Poussette wagged his head in imbecile accord.

"Low fellow—Crabbe—marche donc—get off, animal, don' come my place 'tall."

"You know I'm talking right, Poussette. Get rid of Crabbe. And sober up now, man; don't let folks see you like this."

Ringfield put his arm through the other's and led him aside under a thick canopy of trees as a party of fishermen and Martin came along.

"Look here—I'll make a pillow for you, here, out of these balsam twigs! You lie down—that's it—and get a good sound sleep. Got a cigar? And a light? That's all right. Now, you sleep—yes, don't bother about the smoke now—just go to sleep and when you wake up, have your smoke, clear your head, shake yourself and show up at tea-time, straight and sober as I am! You'd better! Father Rielle's over for tea. You wouldn't like him to see you like this!"

Poussette collapsed on the improvised balsam couch, but managed to remark that he would not get up on account of Father Rielle, nor give him anything good to eat.

"Why, I thought you liked him! Liked his good opinion, anyway!"

"Beeg liar! Beeg rascal! I like you, Mr. Ringfield, when you don' take away my girl. You leave my bes' girl alone and I like you—first rate. Bigosh—excuses, I'll just go to sleep—for—while."

Ringfield rose from the ground and sighed. He earned his livelihood pretty hard when such scenes came into his life. Pastoral slumming, one might term it, for he had only just laid Poussette respectably to rest when he encountered Crabbe, lurching dully along the road, and at the sight of him Poussette's extraordinary remark about his "best girl" came back. What possible connexion could have suggested itself to Poussette between the faded sickly creature he called his wife and the visitor from Ontario? Ringfield thought it not unlikely that Poussette was confusing him with Crabbe, for to-day was not the first time he had seen the woman wandering in the proximity of the shack. However, Crabbe gave him no opportunity for ministerial argument or reasoning, for as soon as he perceived the other he turned, and straightening in his walk very considerably, soon disappeared in the forest.

Ringfield was thus thrown on his own resources after all, and in thinking over the question of the Sunday music, not unnaturally was led to associate Miss Clairville with it. He did not know her to be exactly musical, but he gathered that she could sing; at all events, she was the only person he had met in St. Ignace capable of making arrangements for a decorous and attractive service, and he resolved to see her and ask for her co-operation. Thus again he was drawn by inclination and by a steady march of events along the road that led to Lac Calvaire. Arrived at the metairie he was told of Pauline's departure for Montreal, and also that Henry Clairville was confined to his bed by a severe cold. Some new awkwardness led Ringfield over the threshold; the old Archambault woman who had attended the front door threw open another on her left hand, and the next moment he found himself in what must have been once the salon of the family. The furniture was of faded tapestry; a spinning-wheel, an armoire of dark mahogany, miniatures, one very old and very ugly oil painting of some mythological subject, cracked with age, the gilt frame thick with fly-specks; a suit of Court clothes hung ostentatiously on a common nail—these were the impressions he received as he sat waiting to hear whether the Sieur would see him.

Suddenly he started. The woman had closed the door, the room had been empty when he entered it and yet—there were three cats in front of his chair! Where had they come from? The window was closed, how had they got in? Watching, Ringfield saw what greatly astonished him, for presently the cats walked towards the door and a miracle appeared to happen! They not only walked towards it but through it, and he was ignorant of the apparent cause of the miracle until observing the door very closely he discovered a little door down at the bottom, a cat door through which they were in the habit of calmly passing back and forth at will. Another cat door appeared in the hall where he stood a minute later before being shown out, for Mr. Clairville would not receive him, and nothing more impressed him with the idea of being in a strange house given over to strange people than the knowledge of a system of little doors cut in the big ones for the use of a dozen cats.

Once more on the road, Ringfield experienced that sense of frustration inseparable from first love. He had been so confident of seeing Miss Clairville once again, and now, as he learned from the servant, it might be Christmas before she would return, and despite his resolutions, he knew he should be very lonely indeed, without any congenial soul in the village, for a period of four months. He roused himself, however, to think of the morrow's duties, particularly of the music, and at tea that evening he found the person he wanted through the kind offices of Father Rielle, who was a very liberal Catholic, well acquainted with the whole countryside and who could ask, as he said, in eloquent broken English, nothing better than co-operation in good works with his young Methodist confrere. Poussette was present at the evening meal, rather pale and subdued and pointing with the pride of a true chef to the omelettes which were his alone to make by special dispensation, and after supper Ringfield walked out to the great Fall, remaining till it was dark and late—so late that he knew no one would pass that way. Then he knelt on a slab of rock and lifted up his voice in this wise:—

"O Lord," he began, "look down on Thine unworthy servant. Help him and guide his footsteps aright. He has returned to this place and to this people. Assist him to preach the truth of the Gospel in the wilderness and to those who know Thee not. Make him kind and keep him humble. Give him light and understanding that he may be acceptable in this place and that he may witness for Thee and for the Gospel, and that his labours may be blessed and the harvest thereof indeed be great." He paused, his eyes opening on the white wilderness of the Fall. Knowing that the roar of its foaming waters would drown his voice he did not scruple to use his fine, sonorous tones to the full, and went on again: "Strip from Thy servant, O God Most High, all that savours of self. Strike at sin if it lodgeth in him; cause him to remember now his Creator in the days of his youth. Grant him wisdom in dealing with the froward, and may Thy Holy Spirit descend in this solemn evening hour and be with him now through the watches of the night and to-morrow when he rises to plead Thy righteous cause. For Christ's sake, Amen."

The mixture of the orthodox circuit style with an occasional direct and colloquial abruptness made this prayer worthy of record, and after silent meditation under the dark, swaying pine-trees, Ringfield, braced by temporary abandonment of self, returned to Poussette's. As he rose from his knees, however, something rolled down several ledges of rock and he promptly went after it and picked it up. It proved to be a book, not very large, and opening easily, but there was no light to view it by, and it was not until he came near the village windows that he discovered it to be, much to his astonishment, a well-worn copy of Tennyson's Poems. On the fly-leaf were the initials "E. C. H." and underneath, the word "Oxford" and date "1873". Ringfield took it up to his room; some tourist had probably dropped it, and it was safer with him than with Poussette. But when had an Oxford man passed that way?



CHAPTER VII

THE OXFORD MAN

"Here Nature was my guide, The Nature of the dissolute; but Thee, O fostering Nature! I rejected..."

Ringfield, now committed to his duty at St. Ignace, was experiencing that reaction which must always follow upon a sudden change in the affairs of life when the person concerned has a tendency towards the reflective. The absence from the manor house of that interesting personality, Miss Clairville, threw him altogether on the society of the village, but, apart from Poussette, who had become mysteriously friendly again, the two individuals most in need of his ministrations were Mme. Poussette and the shambling guide, Edmund Crabbe, in whom were the dregs of a being originally more than the preacher's equal. Old world distinctions would seem to be of small account in such a hamlet as St. Ignace and yet questions of caste were felt even there.

Crabbe, the owner of the "Tennyson," was that melancholy wraith of breeding, a deteriorated gentleman, spoken of in whispers as an "Oxford man," slouching along the winding country road, more or less in liquor, with the gait and air of a labourer, yet once known as the youngest son of a good county family. Few would have recognized in the whiskered blear-eyed, stumbling creature an educated Englishman of more than middle-class extraction. In drink an extraordinary thing occurred. He then became sober, knew himself, and quoted from the classics; when sober, he was the sullen loafer, the unmannerly cad, and his service as guide alone redeemed him from starvation and neglect. Ringfield, who had seen him, as he supposed, drunk on the Saturday afternoon when Miss Clairville's departure had been made known, concluded to call upon him at his shack a few days later, and was considerably surprised to find the place roughly boarded up, while sounds of talking came from a shanty at the back. The latter was on the plumed edge of an odorous hemlock wood; squirrels and chipmunks ran, chattering, hither and thither in quest of food, and a muskrat, sitting on a log near the water, looked unconcernedly at Ringfield as he stood, hesitating, for a few seconds. While he thus remained, a boy came along, looked at the "store" and scudded away; then came a little girl, and, finally, one of the maidservants from Poussette's. Muttering her annoyance, she too waited for a while and was on the point of going away, when the door of the cabin opened, and Crabbe looked out. He held himself erect, he had shaved, his faded neglige shirt was clean and laced with blue—a colour that matched his eyes, and his voice had a certain expressive and even authoritative drawl in it.

"No supplies to-day, my good people," he said, affecting to suppose Ringfield a customer. "Call to-morrow, or—ah—the next day. Sorry to inconvenience you, but I've had to take a few hours off, writing letters to the Old Country, asking about my remittance and so forth. So I can't attend to business."

