The Padre rose from his seat and crossed to where the girl was sitting. He stood for a moment just behind her chair. Then, very gently, he laid one sunburnt hand upon her shoulder.
"Little girl," he said, with a wonderful kindliness that started the long-threatened tears to the girl"s eyes, "you"ve got a peck of trouble inside that golden head of yours. But it"s all in there.
There"s none of it outside. Look back over all those things you"ve told me. Every one of them. Just show me where your hand in them lies.
There is not a disaster that you have mentioned but what possesses its perfectly logical, natural cause. There is not one that has not been duplicated, triplicated, ah! dozens and dozens of times since this quaint old world of ours began. You believe it is due to your influence because a silly old woman catches you in an overwrought moment and tells you so. She has implanted a parasite in your little head that has stuck there and grown out of all proportion. Believe me, child, you cannot influence the destinies of men. You have no say in the matter. As we are made, so we must work out our own salvation. It has been your lot to witness many disasters, but had these things occurred with other girls as the central figure, would you have attributed this hideous curse to their lives? Would you? Never. But you readily attribute it to your own. I am an old man my dear; older to-day, perhaps, by far than my years call for. I have seen so much of misery and trouble that sometimes I have thought that all life is just one long sea of disaster. But it isn"t--unless we choose to make it so. You are rapidly making yours such. You are naturally generous, and kind, and sympathetic. These things you have allowed to develop in you until they have become something approaching disease. Vampires sucking out all your nervous strength. Abandon these things for a while. Live the life the good G.o.d gave you. Enjoy your living moments as you were intended to enjoy them. And be thankful that the sun rises each morning, and that you can rise up from your bed refreshed and ready for the full play of heart, and mind, and limbs. Disasters will go on about you as they go on about me, and about us all. But they do not belong to us. That is just life. That is just the world and its scheme. There are lessons in all these things for us to learn--lessons for the purification of our hearts, and not diseases for our silly, weak brains. Now, little girl, I want you to promise that you will endeavor to do as I say. Live a wholesome, healthy life. Enjoy all that it is given you to enjoy. Where good can be done, do it. Where evil lies, shun it. Forget all this that lies behind you, and--Live!
Evil is merely the absence of Good. Life is all Good. If we deny that good, then there is Evil. Live your life with all its blessings, and your G.o.d will bless _you_. This is your duty to yourself; to your fellows; to life; to your G.o.d."
Joan had risen from her seat. Her face was alight with a hope that had not been there for many days. The man"s words had taken hold of her.
Her troubled mind could not withstand them. He had inspired her with a feeling of security she had not known for weeks. Her tears were no longer tears of despair. They were tears of thankfulness and hope. But when she spoke her words seemed utterly bald and meaningless to express the wave of grat.i.tude that flooded her heart.
"I will; I will," she cried with glistening eyes. "Oh, Padre!" she went on, with happy impulse, "you don"t know what you"ve done for me--you don"t know----"
"Then, child, do something for me." The man was smiling gravely down into the bright, upturned face. "You must not live alone down there at the farm. It is not good in a child so young as you. Get some relative to come and share your home with you."
"But I have no one--except my Aunt Mercy."
"Ah!"
"You see she is my only relative. But--but I think she would come if I asked her."
"Then ask her."
The Padre was sitting in the chair that Joan had occupied. He too was bending over the stove with his hands outstretched to the warming blaze. Perhaps he too was feeling the nip of the mountain air. Feeling it more than usual to-night. Buck was sitting on the edge of the table close by. He had just returned from taking Joan back to the farm.
The young man"s journey home had been made in a condition of mental exhilaration which left him quite unconscious of all time and distance. The change wrought in Joan had been magical, and Caesar, for once in his life, felt the sharp spur of impatience in the man"s eager desire to reach his friend and speak something of the grat.i.tude he felt.
But habit was strong upon Buck, and his grat.i.tude found no outlet in words when the moment came. Far from it. On his arrival he found the Padre sitting at their fireside without even the most ordinary welcome on his lips. A matter so unusual that it found Buck dumb, waiting for the lead to come, as he knew it inevitably would, in the Padre"s own good time.
It took longer than he expected, however, and it was not until he had prepared their frugal supper that the elder man stirred from his moody contemplation of the fire.
He looked up, and a smile struggled painfully into his eyes.
"Hungry, Buck?" he inquired.
"So!"
"Ah! then sit right down here, boy, an" light your pipe. There"s things I want to say--first."
"Get right ahead." Buck drew up a chair, and obediently filled and lit his pipe.
"Life"s pretty twisted," the Padre began, his steady gray eyes smiling contemplatively. "So twisted, it makes you wonder some. That girl"s happier now, because I told her there were no such things as cusses.
Yes, it"s all queer."
He reached out and helped himself from Buck"s tobacco pouch. Then he, too, filled and lit his pipe.
"You"ve never asked me why I live out here," he went on presently.
"Never since I"ve known you. Once or twice I"ve seen the question in your eyes, but--it never stayed there long. You don"t ask many questions, do you, Buck?"
The Padre puffed slowly at his pipe. His manner was that of a man looking back upon matters which had suddenly acquired an added interest for him. Yet the talk he desired to have with this youngster inspired an ill-flavor.
