Ringfield: A Novel
Produced by Al Haines
RINGFIELD
A NOVEL
BY
S. F. HARRISON,
"SERANUS"
[Transcriber's note: Author's full name is Susie Frances Harrison]
AUTHOR OF "THE FOREST OF BOURG-MARIE," "PINE, ROSE AND FLEURE DE LIS," "CROWDED OUT, AND OTHER SKETCHES," "THE CANADIAN BIRTHDAY BOOK," ETC.
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY, LIMITED
1914
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE HOLY WATERS
CHAPTER II
THE WHITE PEACOCK
CHAPTER III
THE MAN IN THE CHAIR
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUSE OF CLAIRVILLE
CHAPTER V
THE UNSEEN HAND
CHAPTER VI
THE MISSIONARY
CHAPTER VII
THE OXFORD MAN
CHAPTER VIII
THE "PIC"
CHAPTER IX
PAULINE
CHAPTER X
THE PICNIC
CHAPTER XI
"ANGEEL"
CHAPTER XII
THE HEART OF POUSSETTE
CHAPTER XIII
A SICK SEIGNEUR
CHAPTER XIV
FATHER RIELLE
CHAPTER XV
THE STORM
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE BARN
CHAPTER XVII
REVELRY BY NIGHT
CHAPTER XVIII
A CONCERT DE LUXE
CHAPTER XIX
REHABILITATION
CHAPTER XX
A RURAL AUTOCRAT
CHAPTER XXI
THE NATURAL MAN
CHAPTER XXII
THE TROUSSEAU OF PAULINE
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SEIGNEUR PASSES
CHAPTER XXIV
RELAPSE
CHAPTER XXV
THE TROUSSEAU AGAIN
CHAPTER XXVI
THE GLISSADE
CHAPTER XXVII
THE CARPET BAG
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE HAVEN
CHAPTER XXIX
THE WILL OF GOD
CHAPTER XXX
THE QUEST OF HAPPINESS
CHAPTER I
THE HOLY WATERS
"...... the sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion."
In a country of cascades, a land of magnificent waterfalls, that watery hemisphere which holds Niagara and reveals to those who care to travel so far north the unhackneyed splendours of the Labrador, the noble fall of St. Ignace, though only second or third in size, must ever rank first in all that makes for majestic and perfect beauty.
It is not alone the wondrous sweep and curve of tumbling brown water that descends by three horseshoe ledges to a swirl of sparkling spray. It is not alone the great volume of the dark river above sent over, thrust down, nor the height from which the olive is hurled to the white below. So, too, plunge and sweep other falls--the Grand Loup in Terrebonne, the Petit Loup in Joliette, the Pleureuse, the Grand Lorette, the Tuque, the big and little Shawenigan, the half-dozen or so "Chaudière," the Montmorenci or La Vache, but none of these can equal the St. Ignace in point of dignified, unspoilt approach and picturesque surroundings. For a mile above the cataract the river runs, an inky ribbon, between banks of amazing solitariness; no clearing is there, no sign of human habitation, hardly any vestige of animal life. The trees stand thick along the edges, are thick towards the high rocky table-land that lies on either side; it is, in short, a river flowing through a forest. And when it drops, it drops to meet the same impassable wooded banks; it is now a cataract in a forest. Rocks are turbulently heaped upon one hand; upon the other, the three great ledges meet the shock of the descending waters and define the leap by boldly curved thick masses of olive, topaz, and greenish jelly. Where it is brown, it is nearest the rocky bed; where olive, more water is going over; and where green, it is so solid that twice a yard measure alone will penetrate the reach of rock beneath. The white of its flowing spray is whiter than the summer cloud, and the dark green of the pines framing it, shows often black against the summer blue. Its voice--roar as of wind or steady thunder--calling always--has silenced other voices. Birds do not build, nor squirrels climb too near that deep reverberating note, although the blue heron, fearless, frequently stands in summer on the spray-washed rock and seems to listen. Below the filmy smoke of rainbowed arches there is quiet black water, with circles, oily, ominous, moving stealthily along, and below these--a quarter of a mile down--the rapids, swift, impetuous, flashing, ushering in the latter half of the St. Ignace, here at last the river of life and motion, bearing stout booms of great chained logs, with grassy clearings and little settlements at each side, curving into lilied bays, or breaking musically upon yellow beaches, a River of Life indeed, and no longer a river of Death and Negation!
For in the countryside, the _paroisse_ of Juchereau de St. Ignace, the upper part or inky ribbon of the river was frequently called by that gloomy name; a Saguenay in miniature, icy cold, black, solitary, silent, River of Death, who shall live in sight of your blackness? Who may sing aloud at his toil, whether he dig, or plant, or plough, or trap, or fish? Beautiful though the grand sweep and headlong rush of the fall, the people of the settlement avoid its sombre majesty and farms were none and smaller clearings few along the upper St. Ignace. A quarter of a mile back from the fall lay the village, holding a cluster of poor houses, a shop or two, a blacksmith's forge, a large and well-conducted summer hotel patronized for the fishing, a sawmill, depending for power on the Rivière Bois Clair, a brighter, gayer stream than the St. Ignace, and lastly a magnificent stone church capable of containing 1500 people, with a Presbytère attached and quarters for some Recollet brothers.
Such was and is still, doubtless, with a few modifications, the hamlet of St. Ignace, fair type of the primitive Lower Canadian settlement, dominated by the church, its twin spires recalling the towers of Notre Dame, its tin roof shining like silver, the abode of contented ignorance and pious conservatism, the home of those who are best described as a patient peasantry earning a monotonous but steady livelihood, far removed from all understanding of society or the State as a whole. With each other, with Nature, and with the Church they had to do--and thought it enough to keep the peace with all three.
Yet change was in the air, destiny or fate inevitable. The moving on process or progressive spirit was about to infect the obscure, remote, ignorant, contented little _paroisse_ of Juchereau de St. Ignace when one April morning there stood upon the edge of rock nearest the great fall, still partly frozen into stiff angular masses, two men of entirely different aspects, tastes, and habits, yet both strongly agreed upon one essential point, the importance of religion, and, more particularly, the kind of religion practised and set forth by the Methodist Church.
The elder was Monsieur Amable Poussette, owner of the sawmill at Bois Clair and proprietor of the summer hotel, a French Canadian by birth and descent and in appearance, but in clothes, opinions, and religious belief a curious medley of American and Canadian standards. Notwithstanding the variety of his occupations, one of which was supposed to debar him from joining the Methodist Church, he was an ardent member of that community. The younger man was a Methodist preacher, working as yet on the missionary circuit, and to him M. Poussette was holding forth with round black eyes rolling at the landscape and with gestures inimitably French.
"See, now," he was saying, standing perilously near the wet edge of rock, "there is no difficult thing! I own the ground. I give the money. I have it to give. My friend Romeo Desnoyers, of Three Rivers, he shall come at this place, at this point, and build the church. It will be for a great convenience, a great success. My guests, they will attend. I myself will see to that. I shall drive them over."
The younger man smiled faintly. It was necessary at times to restrain M. Poussette. He pulled him back now, but gently, from the slippery rock.
"In the summer--yes, of course, I see that. I see that it is needed then. The rest of the year----"
"The rest of the year! Bigosh--_excusez_,--I tell you, it is needed _all_ the year round. Look at that big ugly barn full of bad pictures--yes, sir, I went to Mass regular, when I was a boy--_petit garçon_--well, every one was the same, sure. But now, ah!--excuse _me_. A seegar? Yes? You will thry one?"
The minister declined, but M. Poussette lit one of a large and overfragrant variety, while he frowned at the fall, rolled his large eyes around again and finally led the way through thick underbrush and across fallen logs to the deeply-rutted highroad where a horse and _caleche_ awaited them. The prospective church builder took a long last look and then said:--
"And you--you shall preach the first sermon. How long does it take to build nice church, nice pretty Methodist church--not like that big stone barn I used to go to Mass in?"
At this the Reverend Joshua Ringfield did more than smile. He threw back his fine head and laughed heartily.
"Oh--Poussette!" he cried; "you're the funniest fellow, the funniest man alive! Ask somebody else how long it takes to build any kind of church--how should I know! But if you're in earnest, and I admire you for it if you are, and I wish there were more like you, I'll come and do the preaching with pleasure. You'll require a bigger man than I am, I'm afraid though."
"No, no," pronounced Poussette with fierce and friendly emphasis, driving away at a reckless pace. "See now, this is it. This is my affair. It will be my church, and my friend, Mister Romeo Desnoyers of Three Rivers, shall build it. Bigosh--_excusez_; I'll have only friends in it; you're my friend, I am good Methodist since I hear you preach, and Goddam,--well, _excusez_ again, sir, I'll have you and no other. We'll say July, and you will have one, two, three months to get the sermon ready. Get on there, _m'rch donc, animal-l-l_! I am too long away from my business."
Ringfield, who was right in supposing that his friend and patron had tasted of the "viskey blanc" before starting, refrained from any criticism of the scheme, promising his services merely, should they be required, and that evening saw him depart for the west to attend a course of lectures at a theological college. Before many hours the tumbling, foaming Fall, the lonely river, the Bois Clair settlement and Poussette were almost forgotten. A camping trip with friendly Ontarians succeeded the lectures, then ensued a fortnight of hard reading and preparation for the essay or thesis which his Church demanded from him as token of his standing and progress, he being as yet a probationer, and thus the summer passed by until on the 6th of August a letter reached him from the Lower Province bidding him attend at the opening services of the new Methodist church recently built at St. Ignace through the enterprise and liberality of M. Amable Poussette. The letter, in Canadian French, had an English postscript; "I pay all expense. Me, Amable Poussette, of Juchereau de St. Ignace."
Ringfield put the letter away with a frown. He was busy, in demand, ambitious. Born in one of the Maritime Provinces, he owed all he was to Ontario, and now--Ontario claimed him. Return he might some day to the rapid rivers, the lonely hills, the great forests and the remote villages, but not now. Now, just as he was beginning to fill his place, to feel his power, to live and work, and above all preach, a man among men, a man for men, he resented any interruption in his plan of existence, in his scheme of self-consecration. The big bustling cities of Western Ontario and of the State of Ohio, where some of his holidays had been spent, were very far away from the hamlet of Juchereau de St. Ignace, a mere handful of souls--yes, Souls, and here Ringfield stopped and reconsidered. After all, there was his word, and Poussette, though rough, was not a bad fellow. It would take, say, three or four days out of his last week of recreation, but still, he was engaged, earnestly and sincerely engaged in the work of bringing souls to Christ, and, no small thing, his expenses would be paid. The better counsel, as it seemed, prevailed, and he went east the next night.
Meanwhile the energetic Poussette, mill owner of Bois Clair, rich man and patron of the countryside, had put his plan into execution, and in the space of three months a tract of rocky ground on the north side of the Fall had been cleared and a neat, convenient church erected from the native woods, furnished with benches, a table and chair for the minister, and a harmonium. St. Ignace was quite excited, for the thing seemed pure imbecility to the French, who were to a man true Catholics, but Poussette stoutly asserted his belief that before long conversions to Methodism would be numerous and for the present there were his "guests," a couple of families from Beaulac, the foreman of the mill--_voilà un congrégation très distingué_! Much, too, would depend upon the choice of a preacher, and Poussette was cherishing the hope that some inducement might be held out to retain Ringfield in their midst.
Of this the younger man was at first ignorant. Impatience at detention in such a place warred with strict conceptions of duty, yet his excellent training in subservience to his Church and a ready gift of oratory assisted him in a decision to do the best he could for the new _paroisse_, heretofore so distinctively Catholic, of Juchereau de St. Ignace. That M. Poussette's congregation was more _distingué_ than numerous did not for a moment affect the preacher on the warm, rainy Sunday when he stood within sound of the great Fall and read from the forty-seventh chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel. Romeo Desnoyers, thin, keen, professional looking; Poussette and his wife, the latter an anaemic, slightly demented person who spoke no English; Mr. Patrick Maccartie, foreman of the mill, who likewise was ignorant of English, despite his name, and the Methodist contingent from Beaulac were planted along the front seats at markedly wide intervals, for Poussette had erected his church on a most generous scale. Summer visitors of all denominations trickled in out of the moist forest arcades, so that when Ringfield rose to conduct the service he was facing seventy or eighty people, far more than he or the architect had expected to see, although doubtless inferior in numbers to the great throngs existing in the imagination of M. Poussette.
The opening hymn and prayer over, the young man took his Bible and read in natural colloquial tones but with considerable emphasis as follows:--
"Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the fore-front of the house stood towards the east, and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar".
A slight pause was here made by the reader and caused a rustling in the porch to be the more distinctly heard, as a late comer, a lady, evidently afraid of the weather because of cloak and veil, moved to a seat near the door and sat down. The reader, seeing only a female figure merge itself in the congregation, resumed.
"Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward, and led me about the way without unto the outer gate by the way that looketh eastward; and behold, there ran out waters on the right side."
Again there was that slight pause, and again, too, a rustling as of silken feminine garments. Ringfield caught Poussette's eye, but it was somewhat vacant; evidently the analogy of the picture was lost upon him.
"And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins. Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a River that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a River that could not be passed over. And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river."
With the climactic force and aptness of the description his voice had grown louder till it completely filled the building. His fine head erect, his steady passionless blue-gray eyes fastened more on the dark sopping cedars outside the window than upon the people in front, his large but as yet undeveloped frame denoting strength, vigour, rude health--all testified to his unsullied manhood, to the perfection of sane mind in pure body which it was his highest joy and duty to retain.
There is an asceticism among Methodists of his class which does not differ greatly from that enforced by other religious orders. Thus Ringfield, handsome, healthy, with pulsing vitality, active senses and strong magnetic personality, was consecrated to preaching and to what was called "leading souls to Christ" as much as any severe, wedded-to-silence, befrocked and tonsured priest. And over and beyond this self-consecration there was the pleasure involved in fulfilling his mission, and herein perhaps he differed from the conventional and perfunctory Roman. The sound of his own voice, the knowledge that he was bound to interest, to convince, even to convert, the very attitude in which he stood, with chest inflated, head thrown back, hand uplifted, all these things delighted him, communicated to his lively sentient side many delightful and varying sensations. As the _prima donna_ among women so is the popular preacher among men.
"Now, when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other. Then said he unto me, ... everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, ... And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it ... they shall be a place to spread forth nets: their fish shall be according to their kinds, exceeding many.... And by the river, upon the bank ... shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaves shall not fade, ... because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary; and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for a medicine."
This concluded the customary reading of a portion of Scripture, but when the second hymn had been sung and the preacher began his sermon he asked the congregation to let their minds revert for a moment to that Vision of the Holy Waters which he was about to take as a text. Yet, although throughout the sometimes flowery, sometimes didactic, but always eloquent address which followed, more than one present looked for a reference to the landscape outside, so markedly similar to that pictured by the prophet, nothing of the kind occurred. The four thousand years of religious growth, the spread of Gospel knowledge and counsel, the healing qualities of the Stream of Salvation flowing down the ages through a dark world of sin and affliction, the medicine for the soul of man and the spiritual food for his spiritual nature--these were the thoughts so warmly sketched and the lessons so skilfully drawn from the passage in question.
At the conclusion of the service, Ringfield was moving out quietly behind the others, with that sense of slight collapse upon him which frequently follows oratorical efforts, when Poussette and the architect, Desnoyers, turned back and shook hands with him.
Madame Poussette, standing irresolutely near the door, weak, vacant-eyed, badly dressed, was staring at another woman, the veiled and cloaked figure who had rustled in during the reading of Scripture, but the veil was lifted now and the cloak hanging over her arm. The face and form were undoubtedly those of a most attractive, youthful and well-dressed person, in fine, a lady, and Ringfield at once recollected her presence in the congregation. So mutual was their recognition, that, accustomed to being sought in this manner, he was about to inquire if she wished to speak with him, when Poussette came between them, taking his wife's arm, and the opportunity was lost. In a few moments they were driving along the road to Bois Clair, and the young minister, looking back, could discern no trace of the lady. So little did he connect her with the remote wildness of the place, so different did she appear even in a moment's glimpse from the natives and visitors alike, who had made up the morning assembly, that he did not ask M. Poussette for any information. As for the latter, no achievement had ever put him into such good humour with himself as the building of the new church; and the Sunday dinner at which M. Romeo Desnoyers and the Rev. Joshua Ringfield were guests of honour, was eaten with the utmost relish and hilarity. Cabbage soup, the French Canadian staple; young Beauport ducks, dressed plentifully with onions; deep pies in earthern bowls containing jointed chickens and liver cut in shapes; apples and pears baked in the oven with wine and cream; good butter, better bread, and indifferent ice cream, _crême d'office_, made up one of the characteristic meals for which "Poussette's" was famous, and it need not detract from Ringfield's high mental capacities to state that having partaken of this typical and satisfying fare, he was compelled, when he could escape the importunities of his French friends, to walk away by himself along the muddy highroad for the benefit of his health.
CHAPTER II
THE WHITE PEACOCK
"Nor shall the aerial powers
Dissolve that beauty--destined to endure
White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure,
Thro' all vicissitudes."
Rocky slabs and mounds of Laurentian gneiss, forest trees and a young wood interspersed with mats of juniper constituted the chief scenic attraction in the vicinity of the Fall, so that it might truly be said, all roads at St. Ignace lead to the Fall--it was so much more directly beautiful. But Ringfield from choice walked away from the river and struck inland by a miry sloppy path which was nevertheless beautiful too, bordered by splendid ferns, mossy trunks upholding miniature pines in their rich brown crevices, plants of aromatic teaberry, and at intervals shallow golden pools where the wild white arum bloomed alongside the pinkish purple of other water flowers.
His thoughts were not, however, upon all the lovely detail at his feet, for just at present he found himself more interesting than the landscape. A very unusual thing had occurred. Poussette, during the drive home, had anticipated a more serious proposal on the morrow by asking him briefly and to the point whether he would remain in the Province, at St. Ignace in fact, and become pastor of the new church. The small stipend which in all probability the Methodist Church would cheerfully pay was to be augmented by Poussette's own gift. Not content with presenting his favourite denomination with a building out of debt and ready for use, he proposed also to equip it with a pastor after his own heart, for he combined thoroughness with an impulsive nature in a manner peculiar to himself. This Poussette was indeed a character, an original. Very fat and with every indication of becoming fatter still, fond of tweed suits and white waistcoats, and quick at picking up English in a locality where the tongue was not prominent, he owed much of his progressive spirit to the teachings of a certain French Canadian named Magloire le Caron, born in the county of Yamachiche but latterly an American citizen. This Magloire or Murray Carson, as he was known in Topeka, Kansas, had numbered the young Poussette among his hearers some ten years before when on tour in his native country in the interests of a Socialistic order. The exodus of French Canadians to the neighbouring "States" is frequently followed by a change of name, so that, M. Lapierre or St. Pierre becomes Mr. Stone, M. Dupont Mr. Bridge, M. Leblanc Mr. White, M. Lenoir Mr. Black, Leroy, King, and so on.
Poussette was, to his credit, among those who gauged Le Caron's sentiments fairly correctly, and he had no wish either to leave his country or to change his name. Succeed he would--and did; make money above all, but make it just as well in St. Ignace or Bois Clair as in the States; learn English but not forget French, both were necessary; become "beeg man," "reech man," but marry and live where his name would be carried down most easily and quickly. As for his change of religion, it was a good evening's entertainment to "seet roun," in the bar and listen to Poussette's illustrated lecture entitled "How I became a Methodist"; the illustrations being repeated sips of whisky and water, imitations of different priests and anecdotes of indifferent preachers.
Most of this Ringfield was familiar with, but while Poussette as a sort of accepted "character," a chartered entertainer, was one thing, Poussette as a patron, importunate, slightly quarrelsome, and self-willed, was another. For a few months the arrangement might work well enough, but for the entire winter--he thought of the cold, of the empty church at service time, of the great snowdrifts lasting for weeks and weeks, and more than this too, he thought of his plans for self-improvement, the lectures he would miss, the professors and learned men he would not meet, the companionship of other students he must perforce renounce.
Reflections of this kind were continuing to occupy him when he suddenly saw through the trees on the right hand the gleam of open water. He had reached Five Mile Lake or Lac Calvaire, a spot he had heard of in connexion with fabulous catches of fish, and on the opposite side of the shining water he also discerned the roof of a large house, painted red, and somewhat unusual in shape. That is, unusual in the eyes of the person who saw it, for the steep, sloping roof, the pointed windows, the stone walls, and painted doors, are everyday objects in French Canada. The house at Lac Calvaire was a type of the superior farm-house built in the eighteenth century by thrifty and skilful fur-traders, manufacturers and lesser seigneurs, differing rather in appearance and construction from the larger chateaux or manoirs, a few of which at one time existed along the banks of the St. Laurent, but of which now only three well-preserved examples survive. As the size of the original grants of land or seigneuries varied, some eighteen, twenty and twenty-five miles long by six, eight, twelve miles wide, others less, certainly few larger, so the lesser properties, accounts of which are rare among works dealing with the state of society at the time, varied also. While numerous collections of facts pertaining to the original fiefs or seigneuries (usually called _cadastres_) exist, it is not so common to meet with similar attempts to define and describe the exact position of others in the early colony beside the seigneurs. The large land-holder figures prominently in colonial documents, but the rise of the trader, the merchant, the notary, the teacher, the journalist, is difficult to follow. Very often the seigneur was also the merchant; to be _grand marchand de Canada_ in the new colony signified solid pecuniary success.
As far back as the year 1682 the Sieur de la Chinay _et autres marchands de Canada_ equipped, it is presumed at their own expense, several ships, and proceeded to Port Nelson, raiding and burning the Hudson Bay Post, and carrying away sixteen subjects of His Majesty. The Sieur de Caen gave his name to the Society of Merchants still farther back, in 1627. Henry, in 1598, and Francis, in 1540, each granted letters patent and edicts confirming certain Court favourites and nobles in possession of the great fur-bearing districts of Hochelaga, Terres Neuves, and also of "_La Baye du Nord de Canada oui a été depuis appelle Hudson est comprise_". It is plain that commerce had as much to do with early colonization as the love of conquest, ecclesiastical ambition, or the desire on the part of jaded adventurers and needy nobles for pastures new. From the Sieur de Roberval to the merchant princes of Montreal is an unbroken line of resolute men of business enterprise, bearing in mind only that what the French began, the English, or rather the Scotch, "lifted" with increasing vigour. In 1677 royal permission was given to open mines in Canada in favour of the Sieur de Lagny. The "Compagnie du Castor de Canada," carried on what even at this day would be regarded as an immense trade in beaver skins. "La Manon," wrecked about 1700, carried beaver skins amounting to 107,000,587 livres. The Sieur Guigne, known as the Farmer of the Western Domain, paid at one time the sum of 75,000 livres per annum on account of beavers.
In lesser degree the same was true of moose skins and of the finer furs for apparel and ornament, and thus for many a long year honourable names and well-descended families were found among those who bought and sold and quarrelled and went to law in the spacious marketplace of Le Bas Canada, with the wide and only partially known or understood Atlantic rolling between them and the final court of appeal--His Most Christian _Matie_ in France.
Nothing, it is certain, of this was in Ringfield's mind as he looked at the steep roof and the stone walls of the house at Lac Calvaire. The dwelling, like the country surrounding it, held little attraction, still less what is called romance or glamour for him, for his was not a romantic nature. Yet neither was he dull, and therefore the aspect of the house moved him, out of curiosity alone, to skirt the banks of the reed-fringed lake and find a nearer view of what struck him as unusual. This was not difficult, as the lake was a short oval in shape, and before he walked five or six hundred yards he came to the low stone wall or fence which appeared to completely surround the manor and over which he soon was desultorily leaning. The garden grew in front of him somewhat fantastically, with irregular beds marked out with white stones, and directly facing him was a badly hewn, clumsily scooped fountain half filled with weeds and dirty water. Behind the house were trim rows of dark poplars, and there appeared to be a long chain of barns and other farm buildings extending into the very heart of a dense plantation of pine. As he looked, still leaning on the low wall, the place kindled into life and activity. Pigeons came from some point near and settled on the rim of the fountain. From a door at the side issued an old woman with a dish in her hand, followed by a couple of dogs and four cats. These all disappeared among the barns. A minute later a wagon came lazily along the road, driven by a dark-eyed, habitant-hatted man who turned in at a gate without taking much notice of the loiterer. Two plump, dark-eyed servant girls and a little boy came round the corner of the largest barn; they were apparently dressed in their best, carried prayer-books, and were evidently on their way to evening service at St. Ignace, in the handsome church designated by the heretic Poussette as a "big stone barn full of bad pictures". Finally there emerged upon the scene, proceeding in a deliberate, dainty, mincing manner along the garden walk, now rapidly drying in a burst of fierce August sunshine, the most wonderful, the most imposing, yet the most exquisite and delicate object Ringfield's eyes had ever beheld. If a moment before he had thought of retracing his steps and turning away from a house too full of people on a hot Sunday afternoon to permit of further lingering in its vicinity, now, he found it impossible to move, fascinated by the beauty of the rare creature slowly coming towards him. For this was a white peacock, tempted by the sudden radiance out to take the air. It paused for an instant as if to consider the effect and stood, displaying a colossal fan of snowy feathers, tipped with glittering frost-like filaments. Perhaps it intuitively knew that Ringfield had never seen one of its kind before. It continued to stand, while he continued to gaze, and two or three times it shook that resplendent wheel of shining downy plumes, trembling in each sensitive fibre with pride and glorification in its beauty. With each shake, there fell upon the ear the tinkle as of some faint and far-distant fairy bell; it was the friction of the spear-shaped sparkling tips as they met in air.
