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The Red Patrol
by
“You have missed the great thing, alors, though you have been up here two years,” he said. “You do not feel, you do not know. What good have you done? Who has got on his knees and changed his life because of you? Who has told his beads or longed for the Mass because of you? Tell me, who has ever said, ‘You have showed me how to live’? Even the women, though they cry sometimes when you sing-song the prayers, go on just the same when the little ‘bless-you’ is over. Why? Most of them know a better thing than you tell them. Here is the truth: you are little–eh, so very little. You never lied–direct; you never stole the waters that are sweet; you never knew the big dreams that come with wine in the dead of night; you never swore at your own soul and heard it laugh back at you; you never put your face in the breast of a woman–do not look so wild at me!–you never had a child; you never saw the world and yourself through the doors of real life. You never have said, ‘I am tired; I am sick of all; I have seen all.’ You have never felt what came after–understanding. Chut, your talk is for children–and missionaries. You are a prophet without a call, you are a leader without a man to lead, you are less than a child up here. For here the children feel a peace in their blood when the stars come out, and a joy in their brains when the dawn comes up and reaches a yellow hand to the Pole, and the west wind shouts at them. Holy Mother! we in the far north, we feel things, for all the great souls of the dead are up there at the Pole in the pleasant land, and we have seen the Scarlet Hunter and the Kimash Hills. You have seen nothing. You have only heard, and because, like a child, you have never sinned, you come and preach to us!”
The night was folding down fast, all the stars were shooting out into their places, and in the north the white lights of the aurora were flying to and fro. Pierre had spoken with a slow force and precision, yet, as he went on, his eyes almost became fixed on those shifting flames, and a deep look came into them, as he was moved by his own eloquence. Never in his life had he made so long a speech at once. He paused, and then said suddenly: “Come, let us run.”
He broke into a long, sliding trot, and Sherburne did the same. With their arms gathered to their sides they ran for quite two miles without a word, until the heavy breathing of the clergyman brought Pierre up suddenly.
“You do not run well,” he said; “you do not run with the whole body. You know so little. Did you ever think how much such men as Jacques Parfaite know? The earth they read like a book, the sky like an animal’s ways, and a man’s face like–like the writing on the wall.”
“Like the writing on the wall,” said Sherburne, musing; for, under the other’s influence, his petulance was gone. He knew that he was not a part of this life, that he was ignorant of it; of, indeed, all that was vital in it and in men and women.
“I think you began this too soon. You should have waited; then you might have done good. But here we are wiser than you. You have no message–no real message–to give us; down in your heart you are not even sure of yourself.”
Sherburne sighed. “I’m of no use,” he said. “I’ll get out. I’m no good at all.”
Pierre’s eyes glistened. He remembered how, the day before, this youth had said hot words about his card-playing; had called him–in effect–a thief; had treated him as an inferior, as became one who was of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury.