' which, alas, was not included, but which belongs so strictly to the aforesaid stories that my memory includes it in the volume. In expressing preferences I am transgressing an established rule of literary conduct, which ordains that an author must always speak of his own work with downcast eyes, excusing its existence on the ground of his own incapacity. All the same an author's preferences interest his readers, and having transgressed by telling that these Irish stories lie very near to my heart, I will proceed a little further into literary sin, confessing that my reason for liking 'The Lake' is related to the very great difficulty of the telling, for the one vital event in the priest's life befell him before the story opens, and to keep the story in the key in which it was conceived, it was necessary to recount the priest's life during the course of his walk by the shores of a lake, weaving his memories continually, without losing sight, however, of the long, winding, mere-like lake, wooded to its shores, with hills appearing and disappearing into mist and distance. The difficulty overcome is a joy to the artist, for in his conquest over the material he draws nigh to his idea, and in this book mine was the essential rather than the daily life of the priest, and as I read for this edition I seemed to hear it. The drama passes within the priest's soul; it is tied and untied by the flux and reflux of sentiments, inherent in and proper to his nature, and the weaving of a story out of the soul substance without ever seeking the aid of external circumstance seems to me a little triumph. It may be that I heard what none other will hear, not through his own fault but through mine, and it may be that all ears are not tuned, or are too indifferent or indolent to listen; it is easier to hear 'Esther Waters' and to watch her struggles for her child's life than to hear the mysterious warble, soft as lake water, that abides in the heart. But I think there will always be a few who will agree with me that there is as much life in 'The Lake,' as there is in 'Esther Waters'--a different kind of life, not so wide a life, perhaps, but what counts in art is not width but depth. Artists, it is said, are not good judges of their own works, and for that reason, and other reasons, maybe, it is considered to be unbecoming for a writer to praise himself. So to make atonement for the sins I have committed in this preface, I will confess to very little admiration for 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa.' The writing of 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa' was useful to me inasmuch that if I had not written them I could not have written 'The Lake' or 'The Brook Kerith.' It seems ungrateful, therefore, to refuse to allow two of my most successful books into the canon merely because they do not correspond with my æstheticism. But a writer's æstheticism is his all; he cannot surrender it, for his art is dependent upon it, and the single concession he can make is that if an overwhelming demand should arise for these books when he is among the gone--a storm before which the reed must bend--the publisher shall be permitted to print 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa' from the original editions, it being, however, clearly understood that they are offered to the public only as apocrypha. But this permission must not be understood to extend to certain books on which my name appears--viz., 'Mike Fletcher,' 'Vain Fortune,' Parnell and His Island'; to some plays, 'Martin Luther,' 'The Strike at Arlingford,' 'The Bending of the Boughs'; to a couple of volumes of verse entitled 'Pagan Poems' and 'Flowers of Passion'--all these books, if they are ever reprinted again, should be issued as the work of a disciple--Amico Moorini I put forward as a suggestion. G.M. I It was one of those enticing days at the beginning of May when white clouds are drawn about the earth like curtains. The lake lay like a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, the brown islands showing through the mist faintly, with gray shadows falling into the water, blurred at the edges. The ducks were talking in the reeds, the reeds themselves were talking, and the water lapping softly about the smooth limestone shingle. But there was an impulse in the gentle day, and, turning from the sandy spit, Father Oliver walked to and fro along the disused cart-track about the edge of the wood, asking himself if he were going home, knowing very well that he could not bring himself to interview his parishioners that morning. On a sudden resolve to escape from anyone that might be seeking him, he went into the wood and lay down on the warm grass, and admired the thickly-tasselled branches of the tall larches swinging above him. At a little distance among the juniper-bushes, between the lake and the wood, a bird uttered a cry like two stones clinked sharply together, and getting up he followed the bird, trying to catch sight of it, but always failing to do so; it seemed to range in a circle about certain trees, and he hadn't gone very far when he heard it behind him. A stonechat he was sure it must be, and he wandered on till he came to a great silver fir, and thought that he spied a pigeon's nest among the multitudinous branches. The nest, if it were one, was about sixty feet from the ground, perhaps more than that; and, remembering that the great fir had grown out of a single seed, it seemed to him not at all wonderful that people had once worshipped trees, so mysterious is their life, so remote from ours. And he stood a long time looking up, hardly able to resist the temptation to climb the tree--not to rob the nest like a boy, but to admire the two gray eggs which he would find lying on some bare twigs. At the edge of the wood there were some chestnuts and sycamores. He noticed that the large-patterned leaf of the sycamores, hanging out from a longer stem, was darker than the chestnut leaf. There were some elms close by, and their half-opened leaves, dainty and frail, reminded him of clouds of butterflies. He could think of nothing else. White, cotton-like clouds unfolded above the blossoming trees; patches of blue appeared and disappeared; and he wandered on again, beguiled this time by many errant scents and wilful little breezes. Very soon he came upon some fields, and as he walked through the ferns the young rabbits ran from under his feet, and he thought of the delicious meals that the fox would snap up. He had to pick his way, for thorn-bushes and hazels were springing up everywhere. Derrinrush, the great headland stretching nearly a mile into the lake, said to be one of the original forests, was extending inland. He remembered it as a deep, religious wood, with its own particular smell of reeds and rushes. It went further back than the island castles, further back than the Druids; and was among Father Oliver's earliest recollections. Himself and his brother James used to go there when they were boys to cut hazel stems, to make fishing-rods; and one had only to turn over the dead leaves to discover the chips scattered circlewise in the open spaces where the coopers sat in the days gone by making hoops for barrels. But iron hoops were now used instead of hazel, and the coopers worked there no more. In the old days he and his brother James used to follow the wood-ranger, asking him questions about the wild creatures of the wood--badgers, marten cats, and otters. And one day they took home a nest of young hawks. He did not neglect to feed them, but they had eaten each other, nevertheless. He forgot what became of the last one. A thick yellow smell hung on the still air. 'A fox,' he said, and he trailed the animal through the hazel-bushes till he came to a rough shore, covered with juniper-bushes and tussocked grass, the extreme point of the headland, whence he could see the mountains--the pale southern mountains mingling with the white sky, and the western mountains, much nearer, showing in bold relief. The beautiful motion and variety of the hills delighted him, and there was as much various colour as there were many dips and curves, for the hills were not far enough away to dwindle to one blue tint; they were blue, but the pink heather showed through the blue, and the clouds continued to fold and unfold, so that neither the colour nor the lines were ever the same. The retreating and advancing of the great masses and the delicate illumination of the crests could be watched without weariness. It was like listening to music. Slieve Cairn showing straight as a bull's back against the white sky, a cloud filling the gap between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan, a quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road. Slieve Louan was followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next hill to a reptile raising itself on its forepaws. He stood at gaze, bewitched by the play of light and shadow among the slopes; and when he turned towards the lake again, he was surprised to see a yacht by Castle Island. A random breeze just sprung up had borne her so far, and now she lay becalmed, carrying, without doubt, a pleasure-party, inspired by some vague interest in ruins, and a very real interest in lunch; or the yacht's destination might be Kilronan Abbey, and the priest wondered if there were water enough in the strait to let her through in this season of the year. The sails flapped in the puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of water. As if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of Cork before morning. The run from Cork to Liverpool would be slower, but the wind might veer a little, and in four-and-twenty hours the Welsh mountains would begin to show above the horizon. But he would not land anywhere on the Welsh coast. There was nothing to see in Wales but castles, and he was weary of castles, and longed to see the cathedrals of York and Salisbury; for he had often seen them in pictures, and had more than once thought of a walking tour through England. Better still if the yacht were to land him somewhere on the French coast. England was, after all, only an island like Ireland--- a little larger, but still an island--and he thought he would like a continent to roam in. The French cathedrals were more beautiful than the English, and it would be pleasant to wander in the French country in happy-go-lucky fashion, resting when he was tired, walking when it pleased him, taking an interest in whatever might strike his fancy. It seemed to him that his desire was to be freed for a while from everything he had ever seen, and from everything he had ever heard. He merely wanted to wander, admiring everything there was to admire as he went. He didn't want to learn anything, only to admire. He was weary of argument, religious and political. It wasn't that he was indifferent to his country's welfare, but every mind requires rest, and he wished himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing music, any music, French or German--any music but Irish music. He sighed, and wondered why he sighed. Was it because he feared that if he once went away he might never come back? This lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was tired of those mountains, melancholy as Irish melodies, and as beautiful. He felt suddenly that he didn't want to see a lake or a mountain for two months at least, and that his longing for a change was legitimate and most natural. It pleased him to remember that everyone likes to get out of his native country for a while, and he had only been out of sight of this lake in the years he spent in Maynooth. On leaving he had pleaded that he might be sent to live among the mountains by Kilronan Abbey, at the north end of the lake, but when Father Conway died he was moved round to the western shore; and every day since he walked by the lake, for there was nowhere else to walk, unless up and down the lawn under the sycamores, imitating Father Peter, whose wont it was to walk there, reading his breviary, stopping from time to time to speak to a parishioner in the road below; he too used to read his breviary under the sycamores; but for one reason or another he walked there no longer, and every afternoon now found him standing at the end of this sandy spit, looking across the lake towards Tinnick, where he was born, and where his sisters lived. He couldn't see the walls of the convent to-day, there was too much mist about; and he liked to see them; for whenever he saw them he began to think of his sister Eliza, and he liked to think of her--she was his favourite sister. They were nearly the same age, and had played together; and his eyes dwelt in memory on the dark corner under the stairs where they used to play. He could even see their toys through the years, and the tall clock which used to tell them that it was time to put them aside. Eliza was only eighteen months older than he; they were the red-haired ones, and though they were as different in mind as it was possible to be, he seemed nearer Eliza than anyone else. In what this affinity consisted he couldn't say, but he had always felt himself of the same flesh and blood. Neither his father nor mother had inspired this sense of affinity; and his sister Mary and his brothers seemed to him merely people whom he had known always--not more than that; whereas Eliza was quite different, and perhaps it was this very mutuality, which he could not define, that had decided their vocations. No doubt there is a moment in every man's life when something happens to turn him into the road which he is destined to follow; for all that it would be superficial to think that the fate of one's life is dependent upon accident. The accident that turns one into the road is only the means which Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends. Accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of sparks, and any spark is enough to set fire to the train. The train escapes a thousand, but at last a spark lights it, and this spark always seems to us the only one that could have done it. We cannot imagine how the same result could have been obtained otherwise. But other ways would have been found; for Nature is full of resource, and if Eliza had not been by to fire the idea hidden in him, something else would. She was the means, but only the means, for no man escapes his vocation, and the priesthood was his. A vocation always finds a way out. But was he sure if it hadn't been for Eliza that he wouldn't have married Annie McGrath? He didn't think he would have married Annie, but he might have married another. All the same, Annie was a good, comfortable girl, a girl that everybody was sure would make a good wife for any man, and at that time many people were thinking that he should marry Annie. On looking back he couldn't honestly say that a stray thought of Annie hadn't found its way into his mind; but not into his heart--there is a difference. At that time he was what is known as a growing lad; he was seventeen. His father was then dead two years, and his mother looked to him, he being the eldest, to take charge of the shop, for at that time it was almost settled that James was to go to America. They had two or three nice grass farms just beyond the town: Patsy was going to have them; and his sisters' fortunes were in the bank, and very good fortunes they were. They had a hundred pounds apiece and should have married well. Eliza could have married whomever she pleased. Mary could have married, too, and to this day he couldn't tell why she hadn't married. The chances his sister Mary had missed rose up in his mind--why, he did not know; and a little bored by these memories, he suddenly became absorbed in the little bleat of a blackcap perched on a bush, the only one amid a bed of flags and rushes; 'an alder-bush,' he said. 'His mate is sitting on her eggs, and there are some wood-gatherers about; that's what's worrying the little fellow.' The bird continued to utter its troubled bleat, and the priest walked on, thinking how different was its evensong. He meditated an excursion to hear it, and then, without his being aware of any transition, his thoughts returned to his sister Mary, and to the time when he had once indulged in hopes that the mills along the river-side might be rebuilt and Tinnick restored to its former commercial prosperity. He was not certain if he had ever really believed that he might set these mills going, or if he had, he encouraged an illusion, knowing it to be one. He was only certain of this, that when he was a boy and saw no life ahead of him except that of a Tinnick shopman, he used to feel that if he remained at home he must have the excitement of adventure. The beautiful river, with its lime-trees, appealed to his imagination; the rebuilding of the mills and the reorganization of trade, if he succeeded in reorganizing trade, would mean spending his mornings on the wharves by the river-side, and in those days his one desire was to escape from the shop. He looked upon the shop as a prison. In those days he liked dreaming, and it was pleasant to dream of giving back to Tinnick its trade of former days; but when his mother asked him what steps he intended to take to get the necessary capital, he lost his temper with her. He must have known that he could never make enough money in the shop to set the mills working! He must have known that he would never take his father's place at the desk by the dusty window! But if he shrank from an avowal it was because he had no other proposal to make. His mother understood him, though the others didn't, and seeing his inability to say what kind of work he would put his hand to, she had spoken of Annie McGrath. She didn't say he should marry Annie--she was a clever woman in her way--she merely said that Annie's relations in America could afford to supply sufficient capital to start one of the mills. But he never wanted to marry Annie, and couldn't do else but snap when the subject was mentioned, and many's the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be necessary to start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had found one, and sit watching for an opportunity to raise the question again. No, it wasn't because Annie's relations weren't rich enough that he hadn't wanted to marry her. And to account for his prejudice against marriage, he must suppose that some notion of the priesthood was stirring in him at the time, for one day, as he sat looking at Annie across the tea-table, he couldn't help thinking that it would be hard to live alongside of her year in and year out. Although a good and a pleasant girl, Annie was a bit tiresome to listen to, and she wasn't one of those who improve with age. As he sat looking at her, he seemed to understand, as he had never understood before, that if he married her all that had happened in the years back would happen again--more children scrambling about the counter, with a shopman (himself) by the dusty window putting his pen behind his ear, just as his father did when he came forward to serve some country woman with half a pound of tea or a hank of onions. And as these thoughts were passing through his mind, he remembered hearing his mother say that Annie's sister was thinking of starting dressmaking in the High Street. 'It would be nice if Eliza were to join her,' his mother added casually. Eliza laid aside the skirt she was turning, raised her eyes and stared at mother, as if she were surprised mother could say anything so stupid. 'I'm going to be a nun,' she said, and, just as if she didn't wish to answer any questions, went on sewing. Well might they be surprised, for not one of them suspected Eliza of religious inclinations. She wasn't more pious than another, and when they asked her if she were joking, she looked at them as if she thought the question very stupid, and they didn't ask her any more. She wasn't more than fifteen at the time, yet she spoke out of her own mind. At the time they thought she had been thinking on the matter--considering her future. A child of fifteen doesn't consider, but a child of fifteen may _know_, and after he had seen the look which greeted his mother's remarks, and heard Eliza's simple answer, 'I've decided to be a nun,' he never doubted that what she said was true. From that day she became for him a different being; and when she told him, feeling, perhaps, that he sympathized with her more than the others did, that one day she would be Reverend Mother of the Tinnick Convent, he felt convinced that she knew what she was saying--how she knew he could not say. His childhood had been a slumber, with occasional awakenings or half awakenings, and Eliza's announcement that she intended to enter the religious life was the first real awakening; and this awakening first took the form of an acute interest in Eliza's character, and, persuaded that she or her prototype had already existed, he searched the lives of the saints for an account of her, finding many partial portraits of her; certain typical traits in the lives of three or four saints reminded him of Eliza, but there was no complete portrait. The strangest part of the business was that he traced his vocation to his search for Eliza in the lives of the saints. Everything that happened afterwards was the emotional sequence of taking down the books from the shelf. He didn't exaggerate; it was possible his life might have taken a different turn, for up to that time he had only read books of adventure--stories about robbers and pirates. As if by magic, his interest in such stories passed clean out of his mind, or was exchanged for an extraordinary enthusiasm for saints, who by renouncement of animal life had contrived to steal up to the last bounds, whence they could see into the eternal life that lies beyond the grave. Once this power was admitted, what interest could we find in the feeble ambitions of temporal life, whose scope is limited to three score and ten years? And who could doubt that saints attained the eternal life, which is God, while still living in the temporal flesh? For did not the miracles of the saints prove that they were no longer subject to natural laws? Ancient Ireland, perhaps, more than any other country, understood the supremacy of spirit over matter, and strove to escape through mortifications from the prison of the flesh. Without doubt great numbers in Ireland had fled from the torment of actual life into the wilderness. If the shore and the islands on this lake were dotted with fortress castles, it was the Welsh and the Normans who built them, and the priest remembered how his mind took fire when he first heard of the hermit who lived in Church Island, and how disappointed he was when he heard that Church Island was ten miles away, at the other end of the lake. For he could not row himself so far; distance and danger compelled him to consider the islands facing Tinnick--two large islands covered with brushwood, ugly brown patches--ugly as their names, Horse Island and Hog Island, whereas Castle Island had always seemed to him a suitable island for a hermitage, far more so than Castle Hag. Castle Hag was too small and bleak to engage the attention of a sixth-century hermit. But there were trees on Castle Island, and out of the ruins of the castle a comfortable sheiling could be built, and the ground thus freed from the ruins of the Welshman's castle might be cultivated. He remembered commandeering the fisherman's boat, and rowing himself out, taking a tape to measure, and how, after much application of the tape, he had satisfied himself that there was enough arable land in the island for a garden; he had walked down the island certain that a quarter of an acre could grow enough vegetables to support a hermit, and that a goat would be able to pick a living among the bushes and the tussocked grass: even a hermit might have a goat, and he didn't think he could live without milk. He must have been a long time measuring out his garden, for when he returned to his boat the appearance of the lake frightened him; it was full of blustering waves, and it wasn't likely he'd ever forget his struggle to get the boat back to Tinnick. He left it where he had found it, at the mouth of the river by the fisherman's hut, and returned home thinking how he would have to import a little hay occasionally for the goat. Nor would this be all; he would have to go on shore every Sunday to hear Mass, unless he built a chapel. The hermit of Church Island had an oratory in which he said Mass! But if he left his island every Sunday his hermitage would be a mockery. For the moment he couldn't see how he was to build a chapel--a sheiling, perhaps; a chapel was out of the question, he feared. He would have to have vestments and a chalice, and, immersed in the difficulty of obtaining these, he walked home, taking the path along the river from habit, not because he wished to consider afresh the problems of the ruined mills. The dream of restoring Tinnick to its commerce of former days was forgotten, and he walked on, thinking of his chalice, until he heard somebody call him. It was Eliza, and as they leaned over the parapet of the bridge, he could not keep himself from telling her that he had rowed out to Castle Island, never thinking that she would reprove him, and sternly, for taking the fisherman's boat without asking leave. It was no use to argue with Eliza that the fisherman didn't want his boat, the day being too rough for fishing. What did she know about fishing? She had asked very sharply what brought him out to Castle Island on such a day. There was no use saying he didn't know; he never was able to keep a secret from Eliza, and feeling that he must confide in somebody, he told her he was tired of living at home, and was thinking of building a sheiling on the island. Eliza didn't understand, and she understood still less when he spoke of a beehive hut, such as the ancient hermits of Ireland lived in. She was entirely without imagination; but what surprised him still more than her lack of sympathy with his dream-project was her inability to understand an idea so inherent in Christianity as the hermitage, for at that time Eliza's mind was made up to enter the religious life. He waited a long time for her answer, but the only answer she made was that in the early centuries a man was either a bandit or a hermit. This wasn't true: life was peaceful in Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries; even if it weren't, she ought to have understood that change of circumstance cannot alter an idea so inherent in man as the hermitage, and when he asked her if she intended to found a new Order, or to go out to Patagonia to teach the Indians, she laughed, saying she was much more interested in a laundry than in the Indians. Her plea that the Tinnick Convent was always in straits for money did not appeal to him then any more than it did to-day. 'The officers in Tinnick have to send their washing to Dublin. A fine reason for entering a convent,' he answered. But quite unmoved by the sarcasm, she replied that a woman can do nothing unless she be a member of a congregation. He shrank from Eliza's mind as from the touch of something coarse, and his suggestion that the object of the religious life is meditation did not embarrass her in the very least, and he remembered well how she had said: 'Putting aside for the moment the important question whether there may or may not be hermits in the twentieth century, tell me, Oliver, are you thinking of marrying Annie McGrath? You know she has rich relations in America, and you might get them to supply the capital to set the mills going. The mills would be a great advantage. Annie has a good headpiece, and would be able to take the shop off your hands, leaving you free to look after the mills.' 'The mills, Eliza! there are other things in the world beside those mills!' 'A hermitage on Castle Island?' Eliza could be very impertinent when she liked. If she had no concern in what was being said, she looked round, displaying an irritating curiosity in every passer-by, and true to herself she had drawn his attention to the ducks on the river while he was telling her of the great change that had come over him. He had felt like boxing her ears. But the moment he began to speak of taking Orders she forgot all about the ducks; her eyes were fixed upon him, she listened to his every word, and when he finished speaking, she reminded him there had always been a priest in the family. All her wits were awake. He was the one of the family who had shown most aptitude for learning, and their cousin the Bishop would be able to help him. What she would like would be to see him parish priest of Tinnick. The parish was one of the best in the diocese. Not a doubt of it, she was thinking at that moment of the advantage this arrangement would be to her when she was directing the affairs of the convent. If there was no other, there was at least one woman in Ireland who was interested in things. He had never met anybody less interested in opinions or in ideas than Eliza. They had walked home together in silence, at all events not saying much, and that very evening she left the room immediately after supper. And soon after they heard sounds of trunks being dragged along the passage; furniture was being moved, and when she came downstairs she just said she was going to sleep with Mary. 'Oliver is going to have my room. He must have a room to himself on account of his studies.' On that she gathered up her sewing, and left him to explain. He felt that it was rather sly of her to go away like that, leaving all the explanation to him. She wanted him to be a priest, and was full of little tricks. There was no time for thinking it over. There was only just time to prepare for the examination. He worked hard, for his work interested him, especially the Latin language; but what interested him far more than his aptitude for learning whatever he made up his mind to learn was the discovery of a religious vocation in himself. Eliza feared that his interest in hermits sprang from a boyish taste for adventure rather than from religious feeling, but no sooner had he begun his studies for the priesthood, than he found himself overtaken and overpowered by an extraordinary religious fervour and by a desire for prayer and discipline. Never had a boy left home more zealous, more desirous to excel in piety and to strive for the honour and glory of the Church. An expression of anger, almost of hatred, passed over Father Oliver's face, and he turned from the lake and walked a few yards rapidly, hoping to escape from memories of his folly; for he had made a great fool of himself, no doubt. But, after all, he preferred his enthusiasms, however exaggerated they might seem to him now, to the commonplace--he could not call it wisdom--of those whom he had taken into his confidence. It was foolish of him, no doubt, to have told how he used to go out in a boat and measure the ground about Castle Island, thinking to build himself a beehive hut out of the ruins. He knew too little of the world at that time; he had no idea how incapable the students were of understanding anything outside the narrow interests of an ecclesiastical career. Anyhow, he had had the satisfaction of having beaten them in all the examinations; and if he had cared to go in for advancement, he could have easily got ahead of them all, for he had better brains and better interest than any of them. When he last saw that ignorant brute Peter Fahy, Fahy asked him if he still put pebbles in his shoes. It was to Fahy he had confided the cause of his lameness, and Fahy had told on him; he was ridiculously innocent in those days, and he could still see them gathered about him, pretending not to believe that he kept a cat-o'-nine-tails in his room, and scourged himself at night. It was Tom Bryan who said that he wouldn't mind betting a couple of shillings that Gogarty's whip wouldn't draw a squeal from a pig on the roadside. The answer to that was: 'A touch will make a pig squeal: you should have said an ass!' But at the moment he couldn't think of an answer. No doubt everyone looked on him as a ninny, and they persuaded him to prove to them that his whip was a real whip by letting Tom Bryan do the whipping for him. Tom Bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for him--a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his authority in the parish. The remembrance of the day he bared his back to that fellow was still a bitter one. With a gentle smile he had handed the whip to Tom Bryan, the very smile which he imagined the hermits of old time used to wear. The first blow had so stunned him that he couldn't cry out, and this blow was followed by a second which sent the blood flaming through his veins, and then by another which brought all the blood into one point in his body. He seemed to lose consciousness of everything but three inches of back. Nine blows he bore without wincing; the tenth overcame his fortitude, and he had reeled away from Tom Bryan. Tom had exchanged the whip he had given him for a great leather belt; that was why he had been hurt so grievously--hurt till the pain seemed to reach his very heart. Tom had belted him with all his strength; and half a dozen of Tom's pals were waiting outside the door, and they came into the room, their wide mouths agrin, asking him how he liked it. But they were unready for the pain his face expressed, and in the midst of his agony he noticed that already they foresaw consequences, and he heard them reprove Tom Bryan, their intention being to dissociate themselves from him. Cowards! cowards! cowards! They tried to help him on with his shirt, but he had been too badly beaten, and Tom Bryan came up in the evening to ask him not to tell on him. He promised, and he wouldn't have told if he could have helped it. But some explanation had to be forthcoming--he couldn't lie on his back. The doctor was sent for.... And next day he was told the President wished to see him. The President was Eliza over again; hermits and hermitages were all very well in the early centuries, but religion had advanced, and nowadays a steadfast piety was more suited to modern requirements than pebbles in the shoes. If it had been possible to leave for America that day he thought he would have gone. But he couldn't leave Maynooth because he had been fool enough to bare his back to Tom Bryan. He couldn't return home to tell such a story as that. All Tinnick would be laughing at him, and Eliza, what would she think of him? He wasn't such a fool as the Maynooth students thought him, and he realized at once that he must stay in Maynooth and live down remembrance of his folly. So, as the saying goes, he took the bit between his teeth. The necessity of living down his first folly, of creating a new idea of himself in the minds of the students, forced him to apply all his intelligence to his studies, and he made extraordinary progress in the first years. The recollection of the ease with which he outdistanced his fellow-students was as pleasant as the breezes about the lake, and his thoughts dwelt on the opinion which he knew was entertained, that for many years no one at Maynooth had shown such aptitude for scholarship. He only had to look at a book to know more about it than his fellow-students would know if they were to spend days over it. He won honours. He could have won greater honours, but his conscience reminded him that the gifts he received from God were not bestowed upon him for the mere purpose of humiliating his fellow-students. He often felt then that if certain talents had been given to him, they were given to him to use for the greater glory of God rather than for his own glorification; and his feeling was that there was nothing more hateful in God's sight than intellectual, unless perhaps spiritual, pride, and his object during his last years at Maynooth was to exhibit himself to the least advantage. It is strange how an idea enters the soul and remakes it, and when he left Maynooth he used his influence with his cousin, the Bishop, to get himself appointed to the poorest parish in Connaught. Eliza had to dissemble, but he knew that in her heart she was furious with him. We are all extraordinarily different one from another, and if we seem most different from those whom we are most like, it is because we know nothing at all about strangers. He had gone to Kilronan in spite of Eliza, in spite of everyone, their cousin the Bishop included. He had been very happy in Bridget Clery's cottage, so happy that he didn't know himself why he ever consented to leave Kilronan. No, it was not because he was too happy there. He had to a certain extent outgrown his very delicate conscience. II A breeze rose, the forest murmured, a bird sang, and the sails of the yacht filled. The priest stood watching her pass behind a rocky headland, knowing now that her destination was Kilronan Abbey. But was there water enough in the strait at this season of the year? Hardly enough to float a boat of her size. If she stuck, the picnic-party would get into the small boat, and, thus lightened, the yacht might be floated into the other arm of the lake. 'A pleasant day indeed for a sail,' and in imagination he followed the yacht down the lake, past its different castles, Castle Carra and Castle Burke and Church Island, the island on which Marban--Marban, the famous hermit poet, had lived. It seemed to him strange that he had never thought of visiting the ruined church when he lived close by at the northern end of the lake. His time used to be entirely taken up with attending to the wants of his poor people, and the first year he spent in Garranard he had thought only of the possibility of inducing the Government to build a bridge across the strait. That bridge was badly wanted. All the western side of the lake was cut off from railway communication. Tinnick was the terminus, but to get to Tinnick one had to go round the lake, either by. the northern or the southern end, and it was always a question which was the longer road--round by Kilronan Abbey or by the Bridge of Keel. Many people said the southern road was shorter, but the difference wasn't more than a mile, if that, and Father Oliver preferred the northern road; for it took him by his curate's house, and he could always stop there and give his horse a feed and a rest; and he liked to revisit the abbey in which he had said Mass for so long, and in which Mass had always been said for a thousand years, even since Cromwell had unroofed it, the celebrant sheltered by an arch, the congregation kneeling under the open sky, whether it rained or snowed. The roofing of the abbey and the bridging of the strait were the two things that the parish was really interested in. He tried when he was in Kilronan to obtain the Archbishop's consent and collaboration; Moran was trying now: he did not know that he was succeeding any better; and Father Oliver reflected a while on the peculiar temperament of their diocesan, and jumping down from the rock on which he had been sitting, he wandered along the sunny shore, thinking of the many letters he had addressed to the Board of Works on the subject of the bridge. The Board believed, or pretended to believe, that the parish could not afford the bridge; as well might it be urged that a cripple could not afford crutches. Without doubt a public meeting should be held; and in some little indignation Father Oliver began to think that public opinion should be roused and organized. It was for him to do this: he was the people's natural leader; but for many months he had done nothing in the matter. Why, he didn't know himself. Perhaps he needed a holiday; perhaps he no longer believed the Government susceptible to public opinion; perhaps he had lost faith in the people themselves! The people were the same always; the people never change, only individuals change. And at the end of the sandy spit, where some pines had grown and seeded, he stood looking across the silvery lake wondering if his parishioners had begun to notice the change that had come over him since Nora Glynn left the parish, and as her name came into his mind he was startled out of his reverie by the sound of voices, and turning from the lake, he saw two wood-gatherers coming down a little path through the juniper-bushes. He often hid himself in the woods when he saw somebody coming, but he couldn't do so now without betraying his intention, and he stayed where he was. The women passed on, bent under their loads. Whether they saw him or not he couldn't tell; they passed near enough for him to recognize them, and he remembered that they were in church the day he alluded to Nora in his sermon. A hundred yards further on the women unburdened and sat down to rest a while, and Father Oliver began to consider what their conversation might be. His habit of wandering away by himself had no doubt been noticed, and once it was noticed it would become a topic of conversation. 'And what they do be saying now is, "That he has never been the same man since he preached against the schoolmistress, for what should he be doing by the lake if he wasn't afraid that she made away with herself?" And perhaps they are right,' he said, and walked up the shore, hoping that as soon as he was out of sight the women would forget to tell when they returned home that they had seen him walking by the lake. All the morning he had been trying to keep Nora Glynn out of his mind, but now, as he rambled, he could not put back the memory of the day he met her for the first time, nearly two years ago, for to-day was the fifteenth of May; it was about that time a little later in the year; it must have been in June, for the day was very hot, and he had been riding fast, not wishing to keep Catherine's dinner waiting, and as he pushed his bicycle through the gate, he saw the great cheery man, Father Peter, with a face like an apple, walking up and down under the sycamores reading his breviary. It must have been in June, for the mowers were in the field opposite, in the field known as the priest's field, though Father Peter had never rented it. There had never been such weather in Ireland before, and the day he rode his bicycle over to see Father Peter seemed to him the hottest day of all. But he had heard of the new schoolmistress's musical talents, and despite the heat of the day had ridden over, so anxious was he to hear if Father Peter were satisfied with her in all other respects. 'We shall be able to talk better in the shade of the sycamores,' Father Peter said, and on this they crossed the lawn, but not many steps were taken back and forth before Father Peter began to throw out hints that he didn't think Miss Glynn was altogether suited to the parish. 'But if you're satisfied with her discipline,' Father Oliver jerked out, and it was all he could do to check himself from further snaps at the parish priest, a great burly man who could not tell a minor from a major chord, yet was venting the opinion that good singing distracted the attention of the congregation at their prayers. He would have liked to ask him if he was to understand that bad singing tended to a devotional mood, but wishing to remain on good terms with his superior, he said nothing and waited for Father Peter to state his case against the new schoolmistress, which he seemed to think could be done by speaking of the danger of young unmarried women in the parish. It was when they came to the break in the trees that Father Peter nudged him and said under his breath: 'Here is the young woman herself coming across the fields.' He looked that way and saw a small, thin girl coming towards the stile. She hopped over it as if she enjoyed the little jump into the road. Father Peter called to her and engaged her in conversation; and he continued to talk to her of indifferent things, no doubt with the view to giving him an opportunity of observing her. But they saw her with different eyes: whereas Father Peter descried in her one that might become a mischief in the parish, he could discover no dangerous beauty in her, merely a crumpled little face that nobody would notice were it not for the eyes and forehead. The forehead was broad and well shapen and promised an intelligence that the eyes were quick to confirm; round, gray, intelligent eyes, smiling, welcoming eyes. Her accent caressed the ear, it was a very sweet one, only faintly Irish, and she talked easily and correctly, like one who enjoyed talking, laughing gaily, taking, he was afraid, undue pleasure in Father Peter's rough sallies, without heeding that he was trying to entrap her into some slight indiscretion of speech that he could make use of afterwards, for he must needs justify himself to himself if he decided to dismiss her. As he had been asked to notice her he remarked her shining brown hair. It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter did not like about the girl was her independent mind, which displayed itself in every gesture, in the way she hopped over the stile, and the manner with which she toyed with her parasol--a parasol that seemed a little out of keeping with her position, it is true. A very fine parasol it was; a blue silk parasol. Her independence betrayed itself in her voice: she talked to the parish priest with due respect, but her independent mind informed every sentence, even the smallest, and that was why she was going to be dismissed from her post. It was shameful that a grave injustice should be done to a girl who was admittedly competent in the fulfilment of all her duties, and he had not tried to conceal his opinion from Father Peter during dinner and after dinner, leaving him somewhat earlier than usual, for nothing affronted him more than injustice, especially ecclesiastical injustice. As he rode his bicycle down the lonely road to Bridget's cottage, the thought passed through his mind that if Nora Glynn were a stupid, intelligent woman no objection would have been raised against her. 'An independent mind is very objectionable to the ecclesiastic,' he said to himself as he leaped off his bicycle.... 'Nora Glynn. How well suited the name is to her. There is a smack in the name. Glynn, Nora Glynn,' he repeated, and it seemed to him that the name belonged exclusively to her. A few days after this first meeting he met her about two miles from Garranard; he was on his bicycle, she was on hers, and they both leaped instinctively from their machines. What impressed him this time far more than her looks was her happy, original mind. While walking beside her he caught himself thinking that he had never seen a really happy face before. But she was going to be sent away because she was happy and wore her soul in her face. They had seemed unable to get away from each other, so much had they to say. He mentioned his brother James, who was doing well in America and would perhaps one day send them the price of a harmonium. She told him she couldn't play on the wheezy old thing at Garranard, and at the moment he clean forgot that the new harmonium would avail her little, since Father Peter was going to get rid of her; he only remembered it as he got on his bicycle, and he returned home ready to espouse her cause against anybody. She must write to the Archbishop, and if he wouldn't do anything she must write to the papers. Influence must be brought to bear, and Father Peter must be prevented from perpetrating a gross injustice. He felt that it would be impossible for him to remain Father Peter's curate if the schoolmistress were sent away for no fault of hers, merely because she wore a happy face. What Father Peter would have done if he had lived no one would ever know. He might have dismissed her; even so the injustice would have been slight compared with what had happened to her; and the memory of the wrong that had been done to her put such a pain into his heart that he seemed to lose sight of everything, till a fish leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting. Father Peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before the end of the week he was in his coffin; and it was left to him to turn Nora Glynn out of the parish. No doubt other men had committed faults as grave as his; but they had the strength to leave the matter in the hands of God, to say: 'I can do nothing, I must put myself in the hands of God; let him judge. He is all wise.' He hadn't their force of character. He believed as firmly as they did, but, for some reason which he couldn't explain to himself, he was unable to leave the matter in God's hands, and was always thinking how he could get news of her. If it hadn't been for that woman, for that detestable Mrs. O'Mara, who was the cause of so much evil-speaking in the parish!... And with his heart full of hatred so black that it surprised him, he asked himself if he could forgive that woman. God might, he couldn't. And he fell to thinking how Mrs. O'Mara had long been a curse upon the parish. Father Peter was more than once compelled to speak about her from the altar, and to make plain that the stories she set going were untrue. Father Peter had warned him, but warnings are no good; he had listened to her convinced at the time that it was wrong and foolish to listen to scandalmongers, but unable to resist that beguiling tongue, for Mrs. O'Mara had a beguiling tongue--fool that he was, that he had been. There was no use going over the wretched story again; he was weary of going over it, and he tried to put it out of his mind. But it wouldn't be put out of his mind, and in spite of himself he began to recall the events of the fatal day. He had been out all the morning, walking about with an engineer who was sent down by the Board of Works to consider the possibility of building the bridge, and had just come in to rest. Catherine had brought him a cup of tea; he was sitting by the window, almost too tired to drink it. The door was flung open. If Catherine had only asked him if he were at home to visitors, he would have said he wasn't at home to Mrs. O'Mara, but he wasn't asked; the door was flung open, and he found himself face to face with the parish magpie. And before he could bless himself she began to talk to him about the bridge, saying that she knew all about the engineer, how he had gotten his appointment, and what his qualifications were. It is easy to say one shouldn't listen to such gossips, but it is hard to shut one's ears or to let what one hears with one ear out the other ear, for she might be bringing him information that might be of use to him. So he listened, and when the bridge, and the advantage of it, had been discussed, she told him she had been staying at the convent. She had tales to tell about all the nuns and about all the pupils. She told him that half the Catholic families in Ireland had promised to send their daughters to Tinnick if Eliza succeeded in finding somebody who could teach music and singing. But Eliza didn't think there was anyone in the country qualified for the post but Nora Glynn. If Mrs. O'Mara could be believed, Eliza said that she could offer Nora Glynn more money than she was earning in Garranard. Until then he had only half listened to Mrs. O'Mara's chatter, for he disliked the woman--her chatter amused him only as the chatter of a bird might; but when he heard that his sister was trying to get his schoolmistress away from him he had flared up. 'Oh, but I don't think that your schoolmistress would suit a convent school. I shouldn't like my daughter--' 'What do you mean?' Her face changed expression, and in her nasty mincing manner she began to throw out hints that Nora Glynn would not suit the nuns. He could see that she was concealing something--there was something at the back of her mind. Women of her sort want to be persuaded; their bits of scandal must be dragged from them by force; they are the unwilling victims who would say nothing if they could help it. She had said enough to oblige him to ask her to speak out, and she began to throw out hints about a man whom Nora used to meet on the hillside (she wouldn't give the man's name, she was too clever for that). She would only say that Nora had been seen on the hillside walking in lonely places with a man. Truly a detestable woman! His thoughts strayed from her for a moment, for it gave him pleasure to recollect that he had defended his schoolmistress. Didn't he say: 'Now, then, Mrs. O'Mara, if you have anything definite to say, say it, but I won't listen to vague charges.' 'Charges--who is making charges?' she asked, and he had unfortunately called her a liar. In the middle of the row she dropped a phrase: 'Anyhow, her appearance is against her.' And it was true that Nora Glynn's appearance had changed in the last few months. Seeing that her words had a certain effect, Mrs. O'Mara quieted down; and while he stood wondering if it could possibly be true that Nora had deceived them, that she had been living in sin all these months, he suddenly heard Mrs. O'Mara saying that he was lacking in experience--which was quite true, but her way of saying it had roused the devil in him. Who was she that she should come telling him that he lacked experience? To be sure, he wasn't an old midwife, and that's what Mrs. O'Mara looked like, sitting before him. He had lost control of himself, saying, 'Now, will you get out of this house, you old scandalmonger, or I'll take you by the shoulders and put you out!' And he had thrown the front-door open. What a look she gave him as she passed out! At that moment the clock struck three and he remembered suddenly that the children were coming out of school at that moment. It would have been better if he had waited. But he couldn't wait: he'd have gone mad if he had waited; and he recalled how he had jumped into the road, squeezed through the stile, and run across the field. 'Why all this hurry?' he had asked himself. She was locking up the desks; the children went by him, curtseying, and he had to wait till the last one was past the door. Nora must have guessed his errand, for her face noticeably hardened. 'I've seen Mrs. O'Mara,' he blurted out, 'and she tells me that you've been seen walking with some man on the hillside in lonely places.... Don't deny it if it is true.' 'I'm not going to deny anything that is true.' How brave she was! Her courage attracted him and softened his heart. But everything was true, alas! Everything. She told him that her plans were to steal out of the parish without saying a word to anyone, for she was determined not to disgrace him or the parish. She was thinking of him in all her trouble, and everything might have ended well if he had not asked her who the man was. She would not say, nor give any reasons why she wouldn't do so. Only this, that if the man had deserted her she didn't want anybody to bring him back, if he could be brought back; if the man were dead it were better to say nothing about him. 'But if it were his fault?' 'I don't see that that would make any difference.' They went out of the school-house talking in quite a friendly way. There was a little drizzle in the air, and, opening her umbrella, she said, 'I'm afraid you'll get wet.' 'Get wet, get wet! what matter?' he had answered impatiently, for the remark annoyed him. By the hawthorn-bush he began to tell her again that it would relieve his mind to know who the man was. She tried to get away from him, but he wouldn't let her go; and catching her by the arm he besought her, saying that it would relieve his mind. How many times had he said that? But he wasn't able to persuade her, notwithstanding his insistence that as a priest of the parish he had a right to know. No doubt she had some very deep reason for keeping her secret, or perhaps his authoritative manner was the cause of her silence. However this might be, any words would have been better than 'it would relieve my mind to know who the man was.' 'Stupid, stupid, stupid!' he muttered to himself, and he wandered from the cart-track into the wood. It was impossible to say now why he had wished to press her secret from her. It would be unpleasant for him, as priest of the parish, to know that the man was living in the parish; but it would be still more unpleasant if he knew who the man was. Nora's seducer could be none other than one of the young soldiers who had taken the fishing-lodge at the head of the lake. Mrs. O'Mara had hinted that Nora had been seen with one of them on the hill, and he thought how on a day like this she might have been led away among the ferns. At that moment there came out of the thicket a floating ball of thistle-down. 'It bloweth where it listeth,' he said. 'Soldier or shepherd, what matter now she is gone?' and rising to his feet and coming down the sloping lawn, overflowing with the shade of the larches, he climbed through the hawthorns growing out of a crumbled wall, and once at the edge of the lake, he stood waiting for nothing seemingly but to hear the tiresome clanking call of the stonechat, and he compared its reiterated call with the words 'atonement,' 'forgiveness,' 'death,' 'calamity,' words always clanking in his heart, for she might be lying at the bottom of the lake, and some day a white phantom would rise from the water and claim him. His thoughts broke away, and he re-lived in memory the very agony of mind he had endured when he went home after her admission that she was with child. All that night, all next day, and for how many days? Would the time ever come when he could think of her without a pain in his heart? It is said that time brings forgetfulness. Does it? On Saturday morning he had sat at his window, asking himself if he should go down to see her or if he should send for her. There were confessions in the afternoon, and expecting that she would come to confess to him, he had not sent for her. One never knows; perhaps it was her absence from confession that had angered him. His temper took a different turn that evening. All night he had lain awake; he must have been a little mad that night, for he could only think of the loss of a soul to God, and of God's love of chastity. All night long he had repeated with variations that it were better that all which our eyes see--this earth and the stars that are in being--should perish utterly, be crushed into dust, rather than a mortal sin should be committed; in an extraordinary lucidity of mind he continued to ponder on God's anger and his own responsibility towards God, and feeling all the while that there are times when we lose control of our minds, when we are a little mad. He foresaw his danger, but he could not do else than rise from his bed and begin to prepare his sermon, for he had to preach, and he could only preach on chastity and the displeasure sins against chastity cause to God. He could think but of this one thing, the displeasure God must feel against Nora and the seducer who had robbed her of the virtue God prized most in her. He must have said things that he would not have said at any other time. His brain was on fire that morning, and words rose to his lips--he knew not whence nor how they came, and he had no idea now of what he had said. He only knew that she left the church during his sermon; at what moment he did not know, nor did he know that she had left the parish till next day, when the children came up to tell him there was no schoolmistress. And from that day to this no news of her, nor any way of getting news of her. His thoughts went to the hawthorn-trees, for he could not think of her any more for the moment, and it relieved his mind to examine the green pips that were beginning to appear among the leaves. 'The hawthorns will be in flower in another week,' he said; and he began to wonder at the beautiful order of the spring. The pear and the cherry were the first; these were followed by the apple, and after the apple came the lilac, the chestnut, and the laburnum. The forest trees, too, had their order. The ash was still leafless, but it was shedding its catkins, and in another fifteen days its light foliage would be dancing in the breeze. The oak was last of all. At that moment a swallow flitted from stone to stone, too tired to fly far, and he wondered whence it had come. A cuckoo called from a distant hill; it, too, had been away and had come back. His eyes dwelt on the lake, refined and wistful, with reflections of islands and reeds, mysteriously still. Rose-coloured clouds descended, revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every crest distinguishable. It was the hour when the cormorants come home to roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep there till morning,' he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting through ferns and thorn-bushes. At the top of the hill was his house, the house Father Peter had built. Its appearance displeased him, and he stood for a long time watching the evening darkening, and the yacht being towed home, her sails lowered, the sailors in the rowing-boat. 'They will be well tired before they get her back to Tinnick;' and he turned and entered his house abruptly. III Catherine's curiosity was a worry. As if he knew why he hadn't come home to his dinner! If she'd just finish putting the plates on the table and leave him. Of course, there had been callers. One man, the man he especially wished to see, had driven ten miles to see him. It was most unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped; he had felt that morning that he couldn't stay indoors--the business of the parish had somehow got upon his nerves, but not because he had been working hard. He had done but little work since she left the parish. Now was that story going to begin again? If it did, he should go out of his mind; and he looked round the room, thinking how a lonely evening breeds thoughts of discontent. Most of the furniture in the room was Father Peter's. Father Peter had left his curate his furniture, but the pretty mahogany bookcase and the engravings upon the walls were Father Oliver's own taste; he had bought them at an auction, and there were times when these purchases pleased him. But now he was thinking that Father Peter must have known to whom the parish would go at his death, for he could not have meant all his furniture to be taken out of the house--'there would be no room for it in Bridget Clery's cottage;' and Father Oliver sat thinking of the evenings he used to spend with Father Peter. How often during those evenings Father Peter must have said to himself, 'One day, Gogarty, you will be sitting in my chair and sleeping in my bed.' And Father Oliver pondered on his affection for the dead man. There were no differences of opinion, only one--the neglected garden at the back of the house; and, smiling sadly, Father Oliver remembered how he used to reprove the parish priest. 'I'm afraid I'm too big and too fat and too fond of my pipe and my glass of whisky to care much about carnations. But if you get the parish when I'm gone, I'm sure you'll grow some beauties, and you'll put a bunch on my grave sometimes, Gogarty.' The very ring of the dead man's voice seemed to sound through the lonely room, and, sitting in Father Peter's chair, with the light of Father Peter's lamp shining on his face and hand, Father Oliver's thoughts flowed on. It seemed to him that he had not understood and appreciated Father Peter's kindliness, and he recalled his perfect good nature. 'Death reveals many things to us,' he said; and he lifted his head to listen, for the silence in the house and about the house reminded him of the silence of the dead, and he began to consider what his own span of life might be. He might live as long as Father Peter (Father Peter was fifty-five when he died); if so, twenty-one years of existence by the lake's side awaited him, and these years seemed to him empty like a desert--yes, and as sterile. 'Twenty-one years wondering what became of her, and every evening like this evening--the same loneliness.' He sat watching the hands of his clock, and a peaceful meditation about a certain carnation that unfortunately burst its calyx was interrupted by a sudden thought. Whence the thought came he could not tell, nor what had put it into his head, but it had occurred to him suddenly that 'if Father Peter had lived a few weeks longer he would have found means of exchanging Nora Glynn for another schoolmistress, more suitable to the requirements of the parish. If Father Peter had lived he would have done her a grievous wrong. He wouldn't have allowed her to suffer, but he would have done her a wrong all the same.' And it were better that a man should meet his death than he should do a wrong to another. But he wasn't contemplating his own death nor Nora's when this end to the difficulty occurred to him. Our inherent hypocrisy is so great that it is difficult to know what one does think. He surely did not think it well that Father Peter had died, his friend, his benefactor, the man in whose house he was living? Of course not. Then it was strange he could not keep the thought out of his mind that Father Peter's death had saved the parish from a great scandal, for if Nora had been dismissed he might have found himself obliged to leave the parish. Again he turned on himself and asked how such thoughts could come into his mind. True, the coming of a thought into the consciousness is often unexpected, but if the thought were not latent in the mind, it would not arise out of the mind; and if Father Peter knew the base thoughts he indulged in--yes, indulged in, for he could not put them quite out of his mind--he feared very much that the gift of all this furniture might--No, he was judging Father Peter ill: Father Peter was incapable of a mean regret. But who was he, he'd like to be told, that he should set himself up as Father Peter's judge? The evil he had foreseen had happened. If Father Peter felt that Nora Glynn was not the kind of schoolmistress the parish required, should he not send her away? The need of the parish, of the many, before the one. Moreover, Father Peter was under no obligation whatsoever to Nora Glynn. She had been sent down by the School Board subject to his approval. 'But my case is quite different. I chose her; I decided that she was to remain.' And he asked himself if his decision had come about gradually. No, he had never hesitated, but dismissed Father Peter's prejudices as unworthy.... The church needed some good music. But did he think of the church? Hardly at all. His first consideration was his personal pleasure, and he wished that the best choir in the diocese should be in his church, and Nora Glynn enabled him to gratify his vanity. He made her his friend, taking pleasure in her smiles, and in the fact that he had only to express a desire for it to be fulfilled. After school, tired though she might be, she was always willing to meet him in the church for choir practice. She would herself propose to decorate the altar for feast-days. How many times had they walked round the garden together gathering flowers for the altar! And it was strange that she could decorate so well without knowing much about flowers or having much natural taste for flowers. Feeling he was doing her an injustice, he admitted that she had made much progress under his guidance in her knowledge of flowers. 'But how did he treat her in the end, despite all her kindnesses? Shamefully, shamefully, shamefully!' and getting up from his chair Father Oliver walked across the room, and when he turned he drew his hand across his eyes. The clock struck twelve. 'I shall be awake at dawn,' he said, 'with all this story running in my head,' and he stopped on the threshold of his bedroom, frightened at the sight of his bed. But he had reached the stint of his sufferings, and that morning lay awake, hardly annoyed at all by the black-birds' whistling, contentedly going over the mistakes he had made--a little surprised, however, that the remembrance of them did not cause him more pain. At last he fell asleep, and when his housekeeper knocked at his door and he heard her saying that it was past eight, he leaped out of bed cheerily, and sang a stave of song as he shaved himself, gashing his chin, however, for he could not keep his attention fixed on his chin, but must peep over the top of the glass, whence he could see his garden, and think how next year he would contrive a better arrangement of colour. It was difficult to stop the bleeding, and he knew that Catherine would grumble at the state he left the towels in (he should not have used his bath-towel); but these were minor matters. He was happier than he had been for many a day. The sight of strawberries on his breakfast-table pleased him; the man who drove ten miles to see him yesterday called, and he shared his strawberries with him in abundant spirit. The sunlight was exciting, the lake called him, and it was pleasant to stride along, talking of the bridge (at last there seemed some prospect of getting one). The intelligence of this new inspector filled him with hope, and he expatiated in the advantages of the bridge and many other things. Nor did his humour seem to depend entirely on the companionship of his visitor. It endured long after his visitor had left him, and very soon he began to think that his desire to go away for a long holiday was a passing indisposition of mind rather than a need. His holiday could be postponed to the end of the year; there would be more leisure then, and he would be better able to enjoy his holiday than he would be now. His changing mind interested him, and he watched it like a vane, unable to understand how it was that, notwithstanding his restlessness, he could not bring himself to go away. Something seemed to keep him back, and he was not certain that the reason he stayed was because the Government had not yet sent a formal promise to build the bridge. He could think of no other reason for delaying in Garranard; he certainly wanted change. And then Nora's name came into his mind, and he meditated for a moment, seeing the colour of her hair and the vanishing expression of her eyes. Sometimes he could see her hand, the very texture of its skin, and the line of the thumb and the forefinger. A cat had once scratched her hand, and she had told him about it. That was about two months before Mrs. O'Mara had come to tell him that shocking story, two months before he had gone down to his church and spoken about Nora in such a way that she had gone out of the parish. But was he going to begin the story over again? He picked up a book, but did not read many sentences before he was once more asking himself if she had gone down to the lake, and if it were her spell that kept him in Garranard. 'The wretchedness of it all,' he cried, and fell to thinking that Nora's spirit haunted the lake, and that his punishment was to be kept a prisoner always. His imagination ran riot. Perhaps he would have to seek her out, follow her all over the world, a sort of Wandering Jew, trying to make atonement, and would never get any rest until this atonement was made. And the wrong that he had done her seemed the only reality. It was his elbow companion in the evening as he sat smoking his pipe, and every morning he stood at the end of a sandy spit seeing nothing, hearing nothing but her. One day he was startled by a footstep, and turned expecting to see Nora. But it was only Christy, the boy who worked in his garden. 'Your reverence, the postman overlooked this letter in the morning. It was stuck at the bottom of the bag. He hopes the delay won't make any difference.' _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_June_ 1, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I am writing to ask you if you know anything about a young woman called Nora Glynn. She tells me that she was schoolmistress in your parish and organist in your church, and that you thought very highly of her until one day a tale-bearer, Mrs. O'Mara by name, went to your house and told you that your schoolmistress was going to have a baby. It appears that at first you refused to believe her, and that you ran down to the school to ask Miss Glynn herself if the story you had heard about her was a true one. She admitted it, but on her refusal to tell you who was the father of the child you lost your temper; and the following Sunday you alluded to her so plainly in your sermon about chastity that there was nothing for her but to leave the parish. 'There is no reason why I should disbelieve Miss Glynn's story; I am an Irish priest like yourself, sir. I have worked in London among the poor for forty years, and Miss Glynn's story is, to my certain knowledge, not an uncommon one; it is, I am sorry to say, most probable; it is what would happen to any schoolmistress in Ireland in similar circumstances. The ordinary course is to find out the man and to force him to marry the girl; if this fails, to drive the woman out of the parish, it being better to sacrifice one affected sheep than that the whole flock should be contaminated. I am an old man; Miss Glynn tells me that you are a young man. I can therefore speak quite frankly. I believe the practice to which I have alluded is inhuman and unchristian, and has brought about the ruin of many an Irish girl. I have been able to rescue some from the streets, and, touched by their stories, I have written frequently to the priest of the parish pointing out to him that his responsibility is not merely local, and does not end as soon as the woman has passed the boundary of his parish. I would ask you what you think your feelings would be if I were writing to you now to tell you that, after some months of degraded life, Miss Glynn had thrown herself from one of the bridges into the river? That might very well have been the story I had to write to you; fortunately for you, it is another story. 'Miss Glynn is a woman of strong character, and does not give way easily; her strength of will has enabled her to succeed where another woman might have failed. She is now living with one of my parishioners, a Mrs. Dent, of 24, Harold Street, who has taken a great liking to her, and helped her through her most trying time, when she had very little money and was alone and friendless in London. Mrs. Dent recommended her to some people in the country who would look after her child. She allowed her to pay her rent by giving lessons to her daughter on the piano. One thing led to another; the lady who lived on the drawing-room floor took lessons, and Miss Glynn is earning now, on an average, thirty shillings per week, which little income will be increased if I can appoint her to the post of organist in my church, my organist having been obliged to leave me on account of her health. It was while talking to Mrs. Dent on this very subject that I first heard Miss Glynn's name mentioned. 'Mrs. Dent was enthusiastic about her, but I could see that she knew little about her lodger's antecedents, except that she came from Ireland. She was anxious that I should engage her at once, declaring that I could find no one like her, and she asked me to see her that evening. I went, and the young woman impressed me very favourably. She came to my church and played for me. I could see that she was an excellent musician, and there seemed to be no reason why I should not engage her. I should probably have done so without asking any further questions--for I do not care to inquire too closely into a woman's past, once I am satisfied that she wishes to lead an honourable life--but Miss Glynn volunteered to tell me what her past had been, saying it was better I should hear it from her than from another. When she had told me her sad story, I reminded her of the anxiety that her disappearance from the parish would cause you. She shook her head, saying you did not care what might happen to her. I assured her that such a thing was not the case, and begged of her to allow me to write to you; but I did not obtain her consent until she began to see that if she withheld it any longer we might think she was concealing some important fact. Moreover, I impressed upon her that it was right that I should hear your story, not because I disbelieved hers--I take it for granted the facts are correctly stated--but in the event of your being able to say something which would put a different complexion upon them. 'Yours very sincerely, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' IV After reading Father O'Grady's letter he looked round, fearing lest someone should speak to him. Christy was already some distance away; there was nobody else in sight; and feeling he was safe from interruption, he went towards the wood, thinking of the good priest who had saved her (in saving her Father O'Grady had saved him), and of the waste of despair into which he would have drifted certainly if the news had been that she had killed herself. He stood appalled, looking into the green wood, aware of the mysterious life in the branches; and then lay down to watch the insect life among the grass--a beetle pursuing its little or great destiny. But he was too exalted to remain lying down; the wood seemed to beckon him, and he asked if the madness of the woods had overtaken him. Further on he came upon a chorus of finches singing in some hawthorn-trees, and in Derrinrush he stopped to listen to the silence that had suddenly fallen. A shadow floated by; he looked up: a hawk was passing overhead, ready to attack rat or mouse moving among the young birches and firs that were springing up in the clearance. The light was violent, and the priest shaded his eyes. His feet sank in sand, he tripped over tufts of rough grass, and was glad to get out of this part of the wood into the shade of large trees. Trees always interested him, and he began to think of their great roots seeking the darkness, and of their branches lifting themselves in love towards the light. He and these trees were one, for there is but one life, one mother, one elemental substance out of which all has come. That was it, and his thoughts paused. Only in union is there happiness, and for many weary months he had been isolated, thrown out; but to-day he had been drawn suddenly into the general life, he had become again part of the general harmony, and that was why he was so happy. No better explanation was forthcoming, and he did not think that a better one was required--at least, not to-day. He noticed with pleasure that he no longer tried to pass behind a thicket nor into one when he met poor wood-gatherers bent under their heavy loads. He even stopped to speak to a woman out with her children; the three were breaking sticks across their knees, and he encouraged them to talk to him. But without his being aware of it, his thoughts hearkened back, and when it came to his turn to answer he could not answer. He had been thinking of Nora, and, ashamed of his absentmindedness, he left them tying up their bundles and went towards the shore, stopping many times to admire the pale arch of evening sky with never a wind in it, nor any sound but the cries of swallows in full pursuit. 'A rememberable evening,' he said, and there was such a lightness in his feet that he believed, or very nearly, that there were wings on his shoulders which he only had to open to float away whither he might wish to go. His brain overflowed with thankfulness and dreams of her forgiveness, and at midnight he sat in his study still thinking, still immersed in his happiness; and hearing moths flying about the burning lamp he rescued one for sheer love of her, and later in the evening the illusion of her presence was so intense that he started up from his chair and looked round for her. Had he not felt her breath upon his cheek? Her very perfume had floated past! There ... it had gone by again! No, it was not she--only the syringa breathing in the window. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O'Grady._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 2, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER O'GRADY, 'Miss Glynn's disappearance caused me, as you rightly surmise, the gravest anxiety, and it is no exaggeration to say that whenever her name was mentioned, my tongue seemed to thicken and I could not speak. 'I wish I could find words to thank you for what you have done. I am still under the influence of the emotion that your letter caused me, and can only say that Miss Glynn has told her story truthfully. As to your reproofs, I accept them, they are merited; and I thank you for your kind advice. I am glad that it comes from an Irishman, and I would give much to take you by the hand and to thank you again and again.' Getting up, he walked out of the room, feeling in a way that a calmer and more judicious letter would be preferable. But he must answer Father O'Grady, and at once; the letter would have to go. And in this resolve he walked out of his house into his garden, and stood there wondering at the flower-life growing so peacefully, free from pain. The tall Madonna lilies flourished like sculpture about the porch, and he admired their tall stems and leaves and carven blossoms, thinking how they would die without strife, without complaint. The briar filled the air with a sweet, apple-like smell; and far away the lake shone in the moonlight, just as it had a thousand years ago when the raiders returned to their fortresses pursued by enemies. He could just distinguish Castle Island, and he wondered what this lake reminded him of: it wound in and out of gray shores and headlands, fading into dim pearl-coloured distance, and he compared it to a shroud, and then to a ghost, but neither comparison pleased him. It was like something, but the image he sought eluded him. At last he remembered how in a dream he had seen Nora carried from the lake; and now, standing among the scent of the flowers, he said: 'She has always been associated with the lake in my thoughts, yet she escaped the lake. Every man,' he continued, 'has a lake in his heart.' He had not sought the phrase, it had come suddenly into his mind. Yes, 'Every man has a lake in his heart,' he repeated, and returned to the house like one dazed, to sit stupefied until his thoughts took fire again, and going to his writing-table he drew a sheet of paper towards him, feeling that he must write to Nora. At last he picked up the pen. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GAHRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 2, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I must write to thank you for your kindness in asking Father O'Grady to send me a letter. It appears that you were afraid I might be anxious about you, and I have been very anxious. I have suffered a great deal since you left, and it is a great relief to my mind to hear that you are safe and well. I can understand how loath you were to allow Father O'Grady to write to me; he doesn't say in his letter that you have forgiven me, but I hope that your permission to him to relieve my anxiety by a letter implies your forgiveness. Father O'Grady writes very kindly; it appears that everybody is kind except me. But I am thinking of myself again, of the ruin that it would have been if any of the terrible things that have happened to others had happened to you. But I cannot think of these things now; I am happy in thinking that you are safe.' The evening post was lost, but if he were to walk to Bohola he would catch the morning mail, and his letter would be in her hands the day after to-morrow. It was just three miles to Bohola, and the walk there, he thought, would calm the extraordinary spiritual elation that news of Nora had kindled in his brain. The darkness of the night and the almost round moon high in the southern horizon suited his mood. Once he was startled by a faint sigh coming from a horse looking over a hedge, and the hedgerows were full of mysterious little cracklings. Something white ran across the road. 'The white belly of a stoat,' he thought; and he walked on, wondering what its quest might be. The road led him through a heavy wood, and when he came out at the other end he stopped to gaze at the stars, for already a grayness seemed to have come into the night. The road dipped and turned, twisting through gray fields full of furze-bushes, leading to a great hill, on the other side of which was Bohola. When he entered the village he wondered at the stillness of its street. 'The dawn is like white ashes,' he said, as he dropped his letters into the box; and he was glad to get away from the shadowy houses into the country road. The daisies and the dandelions were still tightly shut, and in the hedgerow a half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. A streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. He could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, advancing to the fight. The priest admired his courage, and allowed him to peck at his knees. Close by Tom Mulhare's dorking was crowing hoarsely, 'A hoarse bass,' said the priest, and at the end of the village he heard a bird crowing an octave higher, and from the direction he guessed it must be Catherine Murphy's bird. Another cock, and then another. He listened, judging their voices to range over nearly three octaves. The morning was so pure, the air so delicious, and its touch so exquisite on the cheek, that he could not bear even to think of a close bedroom and the heat of a feather bed. He went into his garden, and walking up and down he appreciated the beauty of every flower, none seeming to him as beautiful as the anemones, and he thought of Nora Glynn living in a grimy London lodging, whereas he was here amid many flowers--anemones blue, scarlet, and purple, their heads bent down on their stalks. New ones were pushing up to replace the ones that had blown and scattered the evening before. The gentians were not yet open, and he thought how they would look in a few hours--bluer than the mid-day sky. He passed through the wicket, and stood on the hill-top watching the mists sinking lower. The dawn light strengthened--the sky filled with pale tints of emerald, mauve, and rose. A cormorant opened his wings and flew down the lake, his fellows followed soon after; but Father Oliver stood on the hill-top waiting for daybreak. At last a red ball appeared behind a reddish cloud; its colour changed to the colour of flame, paled again, and at four flared up like a rose-coloured balloon. The day had begun, and he turned towards his house. But he couldn't sleep; the house was repellent, and he waited among the thorn-bushes and ferns. Of what use to lie in one's bed when sleep is far and will not be beckoned? and his brain being clear as day he went away to the woods and watersides, saying: 'Life is orientated like a temple; there are in every existence days when life streams down the nave, striking the forehead of the God.' And during his long life Father Oliver always looked back upon the morning when he invaded the pantry and cut large slices of bread, taking the butter out of the old red crock, with a little happy sadness in his heart. He wrapped the slices in paper and wandered without thought for whither he was going, watching the birds in the branches, interested in everything. He was fortunate enough to catch sight of an otter asleep on a rock, and towards evening he came upon a wild-duck's nest in the sedge; many of the ducklings had broken their shells; these struggled after the duck; but there were two prisoners, two that could not escape from their shells, and, seeing their lives would be lost if he did not come to their aid, he picked the shells away and took them to the water's edge, for he had heard Catherine say that one could almost see little ducks growing when they had had a drop of water. The old duck swam about uttering a whistling sound, her cry that her ducklings were to join her. And thinking of the lives he had saved, he felt a sudden regret that he had not come upon the nest earlier, when Christy brought him Father O'Grady's letter. The yacht appeared between the islands, her sails filled with wind, and he began to dream how she might cast anchor outside the reeds. A sailor might draw a pinnace alongside, and he imagined a woman being helped into it and rowed to the landing-place. But the yacht did not cast anchor; her helm was put up, her boom went over, and she went away on another tack. He was glad of his dream, though it lasted but a moment, and when he looked up a great gull was watching him. The bird had come so near that he could see the small round head and the black eyes; as soon as he stirred it wheeled and floated away. Many other little adventures happened before the day ended. A rabbit crawled by him screaming, for he could run no longer, and lay waiting for the weasel that appeared out of the furze. What was to be done? Save it and let the weasel go supperless? At eight the moon rose over Tinnick, and it was a great sight to see the yellow mass rising above the faint shores; and while he stood watching the moon an idea occurred to him that held him breathless. His sister had written to him some days ago asking if he could recommend a music-mistress to her. It was through his sister that he might get Nora back to her country, and it was through his sister that he might make atonement for the wrong he had done. The letter must be carefully worded, for nuns understood so little, so estranged were they from the world. As for his sister Mary, she would not understand at all--she would oppose him; but Eliza was a practical woman, and he had confidence in her good sense. He entered the house, and, waving Catherine aside, who reminded him that he had had nothing to eat since his dinner the day before, he went to his writing-table and began his letter. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to the Mother Abbess, Tinnick Convent._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June 3_, 19--. 'MY DEAR ELIZA, 'I hope you will forgive me for having delayed so long to answer your letter, but I could not think at the moment of anybody whom I could recommend as music-mistress, and I laid the letter aside, hoping that an idea would come to me. Well, an idea has come to me. I do not think you will find--' The priest stopped, and after thinking a while he laid down his pen and got up. The sentence he had been about to write was, 'I do not think you will find anyone better than Miss Glynn.' But he would have to send Father O'Grady's letter to his sister, and even with Father O'Grady's letter and all that he might add of an explanation, she would hardly be able to understand; and Eliza might show the letter to Mary, who was prejudiced. Father Oliver walked up and down the room thinking.... A personal interview would be better than the letter, for in a personal interview he would be able to answer his sister's objections, and instead of the long letter he had intended to write he wrote a short note, adding that he had not seen them for a long time, and would drive over to-morrow afternoon. V The southern road was the shorter, but he wanted to see Moran and to hear when he proposed to begin to roof the abbey. Father Oliver thought, moreover, that he would like to see the abbey for a last time in its green mantle of centuries. The distance was much the same--a couple of miles shorter by the southern road, no doubt, but what are a couple of miles to an old roadster? Moreover, the horse would rest in Jimmy Maguire's stable whilst he and Moran rambled about the ruin. An hour's rest would compensate the horse for the two extra miles. He tapped the glass; there was no danger of rain. For thirty days there had been no change--only a few showers, just enough to keep the country going; and he fell asleep thinking of the drive round the lake from Garranard to Tinnick in the sunlight and from Tinnick to Garranard in the moonlight. He was out of bed an hour before his usual time, calling to Catherine for hot water. His shaving, always disagreeable, sometimes painful, was a joyous little labour on this day. Stropping his razor, he sang from sheer joy of living. Catherine had never seen him spring on the car with so light a step. And away went the old gray pulling at the bridle, little thinking of the twenty-five Irish miles that lay before him. The day was the same as yesterday, the meadows drying up for want of rain; and there was a thirsty chirruping of small birds in the hedgerows. Everywhere he saw rooks gaping on the low walls that divided the fields. The farmers were complaining; but they were always complaining--everyone was complaining. He had complained of the dilatoriness of the Board of Works, and now for the first time in his life he sympathized a little with the Board. If it had built the bridge he would not be enjoying this long drive; it would be built by-and-by; he couldn't feel as if he wished to be robbed of one half-hour of the long day in front of him; and he liked to think it would not end for him till nine o'clock. 'These summer days are endless,' he said. After passing the strait the lake widened out. On the side the priest was driving the shore was empty and barren. On the other side there were pleasant woods and interspaces and castles. Castle Carra appeared, a great ivy-grown ruin showing among thorn-bushes and ash-trees, at the end of a headland. In bygone times the castle must have extended to the water's edge, for on every side fragments of arches and old walls were discovered hidden away in the thickets. Father Oliver knew the headland well and every part of the old fortress. Many a time he had climbed up the bare wall of the banqueting-hall to where a breach revealed a secret staircase built between the walls, and followed the staircase to a long straight passage, and down another staircase, in the hope of finding matchlock pistols. Many a time he had wandered in the dungeons, and listened to old stories of oubliettes. The moat which once cut the neck of land was now dry and overgrown; the gateway remained, but it was sinking--the earth claimed it. There were the ruins of a great house a little way inland, to which no doubt the descendants of the chieftain retired on the decline of brigandage; and the rough hunting life of its semi-chieftains was figured by the gigantic stone fox on a pillar in the middle of the courtyard and the great hounds on either side of the gateway. Castle Carra must have been the strongest castle in the district of Tyrawley, and it was built maybe by the Welsh who invaded Ireland in the thirteenth century, perhaps by William Barrett himself, who built certainl y the castle on the island opposite to Father Oliver's house. William Fion (i.e., the Fair) Barrett landed somewhere on the west coast, and no doubt came up through the great gaps between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan--it was not likely that he la nded on the east coast; he could hardly have marched his horde across Ireland--and Father Oliver imagined the Welshmen standing on the very hill on which his house now stood, and Fion telling his followers to build a castle on each island. Patsy Murphy, w ho knew more about the history of the country than anybody, thought that Castle Carra was of later date, and spoke of the Stantons, a fierce tribe. Over yonder was the famous causeway, and the gross tragedy that was enacted there he yesterday heard from the wood-cutter, William's party of Welshmen were followed by other Welshmen--the Cusacks, the Petits, and the Brownes; and these in time fell out with the Barretts, and a great battle fought, the Battle of Moyne, in 1281, in which William Barrett was killed. But in spite of their defeat, the Barretts held the upper hand of the country for many a long year, and the priest began to smile, thinking of the odd story the old woodman had told him about the Barretts' steward, Sgnorach bhuid bhearrtha, 'saving your reverence's presence,' the old man said, and, unable to translate the words into English fit for the priest's ears, he explained that they meant a glutton and a lewd fellow. The Barretts sent Sgnorach bhuid bhearrtha to collect rents from the Lynotts, another group of Welshmen, but the Lynotts killed him and threw his body into a well, called ever afterwards Tobar na Sgornaighe (the Well of the Glutton), near the townland of Moygawnagh, Barony of Tyrawley. To avenge the murder of their steward, the Barretts assembled an armed force, and, having defeated the Lynotts and captured many of them, they offered their prisoners two forms of mutilation: they were either to be blinded or castrated. After taking counsel with their wise men, the Lynotts chose blindness; for blind men could have sons, and these would doubtless one day revenge the humiliation that was being passed upon them. A horrible story it was, for when their eyes were thrust out with needles they were led to a causeway, and those who crossed the stepping-stones without stumbling were taken back; and the priest thought of the assembled horde laughing as the poor blind men fell into the water. The story rambled on, the Lynotts plotting how they could be revenged on the Barretts, telling lamely but telling how the Lynotts, in the course of generations, came into their revenge. 'A badly told story,' said the priest, 'with one good incident in it,' and, instead of trying to remember how victory came to the Lynotts, Father Oli ver's eyes strayed over the landscape, taking pleasure in the play of light along sides and crests of the hills. The road followed the shore of the lake, sometimes turning inland to avoid a hill or a bit of bog, but returning back again to the shore, finding its way through the fields, if they could be called fields--a little grass and some hazel-bushes growing here and there between the rocks. Under a rocky headland, lying within embaying shores, was Church Island, some seven or eight acres, a handsome wooded island, the largest in the lake, with the ruins of a church hidden among the tall trees, only an arch of it remaining, but the paved path leading from the church to the hermit's cell could be followed. The hermit who used this paved path fourteen hundred years ago was a poet; and Father Oliver knew that Marban loved 'the shieling that no one knew save his God, the ash-tree on the hither side, the hazel-bush beyond it, its lintel of honeysuckle, the wood shedding its mast upon fat swine;' and on this sweet day he found it pleasanter to think of Ireland's hermits than of Ireland's savage chieftains always at war, striving against each other along the shores of this lake, and from island to island. His thoughts lingered in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the arts were fostered in monasteries--the arts of gold-work and illuminated missals--'Ireland's halcyon days,' he said; a deep peace brooded, and under the guidance of the monks Ireland was the centre of learning when England was in barbarism. The first renaissance was the Irish, centuries before a gleam showed in Italy or in France. But in the middle of the eighth century the Danes arrived to pillage the country, and no sooner were they driven out than the English came to continue the work of destruction, and never since has it ceased.' Father Oliver fell to thinking if God were reserving the bright destiny for Ireland which he withheld a thousand years ago, and looked out for the abbey that Roderick, King of Connaught, built in the twelfth century. It stood on a knoll, and in the distance, almost hidden in bulrushes, was the last arm of the lake. 'How admirable! how admirable!' he said. Kilronan Abbey seemed to bid him remember the things that he could never forget; and, touched by the beauty of the legended ruins, his doubts return ed to him regarding the right of the present to lay hands on these great wrecks of Ireland's past. He was no longer sure that he did not side with the Archbishop, who was against the restoration--for entirely insufficient reasons, it was true. 'Put a roof,' Father Oliver said, 'on the abbey, and it will look like any other church, and another link will be broken. "Which is the better--a great memory or some trifling comfort?"' A few moments after the car turned the corner and he caught sight of Father Moran, 'out for his morning's walk,' he said; and he compared Moran's walk up and down the highroad with his own rambles along the lake shores and through the pleasant woods of Carnecun. For seven years Father Oliver had walked up and down that road, for there was nowhere else for him to walk; he walked that road till he hated it, but he did not think that he had suffered from the loneliness of the parish as much as Moran. He had been happier than Moran in Bridget Clery's cottage--a great idea enabled him to forget every discomfort; and 'we are never lonely as long as our idea is with us,' he ejaculated. 'But Moran is a plain man, without ideas, enthusiasms, or exaltations. He does riot care for reading, or for a flower garden, only for drink. Drink gives him dreams, and man must dream,' he said. He knew that his curate was pledged to cure himself, and believed he was succeeding; but, all the same, it was terrible to think that the temptation might overpower him at any moment, and that he might st agger helpless through the village--a very shocking example to everybody. The people were prone enough in that direction, and for a priest to give scandal instead of setting a good example was about as bad as anything that could happen in the parish. But what was he to do? There was no hard-and-fast rule about anything, and Father Oliver felt that Moran must have his chance. 'I was beginning to think we were never going to see you again;' and Father Moran held out a long, hard hand to Father Oliver. 'You'll put up your horse? Christy, will you take his reverence's horse? You'll stay and have some dinner with me?' 'I can't stay more than half an hour. I'm on my way to Tinnick; I've business with my sister, and it will take me some time.' 'You have plenty of time.' 'No, I haven't? I ought to have taken the other road; I'm late as it is.' 'But you will come into the house, if only for a few minutes.' Father Oliver had taught Bridget Clery cleanliness; at least, he had persuaded her to keep the f owls out of the kitchen, and he had put a paling in front of the house and made a little garden--an unassuming one, it is true, but a pleasant spot of colour in the summer-time--and he wondered how it was that Father Moran was not ashamed of its neglected state, nor of the widow's kitchen. These things were, after all, immaterial. What was important was that he should find no faintest trace of whisky in Moran's room. It was a great relief to him not to notice any, and no doubt that was why Moran insisted on bringing him into the house. The specifications were a pretext. He had to glance at them, however. 'No doubt if the abbey is to be roofed at all the best roof is the one you propose.' 'Then you side with the Archbishop?' 'Perhaps I do in a way, but for different reasons. I know very well that the people won't kneel in the rain. Is it really true that he opposes the roofing of the abbey on account of the legend? I have heard the legend, but there are many variants. Let's go to the abbey and you'll tell the story on the way.' 'You see, he'll only allow a portion of the abbey to be roofed.' 'You don't mean that he is so senile and superstitious as that? Then the reason of his opposition really is that he believes his death to be implicit in the roofing of Kilronan.' 'Yes; he thinks that;' and the priests turned out of the main road. 'How beautiful it looks!' and Father Oliver stopped to admire. The abbey stood on one of the lower slopes, on a knoll overlooking rich water-meadows, formerly abbatial lands. 'The legend says that the abbey shall be roofed when a De Stanton is Abbot, and the McEvillys were originally De Stantons; they changed their name in the fifteenth century on account of a violation of sanctuary committed by them. A roof shall be put on those walls, the legend says, when a De Stanton is again Abbot of Kilronan, and the Abbot shall be slain on the highroad.' 'And to save himself from a violent death, he will only allow you to roof a part of the abbey. Now, what reason does he give for such an extraordinary decision?' 'Are Bishops ever expected to have reasons?' The priests laughed, and Father Oliver said: 'We might appeal to Rome.' 'A lot of good that would do us. Haven't we all heard the Archbishop say that any of his priests who appeals to Rome against him will get the worst of it?' 'I wonder that he dares to defy popular opinion in this way.' 'What popular opinion is there to defy? Wasn't Patsy Donovan saying to me only yesterday that the Archbishop was a brave man to be letting any roof at all on the abbey? And Patsy is the best-educated man in this part of the country.' 'People will believe anything.' 'Yes, indeed.' And the priests stopped at the grave of Seaghan na Soggarth, or 'John of the Priests,' and Father Oliver told Father Moran how a young priest, who had lost his way in the mountains, had fallen in with Seaghan na Soggarth. Seaghan offered to put him into the right road, but instead of doing so he led him to his house, and closed the door on him, and left him there tied hand and foot. Seaghan's sister, who still clung to religion, loosed the priest, and he fled, passing Seaghan, who was on his way to fetch the soldiers. Seaghan followed after, and on they went like hare and hound till they got to the abbey. There the priest, who could run no further, turned on his foe, and they fought until the priest got hold of Seaghan's knife and killed him with it. 'But you know the story. Why am I telling it to you?' 'I only know that the priest killed Seaghan. Is there any more of it?' 'Yes, there is more.' And Father Oliver went on to tell it, though he did not feel that Father Moran would be interested in the legend; he would not believe that it had been prophesied that an ash-tree should grow out of the buried head, and that one of the branches should take root and pierce Seaghan's heart. And he was right in suspecting his curate's lack of sympathy. Father Moran at once objected that the ash-tree had not yet sent down a branch to pierce the priest-killer's heart. 'Not yet; but this branch nearly touches the ground, and there's no saying that it won't take root in a few years.' 'But his heart is there no longer.' 'Well, no,' said Father Oliver, 'it isn't; but if one is to argue that way, no one would listen to a story at all.' Father Moran held his peace for a little while, and then he began talking about the penal times, telling how religion in Ireland was another form of love of country, and that, if Catholics were intolerant to every form of heresy, it was because they instinctively felt that the questioning of any dogma would mean some slight subsidence from the idea of nationality that held the people together. Like the ancient Jews, the Irish believed that the faith of their forefathers could bring them into their ultimate inheritance; this was why a proselytizer was hated so intensely. 'More opinions,' Father Oliver said to himself. 'I wonder he can't admire that ash-tree, and be interested in the story, which is quaint and interesting, without trying to draw an historical parallel between the Irish and the Jews. Anyhow, thinking is better than drinking,' and he jumped on his car. The last thing he heard was Moran's voice saying, 'He who betrays his religion betrays his country.' 'Confound the fellow, bothering me with his preaching on this fine summer's day! Much better if he did what he was told, and made up his mind to put the small green slates on the abbey, and not those coarse blue things which will make the abbey look like a common barn.' Then, shading his eyes with his hand, he peered through the sun haze, following the shapes of the fields. The corn was six inches high, and the potatoes were coming into blossom. True, there had been a scarcity of water, but they had had a good summer, thanks be to God, and he thought he had never seen the country looking so beautiful. And he loved this country, this poor Western plain with shapely mountains enclosing the horizon. Ponies were feeding between the whins, and they raised their shaggy heads to watch the car passing. In the distance cattle were grazing, whisking the flies away. How beautiful was everything--the white clouds hanging in the blue sky, and the trees! There were some trees, but not many--only a few pines. He caught glimpses of the lake through the stems; tears rose to his eyes, and he attributed his happiness to his native land and to the thought that he was living in it. Only a few days ago he wished to leave it--no, not for ever, but for a time; and as his old car jogged through the ruts he wondered how it was that he had ever wished to leave Ireland, even for a single minute. 'Now, Christy, which do you reckon to be the shorter road?' 'The shorter road, your reverence, is the Joycetown road, but I doubt if we can get the car through it.' 'How is that?' And the boy answered that since the Big House had been burnt the road hadn't been kept in repair. 'But,' said Father Oliver, 'the Big House was burnt seventy years ago.' 'Well, your reverence, you see, it was a good road then, but the last time I heard of a car going that way was last February.' 'And if a car got through in February, why can't we get through on the first of June?' 'Well, your reverence, there was the storm, and I do be hearing that the trees that fell across the road then haven't been removed yet.' 'I think we might try the road, for all that, for though if we have to walk the greater part of it, there will be a saving in the end.' 'That's true, your reverence, if we can get the car through; but if we can't we may have to come all the way back again.' 'Well, Christy, we'll have to risk that. Now, will you be turning the horse up the road? And I'll stop at the Big House--I've never been inside it. I'd like to see what it is like.' Joycetown House was the last link between the present time and the past. In the beginning of the century a duellist lived there; the terror of the countryside he, for he was never known to miss his man. For the slightest offence, real or imaginary, he sent seconds demanding redress. No more than his ancestors, who had doubtless lived on the islands, in Castle Island and Castle Hag, could he live without fighting. But when he completed his round dozen, a priest said, 'If we don't put a stop to his fighting, there won't be a gentleman left in the country,' and wrote to him to that effect. The story runs how Joyce, knowing the feeling of the country was against him, tried to keep the peace. But the blood fever came on him again, and he called out his nearest neighbour, Browne of the Neale, the only friend he had in the world. Browne lived at Neale House, just over the border, in County Galway, so the gentlemen arranged to fight in a certain field near the mearing. It was Browne of Neale who was the first to arrive. Joyce, having to come a dozen miles, was a few minutes late. As soon as his gig was seen, the people, who were in hiding, came out, and they put themselves between him and Browne, telling him up to his face there was to be no fighting that day! And the priest, who was at the head of them, said the same; but Joyce, who knew his countrymen, paid no heed, but stood up in the gig, and, looking round him, said, 'Now, boys, which is it to be? The Mayo cock or the Galway cock?' No sooner did he speak these words than they began to cheer him, and in spite of all the priest could say they carried him into the field in which he shot Browne of the Neale. 'A queer people, the queerest in the world,' Father Oliver thought, as he pulled a thorn-bush out of the doorway and stood looking round. There were some rough chimney-pieces high up in the grass-grown walls, but beyond these really nothing to be seen, and he wandered out seeking traces of terraces along the hillside. On meeting a countryman out with his dogs he tried to inquire about the state of the road. 'I wouldn't be saying, your reverence, that you mightn't get the car through by keeping close to the wall; but Christy mustn't let the horse out of a walk.' The countryman said he would go a piece of the road with them, and tell Christy the spots he'd have to look out for. 'But your work?' 'There's no work doing now to speak of, your reverence.' The three of them together just managed to remove a fallen tree, which seemed the most serious obstacle, and the countryman said once they were over the top of the hill they would be all right; the road wasn't so bad after that. Half a mile further on Father Oliver found himself in sight of the main road, and of the cottage that his sister Mary had lived in before she joined Eliza in the convent. To have persuaded Mary to take this step proved Eliza's superiority more completely than anything else she had done, so Father Oliver often said, adding that he didn't know what mightn't have happened to poor Mary if she had remained in the world. For her life up to the time she entered the convent was little else than a series of failures. She was a shop-assistant, but standing behind the counter gave her varicose veins; and she went to Dublin as nursery-governess. Father Oliver had heard of musical studies: she used to play the guitar. But the instrument was not popular in Dublin, so she gave it up, and returned to Tinnick with the intention of starting a rabbit and poultry farm. Who put this idea into her head was her secret, and when he received Eliza's letter telling him of this last experiment, he remembered throwing up his hands. Of course, it could only end in failure, in a loss of money; and when he read that she was going to take the pretty cottage on the road to Tinnick, he had become suddenly sad. 'Why should she have selected that cottage, the only pretty one in the county? Wouldn't any other do just as well for her foolish experiment?' VI The flowered cottage on the road to Tinnick stood in the midst of trees, on a knoll some few feet above the roadway, and Father Oliver, when he was a boy, often walked out by himself from Tinnick to see the hollyhocks and the sunflowers; they overtopped the palings, the sunflowers looking like saucy country girls and the hollyhocks like grand ladies, delicate and refined, in pink muslin dresses. He used to stand by the gate looking into the garden, delighted by its luxuriance, for there were clumps of sweet pea and beds of red carnations and roses everywhere, and he always remembered the violets and pansies he saw before he went away to Maynooth. He never remembered seeing the garden in bloom again. He was seven years at Maynooth, and when he came home for his vacations it was too late or too early in the season. He was interested in other things; and during his curacy at Kilronan he rarely went to Tinnick, and when he did, he took the other road, so that he might see Father Peter. He was practically certain that the last time he saw the garden in bloom was just before he went to Maynooth. However this might be, it was certain he would never see it in bloom again. Mary had left the cottage a ruin, and it was sad to think of the clean thick thatch and the whitewashed walls covered with creeper and China roses, for now the thatch was black and mouldy; and of all the flowers only a few stocks survived; the rose-trees were gone--the rabbits had eaten them. Weeds overtopped the currant and gooseberry bushes; here and there was a trace of box edging. 'But soon,' he said, 'all traces will be gone, the roof will fall in, and the garden will become part of the waste.' His eyes roved over the country into which he was going--almost a waste; a meagre black soil, with here and there a thorn-bush and a peasant's cabin. Father Oliver knew every potato field and every wood, and he waited for the elms that lined the roadway a mile ahead of him, a long, pleasant avenue that he knew well, showing above the high wall that encircled a nobleman's domain. Somewhere in the middle of that park was a great white house with pillars, and the story he had heard from his mother, and that roused his childish imaginations, was that Lord Carra was hated by the town of Tinnick, for he cared nothing for Ireland and was said to be a man of loose living, in love with his friend's wife, who came to Tinnick for visits, sometimes with, sometimes without, her husband. It may have been his Lordship's absenteeism, as well as the scandal the lady gave, that had prompted a priest to speak against Lord Carra from the altar, if not directly, indirectly. 'Both are among the gone,' Father Oliver said to himself. 'No one speaks of them now; myself hasn't given them a thought this many a year--' His memories broke off suddenly, for a tree had fallen, carrying a large portion of the wall with it, but without revealing the house, only a wooded prospect through which a river glided. 'The Lord's mistress must have walked many a time by the banks of that river,' he said. But why was he thinking of her again? Was it the ugly cottage that put thoughts of her into his mind? for she had done nothing to alleviate the lives of the poor, who lived without cleanliness and without light, like animals in a den. Or did his thoughts run on that woman, whom he had never seen, because Tinnick was against her and the priest had spoken slightingly of the friends that Lord Carra brought from England? The cause of his thoughts might be that he was going to offer Nora Glynn to his sister as music-mistress. But what connection between Nora Glynn and this dead woman? None. But he was going to propose Nora Glynn to Eliza, and the best line of argument would be that Nora would cost less than anyone as highly qualified as she. Nuns were always anxious to get things cheap, but he must not let them get Nora too cheap. But the question of price wouldn't arise between him and Eliza. Eliza would see that the wrong he did to Nora was preying on his conscience, and that he'd never be happy until he had made atonement--that was the light in which she would view the matter, so it would be better to let things take their natural course and to avoid making plans. The more he thought of what he should say to Eliza, the less likely was he to speak effectively; and feeling that he had better rely on the inspiration of the moment, he sought distraction from his errand by noting the beauty of the hillside. He had always liked the way the road dipped and then ascended steeply to the principal street in the town. There were some pretty houses in the dip--houses with narrow doorways and long windows, built, no doubt, in the beginning of the nineteenth century--and his ambition was once to live in one of these houses. The bridge was an eighteenth-century bridge, with a foaming weir on the left, and on the right there was a sentimental walk under linden-trees, and there were usually some boys seated on the parapet fishing. He would have liked to stop the car, so remote did the ruined mills seem--so like things of long ago that time had mercifully weaned from the stress and struggle of life. At the corner of the main street was the house in which he was born. The business had passed into other hands, but the old name--'Gogarty's Drapery Stores'--remained. Across the way were the butcher and the grocer, and a little higher up the inn at which the commercial travellers lodged. He recalled their numerous leather trunks, and for a moment stood a child again, seeing them drive away on post-cars. A few more shops had been added--very few--and then the town dwindled quickly, slated roofs giving way to thatched cottages, and of the same miserable kind that was wont to provoke his antipathy when he was a boy. This sinful dislike of poverty he overcame in early manhood. A high religious enthusiasm enabled him to overcome it, but his instinctive dislike of the lowly life--intellectual lowliness as well as physical--gathered within these cottages, seemed to have returned again. He asked himself if he were wanting in natural compassion, and if all that he had of goodness in him were a debt he owed to the Church. It was in patience rather than in pity maybe that he was lacking; and pursuing this idea, he recalled the hopes he entertained when he railed off a strip of ground in front of Bridget Clery's house. But that strip of garden had inspired no spirit of emulation. Eliza was perhaps more patient than he, and he began to wonder if she had any definite aim in view, and if the spectacle of the convent, with its show of nuns walking under the trees, would eventually awaken some desire of refinement in the people, if the money their farms now yielded would produce some sort of improvement in their cottages, the removal of those dreadfully heavy smells, and a longing for colour that would find expression in the planting of flowers. They gave their money willingly enough for the adornment of their chapel, for stained glass, incense, candles, and for music, and were it not for the services of the Church he didn't know into what barbarism the people mightn't have fallen: the tones of the organ sustaining clear voices of nuns singing a Mass by Mozart must sooner or later inspire belief in the friendliness of pure air and the beauty of flowers. Flowers are the only beautiful things within the reach of these poor people. Roses all may have, and it was pleasant to think that there is nothing more entirely natural or charming in the life of man than his love of flowers: it preceded his love of music; no doubt an appreciation of something better in the way of art than a jig played on the pipes would follow close on the purification of the home. Nora Glynn was beautiful, and her personality was winning and charming, her playing delightful, and her singing might have inspired the people to cultivate beauty. But she was going to the convent. The convent had gotten her. It was a pity. Mrs. O'Mara's scandalous stories, insinuating lies, had angered him till he could bear with her no longer, and he had put her out the door. He didn't believe that Eliza had ever said she could give Nora more than she was earning in Garranard. It mattered very little if she had, for it had so fallen out that she was going to get her. He begrudged them Nora. But Eliza was going to get her, and he'd have to make the best terms he could. But he could not constrain his thoughts to the present moment. They would go back to the fateful afternoon when he ran across the fields to ask Nora if what Mrs. O'Mara had said of her were true. If he had only waited! If she had come to him to confession on Saturday, as he expected she would! If something had prevented him from preaching on Sunday! A bad cold might have prevented him from speaking, and she might have gone away for a while, and, when her baby was born, she might have come back. It could have been easily arranged. But fate had ordered her life otherwise, and here he was in the Tinnick Convent, hoping to make her some poor amends for the wrong he had done her. Would Eliza help him?--that was the question he asked himself as he crossed the beeswaxed floor and stood looking at the late afternoon sunlight glancing through the trees, falling across the green sward. 'How do you do, Oliver?' His face lighted up, but it changed expression and became gray again. He had expected to see Eliza, tall and thin, with yellow eyebrows and pale eyes. Hers was a good, clearly-cut face, like his own, whereas Mary's was quite different. Yet a family likeness stared through Mary's heavy white face. Her eyes were smaller than his, and she already began to raise them and lower them, and to look at him askance, in just the way he hated. Somehow or other she always contrived to make him feel uncomfortable, and the present occasion was no exception. She was already reproving him, hoping he was not disappointed at seeing her, and he had to explain that he expected to see Eliza, and that was why he looked surprised. She must not confuse surprise with disappointment. He was very glad to see her. 'I know I am not as interesting as Eliza,' she began, 'but I thought you might like to see me, and if I hadn't come at once I shouldn't have had an opportunity of seeing you alone.' 'She has something to confide,' Father Oliver said to himself, and he hoped that her confidences might be cut short by the timely arrival of Eliza. 'Eliza is engaged at present. She told Sister Agatha to tell you that she would be with you presently. I met Sister Agatha in the passage, and said I would take the message myself. I suppose I oughtn't to have done so, but if I hadn't I shouldn't have had an opportunity of speaking with you.' 'Why is that?' 'I don't think she likes me to see you alone.' 'My dear Mary!' 'You don't know, Oliver, what it is to live in a convent, and your own sister the head of it.' 'I should have thought, Mary, that it was especially pleasant, and that you were especially fortunate. And as for thinking that Eliza is not wishing you to see me alone, I am sure--' 'You are sure I'm mistaken.' 'What reason could she have?' 'Eliza doesn't wish the affairs of the convent discussed. You know, I suppose, that the building of the new wing has put a burden of debt on the convent.' 'I know that; so why should Eliza--' 'Eliza tries to prevent my seeing any of the visitors. Now, do you think that quite right and fair towards one's sister?' Father Oliver tried to prevent himself from smiling, but he sympathized so entirely with Eliza's efforts to prevent Mary from discussing the affairs of the convent that he could hardly keep down the smile that rose to his lips. He could see Eliza's annoyance on coming into the parlour and finding Mary detailing all the gossip and confiding her own special woes, for the most part imaginary, to a visitor. Nor would Mary refrain from touching on the Reverend Mother's shortcomings. He was so much amused that he might have smiled if it had not suddenly come to his mind that Mary might leave the convent and insist on living with him; and a little scared he began to think of what he could say to pacify her, remembering in the midst of his confusion and embarrassment that Mary was professed last year, and therefore could not leave the convent; and this knowledge filled him with such joy that he could not keep back the words, but must remind his sister that she had had ample opportunity of considering if she were suited to the religious life. 'You see, Mary, you should have thought of all this before you were professed.' 'I shan't take my final vows till next year.' 'But, my dear Mary, once a woman has taken the black veil ... it is the same thing, you know.' 'Not quite, otherwise there would be no meaning in the delay.' 'You don't mean to say that you're thinking of leaving the convent, Mary?' 'Not exactly, but it is very hard on me, Oliver. I was thinking of writing to you, but I hoped that you would come to see us. You have been a long time now without coming.' 'Well, Mary--' 'Eliza loves ruling everybody, and just because I am her sister she is harder on me than anyone else. Only the other day she was furious with me because I stopped at confession a few minutes longer than usual. "I think," she said, "you might spare Father Higgins your silly scruples." Now, how is one to stop in a convent if one's own sister interferes in one's confessions?' 'Well, Mary, what are you thinking of doing?' 'There are some French nuns who have just come over and want to open a school, and are looking for Irish subjects. I was thinking they'd like to have me. You see, I wouldn't have to go through the novitiate again, for they want an experienced person to teach them English and to mind the school for them. It is really a mistake to be under one's own sister.' At that moment the door opened and Eliza came in, apologizing for having kept her brother so long waiting. 'You see, my dear Oliver, I've had two mothers here this morning, and you know what parents are. I suppose Mary has told you about our difficulties. Now, do you mean to say that you have found a person who will suit us?... It is really very kind of you.' 'I can't say for certain, Eliza. Of course, it is difficult for me to know exactly what you want, but, so far as I know, I think the person I have in my mind will suit you.' 'But has she a diploma from the Academy? We must have a certificate.' 'I think she'll suit you, but we'll talk about her presently. Don't you think we might go into the garden?' 'Yes, it will be pleasanter in the garden. And you, Mary--you've had your little chat with Oliver.' 'I was just going, Eliza. If I'd known that Oliver wanted to speak privately to you, I'd have gone sooner.' 'No, no, I assure you, Mary.' Mary held out her hand to her brother, saying: 'I suppose I shall not see you again, unless, perhaps, you're stopping the night with Father Higgins. It would be nice if you could do that. You could say Mass for us in the morning.' Father Oliver shook his head. 'I'm afraid I must get back to-night.' 'Well, then, good-bye.' And Mary went out of the room regretfully, like one who knows that the moment her back is turned all her faults will become the subject of conversation. 'I hear from Mary that some French nuns are coming over, and want to open a school. I hope that won't interfere with yours, Eliza; you spent a great deal of money upon the new wing.' 'It will interfere very much indeed; but I'm trying to get some of the nuns to come here, and I hope the Bishop will not permit a new foundation. It's very hard upon us Irish women if we are to be eaten out of house and home by pious foreigners. I'm in correspondence with the Bishop about it. As for Mary--' 'You surely don't think she's going to leave?' 'No, I don't suppose she'll leave; it would be easier for me if she did, but it would give rise to any amount of talk. And where would she go if she did leave, unless she lived with you?' 'My house is too small; besides, she didn't speak of leaving, only that she hadn't yet taken her final vows. I explained that no one will distinguish between the black veil and final vows. Am I not right?' 'I think those vows will take a great weight off your mind, Oliver. I wish I could say as much for myself.' The Reverend Mother opened a glass door, and brother and sister stood for some time admiring the flower vases that lined the terrace. 'I can't get her to water the geraniums.' 'If you'll tell me where I can get a can--' 'You'll excuse me, Reverend Mother.' It was the Sister in charge of the laundry, and, seeing her crippled arm, Father Oliver remembered that her dress had become entangled in the machinery. He didn't know, however, that the fault lay with Mary, who was told off to watch the machinery and to stop it instantly in case of necessity. 'She can't keep her attention fixed on anything, not even on her prayers, and what she calls piety I should call idleness. It's terrible to have to do with stupid women, and the convent is so full of them that I often wonder what is the good of having a convent at all.' 'But, Eliza, you don't regret--' 'No, of course I don't regret. I should do just the same again. But don't let us waste our time talking about vocations. I hear enough of that here. I want you to tell me about the music-mistress; that's what interests me.' And when Father Oliver had told her the whole story and showed her Father O'Grady's letter, she said: 'You know I always thought you were a little hard on Miss Glynn. Father O'Grady's letter convinces me that you were.' 'My dear Eliza, I don't want advice; I've suffered enough.' 'Oliver dear, forgive me.' And the nun put out her hand to detain him. 'Well, don't say again, Eliza, that you always thought. It's irritating, and it does no good.' 'Her story is known, but she could live in the convent; that would shelter her from any sort of criticism. I don't see why she shouldn't take the habit of one of the postulants, but--' The priest waited for his sister to speak, and after waiting a little while he asked her what she was going to say. 'I was going to ask you,' said the nun, waking from her reverie, 'if you have written to Miss Glynn.' 'Yes, I wrote to her.' 'And she's willing to come back?' 'I haven't spoken to her about that. It didn't occur to me until afterwards, but I can write at once if you consent.' 'I may be wrong, Oliver, but I don't think she'll care to leave London and come back here, where she is known.' 'But, Eliza, a girl likes to live in her own country. Mind you, I am responsible. I drove her out of her country among strangers. She's living among Protestants.' 'I don't think that will trouble her very much.' 'I don't know why you say that, Eliza. Do you think that a woman cannot repent? that because she happens to have sinned once--' 'No; I suppose there are repentant sinners, but I think we most often go on as we begin. Now, you see, Father O'Grady says that she's getting on very well in London, and we like to live among those who appreciate us.' 'Well, Eliza, of course, if you start with the theory that no one can repent--' 'I didn't say that, Oliver. But she wouldn't tell you who the man was. She seems a person of character--I mean, she doesn't seem to be lacking in strength of character.' 'She's certainly a most excellent musician. You'll find no one like her, and you may be able to get her very cheap. And if your school doesn't pay--' A shade passed across the Reverend Mother's face. 'There's no doubt that the new wing has cost us a great deal of money.' 'Then there are the French nuns--' 'My dear Oliver, if you wish me to engage Miss Glynn as music-mistress I'll do so. There's no use speaking to me about the French nuns. I'll engage her because you ask me, but I cannot pay her as much as those who have diplomas. How much do you think she'd come for?' 'I don't know what she's earning in London, but I suppose you can pay her an average wage. You could pay her according to results.' 'What you say is quite true, Oliver.' The priest and the nun continued their walk up and down in front of the unfinished building. 'But you don't know, Oliver, if she's willing to leave London. You'll have to write and find out.' 'Very well, Eliza, I'll write. You'll be able to offer her as much as she was earning in my parish as schoolmistress. That's fifty pounds a year.' 'It's more than we can afford, Oliver, but if you wish it.' 'I do wish it, Eliza. Thank you. You've taken a great weight off my mind.' They passed into the house, and, stopping in front of the writing-table, the nun looked to see if there were paper and envelopes in the blotter. 'You'll find everything you want, even sealing-wax,' she said. 'Now I'll leave you.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'TINNICK CONVENT, '_June 4, 19--_. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I take it for granted that you received the letter I sent you two days ago, telling you how much I appreciated your kindness in asking Father O'Grady to write to tell me that you were quite safe and getting on well. Since writing that letter I feel more keenly than ever that I owe you reparation, for it was through an error of judgment on my part that you are now an exile from your own country. Everyone is agreed that I have committed an error of judgment. My sister, the Mother Superior of this convent from where I am writing, is of that opinion. The moment I mentioned your name she began, "I always thought that--" and I begged of her to spare me advice on the subject, saying that it was not for advice that I came to her, but to ask her to help me to make atonement, which she could do by engaging you to teach music in her convent. You see, I had heard that my sister was in a difficulty. The new wing is nearly completed, and she could get the best families in Ireland to send their daughters to be educated in her convent if she could provide sufficient musical instruction. I thought you might like to live in your own country, now that your thoughts have again turned towards God, and I can imagine the unpleasantness it must be to a Catholic to live in a Protestant country. I told my sister this, and she answered that if you wish to come over here, and if Father O'Grady advises it, she will take you as music-mistress. You will live in the convent. You can enter it, if you wish, as a postulant, or if you should remain an extern teacher the salary they will give you will be fifty pounds a year. I know you can make more than that in London, but you can live more cheaply here, and you will be among friends. 'I shall be glad to hear from you on this subject. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY, P.P.' When he looked up, the darkness under the trees surprised him, and the geraniums so faintly red on the terrace, and his sister passing up and down like a phantom. 'Eliza.' He heard her beads drop, and out of a loose sleeve a slim hand took the letter. There was not enough light in the room to read by, and she remained outside, leaning against the glass door. 'You haven't written exactly the letter I should have written, but, then, we're quite different. I should have written a cold and more business-like letter.' His face changed expression, and she added: 'I'm sorry if I'm unsympathetic, Oliver.' The touch of her hand and the look in her eyes surprised him, for Eliza was not demonstrative, and he wondered what had called forth this sudden betrayal of feeling. He expected her to ask him not to send the letter, but instead of doing so she said: 'If the letter were written otherwise it wouldn't be like yourself, Oliver. Send it, and if she leaves London and comes back here, I will think better of her. It will be proof that she has repented. I see you'll not have an easy mind until you make atonement. You exaggerate, I think; but everyone for himself in a matter like this.' 'Thank you, Eliza. You always understand.' 'Not always. I failed to understand when you wanted to set up a hermitage on Castle Island.' 'Yes, you did; you have better sense than I. Yet I feel we are more alike than the others. You have counted for a great deal in my life, Eliza. Do you remember saying that you intended to be Reverend Mother? And now you are Reverend Mother.' 'I don't think I said "I intended." But I felt that if I became a nun, one day or another I should be Reverend Mother; one knows most often than not what is going to happen--one's own fate, I mean.' 'I wonder if Mary knows?' 'If she does, I wish she'd tell us.' 'We'll have time to walk round the garden once more. You have no idea what a pleasure it is for me to see you--to talk with you like this.' And, talking of Mary, they walked slowly, forgetful of everything but each other. A bell rang. 'I must be going; it will be late before I get home.' 'Which way are you going? Round by Kilronan or across the Bridge of Keel?' 'I came by Kilronan. I think I'll take the other way. There will be a moon to-night.' Brother and sister entered the convent. 'You'll enjoy the drive?' 'Yes.' And he fell to thinking of the drive home by the southern road, the mountains unfolding their many aspects in the gray moonlight, and melting away in misty perspectives. VII _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '4, WILSON STREET, LONDON, '_June_ 8, 19--, 'FATHER GOGARTY, 'I did not answer your first letter because the letters that came into my mind to write, however they might begin, soon turned to bitterness, and I felt that writing bitter letters would not help me to forget the past. But your second letter with its proposal that I should return to Ireland to teach music in a convent school forces me to break silence, and it makes me regret that I gave Father O'Grady permission to write to you; he asked me so often, and his kindness is so winning, that I could not refuse him anything. He said you would certainly have begun to see that you had done me a wrong, and I often answered that I saw no reason why I should trouble to soothe your conscience. I do not wish to return to Ireland; I am, as Father O'Grady told you, earning my own living, my work interests me, and very soon I shall have forgotten Ireland. That is the best thing that can happen, that I should forget Ireland, and that you should forget the wrong you did me. Put the whole thing, and me, out of your mind; and now, good-bye, Father Gogarty. 