Rosalie Evanturel rescued the bottles from the doorstep and awaited Charley’s return to his shop, that she might take them over to him, and so have an excuse to speak with him; for to-day her heart and mind were full of him. He had done a brave thing for the medicine-man, and had then fled from public gaze as a brave man should. There was no one to compare with him. Not even the Cure was his superior in ability, and certainly he was a greater man--though seemingly only a tailor--than M. Rossignol. M. Rossignol--she flushed. Who could have believed that the Seigneur would say those words to her this morning--to her, Rosalie Evanturel, who hadn’t five hundred dollars to her name? That she should be asked to be Madame Rossignol! Confusion mingled with her simple pride, and she ran out into the street, to where her father sat listening to the medicine-man singing, in doubtful French:
“I am a waterman bold, Oh, I’m a waterman bold: But for my lass I have great fear, Yes, in the isles I have great fear, For she is young, and I am old, And she is bien gentille!”
It was night now. The militia had departed, their Colonel roaring commands at them out of a little red drill-book; the older people had gone to their homes, but festive youth hovered round the booths and sideshows, the majority enjoying themselves at some expense in the medicine-man’s encampment.
As Rosalie ran towards the crowd she turned a wistful glance to the tailor-shop. Not a sign of life there! She imagined M’sieu’ to be at Vadrome Mountain, until, glancing round the crowd at the quack-doctor’s wagon, she saw Jo Portugais gloomily watching the travelling tinker of human bodies. Evidently M’sieu’ was not at Vadrome Mountain.
He was not far from her. At the side of the road, under a huge maple-tree with wide-spreading branches, Charley stood and watched John Brown performing behind the flaring oil-lights stuck on poles round his wagon, his hat now on, now off; now singing a comic song in English---‘I found Y’ in de Honeysuckle Paitch;’ now a French chanson--‘En Revenant de St. Alban;’ now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving momentary help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech.
Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy only--a staring, high-coloured dream. This man--John Brown--had gone down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the means of disgracing his name. A step forward to that wagon, a word uttered, a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put by for ever, would have to meet a hard problem and settle it--to what misery and tragedy, who might say? Under this tree he was M. Mallard, the infidel tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of this place called Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which, automatically repeated, at length becomes character. Out in that red light, before that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister, ‘flaneur’, and fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife, misled her brother, robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune, become drunkard and wastrel, and at last had lost his life in a disorderly tavern at the Cote Dorion. This man before him had contributed to his disgrace; but once he had contributed to John Brown’s disgrace; and to-day he had saved John Brown’s life. They were even.