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The Lane That Had No Turning, Complete

by Gilbert Parker · English · Gutenberg #6241 · 457,153 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lane That Had No Turning, Complete

Author: Gilbert Parker


        
Release date: November 18, 2004 [eBook #6241]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING, COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING

By Gilbert Parker



CONTENTS

     Volume 1.
     THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING

     Volume 2.
     THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P’TITE LOUISON
     THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR
     A SON OF THE WILDERNESS
     A WORKER IN STONE

     Volume 3.
     THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE
     THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER
     MATHURIN
     THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER
     THE WOODSMAN’S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF
     UNCLE JIM
     THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH
     PARPON THE DWARF

     Volume 4.
     TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC
     MEDALLION’S WHIM
     THE PRISONER
     AN UPSET PRICE
     A FRAGMENT OF LIVES
     THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA
     THE BARON OF BEAUGARD
     THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED




The Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier G.C.M.G.

Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Since I first began to write these tales in
1892, I have had it in my mind to dedicate to you the “bundle of life”
 when it should be complete. It seemed to me--and it seems so still--that
to put your name upon the covering of my parcel, as one should say, “In
care of,” when it went forth, was to secure its safe and considerate
delivery to that public of the Empire which is so much in your debt.

But with other feelings also do I dedicate this volume to yourself. For
many years your name has stood for a high and noble compromise between
the temperaments and the intellectual and social habits of two races;
and I am not singular in thinking that you have done more than most
other men to make the English and French of the Dominion understand each
other better. There are somewhat awkward limits to true understanding as
yet, but that sympathetic service which you render to both peoples,
with a conscientious striving for impartiality, tempers even the wind of
party warfare to the shorn lamb of political opposition.

In a sincere sympathy with French life and character, as exhibited in
the democratic yet monarchical province of Quebec, or Lower Canada
(as, historically, I still love to think of it), moved by friendly
observation, and seeking to be truthful and impartial, I have made this
book and others dealing with the life of the proud province, which a
century and a half of English governance has not Anglicised. This series
of more or less connected stories, however, has been the most cherished
of all my labours, covering, as it has done, so many years, and being
the accepted of my anxious judgment out of a much larger gathering, so
many numbers of which are retired to the seclusion of copyright, while
reserved from publication. In passing, I need hardly say that the
“Pontiac” of this book is an imaginary place, and has no association
with the real Pontiac of the Province.

I had meant to call the volume, “Born with a Golden Spoon,” a title
stolen from the old phrase, “Born with a golden spoon in the mouth”; but
at the last moment I have given the book the name of the tale which is,
chronologically, the climax of the series, and the end of my narratives
of French Canadian life and character. I had chosen the former title
because of an inherent meaning in it relation to my subject. A man born
in the purple--in comfort wealth, and secure estate--is said to have the
golden spoon in his mouth. In the eyes of the world, however, the phrase
has a some what ironical suggestiveness, and to have luxury, wealth, and
place as a birthright is not thought to be the most fortunate incident
of mortality. My application of the phrase is, therefore, different.

I have, as you know, travelled far and wide during the past seventeen
years, and though I have seen people as frugal and industrious as the
French Canadians, I have never seen frugality and industry associated
with so much domestic virtue, so much education and intelligence, and so
deep and simple a religious life; nor have I ever seen a priesthood at
once so devoted and high-minded in all the concerns the home life
of their people, as in French Canada. A land without poverty and yet
without riches, French Canada stands alone, too well educated to have a
peasantry, too poor to have an aristocracy; as though in her the ancient
prayer had been answered “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed
me with food convenient for me.” And it is of the habitant of Quebec,
before a men else, I should say, “Born with the golden spoon in his
mouth.”

To you I come with this book, which contains the first thing I ever
wrote out of the life of the Province so dear to you, and the last
things also that I shall ever write about it. I beg you to receive it as
the loving recreation of one who sympathises with the people of who you
come, and honours their virtues, and who has no fear for the unity, and
no doubt as to the splendid future, of the nation, whose fibre is got of
the two great civilising races of Europe.

Lastly, you will know with what admiration and regard I place your
name on the fore page of my book, and greet in you the statesman, the
litterateur, and the personal friend.

        Believe me,
          Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
             Yours very sincerely,
               GILBERT PARKER.

20 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE,   LONDON, S. W.,
     14th August, 1900.




INTRODUCTION

The story with which this book opens, ‘The Lane That Had No Turning’,
gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever
importance my work may possess. Cotemporaneous with the Pierre
series, which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in
the ‘Illustrated London News’, at the request of the then editor, Mr.
Clement K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which
the first was ‘The Tragic Comedy of Annette’. It was followed by ‘The
Marriage of the Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd
Romance of P’tite Louison, and The Woodsman’s Story of the Great White
Chief’. They were begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in lodgings
which I had taken on Hampstead Heath. Each--for they were all very
short--was written at a sitting, and all had their origin in true
stories which had been told me in the heart of Quebec itself. They were
all beautifully illustrated in the Illustrated London News, and in their
almost monosyllabic narrative, and their almost domestic simplicity,
they were in marked contrast to the more strenuous episodes of the
Pierre series. They were indeed in keeping with the happily simple and
uncomplicated life of French Canada as I knew it then; and I had perhaps
greater joy in writing them and the purely French Canadian stories that
followed them, such as ‘Parpon the Dwarf, A Worker in Stone, The Little
Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner’, than in almost anything else I have
written, except perhaps ‘The Right of Way and Valmond’, so far as Canada
is concerned.

I think the book has harmony, although the first story in it covers
eighty-two pages, while some of the others, like ‘The Marriage of the
Miller’, are less than four pages in length. At the end also there are
nine fantasies or stories which I called ‘Parables of Provinces’. All
of these, I think, possessed the spirit of French Canada, though all are
more or less mystical in nature. They have nothing of the simple realism
of ‘The Tragic Comedy of Annette’, and the earlier series. These nine
stories could not be called popular, and they were the only stories
I have ever written which did not have an immediate welcome from the
editors to whom they were sent. In the United States I offered them to
‘Harper’s Magazine’, but the editor, Henry M. Alden, while, as I know,
caring for them personally, still hesitated to publish them. He thought
them too symbolic for the every-day reader. He had been offered four of
them at once because I declined to dispose of them separately, though
the editor of another magazine was willing to publish two of them.
Messrs. Stone & Kimball, however, who had plenty of fearlessness where
literature was concerned, immediately bought the series for The Chap
Book, long since dead, and they were published in that wonderful little
short-lived magazine, which contained some things of permanent value
to literature. They published four of the series, namely: ‘The Golden
Pipes, The Guardian of the Fire, By that Place Called Peradventure,
The Singing of the Bees, and The Tent of the Purple Mat’. In England,
because I would not separate the first five, and publish them
individually, two or three of the editors who were taking the Pierre
series and other stories appearing in this volume would not publish
them. They, also, were frightened by the mystery and allusiveness of the
tales, and had an apprehension that they would not be popular.

Perhaps they were right. They were all fantasies, but I do not wish
them other than they are. One has to write according to the impulse that
seizes one and after the fashion of one’s own mind. This at least can be
said of all my books, that not a page of them has ever been written to
order, and there is not a story published in all the pages bearing
my name which does not represent one or two other stories rejected by
myself. The art of rejection is the hardest art which an author has
to learn; but I have never had a doubt as to my being justified in
publishing these little symbolic things.

Eventually the whole series was published in England. W. E. Henley gave
‘There Was a Little City’ a home in ‘The New Review’, and expressed
himself as happy in having it. ‘The Forge in the Valley’ was published
by Sir Wemyss Reid in the weekly paper called ‘The Speaker’, now known
as ‘The Nation’, in which ‘Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’ made his name and
helped the fame of others. ‘There Was a Little City’ was published in
‘The Chap Book’ in the United States, but ‘The Forge in the Valley’ had
(I think) no American public until it appeared within the pages of ‘The
Lane That Had No Turning’. The rest of the series were published in the
‘English Illustrated Magazine’, which was such a good friend to my work
at the start. As was perhaps natural, there was some criticism, but very
little, in French Canada itself, upon the stories in this volume. It
soon died away, however, and almost as I write these words there has
come to me an appreciation which I value as much as anything that has
befallen me in my career, and that is, the degree of Doctor of Letters
from the French Catholic University of Laval at Quebec. It is the seal
of French Canada upon the work which I have tried to do for her and for
the whole Dominion.




THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING




CHAPTER I. THE RETURN OF MADELINETTE

His Excellency the Governor--the English Governor of French Canada--was
come to Pontiac, accompanied by a goodly retinue; by private secretary,
military secretary, aide-de-camp, cabinet minister, and all that. He was
making a tour of the Province, but it was obvious that he had gone out
of his way to visit Pontiac, for there were disquieting rumours in the
air concerning the loyalty of the district. Indeed, the Governor had
arrived but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the
presidency of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable
into sedition were presented. The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the
nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result
that the new-born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died
down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Cure and the Avocat in anger.

Pontiac had been involved in an illegal demonstration once before.
Valmond, the bizarre but popular Napoleonic pretender, had raised his
standard there; the stones before the parish church had been stained
with his blood; and he lay in the churchyard of St. Saviour’s forgiven
and unforgotten. How was it possible for Pontiac to forget him? Had
he not left his little fortune to the parish? and had he not also
left twenty thousand francs for the musical education of Madelinette
Lajeunesse, the daughter of the village forgeron, to learn singing of
the best masters in Paris? Pontiac’s wrong-doings had brought it more
profit than penalty, more praise than punishment: for, after five
years in France in the care of the Little Chemist’s widow, Madelinette
Lajeunesse had become the greatest singer of her day. But what had put
the severest strain upon the modesty of Pontiac was the fact that, on
the morrow of Madelinette’s first triumph in Paris, she had married M.
Louis Racine, the new Seigneur of Pontiac.

What more could Pontiac wish? It had been rewarded for its mistakes; it
had not even been chastened, save that it was marked Suspicious as to
its loyalty, at the headquarters of the English Government in Quebec. It
should have worn a crown of thorns, but it flaunted a crown of roses. A
most unreasonable good fortune seemed to pursue it. It had been led to
expect that its new Seigneur would be an Englishman, one George Fournel,
to whom, as the late Seigneur had more than once declared, the property
was devised by will; but at his death no will had been found, and Louis
Racine, the direct heir in blood, had succeeded to the property and the
title.

Brilliant, enthusiastic, fanatically French, the new Seigneur had set
himself to revive certain old traditions, customs, and privileges of the
Seigneurial position. He was reactionary, seductive, generous, and at
first he captivated the hearts of Pontiac. He did more than that.
He captivated Madelinette Lajeunesse. In spite of her years in
Paris--severe, studious years, which shut out the social world and the
temptations of Bohemian life--Madelinette retained a strange simplicity
of heart and mind, a desperate love for her old home which would not
be gainsaid, a passionate loyalty to her past, which was an illusory
attempt to arrest the inevitable changes that come with growth; and,
with a sudden impulse, she had sealed herself to her past at the very
outset of her great career by marriage with Louis Racine.

On the very day of their marriage Louis Racine had made a painful
discovery. A heritage of his fathers, which had skipped two generations,
suddenly appeared in himself: he was becoming a hunchback.

Terror, despair, gloom, anxiety had settled upon him. Three months later
Madelinette had gone to Paris alone. The Seigneur had invented excuses
for not accompanying her, so she went instead in the care of the Little
Chemist’s widow, as of old Louis had promised to follow within another
three months, but had not done so. The surgical operation performed upon
him was unsuccessful; the strange growth increased. Sensitive, fearful,
and morose, he would not go to Europe to be known as the hunchback
husband of Lajeunesse, the great singer. He dreaded the hour when
Madelinette and he should meet again. A thousand times he pictured her
as turning from him in loathing and contempt. He had married her because
he loved her, but he knew well enough that ten thousand other men could
love her just as well, and be something more than a deformed Seigneur of
an obscure manor in Quebec.

As his gloomy imagination pictured the future, when Madelinette should
return and see him as he was and cease to love him--to build up his
Seigneurial honour to an undue importance, to give his position a
fictitious splendour, became a mania with him. No ruler of a Grand Duchy
ever cherished his honour dearer or exacted homage more persistently
than did Louis Racine in the Seigneury of Pontiac. Coincident with the
increase of these futile extravagances was the increase of his fanatical
patriotism, which at last found vent in seditious writings, agitations,
the purchase of rifles, incitement to rebellion, and the formation of an
armed, liveried troop of dependants at the Manor. On the very eve of the
Governor’s coming, despite the Cure’s and the Avocat’s warnings, he
had held a patriotic meeting intended to foster a stubborn, if silent,
disregard of the Governor’s presence amongst them.

The speech of the Cure, who had given guarantee for the good behaviour
of his people to the Government, had been so tinged with sorrowful
appeal, had recalled to them so acutely the foolish demonstration which
had ended in the death of Valmond; that the people had turned from the
exasperated Seigneur with the fire of monomania in his eyes, and had
left him alone in the hall, passionately protesting that the souls of
Frenchmen were not in them.

Next day, upon the church, upon the Louis Quinze Hotel, and elsewhere,
the Union Jack flew--the British colours flaunted it in Pontiac with
welcome to the Governor. But upon the Seigneury was another flag--it
of the golden-lilies. Within the Manor House M. Louis Racine sat in the
great Seigneurial chair, returned from the gates of death. As he had
come home from the futile public meeting, galloping through the streets
and out upon the Seigneury road in the dusk, his horse had shied upon
a bridge, where mischievous lads waylaid travellers with ghostly heads
made of lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins, and horse and man had been
plunged into the stream beneath. His faithful servant Havel had seen the
accident and dragged his insensible master from the water.

Now the Seigneur sat in the great arm-chair glowering out upon the
cheerful day. As he brooded, shaken and weak and bitter--all his
thoughts were bitter now--a flash of scarlet, a glint of white plumes
crossed his line of vision, disappeared, then again came into view, and
horses’ hoofs rang out on the hard road below. He started to his feet,
but fell back again, so feeble was he, then rang the bell at his side
with nervous insistence. A door opened quickly behind him, and his voice
said imperiously:

“Quick, Havel--to the door. The Governor and his suite have come.
Call Tardif, and have wine and cake brought at once. When the Governor
enters, let Tardif stand at the door, and you beside my chair. Have the
men-at-arms get into livery, and make a guard of honour for the Governor
when he leaves. Their new rifles too--and let old Fashode wear his
medal! See that Lucre is not filthy--ha! ha! very good. I must let the
Governor hear that. Quick--quick, Havel. They are entering the grounds.
Let the Manor bell be rung, and every one mustered. He shall see that
to be a Seigneur is not an empty honour. I am something in the state,
something by my own right.” His lips moved restlessly; he frowned; his
hands nervously clasped the arms of the chair. “Madelinette too shall
see that I am to be reckoned with, that I am not a nobody. By God, then,
but she shall see it!” he added, bringing his clasped hand down hard
upon the wood.

There was a stir outside, a clanking of chains, a champing of bits,
and the murmurs of the crowd who were gathering fast in the grounds.
Presently the door was thrown open and Havel announced the Governor.
Louis Racine got to his feet, but the Governor hastened forward, and,
taking both his hands, forced him gently back into the chair.

“No, no, my dear Seigneur. You must not rise. This is no state visit,
but a friendly call to offer congratulations on your happy escape, and
to inquire how you are.”

The Governor said his sentences easily, but he suddenly flushed and
was embarrassed, for Louis Racine’s deformity, of which he had not
known--Pontiac kept its troubles to itself--stared him in the face; and
he felt the Seigneur’s eyes fastened on him with strange intensity.

“I have to thank your Excellency,” the Seigneur said in a hasty nervous
voice. “I fell on my shoulders--that saved me. If I had fallen on my
head I should have been killed, no doubt. My shoulders saved me!” he
added, with a petulant insistence in his voice, a morbid anxiety in his
face.

“Most providential,” responded the Governor. “It grieves me that
it should have happened on the occasion of my visit. I missed the
Seigneur’s loyal public welcome. But I am happy,” he continued, with
smooth deliberation, “to have it here in this old Manor House, where
other loyal French subjects of England have done honour to their
Sovereign’s representative.”

“This place is sacred to hospitality and patriotism, your Excellency,”
 said Louis Racine, nervousness passing from his voice and a curious hard
look coming into his face.

The Governor was determined not to see the double meaning. “It is a
privilege to hear you say so. I shall recall the fact to her Majesty’s
Government in the report I shall make upon my tour of the province.
I have a feeling that the Queen’s pleasure in the devotion of her
distinguished French subjects may take some concrete form.”

The Governor’s suite looked at each other significantly, for never
before in his journeys had his Excellency hinted so strongly that an
honour might be conferred. Veiled as it was, it was still patent as the
sun. Spots of colour shot into the Seigneur’s cheeks. An honour from the
young English Queen--that would mate with Madelinette’s fame. After all,
it was only his due. He suddenly found it hard to be consistent. His
mind was in a whirl. The Governor continued:

“It must have given you great pleasure to know that at Windsor her
Majesty has given tokens of honour to the famous singer, the wife of
a notable French subject, who, while passionately eager to keep alive
French sentiment, has, as we believe, a deep loyalty to England.”

The Governor had said too much. He had thought to give the Seigneur an
opportunity to recede from his seditious position there and then, and
to win his future loyalty. M. Racine’s situation had peril, and the
Governor had here shown him the way of escape. But he had said one thing
that drove Louis Racine mad. He had given him unknown information about
his own wife. Louis did not know that Madelinette had been received
by the Queen, or that she had received “tokens of honour.” Wild with
resentment, he saw in the Governor’s words a consideration for himself
based only on the fact that he was the husband of the great singer. He
trembled to his feet.

At that moment there was a cheering outside--great cheering--but he
did not heed it; he was scarcely aware of it. If it touched his
understanding at all, it only meant to him a demonstration in honour of
the Governor.

“Loyalty to the flag of England, your Excellency!” he said, in a
hoarse acrid voice--“you speak of loyalty to us whose lives for two
centuries--” He paused, for he heard a voice calling his name.

“Louis! Louis! Louis!”

The fierce words he had been about to utter died on his lips, his eyes
stared at the open window, bewildered and even frightened.

“Louis! Louis!”

Now the voice was inside the house. He stood trembling, both hands
grasping the arms of the chair. Every eye in the room was now turned
towards the door. As it opened, the Seigneur sank back in the chair, a
look of helpless misery, touched by a fierce pride, covering his face.

“Louis!”

It was Madelinette, who, disregarding the assembled company, ran forward
to him and caught both his hands in hers.

“O Louis, I have heard of your accident, and--” she stopped suddenly
short. The Governor turned away his head. Every person in the room did
the same. For as she bent over him--she saw. She saw for the first time;
for the first time knew!

A look of horrified amazement, of shrinking anguish, crossed over her
face. He felt the lightning-like silence, he knew that she had seen; he
struggled to his feet, staring fiercely at her.

That one torturing instant had taken all the colour from her face, but
there was a strange brightness in her eyes, a new power in her bearing.
She gently forced him into the seat again.

“You are not strong enough, Louis. You must be tranquil.”

She turned now to the Governor. He made a sign to his suite, who,
bowing, slowly left the room. “Permit me to welcome you to your native
land again, Madame,” he said. “You have won for it a distinction it
could never have earned, and the world gives you many honours.”

She was smiling and still, and with one hand clasping her husband’s, she
said:

“The honour I value most my native land has given me: I am lady of the
Manor here, and wife of the Seigneur Racine.”

Agitated triumph came upon Louis Racine’s face; a weird painful vanity
entered into him. He stood up beside his wife, as she turned and looked
at him, showing not a sign that what she saw disturbed her.

“It is no mushroom honour to be Seigneur of Pontiac, your Excellency,”
 he said, in a tone that jarred. “The barony is two hundred years old. By
rights granted from the crown of France, I am Baron of Pontiac.”

“I think England has not yet recognised the title,” said the Governor
suggestively, for he was here to make peace, and in the presence of this
man, whose mental torture was extreme, he would not allow himself to be
irritated.

“Our baronies have never been recognised,” said the Seigneur harshly.
“And yet we are asked to love the flag of England and--”

“And to show that we are too proud to ask for a right that none can
take away,” interposed Madelinette graciously and eagerly, as though to
prevent Louis from saying what he intended. All at once she had had to
order her life anew, to replace old thoughts by new ones. “We honour and
obey the rulers of our land, and fly the English flag, and welcome the
English Governor gladly when he comes to us--will your Excellency have
some refreshment?” she added quickly, for she saw the cloud on the
Seigneur’s brow. “Louis,” she added quickly, “will you--”

“I have ordered refreshment,” said the Seigneur excitedly, the storm
passing from his face, however. “Havel, Tardif--where are you, fellows!”
 He stamped his foot imperiously.

Havel entered with a tray of wine and glasses, followed by Tardif loaded
with cakes and comfits, and set them on the table.

Ten minutes later the Governor took his leave. At the front door he
stopped surprised, for a guard of honour of twenty men were drawn up. He
turned to the Seigneur.

“What soldiers are these?” he asked.

“The Seigneury company, your Excellency,” replied Louis.

“What uniform is it they wear?” he asked in an even tone, but with a
black look in his eye, which did not escape Madelinette.

