Rosalie also had a hidden pride: the secret was now her very own—hers and M'sieu's.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME

It was St. Jean Baptiste's day, and French Canada was en fete. Every seigneur, every cure, every doctor, every notary—the chief figures in a parish—and every habitant was bent for a happy holiday, dressed in his best clothes, moved in his best spirits, in the sweet summer weather.

Bells were ringing, flags were flying, every road and lane was filled with caleches and wagons, and every dog that could draw a cart pulled big and little people, the old and the blind and the mendicant, the happy and the sour, to the village, where there were to be sports and speeches, races upon the river, and a review of the militia, arranged by the member of the Legislature for the Chaudiere-half of the county. French soldiers in English red coats and carrying British flags were straggling along the roads to join the battalion at the volunteers' camp three miles from the town, and singing:

"Brigadier, respondez Pandore— Brigadier, vous avez raison."

It was not less incongruous and curious when one group presently broke out into 'God save the Queen', and another into the 'Marseillaise', and another still into 'Malbrouck s'en va t'en guerre'. At last songs and soldiers were absorbed in the battalion at the rendezvous, and 1the long dusty march to the village gave a disciplined note to the gaiety of the militant habitant.

At high noon Chaudiere was filled to overflowing. There were booths and tents everywhere—all sorts of cheap-jacks vaunted their wares, merry-go- rounds and swings and shooting-galleries filled the usual spaces in the perspective. The Cure, M. Rossignol the Seigneur, and the Notary stood on the church steps viewing the scene and awaiting the approach of the soldier-citizens. The Seigneur and the Cure had ceased listening to the babble of M. Dauphin, who seemed not to know that his audience closed its ears and found refuge in a "Well, well!" or "Think of that!" or an abstracted "You surprise me!"

The Notary talked on with eager gesture and wreathing smile, shaking back his oiled ringlets as though they trespassed on his smooth, somewhat jaundiced cheeks, until it began to dawn upon him that there was no coin of real applause to be got at this mint. Fortune favoured him at the critical juncture, for the tailor walked slowly past them, looking neither to right nor to left, his eyes cast upon the ground, apparently oblivious to all round him. Almost opposite the church door, however, Charley was suddenly stopped by Filion Lacasse, who ran out from a group before the tavern, and, standing in front of him with outstretched hand, said loudly:

"M'sieu', it's all right. What you said done it, sure! I'm a thousand dollars richer to-day. You may be an infidel, but you have a head, and you save me money, and you give away your own, and that's good enough for me,"—he wrung Charley's hand,—"and I don't care who knows it—sacre!"

Charley did not answer him, but calmly withdrew his hand, smiled, raised his hat at the lonely cheer the saddler raised, and passed on, scarce conscious of what had happened. Indeed he was indifferent to it, for he had a matter on his mind this day which bitterly absorbed him.

But the Notary was not indifferent. "Look there, what do you think of that?" he asked querulously. "I am glad to see that Lacasse treats Monsieur well," said the Cure.

"What do you think of that, Monsieur?" repeated the Notary excitedly to the Seigneur.

The Seigneur put his large gold-handled glass to his eye and looked interestedly after Charley for a moment, then answered: "Well, Dauphin, what?"

"He's been giving Filion Lacasse advice about the old legacy business, and Filion's taken it; and he's got a thousand dollars; and now there's all that fuss. And four months ago Filion wanted to tar and feather him for being just what he is to-day—an infidel—an infidel!"

He was going to say something else, but he did not like the look the Cure turned on him, and he broke off short.

"Do you regret that he gave Lacasse good advice?" asked the Cure.

"It's taking bread out of other men's mouths."

"It put bread into Filion's mouth. Did you ever give Lacasse advice? The truth now, Dauphin!" said the Seigneur drily.

"Yes, Monsieur, and sound advice too, within the law-precedent and code and every legal fact behind." The Seigneur was a man of laconic speech. "Tut, tut, Dauphin; precedent and code and legal fact are only good when there's brain behind 'em. The tailor yonder has brains."

"Ah, but what does he know about the law?" answered Dauphin, with acrimonious voice but insinuating manner, for he loved to stand well with the Seigneur.

"Enough for the saddler evidently," sharply rejoined the Seigneur.

Dauphin was fighting for his life, as it were. His back was to the wall. If this man was to be allowed to advise the habitants of Chaudiere on their disputes and "going to law," where would his own prestige be? His vanity had been deeply wounded.

"It's guesswork with him. Let him stick to his trade as I stick to mine. That sort of thing only does harm."

"He puts a thousand dollars into the saddler's pocket: that's a positive good. He may or may not take thereby ten dollars out of your pocket: that's a negative injury. In this case there was no injury, for you had already cost Lacasse—how much had you cost him, Dauphin?" continued the Seigneur, with a half-malicious smile. "I've been out of Chaudiere for near a year; I don't know the record—how much, eh, Dauphin?"

The Notary was too offended to answer. He shook his ringlets back angrily, and a scarlet spot showed on each straw-coloured cheek.

"Twenty dollars is what Lacasse paid our dear Dauphin," said the Cure benignly, "and a very proper charge. Lacasse probably gave Monsieur there quite as much, and Monsieur will give it to the first poor man he meets, or send it to the first sick person of whom he hears."

"My own opinion is, he's playing some game here," said the Notary.

"We all play games," said the Seigneur. "His seems to give him hard work and little luxury. Will you bring him to see me at the Manor, my dear Cure?" he added. "He will not go. I have asked him."

"Then I shall visit him at his tailor-shop," said the Seigneur. "I need a new suit."

"But you always had your clothes made in Quebec, Monsieur," said the Notary, still carping.

"We never had such a tailor," answered the Seigneur.

"We'll hear more of him before we're done with him," obstinately urged the Notary.

"It would give Dauphin the greatest pleasure if our tailor proved to be a murderer or a robber. I suppose you believe that he stole our little cross here," the Cure added, turning to the church door, where his eye lingered lovingly on the relic, hanging on a pillar just inside, whither he had had it removed.

"I'm not sure yet he hadn't something to do with it," was the stubborn response.

"If he did, may it bring him peace at last!" said the Cure piously. "I have set my heart on nailing him to our blessed faith as that cross is fixed to the pillar yonder—'I will fasten him like a nail in a sure place,' says the Book. I take it hard that my friend Dauphin will not help me on the way. Suppose the man were evil, then the Church should try to snatch him like a brand from the burning. But suppose that in his past there was no wrong necessary to be hidden in the present—and this I believe with all my heart; suppose that he was wronged, not wronging: then how much more should the Church strive to win him to the light! Why, man, have you no pride in Holy Church? I am ashamed of you, Dauphin, with your great intelligence, your wide reading. With our knowledge of the world we should be broader."

The Seigneur's eyes were turned away, for there was in them at once humour and a suspicious moisture. Of all men in the world he most admired the Cure, for his utter truth and nobility; but he could not help smiling at his enthusiasm—his dear Cure turned evangelist like any "Methody"!—and at the appeal of the Notary on the ground of knowledge of the world. He was wise enough to count himself an old fogy, a provincial, and "a simon-pure habitant," but of the three he only had any knowledge of life. As men of the world the Cure and the Notary were sad failures, though they stood for much in Chaudiere. Yet this detracted nothing from the fine gentlemanliness of the Cure or the melodramatic courtesy of the Notary.

Amused and touched as the Seigneur had been at the Cure's words, he turned now and said: "Always on the weaker side, Cure; always hoping the best from the worst of us."

"I am only following an example at my door—you taught us all charity and justice," answered M. Loisel, looking meaningly at the Seigneur. There was silence a little while, for all three were thinking of the woman of the hut, at the gate of the Seigneur's manor.

On this topic M. Dauphin was not voluble. His original kindness to the woman had given him many troubled hours at home, for Madame Dauphin had construed his human sympathy into the dark and carnal desires of the heart, and his truthful eloquence had made his case the worse. A miserable sentimentalist, the Notary was likely to be misunderstood for ever, and one or two indiscretions of his extreme youth had been a weapon against him through the long years of a blameless married life.

He heaved a sigh of sympathy with the Cure now. "She has not come back yet?" he said to the Seigneur. "No sign of her. She locked up and stepped out, so my housekeeper says, about the time—"

"The day of old Margot's funeral," interposed the Notary. "She'd had a letter that day, a letter she'd been waiting for, and abroad she went— alas! the flyaway—from bad to worse, I fear—ah me!"

The Seigneur turned sharply on him. "Who told you she had a letter that day, for which she had been waiting?" he said.

"Monsieur Evanturel."

The Seigneur's face became sterner still. "What business had he to know that she received a letter that day?"

