THE BELLS OF PONT DU SABLE

The big yellow car came ripping down the road a clean hard ribbon of a road skirting the tawny marsh that lay this sparkling August morning under a glaze of turquoise blue water at high tide.

With a devilish wail from its siren, the yellow car whizzed past my house abandoned by the marsh. I was just in time, as I raised my head above the rambling wall of my courtyard, to catch sight of my good friend the cure on the back seat, holding on tight to his saucer-like hat. In the same rapid glance I saw the fluttering ends of a bottle-green veil, in front of the cure’s nose and knew Germaine was driving.

“Lucky cure!” I said to myself, as I returned to my half-finished sketch, “carried off again to luncheon by one of the dearest of little women.”

No wonder during his lonely winters, when every villa or chateau of every friend of his for miles around is closed, and my vagabond village of Pont du Sable rarely sees a Parisian, the cure longs for midsummer. It is his gayest season, since hardly a day passes but some friend kidnaps him from his presbytery that lies snug and silent back of the crumbling wall which hides both his house and his wild garden from the gaze of the passer-by.

He is the kind of cure whom it is a joy to invite this straight, strong cure, who is French to the backbone; with his devil-may-care geniality, his irresistible smile of a comedian, his quick wit of an Irishman, and his heart of gold.

To-day Germaine had captured him and was speeding him away to a jolly luncheon of friends at her villa, some twenty kilometres below Pont du Sable Germaine with her trim, lithe figure and merry brown eyes, eyes that can become in a flash as calm and serious as the cure’s, and in turn with her moods (for Germaine is a pretty collection of moods) gleam with the impulsive devilry of a gamine; Germaine, who teases an old vagabond painter like myself, by daubing a purple moon in the middle of my morning sketch, adds a dab on my nose when I protest, and the next instant embraces me, and begs my forgiveness.

I cannot conceive of anyone not forgiving Germaine, beneath whose firm and delicate beauty lies her warm heart, as golden in quality as the cure’s.

Ah! It is gay enough in midsummer with Germaine and such other good Bohemians as Alice de Breville, Tanrade, and his reverence to cheer my house abandoned by the marsh.

I heard the yellow car tearing back to Pont du Sable late that night. It slowed down as it neared my walled domain, and with a wrenching grunt stopped in front of my gate. The next instant the door of my den opened and in rushed the cure.

“All of us to luncheon to-morrow at The Three Wolves!” he cried, flinging his hat on the floor; then bending, with a grin of satisfaction over the lamp chimney, he kindled the end of a fat cigarette he had rolled in the dark. His eyes were snapping, while the corners of his humorous mouth twitched in a satisfied smile. He strode up and down the room for some moments, his hands clasped behind him, his strong, sun-tanned face beaming in the glow of the shaded lamplight, while he listened to my delight over the pleasant news he had brought.

“Ah! They are good to me, these children of mine,” he declared with enthusiasm. “Germaine tells me there is a surprise in store for me and that I am not to know until to-morrow, at luncheon. Beyond that, she would tell me nothing, the little minx, except that I managed to make her confess that Alice was in the secret.”

He glanced at his watch, “Ah!” he ejaculated, “I must be getting to bed; you, too, my old one, for we must get an early start in the morning, if we are to reach The Three Wolves by noon.” He recovered his hat from the floor, straightened up, brushed the cigarette ashes from the breast of his long black soutane, shiny from wear, and held out his strong hand.

“Sleep well,” he counselled, “for to-morrow we shall be en fête.”

Then he swung open my door and passed out into the night, whistling as he crossed my courtyard a cafe chantant air that Germaine had taught him.

A moment later, the siren of the yellow car sent forth its warning wail, and he was speeding back to his presbytery under the guidance of Germaine’s chauffeur.

The cure was raking out the oysters; he stood on the sandy rim of a pool of clear sea-water that lay under the noonday sun like a liquid emerald. As Monsieur le Cure plunged in his long rake and drew it back heavy with those excellent bivalves for which the restaurant at The Three Wolves has long been famous, his tall black figure, silhouetted against the distant sea and sky, reminded me of some great sea-crow fishing for its breakfast.

