"You wish to give yourself to justice?"
"I shall have no peace unless."
There was something martyr-like in the man's attitude. It appealed to some stern, martyr-like quality in the priest. If the man would win eternal peace so, then so be it. His grim piety approved. He spoke now with the authority of divine justice.
"For one year longer go on as you are, then give yourself to justice—one year from to-day, my son. Is it enough?"
"It is enough."
"Absolvo te!" said the priest.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE EDGE OF LIFE
Meantime Charley was alone with his problem. The net of circumstances seemed to have coiled inextricably round him. Once, at a trial in court in other days, he had said in his ironical way: "One hasn't to fear the penalties of one's sins, but the damnable accident of discovery."
To try to escape now, or, with the assistance of Jo Portugais, when en route to Quebec in charge of the constables, and find refuge and seclusion elsewhere? There was nothing he might ask of Portugais which he would not do. To escape—and so acknowledge a guilt not his own! Well, what did it matter! Who mattered? He knew only too well. The Cure mattered—that good man who had never intruded his piety on him; who had been from the first a discreet friend, a gentleman,—a Christian gentleman, if there was such a sort of gentleman apart from all others. Who mattered? The Seigneur, whom he had never seen before, yet who had showed that day a brusque sympathy, a gruff belief in him? Who mattered?