26
The hotel was in an uproar. The pale women, excited by the storm, could not be kept in their rooms; they crowded the corridors, uttering plaintive cries. The quick flashes of lightning revealed little groups huddled together; one poor thing quite lost her control. She betrayed her terror in a strangely interesting manner: rushed to the long door opening onto the balcony, baring her white bosom to the storm. She was wonderful as she stood there, her face rapturous, like a woman lifting herself to the embrace of her lover.
The storm passed. The pale women fluttered in the sun, holding up their bloodless hands to its warmth, chattering, laughing over their “thrilling” experience.
Mary was terribly worried about her friends. The carriage had not come back. The proprietress thought the party had been driven through the short cut to the pastor’s châlet.
“But the shot!” said Mary. The woman looked grave. It was not hunting time.
When the carriage drove up with Julie and Father Cabello, Mary knew something terrible had happened. She grew very pale, but she had been trained to ask no questions. Julie was quiet, with wide-open horror-filled eyes. Father Cabello took Mary’s hand and spoke gravely.
“There has been an accident. Mr. Steele has been lost in the storm; they are looking for him.” She caught her breath.
“Mr. Garrison?”
The priest pierced her with his understanding eyes.
“Mr. Garrison is safe; he and his wife will leave here by the early train tomorrow. Will you see to everything?”
“Yes,” said Mary.
Then his voice hardened.
“No matter what happens, they must go; nothing can prevent that.”
Julie let herself be undressed and fell into a lethargy. Mary tried several times to awaken her; she would open her eyes and fall again into that trance which was not sleep.
The pastor came over to the hotel to see Father Cabello. They talked long into the night, of Floyd, Julie, of the fight against Martin. The pastor repeated again:
“He is one of ours; he has done wrong. He must make restitution.”
Father Cabello was troubled. Julie had shown unexpected strength. He must find a way to bring her back to the Church, to submission.
The next morning, early, Mary was surprised to find Julie up and dressed. The hotel was closing that day. The trunks had to be locked and taken down. Julie watched her moving about.
“If I could get out of this room—it is horrible.”
A hotel room before the departure of its occupant, with its torn newspapers, remnants of food, bedclothes thrown in a heap—there is nothing more desolate, more inexpressibly forlorn.
They went down to an empty room on the ground floor, misnamed the “children’s playroom.” The pale women were unmarried or childless. Julie moved continually from one window to another; when she saw Father Cabello and Floyd coming up the walk, she shrank into a corner, a terrified hunted thing.
Father Cabello found Floyd very quiet; whatever may have been his feelings, he had them under perfect control. He answered the priest’s questions in as few words as possible, and listened without comment to his sophistical justification of Julie.
“Perhaps your wife was not all to blame.”
“Perhaps not.”
“You know Julie’s nature—she is easily influenced.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The man must have persecuted her.”
“Perhaps he did.”
“I don’t wish to blame you, but knowing what has happened and the desperate character of the man, was it right to let your wife travel alone?”
“Perhaps it was not right. But it didn’t occur to me.”
When they entered the room, Floyd stood quietly at the door. The priest went to Julie and took her hand.
“Julie, you must ask your husband to forgive you.”
The answer came again:
“I will not. I belong to Martin; I will never leave him!”
The priest’s wrath was terrible. He stormed, threatened, pleaded—she must go with her husband; there must be no scandal. She must go home to her child.
Floyd was white to the lips—Mary couldn’t bear it. She rushed out of the room....
The pastor came up the terrace; Father Cabello went out to meet him and brought him in. He spoke quietly, with deep feeling.
“The guides who were seeking Martin Steele have come down from the mountain.”
“Have they found him?”
There was a silence. It was Floyd this time who cried with a rush of repentant agony:
“Martin! I killed him! I am a murderer!”
“No! he himself was responsible. He met the fate of the rash. A man must know the precipices and how to avoid them before he tries to climb.”
Again came the cry from Floyd:
“I shot to kill! I shot to kill!”
“The guides followed his traces up the mountain; there were signs that told a human thing had passed. He must have gone over at the first plateau. They went down as far as they dared. There were broken branches; the violence of the fall tore up a young tree with its roots. Come with me, I will show you where he struck the trail. There was madness upon him, his senses wandered, the inevitable happened.”
