The Ruling Passion [27]
and "MAUDITS!" that came out of the swaying top. He grinned--until
he saw that a half-dozen more blows would fell the birch right on
the roof of the shanty.
"Are you crazy?" he cried, as he picked up an axe; "you know nothing
how to chop. You kill a man. You smash the cabane. Let go!" He
shoved one of the boys away and sent a few mighty cuts into the side
of the birch that was farthest from the cabin; then two short cuts
on the other side; the tree shivered, staggered, cracked, and swept
in a great arc toward the deep snow-drift by the brook. As the top
swung earthward, Raoul jumped clear of the crashing branches and
landed safely in the feather-bed of snow, buried up to his neck.
Nothing was to be seen of him but his head, like some new kind of
fire-work--sputtering bad words.
Well, this was the first thing that put an edge on Vaillantcoeur's
hunger to fight. No man likes to be chopped down by his friend,
even if the friend does it for the sake of saving him from being
killed by a fall on the shanty-roof. It is easy to forget that part
of it. What you remember is the grin.
The second thing that made it worse was the bad chance that both of
these men had to fall in love with the same girl. Of course there
were other girls in the village beside Marie Antoinette Girard--
plenty of them, and good girls, too. But somehow or other, when
they were beside her, neither Raoul nor Prosper cared to look at any
of them, but only at 'Toinette. Her eyes were so much darker and
her cheeks so much more red--bright as the berries of the mountain-
ash in September. Her hair hung down to her waist on Sunday in two
long braids, brown and shiny like a ripe hazelnut; and her voice
when she laughed made the sound of water tumbling over little
stones.
No one knew which of the two lovers she liked best. At school it was
certainly Raoul, because he was bigger and bolder. When she came
back from her year in the convent at Roberval it was certainly
Prosper, because he could talk better and had read more books. He
had a volume of songs full of love and romance, and knew most of
them by heart. But this did not last forever. 'Toinette's manners
had been polished at the convent, but her ideas were still those of
her own people. She never thought that knowledge of books could
take the place of strength, in the real battle of life. She was a
brave girl, and she felt sure in her heart that the man of the most
courage must be the best man after all.
For a while she appeared to persuade herself that it was Prosper,
beyond a doubt, and always took his part when the other girls
laughed at him. But this was not altogether a good sign. When a
girl really loves, she does not talk, she acts. The current of
opinion and gossip in the village was too strong for her. By the
time of the affair of the "chopping-down" at Lac des Caps, her heart
was swinging to and fro like a pendulum. One week she would walk
home from mass with Raoul. The next week she would loiter in the
front yard on a Saturday evening and talk over the gate with
Prosper, until her father called her into the shop to wait on
customers.
It was in one of these talks that the pendulum seemed to make its
last swing and settle down to its resting-place. Prosper was
telling her of the good crops of sugar that he had made from his
maple grove.
"The profit will be large--more than sixty piastres--and with that I
shall buy at Chicoutimi a new four-wheeler, of the finest, a
veritable wedding carriage--if you--if I--'Toinette? Shall we ride
together?"
His left hand clasped hers as it lay on the gate. His right arm
stole over the low picket fence and went around the shoulder that
leaned against the gate-post. The road was quite empty, the night
already dark. He could feel her warm breath on his neck as she
laughed.