The Adventures of Miss Gregory. Gibbon Perceval
amazed, stricken suddenly wise and weary and sad. It never fails me; I have but to close my eyes and it is there. I see it now.'
"Mees Gregory moved the fan above her, and drew the sheet straight.
" 'He is near here?' she asked.
" 'Twelve hours away,' answered Doña Fortuna, 'and a priest. Is that not far enough?'
"Mees Gregory did not interrupt the fanning. 'Where is it?' she asked.
"Then Doña Fortuna gave her the name of the old Mission down the river. 'You would send for him?' she asked. 'But he would not come.'
" 'We shall see,' said the other, in her short way. 'And now you must try to sleep again.'
"That was a day that came in with a dull red sun floating up slowly—a day of heat. There are days in this town, Timotheo, when one could wish to be a dog, to be naked in shady places and scratch. This was one of them. Even Doña Fortuna's great stone chamber filled with the glow of it, and the fan seemed but to blow hot waves to and fro. She was very ill that day. Once in the morning her senses fled and she talked to some one who was not there. The German who gives medicines threw out his hands when he saw her. 'I am not a doctor,' he told the Englishwoman; 'I do only what I can, and this is outside of my little knowledge.' But they worked together about her without resting, sending the rest of us forth, so that I did not hear any more. But I was very curious."
"Yes," said Timotheo; "no doubt. But what happened?"
"Nothing happened till the afternoon," said Anna. "Then Mees Gregory came to the door and called me. She was dressed in her clothes again, looking very like a man in a guardape [petticoat], but pink and composed still. I was to remain with Doña Fortuna, she told me, and attend to her in a certain fashion. As she talked she took me into the room to show me the medicines. There were not many. Then she bade good-by to Doña Fortuna.
" 'You will really go yourself?' asked my mistress.
"Mees Gregory smiled at her and patted her hand. 'I'm off this very minute,' she said. 'Now you must take care of yourself till I come back. And don't fret!'
"She gave me her little, high, masterly nod, and marched forth. I had no notion whither she went. It was all outside my understanding. But she found you at the old Mission, did she not?"
"Yes." Timotheo pitched the end of his cigarette from him and shifted back against the wall again. "Yes, she found us," he said, fumbling in his bosom for another cigarette. He drew forth two, and held out the bent one of them to Anna. A good story is the best possible foundation for a better one; Timotheo felt this as he lit the cigarette and drew at it reflectively. Anna captured the match and lit her own; there was a while of silence as the priest's servant ordered his thoughts. As he smoked, the cigarette-end made brief illuminations of him. Anna waited respectfully for him to offer speech.
"Yes," he said again; "she found us in a season of miracles."
"Tell me," begged Anna. "I told you all that I knew."
Timotheo waved her to be silent. "In a season of miracles," he repeated. "We were at the old Mission, recently returned from a journey through the accursed country of M'Kombi, and the fruits of our labour were a malaria and an ague that left of the Padre the mere rag of a man. That Mission—it was built in the old times by folk who had yet to learn of fevers. It squats at the brim of the river, a long, slanting front of old gray stone, and within it is all little damp rooms like tombs. In one of these the Padre had his camp-bed, and on it he would burn and shiver from twelve o'clock to twelve o'clock. It was very melancholy there—nothing to do, nothing to see but the eternal river, no one to talk to. There was a pair of very wild and very timid Kaffirs to cook and clean up; there was the Padre with his teeth chattering like castanhetas; and there was I, solitary among them as a crow in a fowl-run. All day long the gaunt palms wagged their heads and the brown water slid past, and the stillness made me think of waiting for the Resurrection. I was sad. I tell you, Anna, I was ready for diversion, even though it should come with its face blacked. Therefore, when, in the afternoon, while I mixed his draught for the Padre, the door was darkened, and I looked round to see your Mees Gregory in the door, it was not surprise I felt, but joy. Here at length was something on two legs! And yet, it was astonishing enough. Imagine, then—out of that emptiness of bush and river, in that silence of heathendom, at the middle of the afternoon, there arrives your Englishwoman. She was as you have said—a man in a guardape, the strangest thing I ever saw, incredible, ridiculous; but I did not laugh."
"No," said Anna. "One does not laugh."
"She spoke the Padre's name, and he turned on his elbow to gaze at her," Timotheo continued. "A shivering fit had just passed, and he was yet limp and sweating. 'I have a message,' she said. 'I have come from Tete to deliver it.' Her eye rested on me rather noticeably.
" 'Timotheo,' bade the Padre, 'set a chair and get out!'
"That was of no consequence, for the rooms in the old Mission have no doors; one hears quite as well outside as in. I stood just out of sight, at the corner of the wall, and there I was able to see how she had come. There was a canoe under the bank, and in it were a pair of the weariest Kaffirs I have ever seen. I learned afterward that this Mees Gregory had constrained them to paddle through the heat of the day, such was her haste to reach us. How she was to get back yet awhile was not so clear; they lay in the canoe in a sprawl of arms and legs; there was no more work left in them.
"The talk at the Padre's bedside was brief.
" 'You are ill?' said the Englishwoman doubtfully.
" 'I am not too ill to hear you,' the Padre answered.
"She seemed not to be assured, but made up her mind to speak.
" 'Let me ask you,' she said, 'does the name of Fortuna carry any meaning to you?' I could not see, of course, how the Padre took her question, but I think he must have stared, for she went on at once. 'My message is from her.'
"The Padre answered after a pause. 'Senhora,' he said, 'I am a priest.'
" 'Yes,' said the Englishwoman. 'It is to a priest I was sent. There is grave need for a priest—if not you, then another. But it is you she desires.'
"He repeated the words: 'Grave need!'
" 'Grave need,' she said again. 'The gravest need of all. Your reverence, recall her. It is you she asks for—to see you and speak to you; but it is the priest she has the greatest need for. At least, it was so when I left.'
" 'You are sure?' he asked. 'She cannot live? She cannot recover? You are sure?'
"I suppose she nodded, for she answered nothing in words.
" 'There are priests in Tete,' he said, then.
" 'There will be no priest if it be not you,' she replied.
" 'Ah!' he said. 'The poor woman! So that is her need of me now?'
" 'That is her need,' answered Mees Gregory. 'But—but, father, you are ill.'
"I could hear the bed creak as he sat up.
" 'I have not been taught to encourage my weaknesses,' he said. 'Her case is worse than mine.' And he called for me."
"He is a saint," said Anna, with conviction.
"Largely by my assistance," replied Timotheo, with deliberation. "But he is somewhat of a saint, none the less. I could not at first believe that he was sober in his intention to rise and travel. The man was a sop, a piece of damp flesh; the fever had sodden his bones. I almost laughed at him as he gave me his orders; but this saint has enough of the devil in him to make himself obeyed. It was not possible for him to stand on his feet, but he stood! And what he proposed! There was no returning by water; the Englishwoman's Kaffirs had not the flap of a paddle remaining in their arms, and the way to Tete was upstream, besides. So it was twelve hours on foot through the infested bush, with night coming up and the land crawling with wild beasts. I would have kneeled to him but that I know him; he had a certain tone in his voice that told me