The Right of Way — Complete

In the uttermost corner of his intelligence he felt with sure prescience that, however befalling, the end of all was not far off. In the exercise of new faculties, which had more to do with the soul than with reason, he now believed what he could not see, and recognised what was not proved. Labour of the hand, trouble, sorrow, and perplexity, charity and humanity, had cleared and simplified his life, had sweetened his intelligence, and taken the place of ambition. He saw life now through the lens of personal duty, which required that the thing nearest to one’s hand should be done first.

But as foreboding pressed upon him there came the thought of what should come after—to Rosalie. His thoughts took a practical form—her good was uppermost in his mind. All Rosalie had to live on was her salary as postmistress, for it was in every one’s knowledge that the little else she had was being sacrificed to her father’s illness. Suppose, then, that through illness or accident she lost her position, what could she do? He might leave her what he had—but what had he? Enough to keep her for a year or two—no more. All his earnings had gone to the poor and the suffering of Chaudiere.

There was one way. It had suggested itself to him so often in Chaudiere, and had been one of the two reasons for bringing him here. There were his dead mother’s pearls and one thousand dollars in notes behind a secret panel in the white house on the hill, in this very city where he was. The pearls were worth over ten thousand dollars—in all, there would be eleven thousand, enough to secure Rosalie from poverty. What should Kathleen do with his mother’s pearls, even if they were found by her? What should she do with his money did she not loathe his memory? Had not all his debts been paid? These pearls and this money were all his own.

But to get them. To go now to the white house on the hill; to face that old life even for an hour, a knocking at the door of a haunted house—he shrank from the thought. He would have to enter the place like a thief in the night.

Yet for Rosalie he must take the risk—he must go.

CHAPTER XLIX. THE OPEN GATE

It was a still night, and the moon, delicately bright, gave forth that radiance which makes spiritual to the eye the coarsest thing. Inside the white house on the hill all was dark. Sleep had settled on it long before midnight, for, on the morrow, its master and mistress hoped to make a journey to the valley of the Chaudiere, where the Passion Play was being performed by habitants and Indians. The desire to see the play had become an infatuation in the minds of the two, eager for some interest to relieve the monotony of a happy life.

But as all slept, a figure in the dress of a habitant moved through the passages of the house stealthily, yet with an assurance unusual in the thief or housebreaker. In the darkest passages his step was sure, and his hand fastened on latch or door-knob with perfect precision. He came at last into a large hallway flooded by the moon, pale, watchful, his beard frosted by the light. In the stillness of his tread and the composed sorrow of his face he seemed like one long dead who “revisits the glimpses of the moon.”

At last he entered a room the door of which stood wide open. In this room had been begotten, or had had exercise, whatever of him was worth approving in the days before he died. It was a place of books and statues and tapestry, and the dark oak was nobly smutched of Time. This sombre oaken wall had been handed down through four generations from the man’s great-grandfather: the breath of generations had steeped it in human association.

Entering, he turned for an instant with clinched hands to look at another door across the hall. Behind that door were two people who despised his memory, who conspired to forget his very name. This house was the woman’s, for he had given it to her the day he died. But that she could live there with all the old associations, with memories that, however bitter, however shaming, had a sort of sacredness, struck into his soul with a harrowing pain. There she was whom he had spared—himself; whose happiness had lain in his hands, and he had given it to her. Yet her very existence robbed himself of happiness, and made sorrowful a life dearer than his own.

Kathleen lay asleep in that room—he fancied he could hear her breathing; and, by the hospital on the hill, up beyond the point of pines, in a little cottage which he could see from the great window, lay Rosalie with sleepless eyes and wan cheeks, longing for morning and the stir of life to help her to forget.

For Rosalie he had come to this house once more. For her sake he was revisiting this torture-chamber, from which he knew he must go again, blanched and shaken, as a man goes from a tomb where his dead lie unforgiving.

He shut his teeth, went swiftly across the room, and beside a great carved oak table touched a hidden spring in the side of it. The spring snapped; the panel creaked a little and drew back. It seemed to him that the noise he made must be heard in every part of the house, so sensitive was his ear, so deep was the silence on which the sounds had broken. He turned round to the doorway to listen before he put his hand within the secret place.

There was no sound. He turned his attention to the table. Drawing forth two packets with a gasp of relief, he put them in his pocket, and, with extreme care, proceeded to close the panel. By rubbing the edges of the wood with grease from a candle on the table, he was able to readjust the panel in silence. But, as the spring came home, he became suddenly conscious of a presence in the room. A shiver passed through him. He turned round-softly, quickly. He was in the shadow and near great window-curtains, and his fingers instinctively clutched them as he saw a figure in white at the door of the room. Slowly, strangely deliberate, the figure moved further into the room.

Charley’s breath stopped. He felt his face flush, and a strange weakness came on him. There before him stood Kathleen.

She was in her night-gown, and she stood still, as though listening; yet, as Charley looked closer, he realised that it was an unconscious, passive listening, and that she did not know he was there.

Her mind only was listening. She was asleep. Was it possible that his very presence in the house had touched some old note of memory, which, automatically responding, had carried her from her bed in this somnambulistic trance? That subtle telegraphy between our subconscious selves which we cannot reduce to a law, yet alarming us at times, announced to Kathleen’s mind, independent of the waking senses, the presence once familiar to this house for so many years. In her sleep she had involuntarily responded to the call of Charley’s approach.

Once, in the past, the night her uncle died, she had walked in her sleep, and the memory of this flashed upon Charley now. Silently he came closer to her. The moonlight shone on her face. He could see plainly she was asleep. His position was painful and perilous. If she waked, the shock to herself would be great; if she waked and saw him, what disaster might not occur!

Yet he had no agitation now, only clearness of mind and a curious sense of confusion that he should see her en dishabille—the old fastidious sense mingling with the feeling that she was now a stranger to him, and that, waking, she would fly embarrassed from his presence, as he was ready to fly from hers. He was about to steal to the door and escape before she waked, but she turned round, moved through the doorway, and glided down the hall. He followed silently.

She moved to the staircase, then slowly down it, and through a passage to a morning-room, where, opening a pair of French windows, she passed out onto the lawn. He followed, not more than a dozen paces behind her. His safety lay in getting outside, where he could easily hide among the bushes, should someone else appear and an alarm be raised.

She crossed the lawn swiftly, a white, ghostlike figure. In the middle of the lawn she stopped short once as if in doubt what to do—as a thought-reader pauses in his search for the mental scent again, ere he rushes upon the object of his search with the certainty of instinct.

Presently she moved on, going directly towards a gate that opened out on the cliff above the river. In Charley’s day this gate had been often used, for it gave upon four steep wooden steps leading to a narrow shelf of rock below. From the edge of this cliff a rope-ladder dropped fifty feet to the river. For years he had used this rope-ladder to get down to his boat, and often, when they were first married, Kathleen used to come and watch him descend, and sometimes, just at the very first, would descend also. As he stole into the grounds this evening he had noticed, however, that the rope-ladder was gone, and that new steps were being built. He had also mechanically observed that the gate was open.

For an instant he watched her slowly moving towards the gate. At first he did not realise the situation. Suddenly her danger flashed upon him. Passing through the gateway, she must fall over the cliff.

Her life was in his hands.

He could rush forward swiftly and close the gate, then, raising an alarm, get away before he was seen; or—he could escape now.

What had he to do with her? A weird, painful suggestion crept into his brain: he was not responsible for her, and he was responsible for a woman up there by the hospital, whose home was the valley of the Chaudiere!

If Kathleen were gone, what barrier would there be between him and Rosalie? What had he to do with this strange disposition of events? Kathleen was never absent from her church twice on Sundays; she was devoted to work of all sorts for the church on week-days—where was her intervening personal Providence? If Providence permitted her to die?—well, she had had two years of happiness with the man she loved, at some expense to himself—was it not fair that Rosalie should have her share? Had he the right to call upon Rosalie for constant self-sacrifice, when, by shutting his eyes now, by being dead to Kathleen and her need, as he was dead to the world he once knew, the way would be clear to marry Rosalie?

Dead—he was dead to the world and to Kathleen! Should his ghost interpose between her and the death now within two-score feet of her? Who could know? It was grim, it was awful, but was it not a wild kind of justice? Who could blame? It was the old Charley Steele, the Charley Steele of the court-room, who argued back humanity and the inherent rightness of things.

But it was only a moment’s pause. The thoughts flashed by like the lightning impressions of a dream, and a voice said in his ear, the voice of the new Charley with a conscience:

“Save her—save her!”

Even as he was conscious of another presence on the lawn, he rushed forward noiselessly. Stealing between Kathleen and the gate-she was within five feet of it he closed and locked it. Then, with a quick glance at her sleeping face-it was engraven on his memory ever after like a dead face in a coffin—he ran along the fence among the shrubbery. A man not fifty feet away called to him.

“Hush—she is asleep!” Charley whispered, and disappeared.

It was Fairing himself who saw this deed which saved Kathleen’s life. Awaking, and not finding her, he had glanced towards the window, and had seen her on the lawn. He had rushed down to her, in time to see her saved by a strange bearded man in habitant dress. His one glance at the man’s face, as it turned towards him, produced an extraordinary effect upon his mind, not soon to be dispelled—a haunting, ghostlike apparition, which kept reminding him of something or somebody, he could not tell what or whom. The whispering voice and the breathless words, “Hush—she is asleep!” repeated themselves over and over again in his brain, as, taking Kathleen’s hand, he led her, unresisting, and still sleeping, back to her room. In agitated thankfulness he resolved not to speak of the event to Kathleen, or to any one else, lest it should come to her ears and frighten her.

He would, however, keep a sharp lookout for the man who had saved her life, and would reward him duly. The face of the bearded habitant came between him and his sleep.

Meanwhile this disturber of a woman’s dreams and a man’s sleep was hurrying to an inn in the town by the waterside, where he met another habitant with a team of dogs—Jo Portugais. Jo had not been able to bear the misery of suspense and anxiety, and had come seeking him. There was little speech between them.

“You have not been found out, M’sieu’?” was Jo’s anxious question.

“No, no, but I have had a bad night, Jo. Get the dogs together.”

A little later, as Charley made ready to go back to Chaudiere, Jo said:

“You look as if you’d had a black dream, M’sieu’.” With the river rustling by, and the trees stirring in the first breath of dawn, Charley told Jo what had happened.

For a moment the murderer did not speak or stir, for a struggle was going on in his breast also; then he stooped quickly, caught his companion’s hand, and kissed it.

“I could not have done it, M’sieu’,” he said hoarsely. They parted, Jo to remain behind as they had agreed, to be near Rosalie if needed; Charley to return to the valley of the Chaudiere.

CHAPTER L. THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE

For the first time in its history Chaudiere was becoming notable in the eyes of the outside world.

“We’ll have more girth after this,” said Filion Lacasse the saddler to the wife of the Notary, as, in front of the post-office, they stood watching a little cavalcade of habitants going up the road towards Four Mountains to rehearse the Passion Play.

“If Dauphin’s advice had been taken long ago, we’d have had a hotel at Four Mountains, and the city folk would be coming here for the summer,” said Madame Dauphin, with a superior air.

“Pish!” said a voice behind them. It was the Seigneur’s groom, with a straw in his mouth. He had a gloomy mind.

“There isn’t a house but has two or three boarders. I’ve got three,” said Filion Lacasse. “They come tomorrow.”

“We’ll have ten at the Manor. But no good will come of it,” said the groom.

“No good! Look at the infidel tailor!” said Madame Dauphin. “He translated all the writing. He drew all the dresses, and made a hundred pictures—there they are at the Cure’s house.”

“He should have played Judas,” said the groom malevolently. “That’d be right for him.”

“Perhaps you don’t like the Passion Play,” said Madame Dauphin disdainfully.

“We ain’t through with it yet,” said the death’s-head groom.

“It is a pious and holy mission,” said Madame Dauphin. “Even that Jo Portugais worked night and day till he went away to Montreal, and he always goes to Mass now. He’s to take Pontius Pilate when he comes back. Then look at Virginie Morrissette, that put her brother’s eyes out quarrelling—she’s to play Mary Magdalene.”

“I could fit the parts better,” said the groom.

“Of course. You’d have played St. John,” said the saddler—“or, maybe, Christus himself!”

“I’d have Paulette Dubois play Mary the sinner.”

“Magdalene repented, and knelt at the foot of the cross. She was sorry and sinned no more,” said the Notary’s wife in querulous reprimand.

“Well, Paulette does all that,” said the stolid, dark-visaged groom.

Filion Lacasse’s ears pricked up. “How do you know—she hasn’t come back?”

“Hasn’t she, though! And with her child too—last night.”

“Her child!” Madame Dauphin was scandalised and amazed.

The groom nodded. “And doesn’t care who knows it. Seven years old, and as fine a child as ever was!”

“Narcisse—Narcisse!” called Madame Dauphin to her husband, who was coming up the street. She hastily repeated the groom’s news to him.

The Notary stuck his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat. “Well, well, my dear Madame,” he said consequentially, “it is quite true.”

“What do you know about it—whose child is it?” she asked, with curdling scorn.