“The livery of the Barony of Pontiac,” answered the Seigneur.

The Governor looked at them a moment without speaking. “It is French
uniform of the time of Louis Quinze,” he said. “Picturesque, but
informal,” he added.

He went over, and taking a carbine from one of the men, examined
it. “Your carbines are not so unconventional and antique,” he
said meaningly, and with a frosty smile. “The compromise of the
centuries--hein?” he added to the Cure, who, with the Avocat, was now
looking on with some trepidation. “I am wondering if it is quite
legal. It is charming to have such a guard of honour, but I am
wondering--wondering--eh, monsieur l’avocat, is it legal?”

The Avocat made no reply, but the Cure’s face was greatly troubled. The
Seigneur’s momentary placidity passed.

“I answer for their legality, your Excellency,” he said, in a high,
assertive voice.

“Of course, of course, you will answer for it,” said the Governor,
smiling enigmatically. He came forward and held out his hand to
Madelinette.

“Madame, I shall remember your kindness, and I appreciate the simple
honours done me here. Your arrival at the moment of my visit is a happy
circumstance.”

There was a meaning in his eye--not in his voice--which went straight
to Madelinette’s understanding. She murmured something in reply, and a
moment afterwards the Governor, his suite, and the crowd were gone; and
the men-at-arms-the fantastic body of men in their antique livery-armed
with the latest modern weapons, had gone back to civic life again.

Inside the house once more, Madelinette laid her hand upon Louis’ arm
with a smile that wholly deceived him for a moment. He thought now that
she must have known of his deformity before she came--the world was so
full of tale-bearers--and no doubt had long since reconciled herself
to the painful fact. She had shown no surprise, no shrinking. There
had been only the one lightning instant in which he had felt a kind of
suspension of her breath and being, but when he had looked her in
the face, she was composed and smiling. After all his frightened
anticipation the great moment had come and gone without tragedy. With
satisfaction he looked in the mirror in the hall as they passed inside
the house. He saw no reason to quarrel with his face. Was it possible
that the deformity did not matter after all?

He felt Madelinette’s hand on his arm. He turned and clasped her to his
breast.

He did not notice that she kept her hands under her chin as he drew
her to him, that she did not, as had been her wont, put them on his
shoulders. He did not feel her shrink, and no one, seeing, could have
said that she shrank from him in ever so little.

“How beautiful you are!” he said, as he looked into her face.

“How glad I am to be here again, and how tired I am, Louis!” she said.
“I’ve driven thirty miles since daylight.” She disengaged herself. “I am
going to sleep now,” she added. “I am going to turn the key in my door
till evening. Please tell Madame Marie so, Louis.”

Inside her room alone she flung herself on her bed in agony and despair.

“Louis--Oh, my God!” she cried, and sobbed and sobbed her strength away.




CHAPTER II. WHEN THE RED-COATS CAME

A month later there was a sale of the household effects, the horses
and general possessions of Medallion the auctioneer, who, though a
Protestant and an Englishman, had, by his wits and goodness of heart,
endeared himself to the parish. Therefore the notables among the
habitants had gathered in his empty house for a last drink of
good-fellowship--Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Benoit the
ne’er-do-weel, Gingras the one-eyed shoemaker, and a few others. They
had drunk the health of Medallion, they had drunk the health of the
Cure, and now Duclosse the mealman raised his glass. “Here’s to--”

“Wait a minute, porridge-pot,” cried Muroc. “The best man here should
raise the glass first and say the votre sante. ‘Tis M’sieu’ Medallion
should speak and sip now.”

Medallion was half-sitting on the window-sill, abstractedly listening.
He had been thinking that his ships were burned behind him, and that in
middle-age he was starting out to make another camp for himself in the
world, all because of the new Seigneur of Pontiac. Time was when he had
been successful here, but Louis Racine had changed all that. His hand
was against the English, and he had brought a French auctioneer to
Pontiac. Medallion might have divided the parish as to patronage, but he
had other views.

So he was going. Madelinette had urged him to stay, but he had replied
that it was too late. The harm was not to be undone.

As Muroc spoke, every one turned towards Medallion. He came over and
filled a glass at the table, and raised it.

“I drink to Madelinette, daughter of that fine old puffing forgeron
Lajeunesse,” he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room.
Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head. “I knew Madelinette, as did you
all, when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories, and
listen to her sing French chansons--the best in the world. She has gone
on; we stay where we were. But she proves her love to us, by taking her
husband from Pontiac and coming back to us. May she never find a spot so
good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!”

He drank, and they all did the same. Draining his glass, Medallion let
it fall on the stone floor. It broke into a score of pieces.

He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse. “Give her my love,” he said.
“Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses
she gave me when she was five and I was twenty.”

Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room.

“Why did he drop his glass?” asked Gingras the shoemaker.

“That’s the way of the aristocrats when it’s the damnedest toast that
ever was,” said Duclosse the mealman. “Eh, Lajeunesse, that’s so, isn’t
it?”

“What the devil do I know about aristocrats!” said Lajeunesse.

“You’re among the best of the land, now that Madelinette’s married to
the Seigneur. You ought to wear a collar every day.”

“Bah!” answered the blacksmith. “I’m only old Lajeunesse the blacksmith,
though she’s my girl, dear lads. I was Joe Lajeunesse yesterday, and
I’ll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I’ll die Joe Lajeunesse the
forgeron--bagosh! So you take me as you find me. M’sieu’ Racine doesn’t
marry me. And Madelinette doesn’t take me to Paris and lead me round the
stage and say, ‘This is M’sieu’ Lajeunesse, my father.’ No. I’m myself,
and a damn good blacksmith and nothing else am I!”

“Tut, tut, old leather-belly,” said Gingras the shoemaker, whose liquor
had mounted high, “you’ll not need to work now. Madelinette’s got double
fortune. She gets thousands for a song, and she’s lady of the Manor
here. What’s too good for you, tell me that, my forgeron?”

“Not working between meals--that’s too good for me, Gingras. I’m here to
earn my bread with the hands I was born with, and to eat what they earn,
and live by it. Let a man live according to his gifts--bagosh! Till I’m
sent for, that’s what I’ll do; and when time’s up I’ll take my hand off
the bellows, and my leather apron can go to you, Gingras, for boots for
a bigger fool than me.”

“There’s only one,” said Benolt, the ne’er-do-weel, who had been to
college as a boy.

“Who’s that?” said Muroc.

“You wouldn’t know his name. He’s trying to find eggs in last year’s
nest,” answered Benolt with a leer.

“He means the Seigneur,” said Muroc. “Look to your son-in-law,
Lajeunesse. He’s kicking up a dust that’ll choke Pontiac yet. It’s as if
there was an imp in him driving him on.”

“We’ve had enough of the devil’s dust here,” said Lajeunesse. “Has he
been talking to you, Muroc?”

Muroc nodded. “Treason, or thereabouts. Once, with him that’s dead in
the graveyard yonder, it was France we were to save and bring back the
Napoleons--I have my sword yet. Now it’s save Quebec. It’s stand alone
and have our own flag, and shout, and fight, maybe, to be free of
England. Independence--that’s it! One by one the English have had to go
from Pontiac. Now it’s M’sieu’ Medallion.”

“There’s Shandon the Irishman gone too. M’sieu’ sold him up and shipped
him off,” said Gingras the shoemaker.

“Tiens! the Seigneur gave him fifty dollars when he left, to help him
along. He smacks and then kisses, does M’sieu’ Racine.”

“We’ve to pay tribute to the Seigneur every year, as they did in the
days of Vaudreuil and Louis the Saint,” said Duclosse. “I’ve got my
notice--a bag of meal under the big tree at the Manor door.”

“I’ve to bring a pullet and a bag of charcoal,” said Muroc. “‘Tis the
rights of the Seigneur as of old.”

“Tiens! it is my mind,” said Benoit, “that a man that nature twists in
back, or leg, or body anywhere, gets a twist in’s brain too. There’s
Parpon the dwarf--God knows, Parpon is a nut to crack!”

“But Parpon isn’t married to the greatest singer in the world, though
she’s only the daughter of old leather-belly there,” said Gingras.

“Something doesn’t come of nothing, snub-nose,” said Lajeunesse. “Mark
you, I was born a man of fame, walking bloody paths to glory; but, by
the grace of Heaven and my baptism, I became a forgeron. Let others ride
to glory, I’ll shoe their horses for the gallop.”

“You’ll be in Parliament yet, Lajeunesse,” said Duclosse the mealman,
who had been dozing on a pile of untired cart-wheels.

“I’ll be hanged first, comrade.”

“One in the family at a time,” said Muroc. “There’s the Seigneur. He’s
going into Parliament.”

“He’s a magistrate--that’s enough,” said Duclosse. “He’s started the
court under the big tree, as the Seigneurs did two hundred years ago.
He’ll want a gibbet and a gallows next.”

“I should think he’d stay at home and not take more on his shoulders!”
 said the one-eyed shoemaker. Without a word, Lajeunesse threw a dish of
water in Gingras’s face. This reference to the Seigneur’s deformity was
unpalatable.

Gingras had not recovered from his discomfiture when all were startled
by the distant blare of a bugle. They rushed to the door, and were
met by Parpon the dwarf, who announced that a regiment of soldiers was
marching on the village.

“‘Tis what I expected after that meeting, and the Governor’s visit,
and the lily-flag of France on the Manor, and the body-guard and the
carbines,” said Muroc nervously.

“We’re all in trouble again-sure,” said Benoit, and drained his glass to
the last drop. “Some of us will go to gaol.”

The coming of the militia had been wholly unexpected by the people of
Pontiac, but the cause was not far to seek. Ever since the Governor’s
visit there had been sinister rumours abroad concerning Louis Racine,
which the Cure and the Avocat and others had taken pains to contradict.
It was known that the Seigneur had been requested to disband his
so-called company of soldiers with their ancient livery and their modern
arms, and to give them up. He had disbanded the corps, but he had not
given up the arms, and, for reasons unknown, the Government had not
pressed the point, so far as the world knew. But it had decided to
hold a district drill in this far-off portion of the Province; and this
summer morning two thousand men marched ‘upon the town and through
it, horse, foot, and commissariat, and Pontiac was roused out of the
last-century romance the Seigneur had sought to continue, to face the
actual presence of modern force and the machinery of war. Twice before
had British soldiers marched into the town, the last time but a few
years agone, when blood had been shed on the stones in front of the
parish church. But here were large numbers of well-armed men from the
Eastern parishes, English and French, with four hundred regulars to
leaven the mass. Lajeunesse knew only too well what this demonstration
meant.

Before the last soldier had passed through the street, he was on his way
to the Seigneury.

He found Madelinette alone in the great dining-room, mending a rent in
the British flag, which she was preparing for a flag-staff. When she
saw him, she dropped the flag, as if startled, came quickly to him, took
both his hands in hers, and kissed his cheek.

“Wonder of wonders!” she said.

“It’s these soldiers,” he replied shortly. “What of them?” she asked
brightly.

“Do you mean to say you don’t know what their coming here means?” he
asked.

“They must drill somewhere, and they are honouring Pontiac,” she replied
gaily, but her face flushed as she bent over the flag again.

He came and stood in front of her. “I don’t know what’s in your mind;
I don’t know what you mean to do; but I do know that M’sieu’ Racine is
making trouble here, and out of it you’ll come more hurt than anybody.”

“What has Louis done?”

“What has he done! He’s been stirring up feeling against the British.
What has he done!--Look at the silly customs he’s got out of old
coffins, to make us believe they’re alive. Why did he ever try to marry
you? Why did you ever marry him? You are the great singer of the world.
He’s a mad hunchback habitant seigneur!”

She stamped her foot indignantly, but presently she ruled herself to
composure, and said quietly: “He is my husband. He is a brave man, with
foolish dreams.” Then with a sudden burst of tender feeling, she said:
“Oh, father, father, can’t you see, I loved him--that is why I married
him. You ask me what I am going to do? I am going to give the rest of my
life to him. I am going to stay with him, and be to him all that he may
never have in this world, never--never. I am going to be to him what my
mother was to you, a slave to the end--a slave who loved you, and who
gave you a daughter who will do the same for her husband--”

“No matter what he does or is--eh?”

“No matter what he is.”

Lajeunesse gasped. “You will give up singing! Not sing again before
kings and courts, and not earn ten thousand dollars a month--more than
I’ve earned in twenty years? You don’t mean that, Madelinette.”

He was hoarse with feeling, and he held out his hand pleadingly. To
him it seemed that his daughter was mad; that she was throwing her life
away.

“I mean that, father,” she answered quietly. “There are things worth
more than money.”

“You don’t mean to say that you can love him as he is. It isn’t natural.
But no, it isn’t.”

“What would you have said, if any one had asked you if you loved my
mother that last year of her life, when she was a cripple, and we
wheeled her about in a chair you made for her?”

“Don’t say any more,” he said slowly, and took up his hat, and kept
turning it round in his hand. “But you’ll prevent him getting into
trouble with the Gover’ment?” he urged at last.

“I have done what I could,” she answered. Then with a little gasp: “They
came to arrest him a fortnight ago, but I said they should not enter the
house. Havel and I prevented them--refused to let them enter. The men
did not know what to do, and so they went back. And now this--!” she
pointed to where the soldiers were pitching their tents in the valley
below. “Since then Louis has done nothing to give trouble. He only
writes and dreams. If he would but dream and no more--!” she added, half
under her breath.

“We’ve dreamt too much in Pontiac already,” said Lajeunesse, shaking his
head.

Madelinette reached up her hand and laid it on his shaggy black hair.
“You are a good little father, big smithy-man,” she said lovingly. “You
make me think of the strong men in the Niebelungen legends. It must be a
big horse that will take you to Walhalla with the heroes,” she added.

“Such notions--there in your head,” he laughed. “Try to frighten me with
your big names-hein?” There was a new look in the face of father and of
daughter. No mist or cloud was between them. The things they had long
wished to say were uttered at last. A new faith was established between
them. Since her return they had laughed and talked as of old when they
had met, though her own heart was aching, and he was bitter against the
Seigneur. She had kept him and the whole parish in good humour by
her unconventional ways, as though people were not beginning to make
pilgrimages to Pontiac to see her--people who stared at the name over
the blacksmith’s door, and eyed her curiously, or lay in wait about
the Seigneury, that they might get a glimpse of Madame and her deformed
husband. Out in the world where she was now so important, the newspapers
told strange romantic tales of the great singer, wove wild and wonderful
legends of her life. To her it did not matter. If she knew, she did
not heed. If she heeded it--even in her heart--she showed nothing of it
before the world. She knew that soon there would be wilder tales still
when it was announced that she was bidding farewell to the great working
world, and would live on in retirement. She had made up her mind quite
how the announcement should read, and, once it was given out, nothing
would induce her to change her mind. Her life was now the life of the
Seigneur.

A struggle in her heart went on, but she fought it down. The lure of a
great temptation from that far-off outside world was before her, but
she had resolved her heart against it. In his rough but tender way her
father now understood, and that was a comfort to her. He felt what he
could not reason upon or put into adequate words. But the confidence
made him happy, and his eyes said so to her now.

“See, big smithy-man,” she said gaily, “soon will be the fete of St.
Jean Baptiste, and we shall all be happy then. Louis has promised me to
make a speech that will not be against the English, but only words which
will tell how dear the old land is to us.”

“Ten to one against it!” said Lajeunesse anxiously. Then he brightened
as he saw a shadow cross her face. “But you can make him do anything--as
you always made me,” he added, shaking his tousled head and taking with
a droll eagerness the glass of wine she offered him.




CHAPTER III. “MAN TO MAN AND STEEL TO STEEL”

One evening a fortnight later Louis Racine and George Fournel, the
Englishman, stood face to face in the library of the Manor House. There
was antagonism and animosity in the attitude of both. Apart from the
fact that Louis had succeeded to the Seigneury promised to Fournel, and
sealed to him by a reputed will which had never been found, there
was cause for hatred on the Englishman’s part. Fournel had been an
incredibly successful man. Things had come his way--wealth, and the
power that wealth brings. He had but two set-backs, and the man before
him in the Manor House of Pontiac was the cause of both. The last rebuff
had been the succession to the Seigneury, which, curious as it might
seem, had been the cherished dream of the rich man’s retirement. It had
been his fancy to play the Seigneur, the lord magnificent and bountiful,
and he had determined to use wealth and all manner of influence to
have the title of Baron of Pontiac revived--it had been obsolete for a
hundred years. He leaned towards the grace of an hereditary dignity, as
other retired millionaires cultivate art and letters, vainly imagining
that they can wheedle civilisation and the humanities into giving them
what they do not possess by nature, and fool the world at the same time.

The loss of the Seigneury had therefore cut deep, but there had been
a more hateful affront still. Four years before, Louis Racine, when
spasmodically practising law in Quebec, had been approached by two poor
Frenchmen, who laid claim to thousands of acres of land which a Land
Company, whereof George Fournel was president, was publicly exploiting
for the woods and valuable minerals discovered on it. The Land Company
had been composed of Englishmen only. Louis Racine, reactionary and
imaginative, brilliant and free from sordidness, and openly hating the
English, had taken up the case, and for two years fought it tooth and
nail without pay or reward. The matter had become a cause celebre,
the Land Company engaging the greatest lawyers in both the English
and French province. In the Supreme Court the case was lost to Louis’
clients. Louis took it over to the Privy Council in London, and carried
it through triumphantly and alone, proving his clients’ title. His two
poor Frenchmen regained their land. In payment he would accept nothing
save the ordinary fees, as though it were some petty case in a county
court. He had, however, made a reputation, which he had seemed not to
value, save as a means of showing hostility to the governing race, and
the Seigneury of Pontiac, when it fell to him, had more charms for him
than any celebrity to be won at the bar. His love of the history of
his country was a mania with him, and he looked forward, on arriving at
Pontiac, to being the apostle of French independence on the continent.
Madelinette had crossed his path in his most enthusiastic moment, when
his brilliant tongue and great dreams surrounded him with a kind of
glamour. He had caught her to himself out of the girl’s first triumph,
when her nature, tried by the strain of her first challenge to the
judgment of the world, cried out for rest, for Pontiac and home, and all
that was of the old life among her people.

Fournel’s antipathy had only been increased by the fact that Louis
Racine had married the now famous Madelinette, and his animosity
extended to her.

It was not in him to understand the nature of the Frenchman, volatile,
moody, chivalrous, unreasonable, the slave of ideas, the victim of
sentiment. Not understanding, when he began to see that he could not
attain the object of his visit, which was to secure some relics of the
late Seigneur’s household, he chose to be disdainful.

“You are bound to give me these things I ask for, as a matter of
justice--if you know what justice means,” he said at last.

“You should be aware of that,” answered the Seigneur, with a kindling
look. He felt every glance of Fournel’s eye a contemptuous comment upon
his deformity, now so egregious and humiliating. “I taught you justice
once.”

Fournel was not to be moved from his phlegm. He knew he could torture
the man before him, and he was determined to do so, if he did not get
his way upon the matter of his visit.

“You can teach me justice twice and be thanked once,” he answered.
“These things I ask for were much prized by my friend, the late
Seigneur. I was led to expect that this Seigneury and all in it and
on it should be mine. I know it was intended so. The law gives it you
instead. Your technical claim has overridden my rights--you have a gift
for making successful technical claims. But these old personal relics,
of no monetary value--you should waive your avaricious and indelicate
claim to them.” He added the last words with a malicious smile, for the
hardening look in Racine’s face told him his request was hopeless, and
he could not resist the temptation to put the matter with cutting force.
Racine rose to the bait with a jump.

“Not one single thing--not one single solitary thing--!”

“The sentiment is strong if the grammar is bad,” interrupted Fournel,
meaning to wound wherever he found an opportunity, for the Seigneur’s
deformity excited in him no pity; it rather incensed him against the
man, as an affront to decency and to his own just claims to the honours
the Frenchman enjoyed. It was a petty resentment, but George Fournel
had set his heart upon playing the grand-seigneur over the Frenchmen of
Pontiac, and of ultimately leaving his fortune to the parish, if they
all fell down and worshipped him and his “golden calf.”

“The grammar is suitable to the case,” retorted the Seigneur, his voice
rising. “Everything is mine by law, and everything I will keep. If you
think different, produce a will--produce a will!”

Truth was, Louis Racine would rather have parted with the Seigneury
itself than with these relics asked for. They were reminiscent of the
time when France and her golden-lilies brooded over his land, of the
days when Louis Quatorze was king. He cherished everything that had
association with the days of the old regime, as a miner hugs his gold,
or a woman her jewels. The request to give them up to this unsympathetic
Englishman, who valued them because they had belonged to his friend the
late Seigneur, only exasperated him.

“I am ready to pay the highest possible price for them, as I have said,”
 urged the Englishman, realising as he spoke that it was futile to urge
the sale upon that basis.

“Money cannot buy the things that Frenchmen love. We are not a race of
hucksters,” retorted the Seigneur.

“That accounts for your envious dispositions then. You can’t buy what
you want--you love such curious things, I assume. So you play the dog
in the manger, and won’t let other decent folk buy what they want.” He
wilfully distorted the other’s meaning, and was delighted to see the
Seigneur’s fingers twitch with fury. “But since you can’t buy the things
you love--and you seem to think you should--how do you get them? Do you
come by them honestly? or do you work miracles? When a spider makes love
to his lady he dances before her to infatuate her, and then in a moment
of her delighted aberration snatches at her affections. Is it the way of
the spider then?”

