Right of Way — 16 - Chapters 50, 51, 52, & 53
For the first time in its history Chaudiere was becoming notable in the eyes of the outside world.
“We’ll have more girth after this,” said Filion Lacasse the saddler to the wife of the Notary, as, in front of the post-office, they stood watching a little cavalcade of habitants going up the road towards Four Mountains to rehearse the Passion Play.
“If Dauphin’s advice had been taken long ago, we’d have had a hotel at Four Mountains, and the city folk would be coming here for the summer,” said Madame Dauphin, with a superior air.
“Pish!
” said a voice behind them.
It was the Seigneur’s groom, with a straw in his mouth.
He had a gloomy mind.
“There isn’t a house but has two or three boarders.
I’ve got three,” said Filion Lacasse.
“They come tomorrow.
” “We’ll have ten at the Manor.
But no good will come of it,” said the groom.
“No good!
Look at the infidel tailor!
” said Madame Dauphin.
“He translated all the writing.
He drew all the dresses, and made a hundred pictures--there they are at the Cure’s house.
” “He should have played Judas,” said the groom malevolently.
“That’d be right for him.
” “Perhaps you don’t like the Passion Play,” said Madame Dauphin disdainfully.
“We ain’t through with it yet,” said the death’s-head groom.
“It is a pious and holy mission,” said Madame Dauphin.
“Even that Jo Portugais worked night and day till he went away to Montreal, and he always goes to Mass now.
He’s to take Pontius Pilate when he comes back.
Then look at Virginie Morrissette, that put her brother’s eyes out quarrelling--she’s to play Mary Magdalene.
” “I could fit the parts better,” said the groom.
“Of course.
You’d have played St. John,” said the saddler--“or, maybe, Christus himself!
” “I’d have Paulette Dubois play Mary the sinner.
” “Magdalene repented, and knelt at the foot of the cross.
She was sorry and sinned no more,” said the Notary’s wife in querulous reprimand.
“Well, Paulette does all that,” said the stolid, dark-visaged groom.
Filion Lacasse’s ears pricked up.
“How do you know--she hasn’t come back?
” “Hasn’t she, though!
And with her child too--last night.
” “Her child!
” Madame Dauphin was scandalised and amazed.
The groom nodded.
“And doesn’t care who knows it.
Seven years old, and as fine a child as ever was!
” “Narcisse--Narcisse!
” called Madame Dauphin to her husband, who was coming up the street.
She hastily repeated the groom’s news to him.
The Notary stuck his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat.
“Well, well, my dear Madame,” he said consequentially, “it is quite true.
” “What do you know about it--whose child is it?
” she asked, with curdling scorn.
“‘Sh-’sh!
” said the Notary.
Then, with an oratorical wave of his free hand: “The Church opens her arms to all--even to her who sinned much because she loved much, who, through woful years, searched the world for her child and found it not--hidden away, as it was, by the duplicity of sinful man”--and so on through tangled sentences, setting forth in broken terms Paulette Dubois’s life.
“How do you know all about it?
” asked the saddler.
“I’ve known it for years,” said the Notary grandly--stoutly too, for he would freely risk his wife’s anger that the vain-glory of the moment might be enlarged.
“And you keep it even from madame!
” said the saddler, with a smile too broad to be sarcastic.
“Tiens!
if I did that, my wife’d pick my eyes out with a bradawl.
” “It was a professional secret,” said the Notary, with a desperate resolve to hold his position.
“I’m going home, Dauphin--are you coming?
” questioned his wife, with an air.
“You will remain, and hear what I’ve got to say.
This Paulette Dubois--she should play Mary Magdalene, for--” “Look--look, what’s that?
” said the saddler.
He pointed to a wagon coming slowly up the road.
In front of it a team of dogs drew a cart.
It carried some thing covered with black.
“It’s a funeral!
There’s the coffin.
It’s on Jo Portugais’ little cart,” added Filion Lacasse.
