Father Corraine rose and sat beside the table, his book of offices open
before him. At length he said: "There is much that might be spoken; for
the Church has words for every hour of man's life, whatever it be; but
there comes to me now a word to say, neither from prayer nor psalm, but
from the songs of a country where good women are; where however poor the
fireside, the loves beside it are born of the love of God, though the
tongue be angry now and then, the foot stumble, and the hand quick at a
blow." Then, with a soft, ringing voice, he repeated:
"'New friends will clasp your hand, dear, new faces on you smile--
You'll bide with them and love them, but you'll long for us the while;
For the word across the water, and the farewell by the stile--
For the true heart's here, my darlin'.'"
Mary Callen's tears flowed afresh at first; but soon after the voice
ceased she closed her eyes and her sobs stopped, and Father Corraine sat
down and became lost in thought as he watched the candle. Then there
went a word among the spirits watching that he was not thinking of the
candle, or of them that the candle was to light on the way, nor even of
this girl near him, but of a summer forty years gone when he was a goodly
youth, with the red on his lip and the light in his eye, and before him,
leaning on a stile, was a lass with--
" . . . cheeks like the dawn of day."
And all the good world swam in circles, eddying ever inward until it
streamed intensely and joyously through her eyes "blue as the fairy
flax." And he had carried the remembrance of this away into the world
with him, but had never gone back again. He had travelled beyond the
seas to live among savages and wear out his life in self-denial; and now
he had come to the evening of his life, a benignant figure in a lonely
land. And as he sat here murmuring mechanically bits of an office, his
heart and mind were with a sacred and distant past. Yet the spirits
recorded both these things on their tablets, as though both were worthy
of their remembrance.
He did not know that he kept repeating two sentences over and over to
himself:
"'Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium et a verbo aspero.
Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te: ut custodiant te in omnibus viis
tuis.'"
These he said at first softly to himself, but unconsciously his voice
became louder, so that the girl heard, and she said:
"Father Corraine, what are those words? I do not understand them, but
they sound comforting."
And he, waking from his dream, changed the Latin into English, and said:
"'For he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunter, and from the
sharp sword.
For he hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways.'"
"The words are good," she said. He then told her he was going out, but
that he should be within call, saying, at the same time, that someone
would no doubt arrive from Fort Cypress soon: and he went from the house.
Then the girl rose slowly, crept lamely to a chair and sat down.
Outside, the priest paced up and down, stopping now and then, and
listening as if for horses' hoofs. At last he walked some distance away
from the house, deeply lost in thought, and he did not notice that a man
came slowly, heavily, to the door of the hut, and opening it, entered.
Mary Callen rose from her seat with a cry in which was timidity, pity,
and something of horror; for it was Pretty Pierre. She recoiled, but
seeing how he swayed with weakness, and that his clothes had blood upon
them, she helped him to a chair. He looked up at her with an enigmatical
smile, but he did not speak. "Oh," she whispered, "you are wounded!"
He nodded; but still he did not speak. Then his lips moved dryly. She
brought him water. He drank deeply, and a sigh of relief escaped him.
"You got here safely," he now said. "I am glad of that--though you, too,
are hurt."
She briefly told him how, and then he said: "Well, I suppose you know all
of me now?"
"I know what happened in Pipi Valley," she said, timidly and wearily.
"Father Corraine told me."
"Where is he?"
When she had answered him, he said: "And you are willing to speak with me
still?"
"You saved me," was her brief, convincing reply. "How did you escape?
Did you fight?"
"No," he said. "It is strange. I did not fight at all. As I said to
you, I was sick of blood. These men were only doing their duty. I might
have killed two or three of them, and have escaped, but to what good?
When they shot my horse, my good Sacrament,--and put a bullet into this
shoulder, I crawled away still, and led them a dance, and doubled on
them; and here I am."
"It is wonderful that they have not been here," she said.
"Yes, it is wonderful; but be very sure they will be with that candle in
the window. Why is it there?"
She told him. He lifted his brows in stoic irony, and said: "Well, we
shall have an army of them soon." He rose again to his feet. "I do not
wish to die, and I always said that I would never go to prison. Do you
understand?"
