The season of the wine-making passed, and the putting up of all the fruits that the mission fields grew. Lotions and medicines were distilled from the garden herbs. Perfume was manufactured from the petals of the flowers and certain spices, and presents of it despatched to San Fernando and Ventura, and to friends at other places; for the padre had a special receipt. As the time ran on, two or three visitors passed a night with him; and presently there was a word at various missions that Padre Ignazio had begun to show his years. At Santa Ysabel del Mar they whispered, "The padre is getting sick." Yet he rode a great deal over the hills by himself, and down the canyon very often, stopping where he had sat with Gaston, to sit alone and look up and down, now at the hills above, and now at the ocean below. Among his parishioners he had certain troubles to soothe, certain wounds to heal; a home from which he was able to drive jealousy; a girl whom he bade her lover set right. But all said, "The padre is sick." And Felipe told them that the music seemed nothing to him any more; he never asked for his Dixit Dominus nowadays. Then for a short time he was really in bed, feverish with the two voices that spoke to him without ceasing. "You have given your life," said one voice. "And therefore," said the other, "have earned the right to go home and die." "You are winning better rewards in the service of God," said the first voice. "God can be served in other places than this," answered the second. As he lay listening he saw Seville again, and the trees of Aranhal, where he had been born. The wind was blowing through them; and in their branches he could hear the nightingales. "Empty! Empty!" he said, aloud. "He was right about the birds. Death does live in the air where they never sing." And he lay for two days and nights hearing the wind and the nightingales in the trees of Aranhal. But Felipe, watching, heard only the padre crying through the hours: "Empty! Empty!"
Then the wind in the trees died down, and the padre could get out of bed, and soon could be in the garden. But the voices within him still talked all the while as he sat watching the sails when they passed between the headlands. Their words, falling forever the same way, beat his spirit sore, like bruised flesh. If he could only change what they said, he could rest.
"Has the padre any mail for Santa Barbara?" said Felipe. "The ship bound southward should be here to-morrow."
"I will attend to it," said the priest, not moving. And Felipe stole away.
At Felipe's words the voices had stopped, a clock done striking. Silence, strained like expectation, filled the padre's soul. But in place of the voices came old sights of home again, the waving trees at Aranhal; then would be Rachel for a moment, declaiming tragedy while a houseful of faces that he knew by name watched her; and through all the panorama rang the pleasant laugh of Gaston. For a while in the evening the padre sat at his Erard playing "Trovatore." Later, in his sleepless bed he lay, saying now a then: "To die at home! Surely I may granted at least this." And he listened for the inner voices. But they were not speaking any more, and the black hole of silence grew more dreadful to him than their arguments. Then the dawn came in at his window, and he lay watching its gray grow warm into color, us suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked the sea. The southbound ship was coming. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of the same window. "Merciful God!" he cried, sinking on knees. "Heavenly Father, Thou seest this evil in my heart. Thou knowest that my weak hand cannot pluck it out. My strength is breaking, and still Thou makest my burden heavier than I can bear." He stopped, breathless and trembling. The same visions were flitting across his closed eyes; the same silence gaped like a dry crater in his soul. "There is no help in earth or heaven," he said, very quietly; and he dressed himself.
It was so early still that none but a few of the Indians were stirring, and one of them saddled the padre's mule. Felipe was not yet awake, and for a moment it came in the priest's mind to open the boy's door softly, look at him once more, and come away. But this he did not do, nor even take a farewell glance at the church and organ. He bade nothing farewell, but, turning his back upon his room and his garden, rode down the caution.
The vessel lay at anchor, and some one had landed from her and was talking with other men on the shore. Seeing the priest slowly coming, this stranger approached to meet him.
"You are connected with the mission here?" he inquired.
"I—am."
"Perhaps it is with you that Gaston Villere stopped?"
"The young man from New Orleans? Yes. I am Padre Ignazio."
"Then you will save me a journey. I promised him to deliver these into your own hands."
The stranger gave them to him.
"A bag of gold-dust," he explained, "and a letter. I wrote it from his dictation while he was dying. He lived scarcely an hour afterwards."
The stranger bowed his head at the stricken cry which his news elicited from the priest, who, after a few moments vain effort to speak, opened the letter and read:
"MY DEAR FRIEND,—It is through no man's fault but mine that I have come to this. I have had plenty of luck, and lately have been counting the days until I should return home. But last night heavy news from New Orleans reached me, and I tore the pressed flower to pieces. Under the first smart and humiliation of broken faith I was rendered desperate, and picked a needless quarrel. Thank God, it is I who have the punishment. My dear friend, as I lie here, leaving a world that no man ever loved more, I have come to understand you. For you and your mission have been much in my thoughts. It is strange how good can be done, not at the time when it is intended, but afterwards; and you have done this good to me. I say over your words, Contentment with renunciation, and believe that at this last hour I have gained something like what you would wish me to feel. For I do not think that I desire it otherwise now. My life would never have been of service, I am afraid. You are the last person in this world who has spoken serious words to me, and I want you to know that now at length I value the peace of Santa Ysabel as I could never have done but for seeing your wisdom and goodness. You spoke of a new organ for your church. Take the gold-dust that will reach you with this, and do what you will with it. Let me at least in dying have helped some one. And since there is no aristocracy in souls—you said that to me; do you remember?—perhaps you will say a mass for this departing soul of mine. I only wish, since my body must go underground in a strange country, that it might have been at Santa Ysabel del Mar, where your feet would often pass."
"'At Santa Ysabel del Mar, where your feet would often pass.'" The priest repeated this final sentence aloud, without being aware of it.
"Those are the last words he ever spoke," said the stranger, "except bidding good-bye to me."
"You knew him well, then?"
"No; not until after he was hurt. I'm the man he quarrelled with."
The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon. Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the stranger. "I thank you," said he. "You will never know what you have done for me."
"It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set great store on a new organ."
Padre Ignazio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge. When he reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom, that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he returned to the mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the garden. But it was with another look that he watched the sea; and presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it had rounded the headland. Gaston's first coming was in the padre's mind; and as the vespers bell began to ring in the cloistered silence, a fragment of Auber's plaintive tune passed like a sigh across his memory: