"TIENS! You have fear, Monsieur Leclere! Truly I had not thought of that.It is strange.For so strong a man it is a little stupid to be afraid.Good-night.I hear my father calling me.Perhaps some one in the store who wants to be served.You must tell me again what you are going to do with the new carriage.Good-night!"She was laughing again.But it was a different laughter.Prosper, at the gate, did not think it sounded like the running of a brook over the stones.No, it was more the noise of the dry branches that knock together in the wind.He did not hear the sigh that came as she shut the door of the house, nor see how slowly she walked through the passage into the store.
II
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 BETEProsper 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."
