The Father Confessor, Stories of Death and Danger

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THE FATHER CONFESSOR

"A man staggered in" (page 8).

THE FATHER CON- FESSOR STORIES OF BY DORA SIGERSON SHORTER (Mrs. Clement Shorter) ILLUSTRATED

The Father Confessor

I. The Father Confessor

I had thought for a glad moment you loved me. A week ago I hoped for a different answer. Will you tell me why this is?"

"A week ago; that is a long time."

"I see; you had not then met him."

"No, I had not met him; and yet I seem always to have known him."

"You do not know him, you idealize. Your vivid imagination, your love of romance and beauty, blind you. He is cruel and unscrupulous."

"How dare you speak to me so?"

"I dare because I love. Oh, it is not jealousy. Only give him up, and I will go away where you will see me no more. Can you not read his eyes? They are so cruel. He would kill a person if he hated him."

"His eyes, they are not cruel; they are full of—love, and he does not hate me."

"He would kill a woman if he grew tired of her."

"Oh, you must not speak so. I love him, and—he has asked me to be his wife."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

The priest stood at the bedside of the dying woman, he looked down upon her and wondered at her face. Her hair had turned pure white, and she so young. Her eyes were the eyes of a hare, full of watching, always seeming to be expecting some sudden fright. Her nervous hands, for ever twitching, kept pulling at the blankets and moving unceasingly.

"I sent for you," she said, with a weak smile," to tell you how wrong you were. He has been good to me, and loves me so. I pray God for his sake not to let me die."

The door was flung open and a man staggered in. The woman stretched out her thin arms to him, and then saw his face. She gave a shrill death cry, and rising from her bed, fell towards him. The priest made a step to raise her, but drew back, giving the man his place. Laying the dead woman back on the bed, the man broke into loud sobs.

"What has happened," said the stern priest, "that you burst into a sick-room with your face like that?"

"They said she was worse, and I rushed down afraid."

"You have frightened her to death."

The man grew as white as she was.

"Frightened her to death?" he repeated.

"Look at your face," said the priest.

The man stood before the glass. Up the left side of his throat and face there seemed to be a great red gash. The blood from it was on his collar and shirt.

"Oh," he said, "I must have cut myself. I was shaving when the maid rushed up to say my wife was worse, and had sent for a priest."

He drew a wet cloth across his face, and the crimson was gone; only a little scratch to make all that blood!

The priest closed the door, and went out into the night.

For the second time that year the priest stood in the same house, and this time too, by the bedside of a dying person. Now it was the man who lay there broken, where the wheels of a heavy van had crossed him. The tortured creature cried to the priest, "Confession! confession!"

"I am here," the priest answered. He bent his head nearer the pillow.

"You see that book—that book?" whispered the man.

"I see no book."

"There, upon the table—De Quincey's Essay."

"Yes, Murder as One of the Fine Arts; what of it?"

"I read it—and I thought of murder as a fine art. No poisons, or knives, of stifling for me. I planned a murder that no one could hang me for, or prove against me. A fine art! Oh, I had found the art! Hear me! hear me!"

"I hear you."

"Shall I ever be forgiven? Nobody ever suspected me—she did not suspect."

"She?"

"A woman; I will tell you the story. Come nearer. Why do you look at me like that? I do not know you. Do you hate me? Are you not a priest?"

"Yes, a priest; God forgive me! Continue in peace, I am listening."

"Yes, yes. O heavens! what torture! My murder had no suffering like this, like the death You give me, oh God!"

"Hush, hush; be patient. It is your punishment. Pray for forgiveness."

"I will pray, yes, yes; but I must tell you first of my sin. I must confess."

"I am listening."

"I will tell you a story; mind, it is a story. Oh! it could not have been a murder. No one could say it was a murder. No jury could hang me, even if they knew all. My excuse, youth—and the indissolubility of the marriage bond. I was very young when I married."

"And she?"

"She. Oh, yes, she was very young, too; but I did not know my own mind—did not know that in a few years I should meet a woman who would be all the world to me, and whom I could not have. I would have flown to her, but she would not have me, and the dull tie that I hated bound me down."

"Why did you marry?"

"Why? Oh, I loved my wife once—in a way, with a boy’s love. And there was another man after her always. The rivalry made me more eager, more blind to my true feelings. It was winning her from him I thought of more than gaining her myself."

