“If they wish to be measured for uniforms—or manners—I will see them at my shop,” he said.
The Seigneur chuckled. Charley stepped again towards the door. The two constables stood before it. Again he turned inquiringly, this time towards the Cure. The Cure did not speak.
“It is you we wish to see, tailor,” said the Abbe Rossignol.
Soft-tongued irony leaped to Charley’s lips: “Have I, then, the honour of including Monsieur among my customers? I cannot recall Monsieur’s figure. I think I should not have forgotten it.”
It was now the old Charley Steele, with the new body, the new spirit, but with the old skilful mind, aggravatingly polite, non-intime—the intolerant face of this father of souls irritated him.
“I never forget a figure which has idiosyncrasy,” he added, with a bland eye wandering over the priest’s gaunt form. It was his old way to strike first and heal after—“a kick and a lick,” as old Paddy Wier, whom he once saved from prison, said of him. It was like bygone years of another life to appear in defence when the law was tightening round a victim. The secret spring had been touched, the ancient machinery of his mind was working almost automatically.
The illusion was considerable, for the Seigneur had taken the only arm-chair in the room, a little apart, as it were, filling the place of judge. The priest-brother, cold and inveterate, was like the attorney for the crown. The Cure was the clerk of the court, who could only echo the decisions of the Judge. The constables were the machinery of the Law, and Jo Portugais was the unwilling witness, whose evidence would be the crux of the case. The prisoner—he himself was prisoner and prisoner’s counsel.
A good struggle was forward.
He had enraged the Abbe as much as he had delighted the Abbe’s brother; for nothing gave the Seigneur such pleasure as the discomfiture of the Abbe Rossignol, chaplain and ordinary to the Archbishop of Quebec. The genial, sympathetic nature of the Seigneur could not even be patient with the excessive piety of the churchman, who, in rigid righteousness, had thrashed him cruelly as a boy. At Charley’s words upon the Abbe’s figure, gaunt and precise as a swaddled ramrod, he pulled his nose with a grunt of satisfaction.
The Cure, the peace-maker, intervened. The tailor’s meaning was sufficiently clear: if they had come to see him personally, then it was natural for him to wish to know the names and stations of his guests, and their business. The Seigneur was aware that the tailor did know, and he enjoyed the ‘sang-froid’ with which he was meeting the situation.