“God is not mocked! God is not mocked!”—the words seemed to echo and reverberate around him, they seemed to be thundered in a voice of vengeance. “God is not mocked!”—and he was blessing the grave of Théophile Blondir!
Did these people, gathered, clustered about him, not hear that voice! Why did they not hear it? It was not the Benedictus that was being sung that prevented them from hearing it, for he could scarcely hear the Benedictus.
Raymond's lips moved. “I am not mocking God,” he whispered. “I do not believe in God, but I am not mocking. I am asking only for my life. I am taking only the one chance I have. I did not intend to kill the fool—he killed himself. I am no murderer. I——” He shivered suddenly again, as once in the church he had shivered before. His hands outstretched seemed to be creeping again toward a bare throat that lay exposed upon a bed, the feel of soft, pulsing flesh seemed upon his finger tips. And then a diabolical chortle seemed to rattle in his ears. So murder was quite foreign to him, eh? And he did not believe in God? And he was quite above and apart from all such nonsense? And therein, of course, lay the reason why the tumbling of this dead thing into a grave left him so cool and imperturbable; and why the solemn words of the service had no meaning; and why it was a matter of supreme unconcern to him, provided he was not caught at it, that he took God's words upon his lips, and God's garb upon his shoulders!
White-faced, Raymond lifted his head. The Benedictus was ended, and now the words came slowly from his lips in a strange, awed, almost wondering way.
“'Requiem oternam.... Ego sum resurrectio et vita....' I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live: and every one who liveth, and believeth in Me, shall never die.”
His voice faltered a little, steadied by a tremendous effort of will, and went on again, low-toned, through the responses and short prayer that closed the service. “'Kyrie eleison'... not into temptation.... 'Requiem oternam.'... 'Requiescat in pace'... through the mercy of God.... 'Amen.'”
Forgotten for the moment was that grim pendulum that hovered over the bed in the presbytère yonder, and by the side of the grave Raymond stood and looked down on the coffin of Théophile Blondin. The people began to disperse, but he was scarcely conscious of it. It seemed that he had run the gamut of every human emotion since he had met the funeral procession at the church door; but here was another now—an incomprehensible, quiet, chastened, questioning mood. They were very beautiful words, these, that he was repeating to himself. He did not believe them, but they were very beautiful, and to one who did believe they must offer more than all of life could hold.
“'I am the resurrection and the life... he that be-lieveth in Me... shall never die.'”
There was another gateway in the little whitewashed fence, a smaller one that gave on the sacristy at the side and toward the rear of the church. Slowly, head bowed, absorbed, unconscious of the rôle he played so well, Raymond walked toward the gate, and through it, and, raising his head, paused. A shrivelled and dishevelled form crouched there against the palings. It was old Mother Blondin.
And Raymond stared—and suddenly a wave of immeasurable pity, mingling a miserable sense of distress, swept upon him. In there was forbidden ground to her; and in there was her son—killed in a fight with him. She had come around here to the side, unobserved, unless Dupont were lurking somewhere about, to be as near at the last as she could. An old hag, wretched, dissolute—but human above all things else, huddling before the dying embers of mother-love. She did not look up; her forehead was pressed close against the fence as she peered inside; a withered, dirty hand clutched fiercely at a paling on each side of her face.