"So lightly held, so bitterly deplored," the priest muttered.

"You bless me, Father?" the man continued; "I want it. Pray for my ease; I am in torture. My sin is great. Soon after I married my life became unbearable. At first I did not notice how dull and uninteresting my wife was, but when I saw the other woman my heart leaped out to her, and I knew I had met my fate. Then my home life became more and more dreary. The dull monotony of domesticity rose up around me, and chained me down. I grew to hate my wife’s face, with its never-varying expression of sweetness and prettiness. She was always the same: she met me with a smile every day I came home, and bid me good-bye with the same smile at the gate in the morning. I knew it so well, and hated it so. She had a mouth like a young child’s, and when she smiled a dimple would come——"

"Your crime," said the stern priest.

"Yes, yes. I hated her when I compared her with the grand woman with the changing soul of the sea—the woman I wanted and could not get because of this little foolish child I had married. And there was no way to reach her except across the dead body of my wife—no way that she would accept. So I thought and thought, until in my mind there grew up a plan. I knew my wife’s heart was not strong; she had a way of putting her hand upon her breast when she got any sudden fright, and it suggested an idea to me. It was then that I read De Quincey’s Murder as a Fine Art, and I knew I could do better than anything I read there. I brought her away to a little watering-place, not far from the city. The other woman was there. We went for long walks along the high cliffs. Once I walked by the edge as close as I dared, watching the effect on my wife. She grew white and nervous, begging me to come away. But the other woman only laughed, and that made me mad. Trying to make her fear for me also, I walked too near the edge, and the ground crumbled beneath me. When next I knew anything I saw the other woman bending over me and laughing. I rose to my feet and found I was not hurt.

"'Come, come, you are all right,' the woman said; 'you only fell a little way. I knew you could not be hurt.'

"Vexed at her calmness, I looked round for my wife. She was walking up and down behind me, holding her hands across her breast.

"'Oh,' she said, 'you frightened me so. My heart beats so strangely.'

"For some moments she could not calm herself, then she turned to me with her smile, holding my hands.

"'Did I frighten you?' she said; 'but my heart, I thought it would not beat again. I thought you had fallen over the cliff into the sea. I did not know there was a ledge only a few feet down.'

"That was my first trial, half accidental, but wholly successful. What did you say, Father? I did not hear you. Your hand is hurting mine; take it away.

"From that time I followed out my idea; it was so easy. One day for her a long run for a train, the next a climb over a steep hill. One night a lamp overturned and the bed on fire; the next, a pretended alarm of thieves. One evening when she was alone I dressed as a tramp and threatened her till she swooned. One morning I purchased a savage dog and let it run loose through the house. So things went on till the constant wear on her nerves and heart began to tell, and all through she never suspected; all through I never laid my hands upon her in violence. I travelled with her in other countries when my opportunities here were getting few, and the other woman came as her friend. All the time the clever eyes of the other woman were upon me, and I did not know if she knew or not. If I spoke of my love for her she drew herself away, saying, ‘Be silent; you are a married man.’ But I felt that if it were not for my wife she would have loved me, and the thought of it made me savage. Think of it—only one life between you and the woman you love. But you are a priest; what do you know of love? Oh, the grand woman, with eyes changing as the heavens, and she as far from me as the stars, parted by that other face which must be always with me, with its baby mouth, and the dimples that came when she smiled——"

"Your story," said the stern priest; "proceed."

"Pity me, Father; you cannot know the temptations of the world or the pity of love. I had so long to wait, and I never touched her in violence. She loved me always, and passed away in peace.

"One day, in a foreign country, a servant killed a poisonous snake, and drew it along the ground as he passed to burn it amongst the refuse of the garden. I saw my wife come and set her chair across the track he had left. I went out of the house, saying that it was fate; for I knew the mate of the snake would follow the scent, seeking for its companion, and would find my wife in its way. Do you pray for me, Father? I cannot hear you, you speak so low. When I returned she was sitting white and statuelike, without a movement, and round her ankle was curled the body of a snake. I would have rushed to her, causing her to rise, and thus have ended it all, for my heart was evil within me that day. But the other woman came to the door that minute, and rested her eyes upon me so that I stood transfixed, afraid to move. She bore in her hands a saucer of milk, and laid it down as near the serpent as she dared, thrusting it slowly forward with a stick, all the time whispering to my wife, ‘Don’t move, don’t speak, for your life.’ The snake uncurled and glided from her foot at the smell of the milk, and the other woman with a blow of the stick broke its back."

