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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Right of Way, Volume 6, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Right of Way, Volume 6 (of 6)
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6248]
+Last Updated: November 1, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT OF WAY, VOL 6 (of 6) ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY, Volume 6 (of 6)
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+  L.        THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE
+  LI.       FACE TO FACE
+  LII.      THE COMING OF BILLY
+  LIII.     THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION
+  LIV.      M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH
+  LV.       ROSALIE PLAYS A PART
+  LVI.      MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS
+  LVII.     A BURNING FIERY FURNACE
+  LVIII.    WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
+  LIX.      IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER
+  LX.       THE HAND AT THE DOOR
+  LXI.      THE CURE SPEAKS
+
+  EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L. THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE
+
+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.
+
+"Will she do it?" said the Seigneur.
+
+The Cure nodded. "Paulette Dubois has heard the word, 'Go and sin no
+more'; she will obey."
+
+Walking through the village as they talked, the Cure shrank back
+painfully several times, for voices of strangers, singing festive songs,
+rolled out upon the road. "Who can they be?" he said distressfully.
+
+Without a word the Seigneur went to the door of the inn whence the
+sounds proceeded, and, without knocking, entered. A moment afterwards
+the voices stopped, but broke out again, quieted, then once more broke
+out, and presently the Seigneur issued from the door, white with anger,
+three strangers behind him. All were intoxicated.
+
+One was violent. It was Billy Wantage, whom the years had not improved.
+He had arrived that day with two companions--an excursion of curiosity
+as an excuse for a "spree."
+
+"What's the matter with you, old stick-in-the-mud?" he shouted. "Mass is
+over, isn't it? Can't we have a little guzzle between prayers?"
+
+By this time a crowd had gathered, among them Filion Lacasse. At a
+motion from the Seigneur, and a whisper that went round quickly, a dozen
+habitants swiftly sprang on the three men, pinioned their arms, and
+carrying them bodily to the pump by the tavern, held them under it, one
+by one, till each was soaked and sober. Then their horses and wagon were
+brought, and they were given five minutes to leave the village.
+
+With a devilish look in his eye, and drenched and furious, Billy
+was disposed to resist the command, but the faces around him were
+determined, and, muttering curses, the three drove away towards the next
+parish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII. THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION
+
+Presently the Seigneur and the Cure stood before the door of the
+tailor-shop. The Cure was about to knock, when the Seigneur laid a hand
+upon his arm.
+
+"There is no use; he has been gone several days," he said.
+
+"Gone--gone!" said the Cure.
+
+"I came to see him yesterday, and not finding him, I asked at the
+post-office." M. Rossignol's voice lowered. "He told Mrs. Flynn he was
+going into the hills, so Rosalie says."
+
+The Cure's face fell. "He went away also just before the play began. I
+almost fear that--that we get no nearer. His mind prompts him to do good
+and not evil, and yet--and yet.... I have dreamed a good dream, Maurice,
+but I sometimes fear I have dreamed in vain."
+
+"Wait-wait!"
+
+M. Loisel looked towards the post-office musingly. "I have thought
+sometimes that what man's prayers may not accomplish a woman's love
+might do. If--but, alas, what do we know of his past! Nothing. What
+do we know of his future? Nothing. What do we know of the human heart?
+Nothing--nothing!"
+
+The Seigneur was astounded. The Cure's meaning was plain. "What do you
+mean?" he asked, almost gruffly.
+
+"She--Rosalie--has changed--changed." In his heart he dwelt sorrowfully
+upon the fact that she had not been to confession to him for many, many
+months.
+
+"Since her father's death--since her illness?"
+
+"Since she went to Montreal seven months ago. Even while she was so ill
+these past weeks, she never asked for me; and when I came... Ah, if it
+is that her heart has gone out to the man, and his does not respond!"
+
+"A good thing, too!" said the other gloomily. "We don't know where he
+came from, and we do know that he is a pagan."
+
+"Yet there she sits now, hour after hour, day after day--so changed."
+
+"She has lost her father," urged M. Rossignol anxiously.
+
+"I know the grief of children--this is not such a grief. There is
+something more. But I cannot ask. If she were a sinner--but she is
+without fault. Have we not watched her grow up here, mirthful, brave,
+pure-souled--"
+
+"Fitted for any station," interposed the Seigneur huskily. Presently
+he laid a hand upon the Cure's arm. "Shall I ask her again?" he said,
+breathing hard. "Do you think she has found out her mistake?"
+
+The Cure was so taken aback that at first he could not speak. When
+he realised, however, he could scarce suppress a smile at the other's
+simple vanity. But he mastered himself, and said: "It is not that,
+Maurice. It is not you."
+
+"How did you know I had asked her?" asked his friend querulously.
+
+"You have just told me."
+
+M. Rossignol felt a kind of reproval in the Cure's tone. It made him
+a little nervous. "I'm an old fool, but she needed some one," he
+protested. "At least I am a gentleman, and she would not be thrown
+away."
+
+"Dear Maurice!" said the Cure, and linked his arm in the other's. "In
+all respects save one, it would have been to her advantage. But youth is
+the only comrade for youth. All else is evasion of life's laws."
+
+The Seigneur pressed his arm. "I thought you less worldly-wise than
+myself; I find you more," he said.
+
+"Not worldly-wise. Life is deeper than the world or worldly wisdom.
+Come, we will both go and see Rosalie."
+
+M. Rossignol suddenly stopped at the post-office door, and half turned
+towards the tailor-shop. "He is young. Suppose that he drew her love his
+way, but gave her nothing in return, and--"
+
+"If it were so"--the Cure paused, and his face darkened--"if it were so,
+he should leave her forever; and so my dream would end."
+
+"And Rosalie?"
+
+"Rosalie would forget. To remember, youth must see and touch and be
+near, else it wears itself out in excess of feeling. Youth feels more
+deeply than age, but it must bear daily witness."
+
+"Upon my honour, Cure, you shall write your little philosophies for the
+world," said M. Rossignol, and then knocked at the door.
+
+"I will go in alone, Maurice," the Cure urged. "Good-you are right,"
+answered the other. "I will go write the proclamation denying strangers
+the valley after Wednesday. I will enforce it, too," he added, with
+vigour, and, turning, walked up the street, as Mrs. Flynn admitted the
+Cure to the post-office.
+
+A half-hour later M. Loisel again appeared at the post-office door, a
+pale, beautiful face at his shoulder.
+
+He had not been brave enough to say what was on his mind. But as he bade
+her good-bye, he plucked up needful courage.
+
+"Forgive me, Rosalie," he said, "but I have sometimes thought that you
+have more griefs than one. I have thought"--he paused, then went on
+bravely--"that there might be--there might be unwelcomed love, or love
+deceived."
+
+A mist came before her eyes, but she quietly and firmly answered: "I
+have never been deceived in love, Monsieur Loisel."
+
+"There, there!" he hurriedly and gently rejoined. "Do not be hurt, my
+child. I only want to help you." A moment afterwards he was gone.
+
+As the door closed behind him, she drew herself proudly up.
+
+"I have never been deceived," she said aloud. "I love him--love
+him--love him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV. M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH
+
+It was the last day of the Passion Play, and the great dramatic mission
+was drawing to a close. The confidence of the Cure and the Seigneur was
+restored. The prohibition against strangers had had its effect, and for
+three whole days the valley had been at rest again. Apparently there was
+not a stranger within its borders, save the Seigneur's brother, the Abbe
+Rossignol, who had come to see the moving spectacle.
+
+The Abbe, on his arrival, had made inquiries concerning the tailor of
+Chaudiere and Jo Portugais, as persistently about the one as the other.
+Their secrets had been kept inviolate by him.
