The dead lay at rest in their boxes and thanked G.o.d they were quiet and had found everlasting peace.
And one day even this, for which they had patiently endured life, was taken from them.
The village was picturesque and there was none quite like it, even in Finisterre. Artists discovered it and made it famous. After the artists followed the tourists, and the old creaking _diligence_ became an absurdity. Brittany was the fashion for three months of the year, and wherever there is fashion there is at least one railway. The one built to satisfy the thousands who wished to visit the wild, sad beauties of the west of France was laid along the road beside the little cemetery of this tale.
It takes a long while to awaken the dead. These heard neither the voluble working-men nor even the first snort of the engine. And, of course, they neither heard nor knew of the pleadings of the old priest that the line should be laid elsewhere. One night he came out into the old cemetery and sat on a grave and wept. For he loved his dead and felt it to be a tragic pity that the greed of money, and the fever of travel, and the petty ambitions of men whose place was in the great cities where such ambitions were born, should shatter forever the holy calm of those who had suffered so much on earth. He had known many of them in life, for he was very old; and although he believed, like all good Catholics, in heaven and purgatory and h.e.l.l, yet he always saw his friends as he had buried them, peacefully asleep in their coffins, the souls lying with folded hands like the bodies that held them, patiently awaiting the final call. He would never have told you, this good old priest, that he believed heaven to be a great echoing palace in which G.o.d and the archangels dwelt alone waiting for that great day when the elected dead should rise and enter the Presence together, for he was a simple old man who had read and thought little; but he had a zigzag of fancy in his humble mind, and he saw his friends and his ancestors" friends as I have related to you, soul and body in the deep undreaming sleep of death, but sleep, not a rotted body deserted by its affrighted mate; and to all who sleep there comes, sooner or later, the time of awakening.
He knew that they had slept through the wild storms that rage on the coast of Finisterre, when ships are flung on the rocks and trees crash down in the Bois d"Amour. He knew that the soft, slow chantings of the _pardon_ never struck a chord in those frozen memories, meagre and monotonous as their store had been; nor the bagpipes down in the open village hall--a mere roof on poles--when the bride and her friends danced for three days without a smile on their sad brown faces.
All this the dead had known in life and it could not disturb nor interest them now. But that hideous intruder from modern civilization, a train of cars with a screeching engine, that would shake the earth which held them and rend the peaceful air with such discordant sounds that neither dead nor living could sleep! His life had been one long unbroken sacrifice, and he sought in vain to imagine one greater, which he would cheerfully a.s.sume could this disaster be spared his dead.
But the railway was built, and the first night the train went screaming by, shaking the earth and rattling the windows of the church, he went out and sprinkled every grave with holy-water.
And thereafter, twice a day, at dawn and at night, as the train tore a noisy tunnel in the quiet air, like the plebeian upstart it was, he sprinkled every grave, rising sometimes from a bed of pain, at other times defying wind and rain and hail. And for a while he believed that his holy device had deepened the sleep of his dead, locked them beyond the power of man to awake. But one night he heard them muttering.
It was late. There were but a few stars on a black sky. Not a breath of wind came over the lonely plains beyond, or from the sea. There would be no wrecks to-night, and all the world seemed at peace. The lights were out in the village. One burned in the tower of Croisac, where the young wife of the count lay ill. The priest had been with her when the train thundered by, and she had whispered to him:
"Would that I were on it! Oh, this lonely lonely land! this cold echoing chateau, with no one to speak to day after day! If it kills me, _mon pere_, make him lay me in the cemetery by the road, that twice a day I may hear the train go by--the train that goes to Paris! If they put me down there over the hill, I will shriek in my coffin every night."
The priest had ministered as best he could to the ailing soul of the young n.o.blewoman, with whose like he seldom dealt, and hastened back to his dead. He mused, as he toiled along the dark road with rheumatic legs, on the fact that the woman should have the same fancy as himself.
"If she is really sincere, poor young thing," he thought aloud, "I will forbear to sprinkle holy-water on her grave. For those who suffer while alive should have all they desire after death, and I am afraid the count neglects her. But I pray G.o.d that my dead have not heard that monster to-night." And he tucked his gown under his arm and hurriedly told his rosary.