In these polite if slightly satirical cadences there was the element of superiority; the woman and the girl faded away, while Ringfield hardly knew how to proceed.

"I have come over just for a chat," he finally said, "if you are not too much engaged. I have a good deal of time on my hands, and I'm trying to get to know the people around. I am speaking to Mr. Crabbe, I think?"

"You are not sure, eh? Want to apologize for calling me a low fellow to mine host Poussette, I expect! Well, come in and have your chat. I'm not much in favour of clergymen, but then—you're only a Methodist, I hear. You don't count."

He shut the door, after piloting the other in, and led the way into a sort of dining and living room, in the middle of which was a long, narrow table covered with white oilcloth, graced by a monster bouquet of wild-flowers, grasses and ferns at the end; at the other end was a tumbler and a bottle and Ringfield saw clearly enough that it held whisky. Yet he did not comprehend that Crabbe was drunk, while the bold, blue eyes, the erect stature and the loud voice did not make a single suspicion. Indeed, surprise and pity worked in him a kind of false modesty.

"I certainly should never have used that expression. My defence is, that Poussette, though a good fellow, is rough, and difficult to impress in English, you understand, especially when he is about half-tipsy himself!"

Looking around, the sight of faded photographs of English scenes on the wall, of a large lithograph of Tennyson and of many well-bound books and other evidences of refinement, led Ringfield to say, in vague apology, "If I had known——"

"Known what?" said Crabbe in loud, dictatorial, dangerous tones, all shiftiness gone. "That I was a gentleman, eh? Well, gentle is as gentle does, I suppose, and I've never scored anywhere, so here I am, here I am, Ringfield (bringing his hand down on the table) that's your name, I believe—and I've not worn so badly all these years. From Oxford to Manitoba; then robbed and ruined by a shark of a farming agent, damn him, down here to this wilderness and hole of a Quebec Province for a change. For keeps, I imagine."

He went round the table and poured out some whisky, drank it off raw, and still Ringfield did not understand. He thought this was the sober phase, the other, the drunken one, and feeling his way, ventured on general topics.

"Well, I'm here too by a curious twist of circumstances. I'm a 'varsity' man—Toronto, you know—and might look for something different from St. Ignace."

"You're a what?" cried the other. "O Lord!" and a strange kind of rude contempt filled the rich cadences with which he spoke, so different from the surly repression of his ordinary tone.

"O I see!" he drawled presently. "I'm an Oxford man myself—worse luck—and much good it's done me; hope you've benefited more thereby. What disgusting rot, Ringfield, filling us up with Horace and Virgil, and then sending us out to a land like this! I'm the youngest of five; there was nothing left for me at home, and then there was fuss about a woman—there always is."

"Is there?" echoed the other sweetly, determined not to be annoyed. "Don't lay everything at their door. Our mothers, Crabbe, our sisters——"

The Englishman suddenly ran amuck, as it were.

"In God's name, Ringfield, drop that! I can see you know nothing about it, nothing about life or women—God, Ringfield, women are the Devil! If I thought you'd listen and not preach——"

The other's hand, which had been lifted in horror and deprecation, came down again.

"I don't care to listen," he said, "but I can gather your meaning—all the same! Don't take any more of that vile stuff, you'll make yourself drunk. Here——" and then, with sudden fury, the preacher grabbed the bottle, threw it out of the window among the debris of rotting fruit and rusty cans and faced the Englishman.

For a moment Crabbe looked, spat, and swore like a fiend; then he collapsed into his chair, though still gazing at Ringfield with those full, rolling eyes and that hateful, superior smile.

"I'll hear anything you have to tell about yourself," continued Ringfield, "but I won't listen to tales of other people, men or women. And what's the use of telling me about yourself? That won't do any good. Put it all back in the past, man; put it all away. Now is your accepted time, now is your day of salvation, right here, this moment. But I won't preach to you. I won't vindicate my calling and talk religion, as you'd call it, in this place and at this hour, because I see you're not ready. I thought you were sober. Now I see my mistake, and now, I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how to begin! I've never tasted the stuff myself—not even a glass of wine has ever passed my lips, and my mother, Crabbe, used to make home-made wine and give it to us—all but me. I wouldn't taste it. If I understood the fascination of it, if I could follow the process, if I could sympathize at all with you, then I might appreciate the difficulty and realize the force of the temptation. But I can't! Other vices, take theft or treachery, or cowardice, or insubordination; the seed of hatred suffered to grow till the black Death Flower of Murder be born; covetousness, sins of temper, all these I understand. And in some degree those other temptations to which you have alluded."

A slight wave of colour surged in the young minister's cheeks. Crabbe was apparently beyond impressing. He sat and whistled, looking wisely at his nails. The loss of the whisky did not trouble him, for he remembered where he had a second bottle hidden, and a small quantity yet remained at the bottom of the tumbler, unnoticed by Ringfield. But presently he broke out again.

"As for women," he cried thickly, as if he had not heard the other's latest speech. "I've had enough of them, too much, as I said before. You be warned, Ringfield! You keep out of trouble! I wouldn't swear that I did not take to drink on account of them, and then, look here—the trouble followed me out to this country, even to St. Ignace, even to this hut and hole. What d'ye think of that?"

"Why, who is there here?" exclaimed Ringfield, but as he spoke he had a vision; the foolish wife of Poussette seemed to come along the path, chanting as she came some minor French refrain and tapping at the uncared for window as she passed. She might have been attractive once, and Crabbe was not a very young man now. Some graces she must have had; a way of catching at the side of her skirt, suggesting a curtsy; plenty of fair hair and a child's smile playing at the corners of her mouth—not so foolish then. But wise or foolish, she had been another man's wife, unless he had encountered her in her maiden days, which seemed improbable.

"I cannot think," went on Ringfield, striving to shut this vision out, "how women, any woman, plain or fair, sane or mad, could bring herself to care for you,—and not because,—hear me, Crabbe, you are beyond caring about. God forbid!—but because your form of vice must ever be so distasteful to a woman. And then you are all wrong about your surroundings. You are, you have been, at least, a man of education, and yet you call this a hut and a hole. It is you who make it so! You vilify, where you might ennoble. You defile where you should enrich and keep pure. You are set here, in the midst of the most beautiful scenes of Nature, scenes that cannot be matched anywhere in the world, and yet you despise them and use them for your own undoing and that of others. Nature lies at your door and you are answerable for your treatment other."

Crabbe laughed surlily. "She's no business lying—where'd you say—at my door. Nature, always Nature! Much good it's done me, Nature, and all that rubbish. I hate it, I hate and abhor it, Ringfield. That's what makes me drink. Too much Nature's been my ruin. I'd be sober enough in a big town with lively streets and bustle and riot and row. I wouldn't drink there. I'd show them the pace, I'd go it myself once more and be d——d to all this rot and twaddle about Nature! Nature doesn't care for me. So careful of the type she seems, but so careless of the single life. She doesn't bother her head about me, or you, or Henry Clairville or Pauline!"

He paused, and Ringfield shivered with sudden poignancy of recollection. What right had this miserable scion of good family, so fallen from grace, so shaken and so heartless, to call the lady of Clairville Manor by her Christian name?

"Or Mme. Poussette!" said the minister hurriedly, but with meaning, as he pronounced the name, his voice trembling in spite of himself. "Nature, it is true, does not care for any of us. Nature will let you starve, get drunk, go mad. Therefore, we need a greater than Nature. Therefore, having this committed unto us we speak as——"

"O Mme. Poussette!" interrupted Crabbe, pouring the contents of the tumbler down his throat. "Shall I get you some? No? Well, I don't blame you, don't blame you. Mme. Poussette, poor creature! I have heard she was pretty once. That was before I came, before—God's truth this, Ringfield—before I taught her husband to drink deep."

"I might have known!" escaped from the other. "Our own people rarely drink—like you."

"He was no innocent! He tippled, tippled. Then I came along and set up my sign, Edmund Crabbe Hawtree, Esquire; no, we'll drop the last and stick to E. Crabbe without the Esquire, d——n it! Lord! what a mess I've made of it, and this rankles, Ringfield. Listen. Over at Argosy Island there's a slabsided, beastly, canting Methodist Yankee who has a shop too. Must copy the Britisher, you see. Must emulate—gentleman."

His sentences were beginning to be less clear now. His head was falling forward. "Well! then—this fine fellow does well out of his shop; sets up another down the river and yet another over at Beausoley. He's made money! He's rich, married, and has a big family. Why don't I make money, Ringfield, and get away from here? Why don't you make money and not go about preaching? Eh? So careless of the single life! Who said that? Whoever said that, knew what—was talking about. I know what I'm talking about. I'm a gentleman, that's what I am, Ringfield, and yet I can't make money."