To the right of him crouched the restaurant, a low wooden structure, with its back to the breakers. It has the appearance of being cast there at high tide, its zigzag line of tiled roofs drying in the air and sun, like the scaled shell of some stranded monster of the sea. There is a cavernous old kitchen within, resplendent in shining copper a busy kitchen to-day, sizzling in good things and pungent with the aroma of two tender young chickens, basting on a spit, a jolly old kitchen, far more enticing than the dingy long dining-room adjoining it, whose walls are frescoed in panels representing bottle-green lobsters, gaping succulent clams, and ferocious crabs sidling away indignantly from nets held daintily by fine ladies and their gallants, in costumes that were in vogue before the revolution. Even when it pours, this cheerless old dining-room at The Three Wolves is deserted, since there are half a score of far cosier little round pavilions for lovers and intimate friends, built over the oyster pools.

Beyond them, hard by the desolate beach, lie the rocks known as The Three Wolves. In calm weather the surf smashes over their glistening backs at low water, as it happened to be to-day, the seethe of the tide scurried about their dripping bellies green with hairy sea-weed.

Now and then came cheery ripples of laughter from our little pavilion, where Germaine and Alice de Breville were arranging a mass of scarlet nasturtiums, twining their green leaves and tendrils amongst the plates of hors d’oeuvres and among the dust-caked bottles of Chablis and Burgundy Alice, whose dark hair and olive skin are in strong contrast to Germaine’s saucy beauty.

They had banished Tanrade, who had offered his clumsy help and spilled the sardines. He had climbed on the roof and dropped pebbles down on them through the cracks and had later begged forgiveness through the key-hole. Now he was yelling like an Indian, this celebrated composer of ballets, as he swung a little peasant maid of ten in a creaky swing beyond the pool a dear little maid with eyes as dark as Alice’s, who screamed from sheer delight, and insisted on that good fellow playing all the games that lay about them, from tonneau to bilboquet.

Together, the cure and I carried the basket, now plentifully filled with oysters back to the kitchen, while Tanrade was hailed from the pavilion, much to the little maid’s despair.

“Depechez-vous!” cried Alice, who had straightway embraced her exiled Tanrade on his return and was now waving a summons to the cure and myself.

“Bon,” shouted back the cure. “Allons, mes enfants, a table and the one who has no appetite shall be cast into the sea by the heels,” added his reverence.

What a breakfast followed! Such a rushing of little maids back and forth from the jolly kitchen with the great platters of oysters. What a sole smothered in a mussel sauce! What a lobster, scarlet as the cap of a cardinal and garnished with crisp romaine! and the chickens! and the mutton! and the souffle of potatoes, and the salad of shrimps Mon Dieu! What a luncheon, “sprayed,” as the French say, with that rare old Chablis and mellow Burgundy! And what laughter and camaraderie went with it from the very beginning, for to be at table with friends in France is to be en fête it is the hour when hearts are warmest and merriest.

Ah, you dear little women! You who know just when to give those who love you a friendly pressure of the hand, or the gift of your lips if needs be, even in the presence of so austere a personage as Monsieur le Cure. You who understand. You who are tender or merry with the mood, or contrary to the verge of exasperation only to caress with the subtle light of your eyes and be forgiven.

It was not until we had reached our coffee and liqueur, that the surprise for the cure was forthcoming. Hardly had the tiny glasses been filled, when the clear tone of the bell ringing from the ancient church of The Three Wolves made us cease our talk to listen.

Alice turned to the cure; it was evidently the moment she had been waiting for.

“Listen,” said Alice softly “how delicious!”

“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 passed 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 mass, 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 nobly 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 parishioner 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!”

He sank his chin in his hands and gazed at me with a look of utter despair.