+
+It was disconcerting to hear the tales people told of the tailor's
+charity and wisdom. It was all dangerous, for what was, accidentally,
+no evil in this particular instance, might be the greatest disaster
+in another case. Principle was at stake. He heard in stern silence the
+Cure's happy statement that Jo Portugais had returned to the bosom of
+the Church, and attended Mass regularly.
+
+"So it may be, my dear Abbe," said M. Loisel, "that the friendship
+between him and our 'infidel' has been the means of helping Portugais. I
+hope their friendship will go on unbroken for years and years."
+
+"I have no idea that it will," said the Abbe grimly. "That rope of
+friendship may snap untimely."
+
+"Upon my soul, you croak like a raven!" testily broke in M. Rossignol,
+who was present. "I didn't know there was so much in common between you
+and my surly-jowled groom. He gets his pleasure out of croaking. 'Wait,
+wait, you'll see--you'll see! Death, death, death--every man must die!
+The devil has you by the hair--death--death--death!' Bah! I'm heartily
+sick of croakers. I suppose, like my grunting groom, you'll say about
+the Passion Play, 'No good will come of it--wait--wait--wait!' Bah!"
+
+"It may not be an unmixed good," answered the ascetic.
+
+"Well, and is there any such thing on earth as an unmixed good? The
+play yesterday was worth a thousand sermons. It was meant to serve Holy
+Church, and it will serve it. Was there ever anything more real--and
+touching--than Paulette Dubois as Mary Magdalene yesterday?"
+
+"I do not approve of such reality. For that woman to play the part is to
+destroy the impersonality of the scene."
+
+"You would demand that the Christus should be a good man, and the St.
+John blameless--why shouldn't the Magdalene be a repentant woman?"
+
+"It might impress the people more, if the best woman in your parish were
+to play the part. The fall of virtue, the ruin of innocence, would be
+vividly brought home. It does good to make the innocent feel the
+terror and shame of sin. That is the price the good pay for the fall of
+man--sorrow and shame for those who sin." The Seigneur, rising quickly
+from the table, and kicking his chair back, said angrily: "Damn
+your theories!" Then, seeing the frozen look on his brother's face,
+continued, more excitedly: "Yes, damn, damn, damn your theories! You
+always took the crass view. I beg your pardon, Cure--I beg your pardon."
+
+He then went to the window, threw it open, and called to his groom.
+
+"Hi, there, coffin-face," he said, "bring round the horses--the quietest
+one in the stable for my brother--you hear? He can't ride," he added
+maliciously.
+
+This was his fiercest stroke, for the Abbe's secret vanity was the
+belief that he looked well on a horse, and rode handsomely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV. ROSALIE PLAYS A PART
+
+From a tree upon a little hill rang out a bell--a deep-toned bell,
+bought by the parish years before for the missions held at this very
+spot. Every day it rang for an instant at the beginning of each of the
+five acts. It also tolled slowly when the curtain rose upon the scene of
+the Crucifixion. In this act no one spoke save the abased Magdalene, who
+knelt at the foot of the cross, and on whose hair red drops fell when
+the Roman soldier pierced the side of the figure on the cross. This had
+been the Cure's idea. The Magdalene should speak for mankind, for the
+continuing world. She should speak for the broken and contrite heart in
+all ages, should be the first-fruits of the sacrifice, a flower of the
+desert earth, bedewed by the blood of the Prince of Peace.
+
+So, in the long nights of the late winter and early spring, the Cure had
+thought and thought upon what the woman should say from the foot of the
+cross. At last he put into her mouth that which told the whole story of
+redemption and deliverance, so far as his heart could conceive it--the
+prayer for all sorts and conditions of men and the general thanksgiving
+of humanity.
+
+During the last three days Paulette Dubois had taken the part of Mary
+Magdalene. As Jo Portugais had confessed to the Abbe that notable day in
+the woods at Vadrome Mountain, so she had confessed to the Cure after
+so many years of agony--and the one confession fitted into the other: Jo
+had once loved her, she had treated him vilely, then a man had wronged
+her, and Jo had avenged her--this was the tale in brief. She it was who
+laughed in the gallery of the court-room the day that Joseph Nadeau was
+acquitted.
+
+It had pained and shocked the Cure more than any he had ever heard, but
+he urged for her no penalty as Portugais had set for himself with the
+austere approval of the Abbe. Paulette's presence as the Magdalene had
+had a deep effect upon the people, so that she shared with Mary the
+Mother the painfully real interest of the vast audience.
+
+Five times had the bell rung out in the perfect spring air, upon which
+the balm of the forest and the refreshment of the ardent sun were
+poured. The quick anger of M. Rossignol had passed away long before the
+Cure, the Abbe, and himself had reached the lake and the great plateau.
+Between the acts the two brothers walked up and down together, at peace
+once more, and there was a suspicious moisture in the Seigneur's eyes.
+The demeanour of the people had been so humble and rapt that the place
+and the plateau and the valley seemed alone in creation with the lofty
+drama of the ages.
+
+The Cure's eyes shone when he saw on a little knoll in the trees, apart
+from the worshippers and spectators, Charley and Jo Portugais. His cup
+of content was now full. He had felt convinced that if the tailor had
+but been within these bounds during the past three days, a work were
+begun which should end only at the altar of their parish church. To-day
+the play became to him the engine of God for the saving of a man's soul.
+Not long before the last great tableau was to appear he went to his own
+little tent near the hut where the actors prepared to go upon the stage.
+As he entered, some one came quickly forward from the shadow of the
+trees and touched him on the arm.
+
+"Rosalie!" he cried in amazement, for she wore the costume of Mary
+Magdalene.
+
+"It is I, not Paulette, who will appear," she said, a deep light in her
+eyes.
+
+"You, Rosalie?" he asked dumfounded. "You are distrait. Trouble and
+sorrow have put this in your mind. You must not do it."
+
+"Yes, I am going there," she said, pointing towards the great stage.
+"Paulette has given me these to wear"--she touched the robe--"and I only
+ask your blessing now. Oh, believe, believe me, I can speak for those
+who are innocent and those who are guilty; for those who pray and those
+who cannot pray; for those who confess and those who dare not! I can
+speak the words out of my heart with gladness and agony, Monsieur," she
+urged, in a voice vibrating with feeling.
+
+A luminous look came into the Cure's face. A thought leapt up in his
+heart. Who could tell!--this pure girl, speaking for the whole sinful,
+unbelieving, and believing world, might be the one last conquering
+argument to the man.
+
+He could not read the agony of spirit which had driven Rosalie to
+this--to confess through the words of Mary Magdalene her own woe, to say
+it out to all the world, and to receive, as did Paulette Dubois, every
+day after the curtain came down, absolution and blessing. She longed for
+the old remembered peace.
+
+The Cure could not read the struggle between her love for a man and the
+ineradicable habit of her soul; but he raised his hand, made the sacred
+gesture over leer, and said: "Go, my child, and God be with you."
+
+He could not see her for tears as she hurried away to where Paulette
+Dubois awaited her--the two at peace now. At the hands of the lately
+despised and injurious woman Rosalie was made ready to play the part
+in the last act, none knowing save the few who appeared in the final
+tableau, and they at the last moment only.
+
+The bell began to toll.
+
+A thousand people fell upon their knees, and with fascinated yet abashed
+and awe-struck eyes saw the great tableau of Christendom: the three
+crosses against the evening sky, the Figure in the centre, the Roman
+populace, the trembling Jews, the pathetic groups of disciples. A cloud
+passed across the sky, the illusion grew, and hearts quivered in piteous
+sympathy. There was no music now--not a sound save the sob of some
+overwrought woman. The woe of an oppressed world absorbed them. Even the
+stolid Indians, as Roman soldiers, shrank awe-stricken from the sacred
+tragedy. Now the eyes of all were upon the central Figure, then they
+shifted for a moment to John the Beloved, standing with the Mother.