The wagging head toppled—he fell over on the table. The fire and youth Ringfield had observed were gone and in their place were the decrepit tone and the surly animalism which one associated with the guide. Here, then, thought the young and impressionable minister, is the living result of two corroding vices; the man is a sot, but something beside the lust for liquor has helped to make him one. He has followed after sin in the shape of his neighbour's wife, and perhaps the latter's decline may be traced to the working of remorse and the futile longing after a better life.

As he was thus thinking, the vision of his thought actually flitted past the window without turning her head. Still with those thin hands picking at her shabby skirts and with that tremulous smile she emerged from the wood and Ringfield heard her singing long after the rustling of the closely arched branches had ceased. Crabbe seemed to be dropping asleep when Ringfield touched him on the arm and tried again to reason with him.

"Tell me, I ask it for your own good and for that of the poor unfortunate woman who has just gone by, tell me what there is between you, how far the matter went, how long ago it was. Tell me, and I will help you perhaps to get away, leave this place and all in it. That would be the best thing. Come, Crabbe, I'll believe in you if you've lost belief in yourself. Can I, can anyone, do more than that?"

The Englishman rallied, passed a hand across his brow, then rose unsteadily to his feet, looking around the cabin. Habit called for a drink at this juncture and he saw nothing to drink. Anger awoke in him; he grew maniacal, dangerous, and the late September shadows filled the room.

"What woman do you mean?" he cried. "In vino veritas! You thought I was sober. So I was. Sober enough before you, the preacher, to know that I'm getting drunk rapidly, beastly drunk too, and being so, and the gentleman I am, or meant to be, I don't thank you for interference in my affairs. What woman are you thinking of? What woman passed my window?"

"Mme. Poussette."

The guide's face stared, then broke into unmistakable and contemptuous laughter.

"Didn't I tell you I was a gentleman? You've made a big mistake, Ringfield. Even in my deterioration" (he had difficulty with this word) "I remember who I am, and I don't go after married women. Matrimony's one of the Church's sacraments, Ringfield, isn't it? Perhaps not; I have forgotten. Anyway, Mme. Poussette is the wife of my best friend, my best friend I tell you, and whoever cares for her faded hair and finicking ways it isn't I. Sweeter pastures once were mine. Have I named the lady of my choice or have I not? The gay Pauline, the witty Pauline, the handsome Pauline! Ah! You admire her yourself. You wrote her a letter. I gave it to her and we read it together and laughed at it. 'Yours in Christ.' Ha-ha! We laughed at it, Ringfield."

Even in his foolish insults he paused, for an awful expression appeared for a moment on the other's face. In that moment Ringfield realized what Miss Clairville had become to him. No one can bear to hear his love traduced, and he believed that in his cups this villain, Crabbe, was lying. They faced each other and Ringfield was not the cooler nor the saner of the two.

"Pauline! Miss Clairville! What can she be to you? Hanger on of womanly footsteps," burst from him, scarcely knowing what words formed in his brain and emptied themselves upon the darkening air of the cabin. "Stealthy and gloating admirer of her beauty, even the despised companion and disloyal friend of her brother—all these you may be, but surely nothing more to her."

"What I am to her I know well enough and can tell you easily enough. She's done with me, hates and fears me, won't have anything to do with me, and yet she belongs to me and I'm not likely to forget it. And I belong to her. That's another reason why I wouldn't go after Mme. Poussette."

"You mean—that she is, that you are—oh! impossible! You mean—what do you mean? Not that you are married to her?"

Extreme agony and repulsion gave shrillness to Ringfield's voice. To have met and loved, to have coveted and dreamed of that warm, imperious yet womanly presence, and to hear this dreadful truth concerning her—if it were the truth.

"Well, you've guessed it. Yes, married to her, by heaven!" said Crabbe, and he lurched forward and fell.

Ringfield saw and heard him fall, but he was already out of the shack and speeding through the forest paths; dim arcades of larch and pine met over his head while upon the river and the great Fall were stealing long bars of bright silvery light from the level sun. Soon the silver would mellow to gold as the daily marvel of the sunset was accomplished, but Ringfield was beyond such matters now. Nature could do no more for him in this crisis than it had done for Edmund Crabbe, and the virginity, the silence and fragrance of the noble wood, brought him no solace. Yet as he sped he could not choose but breathe and the air filled his breast and then fed his mind so that presently coming upon a glade or opening in which was a large slab of grey lichened rock he lay down at length to think. And that Nature which could do nothing for him spiritually in this hour of trial conspired to comfort and restore him physically. He could not pray. His accustomed resources had failed him; instead, as it grew quite dark around, he fell asleep.



CHAPTER VIII

THE "PIC"

"How dreadful the dominion of the impure!"

The September days gave place to October ones and still Miss Clairville remained away. The tourists had departed and Ringfield could judge more accurately of the mental and moral status of the countryside. The congregation of Sunday scarcely numbered two score, but Amable Poussette and wife were always present and the rule seemed to be that any who had tired of Father Rielle came to Ringfield whether they understood him or not; poor Catholics were thus in danger of becoming even worse Methodists, and he exerted all his faculties and talents in general directions concerning conduct and character. The beautiful skies and water, the rocks and great Fall, were as impressive as before, but they no longer filled so much space in the mind of the young preacher, who now saw all things in the visible universe from the standpoint and through the jaundiced eye of the disappointed and unhappy lover. All Nature mocked him and it would go hard indeed with him should religion, too, fail him in such a juncture, but the spirit of work and priestly endeavour kept him as yet from sheer wretchedness; he prayed daily to think less of the world and more of his calling and it seemed as if the fate which brought him back to St. Ignace to love and suffer in loving would spare him further, since there was no sign of Miss Clairville's return. His preaching could not fail, because he brought to it a fine original gift and an automatic precision and certainty resulting from the excellent training of his Church, but between Sundays the time dragged. His labours among the few scattered and uneducated families of conflicting race and origin seemed unconvincing and empty, and a new shyness possessed him; he disliked hearing any mention of the Clairvilles, for Crabbe's story he had come to accept as true without a word of questioning; indeed, Miss Clairville's own words came back to him as a proof.

"Another patient of the soul," she had said. Also, she had referred to something dark and of sinister import, fatal yet compelling, which always drew her back from livelier and more congenial places, and, as he judged, from a sphere of work which paid, to the house at Lac Calvaire. That the society of her brother was the attraction, Ringfield could not admit, and what other ties or friends had she? So far as he could learn—none, and thus he read her story; growing up unprotected and motherless, without any standard to judge by, she must have accepted the attentions and fallen under the spell of a man who probably appealed to her pity and also to her intellect. Crabbe had been the only man in the neighbourhood capable of understanding her cultivated allusions; the remnants of the mixed education she had drawn from the school at Sorel and the pedantic dreary associations of the manor house. But in the contemplation of such a thing as her marriage to such a man Ringfield's fancy failed. The whole plan of creation was altered and blackened. He did not wish to know on what terms Pauline and this man now met. He tried to shut out all the images such a story conveyed, and thus he asked no questions nor did he hear any gossip, proving that the affair was old, and if once known to the country people, accepted and forgotten. Why could he not treat it in the same fashion? His faith was not shaken in the sense of belief in a Supreme Being, but he no longer lived so much for and by his faith; Nature and God were put back in the past, as he had said to Crabbe, and all his thought was for the duty of the hour and for the guidance and sustenance of others. He imagined he had lowered his own dignity by writing, on the first impulse of desperate first love, the letter which Crabbe had read with Pauline, and he strove to regain that clerical calm and judicial bearing that had suffered so violent a shock. But when six weeks of this repressed existence had sped and autumnal winds were sweeping down from the glacial north of Terrebonne, bringing cold rains and occasional snow flurries with them, he felt that he must at least call at the manor to inquire after Henry Clairville. Little at any time was heard of the latter except when "Ma'amselle" returned to her native heath, at which times the Archambaults were whipped into work and obedience by the forcible tongue and stormy temper of their mistress. Messages and parcels then passed between the domain and the village; Father Rielle made his call and the whole village and paroisse quickened with energy under Pauline's determined sway. Crabbe—this Ringfield heard from Poussette—was also sent about his business; he was no longer encouraged to play cards and drink with Henry, who fared as he might at the hands of the tyrant family swarming all over the estate.

