The Right of Way Part 15

It was all the work of a moment. People ran from the doorways and sidewalks, but stayed at a comfortable distance until the moose was dragged down; then they made to approach the insensible man. Before any one could reach him, however, the great hound, with dripping fangs, rushed to his master's body, and, standing over it, showed his teeth savagely. The hotel-keeper approached, but the bristles of the hound stood up, he prepared to attack, and the landlord drew back in haste.

Then M. Dauphin, the Notary, who had joined the crowd, held out a hand coaxingly, and with insinuating rhetoric drew a little nearer than the landlord had done; but he retreated precipitously as the hound crouched back for a spring. Some one called for a gun, and Filion Laca.s.se ran into his shop. The animal had now settled down on his master's body, his bloodshot eyes watching in menace. The one chance seemed to be to shoot him, and there must be no bungling, lest his prostrate master suffer at the same time. The crowd had melted away into the houses, and were now standing at doorways and windows, ready for instant retreat.

Filion Laca.s.se's gun was now at disposal, but who would fire it? Jo Portugais was an expert shot, and he reached out a hand for the weapon.

As he did so, Rosalie Evanturel cried: "Wait, oh, wait!" Before any one could interfere she moved along the open s.p.a.ce to the mad beast, speaking soothingly, and calling his name.

The crowd held their breath. A woman fainted. Some wrung their hands, and Jo Portugais, with blanched face, stood with gun half raised. With a.s.sured kindness of voice and manner, Rosalie walked deliberately over to the hound. At first the animal's bristles came up, and he prepared to spring, but murmuring to him, she held out her hand, and presently laid it on his huge head. With a growl of subjection, the dog drew from the body of his master, and licked Rosalie's fingers as she knelt beside Boily and felt his heart. She put her arm round the dog's neck, and said to the crowd, "Some one come--only one--ah, yes, you, Monsieur!" she added, as Charley, who had just arrived on the scene, came forward.

"Only you, if you can lift him. Take him to my house."

Her arm still round the dog, she talked to him, as Charley came forward, and, lifting up the body of the little horse-trainer, drew him across his shoulder. The hound at first resented the act, but under Rosalie's touch became quiet, and followed at their heels towards the post-office, licking the wounded man's hands as they hung down. Inside M. Evanturel's house the injured man was laid upon a couch. Charley examined his wounds, and, finding them severe, advised that the Cure be sent for, while he and Jo Portugais set about restoring him to consciousness. Jo had skill of a sort, and his crude medicaments were efficacious.

When the Cure came, the injured man was handed over to his care, and he arranged that in the evening Boily should be removed to his house, to await the arrival of the doctor from the next parish.

This was Charley's public introduction to the people of Chaudiere, and it was his second meeting with Rosalie Evanturel.

The incident brought him into immediate prominence. Before he left the post-office, Filion Laca.s.se, Maximilian Cour, and Mrs. Flynn had given forth his history, as related by Jo Portugais. The village was agog with excitement.

But attention was not centred on himself, for Rosalie's courage had set the parish talking. When the Notary stood on the steps of the saddler's shop, and with fine rhetoric proposed a vote of admiration for the girl, the cheering could be heard inside the post-office, and it brought Mrs.

Flynn outside.

"'Tis for her, the darlin'--for Ma'm'selle Rosalie--they're splittin'

their throats!" she said to Charley as he was making his way from the sick man's room to the street door. "Did ye iver see such an eye an'

hand? That avil baste that's killed two Injins already--an' all the men o' the place sneakin' behind dures, an' she walkin' up cool as leaf in mornin' dew, an' quietin' the divil's own! Did ye iver see annything like it, sir--you that's seen so much?"

"Madame, it is not touch of hand alone, or voice alone," answered Charley.

"Shure, 'tis somethin' kin in baste an' maid, you're manin' thin?"

"Quite so, Madame."

"Simple like, an' understandin' what Noah understood in that ark av his--for talk to the bastes he must have, explainin' what was for thim to do."

"Like that, Madame."

"Thrue for you, sir, 'tis as you say. There's language more than tongue of man can shpake. But listen, thin, to me"--her voice got lower--"for 'tis not the furst time, a thing like that, the lady she is--granddaughter of a Seigneur, and descinded from n.o.bility in France!

'Tis not the furst time to be doin' brave things. Just a shlip of a girl she was, three years ago, afther her mother died, an' she was back from convint. A woman come to the parish an' was took sick in the house of her brother--from France she was. Small-pox they said at furst. 'Twas no small-pox, but plague, got upon the seas. Alone she was in the house--her brother left her alone, the black-hearted coward. The people wouldn't go near the place. The Cure was away. Alone the woman was--poor soul! Who wint--who wint and cared for her? Who do ye think, sir?"

"Mademoiselle?"

"None other. 'Go tell Mrs. Flynn,' says she, 'to care for my father till I come back,' an' away she wint to the house of plague. A week she stayed, an' no one wint near her. Alone she was with the woman and the plague. 'Lave her be,' said the Cure when he come back; "tis for the love of G.o.d. G.o.d is with her--lave her be, and pray for her,' says he.

