And Thus He Came - Cyrus Townsend Brady (acx book reading .txt) 📗

and rose slowly to a crouching position. Another rain of shots came from the nook; the man's rifle would be empty, he must give him no chance to reload. Now it would be a fair fight with the bayonet.

He threw aside the white draperies that impeded his legs and in half a dozen bounds the two men were face to face.

No shot had been fired. Yes, the magazine of the man's rifle was empty. He heard the crunch of his enemy's feet on the snow. He rose to his feet, his bayoneted rifle extended. The two barrels struck with terrific force. The men swayed, drew back for another thrust, and they were suddenly aware of a mist-like figure between them, a figure draped in white, lightly, diaphanously.

They stood arrested, guns drawn back, and stared. The figure slowly extended its arm, carrying drapery with it. A man's breast was bared. There, over the heart, was a great gaping wound, fresh, as if a broad, heavy blade had pierced it.

There was a clatter on the ice as a gun dropped and another clatter as a similar weapon struck the stone opposite. The two men bent forward, their hands outstretched. They took a step as if to touch the figure and there was nothing there! The hands met. They clasped warmly in the cold against each other.

"My God, what was that?" said the stalker.

"I don't know," answered the other.

"A pierced side!"

"Was it--"

"No. It couldn't be."

"Well, we worship the same God and--"

Ah, they were seen. There were quick words of command from the trenches, a staccato of rifle-shots, and two bodies lay side by side, hands still clasped, while the snow reddened and reddened beneath them.

And it was Christmas eve.


IX


The Forgiver of Sins

"I SAY UNTO THEE UNTIL SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN"

"A Priest, for Christ's sake, a priest," moaned the man.

A white-faced sister of charity upon whom had developed the appalling task of caring for the long rows of wounded at the dressing station before they were entrained and sent south to the hospital, hovered over the stretcher.

"My poor man," she whispered, "there is no priest here."

"I can't die without confession--absolution," was the answer. "A priest, get me a priest."

Next to and almost touching the cot on which the speaker writhed in his death agony lay another man apparently in a profound stupor. He wore the uniform of a private soldier and his eyes were bandaged. His face had been torn to pieces by shrapnel, fragments of which had blinded him. At that instant he came out of that stupor. Perhaps the familiar words recalled him to himself. He moved his hand slightly. The sister saw his lips tremble. She bent low.

"Who seeks confession, absolution?" he whispered. "I am a priest."

"You are wounded, dying, father."

"How can I die better than shriving a fellow sinner?"

That was true. The heroic woman turned to the man who still kept up his monotonous appeal.

"The man next to you," she said, "dying like you, is a priest."

"Father," cried the first man with sudden strength. "I must confess before I die."

"Lift me up," said the priest.

The woman slipped her arm about his shoulders and raised him.

"The sister?" began the other.

"I shall be blind and deaf," said the woman.

"Speak on," whispered the priest.

"I have been a great sinner--there isn't time to confess all."

"What is heaviest upon your soul, my son?"

"A woman's fate."

"Ah."

"There were two who loved her--a dozen years ago--she preferred me--I took her away."

"Did you marry her?"

"No. And then we quarreled--I deserted her. When I came to seek her she was gone--young, innocent, penniless, alone in Paris--I have sought her and never found her."

"What is your name?" asked the priest suddenly with a fierce note in his quivering voice.

"Father, can I be forgiven?" answered the man giving his name.

The dying soldier stared anxiously up at his bandaged comrade, at the nun who had hid her face behind the shoulder of the priest. He noticed that her body was shaking.

"And the woman's name?"

The priest suddenly sat upright. He shook off the sister's restraining hand. He tore the bandage from his own face. He bent over the dying man as he murmured the woman's name.

"Wretch," he cried, "look at me."

His face was gashed and cut and torn but something remained by which the other recognized him.

"You!" he cried shrinking away.

"I loved her, too," said the priest. "I would have married her. When she went away with you Holy Church received me."

"Mercy," cried the soldier uplifting his hand.

"What mercy did you show her?"

The priest could not see but he could feel. His hand seized the other's throat.

"My father," interposed the nun. "He has confessed. God will forgive, even as I."

"Who are you?" asked the blind priest, fearfully.

"The woman!" cried the dying man shaking off the other's hand and lifting himself up.

The sight came back to the priest on the instant. The fierce agony that filled his blinded eyes seemed to give place to the gentle touch of a hand upon them. He seemed to hear a mighty word--_Ephphatha_--that meant "be opened." Light flooded his soul. Looking up he was aware of two figures. One of the twain, an old man, gray bearded, was appealing to the other, clad in white raiment and youthful. And the priest suddenly recalled an old and well-known story of a fellow servant who would not have mercy.