Ringfield thought it the whitest thing he had ever seen. It was like snow, or sugar, so finely spun and glistening. Then its air of arrogance captivated him--the creature was so fully aware of its charms. He spoke to it and the bird came on nonchalantly; then gracefully executed a wide turn, carrying that shining palpitating tail with it and walked back to the house. At the same moment he old woman with the dish reappeared and commenced driving the bird before her.
"O don't do that!" exclaimed Ringfield, forgetting that probably she knew no English. "The rain is over for a while. Let it have its walk. I've never seen one like it before."
The old woman was smiling as if to encourage him, but he saw directly that she did not understand him. He was answered however, and by a voice from the doorway. The lady he had seen that morning at church was addressing him. Laughing lightly, she came out to the garden and Ringfield advanced to meet her. Thus they had the bird between them.
"I am speaking to the Reverend Mr. Ringfield?" said she pleasantly, and the young man was reassured. This new acquaintance, whether _châtelaine_ of the curious house or stranger, spoke excellent English.
"I saw you in church this morning," responded he. So much of a mutual introduction was easy and necessary; after that, with a dignified withdrawal of the peacock, conversation naturally turned to the subject of the morning service.
"I do not think I can ask you inside," she said presently, "for like many old houses, particularly those built of stone, ours is cold in winter and hot or rather close in summer. We might walk toward the poplar grove there, I should so like to speak to you about that sermon."
Ringfield assented with a pleased brightness.
"And what are your conclusions as to the sermon?" he said, when they were seated in an old and crumbling arbour looking upon the lake. "I am afraid I did not give myself quite enough time on this important occasion. Preparation is everything."
"I do not allude exactly to the sermon, not the devotional part of it. Sermons are not much in my line. I meant rather the reading you gave, that wonderful description of the river, the fall, the waters issuing from under the sanctuary--you see I have remembered the words--the trees for medicine and healing, even the fish,--why I never thought there could be anything like that in the Bible! You chose it purposely, of course?" The young man did not reply for an instant. A hint of flippancy in the speech of his companion seemed to create a barrier between them.
"Purposely! Well, yes, I suppose I did. Purpose, intention, design, must, should enter into all earnest preaching, and whatever may be the faults of mine I endeavour at least to be that, to be earnest. But I am glad you were struck with the parallel; not many in that congregation would be at all likely to."
"You might have dwelt more upon that parallel in the sermon. I expected you would."
"Well, no, there are canons of good taste, good form, as the world puts it, in preaching as in other matters. It was sufficient to indicate the parallel; people could then look up chapter and verse for themselves. As no doubt you have done."
"Quite impossible. I do not possess a Bible."
Ringfield turned a reproachful eye upon her.
"We are Catholics, you see, or supposed to be. I have a 'Key of Heaven' and five other devotional works. But I never read them."
The other was silent. Looking for the first time with serious interest at the lady whose ease of manner and cultured speech were remarkable for the place, he perceived that in a moment she had revealed much. How few people, how few women in particular, would display a spirit of utter frankness towards a stranger on so important a topic as religious belief! And how quick she had been to appreciate the literary side at least of his quotations from Ezekiel! What more was striking or unusual about her he could not then take time to consider, for people so recently complete strangers cannot, it is conceded, discuss each other or a situation as they may after several days or weeks of intimacy. He was conscious of feeling that in a certain sense he had met with as clever a brain as his own and with some one in whose personal history or life story there was an element of romance, of the unexpected, the unconventional, absolutely foreign to his own experience of life. He therefore hastened to change the subject.
"It may be that you have heard. If not, I may tell you that Mr. Poussette has offered me the new church at St. Ignace. I took this long walk out here to-day to think it over. I--well, frankly, I hardly know what to say."
"In your profession you are not supposed to consult your own wishes, but rather the general good. Is not that the case?"
Ringfield smiled, but also shot a look at his companion.
"I suppose I may put it that I have had a 'call'. A call to the new, flourishing and highly attractive 'parish,' as our friends the Anglicans call it, I should say, the 'mission,' of St. Ignace. I am not speaking satirically, I might do worse."
"You are considering it, now, this afternoon?"
He paused for a mere fraction of a moment. "I was."
"In the meantime, you have another service this evening and I am detaining you here when you should be on your way back to the Fall and the village."
It was true. Ringfield was forgetting the time.
"Had it not been for the bird--" he began, and from that point the conversation, at one time strongly personal and introspective, became ordinary. Ringfield closed the gate behind him, lifted his hat and turned back along the road without having ascertained the name of the lady or her condition in life. The service hour arrived, so did the small but enthusiastic congregation. The rain had entirely ceased and the air was perceptibly cooler. The preacher had prepared a sermon of more florid style than the one delivered in the morning, and he appeared to have the absorbed attention of those who understood the language, while the French contingent listened respectfully. The passage of Scripture to be read aloud had been chosen since the morning, since the afternoon walk in fact, but there was no one present from the house at Lac Calvaire to hear and understand part of the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, beginning with the verse, "By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?" and ending with the thirteenth verse of the succeeding chapter, "Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?"
CHAPTER III
THE MAN IN THE CHAIR
"From out the crumbling ruins of fallen pride
And chambers of transgression, now forlorn."
The house at Lac Calvaire was, as stated, a fair specimen of the dwellings erected in the first half of the eighteenth century by those Canadians who, living frugally though comfortably, felt that affection for the soil, for the natural features of the wild but picturesque country, even for its severe and strenuous climate, which in many cases prompted them to make homes and found families. In the year 1729, a Clairville, rich trader in furs and skins, built the house five miles from the majestic and lonely Fall. This Clairville was the grandson of a certain François Gaillard, body servant and faithful follower of the Sieur de Clairville--Antoine-Louis-Onesime--who came to New France in 1664. The nobleman in question led a truly chequered life in the gay garrisons of the new world, varied by a couple of voyages to the gayer Court he had left behind, but through all the reckless episodes of his long and stirring career, François was by his side, patient, adroit, silent when necessary, at other times a madcap for freak and fantasy. Faith of a gentleman--François Gaillard was everything his noble master should have been, and that master too often such as the poorest lackey might have been ashamed to be, yet--faith of a gentleman--De Clairville atoned for much ere he died. François, his foster-brother, received at his master's death a gift of land under the Crown to him and his heirs for ever, the name Gaillard to be abandoned for that of Clairville. In 1684 the Sieur de Clairville died; François survived him twenty years, leaving one son and two daughters. These became _Clairvilles_; there were no De Clairvilles. The son prospered, as did _his_ son, another François, who built the strong stone farm-house and planted the poplars and laid the foundation of a well-known name, respected and quoted far and near in the community. Both house and family seemed to bear charmed lives. Canada was lost to France and in that losing many fine manor-houses and farms were destroyed, but Clairville and Clairville Manor went untouched. For this, the peculiar situation of the house, so far back from the Fall, its existence almost undreamt of by English soldiery, ignorant of the country, was, of course, responsible. A Clairville went to France at the close of the Revolution, made himself useful and remained in some post under the Government. Another went up to Quebec, became a sound lawyer, and batonnier of his district. Both of these individuals, however, died unmarried, and the next owner of the manor neither distinguished himself nor contributed to the glory of his line. That glory, such as it was, for the ignoble François was the founder of it, gradually departed. The Clairvilles deteriorated, sold off large parcels of their land, married undesirable persons, till, in the present generation, the culmination of domestic ruin seemed probable. For the Clairville now inhabiting the manor was not only reduced in purse and delicate in health but suspiciously weak in intellect.
When Ringfield woke on the Monday following his inaugural service, the sun was shining brightly into his room at Poussette's, and it is a fact that in his mind he saw a picture of a dazzling fan of foamy white feathers waving proudly in that sunlight. It really was the bird and not the lady that intercepted other and more pertinent reflections having to do with his future movements. He loitered about all morning, fished, lunched with his guide, made a pencil sketch of the Fall, and then about three o'clock in the afternoon walked out to Lac Calvaire. He neared the house; at first he saw no one, it was the middle-day siesta. No peacock was visible, no lady. Then he saw a face at a window and it stared at him. Ringfield, taken by surprise, returned the stare. To the stare succeeded a weak smile, then a beckoning finger, then an insistent tapping. The window was closed, with a roughly crocheted curtain half-drawn back on a string. The young man had no cause to hesitate, for he knew nothing of what lay inside the house. He was also a clergyman, which means much. It means, if you rightly understand your office, that you must be always ready to go anywhere, to do anything, that may be of the smallest benefit to your fellow-man. It means, that because of that high office, there is nothing really beneath your attention, too insignificant for your study, and yet you are so far above the rest of mankind, the mere lay portion of the world, that, like a God in courage and in calm, you may indeed enter where Angel and Devil alike fear to tread. At least, that is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded and greasy but rather handsome theatrical-looking dressing-gown and seated in a worn arm-chair. As for the room itself, he suppressed an exclamation of mingled surprise and impatient remonstrance, for, although of large proportions and not badly lighted, it was so littered with books, papers, maps, and pamphlets, so overgrown with piles of dusty blue-books, reports, dictionaries and works of reference, thick and antiquated, thin and modern, local and foreign, standing on end, on tables, on the mantel-shelf, extending into the old-fashioned cupboards minus doors, taking up a ragged sofa, a couple of arm-chairs, and a dilapidated _armoire_, and even the greater portion of a bed, that almost every gleam of sunlight was obscured, and upon this warm damp August afternoon the air was heavy and close with a suggestion of staler odours still.
"I saw you yesterday," said the man in the chair, "from this window, but you did not see me, eh? You were greatly interested in the bird."
He paused, and a weak smile changed to a haughty air, accompanied by a flourish of the hand.
"It is without doubt rare, a great curiosity. But there have been white peacocks at Clairville a long time, many years, many years."
"Clairville! That is your name, the name of the young lady, the name of this place?"
"Of this house. Also the estate. This house is, or should be, the Manoir of the Clairvilles, of the _De_ Clairvilles. You are some kind of clergyman?"
"I am. I am a Methodist."
"Have you read much?"
Ringfield, looking around somewhat whimsically at so many books, on a pile of which he was obliged to sit, felt unusual ignorance. He was probably in the presence of some famous scholar.
"Not much. Not anything like what you must have read if you have even gone through a quarter of all these!"
"Ah!"
The strange man, savant, scientist, bibliophile, whatever he was, drew his dirty dressing-gown around him with another flourish of complacent self-admiration.
"I am--you are quite right, Mr. Clergyman--a great reader. I have read every book in this room two, three, many times over. You were--surprised--to see all this book, all this document, all this pamphlette--here, at this place, eh?"
Ringfield, as yet only partly guessing at the peculiarities of his host, assented politely.
"My name is Ringfield," he said, noting for the first time the strong broken accent of the other and his use of French idiom. "I am a Methodist minister, spending some time at St. Ignace, and yesterday I encountered a lady, who, I believe, lives here. At least, I----"
The other cut him short.
"Ringfield? That is your name? _Anneau, champ_--no the other way, Champanneau. We have not this name with us. Yet, I do not know, it may be a good name."
The young man was superior to the slighting tone because he belonged to the class which lives by work, and which has not traced or kept track of its genealogy. He was so far removed from aristocratic tendencies, ideas of caste, traditions of birth, that he scarcely apprehended the importance of such subjects in the mind of anyone.
"The English name, Champney," continued the man in the chair, "you know that--might derive from it, might derive. But I am not so well acquainted with the English names as with the French. You _comprenez pour quoi, sans doute_. I am derive--myself, from a great French name, a great family."
The satisfaction with which he repeated this oracular statement continued to amuse Ringfield, a son of the people, his friends of the people, but it did not amuse the third person who heard it, the lady who, advancing into the dark stuffy room, received a pleased glance from the minister and a half-fearful, half-defiant scowl from the man in the chair.
"Henry!" exclaimed she, with great volubility and a kind of fierce disgust, "how is this? What can you mean by so disobeying me? This is no place to bring strangers! Nor do I want strangers brought into any part of this house at any time of the day! It is suffocating here. Do you not find it very heavy, very close in here?" she added, to Ringfield, who had risen and slightly changed countenance as she pronounced the word "stranger".
He looked from the lady to the man in the chair in astonishment, for he saw the former in a new and painful light. So dark was the frown upon her usually serene countenance, so angry the light in her fine hazel eyes, so anxious and perturbed her entire being, that she appeared almost ugly. Not only so, but added to impatience and anger there seemed something like repugnance, disgust, directed at the miserable pedant who under the fires of womanly wrath blinked and smiled, but had no defence ready.
"It is altogether my fault that I am here," said Ringfield quietly; "I took another walk in this direction, hoping for a sight of the peacock."
"And you saw something else instead! Ah!--there is much I must explain to you, you who come among us not knowing, not understanding. You see only the outside. But I suppose I must tell you who we are. This is my brother, my only brother, in fact my only living relative, Henry Clairville. I am Miss--Mademoiselle Clairville."
Ringfield bowed to her and to the man in the chair.
"We are the last of what--of what it pleases him to call our Line. It is all most foolish, most absurd. But I cannot tell you here. Since chance has brought you our way again, and as you may take up your residence in the neighbourhood--have you decided yet?--I feel I must make some explanation of how you find us, my brother and myself. Can you row? or paddle?"
Her manner, gradually changing and growing easier every moment, made it easy for Ringfield, who answered her with a smile.
"Of course."
"I asked, because some clergymen are so useless in some directions while good enough in others."
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUSE OF CLAIRVILLE
"High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised."
The hall through which they passed was sufficiently dark to prevent the masculine eye of Ringfield noting that long and systematic neglect marked every inch of the wall, every foot of flooring, every window, door, stair, sill and sash. Nothing was clean, nothing was orderly, and as the books and papers contained in the invalid's room had overflowed into the halls, lying on the steps and propped up on chairs and in corners, the dirt and confusion was indescribable. Hideous wallpapers were peeling off the damp and cracking wall, tattered shreds showing, by the accumulation on their fly-specked yellow edges of thick dust, how long they had waved upon the close air of this uncared-for house. All the woodwork was rough and horrid to the touch by reason of the millions of similar fly-specks; had nothing ever been washed here? Cats were alarmingly abundant. Three lay about in the hall; four were stretched on the grass in front of the door, and Ringfield saw two more--so large and brown and with such huge tigers' heads, prowling under the trees, that he scarcely took them for cats. The chain of barns, farm-buildings and sheds was all in the same dilapidated, dirty condition, and it was hardly strange that the vision of that white loveliness--the peacock--which had tempted him in this direction, crossed his mind as they proceeded to the landing-place. And yet the Clairvilles were not without servants. Mademoiselle, having regained a measure of her wonted serenity, began to describe her retainers, proving that servants were almost as numerous as cats in that neighbourhood. The elderly woman, the man, the two girls and the boy, were all one family, and living "about" as their mistress carelessly put it, in the barns and out-buildings, divided the work among them. The woman's husband, Xavier Archambault, employed at the Fall as assistant to look after the bridge and dam, helped at odd moments in the business of the estate, thus making in all six servants, a rather large contingent for a dwindling concern; and Ringfield, listening to these wonders, could not fail to observe that their united wages must reach a high figure.
"Oh--they are not paid!" exclaimed mademoiselle, "at least, not in money. My brother, who is, as I was going to tell you, a person of stronger character than you might imagine, has never paid a cent of wages to anyone in his life. He has managed to infect all his work-people, and, indeed, many in the village, with his own belief that it is an honour to labour for him and his, he being a De Clairville and the highest in rank in this part of the country. Of course you, having lived in the West, and knowing so much of the world, must see how foolish this is, how it involves us--my brother and myself--in many unpleasant and difficult situations."
A note of challenge in her voice led Ringfield, who had taken off his coat and was paddling, to stop sharply and observe her.
"Pray be careful!" she cried in sudden alarm. "When I was at home all the time I could stand any kind of behaviour in a canoe, but lately I seem to be losing my nerve. I suppose you _must_ kneel?"
"Certainly. Much the easier, therefore the safer way."
"Therefore! All easy things--safe?"
He was clumsy at this kind of refined innuendo, and considered before replying.
"No, perhaps not. But I give you my word not to disturb the equilibrium again."
The lake, a basin of clear water, small as Lower Canadian lakes go, and framed with thick foliage reaching to the edge, was absolutely silent, absolutely deserted, on this warm afternoon. Ringfield found it almost too hot to talk, but his companion seemed to enjoy the unburdening of various confidences, and as she had such a willing listener she had every opportunity, of taking her own time, and of delivering herself in her own way, of a remarkable tale.
That, within two days of his enforced sojourn at St. Ignace, the young preacher found himself thus--floating on a silent desolate lake in one of the remotest parishes of Quebec, listening to a family history of mediaeval import from the lips of a woman, young too, cultivated, self-possessed to the degree of hauteur, whose Christian name was as yet unknown to him, was in itself remarkable.
Ringfield, ardent, gifted, good, inherited directness of aim, purity of ideals, and narrowness of vision, from the simple working stock from which he had sprung, and it would have been easy for a man of the world to foresee the limitations existing in such a nature. When mademoiselle therefore began the Clairville history by relating some circumstances in the flighty career of the Sieur De Clairville, hinting at certain deflections and ridiculing uncertain promises of reformation, of reparation--for even the seventeenth century had its cant--the matter was far from being either real or relevant to her listener. What had he to do with a bundle of old-world memoirs, even when edited and brought up to date by an interesting woman! What to him was the spotless character of the ignoble François, son of a butcher, created a Clairville for his plebeian virtues, or the lives of each succeeding descendant of François, growing always a little richer, a little more polished, till in time the wheel turned and the change came in the fortunes of the house which culminated in the present! All these were mere abstractions, dull excerpts from some period of remote and unfamiliar history, because that system which gave him his secular education did not include knowledge of his country from an historical standpoint.
Macaulay and Alison, Gibbon and Grote, Motley and Bancroft--but not yet Garneau or Parkman. The lady might have romanced indeed, with glib falseness gilding picturesque invention, and he would not have detected it.
As it was, the truth remained sufficiently high coloured. He listened, he apprehended, but he could not see that it mattered.
"So now," remarked mademoiselle, trailing her large firm white hand through the water and knitting her firm black brows still closer, "I have brought the story up to the appearance on the scene of my brother, whom you have met, no doubt pondered over, perhaps shrunk from."
"No, no!" cried Ringfield. "You mistake. I was conscious only of having no right to enter."
"Ah--I could see, I could see. Poor Henry! He is the victim of many delusions. One--that he is a great invalid and cannot leave his room, that room you saw him in to-day. Another--that we are properly De Clairvilles, but that we have somehow lost the prefix, the 'De,' in course of years, and that a Bill may have to pass in Parliament to permit us using it legally. There has been already in this antiquated province a case very similar to ours, but it was a genuine case, which ours is not. My brother owns the largest collection of old French and old French-Canadian memoirs and books in the country, I believe, and it may be that out of constant poring over them has come this ruling passion, this dominant idea, to prove himself a seigneur, and more, a noble, _grand seigneur de France_! Voilà! but I forget, Mr. Ringfield hardly speaks French, and I--hate the sound of it, only it crops out sometimes."
"But why--and you--how do _you_ speak such good English? I have been wondering over that much more than over the case of your brother."
Ringfield, as he asked the question, stopped paddling and sat down cautiously opposite his companion. Her dark brows clouded even more and the warm colouring of her face went white; she again resembled the fury who had lectured the unfortunate pedant in the arm-chair.
"I knew you would ask that. Every one does. I suppose it is to be expected. Well then, my mother was English and I was educated at a mixed school, ladies' school at Sorel, not a convent. I was quick at the language--_voilà_!"
"Perhaps it was rude in me to ask. I believe I am deficient in manners; my friends often tell me so. But you spoke such _good_ English; better far than mine."
"That would not be difficult. You have the accent strange to me, that of the West. Then I have studied for the stage, in fact, and now I suppose I shall frighten you altogether and make you upset the canoe when I tell you that I am _on_ the stage."
It only needed some such declaration to convince Ringfield that, still floating on this silent, desolate lake he was indeed removed from all his usual convictions, prejudices and preferences. What had he to do with the stage! To the Methodist of his day the Stage was deliberately ignored in the study of social conditions. It was too evil to be redeemed. Its case was hopeless. Then let it alone and let us pretend it does not exist. This in effect was his actual state of mind.
"I have never been to the theatre," he said simply. "They say that at some future day we, as Methodists, may have to take up the question of amusements and consider the theatre seriously. It may be that we shall have to face other facts--the craving in this age of people, especially our young people, for greater liberty of thought, and I suppose, corresponding liberty of action. But so far these questions have not come very much before me, and I must plead entire ignorance of all matters connected with the profession to which you belong."
Mademoiselle Clairville's brow was now completely serene; a laugh was on her lips and a smile in her eyes as she listened to the staid phrases of her new friend.
"You and your young people!" she cried. "How old are you yourself, pray? Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty--no, hardly twenty-seven. You may tell me your age quite frankly, for I will tell you mine. I am twenty-nine. Do you not think that I look much younger?"
He was in truth a good deal surprised, for to his age--twenty-six, as she had correctly guessed--twenty-nine seems old for a woman.
Before he could frame a clumsy allusion to her youthful appearance she had continued with a change of manner:--
"But sometimes I look older, yes, old enough. Tell me, you who preach your English sermons, so long, so much longer than our Catholic ones, about trees and rivers and _fish_--do you never preach too about men and women and their faults and vices and tempers? Ah! there, _Monsieur le p'tit curé_, you should know that I am a good subject for a sermon, I and my temper! For I have a temper. Oh, yes, indeed I have."
There being no instinct--at least not as yet developed--of gallantry in Ringfield's composition, he did not seek to weakly deny her self-imputed charge. Had he not already seen a proof of the truth of it in her treatment of Henry Clairville? Was there not even now a curious malicious gleam in her dark eye, a frown upon her forehead, a kind of puckered and contemptuous smile upon her lips? Handsome and probably clever, even good she might be, and yet remain--unamiable.
"I am afraid you have not had a happy life," said he, very gently, and the simplicity and kindness of his manner smote upon her stormy countenance, so that it melted and all the ugly hardness and latent shrewishness died away.
"I have not, I have not!" she cried. "You see my situation here, my surroundings. Henry, my poor unfortunate brother; the old house, which might be so comfortable, falling to pieces for lack of money to keep it up; these terrible people, the Archambaults, pretending to work, but living on me and eating up everything on the place; the village, with none in it to know or speak to that I care about; the lonely country all around, cold in winter, hot in summer; the conviction that Henry will get worse; the fear of--the fear of----." She stopped.
"The fear of what?" said Ringfield quietly. "You need have no fear whatever of anything. You are one of God's children. Perfect love casteth out fear. Dear Miss Clairville, so recently a stranger, but rapidly becoming so well known to me, never mind about sermons and conversions. Never mind about Catholic or Protestant, bond or free, English Church or Methodist. Just think of one thing. Just cling to one thought. You are in God's hands. He will not try you too far." Very impressively he repeated this, bending forward till he could look into her troubled eyes. "I believe, and you must believe too, that in His infinite goodness He will not try you too far."
A shiver passed over her frame. She lowered her eyes, her mouth twitched once or twice, then she remained silent and passive while Ringfield, thinking he had said enough, resumed his paddling. It was some minutes before conversation recommenced and then Mademoiselle Clairville requested him to return.
