“Monsieur, Monsieur!” came the voice from inside the house, querulously and anxiously. Charley entered the Notary’s bedroom.
“Monsieur,” said the Notary excitedly, “she is here—Paulette is here. My wife is asleep, thank God! but old Sophie has just told me that the woman asks to see me. Ah, Heaven above, what shall I do?”
“Will you leave it to me?”
“Yes, yes, Monsieur.”
“You will do exactly as I say?”
“Ah, most sure.”
“Very well. Keep still. I will see her first. Trust to me.” He turned and left the room.
Charley found the woman in the Notary’s office, which, while partly detached from the house, did duty as sitting-room and library. When Charley entered, the room was only lighted by two candles, and Paulette’s face was hidden by a veil, but Charley observed the tremulousness of the figure and the nervous decision of manner. He had seen her before several times, and he had always noticed the air, half bravado, half shrinking, marking her walk and movements, as though two emotions were fighting in her. She was now dressed in black, save for one bright red ribbon round her throat, incongruous and garish.
When she saw Charley she started, for she had expected the servant with a message from the Notary—her own message had been peremptory.
“I wish to see the Notary,” she said defiantly.
“He is not able to come to you.”
“What of that?”
“Did you expect to go to his bedroom?”
“Why not?” She was abrupt to discourtesy.
“You are neither physician, nor relative.”
“I have important business.”
“I transact his business for him, Madame.”
“You are a tailor.”
“I learned that; I am learning to be a notary.”
“My business is private.”
“I transact his private business too—that which his wife cannot do. Would you prefer his wife to me? It must be either the one or the other.”
The woman started towards the door in a rage. He stepped between. “You cannot see the Notary.”
“I’ll see his wife, then—”
“That would only put the fat in the fire. His wife would not listen to you. She is quick-tempered, and she fancies she has reasons for not liking you.”
“She’s a fool. I haven’t been always particular, but as for Narcisse Dauphin—”
“He has been a good friend to you at some expense, the world says.”
The woman struggled with herself. “The world lies!” she said at last.
“But he doesn’t. The village was against you once. That was when the Notary, with the Seigneur, was for you—it has cost him something ever since, I’m told. You’ve never thanked him.”
“He has tortured me for years, the oily, smirking, lying—”
“He has been your best friend,” he interrupted. “Please sit down, and listen to me for a moment.”
She hesitated, then did as he asked.
“He tells me that years ago he was in love with you. Hasn’t he behaved better than some who said they loved you?”
The woman half started up, her eyes flashing, but met a deprecating motion of his hand and sat down again.
“He thought that if you knew your child lived, you would think better of life—and of yourself. He has his good points, the Notary.”
“Why doesn’t he tell me where my child is?”
“The Notary is in bed—you shot him! Don’t you think it is doing you a good turn not to have you arrested?”
“It was an accident.”
“Oh no, it wasn’t! You couldn’t make a jury believe that. And if you were in prison, how could you find your child? You see, you have treated the Notary very badly.”
She was silent, and he added, slowly: “He had good reasons for not telling you. It wasn’t his own secret, and he hadn’t come by it in a strictly professional way. Your child was being well cared for, and he told you simply that it was alive—for your own sake. But he has changed his mind at last, and—”
The woman sprang from her seat. “He will tell me—he will tell me?”
“I will tell you.”
“Monsieur-Monsieur—ah, my God, but you are kind! How should you know—what do you know?”
“I give you my word that by to-morrow evening you shall know where your child is.”
For a moment she was bewildered and overcome, then a look of gratitude, of luminous hope, covered her face, softening the hardness of its contour, and she fell on her knees beside the table, dropped her head in her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
“My little lamb, my little, little lamb-my own dearest!” she sobbed. “I shall have you again. I shall have you again—all my own!”
He stood and watched her meditatively. He was wondering why it was that grief like this had never touched him so before. His eyes were moist. Though he had been many things in his life, he had never been abashed; but a curious timidity possessed him now.
