"We have the Rev. Mr. Ringfield of St. Ignace with us this afternoon, and I have no doubt that he is already as anxious as the rest of you for a share of the good things we see here before us, so I am going to ask him to say—ah—Grace, then we can fall to. Mr. Ringfield, will you be kind enough to ask the blessing?"

There was a pause, not because Ringfield was unready on these occasions nor because of any fear lest his special kind of intercessory gastronomic prayer might fail to carry conviction with it, but on account of the intrusion of two belated arrivals down by the door. He could not distinguish very clearly, but there seemed to be some one either invalided or very young in a basket-chair, wheeled in by a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three, who entering brusquely, on a run, and laughing, was silenced, and the chair and its occupant pushed back against the wall. This slight but untimely interruption over, Ringfield gazed solemnly around—it was already growing a little dim in the barn—and spoke as follows, with head thrown back, and closed eyes:—

"O Lord, the giver of all good things, who sendest seed-time and harvest, rain and sun on the fruits of the earth and crownest the year with fatness, look down on us at this time and bless us." At this point the Anglicans present sat down under the impression that the "grace" was over. They rose again in confusion as Ringfield continued:—

"We thank Thee for these, Thy temporal blessings vouchsafed unto us as a people. We have Thy pledge in the book of Thy Holy Word, that while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not fail. We thank Thee for the fields white with harvest. We thank Thee for our great and beautiful country; for its beneficent laws, its opportunities, its great and unequalled privileges, and we pray for our rulers, for all in authority, for all engaged in the ministry of whatever denomination, for the Queen and the Royal Family. We pray for him whose duty it is to go in and out before this assembly; grant him wisdom and spiritual strength; bless also the partner of his life work, and may their united labours prevail and resound to Thy glory and the honour of Thy name, and while we remember at this time to thank Thee with full hearts for these temporal gifts, let us be swift to remember also Thy choicer, greater, holier gift of Free Salvation; Mercy, Pardon, Peace, and glorious relief from sin and its thraldom—these may be ours for the asking. O Lord, if any sinner lurk among us, if any poor sinner be at this board to-night, search him, O Lord, and purge his mortal body, try it with Thy true refiner's fire. As our snows are pure, so let us be pure. As our waters are deep yet clear, let our minds be clear of evil, and rid of all offence; and for all who by reason of sin, or pain, or sickness, or any other infirmity either of body or of mind cannot be with us at this time, we pray that Thou wilt comfort, uplift, forgive and relieve them. All—for Christ's sake—Amen."



CHAPTER XI

"ANGEEL!"

"Like a sheep enthralled 'Mid thorns and brambles."

On the conclusion of this address, which was Ringfield's idea of a "grace" and which was modelled on the Methodist formula customary on such occasions, the people, whose appetites had been held over-long in check, took their seats with expressions of relief and in some cases with audible grunts and whispers of annoyance. The truth was, Ringfield had exhibited a want of tact in expatiating in an eloquent prayer on things better left alone, from the village point of view. It was bad enough to occupy so much time when already it was darkening and soon the lamps would have to be lighted; it was bad enough to pray in public for the rector and his wife; it was entirely inexcusable to hint at the presence of a sinner in their midst, at the very board now covered with the home-made dainties cooked and sent in by the ladies of Hawthorne. In itself perhaps the prayer, though trite and redundant (Ringfield was not in his best vein, no longer single-minded), was eloquent and pointed, and the reference to the snows and rivers of the country extremely poetic and suggestive, yet it was not in accordance with the best taste, although prompted by the best feeling. The rector and his wife, ignoring their own sentiments, made haste to smooth away the little difficulty that had thus unexpectedly arisen, and in a few minutes all was in a pleasant clatter and babble with the pouring of tea, cutting of huge three-decker cakes, and passing of large, solid plates holding pyramids of equally large and solid sandwiches. Ringfield, devoting himself to the English visitors and the person in black silk, who was the widow of a deceased lumber king correctly reputed to have left an enormous fortune, was by the nature of things the last to perceive that he had wounded the delicate sensibilities of the company, and therefore he made a good meal, unconscious of the comments lower down his table and also around the rector.