“‘Sh-’sh!” said the Notary. Then, with an oratorical wave of his free hand: “The Church opens her arms to all—even to her who sinned much because she loved much, who, through woful years, searched the world for her child and found it not—hidden away, as it was, by the duplicity of sinful man”—and so on through tangled sentences, setting forth in broken terms Paulette Dubois’s life.

“How do you know all about it?” asked the saddler. “I’ve known it for years,” said the Notary grandly—stoutly too, for he would freely risk his wife’s anger that the vain-glory of the moment might be enlarged.

“And you keep it even from madame!” said the saddler, with a smile too broad to be sarcastic. “Tiens! if I did that, my wife’d pick my eyes out with a bradawl.”

“It was a professional secret,” said the Notary, with a desperate resolve to hold his position.

“I’m going home, Dauphin—are you coming?” questioned his wife, with an air.

“You will remain, and hear what I’ve got to say. This Paulette Dubois—she should play Mary Magdalene, for—”

“Look—look, what’s that?” said the saddler. He pointed to a wagon coming slowly up the road. In front of it a team of dogs drew a cart. It carried some thing covered with black. “It’s a funeral! There’s the coffin. It’s on Jo Portugais’ little cart,” added Filion Lacasse.

“Ah, God be merciful, it’s Rosalie Evanturel and Mrs. Flynn! And M’sieu’ Evanturel in the coffin!” said Madame Dauphin, running to the door of the postoffice to call the Cure’s sister.

“There’ll be use enough for the baker’s Dead March now,” remarked M. Dauphin sadly, buttoning up his coat, taking off his hat, and going forward to greet Rosalie. As he did so, Charley appeared in the doorway of his shop.

“Look, Monsieur,” said the Notary. “This is the way Rosalie Evanturel comes home with her father.”

“I will go for the Cure” Charley answered, turning white. He leaned against the doorway for a moment to steady himself, then hurried up the street. He did not dare meet Rosalie, or go near her yet. For her sake it was better not.

“That tailor infidel has a heart. His eyes were leaking,” said the Notary to Filion Lacasse, and went on to meet the mournful cavalcade.

CHAPTER LI. FACE TO FACE

“If I could only understand!”—this was Rosalie’s constant cry in these weeks wherein she lay ill and prostrate after her father’s burial. Once and once only had she met Charley alone, though she knew that he was keeping watch over her. She had first seen him the day her father was buried, standing apart from the people, his face sorrowful, his eyes heavy, his figure bowed.

The occasion of their meeting alone was the first night of her return, when the Notary and Charley had kept watch beside her father’s body.

She had gone into the little hallway, and had looked into the room of death. The Notary was sound asleep in his arm-chair, but Charley sat silent and moveless, his eyes gazing straight before him. She murmured his name, and though it was only to herself, not even a whisper, he got up quickly and came to the hall, where she stood grief-stricken, yet with a smile of welcome, of forgiveness, of confidence. As she put out her hand to him, and his swallowed it, she could not but say to him—so contrary is the heart of woman, so does she demand a Yes by asserting a No, and hunger for the eternal assurance—she could not but say:

“You do not love me—now.”

It was but a whisper, so faint and breathless that only the heart of love could hear it. There was no answer in words, for some one was stirring beyond Rosalie in the dark, and a great figure heaved through the kitchen doorway, but his hand crushed hers in his own; his heart said to her, “My love is an undying light; it will not change for time or tears”—the words they had read together in a little snuff-coloured book on the counter in the shop one summer day a year ago. The words flashed into his mind, and they were carried to hers. Her fingers pressed his, and then Charley said, over her shoulder, to the approaching Mrs. Flynn: “Do not let her come again, Madame. She should get some sleep,” and he put her hand in Mrs. Flynn’s. “Be good to her, as you know how, Mrs. Flynn,” he added gently.

He had won the heart of Mrs. Flynn that moment, and it may be she had a conviction or an inspiration, for she said, in a softer voice than she was wont to use to any one save Rosalie:

“I’ll do by her as you’d do by your own, sir,” and tenderly drew Rosalie to her own room.

Such had been their first meeting after her return. Afterwards she was taken ill, and the torture of his heart drove him out into the night, to walk the road and creep round her house like a sentinel, Mrs. Flynn’s words ringing in his ears to reproach him—“I’ll do by her as you would do by your own, sir.” Night after night it was the same, and Rosalie heard his footsteps and listened and was less sorrowful, because she knew that she was ever in his thoughts. But one day Mrs. Flynn came to him in his shop.