He leaned over and touched her shoulder with a kindly abruptness, a friendly awkwardness. “Cheer up,” he said. “You shall have your child, if Dauphin can help you to it.”
“If he ever tries to take him from me”—she sprang to her feet, her face in a fury—“I will—”
For an instant her overpowering passion possessed her, and she stood violent and wilful; then, under his fixed, exacting gaze, her rage ceased; she became still and grey and quiet.
“I shall know to-morrow evening, Monsieur? Where?” Her voice was weak and distant.
He thought for a time. “At my house-at nine o’clock,” he answered at last.
“Monsieur,” she said, in a choking voice, “if I get my child again, I will bless you to my dying day.”
“No, no; it will be Dauphin you must bless,” he said, and opened the door for her. As she disappeared into the dusk and silence he adjusted his eye-glass, and stared musingly after her, though there was nothing to see save the summer darkness, nothing to hear save the croak of the frogs in the village pond. He was thinking of the trial of Joseph Nadeau, and of a woman in the gallery, who laughed.
“Monsieur, Monsieur,” called the voice of the Notary from the bedroom.
It had been a perfect September day. The tailor of Chaudiere had been busier than usual, for winter was within hail, and careful habitants were renewing their simple wardrobes. The Seigneur and the Cure arrived together, each to order the making of a greatcoat of the Irish frieze which the Seigneur kept in quantity at the Manor. The Seigneur was in rare spirits. And not without reason; for this was Michaelmas eve, and tomorrow would be Michaelmas day, and there was a promise to be redeemed on Michaelmas day! He had high hopes of its redemption according to his own wishes; for he was a vain Seigneur, and he had had his way in all things all his life, as everybody knew. Importunity with discretion was his motto, and he often vowed to the Cure that there was no other motto for the modern world.
The Cure’s visit to the tailor’s shop on this particular day had unusual interest, for it concerned his dear ambition, the fondest aspiration of his life: to bring the infidel tailor (they could not but call a man an infidel whose soul was negative—the word agnostic had not then become usual) from the chains of captivity into the freedom of the Church. The Cure had ever clung to his fond hope; and it was due to his patient confidence that there were several parishioners who now carried Charley’s name before the shrine of the blessed Virgin, and to the little calvaries by the road-side. The wife of Filion Lacasse never failed to pray for him every day. The thousand dollars gained by the saddler on the tailor’s advice had made her life happier ever since, for Filion had become saving and prudent, and had even got her a “hired girl.” There were at least a half-dozen other women, including Madame Dauphin, who did the same.
That he might listen again to the good priest on his holy hobby, inflamed with this passion of missionary zeal, the Seigneur, this morning, had thrown doubt upon the ultimate success of the Cure’s efforts.
“My dear Cure” said the Seigneur, “it is true, I think, what the tailor suggested to my brother—on my soul, I wonder the Abbe gave in, for a more obstinate fellow I never knew!—that a man is born with the disbelieving maggot in his brain, or the butterfly of belief, or whatever it may be called. It’s constitutional—may be criminal, but constitutional. It seems to me you would stand more chance with the Jew, Greek, or heretic, than our infidel. He thinks too much—for a tailor, or for nine tailors, or for one man.”
He pulled his nose, as if he had said a very good thing indeed. They were walking slowly towards the village during this conversation, and the Cure, stopping short, brought his stick emphatically down in his palm several times, as he said:
“Ah, you will not see! You will not understand. With God all things are possible. Were it the devil himself in human form, I should work and pray and hope, as my duty is, though he should still remain the devil to the end. What am I? Nothing. But what the Church has done, the Church may do. Think of Paul and Augustine, and Constantine!”
“They were classic barbarians to whom religion was but an emotion. This man has a brain which must be satisfied.”
“I must count him as a soul to be saved through that very intelligence, as well as through the goodness of his daily life, which, in its charity, shames us all. He gives all he earns to the sick and needy. He lives on fare as poor as the poorest of our people eat; he gives up his hours of sleep to nurse the sick. Dauphin might not have lived but for him. His heart is good, else these things were impossible. He could not act them.”
