Part 40 (2/2)

”My heart is thine, and soul and body render Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall: Take all, dear love! thou art my life's defender; Speak to my soul! Take life and love; take all!”

She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of her own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it exaltation. The touch had come.

She went on abstractedly to the place where she had trysted with her thoughts only, these many years, and, sitting down, watched the sun sink beyond the trees, the shades of evening fall. All that had happened since Charley came to the parish she went over in her mind.

She remembered the day he had said this, the day he had said that; she brought back the night--it was etched upon her mind!--when he had said to her, ”You have saved my life, Mademoiselle!” She recalled the time she put the little cross back on the church-door, the ghostly footsteps in the church, the light, the lost hood. A shudder ran through her now, for the mystery of that hood had never been cleared up. But the words on the page caught her eye again:

”My heart is thine, and soul and body render Faith to thy faith...”

It swallowed up the moment's agitation. Never till this day, never till last night, had she dared to say to herself, He loves me. He seemed so far above her--she never had thought of him as a tailor!--that she had given and never dared hope to receive, had lived without antic.i.p.ation lest there should come despair. Even that day at Vadrome Mountain she had not thought he meant love, when he had said to her that he would remember to the last. When he had said that he would die for love's sake, he had not meant her, but others--some one else whom he would save by his death. Kathleen, that name which had haunted her--ah, whoever Kathleen was, or whatever Kathleen had to do with him or his life, she had no reason to fear Kathleen now. She had no reason to fear any one; for had she not heard his words of love as he clasped her in his arms last night? Had she not fled from that enfolding, because her heart was so full in the hour of her triumph that she could not bear more, could not look longer into the eyes to which she had told her love before his was spoken?

In the midst of her thoughts she heard footsteps. She started up.

Paulette Dubois suddenly appeared in the path below. She had taken the river-path down from Vadrome Mountain, where she had gone to see Jo Portugais, who had not yet returned from Quebec. Paulette's face was agitated, her manner nervous. For nights she had not slept, and her approaching meeting with the tailor had made her tremble all day.

Excited as she was, there was a wild sort of beauty in her face, and her figure was lithe and supple. She dressed always a little garishly, but now there was only that band of colour round the throat, worn last night in the talk with Charley.

To both women this meeting was as a personal misfortune, a mutual affront. Each had a natural antipathy. To Rosalie the invasion of her beloved retreat was as hateful as though the woman had purposely intruded.

For a moment they confronted each other without speaking, then Rosalie's natural courtesy, her instinctive good-heartedness, overcame her irritation, and she said quietly:

”Good-evening, Madame.”

”I am not Madame, and you know it,” answered the woman harshly.

”I am sorry. Good-evening, Mademoiselle,” rejoined Rosalie evenly.

”You wanted to insult me. You knew I wasn't Madame.”

Rosalie shook her head. ”How should I know? You have not always lived in Chaudiere, you have lived in Montreal, and people often call you Madame.”

”You know better. You know that letters come to me from Montreal addressed Mademoiselle.”

Rosalie turned as if to go. ”I do not recall what letters pa.s.s through the post-office. I have a good memory for forgetting. Good-evening,” she added, with an excess of courtesy. Paulette read the placid scorn in the girl's face; she did not see and would not understand that Rosalie did not scorn her for what she had ever done, but for something that she was.

”You think I am the dirt under your feet,” she said, now white, now red, and mad with anger. ”I'm not fit to speak with you--I'm a rag for the dust pile!”

”I have never thought so,” answered Rosalie. ”I have not liked you, but I am sorry for you, and I never thought those things.”

”You lie!” was the rejoinder; and Rosalie, turning away quickly with trouble in her face, put her hands to her ears, and, hastening down the hillside, did not hear the words the woman called after her.

”To-morrow every one shall know you are a thief. Run, run, run! You can hear what I say, white-face! They shall know about the little cross to-morrow.”

She followed Rosalie at a distance, her eyes blazing. As fate would have it, she met on the highroad the least scrupulous man in the parish, an inveterate gossip, the keeper of the general store, whose only opposition in business was the post-office shop. He was the centre of the village t.i.ttle-tattle, and worse. With malicious speed Paulette told him how she had seen Rosalie Evanturel nailing the little cross on the church door of a certain night. If he wanted proof of what she said, let him ask Jo Portugais.

Having spat out her revenge, she went on to the village, and through it to her house, where she prepared to visit the shop of the tailor. Her sense of retaliation satisfied, Rosalie pa.s.sed from her mind; her child only occupied it. In another hour she would know where her child was--the tailor had promised that she should. Then perhaps she would be sorry for the accident to the Notary; for it was an accident, in spite of appearances.

It was dark when Paulette entered the door of the tailor's house. When she came out, a half-hour later, with elation in her carriage, and tears of joy running down her face, she did not look about her; she did not care whether or not any one saw her: she was possessed with only one thought--her child! She pa.s.sed like a swift wind down the street, making for home and for her departure to the hiding-place of her child.

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