“She’s wantin’ a word with ye on business,” she said, and gestured towards the little house across the way. “‘Tis few words ye do be shpakin’ to annybody, but if y’ have kind words to shpake and good things to say, y’ naidn’t be bitin’ yer tongue,” she added in response to his nod, and left him.

Charley looked after her with a troubled face. On the instant it seemed to him that Mrs. Flynn knew all. But his second thought told him that it was only an instinct on her part that there was something between them—the beginning of love, maybe.

In another half-hour he was beside Rosalie’s chair. “Perhaps you are angry,” she said, as he came towards her where she sat in the great arm-chair. She did not give him time to answer, but hurried on. “I wanted to tell you that I have heard you every night outside, and that I have been glad, and sorry too—so sorry for us both.”

“Rosalie! Rosalie” he said hoarsely, and dropped on a knee beside her chair, and took her hand and kissed it. He did not dare do more.

“I wanted to say to you,” she said, dropping a hand on his shoulder, “that I do not blame you for anything—not for anything. Yet I want you to be sorry too. I want you to feel as sorry for me as I feel sorry for you.”

“I am the worst man and you the best woman in the world.”

She leaned over him with tears in her eyes. “Hush!” she said. “I want to help you—Charles. You are wise. You know ten thousand things more than I; but I know one thing you do not understand.”

“You know and do whatever is good,” he said brokenly.

“Oh, no, no, no! But I know one thing, because I have been taught, and because it was born with me. Perhaps much was habit with me in the past, but now I know that one thing is true. It is God.”

She paused. “I have learned so much since—since then.”

He looked up with a groan, and put a finger on her lips. “You are feeling bitterly sorry for me,” she said. “But you must let me speak—that is all I ask. It is all love asks. I cannot bear that you should not share my thoughts. That is the thing that has hurt—hurt so all these months, these long hard months, when I could not see you, and did not know why I could not. Don’t shake so, please! Hear me to the end, and we shall both be the better after. I felt it all so cruelly, because I did not—and I do not—understand. I rebelled, but not against you. I rebelled against myself, against what you called Fate. Fate is one’s self, what one brings on one’s self. But I had faith in you—always—always, even when I thought I hated you.”

“Ah, hate me! Hate me! It is your loving that cuts me to the quick,” he said. “You have the magnanimity of God.”

Her eyes leapt up. “‘Of God’—you believe in God!” she said eagerly. “God is God to you? He is the one thing that has come out of all this to me.” She reached out her hand and took her Bible from a table. “Read that to yourself,” she said, and, opening the Book, pointed to a passage. He read it:

Closing the Book, Charley said: “I understand—I see.”

“Will you say a prayer with me?” she urged. “It is all I ask. It is the only—the only thing I want to hurt you, because it may make you happier in the end. What keeps us apart, I do not know. But if you will say one prayer with me, I will keep on trusting, I will never complain, and I will wait—wait.”

He kissed both her hands, but the look in his eyes was that of a man being broken on the wheel. She slipped to the floor, her rosary in her fingers. “Let us pray,” she said simply, and in a voice as clear as a child’s, but with the anguish of a woman’s struggling heart behind.

He did not move. She looked at him, caught his hands in both of hers, and cried: “But you will not deny me this! Haven’t I the right to ask it? Haven’t I a right to ask of you a thousand times as much?”

“You have the right to ask all that is mine to give life, honour, my body in pieces inch by inch, the last that I can call my own. But, Rosalie, this is not mine to give! How can I pray, unless I believe!”

“You do—oh, you do believe in God,” she cried passionately.

“Rosalie—my life,” he urged, hoarse misery in his voice, “the only thing I have to give you is the bare soul of a truthful man—I am that now at least. You have made me so. If I deceived the whole world, if I was as the thief upon the cross, I should still be truthful to you. You open your heart to me—let me open mine to you, to see it as it is. Once my soul was like a watch, cased and carried in the pocket of life, uncertain, untrue, because it was a soul made, not born. I must look at the hands to know the time, and because it varied, because the working did not answer to the absolute, I said: ‘The soul is a lie.’ You—you have changed all that, Rosalie. My soul now is like a dial to the sun. But the clouds are there above, and I do not know what time it is in life. When the clouds break—if they ever break—and the sun shines, the dial will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—”

He paused, confused, for he had repeated the words of a witness taking the oath in court.