On a chilly October day, Ringfield once again traversed the muddy road leading to Lac Calvaire, his heart sore over the revelation that had reached him, and he could not repress a painful sigh as he came in sight of the metairie. The lake was dull grey, the maples were shedding their leaves without painting them red and yellow, and the pines looked unusually sombre against a pale and cheerless sky. A pair of kingfishers were flying from side to side of the road, and a forked object sailing high up in the air proclaimed itself a bird, otherwise there was no sign of life till, approaching the front of the metairie, he observed the peacock taking its airing in a neglected garden.

Nothing had affected the pose and splendour of this radiant creature as it paraded up and down, gently swaying its lustrous and shimmering tail; the drooping fortunes of the house were not reflected in its mien or expression, and it was not until Ringfield was met by four lean cats prowling about him in evident expectation of food and petting that he descried unusual neglect in the appearance of house and garden. Three ugly blotched and snorting pigs ran out from under some bushes and followed him. He saw no smoke arising, no face at any window, heard no lively bustle in the farm-yard, no amusing and contentious chatter in Canadian French from the barns and out-buildings which sheltered the various members of the Archambault family. A curious feeling rushed over him and with it a conviction—the place was deserted. He went at once to the chain of farm buildings and examined them all; all were empty, with every sign of hurried and agitated flight rather than of orderly and complacent departure. The horses were gone, the two wagons and buggy, the buckboard. Traces of fright and apprehension were met at every step; a dirty hairbrush dropped on the ground; a clock abandoned on a bench outside the door as if too heavy; tins opened and rifled of their contents; a tub half full of soiled clothes in foul water. All these he saw, scarcely taking in their meaning, until returning to the manor he opened the front door and went in. There in the usual place he found Henry Clairville, alive, and no more. Still clad in the greasy dressing-gown and still seated in the tattered arm-chair, the unfortunate man was clearly very ill. Patches appeared on his face, which was both pallid and flushed; his neck showed red and sore and his body hung down limply over the side of the chair. Evidently he had tried to get to his bed which stood in a corner, and failed. His eyes were staring and full, yet glassy; sense and recognition alike were wanting, while the delirious accents which escaped now and then from his parched lips were altogether in French. In short, Ringfield, though unaccustomed to disease, knew that the man before him was very ill, of what did not enter his head, although there came to his mind a description of the plague in a boy's story-book. He did what he could, singlehanded, which was to snatch some warm clothing from the bed, cover up the sufferer so that draughts might not reach him, fetch water and leave it on the table near the chair and see that all animals were excluded. He then quickly sought for a secluded spot near the lake, hung his own clothes about on branches to air, and took a plunge into the clean, cool water, after which he was ready to return to St. Ignace and get assistance.

Dr. Renaud, the village practitioner, drove out at once, taking a woman with him, who, as soon as she learned she had to deal with the "Pic" ran screaming from the house, thus clearing up the mystery of the Archambaults.

"They knew," said Ringfield, "and I didn't. But I guessed something of the kind and took the only precaution open to me. I washed in pure water. And now what are we to do? Has M. Clairville no one belonging to him but his sister?"

"Not to my knowledge," said Dr. Renaud, who spoke good English, "and we do not wish her to return."

"Certainly not."

"Then I can only think of one person in the village."

"A nurse?"

"Not a professional nurse, but, as I say, the only person I know of close at hand who can do what is necessary until we get a nurse, if the man lives to require one. A male nurse would be better, but who is there here? No. I am thinking of the right one if I can only get her, if I can only get her?"

"She lives in the village?" Ringfield was curious; he thought he had met every one in the village, yet here was some paragon of female skill, virtue and strength with whom he was not acquainted.

"You must have met her. Of course you know her. I speak of Mme. Poussette. Ah! You shall smile and you shall frown, but you shall see what a miracle she can work! You shall yet envy this sick seigneur. Madame is noted for her care of the sick and dying. You are surprised? Yes?"

"I cannot help it. Anyone would be. She looks so frail, so delicate, and surely she is also what we call afflicted, peculiar. Is she a fit and sensible person for a case like this?"

"Ah! Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the doctor with a slight impatience. "These afflicted ones, these peculiar ones—they are still capable of something. Many times have I seen it; the old, old tottering grandmere, the crazy aunt, the bad-tempered husband, even the inebriate, can find, when they are guided, work which suits and maintains them. Even when the mind is shaken, if it is only a little, just a little, to care for others, a bird or a cat, or a sick person, this will keep the wits steady. A case like this moreover!" repeated Dr. Renaud, laying his finger to his nose. He was round, jolly, bow-legged, and brusque, with pronounced features overstrong for his height, merry eyes, and a red birthmark. "This is the case. We are, you and I and presently Father Rielle, responsible for M. Clairville. He must not be moved except to his bed; he is too far gone for more. The wife of Poussette is, to my knowledge, the only person we can get to sit here, administer drink and medicine, make him comfortable. Well, not even she can do that but—you comprenez. And she is capable, I know her well. She is as she is" (and the doctor made the sign of the Cross), "yet she is worth ten saner women, for she has no nerves, no fears, no imagination. Tell her what to do, place her here to do it, and she will not fail; I have seen her a dozen times in the village nursing sick women and their babies. She's as good as most doctors and better than most nurses. Yes, yes, we will get madame to him at once."

"But she may take it!"

"I think not. Her body like her mind is purged of all evil humours, mon ami. She is already more than half spirit and waits in peace for old age and quiet decay."

Ringfield got into the doctor's buggy in silent surprise.

"Besides, if she did take it, and it killed her, I cannot see any great calamity. I will tell you her history. She was well educated at a good convent near Montreal; her father was a doctor, as I am, but a far cleverer one. Yes, I lift the chapeau to that one, that old Dr. Pacquette as regards the great art and science of medicine. But as a father—ah! God pity him where he is now, according to our belief, in purgatory for many long years to come. Bien! Dr. Pacquette had lost his wife, and his daughter, a fairy thing, was allowed, even encouraged, to grow up as she pleases. They have grand friends in Montreal, her father's people still live on Rue St. Denis, great rich people; if you go there, drive out over the mountain and you shall see her old home, the Pacquette Chateau. Well, this Mme. Poussette when she is a girl (Natalie-Elmire-Alexandre, I don't give you all her name) she is very pretty, and the old doctor wish her to make a grand marriage, and he has every one up to the house and make a big time for them, and introduce her to all the young men, all the rich young men. But while she has been at that convent she has met with Amable Poussette, who was not so stout then, had a good figure and a lively tongue, and the end is, they are married at Ancien Lorette by a young priest, who might have known better. Some months after, she goes home to her father to be taken in and forgiven and nursed, for she has by this time a young infant about six weeks old. Well, you can perhaps imagine le vieux Pacquette when it is all explained. He is enraged, he drives her from his door, she passes all one long, cold night in the snow outside the chateau on Cote des Neiges hill and when she is found by the servants two days later, she is as you see her, monsieur, and the baby is dead! Never again the bright little Natalie-Elmire, but instead, a pale, faded, vacant-eyed, timid woman. Ah! If I ever meet le vieux Pacquette in the next world!"

The doctor nodded his bald head sagaciously; as for Ringfield, he was thinking that here was the opportunity for which he unconsciously had been waiting, to ask for and probably receive Miss Clairville's equally dramatic story, when he beheld another buggy coming around a corner of the road driven recklessly by one of the Archambault boys and in the buggy sat mademoiselle herself. Her attire, always so different from village modes, was true on this occasion to her theatrical calling, for to Ringfield's eye at least she appeared like some Oriental personage, caught and brought home in native garb, coupled with a very bad temper. Red and black was her habit and black and red her eyes and angry compressed lips.

The doctor stood up in his buggy and Miss Clairville in hers, and, as for a quarter of an hour the excited talk was in rapid French, Ringfield could only gather that the doctor was endeavouring to restrain her from going to see her brother. At last, turning away from Renaud with an imperious wave of the hand, she addressed herself to the minister in English.

"I understand it is to you the doctor owes his knowledge of my poor brother's sickness. I only heard of it myself last night on the stage at eleven o'clock, but I came at once—look at me in all this sinful finery, I can see you are calling it! Oh, yes, you are. Well, now that I have come and thrown up my part and my place in the company in Montreal, he will not allow me to finish my journey and go on to Clairville!"

"Certainly, you must not think of going!" cried Ringfield. "On no account must you do such a thing. Do you know what is the matter with him?"

"Oh, the 'Pic' I suppose, but I'm not afraid of it."

"Yet you have not been vaccinated, I fear!"

"Who told you that? Dr. Renaud, I suppose. Of course. No! No one is ever vaccinated here, no good Catholics at any rate. Good orthodox ones, like myself."

