The Trapper's Daughter Part 20

"It is, indeed, strange," the priest muttered thoughtfully.

"My son's foster-brother frequently writes to me; thanks to him, I am rich for a woman of my condition, who is accustomed to live on a little.

In each of his letters he begs me to come and end my days with him; but it is my son, my poor child, I wish to see again; in his arms I should like to close my eyes. Alas! That consolation will not be granted me.

Oh! Father, you cannot imagine what grief it is for a mother to live alone, far from the only being who gave joy to her latter days. Though I have not seen him for ten years, I picture him to myself as on the day he left me, young and strong, and little suspecting that he was leaving me forever."

While uttering these words, the poor woman could not repress her tears and sobs.

"Courage! life is but one long trial; is you have suffered so greatly, perchance G.o.d, whose mercy is infinite, reserves a supreme joy for your last days of life."

"Alas, father, as you know, nothing can console a mother for the absence of her son, for he is her flesh, her heart. Every s.h.i.+p that arrives, I run, I inquire, and ever, ever the same silence! And yet, shall I confess it to you? I have something in me which tells me he is not dead, and I shall see him again; it is a secret presentiment for which I cannot account: I fancy that if my son were dead, something would have snapped in my heart, and I should have ceased to exist long ago. That hope sustains me, in spite of myself; it gives me the strength to live."

"You are a mother in accordance with the gospel; I admire you."

"You are mistaken, father; I am only a poor creature, very simple and very unhappy; I have only one feeling in my heart, but it fills me entirely: love of my son. Oh, could I see him, were it only for a moment, I fancy I should die happy. At long intervals, a banker writes me to come to him, and he pays me money, sometimes small sums, at others large. When I ask him whence the money comes, he says that he does not know himself, and that a strange correspondent has requested him to pay it to me. Well, father, every time I receive money in this way, I fancy that it comes from my son, that he is thinking of me, and I am happy."

"Do not doubt that it is your son who sends you this money."

"Is it not?" she said, with a start of joy. "Well, I feel so persuaded of that, that I keep it; all the sums are at my house, intact, in the order as I received them. Often, when grief crushes me more than usual, when the weight that oppresses my heart seems to me too crus.h.i.+ng, I look at them, I let them slip through my fingers, as I talk to them, and I fancy my son answers me; he bids me hope I shall see him again, and I feel hope return. Oh! You must think me very foolish to tell you all this, father: but of what can a mother speak, save of her son? Of what can she think but her son?"

Father Seraphin gazed on her with a tenderness mingled with respect.

Such grandeur and simplicity in a woman of so ordinary a rank overcame him, and he felt tears running down his cheeks which he did not attempt to check.

"Oh, holy and n.o.ble creature!" he said to her; "Hope, hope; G.o.d watches over you."

"You believe so too, father? Oh, thanks for that. You have told me nothing, and yet I feel comforted through having seen you and let my heart overflow in your presence. It is because you are good, you have understood my sorrow, for you, too, have doubtless suffered."

"Alas; madam, each of us has a cross to bear in this world; happy is he whom his burden does not crush."

"Pardon my having troubled you with my sorrows," she said, as she prepared to leave; "I thank you for your kind words."

"I have nothing to pardon you; but permit me to ask you one more question."

"Do so, father."

"I am a missionary. For several years I have been in America, whose immense solitudes I have traversed in every direction. I have seen many things, met many persons during my travels. Who knows? Perhaps, without knowing it, I may have met your son, and may give the information you have been awaiting so long in vain."

The poor mother gave him a glance of indefinable meaning, and placed her hand on her heart to still its hurried beating.

"Madam, G.o.d directs all our actions. He decreed our meeting on this beach; the hope you have lost I may perhaps be destined to restore you.

What is your son's name?"

At this moment Father Seraphin had a truly inspired air; his voice was commanding, and his eyes shone with a bright and fascinating fire.

"Valentine Guillois!" the poor woman said, as she fell in almost a fainting state on a log of wood left on the beach.

"Oh!" the priest exclaimed; "On your knees and thank Heaven! Console yourself, poor mother! Your son lives!"

