Padre Ignacio Or The Song of Temptation

by Owen Wister

The season of the wine-making passed, and the preserving of all the fruits that the mission fields grew. Lotions and medicines was distilled from garden herbs. Perfume was manufactured from the petals of 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 Ignacio had begun to show his years. At Santa Ysabel del Mar they whispered, "The Padre is not well." 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 unwell." 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 better served in other places," 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. And he lay for two days and nights hearing the wind and the nightingales in the far trees of Aranhal. But Felipe, watching, only heard 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 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 for ever the same way, beat his spirit sore, like blows upon flesh already bruised. If he could only change what they said, he would rest.

"Has the Padre any mall for Santa Barbara?" asked 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, as a clock finishes 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 it 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 and then: "To die at home! Surely I may be 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, until suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked at the sea. Blue it lay, sapphire-hued and dancing with points of gold, lovely and luring as a charm; and over its triangle the south-bound ship was approaching. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of this same window. "Merciful God!" he cried, sinking on his 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 was 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.

VI

It was still so early that few of the Indians were stirring, and one of these 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, 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 canyon.

The vessel lay at anchor, and some one had landed from ha 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."