But attention was not centred on himself, for Rosalie’s courage had set the parish talking. When the Notary stood on the steps of the saddler’s shop, and with fine rhetoric proposed a vote of admiration for the girl, the cheering could be heard inside the post-office, and it brought Mrs. Flynn outside.
“‘Tis for her, the darlin’—for Ma’m’selle Rosalie—they’re splittin’ their throats!” she said to Charley as he was making his way from the sick man’s room to the street door. “Did ye iver see such an eye an’ hand? That avil baste that’s killed two Injins already—an’ all the men o’ the place sneakin’ behind dures, an’ she walkin’ up cool as leaf in mornin’ dew, an’ quietin’ the divil’s own! Did ye iver see annything like it, sir—you that’s seen so much?”
“Madame, it is not touch of hand alone, or voice alone,” answered Charley.
“Shure, ‘tis somethin’ kin in baste an’ maid, you’re manin’ thin?”
“Quite so, Madame.”
“Simple like, an’ understandin’ what Noah understood in that ark av his—for talk to the bastes he must have, explainin’ what was for thim to do.”
“Like that, Madame.”
“Thrue for you, sir, ‘tis as you say. There’s language more than tongue of man can shpake. But listen, thin, to me”—her voice got lower—“for ‘tis not the furst time, a thing like that, the lady she is—granddaughter of a Seigneur, and descinded from nobility in France! ‘Tis not the furst time to be doin’ brave things. Just a shlip of a girl she was, three years ago, afther her mother died, an’ she was back from convint. A woman come to the parish an’ was took sick in the house of her brother—from France she was. Small-pox they said at furst. ‘Twas no small-pox, but plague, got upon the seas. Alone she was in the house—her brother left her alone, the black-hearted coward. The people wouldn’t go near the place. The Cure was away. Alone the woman was—poor soul! Who wint—who wint and cared for her? Who do ye think, sir?”
“Mademoiselle?”
“None other. ‘Go tell Mrs. Flynn,’ says she, ‘to care for my father till I come back,’ an’ away she wint to the house of plague. A week she stayed, an’ no one wint near her. Alone she was with the woman and the plague. ‘Lave her be,’ said the Cure when he come back; ‘‘tis for the love of God. God is with her—lave her be, and pray for her,’ says he. An’ he wint himself, but she would not let him in. ‘‘Tis my work,’ says she. ‘‘Tis God’s work for me to do,’ says she. ‘An’ the woman will live if ‘tis God’s will,’ says she. ‘There’s an agnus dei on her breast,’ says she. ‘Go an’ pray,’ says she. Pray the Cure did, an’ pray did we all, but the woman died of the plague. All alone did Rosalie draw her to the grave on a stone-boat down the lane, an’ over the hill, an’ into the churchyard. An’ buried her with her own hands at night, no one knowin’ till the mornin’, she did. So it was. An’ the burial over, she wint back an’ burned the house to the ground—sarve the villain right that lave the sick woman alone! An’ her own clothes she burned, an’ put on the clothes I brought her wid me own hand. An’ for that thing she did, the love o’ God in her heart, is it for Widdy Flynn or Cure or anny other to forgit? Shure the Cure was for iver broken-hearted, for that he was sick abed for days an’ could not go to the house when the woman died, an’ say to Rosalie, ‘Let me in for her last hour.’ But the word of Rosalie—shure ‘twas as good as the words of a praste, savin’ the Cure prisince wheriver he may be!”