'NORA GLYNN.' 'Good heavens! how she hates me, and she'll hate me till her dying day. She'll never forget. And this is the end of it, a bitter, unforgiving letter.' He sat down to think, and it seemed to him that she wouldn't have written this letter if she had known the agony of mind he had been through. But of this he wasn't sure. No, no; he could not believe her spiteful. And he walked up and down the room, trying to quell the bitterness rising up within him. No other priest would have taken the trouble; they would have just forgotten all about it, and gone about congratulating themselves on their wise administration. But he had acted rightly, Father O'Grady had approved of what he had done; and this was his reward. She'll never come back, and will never forgive him; and ever since writing to her he had indulged in dreams of her return to Ireland, thinking how pleasant it would be to go down to the lake in the mornings, and stand at the end of the sandy spit looking across the lake towards Tinnick, full of the thought that she was there with his sisters earning her living. She wouldn't be in his parish, but they'd have been friends, neighbours, and he'd have accepted the loss of his organist as his punishment. Eva Maguire was no good; there would never be any music worth listening to in his parish again. Such sternness as her letter betrayed was not characteristic of her; she didn't understand, and never would. Catherine's step awoke him; the awaking was painful, and he couldn't collect his thoughts enough to answer Catherine; and feeling that he must appear to her daft, he tried to speak, but his speech was only babble. 'You haven't read your other letter, your reverence.' He recognized the handwriting; it was from Father O'Grady. _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_June_ 8, 19--. 'MY DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I was very glad to hear that Miss Glynn told her story truthfully; for if she exaggerated or indulged in equivocation, it would be a great disappointment to me and to her friends, and would put me in a very difficult position, for I should have to tell certain friends of mine, to whom I recommended her, that she was not all that we imagined her to be. But all's well that ends well; and you will be glad to hear that I have appointed her organist in my church. It remains, therefore, only for me to thank you for your manly letter, acknowledging the mistake you have made. 'I can imagine the anxiety it must have caused you, and the great relief it must have been to you to get my letter. Although Miss Glynn spoke with bitterness, she did not try to persuade me that you were naturally hard-hearted or cruel. The impression that her story left on my mind was that your allusions to her in your sermon were unpremeditated. Your letter is proof that I was not mistaken, and I am sure the lesson you have received will bear fruit. I trust that you will use your influence to restrain other priests from similar violence. It is only by gentleness and kindness that we can do good. I shall be glad to see you if you ever come to London. 'I am, sir, 'Very sincerely yours, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' 'All's well that ends well. So that's how he views it! A different point of view.' And feeling that he was betraying himself to Catherine, he put both letters into his pocket and went out of the house. But he had not gone many yards when he met a parishioner with a long story to tell, happily not a sick call, only a dispute about land. So he invented an excuse postponing his intervention until the morrow, and when he returned home tired with roaming, he stopped on his door-step. 'The matter is over now, her letter is final,' he said. But he awoke in a different mood next morning; everything appeared to him in a different light, and he wondered, surprised to find that he could forget so easily; and taking her letter out of his pocket, he read it again. 'It's a hard letter, but she's a wise woman. Much better for us both to forget each other. "Good-bye, Father Gogarty," she said; "Good-bye, Nora Glynn," say I.' And he walked about his garden tending his flowers, wondering at his light-heartedness. She thought of her own interests, and would get on very well in London, and Father O'Grady had been lucky too. Nora was an excellent organist. But if he went to London he would meet her. A meeting could hardly be avoided--and after that letter! Perhaps it would be wiser if he didn't go to London. What excuse? O'Grady would write again. He had been so kind. In any case he must answer his letter, and that was vexatious. But was he obliged to answer it? O'Grady wouldn't misunderstand his silence. But there had been misunderstandings enough; and before he had walked the garden's length half a dozen conclusive reasons for writing occurred to him. First of all Father O'Grady's kindness in writing to ask him to stay with him, added to which the fact that Nora would, of course, tell Father O'Grady she had been invited to teach in the convent; her vanity would certainly urge her to do this, and Heaven only knows what account she would give of his proposal. There would be his letter, but she mightn't show it. So perhaps on the whole it would be better that he should write telling O'Grady what had happened. And after his dinner as he sat thinking, a letter came into his mind; the first sentences formulated themselves so suddenly that he was compelled to go to his writing-table. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O'Grady._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 12, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER O'GRADY, 'I enclose a letter which I received three days ago from Miss Nora Glynn, and I think you will agree with me that the letter is a harsh one, and that, all things considered, it would have been better if she had stinted herself to saying that I had committed an error of judgment which she forgave. She did not, however, choose to do this. As regards my sister's invitation to her to come over here to teach, she was, of course, quite right to consider her own interests. She can make more money in London than she could in Ireland. I forgot that she couldn't bring her baby with her, remembering only that my eldest sister is Mother Abbess in the Tinnick Convent--a very superior woman, if I may venture to praise my own sister. The convent was very poor at one time, but she has made the school a success, and, hearing that she wanted someone who would teach music and singing, I proposed to her that she should engage Miss Glynn, with whose story she was already acquainted. She did not think that Miss Glynn would return to Ireland; and in this opinion she showed her good judgment. She was always a wonderful judge of character. But she could see that I was anxious to atone for any wrong that I might have done Miss Glynn, and after some hesitation she consented, saying: "Well, Oliver, if you wish it." 'Miss Glynn did not accept the proposal, and I suppose that the episode now ends so far as I am concerned. She has fallen into good hands; she is making her living, thanks to your kindness. But I dare not think what might not have happened if she had not met you. Perhaps when you have time you will write again; I shall be glad to hear if she succeeds in improving your choir. My conscience is now at rest; there is a term, though it may not be at the parish boundary, when our responsibility ceases. 'Thanking you again, and hoping one of these days to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, 'I am very truly yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_June_ 18, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'Thank you for sending me Miss Glynn's letter, and I agree with you when you describe it as harsh; but I understand it in a way. Miss Glynn came over to London almost penniless, and expecting the birth of her illegitimate child. She suffered all that a woman suffers in such circumstances. I do not want to harass you unnecessarily by going over it all again, but I do wish you to forgive her somewhat intemperate letter. I'll speak to her about it, and I am sure she will write to you in a more kindly spirit later on; meanwhile, rest assured that she is doing well, and not forgetful of the past. I shall try to keep a watchful eye over her, seeing that she attends to her duties every month; there is no better safeguard. But in truth I have no fear for her, and am unable to understand how she could have been guilty of so grave a sin, especially in Ireland. She seems here most circumspect, even strict, in her manner. She is an excellent musician, and has improved my choir. I have been tempted to comply with her request and spend some more money upon the singing.... 'While writing these lines I was interrupted. My servant brought me a letter from Miss Glynn, telling me that a great chance had come her way. It appears that Mr. Walter Poole, the father of one of her pupils, has offered her the post of secretaryship, and she would like to put into practice the shorthand and typewriting that she has been learning for the last six months. Her duties, she says, will be of a twofold nature: she will help Mr. Poole with his literary work and she will also give music lessons to his daughter Edith. Mr. Poole lives in Berkshire, and wants her to come down at once, which means she will have to leave me in the lurch. "You will be without an organist," she writes, "and will have to put up with Miss Ellen McGowan until you can get a better. She may improve--I hope and think she will; and I'm sorry to give trouble to one who has been so kind to me, but, you see, I have a child to look after, and it is difficult to make both ends meet on less than three pounds a week. More money I cannot hope to earn in my present circumstances; I am therefore going down to Berkshire to-morrow, so I shall not see you again for some time. Write and tell me you are not angry with me." 'On receiving this letter, I went round to Miss Glynn's lodgings, and found her in the midst of her packing. We talked a long while, and very often it seemed to me that I was going to persuade her, but when it came to the point she shook her head. Offer her more money I could not, but I promised to raise her wages to two pounds a week next year if it were possible to do so. I don't think it is the money; I think it is change that tempts her. Well, it tempts us all, and though I am much disappointed at losing her, I cannot be angry with her, for I cannot forget that I often want change myself, and the longing to get out of London is sometimes almost irresistible. I do not know your part of the country, but I do know what an Irish lake is like, and I often long to see one again. And very often, I suppose, you would wish to exchange the romantic solitude of your parish for the hurly-burly of a town, and for its thick, impure air you would be willing--for a time only, of course--to change the breezes of your mountain-tops. 'Very truly yours, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O'Grady._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 22, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER O'GRADY, 'No sooner had I begun to feel easier in my conscience and to dream that my responsibilities were at an end than your letter comes, and I am thrown back into all my late anxieties regarding Nora Glynn's future, for which I am and shall always be responsible. 'It was my words that drove her out of Ireland into a great English city in which some dreadful fate of misery and death might have befallen her if you had not met her. But God is good, and he sent you to her, and everything seems to have happened for the best. She was in your hands, and I felt safe. But now she has taken her life into her own hands again, thinking she can manage it without anybody's help! 'The story you tell seems simple enough, but it doesn't sound all right. Why should she go away to Berkshire to help Mr. Walter Poole with his literature without giving you longer notice? It seems strange to write to one who has taken all the trouble you have to find her work--"I have discovered a post that suits me better and am going away to-morrow." Of course she has her child to think of. But have you made inquiries? I suppose you must have done. You would not let her go away to a man of whom you know nothing. She says that he is the father of one of her pupils. But she doesn't know him, yet she is going to live in his house to help him with his literature. Have you inquired, dear Father O'Grady, what this man's writings are, if he is a Catholic or a Protestant? I should not like Miss Nora Glynn to go into a Protestant household, where she would hear words of disrespect for the religion she has been brought up in. 'As I write I ask myself if there is a Catholic chapel within walking distance; and if there isn't, will he undertake to send her to Mass every Sunday? I hope you have made all these inquiries, and if you have not made them, will you make them at once and write to me and relieve my anxiety? You are aware of the responsibilities I have incurred and will appreciate the anxiety that I feel. 'Yours very sincerely, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' It seemed to Father Oliver so necessary that Father O'Grady should get his letter as soon as possible that he walked to Bohola; but soon after dropping the letter in the box he began to think that he might have written more judiciously, and on his way home he remembered that he had told Father O'Grady, and very explicitly, that he should have made inquiries regarding Mr. Walter Poole's literature before he allowed Nora Glynn to go down to Berkshire to help him with his literary work. Of course he hoped, and it was only natural that he should hope, that Father O'Grady had made all reasonable inquiries; but it seemed to him now that he had expressed himself somewhat peremptorily. Father O'Grady was an old man--how old he did not know--but himself was a young man, and he did not know in what humour Father O'Grady might read his letter. If the humour wasn't propitious he might understand it as an impertinence. It vexed him that he had shown so much agitation, and he stopped to think. But it was so natural that he should be concerned about Nora Glynn. All the same, his anxiety might strike Father O'Grady as exaggerated. A temperate letter, he reflected, is always better; and the evening was spent in writing another letter to Father O'Grady, a much longer one, in which he thanked Father O'Grady for asking him to come to see him if he should ever find himself in London. 'Of course,' he wrote, 'I shall be only too pleased to call on you, and no doubt we shall have a great deal to talk about--two Irishmen always have; and when I feel the need of change imminent, I will try to go to London, and do you, Father O'Grady, when you need a change, come to Ireland. You write: "I do not know your part of the country, but I know what an Irish lake is like, and I often long to see one again." Well, come and see my lake; it's very beautiful. Woods extend down to the very shores with mountain peaks uplifting behind the woods, and on many islands there are ruins of the castles of old time. Not far from my house it narrows into a strait, and after passing this strait it widens out into what might almost be called another lake. We are trying to persuade the Government to build a bridge, but it is difficult to get anything done. My predecessor and myself have been in correspondence on this subject with the Board of Works; it often seems as if success were about to come, but it slips away, and everything has to be begun again. I should like to show you Kilronan Abbey, an old abbey unroofed by Cromwell. The people have gone there for centuries, kneeling in the snow and rain. We are sadly in need of subscription. Perhaps one of these days you will be able to help us; but I shall write again on this subject, and as soon as I can get a photograph of the abbey I will send it. 'Yours very sincerely, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' 'Now, what will Father O'Grady answer to all this?' he said under his breath as he folded up his letter. 'A worthy soul, an excellent soul, there's no doubt about that.' And he began to feel sorry for Father O'Grady. But his sorrow was suddenly suspended. If he went to London he wouldn't be likely to see her. 'Another change,' he said; 'things are never the same for long. A week ago I knew where she was; I could see her in her surroundings. Berkshire is not very far from London. But who is Mr. Poole?' And he sat thinking. A few days after he picked up a letter from his table from Father O'Grady, a long garrulous letter, four pages about Kilronan Abbey, Irish London, convent schools--topics interesting enough in themselves, but lacking in immediate interest. The letter contained only three lines about her. That Mr. Poole explained everything to her, and that she liked her work. The letter dropped from his hand; the hand that had held the letter fell upon his knee, and Father Oliver sat looking through the room. Awaking suddenly, he tried to remember what he had been thinking about, for he had been thinking a long while; but he could not recall his thoughts, and went to his writing-table and began a long letter telling Father O'Grady about Kilronan Abbey and enclosing photographs. And then, feeling compelled to bring himself into as complete union as possible with his correspondent, he sat, pen in hand, uncertain if he should speak of Nora at all. The temptation was by him, and he found excuse in the thought that after all she was the link; without her he would not have known Father O'Grady. And so convinced was he of this that when he mentioned her he did so on account of a supposed obligation to sympathize once again with Father O'Grady's loss of his organist. His letter rambled on about the Masses Nora used to play best and the pieces she used to sing. A few days after he caught sight of her handwriting on his breakfast-table, and he sat reading the letter, to Catherine's annoyance, who said the rashers were getting cold. _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'BEECHWOOD HALL, BERKSHIRE, '_July_ 20, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'One is not always in a mood to give credit to others for good intentions, especially when one returns home at the close of day disappointed, and I wrote a hard, perhaps a cruel, letter; but I'm feeling differently now. The truth is that your letter arrived at an unfortunate moment when things were going badly with me.' 'I'm forgiven,' Father Oliver cried--'I'm forgiven;' and his joy was so great that the rest of the letter seemed unnecessary, but he continued to read: 'Father O'Grady has no doubt told you that I have given up my post of organist in his church, Mr. Poole having engaged me to teach his daughter music and to act as his secretary. In a little letter which I received about a fortnight ago from him he told me he had written to you, and it appears that you have recovered from your scruples of conscience, and have forgotten the wrong you did me; but if I know you at all, you are deceiving yourself. You will never forget the wrong you did me. But I shall forget. I am not sure that it has not already passed out of my mind. This will seem contradictory, for didn't I say that I couldn't forget your cruelty in my first letter? I wonder if I meant it when I wrote, "Put the whole thing and me out of your mind...." I suppose I did at the time, and yet I doubt it. Does anyone want to be forgotten utterly? 'I should have written to you before, but we have been busy. Mr. Poole's book has been promised by the end of the year. It's all in type, but he is never satisfied. To-day he has gone to London to seek information about the altars of the early Israelites. It's a wonderful book, but I cannot write about it to-day; the sun is shining, the country is looking lovely, and my pupil is begging me to finish my letter and go out with her. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' 'So forgiveness has come at last,' he said; and as he walked along the shore he fell to thinking that very soon all her life in Garranard would be forgotten. 'She seems interested in her work,' he muttered; and his mind wandered over the past, trying to arrive at a conclusion, if there was or was not a fundamental seriousness in her character, inclining on the whole to think there was, for if she was not serious fundamentally, she would not have been chosen by Mr. Poole for his secretary. 'My little schoolmistress, the secretary of a great scholar! How very extraordinary! But why is it extraordinary? When will she write again?' And every night he wished for the dawn, and every morning he asked if there were any letters for him. 'No, your reverence, no letters this morning;' and when Catherine handed him some envelopes they only contained bills or uninteresting letters from the parishioners or letters from the Board of Works about the bridge in which he could no longer feel any interest whatever. At last he began to think he had said something to offend her, and to find out if this were so he would have to write to Father O'Grady telling him that Miss Glynn had written saying she had forgiven him. Her forgiveness had brought great relief; but Miss Glynn said in her letter that she was alone in Berkshire, Mr. Poole having gone to London to seek information regarding the altars of the early Israelites. _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_August_ 1, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I am sorry I cannot give you the information you require regarding the nature of Mr. Poole's writings, and if I may venture to advise you, I will say that I do not think any good will come to her by your inquiry into the matter. She is one of those women who resent all control; and, if I may judge from a letter she wrote to me the other day, she is bent now on educating herself regardless of the conclusions to which her studies may lead her. I shall pray for her, and that God may watch over and guide her is my hope. I am sure it is yours too. She is in God's hands, and we can do nothing to help her. I am convinced of that, and it would be well for you to put her utterly out of your mind. 'I am, very truly yours, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' 'Put her utterly out of my mind,' Father Oliver cried aloud; 'now what does he mean by that?' And he asked himself if this piece of advice was Father O'Grady's attempt to get even with him for having told him that he should have informed himself regarding Mr. Poole's theological opinions before permitting her to go down to Berkshire. It did not seem to him that Father O'Grady would stoop to such meanness, but there seemed to be no other explanation, and he fell to thinking of what manner of man was Father O'Grady--an old man he knew him to be, and from the tone of his letters he had judged him a clever man, experienced in the human weakness and conscience. But this last letter! In what light was he to read it? Did O'Grady fail to understand that there is no more intimate association than that of an author and his secretary. If we are to believe at all in spiritual influences--and who denies them?--can we minimize these? On his way to the writing-table he stopped. Mr. Poole's age--what was it? He imagined him about sixty. 'It is at that age,' he said, 'that men begin to think about the altars of the early Israelites,' and praying at intervals that he might be seventy, he wrote a short note thanking Father O'Grady for his advice and promising to bear it in mind. He did not expect to get an answer, nor did he wish for an answer; for he had begun to feel that he and Father O'Grady had drifted apart, and had no further need one for the other. 'Are there no letters this morning?' he asked Catherine. 'None, sir. You haven't had one from London for a long time.' He turned away. 'An intolerable woman--intolerable! I shall be obliged to make a change soon,' he said, turning away so that Catherine should not see the annoyance that he felt on his face. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_August_ 6, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'You said in your very kind letter, which I received a fortnight ago, and which I answered hastily, that on some future occasion you would perhaps tell me about the book Mr. Poole is writing. I wonder if this occasion will ever arise, and, if so, if it be near or far--near, I hope, for interested as I naturally am in your welfare, I have begun to feel some anxiety regarding this book. On the day that--' 'Father O'Grady, your reverence.' Father Oliver laid his letter aside, and then hid it in the blotter, regretting his haste and his fumbling hands, which perhaps had put the thought into O'Grady's mind that the letter was to Nora. And so he came forward faintly embarrassed to meet a small pale man, whom he judged to be seventy or thereabouts, coming forward nimbly, bent a little, with a long, thin arm and bony hand extended in a formal languor of welcome. A little disappointing was the first moment, but it passed away quickly, and when his visitor was seated Father Oliver noticed a large nose rising out of the pallor and on either side of it dim blue eyes and some long white locks. 'You're surprised to see me,' Father O'Grady said in a low, winning voice. 'Of course you're surprised--how could it be otherwise? but I hope you're glad.' 'Very glad,' Father Oliver answered. 'Glad, very glad,' he repeated; and begged his visitor to allow him to help him off with his overcoat. 'How pleasant,' Father O'Grady said, as soon as he was back in the armchair, as if he felt that the duty fell upon him to find a conversation that would help them across the first five minutes--'how pleasant it is to see a turf fire again! The turf burns gently, mildly, a much pleasanter fire than coal; the two races express themselves in their fires.' 'Oh, we're fiery enough over here,' Father Oliver returned; and the priests laughed. 'I did not feel that I was really in Ireland,' Father O'Grady continued, 'till I saw the turf blazing and falling into white ash. You see I haven't been in Ireland for many years.' Father Oliver threw some more sods of turf into the grate, saying: 'I'm glad, Father O'Grady, that you enjoy the fire, and I'm indeed glad to see you. I was just thinking--' 'Of me?' Father O'Grady asked, raising his Catholic eyes. The interruption was a happy one, for Father Oliver would have found himself embarrassed to finish the sentence he had begun. For he would not have liked to have admitted that he had just begun a letter to Nora Glynn, to say, 'There it is on the table.' Father O'Grady's interruption gave him time to revise his sentence. 'Yes, I was thinking of you, Father O'Grady. Wondering if I might dare to write to you again.' 'But why should you be in doubt?' Father O'Grady asked; and then, remembering a certain asperity in Father Oliver's last letter, he thought it prudent to change the conversation. 'Well, here I am and unexpected, but, apparently, welcome.' 'Very welcome,' Father Oliver murmured. 'I'm glad of that,' the old man answered; 'and now to my story.' And he told how a variety of little incidents had come about, enabling him to spend his vacation in Ireland. 'A holiday is necessary for every man. And, after all, it is as easy to go from London to Ireland as it is to go to Margate, and much more agreeable. But I believe you are unacquainted with London, and Margate is doubtless unknown to you. Well, I don't know that you've missed much;' and he began to tell of the month he had spent wandering in the old country, and how full of memories he had found it--all sorts of ideas and associations new and old. 'Maybe it was you that beguiled me to Ireland; if so, I ought to thank you for a very pleasant month's holiday. Now I'm on my way home, and finding that I could fit in the railway journey I went to Tinnick, and I couldn't go to Tinnick without driving over to Garranard.' 'I should think not, indeed,' Father Oliver answered quickly. 'It was very good of you to think of me, to undertake the journey to Tinnick and the long drive from Tinnick over here.' 'One should never be praised for doing what is agreeable to one to do. I liked you from your letters; you're like your letters, Father Oliver--at least I think you are.' 'I'm certain you're like yours,' Father Oliver returned, 'only I imagined you to speak slower.' 'A mumbling old man,' Father O'Grady interjected. 'You know I don't mean that,' Father Oliver replied, and there was a trace of emotion in his voice. 'It was really very good of you to drive over from Tinnick. You say that you only undertook the journey because it pleased you to do so. If that philosophy were accepted, there would be no difference between a good and an evil action; all would be attributed to selfishness.' He was about to add: 'This visit is a kindness that I did not expect, and one which I certainly did not deserve;' but to speak these words would necessitate an apology for the rudeness he felt he was guilty of in his last letter, and the fact that he knew that Father O'Grady had come to talk to him about Nora increased his nervousness. But their talk continued in commonplace and it seemed impossible to lift it out of the rut. Father O'Grady complimented Father Oliver on his house and Oliver answered that it was Peter Conway that built it, and while praising its comfort, he enlarged on the improvements that had been made in the houses occupied by priests. 'Yes, indeed,' Father O'Grady answered, 'the average Irish priest lived in my time in a cottage not far removed from those the peasants lived in. All the same, there was many a fine scholar among them. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, Cicero in the bookcases. Do you ever turn to these books? Do you like reading Latin?' And Father Oliver replied that sometimes he took down his Virgil. 'I look into them all sometimes,' he added. 'And you still read Latin, classical Latin, easily?' Father O'Grady inquired. 'Fairly,' Father Oliver replied; 'I read without turning to the dictionary, though I often come to words I have never seen or have forgotten the meaning of. I read on. The Latin poets are more useful than the English to me.' 'More useful?' Father O'Grady repeated. 'More useful,' Father Oliver rejoined, 'if your object is a new point of view, and one wants that sometimes, living alone in the silent country. One sometimes feels frightened sitting by the fire all alone listening to the wind. I said just now that I was thinking of you. I often think of you, Father O'Grady, and envy you your busy parish. If I ever find myself in London I shall go for long tram drives, and however sordid the district I shall view the dim congregation of houses with pleasure and rejoice in the hub of the streets.' 'You would soon weary of London, I promise you that, Father Oliver.' 'A promise for which it would be an affectation to thank you,' Father Oliver answered. And Father O'Grady spoke of the miles and miles of docks. 'The great murky Thames,' he said, 'wearies, but it is very wonderful. Ah, Landor's "Hellenics" in the original Latin: how did that book come here?' 'A question I've often asked myself,' Father Oliver returned. 'A most intellectual volume it is to find in the house of an Irish priest. Books travel, and my predecessor, Father Peter, is the last man in the world who would have cared to spend an hour on anything so literary as Landor. He used to read the newspaper--all the newspapers he could get hold of.' Father Peter's personality did not detain them long, and feeling somewhat ashamed of their inability to talk naturally, without thinking of what they were to say next, Father O'Grady ventured to doubt if Horace would approve of Landor's Latin and of the works written in comparatively modern times. Buchanan, for instance. At last the conversation became so trite and wearisome that Father O'Grady began to feel unable to continue it any longer. 'You've a nice garden, Father Oliver.' 'You'd like to see my garden?' Father Oliver asked, very much relieved at having escaped from Buchanan so easily. And the two priests went out, each hoping that the other would break the ice; and to encourage Father Oliver to break it, Father O'Grady mentioned that he was going back that evening to Tinnick--a remark that was intended to remind Father Oliver that the time was passing by. Father Oliver knew that the time for speaking of her was passing by, but he could not bring himself to speak, and instead he tried to persuade Father O'Grady to stay to dinner, but he could not be persuaded; and they walked to and fro, talking about their different parishes, Father O'Grady asking Father Oliver questions about his school and his church. And when Father O'Grady had contributed a great deal of unnecessary information, he questioned Father O'Grady about his parish, and gained much information regarding the difficulties that a Catholic priest met with in London, till religion became as wearisome as the Latin language. At last it suddenly struck Father Oliver that if he allowed the talk to continue regarding the difficulties of the Catholic priest in London, Father O'Grady might speak of girls that had been driven out of Ireland by the priests, to become prostitutes in London. A talk on this subject would be too painful, and to escape from it he spoke of the beauty of the trees about the garden and the flowers in the garden, calling Father O'Grady's attention to the chrysanthemums, and, not willing to be outdone in horticulture, the London priest began to talk about the Japanese mallow in his garden, Father Oliver listening indifferently, saying, when it came to him to make a remark, that the time had come to put in the bulbs. 'Miss Glynn was very fond of flowers,' he said Suddenly, 'and she helped me with my garden; it was she who told me to plant roses in that corner, and to cover the wall with rambling robin. Was it not a very pretty idea to cover that end of the garden with rambling roses?' 'It was indeed. She is a woman of great taste in music and in many other things. She must have regretted your garden.' 'Why do you think she regretted my garden?' Father Oliver asked. 'Because she always regretted that mine wasn't larger. She helped me with my garden;' and feeling that they had at last got into a conversation that was full of interest for them both, Father Oliver said: 'Shall we go into the house? We shall be able to talk more agreeably by the fireside.' 'I should like to get back to that turf fire; for it is the last that I shall probably see. Let us get back to it.' 'I'm quite agreeable to return to the fire. Catherine will bring in the tea presently.' And as soon as they were back in the parlour, Father Oliver said: 'Father O'Grady, that is your chair. It was very good of you to take the trouble to drive over.' 'I wished to make my correspondent's acquaintance,' Father O'Grady murmured; 'and there is much that it is difficult to put down on paper without creating a wrong impression, whereas in talk one is present to rectify any mistakes one may drop into. I am thinking now of the last subject dealt with in our correspondence, that I should have informed myself regarding Mr. Poole's writing before I consented to allow Nora Glynn to accept the post of secretary.' 'You must forgive me, Father O'Grady,' Father Oliver cried. 'There is nothing to forgive, Father Oliver; but this criticism surprised me, for you have known Miss Nora Glynn longer than I have, and it seems strange that you should have forgotten already her steadfastness. Nothing that I could have said would have availed, and it seems to me that you were mistaken in asking me to urge Miss Glynn to decline the chance of improving her circumstances. I could not compel Miss Glynn even if I had wished to compel her. But we have discussed that question; let it pass.' 'All the same,' Father Oliver interjected, 'if one sees a woman going into danger, surely one may warn her. A word of warning dropped casually is sometimes effective.' 'But it is fatal to insist,' Father O'Grady remarked; 'and one should not try to bar the way--that is my experience at least.' 'Well, your experiences are longer than mine, Father O'Grady, I submit. The mistake I made will certainly not be repeated. But since hearing from you I've heard from Miss Glynn, and the remarks she makes in her letters about Mr. Poole's literary work, unless indeed he be a Catholic, alarm me.' 'Biblical criticism is not a Catholic characteristic,' Father O'Grady answered. 'So Miss Glynn has written to you?' 'Yes, but nothing definite about Mr. Poole's work--nothing definite. Do you know anything, Father O'Grady, about this man's writing? What is his reputation in the literary world?' 'I've heard a great deal about him,' Father O'Grady answered. 'I've made inquiries and have read some of Mr. Poole's books, and have seen them reviewed in the newspapers; I've heard his opinions discussed, and his opinions are anti-Christian, inasmuch as he denies the divinity of our Lord.' 'Could anybody be more anti-Christian than that?' Father Oliver asked. 'Yes, very much more,' Father O'Grady replied. 'There have always been people, and their number is increasing, who say that Christianity is not only untruthful but, what is worse, a great evil, having set men one against the other, creating wars innumerable. Millions have owed their deaths to tortures they have received because they differed regarding some trifling passage in Scripture. There can be no doubt of that, but it is equally true that Christianity has enabled many more millions to live as much from a practical point of view as from a spiritual. If Christianity had not been a necessity it would not have triumphed;' and Father O'Grady continued to speak of Mr. Poole's historical accounts of the history of the rise and influence of Christianity till Father Oliver interrupted him, crying out: 'And it is with that man her life will henceforth be passed, reading the books he reads and writes, and, what is worse, listening to his insidious conversation, to his subtle sophistries, for, no doubt, he is an eloquent and agreeable talker.' 'You think, then,' Father O'Grady said, 'that a Christian forfeits his faith if he inquires?' 'No, if I thought that I should cease to be a Christian. She is not inquiring the matter out of her own account; she is an enforced listener, and hears only one side. Every day a plausible account is being poured into her ears, and her circumstances are such as would tempt her to give a willing ear to Mr. Poole's beliefs that God has not revealed his existence, and that we are free to live as we please, nature being our only guide. I cannot imagine a young woman living in a more dangerous atmosphere than this. 'All you tell me, Father O'Grady, frightens me. I discovered my suspicions to you in my letters, but I can express myself better in talking than on paper--far better. It is only now that I realize how wrongly I acted towards this young woman. I was frightened in a measure before, but the reality of my guilt has never appeared so distinctly to me till now. You have revealed it to me, and I'm thinking now of what account I could give to God were I to die to-morrow. "Thou hast caused a soul to be lost," he would say. "The sins of the flesh are transitory like the flesh, the sins of the faith are deeper," may be God's judgment. Father O'Grady, I'm frightened, frightened; my fear is great, and at this moment I feel like a man on his deathbed. My agony is worse, for I'm in good health and can see clearly, whereas the dying man understands little. The senses numb as death approaches.' 'Have you spoken of the mistake you made in confession, Father Oliver?' 'No, why should I?' he answered, 'for none here would understand me. But I'll confess to you. You may have been sent to hear me. Who knows? Who can say?' and he dropped on his knees crying: 'Can I be forgiven if that soul be lost to God? Tell me if such a sin can be forgiven?' 'We must not fall into the sin of despair,' Father O'Grady answered. And he murmured the Latin formula _Absolve te_, etc., making the sign of the cross over the head of his penitent. For a while after the priests knelt together in prayer, and it was with a feeling that his burden had been lifted from him that Father Oliver rose from his knees, and, subdued in body and mind, stood looking through the room, conscious of the green grass showing through his window, lighted by a last ray of the setting sun. It was the wanness of this light that put the thought into his mind that it would soon be time to send round to the stables for his visitor's car. His visitor! That small, frail man sitting in his armchair would soon be gone, carrying with him this, Father Oliver's, confession. What had he confessed? Already he had forgotten, and both men stood face to face thinking of words wherewith they might break the silence. 'I do not know,' Father O'Grady said, 'that I altogether share your fear that an anti-Christian atmosphere necessarily implies that the Catholic who comes into it will lose her faith, else faith would not be a pure gift from God. God doesn't overload his creatures unbearably, nor does he put any stress upon them from which they cannot extricate themselves. I could cite many instances of men and women whose faith has been strengthened by hostile criticism; the very arguments that have been urged against their faith have forced them to discover other arguments, and in this way they have been strengthened in their Catholic convictions.' And to Father Oliver's question if he discerned any other influence except an intellectual influence in Mr. Poole, he answered that he had not considered this side of the question. 'I don't know what manner of man he is in his body,' said Father Oliver, 'but his mind is more dangerous. An intellectual influence is always more dangerous than a sensual influence, and the sins of faith are worse than the sins of the flesh. I never thought of him as a possible seducer. But there may be that danger too. I still think, Father O'Grady, that you might have warned Nora of her danger. Forgive me; I'm sure you did all that was necessary. You do forgive me?' The men's eyes met, and Father O'Grady said, as if he wished to change the subject: 'You were born at Tinnick, were you not?' 'Yes, I was born in Tinnick,' Father Oliver repeated mechanically, almost as if he had not heard the question. 'And your sisters are nuns?' 'Yes, yes.' 'Tell me how it all came about.' 'How all what came about?' Father Oliver asked, for he was a little dazed and troubled in his mind, and was, therefore, easily led to relate the story of the shop in Tinnick, his very early religious enthusiasms, and how he remembered himself always as a pious lad. On looking into the years gone by, he said that he saw himself more often than not by his bedside rapt in innocent little prayers. And afterwards at school he had been considered a pious lad. He rambled on, telling his story almost unconsciously, getting more thoughtful as he advanced into it, relating carefully the absurd episode of the hermitage in which, to emulate the piety of the old time, he chose Castle Island as a suitable spot for him to live in. Father O'Grady listened, seriously moved by the story; and Father Oliver continued it, telling how Eliza, coming to see the priest in him, gave up her room to him as soon as their cousin the Bishop was consulted. And it was at this point of the narrative that Father O'Grady put a question. 'Was no attempt,' he asked, 'made to marry you to some girl with a big fortune?' And Father Oliver told of his liking for Annie McGrath and of his aversion for marriage, acquiescing that aversion might be too strong a word; indifference would more truthfully represent him. 'I wasn't interested in Annie McGrath nor in any woman as far as I can remember until this unfortunate conduct of mine awakened an interest in Nora Glynn. And it would be strange, indeed, if it hadn't awakened an interest in me,' he muttered to himself. Father O'Grady suppressed the words that rose up in his mind, 'Now I'm beginning to understand.' And Father Oliver continued, like one talking to himself: 'I'm thinking that I was singularly free from all temptations of the sensual life, especially those represented by womankind. I was ordained early, when I was twenty-two, and as soon as I began to hear confessions, the things that surprised me the most were the stories relating to those passionate attachments that men experience for women and women for men--attachments which sometimes are so intense that if the sufferer cannot obtain relief by the acquiescence of the object of their affections, he, if it be he, she, if it be she, cannot refrain from suicide. There have been cases of men and women going mad because their love was not reciprocated, and I used to listen to these stories wonderingly, unable to understand, bored by the relation.' If Father Oliver had looked up at that moment, Father O'Grady's eyes would have told him that he had revealed himself, and that perhaps Father O'Grady now knew more about him than he knew himself. But without withdrawing his eyes from the fire he continued talking till Catherine's step was heard outside. 'She's coming to lay the cloth for our tea,' Father Oliver said. And Father O'Grady answered: 'I shall be glad of a cup of tea.' 'Must you really go after tea?' Father Oliver asked; and again he begged Father O'Grady to stay for dinner. But Father O'Grady, as if he felt that the object of his visit had been accomplished, spoke of the drive back to Tinnick and of the convenience of the branch line of railway. It was a convenience certainly, but it was also an inconvenience, owing to the fact that the trains run from Tinnick sometimes missed the mail train; and this led Father Oliver to speak of the work he was striving to accomplish, the roofing of Kilronan Abbey, and many other things, and the time passed without their feeling it till the car came round to take Father O'Grady away. 'He goes as a dream goes,' Father Oliver said, and a few minutes afterwards he was sitting alone by his turf fire, asking himself in what dreams differed from reality. For like a dream Father O'Grady had come and he had gone, never to return. 'But does anything return?' he asked himself, and he looked round his room, wondering why the chairs and tables did not speak to him, and why life was not different from what it was. He could hear Catherine at work in the kitchen preparing his dinner, she would bring it to him as she had done yesterday, he would eat it, he would sit up smoking his pipe for a while, and about eleven o'clock go to his bed. He would lie down in it, and rise and say Mass and see his parishioners. All these things he had done many times before, and he would go on doing them till the day of his death--Until the day of my death,' he repeated, 'never seeing her again, never seeing him. Why did he come here?' And he was surprised that he could find no answer to any of the questions that he put to himself. 'Nothing will happen again in my life--nothing of any interest. This is the end! And if I did go to London, of what should I speak to him? It will be better to try to forget it all, and return, if I can, to the man I was before I knew her;' and he stood stock still, thinking that without this memory he would not be himself. Father O'Grady's coming had been a pleasure to him, for they had talked together; he had confessed to him; had been shriven. At that moment he caught sight of a newspaper upon his table. '_Illustrated England_,' he muttered, his thoughts half away; and he fell to wondering how it had come into the house. 'Father O'Grady must have left it,' he said, and began to unroll the paper. But while unrolling it he stopped. Half his mind was still away, and he sat for fully ten minutes lost in sad sensations, and it was the newspaper slipping from his hand that awoke him. The first thing that caught his eye on opening the paper was an interview with Mr. Walter Poole, embellished with many photographs of Beechwood Hall. 'Did O'Grady leave this paper here for me to read,' he asked himself, 'or did he forget to take it away with him? We talked of so many things that he may have forgotten it, forgotten even to mention it. How very strange!' The lodge gates and the long drive, winding between different woods, ascending gradually to the hilltop on which Beechwood Hall was placed by an early eighteenth-century architect, seemed to the priest to be described with too much unction by the representative of _Illustrated England_. To the journalist Beechwood Hall stood on its hill, a sign and symbol of the spacious leisure of the eighteenth century and the long tradition that it represented, one that had not even begun to drop into decadence till 1850, a tradition that still existed, despite the fact that democracy was finding its way into the agricultural parts of England. The journalist was impressed, perhaps unduly impressed, by the noble hall and the quiet passages that seemed to preserve a memory of the many generations that had passed through them on different errands, now all hushed in the family vault. Father Oliver looked down the column rapidly, and it was not until the footman who admitted the journalist was dismissed by the butler, who himself conducted the journalist to the library, that Father Oliver said: 'We have at last arrived at the castle of learning in which the great Mr. Poole sits sharpening the pen which is to slay Christianity. But Christianity will escape Mr. Poole's pen. It, has outlived many such attacks in the past. We shall see, however, what kind of nib he uses, fine or blunt?' The journalist followed the butler down the long library overlooking green sward to a quiet nook, if he might venture to speak of Mr. Walter Poole's study as a quiet nook. It seemed to surprise him that Mr. Walter Poole should rise from his writing-table and come forward to meet him, and he expressed his gratitude to Mr. Walter Poole, whose time was of great importance, for receiving him. And after all this unction came a flattering description of Mr. Walter Poole himself. He was, in the interviewer's words, a young man, tall and clean-shaven, with a high nose which goes well with an eye-glass. The chin is long and drops straight; his hair is mustard-coloured and glossy, and it curls very prettily about the broad, well-shapen forehead. He is reserved at first, and this lends a charm to the promise, which is very soon granted you, of making the acquaintance with the thoughts and ideas which have interested Mr. Walter Poole since boyhood--in fine, which have given him his character. If he seems at first sight to conceal himself from you, it is from shyness, or because he is reluctant to throw open his mind to the casual curious. Why should he not keep his mind for his own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of his friends, treating it like his pleasure grounds or park? His books are not written for the many but for the few, and he does not desire a larger audience than those with whom he is in natural communion from the first, and this without any faintest appearance of affectation. 'I suppose it isn't fair,' the priest said, 'to judge a man through his interviewer; but if this interviewer doesn't misrepresent Mr. Walter Poole, Mr. Walter Poole is what is commonly known as a very superior person. He would appear from this paper,' the priest said, 'to be a man between thirty and forty, not many years older than myself.' The priest's thoughts floated away back into the past, and, returning suddenly with a little start to the present, he continued reading the interview, learning from it that Mr. Walter Poole's conversation was usually gentle, like a quiet river, and very often, like a quiet river, it rushed rapidly when Mr. Walter Poole became interested in his subject. 'How very superior all this is,' the priest said. 'The river of thought in him,' the interviewer continued, 'is deep or shallow, according to the need of the moment. If, for instance, Mr. Walter Poole is asked if he be altogether sure that it is wise to disturb people in their belief in the traditions and symbols that have held sway for centuries, he will answer quickly that if truth lies behind the symbols and traditions, it will be in the interest of the symbols and traditions to inquire out the truth, for blind belief--in other words, faith--is hardly a merit, or if it be a merit it is a merit that cannot be denied to the savages who adore idols. But the civilized man is interested in his history, and the Bible deserves scientific recognition, for it has a history certainly and is a history. "We are justified, therefore," Mr. Walter Poole pleaded, "in seeking out the facts, and the search is conducted as much in the interests of theology as of science; for though history owes nothing to theology, it cannot be denied that theology owes a great deal to history."' 'He must have thought himself very clever when he made that remark to the interviewer,' the priest muttered; and he walked up and down his room, thinking of Nora Glynn living in this unchristian atmosphere. He picked up the paper again and continued reading, for he would have to write to Nora about Father O'Grady's visit and about the interview in _Illustrated England_. The interviewer inquired if Mr. Walter Poole was returning to Palestine, and Mr. Walter Poole replied that there were many places that he would like to revisit, Galilee, for instance, a country that St. Paul never seemed to have visited, which, to say the least, was strange. Whereupon a long talk began about Paul and Jesus, Mr. Walter Poole maintaining that Paul's teaching was identical with that of Jesus, and that Peter was a clown despised by Paul and Jesus. 'How very superior,' Father Oliver muttered--how very superior.' He read that Mr. Walter Poole was convinced that the three Synoptic Gospels were written towards the close of the first century; and one of the reasons he gave for this attribution was as in Matthew, chapter xxvii., verse 7, 'And they took counsel, and bought with them (the thirty pieces of silver) the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day'--a passage which showed that the Gospel could not have been written till fifty or sixty years after the death of Jesus. 'England must be falling into atheism if newspapers dare to print such interviews,' Father Oliver said; and he threw the paper aside angrily. 'And it was I,' he continued, dropping into his armchair, 'that drove her into this atheistical country. I am responsible, I alone.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_August_ 10, 19--. 'DEAR Miss Glynn, 'I have a piece of news for you. Father O'Grady has been here, and left me a few hours ago. Catherine threw open the door, saying, "Father O'Grady, your reverence," and the small, frail man whom you know so well walked into the room, surprising me, who was altogether taken aback by the unexpectedness of his visit. 'He was the last person in the world I expected at that moment to meet, yet it was natural that an Irish priest, on the mission in England, would like to spend his holidays in Ireland, and still more natural that, finding himself in Ireland, Father O'Grady should come to see me. He drove over from Tinnick, and we talked about you. He did not seem on the whole as anxious for your spiritual safety as I am, which is only what one might expect, for it was not he that drove you out of a Catholic country into a Protestant one. He tried to allay my fears, saying that I must not let remorse of conscience get hold of me, and he encouraged me to believe that my responsibility had long ago ended. It was pleasant to hear these things said, and I believed him in a way; but he left by accident or design a copy of _Illustrated England_ on my table. I am sufficiently broad-minded to believe that it is better to be a good Protestant than a bad Catholic; but Mr. Walter Poole is neither Catholic nor Protestant, but an agnostic, which is only a polite word for an atheist. Week in and week out you will hear every argument that may be used against our holy religion. It is true that you have the advantage of being born a Catholic, and were well instructed in your religion; and no doubt you will accept with caution his statements, particularly that very insidious statement that Jesus lays no claim to divinity in the three Synoptic Gospels, and that these were not written by the apostles themselves, but by Greeks sixty, seventy, or perhaps eighty years after his death. I do not say he will try to undermine your faith, but how can he do otherwise if he believe in what he writes? However careful he may be to avoid blasphemy in your presence, the fact remains that you are living in an essentially unchristian atmosphere, and little by little the poison which you are taking in will accumulate, and you will find that you have been influenced without knowing when or how. 'If you lose your faith, I am responsible for it; and I am not exaggerating when I say the thought that I may have lost a soul to God is always before me. I can imagine no greater responsibility than this, and there seems to be no way of escaping from it. Father O'Grady says that you have passed out of our care, that all we can do is to pray for you. But I would like to do something more, and if you happen upon some passages in the books you are reading that seem in contradiction to the doctrines taught by the Catholic Church, I hope you will not conclude that the Church is without an answer. The Church has an answer ready for every single thing that may be said against her doctrines. I am not qualified to undertake the defence of the Church against anyone. I quite recognize my own deficiency in this matter, but even I may be able to explain away some doubts that may arise. If so, I beg of you not to hesitate to write to me. If I cannot do so myself, I may be able to put you in the way of finding out the best Catholic opinion on matters of doctrine. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'BEECHWOOD HALL, BERKSHIRE, '_August_ 15, 19--. 'I am sorry indeed that I am causing you so much trouble of conscience. You must try to put it out of your mind that you are responsible for me. The idea is too absurd. When I was in your parish I was interested in you, and that was why I tried to improve the choir and took trouble to decorate the altar. Have you forgotten how anxious I was that you should write the history of the lake and its castles? Why don't you write it and send it to me? I shall be interested in it, though for the moment I have hardly time to think of anything but Jewish history. Within the next few weeks, for certain, the last chapter of Mr. Poole's book will be passed for press, and then we shall go abroad and shall visit all the great men in Europe. Some are in Amsterdam, some are in Paris, some live in Switzerland. I wish I understood French a little better. Isn't it all like a dream? Do you know, I can hardly believe I ever was in forlorn Garranard teaching little barefooted children their Catechism and their A, B, C. 'Good-bye, Father Gogarty. We go abroad next week. I lie awake thinking of this trip--the places I shall see and the people I shall meet. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' It seemed to him that her letter gave very little idea of her. Some can express themselves on paper, and are more real in the words they write than in the words they speak. But hardly anything of his idea of her transpired in that letter--only in her desire of new ideas and new people. She was interested in everything--in his projected book about the raiders faring forth from the island castles, and now in the source of the Christian River; and he began to meditate a destructive criticism of Mr. Poole's ideas in a letter addressed to the editor of _Illustrated England_, losing heart suddenly, he knew not why, feeling the task to be beyond him. Perhaps it would be better not to write to Nora again. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_August_ 22, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I gather from your letter that religion has ceased to interest you, except as a subject for argument, and I will not begin to argue with you, but will put instead a simple question to you: In what faith do you intend to bring up your child? and what will be your answer when your child asks: "Who made me?" Mr. Poole may be a learned man, but all the learning in the world will not tell you what answer to make to your child's questions; only the Church can do that. 'I have thought a great deal about the danger that your post of secretary to Mr. Poole involves and am not sure that the state of indifference is not the worst state of all. One day you will find that indifference has passed into unbelief, and you will write to me (if we continue to write to each other) in such a way that I shall understand that you have come to regard our holy religion as a tale fit only for childhood's ears. I write this to you, because I have been suddenly impelled to write, and it seems to me that in writing to you in this simple way I am doing better than if I spent hours in argument. You will not always think as you do now; the world will not always interest you as much as it does now. I will say no more on this point but will break off abruptly to tell you that I think you are right when you say that we all want change. I feel I have lived too long by the side of this lake, and I am thinking of going to London....' The room darkened gradually, and, going to the window, he longed for something to break the silence, and was glad when the rain pattered among the leaves. The trees stood stark against the sky, in a green that seemed unnatural. The sheep moved as if in fear towards the sycamores, and from all sides came the lowing of cattle. A flash drove him back from the window. He thought he was blinded. The thunder rattled; it was as if a God had taken the mountains in his arms and was shaking them together. Crash followed crash; the rain came down; it was as if the rivers of heaven had been opened suddenly. Once he thought the storm was over; but the thunder crashed again, the rain began to thicken; there was another flash and another crash, and the pour began again. But all the while the storm was wearing itself out, and he began to wonder if a sullen day, ending in this apocalypse, would pass into a cheerful evening. It seemed as if it would, for some blue was showing between the clouds drifting westward, threatening every moment to blot out the blue, but the clouds continued to brighten at the edges. 'The beginning of the sunset,' the priest said; and he went out on his lawn and stood watching the swallows in the shining air, their dipping, swerving flight showing against a background of dappled clouds. He had never known so extraordinary a change; and he walked to and fro in the freshened air, thinking that Nora's health might not have withstood the strain of trudging from street to street, teaching the piano at two shillings an hour, returning home late at night to a poky little lodging, eating any food a landlady might choose to give her. As a music teacher she would have had great difficulty in supporting herself and her baby, and it pleased him to imagine the child as very like her mother; and returning to the house, he added this paragraph: 'I was interrupted while writing this letter by a sudden darkening of the light, and when I went to the window the sky seemed to have sunk close to the earth, and there was a dreadful silence underneath it. I was driven back by a flash of lightning, and the thunder was terrifying. A most extraordinary storm lasting for no more than an hour, if that, and then dispersing into a fine evening. It was a pleasure to see the change--the lake shrouded in mist, with ducks talking softly in the reeds, and swallows high up, advancing in groups like dancers on a background of dappled clouds. 'I have come back to my letter to ask if you would like me to go to see your baby? Father O'Grady and I will go together if I go to London, and I will write to you about it. You will be glad, no doubt, to hear that the child is going on well. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_September_ 4, 19--. 'Forgive me, my dear friend, but I am compelled to write to apologize for the introduction of my troubles of conscience and my anxiety for your spiritual welfare into my last letter. You found a way out of difficulties--difficulties into which I plunged you. But we will say no more on that point: enough has been said. You have created a life for yourself. You have shown yourself to be a strong woman in more ways than one, and are entitled to judge whether your work and the ideas you live among are likely to prove prejudicial to your faith and morals. By a virtue of forgiveness which I admire and thank you for, you write telling me of the literary work you are engaged upon. If I had thought before writing the letter I am now apologizing for, I could not have failed to see that you write to me because you would relieve my loneliness as far as you are able. But I did not think: I yielded to my mood, and see now that my letters are disgracefully egotistical, and very often absurd; for have I not begged of you to remember that since God will hold me responsible for your soul, it would be well that you should live a life of virtue and renunciation, so that I shall be saved the humiliation of looking down from above upon you in hell? 'Loneliness begets sleeplessness, and sleeplessness begets a sort of madness. I suffer from nightmare, and I cannot find words to tell you how terrible are the visions one sees at dawn. It is not so much that one sees unpleasant and ugly things--life is not always pretty or agreeable, that we know--but when one lies between sleeping and waking, life itself is shown in mean aspects, and it is whispered that one has been duped till now; that now, and for the first time, one knows the truth. You remember how the wind wails about the hilltop on which I live. The wailing of wind has something to do with my condition of mind; one cannot sit from eight o'clock in the evening till twelve at night staring at the lamp, hearing the wind, and remain perfectly sane. 'But why am I writing about myself? I want to escape from myself, and your letters enable me to do so. The names of the cities you are going to visit transport me in imagination, and last night I sat a long while wondering why I could not summon courage to go abroad. Something holds me back. I think if I once left Garranard, I should never return to the lake and its island. I hope you haven't forgotten Marban, the hermit who lived at the end of the lake in Church Island. I visited his island yesterday. I should have liked to have rowed myself through the strait and along the shores, seeing Castle Cara and Castle Burke as I passed; but Church Island is nearly eight miles from here, and I don't know if I should have been man enough to pull the fisherman's boat so far, so I put the gray horse into the shafts and went round by road. 'Church Island lies in a bay under a rocky shore, and the farmer who cuts the grass there in the summer-time has a boat to bring away the hay. It was delightful to step into it, and as the oars chimed I said to myself, "I have Marban's poem in my pocket--and will read it walking up the little path leading from his cell to his church." The lake was like a sheet of blue glass, and the island lay yellow and red in it. As we rowed, seeking a landing-place under the tall trees that grow along the shores, the smell of autumn leaves mingled with the freshness of the water. We rowed up a beautiful little inlet overhung with bushes. The quay is at the end of it, and on getting out of the boat, I asked the boatman to point out to me what remained of Marban's Church. He led me across the island--a large one, the largest in the lake--not less than seven acres or nine, and no doubt some parts of it were once cultivated by Marban. Of his church, however, very little remains--only one piece of wall, and we had great difficulty in seeing it, for it is now surrounded by a dense thicket. The little pathway leading from his cell to the church still exists; it is almost the same as he left it--a little overgrown, that is all. 'Marban was no ordinary hermit; he was a sympathetic naturalist, a true poet, and his brother who came to see him, and whose visit gave rise to the colloquy, was a king. I hope I am not wronging Marban, but the island is so beautiful that I cannot but think that he was attracted by its beauty and went there because he loved Nature as well as God. His poem is full of charming observations of nature, of birds and beasts and trees, and it proves how very false the belief is that primitive man had no eyes to see the beauties of the forest and felt no interest in the habits of animals or of birds, but regarded them merely as food. It pleases me to think of the hermit sitting under the walls of his church or by his cell writing the poem which has given me so much pleasure, including in it all the little lives that cams to visit him--the birds and the beasts--enumerating them as carefully as Wordsworth would, and loving them as tenderly. Marban! Could one find a more beautiful name for a hermit? Guaire is the brother's name. Marban and King Guaire. Now, imagine the two brothers meeting for a poetic disputation regarding the value of life, and each speaking from his different point of view! True that Guaire's point of view is only just indicated--he listens to his brother, for a hermit's view of life is more his own than a king's. It pleases me to think that the day the twain met to discourse of life and its mission was the counterpart of the day I spent on the island. My day was full of drifting cloud and sunshine, and the lake lay like a mirror reflecting the red shadow of the island. So you will understand that the reasons Marban gave for living there in preference to living the life of the world seemed valid, and I could not help peering into the bushes, trying to find a rowan-tree--for he speaks of one. The rowan is the mountain-ash. I found several. One tree was covered with red berries, and I broke off a branch and brought it home, thinking that perchance it might have come down to us from one planted by Marban's hand. Of blackthorns there are plenty. The adjective he uses is "dusky." Could he have chosen a more appropriate one? I thought, too, of "the clutch of eggs, the honey and the mast" that God sent him, of "the sweet apples and red whortleberries," and of his dish of "strawberries of good taste and colour." 'It is hard to give in an English translation an idea of the richness of the verse, heavily rhymed and winningly alliterated, but you will see that he enumerates the natural objects with skill. The eternal summer--the same in his day as in ours--he speaks of as "a coloured mantle," and he mentions "the fragrance of the woods." And seeing the crisp leaves--for the summer was waning--I repeated his phrase, "the summer's coloured mantle," and remembered: "Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world-- A gentle chorus." "The wren," he says, "is an active songster among the hazel boughs. Beautifully hooded birds, wood-peckers, fair white birds, herons, sea-gulls, come to visit me." There is no mournful music in his island; and as for loneliness, there is no such thing in "My lowly little abode, hidden in a mane of green-barked yew-tree. Near is an apple-tree, Big like a hostel; A pretty bush thick as a fist of hazel-nuts, a choice spring and water fit for a Prince to drink. Round it tame swine lie down, Wild swine, grazing deer, A badger's brood, A peaceful troop, a heavy host of denizens of the soil A-trysting at my house. To meet them foxes come. How delightful!" 'The island is about a hundred yards from the shore, and I wondered how the animals crossed from the mainland as I sat under the porch of the ruined church. I suppose the water was shallower than it is now. But why and how the foxes came to meet the wild swine is a matter of little moment; suffice it that he lived in this island aware of its loneliness, "without the din of strife, grateful to the Prince who giveth every good to me in my bower." To which Guaire answered: '"I would give my glorious kingship With my share of our father's heritage,-- To the hour of my death let me forfeit it, So that I may be in thy company, O Marban." 'There are many such beautiful poems in early Irish. I know of another, and I'll send it to you one of these days. In it is a monk who tells how he and his cat sit together, himself puzzling out some literary or historical problem, the cat thinking of hunting mice, and how the catching of each is difficult and requires much patience. 'Ireland attained certainly to a high degree of civilization in the seventh and eighth centuries, and if the Danes had not come, Ireland might have anticipated Italy. The poems I have in mind are the first written in Europe since classical times, and though Italy and France be searched, none will be found to match them. 'I write these things to you because I wish you to remember that, when religion is represented as hard and austere, it is the fault of those who administer religion, and not of religion itself. Religion in Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries was clearly a homely thing, full of tender joy and hope, and the inspiration not only of poems, but of many churches and much ornament of all kinds, illuminated missals, carven porches. If Ireland had been left to herselfif it had not been for the invasion of the Danes, and the still worse invasion of the English--there is no saying what high place she might not have taken in the history of the world. But I am afraid the halcyon light that paused and passed on in those centuries will never return. We have gotten the after-glow, and the past should incite us; and I am much obliged to you for reminding me that the history of the lake and its castles would make a book. I will try to write this book, and while writing will look forward to the day when I shall send you a copy of the work, if God gives me strength and patience to complete it. Little is ever completed in Ireland.... But I mustn't begin to doubt before I begin the work, and while you and Mr. Poole are studying dry texts, trying to prove that the things that men have believed and loved for centuries are false, I shall be engaged in writing a sympathetic history--the history of natural things and natural love. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'ANTWERP, '_September_ 3, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'You are a very human person after all, and it was very kind of you to think about my baby and kind of you to write to me about her. My baby is a little girl, and she has reddish hair like mine, and if ever you see her I think you will see me in her. The address of the woman who is looking after her is Mrs. Cust, 25, Henry Street, Guildford. Do go to see her and write me a long letter, telling me what you think of her. I am sure a trip to London will do you a great deal of good. Pack up your portmanteau, Father Gogarty, and go to London at once. Promise me that you will, and write to me about your impressions of London and Father O'Grady, and when you are tired of London come abroad. We are going on to Munich, that is all I know, but I will write again. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' Father Oliver sat wondering, and then, waking up suddenly, he went about his business, asking himself if she really meant all she said, for why should she wish him to go abroad, for his health or in the hope of meeting him--where? In Munich! 'A riddle, a riddle, which'--he reflected a moment--'which my experience of life is not sufficient to solve.' On his way to Derrinrush he was met by a man hurrying towards him. 'Sure it is I that am in luck this day, meeting your reverence on the road, for we shall be spared half a mile if you have the sacred elements about you.' So much the peasant blurted out between the gasps, and when his breath came easier the priest learnt that Catherine, the man's wife, was dying. 'Me brother's run for the doctor, but I, being the speedier, came for yourself, and if your reverence has the sacred elements about you, we'll go along together by a short cut over the hill.' 'I'm afraid I have not got the oil and there's nothing for it but to go back to the house.' 'Then I'm afeard that Catherine will be too late to get the Sacrament. But she is a good woman, sorra better, and maybe don't need the oil,' which indeed proved to be a fact, for when they reached the cabin they found the doctor there before them, who rising from his chair by the bedside, said, 'The woman is out of danger, if she ever was in any.' 'All the same,' cried the peasant, 'Catherine wouldn't refuse the Sacrament.' 'But if she be in no danger, of what use would the Sacrament be to her?' the doctor asked; the peasant answering, 'Faith, you must have been a Protestant before you were a Catholic to be talking like that,' and Father Oliver hesitated, and left the cabin sorrowed by the unseemliness of the wrangle. He was not, however, many yards down the road when the dispute regarding the efficacy of the Sacrament administered out of due time was wiped out by a memory of something Nora had told him of herself: she had announced to the monitresses, who were discussing their ambitions, that hers was to be the secretary of a man of letters. 'So it would seem that she had an instinct of her destiny from the beginning, just as I had of mine. But had I? Her path took an odd turn round by Garranard. But she has reached her goal, or nearly. The end may be marriage--with whom? Poole most likely. Be that as it may, she will pass on to middle age; we shall grow older and seas and continents will divide our graves. Why did she come to Garranard?' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ '_September_ 10, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I received your letter this morning, written from Antwerp, and it has set me thinking that Mr. Poole's interests in scholarship must have procured for him many acquaintances among Dutch scholars, men with whom he has been in correspondence. You will meet them and hear them pour their vast erudition across dinner-tables. Rubens' great picture, "The Descent from the Cross," is in Antwerp; you will go to see it, and in Munich Mr. Poole will treat you to the works of Wagner and Mozart. You are very happy; everything has gone well with you, and it would ill befit me, who brought so much unhappiness upon you, to complain that you are too happy, too much intent on the things of this world. Yet, if you will allow me to speak candidly, I will tell you what I really think. You are changing; the woman I once knew hardly corresponds with the woman who writes to me. In reading the letters of the English Nora, I perceive many traces here and there of the Irish Nora, for the Irish Nora was not without a sense of duty, of kindness towards others, but the English Nora seems bent upon a life of pleasure, intellectual and worldly adventures. She delights in foreign travel, and no doubt places feelings above ideas, and regards our instincts as our sovereign guides. Now, when we find ourselves delighting to this extent in the visible, we may be sure that our lives have wandered far away from spiritual things. There is ever a divorce between the world of sense and the world of spirit, and the question of how much love we may expend upon external things will always arise, and will always be a cause of perplexity to those who do not choose to abandon themselves to the general drift of sensual life. This question is as difficult as the cognate question of what are our duties toward ourselves and our duties toward others. And your letters raise all these questions. I ponder them in my walks by the lake in the afternoon. In the evening in my house on the hilltop I sit thinking, seeing in imagination the country where I have been born and where I have always lived--the lake winding in and out of headlands, the highroad shaded by sycamores at one spot, a little further on wandering like a gray thread among barren lands, with here and there a village; and I make application of all the suggestions your letters contain to my own case. Every house in Garranard I know, and I see each gable end and each doorway as I sit thinking, and all the faces of my parishioners. I see lights springing up far and near. Wherever there is a light there is a poor family. 'Upon these people I am dependent for my daily bread, and they are dependent upon me for spiritual consolation. I baptize them, I marry them, and I bury them. How they think of me, I know not. I suppose they hardly think at all. When they return home at night they have little time for thinking; their bodies are too fatigued with the labour of the fields. But as I sit thinking of them, I regret to say that my fear often is that I shall never see any human beings but them; and I dream of long rambles in the French country, resting at towns, reading in libraries. A voice whispers, "You could do very well with a little of her life, but you will never know any other life but your present one." A great bitterness comes up, a little madness gathers behind the eyes; I walk about the room and then I sit down, stunned by the sudden conviction that life is, after all, a very squalid thing--something that I would like to kick like an old hat down a road. 'The conflict going on within me goes on within every man, but without this conflict life would be superficial; we shouldn't know the deeper life. Duty has its rewards as well as its pain, and the knowledge that I am passing through a time of probationship sustains me. I know I shall come out of it all a stronger man. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' After posting his letter he walked home, congratulating himself that he had made it plain to her that he was not a man she could dupe. Her letter was written plainly, and the more he thought of her letter the clearer did it seem that it was inspired by Poole. But what could Poole's reason be for wishing him to leave Ireland, to go abroad? It was certain that if Poole were in love with Nora he would do all in his power to keep a poor priest (was it thus they spoke of him?) in Ireland. Poole might wish to make a fool of him, but what was her reason for advising him to go abroad? Revenge was too strong a word. In the course of the evening it suddenly struck him that, after all, she might have written her letter with a view of inducing him to come to Rome. She was so capricious that it was not impossible that she had written quite sincerely, and wished him out there with her. She was so many-sided, and he fell to thinking of her character, without being able to arrive at any clear estimate of it, with this result, however--that he could not drive out the belief that she had written him an insincere letter. Or did she wish to revenge herself? The thought brought him to his feet, for he could never forget how deeply he had wronged her--it was through his fault that she had become Mr. Poole's secretary--maybe his mistress. If he had not preached that sermon, she would be teaching the choir in his parish. But, good heavens! what use was there in going over all that again? He walked to the window and stood there watching the still autumn weather--a dull leaden sky, without a ray of light upon the grass, or a wind in the trees--thinking that these gray days deprived him of all courage. And then he remembered suddenly how a villager's horse coming from market had tripped and fallen by the roadside. Would that he, too, might fall by the roadside, so weary was he. 'If I could only make known my suffering, she would take pity on me; but no one knows another's suffering.' He walked from his window sighing, and a moment after stopped in front of his writing-table. Perhaps it was the writing-table that put the thought into his mind that she might like to read a description of an Irish autumn. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_September_. 'You know the wind is hardly ever at rest about the hilltop on which my house stands. Even in summer the wind sighs, a long, gentle little sigh, sometimes not unpleasant to hear. You used to speak of an Æolian harp, and say that I should place one on my window-sill. A doleful instrument it must be--loud wailing sound in winter-time, and in the summer a little sigh. But in these autumn days an Æolian harp would be mute. There is not wind enough to-day on the hillside to cause the faintest vibration. Yesterday I went for a long walk in the woods, and I can find no words that would convey an idea of the stillness. It is easy to speak of a tomb, but it was more than that. The dead are dead, and somnambulism is more mysterious than death. The season seemed to stand on the edge of a precipice, will-less, like a sleep-walker. Now and then the sound of a falling leaf caught my ear, and I shall always remember how a crow, flying high overhead towards the mountains, uttered an ominous "caw"; another crow answered, and there was silence again. The branches dropped, and the leaves hung out at the end of long stems. One could not help pitying the trees, though one knew one's pity was vain. 'As I wandered in Derrinrush, I came suddenly upon some blood-red beech-trees, and the hollow was full of blood-red leaves. You have been to Derrinrush: you know how mystic and melancholy the wood is, full of hazels and Druid stones. After wandering a long while I turned into a path. It led me to a rough western shore, and in front of me stood a great Scotch fir. The trunk has divided, and the two crowns showed against the leaden sky. It has two birch-trees on either side, and their graceful stems and faint foliage, pale like gold, made me think of dancers with sequins in their hair and sleeves. There seemed to be nothing but silence in the wood, silence, and leaves ready to fall. I had not spoken to anyone for a fortnight--I mean I had no conversation with anyone--and my loneliness helped me to perceive the loneliness of the wood, and the absence of birds made me feel it. The lake is never without gulls, but I didn't see one yesterday. "The swallows are gone," I said; "the wild geese will soon be here," and I remembered their doleful cry as I scrambled under some blackthorn bushes, glad to get out of the wood into the fields. Though I knew the field I was in well, I didn't remember the young sycamores growing in one corner of it. Yesterday I could not but notice them, for they seemed to be like children dying of consumption in a hospital ward--girls of twelve or thirteen. You will think the comparison far-fetched and unhealthy, one that could only come out of a morbidly excited imagination. Well, I cannot help that; like you, I must write as I feel. 'Suddenly I heard the sound of an axe, and I can find no words to tell you how impressive its sound was in the still autumn day. "How soon will the tree fall?" I thought; and, desirous of seeing it fall, I walked on, guided by the sound, till I saw at the end of the glade--whom do you think? Do you remember an old man called Patsy Murphy? He had once been a very good carpenter, and had made and saved money. But he is now ninety-five, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him trying to cut down a larch. What his object could be in felling the tree I could not tell, and, feeling some curiosity, I walked forward. He continued to chip away pieces of the bark till his strength failed him, and he had to sit down to rest. Seeing me, he took off his hat--you know the tall hat he wears--a hat given him twenty or thirty years ago by whom? Patsy Murphy's mind is beginning to wander. He tells stories as long as you will listen to him, and it appears now that his daughter-in-law turned him out of his house--the house he had built himself, and that he had lived in for half a century. This, however, is not the greatest wrong she had done him. He could forgive her this wrong, but he cannot forgive her stealing of his sword. "There never was a Murphy," he said, "who hadn't a sword." Whether this sword is an imagination of Patsy's fading brain, I cannot say; perhaps he had some old sword and lost it. The tale he tells to-day differs wholly from the tale he told yesterday and the tale he will tell to-morrow. He told me once he had been obliged to give up all his savings to his son. I went to interview the son, determined to sift the matter to the bottom, and discovered that Patsy had still one hundred and twenty pounds in the bank. Ten pounds had been taken out for--I needn't trouble you with further details. Sufficient has been said to enable you to understand how affecting it was to meet this old man in the red and yellow woods, at the end of a breathless autumn day, trying to fell a young larch. He talked so rapidly, and one story flowed so easily into another, that it was a long time before I could get in a word. At last I was able to get out of him that the Colonel had given him leave to build a house on the shore, where he would be out of everybody's way. "All my old friends are gone, the Colonel's father and his mother. God be merciful to her! she was a good woman, the very best. And all I want now is time to think of them that's gone.... Didn't I know the Colonel's grandfather and his grandmother? They're all buried in the cemetery yonder in Kiltoon, and on a fine evenin' I do like to be sittin' on a stone by the lake, thinking of them all." 'It was at once touching and impressive to see this old man, weak as a child, the only trembling thing in a moveless day, telling these wanderings of an almost insane brain. You will say, "But what matter? They may not be true in fact, but they are his truth, they are himself, they are his age." His ninety-five years are represented in his confused talk, half recollection, half complaints about the present. He knew my father and mother, too, and, peering into my face, he caught sight of a gray hair, and I heard him mutter: '"Ah! they grow gray quicker now than they used to." 'As I walked home in the darkening light, I bethought myself of the few years left to me to live, though I am still a young man, that in a few years, which would pass like a dream, I should be as frail as Patsy Murphy, who is ninety-five. "Why should I not live as long?" I asked myself, losing my teeth one by one and my wits.' '_September_. 'I was interrupted in my description of the melancholy season, and I don't know how I should have finished that letter if I had not been interrupted. The truth is that the season was but a pretext. I did not dare to write asking you to forgive me for having returned your letter. I do not do so now. I will merely say that I returned the letter because it annoyed me, and, shameful as the admission may be, I admit that I returned it because I wished to annoy you. I said to myself, "If this be so--if, in return for kind thought--Why shouldn't she suffer? I suffer." One isn't--one cannot be--held responsible for every base thought that enters the mind. How long the mind shall entertain a thought before responsibility is incurred I am not ready to say. One's mood changes. A storm gathers, rages for a while, and disperses; but the traces of the storm remain after the storm has passed away. I am thinking now that perhaps, after all, you were sincere when you asked me to leave Garranard and take my holiday in Rome, and the baseness of which for a moment I deemed you capable was the creation of my own soul. I don't mean that my mind, my soul, is always base. At times we are more or less unworthy. Our tempers are part of ourselves? I have been pondering this question lately. Which self is the true self--the peaceful or the choleric? My wretched temper aggravated my disappointment, and my failure to write the history of the lake and its castles no doubt contributed to produce the nervous depression from which I am suffering. But this is not all; it seems to me that I may point out that your--I hardly know what word to use: "irrelevancy" does not express my meaning; "inconsequences" is nearer, yet it isn't the word I want--well, your inconsequences perplex and distract my thoughts. If you will look through the letter you sent me last you will find that you have written many things that might annoy a man living in the conditions in which I live. You follow the current of your mood, but the transitions you omit, and the reader is left hopelessly conjecturing....' She seemed so strange, so inconclusive. There seemed to be at least two, if not three, different women in the letters she had written to him, and he sat wondering how a woman with cheeks like hers, and a voice like hers, and laughter like hers, could take an interest in such arid studies. Her very name, Nora Glynn, seemed so unlike the woman who would accompany Mr. Poole into National Libraries, and sit by him surrounded by learned tomes. Moreover a mistress does not read Hebrew in a National Library with her paramour. But what did he know about such women? He had heard of them supping in fashionable restaurants covered with diamonds, and he thought of them with painted faces and dyed hair, and he was sure that Nora did not dye her hair or paint her face. No, she was not Poole's mistress. It was only his ignorance of life that could have led him to think of anything so absurd.... And then, weary of thinking and debating with himself, he took down a book that was lent some months ago, a monograph on a learned woman, a learned philosophical writer and translator of exegetical works from the German. Like Nora, she came from the middle classes, and, like Nora, she transgressed, how often he did not know, but with another woman's husband certainly. A critical writer and exponent of serious literature. Taste for learned studies did not preclude abstinence from those sins which in his ignorance of life he had associated with worldlings! Of course, St. Augustine was such a one. But is a man's truth also woman's truth? Apparently it is, and if he could believe the book he had been reading, Nora might very well be Poole's mistress. Therewith the question came up again, demanding answer: Why did she write declining any correspondence with him, and three weeks afterwards write another letter inveigling him, tempting him, bringing him to this last pitch of unhappiness? Was the letter he returned to her prompted by Mr. Poole and by a spirit of revenge? Three days after he took up his pen and added this paragraph to his unfinished letter: 'I laid aside my pen, fearing I should ask what are your relations with Mr. Poole. I have tried to keep myself from putting this question to you, but the torture of doubt overcomes me, and even if you should never write to me again, I must ask it. Remember that I am responsible to God for the life you lead. Had it not been for me, you would never have known Poole. You must grant to every man his point of view, and, as a Christian, I cannot put my responsibility out of mind. If you lose your soul, I am responsible for it. Should you write that your relations with Mr. Poole are not innocent, I shall not be relieved of my responsibility, but it will be a relief to me to know the truth. I shall pray for you, and you will repent your sins if you are living in sin. Forgive me the question I am putting to you. I have no right to do so whatever. Whatever right I had over you when you were in my parish has passed from me. I exceeded that right, but that is the old story. Maybe I am repeating my very fault again. It is not unlikely, for what do we do all through our lives but to repeat ourselves? You have forgiven me, and, having forgiven me once, maybe you will forgive me again. However this may be, do not delay writing, for every day will be an agony till I hear from you. At the end of an autumn day, when the dusk is sinking into the room, one lacks courage to live. Religion seems to desert one, and I am thinking of the leaves falling, falling in Derrinrush. All night long they will be falling, like my hopes. Forgive me this miserable letter. But if I didn't write it, I should not be able to get through the evening. Write to me. A letter from Italy will cheer me and help me to live. All my letters are not like this one. Not very long ago I wrote to you about a hermit who never wearied of life, though he lived upon an island in this lake. Did you receive that letter? I wonder. It is still following you about maybe. It was a pleasant letter, and I should be sorry if you did not get it. Write to me about Italy--about sunshine, about statues and pictures. 'Ever sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_October_ 20, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I wrote last week apologizing for troubling you again with a letter, pleading that the melancholy of autumn and the falling of the leaf forced me to write to someone. I wrote asking for a letter, saying that a letter about Italian sunshine would help me to live. I am afraid my letter must have seemed exaggerated. One writes out of a mood. The mood passes, but when it is with one, one is the victim of it. And this letter is written to say I have recovered somewhat from my depression of spirits.... I have found consolation in a book, and I feel that I must send it to you, for even you may one day feel depressed and lonely. Did you ever read "The Imitation of Christ"? There is no book more soothing to the spirit than it; and on the very first page I found some lines which apply marvellously well to your case: '"If thou didst know the whole Bible outwardly, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it all profit thee without charity and the grace of God?" 'Over the page the saint says: "Every man naturally desireth to know; but what doth knowledge avail without the fear of God?" '"Truly, a lowly rustic that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher who pondereth the course of the stars and neglecteth himself." '"He that knoweth himself becometh vile to himself, and taketh no delight in the praises of men." '"If I knew all things that are in the world, and were not in charity, what would it profit me in the sight of God, who will judge according to deeds?" '"Cease from overweening desire of knowledge, because many distractions are found there, and much delusion." 'I might go on quoting till I reached the end, for on every page I note something that I would have you read. But why quote when I can send you the book? You have lost interest in the sentimental side of religion, but your loss is only momentary. You will never find anyone who will understand you better than this book. You are engaged now in the vain pursuit of knowledge, but some day, when you are weary of knowledge, you will turn to it. I do not ask you to read it now, but promise me that you will keep it. It will be a great consolation to me to know that it is by you. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY, P.P.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_November_ 3, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I sent you--I think it must be a fortnight ago--a copy of "The Imitation of Christ." The copy I sent is one of the original Elizabethan edition, a somewhat rare book and difficult to obtain. I sent you this copy in order to make sure that you would keep it; the English is better than the English of our modern translations. You must not think that I feel hurt because you did not write to thank me at once for having sent you the book. My reason for writing is merely because I should like to know if it reached you. If you have not received it, I think it would be better to make inquiries at once in the post. It would be a pity that a copy of the original Elizabethan edition should be lost. Just write a little short note saying that you have received it. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY, P.P.' IX 'The Imitation' dropped on his knees, and he wondered if the spiritual impulse it had awakened in him was exhausted, or if the continual splashing of the rain on the pane had got upon his nerves. 'But it isn't raining in Italy,' he said, getting up from his chair; 'and I am weary of the rain, of myself--I am weary of everything.' And going to the window, he tried to take ant interest in the weather, asking himself if it would clear up about 3 o'clock. It cleared usually late in the afternoon for a short while, and he would be able to go out for half an hour. But where should he go? He foresaw his walk from end to end before he began it: the descent of the hill, the cart-track and the old ruts full of water, the dead reeds on the shore soaking, the dripping trees. But he knew that about 3 o'clock the clouds would lift, and the sunset begin in the gaps in the mountains. He might go as far as the little fields between Derrinrush and the plantations, and from there he could watch the sunset. But the sunset would soon be over, and he would have to return home, for a long evening without a book. Terrible! And he began to feel that he must have an occupation--his book! To write the story of the island castles would pass the time, and wondering how he might write it, whether from oral tradition or from the books and manuscripts which he might find in national libraries, he went out about 3 o'clock and wandered down the old cart-track, getting his feet very wet, till he came to the pine-wood, into which he went, and stood looking across the lake, wondering if he should go out to Castle Island in a boat--there was no boat, but he might borrow one somewhere--and examine what remained of the castle. But he knew every heap of old stones, every brown bush, and the thick ivy that twined round the last corner wall. Castle Hag had an interest Castle Island had not. The cormorants roosted there; and they must be hungry, for the lake had been too windy for fishing this long while. A great gust whirled past, and he stood watching the clouds drifting overhead--the same thick vapour drifting and going out. For nearly a month he was waiting for a space of blue sky, and a great sadness fell upon him, a sick longing for a change; but if he yielded to this longing he would never return to Garranard. There seemed to be no way out of the difficulty--at least, he could see none. A last ray lit up a distant hillside, his shadow floated on the wet sand. The evening darkened rapidly, and he walked in a vague diffused light, inexpressibly sad to find Moran waiting for him at the end of an old cart-track, where the hawthorns grew out of a tumbled wall. He would keep Moran for supper. Moran was a human being, and-- 'I've come to see you, Gogarty; I don't know if I'm welcome.' 'It's joking you are. You'll stay and have some supper with me?' 'Indeed I will, if you give me some drink, for it's drink that I'm after, and not eating. I'd better get the truth out at once and have done with it. I've felt the craving coming on me for the last few days--you know what I mean--and now it's got me by the throat. I must have drink. Come along, Gogarty, and give me some, and then I'll say good-bye to you for ever.' 'Now what are you saying?' 'Don't stand arguing with me, for you can't understand, Gogarty--no one can; I can't myself. But it doesn't matter what anybody understands--I'm done for.' 'We'll have a bit of supper together. It will pass from you.' 'Ah, you little know;' and the priests walked up the hill in silence. 'Gogarty, there's no use talking; I'm done for. Let me go.' 'Come in, will you?' and he took him by the arm. 'Come in. I'm a bigger man than you, Moran; come in!' 'I'm done for,' Father Moran said again. Father Oliver made a sign of silence, and when they were in the parlour, and the door shut behind them, he said: 'You mustn't talk like that, and Catherine within a step of you.' 'I've told you, Gogarty, I'm done for, and I've just come here to bid you good-bye; but before we part I'd like to hear you say that I haven't been wanting in my duties--that in all the rest, as far as you know, I've been as good a man as another.' 'In all but one thing I know no better man, and I'll not hear that there's no hope.' 'Better waste no time talking. Just let me hear you say again that I've been a good man in everything but one thing.' 'Yes, indeed;' and the priests grasped hands. And Catherine came into the room to ask if Father Moran was stopping to supper. Father Oliver answered hurriedly: 'Yes, yes, he's staying. Bring in supper as soon as you can;' and she went away, to come back soon after with the cloth. And while she laid it the priests sat looking at each other, not daring to speak, hoping that Catherine did not suspect from their silence and manner that anything was wrong. She seemed to be a long while laying the cloth and bringing in the food; it seemed to them as if she was delaying on purpose. At last the door was closed, and they were alone. 'Now, Moran, sit down and eat a bit, won't you?' 'I can't eat anything. Give me some whisky; that is what I want. Give me some whisky, and I will go away and you'll never see me again. Just a glass to keep me going, and I will go straight out of your parish, so that none of the disgrace will fall upon you; or--what do you think? You could put me up here; no one need know I'm here. All I want are a few bottles of whisky.' 'You mean that I should put you up here and let you get drunk?' 'You know what I mean well enough. I'm like that. And it's well for you who don't want whisky. But if it hadn't been for whisky I should have been in a mad-house long ago. Now, just tell me if you'll give me drink. If you will, I'll stay and talk with you, for I know you're lonely; if not, I'll just be off with myself.' 'Moran, you'll be better when you've had something to eat. It will pass from you. I will give you a glass of beer.' 'A glass of beer! Ah, if I could tell you the truth! We've all our troubles, Gogarty--trouble that none knows but God. I haven't been watching you--I've been too tormented about myself to think much of anyone else--but now and then I've caught sight of a thought passing across your mind. We all suffer, you like another, and when the ache becomes too great to be borne we drink. Whisky is the remedy; there's none better. We drink and forget, and that is the great thing. There are times, Gogarty, when one doesn't want to think, when one's afraid, aren't there?--when one wants to forget that one's alive. You've had that feeling, Gogarty. We all have it. And now I must be off. I must forget everything. I want to drink and to feel the miles passing under my feet.' And on that he got up from the fire. 'Come, Moran, I won't hear you speak like that.' 'Let me go. It's no use; I'm done for;' and Father Oliver saw his eyes light up. 'I'll not keep you against your will, but I'll go a piece of the road with you.' 'I'd sooner you didn't come, Gogarty.' Without answering, Father Oliver caught up his hat and followed Father Moran out of the house. They walked without speaking, and when they got to the gate Father Oliver began to wonder which way his unhappy curate would choose for escape. 'Now why does he take the southern road?' And a moment after he guessed that Moran was making for Michael Garvey's public-house, 'and after drinking there,' he said to himself, 'he'll go on to Tinnick.' After a couple of miles, however, Moran turned into a by-road leading through the mountains, and they walked on without saying a word. And they walked mile after mile through the worn mountain road. 'You've come far enough, Gogarty; go back. Regan's public-house is outside of your parish.' 'If it's outside my parish, it's only the other side of the boundary; and you said, Moran, that you wouldn't touch whisky till to-morrow morning.' The priests walked on again, and Father Oliver fell to thinking now what might be the end of this adventure. He could see there was no hope of persuading Father Moran from the bottle of whisky. 'What time do you be making it, Gogarty?' 'It isn't ten o'clock yet.' 'Then I'll walk up and down till the stroke of twelve ... I'll keep my promise to you.' 'But they'll all be in bed by twelve. What will you do then?' Father Moran didn't give Father Gogarty an answer, but started off again, and this time he was walking very fast; and when they got as far as Regan's public-house Father Oliver took his friend by the arm, reminding him again of his promise. 'You promised not to disgrace the parish.' 'I said that.... Well, if it's walking your heart is set upon, you shall have your bellyful of it.' And he was off again like a man walking for a wager. But Father Oliver, who wouldn't be out-walked, kept pace with him, and they went striding along, walking without speaking. Full of ruts and broken stones, the road straggled through the hills, and Father Oliver wondered what would happen when they got to the top of the hill. For the sea lay beyond the hill. The road bent round a shoulder of the hill, and when Father Oliver saw the long road before him his heart began to fail him, and a cry of despair rose to his lips; but at that moment Moran stopped. 'You've saved me, Gogarty.' He did not notice that Father Gogarty was breathless, almost fainting, and he began talking hurriedly, telling Father Oliver how he had committed himself to the resolution of breaking into a run as soon as they got to the top of the hill. 'My throat was on fire then, but now all the fire is out of it; your prayer has been answered. But what's the matter, Gogarty? You're not speaking.' 'What you say is wonderful indeed, Moran, for I was praying for you. I prayed as long as I had breath; one can't pray without breath or speak. We'll talk of this presently.' The priests turned back, walking very slowly. 'I feel no more wish to drink whisky than I do to drink bog-water. But I'm a bit hot, and I think I'd like a drink, and a drink of water will do me first-rate. Now look here, Gogarty: a miracle has happened, and we should thank God for it. Shall we kneel down?' The road was very wet, and they thought it would do as well if they leant over the little wall and said some prayers together. 'I've conquered the devil; I know it. But I've been through a terrible time, Gogarty. It's all lifted from me now. I'm sorry I've brought you out for such a walk as this.' 'Never mind the walk, Moran, so long as the temptation has passed from you--that's the principal thing.' To speak of ordinary things was impossible, for they believed in the miracle, and, thanking God for this act of grace, they walked on until they reached Father Oliver's gate. 'I believe you're right, Moran; I believe that a miracle has happened. You'll go home straight, won't you?' Father Moran grasped Father Oliver's hand. 'Indeed I will.' And Father Oliver stood by his gate looking down the road, and he didn't open it and go through until Father Moran had passed out of sight. Pushing it open, he walked up the gravel path, saying to himself, 'A miracle, without doubt. Moran called it a miracle and it seems like one, but will it last? Moran believes himself cured, that is certain;' and Father Oliver thought how his curate had gripped his hand, and felt sure that the grip meant, 'You've done me a great service, one I can never repay.' It was a pleasure to think that Moran would always think well of him. 'Yes, Moran will always think well of me,' he repeated as he groped his way into the dark and lonely house in search of a box of matches. When his lamp was lighted he threw himself into his armchair so that he might ponder better on what had happened. 'I've been a good friend to him, and it's a great support to a man to think that he's been a good friend to another, that he kept him in the straight path, saved him from himself. Saved himself from himself,' he repeated;' can anybody be saved from himself?' and he began to wonder if Moran would conquer in the end and take pride in his conquest over himself. There was no sound, only an occasional spit of the lamp, and in the silence Father Oliver asked if it were the end of man's life to trample upon self or to encourage self. 'Nora,' he said, 'would answer that self is all we have, and to destroy it and put in its place conventions and prejudices is to put man's work above God's. But Nora would not answer in these words till she had spoken with Mr. Walter Poole.' The name brought a tightening about his heart, and when Father Oliver stumbled to his feet--he had walked many miles, and was tired--he began to think he must tell Nora of the miracle that had happened about a mile--he thought it was just a mile--beyond Patsy Regan's public-house. The miracle would impress her, and he looked round the room. It was then he caught sight of a letter--her letter. The envelope and foreign stamp told him that before he read the address--her writing! His hand trembled and his cheek paled, for she was telling him the very things he had longed to know. She was in love with Poole! she was not only in love with him--she was his mistress! The room seemed to tumble about him, and he grasped the end of the chimney-piece. And then, feeling that he must get out into the open air, he thought of Moran. He began to feel he must speak to him. He couldn't remember exactly what he had to say to him, but there was something on his mind which he must speak to Moran about. It seemed to him that he must go away with Moran to some public-house far away and drink. Hadn't Moran said that there were times when we all wanted drink? He tried to collect his thoughts.... Something had gone wrong, but he couldn't remember what had gone wrong or where he was. It seemed to him that somebody had lost her soul. He must seek it. It was his duty. Being a priest, he must go forth and find the soul, and bring it back to God. He remembered no more until he found himself in the midst of a great wood, standing in an open space; about him were dripping trees, and a ghostly sky overhead, and no sound but that of falling leaves. Large leaves floated down, and each interested him till it reached the wet earth. And then he began to wonder why he was in the wood at night, and why he should be waiting there, looking at the glimmering sky, seeing the oak-leaves falling, remembering suddenly that he was looking for her soul, for her lost soul, and that something had told him he would find the soul he was seeking in the wood; so he was drawn from glade to glade through the underwoods, and through places so thickly overgrown that it seemed impossible to pass through. And then the thorn-bushes gave way before him, for he was no longer alone. She had descended from the trees into his arms, white and cold, and every moment the wood grew dimmer; but when he expected it to disappear, when he thought he was going to escape for ever with her, an opening in the trees discovered the lake, and in fear he turned back into the wood, seeking out paths where there was little light. Once he was within the wood, the mist seemed to incorporate again; she descended again into his arms, and this time he would have lifted the veil and looked into her face, but she seemed to forbid him to recognize her under penalty of loss. His desire overcame him, and he put out his hand to lift the veil. As he did so his eyes opened, he saw the wet wood, the shining sky, and she sitting by a stone waiting for him. A little later she came to meet him from behind the hawthorns that grew along the cart-track--a tall woman with a little bend in her walk. He wondered why he was so foolish as to disobey her, and besought her to return to him, and they roamed again in the paths that led round the rocks overgrown with briars, by the great oak-tree where the leaves were falling. And wandering they went, smiling gently on each other, till she began to tell him that he must abide by the shores of the lake--why, he could not understand, for the wood was much more beautiful, and he was more alone with her in the wood than by the lake. The sympathy was so complete that words were not needed, but they had begun in his ears. He strove to apprehend the dim words sounding in his ears. Not her words, surely, for there was a roughness in the voice, and presently he heard somebody asking him why he was about this time of night, and very slowly he began to understand that one of his parishioners was by him, asking him whither he was going. 'You'll be catching your death at this hour of the night, Father Oliver.' And the man told Father Oliver he was on his way to a fair, and for a short-cut he had come through the wood. And Father Oliver listened, thinking all the while that he must have been dreaming, for he could remember nothing. 'Now, your reverence, we're at your own door, and the door is open. When you went out you forgot to close it.' The priest didn't answer. 'I hope no harm will come to your reverence; and you'll be lucky if you haven't caught your death.' X He stopped in his undressing to ponder how Moran had come to tell him that he was going away on a drinking-bout, and all their long walk together to within a mile of Regan's public-house returned to him bit by bit, how Moran knelt down by the roadside to drink bog-water, which he said would take the thirst from him as well as whisky; and after bidding Moran good-night he had fallen into his armchair. It was not till he rose to his feet to go to bed that he had caught sight of the letter. Nora wrote--he could not remember exactly what she wrote, and threw himself into bed. After sleeping for many hours, his eyes at last opened, and he awoke wondering, asking himself where he was. Even the familiar room surprised him. And once more he began the process of picking his way back, but he couldn't recall what had happened from the time he left his house in search of Moran till he was overtaken by Alec in the wood. In some semi-conscious state he must have wandered off to Derrinrush. He must have wandered a long while--two hours, maybe more --through the familiar paths, but unaware that he was choosing them. To escape from the effort of remembrance he was glad to listen to Catherine, who was telling him that Alec was at the door, come up from the village to inquire how the priest was. She waited to hear Father Oliver's account of himself, but not having a story prepared, he pretended he was too tired to speak; and as he lay back in his chair he composed a little story, telling how he had been for a long walk with Father Moran, and, coming back in the dark, had missed his way on the outskirts of the wood. She began to raise some objections, but he said she was not to excite herself, and went out to see Alec, who, not being a quick-witted fellow, was easily persuaded into an acceptance of a very modified version of the incident, and Father Oliver lay back in his chair wondering if he had succeeded in deceiving Catherine. It would seem that he had, for when she came to visit him again from her kitchen she spoke of something quite different, which surprised him, for she was a very observant woman of inexhaustible curiosity. But this time, however, he had managed to keep his secret from her, and, dismissing her, he thought of Nora's letter. _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'RAPALLO, ITALY, '_December_ 12, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I received "The Imitation" to-day and your two letters, one asking me if I had got the book. We had left Munich without giving instructions about our letters, so please accept my apologies and my best thanks. The Elizabethan translation, as you point out, is beautiful English, and I am glad to have the book; it will remind me of you, and I will keep it by me even if I do not read it very often. I passed the book over to Mr. Poole; he read it for a few minutes, and then returned it to me. "A worthy man, no doubt," he said, "but prone to taking things for granted. 'The Imitation,'" he continued, "reminds me of a flower growing in the shade of a cloister, dying for lack of sun, and this is surely not the right kind of reading for you or your friend Father Oliver." I feel sure you want a change. Change of scene brings a change of mind. Why don't you come to Italy? Italy is the place for you. Italy is your proper mind. Mr. Poole says that Italy is every man's proper mind, and you're evidently thinking of Italy, for you ask for a description of where I am staying, saying that a ray of Italian sunlight will cheer you. Come to Italy. You can come here without danger of meeting us. We are leaving at the end of the month. 'But I could go on chattering page after page, telling you about gardens and orange-trees (the orange-trees are the best part of the decoration; even now the great fruit hangs in the green leaves); and when I had described Italy, and you had described all the castles and the islands, we could turn back and discuss our religious differences. But I doubt if any good would come of this correspondence. You see, I have got my work to do, and you have got yours, and, notwithstanding all you say, I do not believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. Your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the Irish climate. It is very depressing, I know. I remember how you used to attribute the history of Ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as you said once, without an accent upon it. But you are not the ordinary Irishman; there is enough vitality in you to resist the languor of the climate. Your mood will pass away.... Your letter about the hermit that lived on Church Island is most beautiful. You have struck the right note--the wistful Irish note--and if you can write a book in that strain I am sure it will meet with great success. Go on with your book, and don't write to me any more--at least, not for the present. I have got too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence. We are going to Paris, and are looking forward to spending a great deal of time reading in the National Library. Some day we may meet, or take up this correspondence again. At present I feel that it is better for you and better for me that it should cease. But you will not think hardly of me because I write you this. I am writing in your own interests, dear Father Gogarty. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' He read the letter slowly, pondering every sentence and every word, and when he had finished it his hand dropped upon his knee; and when the letter fell upon the hearthrug he did not stoop to pick it up, but sat looking into the fire, convinced that everything was over and done. There was nothing to look forward to; his life would drag on from day to day, from week to week, month to month, year to year, till at last he would be taken away to the grave. The grave is dreamless! But there might be a long time before he reached it, living for years without seeing or even hearing from her, for she would weary of writing to him. He began to dream of a hunt, the quarry hearing with dying ears the horns calling to each other in the distance, and cast in his chair, his arms hanging like dead arms, his senses mercifully benumbed, he lay, how long he knew not, but it must have been a long time. Catherine came into the room with some spoons in her hands, and asked him what was the matter, and, jumping up, he answered her rudely, for her curiosity annoyed him. It was irritating to have to wait for her to leave the room, but he did not dare to begin thinking while she was there. The door closed at last; he was alone again, and his thoughts fixed themselves at once on the end of her letter, on the words, 'Go on with your book, and don't write to me any more--at least, not for the present. I have too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence.' The evident cruelty of her words surprised him. There was nothing like this in any of her other letters. She intended these words as a _coup de grâce_. There was little mercy in them, for they left him living; he still lived--in a way. There was no use trying to misunderstand her words. To do so would be foolish, even if it were possible for him to deceive himself, and the rest of her letter mattered nothing to him. The two little sentences with which she dismissed him were his sole concern; they were the keys to the whole of this correspondence which had beguiled him. Fool that he had been not to see it! Alas! we see only what we want to see. He wandered about the lake, trying to bring himself to hate her. He even stopped in his walks to address insulting words to her. Words of common abuse came to his tongue readily, but there was an unconquerable tenderness in his heart always; and one day the thought went by that it was nobler of her to make him suffer than to have meekly forgiven him, as many women would have done, because he was a priest. He stopped affrighted, and began to wonder if this were the first time her easy forgiveness of his mistake had seemed suspicious. No, he felt sure that some sort of shadow of disappointment had passed at the back of his mind when he read her first letter, and after having lain for months at the back of his mind, this idea had come to the surface. An extraordinary perversion, truly, which he could only account for by the fact that he had always looked upon her as being more like what the primitive woman must have been than anybody else in the world; and the first instinct of the primitive woman would be to revenge any slight on her sexual pride. He had misread her character, and in this new reading he found a temporary consolation. As he sat thinking of her he heard a mouse gnawing under the boards, and every night after the mouse came to gnaw. 'The teeth of regret are the same; my life is being gnawed away. Never shall I see her.' It seemed impossible that life would close on him without his seeing her face or hearing her voice again, and he began to think how it would be if they were to meet on the other side. For he believed in heaven, and that was a good thing. Without such belief there would be nothing for him to do but to go down to the lake and make an end of himself. But believing as he did in heaven and the holy Catholic Church to be the surest way of getting there, he had a great deal to be thankful for. Poole's possession of her was but temporary, a few years at most, whereas his possession of her, if he were so fortunate as to gain heaven, and by his prayers to bring her back to the true fold, would endure for ever and ever. The wisest thing, therefore, for him to do would be to enter a Trappist monastery. But our Lord says that in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and what would heaven be to him without Nora? No more than a union of souls, and he wanted her body as well as her soul. He must pray. He knew the feeling well--a sort of mental giddiness, a delirium in the brain; and it increased rapidly, urging him to fall on his knees. If he resisted, it was because he was ashamed and feared to pray to God to reserve Nora for him. But the whirl in his brain soon deprived him of all power of resistance, and, looking round the room hurriedly to assure himself he was not watched, he fell on his knees and burst into extemporary prayer: '_O my God, whatever punishment there is to be borne, let me bear it. She sinned, no doubt, and her sins must be atoned for. Let me bear the punishment that thou, in thine infinite wisdom, must adjudge to her, poor sinful woman that she is, poor woman persecuted by men, persecuted by me. O my God, remember that I lent a willing ear to scandalmongers, that I went down that day to the school and lost my temper with her, that I spoke against her in my church. All the sins that have been committed are my sins; let me bear the punishment. O my Lord Jesus Christ, do thou intercede with thy Father and ask him to heap all the punishment on my head. Oh, dear Lord Jesus, if I had only thought of thee when I went down to the school, if I had remembered thy words, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," I should have been spared this anguish. If I had remembered thy words, she might have gone to Dublin and had her baby there, and come back to the parish. O my God, the fault is mine; all the faults that have been committed can be traced back to me, therefore I beseech of thee, I call upon thee, to let me bear all the punishment that she has earned by her sins, poor erring creature that she is. O my God, do this for me; remember that I served thee well for many years when I lived among the poor folk in the mountains. For all these years I ask this thing of thee, that thou wilt let me bear her punishment. Is it too much I am asking of thee, O my God, is it too much?'_ When he rose from his knees, bells seemed to be ringing in his head, and he began to wonder if another miracle had befallen him, for it was as if someone had laid hands on him and forced him on his knees. But to ask the Almighty to extend his protection to him rather than to Mr. Poole, who was a Protestant, seemed not a little gross. Father Oliver experienced a shyness that he had never known before, and he hoped the Almighty would not be offended at the familiarity of the language, or the intimate nature of the request, for to ask for Nora's body as well as her soul did not seem altogether seemly. It was queer to think like that. Perhaps his brain was giving way. And he pushed the plates aside; he could not eat any dinner, nor could he take any interest in his garden. The dahlias were over, the chrysanthemums were beginning. Never had the country seemed so still: dead birds in the woods, and the sounds of leaves, and the fitful December sunlight on the strands--these were his distractions when he went out for a walk, and when he came in he often thought it would be well if he did not live to see another day, so heavy did the days seem, so uneventful, and in these languid autumn days the desire to write to Nora crept nearer, until it always seemed about him like some familiar animal. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_December_ 30, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I should have written to you before, but I lacked courage. Do you remember saying that the loneliness of the country sometimes forced you to kneel down to pray that you might die? I think the loneliness that overcame you was the loneliness that comes at the end of an autumn day when the dusk gathers in the room. It seems to steal all one's courage away, and one looks up from one's work in despair, asking of what value is one's life. The world goes on just the same, grinding our souls away. Nobody seems to care; nothing seems to make any difference. 'Human life is a very lonely thing, and for that it is perhaps religious. But there are days when religion fails us, when we lack courage, lonesomeness being our national failing. We were always lonesome, hundreds of years ago as much as to-day. You know it, you have been through it and will sympathize. A caged bird simply beats its wings and dies, but a human being does not die of loneliness, even when he prays for death. You have experienced it all, and will know what I feel when I tell you that I spend my time watching the rain, thinking of sunshine, picture-galleries, and libraries. 'But you were right to bid me go on with the book I spoke to you about. If I had gone away, as you first suggested, I should have been unhappy; I should have thought continually of the poor people I left behind; my abandonment of them would have preyed on my mind, for the conviction is dead in me that I should have been able to return to them; we mayn't return to places where we have been unhappy. I might have been able to get a parish in England or a chaplaincy, but I should have always looked upon the desertion of my poor people as a moral delinquency. A quiet conscience is, after all, a great possession, and for the sake of a quiet conscience I will remain here, and you will be able to understand my scruple when you think how helpless my people are, and how essential is the kindly guidance of the priest. 'Without a leader, the people are helpless; they wander like sheep on a mountain-side, falling over rocks or dying amid snowdrifts. Sometimes the shepherd grows weary of watching, and the question comes, Has a man no duty towards himself? And then one begins to wonder what is one's duty and what is duty--if duty is something more than the opinions of others, something more than a convention which we would not like to hear called into question, because we feel instinctively that it is well for everyone to continue in the rut, for, after all, a rut means a road, and roads are necessary. If one lets one's self go on thinking, one very soon finds that wrong and right are indistinguishable, so perhaps it is better to follow the rut if one can. But the rut is beset with difficulties; there are big holes on either side. Sometimes the road ends nowhere, and one gets lost in spite of one's self. But why am I writing all these things to you?' Why, indeed? If he were to send this letter she would show it to Mr. Poole, and they would laugh over it together. 'Poor priesty!' they would say, and the paper was crumpled and thrown into the fire. 'My life is unendurable, and it will grow worse,' he said, and fell to thinking how he would grow old, getting every day more like an old stereotyped plate, the Mass and the rosary at the end of his tongue, and nothing in his heart. He had seen many priests like this. Could he fall into such miserable decadence? Could such obedience to rule be any man's duty? But where should he go? It mattered little whither he went, for he would never see her any more, and she was, after all, the only real thing in the world for him. So did he continue to suffer like an animal, mutely, instinctively, mourning his life away, forgetful of everything but his grief; unmindful of his food, and unable to sleep when he lay down, or to distinguish between familiar things--the birds about his house, the boys and girls he had baptized. Very often he had to think a moment before he knew which was Mary and which was Bridget, which was Patsy and which was Mike, and very often Catherine was in the parlour many minutes before he noticed her presence. She stood watching him, wondering of what he was thinking, for he sat in his chair, getting weaker and thinner; and soon he began to look haggard as an old man or one about to die. He seemed to grow feebler in mind; his attention wandered away every few minutes from the book he was reading. Catherine noticed the change, and, thinking that a little chat would be of help, she often came up from her kitchen to tell him the gossip of the parish; but he could not listen to her, her garrulousness seemed to him more than ever tiresome, and he kept a book by him, an old copy of 'Ivanhoe,' which he pretended he was reading when he heard her step. Father Moran came to discuss the business of the parish with him and insisted on relieving Father Oliver of a great deal of it, saying that he wanted a rest, and he often urged Father Oliver to go away for a holiday. He was kind, but his talk was wearisome, and Father Oliver thought he would prefer to read about the fabulous Rowena than to hear any more about the Archbishop. But when Father Moran left Rowena bored him, and so completely that he could not remember at what point he had left off reading, and his thoughts wandered from the tournament to some phrase he had made use of in writing to Nora, or, it might be, some phrase of hers that would suddenly spring into his mind. He sought no longer to discover her character from her letters, nor did he criticize the many contradictions which had perplexed him: it seemed to him that he accepted her now, as the phrase goes, 'as she was,' thinking of her as he might of some supernatural being whom he had offended, and who had revenged herself. Her wickedness became in his eyes an added grace, and from the rack on which he lay he admired his executioner. Even her liking for Mr. Poole became submerged in a tide of suffering, and of longing, and weakness of spirit. He no longer had any strength to question her liking for the minor prophets: there were discrepancies in everyone, and no doubt there were in him as well as in her. He had once been very different from what he was to-day. Once he was an ardent student in Maynooth, he had been an energetic curate; and now what was he? Worse still, what was he becoming? And he allowed his thoughts to dwell on the fact that every day she was receding from him. He, too, was receding. All things were receding--becoming dimmer. He piled the grate up with turf, and when the blaze came leaned over it, warming his hands, asking himself why she liked Mr. Poole rather than him. For he no longer tried to conceal from himself the fact that he loved her. He had played the hypocrite long enough; he had spoken about her soul, but it was herself that he wanted. This admission brought some little relief, but he felt that the relief would only be temporary. Alas! it was surrender. It was worse than surrender--it was abandonment. He could sink no deeper. But he could; we can all sink deeper. Now what would the end be? There is an end to everything; there must be an end even to humiliation, to self-abasement. It was Moran over again. Moran was ashamed of his vice, but he had to accept it, and Father Oliver thought how much it must have cost his curate to come to tell him that he wanted to lie drunk for some days in an outhouse in order to escape for a few days from the agony of living. 'That is what he called it, and I, too, would escape from it.' His thoughts turned suddenly to a poem written by a peasant in County Cork a hundred years ago to a woman who inspired a passion that wrecked his mind altogether in the end. And he wondered if madness would be the end of his suffering, or if he would go down to the lake and find rest in it. 'Oh, succour me, dear one, give me a kiss from thy mouth, And lift me up to thee from death, Or bid them make for me a narrow bed, a coffin of boards, In the dark neighbourhood of the worm and his friends. My life is not life but death, my voice is no voice but a wind, There is no colour in me, nor life, nor richness, nor health; But in tears and sorrow and weakness, without music, without sport, without power, I go into captivity and woe, and in the pain of my love of thee.' XI _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_March_ 12, 19--. 'A long time has passed without your hearing from me, and I am sure you must have said more than once: "Well, that priest has more sense than I gave him credit for. He took the hint. He understood that it would be useless for us to continue to write long letters to each other about remorse of conscience and Mr. Poole's criticism of the Bible." But the sight of my handwriting will call into question the opinion you have formed of my good sense, and you will say: "Here he is, beginning it all over again." No, I am not. I am a little ashamed of my former letters, and am writing to tell you so. My letters, if I write any, will be quite different in the future, thanks to your candour. Your letter from Rapallo cured me; like a surgeon's knife, it took out the ulcer that was eating my life away. The expression will seem exaggerated, I know; but let it remain. You no doubt felt that I was in ignorance of my own state of feelings regarding you, and you wrote just such a letter as would force me to look into my heart and to discover who I really was. You felt that you could help me to some knowledge of myself by telling me about yourself. 