An' he wint himself, but she would not let him in. "Tis my work,' says she. "Tis G.o.d's work for me to do,' says she. 'An' the woman will live if 'tis G.o.d's will,' says she. 'There's an agnus dei on her breast,'

says she. 'Go an' pray,' says she. Pray the Cure did, an' pray did we all, but the woman died of the plague. All alone did Rosalie draw her to the grave on a stone-boat down the lane, an' over the hill, an' into the churchyard. An' buried her with her own hands at night, no one knowin'

till the mornin', she did. So it was. An' the burial over, she wint back an' burned the house to the ground--sarve the villain right that lave the sick woman alone! An' her own clothes she burned, an' put on the clothes I brought her wid me own hand. An' for that thing she did, the love o' G.o.d in her heart, is it for Widdy Flynn or Cure or anny other to forgit? Shure the Cure was for iver broken-hearted, for that he was sick abed for days an' could not go to the house when the woman died, an'

say to Rosalie, 'Let me in for her last hour.' But the word of Rosalie--shure 'twas as good as the words of a praste, savin' the Cure prisince wheriver he may be!"

This was the story of Rosalie which Mrs. Flynn told Charley, as he stood at the street door of the post-office. When she had finished, Charley went back into the room where Rosalie sat beside the sick man's couch, the hound at her feet. She came forward, surprised, for he had bade her good-bye but a few minutes before.

"May I sit and watch for an hour longer, Mademoiselle?" he said. "You will have your duties in the post-office."

"Monsieur--it is good of you," she answered.

For two hours Charley watched her going in and out, whispering directions to Mrs. Flynn, doing household duty, bringing warmth in with her, and leaving light behind her.

It was afternoon when he returned to his bench in the tailor-shop, and was received by old Louis Trudel in peevish silence. For an hour they worked in silence, and then the tailor said:

"A brave girl--that. We will work till nine to-night!"

CHAPTER XV. THE MARK IN THE PAPER

Chaudiere was nearing the last of its nine-days' wonder. It had filed past the doorway of the tailor-shop; it had loitered on the other side of the street; it had been measured for more clothes than in three months past--that it might see Charley at work in the shop, cross-legged on a bench, or wielding the goose, his eye gla.s.s in his eye. Here was sensation indeed, for though old M. Rossignol, the Seigneur, had an eye-gla.s.s, it was held to his eye--a large bone-bound thing with a little gold handle; but no one in Chaudiere had ever worn a gla.s.s in his eye like that. Also, no one in Chaudiere had ever looked quite like "M'sieu'"--for so it was that, after the first few days (a real tribute to his importance and sign of the interest he created) Charley came to be called "M'sieu'," and the Mallard was at last entirely dropped.

Presently people came and stood at the tailor's door and talked, or listened to Louis Trudel and M'sieu' talking. And it came to be noised abroad that the stranger talked as well as the Cure and better than the Notary. By-and-by they a.s.sociated his eye-gla.s.s with his talent, so that it seemed, as it were, to be the cause of it. Yet their talk was ever of simple subjects, of everyday life about them, now and then of politics, occasionally of the events of the world filtered to them through vast tracts of country. There was one subject which, however, was barred; perhaps because there was knowledge abroad that M'sieu' was not a Catholic, perhaps because Charley himself adroitly changed the conversation when it veered that way.

Though the parish had not quite made up its mind about him, there were a number of things in his favour. In the first place, the Cure seemed satisfied; secondly, he minded his own business. Also, he was working for Louis Trudel for nothing. These things Jo Portugais diligently impressed on the minds of all who would listen.

From above the frosted part of the windows of the post-office, in the corner where she sorted letters, Rosalie could look over at the tailor's shop at an angle; could sometimes even see M'sieu' standing at the long table with a piece of chalk, a pair of shears, or a measure. She watched the tailor-shop herself, but it annoyed her when she saw any one else do so. She resented--she was a woman and loved monopoly--all inquiry regarding M'sieu', so frequently addressed to her.

One afternoon, as Charley came out, on his way to the house on Vadrome Mountain, she happened to be outside. He saw her, paused, lifted his fur cap, and crossed the street to her.

"Have you, perhaps, paper, pens, and ink for sale, Mademoiselle?"

"Yes, oh yes; come in, Monsieur Mallard."

"Ah, it is nice of you to remember me," he answered. "I see you every day--often," she answered.

"Of course, we are neighbours," he responded. "The man--the horse-trainer--is quite well again?"

"He has gone home almost well," she answered. She placed pens, paper, and ink before him. "Will these do?"

"Perfectly," he answered mechanically, and laid a few pens and a bottle of ink beside the paper.

"You were very brave that day," he said--they had not talked together since, though seeing each other so often.

"Oh, no; I knew he would make friends with me--the hound."

"Of course," he rejoined.

"We should show animals that we trust them," she said, in some confusion, for being near him made her heart throb painfully.

He did not answer. Presently his eye glanced at the paper again, and was arrested. He ran his fingers over it, and a curious look flashed across his face. He held the paper up to the light quickly, and looked through it. It was thin, half-foreign paper, without lines, and there was a water-mark in it-large, shadowy, filmy--Kathleen.

It was paper made in the mills which had belonged to Kathleen's uncle.

This water-mark was made to celebrate their marriage-day. Only for one year had this paper been made, and then the trade in it was stopped. It had gone its ways down the channels of commerce, and here it was in his hand, a reminder, not only of the old life, but, as it were, the parchment for the new. There it was, a piece of plain good paper, ready for pen and ink and his letter to the Cure's brother in Paris--the only letter he would ever write, ever again until he died, so he told himself; but hold it up to the light and there was the name over which his letter must be written--Kathleen, invisible but permanent, obscured, but brought to life by the raising of a hand.

The girl caught the flash of feeling in his face, saw him holding the paper up to the light, and then, with an abstracted air, calmly lay it down.