The Jimmyjohn Boss, and Other Stories, Owen Wister [easy novels to read txt] 📗

Temptation had arrived with Gaston, but was going to make a longer stay at Santa Ysabel del Mar. Yet it was something like a week before the priest knew what guest he had in his house now. The guest was not always present—made himself scarce quite often.

Sail away on the barkentine? That was a wild notion, to be sure, although fit enough to enter the brain of such a young scapegrace. The padre shook his head and smiled affectionately when he thought of Gaston Villere. The youth's handsome, reckless countenance would come before him, 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 could not be imagined. The mere parting alone would make it forever impossible that he should think of such a thing. “And then,” he said to himself each new morning, when he looked out at the ocean, “I have given my life to them. 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 there 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 here 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 there 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 alone inside 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 putting up of all the fruits that the mission fields grew. Lotions and medicines were distilled from the garden herbs. Perfume was manufactured from the petals of the 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 Ignazio had begun to show his years. At Santa Ysabel del Mar they whispered, “The padre is getting sick.” 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 sick.” 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 served in other places than this,” 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. “He was right about the birds. Death does live in the air where they never sing.” And he lay for two days and nights hearing the wind and the nightingales in the trees of Aranhal. But Felipe, watching, heard only 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 could 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 forever the same way, beat his spirit sore, like bruised flesh. If he could only change what they said, he could rest.

“Has the padre any mail for Santa Barbara?” said 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, a clock done 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 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 a then: “To die at home! Surely I may 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, us suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked the sea. The southbound ship was coming. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of the same window. “Merciful God!” he cried, sinking on 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 were 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.

It was so early still that none but a few of the Indians were stirring, and one of them 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 do, 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 caution.

The vessel lay at anchor, and some one had landed from her 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 Ignazio.”

“Then