Part 8

Tina abandoned herself utterly to the other's impassioned tenderness; and for a long time the two sat there, tightly clasped, silent, understanding.

Sabine Bob had no word of blame for the unhappy girl. Vaguely she knew that she ought to blame her; very vaguely she remembered that girls like this were bad girls; but that did not seem to make any difference. Instead of indignation she felt something very like humility and reverence.

"Yes, he must marry you," she said at last, very simply and gently.

"Oh, if he only would!" sobbed Tina.

"What!" cried Sabine, in amazement.

"He says such cruel things to me," confessed the girl. "He knows, oh, he does know I never loved any man but himself; never, never any other man, nor ever will!"

Sabine's eyes opened upon new vistas of man's perfidiousness. And yet, in spite of everything, how one could love them! She felt an immense compassion toward this poor girl who had loved not wisely but so all-givingly.

"I will go to him," she said, resolutely. "I will tell him he must marry you; and I will say that if he does not, I will tell every person in Petit Espoir what a wicked thing he has done."

Tina leaped to her feet in terror. "Oh, no, no!" she pleaded. "No one must know."

Sabine understood. Not the present only, but the future must be thought of.

"And if he was forced like that to marry me, he would hate me," pursued the girl, who saw things with the pitiless clear foresight that desperation gives. "He must marry me from his own choice. Oh, if I could only make him choose; but to-night he said NO! and went away, very angry. I'm afraid he will never come back again."

"Yes, he will," said Sabine Bob. There was a grim smile on her lips; and she squared her shoulders as if to give herself courage for some dreaded ordeal. "There is a way."

But to the startled, eager question in the other's eyes, she vouchsafed no answer. She came to her and put her hands firmly on her shoulders.

"Tina, will you promise not to believe anything you hear them say about me? Will you promise to keep on loving me just the same?"

The girl clung to her. "Oh, yes, yes," she promised. "Always!" and then, in a shy whisper, she added: "And some day--I will not be the only one to love you."

Sabine Bob gave her a quick, almost violent kiss, and went out, not stopping for even a word of good-night. And the next day she put her plan into execution. There was a perfectly relentless logic about Sabine Bob. She saw a thing to do; and she went and did it.

As soon as her dinner dishes were washed and put away, she donned her old brown coat and the little yellow-black hat that had served her winter and summer from time immemorial, and proceeded to make a dozen calls on her friends, up and down the street. Wherever she went she talked, volubly, feverishly. She railed; she threatened; she vociferated; and the object of her vociferations was Thomas Ned. He had promised to marry her; and he had deserted her; and she would have the law on him! Marry her he must, now, whether he would or no.

"See that word?" she demanded, displaying her sheaf of compromising post-cards. "That word is _wife_; and the man who calls me wife must stick to it. I am not a woman to be made a fool of!"

So she stormed away, from house to house. Her friends tried to pacify her; but the more they tried, the more venom she put into her threats. And soon the news spread through the whole town. Nothing else was talked of.

"She's crazy," people said. "But she can make trouble for him, if she wants to, no doubt about it."

Sabine laughed grimly to herself. She was going to succeed. The scheme would work. She knew the kind of man Thomas Ned was: full of shifts. He had proved that already. He would never face a thing squarely. He would look for a way out.

She was right. It was only ten days later, at high mass, that the success of her strategy was tangibly proved. At the usual point in the service for such announcements, just before the sermon, Father Beauclerc, standing in the pulpit, called the banns for Thomas Boudrot, of Petit Espoir, North, and Tina Mélanie Brigitte Lejeune, of the Ponds.

The announcement caused a sensation. An audible murmur of amazement, not to say consternation, went up from all quarters of the edifice, floor and galleries; even the altar boys exchanged whispers with one another; and there was a great stretching of necks in the direction of Sabine Bob, who sat there in her uncushioned pew, very straight and very red, with set lips, while her rough old fingers played nervously with the rosary in her lap.

This was her victory! She had never felt the ugliness of her fifty years so cruelly before. A bony, ridiculous old maid, making a fool of herself in public! That was the sum of it! And all her life she had been so careful, so jealously careful, not to do anything that might cause her to be laughed at!

She could hear some of the whispers that were being exchanged in neighboring pews. "Poor old thing!" people were saying. "But how could she expect anybody would want to marry her at her age!"

A trembling like ague seized her, and she felt suddenly very cold and very very weak. She shut her eyes, for things were beginning to flicker and whirl; and when she opened them again, they were caught and held by the picture above the high altar.

It was the Mother. The Mother and the Little One. He lay in her arms and smiled.

The tears gushed up in Sabine Bob's eyes, and a smile of wonderful tenderness and peace broke over the harsh lines of her face and transfigured it, just for one instant. It was a victory; it _was_ a victory; though nobody knew it but herself; just herself, and one other, and--perhaps--

Sabine still gazed at the picture, poor old Sabine Bob in her brown coat and faded little yellow-black hat: and the Eternal Mother returned the gaze of the Eternal Mother, smiling; and it didn't matter very much after that--how could it?--what people might think or say in Petit Espoir.

Once more, that afternoon, as she slashed the suds over the dishes, Sabine Bob was singing. You could hear her way down there on the street, so buoyant and so merry was her voice:

_Long live the Canadian maid; Fly, fly, oh fly, my heart!_