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We were unmolested, however. In the morning, mounting our horses, we rode some distance before we breakfasted. Then we shot all day with a result highly satisfactory to the doctor, though we met with no adventures worth noting. In the evening I found that we were not far from Padre Pacheco's abode; and recollecting my promise to visit him, I proposed that we should go round that way.
And while I was wondering she herself stooped, picked up the fan, and good-humouredly dropped me a curtsey for my lack of manners. Esteban presented me to her that evening. There followed two magical months in Paris and a June in London." "But, Esteban?" said the padre, doubtfully. "I do not understand. I know something of Esteban Silvela. A lean man of plots and devices.
Then he saw who the figures were: it was Captain Puffin who had just missed his putt, it was Major Flint who now expressed elated sympathy. "Bad luck, old boy," he said. "Well, a jolly good match and we halve it. Why, there's the Padre. Been for a walk? Join us in a round this afternoon, Padre! Blow your sermon!"
The elder man turned back sharply and looked into the dark eyes with a shrewd smile. "You generally get what I'm thinking," he said. "Guess you're not much of a riddle to me," Buck laughed, drawing the moist dust into a heap preparatory to picking it up. The Padre laughed too. "Maybe you know how I'm feeling about things, then? Y' see there's nothing for you now but half the farm money.
As he lay listening he saw Seville again, and the trees of Aranhal, where he had been born. The wind was blowing through them, and in their branches he could hear the nightingales. "Empty! Empty!" he said, aloud. And he lay for two days and nights hearing the wind and the nightingales in the far trees of Aranhal. But Felipe, watching, only heard the Padre crying through the hours, "Empty! Empty!"
The next moment an Indian boy appeared upon the azotea, and taking off his hat approached the padre with an air of reverence. "You will guide the capitan through the path in the chapparal to the hunters' hut." "Si, Senor." "Don't tell any one you have done so." "No, Senor." "If you do you shall catch the `cuarto. Vaya!"
In a few hours the majority of the camp would be with him. Then, when the time came, he would play them for his own ends, and so pay off all his old scores. The Padre would be taken. He would see to that. The sheriff should know every detail of Buck's intentions. Buck would ultimately be taken after being outlawed.
But the story gives us a true idea of the impression made on the minds of the home army by the democratic spirit of the men from overseas. I only know one padre story which has become universally popular. It takes the form of a dialogue. Sentry: "Who goes there?" Padre: "Chaplain." Sentry: "Pass, Charlie Chaplin, and all's well."
At Santa Ysabel del Mar they whispered, "The Padre is not well." Yet he rode a great deal over the hills by himself, and down the canyon very often, stopping where he had sat with Gaston, to sit alone and look up and down, now at the hills above, and now at the ocean below.
I came to know them all after this battle, and gave them fancy names in my despatches: the Georgian gentleman, as handsome as Beau Brummell, and a gallant soldier, who was several times wounded, but came back to command his old battalion, and then was wounded again nigh unto death, but came back again; and Honest John, slow of speech, with a twinkle in his eyes, careless of shell splinters flying around his bullet head, hard and tough and cunning in war; and little Ginger, with his whimsical face and freckles, and love of pretty girls and all children, until he was killed in Flanders; and the Permanent Temporary Lieutenant who fell on the Somme; and the Giant who had a splinter through his brain beyond Arras; and many other Highland gentlemen, and one English padre who went with them always to the trenches, until a shell took his head off at the crossroads.
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