+
+"Pauvre Mere! Pauvre Christ!" said a weeping woman aloud.
+
+A Roman soldier raised a spear and pierced the side of the Hero of the
+World. Blood flowed, and hundreds gasped. Then there was silence--a
+strange hush as of a prelude to some great event.
+
+"It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," said the
+Figure.
+
+The hush was broken by such a sound as one hears in a forest when a
+wind quivers over the earth, flutters the leaves, and then sinks
+away--neither having come nor gone, but only lived and died.
+
+Again there was silence, and then all eyes were fixed upon the figure at
+the foot of the cross-Mary the Magdalene.
+
+Day after day they had seen this figure rise, come forward a step, and
+speak the epilogue to this moving miracle-drama. For the last three days
+Paulette Dubois had turned a sorrowful face upon them, and with one
+hand upraised had spoken the prayer, the prophecy, the thanksgiving, the
+appeal of humanity and the ages. They looked to see the same figure now,
+and waited. But as the Magdalene turned, there was a great stir in the
+multitude, for the face bent upon them was that of Rosalie Evanturel.
+Awe and wonder moved the people.
+
+Apart from the crowd, under a clump of trees, knelt a woodsman from
+Vadrome Mountain, and the tailor of Chaudiere stood beside him.
+
+When Charley, touched by the heavy scene, saw the figure of the
+Magdalene rise, he felt a curious thrill of fascination. When she
+turned, and he saw the face of Rosalie, the blood rushed to his face;
+then his heart seemed to stand still. Pain and shame travelled to the
+farthest recesses of his nature. Jo Portugais rose to his feet with a
+startled exclamation.
+
+Rosalie began to speak. "This is the day of which the hours shall never
+cease--in it there shall be no night. He whom ye have crucified hath
+saved you from the wrath to come. He hath saved others, Himself He
+would not save. Even for such as I, who have secretly opened, who have
+secretly entered, the doors of sin--"
+
+With a gasp of horror and a mad desire to take her away from the sight
+of this gaping, fascinated crowd, Charley made to rush forward, but Jo
+Portugais held him back.
+
+"Be still. You will ruin her, M'sieu'!" said Jo.
+
+"--even for such as I am," the beautiful voice went on, "hath He died.
+And in the ages to come, women such as I, and all women who sorrow, and
+all men who err and are deceived, and all the helpless world, will
+know that this was the Friend of the human soul." Not a gesture, not a
+movement, only that slight, pathetic figure, with pale, agonised face,
+and eyes that looked--looked--looked beyond them, over their heads to
+the darkening east, the clouded light of evening behind her. Her voice
+rang out now valiant and clear, now searching and piteous, yet reaching
+to where the farthermost person knelt, and was lost upon the lake and in
+the spreading trees.
+
+"What ye have done may never be undone; what He hath said shall never
+be unsaid. His is the Word which shall unite all languages, when ye that
+are Romans shall be no more Romans, and ye that are Jews shall still be
+Jews, reproached and alone. No longer shall men faint in the glare--the
+shadow of the Cross shall screen them. No more shall woman bear her
+black sorrows, alone; the Light of the World shall cheer her."
+
+As she spoke, the cloud drew back from the sunset, and the saffron glow
+behind lighted the cross, and shone upon her hair, casting her face in
+a gracious shadow. Her voice rose higher. "I, the Magdalene, am the
+first-fruits of this sacrifice: from the foot of the cross I come. I
+have sinned more than all. I have shamed all women. But I have confessed
+my sin, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
+cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
+
+Her voice now became lower, but clear and even, pathetically exulting:
+
+"O world, forgive, as He hath forgiven you! Fall, dark curtain, and hide
+this pain, and rise again upon forgiven sin and a redeemed people!"
+
+She stood still, with her eyes upraised, and the curtain came slowly
+down.
+
+For a long time no one in all the gathered multitude stirred. Far over
+under the trees a man sat upon the ground, his head upon his arms, and
+his arms upon his knees, in a misery unmeasurable. Beside him stood a
+woodsman, who knew of no word to say that might comfort him.
+
+A girl, in the garb of the Magdalene, entered the tent of the Cure, and,
+speaking no word, knelt and received absolution of her sins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI. MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS
+
+CHARLEY left Jo Portugais behind, and went home alone. He watched at a
+window till he saw Rosalie return. As she passed quickly down the street
+with Mrs. Flynn to her own door, he observed that her face was happier
+than he had seen it for many a day. Her step was lighter, there was a
+freedom in her air, a sense of confidence in her carriage.
+
+She bore herself as one who had done a thing which relaxed a painful
+tension. There was a curious glow in her eyes and face, and this became
+deeper as, showing himself at the door, she saw him, smiled, and stood
+still. He came across the street and took her hand.
+
+"You have been away," she said softly. "For a few days," he answered.
+
+"Far?"
+
+"At Vadrome Mountain."
+
+"You have missed these last days of the Passion Play," she said, a
+shadow in her eyes.
+
+"I was present to-day," he answered.
+
+She turned away her head quickly, for the look in his eyes told her more
+than any words could have done, and Mrs. Flynn said:
+
+"'Tis a day for everlastin' mimory, sir. For the part she played this
+day, the darlin', only such as she could play! 'Tis the innocent takin'
+the shame o' the guilty, and the tears do be comin' to me eyes. 'Tis
+not ould Widdy Flynn's eyes alone that's wet this day, but hearts do be
+weepin' for the love o' God."
+
+Rosalie suddenly opened the door, and, without another look at Charley,
+entered the house.
+
+"'Tis one in a million!" said Mrs. Flynn, in a confidential tone, for
+she had a fixed idea that Rosalie loved Charley and that he loved her,
+and that the only thing that stood in the way of their marriage was
+religion. From the first Charley had conquered Mrs. Flynn. That he was a
+tailor was a pity and a shame, but love was love, and the man had a head
+on him and a heart in him; and love was love! So Mrs. Flynn said:
+
+"'Tis one that a man that's a man should do annything for, was it havin'
+the heart cut out uv him, or givin' the last drop uv his blood. Shure,
+for such as her, murder, or false witness, or givin' up the last wish or
+thought a man hugged to his boosom, would be as aisy as aisy."
+
+Charley laughed to himself, her purpose was so obvious, but his heart
+went out to her, for she was a friend, and, whatever came to him,
+Rosalie would not be alone.
+
+"I believe every word of yours," he said, shaking her hand, "and we'll
+see, you and I, that no man marries her who isn't ready to do what you
+say."
+
+"Would you do it yourself--if it was you?" she asked, flushing for her
+boldness.
+
+"I would," he answered.
+
+"Then do it," she said, and fled inside the house and shut the door.
+
+"Mrs. Flynn--good Mrs. Flynn!" he said, and went back sadly to his
+house, and shut himself up with his thoughts. When night drew on he went
+to bed, but he could not sleep. He got up after a time, and taking pen
+and paper, wrote for a long time. Having finished, he took what he had
+written, and placing it with the two packets-of money and pearls--which
+he had brought from his old home, he addressed it to the Cure, and going
+to the safe in the wall of the shop, placed them inside and locked the
+door.
