There seemed to be a great many rainy Saturdays that spring; and in the early summer the trade in Girard’s store was so brisk that it appeared to need all the force of the establishment to attend to it. The gate of the front yard had no more strain put upon its hinges. It fell into a stiff propriety of opening and shutting, at the touch of people who understood that a gate was made merely to pass through, not to lean upon.
That summer Vaillantcoeur had a new hat—a black and shiny beaver—and a new red-silk cravat. They looked fine on Corpus Christi day, when he and ‘Toinette walked together as fiancee’s.
You would have thought he would have been content with that. Proud, he certainly was. He stepped like the cure’s big rooster with the topknot—almost as far up in the air as he did along the ground; and he held his chin high, as if he liked to look at things over his nose.
But he was not satisfied all the way through. He thought more of beating Prosper than of getting ‘Toinette. And he was not quite sure that he had beaten him yet.
Perhaps the girl still liked Prosper a little. Perhaps she still thought of his romances, and his chansons, and his fine, smooth words, and missed them. Perhaps she was too silent and dull sometimes, when she walked with Raoul; and sometimes she laughed too loud when he talked, more at him than with him. Perhaps those St. Raymond fellows still remembered the way his head stuck out of that cursed snow-drift, and joked about it, and said how clever and quick the little Prosper was. Perhaps—ah, MAUDIT! a thousand times perhaps! And only one way to settle them, the old way, the sure way, and all the better now because ‘Toinette must be on his side. She must understand for sure that the bravest man in the parish had chosen her.
That was the summer of the building of the grand stone tower of the church. The men of Abbeville did it themselves, with their own hands, for the glory of God. They were keen about that, and the cure was the keenest of them all. No sharing of that glory with workmen from Quebec, if you please! Abbeville was only forty years old, but they already understood the glory of God quite as well there as at Quebec, without doubt. They could build their own tower, perfectly, and they would. Besides, it would cost less.
Vaillantcoeur was the chief carpenter. He attended to the affair of beams and timbers. Leclere was the chief mason. He directed the affair of dressing the stones and laying them. That required a very careful head, you understand, for the tower must be straight. In the floor a little crookedness did not matter; but in the wall—that might be serious. People have been killed by a falling tower. Of course, if they were going into church, they would be sure of heaven. But then think—what a disgrace for Abbeville!
Every one was glad that Leclere bossed the raising of the tower. They admitted that he might not be brave, but he was assuredly careful. Vaillantcoeur alone grumbled, and said the work went too slowly, and even swore that the sockets for the beams were too shallow, or else too deep, it made no difference which. That BETE Prosper made trouble always by his poor work. But the friction never came to a blaze; for the cure was pottering about the tower every day and all day long, and a few words from him would make a quarrel go off in smoke.
“Softly, my boys!” he would say; “work smooth and you work fast. The logs in the river run well when they run all the same way. But when two logs cross each other, on the same rock—psst! a jam! The whole drive is hung up! Do not run crossways, my children.”
The walls rose steadily, straight as a steamboat pipe—ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet; it was time to put in the two cross-girders, lay the floor of the belfry, finish off the stonework, and begin the pointed wooden spire. The cure had gone to Quebec that very day to buy the shining plates of tin for the roof, and a beautiful cross of gilt for the pinnacle.
Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls. Vaillantcoeur came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen were standing about.
“Look here, you Leclere,” said he, “I tried one of the cross-girders yesterday afternoon and it wouldn’t go. The templet on the north is crooked—crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down again. I suppose we must trim it off some way, to get a level bearing, and make the tower weak, just to match your sacre bad work, eh?”
“Well,” said Prosper, pleasant and quiet enough, “I’m sorry for that, Raoul. Perhaps I could put that templet straight, or perhaps the girder might be a little warped and twisted, eh? What? Suppose we measure it.”
Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and had corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode over to them.
“It’s a dam’ lie,” he said, sullenly. “Prosper Leclere, you slipped the string. None of your sacre cheating! I have enough of it already. Will you fight, you cursed sneak?”
Prosper’s face went gray, like the mortar in the trough. His fists clenched and the cords on his neck stood out as if they were ropes. He breathed hard. But he only said three words:
“No! Not here.”
“Not here? Why not? There is room. The cure is away. Why not here?”
“It is the house of LE BON DIEU. Can we build it in hate?”
“POLISSON! You make an excuse. Then come to Girard’s, and fight there.”
Again Prosper held in for a moment, and spoke three words:
“No! Not now.”
“Not now? But when, you heart of a hare? Will you sneak out of it until you turn gray and die? When will you fight, little musk-rat?”
“When I have forgotten. When I am no more your friend.”
Prosper picked up his trowel and went into the tower. Raoul bad-worded him and every stone of his building from foundation to cornice, and then went down the road to get a bottle of cognac.
