II

One bright, sunshiny day of early winter, he trudged through the snow-

banked street of Pontiac back to his home. Men he once knew well, and

had worked with, passed him in a sled on their way to the great shanty in

the backwoods. They halted in their singing for a moment when they saw

him; then, turning their heads from him, dashed off, carolling lustily:

"Ah, ah, Babette,

We go away;

But we will come

Again, Babette,

Again back home,

On Easter Day,

Back home to play

On Easter Day,

Babette! Babette!"

"Babette! Babette!" The words followed him, ringing in his ears long

after the men had become a mere fading point in the white horizon behind

him.

This was not the same world that he had known, not the same Pontiac.

Suddenly he stopped short in the road.

"Curse them! Curse them! Curse them all!" he cried in a cracked,

strange voice. A woman hurrying across the street heard him, and went

the faster, shutting her ears. A little boy stood still and looked at

him in wonder. Everything he saw maddened him. He turned sharp round

and hurried to the Louis Quinze. Throwing open the door, he stepped

inside. Half-a-dozen men were there with the landlord. When they saw

him, they started, confused and dismayed. He stood still for a moment,

looking at them with glowering brows.

"Good-day," he said. "How goes it?"

No one answered. A little apart from the others sat Medallion the

auctioneer. He was a Protestant, and the curse on his baptism uttered by

Pomfrette was not so heinous in his sight. For the other oath, it was

another matter. Still, he was sorry for the man. In any case, it was

not his cue to interfere; and Luc was being punished according to his

bringing up and to the standards familiar to him. Medallion had never

refused to speak to him, but he had done nothing more. There was no

reason why he should provoke the enmity of the parish unnecessarily; and

up to this-point Pomfrette had shifted for himself after a fashion, if a

hard fashion.

With a bitter laugh, Pomfrette turned to the little bar.

"Brandy," he said; "brandy, my Bourienne."

The landlord shrugged his shoulder, and looked the other way.

"Brandy," he repeated. Still there was no sign.

There was a wicked look in his face, from which the landlord shrank back-

shrank so far that he carried himself among the others, and stood there,

half frightened, half dumfounded.

Pomfrette pulled out a greasy dollar-bill from his pocket--the last he

owned in the world--and threw it on the counter. Then he reached over,

caught up a brandy-bottle from the shelf, knocked off the neck with a

knife, and, pouring a tumblerful, drank it off at a gasp.

His head came up, his shoulders straightened out, his eyes snapped fire.

He laughed aloud, a sardonic, wild, coarse laugh, and he shivered once or

twice violently, in spite of the brandy he had drunk.

"You won't speak to me, eh? Won't you? Curse you! Pass me on the other

side--so! Look at me. I am the worst man in the world, eh? Judas is

nothing--no! Ack, what are you, to turn your back on me? Listen to me!

You, there, Muroc, with your charcoal face, who was it walk thirty miles

in the dead of winter to bring a doctor to your wife, eh? She die, but

that is no matter--who was it? It was Luc Pomfrette. You, Alphonse

Durien, who was it drag you out of the bog at the Cote Chaudiere? It was

Luc Pomfrette. You, Jacques Baby, who was it that lied for you to the

Protestant girl at Faribeau? Just Luc Pomfrette. You two, Jean and

Nicolas Mariban, who was it lent you a hunderd dollars when you lose all

your money at cards? Ha, ha, ha! Only that beast Luc Pomfrette! Mother

of Heaven, such a beast is he--eh, Limon Rouge?--such a beast that used

to give your Victorine little silver things, and feed her with bread and

sugar and buttermilk pop. Ah, my dear Limon Rouge, how is it all

different now!"

He raised the bottle and drank long from the ragged neck. When he took

it away from his mouth not much more than half remained in the quart

bottle. Blood was dripping upon his beard from a cut on his lip, and

from there to the ground.

"And you, M'sieu' Bourienne," he cried hoarsely, "do I not remember that

dear M'sieu' Bourienne, when he beg me to leave Pontiac for a little

while that I not give evidence in court against him? Eh bien! you all

walk by me now, as if I was the father of smallpox, and not Luc

Pomfrette--only Luc Pomfrette, who spits at every one of you for a pack

of cowards and hypocrites."

He thrust the bottle inside his coat, went to the door, flung it open

with a bang, and strode out into the street, muttering as he went. As

the landlord came to close the door Medallion said:

"The leper has a memory, my friends." Then he also walked out, and went

to his office depressed, for the face of the man haunted him.

Pomfrette reached his deserted, cheerless house. There was not a stick

of fire-wood in the shed, not a thing to eat or drink in cellar or

cupboard. The door of the shed at the back was open, and the dog-chains

lay covered with frost and half embedded in mud. With a shiver of misery

Pomfrette raised the brandy to his mouth, drank every drop, and threw the

bottle on the floor. Then he went to the front door, opened it, and

stepped outside. His foot slipped, and he tumbled head forward into the

snow. Once or twice he half raised himself, but fell back again, and

presently lay still. The frost caught his ears and iced them; it began

to creep over his cheeks; it made his fingers white, like a leper's.