I regarded him keenly, then I went to the decanter and poured out for him a stiff glass of applejack.

“Drink that,” said I, “and get normal.”

With an impetuous gesture he waved it away.

“No, not now!” he exclaimed, “wait until I tell you all nothing until I tell you.”

“Go on, then,” I returned, “I want to hear all about this wretched business. Go slow and tell it to me from top to bottom. I am not as convinced of the cure’s guilt as you are, old boy. There may be nothing in it more than a pack of village lies; and if there is a vestige of the truth, we may, by putting our heads together, help matters.”

He started to speak, but I held up my hand.

“One thing before you proceed,” I declared with conviction. “I can no more believe the cure is dishonest than Alice or yourself. It is ridiculous to presume so for a moment. I have known the cure too well. He is a prince. He has a heart as big as all outdoors. Look at the good he’s done in this village! There is not a vagabond in it but will tell you he is as right as rain. Ask the people he helps what they think of him, they’ll tell you ‘he’s just the cure for Pont du Sable.’ Voila! That’s what they’ll tell you, and they mean it. All the gossip in the world can’t hurt him. Here,” I cried, forcing the glass into his hand, “get that down you, you maker of ballets, and proceed with the horrible details, but proceed gently, merrily, with the right sort of beat in your heart, for the cure is as much a friend of yours as he is of mine.”

Tanrade shrugged his broad shoulders, and for some moments sipped his glass. At length, he set it down on the broad table at his elbow, and said slowly: “You know how good Alice is, how much she will do for any one she is fond of for a friend, I mean, like the cure. Very well, it is not an easy thing to give a concert in Paris that earns fifteen hundred francs for a cure whom, it is safe to say, no one in the audience, save Germaine, Alice and myself had ever heard of. It was a veritable tour de force to organize. You were not there. I’m glad you were not. It was a dull old concert that would not have amused you much Lassive fell ill at the last moment, Delmar was in a bad humour, and the quartet had played the night before at a ball at the Elysee and were barely awake. Yet in spite of it the theatre was packed; a chic audience, too. Frambord came out with half a column in the Critique des Arts with a pretty compliment to Alice’s executive energy, and added ‘that it was one of the rare soirees of the season.’ He must have been drunk when he wrote it. I played badly I never can play when they gabble. It was as garrulous as a fish market in front. Enfin! It was over and we telegraphed his reverence the result; from a money standpoint it was a ‘succès fou.’”

Tanrade leaned back and for a few seconds gazed at the ceiling of my den.

“Where every penny has gone,” he resumed, with a strained smile, “Dieu sait! There is no bell, not even the sound of one, et voila!”

He turned abruptly and reached for his glass, forgetting he had drained it. A fly was buzzing on its back in the last drop. And then we both smiled grimly, for we were thinking of Monsieur le Cure.

I rang the bell of the presbytery early the next morning, by inserting my jackknife, to spare my fingers, in a loop at the end of a crooked wire which dangles over the rambling wall of the cure’s garden. The door itself is of thick oak, and framed by stones overgrown with lichens a solid old playground for nervous lizards when the sun shines, and a favourite sticking place for snails when it rains. I had to tug hard on the crooked wire before I heard a faint jingle issuing in response from the cure’s cavernous kitchen, whose hooded chimney and stone-paved floor I love to paint.

Now came the klop-klop of a pair of sabots then the creak of a heavy key as it turned over twice in the rusty lock, and his faithful Marie cautiously opened the garden door. I do not know how old Marie is, there is so little left of this good soul to guess by. Her small shrunken body is bent from age and hard work. Her hands are heavy the fingers gnarled and out of proportion to her gaunt thin wrists. She has the wrinkled, leathery face of some kindly gnome. She opened her eyes in a sort of mute appeal as I inquired if Monsieur le Cure was at home.

“Ah! My poor monsieur, his reverence will see no one” she faltered Ah! Mais” she sighed, knowing that I knew the change in her master and the gossip thereof.

