The Lane That Had No Turning, Complete - Gilbert Parker
"But at las' when he give a hunder' dollars to the Church, the Cure say
yes. All happy that way for while. P'tite Louison, she get ready
quick-sapre, what fine things had she--and it is all to be done in a
week, while the theatre in New York wait for M'sieu'. He sit there with
us, and play on the fiddle, and sing songs, and act plays, and help
Florian in the barn, and Octave to mend the fence, and the Cure to fix
the grape-vines on his wall. He show me and Emile how to play
sword-sticks; and he pick flowers and fetch them to P'tite Louison, and
teach her how to make an omelette and a salad like the chef of the Louis
Quinze Hotel, so he say. Bagosh, what a good time we have! But first one,
then another, he get a choke-throat when he think that P'tite Louison go
to leave us, and the more we try, the more we are bagosh fools. And that
P'tite Louison, she kiss us hevery one, and say to M'sieu' Hadrian,
'Charles, I love you, but I cannot go.' He laugh at her, and say, 'Voila!
we will take them all with us:' and P'tite Louison she laugh. That night
a thing happen. The Cure come, and he look ver' mad, and he frown and he
say to M'sieu' Hadrian before us all, 'M'sieu', you are married.'
"Sapre! that P'tite Louison get pale like snow, and we all stan' roun'
her close and say to her quick, 'Courage, P'tite Louison!' M'sieu'
Hadrian then look at the priest and say: 'No, M'sieu', I was married ten
years ago; my wife drink and go wrong, and I get divorce. I am free like
the wind.'
"'You are not free,' the Cure say quick. 'Once married, married till
death. The Church cannot marry you again, and I command Louison to give
you up.'
"P'tite Louison stan' like stone. M'sieu' turn to her. 'What shall it be,
Louison?' he say. 'You will come with me?'
"'Kiss me, Charles,' she say, 'and tell me good-bye till--till you are
free.'
"He look like a madman. 'Kiss me once, Charles,' she say, 'and let me
go.'
"And he come to her and kiss her on the lips once, and he say, 'Louison,
come with me. I will never give you up.'
"She draw back to Florian. 'Good-bye, Charles,' she say. 'I will wait as
long as you will. Mother of God, how hard it is to do right!' she say,
and then she turn and leave the room.
"M'sieu' Hadrian, he give a long sigh. 'It was my one chance,' he say.
'Now the devil take it all!' Then he nod and say to the Cure: 'We'll
thrash this out at Judgment Day, M'sieu'. I'll meet you there--you and
the woman that spoiled me.'
"He turn to Florian and the rest of us, and shake hands, and say: 'Take
care of Louison. Thank you. Good-bye.' Then he start towards the door,
but stumble, for he look sick. 'Give me a drink,' he say, and begin to
cough a little--a queer sort of rattle. Florian give him big drink, and
he toss it off-whiff! 'Thank you,' he say, and start again, and we see
him walk away over the hill ver' slow--an' he never come back. But every
year there come from New York a box of flowers, and every year P'tite
Louison send him a 'Merci, Charles, mille fois. Dieu to garde.' It is so
every year for twenty-five year."
"Where is he now?" asked Medallion.
Isidore shook his head, then lifted his eyes religiously. "Waiting for
Judgment Day and P'tite Louison," he answered.
"Dead!" said Medallion.
"How long?"
"Twenty year."
"But the flowers--the flowers?"
"He left word for them to be sent just the same, and the money for it."
Medallion turned and took off his hat reverently, as if a soul were
passing from the world; but it was only P'tite Louison going out into the
garden.
"She thinks him living?" he asked gently as he watched Louison.
"Yes; we have no heart to tell her. And then he wish it so. And the
flowers kep' coming."
"Why did he wish it so?" Isidore mused a while.
"Who can tell? Perhaps a whim. He was a great actor--ah, yes, sublime!"
he said.
Medallion did not reply, but walked slowly down to where P'tite Louison
was picking berries. His hat was still off.
"Let me help you, Mademoiselle," he said softly. And henceforth he was as
foolish as her brothers.
THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR
"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!
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.