And then very slowly, like a man rousing from a stupor, his head came up from the desk, and he listened. From across the green came the sound of the church bells ringing for early mass. And as he listened the bells seemed to catch up the tempo of some refrain. What was it? Yes, he knew now. It was the opening of the mass—the words he would have to go in there presently and say. Were they mocking him, those bells! Was this what the daylight, the merciful daylight had brought—only a crowning, pitiless, merciless jeer! His face, strained and haggard, lifted suddenly a little higher. Was it only mockery, or could it be—see, they seemed to peal more softly now—could it be that they held another meaning—like voices calling in compassion to him because he was lost? No—his mind was dazed—it could not mean that—for him. But listen! They were repeating it over and over again. It was the call to mass, for it was daylight, and the beginning of a new day. Listen!
“Introibo ad altare Dei—I will go in unto the Altar of God.”
CHAPTER XIX—THE TWO SINNERS
INTROIBO ad altare Dei—I will go in unto the Altar of God.” It had been days, another week of them, since the morning when he had raised his head to that call for early mass,' and his brain, stumbling and confused, had set those words in a refrain to the tempo of the pealing bells.
It was midnight now—another night—the dreaded night. They were not all like that other night, not all so pitiless—that would have been beyond physical endurance. But they were bad, all the nights were bad. They seemed cunningly just to skirt the border edge of strain that could be endured, and cunningly just to evade the breaking point.
It was midnight. On the table beside the bed stood the lighted lamp; and beside the lamp, topped by a prayer-book, was a little pile of François Aubert's books; and the bed was turned neatly down, disclosing invitingly the cool, fresh sheets. These were Madame Lafleur's kindly and well-meant offices. Madame La-fleur knew that he did not sleep very well. Each evening she came in here and set the lamp on the table, and arranged the books, and turned down the bed.
This was the same rocking-chair he sat in now that he had sat in night after night, and watched a man with bandaged head lying on that same bed—watched and waited for the man to die. The man was not there any more—there were just the cool, fresh sheets. The man was in Tournayville. He had seen the man again that afternoon—and now it was the man who was waiting to die.
“I will go in unto the Altar of God.” With a curious hesitancy he reached out and took the prayer-book from the table, and abstractedly began to finger its pages. What did those words mean? They had been with him incessantly, insistently, since that morning when he had groped for their meaning as between the bitterest of mockeries and a sublime sincerity. They did not mock him now, they held no sting of irony. It was very strange. They had not mocked him all that week. He had been glad, eager, somehow, to repeat them to himself. Did they mean—peace?