VI
The Church has always held that life is for
the living. On Saturday, while half the vil-
lage of Sainte-Agnes was mourning for Ame-
dee and preparing the funeral black for his
burial on Monday, the other half was busy
with white dresses and white veils for the great
confirmation service to-morrow, when the
bishop was to confirm a class of one hundred
boys and girls. Father Duchesne divided his
time between the living and the dead. All day
Saturday the church was a scene of bustling
activity, a little hushed by the thought of
Amedee. The choir were busy rehearsing a
mass of Rossini, which they had studied and
practised for this occasion. The women were
trimming the altar, the boys and girls were
bringing flowers.
On Sunday morning the bishop was to drive
overland to Sainte-Agnes from Hanover, and
Emil Bergson had been asked to take the place
of one of Amedee's cousins in the cavalcade of
forty French boys who were to ride across coun-
try to meet the bishop's carriage. At six o'clock
on Sunday morning the boys met at the church.
As they stood holding their horses by the bridle,
they talked in low tones of their dead comrade.
They kept repeating that Amedee had always
been a good boy, glancing toward the red brick
church which had played so large a part in
Amedee's life, had been the scene of his most
serious moments and of his happiest hours. He
had played and wrestled and sung and courted
under its shadow. Only three weeks ago he had
proudly carried his baby there to be christened.
They could not doubt that that invisible arm
was still about Amedee; that through the church
on earth he had passed to the church triumph-
ant, the goal of the hopes and faith of so many
hundred years.
When the word was given to mount, the
young men rode at a walk out of the village;
but once out among the wheatfields in the
morning sun, their horses and their own youth
got the better of them. A wave of zeal and fiery
enthusiasm swept over them. They longed for
a Jerusalem to deliver. The thud of their gal-
loping hoofs interrupted many a country break-
fast and brought many a woman and child to
the door of the farmhouses as they passed. Five
miles east of Sainte-Agnes they met the bishop
in his open carriage, attended by two priests.
Like one man the boys swung off their hats in a
broad salute, and bowed their heads as the
handsome old man lifted his two fingers in the
episcopal blessing. The horsemen closed about
the carriage like a guard, and whenever a rest-
less horse broke from control and shot down the
road ahead of the body, the bishop laughed and
rubbed his plump hands together. "What fine
boys!" he said to his priests. "The Church still
has her cavalry."
As the troop swept past the graveyard half a
mile east of the town,--the first frame church
of the parish had stood there,--old Pierre
Seguin was already out with his pick and spade,
digging Amedee's grave. He knelt and un-
covered as the bishop passed. The boys with
one accord looked away from old Pierre to the
red church on the hill, with the gold cross
flaming on its steeple.
Mass was at eleven. While the church was
filling, Emil Bergson waited outside, watching
the wagons and buggies drive up the hill. After
the bell began to ring, he saw Frank Shabata
ride up on horseback and tie his horse to the
hitch-bar. Marie, then, was not coming. Emil
turned and went into the church. Amedee's
was the only empty pew, and he sat down in it.
Some of Amedee's cousins were there, dressed
in black and weeping. When all the pews were
full, the old men and boys packed the open
space at the back of the church, kneeling on the
floor. There was scarcely a family in town that
was not represented in the confirmation class,
by a cousin, at least. The new communicants,
with their clear, reverent faces, were beautiful
to look upon as they entered in a body and took
the front benches reserved for them. Even
before the Mass began, the air was charged
with feeling. The choir had never sung so well
and Raoul Marcel, in the "Gloria," drew even
the bishop's eyes to the organ loft. For the
offertory he sang Gounod's "Ave Maria,"--
always spoken of in Sainte-Agnes as "the Ave
Maria."
