Part 28 (1/2)
”It is the bell of Ste. Marie,” returned the cure.
Even Tanrade was silent now, for his reverence had made the sign of the cross. As his fingers moved I saw a peculiar look come into his eyes--a look of mingled disappointment and resignation.
Again Alice spoke: ”Your cracked bell at Pont du Sable has not long to ring, my friend,” she said very tenderly.
”One must be content, my child, with what one has,” replied the cure.
Alice leaned towards him and whispered something in his ear, Germaine smiling the while.
I saw his reverence give a little start of surprise.
”No, no,” he protested half aloud. ”Not that; it is too much to ask of you with all your rehearsals at the Bouffes Parisiennes coming.”
”_Parbleu!_” exclaimed Alice, ”it will not be so very difficult--I shall accomplish it, you shall see what a concert we shall give--we shall make a lot of money; every one will be there. It has the voice of a frog, your bell. _Dieu!_ What a fuss it makes over its crack. You shall have a new one--two new ones, _mon ami_, even if we have to make bigger the belfry of your little gray church to hang them.”
The cure grew quite red. I saw for an instant his eyes fill with tears, then with a benign smile, he laid his hand firmly over Alice's and lifting the tips of her fingers, kissed them twice in gratefulness.
He was very happy. He was happy all the way back in Germaine's yellow car to Pont du Sable. Happy when he thrust his heavy key in the rusty lock of the small door that let him into his silent garden, cool under the stars, and sweet with the scent of roses.
A long winter has pa.s.sed since that memorable luncheon at The Three Wolves. Our little pavilion over the emerald pool will never see us reunited, I fear. A cloud has fallen over my good friend the cure, a cloud so unbelievable, and yet so dense, if it be true, and so filled with ominous mutterings of thunder and lightning, crime, defalcation, banishment, and the like, that I go about my work dazed at the rumoured situation.
They tell me the cure still says ma.s.s, and when it is over, regains the presbytery by way of the back lane skirting the marsh. I am also told that he rarely even ventures into his garden, but spends most of his days and half of his nights alone in his den with the door locked, and strict orders to his faithful old servant Marie, who adores him, that he will see no one who calls.
For days I have not laid eyes on him--he who kept his napkin tied in a sailor's knot in my cupboard and came to breakfast, luncheon, or dinner when he pleased, waking up my house abandoned by the marsh with his good humour, joking with Suzette, my little maid-of-all-work, until her fair cheeks grew the rosier, and rousing me out of the blues with his quick wit and his hearty laugh.
It seems impossible to me that he is guilty of what he is accused of, yet the facts seem undeniable.
Only the good go wrong, is it not so? The bad have become so commonplace, they do not attract our attention.
Now the ways of the cure were always just. I have never known him to do a mean thing in his life, far less a dishonest one. I have known him to give the last few sous he possessed to a hungry fisherwoman who needed bread for herself and her brood of children and content himself with what was left among the few remaining vegetables in his garden. There are days, too, when he is forced to live frugally upon a peasant soup and a pear for dinner, and there have been occasions to my knowledge, when the soup had to be omitted and his menu reduced to a novel, a cigarette and the pear.
It is a serious matter, the separation of the state from the church in France, since it has left the priest with the munificent salary of four hundred francs a year, out of which he must pay his rent and give to the poor.
Once we dined n.o.bly together upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window, while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the stock of his duck gun.
Monsieur le Cure is ingenious when it comes to hard times.
Again, there are days when he is in luck, when some generous paris.h.i.+oner has had the forethought to restock his larder. Upon such bountiful occasions he insists on Tanrade and myself dining with him at the presbytery as long as these luxuries last, refusing to dine with either of us until there is no more left of his own to give.
The last time I saw him, I had noticed a marked change in his reverence.
He was moody and unshaven, and his saucerlike hat was as dusty and spotted as his frayed soutane. Only now and then he gave out flashes of his old geniality and even they seemed forced. I was amazed at the change in him, and yet, when I consider all I have heard since, I do not wonder much at his appearance.
Tanrade tells me (and he evidently believes it) that some fifteen hundred francs, raised by Alice's concert and paid over to the cure to purchase the bells for his little gray church at Pont du Sable, have disappeared and that his reverence refuses to give any account.
Despite his hearty Bohemian spirit, Tanrade, like most musicians, is a dreamer and as ready as a child to believe anything and anybody. Being a master of the pianoforte and a composer of rare talent, he can hardly be called sane. And yet, though I have seen him enthusiastic, misled, moved to tears over nothing, indignant over an imaginary insult, or ready to forgive any one who could be fool enough to be his enemy, I have never known him so thoroughly upset or so positive in his convictions as when the other morning, as I sat loafing before my fire, he entered my den.
”It is incredible, _mon vieux_, incredible!” he gasped, throwing himself disconsolately into my arm-chair. ”I have just been to the presbytery.
Not only does he refuse to give an account of the money, but he declines to offer any explanation beyond the one that he ”spent it.” Moreover, he sits hunched up before his stove in his little room off the kitchen, chewing the end of a cigarette. Why, he didn't even ask me to have a drink--the cure, _mon ami_--our cure--_Mon Dieu_, what a mess! Ah, _mon Dieu!_”