“‘So help me God!”’ she finished the oath for him. Then, with a sudden change of manner, she came to her feet with a spring. She did not quite understand. She was, however, dimly conscious of the power she had over his chivalrous mind: the power of the weak over the strong—the tyranny of the defended over the defender. She was a woman tortured beyond bearing; and she was fighting for her very life, mad with anguish as she struggled.

“I do not understand you,” she cried, with flashing eyes. “One minute you say you do not believe in anything, and the next you say, ‘So help me God!’”

“Ah, no, you said that, Rosalie,” he interposed gently.

“You said I was as magnanimous as God. You were laughing at me then, mocking me, whose only fault is that I loved and trusted you. In the wickedness of your heart you robbed me of happiness, you—”

“Don’t—don’t! Rosalie! Rosalie!” he exclaimed in shrinking protest.

That she had spoken to him as her deepest heart abhorred only increased her agitated denunciation. “Yes, yes, in your mad selfishness, you did not care for the poor girl who forgot all, lost all, and now—” She stopped short at the sight of his white, awe stricken face. His eye-glass seemed like a frost of death over an eye that looked upon some shocking scene of woe. Yet he appeared not to see, for his fingers fumbled on his waistcoat for the monocle—fumbled—vaguely, helplessly. It was the realisation of a soul cast into the outer darkness. Her abrupt silence came upon him like the last engulfing wave to a drowning man—the final assurance of the end, in which there is quiet and the deadly smother.

“Now—I know-the truth!” he said, in a curious even tone, different from any she had ever heard from him. It was the old Charley Steele who spoke, the Charley Steele in whom the intellect was supreme once more. The judicial spirit, the inveterate intelligence which put justice before all, was alive in him, almost rejoicing in its regained governance. The new Charley was as dead as the old had been of late, and this clarifying moment left the grim impression behind that the old law was not obsolete. He felt that in the abandonment of her indignation she had mercilessly told the truth; and the irreducible quality of mind in him which in the old days made for justice, approved. There was a new element now, however—that conscience which never possessed him fully until the day he saw Rosalie go travelling over the hills with her crippled father. That picture of the girl against the twilight, her figure silhouetted in the clear air, had come to him in sleeping and waking dreams, the type and sign of an everlasting melancholy. As he looked at her blindly now, he saw, not herself, but that melancholy figure. Out of the distance his own voice said again:

“Now—I know-the truth!”

She had struck with a violence she did not intend, which, she knew, must rend her own heart in the future, which put in the dice-box the last hopes she had. But she could not have helped it—she could not have stayed the words, though a suspended sword were to fall with the saying. It was the cry of tradition and religion, and every home-bred, convent-nurtured habit, the instinct of heredity, the wail of woman, for whom destiny, or man, or nature, has arranged the disproportionate share of life’s penalties. It was the impotent rebellion against the first curse, that man in his punishment should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow—which he might do with joy—while the woman must work out her ordained sentence “in sorrow all the days of her life.”

In her bitter words was the inherent revolt of the race of woman. But now she suddenly felt that she had flung him an infinite distance from her; that she had struck at the thing she most cherished—his belief that she loved him; that even if she had told the truth—and she felt she had not—it was not the truth she wished him most to feel.

For an instant she stood looking at him, shocked and confounded, then her changeless love rushed back on her, the maternal and protective spirit welled up, and with a passionate cry she threw herself in the chair again in very weakness, with outstretched hands, saying:

“Forgive me—oh, forgive me! I did not mean it—oh, forgive your Rosalie!”

Stooping over her, he answered:

“It is good for me to know the whole truth. What hurts you may give me will pass—for life must end, and my life cannot be long enough to pay the price of the hurts I have given you. I could bear a thousand—one for every hour—if they could bring back the light to your eye, the joy to your heart. Could prayer, do you think, make me sorrier than I am? I have hurt what I would have spared from hurt at the cost of my life—and all the lives in all the world!” he added fiercely.

“Forgive me—oh, forgive your Rosalie!” she pleaded. “I did not know what I was saying—I was mad.”

“It was all so sane and true,” he said, like one who, on the brink of death, finds a satisfaction in speaking the perfect truth. “I am glad to hear the truth—I have been such a liar.”

She looked up startled, her tears blinding her. “You have not deceived me?” she asked bitterly. “Oh, you have not deceived me—you have loved me, have you not?” It was that which mattered, that only. Moveless and eager, she looked—looked at him, waiting, as it were, for sentence.

“I never lied to you, Rosalie—never!” he answered, and he touched her hand.