"He is postmaster," innocently replied the Notary. "He is the devil!" said the Seigneur tartly. "I beg your pardon, Cure; but it is Evanturel's business not to know what letters go to and fro in that office. He should be blind and dumb, so far as we all are concerned."

"Remember that Evanturel is a cripple," the Cure answered gently. "I am glad, very glad it was not Rosalie."

"Rosalie has more than usual sense for her sex," gruffly but kindly answered the Seigneur, a look of friendliness in his eyes. "I shall talk to her about her father; I can't trust myself to speak to the man."

"Rosalie is down there with Madame Dauphin," said the Notary, pointing. "Shall I ask her to come?"

The Seigneur nodded. He was magistrate and magnate, and he was the guarantor of the post-office, and of Rosalie and her father. His eyes fixed in reverie on Rosalie; he and the Cure passively waited her approach.

She came over, pale and a little anxious, but with a courageous look. She had a vague sense of trouble, and she feared it might be the little cross, that haunting thing of all these months.

When she came near, the Cure greeted her courteously, and then, taking the Notary by the arm, led him away.

The Seigneur and Rosalie being left alone, the girl said: "You wish to speak with me, Monsieur?"

The Seigneur scrutinised her sharply. Though her colour came and went, her look was frank and fearless. She had had many dark hours since that fateful month of April. At night, trying to sleep, she had heard the ghostly footsteps in the church, which had sent her flying homeward. Then, there was the hood. She had waited on and on, fearing word would come that it had been found in the churchyard, and that she had been seen putting the cross back upon the church door. As day after day passed she had come at length to realise that, whatever had happened to the hood, she was not suspected. Yet the whole train of circumstances had a supernatural air, for the Cure and Jo Portugais had not made public their experience on the eventful night; she had been educated in a land of legend and superstition, and a deep impression had been made upon her mind, giving to her other new emotions a touch of pathos, of imagination, and adding character to her face. The old Seigneur stroked his chin as he looked at her. He realised that a change had come upon her, that she had developed in some surprising way.

"What has happened—who has happened, Mademoiselle Rosalie?" he asked. He had suddenly made up his mind about that look in her face—he thought it the woman in her which answers to the call of man, not perhaps any particular man, but man the attractive influence, the complement.

Her eyes dropped, then raised frankly to his. "I don't know,"—adding, with a quick humour, for he had been very friendly with her, and joked with her in his dry way all her life; "do you, Monsieur?"

He pulled his nose with a quick gesture habitual to him, and answered slowly and meaningly: "The government's a good husband and pays regular wages, Mademoiselle. I'd stick to government."

"I am not asking for a divorce, Monsieur."

He pulled his nose again delightedly—so many people were pathetically in earnest in Chaudiere—even the Cure's humour was too mediaeval and obvious. He had never before thought Rosalie so separate from them all. All at once he had a new interest in her. His cheek flushed a little, his eye kindled, humour relaxed his lips.

"No other husband would intrude so little," he rejoined.

"True, there's little love lost between us, Monsieur." She felt exhilaration in talking with him, a kind of joy in measuring word against word; yet a year ago she would have done no more than smile respectfully and give a demure reply if the Seigneur had spoken to her like this.

The Seigneur noted the mixed emotions in her face and the delicate alertness of expression. As a man of the world, he was inclined to believe that only one kind of experience can bring such looks to a woman's face. He saw in her the awakening of the deeper interests of life, the tremulous apprehension of nascent emotions and passions which, at some time or other, give beauty and importance to the nature of every human being. It did not occur to him that the tailor—the mysterious figure in the parish—might be responsible. He was observant, but not imaginative; he was moved by what he saw, in a quiet, unexplainable manner.

"The government is the best sort of husband. From the other sort you would get more kisses and less ha'pence," he continued.

"That might be a satisfactory balance-sheet, Monsieur."

"Take care, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he rejoined, half seriously, "that you don't miss the ha'pence before you get the kisses."

She turned pale in very fear. What was he going to say? Was the post- office to be taken from them? She came straight to the point.

"What have I done wrong, Monsieur? I've never kept the mail-stage waiting; I've never left the mailbag unlocked; I've never been late in opening the wicket; I've never been careless, and no one's ever complained of a lost letter."

The Seigneur saw her agitation, and was sorry for her. He came to the point as she had done:

"We will have you made postmistress—you alone, Rosalie Evanturel. I've made up my mind to that. But you'll promise not to get married—eh? Anyhow, there's no one in the parish for you to marry. You're too well- born and you've been too well educated for a habitant's wife—and the Cure or I can't marry you."

He was not taken back to see her flush deeply, and it pleased him to see this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his mind a new interest. He had come to that age when the mind is surprised to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things once hated are less acutely repulsive. He saw her embarrassment. He did not know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of marriage since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of thinking much on a man, had become a possibility, which, however, she had never confessed to herself. Here she was faced by it now in the broad open day: a plain, hard statement, unrelieved by aught save the humour of the shrewd eyes bent upon her.

She did not answer him at once. "Do you promise not to marry so useless a thing as man, and to remain true to the government?" he continued.

"If I wished to marry a man, I should not let the government stand in my way," she said, in brave confusion.

"But do you wish to marry any man?" he asked abruptly, even petulantly.

"I have not asked myself that question, Monsieur, and—should you ask it, unless—" she said, and paused with as pretty and whimsical a glance of merriment as could well be.

He burst out laughing at the swift turn she had given her reply, and at the double suggestion. Then he suddenly changed. A curious expression filled his eyes. A smile, almost beautiful, came to his lips.

"'Pon my honour," he said, in a low tone, "you have me caught! And I beg to say—I beg to say," he added, with a flush mounting in his own face, a sudden inspiration in his look, "that if you do not think me too old and crabbed and ugly, and can endure me, I shall be profoundly happy if you will marry me, Rosalie."

He stood upright, holding himself very hard, for this idea had shot into his mind all in an instant, though, unknown to himself, it had been growing for years, cherished by many a kind act to her father and by a simple gratitude on her part. He had spoken without feeling the absurdity of the proposal. He had never married, and he was unprepared to make any statement on such a theme; but now, having made it somehow, he would stand by it, in spite of any and all criticism. He had known Rosalie since her birth, her education was as good as a convent could secure, she was the granddaughter of a notable seigneur, and here she was, as fine a type of health, beauty and character as man could wish— and he was only fifty! Life was getting lonelier for him every day, and, after all, why should he leave distant relations and the Church his worldly goods? All this flashed through his mind as he waited for her answer. Now it seemed to him that he had meant to say this thing for many years. He had seen an awakening in her—he had suddenly been awakened himself.

"Monsieur, Monsieur," she said in a bewildered way, "do not amuse yourself at my expense."

"Would it be that, then?" he said, with a smile, behind which there was determination and self-will. "I want you to marry me; I do with all my heart. You shall have those ha'pence, and the kisses too, if so be you will take them—or not, as you will, Rosalie."

"Monsieur," she gasped, for something caught her in the throat, and the tears started to her eyes, "ask me to forget that you have ever said those words. Oh, Monsieur, it is not possible, it never could be possible! I am only the postmaster's daughter."

"You are my wife, if you will but say the word," he answered, "and I as proud a husband as the land holds!"

"You were always kind to me, Monsieur," she rejoined, her lips trembling; "won't you be so still?"

"I am too old?" he asked.

"Oh no, it is not that," she replied.

"You have as good manners as my mother had. You need not fear comparison with any lady in the land. Have I not known you all your life? I know the way you have come, and your birth is as good as mine."

"Ah, it is not that, Monsieur!"

"I give you my word that I do not come to you because no one else would have me," he said with a curious simplicity. "I never asked a woman to marry me—never! You are the first. There was talk once—but it was all false. I never meant to ask any one to marry me. But I have the wish now which I never had in my youth. I thought best of myself always; now, I think—I think better of you than—"

"Oh, Monsieur, I beg of you, no more! I cannot; oh, I cannot—"

"You—but no; I will not ask you, Mademoiselle. If you have some one else in your heart, or want some one else there, that is your affair, not mine—undoubtedly. I would have tried to make you happy; you would have had peace and comfort all your life; you could have trusted me—but there it is. . . ." He felt all at once that he was unfair to her, that he had thrust upon her too hard a problem in too troubled an hour.

"I could trust you with my life, Monsieur Rossignol," she replied. "And I love you in a way that a man may be loved to no one's harm or sorrow: it is true that!" She raised her eyes to his simply, trustingly.

He looked at her steadily for a moment. "If you change your mind—"

She shook her head sadly.

