The Right of Way, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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The mystery inflamed her imagination. Charley's passiveness when he was
assaulted by old Louis and afterwards threatened by the saddler seemed to
her indifference to any sort of danger--the courage of the hopeless life,
maybe. Instantly her heart overflowed with sympathy. Monsieur was not a
Catholic perhaps? Well, so much the more he should be befriended, for he
was so much the more alone and helpless. If a man was born a
Protestant--or English--he could not help it, and should not be punished
in this world for it, since he was sure to be punished in the next.
Her mind became more and more excited. The postoffice had been long since
closed, and her father was asleep--she could hear him snoring. It was ten
o'clock, and there was still a light in the tailor's shop. Usually the
light went out before nine o'clock. She went to the post-office door and
looked out. The streets were empty; there was not a light burning
anywhere, save in the house of the Notary. Down towards the river a
sleigh was making its way over the thin snow of spring, and screeching on
the stones. Some late revellers, moving homewards from the Trois
Couronnes, were roaring at the top of their voices the habitant chanson,
'Le Petit Roger Bontemps':
"For I am Roger Bontemps,
Gai, gai, gai!
With drink I am full and with joy content,
Gai, gaiment!"
The chanson died away as she stood there, and still the light was burning
in the shop opposite. A thought suddenly came to her. She would go over
and see if the old housekeeper, Margot Patry, had gone to bed. Here was
the solution to the problem, the satisfaction of modesty and propriety.
She crossed the street quickly, hurried round the corner of the house,
and was passing the side-window of the shop, when a crack in the shutters
caught her eye. She heard something fall on the floor within. Could it be
that the tailor and M'sieu' were working at so late an hour? She had an
irresistible impulse, and glued her eye to the crack.
But presently she started back with a smothered cry. There by the great
fireplace stood Louis Trudel picking up a red-hot cross with a pair of
pincers. Grasping the iron firmly just below the arms of the cross, the
tailor held it up again. He looked at it with a wild triumph, yet with a
malignancy little in keeping with the object he held--the holy relic he
had stolen from the door of the parish church. The girl gave a low cry of
dismay.
She saw old Louis advance stealthily towards the door of the shop leading
into the house. In bewilderment, she stood still an instant, then, with a
sudden impulse, she ran to the kitchen-door and tried it softly. It was
not locked. She opened it, entered quickly, and found old Margot standing
in the middle of the room in her night-dress.
"Oh, Rosalie, Rosalie!" cried the old woman, "something's going to
happen. M'sieu' Trudel has been queer all evening. I peeped in the
key-hole of the shop just now, and--"
"Yes, yes, I've seen too. Come!" said Rosalie, and going quickly to the
door, opened it, and passed through to another room. Here she opened
another door, leading into the hall between the shop and the house.
Entering the hall, she saw a glimmer of light above. It was the reddish
glow of the iron cross held by old Louis. She crept softly up the stone
steps. She heard a door open very quietly. She hurried now, and came to
the landing. She saw the door of Charley's room open--all the village
knew what room he slept in--and the moonlight was streaming in at the
window.
She saw the sleeping man on the bed, and the tailor standing over him.
Charley was lying with one arm thrown above his head; the other lay over
the side of the bed.
As she rushed forward, divining old Louis' purpose, the fiery cross
descended, and a voice cried: "'Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!'"
This voice was drowned by that of another, which, gasping with agony out
of a deep sleep, as the body sprang upright, cried: "God-oh God!"
Rosalie's hand grasped old Louis' arm too late. The tailor sprang back
with a horrible laugh, striking her aside, and rushed out to the landing.
"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" cried Rosalie, and, snatching a scarf from her
bosom, thrust it in upon the excoriated breast, as Charley, hardly
realising what had happened, choked back moans of pain.
"What did he do?" he gasped.
"The iron cross from the church door!" she answered. "A minute, one
minute, Monsieur!"
She rushed out upon the landing in time to see the tailor stumble on the
stairs and fall head forwards to the bottom, at the feet of Margot Patry.
Rosalie paid no heed to the fallen man. "Oil! flour! Quick!" she cried.
"Quick! Quick!" She stepped over the body of the tailor, snatched at
Margot's arm, and dragged her into the kitchen. "Quick-oil and flour!"
The old woman showed her where they were, moaning and whining.
"He tried to kill Monsieur," cried Rosalie, "burned him on the breast
with the holy cross!"
