"Sacre bapteme!"
"What did he say?" asked the Little Chemist, stepping from his doorway.
"He cursed his baptism," answered tall Medallion, the English auctioneer,
pushing his way farther into the crowd.
"Ah, the pitiful vaurien!" said the Little Chemist's wife, shudderingly;
for that was an oath not to be endured by any one who called the Church
mother.
The crowd that had gathered at the Four Corners were greatly disturbed,
for they also felt the repulsion that possessed the Little Chemist's
wife. They babbled, shook their heads, and waved their hands excitedly,
and swayed and craned their necks to see the offender.
All at once his voice, mad with rage, was heard above the rest, shouting
frenziedly a curse which was a horribly grotesque blasphemy upon the name
of God. Men who had used that oath in their insane anger had been known
to commit suicide out of remorse afterwards.
For a moment there was a painful hush. The crowd drew back involuntarily
and left a clear space, in which stood the blasphemer--a middle-sized,
athletic fellow, with black beard, thick, waving hair, and flashing brown
eyes. His white teeth were showing now in a snarl like a dog's, his cap
was on the ground, his hair was tumbled, his hands were twitching with
passion, his foot was stamping with fury, and every time it struck the
ground a little silver bell rang at his knee--a pretty sylvan sound, in
no keeping with the scene. It heightened the distress of the fellow's
blasphemy and ungovernable anger. For a man to curse his baptism was a
wicked thing; but the other oath was not fit for human ears, and horror
held the crowd moveless for a moment.
Then, as suddenly as the stillness came, a low, threatening mumble of
voices rose, and a movement to close in on the man was made; but a figure
pushed through the crowd, and, standing in front of the man, waved the
people back. It was the Cure, the beloved M. Fabre, whose life had been
spent among them, whom they obeyed as well as they could, for they were
but frail humanity, after all--crude, simple folk, touched with
imagination.
"Luc Pomfrette, why have you done this? What provocation had you?"
The Cure's voice was stern and cold, his usually gentle face had become
severe, his soft eyes were piercing and determined.
The foot of the man still beat the ground angrily, and the little bell
kept tinkling. He was gasping with passion, and he did not answer yet.
"Luc Pomfrette, what have you to say?" asked the Cure again. He
motioned back Lacasse, the constable of the parish, who had suddenly
appeared with a rusty gun and a more rusty pair of handcuffs.
Still the voyageur did not answer.
The Cure glanced at Lajeunesse the blacksmith, who stood near.
"There was no cause--no," sagely shaking his head said Lajeunesse, "Here
stand we at the door of the Louis Quinze in very good humour. Up come
the voyageurs, all laughing, and ahead of them is Luc Pomfrette, with the
little bell at his knee. Luc, he laugh the same as the rest, and they
stand in the door, and the garcon bring out the brandy--just a little,
but just enough too. I am talking to Henri Beauvin. I am telling him
Junie Gauloir have run away with Dicey the Protestant, when all very
quick Luc push between me and Henri, jump into the street, and speak like
that!"
Lajeunesse looked around, as if for corroboration; Henri and others
nodded, and some one said:
"That's true; that's true. There was no cause."
"Maybe it was the drink," said a little hunchbacked man, pushing his way
in beside the Cure. "It must have been the drink; there was nothing
else--no."
The speaker was Parpon the dwarf, the oddest, in some ways the most
foolish, in others the wisest man in Pontiac.
"That is no excuse," said the Cure.
"It is the only one he has, eh?" answered Parpon. His eyes were fixed
meaningly on those of Pomfrette.
"It is no excuse," repeated the Cure sternly. "The blasphemy is
horrible, a shame and stigma upon Pontiac for ever." He looked Pomfrette
in the face. "Foul-mouthed and wicked man, it is two years since you
took the Blessed Sacrament. Last Easter day you were in a drunken sleep
while Mass was being said; after the funeral of your own father you were
drunk again. When you went away to the woods you never left a penny for
candles, nor for Masses to be said for your father's soul; yet you sold
his horse and his little house, and spent the money in drink. Not a cent
for a candle, but--"
"It's a lie," cried Pomfrette, shaking with rage from head to foot.
A long horror-stricken "Ah!" broke from the crowd. The Cure's face
became graver and colder.
"You have a bad heart," he answered, "and you give Pontiac an evil name.
