"And Spurling—if Spurling dwells near us in the uttermost parts of the earth?"
"He also is God's child."
"It is easy for you to talk, Père Antoine; you are an old man, and, being a priest, have never loved a woman yourself."
The stern, grey features of the Jesuit relaxed; he hesitated, then he said, "My child, don't be too sure of that. Perhaps I may be attempting to live this life well only in order that I may make sure of meeting and being worthy of one such woman in the after-world. If that were so, it would be great shame to me, for I ought to be striving to live this life well solely for the love of Christ."
He fell silent, sitting with his head bent forward, his gnarled hands folded on his knees before him. A far-away look had come into his eyes, a fixed expression of calmness, as though they slept with the lids parted. Granger watched the hands, mutilated and ruined, with three fingers missing from the right, and two from the left; and yet, despite their brokenness, he thought how beautiful they were. There was scarcely a part of the priest's body that had not been at some time shattered with service. It had never occurred to Granger that Père Antoine, like most other men in the district, had a past which did not belong to Keewatin—memories of a happier time to which he might sometimes look back with the painfulness of regret. Antoine had been there so long that there was no man who remembered the day when first he arrived. He seemed as natural to the landscape as the Last Chance River itself. And now suddenly, in an electric moment of sympathy, his past had revealed itself.
Granger watched and waited, hoping that presently he would explain. It occurred to him as a discovery that he had no knowledge of the priest's real name or of his family. At his nationality he could only guess, supposing him to be a Frenchman or a French-Canadian. How incurious he had been! And, in this case, lack of curiosity had meant lack of kindness; he blamed himself. He, like all Keewatin, was ready in time of crisis to draw upon the old man's strength, but beyond that he had never shown him real friendship—he had never been conscious of any desire to hear about the man himself. And now he had learned that this man also had a tragedy, and, like himself, had loved a woman who was now long since dead. He wanted to ask him questions, that so he might make up for omitted kindnesses; but he was restrained when he looked upon the grey dreamy countenance, for it was evident that le Père was wandering in the idealised meadows of a bygone pleasantness—a country which was known only to himself. So Granger returned his eyes to the portrait which he had taken from the dead man's hand, and, gazing upon it, tried his best to fill in the blanks in his little knowledge of the woman he had loved.
He constructed for himself a picture of an ivied manor-house, terraced and with an old-world garden lying round about it, where her childhood had been spent and where she had grown to girlhood. He told himself that there must have been a river somewhere near, and he imagined her as stretched upon its banks in the summer shadows. And he thought of the schoolhouse in London, and the little heart-weary child who had penned that letter there. He re-read it, and then once again re-read it, suffering the same agony of longing for things irrecoverable which this small creature had suffered years ago, who was now beyond all knowledge of pain. What a mystery it was that across that expanse of space and years her letter should have drifted down to him, from London to Keewatin, carried over the last few yards of its journey in the breast of a man who was already dead. It made him feel less of an exile that a miracle like that could happen—it was almost as though she herself had appealed to him from the hidden world. It made him ask himself that question, which so many had asked before him, "And are we really ever dead?"
Père Antoine stirred, rose up and walked over to the window, where he stood in the shadow, outside the circle of the lamp's rays, with his back turned toward the younger man. There was something which he wanted to say, but which he found difficult to express. Granger guessed that, and so he said, "Antoine, you are thinking of her to-night. She must have lived very long ago. Was she anything like the portrait of this young girl?"
There was silence. Then, still gazing away from him, his long lean figure blocking out the moonlight, the priest returned, "All white women seem alike to one who has lived long in Keewatin. Yet that face did seem very like to hers; but it is many years ago now, and I may not remember her well. She died; and she was everything that was of worth to me in this world. I begin to fear that she is all that I count of highest value in the next."
"But why fear? I should not fear that."