“My good Marie,” I said, persuasively patting her bony shoulder, “tell his reverence that I must see him. Old friends as we are

“Bon Dieu, oui!” she exclaimed after another sigh. “Such old friends as you and he I will go and see,” said she, and turned bravely back down the path that led to his door while I waited among the roses.

A few moments later Marie beckoned to me from the kitchen window.

“He will see you,” she whispered, as I crossed the stone floor of the kitchen. “He is in the little room,” and she pointed to a narrow door close by the big chimney, a door provided with old-fashioned little glass panes upon which are glued transparent chromos of wild ducks.

I knocked gently.

“Entrez!” came a tired voice from within.

I turned the knob and entered his den a dingy little box of a room, sunk a step below the level of the kitchen, with a smoke-grimed ceiling and corners littered with dusty books and pamphlets.

He was sitting with his back to me, humped up in a worn arm-chair, before his small stove, just as Tanrade had found him. As I edged around his table past a rack holding his guns, half-hidden under two dilapidated game bags and a bicycle tyre long out of service, he turned his hollow eyes to mine, with a look I shall long remember, and feebly grasped my outstretched hand.

“Come,” said I, “you’re going to get a grip on yourself, mon ami. You’re going to get out of this wretched, unkempt state of melancholia at once. Tanrade has told me much. You know as well as I do, the village is a nest of gossip that they make a mountain out of a molehill; if I were a pirate chief and had captured this vagabond port, I’d have a few of those wagging tongues taken out and keel-hauled in the bay.”

He started as if in pain, and again turned his haggard eyes to mine.

“I don’t believe there’s a word of truth in it,” I declared hotly.

There is,” he returned hoarsely, trembling so his voice faltered “I am a thief.”

He sat bolt-upright in his chair, staring at me like a man who had suddenly become insane. His declaration was so sudden and amazing, that for some moments I knew not what to reply, then a feeling of pity took possession of me. He was still my friend, whatever he had done. I saw his gaze revert to the crucifix hanging between the steel engravings of two venerable saints, over the mantel back of the stove a mantel heaped with old shot bags and empty cartridge shells.

“How the devil did it happen?” I blurted out at length. “You don’t mean to say you stole the money?”

“Spent it,” he replied half inaudibly.

“How spent it? On yourself?”

“No, no! Thank God

“How, then?”

He leaned forward, his head sunk in his hands, his eyes riveted upon mine.

“There is so much dire need of money,” he said, catching his breath between his words. “We are all human all weak in the face of another’s misery. It takes a strong heart, a strong mind, a strong body to resist. There are some temptations too terrible even for a priest. I wish with all my heart that Alice had never given it into my hands.”

I started to speak, but he held up his arms.

“Do not ask me more,” he pleaded “I cannot tell you I am ill and weak my courage is gone.”

“Is there any of the money left?” I ventured quietly, after waiting in vain for him to continue.

“I do not know,” he returned wearily, “most of it has gone over there, beneath the papers, in the little drawer,” he said pointing to the corner; “I kept it there. Yes, there is some left but I have not dared count it.”

Again there ensued a painful silence, while I racked my brain for a scheme that might still save the situation, bad as it looked. In the state he was in, I had not the heart to worry out of him a fuller confession. Most of the fifteen hundred francs was gone, that was plain enough. What he had done with it I could only conjecture. Had he given it to save another I wondered. Some man or woman whose very life and reputation depended upon it? Had he fallen in love hopelessly and past all reasoning? There is no man that some woman cannot make her slave. It was not many years ago, that a far more saintly priest than he eloped to Belgium with a pretty seamstress of Les Fosses. Then I thought of Germaine! that little minx, badly in debt perhaps? No, no, impossible! She was too clever too honest for that.

“Have you seen Alice?” I broke our silence with at length.

He shook his head wearily. “I could not,” he replied, “I know the bitterness she must feel toward me.”

At that moment Marie knocked at the door. As she entered, I saw that her wrinkled face was drawn, as with lowered eyes she regarded a yellow envelope stamped with the seal of the Republique Francaise.