The doctor frowned, for he disliked the tone of bravado in which these words were uttered.

"It's no question of faith. It's a question of common sense and precaution. I have charge of the case and I will not permit you or anyone else to cross the threshold of Clairville Manor."

"You would class me then with the Archambaults! My own people, who eat and drink at my expense and who turn their backs on me in the hour of trial! Poor Henry, it will finish him, I fear, yet I and none other must be there to nurse him. Mon Dieu, but it is a shame!"

"Silly girl!" snapped Renaud. "There is no nursing for you in this case. Assuredly, Mlle. Pauline, you do not enter the house, I cannot allow it. Besides, mademoiselle, you return home too late. If you remained at Clairville longer, and had the place cleaned out, and saw to it that it was kept clean, your brother might escape these sicknesses, but poor girl, poor girl, I find it hard to blame you. Antoine! turn back and drive to the village. Mademoiselle goes now along with us."

His allusions if they pained did not soften her, but it was at Ringfield she continued to look.

"I shall have no place to stay," she said poutingly.

"It's a pity you came at all," said the doctor. "They can find you a room at Poussette's."

"I will die sooner than go to that man's house. It is a common place, not fit for me."

"Come, come, you are excited. We know Poussette's weakness for a pretty face and a fine figure, but here is our new and true friend to look after you."

"Mine is not a pretty face, Dr. Renaud, and I prefer to look after myself. You do not understand, I am out of a position by coming here. I only heard last night that Henry was ill and I came at once, expecting to be in my own home; I did not know what was the sickness he had; I have left the theatre to come here and now I have nowhere to go."

Ringfield spoke at last.

"There need be no difficulty at all about your going to Poussette's, Miss Clairville. You will oblige me by taking my room, which is the largest and best in the house. As for me, I can do with anything. If you wish I will go back to your house, sleep there in place of the servants, and keep you aware of all that goes on, of your brother's progress at least."

"Quite unnecessary," broke in the doctor testily. "I am in charge of this case, and one patient at one time is all I care for. Drive back, Antoine, to Poussette's, where you will leave ma'amselle. Drive quick, too, for I wish to see the carpenter, Alexis Gagnon, next door to M. Poussette, where I think a room can be got for Mr. Ringfield. Allons! we have wasted one good half-hour already!"

"You blame me of course for that!" said Pauline, still gazing at Ringfield, but talking to the doctor.

"Faith, I do," said the latter grimly, and she said no more.

In the Maison Pension of Alexis Gagnon, the village wag, carpenter and undertaker, Ringfield was accommodated with a room which had a balcony at the back looking on a square of Arctic garden, where amid circles and triangles of whitewashed stones the tobacco plant and some sunflowers lasted into the autumn. The news of monsieur's serious illness had now filtered through the parish, and Poussette's was full of men discussing the affair, as Pauline, looking like an outraged and defeated savage queen, passed into the hall, trailing her cheap red silken draperies up to Ringfield's room. The door to the bar was partly open; whisky was going round as supposed to be good to ward off the "Pic," and prominent in the noisy crowd was the shambling figure of Crabbe, who did not appear to notice Pauline, nor she him, and Ringfield, observing them both, could hardly bring himself to believe their extraordinary story. The brilliant if wayward actress, with her fine carriage and white hands, could never have belonged to that derelict of a man, lower even than the rough Frenchmen from the rafts and chantiers now demanding more "visky blanc". Yet in youth many things are possible, and the recital of Mme. Poussette's history seemed to prepare the way for Pauline's. Meanwhile Dr. Renaud had spoken to madame, and within an hour she was ready, and, being driven to Lac Calvaire, entered upon her labours without qualm or protest.



CHAPTER IX

PAULINE

"A conspicuous flower, Whom he had sensibility to love, Ambition to attempt and skill to win."

Thus the next day and for many days to come Ringfield met the lady of his dreams at breakfast and at dinner; her third meal was served privately to her in her own room at a quarter to seven, and he wondered why until he remembered her vocation. Though at present not acting she evidently retained the habits of the profession, and for the first few days she continued to wear the scarlet silken and spangled drapery in which she had left the theatre, modified by different wraps and scarves; then a trunk arrived and she appeared more discreetly and soberly clad. One evening it became unusually warm for the season, and stepping out on his balcony he perceived her seated on hers; he returned her gracious and encouraging salutation, wholly different from the self-conscious manner she affected at the dining-table, and he hoped now to be able to take up the acquaintance where it had been dropped. For his part he meant to ignore that miserable story of Crabbe's; he would treat her as the lady she was and the sincere, much-tried creature he thought her. Her mood just now chanced to be charming, and as she rose, again wearing the gay dress of the theatre, which showed her throat and elbows in their perfection, Ringfield, even with his slight experience, knew that she was beautiful. That same Nature which was so forced upon his notice in his new resting-place was strong within him this evening, and he could not refuse to harbour certain natural impulses of admiration and delight, especially as she was unusually animated in voice, expression and gesture.

"Do you not think it dreadful, Mr. Ringfield, that poor Mme. Poussette is alone with my brother all this time? Should I not be there too and take my share in some way? Oh, not in this dress of course; I understand your look. I have only put this on because it is cooler than any other I have with me. See—I have pinned up the train around me! I must not scandalize the country-folk! I may tell you this—the people of the village think me very peculiar. In their opinion I might mend my manners."

"Oh, their opinion!" came from Ringfield with a smile.

"Well, even here, even in St. Ignace, there is a standard, you see."

"Of manners? Yes, I suppose so. And of morality, let us hope."

"You are not certain? What have you found out, what departure from the standard in other places? Mon—Dieu! I hope not—you are thinking of Montreal and the Hotel-Champlain!"

"The chief vice I have encountered here," returned Ringfield firmly, "is drink, and as a result other things connected with it, ensuing naturally."

Miss Clairville sat down suddenly, and as she did so her draperies whorled about her till she looked like some crimson flower with her dark head for its centre. "Oh!" she said under her breath, "surely there are worse things than drink!" Some latent emotion betrayed itself in her voice; small wonder, he thought, if Crabbe were really anything to her.

"Certainly there are, but they are easier to deal with. There is my difficulty, for I know I am going to find it very difficult to make an impression, to work any lasting reform here."

"And you wish to?"

"I wish to if I can."

"I thought at first you were only a preacher."

He laughed. "Only a preacher! That conveys a great deal. You must have but a poor idea of my vocation, of the saving grace and special power of all true religion."

"Religion! But if religion can do so much, why would not Father Rielle succeed as well as you?"

"Ah! there you have a problem, I admit. Perhaps, however, he has been here too long; perhaps he is accustomed to the situation and is not so deeply impressed by it. Besides, I am not so much concerned with the habits of the rough fellows we see about here; as far as I can judge, the lumbermen, mill-hands, labourers, and people of the village are remarkably sober, considering the temptations and loneliness of the life and certain contingencies which prevail. For example, when you take two or three dozen uneducated men and isolate them for months in a lumber camp, or a mine, or send them to work on remote booms and rafts, depriving them of all family ties and Christian influences, and removing them from all standards of conduct and character, what wonder that you are confronted by this grave problem?

"But I was not thinking of such cases. I was thinking rather of a successful man like Poussette, good-hearted, respected by all who know him, and yet so weak! So weak in this respect that he neglects his business and allows himself to be led into disgrace and humiliation by——"

"I never knew Mr. Poussette drank!" exclaimed Miss Clairville hurriedly. "I am quite surprised. He is such a kind man and a friend of Henry's, and Father Rielle thinks highly of him, although he no longer attends his church."

Ringfield was now satisfied that she had broken into his speech purposely to avoid the mention of the Englishman's name, but he determined to stand his ground.

"I was about to say that while I blame Poussette for his weakness I blame still more the individual who in my opinion has led him on. Living in the neighbourhood so long you must recognize the man I mean."

Her attitude did not in the least change, nor was her gay mood impaired, but she did not reply, and the silence was a challenge to him.

"I mean the unfortunate Englishman who runs that grocery and liquor shack across the road, who calls himself a gentleman, Crabbe, the guide. You know him?"

"I have seen him."

"You know him?"

Surprised, she answered less brightly: "Yes, I know him."

"You knew him better perhaps years ago? You knew him when he was master of himself, when he first came here. He is, he tells me, an English university man, and in the course of our conversation one day he quoted from 'In Memoriam' in the intervals of a semi-drunken confession."

He now had all her attention; she tried to maintain her proud air, but something was working in her to the exclusion of all coquetry, all dissimulation.

