"I am comforted that you are come, mon pere," said the sick man, "for I have the heavy heart.There is a secret that I have kept for many years.Sometimes I had almost forgotten that it must be told at the last; but now it is the time to speak.I have a sin to confess--a sin of the most grievous, of the most unpardonable."The listener soothed him with gracious words; spoke of the mercy that waits for all the penitent; urged him to open his heart without delay.
"Well, then, mon pere, it is this that makes me fear to die.Long since, in Canada, before I came to this place, I have killed a man.
It was--"
The voice stopped.The little round clock on the window-sill ticked very distinctly and rapidly, as if it were in a hurry.
"I will speak as short as I can.It was in the camp of 'Poleon Gautier, on the river St.Maurice.The big Baptiste Lacombe, that crazy boy who wants always to fight, he mocks me when I play, he snatches my violin, he goes to break him on the stove.There is a knife in my belt.I spring to Baptiste.I see no more what it is that I do.I cut him in the neck--once, twice.The blood flies out.He falls down.He cries, 'I die.' I grab my violin from the floor, quick; then I run to the woods.No one can catch me.Ablanket, the axe, some food, I get from a hiding-place down the river.Then I travel, travel, travel through the woods, how many days I know not, till I come here.No one knows me.I give myself the name Tremblay.I make the music for them.With my violin Ilive.I am happy.I forget.But it all returns to me--now--at the last.I have murdered.Is there a forgiveness for me, mon pere?"The priest's face had changed very swiftly at the mention of the camp on the St.Maurice.As the story went on, he grew strangely excited.His lips twitched.His hands trembled.At the end he sank on his knees, close by the bed, and looked into the countenance of the sick man, searching it as a forester searches in the undergrowth for a lost trail.Then his eyes lighted up as he found it.
"My son," said he, clasping the old fiddler's hand in his own, "you are Jacques Dellaire.And I--do you know me now?--I am Baptiste Lacombe.See those two scars upon my neck.But it was not death.
You have not murdered.You have given the stroke that changed my heart.Your sin is forgiven--AND MINE ALSO--by the mercy of God!"The round clock ticked louder and louder.A level ray from the setting sun--red gold--came in through the dusty window, and lay across the clasped hands on the bed.A white-throated sparrow, the first of the season, on his way to the woods beyond the St.
Lawrence, whistled so clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he were repeating to these two gray-haired exiles the name of their homeland."sweet--sweet--Canada, Canada, Canada!" But there was a sweeter sound than that in the quiet room.
It was the sound of the prayer which begins, in every language spoken by men, with the name of that Unseen One who rules over life's chances, and pities its discords, and tunes it back again into harmony.Yes, this prayer of the little children who are only learning how to play the first notes of life's music, turns to the great Master musician who knows it all and who loves to bring a melody out of every instrument that He has made; and it seems to lay the soul in His hands to play upon as He will, while it calls Him, OUR FATHER!
Some day, perhaps, you will go to the busy place where Bytown used to be; and if you do, you must take the street by the river to the white wooden church of St.Jacques.It stands on the very spot where there was once a cabin with a curved roof.There is a gilt cross on the top of the church.The door is usually open, and the interior is quite gay with vases of china and brass, and paper flowers of many colours; but if you go through to the sacristy at the rear, you will see a brown violin hanging on the wall.
Pere Baptiste, if he is there, will take it down and show it to you.
He calls it a remarkable instrument--one of the best, of the most sweet.
But he will not let any one play upon it.He says it is a relic.
THE REWARD OF VIRTUE
I
When the good priest of St.Gerome christened Patrick Mullarkey, he lent himself unconsciously to an innocent deception.To look at the name, you would think, of course, it belonged to an Irishman; the very appearance of it was equal to a certificate of membership in a Fenian societyBut in effect, from the turned-up toes of his bottes sauvages to the ends of his black mustache, the proprietor of this name was a Frenchman--Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in Normandy.Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft from the Green Isle.A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had drifted up the Saguenay into the Lake St.John region, and married the daughter of a habitant, and settled down to forget his own country and his father's house.But every visible trace of this infusion of new blood had vanished long ago, except the name; and the name itself was transformed on the lips of the St.Geromians.
If you had heard them speak it in their pleasant droning accent,--"Patrique Moullarque,"--you would have supposed that it was made in France.To have a guide with such a name as that was as good as being abroad.
Even when they cut it short and called him "Patte," as they usually did, it had a very foreign sound.Everything about him was in harmony with it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt in French--the French of two hundred years ago, the language of Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong woodland flavour.In short, my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat, did not have a drop of Irish in him, unless, perhaps, it was a certain--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you have heard this story of his virtue, and the way it was rewarded.