She drew herself up as if moved by a spring, and fell on her knees sobbing, and held out her hands to the man who restored her son to her.

But it was too much for her: so strong against grief, could not resist joy: she fainted. Father Seraphin ran up to her and recalled her to life. We will not describe the ensuing scene, but a week later the missionary and the hunter's mother started for America. During the voyage Father Seraphin fully described to his companion what had happened to her son during his long absence, the reasons of his silence, and the sacred remembrance in which he had ever held her. The poor mother listened, radiant with happiness, to those stories, which she begged to hear over and over again, for she was never tired of hearing her son spoken of.

On reaching Galveston, the missionary, justly fearing for her the fatigues of a journey through the desert, wished to induce her to remain in that city till her son came to her, but at that proposition the mother shook her head.

"No," she said, resolutely, "I have not come here to stop in a town: I wish to spend the few days left me to live by his side; I have suffered enough to be avaricious of my happiness, and desire not to lose an atom.

Let us go, father. Lead me to my child."

Before a will so firmly expressed, the priest found himself powerless; he did not recognise the right of insisting longer; he merely tried to spare his companion the fatigue of his journey as far as possible.

They, therefore, started for Galveston, proceeding by short stages to the Far West. On reaching the border of civilised countries, Father Seraphin took an escort of devoted Indians to protect his companion.

They had been in the desert for six days, when suddenly heaven brought them face to face with Red Cedar, dying without help in the heart of the primeval forest.

CHAPTER XIII.

RETURN TO LIFE.

Charity is a virtue loudly preached in our age, but unfortunately practised by few. The story of the good Samaritan finds but scanty application in the Old World, and if we would discover charity exercised sacredly and simply, as the gospel teaches, we must obtain our examples from the deserts of the New World.

This is sad to say, even more sad to prove, but mankind is not to blame for it; the age alone must be held responsible for this egotism, which has for some years past been planted in the heart of man, and reigns there supreme. To two causes must be attributed the personalism and egotism which crown the actions of the great human family in Europe; the discovery of gold in California, Australia, and on Frazer River, and, above all, the Stock Exchange.

The Bourse is the scourge of the Old World; so soon as everybody fancied that he was enabled to enrich himself between today and tomorrow, no one thought any longer of his neighbour, who remained poor, save as being incapable of ameliorating his position. The result is, that the men who have the courage to leave the intoxicating maelstrom that surrounds them, to despise those riches which flash around them, and go under the impulse of Christian Charity, the holiest and least rewarded of all the virtues, to bury themselves among savages, amid hordes most hostile to every good and honourable feeling, in the most deadly countries--such men, we say, who, impelled solely by a divine feeling, abandon all earthly enjoyments, are chosen vessels, and in every respect deserve well of humanity.

Their number is much larger than might be supposed at the first blush, and that is very logical; the pa.s.sion for devotion must go side by side with the thirst for gold, in order that the eternal balance of good and evil which governs the world should remain in those equal proportions which are conditions of its vitality and prosperity.

Red Cedar's condition was serious; the moral commotion he underwent in recognising the man whom he had once attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate, had brought on a frightful attack of delirium. The wretch, a prey to the most gnawing remorse, was tortured by the hideous phantoms of his victim, evoked by his diseased imagination, and which stalked round his bed like a legion of demons. The night he pa.s.sed was terrible. Father Seraphin, Ellen, and Valentine's mother did not leave him for a second, watching over him anxiously, and frequently compelled to struggle with him in order to prevent him das.h.i.+ng his head against the trees, in the paroxysms of the crisis that tortured him.

Strange coincidence! The bandit had a similar wound in his shoulder to the one he had formerly dealt the missionary, which had compelled the latter to go and seek a cure in Europe, a voyage from which he had only returned a few days, when Providence permitted him to find the man who wished to a.s.sa.s.sinate him, lying almost dead at the foot of a tree.