+
+Then he went to bed, and slept soundly--the deep sleep of the just.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII. A BURNING FIERY FURNACE
+
+Every man within the limits of the parish was in his bed, save one. He
+was a stranger who, once before, had visited Chaudiere for one brief
+day, when he had been saved from death at the Red Ravine, and had fled
+the village that night because, as he thought, he had heard the voice of
+his old friend's ghost in the trees. Since that time he had travelled
+in many parishes, healing where he could, entertaining where he might,
+earning money as the charlatan. He was now on his way back through the
+parishes to Montreal, and his route lay through Chaudiere. He had
+hoped to reach Chaudiere before nightfall--he remembered with fear the
+incident from which he had fled many months before; but his horse had
+broken its leg on a corduroy bridge, a few miles out from the parish in
+the hills, and darkness came upon him before he could hide his wagon
+in the woods and proceed afoot to Chaudiere. He had shot his horse, and
+rolled it into the swift torrent beneath the bridge.
+
+Travelling the lonely road, he drank freely from the whiskey-horn he
+carried, to keep his spirits up, so that by the time he came to the
+outskirts of Chaudiere he was in a state of intoxication, and reeled
+impudently along with the "Dutch courage" the liquor had given
+him. Arrived at the first cluster of houses in the place, he paused
+uncertain. Should he knock here or go on to the tavern? He shivered at
+thought of the tavern, for it was near it he had heard Charley Steele's
+voice calling to him out of the trees. If he knocked here, would the
+people admit him in his present state?--he had sense enough to know that
+he was very drunk. As he shook his head in owlish gravity, he saw the
+church on the hill not far away. He chuckled to himself. The carpet in
+the chancel and the hassocks at the altar would make a good bed. No fear
+of Charley's ghost coming inside the church--it wouldn't be that kind of
+a ghost. As he travelled the intervening space, shrugging his shoulders,
+staggering serenely, he told himself in confidence that he would leave
+the church at dawn, go to the tavern, purchase a horse as soon as might
+be, and get back to his wagon.
+
+The church door was unlocked, and he entered and made his way to the
+chancel, found surplices in the vestry and put a hassock inside one for
+a pillow. Then he sat down and drew the loose rug of the chancel-floor
+over him, and took another drink from the whiskey horn. Lighting his
+pipe, he smoked for a while, but grew drowsy, and his pipe fell into his
+lap. With eyes nearly shut he struck another match, made to light his
+pipe again, but threw the match away, still burning. As he did so
+the pipe dropped again from his mouth, and he fell back on the
+hassock-pillow he had made.
+
+The lighted match fell on a surplice which had dropped from his arms
+as he came from the vestry, and set it afire. In five minutes the whole
+chancel was burning, and the sleeping man waked in the midst of smoke
+and flame. He staggered to his feet with a terror-stricken cry, stumbled
+down the aisle, through the front door, and out into the night. Reaching
+the road, he turned his face again to the hill where his wagon lay hid.
+If he could reach that, he would be safe; nobody would suspect him.
+He clutched the whiskey-horn tight and broke into a run. As he passed
+beyond the village his excited imagination heard Charley Steele's ghost
+calling after him. He ran harder. The voice kept calling from Chaudiere.
+
+Not Charley's voice, but the voices of many people in Chaudiere were
+calling. Some wakeful person had seen the glare in the church windows
+and had given the alarm, and now there rang through the streets the
+call-"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
+
+Charley and Jo were among the last to wake, for both had slept soundly,
+but Jo was roused by a handful of gravel thrown at his window and a
+warning cry, and a few moments later he and Charley were in the street
+with a hurrying crowd. Over all the village was a red glare, lighting up
+the sky, burnishing the trees. The church was a mass of flames.
+
+Charley was as pale as the rest of the crowd; for he thought of the
+Cure, he thought of this people to whom their church meant more than
+home and vastly more than friend and fortune. His heart was with them
+all: not because it was their church that was burning, but because it
+was something dear to them.
+
+Reaching the hill, he saw the Cure coming from the vestry of the burning
+church, bearing some vessels of the altar. Depositing them in the arms
+of his weeping sister, he turned again towards the door. People clung to
+him, and would not let him go.
+
+"See, it is all inflames," they cried. "Your cassock is singed. You
+shall not go."
+
+At that moment Charley and Portugais came up. A hurried question to the
+Cure from Charley, a key handed over, a nod from Jo, and before the Cure
+could prevent them the two men had rushed through the smoke and flame
+into the vestry, Portugais holding Charley's hand.
+
+The crowd outside waited in a terrible anxiety. The timbers of the
+chancel portion of the building seemed about to fall, and still the two
+men did not appear. The people called; the Cure clinched his hands at
+his side--he was too fearful even to pray.
+
+But now the two men appeared, loaded with the few treasures of the
+church. They were scorched and singed, and the beards of both were
+burned, but, stumbling and exhausted, they brought their loads to the
+eager arms of the waiting habitants.
+
+Then from the other end of the church came a cry: "The little cross--the
+little iron cross!" Then another cry: "Rosalie Evanturel! Rosalie
+Evanturel!" Some one came running to the Cure.
+
+"Rosalie Evanturel has gone inside for the little cross on the pillar.
+She is in the flames; the door has fallen in. She can't get out again."
+
+With a hoarse cry, Charley darted back inside the vestry door. A cry of
+horror went up.
+
+It was only a minute and a half, but it seemed like years, and then a
+man in flames appeared in the fiery porch--and not alone. He carried
+a girl in his arms. He wavered even at the threshold with the timbers
+swaying overhead, but, with a last effort, he plunged forward through
+the furnace, and was caught by eager hands on the margin of endurable
+heat. The two were smothered in quilts brought from the Cure's house,
+and carried swiftly to the cool safety of the grass and trees beyond.
+The woman had fainted in the flame of the church; the man dropped
+insensible as they caught her from his arms.
+
+As they tore away Charley's coat muffling his face, and opened his
+shirt, they stared in awe. The cross which Rosalie had torn from the
+pillar, Charley had thrust into his bosom, and there it now lay on the
+red scar made by itself in the hands of Louis Trudel.
+
+M. Loisel waved the people back. He raised Charley's head. The Abbe
+Rossignol, who had just arrived with the Seigneur, lifted the cross from
+the insensible man's breast.
+
+He started when he saw the scar. Then he remembered the tale he had
+heard. He turned away gravely to his brother. "Was it the cross or the
+woman he went for?" he asked.
+
+"Great God--do you ask!" the Seigneur said indignantly. "And he deserves
+her," he muttered under his breath.
+
+Charley opened his eyes. "Is she safe?" he asked, starting up.
+
+"Unscathed, my son," the Cure said.
+
+Was this tailor-man not his son? Had he not thirsted for his soul as a
+hart for the water-brooks?
+
+"I am very sorry for you, Monsieur," said Charley.
+
+"It is God's will," was the reply, in a choking voice. "It will be years
+before we have another church--many, many years."
+
+The roof gave way with a crash, and the spire shot down into the flaming
+debris.
+
+The people groaned.
+
+"It will cost sixty thousand dollars to build it up again," said Filion
+Lacasse.
+
+"We have three thousand dollars from the Passion Play," said the Notary.
+"That could go towards it."
+
+"We have another two thousand in the bank," said Maximilian Cour.
+
+"But it will take years," said the saddler disconsolately.
+
+Charley looked at the Cure, mournful and broken but calm. He saw the
+Seigneur, gloomy and silent, standing apart. He saw the people in
+scattered groups, looking more homeless than if they had no homes. Some
+groups were silent; others discussed angrily the question, who was the
+incendiary--that it had been set on fire seemed certain.
+
+"I said no good would come of the play-acting," said the Seigneur's
+groom, and was flung into the ditch by Filion Lacasse.
+
+Presently Charley staggered to his feet, purpose in his face. These
+people, from the Cure and Seigneur to the most ignorant habitant, were
+hopeless and inert. The pride of their lives was gone.
+
+"Gather the people together," he said to the Notary and Filion Lacasse.
+Then he turned to the Cure and the Seigneur.