“Ah, God be merciful, it’s Rosalie Evanturel and Mrs. Flynn!
And M’sieu’ Evanturel in the coffin!
” said Madame Dauphin, running to the door of the postoffice to call the Cure’s sister.
“There’ll be use enough for the baker’s Dead March now,” remarked M. Dauphin sadly, buttoning up his coat, taking off his hat, and going forward to greet Rosalie.
As he did so, Charley appeared in the doorway of his shop.
“Look, Monsieur,” said the Notary.
“This is the way Rosalie Evanturel comes home with her father.
” “I will go for the Cure” Charley answered, turning white.
He leaned against the doorway for a moment to steady himself, then hurried up the street.
He did not dare meet Rosalie, or go near her yet.
For her sake it was better not.
“That tailor infidel has a heart.
His eyes were leaking,” said the Notary to Filion Lacasse, and went on to meet the mournful cavalcade.
CHAPTER LI. FACE TO FACE
“If I could only understand!
”--this was Rosalie’s constant cry in these weeks wherein she lay ill and prostrate after her father’s burial.
Once and once only had she met Charley alone, though she knew that he was keeping watch over her.
She had first seen him the day her father was buried, standing apart from the people, his face sorrowful, his eyes heavy, his figure bowed.
The occasion of their meeting alone was the first night of her return, when the Notary and Charley had kept watch beside her father’s body.
She had gone into the little hallway, and had looked into the room of death.
The Notary was sound asleep in his arm-chair, but Charley sat silent and moveless, his eyes gazing straight before him.
She murmured his name, and though it was only to herself, not even a whisper, he got up quickly and came to the hall, where she stood grief-stricken, yet with a smile of welcome, of forgiveness, of confidence.
As she put out her hand to him, and his swallowed it, she could not but say to him--so contrary is the heart of woman, so does she demand a Yes by asserting a No, and hunger for the eternal assurance--she could not but say: “You do not love me--now.
” It was but a whisper, so faint and breathless that only the heart of love could hear it.
There was no answer in words, for some one was stirring beyond Rosalie in the dark, and a great figure heaved through the kitchen doorway, but his hand crushed hers in his own; his heart said to her, “My love is an undying light; it will not change for time or tears”--the words they had read together in a little snuff-coloured book on the counter in the shop one summer day a year ago.
The words flashed into his mind, and they were carried to hers.
Her fingers pressed his, and then Charley said, over her shoulder, to the approaching Mrs. Flynn: “Do not let her come again, Madame.
She should get some sleep,” and he put her hand in Mrs. Flynn’s. “Be good to her, as you know how, Mrs. Flynn,” he added gently.
He had won the heart of Mrs. Flynn that moment, and it may be she had a conviction or an inspiration, for she said, in a softer voice than she was wont to use to any one save Rosalie: “I’ll do by her as you’d do by your own, sir,” and tenderly drew Rosalie to her own room.
Such had been their first meeting after her return.
Afterwards she was taken ill, and the torture of his heart drove him out into the night, to walk the road and creep round her house like a sentinel, Mrs. Flynn’s words ringing in his ears to reproach him--“I’ll do by her as you would do by your own, sir.
” Night after night it was the same, and Rosalie heard his footsteps and listened and was less sorrowful, because she knew that she was ever in his thoughts.
But one day Mrs. Flynn came to him in his shop.
“She’s wantin’ a word with ye on business,” she said, and gestured towards the little house across the way.
“‘Tis few words ye do be shpakin’ to annybody, but if y’ have kind words to shpake and good things to say, y’ naidn’t be bitin’ yer tongue,” she added in response to his nod, and left him.
Charley looked after her with a troubled face.
On the instant it seemed to him that Mrs. Flynn knew all.
But his second thought told him that it was only an instinct on her part that there was something between them--the beginning of love, maybe.
In another half-hour he was beside Rosalie’s chair.
