The Going of the White Swan | Page 5

for a woman,
because of his clean-shaven face, of the long black robe which he wore,
and because his hair fell loose on his shoulders.
"Have patience, my daughter," said the man. "Do not enter till I call
you. But stand close to the door, if you will, and hear all."
So saying he raised his hand as in a kind of benediction, passed to the
door, and, after tapping very softly, opened it, entered, and closed it
behind him--not so quickly, however, but that the woman caught a
glimpse of the father and the boy. In her eyes there was the divine look
of motherhood.

"Peace be to this house!" said the man gently, as he stepped forward
from the door.
The father, startled, turned shrinkingly on him, as though he had seen a
spirit.
"M'sieu' le curé!" he said in French, with an accent much poorer than
that of the priest, or even of his own son. He had learned French from
his wife; he himself was English.
The priest's quick eye had taken in the lighted candles at the little
shrine, even as he saw the painfully changed aspect of the man.
"The wife and child, Bagot?" he asked, looking round. "Ah, the boy!"
he added, and going toward the bed, continued, presently, in a low
voice: "Dominique is ill?"
Bagot nodded, and then answered: "A wildcat and then fever, Father
Corraine."
The priest felt the boy's pulse softly, then with a close personal look he
spoke hardly above his breath, yet distinctly, too:
"Your wife, Bagot?"
"She is not here, m'sieu'." The voice was low and gloomy.
"Where is she, Bagot?"
"I do not know, m'sieu'."
"When did you see her last?"
"Four weeks ago, m'sieu'."
"That was September, this is October--winter. On the ranches they let
their cattle loose upon the plains in winter, knowing not where they go,
yet looking for them to return in the spring. But a woman--a woman
and a wife--is different.... Bagot, you have been a rough, hard man, and

you have been a stranger to your God, but I thought you loved your
wife and child!"
The hunter's hands clenched, and a wicked light flashed up into his
eyes; but the calm, benignant gaze of the other cooled the tempest in
his veins. The priest sat down on the couch where the child lay, and
took the fevered hand in his own.
"Stay where you are, Bagot, just there where you are, and tell me what
your trouble is, and why your wife is not here.... Say all honestly--by
the name of the Christ!" he added, lifting up an iron crucifix that hung
on his breast.
Bagot sat down on a bench near the fireplace, the light playing on his
bronzed, powerful face, his eyes shining beneath his heavy brows like
two coals. After a moment he began:
"I don't know how it started. I'd lost a lot of pelts--stolen they were,
down on the Child o' Sin River. Well, she was hasty and nervous, like
as not--she always was brisker and more sudden than I am. I--I laid my
powder-horn and whiskey-flash--up there!"
He pointed to the little shrine of the Virgin, where now his candles
were burning. The priest's grave eyes did not change expression at all,
but looked out wisely, as though he understood everything before it
was told.
Bagot continued: "I didn't notice it, but she had put some flowers there.
She said something with an edge, her face all snapping angry, threw the
things down, and called me a heathen and a wicked heretic--and I don't
say now but she'd a right to do it. But I let out then, for them stolen
pelts was rasping me on the raw. I said something pretty rough, and
made as if I was goin' to break her in two--just fetched up my hands,
and went like this!--"
With a singular simplicity he made a wild gesture with his hands, and
an animal-like snarl came from his throat. Then he looked at the priest
with the honest intensity of a boy.

"Yes, that was what you did--what was it you said which was 'pretty
rough'?"
There was a slight hesitation, then came the reply:
"I said there was enough powder spilt on the floor to kill all the priests
in heaven."
A fire suddenly shot up into Father Corraine's face, and his lips
tightened for an instant, but presently he was as before, and he said:
"How that will face you one day, Bagot! Go on. What else?"
Sweat began to break out on Bagot's face, and he spoke as though he
were carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders, low and brokenly.
"Then I said, 'And if virgins has it so fine, why didn't you stay one?'"
"Blasphemer!" said