The Right of Way Part 55

"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 hoa.r.s.e 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 gra.s.s 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 m.u.f.fling his face, and opened his s.h.i.+rt, 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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d'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 Laca.s.se.

"We have three thousand dollars from the Pa.s.sion 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 Laca.s.se.

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 Laca.s.se.

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 n.o.ble 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."