But she had promised the old woman she would read these tracts, and this was her only time, for they must be returned that night: others were waiting for them with an eagerness and longing of which, haply, tract-dispensers see little now. Still she delayed in opening them. The news of Leclerc's sentence had filled her with dismay.
Did she dread to read the truth,—"the truth of Jesus Christ," as his mother styled it? The frightful image of the bleeding, lacerated wool-comber would come between her and the book in which that faith was written for maintaining which this man must suffer. Strange contrast between the heavy gloom and terror of her thoughts and the peaceful "river flowing on"! How tranquil were the fields that spread beyond her sight! But there is no rest or joy in Nature to the agitated and foreboding spirit. Must we not have conquered the world, if we serenely enter into Nature's rest?
Fain would Jacqueline have turned her face and steps in another direction that night than toward the road that led to Meaux: to the village on the border of the Vosges,—to the ancient Domrémy. Once her home was there; but Jacqueline had passed forth from the old, humble, true defences: for herself must live and die.
Domrémy had a home for her no more. The priest, on whom she had relied when all failed her, was still there, it is true; and once she had thought, that, while he lived, she was not fatherless, not homeless: but his authority had ceased to be paternal, and she trusted him no longer.
She had two graves in the old village, and among the living a few faces she never could forget. But on this earth she had no home.
Musing on these dreary facts, and on the bleeding, branded image of Leclerc, as her imagination rendered him back to his friends, his fearful trial over, a vision more familiar to her childhood than her youth opened to Jacqueline.
There was one who used to wander through the woods that bordered the mountains in whose shadow stood Domrémy,—one whose works had glorified her name in the England and the France that made a martyr of her. Jeanne d'Arc had ventured all things for the truth's sake: was she, who also came forth from that village, by any power commissioned?
Jacqueline laid the tracts on the grass. Over them she placed a stone. She bowed her head. She hid her face. She saw no more the river, trees, or home-returning birds; heard not the rush of water or of wind,—nor, even now, the hurry and the shout; that possibly to-morrow would follow the poor wool-comber through the streets of Meaux,—and on the third day they would brand him!
She remembered an old cottage in the shadow of the forest-covered mountains. She remembered one who died there suddenly, and without remedy,—her father, unabsolved and unanointed, dying in fear and torment, in a moment when none anticipated death. She remembered a strong-hearted woman who seemed to die with him,—who died to all the interests of this life, and was buried by her husband ere a twelvemonth had passed,—her mother, who was buried by her father's side.
Burdened with a solemn care they left their child. The priest of Domrémy, and none beside him, knew the weight of this burden. How had he helped her bear it? since it is the business of the shepherd to look after the younglings of the flock. Her hard earnings paid him for the prayers he offered for the deliverance of her father from his purgatorial woes. Burdened with a dire debt of filial love, the priest had let her depart from Domrémy; his influence followed her as an oppression and a care,—a degradation also.