CHAPTER XIX—THE TWO SINNERS

INTROIBO ad altare Dei—I will go in unto the Altar of God.” It had been days, another week of them, since the morning when he had raised his head to that call for early mass,' and his brain, stumbling and confused, had set those words in a refrain to the tempo of the pealing bells.

It was midnight now—another night—the dreaded night. They were not all like that other night, not all so pitiless—that would have been beyond physical endurance. But they were bad, all the nights were bad. They seemed cunningly just to skirt the border edge of strain that could be endured, and cunningly just to evade the breaking point.

It was midnight. On the table beside the bed stood the lighted lamp; and beside the lamp, topped by a prayer-book, was a little pile of François Aubert's books; and the bed was turned neatly down, disclosing invitingly the cool, fresh sheets. These were Madame Lafleur's kindly and well-meant offices. Madame La-fleur knew that he did not sleep very well. Each evening she came in here and set the lamp on the table, and arranged the books, and turned down the bed.

This was the same rocking-chair he sat in now that he had sat in night after night, and watched a man with bandaged head lying on that same bed—watched and waited for the man to die. The man was not there any more—there were just the cool, fresh sheets. The man was in Tournayville. He had seen the man again that afternoon—and now it was the man who was waiting to die.

“I will go in unto the Altar of God.” With a curious hesitancy he reached out and took the prayer-book from the table, and abstractedly began to finger its pages. What did those words mean? They had been with him incessantly, insistently, since that morning when he had groped for their meaning as between the bitterest of mockeries and a sublime sincerity. They did not mock him now, they held no sting of irony. It was very strange. They had not mocked him all that week. He had been glad, eager, somehow, to repeat them to himself. Did they mean—peace?

Peace! If he could have peace—even for to-night. If he could lie down between those cool, fresh sheets—and sleep! He was physically weary. He had made himself weary each night in the hope that weariness might bring a dreamless rest. He had thrown himself feverishly into the rôle of the Curé of St. Marleau; he had walked miles and driven miles; there was not a cottage in the parish upon whose door he had not knocked, and with whose occupants he had not shared-the personal joys and sorrows of the moment; and he had sat with the sick—with old Mother Blondin that morning, for instance, who seemed quite ill and feeble, and who in the last few days had taken to her bed. Yes, it was strange! He had done all this, too, with a certain sincerity that was not alone due to an effort to find forgetfulness during the day and weariness that would bring repose at night. He had found neither the forgetfulness nor the repose; but he had found a sort of wistful joy in the kindly acts of the good, young Father Aubert!

He had found neither the forgetfulness nor the repose. He could not forget the “afterwards”—the day that must irrevocably come—unless something, some turn of fate, some unforeseen thing intervened. Something! It was a pitiful thing to cling to—a pitiful thing even for a gambler's chance! But he clung to it now more desperately, more tenaciously than ever before. It was not only his life now, it was not only the life of the condemned man in that cell—it was Valérie. He might blindfold his mental vision; he might crush back, and trample down, and smother the thought, and refuse to admit it—but in his soul he believed she cared. And if she cared, and if that “something” did not happen, and he was forced, in whatever way he finally must choose, to play the last card—there was Valérie. If she cared—there was Valérie to suffer too! If he hanged instead of that man—there was Valérie! If he confessed from a safe distance after flight—there was Valérie to endure the shame! If the good, young Father Aubert died by “accident”—there was the condemned man in the death cell to pay the penalty—and Valérie to know the grief! Choice! What choice was there? Who called this ghastly impasse a choice! He could only wait—wait and cling to that hope, which in itself, because it was so paltry a thing to lean on, but added to the horror and suspense of the hours and days that stretched between now and the “afterwards.”

“Something” might happen—yes, something might happen—but nothing had happened yet—nothing yet—and his brain, day and night, would not stop mangling and tearing itself to pieces—and would not let him rest—and there was no peace—none—not even for a few short hours.

His fingers were still mechanically turning the pages of the prayer-book. “I will go in unto the Altar of God.” Why did those words keep on running insistently through his mind? Did they suggest—peace?

