“My son,” said Father Tierney, in a brisk, full voice, “ye’ve a look of mortal fever! The Saints know it doesn’t become us to boast! But I was born with a bit of a medical faculty sticking sthraight out and looking grave.—Let me lay my finger on your pulse.”
Stafford’s palm closed upon something hard and round and yellow. His eyes met the priest’s eyes.
“It’s a weary number of soul miles ye’ll have been travelling, my friend,” thought the priest. “There’s something in you that’s been lightning branded, but it’s putting out green shoots again.”
The blue officer was seen approaching. Father Tierney turned with heartiness to meet him. “That poor lad yonder, Captain, he’s not long for this sinful world! If you’ve no objection I’d like to come again—That’s thrue! That’s thrue enough! ‘Who’d mercy have must mercy show.’—Captain, darlint, it’s hot enough to melt rock! Between the time I left Ireland and came to America, and that’s twinty years ago, I went a pilgrimage to Italy. Having seen Rome I wint to Venice. There’s a big palace there where the Doges lived, and up under the palace roof with just a bit of lead like a coffin lid between you and the core of the blessed sun in heaven—there’s the prisons they call piombi.—Now you usually think of cold when you think of prisons, but I gather that heat’s more maddening—”
Prison X was as capricious as any other despot. The next day was as hot a day, but only so many might go into the air at once. Many, waiting their turn in the black, stifling hall, got no other gleam than that afforded by the grudged opening and the swift closing of the outer door. The next day again the heat held and the despot’s ill humour held. At long intervals the door opened, but before a score had passed, it closed with a grating sound.
The fourth morning Stafford found himself again in the sun and shadow of this yard. The earth was harder-baked, the blue sky more fiercely metallic, the bushy head of the one tree seen over the wall more decisively mocking. With it all there was a dizziness in the air. He knew that he had been buoyed by the second wind. As he came out from the gloom into the glare a doubt wound like a snake into his brain. He feared the wind—that it would not last—it was so very sickening out here.
He took the shade of the wall, pressed his shoulder against the bricks and closed his eyes. For a minute or more the spirit sank, then the will put its lips to some deep reservoir and drank. Stafford opened his eyes and stood from the wall. Second wind or third wind, it held steady.
The consumptive lieutenant was not in the yard. He had had a hemorrhage and was now in the hospital watching Death come a stride a day. The yard held a fair number of men, listless in the heat, walking slowly, standing, or seated, with hands about the knees and bowed heads, on the parched, untidy ground. The guards at the small gate, a gate which opened on another yard, not free to prisoners, with beyond it the true, heavy gate—the guards suffered with the heat, held their rifles languidly. The moments went on, a line of winged creatures now with broken wings, creeping, not flying, an ant-line of slow moments, each with its burden of lassitude, ennui, enfeebled hope. The one tree-top was all green and gold and shining fair and heavenly cool, but it was set in Paradise, and from Paradise, like Abraham, it only looked across the gulf, a gulf in which it acquiesced. And so it was a mocking tree, more fiend than angel....
The figures of the sentries at the gate grew energized; they tautened, stood at salute. Into the yard came on inspection a group of officers, among them the one whom the prisoners held to be human. With them came Father Tierney.
“The top of the morning to ye, children!” said Father Tierney. “Sure it’s a red cock feather the morning’s wearing!” He came nearer. “Where’s the lieutenant that was coughing himself away, poor deluded lad!”