He heard the man cry out in a low voice, and the creak of the bed again, and the man's step on the floor--and, stooping low, Raymond darted around the corner of the house.
A moment later he was standing again in the hallway of the _presbytère_.
"Oh, Madame Lafleur!" he called up the stairs. "It is only to tell you that I am going out now."
"Yes, Monsieur le Curé--yes. Very well, Monsieur le Curé," she answered.
Raymond closed the front door behind him, and, walking sedately across the green and past the church, gained the road. It was Mother Blondin's now, but he would not go by the station road--further along the village street, where the houses thinned out and were scattered more apart, he could climb up the little hill without being seen, and by walking through the woods would come out on the path whose existence had once already done him such excellent service. And the path, as an approach to Mother Blondin's this afternoon, offered certain very important strategical advantages.
But now for the moment he was in the heart of the village, and from the doorways and garden patches of the little squat, curved-roof, whitewashed houses of rough-squared logs that flanked the road on either side, voices called out to him cheerily as he walked along. He answered them--all of them. He was even conscious, in spite of the worry of his mind, of a curious and not altogether unwelcome wonder. They were simple folk, these people, big-hearted and kindly, free and open-handed with the little they had, and they appeared to have grown fond of him in the few days he had been in St. Marleau, to look up to him, to trust him, to have faith in him, and to accept him as a friend, offering a frank friendship in return.
His hands were clasped behind his back as he walked along, and suddenly his fingers laced tightly over one another. The pleasurable wonder of it was gone. He was playing well this rôle of saint! He was a gambler--Three-Ace Artie of Ton-Nugget Camp; a gambler--too unclean even for the Yukon. But he was no hypocrite! He would have liked to have torn these saintly trappings from his body, wrenched off his _soutane_ and hurled it in the faces of these people, and bade them keep their friendship and their trust--tell them that he asked for nothing that they gave because they believed him other than he was. He was no hypocrite--he was a man fighting desperately for that for which every one had a right to fight, for which instinct bade even an insect fight--his life! He did not despise this proffered friendship, the smile of eye and lip, the ring of genuine sincerity in the voices that called to him--but they were not his, they were not meant for Three-Ace Artie, they were not meant for Raymond Chapelle. Somehow--it was a grotesque thought--he envied himself in the rôle of curé for these things. But they were not his. It was strange even that he, in whose life there had been naught but riot and ruin, should still be able to simulate so well the better things, to carry through, not the rôle of priest, that was a matter of ritual, a matter of keeping his head and his nerve, but the far kindlier and intimate rôle of _father_ to the parish! Yes, it was very strange, and----