Slippy McGee | Page 4

Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in
the flower of his youth. His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom, falls
about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he clothed
that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind with those
"_captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them desirable
young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins, exceeding in dyed
attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to" ... whom
Aholibah "doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed upon the
walls in vermilion_."
The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and
stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower that
fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and gold; and
sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old crucifix. For
that is Armand De Rancé, glorious sinner, handsomest, wealthiest,
most gifted man of his day--and his a day of glorious men; and this is
Armand De Rancé, become the sad austere reformer of La Trappe.
My mother rose, walked over to the Abbé's pictures, and looked long
and with rather frightened eyes at him. Perhaps there was something in
the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his
name, which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand De Rancé,
of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New
World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the
Mississippi.
Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded me pitifully.
"Oh, no, not that!" I reassured her. "I am at once too strong and not
strong enough for solitude and silence. Surely there is room and work
for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the
open, is there not?"

At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I am an only son and
the name dies with me, the old name of which she was so beautifully
proud! She had hoped to see my son wear my father's name and face
and thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly loved; she had
prayed to see my children about her knees, and it must have cost her a
frightful anguish to renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these
tender and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and kissed me on
the brow.
Three months later I entered the Church; and because I was the last De
Rancé, and twenty four, and the day was to have been my wedding-day,
there fell upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of sad romance.
Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into what I might call a
very popular preacher. Though I myself cannot see that I ever did much
actual good, since my friends praised my sermons for their "fine Gallic
flavor," and I made no enemies.
But there was no rest for my spirit, until the Call came again, the Call
that may not be slighted, and bade me leave my sheltered place, my
pleasant lines, and go among the poor, to save my own soul alive.
That is why and how the Bishop, my old and dear friend, after long
argument and many protests, at length yielded and had me transferred
from fashionable St. Jean Baptiste's to the poverty-stricken missionary
parish of sodden laboring folk in a South Carolina coast-town: he
meant to cure me, the good man! I should have the worst at the outset.
"And I hope you understand," said he, sorrowfully, "that this step
practically closes your career. Such a pity, for you could have gone so
far! You might even have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too much
that the last De Rancé, the namesake of the great Abbé, might have
finished as an American cardinal! But God's will be done. If you must
go, you must go."
I said, respectfully, that I had to go.
"Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost," said the Bishop. "And it

may be that, if you do not kill yourself with overwork, you may return
to me cured, when you see the futility of the task you wish to
undertake." But I was never again to see his kind face in this world.
And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely from all ties, as if to
render my decision irrevocable, it was permitted of Providence that the
wheel of my fortune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis of
the banking house which bore his name shot himself through the head
one fine morning, and as he had been my guardian and was