She gave a moan of relief at his words. “Oh, then, oh, then... “ she said, in a low voice, and the tears in her eyes dried away.

“I meant that until I knew you, I kept deceiving myself and others all my life—”

“But without knowing it?” she said eagerly.

“Perhaps, without quite knowing it.”

“Until you knew me?” she asked, in quick, quivering tones.

“Till I knew you,” he answered.

“Then I have done you good—not ill?” she asked, with painful breathlessness.

“The only good there may be in me is you, and you only,” he said, and he choked something rising in his throat, seeing the greatness of her heart, her dear desire to have entered into his life to his own good. He would have said that there was no good in him at all, but that he wished to comfort her.

A little cry of joy broke from her lips. “Oh, that—that!” she cried, with happy tears. “Won’t you kiss me now?” she added softly.

He clasped her in his arms, and though his eyes were dry, his heart wept tears of blood.

CHAPTER LII. THE COMING OF BILLY

Chaudiere had made—and lost—a reputation. The Passion Play in the valley had become known to a whole country—to the Cure’s and the Seigneur’s unavailing regret. They had meant to revive the great story for their own people and the Indians—a homely, beautiful object-lesson, in an Eden—like innocence and quiet and repose; but behold the world had invaded them! The vanity of the Notary had undone them. He had written to the great papers of the province, telling of the advent of the play, and pilgrimages had been organised, and excursions had been made to the spot, where a simple people had achieved a crude but noble picture of the life and death of the Hero of Christendom. The Cure viewed with consternation the invasion of their quiet. It was no longer his own Chaudiere; and when, on a Sunday, his dear people were jostled from the church to make room for strangers, his gentle eloquence seemed to forsake him, he spoke haltingly, and his intoning of the Mass lacked the old soothing simplicity.

“Ah, my dear Seigneur!” he said, on the Sunday before the playing was to end, “we have overshot the mark.”

The Seigneur nodded and turned his head away. “There is an English play which says, ‘I have shot mine arrow o’er the house and hurt my brother.’ That’s it—that’s it! We began with religion, and we end with greed, and pride, and notoriety.”

“What do we want of fame! The price is too high, Maurice. Fame is not good for the hearts and minds of simple folk.”

“It will soon be over.”

“I dread a sordid reaction.”

The Seigneur stood thinking for a moment. “I have an idea,” he said at last. “Let us have these last days to ourselves. The mission ends next Saturday at five o’clock. We will announce that all strangers must leave the valley by Wednesday night. Then, during those last three days, while yet the influence of the play is on them, you can lead your own people back to the old quiet feelings.”

“My dear Maurice—it is worthy of you! It is the way. We will announce it to-day. And see now.... For those three days we will change the principals; lest those who have taken the parts so long have lost the pious awe which should be upon them. We will put new people in their places. I will announce it at vespers presently. I have in my mind who should play the Christ, and St. John, and St. Peter—the men are not hard to find; but for Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene—”

The eyes of the two men suddenly met, a look of understanding passed between them.

“Will she do it?” said the Seigneur.

The Cure nodded. “Paulette Dubois has heard the word, ‘Go and sin no more’; she will obey.”

Walking through the village as they talked, the Cure shrank back painfully several times, for voices of strangers, singing festive songs, rolled out upon the road. “Who can they be?” he said distressfully.

Without a word the Seigneur went to the door of the inn whence the sounds proceeded, and, without knocking, entered. A moment afterwards the voices stopped, but broke out again, quieted, then once more broke out, and presently the Seigneur issued from the door, white with anger, three strangers behind him. All were intoxicated.

One was violent. It was Billy Wantage, whom the years had not improved. He had arrived that day with two companions—an excursion of curiosity as an excuse for a “spree.”

“What’s the matter with you, old stick-in-the-mud?” he shouted. “Mass is over, isn’t it? Can’t we have a little guzzle between prayers?”

By this time a crowd had gathered, among them Filion Lacasse. At a motion from the Seigneur, and a whisper that went round quickly, a dozen habitants swiftly sprang on the three men, pinioned their arms, and carrying them bodily to the pump by the tavern, held them under it, one by one, till each was soaked and sober. Then their horses and wagon were brought, and they were given five minutes to leave the village.

With a devilish look in his eye, and drenched and furious, Billy was disposed to resist the command, but the faces around him were determined, and, muttering curses, the three drove away towards the next parish.