"Good, then," he went on, for he thought it wise not to press her now, though he had no intention of taking her no as final. "I'll keep an eye on you. You'll need me some day soon; I can do things that the Cure can't, perhaps." His manner changed still more. "Now to business," he continued. "Your father has been talking about letters received and sent from the post-office. That is punishable. I am responsible for you both, and if it is reported, if the woman were to report it—you know the letter I mean—there would be trouble. You do not talk. Now I am going to ask the government to make you sole postmistress, with full responsibility. Then you must govern your father—he hasn't as much sense as you."

"Monsieur, we owe you so much! I am deeply grateful, and, whatever you do for us, you may rely on me to do my duty."

They could scarcely hear each other speak now, for the soldiers were coming nearer, and the fife-and-drum bands were screeching, 'Louis the King was a Soldier'.

"Then you will keep the government as your husband?" he asked, with forced humour, as he saw the Cure and the Notary approaching.

"It is less trouble, Seigneur," she answered, with a smile of relief.

M. Rossignol turned to the Cure and the Notary. "I have just offered Mademoiselle a husband she might rule in place of a government that rules her, and she has refused," he said in the Cure's ear, with a dry laugh.

"She's a sensible girl, is Rosalie," said the Cure, not apprehending.

The soldiers were now opposite the church, and riding at their head was the battalion Colonel, also member of the Legislature.

They all moved down, and Rosalie disappeared in the crowd. As the Seigneur and the Cure greeted the Colonel, the latter said:

"At luncheon I'll tell you one of the bravest things ever seen. Happened half-hour ago at the Red Ravine. Man who did it wore an eye-glass—said he was a tailor."



CHAPTER XXV

THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY

The Colonel had lunched very well indeed. He had done justice to every dish set before him; he had made a little speech, congratulating himself on having such a well-trained body of men to command, and felicitating Chaudiere from many points of view. He was in great good-humour with himself, and when the Notary asked him—it was at the Manor, with the soldiers resting on the grass without—about the tale of bravery he had promised them, he brought his fist down on the table with great intensity but little noise, and said:

"Chaudiere may well be proud of it. I shall refer to it in the Legislature on the question of roads and bridges—there ought to be a stone fence on that dangerous road by the Red Ravine—Have I your attention?"

He stood up, for he was an excitable and voluble Colonel, and he loved oration as a cat does milk. With a knife he drew a picture of the locale on the table cloth. "Here I was riding on my sorrel, all my noble fellows behind, the fife and drums going as at Louisburg—that day! Martial ardour united to manliness and local pride—follow me? Here we were, Red Ravine left, stump fences and waving fields of grain right. From military point of view, bad position—ravine, stump fence, brave soldiers in the middle, food for powder—catch it?—see?"

He emptied his glass, drew a long breath, and again began, the carving- knife cutting a rhetorical path before him. "I was engaged upon the military problem—demonstration in force, no scouts ahead, no rearguard, ravine on the right, stump fence on the left, red coats, fife-and-drum band, concealed enemy—follow me? Observant mind always sees problems everywhere—unresting military genius accustoms intelligence to all possible contingencies—'stand what I mean?"

The Seigneur took a pinch of snuff, and the Cure, whose mind was benevolent, listened with the gravest interest.

"At the juncture when, in my mind's eye, I saw my gallant fellows enfiladed with a terrible fire, caught in a trap, and I, despairing, spurring on to die at their headhave I your attention?—just at that moment there appeared between the ravine and the road ahead a man. He wore an eye-glass; he seemed an unconcerned spectator of our movements —so does the untrained, unthinking eye look out upon destiny! Not far away was a wagon, in it a man. Wagon bisecting our course from a cross- road—"

He drew a line on the table-cloth with the carvingknife, and the Notary said: "Yes, yes, the concession road."

"So, Messieurs. There were we, a battalion and a fife-and-drum band; there was the man with the eyeglass, the indifferent spectator, yet the engine of fate; there was the wagon, a mottled horse, and a man driving— catch it? The mottled horse took fright at our band, which at that instant strikes up 'The Chevalier Drew his Sabre'. He shies from the road with a leap, the man falls backwards into the wagon, and the reins drop. The horse dashes from the road into the open, and rushes on to the ravine. What good now to stop the fifes and drums-follow me? What can we, an armed force, bandoleered, knapsacked, sworded, rifled, impetuous, brave, what can we do before this tragedy? The man in the wagon senseless, the flying horse, the ravine, death! How futile the power of man—'stand what I mean?"

"Why didn't your battalion shoot the horse?" said the Seigneur drily, taking a pinch of snuff. "Monsieur," said the Colonel, "see the irony, the implacable irony of fate—we had only blank cartridge! But see you, here was this one despised man with an eye-glass, a tailor—takes nine tailors to make a man!—between the ravine and the galloping tragedy. His spirit arrayed itself like an army with banners, prepared to wrestle with death as Jacob wrestled with his shadow all the night 'sieur le Cure!"

The Cure bowed; the Notary shook back his oiled locks in excitement.

"Awoke a whole man—nine-ninths, as in Adam—in the obscure soul of the tailor, and, rushing forward, he seized the mottled horse by the bridle as he galloped upon the chasm: The horse dragged him on—dragged him on —on—on. We, an army, so to speak, stood and watched the Tailor and the Tragedy! All seemed lost, but, by the decree of fate—"

"The will of God," said the Cure softly.

"By the great decree, the man was able to stop the horse, not a half- dozen feet from the ravine. The horse and the insensible driver were spared death—death. So, Messieurs, does bravery come from unexpected places—see?"

The Seigneur, the Cure, and even the Notary clapped their hands, and murmured praises of the tailor-man. But the Colonel did not yet take his seat.

"But now, mark the sequel," he said. "As I galloped over, I saw the tailor look into the wagon, and turn away quickly. He waited by the horse till I came near, and then walked off without a word. I rode up, and tapped him with my sword upon the shoulder. 'A noble deed, my good man,' said I. 'I approve of your conduct, and I will remember it in the Legislature when I address the committee of the whole house on roads and bridges.' What do you think was his reply to my affable words? When I tapped him approvingly on the shoulder a second time, he screwed his eye- glass in his eye, and, with no emotion, though my own eyes were full of tears, he said, in a tone of affront, 'Look after the man there, constable,' and pointed to the wagon. Constable—mon Dieu! Gross manners even for a tailor!"

"I had not thought his manners bad," said the Cure, as the Colonel sat down, gulped a glass of brandy-andwater, and mopped his forehead.

"A most remarkable tailor," said the Seigneur, peering into his snuff- box.

"And the driver of the mottled horse?" asked the Notary.

"Knocked senseless. One of my captains soon restored him. He followed us into the village. He is a quack-doctor. I suppose he is now selling tinctures, pulling teeth, and driving away rheumatics. He gave me his card. I told him he should leave one on the tailor."

With a flourish he threw a professional card upon the table, before the Cure.

The Cure picked it up and read:

JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,

Healer of Ailments that Defy the Ordinary Skill of Ordinary Medical Men. Rheumatism, Sciatica, Headache, Toothache, Asthma, Ague, Pleurisy, Gout, and all Chronic Diseases Yield Instantly to the Power of his Medicines.

Dr. Brown will publicly treat the most stubborn cases, laying himself open to the derision of mankind if he does not instantly give relief and benefit. His whole career has been a blessing to his fellows, and his journey now through this country, fresh from his studies in the Orient, is to introduce his remedies to a suffering world, for the conquest of malady, not for personal profit.

JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,

Specialist in Chronic Diseases and General Practitioner.



CHAPTER XXVI

A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST

All day John Brown, ex-clergyman and quack-doctor, harangued the people of Chaudiere from his gaily-painted wagon. He had the perfect gift of the charlatan, and he had discovered his metier. Inclined to the picturesque by nature, melodramatic and empirical, his earlier career had been the due fruit of habit and education. As a dabbler in mines he had been out of his element. He lacked the necessary reticence, and arsenic had not availed him, though it had tempted Billy Wantage to forgery; and because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele. Since Charley's death John Brown had never seen Billy: he had left the town one woful day an hour after Billy had told him of the discovery Charley had made. From a far corner of the country he had read the story of Charley's death; of the futile trial of the river-drivers afterwards, ending in acquittal, and the subsequent discovery of the theft of the widows' and orphans' trust-moneys.

