CHAPTER XXII—HOW RAYMOND BADE FAREWELL TO ST. MARLEAU

AN hour! There lay an hour between himself—and death. Primal, elemental, savage in its intensity, tigerish in its coming, there surged upon him the demand for life—to live—to fight for self-preservation. And yet how clear his brain was, and how swiftly it worked! Life! There lay an hour between himself—and death. The horse was still outside. The overalls, the old coat, the old hat belonging to the sacristan were still at his disposal in the shed. He would ostentatiously set out to drive to the station to meet the Bishop, hide the horse and buckboard in the woods just before he got there, change his clothes, run on the rest of the way, remain concealed on the far side of the tracks until the train arrived—and, as Monsignor the Bishop descended from one side of the train to the platform, he, Raymond, would board it from the other. There would then, of course, be no one to meet the Bishop. The Bishop would wait patiently no doubt for a while; then Labbée perhaps would manage to procure a vehicle of some sort, or the Bishop might even walk. Eventually, of course, it would appear that Father Aubert had set out for the station and had not since been seen—but it would be a good many hours before the truth began to dawn on any one. There would be alarm only at first for the safety of the good, young Father Aubert—and meanwhile he would have reached Halifax, say One could not ask for a better start than that!

Life! With the crisis upon him, his mind held on no other thing. Life—the human impulse to live and not to die! No other thing—but life! It was an hour before the train was due—he could drive to the station easily in half an hour. There was no hurry—but there was Madame Lafleur who, he was conscious, was watching him from the doorway—Madame Lafleur, and Madame Lafleur's supper. He would have need of food, there was no telling when he would have another chance to eat; and there was Madame Lafleur, too, to enlist as an unwitting accomplice.

“Monsieur le Curé”—it was Madame Lafleur speaking a little timidly from the doorway—“it—it is not bad news that Monsieur le Curé has received?”

“Bad news!” Raymond picked up the telegram, and, turning from the desk, walked toward her. “Bad news!” he smiled. “But on the contrary, my dear Madame Lafleur! I was thinking only of just what was the best thing to do, since it is now quite late, and I did not receive the telegram this afternoon, as I otherwise should had I not been away. Listen! Monsignor the Bishop, who is on his way”—Raymond glanced deliberately at the message—“yes, he says to Halifax—who then is on his way to Halifax, will stop off here this evening.”

Madame Lafleur was instantly in a flutter of excitement.

“Oh, Monsieur le Curé!”—her comely cheeks grew rosy, and her eyes shone with pleasure. “Oh, Monsieur le Curé—Monsignor the Bishop! He will spend the night here?” she demanded eagerly.

Raymond patted her shoulder playfully, as he led her toward the dining room.

“Yes, he will spend the night here, Madame Lafleur”—it was strange that he could laugh teasingly, naturally. “But first, a little supper for a mere curé, eh, Madame Lafleur—since Monsignor the Bishop will undoubtedly have dined on the train.”

“Oh, Monsieur le Curé!” She shook her head at him.

“And then,” laughed Raymond, as he seated himself at the table, “since the horse is already outside, I will drive over to the station and meet him.”

He ate rapidly, and, strangely enough, with an appetite. Madame Lafleur bustled about him, quite unable to keep still in her excitement. She talked, and he answered her. He did not know what she said; his replies were perfunctory. There was an excuse to be made for going to the shed instead of getting directly into the buckboard and driving off. Madame Lafleur would undoubtedly and most naturally watch him off from the front door. But—yes, of course—that was simple—absurdly simple! Well then, another thing—it would mean at least a good hour to him if the village was not on tiptoe with expectancy awaiting the Bishop's arrival, and thus be ready to start out to discover what had happened to the good, young Father Aubert on the instant that the alarm was given; or, worse still, that any one, learning of the Bishop's expected arrival, should enthusiastically drive over to the station as a sort of self-appointed delegation of welcome, just a few minutes behind himself. In that case anything might happen. No, it would not do at all! Every minute of delay and confusion on the part of St. Marleau, and Labbée, and Madame Lafleur no less than the others, was priceless to him now. He remembered his own experience. It would take Labbée a long time to find a horse and wagon; and Madame Lafleur, on her part, would think nothing of a prolonged delay in his return—if he left her with the suggestion, that the train might be late! Well, there was no reason why he should not accomplish all this. So far, it was quite evident, since Madame Lafleur had had no inkling of what the telegram contained, that no one knew anything about it; and that Labbée, whom he was quite prepared to credit with being loose-tongued enough to have otherwise spread the news, had not associated the Bishop's official signature—with Monsignor the Bishop! It was natural enough. The telegram was signed simply—“Montigny”—not the Bishop of Montigny.

