“You are too good, too generous, Madame Bouchard,” he said, shaking his forefinger at her chidingly. “And yet”—he smiled broadly—“if there is enough to spare, there is nothing I know of that would delight me more.”
“Of course, she can spare it!” declared the carpenter heartily, coming forward. “Stanislaus will carry you two presently. And, tiens, Monsieur le Curé, you like to row a boat—eh?”
Raymond, on the point of shaking his head, checked himself. A boat! One of these days—soon, if this devil's trap would only open a little—there was his own escape to be managed. He had planned that carefully... a boating accident... the boat recovered... the curé's body swept out somewhere in those twenty-five miles of river breadth that stretched away before him now, and from there—who could doubt it!—to the sea.
“Yes,” he said; “I am very fond of it, but as yet I have not found time.”
“Good!” exclaimed the carpenter. “Well, in two or three days it will be finished, the best boat in St. Marleau—and Monsieur le Curé will be welcome to it as much as he likes. It is a nice row to the islands out there—three miles—to gather the sea-gull eggs—and the islands themselves are very pretty. It is a great place for a picnic, Monsieur le Curé.”
“Excellent!” said Raymond enthusiastically. “That is exactly what I shall do.” He clapped the carpenter playfully upon the shoulder. “So—eh, Monsieur Bouchard,—you will lose no time in finishing the boat!” He turned to Madame Bouchard. “Au revoir, madame—and very many thanks to you. I shall think of you at supper to-night, I promise you!” He waved his hand to the children on the veranda, and once more started along the road.
Madame Bouchard's voice, speaking to her husband, reached him. The words were not intended for his ears, and he did not catch them all. It was something about—“the good, young Father Aubert.”
A wan smile crept to Raymond's lips. For the moment at least, he was in a softened, chastened mood. “The good, young Father Aubert”—well, let it be so! They would never know, these people of St. Marleau. Somehow, he was relieved at that. He did not want them to know. Somehow, he, too, wanted for himself just what they would have—a memory—the memory of a good, young Father Aubert.
At a bend in the road, where the road edged in against the slope of the hill, hiding him from view, Raymond clambered up the short ascent. In a clump of small cedars at the top, he paused and looked back. The great sweep of river, widening into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with no breath of air to stir its surface, shimmered like a mirror under the afternoon sun. A big liner, outward bound, and perhaps ten miles from shore, seemed as though it were painted there. To the right, close in, was the little group of islands, with bare, rounded, rocky peaks, to which the carpenter had referred. About him, from distant fields, came the occasional voice of a man calling to his horses, the faint whir of a reaper, and a sort of pervading, drowsy murmur of insect life. Below him, nestled along the winding road, were the little whitewashed houses, quiet, secure, tranquil, they seemed to lie there; and high above them all, as though to typify the scene, to set its seal upon it, from the steeple of the church there gleamed in the sunlight a golden cross, the symbol of peace—such as he wore upon his breast!
With a quick intake of his breath, a snarl smothered in a low, confused cry, as he glanced involuntarily downward at his crucifix, he gathered up the skirts of his soutane, and, as though to vent his emotion in physical exertion, began to force his way savagely through the bushes and undergrowth.