In Sanctuary

: The Crusade Of The Excelsior

When James Hurlstone reached the shelter of the shrubbery he leaned

exhaustedly against the adobe wall, and looked back upon the garden

he had just traversed. At its lower extremity a tall hedge of cactus

reinforced the crumbling wall with a cheval de frise of bristling

thorns; it was through a gap in this green barrier that he had found his

way a few hours before, as his torn clothes still testified. At one side

ran t
e low wall of the Alcalde's casa, a mere line of dark shadow in

that strange diaphanous mist that seemed to suffuse all objects. The

gnarled and twisted branches of pear-trees, gouty with old age, bent

so low as to impede any progress under their formal avenues; out of a

tangled labyrinth of figtrees, here and there a single plume of feathery

palm swam in a drowsy upper radiance. The shrubbery around him, of some

unknown variety, exhaled a faint perfume; he put out his hand to grasp

what appeared to be a young catalpa, and found it the trunk of an

enormous passion vine, that, creeping softly upward, had at last invaded

the very belfry of the dim tower above him; and touching it, his soul

seemed to be lifted with it out of the shadow.



The great hush and quiet that had fallen like a benediction on every

sleeping thing around him; the deep and passionless repose that seemed

to drop from the bending boughs of the venerable trees; the cool,

restful, earthy breath of the shadowed mold beneath him, touched only by

a faint jessamine-like perfume as of a dead passion, lulled the hurried

beatings of his heart and calmed the feverish tremor of his limbs. He

allowed himself to sink back against the wall, his hands tightly clasped

before him. Gradually, the set, abstracted look of his eyes faded and

became suffused, as if moistened by that celestial mist. Then he rose

quickly, drew his sleeve hurriedly across his lashes, and began slowly

to creep along the wall again.



Either the obscurity of the shrubbery became greater or he was growing

preoccupied; but in steadying himself by the wall he had, without

perceiving it, put his hand upon a rude door that, yielding to his

pressure, opened noiselessly into a dark passage. Without apparent

reflection he entered, followed the passage a few steps until it turned

abruptly; turning with it, he found himself in the body of the Mission

Church of Todos Santos. A swinging-lamp, that burned perpetually before

an effigy of the Virgin Mother, threw a faint light on the single

rose-window behind the high altar; another, suspended in a low archway,

apparently lit the open door of the passage towards the refectory. By

the stronger light of the latter Hurlstone could see the barbaric red

and tarnished gold of the rafters that formed the straight roof. The

walls were striped with equally bizarre coloring, half Moorish and half

Indian. A few hangings of dyed and painted cloths with heavy fringes

were disposed on either side of the chancel, like the flaps of a wigwam;

and the aboriginal suggestion was further repeated in a quantity of

colored beads and sea-shells that decked the communion-rails. The

Stations of the Cross, along the walls, were commemorated by paintings,

evidently by a native artist--to suit the same barbaric taste; while a

larger picture of San Francisco d'Assisis, under the choir, seemed

to belong to an older and more artistic civilization. But the sombre

half-light of the two lamps mellowed and softened the harsh contrast of

these details until the whole body of the church appeared filled with a

vague harmonious shadow. The air, heavy with the odors of past incense,

seemed to be a part of that expression, as if the solemn and sympathetic

twilight became palpable in each deep, long-drawn inspiration.



Again overcome by the feeling of repose and peacefulness, Hurlstone sank

upon a rude settle, and bent his head and folded arms over a low railing

before him. How long he sat there, allowing the subtle influence to

transfuse and possess his entire being, he did not know. The faint

twitter of birds suddenly awoke him. Looking up, he perceived that it

came from the vacant square of the tower above him, open to the night

and suffused with its mysterious radiance. In another moment the roof of

the church was swiftly crossed and recrossed with tiny and adventurous

wings. The mysterious light had taken an opaline color. Morning was

breaking.



The slow rustling of a garment, accompanied by a soft but heavy tread,

sounded from the passage. He started to his feet as the priest, whom

he had seen on the deck of the Excelsior, entered the church from the

refectory. The Padre was alone. At the apparition of a stranger, torn

and disheveled, he stopped involuntarily and cast a hasty look towards

the heavy silver ornaments on the altar. Hurlstone noticed it, and

smiled bitterly.