“Perhaps you are angry,” she said, as he came towards her where she sat in the great arm-chair.
She did not give him time to answer, but hurried on.
“I wanted to tell you that I have heard you every night outside, and that I have been glad, and sorry too--so sorry for us both.
” “Rosalie!
Rosalie” he said hoarsely, and dropped on a knee beside her chair, and took her hand and kissed it.
He did not dare do more.
“I wanted to say to you,” she said, dropping a hand on his shoulder, “that I do not blame you for anything--not for anything.
Yet I want you to be sorry too.
I want you to feel as sorry for me as I feel sorry for you.
” “I am the worst man and you the best woman in the world.
” She leaned over him with tears in her eyes.
“Hush!
” she said.
“I want to help you--Charles.
You are wise.
You know ten thousand things more than I; but I know one thing you do not understand.
” “You know and do whatever is good,” he said brokenly.
“Oh, no, no, no!
But I know one thing, because I have been taught, and because it was born with me.
Perhaps much was habit with me in the past, but now I know that one thing is true.
It is God.
” She paused.
“I have learned so much since--since then.
” He looked up with a groan, and put a finger on her lips.
“You are feeling bitterly sorry for me,” she said.
“But you must let me speak--that is all I ask.
It is all love asks.
I cannot bear that you should not share my thoughts.
That is the thing that has hurt--hurt so all these months, these long hard months, when I could not see you, and did not know why I could not.
Don’t shake so, please!
Hear me to the end, and we shall both be the better after.
I felt it all so cruelly, because I did not--and I do not--understand.
I rebelled, but not against you.
I rebelled against myself, against what you called Fate.
Fate is one’s self, what one brings on one’s self.
But I had faith in you--always--always, even when I thought I hated you.
” “Ah, hate me!
Hate me!
It is your loving that cuts me to the quick,” he said.
“You have the magnanimity of God.
” Her eyes leapt up.
“‘Of God’--you believe in God!
” she said eagerly.
“God is God to you?
He is the one thing that has come out of all this to me.
” She reached out her hand and took her Bible from a table.
“Read that to yourself,” she said, and, opening the Book, pointed to a passage.
He read it: And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And He said, Who told thee that thou wart naked?
Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
Closing the Book, Charley said: “I understand--I see.
” “Will you say a prayer with me?
” she urged.
“It is all I ask.
It is the only--the only thing I want to hurt you, because it may make you happier in the end.
What keeps us apart, I do not know.
But if you will say one prayer with me, I will keep on trusting, I will never complain, and I will wait--wait.
” He kissed both her hands, but the look in his eyes was that of a man being broken on the wheel.
She slipped to the floor, her rosary in her fingers.
“Let us pray,” she said simply, and in a voice as clear as a child’s, but with the anguish of a woman’s struggling heart behind.
He did not move.
She looked at him, caught his hands in both of hers, and cried: “But you will not deny me this!
Haven’t I the right to ask it?
Haven’t I a right to ask of you a thousand times as much?
” “You have the right to ask all that is mine to give life, honour, my body in pieces inch by inch, the last that I can call my own.
But, Rosalie, this is not mine to give!
How can I pray, unless I believe!
” “You do--oh, you do believe in God,” she cried passionately.
“Rosalie--my life,” he urged, hoarse misery in his voice, “the only thing I have to give you is the bare soul of a truthful man--I am that now at least.
You have made me so.
If I deceived the whole world, if I was as the thief upon the cross, I should still be truthful to you.
You open your heart to me--let me open mine to you, to see it as it is.
Once my soul was like a watch, cased and carried in the pocket of life, uncertain, untrue, because it was a soul made, not born.
I must look at the hands to know the time, and because it varied, because the working did not answer to the absolute, I said: ‘The soul is a lie.
’ You--you have changed all that, Rosalie.
My soul now is like a dial to the sun.
But the clouds are there above, and I do not know what time it is in life.