On this St. Jean Baptiste's day he was thinking of anything and everything else but Charley Steele. Nothing could have been a better advertisement for him than the perilous incident at the Red Ravine. Falling backwards when the horse suddenly bolted, his head had struck the medicine-chest, and he had lain insensible till brought back to consciousness by the good offices of the voluble Colonel. He had not, therefore, seen Charley. It was like him that his sense of gratitude to the unknown tailor should be presently lost in exploiting the interest he created in the parish. His piebald horse, his white "plug" hat, his gaily painted wagon, his flamboyant manner, and, above all, the marvellous tale of his escape from death, were more exciting to the people of Chaudiere than the militia, the dancing-bears, the shooting- galleries, or the boat-races. He could sing extremely well—had he not trained his own choir when he was a parson? had not Billy approved his comic songs?—and these comic songs, now sandwiched between his cures and his sales, created much laughter. He cured headaches, toothaches, rheumatism, and all sorts of local ailments "with despatch." He miraculously juggled away pains by what he called his Pain Paint, and he stopped a cough by a laugh and a dose of his Golden Pectoral. In the exuberance of trade, which steadily increased till sundown, he gave no thought to the tailor, to whom, however, he had sent by a messenger a two-dollar bill and two bottles of Pain Paint, with the lordly announcement that he would call in the evening and "present his compliments and his thanks." The messenger left the Pain Paint on the door-step of the tailor-shop, and the two dollars he promptly spent at the Trois Couronnes.

Rosalie Evanturel rescued the bottles from the doorstep and awaited Charley's return to his shop, that she might take them over to him, and so have an excuse to speak with him; for to-day her heart and mind were full of him. He had done a brave thing for the medicine-man, and had then fled from public gaze as a brave man should. There was no one to compare with him. Not even the Cure was his superior in ability, and certainly he was a greater man—though seemingly only a tailor—than M. Rossignol. M. Rossignol—she flushed. Who could have believed that the Seigneur would say those words to her this morning—to her, Rosalie Evanturel, who hadn't five hundred dollars to her name? That she should be asked to be Madame Rossignol! Confusion mingled with her simple pride, and she ran out into the street, to where her father sat listening to the medicine-man singing, in doubtful French:

"I am a waterman bold, Oh, I'm a waterman bold: But for my lass I have great fear, Yes, in the isles I have great fear, For she is young, and I am old, And she is bien gentille!"

It was night now. The militia had departed, their Colonel roaring commands at them out of a little red drill-book; the older people had gone to their homes, but festive youth hovered round the booths and sideshows, the majority enjoying themselves at some expense in the medicine-man's encampment.

As Rosalie ran towards the crowd she turned a wistful glance to the tailor-shop. Not a sign of life there! She imagined M'sieu' to be at Vadrome Mountain, until, glancing round the crowd at the quack-doctor's wagon, she saw Jo Portugais gloomily watching the travelling tinker of human bodies. Evidently M'sieu' was not at Vadrome Mountain.

He was not far from her. At the side of the road, under a huge maple- tree with wide-spreading branches, Charley stood and watched John Brown performing behind the flaring oil-lights stuck on poles round his wagon, his hat now on, now off; now singing a comic song in English—-'I found Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch;' now a French chanson—'En Revenant de St. Alban;' now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving momentary help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech.

Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy only—a staring, high-coloured dream. This man—John Brown—had gone down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the means of disgracing his name. A step forward to that wagon, a word uttered, a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put by for ever, would have to meet a hard problem and settle it—to what misery and tragedy, who might say? Under this tree he was M. Mallard, the infidel tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of this place called Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which, automatically repeated, at length becomes character. Out in that red light, before that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister, 'flaneur', and fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife, misled her brother, robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune, become drunkard and wastrel, and at last had lost his life in a disorderly tavern at the Cote Dorion. This man before him had contributed to his disgrace; but once he had contributed to John Brown's disgrace; and to-day he had saved John Brown's life. They were even.

All the night before, all this morning, he had fought a fierce battle with his past—with a raging thirst. The old appetite had swept over him fiercely. All day he had moved in a fevered conflict, which had lifted him away from the small movements of everyday life into a region where only were himself and one strong foe, who tirelessly strove with him. In his old life he had never had a struggle of any sort. His emotions had been cloaked, his soul masked, there had been a film before his eyes, he had worn an armour of selfishness on a life which had no deep problems, because it had no deep feelings—a life never rising to the intellectual prowess for which it was fitted, save when under the stimulus of liquor.

From the moment he had waked from a long seven months' sleep in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, new deep feelings had come to him as he faced problems of life. Fighting had begun from that hour—a fighting which was putting his nature through bitter mortal exercises, yet, too, giving him a sense of being he had never known. He had now the sweetness of earning daily bread by the work of his hands; of giving to the poor, the needy, and the afflicted; of knowing for the first time in his life that he was not alone in the world. Out of the grey dawn of life a woman's voice had called to him; the look of her face had said to him: "Viens ici! Viens ici!"—"Come to me! Come to me!"

But with that call there was the answer of his soul, the desolating cry of the dispossessed Lear-" Never—never—never—never—never!"

He had not questioned himself concerning Rosalie—had dared not to do so. But now, as he stood under the great tree, within hand-touch of the old life, in imminent danger of being thrust back into it, the question of Rosalie came upon him with all the force of months of feeling behind it. Thus did he argue with himself:

"Do I love her? And if I love her, what is to be done? Marry her, with a wife living? Marry her while charged with a wretched crime? Would that be love? But suppose I never were discovered, and we might live here for ever, I as 'Monsieur Mallard,' in peace and quiet all the days of our life? Would that be love? . . . Could there be love with a vital secret, like, a cloud between, out of which, at any hour, might spring discovery? Could I build our life upon a silence which must be a lie? Would I not have to face the question, Does any one know cause or just impediment why this woman should not be married to this man? Tell Rosalie all, and let the law separate myself and Kathleen? That would mean Billy's ruin and imprisonment, and Kathleen's shame, and it might not bring Rosalir. She is a Catholic, and her Church would not listen to it. Would I have the right to bring trouble into her life? To wrong one woman should seem enough for one lifetime!"

At that instant Rosalie, who had been on the outskirts of the crowd, moved into his line of vision. The glare from the lights fell on her face as she stood by her father's chair, looking curiously at the quack- doctor who, having sold many bottles of his medicines, noy picked up a guitar and began singing an old dialect chanson of Saintonge:

"Voici, the day has come When Rosette leaves her home! With fear she walks in the sun, For Raoul is ninety year, And she not twenty-one. La petit' Rosette, She is not twenty-one.

"He takes her by the hand, And to the church they go; By parents 'twas well meant, But is Rosette content? 'Tis gold and ninety year She walks in the sun with fear, La petit' Rosette, Not twenty-one as yet!"

Charley's eyes, which had watched her these months past, noted the deepening colour of the face, the glow in the eyes, the glances of keen but agitated interest towards the singer. He could not translate her looks; and she, on her part, had she been compelled to do so, could only have set down a confusion of sensations.

In Rosette she saw herself, Rosalie Evanturel; in the man "de quatre- vingt-dix ans," who was to marry this Rosette of Saintonge, she saw M. Rossignol. Disconcerting pictures of a possible life with the Seigneur flitted before her mind. She beheld herself, young, fresh-cheeked, with life beating high and all the impulses of youth panting to use, sitting at the head of the seigneury table. She saw herself in the great pew at Mass, stiff with dignity, old in the way of manorial pride—all laughter dead in her, all spring-time joy overshadowed by the grave decorum of the Manor, all the imagination of her dreaming spirit chilled by the presence of age, however kindly and quaint and cheerful.

She shuddered, and dropped her eyes upon the ground, as, to the laughter and giggling of old and young gathered round the wagon, the medicine-man sang:

"He takes her by the hand, And to her chamber fair—"

Then, suddenly turning, she vanished into the night, followed by the feeble inquiry of her father's eyes, the anxious look in Charley's.

Charley could not read her tale. He had, however, a hot impulse to follow and ask her if she would vanish from the scene if the medicine-man should sing of Rosette and a man of thirty, not ninety, years. The fight he had had all day with his craving for drink had made him feverish, and all his emotions—unregulated, under the command of his will only—were in high temperature. A reckless feeling seized him. He would go to Rosalie, look into her eyes, and tell her that he loved her, no matter what the penalty of fate. He had never loved a human being, and the sudden impulse to cry out in the new language was driving him to follow the girl whose spirit for ever called to him.

