The Jimmyjohn Boss, and Other Stories by Owen Wister (the best novels to read TXT) 📗

down, the love of the world was restlessly answering that call. Young Gaston showed more eagerness than the padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing “Trovatore” in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, before he took his leave, to help rehearse the new music with the choir. He would be a missionary too. A perfectly new experience.

“And you still forgive Verdi the sins of his youth?” he said to his host. “I wonder if you could forgive mine?”

“Verdi has left his behind him,” retorted the padre.

“But I am only twenty-five,” explained Gaston, pathetically.

“Ah, don't go away soon!” pleaded the exile. It was the plainest burst that had escaped him, and he felt instant shame.

But Gaston was too much elated with the enjoyment of each new day to understand. The shafts of another's pain might scarcely pierce the bright armor of his gayety. He mistook the priest's exclamation for anxiety about his own happy soul.

“Stay here under your care?” he said. “It would do me no good, padre. Temptation sticks closer to me than a brother!” and he gave that laugh of his which disarmed severer judges than his host. “By next week I should have introduced some sin or other into your beautiful Garden of Ignorance here. It will be much safer for your flock if I go and join the other serpents at San Francisco.”

Soon after breakfast the padre had his two mules saddled, and he and his guest set forth down the hills together to the shore. And beneath the spell and confidence of pleasant, slow riding, and the loveliness of everything, the young man talked freely of himself.

“And, seriously,” said he, “if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I should long to hear the birds. At home our gardens are full of them, and one smells the jasmine, and they sing and sing! When our ship from the Isthmus put into San Diego, I decided to go on by land and see California. Then, after the first days, I began to miss something. All that beauty seemed empty, in a way. And suddenly I found it was the birds. For these little scampering quail are nothing. There seems a sort of death in the air where no birds ever sing.”

“You will not find any birds at San Francisco,” said the padre.

“I shall find life!” exclaimed Gaston. “And my fortune at the mines, I hope. I am not a bad fellow, father. You can easily guess all the things that I do. I have never, to my knowledge, harmed any one. I did not even try to kill my adversary in an affair of honor. I gave him a mere flesh wound, and by this time he must be quite recovered. He was my friend. But as he came between me—”

Gaston stopped; and the padre, looking keenly at him, saw the violence that he had noticed in church pass like a flame over the young man's handsome face.

“There's nothing dishonorable,” said Gaston, answering the priest's look.

“I have not thought so, my son.”

“I did what every gentleman would do,” said Gaston.

“And that is often wrong!” cried the padre. “But I'm not your confessor.”

“I've nothing to confess,” said Gaston, frankly. “I left New Orleans at once, and have travelled an innocent journey straight to you. And when I make my fortune I shall be in a position to return and—”

“Claim the pressed flower!” put in the padre, laughing.

“Ah, you remember how those things are!” said Gaston; and he laughed also and blushed.

“Yes,” said the padre, looking at the anchored barkentine, “I remember how those things are.” And for a while the vessel and its cargo and the landed men and various business and conversations occupied them. But the freight for the mission once seen to, there was not much else to hang about here for.

The barkentine was only a coaster like many others which now had begun to fill the sea a little more of late years, and presently host and guest were riding homeward. And guessing at the two men from their outsides, any one would have got them precisely wrong; for within the turbulent young figure of Gaston dwelt a spirit that could not be more at ease, while revolt was steadily smouldering beneath the schooled and placid mask of the padre.

Yet still the strangeness of his being at such a place came back as a marvel into the young man's lively mind. Twenty years in prison, he thought, and hardly aware of it! And he glanced at the silent priest. A man so evidently fond of music, of theatres, of the world, to whom pressed flowers had meant something once—and now contented to bleach upon these wastes! Not even desirous of a brief holiday, but finding an old organ and some old operas enough recreation! “It is his age, I suppose,” thought Gaston. And then the notion of himself when he should be sixty occurred to him, and he spoke.

“Do you know, I do not believe,” said he, “that I should ever reach such contentment as yours.”

“Perhaps you will,” said Padre Ignazio, in a low voice.

“Never!” declared the youth. “It comes only to the few, I am sure.”

“Yes. Only to the few,” murmured the padre.

“I am certain that it must be a great possession,” Gaston continued; “and yet—and yet—dear me! life is a splendid thing!”

“There are several sorts of it,” said the padre.

“Only one for me!” cried Gaston. “Action, men, women, things—to be there, to be known, to play a part, to sit in the front seats; to have people tell each other, 'There goes Gaston Villere!' and to deserve one's prominence. Why, if I were Padre of Santa Ysabel del Mar for twenty years—no! for one year—do you know what I should have done? Some day it would have been too much for me. I should have left these savages to a pastor nearer their own level, and I should have ridden down this canyon upon my mule, and stepped on board the barkentine, and gone back to my proper sphere. You will understand, sir, that I am far from venturing to make any personal comment. I am only thinking what a world of difference lies between men's natures who can feel alike as we do upon so many subjects. Why, not since leaving New Orleans have I met any one with whom I could talk, except of the weather and the brute interests common to us all. That such a one as you should be here is like a dream.”

“But it is not a dream,” said the padre.

“And, sir—pardon me if I do say this—are you not wasted at Santa Ysabel del Mar? I have seen the priests at the other missions They are—the sort of good men that I expected. But are you needed to save such souls as these?”

“There is no aristocracy of souls,” said the padre, almost whispering now.

“But the body and the mind!” cried Gaston. “My God, are they nothing? Do you think that they are given to us for nothing