White and malicious faces peered through the doorway. There was an ugly
murmur coming up the staircase. Many habitants had heard Louis Trudel’s
last words, and had passed them on with vehement exaggeration.
Chaudiere had been touched in its most superstitious corner.
Protestantism was a sin, but atheism was a crime against humanity. The
Protestant might be the victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the
deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers. An atheist in
their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed--no one could tell when
and where he would sting. Rough misdemeanours among them had been many,
there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of
infidelity were more shameful than crimes the eye could see.
To the minds of these excited people the tailor-man’s death was due to
the infidel before them. They were ready to do all that might become
a Catholic intent to avenge the profaned honour of the Church and the
faith. Bodily harm was the natural form for their passion to take.
“Bring him out--let us have him!” they cried with fierce gestures, to
which Rosalie Evanturel turned a pained, indignant face.
As the Curb stood with the paper in his hand, his face set and bitter,
Rosalie made a step forward. She meant to tell the truth about Louis
Trudel, and show how good this man was, who stood charged with an
imaginary crime. But she met the warning eye of the man himself, calm
and resolute, she saw the suffering in the face, endured with what
composure! and she felt instantly that she must obey him, and that--who
could tell?--his plan might be the best in the end. She looked at the
Cure anxiously. What would he say and do? In the Cure’s heart and mind a
great struggle was going on. All his inherent prejudice, the hereditary
predisposition of centuries, the ingrain hatred of atheism, were alive
in him, hardening his mind against the man before him. His first
impulse was to let Charley take his fate at the hands of the people
of Chaudiere, whatever it might be. But as he looked at the man, as he
recalled their first meeting, and remembered the simple, quiet life he
had lived among them--charitable, and unselfish--the barriers of creed
and habit fell down, and tears unbidden rushed into his eyes.
The Cure had, all at once, the one great inspiration of his life--its
one beautiful and supreme imagining. For thus he reasoned swiftly:
Here he was, a priest who had shepherded a flock of the faithful passed
on to him by another priest before him, who again had received them from
a guardian of the fold--a family of faithful Catholics whose thoughts
never strayed into forbidden realms. He had done no more than keep them
faithful and prevent them from wandering--counselling, admonishing,
baptising, and burying, giving in marriage and blessing, sending them on
their last great journey with the cachet of Holy Church upon them. But
never once, never in all his life, had he brought a lost soul into
the fold. If he died to-night, he could not say to St. Peter, when he
arrived at Heaven’s gate: “See, I have saved a soul!” Before the Throne
he could not say to Him who cried: “Go ye into all the world and preach
the gospel to every creature”--he could not say: “Lord, by Thy grace
I found this soul in the wilderness, in the dark and the loneliness,
having no God to worship, denial and rebellion in his heart; and behold,
I took him to my breast, and taught him in Thy name, and led him home to
Thy haven, the Church!”
Thus it was that the Cure dreamed a dream. He would set his life to
saving this lost soul. He would rescue him from the outer darkness.
His face suffused, he handed the paper in his hand back to the man
who had written the words upon it. Then he lifted his hand against the
people at the door and the loud murmuring behind them.
“Peace--peace!” he said, as though from the altar. “Leave this room of
death, I command you. Go at once to your homes. This man”--he pointed to
Charley--“is my friend. Who seeks to harm him, would harm me. Go hence
and pray. Pray for yourselves, pray for him, and for me; and pray for
the troubled soul of Louis Trudel. Go in peace.”
Soon afterwards the house was empty, save for the Cure, Charley, old
Margot, and the Notary.
That night Charley sat in the tailor’s bedroom, rigid and calm, though
racked with pain, and watched the candles flickering beside the dead
body. He was thinking of the Cure’s last words to the people.
“I wonder--I wonder,” he said, and through his eyeglass he stared at the
crucifix that threw a shadow on the dead man’s face. Morning found him
there. As dawn crept in he rose to his feet. “Whither now?” he said,
like one in a dream.