Right of Way — 06 - Chapters 15, 16, 17 & 18

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 glass in his eye.

Here was sensation indeed, for though old M. Rossignol, the Seigneur, had an eye-glass, 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 glass 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 associated his eye-glass 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.

“That will do, thank you,” he said.

“Give me the whole packet.

” She wrapped it up for him without a word, and he laid down a two-dollar note, the last he had in the world.

“How much of this paper have you?

” he asked.

The girl looked under the counter.

“Six packets,” she said.

“Six, and a few sheets over.

” “I will take it all.

But keep it for me, for a week, or perhaps a fortnight, will you?

” He did not need all this paper to write letters upon, yet he meant to buy all the paper of this sort that the shop contained.

But he must get money from Louis Trudel--he would speak about it to-morrow.

“Monsieur does not want me to sell even the loose sheets?

” “No. I like the paper, and I will take it all.

” “Very good, Monsieur.

” Her heart was beating hard.

All this man did had peculiar significance to her.

His look seemed to say: “Do not fear.

I will tell you things.

” She gave him the parcel and the change, and he turned to go.

“You read much?

” he asked, almost casually, yet deeply interested in the charm and intelligence of her face.

“Why, yes, Monsieur,” she answered quickly.

“I am always reading.

” He did not speak at once.

He was wondering whether, in this primitive place, such a mind and nature would be the wiser for reading; whether it were not better to be without a mental aspiration, which might set up false standards.

“What are you reading now?

” he asked, with his hand on the door.

“Antony and Cleopatra, also Enoch Arden,” she answered, in good English, and without accent.

His head turned quickly towards her, but he did not speak.

“Enoch Arden is terrible,” she added eagerly.

“Don’t you think so, Monsieur?

” “It is very painful,” he answered.

“Good-night.

” He opened the door and went out.

She ran to the door and watched him go down the street.

For a little she stood thinking, then, turning to the counter, and snatching up a sheet of the paper he had bought, held it up to the light.

She gave a cry of amazement.

“Kathleen!

” she exclaimed.

She thought of the start he gave when he looked at the water-mark; she thought of the look on his face when he said he would buy all this paper she had.

“Who was Kathleen?

” she whispered, as though she was afraid some one would hear.

“Who was Kathleen!

” she said again resentfully.

CHAPTER XVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION

One day Charley began to know the gossip of the village about him from a source less friendly than Jo Portugais.

The Notary’s wife, bringing her boy to be measured for a suit of broadcloth, asked Charley if the things Jo had told about him were true, and if it was also true that he was a Protestant, and perhaps an Englishman.

As yet, Charley had been asked no direct questions, for the people of Chaudiere had the consideration of their temperament; but the Notary’s wife was half English, and being a figure in the place, she took to herself more privileges than did old Madame Dugal, the Cure’s sister.

To her ill-disguised impertinence in English, as bad as her French and as fluent, Charley listened with quiet interest.

When she had finished her voluble statement she said, with a simper and a sneer-for, after all, a Notary’s wife must keep her position--“And now, what is the truth about it?

And are you a Protestant?

” There was a sinister look in old Trudel’s eyes as, cross-legged on his table, he listened to Madame Dauphin.

He remembered the time, twenty-five years ago, when he had proposed to this babbling woman, and had been rejected with scorn--to his subsequent satisfaction; for there was no visible reason why any one should envy the Notary, in his house or out of it.

Already Trudel had a respect for the tongue of M’sieu’.

He had not talked much the few days he had been in the shop, but, as the old man had said to Filion Lacasse the saddler, his brain was like a pair of shears--it went clip, clip, clip right through everything.

He now hoped that his new apprentice, with the hand of a master-workman, would go clip, clip through madame’s inquisitiveness.

He was not disappointed, for he heard Charley say: “One person in the witness-box at a time, Madame.

Till Jo Portugais is cross-examined and steps down, I don’t see what I can do!

” “But you are a Protestant!

” said the woman snappishly.

This man was only a tailor, dressed in fulled cloth, and no doubt his past life would not bear inspection; and she was the Notary’s wife, and had said to people in the village that she would find out the man’s history from himself.

“That is one good reason why I should not go to confession,” he replied casually, and turned to a table where he had been cutting a waistcoat--for the first time in his life.

“Do you think I’m going to stand your impertinence?

Do you know who I am?

” Charley calmly put up his monocle.

He looked at the foolish little woman with so cruel a flash of the eye that she shrank back.

“I should know you anywhere,” he said.

“Come, Stephan,” she said nervously to her boy, and pulled him towards the door.

On the instant Charley’s feeling changed.

Was he then going to carry the old life into the new, and rebuke a silly garish woman whose faults were generic more than personal?

He hurried forward to the door and courteously opened it for her.

“Permit me, Madame,” he said.

She saw that there was nothing ironical in this politeness.

She had a sudden apprehension of an unusual quality called “the genteel,” for no storekeeper in Chaudiere ever opened or shut a shop-door for anybody.

She smiled a vacuous smile; she played “the lady” terribly, as, with a curious conception of dignity, she held her body stiff as a ramrod, and with a prim merci sailed into the street.

This gorgeous exit changed her opinion of the man she had been unable to catechise.

Undoubtedly he had snubbed her--that was the word she used in her mind--but his last act had enabled her, in the sight of several habitants and even of Madame Dugal, “to put on airs,” as the charming Madame Dugal said afterwards.

Thinking it better to give the impression that she had had a successful interview, she shook her head mysteriously when asked about M’sieu’, and murmured, “He is quite the gentleman!

” which she thought a socially distinguished remark.

When she had gone, Charley turned to old Louis.

“I don’t want to turn your customers away,” he said quietly, “but there it is!

I don’t need to answer questions as a part of the business, do I?

” There was a sour grin on the face of old Trudel.

He grunted some inaudible answer, then, after a pause, added: “I’d have been hung for murder, if she’d answered the question I asked her once as I wanted her to.

” He opened and shut his shears with a sardonic gesture.

Charley smiled, and went to the window.

For a minute he stood watching Madame Dauphin and Rosalie at the post-office door.

The memory of his talk with Rosalie was vivid to him at the moment.

He was thinking also that he had not a penny in the world to pay for the rest of the paper he had bought.

He turned round and put on his coat slowly.

“What are you doing that for?

” asked the old man, with a kind of snarl, yet with trepidation.

“I don’t think I’ll work any more to-day.

” “Not work!

Smoke of the devil, isn’t Sunday enough to play in?

You’re not put out by that fool wife of Dauphin’s?

” “Oh no--not that!

I want an understanding about wages.

” To Louis the dread crisis had come.

He turned a little green, for he was very miserly-for the love of God.

He had scarcely realised what was happening when Charley first sat down on the bench beside him.

He had been taken by surprise.

Apart from the excitement of the new experience, he had profited by the curiosity of the public, for he had orders enough to keep him busy until summer, and he had had to give out work to two extra women in the parish, though he had never before had more than one working for him.

But his ruling passion was strong in him.

He always remembered with satisfaction that once when the Cure was absent and he was supposed to be dying, a priest from another parish came, and, the ministrations over, he had made an offering of a gold piece.

When the young priest hesitated, his fingers had crept back to the gold piece, closed on it, and drawn it back beneath the coverlet again.

He had then peacefully fallen asleep.

It was a gracious memory.

“I don’t need much, I don’t want a great deal,” continued Charley when the tailor did not answer, “but I have to pay for my bed and board, and I can’t do it on nothing.

” “How have you done it so far?

” peevishly replied the tailor.

“By working after hours at carpentering up there”--he made a gesture towards Vadrome Mountain.

“But I can’t go on doing that all the time, or I’ll be like you too soon.

” “Be like me!

” The voice of the tailor rose shrilly.

“Be like me!

What’s the matter with me?

” “Only that you’re in a bad way before your time, and that you mayn’t get out of this hole without stepping into another.

You work too hard, Monsieur Trudel.

” “What do you want--wages?

” Charley inclined his head.

“If you think I’m worth them.

” The tailor viciously snipped a piece of cloth.

“How can I pay you wages, if you stand there doing nothing?

” “This is my day for doing nothing,” Charley answered pleasantly, for the tailor-man amused him, and the whimsical mental attitude of his past life was being brought to the surface by this odd figure, with big spectacles pushed up on a yellow forehead, and shrunken hands viciously clutching the shears.

“You don’t mean to say you’re not going to work to-day, and this suit of clothes promised for to-morrow night--for the Manor House too!

” With a piece of chalk Charley idly made heads on brown paper.

“After all, why should clothes be the first thing in one’s mind--when they are some one else’s!

It’s a beautiful day outside.

I’ve never felt the sun so warm and the air so crisp and sweet--never in all my life.

” “Then where have you lived?

” snapped out the tailor with a sneer.

“You must be a Yankee--they have only what we leave over down there!

”--he jerked his head southward.