He made a step forward to follow her, but stopped short, recalled to caution and his danger by the voice of the medicine-man:

"I had a friend once—good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever knew. Tremendous fop—ladies loved him—cheeks like roses—tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate—got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend of all tailors. Well, to continue. My friend that was—I call him my friend, though he ruined me and ruined others,—didn't mean to, but he did just the same,—he came to a bad end. But he was a great man while he lived. And what I'm coming to is this, the song he used to sing when, in youthful exuberance, we went on the war-path like our young friend over there"—he pointed to a young habitant farmer, who was trying hard to preserve equilibrium—"Brown's Golden Pectoral will cure that cough, my friend!" he added, as the young man, gloomily ashamed of the laughter of the crowd, hiccoughed and turned away to the tree under which Charley Steele stood. "Well," he went on, "I was going to say that my friend's name was Charley, and the song he used to sing when the roosters waked the morn was called 'Champagne Charlie.' He was called 'Champagne Charlie'—till he came to a bad end."

He twanged his guitar, cleared his throat, winked at Maximilian Cour the baker, and began:

"The way I gained my title's by a hobby which I've got Of never letting others pay, however long the shot; Whoever drinks at my expense is treated all the same; Whoever calls himself my friend, I make him drink champagne. Some epicures like Burgundy, Hock, Claret, and Moselle, But Moet's vintage only satisfies this champagne swell. What matter if I go to bed and head is muddled thick, A bottle in the morning sets me right then very quick. Champagne Charlie is my name; Champagne Charlie is my name. Who's the man with the heart so young, Who's the man with the ginger tongue? Champagne Charlie is his name!"

Under the tree, Charley Steele listened to this jaunty epitaph on his old self. At the first words of the coarse song there rushed on him the dreaded thirst. He felt his veins beating with desire, with anger, disgust, and shame; for there was John Brown, to the applause of the crowd, imitating his old manner, his voice, his very look. He started forward, but the drunken young habitant lurched sideways under the tree and collapsed upon the ground, a bottle of whiskey falling out of his pocket and rolling almost to his own feet.

"Champagne Charlie is my name,"

sang the medicine-man. All Charley's old life surged up in him as dyked water suddenly bursts bounds and spreads destruction. He had an uncontrollable impulse. As a starving animal snatches at the first food offered it, he stooped, with a rattle in his throat, seized the bottle, uncorked it, put it to his lips, and drank—drank—drank.

Then he turned and plunged away into the trees. The sound of the song followed him. It came to him, the last refrain, sung loudly to the laughter of the crowd, in imitation of his own voice as it used to be —it had been a different voice during this past year. He turned with headlong intention, and, as the last notes of the song and the applause that followed it, died away, threw back his head and sang out of the darkness:

"Champagne Charlie is my name—"

With a shrill laugh, like the half-mad cry of an outcast soul, he flung away farther into the trees.

There was a sudden silence. The crowd turned with half-apprehensive laughter to the trees. Upon John Brown the effect was startling. His face blanched, his eyes grew large with terror, his mouth opened in helpless agitation. Charley Steele was lying under the waters of the great river, his bones rotting there for a year, yet here was his voice coming out of the night, in response to his own grotesque imitation of the dead man. Seeing his agitation, women turned pale, men felt their flesh creep, imagination gave a thrilling coldness to the air. For a moment the silence was unbroken. Then John Brown stretched out his hand and said, in a hoarse whisper:

"It was his voice—Charley's voice, and he's been dead a year!"

Within half-an-hour, in utter collapse and fright, he was being driven to the next parish by two young habitants whom he paid to accompany him.



CHAPTER XXVII

OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL

There was one person in the crowd surrounding the medicine-man's wagon who had none of that superstitious thrill which had scattered the habitants into little awe-stricken groups, and then by twos and threes to their homes; none of that fear which had reduced the quack-doctor to such nervous collapse that he would not spend the night in the village. Jo Portugais had recognised the voice—that of Charley Steele the lawyer who had saved him from hanging years ago. It was little like the voice of M'sieu'! There was that in it which frightened him. He waited until he had seen the quackdoctor start for the next parish, then he went slowly down the street. There were people still about, so he walked on towards the river. When he returned, the street was empty. Keeping in the shadow of the trees, he went to Charley's house. There was a light in a window. He went to the back door and tried it. It was not locked, and, without knocking, he stepped inside the kitchen. Here was no light, and he passed into the hallway and on to a little room opening from the tailorshop. He knocked; then, not waiting for response, opened the door and entered.

Charley was standing before a mirror, holding a pair of scissors. He turned abruptly, and said forbiddingly: "I am at my toilet!"

Then, turning again to the mirror, with a shrug of the shoulders, he raised the shears to his beard. Before he could use them, Jo's hand was on his arm.

"Stop that, M'sieu'!" he said huskily.

Charley had drunk nearly a whole bottle of cheap whiskey within an hour. He was intoxicated, but, as had ever been the case with him, his brain was working clearly, his hand was steady; he was in that wide dream of clear-seeing and clear-knowing which, in old days, had given him glimpses of the real life from which, in the egotism of the non-intime, he had been shut out. Looking at Jo now, he was possessed by a composed intoxication like that in which he had moved during that last night at the Cote Dorion.

But now, with the baleful crust of egotism gone, with every nerve of life exposed, with conscience struggling to its feet from the torpor of thirty-odd vacant years, he was as two men in one, with different lives and different souls, yet as inseparable in their misery as those poor victims of Gallic tyranny, chained back to back and thrown into the Seine.

Jo's words, insistent and eager, suddenly roused in him some old memory, which stayed his hand.

"Why should I stop?" he asked quietly, and smiling that smile which had infuriated the river-drivers at the Cote Dorion.

"Are you going back, M'sieu?"

"Back where?" Charley's eyes were fixed on Jo with a penetrating intensity, heightened to a strange abstraction, as though he saw not Jo alone, but something great distances beyond.

Jo did not answer this question directly. "Some one came to-day—he is gone; some one may come to-morrow—and stay," he said meaningly.

Charley went over to the fire and sat down on a bench, opening and shutting the scissors mechanically. Jo was in the light, and Charley's eyes again studied him hard.

His memory was industriously feeling its way into the baffling distance.

"What if some one did come-and stay?" he urged quietly.

"You might be recognised without the beard."

"What difference would it make?" Charley's memory was creeping close to the hidden door. It was feeling-feeling for the latch.

"You know best, M'sieu'."

"But what do you know?" Charley's face now had a strained look, and he touched his lips with his tongue. "What John Brown knows, M'sieu'."

There flashed across Charley's mind the fatal newspaper he had read on the day he awakened to memory again in the but on Vadrome Mountain. He remembered that he had put it in the fire. But Jo might have read it before it was spread upon the bench-put it there of purpose for him to read. Yet what reason could Jo have for being silent, for hiding his secret?

There was silence for a space, in which Charley's eyes were like unmoving sparks of steel. He did not see Jo's face—it was in a mist—he was searching, searching, searching. All at once he felt the latch of the hidden door under his finger; he saw a court-room, a judge and jury, and hundreds of excited faces, himself standing in the midst. He saw twelve men file slowly into the room and take their seats-all save one, who stood still in his place and said: "Not guilty, your Honour!" He saw the prisoner leave the box and step down a free man. He saw himself coming out into the staring summer day. He watched the prisoner come to him and touch his arm, and say: "Thank you, M'sieu'. You have saved my life." He saw himself turn to this man:

He roused from his trance, he staggered to his feet, the shears rattled to the floor. Lurching forward, he caught Jo Portugais by the throat, and said, as he had said outside the court-room years ago:

"Get out of my sight. You're as guilty as hell!"

His grip tightened—tightened on Jo's throat. Jo did not move, though his face grew black. Then, suddenly, the hands relaxed, a bluish paleness swept over the face, and Charley fell sidewise to the floor before Jo could catch him.

All night, alone, the murderer struggled with death over the body of the lawyer who had saved his life.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING

Rosalie had watched a shut door for five days—a door from which, for months past, had come all the light and glow of her life. It framed a figure which had come to represent to her all that meant hope and soul and conscience-and love. The morning after St. Jean Baptiste's day she had awaited the opening door, but it had remained closed. Ensued watchful hours, and then from Jo Portugais she had learned that M'sieu' had been ill and near to death. She had been told the weird story of the medicine-man and the ghostly voice, and, without reason, she took the incident as a warning, and associated it with the man across the way. She was come of a superstitious race, and she herself had heard and seen things of which she never had been able to speak—the footsteps in the church the night she had screwed the little cross to the door again; the tiny round white light by the door of the church; the hood which had vanished into the unknown. One mystery fed another. It seemed to her as if some dreadful event were forward; and all day she kept her eyes fixed on the tailor's door.

Dead—if M'sieu' should die! If M'sieu' should die—it needed all her will to prevent herself from going over and taking things in her own hands, being his nurse, his handmaid, his slave. Duty—to the government, to her father? Her heart cried out that her duty lay where all her life was eddying to one centre. What would the world say? She was not concerned for that, save for him. What, then, would M'sieu' say? That gave her pause. The Seigneur's words the day before had driven her back upon a tide of emotions which carried her far out upon that sea where reason and life's conventions are derelicts, where Love sails with reckless courage down the shoreless main.

"If I could only be near him!" she kept saying to herself. "It is my right. I would give my life, my soul for his. I was with him before when his life was in danger. It was my hand that saved him. It was my love that tended him. It was my soul that kept his secret. It was my faith that spoke for him. It was my heart that ached for him. It is my heart that aches for him now as none other in all the world can. No one on earth could care as I care. Who could there be?" Something whispered in her ear, "Kathleen!" The name haunted her, as the little cross had done. Misery and anger possessed her, and she fought on with herself through dark hours.

Thus five days had gone, until at last a wagon was brought to the door of the tailor-shop, and M'sieu' came out, leaning on the arm of Jo Portugais. There were several people in the street at the time, and they kept whispering that M'sieu' had been at death's door. He was pale and haggard, with dark hollows under the eyes. Just as he got into the wagon the Cure came up. They shook hands. The Cure looked him earnestly in the face, his lips moved, but no one could have told what he said. As the wagon started, Charley looked across to the post-office. Rosalie was standing a little back from the door, but she stepped forward now. Their eyes met. Her heart beat faster, for there was a look in his eyes she had never seen before—a look of human helplessness, of deep anxiety. It was meant for her—for herself alone. She could not trust herself to go and speak to him. She felt that she must burst into tears. So, with a look of pity and pain, she watched the wagon go down the street.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!—the Seigneur's gold-headed cane rattled on the front door of the tailor-shop. It was plain to be seen his business was urgent.

Madame Dauphin came hurrying from the postoffice, followed by Maximilian Cour and Filion Lacasse. "Ah, M'sieu', the tailor will not answer. There's no use knocking—not a bit, M'sieu' Rossignol," said Madame.

The Seigneur turned querulously upon the Notary's wife, yet with a glint of hard humour in his eye. He had no love for Madame Dauphin. He thought she took unfair advantages of M. Dauphin, whom also he did not love, but whose temperament did him credit.

"How should Madame know whether or no the gentleman will answer? Does Madame share the gentleman's confidence, perhaps?" he remarked.

Madame did not reply at once. She turned on the saddler and the baker. "I hope you'll learn a lesson," she cried triumphantly. "I've always said the tailor was quite the gentleman; and now you see how your betters call him. No, M'sieu', the gentleman will not answer," she added to the Seigneur.

"He is in bed yet, Madame?"

"His bed is empty there, M'sieu'," she said, impressively, and pointing.

"I suppose I should trust you in this matter; I suppose you should know. But, Dauphin—what does Dauphin say?"

The saddler laughed outright. Maximilian Cour suddenly blushed in sympathy with Madame Dauphin, who now saw the drift of the Seigneur's remarks, and was sensibly agitated, as the Seigneur had meant her to be. Had she not turned Dauphin's human sympathies into a crime? Had not the Notary supported the Seigneur in his friendly offices to Paulette Dubois; and had not Madame troubled her husband's life because of it? Madame bridled up now—with discretion, for it was not her cue to offend the Seigneur.

"All the village knows his bed's empty there, M'sieu'," she said, with tightening lips.

"I am subtracted from the total, then?" he asked drily.

"You have been away for the last five days—"

"Come, now, how did you know that?"

"Everybody knows it. You went away with the Colonel and the soldiers on St. Jean Baptiste's day. Since then M'sieu' the tailor has been ill. I should think Mrs. Flynn would have told you that, M'sieu'."

"H'm! Would you? Well, Mrs. Flynn has been away too—and you didn't know that! What is the matter with Monsieur Mallard?"

"Some kind of fever. On St. Jean Baptiste's day he was taken ill, and that animal Portugais took care of him all night—I wonder how M'sieu' can have the creature about! That St. Jean Baptiste's night was an awful night. Have you heard of what happened, M'sieu'? Ghost or no ghost—"

"Come, come, I want to know about the tailor, not of ghosts," impatiently interrupted the Seigneur. "Tiens! M'sieu', the tailor was ill for three days here, and he would let no one except the Cure and Jo Portugais near him. I went myself to clean up and make some broth, but that toad of a Portugais shut the door in my face. The Cure told us to go home and leave M'sieu' with Portugais. He must be very sick to have that black sheep about him—and no doctor either."

The saddler spoke up now. "I took him a bottle of good brandy and some buttermilk-pop and seed cake—I would give him a saddle if he had a horse—he got my thousand dollars for me! Well, he took them, but what do you think? He sent them right off to the shantyman, Gugon, who has a broken leg. Infidel or no, I'm on his side for sure. And God blesses a cheerful giver, I'm told."

It was the baker's chance, and he took it. "I played 'The Heart Bowed Down'-it is English-under his window, two nights ago, and he sent word for me to come and play it again in the kitchen. Ah, that is a good song, 'The Heart Bowed Down.'"

"You'd be a better baker if you fiddled less," said Madame Dauphin, annoyed at being dropped out of the conversation.

"The soul must be fed, Madame," rejoined the baker, with asperity.

"Where is the tailor now?" said the Seigneur shortly. "At Portugais's on Vadrome Mountain. They say he looked like a ghost when he went. Rosalie Evanturel saw him, but she has no tongue in her head this morning," added Madame.

The Seigneur moved away. "Good-bye to you—I am obliged to you, Madame. Good-bye, Lacasse. Come and fiddle to me some night, Cour."

He bowed to the obsequious three, and then bent his steps towards the post-office. They seemed about to follow him, but he stopped them with a look. The men raised their bonnets-rouges, the woman bowed low, and the Seigneur entered the post-office door.

From the shadows of the office Rosalie had watched the little group before the door of the tailor-shop. She saw the Seigneur coming across the street. Suddenly she flushed deeply, for there came to her mind the song the quack-doctor sang:

"Voila, the day has come When Rosette leaves her home! With fear she walks in the sun, For Raoul is ninety year, And she not twenty-one."

As M. Rossignol's figure darkened the doorway, she pretended to be busy behind the wicket, and not to see him. He was not sure, but he thought it quite possible that she had seen him coming, and he put her embarrassment down to shyness. Naturally the poor child was not given the chance every day to receive an offer of marriage from a seigneur. He had made up his mind that she would be sure to accept him if he asked her a second time.

"Ah, Ma'm'selle Rosalie," he said gaily, "what have you to say that you should not come before a magistrate at once?"

"Nothing, if Monsieur Rossignol is to be the magistrate," she replied, with forced lightness.

"Good!" He looked at her quizzically through his gold-handled glass. "I can't frighten you, I see. Well, you must wait a little; you shall be sworn in postmistress in three days." His voice lowered, became more serious. "Tell me," he said, "do you know what is the matter with the gentleman across the way?" Turning, he looked across to the tailor-shop, as though he expected "the gentleman" to appear, and he did not see her turn pale. When his look fell on her again, she was self-controlled.

"I do not know, Monsieur."

"You have been opposite him here these months past—did you ever see anything not—not as it should be?"

"With him, Monsieur? Never."

"It is as though the infidel behaved like a good Catholic and a Christian?"

"There are good Catholics in Chaudiere who do not behave like Christians."

"What would you say, for instance, about his past?"

"What should I say about his past, Monsieur? What should I know?"

"You should know more than any one else in Chaudiere. The secrets of his breast might well be bared to you."

She started and crimsoned. Before her eyes there came a mist obscuring the Seigneur, and for an instant shutting out the world. The secrets of his breast—what did he mean? Did he know that on Monsieur's breast was the red scar which . . .

M. Rossignol's voice seemed coming from an infinite distance, and as it came, the mist slowly passed from her eyes.

"You will know, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he was saying, "that while I suggested that the secrets of his breast might well be bared to you, I meant that as an honest lady and faithful postmistress they were not. It was my awkward joke—a stupid gambolling by an old man who ought to know better."

She did not answer, and he continued:

"You know that you are trusted. Pray accept my apologies."

She was herself again. "Monsieur," she said quietly; "I know nothing of his past. I want to know nothing. It does not seem to me that it is my business. The world is free for a man to come and go in, if he keeps the law and does no ill—is it not? But, in any case, I know nothing. Since you have said so much, I shall say this, and betray no 'secrets of his breast'—that he has received no letter through this office since the day he first came from Vadrome Mountain."

The Seigneur smiled. "A wonderful tailor! How does he carry on business without writing letters?"

