Parables of a Province | Page 7

peace. I kissed--His feet,
and my throat was full of tears; but I called in my heart. Yet the storm
and the dark stay, and my father does not come."
"Let us be patient, my Fanchon."
"He went to guide the priest across the hills. Why does not God guide
him back?"
"My Fanchon, let us be patient."
"The priest was young, and my father has grey hair."
"Wilt thou not be patient, my child?"
"He filled the knapsack of the priest with food better than his own, and
--thou didst not see it--put money in his hand."
"My own, the storm may pass."
"He told the priest to think upon our home as a little nest God set up

here for such as he."
"There are places of shelter in the hills for thy father, my Fanchon."
"And when the priest prayed, 'That Thou mayst bring us safely to this
place where we would go,' my father said so softly, 'We beseech Thee
to hear us, good Lord!'"
"My Fanchon, thy father hath gone this trail many times."
"The prayer was for the out-trail, not the in-trail, my mother."
"Nay, I do not understand thee."
"A swarm of bees came singing through the room last night, my mother.
It was dark and I could not see, but there was a sweet smell, and I heard
the voices."
"My child, thou art tired with watching, and thy mind is full of fancies.
Thou must sleep."
"I am tired of watching. Through the singing of the bees as they passed
over my bed, I heard my father's voice. I could not hear the words, they
seemed so far away, like the voices of the bees; and I did not cry out,
for the tears were in my throat. After a moment the room was so still
that it made my heart ache."
"Oh, my Fanchon, my child, thou dost break my heart! Dost thou not
know the holy words?"
"'And their souls do pass like singing bees, where no man may follow.
These are they whom God gathereth out of the whirlwind and the desert,
and bringeth home in a goodly swarm.'"
Night drew close to the earth, and as suddenly as a sluice-gate drops
and holds back a flood the storm ceased. Along the crest of the hills
there slowly grew a line of light, and then the serene moon came up and
on, persistent to give the earth love where it had had punishment.
Divers flocks of clouds, camp-followers of the storm, could not abash
her. But once she drew shrinking back behind a slow troop of them; for
down at the bottom of a gorge lay a mountaineer, face upward and
unmoving, as he had lain since a rock loosened beneath him, and the
depths swallowed him. If he had had ears to hear, he would have
answered the soft, bitter cries which rose from a but on the Voshti Hills
above him:
"Michel, Michel, art thou gone?"
"Come back, oh, my father, come back!"
But perhaps it did avail that there were lighted candles before a little

shrine, and that a mother, in her darkness, kissed the feet of One on a
Calvary.

THE WHITE OMEN
"Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, come quick!"
"My son, wilt thou not be patient?"
"But she--my Fanchon--and the child!"
"I knew thy Fanchon, and her father, when thou wast yet a child."
"But they may die before we come, Monsieur."
"These things are in God's hands, Gustave."
"You are not a father; you have never known what makes the world
seem nothing."
"I knew thy Fanchon's father."
"Is that the same?"
"There are those who save and those who die for others. Of thy love
thou wouldst save--the woman hath lain in thine arms, the child is of
this. But to thy Fanchon's father I was merely a priest--we had not
hunted together nor met often about the fire, and drew fast the curtains
for the tales which bring men close. He took me safely on the out-trail,
but on the home-trail he was cast away. Dost thou not think the love of
him that stays as great as the love of him that goes?"
"Ah, thou wouldst go far to serve my wife and child!"
"Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars,
its feet for the swords; it continueth, though an army lay waste the
pasture; it comforteth when there are no medicines; it hath the relish of
manna; and by it do men live in the desert."
"But if it pass from a man, that which he loves, and he is left alone,
Monsieur?"
"That which is loved may pass, but love hath no end."
"Thou didst love my Fanchon's father?"
"I prayed him not