Well, if they did, why wasn't there something practical about them, something tangible, something he could lay material hands upon, and sense, and feel? The Altar, of God! Was there in very reality a God? He had chosen once to deny it contemptuously; and he had chosen once to despise religion as cant and chicanery cleverly practised upon the gullible and the weak-minded to the profit of those who pretended to interpret it! But there were beautiful words here in this book; and religion, if this were religion, must therefore be beautiful too—if one could believe. He remembered those words at the burial of Théophile Blondin—years, an eternity ago that was—“I am the resurrection and the life... he that believeth in Me... shall never die.” He had repeated them over and over to himself that morning—he had spoken them aloud, in what had seemed then an unaccountable sincerity, to old Mother Blondin as she had clung to the palings of the cemetery fence that morning. Yes, they were beautiful words—if one could believe.

And here were others! What were these words here? He was staring at an open page before him, staring and staring at it. What were these other words here? It was not that he had never seen them before—but why was the book open at this place now—at these last few words of the Benedictus? “Per viscera misericordiæ Dei nostri... illuminare his qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent: ad dirigendos pedes nostros in viam pacis—Through the tender mercy of our God... to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shade of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.”

Were they but words—mere words—these? They were addressed to him—definitely to him, were they not? He sat in darkness, in an agony of darkness, lost, unable to find his way, and he sat—in the shade of death! Was there a God, a God who had tender mercy, a God—to direct his feet into the way of peace?

The book slipped from his fingers, and dropped to the floor—and, his lips compressed, he stood up from the chair. If there was a God who had mercy, mercy of any kind—it was mercy he asked now. Where was this mercy? Where was this way of peace? Where was—a strange, bewildered, incredulous wonder was creeping into his face. Was that it—the Altar of God? Was that where there was peace—in unto the Altar of God? He had asked for a practical application of the words. Is that what they meant—that he should actually go—in unto the Altar of God—in there in the church—now?

It seemed to stagger him for a moment. Numbly he stooped and picked up the prayer-book, and closed it, and laid it back on the table—and stood irresolute. Something, he was conscious, was impelling him to go there. Well, why not? If there was a God, if there was a God who had tender mercy, if it was that God whose words were suggesting a way of peace—why not put that God to the test! Once, on the afternoon just before he had attempted that man's escape, he had yielded to a previous impulse, and had gone into the church. It had been quiet, still and restful, he remembered; and he remembered that he had come away strangely calmed. But since then a cataclysm had swept over him; then he had been in a state of mind that, compared with now, was one even of peace—but even so, it was quiet, still and restful there, he remembered.

He was crossing the room slowly, hesitantly, toward the door. Well, why not? If there was a God, and this impulse emanated from God—why not put it to the test? If it was all a hollow fraud, a myth, a superstition to which he was weak enough to yield, he would at least be no worse off than to sit here in that chair, or to lie upon the bed and toss the hours away until morning came!

Well, he would go! He stepped softly out into the hall, closed his door behind him, groped his way in the darkness to the front door of the presbytère, opened it—and stood still for an instant, listening. Neither Valérie nor her mother, asleep upstairs, had been disturbed he was sure. If they had—well, they would assign no ulterior motive to his going out—it was only that Monsieur le Curé, poor man, did not sleep well!

He closed the door quietly, and went down the steps—and at the bottom paused again. He became suddenly conscious that there was a great quiet and a great serenity in the night—and a great beauty. There were stars, a myriad stars in a perfect sky; and the moonlight bathed the church green in a radiance that made of it a velvet carpet, marvellously wrought in shadows of many hues. There, along the road, a whitewashed cottage stood out distinctly, and still further along another, and yet another—like little fortresses whose tranquillity was impregnable. And the moonlight, and the lullaby of the lapping water on the shore, and the night sounds that were the chirping of the little grass-things, were like some benediction breathed softly upon the earth.

“To direct our feet into the way of peace”—Raymond murmured the words with a sudden overpowering sense of yearning and wistfulness sweeping upon him. And then, as suddenly, he was tense, alert, straining his eyes toward the front of the church. Was that a shadow there that moved, cast perhaps by the swaying branch of some tree? It was a very curious branch if that were so! The shadow seemed to have appeared suddenly from around the corner of the church and to be creeping toward the door. It was too far across the green to see distinctly, even with the moonlight as bright as it was, but it seemed as though he could see the church door open and close again—and now the shadow had disappeared.

