The Magnetic North Part 67

"Everything that we Americans have done, everything that we are, is achieved by the grace of goin' bang the other way." The Boy pulled off a muckluck and threw it half across the room. "And yet, and yet--"

He sat with one stocking-foot in his hand and stared at the candle.

"I wonder, Colonel, if it _satisfies_ anybody to be a hustler and a millionaire."

"Satisfies?" echoed the Colonel, pus.h.i.+ng his chin over the bed-clothes.

"Who expects to be satisfied?"

"Why, every man, woman and child on the top o' the earth; and it just strikes me I've never, personally, known anybody get there but these fellas at Holy Cross."

The Colonel pushed back the bedclothes a little farther with his chin.

"Haven't you got the gumption to see why it is this place and these men take such a hold on you? It's because you've eaten, slept, and lived for half a year in a s.p.a.ce the size of this bedroom. We've got so used to narrowing life down, that the first result of a little larger outlook is to make us dizzy. Now, you hurry up and get to bed. You'll sleep it off."

The Boy woke at four o'clock, and after the match-light, by which he consulted his watch, had flickered out, he lay a long time staring at the dark.

Silence still reigned supreme, when at last he got up, washed and dressed, and went downstairs. An irresistible restlessness had seized hold of him.

He pulled on his furs, cautiously opened the door, and went out--down, over the crisp new crust, to the river and back in the dimness, past the Fathers' House to the settlement behind, then to the right towards the hillside. As he stumbled up the slope he came to a little burial-ground. Half hidden in the snow, white wooden crosses marked the graves. "And here I shall be buried," she had said--"here." He came down the hill and round by the Sisters' House.

That window! That was where a light had shone the evening they arrived, and a nun--Sister Winifred--had stood drawing the thick curtains, shutting out the world.

He thought, in the intense stillness, that he heard sounds from that upper room. Yes, surely an infant's cry.

A curious, heavy-hearted feeling came upon him, as he turned away, and went slowly back towards the other house.

He halted a moment under the Cross, and stared up at it. The door of the Fathers' House opened, and the Travelling Priest stood on the threshold. The Boy went over to him, nodding good-morning.

"So you are all ready--eager to go from us?"

"No; but, you see--"

"I see."

He held the door open, and the Boy went in.

"I don't believe the Colonel's awake yet," he said, as he took off his furs. "I'll just run up and rouse him."

"It is very early"--the priest laid his hand on the young man's arm--"and he will not sleep so well for many a night to come. It is an hour till breakfast."

Henry had lit the fire, and now left it roaring. The priest took a chair, and pushed one forward for his guest.

The Boy sat down, stretched his legs out straight towards the fire, and lifting his hands, clasped them behind his head. The priest read the homesick face like a book.

"Why are you up here?" Before there was time for reply he added: "Surely a young man like you could find, nearer home, many a gate ajar.

And you must have had glimpses through of--things many and fair."

"Oh, yes, I've had glimpses of those things."

"Well----"

"What I wanted most I never saw."

"You wanted----"

"To be--_sure_."

"Ah! it is one of the results of agnosticism."

The Boy never saw the smile.

"I've said--and I was not lying--that I came away to shorten the business of fortune-making--to buy back an old place we love, my sister and I; but----"

"Which does she love best, the old place or the young brother?"

"Oh, she cares about me--no doubt o' that." He smiled the smile of faith.

"Has she ... an understanding heart?"

"The most I know."

"Then she would be glad to know you had found a home for the spirit. A home for the body, what does it matter?"

In the pause, Father Brachet opened the door, but seemed suddenly to remember some imperative call elsewhere. The Boy jumped up, but the Superior had vanished without even "Good-morning." The Boy sat down again.

"Of course," he went on, with that touch of pedantry so common in American youth, "the difficulty in my case is an intellectual one. I think I appreciate the splendid work you do, and I see as I never saw before----" He stopped.

"You strike your foot against the same stone of stumbling over which the Pharisees fell, when the man whom Jesus healed by the way replied to their questioning: 'Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.'"

"I don't deny that the life here has been a revelation to me. I'm not talkin' about creeds (for I don't know much about them, and I don't think it's in me to care much); but so far as the work here is concerned--" He paused.

"We can take little credit for that; it is the outcome of our Order."

The Boy failed to catch the effect of the capital letter.

"Yes, it's just that--the order, the good government! A fella would be a bigot if he couldn't see that the system is as nearly perfect as a human inst.i.tution can be."

"That has been said before of the Society of Jesus." But he spoke with the wise man's tolerance for the discoveries of the young. Still, it was not to discuss the merits of his Order that he had got up an hour before his time. "I understand, maybe better than yourself, something of the restlessness that drove you here."

"You understand?"

The priest nodded.

"You had the excuse of the old plantation and the sister--"

The Boy sat up suddenly, a little annoyed.