Emil began to torture himself with questions about Marie. Was she ill? Had she quarreled with her husband? Was she too unhappy to find comfort even here? Had she, perhaps, thought that he would come to her? Was she waiting for him? Overtaxed by excitement and sorrow as he was, the rapture of the service took hold upon his body and mind. As he listened to Raoul, he seemed to emerge from the con- flicting emotions which had been whirling him about and sucking him under. He felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture in which he could love forever with- out faltering and without sin. He looked across the heads of the people at Frank Shabata with calmness. That rapture was for those who could feel it; for people who could not, it was non-existent. He coveted nothing that was Frank Shabata's. The spirit he had met in music was his own. Frank Shabata had never found it; would never find it if he lived beside it a thousand years; would have destroyed it if he had found it, as Herod slew the innocents, as Rome slew the martyrs.
SAN--CTA MARI-I-I-A,
wailed Raoul from the organ loft;
O--RA PRO NO-O-BIS!
And it did not occur to Emil that any one had
ever reasoned thus before, that music had ever
before given a man this equivocal revelation.
The confirmation service followed the Mass.
When it was over, the congregation thronged
about the newly confirmed. The girls, and even
the boys, were kissed and embraced and wept
over. All the aunts and grandmothers wept
with joy. The housewives had much ado to
tear themselves away from the general rejoicing
and hurry back to their kitchens. The country
parishioners were staying in town for dinner,
and nearly every house in Sainte-Agnes enter-
tained visitors that day. Father Duchesne, the
bishop, and the visiting priests dined with
Fabien Sauvage, the banker. Emil and Frank
Shabata were both guests of old Moise Marcel.
After dinner Frank and old Moise retired to
the rear room of the saloon to play California
Jack and drink their cognac, and Emil went
over to the banker's with Raoul, who had been
asked to sing for the bishop.
At three o'clock, Emil felt that he could
stand it no longer. He slipped out under cover
of "The Holy City," followed by Malvina's
wistful eye, and went to the stable for his mare.
He was at that height of excitement from which
everything is foreshortened, from which life
seems short and simple, death very near, and
the soul seems to soar like an eagle. As he rode
past the graveyard he looked at the brown hole
in the earth where Amedee was to lie, and felt no
horror. That, too, was beautiful, that simple
doorway into forgetfulness. The heart, when it
is too much alive, aches for that brown earth,
and ecstasy has no fear of death. It is the old
and the poor and the maimed who shrink from
that brown hole; its wooers are found among
the young, the passionate, the gallant-hearted.
It was not until he had passed the graveyard
that Emil realized where he was going. It was
the hour for saying good-bye. It might be the
last time that he would see her alone, and to-
day he could leave her without rancor, without
bitterness.
Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot
afternoon was full of the smell of the ripe wheat,
like the smell of bread baking in an oven. The
breath of the wheat and the sweet clover passed
him like pleasant things in a dream. He could
feel nothing but the sense of diminishing dis-
tance. It seemed to him that his mare was fly-
ing, or running on wheels, like a railway train.
The sunlight, flashing on the window-glass of
the big red barns, drove him wild with joy. He
was like an arrow shot from the bow. His life
poured itself out along the road before him as he
rode to the Shabata farm.
When Emil alighted at the Shabatas' gate, his horse was in a lather. He tied her in the stable and hurried to the house. It was empty. She might be at Mrs. Hiller's or with Alexan- dra. But anything that reminded him of her would be enough, the orchard, the mulberry tree. . . When he reached the orchard the sun was hanging low over the wheatfield. Long fingers of light reached through the apple branches as through a net; the orchard was rid- dled and shot with gold; light was the reality, the trees were merely interferences that reflected and refracted light. Emil went softly down between the cherry trees toward the wheatfield. When he came to the corner, he stopped short and put his hand over his mouth. Marie was lying on her side under the white mulberry tree, her face half hidden in the grass, her eyes closed, her hands lying limply where they had happened to fall. She had lived a day of her new life of perfect love, and it had left her like this. Her breast rose and fell faintly, as if she were asleep. Emil threw himself down beside her and took her in his arms. The blood came back to her cheeks, her amber eyes opened slowly, and in them Emil saw his own face and the orchard and the sun. "I was dreaming this," she whis- pered, hiding her face against him, "don't take my dream away!"
