VI
The Church has always held that life is for the living. On Saturday,while half the village of Sainte-Agnes was mourning for Amedee andpreparing the funeral black for his burial on Monday, the otherhalf was busy with white dresses and white veils for the greatconfirmation service to-morrow, when the bishop was to confirm aclass of one hundred boys and girls. Father Duchesne divided histime between the living and the dead. All day Saturday the churchwas a scene of bustling activity, a little hushed by the thoughtof Amedee. The choir were busy rehearsing a mass of Rossini, whichthey had studied and practised for this occasion. The women weretrimming the altar, the boys and girls were bringing flowers.
On Sunday morning the bishop was to drive overland to Sainte-Agnesfrom Hanover, and Emil Bergson had been asked to take the place ofone of Amedee's cousins in the cavalcade of forty French boys whowere to ride across country to meet the bishop's carriage. Atsix o'clock on Sunday morning the boys met at the church. As theystood holding their horses by the bridle, they talked in low tonesof their dead comrade. They kept repeating that Amedee had alwaysbeen a good boy, glancing toward the red brick church which hadplayed so large a part in Amedee's life, had been the scene of hismost serious moments and of his happiest hours. He had played andwrestled and sung and courted under its shadow. Only three weeksago he had proudly carried his baby there to be christened. Theycould not doubt that that invisible arm was still about Amedee; thatthrough the church on earth he had passed to the church triumphant,the goal of the hopes and faith of so many hundred years.
When the word was given to mount, the young men rode at a walk outof the village; but once out among the wheatfields in the morningsun, their horses and their own youth got the better of them. Awave of zeal and fiery enthusiasm swept over them. They longedfor a Jerusalem to deliver. The thud of their galloping hoofsinterrupted many a country breakfast and brought many a woman andchild to the door of the farmhouses as they passed. Five miles eastof Sainte-Agnes they met the bishop in his open carriage, attendedby two priests. Like one man the boys swung off their hats in abroad salute, and bowed their heads as the handsome old man liftedhis two fingers in the episcopal blessing. The horsemen closedabout the carriage like a guard, and whenever a restless horse brokefrom control and shot down the road ahead of the body, the bishoplaughed and rubbed his plump hands together. "What fine boys!" hesaid to his priests. "The Church still has her cavalry."
As the troop swept past the graveyard half a mile east of thetown,--the first frame church of the parish had stood there,--oldPierre Seguin was already out with his pick and spade, diggingAmedee's grave. He knelt and uncovered as the bishop passed. Theboys with one accord looked away from old Pierre to the red churchon the hill, with the gold cross flaming on its steeple.
Mass was at eleven. While the church was filling, Emil Bergson waitedoutside, watching the wagons and buggies drive up the hill. Afterthe bell began to ring, he saw Frank Shabata ride up on horsebackand tie his horse to the hitch-bar. Marie, then, was not coming.Emil turned and went into the church. Amedee's was the only emptypew, and he sat down in it. Some of Amedee's cousins were there,dressed in black and weeping. When all the pews were full, theold men and boys packed the open space at the back of the church,kneeling on the floor. There was scarcely a family in town that wasnot represented in the confirmation class, by a cousin, at least.The new communicants, with their clear, reverent faces, were beautifulto look upon as they entered in a body and took the front benchesreserved for them. Even before the Mass began, the air was chargedwith feeling. The choir had never sung so well and Raoul Marcel,in the "Gloria," drew even the bishop's eyes to the organ loft.For the offertory he sang Gounod's "Ave Maria,"--always spoken ofin Sainte-Agnes as "the Ave Maria."