'The shock on reading your confession--for I look upon your Rapallo letter as one--was very great, for on reading it I felt that a good deal that I had written to you about the salvation of your soul was inspired, not by any pure fear that I had done anything that might lose a soul to God, but by pure selfishness. I did not dare to write boldly that I loved yourself, and would always love you; I wore a mask and a disguise, and in order to come to terms with myself I feel it necessary to confess to you; otherwise all the suffering I have endured would be wasted. 'But this is not all my confession; worse still remains. I have discovered that when I spoke against you in church, and said things that caused you to leave the parish, I did not do so, as I thought, because I believed that the morality of my parish must be maintained at any cost. I know now that jealousy--yes, sensual jealousy--prompted me. And when I went to my sisters to ask them to appoint you to the post of music-teacher in their school, I did not do so for their sake, but for my own, because I wished to have you back in the parish. But I do not wish you to think that when I wrote about atonement I wrote what I knew to be untrue. I did not; the truth was hidden from me. Nor did I wish to get you back to the parish in order that I might gratify my passion. All these things were very vague, and I didn't understand myself until now. I never had any experience of life till I met you. And is it not curious that one should know so little of one's self, for I might have gone down to my grave without knowing how false I was at heart, if I had not been stricken down with a great illness. 'One day, Catherine told me that the lake was frozen over, and, as I had been within doors a long while, she advised me to go out and see the boys sliding on the ice. Her advice put an idea into my head, that I might take out my skates and skate recklessly without trying to avoid the deeper portions where the ice was likely to be thin, for I was weary of life, and knowing that I could not go back upon the past, and that no one would ever love me, I wished to bring my suffering to an end. You will wonder why I did not think of the sufferings that I might have earned for myself in the next world. I had suffered so much that I could think of nothing but the present moment. God was good, and he saved me, for as I stood irresolute before a piece of ice which I knew wouldn't bear me, I felt a great sickness creeping over me. I returned home, and for several days the doctor could not say whether I would live or die. You remember Catherine, my servant? She told me that the only answer the doctor would give her was that if I were not better within a certain time there would be no hope of my recovery. At the end of the week he came into my room. Catherine was waiting outside, and I hear that she fell on her knees to thank God when the doctor said: "Yes, he is a little better; if there's no relapse he'll live." 'After a severe illness one is alone with one's self, the whole of one's life sings in one's head like a song, and listening to it, I learned that it was jealousy that prompted me to speak against you, and not any real care for the morality of my parish. I discovered, too, that my moral ideas were not my own. They were borrowed from others, and badly assimilated. I remembered, too, how at Maynooth the tradition was always to despise women, and in order to convince myself I used to exaggerate this view, and say things that made my fellow-students look at me askance, if not with suspicion. But while dozing through long convalescent hours many things hitherto obscure to me became clear, and it seems now to me to be clearly wrong to withhold our sympathy from any side of life. It seems to me that it is only by our sympathy we can do any good at all. God gave us our human nature; we may misuse and degrade our nature, but we must never forget that it came originally from God. 'What I am saying may not be in accordance with current theology, but I am not thinking of theology, but of the things that were revealed to me during my sickness. It was through my fault that you met Mr. Walter Poole, and I must pray to God that he will bring you back to the fold. I shall pray for you both. I wish you all happiness, and I thank you for the many kind things you have said, for the good advice you have given me. You are quite right: I want a change. You advise me to go to Italy, and you are right to advise me to go there, for my heart yearns for Italy. But I dare not go; for I still feel that if I left my parish I should never return to it; and if I were to go away and not return a great scandal would be caused, and I am more than ever resolved not to do anything to grieve the poor people, who have been very good to me, and whose interests I have neglected this long while. 'I send this letter to Beechwood Hall, where you will find it on your return. As I have already said, you need not answer it; no good will come by answering it. In years to come, perhaps, when we are both different, we may meet again. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'IMPERIAL HOTEL, CAIRO, EGYPT, '_May_ 5, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'By the address on the top of this sheet of paper you will see that I have travelled a long way since you last heard from me, and ever since your letter has been following me about from hotel to hotel. It is lucky that it has caught me up in Egypt, for we are going East to visit countries where the postal service has not yet been introduced. We leave here to-morrow. If your letter had been a day later it would have missed me; it would have remained here unclaimed--unless, indeed, we come back this way, which is not likely. You see what a near thing it was; and as I have much to say to you, I should be sorry not to have had an opportunity of writing. 'Your last letter put many thoughts into my head, and made me anxious to explain many things which I feel sure you do not know about my conduct since I left London, and the letters I have written to you. Has it not often seemed strange to you that we go through life without ever being able to reveal the soul that is in us? Is it because we are ashamed, or is it that we do not know ourselves? It is certainly a hard task to learn the truth about ourselves, and I appreciate the courage your last letter shows; you have faced the truth, and having learned it, you write it to me in all simplicity. I like you better now, Oliver Gogarty, than I ever did before, and I always liked you. But it seems to me that to allow you to confess yourself without confessing myself, without revealing the woman's soul in me as you have revealed the man's soul in yourself, would be unworthy. 'Our destinies got somehow entangled, there was a wrench, the knot was broken, and the thread was wound upon another spool. The unravelling of the piece must have perplexed you, and you must have wondered why the shape and the pattern should have passed suddenly away into thread again, and then, after a lapse of time, why the weaving should have begun again. 'You must have wondered why I wrote to you, and you must have wondered why I forgave you for the wrong you did me. I guessed that our friendship when I was in the parish was a little more than the platonic friendship that you thought it was, so when you turned against me, and were unkind, I found an excuse for you. When my hatred was bitterest, I knew somehow, at the back of my mind--for I only allowed myself to think of it occasionally--that you acted from--there is but one word--jealousy (not a pretty word from your point of view); and it must have shocked you, as a man and as a priest, to find that the woman whom you thought so much of, and whose society gave you so much pleasure (I know the times we passed together were as pleasant to you as they were to me), should suddenly without warning appear in a totally different light, and in a light which must have seemed to you mean and sordid. The discovery that I was going to have a baby threw me suddenly down from the pedestal on which you had placed me; your idol was broken, and your feelings--for you are one of those men who feel deeply--got the better of you, and you indulged in a few incautious words in your church. 'I thought of these things sometimes, not often, I admit, in the little London lodging where I lived till my baby was born, seeing my gown in front getting shorter, and telling lies to good Mrs. Dent about the husband whom I said was abroad, whom I was expecting to return. That was a miserable time, but we won't talk of it any more. When Father O'Grady showed me the letter that you wrote him, I forgave you in a way. A woman forgives a man the wrongs he does when these wrongs are prompted by jealousy, for, after all, a woman is never really satisfied if a man is not a little jealous. His jealousy may prove inconvenient, and she may learn to hate it and think it an ugly thing and a crooked thing, but, from her point of view, love would not be complete without it. 'I smiled, of course, when I got your letter telling me that you had been to your sisters to ask them if they would take me as a schoolmistress in the convent, and I walked about smiling, thinking of your long innocent drive round the lake. I can see it all, dear man that you are, thinking you could settle everything, and that I would return to Ireland to teach barefooted little children their Catechism and their A, B, C. How often has the phrase been used in our letters! It was a pretty idea of yours to go to your sisters; you did not know then that you cared for me--you only thought of atonement. I suppose we must always be deceived. Mr. Poole says self-deception is the very law of life. We live enveloped in self-deception as in a film; now and again the film breaks like a cloud and the light shines through. We veil our eyes, for we do not like the light. It is really very difficult to tell the truth, Father Gogarty; I find it difficult now to tell you why I wrote all these letters. Because I liked you? Yes, and a little bit because I wished you to suffer; I don't think I shall ever get nearer the truth than that. But when I asked you to meet us abroad, I did so in good faith, for you are a clever man, and Mr. Poole's studies would please you. At the back of my mind I suppose I thought to meet him would do you good; I thought, perhaps, that he might redeem you from some conventions and prejudices. I don't like priests; the priest was the only thing about you I never liked. Was it in some vain, proselytizing idea that I invited you? Candidly, I don't know, and I don't think I ever shall. We know so very little about this world that it seems to me waste of time to think about the next. My notion is that the wisest plan is to follow the mood of the moment, with an object more or less definite in view.... Nothing is worth more than that. I am at the present moment genuinely interested in culture, and therefore I did not like at all the book you sent me, "The Imitation," and I wrote to tell you to put it by, to come abroad and see pictures and statues in a beautiful country where people do not drink horrid porter, but nice wine, and where Sacraments are left to the old people who have nothing else to interest them. I suppose it was a cruel, callous letter, but I did not mean it so; I merely wanted to give you a glimpse of my new life and my new point of view. As for this letter, Heaven knows how you will take it--whether you will hate me for it or like me; but since you wrote quite frankly to me, confessing yourself from end to end, I feel bound to tell you everything I know about myself--and since I left Ireland I have learned a great deal about myself and about life. Perhaps I should have gone on writing to you if Mr. Poole had not one day said that no good would come of this long correspondence; he suspected I was a disturbing influence, and, as you were determined to live in Ireland, he said it were better that you should live in conventions and prejudices, without them your life would be impossible. 'Then came your last letter, and it showed me how right Mr. Poole was. Nothing remains now but to beg your forgiveness for having disturbed your life. The disturbance is, perhaps, only a passing one. You may recover your ideas--the ideas that are necessary to you--or you may go on discovering the truth, and in the end may perhaps find a way whereby you may leave your parish without causing scandal. To be quite truthful, that is what I hope will happen. However this may be, I hope if we ever meet again it will not be till you have ceased to be a priest. But all this is a long way ahead. We are going East, and shall not be back for many months; we are going to visit the buried cities in Turkestan. I do not know if you have ever heard about these cities. They were buried in sand somewhere about a thousand years ago, and some parts have been disinterred lately. Vaults were broken into in search of treasure. Gold and precious stones were discovered, but far more valuable than the gold and silver, so says Mr. Poole, are certain papyri now being deciphered by the learned professors of Berlin. 'You know the name of Mr. Poole's book, "The Source of the Christian River"? He had not suspected that its source went further back than Palestine, but now he says that some papyri may be found that will take it far back into Central Asia. 'I am going with him on this quest. It sounds a little absurd, doesn't it? my going in quest of the Christian river? But if one thinks for a moment, one thing is as absurd as another. Do you know, I find it difficult to take life seriously, and I walk about the streets thinking of you, Father Gogarty, and the smile that will come over your face, half angry, half pleased, when you read that your schoolmistress is going to Central Asia in quest of the Christian river. What will you be doing all this time? You say that you cannot leave your parish because you fear to give scandal; you fear to pain the poor people, who have been good to you and who have given you money, and your scruple is a noble one; I appreciate and respect it. But we must not think entirely of our duties to others; we must think of our duties to ourselves. Each one must try to realize himself--I mean that we must try to bring the gifts that Nature gave us to fruition. Nature has given you many gifts: I wonder what will become of you? 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' 'Good God, how I love that woman!' the priest said, awaking from his reverie, for the clock told him that he had sat for nearly three-quarters of an hour, her letter in his hand, after having read it. And lying back in his armchair, his hands clasped, his eyes fixed on the window, listening to the birds singing in the vine--it was already in leaf, and the shadows of the leaves danced across the carpet--he sought to define that sense of delight--he could find no other words for it--which she exhaled unconsciously as a flower exhales its perfume, that joy of life which she scattered with as little premeditation as the birds scattered their songs. But though he was constantly seeking some new form of expression of her charm, he always came back to the words 'sense of delight.' Sometimes he added that sense of delight which we experience when we go out of the house on an April morning and find everything growing about us, the sky wilful and blue, and the clouds going by, saying, 'Be happy, as we are.' She was so different from every other woman. All other women were plain instincts, come into the world for the accomplishment of things that women had accomplished for thousands of years. Other women think as their mothers thought, and as their daughters will think, expressing the thoughts of the countless generations behind and in front of them. But this woman was moved merely by impulses; and what is more inexplicable than an impulse? What is the spring but an impulse? and this woman was mysterious, evanescent as its breath, with the same irresponsible seduction. He was certain that she was at last clear to him, though she might become dark to him again. One day she had come to gather flowers, and while arranging her posy she said casually: 'You are a ruler in this parish; you direct it, the administration of the parish is your business, and I am the little amusement that you turn to when your business is done.' He had not known how to answer her. In this way her remarks often covered him with confusion. She just thought as she pleased, and spoke as she pleased, and he returned to his idea that she was more like the primitive woman than anybody else. Pondering on her words for the hundredth time, they seemed to him stranger than ever. That any human being should admit that she was but the delight of another's life seemed at first only extraordinary, but if one considered her words, it seemed to signify knowledge--latent, no doubt--that her beauty was part of the great agency. Her words implied that she was aware of her mission. It was her unconscious self that spoke, and it was that which gave significance to her words. His thoughts melted into nothingness, and when he awoke from his reverie he was thinking that Nora Glynn had come into his life like a fountain, shedding living water upon it, awakening it. And taking pleasure in the simile, he said, 'A fountain better than anything else expresses this natural woman,' controlled, no doubt, by a law, but one hidden from him. 'A fountain springs out of earth into air; it sings a tune that cannot be caught and written down in notes; the rising and falling water is full of iridescent colour, and to the wilting roses the fountain must seem not a natural thing, but a spirit, and I too think of her as a spirit.' And his thoughts falling away again he became vaguely but intensely conscious of all the beauty and grace and the enchantment of the senses that appeared to him in the name of Nora Glynn. At that moment Catherine came into the room. 'No, not now,' he said; and he went into the garden and through the wicket at the other end, thinking tenderly how he had gone out last year on a day just like the present day, trying to keep thoughts of her out of his mind. The same fifteenth of May! But last year the sky was low and full of cotton-like clouds; and he remembered how the lake warbled about the smooth limestone shingle, and how the ducks talked in the reeds, how the reeds themselves seemed to be talking. This year the clouds lifted; there was more blue in the sky, less mist upon the water, and it was this day last year that sorrow began to lap about his heart like soft lakewater. He thought then that he was grieving deeply, but since last year he had learned all that a man could know of grief. For last year he was able to take an interest in the spring, to watch for the hawthorn-bloom; but this year he did not trouble to look their way. What matter whether they bloomed a week earlier or a week later? As a matter of fact they were late, the frost having thrown them back, and there would be no flowers till June. How beautifully the tasselled branches of the larches swayed, throwing shadows on the long May grass! 'And they are not less beautiful this year, though they are less interesting to me,' he said. He wandered through the woods, over the country, noting the different signs of spring, for, in spite of his sorrow, he could not but admire the slender spring. He could not tell why, perhaps because he had always associated Nora with the gaiety of the spring-time. She was thin like the spring, and her laughter was blithe like the spring. She seemed to him like a spirit, and isn't the spring like a spirit? She was there in the cow-parsley just coming up, and the sight of the campions between the white spangles reminded him of the pink flowers she wore in her hat. The underwood was full of bluebells, but her eyes were not blue. The aspens were still brown, but in a month the dull green leaves, silvery underneath, would be fluttering at the end of their long stems. And the continual agitation of the aspen-leaf seemed to him rather foolish, reminding him of a weak-minded woman clamouring for sympathy always. The aspen was an untidy tree; he was not sure that he liked the tree, and if one is in doubt whether one likes or dislikes, the chances are that one dislikes. Who would think of asking himself if he liked beech-trees, or larches, or willows? A little later he stood lost in admiration of a line of willows all a-row in front of a stream; they seemed to him like girls curtseying, and the delicacy of the green and yellow buds induced him to meditate on the mysteries that common things disclose. Seeing a bird disappear into a hole in the wall, he climbed up. The bird pecked at him, for she was hatching. 'A starling,' he said. In the field behind his house, under the old hawthorn-tree, an amiable-looking donkey had given birth to a foal, and he watched the little thing, no bigger than a sheep, covered with long gray hair ... There were some parishioners he would be sorry to part with, and there was Catherine. If he went away he would never see her again, nor those who lived in the village. All this present reality would fade, his old church, surrounded with gravestones and stunted Scotch firs, would become like a dream, every year losing a little in colour and outline. He was going, he did not know when, but he was going. For a long time the feeling had been gathering in him that he was going, and her letter increased that feeling. He would go just as soon as a reputable way of leaving his parish was revealed to him. By the help of his reason he could not hope to find out the way. Nothing seemed more impossible than that a way should be found for him to leave his parish without giving scandal; but however impossible things may seem to us, nothing is impossible to Nature. He must put his confidence in Nature; he must listen to her. She would tell him. And he lay all the afternoon listening to the reeds and the ducks talking together in the lake. Very often the wood was like a harp; a breeze touched the strings, and every now and then the murmur seemed about to break into a little tune, and as if in emulation, or because he remembered his part in the music, a blackbird, perched near to his mate, whose nest was in the hawthorns growing out of the tumbled wall, began to sing a joyful lay in a rich round contralto, soft and deep as velvet. 'All nature,' he said, 'is talking or singing. This is talking and singing time. But my heart can speak to no one, and I seek places where no one will come.' And he began to ask if God would answer his prayer if he prayed that he might die. The sunlit grass, already long and almost ready for the scythe, was swept by shadows of the larches, those long, shelving boughs hung with green tassels, moving mysteriously above him. Birds came and went, each on its special errand. Never was Nature more inveigling, more restful. He shut his eyes, shapes passed, dreams filled the interspaces. Little thoughts began. Why had he never brought her here? A memory of her walking under these larches would be delightful. The murmur of the boughs dissipated his dreams or changed them, or brought new ones; his consciousness grew fainter, and he could not remember what his last thoughts were when he opened his eyes. And then he wandered out of the wood, into the sunlit country, along the dusty road, trying to take an interest in everyone whom he met. It was fairday. He met drovers and chatted to them about the cattle; he heard a wonderful story about a heifer that one of them had sold, and that found her way back home again, twenty-five miles, and a little further on a man came across the fields towards him with a sheep-dog at his heels, a beautiful bitch who showed her teeth prettily when she was spoken to; she had long gold hair, and it was easy to see that she liked to be admired. 'They're all alike, the feminine sex,' the priest thought. 'She's as pretty as Nora, and acts very much the same.' He walked on again, stopping to speak with everybody, glad to listen to every story. One was of a man who lived by poaching. He hadn't slept in a bed for years, but lay down in the mountains and the woods. He trapped rabbits and beat people; sometimes he enticed boys far away, and then turned upon them savagely. Well, the police had caught him again, and this time he wouldn't get off with less than five years. Listening to Mike Mulroy's talk, Father Oliver forgot his own grief. A little further on they came upon a cart filled with pigs. The cart broke down suddenly, and the pigs escaped in all directions, and the efforts of a great number of country people were directed to collecting them. Father Oliver joined in the chase, and it proved a difficult one, owing to the density of the wood that the pigs had taken refuge in. At last he saw them driven along the road, for it had been found impossible to mend the cart, and at this moment Father Oliver began to think that he would like to be a pig-driver, or better still, a poacher like Carmody. A wandering mood was upon him. Anything were better than to return to his parish, and the thought of the confessions he would have to hear on Saturday night and of the Mass he would have to say on Sunday was bitter indeed, for he had ceased to believe in these things. To say Mass, believing the Mass to be but a mummery, was detestable. To remain in his parish meant a constant degradation of himself. When a parishioner sent to ask him to attend a sick call, he could barely bring himself to anoint the dying man. Some way out of the dilemma must be found, and stopping suddenly so that he might think more clearly, he asked himself why he did not wander out of the parish instead of following the path which led him back to the lake? thinking that it was because it is hard to break with habits, convictions, prejudices. The beautiful evening did not engage his thoughts, and he barely listened to the cuckoo, and altogether forgot to notice the bluebells, campions, and cow-parsley; and it was not till he stood on the hilltop overlooking the lake that he began to recover his self-possession. 'The hills,' he said, 'are turned hither and thither, not all seen in profile, and that is why they are so beautiful.' The sunlit crests and the shadow-filled valleys roused him. In the sky a lake was forming, the very image and likeness of the lake under the hill. One glittered like silver, the other like gold, and so wonderful was this celestial lake that he began to think of immortals, of an assembly of goddesses waiting for their gods, or a goddess waiting on an island for some mortal, sending bird messengers to him. A sort of pagan enchantment was put upon him, and he rose up from the ferns to see an evening as fair as Nora and as fragrant. He tried to think of the colour of her eyes, which were fervid and oracular, and of her hands, which were long and curved, with fragile fingers, of her breath, which was sweet, and her white, even teeth. The evening was like her, as subtle and as persuasive, and the sensation of her presence became so clear that he shut his eyes, feeling her about him--as near to him as if she lay in his arms, just as he had felt her that night in the wood, but then she was colder and more remote. He walked along the foreshore feeling like an instrument that had been tuned. His perception seemed to have been indefinitely increased, and it seemed to him as if he were in communion with the stones in the earth and the clouds in heaven; it seemed to him as if the past and the future had become one. The moment was one of extraordinary sweetness; never might such a moment happen in his life again. And he watched the earth and sky enfolded in one tender harmony of rose and blue--blue fading to gray, and the lake afloat amid vague shores, receding like a dream through sleep. XII _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 18, 19--. 'Thoughts are rising up in my mind, and I am eager to write them down quickly, and with as little consideration as possible. Perhaps my thoughts will seem trivial when I have written them, but the emotion that inspired them was very wonderful and overpowering. I am, as it were, propelled to my writing-table. I must write: my emotion must find expression. Even if I were sure you would not get this letter for months, I should write it. I believe if I knew you would never get it, I should write. But if I send it to Beechwood Hall it will be forwarded, I suppose, for you will not remain whole months without hearing from Europe.... In any case, you will get this letter on your return, and it will ease my heart to write it. Above all things, I would have you know that the report that I was drowned while bathing is not true, for a report to this effect will certainly find its way into the local papers, and in these days, once a piece of news gets reported, it flies along from newspaper to newspaper, and newspapers have a knack of straying into our hands when they contain a disagreeable item of news. 'You will remember how the interview with Mr. Poole, published in _Illustrated England_, came into my hands. That was the first number of _Illustrated England_ I had seen. Father O'Grady brought it here and left it upon the table, and only the fate that is over us knows why. In the same way, a paper containing a report of my supposed drowning may reach you when you return to England, and, as I do not want you to think that I have gone out of this life, I am writing to tell you that the report of my death is untrue, or, to speak more exactly, it will not be true, if my arms and legs can make it a false report. These lines will set you wondering if I have taken leave of my senses. Read on, and my sanity will become manifest. Some day next month I intend to swim across the lake, and you will, I think, appreciate this adventure. You praised my decision not to leave my parish because of the pain it would give the poor people. You said that you liked me better for it, and it is just because my resolve has not wavered that I have decided to swim across the lake. Only in this way can I quit my parish without leaving a scandalous name behind me. Moreover, the means whereby I was enlightened are so strange that I find it difficult to believe that Providence is not on my side. 'Have not men always believed in bird augury from the beginning of time? and have not prognostications a knack of coming true? I feel sure that you would think as I do if what had happened to me happened to you. Yet when you read this letter you will say, "No sooner has he disentangled himself from one superstition than he drops into another!" However this may be, I cannot get it out of my head that the strangely ill-fated bird that came out of the wood last February was sent for a purpose. But I have not told you about that bird. In my last letter my mind was occupied by other things, and there was no reason why I should have mentioned it, for it seemed at the time merely a curious accident--no more curious than the hundred and one accidents that happen every day. I believe these things are called coincidences. But to the story. The day I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, wounding the bird. 'We watched it till we saw it fall on the shore of Castle Island, and, thinking that it would linger there for days, dying by inches, I started off with the intention of saving it from a lingering death, but a shot had done that. One pellet would have been enough, for the bird was but a heap of skin and feathers, not to be wondered at, its legs being tied together with a piece of stout string, twisted and tied so that it would last for years. And this strangely ill-fated curlew set me thinking if it were a tame bird escaped from captivity, but tame birds lose quickly their instinct of finding food. "It must have been freed yesterday or the day before," I said to myself, and in pondering how far a bird might fly in the night, this curlew came to occupy a sort of symbolic relation towards my past and my future life, and it was in thinking of it that the idea occurred to me that, if I could cross the lake on the ice, I might swim it in the summer-time when the weather was warm, having, of course, hidden a bundle of clothes amid the rocks on the Joycetown side. My clerical clothes will be found on this side, and the assumption will be, of course, that I swam out too far. 'This way of escape seemed at first fantastic and unreal, but it has come to seem to me the only practical way out of my difficulty. In no other way can I leave the parish without giving pain to the poor people, who have been very good to me. And you, who appreciated my scruples on this point, will, I am sure, understand the great pain it would give my sisters if I were to leave the Church. It would give them so much pain that I shrink from trying to imagine it. They would look upon themselves as disgraced, and the whole family. My disappearance from the parish would ever do them harm--Eliza's school would suffer for sure. This may seem an exaggeration, but certainly Eliza would never quite get over it. If this way of escape had not been revealed to me, I don't think I ever should have found courage to leave, and if I didn't leave I should die. Life is so ordered that a trace remains of every act, but the trace is not always discovered, and I trust you implicitly. You will never show this letter to anyone; you will never tell anyone. 'The Church would allow me, no doubt, to pick up a living as best I could, and would not interfere with me till I said something or wrote something that the Church thought would lessen its power; then the cry of unfrocked priest would be raised against me, and calumny, the great ecclesiastical weapon, would be used. I do not know what my future life will be: my past has been so beset with misfortune that, once I reach the other side, I shall never look back. I cannot find words to tell you of the impatience with which I wait the summer-time, the fifteenth of July, when the moon will be full. I cannot think what would have happened to me if I had stayed at home the afternoon that the curlew was shot; something would have happened, for we cannot go on always sacrificing ourselves. We can sacrifice ourselves for a time, but we cannot sacrifice ourselves all our life long, unless we begin to take pleasure in the immolation of self, and then it is no longer sacrifice. Something must have happened, or I should have gone mad. 'I had suffered so much in the parish. I think the places in which we have suffered become distasteful to us, and the instinct to wander takes us. A migratory bird goes, or dies of home-sickness; home is not always where we are born--it is among ideas that are dear to us: and it is exile to live among people who do not share our ideas. Something must have happened to me. I can think of nothing except suicide or what did happen, for I could never have made up my mind to give pain to the poor people and to leave a scandalous name behind; still less could I continue to administer Sacraments that I ceased to believe in. I can imagine nothing more shameful than the life of a man who continues his administrations after he has ceased to believe in them, especially a Catholic priest, so precise and explicit are the Roman Sacraments. A very abject life it is to murmur _Absolve te_ over the heads of parishioners, and to place wafers on their tongues, when we have ceased to believe that we have power to forgive sins and to turn biscuits into God. A layman may have doubts, and continue to live his life as before, without troubling to take the world into his confidence, but a priest may not. The priest is a paid agent and the money an unbelieving priest receives, if he be not inconceivably hardened in sin, must be hateful to him, and his conscience can leave him no rest. 'At first I used to suspect my conversion, and began to think it unseemly that a man should cease to believe that we must renounce this life in order to gain another, without much preliminary study of the Scriptures; I began to look upon myself as a somewhat superficial person whose religious beliefs yielded before the charm of a pretty face and winsome personality, but this view of the question no longer seems superficial. I believe now that the superficial ones are those who think that it is only in the Scriptures that we may discover whether we have a right to live. Our belief in books rather than in Nature is one of humanity's most curious characteristics, and a very irreligious one, it seems to me; and I am glad to think that it was your sunny face that raised up my crushed instincts, that brought me back to life, and ever since you have been associated in my mind with the sun and the spring-tide. 'One day in the beginning of March, coming back from a long walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. As the spring-tide advanced I discovered a new likeness to you in the daffodil; it is so shapely a flower. I should be puzzled to give a reason, but it reminds me of antiquity, and you were always a thing divorced from the Christian ideal. While mourning you, my poor instincts discovered you in the wind-shaken trees, and in the gaiety of the sun, and the flowers that May gives us. I shall be gone at the end of July, when the carnations are in bloom, but were I here I am certain many of them would remind me of you. There have been saints who have loved Nature, but I always wondered how it was so, for Nature is like a woman. I might have read the Scriptures again and again, and all the arguments that Mr. Poole can put forward, without my faith being in the least shaken. When the brain alone thinks, the thinking is very thin and impoverished. It seems to me that the best thinking is done when the whole man thinks, the flesh and the brain together, and for the whole man to think the whole man must live; and the life I have lived hitherto has been a thin life, for my body lived only. And not even all my body. My mind and body were separated: neither were of any use to me. I owe everything to you. My case cannot be defined merely as that of a priest who gave up his religion because a pretty woman came by. He who says that does not try to understand; he merely contents himself with uttering facile commonplace. What he has to learn is the great oneness in Nature. There is but one element, and we but one of its many manifestations. If this were not so, why should your whiteness and colour and gaiety remind me always of the spring-time? 'My pen is running fast, I hardly know what I am writing, but it seems to me that I am beginning to see much clearer. The mists are dissolving, and life emerges like the world at daybreak. I am thinking now of an old decrepit house with sagging roof and lichen-covered walls, and all the doors and windows nailed up. Every generation nailed up a door or a window till all were nailed up. In the dusty twilight creatures wilt and pray. About the house the sound of shutters creaking on rusty hinges never ceases. Your hand touched one, and the shutters fell, and I found myself looking upon the splendid sun shining on hills and fields, wooded prospects with rivers winding through the great green expanses. At first I dared not look, and withdrew into the shadow tremblingly; but the light drew me forth again, and now I look upon the world without fear. I am going to leave that decrepit dusty house and mix with my fellows, and maybe blow a horn on the hillside to call comrades together. My hands and eyes are eager to know what I have become possessed of. I owe to you my liberation from prejudices and conventions. Ideas are passed on. We learn more from each other than from books. I was unconsciously affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my vocation when you left the parish. 'I remember walking by the lake just this time last year, with the story of my life singing in my head, and you in the background beating the time. You know, we had a shop in Tinnick, and I had seen my father standing before a high desk by a dusty window year after year, selling half-pounds of tea, hanks of onions, and farm implements, and felt that if I married my cousin, Annie McGrath, our lives would reproduce those of my father and mother in every detail. I couldn't undertake the job, and for that began to believe I had a vocation for the priesthood; but I can see now that it was not piety that sent me to Maynooth, but a certain spirit of adventure, a dislike of the commonplace, of the prosaic--that is to say, of the repetition of the same things. I was interested in myself, in my own soul, and I did not want to accept something that was outside of myself, such as the life of a shopman behind a counter, or that of a clerk of the petty sessions, or the habit of a policeman. These were the careers that were open to me, and when I was hesitating, wondering if I should be able to buy up the old mills and revive the trade in Tinnick, my sister Eliza reminded me that there had always been a priest in the family. The priesthood seemed to offer opportunities of realizing myself, of preserving the spirit within me. It offered no such opportunities to me. I might as well have become a policeman, and all that I have learned since is that everyone must try to cling to his own soul; that is the only binding law. If we are here for anything, it is surely for that. 'But one does not free one's self from habits and ideas, that have grown almost inveterate, without much pain and struggle; one falls back many times, and there are always good reasons for following the rut. We believe that the rutted way leads us somewhere: it leads us nowhere, the rutted way is only a seeming; for each man received his truth in the womb. You say in your letter that our destinies got entangled, and that the piece that was being woven ran out into thread, and was rewound upon another spool. It seemed to you and it seemed to me that there is no pattern; we think there is none because Nature's pattern is undistinguishable to our eyes, her looms are so vast, but sometimes even our little sight can follow a design here and there. And does it not seem to you that, after all, there was some design in what has happened? You came and released me from conventions, just as the spring releases the world from winter rust. 'A strange idea has come into my mind, and I cannot help smiling at the topsyturvydom of Nature, or what seems to be topsyturvydom. You, who began by living in your instincts, are now wandering beyond Palestine in search of scrolls; and I, who began my life in scrolls, am now going to try to pick up the lost thread of my instincts in some great commercial town, in London or New York. My life for a long time will be that of some poor clerk or some hack journalist, picking up thirty shillings a week when he is in luck. I imagine myself in a threadbare suit of clothes edging my way along the pavement, nearing a great building, and making my way to my desk, and, when the day's work is done, returning home along the same pavement to a room high up among the rafters, close to the sky, in some cheap quarter. 'I do not doubt my ability to pick up a living--it will be a shameful thing indeed if I cannot; for the poor curlew with its legs tied together managed to live somehow, and cannot I do as much? And I have taken care that no fetters shall be placed upon my legs or chain about my neck. Anything may happen--life is full of possibilities--but my first concern must be how I may earn my living. To earn one's living is an obligation that can only be dispensed with at one's own great risk. What may happen afterwards, Heaven knows! I may meet you, or I may meet another woman, or I may remain unmarried. I do not intend to allow myself to think of these things; my thoughts are set on one thing only--how to get to New York, and how I shall pick up a living when I get there. Again I thank you for what you have done for me, for the liberation you have brought me of body and mind. I need not have added the words "body and mind," for these are not two things, but one thing. And that is the lesson I have learned. Good-bye. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' XIII It would be a full moon on the fifteenth of July, and every night he went out on the hillside to watch the horned moon swelling to a disc. And on the fifteenth, the day he had settled for his departure, as he sat thinking how he would go down to the lake in a few hours, a letter started to his mind which, as well as he could remember, was written in a foolish, vainglorious mood--a stupid letter that must have made him appear a fool in her eyes. Had he not said something about--The thought eluded him; he could only remember the general tone of his letter, and in it he seemed to consider Nora as a sort of medicine--a cure for religion. He should have written her a simple little letter, telling her that he was leaving Ireland because he had suffered a great deal, and would write to her from New York, whereas he had written her the letter of a booby. And feeling he must do something to rectify his mistake, he went to his writing-table, but he had hardly put the pen to the paper when he heard a step on the gravel outside his door. 'Father Moran, your reverence.' 'I see that I'm interrupting you. You're writing.' 'No, I assure you.' 'But you've got a pen in your hand.' 'It can wait--a matter of no importance. Sit down.' 'Now, you'll tell me if I'm in the way?' 'My good man, why are you talking like that? Why should you be in the way?' 'Well, if you're sure you've nothing to do, may I stay to supper?' 'To supper?' 'But I see that I'm in the way.' 'No; I tell you you're not in the way. And you're going to stay to supper.' Father Oliver flung himself between Father Moran and the door; Father Moran allowed himself to be led back to the armchair. Father Oliver took the chair opposite him, for he couldn't send Moran away; he mustn't do anything that would give rise to suspicion. 'You're quite sure I'm not in the way--I'm not interfering with any plans?' 'Quite sure. I'm glad you have come this evening.' 'Are you? Well, I had to come.' 'You had to come!' 'Yes, I had to come; I had to come to see if anything had happened. You needn't look at me like that; I haven't been drinking, and I haven't gone out of my mind. I can only tell you that I had to come to see you this evening.' 'And you don't know why?' 'No, I don't; I can't tell you exactly why I've come. As I was reading my breviary, walking up and down the road in front of the house, I felt that I must see you. I never felt anything like it in my life before. I had to come.' 'And you didn't expect to find me?' 'Well, I didn't. How did you guess that?' 'You'd have hardly come all that way to find me sitting here in this armchair.' 'That's right. It wasn't sitting in that chair I expected to see you; I didn't expect to see you at all--at least, I don't think I did. You see, it was all very queer, for it was as if somebody had got me by the shoulders. It was as if I were being pushed every yard of the road. Something was running in my mind that I shouldn't see you again, or if I did see you that it would be for the last time. You seemed to me as if you were going away on a long journey.' 'Was it dying or dead you saw me?' 'That I can't say. If I said any more I shouldn't be telling the truth. No, it wasn't the same feeling when I came to tell you I couldn't put up with the loneliness any more--the night I came here roaring for drink. I was thinking of myself then, and that you might save me or do something for me--give me drink or cure me. I don't know which thought it was that was running in my head, but I had to come to you all the same, just as I had to come to you to-day. I say it was different, because then I was on my own business; but this time it seemed to me that I was on yours. One good turn deserves another, as they say; and something was beating in my head that I could help you, serve as a stay; so I had to come. Where should I be now if it were not for you? I can see you're thinking that it was only nonsense that was running in my head, but you won't be saying it was nonsense that brought me the night I came like a madman roaring for drink. If there was a miracle that night, why shouldn't there be a miracle to-night? And if a miracle ever happened in the world, it happened that night, I'm thinking. Do you remember the dark gray clouds tearing across the sky, and we walking side by side, I trying to get away from you? I was that mad that I might have thrown you into the bog-hole if the craving had not passed from me. And it was just lifted from me as one might take the cap off one's head. You remember the prayer we said, leaning over the bit of wall looking across the bog? There was no lonesomeness that night coming home, Gogarty, though a curlew might have felt a bit.' 'A curlew!' 'Well, there were curlews and plovers about, and a starving ass picking grass between the road and the bog-hole. That night will be ever in my mind. Where would I be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me and brought me back, cured? It wouldn't be a cassock that would be on my back, but some old rag of a coat. There's nothing in this world, Gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. I think I can see myself in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached to a cab-rank.' 'Lord of Heaven, Moran! what are you coming here to talk to me in this way for? The night you're speaking of was bad enough, but your memory of it is worse. Nothing of what you're saying would have happened; a man like you would be always able to pick up a living.' 'And where would I be picking up a living if it weren't on a cab-rank, or you either?' 'Well, 'tis melancholy enough you are this evening.' 'And all for nothing, for there you are, sitting in your old chair. I see I've made a fool of myself.' 'That doesn't matter. You see, if one didn't do what one felt like doing, one would have remorse of conscience for ever after.' 'I suppose so. It was very kind of you, Moran, to come all this way.' 'What is it but a step? Three miles--' 'And a half.' Moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, Father Oliver got up from his chair. 'Now, Moran, isn't it strange? I wonder how it was that you should have come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. You said you were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you didn't think of giving up the priesthood.' 'What are you saying, Gogarty? Don't you know well enough I'd have been suspended? Didn't I tell you that drink had taken that power over me that, if roaring hell were open, and I sitting on the brink of it and a table beside me with whisky on it, I should fill myself a glass?' 'And knowing you were going down to hell?' 'Yes, that night nothing would have stopped me. But, talking of hell, I heard a good story yesterday. Pat Carabine was telling his flock last Sunday of the tortures of the damned, and having said all he could about devils and pitchforks and caldrons, he came to a sudden pause--a blank look came into his face, and, looking round the church and seeing the sunlight streaming through the door, his thoughts went off at a tangent. "Now, boys," he said, "if this fine weather continues, I hope you'll be all out in the bog next Tuesday bringing home my turf."' Father Oliver laughed, but his laughter did not satisfy Father Moran, and he told how on another occasion Father Pat had finished his sermon on hell by telling his parishioners that the devil was the landlord of hell. 'And I leave yourself to imagine the groaning that was heard in the church that morning, for weren't they all small tenants? But I'm afraid my visit has upset you, Gogarty.' 'How is that?' 'You don't seem to enjoy a laugh like you used to.' 'Well, I was thinking at that moment that I've heard you say that, even though you gave way to drink, you never had any doubts about the reality of the hell that awaited you for your sins.' 'That's the way it is, Gogarty, one believes, but one doesn't act up to one's belief. Human nature is inconsistent. Nothing is queerer than human nature, and will you be surprised if I tell you that I believe I was a better priest when I was drinking than I am now that I'm sober? I was saying that human nature is very queer; and it used to seem queer to myself. I looked upon drink as a sort of blackmail I paid to the devil so that he might let me be a good priest in everything else. That's the way it was with me, and there was more sense in the idea than you'd be thinking, for when the drunken fit was over I used to pray as I have never prayed since. If there was not a bit of wickedness in the world, there would be no goodness. And as for faith, drink never does any harm to one's faith whatsoever; there's only one thing that takes a man's faith from him, and that is woman. You remember the expulsions at Maynooth, and you know what they were for. Well, that sin is a bad one, but I don't think it affects a man's faith any more than drink does. It is woman that kills the faith in men.' 'I think you're right: woman is the danger. The Church dreads her. Woman is life.' 'I don't quite understand you.' Catherine came into the room to lay the cloth, and Father Oliver asked Father Moran to come out into the garden. It was now nearing its prime. In a few days more the carnations would be all in bloom, and Father Oliver pondered that very soon it would begin to look neglected. 'In a year or two it will have drifted back to the original wilderness, to briar and weed,' he said to himself; and he dwelt on his love of this tiny plot of ground, with a wide path running down the centre, flower borders on each side, and a narrow path round the garden beside the hedge. The potato ridges, and the runners, and the cabbages came in the middle. Gooseberry-bushes and currant-bushes grew thickly, there were little apple-trees here and there, and in one corner the two large apple-trees under which he sat and smoked his pipe in the evenings. 'You're very snug here, smoking your pipe under your apple-trees.' 'Yes, in a way; but I think I was happier where you are.' 'The past is always pleasant to look upon.' 'You think so?' The priests walked to the end of the garden, and, leaning on the wicket, Father Moran said: 'We've had queer weather lately--dull heavy weather. See how low the swallows are flying. When I came up the drive, the gravel space in front of the house was covered with them, the old birds feeding the young ones.' 'And you were noticing these things, and believing that Providence had sent you here to bid me good-bye.' 'Isn't it when the nerves are on a stretch that we notice little things that don't concern us at all?' 'Yes, Moran; you are right. I've never known you as wise as you are this evening.' Catherine appeared in the kitchen door. She had come to tell them their supper was ready. During the meal the conversation turned on the roofing of the abbey and the price of timber, and when the tablecloth had been removed the conversation swayed between the price of building materials and the Archbishop's fear lest he should meet a violent death, as it had been prophesied if he allowed a roof to be put upon Kilronan. 'You know I don't altogether blame him, and I don't think anyone does at the bottom of his heart, for what has been foretold generally comes to pass sooner or later.' 'The Archbishop is a good Catholic who believes in everything the Church teaches--in the Divinity of our Lord, the Immaculate Conception, and the Pope's indulgences. And why should he be disbelieving in that which has been prophesied for generations about the Abbot of Kilronan?' 'Don't you believe in these things?' 'Does anyone know exactly what he believes? Does the Archbishop really believe every day of the year and every hour of every day that the Abbot of Kilronan will be slain on the highroad when a De Stanton is again Abbot?' Father Oliver was thinking of the slip of the tongue he had been guilty of before supper, when he said that the Church looks upon woman as the real danger, because she is the life of the world. He shouldn't have made that remark, for it might be remembered against him, and he fell to thinking of something to say that would explain it away. 'Well, Moran, we've had a pleasant evening; we've talked a good deal, and you've said many pleasant things and many wise ones. We've never had a talk that I enjoyed more, and I shall not forget it easily.' 'How is that?' 'Didn't you say that it isn't drink that destroys a man's faith, but woman? And you said rightly, for woman is life.' 'I was just about to ask you what you meant, when Catherine came in and interrupted us.' 'Love of woman means estrangement from the Church, because you have to protect her and her children.' 'Yes, that is so; that's how it works out. Now you won't be thinking me a fool for having come to see you this evening, Gogarty? One never knows when one's impulses are true and when they're false. If I hadn't come the night when the drink craving was upon me, I shouldn't have been here now.' 'You did quite right to come, Moran; we've talked of a great many things.' 'I've never talked so plainly to anyone before; I wonder what made me talk as I've been talking. We never talked like this before, did we, Gogarty? And I wouldn't have talked to another as I've talked to you. I shall never forget what I owe to you.' 'You said you were going to leave the parish.' 'I don't think I thought of anything except to burn myself up with drink. I wanted to forget, and I saw myself walking ahead day after day, drinking at every public-house.' 'And just because I saved you, you thought you would come to save me?' 'There was something of that in it. Gad! it's very queer; there's no saying where things will begin and end. Pass me the tobacco, will you?' Father Moran began to fill his pipe, and when he had finished filling it, he said: 'Now I must be going, and don't be trying to keep me; I've stopped long enough. If I were sent for a purpose--' 'But you don't believe seriously, Moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' Moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated Father Oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'Aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? You thought to find me gone, and here I am sitting before you.' After waiting for some time for Moran to speak, he said: 'You haven't answered me.' 'What should I be answering?' 'Do you still think you were sent for a purpose?' 'Well, I do.' 'You do?' The priests stood looking at each other for a while. 'Can't you give a reason?' 'No; I can give no reason. It's a feeling. I know I haven't reason on my side. There you are before me.' 'It's very queer.' He would have liked to have called back Moran. It seemed a pity to let him go without having probed this matter to the bottom. He hadn't asked him if he had any idea in his mind about the future, as to what was going to happen; but it was too late now. 'Why did he come here disturbing me with his beliefs,' he cried out, 'poisoning my will?' for he had already begun to fear that Moran's visit might come between him and his project. The wind sighed a little louder, and Father Oliver said: 'I wouldn't be minding his coming here to warn me, though he did say that it wasn't of his own will that he came, but something from the outside that kept pushing him along the road--I wouldn't be minding all that if this wind hadn't risen. But the omen may be a double one.' At that moment the wind shook the trees about the house, and he fell to thinking that if he had started to swim the lake that night he would be now somewhere between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore, in the deepest and windiest part of the lake. 'And pretty well tired I'd be at the time. If I'd started to-night a corpse would be floating about by now.' The wind grew louder. Father Oliver imagined the waves slapping in his face, and then he imagined them slapping about the face of a corpse drifting towards the Joycetown shore. XIV There was little sleep in him that night, and turning on his pillow, he sought sleep vainly, getting up at last when the dawn looked through the curtains. A wind was shaking the apple-trees, and he went back to bed, thinking that if it did not drop suddenly he would not be able to swim across the lake that evening. The hours passed between sleeping and waking, thinking of the newspaper articles he would write when he got to America, and dreaming of a fight between himself and an otter on the shore of Castle Island. Awaking with a cry, he sat up, afraid to seek sleep again lest he might dream of drowning men. 'A dream robs a man of all courage,' and then falling back on his pillow, he said, 'Whatever my dreams may be I shall go. Anything were better than to remain taking money from the poor people, playing the part of a hypocrite.' And telling Catherine that he could not look through her accounts that morning, he went out of the house to see what the lake was like. 'Boisterous enough; it would take a good swimmer to get across to-day. Maybe the wind will drop in the afternoon.' The wind continued to rise, and next day he could only see white waves, tossing trees, and clouds tumbling over the mountains. He sat alone in his study staring at the lamp, the wind often awaking him from his reverie; and one night he remembered suddenly that it was no longer possible for him to cross the lake that month, even if the wind should cease, for he required not only a calm, but a moonlight night. And going out of the house, he walked about the hilltop, about the old thorn-bush, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood watching the moon setting high above the south-western horizon. But the lake--where was it? Had he not known that a lake was there, he would hardly have been able to discover one. All faint traces of one had disappeared, every shape was lost in blue shadow, and he wondered if his desire to go had gone with the lake. 'The lake will return,' he said, and next night he was on the hillside waiting for the lake to reappear. And every night it emerged from the shadow, growing clearer, till he could follow its winding shores. 'In a few days, if this weather lasts, I shall be swimming out there.' The thought crossed his mind that if the wind should rise again about the time of the full moon he would not be able to cross that year, for in September the water would be too cold for so long a swim. 'But it isn't likely,' he said; 'the weather seems settled.' And the same close, blue weather that had prevailed before the storm returned, the same diffused sunlight. 'There is nothing so depressing,' the priest said, 'as seeing swallows flying a few feet from the ground.' It was about eight o'clock--the day had begun to droop in his garden--that he walked up and down the beds admiring his carnations. Every now and again the swallows collected into groups of some six or seven, and fled round the gables of his house shrieking. 'This is their dinner-hour; the moths are about.' He wondered on, thinking Nora lacking; for she had never appreciated that beautiful flower Miss Shifner. But her ear was finer than his; she found her delight in music. A thought broke through his memories. He had forgotten to tell her he would write if he succeeded in crossing the lake, and if he didn't write she would never know whether he was living or dead. Perhaps it would be better so. After hesitating a moment, the desire to write to her took strong hold upon him, and he sought an excuse for writing. If he didn't write, she might think that he remained in Garranard. She knew nothing of Moran's visit, nor of the rising of the wind, nor of the waning of the moon; and he must write to her about these things, for if he were drowned she would think that God had willed it. But if he believed in God's intervention, he should stay in his parish and pray that grace might be given to him. 'God doesn't bother himself about such trifles as my staying or my going,' he muttered as he hastened towards his house, overcome by an immense joy. For he was happy only when he was thinking of her, or doing something connected with her, and to tell her of the fatality that seemed to pursue him would occupy an evening. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_July_ 25, 19--. 'You will be surprised to hear from me so soon again, but I forgot to say in my last letter that, if I succeeded in crossing the lake, I would write to you from New York. And since then many things have happened, strange and significant coincidences.' And when he had related the circumstance of Father Moran's visit and the storm, he sought to excuse his half-beliefs that these were part of God's providence sent to warn him against leaving his parish. 'Only time can rid us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. A sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "One year's seed, seven years' weed." And behind imported Palestinian supernature, if I may be permitted to drop into Mr. Poole's style, or what I imagine to be his style, there is the home belief in fairies, spirits, and ghosts, and the reading of omens. Who amongst us does not remember the old nurse who told him stories of magic and witchcraft? Nor can it be denied that things happen that seem in contradiction to all we know of Nature's laws. Moreover, these unusual occurrences have a knack of happening to men at the moment of their setting out on some irrevocable enterprise. 'You who are so sympathetic will understand how my will has been affected by Father Moran's visit. Had you heard him tell how he was propelled, as it were, out of his house towards me, you, too, would believe that he was a messenger. He stopped on his threshold to try to find a reason for coming to see me; he couldn't find any, and he walked on, feeling that something had happened. He must have thought himself a fool when he found me sitting here in the thick flesh. But what he said did not seem nonsense to me; it seemed like some immortal wisdom come from another world. Remember that I was on the point of going. Nor is this all. If nothing else had happened, I might have looked upon Father Moran's visit as a coincidence. But why should the wind rise? So far as I can make out, it began to rise between eleven and twelve, at the very time I should have been swimming between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore. I know that belief in signs and omens and prognostics can be laughed at; nothing is more ridiculous than the belief that man's fate is governed by the flight of birds, yet men have believed in bird augury from the beginning of the world. 'I wrote to you about a curlew (I can still see it in the air, its beautifully shapen body and wings, its long beak, and its trailing legs; it staggered a little in its flight when the shot was fired, but it had strength enough to reach Castle Island: it then toppled over, falling dead on the shore); and I ask you if it is wonderful that I should have been impressed? Such a thing was never heard of before--a wild bird with its legs tied together! 'At first I believed that this bird was sent to warn me from going, but it was that bird that put the idea into my head how I might escape from the parish without giving scandal. Life is so strange that one doesn't know what to think. Of what use are signs and omens if the interpretation is always obscure? They merely wring the will out of us; and well we may ask, Who would care for his life if he knew he was going to lose it on the morrow? And what mother would love her children if she were certain they would fall into evil ways, or if she believed the soothsayers who told her that her children would oppose her ideas? She might love them independent of their opposition, but how could she love them if she knew they were only born to do wrong? Volumes have been written on the subject of predestination and freewill, and the truth is that it is as impossible to believe in one as in the other. Nevertheless, prognostications have a knack of coming true, and if I am drowned crossing the lake you will be convinced of the truth of omens. Perhaps I should not write you these things, but the truth is, I cannot help myself; there is no power of resistance in me. I do not know if I am well or ill; my brain is on fire, and I go on thinking and thinking, trying to arrive at some rational belief, but never succeeding. Sometimes I think of myself as a fly on a window-pane, crawling and buzzing, and crawling and buzzing again, and so on and so on.... 'You are one of those who seem to have been born without much interest in religion or fear of the here-after, and in a way I am like you, but with a difference: I acquiesced in early childhood, and accepted traditional beliefs, and tried to find happiness in the familiar rather than in the unknown. Whether I should have found the familiar enough if I hadn't met you, I shall never know. I've thought a good deal on this subject, and it has come to seem to me that we are too much in the habit of thinking of the intellect and the flesh as separate things, whereas they are but one thing. I could write a great deal on this subject, but I stop, as it were, on the threshold of my thought, for this is no time for philosophical writing. I am all a-tremble, and though my brain is working quickly, my thoughts are not mature and deliberate. My brain reminds me at times of the skies that followed Father Moran's visit--skies restlessly flowing, always different and always the same. These last days are merciless days, and I have to write to you in order to get some respite from purposeless thinking. Sometimes I stop in my walk to ask myself who I am and what I am, and where I am going. Will you be shocked to hear that, when I awoke and heard the wind howling, I nearly got out of bed to pray to God, to thank him for having sent Moran to warn me from crossing the lake? I think I did say a prayer, thanking him for his mercy. Then I felt that I should pray to him for grace that I might remain at home and be a good priest always, but that prayer I couldn't formulate, and I suffered a great deal. I know that such vacillations between belief and unbelief are neither profitable nor admirable; I know that to pray to God to thank him for having saved me from death while in mortal sin, and yet to find myself unable to pray to him to do his will, is illogical, and I confess that my fear is now lest old beliefs will claim me before the time comes. A poor, weak, tried mortal man am I, but being what I am, I cannot be different. I am calm enough now, and it seems as if my sufferings were at an end; but to-morrow some new fear will rise up like mist, and I shall be enveloped. What an awful thing it would be if I should find myself without will on the fifteenth, or the sixteenth, or the seventeenth of August! If the wind should rise again, and the lake be windy while the moon is full, my chance for leaving here this summer will be at an end. The water will be too cold in September. 'And now you know all, and if you don't get a letter from New York, understand that what appears in the newspapers is true--that I was drowned whilst bathing. I needn't apologize for this long letter; you will understand that the writing of it has taken me out of myself, and that is a great gain. There is no one else to whom I can write, and it pleases me to know this. I am sorry for my sisters in the convent; they will believe me dead. I have a brother in America, the one who sent the harmonium that you used to play on so beautifully. He will believe in my death, unless we meet in America, and that is not likely. I look forward to writing to you from New York. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' Two evenings were passed pleasantly on the composition and the copying of this letter, and, not daring to entrust it to the postboy, he took it himself to Bohola; and he measured the time carefully, so as to get there a few minutes before the postmistress sealed up the bag. He delayed in the office till she sealed it, and returned home, following the letter in imagination to Dublin, across the Channel to Beechwood Hall. The servant in charge would redirect it. His thoughts were at ramble, and they followed the steamer down the Mediterranean. It would lie in the post-office at Jerusalem or some frontier town, or maybe a dragoman attached to some Turkish caravansary would take charge of it, and it might reach Nora by caravan. She might read it in the waste. Or maybe it would have been better if he had written 'Not to be forwarded' on the envelope. But the servant at Beechwood Hall would know what to do, and he returned home smiling, unable to believe in himself or in anything else, so extraordinary did it seem to him that he should be writing to Nora Glynn, who was going in search of the Christian river, while he was planning a journey westward. A few days more, and the day of departure was almost at hand; but it seemed a very long time coming. What he needed was a material occupation, and he spent hours in his garden watering and weeding, and at gaze in front of a bed of fiery-cross. Was its scarlet not finer than Lady Hindlip? Lady Hindlip, like fiery-cross, is scentless, and not so hardy. No white carnation compares with Shiela; but her calyx often bursts, and he considered the claims of an old pink-flaked clove carnation, striped like a French brocade. But it straggled a little in growth, and he decided that for hardiness he must give the verdict to Raby Castle. True that everyone grows Raby Castle, but no carnation is so hardy or flowers so freely. As he stood admiring her great trusses of bloom among the tea-roses, he remembered suddenly that it was his love of flowers that had brought him to Garranard, and if he hadn't come to this parish, he wouldn't have known her. And if he hadn't known her, he wouldn't have been himself. And which self did he think the worthier, his present or his dead self? His brain would not cease thinking; his bodily life seemed to have dissipated, and he seemed to himself to be no more than a mind, and, glad to interest himself in the business of the parish, he listened with greater attention than he had ever listened before to the complaints that were brought to him--to the man who had failed to give up a piece of land that he had promised to include in his daughter's fortune, and to Patsy Murphy, who had come to tell him that his house had been broken into while he was away in Tinnick. The old man had spent the winter in Tinnick with some relations, for the house that the Colonel had given him permission to build at the edge of the lake proved too cold for a winter residence. Patsy seemed to have grown older since the autumn; he seemed like a doll out of which the sawdust was running, a poor shaking thing--a large head afloat on a weak neck. Tresses of white hair hung on his shoulders, and his watery eyes were red and restless like a ferret's. He opened his mouth, and there were two teeth on either side like tusks. Gray stubble covered his face, and he wore a brown suit, the trousers retained about his pot-belly--all that remained of his body--by a scarf. There was some limp linen and a red muffler about his throat. He spoke of his age--he was ninety-five--and the priest said he was a fine-looking, hearty man for his years. There wasn't a doubt but he'd pass the hundred. Patsy was inclined to believe he would go to one hundred and one; for he had been told in a vision he would go as far as that. 'You see, living in the house alone, the brain empties and the vision comes.' That was how he explained his belief as he flopped along by the priest's side, his head shaking and his tongue going, telling tales of all kinds, half-remembered things: how the Gormleys and the Actons had driven the Colonel out of the country, and dispersed all his family with their goings-on. That was why they didn't want him--he knew too much about them. One of his tales was how they had frightened the Colonel's mother by tying a lame hare by a horsehair to the knocker of the hall door. Whenever the hare moved a rapping was heard at the front-door. But nobody could discover the horsehair, and the rapping was attributed to a family ghost. He seemed to have forgotten his sword, and was now inclined to talk of his fists, and he stopped the priest in the middle of the road to tell a long tale how once, in Liverpool, someone had spoken against the Colonel, and, holding up his clenched fist, he said that no one ever escaped alive from the fist of Patsy Murphy. It was a trial to Father Oliver to hear him, for he could not help thinking that to become like him it was only necessary to live as long as he. But it was difficult to get rid of the old fellow, who followed the priest as far as the village, and would have followed him further if Mrs. Egan were not standing there waiting for Father Oliver--a delicate-featured woman with a thin aquiline nose, who was still good-looking, though her age was apparent. She was forty-five, or perhaps fifty, and she held her daughter's baby in her coarse peasant hands. Since the birth of the child a dispute had been raging between the two mothers-in-law: the whole village was talking, and wondering what was going to happen next. Mrs. Egan's daughter had married a soldier, a Protestant, some two years ago, a man called Rean. Father Oliver always found him a straightforward fellow, who, although he would not give up his own religion, never tried to interfere with his wife's; he always said that if Mary liked she could bring up her children Catholics. But hitherto they were not blessed with children, and Mary was jeered at more than once, the people saying that her barrenness was a punishment sent by God. At last a child was given them, and all would have gone well if Rean's mother had not come to Garranard for her daughter-in-law's confinement. Being a black Protestant, she wouldn't hear of the child being brought up a Catholic or even baptized in a Catholic Church. The child was now a week old and Rean was fairly distracted, for neither his own mother nor his mother-in-law would give way; each was trying to outdo the other. Mrs. Rean watched Mrs. Egan, and Mrs. Egan watched Mrs. Rean, and the poor mother lay all day with the baby at her breast, listening to the two of them quarrelling. 'She's gone behind the hedge for a minute, your reverence, so I whipped the child out of me daughter's bed; and if your reverence would only hurry up we could have the poor cratur baptized in the Holy Faith. Only there's no time to be lost; she do be watchin' every stir, your reverence.' 'Very well, Mrs. Egan: I'll be waiting for you up at the chapel.' 'A strange rusticity of mind,' he said to himself as he wended his way along the village street, and at the chapel gate a smile gathered about his lips, for he couldn't help thinking how Mrs. Rean the elder would rage when the child was brought back to her a Catholic. So this was going to be his last priestly act, the baptism of the child, the saving of the child to the Holy Faith. He told Mike to get the things ready, and turned into the sacristy to put on his surplice. The familiar presses gave out a pleasant odour, and the vestments which he might never wear again interested him, and he stood seemingly lost in thought. 'But I mustn't keep the child waiting,' he said, waking up suddenly; and coming out of the sacristy, he found twenty villagers collected round the font, come up from the cottages to see the child baptized in the holy religion. 'Where's the child, Mrs. Egan?' The group began talking suddenly, trying to make plain to him what had happened. 'Now, if you all talk together, I shall never understand.' 'Will you leave off pushing me?' said one. 'Wasn't it I that saw Patsy? Will your reverence listen to me?' said Mrs. Egan. 'It was just as I was telling your reverence, if they'd be letting me alone. Your reverence had only just turned in the chapel gate when Mrs. Rean ran from behind the hedge, and, getting in front of me who was going to the chapel with the baby in me arms, she said: "Now I'll be damned if I'll have that child christened a Catholic!" and didn't she snatch the child and run away, taking a short-cut across the fields to the minister's.' 'Patsy Kivel has gone after her, and he'll catch up on her, surely, and she with six ditches forninst her.' 'If he doesn't itself, maybe the minister isn't there, and then she'll be bet.' 'All I'm hopin' is that the poor child won't come to any harm between them; but isn't she a fearful terrible woman, and may the curse of the Son of God be on her for stealin' away a poor child the like of that!' 'I'd cut the livers out of the likes of them.' 'Now will you mind what you're sayin', and the priest listenin' to you?' 'Your reverence, will the child be always a Protestant? Hasn't the holy water of the Church more power in it than the water they have? Don't they only throw it at the child?' 'Now, Mrs. Egan--' 'Ah, your reverence, you're going to say that I shouldn't have given the child to her, and I wouldn't if I hadn't trod on a stone and fallen against the wall, and got afeard the child might be hurt.' 'Well, well,' said Father Oliver, 'you see there's no child--' 'But you'll be waitin' a minute for the sake of the poor child, your reverence? Patsy will be comin' back in a minute.' On that Mrs. Egan went to the chapel door and stood there, so that she might catch the first glimpse of him as he came across the fields. And it was about ten minutes after, when the priest and his parishioners were talking of other things, that Mrs. Egan began to wave her arm, crying out that somebody should hurry. 'Will you make haste, and his reverence waitin' here this half-hour to baptize the innocent child! He'll be here in less than a minute now, your reverence. Will you have patience, and the poor child will be safe?' The child was snatched from Patsy, and so violently that the infant began to cry, and Mrs. Egan didn't know if it was a hurt it had received, for the panting Patsy was unable to answer her. 'The child's all right,' he blurted out at last. 'She said I might take it and welcome, now it was a Protestant.' 'Ah, sure, you great thickhead of a boy! weren't you quick enough for her?' 'Now, what are you talkin' about? Hadn't she half a mile start of me, and the minister at the door just as I was gettin' over the last bit of a wall!' 'And didn't you go in after them?' 'What would I be doin', going into a Protestant church?' Patsy's sense of his responsibility was discussed violently until Father Oliver said: 'Now, I can't be waiting any longer. Do you want me to baptize the child or not?' 'It would be safer, wouldn't it?' said Mrs. Egan. 'It would,' said Father Oliver; 'the parson mightn't have said the words while he was pouring the water.' And, going towards the font with the child, Father Oliver took a cup of water, but, having regard for the child's cries, he was a little sparing with it. 'Now don't be sparin' with the water, your reverence, and don't be a mindin' its noise; it's twicest the quantity of holy water it'll be wanting, and it half an hour a Protestant.' It was at that moment Mrs. Rean appeared in the doorway, and Patsy Kivel, who didn't care to enter the Protestant church, rushed to put her out of his. 'You can do what you like now with the child; it's a Protestant, for all your tricks.' 'Go along, you old heretic bitch!' 'Now, Patsy, will you behave yourself when you're standing in the Church of God! Be leaving the woman alone,' said Father Oliver; but before he got to the door to separate the two, Mrs. Rean was running down the chapel yard followed by the crowd of disputants, and he heard the quarrel growing fainter in the village street. Rose-coloured clouds had just begun to appear midway in the pale sky--a beautiful sky, all gray and rose--and all this babble about baptism seemed strangely out of his mind. 'And to think that men are still seeking scrolls in Turkestan to prove--' The sentence did not finish itself in his mind; a ray of western light falling across the altar steps in the stillness of the church awakened a remembrance in him of the music that Nora's hands drew from the harmonium, and, leaning against the Communion-rails, he allowed the music to absorb him. He could hear it so distinctly in his mind that he refrained from going up into the gallery and playing it, for in his playing he would perceive how much he had forgotten, how imperfect was his memory. It were better to lose himself in the emotion of the memory of the music; it was in his blood, and he could see her hands playing it, and the music was coloured with the memory of her hair and her eyes. His teeth clenched a little as if in pain, and then he feared the enchantment would soon pass away; but the music preserved it longer than he had expected, and it might have lasted still longer if he had not become aware that someone was standing in the doorway. The feeling suddenly came over him that he was not alone; it was borne in upon him--he knew not how, neither by sight nor sound--through some exceptional sense. And turning towards the sunlit doorway, he saw a poor man standing there, not daring to disturb the priest, thinking, no doubt, that he was engaged in prayer. The poor man was Pat Kearney. So the priest was a little overcome, for that Pat Kearney should come to him at such a time was portentous. 'It is strange, certainly, coincidence after coincidence,' he said; and he stood looking at Pat as if he didn't know him, till the poor man was frightened and began to wonder, for no one had ever looked at him with such interest, not even the neighbour whom he had asked to marry him three weeks ago. And this Pat Kearney, who was a short, thick-set man, sinking into years, began to wonder what new misfortune had tracked him down. His teeth were worn and yellow as Indian meal, and his rough, ill-shaven cheeks and pale eyes reminded the priest of the country in which Pat lived, and of the four acres of land at the end of the boreen that Pat was digging these many years. He had come to ask Father Oliver if he would marry him for a pound, but, as Father Oliver didn't answer him, he fell to thinking that it was his clothes that the priest was admiring, 'for hadn't his reverence given him the clothes himself? And if it weren't for the self-same clothes, he wouldn't have the pound in his pocket to give the priest to marry him,' 'It was yourself, your reverence--' 'Yes, I remember very well.' Pat had come to tell him that there was work to be had in Tinnick, but that he didn't dare to show himself in Tinnick for lack of clothes, and he stood humbly before the priest in a pair of corduroy trousers that hardly covered his nakedness. And it was as Father Oliver stood examining and pitying his parishioner's poverty it had occurred to him that, if he were to buy two suits of clothes in Tinnick and give one to Pat Kearney, he might wrap the other one in a bundle, and place it on the rocks on the Joycetown side. It was not likely that the shopman in Tinnick would remember, after three months, that he had sold two suits to the priest; but should he remember this, the explanation would be that he had bought them for Pat Kearney. Now, looking at this poor man who had come to ask him if he would marry him for a pound, the priest was lost in wonder. 'So you're going to be married, Pat?' And Pat, who hadn't spoken to anyone since the woman whose potatoes he was digging said she'd as soon marry him as another, began to chatter, and to ramble in his chatter. There was so much to tell that he did not know how to tell it. There was his rent and the woman's holding, for now they would have nine acres of land, money would be required to stock it, and he didn't know if the bank would lend him the money. Perhaps the priest would help him to get it. 'But why did you come to me to marry you? Aren't you two miles nearer to Father Moran than you are to me?' Pat hesitated, not liking to say that he would be hard set to get round Father Moran. So he began to talk of the Egans and the Reans. For hadn't he heard, as he came up the street, that Mrs. Rean had stolen the child from Mrs. Egan, and had had it baptized by the minister? And he hoped to obtain the priest's sympathy by saying: 'What a terrible thing it was that the police should allow a black Protestant to steal a Catholic child, and its mother a Catholic and all her people before her!' 'When Mrs. Rean snatched the child, it hadn't been baptized, and was neither a Catholic nor a Protestant,' the priest said maliciously. Pat Kearney, whose theological knowledge did not extend very far, remained silent, and the priest was glad of his silence, for he was thinking that in a few minutes he would catch sight of the square whitewashed school-house on the hillside by the pine-wood, and the thought came into his mind that he would like to see again the place where he and Nora once stood talking together. But a long field lay between his house and the school-house, and what would it avail him to see the empty room? He looked, instead, for the hawthorn-bush by which he and Nora had lingered, and it was a sad pleasure to think how she had gone up the road after bidding him good-bye. But Pat Kearney began to talk again of how he could get an advance from the bank. 'I can back no bill for you, Pat, but I'll give you a letter to Father Moran telling him that you can't afford to pay more than a pound.' Nora's letters were in the drawer of his writing-table; he unlocked it, and put the packet into his pocket, and when he had scribbled a little note to Father Moran, he said: 'Now take this and be off with you; I've other business to attend to besides you;' and he called to Catherine for his towels. 'Now, is it out bathing you're going, your reverence? You won't be swimming out to Castle Island, and forgetting that you have confessions at seven?' 'I shall be back in time,' he answered testily, and soon after he began to regret his irritation; for he would never see Catherine again, saying to himself that it was a pity he had answered her testily. But he couldn't go back. Moran might call. Catherine might send Moran after him, saying his reverence had gone down to bathe, or any parishioner, however unwarranted his errand, might try to see him out. 'And all errands will be unwarranted to-day,' he said as he hurried along the shore, thinking of the different paths round the rocks and through the blackthorn-bushes. His mind was on the big wood; there he could baffle anybody following him, for while his pursuer would be going round one way he would be coming back the other. But it would be lonely in the big wood; and as he hurried down the old cart-track he thought how he might while away an hour among the ferns in the little spare fields at the end of the plantation, watching the sunset, for hours would have to pass before the moon rose, and the time would pass slowly under the melancholy hazel-thickets into which the sun had not looked for thousands of years. A wood had always been there. The Welshmen had felled trees in it to build rafts and boats to reach their island castles. Bears and wolves had been slain in it; and thinking how it was still a refuge for foxes, martens and badgers and hawks, he made his way along the shore through the rough fields. He ran a little, and after waiting a while ran on again. On reaching the edge of the wood, he hid himself behind a bush, and did not dare to move, lest there might be somebody about. It was not till he made sure there was no one that he stooped under the blackthorns, and followed a trail, thinking the animal, probably a badger, had its den under the old stones; and to pass the time he sought for a den, but could find none. A small bird, a wren, was picking among the moss; every now and then it fluttered a little way, stopped, and picked again. 'Now what instinct guided its search for worms?' he asked, and getting up, he followed the bird, but it escaped into a thicket. There were only hazel-stems in the interspace he had chosen to hide himself in, but there were thickets nearly all about it, and it took some time to find a path through these. After a time one was found, and by noticing everything he tried to pass the time away and make himself secure against being surprised. The path soon came to an end, and he walked round to the other side of the wood, to see if the bushes were thick enough to prevent anyone from coming upon him suddenly from that side; and when all searches were finished he came back, thinking of what his future life would be without Nora. But he must not think of her, he must learn to forget her; for the time being at least, his consideration must be of himself in his present circumstances, and he felt that if he did not fix his thoughts on external things, his courage--or should he say his will?--would desert him. It did not need much courage to swim across the lake, much more to leave the parish, and once on the other side he must go any whither, no whither, for he couldn't return to Catherine in a frieze coat and a pair of corduroy trousers. Her face when she saw him! But of what use thinking of these things? He was going; everything was settled. If he could only restrain his thoughts--they were as wild as bees. Standing by a hazel-stem, his hand upon a bough, he fell to thinking what his life would be, and very soon becoming implicated in a dream, he lost consciousness of time and place, and was borne away as by a current; he floated down his future life, seeing his garret room more clearly than he had ever seen it--his bed, his washhand-stand, and the little table on which he did his writing. No doubt most of it would be done in the office, but some of it would be done at home; and at nightfall he would descend from his garret like a bat from the eaves. Journalists flutter like bats about newspaper offices. The bats haunt the same eaves, but the journalist drifts from city to city, from county to county, busying himself with ideas that were not his yesterday, and will not be his to-morrow. An interview with a statesman is followed by a review of a book, and the day after he may be thousands of miles away, describing a great flood or a railway accident. The journalist has no time to make friends, and he lives in no place long enough to know it intimately; passing acquaintance and exterior aspects of things are his share of the world. And it was in quest of such vagrancy of ideas and affections that he was going. At that moment a sudden sound in the wood startled him from his reverie, and he peered, a scared expression on his face, certain that the noise he had heard was Father Moran's footstep. It was but a hare lolloping through the underwood, and wondering at the disappointment he felt, he asked if he were disappointed that Moran had not come again to stop him. He didn't think he was, only the course of his life had been so long dependent on a single act of will that a hope had begun in his mind that some outward event might decide his fate for him. Last month he was full of courage, his nerves were like iron; to-day he was a poor vacillating creature, walking in a hazel-wood, uncertain lest delay had taken the savour out of his adventure, his attention distracted by the sounds of the wood, by the snapping of a dry twig, by a leaf falling through the branches. 'Time is passing,' he said, 'and I must decide whether I go to America to write newspaper articles, or stay at home to say Mass--a simple matter, surely.' The ordinary newspaper article he thought he could do as well as another--in fact, he knew he could. But could he hope that in time his mind would widen and deepen sufficiently to enable him to write something worth writing, something that might win her admiration? Perhaps, when he had shed all his opinions. Many had gone already, more would follow, and one day he would be as free as she was. She had been a great intellectual stimulus, and soon he began to wonder how it was that all the paraphernalia of religion interested him no longer, how he seemed to have suddenly outgrown the things belonging to the ages of faith, and the subtle question, if passion were essential to the growth of the mind, arose. For it seemed to him that his mind had grown, though he had not read the Scriptures, and he doubted if the reading of the Scriptures would have taught him as much as Nora's beauty. 'After all,' he said, 'woman's beauty is more important to the world than a scroll.' He had begun to love and to put his trust in what was natural, spontaneous, instinctive, and might succeed in New York better than he expected. But he would not like to think that it was hope of literary success that tempted him from Garranard. He would like to think that in leaving his poor people he was serving their best interests, and this was surely the case. For hadn't he begun to feel that what they needed was a really efficient priest, one who would look after their temporal interests? In Ireland the priest is a temporal as well as a spiritual need. Who else would take an interest in this forlorn Garranard and its people, the reeds and rushes of existence? He had striven to get the Government to build a bridge, but had lost patience; he had wearied of the task. Certain priests he knew would not have wearied of it; they would have gone on heckling the Government and the different Boards until the building of the bridge could no longer be resisted. His failure to get this bridge was typical, and it proved beyond doubt that he was right in thinking he had no aptitude for the temporal direction of his parish. But a curate had once lived in Bridget Clery's cottage who had served his people excellently well, had intrigued successfully, and forced the Government to build houses and advance money for drainage and other useful works. And this curate had served his people in many capacities--as scrivener, land-valuer, surveyor, and engineer. It was not till he came to Garranard that he seemed to get out of touch with practical affairs, and he began to wonder if it was the comfortable house he lived in, if it were the wine he drank, the cigars he smoked, that had produced this degeneracy, if it were degeneracy. Or was it that he had worn out a certain side of his nature in Bridget Clery's cottage? It might well be that. Many a man has mistaken a passing tendency for a vocation. We all write poetry in the beginning of our lives; but most of us leave off writing poetry after some years, unless the instinct is very deep or one is a fool. It might well be that his philanthropic instincts were exhausted; and it might well be that this was not the case, for one never gets at the root of one's nature. The only thing he was sure of was that he had changed a great deal, and, he thought, for the better. He seemed to himself a much more real person than he was a year ago, being now in full possession of his soul, and surely the possession of one's soul is a great reality. By the soul he meant a special way of feeling and seeing. But the soul is more than that--it is a light; and this inner light, faint at first, had not been blown out. If he had blown it out, as many priests had done, he would not have experienced any qualms of conscience. The other priests in the diocese experienced none when they drove erring women out of their parishes, and the reason of this was that they followed a light from without, deliberately shutting out the light of the soul. The question interested him, and he pondered it a long while, finding himself at last forced to conclude that there is no moral law except one's own conscience, and that the moral obligation of every man is to separate the personal conscience from the impersonal conscience. By the impersonal conscience he meant the opinions of others, traditional beliefs, and the rest; and thinking of these things he wandered round the Druid stones, and when his thoughts returned to Nora's special case he seemed to understand that if any other priest had acted as he had acted he would have acted rightly, for in driving a sinful woman out of the parish he would be giving expression to the moral law as he understood it and as Garranard understood it. This primitive code of morals was all Garranard could understand in its present civilization, and any code is better than no code. Of course, if the priest were a transgressor himself he could not administer the law. Happily, that was a circumstance that did not arise often. So it was said; but what did he know of the souls of the priests with whom he dined, smoked pipes, and played cards? And he stopped, surprised, for it had never occurred to him that all a man knows of his fellow is whether he be clean or dirty, short or tall, thin or stout. 'Even the soul of Moran is obscure to me,' he said--'obscure as this wood;' and at that moment the mystery of the wood seemed to deepen, and he stood for a long while looking through the twilight of the hazels. Very likely many of the priests he knew had been tempted by women: some had resisted temptation, and some had sinned and repented. There might be a priest who had sinned and lived for years in sin; even so if he didn't leave his parish, if he didn't become an apostate priest, faith would return to him in the end. But the apostate priest is anathema in the eyes of the Church; the doctrine always has been that a sin matters little if the sinner repent. Father Oliver suddenly saw himself years hence, still in Garranard, administering the Sacraments, and faith returning like an incoming tide, covering the weedy shore, lapping round the high rock of doubt. If he desired faith, all he had to do was to go on saying Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing the young, burying the old, and in twenty years--maybe it would take thirty--when his hair was white and his skin shrivelled, he would be again a good priest, beloved by his parishioners, and carried in the fulness of time by them to the green churchyard where Father Peter lay near the green pines. Only the other day, coming home from his after-noon's walk, he stopped to admire his house. The long shadow of its familiar trees awakened an extraordinary love in him, and when he crossed the threshold and sat down in his armchair, his love for his house had surprised him, and he sat like one enchanted by his own fireside, lost in admiration of the old mahogany bookcase with the inlaid panels, that he had bought at an auction. How sombre and quaint it looked, furnished with his books that he had had bound in Dublin, and what pleasure it always was to him to see a ray lighting up the parchment bindings! He had hung some engravings on his walls, and these had become very dear to him; and there were some spoons, bought at an auction some time ago--old, worn Georgian spoons--that his hands were accustomed to the use of; there was an old tea-service, with flowers painted inside the cups, and he was leaving these things; why? He sought for a reason for his leaving them. If he were going away to join Nora in America he could understand his going. But he would never see her again--at least, it was not probable that he would. He was not following her, but an idea, an abstraction, an opinion; he was separating himself, and for ever, from his native land and his past life, and his quest was, alas! not her, but--He was following what? Life? Yes; but what is life? Do we find life in adventure or by our own fireside? For all he knew he might be flying from the very thing he thought he was following. His thoughts zigzagged, and, almost unaware of his thoughts, he compared life to a flower--to a flower that yields up its perfume only after long cultivation--and then to a wine that gains its fragrance only after it has been lying in the same cellar for many years, and he started up convinced that he must return home at once. But he had not taken many steps before he stopped: 'No, no, I cannot stay here year after year! I cannot stay here till I die, seeing that lake always. I couldn't bear it. I am going. It matters little to me whether life is to be found at home or abroad, in adventure or in habits and customs. One thing matters--do I stay or go?' He turned into the woods and walked aimlessly, trying to escape from his thoughts, and to do so he admired the pattern of the leaves, the flight of the birds, and he stopped by the old stones that may have been Druid altars; and he came back an hour after, walking slowly through the hazel-stems, thinking that the law of change is the law of life. At that moment the cormorants were coming down the glittering lake to their roost. With a flutter of wings they perched on the old castle, and his mind continued to formulate arguments, and the last always seemed the best. At half-past seven he was thinking that life is gained by escaping from the past rather than by trying to retain it; he had begun to feel more and more sure that tradition is but dead flesh which we must cut off if we would live.... But just at this spot, an hour ago, he had acquiesced in the belief that if a priest continued to administer the Sacraments faith would return to him; and no doubt the Sacraments would bring about some sort of religious stupor, but not that sensible, passionate faith which he had once possessed, and which did not meet with the approval of his superiors at Maynooth. He had said that in flying from the monotony of tradition he would find only another monotony, and a worse one--that of adventure; and no doubt the journalist's life is made up of fugitive interests. But every man has, or should have, an intimate life as well as an external life; and in losing interest in religion he had lost the intimate life which the priesthood had once given him. The Mass was a mere Latin formula, and the vestments and the chalice, the Host itself, a sort of fetishism--that is to say, a symbolism from which life had departed, shells retaining hardly a murmur of the ancient ecstasy. It was therefore his fate to go in quest of--what? Not of adventure. He liked better to think that his quest was the personal life--that intimate exaltation that comes to him who has striven to be himself, and nothing but himself. The life he was going to might lead him even to a new faith. Religious forms arise and die. The Catholic Church had come to the end of its thread; the spool seemed pretty well empty, and he sat down so that he might think better what the new faith might be. What would be its first principle? he asked himself, and not finding any answer to this question, he began to think of his life in America. He would begin as a mere recorder of passing events. But why should he assume that he would not rise higher? And if he remained to the end of his day a humble reporter, he would still have the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he had not resigned himself body and soul to the life of the pool, to a frog-like acquiescence in the stagnant pool. His hand held back a hazel-branch, and he stood staring at the lake. The wild ducks rose in great flocks out of the reeds and went away to feed in the fields, and their departure was followed by a long interval, during which no single thought crossed his mind--at least, none that he could remember. No doubt his tired mind had fallen into lethargy, from which a sudden fear had roughly awakened him. What if some countryman, seeking his goats among the rocks, had come upon the bundle and taken it home! And at once he imagined himself climbing up the rocks naked. Pat Kearney's cabin was close by, but Pat had no clothes except those on his back, and would have to go round the lake to Garranard; and the priest thought how he would sit naked in Kearney's cottage hour after hour. 'If anyone comes to the cabin I shall have to hold the door to. There is a comic side to every adventure,' he said, 'and a more absurd one it would be difficult to imagine.' The day had begun in a ridiculous adventure--the baptism of the poor child, baptized first a Protestant, then a Catholic. And he laughed a little, and then he sighed. 'Is the whole thing a fairy-tale, a piece of midsummer madness, I wonder? No matter, I can't stay here, so why should I trouble to discover a reason for my going? In America I shall be living a life in agreement with God's instincts. My quest is life.' And, remembering some words in her last letter, his heart cried out that his love must bring her back to him eventually, though Poole were to take her to the end of the earth, and at once he was carried quickly beyond the light of common sense into a dim happy world where all things came and went or were transformed in obedience to his unexpressed will. Whether the sun were curtained by leafage or by silken folds he did not know--only this: that she was coming towards him, borne lightly as a ball of thistle-down. He perceived the colour of her hair, and eyes, and hands, and of the pale dress she wore; but her presence seemed revealed to him through the exaltation of some sense latent or non-existent in him in his waking moods. His delight was of the understanding, for they neither touched hands nor spoke. A little surprise rose to the surface of his rapture--surprise at the fact that he experienced no pang of jealousy. She had said that true love could not exist without jealousy! But was she right in this? It seemed to him that we begin to love when we cease to judge. If she were different she wouldn't be herself, and it was herself he loved--the mystery of her sunny, singing nature. There is no judgment where there is perfect sympathy, and he understood that it would be as vain for him to lament that her eyebrows were fair as to lament or reprove her conduct. Continuing the same train of thought, he remembered that, though she was young to-day, she would pass into middle, maybe old age; that the day would come when her hair would be less bright, her figure would lose its willowness; but these changes would not lessen his love for her. Should he not welcome change? Thinking that perhaps fruit-time is better than blossom-time, he foresaw a deeper love awaiting him, and a tenderness that he could not feel to-day might be his in years to come. Nor could habit blunt his perceptions or intimacy unravel the mystery of her sunny nature. So the bourne could never be reached; for when everything had been said, something would remain unspoken. The two rhythms out of which the music of life is made, intimacy and adventure, would meet, would merge, and become one; and she, who was to-day an adventure, would become in the end the home of his affections. A great bird swooped out of the branches above him, startling him, and he cried out: 'An owl--only an owl!' The wood was quiet and dark, and in fear he groped his way to the old stones; for one thing still remained to be done before he left--he must burn her letters. He burnt them one by one, shielding the flame with his hand lest it should attract some passer-by, and when the last was burnt he feared no longer anything. His wonder was why he had hesitated, why his mind had been torn by doubt. At the back of his mind he had always known he was going. Had he not written saying he was going, and wasn't that enough? And he thought for a moment of what her opinion of him would be if he stayed in Garranard. In a cowardly moment he hoped that something would happen to save him from the ultimate decision, and now doubt was overcome. A yellow disc appeared, cutting the flat sky sharply, and he laid his priest's clothes in the middle of a patch of white sand where they could be easily seen. Placing the Roman collar upon the top, and, stepping from stone to stone, he stood on the last one as on a pedestal, tall and gray in the moonlight--buttocks hard as a faun's, and dimpled like a faun's when he draws himself up before plunging after a nymph. When he emerged he was among the reeds, shaking the water from his face and hair. The night was so warm that it was like swimming in a bath, and when he had swum a quarter of a mile he turned over on his back to see the moon shining. Then he turned over to see how near he was to the island. 'Too near,' he thought, for he had started before his time. But he might delay a little on the island, and he walked up the shore, his blood in happy circulation, his flesh and brain a-tingle, a little captivated by the vigour of his muscles, and ready and anxious to plunge into the water on the other side, to tire himself if he could, in the mile and a half of gray lake that lay between him and shore. There were lights in every cottage window; the villagers would be about the roads for an hour or more, and it would be well to delay on the island, and he chose a high rock to sit upon. His hand ran the water off his hard thighs, and then off his long, thin arms, and he watched the laggard moon rising slowly in the dusky night, like a duck from the marshes. Supporting himself with one arm, he let himself down the rock and dabbled his foot in the water, and the splashing of the water reminded him of little Philip Rean, who had been baptized twice that morning notwithstanding his loud protest. And now one of his baptizers was baptized, and in a few minutes would plunge again into the beneficent flood. The night was so still and warm that it was happiness to be naked, and he thought he could sit for hours on that rock without feeling cold, watching the red moon rolling up through the trees round Tinnick; and when the moon turned from red to gold he wondered how it was that the mere brightening of the moon could put such joy into a man's heart. Derrinrush was the nearest shore, and far away in the wood he heard a fox bark. 'On the trail of some rabbit,' he thought, and again he admired the great gold moon rising heavily through the dusky sky, and the lake formless and spectral beneath it. Catherine no doubt had begun to feel agitated; she would be walking about at midnight, too scared to go to sleep. He was sorry for her; perhaps she would be the only one who would prefer to hear he was in America and doing well than at the bottom of the lake. Eliza would regret in a way, as much as her administration of the convent would allow her; Mary would pray for him--so would Eliza, for the matter of that; and their prayers would come easily, thinking him dead. Poor women! if only for their peace of mind he would undertake the second half of the crossing. A long mile of water lay between him and Joycetown, but there was a courage he had never felt before in his heart, and a strength he had never felt before in his limbs. Once he stood up in the water, sorry that the crossing was not longer. 'Perhaps I shall have had enough of it before I get there;' and he turned on his side and swam half a mile before changing his stroke. He changed it and got on his back because he was beginning to feel cold and tired, and soon after he began to think that it would be about as much as he could do to reach the shore. A little later he was swimming frog-fashion, but the change did not seem to rest him, and seeing the shore still a long way off he began to think that perhaps after all he would find his end in the lake. His mind set on it, however, that the lake should be foiled, he struggled on, and when the water shallowed he felt he had come to the end of his strength. 'Another hundred yards would have done for me,' he said, and he was so cold that he could not think, and sought his clothes vaguely, sitting down to rest from time to time among the rocks. He didn't know for certain if he would find them, and if he didn't he must die of cold. So the rough shirt was very welcome when he discovered it, and so were the woollen socks. As soon as he was dressed he thought that he felt nearly strong enough to climb up the rocks, but he was not as strong as he thought, and it took him a long time to get to the top. But at the top the sward was pleasant--it was the sward of the terrace of the old house; and lying at length, fearful lest sleep might overtake him, he looked across the lake. 'A queer dusky night,' he said, 'with hardly a star, and that great moon pouring silver down the lake.' 'I shall never see that lake again, but I shall never forget it,' and as he dozed in the train, in a corner of an empty carriage, the spectral light of the lake awoke him, and when he arrived at Cork it seemed to him that he was being engulfed in the deep pool by the Joycetown shore. On the deck of the steamer he heard the lake's warble above the violence of the waves. 'There is a lake in every man's heart,' he said, 'and he listens to its monotonous whisper year by year, more and more attentive till at last he ungirds.' THE END 
10963	----	generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. THE GRIP OF DESIRE THE STORY OF A PARISH-PRIEST TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF HECTOR FRANCE [Illustration: Début d'une série de documents en couleur.] Love is a familiar; love is a devil; there is no evil angel but love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. _Love's Labour Lost_. With an engraved portrait of the Author Other Works in English By HECTOR FRANCE Mansour's Chastisement, the Loves and Intrigues of an Arab Don Juan, done into English by ALFRED ALLINSON, and embellished with Seven fine Engravings by THEVENIN, after Drawings by BAZEILHAC. Musk, Hashish and Blood, with Twenty-One Engravings by PAUL AVRIL. (In the Press.) The Attack on the Brothels, A Realistic Account of the Civilizing of "Barbarians". With Illustrations. (In Hand.) The Daughter of the Christ; The most original and philosophic work of the last twenty years. This work will be sumptuously illustrated by leading French Artists. (In Preparation.) [Illustration: Fin d'une série de documents en couleur.] [Illustration: the author.] [Illustration] TO THE READER The truth, the bitter truth. DANTON. Oh, sons and brothers, oh, poets When the thing exists, speak the word. V. HUGO. I do not assert that all the personages in this story are models of virtue. To some of them has been given a part which severe morality reproves. But I am a realist and not an idealist, and for that I beg the reader a thousand pardons. I have tried to paint what I saw and not that of which I dreamed. If my figures are not chaste, the fault is not mine, but of those who passed before me and whose features I sketched as my pen ran on. You are warned therefore, Madam, that when you open this book, you will not find a "Treatise on Morality". Here are only the simple and pastoral loves of a poor and obscure village priest. An idyll in the shade of the parsonage limes and under the motionless eye of the weather-cock on the belfry. If then you come across any word which offends your chaste ears, any picture which distresses your modest eye, blame only your own curiosity. HECTOR FRANCE. LIST OF CHAPTERS. Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are Defiled and Unbelieving is nothing pure: but even their mind and conscience is Defiled. They profess that they know God; but in Works they Deny Him, being Abominable and Disobedient, and unto every good work Reprobate. ST. PAUL. LIST OF CHAPTERS. I. The Curé II. The Confessional III. The Parsonage IV. Expectation V. The Meeting VI. The Look VII. The Salute VIII. The Fever IX. During Vespers X. In Parenthesis XI. The Flesh XII. The Temptation XIII. The Resolution XIV. The Captain XV. Memories XVI. The Epaulet XVII. The Voltairian XVIII. The Visit XIX. Hard Words XX. Kicks XXI. The Past XXII. The Servant XXIII. The Letter XXIV. The First Meeting XXV. Love XXVI. Of Young Girls in General XXVII. Of Suzanne in Particular XXVIII. The Shadow. XXIX. Other Meetings XXX. Seraphic Love XXXI. The Virgin XXXII. The Death's-Head XXXIII. Frenzy XXXIV. The Prohibition XXXV. The Shelter XXXVI. The Hot Wine XXXVII. Tête-à-Tête XXXVIII. The Kiss XXXIX. The Devil in Petticoats XL. Little Confessions XLI. Moral Reflections XLII. Memory Looking Back XLIII. Espionage XLIV. The Garret Window XLV. Treacherous Manoeuvre XLVI. The Letter XLVII. Good News XLVIII. Reconcilliation XLIX. Confidences L. Mammosa Virgo LI. Chamber Morality LII. The Posset LIII. The Leg LIV. Mater Saeva Cupidunum LV. In the Foot-Path LVI. Double Remorse LVII. The Explosion LVIII. Provocation LIX. Acts and Words LX. Talks LXI. Le Père Hyacinthe LXII. The Happy Curé LXIII. The Miracles LXIV. The Two Augurs LXV. Table-Talk LXVI. Good Counsel LXVII. In A Glass LXVIII. The Rose Chamber LXIX. The Gust of Wind LXX. The Ambuscade LXXI. The Breach LXXII. The Assault LXXIII. Audaces Fortuna Juvat LXXIV. Before Mass LXXV. During Mass LXXVI. Awakening LXXVII. Consolations LXXVIII. False Alarms LXXIX. In the _Diligence_ LXXX. An Old Acquaintance LXXXI. A Little Confession LXXXII. The Church-Woman LXXXIII. Conventicle LXXXIV. At the Palace LXXXV. Little Pastimes LXXXVI. Serious Talk LXXXVII. The Seminary LXXXVIII. The Fair One LXXXIX. Love Again XC. Le Cygne de la Croix XCI. The Calves XCII. The Scapular XCIII. From the Dark to the Fair XCIV. The Change XCV. The Curé of St. Marie XCVI. Finis Coronet Opus [Illustration] I. THE CURÉ. "I will sing thy praises on the harp, oh Lord. But, my soul, whence cometh thy sadness, and wherefore art thou troubled." (The _Introito_ of the Mass). The Curé of Althausen was reputed to be chaste. Was he so really? To tell the truth, I never believed him so; at thirty men are not chaste; they may try to be so; they rarely succeed. However that might be, he was a singular man. He had a profound reverence for common sense, and it was said that he taught a strange doctrine to his flock; for example, that a day of work was more pleasing to God than a day of prayer; that the temples were for those who labour not, and that a good action was well worth a mass. He maintained too that we purchase nothing with money in the other world, and that the coins, so appreciated among ourselves, have no currency beyond the grave, and a hundred other oddities of this kind, which in the good old times would have brought him to the stake. The Bishop had severely reprimanded him for all these heresies; but he seemed to pay no attention to it. Every Sunday, from the height of his pulpit, he continued to brave shamelessly the thunders of his Bishop and the thunders of heaven. I went one day to hear him. His voice was sweet, persuasive, with a clear and harmonious tone. He said simply: "Love one another. That is the true religion of Christ. Love one another! everything is there: religion, philosophy and morality. Charity, properly understood, that which comes from the heart, is more pleasing to God than all the prayers. There are people who in order to pray neglect their home duties, their duties as wife and as mother. To them, I say of a truth, God remains deaf. He wills, before aught else, that you should fulfil your duties to your own. Every prayer which causes another to suffer is an impiety." Such was pretty near the essence of his sermons: they were short and simple. No great sonorous words, no pompous digressions, no Latin quotations which no one would have understood, no declamations on Our Lady of Lourdes or of La Salotte, on the miracle of Roses or the Immaculate Conception. Thus he placed himself on a level with the simple souls who heard him, addressed himself only to their good sense and to their heart, and did not waste their time. He thought that after having worked hard throughout the week, it was well to spend the Sunday in rest and not in fresh fatigue. But that which struck me most in him was his intelligent and expressive countenance, and I was astonished that a man hall-marked with such originality, should consent to vegetate, obscure and future-less, in the care of a poor village. They said he was chaste. In truth that must be a task more arduous for him than for any other, for he bore on his face the impress of ardent passions. A disciple of Lavater would doubtless have sought for and found the secret of hidden dramas in the fine pale face. From his looks, now full of feverish ardour, now laden with sweet caresses, like the limpid eyes of a bride, the desires of the flesh in rebellion against deadly duty, seemed to burst forth with bold prolific thoughts. One saw at times that his thoughts escaped in moments of forgetfulness from the clerical fetter. Wild, wandering and licentious, they plunged with delight into the ocean of reverie. They left far behind them on the misty shore our conventions, our prejudices and our follies, and all those toils of spider-web which beset and catch and destroy so well the silly crowd, and which we call social rules, opinion and propriety. Then the priest was gone; the man alone remained, the man of thirty, robust and full of life and yearning for all the joys of life. And beneath his gold-embroidered chasuble, near that altar laden with lustres and with flowers, amidst the floods of light and the floods of perfume, in that atmosphere saturated with the intoxicating waves of incense and the breath of maidens; surrounded by all those women, by all these girls on their knees before him or hanging on his lips; before all these modest or burning looks fixed upon his gaze, a strange sensation rose to his brain; the perspiration stood upon his forehead, he blushed and grew pale by turns; a shiver ran through his frame, and trying to subdue the ardour of his gaze, he turned towards the crowd of young girls, and said to them in a trembling voice: --_Dominus vobiscum_. --_Et cum spiritu tuo_, answered the choir of maidens. Oh, how willingly instead of the name of God would he have cast to them his heart. II. THE CONFESSIONAL. "In the course of the holy missions to which I have consecrated a great portion of my life, I have often come across upright souls, disposed to make great progress in perfection, if they had found a skilful director." THE REV. FATHER J.B. SCAROMELLI (_The Spiritual Guide_). However, almost in spite of myself, I was interested in this young priest, and although disposed to believe that he was a knave like the rest, I was sensible of something in him so upright and so loyal that I was, from the very first, prejudiced in his favour. And besides, these flashes of fiery passion which at times betrayed him, could they serve as an accusation against him? Could one take offence at his not having completely stifled at thirty years the fierce passions of youth and his violent desires? Was it not a proof on the contrary of his victorious struggles and of his energy? And even though he should succumb before the imperious needs of potent nature, which would be the more culpable, he or the women who surrounded him, enveloped him with their gaze, encompassed him with their seductions; he or the husbands and fathers who seemed tacitly to say to him: "You are young, ardent, fall of passion and vigour, there is my daughter, there is my wife, I hand them to you, receive their confessions, dive into their looks, read in their soul, listen month to month to their most secret confidences, but beware of touching their lips." Fools! And when the priest succumbs and their shame is noised abroad, they make a great uproar and complain to all the echoes, instead of bowing their head and humbly saying: _mea culpa_. What? silly fool, you cast the modesty of your young wife and the virginity of your daughter as food for that envious celibate, you leave them alone in the mysterious tête-à-tête of the confessional, with no obstacle between his burning lust and the object of that lost, between those mouths which speak so low![1] What will stop them? Duty? Virtue? His duty to himself? Laughable obstacles. Fragile plank on which you place your honour. Her own virtue? Trust not to it overmuch, for he will know how to lead her to the will of his appetite. He will form her in such a way that she will pass by all the roads by which he will wish to guide her. It is a gate which he will contrive sooner or later to force, however it may be bolted, however it may be guarded by those sleepy gaolers which we call Principles. The Confessional! Marvellous invention of greedy curiosity, satanic work of some hoary sinner! Hallowed goad of concupiscence, blessed antechamber which leads to the alcove, mysterious retreat where the priest sits between husband and wife, listens to their private talk and stands by, panting at all their excesses. Refuge more secret than the best padded boudoir. Formidable entrenchment sacred to all! What jealous lover would dare to lift that curtain of serge behind which are murmured so many secret confidences? It is there that the artless virgin utters her first confessions; there, that the plighted maid reveals the beatings of her heart; there, that the blushing bride unveils the secrets of the nuptial couch. He, the man of God, he listens ... he collects all their voluptuous nothings and out of them creates worlds. Do you see him give ear? His face has kept its sanctimonious expression, but the fire gleams forth beneath his drooping eye-lid. He is leaning near, as near as possible to those stammering lips.... The penitent is silent. What! already? everything said already? Oh! that is not enough. She has passed too quickly over certain faults the remembrance of which covers her forehead with a blush. He is not satisfied. He wishes to know further. He reproves gently, "Why hesitate? God is full of pity; but in order that the pardon may be complete, the confession must be complete," and anew he questions, he presses ... his temples throb, his blood boils, his hands burn, the demon of the flesh completely embraces him. Come, incautious girl, speak, explain, give details, and by the confession of your pleasant faults, plunge into ecstasy the ruttish confessor. [Footnote 1: In the confessionals of the Church of St. Gudule at Brussels and in those of the majority of Belgian churches an opening may be seen contrived in the screen, through which it is easy for mouths to meet.] III. THE PARSONAGE. "The pretty parsonage encircled with verdure, With its white pigeons cooing on the roof, Assumes to the sun a saucy air of sanctity And permits a smell of cooking to go forth." CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Les Rustiques_). The parsonage is seated on the summit of the hill and overlooks a part of the village and of the plain. The traveller perceives from far its white outline in the midst of a nest of verdure, and feels delighted at the view. Nothing more simple than this peaceful house. A single story above the ground-floor, with four windows from which the panes shine cheerfully in the first rays of the sun, and upon the red-tiled roof two attics with pointed gable. The door, which one reaches by a broad stone stair, is framed by two vines, their vigorous branches stretching up to the side of the windows, yielding to the hand, when September is come, their velvety, ruby bunches. Behind the house, a little garden surrounded by a hedge of green, at once an orchard, flower and kitchen garden. In front, two hundred paces away, the old church with its stained walls on which the ivy clings, and its pointed belfry. The distance between is partly filled by several rows of lime-trees, which, seen from a distance, give to the parsonage the calm and cheerful look of those peaceful retreats where we sometimes dream of burying our existence. "Is not this the harbour!" says the tempest-beaten way-farer. "Oh! how happy must be the dweller in this calm abode!" He might enter; he was welcome. The door was open to all, and this house, like that of the wise man, seemed to be of glass. And all the women, young or old, knew hour by hour how their Curé spent his time, and in spite of all the perseverance which, according to principle, they had applied to discover some mystery in his life or the knot of a secret intrigue, they acknowledged unanimously that no one could give less hold for scandal than he. Every day, when he had said mass, pruned his trees, watered his flowers, visited some poor or sick person, he shut himself up with his books and lived with them till the evening, until his servant came and said to him, "It is time for supper." Then he rose, ate his supper in silence, after putting aside the portion for the poor, and then returned to his books. That was all his life. On Sunday, if the weather was fine, he took his breviary, and walked with slow steps along the high-road. The children would stop their games and run forward to meet him in order to receive a caress from him, while the young girls whispered together and seemed to avoid him. The bolder ones met his gaze with a blush: perhaps they too would have liked, just as the little children, to receive a caress from the handsome Curé of Althausen. But he passed on without ever stopping, answering their timid salutations with an almost frigid gravity. He acted wisely. He was full of distrust of himself, and kept himself in prudent reserve in face of the enemy. For he knew full well that the enemy was there, in these sweet woman's eyes and those smiles which wished him welcome. Then the pagan intoxications of the Catholic rites were no more surrounding him to over-excite him and betray the trouble of his heart and the straying of his thoughts, and if he felt affected before the smiles of these marriageable girls, he armed himself with force sufficient to thrust back carefully to his inmost being his boldness and his desires. It was no more the ardent passionate man who disclosed himself sometimes in rapid moments of forgetfulness, it was the priest austere and calm, the functionary salaried by the State to teach the religion of the State. IV. EXPECTATION. "And the days and the hours glided on, and withdrawn within itself, affected by sorrows and joys unknown, the soul stretched its mysterious wing over a new life soon to dawn." LAMENNAIS (_Une voix de prison_). One of his greatest pleasures was to plunge into the woods which surround the village. He sought silence and solitude there, and when he heard the steps of a keeper or of some pedestrian, or even the happy voices of young couples calling one another, he concealed himself behind the masses of foliage, and hid himself with a kind of shame like a criminal. He wished to be alone, completely alone, so as to dream at his ease. Then he stretched himself in the sun on the warm grass, opened his breviary, the discreet confidant of all wandering thoughts, the screen for the priest's looks and thoughts, and listened to the insects' hum. He followed the goings and comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the profundity of nature, he dreamed.... One could have seen by his smile that he was wandering in spirit in the laughing and limit-less garden of hope, pausing here and there on rosy illusions and fair chimeras like a butterfly on flowers. They were delicious hours which he passed thus, full of forgetfulness and indolence. He enjoyed the present moment, the present, poor, humble and obscure, but which held neither disquietude nor care. Sometimes regrets for a past of which no one was aware came and knocked at the door of his dreams, but he drove them for away, saying like Werther: "The past is past." The hand of time revolved without his giving heed, and often night surprised him in his fantastic reveries. The good country-folk bad been sorely puzzled by these solitary walks in the depths of the woods. They talked at first of some scandalous intrigue, and the Curé had no difficulty in discovering that he was followed and watched by rigid parishioners, anxious about his morality and his virtue. More than once through the foliage he believed he saw vigilant sentinels who watched him carefully. Lost labour! Never did those who tried with such unwearied perseverance to detect his secret amours, have the pleasure of beholding _that mistress_ whom they would have been so happy to cover with shame and scorn. They were obliged to renounce it, for his mistress then was that admirable fairy, invisible and dumb to the common herd, who displays her beauties to the gaze of a chosen race alone, as she murmurs her divine and chaste sonnets in their ear. It was nature all radiant, which caressed his brow with the breeze, which sang by his ear with the mysterious harmony of the woods, which gladdened his sight with the flower of the fields, the verdant meadow, the golden harvest. His loves were the hollow path which is lost in the mountain, the old willow which leans over the edge of the pool, the sparrow which chatters among the leaves, the splendours of the starry sky, the magic mirages of the evening. They were all the melodies which poets have made to vibrate on the strings of lyres, and in those moments of delicious ecstasy he forgot the vexations, the littlenesses and the miseries of the world, and if anyone had asked him what was the aim of his life, he would have replied like Anaxagoras: "To love Nature, and to contemplate the sky." But among his uncouth surroundings, who would have been capable of understanding these sweet pleasures and that over-excitement of soul and brain, by means of which he sought to benumb his senses and to change the current of his heart, that heart which like the body has its imperious needs. He had reached that fatal epoch when man experiences an insatiable hunger for love, and for want of a woman will nourish some monstrous fantasy, or even, like the prisoner of Saintine, become enamoured of a flower. V. THE MEETING. "Skilled physicians have remarked that an emanation of infinitely projectile forces continually takes place from the eyes of impassioned persons, of lovers or of lascivious women, which communicates insensibly to those who listen to or behold them, the same agitation by which they are affected." RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE (_Le Paysan perverte_). One afternoon, while returning to the village, the Curé chanced to meet a young girl who was unknown to him. She was but poorly dressed, and her shoes were white with dust; but youth and gaiety shone forth beneath the glow of her cheeks, her blue eye sparkled under the dark arch of her eyebrows, and the voluptuous opulence of her shape made one forget the poverty of her dress. From her straw hat with its faded ribbons escaped heavy tresses which shone like gold. Bending over his breviary, the Curé passed, casting a sidelong look, one of those priestly looks which see without being seen; but the stranger compelled him to raise his head. She had stood still and was fixing on him smiling a bright and confident look. On seeing this, the Curé stood still also. Certainly, in the white flock of his congregation he counted just as lovely creatures every Sunday, he encountered just as provoking smiles. Nevertheless, he was troubled; he felt a secret flame course through his veins; a kind of charm emanated front this girl. He remembered reading that magnetic currents flow forth from certain women which inflame the senses, and he took a step backwards; but the charm operated in spite of himself, his eyes remained fixed on the seductive outlines of the figure of the unknown. She enquired of him politely the way to the _Mairie_. In pointing it out to her the Curé perhaps displayed more earnestness than was necessary, he even took a few steps with her as far as the entrance to the village, then he returned home, thinking of this pretty girl. During supper his servant told him that some mountebanks had arrived in the village, and that they were going to give a performance the same evening in the market-place. In fact a drum was heard beating the call, and the hoarse voice of the clown announcing "a grand acrobatic spectacle, accompanied with dances and followed by a pantomime." Involuntarily the Curé's thought turned to the stranger; he went upstairs into his study and behind his half-closed shutters he could take part in the spectacle. As he expected, the pretty girl was there, and seen from this distance in the night, half-lighted by a few smoky lamps, with her little bodice of velvet, her gauze skirt spangled with gold, her flesh-coloured tights, she was really charming. At that moment she was dancing, with wonderful lightness and grace, some lascivious fandango, while she accompanied herself with the castanets. She was smiling at the crowd, delighting in the effect which she knew how to produce with her sparkling eye and her white teeth and her rosy lips, and the Curé was intoxicated by that smile. Then he cast his eyes over the rough crowd, and ha was grieved at so much cost for such an audience: _Margaritas ante porcos_, he murmured, _Margaritas ante porcos_. In order to admire her better, he had taken a field-glass and lost none of her gestures. Her bosom was boldly bared, and he feasted his eyes upon the sweet furrow of her breasts, he followed the delicious outline of her leg, and found his heart melting before the undulating movements of her graceful bust and her sturdy hips. He abruptly left the window, took up a book at random and tried to read. But this was in vain; his eyes only were reading, his thoughts were elsewhere; they were in the market-place which was in frolic with the dancer. He wished to stop this libertine thought; he read aloud: "The fall is great after great efforts. The soul risen so high in heroism and holiness falls very heavily to the earth.... Sick and embittered it plunges into evil with a savage hunger, as though to avenge itself for having believed." At another time, he would have said: "It is a warning." But he saw not the warning, he only saw the dancer, and he murmured: "How beautiful is she!" He took the hundred paces round his table; but his body only was there, his thoughts always were hovering on the market-place round the spangled petticoat. He returned to the window. All was over; the lamps were put out, the crowd was slowly dispersing; five or six inquisitive ones were standing round the heavy carriage of the company, from which some gleam of light escaped. He remained a long time leaning on his elbow at his window, looking at the stars and listening mechanically to all the noises outside. The market-place became empty. Only the stamping of the horses was to be heard fastened near by, in the thick shade of the old lime-trees. A slender thread of light again filtered up to hint. VI. THE LOOK. "His pupils glowed in the dim twilight, like burning coals." LÉON CLAUDEL (_Les Va-nu-pieds_). It was like a lover attracting him, a magic thread which fastened yonder was unwinding itself to his eye. He could not withdraw it thence, and armed with his glass he tried to reach the bottom of the mysterious light. Two or three times he saw a figure which he thought he recognized, pass and repass in the lighted square. Then the devil tempted him, like Jesus on the mountain. He did not show him the kingdoms of the earth, but he gave him a glimpse of the mountebank undressed. "Go not there," his good angel cried to him. But the Curé turned a deaf ear; he went down noiselessly from his room and ventured into the market-place. In order to approach the carriage, he displayed all the strategy of a skilful general; he first walked the length of the parsonage, then crossed the market-place, then little by little, artfully, disappeared beneath the lime-trees. [PLATE I: THE LOOK. No one could have detected him plunging his burning gaze into the depth of the little room where the fair dancer, stripped of her tights, appeared to him half-naked.] [Illustration] The house on wheels was only a few paces away, silent, motionless, crammed up. Within those ten feet of planks was perceptible an excess of lives, passions, miseries, joys, of comedies and dramas; quite a world in miniature. Breathings and rustlings issued now and then from this living coffin. It wan the heavy slumber of fatigue, of fever, or of drink. One window was lighted still, and the half-drawn curtain allowed a room to be seen the size of a sentry-box. He passed slowly by, and gave a look. A strange emotion seized him: he would have wished not to have seen, and he felt full of a delicious trouble at having seen. He looked round him with alarm; he was quite alone. No one had detected him, no one could have detected him, plunging his burning gaze into the depth of the little room where the fair dancer, stripped of her tights, appeared to him half-naked and dazzling like a goddess of Rubens. VII. THE SALUTE. "She is fair, she is white, and her golden hair Sweetly frames her rosy face: The limpid look of her azure eyes Beguiles near as much as her half-closed lip." N. CHANNARD (_Poésies inédites_). The next day, from break of dawn, the strolling players were already making their preparations for departure. He saw the fair dancer again. No longer had she on her gauze dress with golden spangles, nor the tights which displayed her shape, nor her glittering diadem, nor the imitation pearls in her hair. She had resumed her poor dress of printed cotton, her darned stockings and her coarse shoes; but there was still her blue eye with its strange light, her pleasant face, her silky hair falling in thick tresses on her sunburnt neck, and beneath her cotton bodice the figure of an empress was outlined with the same opulence. A knot of women was there, laughing and talking scandal. What were these stupid peasants laughing at? At length the heavy vehicle began to move, drawn by two broken-winded horses. The fair girl is at the little window and watches, inquisitive and smiling, the silly scoffing crowd. "Pass on, daughter of Bohemia, and despise these men who jest at your poverty, these women who cast a look of scorn and hate. They scorn and hate you, because they have not your splendid hair, nor the brightness of your eyes, nor your white teeth, nor your fresh smile, nor your suppleness, grace and vigour, nor your bewitching shape; despise them in your turn, but envy them not, them who despise and envy you." Thus the Curé murmured to himself as the carriage was passing by. She is there still at her little window, like a youthfull picture by Greuze. She lifts her eyes and recognizes the priest, and bows with that smile which has already so affected him. What grace in that simple gesture! What promises in those gentle eyes! In the midst of the hostile scornful looks of that foolish crowd she has met a friendly face; she has read sympathy and perhaps a secret admiration on the intelligent countenance of the priest. The Curé replied to her salute, and for a long while his gaze pursued the carriage. Meanwhile the good ladies whispered among themselves, and said to one another with a scandalized air: "Did you see? He bowed to the mountebank!" VIII. THE FEVER. "Who has not had those troubled nights, when the storm rages within, when the soul, miserably oppressed with shameful desires, floats in the mud of a swamp?" MICHELET (_L'Amour_). He was quite aware of his imprudence, but was unable to withdraw his eyes from the road, and his thoughts still followed the carriage long after it had disappeared behind the tall poplars. It seemed to him that it was a portion of himself which was going away for ever. What! was the madman then beginning to cast his heart thus on the roads, and could he feel smitten by this creature whom he had scarcely met? No, it was not she whom he loved, but she had just made the over-full cup run over. She or another, it was indifferent to him. His altered feelings of desire needed at length to drink freely. He was thirsty, what signified to him the vessel? Hitherto he had only felt that ordinary confusion which the chaste man experiences in presence of the woman, for hitherto his sight bad only paused complacently upon pretty fresh faces, and if his thought wandered beyond, he drove it back with care to his very inmost being; but now that he had seen the naked breast of a pretty girl, that he had relished it with his gaze, embraced it with his desire, that he had yielded to a fatal forgetfulness, his flesh, so long subdued and humiliated, profited by that moment of error, and subdued him in its turn. A kind of frenzy had taken possession of his being in a moment, and in the sleepless night which he had just passed, he had given himself up to an absolute orgy in his over-excited imagination. That wandering girl who had just disappeared, had carried away his modesty. He felt his heart beating for her; but he felt that his heart was beating for all alike; girls or women, he wanted them all, he defiled them all with his thoughts. And so, after ten years of struggles, the virtue of the Curé of Althausen dissolved one evening before the naked breast of a rope-dancer, like snow before the sun. That day was a Sunday, and, as he did not come downstairs, his servant came to warn him that the time for Mass was drawing near. She stood struck with the strange look on his countenance, at the fatigue displayed on his features, and anxiously enquired of him the cause. The Curé assured her that she was mistaken, that he bad never felt better; but at the same time he gave a glance at his mirror. He was frightened at his face and he remained a long time thoughtful, contemplating the gloomy fire of his own look. That sinister countenance seemed to him to presage some approaching calamity. Thus, there are men whom fate has marked on the forehead with a fatal stamp. The mysterious sign is not displayed at every time and before all; but at certain epochs of life, when the unknown breath caresses the predestinated or cursed head, the mark all at once appeals, like a tawny light in the depth of night. A curse! Fatality has moulded that man's brain, it has left its potent impress on his skull. --With what seal then am I marked? he cried. Is it that of reprobation which God has stamped upon my face? No, simpleton that thou art, it is the phosphorus of thy brain, which catches fire from time to time. IX. DURING VESPERS. "There is a beautiful girl of sixteen, white as milk, rosy as a rose-bud, fresh as a spring morning,--and chaste as Vesta." A. DELVAU (_Le Fumier d'Ennius_). He went up into the pulpit, and preached a sermon on this text: "Blessed are the pure in heart." He had prepared it the day before, previous to the arrival of that enchanting player, and his thoughts had been since then too occupied with very different subjects for him to search for another theme. Bitter mockery! What could he say to these good people about hearts pure and chaste? He tried, all the same, and said some excellent things. He spoke above all about temptation, which, following the expression of a Father of the Church, "is only, to commence with, an ant which tickles, and finishes by becoming a devouring lion." "Alas," he said, "how many, without meaning it, have been thus devoured, beginning perhaps with this pious individual." His sermon took great effect. An old woman wept, and several members of the congregation appeared to sigh and think that it was a long time since they had been devoured thus. He had an inclination to laugh, as he came down from the pulpit, at the words which he had just uttered on purity of heart, and he wondered that he had been able to bring so much conviction and warmth to bear upon a subject to which he was henceforth completely a stranger. His own scepticism terrified him, and he saw that he had taken a long step into evil Nevertheless he did concern himself at that, and from his place near the pulpit he turned his impassioned gaze with more assurance on the group of young girls. Passion is a brutal level which equalizes us all. There remained in him nothing more of the priest, there only remained the man full of desires, and he flung his desires in riot upon that gyneceum which he thought belonged to him. In certain village churches, all the young girls are placed apart, near the choir, sometimes even in the choir itself, under the eyes of the priest, as if they wished to leave the most convenient choice to that never satiated Priapus. The handsome Curé of Althausen made his choice therefore at his ease and without the least shame. This one was fair and pale, that other dark and high in colour; this one was thin and delicate, that one fat and plump; this one was prettier, that other more graceful. He knew not upon which to stop. He would have wished for them all, for they all had that provoking beauty which pleases the devil so much: exuberant youth. And he could not grow weary of contemplating all these fresh faces; his look, more than once, encountered sweet looks, and then he experienced a delicious shock which stirred his heart. It was not only the faces which excited his longings. In spite of himself, the opulent breast of the fair player entered his imagination and his thoughts seemed to search each one's neckerchief, seeking this powerful nourishment for his appetite. He bad tried to drive away these abominable desires, but it was in vain: the forbidden fruit was there and something seemed to tell him that he had only to stretch out his hand to seize it. As he tried to escape from this diabolical hallucination, he remarked all at once in the gallery set apart for the wives of the principal inhabitants, a young girl, a stranger, whose beauty struck him. She was pale and dark, and her full lips, of a brilliant red, were lightly pencilled with a black down. Her deep, burning eyes darted flames, and were fixed on the priest with a persistency which made him blush. The erotic fever which had possessed him disappeared at once. He was ashamed of himself and of his secret thoughts, for it seemed to him that this stranger read to the bottom of his soul. This flaming look which he had caught sight of, weighed upon him like remorse. In the evening, at the _Salut_ he saw again the same face and the same burning eyes, fastened on his own; but be thought he discovered that there was nothing terrible about them, and that what in his trouble he had taken for inquisition and wrath, might in reality be nothing but tenderness and sweetness. He made skilful enquiries regarding the stranger; she was Mademoiselle Suzanne Durand, who had just completed her education at Saint-Denis, the daughter of Captain Durand, "a bad parishioner," his servant told him, "who paid little regard to the service and treated the priests as humbugs." X. IN PARENTHESIS. "Is it meet for you to be among such vicious people? Envy, anger and avarice reign among some; modesty is banished among others; these abandon themselves to intemperance and sloth, and the pride of these rises to insolence. It is all over; I will dwell no longer among the seven deadly sins." LE SAGE (_Gil-Blas_). I must take my courage with both hands to continue to unfold before you the events however simple of this simple tale. Already I hear the eternal flock of hypocrites and fools protesting and crying out at outraged morality. I know them, these indignant voices of the defenders of morality. They arise every time that we unveil the vilenesses, that we expose the gangrenes of our institutions; corrupt magistracy, vicious clergy, rotten army; tottering tripod which holds up that worm-eaten scaffolding which is called _social order_. But the sages of the present day and a great number of those of former times have always made me laugh, particularly where beneath the mask of the venerable philosopher or the hood of the austere monk, I discovered the grin of the rogue. I shall stop my ears then to their clamours and I shall continue the task I have undertaken. Nevertheless, some sincere persons may object: "What sort then is this cynical priest which you display to us? Is there nothing then remaining to him, and in default of modesty and morality, in default of his energy, which has foundered thus all at once, could he not still lay hold of the wrecks of faith?" Faith? It had fled away long ago, since the day when he had laid aside his dress of catechumen, and, initiated in the secrets of the sanctuary, he had laid hand on the priestly jugglings. Then he had been filled with an infinite sorrow. But he had prudently repressed it deep within, and in this centre of devout hypocrisy and holy intrigue, he had covered himself again, like all the rest, with a varnish of sanctity. Faith! What priest is he who, amidst the religious pageants, the public falsehoods and the private apostacies, the burlesque scenes behind the stage preceding the solemn performance, what priest is he who has preserved his faith? What priest is he, upright and wishing to remain upright--there are such lost in obscure positions--who has not said quietly to himself, in his inmost being, all alone with his conscience, what the Curé of Althausen often repeated to himself: "Faith, bitter mockery! to believe by order, without examination and without reply! "Annihilation of the individual, murder of the thought, criminal denial of the intelligence, the most sublime of man's gifts! "Oh miseries of the soul! filth of the body! vileness of the spirit! unfathomable depths of human folly! What am I and what are we, and whom do we wish to deceive? "What are we, we who say to others, 'Be just, humble, chaste, pitiful? Have faith.' Oh! priests, my brethren, and you, my masters, you have tried to close my soul as we close a book, to extinguish my thought like a too lively flame and to bend my rebellious reason; but my soul unfolds in spite of you; the book swollen with doubts, bursts under the clasp, my thought rekindles at the first spark, and my reason rises to its full height to protest from the deeps of darkness where you would bury it. "For I have followed you step by step in the tortuous ways of your dark lives. I have listened to your words and I have seen your deeds, and the deeds gave the lie to your words. "Then I said to myself: Perhaps we are living in an evil period. The curse is upon this age. And I have sought to relieve my thoughts in less gloomy pictures. I have ransacked history to find there the golden age of Catholicism. But the pages of Catholic history are stained with mire and blood. The dealers of the temple, more powerful than Christ, have in their turn driven him out of the sanctuary. Humanity, imprisoned in the round of hypocritical conventions and nefarious laws, revolves unceasingly on itself, the eternal Ixion fastened to the eternal wheel. "Whither are we going? Whither are we going in the ocean of social tempests, of political knaveries, of religious falsehoods? Centuries pass, empires fall, nations disappear, religions, at first blazing torches, then smoky harmful lamps, die out one by one, generations succeed generations with hands stretched out towards the future whence the new light must spring, and the future, gloomy gulf, will swallow up all, men and things, worlds and gods. "I have ransacked history and I have discovered that yesterday as to-day, there were among those men who call themselves shepherds of souls, pride, falsehood, injustice, thirst of riches, hatred and luxury, but neither belief, nor truth, nor faith." Do not cry out, saintly souls, virtuous prelates, gentle apostles, frank and rosy curates, but let him among you who is without any of his sins, rise up and cast the first stone at the Curé of Althausen. XI. THE FLESH. "The man tries in vain, he must yield to his nature: A woman excites him untying her girdle." VICTOR HUGO. Eight days had passed away. Eight days, during which he had tried with supreme efforts to silence his senses, and to chain down his wild thoughts. He had become calmer and more master of himself. The species of vertigo which had seized him is an accident frequent enough among young priests, who in spite of all the seductions which surround them and the occasions of falling, wish to remain steadfast in duty. "For we do not deny ourselves the inclinations of nature with impunity, it is an age at which the physical delights of love become necessary to every well organized being, and it is never but at the expense of health, and of the repose of the whole life, that we can he faithful to the vows of perpetual chastity."