But when he went about among the graves with the holy-water he heard the dead muttering.
"Jean-Marie," said a voice, fumbling among its unused tones for forgotten notes, "art thou ready? Surely that is the last call."
"Nay, nay," rumbled another voice, "that is not the sound of a trumpet, Francois. That will be sudden and loud and sharp, like the great blasts of the north when they come plunging over the sea from out the awful gorges of Iceland. Dost thou remember them, Francois? Thank the good G.o.d they spared us to die in our beds with our grandchildren about us and only the little wind sighing in the Bois d"Amour. Ah, the poor comrades that died in their manhood, that went to the _grande peche_ once too often! Dost thou remember when the great wave curled round Ignace like his poor wife"s arms, and we saw him no more? We clasped each other"s hands, for we believed that we should follow, but we lived and went again and again to the _grande peche_, and died in our beds.
_Grace a Dieu_!"
"Why dost thou think of that now--here in the grave where it matters not, even to the living?"
"I know not; but it was of that night when Ignace went down that I thought as the living breath went out of me. Of what didst thou think as thou layest dying?"
"Of the money I owed to Dominique and could not pay. I sought to ask my son to pay it, but death had come suddenly and I could not speak. G.o.d knows how they treat my name to-day in the village of St. Hilaire."
"Thou art forgotten," murmured another voice. "I died forty years after thee and men remember not so long in Finisterre. But thy son was my friend and I remember that he paid the money."
"And my son, what of him? Is he, too, here?"
"Nay; he lies deep in the northern sea. It was his second voyage, and he had returned with a purse for the young wife, the first time. But he returned no more, and she washed in the river for the dames of Croisac, and by-and-by she died. I would have married her, but she said it was enough to lose one husband. I married another, and she grew ten years in every three that I went to the _grande peche_. Alas for Brittany, she has no youth!"
"And thou? Wert thou an old man when thou camest here?"
"Sixty. My wife came first, like many wives. She lies here. Jeanne!"
"Is"t thy voice, my husband? Not the Lord Jesus Christ"s? What miracle is this? I thought that terrible sound was the trump of doom."
"It could not be, old Jeanne, for we are still in our graves. When the trump sounds we shall have wings and robes of light, and fly straight up to heaven. Hast thou slept well?"
"Ay! But why are we awakened? Is it time for purgatory? Or have we been there?"
"The good G.o.d knows. I remember nothing. Art frightened? Would that I could hold thy hand, as when thou didst slip from life into that long sleep thou didst fear, yet welcome."
"I am frightened, my husband. But it is sweet to hear thy voice, hoa.r.s.e and hollow as it is from the mould of the grave. Thank the good G.o.d thou didst bury me with the rosary in my hands," and she began telling the beads rapidly.
"If G.o.d is good," cried Francois, harshly, and his voice came plainly to the priest"s ears, as if the lid of the coffin had rotted, "why are we awakened before our time? What foul fiend was it that thundered and screamed through the frozen avenues of my brain? Has G.o.d, perchance, been vanquished and does the Evil One reign in His stead?"
"Tut, tut! Thou blasphemest! G.o.d reigns, now and always. It is but a punishment He has laid upon us for the sins of earth."
"Truly, we were punished enough before we descended to the peace of this narrow house. Ah, but it is dark and cold! Shall we lie like this for an eternity, perhaps? On earth we longed for death, but feared the grave. I would that I were alive again, poor and old and alone and in pain. It were better than this. Curse the foul fiend that woke us!"
"Curse not, my son," said a soft voice, and the priest stood up and uncovered and crossed himself, for it was the voice of his aged predecessor. "I cannot tell thee what this is that has rudely shaken us in our graves and freed our spirits of their blessed thraldom, and I like not the consciousness of this narrow house, this load of earth on my tired heart. But it is right, it must be right, or it would not be at all--ah, me!"
For a baby cried softly, hopelessly, and from a grave beyond came a mother"s anguished attempt to still it.