“But that’s just it, Cure. Doesn’t he act them? Isn’t it a whim? What more likely than that, tired of the flesh-pots of Egypt, he comes here to live in the desert—for a sensation? We don’t know.”
“We do know. The man has had sorrow and the man has had sin. Yes, believe me, there is none of us that suffers as this man has suffered. I have had many, many talks with him. Believe me, Maurice, I speak the truth. My heart bleeds for him. I think I know the thing that drove him here amongst us. It is a great temptation, which pursues him here—even here, where his life is so commendable. I have seen him fighting it. I have seen his torture, the piteous, ignoble yielding, and the struggle, with more than mortal energy, to be master of himself.”
“It is—” the Seigneur said, then paused.
“No, no; do not ask me. He has not confessed to me, Maurice-naturally, nothing like that. But I know. I know and pity—ah, Maurice, I almost love. You argue, and reason, but I know this, my friend, that something was left out of this man when he was made, and it is that thing that we must find, or he will die among us a ruined soul, and his gravestone will be the monument of our shame. If he can once trust the Church, if he can once say, ‘Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,’ then his temptation will vanish, and I shall bring him in—I shall lead him home.”
For an instant the Seigneur looked at him in amazement, for this was a Cure he had never known.
“Dear Cure, you are not your old self,” he said gently.
“I am not myself—yes, that is it, Maurice. I am not the old humdrum Cure you knew. The whole world is my field now. I have sorrowed for sin, within the bounds of this little Chaudiere. Now I sorrow for unbelief. Through this man, through much thinking on him, I have come to feel the woe of all the world. I have come to hear the footsteps of the Master near. My friend, it is not a legend, not a belief now, it is a presence. I owe him much, Maurice. In bringing him home, I shall understand what it all means—the faith that we profess. I shall in truth feel that it is all real. You see how much I may yet owe to him—to this infidel tailor. I only hope I have not betrayed him,” he added anxiously. “I would keep faith with him—ah, yes, indeed!”
“I only remember that you have said the man suffers. That is no betrayal.”
They entered the village in silence. Presently, however, the sound of Maximilian Cour’s violin, as they passed the bakery, set the Seigneur’s tongue wagging again, and it wagged on till they came to the tailor’s shop.
“Good-day to you, Monsieur,” he said, as they entered.
“Have you a hot goose for me?”
“I have, but I will not press it on you,” replied Charley.
“Should you so take my question—eh?”
“Should you so take my ‘anser’?”
The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling. “Think of that, Cure! He knows the classics.” He laughed till the tears came into his eyes.
The next few moments Charley was busy measuring the two potentates for greatcoats. As it was his first work for them, it was necessary for the Cure to write down the Seigneur’s measurements, as the tailor called them off, while the Seigneur did the same when the Cure was being measured. So intent were the three it might have been a conference of war. The Seigneur ventured a distant but self-conscious smile when the measurement of his waist was called, for he had by two inches the advantage of the Cure, though they were the same age, while he was one inch better in the chest. The Seigneur was proud of his figure, and, unheeding the passing of fashions, held to the knee-breeches and silk stockings long after they had disappeared from the province. To the Cure he had often said that the only time he ever felt heretical was when in the presence of the gaitered calves of a Protestant dean. He wore his sleeves tight and his stock high, as in the days when William the Sailor was king in England, and his long gold-topped Prince Regent cane was the very acme of dignity.
The measurement done, the three studied the fashion plates—mostly five years old—as Von Moltke and Bismarck might have studied the field of Gravelotte. The Seigneur’s remarks were highly critical, till, with a few hasty strokes on brown paper, Charley sketched in his figure with a long overcoat in style much the same as his undercoat, stately and flowing and confined at the waist.
“Admirable, most admirable!” said the Seigneur. “The likeness is astonishing”—he admired the carriage of his own head in Charley’s swift lines—“the garment in perfect taste. Form—there is nothing like form and proportion in life. It is almost a religion.”