"It's always the way with them Methodists," said one speaker in a careful undertone, a venerable body of fifty or so, with four teeth left in his head, bent, bald and wrinkled. "They pride themselves on what they call 'extem-pore' speaking." He gave the word only three syllables of course. "Why, it's mostly out of the Prayer Book anyway! He said 'any other infirmity,' did you notice? And we say, 'any other adversity,' don't we? Well, where's the difference?"

"The tairms are not precisely in the nature of synonyms," remarked the schoolmaster, a Scotchman of sandy and freckled appearance, who was cutting a sandwich into small pieces with his penknife and then frugally conveying them to his mouth with the aid of the same useful implement. "But in a sairtain sense ye can call them synonyms."

"It's out of course and all irregular like to pray for the Queen and the Royal Family on a day like this. 'Twould be best keep that for Sundays where it belongs," said the wife of the ancient who had spoken first.

"What can ye expect, ma'am, when they come to it without their notes? Stands to reason, if any man's going to preach earnest, earnest, mind you, he'll require some notes or heads jotted down, clear and easy to be got at, before him." This was the opinion of another elderly man, but of a fat and comfortable if blustering variety, who had come out from the English provinces thirty years before as cook with a regiment, and was now the Hawthorne butcher and general store-keeper, also accounted a rich man.

"But that's not the point," he went on with husky and stertorous fervour. "The point is not whether what he said was well said or ill said; the point is, he should never have spoke them words at all. Point? To almost point the finger at us sitting around this hospitable board declaring we were all sinners! So we are, all of us. The Litany says so, don't it? Don't it say, 'miserable sinners'?"

"It does, it does," murmured a sympathetic female engaged in feeding two out of eleven kinds of cake to a child on her lap.

"And the rector leaves it there, where it ought to be left. In my opinion, ma'am, it don't do no good to pray nor preach too direct. It's casting a stone, that's what it is, it's casting a stone."

"Perhaps he was nervous, poor young man, at seeing so many people," said the young mother of the child who was crumbling the cake all over its mouth and fingers and dress without swallowing any, having previously been regaled with maple sugar and molasses candy outside, and consequently not feeling very hungry. "Perhaps he has heard about Angeel."

The latter was the common pronunciation of Angele, the name of the little girl in the basket-chair who was engaged like the rest in eating and drinking in company with her nurse not far from Mr. Abercorn.

At the word "Angeel" several warning coughs around her, winks, nudges and a kick under the table, made the young woman so flurried that she slapped the child for not eating properly, and the child immediately beginning to cry, a diversion was created, but not before Ringfield had overheard a few remarks touching his recent prayer, not exactly flattering to his self-esteem. Soon the conversation lapsed as the piles of cake, custard and pumpkin pies and jugs of tea were depleted; and Mr. Abercorn, upon whom the quiet and gathering gloom had a depressing effect, jumped up and asked for volunteers to assist in lighting the lamps.

"We usually get through without artificial aid to our eyes and our mouths, but that is when the picnic tea is held in October. We are at least a fortnight late this year. We shall want the tall men for this—Jacobs, Enderby, Anselme—you take these three lamps on the other side while I find somebody to help me with mine."

"On the score of height, at least," said Ringfield pleasantly, leaving his seat and striding down the centre of the barn, "I can offer my services. Which are the ones to be lighted? These two and the one just over our heads?"

"Very good of you, I'm sure," responded the rector briefly. "They are quite steady on their brackets, I suppose, men? Now shut those doors; we don't want any draught. Be careful with the matches, everybody!"

The others had got to work first, and along their side of the wall, Anselme, Jacobs, and Enderby, the butcher, slowly lit their three lamps, when, Ringfield, busy over a refractory wick and just in the act of applying a match, in turning his head, saw directly beneath him the basket-chair and its occupant as well as the young woman in charge of it.

The shock of perceiving what was in reality more of a Thing than a person, being an unfortunate child of about nine years of age, otherwise well formed, but with a weak and hanging head enlarged very much beyond its normal size and yet with a pair of shrewd eyes and a smiling mouth, told upon his nerves. He started, leant too heavily on the bracket, and in a second the lighted lamp, as yet without a chimney, fell on the floor.