I command you to come to Mass next Sunday, to repent and to hear your
penance given from the altar. For until--"
"I'll go to no Mass till I'm carried to it," was the sullen, malevolent
interruption.
The Cure turned upon the people.
"This is a blasphemer, an evil-hearted, shameless man," he said. "Until
he repents humbly, and bows his vicious spirit to holy Church, and his
heart to the mercy of God, I command you to avoid him as you would a
plague. I command that no door be opened to him; that no one offer him
comfort or friendship; that not even a bon jour or a bon soir pass
between you. He has blasphemed against our Father in heaven; to the
Church he is a leper." He turned to Pomfrette. "I pray God that you
have no peace in mind or body till your evil life is changed, and your
black heart is broken by sorrow and repentance."
Then to the people he said again: "I have commanded you for your souls'
sake; see that you obey. Go to your homes. Let us leave the leper--
alone." He waved the awed crowd back.
"Shall we take off the little bell?" asked Lajeunesse of the Cure.
Pomfrette heard, and he drew himself together, his jaws shutting with
ferocity, and his hand flying to the belt where his voyageur's case-knife
hung. The Cure did not see this. Without turning his head towards
Pomfrette, he said:
"I have commanded you, my children. Leave the leper alone."
Again he waved the crowd to be gone, and they scattered, whispering to
each other; for nothing like this had ever occurred in Pontiac before,
nor had they ever seen the Cure with this granite look in his face, or
heard his voice so bitterly hard.
He did not move until he had seen them all started homewards from the
Four Corners. One person remained beside him--Parpon the dwarf.
"I will not obey you, M'sieu' le Cure," said he. "I'll forgive him
before he repents."
"You will share his sin," answered the Cure sternly. "No; his
punishment, M'sieu'," said the dwarf; and turning on his heel, he trotted
to where Pomfrette stood alone in the middle of the road, a dark, morose
figure, hatred and a wild trouble in his face.
Already banishment, isolation, seemed to possess Pomfrette, to surround
him with loneliness. The very effort he made to be defiant of his fate
appeared to make him still more solitary. All at once he thrust a hand
inside his red shirt, and, giving a jerk which broke a string tied round
his neck, he drew forth a little pad--a flat bag of silk, called an Agnus
Dei, worn as a protection and a blessing by the pious, and threw it on
the ground. Another little parcel he drew from his belt, and ground it
into the dirt with his heel. It contained a woman's hair. Then,
muttering, his hands still twitching with savage feeling, he picked up
his cap, covered with dirt, put it on, and passed away down the road
towards the river, the little bell tinkling as he went. Those who heard
it had a strange feeling, for already to them the man was as if he had
some baleful disease, and this little bell told of the passing of a
leper.
Yet some one man had worn just such a bell every year in Pontiac. It was
the mark of honour conferred upon a voyageur by his fellows, the token of
his prowess and his skill. This year Luc Pomfrette had won it, and that
very day it had been buckled round his leg with songs and toasts.
For hours Pomfrette walked incessantly up and down the river-bank,
muttering and gesticulating, but at last came quietly to the cottage
which he shared with Henri Beauvin. Henri had removed himself and his
belongings: already the ostracising had begun. He went to the bedroom of
old Mme. Burgoyne, his cousin; she also was gone. He went to a little
outhouse and called.
For reply there was a scratching at the door. He opened it, and a dog
leaped out and upon him. With a fierce fondness he snatched at the dog's
collar, and drew the shaggy head to his knee; then as suddenly shoved him
away with a smothered oath, and going into the house, shut the door. He
sat down in a chair in the middle of the room, and scarcely stirred for
half an-hour. At last, with a passionate jerk of the head, he got to his
feet, looking about the room in a half-distracted way. Outside, the dog
kept running round and round the house, silent, watchful, waiting for the
door to open.
As time went by, Luc became quieter, but the look of his face was more
desolate. At last he almost ran to the door, threw it open, and called.
The dog sprang into the room, went straight to the fireplace, lay down,
and with tongue lolling and body panting looked at Pomfrette with
blinking, uncomprehending eyes.
Pomfrette went to a cupboard, brought back a bone well covered with meat,
and gave it to the dog, which snatched it and began gnawing it, now and
again stopping to look up at his master, as one might look at a mountain
moving, be aware of something singular, yet not grasp the significance of
the phenomenon. At last, worn out, Pomfrette threw himself on his bed,
and fell into a sound sleep. When he awoke, it was far into the morning.