“My dear friend!” said the Cure, in amazement.
“I know when I am in the presence of an artist and his work. Louis Trudel had rule and measure, shears and a needle. Our friend here has eye and head, sense of form and creative gift. Ah, Cure, Cure, if I were twenty-five, with the assistance of Monsieur, I would show the bucks in Fabrique Street how to dress. What style is this called, Monsieur?” he suddenly asked, pointing to the drawing.
“Style a la Rossignol, Seigneur,” said the tailor.
The Seigneur was flattered out of all reason. He looked across at the post-office, where he could see Rosalie dimly moving in the shade of the shop.
“Ah, if I had but ordered this coat sooner!” he said regretfully. He was thinking that to-morrow was Michaelmas day, when he was to ask Rosalie for her answer again, and he fancied himself appearing before her in the gentle cool of the evening, in this coat, lightly thrown back, disclosing his embroidered waistcoat, seals, and snowy linen. “Monsieur, I am highly complimented, believe me,” he said. “Observe, Cure, that this coat is invented for me on the spot.”
The Cure nodded appreciatively. “Wonderful! Wonderful! But do you not think,” he added, a little wistfully—for, was he not a Frenchman, susceptible like all his race to the appearance of things?—“do you not think it might be too fashionable for me?”
“Not a whit—not a whit,” replied the Seigneur generously. “Should not a Cure look distinguished—be dignified? Consider the length, the line, the eloquence of design! Ah, Monsieur, once again, you are an artist! The Cure shall wear it—indeed but he shall! Then I shall look like him, and perhaps get credit for some of his perfections.”
“And the Cure?” said Charley.
“The Cure?—the Cure? Tiens, a little of my worldliness will do him good. There are no contrasts in him. He must wear the coat.” He waved his walking-stick complacently, for he was thinking that the Cure’s less perfect figure would set off his own well as they walked together. “May I have the honour to keep this as a souvenir?” he added, picking up the sketch.
“With pleasure,” answered Charley. “You do not need it?”
“Not at all.”
The Cure looked a little disappointed, and Charley, seeing, immediately sketched on brown paper the priestly figure in the new-created coat, a la Rossignol. On this drawing he was a little longer engaged, with the result that the Cure was reproduced with a singular fidelity—in face, figure, and expression a personality gentle yet important.
“On my soul, you shall not have it!” said the Seigneur. “But you shall have me, and I shall have you, lest we both grow vain by looking at ourselves.” He thrust the sketch of himself into the Cure’s hands, and carefully rolled up that of his friend.
The Cure was amazed at this gift of the tailor, and delighted with the picture of himself—his vanity was as that of a child, without guile or worldliness. He was better pleased, however, to have the drawing of his friend by him, that vanity might not be too companionable. He thanked Charley with a beaming face, and then the two friends bowed and moved towards the door. Suddenly the Cure stopped.
“My dear Maurice,” said he, “we have forgotten the important thing.”
“Think of that—we two old babblers!” said the Seigneur. He nodded for the Cure to begin. “Monsieur,” said the Cure to Charley, “you maybe able to help us in a little difficulty. For a long time we have intended holding a great mission with a kind of religious drama like that performed at Ober-Ammergau, and called The Passion Play. You know of it, Monsieur?”
“Very well through reading, Monsieur.”
“Next Easter we propose having a Passion Play in pious imitation of the famous drama. We will hold it at the Indian reservation of Four Mountains, thus quickening our own souls and giving a good object-lesson of the great History to the Indians.”
The Cure paused rather anxiously, but Charley did not speak. His eyes were fixed inquiringly on the Cure, and he had a sudden suspicion that some devious means were forward to influence him. He dismissed the thought, however, for this Cure was simple as man ever was made, straightforward as the most heretical layman might demand.