"Yes," she replied. She went immediately to the window, took the candle
from it, and put it behind an improvised shade. No sooner was this done
than Father Corraine entered the room, and seeing the outlaw, said "You
have come here, Pierre?" And his face showed wonder and anxiety.
"I have come, mon pere, for sanctuary."
"For sanctuary! But, my son, if I vex not Heaven by calling you so,
why"--he saw Pierre stagger slightly. "But you are wounded." He put his
arm round the other's shoulder, and supported him till he recovered
himself. Then he set to work to bandage anew the wound, from which
Pierre himself had not unskilfully extracted the bullet. While doing so,
the outlaw said to him:
"Father Corraine, I am hunted like a coyote for a crime I did not commit.
But if I am arrested they will no doubt charge me with other things--
ancient things. Well, I have said that I should never be sent to gaol,
and I never shall; but I do not wish to die at this moment, and I do not
wish to fight. What is there left?"
"How do you come here, Pierre?"
He lifted his eyes heavily to Mary Callen, and she told Father Corraine
what had been told her. When she had finished, Pierre added:
"I am no coward, as you will witness; but as I said, neither gaol nor
death do I wish. Well, if they should come here, and you said, Pierre is
not here, even though I was in the next room, they would believe you, and
they would not search. Well, I ask such sanctuary."
The priest recoiled and raised his hand in protest. Then, after a
moment, he said:
"How do you deserve this? Do you know what you ask?"
"Ah, oui, I know it is immense, and I deserve nothing: and in return I
can offer nothing, not even that I will repent. And I have done no good
in the world; but still perhaps I am worth the saving, as may be seen in
the end. As for you, well, you will do a little wrong so that the end
will be right. So?"
The priest's eyes looked out long and sadly at the man from under his
venerable brows, as though he would see through him and beyond him to
that end; and at last he spoke in a low, firm voice:
"Pierre, you have been a bad man; but sometimes you have been generous,
and of a few good acts I know--"
"No, not good," the other interrupted. "I ask this of your charity."
"There is the law, and my conscience."
"The law! the law!" and there was sharp satire in the half-breed's voice.
"What has it done in the West? Think, 'mon pere!' Do you not know a
hundred cases where the law has dealt foully? There was more justice
before we had law. Law--" And he named over swiftly, scornfully, a
score of names and incidents, to which Father Corraine listened intently.
"But," said Pierre, gently, at last, "but for your conscience, m'sieu',
that is greater than law. For you are a good man and a wise man; and you
know that I shall pay my debts of every kind some sure day. That should
satisfy your justice, but you are merciful for the moment, and you will
spare until the time be come, until the corn is ripe in the ear. Why
should I plead? It is foolish. Still, it is my whim, of which, perhaps,
I shall be sorry tomorrow . . . Hark!" he added, and then shrugged
his shoulders and smiled. There were sounds of hoof beats coming faintly
to them. Father Corraine threw open the door of the other room of the
hut, and said "Go in there--Pierre. We shall see . . . we shall see."
The outlaw looked at the priest, as if hesitating; but, after, nodded
meaningly to himself, and entered the room and shut the door. The priest
stood listening. When the hoof-beats stopped, he opened the door, and
went out. In the dark he could see that men were dismounting from their
horses. He stood still and waited. Presently a trooper stepped forward
and said warmly, yet brusquely, as became his office: "Father Corraine,
we meet again!"
The priest's face was overswept by many expressions, in which marvel and
trouble were uppermost, while joy was in less distinctness.
"Surely," he said, "it is Shon McGann."
"Shon McGann, and no other.--I that laughed at the law for many a year,
though never breaking it beyond repair,--took your advice, Father
Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the
saddle's pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, at your service."
They clasped hands, and the priest said: "You have come at my call from
Fort Cypress?"
"Yes. But not these others. They are after a man that's played ducks
and drakes with the statutes--Heaven be merciful to him, I say. For
there's naught I treasure against him; the will of God bein' in it all,
with some doin' of the Devil, too, maybe."
Pretty Pierre, standing with ear to the window of the dark room, heard
all this, and he pressed his upper lip hard with his forefinger, as if
something disturbed him.
