The disappearing act

Horace Endicott once believed that life began for him the day he married Sonia Westfield. The ten months spent with the young wife were of a hue so roseate as to render discussion of the point foolish. His youth had been a happy one, of the roystering, innocent kind: noisy with yachting, baseball, and a moderate quantity of college beer, but clean, as if his mother had supervised it; yet he had never really lived in his twenty-five years, until the blessed experience of a long honeymoon and a little housekeeping with Sonia had woven into his life the light of sun and moon and stars together.

However, as he admitted long afterwards, his mistake was as terrible as convincing. Life began for him that day he sat in the railway carriage across the aisle from distinguished Monsignor O'Donnell, prelate of the Pope's household, doctor in theology, and vicar-general of the New York diocese. The train being on its way to Boston, and the journey dull, Horace whiled away a slow hour watching the Monsignor, and wondering what motives govern the activity of the priests of Rome. The priest was a handsome man of fifty, dark-haired, of an ascetic pallor, but undoubtedly practical, as his quick and business-like movements testified. His dark eyes were of fine color and expression, and his manners showed the gentleman.

"Some years ago," thought Horace, "I would have studied his person for indications of hoofs and horns-so strangely was I brought up. He is just a poor fellow like myself-it is as great a mistake to make these men demi-gods as to make them demi-devils-and he denies himself a wife as a Prohibitionist denies himself a drink. He goes through his mummeries as honestly as a parson through his sermons or a dervish through his dances-it's all one, and we must allow for it in the make-up of human nature. One man has his parson, another his priest, a third his dervish-and I have Sonia."

This satisfactory conclusion he dwelt upon lovingly, unconscious that the Monsignor was now observing him in turn.

"A fine boy," the priest thought, "with man written all over him. Honest face, virtuous expression, daring too, loving-hearted, lovable, clever, I'm sure, and his life has been too easy to develop any marked character. Too young to have been in the war, but you may be sure he wanted to go, and his mother had to exercise her authority to keep him at home. He has been enjoying me for an hour.... I'm as pleasant as a puzzle to him ... he preferred to read me rather than Dickens, and I gather from his expression that he has solved me. By this time I am rated in his mind as an impostor. Oh, the children of the Mayflower, how hard for them to see anything in life except through the portholes of that ship."

With a sigh the priest returned to his book, and the two gentlemen, having had their fill of speculation, forgot each other directly and forever. At this point the accident occurred. The slow train ran into a train ahead, which should have been farther on at that moment. All the passengers rose up suddenly, without any ceremony, quite speechless, and flew up the car like sparrows. Then the car turned on its left side, and Horace rolled into the outstretched arms and elevated legs of Monsignor O'Donnell. He was kicked and embraced at the same moment, receiving these attentions in speechless awe, as he could not recall who was to blame for the introduction and the attitude. For a moment he reasoned that they had become the object of most outrageous ridicule from the other passengers; for these latter had suddenly set up a shouting and screeching very scandalous. Horace wondered if the priest would help him to resent this storm of insult, and he raised himself off the Monsignor's face, and removed the rest of his person from the Monsignor's body, in order the more politely to invite him to the battle. Then he discovered the state of things in general. The overthrown car was at a stand-still. That no one was hurt seemed happily clear from the vigorous yells of everybody, and the fine scramble through the car-windows. The priest got up leisurely and felt himself. Next he seized his satchel eagerly.

"Now it was more than an accident that I brought the holy oils along," said he to Horace. "I was vexed to find them where they shouldn't be, yet see how soon I find use for them. Someone must be badly hurt in this disaster, and of course it'll be one of my own."

"I hope," said the other politely, "that I did you no harm in falling on you. I could not very well help it."

"Fortune was kinder to you than if the train rolled over the other way. Don't mention it, my son. I'll forgive you, if you will find me the way out, and learn if any have been injured."

The window was too small for a man of the Monsignor's girth, but through the rear door the two crawled out comfortably, Monsignor dragging the satchel and murmuring cheerfully: "How lucky! the holy oils!" It was just sundown, and the wrecked train lay in a meadow, with a pretty stream running by, whose placid ripplings mocked the tumult of the mortals examining their injuries in the field. Yet no one had been seriously injured. Bruises and cuts were plentiful, some fainted from shock, but each was able to do for himself, not so much as a bone having been broken. For a few minutes the Monsignor rejoiced that he would have no use for what he called the holy oils. Then a trainman came running, white and broken-tongued, crying out: "There was a priest on the train-who has seen him?" It turned out that the fireman had been caught in the wrecked locomotive, and crushed to death.

"And it's a priest he's cryin' for, sir," groaned the trainman, as he came up to the Monsignor. The dying man lay in the shade of some trees beside the stream, and a lovely woman had his head in her lap, and wept silently while the poor boy gasped every now and then "mother" and "the priest." She wiped the death-dew from his face, from which the soot had been washed with water from the stream, and moistened his lips with a cordial. He was a youth, of the kind that should not die too early, so vigorous was his young body, so manly and true his dear face; but it was only a matter of ten minutes stay beside the little stream for Tim Hurley. The group about him made way for Monsignor, who sank on his knees beside him, and held up the boy's face to the fading light.

"The priest is here, Tim," he said gently, and Endicott saw the receding life rush back with joy into the agonized features. With something like a laugh he raised his inert hands, and seized the hands of the priest, which he covered with kisses.

"I shall die happy, thanks be to God," he said weakly; "and, father, don't forget to tell my mother. It's her last consolation, poor dear."

"And I have the holy oils, Tim," said Monsignor softly.

Another rush of light to the darkening face!

"Tell her that, too, father dear," said Tim.