of wings. A bright flock of pigeons swept over their heads to the far
end of the garden, where a woman was just emerging from the gate that
led into the school grounds; Magdalena, who came every day to feed the
doves and to gather flowers. The Sisters had given her charge of the
altar decoration of the school chapel for this month, and she came for
the Bishop's apple blossoms and daffodils. She advanced in a whirlwind
of gleaming wings, and Tranquilino dropped his spade and stood watching
her. At one moment the whole flock of doves caught the light in such a
way that they all became invisible at once, dissolved in light and
disappeared as salt dissolves in water. The next moment they flashed
around, black and silver against the sun. They settled upon Magdalena's
arms and shoulders, ate from her hand. When she put a crust of bread
between her lips, two doves hung in the air before her face, stirring
their wings and pecking at the morsel. A handsome woman she had grown to
be, with her comely figure and the deep claret colour under the golden
brown of her cheeks.
"Who would think, to look at her now, that we took her from a place
where every vileness of cruelty and lust was practised!" murmured Father
Vaillant. "Not since the days of early Christianity has the Church been
able to do what it can here."
"She is but twenty-seven or -eight years old. I wonder whether she ought
not to marry again," said the Bishop thoughtfully. "Though she seems so
contented, I have sometimes surprised a tragic shadow in her eyes. Do
you remember the terrible look in her eyes when we first saw her?"
"Can I ever forget it! But her very body has changed. She was then a
shapeless, cringing creature. I thought her half-witted. No, no! She has
had enough of the storms of this world. Here she is safe and happy."
Father Vaillant sat up and called to her. "Magdalena, Magdalena, my
child, come here and talk to us for a little. Two men grow lonely when
they see nobody but each other."
2
DECEMBER NIGHT
FATHER VAILLANT had been absent in Arizona since midsummer, and it was
now December. Bishop Latour had been going through one of those periods
of coldness and doubt which, from his boyhood, had occasionally settled
down upon his spirit and made him feel an alien, wherever he was. He
attended to his correspondence, went on his rounds among the parish
priests, held services at missions that were without pastors,
superintended the building of the addition to the Sisters' school: but
his heart was not in these things.
One night about three weeks before Christmas he was lying in his bed,
unable to sleep, with the sense of failure clutching at his heart. His
prayers were empty words and brought him no refreshment. His soul had
become a barren field. He had nothing within himself to give his priests
or his people. His work seemed superficial, a house built upon the
sands. His great diocese was still a heathen country. The Indians
travelled their old road of fear and darkness, battling with evil omens
and ancient shadows. The Mexicans were children who played with their
religion.
As the night wore on, the bed on which the Bishop lay became a bed of
thorns; he could bear it no longer. Getting up in the dark, he looked
out of the window and was surprised to find that it was snowing, that
the ground was already lightly covered. The full moon, hidden by veils
of cloud, threw a pale phosphorescent luminousness over the heavens, and
the towers of the church stood up black against this silvery fleece.
Father Latour felt a longing to go into the church to pray; but instead
he lay down again under his blankets. Then, realizing that it was the
cold of the church he shrank from, and despising himself, he rose again,
dressed quickly, and went out into the court, throwing on over his
cassock that faithful old cloak that was the twin of Father Vaillant's.
They had bought the cloth for those coats in Paris, long ago, when they
were young men staying at the Seminary for Foreign Missions in the rue
du Bac, preparing for their first voyage to the New World. The cloth had
been made up into caped riding-cloaks by a German tailor in Ohio, and
lined with fox fur. Years afterward, when Father Latour was about to
start on his long journey in search of his Bishopric, that same tailor
had made the cloaks over and relined them with squirrel skins, as more
appropriate for a mild climate. These memories and many others went
through the Bishop's mind as he wrapped the trusty garment about him and
crossed the court to the sacristy, with the big iron key in his hand.
The court was white with snow, and the shadows of walls and buildings
stood out sharply in the faint light from the moon muffled in vapour. In
the deep doorway of the sacristy he saw a crouching figure--a woman, he
made out, and she was weeping bitterly. He raised her up and took her
inside. As soon as he had lit a candle, he recognized her, and could
have guessed her errand.
