第47章

It was upon that, at length, that his disordered mind concentrated itself, an Answer--he demanded, he implored an Answer.Not a vague visitation of Grace, not a formless sense of Peace; but an Answer, something real, even if the reality were fancied, a voice out of the night, responding to his, a hand in the dark clasping his groping fingers, a breath, human, warm, fragrant, familiar, like a soft, sweet caress on his shrunken cheeks.Alone there in the dim half-light of the decaying Mission, with its crumbling plaster, its naive crudity of ornament and picture, he wrestled fiercely with his desires--words, fragments of sentences, inarticulate, incoherent, wrenched from his tight-shut teeth.

But the Answer was not in the church.Above him, over the high altar, the Virgin in a glory, with downcast eyes and folded hands, grew vague and indistinct in the shadow, the colours fading, tarnished by centuries of incense smoke.The Christ in agony on the Cross was but a lamentable vision of tormented anatomy, grey flesh, spotted with crimson.The St.John, the San Juan Bautista, patron saint of the Mission, the gaunt figure in skins, two fingers upraised in the gesture of benediction, gazed stolidly out into the half-gloom under the ceiling, ignoring the human distress that beat itself in vain against the altar rail below, and Angele remained as before--only a memory, far distant, intangible, lost.

Vanamee rose, turning his back upon the altar with a vague gesture of despair.He crossed the church, and issuing from the low-arched door opposite the pulpit, once more stepped out into the garden.Here, at least, was reality.The warm, still air descended upon him like a cloak, grateful, comforting, dispelling the chill that lurked in the damp mould of plaster and crumbling adobe.

But now he found his way across the garden on the other side of the fountain, where, ranged against the eastern wall, were nine graves.Here Angele was buried, in the smallest grave of them all, marked by the little headstone, with its two dates, only sixteen years apart.To this spot, at last, he had returned, after the years spent in the desert, the wilderness--after all the wanderings of the Long Trail.Here, if ever, he must have a sense of her nearness.Close at hand, a short four feet under that mound of grass, was the form he had so often held in the embrace of his arms; the face, the very face he had kissed, that face with the hair of gold making three-cornered the round white forehead, the violet-blue eyes, heavy-lidded, with their strange oriental slant upward toward the temples; the sweet full lips, almost Egyptian in their fulness--all that strange, perplexing, wonderful beauty, so troublous, so enchanting, so out of all accepted standards.

He bent down, dropping upon one knee, a hand upon the headstone, and read again the inscription.Then instinctively his hand left the stone and rested upon the low mound of turf, touching it with the softness of a caress; and then, before he was aware of it, he was stretched at full length upon the earth, beside the grave, his arms about the low mound, his lips pressed against the grass with which it was covered.The pent-up grief of nearly twenty years rose again within his heart, and overflowed, irresistible, violent, passionate.There was no one to see, no one to hear.

Vanamee had no thought of restraint.He no longer wrestled with his pain--strove against it.There was even a sense of relief in permitting himself to be overcome.But the reaction from this outburst was equally violent.His revolt against the inevitable, his protest against the grave, shook him from head to foot, goaded him beyond all bounds of reason, hounded him on and into the domain of hysteria, dementia.Vanamee was no longer master of himself--no longer knew what he was doing.

At first, he had been content with merely a wild, unreasoned cry to Heaven that Angele should be restored to him, but the vast egotism that seems to run through all forms of disordered intelligence gave his fancy another turn.He forgot God.He no longer reckoned with Heaven.He arrogated their powers to himself--struggled to be, of his own unaided might, stronger than death, more powerful than the grave.He had demanded of Sarria that God should restore Angele to him, but now he appealed directly to Angele herself.As he lay there, his arms clasped about her grave, she seemed so near to him that he fancied she MUST hear.And suddenly, at this moment, his recollection of his strange compelling power--the same power by which he had called Presley to him half-way across the Quien Sabe ranch, the same power which had brought Sarria to his side that very evening--recurred to him.Concentrating his mind upon the one object with which it had so long been filled, Vanamee, his eyes closed, his face buried in his arms, exclaimed:

"Come to me--Angele--don't you hear? Come to me."But the Answer was not in the Grave.Below him the voiceless Earth lay silent, moveless, withholding the secret, jealous of that which it held so close in its grip, refusing to give up that which had been confided to its keeping, untouched by the human anguish that above there, on its surface, clutched with despairing hands at a grave long made.The Earth that only that morning had been so eager, so responsive to the lightest summons, so vibrant with Life, now at night, holding death within its embrace, guarding inviolate the secret of the Grave, was deaf to all entreaty, refused the Answer, and Angele remained as before, only a memory, far distant, intangible, lost.