"Father, forgive--" whispered the man before him.

As the voice of the dying sinner died away in the silence all was dark again. The priest saw no more, but the horrible pain in his eyes did not return. Over his torn features came a look of calm. He lifted his arm. His wavering hand cut the air in the sign of the cross.

"_Absolvo te_," he murmured as he pitched forward dead upon the breast of the dying.

And the woman tenderly covered them over.


X


The Giver of Life

"HE THAT EATETH OF THIS BREAD SHALL LIVE FOREVER"

Of the five specters in the boat three were without life. Those whose faint breathing indicated that they had not yet reached the point of death were too weak and indifferent to rid the boat of the bodies of the others. Ever since the homeward-bound whaler had struck a derelict in a gale of wind north of the Falklands and foundered, this little boat, surviving the shipwreck as by a miracle, had drifted on.

For three weeks in vain they had scanned the horizon for a sail. Their scanty supply of bread and water had been consumed in ten days. Thereafter they had nothing. The baby had died first, next a man whose arm had been broken by a falling spar in the disaster, and then the ship's cabin boy. The survivors were a man and a woman. They were both far gone. The woman was plainly dying. The man kept himself up by sheer exercise of will.

Their drifting had been northward toward warmer seas. It was winter in their home land and, though they knew it not, Christmas day. There the tropic sun blazed overhead from an absolutely cloudless sky. There was no vestige of breeze to stir the canvas of the solitary sail or ripple the glassy surface of the smoothed out ocean. The boat lay still. Not even the iron man at the helm could have lifted an oar. It had been dead calm for days. Speech there was none except in the gravest necessity. To talk connectedly was impossible.

After scanning the horizon for the thousandth time the man's burning eyes sought those of the woman at his feet. He was astonished to find them open. Her mouth was working, her parched lips strove to form words. He dropped the tiller which his hand had grasped mechanically, and which was useless since there was no way on the boat, and bent his head lower. Some sudden recrudescence of strength which the dying sometimes receive came to the woman.

"Death," she whispered. "Glad." She turned her head slightly and saw the form of the child. "The Baby--and--I--together."

The man nodded. Tenderly he laid his hot wasted hand on the woman's fevered brow.

"A priest," she said, looking up at him uncomprehendingly.

She was evidently going fast yet she knew what she wanted although she was not conscious that she craved the impossible. It would appear that she had been a good churchwoman. The man could only stare. He was no priest, only a rough sailor.

"A priest," said the woman more clearly. "I want--a priest--the sacrament." By some nervous convulsive effort she lifted her arms up toward him beseeching, appealing. There was another kind of agony in her voice that had not been present when she had moaned for water in the days before.

"The sacrament," she insisted, "I die."

The man looked away. Hard by the boat where there had been but a waste of sea rose a green island. A stretch of pleasant meadow met his eyes. It was so close to him that if he had leaned over the gunwale of the boat he could have laid his hand on the lush grass. Dumbly he wondered where it had been before, how he had come upon it so suddenly, why he had not seen it hours ago.

In front of him were hundreds of people, men, women, and children, plain people in strange simple garb, the like of which he had never seen. In front of these people and with their backs toward him stood a little group of men, in the center a figure in white garments. A lad offered something in a basket.

The man watched, amazed, awe-stricken, yet with a strange peace in his soul. He made no movement to gain the shore. He only looked and looked. The white-robed figure bent over the basket. He lifted from it a crude rough loaf of bread. He raised his eyes to heaven, his lips moved. He broke the bread and gave it.

As the sailor watched the island disappeared as suddenly as it had come. The scene changed. Now he looked into a low room, dimly lighted with strange lamps. Through an open window he saw the stars. The few men that had stood about the man in the grassy meadow were alone with him in that upper chamber reclining about a table. The man lifted from the board a cup of silver. He blessed it and gave it. The fragrance of wine came to the watcher.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again and before him spread the smooth unbroken surface of the monotonous sea. The woman's voice smote his ear again, higher, shriller, with more painful entreaty.

"A priest--for the love of God--the sacrament," she whispered.

The man tore open the last canvas bread-bag. It was tough material but it yielded to his insistence. In the corner there was a single tiny crumb they had overlooked. He lifted it gently with his great hand. He held it up in the air a moment striving to think. He was an English sailor and in his boyhood had been a chorister in a great Cathedral. The mighty words came back to him. He bent over