"Do not think," said she, "that I am offended at your preaching to me," and now a mild sadness had succeeded to her wilder mood, "but one of the servants is signalling to me from the shore; my brother probably is in need of me. You will come to see us, to see me again, and I shall hope to hear that you will remain at St. Ignace for the winter at least. Here is one patient of the soul, and we may soon find another."
"If it would make any difference to you,----" he began, still without any trace of innuendo or latent gallantry, but she interrupted him with some flashing out of former merriment:--
"How could it, when I am away nearly all the time or try to be? I am now, like you, considering an offer, and may say adieu to St. Ignace, the Fall, and Henry, any day. But even if I go, some fascination will draw me back. It always does."
As he left her at her own gate the face at the window was still blinking at them. Dimly the ardent young Methodist began to discern some contingencies in life of which he had never dreamed. And how admirably he had perjured himself in the interview! Had he not forgotten the particular sect to which he belonged? Had he not besought his hearer to forget whether she was Catholic or Protestant? Had he not, in short, for the first time in his ministerial experience, fulfilled the plain duty of a true Christian without stopping to think of ways and means and artifices? Looking back, he was amazed to remember how earnest he had been and how sudden but genuine was his sympathy with this lonely woman. Apprehensive for her safety and content of mind, stimulated as he had never been before by her frank, original presence, he mentally resolved to remain at St. Ignace for her sake, or if her protracted absence ensued, as she hoped, to manage to return when she did.
He had arrived at this decision when, on drawing near Poussette's, he perceived that individual himself in little straw hat and large white apron standing at the door engaged in critically examining an enormous catch of fish--black bass and lunge, just brought in by the guides. Ringfield asked the time, for he began to realize how long he had been absent. It was nearly seven o'clock and the evening meal was over.
Poussette at first tried to be angry. He declared that there was nothing left. Ringfield smiled and strode to the fish lying in glittering silver heaps on the grass. He lifted up the biggest bass and carried it into the house, and the coolness of the deed appeased Poussette.
"That is all right, Mr. Ringfield," said he, slapping him quite affectionately on the back. "You shall have a good tea, a good tea, after which you shall hear what we have to say. Mister Desnoyers, Patrick, myself, all wait for you and all shall be arrange, eh? Every one round come in, come in and drink _bon santé_ in something good I got on Saturday. Ah--you shall see, you shall see!"
As Ringfield went in to his "good tea" Madame Poussette came out. Rather to his astonishment, she sang to herself in passing, and although her sad vacant eyes were not bent on him, he felt as if the words were intended for his ear. What were those words?
His knowledge of French was limited, but still he could make out a kind of rhyming refrain--
"Derrière
Chez mon père
Il-y-avait un grand oiseau."
He stopped and tried to catch more as Madame went down the walk singing low to herself.
"Derrière
Chez mon père
Il-y-avait un grand oiseau.
la, la, la, la--
C'était beau ça, c'était beau."
CHAPTER V
THE UNSEEN HAND
"The procession of our Fate, howe'er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power."
Had Ringfield continued his conversation with the _châtelaine_ of Clairville he would in all probability have asked a few questions about her theatrical career, placing it in his imagination in one of the large American centres to which in the seventies or eighties all Canadian artists gravitated. In this he would have been wrong.
In a back street in the purely French quarter of Montreal stood a pillared and placarded building once known as the home of an ambitious coterie, the _Cercle Littéraire_, which met fortnightly to discuss in rapid incisive Canadian French such topics as "Our National Literature," "The Destiny of Canada," and "The Dramatists of France," from which all _politique_ was supposed to be eliminated. The building had originally been a house and private bank belonging to a courtly descendant of an old family, a De Lotbinière, who grew French walnut and cherry trees, lettuces and herbs in the back garden. When the banker died the _Cercle Littéraire_ bought the house for a small sum, comparatively, seeing that it was built of good grey stone, had many bright green shutters and an imposing façade of four pillars, and from one part of it issued once a month the extremely high-class journal--organ of the society--called "Le Flambeau," the other part which comprised a fair-sized hall, retiring rooms, and secretary's office and quarters, being altered to suit the needs of the _Cercle Littéraire_. But in time the glories of the exclusive and classically minded coterie faded, its leading spirits died or disappeared, the superior monthly organ--torch for all the country--burnt itself out, lost subscribers--in fact the whole business was declared insolvent, and the nervous, gifted, but too sanguine editor-in-chief (there were three editors), M. Anselme-Ferdinande Placide De Lery, _avocat_, and the devoted, conscientious, but unprogressive secretary, old Amédée Laframboise, scientific grubber and admirable violinist, had to get out of Rue St. Dominique as best they could and go back to the law and the local orchestra. For several years the house was vacant, and then at last it held a still more gifted, more numerous, and, all things considered, more successful coterie within its walls than "Le Flambeau" had been able to procure for it. A certain travelling organization, a company of good actors and actresses direct from Paris, which had landed in America the previous year, giving comedies and pretty domestic pieces in New York and other cities, not meeting with the success it expected, came to French Canada in the hope of reaping substantial profits in a congenial atmosphere. Ah--what a mistake was this! To think that if in Philadelphia or Boston "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" or "La Joie Fait Peur" did not make money, either play would do so in the Montreal of thirty years ago! It was a mistake, certainly, from the monetary point of view; on the other hand, many friends were made, much good feeling and admiration prevailed and, in short, the company, stranded in a Canadian town, found living cheap and easily earned, plenty of good fellows--French--and settled down as a local stock affair, fitting up at no great expense the banker's house with the walnut-trees and bright green shutters under the name of the Théâtre des Nouveautés.
This was the playhouse in which Mlle. Clairville acted. This was the clever company which, secure in New France from blasé critics, produced the comedies and tragedies of Molière, Corneille, Dumas, Halévy, Mme. de Genlis, as well as serving up adaptations like "Le Vieux Oncle Tom," "Le Prince de Denmarque," "Le Condamné," "L'étranger," also attacking with superb, delicious confidence the then popular operas of "La Grande Duchesse," "La Belle Hélène," and "Il Trovatore." What acting it was, so vigorous, dashing, resourceful! How Mme. d'Estarre jumped easily from a Précieuse to Eva, and from Gertrude, a dark-eyed _bourgeoise_ Queen with frizzed hair and train of cotton velvet, to Camille--wickedest play known at that time! Then when Mlle. Pauline-Archange-Emma-Louise de Clairville joined the company, what a Hamlet she made with her fine figure and her remarkably firm, white hands, what a Phedre, once when the actor was ill, what an "Oncle Tom"! What a Duchess of Gerolstein later, when the company discovered that it could sing, collectively at least, and what a Helen, in flowing Greek costume, fillet of gold braid, and sandals!
This was indeed Acting--to merge mannerisms, to defy fate and the jeers of any sober English reporter who strayed into the Theatre of Novelties! When Mme. d'Estarre found that she had to return to France unexpectedly, on account of the ill health of her children, left behind in a provincial town, she was given a grand benefit, and although the public (who were getting a little tired of madame, she was over fifty) did not respond as gallantly as might have been expected, the members of the company with true Gallic chivalry made up the large amount necessary to carry her across, bring her back and provide in the interim for the afflicted children. This was Pauline's opportunity; she naturally succeeded to the position of leading lady, and kept it until her faults of temper developed and she had the pleasurable excitement of a fierce quarrel with her manager. Thus, while her talent was conceded, her stormy temperament prevented her achieving anything like permanent success, and every few months she would reappear at St. Ignace, live drearily in the dingy house, lecture the servants, abuse and weep over her brother, when suddenly tiring of this she would return and have to begin again at the foot of the ladder.
Ignorant of these cloudy and strenuous careers, Ringfield saw only an impulsive and unhappy woman old enough to fascinate him by her unusual command of language and imperiousness of conduct, and young enough for warm ripe brunette beauty. To be plain, first love was already working in him, but he did not recognize its signs and portents; he only knew that an ardent wish to remain at St. Ignace had suddenly taken the place of the tolerant and amused disdain with which he had once considered Poussette's offer.
A couple of days later he had returned from a long afternoon on the river when a man around the place named Crabbe came to him with a letter. Opening it, he found it to contain another offer from a prominent citizen of Radford, a large and thriving Western town, to fill a certain pulpit of some distinction during the absence of the pastor in Europe. The time mentioned was ten months and Ringfield sat down at once to consider the importance of this offer. He would be at last in a cultivated community. Much would be expected of him and he would have every chance to put forth what was best in him. For several years he had been labouring on the missionary circuit and the work was hard indeed, with slender results. Here was sufficient remuneration, comfortable housing in a more sympathetic climate, and the prospect of receiving a still more important call in the future should he make his mark. Such considerations, if mundane, need not also be mercenary; each man is worthy of his hire and his pulse beat in pleased excitement as he viewed the rosy outlook.
But--Miss Clairville! A vague foreboding of the truth flitted through his brain; men wiser in love and affairs of the affections than our young Methodist minister have been self-deceived, and although he sternly put her image away he dimly avowed to himself that she was already occupying far too much of his thought. Here was a clear way opened, or so he imagined, referring each move as it occurred to the guidance and knowledge of the Higher Power, and he could find no other than an affirmative answer to the letter which he kept turning over in his pocket, and still kept reading through the evening in the general room. He had excused himself from the already over-convivial group on the front verandah, and being provided with paper, sat at the table composing his reply.
The lineaments of his singularly fine and noble countenance were easily seen through the window where the guides, M. Desnoyers and Poussette were sitting, and the vision of the black-coated, serious young scribe inditing what he had informed them was a very "important" letter, subdued the incipient revelry.
Poussette was uneasy. He had not yet received any direct answer from Ringfield to his own offer, and for many reasons he preferred to attach and retain him rather than any other "Parson" he had ever encountered. But Ringfield was wrapped in his own thoughts and quite unconscious of the highly improving spectacle he made, lifting his eyes only to nod pleasantly to Mme. Poussette who had glided in and was sitting by the window. His letters were three: one to Mr. Beddoe who had invited him to Radford, another to his relatives on the farm at Grand River, and a third to Miss Clairville. He had not hesitated to write to her, for short as their intercourse had been, her emotional nature had manifested itself so warmly and their talk had been so completely out of the ordinary, that higher things than convention must always govern their friendship. His conscientious side held itself responsible for a slightly superfluous act of sudden interest and attachment, and the mentor's tone in which he pleaded with her, to ask herself whether the theatre must be her goal, would have deceived anybody unaccustomed to cold analysis of motives. He gave her, in short, good advice in the guise of kindly sentiments, ending by avowing himself her "friend in Christ" and protesting that her true welfare and happiness would always be of interest to him.
The letter written, he leant back, resolving not to send it by post but by some ignorant, unsuspicious hand (therein was the new-found subtlety and shyness of the true lover), and the change in attitude confused the watchers outside who guiltily resumed their smoking and conversation. And the strange, silent woman at the window, supposing Ringfield to be in want of something--paper, stamp or ink--rose and stood by his side. Thus she saw two envelopes addressed and ready for the mail, and a third as yet innocent of any inscription. That she could read English he doubted, yet he felt an objection to letting her look over his shoulder. He rose, and going to the office, where Poussette hastily preceded him, gave in the two letters for Ontario, and then informed him of his decision.
The Frenchman's disappointment was genuine and comic, partaking of tragedy and despair. Desnoyers was called in; also the guests and the two guides, with servants forming a picturesque and interested background, so that Ringfield suddenly found himself the centre of an admiring, friendly, but inclining-to-be quarrelsome crowd. Nothing occurred, however, to alter his decision, and, true to his idea of duty, he set off two mornings later, having committed the letter for Miss Clairville to the man called Crabbe, a slouching sort of Englishman who occasionally served as guide, ran a small open-air general store, and about whom there seemed to be some mystery, his accent and grammar being out of the common.
Forty-eight hours after, Ringfield arrived at his destination, and walking up from the train to the house of Mr. Beddoe, the gentleman who had written to him, was shown into a small parlour to wait a few minutes. Voices came from across the hall for a while, then he heard a visitor depart and the next moment Mr. Beddoe himself entered the room.
The surprise of this individual on perceiving Ringfield was genuine and complete; his countenance fell and he stood gazing.
"You did not expect me so soon, I see," said the young man easily. "Well, I was in rather a quandary, something else having offered, so I decided quickly, hating indecision. You got my note of acceptance all right, I hope? It should have reached you _at the latest_ yesterday."
"Yes, yes," murmured Mr. Beddoe, "but, sit down, Mr. Ringfield, sit down--the truth is--a rather peculiar thing has occurred. I--ah--I may as well make you acquainted with it at once. Our pastor, who, without being mentally weakened to any extent by a troublesome and obstinate illness, for which, as you know, we have sent him abroad for a trip, was extremely absent-minded in many little ways, and it has transpired that before his departure he wrote himself to the Rev. Mr. Steers of Bradford, arranging with him to take the pulpit for the time he should be away. He neglected to inform us of the fact, but Mr. Steers came in just after we had written to you, and as he is a married man with a family, and as he certainly expected the duty and the remuneration for a period, I felt that you would have to reconsider our offer. I sent you a telegram embodying all this."
"I never got it. Telegraphic facilities are uncertain in that part of Quebec. For example, St. Ignace is the village, but Bois Clair the name of the post office, and there is no telegraph at either place. Montmagny----"
"That was where we telegraphed," broke in Mr. Beddoe, "but probably there was some delay in sending on the message and we did not look for you quite so soon. Mr. Steers has just left; he is a very reasonable sort of man, and if you think you are bound to keep us to our offer we will talk it over with him."
The young man had taken a chair at Mr. Beddoe's invitation, but he still clutched his florid and somewhat old-fashioned carpet-bag and he did not make any suggestions.
"Of course," exclaimed the other, uneasy at the silence, "you will remain here with us until the matter is settled, and I feel sure a satisfactory settlement can be made. You spoke of an alternative. Would that do for Mr. Steers?"
Ringfield roused himself to say that he did not think it would.
"It's not the place for a married man," he went on. "There are no houses such as you are accustomed to up here; the people are mostly French, the climate is extreme; it is, in short, only a mission, and as I've just come from there, and understand the place, I think I had better go back and leave Mr. Steers in possession of the field."
"Oh! But----" returned Mr. Beddoe, noticing a faint tinge of sarcasm in the tone of the speaker, "we do not ask you to do this. It's all most unfortunate! These great distances, so difficult to find a person--we did our best."
Ringfield rose; there was clearly no reason why he should remain in Radford whether he went back to St. Ignace or not, and just then the condition of his purse was extremely important. This detail was set right in time, in about two months; meanwhile a visit to his friends in the country would give him an opportunity to decide as to his future movements.
The sojourn on the farm occupied three days, at the end of which he did what he knew he would do from the moment of meeting Mr. Beddoe. He bought a ticket for Bois Clair with almost the last money he had in the world, and within ten days of leaving Poussette's the steamer plying on the river to St. Ignace deposited him at the familiar rickety wharf once more.
It was nine o'clock and dark, with a light rain falling. The passengers, mostly tourists, were stepping off in that timorous way peculiar to people unaccustomed to the primitive, by the light of a lantern waveringly but officially displayed by Crabbe, the surly guide to whom Ringfield had given his letter, and behind Crabbe, a little higher up on the bank, stood Poussette, whose costume as usual was characteristic. He wore a checked tweed suit of light brown, a straw hat, and an enormous chef's apron tied round his waist under his coat. Visions of fried bass or lunge, of potatoes _sauté_, and even of hot pancakes, danced before Ringfield's weary eyes, for he was both tired and cold, and accordingly he gaily pushed his way through the loiterers and fresh arrivals until he reached his host.
"Well, Poussette!" he cried, "I'm to be your man after all, it seems! They didn't want me in the West, I found, or rather I thought it wiser to come back and take advantage of your kind offer. I suppose you can put me up somewhere for to-night, and to-morrow we can talk the matter over."
The Frenchman had started violently on seeing Ringfield and a great change came over his manner. Where was the welcome the minister had looked for? On this fat, usually smiling countenance he could discern naught but astonishment, disappointment, anger!
What could have happened during that futile journey westward and back? Poussette vouchsafed no reply, no solution. He avoided the puzzled stare of the other man, and after giving some orders in French to Crabbe and the other guide, Martin, a very decent Indian, quickly went up to the house without greeting his guests.
Ringfield was suddenly seized with a sense of the ludicrous. He told himself that he managed to be _de trop_ wherever he went, but he also firmly resolved that no temper, no caprice on his patron's part should affect him now. If possible he must remain at St. Ignace and ignore whatever had caused the singular change in Poussette's attitude. There was indeed fish for supper, but he fancied that the cunning touch of the chef was wanting, and he was right. Poussette had not entered the kitchen.
CHAPTER VI
THE MISSIONARY
"Nor is it a mean phase of rural life,
And solitude, that they do favour most,
Most frequently call forth and best sustain
These pure sensations."
The following day Ringfield's curiosity naturally ran high; he was entirely in the dark as to the peculiar treatment he had received at the hands of Poussette, and it followed that one strong idea shut out others. Miss Clairville's image for the time was obliterated, yet he remembered to ask Crabbe whether the letter had been safely delivered, to which the guide replied rather curtly in the affirmative. He supposed Pauline to be still at the manor-house, but the truth was, on the receipt of his letter a sudden temper shook her; she wrote at once to M. Rochelle, her former manager in Montreal, requesting a place in his company, and the evening that brought Ringfield back to St. Ignace took her away.
There were symptoms of thaw stirring in Poussette, and the minister did his best to encourage them, but on the Saturday afternoon following his return, when it was necessary to hold some sustained business conversation with his patron, the latter could not be found. The bar was a model of Saturday cleanliness, damp and tidy, smelling equally of lager beer and yellow soap. Fresh lemons and newly-ironed red napkins adorned the tall glasses ranged in front of Sir John A. Macdonald's lithograph, and the place was dark and tenantless, save for Plouffe, a lazy retriever, stretched at the door. The dining-room was abandoned, the general room was full of children engaged in some merry game, but otherwise the place wore that air of utter do-nothingness which characterizes a warm afternoon in the country. Yet Ringfield persevered and at last heard familiar accents from the "store" across the road, a kind of shack in which a miscellaneous collection of groceries, soft drinks, hardware and fishing appliances were presided over by the man called Crabbe. Ringfield crossed, and found the two men lolling on chairs; Poussette slightly drunk and Crabbe to all appearances decidedly so. The place was of the roughest description; it had no windows but an open space occupied by a board counter on which were boxes of cigars, bottles, a saucer of matches and the mail, duly sorted out for the inhabitants by Crabbe, who was supposed to be a person of some importance and education, and postmaster as well as guide. As Ringfield paused at this aboriginal place of barter, not far removed from the rough shelter up the road under the trees where some Indians held camp and displayed their grass and quill wares on planks supported by barrels, he was struck by the sight of his own name. There in front of him lay the missing telegram which Mr. Beddoe had dispatched to Montmagny nearly a fortnight before. He took the folded yellow paper up and put it in his pocket--no need to open it there and then.
"How long has this been here?" he asked, but Crabbe only moved uneasily in his chair, reaching sideways in a pretence of arranging boxes underneath the improvised counter, his hands shaking so that the goods tumbled out of them.
Poussette laughed and swore, yet a gleam of good nature seemed to illumine his puffy face, and Ringfield, catching at this ray of kindness, hoped he had come at the right moment.
"Why, Poussette!" he said. "I'm sorry to see you neglecting a good business like yours in this manner.--Get up, man, and walk along the road with me. Where is the fun, or glory, or enjoyment of this muddling and tippling--I am ashamed of you! Come on, I say!"
But Poussette was hard to move; Crabbe, on the other hand, rose and shuffled out of doors in the direction of the forest; Ringfield thought he saw Madame Poussette's skimp skirts behind a tree; presently she emerged and stood talking to the guide.
"Come now, Poussette! There's your wife. Don't let her see you like this. Then there's Father Rielle."
"Where?" Poussette rose, superstitious fears of the village _curé_ giving him strength and aiding his resolution.
"Nowhere at present. But he's coming to tea. The cook told me he was."
"What cook? I'm the cook!"--with great dignity.
"No, no. You are cook extraordinary, when you wish it. I mean Frank, who gets the wood and keeps the fire going, who cooks under you--you know well enough whom I mean. Now, are you coming?"
Poussette allowed himself to be hauled out of the shack and presently he and Ringfield were walking up the road.
"I've got to get you sober for to-morrow, you see. To-morrow's Sunday and I want to know about the music. If we are going to introduce our hymns to St. Ignace, you must help me to find some one to play the harmonium. Better be a lady. Do you know any one?"
But Poussette was not following. The mention of the priest had awakened a flood of memory.
"Father Rielle--I don't know if I like that one or not. One's enough, you're enough, Mr. Ringfield. Give Father Rielle a drink and let him go."
"I'm not talking about Father Rielle at all just now. I'm talking about our church and some one to play for us. And look here, Poussette, this returning of mine wasn't my own doing. I want you to know this. The man who wrote to me telegraphed afterwards--here's the message in my pocket--and you see I never got it. I'm here now and we must make the best of things. That fellow Crabbe mislaid the message or detained it knowingly, I can't tell which, and I don't like him, Poussette, I don't like his looks at all. He's a low fellow, always drunk, and if I were you I wouldn't be seen going about with him. I'm astonished at you, Poussette, with such a good businesss, two good businesses, you may say, well-to-do and prosperous as you are, keeping such a fellow on the premises. For I suppose he rents the shack from you. Well, I know I wouldn't have him round the place at all."
Poussette wagged his head in imbecile accord.
"Low fellow--Crabbe--_marche donc_--get off, _animal_, don' come my place 'tall."
"You know I'm talking _right_, Poussette. Get rid of Crabbe. And sober up now, man; don't let folks see you like this."
Ringfield put his arm through the other's and led him aside under a thick canopy of trees as a party of fishermen and Martin came along.
"Look here--I'll make a pillow for you, here, out of these balsam twigs! You lie down--that's it--and get a good sound sleep. Got a cigar? And a light? That's all right. Now, you sleep--yes, don't bother about the smoke now--just go to sleep and when you wake up, have your smoke, clear your head, shake yourself and show up at tea-time, straight and sober as I am! You'd better! Father Rielle's over for tea. You wouldn't like him to see you like this!"
Poussette collapsed on the improvised balsam couch, but managed to remark that he would not get up on account of Father Rielle, nor give him anything good to eat.
"Why, I thought you liked him! Liked his good opinion, anyway!"
"Beeg liar! Beeg rascal! I like you, Mr. Ringfield, when you don' take away my girl. You leave my bes' girl alone and I like you--first rate. Bigosh--excuses, I'll just go to sleep--for--while."
Ringfield rose from the ground and sighed. He earned his livelihood pretty hard when such scenes came into his life. Pastoral slumming, one might term it, for he had only just laid Poussette respectably to rest when he encountered Crabbe, lurching dully along the road, and at the sight of him Poussette's extraordinary remark about his "best girl" came back. What possible connexion could have suggested itself to Poussette between the faded sickly creature he called his wife and the visitor from Ontario? Ringfield thought it not unlikely that Poussette was confusing him with Crabbe, for to-day was not the first time he had seen the woman wandering in the proximity of the shack. However, Crabbe gave him no opportunity for ministerial argument or reasoning, for as soon as he perceived the other he turned, and straightening in his walk very considerably, soon disappeared in the forest.
Ringfield was thus thrown on his own resources after all, and in thinking over the question of the Sunday music, not unnaturally was led to associate Miss Clairville with it. He did not know her to be exactly musical, but he gathered that she could sing; at all events, she was the only person he had met in St. Ignace capable of making arrangements for a decorous and attractive service, and he resolved to see her and ask for her co-operation. Thus again he was drawn by inclination and by a steady march of events along the road that led to Lac Calvaire. Arrived at the _métairie_ he was told of Pauline's departure for Montreal, and also that Henry Clairville was confined to his bed by a severe cold. Some new awkwardness led Ringfield over the threshold; the old Archambault woman who had attended the front door threw open another on her left hand, and the next moment he found himself in what must have been once the _salon_ of the family. The furniture was of faded tapestry; a spinning-wheel, an armoire of dark mahogany, miniatures, one very old and very ugly oil painting of some mythological subject, cracked with age, the gilt frame thick with fly-specks; a suit of Court clothes hung ostentatiously on a common nail--these were the impressions he received as he sat waiting to hear whether the Sieur would see him.