"If you know him so well, why—why come to me for information? Of course any one living here, as you say, must have met him."

"But he has spoken to me of you as if he knew you very well, as if——" He could not continue, and even in her own uneasiness she felt a pity and tenderness for him.

"Why do you bother yourself about us—about him, I mean? Or me. I shall be going away soon, I hope; you will not remain all your life in such a little place as St. Ignace; try and forget what he has said."

"I cannot. It is with me day and night. Tell me if it is true!"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Because I must know. Because, if a lie, such a tale must be traced back from where it came—the black imagination of a depraved and incorrigible villain. Because if true, if true——" his voice failed him, and although it was now quite dark, Miss Clairville could detect great excitement in his usually calm and pleasantly austere manner.

She leant to him over the balcony.

"But I cannot tell you here! I cannot go to you; will you then come to me? There will be none upstairs at this hour in this house; they are all gone to see the boat come in at the wharf. There is her whistle now! Would you mind coming very much, Mr. Ringfield? Do you think it wrong of me to ask you?"

"Wrong, Miss Clairville?"

"Improper, I mean. Even here there are the convenances, the proprieties."

"Proprieties! When we are talking of our immortal souls and of our hopes of salvation! When truth is at stake, your character, your future perhaps—think if that had been told to anyone else!" he exclaimed half to himself.

"Then you will come?" Miss Clairville's tone was full of a radiant incredulity. She leant still farther towards him, and her eyes burned into the surrounding darkness of the night.

"I will come at once. I—if I meet anyone I can say that I am calling on you to hear about your brother."

She smiled, then frowned, in the dark. Would it be her lot to teach a good man subtlety? Should she tell the truth? She had not long to wait or think about it, for in five minutes Ringfield was knocking at her door. Nothing subtle as yet looked forth from his earnest eyes, and the grasp with which he took and held her hand was that of the pastor rather than that of the lover, but the night was dark and heavily warm, and although there were stars in the sky he did not look at them. Jupiter was just rising, giving a large mellow light like a house lamp, round and strong, and casting a shadow, but the fall of a sable lock on Miss Clairville's white neck was already more to him. They were soon seated side by side on the balcony. She had regained something other usual manner.

"You must not think that I am ungrateful for your interest in me," she said. "I believe that you are a good man, a Christian I suppose you call yourself, outside and above all creed, all ritual, the first I have ever met. No, I am not forgetting Father Rielle. He did the best he could for me, and Henry and others, but I could never follow the rules of the Romish Church, although born and bred a Catholic. With grand music one might stay in that communion, but not as our service is rendered here. And then, the confession! That is all right when you have nothing to confess, but not for me! Oh—Mr. Ringfield, why is it I cannot confess to Father Rielle, but that I can or could to you?"

"Then that story is true?"

"What was the story? What did he say?"

They talked now in whispers, and Ringfield told her in four short and to him abhorrent words. "He said—you were his wife."

Great was his relief when Pauline, starting from her seat, almost screamed aloud her agitated reply.

"No, it is not true! I never married him. That is—at least—no, I entirely deny it. I am not his wife. I am not married to him."

In his state of mind and inexperience he failed to notice the equivocal nature of this denial. He heard the impassioned negatives; he saw fear, resentment, and a sort of womanly repulsion in the frightened gesture she flung upon the air, and what he wished to hear and prayed to hear, that he heard. Crabbe then had deliberately lied perhaps, considering his condition, he had only boastfully invented.

"Thank God!" he ejaculated, standing up and taking Miss Clairville's finely formed white hand in both of his own. "Thank God!" he repeated, and, with restored confidence and renewed enthusiasm in all good works, he seized the opportunity to speak of what was in his heart. "Now you must listen to me. I believe, I honestly believe, that by His all-wise and all-knowing ruling I have been sent here to help you and be your friend. That letter I wrote to you—you received it I know, for I heard about it. I went West from a sense of duty. I was not required, and again the sense of duty brought me back to St. Ignace and—you."

"Oh, not only me! You would have come back in any case. You say it was Duty, not,—not——" Not Desire? If this were thought in some vague and unapprehended shape, it was not spoken. Ringfield gave her hand a strong and kindly pressure and let it fall.

"It was duty, yes, duty revealed to me by my Maker, to serve and obey whom is not only my duty but my whole desire and pleasure."

"You really mean what you say in telling me this? It sounds like things we read, like the little books they gave us at Sorel-en-haut. Mon Dieu! but those little books! And one big one there was, a story-book about a girl, all about a girl. A girl called Ellen, Ellen something, I have forgotten."

"That must have been 'The Wide, Wide World'. And you read that while you were at school!"

"Yes, when I was a young girl. I am afraid it didn't do me much good."

These interchanges of simple talk marked the progress of their friendship. Any fact about her past or present life, no matter how trivial, was of astonishing interest to him. And to her, the knowledge that she was already and swiftly, passionately, purely dear to a being of Ringfield's earnest mould and serious mien, so different to the other man who had come into her life, gave a sense of delicious triumph and joy. They continued to talk thus, in accents growing momentarily more tender, of many things connected with her youth and his calling, and the fact that they kept their voices down so intimately low lent additional zest and delight to the situation. Only when Ringfield alluded directly to Edmund Crabbe did she show uneasiness.

"You must give me the right to settle this affair with him," said her visitor. "We cannot risk such statements being made to people of the village, to such a man as Poussette, for example."

"Oh—Poussette!" Miss Clairville found it possible and even pleasant now to laugh. "Do you not know then all about Mr. Poussette? He is in love with me, too, or so he says. Yes, I have had a great deal of bother with him. That poor Mme. Poussette! It is not enough that one is faded and worn and has lost one's only little child, but one must also be wished dead, out of the way by one's husband. Ah—you are startled, mais c'est la belle verite! It is a good thing to be a clergyman, like you, Mr. Ringfield; you are removed from all these betises, all these foolish imaginings. You do your work and look neither to the right nor the left. How I wish I were like you! I only pray, for I do pray sometimes, that no thought of me will ever darken your young and ardent life; I only hope that no care for me will ever turn you aside from your plain duty."

"Do not, please," broke in Ringfield, pushing back his chair so loudly that she was obliged to beg more caution, "use that tone to me. Twenty-six is not so very young. I should have spoken and felt as I feel and as I speak when I was twenty. So Poussette is added to your list of admirers! Will it be Father Rielle himself next, I wonder? Oh, Miss Clairville—I was right! The theatre is no place for you. I ask you to leave it, to forsake it for ever. This your opportunity. Do not go back to it. I do not, it is true, know anything about it from actual experience, but I can gather that it presents, must present, exceptional temptations. Will you not be guided by me? Will you not take and act upon my advice?"

"But the special troubles that beset me are here, not within the theatre! If Poussette is silly, with his ridiculous attentions when he thinks his wife is not looking, if the other person, if——"

"You mean this man Crabbe?"

She inclined her head; at the mention of the name all spirit seemed to die out of her.

"If he maligns me, slanders and lies about me, that is here—here at St. Ignace, and not at the theatre. Why, then, do you expect me to return here for good? I come back too often as it is. I should leave here altogether, but that some influence, some fate, always draws me back."

"Whose influence? for with fate I will have nothing to do. God and a man's self—with these we front the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Crabbe's evil influence still! You knew him when he called himself by another name?"

"Yes, Mr. Edmund Hawtree. We, we—— I suppose you would call it a flirtation. He was very different then, as you may believe."

Jealousy leapt into Ringfield's breast, the first he had ever known, and a common retort sprang to his lips.

"I should hope so! I cannot bear to think of your having known him well under any circumstances. The man is low! Whether drunk or sober he has nothing to commend him, and I believe him to be utterly irreclaimable and lost."

"In this world perhaps. But not necessarily in the next? Do you decline, then, to continue the work of reformation?"

He winced, and upon recalling what he had said saw his error. "No, I retract that. He is human, therefore a soul to be saved, as one of God's creatures, but whether the man can be reinstated in society is a doubtful matter. You are right to defend him, and I am sad only when I grudge you those memories of him. You knew him then so very well?"

She understood the pleading tone and she endeavoured to be candid, but how explain certain things to a man of Ringfield's calibre? To another, a glance, a smile, the inflection of a word, of a syllable, and all would be clear. How was she to frame an explanation which should receive his tacit and grave but unenlightened approval? How far he could conjecture, disassociate, dissect, limit and analyse, weigh and deduct, the various progresses in a crude amalgamation people call Love, she did not know, and there lay her difficulty.

