The Sin That Was His

by Frank L. Packard

“What is it, monsieur?”—she had caught at his sleeve. “Ah, you had perhaps heard that the Letelliers all moved away from here—and you did not know that I was once a Letellier? They sold everything and went away because of me a few years after I married Blondin.”

“Yes,” said Raymond mechanically. “But tell me more about yourself and Pierre—and—and those happy years. You had children—a—a son, perhaps?”

“Yes—yes, monsieur!” There was a glad eagerness in her voice—and then a broken sob—and the old eyes brimmed anew with tears. “There was little Jean. He was born just a few months after his father died. He—he was just like Pierre. He was four years old when I married Blondin, and—and when he was ten he ran away.”

The altar light, that tiny light there seemed curiously transparent. He could see through it, not to the body of the altar behind it, but through it to a vast distance that did not measure miles, and he could see the interior of a shack whose window pane was thickly frosted and in whose doorway stood a man, and the man was Murdock Shaw who had come to bring Canuck John's dying message—and he could hear Murdock Shaw's words: “'Tell Three-Ace Artie—give good-bye message—my mother and——' And then he died.”

“I do not know where he went”—old Mother Blon-din's faltering voice, too, seemed a vast distance away—“I—I have never heard of him since then. He is dead, perhaps; but, if he is alive, I hope—I hope that he will never know. Yes—there were three years of happiness, monsieur—and then it was finished. Monsieur, I—I will go now.”

Raymond's head on his crossed arms was bowed on the back of the pew before him. Letellier! It was the forgotten name come back to him. This was Canuck John's mother—and this was Théophile Blondin's mother—and he had come to St. Marleau to deliver to her a message of death—and he had delivered it in the killing of her other son! Was this the peace that he had come here to seek to-night? Was this the hand of God that had led him here? What did it mean? Was it God who had brought Mother Blondin here to-night? Would it bring her comfort—to believe in God again? Was he here for that? Here, that a word from him, whom she thought a priest, might turn the scales and bring her to her God of the many years ago? Was this God's way—to use him, who masqueraded as God's priest, and through whom this woman's son had been killed—was this God's way to save old Mother Blondin?

She touched his arm timidly.

“Are you praying for me, monsieur?” she whispered tremulously. “It—it is too late for that—that was forty years ago. And—and I will go now.”

He raised his head and looked at the old, withered, tear-stained face. The question of his own belief did not enter here. If she went now without a word from him, without a priestly word, she went forever. They were beautiful words—and, if one believed, they brought comfort. And she was near, very near to that old belief again. And they were near, very near to his own lips too, those words.

“It is not too late,” he said brokenly. “Listen! Do you remember the Benedictus? Give me your hand, and we will kneel, and say it together.”