Suddenly he started. The woman had closed the door, the room had been empty when he entered it and yet--there were three cats in front of his chair! Where had they come from? The window was closed, how had they got in? Watching, Ringfield saw what greatly astonished him, for presently the cats walked towards the door and a miracle appeared to happen! They not only walked towards it but through it, and he was ignorant of the apparent cause of the miracle until observing the door very closely he discovered a little door down at the bottom, a cat door through which they were in the habit of calmly passing back and forth at will. Another cat door appeared in the hall where he stood a minute later before being shown out, for Mr. Clairville would not receive him, and nothing more impressed him with the idea of being in a strange house given over to strange people than the knowledge of a system of little doors cut in the big ones for the use of a dozen cats.
Once more on the road, Ringfield experienced that sense of frustration inseparable from first love. He had been so confident of seeing Miss Clairville once again, and now, as he learned from the servant, it might be Christmas before she would return, and despite his resolutions, he knew he should be very lonely indeed, without any congenial soul in the village, for a period of four months. He roused himself, however, to think of the morrow's duties, particularly of the music, and at tea that evening he found the person he wanted through the kind offices of Father Rielle, who was a very liberal Catholic, well acquainted with the whole countryside and who could ask, as he said, in eloquent broken English, nothing better than co-operation in good works with his young Methodist _confrère_. Poussette was present at the evening meal, rather pale and subdued and pointing with the pride of a true _chef_ to the omelettes which were his alone to make by special dispensation, and after supper Ringfield walked out to the great Fall, remaining till it was dark and late--so late that he knew no one would pass that way. Then he knelt on a slab of rock and lifted up his voice in this wise:--
"O Lord," he began, "look down on Thine unworthy servant. Help him and guide his footsteps aright. He has returned to this place and to this people. Assist him to preach the truth of the Gospel in the wilderness and to those who know Thee not. Make him kind and keep him humble. Give him light and understanding that he may be acceptable in this place and that he may witness for Thee and for the Gospel, and that his labours may be blessed and the harvest thereof indeed be great." He paused, his eyes opening on the white wilderness of the Fall. Knowing that the roar of its foaming waters would drown his voice he did not scruple to use his fine, sonorous tones to the full, and went on again: "Strip from Thy servant, O God Most High, all that savours of self. Strike at sin if it lodgeth in him; cause him to remember now his Creator in the days of his youth. Grant him wisdom in dealing with the froward, and may Thy Holy Spirit descend in this solemn evening hour and be with him now through the watches of the night and to-morrow when he rises to plead Thy righteous cause. For Christ's sake, Amen."
The mixture of the orthodox circuit style with an occasional direct and colloquial abruptness made this prayer worthy of record, and after silent meditation under the dark, swaying pine-trees, Ringfield, braced by temporary abandonment of self, returned to Poussette's. As he rose from his knees, however, something rolled down several ledges of rock and he promptly went after it and picked it up. It proved to be a book, not very large, and opening easily, but there was no light to view it by, and it was not until he came near the village windows that he discovered it to be, much to his astonishment, a well-worn copy of Tennyson's Poems. On the fly-leaf were the initials "E. C. H." and underneath, the word "Oxford" and date "1873". Ringfield took it up to his room; some tourist had probably dropped it, and it was safer with him than with Poussette. But when had an Oxford man passed that way?
CHAPTER VII
THE OXFORD MAN
"Here Nature was my guide,
The Nature of the dissolute; but Thee,
O fostering Nature! I rejected..."
Ringfield, now committed to his duty at St. Ignace, was experiencing that reaction which must always follow upon a sudden change in the affairs of life when the person concerned has a tendency towards the reflective. The absence from the manor house of that interesting personality, Miss Clairville, threw him altogether on the society of the village, but, apart from Poussette, who had become mysteriously friendly again, the two individuals most in need of his ministrations were Mme. Poussette and the shambling guide, Edmund Crabbe, in whom were the dregs of a being originally more than the preacher's equal. Old world distinctions would seem to be of small account in such a hamlet as St. Ignace and yet questions of caste were felt even there.
Crabbe, the owner of the "Tennyson," was that melancholy wraith of breeding, a deteriorated gentleman, spoken of in whispers as an "Oxford man," slouching along the winding country road, more or less in liquor, with the gait and air of a labourer, yet once known as the youngest son of a good county family. Few would have recognized in the whiskered blear-eyed, stumbling creature an educated Englishman of more than middle-class extraction. In drink an extraordinary thing occurred. He then became sober, knew himself, and quoted from the classics; when sober, he was the sullen loafer, the unmannerly cad, and his service as guide alone redeemed him from starvation and neglect. Ringfield, who had seen him, as he supposed, drunk on the Saturday afternoon when Miss Clairville's departure had been made known, concluded to call upon him at his shack a few days later, and was considerably surprised to find the place roughly boarded up, while sounds of talking came from a shanty at the back. The latter was on the plumed edge of an odorous hemlock wood; squirrels and chipmunks ran, chattering, hither and thither in quest of food, and a muskrat, sitting on a log near the water, looked unconcernedly at Ringfield as he stood, hesitating, for a few seconds. While he thus remained, a boy came along, looked at the "store" and scudded away; then came a little girl, and, finally, one of the maidservants from Poussette's. Muttering her annoyance, she too waited for a while and was on the point of going away, when the door of the cabin opened, and Crabbe looked out. He held himself erect, he had shaved, his faded _negligé_ shirt was clean and laced with blue--a colour that matched his eyes, and his voice had a certain expressive and even authoritative drawl in it.
"No supplies to-day, my good people," he said, affecting to suppose Ringfield a customer. "Call to-morrow, or--ah--the next day. Sorry to inconvenience you, but I've had to take a few hours off, writing letters to the Old Country, asking about my remittance and so forth. So I can't attend to business."
In these polite if slightly satirical cadences there was the element of superiority; the woman and the girl faded away, while Ringfield hardly knew how to proceed.
"I have come over just for a chat," he finally said, "if you are not too much engaged. I have a good deal of time on my hands, and I'm trying to get to know the people around. I am speaking to Mr. Crabbe, I think?"
"You are not sure, eh? Want to apologize for calling me a low fellow to mine host Poussette, I expect! Well, come in and have your chat. I'm not much in favour of clergymen, but then--you're only a Methodist, I hear. You don't count."
He shut the door, after piloting the other in, and led the way into a sort of dining and living room, in the middle of which was a long, narrow table covered with white oilcloth, graced by a monster bouquet of wild-flowers, grasses and ferns at the end; at the other end was a tumbler and a bottle and Ringfield saw clearly enough that it held whisky. Yet he did not comprehend that Crabbe was drunk, while the bold, blue eyes, the erect stature and the loud voice did not make a single suspicion. Indeed, surprise and pity worked in him a kind of false modesty.
"I certainly should never have used that expression. My defence is, that Poussette, though a good fellow, is rough, and difficult to impress in English, you understand, especially when he is about half-tipsy himself!"
Looking around, the sight of faded photographs of English scenes on the wall, of a large lithograph of Tennyson and of many well-bound books and other evidences of refinement, led Ringfield to say, in vague apology, "If I had known----"
"Known what?" said Crabbe in loud, dictatorial, dangerous tones, all shiftiness gone. "That I was a gentleman, eh? Well, gentle is as gentle does, I suppose, and I've never scored anywhere, so here I am, here I _am_, Ringfield (bringing his hand down on the table) that's your name, I believe--and I've not worn so badly all these years. From Oxford to Manitoba; then robbed and ruined by a shark of a farming agent, damn him, down here to this wilderness and hole of a Quebec Province for a change. For keeps, I imagine."
He went round the table and poured out some whisky, drank it off raw, and still Ringfield did not understand. He thought this was the sober phase, the other, the drunken one, and feeling his way, ventured on general topics.
"Well, I'm here too by a curious twist of circumstances. I'm a 'varsity' man--Toronto, you know--and might look for something different from St. Ignace."
"You're a what?" cried the other. "O Lord!" and a strange kind of rude contempt filled the rich cadences with which he spoke, so different from the surly repression of his ordinary tone.
"O I see!" he drawled presently. "I'm an Oxford man myself--worse luck--and much good it's done me; hope you've benefited more thereby. What disgusting rot, Ringfield, filling us up with Horace and Virgil, and then sending us out to a land like this! I'm the youngest of five; there was nothing left for me at home, and then there was fuss about a woman--there always is."
"Is there?" echoed the other sweetly, determined not to be annoyed. "Don't lay everything at their door. Our mothers, Crabbe, our sisters----"
The Englishman suddenly ran amuck, as it were.
"In God's name, Ringfield, drop that! I can see you know nothing about it, nothing about life or women--God, Ringfield, women are the Devil! If I thought you'd listen and not preach----"
The other's hand, which had been lifted in horror and deprecation, came down again.
"I don't care to listen," he said, "but I can gather your meaning--all the same! Don't take any more of that vile stuff, you'll make yourself drunk. Here----" and then, with sudden fury, the preacher grabbed the bottle, threw it out of the window among the debris of rotting fruit and rusty cans and faced the Englishman.
For a moment Crabbe looked, spat, and swore like a fiend; then he collapsed into his chair, though still gazing at Ringfield with those full, rolling eyes and that hateful, superior smile.
"I'll hear anything you have to tell about yourself," continued Ringfield, "but I won't listen to tales of other people, men or women. And what's the use of telling me about yourself? That won't do any good. Put it all back in the past, man; put it all away. Now is your accepted time, now is your day of salvation, right here, this moment. But I won't preach to you. I won't vindicate my calling and talk religion, as you'd call it, in this place and at this hour, because I see you're not ready. I thought you were sober. Now I see my mistake, and now, I don't know _how_ to talk to you. I don't know how to begin! I've never tasted the stuff myself--not even a glass of wine has ever passed my lips, and my mother, Crabbe, used to make home-made wine and give it to us--all but me. I wouldn't taste it. If I understood the fascination of it, if I could follow the process, if I could sympathize at all with you, then I might appreciate the difficulty and realize the force of the temptation. But I can't! Other vices, take theft or treachery, or cowardice, or insubordination; the seed of hatred suffered to grow till the black Death Flower of Murder be born; covetousness, sins of temper, all these I understand. And in some degree those other temptations to which you have alluded."
A slight wave of colour surged in the young minister's cheeks. Crabbe was apparently beyond impressing. He sat and whistled, looking wisely at his nails. The loss of the whisky did not trouble him, for he remembered where he had a second bottle hidden, and a small quantity yet remained at the bottom of the tumbler, unnoticed by Ringfield. But presently he broke out again.
"As for women," he cried thickly, as if he had not heard the other's latest speech. "I've had enough of them, too much, as I said before. You be warned, Ringfield! You keep out of trouble! I wouldn't swear that I did not take to drink on account of them, and then, look here--the trouble followed me out to this country, even to St. Ignace, even to this hut and hole. What d'ye think of that?"
"Why, who is there here?" exclaimed Ringfield, but as he spoke he had a vision; the foolish wife of Poussette seemed to come along the path, chanting as she came some minor French refrain and tapping at the uncared for window as she passed. She might have been attractive once, and Crabbe was not a very young man now. Some graces she must have had; a way of catching at the side of her skirt, suggesting a curtsy; plenty of fair hair and a child's smile playing at the corners of her mouth--not so foolish then. But wise or foolish, she had been another man's wife, unless he had encountered her in her maiden days, which seemed improbable.
"I cannot think," went on Ringfield, striving to shut this vision out, "how women, any woman, plain or fair, sane or mad, could bring herself to care for you,--and not because,--hear me, Crabbe, you are beyond caring about. God forbid!--but because your form of vice must ever be so distasteful to a woman. And then you are all wrong about your surroundings. You are, you have been, at least, a man of education, and yet you call this a hut and a hole. It is you who make it so! You vilify, where you might ennoble. You defile where you should enrich and keep pure. You are set here, in the midst of the most beautiful scenes of Nature, scenes that cannot be matched anywhere in the world, and yet you despise them and use them for your own undoing and that of others. Nature lies at your door and you are answerable for your treatment other."
Crabbe laughed surlily. "She's no business lying--where'd you say--at my door. Nature, always Nature! Much good it's done me, Nature, and all that rubbish. I hate it, I hate and abhor it, Ringfield. That's what makes me drink. Too much Nature's been my ruin. I'd be sober enough in a big town with lively streets and bustle and riot and row. I wouldn't drink there. I'd show them the pace, I'd go it myself once more and be d----d to all this rot and twaddle about Nature! Nature doesn't care for me. So careful of the type she seems, but so careless of the single life. She doesn't bother her head about me, or you, or Henry Clairville or Pauline!"
He paused, and Ringfield shivered with sudden poignancy of recollection. What right had this miserable scion of good family, so fallen from grace, so shaken and so heartless, to call the lady of Clairville Manor by her Christian name?
"Or Mme. Poussette!" said the minister hurriedly, but with meaning, as he pronounced the name, his voice trembling in spite of himself. "Nature, it is true, does not care for any of us. Nature will let you starve, get drunk, go mad. Therefore, we need a greater than Nature. Therefore, having this committed unto us we speak as----"
"O Mme. Poussette!" interrupted Crabbe, pouring the contents of the tumbler down his throat. "Shall I get you some? No? Well, I don't blame you, don't blame you. Mme. Poussette, poor creature! I have heard she was pretty once. That was before I came, before--God's truth this, Ringfield--before I taught her husband to drink deep."
"I might have known!" escaped from the other. "Our own people rarely drink--like you."
"He was no innocent! He tippled, tippled. Then I came along and set up my sign, Edmund Crabbe Hawtree, Esquire; no, we'll drop the last and stick to E. Crabbe without the Esquire, d----n it! Lord! what a mess I've made of it, and this rankles, Ringfield. Listen. Over at Argosy Island there's a slabsided, beastly, canting Methodist Yankee who has a shop too. Must copy the Britisher, you see. Must emulate--gentleman."
His sentences were beginning to be less clear now. His head was falling forward. "Well! then--this fine fellow does well out of _his_ shop; sets up another down the river and yet another over at Beausoley. He's made money! He's rich, married, and has a big family. Why don't I make money, Ringfield, and get away from here? Why don't you make money and not go about preaching? Eh? So careless of the single life! Who said that? Whoever said that, knew what--was talking about. I know what I'm talking about. I'm a gentleman, that's what I am, Ringfield, and yet I can't make money."
The wagging head toppled--he fell over on the table. The fire and youth Ringfield had observed were gone and in their place were the decrepit tone and the surly animalism which one associated with the guide. Here, then, thought the young and impressionable minister, is the living result of two corroding vices; the man is a sot, but something beside the lust for liquor has helped to make him one. He has followed after sin in the shape of his neighbour's wife, and perhaps the latter's decline may be traced to the working of remorse and the futile longing after a better life.
As he was thus thinking, the vision of his thought actually flitted past the window without turning her head. Still with those thin hands picking at her shabby skirts and with that tremulous smile she emerged from the wood and Ringfield heard her singing long after the rustling of the closely arched branches had ceased. Crabbe seemed to be dropping asleep when Ringfield touched him on the arm and tried again to reason with him.
"Tell me, I ask it for your own good and for that of the poor unfortunate woman who has just gone by, tell me what there is between you, how far the matter went, how long ago it was. Tell me, and I will help you perhaps to get away, leave this place and all in it. That would be the best thing. Come, Crabbe, I'll believe in you if you've lost belief in yourself. Can I, can anyone, do more than that?"
The Englishman rallied, passed a hand across his brow, then rose unsteadily to his feet, looking around the cabin. Habit called for a drink at this juncture and he saw nothing to drink. Anger awoke in him; he grew maniacal, dangerous, and the late September shadows filled the room.
"What woman do you mean?" he cried. "_In vino veritas_! You thought I was sober. So I was. Sober enough before you, the preacher, to know that I'm getting drunk rapidly, beastly drunk too, and being so, and the gentleman I am, or meant to be, I don't thank you for interference in my affairs. What woman are you thinking of? What woman passed my window?"
"Mme. Poussette."
The guide's face stared, then broke into unmistakable and contemptuous laughter.
"Didn't I tell you I was a gentleman? You've made a big mistake, Ringfield. Even in my deterioration" (he had difficulty with this word) "I remember who I am, and I don't go after married women. Matrimony's one of the Church's sacraments, Ringfield, isn't it? Perhaps not; I have forgotten. Anyway, Mme. Poussette is the wife of my best friend, my best friend I tell you, and whoever cares for her faded hair and finicking ways it isn't I. Sweeter pastures once were mine. Have I named the lady of my choice or have I not? The gay Pauline, the witty Pauline, the handsome Pauline! Ah! You admire her yourself. You wrote her a letter. I gave it to her and we read it together and laughed at it. 'Yours in Christ.' Ha-ha! We laughed at it, Ringfield."
Even in his foolish insults he paused, for an awful expression appeared for a moment on the other's face. In that moment Ringfield realized what Miss Clairville had become to him. No one can bear to hear his love traduced, and he believed that in his cups this villain, Crabbe, was lying. They faced each other and Ringfield was not the cooler nor the saner of the two.
"Pauline! Miss Clairville! What can she be to you? Hanger on of womanly footsteps," burst from him, scarcely knowing what words formed in his brain and emptied themselves upon the darkening air of the cabin. "Stealthy and gloating admirer of her beauty, even the despised companion and disloyal friend of her brother--all these you may be, but surely nothing more to her."
"What I am to her I know well enough and can tell you easily enough. She's done with me, hates and fears me, won't have anything to do with me, and yet she belongs to me and I'm not likely to forget it. And I belong to her. That's another reason why I wouldn't go after Mme. Poussette."
"You mean--that she is, that you are--oh! impossible! You mean--what do you mean? Not that you are married to her?"
Extreme agony and repulsion gave shrillness to Ringfield's voice. To have met and loved, to have coveted and dreamed of that warm, imperious yet womanly presence, and to hear this dreadful truth concerning her--if it were the truth.
"Well, you've guessed it. Yes, married to her, by heaven!" said Crabbe, and he lurched forward and fell.
Ringfield saw and heard him fall, but he was already out of the shack and speeding through the forest paths; dim arcades of larch and pine met over his head while upon the river and the great Fall were stealing long bars of bright silvery light from the level sun. Soon the silver would mellow to gold as the daily marvel of the sunset was accomplished, but Ringfield was beyond such matters now. Nature could do no more for him in this crisis than it had done for Edmund Crabbe, and the virginity, the silence and fragrance of the noble wood, brought him no solace. Yet as he sped he could not choose but breathe and the air filled his breast and then fed his mind so that presently coming upon a glade or opening in which was a large slab of grey lichened rock he lay down at length to think. And that Nature which could do nothing for him spiritually in this hour of trial conspired to comfort and restore him physically. He could not pray. His accustomed resources had failed him; instead, as it grew quite dark around, he fell asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
THE "PIC"
"How dreadful the dominion of the impure!"
The September days gave place to October ones and still Miss Clairville remained away. The tourists had departed and Ringfield could judge more accurately of the mental and moral status of the countryside. The congregation of Sunday scarcely numbered two score, but Amable Poussette and wife were always present and the rule seemed to be that any who had tired of Father Rielle came to Ringfield whether they understood him or not; poor Catholics were thus in danger of becoming even worse Methodists, and he exerted all his faculties and talents in general directions concerning conduct and character. The beautiful skies and water, the rocks and great Fall, were as impressive as before, but they no longer filled so much space in the mind of the young preacher, who now saw all things in the visible universe from the standpoint and through the jaundiced eye of the disappointed and unhappy lover. All Nature mocked him and it would go hard indeed with him should religion, too, fail him in such a juncture, but the spirit of work and priestly endeavour kept him as yet from sheer wretchedness; he prayed daily to think less of the world and more of his calling and it seemed as if the fate which brought him back to St. Ignace to love and suffer in loving would spare him further, since there was no sign of Miss Clairville's return. His preaching could not fail, because he brought to it a fine original gift and an automatic precision and certainty resulting from the excellent training of his Church, but between Sundays the time dragged. His labours among the few scattered and uneducated families of conflicting race and origin seemed unconvincing and empty, and a new shyness possessed him; he disliked hearing any mention of the Clairvilles, for Crabbe's story he had come to accept as true without a word of questioning; indeed, Miss Clairville's own words came back to him as a proof.
"Another patient of the soul," she had said. Also, she had referred to something dark and of sinister import, fatal yet compelling, which always drew her back from livelier and more congenial places, and, as he judged, from a sphere of work which paid, to the house at Lac Calvaire. That the society of her brother was the attraction, Ringfield could not admit, and what other ties or friends had she? So far as he could learn--none, and thus he read her story; growing up unprotected and motherless, without any standard to judge by, she must have accepted the attentions and fallen under the spell of a man who probably appealed to her pity and also to her intellect. Crabbe had been the only man in the neighbourhood capable of understanding her cultivated allusions; the remnants of the mixed education she had drawn from the school at Sorel and the pedantic dreary associations of the manor house. But in the contemplation of such a thing as her marriage to such a man Ringfield's fancy failed. The whole plan of creation was altered and blackened. He did not wish to know on what terms Pauline and this man now met. He tried to shut out all the images such a story conveyed, and thus he asked no questions nor did he hear any gossip, proving that the affair was old, and if once known to the country people, accepted and forgotten. Why could he not treat it in the same fashion? His faith was not shaken in the sense of belief in a Supreme Being, but he no longer lived so much for and by his faith; Nature and God were put back in the past, as he had said to Crabbe, and all his thought was for the duty of the hour and for the guidance and sustenance of others. He imagined he had lowered his own dignity by writing, on the first impulse of desperate first love, the letter which Crabbe had read with Pauline, and he strove to regain that clerical calm and judicial bearing that had suffered so violent a shock. But when six weeks of this repressed existence had sped and autumnal winds were sweeping down from the glacial north of Terrebonne, bringing cold rains and occasional snow flurries with them, he felt that he must at least call at the manor to inquire after Henry Clairville. Little at any time was heard of the latter except when "Ma'amselle" returned to her native heath, at which times the Archambaults were whipped into work and obedience by the forcible tongue and stormy temper of their mistress. Messages and parcels then passed between the domain and the village; Father Rielle made his call and the whole village and _paroisse_ quickened with energy under Pauline's determined sway. Crabbe--this Ringfield heard from Poussette--was also sent about his business; he was no longer encouraged to play cards and drink with Henry, who fared as he might at the hands of the tyrant family swarming all over the estate.
On a chilly October day, Ringfield once again traversed the muddy road leading to Lac Calvaire, his heart sore over the revelation that had reached him, and he could not repress a painful sigh as he came in sight of the _métairie_. The lake was dull grey, the maples were shedding their leaves without painting them red and yellow, and the pines looked unusually sombre against a pale and cheerless sky. A pair of kingfishers were flying from side to side of the road, and a forked object sailing high up in the air proclaimed itself a bird, otherwise there was no sign of life till, approaching the front of the _métairie_, he observed the peacock taking its airing in a neglected garden.
Nothing had affected the pose and splendour of this radiant creature as it paraded up and down, gently swaying its lustrous and shimmering tail; the drooping fortunes of the house were not reflected in its mien or expression, and it was not until Ringfield was met by four lean cats prowling about him in evident expectation of food and petting that he descried unusual neglect in the appearance of house and garden. Three ugly blotched and snorting pigs ran out from under some bushes and followed him. He saw no smoke arising, no face at any window, heard no lively bustle in the farm-yard, no amusing and contentious chatter in Canadian French from the barns and out-buildings which sheltered the various members of the Archambault family. A curious feeling rushed over him and with it a conviction--the place was deserted. He went at once to the chain of farm buildings and examined them all; all were empty, with every sign of hurried and agitated flight rather than of orderly and complacent departure. The horses were gone, the two wagons and buggy, the buckboard. Traces of fright and apprehension were met at every step; a dirty hairbrush dropped on the ground; a clock abandoned on a bench outside the door as if too heavy; tins opened and rifled of their contents; a tub half full of soiled clothes in foul water. All these he saw, scarcely taking in their meaning, until returning to the manor he opened the front door and went in. There in the usual place he found Henry Clairville, alive, and no more. Still clad in the greasy dressing-gown and still seated in the tattered arm-chair, the unfortunate man was clearly very ill. Patches appeared on his face, which was both pallid and flushed; his neck showed red and sore and his body hung down limply over the side of the chair. Evidently he had tried to get to his bed which stood in a corner, and failed. His eyes were staring and full, yet glassy; sense and recognition alike were wanting, while the delirious accents which escaped now and then from his parched lips were altogether in French. In short, Ringfield, though unaccustomed to disease, knew that the man before him was very ill, of what did not enter his head, although there came to his mind a description of the plague in a boy's story-book. He did what he could, singlehanded, which was to snatch some warm clothing from the bed, cover up the sufferer so that draughts might not reach him, fetch water and leave it on the table near the chair and see that all animals were excluded. He then quickly sought for a secluded spot near the lake, hung his own clothes about on branches to air, and took a plunge into the clean, cool water, after which he was ready to return to St. Ignace and get assistance.