+
+"With your permission, messieurs," he said, "I will do a harder thing
+than I have ever done. I will speak to them all."
+
+Wondering, M. Loisel added his voice to the Notary's, and the word went
+round. Slowly they all made their way to a spot the Cure indicated.
+
+Charley stood on the embankment above the road, the notables of the
+parish round him.
+
+Rosalie had been taken to the Cure's house. In that wild moment in the
+church when she had fallen insensible in Charley's arms, a new feeling
+had sprung up in her. She loved him in every fibre, but she had a
+strange instinct, a prescience, that she was lying on his breast for
+the last time. She had wound her arms round his neck, and, as his lips
+closed on hers, she had cried: "We shall die together--together."
+
+As she lay in the Cure's house, she thought only of that moment.
+
+"What are they cheering for?" she asked, as a great noise came to her
+through the window.
+
+"Run and see," said the Cure's sister to Mrs. Flynn, and the fat woman
+hurried away.
+
+Rosalie raised herself so that she could look out of the window. "I can
+see him," she cried.
+
+"See whom?" asked the Cure's sister.
+
+"Monsieur," she answered, with a changed voice. "He is speaking. They
+are cheering him."
+
+Ten minutes later, the Cure and the Notary entered the room. M. Loisel
+came forward to Rosalie, and took her hands in his.
+
+"You should not have done it," he said.
+
+"I wanted to do something," she replied. "To get the cross for you
+seemed the only payment I could make for all your goodness to me."
+
+"It nearly cost you your life--and the life of another," he said,
+shaking his head reproachfully.
+
+Cheering came again from the burning church. "Why do they cheer?" she
+asked.
+
+"Why do they cheer? Because the man we have feared, Monsieur Mallard--"
+
+"I never feared him," said Rosalie, scarcely above her breath.
+
+"Because he has taught them the way to a new church again--and at once,
+at once, my child."
+
+"A remarkable man!" said Narcisse Dauphin. "There never was such a
+speech. Never in any courtroom was there such an appeal."
+
+"What did he do?" asked Mademoiselle Loisel, her hand in Rosalie's.
+
+"Everything," answered the Cure. "There he stood in his tattered
+clothes, the beard burnt to his chin, his hands scorched, his eyes
+bloodshot, and he spoke--"
+
+"'With the tongues of men and of angels,'" said M. Dauphin
+enthusiastically.
+
+The Cure frowned and continued: "'You look on yonder burning walls,' he
+said, 'and wonder when they will rise again on this hill made sacred
+by the burial of your beloved, by the christening of your children, the
+marriages which have given you happy homes, and the sacraments which
+are to you the laws of your lives. You give one-twentieth of your income
+yearly towards your church--then give one-fortieth of all you possess
+today, and your church will be begun in a month. Before a year goes
+round you will come again to this venerable spot and enter another
+church here. Your vows, your memories, and your hopes will be purged
+by fire. All that you possess will be consecrated by your free-will
+offerings.'--Ah, if I could but remember what came afterwards! It was
+all eloquence, and generous and noble thought."
+
+"He spoke of you," said the Notary--"he spoke the truth; and the people
+cheered. He said that the man outside the walls could sometimes tell
+the besieged the way relief would come. Never again shall I hear such a
+speech."
+
+"What are they going to do?" asked Rosalie, and withdrew her trembling
+hand from that of Madame Dugal.
+
+"This very day, at my office, they will bring their offerings, and we
+will begin at once," answered M. Dauphin. "There is no man in Chaudiere
+but will take the stocking from the hole, the bag from the chest, the
+credit from the bank, the grain from the barn for the market, or make
+the note of hand to contribute one-fortieth of all he is worth for the
+rebuilding of the church."
+
+"Notes of hand are not money," said the Cure's sister, the practical
+sense ever uppermost.
+
+"They shall all be money--hard cash," said the Notary. "The Seigneur is
+going to open a sort of bank, and take up the notes of hand, and give
+bank-bills in return. To-day I go with his steward to Quebec to get the
+money."
+
+"What does the Abbe Rossignol say?" said the Cure's sister.
+
+"Our church and parish are our own," interposed the Cure proudly. "We do
+our duty and fear no abbe."
+
+"Voila!" said M. Dauphin, "he never can keep hands off. I saw him go to
+Jo Portugais a little while ago. 'Remember!' he said--I can't make out
+what he was after. We have enough to remember to-day, for sure."
+
+"Good may come of it, perhaps," said M. Loisel, looking sadly out upon
+the ruins of his church.
+
+"See, 'tis the sunrise!" said Mrs. Flynn's voice from the corner, her
+face towards the eastern window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII. WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL.
+
+In four days ten thousand dollars in notes and gold had been brought to
+the office of the Notary by the faithful people of Chaudiere. All day
+in turn M. Loisel and M. Rossignol sat in the office and received that
+which represented one-fortieth of the value of each man's goods, estate,
+and wealth--the fortieth value of a woodsawyer's cottage, or a widow's
+garden. They did it impartially for all, as the Cure and three of the
+best-to-do habitants had done for the Seigneur, whose four thousand
+dollars had been paid in first of all.
+
+Charley had been confined to his room for three days, because of his
+injuries and a feverish cold he had caught, and the habitants did not
+disturb his quiet. But Mrs. Flynn took him broth made by Rosalie's
+hands, and Rosalie fought with her desire to go to him and nurse him.
+She was not, however, the Rosalie of the old impulse and impetuous
+resolve--the arrow had gone too deep; she waited till she could see
+his face again and look into his eyes. Not apathy, but a sense of the
+inevitable was upon her, and pale and fragile, but with a calm spirit,
+she waited for she knew not what.
+
+She felt that the day of fate was closing down. She must hold herself
+ready for the hour when he would need her most. At first, when the
+conviction had come to her that the end of all was near, she had
+revolted. She had had impulse to go to him at all hazards, to say to
+him: "Come away--anywhere, anywhere!" But that had given place to the
+deeper thing in her, and something of Charley's spirit of stoic waiting
+had come upon her.
+
+She watched the people going to the Notary's office with their tributes
+and free-will offerings, and they seemed like people in a play--these
+days she lived no life which was theirs. It was a dream, unimportant and
+temporary. She was feeling what was behind all life, and permanent.
+It could not last, but there it was; and she could not return to the
+transitory till this cloud of fate was lifted. She was much too young to
+suffer so, but the young ever suffer most.
+
+On the fourth day she saw Charley. He came from his shop and went to the
+Notary's office. At first she was startled, for he was clean-shaven--the
+fire had burned his beard to the skin. She saw a different man, far
+removed from this life about them both--individual, singular. He was
+pale, and his eye-glass, with the cleanshaven face, gave an impression
+of refined separateness. She did not know that the same look was in both
+their faces. She watched him till he entered the Notary's shop, then she
+was called away to her duties.
+
+Charley had come to give his one-fortieth with the rest. When he entered
+the Notary's office, the Seigneur and M. Dauphin stood up to greet him.
+They congratulated him on his recovery, while feeling also that the
+change in his personal appearance somehow affected their relations.
+A crowd gathered round the door of the shop. When Charley made his
+offering, with a statement of his goods and income, the Seigneur and
+Notary did not know what to do. They were disposed to decline it, for
+since Monsieur was no Catholic, it was not his duty to help. At this
+moment of delicate anxiety M. Loisel entered. With a swift bright flush
+to his cheek he saw the difficulty, and at once accepted freely.
+
+"God bless you," he said, as he took the money, and Charley left. "It
+shall build the doorway of my church."