"There was a large stock of everything left by Louis Trudel, and not long ago a commercial traveller was here with everything."

"You think he has nothing to hide, then?"

"Have not we all something to hide—with or without shame?" she asked simply.

"You have more sense than any woman in Chaudiere, Mademoiselle."

She shook her head, yet she raised her eyes gratefully to him.

"I put faith in what you say," he continued. "Now listen. My brother, the Abbe, chaplain to the Archbishop, is coming here. He has heard of 'the infidel' of our parish. He is narrow and intolerant—the Abbe. He is going to stir up trouble against the tailor. We are a peaceful people here, and like to be left alone. We are going on very well as we are. So I wanted to talk to Monsieur to-day. I must make up my own mind how to act. The tailor-shop is the property of the Church. An infidel occupies it, so it is said; the Abbe does not like that. I believe there are other curious suspicions about Monsieur: that he is a robber, or incendiary, or something of the sort. The Abbe may take a stand, and the Cure's position will be difficult. What is more, my brother has friends here, fanatics like himself. He has been writing to them. They are men capable of doing unpleasant things—the Abbe certainly is. It is fair to warn the tailor. Shall I leave it to you? Do not frighten him. But there is no doubt he should be warned—fair play, fair play! I hear nothing but good of him from those whose opinions I value. But, you see, every man's history in this parish and in every parish of the province is known. This man, for us, has no history. The Cure even admits there are some grounds for calling him an infidel, but, as you know, he would keep the man here, not drive him out from among us. I have not told the Cure about the Abbe yet. I wished first to talk with you. The Abbe may come at any moment. I have been away, and only find his letters to-day."

"You wish me to tell Monsieur?" interrupted Rosalie, unable to hold silence any longer. More than once during the Seigneur's disclosure she had felt that she must cry out and fiercely repel the base insinuations against the man she loved.

"You would do it with discretion. You are friendly with him, are you not?—you talk with him now and then?"

She inclined her head. "Very well, Monsieur. I will go to Vadrome Mountain to-morrow," she said quietly. Anger, apprehension, indignation, possessed her, but she held herself firmly. The Seigneur was doing a friendly thing; and, in any case, she could have no quarrel with him. There was danger to the man she loved, however, and every faculty was alive.

"That's right. He shall have his chance to evade the Abbe if he wishes," answered M. Rossignol.

There was silence for a moment, in which she was scarcely conscious of his presence; then he leaned over the counter towards her, and spoke in a low voice.

"What I said the other day I meant. I do not change my mind—I am too old for that. Yet I'm young enough to know that you may change yours."

"I cannot change, Monsieur," she said tremblingly.

"But you will change. I knew your mother well, I know how anxious she was for your future. I told her once that I should keep an eye on you always. Her father was my father's good friend. I knew you when you were in the cradle—a little brown-haired babe. I watched you till you went to the convent. I saw you come back to take up the duties which your mother laid down, alas!—"

"Monsieur—!" she said choking, and with a troubled little gesture.

"You must let me speak, Rosalie. We got your father this post-office. It is a poor living, but it keeps a roof over your head. You have never failed us you have always fulfilled our hopes. But the best years of your life are going, and your education and your nature have not their chance. Oh, I've not watched you all these years for nothing. I never meant to ask you to marry me. It came to me, though, all at once, and I know that it has been in my mind all these years—far back in my mind. I don't ask you for my own sake alone. Your father may grow very ill— who can tell what may happen!"

"I should be postmistress still," she said sadly.

"As a young girl you could not have the responsibility here alone. And you should not waste your life it is a fine, full spirit; let the lean, the poor-spirited, go singly. You should be mated. You can't marry any of the young farmers of Chaudiere. 'Tis impossible. I can give you enough for any woman's needs—the world may be yours to see and use to your heart's content. I can give, too"—he drew himself up proudly—" the unused emotions of a lifetime." This struck him as a very fine and important thing to say.

"Ah, Monsieur, that is not enough," she responded. "What more can you want?"

She looked up with a tearful smile. "I will tell you one day, Monsieur."

"What day?"

"I have not picked it out in the calendar."

"Fix the day, and I will wait till then. I will not open my mouth again till then."

"Michaelmas day, then, Monsieur," she answered mechanically and at haphazard, but with an urged gaiety, for a great depression was on her.

"Good. Till Michaelmas day, then!" He pulled his long nose, laughing silently. . . . "I leave the tailor in your hands. Give every man his chance, I say. The Abbe is a hard man, but our hearts are soft—eh, eh, very soft!" He raised his hat and turned to the door.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Always hoping the best from the worst of us Have not we all something to hide—with or without shame? In all secrets there is a kind of guilt Pathetically in earnest Things that once charmed charm less



THE RIGHT OF WAY

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 4.



XXIX. THE WILD RIDE XXX. ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY XXXI. CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY XXXII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XXXIII. THE EDGE OF LIFE XXXIV. IN AMBUSH XXXV. THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER XXXVI. BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY XXXVII. THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS XXXVIII. THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR XXXIX. THE SCARLET WOMAN XL. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING



CHAPTER XXIX

THE WILD RIDE

There had been a fierce thunder-storm in the valley of the Chaudiere. It had come suddenly from the east, had shrieked over the village, levelling fences, carrying away small bridges, and ending in a pelting hail, which whitened the ground with pebbles of ice. It had swept up to Vadrome Mountain, and had marched furiously through the forest, carrying down hundreds of trees, drowning the roars of wild animals and the crying and fluttering of birds. One hour of ravage and rage, and then, spent and bodiless, the storm crept down the other side of the mountain and into the next parish, whither the affrighted quack-doctor had betaken himself. After, a perfect calm, a shining sun, and a sweet smell over all the land, which had thirstily drunk the battering showers.

In the house on Vadrome Mountain the tailor of Chaudiere had watched the storm with sympathetic interest. It was in accord with his own feelings. He had had a hard fight for months past, and had gone down in the storm of his emotions one night when a song called Champagne Charlie had had a weird and thrilling antiphonal. There had been a subsequent debacle for himself, and then a revelation concerning Jo Portugais. Ensued hours and days, wherein he had fought a desperate fight with the present—with himself and the reaction from his dangerous debauch.

The battle for his life had been fought for him by this gloomy woodsman who henceforth represented his past, was bound to him by a measureless gratitude, almost a sacrament—of the damned. Of himself he had played no conscious part in it till the worst was over. On the one side was the Cure, patient, gentle, friendly, never pushing forward the Faith which the good man dreamed should give him refuge and peace; on the other side was the murderer, who typified unrest, secretiveness, an awful isolation, and a remorse which had never been put into words or acts of restitution. For six days the tailor-shop and the life at Chaudiere had been things almost apart from his consciousness. Ever-recurring memories of Rosalie Evanturel were driven from his mind with a painful persistence. In the shadows where his nature dwelt now he would not allow her good innocence and truth to enter. His self-reproach was the more poignant because it was silent.

Watching the tempest-swept valley, the tortured forest, where wild life was in panic, there came upon him the old impulse to put his thoughts into words, "and so be rid of them," as he was wont to say in other days. Taking from his pocket some slips of paper, he laid them on the table before him. Three or four times he leaned over the paper to write, but the noise of the storm again and again drew his look to the window. The tempest ceased almost as suddenly as it had come, and, as the first sunlight broke through the flying clouds, he mechanically lifted a sheet of the paper and held it up to the light. It brought to his eyes the large water-mark, Kathleen!

A sombre look passed over his face, he shifted in his chair, then bent over the paper and began to write. Words flowed from his pen. The lines of his face relaxed, his eyes lightened; he was lost in a dream. He thought of the present, and he wrote:

"Wave walls to seaward, Storm-clouds to leeward, Beaten and blown by the winds of the West; Sail we encumbered Past isles unnumbered, But never to greet the green island of Rest."

He thought of Father Loisel. He had seen the good man's lips tremble at some materialistic words he had once used in their many talks, and he wrote:

"Lips that now tremble, Do you dissemble When you deny that the human is best?— Love, the evangel, Finds the Archangel? Is that a truth when this may be a jest?

"Star-drifts that glimmer Dimmer and dimmer, What do ye know of my weal or my woe? Was I born under The sun or the thunder? What do I come from? and where do I go?

"Rest, shall it ever Come? Is endeavour But a vain twining and twisting of cords? Is faith but treason; Reason, unreason, But a mechanical weaving of words?"

He thought of Louis Trudel, in his grave, and his own questioning: "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailorman!" and he wrote:

"What is the token, Ever unbroken, Swept down the spaces of querulous years, Weeping or singing That the Beginning Of all things is with us, and sees us, and hears?"