Dr. Renaud, the village practitioner, drove out at once, taking a woman with him, who, as soon as she learned she had to deal with the "Pic" ran screaming from the house, thus clearing up the mystery of the Archambaults.
"They knew," said Ringfield, "and I didn't. But I guessed something of the kind and took the only precaution open to me. I washed in pure water. And now what are we to do? Has M. Clairville no one belonging to him but his sister?"
"Not to my knowledge," said Dr. Renaud, who spoke good English, "and we do not wish her to return."
"Certainly not."
"Then I can only think of one person in the village."
"A nurse?"
"Not a professional nurse, but, as I say, the only person I know of close at hand who can do what is necessary until we get a nurse, if the man lives to require one. A male nurse would be better, but who is there here? No. I am thinking of the right one if I can only get her, if I can only get her?"
"She lives in the village?" Ringfield was curious; he thought he had met every one in the village, yet here was some paragon of female skill, virtue and strength with whom he was not acquainted.
"You must have met her. Of course you know her. I speak of Mme. Poussette. Ah! You shall smile and you shall frown, but you shall see what a miracle she can work! You shall yet envy this sick seigneur. Madame is noted for her care of the sick and dying. You are surprised? Yes?"
"I cannot help it. Anyone would be. She looks so frail, so delicate, and surely she is also what we call afflicted, peculiar. Is she a fit and sensible person for a case like this?"
"Ah! Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the doctor with a slight impatience. "These afflicted ones, these peculiar ones--they are still capable of something. Many times have I seen it; the old, old tottering _grandmère_, the crazy aunt, the bad-tempered husband, even the inebriate, can find, when they are guided, work which suits and maintains them. Even when the mind is shaken, if it is only a little, just a little, to care for others, a bird or a cat, or a sick person, this will keep the wits steady. A case like this moreover!" repeated Dr. Renaud, laying his finger to his nose. He was round, jolly, bow-legged, and brusque, with pronounced features overstrong for his height, merry eyes, and a red birthmark. "This is the case. We are, you and I and presently Father Rielle, responsible for M. Clairville. He must not be moved except to his bed; he is too far gone for more. The wife of Poussette is, to my knowledge, the only person we can get to sit here, administer drink and medicine, make him comfortable. Well, not even she can do that but--you _comprenez_. And she is capable, I know her well. She is as she is" (and the doctor made the sign of the Cross), "yet she is worth ten saner women, for she has no nerves, no fears, no imagination. Tell her what to do, place her here to do it, and she will not fail; I have seen her a dozen times in the village nursing sick women and their babies. She's as good as most doctors and better than most nurses. Yes, yes, we will get madame to him at once."
"But she may take it!"
"I think not. Her body like her mind is purged of all evil humours, _mon ami_. She is already more than half spirit and waits in peace for old age and quiet decay."
Ringfield got into the doctor's buggy in silent surprise.
"Besides, if she did take it, and it killed her, I cannot see any great calamity. I will tell you her history. She was well educated at a good convent near Montreal; her father was a doctor, as I am, but a far cleverer one. Yes, I lift the _chapeau_ to that one, that old Dr. Pacquette as regards the great art and science of medicine. But as a father--ah! God pity him where he is now, according to our belief, in purgatory for many long years to come. _Bien_! Dr. Pacquette had lost his wife, and his daughter, a fairy thing, was allowed, even encouraged, to grow up as she pleases. They have grand friends in Montreal, her father's people still live on Rue St. Denis, great rich people; if you go there, drive out over the mountain and you shall see her old home, the Pacquette Château. Well, this Mme. Poussette when she is a girl (Natalie-Elmire-Alexandre, I don't give you all her name) she is very pretty, and the old doctor wish her to make a grand marriage, and he has every one up to the house and make a big time for them, and introduce her to all the young men, all the _rich_ young men. But while she has been at that convent she has met with Amable Poussette, who was not so stout then, had a good figure and a lively tongue, and the end is, they are married at Ancien Lorette by a young priest, who might have known better. Some months after, she goes home to her father to be taken in and forgiven and nursed, for she has by this time a young infant about six weeks old. Well, you can perhaps imagine _le vieux_ Pacquette when it is all explained. He is enraged, he drives her from his door, she passes all one long, cold night in the snow outside the _château_ on Cote des Neiges hill and when she is found by the servants two days later, she is as you see her, monsieur, and the baby is dead! Never again the bright little Natalie-Elmire, but instead, a pale, faded, vacant-eyed, timid woman. Ah! If I ever meet _le vieux_ Pacquette in the next world!"
The doctor nodded his bald head sagaciously; as for Ringfield, he was thinking that here was the opportunity for which he unconsciously had been waiting, to ask for and probably receive Miss Clairville's equally dramatic story, when he beheld another buggy coming around a corner of the road driven recklessly by one of the Archambault boys and in the buggy sat mademoiselle herself. Her attire, always so different from village modes, was true on this occasion to her theatrical calling, for to Ringfield's eye at least she appeared like some Oriental personage, caught and brought home in native garb, coupled with a very bad temper. Red and black was her habit and black and red her eyes and angry compressed lips.
The doctor stood up in his buggy and Miss Clairville in hers, and, as for a quarter of an hour the excited talk was in rapid French, Ringfield could only gather that the doctor was endeavouring to restrain her from going to see her brother. At last, turning away from Renaud with an imperious wave of the hand, she addressed herself to the minister in English.
"I understand it is to you the doctor owes his knowledge of my poor brother's sickness. I only heard of it myself last night on the stage at eleven o'clock, but I came at once--look at me in all this sinful finery, I can see you are calling it! Oh, yes, you are. Well, now that I have come and thrown up my part and my place in the company in Montreal, he will not allow me to finish my journey and go on to Clairville!"
"Certainly, you must not think of going!" cried Ringfield. "On no account must you do such a thing. Do you know what is the matter with him?"
"Oh, the 'Pic' I suppose, but I'm not afraid of it."
"Yet you have not been vaccinated, I fear!"
"Who told you that? Dr. Renaud, I suppose. Of course. No! No one is ever vaccinated here, no good Catholics at any rate. Good orthodox ones, like myself."
The doctor frowned, for he disliked the tone of bravado in which these words were uttered.
"It's no question of faith. It's a question of common sense and precaution. I have charge of the case and I will not permit you or anyone else to cross the threshold of Clairville Manor."
"You would class me then with the Archambaults! My own people, who eat and drink at my expense and who turn their backs on me in the hour of trial! Poor Henry, it will finish him, I fear, yet I and none other must be there to nurse him. _Mon Dieu_, but it is a shame!"
"Silly girl!" snapped Renaud. "There is no nursing for you in this case. Assuredly, Mlle. Pauline, you do not enter the house, I cannot allow it. Besides, mademoiselle, you return home too late. If you remained at Clairville longer, and had the place cleaned out, and saw to it that it was kept clean, your brother might escape these sicknesses, but poor girl, poor girl, I find it hard to blame you. Antoine! turn back and drive to the village. Mademoiselle goes now along with us."
His allusions if they pained did not soften her, but it was at Ringfield she continued to look.
"I shall have no place to stay," she said poutingly.
"It's a pity you came at all," said the doctor. "They can find you a room at Poussette's."
"I will die sooner than go to that man's house. It is a common place, not fit for me."
"Come, come, you are excited. We know Poussette's weakness for a pretty face and a fine figure, but here is our new and true friend to look after you."
"Mine is not a pretty face, Dr. Renaud, and I prefer to look after myself. You do not understand, I am out of a position by coming here. I only heard last night that Henry was ill and I came at once, expecting to be in my own home; I did not know what was the sickness he had; I have left the theatre to come here and now I have nowhere to go."
Ringfield spoke at last.
"There need be no difficulty at all about your going to Poussette's, Miss Clairville. You will oblige me by taking my room, which is the largest and best in the house. As for me, I can do with anything. If you wish I will go back to your house, sleep there in place of the servants, and keep you aware of all that goes on, of your brother's progress at least."
"Quite unnecessary," broke in the doctor testily. "I am in charge of this case, and one patient at one time is all I care for. Drive back, Antoine, to Poussette's, where you will leave ma'amselle. Drive quick, too, for I wish to see the carpenter, Alexis Gagnon, next door to M. Poussette, where I think a room can be got for Mr. Ringfield. Allons! we have wasted one good half-hour already!"
"You blame me of course for that!" said Pauline, still gazing at Ringfield, but talking to the doctor.
"Faith, I do," said the latter grimly, and she said no more.
In the Maison Pension of Alexis Gagnon, the village wag, carpenter and undertaker, Ringfield was accommodated with a room which had a balcony at the back looking on a square of Arctic garden, where amid circles and triangles of whitewashed stones the tobacco plant and some sunflowers lasted into the autumn. The news of monsieur's serious illness had now filtered through the parish, and Poussette's was full of men discussing the affair, as Pauline, looking like an outraged and defeated savage queen, passed into the hall, trailing her cheap red silken draperies up to Ringfield's room. The door to the bar was partly open; whisky was going round as supposed to be good to ward off the "Pic," and prominent in the noisy crowd was the shambling figure of Crabbe, who did not appear to notice Pauline, nor she him, and Ringfield, observing them both, could hardly bring himself to believe their extraordinary story. The brilliant if wayward actress, with her fine carriage and white hands, could never have belonged to that derelict of a man, lower even than the rough Frenchmen from the rafts and chantiers now demanding more "visky blanc". Yet in youth many things are possible, and the recital of Mme. Poussette's history seemed to prepare the way for Pauline's. Meanwhile Dr. Renaud had spoken to madame, and within an hour she was ready, and, being driven to Lac Calvaire, entered upon her labours without qualm or protest.
CHAPTER IX
PAULINE
"A conspicuous flower,
Whom he had sensibility to love,
Ambition to attempt and skill to win."
Thus the next day and for many days to come Ringfield met the lady of his dreams at breakfast and at dinner; her third meal was served privately to her in her own room at a quarter to seven, and he wondered why until he remembered her vocation. Though at present not acting she evidently retained the habits of the profession, and for the first few days she continued to wear the scarlet silken and spangled drapery in which she had left the theatre, modified by different wraps and scarves; then a trunk arrived and she appeared more discreetly and soberly clad. One evening it became unusually warm for the season, and stepping out on his balcony he perceived her seated on hers; he returned her gracious and encouraging salutation, wholly different from the self-conscious manner she affected at the dining-table, and he hoped now to be able to take up the acquaintance where it had been dropped. For his part he meant to ignore that miserable story of Crabbe's; he would treat her as the lady she was and the sincere, much-tried creature he thought her. Her mood just now chanced to be charming, and as she rose, again wearing the gay dress of the theatre, which showed her throat and elbows in their perfection, Ringfield, even with his slight experience, knew that she was beautiful. That same Nature which was so forced upon his notice in his new resting-place was strong within him this evening, and he could not refuse to harbour certain natural impulses of admiration and delight, especially as she was unusually animated in voice, expression and gesture.
"Do you not think it dreadful, Mr. Ringfield, that poor Mme. Poussette is alone with my brother all this time? Should I not be there too and take my share in some way? Oh, not in this dress of course; I understand your look. I have only put this on because it is cooler than any other I have with me. See--I have pinned up the train around me! I must not scandalize the country-folk! I may tell you this--the people of the village think me very peculiar. In their opinion I might mend my manners."
"Oh, _their_ opinion!" came from Ringfield with a smile.
"Well, even here, even in St. Ignace, there is a standard, you see."
"Of manners? Yes, I suppose so. And of morality, let us hope."
"You are not certain? What have you found out, what departure from the standard in other places? _Mon--Dieu_! I hope not--you are thinking of Montreal and the Hotel-Champlain!"
"The chief vice I have encountered here," returned Ringfield firmly, "is drink, and as a result other things connected with it, ensuing naturally."
Miss Clairville sat down suddenly, and as she did so her draperies whorled about her till she looked like some crimson flower with her dark head for its centre. "Oh!" she said under her breath, "surely there are worse things than drink!" Some latent emotion betrayed itself in her voice; small wonder, he thought, if Crabbe were really anything to her.
"Certainly there are, but they are easier to deal with. There is my difficulty, for I know I am going to find it very difficult to make an impression, to work any lasting reform here."
"And you wish to?"
"I wish to if I can."
"I thought at first you were only a preacher."
He laughed. "Only a preacher! That conveys a great deal. You must have but a poor idea of my vocation, of the saving grace and special power of all true religion."
"Religion! But if religion can do so much, why would not Father Rielle succeed as well as you?"
"Ah! there you have a problem, I admit. Perhaps, however, he has been here too long; perhaps he is accustomed to the situation and is not so deeply impressed by it. Besides, I am not so much concerned with the habits of the rough fellows we see about here; as far as I can judge, the lumbermen, mill-hands, labourers, and people of the village are remarkably sober, considering the temptations and loneliness of the life and certain contingencies which prevail. For example, when you take two or three dozen uneducated men and isolate them for months in a lumber camp, or a mine, or send them to work on remote booms and rafts, depriving them of all family ties and Christian influences, and removing them from all standards of conduct and character, what wonder that you are confronted by this grave problem?
"But I was not thinking of such cases. I was thinking rather of a successful man like Poussette, good-hearted, respected by all who know him, and yet so weak! So weak in this respect that he neglects his business and allows himself to be led into disgrace and humiliation by----"
"I never knew Mr. Poussette drank!" exclaimed Miss Clairville hurriedly. "I am quite surprised. He is such a kind man and a friend of Henry's, and Father Rielle thinks highly of him, although he no longer attends his church."
Ringfield was now satisfied that she had broken into his speech purposely to avoid the mention of the Englishman's name, but he determined to stand his ground.
"I was about to say that while I blame Poussette for his weakness I blame still more the individual who in my opinion has led him on. Living in the neighbourhood so long you must recognize the man I mean."
Her attitude did not in the least change, nor was her gay mood impaired, but she did not reply, and the silence was a challenge to him.
"I mean the unfortunate Englishman who runs that grocery and liquor shack across the road, who calls himself a gentleman, Crabbe, the guide. You know him?"
"I have seen him."
"You _know_ him?"
Surprised, she answered less brightly: "Yes, I know him."
"You knew him better perhaps years ago? You knew him when he was master of himself, when he first came here. He is, he tells me, an English university man, and in the course of our conversation one day he quoted from 'In Memoriam' in the intervals of a semi-drunken confession."
He now had all her attention; she tried to maintain her proud air, but something was working in her to the exclusion of all coquetry, all dissimulation.
"If you know him so well, why--why come to me for information? Of course any one living here, as you say, must have met him."
"But he has spoken to me of you as if he knew you very well, as if----" He could not continue, and even in her own uneasiness she felt a pity and tenderness for him.
"Why do you bother yourself about us--about him, I mean? Or me. I shall be going away soon, I hope; you will not remain all your life in such a little place as St. Ignace; try and forget what he has said."
"I cannot. It is with me day and night. Tell me if it is true!"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Because I must know. Because, if a lie, such a tale must be traced back from where it came--the black imagination of a depraved and incorrigible villain. Because if true, if true----" his voice failed him, and although it was now quite dark, Miss Clairville could detect great excitement in his usually calm and pleasantly austere manner.
She leant to him over the balcony.
"But I cannot tell you here! I cannot go to you; will you then come to me? There will be none upstairs at this hour in this house; they are all gone to see the boat come in at the wharf. There is her whistle now! Would you mind coming very much, Mr. Ringfield? Do you think it wrong of me to ask you?"
"Wrong, Miss Clairville?"
"Improper, I mean. Even here there are the _convenances_, the proprieties."
"Proprieties! When we are talking of our immortal souls and of our hopes of salvation! When truth is at stake, your character, your future perhaps--think if that had been told to anyone else!" he exclaimed half to himself.
"Then you will come?" Miss Clairville's tone was full of a radiant incredulity. She leant still farther towards him, and her eyes burned into the surrounding darkness of the night.
"I will come at once. I--if I meet anyone I can say that I am calling on you to hear about your brother."
She smiled, then frowned, in the dark. Would it be her lot to teach a good man subtlety? Should she tell the truth? She had not long to wait or think about it, for in five minutes Ringfield was knocking at her door. Nothing subtle as yet looked forth from his earnest eyes, and the grasp with which he took and held her hand was that of the pastor rather than that of the lover, but the night was dark and heavily warm, and although there were stars in the sky he did not look at them. Jupiter was just rising, giving a large mellow light like a house lamp, round and strong, and casting a shadow, but the fall of a sable lock on Miss Clairville's white neck was already more to him. They were soon seated side by side on the balcony. She had regained something other usual manner.
"You must not think that I am ungrateful for your interest in me," she said. "I believe that you are a good man, a Christian I suppose you call yourself, outside and above all creed, all ritual, the first I have ever met. No, I am not forgetting Father Rielle. He did the best he could for me, and Henry and others, but I could never follow the rules of the Romish Church, although born and bred a Catholic. With grand music one might stay in that communion, but not as our service is rendered here. And then, the confession! That is all right when you have nothing to confess, but not for me! Oh--Mr. Ringfield, why is it I cannot confess to Father Rielle, but that I can or could to you?"
"Then that story is true?"
"What was the story? What did he say?"
They talked now in whispers, and Ringfield told her in four short and to him abhorrent words. "He said--you were his wife."
Great was his relief when Pauline, starting from her seat, almost screamed aloud her agitated reply.
"No, it is not true! I never married him. That is--at least--no, I entirely deny it. I am _not_ his wife. I am _not_ married to him."
In his state of mind and inexperience he failed to notice the equivocal nature of this denial. He heard the impassioned negatives; he saw fear, resentment, and a sort of womanly repulsion in the frightened gesture she flung upon the air, and what he wished to hear and prayed to hear, that he heard. Crabbe then had deliberately lied perhaps, considering his condition, he had only boastfully invented.
"Thank God!" he ejaculated, standing up and taking Miss Clairville's finely formed white hand in both of his own. "Thank God!" he repeated, and, with restored confidence and renewed enthusiasm in all good works, he seized the opportunity to speak of what was in his heart. "Now you must listen to me. I believe, I honestly believe, that by His all-wise and all-knowing ruling I have been sent here to help you and be your friend. That letter I wrote to you--you received it I know, for I heard about it. I went West from a sense of duty. I was not required, and again the sense of duty brought me back to St. Ignace and--you."
"Oh, not only me! You would have come back in any case. You say it was Duty, not,--not----" Not Desire? If this were thought in some vague and unapprehended shape, it was not spoken. Ringfield gave her hand a strong and kindly pressure and let it fall.
"It was duty, yes, duty revealed to me by my Maker, to serve and obey whom is not only my duty but my whole desire and pleasure."
"You really mean what you say in telling me this? It sounds like things we read, like the little books they gave us at Sorel-en-haut. _Mon Dieu_! but those little books! And one big one there was, a story-book about a girl, all about a girl. A girl called Ellen, Ellen something, I have forgotten."
"That must have been 'The Wide, Wide World'. And you read that while you were at school!"
"Yes, when I was a young girl. I am afraid it didn't do me much good."
These interchanges of simple talk marked the progress of their friendship. Any fact about her past or present life, no matter how trivial, was of astonishing interest to him. And to her, the knowledge that she was already and swiftly, passionately, purely dear to a being of Ringfield's earnest mould and serious mien, so different to the other man who had come into her life, gave a sense of delicious triumph and joy. They continued to talk thus, in accents growing momentarily more tender, of many things connected with her youth and his calling, and the fact that they kept their voices down so intimately low lent additional zest and delight to the situation. Only when Ringfield alluded directly to Edmund Crabbe did she show uneasiness.
"You must give me the right to settle this affair with him," said her visitor. "We cannot risk such statements being made to people of the village, to such a man as Poussette, for example."
"Oh--Poussette!" Miss Clairville found it possible and even pleasant now to laugh. "Do you not know then all about Mr. Poussette? He is in love with me, too, or so he says. Yes, I have had a great deal of bother with him. That poor Mme. Poussette! It is not enough that one is faded and worn and has lost one's only little child, but one must also be _wished dead_, out of the way by one's husband. Ah--you are startled, _mais c'est la belle verité_! It is a good thing to be a clergyman, like you, Mr. Ringfield; you are removed from all these _bétises_, all these foolish imaginings. You do your work and look neither to the right nor the left. How I wish I were like you! I only pray, for I do pray sometimes, that no thought of me will ever darken your young and ardent life; I only hope that no care for me will ever turn you aside from your plain duty."
"Do not, please," broke in Ringfield, pushing back his chair so loudly that she was obliged to beg more caution, "use that tone to me. Twenty-six is not so very young. I should have spoken and felt as I feel and as I speak when I was twenty. So Poussette is added to your list of admirers! Will it be Father Rielle himself next, I wonder? Oh, Miss Clairville--I was right! The theatre is no place for you. I ask you to leave it, to forsake it for ever. This your opportunity. Do not go back to it. I do not, it is true, know anything about it from actual experience, but I can gather that it presents, must present, exceptional temptations. Will you not be guided by me? Will you not take and act upon my advice?"
"But the special troubles that beset me are here, not within the theatre! If Poussette is silly, with his ridiculous attentions when he thinks his wife is not looking, if the other person, if----"
"You mean this man Crabbe?"
She inclined her head; at the mention of the name all spirit seemed to die out of her.
"If he maligns me, slanders and lies about me, that is here--here at St. Ignace, and not at the theatre. Why, then, do you expect me to return here for good? I come back too often as it is. I should leave here altogether, but that some influence, some fate, always draws me back."
"Whose influence? for with fate I will have nothing to do. God and a man's self--with these we front the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Crabbe's evil influence still! You knew him when he called himself by another name?"
"Yes, Mr. Edmund Hawtree. We, we---- I suppose you would call it a flirtation. He was very different then, as you may believe."
Jealousy leapt into Ringfield's breast, the first he had ever known, and a common retort sprang to his lips.
"I should hope so! I cannot bear to think of your having known him well under any circumstances. The man is low! Whether drunk or sober he has nothing to commend him, and I believe him to be utterly irreclaimable and lost."
"In this world perhaps. But not necessarily in the next? Do you decline, then, to continue the work of reformation?"
He winced, and upon recalling what he had said saw his error. "No, I retract that. He is human, therefore a soul to be saved, as one of God's creatures, but whether the man can be reinstated in society is a doubtful matter. You are right to defend him, and I am sad only when I grudge you those memories of him. You knew him then so very well?"
She understood the pleading tone and she endeavoured to be candid, but how explain certain things to a man of Ringfield's calibre? To another, a glance, a smile, the inflection of a word, of a syllable, and all would be clear. How was she to frame an explanation which should receive his tacit and grave but unenlightened approval? How far he could conjecture, disassociate, dissect, limit and analyse, weigh and deduct, the various progresses in a crude amalgamation people call Love, she did not know, and there lay her difficulty.
"I will tell you what I can. I was quite young when I met Mr. Hawtree, 'Crabbe,' as he is now known. It is his second name. He had been unfortunate in money affairs, I understood, and had not been trained to any kind of work. It was after I returned from Sorel that I found him here. He frequently came to visit Henry; they described themselves as gentlemen together, and I suppose they were not wise company for one another, but at first I did not take any notice. He fell in love with me, and talked a great deal to me, improving my English as he called it, and you can understand how little opportunity I had had of reading or continuing my studies. I have no talent for the _ménage_; besides, Henry's methods had been long in practice, and I could not unchange them, at the age of nineteen! Mr. Hawtree and I were thus thrown very much together, yet one thing kept occurring which made me very miserable. I found out that he was drinking, and Henry too! Then another thing--my bad temper. Ah! how I suffered, suffered, in those days with that man, Mr. Ringfield!"
"I can well believe it."
"And he with me! Perhaps some other kind of woman would have suited him better, a timid, angelic, gentle little being who would have appealed to him more. When we quarrelled he grew like all you English, haughty and sneering--ah! when I think of it! And I changed to a fury--the Clairville temper--and gave back even more, even worse, than I got. But do not let us talk any more about it! You have discovered what I would have hidden, and for my part I get on better when I make myself forget it and him altogether."
He was silent; new and conflicting ideas clashed in his brain, while very close to him in the warm, fragrant night sat this alluring, sorely tried and lonely creature, who soon found the silence insupportable. To keep talking was safe; to be long silent impossible, since they seemed to draw nearer and nearer with every moment, and soon it would either be Ringfield's hand upon that dark lock he perceived adorning her white neck, or her head with its crown of hair stealing tenderly towards his shoulder. From such a precipitation of events they were saved by timely recollection of their position and the sounds which reached them from the road. The boat was leaving again, and they knew they had been thus together for an hour. Ringfield rose.