An hour later he came back breathing out threatenings and slaughter, strongly flavoured with raw spirits. Prosper was working quietly on the top of the tower, at the side away from the road. He saw nothing until Raoul, climbing up by the ladders on the inside, leaped on the platform and rushed at him like a crazy lynx.
“Now!” he cried, “no hole to hide in here, rat! I’ll squeeze the lies out of you.”
He gripped Prosper by the head, thrusting one thumb into his eye, and pushing him backward on the scaffolding.
Blinded, half maddened by the pain, Prosper thought of nothing but to get free. He swung his long arm upward and landed a heavy blow on Raoul’s face that dislocated the jaw; then twisting himself downward and sideways, he fell in toward the wall. Raoul plunged forward, stumbled, let go his hold, and pitched out from the tower, arms spread, clutching the air.
Forty feet straight down! A moment—or was it an eternity?—of horrible silence. Then the body struck the rough stones at the foot of the tower with a thick, soft dunt, and lay crumpled up among them, without a groan, without a movement.
When the other men, who had hurried up the ladders in terror, found Leclere, he was peering over the edge of the scaffold, wiping the blood from his eyes, trying to see down.
“I have killed him,” he muttered, “my friend! He is smashed to death. I am a murderer. Let me go. I must throw myself down!”
They had hard work to hold him back. As they forced him down the ladders he trembled like a poplar.
But Vaillantcoeur was not dead. No; it was incredible—to fall forty feet and not be killed—they talk of it yet all through the valley of the Lake St. John—it was a miracle! But Vaillantcoeur had broken only a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs—for one like him that was but a bagatelle. A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few months of nursing, and he would be on his feet again, almost as good a man as he had ever been.
It was Leclere who put himself in charge of this.
“It is my affair,” he said—“my fault! It was not a fair place to fight. Why did I strike? I must attend to this bad work.”
“MAIS, SACRE BLEU!” they answered, “how could you help it? He forced you. You did not want to be killed. That would be a little too much.”
“No,” he persisted, “this is my affair. Girard, you know my money is with the notary. There is plenty. Raoul has not enough, perhaps not any. But he shall want nothing—you understand—nothing! It is my affair, all that he needs—but you shall not tell him—no! That is all.”
Prosper had his way. But he did not see Vaillantcoeur after he was carried home and put to bed in his cabin. Even if he had tried to do so, it would have been impossible. He could not see anybody. One of his eyes was entirely destroyed. The inflammation spread to the other, and all through the autumn he lay in his house, drifting along the edge of blindness, while Raoul lay in his house slowly getting well.
The cure went from one house to the other, but he did not carry any messages between them. If any were sent one way they were not received. And the other way, none were sent. Raoul did not speak of Prosper; and if one mentioned his name, Raoul shut his mouth and made no answer.
To the cure, of course, it was a distress and a misery. To have a hatred like this unhealed, was a blot on the parish; it was a shame, as well as a sin. At last—it was already winter, the day before Christmas—the cure made up his mind that he would put forth one more great effort.
“Look you, my son,” he said to Prosper, “I am going this afternoon to Raoul Vaillantcoeur to make the reconciliation. You shall give me a word to carry to him. He shall hear it this time, I promise you. Shall I tell him what you have done for him, how you have cared for him?”
“No, never,” said Prosper; “you shall not take that word from me. It is nothing. It will make worse trouble. I will never send it.”
“What then?” said the priest. “Shall I tell him that you forgive him?”
“No, not that,” answered Prosper, “that would be a foolish word. What would that mean? It is not I who can forgive. I was the one who struck hardest. It was he that fell from the tower.”
“Well, then, choose the word for yourself. What shall it be? Come, I promise you that he shall hear it. I will take with me the notary, and the good man Girard, and the little Marie Antoinette. You shall hear an answer. What message?”
“Mon pere,” said Prosper, slowly, “you shall tell him just this. I, Prosper Leclere, ask Raoul Vaillantcoeur that he will forgive me for not fighting with him on the ground when he demanded it.”
Yes, the message was given in precisely those words. Marie Antoinette stood within the door, Bergeron and Girard at the foot of the bed, and the cure spoke very clearly and firmly. Vaillantcoeur rolled on his pillow and turned his face away. Then he sat up in bed, grunting a little with the pain in his shoulder, which was badly set. His black eyes snapped like the eyes of a wolverine in a corner.
“Forgive?” he said, “no, never. He is a coward. I will never forgive!”
A little later in the afternoon, when the rose of sunset lay on the snowy hills, some one knocked at the door of Leclere’s house.
“ENTREZ!” he cried. “Who is there? I see not very well by this light. Who is it?”
“It is me,” said ‘Toinette, her cheeks rosier than the snow outside, “nobody but me. I have come to ask you to tell me the rest about that new carriage—do you remember?”
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