[1] The crisis, according to the temperament of the _subject_, is more or less violent, and occurs again several times, until he finally yields to the temptation, or again until madness seizes him. Then everybody is terrified to learn one day in the _Gazette des Tribunaux_ the horrible details of some crime so abominable that one would believe it sprung from the horrors of a nightmare. Let them not be astonished! the wretch who has committed it was in reality overcome by hallucination. In the struggles of the will against the appetites, the reason expires. Madness has clasped the brain, too feeble to strive against the flesh in revolt, and the latter has avenged itself as the brute avenge itself by the act of a brute. "The torch of reason completely extinguished, the victim of senseless vows has brought the piece to an end by a catastrophe which alarms modesty, astonishes nature and disconcerts religion."[2] Meanwhile, I repeat, the Curé seemed calmer: to the crisis had succeeded a kind of depression and languor. He resumed his studies with more eagerness, and only went out in order to go from the parsonage to the church, conscientiously occupying himself in his profession. His senses were slumbering again. But the mischievous devil was at his heels and did not lose sight of him. The old serpent, says the apostle, finds the means of tempting by the very virtues which we possess, even to making them the occasions of sin to us; how would he not tempt us when it is sin itself which dwells in our heart? [Footnote 1: _Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales_. Vol. VI.] [Footnote 2: The inconveniences of compulsory chastity are more or less grave according to different cases: with youthful subjects, vigorous, and fed on succulent foods, mental derangement under the most horrible forms, such as Satyriasis, Priapism, Erotomania, Nymphomania and even death may quickly result from it. Instances are numerous. (Sciences médicales).] XII. THE TEMPTATION. "Alas! to return alone to our deserted home With no open window to herald our approach, If, when from the horizon we behold our roof, We cannot say, 'My return gladdens my home'." LAMARTINE (_Jocelin_). It was at Sunday's Mass, in the sanctuary itself, that he waited for his prey. The priest had scarcely reached the steps of the altar, his hands laden with the holy vessels, when, lifting his eyes to the gallery, he encountered the look he dreaded. Suzanne Durand was there, fixing on him her eyes, filled with magnetic force. He returned once again full of trouble. His servant, surprised at his agitation, overwhelmed him with inquisitive questions; he escaped from her and hastened towards the woods. He cast himself on the moss at the foot of an old oak and began to reflect. The dark eyes followed him everywhere. "Whither am I going?" he said to himself. "Why does the sight of this young girl agitate my heart in this way?" And he examined his heart and found it saturated with bitterness, disgust, weariness and regret, and in the midst of all that, something unknown was springing up. It was like a germ of hope which all at once had risen out of nothingness, a fleeting light which flickered in the dense gloom of his life. He heard the sound of a voice at some distance, a fresh, gay, melodious voice, to which a deeper note was answering. Spring, youth and love were mingling their accents together. Between the foliage he saw them slowly passing. They did not see him. Absorbed in the contemplation of themselves, arm in arm, with joined hands, their faces together, they passed along with bright looks, and open hearts, rejoicing in the seventh heaven. Now and again they stopped, and he all in play, took hold of her thick knot of hair, drew her head backwards and gave her a long kiss on the lips. He did not tire of it, but she pushed him back with all her strength, putting her hand on his mouth and saying to him, "That's enough, naughty boy, that's enough." The Curé knew them well. She was the best and prettiest girl in his congregation, and he, the happy rogue, sang in the choir. And he began to envy the happiness of this rustic; he would have wished to be for a moment this rude ignorant peasant, and who knows, for a moment? why not always? Would he not be happier going each morning to till the fruitful soil, to sow the furrow, and then to cut the sheaves of the golden harvest, than to vegetate as he was, casting his sterile grain upon arid souls. After the hard toil of the day, when he returned in the evening to his roof of thatch, he would meet with a smile of welcome, the smile of a loved wife, which would compensate him for his fatigues. He followed them with his eyes, full of envy and bitterness at heart, and when they had buried themselves behind the young underwood, when he no longer heard the sound of steps, or fresh bursts of laughter, he rose and sadly resumed his way to the village. Evening had come. The twilight was stretching its dark veil over all. The peasants dressed in their Sunday clothes were chatting on their door-steps while they waited for supper. Near the inns there rose the confused sound of gamblers' voices and drunkards' songs; but here and there through the windows he saw the bright fire of vine-twigs blazing merrily on the hearth, while the mother or the eldest daughter poured the steaming soup into the large blue-flowered plates ranged on the white wood table. He saw it all, and he walked with slow steps to his solitary abode. He thought of his life wasted, of the years of his prime which were passing away, without leaving any more traces than the skimming of the swallow's wing leaves upon the verdant brook. Oh! the fleeting time which carries all away, the hour which glides away dull and empty, the barren youth which flies, and the white hairs which come with disillusion, discouragement and despair. "Stay, stay, oh youth; stay but another day!" But what matters his youth to him? What joys has it brought him; what pleasures has he tasted? has he breathed the burning breath of life, of that fair life at twenty which unfolds like a ripe pomegranate, and casts to the warm sun its treasures and its perfumes? XIII. THE RESOLUTION. "My life was blighted, my universe was changed; I had entangled myself without knowing it in an inextricable drama. I must get out of it at any cost, and I had no way of unravelling it. I resolved by all means to find one." J. JANIN (_L'Ans morte_). He sat by his desolate hearth and began to think with terror of the eternal solitude of that hearth. Alone! always alone! Already he had said to himself very often that he had chosen the wrong road, that this arid and desolate path was not the one needful to his ardent soul, that the hopes with which he had formerly been deluded, were falsehoods in reality, and that the God whom they had made him believe that he loved with such ardour, left his soul empty and barren. To love God! The love of God! High-sounding, hollow words which enable hypocrites to take advantage of the common people; fantastic passion kindled in the heart of fools for the amazement of the simple! Ah! how willingly would he have replaced the worn-out vision of this chimerical phantom with the likeness of some young girl, with sweet look and smile, full of promise. And the burning memory of the wanton player came and blended with the fresh and radiant memory of the charming pupil of Saint-Denis. "But why, priest, dost thou permit thy fevered guilty imagination to wander thus? Pursue thy course, pursue it without stopping, without looking back; henceforth it is too late to retrace thy path; anyhow be chaste, be chaste under pain of shame and infamy. "Thou must not be chaste in view of recompense like a slave, thou must be chaste without expectance."[1] He took up a book, his sovereign remedy in hours of temptation. It was the life of St. Antony, written by his companion, St. Athanasius. "The demons presented to his mind thoughts of impurity, but Antony repulsed them by prayer. The devil excited his senses, but Antony blushed with shame, as though the fault were his own, and strengthened his body by faith, by prayer and by vigil. The devil, seeing himself vanquished thus, took the shape of a young and lovely woman and imitated the most lascivious actions in order to beguile him, but Antony raising his thoughts towards heaven and considering the loftiness and excellence of the soul which is given to us, extinguished these burning coals by which the devil hoped to inflame his heart through this deception, and drove away the devilish creature." Marcel shrugged his shoulders and closed the book. How many times already he had tried all those means without success. He leant his burning forehead on his hands and, in self-contemplation, tried to see to the bottom of his soul. Chaste! always chaste! What! Was the flower of his youth wasted away thus, in incessant, barren struggles? If only peace of heart, and a quiet conscience remained to him; if quietude sat by his hearth, as his masters many a time had promised him! But no, alone with himself, he felt himself to be with an enemy. For many years, it had been so, and a lying voice had cried to him without ceasing: "Wait for happiness, for sweet pure joys, wait for it till to-morrow: to-morrow all this fury will have passed away, these raging blasts which rise to thy brain will have vanished; thy vanquished senses will leave thee in peace, and calm and strong, thou shalt rejoice over an untroubled conscience and over the satisfaction of duty fulfilled." And he had waited in vain. Now he had reached ripe age, and the future is visible ever more gloomy; to-morrow has come, as sad, as empty, and as desolate as yesterday. He was tired at last of waiting, patiently, humbly, resigned like the beast of burden which awaits the slaughterhouse. Beasts of burden! Are we not that, all we who with brow bent under humiliation, injustice, thankless toil; with the heart embittered by tedious deception and tedious despair, miseries of heart and miseries of body, wait, wait ever, wait vainly for a more brilliant sun to shine at last, until at the end of the day there rises before us the only guest we have never expected, on whom we counted not,--the solution of the great problem, the radical cure for all our ills--DEATH. Death, which with its brutal hand, seizes us at the moment when perhaps at last we are going to rest ourselves and rejoice. No, that shall not be. He will not continue to vegetate without happiness in these dull, common-place surroundings; to walk at random in this road bristling with thorns; to pursue his disheartening career, enclosed by miserable vices. Nothing around him but stupid, vulgar prosiness, foolish moral annihilation. No poetry, no golden ray, no rainbow! Everything most low, unsightly, pitiful. Such was his lot as priest. Complaints of the soul, wandering flashes of the imagination, criminal aspirations of the heart, sinful desires ... these ... that was all. Was this then life? Was it for this that God had created him, that his mother had drawn him painfully forth from her entrails, that nature had one day counted one intelligent being the more? Ah! he felt full well it was not so. He felt full well it was not so by his thirst for emotions and enjoyment, by his altered lips, by his aspirations for an unknown world. He was in haste to strip off for once at least this old man's shell which enveloped him, this black, hideous, hardened covering of the bad priest, beneath which he felt his vitality, his youth, his strength, his heart of thirty, bounding, boiling, roaring, like burning lava. The next day be remembered that though it was nearly six months since he had taken possession of his cure, his pastoral visits were not yet completed. In fact, he had gone everywhere, even to Captain Durand's. Only, he had found the door closed and, after the information he received, he had fully resolved not to go there again. [Footnote 1: The Antigone of Soto.] XIV. THE CAPTAIN. "The disposition of a man of sixty is nearly always the happy or sad reflection of his life. Young people are such as Nature has made them; old men have been fashioned by the often awkward hands of society." ED. ABOUT (_Trente et Quarante_). The old Captain was in fact a bad parishioner, as his servant had told him, and had only one good quality in the eyes of that careful housekeeper, "that he was always shining like a new halfpenny." Durand, in fact, was what is called in a regiment "a smart soldier," which means to say "a clean soldier." And still, one of his most important occupations was to brush his things. The son of peasants, without patronage, fortune or backstairs influence, he had raised himself, a rare and difficult thing nowadays; therefore he was proud of himself, and would say to anyone who would listen to him: "I am the son of my own deeds." He had been one of those serious-minded officers of whom Jules Noriac speaks, who instead of dividing their many spare hours between the goddess of play and the goddess of the bar, employ themselves in regimental reforms. The dimensions of a spur-rowel, the length and thickness of a trouser-strap, the improvement of a whitening for belts which does not fall off, were questions which had more importance and interest for him than a question of State. The slave of his duties, he was excessively severe in the service, and this stiffness and severity he had brought, it was said, into his household. With these military qualities; passive obedience, scrupulous cleanliness and the vulgar courage necessary for a son of Mars, Durand, with a good reputation and full of zeal, had had when very young, a rapid advance. At one moment he had foreseen a brilliant future, but his ambitious hopes had been quickly deceived. He saw the Baron de Chipotier, the Comte de Boisflottant, and the son of Pillardin, the lucky millionaire, successively come into the regiment, and these sprigs of lofty lineage, full of brilliancy and loquacity, naturally eclipsed the modest qualities of the obscure upstart soldier. Spending their life in cafés, overwhelmed with debt, loved by the women, they laughed among themselves at all the _minutiae_ of the service, which they treated as beneath their notice, ridiculed their superiors, and especially the serious-minded officers. Everything was forgiven them, they were rich. Durand was filled with indignation; he saw everything he had respected become an object of sarcasm to these young men, and his most cherished convictions turned into ridicule. He was like those devout persons who, when they hear an unseemly oath or an impious word, tremble and pray heaven not to cast its avenging lightning; he asked himself if social order was not overthrown, if the army was not marching to its ruin. He began to talk of his apprehensions, of this pitiable state of things, and they laughed in his face. But when these frivolous, turbulent, incapable officers became his chiefs, chiefs over him, the studious, model officer, the upright man, the slave to the regulations, he began to mistrust everything, society, France, the empire, the justice of God, and himself. It was from this period that the crabbed character dated, by which he was known. He passed a long season thus, full of anger and jealousy: then the time for his retirement arrived, that time to which all the forgotten, the obscure, the pariahs of the army look forward during long years, and which casts them forth into the social world, ignorant and strangers. Then he had retired to his own village, dividing his time between the tending of his garden, and the cares which were occasioned him by his daughter Suzanne. XV. MEMORIES. "Often risen from humble origin, he has gained the respect of all and the public esteem; but this cannot prevent his having a restless spirit; he misses the duty which has called him for so long at the appointed hour. Around him are scattered the memorials of his regiment, his eye catches them and a mist comes over it." ERNEST BILLAUDEL (_Les Hommes d'épée_). He was up by dawn, and the villagers on their way to their fields sometimes stopped to cast an inquisitive look over his garden palings. They saw him dressed in a linen jacket, with the glorious ribbon adorning his button-hole, weeding his flower-garden, turning up his walks, pruning his trees, clearing his flowers of caterpillars, watering his borders, with great drops of sweat pouring down, bending over his labour like a negro under the lash. "What a pity!" they said, "for a rich man to give himself so much trouble! If it only repaid him!" And they shouted to him: "Good-morning, Captain Durand, how are you to-day?"--"Pretty well, thank you," replied Durand, in a peevish tone.--"Still warm to-day, Captain; but you had it warmer in Africa, didn't you?" At the word Africa, the old soldier's eyes brightened, his forehead lost its wrinkles, and a smile came to his lips. All his past rose before him. Africa, the Bedouins, the gunshots, the razzias, the bare desert, the fresh oases, the life in camp, the glasses of absinthe, the days of rain and sun, the ostrich chases, the watch for the jackal and the races over the plain. All this, helter-skelter, in crowds, crossing, following, multiplying, like the sheaves of sparks which burst forth from a rocket. Ah! Ah! that was the happy time. And then he would stop and forget his work, his flowers, his grafts, and his espaliers; he would forget the peasants who were there, laughing quietly and nudging one another, and saying: "The old man is gone in the head." For they understood nothing of the tear, which all at once trickled from the corner of his eye-lid, a bitter drop which overflowed from the too full cup of his heart. Ah! youth has but one time, and they do well, who when the sun gilds their brow, cast their sap to its warm caresses. The winter, gloomy shadow, will come but too soon to freeze their slowly opened buds, leaving only a trunk, dry and bare. Then, when nothing more than a few warm cinders remain at the bottom of the human engine, we try to warm ourselves again at this cold hearth, and to search among those dying sparks which we call memories. And these memories of a time for ever fled, these lights which gladden or stir again your old heart sad and cold, these are the simple and fruitful beliefs, the transports of the soul, the insane devotions, the ardent passions, and all those orgies of heart and sense, all those frenzies of imagination, and all those follies of youth, which cause the wise to cry out so loudly, and which are the only feast-days of life. Hasten then, young man, hasten; take the good which comes to thee, and be not decoyed by idle fancies; wait not till to-morrow to be glad. To-morrow is the age of ripeness, of the falling fruit, the wrinkled brow, the faded flower; it is the vanished locks; it is the blood which grows cold, the smile which comes not back; it is in fine the worm of deceptions, which is ever growing larger and gnawing what may be left of thy heart. XVI. THE EPAULET. "Really, yes! I love my calling. This active adventurous life is amusing, do you see? there is something as regards discipline itself which has its charm; it is wholesome and relieves the spirit to have one's life ordered in advance with no possible dispute, and consequently with no irresolution or regret. Thence comes lightness of heart and gaiety. We know what we must do, we do it, and we are content." EMILE AUGIER et JULES SANDEAU (_Le Gendre de M. Poirier_). And Durand threw down his rake or his spade. --Well! here you are already, cried the old housekeeper; breakfast is not ready. --My paper? he said shortly. Sometimes the paper had not yet arrived; then he sat down near the window and watched impatiently for the carrier. There he is, coming out of the next street. He goes down with all haste to open the door himself, and take the precious _Moniteur_. For it is the _Moniteur de l'Armée_! and he unfolds it with the respect which we owe to holy things, and he reads it all religiously from the first article to the everlasting advertisement of _Rob Boyreau Laffecteur_. He reads it all, not because he is studying tactics or has need of Rob, but because he has set himself the task of reading it all. His servant brings him his morning coffee and brandy, and he believes himself still at father Etienne's or mother Gaspard's, at the garrison café; this makes him quite sprightly. "Come, mother Gaspard, It is not late, Another glass! Come, mother Gaspard, It is not late, To midnight it wants a quarter!" But it is not the long, tedious military articles which first attract his eye, nor the ministerial decrees, nor the studies on the sabretache, nor the biographies of celebrated skin breeches, nor the improvement of gaiter buttons, nor the changes of police caps; PROMOTIONS AND CHANGES, that is what he wants. PROMOTIONS AND CHANGES! divine rubrics which have caused so many hearts to beat. You all recollect it, my old brothers in arms, who have waited long, like me. Years and years have passed. At length the hour is come and the newspaper which is going to transform your life. That folded paper gleams with all the fires of hope, it glitters like a sun, for it contains the magic word which out of nothing is going to make you everything, to draw you out of the obscure ranks to place you in the brilliant phalanx, which, from a passive despised instrument, is going to create you an active and respected head. How you are dazzled as you open it; with what palpitations and haste you look for the blessed page, skipping the regiments, glancing over the ranks, flying over the names in order to arrive at your own. Ah! you know well where it ought to be; it is among the last; but what does it matter, it is here above all that the last can arrive first. Here it is! here it is at last! What intoxication! young and old, we all were twenty once. And meanwhile.... And meanwhile, the best days of your youth are lost in barren, vulgar, common-place, at times repulsive occupations. Your spirit is extinguished, your responsibility as an intelligent man is destroyed at settled hours by the sound of the bugle or of the trumpet, those flourishes of gilded servitude; and beneath the heavy hammer of passive obedience your temples are already growing grey; you have wrinkles on your forehead and on your heart, for you have reached that part of the cup of life, at which one drinks little else than bitterness ... But you forget all that; a new life full of enchantment is beginning. You are an officer! an officer! Ah! those who have never borne the harness, do not know what fairy-land that magic word contains. But you--you know it, and you took at your name, you spell each letter of it and you say: "At last! It is I, it is really I! Sub-lieutenant! I am sub-lieutenant!" Thus, ten to fifteen years of struggles, tribulation, obstacles, humiliations, devotion, dangers, in order to reach the salary of a grocer's clerk! But the old Captain, what was he looking for in the columns of the Service newspaper? He had nothing to expect. No new promotion could swell his aged breast. He had completed his career. Like a rejected charger whose ear has been slit, or whose right flank has been branded, he had been laid aside for ever. Henceforth he had nothing else to do but to plant his cabbages, until his legs were seized by anchylosis, absolutely forgotten. And so with all those who go away. Amidst the thousand incidents of military life, so filled in its leisure and so empty in its employments, has anyone the time to give a thought to the absent one who must return no more? His place is taken; a new face is seated there where we used to see him, and his is no longer familiar to us. A few years hence and his name will be known no more. The army is for the young! But does he forget? Does a man forget his youth, his glory, his dearest memories, his whole life? Retired into some country nook, completely buried in an obscure market-town, or become the modest citizen of some provincial city, the old officer follows afar off with solicitude and envy the different fortunes of his brothers in arms, living ever in thought amidst that forgetful and ungrateful family which he loves as much as his own--the Regiment. And that is why you, brave veterans, understand it well, that is why Captain Durand used to read the _Moniteur_. XVII. THE VOLTAIRIAN. "For them religion is the most skillful of juggling, the most favourable veil, the most respectable disguise under which man can conceal himself to lie and deceive." BARNUM (_Les Blagues de l'Univers_). But, as I have said, he was a bad parishioner, a bunch of tare in the field of God, a scabby sheep in the flock of the Lord. Taking no heed of his religious duties, reading the _Siècle_, speaking evil of priests and refusing the blessed bread, he was the scandal of the godly and not one of them in the village augured any good of him. Never did a publican from Belleville or a novice of freemasonry proclaim with so much boldness his contempt for the things which everybody venerates. He did not uncover himself in presence of funerals, saying he did not want to bow to the dead; he called the church the priests' bank, the altar a parade of mountebanks, the confessional the antechamber to the brothel. "That man will perish on the scaffold!" the former Curé of the village cried out one day in righteous indignation. How had he come by this hatred, vigorous as that which Alcestis demands from virtuous souls against hypocrites and evil-doers? What had the _black-coats_ done to him? He did not say, and perhaps he would have been embarrassed to say. There are certain natures which will love at any price, there are others on the contrary which need to hate. He was doubtless one of the latter, and he discharged all his excess of gall on the servants of Jesus. "They are criminals," he cried, "all without exception, from the first to the last. Hypocrisy engenders wickedness. It is a sore which spreads and becomes leprosy. Everything which touches it catches it. Those who associate with hypocrites become hypocrites, and then scoundrels, slowly but surely by infection. That is the logic of the scab. It is not necessary to dress up in a black gown and to swallow God in public to make a perfect priestling, it is enough to rub against the priest's cap. Look at the sacristans, the beadles, the lackeys of the Bishop's palace, the hirers of chairs, the choir-men, the sellers of tapers, the tradesmen by appointment to the religious houses, the beggar who stretches out his hand to you at the door, and the man who hands you the holy-water sprinkler, have they not all the same hypocritical face, the same cunning, devoutly sanctimonious look? Well! scratch the skins of the godly and you will find the hide of the scoundrel." An honourable man and brutally frank like many old soldiers he had kept in private life the tone and ways of barracks and camps. As he said himself, he did not mince the truth to anybody, and he repeated readily, without understanding it, the saying of Gonsalvo of Cordova, the great captain, "_The cloth of honour should be coarsely woven_." When one evening, on returning home, he found the card of the Curé, he nearly fell backwards. --What, he has had the audacity to come to my house, this holy water merchant. They have not told him then what I am! --Good heavens, I cried, my dear Captain, what has this poor man done to you? --To me! nothing at all. I don't know him. He is part of the holy priesthood; that is enough for me. He is a scoundrel like the rest. --But it is not enough to call a man scoundrel, you must prove that he is. --Don't trouble me about your proofs. Do you suppose I am going to rummage into this gentleman's private life and see what passes in his alcove? No, indeed, I have no desire to do so, and I leave that care to my cook. --Come, Captain, you admit that this is to vilify a man on rather slender grounds. There are fagots and fagots, and so there are Curés and Curés. This one, I assure you, is an excellent fellow. --It may be so, but as I have no desire to make his acquaintance, I laugh at his good qualities. --Everybody is not of your opinion, and it appears that all the women are distracted about him. --Another reason why I detest him; women usually place their affections very badly. --And he turns the heads of all the girls. --That is good! Oh, the good Curé. He reminds me of the one at Djidjelly when I was a non-commissioned officer, the greatest girl-hunter that I have ever known. The Kabyles used to call him _Bou-Zeb_, which means capable of the thirteenth labour of Hercules, and they held him in high esteem, but when he went near their tents they used to make all the women go inside. Ah! that was a famous Curé! I wish that ours resembled him, and that he would get a child out of all the girls, and that he would make cuckolds of all the husbands. --Why so? --To teach these idiots to let their wives and their daughters be idle and dance attendance at the churches, and relate all the details of their household and their little sins to these bullies, as to their grand-dad. --I grant there is some danger when the confidant is a handsome bachelor. --There is no need to be handsome, sir. With the women, the cassock gives charms to the ugliest. I have known a sweet and lovely creature become mad after one of these rogues who had a head like a pitchfork. He did with her what he wished. He made her devout, shrewish, and the worst of whores. Yes, yes, they say that the red breeches get over the women, but the black gown bewitches them. Explain that if you can. They want to know what is underneath that wicked cassock. Something strange, mysterious, monstrous attracts them. Women love enormities, and besides it must be said, especially and above all, forbidden fruit. The Captain had mounted his favourite hobby, I could only let him go on. --They are vice incarnate, and know how to employ every means to seduce. Religion, the confessional, the bible, the Mass, Vespers, the New Testament, all the holy business is an auxiliary for them. For instance, conceive anything more disgusting than that pardon promised beforehand to guilty women. Play the whore all your life, deceive your husband, have fifty lovers, provided that at the end you lament your faults, God will have only tenderness for you, and will receive you with open arms. I should like to know if by chance their Jesus had taken a wife, what would have been his opinion then of the woman taken in adultery; but he remained single and consequently incompetent to decide upon that delicate matter. All that, you see, is an encouragement to debauchery and a stimulant to lewdness. A devout woman, when she is young and pretty, is on a slope which leads quite straight to Monsieur le Curé's bed. XVIII. THE VISIT. "Stupefied, the pedant closed his mouth, and opened his eyes." LÉON CLADEL (Titi Foyssac IV). If there are any beings as blind as the husbands, they are certainly the fathers; with the latter, as with the former, blindness reaches its utmost limits. Since Molière no one laughs at them any more, and I don't know why, for they always deserve to be laughed at, while all the sarcasms have fallen on the head of the unhappy husbands. Folly and injustice! Conjugal love is as respectable as paternal affection. Love is as good as affection, and what the heart chooses is quite as good as what the blood gives you. Why then do they complain if it is papa who is deceived, and laugh if it is a husband. Exactly the contrary ought to occur. Paternal love is egotistic. It is for the most part vanity and self-love. The father looks for his own likeness in his offspring, and if he believes himself to be an eagle, his son naturally must be an eaglet. Most frequently he is only a foolish gosling, but the father insists on finding on him an eagle's plumes. If then he is deceived in his hopes, which are only a deduction from his own infatuation, it is certainly permissible to laugh at it. While the husband.... This is what I observed to Durand, which put him in a great passion. --Because my daughter has gone to Mass? And you say: "fathers are blind." Here is a self-contradictory individual. One can see plainly that you are not a father, or you would alter your theories. Hang it! You can't say I am enchanted at it, but you must put yourself in a man's place. She is a child, who leaves school, mark that well, where she was obliged, compelled to perform her religious duties, and one does not break off in a couple of days the habits of ten years like that. Give her time to reach it. I reason with her; hang it, I can't do everything in a day. When she goes from time to time to Mass, on Sunday, it does not follow that she is becoming religious. I am a free-thinker, but I am a father also, and what would you have a father do when two pretty arms take hold of your neck and a sweet little coaxing voice whispers to you, "Let me go there, my darling papa." Hang it, one is not made of wood, after all! --Neither is the Curé made of wood. --You make one shiver. Can my daughter have anything in common with your peasants' Curé? I say again that it is purely for diversion that she goes to Mass. And I understand it. Where can she show her new dress? And what place is more favourable for this little display than going into and coming out of church? --Then the Church is a spectacle like another. There are chants, music, tapers, perfumes, flowers, the half-light which comes through the coloured windows. --Without speaking of the fellows covered with gold-tinsel who repeat in unknown language the pater-nosters to which no one listens. It is enough to make one burst with laughing, and, if I had not my cabbages to plant, I would go myself now and again and entertain myself at these masquerades which are as good as the theatres at the fair, and to complete the resemblance, it only costs a couple of sous. --But the principal person of the troop attracts the looks, and the danger is there. --Your priestling is young then? --And vigorous. Strong appetites. When I see him rambling in the village, I begin to say: "Good people, the cock is loose, take care of your hens." It is like your Curé of Djidjelly. --I am easy on that ground. The black cock will not come and rub his wings here. He knows now that he has mistaken the door; they have informed him regarding me, and he will not be so rude as to come again. But just at that moment the servant came into the room quite scared, and said: --Here is Monsieur le Curé. --Who? what? said Durand; and turning towards me, Shall I receive him? Well, we shall have a laugh! He was still undecided, when Marcel glided into the room. XIX. HARD WORDS. "I will speak, Madame, with the liberty of a soldier who knows but ill how to varnish the truth." RACINE (_Britannicus_). The old soldier, upright, with his hand leaning on the back of his arm-chair, let the priest come forward with all the agreeableness of a mastiff which is making ready to bite. The latter bowed gravely, and, although he felt himself to be in hostile quarters, took the seat offered him with an easy air. Meanwhile his bearing and pleasant look produced their usual effect. Imbued with the theories of the army, which of all surroundings is that in which one judges most by the appearance, where a good carriage is the first condition of success, where in fact they salute the stripes and not the man, the Captain was, in presence of this handsome young fellow, recalled to less aggressive sentiments. --Hang it! he said to himself, what a splendid cuirassier this fellow would have made! What devil of an idea has shoved him into a cassock? War being the most sublime of arts, as Maurice de Saxe remarked, there are few old officers who understand how a man can choose another profession by inclination. --I come, Monsieur le Capitaine, said Marcel, to pay you my visit as pastor, although perhaps a little late. But you are aware doubtless that I have had the honour of knocking once already at your door. --You should not have troubled yourself, my dear sir, and you should adhere to that; I belong so little to the holy flock. --I owe myself to all, said Marcel smiling, to the bad sheep--I mean to the wandering sheep, just as to the good ones; to watch over the one, to bring back and cure the others. --Oh! Oh! Well, sir shepherd, you are losing your time finely, for I am a worn-out goat. --There will be more joys in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.... --That is the story of the 99 just persons that you are going to tell us; we know it, and, let me tell you, it is not encouraging for the 99 just persons. The Curé, seeing himself on dangerous ground, hastened to leap elsewhere. --This is a charming little house, Captain; it is a sweet retreat after toilsome and glorious years, for you have had numerous campaigns, have you not? --Fifteen years in Africa, thirty-two campaigns, thirty years' service, two wounds, one of them received at Rome when we fought for that old bully Pius IX. Marcel had gone astray again; he quickly seized hold of the wounds. --Ah! two wounds! And are they still painful? --Sometimes, when the weather is stormy. And yours? --Mine, Captain! but I have none. I have not had like you the honour of shedding any blood for our Holy Father. --A pretty cuckoo. It doesn't matter, you may have got a wound somewhere else. --Where? enquired Marcel simply. --How do I know? We get them right and left, when we are least thinking of it. --Like all accidents. --Well, if you had been the chaplain of my regiment, you would have had a famous accident. He was a right worthy apostle. He wanted to teach the catechism to the daughter of our cantinière, a bud of sixteen, and the little one put so much ardour into the study that the Holy Spirit made her hatch. Her parents beat her unmercifully, and the poor girl died of grief. Our hero, who knew how to get himself out of it with unction as white as snow, did not all the same betake himself to Paradise. A pretty Italian gave him his reckoning. _Quinte_, _quatorze_ and the _point_. Game finished. He died in the hospital pulling an ugly face. That was the best action of his life. Well, old boy, what do you say to that? --I have not exactly understood, replied Marcel, trying to keep his countenance. --You are very hard of understanding. I will tell you another story and I will be clearer. I see what you want--the dots on the i's. Marcel rose up alarmed. --No, no, cried Durand. Don't get up. Don't go away. Since you are here, we must talk a little. Stay, it will not be long. It is the story of a cousin of mine, or rather a cousin of my wife. Another of your confraternity. He was curate or deacon, or canon, in fact I don't know what rank in your regiment. At any rate, a bitter hypocrite; you will see. Under pretence of relationship, he used to pay us frequent visits. You can think if that suited me, who already adored the cassock! Besides, on principle, I detested cousins. It is the sore of households, gentlemen; you must avoid it like the plague. Monsieur le Curé, if you have a pretty servant, beware of cousins. I only say that. My wife used to say to me: "What has this poor boy done to you that you receive him so badly? Are you jealous of him? Ah! I know very well, it is because he belongs to my family, and you cannot endure my poor relations." So to have peace I tolerated my cousin. He, convinced that little presents maintain friendship, used to make us little presents. There were tickets for sacred concerts, lotteries for the benefit of the little Chinese, rosaries blessed by the pope, pebbles from Jerusalem. Nothing wrong so far. My wife availed herself of the concert tickets; the rosaries were put into a drawer, and I threw the pebbles into the garden. But soon his gifts changed their character. He brought us some hairs of St. Pancratius, a tooth of St. Alacoque, a rag which had wiped something or other off St. Anastasius or St. Cunegunda. My wife clasped her hands, was in ecstasy and transported with joy, and I went and brought up my dinner. I foresaw the time when he would bring us extraordinary things; a louse of St. Labre, a testicle of St. Origen, the coccyx of St. Antony, the parts of St. Gudule or the prepuce of Jesus Christ. The Curé rose again. --I see that my presence is _de trop_ here, Captain; pardon my having disturbed you. --Not at all. Good Lord. Not at all. Sit down. It gives me extraordinary pleasure to talk to you. Besides, I have not finished the story of my cousin. Sit down, I pray you; I resume. He had given a very pretty engraving, a reproduction of a picture by somebody, _Jesus and the woman taken in adultery_. My wife had had it framed very carefully, and had hung it up in our bedroom: a bad sign. That seemed to say to me, "See, my friend, imitate Jesus." One day returning home very quietly, I surprised both of them, squeezed one against the other, holding each others hand, looking at the picture with emotion. I took the little cousin by the shoulders, and I threw him out of doors. I never saw him again. Do you understand the moral? --Yes, Captain, I understand, said Marcel rising again, and this time fully decided to go away. But the door opened, and Suzanne showed herself on the threshold. XX. KICKS. "I should have wished, mischievously, to put him in the wrong, and that a thoughtless or insulting word on his part, should serve as a justification for the insult which I meditated." A. DE VIGNY (_Servitude et Grandeur militaires_). She had on her school-girl dress of black, which made the whiteness of her complexion more dazzling, and imparted something grave and serious to her beauty. She was hardly eighteen, and already by the harmonious outlines of her bust, by the undulating movements of her hips and above all by the flash of her great dark eyes, one foresaw in this young girl, still a child to-day, the woman of to-morrow: a daughter of Eve of our modern civilization; forward, precocious, charming. She was one of those the sight alone of whom is the most radiant and the most dangerous of spectacles, and who, like others, distilling holiness and blessings from heaven, shed around them a perfume of love. The bright fire of their heart shines out in their look; it reveals itself in the sound of their voice, in their gestures and in their walk. Everything in them is soft, trembling, passionate. Sweet creatures who see only one goal in life, love, and, when the goal is missed, death. There are women who are but half women. They are quickly recognized; vulgar and awkward, they hide under their ungraceful petticoats the instincts of man, and masculinity is displayed up to their corsage. They form the fantastical cohort of learned women, of the disciples of Stuart Mill and rivals of Miss Taylor, hybrid natures which may possess a heart of gold and a manly soul, but are incapable of being the joy of the hearth. Others are women to the tips of their rosy nails, to the root of their abundant hair; women above all by their faults, that is to say their weaknesses, and this weakness is one of their attractions. Impressionable and easily led, they become, according to the surroundings which hold them and the destiny which urges them, heroines or saints, courtesans or nuns, but invariably martyrs of that blind despot, their heart. They are Magdalene or St. Theresa, Madame de Guyon or Heloïse, the nun in love with Jesus or the light girl in love with the passer-by. In a second the priest had understood this sweet nature, or rather he had felt it, and his quivering nostrils inhaled the keen perfume of pleasure, while his look was lost in ecstasy. It was but a flash, but if beneath the watchful eye of the Captain it appeared impossible, the young girl could read the dumb language which every woman understands. She came forward, blushing. --This is my daughter, said the Captain. --I believe, said the Curé, with a bow, that I have had the pleasure of seeing Mademoiselle several times already in our modest church. --And you concluded therefore that my daughter was going to increase the blessed flock. Don't be misled, comrade. Suzanne cast a look of reproach upon her father. --What! said Marcel, hurt, must not Mademoiselle follow her religion? work out her salvation? --Her salvation? There is a word which always makes me laugh. It reminds me of my Colonel's wife who, when her husband gave orders for a review and parade for Sunday, said, "My dear, you want then to deprive the poor soldiers of the holy Mass, ought they not to work out their salvation?" A magnificent creature, sir, but too much inclined to the cassock. Her husband, however, had nothing to complain of, for one fine morning he picked up the stars of his epaulets in some sacristy or other. What have you come for, my child? --Nothing, papa. I knew Monsieur le Curé was there and I came in. --I was having a little edifying conversation with Monsieur, and you have interrupted us, but we can talk of something else: You hold the first rank now, gentlemen, continued the Captain, I must do you that justice; and as times go, it is better to be the son of a bishop than of a general. I myself, if I had only had some high influential canon for my father, should have reached the highest offices. Come, you seem to me to be a good fellow, and I want to give you a word of advice. If papa is a bishop, make use of him, and don't stagnate in this village, you will get no good there: I tell you so on my word of honour! I suppose that with you, promotion is as it is with us? "The cup of humiliation is full," said Marcel to himself. Nevertheless, he answered, I don't understand exactly what you mean by that. --I mean by that that promotion is a lottery from which they begin by withdrawing all the big numbers to distribute them to Monsieur Cretinard whose papa is a millionaire, to Monsieur Tartuffe whose papa is a Jesuit, or to a Marquis de Carabas whose mamma has the good graces of my Lord the Bishop, and they make the poor devils draw from the rest. It is so in the army--and with you? --Among the clergy, sir, promotion is generally given to merit. --I don't believe it; for if it were so, you would be a bishop at least. Don't blush, it is the general report. --Captain.... --No false modesty. I hear your virtues praised everywhere. There is a chorus of praises from every quarter. My friend here was just declaring to me that all the women are wild about you. --Sir ... cried the Curé, blushing up to his ears, and not daring to raise his eyes to Suzanne, who sat in a corner, convulsively turning over the leaves of an album. --Don't protest, we know that true merit is modest; besides, I was by way of asking myself, if I should not beg you to complete my daughter's education. --You are making pleasant jokes, Captain, and I ask your pardon for not being able to rise to the level of these witticisms. I see that my visit has been unseasonable. It only remains for me to make my excuses and to say to Mademoiselle, how pained I am to have made her acquaintance under such unfavourable auspices, but I hope.... --Stop that, Monsieur le Curé, interrupted Durand in a curt tone. Marcel made a low bow, but as he withdraw, he caught an appealing look from Suzanne. XXI. THE PAST. "Look not upon the past with grief, it will not come back; wisely improve the present, it is thine; and go onwards fearlessly and with a strong heart towards the mysterious future." LONGFELLOW (_Hyperion_). Marcel returned home exceedingly indignant. Although he had not expected an over-cordial reception from the old Captain, whose irascible character and surly ways were known to all, he did not think that he would have carried so far his disregard of the most elementary propriety. "It serves me right," he said to himself, "what business had I there? Nevertheless, on reflection, I have lost nothing. My reception by this old dotard has taken away for ever my wish to go back there: and who knows what might have happened, if I had had free admission to that house, if I had met a friendly face and a kindly welcome? Oh, fool! I have found all that in the sweet look of his adorable daughter, that appealing look which seemed to implore my indulgence and pardon for the malevolent words of that ill-bred soldier. Come, think no more of it, drive back to the lowest depths those foolish thoughts which excite the brain. All that he does, God does well. I was on the brink of the abyss; one step more and I should have rolled to the bottom. Let me stop then, there is still time. Let me forget, forget. Forget! better still, I will write and ask to be changed. Could I forget her if I were to meet again that burning look, which pursues me to the steps of the altar, and troubles me to the bottom of my soul?" He wrote in fact and began his letter ten times afresh. What could he say? What reason could he bring? He had filled this cure for scarcely six months. What pretext could he raise before his superiors? And how would any complaint from him be received at the Palace? Night came. He felt himself oppressed by a vague and indefinable grief. Then little by little the present vanished. His infancy rose up before him. He saw it again as in a glass, smiling, simple, pure; and he forgot himself in these sweet memories. In proportion as we advance in life, we are attached to the things of the past. It clothes itself then with those brilliant colours with which we love to invest what we have lost. Youthful years, bright with poetry and sunlight, come and gild the gloomy and prosaic nooks of ripened age, the twilight of the eternal night. The young man full of illusions and dreams pursues his road without casting a look backwards. What matters, indeed, the past to him? He expects nothing but from the future. Proud at having escaped from infancy, at arriving at the age of man, at flying on his wings, he pities the years when he was small and weak, ignorant and credulous. But when he has met with obstacles and ruts on that road which appeared to him so wide and so fair, when he has torn his heart with the first briars of life, when his thought has ripened beneath the sun of passions, and his soul, stripped of its illusions, feels all chilly and bare amidst the ice of reality, then he returns to the joys of infancy, he warms himself again with the memory of his mother, and sits once again in the pleasant corner of the family fire-side, on the little stool of his childhood. Marcel saw himself again at the little seminary of Pont-à-Mousson, on the benches, all blackened with ink, of the school-room, studying with ardour the _Epitome_ or the _De Viris_ beneath the paternal eye of Father Martin, a father aged 24, a deacon with curly hair, as timid as a maid. Then he ran in the long corridors, or in the great square court lined with galleries shaded by the chapel. He remembered his joy when he had slipped on some excuse into the Seniors' garden: "Ah! there is little Marcel, come here, you brat!" And everyone wished to give him a caress. Then, the first time when he was called to the honour of serving the Mass. He had thought of it a week beforehand, full of emotion and fear. At length the day has come. He is dressed in the white surplice, wearing on his head the red cap. He would have wished the whole world to see him; but the pupils alone were present, and that diminished his happiness. Father Barbelin, the censor, a severe but just man, officiated. He trembled in every limb, as he responded the sacramental verses to this formidable functionary. That was a great business; his little comrades called him in a whisper from behind: Marcel! Marcel! and laughed and nudged each other, while the elder ones, their nose in their book, with sanctimonious face and ecstatic look were wrapt in God. Then his success, his entrance to the great seminary at Nancy, his first sermon in the chapel. His voice trembled at the commencement, but little by little, growing stronger, taking courage, inspired by the sacred text, he forgot everything, and the Superior, old Father Richard, who watched him with his little bright cunning eyes, and the unmoved professors, and his watchful fellow-students, jeering and scoffing at first, then at last astonished and jealous. "There is the stuff of an orator in him," the Professor of Sacred Eloquence had said, "we must push this lad forward." "He is full of talent and virtue," the Superior had replied, "he will get on. He is our chosen vessel." And the same day he had dined at the master's table, and they had spoken of him to Monseigneur. He had in fact been pushed forward ... and with his talents, his learning, his virtues and his eloquence, he had come to teaching the catechism to the little peasants of Althausen! Althausen! That was the blow of the hammer which recalled him to reality. He found himself again the poor village Curé, and he began to laugh. "Poor fool!" he cried, "I shall never be but a common imbecile! Is not my way all traced out? I must continue my career, and let myself go with the current of life. Is it then so hard? Why delude myself with phantoms? I will try to slay the muttering passions, to drive away the fits of ambition which rise to my brain; and perhaps by dint of subduing all that is rebellious in me, I shall come to follow piously the line marked out by my superiors. I will watch patiently amidst my flock, by the corner of my fire, among the Fathers and my weariness. "Weariness, that cold demon with the gloomy eye, but I will remain chaste ... and after a life filled with little nothingnesses and little works I shall pass away in peace in the bosom of the Lord. And there is my life. Nothing else to choose. No turning aside to the right or to the left. I must remain a martyr, a martyr to my duty, or an apostate, and infamous renegade. The triumph or the shame!" And, as he just uttered these words with bitterness, a soft voice answered like an echo: --The shame? The Curé started and raised his head. His lamp was out, and the dying embers on the hearth cast only a feeble light into the room. He distinguished, however, a few steps from him the outline of a woman's form. --Who is there? he cried with a sort of terror. The shadowy outline stood forth more clearly. He recognized his servant. --Why the shame? she said. XXII. THE SERVANT. "I have already said that dame Jacinthe although little superannuated, had still kept her bloom. It is true that she spared nothing to preserve it: besides taking a clyster every day, she swallowed some excellent jelly during the day and on going to bed." LE SAGE (_Gil-Blas_). She looked at him fixedly with burning, feverish eyes. She was a lusty lass, already arrived at the age of discretion, as Le Sage says, that is to say, she had passed her fortieth year, the canonical period for the servants of Curés, but was fair and fresh still, in spite of some wrinkles and her hair growing gray. She possessed that modest and appetizing plumpness, somewhat rare among mature virgins, the sign of a quiet conscience, a good digestion and feelings satisfied. What pious souls call holiness exuded from every pore: cast-down eyes, chaste deportment, gentle movements. She did not walk, she glided over the ground as if she already felt the wings of seraphim hanging on her shoulders; she did not speak, she murmured unctuous words with a soft, low, mysterious voice like a prayer. When she said: "Would Monsieur le Curé he pleased to come to breakfast? Perhaps Monsieur le Curé could eat a boiled egg?" or "Ah! the sermon which Monsieur le Curé has been pleased to give has gone to my heart!" it was in the same tone as she would say: "_Lamb of God which takest away the sins of the world_...." and one was tempted to answer: _Kyrie eleison_. And she wiped her moist eyelid, and cast on her master her veiled, long, silent look. She said so well: "my duty," "I wish to do my duty," that one felt filled with admiration for this holy maid. Oh! divine modesty, perfume of woman, sweet enchantment which gently penetrates the heart of man, ready always to unfold. Besides, what hearts had unfolded for her! what ravages had been caused by her austere deportment and her substantial charms. More than one buxom village lad had made warm proposals with honourable intentions, and the gallant corporal of gendarmes had tried on several occasions to enter upon this delicate subject with her. But she had willed to remain a maid and virtuous, and vowed herself body and soul to the service of the Church, to the glory of God, and the fortune of her pastor. She approached the hearth with slow steps, blew on the embers, relighted the lamp, and placing it so as to throw the light on her master's face, she said to him anxiously: --You are in pain, are you not? --You were there then? said the Curé dissatisfied. --Yes, she answered him with the affectionate tone of a mother, I was there, pardon me; I was going to bed, and I heard you talking aloud, there was no light; I feared you were ill, and I ventured to come in. --And you have heard? --I have heard that you were not happy, that is all. --No one is happy in this world, Veronica. --Yes, we are so only in the other, I know that. And yet happiness is so easy. The Curé put his head between his hands without replying. The servant went on: --Can it be that I, your servant, a poor ignorant village girl, should say that to you, Monsieur le Curé? --What, Veronica? --But what matters our condition on earth? We are in a state of transition. Holy Mary, she too, was a poor servant and now she is far above a queen. --Without doubt, said the Curé. --We must then despise nobody. Under the most humble appearance, God often conceals his most faithful servants. --Most certainly. But what are you driving at? --At this, Monsieur le Curé; that we must be good and indulgent to everybody: that the great sometimes have need of the little, and that when we are able to render a service to our neighbour we must do it without hesitation. --It is Jesus who commands it, Veronica. But explain yourself, I pray. --Well! yes, I will speak, she replied, for I am pained to see you thus, and the more so as it is certainly allowed me to tell you so, me who am destined, please God, to live with you. I have only known you since you were our Curé, but you have been so good to me that I love you like ... a sister. I was all alone here, like a poor forsaken creature, after the death of my old master, the Abbé Fortin--may God keep his soul,--and you consented to keep me when taking the parsonage. It is good of you, for you might have brought with you your former servant, or again some niece, as many do. --I have no niece, Veronica. --A niece, or a sister, or a relation. After all you have kept me, although you could have found a better than myself. Oh, very easily, I know ... and I thank you from the bottom of my heart, yes, from the bottom of my heart. But could you have found one more devoted, more discreet? I believe not; as much, perhaps; but more, I believe not. Ah! I tell you here, Monsieur le Curé, you can do everything you want, nobody shall ever know anything of it. The Curé looked at his servant with amazement. --What do you mean by that, Veronica? he asked in a stern voice. --Oh! nothing, I mean nothing. I mean that you can have entire confidence in your poor servant. --I thank you, Veronica, but I don't know what you mean. --I explain myself badly doubtless, Monsieur le Curé. Ah! pardon me, I was forgetting ... here, there is a letter which I have just found and which has been slipped under the door at night. He looked at the address. It was an elegant and bold hand, the hand of a woman. XXIII. THE LETTER "The beauty then, to end this war, Offers but a single way which we can hardly guess." R. IMBERT (_Nouvelles_). A sweet perfume was exhaled from it. He opened it with a trembling hand. That strange intuition of the heart which is named presentiment, told him that it came from Suzanne. Pale with emotion he read: "MONSIEUR L'ABBÉ, "I do not wish the day to pass without coming to ask your pardon for my father's conduct towards you, and assure you that he does not think a single one of his wicked words. "Do not keep, I pray, an evil memory of me, and believe that I should he grieved if a single doubt were to remain in your mind as to the sympathy and respect which you inspire in "Suzanne Durand. "P.S. I have much need of your counsels." Marcel, full of a delicious trouble, read and re-read this letter. He did not take careful note of his sensations, but he felt an ineffable joy overflow his heart, and at the same time a vague anxiety. His servant's voice recalled Him to himself. --Doubtless it is a sick person who asks for religious aid, she said. Was there a slight irony in that question? The priest thought he saw it. He called out sharply: --You are still there, Veronica? Who has called you? I don't want you any longer. --Pardon me, Monsieuur le Curé, she answered humbly and softly, I was waiting.... I thought that perhaps you were going out _to visit this sick person_ and that then I could be useful to you in some way. --You cannot be useful to me in any way, Veronica, But truly you astonish me. What have you then to say to me? Come, explain yourself at once. --No, Monsieur le Curé, there is midnight striking. It is time to repose, I wish you good-night, sir. --Good-night, Veronica. "What a strange woman," said Marcel to himself, "what can she want with me. One would say that she had a secret to confide to me and that she does not dare.... Could she have any suspicion? No, it is impossible. How could she know what I want to hide from myself. She has caught two or three words perhaps; but what could she understand, and what have I let drop to compromise me? She has evidently heard others, for she was here before me, and these old walls have been witnesses, I am sure, of many groanings of the soul.... Let us be cautious, nevertheless, and repress within ourselves the thoughts which would come forth. A wise precept. It was a precept of my master of rhetoric. Yes, let us be cautious; in spite of this woman's appearance of devotion, who would trust to such marks of affection? The servant's enemy is his master; and I clearly see that independently of my dignity, I must not make the least false step; what torments I should reserve to myself for the future. "And this letter of Suzanne, the adorable and lovely Suzanne! What an emotion suddenly seized me at the sight of that unknown handwriting, which I had a presentiment was here. Oh! what a strange mystery is man's heart. I, a priest, with a nature said to be energetic and strong. I trembled and was affected like a child, because it has pleased a little school-girl to write me a couple of lines in order to excuse her father's rudeness. What is more natural than such conduct? Is it not the act of a well-bred girl? And yet already my foolish brain is beating the country and travelling into the land of fancies ... of abominable fancies. "She asks me for counsel; doubtless I will give it her. Is it not my duty and business as priest? but where, but when can I see her?..." And he went very thoughtfully to bed, with his head full of dreams. XXIV. THE FIRST MEETING. "Ah! let him, my child, Ah! let him proceed. When I was a Curate I did much the same." ANONYMOUS (_Le chant du Curé_). The first person he saw the next day at morning Mass was Suzanne Durand. She had not yet come to these low Masses, which are affected usually by the devout, because the church is then more empty, and they feel themselves more alone with God or with the priest; therefore the Curé was deeply affected by this pious eagerness. It is doubtful whether, on that day, his prayers reached the throne of the Eternal, for he brought but little fervour to the holy sacrifice. A good woman who had given twenty sous to buy a place in the firmament for her defunct spouse, was quite scandalized to remark that the Curé was eating in a heedless manner the wafer which, for nearly 2000 years, serves as a lodging for Christ. His words rose with the incense to the arches of the old church, but his soul remained below, fluttering round that fair young girl, as if to envelop her with embraces. When he had dismissed the faithful with the sacramental words _Ite missa est_, he felt a momentary confusion and he felt his knees tremble. He was afraid of himself, for he saw the Captain's daughter rise from her seat and slowly make her way to the confessional. What! It was perfectly true then, she had asked for his counsel, and while he, the priest, was hesitating and seeking where he could converse with her without exposing himself to the brutal invective of the father or the senseless scandals of the village, this simple girl had found, without any aid from him, the safest spot, the sanctuary of which he had inwardly dreamed. He was then about to listen all alone to the divine accents of that charming mouth; to see her kneeling before him, her face wreathed with a modest blush,--before him who had wished to kiss her foot-prints. Oh, God supreme! who could depict his transports, his emotion, the thrill which ran through all his frame. She, she so near to him, so near that her sweet breath caresses his face like a breeze come from heaven. He felt wild with joy. But she also is affected, she also trembles, and beneath her palpitating breast, he seems to hear the beatings of her heart. What passed? What avowal did this maiden of ardent feeling make to this hot-passioned man? There is one of those mysteries which remain for ever buried between priest and woman, between penitent and confessor. What they said to one another no one knows, but from that confessional into which he entered pensive, wavering, it is true, but still contending, he went out with his face radiant, and his heart intoxicated with love. XXV. LOVE. "All loves around us: all around is heard, Hard by the warbler's quivering kiss, That voiceless song of flowers, which the lark, by love distracted, to his mate translates." EMILE DARIO (_Sonnets_). He returned to the parsonage with a light step, hearing the birds singing in the lime-trees the same joyous song which his own heart was singing. He breakfasted with a good appetite, smiled at his servant, and gave pleasant answers to her questions. It seemed to him that a new world was opening. New ideas sprang up in him, and he discovered sensations till then unknown. He felt better; life smiled upon him, and all the things of life. The past had altogether vanished; the present was radiant, the future was laden with rosy dreams. That same morning he had risen as usual, with no settled wish, aimless and hopeless. Till then, he had acted like a machine, hardly knowing whither he went, following his road by chance, walking onwards in the line which had been traced out for him, with no relish, full of weariness and sadness. What was he expecting then? Nothing. He was clinging to the fragments of his beliefs, he remained hanging there, not daring to stir, to think, or to turn, for fear of rolling to the bottom of some unknown abyss. But suddenly everything is changed, everything is transformed, everything takes another aspect. The whole world is illumined. Religion, dogma, mysteries, altar, priest, what is all that? God even. He thinks no more of him. A woman's look has obliterated all. A woman's voice has murmured in his ear and he perceives that he is young, that he is strong, that he has a heart, and that all cries to him at once: Love! Love! Oh! what a wonderful thing love is! What frenzy, what delirium, what madness! Sublime madness, ravishing delirium, delicious frenzy. First and last mystery of nature, first and last voice of the universe. It is thou, oh God, who givest life to all, who dost animate all, who art the principle of all. Thou art Alpha and Omega; thou art the potent arm which has caused the worlds to rise, which has re-united the scattered forces of matter, which has made order out of chaos. And there are found men, creatures, works of love like everything which moves, breathes, buds, shoots forth, there are found creatures who have dared to say: Love is evil. They have sworn to renounce love. They have spat in thy face, fruitful, creative Divinity, they have denied thee on their impure altars. But it is their God who is evil, as Proudhon said, that senseless and ludicrous God who delights in grotesque saturnalia, in ridiculous prayers, in shameful mummeries, in vows contrary to nature. Marcel felt himself transformed. A new feeling was born in him and plunged him into ineffable delight. Nevertheless, as I have said, he experienced a vague fear; he had had a glimpse of the unknown, and he was one of those delicate and timid souls with their thoughts in some way turned upon themselves, which are terrified at the unknown. Seized with a restless apprehension and with a mysterious trouble, he felt the hour coming which was about to change his life. XXVI. OF YOUNG GIRLS IN GENERAL. "You tell me, Madame, that this description is neither in the taste of Ovid nor that of Quinault. I agree, my dear, but I am not in a humour to say soft things." VOLTAIRE (_Dict. Phil._). The great fault, in my opinion, both of the writer and of the poet, is to idealize woman too much, and especially the young girl. On the stage just as in the novel, the heroines are placed on a sort of pedestal where they receive haughtily the incense and homage of poor mankind. They are perfect beings, of superior essence, gifted with all the beauties and all the virtues, whose white robes of innocence never receive, amidst all the impurities, of our social state, the slightest splash. Why then raise thus upon a pedestal of Parian marble these statues of clay? Why place reverentially beneath a tabernacle of gold these pasteboard divinities? Good Heavens! women are women, that is to say: the females of man, nothing more. They are above all what men make them, and as we are generally vicious and spoilt, since from the most tender age we take care to defile ourselves in the street, in the workshop or on the school-benches; as the atmosphere we breathe is corrupt, we have no claim to believe that our wives, our sisters and our daughters can remain unspotted by our touch, and that this same atmosphere which they breathe, will purify itself in passing through their chaste nostrils. If then the woman is not worse than we, as some assert, assuredly she is no better. And how could they be better, who are our pupils, and when the share we have given them in society is so slight and so strangely ordered that, if they cannot by means of supreme efforts expand and grow in it morally and intellectually, every latitude is allowed them on the other hand to corrupt themselves in it beyond measure, and to fall lower than the man into the lowest depths. "Fools!" said Machiavelli, "you sow hemlock and pretend you see ears of corn growing ripe." Why then idealize and make a divinity of this creature, when we know that the education she ordinarily receives, takes away from her, little by little, all which remains attractive, divine and ideal! Certainly a chaste and simple young girl, fair and fresh as a spring morning, sweet as the perfume of the violet, and whose mind and body alike are as pure as the petals of a half-opened lily, is the most heavenly and the most adorable thing in the world. But, outside the pages of your novel, how many of them have you met in the world? I have often heard the modest virtues of the middle classes extolled, and it is from such surroundings that the novelist of to-day most frequently draws his feminine ideal. It is among the middle classes indeed that all the qualifications seem to unite at first. It is the intermediate condition, the most happy of all, as the excellent Monsieur Daru said in 1820, since it is only disinherited of the highest favours of fortune, and the social and intellectual advantages of it are accessible to a reasonable ambition. But they evidently benefit very little by their advantages, for I, and you also, have always found them coquettish, ignorant, frivolous and vain, bringing up their children very badly, but in revenge, generally deceiving their husbands very well. "In middle-class households, bickering; among fashionable people, adultery. In fashionable middle-class households, either one or the other and sometimes both."[1] And how could it be otherwise? The daughters of devout and consequently narrow-minded and ignorant mothers, of sceptical and libertine fathers, they spend five or six years at school, where they consummate the loss of what may have escaped the baneful example of their family. They have taken from their mother foolish vanity, ridiculous prejudices, the art of lying; from their father scepticism and an elastic conscience; perhaps they will preserve their virtue and modesty? The pernicious contacts of the school soon carry them away. They still have a blush on their face, a down-cast eye, a timid bearing. But their affected timidity is the token of their knowledge of _good and evil_; like Eve, if they have not yet tasted of the forbidden fruit, they burn to taste it, for their thought is sullied, their imagination is vagrant and at the bottom of their soul there is a germ of corruption. They leave the boarding-school _virgins_, but chaste, never. Let us then represent the world as it la, women such as they are, and not such as they ought to be; let us call things by their names, and when there is moral deformity somewhere, let us show that deformity. When we make wonders of the heroines of a novel, possessing the charms of the _three Graces_ and the virtues of the seven sages of Greece, who when they fall, fall in spite of themselves, impelled by a fatal concurrence of circumstances, but with so much candour and innocence, that we cannot do otherwise than pardon their fall and even fail to comprehend that they have fallen, we are completely amazed when we descend from this imaginary world to enter the world of reality. The idealization of woman has therefore, besides other faults, that of causing as to take a dislike to our ordinary companions. How, indeed, after being present at the devotion of Sophonisba, at the suicide of the chaste Lucretia, at the display of the virtues of Mademoiselle Agnes, and at that of the form of Venus at the bath, can we contemplate with ravished eye the wife no less plain than lawful, who is sitting with sullen air at our fire-side, who has no other care than that of her person, no other moral capital than a round enough sum of prejudices and follies, and whose charms, finally, resemble more those of a Hottentot Venus than those of Venus Aphrodite. The picture of virtues is an excellent thing, but still it is necessary that these virtues should exist. We must not enunciate an idea simply because it is moral, but because it is true. _Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas_. That is why I shall not depict the little person, whom I am going to make better known to you, as a model of virtue. She is an inquisitive girl, she is vehement, she has been brought up in an atmosphere where depravity is more generally inhaled than holiness. I should then be badly advised in presenting you with an angel of candour and wisdom. An angel! She is at that age indeed, at which foolish men call women angels. "Before they are wed, they are angels so gentle, But quickly they change to vulgarian scolds, She-demons who truly make hell of their homes." [Footnote 1: H. Taine (Notes sur Paris).] XXVII. OF SUZANNE IN PARTICULAR. "An exalted, romantic imagination of vivid dreams, peopled with sumptuous hotels, with smart equipages, fêtes, balls, rubies, gold and azure. This is what I have most surely gathered at this school and is called: a brilliant education." V. SARDOU (_Maison Neuve_). But she was a ravishing demon, this child, and more than one saint might have damned himself for her black eyes, those deep limpid eyes which let one read to her soul. And there one paused perfectly fascinated, for this fresh resplendent soul displayed in large characters the radiant word, Love. Have you never read this word in a maiden's two eyes? Seek in your memory and seek the fairest, and you will have the delightful portrait of Suzanne. I am unable to say, however, that she was a perfect girl. What girl is perfect here below? She had left school, and it would have been a miracle if she were, and we know that away from Lourdes, God works no more miracles. She had even many faults: those of her age doubled by those which education gives to girls. Many a time, when opening the holy Bible, the only book capable of cheering me in the hours of sadness, I have come across these words of Ezekiel, "They are proud, full of appetites, abounding in idleness." It is of the daughters of Sodom that the holy prophet is complaining! What would he say to-day to _the young ladies_ of our modern Sodoms? But if the little Suzanne had all the darling faults of forward flowers forced in the warm soil of our enervating education, and our decayed civilization, she was better than many plainer ones, and I do not think that the sum total of her errors could weigh heavy on her conscience. Perhaps she was culpable in thought; but if the imagination was sick, the heart was good and sound. She had not sinned, but she said to herself, that sinning would be sweet! Well! there is no great crime there. Does not every woman love instinctive pleasure? Among them there are few stoics. They who are so, are so by compulsion, and so they cannot make a virtue of it. Suzanne loved pleasure then, and she loved it the more because she only knew it by hear-say. The education of Saint-Denis had contributed no little to develop her natural disposition. Everything has been said about the _House of the Legion of Honour_, about its curious system of education with regard to young girls, nearly all of them poor, and brought up as if, when they left school, they would find an income of £2,000 a year. It is known that in this establishment intended for the daughters of officers _with no fortune_, everything is taught except that which is most necessary for a woman to know. They leave having a barren, superficial education, principally composed of words, and in which consequently, to the exclusion of the intelligence and the heart, the memory plays the principal part; none of the childish rules of ceremonial are spared them, none of the frivolous accomplishments indispensable for access to a world which, for the greater part, they will never be invited to see; and they return to their father's humble roof, dreaming of balls, fêtes, equipages, hotels, drawing-rooms, the only surroundings in which they could profitably display the useless accomplishments with which they have been endowed, but also perfectly incapable of darning their stockings or of boiling an egg. And so they soon blush at their father's obscure condition and evince a mortal disgust of the modest joys of the poor fire-side. "Heavens! how little it all is!" Such was the first word which escaped her when she returned to her father's house. She had grown, and everything she saw on her return had shrank; her father like the rest, perhaps more than the rest. She loved him all the same, but she could not help finding him common. She, the dainty young lady, brought up with the daughters of country-gentlemen and generals, she said to herself that she was only the daughter of an obscure captain, and it humiliated her. Ah! if her haughty friends with whom she had exchanged confidences and dreams, had seen her coming down the sumptuous stairs of her castles in Spain to go and live in a poor village, while her father perspired over his cabbage-planting. Her dreams! You know them well, and have also told them in quiet at the age when you know how to form them: At the age when you cease to be called a little girl, when the dress-maker has just lengthened your dress, when your father's friends are no longer familiar, but say with a smile: _Mademoiselle_. At the age, when you feel the attraction of the unknown redouble its power, when for the first time you feel a conscious blush at the look of a man. At the age when the likeness of the young cousin you saw yesterday, appears all at once on the page of your history or grammar, and strange to say, pursues you at your games; when the noisy games of your companions weary you, and you betake yourself to solitude in order to screen your thoughts. And solitude, a bad adviser, takes possession of your thoughts, isolates them from the rest of the real world, in order to immerse them in imaginary worlds, and then agitates, reflects, whirls, polishes all that marvellous enchanted universe in which the daughters of Eve wander with each wild license, whom the base-born sons of Adam approach only a single step. But when that step is taken, the enchanted world vanishes. The scaffolding cracks and falls down. Palaces, geail, heroes and bounteous fairies disappear pell-mell into the lowest depth. The old farce of humanity, the comedy of love is played out. Ah! how ugly it all is then! Under the smoky lamp of reality you vaguely distinguish the battered grotesque shapes, rising in the ruins. Suzanne therefore, like all her young friends, like you, Mademoiselle, and also like you formerly, Madame, had commenced her little romance, had sketched her little plot. She had loved, oh truly loved, with a love necessarily confined to the platonic state, the handsome young men with tasty cravats, whom she had seen on days when she walked out. What delightful chapters were sketched upon their brown or fair heads! Oh! when would she be free? When would she cease to have the ever-open eye of an inquisitive under-mistress upon her slightest gesture? And then the day of liberty had come, and under the breath of that liberty, so eagerly and impatiently expected, the chapters she had begun were blotted out, and so was the handsome head of a cherub or an Amadis in a sublieutenant's cap or in a chimney-pot. Fallen from these enervating heights of fictitious passions and hair-dressers' scents into the prosaic but generous and brave arms of paternal lore, on the breast of true and mighty nature, she had forgotten for a moment her dreams. She lavished on her father all the treasures of affection which her heart contained, and treated him with all manner of solicitude and caresses; and the old soldier before this youthful future which shone before him, himself forgot his dreams of the past. XXVIII. THE SHADOW. "Troubled by a vague emotion, I said to myself, I wanted to be loved, and I looked around me; I saw no one who inspired me with love, no one who appeared to me capable of feeling it." BENJAMIN CONSTANT (_Adolphe_). But what is the liberty that a well-behaved girl can enjoy? She had run like a wild thing in the meadows, letting her hair fly in the wind, and elated by the kisses of the breeze. She had relished the long mornings of idleness in bed, recollecting, in order to double her enjoyment, that at that very moment the friends she had left at school, were turning pale beneath the smoky lamps of the school-room; and in the evening she read the delightful novels of Droz by her lamp, and thought with pleasure that her same friends had been in bed for a long while. Then she closed her book, and reflected again and said with a yawn: "They are asleep, poor little things, and I am awake, I am free to be awake." And she wrote long letters to them in which she told them, how happy she was, assuming a charming air of superiority, treating them as children who knew nothing yet of life. But she thought that she knew nothing more of it herself, and yearned to be instructed. She felt that there was something wanting, and that her father's affection was not enough to fill her heart. She had looked well about her, but she had found only what was commonplace. No more young clerks with curled hair, who darted inflammatory looks at the women from behind the shop-windows, no Saint-Cyrion with delicate moustache, no doctors of twenty-five or poets of eighteen. Besides her father and the notabilities of the village, middle-aged dignitaries, nothing but peasants only. She held the belief which all girls hold; a nice little belief very convenient and very simple: the sweet Jesus, the Paschal Lamb, and the Immaculate Conception. Around this trio gravitated all the rest, but graceful and light as the mists which float at sun-rise. Therefore the Captain had not thought it his duty to disappoint his daughter, when she said to him one Sunday morning, "My darling papa, I am going to Mass." He let her go, grumbling; and she noticed Marcel. The fine figure of the priest struck her; she was touched by the sound of his voice, and while she fixed her gaze upon him, she encountered his, and their eyes fell. In the days when she took her walks at Saint-Denis, and saw for the first time that she was admired by some handsome young men, she had not experienced a more delicious emotion. She was astonished and almost ashamed at it, and nevertheless she returned for Vespers on purpose to see the Curé. She soon gained the certainty that she had attracted his attention, and she was flattered at it. What! she, a little school-girl, was she distracting from his prayers, at the very foot of the altar, a minister of the altar? She felt herself rise in importance. But her natural modesty made her reflect directly: "Has he looked at me because I am a stranger, or because I am pretty?" She was almost afraid that it was not this latter reason; Marcel's eyes reassured her. Nevertheless, the first impulse of self-love satisfied, what did it concern her? How did this priest's admiration affect her? Is a priest a man? It must be no more thought of. But she could not prevent herself from thinking of him, being pleased at his finding her pretty. Others, doubtless, had found her pretty before he did; perhaps had told her so in a whisper, but was that the same thing? The silent admiration of this grave personage, clothed in a sacred character, raised her all at once in her own eyes more than a thousand warm glances or timid declarations from insignificant and common-place youths. Besides, he was young, he was handsome, and his position, his studies placed him far above the ignorant and common people, whom she elbowed since her return. At night, the pale fine countenance of the Curé of Althausen crossed her dreams several times; she was not disturbed at it, but she said to herself that she would like to have a closer acquaintance with this shepherd of men, who had made so deep an impression on her. She was affected by his grave voice, soft and sad, more than by his look, and, with a school-girl's simplicity, she asked herself, if a heart could not beat beneath that black robe. The visit of Marcel filled her with a strange trouble, and she hesitated a long time before showing herself to him. Then the bitter raillery of her father tortured her heart and wounded her in her delicate maidenly sentiments. She suffered more than he from the insults which he received, and she vowed to herself to have them forgiven. XXIX. OTHER MEETINGS. "There was no seduction on her part or on mine: love simply came, and I was her lover before I had even thought that I could become so." MAXIME DU CAMP (_Mémoires d'un suicidé_). They saw one another again very soon: sometimes on the road which leads to the little chapel of Saint Anne, sometimes behind the village gardens, other times on the high-road lined with poplars. From the furthest point at which he caught sight of her dress or her large straw-hat, trimmed with red ribbon, he trembled and became pale. The first time he quickened his pace as he passed her, as though he were afraid of being retained by a force stronger than his own will, or perhaps from fear of ridicule, and he bowed to her as one bows to a queen. She returned his bow graciously, and that was all. He had his sum of happiness for the rest of the day. The second time they met, they had both thought so much of one another that they accosted one another like old acquaintances. The heart of each had broken the ice and made all the advances before they had taken the first steps. The young girl had read in the priest's eyes the wish to accost her, and he saw that he would be welcome. Was anything more necessary? Therefore, mutually content, when they separated, they each had the desire to see the other again. It was very often then that they saw one another; but especially at the morning Masses; then, when he turned towards the nave, and raising his look towards the gallery encountered hers, he asked no other joy from heaven. XXX. SERAPHIC LOVE. "How many times does it not occur to me to blush at my tastes? to hide them from myself? to feign with myself that I have them not? to find some covering for them beneath which I conceal them, in order to play a part a little less foolish in my own conscience?" JULES SIMON (_Le Devoir_). But one day the Curé awoke full of dismay. The first intoxication had slightly dissipated, he had taken time to look closely within himself, and when he sought to analyze in cool blood this new and ravishing sensation, he saw the abyss beneath his feet. "What! he said to himself, whither am I going? What am I doing? I, a priest, a minister of the altar, I should be at that point a slave of sin; I shall continue to cast myself from darkness to darkness until the definite and final fall. Oh! Lord, stop me, come to my aid; suffer not this shame and this crime." But he altered his mind. When the devil has succeeded in bringing a soul to sin, there is no artifice he does not use to blind him beforehand, and to turn away his thought from everything capable of making him see the unhappy state in which he is. That is what the Church teaches. Soon he viewed this passion under a new aspect, and he asked himself why he had not the right to love. Had not all the saints loved? Had not St. Jerome loved St. Paula? Had not Francis de Sales loved Madame de Chantal? Had not Fénélon loved Madame Guyon? St. Theresa, her spiritual director, and Venillot, his cook? Were there not two kinds of love? The ethereal, ideal, chaste, seraphic love, the love of the creature grateful for the perfect work of the creator; platonic love, free from all impurity, allowed to the virtuous confessor for his virtuous penitent, the love of the wise man in fact; or--the other. Then with that art of the rhetorician which sacred scholasticism teaches to every Levite, he said to himself, "Yes, I can love, for it is the spotless love of the angels." But his conscience protested and cried to him: "It is the other!" XXXI. THE VIRGIN. "In whatever place I was, whatever occupation I imposed on myself, I could not think of women, the sight of a woman made me tremble. How many times have I risen at night, bathed in sweat, to fasten my mouth on our ramparts, feeling myself ready to suffocate." A. DE MUSSET (_Confession d'un enfant du Siècle_). It was the other. He was soon obliged to confess this to himself; for slumber abandoned his couch. In vain in the day-time he wearied his body under the labour which kills thought. He sought to fly from the seductive image. He did not go out, for fear of seeing her. He rushed upon every hard and unfruitful labour that he could find. He rooted up his trees in order to re-plant them elsewhere; dug useless banks in his garden; changed his library from its place, and carried one after another his enormous folios to the upper story. He would have liked to go upon the road, sit at the bottom of some ditch, and take the stone-breaker's hammer. But the thought which he silenced by day, took its revenge by night. How many times, during the long silent hours, his servant heard him get up all at once and march with long steps in his room, as if he had to accomplish some terrible vow. It was the devil, whispering low mysterious words in his ear, while his impetuous desires constrained him with all the power of his vitality. He walked like a madman from his bed to his window, which he dared not open. He had often formerly, leant his elbows there during the hours of sleeplessness, and breathed with delight the keen freshness of the valley. But now he dared no longer; warm vapours rose up to him and completed the conflagration of his senses. Nature was re-awakening from the long slumber of winter, and already setting to work, was accomplishing from every quarter the mysterious work of love. And within and without he felt its formidable power growing and enveloping him. Nameless thoughts tumultuously invaded his sick brain and ruled there as despots. They attached themselves to him like an implacable furious old woman, who attaches herself the more closely to her young lover, the more she feels he is going to escape her. He saw again in continual hallucinations, sometimes the lascivious player as she had appeared to him near her little white bed, sometimes the fresh face of the religious school-girl who smiled to him from the height of the gallery. At other times he saw them both together, and each of them called him and said to him: Come, come. Oh! why all these obstacles, these doors, these walls, these prejudices and that formidable barrier which he dared not pass, duty. It seemed to him that a burning lava was escaping from his heart, running into his veins and devouring him. His limbs were heavy and bruised; his head was on fire like his heart, and his thoughts were enveloped in mire. Often with his eye fixed on space, he contemplated some phantom visible to himself alone; then big tears rolled slowly on his cheeks and fell one by one on his bare chest, and he felt that they relieved him. He had placed a statue of the Virgin at the foot of his bed: the one which has a heart in flames and open arms. He looked on it as he went to sleep and prayed the Mother, eternally chaste, to watch over his dreams. But many times in his delirium he saw the Virgin come to life and take the well-known face of her from whom he sought to flee, and come and find him in his couch. And he woke with a start full of terror of himself at the moment when, in his impious sacrilege, he felt the chaste bosom of the Mother of God quiver beneath his kisses. Then he opened his scared eyes and perceived before him the sweet form which stretched its plaster arms to him in the shadow, and full of agony he cried: "_Mater inviolata, ora pro nobis_!" But once he thought he heard a voice which answered: "_Christe, audi nos_." XXXII. THE DEATH'S-HEAD. "God is my witness that I did then everything in the world to divert myself and to heal myself." A. DE MUSSET (_Confession d'un enfant du Siècle_). One night he went out by stealth, crossed the market-place, and descended the hill. He had the look of a man who was hiding himself, and he went back several times, as if he was afraid of being followed. He reached the cemetery, took a key from his pocket, cautiously opened the gate and closed it behind him. At the bottom of the principal path there was a little chapel which served for an ossuary. In it was a hideous accumulation of the remains of several generations. The cemetery was becoming too full and it had been necessary to make room. Here as elsewhere the cry was: "Room for the young." And it is only justice. What would become of as if all the old remained? There is overcrowding under ground as there is above. "Keep off! Keep off!" Therefore their ancestors' bones were in the way, and they had cast them into this retreat to wait for the common grave. But the common grave is again a place which must be taken, and the recent gluttonous dead want everything. "Keep off! Keep off!" Let us not say anything ourselves, perhaps they will dispute with us the corner of ground which should shelter our bones! Marcel went into the gloomy chapel; he lighted a dark lantern and began to search among the pile. Then he returned to the parsonage like a thief, afraid of being caught, and shut himself up in his room. He had a parcel under his arm; he opened it and, carefully placing its contents on the table, he sat down in front of it and contemplated it for a long time. XXXIII. FRENZY. "Abstinence has its deadly exhaustions." BALZAC (_Le Lys dans la Vallée_). A few days before, the gravedigger, while digging up the whitened bones of the ancient dead, had broken up with his pick-axe a mouldering coffin, and a head rolled to his feet It was of later date, for the lower jaw was still fastened to it and it had not the calcareous colour of bones buried long ago. It was the more horrible. The gravedigger threw it into his wheel-barrow with its neighbour's shin-bones, and carried it to the common heap. It was this _thing_ that the Curé of Althausen had coveted and stolen. He had then placed it on his table and contemplated it in silence. The top of the skull was polished and blunt, the front narrow, the bones small and apparently not having attained their full development. It was therefore a youthful head, the head of an adolescent cut down at the moment, when life completely unfolds itself to hope; while the elliptical shape of the lower maxillary, the small and similarly-shaped teeth, the slight separation of the nasal bones, a few long hairs still adhering to the occiput, clearly indicated its feminine origin. "A young girl!" murmured Marcel, "a young girl! beautiful perhaps; loved without doubt ... and there is what remains. Ah! if he who was pleased to kiss your lips, could see your dreadful laugh." And, after he had meditated a long while, he went to his bed, took the plaster virgin from its pedestal, and taking in his two hands the skull, he put it in its place between the serge curtains. And when the fever seized him, when he was burning with all the flames which the fiery _simoom_ of passion breathed on him, and he felt the frenzy taking possession of his pillow, he turned towards the wall and looked at this new companion. Sometimes a moon-beam came and lighted up the hideous skull and played in the gloomy cavities of its sightless eyes. The head then seemed to become animate and its bare teeth gave an infernal grin. This was his remedy for love. But we grow used to everything. Custom destroys sensations. Death and its mysteries, the horrible, and all its threatening shapes soon present nothing to our eyes but worn-out pictures. He accustomed himself to contemplate without emotion this lugubrious ruin. As before, the frenzy seized him and shook him before the skull. It did more. It clothed it again with flesh. It planted long hairs upon that shining, yellow forehead. It placed in the hollow orbits large eyes full of love; it hid the wasted cartillages under quivering nostrils, and upon that horrible jaw it laid rosy lips and a sweet mouth, like a maiden's first kiss. And it is thus that it appeared to him in the shadow, wrapped in the curtains of his bed, like a modest girl who hides herself from sight. "Oh! sweet phantom, return to life," he said. "Take again thy body adorned with its graces and with its charms; come, clothed in thy sixteen years." And he stretched his arms towards the enchanting vision, while the death's-head, with its bare jaw, gave its eternal grin. He woke and found himself kneeling near his bed, facing the wreck of humanity. Horror soiled him. His empty room was filled with spectres. He saw hell-hags with death's-heads sporting and swarming on his bed. At the same time, little sharp, hasty, shrill knocks shook his window. Fall of terror he ran to open it. A gust of wind, mingled with rain and hail, heat against his face. He was ashamed of his fears and leant his head out to catch the beneficent shower. His brain cooled and his blood grew calm. He was there for a few minutes, when all at once, under the trees in the market-place, he thought he distinguished two motionless shadows. He thought for an instant that his hallucination lasted still, but soon the shadows drew near. They seemed to walk carefully under the young foliage of the limes in order to avoid the rain, and in one of them he recognized distinctly Suzanne. XXXIV. THE PROHIBITION. "Do you know any means of making a woman do that which she has decided that she will not do?" ERNEST FEYDEAU (_La Comtesse de Chalis_). That same day, after supper, the Captain had entered the drawing-room where Suzanne was playing the _Requiem_ of Mozart. --So you are playing Church airs now? he said to her. --Don't you like this piece, father? --Not at all. --Perhaps, said Suzanne smiling, because it is a Mass. --My dear child, do you want me to tell you what you are with all your Masses? --What? --Where did you go this morning? --At what time? --At the time when you went out. --I only went out to go to Mass. --And the day before yesterday? --Why this questioning, dearest papa? --Ah! dearest papa, dearest papa. There is no dearest papa here, I want to know the truth. --But what truth? I have nothing wrong to hide from you. I went to Mass. Is that forbidden? --To Mass! Good Heavens! To Mass! That is most decidedly making up your mind to disobey me! --But papa, you have not forbidden it to me. --Not in so many words, it is true; because I counted on your reason and good sense. Have I not spoken loudly enough my way of thinking on this subject? --But, papa, your way of thinking is completely contrary to that which I have been taught. You ought to have said when you sent me to Saint-Denis: "You are not to teach my daughter any religion." They have taught me religion, what is more natural than for me to follow it. --And what has your religion in common with your Mass? If you want to pray to God, can you not pray to him at home? --Am I not a Catholic before all? It was the first time that Suzanne had spoken to her father in this firm and decided tone. Nothing more was wanted to irritate the irascible soldier: --Ah! I know the hidden and villainous insinuation! he cried, Catholic before all! It is that indeed. Before being daughter! before being wife! before being mother! the Church, the priest first; the rest only comes after. The Mass, the Church! the Church, the Mass! With that they cover every vileness. Well, do you want me to tell you what I think of women who frequent churches? They are either lazy, or hypocrites, or idiots, or finally hussies in love with the Curé. There are no others. In which category do you want to be placed, my daughter? --And all that because I discharge my religious duties! --You have spoken to that Curé? I see it. Where have you spoken to him? --I have nothing to hide from you, father; but Monsieur Marcel had not given me any bad advice, I ask you to believe. --So it is true then; you have spoken to this man: unknown to me, in secret. --I had no secret to make of it. I went to confession, that is all, as I was accustomed to do at school. --Confession! what, good Heavens! You went and knelt before that rascal, after what I have told you concerning all his like! --All priests are not alike. --Ah! you are under his influence already. Doubtless, he is the pearl, the model, the saint. Thunder of Heaven! my daughter too, but you do not know that your mother died of remorse of soul because she found a saint, a model of virtue in that black crew of scoundrels. Stay, be silent, you make me say too much. --I don't understand you. --I will be obeyed and not questioned. Have I the right to expect that from my daughter? --You have every right, father. --Well, I forbid you for the future to put your foot inside the church. --In truth, father, would not one say that you were talking of some ill-reputed place? --Worse than that. Those who enter a place of ill-repute, know beforehand where they go and to what they expose themselves, which the little fools who frequent churches never know. Suzanne made no reply and went down into the garden. The old governess who bad brought her up and who loved her tenderly, came to meet her. --Your father is after the Curés again. What can these poor people of God have done to the man? They walked a long time round the kitchen-garden, then they sat down under an arbour of honeysuckle. --What time is it, Marianne? the young girl said all at once, fixing her eyes on the window of her father's room. --It is late, my child, it is ten o'clock at least; everybody in the village has gone to bed. Come, your father has finished his newspaper, there is no longer any light in his room; he has just blown out his lamp. Let us go in. They were near the little back-gate which led out to the meadows. Suzanne opened it cautiously: "No, let us go out," she said. XXXV. THE SHELTER. "Is it a chance? No. And besides; chance, what is it after all but the effect of a cause which escapes us?" ERCHMAN-CHATRIAN (_Contes fantastiques_). As soon as Marcel had recognized Suzanne, he did not take time to reflect, and say to himself: "What is it you are going to do, idiot?" He ran downstairs, stumbling like a drunken man, and gently opened the door. What did he intend? He did not know. Was he going to call these women? He did not know. He opened his door, that was all, and his thought went no further. The same morning at church, he had seen Suzanne, and said to himself, "I will not look at her." He did not look at her. He kept his eyes lowered when he turned towards the nave, but he could have said how many times Suzanne lifted hers, if she were joyous or sad, and if she had a red ribbon or a blue ribbon at her neck. Oh! the eternal contradiction of mankind. He had not wanted to look at her by day, and here he is throwing himself in her path in the middle of the night. The steps approached and his heart beat with violence; he was so agitated that, at the moment when the two women passed before his door to reach the lane which led to the bottom of the hill, he could hardly articulate in a hesitating voice: "Mademoiselle Durand." They uttered a cry. --It is I, he said coming forward. Is it possible? You here at such an hour and in the rain? --I had gone out with my maid, said Suzanne, and the rain has surprised us. --Do not go farther. Shelter yourselves under my door. It is an April shower; it will soon have passed. At the same time he went down the steps before the house and took Suzanne's hand. Never had he felt such boldness. --I pray, Mademoiselle, do not refuse me the pleasure of offering you a refuge for a few moments beneath my humble roof. Suzanne accepted without making him plead any more. She went up the stairs and entered the corridor. The servant followed her. At the end, on the first steps of the stair-case, a lamp swung to and fro in the wind. The Curé shut the door again and, passing near the two women, drawn up against the wall, he brushed against the young girl's damp dress with his hand. --But you are wet, Mademoiselle, he said to her. Perhaps it would not be wise to remain in this cold passage. Should I dare to ask you to go upstairs an instant, and warm yourself at my fire? His voice trembled with emotion, and he found that his hand was so near hers that he had only to close his fingers to take Suzanne's. He seized it therefore and inflicting on her a gentle violence: "Go up, I pray, go up," he said. She allowed him to conduct her. He showed them into his library, which was his favourite apartment, the sanctuary of his labours, his griefs and his dreams. He took some vine-twigs which he threw in the fireplace, and soon a cheerful flame lighted up the hearth. XXXVI. THE HOT WINE. "I looked at her; she tried to show nothing of what she felt in her heart. She held herself straight, like an oarsman who feels that the current is carrying him away, and her nostrils quivered." CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Contes flamands et wallons_). Suzanne was sitting in the old arm-chair of straw, the seat of honour of the parsonage, her huge dark eyes followed the curling flames, while Marianne, standing up against one of the sides of the chimney-piece, cast around her an inquisitive and timorous look. The priest with one knee on the ground, was drawing up the fire. --Here is quite a Christmas fire, he said as he got up. Come close, Mademoiselle, your feet are doubtless damp. It is cold; don't you find it so? He was trembling in all his limbs as if indeed he were frozen near this blazing fire. Suzanne put forward a little delicate arched foot which she rested on one of the fire-dogs. The priest's eyes stayed with ecstasy on the white line, the breadth of two fingers, displayed between her boot and the bottom of her dress. --I am truly ashamed, she murmured, yes, truly ashamed to disturb you at such an hour. --Ought not the priest's house, said Marcel, to be open to all at any hour? It is open to the poor man who passes by; it is open sometimes to the vagabond; why should it not be to an angelic young lady who seeks a shelter against the storm? --It is true, it is the house of God, said Marianne. The young girl looked at the priest, smiled and then became thoughtful. She appeared soon no longer to be conscious where she was, nor of the priest who remained standing before her. She knitted her eyebrows and a feverish shudder ran through her frame. Marcel stooped down towards her with anxiety. --Are you in pain? he said. She shook her head as if to drive away a world of thought which possessed her and answered with a kind of hesitation: --No, Monsieur, thank you; I am not in pain. But I tremble to find myself here. What will my father say? And you, Monsieur, what will you think of me? --But what are you frightened at, Mademoiselle? said Marianne. We are here because Monsieur le Curé has had the goodness to bring us in. Don't you hear the rain outside? As to your father, he is not obliged to know that we are at Monsieur le Curé's. --Reassure yourself, Mademoiselle; your father cannot be offended because you have accepted a shelter against the bad weather. You are here, as the good Marianne has just said, in the house of God, and I will say in my turn, beneath the eye of God. These are very great words about so small a matter, he added with a smile. But you are in pain? Ah! you see, you have a cold already. He proposed making her take a little warm wine, which Marianne declared to be a sovereign remedy, and spoke of going to wake up his servant. Marianne opposed this with all her power. --Since you have the kindness to offer something to our dear young lady, she said, let me make it. Good Heavens! to wake up Mademoiselle Veronica! what would she say? that I am good for nothing, and she would be right. --Well, said Marcel, I am going to show you where you will find what is necessary. They both went down to the kitchen, as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb Veronica's slumber, and Marianne declared that with an armful of dry wood, she would have finished in a few minutes. --Then I leave you, said the priest; I must not leave Mademoiselle Suzanne alone. He remained several seconds longer, hesitating, following the movements of the old governess without seeing them, then all at once he quickly remounted the stair-case. XXXVI. TÊTE-À-TÊTE. "'Tis yours to use aright the hour Which destiny may leave you, To drain the cup of oldest wine, And pluck the morning's roses." A. BUSQUET (_La poésie des heures_). He halted at the threshold, pale and trembling as if he were about to commit a crime. He passed his hand over his brow, it was damp with a cold sweat. What! Suzanne was there, in his house, alone, in the middle of the night, in his own room, beside his fire, seated in his arm-chair. Oh, blessed vision! Was it possible? Was he dreaming? Would the charming picture disappear? And he remained there, motionless, anxious, not daring to move a step, for fear of seeing her disappear. But yes, it is she indeed; she has hidden her charming face in her hands, and it seems to him that tears are stealing through her fingers. He sprang towards her. --Oh! Mademoiselle, what is the matter? What is the matter? Why these tears, which break my heart? Confide your troubles to me, and, I swear to you, if it be in my power, I will alleviate them. --You cannot, answered Suzanne sadly, lifting to him her great moist eyes. --I cannot! do not believe that, my child: the priest can do many things; he knows how to comfort souls, it is the most precious of his gifts. Do not hesitate to confide your griefs to the priest, to the friend. He sat down, facing her, waiting for her to speak. But she remained silent; he only heard the rapid breathing of the young girl, and the storm which raged in his own heart. At length he broke the silence. --Mademoiselle, dear young lady, he said with his most insinuating voice, do you lack confidence then in me? Ah! I see but too well, your father's prejudices have left their marks. --Do not believe it, she cried eagerly, do not believe it. --Thank you, dear young lady. I should so much wish to have your confidence. And in whom could you better repose it? What others could receive more discreetly than ourselves the trust of secret sufferings? Ah, that is one of the benefits of our holy religion; it is on that account that she is the consolation of those who are sad, the relief of those who suffer, the refuge of the humble and the weak, the joy of all the afflicted. Her strong arms are open to all human kind; but how small is the number of the chosen who wish to profit by this maternal tenderness. Be one of that number, dear child, come to us, to us who stretch out our arms to you, to me, who now say to you: "Open your heart to me, confide to me your troubles. However sick your soul may be, mine will understand it." The priest's voice was troubled, and it went to the bottom of Suzanne's heart. She cast on him a look full of compassion: You are unhappy, she asked. --Do not say that, do not say that! Unhappy! yes, I may have been so, but now I am so no longer. Are you not there? Has not your presence caused all the dark clouds to fly away? No, I am no longer unhappy; it would be a blasphemy to say so, when God has permitted you, by some way or other of his mysterious and infinite wisdom, to come and bring happiness to my hearth! --Happiness! I bring happiness to you! But who am I? a little girl just out of school, who knows nothing of life. --And that is what makes you more charming. You are a rose which the breath of morning, pure as it is, has not yet touched. Life! dear child, do not seek to know it too soon. It is a vale of tears, and those who know it best are those who have suffered most deception and weeping. --But a priest is safe from deception and sorrows.... --Ah, Mademoiselle, you with that clear and honest look, you do not know all that passes at the bottom of a man's heart. Alas, we priests, we are but men, more miserable than others, that is the difference ... yes, more miserable because we are more alone. Ah, you cannot understand how painful it is never to have anybody to whom you can open your heart; no one to partake your joys and mitigate your griefs; no loved soul to respond to your soul; no intellect to understand your intellect. Alone, eternally alone, that is our lot. We are men of all families; friends of all, and we have no friends; counsellors to all, and no one gives us salutary advice; directors of all consciences, and we have no one to direct ours, but the evil thoughts which spring from our weariness and our isolation. But why do I speak to you of all that, am I mad? Let us talk about yourself. Come, dear child, I have made my little disclosures to you, make yours to me, open your heart to me ... speak ... speak. --Well, yes, I wanted to see you, to speak with you, to ask your advice. I used to meet you before from time to time in your walks, now you never go out. I have gone to Mass, notwithstanding the displeasure it causes my father, I thought your looks avoided mine. What have I done to you? I don't believe I have done anything wrong. This evening I had a dispute with my father. I went out not knowing where I went; the rain overtook us and I met you. Marcel trembled. He had taken the young girl's hand, but he quickly dropped it, fearing she might observe his agitation. --Ah! Suzanne continued, there are hours when I miss the school, my companions, the long cold corridors, our silent school-room, even the under-mistresses. I am ashamed of it, and angry with myself, but I must-confess it. Is this then that liberty I so desired? I was a prisoner then, but I was peaceful, I was happy: I see it now. Weariness consumes me here. I see no aim for my life. I had one consolation; my religious duties. That is taken away from me. For my father has formally forbidden me this evening to go to church. If I go there again, I disobey my father and I grieve him. If I obey his orders, I take away the only happiness of my life. She had spoken with volubility, and the priest listened to her in silence. Hanging on her look, he drank in her words. He heard them without comprehending exactly their meaning. It was sweet music which charmed him, but he only thought of one thing. She had said: "Your looks avoided mine." When she had finished speaking, he was surprised to hear her no longer and listened afresh. --I have spoken with open heart to my confessor, said Suzanne timidly, astonished at this silence. --To the confessor! no, no, dear child; to the friend, to the friend, is it not? Do you want him? Will you trust yourself to me? Will you let yourself be guided by me? I will bring you by a way from which I will remove all the thorns. --But my father? This was like the blow from a club to Marcel. --Your father! Ah, yes! your father! Well, but what are we going to do? --I have just asked you. --It is written in the Gospel: "No one can serve two masters at the same time." You have a master who is God. Your father places himself between God and your duty. You must choose. Suzanne did not reply. --Consult your conscience, my child. What says your conscience? --My conscience says nothing to me. Marcel thought perhaps he had gone a little too far, he added: --You must decide nevertheless. It is also written, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." --How am I to unite the respect and submission which I owe to my father with my duties as a Christian? That, repeated Suzanne, is what I wanted to ask you. --And we will solve the problem, dear child. Yes, we will come forth from this evil pass, to our advantage and to our glory. Nothing happens but by the will of God, and it is He, doubt it not, who has guided you into my path in order that I may take care of your young and beautiful soul. The ancients were in the habit of marking their happy days; I count already two days in my life which I shall never obliterate from my memory, two days marked in the golden book of my remembrances. The one is that on which I saw you for the first time. You were in the gallery of our church. The light was streaming behind you through the painted windows and surrounded you with a halo. I said to myself: "Is it not one of the virgins detached from the window?" The other is to-day.