It was an old Mexican woman, called Sada, who was slave in an American
family. They were Protestants, very hostile to the Roman Church, and
they did not allow her to go to Mass or to receive the visits of a
priest. She was carefully watched at home,--but in winter, when the
heated rooms of the house were desirable to the family, she was put to
sleep in a woodshed. To-night, unable to sleep for the cold, she had
gathered courage for this heroic action, had slipped out through the
stable door and come running up an alley-way to the House of God to
pray. Finding the front doors of the church fastened, she had made her
way into the Bishop's garden and come round to the sacristy, only to
find that, too, shut against her.
The Bishop stood holding the candle and watching her face while she
spoke her few words; a dark brown peon face, worn thin and sharp by life
and sorrow. It seemed to him that he had never seen pure goodness shine
out of a human countenance as it did from hers. He saw that she had no
stockings under her shoes,--the cast-off rawhides of her master,--and
beneath her frayed black shawl was only a thin calico dress, covered
with patches. Her teeth struck together as she stood trying to control
her shivering. With one movement of his free hand the Bishop took the
furred cloak from his shoulders and put it about her. This frightened
her. She cowered under it, murmuring, "Ah, no, no, Padre!"
"You must obey your Padre, my daughter. Draw that cloak about you, and
we will go into the church to pray."
The church was utterly black except for the red spark of the sanctuary
lamp before the high altar. Taking her hand, and holding the candle
before him, he led her across the choir to the Lady Chapel. There he
began to light the tapers before the Virgin. Old Sada fell on her knees
and kissed the floor. She kissed the feet of the Holy Mother, the
pedestal on which they stood, crying all the while. But from the working
of her face, from the beautiful tremors which passed over it, he knew
they were tears of ecstasy.
"Nineteen years, Father; nineteen years since I have seen the holy
things of the altar!"
"All that is passed, Sada. You have remembered the holy things in your
heart. We will pray together."
The Bishop knelt beside her, and they began, _O Holy Mary, Queen of
Virgins_....
More than once Father Vaillant had spoken to the Bishop of this aged
captive. There had been much whispering among the devout women of the
parish about her pitiful case. The Smiths, with whom she lived, were
Georgia people, who had at one time lived in El Paso del Norte, and they
had taken her back to their native State with them. Not long ago some
disgrace had come upon this family in Georgia, they had been forced to
sell all their negro slaves and flee the State. The Mexican woman they
could not sell because they had no legal title to her, her position was
irregular. Now that they were back in a Mexican country, the Smiths were
afraid their charwoman might escape from them and find asylum among her
own people, so they kept strict watch upon her. They did not allow her
to go outside their own _patio_, not even to accompany her mistress to
market.
Two women of the Altar Guild had been so bold as to go into the _patio_
to talk with Sada when she was washing clothes, but they had been rudely
driven away by the mistress of the house. Mrs. Smith had come running
out into the court, half dressed, and told them that if they had
business at her _casa_ they were to come in by the front door, and not
sneak in through the stable to frighten a poor silly creature. When they
said they had come to ask Sada to go to Mass with them, she told them
she had got the poor creature out of the clutches of the priests once,
and would see to it that she did not fall into them again.
Even after that rebuff a very pious neighbour woman had tried to say a
word to Sada through the alley door of the stable, where she was
unloading wood off the burro. But the old servant had put her finger to
her lips and motioned the visitor away, glancing back over her shoulder
the while with such an expression of terror that the intruder hastened
off, surmising that Sada would be harshly used if she were caught
speaking to anyone. The good woman went immediately to Father Vaillant
with this story, and he had consulted the Bishop, declaring that
something ought to be done to secure the consolations of religion for
the bond-woman. But the Bishop replied that the time was not yet; for
the present it was inexpedient to antagonize these people. The Smiths
were the leaders of a small group of low-caste Protestants who took
every occasion to make trouble for the Catholics. They hung about the
door of the church on festival days with mockery and loud laughter,
spoke insolently to the nuns in the street, stood jeering and
blaspheming when the procession went by on Corpus Christi Sunday. There
were five sons in the Smith family, fellows of low habits and evil
tongues. Even the two younger boys, still children, showed a vicious
disposition. Tranquilino had repeatedly driven these two boys out of the
Bishop's garden, where they came with their lewd companions to rob the
young pear trees or to speak filth against the priests.