He made an involuntary motion of his hand to his breast, where old Louis Trudel had set a sign. So long as he lived, it must be there to read: a shining smooth scar of excoriation, a sacred sign of the faith he had never been able to accept; of which he had never, indeed, been able to think, so distant had been his soul, until, against his will, his heart had answered to the revealing call in a woman's eyes. He felt her fingers touch his breast as they did that night the iron seared him; and out of this first intimacy of his soul he wrote:

"What is the token? Bruised and broken, Bend I my life to a blossoming rod? Shall then the worst things Come to the first things, Finding the best of all, last of all, God?"

Like the cry of his "Aphrodite," written that last afternoon of the old life, this plaint ended with the same restless, unceasing question. But there was a difference. There was no longer the material, distant note of a pagan mind; there was the intimate, spiritual note of a mind finding a foothold on the submerged causeway of life and time.

As he folded up the paper to put it into his pocket, Jo Portugais entered the room. He threw in a corner the wet bag which had protected his shoulders from the rain, hung his hat on a peg of the chimney-piece, nodded to Charley, and put a kettle on the little fire.

"A big storm, M'sieu'," Jo said presently as he put some tea into a pot.

"I have never seen a great storm in a forest before," answered Charley, and came nearer to the window through which the bright sun streamed.

"It always does me good," said Jo. "Every bird and beast is awake and afraid and trying to hide, and the trees fall, and the roar of it like the roar of the chasse-galerie on the Kimash River."

"The Kimash River—where is it?"

Jo shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows!"

"Is it a legend, then?"

"It is a river."

"And the chasse-galerie?"

"That is true, M'sieu', no matter what any one thinks. I know; I have seen—I have seen with my own eyes." Jo was excited now.

"I am listening." He took a cup of tea from Portugais and drank eagerly.

"The Kimash River, M'sieu', that is the river in the air. On it is the chasse-galerie. You sell your soul to the devil; you ask him to help you; you deny God. You get into a canoe and call on the devil. You are lifted up, canoe and all, and you rush on down rapids, over falls, on the Kimash River in the air. The devil stands behind you and shouts, and you sing, 'V'la! l'bon vent! V'la l'joli vent!' On and on you go, faster and faster, and you forget the world, and you forget yourself, and the devil is with you in the air—in the chasse-galerie on the Kimash River."

"Jo," said Charley Steele, "do you honestly think there's a river like that?"

'M'sieu', I know it. I saw Ignace Latoile, who robbed a priest and got drunk on the communion wine—I saw him with the devil in the Black Canoe at the Saguenay. I could see Ignace; I could see the devil; I could see the Kimash River. I shall ride myself some day.

"Ride where?"

"What does it matter where?"

"Why should you ride?"

"Because you ride fast with the devil."

"What is the good of riding fast?"

"In the rush a man forget."

"What does he forget, my friend?"

There was a pause, in which a man with a load of crime upon his soul dwelt upon the words my friend, coming from the lips of one who knew the fulness of his iniquity. Then he answered:

"In the noise he forget that a voice is calling in his ear, 'You did It!' He forget what he see in his dreams. He forget the hand that touch him on the arm when he walk in the woods alone, or lie down to sleep at night, no one near. He forget that some one wait—wait—wait, till he has suffer long enough, or till, one day, he think he is happy again, and the Thing he did is far off like a dream—to drag him out to the death he did not die. He forget that he is alone—all alone in the world, for ever and ever and ever."

He suddenly sank upon the floor beside Charley, and a groan burst from his lips. "To have no friend—ah, it is so awful!" he said. "Never to see a face that look into yours, and know how bad are you, and doesn't mind. For five years I have live like that. I cannot let any one be my friend because I was that! They seem to know—everything, everybody— what I am. The little children when I pass them run away to hide. I have wake in the night and cry out in fear, it is so lonely. I have hear voices round me in the woods, and I run and run and run from them, and not leave them behind. Three times I go to the jails in Quebec to see the prisoners behind the bars, and watch the pains on their faces, to understand what I escape. Five times have I go to the courts to listen to murderers tried, and watch them when the Jury say Guilty! and the Judge send them to death—that I might know. Twice have I go to see murderers hung. Once I was helper to the hangman, that I might hear and know what the man said, what he felt. When the arms were bound, I felt the straps on my own; when the cap come down, I gasp for breath; when the bolt is shot, I feel the wrench and the choke, and shudder go through myself—feel the world jerk out in the dark. When the body is bundled in the pit, I see myself lie still under the quick-lime with the red mark round my throat."

Charley touched him on the shoulder. "Jo—poor Jo, my friend!" he said. Jo raised his eyes, red with an unnatural fire, deep with gratitude.

"As I sit at my dinner, with the sun shining and the woods green and glad, and all the world gay, I have see what happened all over again. I have see his strong hands; his bad face laugh at my words; I have see him raise his riding-whip and cut me across the head. I have see him stagger and fall from the blows I give him with the knife—the knife which never was found—why, I not know, for I throw it on the ground beside him! There, as I sit in the open day, a thousand times I have see him shiver and fall, staring, staring at me as if he see a dreadful thing. Then I stand up again and strike at him—at his ghost!—as I did that day in the woods. Again I see him lie in his blood, straight and white—so large, so handsome, so still! I have shed tears—but what are tears! Blind with tears I have call out for the devils of hell to take me with them. I have call on God to give me death. I have prayed, and I have cursed. Twice I have travelled to the grave where he lies. I have knelt there and have beg him to tell the truth to God, and say that he torture me till I kill him. I have beg him to forgive me and to haunt me no more with his bad face. But never—never—never—have I one quiet hour until you come, M'sieu'; nor any joy in my heart till I tell you the black truth—M'sieu'! M'sieu!"

He buried his face between Charley's feet, and held them with his hands.

Charley laid a hand on the shaggy head as though it were that of a child. "Be still—be still, Jo," he said gently.

Since that night of St. Jean Baptiste's festival, no word of the past, of the time when Charley turned aside the revanche of justice from a man called Joseph Nadeau, had been spoken between them. Out of the delirium of his drunken trance had come Charley's recognition of the man he knew now as Jo Portugais. But the recognition had been sent again into the obscurity whence it came, and had not been mentioned since. To outward seeming they had gone on as before. As Charley saw the knotted brows, the staring eyes, the clinched hands, the figure of the woodsman rigid in its agony of remorse, he said to himself: "What right had I to save this man's life? To have paid for his crime would have been easier for him. I knew he was guilty. Perhaps it was my duty to see that every condition, to the last shade of the law, was satisfied, but was it justice to the poor devil himself? There he sits with a load on him that weighs him down every hour of his life. I called him back; I gave him life; but I gave him memory and remorse, and the ghosts that haunt him: the voice in his ear, the touch on his arm, the some one that is 'waiting—waiting—waiting!' That is what I did, and that is what the brother of the Cure did for me. He drew me back. He knew I was a drunkard, but he drew me back. I might have been a murderer like Portugais. The world says I was a thief, and a thief I am until I prove to the world I am innocent—and wreck three lives! How much of Jo's guilt is guilt? How much remorse should a man suffer to pay the debt of a life? If the law is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, how much hourly remorse and torture, such as Jo's, should balance the eye or the tooth or the life? I wonder, now!"

He leaned over, and, helping Jo to his feet, gently forced him down upon a bench near. "All right, Jo, my friend," he said. "I understand. We'll drink the gall together."

They sat and looked at each other in silence.

At length Charley leaned over and touched Jo on the shoulder.

"Why did you want to save yourself?" he said.

At that instant there was a knock at the door, and a voice said: "Monsieur!—Monsieur!"

Jo sprang to his feet with a sharp exclamation, then went heavily to the door and threw it open.



CHAPTER XXX

ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY

Charley's eyes met Rosalie's with a look the girl had never seen in them before. It gave a glow to his haggard face.

Rosalie turned to Jo and greeted him with a friendlier manner than was her wont towards him. The nearer she was to Charley, the farther away from him, to her mind, was Portugais, and she became magnanimous.

Jo nodded' awkwardly and left the room. Looking after the departing figure, Rosalie said: "I know he has been good to you, but—but do you trust him, Monsieur?"

"Does not everybody in Chaudiere trust him?"

"There is one who does not, though perhaps that's of no consequence."

"Why do you not trust him?"

"I don't know. I never knew him do a bad thing; I never heard of a bad thing he has done; and—he has been good to you."

She paused, flushing as she felt the significance of her words, and continued: "Yet there is—I cannot tell what. I feel something. It is not reasonable to go upon one's feelings; but there it is, and so I do not trust him."