Читать книгу The Art of Disappearing - John Talbot Smith - Страница 7

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Horace Endicott once believed that life began for him the day he married Sonia Westfield. The ten months spent with the young wife were of a hue so roseate as to render discussion of the point foolish. His youth had been a happy one, of the roystering, innocent kind: noisy with yachting, baseball, and a moderate quantity of college beer, but clean, as if his mother had supervised it; yet he had never really lived in his twenty-five years, until the blessed experience of a long honeymoon and a little housekeeping with Sonia had woven into his life the light of sun and moon and stars together. However, as he admitted long afterwards, his mistake was as terrible as convincing. Life began for him that day he sat in the railway carriage across the aisle from distinguished Monsignor O'Donnell, prelate of the Pope's household, doctor in theology, and vicar-general of the New York diocese. The train being on its way to Boston, and the journey dull, Horace whiled away a slow hour watching the Monsignor, and wondering what motives govern the activity of the priests of Rome. The priest was a handsome man of fifty, dark-haired, of an ascetic pallor, but undoubtedly practical, as his quick and business-like movements testified. His dark eyes were of fine color and expression, and his manners showed the gentleman.

"Some years ago," thought Horace, "I would have studied his person for indications of hoofs and horns—so strangely was I brought up. He is just a poor fellow like myself—it is as great a mistake to make these men demi-gods as to make them demi-devils—and he denies himself a wife as a Prohibitionist denies himself a drink. He goes through his mummeries as honestly as a parson through his sermons or a dervish through his dances—it's all one, and we must allow for it in the make-up of human nature. One man has his parson, another his priest, a third his dervish—and I have Sonia."

This satisfactory conclusion he dwelt upon lovingly, unconscious that the Monsignor was now observing him in turn.

"A fine boy," the priest thought, "with man written all over him. Honest face, virtuous expression, daring too, loving-hearted, lovable, clever, I'm sure, and his life has been too easy to develop any marked character. Too young to have been in the war, but you may be sure he wanted to go, and his mother had to exercise her authority to keep him at home. He has been enjoying me for an hour. … I'm as pleasant as a puzzle to him … he preferred to read me rather than Dickens, and I gather from his expression that he has solved me. By this time I am rated in his mind as an impostor. Oh, the children of the Mayflower, how hard for them to see anything in life except through the portholes of that ship."

With a sigh the priest returned to his book, and the two gentlemen, having had their fill of speculation, forgot each other directly and forever. At this point the accident occurred. The slow train ran into a train ahead, which should have been farther on at that moment. All the passengers rose up suddenly, without any ceremony, quite speechless, and flew up the car like sparrows. Then the car turned on its left side, and Horace rolled into the outstretched arms and elevated legs of Monsignor O'Donnell. He was kicked and embraced at the same moment, receiving these attentions in speechless awe, as he could not recall who was to blame for the introduction and the attitude. For a moment he reasoned that they had become the object of most outrageous ridicule from the other passengers; for these latter had suddenly set up a shouting and screeching very scandalous. Horace wondered if the priest would help him to resent this storm of insult, and he raised himself off the Monsignor's face, and removed the rest of his person from the Monsignor's body, in order the more politely to invite him to the battle. Then he discovered the state of things in general. The overthrown car was at a stand-still. That no one was hurt seemed happily clear from the vigorous yells of everybody, and the fine scramble through the car-windows. The priest got up leisurely and felt himself. Next he seized his satchel eagerly.

"Now it was more than an accident that I brought the holy oils along," said he to Horace. "I was vexed to find them where they shouldn't be, yet see how soon I find use for them. Someone must be badly hurt in this disaster, and of course it'll be one of my own."

"I hope," said the other politely, "that I did you no harm in falling on you. I could not very well help it."

"Fortune was kinder to you than if the train rolled over the other way. Don't mention it, my son. I'll forgive you, if you will find me the way out, and learn if any have been injured."

The window was too small for a man of the Monsignor's girth, but through the rear door the two crawled out comfortably, Monsignor dragging the satchel and murmuring cheerfully: "How lucky! the holy oils!" It was just sundown, and the wrecked train lay in a meadow, with a pretty stream running by, whose placid ripplings mocked the tumult of the mortals examining their injuries in the field. Yet no one had been seriously injured. Bruises and cuts were plentiful, some fainted from shock, but each was able to do for himself, not so much as a bone having been broken. For a few minutes the Monsignor rejoiced that he would have no use for what he called the holy oils. Then a trainman came running, white and broken-tongued, crying out: "There was a priest on the train—who has seen him?" It turned out that the fireman had been caught in the wrecked locomotive, and crushed to death.

