CHAPTER XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS
If Charley had been less engaged with his own thoughts, he would have noticed the curious baleful look in the eyes of the tailor; but he was deeply absorbed in a struggle that had nothing to do with Louis Trudel.
The old fever of thirst and desire was upon him. All morning the door of Jolicoeur’s saloon was opening and shutting before his mind’s eye, and there was a smell of liquor everywhere. It was in his nostrils when the hot steam rose from the clothes he was pressing, in the thick odour of the fulled cloth, in the melting snow outside the door.
Time and again he felt that he must run out of the shop and away to the little tavern where white whiskey was sold to unwise habitants. But he fought on. Here was the heritage of his past, the lengthening chain of slavery to his old self—was it his real self? Here was what would prevent him from forgetting all that he had been and not been, all the happiness he might have had, all that he had lost—the ceaseless reminder. He was still the victim to a poison which gave not only a struggle of body, but a struggle of soul—if he had a soul.
“If he had a soul!” The phrase kept repeating itself to him even as he fought the fever in his throat, resisting the temptation to take that medicine which the Curb’s brother had sent him.
“If he had a soul!” The thinking served as an antidote, for by the ceaseless iteration his mind was lulled into a kind of drowse. Again and again he went to the pail of water that stood on the window-sill, and lifting it to his lips, drank deep and full, to quench the wearing thirst.
“If he had a soul!” He looked at Louis Trudel, silent and morose, the clammy yellow of a great sickness in his face and hands, but his mind only intent on making a waistcoat—and the end of all things very near! The words he had written the night before came to him: “Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man? Therefore, wherefore, God?... Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!” As if in reply to his thoughts there came the sound of singing, and of bells ringing in the parish church.
A procession with banners was coming near. It was a holy day, and Chaudiere was mindful of its duties. The wanderers of the parish had come home for Easter. All who belonged to Chaudiere and worked in the woods or shanties, or lived in big cities far away, were returned—those who could return—to take the holy communion in the parish church. Yesterday the parish had been alive with a pious hilarity. The great church had been crowded beyond the doors, the streets had been full of cheerily dressed habitants. There had, however, come a sudden chill to the seemly rejoicings—the little iron cross blessed by the Pope had been stolen from the door of the church!
The fact had been told to the Cure as he said the Mass, and from the altar steps, before going to the pulpit, he referred to the robbery with poignant feeling; for the relic had belonged to a martyr of the Church, who, two centuries before, had laid down his life for the Master on the coast of Africa.