With a trembling hand she laid it beside the cure, and left the room.

The cure started, then he rose nervously to his feet, steadying himself against the table’s edge as he tore open the envelope, and glanced at its contents. With a low moan he sank back in his chair. “Go,” he pleaded huskily, “I wish to be alone I have been summoned before the mayor.”

Never before in the history of the whole country about, had a cure been hauled to account. Pont du Sable was buzzing like a beehive over the affair. Along its single thoroughfare, flanked by the stone houses of the fishermen, the gossips clustered in groups. From what I caught in passing proved to me again that his reverence had more friends than enemies.

It was in the mayor’s kitchen, which serves him as executive chamber as well, that the official investigation took place.

With the exception of the Municipal Council, consisting of the baker, the butcher, the grocer, and two raisers of cattle, none were to be admitted at the mayor’s save Tanrade, myself and Alice de Breville, whose presence the mayor had judged imperative, and who had been summoned from Paris.

Tanrade and I had arrived early the mayor greeting us at the gate of his trim little garden, and ushering us to our chairs in the clean, well-worn kitchen, with as much solemnity as if there had been a death in the house. Here we sat, under the low ceiling of rough beams and waited in a funereal silence, broken only by the slow ticking of the tall clock in the corner. It was working as hard as it could, its brass pendulum swinging lazily toward three o’clock, the hour appointed for the investigation.

Monsieur le Maire to-day was no longer the genial, ruddy old raiser of cattle, who stops me whenever I pass his gate with a hearty welcome. He was all Mayor to-day, clean shaven to the raw edges of his cropped gray side-whiskers with a look of grave importance in his shrewd eyes and a firm setting of his wrinkled upper lip, that indicated the dignity of his office; a fact which was further accentuated by his carefully brushed suit of black, a clean starched collar and the tri-coloured silk sash, with gold tassels, which he is forced to gird his fat paunch with, when he either marries you or sends you to jail. The clock ticked on, its oaken case reflecting the copper light from the line of saucepans hanging beside it on the wall. Presently, the Municipal Council filed in and seated themselves about a centre table, upon which lay in readiness the official seal, pen, ink and paper. Being somewhat ill at ease in his starched shirt, the florid grocer coughed frequently, while the two cattle-raisers in their black blouses, talked in gutteral whispers over a bargain in calves. Through the open window, screened with cool vines, came the faint murmur of the village suddenly it ceased. I rose, and going to the window, looked up the street. The cure was coming down it, striding along as straight as a savage, nodding to those who nodded to him. An old fisherwoman hobbled forth and kissed his hand. Young and old, gamblers of the sea, lifted their caps as he passed.

“The census of opinion is with him,” I whispered to Tanrade, as I regained my chair. “He has his old grit with him, too.”

The next instant, his reverence strode in before us firm, cool, and so thoroughly master of himself that a feeling of intense relief stole over me.

“I have come,” he said, in a clear, even voice, “in answer to your summons, Monsieur le Maire.”

The mayor rose, bowed gravely, waved the cure to a chair opposite the Municipal Council, and continued in silence the closely written contents of two official documents containing the charge. The stopping of an automobile at his gate now caused him to look up significantly. Madame de Breville had arrived. As Alice entered every man in the room rose to his feet. Never had I seen her look lovelier, gowned, as she was, in simple black, her dark hair framing her exquisite features, pale as ivory, her sensitive mouth tense as she pressed Tanrade’s hand nervously, and took her seat beside us. For an instant, I saw her dark eyes flash as she met the steady gaze of the cure’s.

“In the name of the Republique Francaise,” began the mayor in measured tones.

The cure folded his arms, his eyes fixed on the open door.

“Pardon me,” interrupted Alice, “I wish it to be distinctly understood before you begin, Monsieur le Maire, that I am here wholly against my will.”

The cure turned sharply.