"Don't alarm yourself. I only sought this place for shelter."



He spoke in French--the language he had heard Padre Esteban address to

Mrs. Brimmer. But the priest's quick eye had already detected his own

mistake. He lifted his hand with a sublime gesture towards the altar,

and said,--



"You are right! Where should you seek shelter but here?"



The reply was so unexpected that Hurlstone was silent. His lips quivered

slightly.



"And if it were SANCTUARY I was seeking?" he said.



"You would first tell me why you sought it," said Padre Esteban gently.



Hurlstone looked at him irresolutely for a moment and then said, with

the hopeless desperation of a man anxious to anticipate his fate,--



"I am a passenger on the ship you boarded yesterday. I came ashore with

the intention of concealing myself somewhere here until she had sailed.

When I tell you that I am not a fugitive from justice, that I have

committed no offense against the ship or her passengers, nor have I

any intention of doing so, but that I only wish concealment from their

knowledge for twenty-four hours, you will know enough to understand that

you run no risk in giving me assistance. I can tell you no more."



"I did not see you with the other passengers, either on the ship or

ashore," said the priest. "How did you come here?"



"I swam ashore before they left. I did not know they had any idea of

landing here; I expected to be the only one, and there would have been

no need for concealment then. But I am not lucky," he added, with a

bitter laugh.



The priest glanced at his garments, which bore the traces of the sea,

but remained silent.



"Do you think I am lying?"



The old priest lifted his head with a gesture.



"Not to me--but to God!"



The young man followed the gesture, and glanced around the barbaric

church with a slight look of scorn. But the profound isolation, the

mystic seclusion, and, above all, the complete obliteration of that

world and civilization he shrank from and despised, again subdued and

overcame his rebellious spirit. He lifted his eyes to the priest.



"Nor to God," he said gravely.



"Then why withhold anything from Him here?" said the priest gently.



"I am not a Catholic--I do not believe in confession," said Hurlstone

doggedly, turning aside.



But Padre Esteban laid his large brown hand on the young man's shoulder.

Touched by some occult suggestion in its soft contact, he sank again

into his seat.



"Yet you ask for the sanctuary of His house--a sanctuary bought by that

contrition whose first expression is the bared and open soul! To the

first worldly shelter you sought--the peon's hut or the Alcalde's

casa--you would have thought it necessary to bring a story. You would

not conceal from the physician whom you asked for balsam either the

wound, the symptoms, or the cause? Enough," he said kindly, as Hurlstone

was about to reply. "You shall have your request. You shall stay here. I

will be your physician, and will salve your wounds; if any poison I know

not of rankle there, you will not blame me, son, but perhaps you will

assist me to find it. I will give you a secluded cell in the dormitory

until the ship has sailed. And then"--



He dropped quietly on the settle, took the young man's hand paternally

in his own, and gazed into his eyes as if he read his soul.



And then . . . Ah, yes . . . What then? Hurlstone glanced once more

around him. He thought of the quiet night; of the great peace that had

fallen upon him since he had entered the garden, and the promise of

a greater peace that seemed to breathe with the incense from those

venerable walls. He thought of that crumbling barrier, that even in its

ruin seemed to shut out, more completely than anything he had conceived,

his bitter past, and the bitter world that recalled it. He thought of

the long days to come, when, forgetting and forgotten, he might find a

new life among these simple aliens, themselves forgotten by the world.

He had thought of this once before in the garden; it occurred to him

again in this Lethe-like oblivion of the little church, in the kindly

pressure of the priest's hand. The ornaments no longer looked

uncouth and barbaric--rather they seemed full of some new spiritual

significance. He suddenly lifted his eyes to Padre Esteban, and, half

rising to his feet, said,--



"Are we alone?"



"We are; it is a half-hour yet before mass," said the priest.



"My story will not last so long," said the young man hurriedly, as if

fearing to change his mind. "Hear me, then--it is no crime nor offense

to any one; more than that, it concerns no one but myself--it is of"--



"A woman," said the priest softly. "So! we will sit down, my son."