+
+Later in the day the Cure sent for Charley. There were grave matters
+to consider, and his counsel was greatly needed. They had all come to
+depend on the soundness of his judgment. It had never gone astray in
+Chaudiere, they said. They owed to him this extraordinary scheme, which
+would be an example to all modern Christianity. They told him so. He
+said nothing in reply.
+
+In an hour he had planned for them a scheme for the consideration of
+contractors; had drawn, with the help of M. Loisel, an architect's
+rough plan of the new church, and, his old professional instincts keenly
+alive, had lucidly suggested the terms and safeguards of the contracts.
+
+Then came the question of the money contributed. The day before, M.
+Dauphin and the Seigneur's steward had arrived in safety from Quebec
+with twenty thousand dollars in bank-bills. These M. Rossignol had
+exchanged for the notes of hand of such of the habitants as had not
+ready cash to give. All of this twenty thousand dollars had been paid
+over. They had now thirty thousand dollars in cash, besides three
+thousand which the Cure had at his house, the proceeds of the Passion
+Play. It was proposed to send this large sum to the bank in Quebec in
+another two days, when the whole contributions should be complete.
+
+As to the safety of the money, the timid M. Dauphin did not care to take
+responsibility. Strangers were still arriving, ignorant of the fact that
+the Passion Play had ceased, and some of them must be aware that this
+large sum of money was in the parish--no doubt also knew that it was in
+his house. It was therefore better, he urged, that M. Rossignol or the
+Cure should take charge of it. M. Loisel urged that secrecy as to the
+resting-place of the money was important. It was better that it should
+be deposited in the most unlikely place, and with some unofficial person
+who might not be supposed to have it in charge.
+
+"I have it!" said the Seigneur. "The money shall be placed in old Louis
+Trudel's safe in the wall of the tailor-shop."
+
+It was so arranged, after Charley's protests of unwillingness, and
+counter-appeals from the others. That evening at sundown thirty-three
+thousand dollars was deposited in the safe in the old stone wall of the
+tailorshop, and the lock was sealed with the parish seal.
+
+But the Notary's wife had wormed the secret from her husband, and she
+found it hard to keep. She told it to Maximilian Cour, and he kept it.
+She told it to her cousin, the wife of Filion Lacasse, and she did not
+keep it. Before twenty-four hours went round, a dozen people knew it.
+
+The evening of the second day, another two thousand dollars was added
+to the treasure, and the lock was again sealed--with the utmost secrecy.
+Charley and Jo Portugais, the infidel and the murderer, were thus
+the sentries to the peace of a parish, the bankers of its gifts, the
+security for the future of the church of Chaudiere. Their weapons of
+defence were two old pistols belonging to the Seigneur.
+
+"Money is the master of the unexpected," the Seigneur had said as he
+handed them over. He chuckled for hours afterwards as he thought of his
+epigram. That night, as he turned over in bed for the third time, as was
+his custom before going to sleep, another epigram came to him--"Money is
+the only fox hunted night and day." He kept repeating it over and over
+again with vain pride.
+
+The truth of M. Rossignol's aphorisms had been demonstrated several days
+before. On his return from Quebec with the twenty thousand dollars
+of the Seigneur's money, M. Dauphin had dwelt with great pride on
+the discretion and energy he and the steward had shown; had told
+dramatically of the skill which had enabled them to make a journey of
+such importance so secretly and safely; had covered himself with blushes
+for his own coolness and intrepidity. Fortune had, however, favoured his
+reputation and his intrepidity, for he had been pursued from the hour he
+and his companion left Quebec. A taste for the picturesque had impelled
+him to arrange for two relays of horses, and this fact saved him and the
+twenty thousand dollars he carried. Two hours after he had left Quebec,
+four determined men had got upon his trail, and had only been prevented
+from overtaking him by the freshness of the horses which his dramatic
+foresight had provided.
+
+The leader of these four pursuers was Billy Wantage, who had come to
+know of the curious action of the Seigneur of Chaudiere from an intimate
+friend, a clerk in the bank. Billy's fortunes were now in a bad way,
+and, in desperate straits for money, he had planned this bold attempt
+at the highwayman's art with two gamblers, to whom he owed money, and a
+certain notorious horse-trader of whom he had made a companion of late.
+Having escaped punishment for a crime once before, through Charley's
+supposed death, the immunity nerved him to this later and more dangerous
+enterprise. The four rode as hard as their horses would permit, but M.
+Dauphin and his companion kept always an hour or more ahead, and, from
+the high hills overlooking the village, Billy and his friends saw the
+two enter it safely in the light of evening.
+
+His three friends urged Billy to turn back, since they were out of
+provisions and had no shelter. It was unwise to go to a tavern or a
+farmer's house, where they must certainly be suspected. Billy, however,
+determined to make an effort to find the banking-place of the money, and
+refused to turn back without a trial. He therefore proposed that they
+should separate, going different directions, secure accommodation for
+the night, rest the following day, and meet the next night at a point
+indicated. This was agreed upon, and they separated.
+
+When the four met again, Billy had nothing to communicate, as he had
+been taken ill during the night before, and had been unable to go
+secretly into Chaudiere village. They separated once more. When they met
+the next night Billy was accompanied by an old confederate. As he was
+entering Chaudiere the previous evening, he had met John Brown, with his
+painted wagon and a new mottled horse. John Brown had news of importance
+to give; for, in the stable-yard of the village tavern, he had heard one
+habitant confide to another that the money for the new church was kept
+in the safe of the tailor-shop. John Brown was as ready to share in
+Billy's second enterprise as he had been to incite him to his first
+crime.
+
+So it was that as the Seigneur made his epigram and gloated over it,
+the five men, with horses at a convenient distance, armed to the teeth,
+broke stealthily into Charley's house.
+
+They entered silently through the kitchen window, and made their way
+into the little hall. Two stood guard at the foot of the stairs, and
+three crept into the shop.
+
+This night Jo Portugais was sleeping up-stairs, while Charley lay
+upon the bench in the tailor-shop. Charley heard the door open, heard
+unfamiliar steps, seized his pistol, and, springing up, with his back to
+the safe, called out loudly to Jo. As he dimly saw men rush at him,
+he fired. The bullet reached its mark, and one man fell dead. At that
+moment a dark-lantern was turned full on Charley, and a pistol was fired
+pointblank at him.
+
+As he fell, shot through the breast, the man who had fired dropped
+the lantern with a shriek of terror. He had seen the ghost of his
+brother-in-law-Charley Steele.
+
+With a quaking cry of warning to the others, Billy bolted from the
+house, followed by his companions, two of whom were struggling with Jo
+Portugais on the stairway. These now also broke and ran.
+
+Jo rushed into the shop, and saw, as he thought, Charley lying dead--saw
+the robber dead upon the floor. His master and friend gone, the
+conviction seized him that his own time had come. He would give himself
+to justice now--but to God's justice, not to man's. The robbers were
+four to one, and he would avenge his master's death and give his own
+life to do it! It was all the thought of a second. He rushed out after
+the robbers, shouting as he ran, to awake the villagers. He heard the
+marauders ahead of him, and, fleet of foot, rushed on. Reaching them
+as they mounted, he fired, and brought down his man--a shivering
+quack-doctor, who, like his leader, had seen a sight in the tailor-shop
+that struck terror to his soul. Two of the others then fired at Jo, who
+had caught a horse by the head. He fell without a sound, and lay upon
+his face--he did not hear the hoofs of the escaping horses nor any
+other sound. He had fallen without a pang beside the quackdoctor, whose
+medicines would never again quicken a pulse in his own body or any
+other.
+
+Behind, in the village, frightened people flocked about the tailor-shop.
+Within, Mrs. Flynn and the Notary crudely but tenderly bound up the
+dreadful wound in Charley's side, while Rosalie pillowed his head on her
+bosom.