"There is now only the man himself to be seen and made to understand that such stories about you must cease. I shall speak to him at once, to-night perhaps, certainly to-morrow."
At this she quailed and could not control herself; she laid her hands on his arm and all the delicate art of the actress was called upon to assist her pleading.
"Oh!" she cried, "do you not see that it is better left alone? You take my word--you take my word of honour with you this night--I was never married to that man. Let it rest there. Do not speak with him about me. I could not bear it! I should be so ill, so worried, so unhappy. We scarcely see each other now; let it all be dropped and forgotten. He--he--exaggerated, forgets---- Oh! I do not know how to put it, but you must not speak of it. He did not know what he was saying, you know that yourself."
"That was what I thought at first, certainly."
They remained standing; eye on eye and her firm hands still clasping his arm. "You will promise me?"
He reflected a moment and then gave her his promise.
"On this condition, that if he speaks of it again, to my knowledge, to anyone, anywhere, I must then confront him and prove it a lie on your own showing."
Miss Clairville, only too glad to have gained her point, readily acceded, and Ringfield at once withdrew, fortunately without meeting anyone on the stairs or verandah. And now once more for him prospects were partly fair. Pauline's denial satisfied him; easily deceived on such a score, he knew nothing of intermediate stages of unlicensed and unsanctified affection. In his opinion women were either good or bad, married or unmarried, and to find this coveted one free was enough. The problem was how to manage the future; whether he would ever be in a position to marry, for it had come to that, and whether Miss Clairville would consent to leave the stage; as far as he was concerned the sooner the better.
CHAPTER X
THE PICNIC
".... The charm
Of pious sentiment diffused afar
And human charity and social love."
There is an idea which prevails among many thoughtful people, but which is nevertheless a good deal of a fallacy, that in the complex and congested life of cities greater opportunities for observation of character can be found than in the country. Ringfield, for example, would have combated this idea, feeling that he might have left college and taken up his work in some large Western town, preaching every Sunday to a numerous and flourishing congregation, and continued thus for several years without encountering the strongly marked types he had met within a few weeks at St. Ignace. It may be said in general of life in cities of the new world that dwellers in such populous centres are apt to undergo considerable change of character; their natural traits become altered or turned aside, dissimulation and caution are engendered by force of circumstances, while conformity to usage and imitation enter largely into daily conduct. Thus, environment becomes stronger than heredity; respectability at least is demanded, individualities disappear, and the natural man is outwardly vanquished. In the village, family failings, vices and virtues remain on exhibition, as it were, for years, known to all about. The blend here and there is recognized; individuals are often remarkable for peculiarities or defects of moral and physical construction, and heredity is strong. The simplicity of surrounding life supplies an impressive background for the elemental passions which reveal themselves in primitive or aboriginal force. Absence of standards, absence of amusements, the lack of contrast, these are a few of the causes that contribute towards the self-centred existence led by most inhabitants of rural communities. To prove this, one has but to think of a cripple, or a dwarf, or a drunken man, or a maniac; also, to revert to pleasanter images, of an unusual flower or animal, or of convincing and conspicuous personal beauty. What is a cripple in the city? He is passed by without a glance, for there are, alas! many like him. What is a dwarf? He only suggests the unnatural or unpleasant; the last circus or a fairy-book. What is a drunken man in a city? Or what a poor maniac? Officers of the police, and places of correction, physicians and nurses are at hand; the suffering and the evildoer are taken away and we know them no more.
But if we change a little part of speech and write the cripple, and proceed to think of the cripple in a village, or the dwarf, or the drunken man or the maniac, we instantly perceive how their presence must greatly colour the limited society in which they exist; how they must either amuse or disgust, arouse sympathy or create fear, as the case may be, and although a calla lily and a red-blooming cactus, a parrot or Persian kitten, are scarcely regarded as curiosities or rarities in the city, they may easily come to be regarded as such in the village.
From uninteresting and unimpersonal generalizations and aggregations such as dwarfs, cripples, lunatics, cats and parrots, we turn to the individuals of the species and behold--it is now The Cripple, The Dwarf, The Maniac, and so on, and how profoundly important the appearance and conduct, habits and dwellings of these--our companions--immediately become. We cannot get away from them, nor they from us. And the beautiful young girl! She is often safer in the city, where a kind of dove-like wisdom soon informs and protects, than in the lonely and silent places of the wilderness. The beauty that was fatally conspicuous in the village finds its rival and its level in the town.
Ringfield had certainly had his full share of ministering to the decadent and the unhappy at St. Ignace, and he was therefore very pleased one day to be called on by the Rev. Mr. Abercorn, incumbent of St Basil's at Hawthorne, the latter a small settlement, about nine miles distant, in which the English element predominated. Once a year the congregation of St. Basil's gave a picnic tea, when members of surrounding denominations met tranquilly on common ground and neutral territory. Macaulay's description of the peculiar position of the Church of England is nowhere truer than in some isolated districts like these Lower Canadian hamlets. She does, indeed, occupy a happy middle place between the unadorned wooden temples with whitewashed windows of the sects, and the large, aggressive stone churches of the Romish faith. Were her clergy as alive to the situation and the peculiar wants of the _peuple gentil-homme_ as they ought to be, one would meet with greater numbers of adherents to the Episcopal ritual.
Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn were fully in sympathy with the countryside, and acted themselves as runners and scouts in connexion with the picnic tea, the lady seconding her husband in the most able and sagacious manner, the latter bringing to his duties all those charms of culture and presence which ministers of the Episcopal Church so often possess, even when not too richly dowered with profound theological learning or magnetic gifts of oratory. Moral and social wisdom, tact and experience of the world, often atone for intellectual shortcomings, especially in rural districts, and Ringfield was compelled to admit that he was not the only worker in the neighbourhood capable of understanding the wants of the people. Mr. Abercorn was about fifty, but as enthusiastic and energetic as a much younger man.
"I knew something of French life and character before I came out here. My wife is a native of Jersey. Our severe climate with its long, rigorous winter and short but hot summer has helped to form the national character; also the scenery. I mean that the beauty of the place, of all these fine but lonely, austere rivers and forests creates a melancholy, reflective tendency, and this makes it difficult in the matter of recreation, which last is what so many of our people require, particularly the French. I would have amusements going all the time if I could afford it, but that, of course, is not feasible; the _joie de vivre_ is only to be arrived at modestly, and in our small way we try to make our picnic tea a success. We hope you will come over and join us on that occasion. We shall be having it later than usual this year, one reason for this being the fact that such serious illness exists in your own parish. I refer to Mr. Henry Clairville. It would not do to have much visiting between the parishes. And how is he getting on, for I suppose you hear all about him from time to time."
Ringfield, as it happened, knew very little of what was transpiring at the Manor House, but remarked that the worst was over, that the wife of Poussette was still absent from her home, and that Miss Clairville had not returned to her vocation.
"Ah," ejaculated Mr. Abercorn thoughtfully, "a peculiar family, a peculiar family indeed; but they are very fortunate in having you here. Oh, yes, I am not in the least bigoted, you know,--can't afford to be down here,--and I only hope you'll stay and make a great success of the new church. If everything goes well, we'll hold our picnic on the 1st of November, sort of Harvest Festival and Thanksgiving all in one, and either I or Mrs. Abercorn will drive over for you, as I suppose you will not be setting up a horse just yet."
On the day appointed Ringfield was sitting dully enough in his room over the carpenter's shop. Pauline was lingering on at Poussette's, partly because she had no other place to go, and partly because Ringfield was near. Their relations had not outwardly progressed since the evening on her balcony; several other meetings had taken place, but once assured that she was free, Ringfield settled to his work, preferring to put the whole episode from him for a while, until he could feel satisfied that she might be approached on the subject of the theatre. Thus their feelings were like Tennyson's wood, all in a mist of green with nothing perfect; meanwhile only a couple of planks separated them at this very instant, and, as usual, his thoughts were hovering about her at this hour, about half-past one o'clock, when he heard his name called by a younger member of the Gagnon family (a numerous one of five boys and four little girls), and descended to meet Mrs. Abercorn. This lady was taking the opportunity, in her rôle of auxiliary parson and general parochial assistant, of putting in a good word for Hawthorne and St. Basil's as she sat in her buggy at the door, surrounded by Poussette, Martin, and eight or ten children.
An intractable little mare pawed and shuffled in an uncertain frame of mind, apparently viewing with special disfavour the fiddling of Antoine Archambault, who had been hanging around the village ever since Pauline's return. Glancing consciously up, Ringfield thought he perceived a white hand and gleaming bracelet at the window of his old room.
"We have a rough drive before us, with a bad four miles in one place," said Mrs. Abercorn, "so we'll get away at once. You haven't been over to Hawthorne yet, Mr. Ringfield, how is that? But never mind, you'll be one of us after this afternoon at any rate. Do you play croquet?"
Looking rather astonished, Ringfield said "_No_," and the emphasis led Mrs. Abercorn to smile as she observed him more closely. She herself was one of those people of good birth who instinctively ask, no matter where they are placed, of everybody they meet, "Is she a _lady_?" "Is he a _gentleman_?" but who, in spite of this inherent and clannish trait, manage to make friends with the mammon of No-Family. She was literally as broad as she was high; short hair, turning grey, was fantastically curled about her clever, dark eyes; she had two hats, one for summer and one for winter, the latter a man's old seal cap; her skirts and jackets were skimp and dowdy, and her features and complexion unattractive, yet the authority and ease, the whole manner of the true lady made her a delightful companion, and she would have been equally diverting and diverted at a Royal Audience in Buckingham Palace or at a bean-feast on an Indian reserve. She displayed ornaments that were not precisely jewels, the value of which was of genealogical order; thus, she wore her grandfather's fobs and seals, her mother's bracelets of bog-oak and lava, and her brooch contained the hair of her only child, long deceased. She had had one dinner-dress for ten years of black "uncrushable grenadine," cut square, and it was quite true that she was the niece of an earl and the daughter of an admiral, and that she had eloped with the Rev. Marcus Abercorn eighteen years ago.
Ringfield had never met any one like her before, but in spite of her accent, so extremely English that in the Canadian country it was almost certain to be dubbed "affected," and in spite of a bright worldliness he found unusual in a clergyman's wife, he liked her very much and watched her manipulation of the mare--Flora Macdonald--with great interest, and not a little apprehension.
The bad four miles turned out to consist of alternate patches of ancient corduroy road, the logs exposed for a foot or so above the soil, and a long hogs-back of dyke-veined limestone, the ridges of spar and quartz cutting deep into the rock.
Mrs. Abercorn sighed eloquently for the lanes of Old England as the mare pranced, and the buggy flew over the various obstructions, bumping and swinging in a reckless manner Ringfield had never seen equalled.
"We are a little late," said his aristocratic charioteer, her hat crooked and her mouth quite as vicious as Flora's when touched up with a ragged whip, "but we'll be in time for a game of croquet before tea. We have the tea at five, because it's beginning to darken so early, and then we have a nice little show in the school-house: Marcus and I both believe in amusing the people. So you see it's not exactly a picnic, but quite a lot of things put together. You'll see presently."
And he did. Father and mother of their people, Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn had instituted a remarkable series of "events," as they say on regatta programmes--nautical, terpsichorean, athletic, musical and histrionic--grouped under the head of "games" and the large and delighted crowd drawn from several parishes rewarded their cheerful and untiring efforts. The Rector was not only all things to all men but to many women and numerous children as well, and Ringfield noted that, unlike the West, the men assembled were nearly all old men; there was a marked scarcity of boys and youths, and these old men appeared to be many years older than they had any right to appear. Many of them possessed but a couple of sound teeth apiece, others had retained the lower set more or less horribly intact, while a single tusk adorned the upper gum. Absence of regular visits to the dentist, or indeed of any visits at all, had wrought this ruin in faces also wrinkled and weather-beaten by exposure to the strenuous climate. The women showed to better advantage than the men, and the French were more prepossessing and better preserved than the English, especially in the matter of teeth, owing probably to a steady diet of onions and comparative lack of meat.
Diversity among the ladies included the fat, motherly looking ones, several of whom were spinsters; the young, too-smartly dressed daughters of farmers, possessing very little beauty, but of good height and figure; one person clothed entirely in black silk and very conscious of a new kind of watch, of gold and colours and small, pinned to her left bosom; and last, a couple of conventional Englishwomen staying at the Rectory.
It was natural that Mrs. Abercorn should desire to present to her friends and a few of the "quality" so good-looking a young man as Ringfield, and as soon as the buggy had been tied up under a grove of maples, he was led about by the energetic queen of the feast, whose attire, weird enough while driving, had now culminated in a highly rational although unusual aspect. Everything upon her partook of an unpleasing and surely unnecessary brevity; thus her figure was too short for her breadth, and her skirts too short for her figure; her jacket was too short over her hips, and her gloves too short over her wrists; her hair was too short on her neck and her veil too short over her nose. Yet the rakish hat settled, and the fobs and seals shaken out, she appeared mentally fresh and charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, and he was happy in experiencing for the first time in his life that amiable naturalness, inimitable airiness, ease and adaptability, which characterize the Anglican clergy and their method of doing things. Attenuated tennis, Lilliputian Badminton, swings, a greased pole, potato and sack races, fiddling, and dancing on a platform, for the French, all these he passed in review with Mrs. Abercorn and the English ladies, presently participating in a merry game of croquet on a rocky, uneven, impossible kind of ground. The Rev. Marcus, and the person in black silk joined in this game of croquet, the latter so exclusive that it gave Ringfield the feeling that people must have when they are chosen for a _quadrille d'honneur_.
Without relief or intermission the amusements held sway till about half-past four, when even the quality tired of their croquet; the day, though bright, was cold, and a bonfire on the rocks was greatly patronized by the very old and very young, while distant preparations for tea were viewed, at first with stealthy, half-reluctant admiration, and then with open restlessness. The patriarchs--toothless and wrinkled, yet not a man of them over fifty-eight--stood around in expectant silent clusters, and also in their best clothes, of which a great deal of faded red neck-tie and pepper and salt trousers seemed chiefly to strike the eye.
The tea was to be served in the large barn adjoining the church, surrounded on two sides by tall plantations of Indian corn, a rough kind known as horse corn, and not used at table. Very soon those engaged in the games fell away by twos and threes, and the rector and his wife gaily beating the covers afforded by forest and grove, all gradually converged to the meeting point outside the big doors of the barn, through which were now passing the wives and daughters of the plough, bearing coarse bedroom jugs of tea and coffee, plates of cakes, pies, and sandwiches. The people waiting thus in patient content at the doors were orderly and sober, and none ventured to enter till their rector, having unearthed even the remotest and shyest member of his flock, advanced in florid hurry and taking his wife and Ringfield with him, passed under the hanging branches of maize, asparagus, fern and crabapples which decorated the great door. The floor of the barn, although partially cleared, was still half full of straw, and flecks of it flew through the air as the people trooped in, decently awed but amused too, for the ripple of lowered laughter and pleased hum of voices resounded throughout the building. The walls, draped with flags and coloured curtains, held sheaves of grasses and several lamps in brackets at the sides, and the food, good, plain, with plenty of it, adorned the two long tables that ran down the middle. Ringfield, at the head of a table, was comparing the scene with some Harvest Homes of his youth, and wondering who would start the Doxology, when he heard the rector say, standing a long way off at the end of the other table:--
"We have the Rev. Mr. Ringfield of St. Ignace with us this afternoon, and I have no doubt that he is already as anxious as the rest of you for a share of the good things we see here before us, so I am going to ask him to say--ah--Grace, then we can fall to. Mr. Ringfield, will you be kind enough to ask the blessing?"
There was a pause, not because Ringfield was unready on these occasions nor because of any fear lest his special kind of intercessory gastronomic prayer might fail to carry conviction with it, but on account of the intrusion of two belated arrivals down by the door. He could not distinguish very clearly, but there seemed to be some one either invalided or very young in a basket-chair, wheeled in by a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three, who entering brusquely, on a run, and laughing, was silenced, and the chair and its occupant pushed back against the wall. This slight but untimely interruption over, Ringfield gazed solemnly around--it was already growing a little dim in the barn--and spoke as follows, with head thrown back, and closed eyes:--
"O Lord, the giver of all good things, who sendest seed-time and harvest, rain and sun on the fruits of the earth and crownest the year with fatness, look down on us at this time and bless us." At this point the Anglicans present sat down under the impression that the "grace" was over. They rose again in confusion as Ringfield continued:--
"We thank Thee for these, Thy temporal blessings vouchsafed unto us as a people. We have Thy pledge in the book of Thy Holy Word, that while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not fail. We thank Thee for the fields white with harvest. We thank Thee for our great and beautiful country; for its beneficent laws, its opportunities, its great and unequalled privileges, and we pray for our rulers, for all in authority, for all engaged in the ministry of whatever denomination, for the Queen and the Royal Family. We pray for him whose duty it is to go in and out before this assembly; grant him wisdom and spiritual strength; bless also the partner of his life work, and may their united labours prevail and resound to Thy glory and the honour of Thy name, and while we remember at this time to thank Thee with full hearts for these temporal gifts, let us be swift to remember also Thy choicer, greater, holier gift of Free Salvation; Mercy, Pardon, Peace, and glorious relief from sin and its thraldom--these may be ours for the asking. O Lord, if any sinner lurk among us, if any poor sinner be at this board to-night, search him, O Lord, and purge his mortal body, try it with Thy true refiner's fire. As our snows are pure, so let us be pure. As our waters are deep yet clear, let our minds be clear of evil, and rid of all offence; and for all who by reason of sin, or pain, or sickness, or any other infirmity either of body or of mind cannot be with us at this time, we pray that Thou wilt comfort, uplift, forgive and relieve them. All--for Christ's sake--Amen."
CHAPTER XI
"ANGEEL!"
"Like a sheep enthralled
'Mid thorns and brambles."
On the conclusion of this address, which was Ringfield's idea of a "grace" and which was modelled on the Methodist formula customary on such occasions, the people, whose appetites had been held over-long in check, took their seats with expressions of relief and in some cases with audible grunts and whispers of annoyance. The truth was, Ringfield had exhibited a want of tact in expatiating in an eloquent prayer on things better left alone, from the village point of view. It was bad enough to occupy so much time when already it was darkening and soon the lamps would have to be lighted; it was bad enough to pray in public for the rector and his wife; it was entirely inexcusable to hint at the presence of a sinner in their midst, at the very board now covered with the home-made dainties cooked and sent in by the ladies of Hawthorne. In itself perhaps the prayer, though trite and redundant (Ringfield was not in his best vein, no longer single-minded), was eloquent and pointed, and the reference to the snows and rivers of the country extremely poetic and suggestive, yet it was not in accordance with the best taste, although prompted by the best feeling. The rector and his wife, ignoring their own sentiments, made haste to smooth away the little difficulty that had thus unexpectedly arisen, and in a few minutes all was in a pleasant clatter and babble with the pouring of tea, cutting of huge three-decker cakes, and passing of large, solid plates holding pyramids of equally large and solid sandwiches. Ringfield, devoting himself to the English visitors and the person in black silk, who was the widow of a deceased lumber king correctly reputed to have left an enormous fortune, was by the nature of things the last to perceive that he had wounded the delicate sensibilities of the company, and therefore he made a good meal, unconscious of the comments lower down his table and also around the rector.
"It's always the way with them Methodists," said one speaker in a careful undertone, a venerable body of fifty or so, with four teeth left in his head, bent, bald and wrinkled. "They pride themselves on what they call 'extem-pore' speaking." He gave the word only three syllables of course. "Why, it's mostly out of the Prayer Book anyway! He said 'any other infirmity,' did you notice? And we say, 'any other adversity,' don't we? Well, where's the difference?"
"The tairms are not precisely in the nature of synonyms," remarked the schoolmaster, a Scotchman of sandy and freckled appearance, who was cutting a sandwich into small pieces with his penknife and then frugally conveying them to his mouth with the aid of the same useful implement. "But in a sairtain sense ye can _call_ them synonyms."
"It's out of course and all irregular like to pray for the Queen and the Royal Family on a day like this. 'Twould be best keep that for Sundays where it belongs," said the wife of the ancient who had spoken first.
"What can ye expect, ma'am, when they come to it without their notes? Stands to reason, if any man's going to preach earnest, _earnest_, mind you, he'll require some notes or heads jotted down, clear and easy to be got at, before him." This was the opinion of another elderly man, but of a fat and comfortable if blustering variety, who had come out from the English provinces thirty years before as cook with a regiment, and was now the Hawthorne butcher and general store-keeper, also accounted a rich man.
"But that's not the point," he went on with husky and stertorous fervour. "The point is not whether what he said was well said or ill said; the point is, he should never have spoke them words at all. Point? To almost point the finger at us sitting around this hospitable board declaring we were all sinners! So we are, all of us. The Litany says so, don't it? Don't it say, 'miserable sinners'?"
"It does, it does," murmured a sympathetic female engaged in feeding two out of eleven kinds of cake to a child on her lap.
"And the rector leaves it there, where it ought to be left. In my opinion, ma'am, it don't do no good to pray nor preach too direct. It's casting a stone, that's what it is, it's casting a stone."
"Perhaps he was nervous, poor young man, at seeing so many people," said the young mother of the child who was crumbling the cake all over its mouth and fingers and dress without swallowing any, having previously been regaled with maple sugar and molasses candy outside, and consequently not feeling very hungry. "Perhaps he has heard about Angeel."
The latter was the common pronunciation of Angele, the name of the little girl in the basket-chair who was engaged like the rest in eating and drinking in company with her nurse not far from Mr. Abercorn.
At the word "Angeel" several warning coughs around her, winks, nudges and a kick under the table, made the young woman so flurried that she slapped the child for not eating properly, and the child immediately beginning to cry, a diversion was created, but not before Ringfield had overheard a few remarks touching his recent prayer, not exactly flattering to his self-esteem. Soon the conversation lapsed as the piles of cake, custard and pumpkin pies and jugs of tea were depleted; and Mr. Abercorn, upon whom the quiet and gathering gloom had a depressing effect, jumped up and asked for volunteers to assist in lighting the lamps.
"We usually get through without artificial aid to our eyes and our mouths, but that is when the picnic tea is held in October. We are at least a fortnight late this year. We shall want the tall men for this--Jacobs, Enderby, Anselme--you take these three lamps on the other side while I find somebody to help me with mine."
"On the score of height, at least," said Ringfield pleasantly, leaving his seat and striding down the centre of the barn, "I can offer my services. Which are the ones to be lighted? These two and the one just over our heads?"
"Very good of you, I'm sure," responded the rector briefly. "They are quite steady on their brackets, I suppose, men? Now shut those doors; we don't want any draught. Be careful with the matches, everybody!"
The others had got to work first, and along their side of the wall, Anselme, Jacobs, and Enderby, the butcher, slowly lit their three lamps, when, Ringfield, busy over a refractory wick and just in the act of applying a match, in turning his head, saw directly beneath him the basket-chair and its occupant as well as the young woman in charge of it.
The shock of perceiving what was in reality more of a Thing than a person, being an unfortunate child of about nine years of age, otherwise well formed, but with a weak and hanging head enlarged very much beyond its normal size and yet with a pair of shrewd eyes and a smiling mouth, told upon his nerves. He started, leant too heavily on the bracket, and in a second the lighted lamp, as yet without a chimney, fell on the floor.
In another second the straw and decorations were all in a blaze, the barn full of smoke and commotion; and he was conscious only of himself and the rector wildly stamping, grovelling, and pushing with might and main for what seemed hours of fear and suspense. The men tore the great doors open; there were, happily, no corridors to tread, no stairs to descend; the women and children first, and then their husbands and fathers, rushed out, mostly uninjured, into the cool twilight air, and when Ringfield came to himself he found that in some way he too was outside the barn, holding on to the basket-chair, nearly hysterical from the fright he had sustained, but still endeavouring to calm the dreadful child and its nurse, both of whom were shrieking wildly.
"Angeel! Angeel!" cried the girl, and then in French: "Oh, what would they say to me if anything happened to you! It doesn't matter about me, only you, Angeel, only you!"
Ringfield looked around, dazed. The comfort, jollity, and abandon of the picnic tea were things of the past. The barn had been saved and the fire was out, but the groups of excited, tearful women and coatless, dishevelled men, the rector with one hand badly burnt, Mrs. Abercorn loudly deploring the loss of her hat and an antique bracelet--all was forlorn, changed, miserable! And all this was his fault, his doing, the result of his carelessness! He could scarcely frame the words with which to deeply lament the unfortunate accident, but his very genuine contrition softened the rector's heart even while he felt some resentment at the sudden fatality which had spoiled the day and in his own case was destined to leave a very unpleasant remembrance.