--Do you believe in presentiments, Mademoiselle? --Sometimes. --Well! I had a presentiment as it were of this visit. Yes, shall I dare to tell you so? The whole day I have been wild with joy! I had an intuition of an approaching happiness, a very rare event with me, Mademoiselle. --Of what happiness? --Why of this, of this which I enjoy at this moment; this of seeing you sitting at my hearth, in front of me, near to me, this of hearing your sweet voice, and reading your pure eyes. But what am I saying? Pardon me, Mademoiselle. See how happiness make us egotistic! I talk to you about myself, while it is about you that we ought to occupy ourselves, of you, and of your future. And he looked at her with such glowing eyes, that she was a little frightened. XXXVIII THE KISS. "That strange kiss makes me shudder still." A. DE MUSSET (_Premières poesies_). --Are you not cold? said Marcel; and he stooped down to draw up the fire. But on sitting down again it happened that his seat was quite close to that of Suzanne, so close that their knees were touching, and that he had only to make a slight movement to take one of her hands. --Dear, dear child. And he began to talk to her of God in his unctuous voice. He talked to her also of her duties as a Christian, and of the probable struggles she would have to undergo. He talked to her again of the purity of her heart and compared her to the angels. And while he talked, he began to fondle this little soft white hand, lifting delicately the slender fingers with their rosy nails, drawing over the soft and satiny tips his brown and muscular fingers. Soon his warm hand became burning. Magnetic influences were evolved. Invisible sparks broke forth suddenly at the contact of these two epidermises, ran through his veins, inflamed his heart and set his brain a-blaze. [PLATE II: THE KISS. She tried to release her imprisoned hand, but he bent over it, and pressed it to his lips.] [Illustration] He lost his presence of mind, his will wavered and sank in the molten lava of his desires; he lost perception of his surroundings, of all those formidable things which until then had bound him with the strong bands of moral authority; he thought no longer of anything, he paused no longer at anything, he saw nothing but this fair young girl whom he coveted, who was alone with him, her hand in his, sitting by his fire-side, in the silence and the mystery of the night. His clasp became convulsive. Under the fire of his burning gaze Suzanne raised her head, and a second time fell back in dismay. She tried to release her imprisoned hand, but he bent over it, and pressed it to his lips. The door opened wide. --Don't get impatient, said Marianne, there is the hot wine. I have been a long time, but the wood was green. Are you better? But Suzanne, trembling all over, remained silent. XXXIX. THE DEVIL IN PETTICOATS. "I know an infallible means of drawing you back from the precipice on which you stand." CHARLES (_Des Illustres Françaises_). --Wretch that I am. I have defiled a pure confiding child, who came in all loyalty to sit at my fire-side. Vile and cowardly nature, like some base Lovelace, I have grossly abused the confidence which was placed in me. My priestly robe, far from being a safeguard, is but a cloke for my iniquities. I have reached that pitch of cowardice that I am no longer master of myself. Incapable of commanding my feelings; become the slave and the plaything of my shameful desires and of my lustful passions!... It must have happened. Yes, it must have happened. Sooner or later I was obliged to fall: it is the chastisement of my presumption and pride. Ah! wretch, you wish to subdue the flesh, you wish to reform nature, you wish to be wiser than God. They tried at the seminary by means of _nenuphar_ and _infusions of nitre_ to quench in you the desires of youth and its rebellious passion. Vain efforts, senseless attempts, which served only to retard your fall. In vain you try, in vain you struggle, in vain you invoke the angels and call God to your aid; there comes a time, a moment, a minute, a second, in which all your life of struggles and efforts is lost. The angry flesh subdues you in its turn, baffled nature revolts, and the Creator, whose laws you have not recognized, abandons the worthless creature and lets him roll over, falling into an abyss of iniquity. Oh! my God! where is all this going to bring me? What will become of me? How can I show my brow all covered with shame? Is not my infamy written there?... She, she, what will she think of me?... To kiss her hand, her soft perfumed hand. Oh God, God all-powerful, where am I? where am I going? I said it; martyrdom or shame! It is shame which awaits me. So spoke the Curé, when Marianne had taken away her young mistress, and his conscience exaggerated the gravity and the consequences of his imprudent rapture. --Yes, it is shame, it is shame. --Do not despair in this way, said a jeering voice. Marcel turned round, terror-struck. His servant was behind him. She had approached, noiselessly, and was looking at him with her strange, green eyes. --Shame lies in scandal, she added sententiously. Reassure yourself; that pretty young lady will hold her tongue. She spoke low, slowly, with perfect calm, and each word penetrated the priest's heart like a steel blade. Like all persons ashamed of having been caught, he put himself in a passion. --You! he cried. You here? Who called you? You were not gone to bed then? What do you want? What have you just been doing? You are always listening then at the doors? --That is useful sometimes, the woman said sententiously. --What, you dare to admit that wretched fault without blushing at it? --There are many others who ought to blush and yet don't blush. --What do you mean? Come, speak? what do you want? --Only to talk with you. You have had a long talk with Mademoiselle Suzanne Durand! you can well listen to me a little in my turn. --What do you say? wicked creature! what do you say? --Oh, Monsieur le Curé, you are wrong to call me wicked, I am not so. --You are, at the very least, most indiscreet. --Oh, sir, it is not my fault; it is quite involuntarily that I have been a witness of what passed. --Eh! what has passed then? --Sir, don't question me, she said in a pitying tone, _I have heard and seen_. --You have seen! cried the priest in a stifled voice. What have you seen then, wretched woman? And mad with anger, with blazing eyes and clenched fists, he sprang upon the servant, who was afraid and retreated to the door. --Please, Monsieur le Curé, she implored, don't hurt me. These words recalled the priest to himself. --No, he said as he sat down again, no, Veronica, I shall not hurt you. I flew into a passion, I was wrong; pardon me. Reassure yourself; see, I am calm; come closer and let us talk. Come closer. Sit here, in front of me. --I will do so. Ah! you frighten me.... --It is your fault, Veronica; why do you put me into such passion? --It was not my intention; far from it. I wanted to talk with you very peaceably, like the _other_, it is so nice. --Please, enough of that subject. --Oh, Monsieur le Curé, it is just about that I want to speak to you. --Do not jest, Veronica. You have been, thanks to your culpable indiscretion, witness of a momentary error, which will not be repeated any more. --A momentary error, which would have led you to some pretty things, Monsieur le Curé. Good God! if Marianne had not arrived in time, who knows what might have happened. --It is not for you to blame me, Veronica. There is only God who is without sin. --I know that well. Therefore, I have not said that to you in order to blame you. Quite the contrary, I was astonished that with a temperament ... as strong as yours, you have remained free from fault till to-day. --And, please God, I will always remain so. --Oh! God does not ask for impossibilities, as my old master, Monsieur le Curé Fortin, used to say: he was a good-natured man. He often repeated to me: "You see, Veronica, provided appearances are saved, everything is saved. God is content, he asks for no more." --What, the Abbé Fortin said that? --Yes, and many other things too. He was so honest, so delicate a man--not more than you, however, Monsieur le Curé--but he understood his case better than any other. He said again: "Beware of bad example, keep yourself from scandal. Dirty linen should be washed at home." Good rules, are they not, Monsieur Marcel? --Certainly. --He knew so well how to compassionate human infirmities. Ah! when nature speaks, she speaks very loudly. --Do you know anything about it, Veronica? --Who does not know it? I can certainly acknowledge that to you, since you are my Curé and my confessor. --That is true, Veronica. --And to whom should a poor servant acknowledge her secret thoughts, if not to her Curé and her confessor? He is her only friend in this world, is he not? The Curé did not reply. He considered the strange shape the conversation was taking, and cast a look of defiance at the woman. --You do not answer, sir, she said. You do not look upon me as your friend, that is wrong. Is it because I have surprised your secrets? --I have no secrets. --Yes?.... Suzanne? --Enough on that subject. Do not revive my shame, since you call yourself my friend. --Oh! sir, it is precisely for that, it is because I do not want you to distress yourself about so little. Listen to me, sir, I am older than you, and although I am not so learned, I have the experience which, as they say, is not picked up in books: well, this experience has taught me many things which perhaps you do not suspect. --Explain yourself. --I would have explained already, if you had wished it. The other evening you were quite sad, sitting by that fireless grate; you were thinking of I don't know what, but certainly it was not of anything very lively, so much so that it went to my heart. I suspected what was vexing you; I wanted to speak to you, but you repulsed me almost brutally. Nevertheless, if you had listened to me that day, what has just happened might not have occurred. --I don't understand you. --I will make myself understood ... if you allow me. XL. LITTLE CONFESSIONS. "To relate one's misfortunes often alleviates them." CORNEILLE (_Polyeucte_). The Curé laid his forehead between his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees, a common attitude among confessors. --I am listening to you, he said. --I said to you, Monsieur le Curé, do not despair. You will excuse a poor servant's boldness, but it is the friendship I have for you which has urged me; nothing else, believe me; I am an honest girl, entirely devoted to my masters. You are the fourth, Monsieur le Curé, yes, the fourth master. Well! the three others have never had to complain about me a single moment for indiscretion, or for idleness, or for want of attention, or for anything, in fact, for anything. Never a harsh word. "You have done well, Veronica; that's quite right, Veronica; do as you think proper, Veronica; your advice is excellent, Veronica." Those are all the rough words which have been said to me, Monsieur Marcel. Therefore, I repeat, really it went to my heart to hear you speaking harshly sometimes to me, and to see that you did not appear satisfied with me. I had not been accustomed to that. And the servant, picking up the corner of her apron, burst into tears. --Why! Veronica, are you mad? Why do you cry so? Who has made you suppose that I was not satisfied with you? I may have spoken harshly to you, it is possible; but it was in a moment of excitement or of impatience, which I regret. You well know that I am not ill-natured. --Oh, no, sir, that is just what grieves me. You are so kind to everybody. You are only severe to me. --You are wrong again, Veronica. I may have felt hurt at your indiscretion, but that is all. Put yourself in my place, and you will allow that it is humiliating for a priest.... --Do not speak of that again, Monsieur le Curé. You are very wrong to disturb yourself about it, and if you had had confidence in me before, I should have told you that all have acted like you, all have gone through that, all, all. --What do you mean? --I mean that young and old have fallen into the same fault.... If we can call it a fault, as Monsieur Fortin used to say. And the old still more than the young. After that, perhaps you will say to me that it is the place which is wicked. --Be silent, Veronica. What you say is very wrong, for if I perfectly understand you, you are bringing an infamous accusation against my predecessors. Perhaps you think to palliate my fault thus in my own eyes. I thank you for the intention, but it is an improper course, and the reproach which you try to cast upon the worthy priests who have succeeded one another in this parish, takes away none of my remorse. --Monsieur Fortin had not so many scruples. He was, however, a most respectable man, and one who never dared to look a young girl in her face, he was so bashful. "Well," he often used to say, "God has well done all that he has done, and He is too wise to be angry when we make use of His benefits!" --That is rather an elastic morality. --It was Monsieur Fortin who taught me that. After all, that is perhaps morality in word, you are ... morality in deed. --Veronica, you are strangely misusing the rights which I have allowed you to take. --Do not put yourself in a rage, Monsieur le Curé, if I talk to you so. I wanted to persuade you thoroughly that you can rely upon me in everything, that I can keep a secret, though you sometimes call me a tattler, and that I am not, after all, such a worthless girl as you believe. We like, when the moment has come to get ourselves appreciated, to profit by it to our utmost. --Veronica, said Marcel, I hardly know what you want to arrive at; but I wish to speak frankly to you, since you have behaved frankly towards me. I recognize all the wisdom of your proceeding, although you will agree it has something offensive and humiliating for me, but after all, it is preferable that you should come and tell me this to my face, than that you should go and chatter in the village and tattle without my knowledge. --Oh, Monsieur le Curé, Veronica is not capable of that. --Therefore, since you have discovered ... discovered a secret which would ruin me, what do you calculate on making from this secret, and what do you demand? --I, Monsieur le Curé, cried the servant, I demand nothing ... oh! nothing. --You are hesitating. Yes, you want something. Come, it is you now who hang your head and blush, while it is I who am the culprit.... Come, place yourself there, close to me. --Oh! Monsieur le Curé, I shall never presume. --Presume then to-day. Have you not told me that you were my friend?... Yes. Well then, place yourself there. Tell me, Veronica, what is your age? --Mine, Monsieur le Curé. What a question! I am not too old; come, not so old as you think. I am forty. --Forty! why you are still of an age to get married. --I quite think so. --And you have never intended to do so? --To get married? Oh, upon my word, if I had wanted to do so, I should not have waited until now. --I believe you, Veronica. You could have done very well before now. But you may have changed your ideas. Our characters, our tastes change with time, and a thing displeases us to-day, which will please us to-morrow. There are often, it is true, certain considerations which stop us and make us reflect. Perhaps you have not a round enough sum. With a little money, at your age, you could still make an excellent match. --And even without money, Monsieur le Curé. If I were willing, somebody has been pestering me for a long time for that. --And you are not willing. The person doubtless does not suit you? --Oh, I have my choice. --Well and good. We cannot use too much reflection upon a matter of this importance. I am not rich, Veronica, but I should like to help you and to increase, if it be possible, your little savings, your dowry in fact. --You are very good, sir, but I do not wish to get married. --Why so? --It depends on tastes, you know.... You are in a great hurry then to get rid of me, Monsieur le Curé. --Not at all: do not believe it. --Come, come, Monsieur le Curé. I see your intentions. You say to yourself: "she holds a secret which may prove troublesome to me; with a little money I will put a padlock on her tongue, I will get her married, and by this means she will trouble me no more." Is it a bad guess? --You have not guessed it the least in world, Veronica. --Oh, it is! But it is a bad calculation, and for two reasons. In the first place, if I marry, your secret is more in danger than if I remain single. You know that a woman ought not to hide anything from her husband. --There are certain things.... --No, nothing at all: no secret, or mystery. The husband ought to see all, to know all, to be acquainted with all that concerns his wife. Ah! I know how to live, though I am an old maid. --You are a pearl, Veronica. --You want to make fun of me; but others have said that to me before you, and they were talking seriously. On the other hand, she continued, if you keep me, you need not fear my slandering you, since I am in your hands and the day you hear any rumour, you can turn me away. --Your argument is just, and believe me that my words had but a single object, not that of separating myself from you, but of being useful to you. Since you are desirous of remaining with me, at which I am happy, let us therefore try to live on good terms, and do you for your part forget my weaknesses; I for mine will forget your inquisitiveness; and let us talk no more about them. --Oh yes, we will talk again. --I consent to it. Let us therefore make peace, and give me your hand. --Here it is, Monsieur le Curé. --Ah, Veronica. _Errare humanum est_. --Yes, I know, Monsieur Fortin often repeated it. That means to say that the devil is sly, and the flesh is weak. --It is something like that. So then I trust to your honesty. --You can do so without fear. --To your discretion. --You can do so with all confidence. --To your friendship for me. Have you really a little, Veronica? --I have, sir, said the servant, affected. You ask me that: what must I then do to convince you? --Be discreet, that is all. --Oh! you might require more than that. But could I also, in my turn, ask something of you? --Ask on. --It will be perhaps very hard for you. --Speak freely. What do you want? Are you not mistress here? Is not everything at your disposal? --Oh, no. --No! You surprise me. Have I hurt you without knowing it? I do not remember it, I assure you. Tell me then, that I may atone for my fault. --I hardly know how to tell you. --Is it then very serious? --Not precisely, but.... --You are putting me on thorns. What is it then? --Oh, nothing. --What nothing? Do you wish to vex me, Veronica. --I don't intend it; it is far from that. --Speak then. --Well no, I will say no more. You will guess it perhaps. But meanwhile.... --Meanwhile.... --It is quite understood between us that you will never see that little hussy again. --What hussy? --That little hussy, who was here just now. --Oh, Veronica! Veronica! --It is for your interests, Monsieur le Curé, in short ... the proprieties. --My dignity is as dear to me as it is to you, my daughter, be answered sharply. --Good-night, Monsieur le Curé; take counsel with your pillow. XLI. MORAL REFLECTIONS. "Ah, poor grandmamma, what grand-dam's tales You used to sing to me in praise of virtue; Everywhere have I asked: 'What is this stranger?' They laughed at me and said, 'Whence hast thou come?'" G. MELOTTE (_Les Temps nouveaux_). The Curé of Althausen had no need of reflection to understand the kind of shameful bargain which his servant had allowed him to catch a glimpse of. The lustful look of the woman had spoken too clearly, and when he had taken her hand, he had felt it burn and tremble in his. Then certain circumstances, certain facts to which he had not attended at first, came back to his memory. Two or three times, Veronica, on frivolous pretexts had entered his bedroom at night; and each time, he remembered well, she was in somewhat indecent undress, which contrasted strangely with her ordinarily severe appearance. He recalled to himself all the stories of Curés' servants who shared their masters' bed. Stories told in a whisper at certain _general repasts_, when the priests of the district met together at the senior's house to observe the feast of some saint or other--the great Saint Priapus perhaps--and where lively talk and sprightly stories ran merrily round the table. And what he had taken for jokes in bad taste, and refused to believe till now, he began to understand. For he could no longer doubt that he had set his servant's passions aflame, and he must either expose himself to her venomous tongue and incur the shame and scandal, or else appease the erotic rage of this kitchen Messalina. He tried to drive away this horrible thought, to believe that he had been mistaken, to persuade himself that he was the dope of erroneous appearances; he wished to convince himself that he had been the victim of errors engendered by his own depravity, that he judged according to his secret sentiments; his efforts were vain; the woman's feverish eyes, her restless solicitude, her jealous rage, her incessant watching, the evidence in short was there which contradicted all his hopes to the contrary. And then, the latest confessions regarding his predecessors: "All have acted like you, all," possessed his mind. Like him! What had they done? They also had attempted then to seduce young girls, and perhaps had consummated their infernal design. What? respectable priests, ministers of the Gospel, pastors of God's flock! Was it possible? But was not he a respectable priest and respected by all, a minister of God, a leader of the holy flock, a pastor of men, and yet.... How then? where is virtue? "Virtue," answered that voice which we have within ourselves, that voice odious to hypocrites and deceivers, which the Church calls the Devil's voice, and which is the voice of reason. Virtue? Of which do you speak, fool? Without counting the _three theological_, there are fifty thousand kinds of virtues. It is like happiness, institutions, reputations, religions, morals, principles: Truth on this side the mount, error on that. There are as many kinds of virtues as there are different peoples. History swarms with virtuous people who have been so in their own way. Socrates was virtuous, and yet what strange familiarities he allowed himself with the young Alcibiades. The virtuous Brutus virtuously assassinated his father. The virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary had herself whipped by her confessor, the virtuous Conrad, and the virtuous Janicot doted on virtuous little boys; and finally Monseigneur is virtuous, but his old lady friends look down and smile when he talks of virtue. See this priest of austere countenance and whitened hair. He too, during long years, has believed in that virtue which forms his torment. Candid and trustful, he felt the fervency of religion fill his heart from his youth. He had faith, he was filled with the spirit of charity and love. He said like the apostle: _Ubi charitas et amor, Deus ibi est_. And he believed that God was with him, and that alone with God he was peacefully pursuing his road. But he had counted without that troublesome guest who comes and places himself as a third between the creature and the Creator, and who, more powerful than the God of legend, quickly banishes him, for he is the principle of life and the other is the principle of death; it is the fruitful love and the other is the wasting barren love; it is present and active, while the other is inert, dumb and in the clouds of your sickly brain. "It is in vain that in his successive halts from parish to parish, he has resisted the thousand seductions which surround the priest, from the timid gaze of the simple school-girl, smitten with a holy love for the young curate, to the veiled smile of the languishing woman. In vain will he attempt, like Fénélon formerly, to put the warmth of his heart and the incitements of the flesh upon the wrong scent by carrying on a platonic love with some chosen souls; what is the result in the end of his efforts and his struggles? Now he is old; ought he not to be appeased? No, weighty and imperious matter has regained the upper hand. He loves no longer, he is not able to love any longer, but the fury urges him on. He seduces his cook, or dishonours his niece." And yet those most courageous natures exist, for they have resisted to the end. We blame them, we are wrong. Who would have been capable of such efforts and sacrifices? Who would sustain during ten, fifteen, twenty years, similar straggles between the imperious requirements of nature and the miserable duties of convention? They, therefore, who see their hair fall before their virtue are very rare. The crowd of priests strike themselves against the obstacles of the road from the first steps, they tear their catechumen's robe with the white thorns of May, and when they have arrived at the end of their career, they have stopped many a time under some mysterious thicket, unknown by the vulgar, relishing the forbidden fruit. Let us leave them in peace. It is not I who will disturb their sweet tête-à-tête. XLII. MEMORY LOOKING BACK. "Man can do nothing against Destiny. We go, time flies, and that which must arrive, arrives." LÉON CLADEL (_L'Homme de la Croix-aux-Baufs_). Marcel was one of those energetic natures who believe that struggle is one of the conditions of life. He had valiantly accepted the task which was incumbent upon him. But there are hours of discouragement and exhaustion, in which the boldest and the strongest succumb, and he had reached one of those hours. And then, it is so difficult to struggle without ceasing, especially when we catch no glimpse of calmer days. Weariness quickly comes and we sink down on the road. Then a friendly hand should be stretched towards us, should lift us up and say to us "Courage." But Marcel could not lean on any friendly hand. He had no one to whom he could confide his struggles, his vexations, and the apprehension of his coming weaknesses. Although his life as priest had been spotless up to then, his brethren held aloof from him, for there was a bad mark against him at the Bishop's Palace. It had been attached at the commencement of his career. He was one of those catechumens on whom from the very first the most brilliant hopes are founded. Knowledge, intelligence, respectful obedience, appearance of piety, sympathetic face, everything was present in him. The Bishop, a frivolous old man, a great lover of little girls, who combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of devout gallantry or of gallant devotion, the Bishop, a worthy pastor for such a sheep, passed the greater portion of his time in the intrigues of petticoats and sacristies, and left to the young secretary the care of matters spiritual. It was he who, like Gil-Blas, composed the mandates and sometimes the sermons of Monseigneur. This confidence did not fail to arouse secret storms in the episcopal guest-chamber. A Grand-Vicar, jealous of the influence which the young Abbé was assuming over his master's mind, had resolved upon his dismissal and fall. With a church-man's tortuous diplomacy, he pried into the young man's heart, as yet fresh and inexperienced. He insinuated himself into the most hidden recesses of his conscience, seized, so to say, in their flight the timid fleeting transports of his thought, of his vigorous imagination, and soon discovered with secret satisfaction that he was straying from the ancient path of orthodoxy. Marcel, indeed, belonged to that younger generation of the clergy which believes that everything which alienates the Church from new ideas, brings it nearer to its ruin. And the day when the foolish Pius IX presumed to proclaim and define, to the great joy of free-thinkers and the enemies of Catholicism, the ridiculous dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the presence of two hundred dumb complaisant prelates, on that day he experienced profound grief. According to his ideas this was the severest blow which had been inflicted on the foundations of the Church for centuries. He had studied theology deeply, but he had not confined himself to the letter; he believed he saw something beyond. --The letter killeth, he said, the spirit giveth life. --The spirit giveth life when it is wholesome and pure, the Grand-Vicar answered him with a smile, but is it healthy in a young man who believes himself to be wiser than his elders? Marcel then without mistrust and urged by questions, developed his theories. He believed in the absolute equality of men before God, in the transmutation of souls: and the resurrection of the flesh seemed to him the utmost absurdity. He quite thought that there were future rewards and penalties, but he had too much faith in the goodness of God to suppose that the expiation could be eternal. He allied himself in that to the Universalists, who were, he said, the most reasonable sect of American Protestantism. --Reasonable! reasonable! repeated the Grand-Vicar scoffingly; in truth, my poor friend, you make me doubt your reason. Can there be anything reasonable in the turpitude of heresy? Then he hurried to find the Bishop: --I have emptied our young man's bag, he said to him. Do you know, Monseigneur, what there was at the bottom? --Oh, oh. Has he been inclined to debauchery? He is so young. --Would to heaven it were only that, Monseigneur. But it is a hundred times worse. --What do you tell me? Must I fear then for all my little sheep? We must look after him then. --I repeat, Monseigneur, that that would be nothing.... It is the abomination of abomination, a whole world of turpitude, heresies in embryo. --Heresies! Oh, oh! That is serious. --Heresies which would make the cursed shades of John Huss, Wickliffe, Luther and Calvin himself tremble, if they appeared again. --What do you say? --I tell you, Monseigneur, that you have warmed a viper in your bosom. --Ah, well, I will drive out this wicked viper. The Bishop, who kept two nieces in the episcopal seraglio, would willingly have pardoned his secretary if he had been accused of immorality, but he could not carry his condescension so far as heresy. He wanted, however, to assure himself personally, and as Marcel was incapable of lying, he quickly recognized the sad reality. The young Abbé was severely punished. He was compelled to make an apology, to retract his horrible ideas, to stifle the germ of these infant monstrosities; then he was condemned to spend six months in one of those ecclesiastical prisons called _houses of retreat_, where the guilty priest is exposed to every torment and every vexation. He was definitely marked and classed as a dangerous individual. His enemy, the Grand-Vicar, pursued him with his indefatigable hatred, so far that from disgrace to disgrace he had reached the cure of Althausen. XLIII. ESPIONAGE. "A sunbeam had traversed his heart; it had just disappeared." ERNEST DAUDET (_Les Duperies de l'Amour_). Since the fatal evening when the secret of his new-born love had been discovered by his servant, Marcel had observed the woman on his steps, watching his slightest proceedings, scrutinizing his most innocent gestures. He encountered everywhere her keen inquisitive look. He wished at first to meet it with the greatest circumspection and the most absolute reserve. He avoided all conversation which he thought might lead him into the way of fresh confidences, and he affected an icy coldness. But he was soon obliged to renounce this means. The woman, irritated, suddenly became sullen and angry, and made the Curé pay dear for the reserve which he imposed on himself. The dinner was burnt, the soup tasted only of warm water, his bed was hard, his socks were full of holes, his shoes badly cleaned, finally, he was several times awakened with a start by terrible noises during the night. He attempted a few remonstrances. Veronica replied with sharpness and threatened to leave him. --You can look for another maid, she said to him; as for me, I have had enough of it. --Oh! you old hussy, he thought; I would soon pack you off to the devil, if I were not afraid of your cursed tongue. Then, for the sake of peace he changed his tactics. He was affable and smiling and spoke to her gently; and the servant's manners changed directly. She also became like she had been before, attentive and submissive. Several days passed thus in a continual constraint and hidden anger; at the same time, a restlessness consumed him, which he used all his power to conceal. He had not seen Suzanne again, either at the morning Masses, or in her usual walks. He looked forward to Sunday; but at High Mass her place remained empty; he reckoned on Vespers: Vespers, and then Compline passed without her. In vain he searched the nave and the galleries, his sorrowing gaze did not find Suzanne, and he chanted the _Laudate pueri dominum_ with the voice of the _De profundis_. Where was she? He had no other thought. Her father had prevented her from coming to church, without any doubt; but why had he not seen her as before upon the roads, which they both liked? He made a thousand conjectures, and with his thoughts completely absorbed in Suzanne, he forgot aught else. He saw no longer those attractive members of his congregation, who admired him in secret as they accompanied him with their fresh voices, and were astonished at the mysterious trouble which agitated their sweet pastor; he forgot even the odious spy who watched him in some corner of the church, and whom he would meet again at his house. Ashamed of himself, he recalled with a blush the hand he had kissed in a moment of frenzy, which must have let Suzanne suspect what was the plague which consumed his heart, and he would have sacrificed ten years of his life to become again what he was in the eyes of this young girl, hardly a month ago; only a stranger. Unaccustomed to the world, he did not yet know women well enough to be aware that they are full of indulgence for follies committed for their sake, and more ready to excuse an insult than to pardon indifference. Under these circumstances vanity takes the place of courage, and gives to the commonest girl the instincts of a patrician. There is no ill-made woman but wishes to see the world at her feet. And the espionage which laid so heavy on him, became every day more irritating and more insupportable. In vain he fled from the house, and walked on straight before him; far, very far, as far as possible, he felt his servant's gaze following him, and weighing upon him with all the burden of her furious and clear-sighted jealousy. He felt that lynx eye pierce the walls and watch him everywhere, even when he had put between himself and the parsonage, the streets, the gardens, the width of the village and the depth of the woods. She received him on his return with a smile on her lips, but her eager eye searched him from head to foot, studied his looks, his gestures, the folds of his cassock and even the dust on his shoes; as though she wished to strip him and bare his heart in order to feast upon his secret conflicts. XLIV. THE GARRET WINDOW. "Do I direct my love? It directs me. And I could abide it if I would!... And I would, after all, that I could not." V. SARDOU (_Nos Intimes_). Other days passed, and then others. From a garret-window in the loft of the parsonage, the eye commanded a view of the whole village. Over the roofs could be seen the house of Captain Durand, quite at the bottom of the hill. Marcel went up there several times, and with his gaze fixed on that white wall which concealed the sweet object which had torn from him his tranquillity and his peaceful toil, he forgot himself and was lost in his thoughts. Then his eyes wandered over the verdant plain, and the length of the stream edged with willows which wound along as far as the wood, side by side with the little path, where often he had met with Suzanne. Sometimes the keen April wind blew violently through the ill-closed timber and the cracks of the roofing. It shook the joists and filled the loft with that shrill sinister sound, which is like an echo of the lamentable complaint of the dead, and it appeared to him that these groanings of the tempest mingled with the groanings of his soul. But he soon discovered that the garret-window was also a post of observation for Veronica, for to their mutual embarrassment, they caught one another climbing cautiously up the wooden stair-case, or slipping under the dusty joists. Again he was caught in fault. What business had he in that loft? He resumed his walks and prolonged them as much as possible; he resumed his pastoral visits with a zeal which charmed the feminine portion of his flock; but nowhere did he see or hear anything of Suzanne. That name filled his heart, and he dreaded the least suspicion, the slightest comment. He was seen always abroad. He fled from his house, his books, his flowers, that little home which he loved so well when it was quiet, and where now he heard the muttering storms; he suspected some infernal plot. And the remembrance of that hand which was surrendered to him, and on which he had placed his lips, that remembrance consumed his heart. He saw again Suzanne's emotion, her large dark eyes full of amazement, yet without anger, and he would have wished to see them again, were it only for a second, in order to read in them the impression which his presence left there. XLV. TREACHEROUS MANOEUVRE. "He stepped more lightly than a bird; love traced out his progress." CHAMPFLEURY (_La Comédie Académique_). "I must know," he said to himself, "where I stand." And one morning, after saying Mass, he went out of the village. He took the opposite direction to the part where Captain Durand dwelt. But after following the high road for some time, sure that he was not being watched, he retraced his steps, quickly entered the little path, hedged with quicksets, which runs by the side of the gardens, and rapidly made the circuit of Althausen. Hitherto in his walks, he had avoided, from shame as much as from fear, the Captain's house, now he directed his steps thither, with head erect, resolute and assuming a careless air, as if the peasants whom he met could suspect his secret agitation. He hurried his steps, desirous of settling the question one way or the other. To discover Suzanne! that was his only desire, and his heart beat as though it would break. In spite of the reproaches and invectives which he addressed and the fine argument which he formed for himself, he had fallen again more than ever under the yoke, precisely because he saw obstacles accumulating. Love had taken absolute possession of his heart, it had hollowed out its nest therein, like the viper in the old Norway ballads, and while ever increasing, consumed it. To see Suzanne, simply the hem of her gown, or her pretty spring hat crowned with bluebirds, to pass near the spot where she breathed and to inhale there some emanation from her, was his promised treat. And he walked along joyously, his step was light, and he no longer felt the load of his grief; his apprehensions and anxiety disappeared, and he was filled with a wild hope. A few steps more and he would see behind the clump of old chestnuts the little house, always so smart and white. Ah! he knew it well. Many a time he had passed in front of it and behind it, pensive and indifferent, without dreaming that the sanctuary of a goddess was there, the only one henceforth whom his heart could adore. There was a little garden, surrounded with palings, with two paths which crossed, and placed in the middle, a statue of the Little Corporal in a bed of China-asters. In one corner an arbour of honeysuckle, where more than once he had caught sight of a crabbed face. Perhaps the maid with the sweet eyes will be sitting beneath that arbour embroidering thoughtfully some chosen pattern. What shall he do if Suzanne is there? Will he dare to look at her? Yes, he must! He must read the expression in her look. And if that look is sweet and free from anger, shall he stop? Certainly. Why should he hesitate? What is there surprising in a priest, stopping to talk to a young girl? Is he not her Curé? More than that, her Confessor. Her confessor! Has he still the right to call himself so? And the weather-beaten soldier, the disciple of Voltaire, the malevolent, unmannerly father? Come, another blunder! he sees clearly that he cannot dream of stopping. And then, after what he has done, what would he dare to say? He will pass by therefore rapidly, without even turning his head; she will see him, and that is enough. He quickens his step, then he slackens it. Where will she be. Here are the old chestnut-trees, and behind is the white house, the corner of paradise. What is that open window, garnished with flowers, that room hung with rose, and at the back those white curtains which the morning sun is gilding? Oh, that he might melt into those subtle rays, and penetrate, like a ray of love, into that chaste virgin conch. Now he is near the garden. His heart is beating. He looks. A sound of footsteps on the path, and the rustling of a dress make him start. Is it she? He turns round. Veronica is behind him. XLVI. THE LETTER. "Let them take but one step within your door. They will soon have taken four." LA FONTAINE (_Fables_). She was red and out of breath, and her large breasts rose and fell like the bellows of a forge, while her air of triumph said clearly to Marcel: "Ah, ah, I have caught you here." --Come, Monsieur le Curé, it is quite a quarter-of-an-hour that I have been looking for you. I ought to have thought before where to find you. Somebody is waiting for you. --Who! But the servant avoided making any reply, as she took the lead towards home. The Curé followed her hanging his head. He reached the parsonage directly after her. --Who is waiting for me then? he said again. --It's the postman, she replied with an air of frankness; he could not wait till to-morrow. He had a letter for you ... for _you_ only, she added, lingering over these words with a scornful smile. Marcel blushed. --Another mystery, Veronica went on. Ah, Jesus! My God! What a lot of mysteries there are here. Really it's worse than the Catechism. Your letters for you only! Isn't that enough to humiliate me? You have reason then to complain of my discretion that you tell the postman to hand your letters to _yourself only_. Holy Virgin! it's a pretty thing. What can they think of me then at the Post-office? They will surely say that I read your letters before you do. Upon my word. Your letters don't matter to me. Would they not say...? Ah, Lord Jesus. To make a poor servant suffer martyrdom in this way? --There you are with your recrimination again! -Oh, Monsieur le Curé, I make no recriminations, I complain that is all: I certainly have the right to complain; my other masters never acted in that way with me. --Your masters acted as they thought proper, and I also do as I wish. --I see very well, that you don't ask advice from anyone.... And with the insolence of a servant who has got on a footing with her master, she added: You have gone again to the part where Durand lives? After what has happened, are you not afraid of compromising yourself? --Mind your own business, you silly woman, and leave me alone for once. I consider you are very impudent in trying to scrutinize my actions. --My business! Well, Monsieur le Curé, yours is mine just a bit, since I am your confidante. As to being impudent, I shall never be so much as others I know. --Insolent woman. --Ah, you can insult me, Monsieur le Curé. I let you do as you like with me. --Veronica, said Marcel, this life is unendurable. I hate to be surrounded with incessant spying; what do you want to arrive at? tell me, what do you want to arrive at? And the Curé approached her, his fists clenched, and with glaring eyes. --Take care of yourself, woman, for I am beginning to get tired. --I am so too: I am tired, cried Veronica. Marcel's wrath passed all bounds. --Yes. I understand, you ought indeed to be so. Tired of odious spying; tired of your unwholesome curiosity; tired of your useless narrow-mindedness. Do not drive me too far for your own sake, I warn you. Twice already you have made me beside myself, beware, you miserable woman, beware of doing it a third time. --Be quiet, Monsieur le Curé, said Veronica softly, be quiet. --Oh, you are driving me mad, cried Marcel, throwing himself into an arm-chair, and covering his face with his hands. The servant came near him: --It is you who are making me ill with your fits of anger, she said with solicitude: shall I make you a little tea? --I don't want anything. --Come, Monsieur Marcel, be yourself. I am not what you think, no, I am not. --It is my wish that you leave me, Veronica. --Everything I do is for your interest, Monsieur le Curé, you will understand it one day. --Leave me, I say. The servant withdrew. --It cannot last thus, he thought. What a scandalous scene! And what a horrible fatality thrusts me into this ridiculous and miserable situation! Ah, the apostle is right: "As soon as we leave the straight path, we fall into the abyss." And I am in the abyss, for I am the laughing-stock of this servant. What will become of me with this creature? How can I get rid of her? Can I turn her out? She would proclaim everywhere what she has discovered.... Ah, if it were only a question of myself alone! What a dilemma I am involved in! But that letter, that letter! Suzanne!... dear Suzanne ... no doubt it is she who has written to me, my heart tells me so loudly. He waited with feverish impatience for the postman's return. Expecting news from Suzanne, and fearing with good reason his servant's inquisitiveness, he had indeed asked him for the future to deliver his letters to himself only. He sought for various pretexts to send Veronica away, but the woman too discovered excellent reasons for not going out. She was present therefore, in spite of her master, at the delivery of the mysterious letter. Marcel's countenance at first displayed deep disappointment, but as he read on, it was lighted up by a ray of joy. XLVII. GOOD NEWS. "Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia O filii et filiae... Et Maria Magdalena Et Jacobi, et Salome! Alleluia." (_Easter-Mass Hymn_). "Rejoice, my son, and sing with me _Hosannah! Hosannah!_ The ways of the Lord are infinite. "Your personal enemy, Saint Anastasius Gobin, Grand-Vicar, Arch-Priest, Notary Apostolic and, like the ancient slave, as vile as anyone, _non tum vilis quam nullus_, has just left Nancy secretly, and in disgrace, like a guilty wretch as he is. "Ah, my poor friend, let us veil our faces like the daughters of Sion. It is written: 'If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.' Anastasius Gobin has lived too much after the flesh. Alas! we know it, and you know it. _Nemo melius judicare potest quam tu_, as Brutus said to Cicero; so you will not share in the astonishment of the Cathedral worshippers. I will relate the matter to you in private. "_Ergo_. You are henceforth safe from his persecution for ever; it is now only a question of regaining Monseigneur's favour. The serpent is no longer there to whisper perfidious insinuations into his too complaisant ear. When the beast is dead, the venom is dead. "I hope that adversity has been of use to you. You have experienced what it costs not to be sufficiently yielding. Now the future is yours; nothing has been lost except a few years, and those few years have brought, I hope, experience and knowledge of life. Courage then. _Filii Sion exultate et laetimini in Domino Deo nostro_. "I have faith more than ever in your lucky star, and I hope that you will form the consolation and the pride of my declining years. Yes, my friend, you will do honour to your old master. _Tu quoque Marcellus eris_! "As for myself, I am going to move heaven and earth for you, or, what is worth more, I am going to stir up the arrière-ban of the sacristies. "I know some worthy sheep of influence, who, for my sake, will do anything in their power. I have shown your photograph to the old Comtesse de Montluisant; she finds it charming, yes charming! and she has promised that before six months, Monseigneur shall swear by the Abbé Marcel alone. "That is rather too much to presume, for the old man is as obstinate as an Auvergne mule; but what I can promise you is a change of cure--that at length you shall leave your Thebaid. "Once again then, my dear fellow, courage. As soon as I have a few days to dispose of after Easter, I will hurry to you. And while we are tasting your wine, provided it is good (which I doubt, you dreadful stoic), we will discuss what is best to do. "Have patience then till then. _Vos enim ad libertatem vocati estis, fratres_, said St. Paul to the Galatians. I say so to you. "I embrace you tenderly, "Your spiritual Father "MARCEL RIDOUX "_Curé of St. Nicholas_." XLVIII. RECONCILIATION. "The fair Eglé chooses her part on a sudden In the twinkling of an eye, she becomes charming." CHAMPFORT (_Contes_). "Here is salvation," said Marcel to himself, "the solution of the problem, the end of my misery and shame, the blow which severs this infernal knot which enfolds me and was about to hurry me on to my ruin. God be blessed!" And he turned joyfully to his servant who was watching him: --Good news! Veronica. --I congratulate you, sir, she said, perplexed and disturbed. Are you nominated to a better cure? Does Monseigneur give notice of his visit? --Better than that, Veronica. My excellent and worthy uncle, the Abbé Ridoux, gives notice of his. --Monsieur le Curé of Saint Nicholas? --Himself. Do you know him? --Certainly. He came one day to see Monsieur Fortin (may God keep his soul) regarding a collection for his church. Ah, he has a fine church, it appears, and a famous saint is buried there. My poor defunct master was in the habit of saying that there was not a more agreeable man anywhere in the world, and I easily credited it, for he was always in a good temper. It's he then who has written to you. Well, if he comes here, it will make a little diversion, for we don't often laugh. --That is wrong, Veronica. A gentle gaiety ought to prevail in the priest's house. Gaiety is the mark of a pure heart and a quiet conscience. Where there is hatred and division there is more room for the spirit of darkness. Our Saviour has said: "Every house divided against itself shall perish." --He has said so, yes, Monsieur le Curé. --We must not perish, Veronica. --I have no wish to do so; therefore I do not cause the war. --Listen, Veronica. It would be lamentable and scandalous that my uncle might possibly be troubled on his arrival here by our little domestic differences, and particularly that he might suspect the nature of them. We are both of us a little in the wrong; by our each ascribing it to oneself, it will be easy for us to come to an understanding; will it not, Veronica? --Oh, Monsieur le Curé, we can come to an understanding directly, if you wish it. God says that we must forgive, and I have no malice. --Then it is agreed, we will talk of our little mutual complaints after supper. --I ask for nothing better; I am quite at your service. --And we will celebrate the good news. --I will take my share in the celebration. Ah, Monsieur le Curé, you do not know me yet; I hope that you will know me better, and you will see that I am not an ill-natured girl. My heart is as young as another's, and when we must laugh, provided that it is decent and without offence, I know how to laugh, and do not give up my share. --Good, said Marcel to himself, let me flatter this woman. That is the only way of preventing any rumour. I must leave Althausen, I will pass her on to my successor, but I do not want to have an enemy behind me. If you have my secret, you old hypocrite, I will have yours, and I will know what there is at the bottom of your bag of iniquity. XLIX. CONFIDENCES. "To thee I wish to confide this secret, Speak of it to no-one, we must be discreet They love too much to laugh in this unbelieving age." BABILLOT (_La Mascarade humaine_). That evening, contrary to his usual custom, the Curé of Althausen had coffee served after dinner, and told his servant to lay two cups. --You have asked somebody then? she enquired. --Yes, replied Marcel, I ask you, Veronica. The woman smiled. She went and assured herself that the door below was shut and that the shutters were quite closed, put together a bundle of wood which she placed partly on the hearth, and without further invitation, sat down facing her master. --We are at home, and inquisitive people will not trouble us. Marcel was offended at thus being placed on a footing of equality with his servant. Nevertheless he did not allow it to be seen. "It is my fault," he thought, and he answered quietly: --We have no reason to dread inquisitive persons, we are not going to do anything wrong. --Ah, Jesus, no. But, you know, if they saw your servant sitting at your table, they would not wait to look for the why and wherefore, they would begin to chatter. --It is true. --And one likes to be at home when one has anything to say, is it not so, Monsieur le Curé? Marcel bent his head: --You are a girl of sense, and that is why I can behave to you as one cannot usually with a ... common housekeeper. I am sure that you understand me. Then, after a moment's hesitation: --Twice already I have flown into a passion with you, Veronica; it is a serious fault, and I hope you will consent to forgive it. --Do not speak of that, Monsieur le Curé, I deserved everything that you have said to me. It is for me to ask your pardon for not behaving properly towards you. --I acknowledge all that you do in my interest: I know how to appreciate all your good qualities, so I pardon you freely. --Monsieur le Curé is too good. --No, I am not too good. For if I were so, I should have behaved differently towards you. But you know, there is always a little germ of ingratitude at the bottom of a man's heart. After all, I have considered, and I believe that with a little good will on one side and on the other, we can come to an understanding. --Yes, I am easy to accommodate. --Let us save appearances, that is essential. --You are talking to me like Monsieur Fortin. That suits me. No one could ever reproach me for setting a bad example. --I know it, Veronica; your behaviour is full of decency and dignity: it is well for the outside world, and as Monsieur Fortin used to say to you, we must wash our dirty linen at home. --Poor Monsieur Fortin. --That is what we will do henceforth. Come, Veronica. I have made all my disclosures to you, or very nearly. I have confessed to you my errors, and you know some of my faults as well as I do. Will you not make your little confession to me in your turn? You have finished your coffee? Take a little brandy? There! now sit close to me. --Monsieur le Curé, one only confesses on one's knees. --At the confessional before the priest, yes; but it is not thus that I mean, it is not by right of this that I wish to know your little secrets, but by right of a friend. --I am quite confused, Monsieur le Curé. --There is no Curé here, there is a friend, a brother, anything you wish, but not a priest. Are you willing? --I am quite willing. --You were talking to me lately about my predecessors, and, according to you, their conduct was not irreproachable. What is there then to say regarding them? Oh, don't blush. Answer me. --What do you want me to tell you? --They committed faults then?... --I have told you so, sir,--sometimes--like you. --Ah, Veronica, the greatest saint is he who sins only seven times a day. --Seven times! --Seven times, quite as much. You find, no doubt, that I sin much more, but I am far from being a saint. As to my predecessors, were they no greater saints? --Saints! Ah, Jesus! Do you wish me to tell you, sir? Well, between ourselves, I believe that there are none but in the calendar. --Oh, Veronica, Veronica. --Yes, sir, I believe it in my soul and conscience, and I can add another thing still. If, before they canonized all these saints, they had consulted their servant, perhaps they would not have found a single one of them. --What! you, the pious Veronica, you say such things? --One is pious and staid and everything you wish, but one sees what one sees. Monsieur Fortin was accustomed to say that no one is a great man to his _valet de chambre_; and I add, that no one is a saint to his cook. I tell you so. --But that is blasphemy, Veronica. --Blasphemy possibly, but it is the truth, Monsieur Marcel. --Have you then surprised my predecessors in some act of culpable weakness? --Oh, holy Virgin! I did not surprise them, it was they on the contrary who surprised me. --You!... And how then? --Monsieur le Curé, you don't understand me. You were speaking of their weakness, I meant to say that they had taken advantage of mine. --Ah, here we are, thought Marcel. Is it possible? What! of your weakness? these ecclesiastics? --Sir. You are an ecclesiastic too and yet ... if Mademoiselle Suzanne Durand.... --Don't go on, Veronica. I have asked you not to recall that remembrance to me. It is wrong of you to forget that. --Sweet Jesus! I don't want to offend you. I wanted to make you understand that since you, you have erred, the others.... --And what have they done? --Ah, it is very simple, Lord Jesus! --Let us see. --I hardly know if I ought to tell you that, I am quite ashamed of it. --Come, let us see, speak ... you have nothing to be afraid of before me ... speak, Veronica, speak. --Where must I begin? --Where you like; at the beginning, I suppose. --There are several of them. --Several beginnings? --Yes; I have had three masters, you know. --Well, with the last one, with Monsieur Fortin, that worthy man whom I knew slightly. --He was no better than the rest, Jesus! no. --The Abbé Fortin? --Lord God, yes, the Abbé Fortin! --What has he done then? --My God ... you know well, that which one does when one ... is a man ... and has a warm temperament. --To you, Veronica, to you? --Alas, sweet Jesus. Ah, Monsieur le Curé, I am so good-natured, I don't know how to resist. And then, you know, it is so hard for a poor servant to resist her master, particularly when he is a priest, who holds all your confidence, and possesses all your secrets, and with whom you live in a certain kind of intimacy; and besides a priest is cautious, and one may be quite sure that nothing of what goes on inside the parsonage, will get out through the parsonage door. --Assuredly; he will not go and noise his faults abroad. --And so with us, the priests' servants, who could be more cautious than we are? We have as much in it as our masters, have we not? and a sin concealed is a sin half pardoned. --Yes, Veronica, it was said long ago: "The scandal of the world is what causes the offence. And 'tis not sinning to sin in silence." --Those are words of wisdom; who is it who said so? --A very clever man, called Monsieur Tartuffe. --I see that. Be must have been a priest, at least? --He was not an ecclesiastic, but he was somewhat of a churchman. --That is just as I thought. Certainly we must hide our faults. Who would believe in us without that? I say _us_, for I am also somewhat a church-_woman_. --Undoubtedly. --I have spent my life among ecclesiastics. My father was beadle at St. Eprive's and my mother the Curé's housekeeper. --That is your title. --Is it not? Then I have the honour to be your maid-servant, and I am the head of the association of the Holy Virgin. --No one could contest your claims, Veronica; add to that you are a worthy and cautious person, and let us return to Monsieur Fortin. Ah, I cannot contain my astonishment. Monsieur Fortin!... And how did he go to work to ... seduce you? He must have used much deceit. --All the angels of heavens are witnesses to it, sir, and you shall judge. L. MAMMOSA VIRGO! "The monk could not refrain from admiring the freshness and plumpness of this woman. For a long time he made his eyes speak, and he managed it so well that in the end he inspired the lady with the same desire with which he was burning." BOCCACIO (_La Décaméron_). Veronica took several sips of the brandy which remained at the bottom of the cup, collected her thoughts for a moment, and casting her eyes down with a modest air, she proceeded: --The good Monsieur Fortin, as perhaps you know, used to drink a little of an evening. --Oh, he used to drink! --Yes, not every day, but every now and then; two or three times a week: but you know ... quite nicely, properly, without making any noise; he was gayer than usual, that was all. But when he reached that point, though he was ordinarily as timid as a lay-brother, he became as bold as a gendarme, and he was very ... how shall I say?... very enterprising. I may say that between ourselves, Monsieur le Curé, you understand that strangers never knew anything about it. If by chance anyone came and asked for him at these times, I used to say that he had gone out, or that he was ill. One day, I was finely put out. Christopher Gilquin's daughter came to call him to her mother who was at the point of death. He took it into his head to try and kiss her. The little one, who was hardly fifteen, did not know what it meant. I made her understand that it was to console her, and through pure affection for her and for her mamma. It passed muster. But when she had gone I gave it to him finely, and I made him go to bed ... and sharply too. --And he obeyed you? --I should think so, and without a word. He saw very well he was wrong. One evening then ... I had been in his service hardly six months--I must tell you first that he had looked at me very queerly for some time; I let him do so and said to myself: "Here is another of them who will do like the rest." And I waited for it to happen. I was better-looking then than I am now: I was ten years younger, Monsieur le Curé. --Ten years younger! but you were thirty then. How could you be a Curé's servant at that age? Our rules are opposed to it. --I passed as his relation. And that was tolerated. Besides, when Monseigneur made his visitation, I did not show myself ... for form's sake, for Monseigneur knew very well that I was there. I met him once on the stairs; he took hold of my chin, looked at me very hard, and said in a sly way: "Here is this little _spiritual sister_ then; faith, she is a pretty little rogue." I was so bashful. I asked Monsieur Fortin what a _spiritual sister_ was, and he told me that they used formerly to call women so who lived with priests. They say that all had two or three _spiritual sisters_. What indecency! I should not have allowed that. --Spiritual sister is not exactly the expression, said Marcel, it is _adoptive sister_, because they were adopted.[1] Alas, Veronica, the clergy were slightly dissolute in former times: it is no longer so in our days, in which so many holy ecclesiastics give an example of the rarest virtues. --Oh, three wives, Monsieur le Curé! three wives! sweet Jesus! they must have torn out each other's eyes. --No, Veronica. They agreed very well among themselves. They had different ideas at that time to what we have now. --One evening then Monsieur Fortin had drunk at table a little more than usual. I was going to bring the dessert and I leaned over to take up a dish which was before him. As the dish was heavy and rather far from my hand, I supported myself on the back of his chair, and involuntarily I rubbed against his body with my stomach. "Oh, oh," he said, "if that happens again I shall pinch that big breast." --What! Monsieur Fortin used that expression? --Yes, sir, and many others besides. I blush when I think of it.... Then I looked at him quite astounded. He began to laugh. I went to look for the cheese, and I passed again beside him on purpose, and supported myself on his chair again to place it on the table. "Ah," he cried, "she is beginning again. _O, mammosa virgo_!"--he repeated it so many times to me that I remember it--"so much the worse, I keep my promises." And he pinched me. --Where? --Where he had said. He made no error. I blushed for shame and drew back as quickly as possible: "How can he," I said to myself, "use Latin words to deceive poor women?" Then he cried: "Are you ticklish?"--Yes, sir. "Ah, you are ticklish. The big Veronica is ticklish! Who would have believed it?" And he laughed, but I saw clearly that his laugh was put on, and that something else preoccupied him. And from that moment, each time that I passed near him and stooped down to clear away, he tried to pinch me where he could: "And there," he said, "are you ticklish? are you ticklish there?" I was so stupefied that I could not get over it. "It is a little too much, Holy Mother of God," I said to myself, "a man like him! to pinch me in this way! who would believe it! One would not credit it, if one saw it! Ah, I will see how far he will go, and to-morrow I will give him an account." At last, when I saw that he would not stop it, and that he was going too far, I said to him severely: Monsieur le Curé, if you continue to tease me in this way, you shall see something. --What shall I see? he said getting up suddenly, I want to see it directly. Ah, _mammosa virgo_! you threaten your master! Wait, wait, I will teach you respect. And, pretending to punish me, he caught hold of as much as he could grasp with both hands; yes, sir, as much as he could. Ah, I was very angry, God can tell you so. --And did he stop? --Not at all, sir; quite the contrary. I escaped from his hands, and I turned round the table saying: "Ah, sweet Jesus, what is going to happen? Divine Saviour! How far will he dare to go?" To complete the misfortune, I let the lamp fall, and it went out. Then he put himself into a great passion, and soon caught me. "You have upset the oil," he cried. "I will teach you to spill the oil." He held me with all his might. Then I got angry in earnest, in earnest, you know. --Well? --Well, that was useless. I was taken like a poor fly. It was too late. It was all over. --All over! --All over. Monsieur Fortin let me go then. Ah! sir, if you knew how ashamed I was. [Footnote 1: They are still called _sisters agapetae_ or _subintroduced_ women. Perhaps it is not unnecessary to recall the fact that Gregory VII was the first of the popes to impose celibacy on the clergy. He nullified acts performed by married priests and compelled them to choose between their wives and the priesthood. In spite of this, and in spite of excommunication with which he threatened them, many kept their wives secretly, the rest contented themselves with concubines. Besides, the majority of the bishops, who lived after the same manner, tolerated for bribes infractions of the rule by the lower and higher clergy. The Council of Paris, in 1212, forbade them to receive money, proceeding from this source. At the present time, however, the Catholic priests of the Greeks-United, those of Libar and different Oriental communions, all under papal authority, not only may, but must take wives. St. Paul said: "Choose for priest him who shall have but one wife." Would he find many of them at the present time?] LI. CHAMBER MORALITY. "Practise moderation and prudence with regard to certain virtues which may ruin the health of the body." THE REV. FATHER LAURENT SCUPOLI (_Le Combat Spirituel_). --What a strange story, said Marcel. Oh, Veronica. But did you not make more resistance? --Resistance! I was lame from it for more than a fortnight. I walked like a duck. People said to me: "What is the matter with you, Mademoiselle Veronica? They say you have broken something!" Ah, if they had suspected what it was. --What a scandal! Monsieur Fortin! --He was stronger than I; but I don't give him all the blame. We must be just. It was my fault too. That is what comes of playing with fire. --But it seems to me, Veronica, that you displayed a little willingness. --Ah, Monsieur le Curé, you are scolding me for telling you all this so plainly. Was it not better for me to act thus, than to let Monsieur Fortin run right and left and expose himself to all sorts of affronts, as some do? That man had a temperament of fire. And that temperament must have expended itself on someone. The business about little Gilquin made me reflect. I sacrificed myself, and I acted as much in his interests as in the interests of religion. --And does not temperament speak in you also, Veronica? --Ah, that is only told in confession. --Nevertheless it is fine to rule your passions, to be chaste. --Ah, yes, as you were saying once when I came in: "Chaste without hope." All that is rubbish. God has well done all that he has done; I can't get away from that. --How can you bring the holy name of God into these abominable things? --Abominable! that is rubbish again. Monsieur Fortin and I often asked ourselves what evil that could do to God, when neither of us did any to other people. Monsieur Fortin used to say to me: "Are we doing evil to our neighbours, Veronica?" "Not that I know of, Monsieur le Curé." "Are we causing a scandal?" "Ah, Jesus, no, Monsieur le Curé." "Are we setting a bad example?" "No, Monsieur le Curé, no." "Are we populating the land with orphans?" "Oh, as to that, no." "Well then, in what way can we be offending God?" That was very well said all the same, the more so as his health depended on it. --But, replied Marcel, wishing to change the conversation which was verging upon dangerous ground, have you not told me that you have been in the service of ecclesiastics for nearly five-and-twenty years. That appears to me to be very extraordinary for, after all, you are hardly forty. --Thirty-nine, corrected Veronica, who was past forty-five. --Reason the more. --That is true, Monsieur le Curé, but I began early. At fifteen I went to the Abbé Braqueminet's. --I was acquainted with a Braqueminet, who was Bishop _in partibus_. A very worthy prelate. --That he is, sir; he went to America. --Come! this is too much, Veronica; you want to make a fool of me. At fifteen, do you say, that is too much! At thirty you were with the Abbé Fortin. I have no objection to that, since you passed as his relation, although with regard to this, our rules are precise, and we cannot take a housekeeper, till she is over a certain age. Sometimes, it is true, they smuggle in a few years: but fifteen years! --It is the exact truth, however, sir. I was fifteen years old, and no more at the Abbé Braqueminet's, and you will believe me, when I tell you that I was his niece. -Monseigneur Braqueminet's niece! you, Veronica? -Yes, sir, his niece; the Holy Virgin who hears me, will tell you that I was his niece, and I will explain to you how. LII. THE POSSET. "This little maid, so fair, with teasing ways, Was made to be a lovely man's support. For many a foolish thing in former days He did to gain a face less fair than thine." BÉRANGER (_la Célibataire_). My father, as I have told you, was beadle at Saint Eprive's, and my mother was servant to Monsieur le Curé. These were two good situations, but they had a number of children, and not much time to attend to them. Therefore when I was thirteen, they entrusted me to an old aunt who was willing to take charge of me. She was servant to Monsieur Braqueminet, who was then at Mirecourt. She placed me at first with a lady who made me look after her little children. At the end of a year Monsieur l'Abbé had a change, and went away to a village near Saint-Dié. He said to my aunt: "You cannot leave Veronica alone at Mirecourt; she will soon be fifteen; she is tall and nice-looking; she will run too much risk, and we must take her with us; but as it would make these foolish peasants chatter if their Curé had a strange young girl in the house, she shall pass as my niece. What do you say to this proposal?" My aunt was delighted and agreed to it directly, and all the more because I would have to assist her in the household work, and that her labour would thus be lightened. They took me away from my situation, they taught me my lesson, and I went away with them, very pleased to be Monsieur le Curé's niece. Ah! that was the best time of my life. My aunt spoilt me, Monsieur le Curé was excessively fond of me, I had all my wishes. All the ladies in the neighbourhood spoke to me civilly, the Collector's wife, the lawyer's wife, the Mayoress, the wife of the exciseman, they all, in short, made much of me. Mademoiselle Veronica here! Mademoiselle Veronica there! I had my place in the gallery. They invited me to dinner and they were rivals as to who should make me little presents, as if I were really his true niece; everybody believed it, and my aunt herself, by dint of hearing it said, ended by believing it herself, for she never called me anything else than Mademoiselle Veronica. Unfortunately after some time my aunt died. When we had both of us wept copiously for her, Monsieur le Curé said to me: "Now your aunt is dead, Veronica, what are you going to do?" I made no answer and burst again into tears. "You must not cry like that, little one, you will spoil your pretty eyes; will you remain with me? will you continue to be my niece?" That was my dream; I asked for nothing more. I thanked Monsieur Braqueminet with all my soul, and told him that as he wanted me to be his niece, I would remain his niece all my life.--"That is agreed," he said to me, "you shall keep my little house for me, and I will take another maid-servant for the heavy work only." For he was so nice to me that he would not allow me to fatigue myself in anything. Ah, the men, Monsieur le Curé, who can trust the men! See what he has made of me after all his fine promises: a poor servant, nothing more. --Had he then any reason to complain of you? --To complain of me! ah, sweet Paschal Lamb! Never has he said a word of reproach. But since I am in the mood to tell you everything, I may as well do so at once. It was he who had my innocence. --What! it was not the Abbé Fortin then? -No, Monsieur le Curé, it was the Abbé Braqueminet. --And how did he go to work to have your innocence? --Ah, he was a very clever man. First he knew how to inspire affection, he was so kind to me. It was I who managed everything. I was mistress of all, although so young, and, pray believe me, everything proceeded well. But ... one fine day a real niece turned up, no one knows whence ... and, faith, I was obliged to retire. I might have made an exposure, but I preferred to sacrifice myself. --Was she younger than you then? --The same age, sir, but she was fresh fruit. She appeared so innocent that one would have given her the sacrament without confession. Monsieur Braqueminet, he undertook to give her the Sacrament.... Yes, he undertook it, that man!... --But was she really his niece? --Yes, sir, his own sister's daughter. I have had proofs of it; do you think I should have gone away, without that? This sister hated me, and I thoroughly returned it; but when I saw her daughter arrive, I said to myself: I am well revenged. --But your innocence.... how did he have it? --Ah, you are anxious to know that. I must tell you everything then! everything! this is how it happened. He suffered a little from his chest, and every evening my aunt used to carry him up a posset. When my aunt was dead, I was obliged to take her place, for the servant we had taken was married, and went home at the end of the day. He knew very well what he was doing, and I, poor little lamb of God, believed everything. I was like a new-born child. It is not right to be so silly as that. God has punished me for it: it is quite right. I don't complain at it. So I used to take him up his posset every evening. Then he used to kiss me and squeeze me to his heart, calling me his dear niece, and charging me to be good: --You will always be good? he used to say to me. --Yes, uncle. --Always! you promise me. --Yes, uncle. --Ah, let me kiss you for that kind promise. I found that he kissed me for rather a long time and although it was very pleasant to me, still it used to give me reason for reflection: "How can he love me so much, I thought, when he is not my uncle?" You can judge by that if I was not silly. But it is perfectly conceivable, for I had never been to school, so who was there then to teach me naughtiness. A young girl's brain is active, and I formed a thousand fancies of every kind. "Perhaps he has some interest concealed underneath," I said artlessly to myself, "and perhaps he does not love me as he wishes me to believe." I was hardly fifteen, and you see I was quite candid and simple. I thought I would pretend to be ill, in order to make a trial of him, and see if he would be grieved and if he would come and nurse me. So one evening, when he had finished supper, I told him that I was not well, and that I was going to bed. He was reading his newspaper and did not appear to hear me. At least he made no reply. I went away very sadly and sorrowfully, thinking that his affection for me was not very great, as he did not give the least attention to my complaints. In short, I went to bed. "He will go to bed too very soon," I said to myself, "he will call for his posset and he will be obliged to get up to see why I do not bring it to him." Indeed, about an hour after, I heard his bell. I wrapped myself up in the sheets and pretended to be asleep. He rang a second time. "Veronica, Veronica," he cried, "my posset; what are you doing then? Have you forgotten it? Veronica!" I turned a deaf ear. LIII. THE LEG. "One is compelled sometimes to say to oneself, 'On what does ruin or safety depend?'" J. TOURGUENEFF (_Les eaux printanières_). Then I heard him come upstairs cautiously and stop at the door of my room. All at once he opened it. He remained standing still for a moment, then he came near my bed on tip-toe. I half-opened my eyes quickly, and the first thing I saw was his naked legs--my word, he had a very well-made leg! I looked again and saw that he was covered with an old black cloak which served him as a dressing-gown. I closed my eyes again quickly, and, without giving an account of my feelings, I was overcome by a strong emotion. My uncle passed his hand over my forehead. He found it burning, for he cried out directly: "But she is really ill, she is really ill, poor child." Then leaning over me: "Little one, little one, where are you in pain?" I pretended to wake up with a start, and I stared wildly at him, as if I was much surprised to see him there. We women have the instinct of deceit from birth; believe me, what I tell you is true, Monsieur le Curé. --It is possible, Veronica. --Well, then be said to me, "Where are you in pain, little one?" I put my finger on the pit of my stomach, and replied in a feeble voice "Here." He put his hand there, and I saw that he moved it about with complacency on that part. This touch seemed to make him beside himself, "Oh, the pretty little girl, the pretty little girl!" he said, "she is ill, poor dear child." And his hand continued to caress me. You may think how I was trembling. Although he did it very decently, I said to myself that it was not altogether proper, but I took good care not to utter a word. A girl is inquisitive, you know, and I was not displeased to see what he would come to. "Will you have a fomentation?" he said to me after a moment. "No, uncle," I answered, "I feel I am getting better, it is not worth while; I am even going to get up to make you your posset." "To get up, do you dream of it?... All the same, perhaps you are right, there is still some fire in my room: will you come there? you will warm yourself better than in your bed." "I will, if it does not disturb you." "Disturb me! no, no, don't be afraid of disturbing me; come, put on a dress and come." I sat up in bed, thinking that he would go out of the room to let me dress, but he remained standing in front of me, and his looks frightened me. I remained sitting on the bed, without stirring. "Well, well, little girl, you are not getting up?" "I dare not get up before you, uncle." "Are you silly? What are you afraid of? Are you not my niece? Come, come, out of bed, little stupid." He said that in a gentle insinuating voice, and I dared not hesitate any more. I put one leg out of bed. He followed my movements with the greatest attention; "Well, well, and that other leg?" I put out the other leg, blushing all over with shame, and I wanted to take my petticoat. But he came near directly and said: "Oh, the lovely little lass, how pretty she is like this.... You will always be good, will you not?" "Yes, uncle." "How pretty you are when you are good. You will always be so? You promise?" "Yes, uncle." "Oh, I want to kiss you for that kind promise." --I held out my cheek to him without resistance, but it was my mouth which received the kiss. It was followed by a thousand others. One is not of iron, Monsieur le Curé, and that was how ... I ... lost my innocence. --What, Veronica, you fell so easily! They say that it is only the first step which is painful, but it seems hardly to have been painful to you. --Oh, Monsieur le Curé, we women are full of faults, and we deserve only eternal damnation. --I do not say that, Veronica. Certainly in this circumstance all the fault lies on your seducer, but I should have preferred more struggle on your part. --You men are very good with your struggle. To hear you, we never make enough resistance. Would one not say that the poor women are made of another paste than you, and that they ought to be harder? --No, but it is necessary to know how to govern one's passions. That is the noble, the lofty, the meritorious thing. Resist temptation, everything lies in that. [PLATE III: THE LEG. "Oh, the lovely little lass, how pretty she is like this..."] [Illustration] --Everything lies in that, I know it well; but what would you? I had lost my head entirely like Monsieur Braqueminet. And I did not know what he wanted, or what he was going to do. I only understood when it was too late. --Ah, Veronica, you singular woman, you have made me quite beside myself with your stories. --It was you who wished it. --The Abbé Fortin! the Abbé Braqueminet! God of heaven! and who besides? --The Abbé Marcel! --Yes, it is true, I also ... I have been on the point of transgressing. Ah! temptation is sometimes very strong, Veronica, my good Veronica; the noble thing is to resist. The greatest saints have succumbed. St. Origen was obliged to employ a grand means, you know what, my daughter? --Monsieur Fortin has told me. But you must not act like that saint; that would be a pity, it would be better to succumb, dear Monsieur Marcel. How I like your name, Marcel, Marcel, it is so soft to the mouth. --To resist temptation like Jesus on the mountain.... --There was but one Jesus. --Like St. Antony in the desert.... --That is rubbish; in the desert no one could tempt him. --Leave the room, Veronica; since you have talked to me, I understand the fault of your former masters; leave the room. --Are you afraid of me then? Angels of heaven, a woman like me. Is it possible? Ah, I should have been very proud of it. --Proud to make me sin? --Sin! Sin! Monsieur le Curé: why do we call that a sin? She came nearer to him. He wished to rise from his chair, but his hand went astray, he never knew how, on his servant's waist. Oh vow of chastity, sentiments of modesty, manly dignity and priestly virtue, where were you, where were you? LIV. MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM. "Well, you have found it, this ephemeral happiness." BABILLOT (_La Mascarade humaine_). Sadness succeeds to joy, deception to illusion, the awakening to the dream, the head-ache to the debauch. When the crime is perpetrated, remorse, the avenging lash of virtue, comes and scourges the conscience. "Come, up, vile thing! thou hast slept over long." And it exposes to the wretch the emptiness of pleasures, purchased at the price of honour. The dawn found the Curé of Althausen groaning secretly to himself on his couch. He had made himself guilty of an abominable wickedness, he had just committed an inexcusable crime, he had succumbed cowardly, ignominiously; he had betrayed his faith, abjured his priestly oaths, forgotten his duties, prostituted his dignity on the withered breast of an old corrupted maid-servant. Suzanne, the adorable young girl, who in the first place had insensibly and involuntarily drawn him on the road of perjury, for whom he would have sacrificed honour, reputation, the universe and his God, he had abjured her also in the arms of this drab. And that was the wound which consumed his heart the most. For as soon as we have yielded to the infernal temptation, the lying prism vanishes, the halo disappears, and there only remains vice in all its hideousness and repulsive nudity. It is then that we hear a threatening voice mutter secretly in the depths of our being. Happy is he who, already slipping on the fatal descent, listens to that voice: "Stop, stop; there is still time, raise thyself up." But most frequently we remain deaf to that importunate cry. And, weary of crying in vain, conscience is silent. It no more casts its solemn serious note into the intoxicating music of facile love. And the wretch, devoured by insatiable desire, pursues his coarse and looks not back. He goes on, he ever goes on, leaving right and left, like the trees on the way-side, his vigour and his youth which he scatters behind him. He set forth young, robust and strong, and he arrives at the halting-place, worn-out, soiled and blemished. There is the ditch, and he tumbles headlong into it. He falls into the common grave of cowardice and infamy. The lowest depths receive him and restore him not again. Seek no more, for there is no more; the worms which consume him to his gums have already consumed his brain, and his heart is but gangrened. Disturb not this corpse, it is only putrefaction. The poet has said: "Evil to him who has permitted lewdness Beneath his breast its foremost nail to delve! The pure man's heart is like a goblet deep: Whe the first water poured therin is foul, The sea itself could not wash out the spot, So deep the chasm where the stain doth lie." Marcel had not reached that point, but he felt that he was on a rapid descent, and made these tardy reflections to himself: "Shall I ever be able to see the light of day? Shall I ever dare to raise my eyes after this filthy crime? Oh Heaven, Heaven, overwhelm me. Avenging thunderbolt of omnipotent God, reduce me to ashes, restore me again to the nothingness, from which I ought never to have come forth." But Heaven did not overwhelm him that day, nor was there the slightest rumbling of thunder. Nature continued her work peacefully, just as if no minister of God had sinned. The sun, a glorious sun of Spring, came and danced on his window, and he heard as usual the happy cries of the pillaging sparrows as they fluttered in his garden. There was a movement by his side, and he felt, close to his flesh, the burning flesh of Veronica; she was awake and looking at him with a smile. She felt no remorse; she was proud and happy, and her eyes burning with pleasure and want of sleep were fixed on her new lover with restless curiosity. [PLATE IV: MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM. ...he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.... And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.] [Illustration] Doubtless she was saying to herself: "Is it really possible? Am I then in bed with this handsome priest? Is my dream then realised?" And to assure herself that she was not dreaming, that she was really in the Curé of Althausen's bed, she spoke to him in mincing tones: --You say nothing, my handsome master. You seem to be dejected. What! you are not tired out already? And she put out her hand to give him a caress. But he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust. --Ah, true, she said, happiness makes us forgetful. I was forgetting your Mass. And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm. LV. IN THE FOOT-PATH. "'Tis the comer blest where God's creatures dwell, The wild birds' haunt and the dragon-fly's home, Where the queen-bee flies when she leaves her cell, Where Spring in the verdant glades doth roam." CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Les Rustiques_). "Abomination of abomination!" murmured Marcel, and he went out in haste; he would not remain another minute in that cursed house. It seemed to him that the walls of his room reeked of debauchery, and that everything there was impregnated with the odour of foul orgies. He went out of the village, unconscious of his road, like a hunted criminal; he tried to escape from himself, for that harsh officer, remorse, had laid vigorous hold of his conscience. Be followed at random the foot-paths, lined by gardens by which he had passed so many times with placid brow and a clean heart; he walked on, he walked on, with bare head, and blank and haggard eyes, thinking of nothing but his crime, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, not oven the bell which summoned him to his morning Mass, as it cheerfully filled the air with its silver notes. The morning was as bright as the face of a bride. May was shedding its perfumes and flowers on the paths, and displaying everywhere its marvellous adornments of universal life,--labour and love. The children were already tumbling about in the foot-paths, the birds were warbling in the hawthorn hedges, and in the moist grass the grasshopper was saluting the rising sun. And he, in the midst of all this joy and all this life, was walking on with his head filled with vague ideas of suicide. A few peasants passed near him and sainted him: he saw them not; he saw not the children who stopped still and gazed in bewilderment at his strange appearance: he saw not Suzanne who was approaching at the end of the path. She was only a few paces away when he raised his head, and all his blood rushed to his heart. Vision blessed and cursed at the same time. She, she there, at the vary moment of the consummation of his shame. She before him when he had just dug an abyss between them. What should he say? Would she not read on his troubled face the shameful secret of the drama within? Was not his crime written on his sullied brow in indelible soars? He would have wished the earth to open under his feet. Meanwhile she advanced blushing, perhaps as greatly agitated as himself. And from the smile on her rosy lips, from the brightness of her dark eyes, from the gram of her carriage, from the chaste swelling of her bosom, from the folds of her dress which, blown by the morning breeze, revealed the harmonious outlines of her fairy leg, from all those inexpressible maiden charms, there breathed forth that _something_, for which there is no name in the language of men, but which accelerates the beating of the heart, which pours into the veins an unknown fluid, and bids us murmur low to the stranger who passes by, and whom perhaps we may never see again: "My life is thine, is thine!" Mysterious sensation, which, in the golden days of youth, we have all experienced once at least with ravishing delight. And everything seemed to say to Marcel: "Fool! If thou hadst wished it, we were thine. The delights of paradise were thine, and thou hast preferred the impurities of hell!" Oh, if he had been able, if he had dared, he would have cast himself at this maiden's feet, he would have kissed her knees, he would have grovelled on the ground and cried with tears: "Pardon! pardon! Fate has caused it all. Almighty God will never pardon me, but it is thou whom I implore, and what matters it, if thou, thou dost pardon me." The feeling of the reality recalled him to himself. Who was aware of his fault, and what was there, besides, in common between this young girl and himself? One evening when alone with her, he had acted imprudently, that was all, and it was now long ago. Then, through desperation and also to show that he attached no importance to that act of imprudence which he had almost forgotten, he assumed an icy demeanour. She advanced with a smile, but she felt it congeal on her lips before this insolent coldness, while he, gravely bowing to her as before, a stranger, passed on. LVI. DOUBLE REMORSE. "Ah, how much better are the love-tales which we spelt in our eyes with our hearts." CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Croquis d'automne_). His Mass said, Marcel did not want to return to the parsonage. He made his way slowly to the wood, absorbed by a world of thoughts. All was quite changed since the day before, and what a revolution had been wrought in his soul in one day. The day before there was still time to stop, there was time to cast far away temptations and impure desires, to avoid the infernal snares and ambushes, to take refuge, according to the Apostle's advice, in the bosom of God; now it was too late, it was no longer in his power; he found himself hemmed in within the circle of abominations, and he did not see how he could get forth. A double remorse tormented him, and wrung his conscience with fierce fingers. On the one hand, there was his servant, become his accomplice and his mistress, an odious thing; his servant defiling his couch, hitherto immaculate; his couch of a virtuous priest. Then, on the other, there was the fair pale face of Suzanne, full of reproaches, surprised and sad. Why had he not stopped? What fury had urged him forward, cold and scornful, when he burned to hear once again the sound of that voice which stirred his heart! And the memory of that meeting, at the very moment of the consummation of his infamy, was the blow of the lash which laid bare the open wound of his remorse. He did not curse his crime more than the inopportuneness and the awkwardness of that crime. What! be had given himself up to a despicable old woman, he had slaked the thirst of that ghoul with his generous blood, he had abandoned to that hell-hag the promises of his young body and his virgin soul, while a young girl whose like he had never seen but in fairy tales and dreams, came to him and seemed to say to him: "You may love me." And he had repulsed her in order to give himself up to the former: that horrible creature, that hypocrite, that sorceress. And now that his judgment was calm, he could not understand how he had allowed himself to be carried away by such clumsy manoeuvres, that he had fallen in so cowardly a way, and for such an object. If, at least, it had been in the arms of the lovely school-girl! If his virtue had melted under the kisses of her charming lips! But no, none of all that: none of those unparalleled joys, of those ineffable delights, of those divine and sweet pleasures. Unclean touches, a withered body, an impure mouth. Lewdness instead of love. And his servant's caresses recurred to him and froze him like the infernal spectres of a hideous nightmare. He saw again her face, lighted up by amorous fever, her fiery lecherous look, fastening on him with all the wild fury of her forty-five years, with the cynicism of the sham saint who has thrown away her mask, and who, after long fasting, continence and privation, finds at length the means of glutting herself, and wallows more than any other in the sewer of obscenities and Saturnalia. He saw her again like the old courtesan of Horace, ...._Mulier nigris dignissima barris_ soliciting horribly her too avaricious caresses, and employing all the arsenal of her filthy seduction to excite him. Meanwhile the hours were passing away. The spirit travels in vain into the land of phantoms; nature performs her modest functions without caring for the wanderings of the spirit. He felt by the pangs of his stomach that he had as yet only breakfasted on the body of Christ, a meagre repast after a night consecrated to Venus. In short, he was hungry, and he decided to return to the parsonage. LVII. THE EXPLOSION. "What dost thou want with me, old vixen, worthy to have black elephants for thy lovers.... With what passion dost thou reproach me for my disgust." HORACE (_Epodes_). Veronica was waiting for him with a puckered smile. At another time she would have made a great uproar, for the hour for the meal had struck long ago; but she did not wish to abuse her freshly conquered rights, and she contended herself with asking in accents of soft reproach. --How late you are. Where have you come from? I was beginning to be anxious. Marcel made no reply. --You don't answer me. Why this silence? Are you vexed already? Where have you come from? --I have just been reading my breviary, replied Marcel sharply. The servant smiled, and pointed out to him his breviary, lying on the table. --Why tell a lie? she said, I don't bear you any ill-will, because you went towards the wood, although I should have preferred to see you return here quickly. Ah, you are not like me, you have not my impatience. But men are all like that; they do all they can to have a woman, and afterwards they scorn her. This sentence struck the Curé to the heart like a pin prick. It opened his wounds, already bleeding overmuch, it recalled the shameful memory which he wished to drive away, and which rose up obstinately before him. --You are changing our parts in a strange manner, he cried indignantly. --There you are vexed. Why are you vexed? What have I done to you? Have I said anything wrong to you? Do you then regret? Ah, doubtless I am not young enough or pretty enough for you. --I pray; enough upon that shameful subject. You are revolting. --What do you say? replied the woman, wounded to the quick. --I have no need to repeat it, you heard me, I think. --I heard you, it is true, but I thought I was mistaken. Ah! I am revolting! revolting! Well, I am content to learn it from your mouth. But it is not to-day that you ought to tell me that, sir, it was yesterday, yesterday, she cried insolently. --Yesterday! yesterday! Oh! let us forget yesterday, I implore you. I would that there were between yesterday and to-day, the night and the oblivion of the tomb. --Yes? is that your thought? Well, for my part, I will forget nothing. Oh! you are pleased to wish to forget, are you? Therefore, you give yourself up to all your passions, you make use of a poor girl in order to satiate them, and the next day, when you are tired and weary from your debauchery, with no pity for the unhappy one who has trusted you, you say: "Let us forget." Ah! I know you all well, you virtuous gentlemen, you fine priests who preach continency and morality, you are all just the same, all of you, do you hear? --Veronica, be silent, in the name of Heaven. --I will not be silent, I will not. So much the worse if they hear me. What does that matter to me, poor unhappy creature that I am? It is not I who am guilty, it is you. It is not I who am charged to teach morality, it is you. It is not I who preach fine sermons on Sunday about chastity and purity and morals, and who hide myself behind the shutters to watch half-naked tumblers dancing in the market-place, who entice little girls at night under some pretest or other, and who kiss them when the servant has turned her back. Yes, yes, you have done that. I blush for you. And you are Monsieur le Curé! Monsieur le Curé. If that wouldn't make the hens laugh. Ah, what does it matter to me that they hear me telling you the truth, it is not I who will be despised by everybody, it will be you. Have I gone and sought for you, have I? You have made me tell you a lot of stories which ought not to be told except in confession, you have made me sit down beside you, drink brandy,... and then afterwards you have taken advantage of me. Yes, you have taken advantage of your maid-servant, a poor girl who has been all her life the victim of priests like you. No, I will not be silent, I will cry it upon the house-tops, if I must. Ah! you have taken me like a thing which one makes use of when convenient, and which one throws away, when one has no more need of it: I understand you; but I have more self-respect than that, although I am only a poor servant. You want to forget. Very good. But I do not want to forget, and I shall not forget. Oh, I well know what it is your want, Messieurs les Curés; you want young girls, quite young girls, green fruit, which you pick like that at the Confessional, or in some corner, without appearing to touch it, and all the while praying to God. I am aware of that, you know. You cannot teach any tricks to me. You did not get up early enough, my good master. Your Suzanne! there is what would please you. You would not tell her that she is revolting. Affected thing! But they will give you them, wait a little. _Go and see if they are coming, Jean_. The little girls come like that and throw themselves at your neck! You would allow it perhaps. That is what would be revolting. But the mammas are watching, and the papas are opening their eyes. You hear, Monsieur le Curé? The papas; that is what annoys you. Papa Durand. --Here! cried a voice of thunder from the bottom of the stair-case, and it resounded in Marcel's ears like the trumpet of the last judgment. Pale and terrified, he questioned Veronica with his eyes. --It is he, she said, hurrying to the landing-place. LVIII. PROVOCATION. "For her, for her I will drink the cup to the dregs." A. DE VIGNY (_Chatterton_). --A thousand pardons, said the Captain, but the door was open and I have knocked twice. Monsieur le Curé, I have the honour to salute you. I am not disturbing you? --Not at all, Monsieur le Capitaine, quite the contrary, I am happy to see you; please come in, stammered Marcel, trying to conceal his confusion, and to look pleasantly at the old soldier. He eagerly brought forward an arm-chair for him, the one on which Suzanne had sat. "Ah," he thought, "if he knew that his daughter was there, at this same place!" The Captain sat down, and, tapping his cane on the floor, seemed to be seeking for a way of entering on his subject; he appeared anxious, and Marcel noticed that he no longer had his decisive scoffing manner. --Monsieur le Curé, he said after a moment's silence, you must be a little surprised to see me ... although, after what I believe I heard, I may not be altogether a stranger here. --My parishioners are no strangers, Captain. --Parishioner! oh, I am hardly that. I was not making allusion to that title, but to my name, which was uttered at the very moment when I was at your door. --Your name, Captain, said Marcel growing red; but there are several persons of your name. --That is what I said to myself. There is more than one donkey which is called Neddy, and more than one _Papa_ Durand in the world. _Papa_! that recalls to me my position as father, sir, and the purpose of my presence here. Marcel trembled. --For you may guess that independently of the pleasure of paying you a call, I have moreover another object in view. --Proceed, Captain. --Yes, sir. I wish to talk to you about my daughter. --About your daughter! cried Marcel. --About my daughter, if you allow me. --Do so, I beg of you. --Monsieur le Curé, you have been in this neighbourhood some six or eight months. People have certainly spoken to you about me; they have told you who I am; a miscreant, a man without religion, who regards neither law or Gospel: that is to say, only worth hanging. In spite of that, you came to see me. Very good. You know that I do not pick and choose my words, that I do not seek a lot of little twisting ways to express my meaning. You have had a proof of it. I am blunt, and even brutal, that is well known; but I am open and true. --I do not doubt it, Captain. --After our little conversation the other day, you must have decided on my sentiments with regard to those of your profession. Are those sentiments right or wrong? That is my business. I am not come to begin a controversy, I am come to ask for an explanation. --Please go on, said Marcel alarmed. --Not liking the priests, I should have wished to bring up my daughter in these principles. You see I am straightforward. Unfortunately, like many other things, her education has slipped out of my hands. We soldiers do not accumulate property, and those who have the best share, if they have no private fortune, remain as poor as Job. We are not able therefore to bring up our children as we intend. The State, in its solicitude, is willing to undertake this care: we are glad of it, and we are thankful to the State; but our children slip out of our hands; they become what the State wishes them to be, that is to say, its humble servants, and, if they are daughters, anything but what their father has ever dreamed. Marcel breathed again: --The vocation of children, he said softly, is often in contradiction to the wishes of parents, and that is precisely the sign of the real vocation ... to shatter obstacles. Where is the great artist, the great man, the hero, the saint, the martyr, who has not had to struggle with his own family? --I am not speaking of a vocation, sir, but of prejudices, of fatal habits, of disheartening nonsense, which children, and especially young girls, imbibe in certain surroundings. The education which my daughter has received, has inoculated her with ideas which I am far from blaming in a woman--I have my religion myself too--but the abuse of which I resent. I am not then at war with my daughter because she has her own, and her own is more receptive, but what I blame with all my power, and what I am determined to oppose with all my power is the excessive attendance at church and on the priest ... on the priest, above all. You are a man, sir, and you understand me, do you not? --I understand, Captain, that you do not wish your daughter to go to church. --As little as possible, sir. --Nevertheless, as a Christian and as a Catholic, she has duties to perform. --What do you mean by duties? --Why, the first elements which the Catechism prescribes. --I do not remember exactly what your catechism prescribes, but if you mean by that the little box where they tell their sins, that is exactly what I absolutely forbid. --Nevertheless a young person has need of counsel. --Undoubtedly; but that counsel I intend to give myself. --There is also the priest's part, Captain. --Allow me to have another opinion. Besides, the adviser is too young; that is why, Monsieur le Curé, I ask you to abstain in the future from all advice, and undertake to abandon any intention you may have with regard to the direction of this young soul. Such is the purport of my visit. --Monsieur le Capitaine, answered Marcel, relieved from a great weight, I am an honourable man. Another perhaps might be offended at this proceeding. I will take no offence at it. Another perhaps might answer: "It is a soul to contend for with Satan; it is the struggle between the Church and the family; an old struggle, sir, an eternal struggle. You are master to impose your will among your own, just as among us, we are masters to act according to our conscience. As a father of a family, your rights are sacred, but they stop at the entrance to the holy place. You desire the struggle. It lies between us." For myself I simply reply: "Let it be done according to your wish, and may the will of God equally be done!" --And what does that mean? --That your daughter is and shall be in my eyes like all the souls which Heaven has willed to entrust to my care. If she does not come to church, I will not go to seek her; but if she comes there, I cannot ask her to depart. --You are really too good. And if she comes and kneels in the little box? --Then the will of God will be stronger than the paternal will. --That is no answer. --Well! what can I do? humbly replied Marcel. --Allow me, sir; I ask you what you would do in such a case. --I make you the judge of it; can I treat your daughter differently to the other ladies of the parish? --That is to say that you will receive her confession? --That will be my duty, Captain. I am frank also, you see. --But, Monsieur le Curé, the first of your duties is not to encourage the disobedience of children, and not to place yourself between a father and his daughter. --I place myself on no side, Captain. I confine myself, as far as I can, to the very obscure and modest character of a poor priest. I am charged with an office; is it possible, I ask you yourself, for me to repel those who address themselves to that office? --Very good, sir, said the Captain rising; I know henceforth what to rely on. --Pardon me, Captain, but allow me to say that your proceedings and apprehensions appear to me a trifle superfluous; for indeed, if you have a reproach to make your daughter, it is not that of excessive devotion, for it is a long time since she has come to church. --I have forbidden it to her, sir. But my daughter is grieved, and that pains me. I came to address myself to you, man to man, and as you see, I am disappointed. --Believe me, Captain, let the thing alone. Do nothing in a hurry. Young people are irritated by obstacles. They need freedom and diversion. Think of this young lady's position, dropped from her school into the midst of this solitude, having neither friends or companions any longer; at that age, the family is not everything; books, walks, music are not sufficient, What harm is there in her coming sometimes on Sunday, to hear Divine Service? We do not conceal it from ourselves, sir, that many women whom we see at service, come there for relaxation. --And it is precisely that relaxation which ruins them. --Not in the church, sir. --Not there, no. But behind, in the sacristy, or at the back of some well-closed room. Adieu, sir. --I do not want to criticize your language, Captain But one word more, I ask. Is your daughter acquainted with your proceeding? --Why that question? --Because then my task will be all traced out. --What task? --To avoid every sort.... --Of intercourse. Do what honour counsels you, and trust to me for the rest. I will act with my daughter as it will be suitable for me to act. As for you, you have asserted that any other priest _less honourable_ would have said to me: "We are going to engage in the struggle, it lies between us." I see now that in your mouth the word _honourable_ signifies _polite_, for you have been polite, but the other alone would have been frank and honourable. "Between us" is better, "between us" pleases me. It is plainer and shorter. Again, I have the honour to salute you. LIX. ACTS AND WORDS. "Intrigues of heavy dreams! We go to the right; darkness: we go to the left; darkness: in front; darkness ... the thread which you think you hold, escapes out of your hand, and, triumphant for a moment, you set yourself again to grope your way to the catastrophe, which is a denseness of shadows." CAMILLE LEMONNIERE (_Croquis d'automne_). When the Captain had gone away, Marcel perceived the triumphant face of his servant. Mad with shame and rage he shut himself up in his room, and asked himself what was going to become of him. "What am I to do?" he said to himself; "here is the punishment already." Nevertheless, on serious reflection, he saw a way all traced out before him; it was the ancient, the good, the old way which he had followed until then, and into which the Captain had just brutally driven him back: The way of his duty. To forget Suzanne! He had that very morning, without wishing it, almost unknowingly, commenced the rapture; the father's visit had just completed the work. To forget Suzanne! Yes, he would forget her, he must; not only his honour, his reputation, but his very existence were involved in it. Material impossibilities rose up before him in every direction where he tried to deviate from the straight path. His servant! The father! He was compelled to be an honourable man anyhow, not lost sight of, watched and spied upon by these two enemies. To forget Suzanne! How, after what had passed the previous day, would he dream for a moment of remembering her? He was almost thankful to his servant for having stopped him in time on a descent, at the end of which was scandal and dishonour. In any other circumstances his pride would have revolted at the menaces of the foolish father, he would have been stung in his self-esteem, and he would have disputed with him for his treasure. But where was his pride? Where was his dignity? He had left all that on the lap of a cook. Reputation was safe; that was henceforth the only good which he must keep at any price. "Come," said he, "keep it, have courage. Stand up, son of saints and martyrs. Yield not, hesitate not, march forward, without being anxious for what is on the right or left. Do thy duty in one direction, since in the other thou hast failed. Is a man then lost because he has for one moment deviated from his way? Is he dead for one false step? Peter denied his master three times, thou hast done so but once!"[1] The postman's ring drew him from his reverie. He ran to receive the letter, recognized the writing, hastily put it into his pocket, took up his hat and his breviary, and went out without saying a word. When he was in the little hollow road which is at the bottom of the hill, he turned round, and, certain that he was not being followed, only then did he open the letter which follows: "MONSIEUR LE CURÉ, "Why are you vexed with me? If you have not seen me any more at Mass, it is that I have had to contend with my father, and that I have been obliged to yield. Nevertheless, I am unhappy, and more than ever have I need of your counsel. You have said: 'We cannot serve two masters,' and 'it is very difficult to render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's.' One word, if you please, through the medium of Marianne to "Your very devoted "S.D." He tore up the letter into the smallest fragments and returned home in all haste. A few hours after, Marianne received the following notice: _"To-morrow evening at 7 o'clock, in honour of the Holy Virgin, there will be Salutation and Benediction at the Chapel of St. Anne. The faithful are besought to attend."_ [Footnote 1: Thou art man and not God, says the holy book of Consolation, thou art flesh and not an angel. How canst thou always continue in very virtue?] LX. TALKS. "When from the hills fell balmy night, 'Neith the dark foliage of the lofty trees, Starred by the moon-beams' placid light, Often we wandered by the water's side." CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Poésie inédite_). As he expected, she did not fail to be at the meeting-place. She was unaware of her father's proceedings; it was Marcel who informed her of them. She was quite terrified; but he reassured her, and knew how to soothe her young conscience; and meeting followed meeting. Dear and innocent meetings. The most prudish old woman would have found nothing to find fault with. The mystery, and their being forbidden, formed all their charm. The Chapel of St. Anne, half-a-league distant from the village, was a charming object for a walk. You cross the meadow as far as the little river, bordered with willows, then the chapel is reached by a hollow lane hedged with quicksets. The sweet month of May had begun. Three evenings a week the little nave was in festal dress, and filled with light, and perfumes and flowers. Suzanne went no more to Mass, but she had said to her father: --Will you not let me go instead and take a walk sometimes beside Saint Anne's, to hear the music and the singing of the congregation? --Marianne shall accompany you, replied Durand. They were always the last to leave the chapel, and Marcel soon rejoined them. It was at some winding of the path that he used to meet them _by chance_, and every time he showed great surprise. They walked slowly along, talking of one thing and another. The Spring, the latest books, the _good_ Captain's rheumatism, were themes of inexhaustible variety. The future sometimes attracted their thoughts, her own future; and the priest tried to cause a few fresh rays to shine into the young unquiet soul. They talked also of the school and of friends who had gone out into the world. One of them, a fair child with blue eyes, was her best-beloved and the fairest of the fair, and Marcel sometimes felt jealous of these warm, young-girl friendships. He did not disdain to talk of fashions; it is one way of pleasing, and he admired aloud the elegant cut of the waist, the twig of lilac fastened to the body of her dress, and the graceful art which had twined her long jetty plaits. She smiled and said: "What, you too; you too; you pay attention to these woman's trifles!" But what matters the topic of their conversations, all they could say was not worth the joyous note which sang at the bottom of their hearts. When they drew near the village he bowed to her respectfully, and each one returned by a different way. Marianne was then profuse in her praises: -What a fine Curé! she said, so kind and civil. If your father only knew him better! And Suzanne, who returned very thoughtful, said once: "The Curé! can it be? It is the Curé then." LXI. LE PÈRE HYACINTHE. "She still preserved for herself that little scene; thus, little by little, we accumulate within ourselves all the elements of the inner life." EMILE LECLERCQ (_Une fille du peuple_). She had shown Marcel the portrait of her beloved Rose. "Yes, she is very pretty," he had replied, "but I prefer dark girls ..." Suzanne blushed. He opened his breviary and drew out a card. --Are you going to show me a dark girl? she said. He handed it to her without answering. It was the photograph of a man of about forty, with strongly-marked and characteristic features. The eyes, prominent and slightly veiled, were surrounded with a dark ring, a token of struggle, fatigue and deception. A profile out of a picture of Holbein in every-day dress. --It is a priest, she cried. --It is a priest, indeed, answered Marcel. We are recognized in any costume. We cannot conceal our identity. Do you know who that is? --Is it not that monk who has made such a noise? That Dominican who has married, and broken with the Church? --Yes, Mademoiselle. The young girl regarded it with curiosity. --It must have been a violent passion to come to that, she said. --No, it was an idea well resolved upon and matured. No transport of youth carried him away. See, he is no longer young, and the companion he has chosen is very nearly his own age, and he had for her only a tender and holy feeling. --Why then this uproar and scandal? --In order to protest aloud against a rule which he did not approve. In our days there are so many cowardly and degenerate characters, that we cannot too greatly admire those who have the courage to proclaim their opinion in the presence of the mob, especially when those opinions shock the brutalized mob; for my part I admire this man; but what I admire still more is the woman who has dared to put her hand in his, and brave the derision of the vulgar, and the calumnies of hypocrites. --But his vows? --What is a vow when it is a question of the duty which your conscience dictates? I heard him say one day: "If, after reaching middle age, I have decided after long reflection to choose a companion, it is not in response to the cry of the senses, but in order to sanctify my life." He has taken back the word which he had given, as we all do, at an age when we are ignorant of the import, and the consequence of that word. Be assured that his conscience does not reproach him, for you can see on this fine countenance that his conscience is at rest. Besides, is it the case that God enjoins celibacy? The celibacy of priests dates only from the year 1010: Christ never speaks about it. --And so he has broken with all his past, his relations, his world; he has ruined what you men call his future. He must begin his life again. --And he begins it again in accordance with his inclinations, his needs and his heart: It is never too late to change the road when we discover that we have taken the wrong way. It takes longer time, there is more hardship, but what matters it, provided we attain happiness, the end which we all have in view. Ah, Mademoiselle, how many, like he, would wish to begin their life again, if they found a courageous soul who was willing to accompany them? The future, do you say? But the future, the present, the past, the whole life lies in the sweet union of hearts. To devote oneself, to renounce everything, to give up everything, even one's illusions, one's beliefs, one's dreams for the loved object, is not a sacrifice: it is the sweetest of joys and the noblest of duties. He stopped, fearing that he had gone too far, and did not dare to look at Suzanne. She answered coldly. "Ah, Monsieur le Curé, you approve of that! I did not think you would have approved of Père Hyacinth; truly, I am astonished." _Monsieur le Curé_! It was the first time Suzanne had called him _Monsieur le Curé_. That name wounded him like an affront. He remembered what he was, and what he must not cease to be in the eyes of the young girl: the Curé! nothing but the Curé. And he was sick at heart for several days. But one fine morning, on coming out from Mass, his countenance lit up, he uttered a cry of joy and fell into the arms of Abbé Ridoux. LXII. THE HAPPY CURÉ "Such was Socrates said to have been, because the outside beholders, and those estimating him by his external appearance, would not have given the slice of an onion, so plain was he in his person, and ridiculous in his bearing ... simple in habits, poor in fortune, unfortunate with women, unfit for all the offices of the republic, always laughing, always drinking with one or another, always sporting, always concealing his divine wisdom." RABELAIS (_Gargantua_). Monsieur Ridoux was a very good fellow, but he was not handsome. A big nose, a big belly, blinking eyes, an enormous mouth, hair on end, the arm of a chimpanzee, and the legs of a Greenlander. At first sight, he gave me the impression of a monkey with young. But what is a man's outward form? The vessel, more or less regular, filled with a baneful or beneficent liquid, and you all know that the shape of the flagon has no influence on the quality of the wine. The outward form is the wrapper of the goods: very often that wrapper is brilliant and gilded, of satin or watered silk, and the goods are adulterated and spoiled. At other times the wrapper is rough and coarse, but it enfolds precious commodities. The stamp of genius is usually found only on countenances with fantastic features. Have you ever seen on the fair insipid faces of our _young swells_ the imprint of a powerful and fertile intelligence? The body nearly always is adorned at the expense of the mind. Of all the deformities of nature, the hunchbacks are intellectual in proportion as the handsome men are not. Enquire of the army its opinion on its pre-eminently _fine man_, the drum-major. Vincent Voiture, who had, as he confessed himself, the silly face of a dreaming sheep, used to say that nature usually likes to place the most precious souls in ill-favoured, puny bodies, as jewellers set the richest diamonds in a small quantity of gold. Accordingly, the pitiful wrapper of the Abbé Ridoux covered an excellent soul. With his ugly face and his old stained cassock, he reminded me of those dirty bottles, coated with spider-webs and dust, which we place daintily on the table on days of rejoicing, and which lord it majestically among the glittering decanters, soon to be despised, when their dusty sides appear. Thus Monsieur Ridoux lorded it amongst his curates, younger, handsomer, fresher, more tasty than himself, and eclipsed them by all the brilliancy of his good-sense, his tact, and his experience. He had certainly his little failings!... Who can say that he is exempt from them? But his mind was sound. A good companion, besides, and of a cheerful disposition. "We have reached a period," he used to say, "when the priest must lay aside the stern front and the anathema. There is already much to obtain pardon for in the colour of his robe. Let us be cheerful, let us be insinuating, let us be compassionate to human weaknesses. Let us sin, if need be, with discretion and propriety; but, in heaven's name, let us not terrify. Let us promise paradise to all. There are always plenty enough whose life is a hell." In that he was not of Veuillot's opinion, that rigid saint, who wished to see all the world damned for the love of God. Therefore, on seeing this cheerful countenance, this openness of manner, this freedom of speech, this unrestrained good-nature, even those who had been warned, could not help saying: "Well indeed! this Curé has a pleasant phiz!" Slanderous tongues, Voltairians--who is sheltered from the stings of that race of vipers?--slanderous tongues affirmed that beneath this Rabelaisian exterior, he was profoundly vicious, artful, and hypocritical. Marcel, who had been brought up by him, and was acquainted with the most secret details of his inmost life, has always assured me that he was nothing of the kind, and that his uncle Ridoux, endowed with the ugliness of Socrates, had also his wisdom. Nevertheless, I would not dare to assert that he did not like to pinch the young girls' chins, especially of those who had made their first communion and were near to the marriageable age; a familiarity which, thanks to his gray hairs, and the development of his abdomen, he thought was permitted him, but which, however, is not always without danger. Cazotte, a wise man, used to say to his daughters: "When you are alone with young people, distrust yourselves; but if you find yourselves with old men, distrust them, and avoid allowing them to take hold of your chin." Cazotte was right, for old men begin with that. I would not dare either to assert that the charms of his cook were safe from his indiscreet curiosity, for it is there too that old men finish; and we must swear not at all. Everybody knows the wise man's precept: "When in doubt, abstain." At the period of which I am speaking to you, he reigned in a good parish, well frequented by devout ladies, both young and middle-aged, where from the height of his pulpit he laid down his laws to his kneeling people, without hindrance or control. He was happy, as all wise men ought to be. Happy to be in the world, satisfied to be a Curé. "It is the first of professions," he often used to say, and there is not one of them which can be compared to it. "I am a village Curé, Where I live most modestly; I'm no important person, But I'm happy and content No, I do not envy aught, For my wants they are but small. How I love to pass my days Within the house of God!" But if he had complained, it would have been very hard, and everybody in the diocese, from Monseigneur the Bishop to his sexton, would have risen with indignation and called him, "Ungrateful wretch." For Ridoux was favoured above all his colleagues; above all his colleagues Divine Providence bad overwhelmed him with its favours. He possessed in his parish, in his very church, at his door, beneath his eyes, beneath his hand, a real blessing from Heaven, a grace of God, a Pactolus always rolling down a mine of Peru, a secret of an alchemist, the veritable philosopher's stone caught sight of by Nicolas Flamel, and vainly sought for till the time of Cagliostro, a marvel which made him at once honoured and envied, which made his name celebrated, which gave him a preponderant voice in the Chapter and a place in the episcopal Council, which swelled his heart with pride and his money-bag with crowns; he had in the choir of his church behind the mother altar, in a splendid glass-case, laid on a bed of blue velvet ... an old yellow skeleton! The relics of a saint. But there are saints and saints; those which do miracles, and those which do them not, those which work and those which rest. Monsieur Ridoux's saint worked. LXIII. THE MIRACLES. "Miracles have served for the foundation, and will serve for the continuation of the Church until Antichrist, until the end." (_Pensées de PASCAL_). The miserable herd of free-thinkers, people who have no faith, those who are still plunged in the rut of unbelief, are ignorant perhaps that all the saints have done miracles, that they have all begun in that way, that that is the condition _sine qua non_, for entrance into the blessed confraternity. No money, no Swiss; no miracles, no saint. It is in vain that during all your life you shall have been a model of candour and virtue; it is in vain that you shall edify the universe by your piety and your good works, that you shall have resisted like St. Antony the temptations of the flesh, that you shall have covered yourself with hair-cloth like St. Theresa, with venom like St. Veuillot, with filth like St. Alacoque or with lice like St. Labre: it is in vain that you shall have been beaten with rods like St. Roche, been scourged by your Confessor like St. Elizabeth, that finally you shall have sinned only six instead of seven times a day; if at your death you should not succeed in performing some fine miracle, you will never be admitted into the Calendar. The Pope causes your shade to appear before his sacred tribunal, and according as the number of the dead whom you have raised to life is judged sufficient or not, as the touch of your tibia or coccyx has cured the itch or scrofula or not, you are admitted or excluded. It is a difficult profession to be a saint, and is not for anyone who wishes it. Therefore, the candidates who die in the odour of sanctity hasten to accomplish their regular total of prodigies, in order that our father the Pope may be pleased to assign them a place in the highest heaven. They have hardly closed their eyes before they begin to _operate_. Allured by the hope of being crowned with a glorious halo, they display infinite zeal, and we have seen them, from their tooth-stumps to their prepuce, effecting the most marvellous miracles. That of Jesus Christ--I speak of the prepuce--is preserved thus in several churches; all of which contend for the honour of possessing the veritable one. It is not yet exactly known which is the best; but all without distinction work wonders, and at certain seasons of the year, are kissed by pious young women.[1] But this noble zeal of the saints lasts but for a time, and this is a proof of the imperfection of human kind, that our faults and whims follow us even beyond the tomb. The saints, themselves, fall into all the little meannesses so common with the most ordinary sinners. Like candidates who solicit the votes of the mob in order to gain power, and make the most brilliant promises which they hasten to forget as soon as they have climbed the stairs, so the candidates for canonization perform marvels at first, but once admitted into the seventh heaven, they appear to trouble themselves no more concerning lowly mortals. Or perhaps miraculous properties are like all other faculties, as they grow old they become worn-out, and an _elect_ who has stoutly brought the dead to life when he was only an aspirant for honours, is now only capable of curing the ringworm. But, as I have said, it was a zealous candidate that the Abbé Ridoux had in his church. His bones had been there for fifty years, and as the longed-for time for his canonization had not yet arrived, and he had as yet only the rank of _blessed_, his zeal had not grown cold. Each saint, we all know, has his medical speciality, like Ricord, for instance, or Dr. Ollivier. Suppose you are suffering from ophthalmia, and instead of consulting a physician, you pray to God, in hopes that God will cure you. You are wrong, that does not concern God. It is the business of St. Claire, who has the principal management of the sight of the faithful. You are paralyzed, and you commend yourself to your patron saint. "You must not address yourself to me, that one answers. Go to the other office. See St. Marcel (or _Marchel_), to make the impotent walk is entrusted to him." And so one after another: St. Cloud cures the boils; St. Cornet, the deaf; St. Denis, anemia; St. Marcou, diseases in the neck; St. Eutropus, the dropsy; St. Aignan, the ringworm, and it is generally admitted that we ought to pray on All Saints Day to be preserved from a cough.