He had eaten enough—he pushed back his chair and stood up.

“I think perhaps, Madame Lafleur,” he said reflectively, “that it would be as well not to say anything to any one until Monsignor arrives.” He handed her the telegram. “It would appear that his visit is not an official one, and he may prefer to rest and spend a quiet evening. We can allow him to decide that for himself.”

Madame Lafleur adjusted her spectacles, and read the message.

“But, yes, Monsieur le Curé,” she agreed heartily. “Monsignor will tell us what he desires; and if he wishes to see any one in the village this evening, it will not be too late when you return. But, Monsieur le Curé”—she glanced at the clock—“hadn't you better hurry?”

“Yes,” said Raymond quickly; “that's so! I had!”

Madame Lafleur accompanied him to the front door, carrying a lamp. At the foot of the steps Raymond paused, and looked back at her. It had grown black now, and there was no moon.

“I'll run around to the shed and get a lantern,” he called up to her—and, without waiting for a reply, hurried around the corner of the house.

He laughed a little harshly, his lips were tightly set, as he reached the shed door, opened it, and closed it behind him. He struck a match, found and lighted a lantern, procured a small piece of string, tucked the sacristan's overalls, and the old coat and hat swiftly under his soutane—and a moment later was back beside the buckboard again.

He tied the lantern in front of the dash-board, and climbed into the seat. Madame Lafleur was still standing in the doorway. He hesitated an instant, as he picked up the reins. The sweet, motherly old face smiled at him. A pang came and found lodgment in his heart. It was like that, standing there in the lamp-lit doorway of the presbytère, that he had seen her for the first time—as he saw her now for the last. He had grown to love the silver-haired little old lady with her heart of gold—and so he looked—and a mist came before his eyes, for this was his good-bye.

“You will be back in an hour?” she called out. “You forget, Madame Lafleur”—he forced himself to laugh in the old playful, teasing way—“that the train is sometimes more than an hour late itself!”

“Yes, that is true!” she said. “Au revoir, then, Monsieur le Curé!”

He answered quietly.

“Good-night, Madame Lafleur!”

He drove out across the green, and past the church, and, a short distance down the road, where he could no longer be seen from the windows of the presbytère, he leaned forward and extinguished the lantern. He smiled curiously to himself. It was the only act that appeared at all in consonance with escape! He was a fugitive now, a fugitive for life—and a fugitive running for his life. It seemed as though he should be standing up in the buckboard, and lashing at the horse until the animal was flecked with foam, and the buckboard rocked and swayed with a mad speed along the road. Instead—he had turned off and was on the station road now—the horse was labouring slowly up the steep hill. It seemed as though there should be haste, furious haste, a wild abandon in his flight—that there should be no time to mark, or see, or note, as he was noting now, the twinkling lights of the quiet village nestling below him there along the river's shore. It seemed that his blood should be whipping madly through his veins—instead he was contained, composed, playing his last hand with the old-time gambler's nerve that precluded a false lead, that calculated deliberately, methodically, and with deadly coolness, the value of every card. And yet, beneath this nerve-imposed veneer, he was conscious of a thousand emotions that battered and seethed and raged at their barriers, and sought to fling themselves upon him and have him for their prey.

He laughed coldly out into the night. It was not the fool who tore like a madman, boisterously, blindly, into the open that would escape! He had ample time. He had seen to that, even if he had appeared to accept Madame Lafleur's injunction to hurry. He need reach the station but a minute or so ahead of the train. Meanwhile, the minor details—were there any that he had overlooked? What about the soutane and the clerical hat, for instance, after he had exchanged them for the sacristan's things? Should he hide them where he left the horse and buckboard in the woods? He shook his head after a moment. No; they would probably find the horse before morning, and they might find the soutane. There must be no trace of Father Aubert—the longer they searched the better. And then, more important still, when finally the alarm was spread, the description that would be sent out would be that of a man dressed as a priest. No; he would take them with him, wrap them up in a bundle around a stone, and somewhere miles away, say, throw them from the car into the water as the train crossed a bridge. So much for that! Was there anything else, anything that he——

A lighted window glowed yellow in the darkness from a little distance away. He had come to the top of the rise. It was old Mother Blondin's cottage. He had meant to urge the horse into a trot once the level was gained—but instead the horse was forgotten, and the animal plodded slowly forward at the same pace at which it had ascended the hill.