In another second the straw and decorations were all in a blaze, the barn full of smoke and commotion; and he was conscious only of himself and the rector wildly stamping, grovelling, and pushing with might and main for what seemed hours of fear and suspense. The men tore the great doors open; there were, happily, no corridors to tread, no stairs to descend; the women and children first, and then their husbands and fathers, rushed out, mostly uninjured, into the cool twilight air, and when Ringfield came to himself he found that in some way he too was outside the barn, holding on to the basket-chair, nearly hysterical from the fright he had sustained, but still endeavouring to calm the dreadful child and its nurse, both of whom were shrieking wildly.

"Angeel! Angeel!" cried the girl, and then in French: "Oh, what would they say to me if anything happened to you! It doesn't matter about me, only you, Angeel, only you!"

Ringfield looked around, dazed. The comfort, jollity, and abandon of the picnic tea were things of the past. The barn had been saved and the fire was out, but the groups of excited, tearful women and coatless, dishevelled men, the rector with one hand badly burnt, Mrs. Abercorn loudly deploring the loss of her hat and an antique bracelet—all was forlorn, changed, miserable! And all this was his fault, his doing, the result of his carelessness! He could scarcely frame the words with which to deeply lament the unfortunate accident, but his very genuine contrition softened the rector's heart even while he felt some resentment at the sudden fatality which had spoiled the day and in his own case was destined to leave a very unpleasant remembrance.

"The question is," said Mr. Abercorn, talking to Enderby and the schoolmaster, "whether we are to go on with the rest of the programme. I'm the only one, happy to say, at all injured, and already the pain is better. Plunge in, men, and get out all the burnt stuff and tidy the tables. It might have been worse; thank God, none were hurt! And we mustn't let Mr. Ringfield feel badly about it. The bracket was weak, I'm sure it was weak, and he's a stranger among us. What are you saying, Enderby? A judgment on him? Nonsense. I thought you had more sense. Ask him to remain for the evening and everything shall go on as we intended to have it."

But Ringfield did not care to stay. Everything was against him; for the first time in his life he felt himself a failure,—in the way. How had he come to be so careless? Well he knew, for the face of the dreadful child, in spite of its deformity, evinced a strong, strong, insistent resemblance to a face he knew. The dark hair and eyes, the shape of the forehead, the way the hair grew on the forehead—where had he seen it all reproduced not so very long ago? Miss Clairville's expression, colouring, and animated play of gesture lived again in this mysterious child.

About seven o'clock, just as Mrs. Abercorn's "nice little show" was beginning, he took his way home. The path lay along the darkest road he had ever seen; there was neither moon nor stars, and the blackness of a country road bordered by dense forests can only be understood by those who have travelled at such a time, and for the nine miles that he plodded stupidly along—for he declined to wait to be driven—given up to sombre and sinister thoughts, he was a most unhappy man.



CHAPTER XII

THE HEART OF POUSSETTE

"Yet is the creature rational—endowed With foresight, hears too, every Sabbath day, The Christian promise with attentive ear, Nor disbelieves the tidings which he hears, ..."

About a week later, Ringfield was descending the hilly road behind Poussette's at four o'clock in the afternoon, when he discerned a new arrival at the wharf, and as the tourist season was over, the boat only making a few occasional trips, he was curious concerning the lady who, showily if neither correctly nor expensively attired, was looking about her in disappointment and consternation. Poussette himself hurried out in his character of host; his manner was more than usually warm and familiar as he took her bag and umbrella, and Ringfield soon learnt that she was Miss Sadie Cordova from Montreal, although originally from New York, a member of the Theatre of Novelties, who had come to pay Miss Clairville a visit. This new acquisition to St. Ignace society was more consistently lively than Pauline, not being troubled with moods, and she brightened the place up very considerably in various directions; she did not share Pauline's room, for Poussette gallantly led her to the apartment vacated by Mme. Poussette, but the two friends were constantly together, and Ringfield at first rejoiced in the advent of the gay Cordova, as it intimated a sensible enjoyment of life on Pauline's part in place of moping and brooding, and as it also appeared to keep Edmund Crabbe off the premises. But these two good ends were gained at the expense of a third, for the constant and animated, even tender attentions of the host were altogether too obvious, although at first no complaint could be made, since so much feminine society served to keep Poussette also steady and sober. Still, card-playing in the mornings, noisy operatic music in the afternoons (there was no piano, only an old American organ, in the house) and coquettish scufflings, dancing, and conscious giggling tete-a-tetes in the hall every long, lamp-lit evening soon became wearisome, and Ringfield, made vaguely uneasy, took on himself to reprove Poussette.