+
+With a strange quietness Rosalie gave orders to the Notary and Mrs.
+Flynn. There was a light in her eyes--an unnatural light--of strength
+and presence of mind. Her hand was steady, and as gently as a mother
+with a child she wiped the moist forehead, and poured a little brandy
+between the set teeth.
+
+"Stand back--give him air," she said, in a voice of authority to those
+who crowded round.
+
+People fell back in awe, for, amid tears and excitement and fear, this
+girl had a strange convincing calm. By the time Charley's wound was
+stopped, messengers were on the way to the Cure and the Seigneur.
+By Rosalie's instructions the dead body of the robber was removed,
+Charley's bed up-stairs was prepared for him, a fire was lighted, and
+twenty hands were ready to do accurately her will. Now and again she
+felt his pulse, and she watched his face intently. In her bitter sorrow
+her heart had a sort of thankfulness, for his head was on her breast,
+he was in her arms. It had been given her once more to come first to
+his rescue, and with one wild cry, unheard by any one, to call out his
+beloved name.
+
+The world of Chaudiere, roused by the shooting, had then burst in upon
+them; but that one moment had been hers, no matter what came after. She
+had no illusions--she knew that the end was near: the end of all for him
+and for them both.
+
+The Cure entered and hurried forward. There was the seal of the parish
+intact on the door of the safe, but at what cost!
+
+"He has given his life for the church," he said, then commanded all to
+leave, save those needed to carry the wounded man up-stairs.
+
+Still it was Rosalie that directed the removal. She held his hand; she
+saw that he was carefully laid down; she raised his head to a proper
+height; she moistened his lips and fanned him. Meanwhile the Cure fell
+upon his knees, and the noise of talk and whispering ceased in the
+house.
+
+But presently there was loud murmuring and shuffling of feet outside
+again, and Rosalie left the room hurriedly and went below to stop it.
+She met the men who were bringing the body of Jo Portugais into the
+shop.
+
+Up-stairs the Cure's voice prayed: "Of Thy mercy, O Lord, hear our
+prayer. Grant that he be brought into Thy Church ere his last hour come.
+Forgive, O Lord--"
+
+Charley stirred and opened his eyes. He saw the Cure bowed in prayer; he
+heard the trembling voice. He touched the white head with his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX. IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER
+
+The Cure came to his feet with a joyful cry. "Monsieur--my son," he
+said, bending over him.
+
+"Is it all over?" Charley asked calmly, almost cheerfully. Death now was
+the only solution of life's problems, and he welcomed it from the void.
+
+The Cure went to the door and locked it. The deepest desire of his life
+must here be uttered, his great aspiration be realised.
+
+"My son," he said, as he came softly to the bedside again, "you have
+given to us all you had--your charity, your wisdom, your skill. You have
+"--it was hard, but the man's wound was mortal, and it must be said "you
+have consecrated our new church with your blood. You have given all to
+us; we will give all to you--"
+
+There was a soft knocking at the door. He went and opened it a very
+little. "He is conscious, Rosalie," he whispered. "Wait--wait--one
+moment."
+
+Then came the Seigneur's voice saying that Jo was gone, and that all the
+robbers had escaped, save the two disposed of by Charley and Jo.
+
+The Cure turned to the bed once more. "What did he say about Jo?"
+Charley asked.
+
+"He is dead, my son, and the quack-doctor also. The others have
+escaped."
+
+Charley turned his face away. "Au revoir, Jo," he said into the great
+distance.
+
+Then there was silence for a moment, while outside the door a girl
+prayed, with an old woman's arm around her.
+
+The Cure leaned over Charley again. "Shall not the sacraments of the
+Church comfort you in your last hours?" he said. "It is the way, the
+truth, and the life. It is the Voice that says: 'Peace' to the vexed
+mind. Human intellect is vanity; only the soul survives. Will you not
+hear the Voice? Will you not give us who love and honour you the right
+to make you ours for ever? Will you not come to the bosom of that Church
+for which you have given all?"
+
+"Tell them so," Charley said, and he motioned towards the window, under
+which the people were gathered.
+
+With a glad exclamation the Cure hastened to the window, and, in a voice
+of sorrowful exultation, spoke to the people below.
+
+Charley reckoned swiftly with his fate. What was there now to do? If his
+wound was not mortal, what tragedy might now come! For Billy's hand--the
+hand of Kathleen's brother--had brought him low. If the robbers and
+murderers were captured, he must be dragged into the old life, and
+to what an issue--all the old problems carried into more terrible
+conditions. And Rosalie--in his half-consciousness he had felt her near
+him; he felt her near him now. Rosalie--in any case, what could there
+be for her? Nothing. He had heard the Cure whisper her name at the door.
+She was outside-praying for him. He stretched out a hand as though he
+saw her, and his lips framed her name. In his weakness and fading life
+he had no anguish in the thought of her. Life and Love were growing
+distant though he loved her as few love and live. She would be removed
+from want by him--there were the pearls and the money in the safe with
+the money of the Church; there was the letter to the Cure, his last
+testament, leaving all to her. He, sleeping, would fear no foe; she,
+awake in the living world, would hold him in dear remembrance. Death
+were the better thing for all. Then Kathleen in her happiness would
+be at peace; and even Billy might go unmolested, for, who was there to
+recognise Billy, now that Portugais was dead?
+
+He heard the Cure's voice at the window--"Oh, my dear people, God has
+given him to us at last. I go now to prepare him for his long journey,
+to--"
+
+Charley realised and shuddered. Receive the sacraments of the Church?
+Be made ready by the priest for his going hence--end all the soul's
+interrogations, with the solving of his own mortal problems? Say "I
+believe," confess his sins, and, receiving absolution, lie down in
+peace.
+
+He suddenly raised himself on his elbow, flinging his body over. The
+bandage of his wound was displaced, and blood gushed out upon the white
+clothes of the bed. "Rosalie!" he gasped. "Rosalie, my love!
+God keep..."
+
+As he sank back he heard the priest's anguished voice above him, calling
+for help. He smiled.
+
+"Rosalie--" he whispered. The priest ran and unlocked the door, and
+Rosalie entered, followed by the Seigneur and Mrs. Flynn.
+
+"Quick! Quick!" said the priest. "The bandage slipped."
+
+The bandage slipped--or was it slipped? Who knows!
+
+Blind with agony, and as in a direful dream, Rosalie made her way to the
+bed. The sight of his ensanguined body roused her, and, murmuring his
+name--continually murmuring his name--she assisted Mrs. Flynn to bind
+up the wound again. Standing where she stood when she had stayed Louis
+Trudel's arm long ago, with an infinite tenderness she touched the
+scar-the scar of the cross--on his breast. Terrible as was her grief,
+her heart had its comfort in the thought--who could rob her of that for
+ever?--that he would die a martyr. It did not matter now who knew the
+story of her love. It could not do him harm. She was ready to proclaim
+it to all the world. And those who watched knew that they were in the
+presence of a great human love.
+
+The priest made ready to receive the unconscious man into the Church.
+Had Charley not said, "Tell them so?" Was it not now his duty to say the
+sacred offices over a son of the Church in his last bitter hour? So it
+was done while he lay unconscious.
+
+For hours he lay still, and then the fevered blood, poisoned by
+the bullet which had brought him down, made him delirious, gave him
+hallucinations--open-eyed illusions. All the time Rosalie knelt at the
+foot of the bed, her piteous tearless eyes for ever fixed on his face.
+
+Towards evening, with an unnatural strength, he sat up in bed.