"If folks want to answer questions ther" ain"t no need to ask "em."
Buck"s philosophy interested the other, and he nodded.
"Just so. That"s how it is with me--now. I want to tell you--what you"ve never asked. You"ll see the reason presently."
Buck waited. His whole manner suggested indifference. Yet there was a thoughtful look in his dark eyes.
"That girl," the Padre went on, his gaze returning to a contemplation of the fire. "She"s put me in mind of something. She"s reminded me how full of twists and cranks life is. She"s full of good. Full of good thoughts and ideals. Yet life seems to take a delight in impressing her with a burden so unwholesome as to come very nearly undoing all the good it has endowed her with. It seems queer. It seems devilish hard. But I generally notice the harder folk try in this world the heavier the cross they have to carry. Maybe it"s the law of fitness.
Maybe folks must bear a burden at their full capacity so that the result may be a greater refining. I"ve thought a lot lately. Sometimes I"ve thought it"s better to sit around and--well, don"t worry with anything outside three meals a day. That"s been in weak moments. You see, we can"t help our natures. If it"s in us to do the best we know--well, we"re just going to do it, and--and hang the result."
"H"m." Buck grunted and waited.
"I was thinking of things around here," the other went on. "I was wondering about the camp. It"s a stinking hole now. It"s full of everything--rotten. Yet they think it"s one huge success, and they reckon we helped them to it."
"How?"
"Why, by feeding them when they were starving, and so making it possible for them to hang on until Nature opened her treasure-house."
Buck nodded.
"I see."
"All I see is--perhaps through our efforts--we"ve turned loose a h.e.l.l of drunkenness and debauchery upon earth. These people--perhaps through our efforts--have been driven along the very path we would rather have saved them from. The majority will end in disaster. Some have already done so. But for our help this would not have been."
"They"d jest have starved."
"We should not have sold our farm, and Ike and Pete would have been alive now."
"In Ike"s case it would have been a pity."
The Padre smiled. He took Buck"s protest for what it was worth.
"Yes, life"s pretty twisted. It"s always been the same with me.
Wherever I"ve got busy trying to help those I had regard for I generally managed to find my efforts working out with a result I never reckoned on. That"s why I am here."
The Padre smoked on for some moments in silence.
"I was hot-headed once," he went on presently. "I was so hot-headed that I--I insulted the woman I loved. I insulted her beyond forgiveness. You see, she didn"t love me. She loved my greatest friend. Still, that"s another story. It"s the friend I want to talk about. He was a splendid fellow. A bright, impetuous gambler on the New York Stock Exchange. We were both on Wall Street. I was a gambler too. I was a lucky gambler, and he was an unlucky one. In spite of my love for the woman, who loved him, it was my one great desire to help him. My luck was such that I believed I could do it--my luck and my conceit. You see, next to the woman I loved he was everything in the world to me. Do you get that?"
Buck nodded.
"Well, in spite of all I could and did do, after a nice run of luck which made me think his affairs had turned for the better, a spell of the most terrible ill-luck set in. There was no checking it. He rode headlong for a smash. I financed him time and again, nearly ruining myself in my effort to save him. He took to drink badly. He grew desperate in his gambling. In short, I saw he had given up all hope.
Again I did the best I could. I was always with him. My object was to endeavor to keep him in check. In his drinking bouts I was with him, and when he insisted on poker and other gambling I was there to take a hand. If I hadn"t done these things--well, others would have, but with a different object. By a hundred devices I managed to minimize the bad results of his wild, headstrong career.
"Then the end came. Had I been less young, had I been less hopeful for him, less wrapped up in him, I must have foreseen it. We were playing cards in his apartments. His housekeeper and his baby girl were in a distant room. They were in bed. You see, it was late at night. It was the last hand. His luck had been diabolical, but the stakes were comparatively low. I shall never forget the scene. His nerves were completely shattered. He picked up his hand, glanced at it--we were playing poker--jack pots--and flung it down. "I"m done," he cried, and, kicking back his chair, rose from the table. He moved a pace away as though to go to the side-table where the whisky and soda stood. I thought he meant having a drink. His back was turned to me. The next moment I heard shots. He seemed to stumble, swung round with a sort of jerk, and fell face downward across the table.
"I jumped to his a.s.sistance. But--he was dead. He had shot himself through the heart and in the stomach. My horror? Well, it doesn"t matter now. I was utterly and completely unnerved. If I hadn"t been perhaps I should have acted differently. I should have called his--housekeeper. I should have summoned the police--a doctor. But I did none of these. My horror and grief were such that I--fled; fled like the coward I was. Nor did I simply flee from the house. I left everything, and fled from the city that night. It was not until some days afterward that I realized what my going meant to me. You see, I had left behind me, in his housekeeper, the woman I loved--and had insulted past forgiveness. I was branded as his murderer. Do you see?
She loved him, and was his housekeeper. Oh, there was nothing wrong in it! I knew that. His baby girl was the child of his dead wife. Several times I thought of returning to establish my innocence, but somehow my conduct and my story wouldn"t have fitted in the eyes of a jury.