When they rose from their knees, Father Latour told Sada he was glad to
know that she remembered her prayers so well.
"Ah, Padre, every night I say my Rosary to my Holy Mother, no matter
where I sleep!" declared the old creature passionately, looking up into
his face and pressing her knotted hands against her breast.
When he asked if she had her beads with her, she was confused. She kept
them tied with a cord around her waist, under her clothes, as the only
place she could hide them safely.
He spoke soothingly to her. "Remember this, Sada; in the year to come,
and during the Novena before Christmas, I will not forget to pray for
you whenever I offer the Blessed Sacrament of the Mass. Be at rest in
your heart, for I will remember you in my silent supplications before
the altar as I do my own sisters and my nieces."
Never, as he afterward told Father Vaillant, had it been permitted him
to behold such deep experience of the holy joy of religion as on that
pale December night. He was able to feel, kneeling beside her, the
preciousness of the things of the altar to her who was without
possessions; the tapers, the image of the Virgin, the figures of the
saints, the Cross that took away indignity from suffering and made pain
and poverty a means of fellowship with Christ. Kneeling beside the much
enduring bondwoman, he experienced those holy mysteries as he had done
in his young manhood. He seemed able to feel all it meant to her to know
that there was a Kind Woman in Heaven, though there were such cruel ones
on earth. Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's
hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness. Only
a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.
Not often, indeed, had Jean Marie Latour come so near to the Fountain of
all Pity as in the Lady Chapel that night; the pity that no man born of
woman could ever utterly cut himself off from; that was for the murderer
on the scaffold, as it was for the dying soldier or the martyr on the
rack. The beautiful concept of Mary pierced the priest's heart like a
sword.
"_O Sacred Heart of Mary_!" she murmured by his side, and he felt how
that name was food and raiment, friend and mother to her. He received
the miracle in her heart into his own, saw through her eyes, knew that
his poverty was as bleak as hers. When the Kingdom of Heaven had first
come into the world, into a cruel world of torture and slaves and
masters, He who brought it had said, "_And whosoever is least among you,
the same shall be first in the Kingdom of Heaven_." This church was
Sada's house, and he was a servant in it.
The Bishop heard the old woman's confession. He blessed her and put both
hands upon her head. When he took her down the nave to let her out of
the church, Sada made to lift his cloak from her shoulders. He
restrained her, telling her she must keep it for her own, and sleep in
it at night. But she slipped out of it hurriedly; such a thought seemed
to terrify her. "No, no, Father. If they were to find it on me!" More
than that, she did not accuse her oppressors. But as she put it off, she
stroked the old garment and patted it as if it were a living thing that
had been kind to her.
Happily Father Latour bethought him of a little silver medal, with a
figure of the Virgin, he had in his pocket. He gave it to her, telling
her that it had been blessed by the Holy Father himself. Now she would
have a treasure to hide and guard, to adore while her watchers slept.
Ah, he thought, for one who cannot read--or think--the Image, the
physical form of Love!
He fitted the great key into its lock, the door swung slowly back on its
wooden hinges. The peace without seemed all one with the peace in his
own soul. The snow had stopped, the gauzy clouds that had ribbed the
arch of heaven were now all sunk into one soft white fog bank over the
Sangre de Cristo mountains. The full moon shone high in the blue vault,
majestic, lonely, benign. The Bishop stood in the doorway of his church,
lost in thought, looking at the line of black footprints his departing
visitor had left in the wet scurf of snow.
