“Is he dead? is he dead?” she asked distractedly. “I’ve just come from
the village. Why didn’t you send for me? Tell me, is he dead? Oh, tell
me at once!”
She caught the Regimental Surgeon’s arm. He looked down at her, over
his glasses, benignly, for she had always been a favourite of his, and
answered:
“Alive, alive, my dear. Bad rip in the shoulder--worn
out--weak--shattered--but good for a while yet--yes, yes--certainement!”
With a wayward impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed
him on the cheek. The embrace disarranged his glasses and flushed his
face like a schoolgirl’s, but his eyes were full of embarrassed delight.
“There, there,” he said, “we’ll take care of him--!” Then suddenly he
paused, for the real significance of her action dawned upon him.
“Dear me,” he said in disturbed meditation; “dear me!”
She suddenly opened the bedroom door and went in, followed by Nic.
The Regimental Surgeon dropped his mouth and cheeks in his hand
reflectively, his eyes showing quaintly and quizzically above the
glasses and his fingers.
“Well, well! Well, well!” he said, as if he had encountered a
difficulty. “It--it will never be possible. He would not marry her,” he
added, and then, turning, went abstractedly down the stairs.
Ferrol was in a deep sleep when Christine and her brother entered the
chamber. Her face turned still more pale when she saw him, flushed, and
became pale again. There were leaden hollows round his eyes, and his
hair was matted with perspiration. Yet he was handsome--and helpless.
Her eyes filled with tears. She turned her head away from her brother
and went softly to the window, but not before she had touched the pale
hand that lay nerveless upon the coverlet.
“It’s not feverish,” she said to Nic, as if in necessary explanation of
the act.
She stood at the window for a moment, looking out, then said:
“Come here, Nic, and tell me all about it.”
He told her all he knew: how he had come to the old house by appointment
with Ferrol; had tried to get into the store-room; had found the doors
bolted; had heard the noise of a wild animal inside; had run out, tried
a window, at last wrenched it open and found Ferrol in a dead faint. He
went to the table and brought back the broken bayonet.
“That’s all he had to fight with,” he said. “Fire of a little hell, but
he had grit--after all!”
“That’s all he had to fight with!” she repeated, as she untwisted
the handkerchief from the hilt end. “Why did you say he had true
grit--‘after all’? What do you mean by that ‘after all’?”
“Well, you don’t expect much from a man with only one lung--eh?”
“Courage isn’t in the lungs,” she answered. Then she added: “Go and
fetch me a bottle of brandy--I’m going to bathe his hands and feet in
brandy and hot water as soon as he’s awake.”
“Better let mother do that, hadn’t you?” he asked rather hesitatingly,
as he moved towards the door.
Her eyes snapped fire. “Nic--mon Dieu, hear the nice Nic!” she said.
“The dear Nic, who went in swimming with--”
She said no more, for he had no desire to listen to an account of his
misdeeds, which were not a few,--and Christine had a galling tongue.
When the door was shut she went to the bed, sat down on a chair beside
it, and looked at Ferrol earnestly and sadly.
“My dear! my dear, dear, dear!” she said in a whisper, “you look so
handsome and so kind as you lie there--like no man I ever saw in my
life. Who’d have fought as you fought--and nearly dead! Who’d have had
brains enough to know just what to do! My darling, that never said ‘my
darling’ to me, nor heard me call you so. Suppose you haven’t a dollar,
not a cent, in the world, and suppose you’ll never earn a dollar or a
cent in the world, what difference does that make to me? I could
earn it; and I’d give more for a touch of your finger than a thousand
dollars; and more for a month with you than for a lifetime with the
richest man in the world. You never looked cross at me, or at any one,
and you never say an unkind thing, and you never find fault when
you suffer so. You never hurt any one, I know. You never hurt Vanne
Castine--”
Her fingers twitched in her lap, and then clasped very tight, as she
went on:
“You never hurt him, and yet he’s tried to kill you in the most awful
way. Perhaps you’ll die now--perhaps you’ll die to-night--but no, no,
you shall not!” she cried in sudden fright and eagerness, as she got
up and leaned over him. “You shall not die; you shall live--for a
while--oh! yes, for a while yet,” she added, with a pitiful yearning in
her voice; “just for a little while--till you love me, and tell me so!
Oh, how could that devil try to kill you!”
She suddenly drew herself up.
“I’ll kill him and his bear too--now, now, while you lie there sleeping.
And when you wake I’ll tell you what I’ve done, and you’ll--you’ll love
me then, and tell me so, perhaps. Yes, yes, I’ll--”
She said no more, for her brother entered with the brandy.
“Put it there,” she said, pointing to the table. “You watch him till I
come. I’ll be back in an hour; and then, when he wakes, we’ll bathe him
in the hot water and brandy.”
“Who told you about hot water and brandy?” he asked her, curiously.
She did not answer him, but passed through the door and down the hall
till she came to Nic’s bedroom; she went in, took a pair of pistols from
the wall, examined them, found they were fully loaded, and hurried from
the room.
About a half-hour later she appeared before the house which once had
belonged to Vanne Castine. The mortgage had been foreclosed, and the
place had passed into the hands of Sophie and Magon Farcinelle; but
Castine had taken up his abode in the house a few days before, and
defied anyone to put him out.
A light was burning in the kitchen of the house. There were no curtains
to the window, but an old coat had been hung up to serve the purpose,
and light shone between a sleeve of it and the window-sill. Putting her
face close to the window, the girl could see the bear in the corner,
clawing at its chain and tossing its head from side to side, still
panting and angry from the fight.