"God bless her!" the priest said aloud; "God bless her!"

"Ah, yes!" said the dying man, "she was good, she would have saved me from murder if she could. Once it struck me that she only followed us to protect my wife from me. But it was only for a moment. I would have killed them both if it were so. Do you think it could have been so? You, priest, tell me it was only because she loved me."

But the priest did not answer. He sat with his head upon his breast, his hands clenched.

"From the hot countries," continued the man, "I went to the cold. I took her upon the glaciers of Switzerland, and I vowed in my heart she should not return from them. Once, in crossing a deep crevasse, my foot slipped, and in saving myself I threw her over. But the other woman turned and saw us; I replaced the knife I had taken from my pocket, and drew my wife by the rope back to safety. After that the other woman went behind, and with my wife between us I dared not try again, for the rope would bear the love of my heart upon it then. But this is my story, and what have I more to say? I came home, and my wife and, the woman I loved came too, the chain that kept me from her still unbroken. My wife was then a shadow of her former self, shaken and frightened as a hare. But I never ceased from my plan, and at last she broke down beneath it, and illness came upon her. It was when she lay almost without hope of recovery that I drew blood from my cheek, scattering it over my face and neck, and staggered into her room, so that when she saw me in her weakness she gave a great cry, and fell back dead. And yet I swear to you I never laid my hand upon her in violence, nor did she suspect. And I have written to the other woman many times, but she comes not; nor when I wrote saying that my wife was dying did she reply. But she will come now that I am free. Say it was not murder, Father, for I never laid my hand upon my wife in violence, and death may have been from natural causes. But I shall recover now that I am free for the woman I love, free from the face of the woman I married—with her baby mouth where the dimples came. Bless me, Father, for I am weary."

The priest arose and bent over the bed. He laid his white hands around the throat of the man, but the man smiled back on him in victory. He was already dead.

The priest fell upon his knees by the bedside; he held a crucifix in his hands. Laying his forehead upon it, he fought with his soul, and when he arose in the pale morning light, upon his white brow the figure of the crucified was seen, red in his blood.

The Three Travellers

II. The Three Travellers

THEY were three travellers sitting in the smoking-room of a country inn, who had come together as strangers and grown companionable over their pipes and wine. Two of them were young, the third was grey-haired and wrinkle-faced. They were discussing women’s love.

The youngest argued lightly, because he delighted in debate.

The second bitterly, because he had been jilted and fancied himself still in love.

The grey third without emotion, because he had known sorrow.

"For fairy gifts to win the heart of my fair lady," said the youngest, "were we in the magic days of old, I would ask nothing save a light heart and a handsome face with few harsh years stamped upon it."

"Nay," said the second youth; "I would request nothing save a purse of gold that never would grow empty, and were I ugly as sin, and wicked as its originator, I could buy the heart of any damsel I longed for."

"And you," said the first speaker, turning to the silent, grey man, "are you too old to remember women’s hearts are worth the winning?"

"Old?" said the grey man; "how many years would you say that I carry?"

"You look old for your days if you be under sixty?"

"Nay, then," said the man, "I am forty-five at cockcrow to-morrow."

"Good heavens!" said the youth; "what has aged you so?"

"If I," said the grey man, passing the question, "had the goodwill of the fairies, I would claim the old gift women have always loved—more than beauty, wealth, gentleness, or aught else."

"And that?" said the first youth eagerly.

"Courage," said the man—"plain animal courage."

"I don’t agree," said the other. "Where would he be with an ugly face, beside the curled, beribboned, and handsome lover, the tender glance from dream-loving eyes, the soft hand? No."

"I don’t agree," said the second youth. "What! the courage of the snarling hound, before silken gowns, horses, the envy of one’s neighbours? Gold it is, hard, yellow gold, that makes the ring."

"Beauty wins the eyes," said the grey man softly, "and gold is pretty to the touch; both make marriage. But I spoke of love—and courage wins the heart."

"You have a story to tell," said one youth, filling his pipe; "I see by your face."

"Go on," said the other, replenishing his glass.

"I have a story," said the grey man hesitatingly, "of a woman—of courage—of a man who was a coward. It happened some ten or twelve years ago, and I knew the man."

