|IT was Valerie who held the lamp; and beside her in the doorway stood
a gentle-faced, silverhaired, slim little old lady--and the latter was
another Valerie, only a Valerie whom the years in their passing had
touched in a gentle, kindly way, as though the whitening hair and the
age creeping upon her were but a crowning. And Raymond, turning to
mount the stoop of the _presbytère_, as some of the villagers lifted the
wounded priest from the wagon, drew his breath in sharply, and for an
instant faltered in his step. It was as though, framed there in the
doorway, those two forms of the women, those two faces that seemed to
radiate an innate sanctity, were like guardian angels to bar the way
against a hideous and sacrilegious invasion of some holy thing within.
And Valerie's eyes, those great, deep, dark eyes burned into him.
And her face, that he saw now for the first time plainly, was very
beautiful, and with a beauty that was not of feature alone--for her
expression seemed to write a sort of creed upon her face, a creed that
frankly mirrored faith in all around her, a faith that, never having
been startled, or dismayed, or disillusioned, and knowing no things for
evil, accepted all things for good.
And Raymond's step faltered. It seemed as though he had never seen a
woman's face like that--that it was holding him now in a thrall that
robbed his surroundings momentarily of their danger and their peril.
And then, the next instant, that voice within him was speaking again.
“You fool!” it whispered fiercely. “What are you doing! If you want your
life, play for it! Look around you! A false move, a rational word from
the lips of that limp thing they are carrying there behind you, and
these people, who believe where you mock, who would kneel if you but
lifted your hand in sign of benediction, would turn upon you with the
merciless fury of wild beasts! You fool! You fool! Do you like the feel
of hemp, as it tightens around your neck!”
And then Raymond lifted his head, and his eyes, and with measured pace
walked forward up the steps to where the two women stood.
Valérie's introduction was only another warning to him to be upon his
guard--she seemed to imply that he naturally knew her mother's name.
“Father Aubert, this is my mother,” she said.
With a sort of old-world grace, the elder woman bowed.
“Ah, Monsieur le Curé,” she said quickly, “what a terrible thing to have
happened! Valérie has just told me. And what a welcome to the parish for
you! Not even a room, with that _pauvre_ unfortunate, _misérable_
and murderer though he is, and----”
“But it is a welcome of the heart, I can see that,” Raymond interposed,
and smiled gravely, and took both of the old lady's hands in his own.
“And that is worth far more than the room, which, in any case, I
shall hardly need to-night. It is you, not I, who should have cause
to grumble, for, to my own unexpected arrival, I bring you the added
trouble and inconvenience of this very badly wounded and, I fear, dying
man.”
“But--that!” she exclaimed simply. “But Monsieur le Curé would never
have thought of doing otherwise! Valérie meant only kindness, but she
should not have made any other suggestion. It is for nothing else, if
not this, the _presbytère! Le pauvre misérable_”--she crossed herself
reverently--“even if he has blood that thought of doing otherwise!
Valérie meant only kindness, but she should not have made any other
suggestion. It is for nothing else, if not this, the _presbytère! Le
pauvre misérable_”--she crossed herself reverently--“even if he has
blood that is not his own upon him.”
They were coming up the steps, carrying the wounded priest.
“This way!” said the little old lady softly. “Valérie, dear, hold your
lamp so that they can see. Ah, _le pauvre misérable_; ah, Monsieur le
Curé!”
The girl leading, they passed down a short hallway, entered a bedroom at
the rear of the house, and Valérie set the lamp upon the table.
Raymond motioned to the men to lay the priest upon the bed. He glanced
quietly about him, as he moved to the priest's side. He must get these
people away--there were reasons why he should be alone. Alone! His brain
was like some horrible, swirling vortex. Why alone? For what reasons?