CHAPTER LIII. THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION

Presently the Seigneur and the Cure stood before the door of the tailor-shop. The Cure was about to knock, when the Seigneur laid a hand upon his arm.

“There is no use; he has been gone several days,” he said.

“Gone—gone!” said the Cure.

“I came to see him yesterday, and not finding him, I asked at the post-office.” M. Rossignol’s voice lowered. “He told Mrs. Flynn he was going into the hills, so Rosalie says.”

The Cure’s face fell. “He went away also just before the play began. I almost fear that—that we get no nearer. His mind prompts him to do good and not evil, and yet—and yet.... I have dreamed a good dream, Maurice, but I sometimes fear I have dreamed in vain.”

“Wait-wait!”

M. Loisel looked towards the post-office musingly. “I have thought sometimes that what man’s prayers may not accomplish a woman’s love might do. If—but, alas, what do we know of his past! Nothing. What do we know of his future? Nothing. What do we know of the human heart? Nothing—nothing!”

The Seigneur was astounded. The Cure’s meaning was plain. “What do you mean?” he asked, almost gruffly.

“She—Rosalie—has changed—changed.” In his heart he dwelt sorrowfully upon the fact that she had not been to confession to him for many, many months.

“Since her father’s death—since her illness?”

“Since she went to Montreal seven months ago. Even while she was so ill these past weeks, she never asked for me; and when I came... Ah, if it is that her heart has gone out to the man, and his does not respond!”

“A good thing, too!” said the other gloomily. “We don’t know where he came from, and we do know that he is a pagan.”

“Yet there she sits now, hour after hour, day after day—so changed.”

“She has lost her father,” urged M. Rossignol anxiously.

“I know the grief of children—this is not such a grief. There is something more. But I cannot ask. If she were a sinner—but she is without fault. Have we not watched her grow up here, mirthful, brave, pure-souled—”

“Fitted for any station,” interposed the Seigneur huskily. Presently he laid a hand upon the Cure’s arm. “Shall I ask her again?” he said, breathing hard. “Do you think she has found out her mistake?”

The Cure was so taken aback that at first he could not speak. When he realised, however, he could scarce suppress a smile at the other’s simple vanity. But he mastered himself, and said: “It is not that, Maurice. It is not you.”

“How did you know I had asked her?” asked his friend querulously.

“You have just told me.”

M. Rossignol felt a kind of reproval in the Cure’s tone. It made him a little nervous. “I’m an old fool, but she needed some one,” he protested. “At least I am a gentleman, and she would not be thrown away.”

“Dear Maurice!” said the Cure, and linked his arm in the other’s. “In all respects save one, it would have been to her advantage. But youth is the only comrade for youth. All else is evasion of life’s laws.”

The Seigneur pressed his arm. “I thought you less worldly-wise than myself; I find you more,” he said.

“Not worldly-wise. Life is deeper than the world or worldly wisdom. Come, we will both go and see Rosalie.”

M. Rossignol suddenly stopped at the post-office door, and half turned towards the tailor-shop. “He is young. Suppose that he drew her love his way, but gave her nothing in return, and—”

“If it were so”—the Cure paused, and his face darkened—“if it were so, he should leave her forever; and so my dream would end.”

“And Rosalie?”

“Rosalie would forget. To remember, youth must see and touch and be near, else it wears itself out in excess of feeling. Youth feels more deeply than age, but it must bear daily witness.”

“Upon my honour, Cure, you shall write your little philosophies for the world,” said M. Rossignol, and then knocked at the door.

“I will go in alone, Maurice,” the Cure urged. “Good-you are right,” answered the other. “I will go write the proclamation denying strangers the valley after Wednesday. I will enforce it, too,” he added, with vigour, and, turning, walked up the street, as Mrs. Flynn admitted the Cure to the post-office.

A half-hour later M. Loisel again appeared at the post-office door, a pale, beautiful face at his shoulder.

He had not been brave enough to say what was on his mind. But as he bade her good-bye, he plucked up needful courage.

“Forgive me, Rosalie,” he said, “but I have sometimes thought that you have more griefs than one. I have thought”—he paused, then went on bravely—“that there might be—there might be unwelcomed love, or love deceived.”

A mist came before her eyes, but she quietly and firmly answered: “I have never been deceived in love, Monsieur Loisel.”

“There, there!” he hurriedly and gently rejoined. “Do not be hurt, my child. I only want to help you.” A moment afterwards he was gone.

As the door closed behind him, she drew herself proudly up.

“I have never been deceived,” she said aloud. “I love him—love him—love him.”