Mechanically Raymond rubbed his eyes. It was strange, so very strange that it must surely be only a trick of the imagination. The moonlight was always deceptive and lent itself easily to hallucinations, and at that distance he certainly could not be sure. And besides, at this hour, after midnight, why should any one go stealing into the church? And yet he could have sworn he had seen the door open! And stare as he would now, the shadow that had crept along the low platform above the church steps was no longer visible.

He hesitated a moment. It was even an added incentive for him to go into the church, but suppose some one was there, and he should be seen? He smiled a little wanly—and stepped forward across the green. Well, what of it! Was he not the Curé of St. Mar-leau? It would be only another halo for the head of the good, young Father Aubert! It would require but a word of explanation from him, he could even tell the truth—and they would call him the devout, good, young Father Aubert! Only, instead of entering by one of the main doors, he would go in through the sacristy. He was not even likely to be seen himself in that way; and, if there was any one there, he should be able to discover who it was, and what he or she was doing there.

He passed on along the side of the church, his footsteps soundless on the sward, reached the door of the sacristy, opened it silently, and stepped inside. It was intensely dark here. Treading on tiptoe, he traversed the little room, and finally, after a moment's groping, his fingers closed on the knob of the door that opened on the interior of the church.

A sound broke the stillness. Yes, there was some one out there! Raymond cautiously pulled the door ajar. Came that sound again. It was very loud—and yet it was only the creak of a footstep that seemed to come from somewhere amongst the aisles. It echoed back from the high vaulted roof with a great noise. It seemed to give pause, to terrify with its own alarm whoever was out there, for now as he listened there was silence again.

Still cautiously and still a little wider, Raymond opened the door, and now he could see out into the body of the church—and for a moment, as though gazing upon some mystic scene, he stood there wrapt, immovable. Above the tops of the high, stained windows, it was as though a vast canopy of impenetrable blackness were spread from end to end of the edifice; and slanting from the edge of this canopy in a series of parallel rays the moonlight, coloured into curious solemn tints, filtered across from one wall to the other. And the aisles were like little dark alleyways leading away as into some immensity beyond. And here, looming up, a statue, the figure of some white-robed saint, drew, as it were, a holy light about it, and seemed to take on life and breathe into the stillness a sense of calm and pure and unchanging presence. And the black canopy and the little dark alleyways seemed to whisper of hidden things that kept ward over this abode of God. And there was no sound—and there was awe and solemnity in this silence. And on the altar, very near him, the Altar of God that he had come to seek, the single altar light burned like a tiny scintillating jewel in its setting of moon rays. And there, shadowy against the wall, just outside the chancel rail, was the great cross. There seemed something that spoke of the immutable in that. The first little wooden church above whose doors it had been reared was gone, and there was a church of stone now with a golden, metal cross upon its spire, but this great cross of wood was still here. It was a very precious relic to St. Marleau, and so it hung there on the wall of the new church between the two windows nearest the altar.

And then his eyes, travelling down the length of the cross, fixed upon its base—and the spell that had held him was gone. It was blacker there, very much blacker! There was a patch of blackness there that seemed to move and waver slightly—and it was neither shadow, nor yet the support built out to hold the base of the cross. Some one was crouching there. Well, what should he do? Remain in hiding here, or go out there as the Curé of St. Marleau and see who it was? Something urged him to go; caution bade him remain where he was. He knew a sudden resentment. He had put God to the test—and, instead of peace, he had found a prowler in the church!

Ah—what was that! That low, broken sound—like a sob! Yes, it came again—and the echoes whispered it back from everywhere. It was a woman. A woman was sobbing there at the foot of the cross. Who was it? Came a thought that stabbed with pain. Not Valérie! It could not be Valérie—kneeling there under a load that was beyond her strength! It could not be Valérie in anguish and grief greater than she could bear because—because she loved a man whom she believed to be a priest of God! No—not Valérie! But if it were!

He drew back a little. If it were Valérie she should not know that he had seen. At least he could save her that. He would wait until whoever it was had left the church, and if it were Valérie she would go back to the presbytère, and in that way he would know.

