Then he would rise, and the communion that followed must have been most cheering to both, for mon père even now is merry when he recalls it.
These pilgrimages are at an end, for the two priests confess to one another: conceive of the fellowship that hides away no secret, however mortifying!
The whole population must have been long asleep before we thought of retiring that night, and then arose an argument concerning the fittest occupant of the solitary bed. It fell to me, for both were against me, and each was my superior. When I protested, they held up their fingers and said, "Remember, we are your fathers and must be obeyed." Thus I was driven to the bed, while mine hosts lay on the bare floor with saddles for pillows.
It was this self-sacrificing hospitality that hastened my departure. I felt earth could offer me no nobler fellowship,—that all acts to come, however gracious, would bear a tinge of selfishness in comparison with the reception I had met where least expected.
I am thankful that I had not the heart to sleep well, for I think I could never have forgiven myself had I done so. When I woke in the early part of the night, I saw the young priests bowed over their breviaries, for I had delayed the accustomed offices of devotion, and they were fulfilling them in peace at last, having me so well bestowed that it was utterly impossible to do aught else for my entertainment.
Once more the morning came. I woke to find Père Amabilis at work, hammer in hand, sending his nails home with accurate strokes that spoke well for his trained muscle. Père Fidelis was concocting coffee and directing the volunteer cooks, who were seeking to surpass themselves upon this last meal we were to take together. In an hour mon père was to start for the Chapel of the Palms, while I wended my way onward through a new country, bearing with me the consoling memory of my precious friends. I can forgive a slight and forget the person who slights me, but little kindnesses probe me to the quick. I wonder why the twin fathers were so very careful of me that morning? They could not do enough to satisfy themselves, and that made me miserable; they stabbed me with tender words, and tried to be cheerful with such evident effort that I couldn't eat half my breakfast, though, as it was, I ate more than they did—God forgive me!—and altogether it was a solemn and a memorable meal.
A group of natives gathered about us seated upon the floor; it was impossible for Père Fidelis to move without being stroked by the affectionate creatures who deplored his departure. Père Amabilis insisted upon adjusting our saddles, during which ceremony he slyly hid a morsel of cold fowl in our saddle-bags.
That parting was as cruel as death. We shall probably never see one another again; if we do, we shall be older and more practical and more worldly, and the exquisite confidence we have in one another will have grown blunt with time. I felt it then as I know it now,—our brief idyl can never be lived over in this life.
Well, we departed: the corners of our blessed triangle were spread frightfully. Père Fidelis was paler than ever; he caught his breath as though there wasn't much of it, and the little there was wouldn't last long; Père Amabilis wiped his spectacles and looked utterly forsaken; the natives stood about in awkward, silent groups, coming forward, one by one, to shake hands, and then falling back like so many automatons. Somehow, genuine grief is never graceful: it forgets to pose itself; its muscles are perfectly slack and unreliable.
The sea looked gray and forbidding as it shook its shaggy breakers under the cliff: life was dismal enough. The animals were unusually wayward, and once or twice I paused in despair under the prickly sunshine, half inclined to go back and begin over again, hoping to renew the past; but just then Hoké felt like staggering onward, and I began to realize that there are some brief, perfect experiences in life that pass from us like a dream, and this was one of them.