Part 44 (1/2)

It touched Charley with a kind of awe. He smiled painfully. ”Shall I give you proof?” he said, making a motion to undo his waistcoat.

”Monsieur!” said the Seigneur reprovingly, and holding out his hand.

”Monsieur! We are all gentlemen!”

CHAPTER XLIII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY

Walking slowly, head bent, eyes unseeing, Charley was on his way to Vadrome Mountain, with the knowledge that Jo Portugais had returned.

The hunger for companions.h.i.+p was on him: to touch some mind that could understand the deep loneliness which had settled on him since that scene in the postoffice. It was the loneliness of a new and great separation.

He had wakened to it to-day.

Once before, in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, he had wakened from a grave, had been born again. Last night had come still another birth, had come, as with Rosalie herself, knowledge, revelation, understanding.

To Rosalie the new vision had come with a vague pain of heart, without shame, and with a wonderful happiness. Pain, shame, knowledge, and a happiness that pa.s.sed suddenly into a despairing sorrow, had come to him.

In finding love he had found conscience, and in finding conscience he was on his way to another great discovery.

Looking to where Jo Portugais' house was set among the pines, Charley remembered the day--he saw the scene in his mind's eye--when Rosalie entered with the letter addressed ”To the sick man at the house of Jo Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain,” and he saw again her clear, unsoiled soul in the deep inquiring eyes.

”If you but knew”--he turned and looked down at the village below--”if you but knew!” he said, as though to all the world. ”I have the sign from heaven--I know it now. To-day I wake to know what life means, and I see--Rosalie! I know now--but how? In taking all she had to give. What does she get in return? Nothing--nothing. Because I love her, because the whole world is nothing beside her, nor life, nor twenty lives, if I had them to give, I must say to her now: 'Rosalie, it was love that brought you to my arms, it is love that says, Thus far and no farther.

Never again--never--never--never!' Yesterday I could have left her--died or vanished, without real hurt to her. She would have mourned and broken her heart and mended it again; and I should have been only a memory--of mystery, of tenderness. Then, one day she would have married, and no sting from my going would have remained. She would have had happiness, and I neither shame nor despair.... To-day it is all too late. We have drunk too deep-alas! too deep. She cannot marry another man, for ghosts will not lie for asking, and what is mine may not be another's. She cannot marry me, for what once was mine is mine still by ring and by book, and I should always be haunted by a torturing shadow. Kathleen has the right of way, not Rosalie. Ah, Rosalie, I dare not wrong you further. Yet to marry you, even as things are, if that might be! To live on here unrecognised? I am little like my old self, and year after year I should grow less and less like Charley Steele.... But, no, it is not possible!”

He stopped short in his thoughts, and his lips tightened in bitterness.

”G.o.d in heaven, what an impa.s.se!” he said aloud.

There was a sudden crackling of twigs as a man rose up from a log by the wayside ahead of him. It was Jo Portugais, who had seen him coming, and had waited for him. He had heard Charley's words.

”Do you call me an impa.s.se, M'sieu'?” Charley grasped Portugais' hand.

”What has happened, M'sieu'?” Jo asked anxiously. There was a brief silence, and then Charley told him of the events of the morning.

”You know of the mark-here?” he asked, touching his breast.

Jo nodded. ”I saw, when you were ill.”

”Yet you never asked!”

”I studied it out--I knew old Louis Trudel. Also, I saw ma'm'selle nail the cross to the church door. Two and two together in my mind did it. I didn't think Paulette Dubois would tell. I warned her.”

”She quarrelled with mademoiselle. It was revenge.

”She might have been less vindictive. She had had good luck herself lately.”

”What good luck had she, M'sieu'?”

Charley told Jo the story of the Notary, the woman, and the child.

Jo made no comment. They relapsed into silence. Arriving at the house, they entered. Jo lighted his pipe, and smoked steadily for a time without speaking. Buried in thought, Charley stood in the doorway looking down at the village. At last he turned.

”Where have you been these weeks past, Jo?”