With a snarl as of a wild beast, Louis Racine sprang forward and struck
Fournel in the face with his clinched fist. Then, as Fournel, blinded,
staggered back upon the book-shelves, he snatched two antique swords
from the wall. Throwing one on the floor in front of the Englishman,
he ran to the door and locked it, and turned round, the sword grasped
firmly in his hand, and white with rage.

“Spider! Spider! By Heaven, you shall have the spider dance before you!”
 he said hoarsely. He had mistaken Fournel’s meaning. He had put the most
horrible construction upon it. He thought that Fournel referred to his
deformity, and had ruthlessly dragged in Madelinette as well.

He was like a being distraught. His long brown hair was tossed over his
blanched forehead and piercing black eyes. His head was thrown forward
even more than his deformity compelled, his white teeth showed in a
grimace of hatred; he was half-crouched, like an animal ready to spring.

“Take up the sword, or I’ll run you through the heart where you stand,”
 he continued, in a hoarse whisper. “I will give you till I can count
three. Then by the God in Heaven--!”

Fournel felt that he had to deal with a man demented. The blow he
had received had laid open the flesh on his cheek-bone, and blood
was flowing from the wound. Never in his life before had he been so
humiliated. And by a Frenchman--it roused every instinct of race-hatred
in him. Yet he wanted not to go at him with a sword, but with his two
honest hands, and beat him into a whining submission. But the man was
deformed, he had none of his own robust strength--he was not to be
struck, but to be tossed out of the way like an offending child.

He staunched the blood from his face and made a step forward without a
word, determined not to fight, but to take the weapon from the other’s
hands. “Coward!” said the Seigneur. “You dare not fight with the sword.
With the sword we are even. I am as strong as you there--stronger, and
I will have your blood. Coward! Coward! Coward! I will give you till I
count three. One!... Two!...”

Fournel did not stir. He could not make up his mind what to do. Cry out?
No one could come in time to prevent the onslaught--and onslaught there
would be, he knew. There was a merciless hatred in the Seigneur’s face,
a deadly purpose in his eyes; the wild determination of a man who did
not care whether he lived or died, ready to throw himself upon a hundred
in his hungry rage. It seemed so mad, so monstrous, that the beautiful
summer day through which came the sharp whetting of the scythe, the
song of the birds, and the smell of ripening fruit and grain, should
be invaded by this tragic absurdity, this human fury which must spend
itself in blood.

Fournel’s mind was conscious of this feeling, this sense of futile,
foolish waste and disfigurement, even as the Seigneur said “Three!” and,
rushing forward, thrust.

As Fournel saw the blade spring at him, he dropped on one knee, caught
it with his left hand as it came, and wrenched it aside. The blade
lacerated his fingers and his palm, but he did not let go till he had
seized the sword at his feet with his right hand. Then, springing up
with it, he stepped back quickly and grasped his weapon fiercely enough
now.

Yet, enraged as he was, he had no wish to fight; to involve himself in
a fracas which might end in tragedy and the courts of the land. It was a
high price to pay for any satisfaction he might have in this affair.
If the Seigneur were killed in the encounter--he must defend himself
now--what a miserable notoriety and possible legal penalty and public
punishment! For who could vouch for the truth of his story? Even if he
wounded Racine only, what a wretched story to go abroad: that he had
fought with a hunchback--a hunchback who knew the use of the sword,
which he did not, but still a hunchback!

“Stop this nonsense,” he said, as Louis Racine prepared to attack again.
“Don’t be a fool. The game isn’t worth the candle.”

“One of us does not leave this room alive,” said the Seigneur. “You care
for life. You love it, and you can’t buy what you love from me. I don’t
care for life, and I would gladly die, to see your blood flow. Look,
it’s flowing down your face; it’s dripping from your hand, and there
shall be more dripping soon. On guard!”

He suddenly attacked with a fierce energy, forcing Fournel back upon the
wall. He was not a first-class swordsman, but he had far more knowledge
of the weapon than his opponent, and he had no scruple about using his
knowledge. Fournel fought with desperate alertness, yet awkwardly, and
he could not attack; it was all that he could do, all that he knew how
to do, to defend himself. Twice again did the Seigneur’s weapon draw
blood, once from the shoulder and once from the leg of his opponent,
and the blood was flowing from each wound. After the second injury they
stood panting for a moment. Now the outside world was shut out from
Fournel’s senses as it was from Louis Racine’s. The only world they knew
was this cool room, whose oak floors were browned by the slow searching
stains of Time, and darkened by the footsteps of six generations that
had come and gone through the old house. The books along the walls
seemed to cry out against the unseemly and unholy strife. But now both
men were in that atmosphere of supreme egoism where only their two
selves moved, and where the only thing that mattered on earth was the
issue of this strife. Fournel could only think of how to save his
life, and to do that he must become the aggressor, for his wounds
were bleeding hard, and he must have more wounds, if the fight went on
without harm to the Seigneur.

“You know now what it is to insult a Frenchman--On guard!” again cried
the Seigneur, in a shriller voice, for everything in him was pitched to
the highest note.

He again attacked, and the sound of the large swords meeting clashed
on the soft air. As they struggled, a voice came ringing through the
passages, singing a bar from an opera:

     “Oh eager golden day, Oh happy evening hour,
     Behold my lover cometh from fields of wrath and hate!
     Sheathed is his sword; he cometh to my bower;
     In war he findeth honour, and love within the gate.”

The voice came nearer and nearer. It pierced the tragic separateness of
the scene of blood. It reached the ears of the Seigneur, and a look of
pain shot across his face. Fournel was only dimly aware of the voice,
for he was hard pressed, and it seemed to come from infinite distances.
Presently the voice stopped, and some one tried the door of the room.

It was Madelinette. Astonished at finding it locked, she stood still a
moment uncertain what to do. Then the sounds of the struggle within came
to her ears. She shook the door, leaned her shoulders against it,
and called, “Louis! Louis!” Suddenly she darted away, found Havel the
faithful servant in the passage, and brought him swiftly to the door.
The man sprang upon it, striking with his shoulder. The lock gave, the
door flew open, and Madelinette stepped swiftly into the room, in time
to see George Fournel sway and fall, his sword rattling on the hard oak
floor.

“Oh, what have you done, Louis!” she cried, then added hurriedly to
Havel: “Draw the blind there, shut the door, and tell Madame Marie to
bring some water quickly.”

The silent servant vanished, and she dropped on her knees beside the
bleeding and insensible man, and lifted his head.

“He insulted you and me, and I’ve killed him, Madelinette,” said Louis
hoarsely.

A horrified look came to her face, and she hurriedly and tremblingly
opened Fournel’s waistcoat and shirt, and felt his heart.

She was freshly startled by a struggle behind her, and, turning quickly,
she saw Madame Marie holding the Seigneur’s arm to prevent him from
ending his own life.

She sprang up and laid her hand upon her husband’s arm. “He is not
dead--you need not do it, Louis,” she said quietly. There was no alarm,
no undue excitement in her face now. She was acting with good presence
of mind. A new sense was working in her. Something had gone from her
suddenly where her husband was concerned, and something else had taken
its place. An infinite pity, a bitter sorrow, and a gentle command were
in her eyes all at once--new vistas of life opened before her, all in an
instant.

“He is not dead, and there is no need to kill yourself, Louis,” she
repeated, and her voice had a command in it that was not to be gainsaid.
“Since you have vindicated your honour, you will now help me to set this
business right.”

Madame Marie was on her knees beside the insensible man. “No, he is not
dead, thank God!” she murmured, and while Havel stripped the arm and
leg, she poured some water between Fournel’s lips. Her long experience
as the Little Chemist’s wife served her well now.

Now that the excitement was over, Louis collapsed. He swayed and would
have fallen, but Madelinette caught him, helped him to the sofa, and,
forcing him gently down on his side, adjusted a pillow for him, and
turned to the wounded man again.

An hour went busily by in the closely-curtained room, and at last
George Fournel, conscious, and with wounds well bandaged, sat in a big
arm-chair, glowering round him. At his first coming-to, Louis Racine, at
his wife’s insistence, had come and offered his hand, and made apology
for assaulting him in his own house.

Fournel’s reply had been that he wanted to hear no more fool’s talk and
to have no more fool’s doings, and that one day he hoped to take his pay
for the day’s business in a satisfactory way.

Madelinette made no apology, said nothing, save that she hoped he would
remain for a few days till he was recovered enough to be moved. He
replied that he would leave as soon as his horses were ready, and
refused to take food or drink from their hands. His servant was brought
from the Louis Quinze Hotel, and through him he got what was needed for
refreshment, and requested that no one of the household should come near
him. At night, in the darkness, he took his departure, no servant of the
household in attendance. But as he got into the carriage, Madelinette
came quickly to him, and said:

“I would give ten years of my life to undo to-day’s work.”

“I have no quarrel with you, Madame,” he said gloomily, raised his hat,
and was driven away.




CHAPTER IV. MADELINETTE MAKES A DISCOVERY

The national fete of the summer was over. The day had been successful,
more successful indeed than any within the memory of the inhabitants;
for the English and French soldiers joined in the festivities without
any intrusion of racial spirit, but in the very essence and soul of
good-fellowship. The General had called at the Manor, and paid his
respects to the Seigneur, who received him abstractedly if not coolly,
but Madelinette had captured his imagination and his sympathies. He was
fond of music for an Englishman, and with a ravishing charm she sang
for him a bergerette of the eighteenth century and then a ballad of
Shakespeare’s set to her own music. She was so anxious that the great
holiday should pass off without one untoward incident, that she would
have resorted to any fair device to attain the desired end. The
General could help her by his influence and instructions, and if the
soldiers--regulars and militia--joined in the celebrations harmoniously,
and with goodwill, a long step would be made towards undoing the harm
that Louis had done, and maybe influencing him towards a saner, wiser
view of things. He had changed much since the fateful day when he had
forced George Fournel to fight him; had grown more silent, and had
turned grey. His eyes had become by turns watchful and suspicious,
gloomy and abstracted; and his speech knew the same variations; now
bitter and cynical, now sad and distant, and all the time his eyes
seemed to grow darker and his face paler. But however moody and variable
and irascible he might be with others, however unappeasable, with
Madelinette he struggled to be gentle, and his petulance gave way under
the intangible persuasiveness of her words and will, which had the
effect of command. Under this influence he had prepared the words which
he was to deliver at the Fete. They were full of veneration for past
traditions, but were not at variance with a proper loyalty to the flag
under which they lived, and if the English soldiery met the speech
with genial appreciation the day might end in a blessing--and surely
blessings were overdue in Madelinette’s life in Pontiac.

It had been as she worked for and desired, thanks to herself and the
English General’s sympathetic help. Perhaps his love of music made
him better understand what she wanted, made him even forgiving of the
Seigneur’s strained manner; but certain it is that the day, begun with
uneasiness on the part of the people of Pontiac, who felt themselves
under surveillance, ended in great good-feeling and harmless revelry;
and it was also certain that the Seigneur’s speech gained him an
applause that surprised him and momentarily appeased his vanity. The
General gave him a guard of honour of the French Militia in keeping with
his position as Seigneur; and this, with Madelinette’s presence at his
elbow, restrained him in his speech when he would have broken from the
limits of propriety in the intoxication of his eager eloquence. But he
spoke with moderation, standing under the British Flag on the platform,
and at the last he said:

“A flag not our own floats over us now; guarantees us against the malice
of the world and assures us in our laws and religion; but there is
another flag which in our tearful memories is as dear to us now as it
was at Carillon and Levis. It is the flag of memory--of language and
of race, the emblem of our past upon our hearthstones; and the great
country that rules us does not deny us reverence to it. Seeing it, we
see the history of our race from Charlemagne to this day, and we have
a pride in that history which England does not rebuke, a pride which
is just and right. It is fitting that we should have a day of
commemoration. Far off in France burns the light our fathers saw and
were glad. And we in Pontiac have a link that binds us to the old home.
We have ever given her proud remembrance--we now give her art and song.”

With these words, and turning to his wife, he ended, and cries of
“Madame Madelinette! Madame Madelinette!” were heard everywhere. Even
the English soldiers cheered, and Madelinette sang a la Claire Fontaine,
three verses in French and one in English, and the whole valley rang
with the refrain sung at the topmost pitch by five thousand voices:

“I’ya longtemps que je t’aime, Jamais je ne t’oublierai.”

The day of pleasure done and dusk settled on Pontiac and on the
encampment of soldiers in the valley, a light still burned in the
library at the Manor House long after midnight. Madelinette had gone to
bed, but, excited by the events of the day, she could not sleep, and she
went down to the library to read. But her mind wandered still, and she
sat mechanically looking before her at a picture of the father of the
late Seigneur, which was let into the moulding of the oak wall. As she
looked abstractedly and yet with the intensity of the preoccupied mind,
her eye became aware of a little piece of wood let into the moulding of
the frame. The light of the hanging lamp was full on it.

This irregularity began to perplex her eye. Presently it intruded on her
reverie. Still busy with her thoughts, she knelt upon the table beneath
the picture and pressed the irregular piece of wood. A spring gave, the
picture came slowly away from the frame, and disclosed a small cupboard
behind. In this cupboard were a few books, an old silver-handled pistol,
and a packet. Madelinette’s reverie was broken now. She was face to face
with discovery and mystery. Her heart stood still with fear. After an
instant of suspense, she took out the packet and held it to the light.
She gave a smothered cry.

It was the will of the late Seigneur.




CHAPTER V. WHAT WILL SHE DO WITH IT?

George Fournel was the heir to the Seigneury of Pontiac, not Louis
Racine. There it was in the will of Monsieur de la Riviere, duly signed
and attested.

Madelinette’s heart stood still. Louis was no longer--indeed, never had
been--Seigneur of Pontiac, and they had no right there, had never had
any right there. They must leave this place which was to Louis the
fetich of his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the
trouble nature had cynically laid upon him. He had clung to it as a
drowning man clings to a spar. To him it was the charter from which he
could appeal to the world as the husband of Madelinette Lajeunesse. To
him it was the name, the dignity, and the fortune he brought her. It
was the one thing that saved him from a dire humiliation; it was the
vantage-ground from which he appealed to her respect, the flaming
testimony of his own self-esteem. Every hour since his trouble had
come upon him, since Madelinette’s great fame had come to her, he had
protested to himself that it was honour for honour; and every day he
had laboured, sometimes how fantastically, how futilely! to dignify his
position, to enhance his importance in her eyes. She had understood it
all, had read him to the last letter in the alphabet of his mind and
heart. She had realised the consternation of the people, and she knew
that, for her sake, and because the Cure had commanded, all the obsolete
claims he had made were responded to by the people. Certainly he had
affected them by his eloquence and his fiery kindness, but at the same
time they had shrewdly smelt the treason underneath his ardour. There
was a definite limit to their loyalty to him; and, deprived of the
Seigneury, he would count for nothing.

A hundred thoughts like these went through her mind as she stood by the
table under the hanging lamp, her face white as the loose robe she wore,
her eyes hot and staring, her figure rigid as stone.

To-morrow--how could she face to-morrow, and Louis! How could she tell
him this! How could she say to him, “Louis, you are no longer Seigneur.
The man you hate, he who is your inveterate enemy, who has every reason
to exact from you the last tribute of humiliation, is Seigneur here!”
 How could she face the despair of the man whose life was one inward
fever, one long illusion, which was yet only half an illusion, since he
was forever tortured by suspicion; whose body was wearing itself out,
and spirit was destroying itself in the struggle of a vexed imagination!

She knew that Louis’ years were numbered. She knew that this blow would
break him body and soul. He could never survive the humiliation. His
sensitiveness was a disease, his pride was the only thing that kept
him going; his love of her, strong as it was, would be drowned in an
imagined shame!

It was midnight. She was alone with this secret. She held the paper in
her hand, which was at once Louis’ sentence or his charter of liberty. A
candle was at her hand, the doors were shut, the blinds drawn, the house
a frozen silence--how cold she was, though it was the deep of summer!
She shivered from head to foot, and yet all day the harvest sun had
drenched the room in its heat.

Yet her blood might run warm again, her cold cheeks might regain their
colour, her heart beat quietly, if this paper were no more! The thought
made her shrink away from herself, as it were, yet she caught up the
candle and lighted it.

For Louis. For Louis, though she would rather have died than do it for
herself. To save to Louis what was, to his imagination, the one claim
he had upon her respect and the world’s. After all, how little was it in
value or in dignity! How little she cared for it! One year of her voice
could earn two such Seigneuries as this. And the honour--save that it
was Pontiac-it was naught to her. In all her life she had never done or
said a dishonourable thing. She had never lied, she had never deceived,
she had never done aught that might not have been written down and
published to all the world. Yet here, all at once, she was faced with
a vast temptation, to do a deed, the penalty of which was an indelible
shame.

What injury would it do to George Fournel! He was used now to his
disappointment; he was rich; he had no claims upon Pontiac; there was no
one but himself to whom it mattered, this little Seigneury. What he
did not know did not exist, so far as himself was concerned. How
easily could it all be made right some day! She felt as though she were
suffocating, and she opened the window a little very softly. Then she
lit the candle tremblingly, watched the flame gather strength, and
opened out the will. As she did so, however, the smell of a clover
field, which is as honey, came stealing through the room, and all at
once a strange association of ideas flashed into her brain.

She recalled one summer day long ago, when, in the church of St.
Saviour’s, the smell of the clover fields came through the open doors
and windows, and her mind had kept repeating mechanically, till she
fell asleep, the text of the Curb’s sermon--“As ye sow, so also shall ye
reap.”

That placid hour which had no problems, no cares, no fears, no penalties
in view, which was filled with the richness of a blessed harvest and the
plenitude of innocent youth, came back on her now in the moment of her
fierce temptation.

She folded up the paper slowly, a sob came in her throat, she blew out
the candle, and put the will back in the cupboard. The faint click of
the spring as she closed the panel seemed terribly loud to her.
She started and looked timorously round. The blood came back to her
face--she flushed crimson with guilt. Then she turned out the lighted
lamp and crept away up the stairs to her room.

She paused beside Louis’ bed. He was moving restlessly in his sleep; he
was murmuring her name. With a breaking sigh she crept into bed slowly
and lay like one who had been beaten, bruised, and shamed.

At last, before the dawn, she fell asleep. She dreamed that she was in
prison and that George Fournel was her jailor.

She waked to find Louis at her bedside.

“I am holding my seigneurial court to-day,” he said.




CHAPTER VI. THE ONE WHO SAW

All day and every day Madelinette’s mind kept fastening itself upon one
theme, kept turning to one spot. In her dreams she saw the hanging
lamp, the moving panel, the little cupboard, the fatal paper. Waking and
restlessly busy, she sometimes forgot it for a moment, but remembrance
would come back with painful force, and her will must govern her hurt
spirit into quiet resolution. She had such a sense of humiliation as
though some one dear to her had committed a crime against herself. Two
persons were in her--Madelinette Lajeunesse, the daughter of the village
blacksmith, brought up in the peaceful discipline of her religion,
shunning falsehood and dishonour with a simple proud self-respect; and
Madame Racine, the great singer, who had touched at last the heart of
things; and, with the knowledge, had thrown aside past principles and
convictions to save her stricken husband from misery and humiliation--to
save his health, his mind, his life maybe.

The struggle of conscience and expediency, of principle and
womanliness wore upon her, taking away the colour from her cheeks, but
spiritualising her face, giving the large black eyes an expression of
rare intensity, so that the Avocat in his admiration called her Madonna,
and the Cure came oftener to the Manor House with a fear in his heart
that all was not well. Yet he was met by her cheerful smile, by her
quiet sense of humour, by the touching yet not demonstrative devotion
of the wife to the husband, and a varying and impulsive adoration of
the wife by the husband. One day when the Cure was with the Seigneur,
Madelinette entered upon them. Her face was pale though composed,
yet her eyes had a look of abstraction or detachment. The Cure’s face
brightened at her approach. She wore a simple white gown with a bunch of
roses at the belt, and a broad hat lined with red that shaded her face
and gave it a warmth it did not possess.

“Dear Madame!” said the Cure, rising to his feet and coming towards her.

“I have told you before that I will have nothing but ‘Madelinette,’ dear
Cure,” she replied, with a smile, and gave him her hand. She turned to
Louis, who had risen also, and putting a hand on his arm pressed him
gently into his chair, then, with a swift, almost casual, caress of his
hair, placed on the table the basket of flowers she was carrying, and
began to arrange them.

“Dear Louis,” she said presently, and as though en passant, “I have
dismissed Tardif to-day--I hope you won’t mind these dull domestic
details, Cure,” she added.

The Cure nodded and turned his head towards the window musingly. He was
thinking that she had done a wise thing in dismissing Tardif, for the
man had evil qualities, and he was hoping that he would leave the parish
now.

The Seigneur nodded. “Then he will go. I have dismissed him--I have a
temper--many times, but he never went. It is foolish to dismiss a man in
a temper. He thinks you do not mean it. But our Madelinette there”--he
turned towards the Cure now--“she is never in a temper, and every one
always knows she means what she says; and she says it as even as a
clock.” Then the egoist in him added: “I have power and imagination and
the faculty for great things; but Madelinette has serene judgment--a
tribute to you, Cure, who taught her in the old days.”