3
SPRING IN THE NAVAJO COUNTRY
FATHER VAILLANT was away in Arizona all winter. When the first hint of
spring was in the air, the Bishop and Jacinto set out on a long ride
across New Mexico, to the Painted Desert and the Hopi villages. After
they left Oraibi, the Bishop rode several days to the south, to visit a
Navajo friend who had lately lost his only son, and who had paid the
Bishop the compliment of sending word of the boy's death to him at Santa
Fé.
Father Latour had known Eusabio a long while, had met him soon after he
first came to his new diocese. The Navajo was in Santa Fé at that time,
assisting the military officers to quiet an outbreak of the never-ending
quarrel between his people and the Hopis. Ever since then the Bishop and
the Indian chief had entertained an increasing regard for each other.
Eusabio brought his son all the way to Santa Fé to have the Bishop
baptize him,--that one beloved son who had died during this last winter.
Though he was ten years younger than Father Latour, Eusabio was one of
the most influential men among the Navajo people, and one of the richest
in sheep and horses. In Santa Fé and Albuquerque he was respected for
his intelligence and authority, and admired for his fine presence. He
was extremely tall, even for a Navajo, with a face like a Roman
general's of Republican times. He always dressed very elegantly in
velvet and buckskin rich with bead and quill embroidery, belted with
silver, and wore a blanket of the finest wool and design. His arms,
under the loose sleeves of his shirt, were covered with silver
bracelets, and on his breast hung very old necklaces of wampum and
turquoise and coral--Mediterranean coral, that had been left in the
Navajo country by Coronado's captains when they passed through it on
their way to discover the Hopi villages and the Grand Canyon.
Eusabio lived, with his relatives and dependents, in a group of hogans
on the Colorado Chiquito; to the west and south and north his kinsmen
herded his great flocks.
Father Latour and Jacinto arrived at the cluster of booth-like cabins
during a high sand-storm, which circled about them and their mules like
snow in a blizzard and all but obliterated the landscape. The Navajo
came out of his house and took possession of Angelica by her bridle-bit.
At first he did not open his lips, merely stood holding Father Latour's
very fine white hand in his very fine dark one, and looked into his face
with a message of sorrow and resignation in his deep-set, eagle eyes. A
wave of feeling passed over his bronze features as he said slowly:
"My friend has come."
That was all, but it was everything; welcome, confidence, appreciation.
For his lodging the Bishop was given a solitary hogan, a little apart
from the settlement. Eusabio quickly furnished it with his best skins
and blankets, and told his guest that he must tarry a few days there and
recover from his fatigue. His mules were tired, the Indian said, the
Padre himself looked weary, and the way to Santa Fé was long.
The Bishop thanked him and said he would stay three days; that he had
need for reflection. His mind had been taken up with practical matters
ever since he left home. This seemed a spot where a man might get his
thoughts together. The river, a considerable stream at this time of the
year, wound among mounds and dunes of loose sand which whirled through
the air all day in the boisterous spring winds. The sand banked up
against the hogan the Bishop occupied, and filtered through chinks in
the walls, which were made of saplings plastered with clay.
Beside the river was a grove of tall, naked cottonwoods--trees of great
antiquity and enormous size--so large that they seemed to belong to a
bygone age. They grew far apart, and their strange twisted shapes must
have come about from the ceaseless winds that bent them to the east and
scoured them with sand, and from the fact that they lived with very
little water,--the river was nearly dry here for most of the year. The
trees rose out of the ground at a slant, and forty or fifty feet above
the earth all these white, dry trunks changed their direction, grew back
over their base line. Some split into great forks which arched down
almost to the ground; some did not fork at all, but the main trunk
dipped downward in a strong curve, as if drawn by a bowstring; and some
terminated in a thick coruscation of growth, like a crooked palm tree.
They were all living trees, yet they seemed to be of old, dead, dry
wood, and had very scant foliage. High up in the forks, or at the end of
a preposterous length of twisted bough, would burst a faint bouquet of
delicate green leaves--out of all keeping with the great lengths of
seasoned white trunk and branches. The grove looked like a winter wood
of giant trees, with clusters of mistletoe growing among the bare
boughs.
