“This tailor here.... This stingy, hard, unhappy man.... If there is a God!... Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man?... Therefore, wherefore, God?... Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!”
Hatred of himself, blasphemy, the profane and hellish humour of—of the infidel! A Protestant heretic—he was already damned; a robber—you could put him in jail; a spy—you could shoot him or tar and feather him; a murderer—you could hang him. But an infide—this was a deadly poison, a black danger, a being capable of all crimes. An infidel—“Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man?... Therefore, wherefore, God?... Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!”
The devil laughing—the devil incarnate come to mock a poor tailor, to sow plague through a parish where all were at peace in the bosom of the Church. The tailor had three ruling passions—cupidity, vanity, and religion. Charley had now touched the three, and the whole man was alive. His cupidity had been flattered by the unpaid service of a capable assistant, but now he saw that he was paying the devil a wage. His vanity was overwhelmed by a satanic ridicule. His religion and his God had been assaulted in so shameful a way that no punishment could be great enough for the man of hell. In religion he was a fanatic; he was a demented fanatic now.
He thrust the paper into his pocket, then crept out into the hall and to the door of Charley’s bedroom. He put his ear to the door. After a moment he softly raised the latch, and opened the door and listened again. ‘M’sieu’ was in a deep sleep.
Louis Trudel scarcely knew why he had listened, why he had opened the door and stood looking at the figure in the bed, barely definable in the semi-darkness of the room. If he had meant harm to the helpless man, he had brought no weapon; if he had been curious, there the man was peacefully sleeping!
His sick, morbid imagination was so alive, that he scarcely knew what he did. As he stood there listening, hatred and horror in his heart, a voice said to him: “Thou shalt do no murder.” The words kept ringing in his ears. Yet he had not thought of murder. The fancied command itself was his first temptation towards such a deed. He had thought of raising the parish, of condign punishment of many sorts, but not this. As he closed the door softly, killing entered his mind and stayed there. “Thou shalt not” had been the first instigation to “Thou shalt.”
It haunted him as he returned to his room, undressed himself, and went to bed. He could not sleep. “Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!” The challenge had been to himself. He must respond to it. The duty lay with him; he must answer this black infidel for the Church, for faith, for God.
The more he thought of it, the more Charley’s face came before him, with the monocle shining and hard in the eye. The monocle haunted him. That was the infidel’s sign. “Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!” What sign should he show?
Presently he sat up straight in bed. In another minute he was out and dressing. Five minutes later he was on his way to the parish church. When he reached it he took a tool from his pocket and unscrewed a small iron cross from the front door. It was a cross which had been blessed by the Pope, and had been brought to Chaudiere by the beloved mother of the Cure, now dead.
“When I have done with it I will put it back,” he said, as he thrust it inside his shirt, and hurried stealthily back to his house. As he got into bed he gave a noiseless, mirthless laugh. All night he lay with his yellow eyes wide open, gazing at the ceiling. He was up at dawn, hovering about the fire in the shop.