Not that hellish purpose that had flashed so insidiously upon him
out there on the ride down to the _presbytère!_ Not that! Strange how
outwardly calm, how deadly calm, how composed and self-possessed he was,
when such a thought had even for an instant's space found lodgment in
his soul. It was well that he was calm, he would need to be calm--he
was doing what that inner monitor had told him to do--he was playing the
game--he was playing for his life. Well, he had only to dismiss these
men now, who hung so curiously awe-struck about the bed, and then get
rid of the women--no, they had gone now; Valérie, with her beautiful
face, and those great dark eyes; and the mother, whose gray hair did
not seem to bring age with it at all, and--no, they were back again--no,
they were not--those were not women's steps entering the room.
He had been making pretence at loosening the priest's collar, and he
looked up now. The trunk! He had forgotten all about the trunk. The
newcomers were two men carrying the trunk. They set it down against the
wall near the door. It was a little more than probable that they had
seized the opportunity afforded by the trunk to see what was going on
in the room. They would be favoured amongst their fellows without! They,
too, hats in hand, stared, curious and awe-struck, toward the bed.
“Thank you, all of you,” Raymond heard himself saying in a low tone.
“But go now, my friends, go quietly; madame and her daughter will give
me any further assistance that may be needed.”
They filed obediently from the room--on tiptoe--their coarse, heavy
boots squeaking the more loudly therefor. Raymond's hands sought the
priest's collar again, to loosen it this time with a definite object in
view. He had changed only his outer garments with the other. He dared
not have the priest undressed until he had made sure that there were no
tell-tale marks on the underclothing; a laundry number, perhaps, that
the police would pounce instantly upon. He found himself experiencing
a sort of facetious soul-grin--detectives always laid great stress upon
laundry marks!
Again he was interrupted. With the collar in his hand, his own collar,
that he had removed now from the priest's neck, he turned to see Valérie
and her mother entering the room. They were very capable, those two--too
capable! They were carrying basins of water, and cloths that were
obviously intended for bandages. He had not meant to use any bandages,
he had meant to--what?
He forced a grave smile of approval to his lips, and nodded his head.
The elder woman glanced about her a little in surprise.
“Oh, are the men gone!” she exclaimed. “_Tiens!_ The stupids! But I will
call one of them back, and he will help you undress _le pauvre_, Father
Aubert.”
It was only an instant before Raymond answered; but it seemed, before he
did so, that he had been listening in a kind of panic for long minutes
dragged out interminably to that inner voice that kept telling him to
play the game, play the game, and that only fools lost their heads at
insignificant little unexpected denouements. She was only suggesting
that the man should be undressed; whereas the man must under no
circumstances be undressed until--until----
“I think perhaps we had better not attempt it in his condition until
the doctor arrives, madame,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, as though his
words were weighted with deliberation. “It might do far more harm than
good. For the present, I think it would be better simply to loosen his
clothing, and make him as comfortable as possible in that way.”
“Yes; I think so, too,” said Valérie--she had moved a little table to
the bedside, and was arranging the basins of water and the cloths upon
it.
“Of course!” agreed the little old lady simply. “Monsieur le Curé knows
best.”
“Yes,” said Valérie, speaking in hushed tones, as she cast an anxious
look at the white, blood-stained face upon the bed, “and I think it is
a mercy that Father Aubert knows something about medicine, for
otherwise the doctor might be too late. I will help you, Monsieur le
Curé--everything is ready.”
He knew nothing about medicine--there was nothing he knew less about!
What fiend had prompted him to make such a claim!
“I am afraid, mademoiselle,” he said soberly, “that my knowledge is far
too inadequate for such a case as this.”
“We will be able to do something at least, father”--there was a brave,
troubled smile in her eyes as she lifted them for an instant to his; and
then, bending forward, with deft fingers she removed the torn piece of
shirt from the wounded man's head.
And then, between them, while the mother watched and wrung out the
cloths, they dressed the wound, a ghastly, unsightly thing across the
side of the man's skull--only it was Valerie, not he, who was efficient.
