Then the wind in the trees died down, and the padre could get out of bed, and soon could 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 forever the same way, beat his spirit sore, like bruised flesh. If he could only change what they said, he could rest.
“Has the padre any mail for Santa Barbara?” said 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, a clock done 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 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 a then: “To die at home! Surely I may 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, us suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked the sea. The southbound ship was coming. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of the same window. “Merciful God!” he cried, sinking on 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 were 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.
It was so early still that none but a few of the Indians were stirring, and one of them 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 do, 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 caution.
The vessel lay at anchor, and some one had landed from her 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.”
“Perhaps it is with you that Gaston Villere stopped?”
“The young man from New Orleans? Yes. I am Padre Ignazio.”