And now—what were those words now? She was praying out there as she sobbed. And slowly an amazed and incredulous wonder spread over Raymond's face. No, it was not Valérie! That was not Valérie's voice! Those mumbling, hesitant, uncertain words, as though the memory were pitifully at fault, were not Valérie's. It was not Valérie! He recognised the voice now. It was the old woman on the hill—old Mother Blondin!

And Raymond stared for a moment helplessly out through the crack of the sacristy door which he held ajar, out into those curiously tinted moon rays, and past the altar with its tiny light, to where that dark shadow lay against the wall. Old Mother Blondin! Old Mother Blondin, the heretic, was out there—praying in the church! Why? What had brought her there? Old Mother Blondin who was supposed to be ill in her bed—he had seen her there that morning! She had been sick for the last few days, and worse if anything that morning—and now—now she was here—praying in the church.

What had brought her here? What motive had brought this about, that, with its strength of purpose, must have supplied physical strength as well, for she must almost literally have had to crawl down the hill in her feeble state? Had she too come seeking for—peace! Was it coincidence that they two, who had reached the lees and dregs of that common cup, should be here together, at this strange hour, at the Altar of God! Was it only coincidence—nothing more? Was he ready to believe, would he admit so much, that it was more than—coincidence?

A sense of solemnity and of awe that mingled with a sense of profound compassion for old Mother Blon-din sobbing there in her misery took possession of him, and he seemed moved now as by an impulse beyond and outside himself—to go to her—to comfort and soothe her, if he could. And slowly he opened the sacristy door, and stepped out into the chancel, and into the moonlight that fell softly across the altar's edge—and he called her name.

There was a cry, wild, unrestrained—a cry of terror that seemed to swirl about the church, and from the black canopy above that hid the vaulted roof was hurled back in a thousand echoes. But with the cry, as the dark form from against the wall sprang erect, Raymond caught a sharp, ominous cracking sound—and, as he looked, high up on the wall, the arms of the huge cross seemed to waver and begin to tilt forward.

With a bound, as he saw her danger, Raymond cleared the chancel rail, and the next instant had caught at the base of the cross and steadied it. In her terror as she had jumped to her feet, she had knocked against it and forced it almost off the sort of shelf, or ledge, that had been built out from the wall to support it; and at the same time, he could see now, one or more of the wall fastenings at the top had given away. It was very heavy and unmanageable, but he finally succeeded in getting it far enough back into position to make it temporarily secure.

He turned then to face Mother Blondin. She seemed oblivious, unconscious of her escape, though her face in the moonlight held a ghastly colour. She was staring at him with eyes that burned feverishly in their deep sockets. She was not crying now, but there were still tears, undried, that clung to her withered cheeks. One bony hand reached out and clutched at the back of a pew, for she was swaying on her feet; but the other was clenched and knotted—and suddenly she raised it and shook it in his face.

“Yes, it is I! I—Mother Blondin!” she choked. “Mother Blondin—the old hag—the excommuniée! You saw me come in—eh? And you have come to put me out—to put old Mother Blondin, the excommuniée, out—eh? I have no right here—here—eh? Well, who said I had any right! Put me out—put me out—put me——-” The clenched hand opened, clawed queerly at her face, as though to clear away something that had gathered before her eyes and would not let her see—and she reeled heavily backward.

Raymond's arm went around her shoulders.

“You are ill, Madame Blondin—ill and weak,” he said soothingly. “See”—he half lifted, half supported her into the pew—“sit down here for a moment and rest. I am afraid I frightened you. I am very sorry. Perhaps it would have been better if I had left you by yourself; but I heard you sobbing out here, and I thought that I might perhaps help you—and so I came—and so—you are better now, are you not?—-and so, you see, it was not to drive you out of the church.”

She looked at him in a sort of angry unbelief.

“Ah!” she exclaimed fiercely. “Why do you tell me that, eh? Why do you tell me that? I have no right here—and you are a priest. That is your business—to drive me out.”

“No,” said Raymond gravely; “it is not my business. And I think you would go very far, Madame Blondin, before you would find a priest who would drive you from his church under the circumstances in which I have found you here to-night.”

“Well then, I will go myself!” she said defiantly—and made as though to rise.