[2] And observe how the good people of France are always the most enlightened and intelligent people in the universe! The speciality of Monsieur Ridoux's candidate was broken legs, girls in complaints of childhood, and fluxes of the womb. That was what he healed, but he must not be asked for anything else; besides fluxes of the womb, sprains, and girls in complaints of childhood, he did not attend to anything. That is conceivable; one cannot do everything. It is quite unnecessary to state that he did not give all his consultations free, and that he did not work for fame alone. No one was constrained to pay, it is true; but it would have been a very unhandsome thing not to make a preliminary contribution to Monsieur le Curé's poor-box. Little presents have always maintained friendship, and there is nothing like sterling silver to predispose the benevolence of the saints and the love of heaven in our favour. While on the contrary: A poorly furnished niche affronts the saint: The God deserts, and when we enter, shows His anger from the door of his poor shrine. He no longer worked every-day, but on fête-days. All the cripples came from twenty leagues round, and there were miracles then for crutches. As in the time of Paris the deacon, when Cardinal de Noailles kept a register of the wonders of St. Médard's Cemetery, a churchwarden of the place, assisted by two secretaries and the corporal of Gendarmes, religiously inscribed the miraculous cures of the saint on a magnificent volume. _Credible_ witnesses attested these prodigies and, if necessary, gave details to the incredulous. If all were not cured, they had the hope of being so, which was a consolation. "And then," whispered Monsieur Ridoux in the ear of sceptics, "if the touching of these blessed bones produces no benefit, you are sure it will do no harm, and you cannot say the same of your doctor's drugs." [Footnote 1: The Holy Prepuce is at Rome in the Church of St. John Lateran; it is also at St. James of Compostelia in Spain; at Anvers; in the Abbey of St. Corneille at Compiègne; at Our Lady of the Dove, in the diocese of Chartres, in the Cathedral of Puy-en-Velay; and in several other places (Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique). The Able X...., author of _Maudit_ also places the holy fragment in the church of Chanoux (Vienné) and asserts that a Bishop of Châlone in the 18th century threw a pattern of it into the river.] [Footnote 2: Ainsi parchait à Sinay un caphar, qui Sainct Antoine mettoit le feu ès jambes; Sainct Eutrope faisait les hydropiques; Sainct Gildas les fols; Sainct Genou les gouttes. Mais je le punis en tel exemple, quoi qu'il m'appelast hérétique, que dépuis ce temps caphar quiconque n'est ausé entrer en mes terres. Et m'esbahi si vostre roi les laisse perscher par son royaulme tels scandales. Car plus sont à punir que ceulx qui par art magique ou sultre engin auraient mis la peste par le pays. La peste ne tue que le corps, mais tels imposteurs empoisennent les âmes. (Rabelais).] LXIV. THE TWO AUGURS. "I am surprised that two augurs can look at one another without laughing." CATO. --Ave Marcellus! said the old Curé, giving his nephew a paternal embrace; how are you, my poor boy? --I am very well, replied Marcel. --No! your servant has told me that you have been unwell for some time. --She is really too kind. You have been talking to her then? --Yes, while waiting for you. She seems to me a worthy and intelligent person, but a little irritated with you. Do you live badly together? Marcel coloured. --Come, the blush of holy modesty is covering your face. Don't do so, child, don't we all know what it is, my dear fellow? --Indeed, much you ought to know what these women are. They are cross-grained and stubborn, and claim to be the mistresses of the house, especially with priests younger than themselves. --That is the inconvenience of our condition, Monsieur le Curé. What will you? We must pass it over. But, tell me, she is not so _old_ as that. Ah, come, the maiden's blush again! I do not want to offend your virtuous feelings any longer, and I am going to talk to you about something else. You know I have centred all my ambition on you, that I occupy myself about you only, and that together with my saint and my salvation, you are the sole object of my care. Therefore, you can explain my indignation and wrath at seeing my pupil buried in this frightful village, at seeing you extinguishing your brilliant qualities, having no other stimulant for your intellect than your Sunday sermons and your stupid peasants, no other emotion than your disputes with your cook. I have therefore asked of the Lord one thing only, only one. _Unam petii a Domino, hanc requiram_. You know what it is--your promotion. Well, Monsieur le Curé. I come to tell you that everything is going as it were on wheels. --Really? said Marcel indifferently. --Just think. The day before yesterday a letter reached me from the Palace. It was Monseigneur's secretary, little Gaudinet, who wrote to me. You know Gaudinet? --No, uncle. He is not a bad fellow, but a devil to intrigue. Well, as he knows the interest I take in you, and as he wants to creep up my sleeve, because he hopes soon to take the place of one of my curates, he wrote to me that Monseigneur had spoken of you with interest, and that he proposed to put an end to your exile. I recognize there the Comtesse de Montluisant's good offices. You see that she has lost no time, and so we will do the same; we most strike the iron while it is hot; you are going to get your bag and baggage, and take yourself off to Nancy. --Already? --Why already? Have you any business here which detains you then? --Nothing ... absolutely nothing; but what shall I do at Nancy? --That is just why I have come, you impatient young man, to point out to you what line of conduct to follow, and, as I know, you are rather more scrupulous than there is any need for in our profession, to assist you in removing certain scruples which might stand in the way of your promotion. --Heavens! What scruples? --We will talk about them at table. Meanwhile, this is the question. I have told you that I will move heaven and earth for you; you, however, must help me a little on your side, for whatever I may do, I can effect nothing without you. In his letter, Gaudinet informs me that the parish of St. Mary, Nancy, is deprived of its pastor. It came into my head directly that you must take the place of the defunct. It is an excellent parish, very prominent, splendid surplice fees, devout ladies, sisters, elderly spinsters to plunge into saintly jubilation, a host of Capuchins, everything indeed which constitutes a _blessing from heaven_ for a poor priest. You are young, you are handsome, you are intelligent, you are energetic; while you are waiting for something better, I promise you an existence there, of which the most ambitions of village Curés has never dared to dream. But we most hasten, time presses; Gaudinet tells me that there are already at least a dozen candidates in earnest; and although old Collard's intentions (and he intends to atone for his former injustice) regarding you are favourable, you are well aware that he allows himself to be led by the nose, and generally the last one who talks to him is right. You must be then both the first and the last, and you must not let him slip; not you, but your second, your aide-de-camp, your _fideicommissum_, or rather your protectress, the Comtesse de Montluisant. --But I do not know this lady. --It is precisely for that reason that it is indispensable for you to hasten to go and see her, in order to make her acquaintance. You have only to present yourself, and I assure you even if you were not sent by me, she would receive you with the greatest pleasure. For, between ourselves be it said, she is an elderly coquette, but she is good-natured and knows how to remember her old friends. You will have therefore to be amiable, insinuating, respectful, assiduous. You might even tell her that she is charming, and that one sees she has been very pretty; which is true. Old ladies dote on young people, and devout old ladies on young priests, especially on those with a figure and face like yours. "The face is everywhere the first letter of introduction," said Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and I assure that with Madame de Montluisant, you will not require another. Ah, the Comtesse de Montluisant, my friend, there is a precious soul! What a misfortune that she is a little over-ripe! It is all the same to you, and if you are wise, you will pass over that defect, which she amply atones for by her amiable qualities. She has the complete mastery of Monseigneur. She is the Maintenon of that old Louis XIV. Be to her what she is to him, and have the mastery of her in your turn. I was talking to you a little while ago about scruples; for once you must leave them at home or put them in the bottom of your cassock. _Dixi_! You have understood me I hope. --No, uncle, I don't understand you. --Are you talking seriously? --I declare, uncle, that I don't understand you. --_O rara avis in terris_, oh phoenix! oh pearl! you don't understand me!!! Well, I am come expressly, however, to make myself understood. Must I put the dots on the i's for you? You don't understand me, you say? Surely, you are making fun of me. Come, look me straight in the face; in the white of my eyes ... yes, like that, and dare to tell me that you have not understood me, and keep serious. Ah, ah, you are laughing, you are laughing. You see you cannot look at me without laughing. LXV. TABLE TALK. "I allow that it is necessary to be virtuous in order to be happy, but I assert that it is necessary to be happy in order to be virtuous." CH. LEMESLES (_Tablettes d'un sceptique_). They sat down to table. It was an excellent meal, and the worthy Ridoux tried to make it cheerful, but a vague feeling of sorrow oppressed Marcel. That departure, which he had so eagerly desired before, and the hope of which he had clung to as one lays hold of a means of safety, he could not think of without grief, when he saw it near and practicable. Undoubtedly he would leave without regret this village, where his youth was buried, where his abilities were rendered unfruitful, where his sanguine aspirations were slowly killing themselves.... But Suzanne? That sweet name which he murmured low with love. That sweet young girl the sight of whom was as pleasant as a sun-beam, he was going to leave her for ever. It was for his good, his honour, his quiet, his future; he knew it, he felt it, but he was full of sorrow. Meanwhile, he overwhelmed his uncle with marks of attention and friendship; he made every effort to cope with his guest's cheerful discourse, who, after relating the flight of the Grand-Vicar, surprised in criminal conversation with the wife of the Captain of Gendarmerie, acquainted him all the little ecclesiastical scandals. But he gave only a partial attention; his thoughts were absorbed in his inmost preoccupations. Now and again only did he let fall a few observations in reply: "How horrible," or "How shocking," or again: "How abominable!" Ridoux did not appear at first to pay attention to his nephew's gloomy thoughts. He laughed and joked all alone, but he did not miss a mouthful. Old priests are generally greedy. Good cheer is one of the joys which is left to them. With no serious preoccupation, with no anxiety for the future, exempt from family cares, they transfer all their solicitude to themselves, and make a divinity of their belly. But when his appetite, sharpened by his journey, was appeased, he examined Marcel with curiosity, and what he observed, combined with a few indiscreet words of Veronica, confirmed him in his suspicions, that a drama was being enacted in the young man's soul. --Do you know, he said to him, that you are a pitiable companion. You scarcely eat, you scarcely speak, you do not drink, and you laugh still less. Why, what's the matter with you? Are you not gratified at my visit? --Forgive me, uncle, but I am rather poorly, said Marcel; that is my excuse. --That is what the maid-servant told me, but you declared to me that you were quite well. --How can you suppose that I am not happy to see you? You know my feelings well. --I know that you have excellent feelings. But I find you quite changed. It is scarcely a year since I saw you, and you bear marks of weariness. You stoop like an old man. Look at me, always the same, firm as a rock. "God smites the wicked with many plagues, but he encompasseth with his help those that hope in him." Second penitential psalm. You are not wicked: what plague consumes you? Ambition? Patience, everything will be changed, since your enemy is vanquished. Is it your conscience which is ill at ease? But conscience should be cheerful; that is its true sign. Is it anything else? Come, tell me. --Well yes, uncle, there is something. The same complaint as before, you know, when I hesitated to enter the seminary, when I had doubts about my vocation. You ended my hesitation and silenced my doubts; you have made a priest of me; well, now more than ever, I have moments of lassitude which make me disgusted with my calling. --Really? --Yes, there are hours when this priest's robe devours me, like the robe of Nessus; I wish that I could tear it off, but I feel that I should tear off pieces of my flesh at the same time, for it is too late, and it has become a portion of myself. I am ashamed to make this confession to you, but you wished it, and I have opened my heart to you. --May it not be that the heart is sick? Come. I see that I am come to take you away from here at a seasonable time. --Do not believe that, uncle. --So much the better, if I am mistaken. I should be delighted to be mistaken. To be in love, my son, is the greatest act of stupidity which a priest can commit. Make use of women, if you will, for your health and your satisfaction, and not for theirs. Otherwise you are a lost man. --In truth, uncle, you have singular theories, cried Marcel. Have you not then taken your calling seriously? --My calling? I have taken it so seriously that you will never see me handling it but in the practical way. Therefore, among those who surround me I enjoy a fine reputation for wisdom. To be wise is to be happy, and I have contrived so as to pass my existence in the most pleasant manner possible. I counsel you to make as much of it, and I am going to tell what I mean by being wise: Make use of the things of life with moderation, discretion, and prudence. Now, what constitutes life? Spirit and matter. Well, I wisely make the enjoyments of matter and spirit march abreast. I obtain the equilibrium: health of body and health of soul. As soon as the equilibrium is broken, the mental faculties are deranged, or the constitution declines. You are in one of these two cases, my dear fellow. --I! --Yes, you. And, in spite of all your denials, I wager that you are in love. Ah, ah, ah. It is a good story. He keeps his countenance like a thrashed donkey. Come, drink, cheer up; honour the Lord in his benefits. Your glass is always full. Enjoy yourself, you don't entertain your uncle every day. Marcel emptied his glass. --Is she possessed of a husband? --But uncle, I don't know, what you want to talk about. --Oh, how well dissimulation is grafted in this young man's heart. I congratulate you on it: it is good for strangers, for the profane.... But I, Marcel, I, am I a stranger? "Brought up in the Seraglio, I know its windings." Come, another drop of this wine which could make the dead laugh. --Listen, uncle, you are my second father, my master, my first director, my only true friend. Yes, I want to ask your advice. I am afraid of soiling one day the robe which I wear, I am afraid of becoming an object of shame and compassion. Ah, I am unhappy. --Here we are, cried Ridoux. Speak. The only point is to understand one another. LXVI. GOOD COUNSEL. "Ah, my friend, have not all young people ridiculous passions? My son is enamoured of virtue!... The customs of the word, the need of pleasure, and the facilities of satisfying himself will bring him insensibly to a moderate state of feeling, and at thirty he will be just like any other man; he will enjoy life, and shut his eyes to many things which shock him to-day." PIGAULT-LEBRUN (_Le Blanc et le Noir_). At that moment Veronica came in to serve coffee. In honour of her master's guest, she had put on her black dress of Associate and her silver medal; and on her head she wore coquettishly an embroidered cap, trimmed with tulle of dazzling whiteness. The old Curé threw himself into his arm-chair with his head back, in order to contemplate her with admiration. She went and came, clearing the table, and he followed her movements with the eye of a connoisseur, estimating the value of an article. He smiled sanctimoniously, and the smile and attention, which the bashful Veronica noticed, made her blush and cast her eyes modestly down. -Eh! Eh! he seemed to say, here is a girl who is still fit to adorn a bed. When the servant had left the room, he rose, drew the screen between the table and the door, and then came and sat down again facing Marcel. --I don't understand, he said, why a man should go and search away from home, amid perils and obstacles, for a pleasure which he can obtain comfortably, quietly, with no fear or disquietude, at his own fire-side. --To what are you pleased to allude? --There is a girl, Ridoux continued, who certainly has merit, and I am convinced that many younger ones are not worth as much as she. She is there, in your hands, at your door, in your home; ready, I am sure, to satisfy all your requirements. Avail yourself of her willingness? No? Make use of this blessing which you possess? Again, no. You throw it aside to run after phantoms. Alas, all the men of your age are the same: like the dog in the fable, they let go their prey to seize the shadow. You are like the fool, who spends his life in vainly following fortune to the four quarters of the world, and who, when he returns to his hearth wearied, worn-out and aged, finds it sitting at his door. But he is too late to be able to enjoy it. That girl is really very well: handsome, fresh, very well-preserved, with a decent and respectable appearance. Why then do you disdain her? Why? Tell me. Because she is a few years older than you? But that is just what you young priests require. You require women of that age: matrons with more sense than yourselves. She is staid, she is ripe, she is experienced, a mistress of love's science, and above all, she has a great quality, an inestimable quality, she is cautious and will never compromise you. --Uncle, I implore you. --Let me finish. Another thing which is very valuable. She is full of little attentions for her master. Ah, you are not aware with what tender solicitude, with what kindness, with what jealous affection an old mistress surrounds you. She fears more for your health than for her own, she is acquainted with your tastes and knows how to anticipate them, she satisfies all your desires, and lends herself to all your fancies. --What a conversation! If anyone heard us.... --Be easy. I have drawn the screen. The young mistress is fickle, egotistical, capricious; she exacts adoration, and most frequently loves you for a whim and for want of occupation. The old one devotes herself entirely to you and does not ask you (sublime self-denial!), that you should love her, but only that you should let her love you. Balzac extolled the women of thirty; that was because he had not tasted those of forty. Ah! the women of forty! They are the only women who are of value to the priest, my friend. You have had the good fortune to meet one here, and instead of profiting by it, of thinking yourself fortunate, of thanking heaven and piously and devoutly enjoying the good which God grants you, you cast it away, you disdain, you despise it; and why? For some giddy little thing who will bring upon you every kind of vexation and unpleasantness. _Dixi_. You can speak now. Marcel made no reply. With his elbows resting on the table and his head in his hands, he stared at his uncle. He asked himself if he was really awake, if it was really his adopted father, the mentor of his childhood, the wise and virtuous Curé of St. Nicholas, who was talking to him so. He knew the worthy man's somewhat eccentric character, his coarse witticisms in bad taste, but he never could have believed that he would have stated such theories before him with a cynisism like that. He quite understood that a man might commit faults, he even excused _in petto_ certain crimes, and he excused them the more willingly because he himself had been guilty of them; but he did not understand how a man could dare to talk about them. He was rather of that class of persons who are modest in words, but not in deeds, who are offended at the talk, while they delight in the acts. We hear them utter cries of horror and indignation at the slightest equivocal word, we see them stop their ears at the recital of a racy tale, chastely cover their face before the figure of the Callipygean Venus, treating Molière as obscene and Rabelais as debauched; yet, out of sight, sheltered by the curtains of the alcove, they love to strip in silence some lascivious Maritorne, and cautiously abandon themselves to disgusting orgies with Phrynes whom they chance to encounter. Therefore the Curé of Althausen was offended and indignant at his uncle's cynicism, who had so crudely broached the chapter about the love of middle-aged women to him, who the evening before had abandoned himself to all the furies of a long-repressed passion, in the arms of a debauched old maid-servant. At the same he felt that his brain was confused and that he was gradually losing the exact idea of things. The wine he had drunk was more than he was accustomed to; it was rising to his head and he was becoming intoxicated. --Well, said Ridoux, you give me no answer and you stare at me like an earthen-ware dog. --What answer do you wish me to give you? except that I believe I am dreaming; in truth, I believe I am dreaming. --Be more sincere. I do not like hypocrisy. --You talk of a giddy little thing; I know no giddy thing. As to the rest, I have not quite made out what it is you wanted to tell me. I think that you have intended to make a joke about your old women. --Ah, you, you never understand anything. Where did you come from? --Why, from your school, from the seminary, and neither you nor my masters taught me that there. --To me! to me! to me! you speak in such a manner to me? Oh clever fox! _Alopex, alopex_. Well, you are sharper than I am, cried the old Curé, striking the table and looking at Marcel with astonishment mingled with admiration. Why should I concern myself about your future? You will succeed, my dear fellow, you will succeed. Oh, oh, you are a master. A gray-beard like I cannot teach you anything. Jesus, Mary, Joseph! That is my nephew! My dear old Ridoux, Curé of St. Nicholas, allow me to congratulate you. Monsieur le Curé of Althausen, I swear you will become a bishop. Monseigneur, I drink your health! LXVII. IN A GLASS. "The fumes of the wine were working in my veins; it was one of those moments of intoxication when everything one sees, everything one hears, speaks to us of the beloved." A. DE MUSSET (_Confession d'un enfant du Siècle_). They conversed for a long time still, and they drank too, so much so that Marcel went to his room with his brain charged with the fumes of the wine. He opened his window and breathed with delight the fresh air of night. While he gazed on the stars which were rising slowly in the sky, he tried to analyze the new sensation which he experienced. "How a few mouthfuls of liquor alter a man," he said to himself. He felt himself to be totally different, and he allowed his thoughts to wander in an ocean of delights. His ardent and ecstatic imagination launched itself into space. Bright unknown worlds rose before him with their atmosphere saturated with warmth, with caresses, and with perfumes. He saw the future, and it appeared to him radiant. There were sons without number and feasts without end; the entire universe belonged to him. He flew from planet to planet without effort or fatigue, borne by a mysterious wing into the fields of the Infinite. He discovered an unknown audacity, and all obstacles subsided before his powerful will. No more barriers, no more bolts, no more doors, no more pretences, no more social chains, no more terrible father, no more servant-mistress; Suzanne alone remained in all her youthful grace and her chaste nudity. For, after having wandered in boundless space, it was towards her that his hopes, his desires, his aspirations inclined. There was the soul and the body; happiness and life, sacred symbolical wedlock, the chosen vessel, the nubile maid ready for the husband. And he murmured the Song of Songs: "Let her kiss me with kisses of her mouth, For her teats are better than wine." And it was at the very moment when he was about perhaps to be able to taste this exquisite cup, that he must go away. Go away! that is to say, leave her, she who had just cast a ray into his life. Go away, to obey a culpable ambition; to lose for ever this ravishing young girl! And the promises which he had made to himself; and the unsatisfied desires, and the boundless joys, the delicious troubles, the sweet evening talks, the hand sometimes squeezed in a moment of audacity; of all that but the memory would remain. Of all the intoxications of soul, of heart, of sense; of all those joys which should repay him for his wasted youth, for his fair years lost, he would preserve but remorse ... remorse for having so senselessly let them go. And all at once in the whirlwind of his ideas, he seized one as it passed by. He noticed during the day the Captain entering the _diligence_ for Vic. It was, in fact, the time at which he drew his pay. He could not return till the following day. Suzanne then was alone with the old maid-servant. She went to bed late, he knew; perhaps she was still awake. He looked at his watch, it was not yet eleven o'clock; he still had a chance of seeing her. He cherished this idea; it pleased him and he was surprised that he had not thought of it before. Yes, certainly, he must see her, in order that she might keep the remembrance of him, as he was bearing away the memory of her. What would be more delightful than to say to himself: "I hold the thoughts of a beautiful young girl, I hold her simple confidences; I possess the treasure of her sweet secrets." And although there would never be between her and him but the pure and chaste sympathy of two souls, was not that enough, was not that a compensation, sufficient for the step which he was venturing? And with the audacity of conception and the temerity of conduct of a man on the border of intoxication, he determined to put his fine project into execution immediately. His sense became inflamed the more he thought of it, and what had at first presented itself to him as a vague desire, soon became firmly fixed in his brain, and, in less than ten seconds, he had conceived the plan and weighed all the chances. He decided that nothing was more simple, and that the only serious difficulty was to get out of the house without being heard. He still felt a few scruples; he poured himself out a glass of brandy. --Let me swallow some courage, he said. What a singular piece of machinery is man, who imbibes in a few drops of liquid the dose of bravery which he lacks, and spirit which he needs. And, in fact, he soon felt a generous warmth which ascended to his head; and his heart became anew surrounded little by little with that triple breast plate of brass, _robur triplex_, without which there is no hero. He listened inside and out. All sounds were hushed; in the parsonage as in the village, everybody was asleep. He heard only the croaking of a legion of frogs which were sporting in the neighbouring marsh, and, far away, the bark of some farm-dog. The night was splendid. The moon was rising behind the woods. That was a serious obstacle; but are there any serious obstacles for a man over-excited by drink? He did not even think of it; his mind was cheerful and content. If anyone encountered him in the night, wandering along the roads, what could they say? Had he not a perfect right like anybody else to take, the fresh air of evening? And, besides, might he not have been summoned by a sick person? On the other hand, no more favourable moment would ever present itself for talking with Suzanne. His uncle was snoring in the next room, and his servant, supposing she was still awake, would she dare, while there was a guest at the parsonage, to come and assure herself if he was in his bed? He took off his shoes, opened the door noiselessly and glided into the street. He rapidly went round the parsonage, and he put on his shoes again only when he was at some distance, under the discreet shade of the limes. Then he walked boldly on, keeping to the middle of the road, on the side, however, where the houses cast their shadow, and advanced with the step of a man who is going to accomplish a duty. He arrived without any hindrance at the Captain's house. It was fully lighted up by the pale moon-light, and all the shutters were closed. Consequently, the side looking upon the garden was in the shadow, and there was Suzanne's room, the room hung with rose. So he pursued his way at a rapid pace, entered the little path, bordered with hawthorn, and soon reached the clump of old chestnut-trees. LXVIII. THE ROSE CHAMBER. "They are women already, they were so when they were born, but one guesses them so still, one reads it in their little thought, one comes across an end of thread here and there, which is like a revelation ... They are ... But forgive me, young ladies, I am afraid of going too far." G. DROZ (_Entre nous_). What man is there who has not experienced a delicious emotion on entering for the first time a young girl's room? Who has not breathed with voluptuous delight its sweet and chaste perfumes, and felt his heart soften in its fresh and fragrant atmosphere? How pretty, neat, and harmonious is everything there. The most insignificant objects, the most common articles of furniture, have a mysterious and secret aspect there which makes one dream; one contemplates with transport all those nothings, all those little trifles, all those trinkets which young girls delight in, and because they have been touched by a white hand, they appear clothed in enchanting colours. The fairy who lodges in this place has left a _something_ of herself on all which surrounds her, and _that something_ transforms all into jewels, even the least pin. But that which above all else arrests the gaze, that which drives the blood to the head and causes the heart to beat, is the bed. The young girl's bed, the sanctuary, the delicious nest of love. There is the pillow on which her head reposes ... And then the question comes: What passes in the young head when, softly leaning on the warm down, she lets her thoughts travel into the land of dreams? When slumber soft on all Around thee is outpoured; Oh Pepita, charming maid, My love, of what think'st thou? Here is the place of her body. Yes, it is there, beneath the discreet eider-down, that she hides her naked charms. And we begin to dream as well, and we say to ourselves that we would give much to be able to penetrate into this sanctuary at the hour when the divinity is going to bed. Happy Gyges, lend me your ring that I may assist mutely and invisibly at the sweet mysteries of the night toilette. She is here! She has given and received the evening kiss. "Sleep well," her father and mother have said, and the child replies: "Oh, yes, I am very sleepy." Then she quickly shuts the door and breathes a sigh of satisfaction. She is in her own room, she is alone! Alone! do you believe it? If so, you would be greatly mistaken, for this is the time when she receives her own visitors, and often there is a numerous company. Oh, be reassured: these guests will not be able to compromise her; they are secret, silent and invisible for all else but her; she alone sees them, talks to them and listens to them. It is at the summons of her thought that they hasten there, passive and obedient. Then she passes them in review one by one; she examines them from head to foot, she clothes and unclothes them at her will; never has a Captain of infantry, under orders for parade, made a more minute inspection of his conscripts. Sometimes they come all in a crowd, giving themselves up with her, in the mysterious comers of her imagination, to the wildest frolics. Young people with a stiff collar, beardless sublieutenants, coxcombs with red hands, swells with white cuffs, little heads of wax and little souls of cardboard, run up, ran up, ye pretty puppets. Dance my loves You are but dolls. And she makes them dance on every cord and every tune. But soon the figures are effaced and blend into one. The pomatumed band disappear into space, whence there rises clearly the image of the chosen one. He is young, he is dark or fair: she has seen him to-day; she looked at him, he smiled at her, he thinks her pretty. Is she then always pretty? And quickly she goes to her mirror. Heavens! how badly her hair is done. How badly that ribbon sets! If she had put it in another place? And that little wandering lock; decidedly it must set off that. "Perhaps he would like me better if, instead of plaits, I had curls, and if instead of the brown dress, I put on the blue?" He. Who is he? He is the imaginary lover, the handsome young man whom she has met in the street, he who turned round to look at her, or the one who was so charming at the last ball, or again the one who has just passed the window. Who is he? Does she know? It is the one she is waiting for. The first who presents himself who is _handsome, young, intelligent and rich_. What does the rest matter provided he possesses all these qualities, and all these qualities he must possess. Often she has never even seen him, but he is charming, and she feels that she loves him already. And there are the brilliant displays of the future appearing, the enchanted palaces which are built out of the chapters of novels which never will be finished. And thus every evening--wild adventures in the young brain, intrigues in embryo, meetings full of mystery, delightful terrors with phantom lovers, until at length a very palpable one presents himself, and comes and knocks at the door of reality. Sometimes he is very far from the cherished dream. He is neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor intelligent. She rather makes a face, but she ends by taking him. It is a man. And meanwhile mamma has said as she kisses her daughter's forehead, "Sleep well, my daughter," and she murmurs to papa, "What an angel of candour!" LXIX. THE GUST OF WIND. "I turned my eyes instinctively towards the lighted window, and through the curtains which were drawn, I distinctly caught sight of a woman, dressed in white, with her hair undone, and moving like one who knows that she is alone." G. DROZ (_Monsieur, Madame, et Bébe_). Suzanne's room ... but why should I describe the room?... let me describe Suzanne to you at this secret hour: I am sure that you would prefer me to do so. The young people who read this, will do well to skip this chapter, it interests the men alone. Like the preacher who one day turned the women out of church, as he wanted to keep the men only, I warn over-chaste young ladies that these lines may shock.... Suzanne was preparing to go to bed. To go to bed! That is not done quickly. You have, Mesdames, so many little things to do before going to bed. So Suzanne was going to and fro in her small room, attending to all these little details. She was in a short petticoat, with her legs and arms bare and her little feet in slippers. I warned you that I had borrowed the ring of Gyges and I can tell you that I saw her calf and right above the knee, and all was like a sculptor's model. Beneath the thin, partly-open cambric her budding bosom rose and fell, marking a voluptuous valley on which, like the Shulamite's lover, one would never be weary to let one's kisses wander. But on seeing the white plump shoulders, the graceful throat, and the neck on which was twisted a mass of little brown curls, and the back of velvet which had no other covering than the thick rolls of half-loosed hair, and the delicate hips which the little half-revealing petticoat closely pressed, one asked oneself where the kisses would run on for the longest time. She was delicious like this and under every aspect, and undoubtedly she knew it, for every time she passed before the large glass of her wardrobe, she looked at herself in it and smiled. And she was quite right, for it was indeed the sweetest of sights. A pretty woman is never insensible to the sight of her own charms. See therefore, what a love they have for mirrors. Habit, which palls in so many things, never palls in this; for her it is a sight always charming and always fresh. Very different to the forgetful lover or the sated husband, whose eyes and senses are so quickly habituated, she never grows weary of finding out that she is pretty, and making herself so; in truth a constant homage, earnest and conscientious. Suzanne then examined herself full face, in profile, in three-quarters view, and behind, attentively and conscientiously, like an amateur judging a work of art, who cries at length, "Yes, it is all good, it is all perfect, there is nothing amiss." One could have believed that she saw herself again for the first time after many years. At length, when the survey was completed, and the toilette finished, she let her petticoat slip down, opened her bed, put one knee upon it, and, the upper part of her body leaning forward on her hands, prepared to get in. The lamp on the night-table, close beside her, threw its light no longer on her face. But at the same instant a little zephyr taking her astern, caused the white tissue which English-women never mention, to gently undulate. She noticed then that she had forgotten to shut her window. "Heavens," cried Marcel to himself, for it was he, who perched on the rise of the road and armed with his good opera-glass, had just been witness of what I have narrated. LXX. THE AMBUSCADE. "Be not discouraged either before obstacles, or before ill-will. Wait patiently. The sacred hour will sound for you and all the ways will be made smooth." (_Charge of Mgr. de Nancy_). Drawing near to the window, Suzanne distinguished in front of her, behind the open-work palisade, a dark motionless figure. She immediately recognized the Curé. Alarmed and trembling, she hastily drew back; but she heard a gentle cough, as if someone was calling and was afraid of being surprised. "What is happening?" she said to herself, "what is he doing there?" She covered herself hurriedly with a dressing-gown and drew near the casement again. Marcel, with his hat in his hand, bowed to her, and appeared to invite her by a sign to come down. Again she drew back. She knew not what to think or what to do. She hesitated to comply with the priest's desire, and, on the other hand, she was afraid lest Marianne, or some neighbour, should happen to wake and catch the Curé of the village making signs, at that unseasonable hour, before her door, during her father's absence. God only knew what a scandal there would be then! and as tongues would wag, her father perhaps might hear of it, and what explanation could she give? already they were beginning to chatter about her absence from the services and their meetings on the road. She was seized with terror and ran to put out the lamp, calculating that the Curé would withdraw. But the Curé of Althausen had not undertaken this adventurous expedition to abandon it at the moment when he was attaining his object. Excited by the alcohol, by the dishabille of the charming young girl, and by all that he had just caught a sight of, emboldened by the night and the solitary place, he was waiting with impatience. Therefore when Suzanne, trembling all over, drew near a second time to see if he was gone, he was at the same place, still bowing to her and calling her by signs. He was not tired, and with perfectly clerical obstinacy, multiplied his salutes and his signs. She said to herself that there was doubtless some important motive for him to have decided, in spite of dangers and the proprieties, to require an interview with her in the middle of the night "Good God! could some misfortune have happened to my father?" The thought oppressed her mind. She hesitated no longer, put on a light petticoat, threw a shawl over her shoulders, and went downstairs. LXXI. THE BREACH. "Who art thou, who knockest so loudly. Art thou Great Love, to whom all must yield, for whom heroes sacrificed (more than life) their very heart ... Ah, if thou art he, let the door be opened wide." MICHELET (_L'Amour_). She saw at once that he was all in a fever. --What has happened? she said. You have seen my father? --Nothing has happened, Mademoiselle; as to your father, I saw him this morning getting into a carriage: I believe that he is well. --But what is it then? what is it? do not hide anything from me. --I am hiding nothing from you, Mademoiselle, nothing grievous has happened. Be comforted. I was passing by in my walk, I saw the light, I observed you, your window was partly open. I stopped and said to myself: Perhaps I can make a sign to Mademoiselle Durand that I am going away. --Oh, Heavens, I am trembling all over.... What! you are going away? And where? And when? --To-morrow morning, Mademoiselle, after Mass. --For ever? --Perhaps. --You are leaving Althausen so, without saying good-bye to your parishioners, to your friends! --I have no friends, Mademoiselle, I have only you, who are willing to hear me some ... friendship; only you, who have sometimes thought of the poor solitary at the parsonage, therefore I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart, and I wanted to bid you ... farewell. --But why this sudden and unexpected departure? --A more important cure is offered me, Mademoiselle, and I have, like others, a little grain of ambition. --Oh, I understand, Monsieur, and let me congratulate you on this change in your fortune. Is it far? --Nancy, Mademoiselle. --Nancy! I am glad of it on your account. You will have distractions there which you have not here. I almost envy you. --Do not envy me, Mademoiselle, for I carry away death in my soul. I am sorrowful as Christ at Golgotha. I spoke to you of ambition. It is false, I have no ambition. Other motives than miserable calculations compel me to depart. --Motives ... serious? --You will understand them, Mademoiselle, for I must confess it to you, and that I should not do if I was to remain in this parish. But from the day I saw you, I have felt myself drawn towards you by an invincible sympathy. Oh, be not disturbed. Let not my words offend you; it is the fondness which I should have felt for a dearly-loved sister, if God had given me one. Believe it truly, Mademoiselle, the spotless calyx of the lily, the emblem of purity, is not more chaste than my thoughts when they fly towards you, for when I think of you, I think of the queen of angels; that is why I wished to see you again and bid you farewell. --I thank you, sir. --I wished to say to you: Farewell! I go away, but tell me, not if I may ask to see you sometimes again--I dare not ask so great a favour--but if I shall have the right to mingle my memory with yours, my thought with your thought; tell me if you wish me to remain your friend though far away. We leave one another, we separate, but is that a reason why all should end? May we not write, give one another advice, follow one another from afar on the arduous road of life? It is so sweet, when we are alone, when the heart is sad, when the heaven is dark and the tears come slowly to the eyes, to dream that away there, in a little corner behind the horizon, there is a sister-soul to our soul, which perhaps, at that very moment, leaps towards us also and murmurs across space: "Friend, I think of you." We feel less abandoned and less alone. --Yes, that is true, I understand you. --It is the communion of souls, dear Suzanne, sweeter than all the pleasures of the body, because it is holy and pure, it is the Ark of the Covenant, the gate of Heaven. Tell me, will you? Are you willing that we should follow one another thus in life? You do not answer.... --Listen, sir, listen, there is someone in the road. --There are footsteps, said Marcel, after he had listened. Yes, there are footsteps. Someone comes. I must not be seen here.... Farewell, Mademoiselle, farewell. --Do not go away. That would be the means of compromising us both, for they must have heard our voices, and your departure would attract suspicions. --What shall I do? I cannot remain here. --They cannot have seen us yet: Come in. Under this arbour you will be safe from any gaze. --What! said Marcel, you wish...? --I beseech you, come. This village is full of evil-minded people. It is more prudent for both of us. She turned the key, and Marcel glided like a shadow through the half-open gate, quickly crossed the borders, and threw himself under the arbour. Suzanne closed the gate again and rejoined him. LXXII. THE ASSAULT. "Be mine, be my sister, for I am all thine, And well I deserve thee, for long have I loved." A. DE VIGNY (_Eloa_). They were standing up under the dark arbour. One close to the other, excited, panting: they could scarce get their breath again. Does their heart beat so hard because there is someone in the path? Silence! The cricket, just by their side, sends forth from under the grass his soft monotonous cry, and down there in the neighbouring ditch the toad lifts his harsh voice. Silence! A noise in the road, faint at first as the murmur of the wind, increases. It comes near. It is the cautious hesitating step of someone listening. It comes nearer and stops. Silence! The philosopher cricket continues his song, the amorous toad his poem. Behind the branches of honeysuckle they watch attentively, and can see without being seen. A shadow passes slowly by, with its head turned towards the dark arbour. Suzanne made a movement of surprise;--Your servant, she said. --Silence, murmured Marcel; and he seizes a hand which he keeps within his own. Veronica slowly walked on. When she reached the gate, she pushed it as if to assure herself if it was open. --Well, there is an impertinence, said Suzanne. Who can have made her suspect that you were here? Marcel, for reply, pressed the hand which he was holding. Finding the gate closed, the servant continued her road, then all at once returned, stopped for a few seconds facing the arbour, and at length disappeared behind the chestnut-trees. They followed the sound of her footsteps, which was soon lost in the silence, and found themselves alone, hearing nothing but the beatings of their own heart. --Let us remain, said Suzanne in a low voice, we must not go out yet. Really, that is the most impertinent creature I have ever seen. By what right does she spy on you thus? --Dear child, do you not know that these old servants are on the track of every scandal, jealous of all beauty and all virtue. She will have noticed our frequent interviews, and has imagined a world of iniquities. Nevertheless, I bless her, yes, I bless her, since I owe to her the joy of finding myself in this tête-à-tête with you. See, dear child, how strange is destiny, which is none other but the hand of God--for we must be blind not to recognize in all these things the finger of divine Providence--it is precisely the efforts made to put an obstacle between us, to prevent us, me from fulfilling my duties of a pastor, you those of a Christian, which have been the cause of our sweet intimacy. Your father forbids you to assist at the Holy Sacrifice, and you come to me to ask for counsel. This servant pursues us with her envious hate, and obliges us to take refuge like guilty lovers beneath this dark arbour. Almighty God, thanks, thanks. But what a strange situation! If anyone were to surprise us, the whole world would accuse us, and yet what is surer than our conscience? You see plainly, dear child, that we cannot separate thus, and that, whatever happens, we must not remain strangers to one another. Suzanne did not answer, and he, emboldened by this silence, pressed between his the hand which she abandoned to him. --I was so much accustomed to see you in our church that, when you ceased to come there, it seemed to me that everything was in mourning. You were the most charming and the chastest ornament of it. When I went up into the pulpit, it was for you that I preached, and when I turned towards my flock to bless them, it was you alone, sweet lamb, that I blessed in the name of the Father. You understand now, why I shall go away enveloped in sorrow. --But, sir, I do not deserve the honour which you do me, and I am unworthy to occupy your thoughts in this way. --Do not say that, for since I have seen you, you have become, without my knowing how, the joy of my life, the source from which I draw my sweetest and most holy pleasures. With the memory of you, I lull myself in the Infinite. I see Heaven and the angels, I dream of Seraphims who resemble you, who bear me on their diaphanous wings into the abode where all is joy and love ... heavenly love, dear Suzanne, love like that of the angels for the Virgin, the mother, eternally pure, of our sweet Saviour. You see, you have no reasons to be offended with my dreams. You are not offended at them, are you? --Why should I be offended at them, said Suzanne softly. Can one be offended with dreams? --You remember that night, when, alone as we are now, I allowed myself in a moment of pious transport, to bear to my lips your lovely hand. I have often blushed at it.... I have blushed at it, because I thought that you might have mistaken that respectful kiss. I kissed it as I should have kissed the hem of a queen's robe, if that queen had been a saint, as I should have kissed the feet of the Virgin, as Magdalena kissed those of Christ, as I kiss it at this moment, dear, dear Suzanne. And his lips rested on that little warm, quivering, feverish hand, and they could no more be separated from it. And, when at length he withdrew his mouth from it, he found that Suzanne was so near to him that he heard the beatings of her heart. --Leave me, said the imprudent girl, I entreat you, leave me. Oh, why are you doing that? And she tried with vain efforts to loosen herself from the embrace. But he murmured softly: --Leave you, oh, never; you shall be my companion in life as you are my betrothed before the Eternal. Leave you, dear Suzanne, sweet mystic rose, chosen vessel. See, there is something stronger than all the laws and all the proprieties; it is a look from you. Why do you repulse me? I speak to you as to the Virgin, and I kiss your knees. Chaste betrothed of the Levite, let me espouse you before God. She struggled with all her might, excited and maddened. But what can the dove do in the talons of the hawk! Pressed to his breast by his vigorous arms, it was in vain that she asked for pity. Hell might have opened, ere he would have dropped his prey. The struggle lasted several minutes, passionate, silent, ardent. Woman is weak. Soon nothing was heard ... a sob ... and all died away in the dense shade. The startled cricket was silent, and it alone might have counted the sighs, while in the neighbouring ditch the toad unwearied continued its love-song. LXXIII. AUDACES FORTUNA JUVAT. "If you have done wrong, rebuke yourself sharply: If you have done well, have satisfaction." SAINT FRANÇOIS DE SALLES (_Traité de l'Amour Divin_). Marcel reached the parsonage without hindrance. Veronica had not yet returned. He congratulated himself on that, and went up the stair-case which led to his room with the light step of a happy man, locked his door, and began to laugh like a madman. Everything was safe; only there was down there in a corner of the village, an honour lost. --Is it really you, Marcel, is it really you, he said, who have just played so great a game, and won the trick? And he laughed, and he rubbed his hands, and he would willingly have danced a wild saraband, if he had not been afraid of making a noise. He listened in the next room where his uncle was in bed, and heard his loud breathing. --And the hag who is watching still beneath the limes! And the father who is at Vic, and who, I doubt not, is snoring too. Come, all goes well! all goes well! But he stopped, ashamed of himself. --Decidedly, he said to himself, I have become in a few days utterly bad. I did not believe that it was possible to make such rapid progress in evil. But nonsense. Is it evil? Has not God made wine to be drunk, flowers to be plucked, and women to be loved? As to that weather-beaten old soldier, why should I feel any pity on his account? He has been insolent, he has detested me without my ever having done anything to him; I have loved his daughter, his daughter has loved me, we are quits. I do not see why I should distress myself about an adventure which would make so many people happy, and for which all my brethren would have very quickly sold the sacred Host and the holy Pyx besides. Ah, my dear uncle, good father Ridoux, sleep, sleep in peace. How greatly am I your debtor for what you have done for me, unwittingly and in spite of yourself; for, have you not, by urging me to drink more than is my custom, in order to draw my secret from me, given me the courage to undertake what I should never have dared to dream of? _Audaces fortuna juvat_. Oh, Providence! Providence! She is mine, the girl with the dark eyes is mine! He heard a slight noise in the corridor. --Good never comes alone, he continued, it always has evil for an escort. Behind the sweet form of the angel, the grinning face of Satan. He is coming upstairs and knocks at the door. He had not lighted his lamp again, and he carefully refrained from answering. He heard Veronica, trying to open the door and calling him in a low voice. But he pretended to be deaf, and quietly got into bed, all the while cursing his accomplice, and thinking of the clumsy trap into which he had fallen like a fool, and of that thick and filthy spider's web where, like an unwary and silly fly, he had daubed his wings. What a difference between the chaste resistance of Suzanne, her tears and her defeat, and the hideous advances of that old courtesan of the sacristy! In place of that unclean creature, accomplished in crime, oozing hypocrisy from every pore, he had an adorable, loving, charming mistress, such as he had never dared to dream of. And all this alteration in a few hours! because he had faced it out, because, excited by intoxication, he had taken his courage in both hands, and because he had dared. Oh, why had he not dared ere this? He would not be under the infamous yoke of his servant. And how many priests, he said to himself, for want of a little boldness, are devoted to a degrading concubinage with faded old spinsters! He was not without uneasiness. How could he see Suzanne again, situated as he was between the jealous watching of the servant and the vigilance of the father? And above all, how could he discard his uncle's entreaties, and refuse an unexpected promotion, without arousing suspicion in high quarters? For, more than ever, he wished to remain at Althausen and keep the treasure which had just caused him so much anxiety. Yes, he saw them accumulating on his head, swooping from all parts and under all aspects: Veronica, Durand, Ridoux, the Bishop, the gossips, scandal, dishonour. But, after all, what did it matter to him? The essential is that he was in possession of Suzanne, that Suzanne was his, that he had the most charming of mistresses, and he was indifferent to all the rest. To see her again readily and without danger, to contrive other interviews, and above all to act prudently, was what he must think of. The chief step was taken, the rest would come of its own accord. With Suzanne's consent all obstacles could be smoothed away, and clever is he who succeeds in barring the way to two lovers who are determined to see one another again. The old counsellor Lamblin, who in his capacity of magistrate was aware of that, said long ago: "To safely guard a certain fleece, In vain is all the watchman's care; 'Tis labour lost, if Beauty chance To feel a strange sensation there." It was on this indeed that Marcel calculated; and, smiling, he slept the sleep of the just and dreamed the most rosy dreams. LXXIV. BEFORE MASS. "You think that we ought not to break in two this puppet which is called Public Opinion, and sit upon it." EUG. VERMEESCH (_L'Infamie humaine_). A loud and well-known voice roused him unpleasantly from his dreams. --Well, well, lazy-bones, still in bed when the sun is risen! You are not thinking then of going away? You go to bed the first, and you get up the last. I, a poor old invalid, am giving you an example of activity. Ah, young people! young people! you are not equal to us. Come, come you can rub your eyes to-morrow. Get up! Get up! --How early you are, my dear uncle; my Mass has not yet rang. --Have you no preparations to make for departure? --For departure. Is it for to-day then? --Do you wish to put it off to the Greek Kalends? --To-day! repeated Marcel. I did not think really that it was so soon. He dressed with the prudent delays of a man who says to himself: Let us see, let us consider carefully what we must do. --You don't look satisfied, resumed Ridoux; I bring you honour, fortune and success, and you look sulky. --Honour, fortune and success. Those are very fine words! --It is with fine words that we do fine things, and one of them is, it appears, to unmoor you from this place. --The fact is, replied Marcel, that I have reflected to-night; and, after well considering everything, I am perfectly well off, and have no desire to go away to be worse off elsewhere. --Hey! what do you say? --My parish, humble as it is, is not so bad as you think. The people are simple, kind and affable. I love peace and tranquillity, and I tell you, between ourselves, that to be Curé in a large town has no attractions for me. --What stuff are you telling me now? --Your town Curés are full of meanness and intrigues. The little I have seen of them has disgusted me for ever. They spy one upon another. It is who shall prejudice a fellow-priest in order to supplant him, or play the zealot in Monseigneur's presence. When I was the Bishop's secretary, hardly a day passed without my being witness to some shameful piece of tale bearing. You must weigh all your words, cover your looks and have a care even of your gestures. The slightest imprudence is immediately commented on, exaggerated, embellished and retailed at head-quarters. The Vicar General is the spy in general. Marcel uttered the truth. The position of the priest is a difficult one; he is surrounded with the malevolence of enemies. But the priest's chief enemy, is the priest. As a body, they march together, close, compact, disciplined, defending their rights and the honour of the flag, resenting individually the insults offered to all, and all rejoicing at the success of each. As individuals, they spy on one another, are jealous of one another, fight, accuse and judge one another; and they do all this hypocritically and by occult ways. These hatreds and intrigues do not go outside the sanctuary domains. It is a strange world which stirs within our world, a society within a society, a state within the State. It is the behind-the-scenes of the temple, and it stretches from the sacristy to the parsonage, from the parsonage to the Palace. The profane world suspects nothing; it passes unconcernedly by without dreaming that tempests are rumbling by its side. But, like the revolutions raised by the eunuchs of the Seraglio, the intrigues of the sacristy have been known to change the face of nations. The priest is the spy upon the priest. Misfortune to the cassock which unbuttons itself before another cassock. The old priests are aware of this, and when they are among themselves, they draw the folds of their black robe close, carefully hiding the least tell-tale opening. But the young ones, simple and unreserved, often let themselves be taken. They sound them and turn them up, and soon know what they have underneath. In order to please Monseigneur and to deserve the good graces of the Palace, there are few priests who resist the temptation to sell their brother-priest, and are not ready to deny Jesus like Peter the good apostle, the first and the model of the Roman pontiffs, three times before cock-crow, that is to say before Monseigneur gets up. --No, that will not do for me, added Marcel; if I am poor here, at least I am free. --Pshaw! You did not raise all those objections to me yesterday. --I have reflected, my dear uncle, as I have had the honour of telling you. --Your reflections are fine. Well, whether you have reflected or not, is all the same to me. I have taken it into my head that you should go, and you shall go. I will make you happy in spite of yourself, for I have reflected also, and more than ever I said to myself that you most go. Do you want me to enumerate the reasons? --The same as yesterday I have no doubt. --No, there is one more, and that is worth all the rest. --I know what you are going to say to me, but I have my answer all ready. Speak. --What! at your age! in your position! Are you not ashamed to fall into errors which would scarcely be pardonable in a seminarist? Ah! you want the dots on the i's, well I am going to place them. --Place them, uncle, place them. --Had you not enough girls then in the village without going to lay a claim on the one yonder? On a well-educated young lady, whose fall will cause a scandal, the daughter of an enemy, of a Voltairian, almost a radical, a gaol-bird in fine who will be happy to seize the occasion to raise a terrible outcry, and to proclaim your conduct to the four quarters of the horizon. You see I know all. --And who has informed you so correctly? --I know all, I tell you. You can therefore keep your temper. Will you act like the Curé of Larriques? --What is there in common between the Curé of Larriques and me? --You ought to humble yourself before God. If you wanted a young girl, if your immoderate appetites were not satisfied with what you had under your nose, is there no cautious person in the village who would have been proud and happy to be of service to you, and whom you could have married to some clodhopper or to some Chrysostom ready for the opportunity; whilst that one, whom will you give her to? There will be an uproar, I tell you, and that will be abomination. --Really, uncle, said Marcel pale with anger, if anyone heard us, would they believe that they were listening to the conversation of two ecclesiastics? you talk of these shameful things as if you were talking of the Gospel. In fact, I do not know which to be the more astonished at, the freedom of your talk or the sad opinion which you have of me. But I see whence all this emanates. Do you take me then for a bad priest? --What is that? Do you take me for a simpleton? for one of Molière's uncles?... Enough of playing a farce. You do not take me in, my good fellow. I told you yesterday that you were cleverer than I; you did not see then that I was joking? Your mask is still too transparent. One sees the tears behind the grinning face. No tragic aim. Come down from this stage on which you strut in such a ridiculous manner, and let us talk seriously like plain citizens. --Or bad priests! --Be silent. The bad priests, that is to say the clumsy priests, which is all the same, are in your cassock; and the clumsy ones are those who allow themselves to be caught. You have been caught, my son; and caught by whom? by your cook. Ha! Ha! --Are you not ashamed to listen to the tale-bearing and calumny of that horrible woman? --Horrible! Be quiet, you are blind. It is your conduct which is horrible. To concoct such intrigues! --I concoct no intrigue. And when that does occur; when my feelings of respect, of esteem, of friendship for a young person endowed with virtues and graces, change into a sweeter feeling: at all events, if my position compels me to conceal my inclinations from the world, I shall have no need to blush for them when face to face with myself, that is to say: with my dignity as a man. While your allusions, your instigation to certain intimacies, which in order to be more closely hidden are only the more abominable and degrading, inspire me only with disgust. --Oh, Holy Spirit, enlighten him. He is wandering, he is a triple fool. When I suspected, when I discovered, when I saw that you were entering on a perilous path, I gave you yesterday the advice which a priest of my age has the right to give to one of yours, especially when he is, as I am, regardful of his future. --I am as regardful of it as you. --Cease your idle words. Have you decided to go? --No, uncle, I am well off here, and I stay here. --Well off! Mouldy in your vices and obscurity. Wallowing, like Job, on your dung-heap. Roll yourself in your filth: for my part I know what course remains for me to take. --You will do what you think proper. --I am sure of it. But you, instead of having the excellent cure which was destined for you, you shall have one lower still than this where you can wallow at your ease in your idleness, your nothingness and your vices, for, I swear to you by my blessed patron, that if I go away without you, you shall not remain here for forty-eight hours. I will have you recalled by the Bishop. You laugh. You know me all the same; you know when I say _yes_ it is _yes_. A word is enough for Monseigneur, you know. _Magister dixit_. Marcel knew the character of the old Curé well enough to know that he was capable of keeping his word. Fearing to irritate him more by his obstinacy, he thought it better to appear to yield. --It is time for Mass, he said. We will talk about that again. --Go, my son, and pray to the Holy Spirit. LXXV. DURING MASS. "I have my rights of love and portion of the sun; Let us together flee ..." A. DE VIGNY (_La Prison_). It will easily be credited that Marcel's thoughts had little in common with the Holy Eucharist. He would have been a very ungrateful lover, if his whole soul had not flown towards Suzanne. This was then his chief preoccupation, while he murmured the long _Credo_, partook of Christ, and recited his prayers. What should he decide? that was his second. Should he go away? That meant fortune, reconciliation with the Bishop, putting his foot in the stirrup of honours. Young, intelligent, learned, what was there to stop him? But that meant separation from Suzanne: saying farewell to all those divine delights which he had just tasted. He had hardly time to moisten his parched lips in the cup, before the cup was shattered. He was truly in love, for he should have said to himself: "There are other cups." But for him there was but one. Uncle Ridoux, the Bishop and greatness might go to the devil. The promised cure and the episcopal mitre might go to the devil too. Did he not possess the most precious of treasures, the most enviable blessing, the supplement and complement of everything, the ambition of every young man, the desire of every old man, of every man who has a heart: a young, lovely, modest, loving, intelligent and adored mistress. But what might not be the result of that love? What drama, what tragedy, and perhaps what ludicrous comedy, in which he, the priest, would play the odious and ridiculous character? This love, which plunged him into an ocean of delights, would it not plunge him also into an abyss of misfortunes? Could it proceed for long without being known and remarked? Scandal, shame, and death perhaps, a terrible trinity, were they waiting not at his door? For the viper which harboured at his hearth, had its piercing glassy eye fixed unweariedly on him; and how could he crush the viper? What could he do? What could he venture? He remembered hearing of priests who had fled away with young girls whom they had seduced, and he thought for an instant that he would carry off Suzanne and fly. Willingly would he have left behind him his honour and his reputation, willingly would he have torn his priestly robe on the sharp points of infamy and scandal, willingly would he have quitted for ever that cursed parsonage where shame and humiliation, vice and remorse were henceforth installed; but Suzanne, would she follow him? Then, had he well weighed the mortifications which await the apostate priest! To be nameless in society, with no future, repulsed, despised, scoffed at by all! Should he, like the Père Hyacinth, go and found a free church in some corner of the republic, and rove through Europe, like him, to confer about morality, the rights of women and virtue? Would not poverty come and knock at his door? Poverty with a beloved wife! It would appear a hideous and terrifying spectre, chilling in its livid approach and in its kisses of love. To struggle against these obstacles he would need high energy and high courage, and he felt that courage and energy were lacking in him, the miserable coward, who had shamefully succumbed to the clumsy artifices of a lascivious woman, who had allowed the first fruits of his virginity and his youth to be lost in shameful debauch; while close by there was an adorable maiden whose heart was beating in unison with his own. Thus did his reflection lead him till the end of the Gospel, and when he said the _Deo gratias_ he had as yet decided nothing. LXXVI. AWAKENING. "We never permit with impunity the mind to analyze the liberty to indulge in certain loves; once begin to reflect on those deep and troublesome matters which are called _passion_ and _duty_, the soul which naturally delights in the investigation of every truth, is unable to stop in its exploration." ERNEST FRYDEAU (_La Comtesse de Chalis_). When Marcel had gone away, Suzanne, when she had quietly shut the street-door, by which she had gone out, went upstairs to her room and sat down on the side of her bed. She asked herself if she had not just been the sport of an hallucination, if it was really true that a man had gone out of the house, who had held her in his arms, to whom she had yielded herself. Everything had happened so rapidly, that she had had no time to think, to reflect, to say to herself: "What does he want with me?" no time even to recover herself. A kiss, a violent emotion, a transient indignation, a struggle for a few seconds, a sharp pain, and that was all; the crime was consummated, she had lost her honour, and that was love! She wished not to believe it, but her disordered corsage, her dishevelled hair upon her bare shoulders, her crumpled dressing-gown, and more than all that, the violent leaping of her heart, told her that she was not dreaming. He was gone, the priest; he had fled away into the night, happy and light of heart, leaving her alone with her shame, and the ulcer of remorse in her soul. And then big tears rolled down her cheeks and fell upon her breasts, still burning with his feverish caresses. "It is all over! it is all over. Where is my virginity?" Weep, poor girl, weep, for that virginity is already far away, and nothing, it is said, flees faster than the illusion which departs, if it be not a virginity which flies away. And a vague terror was mingled with her remorse. The first apprehension which strikes brutally against the edifice of illusions of the woman who has committed a fault, is the anxiety regarding the opinion of the man who has incited her to that fault; I am speaking, be it understood, of one in whom there remains the feeling of modesty, without which she is not a woman, but an unclean female. When she awakes from her short delirium, she says to herself: --What will he think of me? What will he believe? Will he not despise me? And she has good grounds for apprehension; for often (I believe I have said so already) the contempt of her accomplice is all that remains to her. And then, what man is there who, after having at length possessed _illegitimately_ the wife or the maiden so long pursued and desired, does not say to himself in the morning, when his fever is dissipated, when the bandage which hitherto has covered the eyes of love _suppliant_, is unbound from the eyes of love _satisfied_, when the _unknown_ which has so many charms, has become the _known_ that we despise, when of the rosy, inflated illusion there remains but a yellow skeleton: "She has given herself to me trustingly and artlessly; but might she not have given herself with equal facility to another, if I had not been there? for in fact ... what devil...?" A strange question, but one which unavoidably takes up its abode in the heart, and waits to come forth and be present one day on the lips, at the time when Satiety gives the last kick to the last house of cards erected by Pleasure. And it is thus that after doing everything to draw a woman into our own fall, we are discontented with her for her sacrifice and for her love. For there comes a moment when the _angel_ for whom one would have given one's life, the _divinity_ for whom one would have sacrificed country, family, fortune, future, is no more than a common mistress, ranked in the ordinary lot with the rest, and for whom one would hesitate to spend half-a-sovereign. Have you not chanced sometimes to follow with an envious eye, on some fresh morning in spring or on a lovely autumn evening, the solitary walk of a loving couple? They go slowly, hand in hand, avoiding notice, selecting the shady and secret paths, or the darkest walks in the woods. He is handsome, young and strong; she is pretty and charming, pale with emotion, or blushing with modesty. What things they murmur as they lean one towards another, what sweet projects of an endless future, what oaths which ought to be eternal, sworn untiringly, lip on lip. "One of those noble loves which have no end." Happy egotists. They think but of themselves; all, except themselves, is insupportable to them, all but themselves wearies and weighs upon them. The universe is themselves, life is the present which glides along, and in order to delay the present and enjoy it at their ease, they have no scruple in mortgaging the future. And they go on, listening to the divine harmony, the mysterious poem which sings in their own heart, of youth and love. You have envied them; who would not envy them? It is happiness which passes by. Make way respectfully. What! you smiled sorrowfully! Ah, it is because like me, you have seen behind these poor trustful children, following them as the _insultores_ used to follow the triumphal chariot of old, a demon with sinister countenance who with his brutal hands will soon roughly tear the veil woven of fancies; the Reality, who is there with his rags, getting ready to cast them upon their bright tinsels of gauze and spangles. Wait a few years, a few months, perhaps only a few weeks. What has become of those handsome lovers so tenderly entwined? They swore mouth to mouth an endless love. Where are they? Where are their loves? As well would it be worth to ask where are the leaves of autumn which the evening breeze carried away last year. "But where are the snows of yester-year?" What! already, it is finished! And yet he had sworn to love her always. Yes, but she also had sworn to be always amiable. Which of the two first forfeited the oath? There has been then a tragedy, a drama, despair, tears? Nonsense! Those who had sworn to die one for the other, one fine day parted as strangers. The charming young girl whom you saw passing by, proud and radiant on the arm of that artless stripling, see, here she comes, a little weary, a little faded, but still charming, on the arm of that cynical Bohemian. That poetical school-girl, who smiled and scattered daisies on the head of her lover, as he knelt before her, has become the adored wife of a dull tallow-chandler; and the other one, who took the ivy for her emblem, and who said to her sweetheart: "I cling till death!" has clung to and separated from half-a-dozen others without dying, and has finished by fastening herself to a rheumatical old churchwarden, peevish but substantial. And the lover? He is no better: he has loved twenty since; the deep sea of oblivion has passed between them, and among so many vanished mistresses, can he precisely remember her name? Suzanne did not say all this to herself, she was ignorant of the whirlpools of life, but she felt instinctively that she was about to be precipated into an abyss. She was not perverse, she was merely frivolous and coquettish, but she had received a vicious education. Her imagination only had been corrupted, her heart had remained till then untainted. It was a good ear of corn which somehow or another had made its way into the field of tares. She reproached herself bitterly therefore for the shameful facility with which she had yielded herself to the priest, and she sought for an excuse to try and palliate her fault in her own eyes. But she was unable to discover any genuine excuses. A young girl is pardoned for yielding herself to her lover in a moment of forgetfulness and excitement, because she hopes that marriage will atone for her fault. But what had she to claim? What could she expect from this Curé? Again a young wife is pardoned for deceiving an old husband, or a husband who is worthless, debauched and brutal, and for seeking a friend abroad whom she cannot find at her fire-side; but she? Whom had she deceived? Her father, who though severe, adored her. Whom had she dishonoured? The white hairs of that worthy, brave old man. She saw clearly that she could find no excuse, and she was compelled to confess that she ought to feel ashamed of herself; but what affected her most was the thought that her lover, the priest, must have been extremely surprised at his victory himself, and that if he too were to attempt to find an excuse for her conduct, he could discover none either. But in proportion as she felt astonished at her shame, as she saw into what a corner she had been driven, as she dreaded the man's scorn, for whom she had fallen so low, did she feel her love grow greater. LXXVII. CONSOLATIONS. "Every fault finds its excuse in itself. This is the sophistry in which we are richest. The struggle of good and evil is serious, and really painful, only in the case of a man who has been brought up in a position where actions, deeds and thoughts have had the power of self-examination." EMILE LECLERCQ (_Une fille du peuple_). Before her fault, or if you prefer it, her fall, this was but the odd caprice of an ardent, amorous, passionate young girl whose feelings are exhilarated and excited by a licentious imagination, continually nourished by the senseless reading of the adventures of heroes, who have existed nowhere but in the brain of novelists. Therefore, eager for the unknown, she hastens to lay hold of the first rascal who comes forward, having a little self-assurance, talkativeness and good looks, and who will be for one day the ideal she has dreamed of, if he knows how to brazen it out. "Every woman is at heart a rake," said the great poet Alexander Pope. And as for those who, in spite of the heat of an ungovernable temperament, remain virtuous and chaste, we must scarcely be pleased at them on that account. It is simply because they have not had the opportunity to sin. The opportunity, which makes the thief, is also the touchstone of women's virtue. Therefore, when this blessed opportunity presents itself, although it is said to be bald, they well know how to find other hairs on it by which they seize and do not let it go again. Certainly there are exceptions, and I am far from saying _Ab una disce omnes_. You, Madame, for instance, who read me, I am convinced that you are not in that category of women of whom the Englishman Pope made this wicked remark. Suzanne felt now possessed by a wild infatuation for the man to whom she had yielded herself almost without love; and do not young girls frequently yield themselves in this manner? She felt herself attracted towards him by the purely physical and magnetic phenomenon which impels the female towards the male; for we shall try in vain and talk in vain, raise ourselves on our dwarfish heels, talk of the ethereal essence of our soul and the quintessence of our feelings, idealize woman and deify love, there always comes a moment when we become like the brute, and when the passion of seraphims cannot be distinguished in anything from that of man. ........who goes by night In some street obscure, to a lodging low and dark. Suzanne certainly had not taken note of her impressions. Attracted towards Marcel by his sympathetic beauty, by his sweet and unctuous voice, and especially by the vague sorrow displayed on his countenance, perhaps still more by the opposition and slanders of her father, she had allowed herself to be won, before she know where she was going. She was far from any carnal thought, and she would have been considerably surprised if anyone had told her that the priest loved her otherwise than as a sister is loved. But that is not what we men understand by love. The Werthers who regard their mistress as a sacred divinity whom we ought to touch with trembling, are rare. They are not met again after eighteen. Marcel was more than eighteen; therefore he had found his desires become more inflamed than ever in the presence of his mistress. If he had been hesitating and timid, like Charlotte's lover, I do not doubt that she would have found time to gather within herself the force necessary to resist him, but she felt herself mastered before even she had recovered from her terror and confusion. I do not wish to try and excuse her, but she repented; and how far more worthy of respect is the repentance of certain fallen women than the haughty virtue of certain others. And, perceiving that she found no excuse for her fault, Suzanne tried to deceive herself by exalting above measure the worth of the man who had ruined her. --He is no ordinary man after all, she said to herself, and we do not love the man we wish. It does honour to the heart to repose its love rightly. It is natural then that I should say, that I should confess to myself, since I cannot confess it to others. Yes, I love him; who would not love him? Yes, I have given myself to him; but who in my place would have had the power to resist him? Is it not a fact that everybody here loves him? Have I not observed the looks of all these village girls fixed on him with eager desire? It would have been easy for him to make his choice among the prettiest, but he has seen me only. He is a priest, but what does that matter? is he not a man? And this man as handsome as a god, I feel that I love him much more than a lover ought to be loved; for I love not only for the happiness of loving him and being loved by him, but also from pride, because I am proud of him, because I admire his fine and noble nature, so open, so sweet, so charming, so audacious, which, led astray into this false and thankless position, must find itself so unhappy. Then, I was so affected the first time that my look met his, I felt that all my being was his, but especially my inward feelings, my spirit, my soul, and my sentiments. And in this way there is a great difference in man and in woman in their love. In man, possession most frequently causes passion to disappear; the reality kills the ideal; the awakening, the dream; in woman on the other hand, it nearly always enhances, for the first time at any rate, the fascination of being loved, for she attaches herself to him in proportion to the trouble, the shame, the sacrifice. For with man, love is but an episode, while with woman it is her whole life. LXXVIII. FALSE ALARM. "She's there, say'st thou? What, can that be the maid Whose pure, fresh face attracted me but now, When I beheld her in her home; alas, And can the flower so quickly fade?"... DELPHINE GAY. Suzanne, who had passed a sleepless night, was fast asleep in the morning, when her father burst into her room like a hurricane. She woke with a start, all pale and trembling; she tried nevertheless to assume the most innocent and the calmest air. --What is the matter, papa? But Durand did not answer. He surveyed the room with a scrutinizing eye, apparently, interrogating the furniture and the walls, as if he were asking them if they had not been witnesses of some unusual event. But if walls at times have eyes and ears, they have no tongue; they cannot relate the things they have seen. Then he turned towards his daughter in such a singular way that Suzanne dropped her eyes and felt she was going to faint. --Suzanne, he demanded of her abruptly, did you hear anything in the night? --I! she said with the most profound astonishment. --Yes, you, Suzanne. It seems to me that I am speaking to you. Did you hear anything in the night? She thought she saw at first that her father knew nothing, and, in spite of herself, a long sigh of relief escaped her breast; therefore she replied with the most natural air in the world: --What do you mean that I have heard, father? --Something has happened, my daughter, this very night, in the garden, said Durand, scanning his words, something extraordinary. This time Suzanne was terrified. Nevertheless she collected all her courage; fully determined to lie to the last extremity. --Well? --Well, father? you puzzle me. And leaning her pretty pale head on her plump arm, she looked at her father with perfect assurance. She was charming thus. Her black hair, long and curling, partly covered her round, polished shoulders, and her velvety eye was frankly fixed on Durand's. The old soldier was moved; he looked at his daughter with admiration, and reproached himself doubtlessly for his wrongful suspicions, for he said gently: --Do not lie to me, Suzanne, and answer my questions frankly. I know very well that you are not guilty, that you cannot be guilty, that you have nothing to reproach yourself with; you quite see then that I am not angry. But sometimes young girls allow themselves to be led into acts of thoughtlessness which they believe to be of no consequence, and which yet have a gravity which they do not foresee. Last night a man entered the garden. --The garden? said Suzanne, alarmed afresh, and ever feeling the fixed and scrutinizing look dwelling upon her. No doubt, it is a thief. No, father, no, I have heard nothing. --I have several reasons for believing that it is not a thief; thieves take more precautions; this one walked heavily in my asparagus-bed. --Ah, what a pity! In the asparagus-bed! He has crushed some, no doubt... --Yes, in the asparagus-bed. The mark of his feet is distinctly visible. Suzanne could contain herself no longer. Her self-possession deserted her, and she felt that her strength was going also. She believed that her father knew all, she saw herself lost, and, to conceal her shame and hide her terror, she buried herself under the bed-clothes, sobbing, and saying: --Ah, papa! Ah, papa! The old soldier mistook her terror, her despair and her tears. --Come, he cried, confound it, Suzanne, are you mad? Don't cry like this, little girl, don't cry like this, like a fool: I only wanted to know if you had heard anything. --No, father, sobbed Suzanne under her bed-clothes. --You did not hear him? Well! very good. That is all, confound it. Another time we will keep our eyes open, that is all. But the shock had been too great, and Suzanne continued to utter sobs; she decided, however, to show her face all bathed in tears, and said to her father in a reproachful tone: --And besides I did not know what you meant with your night-robber and your asparagus-bed; I was fast asleep, and you woke me up with a start to tell me that. --True, I have been rather abrupt, I was wrong; well, don't let us talk about it any more, hang it. But Suzanne, having recovered herself, wanted to enjoy her triumph to the end. --I don't know what you could have meant, she added still in tears, by coming and telling me in an angry tone that a man had been walking in your asparagus, as if it were my fault. --It is true nevertheless, Suzanne. It is quite plain. I arrived this morning quite dusty from my journey, and went down into the garden very quietly as I usually do, thinking of nothing, when all at once I stopped. What did I behold? ... footsteps, child, a man's footsteps, right in the middle of my borders. "Hang it," I cried, "here is a blackguard who makes himself at home." I followed their track, which led me to the wall of the house and right up to the stair-case. That was rather bad, you know. There was still some fresh soil on the steps. Good Heavens! I asked myself then what it meant, and I came to you to learn. --To me, father. But I know no more about it than you do. Why do you suppose that I know more about it than you? Durand had great confidence in his daughter: he knew her to be giddy and frivolous, but he did not suppose for an instant her giddiness and frivolity amounted to the forgetfulness of duty. Many fathers in this manner allow themselves to be deceived by their children with the same blindness and meekness as foolish husbands are deceived by their wives, till the day, when the bandage which covered their eyes, falls at length, and they discover to their amazement that the _cherub_ which they had brought up with so much care and love, and whose long roll of good qualities, talents and virtues they loved to recount before strangers, is nothing but a little being saturated with vice and hide-bound in overweening vanity. He embraced her with a father's tender and affectionate look, and for some time gazed upon Suzanne's clear eyes: --No, he said to himself, there can be no vice in this young soul; is not this calm brow and these pure eyes the evidence of the purity of her soul? And, taking one of her hands in his, he remained near her bed and said to her gently: --It is a fact, I say again, my child, that I know young people sometimes, without thinking or intending any evil, commit imprudent acts, which are nothing at first, but which often have dangerous consequences. Sometimes carelessly they fasten their eyes on a young man whom they meet at church, at a ball, during a walk, or no matter where ... well! that is enough for him to construe the look as an advance which is made to him, or at least as an encouragement, and to believe himself authorized then to undertake some enterprise. Good Heavens, all seductions begin in the same way. We men are for the most part very infatuated with ourselves. I, my dearest child, can make that confession without any shame, for I have long since passed the age of self-conceit, although we still come across some old rascals who want to gobble up chickens, and forget that they have lost their teeth. Men are very foolish, young men particularly, and willingly imagine that all the ladies are dying of love for their little persons. A young woman passes by, and happens to look at them, as one looks at a dog or a pig; good, they say directly, "Stop, stop, that woman wants me." And immediately they try the knot of their tie, arrange their collar, and, assuming a triumphant air, begin to follow her and consider themselves authorized to address her impertinently. --Ah, ah, said Suzanne, I can see that now, father. There were some young fellows who used to follow us always at school, with their moustaches well waxed and a fine parting in their hair behind. Heavens, how they have amused us. --At other times, said Durand, a young girl is at her window. A gentleman, passing by, all at once lifts his nose. The young girl sees him, their eyes meet: "Eh, eh," says the gentleman, "there is a little thing who is rather nice; 'pon my word, she is not bad, not bad at all, and I believe that it would not be difficult ... the devil, it would be charming! What a look she gave me! let us have a try." And the rogue commences to walk up and down under the windows, doing all he can to compromise the girl. And all these young fellows, my dear, are like that; they have the most deplorable opinion of women, that one would say that their mothers had all been very easy-going ladies. And now, that is enough. Together they passed in minute review all the young village _beaux_, but Durand's suspicion did not rest on any. LXXIX IN THE _DILIGENCE_ "Hydras and apes. Triboulet puts on the mitre, and Bobêche the crown, Crispin plays Lycurgus, and Pasquin parades as Solon. Scapin is heard calling himself Sire, Mascarillo is My Lord ... Cheeks made for slaps, are titles for honours. The more they are branded on the shoulder, the more they are bedisened on the back. Trestallion is radiant, and Pancrace resplendent." CAMILLE LEMONNIERE (_Paris-Berlin_). During this time, the _diligence_ for Nancy was carrying away Marcel and Ridoux at full trot. Marcel had appeared to yield to his uncle's exhortations, and said to himself: "Let us go; that does not bind me to anything. In a couple of days at the latest, I shall be on my way back;" and this had made the worthy Ridoux quite happy. They were alone in the _coupé_, and could converse at their ease. --Look at this lovely country, that valley, those little hills, and away there the large woods, and do you not think that I shall feel some regret at leaving this part? --And that little white house at the foot of the hill?... Is it there? --Ah! so Veronica has pointed it out to you. --Reluctantly, my son. But I wanted to know all. She is a cautious and trustworthy person who is entirely devoted to you. --Not a word more about that cautious woman, uncle, I pray. --Let us rather talk about your promotion. --My promotion. I assure you, uncle, that I am no longer ambitious. --What are you saying there? You are no longer ambitious! You are going perhaps to make me believe that you are happy in your shell. Come, rouse yourself. Has a moral torpor already seized you? You are no longer ambitious. Well, I will be so for you, and I intend, yes, I intend, do you hear, that you should make your way. What happiness for a poor old man, like me, when I hear them say: "Monsieur Ridoux, I have just seen your nephew, Monseigneur Marcel, go by." I shall answer then: "It is I, however, who have made him, who have formed him, his Right-Reverence." You will give me your patronage, will you not? --Dear uncle, said Marcel softened, pressing the old Curé's hands, you still have those ideas then, you always think then that I shall become a Bishop? --What? yes I think so; I do more than that, I am sure of it. Are you not of the stuff of which they make them? Why should not you become one as well as another? --A bishopric is not for the first-comer. --Don't worry me. Are you the first-comer? See, my dear fellow, you really must get this into your head, that in order to succeed in our profession, evangelical virtues are more detrimental than useful, and that there are two things indispensable: first to have a good outside show, to stir yourself and to know how to intrigue to the utmost. As for talent, that is an accessory which can do no harm, but after all, it is merely an accessory. Now, you have a good outside show; you have more talent than is necessary, there is only one thing in which you are faulty, you are not sufficiently intriguing. Well, I will be so for you, and I will stir myself up for you. Success wholly lies in that. You say that a bishopric is not for the first-comer. You make me laugh. Look at ours, Monseigneur Collard; what transcendant genius does he possess? Is not his morality somewhat elastic, and his virtues very doubtful? But he has a magnificent head, and that from all time has pleased the world in general and the women in particular. Ah, the women, my dear friend, the women! you do not know what a weight they are in the scales of our destinies, and in the choice of our superiors. I know something about it, and if I had had a smaller nose and a better-made mouth, I should not be now Curé of St. Nicholas. But I am ugly and they despise me. How many I know who owe their cross and their mitre to the way in which they say in the pulpit, "my sisters", and to the amiable manner in which they receive the confessions of influential sheep. --You confess, uncle, that it is abominable. --I confess that it is in human nature, that is all I confess. Is it not logical to befriend people whose appearance pleases you, rather than those whose face is disagreeable to you? Good Heavens, it has always been the case since the commencement of the world. All that you could say on the subject would not make the slightest change. Let us therefore profit by our advantages when we have advantages, and leave fruitless jeremiads to the foolish and envious. --Birth also counts for much in our fortune. --Often, but not always. Look at Collard again, who is the son of a journeyman baker. --He has that in common with Pope Benedict XII. --Yes, but he has that only. Therefore, since it is neither his birth, nor his genius, nor his virtues which have helped him on, it is then something else. --In fact, ecclesiastical history abounds in similar instances. Men, starting from the most humble condition, have attained the supreme dignity: Benedict XI had tended sheep, the great Sixtus V was a swineherd, Urban VI was the son of a cobbler, Alexander V had been a beggar. --And a host of others of the same feather. Well, that ought to encourage you who are the son neither of a cobbler, or of a pig-seller. --Would to heaven that I were a cobbler or a shepherd myself; I could have married according to my taste and have become the worthy father of a family, an honest artisan rather than a bad Curé. --Yes, but Mademoiselle Durand would not have wanted you. --Oh, uncle, do not speak of that young person with whom you are not acquainted, and regarding whom you are strangely mistaken, for you see her through the dirty spectacles of my servant. You want to take me away on her account, but are there not young persons everywhere? You know, as well as I, to what dangers young priests are exposed; shall I be safe from those dangers by going away? No. And since it is agreed between us that, no more than others, can we avoid certain necessities of nature.... -Alas, alas, human infirmity! Omnia vincit amor, et nos cadamus amori. --Then.... --Then, we choose our company; for instance, that pretty girl there. And Ridoux leant his head out of the door. They had just reached Vic, where they changed horses. LXXX. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. "Methinks Queen Mab upon your cheek Doth blend the tints of cream and rose. And lends the pearls which deck her hat And rubies too from off her gown, To be your own fit ornament." E. DARIO (_Strophes_). Before the _Hôtel des Messageries_, a young girl, modestly dressed, was waiting for the _diligence_, with an old band-box in her hand. Marcel, who had also put his head out of the coach-door, looked at her with surprise. He had seen this girl somewhere. Yes, he remembered her. He had seen that charming countenance, he had already admired that fair hair and those blue eyes. But the face had grown pale; the cheeks had lost their freshness with the sun-burn, and the bosom its opulence. Marcel thought her prettier and more delicate like this. For it was really she, the mountebank's daughter, whom he had seen a few weeks before, dancing in the market-place of Althausen. By what chance was she still in the neighbourhood, this travelling swallow? Was the house on wheels then in the vicinity with its two broken-winded horses, and the clown with the cracked voice, and the big woman with the red face, and the thin and hungry little children? He looked if he could not see them all, but he saw only the pretty fair girl, who had recognized him also, and made him a friendly bow. --Mademoiselle Zulma! called the conductor. --It is I, she said. --This way, this way, my little dear, said the conductor with a good-natured familiarity which disgusted Marcel; there is no room inside. And, to the priest's great delight, he opened the coupé. The young girl seemed surprised, for she hesitated a little and said: --What, in the coupé? --Yes, my imp of Satan, in the coupé, and in good hands too. Do you complain? If you are not converted yet, here are two gentlemen who will undertake your conversion. --Well, I ask for nothing better, she answered laughing; and addressing herself to Marcel: Will you take my band-box for me? He took the box, and at the same time offered his hand to help her to get up. She leant on it prettily; and bowing to him, and to Ridoux also, she sat down beside Marcel. --You have come back then into the country, Mademoiselle. --I have not left it, sir; I have been ill. I am coming out of the hospital. --Oh, really. And what has been the matter with you? --'Pon my word, I don't know. I caught a chill after an evening performance, and when I woke up the next morning, I could not move arm or leg. My father was obliged to leave me here in the hospital. They have been very kind to me, and an old gentleman has even paid my coach-fare. Oh, there are good people everywhere. --And you are going to Nancy? --To Nancy first, then I shall rejoin the company, which ought to be at Epinal. Ridoux was listening in his corner. --You know this young person then? he said. --I know her through having seen her once at Althausen. --Twice, the young girl corrected him: when I arrived and when I went away. You remember, we were both of us at our window? Marcel remembered it very well; he remembered still better the fantastic sight in the market-place, and the lascivious dance, and the theatrical low-cut dress of the mountebank, which had awakened all at once the passion of his feelings. But as he was afraid of allowing the young girl to suspect that the memory of her had left too deep a mark upon him, he answered. --I don't remember. Meanwhile, a throng of beggars besieged the _diligence_; allured by the sight of the two cassocks, they recited all at the same time _litanies_, _paters_ and _aves_ in undefinable accents and in lamentable voices. Ridoux and Marcel with much ostentation distributed a few _sous_ among the most bare-faced and importunate, that is to say among the most expert beggars and consequently those who least deserved attention, then they threw themselves back into the carriage and shut their ears. --I have nothing more, said Ridoux, I have nothing more; go and work, you set of idlers. --Poor things, murmured the player; no doubt, among the number there are some who cannot work. --There, said Ridoux, is where the old order of things is ever to be lamented. Formerly there were convents which fed all the beggars, while now these starving creatures will soon eat us all up. Ah, it makes the heart bleed to see such misery. And he took a pinch of snuff. A poor woman, pale and sickly, with a child on her arm, kept timidly behind the greedy crowd. Zulma perceived her, and made her a sign. Then, taking a pie out of her hat-box, she cut it into two and gave her one half. --You are giving away your breakfast, said Marcel. --Yes, sir, it is a present from the kind Sisters. I should have eaten it yesterday, but I preferred to keep it for to-day; you see I have done a good action, she added laughing. --I see that the Sisters were very kind to you. --Yes, sir, they have converted me, they made me confess and take the Communion, which I had not done for a long time. --That is well, said Ridoux. The _diligence_ had started again. A tiny child, emaciated, in rags and with bare feet was running, cap in hand. He was quite out of breath, and with a little panting, plaintive voice, he cried: --Charity, kind Monsieur le Curé; charity, if you please. --Go away, said Ridoux, go away, little rascal. -My mother is very ill, said the little one: there is no bread at home. --Wait, wait, I am going to point you out to the _gendarmes_. The child stopped short, and sadly put on his cap again. --Poor little fellow, said the dancer. And she threw him the other half of the pie. Ridoux thought he saw an offensive meaning in this quite spontaneous action, for he cried angrily: --Would you tell us then, Mademoiselle, that you have taken the Communion? No doubt it was with that piece of meat. --Why, sir? --In what religion have you been brought up? --In the Catholic religion. --Is it possible? Really! you are a Catholic and you keep some pie for your meals on a fast-day, on a Friday! A Friday! he repeated with an accent of the deepest indignation: has not your Curé then taught that it is forbidden to eat meat the day on which Our Lord Jesus Christ died to redeem you from your sins? --I know it, answered the young girl colouring, but we are not able to attend to religion much. We do not belong to any parish. --What do you mean by "we?" What is your calling? --I am a travelling artiste, sir. --A travelling artiste. What is that? --I dance character dances, and I appear in _tableaux vivants_ and _poses plastiques_. --_Poses plastiques_! at your age? Are you not ashamed to follow that calling? --That is the calling which I was taught, sir; I know no other, replied the young girl, whose eyes filled with tears. I have always heard it said that when we gain our living honourably, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with. --Honourably! that's a fine word! --I mean to say, without wronging our neighbour. --And you are talking nonsense. Can you think your life is honourable, when you do not discharge even the most elementary duty of a good Catholic, which is to keep the Friday as a fast-day? And not only that, you encourage others in your vices; in short, that wretched woman, to whom you have given that piece of meat, you incite her to disobey the Church.... --I did not think of that. --And that little child, he continued with growing anger, that little child to whom you have given this bad example, whom you lead into a disorderly life by throwing him, before two ecclesiastics, some pie on a Friday.... You have caused this little child to offend. Do you not know then what Our Lord Jesus Christ has said about those who cause the little children to offend? But you know nothing about it. Do you take heed of the Divine Master's words, you who, at the beginning of your life, display your youth in sinful dances for the lewd pleasure of passers-by? --I make my living as I can, replied Zulma, wounded by the rebuke. --A fine way of making your living! You would do better to pray to the Holy Virgin. --Will the Holy Virgin give me what I want to eat? --Ah, they are all like that. Eating! Eating! They only think of eating! It appeals that they have said everything when they have said: "Who will give me to eat?" That is the great argument to excuse the lowest callings, and work on Sundays. Eating? Eating? Eh, unhappy child, and your soul? You must not think only of your body, which will be one day eaten by worms. Your soul also requires to eat. Marcel interrupted. --Uncle, I ask you to excuse this young person. She is ignorant of the duties of a Christian, and it is not her fault. This is a soul to guide. --I do not say that it is not; I wish then that she may find someone to guide her. Thereupon he opened his breviary; but he had not finished the second page of that potent narcotic before he was sound asleep. LXXXI. A LITTLE CONFESSION "Let us not ask of the tree what fruit it bears." CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Mes Medailles_). --Monsieur le Curé is a trifle abrupt, said Marcel, bat he has an excellent heart. --Yes, he seems to be quickly offended. It is quite different with the old gentleman who came to see me at the Hospital. There is a good sort of a man! --The Chaplain, no doubt. --No, he is a judge. When I knew it, I was quite alarmed at it. A judge, that makes one think of the _gendarmes_. I was quite in order, fortunately. Besides, he is the president of a great Society, which enters everywhere, and knows what is going on everywhere. Ah, he is a man who frightened me very much the first time I saw him. But he is as kind as can be. --You are talking, no doubt, of Monsieur Tibulle, President of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and Judge of the Court at Vic. --Monsieur Tibulle, that is he. A benevolent man, but who does good only to people who are religious and honest and right-minded--as he says. As I am an artiste, the Sister was afraid that he would not trouble himself about me, but he saw plainly that I was an honest girl. --What do you mean by honest girl? She looked at him attentively: --You know very well, she said. --But it is not enough to receive the Communion once, by chance, to be honest. --Was I not obliged to go to confession before? --Ah, I can explain it all now. You have been washed from your sins. That is well, my daughter, but you must not fall into them again. --Fall where? --Into your sins. --That will be very hard, said Zulma with a sigh, for I commit so many of them. --Many! so young! How old are you? --Sixteen. --Sixteen; and so grown-up already. But what are the sins that you can commit at sixteen? --Many. The Curé of the Hospital has assured me so. He said to me that I was a cup of iniquity. --Oh, he has exaggerated; I feel sure that he has exaggerated. What sins do you commit then? --I do not say my prayers, I do not fast on Friday, I do not go to Mass. --What then? --Others besides. --What are they? --I do not know; there are so many. --Which are those that you commit by preference? The sins which you have just related to me are infractions of the Church's laws. But the others ... you do not know what are the sins which you take pleasure in committing? --They all give me pleasure. If I sin, it is because it gives me pleasure, is it not? If it did not give me pleasure, I should not sin. --But, after all, there are pleasures which you love more than others. --Assuredly. Are not all pleasures sins? --All those which are not innocent, yes. --How can I distinguish innocent pleasures from those which are not so? --Your conscience is the best judge. --And when my conscience says nothing? --That is not a sin. --Well, Monsieur le Curé of the Hospital has accused me of a heap of sins for which my conscience does not reproach me at all. --My child, habit sometimes hardens the heart, but you are not of an age to have a hardened heart. I feel certain that your heart, on the contrary, is kind and tender, and that if you commit faults, it is through ignorance. What are then those great faults? --Must I tell you them in order to be an honest girl? --Yes, I should like to hear them; I might be able to give you some good advice. Advice is not to be despised, particularly in your condition, exposed as you are, young and pretty as you are. --Pretty! you think me pretty? --Yes, said Marcel smiling; am I the first to tell you so, and don't you know it? --Oh, no, you are not the first. When I am passing by somewhere, or when I am taking part in the outside show, I often hear them say: Eh, the pretty girl! But you are the first from whom it has given me so much pleasure to hear it. Is that a sin too? --A little sin of vanity, but extremely pardonable. If you have no greater ones than that, you are really an honest girl. He looked at her and smiled. Zulma caught his look, and blushed. --Where are you going to stay at Nancy? --The gentleman who paid my fare, gave me also the address of a house where I can rest for a day or two while I am waiting for news from my company: the _Hôtel du Cygne de la Croix_. --I know it, said Ridoux who had just woke up, it is a respectable house, the best which a young person like you could meet with. I have no doubt but that you will be welcomed there and at a moderate price, being recommended by the worthy Monsieur Tibulle. The mistress of the establishment is a conscientious lady, well-disposed and observing her religious duties. She is not one who will give you meat on a Friday. Monsieur Tibulle takes a great interest in you then? --Yes, sir. He has even said that if I wished, he would find a more suitable position for me; but what position could he give me? --He might find you some ... he is an influential man. I invite you to follow his advice. He is a member of the _Society for the protection of poor young girls_. --But, no doubt, I shall not see him again. --Then, said Marcel, I, for my part, would wish to be useful to you; but unfortunately, you are only passing through, and I also am not here for long. Nevertheless, if for one cause or another you should have need of anyone ... you understand ... a young girl might find herself at a loss in a huge town ... you will enquire for the Abbé Marcel at this address. -Many thanks, sir. They had arrived. The travellers separated. The young girl with her small amount of luggage directed her steps in all confidence towards the inn which the old member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul had acquainted her with, while Ridoux and Marcel took their way to the Place d'Alliance, where resided the Comtesse de Montluisant. LXXXII. THE CHURCH-WOMAN. "Devotion is the sole resource of coquettes: when they are become old, God becomes the last resource of all women who know not aught else to do." MME. DE REUX. As _his uncle_ had foreseen, the young Curé pleased the old lady greatly. She examined him with satisfaction and predicted that he would make his way. --You have not deceived me, she said to Ridoux, here is a priest such as we require. We are encumbered with awkward, ridiculous, red-raced men, who bring religion into disrepute. Why not send all those peasants back to their village, and select men like Monsieur l'Abbé? It is a shame, an absolute shame to allow you to stagnate in this way. I shall reproach Monseigneur severely for it. --It is the fault of the Grand-Vicar Gobin, said Ridoux; he had taken a dislike to my nephew. --I have known that. He was a very harsh and a very tiresome man. Too frozen virtue which has melted, I am told. I do not want to believe it. He is the talk of the town. It is abominable, but I do not pity him. That is what comes of not making religion amiable. Although we are old, Monsieur Marcel, we are of the new school; we firmly believe that religion and agreeable gaiety ought to proceed in harmony. We want conciliatory and amiable priests. In this way the women let themselves be won over. I may confess it to you, I who am double your age; and in so far as we shall have the women, the world is ours. While asking himself, what influence this more than middle-aged lady could exercise over the Bishop's decisions, Marcel quickly perceived that in order to be successful, he had only to be in the good graces of this estimable dowager, and, in spite of the remembrance of Suzanne, he tried to be amiable and witty. But soon his ideas of ambition returned to him in this sumptuous drawing-room, surrounded with comfort and luxury: he thought that he had only to wish it, in order to become himself too, one of the great of the earth, and it appeared to him that the Comtesse do Montluisant ought to be the instrument of a rapid fortune. The old lady was one of those women, very numerous in the world, who make of religion a convenient chaperone for their intrigues and their affairs of gallantry. When they are old, and can scarcely _venture_ any longer on their own account, they generously place their experience and their small talents at another's service, and willingly assist the intrigues of others. That is called _lending the hand_, and more than once the old lady had countenanced, through perfectly Christian charity, the secret interviews of sweet sheep with their tender pastor. The deduction must not be made from this that all the devout are courtesans when they are young and procuresses in their ripened age. Whatever may be said, all are not hypocritical and vicious. Vice usually comes in the long run, and hypocrisy, which oozes from the old arches of the temples, and from the antique wainscoting of the sacristies, falls at length upon their shoulders like an unwholesome drizzling rain, but for the most part they begin with conviction and good faith. They attend church frequently, not only because it is _good form_, not only through want of occupation and through habit, but from inclination. The melodies of the organ, the odour of incense, the singing of the choir, the meditation and silence, the flowers, the wax-tapers, the gilding, the pictures, the mysterious light which filters through the stained-glass windows, the radiant face of the Virgin, the sweet and pale countenance of Christ, the statues of the saints, the niches, the old pillars, the small chapels, all this mystic poetry pleases them, everything enchants and intoxicates them, even to the sanctimonious and hypocritical face of the beadle and the sacristan. It is their element, their centre, their world. They attach themselves to the old nave as sailors attach themselves to their ship. They know all the little corners and recesses of the temple. They have knelt at all the chapels and burnt tapers before all the saints. But there is always one place which they have an affection for, and where they are invariably to be found. Why? Mystery! What do they do there? Mystery again. They remain there for whole hours, motionless, dreaming, their eyes fixed on vacancy, their thoughts one knows not where, and in their hands a book of prayers which they open from time to time as if to recall themselves to reality. A young priest passes by. He recognizes them. He bows and smiles to them like old acquaintances. In fact, he sees them there every day at the same place. Godly sheep! They look at him passing by, and, while pretending to read their psalms, they follow him with that deep, undefinable, mysterious look, which inspires fear. What connection is there between their prayers and reveries, and the lively behaviour of this red-faced Abbé? How he must laugh, and how he must inwardly despise these women, who can find no better employment for the day than to mutter _Paternosters_, devoid of meaning, before an image of wood or stone, or to remain in the vague sanctimonious contemplation of a _mysterious unknown_. Poor women! who, better led, better instructed in their duties and mission in life, would have become excellent mothers, might have been the light and joy of some hearth which now remains deserted, and who, lost and misled by a false education and a detestable system of morality, fall into wasting mysticism, hysterical ecstasies, a contemplative and useless existence, into degrading practices and shameful superstitions, and instead of being the fruitful animating springs of moral and social progress, become the passive instruments, the unfruitful _things_ of the priest, that is to say the agents of reaction. It is they who have caused thinkers to doubt the noble part which woman is called to fulfil; who have compelled Proudhon to say: "Woman is the desolation of the just," and that other apostle of socialism, Bebel, that she is incapable of helping in the reconstitution of Society: "_Slave of every prejudice, affected by every moral and physical malady, she will be the stumbling-block of progress. With her must be used, morally certainly, perhaps physically, the peremptory reason to the slaves of the old race: The Stick_!" We are far from the divine book of Michelet, _Love_. No, do not let us beat woman, even with a rose, as the Arab proverb says. She is a sick child, foolishly spoiled, who requires only to be cured and reformed by another education. The Comtesse was not like this. Skilful and intelligent, she knew _what talking meant_, and how to read in wise men's eyes and between the lines of letters. Therefore, she had learnt in good time, how to bring together two things which the profane suppose to be so opposed to one another, and which form the secret of the Temple: _Religion and pleasure_. "And she was quite right," Veronica would have said, "for how can pleasure hurt God." LXXXIII. CONVENTICLE. "Je, dist Panurge, me trouve bien du conseil des femmes, et mesmement de vieilles." RABELAIS (_Panurge_). They took a light repast, and it was decided that Marcel should repair to the Palace that very day. --There is no time to lose, said the Comtesse. The Curé of St. Marie is much coveted, and we have competitors in earnest. There is firstly the Abbé Matou, who is supported by all the fraternity of the Sacred Heart; he is young, active, wheedling and honey-tongued. He is the man I should choose myself, if I did not know you. He has had certainly a funny little story formerly with some communicants, but that is passed and gone, and as, after all, he is an intelligent priest and very Ultramontane, Monseigneur would he desirous of nominating him in order to rehabilitate him in public esteem. He is dangerous. Now we have little Kock. He has rendered important services. But he is the son of an inn-keeper, and he has common manners. Let us pass him by. There is yet the _Sweet Jesus_. Do you know the sweet Jesus, Abbé Ridoux? --Yes, it is the Abbé Simonet. --The Abbé Simonet, said Marcel, I know him; we were together at the Seminary. Do they call him the sweet Jesus? He was a terrible lazy fellow. --Well, he is not so among the ladies, I assure you They all are madly in love with him. He confesses the wives of the large and small shop-keepers, and he has enough to do. The gentry used to go to the Abbé Gobin. Now he has gone away, what will become of all the sinners of the Old-Town? Supposing they were all to fall upon that poor Simonet! It is enough to make one shudder. Dear _Sweet Jesus_! When I see him wandering in the Cathedral with his long fair hair, and his down-cast eyes, I understand the infatuation of the women. He is nice enough to eat; yes, gentlemen, to eat. Ah, you do not know as well as we do, how religion gains by young and handsome pastors for its interpreters, and with what rapidity the holy flock increases. It is an astonishing thing. I fear that we must strive very hard against the _Sweet Jesus_. --We will strive, said Ridoux. --And we will employ every means. Go, dear Abbé, hasten to Monseigneur's, he is warned of your visit, and before entering on the struggle, it is well to reconnoitre the ground. Go, I have good hopes that we shall have St. Marie. Thus Marcel found himself enlisted, in spite of himself. The Curé of St. Marie was, to tell the truth, perfectly indifferent to him. That one or another mattered to him but little. He had considered that it was perhaps indispensable that he should quit Althausen for the sake of his reputation and the tranquillity of his heart. His heart? Was it then no longer Suzanne's? More than ever: but he thought by this time that if there are reconciliations with heaven, there were none such with his maid-servant, and that to rid himself of her, he must first quit Althausen. Suzanne from time to time could come to Nancy, and it was much more easy and less perilous for him to contrive interviews with her there, than in that village where they were spied upon by all. Afterwards they would see.... LXXXIV. AT THE PALACE. "This world is a great ball where fools, disguised Under the laughable names of Eminence and Highness Think to swell out their being and exalt their baseness In vain does the equipage of vanity amaze us; Mortals are equal: 'tis but their mark is different." VOLTAIRE (_Discourse sur l'Homme_). Marcel felt oppressed at heart, when he put his foot again, for the first time after five years, within the episcopal Palace. It was there formerly--five years ago, quite an abyss--he had dreamed of a future embroidered with gold and silk, but it was there also that he had seen his first illusions and his inmost beliefs flee away. Nothing had changed; the Palace was always the same; there were the same faces, the same porter with the wan complexion, the same attendants, at once haughty and servile. Nevertheless, nobody recognized him. This priest, browned by the sun, old before his years through disappointment, almost bent beneath the load of his secret troubles, was different from the young and brilliant curate, who, full of hope had launched himself formerly into the illimitable future. The lacqueys of the episcopal palace saluted him respectfully for his good looks; but when he gave his name, they eyed from head to foot with disdain and insolence this obscure country Curé, of whose disgrace they were aware. --Monseigneur is much engaged, said a kind of _valet de chambre_ with a sneaking look; I don't think he can receive you. You will call again to-morrow. Monseigneur has given orders not to be disturbed. --Then I will wait. --Wait if you wish to, replied the lacquey, but you run the risk of waiting a long time. If it had not been for the valet's insolence, Marcel would no doubt have gone away, and perhaps, would have abandoned the affair; but, humiliated at hearing himself addressed in that tone, he became obstinate. --Can you not then inform Monseigneur that the Curé of Althausen desires to speak with him? --Althausen! Ah, well! I believe that the Curé of Mattaincourt and Monsieur le Curé of the Cathedral have called and not been received, replied the valet; consequently, he added _in petto_, we shall not disturb ourselves for a junior like you. --Can I speak with _Monseigneur_ the Secretary? --Monsieur l'Abbé Gaudinet does not like to be disturbed, and I believe besides that he is in conference with his Lordship. Marcel was aware that in the episcopal Palace the village Curés are treated with less regard than the dogs in the back-yard; therefore he took his own part, and he had just sat down on a bench without saying a word, deliberating with himself whether be ought to wait or to go away, when a little priest with a busy and important air, with spectacles on his nose and a pen behind his ear, quickly crossed the anteroom. --Is it not Monsieur l'Abbé Gaudinet? said Marcel rising. --Ah, cried the former, Monsieur le Curé of Althausen, I think? It was the Secretary, and he aspired, as may be remembered, to the envied post of curate at St. Nicholas. He thought to obtain the good graces of Ridoux by rendering a service to Marcel. --Monseigneur is really too much engaged, said he, but I will obtain admittance for you anyhow. And he made him go into a small apartment next to the Bishop's private cabinet. --I will call you when it is time, he said to him and went out. Marcel, left alone, heard the sound of a voice in Monseigneur's cabinet, and he recognized perfectly old Collard's. He would have been failing in good clerical traditions, if he had not gently drawn near the door and listened with all his ears; struck with amazement, he heard the singular conversation which follows. LXXXV. LITTLE PASTIMES. "One thing which it is necessary to take into account, is that they are very precocious. A French girl of fifteen is as much developed as regards the sex and love, as an English girl of eighteen. This is accounted for essentially by Catholic education and by the Confessional, which brings forward young girls to so great an extent." MICHELET (_L'Amour_). --Let us see, little one; look me right in the face. Madame de Montinisant has assured me that you were very nice, very sweet, very submissive, very modest, in fact ail the good qualities in the superlative, and that you were worthy of entering into the sisterhood of the Holy Virgin, in spite of your youth; is that quite true? --Yes, Monseigneur. --Ah, ah! It is true, do you say? I am going to know exactly, I am going to know if you are truthful or not. God has bestowed on Bishops the gift of divining everything. Did you know that? --No, Monseigneur. --Ah, ah! You are smiling; you believe perhaps that it is not true; wait, wait, you shall see indeed. Is it long since she made her first communion? --Nearly two years, Monseigneur. --Two years, ah, ah! Then the little girl is fourteen. --Only thirteen, Monseigneur. --Thirteen! thirteen! that is very nice. At thirteen one is already a grown-up girl. Are you already a grown-up girl, little rogue? --I don't know. --You don't know, ah, ah. We are going to see first, if you are modest. Come close to me; see, little girl, give me your chin, and this pretty little dimple.... Oh, oh! you are laughing, stay, stay ... she has some pretty little dimples on her cheeks too, the little naughty thing. We are going to make a little confession.... Ah, you are blushing. Why are you blushing? You have then some great sins on your conscience? Come, you are going to tell me all that ... quite low ... in my ear. --But, Monseigneur.... --There is no _but, Monseigneur_. It is the condition _sine qua non_ of entering the sisterhood. You understand that in order to admit a sheep into his flock, the shepherd must be completely edified regarding that fresh sheep.... The sheep then must relate all her wicked sins to her Bishop. It is God who wills it, it is not I, little girl. What enters by one ear, goes out directly by the other. I should be much puzzled, after the confession to repeat a single word of what you have told me. You know what a speaking-tube is. --Yes, Monseigneur. --Well, the Confessor's ear is the speaking-tube of the ear of God. Has not your Confessor taught you that? --Oh, yes, Monseigneur. --Well, then, we have nothing to be afraid of, and she must not hesitate to confide to us her little faults. Even were there very great sins, I shall hear them without making any remonstrance, for that will prove to me that you have confidence in your Bishop. Come, place yourself there, near me, on your knees. You have no need to recite your _Confiteor_; it is only an examination of conscience that we are both going to make. There! very well, put this little cushion under your knees, you will be less tired. See, where are we going to begin? --One God only thou shalt adore... No, no, that is unnecessary; I am fully persuaded that you love God and your parents with all your heart. --The goods of others thou shalt not take... Ta, ta, ta, I am quite aware that you are not a thief--a thief has not a pretty little face like that; let us go on at once to the sixth commandment: The works of the flesh thou shalt not desire But in marriage only. There, that is what moat concerns little girls. Do you know what are the works of the flesh? --No, Monseigneur. --Oh, it is something very abominable, and I do not know how to explain it to you. Nevertheless, in order to know if you have sinned against this commandment, I must make myself understood. Has not your Confessor already spoken to you about it? --No, Monseigneur. --Ah, do not tell a falsehood. It is a mortal sin to tell a falsehood in confession. Who is your Confessor? --He is Monsieur Matou. --Ah, Matou! the Abbé Matou. Yes, yes, he has spoken to you about it, I know him; he must have spoken to you about it. Come, tell me all about that. --Well, once he asked me.... --Ah, ah! well, well! do not stop. What is it he asked you? --He asked me ... ah! it is a long time ago, before my first communion. --Well? --He asked me, if I did not go and play with the little boys. --And then? --If I had not culpable relations with them. --Culpable relations with little boys, well! And what did you answer him? --I answered him that I had not. --That you had not! Was that quite true? Do not blush, and do not tell a falsehood. I shall see if you are going to tell a falsehood. --Yes, Monseigneur, it was quite true; I did not even know what Monsieur Matou meant. --And you know it now? --Yes, he explained it to me. --Oh, oh! he explained it to you. And how did he explain that to you? --He told me.... --Let us see what he told you. Come, come, you most not hang down your head: see, lift up this pretty face and show me this little dimple; what did the Abbé Matou say to you?... Eh, eh! who is there! who is knocking at the door? Is it you, Gaudinet? Rise up, my little daughter, and go and sit down there, in the corner. Come in, Gaudinet, come in then. Gaudinet put his head discreetly inside. --Monseigneur, I came to inform you that the Curé of Althausen has been there for some time. --There? where is that? --In the cabinet. --What! in the cabinet? Ah, are you mad, Gaudinet, to send people in this way into my cabinet? I do not approve of that, I do not approve of that at all. What does that Curé of Althausen want with me? LXXXVI. SERIOUS TALK. "Such were the words of the man of the Rock; his authority was too great, his wisdom too deep, not to obey him." CHATEAUBRIAND (_Atala_). Marcel had not heard these last words. At Gaudinet's first word, he had quickly vanished, foreseeing that a terrible tempest would burst upon his head, if the Bishop should suspect that he had been a witness of his way of hearing little girls' confessions, the usual way however of nearly all priests; I appeal to the memories of the Lord's sheep. --Monsieur le Curé!... cried Gaudinet, opening the door. Ah, he is no longer there. He has gone away, Monseigneur. I had told him, in fact, that your Lordship was very busy, and, no doubt, he wished not to trouble you. --I was, in fact, expecting him. He will return to-morrow. But, for God's sake, Gaudinet, never let anybody enter that room without warning me beforehand. Marcel was already at the bottom of the stairs. A valet called him back, and Gaudinet, after bringing out the little girl, introduced him to Monseigneur's presence. --Ah, there you are, said the latter in a harsh tone, looking him straight in the face. Why did you go away? --I was told that Monseigneur was engaged, and I feared to disturb your Lordship. --Who told you that? --The Abbé Gaudinet. --You are much changed. I should not have recognized you. I have received a letter from Monsieur le Curé of St. Nicholas, he added, searching on his desk. Here it is. He says that you have returned to better sentiments ... that you are amended, humbled before God ... that you wish henceforth to follow the good way ... Is that so? --That is my desire, Monseigneur. --It is not enough to desire, sir, you must intend, firmly intend. --I intend also. --I intend to believe it. I ask nothing better than to oblige my old friend Ridoux by doing something for you. Sit down. We are in want of priests, that is to say, intelligent, hard-working, active priests, on whom we can absolutely rely. Times are becoming difficult. Evil doctrines are spreading. Faith is passing away. Infamous writers, wretched pamphleteers are spreading everywhere, at so much a line, the seeds of doubt and perversity. And to crown the evil, imprudent and maladroit priests are indulging their vices and creating scandal. But we are not discouraged. Is the holy arch in danger because a few nails are rusty, because a few cords are rotten? Other nails and cords are supplied in their place, and the rottenness is cast away. But we must not hide from ourselves that we are passing through a melancholy period. This is what priests for the greater part do not clearly see. They slumber in their priesthood, take their emoluments, grow fat, go their small way, and believe they have discharged their duty. That is not the case. When a man has the honour to be a priest, he must be active. It is necessary, as in the time of the persecutions, to make proselytes and win souls; to confront the irreligious propaganda with our propaganda; lampoons, with lampoons; speeches, with sermons; acts, with acts. In short, we must struggle. Can we remain still and idle, when our Holy Father is imprisoned in a den of thieves? The time has come. We are fighting for our very existence, we must close the ranks, take count of ourselves, and above all see on what and on whom we can count. Let us see what we can expect from you? What do you ask? You wish to come to the town? I warn you that it will be hard, if you intend to do what I expect of you. --The trouble does not frighten me, Monseigneur. --You will have a difficult parish. You will have to run foul of a thousand different interests, and not give the slightest pretext for slander. You understand me? There are five or six influential Liberals whose wives or daughters you must win over adroitly, and at any cost--at any cost, you understand. Do you feel yourself qualified for this work? Are you the man we need? --I will try, Monseigneur. --You will try. That is not on answer. It is not enough to try; you most succeed. We are surrounded with men who commit nothing but follies, while intending to do well. Hell, you know, is paved with good intentions. He looked at Marcel attentively, and the latter asked himself if this were really the man he had heard, only a few moments before, talking lightly with a little girl. --You have good manners, continued the Bishop; you are intelligent, I know. You will succeed therefore, if you intend it seriously. Our misfortune is, that we are encumbered with dull and stupid peasants, whom the Seminary has been able only partly to refine, and who render us ridiculous. You must certainly have gone to sleep in your village? --No, Monseigneur, I have worked. --We shall see that. And what sort of people are they? Do they perform their religious duties? --A good and hard-working population. --Do they perform their religious duties? --Yes. Monseigneur, I was satisfied with them. --What society? --Very little. The lawyer, the doctor.... --Right-thinking? --Tolerably so. --And the women? --Much the same as all country-folk, ignorant and narrow-minded. --No, you were not the man needed there. You would lose your time and your powers. I will send one of those brutes of whom I have just been speaking. Well, go; you can tell the Abbé Ridoux that you will have the cure. Come again to-morrow. I even think it will be useless for you to return to Althausen. LXXXVII. THE SEMINARY. "I turned my head and I saw a number of the dead in living bodies. These are the worst spectres, because they must be subdued: you touch them, they touch you, and, in order to drag you away to their tomb, they seize you with an arm of flesh which is no better than the marble hand of the Commendatore." EUGENE PELLETAN (ÉLISÉE, _Voyage d'un homme à la recherche de lui-même_). Marcel went away disconsolate. So it was done. He was changed, another put in his place at Althausen. He had hoped for opposition, he had counted on objections from the Bishop, he thought, in short, that he would remain in suspense for some weeks, perhaps for some months, during which he would have the time to look before him and reflect; but no, all at once: "Go and tell the Abbé Ridoux that you have the cure." Well, and Suzanne? Could he leave Suzanne in this way? He had, it is true, informed her of his departure the day before; but had not everything changed since the day before? Could be abandon thus his heart which he had left behind there? More than his heart, his whole soul, his life, the maiden who had yielded herself. Strange contradictions. When he had believed his change far distant and still but slightly probable, he had thought he could leave Suzanne easily, arrange far away from her for secret interviews, and await events; now that this change was certain and had just become an accomplished fact, he looked upon it as a catastrophe. Instead of hastening to announce _the good news_ to Ridoux, he proceeded to roam through the streets, assailed by his thoughts. "And I shall be obliged to live in this world which I have just caught a glimpse of, to elbow these men at every hour, to mingle in their intrigues, to blend myself in their life. That unscrupulous old Comtesse, that insolent prelate, Gaudinet, Matou, Simonet and the rest, all oozing forth hypocrisy, intrigue and vice; dreaming of one thing alone, to satisfy their ambition, their passions, and their appetites. And these are the ministers of God! Veronica was quite right: "'All the same, we are all the same, all.' And I am one of the least bad. I was blind and idiotic not to have cast my gaze earlier into this filthy sewer.