Now and again, also, it licked the bayonet-wound between its shoulders,
and rubbed its lacerated nose on its paw. Castine was mixing some tar
and oil in a pan by the fire, to apply to the still bleeding wounds of
his Michael. He had an ugly grin on his face.
He was dressed just as in the first day he appeared in the village, even
to the fur cap; and presently, as he turned round, he began to sing
the monotonous measure to which the bear had danced. It had at once a
soothing effect upon the beast.
After he had gone from the store-room, leaving Ferrol dead, as he
thought, it was this song alone which had saved himself from peril; for
the beast was wild from pain, fury and the taste of blood. As soon as
they had cleared the farmyard, he had begun this song, and the bear,
cowed at first by the thrusts of its master’s pike, quieted to the
well-known ditty.
He approached the bear now, and, stooping, put some of the tar and oil
upon its nose. It sniffed and rubbed off the salve, but he put more on;
then he rubbed it into the wound of the breast. Once the animal made a
fierce snap at his shoulder, but he deftly avoided it, gave it a thrust
with a sharp-pointed stick, and began the song again. Presently he rose
and came towards the fire.
As he did so he heard the door open. Turning round quickly, he saw
Christine standing just inside. She had a shawl thrown round her, and
one hand was thrust in the pocket of her dress. She looked from him to
the bear, then back again to him.
He did not realise why she had come. For a moment, in his excited state,
he almost thought she had come because she loved him. He had seen her
twice since his return; but each time she would say nothing to him
further than that she wished not to meet or to speak to him at all. He
had pleaded with her, had grown angry, and she had left him. Who could
tell--perhaps she had come to him now as she had come to him in the old
days. He dropped the pan of tar and oil. “Chris!” he said, and started
forward to her.
At that moment the bear, as if it knew the girl’s mission, sprang
forward, with a growl. Its huge mouth was open, and all its fierce lust
for killing showed again in its wild lunges. Castine turned, with an
oath, and thrust the steel-set pike into its leg. It cowered at the
voice and the punishment for an instant, but came on again.
Castine saw the girl raise a pistol and fire at the beast. He was so
dumfounded that at first he did not move. Then he saw her raise another
pistol. The wounded bear lunged heavily on its chain--once--twice--in
a devilish rage, and as Christine prepared to fire, snapped the staple
loose and sprang forward.
At the same moment Castine threw himself in front of the girl, and
caught the onward rush. Calling the beast by its name, he grappled with
it. They were man and servant no longer, but two animals fighting for
their lives. Castine drew out his knife, as the bear, raised on its hind
legs, crushed him in its immense arms, and still calling, half crazily,
“Michael! Michael! down, Michael!” he plunged the knife twice in the
beast’s side.
The bear’s teeth fastened in his shoulder; the horrible pressure of
its arms was turning his face black; he felt death coming, when another
pistol shot rang out close to his own head, and his breath suddenly came
back. He staggered to the wall, and then came to the floor in a heap as
the bear lurched downwards and fell over on its side, dead.
Christine had come to kill the beast and, perhaps, the man. The man had
saved her life, and now she had saved his; and together they had killed
the bear which had maltreated Tom Ferrol.
Castine’s eyes were fixed on the dead beast. Everything was gone from
him now--even the way to his meagre livelihood; and the cause of it
all, as he in his blind, unnatural way thought, was this girl before
him--this girl and her people. Her back was towards the door. Anger and
passion were both at work in him at once.
“Chris,” he said, “Chris, let’s call it even-eh? Let’s make it up.
Chris, ma cherie, don’t you remember when we used to meet, and was fond
of each other? Let’s make it up and leave here--now--to-night-eh?
“I’m not so poor, after all. I’ll be paid by Papineau, the leader of the
Rebellion--” He made a couple of unsteady steps towards her, for he
was weak yet. “What’s the good--you’re bound to come to me in the end!
You’ve got the same kind of feelings in you; you’ve--”
She had stood still at first, dazed by his words; but she grew angry
quickly, and was about to speak as she felt, when he went on:
“Stay here now with me. Don’t go back. Don’t you remember Shangois’s
house? Don’t you remember that night--that night when--ah! Chris, stay
here--”
Her face was flaming. “I’d rather stay in a room full of wild beasts
like that”--she pointed to the bear, “than be with you one minute--you
murderer!” she said, with choking anger.
He started towards her, saying:
“By the blood of Joseph! but you’ll stay just the same; and--”
He got no further, for she threw the pistol in his face with all her
might. It struck between his eyes with a thud, and he staggered back,
blind, bleeding and faint, as she threw open the door and sped away in
the darkness.
Reaching the Manor safely, she ran up to her room, arranged her hair,
washed her hands, and came again to Ferrol’s bedroom. Knocking softly
she was admitted by Nic. There was an unnatural brightness in her eyes.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked, for he noticed this. “What’ve you been
doing?”
“I’ve killed the bear that tried to kill him,” she answered.
She spoke louder than she meant. Her voice awakened Ferrol.
“Eh, what?” he said, “killed the bear, mademoiselle,--my dear friend,”
he added, “killed the bear!” He coughed a little, and a twinge of pain
crossed over his face.
She nodded, and her face was alight with pleasure. She lifted up his
head and gave him a little drink of brandy. His fingers closed on hers
that held the glass. His touch thrilled her.
“That’s good, that’s easier,” he remarked.
“We’re going to bathe you in brandy and hot water, now--Nic and I,” she
said.
“Bathe me! Bathe me!” he said, in amused consternation.
“Hands and feet,” Nic explained.
A few minutes later as she lifted up his head, her face was very near
him; her breath was in his face. Her eyes half closed, her fingers
trembled. He suddenly drew her to him and kissed her. She looked round
swiftly, but her brother had not noticed.