Raymond's eyes were fixed upon the light. Old Mother Blondin's cottage—and in that room, beyond that light, old Mother Blondin, the old woman on the hill, the excommuniée, lay dying. And there was a shadow on the window shade—the shadow of one sitting in a chair—a woman's shadow—Valerie!

He stopped the horse, and, sitting there in the buck-board opposite the cottage, he raised his hand slowly and took his hat from his head.

“Go on—fool!”—with a snarl, vicious as the cut of a whip-lash, came that inner voice. “You may have time—but you have none to throw away!”

“Be still!” answered Raymond's soul. “This is my hour. Be still!”

Valerie! That shadow on the window he knew was Valerie—and within was that other shadow, the shadow of death. This was his good-bye to old Mother Blondin, who had drunk of the common cup with him, and knelt with him in the moonlit church, her hand in his, outcasts, sealing a most strange bond—and this was his good-bye to Valérie. Valérie—a shadow there on the window shade. That was all—a shadow—all that she could ever be, nothing more tangible in his life through the years to come, if there were years, than a shadow that did not smile, that did not speak to him, that did not touch his hand, or lift brave eyes to look into his. A shadow—that was all—a shadow. It was brutal, cruel, remorseless, yet immeasurably true in its significance, this good-bye—this good-bye to Valérie—a shadow.

The shadow moved, and was gone; from miles away, borne for a great distance on the clear night air, came faintly the whistle of a train—and Raymond, springing suddenly erect, his teeth clenched together, snatched at the whip and laid it across the horse's back.

The wagon lurched forward, and he staggered with the plunge and jerk—and his whip fell again. And he laughed now—no longer calm—and lashed the horse. It was not time that he was racing, there was ample time, the train was still far away; it was his thoughts—to outrun them, to distance them, to leave them behind him, to know no other thing than that impulse for life that alone until now so far this night had swayed him.

And he laughed—and horse and wagon tore frantically along the road, and the woods were about him now, and it was black, black as the mouth of Satan's pit and the roadway to it were black. He was flung back into his seat—and he laughed at that. Life—and he had doddled along the road, preening himself on his magnificent apathy! Life—and the battle and the fight for it was the blood afire, reckless of fear and of odds, the laugh of defiance, the joy of combat, the clenched fist shaken in the face of hell itself! Life—in the mad rush for it was appeal! On! The wagon reeled like a drunken thing, and the wheels twisted in the ruts; a patch of starlight seeping through the branches overhead made a patch of gloom in the inky blackness underneath, and in this patch of gloom wavering tree trunks, like uncouth monsters as they flitted by, snatched at the wheel-hubs to wreck and overturn the wagon, but he was too quick for them, too quick—they always missed. On! Away from memory, away from those good-byes, away from every thought save that of life—life, and the right to live—life, and the fight to hurl that gibbet with its dangling rope a smashed and battered and splintered thing against the jail wall where they would strangle him to death and bury him in their cursed lime!

On! Why did not the beast go faster! Were those white spots that danced before his eyes a lather of foam on the animal's flanks? On—along the road to life! Faster! Faster! It was not fast enough—for thoughts were swift, and they were racing behind him now in their pursuit, and coming closer, and they would overtake him unless he could go faster—faster! Faster, or they would be upon him, and—a big and brave and loyal man.

A low cry, a cry of sudden, overmastering hurt, was drowned in the furious pound of the horse's hoofs, in the rattle and the creaking of the wagon, and in the screech and grinding of the wagon's jolt and swing. And, unconscious that he held the reins, unconscious that he tightened them, his hands, clenched, went upward to his face. There was no black road, no plunging horse, no mad, insensate rush, ungoverned and unguided, no wagon rocking demoniacally through the night—there was a woman who knelt in the aisle of a church, and in her arms she held a man, and across the shattered chancel rail there lay a mighty cross, and the shadow of the cross fell upon them both, and the woman's eyes were filled with tears, and she spoke: “A big and brave and loyal man.”