"The question is," said Mr. Abercorn, talking to Enderby and the schoolmaster, "whether we are to go on with the rest of the programme. I'm the only one, happy to say, at all injured, and already the pain is better. Plunge in, men, and get out all the burnt stuff and tidy the tables. It might have been worse; thank God, none were hurt! And we mustn't let Mr. Ringfield feel badly about it. The bracket was weak, I'm sure it was weak, and he's a stranger among us. What are you saying, Enderby? A judgment on him? Nonsense. I thought you had more sense. Ask him to remain for the evening and everything shall go on as we intended to have it."
But Ringfield did not care to stay. Everything was against him; for the first time in his life he felt himself a failure,--in the way. How had he come to be so careless? Well he knew, for the face of the dreadful child, in spite of its deformity, evinced a strong, strong, insistent resemblance to a face he knew. The dark hair and eyes, the shape of the forehead, the way the hair grew on the forehead--where had he seen it all reproduced not so very long ago? Miss Clairville's expression, colouring, and animated play of gesture lived again in this mysterious child.
About seven o'clock, just as Mrs. Abercorn's "nice little show" was beginning, he took his way home. The path lay along the darkest road he had ever seen; there was neither moon nor stars, and the blackness of a country road bordered by dense forests can only be understood by those who have travelled at such a time, and for the nine miles that he plodded stupidly along--for he declined to wait to be driven--given up to sombre and sinister thoughts, he was a most unhappy man.
CHAPTER XII
THE HEART OF POUSSETTE
"Yet is the creature rational--endowed
With foresight, hears too, every Sabbath day,
The Christian promise with attentive ear,
Nor disbelieves the tidings which he hears, ..."
About a week later, Ringfield was descending the hilly road behind Poussette's at four o'clock in the afternoon, when he discerned a new arrival at the wharf, and as the tourist season was over, the boat only making a few occasional trips, he was curious concerning the lady who, showily if neither correctly nor expensively attired, was looking about her in disappointment and consternation. Poussette himself hurried out in his character of host; his manner was more than usually warm and familiar as he took her bag and umbrella, and Ringfield soon learnt that she was Miss Sadie Cordova from Montreal, although originally from New York, a member of the Theatre of Novelties, who had come to pay Miss Clairville a visit. This new acquisition to St. Ignace society was more consistently lively than Pauline, not being troubled with moods, and she brightened the place up very considerably in various directions; she did not share Pauline's room, for Poussette gallantly led her to the apartment vacated by Mme. Poussette, but the two friends were constantly together, and Ringfield at first rejoiced in the advent of the gay Cordova, as it intimated a sensible enjoyment of life on Pauline's part in place of moping and brooding, and as it also appeared to keep Edmund Crabbe off the premises. But these two good ends were gained at the expense of a third, for the constant and animated, even tender attentions of the host were altogether too obvious, although at first no complaint could be made, since so much feminine society served to keep Poussette also steady and sober. Still, card-playing in the mornings, noisy operatic music in the afternoons (there was no piano, only an old American organ, in the house) and coquettish scufflings, dancing, and conscious giggling _tête-à-têtes_ in the hall every long, lamp-lit evening soon became wearisome, and Ringfield, made vaguely uneasy, took on himself to reprove Poussette.
The place was the bar--always the most attractive spot in the house, for the Indian guide, a sober, worthy man, kept it absolutely clean and tidy, and there were comfortable _habitant_ chairs and a wide hearth for logs. These were burning brightly now, as the first November snows were falling, and while Ringfield expostulated with Poussette, the latter spread out his fat hands to the blaze. Upon the little finger of the left hand sat a square seal ring of pale cornelian, and as Ringfield looked he clearly saw the capital letter "C" picked out in red upon the white. New and hateful pangs, suspicions, jealousies, assailed him; he was sure that this must be Pauline's ring, although he had never noticed her wearing it, and the thoughts thereby engendered did not tend to make him listen calmly to Poussette's line of defence. So far from being offended at the clerical interest in his affairs, the Frenchman was immensely flattered and encouraged to speak out.
"And are you quite sure," said Ringfield in conclusion, "are you perfectly certain that Miss Cordova knows you are a married man? In my opinion there is small harm in the lady! the poor, thoughtless creature is too much occupied with her silly clothes and music and trivial passing of the time to work lasting mischief, but I remember that she follows a godless calling--she is an actress and has been one longer than Miss Clairville. You must be careful. It is time Mme. Poussette was relieved from her charge and came home."
"But how--come home? Come at this place again? Bigosh--but that will not do, Mr. Ringfield--at all, sir! Beeg fuss, sure--my wife come at this place so soon after leave nurse Henry Clairville! Dr. Renaud will tell you that. No, sir,--Madame is come no more on me, on St. Ignace at all. When she leave me, go nurse seeck man down with the 'Pic,' she is no more for me. _Voyez_--m'sieu, I am tired of my wife. I shall try get a divorce."
Ringfield was astounded. "You, Poussette! A divorce! From that poor, unhappy woman who has done you no harm, and will have nothing to live upon? How can you do such a thing? Why, you must not let your mind dwell on such a thing for an instant! I do not believe in divorce, or at least only in rare and exceptional cases, and yours is not one of these. You understand me--your wife may be delicate, even afflicted, but no man puts his wife away for these reasons. All the more you must cherish her, comfort her, keep her by you. If she grew worse you would be justified in putting her, as we say, under restraint, or in the care of those best fitted to look after her, but even then you would remain her husband. That is the unwritten law of our and of all true religion."
Poussette spat into the fire and considered. Father Rielle had told him this in almost the same words many times over; he had left the Catholic communion for that reason, and had hoped for better things from the young minister.
"Don't Methodists divorce?" said this nineteenth-century rural Henry the Eighth.
Ringfield moved uneasily in his chair. "They may--they can--they do--but as I have told you, the causes must be exceptional ones. Bitter tragedy--abhorrent false conduct, you understand me?"
The other nodded. "My wife--nothing like that the matter with her. All the contree, all the reever know Mme. Natalie Poussette--good woman, sure. No--but see now, m'sieu, now I am talking, and I tell you my trouble. I'm not so bad _garçon_, you know; kind of fond of drink now and then--I 'pologize, 'pologize, m'sieu, for you see me a leetle bit dhrunk. Now--understand. I'm by nature a most loving kind of man, and I'm fond of leetle children. Yes, sir, bigosh, _excusez_ a leetle bit of swear--but that is my nature, that is me, and I would like, sir, some leetle babee of my own. I make quite a bit of monee, m'sieu, with the 'otel and the mill, and a leetle bet and a leetle horses. _Bien_--what you say? Very well. What must I do with this monee--while I live, and if I die? 'Give it to the Church,' Father Rielle, he say. 'No, sir,' I say!"
And Poussette jammed a couple of smouldering logs with his heel; they instantly knit together and sent out a big crackling shower of sparks that caused both men to retire their chairs farther from the hearth.
A suspicion crossed Ringfield's mind. "Did you send your wife to nurse Henry Clairville or did she go of her own accord?"
"_Certainement_--my wife go herself. Dr. Renaud--come for her. She will not take the 'pic'. She will take nothing. She will nevaire die, that woman!"
The remark was saved from being distasteful to the listener by the fact that it was given with a melancholy despairing gesture, which to a less serious person than Ringfield might have been amusing. But his sense of humour, originally meagre, was not developing at St. Ignace as fast as it might, and he saw nothing humorous in this view of madame's immunity from disease. Before he could frame a reply, Poussette went on:--
"So you see, I like you, Mr. Ringfield, and I'm going to pay you good monee, and I believe you--good Christian man, and I want you to help me get a divorce. Mme. Poussette (you can say like this to the Government)--Mme. Natalie Poussette, poor woman--she is so delicate, so fonny, so--so ill, she cannot have any leetle babee; no leetle children play round their fader--that's me, Amable Poussette, beeg man, rich man, good Methodist, built a fine church on top of the Fall. So this Mister Poussette after many years live with his wife, after long time he wants to marry another woman and have plenty small babee, play round in the summertime (here Poussette hushed his voice) under the beeg trees, and in the water, learn to swim in the reever, splash like old duck, old feesh! Many a time I feel like go on the dhrunk. Well sir, nice, bright, young wife, sing, act, dance--we'd have beeg tam together, and I'd dhrink nothing but tea, sure! Go to Morréall, buy _tiquette_ on the theatre, ride on the street car, make transfer to Hochelaga Park, get out, have nice glass beer--just one, m'sieu--go on the _boutiques_, buy nice bonnett, eh? I have monee to do like that, but [with the national shrug] I have no wife. I am tole there is everything very fonny there all year round, but me--I have only been there two, three tam; no good go alone, meet bad company, get on the dhrunk then, sure. Bigosh--_excusez_, Mr. Ringfield, there's nothing like young, handsome wife and plenty babee keep their father straight. Eh? So I tell you what I want to do. I will be for selling this place; get three thousand dollar for it; go to Morréall every winter; perhaps go on that Hotel Champlain or some other nice _maison pension_ and have big tam--what do you say? That's no bad thing--" Poussette was very earnest here--"for me--to wish young wife, clever wife, and leetle babee play round! Before I have the hairs gray, or lose what I have. _Regardez un peu, m'sieu_!"
And Ringfield could not refuse to examine the fine head of black hair thrust towards him. He was touched in spite of clerical scruples.
"No, no, certainly not a bad thing," he said gently, "not at all an unnatural thing. I think I understand, Poussette, I can see----" and Ringfield seemed to feel something in his throat, at any rate he coughed and hesitated. "I can see that your position has its difficulties and its--its trials. But, Poussette, we all have those. We all have to deny ourselves in some way, in some unexpected quarter. We cannot always have what we want, that is, in fact, at the root of all religious feeling, and, if I am not mistaken, at the root of all religious belief as well. If the great Creator of the universe has had to suffer and deny Himself, as we know, in the past, has He not still to suffer as He looks on at the wickedness and sinful passions of the sons of men? The universe is not absolutely happy, perfect--would that it were! And so this law of suffering runs through everything and assails everybody. None can hope to escape. We--ministers of the Gospel--we do not question this; we recognize that it is so, and all we can do is to impress it upon you who listen to us. I have tried to do this; I have preached upon this--that to each individual man, woman and child, there comes--there must and will come a time, when material success, health, wealth and happiness are non-important, and when moral issues, when duty, character and conduct are the great essential facts of life to be met and grappled with. You--Poussette--have been no exception to this rule in the past--you know the habit of life to which I refer--and now here is this new trial, this new difficulty about your wife. Even were I able to do anything for you--because it is a lawyer, a notary you require, not a minister--I could have nothing to do with your marrying again. That--I must tell you plainly--is out of the question. It is not good for man--some men--to live alone; my Church, my Bible tell me this, and may be I am learning to know it from experience of such cases as yours; but once married, and married to one in whom there is no fault, you must not seek to lightly undo what God and the sacraments of the Church in which you were united have wrought. I fear, Poussette, that in leaving Father Rielle and coming to me, you were not acting honestly, openly."
Poussette, in admiration of his hero's beautiful pastoral diction, felt no resentment and exhibited no temper. "No fault!" he exclaimed. "Ah, but there--that is not so, Mr. Ringfield. Look, sir, look now, there is fault enough--beeg fault--what I have said. That is enough, and I have plenty monee to make it more than enough."
"Money--money!" Ringfield exclaimed in his turn, "The root of many kinds of evil. How much money have you, my friend? You are accounted rich, as it goes in St. Ignace, at Bois Clair, in Hawthorne, but in Quebec, in Three Rivers, in Montreal--no! You would soon find the difference. The rich man of the country might easily become the poor man of the town; living is expensive there--you might find your business here--I mean the mill--not pay so well with you absent; in short, Poussette, you would be foolish to change your way of life! It is not worth your while to leave St. Ignace, but I know who ought to go, to be sent to the right about pretty quickly too, and that is--this man, Edmund Crabbe. What do you think of helping me to get him away? He's a public nuisance in spite of his education, and we should all do better without him."
Ringfield was always torn by painful, shameful jealousy when he thought of the Englishman, and his entire nature appeared to change. He could not have called him "Hawtree" or "Mr." for his life; that savoured of gentility and the fervid past when the man was perhaps a picturesque figure, quoting the English classics in the guise of an unfortunate exile. Besides, if he fathomed Poussette's feelings correctly, the latter in his own jealousy of Crabbe might be found a powerful ally. The plain truth was--three men wanted the same woman; and vaguely, it seemed to Ringfield as if he--the worthiest--had chief right to her; he feared not Poussette, the married and the marred, the uneducated, the inferior one of her own race, but he still feared the perversely cultured, doubtlessly gifted, decadent "Oxford man," the social superior of every one in the village.
Poussette again reflected. Any latent jealousy he had entertained of the minister tended to disappear under the fire of these inquisitorial interviews, and Ringfield might always be credited with having fine command over his features.
"Ah, well, m'sieu," said the Frenchman, sagaciously nodding, "Crabbe is no harm. You get me my divorce; let me marry Ma'amselle Pauline, live with her at the beeg house, and I'll promise--_parole d'honneur_, m'sieu--to see no more that man."
"The Manor House! It will be a long time before any one can live there, I should think!" said Ringfield impatiently, concealing the spasm of tortured pride that passed over him as he heard Poussette's tactics defined. "And what if she will not marry you? Mlle. Clairville is wedded to the theatre, she tells me, and although of that I cannot approve, it would not be so bad as marrying a divorced person."
"But we are great friends, sir! Many a tam I have kept that house, many, many months, m'sieu, supply well with food--the meat and the dhrink, the chickenne and the wine. Her brother is _fou_--mad, he has not one cent monee. How then shall mademoiselle fare? I am good tenant of her brother, the Sieur, Seigneur of St. Ignace, and I send my peep there with good things to eat; he will tell you, sir, of the old tam and all about the _corvée_ when every one in the _paroisse_ do same thing; one man feesh, another man beeg chickenne or turkey, another patackes, another flour from the mill. Why, sir, if it was not that I, Amable Poussette, was good friend there, I don't know, I don't _know_, m'sieu, how they get along 'tall! Those Archambault--all bad peep--all bad together; the old woman, the old man, the girl, the boy--all the same, sure."
"Who pays them?--You?"
"No, m'sieu; do better things with my monee."
"But they don't believe in the _corvée_, surely?"
"It is like this." And Poussette tapped the other's knee with his fat fingers, thereby displaying the cornelian ring to much advantage, and Ringfield saw with satisfaction that on top of the large "C" was cut a little "S". Had the relations between Poussette and Miss Cordova so quickly progressed and of what nature were they? The eye of the Frenchman gave a comprehensive wink. "It is all right, Mr. Ringfield, all right, sir, Mees Cordova--she put the ring on my finger herself; she was just fooling last night and I like to be good friends with her; then she speak for me to Mees Clairville, and so--_vous comprenez_, sir. But no--I pay no money to these Archambault. It is like this. There have been Clairville many years at St. Ignace; there have also been Archambault too a long tam. They say once one was married with another, but I do not know; I would not ask M'sieu Clairville, and I would not ask Ma'amselle Pauline. This is a long tam ago, I only speak of what I hear. I know this, m'sieu--it is not a nice place, not a nice life for a lady like Mees Clairville. Have you not seen her on the theatre? You would like to see her at that?"
"No, decidedly not. I have never seen a play. I do not approve of the life she leads, and trust that when her brother is better she will not return to her vocation."
"But how--she must make some leetle monee of her own, and it is for why she goes on the theatre. I have seen her act and sing."
"Can she sing?"
"Ah, you shall hear. She will sing for me, m'sieu, and bigosh--_excusez_, Mr. Ringfield--I'll get her sing to-night. And if I do that, will you, sir, do one great thing for me?"
Ringfield smiled. "I won't promise, Poussette. You're a deeper character than I thought you were. At any rate, I'll do nothing about a divorce--make sure of that, man!"
Poussette, with large, noble gestures, waved the divorce away.
"I say nothing. I will do nothing. But if you will be so kind, sir, as to speak of me to Mees Clairville, should my wife, Mme. Natalie--die! Tell her, sir, how I am good man, _au fond_, sir, by my nature; how I love the leetle babee, plenty small babee; how I am kind, jolly man, by my nature, sir; how I would like to marry with her, give her good tam. You tell her this, Mr. Ringfield, for me, and make me your best friend, sure?"
Half-laughing, half-shocked, and for the moment forgetting his own views and dreams concerning her, Ringfield acceded to the unusual request.
"And remember, m'sieu--tell her I go no more on the dhrunk after I marry with her--no, sir, go no more 'tall. If we live in Morréall, tell her I'll go no more on that Hotel Champlain neither; a friend of mine, Napoleon Legendre, he has a temperance 'otel in Craig Street; I go there, sir, and never touch even one glass of beer. Tell her that. And tell her I am for selling this place, and p'raps buy Clairville Château. Tell her----"
"Enough, enough, my good Poussette!" cried Ringfield, jumping up as he heard feminine voices nearing their retreat. "Your virtuous resolutions do you credit, and may you be enabled to perform and carry them through--if not to the letter at least in the spirit."
"And you don't think me _bad, low_ kind of _garçon_, eh?"
"I do not, indeed."
"Say"--and Poussette's hand instinctively moved towards the counter--"you will dhrink a leetle glass beer, just one, sir, on that with me?"
"Poussette!"
With an injured expression, and a rapidity amazing for so fat a man, Poussette slipped round behind the counter and brought out two bottles of ginger ale; in a twinkling the tall tumblers were ready and he offered one to Ringfield with a deep and exaggerated bow.
"Ah--I see. I beg your pardon, Poussette. I thought you meant the other kind. Of course I will drink with you and with pleasure."
The glasses were placed side by side, each taking one and looking intently at one another. In that moment all selfishness died out of Ringfield; he felt the importance of the opportunity.
"Will you shake hands first, Poussette?"
"_Mais oui_, m'sieu! _Certainement_, but wait, sir, one moment!"
With repeated rubbings on the clean roller-towel behind him, turning back of cuffs and a general straightening of the person and freshening of the attire, the Frenchman at length proffered his fat hand, and Ringfield clasped it with a firm, bold grasp; his muscles were twice as strong as those of the Frenchman, for while the one had been chiefly employed in the kitchen, at a rude desk, and had rusted in long loafing and idling intervals, the other had maintained his rowing and paddling and his interest in other athletic pursuits; even a half-dozen lessons in boxing had he laid to his credit.
"Now I've got you," said he, smiling, as the fat hand lay tightly imprisoned in the lean one, "and I'm not going to let you go till you make me a promise. See here--Poussette--promise me now--not to touch a drop of liquor again for a whole year. We'll let it go at that; I won't say anything about beer. By degrees, man, we'll fight the Devil and all his works. By degrees, and by prayer, and by every argument in favour of right living that I can bring before you--we'll fight this thing out together, you and I. Don't wait for some hysterical occasion, but do your plain duty now, while I hold your hand in mine. If you should marry again, Poussette, and should ever have those little children playing about you--what then? You'd want to lead a straight life then--and before, I know you would. Come--make me the promise now--and if you break it, as you may do, come to me and tell me of it; make it a second time and so--each interval may be longer, do you see--if you 'take the pledge' as it is called, it is likely to be in public, and your friends and fellow-drinkers hear about it, and ridicule you and laugh at the idea, and so you are driven to drink again. What do you say, Poussette?"
"It is then--just between you and me, sir?"
"That's the idea. Of course I shall say nothing about it to a third person. Come--you promise!"
Poussette seemed uneasy.
"But--m'sieu--just you and me? That seems, sir, just same thing as go confess to Father Rielle. Beg pardon, Mr. Ringfield, but bigosh, sir--that is same sure as go on the confession."
Ringfield saw the point.
"I understand, Poussette. You are right. We must not be ashamed of trying to be good. Nothing done in the corner, eh? Well, then, you tell--anybody you like."
"The new lady--Mees Cordova! Will that be all right, sir?"
"Why Miss Cordova? Oh, well--never mind! So long as I've got your word, Poussette, the word of an honest man, eh?"
"I'll thry, sir."
"That's good. That's all right. You're a _man_, Poussette."
The Frenchman wiped the tumblers thoughtfully and gazed intently into space. Perhaps he saw there the future small Poussettes playing out of doors; perhaps too, he saw the faded, weary woman who bore his name, still watching the sick man in the old manor house.
"You see, m'sieu," he said impressively, "if Mme. Poussette was to come right, if she come again on me here, feex up things around the house, be well and jolly, I would not send her away, I would not thry get this divorce. Fonny things happens--but I don't know about my wife. Dr. Renaud think she will always be the same. It is hard for me, Mr. Ringfield, sir--me, jolly kind of man--have a wife go like silly person all over the place, sing and walk by herself, make up songs, fonny _chansons_. Ah, you don't know how I have hard tam with that one! But, I'll wait till I see how she is in two, three weeks; the doctor--he say Henry Clairville almost well now."
"And it is understood you will leave Miss Clairville alone--and Miss Cordova. Remember, Poussette, you have engaged me to preach in your church and to minister here in this parish. I must refuse to do either if you offend against common decency and morality. Besides--Miss Clairville will never, I am positive, listen to you. You must see as well as I do, her pride in her family connexions, however worthless these are to-day."
"_Bien_," said Poussette jauntily, "if not Mees Clairville, then Mees Cordova. That is for why I wear her ring. I can persuade, sir--bigosh, _excusez_ m'sieu, I can persuade!"
"So it seems," said the other drily, and would have continued his lecture had not the two ladies, who had been in the hall laughing and smiling around the bar door, now appeared boldly on the scene, and Ringfield made his escape, not before he had promised to look in that evening during an improvised concert at which Miss Sadie Cordova would dance, and Miss Clairville act and sing.
CHAPTER XIII
A SICK SEIGNEUR
"He sits alone
On stormy waters in a little boat
That holds but him and can contain no more!"
Meanwhile the house of Clairville was undergoing drastic changes at the hands of Mme. Poussette. The patient, propped up in his ancient and tattered bed, was now strong enough to look at books; many hours he passed in this way while madame roamed over the doleful house, setting in order and cleaning as well as she could. Her strength, patience and endurance were remarkable; she could dust, sweep, scrub, hammer, all day long and never experience fatigue; walls were rubbed down, windows opened and washed, furniture drawn forth from dusty armoires and cupboards raked out--and still the work went on, each day bringing to light some dark, unfamiliar nook, some unexplored room or closet. At Poussette's she never worked at all; sensitiveness to strangers and fear of the servants mastered her; at Clairville she worked incessantly, and when her nursing was done, entered upon her labours in this Augean house with steady passionless activity.
Clairville was badly pitted and every remnant of good looks had left him, yet on the first day that he could put his feet to the floor he would have sent madame into the front room, saying:--
"Bring me the suit of clothes you will see hanging on a nail in the wall".
She stared at him, knowing his weakness of body better than he knew it himself.
"What for, m'sieu?"
"What for? What are clothes for, idiot of a woman! To put on, to wear. I shall habit myself as a gentleman. Faith--it is time, too!"
"But, m'sieu----!"
"Bring me that suit, I say."
Madame hesitated, because she had removed the suit in question a week before to an old trunk in an empty room--she was not very clear which one--and it would take her some minutes to find it.
"If m'sieu will get back into his bed----"
"I will do nothing so foolish. I was thinking of getting up. I _am_ up and should be holding a levee-- How do you do, my Lord Marquis?--pray enter. M. le Chevalier de Repentigny; open there for my friend, the Intendant! Gentlemen, I greet you. You perceive me at my toilet--but these lackeys are too slow! Fetch me my clothes, I say! Ah--misery! I cannot stand! I cannot--cannot even sit! Help me to bed, you woman there--help me, quick!"
And madame, instead of running for the suit of Court clothes, managed to lay Henry Clairville down again before he fainted. However, the next day he was slightly stronger and the next and the next, so that on the fifth day he was nearly as well as ever, and again demanding the suit, she went to the room upstairs and hunted for it. Its colour was a faded claret, and lacings of dingy silver appeared on the front and round the stiffened skirt that stood out from the waist--a kind of cut to make even a meagre man look well among his fellows; a three-cornered hat went with it, and into this relic of strenuous days, madame soon assisted her charge.
"How does it fit?" he inquired anxiously
"It is without doubt large at present for m'sieu, but m'sieu has been ill. After a while it will fit better."