“You have summoned me,” continued Alice, “and there was no alternative but to come I know nothing in detail concerning the charge against Monsieur le Cure, nor do I wish to take any part whatever in this unfortunate affair. It is imperative that I return to Paris in time to play to-night, I beg of you that you will let me go at once.”

There was a polite murmur of surprise from the Municipal Council. The cure sprang to his feet.

“Alice, my child!” he cried, “look at me.”

Her eyes met his own, her lips twitching nervously, her breast heaving.

“I wish you to judge me before you go,” he pleaded. “They accuse me of being a thief;” his voice rose suddenly to its full vibrant strength; “they do not know the truth.”

Alice leaned forward, her lips parted.

“God only knows what this winter has been,” declared his reverence “Empty nets always empty nets.”

He struck the table with his clenched fist. “Empty nets!” he cried, “until I could bear it no longer. My children were in dire need; they came to you,” he declared, turning to the mayor, “and you refused them.”

The mayor shrugged his shoulders with a grunt of resentment.

“I gave what I could, while it lasted, from the public fund,” he explained frankly; “there were new roads to be cut.”

“Roads!” shouted the cure. “What are roads in comparison to illness and starvation? They came to me,” he went on, turning to Alice, “little children mothers, ill, with little children and not a sou in the house, and none to be earned fishing. Old men crying for bread for those whom they loved. I grew to hate the very thought of the bells; they seemed to me a needless luxury among so much misery.”

His voice rose until it rang clear in the room.

“I gave it to them,” he cried out. “There in my little drawer lay the power to save those who were near death from sickness, from dirt, from privation!”

Alice’s ringless white hands were clenched in her lap.

“And I saw, as I gave,” continued the cure, “the end of pain and of hunger little by little I gave, hoping somehow to replace it, until I dared give no more.”

He paused, and drew forth from the breast of his soutane a small cotton sack that had once held his gun wads. “Here is what is left, gentlemen,” said he, facing the Municipal Council; “I have counted it at last, four hundred and eighty francs, sixty-five centimes.”

There were tears now in Alice’s eyes; dark eyes that followed the cure’s with a look of tenderness and pain. The mayor sat breathing irritably. As for the Municipal Council, it was evident to Tanrade and myself, that not one of these plain, red-eared citizens was eager to send a priest to jail it was their custom occasionally to go to mass.

“Marianne’s illness,” continued the cure, “was an important item. You seemed to consider her case of typhoid as a malady that would cure itself if let alone. Marianne needed care, serious care, strong as she was. The girl, Yvonne, she saved from drowning last year, and her baby, she still shelters among her own children in her hut. They, too, had to be fed; for Marianne was helpless to care for them. There was the little boy, too, of the Gavons left alone, with a case of measles well developed when I found him, on the draughty floor of a loft; the mother and father had been drunk together for three days at Bar la Rose. And there were others the Mere Gailliard, who would have been sold out for her rent, and poor old Varnet, the fisherman; he had no home, no money, no friends; he is eighty-four years old. Most of the winter he slept in a hedge under a cast-off sail. I got him a better roof and something for his stomach, Monsieur le Maire.”

He paused again, and drew out a folded paper from his pocket. “Here is a list of all I can remember I have given to, and the amounts as near as I can recall them,” he declared simply. Again he turned to Alice. “It is to you, dear friend, I have come to confess,” he continued; “as for you, gentlemen, my very life, the church I love, all that this village means to me, lies in your hands; I do not beg your mercy. I have sinned and I shall take the consequences all I ask you to do is to judge fairly the error of my ways.” Monsieur le Cure took his seat.

“It is for you, Madame de Breville, to decide,” said the mayor, after some moments conference with the Council, “since the amount in question was given by your hand.”

Alice rose softly she slipped past the Municipal Council of Pont du Sable, until she stood looking up into the cure’s eyes; then her arms went about his strong neck and she kissed him as tenderly as a sister.

“Child!” I heard him murmur.

“We shall give another concert,” she whispered in his ear.