When the clouds break--if they ever break--and the sun shines, the dial will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--” He paused, confused, for he had repeated the words of a witness taking the oath in court.
“‘So help me God!
”’ she finished the oath for him.
Then, with a sudden change of manner, she came to her feet with a spring.
She did not quite understand.
She was, however, dimly conscious of the power she had over his chivalrous mind: the power of the weak over the strong--the tyranny of the defended over the defender.
She was a woman tortured beyond bearing; and she was fighting for her very life, mad with anguish as she struggled.
“I do not understand you,” she cried, with flashing eyes.
“One minute you say you do not believe in anything, and the next you say, ‘So help me God!
’” “Ah, no, you said that, Rosalie,” he interposed gently.
“You said I was as magnanimous as God.
You were laughing at me then, mocking me, whose only fault is that I loved and trusted you.
In the wickedness of your heart you robbed me of happiness, you--” “Don’t--don’t!
Rosalie!
Rosalie!
” he exclaimed in shrinking protest.
That she had spoken to him as her deepest heart abhorred only increased her agitated denunciation.
“Yes, yes, in your mad selfishness, you did not care for the poor girl who forgot all, lost all, and now--” She stopped short at the sight of his white, awe stricken face.
His eye-glass seemed like a frost of death over an eye that looked upon some shocking scene of woe.
Yet he appeared not to see, for his fingers fumbled on his waistcoat for the monocle--fumbled--vaguely, helplessly.
It was the realisation of a soul cast into the outer darkness.
Her abrupt silence came upon him like the last engulfing wave to a drowning man--the final assurance of the end, in which there is quiet and the deadly smother.
“Now--I know-the truth!
” he said, in a curious even tone, different from any she had ever heard from him.
It was the old Charley Steele who spoke, the Charley Steele in whom the intellect was supreme once more.
The judicial spirit, the inveterate intelligence which put justice before all, was alive in him, almost rejoicing in its regained governance.
The new Charley was as dead as the old had been of late, and this clarifying moment left the grim impression behind that the old law was not obsolete.
He felt that in the abandonment of her indignation she had mercilessly told the truth; and the irreducible quality of mind in him which in the old days made for justice, approved.
There was a new element now, however--that conscience which never possessed him fully until the day he saw Rosalie go travelling over the hills with her crippled father.
That picture of the girl against the twilight, her figure silhouetted in the clear air, had come to him in sleeping and waking dreams, the type and sign of an everlasting melancholy.
As he looked at her blindly now, he saw, not herself, but that melancholy figure.
Out of the distance his own voice said again: “Now--I know-the truth!
” She had struck with a violence she did not intend, which, she knew, must rend her own heart in the future, which put in the dice-box the last hopes she had.
But she could not have helped it--she could not have stayed the words, though a suspended sword were to fall with the saying.
It was the cry of tradition and religion, and every home-bred, convent-nurtured habit, the instinct of heredity, the wail of woman, for whom destiny, or man, or nature, has arranged the disproportionate share of life’s penalties.
It was the impotent rebellion against the first curse, that man in his punishment should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow--which he might do with joy--while the woman must work out her ordained sentence “in sorrow all the days of her life.
” In her bitter words was the inherent revolt of the race of woman.
But now she suddenly felt that she had flung him an infinite distance from her; that she had struck at the thing she most cherished--his belief that she loved him; that even if she had told the truth--and she felt she had not--it was not the truth she wished him most to feel.
For an instant she stood looking at him, shocked and confounded, then her changeless love rushed back on her, the maternal and protective spirit welled up, and with a passionate cry she threw herself in the chair again in very weakness, with outstretched hands, saying: “Forgive me--oh, forgive me!
I did not mean it--oh, forgive your Rosalie!
” Stooping over her, he answered: “It is good for me to know the whole truth.
What hurts you may give me will pass--for life must end, and my life cannot be long enough to pay the price of the hurts I have given you.
I could bear a thousand--one for every hour--if they could bring back the light to your eye, the joy to your heart.
