LITMIR.BIZ

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Yes, he can kick, this saint. So I dressed him, as he bade, in the little room with moss on the wall like green and yellow paint, and the tireless Englishwoman strolling to and fro in the sun outside, while our Kaffirs hid in corners and gaped at her.

      "But the Padre was like a nightmare to see. It was as if a corpse should rise up and go to work. His legs were like water under him; the ague took him by the throat and rattled him. as though the bones were loose in his skin. Nothing upheld him save the spirit within him, and that was like a tempest caged. He walked with his face uplifted, while his lips quivered with weakness, and your Mees Gregory kept glancing sideways at him with little considering frowns. But I was not comfortable in my mind—I! I had wished for diversion—true; but not to go forth into the raw wilderness with a priest who walked by supernatural power, and that strange figure of a woman. It was not company in which to take risks. But I did not know.

      "The bush grows close about the Mission. One walks not two minutes and turns round, and one is at the heart of the wild. The paths, where there are any at all, are Kaffir paths, narrow trodden ruts that curl and snake bewilderingly between the bushes and trees, and on them you must go one behind the other. The Padre took the lead, with the Englishwoman behind him, and me at the tail, and behind me all the lurking dangers of darkness. The dusk came all too soon, and lasted too short a while, and then night was with us, crowded with fears. Ai?" Timotheo shivered and drew his breath through his teeth. "Even the telling of it makes my heart hesitate. I am without words to show it to you—our progress, always in a half-hurry; the great deeps of the bush, where things stirred unseen; the spaces of moonlight, and our panting haste to cross them; the back of the Padre, too thin, too straight, not poised as men poise themselves who have their senses; the unwearying, pounding trot of your stumpy Englishwoman; the noise of our breathing that might be the breathing of great beasts near at hand; the voices of lions that we heard; the strangeness, the unreality, the dread of it all. Of the long stages that we made, there remains in my memory as it were a flavour—the salt taste of fear in my mouth."

      Anna made sounds of sympathy.

      "And all to make your Doña Fortuna easy in her mind," said Timotheo. "But this was not all. There were things that occurred on which you may think when next you are deprived of your sleep. I spoke of a season of miracles. You shall hear. … No; I have only one cigarette left. …

      "I judge it was near midnight, and we had been on our way, resting scarcely at all, for some eight hours. There was a broad moon aloft; where the bush was sparse there was plenty of light. I was weary; understand that I was weary to the point of forgetting the terror and strangeness of my situation and remembering only my legs. But the Padre held on. What he felt, what he suffered, if he felt and suffered at all, is not to be told in human speech; it belongs to another tongue. Mees Gregory flagged at moments, but she has strength, that Englishwoman; she could spur herself to the pace as she willed. I dared not be left behind; it was only that which maintained me, by which we see there is a purpose in all our afflictions. I went on blindly, and came to life, as it were, only when we halted.

      "Well, at the time I have mentioned, we came of a sudden to one of those spots where the bush stands back and leaves a piece of the world bare to the sky. I was in the rear; I knew nothing; but Mees Gregory made a hissing noise with her mouth, and reached forward to the Padre's arm and checked him. There was an urgency in the gesture that startled me, and I did not forthwith sit down, as my custom was when we halted. I looked between them as they stood, and at the sight my weariness fell from me. Three times already we had heard lions, but this was the first we saw. He was near the middle of the clear space, plain in the moonlight—a great, lean beast, stiffened to attention at the sound of us, with his great head up and all the mass of him taut as a string. A breath of wind stirred the bush; I could see it move behind him, and the tops of it swing against the stars; and it carried the pungent smell of him down to us. We stood—I do not know how long; it may have been a minute or many minutes—and the great brute never moved. It might have been the carved figure of a lion set there in the pale light, intent and dreadful. I could not take my eyes from it. It crowded all else out of being. And then, suddenly, with a shock that made my heart check and bound, I heard the Padre begin to speak.

      " 'I must not wait,' he said. 'I have my errand.'

      "It was his voice of every day; they were the tones in which he would speak to me of his dinner. I could not think; there was nothing left to me to take hold of. At the sound of his voice, the great beast in the clearing moved a little.

      " 'Hush! Oh, hush!' breathed the Englishwoman, with her hand on his arm.

      "He put her hand from him.

      " 'I am not bidden to be careful of myself,' he answered; 'only to go forward in faith.'

      "And he went forward. He walked out of the shadow that screened us, into the pale light, and so forward. Anna, my friend, I do not speak of it willingly. For my part, I reached out and caught the hand of Mees Gregory and held it; and she did not rebuke me. We did not move from our place, nor stir, nor, I think, breathe. We watched the Padre. He went at his accustomed gait, neither in haste nor slowly. There was no faltering; there were not even the uncertain feet of the ague-stricken. His head was high held, even as it had been since we started; one would have said a tall spirit walked out into the moonlight. Thirty—forty yards before him there was the great beast, its huge head low, its body gathered in behind it, all lean, terrible strength—doom crouched along the ground, tense and imminent. There was a sense upon me as though somewhere something was stretched to the point of breaking; I felt myself waiting for the snap of it. And all the while there was the unbelievable thing, the Padre walking forward, eating up the moments at each stride, and not twenty strides between him and the shape of the lion. There was a catastrophe overdue; I knew it strangely; I was impatient for it."

      "Yes?" said Anna. "Yes? What was the end of it? Go on!"

      Timotheo wriggled his back against the wall. In the velvet darkness of the courtyard he blinked rapidly; his recital had shifted him from his balance.

      "There was no end," he said coolly. "It was in no sense an ending at all. These miracles—they are not dramatic. The Padre went on without pausing; the affair still awaited the last swift effect; and he came as near to the beast as I am to that door. Yes, about that distance. And then the lion moved. 'Here it comes!' thought I. 'It was time.' But no! Nothing of the kind. It seemed to crawl to one side; it had the motion of a great snake. It rippled like a fluid, as smoothly and noiselessly, and, ere one could rub one's eyes, there was the crash of twigs, and it was gone. He, the Padre, did not even turn his head; he went on still, and he was across the clearing before Mees Gregory pulled her hand from mine, and the pair of us returned to our senses."

      "They are like that," said Anna. "Look them in the eye and they always run away."

      "Always," agreed Tirnotheo solemnly. "But who looks them in the eye if he can help it? That kind of fool, thank heaven, is as rare as a saint. Look them in the eye, indeed!"

      "Somebody told me so," said Anna meekly. "Perhaps it is a lie. No doubt it is. And were there any more miracles?"

      "You are hard to satisfy," said Timotheo. "But there was one more. Do not say this time, 'They are like that,' or I shall be displeased."

      "I will not," promised Anna.

      "Very well, then. The second was at dawn. We had gone on from the place of the lion without pausing to felicitate the Padre. He led us without ceasing, and we drove ourselves to keep up with him. There was something changed in his aspect, or it seemed so; we no longer saw him as the man we knew, full to the lips with fever and precarious on his feet. He was become a being armoured against the evil chances of the night and the bush, a man guarded invisibly. Therefore, when the bush led us out to the steep bank of a stream, under which the broad water ran calm and in great volume, we said nothing. We looked to him. It was one of those lesser rivers that come down after the rains and join themselves to the Zambesi; they are new in their course each season, and treacherous as a snake. The sky was pale in the east; the dawn gust was chill in our faces; the bush was ghostly and grey. The Padre stood, gaunt and upright, seeming taller than of old, and looked down at the black water below.

      "

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