With oil and flour she hurried back, over the body of the tailor, up the
stairs, and into Charley's room. Charley was now out of bed and half
dressed, though choking with pain, and preserving consciousness only by a
great effort.
"Good Mademoiselle!" he said.
She took the scarf off gently, soaked it in oil and splashed it with
flour, and laid it quickly back on the burnt flesh.
Margot came staggering into the room.
"I cannot rouse him. I cannot rouse him. He is dead! He is dead!" she
whimpered.
"He--"
Charley swayed forward towards the woman, recovered himself, and said:
"Now not a word of what he did to me, remember. Not one word, or you will
go to jail with him. If you keep quiet, I'll say nothing. He didn't know
what he was doing." He turned to Rosalie. "Not a word of this, please,"
he moaned. "Hide the cross."
He moved towards the door. Rosalie saw his purpose, and ran out ahead of
him and down the stairs to where the tailor lay prone on his face, one
hand still holding the pincers. The little iron cross lay in a dark
corner. Stooping, she lifted up the tailor's head, then felt his heart.
"He is not dead," she cried. "Quick, Margot, some water," she added, to
the whimpering woman. Margot tottered away, and came again presently with
the water.
"I will go for some one to help," Rosalie said, rising to her feet, as
she saw Charley come slowly down the staircase, his face white with
misery. She ran and took his arm to help him down.
"No, no, dear Mademoiselle," he said; "I shall be all right presently.
You must get help to carry him up stairs. Bring the Notary; he and I can
carry him up."
"You, Monsieur! You--it would kill you! You are terribly hurt."
"I must help to carry him, else people will be asking questions," he
answered painfully. "He is going to die. It must not be known--you
understand!" His eyes searched the floor until they found the cross.
Rosalie picked it up with the pincers. "It must not be known what he did
to me," Charley said to the muttering and weeping old woman. He caught
her shoulder with his hand, for she seemed scarcely to heed.
She nodded. "Yes, yes, M'sieu', I will never speak." Rosalie was standing
in the door. "Go quickly, Mademoiselle," he said. She disappeared with
the iron cross, and flying across the street, thrust it inside the
post-office, then ran to the house of the Notary.
CHAPTER XX
THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
Twenty minutes later the tailor was lying in his bed, breathing, but
still unconscious, the Notary, M'sieu', and the doctor of the next
parish, who by chance was in Chaudiere, beside him. Charley's face was
drawn and haggard with pain, for he had helped to carry old Louis to bed,
though every motion of his arms gave him untold agony. In the doorway
stood Rosalie and Margot Patry.
"Will he live?" asked the Notary.
The doctor shook his head. "A few hours, perhaps. He fell downstairs?"
Charley nodded. There was silence for some time, as the doctor went on
with his ministrations, and the Notary sat drumming his fingers on the
little table beside the bed. The two women stole away to the kitchen,
where Rosalie again pressed secrecy on Margot. In the interest of the
cause she had even threatened Margot with a charge of complicity. She had
heard the phrase "accessory before the fact," and she used it now with
good effect.
Then she took some fresh flour and oil, and thrust them inside the
bedroom door where Charley now sat clinching his hands and fighting down
the pain. Careful as ever of his personal appearance, however, he had
brushed every speck of flour from his clothes, and buttoned his coat up
to the neck.
Nearly an hour passed, and then the Cure appeared. When he entered the
sick man's room, Charley followed, and again Rosalie and old Margot came
and stood within the doorway.
"Peace be to this house!" said the Cure. He had a few minutes of
whispered conversation with the doctor, and then turned to Charley.
"He fell down-stairs, Monsieur? You saw him fall?"
"I was in my room--I heard him fall, Cure."
"Had he been ill during the day?"
"He appeared to be feeble, and he seemed moody."
"More than usual, Monsieur?" The Cure had heard of the incident of the
morning when Filion Lacasse accused Charley of stealing the cross.
"Rather more than usual, Monsieur."
The Cure turned towards the door. "You, Mademoiselle Rosalie, how came
you to know?"
"I was in the kitchen with Margot, who was not well."
The Cure looked at Margot, who tearfully nodded. "I was ill," she said,
"and Rosalie was here with me. She helped M'sieu' and me. Rosalie is a
good girl, and kind to me," she whimpered.
The Cure seemed satisfied, and after looking at the sick man for a
moment, he came close to Charley. "I am deeply pained at what happened
to-day," he said courteously. "I know you have had nothing to do with the
beloved little cross."
The Notary tried to draw near and listen, but the Cure's look held him
back. The doctor was busy with his patient.