The Cure, taking heart, again continued: “Now I possess an authentic description of the Ober-Ammergau drama, giving details of its presentation at different periods, and also a book of the play. But there is no one in the parish who reads German, and it occurred to the Seigneur and myself that, understanding French so well, by chance you may understand German also, and would, perhaps, translate the work for us.”
“I read German easily and speak it fairly,” Charley answered, relieved; “and you are welcome to my services.”
The Cure’s pale face flushed with pleasure. He took the little German book from his pocket, and handed it over.
“It is not so very long,” he said; “and we shall all be grateful.” Then an inspiration came to him; his eyes lighted.
“Monsieur,” he said, “you will notice that there are no illustrations in the book. It is possible that you might be able to make us a few drawings—if we do not ask too much? It would aid greatly in the matter of costume, and you might use my library—I have a fair number of histories.” The Cure was almost breathless, his heart thumped as he made the request. After a slight pause he added, hastily: “You are always doing for others. It is hardly kind to ask you; but we have some months to spare; there need be no haste.” Charley hastened to relieve the Cure’s anxiety. “Do not apologise,” he said. “I will do what I can when I can. But as for drawing, Monsieur, it will be but amateurish.”
“Monsieur,” interposed the Seigneur promptly, “if you’re not an artist, I’m damned!”
“Maurice!” murmured the Cure reproachfully. “Can’t help it, Cure. I’ve held it in for an hour. It had to come; so there it is exploded. I see no damage either, save to my own reputation. Monsieur,” he added to Charley, “if I had gifts like yours, nothing would hold me. I should put on more airs than Beauty Steele.”
It was fortunate that, at that instant, Charley’s face was turned away, or the Seigneur would have seen it go white and startled. Charley did not dare turn his head for the moment. He could not speak. What did the Seigneur know of Beauty Steele?
To hide his momentary confusion, he went over to the drawer of a cupboard in the wall, and placed the book inside. It gave him time to recover himself. When he turned round again his face was calm, his manner composed.
“And who, may I ask, is Beauty Steele?” he said. “Faith I do not know,” answered the Seigneur, taking a pinch of snuff. “It’s years since I first read the phrase in a letter a scamp of a relative of mine wrote me from the West. He had met a man of the name, who had a reputation as a clever fop, a very handsome fellow. So I thought it a good phrase, and I’ve used it ever since on occasions. ‘More airs than Beauty Steele.’—It has a sound; it’s effective, I fancy, Monsieur?”
“Decidedly effective,” answered Charley quietly. He picked up his shears. “You will excuse me,” he said grimly, “but I must earn my living. I cannot live on my reputation.”
The Seigneur and the Cure lifted their hats—to the tailor.
“Au revoir, Monsieur,” they both said, and Charley bowed them out.
The two friends turned to each other a little way up the street. “Something will come of this, Cure,” said the Seigneur. The Cure, whose face had a look of happiness, pressed his arm in reply.
Inside the tailor-shop, a voice kept saying, “More airs than Beauty Steele!”
Since the evening in the garden when she had been drawn into Charley’s arms, and then fled from them in joyful confusion, Rosalie had been in a dream. She had not closed her eyes all night, or, if she closed them, they still saw beautiful things flashing by, to be succeeded by other beautiful things. It was a roseate world. To her simple nature it was not so important to be loved as to love. Selfishness was as yet the minor part of her. She had been giving all her life—to her mother, as a child; to sisters at the convent who had been kind to her; to the poor and the sick of the parish; to her father, who was helpless without her; to the tailor across the way. In each case she had given more than she had got. A nature overflowing with impulsive affection, it must spend itself upon others. The maternal instinct was at the very core of her nature, and care for others was as much a habit as an instinct with her. She had love to give, and it must be given. It had been poured like the rain from heaven on the just and the unjust; on animals as on human beings, and in so far as her nature, in the first spring—the very April—of its powers, could do.