"And it's a priest he's cryin' for, sir," groaned the trainman, as he came up to the Monsignor. The dying man lay in the shade of some trees beside the stream, and a lovely woman had his head in her lap, and wept silently while the poor boy gasped every now and then "mother" and "the priest." She wiped the death-dew from his face, from which the soot had been washed with water from the stream, and moistened his lips with a cordial. He was a youth, of the kind that should not die too early, so vigorous was his young body, so manly and true his dear face; but it was only a matter of ten minutes stay beside the little stream for Tim Hurley. The group about him made way for Monsignor, who sank on his knees beside him, and held up the boy's face to the fading light.

"The priest is here, Tim," he said gently, and Endicott saw the receding life rush back with joy into the agonized features. With something like a laugh he raised his inert hands, and seized the hands of the priest, which he covered with kisses.

"I shall die happy, thanks be to God," he said weakly; "and, father, don't forget to tell my mother. It's her last consolation, poor dear."

"And I have the holy oils, Tim," said Monsignor softly.

Another rush of light to the darkening face!

"Tell her that, too, father dear," said Tim.

"With my own lips," answered Monsignor.

The bystanders moved away a little distance, and the lady resigned her place, while Tim made his last confession. Endicott stood and wondered at the sight; the priest holding the boy's head with his left arm, close to his bosom and Tim grasping lovingly the hand of his friend, while he whispered in little gasps his sins and his repentance; briefly, for time was pressing. Then Monsignor called Horace and bade him support the lad's head; and also the lovely lady and gave her directions "for his mother's sake." She was woman and mother both, no doubt, by the way she served another woman's son in his fatal distress. The men brought her water from the stream. With her own hands she bared his feet, bathed and wiped them, washed his hands, and cried tenderly all the time. Horace shuddered as he dried the boy's sweating forehead, and felt the chill of that death which had never yet come near him. He saw now what the priest meant by the holy oils. Out of his satchel Monsignor took a golden cylinder, unscrewed the top, dipped his thumb in what appeared to be an oily substance, and applied it to Tim's eyes, to his ears, his nose, his mouth, the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet, distinctly repeating certain Latin invocations as he worked. Then he read for some time from a little book, and finished by wiping his fingers in cotton and returning all to the satchel again. There was a look of supreme satisfaction on his face.

"You are all right now, Tim," he said cheerfully.

"All right, father," repeated the lad faintly, "and don't forget to tell mother everything, and say I died happy, praising God, and that she won't be long after me. And let Harry Cutler"—the engineer came forward and knelt by his side—"tell her everything. She knew how he liked me and a word from him was more——"

His voice faded away.

"I'll tell her," murmured the engineer brokenly, and slipped away in unbearable distress. The priest looked closer into Tim's face.

"He's going fast," he said, "and I'll ask you all to kneel and say amen to the last prayers for the boy."

The crowd knelt by the stream in profound silence, and the voice of the priest rose like splendid music, touching, sad, yet to Horace unutterably pathetic and grand.

"Go forth, O Christian soul," the Monsignor read, "in the name of God the Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who was poured forth upon thee; in the name of the Angels and Archangels; in the name of the Thrones and Dominations; in the name of the Principalities and Powers; in the name of the Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets; in the name of the holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the holy Martyrs and Confessors; in the name of the holy Monks and Hermits; in the name of the holy Virgins and of all the Saints of God; may thy place be this day in peace, and thy abode in holy Sion. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Then came a pause and the heavy sigh of the dying one shook all hearts. Endicott did not dare to look down at the mournful face of the fireman, for a terror of death had come upon him, that he should be holding the head of one condemned to the last penalty of nature; at the same moment he could not help thinking that a king might not have been more nobly sent forth on his journey to judgment than humble Tim Hurley. Monsignor took another look at the lad's face, then closed his book, and took off the purple ribbon which had hung about his neck.

"It's over. The man's dead," he announced to the silent crowd. There was a general stir, and a movement to get a closer look at the quiet body lying on the grass. Endicott laid the head down and rose to his feet. The woman who had ministered to the dying so sweetly tied up his chin and covered his face, murmuring with tears, "His poor mother."

"Ah, there is the heart to be pitied," sighed the Monsignor. "This heart aches no more, but the mother's will ache and not die for many a year perhaps."

Endicott heard his voice break, and looking saw that the tears were falling from his eyes, he wiping them away in the same matter-of-fact fashion which had marked his ministrations to the unfortunate fireman.

"Death is terrible only to those who love," he added, and the words sent a pang into the heart of Horace. It had never occurred to him that death was love's most dreaded enemy—that Sonia might die while love was young.