"You are only just, Monsieur," said Charley in response, wishing that
these kind eyes were fixed anywhere than on his face.
All at once the Cure laid a hand upon his arm. "You are ill," he said
anxiously. "You look very ill indeed. See, Vaudrey," he added to the
doctor, "you have another patient here!"
The friendly, oleaginous doctor came over and peered into Charley's face.
"Ill-sure enough!" he said. "Look at this sweat!" he pointed to the drops
of perspiration on Charley's forehead. "Where do you suffer?"
"Severe pains all through my body," Charley answered simply, for it
seemed easier to tell the truth, as near as might be.
"I must look to you," said the doctor. "Go and lie down, and I will come
to you."
Charley bowed, but did not move. Just then two things drew the attention
of all: the tailor showed returning consciousness, and there was noise of
many voices outside the house and the tramping of feet below-stairs.
"Go and tell them no one must come up," said the doctor to the Notary,
and the Cure made ready to say the last offices for the dying.
Presently the noise below-stairs diminished, and the priest's voice rose
in the office, vibrating and touching. The two women sank to their knees,
the doctor followed, his eyes still fixed on the dying man. Presently,
however, Charley did the same; for something penetrating and reasonable
in the devotion touched him.
All at once Louis Trudel opened his eyes. Staring round with acute
excitement, his eyes fell on the Cure, then upon Charley.
"Stop--stop, M'sieu' le Cure!" he cried. "There's other work to do." He
gasped and was convulsed, but the pallor of his face was alive with fire
from the distempered eyes. He snatched from his breast the paper Charley
had neglected to burn. He thrust it into the Curb's hand.
"See--see!" he croaked. "He is an infidel--black infidel--from hell!" His
voice rose in a kind of shriek, piercing to every corner of the house. He
pointed at Charley with shaking finger.
"He wrote it there--on that paper. He doesn't--believe in God."
His strength failed him, his hand clutched tremblingly at the air. He
laughed, a dry, crackling laugh, and his mouth opened twice or thrice to
speak, but gasping breaths only came forth. With a last effort,
however--as the priest, shocked, stretched out his hand and said: "Have
done, have done, Trudel!"--he cried, in a voice that quavered shrilly:
"He asked--tailor-man--sign--from--Heaven. Look-look!" He pointed wildly
at Charley. "I--gave him--sign of--"
But that was the end. With a shudder the body collapsed in a formless
heap, and the tailor-man was gone to tell of the work he had done for his
faith on earth.
CHAPTER XXI
THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
White and malicious faces peered through the doorway. There was an ugly
murmur coming up the staircase. Many habitants had heard Louis Trudel's
last words, and had passed them on with vehement exaggeration.
Chaudiere had been touched in its most superstitious corner.
Protestantism was a sin, but atheism was a crime against humanity. The
Protestant might be the victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the
deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers. An atheist in
their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed--no one could tell when
and where he would sting. Rough misdemeanours among them had been many,
there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of
infidelity were more shameful than crimes the eye could see.
To the minds of these excited people the tailor-man's death was due to
the infidel before them. They were ready to do all that might become a
Catholic intent to avenge the profaned honour of the Church and the
faith. Bodily harm was the natural form for their passion to take.
"Bring him out--let us have him!" they cried with fierce gestures, to
which Rosalie Evanturel turned a pained, indignant face.
As the Curb stood with the paper in his hand, his face set and bitter,
Rosalie made a step forward. She meant to tell the truth about Louis
Trudel, and show how good this man was, who stood charged with an
imaginary crime. But she met the warning eye of the man himself, calm and
resolute, she saw the suffering in the face, endured with what composure!
and she felt instantly that she must obey him, and that--who could
tell?--his plan might be the best in the end. She looked at the Cure
anxiously. What would he say and do? In the Cure's heart and mind a great
struggle was going on. All his inherent prejudice, the hereditary
predisposition of centuries, the ingrain hatred of atheism, were alive in
him, hardening his mind against the man before him. His first impulse was
to let Charley take his fate at the hands of the people of Chaudiere,
whatever it might be. But as he looked at the man, as he recalled their
first meeting, and remembered the simple, quiet life he had lived among
them--charitable, and unselfish--the barriers of creed and habit fell
down, and tears unbidden rushed into his eyes.