The place was the bar—always the most attractive spot in the house, for the Indian guide, a sober, worthy man, kept it absolutely clean and tidy, and there were comfortable habitant chairs and a wide hearth for logs. These were burning brightly now, as the first November snows were falling, and while Ringfield expostulated with Poussette, the latter spread out his fat hands to the blaze. Upon the little finger of the left hand sat a square seal ring of pale cornelian, and as Ringfield looked he clearly saw the capital letter "C" picked out in red upon the white. New and hateful pangs, suspicions, jealousies, assailed him; he was sure that this must be Pauline's ring, although he had never noticed her wearing it, and the thoughts thereby engendered did not tend to make him listen calmly to Poussette's line of defence. So far from being offended at the clerical interest in his affairs, the Frenchman was immensely flattered and encouraged to speak out.

"And are you quite sure," said Ringfield in conclusion, "are you perfectly certain that Miss Cordova knows you are a married man? In my opinion there is small harm in the lady! the poor, thoughtless creature is too much occupied with her silly clothes and music and trivial passing of the time to work lasting mischief, but I remember that she follows a godless calling—she is an actress and has been one longer than Miss Clairville. You must be careful. It is time Mme. Poussette was relieved from her charge and came home."

"But how—come home? Come at this place again? Bigosh—but that will not do, Mr. Ringfield—at all, sir! Beeg fuss, sure—my wife come at this place so soon after leave nurse Henry Clairville! Dr. Renaud will tell you that. No, sir,—Madame is come no more on me, on St. Ignace at all. When she leave me, go nurse seeck man down with the 'Pic,' she is no more for me. Voyez—m'sieu, I am tired of my wife. I shall try get a divorce."

Ringfield was astounded. "You, Poussette! A divorce! From that poor, unhappy woman who has done you no harm, and will have nothing to live upon? How can you do such a thing? Why, you must not let your mind dwell on such a thing for an instant! I do not believe in divorce, or at least only in rare and exceptional cases, and yours is not one of these. You understand me—your wife may be delicate, even afflicted, but no man puts his wife away for these reasons. All the more you must cherish her, comfort her, keep her by you. If she grew worse you would be justified in putting her, as we say, under restraint, or in the care of those best fitted to look after her, but even then you would remain her husband. That is the unwritten law of our and of all true religion."

Poussette spat into the fire and considered. Father Rielle had told him this in almost the same words many times over; he had left the Catholic communion for that reason, and had hoped for better things from the young minister.

"Don't Methodists divorce?" said this nineteenth-century rural Henry the Eighth.

Ringfield moved uneasily in his chair. "They may—they can—they do—but as I have told you, the causes must be exceptional ones. Bitter tragedy—abhorrent false conduct, you understand me?"

The other nodded. "My wife—nothing like that the matter with her. All the contree, all the reever know Mme. Natalie Poussette—good woman, sure. No—but see now, m'sieu, now I am talking, and I tell you my trouble. I'm not so bad garcon, you know; kind of fond of drink now and then—I 'pologize, 'pologize, m'sieu, for you see me a leetle bit dhrunk. Now—understand. I'm by nature a most loving kind of man, and I'm fond of leetle children. Yes, sir, bigosh, excusez a leetle bit of swear—but that is my nature, that is me, and I would like, sir, some leetle babee of my own. I make quite a bit of monee, m'sieu, with the 'otel and the mill, and a leetle bet and a leetle horses. Bien—what you say? Very well. What must I do with this monee—while I live, and if I die? 'Give it to the Church,' Father Rielle, he say. 'No, sir,' I say!"