He would soon have stiffened for ever had not Parpon the dwarf, passing

along the road, seen the open door and the sprawling body, and come and

drawn Pomfrette inside the house. He rubbed the face and hands and ears

of the unconscious man with snow till the whiteness disappeared, and,

taking off the boots, did the same with the toes; after which he drew the

body to a piece of rag carpet beside the stove, threw some blankets over

it, and, hurrying out, cut up some fence rails, and soon had a fire going

in the stove.

Then he trotted out of the house and away to the Little Chemist, who came

passively with him. All that day, and for many days, they fought to save

Pomfrette's life. The Cure came also; but Pomfrette was in fever and

delirium. Yet the good M. Fabre's presence, as it ever did, gave an air

of calm and comfort to the place. Parpon's hands alone cared for the

house; he did all that was to be done; no woman had entered the place

since Pomfrette's cousin, old Mme. Burgoyne, left it on the day of his

shame.

When at last Pomfrette opened his eyes, and saw the Cure standing beside

him, he turned his face to the wall, and to the exhortation addressed to

him he answered nothing. At last the Cure left him, and came no more;

and he bade Parpon do the same as soon as Pomfrette was able to leave his

bed.

But Parpon did as he willed. He had been in Pontiac only a few days

since the painful business in front of the Louis Quinze. Where he had

been and what doing no one asked, for he was mysterious in his movements,

and always uncommunicative, and people did not care to tempt his

inhospitable tongue. When Pomfrette was so far recovered that he might

be left alone, Parpon said to him one evening:

"Pomfrette, you must go to Mass next Sunday."

"I said I wouldn't go till I was carried there, and I mean it--that's

so," was the morose reply.

"What made you curse like that--so damnable?" asked Parpon furtively.

"That's my own business. It doesn't matter to anybody but me."

"And you said the Cure lied--the good M'sieu' Fabre--him like a saint."

"I said he lied, and I'd say it again, and tell the truth."

"But if you went to Mass, and took your penance, and--"

"Yes, I know; they'd forgive me, and I'd get absolution, and they'd all

speak to me again, and it would be, 'Good-day, Luc,' and 'Very good,

Luc,' and 'What a gay heart has Luc, the good fellow!' Ah, I know. They

curse in the heart when the whole world go wrong for them; no one hears.

I curse out loud. I'm not a hypocrite, and no one thinks me fit to live.

Ack, what is the good!"

Parpon did not respond at once. At last, dropping his chin in his hand

and his elbow on his knee, as he squatted on the table, he said:

"But if the girl got sorry--"

For a time there was no sound save the whirring of the fire in the stove

and the hard breathing of the sick man. His eyes were staring hard at

Parpon. At last he said, slowly and fiercely:

"What do you know?"

"What others might know if they had eyes and sense; but they haven't.

What would you do if that Junie come back?"

"I would kill her." His look was murderous.

"Bah, you would kiss her first, just the same!"

"What of that? I would kiss her because--because there is no face like

hers in the world; and I'd kill her for her bad heart."

"What did she do?" Pomfrette's hands clinched.

"What's in my own noddle, and not for any one else," he answered sulkily.

"Tiens, tiens, what a close mouth! What did she do? Who knows? What

you think she do, it's this. You think she pretends to love you, and you

leave all your money with her. She is to buy masses for your father's

soul; she is to pay money to the Cure for the good of the Church; she is

to buy a little here, a little there, for the house you and she are going

to live in, the wedding and the dancing over. Very well. Ah, my

Pomfrette, what is the end you think? She run away with Dicey the

Protestant, and take your money with her. Eh, is that so?"

For answer there came a sob, and then a terrible burst of weeping and

anger and passionate denunciations--against Junie Gauloir, against

Pontiac, against the world.

Parpon held his peace.

The days, weeks, and months went by; and the months stretched to three

years.

In all that time Pomfrette came and went through Pontiac, shunned and

unrepentant. His silent, gloomy endurance was almost an affront to

Pontiac; and if the wiser ones, the Cure, the Avocat, the Little Chemist,

and Medallion, were more sorry than offended, they stood aloof till the

man should in some manner redeem himself, and repent of his horrid

blasphemy. But one person persistently defied Church and people, Cure

and voyageur. Parpon openly and boldly walked with Pomfrette, talked

with him, and occasionally visited his house.

Luc made hard shifts to live. He grew everything that he ate, vegetables

and grains. Parpon showed him how to make his own flour in primitive

fashion, for no miller in any parish near would sell him flour, and he

had no money to buy it, nor would any one who knew him give him work.

And after his return to Pontiac he never asked for it. His mood was

defiant, morbid, stern. His wood he chopped from the common known as

No-Man's Land. His clothes he made himself out of the skins of deer that

he shot; when his powder and shot gave out, he killed the deer with bow

and arrow.