The Cure had, all at once, the one great inspiration of his life--its one
beautiful and supreme imagining. For thus he reasoned swiftly:
Here he was, a priest who had shepherded a flock of the faithful passed
on to him by another priest before him, who again had received them from
a guardian of the fold--a family of faithful Catholics whose thoughts
never strayed into forbidden realms. He had done no more than keep them
faithful and prevent them from wandering--counselling, admonishing,
baptising, and burying, giving in marriage and blessing, sending them on
their last great journey with the cachet of Holy Church upon them. But
never once, never in all his life, had he brought a lost soul into the
fold. If he died to-night, he could not say to St. Peter, when he arrived
at Heaven's gate: "See, I have saved a soul!" Before the Throne he could
not say to Him who cried: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature"--he could not say: "Lord, by Thy grace I found this
soul in the wilderness, in the dark and the loneliness, having no God to
worship, denial and rebellion in his heart; and behold, I took him to my
breast, and taught him in Thy name, and led him home to Thy haven, the
Church!"
Thus it was that the Cure dreamed a dream. He would set his life to
saving this lost soul. He would rescue him from the outer darkness.
His face suffused, he handed the paper in his hand back to the man who
had written the words upon it. Then he lifted his hand against the people
at the door and the loud murmuring behind them.
"Peace--peace!" he said, as though from the altar. "Leave this room of
death, I command you. Go at once to your homes. This man"--he pointed to
Charley--"is my friend. Who seeks to harm him, would harm me. Go hence
and pray. Pray for yourselves, pray for him, and for me; and pray for the
troubled soul of Louis Trudel. Go in peace."
Soon afterwards the house was empty, save for the Cure, Charley, old
Margot, and the Notary.
That night Charley sat in the tailor's bedroom, rigid and calm, though
racked with pain, and watched the candles flickering beside the dead
body. He was thinking of the Cure's last words to the people.
"I wonder--I wonder," he said, and through his eyeglass he stared at the
crucifix that threw a shadow on the dead man's face. Morning found him
there. As dawn crept in he rose to his feet. "Whither now?" he said, like
one in a dream.
CHAPTER XXII
THE WOMAN WHO SAW
Up to the moment of her meeting with Charley, Rosalie Evanturel's life
had been governed by habit, which was lightly coloured by temperament.
Since the eventful hour on Vadrome Mountain it had become a life of
temperament, in which habit was involuntary and mechanical. She did her
daily duties with a good heart, but also with a sense superior to the
practical action. This grew from day to day, until, in the tragical days
wherein she had secretly played a great part, she moved as in a dream,
but a dream so formal that no one saw any change taking place in her, or
associated her with the events happening across the way.
She had been compelled to answer many questions, for it was known she was
in the tailor's house when Louis Trudel fell down-stairs, but what more
was there to tell than that she had run for the Notary, and sent word to
the Cure, and that she was present when the tailor died, charging M'sieu'
with being an infidel? At first she was ill disposed to answer any
questions, but she soon felt that attitude would only do harm. For the
first time in her life she was face to face with moral problems--the
beginning of sorrow, of knowledge, and of life.
In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they
may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means
evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind. To the primitive
mind, with its direct yes and no, there is danger of it becoming a
tragical problem ere it is realised that truth is various and diverse.
Perhaps even with that Mary who hid the matter in her heart--the
exquisite tragedy and glory of Christendom--there was a delicate feeling
of guilt, the guilt of the hidden though lofty and beautiful thing.
If secrecy was guilt, then Charley and Rosalie were bound together by a
bond as strong as death: Rosalie held the key to a series of fateful days
and doings.
In ordinary course, they might have known each other for five years and
not have come to this sensitive and delicate association. With one great
plunge she had sprung into the river of understanding. In the moment that
she had thrust her scarf into his scorched breast, in that little upper
room, the work of years had been done.
As long as he lived, that mark must remain on M'sieu's breast--the red,
smooth scar of a cross! She had seen the sort of shining scar a bad burn
makes, and at thought of it she flushed, trembled, and turned her head
away, as though some one were watching her. Even in the night she flushed
and buried her face in the pillow when the thought flashed through her
mind; though when she had soaked the scarf in oil and flour and laid it
on the angry wound she had not flushed at all, was determined, quiet, and
resourceful.
That incident had made her from a girl into a woman, from a child of the
convent into a child of the world. She no longer thought and felt as she
had done before. What she did think or feel could not easily have been
set down, for her mind was one tremulous confusion of unusual thoughts,
her heart was beset by new feelings, her imagination, suddenly finding
itself, was trying its wings helplessly. The past was full of wonder and
event, the present full of surprises.
There was M'sieu' established already in Louis Trudel's place, having
been granted a lease of the house and shop by the Curte, on the part of
the parish, to which the property had been left; receiving also a gift of
the furniture and of old Margot, who remained where she had been so many
years. She could easily see Charley at work--pale and suffering
still--for the door was generally open in the sweet April weather, with
the birds singing, and the trees bursting into blossom. Her wilful
imagination traced the cross upon his breast--it almost seemed as if it
were outside upon his clothes, exposed to every eye, a shining thing all
fire, not a wound inside, for which old Margot prepared oiled linen now.
The parish was as perturbed as her own mind, for the mystery of the
stolen cross had never been cleared up, and a few still believed that
M'sieu' had taken it. They were of those who kept hinting at dark things
which would yet be worked upon the infidel in the tailor's shop. These
were they to whom the Curb's beautiful ambition did not appeal. He had
said that if the man were an infidel, then they must pray that he be
brought into the fold; but a few were still suspicious, and they said in
Rosalie's presence: "Where is the little cross? M'sieu' knows."
He did know. That was the worst of it. The cross was in her possession.
Was it not necessary, then, to quiet suspicion for his sake? She had
locked the relic away in a cupboard in her bedroom, and she carried the
key of it always in her pocket. Every day she went and looked at it, as
at some ghostly token. To her it was a symbol, not of supernatural
things, but of life in its new reality to her. It was M'sieu', it was
herself, it was their secret--she chafed inwardly that Margot should
share a part of that secret. If it were only between their two
selves--between M'sieu' and herself! If Margot--she paused suddenly, for
she was going to say, If Margot would only die! She was not wicked enough
to wish that; yet in the past few weeks she had found herself capable of
thinking things beyond the bounds of any past experience.
She found a solution at last. She would go to-night secretly and nail the
cross again on the church door, and so stop the chatter of evil tongues.
The moon set very early now, and as every one in Chaudiere was supposed
to be in bed by ten o'clock, the chances of not being seen were in her
favour. She received the final impetus to her resolution by a quarrelsome
and threatening remark of Jo Portugais to some sharp-tongued gossip in
the post-office. She was glad that Jo should defend M'sieu', but she was
jealous of his friendship for the tailor. Besides, did there not appear
to be a secret between Jo and M'sieu'? Was it not possible that Jo knew
where M'sieu' came from, and all about him? Of late Jo had come in and
gone out of the shop oftener than in the past, had even brought her
bunches of mosses for her flower-pots, the first budding lilacs, and some
maple-sugar made from the trees on Vadrome Mountain. She remembered that
when she was a girl at school, years ago--ten years ago--Jo Portugais,
then scarcely out of his teens, a cheerful, pleasant, quick-tempered lad,
had brought her bunches of the mountain-ash berry; that once he had
mended the broken runner of her sled; and yet another time had sent her a
birch-bark valentine at the convent, where it was confiscated by the
Mother Superior. Since those days he had become a dark morose figure,
living apart from men, never going to confession, seldom going to Mass,
unloving and unlovable.
There was only one other person in the parish more unloved. That was the
woman called Paulette Dubois, who lived in the little house at the outer
gate of the Manor. Paulette Dubois had a bad name in the parish--so bad
that all women shunned her, and few men noticed her. Yet no one could say
that at the present time she did not live a careful life, justifying, so
far as eye could see, the protection of the Seigneur, M. Rossignol, a man
of queer habits and queerer dress, a dabbler in physical science, a
devout Catholic, and a constant friend of the Cure. He it was who, when
an effort was made to drive Paulette out of the parish, had said that she
should not go unless she wished; that, having been born in Chaudiere, she
had a right to live there and die there; and if she had sinned there, the
parish was in some sense to blame. Though he had no lodge-gates, and
though the seigneury was but a great wide low-roofed farmhouse, with an
observatory, and a chimney-piece dating from the time of Louis the
Fourteenth, the Seigneur gave Paulette Dubois a little hut at his outer
gate, which had been there since the great Count Frontenac visited
Chaudiere. Probably Rosalie spoke to Paulette Dubois more often than did
any one else in the parish, but that was because the woman came for
little things at the shop, and asked for letters, and every week sent
one--to a man living in Montreal. She sent these letters, but not more
than once in six months did she get a reply, and she had not had one in a
whole year. Yet every week she asked, and Rosalie found it hard to answer
her politely, and sometimes showed it.