Pabo, the Priest: A Novel

by S. Baring-Gould

The wind moaned among the rocks, sighed at the window, and piped through the crevices about the door. A snoring owl began its monotonous call. Where it was Pabo could not detect. The sound came now from this side then from that, and next was behind him. It was precisely as though a man—he could not say whether without or within—were in deep stertorous sleep.

Again he endeavored to strike a light and kindle a fire. Sparks he could elicit, that was all. The fungus refused to ignite.

The cold, the damp, ate into the marrow of his bones. He collected a handful of barley-grains and chewed them, but they proved little satisfying to hunger.

Then he went forth. He must exercise his limbs to prevent them from becoming stiff, must circulate his blood and prevent it from coagulating with frost. He would walk along the mountain crest to where, over the southern edge, he could look down on Caio, on his lost home, on where was his wife—not sleeping, he knew she was not that, but thinking of him.

Wondrous, past expression, is that link of love that binds the man and his wife. Never was a truer word spoken than that which pronounced them to be no more twain, but one flesh. The mother parted from her nursling knows, feels in her breast, in every fiber of her being, when her child is weeping and will not be comforted, though parted from it by miles; an unendurable yearning comes over her to hurry to the wailing infant, to clasp it to her heart and kiss away its tears. And something akin to this is that mysterious tie that holds together the man and his wife. They cannot live an individual life. He carries the wife with him wherever he be, thinks, feels with her, is conscious of a double existence fused into a unity; and what is true of the husband is true also of the wife.

It was now with Pabo as though he were irresistibly drawn in the direction of Caio, where he knew that Morwen was with tears on her cheeks, her gentle, suffering heart full of him and his desolation and banishment.

The night was clear, there was actually not much wind; but autumn rawness was in the air.

To the west still hung a dying halo, very faint, and the ground, covered with short grass, was dimly white where pearled with dew, each pearl catching something of the starlight from above.

But away, to the south, was a lurid glow, against which the rounded head of Mallaen stood out as ink.

Pabo thrust on his way, running when he could, and anon stumbling over plots of gorse or among stones.