They stood in the quiet woods and looked up at the wall of stone where Martin had said, “I will climb that mountain.”
The pastor put his arm around Floyd.
“My son, you have been through more than your share of trouble; don’t burden yourself with morbid self accusations. He was your friend; he betrayed you. He made the only reparation—death. Try to think kindly of him. Under natural conditions he would have been a brave son of the soil. He was robbed of his birthright....”
Julie shed no tears. The old fear was upon her; the Punishment had come again in the shape of Death, and he had paid. The priest worked upon this superstitious dread; it was the only way to subdue her. “God had punished her for her crime against her husband. He would punish her further; she must go home, she must go back to her religion, God had struck Martin with the whip of retribution. He would bring it down upon her shoulders if she did not repent. A great calamity would happen to her child.”
She was cowed, humble, on her knees before him begging for mercy. He confessed her, and gave her absolution.
Mr. and Mrs. Garrison left by the afternoon train; they were a pitiable sight, these two unhappy children wondering why the world was so dark, the pain so hard to bear. The priest spoke the last words.
“My children, you are going home. You will be happy again, if you do not nourish your misfortune. God has given us the magic of memory, and a still greater blessing, the gift of forgetting.”
They bowed their heads to his blessing. The train left the station, wending its way in and out of the tunnels.
“When I watch those undulations,” said the pastor to Father Cabello, “I think of a serpent crawling into the great centers of vice, carrying with him the modern Adams, the curious Eves, who will eat copiously of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.”
The priest smiled. The simile appealed to his mind trained in Biblical metaphors.
“I have no fears for our young couple; the New World moulds its people. The practical life of which they are an integral part will make their road clear to them. I have lived long in America. It is a land of proof, not belief; of practical results and a kind of idealism which is expressed in action. There is no time for dreams; inspiration feeds only on quick realization. A land of no secrets, where publicity methods are applied alike to business, science, literature, religion. That which cannot be exploited is called ‘high-brow’—but there is a saving humor in it all. America is a great country.”
The pastor answered with just a touch of good-natured satire.
“If there are no secrets, how is it that the Church has prospered there?”
The priest smiled enigmatically.
“The Church adapts itself....
“I am going back to Rome, with a mind at rest. We have held together the thread of two lives which threatened to snap, nay, three lives: there is a boy whose career must be watched closely. Other forces are at work—race impulses; they must be eradicated.”
“Is that possible?”
“Yes, but difficult. I shall bring the boy to Rome; there, all other influences will be neutralized.”
The pastor offered his hospitality for the night, which was gratefully accepted. It had been a turbulent time ending happily. The priest was in a frame of mind harmonizing with the beauty of approaching twilight. They sat outside the châlet. The pastor filled long glasses with the wine of the Canton, which expands the Soul. They sat there, looking into the Val Sinestra, until the sun scattered rubies and the moon threw down a silver veil.
They talked of the future of religion and the wave of unbelief sweeping over the world.
“When I meet a man like you,” said the priest, “I regret the loss to the Church. Protestantism was at best a frail child; it cannot survive without support. Why should it not come back? We would kill the fatted calf to celebrate the return of our Prodigal Son.”
The pastor saved the situation with a fine sense of humor.
“My friend, we are not father and son: we are brothers, prodigal children of the great original God of the Hebrews.”
The priest’s eyes gleamed.
“Then why not a family reunion? It has been my life’s dream—all sects united in the spacious bosom of the true Faith.”
The pastor nodded in silent approval. Then Luther would come into his own. At this same moment, far away in the East, the muezzin was chanting from the minarets, calling the people to prayer. “There is but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet,” and at this same time, millions of humans, prostrate before Buddha, were praying to attain the perfection of the Soul—Nirvana; and the “chosen people” once again in Jerusalem were praising the “only” God, who had led them out of exile into the land of their fathers. The priest and the pastor would soon solve their problem—they were both approaching with silent rapid steps, the solution of the Great Mystery.
The next morning Father Cabello thanked the pastor again for his good offices. He was a practical man, and in the light of day, dreams evaporate. He did not speak of buying the chapel; he wanted to go in peace.