"I will tell you what I can. I was quite young when I met Mr. Hawtree, 'Crabbe,' as he is now known. It is his second name. He had been unfortunate in money affairs, I understood, and had not been trained to any kind of work. It was after I returned from Sorel that I found him here. He frequently came to visit Henry; they described themselves as gentlemen together, and I suppose they were not wise company for one another, but at first I did not take any notice. He fell in love with me, and talked a great deal to me, improving my English as he called it, and you can understand how little opportunity I had had of reading or continuing my studies. I have no talent for the menage; besides, Henry's methods had been long in practice, and I could not unchange them, at the age of nineteen! Mr. Hawtree and I were thus thrown very much together, yet one thing kept occurring which made me very miserable. I found out that he was drinking, and Henry too! Then another thing—my bad temper. Ah! how I suffered, suffered, in those days with that man, Mr. Ringfield!"

"I can well believe it."

"And he with me! Perhaps some other kind of woman would have suited him better, a timid, angelic, gentle little being who would have appealed to him more. When we quarrelled he grew like all you English, haughty and sneering—ah! when I think of it! And I changed to a fury—the Clairville temper—and gave back even more, even worse, than I got. But do not let us talk any more about it! You have discovered what I would have hidden, and for my part I get on better when I make myself forget it and him altogether."

He was silent; new and conflicting ideas clashed in his brain, while very close to him in the warm, fragrant night sat this alluring, sorely tried and lonely creature, who soon found the silence insupportable. To keep talking was safe; to be long silent impossible, since they seemed to draw nearer and nearer with every moment, and soon it would either be Ringfield's hand upon that dark lock he perceived adorning her white neck, or her head with its crown of hair stealing tenderly towards his shoulder. From such a precipitation of events they were saved by timely recollection of their position and the sounds which reached them from the road. The boat was leaving again, and they knew they had been thus together for an hour. Ringfield rose.

"There is now only the man himself to be seen and made to understand that such stories about you must cease. I shall speak to him at once, to-night perhaps, certainly to-morrow."

At this she quailed and could not control herself; she laid her hands on his arm and all the delicate art of the actress was called upon to assist her pleading.

"Oh!" she cried, "do you not see that it is better left alone? You take my word—you take my word of honour with you this night—I was never married to that man. Let it rest there. Do not speak with him about me. I could not bear it! I should be so ill, so worried, so unhappy. We scarcely see each other now; let it all be dropped and forgotten. He—he—exaggerated, forgets—— Oh! I do not know how to put it, but you must not speak of it. He did not know what he was saying, you know that yourself."

"That was what I thought at first, certainly."

They remained standing; eye on eye and her firm hands still clasping his arm. "You will promise me?"

He reflected a moment and then gave her his promise.

"On this condition, that if he speaks of it again, to my knowledge, to anyone, anywhere, I must then confront him and prove it a lie on your own showing."

Miss Clairville, only too glad to have gained her point, readily acceded, and Ringfield at once withdrew, fortunately without meeting anyone on the stairs or verandah. And now once more for him prospects were partly fair. Pauline's denial satisfied him; easily deceived on such a score, he knew nothing of intermediate stages of unlicensed and unsanctified affection. In his opinion women were either good or bad, married or unmarried, and to find this coveted one free was enough. The problem was how to manage the future; whether he would ever be in a position to marry, for it had come to that, and whether Miss Clairville would consent to leave the stage; as far as he was concerned the sooner the better.



CHAPTER X

THE PICNIC

".... The charm Of pious sentiment diffused afar And human charity and social love."

There is an idea which prevails among many thoughtful people, but which is nevertheless a good deal of a fallacy, that in the complex and congested life of cities greater opportunities for observation of character can be found than in the country. Ringfield, for example, would have combated this idea, feeling that he might have left college and taken up his work in some large Western town, preaching every Sunday to a numerous and flourishing congregation, and continued thus for several years without encountering the strongly marked types he had met within a few weeks at St. Ignace. It may be said in general of life in cities of the new world that dwellers in such populous centres are apt to undergo considerable change of character; their natural traits become altered or turned aside, dissimulation and caution are engendered by force of circumstances, while conformity to usage and imitation enter largely into daily conduct. Thus, environment becomes stronger than heredity; respectability at least is demanded, individualities disappear, and the natural man is outwardly vanquished. In the village, family failings, vices and virtues remain on exhibition, as it were, for years, known to all about. The blend here and there is recognized; individuals are often remarkable for peculiarities or defects of moral and physical construction, and heredity is strong. The simplicity of surrounding life supplies an impressive background for the elemental passions which reveal themselves in primitive or aboriginal force. Absence of standards, absence of amusements, the lack of contrast, these are a few of the causes that contribute towards the self-centred existence led by most inhabitants of rural communities. To prove this, one has but to think of a cripple, or a dwarf, or a drunken man, or a maniac; also, to revert to pleasanter images, of an unusual flower or animal, or of convincing and conspicuous personal beauty. What is a cripple in the city? He is passed by without a glance, for there are, alas! many like him. What is a dwarf? He only suggests the unnatural or unpleasant; the last circus or a fairy-book. What is a drunken man in a city? Or what a poor maniac? Officers of the police, and places of correction, physicians and nurses are at hand; the suffering and the evildoer are taken away and we know them no more.

But if we change a little part of speech and write the cripple, and proceed to think of the cripple in a village, or the dwarf, or the drunken man or the maniac, we instantly perceive how their presence must greatly colour the limited society in which they exist; how they must either amuse or disgust, arouse sympathy or create fear, as the case may be, and although a calla lily and a red-blooming cactus, a parrot or Persian kitten, are scarcely regarded as curiosities or rarities in the city, they may easily come to be regarded as such in the village.

From uninteresting and unimpersonal generalizations and aggregations such as dwarfs, cripples, lunatics, cats and parrots, we turn to the individuals of the species and behold—it is now The Cripple, The Dwarf, The Maniac, and so on, and how profoundly important the appearance and conduct, habits and dwellings of these—our companions—immediately become. We cannot get away from them, nor they from us. And the beautiful young girl! She is often safer in the city, where a kind of dove-like wisdom soon informs and protects, than in the lonely and silent places of the wilderness. The beauty that was fatally conspicuous in the village finds its rival and its level in the town.

Ringfield had certainly had his full share of ministering to the decadent and the unhappy at St. Ignace, and he was therefore very pleased one day to be called on by the Rev. Mr. Abercorn, incumbent of St Basil's at Hawthorne, the latter a small settlement, about nine miles distant, in which the English element predominated. Once a year the congregation of St. Basil's gave a picnic tea, when members of surrounding denominations met tranquilly on common ground and neutral territory. Macaulay's description of the peculiar position of the Church of England is nowhere truer than in some isolated districts like these Lower Canadian hamlets. She does, indeed, occupy a happy middle place between the unadorned wooden temples with whitewashed windows of the sects, and the large, aggressive stone churches of the Romish faith. Were her clergy as alive to the situation and the peculiar wants of the peuple gentil-homme as they ought to be, one would meet with greater numbers of adherents to the Episcopal ritual.

Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn were fully in sympathy with the countryside, and acted themselves as runners and scouts in connexion with the picnic tea, the lady seconding her husband in the most able and sagacious manner, the latter bringing to his duties all those charms of culture and presence which ministers of the Episcopal Church so often possess, even when not too richly dowered with profound theological learning or magnetic gifts of oratory. Moral and social wisdom, tact and experience of the world, often atone for intellectual shortcomings, especially in rural districts, and Ringfield was compelled to admit that he was not the only worker in the neighbourhood capable of understanding the wants of the people. Mr. Abercorn was about fifty, but as enthusiastic and energetic as a much younger man.

"I knew something of French life and character before I came out here. My wife is a native of Jersey. Our severe climate with its long, rigorous winter and short but hot summer has helped to form the national character; also the scenery. I mean that the beauty of the place, of all these fine but lonely, austere rivers and forests creates a melancholy, reflective tendency, and this makes it difficult in the matter of recreation, which last is what so many of our people require, particularly the French. I would have amusements going all the time if I could afford it, but that, of course, is not feasible; the joie de vivre is only to be arrived at modestly, and in our small way we try to make our picnic tea a success. We hope you will come over and join us on that occasion. We shall be having it later than usual this year, one reason for this being the fact that such serious illness exists in your own parish. I refer to Mr. Henry Clairville. It would not do to have much visiting between the parishes. And how is he getting on, for I suppose you hear all about him from time to time."

Ringfield, as it happened, knew very little of what was transpiring at the Manor House, but remarked that the worst was over, that the wife of Poussette was still absent from her home, and that Miss Clairville had not returned to her vocation.