--Blind, idiotic and deaf." He passed near a lofty, gloomy building. It was the Seminary. The desire came upon him to go in. Some of his old fellow-pupils had remained there, as masters or professors. But he altered his mind. What was the good? What would he do? What would he say to them? There was henceforth an abyss between him and these men who remained encrusted in the vessel of clericalism, the most uncrossable of all abysses, that which divides the thoughts. They were perhaps happy. He recalled to mind the long hours he had passed beneath the Sacred Heart in the little chapel of an evening, amidst the wax-lights, the incense and the flowers, mingling his voice in exaltation with the voices of the young Levites, and singing senseless hymns, with his heart melting with love of God. And he began to envy those young fanatics whose blind and unintelligent faith killed every rising thought, and who were ready to suffer martyrdom to support the ridiculous beliefs which they had been taught and which they were called upon to teach. Blind, idiotic and deaf. "Why am I not so still!" he said; "I should believe myself the only guilty one, the only wicked and perverse one among all those apostles; I should curse my weaknesses and myself; but at least I should have faith, I should walk onward with a star upon my brow, the star of sublime follies which gives light and life, whereas I see nought around me but desolation and death. I should humble myself before the Almighty, and I should cry to him like the poet: "'Oh Lord, oh Lord my God, thou art our Father: Pity, for thou art kind! pity for thou art great!' "And instead of that, I am obliged to humble myself before that Bishop whom I despise, to endure the scorn of his lacqueys, and the offensive patronage of his secretary, to have the opportunity of saying: "'A little place in your good graces, Monseigneur!' No, a thousand times no. My village, my poor belfry, my humble parsonage, my liberty, and my Suzanne!" By his dejected look, his uncle and the Comtesse believed he had not succeeded. --Too late! they cried. The cure is given away. --Yes, he answered. --To whom? To the _Sweet Jesus_, I wager. Ah, the Tartuffe. --To me. --And that is why you have a funereal expression? --Yes, uncle, for I am burying for ever my tranquillity and my happiness. --Is it only that? Madame la Comtesse, I present to you the oddest and the most extraordinary man you have ever met. Judge him yourself. He has just carried off at the first onset what he was eagerly desiring, and there he is as cheerful as a flogged donkey. Ah, my dear Madame, how difficult it is to benefit people in spite of themselves. --That is my opinion also, said the Comtesse, looking tenderly with her little eyes, still brilliant in spite of their long service, at the young priest, for whom she felt that vague unfruitful passion which old courtesans have for every young and handsome man; and she made him relate minutely all the details of the interview. --Bravo! bravo, she cried. It is more than I hoped. But do not alarm yourself at the difficulties of the task. Monseigneur wishes to prove you. I am acquainted with the parish. The Radicals have no influence there. One of them the other day took it into his head to die _civilly_ and, in spite of the protestations of some low scoundrels, he has been buried in the early morning without drum or trumpet in the criminals' hole. Two primary schools are in our hands, and with a little skill we shall have the third. --How? --By taking away all the means of work from the workmen who send their children there. It is a task, Monsieur le Curé, which is incumbent upon you. --And so, said Marcel bitterly, I must try to take away their bread from the fathers. --I suppose, said Ridoux severely, that when the interest of religion is in question, there is no reason to hesitate. Madame la Comtesse, pardon this young priest, he comes out from his village and he is still imbued with certain prejudices. --Which we will root out, said the old lady smiling; that shall be the task for us women. LXXXVIII. THE FAIR ONE. "Pretty to paint! as graceful as an ear of corn, slender and yet robust, never was seen a morsel of flesh so delicate, or better rounded. Her hair, a wonderful fleece, smelt as sweet and fresh as the grass, and shone red like the sun." LÉON CLADEL (_L'Homme de la Croix-aux-Boeufs_). It was with a great feeling of relief that, in the evening, after supper, Marcel retired to the room which, in spite of his protests, the Countess had caused to be made ready for him. He had need to be alone. Events had hurried on in such an astounding and rapid manner, and he had had no time to think about them. His resolution was fully taken. He would refuse the new core. The odious part which he was called upon to play there, decided him. He was about to shatter his future. It meant a disagreement with his uncle, the hatred of this influential woman, the formidable persecution of the Bishop; but what was all that? He saw Suzanne again, amiable, gracious, smiling, looking at him with her soft, dark eyes; Suzanne approving of his conduct and saying to him: "You are a man of courage. Let us go away together; cast your frock into the ditch." And he wrote three letters: one to his uncle, the other to the Comtesse, and the third to the Bishop, entreating them to excuse him, and telling them that he did not feel qualified to perform his ministry in a large town. He implored Monseigneur to leave him at Althausen and to think no more about him. But the night brings counsel. And when he woke up the next morning and saw his three letters on the table, he thought that he could not do a more awkward thing. He threw them in the fire, dressed and went out. The idea came to him of going to see the parish which was destined for him. He followed the streets, drawn in a straight line, of that too regular city, and when he arrived at the corner of the _Rue des Carmes_, he heard his name pronounced. Be turned round and saw the landlord of the inn where he was accustomed to stay, when he came to Nancy. --What, you are passing before my door without coming in, Monsieur le Curé; I was expecting you, however. I had prepared your room. --You were expecting me, Monsieur Patin? And who told you that I was here? --Who told me that? It was a young person who is very pretty, upon my word. She came to ask for you yesterday evening, and we expected you up to ten o'clock. --Dark? said Marcel much disturbed. --No, fair, the prettiest fair complexion which I have ever seen. Marcel remembered immediately the little mountebank, whom he had altogether forgotten, and to whom he had given the address of Monsieur Patin's hotel, where he had expected to stay. --It is a young girl who is recommended to me, he said; I regret that I did not see her. --You are not coming in? --No, for perhaps I am going to set out again for Althausen. --For Althausen. That is impossible to-day. I have just seen the _diligence_ go by. Come, you will sleep once more at my house, Monsieur Marcel; your room is quite ready, and my wife, who has a fancy for you, will not let you go away. Stay, here she comes; she has recognized your voice. The little Madame Patin, plump, brown, active and pretty, hastened up, indeed, and compelled Marcel to come in, almost in spite of himself. --You shall remain, you shall remain! she said to him, relieving him of his hat. --No, he answered smiling, I shall not remain, and I will tell you the reason. I came with my uncle, and I have my room at Madame de Montluisant's. Before that declaration Monsieur and Madame Patin bowed. --Ah, that is not right, said Madame Patin; Madame de Montluisant is opposing us, she is drawing our clients to her house.... My dear, have you told Monsieur Marcel that a young person has come?... --Your husband has told me, Madame, and that proves to you that I certainly had the intention of staying with you, since I showed her your address. It had escaped my memory, otherwise I should have called to ask you to send the young person to Madame de Montluisant's. --She will certainly come back again, for she seemed very desirous of seeing you. Must I send her to you at that lady's? --No, but tell her to come again this evening late. I have a thousand things to do, and I can scarcely see any moment but that when I shall be free. That evening at eight o'clock, he was at Monsieur Patin's, where he found a good fire in a small sitting-room well closed, with the newspapers and a cup of coffee. The young girl had called again during the day, and would return. Marcel installed himself comfortably in an arm-chair and waited for her. He had seen the Bishop again, who had flashed before his eyes a future, full of golden rays. The visit of Ridoux and the Comtesse had preceded his own, and in the sudden change of manner of the prelate towards him, he recognized the good offices of his new friend. A good dinner had completed the happy day, and life appeared to him, after all, to have some sweetness. LXXXIX. LOVE AGAIN. "Oh Folly, which we call love, what dost thou make of us? Out of free-men thou dost make us slaves; thou dost breathe into us all the vices. It is thou who dost supply the altars of disloyalty and fear! It is thou who dost extract from thought the rhetorician's art, and from enthusiasm a vile profession. How many young people have you blighted! all the fairest. Ah, siren, thy voice is sweet. Thou speakest to us the language of the gods, but thou are only an impure beast." JEAN LAROQUE (_Niobe_). A kind of emotion seized him. He was almost ashamed of it, and tried to give an account of it to himself. It seemed to him that he was affected as if at the approach of sin. He restrained his feelings and enquired of himself what this young girl could want with him. Perhaps she was but a common courtesan who, attracted by the handsome appearance and tender look of the priest, counted on speculating profitably in a clandestine intrigue. Nevertheless, he was not terrified at the prospect, and he recalled complacently the scene in the open air in the market-place at Althausen. With his eyes closed, he saw her again playing the castanets, rounding her hips and shooting forward her little foot, in order to make the enraptured rustics admire the sculptural beauty of her leg. He saw again that bosom, free from all covering, which had plunged him into such confusion. Ah, if instead of his love for Suzanne, so full of fever and danger, he had picked up on his way some pretty girl like this Bohemian, who, while calming his feelings, would have left his heart in peace. With a common peasant girl, vigorous and sensual, like this dancer at the fair, he would have gratified the only low permissible to a priest; for it was the most unpardonable folly, he recognized now, to surrender his heart. The Curé of St. Nicholas was a thousand times right! Let the priest make use of woman, nothing is more proper, as an instrument, as a pastime, hygienic and aperient; but let him stop there. At certain periods, when the brain is heavy, the digestion is inactive, and the bowels are confined, when dizziness occurs, when the blood becoming too plentiful, grows thick and congested in the veins and rises to the head, then it is that nature needs to accomplish her work. Then one seeks for a woman, one throws oneself on her who happens to be there, and is willing to lend herself to this hygienic and benevolent part. Servant or mistress, girl or wife, lady or work-girl, young or old, courtesan from a drawing-room or the pavement, one takes her, has one's pleasure of her, and goes away. But to love long, to make of the woman the aim of our life, the spring of our actions, the ideal of our existence; to believe in happiness together, to put faith in these fragile, vain and ignorant dolls!... What trickery! To believe in happiness through love! Dream of the school-boy! It is permissible to the neophyte who puts on for the first time the white surplice and the golden chasuble with so much joy and pride. The sweet young girls, the youthful wives, the grave matrons regard you with softened eyes. Then you have faith, you have confidence, you see the future illumined by angels with virgin bodies who murmur mysterious words in your ear, which melt your heart. You dare hardly lift your eyes, and you say to yourself: "Which one shall I love in this legion of seraphims? Oh, I will love them all, all!" Presumptuous youth which doubts of nothing! But when you have loved one, two, three of them ... afterwards, afterwards? After having experienced the nothingness of all these trifles, of all these follies of the heart, of all these caprices of the imagination, of all these abortions of the thought, of all these voids of the soul, of all these impurities of the body, of all the uncleanness of the woman with whom you are satiated, and whose couch you are leaving, then go and speak of eternal love. Oh, how right Diogenes was to call love a short epilepsy. How right that Imperial sophist of the Decline to call it a convulsion! and the first Bonaparte, an affair of the sopha. Thus Marcel moralized, like an old prelate, coming out from a closed room when some filthy scene has been enacted. The fact is, that for some time he had been the hero of a comedy and of a drama; the grotesque comedy which he had unrolled with his servant, the terrible drama in which he saw himself involved with Suzanne Durand. And he was wearied and satiated. The satisfaction of his senses left him by way of retaliation, shame, trouble and fear. Daniel Defoe has written in his admirable book: "From how many mysterious sources, opposed one to the other, do not different circumstances cause our passions to proceed? We hate in the evening what we cherished in the morning; we avoid to-day what we sought for yesterday; we desire an object passionately, and a few moments after, we shall not know how to endure the idea of it." Thus Marcel was cursing love, when Zulma came and knocked at his door. XC. LE CYGNE DE LA CROIX. "As soon as she comes The Hostess looks hard: --My beauty no ceremony, The supper is ready; Come in, come in, my beauty Come in, and no more noise With three gallant captains You shall spend the night." (_Popular Songs of France_). Madame Connard, a widow, and the landlady of the Cygne de la Croix, a godly and right-thinking person, made a significant grimace when she saw a young girl, quietly dressed, entering her house, with no other luggage than an old band-box. But when she handed her the card of Monsieur Tibulle, judge of the Court at Vic, president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and member of the Committee for the protection of poor Young Girls, her grimace changed into a gracious smile. She soon gave her a room and asked her what she wanted to eat, informing her, however, that it was a fast-day and that, consequently, she had not much choice. --Whatever you like, said the dancer; I am convalescent; I have a good appetite, and I accommodate myself to everything: don't give then the best which you have, but the cheapest. --The little thing is sharp, thought Madame Connard; and she added aloud: A young lady, recommended by Monsieur Tibulle, need not fear that she will want for anything. Consider what you would like, my little dear, and don't disturb yourself about the rest. And since you are ill, the Church allows us to give you meat to eat. She went out in the meantime, and an hour afterwards she herself served a dinner which would have made the most greedy of curates envious, and washed down with that light wine, acrid but heady, which the slopes of the Meurthe produce. The dancer, like a true child of Bohemia, dined heartily, and without needing to be asked. She was at her coffee, when she heard a whispering in the corridor, and a little cracked voice, which said: --I am a little late, dear Madame, but I have been kept by Monseigneur. Has the little one behaved well? --Like an angel, Monsieur Tibulle, and a demon for beauty. --Yes, yes. This will be a fine acquisition for the Church. A soul snatched from Satan, dear Madame, snatched from Satan. We shall make something of her. --Ah, how happy you gentlemen are to snatch in this way pretty little souls from hell. We, poor women, have not that power. --But you prepare the ways. You open them, dear Madame Connard; everything has its purpose, its purpose, its purpose. --Well, Monsieur Tibulle, proceed to yours. It is number 10. I leave you. And she quietly half-opened the door of No. 10, into which Monsieur glided like a shadow, saying in his tremulous voice: --Eh! Eh! it is I, I, I, my little dear. How happy I am to see you again, to find you here, comfortably installed like a little queen. Eh, eh. Madame Connard put her head in for an instant, smiled, and cautiously closed the door; "He is still pretty young for his age," she said to herself. "Ah, these men! these men! that goes on to the very end." XCI. THE CALVES. "Non formosus erat sed erat facundus Ulixes." OVID. Zulma had run forward to meet him. He took hold of both her hands and made her sit down close beside him on the sofa. --Well, what is the news? How have they received you here? Are you satisfied? Have you had a good dinner? --Too good, replied Zulma: I am afraid I have spent a deal of money. --A deal of money! Eh, eh! the good little girl! But you have nothing to pay here, my little puss. Nothing at all to pay, nothing at all. All the expense is my concern, and the more you spend, the better pleased I shall be. Have they not told you that, told you that, told you that? --You are too kind, Monsieur; but I, what shall I do then for you? --She is heavenly, eh, eh! But I want nothing, darling, nothing, nothing ... except to see your pretty eyes. When we see them once, we have only one wish, and that is to see them again, again, again. I am well paid for the little I have done for you, since I have that pleasure. Yes, yes, yes. We are only too happy for what we can do for a charming little face like yours, and when we have obliged it, we say thank you! That is what I do, my little duck; thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. --I am very grateful to you.... --That is what I was thinking. I want to kiss you for that kind word. Alas, we come across so many ungrateful people in the world.... What a fine and velvety skin; how soft it is under the lips ... again, again.... I could eat it ... again.... Ah, you do not want to again. What are you afraid of? I might be your father.... Come, another little kiss for poor papa. Zulma let him kiss her again. [PLATE V: THE CALVES. "I want to see them again, again, again." --Well, there they are, but do not touch. --Oh, oh, you are cheating. That is only half, I want to see them all ... up to the knees.] [Illustration] --Ah, what a pretty girl! Look how strong and well made she is! continued the old President passing his trembling hand over the young girl's waist: have not these breasts grown a little thin? Yes, I believe, a little, a little, but how firm they are! like a rock, like a rock; hard as a rock, heavenly girl.... Eh, eh! you are drawing back, you are afraid of me ... of me who might be your papa. --And perhaps my grandpapa, said Zulma. --Grandpapa! Ah, the little girl is not flattering. Grandfather! you think then that I am quite old? I am going to pinch her calves for that naughty word, those big calves which I saw at Vic, and which have turned my head. Have they grown smaller too? Let us see, let us see. Zulma held back the too presumptuous hand. --What, said the worthy man astonished, you will not show your calves? --What is the good, since you have seen them at Vic? --I want to see them again, again, again. --Well, there they are, but do not touch. --Oh, oh, you are cheating. That is only half, I want to see them all ... up to the knees; at the least what I saw in the market-place. --No, sir. --Ah, you must not say _no_ to me.... I do not like _no_. Let me help you, my pretty. Women always have a lot of strings under their petticoats and sometimes there are knots, knots, knots. I know that, so let me do it. --But I don't want to, I tell you. --Nevertheless, just to show me your calves, your fine big calves. --You have seen them enough. --What, cried Monsieur Tibulle, indignant at length at such obstinacy, you refuse to show to me what you exhibit in public, to everybody, in the market-places, in the streets, to the first who comes along; you refuse me when I am all alone, in this little room where nobody sees us. Ah, it is very wrong, wrong, wrong. I intend to punish you for that naughty act. --In public, that is my profession, and besides I have a costume. --She is nice enough to eat! A costume! If you only want that, it is very easy to find. I know of a little costume, very nice and not dear; and if you like, we will both of us put it on. --What is it? --That which God gave us. It is the best of all, and besides it is that which will become you the best. Ah, my little dear, nothing is equal to the gifts of God, and all the fripperies of women will never serve them as well as the simple attire of our first mother. We are going then to try the costume of Adam and Eve. Does that suit you, little one? You will no longer be afraid then of showing your calves. Come, come, Sophie, my dear, enough of these affectations. --My name is not Sophie. --Your name is Zulma, and also Aspasia, and Phryne, and again it is Eve. For it is long since you ate of the forbidden fruit, is it not, you little rogue? --Let me alone, I ask you. --Leave you alone! you would think I was very silly. Come, heavenly Eve, be quick into the costume of your part; I will play Adam and you shall see what a fine apple we will eat. --Sir, a man of your age! --Old men are always more amorous than the young ones, you will see, you will see. --I don't want to see anything, let me go. --Go! and where do you want to go to? A man does not let a little duck like you go away when he has hold of her, for I have you, you little rogue, yes, yes, I have you. Listen. We will go away to-morrow morning, each our own way, neither seen, nor known. And I assure you that you will be satisfied. My wife does not expect me till to-morrow. --Your wife? What, you are married?... --Does that surprise you? My wife is an old she-goat who is good for nothing more. Therefore I make no more use of her. Come, let us be quick; into the costume of Eve, and if you absolutely keep to it, I will fasten a fig-leaf on to you. But Zulma was not the girl to allow herself to be forced in this way; and the worthy old man, who wanted to add deeds to words, received a vigorous slap on the face. He stopped, quite confused, and rubbed his cheek. --She has a strong wrist, he said. Who would suspect that such a little hand could hit so hard? But the ice is broken now, and you are going to pay me for it. XCII. THE SCAPULAR "And the old bearded fellow rubbed away, pushed with his hips, embracing her in front: clasped with his arms embracing her behind; stuffing at the chancellery, throwing her gently and collecting his strength, labouring with his chest, and even tripping her up: he made use of all." LÉON CLADEL (_Ompdrailles_). --I shall scream, said Zulma, who was defending herself valiantly; I shall scream if you do not loose me. --Scream as much as you will, said the holy man as he recovered breath: here the walls are deaf, and you will have to deal with me. --I just laugh at you. You old Punch! --Old Punch! Punch! --You ought to be ashamed. --You insult me; take care. --Let me go directly, or I shall know whom to complain to. --Ah, you assume that tone! You want to make a complaint do you? And to whom, you little wretch? --To whom it may concern. --Ah, what a fine expression you have learnt by heart. Who is _whom it may concern_? I do not know him. Whoever he may be, _whom it may concern_ will laugh in your face. You, a daughter of the streets, a rope-dancer, a clown, a ragged slut, you would lodge a complaint against me! Surely you do not know who I am. I am an honourable man; known everywhere, respected everywhere. Come, you see clearly that you are talking nonsense; be more reasonable again. What! it pleases me to cast my eyes upon you, to want to pass a little while with you agreeably; I honour you by stooping myself to a girl of your kind, and you refuse, and are fastidious. Has one ever seen such a thing? It is enough to make God laugh. Come, come now, not so many affectations: for the lost time, how much do you want? A hundred francs? --You horrify me. Let me go away. He cast a fearful look upon her, and said, with a laugh which chilled her blood: --Oh, you want to go away. Well, how about the money I have spent on you, and on your journey? --Your money! I did not ask you for it. But I will let you have it back again, be assured; when I have worked and earned it. --And you believe that I shall be satisfied with this fine promise? You will let me have my money back immediately, or I shall certainly accuse you of being a thief ... an adventuress. --I will say what happened. It was you who compelled me to take the money for the coach-fare. --I make you a present of that, but you will have to pay all that you have spent here; if not, you will be put in prison, you understand, little good-for-nothing? Do you think people are going to keep you and let you enjoy yourself for nothing? --And who has told you that I shall not pay, replied Zulma, struck by the logic of this objection. --Then you will pay immediately, said the worthy man, for I have been answerable for you, and it is on my recommendation that they have received a trollop like you into this respectable house. Madame Connard, he cried at the door, dear Madame Connard, will you bring up the bill, the little bill? Madame Connard appeared at once: --What, Mademoiselle is going away, is she not sleeping here? --No, Mademoiselle is going to try her fortune elsewhere. Madame Connard handed the bill to Monsieur Tibulle. --No, no. It is Mademoiselle who is going to settle it; this young lady. Zulma glanced at it and grew pale. She had hardly 10 francs, and the bill amounted to 19 francs, 75 centimes. --And besides, it is so little because it is you. Everything is so dear here, and one does not know what to do for a living. The poor girl remained silent; she looked at the bill without seeing it, for her eyes were full of tears. --Well, said Monsieur Tibulle in a wheedling tone. Is there some little hindrance to your settling that? --Madame, said Zulma, I have not enough money with me; no, I do not believe I have enough money ... but I can find it, I know where to find it ... and in an hour or two.... --Oh, oh, cried Madame Connard, in an hour or two, that is a very fine tale. But I know it, my girl, and people don't tell me that sort of thing. --Well, dear Madame, I leave you, said Monsieur Tibulle, making her a knowing sign; I am going to see if my horse is put to, for I am setting off directly. Good-bye, little one, good-bye. No malice. --Well, Mademoiselle, said Madame Connard, what do you decide? --I have told you, Madame, I can give you five or six francs, and, although it is a downright robbery, I will find you the rest. -What! a robbery? you little thief, you little hussy, you dare to call me a thief, you little street-walker. You are going to pay me immediately, or I will hand you over to the police. --Very well, call the police, if you wish; I ask for nothing better; I will relate what has occurred. She considered no doubt that she was wrong, for she cried: --Look, that is not all, pay me immediately and take yourself off somewhere else. Has one ever seen anything like? You believed perhaps that I was going to lodge you and keep you for your pretty face? No, my dear. I have been done already in that way, and you don't catch me any more. There was a respectable gentleman, very polite, rich, and wearing a red ribbon, who was answerable for you, if you had been willing to make an arrangement with him; but instead of making an arrangement with him, you have a dispute; so much the worse for you, your family quarrels don't concern me. What I want is the money, that is all that I know; pay me my bill and get out, you little prostitute. --Come, dear Madame, I will try and arrange this little matter, said Monsieur Tibulle, appearing again; the little one is going to think better of it, I feel sure. Let me reason with her. Madame Connard withdrew complacently. --You see, you see in what a position you are placing yourself, said the excellent old gentleman, crossing his arms and looking at the young girl with all the dignity and sorrow of a father who has detected his child in some shameful act. --Say rather into what an ambush you have driven me, you old scoundrel. --Oh, oh, oh! no bad word, my girl. Bad words are no use. I am going away to pay the bill. --A fig for you and your money. --What! a fig for me and my money! In the first place you should never despise money, my girl; we can do nothing without money in this world. And then you are wrong to despise me, who only wish you well, my dear; yes, yes, wish you well. --I tell you to leave me alone. --Look now, don't be naughty, for I am going to settle the matter. --I don't want you. Don't touch me.... --And how are you going to get yourself out of this scrape, if you will not let me get you out. You rebuff me again, though I only want to make you happy. --I tell you not to come near me. --Come, be pacified, you little angry cat; only a kiss and that shall be all. He wanted to take hold of her waist, but she pushed him back. But he had gone too far to believe that he ought to beat a retreat, and he retained to the charge with renewed vigour. In the struggle she seized him by the neck, his waistcoat came undone, and a little square bit of painted canvas, of a dubious colour, remained in her hand. She threw it back in his face in disgust. --My scapular! he cried. You throw my scapular about in this way. Stay, you are a little wretch, a street-walker, a hussy, a reprobate. You will perish miserably, and I leave you to your fate. Ah, you throw away my scapular! When he had said this, the good gentleman piously recovered his scapular, buttoned up his overcoat, and retired full of dignity. XCIII. FROM THE DARK TO THE FAIR. "Moderation should preside over pleasure: let us seek in new pleasures a refuge against the satiety of our souls." KALVOS DE ZANTE (_Odes nouvelles_). Zulma had remembered Marcel and had gone to him boldly. --You have been crying then, my child? said the priest who noticed her red eyes. The young girl in a few words informed him of her adventure. --Who would ever have believed that? she said. Such a kind man! Such an obliging lady! The old gentleman said to me at Vic: "I shall not concern myself about you if you do not go to Confession, if you do not receive the Communion, if you do not say your prayers." Whom can one trust? And that Madame Connard: "Eat what you like, and don't stand on ceremony. Monsieur Tibulle wishes it so. Old men are made to pay." And with all these fine words, I owe her ten _francs_. Marcel could not help laughing at the girl's artlessness. --Then you have come to ask me for them. --Yes, said Zulma blushing; have I not done right? She has kept my band-box, the old thief; what it contains is not worth ten _francs_, but I don't want to leave it with her. --And what will you give me in exchange? --Everything you want. --That is a great deal to promise; but you have nothing. --It is true, I have nothing, she said piteously. Well, I will kiss you and will love you very much. One may kiss a Curé, may one not? Marcel thought she was getting to business very quickly. --Priests do not receive kisses from anybody, he replied. --From nobody? not even from a sister? --But you are not my sister. --Well, I will be your comrade. --No more do they have a comrade. --Oh, well, if I were a man I should not like to be in your position; one must get awfully tired of being all alone. What are you able to do all the blessed day? For my part, in the first place I must have a lover. --Ha, ha! and who is your lover? --A rider at the Loyal Circus. A handsome boy too. A tall dark fellow like you. He is a little too proud, but I like that in a man. --And for how long has he been your lover? --Ever since I have seen him. It is nearly two years ago at the fête at Mirecourt. Our booth was beside the Circus. --Two years! cried Marcel: but at what age did you begin? --Begin what? to dance on the tight-rope? --To have lovers. --But I have only had one, and that is he. --Well, how old were you when you had him? --I have never had him. --Look, dear child, you have told me that you are sixteen. --Yes, sir. --Then you began at fourteen. --Began what? --With your lover. --We never began anything. I have told you that he was too proud. I wanted to speak to him once, and he answered, "Go along." --But he is not your lover. --But he is, because I love him. --And you have not had others. --No, because I love him. --Well, you are a good girl, and if what you have said is true, you are worth your weight in gold. --My weight in gold! cried Zulma laughing; then buy me, for it is true, and I shall be rich. --But how shall I know if what you say is true? --Ah, that is embarrassing, she said thoughtfully. What can I do to prove it? --I believe you without proof. But I am not rich enough to pay you. --It doesn't matter, to you I give myself for nothing. Marcel was bewildered and hurriedly gave her the ten _francs_. --How kind you are; I should like all the same to do something for you. --You wish to please me? Well, remain good. --Only that! And till when? --Until I give you permission not to be so any longer. --I will certainly. She took a few steps towards the door, opened it, then turning back suddenly, she advanced her bust, as though she were making a bow to the crowd, and placing the tips of her fingers on her lips, she wafted a gracious kiss to the priest. --There is pleasant and easy love-making, said Marcel to himself. Why did I not know it sooner? He ran to the door. --Wait, my child. Where are you going to sleep to-night? It is late. Have you a lodging? --Stay, my word no, I had forgotten it. --This is what you will do. First, settle your account with this landlady, without making allusion to anything. A scandal must always be avoided. Monsieur Tibulle is a man, highly esteemed, with a considerable position in the world, and anything you might say against him, would only turn against you. Do not tell this story then to anybody; and do not tell anybody that you know me. Now take these two _louis_, my dear child, and buy yourself a few little articles of dress. You must be dressed properly. Go, and come back here. Monsieur Patin! The landlord appeared. --Monsieur Patin, said Marcel, I confide this young person to you, or rather, to Madame Patin here. She has been recommended specially to me by some ladies of high rank. She is going to fetch her small articles of luggage, and will soon be back again. Be careful of her. Give her a room and her meals; I am answerable for her. Mademoiselle, I shall see you again to-morrow. What were Marcel's intentions? Had he felt the appetite for the unknown awakening? He who had just poured forth his bitterness upon woman and upon love, had be come to the conclusion in the presence of this stranger that he could not do without woman or without love! But the other? The other was not there, and the absent are in the wrong. Could this one make him forget the other? Could a new fancy destroy the strong love which bound him and was ruining him? Could a love facile and without risk soothe the hidden mischief and diminish the fury of a dangerous passion? She had all that was required for that, this little fair girl with the tempting lips. Like Suzanne she was young and charming, like Suzanne she would be loving, and unlike Suzanne, she would be submissive. Her eyes swimming in their azure, her aquiline nose with its mobile nostrils, her scarlet fleshly lips, her golden hair like ripened corn, her rosy cheeks in which coursed health and life, the slimness of her waist, the delicacy and whiteness of her hand; it all said: Love me. And she was a fresh woman ... a fresh woman, eternal temptation. When he returned to the hotel, he found the Comtesse anxiously waiting for him. With a smile she handed a large packet, sealed with the episcopal arms. It was his nomination to the Curé of St. Marie. He would have to take possession of it immediately. XCIV. THE CHANGE. "Prayer on that day is said within the gothic church, The old men mourn beneath the ancient oak. Resisted are the games but just begun. The village maidens will no longer dance." MME. DE GIRARDIN (_Elgire_). The worshippers at Althausen were much surprised the next day to see a priest whom they did not know, officiating without ceremony in the place of their Curé. He was stout and plain, with an inflamed face, bloated lips, a cynical look, and a thundering voice: he said Mass in such a hasty and indecorous manner that they went away scandalized. The handsome Marcel certainly was no longer there, with his sweet and unctuous voice, his evangelic piety, and his eyes which stirred their hearts. The report spread through the village that the handsome Curé had gone away, and all the gossips at bay grouped in the market-place and watched for Veronica to assail her with questions. But the old maid-servant to her mortification knew no more about it than the gossips. She ventured to interrogate her new master, but he slapped her on the back and sent her away to her kitchen-stove. --He is disgusting, this old fellow, she said. For my part I am not going to remain here. I prefer the Corporal. Durand had just sat down at table with his daughter, when Marianne with a scared air, looked at Suzanne in a mysterious way, and said to the Captain: --Do you know? Monsieur le Curé has gone away. --Pleasant journey, said Durand. --There is a new Curé already in his place. He said Mass this morning. --A new Curé, cried Suzanne; then he has gone away not to return again? --Gone away without hope of coming back, said the Captain, that is discouraging! It surprises you then, little girl, that the handsome priest has disappeared with neither drum nor trumpet, and with no touching farewells to his flock. For my part, I am not surprised at it, and I wager that he has committed some act of blackguardism, and has absconded. --Oh, father! --He has not absconded, Marianne said quickly; he went away on Friday very quietly with another Curé. --Let him go to the devil! Suzanne had difficulty in hiding her palor and her distress. She pretended to have a head-ache, left the table, ran to her room and burst into tears. Why this decisive departure? Why had she not received a single warning from Marcel? No doubt, he had done it for the best, but that best was incomprehensible to her; her heart was broken, and her self-love received a cruel wound. Soon the news arrived. The new Curé announced Marcel's change in the sermon, and said farewell for him to his parishioners. Everybody was in consternation. He might have announced the seven plagues of Egypt. For her part Marianne received a mysterious packet which was intended for Suzanne. The priest, in cautious terms informed her of his change, and said it was necessary to wait. Wait for what? Suzanne waited. But one morning she awoke full of dismay; she had felt something give a start in her entrails. She wrote a long letter to Marcel, and Marcel answered: Wait. Wait for what? She waited again. XCV. THE CURÉ OF ST. MARIE. "The white ground and the gloomy sky Blended their heads sepulchral; The rough north winds of winter Breathed to the heart despair." CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Poèmes parisiens_). Weeks and then months passed away. One rainy winter's evening a young woman, in deep mourning, with her face covered with a thick veil, stopped at the Curé of St. Marie's door. She had hesitated for a long time; several times she had passed in front of the tall gray house, casting a furtive glance on the lofty windows, slackening her walk and seeming to say: "Ought I to go in? Yes, I must go in." But each time she pursued her way again. At length, as the rain kept falling ever colder as night came on, she controlled herself by en effort, slowly retraced her step and rang gently. The door was opened at once, and an old woman with a face the colour of leather, invited her in mysteriously, "Whom shall I announce?" she asked.--"Do not announce me. I am expected." The old woman smiled discreetly and showed her into a large parlour, the door of which she closed upon her. It was a bare wainscoted room, gloomy, lighted by two candle-ends. A _prie-Dieu_, a table, some straw chairs, a few rows of old books on shelves painted black, composed all the furniture. A large crucifix of wood which stretched its thin arms from one window to the other, contributed no little to give a sorrowful and monastic look to the room. The young girl approached the chimney-piece, where a few brands were burning at the bottom of a huge grate. She shivered, perhaps more from emotion than from cold, for she remained there, thoughtful, forgetting even to warm her feet, soaked by the rain. A door opened soon at the other end of the room and Marcel entered. He had greatly changed during these few months. His eye shot forth a gloomy fire, his cheeks were hollow, and numerous threads of silver showed themselves in his dark locks. It was evident that anxiety, watchings and cares, contended on his wrinkled brow. At the sight of the young woman he assumed a livid palor. --You, he murmured in a stifled voice, you here, Mademoiselle? --I am, replied Suzanne; did you not reckon then on seeing me again? --Not now, dear child, I confess to you. I had said to you: Wait. --And I have waited. And weary of waiting, I decided to come and to know finally from your own mouth what I must wait for, and on what I most count. But ... sir.... I am tired: will you allow me to sit down? --Pardon me, Mademoiselle, I mean to say, dear Suzanne, but your coming has filled me with such confusion.... He handed her a chair, and sat down facing her. --Ah! dear child, you do not know with what cares I am overwhelmed. --They must indeed be very serious, sir, since they have made you forgetful of your duties, even to the care of your honour and of mine ... for the moment is approaching when I shall no longer he able to hide the consequences of your.... --Of our fault, dear Suzanne, of both our faults. Do not overwhelm me alone, for it was your pretty face which made me mad. But is it really possible? Can it be true? what, you are.... --I have let you know it, sir, a long time ago, and you have not deigned to give any answer on that subject. I have read and read again your letters many times, seeking for a word which might console me, for a hope, for a light, but there was nothing. You have told me to wait; you have tried, like a coward, to gain time, you have reckoned on something unforeseen occurring, which might settle the question without your aid ... and you would have washed your hands of it in peace in your broad conscience. But the time has gone on, the unexpected has not come, and now here I am, and I come to ask you: What do you intend to do with me? --In truth, dear Suzanne, I had not believed ... Ah, you are more beautiful than ever ... No, I had not believed that the case was so desperate. --You have not believed. No doubt, amidst your life of lies, surrounded by hypocrites and criminals, you have included me charitably in the number, and supposed that I lied. --Suzanne, dear Suzanne, do not be offended ... I believed that you wished to terrify me ... Ah, how lovely you are like this ... Ah, it is a terrible misfortune. We must guard against it. And your father, does he suspect? --Not yet, sir, but the moment is approaching when I shall no longer be able to hide the truth. --It is true then. What is to be done? What is to be done? --Stop; you would make me laugh, if I did not pity you. I am come to ask you, for the last time, if I ought to count upon you. --Count upon me? But, my dear child, upon whom would you count if not upon me? There is no doubt but that you have only me to count on. I am your friend, your only friend. Always the same, dear Suzanne. I am ready for anything, in order to get you out of this scrape. But judge yourself. I am observed by all here, the slightest report would re-echo terribly and would ruin me. I am surrounded by those who envy me and consequently are my enemies. In a year or two, perhaps, I may be Grand-Vicar. You see how careful I have to be of my position. I will do everything, be well assured of it, it is my interest as well as yours, but I cannot do the impossible. What do you ask? --You have a short memory, sir, but I remember, I remember with what infernal art you induced me, not to yield to you--for you well know, and God is witness to it, that I yielded only to violence--but to listen to you with a too trustful ear. No, I see you do not remember it: you have forgotten so many things that it would be lost time to try and refresh your memory. You do not answer? For in truth, sir, the parts are strangely altered, and if I am ashamed of it for myself, I blush still more for your sake. But since you are so careful of your future and of your fortune, I am come to tell you this: I am rich, sir, do not then fear anything, do not dread poverty; I have inherited from an aunt, who leaves me enough to provide me with a husband. But what I want is a father for my child.... --Mademoiselle, dear and fondly-loved Suzanne, yes, ever fondly-loved Suzanne, I am full of confusion and remorse; I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous offer ... but ... can I accept it? I make you the judge of it yourself. Do I belong to myself? I am the Church's, bound from head to foot, body and soul; not a thought belongs to myself, I am but the infinitesimal portion of an immense wheel which carries me away in spite of myself. How can I loosen myself from the gear? Can I do it? Can I defy such a scandal? My honour, my dignity as a man.... --Ah, you are appealing to your honour now ... but, sir, your duty, is not that your honour? And what is your duty? Stay, you are a wretch.... As she uttered these words, a young girl's head, fair, charming, rosy looked inquisitively through the half-open door. Suzanne saw it and grew pale. Her brows contracted and a bitter smile passed across her lips. --I understand, she said, I understand your hesitation, your honour and your scruples. Farewell, sir.... And she went out, without turning her head, stifling her sobs. Marcel followed her with his eyes, and ran to the door: --Suzanne, Mademoiselle, to-morrow you shall have an answer. Another word... She made no reply and he heard the street-door close. A tear rolled to the edge of his eyelid. He rushed to the window to call her back, but a hand laid hold of his and the fair girl stood before him. --Well, Monsieur my uncle, well! And who is that handsome dark girl? --Ah, my poor Zulma, do not be jealous of her. --I am jealous of everything, and I want to know. XCVI. FINIS CORONAT OPUS. "No mortal can foresee his fate Let none despair. Comrades, good night." BYRON (_Mazeppa_). The following evening, the canal toll-collector on the Malzeville road discerned a black shadow which, despite the icy rain, remained for a long time leaning on the parapet of the turn-bridge, then all at once disappeared. He called for help and, a few minutes afterwards, they drew out of the water the body of a young girl of remarkable beauty. A portion of a letter was found upon her which at first aroused a thousand comments. This is what was written: "I have just celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and during the Elevation, I prayed God to inspire me with a good idea. I likewise asked of the Queen of Angels what I could do for this unfortunate one. The All-pitying God and the Mother chaste and pure hearkened to me. Let my sister in Jesus Christ whose image will never be effaced from the heart of her spiritual friend, go and knock at the gate of the Convent of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, in the parish of St. Marie; there, the cares which her interesting condition demand, will be afforded her. It will be easy to explain her temporary absence, and, in case of need, to obtain the permission of a parent who wished to place an obstacle in the way of this pious necessity. Divine Providence will assist in this as it assists all those who have recourse to it. The ladies of the Seven Sorrows are informed, and they await the new sheep with mothers' and sisters' hearts. "Let it be thus done in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: "Jesus, Mary, Joseph." On applying at the Convent of the Seven Sorrows, the good sisters said that in fact they had received a letter, sealed with the episcopal arms, announcing the arrival of a young lady. They were unable to say more. Monseigneur, when questioned, summoned the Abbé Marcel who gave the examining magistrate the most satisfactory explanations, acknowledging that he was the author of the letter, and that she was a young girl whose honour he desired to save. This event did the greatest good to the reputation of the former Curé of Althausen. His discretion, his wisdom and his virtue were lauded more than ever. [Illustration] Afterword. OTHER WORKS IN ENGLISH BY HECTOR FRANCE MANSOUR'S CHASTISEMENT; THE ATTACK ON THE BROTHELS; MUSK, HASHISH AND BLOOD; THE DAUGHTER OF THE CHRIST; UNDER THE BURNOUS. THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORKS. Hector France alighted upon this planet some fifty years ago and chose his home in the midst of a family renowned for generations as fighters. From this preliminary statement we may deduce two facts: firstly, that baby Hector was not destined by his stern-visaged, paternal sire for any other than the martial profession, and secondly, that the squealing youngster of those days is now a man in the prime of life. Strongly-built, upright and vigorous, Hector France looks every inch just what he really is--a Soldier and a Gentleman, as ready to handle the Sword as to smite smooth-faced Lie and Hypocrisy with the Pen. The qualities of his mind are faithfully delineated in his features. He has the same leonine look that distinguished the famous English iconoclast, Charles Bradlaugh. The massive brow, the firm, determined jaw, the large, luminous eyes, the wavy hair and big shoulders would anywhere mark him out at once, though unknown, as a Philosopher, Fighter, Orator and Leader of men. The career of the two men also offers points in common. If Charles Bradlaugh was a soldier so was Hector France, with the difference that the latter really did face sabre-flash and cannon-smoke whereas his English prototype early bought himself out of the Service. Both men, too, mixed in the game of Politics, only Bradlaugh's luck landed him at last in Parliament while France led a forlorn hope that ended, after many a narrow escape for life, in twenty years of weary exile from his beloved country. Finally both men hold nearly identical opinions with regard to Religious Questions, only Bradlaugh imagined he had a special mission to assail the world's historic faiths, and Hector France, like Ernest Renan, smiles in a curious Oriental way, when these things are broached, quite content for you to believe anything you please so that you do not bother him overmuch with your reasons. Hector France must not be confounded, as is often done by ignorant persons, with the gentleman who has elected to call himself "Anatole France", and who writes under that name. The real patronym of M. "Anatole France" is, I am informed, Monsieur Chaussepied, which interpreted into English means "Mr. Shoe-horn". It is unnecessary to state that Hector France is content with his own name, and would not have changed it even had it been less noble than it really is, believing with us that a man's work are sufficient title to nobility, however odd may be the cognomen bequeathed him from bygone sires. The appearance of this book in English will prove a godsend to Protestants who may see in it only an attack on Catholicism. Let them hug no such flattering unction to their souls. M. Hector France is no savage iconoclast gone mad with sectarian hatred. He recognizes the good in all religions as answering a temporary need in the evolution of Humanity, and for none has he a more profound respect than the Catholic Church. Indeed the pomp and magnificence, the architectural grandeur, the vast learning, wealth and influence of this institution appeal to the imagination of both ignorant and cultured alike. The aim of the distinguished writer of the "Grip of Desire" is far removed from that of vulgar and gratuitous image-breaking. He seeks to show the danger to human character that comes through meddling with one of the most imperious of natural instincts. If in the "Chastisement of Mansour" he bodies forth the consequences of unbridled Libertinism, in the "Grip of Desire" he demonstrates the evils attendant on a life of forced Celibacy. In the first we have the autocratic Reign of the Flesh, in the second the Subjection of legitimate Carnal Desire. The union of the female to the male is a law of Nature, as solid as the granite bases of the world. No normally constituted man can disregard that law without doing violence to himself and to his kind. Kant says: "Man and woman constitute, when united, the whole and entire being, one sex completes the other." Schopenhauer asserts: "The sexual impulse is the most complete expression of the will to live, in other words, it is the concentration of all volition." And in another passage: "The affirmation of the will to live concentrates itself in the act of procreation, which is its most positive expression." Mainländer gives utterance to the opinion when he says: "The sexual impulse is the centre of gravity for human existence. It alone secures to the individual the life which he above all desires ... man devotes himself more seriously to the business of procreation than to any other; in the achievement of nothing else does he condense and concentrate the intensity of his will in so remarkable a manner as in the act of generation." And before all those, Buddha wrote: "Sexual desire is sharper than the hook with which wild elephants are tamed; hotter than flame; it is like an arrow that is shot into the heart of man." The present work, if it teach anything at all, teaches that Celibacy is a crime, and the Mother of crime, just as a venomous plant is a producer of poison. The needs of his organization torment the single man until he robs from others that which he lacks. Hence Seduction, Rape, Adultery, the Invasion of trouble into families, and furious Jealousies with all their prolific brood of Wrong-doing and Woe. This is not the place to praise or to blame the book before us. Each man will judge it according to his individual tastes, temperament and character. The embryonic, thin-lipped man may consider it bold, far too outspoken. The full-blooded reader more conversant with the realities of life, will be inclined to look upon it with larger charity, having regard to what the Author has _refrained from saying_, rather than to what he has said. "At the outset," says Camille Lemonnier, himself a well-known writer, "these pages are conspicuously chaste; Temptation takes the form of Mystical Sensuality, at first beaten back and then surging forwards victorious; then, as the fire of passion grows more intense, the lamp of the tabernacle dies gradually out; and Humanity, with the unchaining of instinct, breaks forth, cries and howls like a mad gorilla from his cage." Here again we witness the triumph of Eve; entangled in her long, flaxen tresses she sweeps away the sinner's conscience, and while the Church closes the door against them both, Nature opens out wide her own with a kindly, "Come in, my Children." CHARLES CARRINGTON. PARIS, 1st JUNE, 1898. [Illustration] 
30093	----	THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER Author of "The Heart of a Man," etc. M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY CHICAGO--NEW YORK Copyright 1916 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916. Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916. February, 1917. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN 3 II THE CHOIR UNSEEN 35 III GLOW OF DAWN 64 IV THE ANSWER 103 V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE 137 VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD 174 VII THE INNER CITADEL 210 VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I? 243 IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD 277 X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID 311 THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. It was undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arsene assured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind of French that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers. Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that the Bishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could not understand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheery companion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet of Adirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft and the road is uncertain. In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind and had headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for a bite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up the half-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country and there were no roads. Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followed him down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made and leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only a steady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let the tough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road. Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off the single bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting all day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet braced stiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. But it was the only way that this trip could be made. The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in French Village on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He had arranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had put him back at that time. Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There was no road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad miles to go. Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkier of his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to the sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacred essentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more or less in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break their way through somehow. So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazing French upon Arsene. Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He had learned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties. Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had gone to Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French of another kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent. He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not because the children would understand, but because it would please Father Ponfret and the parents. They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and the Bishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp: "Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!" The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank. While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully his bulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he saw what had happened. The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail and rolled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and the sled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled at the bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through the snow to help he feared that it was serious. Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head just clear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in the _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having his brains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally, move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with them as quietly as if he stood at their heads. They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence of the calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their own craft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessons they had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay still and waited for the voice to come and get them out of this. As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, he remembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himself that he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this little French-Canadian storekeeper. The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him, and lunged for the ponies' heads. "Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!" He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to their feet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail. Arsene now looked around for the Bishop. "Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?" The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from the tumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harness and said ruefully: "Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust." He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble was quite evident. "What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?" "No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sled las' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief." "We must get on somehow," said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of the lashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will hold until we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace. We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is it far?" "Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe." The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out a clump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the white world around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among the trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle against the desolation of the hills. "I donno," said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took up their tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' like Canuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno." "Oh, yes; he will surely," answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody would refuse a bit of harness in a case like this." It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hid itself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off the road where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way through the heavy snow to find the cabin door. It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that had stood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it was still serviceable and tight, and it was a home. The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within. It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place. After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavy wooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin. A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. On the hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not the slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legs planted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. His nose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he dared not give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of fright but seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room where he was looking. Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft, well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out awkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been dragged unconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledge and shone down full into the man's face. At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting the man's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down across his chest. She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense that her whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as though her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted its message to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compelling strength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heaven and earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound. "Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over and over. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn't want you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It's not never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why, he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!" For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening to the pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listening to the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fighting bitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and life to aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her loved one down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of the very clutches of the unknown. And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girl said. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing every word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swept him along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed for the man to open his eyes. Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip and crush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big, grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror. The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head, saying: "Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try." The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted gently and in the end she gave him place beside her. He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen at the man's breast. Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life, certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly. "It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak. Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed. The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's jacket and shirt. "You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help." The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the man on the couch, went out into the snow. The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily. The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on that side. The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little, and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula. He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a little black ball of steel. While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back naturally to a realisation of things. While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth Lansing came back into the room. Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father's voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped her. "The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But I always knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time." The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years. The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an apparition that she could not think or reason herself out of her fright. The Bishop answered easily and quietly: "Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody remembered now." Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at the fireplace. The man there was real! Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back gasping. The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to a better position, saying: "It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not so bad as it looks." But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of blood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew that it was as bad as the worst. The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room. It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied quickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last, flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowding darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work fast. The time was short. Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the girl to him. Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her mother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing had hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They had grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy words between them. As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious, seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question. But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning had given him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely with herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look of understanding and great mothering tenderness. Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it with his eyes. Then he said: "You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin' you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life. But you won't be afraid. I know you won't." The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared not trust herself to speak. "I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for a sign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life. And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take you on. "He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, my Ruth." The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep and long into the glazing eyes. Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and life alone. Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room. She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that the time was short. In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwing one arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it. She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time for that. The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocable change had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering, protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and its infinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen from her knees. As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly: "I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and it don't matter. "I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before he gets here. "You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut to pieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there, because it was every man for himself. "A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' mad across the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me where I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wild horse back into our lines. "Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. I lay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?" "I do, now," said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah, and I never knew what--" That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just a few months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of a battlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes before Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes, lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving water; there hearing the confession of a Catholic. Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flat land. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back into the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. The animal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as he bent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse. Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding back and forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carried him. Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boy with a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of the last charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling down somehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled him across the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his own lines. Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-five years. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloat or been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given him life. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given that daughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say. "I didn't know you then," said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now, Chaplain, or what you are. "But," he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'd have taken it on for me, wouldn't you?" "Of course I would." "Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to get it on to her?" "I hope I would," said the Bishop evenly. "I believe you would. That's what I think of you," said Tom Lansing. "I went back South after the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks old. "There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to. I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some fightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her heart tryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fret herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon be wantin' to know more. She's that kind. "She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in towns havin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she wants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp. "It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother up into this place!" "You could not think of all that then. No man ever does," said the Bishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance. I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?" "Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort to raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets a chance?" "God will help me to do the best for her," said the Bishop quietly. "I am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something." With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom Lansing's eyes turned to his daughter. Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head. To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding her light of cheering love for the soul out-bound. When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, she leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips. Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night. While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man and two women came into the room. They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours whom Arsene had brought. The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him. He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold, and asked him to find her. Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing Mountain. He knew where he would find her. Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once. "No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried. "There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River. They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here sings something." "Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly. "At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--" "Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black hair?" "He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the description out of the memory of that day. "He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow," said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?" "He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand." "He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do not say things easily. "Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark face which he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow. Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister. "Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the White Horse Chaplain?" "The boys called me that," said the Bishop. "Though it was only a name for a day," he added. "It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe. "We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--the ones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priest riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when they're fighting and dying." Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by the hand. The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to the fire. "I must go now, child," he said. "To-morrow I must be in French Village. Monday I will be here again. "Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?" The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, then nodded her head. "Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do what he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he wanted. "God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for you. I have to go now." He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made. Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping in the snow. The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, fretting with the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail. But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. He told him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence. Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl. She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. But more than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago. She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and ask her own questions from life and the world. In the broad open space between her eye-brows it was written that she would never take anybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker; one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand to know what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrow fall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way. The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way is hard and lonely. She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance to face life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did not promise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers was the high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life is ready to give. The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which had sent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him how best to keep that promise. And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village he had gotten no farther than that. Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheets had been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking in through the west window picked out every bare thread of his service coat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung into the belt at his side. Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listening to the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the high hills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew. But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous lie-- How natural he looked! He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her Daddy Tom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would not speak to his Ruth! He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_ Who had ordered this? And _why?_ And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thing they could think to say--upon their lips. Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte, the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together. Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her? She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make him understand and answer. She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner of the house her dog joined her and together they circled away from the horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had been working yesterday. She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright of yesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came and slid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the cap between her hands. So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coat and hood. "You better put these on, Ruth," he said, as he dropped the coat across her shoulder. "It's too cold here." The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up at him. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready to speak to any one. He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over to him. After a little he asked timidly: "What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend your stock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stay here." "You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany school next week. You said you were all ready." "I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the two farms for you." "For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?" "I--I don't care anything about it any more," he lied. "I told mother this morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come and stay with her till Spring." "And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraid into his eyes. "And then?" "Well, then," he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'll be old enough to marry me," he hurried. "Your father, you know, he always wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded, awkwardly but subtly. "I know you don't want to talk about it now," he went on hastily. "But you'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wants you, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it when you wasn't any higher than Prince here." "Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad," the girl answered levelly. "I'm glad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me for it." "Ruth! You know better than that!" "Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide it from me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back and see what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in the hills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, how you're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyer and go to Albany and maybe to Washington." "What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay here with you." The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, she had almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say to the White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop. Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them. "That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I thought it was only in books about Europe." "What did they say?" "My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was no place for me in the hills." "And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to school?" he guessed shrewdly. "I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly. "Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see and pick up. And to-day I don't care." She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all she had in the world. The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly. He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly: "Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know." Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought. Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it was just the eternal surrender of woman. When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears, the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run out into the night. He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white, desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried troth. When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his. "Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he began. "To a school, I suppose." "I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try to see that she got the chance that she will want in the world." "But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring." The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far. "How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully. "Twenty in April." "You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been at school?" "Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at the Academy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week." "And you are giving it all up for Ruth," said the Bishop incisively. "Does it hurt?" The boy winced, but caught himself at once. "It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth." "And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering to make a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes and work yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you would be man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe that. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance, for her, for love. "Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, for nothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance she would know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good and loving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both your sakes, she would never forgive you. Never." "You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start, she'd go faster than I could. I know it," said the boy bitterly. "She'd go away above me. I'd lose her." "I am not asking you to give her up," the Bishop returned steadily. "If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. But are you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraid to let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?" The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then he turned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat. "I can't give it up, Ruth," he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany to school. I can't give it up." The girl looked up at him, and said quietly: "You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to put the blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think." The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now he knew that he had lost. The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be caught. "We must not be hurried, my children," he said, standing by the boy and girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days, telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go as she directs. "You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter could be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy," he added. When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks. "To-day," he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager souls upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left them where they were? "I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix things up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in Him." II THE CHOIR UNSEEN Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would have been able to do as well as she. It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach. Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts were of a range entirely new to her. She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to. She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that she did not have. They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle. But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great things. But they were the things that would make her like these other girls. And she wanted to be like them. Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things that they had and were. They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world and be one of them. Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but infinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters. That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a world all by itself. What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must once have been as different as every girl is different from every other girl. How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that shone in their faces? Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did they have to be happy about? Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her question aside with a stare: "Sisters always look like that." So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially when He was displeased. She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from her. Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door in the face of her sharp, hungry mind. And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds about her--the world of the Catholic Church. Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green building in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church. Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it. It came and went through every door of life. All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much. The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong sometimes. But just when she was sure that she had found something false, something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her, she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could. Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her. The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her. Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these strange women about her. Would never understand them. Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and the wild winds were her friends? She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her home, for her hills. At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano. She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian. But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone. The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand her. She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped down upon her in the hills. She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed little pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the names had clung to them all the years. She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where they belonged when she looked at them from the hills. Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her mother whom she had never seen. Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses directly into the spirit and the heart. It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world. It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ of the Compline to their Queen in Heaven. Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures. She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her beyond all thought. She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words were never needed. She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide of all the sorrow of all the world. On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The Promises of Christ_. The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows, leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the measure of the heart of the world. It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised it as she lay there trembling. Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and play upon it and lead her whether she would or no. It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her. Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she? It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier's daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to walk upon! No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She would not! She would not give in to it. It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it. But she would not. Never would she give in to it. In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched at her heart until she could stand it no longer. The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day. She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to her hills, where there was peace for her. She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel for the sisters' early mass. That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would be still in their rooms. She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did not matter. When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out and down the dim, broad stairs. The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges. She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled away into the dawn. The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came out of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to Lowville and the railroad. Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men. He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him. He has grit and energy. He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he knows his things are worth. Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on the sled under Cassius Bascom's feet. "Don't kick that, Catty," she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk." There was just a little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been a standing joke in the hills all these years. She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But she was not crying now. Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss her. He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very well. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to tell when we were leaving. "It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the time slipping by, and I'll be back." She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a lie. But she backed him up sturdily: "Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in no time." Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong object in her hands. "There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on purpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just have to put it in your overcoat pocket." Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick had furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of his humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of his big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned to kiss his aunt. "I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany," she lectured. "Make your landlady heat it for you every night." A noise in the road made them all turn. Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard. It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise. Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had kicked themselves and each other in the drifts. As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men shouted: "Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that road all night." "Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves," said Mrs. Whiting. "Rogers," said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if I ever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring." Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising eye, and asked: "Who's the one to talk to here?" Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another question. "What do you want?" Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache and cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke. "I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like this. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't do this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people and can do it." "Well, I'm going away now," said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty here knows the people and the country better than most and he can go anywhere." The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the kind of man that the big man wanted. "Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply. "Albany Law School," said Jeffrey promptly. "Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got something for you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten law schools. Put both teams into the barn," the big man commanded loudly. Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of this brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In that moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from everything that he had ever intended. Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply: "Come into the house." In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be ready to make good his threat of staying until spring. "I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent domain for this whole section," said Rogers. "What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_ the country." "No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber. They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the whole country with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for, anyway." Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother's sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and arguments afterward. "Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means," the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. I know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm going to make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among them to make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn't believe me. You can make them see it." "How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey. "You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it to you." Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced men. Jeffrey was ready to listen. "Do you know what an option is?" the man began again. "Of course I do." "I thought so," said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his previous judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad has got to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domain means. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the railroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those referees. Do you understand me?" "Yes. I see," said Jeffrey. "But--" "No buts at all about it, young man," said Rogers, waving his hand. "The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--within thirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. If they don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forest land. And you know how much that brings. "You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your land. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It's the thing that I want you to do. "You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over. Here are the options," said the big man, pulling a packet of folded papers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. All you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then your work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will be waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?" "But say," Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means my mother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have to leave their home!" "Of course," said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keep his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'll have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style, in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here after you're gone. You were going away. Did you think," he said shrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while you were away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get away yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her. "Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live. "Think it over." Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to think in his life. But he could make nothing of it. He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius and Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he thought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything. He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk had gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his mother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely: "All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'll write to you next week." No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation that he was glad to drop him. In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for thought, the boy could not refuse his offer. So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on the down trip to Lowville. Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision. "It is too big for us, Jeff," she said. "We do not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why, or what about. "There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you remember him, Jeffrey?" "I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me." "Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could tell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion. Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I don't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow. He'll tell you what it means." * * * * * Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings had done. Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her. The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her "Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside. Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought of the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keep Ruth there in the hills. As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to any one but the Bishop himself. The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light upon Ruth Lansing's disappearance. "I came to you, sir," said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a chair, "because you could tell us what to do." "You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?" "Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly. The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing. "This," the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram. "But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he read the message. "I thought you were coming to tell me that." "No," said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn't write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. But she wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leaving there." "I suppose not," said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone away suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me." "Yes." And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell how he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. He made it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution that had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant. The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his old-fashioned, stiff way and said: "Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to her my deepest respect. "I do not know what it all means," he went on, in another tone. "But I can soon find out." He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said: "Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a moment." The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway. "What is it?" asked the Bishop. "There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you, but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or frightened." Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door. "Sit down where you were, young man," said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth Lansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that she was--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for the Bishop's credulity. "Send the girl in here," he said shortly. Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She did not see Jeffrey. "I came straight here all the way," she said, "to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I could not stay there." "I am very glad to see you, Ruth," said the Bishop easily, "and if you'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even more pleased." Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door was indeed a coincidence. "Now," said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. It concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General Chandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power of this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen." Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and listen to something, she did not know what. The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military precision. "These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General," said the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in the Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M. Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you tell them?" The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his coat. "No, Bishop," he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of that matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not dare. I do not often have to say that." "No," said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before." "But I can do this, Bishop," said the General, rising. "If you will come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can tell these young people." The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where the two men stood and talked in undertones. "Jeffrey," said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "if you don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_ you!" Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all. In quick whispers, he told her all he knew. The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the door the General saluted gravely and stalked away. "The answer," said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "is one word--Iron." To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly. "No one knows how much there is, or how little there is," said the Bishop. "The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain. But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of the farms. Then, when they have the right of eminent domain, they will let the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices." "I'll start back to warn the people to-night," said Jeffrey, jumping up. "Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!" "Wait," said the Bishop, "there is more to think of. The railroad, if you serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it is worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And they will, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in your commissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them, they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left with little or nothing. Better go slowly, young man." "What?" cried Jeffrey. "Take their bribe! Take their money, for fooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, before I'd do that, I'd leave that farm and everything that's there and go up into the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my mother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to go with me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!" "And so would I!" said Ruth, springing to her feet. "I _would_! I _would_!" she chanted defiantly. "Well, well, well!" said the Bishop, smiling. "But you are not going up into the big woods, Jeffrey," Ruth said demurely. "You are going back home to fight them. If I could help you I would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I'm going back, to the convent, to face my fight." "But, but," said Jeffrey, "I thought you were running away." "I did. I was," said Ruth. "Last night I heard the voice of something calling to me. It was such a big thing," she went on, turning to the Bishop; "it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought it would crush me. It would take my life and make me do what _it_ wanted, not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a Choir Unseen singing to me to follow, and I didn't dare follow. "But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now I know what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life, to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turn back. I can't. God, or life won't let us turn back." "I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing," said the Bishop. "I'm glad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be very glad now to go back." "As for you, young man," he turned to Jeffrey, "I should say that your mother _would_ be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you. Remember that, when you are in the worst of this fight that is before you. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. When you are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, _remember it_." III GLOW OF DAWN Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River, where the saw-dust came to bother him. He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy, quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones. He liked flies better. His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up on every side to the rim of the high hills. Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body, and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap. But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come. Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water, others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that lesson. But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool. He was growing big and fat, and a little careless. As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest, juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once. Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the water! A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of the water! He had the fly in his mouth. Then the struggle began. Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank behind which she had been hiding. The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through the water like a shot. The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender, boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish. He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line she could until he should tire a little. Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she had fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on. Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and took a new hold on the pole. The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly. She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water. It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose him entirely, but she would try it. Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank. Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her prize was secure. "It's you, Twinkle-tail," she panted, as she held him up for a good look, "sure enough!" She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and dizzy from her struggle. Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud: "I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless he sees you." "Yes, that's him all right," said a voice behind her. "I'd know him in a thousand." She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting. "Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't be back till to-morrow." "Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to," said Jeffrey, smiling. "Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail," she hurried on a little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up strategically between them. "Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by her ruse. The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down. "Now tell me," she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroad people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from yourself." But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and said with a show of meanness: "Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death brutally. I know you did. You're always cruel." Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she had fallen on the rocks. Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her handkerchief. "Now," she said, "tell me." "Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake. "Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have trouble with that man yet. "The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the maddest man you ever saw. "He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not to sign anything. "Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get me away from here yet." "How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually started to build the railroad?" "Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through. But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that they want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole line! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off. They're building the road just the same, so that shows that they intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I suppose they will, somehow," he added sullenly. "They always do, I guess." "But the people," said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agree to sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?" "They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They only want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor, and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land." "Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't it strange," she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything we do. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And how he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems to come into all this. "Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North," she went on. "I wonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At the convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more reason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the same way." "He's just like the Catholic Church," said Jeffrey suddenly, and a little sharply; "he comes into everything." "Why, Jeffrey," said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about the Church?" "I know," he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lot with the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked with their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before it's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church. It comes into everything. I don't like it." He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was turning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found. "It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively. "Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything. They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they must say. I don't like it." "Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!" "I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that." "That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same as I was before." "But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening, "you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference, with us, I mean?" The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said: "No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you mean. "So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we will be just the same to each other. If it should make something different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you would not be the same to me. "It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me, yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you." He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something in her face with which he did not dare to argue. He got up saying: "I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'll be back to-night to help you eat the trout." "Where are you going?" "Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that are shaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to Rafe Gadbeau and letting their land go." "But," Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is to their own interest! Are they blind?" "I know," said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with those people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to scratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollars together from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready, green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them." "Good luck, then, Jeff," she said cheerily; "and get back early if you can." "Sure," he said easily as he picked up his hat. "And, say, Ruth." He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn't be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I wouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not very sharp sometimes. Will you?" "Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please." "Oh, sure," he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other side. Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth. This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had seen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power that he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged struggle. He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills, anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend their money. What had Jeffrey to fear? Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to him. Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes, where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men. Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten that she would surely be standing where he had left her? He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of everything else. The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming. She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived. Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and good judgment would make for him out of the land. Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever, in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle. A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great, seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions, pushing right into the very hills. She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home. Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was enough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and to pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished school. It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened. Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the house, as though she saw it already threatened. She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds. "Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night." "Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to do it myself this morning." "So young Whiting's gone away, eh?" "Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?" "Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin' up at French Village yesterday." "What were they saying?" Ruth demanded. "Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of it, I'd skedaddle, too." Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm. "What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must tell everything now. "Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their eyes." "How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me." "He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they can get. He's gone now; skipped out." "But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only half an hour ago." "Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose." Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said shortly: "I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting." "Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--" "Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the road. "You only said what people were saying." "But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her, "have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?" "Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now. Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come. She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the long purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking down in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home. She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of morning, and the cloud of the night had passed. She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was eager to answer to his faith. "Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she caught him crossing the yard from the milk house. "The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the mountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?" "I want to use him," said Ruth. "May I?" "Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain't been driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he's liable to act foolish." "I'm going to _ride_ him," said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the horse barn door for a bridle. "Now, say, Miss," the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brown pony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that colt is just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long." "Thank you," said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'll find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day." The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse. She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches. The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better. He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in a strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement of the horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace. Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of the boy she loved was in danger! She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the stony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves now keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he had not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way. What was it? On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along the edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country. Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be even the sign of a struggle. Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves. "Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business." When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any attention to her question. "What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly. "Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?" "Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go on up country?" "He went on up country." Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word. "But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty yards. "He came back again." Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his knees. "Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the hills." "Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back." "Didn't do that, nuther." "Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of vexation rising into her voice. "Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village. You his wife? You're mighty young." But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones. In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on up the stiff slope. She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the country that way and had no doubt of finding her road. Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had gone there and, of course, had spent the night there. By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered that it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day of obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting. Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass. The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to know vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man reach hastily for his coat of ceremony. "M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove up. "How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me what time it begins?" "I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle." Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await her convenience. He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down deftly. "I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb," said Ruth as she took his hand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?" A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots. "'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse away to the shed in the rear of the store. The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not answer? She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a front pew. At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth could only catch a little here and there. "You will come by the _fête_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, I s'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one _jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance." Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings. It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before been so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switch their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into the fun with all her heart. "Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want to know him." "Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English. "Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him." The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth's request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately. "No," said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'd only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lot about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we've heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me if they are true." "You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young Whiting!" Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly as he led her to a seat. As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get this man to tell her all he would. "One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out. An' he leave these poor French people in the soup. "But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell out everything on the option to him." "But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting should come back before then?" "He don' come back, that fellow." "How do you know?" "I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that." "Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she said, turning suddenly upon him. "Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned excitedly. "Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture." Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way. When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door. When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was finished, then she almost ran to the door. Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the man left the Village. Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him have his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled up sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into the trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. And he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still there. For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw herself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threw up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she had heard the pony. In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly. She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart stopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. The other-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak! She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought a rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably wounded and bound. She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a prisoner there unless he were hurt. She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure. He would not stay long. As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut. Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for Jeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, the only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long wait. First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting beyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. He might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked appealing for help. Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily have him there before nine o'clock. When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion. Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all night? Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin. Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside. What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had she not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now, and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding for help, too late! She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to the taut, ragged nerves of the girl. The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the bushes. Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God; a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The words that the night before would not form themselves for her now sprang up ready in her soul--the words of all the children of earth, to Our Father Who Art in Heaven--paused an instant to bless her lips, then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, and anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the _Glow_ of _Dawn_. Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the path to his pony. Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, and called to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was locked with a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. She reached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. She beat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. There was no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Her hands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on the tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herself against the door. Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnace where they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tied together down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm was broken. For an instant the girl's heart leaped back to the rage of the night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowed up every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands and loosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth. "Don't talk, Jeff," she commanded. "I can see just what happened. Lie easy and get your strength. I've got to take you to French Village at once." She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzily on the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water and gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him as she would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and half delirious with pain. Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He had never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear that he finally gave in. When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacket into a sling for the boy's broken arm, and with a prayer to the heathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail. When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly: "Say, Ruth, what's the use trying to save these people? Let's sell out while we can and take mother and go away." "Why, Jeff, dear," she said lightly, "this fight hasn't begun yet. Wait till we get to French Village. You'll say something different. You'll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North; remember?" Jeffrey said no more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knew he was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this. All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country were gathered in front of Arsene Lacomb's store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing on the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as he thought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speech when he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying a girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, the railroad lawyer beside him, said: "Go on, man. What's the matter with you?" The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his fight again. "Rogers," he shouted, "you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you could spread your lies about me. And you'd have won out, too, if it hadn't been for this brave girl here. "Now, Rogers, you liar," he shouted louder, "I dare you, dare you, to tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a foot of land. I dare you!" Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them and nearly ruined them. A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved them away and pointed to Jeffrey's broken arm. They helped him down and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough's little office. Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward home, and gave him his head. For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had learned in the Glow of Dawn. IV THE ANSWER The Committee on Franchises was in session in one of the committee rooms outside the chamber of the New York State Senate. It was not a routine session. A bill was before it, the purpose of which was virtually to dispossess some four or five hundred families of their homes in the counties of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The bill did not say this. It cited the need of adequate transportation in that part of the State and proposed that the U. & M. Railroad should be granted the right of eminent domain over three thousand square miles of the region, in order to help the development of the country. The committee was composed of five members, three of the majority party in the Senate and two of the minority. A political agent of the railroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had just finished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people of that part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill should become a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of the farmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce left to rot up there in the hills because the men who toiled to produce it had no means of bringing it down to the starving thousands of the cities. The scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that region became in his picture vast reservoirs of cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by the beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world's poor. When the judge had finished, one minority member of the committee looked at his colleague, the other minority member, and winked. It was a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the committee was not often privileged to listen to quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the hearing had been a secret one they would not have listened to it. But the bill had already aroused a storm. So the leader of the majority had given orders that the hearing should be public. So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been said about iron. No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree of interest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outside public. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during its delivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and had already turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of the next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room. Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of the room and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, spare figure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as the snow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan governor, he would have attracted attention under almost any circumstances. Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his orders from the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should be reported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipated no difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone through with. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions that had been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of the Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured, stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general and this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagues would vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of the minority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, was about all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted on the coming of the Bishop of Alden. "The committee would like to hear, sir," began the chairman, as the Bishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of this bill." The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dull session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop turned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said: "I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County." "I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee quite understands that you do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman who has just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be most directly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including those of your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in your county to the proposed grant?" "Your committee," said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there is the most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. If there had not been that opposition, there would have been no call for the bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could have gotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grant would have been given without question. Your committee knows this better than I." "But," returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroad was not able to get those options because a boy up there in the Beaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance against the railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the options in unfair and unlawful ways." The chairman paused an impressive moment. "In fact," he resumed, "from what this committee has been able to gather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in the matter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that some rival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fancied grievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven, but there was every appearance." The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at the feet of the committee. "The boy, Jeffrey Whiting," he said, "was guided by me. I directed his movements from the beginning." The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the fact that a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody had understood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of the French-Canadian farmers of the hills. They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue of the case. No one had expected that he would attack the main question of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself the principal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up in the hills for six months! The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. They were trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before their readers. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of New England, and what was more he had been one of the leaders of that collection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment." He had endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his war record as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known as the Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley to the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern, ascetic set of his countenance. As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put into their notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He had been too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition to the U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop had taken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He could neither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it. "Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee," he temporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to the railroad?" "There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to the railroad," said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee has nothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has already been granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from the present owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly eighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of the railroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, this committee knows that there is iron ore in these hills. "I have said that I do not represent any one here," the Bishop went on. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills who stand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have no voice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committee because only in this way can the case of my people reach the great, final trial court of publicity before the whole State. "They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will have heard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, for they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that their hands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannot uproot them by the stroke of a pen. "These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of them were once my comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I would beg your committee to consider very earnestly this question before bringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of the State. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country to the peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that their fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness. "Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development, which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They are opposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporation power to drive them from the homes they love, and that without fair compensation. "They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that this bill is directly against everything that is American. "They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men. They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Their homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills. "In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the name--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell you this bill should never go back to the Senate. "It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are found weak enough to let it pass here." The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters could be plainly heard in the hush of the room. Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had been wanting to put from the beginning. "Perhaps the committee has been badly informed," he began to the Bishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian immigrants and not usually owners of land." "Is it necessary for me to repeat," said the Bishop, turning sharply, "that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come before you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner of property. I come because I think the cause of my friends will be served by my coming. "The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might as well have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen to come before you, with your permission, because these facts will get a wider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room. "I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that some of you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is in his church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing to create sensation. I am willing that you should say that I have gone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come before your committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put any interpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only so that my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarely and fully before all the people of the State. "When this matter is once thoroughly understood by the people, then I know that no branch of the lawmaking power will dare make itself responsible for the passage of this bill." The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further questions. When he saw that none were forthcoming, he thanked the committee and begged leave to retire. As the Bishop passed out of the room the chairman arose and declared the public hearing closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters crowded out of the room and scattered through the corridors of the Capitol. Four or five reporters bunched themselves about the elevator shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired boy of twenty, summed up the matter with irreverent brevity. "Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway," he said. "Not every bad bill has a bishop at the obsequies." "You can't tell," said the Associated Press man slowly; "they might report it out in spite of all that." "No use," said the youngster shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touch it once this stuff is in the papers." And he jammed a wad of flimsy down into his pocket. * * * * * Three weeks of a blistering August sun had withered the grasses of the hills almost to a powder. The thin soil of the north country, where the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture; so that the heat of the short, vicious summer goes down through the roots of the vegetation to the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone. Since June there had been no rain. The tumbling hill streams were reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man, stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen away into the depths of the thick woods. Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a scarred pine on the French Village road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up away from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew the menace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first, ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men had cut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of what they were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound trees that stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dying trees standing. Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of brush and trimmings. The farmers had come pushing into the hills in the wake of the lumbermen and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes and hay land. But around every piece of cleared land there was an ever-encroaching ring of brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that held a constant threat for the little home within the ring. A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelenting watchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods on unbidden sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangers and outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from the moment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out of them again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginary Indians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires. The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was an enemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, out there in the underbrush and fallen timber. Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to French Village for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroad would try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the special session of the Legislature. And they knew that the session would probably come to a close this week. If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of the hills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter and useless fight against a power with which they could not cope. They would have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board of condemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but it would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have to remember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himself independently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if his fight had failed he would have nothing to bring back to his mother but his own miserable failure. Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop's house in Alden when Jeffrey had said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him into poverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They had both meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. And she had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through all the summer. She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. She would not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to go somewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would get for her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a little matter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence of Jeffrey's failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did not know how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him in vicious moods when he seemed capable of everything. She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came over Argyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast. He was bringing good news! It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden horses. "How did you know it was all right, Ruth?" "I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain," Ruth laughed. "You looked as though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did it all come out?" "Here's the paper," he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the day previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from the Bishop, too," he added. "Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M. Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying to translate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never sure what headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it's generally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'm sure." "Well, it's only short," said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "He leaves out all the part that he did himself." "Of course," said Ruth simply. "He always does." "He says: "'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach you before this does, that the special session of the Legislature closed to-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate. It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure of just public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently thought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in the open Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of the railroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtful that the matter will be brought up even then.' "You see," said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was there present at all. And it was just his speech before the committee that aroused that public anger. Then he goes on: "'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter ends here. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning. Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature of things that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of money in constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your lands should now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a mere legislative setback. They have not entered into this business in any half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it through somehow--anyhow. We must realise that. "'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of a corporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporation will have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for that answer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no man can tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there will be an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion has been on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer. "'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which men set for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do not apologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own, my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourself came to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most, perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question I have never greatly respected those limits which men set. I put these things before you so that when the answer comes you will remember that you engaged yourself in this business solely in defence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you must try to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel. The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heart larger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need to remember this. "'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in the hills, not forgetting your friend Ruth.' That's all," said Jeffrey, folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed the thing." "Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without bothering about how? That is the way he does everything." "I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Jeffrey as he gathered up his reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of the letter. It sounds like a warning to me." "It is a warning to you," said Ruth thoughtfully. "Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?" "Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly," said Ruth, trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of what you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather than to your head or about your actions." "Now I don't know what you mean, either," said Jeffrey a little discontentedly. "I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for I don't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother has too," said Ruth reluctantly. "But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?" "I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe that you're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it. But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop's house at Alden?" "Yes, and I remember what you said, too." "We both meant it," Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade any of the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean it now, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference with you." "I don't know it," he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just the thing I started out to do that day." "Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now you are fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not for anything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made the fight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting because you have come to hate the railroad people." "Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?" "No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is a terrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you. I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long, long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might go deeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. After all, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible, menacing, Life!" "My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly. "I have faced that," the girl answered evenly, "just as you have faced it. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do in anger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heart and your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen the worst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!" "I wish," the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep his religion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend," he went on, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything." "But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right and wrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us in life and show us the way?" "But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do? You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part of his letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's the Catholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere." "Isn't that funny," the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myself sick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost frantic thinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me and make me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never think of it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn't make any difference at all." "That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even know that you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it." The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered. "It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff," she said finally in a thoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion? Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. And I--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within an inch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?" "I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth," the boy apologised slowly. "It's none of my business, anyway." They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below them stretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up the other slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain. Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up the hill towards them at a heart-breaking pace. "That's 'My' Stocking's roan," said Jeffrey, straightening in his saddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away." "But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerly from under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_ of them!" Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at his bit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long, sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes downhill. The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, as Jeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waited for him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew by sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was to hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They would not talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell her all that she needed to know. The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heard Stocking conclude: "Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn't see." Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth. "There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to be watched. The country's awful dry," he added quietly. He knew that Ruth would need no further explanation. He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth, saying: "Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry. If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this country. You can make them go. Nobody else could." The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a trust to look after the ones whom he loved. She put out her hand to his and said simply: "I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff." "I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth." "There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she said softly. Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes. Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country. "We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is any." "I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if we go that way." "I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other people would have to do the same." "All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like." At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels. Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail. "Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rode along. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer." "I don't know," Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end of the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody's sure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hills somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That's all we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty." "It's enough to set us on the move, anyway," said Jeffrey. "They have no business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of some sort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make Bald Mountain before daylight?" "Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we're through this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We ought to get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'll give us a little sleep, if we feel like it." True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was a soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide or it might be miles below on the lowlands. Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to give any signals of their own whereabouts. As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroad that morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose was the one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it was useless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to be feared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in the night. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself. And the first blaze would rouse the whole country. The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in the open to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But the softness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack trees floating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began to tell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch. "Curl up and go to sleep, 'My,'" he said, shaking himself. "You might as well. I'll wake you in an hour." A ready snore was the only answer. Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff and weary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darkness as they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day that was before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knew their horses must be gotten down to some water course before night. A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just below them. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the area for sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the world to themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain and watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distant trees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and search more carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowing straight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potential enemy more to be feared than all the doings of men. Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of the shadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man and stout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friend or foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he was or what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started their horses pell-mell down the hill towards him. He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran back into the wood. In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business. They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behind the light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a line of living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch through the long dried grass and brush! The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths or horses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it was too far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in reckless rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, to stamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and a fair shot at the fiend there within the wood. Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave of leaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest. They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man! The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started and began to run another line of fire in the other direction. At that moment Stocking yelled: "There's another starting, straight in front!" "Get him," Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill this one." Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seen starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and leaping free with his gun ran towards the man. The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still using his torch and moving rapidly away. Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until he was within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way among the trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey dropped to one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closed upon the running man and clung to him. Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It was Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed. "I am going to kill him," said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast. A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a half step forward, and fell on his face. Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not pulled, ran forward to where the man lay. He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass. He was dying. No need for a second look. His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair showed just the merest streak of red. Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad torch, with which he had done his work. Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no sign of another human being anywhere. Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at other fleeing figures in the woods. He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his rifle. He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge in his gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past his ear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of sapling he began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire. The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment been started, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where it had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung to his work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think of to do for the moment. He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously after the fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousers and shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away from him, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther on along the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging, rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump. Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could now stop that torrent of fire. He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind the fire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could be saved. He looked around for his horse. Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and old Erskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey was standing and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogers lay. Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little group of horsemen and upon the boy standing there. Myron Stocking spoke at last: "Mine got away, Jeff," he said slowly. Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the words flashed upon him. "I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him from the woods. My gun went off accidental." Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been too muffled for them to hear. Again Stocking broke the silence. "What difference does it make," he said. "Any of us would have done it if we could." "But I didn't! I tell you I didn't," shouted Jeffrey. "The shot from the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from behind!" Old Erskine Beasley took command. "What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live men and women and children to think about to-day," he said. "Straighten him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The alarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising, too," he added. "But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it was. He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his master. He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party that was to try to get around the fire from that side. He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them. There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. They probably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which draws itself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselves would wish to have done it. But the circle is there. Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She would not see that circle. Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a few hours before said that she had sometimes seen even murder in his eyes. V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly, leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a valley. It was a maniac at large. The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of the lower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The fire spread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of the mountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills. Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed the juicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should be coming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down the side of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feed and began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other about this thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth. Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking looked blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled down the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is a hireling. Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out of the houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Some cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at the oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags. Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures were quickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capable hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that went with them. They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But it was the law that they should take the brood and run to safety. Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind the trees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probably useless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the law that men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovels to the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earth which the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert the fire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down a little, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes. This was their business. There was little chance that they would succeed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last moment and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law, that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing the point of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities, some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground, or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten. And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran past their already smoking homes and down the wind for life. Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down a long spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he would have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place of leadership and command among them which he had for months been taking in the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have had that place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men had come to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear, dispirited and miserable. They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang upon its flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now of getting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rolling curtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing ahead of it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire and fight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it was making for itself. If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it would have driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than its original front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breeze as it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that the end of the fire line was not a thin edge of scattered fire that could be fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flame that leaped and danced ever outward and onward. Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it. They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brush and grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doing something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree. They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself. A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass. When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful, tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their puny efforts. Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by them on its way. Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their instinct to hunt water. The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they hung on in desperation. Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something. And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind and around them so that they had to race for life. Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction and with it the fire ran apparently at will. When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off. Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions. If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the fire. They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it. They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into the hills to do this thing. Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter given or asked with the demon of the fire. Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be safe. The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it. They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it! To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and _drink_! Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder, fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They had won! It could not beat them now! As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph. But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames went roaring to the top of it. The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get themselves out of that encircling death. When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of victory. Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but they themselves could not get near the lake. Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in the lake. Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according to the nature that was in each. Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not men of the hills. They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who had set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed straight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And _they_ had _water_! All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire fury of the day, rushed back upon him. He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had not. Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those two there in the water. _In the water!_ He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward, his face buried in a patch of bare earth. Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he understood, he turned on his face moaning: "I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had." And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west. * * * * * The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop. But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results. He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand that struck. Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue of the sky behind them. Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now. Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking posts. Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south and west. He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view. Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should have been. He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart whose passions ran deep below a placid surface. At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the wire of a fire in the hills. Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in" with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company, between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office at Steuben. The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question. Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully: "This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy." The Bishop stood quiet a moment. Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of certain things. Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped: "I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said." The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly: "I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything on the wire?" Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were coming back. He was now coherent. No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call." Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the benefit of the Bishop. "It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--" But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing train. At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house. Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the hills. It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the matter no more than a mild wonder. For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all. He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his well fed life. Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the hills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague. He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot. The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the diocese. Corben did not believe that. In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in his pockets he pressed on into the high hills. Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road. But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them. Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the children. That was all they could tell. As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger. In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the mere argument that he was a man. The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald Mountain. The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched. He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even than the one of the fire itself. "He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth had to tell. "Yes. We had just read it." "He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly. "Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill. "They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road from here there, is it open, do you know?" "No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes down." "I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins. "Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost." "Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill. "But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the road!" But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not answer or look back. Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not drive him back. She knew that. She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death just as certain but which they would prefer to face. The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him. But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped. "I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will catch you before long." "No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you. Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet, and won't be for some time." Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the hill. But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill. She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the chances and was ready to measure himself against them. "Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid. Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's business. I wonder." Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into the sky. Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming, sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward her home. All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her. For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and surround them. While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands and safety. The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him. Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the attempt. Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home. For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the stroke of the whip to madden him. Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over: "You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it. I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear, I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!" She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet body. But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came? She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road. A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on again, through the smoke and out into the good air. The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared, either. Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter much. Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge in the way of men. But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive those who trespass against us," she meant that, too. The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal another. Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be coming down upon the whole world. She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom Bones for his brave best. * * * * * The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all. He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through somehow. He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged. Then he came to the top of the hill. He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road. This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the hill where he stood. Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse and looked. Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid wall of fire. There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French Village. Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick upon him. His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way. Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look. "I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this." He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand feet below. The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any horse could have been driven. The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it. With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily to the ground. "You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle. He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed. "We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again. Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope. No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran through the grass by his horse's feet. One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west. Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in hand. Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his hand. But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him, the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of the thing than he could see heroism. He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He had meant well. God meant better. Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this square of fire. "It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But we won't _burn_!" Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks. They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks. It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light. The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau. The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man. The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came the moan: _"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_ With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And she hurriedly turned away toward the horses. She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--the Catholic Church always turning up in everything. She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there behind that awful veil of red. VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country. But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only continued to mumble the words with which they had begun: _"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--" Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of these. Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth with his hat. Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred years. Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times. But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, something that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying where he fell. He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled itself to his mind. "I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down, if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No. "All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire when I would run out. "They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale. "Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _Mon Pere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man's heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to me he said, 'Some day I may need you.' "Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He would buy the land from the people. "The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,' he said, 'I need you.' "_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came. He bade me do and I did. "M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And hate goes raging to do all sin. "So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine. "Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go. "I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went because there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last moment. I do not know. "I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see. If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak. "Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me. I knew. "Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.' "In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the red flare of the fire running after him. "Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms, gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming: "On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!" He fell back as the scream died in his throat. The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips began to form the words of the Act of Contrition. As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man. Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place, all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out of which she must get the breath of life. Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him! She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she had grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged them all. Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed door beyond it. Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations, none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few moments his soul must go--somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others--for Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire because other men were chasing him. Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul was presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she was a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word, straight in the eyes, literally. So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of Gadbeau, screaming: "On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!" Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had fallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over, apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to her ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane. But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there. Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words burning in her mind. When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say: "He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?" Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and among the Mysteries she wept gently--why, she knew not. When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on the tattered breast and straightened the body. Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it. Finally she began: "Bishop, I--I heard--" "No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly, "nothing." Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful seal. The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that rained down upon everything. Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms thrown over the horses' eyes. As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them in exquisite, blinded torture. The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch. They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live. Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse. Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for water. For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent drifting up into their mouths and eyes. They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and the water. When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude they could. The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying man had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge. Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned under the seal of the confessional. Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always. As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would be no more fire in this region. "Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked; "or did they escape back into the higher hills?" "I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have had to drop everything." The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been. The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and begin their nests over again. For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts. When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be carried off. They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing! His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors. Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all was well! Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded confidence that God was good, that the world was right again. The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race, stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a part of the strange things that they had always half believed about him. Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the fire? The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God was good. No? Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager questions and asking questions of her own. There was just one question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him, must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not put her crying question into words. Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were saying, asked: "You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?" "Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth answered without looking up. Then a tall young fellow in front of her said: "Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers." "He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting did _not_ shoot Rogers! Rafe--!" The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp: "It's nothing-- Let me go." Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from her arm. Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand. Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had among her own kind. But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met in the early summer. "You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close? No?" "Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking. "How did he die? Tell me. How?" "Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms." "I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?" "He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so." But the girl was not to be evaded in that way. "I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he _confess_--about Rogers?" "Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I couldn't--" "He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned swiftly. "Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved. "And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly. "Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that." "I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be silent--and that will be just as bad." Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make. "Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear: "Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!" She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away. Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind. This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes. The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her! She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken her secret from her. And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her. Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever known. And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that had been hidden even from herself. She had said: "Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting." In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the hills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love forever! He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing? But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to look into his eyes and say: I _know_ you did not do it. Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man. It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not meet them, could not cope with them. Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers. The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help. Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation, would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here. The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to scanty living. The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything, begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes. Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one of the notes he signed that day. All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and unashamed. Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth. Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his fingers and unfolded their story to him. Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them. They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them, torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks. This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And, for these two men, to be seen meant to die. So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down to the water. They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would have to have food at once. Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else. They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the world! Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself. There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats! Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the matter. A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside. A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout, faithful heart. In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building. The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire. They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill them. The hour had come. "Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence. A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey. Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now calmly, as one assured. "Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?" "We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd. "True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you. "Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it." A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told. They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task. The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of that story which he himself could but must not tell. The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their intention, he said: "My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets must pass through me. "You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is just one thing--Revenge." "What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd. "It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_! "Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done. And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh! believe me now! You shall see right!" The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad. He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them. Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this grief. He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered the things of God and His world. VII THE INNER CITADEL "And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes, actual eye-witnesses of the crime." In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain. From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been doing at the time. For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the identity of the slayer. There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of the hills against the U. & M. Railroad. Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench. And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it. The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from their influence. Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public. The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter charge. Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the railroad. The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of the public with this case until the people should have had time to forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise. The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a "railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be allowed to enter. And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room was there to hope for his acquittal? The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had been working night and day to put a roof over their families before the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--every word of which would count against them. They had come down determined that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them. There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle and glum, waiting for the end. Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him. He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers. The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached Lowville. When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath. His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again. And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with him. Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her boy brought to this pass because of that man. Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men. The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity, whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts. It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own. Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--! He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was only--! But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her eyes. He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately put his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little time together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his story unimportant. She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had heard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made many wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the angels. Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at Rogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head. Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there under the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave! The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at last came upon the truth--and stuck to it. Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence. He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. The Bishop _knew_. When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what he had expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and her confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his mother. Ruth _knew_. That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of what she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need, she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough. When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never had more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of details in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop's hand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those of a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all. No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop _knew_. It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had been to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must not speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would speak. So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself. He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer, young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face of the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would certainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attention to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the keeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and who would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most terrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who was always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear. The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and plan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here and there--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth _knew_; the Bishop _knew_. The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last. Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called. The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him. Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before the twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band of men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record. Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine himself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrested for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the answers that the prosecutor forced from him. "Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked. "Yes." "Did you hear two shots fired?" "No." "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?" "Yes." "Did you examine it?" "Yes." "Had it been fired off?" "Yes." "Excused," snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears, came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers had made the most damaging sort of evidence. Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and associated in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions. With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald Mountain. He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose Rogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be a failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his terms. Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did they have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in their own interest? Yes. The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald negative and affirmative answers invariably carry. He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French Village had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had been obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger. He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed. The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents and knew what men had said to each other. He now called Myron Stocking. "Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?" was the question. "I went lookin' for him, to tell--" "Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney. "Yes," the witness admitted sullenly. "Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?" "Yes." "Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?" "He followed me," the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly and the attorney yelled: "Yes or no?" "Yes." "Did you see Rogers in the morning?" "Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with his gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on: "Did you hear a shot?" "Yes." "Did you hear two shots?" "The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was asked: "What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?" "I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff.'" "What else did you say?" "I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we had the chance.'" "Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back. "Yes." "One question more and I will excuse you," said the attorney, with a show of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify against your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you, conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed Rogers?" To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply, reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution, that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes. One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing. On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses. He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his, that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their testimony that could be attacked. With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last witness go. The State promptly rested its case. Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him, of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken from the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into the record. Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village. The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop. The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first heard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County. He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He would associate himself and his own good name with the things that Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would be swept aside as irrelevant. One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial. Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He saw that he would not be allowed to do so. One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not kill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He told me so. The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon this course which had brought him here into this court and into the shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He would. And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these circumstances, in a way responsible? He was. Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "Rafe Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus save Jeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more, would do. And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was necessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop, be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of Jeffrey Whiting? He would. Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words? He would not. There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the seal and let those nine words escape his lips. There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mind as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy who sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsible for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the dead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up there and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal salvation of men's souls. But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground between the working of the two. If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his torture, waiting. When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place standing beside the chair that was set for him. At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done. The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing Dardis, he said: "Is this testimony pertinent?" "It is, if Your Honor pardon me," said the Bishop, turning quickly. "It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the crime charged, any more than I could have done so." The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury. He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and sealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read this to the jury. He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court. He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he asked: "Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?" "No, Your Honor. But there are--" "It is irrelevant," interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot go before the jury." The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more. Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for his client--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part of the real confession. He said quickly: "You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?" "I was." "What did he say to you?" Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak! The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered: "Nothing." "That will do. Thank you, Bishop," said Dardis in a low, broken voice. Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop had _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_! As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were questioned about that night, she must do as he had done. Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I do that? Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happen like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands, and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to her and life! She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she care for that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer? Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no good to him or to any one now? Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and unbreakable across her lips. That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she saw held her. What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and fear of death. What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be disturbed. As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words: Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting. How well that girl knew! Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always a chance that the dying man had said something to her. "You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked. "Yes, sir." "Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?" "No, sir." Then he flashed the question upon her: "What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?" Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief. A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._ Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time. Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak. The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout them out to the ends of the earth! But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered: "Nothing." Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand. Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat. _Ruth_ had _lied_! The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him. VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I? The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick spirit of the man within. The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would have offered the few years that might be his, without question or halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ. Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by any perplexities or confusion. Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous, battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory of living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Never had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure. But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come to that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done foolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly. What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart. He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he, Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority. When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed themselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew that Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at the last moment. Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then? Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on denying? Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it who had been born to the Faith. Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled. When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop. But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for her! When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady word--"Nothing." Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street. She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand, she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business with God. She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken. He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying: _Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._ The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the thread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly, the Bishop prompted gently. "And now? my daughter." "And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _Mon Pere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before men and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There is another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the path of the fire because he feared those other men. "But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe. And they will not hurt a girl much," she said, dropping back upon her native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not care who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the court will believe, as I shall tell it." "But, my daughter," said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not be true. We must not lie." "But M'sieur the Bishop, himself," the girl argued swiftly, evidently separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his public walk, "he himself, on the stand--" The girl stopped abruptly. The Bishop held the silence of the grave. "_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth," she began. "_Mon Pere_, I cannot! I--!" "Let us consider," the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he had told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him: Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed. Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?" "To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said: Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved him. Would always love him. "We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell." "But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave to speak." The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground. "If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?" "_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!" "Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I? "And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open place. Would he come back to the world? "And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward with that debt unpaid.' "Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none loved you who will pay the debt?' "And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one, a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right; only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt will be right; my God, let me go.'" The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions that every woman craves for and clings to. "This," the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are to consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people, who do not matter at all? "Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of Ruth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, from where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He would have you tell." "_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale," said the girl simply as she rose from her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage." The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse and sent for Dardis. "This girl," he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think you would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her down." Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God. As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another. Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued. Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it was true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved, and who, he was sure, loved him. It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did not consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took from him his interest in every other fact in the world. Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her life told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she had stood up there and lied. For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth! It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it. He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of life. Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision. He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb? Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did not seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mention the fire again. At his counsel's direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away. Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a simple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirely credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though puzzled by the manner of the recital. Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her church. When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called. He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires would begin his speech at once. He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom he had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau's girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything, and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor little thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let them hurt her. Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very beginning: "Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the price of his silence. "Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one to help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do, for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon him. "At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and that will be the end of all.' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, we will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.'" Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop's advice, to let her get through with it in her own way. "But it was not time for us to marry yet," she went on. "Then came the morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of my aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to hang up in the hot sun to dry." The Judge turned impatiently on his bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed angrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it not important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the Judge gave her the most rigid attention. "Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he was troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and said one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six horses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know,' he said, 'though I can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.' "'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away, and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, I do not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we will get away to Beaupre. Promise me.' "'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.' "But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end. "I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands. "When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much suffering. "In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that Rogers kept him always near him. "I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear. "I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned. "The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face. The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young Whiting had not fired at all. "I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.' "But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not wish to be separated from him in this world or the next. "But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him and the fire." She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end. "Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God, who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God took him away. "That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe." Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its naïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more connected elaborations he might try to make her give. Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case. But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it was true. His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing. The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury. It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the prisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was not nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood aside to grapple with that one astounding thing. The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling. He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act. No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that. He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal. Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an agreement. The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was. Jeffrey Whiting stood up. The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying: "Not guilty." The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love story of an ignorant French girl from the hills. Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a prisoner and brought him to his mother. Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had done to her in these four weeks and in these two days. And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name. Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice he said brutally: "You lied!" Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words. Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the line of death. When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight. The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him. They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which he was quick to notice. During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind. When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full news of the last four weeks. It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only as they contributed to the general result. Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction. Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely incidental. Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end. Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills during the four weeks of his removal from the scene. The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands which the railroad coveted. They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do? Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of officials. The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a claim, for the mere privilege of living. When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself! The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart! Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly needful. Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe Cardinal. The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond him. At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter. Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry! If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their own. If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it, were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was their own? If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months. They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia, but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their people! Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause! Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty? Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people could spare them, and mounted silently behind him. Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at Leavit's bridge. IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's call for help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit's Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced down the line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up the ties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails, heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness. Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literally for their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. They preferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with their wrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The workmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take no chances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence and rioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This was war. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines and bolted down the line, carrying panic before them. In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head had ridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costly construction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in the hills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a single rail in all the hill country where they were masters. The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright. That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally in charge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenly the tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting all sorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had the telegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no more frightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swear in as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget the consideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men. They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible number of fighting men upon the line at once. Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building in New York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw the gravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it. He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities, who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in this battle. He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. He ordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set them in motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that the Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in order that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great man sent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment of the National Guard for service in the hills. Before the second night three companies of the militia had passed through Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orders were to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hill men that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried and imprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristic of the great power which in those days ruled the State that when it had outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attain its ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinion in favour of itself. Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods above Milton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars come creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of the hills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fifty miles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settled country. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run in their blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper. Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun. They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred well-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they could hold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any force that might be sent against them. But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility was already at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had driven him onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near him into this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dull hate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave him time to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were not professional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to be done. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they should come up here to fight for it. Why did they come? They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usually had very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men, for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central part of the State. The militia companies had attracted them because the armouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, because uniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons of veterans and the military tradition was strong in them. Jeffrey Whiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things. He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot down without mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word of command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they were not to be blamed. His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate. Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were to expect. He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not thought that they would go away from their cars. Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect the rebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straight into the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroad was not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had called upon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His men had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. This thing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end there would be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops and drive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almost ridiculous. But that would not be the end. The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it must and would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did not deceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubt as to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The railroad itself had broken the law of the State and the law of humanity. It had defied every principle of justice and common decency. It had burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in the hills. Yet the law had not raised a hand to punish it. But now when the railroad itself had suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to be set in motion to punish the men of the hills who had merely paid their debt. But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had not foreseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail had given him an insight into realities that years of growth and observation of things outside might not have produced in him. He had been given time to see that some things are insurmountable, that things may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persist and go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. Jeffrey Whiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had led these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this mad raid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he now realised had been his from the start. They had thought that they could accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning a victory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of the State would intervene to settle the differences between them and their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that the moment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of the State would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. There would be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If they surrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed for varying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, some of them would be killed and injured and in one way or another all would suffer in the end. He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him with startling clearness now. He had led them into this without letting them see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seen it. There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed now and scattered themselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. And if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almost satisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing to do. He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees, waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancing soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to punishment. His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word, without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front of the oncoming troops. The battle was on! The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no advance. These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning. Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars. For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the ground on which they stood. Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were sheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase of the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and he knew that they were an enemy of a character far different from those harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side of a hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highest of the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip from their sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering them until they should have tracked them down one by one and either captured or killed them all. These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. They stepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thin line of men to either side. Then he saw that the third train, although they were soldiers, took their lesson from the men who had just preceded them. They left the tracks and spreading still farther out took up the wings of a long line that was now stretching east to west along the fringe of the hills. The soldiers in the centre retired a little way down the roadbed, stood bunched together for a little time while their officers evidently conferred together, then left the road by twos and fours and began spreading out and pushing the other lines out still farther. It was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that could not have been better done if he and his companions had planned it for their own capture. There were easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; men well armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with a railroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire State behind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men after these if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of other men were being held in readiness to follow these or were perhaps already on their way. He saw the end. Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly and surround his men. If they stood together they would be massacred. If they separated they would be hunted down one by one. Their only chance was to scatter at once and ride back to where their homes had been. This time he implored them to take their chance, begged them to save themselves while they could. But he might have known that they would do nothing of the kind. Already they were breaking away and spreading out to meet that distending line in front of them. Nothing short of a miracle could now save them from annihilation, and Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle. There was nothing to be done but to take command and sell his life along with theirs as dearly as possible. * * * * * The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up and down the State. Men who had followed the course of things through the past months, men who knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which no newspaper had dared to print openly, understood just what it meant. The men up there had been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men agreed quietly with each other that they had done the very worst thing that could have been done. The injury they had done the railroad would amount to very little, comparatively, in the end, while it would give the railroad an absolutely free hand from now on. The people would be driven forever out of the lands which the railroad wished to possess. There would be no legislative hindrances now. The people had doomed themselves. The echoes reached also to two million other men throughout the State who did not understand the matter in the least. These looked up a moment from the work of living and earning a living to sympathise vaguely with the foolish men up there in the hills who had attacked the sacred and awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad. Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the case. But who could tell? And the two million, the rulers and sovereigns of the State, went back again to their business. The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, almost before a blow had been struck. It is hardly too much to say that he was listening for it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech, slow to anger; but, once past a certain point of aggravation, absolutely heedless and reckless of consequences. He did not stop to compute just how much he himself was bound up in the causes and consequences of what had happened and what was happening in the hills. He had given advice. He had thought with the people and only for the people. He saw, long before it was told him in words, the wild ride down through the hills to strike the railroad, the fury of destruction, the gathering of the forces of the State to punish. Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no moment now. One man there was in all the State, in all the nation, who could give the word that would now save the people of the hills. Clifford W. Stanton who had sat months ago in his office in New York and had set all these things going, whose ruthless hand was to be recognised in every act of those which had driven the people to this madness, his will and his alone could stay the storm that was now raging in the hills. Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfish bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to make it possible and at times inevitable that they should rise to those heights. After these years and the encrusting strata of compromise and cowardice and selfishness which years and life lay upon the fresh heart of the youth of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of Clifford W. Stanton again be touched? Almost before the forces of the State were in motion against the people of the hills, the Bishop, early of a morning, walked into the office of Clifford Stanton. Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and though younger than the latter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned up the fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke and moved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton acted with a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. The spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking which had chiselled the Bishop's face into a single, simple expression of will power was not to be found in the other's face. In its stead there was a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man behind the face had all his life refused to be certain of anything until the jaws of the trap had set upon the accomplished fact. Physically the two men were much of a type. You would have known them anywhere for New Englanders of the generation that has disappeared almost completely in the last twenty years. They had been boys at Harvard together, though not of the same class. They had been together in the Civil War, though the nature of their services had been infinitely diverse. They had met here and there casually and incidentally in the business of life. But they faced each other now virtually as strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon himself each man realised that he was about to grapple with one of the strongest willed men that he had ever met, and that he must test out the other man to the depths and be himself tried out to the limit of his strength. "It is some years since I've seen you, Bishop. But we are both busy men. And--well-- You know I am glad to have you come to see me. I need not tell you that." The Bishop accepted the other man's frank courtesy and took a chair quietly. Stanton watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing the last few years a good deal, he thought. In reality it was the last month that the Bishop was showing. But it did not show in the steady, untroubled glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no time on preliminaries. "I have come on business, of course, Mr. Stanton," he began. "It is a very strange and unusual business. And to come at it rightly I must tell you a story. At the end of the story I will ask you a question. That will be my whole business." The other man said nothing. He did not understand and he never spoke until he was sure that he understood. The Bishop plunged into his story. "One January day in 'Sixty-five' I was going up the Shenandoah alone. My command had left me behind for two days of hospital service at Cross Keys. They were probably some twenty miles ahead of me and would be crossing over the divide towards Five Forks and the east. I thought I knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of the distance that separated me from them, so I started across the Ridge by a path which would have been impossible for troops in order. "I was right. I did cut off the distance which I had expected and came down in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the eastern side of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would be with my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry came pelting over a rise in the road behind me. "I leaped my horse back into the brush at the side of the road and waited. They would sweep on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind them came a troop of our own horse pursuing hotly. The Confederate horses were well spent. I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far off. The Confederates--some detached band of Early's men, I imagine--realised that they would soon be run down. Just where I had left the road there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates threw themselves from their horses and drew themselves across the road. They were in perfect ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen yards back on the narrow road. "I broke from the bush and fled back along the road to warn our men. But I did no good. They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even, as they came yelling around the turn of the road. "For three minutes there was some of the sharpest fighting I ever saw, there in the narrow road, before what remained of the Confederates broke after their horses and made off again. In the very middle of the fight I noticed two young officers. One was a captain, the other a lieutenant. I knew them. I knew their story. I believe I was the only man living who knew that story. Probably _I_ did not know the whole of that story. "The lieutenant had maligned the captain. He had said of him the one thing that a soldier may not say of another. They had fought once. Why they had been kept in the same command I do not know. "Now in the very hottest of this fight, without apparently the slightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain, attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggled there, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain, swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latter drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle I do not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised to lunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he had made no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his arm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant's eyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into his face. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the now breaking line of Confederates. "I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravely refrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw." Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely, forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself: "The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day." "I knew," said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the same brave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were that day?" For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man to face him with it? He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop: "You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me the little bit of it you saw?" "Because," said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great and brave a man you are." Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was merely the instinct of self-defence. "For months," the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hills have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of the lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have tried to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside that you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in their homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look you in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave the suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this minute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave man lives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better? "Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shall prevail: Justice shall conquer.' And where does right prevail? And when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them. But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail? Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer? Then see that they come to no harm. "I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that once lived within you. I saw you--!" "Don't harp on that," Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothing about it." "I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side. I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I would not have come to you. "If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A _coward_, do you remember that word?" The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a ghastly thing that would leap upon him. "A coward without a heart," the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "who has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no heart, can use his power to crush them. "If I had not seen, I would have said that. "But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same brave man with a heart that I saw on that day? "You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man? "If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you which gave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you are not capable of being that same man with the heart of a great and tender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. I will have my answer." Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling as though in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his command of mind and tongue. "Words, words, words," he groaned at last. "Your life is made of words. Words are your coin. What do you know? "Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man that was once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When did words ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here with your question. It's made of words. "When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth is a word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do you think men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ you know? "Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for the words? No! "They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do _you_ know? "Go out there. Stay there." He pointed. "I've got to think." He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishop rose and walked from the room. When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the door barred it. He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his propped hands. He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting black and steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang that went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was a sinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that good man's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediately that he had been mistaken. Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartment within it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. He set it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it, questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expression of a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled. The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet, translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the striking features that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyes there seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, a light, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly radiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable, gentle loveliness. Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within. He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemed so wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answer that shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. The light within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham and illusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived with truth. The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to a sob. "Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a little truth, for once! I'll tell you some truth! "I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told the same lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yet you died a happy woman, because of that lie. "He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yet they made you happy. Where is truth? "You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like what they call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_" He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did he expect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under the bitter revelation? "I've been everything," he went on, still trying to make his point, "I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why? "Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference? "Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes. Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any difference with you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery, words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_" But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truth persisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. And the dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked out wondering at a world remade. "Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Is that what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words and beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And do you, somewhere, understand now? "Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when you understood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would call fine? Or was it the words? "Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that was really the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, did you somehow understand all the time?" He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then he said: "Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him. But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what they call a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing, a brave thing. I did it for you. "And--I'll do this for you." He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Then he locked it away quickly in its place. He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and began writing. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, the other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad and wrote a note, this to his personal representative who was following the state troops into the hills. He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called a clerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand and asked the Bishop back into the office. Closing the door quickly, he said without preface: "This note will put my man up there at your service. You will prefer to go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command of the troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties. The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think. There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You can settle the whole matter in no time. "We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on what ores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't go for much up there, I guess," he put in grimly--"that it will be fair. You can make that the basis of settlement. "They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most good. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, I find. "You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop," he concluded abruptly. The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with a sudden, unwonted emotion. "I will not cheapen this, sir," he said evenly, "by attempting to thank you." "A mere whim of mine, that's all," Stanton cut in almost curtly, the steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A mere whim." "Well," said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner. So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other. Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does ever let another man see what is in his heart? * * * * * All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength of the men with him. All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther upon the enveloping wings to east and west. Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified, wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling. Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to fire on any moving twig or scraping branch. In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown and where nobody would bother with them. The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few. They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason, indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by the soldier pickets and sent down to jail. Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in it of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily out to their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which they had taken from the construction depots along the line which they had destroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each man that this would probably be his last meal. The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them. They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and the formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept those directly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothing in sight before them but that they would certainly all be surrounded and shot down or taken. Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching the most distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men halt and slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they going to rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest! But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walked back in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must be a ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, but determined not to be drawn out. Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old man walking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted rails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightly stooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was the Bishop of Alden! Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either side to stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet the Bishop. "Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time to speak as they met. "Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how bad it is," said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. I don't think any of them are bad." "Call in your men," said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are going back." At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and the Bishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the White Horse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Men who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the scene of that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And young men who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of his coming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him. What did this coming mean? He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy, was willing to make with them. And in the end he added: "You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_ believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to your families at once." Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them. They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying over the names of those they were saved to. The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone completely out of his mind in these last hours. "Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course." "My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer. "But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer. Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things bigger than we are. We get no answer." Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day. X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of Promise. The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the enemy was gone. But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature. For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kissed the scarred, brown body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The world was born again! Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring. The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad, uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings, concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have believed it if it had been told. And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--which she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe was not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good. Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the world to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was in Heaven. As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this scowling young gentleman with the big face. "You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after some verbal beating about the bush; "how is she?" "Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe sharply. Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on: "If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody then? Why didn't you come see?" "Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things. And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church, just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want to." "But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back. "Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one certainty, she should have flown to you. No?" Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste. But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue. "But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you did so much for me." "For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him murderer, blackened his name, for _you_! "No! No! _No!_ _Never!_ "I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death. _Never!_ "I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_ had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in. I did it for _you_! Ha!" The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main argument. "But why couldn't she have told the truth?" "The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, you must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you! "Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where you stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a _man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me with! "Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for _you_! "You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth! "You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an innocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must come forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he was guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_ "I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited for the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _mon Rafe_ was guilty. By how much? "By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you. Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was the difference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_! "You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were guilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you! "You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more from that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You were ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he was desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty. "And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good M'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you innocent! "Bah! _Innocent!_" She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also, she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was about even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had felt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was much relieved. Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl. He had forgotten her. He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick, jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one thing. Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau. Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation. But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as anything but guilty of murder. He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he had not, in fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all. Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him. Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly. Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He had a right to kill him. But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment: "As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau." And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "There is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here." Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for some fresh trouble. She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned things outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men. He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a career. He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to him. All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth more than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Next week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from out of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forest fires almost harmless. He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law school diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of the world--look cheap and little. But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the word--_guilty_. What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall with the word written across it. Guilty--guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth Lansing--! A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing. He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said. Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind. Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the high path of every struggling dream. Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth, while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect, they had said that he was guilty. And he _was_ guilty! What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day on the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there is something bigger than we are." Was this what it meant? Was this the thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that was bigger than he? He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination, misinformation, and some unreadable facts. He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But what was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything. This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would stand between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger than he. There was no answer. There was no way out. Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more. Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man's feet and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as--as Rafe Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words, turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away? It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe away Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau _believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_ believed it! It was a delusion, yes. But--_What_ a delusion! What a magnificent, soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a confidence of relief and freedom! Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held the germ of his guilt. Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in any particular a different person, capable of anything different, likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given the circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning was just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute. There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it. There was no way that it might ever end. And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too. She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in his mind. What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from French Village? He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from her! But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole, impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered equally, or maybe more, from it. Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak. Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing. There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this, and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would understand. He would go to him. He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to Lowville. "I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody." "I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited, "and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing, but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man." "It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back against everybody. "And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty: guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!" "I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey stopped. "Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against which he had come the night before. "You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What brought your mind to this view of the matter?" "A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me." Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer. "Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop decisively, "you must have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you injure?" Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This would clear the way. Whom had he injured? Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, his wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was none the worse of it. Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all. Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in the way meant. Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then--then why all this--? Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor, asking: Whom? Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came the answer; a single word: "_God!_" "Your business is with Him, then," said the Bishop, rising with what almost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him." "But--but," Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, to confess. Rafe Gadbeau--!" "No," said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to _confession_. They come to _confess_ to God." He took the young man's hand, saying: "I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell Him, what you have told me." In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little resentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone looking for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God. Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the world continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did they find God? Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word, some key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be found here on the hills, in the night, in the open? God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find! A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere. The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer. Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was little and these things were very great. Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it, direct to God. It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence utter and unreasoning. Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at him through the starting tears. Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain upon him all these weary hours? He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free, hungry breaths of God's air about him. For it _was_ God's air. That was the wonder of it. The world was God's! And it was new made for him to live in! He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He had been bound: he was free! Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night. With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He is the Royal God in very deed.) Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof. What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved. They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just what was their opinion of the whole matter. Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered what he could say to Ruth. At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe. "Where is she?" he asked without preface. Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed at the change she saw. Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart. I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry. _Non._ "The last house," she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. She will be glad," she remarked simply, and turned on her way. Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of forgiveness--and of all things. Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife Philomena sat in the sun by the side of the house watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms bare above the elbow was working away contentedly in their little patch of garden. They nudged each other as Jeffrey rode up and left his horse, but they made no sign to Ruth. So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth came to her unseen and unheard. He took the hoe from her hand as she turned to face him. Up to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he was to say to her. What was there to say? But as he looked into her startled, pain-clouded eyes he found himself saying: "I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Last night He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will you tell me what to say to you, Ruth?" It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling, wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his horse stood. There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softly through the big bay's mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious before her, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Village observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question. But after all there was no question. For when Jeffrey had told all, down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born in every woman, said: "Poor boy, you have suffered too much!" "What I suffered was that I made for myself," he said thickly. "Cynthe Cardinal told me what a fool I was." "What did Cynthe tell you?" "She told me that you loved me." "Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?" said the girl very quietly. "Yes, it seems so. I'd known your little white soul ever since you were a baby. I knew that in all your life you'd never had a thought that was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew that there was never a time when you wouldn't have given everything, even life, for me. I knew it that day in the Bishop's house. I knew it that morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin." "Yes, I knew all that," he went on bitterly. "I knew you loved me, and I knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day--that day in the courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!" She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him, but he went on doggedly. "Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like a blow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck you. And even that sight wasn't enough for me. I kept on saying it, when I knew in my heart it wasn't so. I couldn't help but know it. I knew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on till yesterday. I wasn't big enough. I wasn't man enough to see that you were just facing something that was bigger than both of us--something that was bigger and truer than words--that there was no way out for you but to do what you did." "Jeffrey, dear," the girl hurried to say, "you know that's a thing we can't speak about--" "Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn't say anything. I _understand_." "And I understand a lot more," he began again. "It took that little French girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was a deeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do as you did. That's why everything was so. I wasn't innocent. Things don't _happen_ as those things did. They work out, because they have to." The girl was watching him with fright and wonder in her eyes. What was he going to say? But she let him go on. "No, I wasn't innocent," he said, as though to himself now. "I fooled myself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man. I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau's quickness prevented me. No, I wasn't innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was a murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as Ca--!" The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been going to say. "You shall not say that!" she panted. "I will not let you say it! Nobody shall say it! I defy the whole world to say it!" "But it's--it's true," said the boy brokenly as he held her. "It is not true! Never! Nothing's true, only the truth that God has hidden in His heart! And that is hidden! How can we say? How dare we say what we would have done, when we didn't do it? How do we know what's really in our hearts? Don't you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot say things like that! We don't know! I won't let you say it. "And if you do say it," she argued, "why, I'll have to say it, too." "You?" "Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I was outside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was I thinking? What was in my heart? I'll tell you. I was out there stalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world. Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done it gladly--with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it! "Now," she gasped, "now, if you're going to say that thing, why, we'll say it together!" The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understood nothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself in whatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that had fallen on him and wrap it around herself too. "My poor little white-souled darling," he said through tears that choked him, "I can't take this from you! It's too much, I can't!" After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against his shoulder and argued dreamily: "I don't see what you can do. You'll have to take _me_. And I don't see how you can take me any way but just as I am." Then she was suddenly conscious that the world was observing. She drew quickly away, and Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go. Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered and adored, he began to speak in wonder and self-abasement. "After all I've made you suffer--!" But Ruth would have none of this. It had been nothing, she declared. She had found work to do. She had been happy, in a way. God had been very kind. At length Jeffrey said: "Well, I guess we'll never have to misunderstand again, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was--I needed Him. Now I want to find Him--your way." "You mean--you mean that you _believe_!" "Yes," said Jeffrey slowly. "I didn't think I ever would. I certainly didn't want to. But I do. And it isn't just to win with you, Ruth, or to make you happier. I can't help it. It's the thing the Bishop once told me about--the thing that's bigger than I am." Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions which she assured him was essential. But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said. Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood much of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not come home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her--and--and they would have all their lives to finish the instructions. On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other convert. If on those occasions he also came to see her, well, she would, of course, be glad to see him and to know how he was progressing. Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see. And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree. Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this arrangement, grumbled that the way of the heretic was indeed made easy in these days. But his wife Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed him that if the good Ruth saw fit to convert even a heathen Turk into a husband for herself she would no doubt make a good job of it. So love came and went through the summer, practically unrebuked. Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb. But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up over the new line of railroad that came into the hills from Welden Junction. And Arsene was very glad of this, for as he looked at his beloved M'sieur l'Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to have faced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was many years older and less sturdy. The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent and thoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now, when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they did not like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing of his. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he had done right. Who was to tell? And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing's side in the little rough-finished sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer. But Jeffrey Whiting saw none of the poor makeshifts out of which the little priest had contrived a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again, in the night, on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned stars, crying out to find God. Then God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch and lifted him out of the dust and agony of the road, and, finally, had brought him here, to this moment. He had just received into his body the God of life. His soul stood trembling at its portal, receiving its Guest for the first time. He was amazed with a great wonder, for here was the very God of the dark night speaking to him in words that beat upon his heart. And his wonder was that from this he should ever arise and go on with any other business whatever. Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to the music of that _choir unseen_ which had once given her the call of life. She had followed it, not always in the perfect way, but at least bravely, unquestioningly. And it had brought her now to a holy and awed happiness. Neither life nor death would ever rob her of this moment. Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop. And as the Shepherd blessed their joined hands he prayed for these two who were dear to him, as well as for his other little ones, and, as always, for those "other sheep." And the breathing of his prayer was: That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear; but trust long in Thee and in each other. THE END Printed in the United States of America.