“In any case, Tardif is going,” she repeated quietly. “What did he do?”
 said the Seigneur. “What was your grievance, beautiful Madame?”

He was looking at her with unfeigned admiration--with just such a look
as was in his face the first day they met in the Avocat’s house on his
arrival in Pontiac. She turned and saw it, and remembered. The scene
flashed before her mind. The thought of herself then, with the flush of
a sunrise love suddenly rising in her heart, roused a torrent of feeling
now, and it required every bit of strength she had to prevent her
bursting into a passion of tears. In imagination she saw him there, a
straight, slim, handsome figure, with the very vanity of proud health
upon him, and ambition and passionate purpose in every line of his
figure, every glance of his eyes. Now--there he was, bent, frail, and
thin, with restless eyes and deep discontent in voice and manner;
the curved shoulder and the head grown suddenly old; the only thing,
speaking of the past, the graceful hand, filled with the illusory
courage of a declining vitality. But for the nervous force in him, the
latent vitality which renewed with stubborn persistence the failing
forces, he was dead. The brain kept commanding the body back to life and
manhood daily.

“What did Tardif do?” the Seigneur again questioned, holding out a hand
to her.

She did not dare to take his hand lest her feelings should overcome her;
so with an assumed gaiety she put in it a rose from her basket and said:

“He has been pilfering. Also he was insolent. I suppose he could not
help remembering that I lived at the smithy once--the dear smithy,” she
added softly.

“I will go at once and pay the scoundrel his wages,” said the Seigneur,
rising, and with a nod to the Cure and his wife opened the door.

“Do not see him yourself, Louis,” said Madelinette. “Not I. Havel shall
pay him and he shall take himself off to-morrow morning.”

The door closed, and Madelinette was left alone with the Cure. She came
to him and said with a quivering in her voice:

“He mocked Louis.”

“It is well that he should go. He is a bad man and a bad servant. I know
him too well.”

“You see, he keeps saying”--she spoke very slowly--“that he witnessed
a will the Seigneur made in favour of Monsieur Fournel. He thinks us
interlopers, I suppose.”

The Cure put a hand on hers gently. “There was a time when I felt that
Monsieur Fournel was the legal heir to the Seigneury, for Monsieur de la
Riviere had told me there was such a will; but since then I have changed
my mind. Your husband is the natural heir, and it is only just that the
Seigneury should go on in the direct line. It is best.”

“Even with all Louis’ mistakes?”

“Even with them. You have set them right, and you will keep him
within the bounds of wisdom and prudence. You are his guardian angel,
Madelinette.”

She looked up at him with a pensive smile and a glance of gratitude.

“But suppose that will--if there is one--exists, see how false our
position!”

“Do you think it is mere accident that the will has never been found--if
it was not destroyed by the Seigneur himself before he died? No, there
is purpose behind it, with which neither you or I or Louis have anything
to do. Ah, it is good to have you here in this Seigneury, my child! What
you give us will return to you a thousandfold. Do not regret the world
and your work there. You will go back all too soon.”

She was about to reply when the Seigneur again entered the room.

“I made up my mind that he should go at once, and so I’ve sent him
word--the rat!”

“I will leave you two to be drowned in the depths of your own
intelligence,” said Madelinette; and taking her empty basket left the
room.

A strange compelling feeling drove her to the library where the fateful
panel was. With a strange sense that her wrong-doing was modified by
the fact, she had left the will where she had found it. She had a
superstition that fate would deal less harshly with her if she did. It
was not her way to temporise. She had concealed the discovery of the
will with an unswerving determination. It was for Louis, it was for his
peace, for the ease of his fading life, and she had no repentance. Yet
there it was, that curious, useless concession to old prejudices, the
little touch of hypocrisy--she left the will where she had found it. She
had never looked at it since, no matter how great the temptation, and
sometimes this was overpowering.

To-day it overpowered her. The house was very still and the blinds were
drawn to shut out the heat, but the soft din of the locusts came through
the windows. Her household were all engaged elsewhere. She shut the
doors of the little room, and kneeling on the table touched the spring.
The panel came back and disclosed the cupboard. There lay the will.
She took it up and opened it. Her eyes went dim on the instant, and she
leaned her forehead against the wall sick at heart.

As she did so a sudden gust of wind drove in the blind of the window.
She started, but saw what it was, and hastily putting the will back,
closed the panel, and with a fast-beating heart, left the room.

Late that evening she found a letter on her table addressed to herself.
It ran:

   You’ve shipped me off like dirt. You’ll be shipped off, Madame,
   double quick. I’ve got what’ll bring the right owner here. You’ll
   soon hear from
                    Tardif.

In terror she hastened to the library and sprung the panel. The will was
gone.

Tardif was on his way with it to George Fournel.




CHAPTER VII. THE PURSUIT

There was but one thing to do. She must go straight to George Fournel at
Quebec. She knew only too well that Tardif was speeding thither as fast
as horses could carry him. He had had several hours’ start, but there
was still a chance of overtaking him. And suppose she overtook him?
She could not decide definitely what she should do, but she would do
anything, sacrifice anything, to secure again that fatal document which,
in George Fournel’s hands, must bring a collapse worse than death. A
dozen plans flashed before her, and now that her mind was set upon the
thing, compunction would not stay her. She had gone so far, she was
prepared to go further to save this Seigneury to Louis. She put in her
pocket the silver-handled pistol from the fatal cupboard.

In an hour from the time she found the note, the horses and coach were
at the door, and the faithful Havel, cloaked and armed, was ready for
the journey. A note to Louis, with the excuse of a sudden and important
call to Quebec, which he was to construe into business concerning her
profession; hurried yet careful arrangements for his comfort during her
absence; a letter to the Cure begging of him a daily visit to the Manor
House; and then, with the flurried Madame Marie, she entered the coach
with Havel on the box, and they were off.

The coach rattled through the village and stopped for a moment at the
smithy. A few words of cheerful good-bye to her father--she carried the
spring in her face and the summer of gaiety in her face however sore her
heart was--and they were once more upon the road.

Their first stage was twenty-five miles, and it led through the ravine
where Parpon and his comrades had once sought to frighten George
Fournel. As they passed the place Madelinette shuddered, and she
remembered Fournel’s cynical face as he left the house three months
ago. She felt that it would not easily soften to mercy or look upon her
trouble with a human eye, if once the will were in his hands. It was
a silent journey, but Madame Marie asked no questions, and there was
comfort in her unspoken sympathy.

Five hours, and at midnight they arrived at the end of the first stage
of their journey, at the village tavern of St. Stanislaus. Here Madame
Marie urged Madelinette to stay and sleep, but this she refused to do,
if horses could be got to go forward. The sight of two gold pieces made
the thing possible in the landlord’s eyes, and Madame Marie urged no
more, but found some refreshment, of which she gently insisted that
Madelinette should partake. In another hour from their arrival they were
on the road again, with the knowledge that Tardif had changed horses
and gone forward four hours before, boasting as he went that when the
bombshell he was carrying should burst, the country would stay awake o’
nights for a year.

Madelinette herself had made the inquiries of the landlord, whose
easily-bought obsequiousness now knew no bounds, and he gave a letter to
Havel to hand to his cousin the landlord at the next change, which, he
said, would be sure to secure them the best of accommodation and good
horses.

As the night grew to morning, Madelinette drooped a little, and Madame
Marie, who had, to her own anger and disgust, slept three hours or more,
quietly drew Madelinette towards her. With a little sob the girl--for
what was she but a girl--let her head drop on the old woman’s shoulder,
and she fell into a troubled sleep, which lasted till, in the flush
of sunrise, they drew up at the solitary inn on the outskirts of the
village of Beaugard. They had come fifty miles since the evening before.

Here Madelinette took Havel into her confidence, in so far as to tell
him that Tardif had stolen a valuable paper from her, the loss of which
might bring most serious consequences.

Whatever Havel had suspected he was the last man in the world to show or
tell. But before leaving the Manor House of Pontiac he had armed himself
with pistols, in the grim hope that he might be required to use them.
Havel had been used hard in the world, Madelinette had been kind to him,
and he was ready to show his gratitude--and he little recked what form
it might take. When he found that they were following Tardif, and
for what purpose, an ugly joy filled his heart, and he determined on
revenge--so long delayed--on the scoundrel who had once tried to turn
the parish against him by evil means. He saw that his pistols were duly
primed, he learned that Tardif had passed but two hours before, boasting
again that Europe would have gossip for a year, once he reached Quebec.
Tardif too had paid liberally for his refreshment and his horses, for
here he had taken a carriage, and had swaggered like a trooper in a
conquered country.

Havel had every hope of overtaking Tardif, and so he told Madelinette,
adding that he would secure the paper for her at any cost. She did not
quite know what Havel meant, but she read purpose in his eye, and when
Havel said: “I won’t say ‘Stop thief’ many times,” she turned away
without speaking--she was choked with anxiety. Yet in her own pocket was
a little silver-handled pistol.

It was true that Tardif was a thief, but she knew that his theft would
be counted a virtue before the world. This she could not tell Havel, but
when the critical moment came--if it did come--she would then act upon
the moment’s inspiration. If Tardif was a thief, what was she!--But this
she could not tell Havel or the world. Even as she thought it for this
thousandth time, her face flushed deeply, and a mist came before her
eyes. But she hardened her heart and gave orders to proceed as soon as
the horses were ready. After a hasty breakfast they were again on their
way, and reached the third stage of their journey by eleven o’clock.
Tardif had passed two hours before.

So, for two days they travelled, with no sleep save what they could
catch as the coach rolled on. They were delayed three hours at one inn
because of the trouble in getting horses, since it appeared that Tardif
had taken the only available pair in the place; but a few gold pieces
brought another pair galloping from a farm two miles away, and they were
again on the road. Fifty miles to go, and Tardif with three hours’ start
of them! Unless he had an accident there was faint chance of overtaking
him, for at this stage he had taken to the saddle again. As time
had gone on, and the distance between them and Quebec had decreased,
Madelinette had grown paler and stiller. Yet she was considerate of
Madame Marie, and more than once insisted on Havel lying down for a
couple of hours, and herself made him a strengthening bowl of soup at
the kitchen fire of the inn. Meanwhile she inquired whether it might
be possible to get four horses at the next change, and she offered five
gold pieces to a man who would ride on ahead of them and secure the
team.

Some magic seemed to bring her the accomplishment of the impossible, for
even as she made the offer, and the downcast looks of the landlord were
assuring her that her request was futile, there was the rattle of hoofs
without, and a petty Government official rode up. He had come a journey
of three miles only, and his horse was fresh. Agitated, yet ruling
herself to composure, Madelinette approached him and made her proposal
to him. He was suspicious, as became a petty Government official,
and replied sullenly. She offered him money--before the landlord,
unhappily--and his refusal was now unnecessarily bitter. She turned away
sadly, but Madame Marie had been roused by the official’s churlishness,
and for once the placid little body spoke in that vulgar tongue which
needs no interpretation. She asked the fellow if he knew to whom he had
been impolite, to whom he had refused a kindly act.

“You--you, a habitant road-watcher, a pound-keeper, a village
tax-collector, or something less!” she said. “You to refuse the great
singer Madelinette Lajeunesse, the wife of the Seigneur of Pontiac, the
greatest patriot in the land; to refuse her whom princes are glad to
serve--” She stopped and gasped her indignation.

A hundred speeches and a hundred pounds could not have done so much. The
habitant official stared in blank amazement, the landlord took a glass
of brandy to steady himself.

“The Lajeunesse--the Lajeunesse, the singer of all the world--ah, why
did she not say so then!” said the churl. “What would I not do for her!
Money--no, it is nothing, but the Lajeunesse, I myself would give my
horse to hear her sing.”

“Tell her she can have M’sieu’s horse,” said the landlord, excitedly
interposing.

“Tiens, who the devil--the horse is mine! If Madame--if she will but
let me offer it to her myself!” said the agitated official. “I sing
myself--I know what singing is. I have sung in an opera--a sentinel in
armour I was. Ah, but bring me to her, and you shall see what I will do,
by grace of heaven! I will marry you if you haven’t a husband,” he added
with ardour to the dumfounded Madame Marie, who hurried to the adjoining
room.

An instant afterwards the official was making an oration in tangled
sentences which brought him a grateful smile and a hand-clasp from
Madelinette. She could not prevent him from kissing her hand, she could
not refrain from laughing when, outside the room, he tried to kiss
Madame Marie. She was astounded, however, an hour later, to see him
still at the inn door, marching up and down, a whip in his hand. She
looked at him reproachfully, indignantly.

“Why are you not on the way?” she asked.

“Your man, that M’sieu’ Havel, has rode on; I am to drive,” he said.
“Yes, Madame, it is my everlasting honour that I am to drive you. Havel
has a good horse, the horse has a good rider, you have a good servant
in me. I, Madame, have a good mistress in you--I am content. I am
overjoyed--I am proud--I am ready, I, Pierre Lapierre.”

The churlish official had gone back to the natural state of an excitable
habitant, ready to give away his heart or lose his head at an instant’s
notice, the temptation being sufficient. Madelinette was frightened.
She knew well why Havel had ridden on ahead without her permission, and
shaking hands with the landlord and getting into the coach, she said
hastily to her new coachman: “Lose not an instant. Drive hard.”

They reached the next change by noon, and here they found four horses
awaiting them. Tardif, and Havel also, had come and gone. An hour’s
rest, and they were away again upon the last stage of the journey. They
should reach Quebec soon after dusk, all being well. At first, Lapierre
the official had been inclined to babble, but at last he relieved his
mind by interjections only. He kept shaking his head wisely, as
though debating on great problems, and he drove his horses with a
master-hand--he had once been a coach driver on that long river-road,
which in summer makes a narrow ribbon of white, mile for mile with the
St. Lawrence from east to west. This was the proudest moment of his
life. He knew great things were at stake, and they had to do with the
famous singer, Lajeunesse; and what tales for his grandchildren in years
to come!

The flushed and comfortable Madame Marie sat upright in the coach,
holding the hand of her mistress, and Madelinette grew paler as the
miles diminished between her and Quebec. Yet she was quiet and unmoving,
now and then saying an encouraging word to Lapierre, who smacked his
lips for miles afterwards, and took out of his horses their strength and
paces by masterly degrees. So that when, at last, on the hill they saw
far off the spires of Quebec, the team was swinging as steadily on as
though they had not come twenty-five miles already. This was a moment of
pride for Lapierre, but of apprehension for Madelinette. At the last two
inns on the road she had got news of both Tardif and Havel. Tardif had
had the final start of half-an-hour. A half-hour’s start, and fifteen
miles to go! But one thing was sure, Havel, the wiry Havel, was the
better man, with sounder nerve and a fostered strength.

Yet, as they descended the hill and plunged into the wild wooded valley,
untenanted and uncivilised, where the road wound and curved among giant
boulders and twisted through ravines and gorges, her heart fell within
her. Evening was at hand, and in the thick forest the shadows were
heavy, and night was settling upon them before its time.

They had not gone a mile, however, when, as they swung creaking round
a great boulder, Lapierre pulled up his horses with a loud exclamation,
for almost under his horses’ feet lay a man apparently dead, his horse
dead beside him.

It was Havel. In an instant Madelinette and Ma dame Marie were bending
over him. The widow of the Little Chemist had skill and presence of
mind.

“He is not dead, dear mine,” said she in a low voice, feeling Havel’s
heart.

“Thank God,” was all that Madelinette could say. “Let us lift him into
the coach.”

Now Lapierre was standing beside them, the reins in his hand. “Leave
that to me,” he said, and passed the reins into Madame Marie’s hands,
then with muttered imprecations on persons unmentioned he lifted up
the slight form of Havel, and carried him to the coach. Meanwhile
Madelinette had stooped to a little stream at the side of the road, and
filled her silver drinking-cup with water.

As she bent over Havel and sprinkled his face, Lapierre examined the
insensible man.

“He is but stunned,” he said. “He will come to in a moment.”

Then he went to the spot where Havel had lain, and found a pistol
lying at the side of the road. Examining it, he found it had been
discharged-both barrels. Rustling with importance he brought it to
Madelinette, nodding and looking wise, yet half timorous too in sharing
in so remarkable a business. Madelinette glanced at the pistol, her lips
tightened, and she shuddered. Havel had evidently failed, and she
must face the worst. Yet now that it had come, she was none the less
determined to fight on.

Havel opened his eyes and looked round in a startled way. He saw
Madelinette.

“Ah, Madame, Madame, pardon! He got away. I fired twice and winged him,
but he shot my horse and I fell on my head. He has got away. What time
is it, Madame?” he suddenly asked. She told him. “Ah, it is too late,”
 he added. “It happened over half-an-hour ago. Unless he is badly hurt
and has fallen by the way, he is now in the city. Madame, I have failed
you--pardon, Madame!”

She helped him to sit up, and made a cushion of her cloak for his head,
in a corner of the coach. “There is nothing to ask pardon for, Havel,”
 she said; “you did your best. It was to be--that’s all. Drink the brandy
now.”

A moment afterwards Lapierre was on the box, Madame Marie was inside,
and Madelinette said to the coachman:

“Drive hard--the White Calvary by the church of St. Mary Magdalene.”

In another hour the coach drew up by the White Calvary, where a soft
light burned in memory of some departed soul.

The three alighted. Madelinette whispered to Havel, he got up on the
box beside Lapierre, and the coach rattled away to a tavern, as the two
women disappeared swiftly into the darkness.




CHAPTER VIII. FACE TO FACE

As the two approached the mansion where George Fournel lived, they saw
the door open and a man come hurriedly out into the street. He wore his
wrist in a sling.

Madelinette caught Madame Marie’s arm. She did not speak, but her heart
sank within her. The man was Tardif.

He saw them and shuffled over.

“Ha, Madame,” he said, “he has the will, and I’ve not done with you
yet--you’ll see.” Then, shaking a fist in Madelinette’s face, he
clattered off into the darkness.

They crossed the street, and Madame Marie knocked at Fournel’s door.
It was at once opened, and Madelinette announced herself. The servant
stared stonily at first, then, as she mentioned her name and he saw
her face, he suddenly became servile, and asked them into a small
waiting-room. Monsieur Fournel was at home, and should be informed at
once of Madame’s arrival.

A few moments later the servant, somewhat graver, but as courteous
still, came to say that Monsieur would receive her in his library.
Madelinette turned towards Madame Marie. The servant understood.

“I shall see that the lady has refreshment,” he said. “Will Madame
perhaps care for refreshment--and a mirror, before Monsieur has the
honour?--Madame has travelled far.”

In spite of the anxiety of the moment and the great matters at stake,
Madelinette could not but smile. “Thank you,” she said, “I hope I’m not
so unpresentable.”

“A little dust here and there perhaps, Madame,” he said, with humble
courtesy.

Madelinette was not so heroical as to undervalue the suggestion. Lives
perhaps were in the balance, but she was a woman, and who could tell
what slight influences might turn the scale!

The servant saw her hesitation. “If Madame will but remain here, I will
bring what is necessary,” he said, and was gone. In a moment he appeared
again with a silver basin, a mirror, and a few necessaries of the
toilet.

“I suppose, Madame,” said the servant, with fluttered anxiety, to show
that he knew who she was, “I suppose you have had sometimes to make
rough shifts, even in palaces.”

She gave him a gold piece. It cheered her in the moment to think that in
this forbidding house, on a forbidding mission, to a forbidding man, she
had one friend. She made a hasty toilet, and but for the great paleness
of her cheeks, no traces remained of the three days’ travel with their
hardship and anxiety. Presently, as the servant ushered her into the
presence of George Fournel, even the paleness was warmed a little by the
excitement of the moment.

Fournel was standing with his back to the door, looking out into the
moonlit night. As she entered he quickly drew the curtains of the
windows and turned towards his visitor, a curious, hard, disdainful look
in his face. In his hands he held a paper which she knew only too well.

“Madame,” he said, and bowed. Then he motioned her to a chair. He took
one himself and sat down beside the great oak writing-desk and waited
for her to speak--waited with a look which sent the blood from her heart
to colour her cheeks and forehead.

She did not speak, however, but looked at him fearlessly. It was
impossible for her to humble herself before the latent insolence of his
look. It seemed to degrade her out of all consideration. He felt the
courage of her defiance, and it moved him. Yet he could but speak in
cynical suggestion.

“You had a long, hard, and adventurous journey,” he said. He rose
suddenly and drew a tray towards him. “Will you not have some
refreshment?” he added, in an even voice. “I fear you have not had time
to seek it at an inn. Your messenger has but just gone.”

It was impossible for him to do justice to himself, or to let his
hospitality rest upon its basis of natural courtesy. It was clear that
he was moved with accumulated malice, and he could not hide it.

“Your servant has been hospitable,” she said, her voice trembling a
little. She plunged at once into the business of her visit.

“Monsieur, that paper you hold--” she stopped for an instant, able to go
no further.

“Ah, this--this document you have sent me,” he said, opening it with an
assumed carelessness. “Your servant had an accident--I suppose we may
call it that privately--as he came. He was fired at--was wounded. You
will share with me the hope that the highwayman who stopped him may be
brought to justice, though, indeed, your man Tardif left him behind in
the dust. Perhaps you came upon him, Madame--hein?”