He lifted his hand with a soothing gesture--the movement of a physician

who has just arrived at an easy diagnosis of certain uneasy symptoms.

There was also a slight suggestion of an habitual toleration, as if

even the seclusion of Todos Santos had not been entirely free from the

invasion of the primal passion.



Hurlstone waited for an instant, but then went on rapidly.



"It is of a woman, who has cursed my life, blasted my prospects, and

ruined my youth; a woman who gained my early affection only to blight

and wither it; a woman who should be nearer to me and dearer than all

else, and yet who is further than the uttermost depths of hell from me

in sympathy or feeling; a woman that I should cleave to, but from whom

I have been flying, ready to face shame, disgrace, oblivion, even that

death which alone can part us: for that woman is--my wife."



He stopped, out of breath, with fixed eyes and a rigid mouth. Father

Esteban drew a snuff-box from his pocket, and a large handkerchief.

After blowing his nose violently, he took a pinch of snuff, wiped his

lip, and replaced the box.



"A bad habit, my son," he said apologetically, "but an old man's

weakness. Go on."



"I met her first five years ago--the wife of another man. Don't misjudge

me, it was no lawless passion; it was a friendship, I believed, due to

her intellectual qualities as much as to her womanly fascinations; for I

was a young student, lodging in the same house with her, in an academic

town. Before I ever spoke to her of love, she had confided to me her own

unhappiness--the uncongeniality of her married life, the harshness, and

even brutality, of her husband. Even a man less in love than I was could

have seen the truth of this--the contrast of the coarse, sensual, and

vulgar man with an apparently refined and intelligent woman; but any one

else except myself would have suspected that such a union was not

merely a sacrifice of the woman. I believed her. It was not until long

afterwards that I learned that her marriage had been a condonation of

her youthful errors by a complaisant bridegroom; that her character

had been saved by a union that was a mutual concession. But I loved her

madly; and when she finally got a divorce from her uncongenial husband,

I believed it less an expression of her love for me than an act of

justice. I did not know at the time that they had arranged the divorce

together, as they had arranged their marriage, by equal concessions.



"I was the only son of a widowed mother, whose instincts were from

the first opposed to my friendship with this woman, and what she

prophetically felt would be its result. Unfortunately, both she and my

friends were foolish enough to avow their belief that the divorce was

obtained solely with a view of securing me as a successor; and it

was this argument more than any other that convinced me of my duty to

protect her. Enough, I married, not only in spite of all opposition--but

BECAUSE of it.



"My mother would have reconciled herself to the marriage, but my wife

never forgave the opposition, and, by some hellish instinct divining

that her power over me might be weakened by maternal influence,

precipitated a quarrel which forever separated us. With the little

capital left by my father, divided between my mother and myself, I took

my wife to a western city. Our small income speedily dwindled under

the debts of her former husband, which she had assumed to purchase

her freedom. I endeavored to utilize a good education and some

accomplishments in music and the languages by giving lessons and

by contributing to the press. In this my wife first made a show of

assisting me, but I was not long in discovering that her intelligence

was superficial and shallow, and that the audacity of expression,

which I had believed to be originality of conviction, was simply

shamelessness, and a desire for notoriety. She had a facility in writing

sentimental poetry, which had been efficacious in her matrimonial

confidences, but which editors of magazines and newspapers found to be

shallow and insincere. To my astonishment, she remained unaffected

by this, as she was equally impervious to the slights and sneers that

continually met us in society. At last the inability to pay one of her

former husband's claims brought to me a threat and an anonymous letter.

I laid them before her, when a scene ensued which revealed the

blindness of my folly in all its hideous hopelessness: she accused me of

complicity in her divorce, and deception in regard to my own fortune. In

a speech, whose language was a horrible revelation of her early habits,

she offered to arrange a divorce from me as she had from her former

husband. She gave as a reason her preference for another, and her belief

that the scandal of a suit would lend her a certain advertisement and

prestige. It was a combination of Messalina and Mrs. Jarley"--



"Pardon! I remember not a Madame Jarley," said the priest.