And Poussette jammed a couple of smouldering logs with his heel; they instantly knit together and sent out a big crackling shower of sparks that caused both men to retire their chairs farther from the hearth.

A suspicion crossed Ringfield's mind. "Did you send your wife to nurse Henry Clairville or did she go of her own accord?"

"Certainement—my wife go herself. Dr. Renaud—come for her. She will not take the 'pic'. She will take nothing. She will nevaire die, that woman!"

The remark was saved from being distasteful to the listener by the fact that it was given with a melancholy despairing gesture, which to a less serious person than Ringfield might have been amusing. But his sense of humour, originally meagre, was not developing at St. Ignace as fast as it might, and he saw nothing humorous in this view of madame's immunity from disease. Before he could frame a reply, Poussette went on:—

"So you see, I like you, Mr. Ringfield, and I'm going to pay you good monee, and I believe you—good Christian man, and I want you to help me get a divorce. Mme. Poussette (you can say like this to the Government)—Mme. Natalie Poussette, poor woman—she is so delicate, so fonny, so—so ill, she cannot have any leetle babee; no leetle children play round their fader—that's me, Amable Poussette, beeg man, rich man, good Methodist, built a fine church on top of the Fall. So this Mister Poussette after many years live with his wife, after long time he wants to marry another woman and have plenty small babee, play round in the summertime (here Poussette hushed his voice) under the beeg trees, and in the water, learn to swim in the reever, splash like old duck, old feesh! Many a time I feel like go on the dhrunk. Well sir, nice, bright, young wife, sing, act, dance—we'd have beeg tam together, and I'd dhrink nothing but tea, sure! Go to Morreall, buy tiquette on the theatre, ride on the street car, make transfer to Hochelaga Park, get out, have nice glass beer—just one, m'sieu—go on the boutiques, buy nice bonnett, eh? I have monee to do like that, but [with the national shrug] I have no wife. I am tole there is everything very fonny there all year round, but me—I have only been there two, three tam; no good go alone, meet bad company, get on the dhrunk then, sure. Bigosh—excusez, Mr. Ringfield, there's nothing like young, handsome wife and plenty babee keep their father straight. Eh? So I tell you what I want to do. I will be for selling this place; get three thousand dollar for it; go to Morreall every winter; perhaps go on that Hotel Champlain or some other nice maison pension and have big tam—what do you say? That's no bad thing—" Poussette was very earnest here—"for me—to wish young wife, clever wife, and leetle babee play round! Before I have the hairs gray, or lose what I have. Regardez un peu, m'sieu!"

And Ringfield could not refuse to examine the fine head of black hair thrust towards him. He was touched in spite of clerical scruples.

"No, no, certainly not a bad thing," he said gently, "not at all an unnatural thing. I think I understand, Poussette, I can see——" and Ringfield seemed to feel something in his throat, at any rate he coughed and hesitated. "I can see that your position has its difficulties and its—its trials. But, Poussette, we all have those. We all have to deny ourselves in some way, in some unexpected quarter. We cannot always have what we want, that is, in fact, at the root of all religious feeling, and, if I am not mistaken, at the root of all religious belief as well. If the great Creator of the universe has had to suffer and deny Himself, as we know, in the past, has He not still to suffer as He looks on at the wickedness and sinful passions of the sons of men? The universe is not absolutely happy, perfect—would that it were! And so this law of suffering runs through everything and assails everybody. None can hope to escape. We—ministers of the Gospel—we do not question this; we recognize that it is so, and all we can do is to impress it upon you who listen to us. I have tried to do this; I have preached upon this—that to each individual man, woman and child, there comes—there must and will come a time, when material success, health, wealth and happiness are non-important, and when moral issues, when duty, character and conduct are the great essential facts of life to be met and grappled with. You—Poussette—have been no exception to this rule in the past—you know the habit of life to which I refer—and now here is this new trial, this new difficulty about your wife. Even were I able to do anything for you—because it is a lawyer, a notary you require, not a minister—I could have nothing to do with your marrying again. That—I must tell you plainly—is out of the question. It is not good for man—some men—to live alone; my Church, my Bible tell me this, and may be I am learning to know it from experience of such cases as yours; but once married, and married to one in whom there is no fault, you must not seek to lightly undo what God and the sacraments of the Church in which you were united have wrought. I fear, Poussette, that in leaving Father Rielle and coming to me, you were not acting honestly, openly."