"And how do you think I look in it?" he continued, gazing with fringeless expressionless eyes on her vacant but concerned countenance. "You see, to meet these gentlemen I must at least try to appear as well as they do. A Sieur de Clairville must guard the appearance at all costs! Where is my sister, Pauline-Archange--why does she not come and assist me in the entertainment of the Court? Of the Court, do I say?"
Here Clairville drew himself up as well as he could, and winking at his nurse gravely informed her that the most Christian King, Louis of France, being in North America for the good of his health, might call at the manor to see its master at any moment.
"If you will be very secret, my good woman, I will tell you this further, but it must be between us only--His Most Christian Majesty of France is just recovering from the 'Pic'. But do not alarm yourself; I have not been with him much. Fear not, madame, neither for yourself nor me."
Madame clasped her hands and looked upwards; she seemed to be crying, and yet she shed no tears. She knew there was something wrong. _She_ was wrong. The Sieur de Clairville was wrong. The old habit of prayer, fervid, poetic, Catholic prayer, asserted itself and accordingly the mystic rosary of Our Lady returned to her.
"_Priez pour nous, sainte Mère de Dieu. Mère aimable, priez pour nous. Mère adorable, priez pour nous. Vierge puissante, priez! Vierge fidèle, priez pour nous. Rose mystérieuse, priez pour nous. Maison d'or, Etoile du matin, priez pour nous. Santé des infirmes, priez pour nous._"
Henry Clairville listened. Gradually he sank into the chair, and the tears, the slow, painful, smarting tears of weak mind and middle age--coursed down his thin, pitted cheeks. Madame sat down too and sobbed.
"Oh, have I offended you, m'sieu? Why did I pray? What makes us pray at all? Is there One who hears a poor woman like me? But she might hear you, m'sieu, a grand gentleman like you--and so I prayed."
"A grand gentleman! Thank you--madame, thank you," said he, trembling. "I believe I am that, or I was once. I have been very ill, I see. You must not take any notice if I go a little out of my head; it is nothing; Pauline is well accustomed to it, and so may you be if you remain here long. Only be lively with me, be always lively and pray aloud no more. I do not like these prayers. But why are you here? Where are my servants--Maman Archambault, Antoine, and the rest?"
"The servants of m'sieu left when m'sieu was taken sick."
"And you are doing their work?"
"As well as I can, m'sieu, when I can leave you. Just a little work I do, to amuse me, keep me from thinking."
Clairville trembled again and could not lift his eyes to this afflicted patient creature.
"I recollect now," he murmured, "you were always a kind woman. It was you who took the child away?"
"It was I, m'sieu."
"Eight years ago, was it not?"
"Nine, m'sieu."
"Nine, then. It was the year of the great snow. Does she--does my sister ever go to see it?"
"I cannot tell, m'sieu. She is not in St. Ignace often, and m'sieu knows that when ma'amselle goes abroad it is to Montreal and to the theatre."
"But you--you know about it, if it lives, if it is well, and has--has its mind?"
"It lives--yes, truly, m'sieu--it is never ill and it has its mind!"
"Mon Dieu!" muttered Henry Clairville. "_That_ has its mind and I--I am sometimes bereft of mine. And you--you----" he pointed to madame, and though innocent and unoffending she quailed before the seigneurial finger. "You even--you woman there--you have not always your mind! Oh--it is dreadful to think of it! I would be ill again and forget. Tell me--is there, is there any resemblance? Say no, madame, say no!"
"I never go to Hawthorne, m'sieu, I cannot tell you. But I do not think so. I have never heard. They are nearly all English in that parish; they would not concern themselves much about that--the poor _bébé_, the poor Angéle. God made her too, m'sieu. Perhaps some day she will be taken away by mademoiselle to a place where such children are cared for. That is why Mademoiselle Pauline works so hard at the theatre to make much money."
"She would need to!" burst from Henry Clairville. "What she does with the money she makes I do not know, it never comes this way! I cannot make money. She ought to remember me sometimes, so that I could establish this place afresh, find new servants, for example. Alas--what shall I do without them?"
He raised his voice and the old peevish tone rang out.
"Be tranquil, m'sieu. It is I--I myself, nursing you, who shall do all that is required."
He sighed heavily, then a sudden fire leapt into his eyes. "Let us see how far I can walk. Open that door, I wish to see if I can cross the hall."
"After so long, m'sieu! It is not possible. May St. Anne give you courage, for it is assuredly six or seven years since m'sieu has left his apartment."
"Nine--nine!" said he impatiently. "The year the child came into this world. I vowed then and all St. Ignace knows I have kept the vow--I would never leave my room again."
"M'sieu, all know, it is true, of the vow, but none know the reason for it. I have kept my faith, m'sieu."
"But she, my sister, she is so flighty, so excitable--she may have told a thousand times!"
"I think not, m'sieu."
"Father Rielle is unsuspecting; likewise Dr. Renaud. Well, well, who gains by considering evil? Not one so weak and battered as I. Nevertheless, I will walk, madame. I will conquer this fear and this weakness and will show the strength and temper of a Clairville, of a De Clairville, I should say. Open then, madame."
Thus with his black skull-cap on his bald head, and the faded claret and silver habit upon his shrunken limbs, he tottered over the threshold of his disorderly, uncared for room which he had occupied without one moment's intermission, night and day, summer and winter, for eight years, ten months and four days, and madame, preceding him, watched in an agony of fear but also of hope--yonder was a new field for her powers of cleansing and purifying. Dust in thick rolls, cobwebs in floating black triangular and looped clusters, stale odours and rubbish--the apartment which had served as bedroom, dining-room, _salon_ and study so long, would naturally be in a disgraceful condition. Henry Clairville's ghost it was that passed from that room to the hall, but the ghost walked--more than Henry Clairville had done for nine years.
The door of the chief _salon_ was open, and he entered, Mme. Poussette assisting him, still with clasped hands and awestruck eyes, and, although all the changes which had been wrought by her indefatigable fingers could not be appreciated by him, as it was so long since he had seen the room, he missed something. The suit, hanging for years upon its common nail, till it was encrusted with flyspecks, riddled with moth-holes, and tarnished, rusty and faded, now covered his meagre frame, but the other things he looked for he failed to find. He gazed at the walls, perceiving the one old, cracked and discoloured painting.
"Where are the others?" he demanded piteously. "There were four others, all valuable, all of great value."
"There was but this one when I came, m'sieu."
"Then Pauline has sold them--to keep that wretched child alive, to pay for its board and keep and _tendresse--tendresse_, perhaps, on part of some one while I--I have been neglected and kept short of the things I might have had--the wine, the comforts, the fruits! Ah--but I am a most unfortunate man, I who should be seigneur of the parish! Is it not so, madame? Here have I been starving and yet--there was money, you see--my sister had money all the time!"
Madame's lips moved; she said nothing. Far from having suffered privation during her stay at Clairville, she had been able to provide both for herself and the invalid, food and drink of the best quality procurable in that part--the Archambaults having hoarded large quantities of the supplies sent up by Poussette's "peep". The love of acquisition for its own sake had spread even among the youngest members of the family, and had one demanded suddenly of any of them the simplest meal, one would have been met by violent protestations that there was nothing in the house! To such an extent had this smuggling and hoarding spread that in looking through the kitchen and cellars madame had encountered a great store of provisions, mostly in good condition; sacks and barrels full of vegetables, apples, winter pears and nuts; tins full of bread and cakes, some mouldy, some fresh, and various kegs and bottles full of wine and spirits.
"Then," he continued, "where are my choice books, my _éditions de luxe_? There were some splendid volumes here, rare, you understand, worth money. She must have sold them also. I recollect when she begged me to let her take them out of my room. And a violin--of the most superb--that is gone! You know nothing of all these?"
"I know nothing--truly--m'sieu."
"And my cats? Who has dared to interfere with my cats, my dear friends? Le Cid--Chateaubriand--Phédre--Montcalm--eh? What has been done with them? And the doors, the little doors I had made for them--nailed up, I see! Ah--ah, madame--this is your work! You have killed them! Say then, am I not right? Miserable wretch of a woman!"
He was staggering now about the room between weakness and temper and she assisted him to a chair.
"You have killed them!" he gasped repeatedly.
"No, m'sieu, not one. Indeed, m'sieu, I speak the truth. The cats of m'sieu were fourteen; how could I kill so many? No, but I fed them and put them away in the barns--yes--and nailed up the little doors, it is true, for I could not do my work with the cats of m'sieu always between the feet. I spoke of them once to you, because there were two who wished to enter your room, lie on the bed----"
"Yes, yes! Le Cid and Montcalm. Good cats, good friends!"
"Lie on the bed, but I could not allow them. Thus, for three days they sat outside the door of m'sieu."
"And the peacock? Is it that I shall find him banished also when I walk forth from my house? Mlle. Pauline has rid herself of him?"
"Not so, m'sieu. I have cared for the bird and indeed for all the animals."
Clairville, quieter now, was thinking.
"Did some one sing to me about cats as I lay there on my bed?"
Madame reddened.
"Yes, m'sieu--it was I who made a song about the 'Cats of Clairville'. To amuse myself only, m'sieu, I often do like that."
He looked at her, then down at his speckled, bony hands.
"We are both mad, I think," he said in the most matter-of-fact way, "but you, of course, more so than I am. Well, to-day I have walked in here. To-morrow I shall walk all over this house, and next week, madame, next week I shall walk to the village--well, half-way. Some day I may even go to church. Oh--you shall see, you shall see!"
And with that, natural fatigue, engendered by the wholly unusual exercise intervened; his nurse moved a sofa into the hall, and there he slept for many hours, while she routed out his room as well as she could; his physical recovery from that day was miraculously rapid, and in a fortnight he was as quick and light upon his feet and as much given to the open air and walking as he had been previously doggedly convinced that he could not use his legs and that the least breath or whiff of fresh air would destroy him. So much for the after-effects of the "Pic" and the sweet uses of adversity.
The fine November days that followed were the days that Canada can give in wonderful perfection--when the thick canopy of leaves has been caught up, shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky, forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and hillock of withered grass, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June and a singular mellow haze fills all the forest paths. Now can be closely seen the different forms of the trees, each trunk and each limb no less interesting than the brilliant foliage which lately enveloped them; the abandoned nests are bare, some on the ground transfixed between the bushes, or pendant from the branches of tall trees. The evergreens of various kinds supply the note of colour which alone gives hope and promises relief from neutral brown and grey, and underneath what once was a leafy forest arcade are all the roots of spring--the spotted erythronium, the hepatica, the delicate uvularia, the starry trientalis. Through such spacious aisles and along such paths of promise Henry Clairville walked every day while the fine weather lasted, wearing the ancient suit and the black skull-cap, and often attended as far as Lac Calvaire by the white peacock and two cats, and always watched from window or door by the faithful Mme. Poussette. Fear of contagion kept the Archambaults away, all save Antoine, who, constituting himself a bodyguard for Pauline in the village, took messages to and fro the Manor House.
When M. Clairville had seen the stores and provisions in his cellar, sufficient, with a few additions, for the entire winter months at least, he demanded of madame if she would remain with him and manage his house, and the poor woman assented with delight. Poussette did not want her; she had no place in the world, no ties; only occasionally was she required to nurse sick people in the village; here was a comfortable remote haven where she might be of use, busied in exercising those faculties remaining to her, which at Poussette's were rotting and rusting away. She remained therefore, to cook and wait upon him; a new existence sprang up for both, and it was when this sort of thing had lasted for a month that the parish priest, Father Rielle, thought it his duty to call.
CHAPTER XIV
FATHER RIELLE
"--his moods
Of pain were keen as those of better men,
Nay, keener, as his fortitude was less."
The writer has elsewhere stated that the Roman Catholic clergy in this part of the world are easily divided into two classes, the rotund, rosy and jolly, and the thin, ascetic and reserved; the _curé_ of St. Ignace belonged to the latter, and possessed a strongly marked characteristic face, the droop of his bitter mouth and the curve of his chiselled nose being almost Dantesque in effect. He had conserved a type of feature which, common enough up to the present, seems to be in danger of extinction; the passing of the aquiline, the slow disappearance of the Roman nose, are facts patent to thoughtful observers of national traits. Any contemporaneous collection of portraits of representative men in the higher walks of life reveals the fact that this fine racial curve is rapidly becoming extinct. From the Duke of Wellington down, this nose has been associated with men prominent in military and naval affairs, in literature (notably poetry and criticism) and in finance and diplomacy, until the possession of such a significant organ has become almost the _sine qua non_ of an individual destined to be famous or successful. Varieties of course existed, such as when combined with beetling brows and sunken eyes one recognized the professor or arch-critic of his generation. Or, when taken with the square forehead, thin mouth and visionary eyes of the military genius, one saw some great general. Or simply existing in some silly scion of good family, and meaning nothing whatever, in this case usually over-high at the thin bridge, and in profile far too strong for the weak rest of the face. In women of gentle extraction this nose was found beautifully proportioned. In belles of the mid-Victorian era were the lineaments of Caesar clearly revealed, associated with the delicacy of colouring and rounded chin and cheek which redeemed them from hard masculinity, so that fifty years ago in any representative gathering of England's fairest and noblest the observer would note a similarity of feature, especially in profile, between peers and peeresses, poets and poetesses, statesmen and the _grandes dames_ of society. Caricatured, it lived in the drawings of Leech and Du Maurier. Taken seriously, it inspired creative artists both of pen and brush when dealing with the heroic. Superficial writers confused it with the Hebraic nose, and in prints of criminal and depraved characters one frequently found it distorted and wrenched to conditions of ugliness. Tennyson and the latest murderer apparently owned the same facial angle, if one corrected the droop of the eyebrow, the curve of the nostril, the set of the ear. Thus the Roman or aquiline nose made itself and its possessor known to the world. Other noses might, if they liked, take a back seat! this nose never. Sala, Lamb, Kingsley--all had varieties of the nose. The American variant is seen in hundreds of nineteeenth century writers, preachers, New England farmers, old Cape Cod characters, Gloucester fishermen, actors, especially of tragic mould; showmen, lecturers, bankers--the nose has prospered in the new world. The significance of the feature is matched by its endurance, by the persistency with which it appears in every decade up to the present.
For with the opening of a new century the nose, aquiline in its purest state, equine with its accompaniment of cruel gums and sharp teeth in its worst, seems on the point of disappearing. The contemporary portraits of great men and beautiful women no longer display it. There is a new nose. It is to be hoped that it retains the powers with which the organ was originally endowed; for example, we suppose that it still can detect and appreciate, repulse and define odours. But as a sign-post showing the path to glory, as an index of force of character or intellect, it is practically useless. The new nose is modest, retiring, seeketh not its own, is never puffed up. You would know it for a nose, certainly, but its ample and aristocratic proportions are wanting; it lacks a bridge, is spineless, immature, unfinished. Yet it is set in the faces of many eminent thinkers and workers among the younger men; it is already allied to keenness of vision and talent, and may or may not be associated with birth and good breeding. The query is--is it a new nose, or only one that has always been with us, but is now gradually supplanting the old one? Did the nose aquiline largely represent class, and does the phenomenon of the new semi-straight, semi-nothing nose represent the intrusion of mass? Against this timid and, it may be, spurious generalization, one may pit the working-man with the nose of a duke, and the young colonial ruler with the unformed, delicate feature of a school-girl. So we accept the fact that in our own day types are passing.
The English face is going. It has served its turn, perhaps. Infusion of American and colonial blood will help to change it. The high-nosed country gentleman or landed noble, with Berserk or Viking blood in his veins, finds that, like Alice in Wonderland, it takes all he can do to keep where he is, and the work entailed takes something, a good deal, out of him. One thing goes, then another; finally, he casts away his birthright, the arch or bridge of his nose, and his son and the younger members of his family appear shorn of that important feature. The plebeian nose, so long as it is neither pug nor pig, is safer, better. Men are not afraid of it. Syndicates and boards breathe more freely when the barriers of nose are broken down, and a good mediocrity of feature may yet avert a war or preserve a treaty. At all events, a study of our chief contemporaries will bear out a considerable portion of this reasoning. The beauties of society and the stage have a leaning to noses tiptilted like the petals of a flower, or to a nose which is a kind of modification of the Greek, frequently found among Americans. For instance, in Canada there is fast growing up a new type of head, clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amusements are lacking; there seems nothing to live for outside work. Nature poets and wild-animal delineators are not among these set, earnest, straight-featured faces. The former are more likely to be denizens of cities. In this slightly dour Canadian face there are but few aquiline noses, and yet such is the danger of generalizing that perhaps the first people readers of this page meet after perusing it might be a group of students, none with Celtic hair and eyes and all with Roman contours. Likewise, on opening the current number of a leading musical journal, the long, high, prominent nasal organ of Sir Edward Elgar confronts us, whose peculiar cast of thought confirms the impression that spirituality, fine artistic conception and capacity to achieve are still the dower of those possessing this fast-disappearing feature. Ringfield belonged to the tribe of straight-nosed, grey-eyed thinkers--a finished contrast to Father Rielle, whose worn profile suggested the wormwood and the gall. Looks, however, not being in all cases indications of the character within, the priest was an exceedingly simple and earnest man, constitutionally timid, and physically frail; thus, he passed for what is known as a "deep" man, when he was nothing of the sort, and although it may be a mooted point whether in a Catholic community the local priest has or has not the entire conscience of that community at his mercy by means of the confessional, it was certain that there were a few things that Father Rielle did not know. Had he been social, convivial, fond, like most of his brother priests, of a game of cards, of good living and long drinking, he might have worked more reforms in the countryside, and holding the reins of priestly government stern and tight prevented some lapses from the moral code. That is to say, a worse man might have achieved better results, but as it was not in his nature to haunt Poussette's, make friends with the guides and call at unconventional hours upon his parishioners, he missed several revelations that fell to Ringfield's share. Crabbe was not upon his visiting list, nor Pauline of late years; for Henry Clairville he entertained a certain sad respect, as for a gentleman and landed proprietor fallen from grace indeed, but by the Will of God rather than by personal shortcomings. His tendency to fatalism was Calvinistic in its intensity, and he trod his accustomed path baptizing, marrying, burying, with the sour curve of his thin profile growing sourer every day. Thus this silent, censorious-looking priest presented a strong contrast to the optimistic young Ontarian, yet one emotion was common to them both--Father Rielle had for years nursed a hopeless passion for Miss Clairville.
It happened that the knowledge of Mme. Poussette's remaining on at Clairville as housekeeper to its master came to Father Rielle as something of a shock. Certain things are right and certain things are wrong in certain places; some things are right and some things are wrong in all places. Madame had a husband who, although plainly tired of her, had not yet openly neglected her; she also had a good home, and in her condition of mind it was not wise, according to the priest, that she should leave her husband and home to live with Henry Clairville. Dr. Renaud was questioned, but as medical men are everywhere less concerned with the conventions than are lawyers or priests, he only intimated that madame was probably happier at Clairville than in her own home, and that he saw no reason for disturbing the arrangement.
"But," said Father Rielle in their common tongue, "is it because the wife of Poussette is a little afflicted, light of head while sad of heart, that rules and customs no longer apply to her? I take it--it will make a scandal in the village and every man who is sick must expect some other man's wife to come in and care for him, and finally live in his house and take care of it. Our society may be small, but in some matters it is best conducted as are large communities. I think M. de Clairville should be instructed that his conduct is wrong."
"You call him 'de' Clairville, I see," replied the doctor from his buggy outside Gagnon's carpenter shop. "Well, it does not matter! Faith--he is both vicious and mad enough to be in truth the seigneur of all the parish as he styles himself--as nobles and seigneurs used to go. I have little knowledge of such myself! I am a plain man! my father was Renaud the harness-maker of Three Rivers. First I was fond of horses, then I was fond of gathering herbs and flowers, then I was fond of mixing medicines and quacking my friends when they were ill; then my mother saved some money and sent me to college and then one fine day I awoke, and I am Dr. Renaud! And you--you are one of the three Rielle brothers, likewise from Three Rivers; one is a notary, one a priest--yourself--and the youngest keeps the Hôtel Jacques Cartier at Sorel-en-haut. That is funny, that! You should have made him something else."
"It is true," replied the priest mildly, "I am not in love with his calling, but people who travel must be lodged. I use his place myself once or twice a year; it is the Will of God that such places must be; it is clean, and his wife, at the age of seventeen, already cooks well; he is lately married at the age of thirty-five. I myself am four years older. But of M. de Clairville I would say--that he must be brought to see that he is doing this poor Mme. Poussette a wrong, and I was going to ask you if you would drive me out to visit him this afternoon. That is, if, as I hear, it is quite safe to go there now."
"It would afford me pleasure indeed, _mon père_," said Dr. Renaud, "but unfortunately I am waiting here for the young man who has charge of the new church by the river,--Poussette's fancy, Mr. Ringfield."
"You are driving him to Clairville?" A quick jealousy animated the priest's eager question.
"I am, but we can make room for you. Certainly, my friend, we are neither of us so very stout and you are thin; you shall sit in our laps--oh yes, I take no denial! You shall come with us, Father Rielle, and we three shall descend upon this sick seigneur of yours and his housekeeper and see what they are doing. Drive her back in the evening, if you like."
While the priest hesitated, Ringfield and Poussette appeared at the door, and the instant the latter heard of the expedition he also wished to go.
"I cannot see why!" cried Dr. Renaud angrily. "One _charrette_ will not hold us all; it is going to snow and I must get back before dark. I'm calling here to leave an order for Gagnon about a coffin for old Telesphore Tremblay who died yesterday, and I have promised to see his poor wife to-night."
"Then I shall take my own buggy and Mr. Ringfield can go with me. The _curé_ can go with you, sir."
"Well, if the whole village wishes to pay its respects to a crazy man all at the same time, let them come!" roared the irascible doctor. "You didn't care to go till you saw us going. But put your horse in, put him in; we will wait for you."
"_Bien_, M'sieu! I have three hams and a sack of potatoes; they shall go too."
This dialogue had been overheard by Pauline, sitting at cards with Miss Cordova in the front room, and with her natural impetuosity she jumped up, declaring that if Henry were well enough to see "these others," he was well enough to see her. Her impulsive movements sent the cards and counters flying up through the air, and one card hit Miss Cordova on the left eye directly over the pupil. As lightly as if flicked by a clever finger, but as unerringly as if deliberately and viciously aimed at her, one of the four sharp points of cardboard selected her dark eye for its target, and with a scream she too sprang up, overturning the table and seizing Pauline by the shoulder. The pain and distress were considerable, and Miss Clairville, opening the window, called for Dr. Renaud, who came at once to look at the eye and recommended bathing, bandages and complete rest. The exquisite tenderness of the inflamed organ gave Miss Cordova so much annoyance that after ten minutes she retired to her room, and the doctor again proposed himself ready to start for Lac Calvaire. The weather, fine and mild for so long, was changing now with every hour, and it was becoming strangely dark overhead.
"Whoever comes with me must prepare for a storm," said he, glancing at the blackening sky, "only a few flurries of snow, perhaps, but one cannot tell--it may prove more."
"You are sure there can be no danger of infection?" asked Ringfield, with an anxious glance at Pauline, who had raced to her room, stuck imitation solitaires in her ears, donned a worn-out but well-fitting seal jacket and muff and a dashing black and scarlet hat, and now stood in the village street--the embodiment of piquant French womanhood--quite conscious of her charms and insufferably weary of having no audience to show them off to! A certain disdain sprang into her treatment of Ringfield at this time, and it was a question with her, should he ever ask her to be his wife, whether she would not inevitably tire of the high aims and lofty ideals he no doubt would impose upon her.
"You don't suppose I'd be going if there were, do you?" she remarked in English tartly, curving her arching black brows at him; "how many are we--five? That's three too many, in my opinion. Father Rielle--I go with you in Mr. Poussette's buggy; you others there, you three messieurs--you can go how you please."
The priest flushed, then a sudden glance passed between him and Ringfield, and in that look each knew what the other wished and hated him for it! Still, Father Rielle followed Pauline instantly, and there was no opposition as she lightly leapt into Poussette's buggy, and with a wave of her muff, adorned by a bright scarlet bow, two of the five were soon out of sight.
CHAPTER XV
THE STORM
"Snow is at the door
Assaulting and defending, and the wind,
A sightless labourer, whistles at his work."
Dr. Renaud now called on the minister and Poussette to make haste; he had been delayed by the accident to Miss Cordova and already large flat flakes were falling.
"Just the size of half-dollars, eh? The idea is, Poussette, to bring madame home; that is to say, the _curé's_ idea, but he's gone off with another woman. I suppose you are jealous now, of this one I mean, not the other."
"Not me, much. Father Rielle, he's no harm. H