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.