+
+"See," he whispered, "that woman in the corner there. She has come
+to take me, but I will not go." Fantasy after fantasy possessed
+him-fantasy, strangely mixed with facts of his own past. Now it was
+Kathleen, now Billy, now Jo Portugais, now John Brown, now Suzon
+Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion, again Jo Portugais. In strange, touching
+sentences he spoke to them, as though they were present before him. At
+length he stopped abruptly, and gazed straight before him--over the head
+of Rosalie into the distance.
+
+"See," he said, pointing, "who is that? Who? I can't see his face--it
+is covered. So tall-so white! He is opening his arms to me. He is
+coming--closer--closer. Who is it?"
+
+"It is Death, my son," said the priest in his ear, with a pitying
+gentleness.
+
+The Cure's voice seemed to calm the agitated sense, to bring it back to
+the outer precincts of understanding. There was an awe-struck silence
+as the dying man fumbled, fumbled, over his breast, found his eye-glass,
+and, with a last feeble effort, raised it to his eye, shining now with
+an unearthly fire. The old interrogation of the soul, the elemental
+habit outlived all else in him. The idiosyncrasy of the mind
+automatically expressed itself.
+
+"I beg--your--pardon," he whispered to the imagined figure, and the
+light died out of his eyes, "have I--ever--been--introduced--to you?"
+
+"At the hour of your birth, my son," said the priest, as a sobbing cry
+came from the foot of the bed.
+
+But Charley did not hear. His ears were for ever closed to the voices of
+life and time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX. THE HAND AT THE DOOR
+
+The eve of the day of the memorable funeral two belated visitors to the
+Passion Play arrived in the village, unknowing that it had ended, and of
+the tragedy which had set a whole valley mourning; unconscious that they
+shared in the bitter fortunes of the tailor-man, of whom men and women
+spoke with tears. Affected by the gloom of the place, the two visitors
+at once prepared for their return journey, but the manner of the
+tailorman's death arrested their sympathies, touched the humanity in
+them. The woman was much impressed.
+
+They asked to see the body of the man. They were taken to the door of
+the tailor-shop, while their horses were being brought round. Within
+the house itself they were met by an old Irishwoman, who, in response to
+their wish "to see the brave man's body," showed them into a room where
+a man lay dead with a bullet through his heart. It was the body of
+Jo Portugais, whose master and friend lay in another room across the
+hallway. The lady turned back in disappointment--the dead man was little
+like a hero.
+
+The Irishwoman had meant to deceive her, for at this moment a girl who
+loved the tailor was kneeling beside his body, and, if possible, Mrs.
+Flynn would have no curious eyes look upon that scene.
+
+When the visitors came into the hall again, the man said: "There was
+another; Kathleen--a woodsman." But standing by the nearly closed door,
+behind which lay the dead tailor of Chaudiere--they could see the
+holy candles flickering within--Kathleen whispered "We've seen the
+tailor--that's enough. It's only the woodsman there. I prefer not, Tom."
+
+With his fingers at the latch, the man hesitated, even as Mrs. Flynn
+stepped apprehensively forward; then, shrugging a shoulder, he responded
+to Kathleen's hand on his arm. They went down the stairs together, and
+out to their carriage.
+
+As they drove away, Kathleen said: "It's strange that men who do such
+fine things should look so commonplace."
+
+"The other one might have been more uncommon," he replied.
+
+"I wonder!" she said, with a sigh of relief, as they passed the bounds
+of the village. Then she caught herself flushing, for she suddenly
+realised that the exclamation was one so often on the lips of a dead,
+disgraced man whose name she once had borne.
+
+If the door of the little room upstairs had opened to the fingers of the
+man beside her, the tailor of Chaudiere, though dead, would have been
+dearly avenged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI. THE CURE SPEAKS
+
+The Cure stood with his back to the ruins of the church, at his feet two
+newly made graves, and all round, with wistful faces, crowds of reverent
+habitants. A benignant sorrow made his voice in perfect temper with
+the pensive striving of this latest day of spring. At the close of his
+address he said:
+
+"I owe you much, my people. I owe him more, for it was given him, who
+knew not God, to teach us how to know Him better. For his past, it is
+not given you to know. It is hidden in the bosom of the Church. Sinner
+he once was, criminal never, as one can testify who knows all"--he
+turned to the Abbe Rossignol, who stood beside him, grave and
+compassionate--"and his sins were forgiven him. He is the one sheaf
+which you and I may carry home rejoicing from the pagan world of
+unbelief. What he had in life he gave to us, and in death he leaves
+to our church all that he has not left to a woman he loved--to Rosalie
+Evanturel."
+
+There was a gasping murmur among the people, but they stilled again, and
+strained to hear.
+
+"He leaves her a little fortune, and to us all else he had. Let us
+pray for his soul, and let us comfort her who, loving deeply, reaped no
+harvest of love.
+
+"The law may never reach his ruthless murderers, for there is none to
+recognise their faces; and were they ten times punished, how should
+it avail us now! Let us always remember that, in his grave, our friend
+bears on his breast the little iron cross we held so dear. That is
+all we could give--our dearest treasure. I pray God that, scarring his
+breast in life, it may heal all his woes in death, and be a saving image
+on his bosom in the Presence at the last."
+
+He raised his hands in benediction.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+Never again was there a Passion Play in the Chaudiere Valley.
+Spring-times and harvests and long winters came and went, and a blessing
+seemed to be upon the valley, for men prospered, and no untoward things
+befel the people. So it was for twenty years, wherein there had been
+going and coming in quiet. Some had gone upon short mortal journeys and
+had come back, some upon long immortal voyages, and had never returned.
+Of the last were the Seigneur and a woman once a Magdalene; but in a
+house beside a beautiful church, with a noble doorway, lived the Cure,
+M. Loisel, aged and serene. There never was a day, come rain or shine,
+in which he was not visited by a beautiful woman, whose life was one
+with the people of the valley.
+
+There was no sorrow in the parish which the lady did not share, with the
+help of an old Irishwoman called Mrs. Flynn. Was there sickness in the
+parish, her hand smoothed the pillow and soothed the pain. Was there
+trouble anywhere, her face brought light to the door way. Did any suffer
+ill-repute, her word helped to restore the ruined name. They did not
+know that she forgave so much in all the world, because she thought she
+had so much in herself to forgive.
+
+She was ever called "Madame Rosalie," and she cherished the name, and
+gave commands that when her grave came to be made near to a certain
+other grave, Madame Rosalie should be carved upon the stone.
+Cheerfulness and serenity were ever with her, undisturbed by wish to
+probe the mystery of the life which had once absorbed her own. She never
+sought to know whence the man came; it was sufficient to know whither
+he had gone, and that he had been hers for a brief dream of life. It
+was better to have lived the one short thrilling hour with all its pain,
+than never to have known what she knew or felt what she had felt. The
+mystery deepened her romance, and she was even glad that the ruffians
+who slew him were never brought to justice. To her mind they were but
+part of the mystic machinery of fate.
+
+For her the years had given many compensations, and so she told the
+Cure, one midsummer day, when she brought to visit him the orphaned
+son of Paulette Dubois, graduated from his college in France and making
+ready to go to the far East.
+
+"I have had more than I deserve--a thousand times," she said.
+
+The Cure smiled, and laid a gentle hand upon her own. "It is right for
+you to think so," he said, "but after a long life, I am ready to say
+that, one way or another, we earn all the real happiness we have. I mean
+the real happiness--the moments, my child. I once had a moment full of
+happiness."
+
+"May I ask?" she said.
+
+"When my heart first went out to him"--he turned his face towards the
+churchyard.
+
+"He was a great man," she said proudly.
+
+The Cure looked at her benignly: she was a woman, and she had loved
+the man. He had, however, come to a stage of life where greatness alone
+seemed of little moment. He forbore to answer her, but he pressed her
+hand.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Right of Way, Volume 6, by Gilbert Parker
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