"Ah, the good G.o.d!" she cried. "I, too, thought it was the great call, and that in a moment I should rise and find my child and go to my Ignace, my Ignace whose bones lie white on the floor of the sea. Will he find them, my father, when the dead shall rise again? To lie here and doubt!--that were worse than life."
"Yes, yes," said the priest; "all will be well, my daughter."
"But all is not well, my father, for my baby cries and is alone in a little box in the ground. If I could claw my way to her with my hands--but my old mother lies between us."
"Tell your beads!" commanded the priest, sternly--"tell your beads, all of you. All ye that have not your beads, say the "Hail Mary!" one hundred times."
Immediately a rapid, monotonous muttering arose from every lonely chamber of that desecrated ground. All obeyed but the baby, who still moaned with the hopeless grief of deserted children. The living priest knew that they would talk no more that night, and went into the church to pray till dawn. He was sick with horror and terror, but not for himself. When the sky was pink and the air full of the sweet scents of morning, and a piercing scream tore a rent in the early silences, he hastened out and sprinkled his graves with a double allowance of holy-water. The train rattled by with two short derisive shrieks, and before the earth had ceased to tremble the priest laid his ear to the ground. Alas, they were still awake!
"The fiend is on the wing again," said Jean-Marie; "but as he pa.s.sed I felt as if the finger of G.o.d touched my brow. It can do us no harm."
"I, too, felt that heavenly caress!" exclaimed the old priest. "And I!"
"And I!" "And I!" came from every grave but the baby"s.
The priest of earth, deeply thankful that his simple device had comforted them, went rapidly down the road to the castle. He forgot that he had not broken his fast nor slept. The count was one of the directors of the railroad, and to him he would make a final appeal.
It was early, but no one slept at Croisac. The young countess was dead.
A great bishop had arrived in the night and administered extreme unction. The priest hopefully asked if he might venture into the presence of the bishop. After a long wait in the kitchen, he was told that he could speak with _Monsieur l"eveque_. He followed the servant up the wide spiral stair of the tower, and from its twenty-eighth step entered a room hung with purple cloth stamped with golden fleurs-de-lis.
The bishop lay six feet above the floor on one of the splendid carved cabinet beds that are built against the walls in Brittany. Heavy curtains shaded his cold white face. The priest, who was small and bowed, felt immeasurably below that august presence, and sought for words.
"What is it, my son?" asked the bishop, in his cold weary voice. "Is the matter so pressing? I am very tired."
Brokenly, nervously, the priest told his story, and as he strove to convey the tragedy of the tormented dead he not only felt the poverty of his expression--for he was little used to narrative--but the torturing thought a.s.sailed him that what he said sounded wild and unnatural, real as it was to him. But he was not prepared for its effect on the bishop.
He was standing in the middle of the room, whose gloom was softened and gilded by the waxen lights of a huge candelabra; his eyes, which had wandered unseeingly from one ma.s.sive piece of carved furniture to another, suddenly lit on the bed, and he stopped abruptly, his tongue rolling out. The bishop was sitting up, livid with wrath.
"And this was thy matter of life and death, thou prating madman!" he thundered. "For this string of foolish lies I am kept from my rest, as if I were another old lunatic like thyself! Thou art not fit to be a priest and have the care of souls. To-morrow--"
But the priest had fled, wringing his hands.
As he stumbled down the winding stair he ran straight into the arms of the count. Monsieur de Croisac had just closed a door behind him. He opened it, and, leading the priest into the room, pointed to his dead countess, who lay high up against the wall, her hands clasped, unmindful for evermore of the six feet of carved cupids and lilies that upheld her. On high pedestals at head and foot of her magnificent couch the pale flames rose from tarnished golden candlesticks. The blue hangings of the room, with their white fleurs-de-lis, were faded, like the rugs on the old dim floor; for the splendor of the Croisacs had departed with the Bourbons. The count lived in the old chateau because he must; but he reflected bitterly to-night that if he had made the mistake of bringing a young girl to it, there were several things he might have done to save her from despair and death.