“We don’t stop to look at weather here.

I

suppose you did where you come from?

” Charley smiled in a distant sort of way.

“Where I came from, when we weren’t paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health--and the weather.

I don’t want a great deal.

I put it to you honestly.

Do you want me?

If you do, will you give me enough to live on--enough to buy a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room?

If I work for you for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself as you’re doing.

” There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: “I came to you because I saw you wanted help badly.

I saw that you were hard-pushed and sick--” “I wasn’t sick,” interrupted the tailor with a snarl.

“Well, overworked, which is the same thing in the end.

I did the best I could: I gave you my hands--awkward enough they were at first, I know, but--” “It’s a lie.

They weren’t awkward,” churlishly cut in the tailor.

“Well, perhaps they weren’t so awkward, but they didn’t know quite what to do--” “You knew as well as if you’d been taught,” came back in a growl.

“Well, then, I wasn’t awkward, and I had a knack for the work.

What was more, I wanted work.

I wanted to work at the first thing that appealed to me.

I had no particular fancy for tailoring--you get bowlegged in time!

”--the old spirit was fighting with the new--“but here you were at work, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn’t responsible for me--a stranger-worked for me and cared for me.

Wasn’t it natural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I should step in and give you a hand?

You’ve been better since--isn’t that so?

” The tailor did not answer.

“But I can’t go on as we are, though I want only enough to keep me going,” Charley continued.

“And if I don’t give you what you want, you’ll leave?

” “No. I’m never going to leave you.

I’m going to stay here, for you’ll never get another man so cheap; and it suits me to stay--you need some one to look after you.

” A curious soft look suddenly flashed into the tailor’s eyes.

“Will you take on the business after I’m gone?

” he asked at last.

“It’s along time to look ahead, I know,” he added quickly, for not in words would he acknowledge the possibility of the end.

“I should think so,” Charley answered, his eyes on the bright sun and the soft snow on the trees beyond the window.

The tailor snatched up a pattern and figured on it for a moment.

Then he handed it to Charley.

“Will that do?

” he asked with anxious, acquisitive look, his yellow eyes blinking hard.

Charley looked at it musingly, then said “Yes, if you give me a room here.

” “I meant board and lodging too,” said Louis Trudel with an outburst of eager generosity, for, as it was, he had offered about one-half of what Charley was worth to him.

Charley nodded.

“Very well, that will do,” he said, and took off his coat and went to work.

For a long time they worked silently.

The tailor was in great good-humour; for the terrible trial was over, and he now had an assistant who would be a better tailor than himself.

There would be more profit, more silver nails for the church door, and more masses for his soul.

“The Cure says you are all right....

When will you come here?

” he said at last.

“To-morrow night I shall sleep here,” answered Charley.

So it was arranged that Charley should come to live in the tailor’s house, to sleep in the room which the tailor had provided for a wife twenty-five years before--even for her that was now known as Madame Dauphin.

All morning the tailor chuckled to himself.

When they sat down at noon to a piece of venison which Charley had prepared himself--taking the frying-pan out of the hands of Margot Patry, the old servant, and cooking it to a turn--Louis Trudel saw his years lengthen to an indefinite period.

He even allowed himself to nervously stand up, bow, shake Charley’s hand jerkingly, and say: “M’sieu’, I care not what you are or where you come from, or even if you’re a Protestant, perhaps an Englishman.

You’re a gentleman and a tailor, and old Louis Trudel will not forget you.

It shall be as you said this morning--it is no day for work.

We will play, and the clothes for the Manor can go to the devil.

Smoke of hell-fire, I will go and have a pipe with that, poor wretch the Notary!

” So, a wonderful thing happened.

Louis Trudel, on a week-day and a market-day, went to smoke a pipe with Narcisse Dauphin, and to tell him that M. Mallard was going to stay with him for ever, at fine wages.

He also announced that he had paid this whole week’s wages in advance; but he did not tell what he did not know--that half the money had already been given to old Margot, whose son lay ill at home with a broken leg, and whose children were living on bread and water.

Charley had slowly drawn from the woman the story of her life as he sat by the kitchen fire and talked to her, while her master was talking to the Notary.

CHAPTER XVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY

Since the day Charley had brought home the paper bought at the post-office, and water-marked Kathleen, he had, at odd times, written down his thoughts, and promptly torn the paper up again or put it in the fire.

In the repression of the new life, in which he must live wholly alone, so far as all past habits of mind were concerned, it was a relief to record his passing reflections, as he had been wont to do when the necessity for it was less.