Emil began to torture himself with questions about Marie. Was sheill? Had she quarreled with her husband? Was she too unhappy tofind comfort even here? Had she, perhaps, thought that he wouldcome to her? Was she waiting for him? Overtaxed by excitementand sorrow as he was, the rapture of the service took hold upon hisbody and mind. As he listened to Raoul, he seemed to emerge fromthe conflicting emotions which had been whirling him about andsucking him under. He felt as if a clear light broke upon hismind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, strongerthan evil, and that good was possible to men. He seemed to discoverthat there was a kind of rapture in which he could love foreverwithout faltering and without sin. He looked across the heads ofthe people at Frank Shabata with calmness. That rapture was for thosewho could feel it; for people who could not, it was non-existent.He coveted nothing that was Frank Shabata's. The spirit he hadmet in music was his own. Frank Shabata had never found it; wouldnever find it if he lived beside it a thousand years; would havedestroyed it if he had found it, as Herod slew the innocents, asRome slew the martyrs.
SAN--CTA MARI-I-I-A,
wailed Raoul from the organ loft;
O--RA PRO NO-O-BIS!
And it did not occur to Emil that any one had ever reasoned thusbefore, that music had ever before given a man this equivocalrevelation.
The confirmation service followed the Mass. When it was over, thecongregation thronged about the newly confirmed. The girls, andeven the boys, were kissed and embraced and wept over. All theaunts and grandmothers wept with joy. The housewives had much adoto tear themselves away from the general rejoicing and hurry backto their kitchens. The country parishioners were staying in townfor dinner, and nearly every house in Sainte-Agnes entertainedvisitors that day. Father Duchesne, the bishop, and the visitingpriests dined with Fabien Sauvage, the banker. Emil and FrankShabata were both guests of old Moise Marcel. After dinner Frankand old Moise retired to the rear room of the saloon to playCalifornia Jack and drink their cognac, and Emil went over to thebanker's with Raoul, who had been asked to sing for the bishop.
At three o'clock, Emil felt that he could stand it no longer. Heslipped out under cover of "The Holy City," followed by Malvina'swistful eye, and went to the stable for his mare. He was at thatheight of excitement from which everything is foreshortened, fromwhich life seems short and simple, death very near, and the soulseems to soar like an eagle. As he rode past the graveyard he lookedat the brown hole in the earth where Amedee was to lie, and feltno horror. That, too, was beautiful, that simple doorway intoforgetfulness. The heart, when it is too much alive, aches forthat brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death. It is the oldand the poor and the maimed who shrink from that brown hole; itswooers are found among the young, the passionate, the gallant-hearted.It was not until he had passed the graveyard that Emil realizedwhere he was going. It was the hour for saying good-bye. It mightbe the last time that he would see her alone, and today he couldleave her without rancor, without bitterness.
Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was full ofthe smell of the ripe wheat, like the smell of bread baking in anoven. The breath of the wheat and the sweet clover passed him likepleasant things in a dream. He could feel nothing but the sense ofdiminishing distance. It seemed to him that his mare was flying,or running on wheels, like a railway train. The sunlight, flashingon the window-glass of the big red barns, drove him wild with joy.He was like an arrow shot from the bow. His life poured itselfout along the road before him as he rode to the Shabata farm.
When Emil alighted at the Shabatas' gate, his horse was in a lather.He tied her in the stable and hurried to the house. It was empty.She might be at Mrs. Hiller's or with Alexandra. But anythingthat reminded him of her would be enough, the orchard, the mulberrytree... When he reached the orchard the sun was hanging low overthe wheatfield. Long fingers of light reached through the applebranches as through a net; the orchard was riddled and shot withgold; light was the reality, the trees were merely interferencesthat reflected and refracted light. Emil went softly down betweenthe cherry trees toward the wheatfield. When he came to the corner,he stopped short and put his hand over his mouth. Marie was lyingon her side under the white mulberry tree, her face half hidden inthe grass, her eyes closed, he
r hands lying limply where they hadhappened to fall. She had lived a day of her new life of perfectlove, and it had left her like this. Her breast rose and fellfaintly, as if she were asleep. Emil threw himself down besideher and took her in his arms. The blood came back to her cheeks,her amber eyes opened slowly, and in them Emil saw his own faceand the orchard and the sun. "I was dreaming this," she whispered,hiding her face against him, "don't take my dream away!"