At last Charley said: “Your brother—Portugais tells me that your brother, the surgeon, has gone away. I should have liked to thank him—if no more.”
“I have written him of your good recovery. He will be glad, I know. But my brother, from one stand-point—a human stand-point—had scruples. These I did not share, but they were strong in him, Monsieur. Marcel asked himself—” He stopped suddenly and looked towards Jo.
Charley saw the look, and said quickly: “Speak plainly. Portugais is my friend.”
Jo turned slowly towards him, and a light seemed to come to his eyes—a shining something that resolved itself into a dog-like fondness, an utter obedience, a strange intense gratitude.
“Marcel asked himself,” the Cure continued, “whether you would thank him for bringing you back to—to life and memory. I fear he was trying to see what I should say—I fear so. Marcel said, ‘Suppose that he should curse me for it? Who knows what he would be brought back to—to what suffering and pain, perhaps?’ Marcel said that.”
“And you replied, Monsieur le Cure?”
“I replied that Nature required you to answer that question for yourself, and whether bitterly or gladly, it was your duty to take up your life and live it out. Besides, it was not you alone that had to be considered. One does not live alone or die alone in this world. There were your friends to consider.”
“And because I had no friends here, you were compelled to think for me!” answered Charley calmly. “Truth is, it was not a question of my friends, for what I was during those seven months, or what I am now, can make no difference to them.”
He looked the Cure in the eyes steadily, and as though he would convey his intentions without words. The Curb understood. The habit of listening to the revelations of the human heart had given him something of that clairvoyance which can only be pursued by the primitive mind, unvexed by complexity.
“It is, then, as though you had not come to life again? It is as though you had no past, Monsieur?”