Till Charley had come to Chaudiere, it had all been the undisciplined ardour of a girl’s nature. A change had begun in the moment when she had tearfully thrust the oil and flour in upon his excoriated breast. Later came real awakening, and a riotous outpouring of herself in sympathy, in observation, in a reckless kindness which must have done her harm but that her clear intelligence balanced her actions, and because secrecy in one thing helped to restrain her in all. Yet with all the fresh overflow of her spirit, which, assisted by her new position as postmistress, made her a conspicuous and popular figure in the parish, where officialdom had rare honour and little labour, she had prejudices almost unworthy of her, due though they were to radical antipathy. These prejudices, one against Jo Portugais and the other against Paulette Dubois, she had never been able entirely to overcome, though she had honestly tried. On the way to the hospital at Quebec, however, Jo had been so careful of her father, so respectful when speaking of M’sieu’, so regardful of her own comfort, that her antagonism to him was lulled. But the strong prejudice against Paulette Dubois remained, casting a shadow on her bright spirit.
All this day she had moved about in a mellow dream, very busy, scarcely thinking. New feelings dominated her, and she was too primitive to analyse them and too occupied with them to realise acutely the life about her. Work was an abstraction, resting rather than tiring her.
Many times she had looked across at the tailor-shop, only seeing Charley once. She did not wish to speak with him now, nor to be near him yet; she wanted this day for herself only.
So it was that, soon after the Cure and the Seigneur had bade good-bye to Charley, she left the post-office and went quickly through the village to a spot by the river, where was a place called the Rest of the Flaxbeaters. It was an overhanging rock which made a kind of canopy over a sweet spring, where, in the days when their labours sounded through the valley, the flaxbeaters from the level below came to eat their meals and to rest.
This had always been a resort for her in the months when the flax-beaters did not use it. Since a child she had made the place her own. To this day it is called Rosalie’s Dell; for are not her sorrows and joys still told by those who knew and loved her? and is not the parish still fragrant with her name? Has not her history become a living legend a thousand times told?
Leaving the village behind her, Rosalie passed down the high-road till she came to a path that led off through a grove of scattered pines. There would be yet a half-hour’s sun and then a short twilight, and the river and the woods and the Rest of the Flax-beaters would be her own; and she could think of the wonderful thing come upon her. She had brought with her a book of English poems, and as she went through the grove she opened it, and in her pretty English repeated over and over to herself:
She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of her own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it exaltation. The touch had come.
She went on abstractedly to the place where she had trysted with her thoughts only, these many years, and, sitting down, watched the sun sink beyond the trees, the shades of evening fall. All that had happened since Charley came to the parish she went over in her mind. She remembered the day he had said this, the day he had said that; she brought back the night—it was etched upon her mind!—when he had said to her, “You have saved my life, Mademoiselle!” She recalled the time she put the little cross back on the church-door, the ghostly footsteps in the church, the light, the lost hood. A shudder ran through her now, for the mystery of that hood had never been cleared up. But the words on the page caught her eye again:
It swallowed up the moment’s agitation. Never till this day, never till last night, had she dared to say to herself, He loves me. He seemed so far above her—she never had thought of him as a tailor!—that she had given and never dared hope to receive, had lived without anticipation lest there should come despair. Even that day at Vadrome Mountain she had not thought he meant love, when he had said to her that he would remember to the last. When he had said that he would die for love’s sake, he had not meant her, but others—some one else whom he would save by his death. Kathleen, that name which had haunted her—ah, whoever Kathleen was, or whatever Kathleen had to do with him or his life, she had no reason to fear Kathleen now. She had no reason to fear any one; for had she not heard his words of love as he clasped her in his arms last night? Had she not fled from that enfolding, because her heart was so full in the hour of her triumph that she could not bear more, could not look longer into the eyes to which she had told her love before his was spoken?
In the midst of her thoughts she heard footsteps. She started up. Paulette Dubois suddenly appeared in the path below. She had taken the river-path down from Vadrome Mountain, where she had gone to see Jo Portugais, who had not yet returned from Quebec. Paulette’s face was agitated, her manner nervous. For nights she had not slept, and her approaching meeting with the tailor had made her tremble all day. Excited as she was, there was a wild sort of beauty in her face, and her figure was lithe and supple. She dressed always a little garishly, but now there was only that band of colour round the throat, worn last night in the talk with Charley.