"Of viciousness and commercial calculation," continued Hurlstone

hurriedly. "I don't remember what happened; she swore that I struck

her! Perhaps--God knows! But she failed, even before a western jury, to

convict me of cruelty. The judge that thought me half insane would not

believe me brutal, and her application for divorce was lost.



"I need not tell you that the same friends who had opposed my marriage

now came forward to implore me to allow her to break our chains. I

refused. I swear to you it was from no lingering love for her, for her

presence drove me mad; it was from no instinct of revenge or jealousy,

for I should have welcomed the man who would have taken her out of

my life and memory. But I could not bear the idea of taking her first

husband's place in her hideous comedy; I could not purchase my freedom

at that price--at any price. I was told that I could get a divorce

against HER, and stand forth before the world untrammeled and unstained.

But I could not stand before MYSELF in such an attitude. I knew that

the shackles I had deliberately forged could not be loosened except by

death. I knew that the stains of her would cling to me and become a part

of my own sin, even as the sea I plunged into yesterday to escape her,

though it has dried upon me, has left its bitter salt behind.



"When she knew my resolve, she took her revenge by dragging my name

through the successive levels to which she descended. Under the plea

that the hardly-earned sum I gave to her maintenance apart from me was

not sufficient, she utilized her undoubted beauty and more doubtful

talent in amateur entertainments--and, finally, on the stage. She was

openly accompanied by her lover, who acted as her agent, in the hope

of goading me to a divorce. Suddenly she disappeared. I thought she had

forgotten me. I obtained an honorable position in New York. One night

I entered a theater devoted to burlesque opera and the exhibition of

a popular actress, known as the Western Thalia, whose beautiful and

audaciously draped figure was the talk of the town. I recognized my wife

in this star of nudity; more than that, she recognized me. The next day,

in addition to the usual notice, the real name of the actress was given

in the morning papers, with a sympathizing account of her romantic and

unfortunate marriage. I renounced my position, and, taking advantage of

an offer from an old friend in California, resolved to join him secretly

there. My mother had died broken-hearted; I was alone in the world. But

my wife discovered my intention; and when I reached Callao, I heard that

she had followed me, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and that probably

she would anticipate me in Mazatlan, where we were to stop. The thought

of suicide haunted me during the rest of that horrible voyage; only my

belief that she would make it appear as a tacit confession of my guilt

saved me from that last act of weakness."



He stopped and shuddered. Padre Esteban again laid his hand softly upon

him.



"It was God who spared you that sacrifice of soul and body," he said

gently.



"I thought it was God that suggested to me to take the SIMULATION of

that act the means of separating myself from her forever. When we neared

Mazatlan, I conceived the idea of hiding myself in the hold of the

Excelsior until she had left that port, in the hope that it would be

believed that I had fallen overboard. I succeeded in secreting myself,

but was discovered at the same time that the unexpected change in the

ship's destination rendered concealment unnecessary. As we did not put

in at Mazatlan, nobody suspected my discovery in the hold to be anything

but the accident that I gave it out to be. I felt myself saved the

confrontation of the woman at Mazatlan; but I knew she would pursue me

to San Francisco.



"The strange dispensation of Providence that brought us into this

unknown port gave me another hope of escape and oblivion. While you

and the Commander were boarding the Excelsior, I slipped from the

cabin-window into the water; I was a good swimmer, and reached the shore

in safety. I concealed myself in the ditch of the Presidio until I

saw the passengers' boats returning with them, when I sought the safer

shelter of this Mission. I made my way through a gap in the hedge and

lay under your olive-trees, hearing the voices of my companions, beyond

the walls, till past midnight. I then groped my way along the avenue

of pear-trees till I came to another wall, and a door that opened to my

accidental touch. I entered, and found myself here. You know the rest."



He had spoken with the rapid and unpent fluency of a man who cared more

to relieve himself of an oppressive burden than to impress his auditor;

yet the restriction of a foreign tongue had checked repetition or

verbosity. Without imagination he had been eloquent; without hopefulness

he had been convincing. Father Esteban rose, holding both his hands.



"My son, in the sanctuary which you have claimed there is no divorce.

The woman who has ruined your life could not be your wife. As long as

her first husband lives, she is forever his wife, bound by a tie which

no human law can sever!"



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