Without hesitation Charley handed over the letter to the Cure, who took it with surprise, read it with amazement, and handed it back with a flush on his face.
“Thank you,” said Charley to the girl. “It is good of you to bring it all this way. May I ask—”
“She is Mademoiselle Rosalie Evanturel,” said the Cure smiling.
“I am Charles Mallard,” said Charley slowly. “Thank you. I will go now, Monsieur Mallard,” the girl said, lifting her eyes to his face. He bowed. As she turned and went towards the door her eyes met his. She blushed.
“Wait, Mademoiselle; I will go back with you,” said the Cure kindly. He turned to Charley and held out his hand. “God be with you, Monsieur—Charles,” he said. “Come and see me soon.” Remembering that his brother had written that the man was a drunkard, his eyes had a look of pity. This was the man’s own secret and his. It was a way to the man’s heart; he would use it.
As the two went out of the door, the girl looked back. Charley was putting the surgeon’s letter into the fire, and did not see her; yet she blushed again.
CHAPTER XIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING AND WHAT HE FOUND
A week passed. Charley’s life was running in a tiny circle, but his mind was compassing large revolutions. The events of the last few days had cut deep. His life had been turned upside down. All his predispositions had been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank and routed, his mental postures flung into confusion. He had to start life again; but it could not be in the way of any previous travel of mind or body. The line of cleavage was sharp and wide, and the only connection with the past was in the long-reaching influence of evil habits, which crept from their coverts, now and again, to mock him as his old self had mocked life—to mock him and to tempt him. Through seven months of healthy life for his body, while brain and will were sleeping, the whole man had made long strides towards recreation. But with the renewal of will and mind the old weaknesses, roused by memory, began to emerge intermittently, as water rises from a spring. There was something terrible in this repetition of sensation—the law of habit answering to the machine-like throbbing of memory, as, a kaleidoscope turning, turning, its pictures pass a certain point at fixed intervals—an automatic recurrence. He found himself at times touching his lips with his tongue, and with this act came the dry throat, the hot eye, the restless hand feeling for a glass that eluded his fingers.
Twice in one week did this fever surge up in him, and it caught him in those moments when, exhausted by the struggle of his mind to adapt itself to the new conditions, his senses were delicately susceptible. Visions of Jolicoeur’s saloon came to his mind’s eye. With a singular separateness, a new-developed dual sense, he saw himself standing in the summer heat, looking over to the cool dark doorway of the saloon, and he caught again the smell of the fresh-drawn beer. He was conscious of watching himself do this and that, of seeing himself move here and there. He began to look upon Charley Steele as a man he had known—he, Charles Mallard, had known—while he had to suffer for what Charley Steele had done. Then, all at once, as he was thinking and dreaming and seeing, there would seize upon him the old appetite, coincident with the seizure of his brain by the old sense of cynicism at its worst—such a worst as had made him insult Jake Hough when the rough countryman was ready to take his part that wild night at the Cote Dorion.