The priest strode out into the moonlight. In the recovery of the child
he saw only a demonstration of the efficacy of prayer, and he could
not too quickly bring home the lesson to his parishioners. Amid their
murmurs of wonder and gratitude Chesterton rode away. To the kindly care
of the priest he bequeathed El Capitan. With him, also, he left the gold
pieces which were to pay for the fresh pony.
A quarter of a mile outside the village three white figures confronted
him. Two who stood apart in the shadow shrank from observation, but the
landlord, seated bareback upon a pony that from some late exertion was
breathing heavily, called to him to halt.
“In the fashion of my country,” he began grandiloquently, “we have come
this far to wish you God speed upon your journey.” In the fashion of
the American he seized Chesterton by the hand. “I thank you, senor,” he
murmured.
“Not me,” returned Chesterton. “But the one who made me ‘pack’ that
medicine chest. Thank her, for to-night I think it saved a life.”
The Spaniard regarded him curiously, fixing him with his eyes as though
deep in consideration. At last he smiled gravely.
“You are right,” he said. “Let us both remember her in our prayers.”
As Chesterton rode away the words remained gratefully in his memory and
filled him with pleasant thoughts. “The world,” he mused, “is full of
just such kind and gentle souls.”
After an interminable delay he reached Newport, and they escaped from
the others, and Miss Armitage and he ran down the lawn to the rocks, and
stood with the waves whispering at their feet.
It was the moment for which each had so often longed, with which both
had so often tortured themselves by living in imagination, that now,
that it was theirs, they were fearful it might not be true.
Finally, he said: “And the charm never failed! Indeed, it was wonderful!
It stood by me so obviously. For instance, the night before San Juan,
in the mill at El Poso, I slept on the same poncho with another
correspondent. I woke up with a raging appetite for bacon and coffee,
and he woke up out of his mind, and with a temperature of one hundred
and four. And again, I was standing by Capron’s gun at El Caney, when
a shell took the three men who served it, and only scared ME. And there
was another time--” He stopped. “Anyway,” he laughed, “here I am.”
“But there was one night, one awful night,” began the girl. She
trembled, and he made this an added excuse for drawing her closer to
him. “When I felt you were in great peril, that you would surely die.
And all through the night I knelt by the window and looked toward Cuba
and prayed, and prayed to God to let you live.”
Chesterton bent his head and kissed the tips of her fingers. After a
moment he said: “Would you know what night it was? It might be curious
if I had been--”
“Would I know!” cried the girl. “It was eight days ago. The night of the
twelfth. An awful night!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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