He lighted a fire in the kitchen, got a "spider," fried himself a piece
of pork, and made some tea. There was no milk in the cupboard; so he
took a pitcher and walked down the road a few rods to the next house,
where lived the village milkman. He knocked, and the door was opened by
the milkman's wife. A frightened look came upon her when she saw who it
was.
"Non, non!" she said, and shut the door in his face. He stared blankly
at the door for a moment, then turned round and stood looking down into
the road, with the pitcher in his hand. The milkman's little boy,
Maxime, came running round the corner of the house. "Maxime," he said
involuntarily and half-eagerly, for he and the lad had been great
friends.
Maxime's face brightened, then became clouded; he stood still an instant,
and presently, turning round and looking at Pomfrette askance, ran away
behind the house, saying: "Non, non!"
Pomfrette drew his rough knuckles across his forehead in a dazed way;
then, as the significance of the thing came home to him, he broke out
with a fierce oath, and strode away down the yard and into the road. On
the way to his house he met Duclosse the mealman and Garotte the lime-
burner. He wondered what they would do. He could see the fat, wheezy
Duclosse hesitate, but the arid, alert Garotte had determination in every
motion and look. They came nearer; they were about to pass; there was no
sign.
Pomfrette stopped short. "Good-day, lime-burner; good-day, Duclosse," he
said, looking straight at them.
Garotte made no reply, but walked straight on. Pomfrette stepped swiftly
in front of the mealman. There was fury in his face-fury and danger; his
hair was disordered, his eyes afire.
"Good-day, mealman," he said, and waited. "Duclosse," called Garotte
warningly, "remember!" Duclosse's knees shook, and his face became
mottled like a piece of soap; he pushed his fingers into his shirt and
touched the Agnus Dei that he carried there. That and Garotte's words
gave him courage. He scarcely knew what he said, but it had meaning.
"Good-bye-leper," he answered.
Pomfrette's arm flew out to throw the pitcher at the mealman's head, but
Duclosse, with a grunt of terror, flung up in front of his face the small
bag of meal that he carried, the contents pouring over his waistcoat from
a loose corner. The picture was so ludicrous that Pomfrette laughed with
a devilish humour, and flinging the pitcher at the bag, he walked away
towards his own house. Duclosse, pale and frightened, stepped from among
the fragments of crockery, and with backward glances towards Pomfrette
joined his comrade.
"Lime-burner," he said, sitting down on the bag of meal, and mechanically
twisting tight the loose, leaking corner, "the devil's in that leper."
"He was a good enough fellow once," answered Garotte, watching Pomfrette.
"I drank with him at five o'clock yesterday," said Duclosse
philosophically. "He was fit for any company then; now he's fit for
none."
Garotte looked wise. "Mealman," said he, "it takes years to make folks
love you; you can make them hate you in an hour. La! La! it's easier
to hate than to love. Come along, m'sieu' dusty-belly."
Pomfrette's life in Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a
day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to
him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to
buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer's flighty wife called
for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had to
bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and
gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last,
when he needed a new suit--so torn had his others become at woodchopping
and many kinds of work--he went to the village tailor, and was promptly
told that nothing but Luc Pomfrette's grave-clothes would be cut and made
in that house.
When he walked down to the Four Corners the street emptied at once, and
the lonely man with the tinkling bell of honour at his knee felt the
whole world falling away from sight and touch and sound of him. Once
when he went into the Louis Quinze every man present stole away in
silence, and the landlord himself, without a word, turned and left the
bar. At that, with a hoarse laugh, Pomfrette poured out a glass of
brandy, drank it off, and left a shilling on the counter. The next
morning he found the shilling, wrapped in a piece of paper, just inside
his door; it had been pushed underneath. On the paper was written: "It
is cursed." Presently his dog died, and the day afterwards he suddenly
disappeared from Pontiac, and wandered on to Ste. Gabrielle, Ribeaux,
and Ville Bambord. But his shame had gone before him, and people shunned
him everywhere, even the roughest. No one who knew him would shelter
him. He slept in barns and in the woods until the winter came and snow
lay thick upon the ground. Thin and haggard, and with nothing left of
his old self but his deep brown eyes and curling hair, and his unhappy
name and fame, he turned back again to Pontiac. His spirit was sullen
and hard, his heart closed against repentance. Had not the Church and
Pontiac and the world punished him beyond his deserts for a moment's
madness brought on by a great shock!