Navajo hospitality is not intrusive. Eusabio made the Bishop understand
that he was glad to have him there, and let him alone. Father Latour
lived for three days in an almost perpetual sand-storm--cut off from
even this remote little Indian camp by moving walls and tapestries of
sand. He either sat in his house and listened to the wind, or walked
abroad under those aged, wind-distorted trees, muffled in an Indian
blanket, which he kept drawn up over his mouth and nose. Since his
arrival he had undertaken to decide whether he would be justified in
recalling Father Vaillant from Tucson. The Vicar's occasional letters,
brought by travellers, showed that he was highly content where he was,
restoring the old mission church of St. Xavier del Bac, which he
declared to be the most beautiful church on the continent, though it had
been neglected for more than two hundred years.
Since Father Vaillant went away the Bishop's burdens had grown heavier
and heavier. The new priests from Auvergne were all good men, faithful
and untiring in carrying out his wishes; but they were still strangers
to the country, timid about making decisions, and referred every
difficulty to their Bishop. Father Latour needed his Vicar, who had so
much tact with the natives, so much sympathy with all their
short-comings. When they were together, he was always curbing Father
Vaillant's hopeful rashness--but left alone, he greatly missed that very
quality. And he missed Father Vaillant's companionship--why not admit
it?
Although Jean Marie Latour and Joseph Vaillant were born in neighbouring
parishes in the Puy-de-Dôm, as children they had not known each other.
The Latours were an old family of scholars and professional men, while
the Vaillants were people of a much humbler station in the provincial
world. Besides, little Joseph had been away from home much of the time,
up on the farm in the Volvic mountains with his grandfather, where the
air was especially pure, and the country quiet salutary for a child of
nervous temperament. The two boys had not come together until they were
Seminarians at Montferrand, in Clermont.
When Jean Marie was in his second year at the Seminary, he was standing
on the recreation ground one day at the opening of the term, looking
with curiosity at the new students. In the group, he noticed one of
peculiarly unpromising appearance; a boy of nineteen who was undersized,
very pale, homely in feature, with a wart on his chin and tow-coloured
hair that made him look like a German. This boy seemed to feel his
glance, and came up at once, as if he had been called. He was apparently
quite unconscious of his homeliness, was not at all shy, but intensely
interested in his new surroundings. He asked Jean Latour his name, where
he came from, and his father's occupation. Then he said with great
simplicity:
"My father is a baker, the best in Riom. In fact, he's a remarkable
baker."
Young Latour was amused, but expressed polite appreciation of this
confidence. The queer lad went on to tell him about his brother and his
aunt, and his clever little sister, Philomène. He asked how long Latour
had been at the Seminary.
"Have you always intended to take orders? So have I, but I very nearly
went into the army instead."
The year previous, after the surrender of Algiers, there had been a
military review at Clermont, a great display of uniforms and military
bands, and stirring speeches about the glory of French arms. Young
Joseph Vaillant had lost his head in the excitement, and had signed up
for a volunteer without consulting his father. He gave Latour a vivid
account of his patriotic emotions, of his father's displeasure, and his
own subsequent remorse. His mother had wished him to become a priest.
She died when he was thirteen, and ever since then he had meant to carry
out her wish and to dedicate his life to the service of the Divine
Mother. But that one day, among the bands and the uniforms, he had
forgotten everything but his desire to serve France.
Suddenly young Vaillant broke off, saying that he must write a letter
before the hour was over, and tucking up his gown he ran away at full
speed. Latour stood looking after him, resolved that he would take this
new boy under his protection. There was something about the baker's son
that had given their meeting the colour of an adventure; he meant to
repeat it. In that first encounter, he chose the lively, ugly boy for
his friend. It was instantaneous. Latour himself was much cooler and
more critical in temper; hard to please, and often a little grey in
mood.
During their Seminary years he had easily surpassed his friend in
scholarship, but he always realized that Joseph excelled him in the
fervour of his faith. After they became missionaries, Joseph had learned
to speak English, and later, Spanish, more readily than he. To be sure,
he spoke both languages very incorrectly at first, but he had no vanity
about grammar or refinement of phrase. To communicate with peons, he was
quite willing to speak like a peon.