“No, not yet”—Raymond pressed her quietly back into the seat. “You must rest for a little while. Why, this morning, you know, you were seriously ill in bed. Surely you were not alone in the house to-night, that there was no one to prevent you getting up—I asked Madame Bouchard to——”

“Madame Bouchard came to spend the night, but I did not want her, and I sent her home,” she interrupted brusquely.

“You should not have done that, Madame Blondin,” Raymond remonstrated kindly. “But even then, you are very weak, and I do not see how you managed to get here.”

Her face set hard with the old stubborn indomitableness that he knew so well.

“I walked!” she said shortly.

Her hands were twisting together in her lap. There was dust covering her skirt thickly.

“And fell,” he said.

She did not answer.

“Will you tell me why you came?” he asked.

“Because I was a fool”—her lips were working, her hands kept twisting over each other in her lap.

“I heard you praying,” said Raymond gently. “What brought you here to-night, Madame Blondin?”

She shook her head now, and turned her face away.

The moonlight fell on the sparse, gray hair, and the thin, drooping shoulders, and the unkempt, shabby clothing. It seemed to enfold her in an infinite sympathy all its own. And suddenly Raymond found that his eyes were wet. It did not seem so startling and incongruous a thing that she should be here at midnight in the church—at the Altar of God. And yet—and yet why had she come? Something within himself demanded in a strange wistfulness the answer to that question, as though in the answer she would answer for them both, for the two who had no right here in this sacred place unless—unless, if there were a God, that God in His own way had meant to—direct their feet into the way of peace.

“Madame Blondin”—his voice was very low, trembling with earnestness—“Madame Blondin, do you believe in God?”

Her hands stopped their nervous movements, and clasped hard one upon the other.

“No!” she cried out sharply. “No—I——” And then her voice faltered, and she burst suddenly into tears. “I—I don't know.”

His arm was still about her shoulders, and now his hand tightened a little upon her. She was crying softly. He was silent now—staring before him at that tiny flame burning in the moon rays on the altar. Well, suppose she did! Suppose even Mother Blondin believed, though she would fight on until she was beaten to her knees before she would unconditionally admit it, did that mean anything to him? Mother Blondin had not stood before that altar there with a crucifix upon her breast, and——

She was speaking again—brushing the tears away with the back of her hand.

“Once I did—once I believed,” she said. “That was when I was a girl, and—and for a little while afterward. I used to come to the church then, and I used to believe. And then after Pierre died I married Blondin, and after that very soon I came no more. It is forty years—forty years—it was the old church then. The ban came before this one was built—I was never in here before—it is only the old cross there, the cross that was on the old church, that I know. Forty years is a long time—a long time—I am seventy-two now—seventy-two.”

She was crying again softly.

“Yes,” said Raymond, and his own voice choked, “and to-night—after forty years?”

“I wanted to come”—she seemed almost to be whispering to herself—“I wanted to come. Blondin said there was no God, but I remembered that when I was a girl—forty years ago—there was a God here. I—I wanted to come and see—and—and I—I don't know—I—I couldn't remember the prayers very well, and so maybe if God is still here He did not understand. Pierre always said there was a God, and he used to come here with me to mass; but Blondin said the priests were all liars, and I began to drink with Blondin, and he said they were all liars when he died, and no one except the ones that came to buy the whiskey-blanc would have anything to do with us, and—and I believed him.”

“And Pierre?” Raymond asked softly. “Who was Pierre?”

“Pierre?” She turned her head and looked at him—and somehow, perhaps it was the tint of the moon rays, somehow the old, hard face was transfigured, and seemed to glow with untold sweetness, and a smile of tenderness mingled with the tears. “Pierre? Ah, he was a good boy, Pierre. Yes, I have been happy! Who shall say I have not been happy? There were three years of it—three years of it—and then Pierre died. I was eighteen, eighteen on the day that Pierre and I were married. And it was a great day in the village—all the village was en fête. You would not believe that! But it is true. It is a long time between eighteen and seventy-two, and I was not like I am now, and Pierre was loved by every one. It is hard to believe, eh? And there are not many now who remember. But there is old Grandmother Frenier. She will tell you that I am telling you the truth about Pierre Letellier.”