She steeled herself. Too much was at stake; she could not resent his
hateful implications now.

“Tardif was not my messenger, Monsieur, as you know. Tardif was the
thief of that document in your hands.”

“Yes, this--will!” he said musingly, an evil glitter in his eyes. “Its
delivery has been long delayed. Posts and messengers are slow from
Pontiac.”

“Monsieur will hear what I have to say? You have the will, your rights
are in your hands. Is not that enough?”

“It is not enough,” he answered, in a grating voice. “Let us be plain
then, Madame, and as simple as you please. You concealed this will. Not
Tardif but yourself is open to the law.”

She shrank under the brutality of his manner, but she ruled herself to
outward composure. She was about to reply when he added, with a sneer:
“Avarice is a debasing vice--Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house!
Thou shalt not steal!”

“Monsieur,” she said calmly, “it would have been easy to destroy the
will. Have you not thought of that?”

For a moment he was taken aback, but he said harshly: “If crime were
always intelligent, it would have fewer penalties.”

She shrank again under the roughness of his words. But she was fighting
for an end that was dear to her soul, and she answered:

“It was not lack of intelligence, but a sense of honour--yes, a sense of
honour,” she insisted, as he threw back his head and laughed. “What do
you think might be my reason for concealing the will--if I did conceal
it?”

“The answer seems obvious. Why does the wild ass forage with a strange
herd, or the pig put his feet in the trough? Not for his neighbour’s
gain, Madame, not in a thousand years.”

“Monsieur, I have never been spoken to so coarsely. I am a blacksmith’s
daughter, and I have heard rough men talk in my day, but I have never
heard a man--of my own race at least--so rude to a woman. But I am here
not for my own sake; I will not go till I have said and done all I have
come to say and do. Will you listen to me, Monsieur?”

“I have made my charges--answer them. Disprove this theft”--he held up
the will--“of concealment, and enjoyment of property not your own, and
then ask of me that politeness which makes so beautiful stable and forge
at Pontiac.”

“Monsieur, you cannot think that the will was concealed for profit, for
the value of the Seigneury of Pontiac. I can earn two such seigneuries
in one year, Monsieur.”

“Nevertheless you do not.”

“For the same reason that I did not bring or send that will to you when
I found it, Monsieur. And for that same reason I have come to ask you
not to take advantage of that will.”

He was about to interpose angrily, but she continued: “Whatever the
rental may be that you in justice feel should be put upon the Seigneury,
I will pay--from the hour my husband entered on the property, its heir
as he believed. Put such rental on the property, do not disturb Monsieur
Racine in his position as it is, and I will double that rental.”

“Do not think, Madame, that I am as avaricious as you.”

“Is it avaricious to offer double the worth of the rental?”

“There is the title and distinction. You married a mad nobody; you wish
to retain an honour that belongs to me.”

“I am asking it for my husband’s sake, not my own, believe me,
Monsieur.”

“And what do you expect me to do for his sake, Madame?”

“What humanity would suggest. Ah, I know what you would say: he tried to
kill you; he made you fight him. But, Monsieur, he has repented of that.
He is ill, he is--crippled, he cherishes the Seigneury beyond its worth
a thousand times.”

“He cherishes it at my expense. So, you must not disturb the man who
robs you of house and land, and tries to murder you, lest he should be
disturbed and not sleep o’ nights. Come, Madame, that is too thin.”

“He might kill you, but he would not rob you, Monsieur. Do you think
that if he knew that will existed, he would be now at the Seigneury, or
I here? I know you hate Louis Racine.”

“With ample reason.”

“You hate him more because he defeated you than because he once tried to
kill you. Oh, I do not know the rights or wrongs of that great case at
law; I only know that Louis Racine was not the judge or jury, but the
avocat only, whose duty it was to do as he did. That he did it the more
gladly because he was a Frenchman and you an Englishman, is not his
fault or yours either. Louis Racine’s people came here two hundred years
ago, yours not sixty years ago. You, the great business man, have had
practical power which gave you riches. You have sacrificed all for
power. Louis Racine has only genius, and no practical power.”

“A dangerous fanatic and dreamer,” he interjected. “A dreamer, if you
will, with no practical power, for he never thought of himself, and
‘practical power’ is usually all self. He dreamed--he gave his heart
and soul up for ideas. Englishmen do not understand that. Do you not
know--you do know--that, had he chosen, he might have been rich too, for
his brains would have been of great use to men of practical power like
yourself.”

She paused; Fournel did not answer, but sat as though reading the will
intently.

“Was it strange that he should dream of a French sovereign state here,
where his people came and first possessed the land? Can you wonder that
this dreamer, when the Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, felt as if a
new life were opened up to him, and saw a way to some of his ambitions.
They were sad, mistaken ambitions, doomed to failure, but they were
also his very heart, which he would empty out gladly for an idea. The
Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, and I married him.”

“Evidently bent upon wrecking the chances of a great career,”
 interrupted Fournel over the paper.

“But no; I also cared more for ideas than for the sordid things of life.
It is in our blood, you see” she was talking with less restraint now,
for she saw he was listening, despite assumed indifference--“and Pontiac
was dearer to me than all else in the world. Louis Racine belonged
there. You--what sort of place would you, an Englishman, have occupied
at the Seigneury of Pontiac! What kind--”

He got suddenly to his feet. He was a man of strange whims and vanities,
and his resentment at his exclusion from the Seigneury of Pontiac had
become a fixed idea. He had hugged the thought of its possession before
M. de la Riviere died, as a man humbly born prides himself on the
distinguished lineage of his wife. His great schemes were completed, he
was a rich man, and he had pictured himself retiring to this Seigneury,
a peaceful and practical figure, living out his days in a refined repose
which his earlier life had never known. She had touched the raw nerves
of his secret vanity.

“What kind of Seigneur would I make, eh? What sort of figure would I cut
in Pontiac!” He laughed loudly. “By heaven, Madame, you shall see! I
did not move against his outrage and assault, but I will move to purpose
now. For you and he shall leave there in disgrace before another week
goes round. I have you both in my ‘practical power,’ and I will squeeze
satisfaction out of you. He is a ruffianly interloper, and you, Madame,
the law would call by another name.”

She got quickly to her feet and came a step nearer to him. Leaning a
hand on the table, she bent towards him slightly. Something seemed to
possess her that transfigured her face, and gave it a sense of power and
confidence. Her eyes fixed themselves steadily on him.

“Monsieur,” she said, “you may call me what you will, and I will bear
it, for you have been sorely injured. You are angry because I seemed to
think an Englishman was not fitted to be Seigneur of Pontiac. We French
are a people of sentiments and ideas; we make idols of trifles, and we
die for fancies. We dream, we have shrines for memories. These things
you despise. You would give us justice and make us rich by what you call
progress. Monsieur, that is not enough. We are not born to appreciate
you. Our hearts are higher than our heads, and, under a flag that
conquered us, they cling together. Was it strange that I should think
Louis Racine better suited to be Seigneur at Pontiac?”

She paused as though expecting him to answer, but he only looked
inquiringly at her, and she continued “My husband used you ill, but he
is no interloper. He took what the law gave him, what has been in his
family for over two hundred years. Monsieur, it has meant more to him
than a hundred times greater honour could to you. When his trouble
came, when--” she paused, as though it was difficult to speak--“when the
other--legacy--of his family descended on him, that Seigneury became to
him the one compensation of his life. By right of it only could he look
the world in the face--or me.”

She stopped suddenly, for her voice choked her. “Will you please
continue?” said Fournel, opening and shutting the will in his hand, and
looking at her with a curious new consideration.

“Fame came to me as his trouble came to him. It was hard for him to go
among men, but, ah, can you think how he dreaded the day when I should
return to Pontiac!... I will tell you the whole truth, Monsieur.” She
drew herself up proudly. “I loved--Louis. He came into my heart with its
first great dream, and before life--the business of life--really began.
He was one with the best part of me, the girlhood in me which is dead.”

Fournel rose and in a low voice said: “Will you not sit down?” He
motioned to a chair.

She shook her head. “Ah no, please! Let me say all quickly and while I
have the courage. I loved him, and he loved and loves me. I love
that love in which I married him, and I love his love for me. It is
indestructible, because it is in the fibre of my life. It has nothing
to do with ugliness or beauty, or fortune or misfortune, or shame or
happiness, or sin or holiness. When it becomes part of us, it must go on
in one form or another, but it cannot die. It lives in breath and song
and thought and work and words. That is the wonder of it, the pity of
it, and the joy of it. Because it is so, because love would shield the
beloved from itself if need be, and from all the terrors of the world at
any cost, I have done what I have done. I did it at cost of my honour,
but it was for his sake; at the price of my peace, but to spare him.
Ah, Monsieur, the days of life are not many for him: his shame and his
futile aims are killing him. The clouds will soon close over, and his
vexed brain and body will be still. To spare him the last turn of the
wheel of torture, to give him the one bare honour left him yet a little
while, I have given up my work of life to comfort him. I concealed, I
stole, if you will, the document you hold. And, God help me! I would do
it again and yet again, if I lost my soul for ever, Monsieur. Monsieur,
I know that in his madness he would have killed you, but it was his
suffering, not a bad heart, that made him do it. Do a sorrowful woman a
great kindness and spare him, Monsieur.”

She had held the man motionless and staring. When she ended, he got to
his feet and came near to her. There was a curious look in his face,
half struggle, half mysterious purpose. “The way is easy to a hundred
times as much,” he said, in a low meaning voice, and his eyes boldly
held hers. “You are doing a chivalrous sort of thing that only a woman
would do--for duty; do something for another reason: for what a woman
would do--for the blood of youth that is in her.” He reached out a hand
to lay it on her arm. “Ask of me what you will, if you but put your hand
in mine and--”

“Monsieur,” she said, pale and gasping, “do you think so ill of me then?
Do I seem to you like--!” She turned away, her eyes dry and burning, her
body trembling with shame.

“You are here alone with me at night,” he persisted. “It would not be
easy to--”

“Death would be easy, Monsieur,” she said calmly and coldly. “My husband
tried to kill you. You would do--ah, but let me pass!” she said, with a
sudden fury. “You--if you were a million times richer, if you could ruin
me for ever, do you think--”

“Hush, Madame,” he said, with a sudden change of voice and a manner all
reverence. “I do not think. I spoke only to hear you speak in reply:
only to know to the uttermost what you were. Madame,” he added, in a
shaking voice, “I did not know that such a woman lived. Madame, I could
have sworn there was none in the world.” Then in a quicker, huskier note
he added: “Eighteen years ago a woman nearly spoiled my life. She was
as beautiful as you, but her heart was tainted. Since then I have
never believed in any woman--never till now. I have said that all were
purchasable--at a price. I unsay that now. I have not believed in any
one--”

“Oh, Monsieur!” she said, with a quick impulsive gesture towards him,
and her face lighting with sympathy.

“I was struck too hard--”

She touched his arm and said gently: “Some are hurt in one way and some
in another; all are hurt some time, but--”

“You shall have your way,” he interrupted, and moved apart.

“Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, it is a noble act!--” she hurriedly rejoined,
then with a sudden cry rushed towards him, for he was lighting the will
at the flame of a candle near him.

“But no, no, no, you shall not do it,” she cried. “I only asked it for
while he lives--ah!”

She collapsed with a cry of despair, for he had held the flaming paper
above her reach, and its ashes were now scattering on the floor.

“You will let me give you some wine?” he said quietly, and poured out a
glassful.




CHAPTER IX. THE BITER BITTEN

Madelinette was faint, and, sitting down, she drank the wine feebly,
then leaned her head against the back of the chair, her face turned from
Fournel.

“Forgive me, if you can,” he said. “You have this to comfort you, that
if friendship is a boon in this world you have an honest friend in
George Fournel.”

She made a gesture of assent with her hand, but she did not speak. Tears
were stealing quietly down her cold face. For a moment so, in silence,
and then she rose to her feet, and pulled down over her face the veil
she wore. She was about to hold out her hand to him to say good-bye,
when there was a noise without, a knocking at the door, then it was
flung open, and Tardif, intoxicated, entered followed by two constables,
with Fournel’s servant vainly protesting.

“Here she is,” Tardif said to the officers of the law, pointing to
Madelinette. “It was her set the fellow on to shoot me. I had the will
she stole from him,” he added, pointing to Fournel.

Distressed as Madelinette was, she was composed and ready.

“The man was dismissed my employ--” she began, but Fournel interposed.

“What is this I hear about shooting and a will?” he said sternly.

“What will!” cried Tardif. “The will I brought you from Pontiac, and
Madame there followed, and her servant shot me. The will I brought you,
M’sieu’. The will leaving the Manor of Pontiac to you!”

Fournel turned as though with sudden anger to the officers. “You come
here--you enter my house to interfere with a guest of mine, on the
charge of a drunken scoundrel like this! What is this talk of wills!
The vapourings of his drunken brain. The Seigneury of Pontiac belongs
to Monsieur Racine, and but three days since Madame here dismissed this
fellow for pilfering and other misdemeanours. As for shooting--the man
is a liar, and--”

“Ah, do you deny that I came to you?--” began Tardif.

“Constables,” said Fournel, “I give this fellow in charge. Take him to
gaol, and I will appear at court against him when called upon.”

Tardif’s rage choked him. He tried to speak once or twice, then began
to shriek an imprecation at Fournel; but the constables clapped hands on
his mouth, and dragged him out of the room and out of the house.

Fournel saw him safely out, then returned to Madelinette. “Do not fear
for the fellow. A little gaol will do him good. I will see to it that he
gives no trouble, Madame,” he said. “You may trust me.”

“I do trust you, Monsieur,” Madelinette answered quietly. “I pray that
you may be right, and that--” “It will all come out right,” he firmly
insisted. “Will you ask for Madame Marie?” she said. Then with a smile:
“We will go happier than we came.”

As she and Madame Marie passed from the house, Fournel shook
Madelinette’s hand warmly, and said: “‘All’s well that ends well.’”

“That ends well,” answered Madelinette, with a sorrowful questioning in
her voice.

“We will make it so,” he rejoined, and then they parted.




CHAPTER X. THE DOOR THAT WOULD NOT OPEN

The old Manor House of Pontiac was alive with light and merriment. It
was the early autumn; not cool enough for the doors and windows to be
shut, but cool enough to make dancing a pleasure, and to give spirit to
the gaiety that filled the old house. The occasion was a notable one for
Pontiac. An address of congratulation and appreciation and a splendid
gift of silver had been brought to the Manor from the capital by certain
high officials of the Government and the Army, representing the people
of the Province. At first Madelinette had shrunk from the honour to be
done her, and had so written to certain quarters whence the movement had
proceeded; but a letter had come to her which had changed her mind. This
letter was signed George Fournel. Fournel had a right to ask a favour of
her; and one that was to do her honour seemed the least that she might
grant. He had suffered much at Louis’ hands; he had forborne much;
and by an act of noble forgiveness and generosity, had left Louis
undisturbed in an honour which was not his, and the enjoyment of an
estate to which he had no claim. He had given much, suffered much, and
had had nothing in return save her measureless and voiceless gratitude.
Friendship she could give him; but it was a silent friendship, an
incompanionable friendship, founded upon a secret and chivalrous act. He
was in Quebec and she in Pontiac; and since that day when he had burned
the will before her eyes she had not seen him. She had heard from him
but twice; once to tell her that she need have no fear of Tardif, and
again, when he urged her to accept the testimonial and the gift to be
offered by her grateful fellow-citizens.

The deputation, distinguished and important, had been received by the
people of Pontiac with the flaunting of flags, playing of bands, and
every demonstration of delight. The honour done to Madelinette was an
honour done to Pontiac, and Pontiac had never felt itself so important.
It realised that this kind of demonstration was less expensive, and less
dangerous, than sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion. The vanity of
the habitants could be better exercised in applauding Madelinette and
in show of welcome to the great men of the land, than in cultivating a
dangerous patriotism under the leadership of Louis Racine. Temptations
to conspiracy had been few since the day George Fournel, wounded and
morose, left the Manor House secretly one night, and carried back to
Quebec his resentment and his injuries. Treasonable gossip filtered no
longer from doorway to doorway; carbines were not to be had for a
song; no more nightly drills and weekly meetings gave a spice of great
expectations to their life. Their Seigneur, silent, and pale, and
stooped, lived a life apart. If he walked through the town, it was with
bitter, abstracted eyes that took little heed of their presence. If he
drove, his horses travelled like the wind. At Mass, he looked at no one,
saw no one, and, as it would seem, heard no one.

But Madelinette--she was the Madelinette of old, simple, gracious, kind,
with a smile here and a kind word there: a little child to be caressed
or an old woman to be comforted; the sick to be fed and doctored; the
poor to be helped; the idle to be rebuked with a persuasive smile; the
angry to be coaxed by a humorous word; the evil to be reproved by a
fearless friendliness; the spiteful to be hushed by a still, commanding
presence. She never seemed to remember that she was the daughter of old
Joe Lajeunesse the blacksmith, yet she never seemed to forget it. She
was the wife of the Seigneur, and she was the daughter of the smithy-man
too. She sat in the smithy-man’s doorway with her hand in his; and
she sat at the Manor table with its silver glitter, and its antique
garnishings, with as real an unconsciousness.

Her influence seemed to pierce far and wide. The Cure and the Avocat
adored her; and the proudest, happiest moment of their lives was when
they sat at the Manor table, or, in the sombre drawing-room, watched
her give it light and grace and charm, and fill their hearts with the
piercing delight of her song. So her life had gone on; to the outward
world serene and happy, full of simplicity, charity, and good works.
What it was in reality no one could know, not even herself. Since
the day when Louis had tried to kill George Fournel, life had been a
different thing for them both. On her part she had been deeply hurt;
wounded beyond repair. He had failed her from every vital stand-point,
he had not fulfilled one hope she had ever had of him. But she laid the
blame not at his door; she rather shrank with inner bitterness from
the cynical cruelty of nature, which, in deforming the body, with a
merciless cruelty had deformed a noble mind. These things were between
her and her inmost soul.

To Louis she was ever the same, affectionate, gentle, and unselfish;
but her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge, commanded his
perturbed spirit into the abstracted quiet and bitter silence wherein
he lived, and which she sought to cheer by a thousand happy devices. She
did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him; no word
or act of hers could have suggested to him the sacrifices she had
made. He knew them, still he did not know them in their fulness; he was
grateful, but his gratitude did not compass the splendid self-effacing
devotion with which she denied herself the glorious career that had lain
before her. Morbid and self-centred, he could not understand. Since her
return from Quebec she had sought to give a little touch of gaiety to
their life, and she had not the heart to interfere with his constant
insistence on the little dignities of the position of Seigneur, ironical
as they all were in her eyes. She had sacrificed everything; and since
another also had sacrificed himself to give her husband the honours and
estate he possessed, the game should be delicately played to the unseen
end.

So it had gone on until the coming of the deputation with the
testimonial and the gift. She had proposed the gaieties of the occasion
to Louis with so simple a cheerfulness, that he had no idea of the
torture it meant to her; no realisation of how she would be brought face
to face with the life that she had given up for his sake. But neither
he nor she was aware of one thing, that the beautiful embossed address
contained an appeal to her to return to the world of song which she
had renounced, to go forth once more and contribute to the happiness of
humanity.

When, therefore, in the drawing-room of the Manor, the address was read
to her, and this appeal rang upon her ears, she felt herself turn dizzy
and faint: her whole life seemed to reel backwards to all she had lost,
and the tyranny of the present bore down upon her with a cruel weight.
It needed all her courage and all her innate strength to rule herself to
composure. For an instant the people in the room were a confused mass,
floating away into a blind distance. She heard, however, the quick
breathing of the Seigneur beside her, and it called her back to an
active and necessary confidence.

With a smile she received the address, and, turning, handed it to Louis,
smiling at him too with a winning duplicity, for which she might never
have to ask forgiveness in this world or the next. Then she turned
and spoke. Eloquently, simply, she gave out her thanks for the gift of
silver and the greater gift of kind words; and said that in her quiet
life, apart from that active world of the stage, where sorrow and sordid
experience went hand in hand with song, where the delights of home were
sacrificed to the applause of the world, she would cherish their gift as
a reward that she might have earned, had she chosen the public instead
of the private way of life. They had told her of the paths of glory, but
she was walking the homeward way.

Thus deftly, and without strain, and with an air of happiness even, did
she set aside the words and the appeal which had created a storm in her
soul. A few moments afterwards, as the old house rang to the laughter of
old and young, with dancing well begun, no one would have thought that
the Manor of Pontiac was not the home of peace and joy. Even Louis
himself, who had had his moments of torture and suspicion when the
appeal was read, was now in a kind of happy reaction. He moved about
among the guests with less abstraction and more cheerfulness than he had
shown for months. He carried in his hand the address which Madelinette
had handed him. Again and again he showed it to eager guests.

Suddenly, as he was about to fold it up for the last time and carry it
to the library, he saw the name of George Fournel among the signatures.
Stunned, dumfounded, he left the room. George Fournel, whom he had tried
to kill, had signed this address of congratulation to his wife! Was it
Fournel’s intention thus to show that he had forgiven and forgotten? It
was not like the man to either forgive or forget. What did it mean? He
left the house buried in morbid speculation, and involuntarily made his
way to a little hut of two rooms which he had built in the Seigneury
grounds. Here it was he read and wrote, here he had spent moody hours
alone, day after day, for months past. He was not aware that some one
left the crowd about the house and followed him. Arrived at the hut,
he entered and shut the door; lighted candles, and spread the embossed
parchment out before him upon the table. As he stood looking at it, he
heard the door open behind him. Tardif stood before him.