To both women this meeting was as a personal misfortune, a mutual affront. Each had a natural antipathy. To Rosalie the invasion of her beloved retreat was as hateful as though the woman had purposely intruded.
For a moment they confronted each other without speaking, then Rosalie’s natural courtesy, her instinctive good-heartedness, overcame her irritation, and she said quietly:
“Good-evening, Madame.”
“I am not Madame, and you know it,” answered the woman harshly.
“I am sorry. Good-evening, Mademoiselle,” rejoined Rosalie evenly.
“You wanted to insult me. You knew I wasn’t Madame.”
Rosalie shook her head. “How should I know? You have not always lived in Chaudiere, you have lived in Montreal, and people often call you Madame.”
“You know better. You know that letters come to me from Montreal addressed Mademoiselle.”
Rosalie turned as if to go. “I do not recall what letters pass through the post-office. I have a good memory for forgetting. Good-evening,” she added, with an excess of courtesy. Paulette read the placid scorn in the girl’s face; she did not see and would not understand that Rosalie did not scorn her for what she had ever done, but for something that she was.
“You think I am the dirt under your feet,” she said, now white, now red, and mad with anger. “I’m not fit to speak with you—I’m a rag for the dust pile!”
“I have never thought so,” answered Rosalie. “I have not liked you, but I am sorry for you, and I never thought those things.”
“You lie!” was the rejoinder; and Rosalie, turning away quickly with trouble in her face, put her hands to her ears, and, hastening down the hillside, did not hear the words the woman called after her.
“To-morrow every one shall know you are a thief. Run, run, run! You can hear what I say, white-face! They shall know about the little cross to-morrow.”
She followed Rosalie at a distance, her eyes blazing. As fate would have it, she met on the highroad the least scrupulous man in the parish, an inveterate gossip, the keeper of the general store, whose only opposition in business was the post-office shop. He was the centre of the village tittle-tattle, and worse. With malicious speed Paulette told him how she had seen Rosalie Evanturel nailing the little cross on the church door of a certain night. If he wanted proof of what she said, let him ask Jo Portugais.
Having spat out her revenge, she went on to the village, and through it to her house, where she prepared to visit the shop of the tailor. Her sense of retaliation satisfied, Rosalie passed from her mind; her child only occupied it. In another hour she would know where her child was—the tailor had promised that she should. Then perhaps she would be sorry for the accident to the Notary; for it was an accident, in spite of appearances.
It was dark when Paulette entered the door of the tailor’s house. When she came out, a half-hour later, with elation in her carriage, and tears of joy running down her face, she did not look about her; she did not care whether or not any one saw her: she was possessed with only one thought—her child! She passed like a swift wind down the street, making for home and for her departure to the hiding-place of her child.
She had not seen a figure in the shadow of a tree near by as she came from the tailor’s door. She had not heard a smothered cry behind her. She was not aware that in unspeakable agony another woman knocked softly at the door of the tailor’s house, and, not waiting for an answer, opened it and entered. It was Rosalie Evanturel.
The kitchen was empty, but light fell through the door of the shop opening upon the little hall between. Rosalie crossed the hall and stood in the doorway of the shop, a figure of concentrated indignation, despair, and shame. Leaning on his elbow Charley was bending over a book in the light of a candle on the bench be side him. He was reading aloud, translating into English the German text of the narrative the Cure had given him:
Charley had not heard Rosalie enter, nor her footsteps in the hall. But now there ran through his reading a thread of something not of himself or of it. He had thrilled to the archaic but clear-hearted style of the old German chronicler, and the warmth he felt had passed into his voice, so that it became louder.