"Ah," ejaculated Mr. Abercorn thoughtfully, "a peculiar family, a peculiar family indeed; but they are very fortunate in having you here. Oh, yes, I am not in the least bigoted, you know,—can't afford to be down here,—and I only hope you'll stay and make a great success of the new church. If everything goes well, we'll hold our picnic on the 1st of November, sort of Harvest Festival and Thanksgiving all in one, and either I or Mrs. Abercorn will drive over for you, as I suppose you will not be setting up a horse just yet."

On the day appointed Ringfield was sitting dully enough in his room over the carpenter's shop. Pauline was lingering on at Poussette's, partly because she had no other place to go, and partly because Ringfield was near. Their relations had not outwardly progressed since the evening on her balcony; several other meetings had taken place, but once assured that she was free, Ringfield settled to his work, preferring to put the whole episode from him for a while, until he could feel satisfied that she might be approached on the subject of the theatre. Thus their feelings were like Tennyson's wood, all in a mist of green with nothing perfect; meanwhile only a couple of planks separated them at this very instant, and, as usual, his thoughts were hovering about her at this hour, about half-past one o'clock, when he heard his name called by a younger member of the Gagnon family (a numerous one of five boys and four little girls), and descended to meet Mrs. Abercorn. This lady was taking the opportunity, in her role of auxiliary parson and general parochial assistant, of putting in a good word for Hawthorne and St. Basil's as she sat in her buggy at the door, surrounded by Poussette, Martin, and eight or ten children.

An intractable little mare pawed and shuffled in an uncertain frame of mind, apparently viewing with special disfavour the fiddling of Antoine Archambault, who had been hanging around the village ever since Pauline's return. Glancing consciously up, Ringfield thought he perceived a white hand and gleaming bracelet at the window of his old room.

"We have a rough drive before us, with a bad four miles in one place," said Mrs. Abercorn, "so we'll get away at once. You haven't been over to Hawthorne yet, Mr. Ringfield, how is that? But never mind, you'll be one of us after this afternoon at any rate. Do you play croquet?"

Looking rather astonished, Ringfield said "No," and the emphasis led Mrs. Abercorn to smile as she observed him more closely. She herself was one of those people of good birth who instinctively ask, no matter where they are placed, of everybody they meet, "Is she a lady?" "Is he a gentleman?" but who, in spite of this inherent and clannish trait, manage to make friends with the mammon of No-Family. She was literally as broad as she was high; short hair, turning grey, was fantastically curled about her clever, dark eyes; she had two hats, one for summer and one for winter, the latter a man's old seal cap; her skirts and jackets were skimp and dowdy, and her features and complexion unattractive, yet the authority and ease, the whole manner of the true lady made her a delightful companion, and she would have been equally diverting and diverted at a Royal Audience in Buckingham Palace or at a bean-feast on an Indian reserve. She displayed ornaments that were not precisely jewels, the value of which was of genealogical order; thus, she wore her grandfather's fobs and seals, her mother's bracelets of bog-oak and lava, and her brooch contained the hair of her only child, long deceased. She had had one dinner-dress for ten years of black "uncrushable grenadine," cut square, and it was quite true that she was the niece of an earl and the daughter of an admiral, and that she had eloped with the Rev. Marcus Abercorn eighteen years ago.

Ringfield had never met any one like her before, but in spite of her accent, so extremely English that in the Canadian country it was almost certain to be dubbed "affected," and in spite of a bright worldliness he found unusual in a clergyman's wife, he liked her very much and watched her manipulation of the mare—Flora Macdonald—with great interest, and not a little apprehension.

The bad four miles turned out to consist of alternate patches of ancient corduroy road, the logs exposed for a foot or so above the soil, and a long hogs-back of dyke-veined limestone, the ridges of spar and quartz cutting deep into the rock.

Mrs. Abercorn sighed eloquently for the lanes of Old England as the mare pranced, and the buggy flew over the various obstructions, bumping and swinging in a reckless manner Ringfield had never seen equalled.

"We are a little late," said his aristocratic charioteer, her hat crooked and her mouth quite as vicious as Flora's when touched up with a ragged whip, "but we'll be in time for a game of croquet before tea. We have the tea at five, because it's beginning to darken so early, and then we have a nice little show in the school-house: Marcus and I both believe in amusing the people. So you see it's not exactly a picnic, but quite a lot of things put together. You'll see presently."

And he did. Father and mother of their people, Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn had instituted a remarkable series of "events," as they say on regatta programmes—nautical, terpsichorean, athletic, musical and histrionic—grouped under the head of "games" and the large and delighted crowd drawn from several parishes rewarded their cheerful and untiring efforts. The Rector was not only all things to all men but to many women and numerous children as well, and Ringfield noted that, unlike the West, the men assembled were nearly all old men; there was a marked scarcity of boys and youths, and these old men appeared to be many years older than they had any right to appear. Many of them possessed but a couple of sound teeth apiece, others had retained the lower set more or less horribly intact, while a single tusk adorned the upper gum. Absence of regular visits to the dentist, or indeed of any visits at all, had wrought this ruin in faces also wrinkled and weather-beaten by exposure to the strenuous climate. The women showed to better advantage than the men, and the French were more prepossessing and better preserved than the English, especially in the matter of teeth, owing probably to a steady diet of onions and comparative lack of meat.

Diversity among the ladies included the fat, motherly looking ones, several of whom were spinsters; the young, too-smartly dressed daughters of farmers, possessing very little beauty, but of good height and figure; one person clothed entirely in black silk and very conscious of a new kind of watch, of gold and colours and small, pinned to her left bosom; and last, a couple of conventional Englishwomen staying at the Rectory.

It was natural that Mrs. Abercorn should desire to present to her friends and a few of the "quality" so good-looking a young man as Ringfield, and as soon as the buggy had been tied up under a grove of maples, he was led about by the energetic queen of the feast, whose attire, weird enough while driving, had now culminated in a highly rational although unusual aspect. Everything upon her partook of an unpleasing and surely unnecessary brevity; thus her figure was too short for her breadth, and her skirts too short for her figure; her jacket was too short over her hips, and her gloves too short over her wrists; her hair was too short on her neck and her veil too short over her nose. Yet the rakish hat settled, and the fobs and seals shaken out, she appeared mentally fresh and charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, and he was happy in experiencing for the first time in his life that amiable naturalness, inimitable airiness, ease and adaptability, which characterize the Anglican clergy and their method of doing things. Attenuated tennis, Lilliputian Badminton, swings, a greased pole, potato and sack races, fiddling, and dancing on a platform, for the French, all these he passed in review with Mrs. Abercorn and the English ladies, presently participating in a merry game of croquet on a rocky, uneven, impossible kind of ground. The Rev. Marcus, and the person in black silk joined in this game of croquet, the latter so exclusive that it gave Ringfield the feeling that people must have when they are chosen for a quadrille d'honneur.

Without relief or intermission the amusements held sway till about half-past four, when even the quality tired of their croquet; the day, though bright, was cold, and a bonfire on the rocks was greatly patronized by the very old and very young, while distant preparations for tea were viewed, at first with stealthy, half-reluctant admiration, and then with open restlessness. The patriarchs—toothless and wrinkled, yet not a man of them over fifty-eight—stood around in expectant silent clusters, and also in their best clothes, of which a great deal of faded red neck-tie and pepper and salt trousers seemed chiefly to strike the eye.

The tea was to be served in the large barn adjoining the church, surrounded on two sides by tall plantations of Indian corn, a rough kind known as horse corn, and not used at table. Very soon those engaged in the games fell away by twos and threes, and the rector and his wife gaily beating the covers afforded by forest and grove, all gradually converged to the meeting point outside the big doors of the barn, through which were now passing the wives and daughters of the plough, bearing coarse bedroom jugs of tea and coffee, plates of cakes, pies, and sandwiches. The people waiting thus in patient content at the doors were orderly and sober, and none ventured to enter till their rector, having unearthed even the remotest and shyest member of his flock, advanced in florid hurry and taking his wife and Ringfield with him, passed under the hanging branches of maize, asparagus, fern and crabapples which decorated the great door. The floor of the barn, although partially cleared, was still half full of straw, and flecks of it flew through the air as the people trooped in, decently awed but amused too, for the ripple of lowered laughter and pleased hum of voices resounded throughout the building. The walls, draped with flags and coloured curtains, held sheaves of grasses and several lamps in brackets at the sides, and the food, good, plain, with plenty of it, adorned the two long tables that ran down the middle. Ringfield, at the head of a table, was comparing the scene with some Harvest Homes of his youth, and wondering who would start the Doxology, when he heard the rector say, standing a long way off at the end of the other table:—