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The White Omen
by
… “Monsieur, did you not see a white arrow shoot down the sky as the prayer ended?”
“My son, it was a falling star.”
“It seemed to have a tuft of fire.”
“Hast thou also the mind of a woman, Gustave?”
“I cannot tell. If it was not a human soul it was a world, and death is death.”
“Thou shalt think of life, Gustave. In thy nest there are two birds where was but one. Keep in thy heart the joy of life and the truth of love, and the White Omen shall be naught to thee.”
“May I say ‘thou’ as I speak?”
“Thou shalt speak as I speak to thee.”
“Thy face is pale-art thou ill, mon pere?”
“I have no beard, and the moon shines in my face.”
“Thy look is as that of one without sight.”
“Nay, nay, I can see the two lights in thy window, my son.”
“Joy–joy, a little while, and I shall clasp my Fanchon in my arms!”
“Thy Fanchon, and the child–and the child.”
The fire sent a trembling glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still in her face, and the exquisite touch of birth on her–for when a child is born the mother also is born again. So still she lay until one who gave her into the world stooped, and drawing open the linen at her breast, nestled a little life there, which presently gave a tiny cry, the first since it came forth. Then Fanchon’s arms drew up, and, with eyes all tenderly burning, she clasped the babe to her breast, and as silk breast touched silk cheek, there sprang up in her the delight and knowledge that the doom of the White Omen was not for herself. Then she called the child by its father’s name, and said into the distance: “Gustave, Gustave, come back!”
And the mother of Fanchon, remembering one night so many years before, said, under her breath: “Michel, Michel, thou art gone so long!”
With their speaking, Gustave and the priest entered on them; and Fanchon crying out for joy, said:
“Kiss thy child–thy little Gustave, my husband.” Then, to the priest:
“Last night I saw the White Omen, mon pere; and one could not die, nor let the child die, without a blessing. But we shall both live now.”
The priest blessed all, and long time he talked with the wife of the lost Michel. When he rose to go to bed she said to him: “The journey has been too long, mon pere. Your face is pale and you tremble. Youth has no patience. Gustave hurried you.”
“Gustave yearned for thy Fanchon and the child. The White Omen made him afraid.”
“But the journey was too much. It is a hard, a bitter trail.”
“I have come gladly as I went once with thy Michel. But, as thou sayest, I am tired–at my heart. I will get to my rest.”
Near dawn Gustave started from the bed where he sat watching, for he saw the White Omen over against the shrine, and then a voice said, as it were out of a great distance:
“Even me also, O my father!”
With awed footsteps, going to see, he found that a man had passed out upon that trail by which no hunter from life can set a mark to guide a comrade; leaving behind the bones and flesh which God set up, too heavy to carry on so long a journey.