Could prayer, do you think, make me sorrier than I am?
I
have hurt what I would have spared from hurt at the cost of my life--and all the lives in all the world!
” he added fiercely.
“Forgive me--oh, forgive your Rosalie!
” she pleaded.
“I did not know what I was saying--I was mad.
” “It was all so sane and true,” he said, like one who, on the brink of death, finds a satisfaction in speaking the perfect truth.
“I am glad to hear the truth--I have been such a liar.
” She looked up startled, her tears blinding her.
“You have not deceived me?
” she asked bitterly.
“Oh, you have not deceived me--you have loved me, have you not?
” It was that which mattered, that only.
Moveless and eager, she looked--looked at him, waiting, as it were, for sentence.
“I never lied to you, Rosalie--never!
” he answered, and he touched her hand.
She gave a moan of relief at his words.
“Oh, then, oh, then...
“ she said, in a low voice, and the tears in her eyes dried away.
“I meant that until I knew you, I kept deceiving myself and others all my life--” “But without knowing it?
” she said eagerly.
“Perhaps, without quite knowing it.
” “Until you knew me?
” she asked, in quick, quivering tones.
“Till I knew you,” he answered.
“Then I have done you good--not ill?
” she asked, with painful breathlessness.
“The only good there may be in me is you, and you only,” he said, and he choked something rising in his throat, seeing the greatness of her heart, her dear desire to have entered into his life to his own good.
He would have said that there was no good in him at all, but that he wished to comfort her.
A little cry of joy broke from her lips.
“Oh, that--that!
” she cried, with happy tears.
“Won’t you kiss me now?
” she added softly.
He clasped her in his arms, and though his eyes were dry, his heart wept tears of blood.
CHAPTER LII. THE COMING OF BILLY
Chaudiere had made--and lost--a reputation.
The Passion Play in the valley had become known to a whole country--to the Cure’s and the Seigneur’s unavailing regret.
They had meant to revive the great story for their own people and the Indians--a homely, beautiful object-lesson, in an Eden--like innocence and quiet and repose; but behold the world had invaded them!
The vanity of the Notary had undone them.
He had written to the great papers of the province, telling of the advent of the play, and pilgrimages had been organised, and excursions had been made to the spot, where a simple people had achieved a crude but noble picture of the life and death of the Hero of Christendom.
The Cure viewed with consternation the invasion of their quiet.
It was no longer his own Chaudiere; and when, on a Sunday, his dear people were jostled from the church to make room for strangers, his gentle eloquence seemed to forsake him, he spoke haltingly, and his intoning of the Mass lacked the old soothing simplicity.
“Ah, my dear Seigneur!
” he said, on the Sunday before the playing was to end, “we have overshot the mark.
” The Seigneur nodded and turned his head away.
“There is an English play which says, ‘I have shot mine arrow o’er the house and hurt my brother.
’ That’s it--that’s it!
We began with religion, and we end with greed, and pride, and notoriety.
” “What do we want of fame!
The price is too high, Maurice.
Fame is not good for the hearts and minds of simple folk.
” “It will soon be over.
” “I dread a sordid reaction.
” The Seigneur stood thinking for a moment.
“I have an idea,” he said at last.
“Let us have these last days to ourselves.
The mission ends next Saturday at five o’clock.
We will announce that all strangers must leave the valley by Wednesday night.
Then, during those last three days, while yet the influence of the play is on them, you can lead your own people back to the old quiet feelings.
” “My dear Maurice--it is worthy of you!
It is the way.
We will announce it to-day.
And see now....
For those three days we will change the principals; lest those who have taken the parts so long have lost the pious awe which should be upon them.
We will put new people in their places.
I will announce it at vespers presently.
I have in my mind who should play the Christ, and St. John, and St. Peter--the men are not hard to find; but for Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene--” The eyes of the two men suddenly met, a look of understanding passed between them.