This is the story that he told, and as he talked the glasses of the youths were unemptied and their pipes unfilled. But he had forgotten them, for he spoke aloud the story that was seared upon his heart.

"Ten or twelve years ago I knew the man. He lived in my village, but where that is does not matter. He was a coward. No one knew he was a coward, except himself—and a woman. In fact, to-day they speak of him as a hero in my village.

"When he was a child he was full of many terrors—afraid of robbers, afraid of ghosts, afraid of the dark. Perhaps he had been frightened as a baby by some nurse, and the terrors lingered. It sometimes happens thus that a child is ruined. When he grew older he was afraid of pain, afraid of blows. So he had few boyish rows, and joined in no rough games. People thought him a quiet and gentle youth. Later he was afraid of being afraid—of the shame of it.

"Then as his youth passed he grew out of this fear, or there were no longer calls on his boyish courage. He passed to manhood, and then, when he understood, he became afraid of death. Death was to him not peace and rest, but darkness. He thought of strangers, creatures not made as he was, there in the gloom faces, clutching hands, shadows half seen. Something of all this death was to him, yet it was a terror that he could not fully explain.

"Once as a boy he fought another, but that was because the other was bearing a story to the boy’s father, and he was afraid of the father.

"Once as a man he fought again, and that was because there was no possible escape without deadly shame, and he fought like a child mad with terror. This nobody knew, and he won—his foe was the smaller.

"Then he married the woman.

"For three years they lived together, and nothing happened to try his courage. Such is the calm of life. The much-dreaded possible battles of boyhood were now no more. He was a man.

"But it happened he had to move from his quiet village into a desolate part of the country. Why does not matter. His was the only house for miles around, and it stood on the edge of a great cattle ranch. Behind it, some distance off, was a railroad, and on one side a strong river, often swollen to twice its natural size by heavy rains. Over it was thrown the railway bridge, too light for it, many thought, but the man laughed at the idea as he looked upon the great supports which stemmed the full flow of the tide.

"So for weeks their uneventful lives went on, nothing more exciting happening in the day than the passing of the great train—tearing by like some screaming soul rushing from damnation; a black snake in the daytime, one of fire by night. To the man and his wife it seemed the one link that bound them to civilization—which spoke to them of the great world that they might else well forget. Through the windows they got many a lightning glance of that society they had left. Here was the young bride alone in a carriage with her husband, speeding on her honeymoon and regarding the world with a smile; here the weary city man reading in a corner his everlasting papers; there the merry schoolboy waving his hat and shouting his unheard jokes from the window; there the hopeless woman mentally checking her household affairs. All were there. In each numbered carriage, every one in his place—first, second, third, the division of the classes according to the purse.

"Now the grim humour of circumstances willed it for the man that he should not be among those people who whirled past him from city to city, whose quiet, uneventful lives brought no strain upon their physical courage, who went without danger from place to place protected by civilization. Who knows but that among the crowd who looked from the flashing windows of the train there might not have been many who chafed the bit of social monotony and pined for this man’s freedom?

"Soon he saw in the eyes of his wife, as they bent upon him, looks of unquiet, or was it of fear? Did she suspect his secret? Was she afraid that he was afraid? Why should she suspect him? He had a retrospective five minutes. Yes, once when they were walking across the fields a great bull ran at the man; he had turned and fled, but the woman was beside him. Had he not shown he knew this? Had he not looked to her first and kept between her and the bull? He could not remember. He never could remember after his fits of terror. When he was a child they bore him along in one great gust, blinding, deafening, maddening for the time. Now the years had hardly lessened their, strength. Again, he remembered a brawny villain who had leered at and shouldered his wife as they walked through a neighbouring village. He had turned on the fellow with stern anger, but the drunken bravado would have nothing but blows, and before his clenched fist the man had stepped aside. He knew, however, that his voice had changed as he said he would have no brawling before a lady. He remembered again, when driving across the country the horse had taken fright, and he sat pale and trembling while the woman took the reins from his hands and guided the animal into quiet. She had never reproached him for these things, only her eyes seemed to speak; and then, how she loved courage! Once, when a weakling lamb of hers fell into the swollen and rapid tide, she stood knee-deep in the water weeping and calling to the man. When he reached her she begged him to go in and save the little creature. She could not swim, but he was a strong swimmer. Yet when he faced the running water he dared not take the risk for the sake of an animal, and said so. But a herdsman on the farm had also heard her calling and had noted the bleating of the lamb. Running down the bank, he had flung off his coat and leaped into the water. With a few strokes he had reached the drowning beast. To get back was not an easy matter, and twice the watchers thought the swimmer must fail, hampered as he was by the struggling beast and with the strong tide against him. But he had fought his way bravely, carrying the lamb, as a cat would her kitten, in his mouth. When he at length reached the side the watchers ran to meet him and helped him ashore. The woman said little, but thanked him with shining and excited eyes. The herd was shamed by her gratitude. He was a coward the minute he was out of danger—afraid of thanks. He shuffled off, saying something about a flood in the river if the heavy rains continued. When he had gone the woman turned to her husband: ‘Oh, if you had done that!’ ‘But dear,’ he answered, ‘is an animal worth the risk of a human life?’ ‘Oh, it was not the lamb,’ she replied, with glowing eyes—then added thoughtfully, ‘He was a man.’