Towards day the crisis grew calmer, and the squatter fell into a species of slumber, which deprived him of the faculties of feeling and perception. No one else slept during this long and mournful night, spent in the heart of the forest; and when Father Seraphin saw that Red Cedar was calmer, he ordered the Indians to prepare a litter to receive him.

They were much disinclined to the task; they had known the squatter for a lengthened period, and these primitive men could not understand why, instead of killing him when chance threw him into his power, the missionary lavished his a.s.sistance on such a villain, who had committed so many crimes, and whose death would have been a blessing to the prairie. It required all the devotion they had vowed to Father Seraphin for them to consent to do, very unwillingly we allow, what he ordered them.

When the litter was, ready, dry leaves and gra.s.s were spread over it, and the squatter was laid on this couch in an almost complete state of insensibility. Before leaving the forest the missionary, who knew how necessary it was to rekindle the drooping faith of the redskins, for the sake of the patient, resolved to offer the holy sacrifice of ma.s.s. An altar was improvised on a gra.s.sy mound, covered with a rag of white cloth, and the ma.s.s was read, served by one of the Indians, who offered his services spontaneously.

a.s.suredly, in the large European cathedrals, beneath the splendid arches of stone, blackened by time, to the imposing murmur of the organ re-echoing through the aisles, the ceremonies of the faith are performed with greater pomp; but I doubt whether they be so with more magnificent simplicity, or are listened to with greater fervour than this ma.s.s, said in the heart of a forest, accompanied by the striking melodies of the desert, by the pale-browed priest, whose eyes glistened with a holy enthusiasm, and who prayed for his a.s.sa.s.sin groaning at his feet.

When ma.s.s was over, Father Seraphin gave a signal, four Indians raised the litter on their shoulders, and the party set out, Ellen being mounted on the horse of one of the bearers. The journey was long; the missionary had left Galveston to go in search of Valentine, but a hunter accustomed to traverse great distances, and whose life is made up of incessant excursions, is very difficult to discover in the desert; the missionary, therefore, decided on going to the winter village of the Comanches, where he was certain to obtain precise information about the man he wished to see.

But his meeting with Red Cedar prevented him from carrying out this plan; Unicorn and Valentine were too inveterate against the squatter for the missionary to hope that they would consent to resign their vengeance. The conjuncture was difficult; Red Cedar was a proscript in the fullest sense of the term; one of those outlaws, whose number is fortunately very limited, who have the whole human race as their foe, and to whom every country is hostile.

And yet this man must be saved; and after ripe reflection, Father Seraphin's resolution was formed. He proceeded, followed by his whole party, to the grotto where we have met him before, a grotto which often served as the Trail-hunter's abode, but where, in all probability, he would not be at this moment. Through an extraordinary chance, the missionary pa.s.sed unseen within a pistol shot of the spot where Valentine and his friends were encamped.

At sunset they prepared for pa.s.sing the night; Father Seraphin removed the bandage he had placed on Red Cedar's wounds, and dressed them: the latter allowed it to be done, not seeming to notice that any attention was being paid him; his prostration was extreme. The wounds were all healthy; that on the shoulder was the worst, but all foreboded a speedy recovery.

When supper was over, prayers said, and the Indians, wrapped in their blankets, were lying on the gra.s.s to rest from the fatigues of the day, the missionary, after a.s.suring himself that Red Cedar was quietly sleeping, made a sign to the two women to come and sit by his side, near the fire lit to keep off wild beasts. Father Seraphin was slightly acquainted with Ellen; he remembered to have frequently met the girl, and even conversed with her in the forest, at the period when her father had so audaciously installed himself on Don Miguel Zarate's estates.

Ellen's character had pleased him; he had found in her such simplicity of heart and innate honour, that he frequently asked himself how so charming a creature could be the daughter of so hardened a villain as Red Cedar: this seemed to him the more incomprehensible, because the girl must have needed a powerful character to resist the influence of the evil examples she constantly had before her. Hence he had taken a lively interest in her, and urged her to persevere in her good sentiments. He had let her see that one day G.o.d would reward her by removing her from the perverse medium in which fate had cast her, to restore her to that great human family of which she was ignorant.