Shon continued. "I'm glad I wasn't sent after him as all these here
know; for it's little I'd like to clap irons on his wrists, or whistle
him to come to me with a Winchester or a Navy. So I'm here on my
business, and they're here on theirs. Though we come together it's
because we met each other hereaway. They've a thought that, maybe,
Pretty Pierre has taken refuge with you. They'll little like to disturb
you, I know. But with dead in your house, and you givin' the word of
truth, which none other could fall from your lips, they'll go on their
way to look elsewhere."
The priest's face was pinched, and there was a wrench at his heart. He
turned to the others. A trooper stepped forward.
"Father Corraine," he said, "it is my duty to search your house; but not
a foot will I stretch across your threshold if you say no, and give the
word that the man is not with you."
"Corporal McGann," said the priest, "the woman whom I thought was dead
did not die, as you shall see. There is no need for inquiry. But she
will go with you to Fort Cypress. As for the other, you say that Father
Corraine's threshold is his own, and at his own command. His home is now
a sanctuary--for the afflicted." He went towards the door. As he did
so, Mary Callen, who had been listening inside the room with shaking
frame and bursting heart, dropped on her knees beside the table, her head
in her arms. The door opened. "See," said the priest, "a woman who is
injured and suffering."
"Ah," rejoined the trooper, "perhaps it is the woman who was riding with
the half-breed. We found her dead horse."
The priest nodded. Shon McGann looked at the crouching figure by the
table pityingly. As he looked he was stirred, he knew not why. And she,
though she did not look, knew that his gaze was on her; and all her will
was spent in holding her eyes from his face, and from crying out to him.
"And Pretty Pierre," said the trooper, "is not here with her?"
There was an unfathomable sadness in the priest's eyes, as, with a slight
motion of the hand towards the room, he said: "You see--he is not here."
The trooper and his men immediately mounted; but one of them, young Tim
Kearney, slid from his horse, and came and dropped on his knee in front
of the priest.
"It's many a day," he said, "since before God or man I bent a knee--more
shame to me for that, and for mad days gone; but I care not who knows it,
I want a word of blessin' from the man that's been out here like a saint
in the wilderness, with a heart like the Son o' God."
The priest looked at the man at first as if scarce comprehending this act
so familiar to him, then he slowly stretched out his hand, said some
words in benediction, and made the sacred gesture. But his face had a
strange and absent look, and he held the hand poised, even when the man
had risen and mounted his horse. One by one the troopers rode through
the faint belt of light that stretched from the door, and were lost in
the darkness, the thud of their horses' hoofs echoing behind them. But a
change had come over Corporal Shon McGann. He looked at Father Corraine
with concern and perplexity. He alone of those who were there had caught
the unreal note in the proceedings. His eyes were bent on the darkness
into which the men had gone, and his fingers toyed for an instant with
his whistle; but he said a hard word of himself under his breath, and
turned to meet Father Corraine's hand upon his arm.
"Shon McGann," the priest said, "I have words to say to you concerning
this poor girl,"
"You wish to have her taken to the Fort, I suppose? What was she doing
with Pretty Pierre?"
"I wish her taken to her home."
"Where is her home, father?" And his eyes were cast with trouble on the
girl, though he could assign no cause for that.
"Her home, Shon,"--the priest's voice was very gentle--"her home was
where they sing such words as these of a wanderer:
"'You'll hear the wild birds singin' beneath a brighter sky,'
The roof-tree of your home, dear, it will be grand and high;
But you'll hunger for the hearthstone where a child you used to lie,
You'll be comin' back, my darlin'."'
During these words Shon's face ran white, then red; and now he stepped
inside the door like one in a dream, and the girl's face was lifted to
his as though he had called her. "Mary--Mary Callen!" he cried. His
arms spread out, then dropped to his side, and he fell on his knees by
the table facing her, and looked at her with love and horror warring in
his face; for the remembrance that she had been with Pierre was like the
hand of the grave upon him. Moving not at all, she looked at him, a numb
despondency in her face. Suddenly Shon's look grew stern, and he was
about to rise; but Father Corraine put a hand on his shoulder, and said:
"Stay where you are, man--on your knees. There is your place just now.
Be not so quick to judge, and remember your own sins before you charge
others without knowledge. Listen now to me."