Writing them here was like the bursting of an imprisoned stream; it was relaxing the ceaseless eye of vigilance;

freeing an imprisoned personality.

This personality was not yet merged into that which must take its place, must express itself in the involuntary acts which tell of a habit of mind and body--no longer the imitative and the histrionic, but the inherent and the real.

On the afternoon of the day that old Louis agreed to give him wages, and went to smoke a pipe with the Notary, Charley scribbled down his thoughts on this matter of personality and habit.

“Who knows,” he wrote, “which is the real self?

A child comes into the world gin-begotten, with the instinct for liquor in his brain, like the scent of the fox in the nostrils of the hound.

And that seems the real.

But the same child caught up on the hands of chance is carried into another atmosphere, is cared for by ginhating minds and hearts: habit fastens on him--fair, decent, and temperate habit--and he grows up like the Cure yonder, a brother of Aaron.

Which is the real?

Is the instinct for the gin killed, or covered?

Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or is it the real life?

“Who knows!

Here am I, born with a question in my mouth, with the ever-present ‘non possumus’ in me.

Here am I, to whom life was one poor futility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally developed; to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only reality; to whom nothing from beyond ever sent a flash of conviction, an intimation, into my soul--not one.

To me God always seemed a being of dreams, the creation of a personal need and helplessness, the despairing cry of the victims of futility--And here am I flung like a stone from a sling into this field where men believe in God as a present and tangible being; who reply to all life’s agonies and joys and exultations with the words ‘C’est le bon Dieu.

’ And what shall I become?

Will habit do its work, and shall I cease to be me?

Shall I, in the permanency of habit, become like unto this tailor here, whose life narrows into one sole cause; whose only wish is to have the Church draw the coverlet of forgiveness and safety over him; who has solved all questions in a blind belief or an inherited predisposition--which?

This stingy, hard, unhappy man--how should he know what I am denied!

Or does he know?

Is it all illusion?

If there is a God who receives such devotion, to the exclusion of natural demand and spiritual anxieties, why does not this tailor ‘let his light so shine before men that they may see his good works, and glorify his Father which is in heaven?

’ That is it.

Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man?

Therefore, wherefore, God?

Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!

” Seated on his bench in the shop, with his eyes ever and anon raised towards the little post-office opposite, he wrote these words.

Afterwards he sat and thought till the shadows deepened, and the tailor came in to supper.

Then he took up the pieces of paper, and, going to the fire, which was still lighted of an evening, thrust them inside.

Louis Trudel saw the paper burning, and, glancing down, he noticed that one piece--the last--had slipped to the floor and was lying under the table.

He saw the pencil still in Charley’s hand.

Forthwith his natural suspicion leaped up, and the cunning of the monomaniac was upon him.

With all his belief in le bon Dieu and the Church, Louis Trudel trusted no one.

One eye was ever open to distrust man, while the other was ever closed with blind belief in Heaven.

As Charley stooped to put wood in the fire, the tailor thrust a foot forward and pushed the piece of paper further under the table.

That night the tailor crept down into the shop, felt for the paper in the dark, found it, and carried it away to his room.

All kinds of thoughts had raged through his diseased mind.

It was a letter, perhaps, and if a letter, then he would gain some facts about the man’s life.

But if it was a letter, why did he burn it?

It was said that he never received a letter and never sent one, therefore it was little likely to be a letter if not a letter, then what could it be?

Perhaps the man was English and a spy of the English government, for was there not disaffection in some of the parishes?

Perhaps it was a plan of robbery.

To such a state of hallucination did his weakened mind come, that he forgot the kindly feeling he had had for this stranger who had worked for him without pay.

Suspicion, the bane of sick old age, was hot on him.

He remembered that M’sieu’ had put an arm through his when they went upstairs, and that now increased suspicion.

Why should the man have been so friendly?

To lull him into confidence, perhaps, and then to rob and murder him in his sleep.

Thank God, his ready money was well hid, and the rest was safe in the bank far away!

He crept back to his room with the paper in his hand.

It was the last sheet of what Charley had written, and had been accidentally brushed off on the floor.

It was in French, and, holding the candle close, he slowly deciphered the crabbed, characteristic handwriting.

His eyes dilated, his yellow cheeks took on spots of unhealthy red, his hand trembled.

Anger seized him, and he mumbled the words over and over again to himself.

Twice or thrice, as the paper lay in one hand, he struck it with the clinched fist of the other, muttering and distraught.

“This tailor here....

This stingy, hard, unhappy man....

If there is a God!...