Tighter against his face he pressed his clenched hands, unconscious that the horse responded to the check and gradually slowed its pace. Valérie! The woman was Valerie—and he was the man! God, the hurt of it—the hurt of those words ringing now in his ears! She had given him her all—her love, her faith, her trust. And in return, he——

The reins dropped from his hands, and his head bowed forward. Life! Yes, there was life this way for him—and for Valerie the bitterest of legacies. He would bequeath to her the belief that she had given her love not only to a felon but to a coward. A coward! And no man, he had boasted, had ever called him a coward. Pitiful boast! Life for himself—for Valerie the fuller measure of misery! Yes, he loved Valérie—he loved her with a traitor's and a coward's love!

His lips were drawn together until they were bloodless. In retrospect his life passed swiftly, unbidden before him—and strewn on every hand was wreckage. And here was the final, crowning act of all—the coward's act—the coward afraid at the end to face the ruin he had, disdainful, callous, contemptuous then of consequence, so consistently wrought since boyhood! If he got away and wrote a letter it would save the man's life, it was true; but it was also true that he ran because he was cornered and at the end of his resources, and because what he might write would, in any case, be instantly discovered if he did not run—and to plead his own innocence in that letter, in the face of glaring proof to the contrary, in the face of the evidence he had so carefully budded against another, smacked only of the grovelling whine of the condemned wretch afraid. None would believe him. None! It was paltry, the police were inured to that; all criminals were eager to protest their innocence, and pule out their tale of extenuating circumstances. None would believe him. Valérie would not believe.

Folds of his cheeks were gripped and crushed in his hands until the finger nails bit into the flesh. He was innocent. He had not murdered that scarred-faced drunken hound—only Valérie would neither believe nor know; and in Valérie's eyes he would stand a loathsome thing, and in her soul would be a horror, and a misery, and a shame that was measured only by the greatness and the depth of the love she had given him, for in that greatness and that depth lay, too, the greatness and the depth of that love's dishonour and that love's abasement. But if—but if——

For a moment he did not stir or move, his eyes seeing nothing, fixed before him—and then steadily his head came up and poised far back on the broad, square shoulders, and the tight lips parted in a strange and sudden smile. If he drove to the station and met Monsignor the Bishop, and drove Monsignor the Bishop back to St. Marleau—then she would believe. No one else could or would believe him, the proof was irrefutable against him, they would convict him, and the sentence would be death; but she in her splendid love would believe him, and know that she had loved—a man. There had been three ways, but one had gone that afternoon; and then there had been two ways, but there was only one now, the man's way, for the other was the coward's way. And, taking this, he could lift his head and stand before them all, for in Valérie's face and in Valérie's eyes there would not be—-what was worse than death. To save Valérie from what he could—not from sorrow, not from grief, that he could not do—but that she might know that her love had been given where it was held a sacred, a priceless and a hallowed thing, and was not outraged and was not degraded because it had been given to him! To save Valerie from what he could—to save himself in his own eyes from the self-abasing knowledge that through a craven fear he had bartered away his manhood and his self-respect, that through fear he ran, and that through fear he hid, and that through fear, though he was innocent, he dared not stand—a man!

He stopped the horse, and stepped down to the ground; and, searching for a match, found one, and lighted the lantern where it hung upon the dash-board. He was calm now, not with that calmness desperately imposed by will and nerve, but with a calmness that was like to—peace. And, standing there, the lantern light fell upon him, and gleamed upon the crucifix upon his breast. And he lifted the crucifix, and, wondering, held it in his hand, and looked at it. It was here in these woods and on this road that he had first hung it about his neck in insolent and bald denial of the Figure that it bore. It was very strange! He had meant it then to save his life; and now—he let it slip gently from his fingers, and climbed back into the buckboard—and now it seemed, as though strengthening him in the way he saw at last, in the way he was to take, as though indeed it were the way itself, came radiating from it, like a benediction, a calm and holy—peace.

And there was no more any turmoil.

And he picked up the reins and drove on along the road.