As Rosalie listened to his reading, a hundred thoughts rushed through her mind. Paulette Dubois, the wanton woman, had just left his doorway secretly, yet there he was, instantly after, calmly reading a pious book! Her mind was in tumult. She could not reason, she could not rule her judgment. She only knew that the woman had come from this house, and hurried guiltily away into the dark. She only knew that the man the woman had left here was the man she loved—loved more than her life, for he embodied all her past; all her present—she knew that she could not live without him; all her future—for where he went she would go, whatever the fate.
Her judgment had been swept from its moorings. She had been carried on the wave of her heart’s fever into this room, not daring to think this or that, not planning this or that, not accusing, not reproaching, not shaming herself and him by black suspicion, but blindly, madly demanding to see him, to look into his eyes, to hear his voice, to know him, whatever he was—man, lover, or devil. She was a child-woman—a child in her primitive feelings that threw aside all convention, because there was no wrong in her heart; a woman, because she was possessed by a jealousy which shamed and angered her, because its very existence put him on trial, condemned him. Her soul was the sport of emotions and passions stronger than herself, because the heritage, the instinct, of all the race of women, the eternal predisposition. At the moment her will was not sufficient to rule them to obedience. She was in the first subservience to that power which feeds the streams of human history.
As she now listened to Charley reading, a sudden revulsion of feeling came over her. Some note in his voice reassured her heart—if it needed reassuring. The quiet force of his presence stilled the tumult in her, so that her eyes could see without mist, her heart beat without agony; but every pulse in her was throbbing, every instinct was alive. Presently there rushed upon her the words that had rung in her ears and chimed in her heart at the Rest of the Flax-beaters:
Feelings lying beneath the mad conflict of emotion which had sent her into this room in such unmaidenly fashion—feelings that were her deepest self-welled up. Her breath came hard and broken.
As Charley read on, a breathing seemed to answer his own. It became quicker than his own, it pierced the stillness, it filled the room with feeling, it came calling to him out of the silence. He swung round, and saw the girl in the doorway.
“Rosalie!” he cried, and sprang to his feet.
With a piteously pathetic cry, she flung herself on her knees beside the tailor’s bench where he worked every day, and, burying her face in her arms as they rested on the bench, wept bitterly.
“Rosalie!” he said anxiously, leaning over her. “What is the matter? What has happened?”
She wept more bitterly still; she made a despairing gesture. His hand touched her hair; he dropped on a knee beside her.
“Oh, I am so ashamed, ashamed! I have been so wicked,” she murmured.
“Rosalie, what has happened?” he urged gently. His own heart was beating hard, his own eyes were responding to hers. The new feelings alive in him, the forces his love had awakened, which, last night, had kept him sleepless, and had been upon him like a dream all day—they were at height in him now. He knew not how to command them.
“Rosalie, dearest, tell me all!” he persisted.
“I shall never—I have been—oh—you will never forgive me!” she said brokenly. “I knew it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t help it. I saw her—the woman—come from your house, and—”
“Hush! For God’s sake, hush!” he broke in almost harshly. Then a better understanding came upon him, and it made him gentle with her.
“Ah, Rosalie, you did not think! But—but it was natural you should wish to see me....”
“But, as soon as I saw you, I knew that—that—” She broke down again and wept.
“I will tell you about her, Rosalie—” His fingers stroked her hair, and, bending over her, his face was near her hands.
“No, no, tell me nothing—oh, if you tell me!—”
“She came to hear from me what she ought to have heard from the Notary. She has had great trouble—the man—her child—and I have helped her, told her—” His face was so near now that his breath was on her hair. She suddenly raised her head and clasped his face in her hands.
“I knew—oh, I knew, I knew...!” she wept, and her eyes drank his.
“Rosalie, my life!” he cried, clasping her in his arms.
The love that was in him, new-born and but half understood, poured itself out in broken words like her own. For him there was no outside world; no past, no Kathleen, no Billy; no suspicion, or infidelity, or unfaith; no fear of disaster; no terrors of the future. Life was Now to him and to her: nothing brooded behind, nothing lay before. The candle spluttered and burnt low in the socket.