“Letellier!”—it came in a low, involuntary cry from Raymond. Letellier! Where had he heard that name before? What strange stirring of the memory was this that the name had brought? Letellier! Was it—could it be——?

“What is it, monsieur?”—she had caught at his sleeve. “Ah, you had perhaps heard that the Letelliers all moved away from here—and you did not know that I was once a Letellier? They sold everything and went away because of me a few years after I married Blondin.”

“Yes,” said Raymond mechanically. “But tell me more about yourself and Pierre—and—and those happy years. You had children—a—a son, perhaps?”

“Yes—yes, monsieur!” There was a glad eagerness in her voice—and then a broken sob—and the old eyes brimmed anew with tears. “There was little Jean. He was born just a few months after his father died. He—he was just like Pierre. He was four years old when I married Blondin, and—and when he was ten he ran away.”

The altar light, that tiny light there seemed curiously transparent. He could see through it, not to the body of the altar behind it, but through it to a vast distance that did not measure miles, and he could see the interior of a shack whose window pane was thickly frosted and in whose doorway stood a man, and the man was Murdock Shaw who had come to bring Canuck John's dying message—and he could hear Murdock Shaw's words: “'Tell Three-Ace Artie—give good-bye message—my mother and——' And then he died.”

“I do not know where he went”—old Mother Blon-din's faltering voice, too, seemed a vast distance away—“I—I have never heard of him since then. He is dead, perhaps; but, if he is alive, I hope—I hope that he will never know. Yes—there were three years of happiness, monsieur—and then it was finished. Monsieur, I—I will go now.”

Raymond's head on his crossed arms was bowed on the back of the pew before him. Letellier! It was the forgotten name come back to him. This was Canuck John's mother—and this was Théophile Blondin's mother—and he had come to St. Marleau to deliver to her a message of death—and he had delivered it in the killing of her other son! Was this the peace that he had come here to seek to-night? Was this the hand of God that had led him here? What did it mean? Was it God who had brought Mother Blondin here to-night? Would it bring her comfort—to believe in God again? Was he here for that? Here, that a word from him, whom she thought a priest, might turn the scales and bring her to her God of the many years ago? Was this God's way—to use him, who masqueraded as God's priest, and through whom this woman's son had been killed—was this God's way to save old Mother Blondin?

She touched his arm timidly.

“Are you praying for me, monsieur?” she whispered tremulously. “It—it is too late for that—that was forty years ago. And—and I will go now.”

He raised his head and looked at the old, withered, tear-stained face. The question of his own belief did not enter here. If she went now without a word from him, without a priestly word, she went forever. They were beautiful words—and, if one believed, they brought comfort. And she was near, very near to that old belief again. And they were near, very near to his own lips too, those words.

“It is not too late,” he said brokenly. “Listen! Do you remember the Benedictus? Give me your hand, and we will kneel, and say it together.”

She drew back, and shook her head, and tried to speak—but no words came, only her lips quivered.

He held out his hand to her—held it silently there for a long time—and then, hesitantly, she laid her hand in his.

And kneeling there in the pew, old Mother Blondin and Raymond Chapelle, Raymond began the solemn words of the Benedictus. Low his voice was, and the tears crept to his eyes as the thin hand clutched and clasped spasmodically at his own. And as he came to the end, the tears held back no longer and rolled hot upon his cheeks.

“... Through the tender mercy of our God... to enlighten those who sit in darkness, and in the shade of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace”—his voice died away.

She was sobbing bitterly. He helped her to her feet as she sought to rise, and, holding tightly to her arm for she swayed unsteadily, he led her down the aisle. And they came to the church door, and out upon the green. And here she paused, as though she expected him to leave her.

“I will walk up the hill with you, Mother Blondin,” he said. “I do not think you are strong enough to go alone.”

She did not answer.

They started on along the road. She walked very slowly, very feebly, and leaned heavily upon him. And neither spoke. And they turned up the hill. And halfway up the hill he lifted her in his arms and carried her, for her strength was gone. And somehow he knew that when she had left her bed that night to stumble down this hill to the moonlit church she had left it for the last time—save one.

She was speaking again—almost inaudibly. He bent his head to catch the words.

“It is forty years,” said old Mother Blondin. “Forty years—it is a long time—forty years.”