The face of Tardif had an evil hunted look. Before the astonished
and suspicious Seigneur had chance to challenge him, he said in a low
insolent tone:

“Good evening, M’sieu’! Fine doings at the Manor--eh?

“What are you doing at the Manor, and what are you doing here?” asked
the Seigneur, scanning the face of the man closely; for there was a look
in it he did not understand.

“I have as much right to be here as you, M’sieu’.”

“You have no right at all to be here. You were dismissed your place by
the mistress of this Manor.”

“There is no mistress of this Manor.”

“Madame Racine dismissed you.”

“And I dismissed Madame Racine,” answered the man with a sneer.

“You are training for the horsewhip. You forget that, as Seigneur, I
have power to give you summary punishment.”

“You haven’t power to do anything at all, M’sieu’!” The Seigneur
started. He thought the remark had reference to his physical disability.
His fingers itched to take the creature by the throat, and choke the
tongue from his mouth. Before he could speak, the man continued with a
half-drunken grimace:

“You, with your tributes, and your courts, and your body-guards! Bah!
You’d have a gibbet if you could, wouldn’t you? You with your rebellion
and your tinpot honours! A puling baby could conspire as well as you.
And all the world laughing at you--v’la!”

“Get out of this room and take your feet from my Manor, Tardif,” said
the Seigneur with a deadly quietness, “or it will be the worse for you.”

“Your Manor--pish!” The man laughed a hateful laugh. “Your Manor? You
haven’t any Manor. You haven’t anything but what you carry on your
back.”

A flush passed swiftly over the Seigneur’s face, then left it cold
and white, and the eyes shone fiery in his head. He felt some shameful
meaning in the man’s words, beyond this gross reference to his
deformity.

“I am Seigneur of this Manor, and you have taken wages from me, and
eaten my bread, slept under my roof, and--”

“I’ve no more eaten your bread and slept under your roof than you have.
Pish! You were living then on another man’s fortune, now you’re living
on what your wife earns.”

The Seigneur did not understand yet. But there was a strange light of
suspicion in his eyes, a nervous rage knotting his forehead.

“My land and my earnings are my own, and I have never lived on another
man’s fortune. If you mean that the late Seigneur made a will--that
canard--”

“It was no canard.” Tardif laughed hatefully. “There was a will right
enough.”

“Where is it? I’ve heard that fool’s gossip before.”

“Where is it? Ask your wife; she knows. Ask your loving Tardif, he
knows.”

“Where is the will, Tardif?” asked the Seigneur in a voice that, in his
own ears, seemed to come from an infinite distance; to Tardif’s ears it
was merely tuneless and harsh.

“In M’sieu’ Fournel’s pocket, or Madame’s. What’s the difference? The
price is the same, and you keep your eyes shut and play the Seigneur,
and eat and drink what they give you just the same.”

Now the Seigneur understood. His eyes went blind for a moment, and his
hands twitched convulsively on the embossed address he had been rolling
and unrolling. A terror, a shame, a dreadful cruelty entered into him,
but he was still and numb, and his tongue was thick. He spoke heavily.

“Tell me all,” he said. “You shall be well paid.”

“I don’t want your money. I want to see you squirm. I want to see
her put where she deserves. Bah! Do you think Fournel forgave you for
putting his feet in his shoes, and for that case at law, for nothing?
Why should he? He hated you, and you hated him. His name’s on that paper
in your hand among all the rest. Do you think he eats humble pie and
crawls to Madame and lets you stay here for nothing?”

The Seigneur was painfully quiet and intent, yet his brain was like some
great lens, refracting and magnifying things to monstrous proportions.

“A will was found?” he asked.

“By Madame in the library. She left it where she found it--behind the
picture over the Louis Seize table. The day you dismissed me, I saw
her at the cupboard. I found the will and started with it to M’sieu’
Fournel. She followed. You remember when she went--eh? On business--and
such business! she and Havel and the old slut Marie. You remember, eh;
Louis?” he added with unnamable insolence. The Seigneur inclined his
head. “V’la! they followed me, overtook me, and Havel shot me in the
wrist. See there!”--he held out his wrist. The Seigneur nodded. “But I
got to Fournel’s first. I put the will into his hands.

“I told him Madame Madelinette was following. Then I went to bring the
constables to his house to arrest her when he had finished with her.”
 He laughed a brutal laugh, which deepened the strange glittering look
in Louis’ eyes. “When I came an hour later, she was there. But--now you
shall see what stuff they are both made of! He laughed at me, said I had
lied; that there was no will; that I was a thief; and had me locked up
in gaol. For a month I was in gaol without trial. Then one day I was let
out without trial. His servant met me and brought me to his house. He
gave me money and told me to leave the country. If I didn’t, I would be
arrested again for trying to shoot Havel, and for blackmail. They could
all swear me off my feet and into prison--what was I to do! I took the
money and went. But I came back to have my revenge. I could cut their
hearts out and eat them.”

“You are drunk,” said the Seigneur quietly. “You don’t know what you’re
saying.”

“I’m not drunk. I’m always trying to get drunk now. I couldn’t have come
here if I hadn’t been drinking. I couldn’t have told you the truth, if
I hadn’t been drinking. But I’m sober enough to know that I’ve done for
him and for her! And I’m even with you too--bah! Did you think she cared
a fig for you? She’s only waiting till you die. Then she’ll go to her
lover. He’s a man of life and limb. Youpish! a hunchback, that all
the world laughs at, a worm--” he turned towards the door laughing
hideously, his evil face gloating. “You’ve not got a stick or stone.
She”--jerking a finger towards the house--“she earns what you eat,
she--”

It was the last word he ever spoke, for, with a low terrible cry,
the Seigneur snatched up a knife from the table and sprang upon him,
catching him by the throat. Once, twice, thrice, the knife went home,
and the ruffian collapsed under it with one loud cry. Not letting go
his grasp of the dying man’s collar, the Seigneur dragged him across the
floor, and, opening the door of the small inner room, pulled him inside.
For a moment he stood beside the body, panting, then he went to the
other room and, bringing a candle, looked at the dead thing in silence.
Presently he stooped, held the candle to the wide-staring eyes, then
felt the heart. “He is gone,” he said in an even voice. Stooping for the
knife he had dropped on the floor, he laid it on the body. He looked at
his hands. There was one spot of blood on his fingers. He wiped it off
with his handkerchief, then blowing out the light, he calmly opened the
door of the hut, locked it, went out, and moved on slowly towards the
house.

As he left the hut he was conscious that some one was moving under the
trees by the window, but his mind was not concerned with things outside
himself and the one other thing left for him to do.

He entered the house and went in search of Madelinette. When he reached
the drawing-room, surrounded by eager listeners, she was beginning to
sing. Her bearing was eager and almost tremulous, for, with this crowd
round her and in the flush of this gaiety and excitement, there was
something of that exhilarating air that greets the singer upon
the stage. Her eyes were shining with a look, half-sorrowful,
half-triumphant. Within the past half-hour she had overcome herself;
she had fought down the blind, wild rebellion that, for one moment as
it were, had surged up in her heart. She was proud and glad, and piteous
and triumphant and deeply womanly all at once.

Going to the piano she had looked round for Louis, but he was not
visible. She smiled to herself, however, for she knew that her singing
would bring him--he worshipped it. Her heart was warm towards him,
because of that moment when she rebelled and was hard at soul. She
played her own accompaniment, and he was hidden from her by the piano
as she sang--sang more touchingly and more humanly, if not more
artistically, than she had ever done in her life. The old art was not
so perfect, perhaps, but there was in the voice all that she had learned
and loved and suffered and hoped. When she rose from the piano to a
storm of applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her,
her own eyes filled with tears. These people--most of them--had known
and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy
or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she
caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his
eyes, and kissed him, saying:

“I learned that from the tunes you played on your anvil, dear
smithy-man.”

Then she turned again to look for Louis. Near the door she saw him, and
with so strange a face, so wild a look, that, unheeding eager requests
to sing again, she responded to the gesture he made, made her way
through the crowd to the hall-way, and followed him up the stairs, and
to the little boudoir beside her bedroom. As she entered and shut the
door, a low sound like a moan broke from him. She went quickly to lay
a hand upon his arm, but he waved her back. “What is it, Louis?” she
asked, in a bewildered voice. “Where is the will?” he said.

“Where is the will, Louis,” she repeated after him mechanically, staring
at his face, ghostly in the moonlight.

“The will you found behind the picture in the library.”

“O Louis!” she cried, and made a gesture of despair. “O Louis!”

“You found it, and Tardif stole it and took it to Quebec.”

“Yes, Louis, but Louis--ah, what is the matter, dear! I cannot bear that
look in your face. What is the matter, Louis?”

“Tardif took it to Fournel, and you followed. And I have been living in
another man’s house, on another’s bread--”

“O Louis, no--no--no! Our money has paid for all.”

“Your money, Madelinette!” His voice rose.

“Ah, don’t speak like that! See, Louis. It can make no difference. How
you have found out I do not know, but it can make no difference. I did
not want you to know--you loved the Seigneury so. I concealed the will;
Tardif found it, as you say. But, Louis, dear, it is all right. Monsieur
Fournel would not take the place, and--and I have bought it.”

She told her falsehood fearlessly. This man’s trouble, this man’s peace,
if she might but win it, was the purpose of her life.

“Tardif said that--he said that you--that you and Fournel--”

She read his meaning in his tone, and shrank back in terror, then with a
flush, straightened herself, and took a step towards him.

“It was natural that you should not care for a hunchback like me,” he
continued, “but--”

“Louis!” she cried, in a voice of anguish and reproach.

“But I did not doubt you. I believed in you when he said it, as I
believe in you now when you stand there like that. I know what you have
done for me--”

“I pleaded with Monsieur Fournel, knowing how you loved the
Seigneury--pleaded and offered to pay three times the price--”

“Yourself would have been a hundred million times the price. Ah, I know
you, Madelinette--I know you now! I have been selfish, but I see all
now. Now when all is over--” he seemed listening to noises with out--“I
see what you have done for me. I know how you have sacrificed all for
me--all but honour--all but honour,” he added, a wild fire in his eyes,
a trembling seizing him. “Your honour is yours forever. I say so. I say
so, and I have proved it. Kiss me, Madelinette--kiss me once,” he added,
in a quick whisper.

“My poor, poor Louis!” she said, laid a soothing hand upon his arm, and
leaned towards him. He snatched her to his breast, and kissed her twice
in a very agony of joy, then let her go. He listened for an instant to
the growing noise without, then said in a hoarse voice:

“Now, I will tell you, Madelinette. They are coming for me--don’t you
hear them? They are coming to take me; but they shall not have me.
They shall not have me--” he glanced to a little door that led into a
bath-room at his right.

“Louis-Louis!” she said in a sudden fright, for though his words seemed
mad, a strange quiet sanity was in all he did. “What have you done? Who
are coming?” she asked in agony, and caught him by the arm.

“I killed Tardif. He is there in the hut in the garden--dead! I was
seen, and they are coming to take me.”

With a cry she ran to the door that led into the hall, and locked it.
She listened, then turned her face to Louis.

“You killed him!” she gasped. “Louis! Louis!” Her face was like ashes.

“I stabbed him to death. It was all I could do, and I did it. He
slandered you. I went mad, and did it. Now--”

There was a knocking at the door, and a voice calling--a peremptory
voice.

“There is only one way,” he said. “They shall not take me. I will not
be dragged to gaol for crowds to jeer at. I will not be sent to the
scaffold, to your shame.”

He ran to the door of the bath-room and flung it open. “If my life is to
pay the price, then--!”

She came blindly towards him, stretching out her hands.

“Louis! Louis!” was all that she could say.

He caught her hands and kissed them, then stepped swiftly back into the
little bath-room, and locked the door, as the door of the room she was
in was burst open, and two constables and a half-dozen men crowded into
the room.

She stood with her back to the bath-room door, panting, and white, and
anguished, and her ears strained to the terrible thing inside the place
behind her.

The men understood, and came towards her. “Stand back,” she said. “You
shall not have him. You shall not have him. Ah, don’t you hear? He
is dying--O God, O God!” she cried, with tearless eyes and upturned
face--“Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon!”

The men stood abashed before her agony. Behind the little door where
she stood there was a muffled groaning. She trembled, but her arms
were spread out before the door as though on a cross, and her lips kept
murmuring: “O God, let him die! Let him die! Oh spare him agony!”

Suddenly she stood still and listened-listened, with staring eyes that
saw nothing. In the room men shrank back, for they knew that death was
behind the little door, and that they were in the presence of a sorrow
greater than death.

Suddenly she turned upon them with a gesture of piteous triumph and
said:

“You cannot have him now.”

Then she swayed and fell forward to the floor as the Cure and George
Fournel entered the room. The Cure hastened to her side and lifted up
her head.

George Fournel pushed the men back who would have entered the bath-room,
and himself, bursting the door open, entered. Louis lay dead upon the
floor. He turned to the constables.

“As she said, you cannot have him now. You have no right here. Go. I had
a warning from the man he killed. I knew there would be trouble. But I
have come too late,” he added bitterly.

An hour later the house was as still as the grave. Madame Marie sat with
the doctor beside the bed of her dear mistress, and in another room,
George Fournel, with the Avocat, kept watch beside the body of the
Seigneur of Pontiac. The face of the dead man was as peaceful as that of
a little child.

       .........................

At ninety years of age, the present Seigneur of Pontiac, one Baron
Fournel, lives in the Manor House left him by Madelinette Lajeunesse the
great singer, when she died a quarter of a century ago. For thirty years
he followed her from capital to capital of Europe and America to hear
her sing; and to this day he talks of her in language more French
than English in its ardour. Perhaps that is because his heart beats in
sympathy with the Frenchmen he once disdained.




THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P’TITE LOUISON

The five brothers lived with Louison, three miles from Pontiac, and
Medallion came to know them first through having sold them, at an
auction, a slice of an adjoining farm. He had been invited to their
home, intimacy had grown, and afterwards, stricken with a severe
illness, he had been taken into the household and kept there till he was
well again. The night of his arrival, Louison, the sister, stood with
a brother on either hand--Octave and Florian--and received him with
a courtesy more stately than usual, an expression of the reserve and
modesty of her single state. This maidenly dignity was at all times
shielded by the five brothers, who treated her with a constant and
reverential courtesy. There was something signally suggestive in their
homage, and Medallion concluded at last that it was paid not only to the
sister, but to something that gave her great importance in their eyes.

He puzzled long, and finally decided that Louison had a romance. There
was something which suggested it in the way they said “P’tite
Louison”; in the manner they avoided all gossip regarding marriages
and marriage-feasting; in the way they deferred to her on questions of
etiquette (as, for instance, Should the eldest child be given the family
name of the wife or a Christian name from her husband’s family?). And
P’tite Louison’s opinion was accepted instantly as final, with satisfied
nods on the part of all the brothers, and whispers of “How clever! how
adorable!”

P’tite Louison affected never to hear these remarks, but looked
complacently straight before her, stirring the spoon in her cup, or
benignly passing the bread and butter. She was quite aware of the homage
paid to her, and she gracefully accepted the fact that she was an object
of interest.

Medallion had not the heart to laugh at the adoration of the brothers,
or at the outlandish sister, for, though she was angular, and sallow,
and thin, and her hands were large and red, there was a something deep
in her eyes, a curious quality in her carriage commanding respect. She
had ruled these brothers, had been worshipped by them, for near half a
century, and the romance they had kept alive had produced a grotesque
sort of truth and beauty in the admiring “P’tite Louison”--an
affectionate name for her greatness, like “The Little Corporal” for
Napoleon. She was not little, either, but above the middle height, and
her hair was well streaked with grey.

Her manner towards Medallion was not marked by any affectation. She was
friendly in a kind, impersonal way, much as a nurse cares for a patient,
and she never relaxed a sort of old-fashioned courtesy, which might have
been trying in such close quarters, were it not for the real simplicity
of the life and the spirit and lightness of their race. One night
Florian--there were Florian and Octave and Felix and Isidore and
Emile--the eldest, drew Medallion aside from the others, and they walked
together by the river. Florian’s air suggested confidence and mystery,
and soon, with a voice of hushed suggestion, he told Medallion the
romance of P’tite Louison. And each of the brothers at different times
during the next fortnight did the same, differing scarcely at all in
details, or choice of phrase or meaning, and not at all in general facts
and essentials. But each, as he ended, made a different exclamation.

“Voila, so sad, so wonderful! She keeps the ring--dear P’tite Louison!”
 said Florian, the eldest.

“Alors, she gives him a legacy in her will! Sweet P’tite Louison,” said
Octave.

“Mais, the governor and the archbishop admire her--P’tite Louison:” said
Felix, nodding confidently at Medallion.

“Bien, you should see the linen and the petticoats!” said Isidore, the
humorous one of the family. “He was great--she was an angel, P’tite
Louison!”

“Attends! what love--what history--what passion!--the perfect P’tite
Louison!” cried Emile, the youngest, the most sentimental. “Ah,
Moliere!” he added, as if calling on the master to rise and sing the
glories of this daughter of romance.

Isidore’s tale was after this fashion:

“I ver’ well remember the first of it; and the last of it--who can tell?
He was an actor--oh, so droll, that! Tall, ver’ smart, and he play in
theatre at Montreal. It is in the winter. P’tite Louison visit Montreal.
She walk past the theatre and, as she go by, she slip on the snow and
fall. Out from a door with a jomp come M’sieu’ Hadrian, and pick her up.
And when he see the purty face of P’tite Louison, his eyes go all fire,
and he clasp her hand to his breast.

“‘Ma’m’selle, Ma’m’selle,’ he say, ‘we must meet again!’

“She thank him and hurry away queeck. Next day we are on the river, and
P’tite Louison try to do the Dance of the Blue Fox on the ice. While she
do it, some one come up swift, and catch her hand and say: ‘Ma’m’selle,
let’s do it together’--like that! It take her breath away. It is M’sieu’
Hadrian. He not seem like the other men she know; but he have a sharp
look, he is smooth in the face, and he smile kind like a woman. P’tite
Louison, she give him her hand, and they run away, and every one stop to
look. It is a gran’ sight. M’sieu’ Hadrian laugh, and his teeth shine,
and the ladies say things of him, and he tell P’tite Louison that she
look ver’ fine, and walk like a queen. I am there that day, and I see
all, and I think it dam good. I say: ‘That P’tite Louison, she beat them
all’--I am only twelve year old then. When M’sieu’ Hadrian leave, he
give her two seats for the theatre, and we go. Bagosh! that is grand
thing that play, and M’sieu’ Hadrian, he is a prince; and when he say to
his minister, ‘But no, my lord, I will marry out of my star, and where
my heart go, not as the State wills,’ he look down at P’tite Louison,
and she go all red, and some of the women look at her, and there is a
whisper all roun’.

“Nex’ day he come to the house where we stay, but the Cure come also
pretty soon and tell her she must go home--he say an actor is not good
company. Never mind. And so we come out home. Well, what you think?
Nex’ day M’sieu’ Hadrian come, too, and we have dam good time--Florian,
Octave, Felix, Emile, they all sit and say bully-good to him all the
time. Holy, what fine stories he tell! And he talk about P’tite Louison,
and his eyes get wet, and Emile he say his prayers to him--bagosh! yes,
I think. Well, at last, what you guess? M’sieu’ he come and come, and at
last one day, he say that he leave Montreal and go to New York, where he
get a good place in a big theatre--his time in Montreal is finish. So
he speak to Florian and say he want marry P’tite Louison, and he say, of
course, that he is not marry and he have money. But he is a Protestan’,
and the Cure at first ver’ mad, bagosh!

“But at las’ when he give a hunder’ dollars to the Church, the Cure
say yes. All happy that way for while. P’tite Louison, she get ready
quick-sapre, what fine things had she--and it is all to be done in a
week, while the theatre in New York wait for M’sieu’. He sit there with
us, and play on the fiddle, and sing songs, and act plays, and help
Florian in the barn, and Octave to mend the fence, and the Cure to
fix the grape-vines on his wall. He show me and Emile how to play
sword-sticks; and he pick flowers and fetch them to P’tite Louison, and
teach her how to make an omelette and a salad like the chef of the Louis
Quinze Hotel, so he say. Bagosh, what a good time we have! But first
one, then another, he get a choke-throat when he think that P’tite
Louison go to leave us, and the more we try, the more we are bagosh
fools. And that P’tite Louison, she kiss us hevery one, and say to
M’sieu’ Hadrian, ‘Charles, I love you, but I cannot go.’ He laugh at
her, and say, ‘Voila! we will take them all with us:’ and P’tite Louison
she laugh. That night a thing happen. The Cure come, and he look ver’
mad, and he frown and he say to M’sieu’ Hadrian before us all, ‘M’sieu’,
you are married.’

“Sapre! that P’tite Louison get pale like snow, and we all stan’ roun’
her close and say to her quick, ‘Courage, P’tite Louison!’ M’sieu’
Hadrian then look at the priest and say: ‘No, M’sieu’, I was married ten
years ago; my wife drink and go wrong, and I get divorce. I am free like
the wind.’