"‘I am not as fine a swimmer as he,’ the man retorted, angry with her and with himself. ‘Perhaps you would have been sorry if I had gone to save your lamb and had been drowned?’

"In a moment she had turned and taken his hands in hers.

"‘Oh, dear love, yes!’ she said. ‘I am glad you did not risk it. I did not think; but I love courage so.’

"She took the lamb in her arms and carried it into the house. As he walked beside her, the man heard her whisper, as she kissed the wet, woolly head, ‘Yet it is but right that the strong should help the weak, even if it be only a lamb.’

"After that it seemed as though something had come between them, something neither could define. True, she loved him even more than before, it might be, but not in the same way. Now she seemed to add pity to her love, and no pride. She did not look up to him, but down upon him. Her love was like that of a mother for a crippled child. Yet, after all, it was the greater love; for love of the weak and failing is true love, while love of the strong and successful is selfish in a degree when he who loves lives in the shadow of that strength.

"One evening the man, sitting in the doorway with his beloved violin at his shoulder, beheld the woman coming towards him in great haste, her pretty curls behind her in the wind, her cloak blown back, her little feet twinkling in their speed. At first he did not hear her calling to him, for his soul was still with his music, and travelled slowly from his dreams. Soon her frightened face became more distinct, and he was conscious something disastrous had happened. He put down the violin and went to meet her, the bow still in his hand. She turned back the way she had come when she saw he was approaching her, and waved to him to hasten.

"‘The bridge!’ she cried—‘the bridge!’

"He hurried after her, and they reached the bridge together. What a sight there met his eyes! The river, turbulent, uncontrollable, mad, swollen to twice its size by the heavy rains, rolled by in a current too strong for waves to break upon. Heavy and dark it moved on, bearing everything before it—trees, dead sheep, a struggling ox, and once a white face with drowned, staring eyes—all he saw in that moment go by like chips of wood on the great river. But more than this he saw, and most terrible—the long railway bridge had given way! The central buttress had crumbled, and the iron rails trailed twisted to the water. At the middle of the great bridge nothing remained to cover a gap of over ninety feet but the handrail, which somehow had loosened from its hold on the broken bridge and swung across—no, not as a tight-rope, but more like a ladder with rungs, which the stanchions made, half a man’s height apart. The second wire, one could see, had broken on the further side, and this caused the whole fence to swing as if it might give way at any moment. In one second the man had seen all this; in the next he had remembered that the train would pass this way in an hour. An hour! What a little time when there is much to do! What an eternity when one waits!

"‘My God, the train!’ he gasped. ‘A hundred people—a hundred——’

"He looked into the rushing torrent, black with its force.

"The woman grasped his hand, and her nails pierced his skin. She was gazing at the wire swaying across the gap.

"‘There is only one possible way. I have thought it all out. Only one possible way.’

"‘And that?’

"‘To cross the wire.’

"‘The wire? My God! You are mad! Who would cross the wire?’

"‘You must. It is the only way to save them.’

"‘It is impossible; it might break under one’s weight. It is probably loose or rotten with time. It would be suicide to attempt it.’

"‘There is no other way, and it is like a ladder—firm enough to bear a man. You are so swift and strong—so strong, Alfred,’ she said slowly, turning and looking into his eyes. ‘There is only one man to whom the chance is given to save all these people—only one man—and only one way.’

"The man looked around; nobody else, they were miles from every one, from every help—one man; and he a coward.