And strangely, as once before, but a little while before, when out there
in front of the house, it was Valerie, and not the man, and not the
wound, and not the peril in which he stood that was dominant, swaying
him for the moment. There was a wondrous tenderness in her hands as
she worked with the bandages, and sometimes her hands touched his; and
sometimes, close together, as they leaned over the bed together, her
hair, dark, luxuriant, brushed his cheek; and the low-collared blouse
disclosed a bare and perfect throat that was white like ivory; and the
half parted lips were tender like the touch of her fingers; and in her
face at sight of the gruesome wound, bringing an added whiteness,
was dismay, and struggling with dismay was a wistful earnestness and
resolution that was born of her woman's sympathy; and she seemed to
steal upon and pervade his senses as though she were some dream-created
vision, for she was not reality at all since his subconsciousness told
him that in actual reality no one existed at all except that
moaning thing upon the bed--that moaning thing upon the bed and
himself--himself, who seemed to be swinging by a precarious hold, from
which even then his fingers were slipping away, over some bottomless
abyss that yawned below him. “Valérie! Valérie!” He was repeating her
name to himself, as though calling to her for aid from the edge of that
black gulf, and----
“Fool!” jeered that inner voice. “Have you never seen a pretty girl
before? She'd be the first to turn upon you, if she knew!”
“You lie!” retorted another self.
“Where's Three-Ace Artie gone?” inquired the voice with cold contempt.
Raymond straightened up. Valérie, turning from the bed, gathered the
basins and soiled cloths together, and moved quietly from the room.
“Will he live, father?”--it was the little gray-haired woman, Valérie's
mother, Valérie's older self, who was looking up into his face so
anxiously, whose lips quivered a little as she spoke.
Would the man _live!_ A devil's laugh seemed suddenly to possess
Raymond's soul. They would be alone together, that gasping, white-faced
thing on the bed, and himself; they would be alone together before
the doctor came--he would see to that. There had been interruption,
confusion... his brain itself was confusion... extraneous thoughts had
intervened... but they would be _alone_ presently. And--great God!--what
hellish mockery!--she asked _him_ if this man would _live!_
“I am afraid”--he was not looking at her; his hand, clutching at the
skirt of the _soutane_ he wore, closed and tightened and clenched--“I am
afraid he will not live.”
“Ah, _le pauvre!_” she whispered, and her eyes filled with tears. “Ah,
Monsieur le Curé, I do not know these things so well as you. It is true
that he is a very guilty man, but is not God very good and tender and
full of compassion, father? Oh, I should not dare to say these things,
for it is you who know what is right and best”--she had caught his
sleeve, and was leading him across the room. “And Mother Church,
Monsieur le Curé, is very merciful and very tender and very
compassionate too--and, oh--and, oh--can there not be mercy and love
even for such as he--must he lose his soul too, as well as his life?”
Raymond, in a blind, wondering way, stared at her. The tears
were streaming down her cheeks now. They had halted before a low,
old-fashioned cupboard, an _armoire_ much like the _armoire_ in the old
hag's house, and now she opened the doors in the lower portion, and took
out a worn and rusty black leather bag, and set it upon the top of the
_armoire_.
“It is only to show you where it is, father, if--if it might be so--even
for him--the Sacrament”--and, turning, she crossed the room, and meeting
Valérie upon the threshold drew the girl away with her, and closed the
door softly.
It was a bag such as the parish priests carried with them on their
visits to the sick and dying. Raymond eyed it sullenly. The Sacrament!
“What have I to do with that!” he snarled beneath his breath.
“Are you not a priest of God?”
He whirled like a flash, startled, sweeping his glances around the room.
And then he laughed in smothered, savage relief. It was only that voice
within that chose a cursed mockery this time to put him upon his guard.
He was staring now at the sprawled form on the bed, at a red stain that
was already creeping through the fresh bandages. His face grew hard and
set; a flush came and died away, leaving it an ashen gray.
And then he stepped to the door--and listened--and locked it.