“‘You are not free,’ the Cure say quick. ‘Once married, married till
death. The Church cannot marry you again, and I command Louison to give
you up.’

“P’tite Louison stan’ like stone. M’sieu’ turn to her. ‘What shall it
be, Louison?’ he say. ‘You will come with me?’

“‘Kiss me, Charles,’ she say, ‘and tell me good-bye till--till you are
free.’

“He look like a madman. ‘Kiss me once, Charles,’ she say, ‘and let me
go.’

“And he come to her and kiss her on the lips once, and he say, ‘Louison,
come with me. I will never give you up.’

“She draw back to Florian. ‘Good-bye, Charles,’ she say. ‘I will wait as
long as you will. Mother of God, how hard it is to do right!’ she say,
and then she turn and leave the room.

“M’sieu’ Hadrian, he give a long sigh. ‘It was my one chance,’ he say.
‘Now the devil take it all!’ Then he nod and say to the Cure: ‘We’ll
thrash this out at Judgment Day, M’sieu’. I’ll meet you there--you and
the woman that spoiled me.’

“He turn to Florian and the rest of us, and shake hands, and say: ‘Take
care of Louison. Thank you. Good-bye.’ Then he start towards the door,
but stumble, for he look sick. ‘Give me a drink,’ he say, and begin to
cough a little--a queer sort of rattle. Florian give him big drink, and
he toss it off-whiff! ‘Thank you,’ he say, and start again, and we see
him walk away over the hill ver’ slow--an’ he never come back. But every
year there come from New York a box of flowers, and every year P’tite
Louison send him a ‘Merci, Charles, mille fois. Dieu to garde.’ It is so
every year for twenty-five year.”

“Where is he now?” asked Medallion.

Isidore shook his head, then lifted his eyes religiously. “Waiting for
Judgment Day and P’tite Louison,” he answered.

“Dead!” said Medallion.

“How long?”

“Twenty year.”

“But the flowers--the flowers?”

“He left word for them to be sent just the same, and the money for it.”

Medallion turned and took off his hat reverently, as if a soul were
passing from the world; but it was only P’tite Louison going out into
the garden.

“She thinks him living?” he asked gently as he watched Louison.

“Yes; we have no heart to tell her. And then he wish it so. And the
flowers kep’ coming.”

“Why did he wish it so?” Isidore mused a while.

“Who can tell? Perhaps a whim. He was a great actor--ah, yes, sublime!”
 he said.

Medallion did not reply, but walked slowly down to where P’tite Louison
was picking berries. His hat was still off.

“Let me help you, Mademoiselle,” he said softly. And henceforth he was
as foolish as her brothers.




THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR

“Sacre bapteme!”

“What did he say?” asked the Little Chemist, stepping from his doorway.

“He cursed his baptism,” answered tall Medallion, the English
auctioneer, pushing his way farther into the crowd.

“Ah, the pitiful vaurien!” said the Little Chemist’s wife, shudderingly;
for that was an oath not to be endured by any one who called the Church
mother.

The crowd that had gathered at the Four Corners were greatly disturbed,
for they also felt the repulsion that possessed the Little Chemist’s
wife. They babbled, shook their heads, and waved their hands excitedly,
and swayed and craned their necks to see the offender.

All at once his voice, mad with rage, was heard above the rest, shouting
frenziedly a curse which was a horribly grotesque blasphemy upon the
name of God. Men who had used that oath in their insane anger had been
known to commit suicide out of remorse afterwards.

For a moment there was a painful hush. The crowd drew back involuntarily
and left a clear space, in which stood the blasphemer--a middle-sized,
athletic fellow, with black beard, thick, waving hair, and flashing
brown eyes. His white teeth were showing now in a snarl like a dog’s,
his cap was on the ground, his hair was tumbled, his hands were
twitching with passion, his foot was stamping with fury, and every time
it struck the ground a little silver bell rang at his knee--a pretty
sylvan sound, in no keeping with the scene. It heightened the distress
of the fellow’s blasphemy and ungovernable anger. For a man to curse
his baptism was a wicked thing; but the other oath was not fit for human
ears, and horror held the crowd moveless for a moment.

Then, as suddenly as the stillness came, a low, threatening mumble
of voices rose, and a movement to close in on the man was made; but
a figure pushed through the crowd, and, standing in front of the man,
waved the people back. It was the Cure, the beloved M. Fabre, whose life
had been spent among them, whom they obeyed as well as they could, for
they were but frail humanity, after all--crude, simple folk, touched
with imagination.

“Luc Pomfrette, why have you done this? What provocation had you?”

The Cure’s voice was stern and cold, his usually gentle face had become
severe, his soft eyes were piercing and determined.

The foot of the man still beat the ground angrily, and the little bell
kept tinkling. He was gasping with passion, and he did not answer yet.

“Luc Pomfrette, what have you to say?” asked the Cure again. He motioned
back Lacasse, the constable of the parish, who had suddenly appeared
with a rusty gun and a more rusty pair of handcuffs.

Still the voyageur did not answer.

The Cure glanced at Lajeunesse the blacksmith, who stood near.

“There was no cause--no,” sagely shaking his head said Lajeunesse, “Here
stand we at the door of the Louis Quinze in very good humour. Up come
the voyageurs, all laughing, and ahead of them is Luc Pomfrette, with
the little bell at his knee. Luc, he laugh the same as the rest, and
they stand in the door, and the garcon bring out the brandy--just a
little, but just enough too. I am talking to Henri Beauvin. I am telling
him Junie Gauloir have run away with Dicey the Protestant, when all very
quick Luc push between me and Henri, jump into the street, and speak
like that!”

Lajeunesse looked around, as if for corroboration; Henri and others
nodded, and some one said:

“That’s true; that’s true. There was no cause.”

“Maybe it was the drink,” said a little hunchbacked man, pushing his
way in beside the Cure. “It must have been the drink; there was nothing
else--no.”

The speaker was Parpon the dwarf, the oddest, in some ways the most
foolish, in others the wisest man in Pontiac.

“That is no excuse,” said the Cure.

“It is the only one he has, eh?” answered Parpon. His eyes were fixed
meaningly on those of Pomfrette.

“It is no excuse,” repeated the Cure sternly. “The blasphemy is
horrible, a shame and stigma upon Pontiac for ever.” He looked Pomfrette
in the face. “Foul-mouthed and wicked man, it is two years since you
took the Blessed Sacrament. Last Easter day you were in a drunken sleep
while Mass was being said; after the funeral of your own father you were
drunk again. When you went away to the woods you never left a penny for
candles, nor for Masses to be said for your father’s soul; yet you sold
his horse and his little house, and spent the money in drink. Not a cent
for a candle, but--”

“It’s a lie,” cried Pomfrette, shaking with rage from head to foot.

A long horror-stricken “Ah!” broke from the crowd. The Cure’s face
became graver and colder.

“You have a bad heart,” he answered, “and you give Pontiac an evil name.
I command you to come to Mass next Sunday, to repent and to hear your
penance given from the altar. For until--”

“I’ll go to no Mass till I’m carried to it,” was the sullen, malevolent
interruption.

The Cure turned upon the people.

“This is a blasphemer, an evil-hearted, shameless man,” he said. “Until
he repents humbly, and bows his vicious spirit to holy Church, and his
heart to the mercy of God, I command you to avoid him as you would a
plague. I command that no door be opened to him; that no one offer
him comfort or friendship; that not even a bon jour or a bon soir pass
between you. He has blasphemed against our Father in heaven; to the
Church he is a leper.” He turned to Pomfrette. “I pray God that you have
no peace in mind or body till your evil life is changed, and your black
heart is broken by sorrow and repentance.”

Then to the people he said again: “I have commanded you for your
souls’ sake; see that you obey. Go to your homes. Let us leave the
leper--alone.” He waved the awed crowd back.

“Shall we take off the little bell?” asked Lajeunesse of the Cure.

Pomfrette heard, and he drew himself together, his jaws shutting
with ferocity, and his hand flying to the belt where his voyageur’s
case-knife hung. The Cure did not see this. Without turning his head
towards Pomfrette, he said:

“I have commanded you, my children. Leave the leper alone.”

Again he waved the crowd to be gone, and they scattered, whispering to
each other; for nothing like this had ever occurred in Pontiac before,
nor had they ever seen the Cure with this granite look in his face, or
heard his voice so bitterly hard.

He did not move until he had seen them all started homewards from the
Four Corners. One person remained beside him--Parpon the dwarf.

“I will not obey you, M’sieu’ le Cure,” said he. “I’ll forgive him
before he repents.”

“You will share his sin,” answered the Cure sternly. “No; his
punishment, M’sieu’,” said the dwarf; and turning on his heel, he
trotted to where Pomfrette stood alone in the middle of the road, a
dark, morose figure, hatred and a wild trouble in his face.

Already banishment, isolation, seemed to possess Pomfrette, to surround
him with loneliness. The very effort he made to be defiant of his fate
appeared to make him still more solitary. All at once he thrust a hand
inside his red shirt, and, giving a jerk which broke a string tied round
his neck, he drew forth a little pad--a flat bag of silk, called an
Agnus Dei, worn as a protection and a blessing by the pious, and threw
it on the ground. Another little parcel he drew from his belt, and
ground it into the dirt with his heel. It contained a woman’s hair.
Then, muttering, his hands still twitching with savage feeling, he
picked up his cap, covered with dirt, put it on, and passed away down
the road towards the river, the little bell tinkling as he went. Those
who heard it had a strange feeling, for already to them the man was as
if he had some baleful disease, and this little bell told of the passing
of a leper.

Yet some one man had worn just such a bell every year in Pontiac. It was
the mark of honour conferred upon a voyageur by his fellows, the token
of his prowess and his skill. This year Luc Pomfrette had won it, and
that very day it had been buckled round his leg with songs and toasts.

For hours Pomfrette walked incessantly up and down the river-bank,
muttering and gesticulating, but at last came quietly to the cottage
which he shared with Henri Beauvin. Henri had removed himself and his
belongings: already the ostracising had begun. He went to the bedroom
of old Mme. Burgoyne, his cousin; she also was gone. He went to a little
outhouse and called.

For reply there was a scratching at the door. He opened it, and a dog
leaped out and upon him. With a fierce fondness he snatched at the dog’s
collar, and drew the shaggy head to his knee; then as suddenly shoved
him away with a smothered oath, and going into the house, shut the door.
He sat down in a chair in the middle of the room, and scarcely stirred
for half an-hour. At last, with a passionate jerk of the head, he got to
his feet, looking about the room in a half-distracted way. Outside, the
dog kept running round and round the house, silent, watchful, waiting
for the door to open.

As time went by, Luc became quieter, but the look of his face was more
desolate. At last he almost ran to the door, threw it open, and called.
The dog sprang into the room, went straight to the fireplace, lay
down, and with tongue lolling and body panting looked at Pomfrette with
blinking, uncomprehending eyes.

Pomfrette went to a cupboard, brought back a bone well covered with
meat, and gave it to the dog, which snatched it and began gnawing it,
now and again stopping to look up at his master, as one might look at
a mountain moving, be aware of something singular, yet not grasp the
significance of the phenomenon. At last, worn out, Pomfrette threw
himself on his bed, and fell into a sound sleep. When he awoke, it was
far into the morning. He lighted a fire in the kitchen, got a “spider,”
 fried himself a piece of pork, and made some tea. There was no milk in
the cupboard; so he took a pitcher and walked down the road a few rods
to the next house, where lived the village milkman. He knocked, and the
door was opened by the milkman’s wife. A frightened look came upon her
when she saw who it was.

“Non, non!” she said, and shut the door in his face. He stared blankly
at the door for a moment, then turned round and stood looking down
into the road, with the pitcher in his hand. The milkman’s little boy,
Maxime, came running round the corner of the house. “Maxime,” he said
involuntarily and half-eagerly, for he and the lad had been great
friends.

Maxime’s face brightened, then became clouded; he stood still an
instant, and presently, turning round and looking at Pomfrette askance,
ran away behind the house, saying: “Non, non!”

Pomfrette drew his rough knuckles across his forehead in a dazed way;
then, as the significance of the thing came home to him, he broke out
with a fierce oath, and strode away down the yard and into the road.
On the way to his house he met Duclosse the mealman and Garotte the
lime-burner. He wondered what they would do. He could see the fat,
wheezy Duclosse hesitate, but the arid, alert Garotte had determination
in every motion and look. They came nearer; they were about to pass;
there was no sign.

Pomfrette stopped short. “Good-day, lime-burner; good-day, Duclosse,” he
said, looking straight at them.

Garotte made no reply, but walked straight on. Pomfrette stepped swiftly
in front of the mealman. There was fury in his face-fury and danger; his
hair was disordered, his eyes afire.

“Good-day, mealman,” he said, and waited. “Duclosse,” called Garotte
warningly, “remember!” Duclosse’s knees shook, and his face became
mottled like a piece of soap; he pushed his fingers into his shirt and
touched the Agnus Dei that he carried there. That and Garotte’s words
gave him courage. He scarcely knew what he said, but it had meaning.
“Good-bye-leper,” he answered.

Pomfrette’s arm flew out to throw the pitcher at the mealman’s head,
but Duclosse, with a grunt of terror, flung up in front of his face
the small bag of meal that he carried, the contents pouring over
his waistcoat from a loose corner. The picture was so ludicrous that
Pomfrette laughed with a devilish humour, and flinging the pitcher
at the bag, he walked away towards his own house. Duclosse, pale and
frightened, stepped from among the fragments of crockery, and with
backward glances towards Pomfrette joined his comrade.

“Lime-burner,” he said, sitting down on the bag of meal, and
mechanically twisting tight the loose, leaking corner, “the devil’s in
that leper.”

“He was a good enough fellow once,” answered Garotte, watching
Pomfrette.

“I drank with him at five o’clock yesterday,” said Duclosse
philosophically. “He was fit for any company then; now he’s fit for
none.”

Garotte looked wise. “Mealman,” said he, “it takes years to make folks
love you; you can make them hate you in an hour. La! La! it’s easier to
hate than to love. Come along, m’sieu’ dusty-belly.”

Pomfrette’s life in Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a
day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to
him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to
buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer’s flighty wife called
for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had
to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and
gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last,
when he needed a new suit--so torn had his others become at woodchopping
and many kinds of work--he went to the village tailor, and was promptly
told that nothing but Luc Pomfrette’s grave-clothes would be cut and
made in that house.

When he walked down to the Four Corners the street emptied at once, and
the lonely man with the tinkling bell of honour at his knee felt the
whole world falling away from sight and touch and sound of him. Once
when he went into the Louis Quinze every man present stole away in
silence, and the landlord himself, without a word, turned and left
the bar. At that, with a hoarse laugh, Pomfrette poured out a glass
of brandy, drank it off, and left a shilling on the counter. The next
morning he found the shilling, wrapped in a piece of paper, just inside
his door; it had been pushed underneath. On the paper was written: “It
is cursed.” Presently his dog died, and the day afterwards he suddenly
disappeared from Pontiac, and wandered on to Ste. Gabrielle, Ribeaux,
and Ville Bambord. But his shame had gone before him, and people shunned
him everywhere, even the roughest. No one who knew him would shelter
him. He slept in barns and in the woods until the winter came and snow
lay thick upon the ground. Thin and haggard, and with nothing left of
his old self but his deep brown eyes and curling hair, and his unhappy
name and fame, he turned back again to Pontiac. His spirit was sullen
and hard, his heart closed against repentance. Had not the Church and
Pontiac and the world punished him beyond his deserts for a moment’s
madness brought on by a great shock!


One bright, sunshiny day of early winter, he trudged through the
snow-banked street of Pontiac back to his home. Men he once knew well,
and had worked with, passed him in a sled on their way to the great
shanty in the backwoods. They halted in their singing for a moment when
they saw him; then, turning their heads from him, dashed off, carolling
lustily:

            “Ah, ah, Babette,
              We go away;
             But we will come
              Again, Babette,
             Again back home,
              On Easter Day,
             Back home to play
              On Easter Day,
             Babette! Babette!”

“Babette! Babette!” The words followed him, ringing in his ears long
after the men had become a mere fading point in the white horizon behind
him.

This was not the same world that he had known, not the same Pontiac.
Suddenly he stopped short in the road.

“Curse them! Curse them! Curse them all!” he cried in a cracked, strange
voice. A woman hurrying across the street heard him, and went the
faster, shutting her ears. A little boy stood still and looked at him
in wonder. Everything he saw maddened him. He turned sharp round and
hurried to the Louis Quinze. Throwing open the door, he stepped inside.
Half-a-dozen men were there with the landlord. When they saw him, they
started, confused and dismayed. He stood still for a moment, looking at
them with glowering brows.

“Good-day,” he said. “How goes it?”

No one answered. A little apart from the others sat Medallion the
auctioneer. He was a Protestant, and the curse on his baptism uttered
by Pomfrette was not so heinous in his sight. For the other oath, it was
another matter. Still, he was sorry for the man. In any case, it was
not his cue to interfere; and Luc was being punished according to his
bringing up and to the standards familiar to him. Medallion had never
refused to speak to him, but he had done nothing more. There was no
reason why he should provoke the enmity of the parish unnecessarily; and
up to this-point Pomfrette had shifted for himself after a fashion, if a
hard fashion.

With a bitter laugh, Pomfrette turned to the little bar.

“Brandy,” he said; “brandy, my Bourienne.”

The landlord shrugged his shoulder, and looked the other way.

“Brandy,” he repeated. Still there was no sign.

There was a wicked look in his face, from which the landlord shrank
back-shrank so far that he carried himself among the others, and stood
there, half frightened, half dumfounded.

Pomfrette pulled out a greasy dollar-bill from his pocket--the last he
owned in the world--and threw it on the counter. Then he reached over,
caught up a brandy-bottle from the shelf, knocked off the neck with a
knife, and, pouring a tumblerful, drank it off at a gasp.

His head came up, his shoulders straightened out, his eyes snapped fire.
He laughed aloud, a sardonic, wild, coarse laugh, and he shivered once
or twice violently, in spite of the brandy he had drunk.

“You won’t speak to me, eh? Won’t you? Curse you! Pass me on the other
side--so! Look at me. I am the worst man in the world, eh? Judas is
nothing--no! Ack, what are you, to turn your back on me? Listen to me!
You, there, Muroc, with your charcoal face, who was it walk thirty miles
in the dead of winter to bring a doctor to your wife, eh? She die,
but that is no matter--who was it? It was Luc Pomfrette. You, Alphonse
Durien, who was it drag you out of the bog at the Cote Chaudiere? It was
Luc Pomfrette. You, Jacques Baby, who was it that lied for you to the
Protestant girl at Faribeau? Just Luc Pomfrette. You two, Jean and
Nicolas Mariban, who was it lent you a hunderd dollars when you lose all
your money at cards? Ha, ha, ha! Only that beast Luc Pomfrette! Mother
of Heaven, such a beast is he--eh, Limon Rouge?--such a beast that used
to give your Victorine little silver things, and feed her with bread
and sugar and buttermilk pop. Ah, my dear Limon Rouge, how is it all
different now!”

He raised the bottle and drank long from the ragged neck. When he took
it away from his mouth not much more than half remained in the quart
bottle. Blood was dripping upon his beard from a cut on his lip, and
from there to the ground.

“And you, M’sieu’ Bourienne,” he cried hoarsely, “do I not remember that
dear M’sieu’ Bourienne, when he beg me to leave Pontiac for a little
while that I not give evidence in court against him? Eh bien! you
all walk by me now, as if I was the father of smallpox, and not Luc
Pomfrette--only Luc Pomfrette, who spits at every one of you for a pack
of cowards and hypocrites.”

He thrust the bottle inside his coat, went to the door, flung it open
with a bang, and strode out into the street, muttering as he went. As
the landlord came to close the door Medallion said:

“The leper has a memory, my friends.” Then he also walked out, and went
to his office depressed, for the face of the man haunted him.

Pomfrette reached his deserted, cheerless house. There was not a stick
of fire-wood in the shed, not a thing to eat or drink in cellar or
cupboard. The door of the shed at the back was open, and the dog-chains
lay covered with frost and half embedded in mud. With a shiver of misery
Pomfrette raised the brandy to his mouth, drank every drop, and threw
the bottle on the floor. Then he went to the front door, opened it, and
stepped outside. His foot slipped, and he tumbled head forward into the
snow. Once or twice he half raised himself, but fell back again, and
presently lay still. The frost caught his ears and iced them; it began
to creep over his cheeks; it made his fingers white, like a leper’s.

He would soon have stiffened for ever had not Parpon the dwarf, passing
along the road, seen the open door and the sprawling body, and come and
drawn Pomfrette inside the house. He rubbed the face and hands and ears
of the unconscious man with snow till the whiteness disappeared, and,
taking off the boots, did the same with the toes; after which he drew
the body to a piece of rag carpet beside the stove, threw some blankets
over it, and, hurrying out, cut up some fence rails, and soon had a fire
going in the stove.

Then he trotted out of the house and away to the Little Chemist, who
came passively with him. All that day, and for many days, they fought
to save Pomfrette’s life. The Cure came also; but Pomfrette was in fever
and delirium. Yet the good M. Fabre’s presence, as it ever did, gave an
air of calm and comfort to the place. Parpon’s hands alone cared for the
house; he did all that was to be done; no woman had entered the place
since Pomfrette’s cousin, old Mme. Burgoyne, left it on the day of his
shame.