And he spoke Mary Callen's tale as he knew it, and as she had given it to
him, not forgetting to mention that she had been told the thing which had
occurred in Pipi Valley.
The heroic devotion of this woman, and Pretty Pierre's act of friendship
to her, together with the swift panorama of his past across the seas,
awoke the whole man in Shon, as the staunch life that he had lately led
rendered it possible. There was a grave, kind look upon his face when he
rose at the ending of the tale, and came to her, saying:
"Mary, it is I who need forgiveness. Will you come now to the home you
wanted?" and he stretched his arms to her. . . .
An hour after, as the three sat there, the door of the other room opened,
and Pretty Pierre came out silently, and was about to pass from the hut;
but the priest put a hand on his arm, and said:
"'Where do you go, Pierre?"
Pierre shrugged his shoulder slightly:
"I do not know. 'Mon Dieu!'--that I have put this upon you!--you that
never spoke but the truth."
"You have made my sin of no avail," the priest replied; and he motioned
towards Shon McGann, who was now risen to his feet, Mary clinging to his
arm. "Father Corraine," said Shon, "it is my duty to arrest this man;
but I cannot do it, would not do it, if he came and offered his arms for
the steel. I'll take the wrong of this now, sir, and such shame as there
is in that falsehood on my shoulders. And she here and I, and this man
too, I doubt not, will carry your sin--as you call it--to our graves,
without shame."
Father Corraine shook his head sadly, and made no reply, for his soul was
heavy. He motioned them all to sit down. And they sat there by the
light of a flickering candle, with the door bolted and a cassock hung
across the window, lest by any chance this uncommon thing should be seen.
But the priest remained in a shadowed corner, with a little book in his
hand, and he was long on his knees. And when morning came they had
neither slept nor changed the fashion of their watch, save for a moment
now and then, when Pierre suffered from the pain of his wound, and
silently passed up and down the little room.
The morning was half gone when Shon McGann and Mary Callen stood beside
their horses, ready to mount and go; for Mary had persisted that she
could travel--joy makes such marvellous healing. When the moment of
parting came, Pierre was not there. Mary whispered to her lover
concerning this. The priest went to the door of the but and called him.
He came out slowly.
"Pierre," said Shon, "there's a word to be said between us that had best
be spoken now, though it's not aisy. It's little you or I will care to
meet again in this world. There's been credit given and debts paid by
both of us since the hour when we first met; and it needs thinking to
tell which is the debtor now, for deeds are hard to reckon; but, before
God, I believe it's meself;" and he turned and looked fondly at Mary
Callen.
And Pierre replied: "Shon McGann, I make no reckoning close; but we will
square all accounts here, as you say, and for the last time; for never
again shall we meet, if it's within my will or doing. But I say I am the
debtor; and if I pay not here, there will come a time!" and he caught
his shoulder as it shrunk in pain of his wound. He tapped the wound
lightly, and said with irony: "This is my note of hand for my debt, Shon
McGann. Eh, bien!"
Then he tossed his fingers indolently towards Shon, and turning his eyes
slowly to Mary Callen, raised his hat in good-bye. She put out her hand
impulsively to him, but Pierre, shaking his head, looked away. Shon put
his hand gently on her arm. "No, no," he said in a whisper, "there can
be no touch of hands between us."
And Pierre, looking up, added: "C'est vrai. That is the truth. You go--
home. I got to hide. So--so." And he turned and went into the hut.
The others set their faces northward, and Father Corraine walked beside
Mary Callen's horse, talking quietly of their future life, and speaking,
as he would never speak again, of days in that green land of their birth.
At length, upon a dividing swell of the prairie, he paused to say
farewell.
Many times the two turned to see, and he was there, looking after them;
his forehead bared to the clear inspiring wind, his grey hair blown back,
his hands clasped. Before descending the trough of a great landwave,
they turned for the last time, and saw him standing motionless, the one
solitary being in all their wide horizon.
But outside the line of vision there sat a man in a prairie hut, whose
eyes travelled over the valley of blue sky stretching away beyond the
morning, whose face was pale and cold. For hours he sat unmoving, and
when, at last, someone gently touched him on the shoulder, he only shook
his head, and went on thinking. He was busy with the grim ledger of his
life.