When at last Pomfrette opened his eyes, and saw the Cure standing beside
him, he turned his face to the wall, and to the exhortation addressed
to him he answered nothing. At last the Cure left him, and came no more;
and he bade Parpon do the same as soon as Pomfrette was able to leave
his bed.

But Parpon did as he willed. He had been in Pontiac only a few days
since the painful business in front of the Louis Quinze. Where he
had been and what doing no one asked, for he was mysterious in his
movements, and always uncommunicative, and people did not care to tempt
his inhospitable tongue. When Pomfrette was so far recovered that he
might be left alone, Parpon said to him one evening:

“Pomfrette, you must go to Mass next Sunday.”

“I said I wouldn’t go till I was carried there, and I mean it--that’s
so,” was the morose reply.

“What made you curse like that--so damnable?” asked Parpon furtively.

“That’s my own business. It doesn’t matter to anybody but me.”

“And you said the Cure lied--the good M’sieu’ Fabre--him like a saint.”

“I said he lied, and I’d say it again, and tell the truth.”

“But if you went to Mass, and took your penance, and--”

“Yes, I know; they’d forgive me, and I’d get absolution, and they’d all
speak to me again, and it would be, ‘Good-day, Luc,’ and ‘Very good,
Luc,’ and ‘What a gay heart has Luc, the good fellow!’ Ah, I know. They
curse in the heart when the whole world go wrong for them; no one hears.
I curse out loud. I’m not a hypocrite, and no one thinks me fit to live.
Ack, what is the good!”

Parpon did not respond at once. At last, dropping his chin in his hand
and his elbow on his knee, as he squatted on the table, he said:

“But if the girl got sorry--”

For a time there was no sound save the whirring of the fire in the stove
and the hard breathing of the sick man. His eyes were staring hard at
Parpon. At last he said, slowly and fiercely:

“What do you know?”

“What others might know if they had eyes and sense; but they haven’t.
What would you do if that Junie come back?”

“I would kill her.” His look was murderous.

“Bah, you would kiss her first, just the same!”

“What of that? I would kiss her because--because there is no face like
hers in the world; and I’d kill her for her bad heart.”

“What did she do?” Pomfrette’s hands clinched.

“What’s in my own noddle, and not for any one else,” he answered
sulkily.

“Tiens, tiens, what a close mouth! What did she do? Who knows? What you
think she do, it’s this. You think she pretends to love you, and you
leave all your money with her. She is to buy masses for your father’s
soul; she is to pay money to the Cure for the good of the Church; she
is to buy a little here, a little there, for the house you and she are
going to live in, the wedding and the dancing over. Very well. Ah,
my Pomfrette, what is the end you think? She run away with Dicey the
Protestant, and take your money with her. Eh, is that so?”

For answer there came a sob, and then a terrible burst of weeping and
anger and passionate denunciations--against Junie Gauloir, against
Pontiac, against the world.

Parpon held his peace.

The days, weeks, and months went by; and the months stretched to three
years.

In all that time Pomfrette came and went through Pontiac, shunned and
unrepentant. His silent, gloomy endurance was almost an affront to
Pontiac; and if the wiser ones, the Cure, the Avocat, the Little
Chemist, and Medallion, were more sorry than offended, they stood aloof
till the man should in some manner redeem himself, and repent of his
horrid blasphemy. But one person persistently defied Church and people,
Cure and voyageur. Parpon openly and boldly walked with Pomfrette,
talked with him, and occasionally visited his house.

Luc made hard shifts to live. He grew everything that he ate, vegetables
and grains. Parpon showed him how to make his own flour in primitive
fashion, for no miller in any parish near would sell him flour, and he
had no money to buy it, nor would any one who knew him give him work.
And after his return to Pontiac he never asked for it. His mood was
defiant, morbid, stern. His wood he chopped from the common known as
No-Man’s Land. His clothes he made himself out of the skins of deer that
he shot; when his powder and shot gave out, he killed the deer with bow
and arrow.


The end came at last. Luc was taken ill. For four days, all alone, he
lay burning with fever and inflammation, and when Parpon found him he
was almost dead. Then began a fight for life again, in which Parpon was
the only physician; for Pomfrette would not allow the Little Chemist or
a doctor near him. Parpon at last gave up hope; but one night, when he
came back from the village, he saw, to his joy, old Mme. Degardy (“Crazy
Joan” she was called) sitting by Pomfrette’s bedside. He did not disturb
her, for she had no love for him, and he waited till she had gone. When
he came into the room again he found Pomfrette in a sweet sleep, and
a jug of tincture, with a little tin cup, placed by the bed. Time and
again he had sent for Mme. Degardy, but she would not come. She had
answered that the dear Luc could go to the devil for all of her; he’d
find better company down below than in Pontiac.

But for a whim, perhaps, she had come at last without asking, and as a
consequence Luc returned to the world, a mere bundle of bones.

It was still while he was only a bundle of bones that one Sunday
morning, Parpon, without a word, lifted him up in his arms and carried
him out of the house. Pomfrette did not speak at first: it seemed
scarcely worth while; he was so weak he did not care.

“Where are you going?” he said at last, as they came well into the
village. The bell in St. Saviour’s had stopped ringing for Mass, and the
streets were almost empty.

“I’m taking you to Mass,” said Parpon, puffing under his load, for
Pomfrette made an ungainly burden. “Hand of a little devil, no!” cried
Pomfrette, startled. “I said I’d never go to Mass again, and I never
will.

“You said you’d never go to Mass till you were carried; so it’s all
right.”

Once or twice Pomfrette struggled, but Parpon held him tight, saying:

“It’s no use; you must come; we’ve had enough. Besides--”

“Besides what?” asked Pomfrette faintly. “Never mind,” answered Parpon.

At a word from Parpon the shrivelled old sexton cleared a way through
the aisle, making a stir, through which the silver bell at Pomfrette’s
knee tinkled, in answer, as it were, to the tinkling of the acolyte’s
bell in the sanctuary. People turned at the sound, women stopped telling
their beads, some of the choir forgot their chanting. A strange feeling
passed through the church, and reached and startled the Cure as he
recited the Mass. He turned round and saw Parpon laying Pomfrette down
at the chancel steps. His voice shook a little as he intoned the ritual,
and as he raised the sacred elements tears rolled down his cheeks.

From a distant corner of the gallery a deeply veiled woman also looked
down at Pomfrette, and her hand trembled on the desk before her.

At last the Cure came forward to the chancel steps. “What is it,
Parpon?” he asked gravely.

“It is Luc Pomfrette, M’sieu’ le Cure.” Pomfrette’s eyes were closed.

“He swore that he would never come to Mass again,” answered the good
priest.

“Till he was carried, M’sieu’ le Cure--and I’ve carried him.”

“Did you come of your own free will, and with a repentant heart, Luc
Pomfrette?” asked the Cure.

“I did not know I was coming--no.” Pomfrette’s brown eyes met the
priest’s unflinchingly.

“You have defied God, and yet He has spared your life.”

“I’d rather have died,” answered the sick man simply.

“Died, and been cast to perdition!”

“I’m used to that; I’ve had a bad time here in Pontiac.”

His thin hands moved restlessly. His leg moved, and the little bell
tinkled--the bell that had been like the bell of a leper these years
past.

“But you live, and you have years yet before you, in the providence of
God. Luc Pomfrette, you blasphemed against your baptism, and horribly
against God himself. Luc”--his voice got softer--“I knew your mother,
and she was almost too weak to hold you when you were baptised, for you
made a great to-do about coming into the world. She had a face like a
saint--so sweet, so patient. You were her only child, and your baptism
was more to her than her marriage even, or any other thing in this
world. The day after your baptism she died. What do you think were her
last words?”

There was a hectic flush on Pomfrette’s face, and his eyes were intense
and burning as they looked up fixedly at the Cure.

“I can’t think any more,” answered Pomfrette slowly. “I’ve no head.”

“What she said is for your heart, not for your head, Luc,” rejoined
the Cure gently. “She wandered in her mind, and at the last she raised
herself up in her bed, and lifting her finger like this”--he made the
gesture of benediction--“she said, ‘Luc Michele, I baptise you in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’ Then
she whispered softly: ‘God bless my dear Luc Michee! Holy Mother pray
for him!’ These were her last words, and I took you from her arms. What
have you to say, Luc Michee?”

The woman in the gallery was weeping silently behind her thick veil, and
her worn hand clutched the desk in front of her convulsively. Presently
she arose and made her way down the stair, almost unnoticed. Two or
three times Luc tried to speak, but could not. “Lift me up,” he said
brokenly, at last.

Parpon and the Little Chemist raised him to his feet, and held him, his
shaking hands resting on their shoulders, his lank body tottering above
and between them.

Looking at the congregation, he said slowly: “I’ll suffer till I die for
cursing my baptism, and God will twist my neck in purgatory for--”

“Luc,” the Cure interrupted, “say that you repent.”

“I’m sorry, and I ask you all to forgive me, and I’ll confess to the
Cure, and take my penance, and--” he paused, for breathing hurt him.

At that moment the woman in black who had been in the gallery came
quickly forward. Parpon saw her, frowned, and waved her back; but she
came on. At the chancel steps she raised her veil, and a murmur of
recognition and wonder ran through the church. Pomfrette’s face was
pitiful to see--drawn, staring.

“Junie!” he said hoarsely.

Her eyes were red with weeping, her face was very pale. “M’sieu’ le
Cure” she said, “you must listen to me”--the Cure’s face had become
forbidding--“sinner though I am. You want to be just, don’t you?
Ah, listen! I was to be married to Luc Pomfrette, but I did not love
him--then. He had loved me for years, and his father and my father
wished it--as you know, M’sieu’ le Cure. So after a while I said I
would; but I begged him that he wouldn’t say anything about it till
he come back from his next journey on the river. I did not love him
enough--then. He left all his money with me: some to pay for Masses for
his father’s soul, some to buy things for--for our home; and the rest to
keep till he came back.”

“Yes, yes,” said Pomfrette, his eyes fixed painfully on her face--“yes,
yes.”

“The day after Luc went away John Dicey the Protestant come to me. I’d
always liked him; he could talk as Luc couldn’t, and it sounded nice.
I listened and listened. He knew about Luc and about the money and all.
Then he talked to me. I was all wild in the head, and things went round
and round, and oh, how I hated to marry Luc--then! So after he had
talked a long while I said yes, I would go with him and marry him--a
Protestant--for I loved him. I don’t know why or how.”

Pomfrette trembled so that Parpon and the Little Chemist made him sit
down, and he leaned against their shoulders, while Junie went on:

“I gave him Luc’s money to go and give to Parpon here, for I was too
ashamed to go myself. And I wrote a little note to Luc, and sent it with
the money. I believed in John Dicey, of course. He came back, and said
that he had seen Parpon and had done it all right; then we went away to
Montreal and got married. The very first day at Montreal, I found out
that he had Luc’s money. It was awful. I went mad, and he got angry and
left me alone, and didn’t come back. A week afterwards he was killed,
and I didn’t know it for a long time. But I began to work, for I wanted
to pay back Luc’s money. It was very slow, and I worked hard. Will
it never be finished, I say. At last Parpon find me, and I tell him
all--all except that John Dicey was dead; and I did not know that. I
made him promise to tell nobody; but he knows all about my life since
then. Then I find out one day that John Dicey is dead, and I get from
the gover’ment a hundred dollars of the money he stole. It was found
on him when he was killed. I work for six months longer, and now I come
back--with Luc’s money.”

She drew from her pocket a packet of notes, and put it in Luc’s hands.
He took it dazedly, then dropped it, and the Little Chemist picked it
up; he had no prescription like that in his pharmacopoeia.

“That’s how I’ve lived,” she said, and she handed a letter to the Cure.

It was from a priest in Montreal, setting forth the history of her
career in that city, her repentance for her elopement and the sin of
marrying a Protestant, and her good life. She had wished to do her
penance in Pontiac, and it remained to M’sieu’ le Cure; to set it.

The Cure’s face relaxed, and a rare gentleness came into it.

He read the letter aloud. Luc once more struggled to his feet, eagerly
listening.

“You did not love Luc?” the Cure asked Junie, meaningly.

“I did not love Luc--then,” she answered, a flush going over her face.

“You loved Junie?” the Cure said to Pomfrette. “I could have killed
her, but I’ve always loved her,” answered Luc. Then he raised his voice
excitedly: “I love her, love her, love her--but what’s the good! She’d
never ‘ve been happy with me. Look what my love drove her to! What’s the
good, at all!”

“She said she did not love you then, Luc Michee,” said Parpon,
interrupting. “Luc Michee, you’re a fool as well as a sinner. Speak up,
Junie.”

“I used to tell him that I didn’t love him; I only liked him. I was
honest. Well, I am honest still. I love him now.”

A sound of joy broke from Luc’s lips, and he stretched out his arms to
her, but the Cure; stopped that. “Not here,” he said. “Your sins must
first be considered. For penance--” He paused, looking at the two sad
yet happy beings before him. The deep knowledge of life that was in him
impelled him to continue gently:

“For penance you shall bear the remembrance of each other’s sins. And
now to God the Father--” He turned towards the altar, and raised his
hands in the ascription.

As he knelt to pray before he entered the pulpit, he heard the tinkling
of the little bell of honour at the knee of Luc, as Junie and Parpon
helped him from the church.




A SON OF THE WILDERNESS

Rachette told the story to Medallion and the Little Chemist’s wife on
Sunday after Mass, and because he was vain of his English he forsook his
own tongue and paid tribute to the Anglo-Saxon.

“Ah, she was so purty, that Norinne, when she drive through the parishes
all twelve days, after the wedding, a dance every night, and her eyes
and cheeks on fire all the time. And Bargon, bagosh! that Bargon, he
have a pair of shoulders like a wall, and five hunder’ dollars and a
horse and wagon. Bagosh, I say that time: ‘Bargon he have put a belt
round the world and buckle it tight to him--all right, ver’ good.’ I say
to him: ‘Bargon, what you do when you get ver’ rich out on the Souris
River in the prairie west?’ He laugh and throw up his hands, for he have
not many words any kind. And the dam little dwarf Parpon, he say: ‘He
will have flowers on the table and ice on the butter, and a wheel in his
head.’

“And Bargon laugh and say: ‘I will have plenty for my friends to eat and
drink and a ver’ fine time.’ “‘Good,’ we all say-’Bagosh!’ So they make
the trip through twelve parish, and the fiddles go all the time, and I
am what you say ‘best man’ with Bargon. I go all the time, and Lucette
Dargois, she go with me and her brother--holy, what an eye had she in
her head, that Lucette! As we go we sing a song all right, and there is
no one sing so better as Norinne:

            “‘C’est la belle Francoise,
             Allons gai!
             C’est la belle Francoise,
             Qui veut se marier,
             Ma luron lurette!
             Qui veut se marier,
             Ma luron lure!’

“Ver’ good, bagosh! Norinne and Bargon they go out to the Souris, and
Bargon have a hunder’ acre, and he put up a house and a shed not ver’
big, and he carry his head high and his shoulders like a wall; yes, yes.
First year it is pretty good time, and Norinne’s cheeks--ah, like an
apple they. Bimeby a baby laugh up at Bargon from Norinne’s lap. I am
on the Souris at a saw-mill then, and on Sunday sometime I go up to see
Bargon and Norinne. I t’ink that baby is so dam funny; I laugh and pinch
his nose. His name is Marie, and I say I marry him pretty quick
some day. We have plenty hot cake, and beans and pork, and a little
how-you-are from a jar behin’ the door.

“Next year it is not so good. There is a bad crop and hard time, and
Bargon he owe two hunder’ dollar, and he pay int’rest. Norinne, she
do all the work, and that little Marie, there is dam funny in him, and
Norinne, she keep go, go, all the time, early and late, and she get
ver’ thin and quiet. So I go up from the mill more times, and I bring
fol-lols for that Marie, for you know I said I go to marry him some
day. And when I see how Bargon shoulders stoop and his eye get dull, and
there is nothing in the jar behin’ the door, I fetch a horn with me, and
my fiddle, and, bagosh! there is happy sit-you-down. I make Bargon sing
‘La Belle Francoise,’ and then just before I go I make them laugh, for I
stand by the cradle and I sing to that Marie:

         “‘Adieu, belle Francoise;
          Allons gai!
          Adieu, belle Francoise!
          Moi, je to marierai,
          Ma luron lurette! Moi,
          je to marierai,
          Ma luron lure!’

“So; and another year it go along, and Bargon he know that if there come
bad crop it is good-bye-my lover with himselves. He owe two hunder’
and fifty dollar. It is the spring at Easter, and I go up to him and
Norinne, for there is no Mass, and Pontiac is too far away off. We stan’
at the door and look out, and all the prairie is green, and the sun
stan’ up high like a light on a pole, and the birds fly by ver’ busy
looking for the summer and the prairie-flower.

“‘Bargon,’ I say--and I give him a horn of old rye--‘here’s to le bon
Dieu!’

“‘Le bon Dieu, and a good harvest!’ he say.

“I hear some one give a long breath behin’, and I look round; but, no,
it is Norinne with a smile--for she never grumble--bagosh! What purty
eyes she have in her head! She have that Marie in her arms, and I say to
Bargon it is like the Madonne in the Notre Dame at Montreal. He nod his
head. ‘C’est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,’ he say.

“Before I go I take a piece of palm--it come from the Notre Dame; it
is all bless by the Pope--and I nail it to the door of the house. ‘For
luck,’ I say. Then I laugh, and I speak out to the prairie: ‘Come along,
good summer; come along, good crop; come two hunder’ and fifty dollars
for Gal Bargon.’ Ver’ quiet I give Norinne twenty dollar, but she will
not take him. ‘For Marie,’ then I say: ‘I go to marry him, bimeby.’ But
she say: ‘Keep it and give it to Marie yourself some day.’

“She smile at me, then she have a little tear in her eye, and she nod to
where Bargon stare’ houtside, and she say: ‘If this summer go wrong, it
will kill him. He work and work and fret and worry for me and Marie, and
sometimes he just sit and look at me and say not a word.’

“I say to her that there will be good crop, and next year we will be
ver’ happy. So, the time go on, and I send up a leetla snack of pork
and molass’ and tabac, and sugar and tea, and I get a letter from Bargon
bimeby, and he say that heverything go right, he t’ink, this summer.
He say I must come up. It is not dam easy to go in the summer, when the
mill run night and day; but I say I will go.

“When I get up to Bargon’s I laugh, for all the hunder’ acre is ver’
fine, and Bargon stan’ hin the door, and stretch out his hand, and say:
‘Rachette, there is six hunder’ dollar for me.’ I nod my head, and fetch
out a horn, and he have one, his eyes all bright like a lime-kiln. He is
thin and square, and his beard grow ver’ thick and rough and long, and
his hands are like planks. Norinne, she is ver’ happy, too, and Marie
bite on my finger, and I give him sugar-stick to suck.

“Bimeby Norinne say to me, ver’ soft: ‘If a hailstorm or a hot wind
come, that is the end of it all, and of my poor Gal.’

“What I do? I laugh and ketch Marie under the arms, and I sit down, and
I put him on my foot, and I sing that dam funny English song--‘Here
We Go to Banbury Cross.’ An’ I say: ‘It will be all as happy as Marie
pretty quick. Bargon he will have six hunder’ dollar, and you a new
dress and a hired girl to help you.’

“But all the time that day I think about a hail-storm or a hot wind
whenever I look out on that hunder’ acre farm. It is so beautiful,
as you can guess--the wheat, the barley, the corn, the potatoes, the
turnip, all green like sea-water, and pigeons and wild ducks flying up
and down, and the horse and the ox standing in a field ver’ comfer’ble.

“We have good time that day, and go to bed all happy that night. I get
up at five o’clock, an’ I go hout. Bargon stan’ there looking hout on
his field with the horse-bridle in his hand. ‘The air not feel right,’
he say to me. I t’ink the same, but I say to him: ‘Your head not feel
right--him too sof’.’ He shake his head and go down to the field for his
horse and ox, and hitch them up together, and go to work making a road.

“It is about ten o’clock when the dam thing come. Piff! go a hot splash
of air in my face, and then I know that it is all up with Gal Bargon. A
month after it is no matter, for the grain is ripe then, but now, when
it is green, it is sure death to it all. I turn sick in my stomich, and
I turn round and see Norinne stan’ hin the door, all white, and she make
her hand go as that, like she push back that hot wind.

“‘Where is Gal?’ she say. ‘I must go to him.’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘I will fetch
him. You stay with Marie.’ Then I go ver’ quick for Gal, and I find him,
his hands all shut like that! and he shake them at the sky, and he say
not a word, but his face, it go wild, and his eyes spin round in his
head. I put my hand on his arm and say: ‘Come home, Gal. Come home, and
speak kind to Norinne and Marie.’

“I can see that hot wind lean down and twist the grain about--a dam
devil thing from the Arzone desert down South. I take Gal back home, and
we sit there all day, and all the nex’ day, and a leetla more, and when
we have look enough, there is no grain on that hunder’ acre farm--only a
dry-up prairie, all grey and limp. My skin is bake and rough, but when
I look at Gal Bargon I know that his heart is dry 

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