Poussette, in admiration of his hero's beautiful pastoral diction, felt no resentment and exhibited no temper. "No fault!" he exclaimed. "Ah, but there—that is not so, Mr. Ringfield. Look, sir, look now, there is fault enough—beeg fault—what I have said. That is enough, and I have plenty monee to make it more than enough."

"Money—money!" Ringfield exclaimed in his turn, "The root of many kinds of evil. How much money have you, my friend? You are accounted rich, as it goes in St. Ignace, at Bois Clair, in Hawthorne, but in Quebec, in Three Rivers, in Montreal—no! You would soon find the difference. The rich man of the country might easily become the poor man of the town; living is expensive there—you might find your business here—I mean the mill—not pay so well with you absent; in short, Poussette, you would be foolish to change your way of life! It is not worth your while to leave St. Ignace, but I know who ought to go, to be sent to the right about pretty quickly too, and that is—this man, Edmund Crabbe. What do you think of helping me to get him away? He's a public nuisance in spite of his education, and we should all do better without him."

Ringfield was always torn by painful, shameful jealousy when he thought of the Englishman, and his entire nature appeared to change. He could not have called him "Hawtree" or "Mr." for his life; that savoured of gentility and the fervid past when the man was perhaps a picturesque figure, quoting the English classics in the guise of an unfortunate exile. Besides, if he fathomed Poussette's feelings correctly, the latter in his own jealousy of Crabbe might be found a powerful ally. The plain truth was—three men wanted the same woman; and vaguely, it seemed to Ringfield as if he—the worthiest—had chief right to her; he feared not Poussette, the married and the marred, the uneducated, the inferior one of her own race, but he still feared the perversely cultured, doubtlessly gifted, decadent "Oxford man," the social superior of every one in the village.

Poussette again reflected. Any latent jealousy he had entertained of the minister tended to disappear under the fire of these inquisitorial interviews, and Ringfield might always be credited with having fine command over his features.

"Ah, well, m'sieu," said the Frenchman, sagaciously nodding, "Crabbe is no harm. You get me my divorce; let me marry Ma'amselle Pauline, live with her at the beeg house, and I'll promise—parole d'honneur, m'sieu—to see no more that man."

"The Manor House! It will be a long time before any one can live there, I should think!" said Ringfield impatiently, concealing the spasm of tortured pride that passed over him as he heard Poussette's tactics defined. "And what if she will not marry you? Mlle. Clairville is wedded to the theatre, she tells me, and although of that I cannot approve, it would not be so bad as marrying a divorced person."

"But we are great friends, sir! Many a tam I have kept that house, many, many months, m'sieu, supply well with food—the meat and the dhrink, the chickenne and the wine. Her brother is fou—mad, he has not one cent monee. How then shall mademoiselle fare? I am good tenant of her brother, the Sieur, Seigneur of St. Ignace, and I send my peep there with good things to eat; he will tell you, sir, of the old tam and all about the corvee when every one in the paroisse do same thing; one man feesh, another man beeg chickenne or turkey, another patackes, another flour from the mill. Why, sir, if it was not that I, Amable Poussette, was good friend there, I don't know, I don't know, m'sieu, how they get along 'tall! Those Archambault—all bad peep—all bad together; the old woman, the old man, the girl, the boy—all the same, sure."

"Who pays them?—You?"

"No, m'sieu; do better things with my monee."

"But they don't believe in the corvee, surely?"

"It is like this." And Poussette tapped the other's knee with his fat fingers, thereby displaying the cornelian ring to much advantage, and Ringfield saw with satisfaction that on top of the large "C" was cut a little "S". Had the relations between Poussette and Miss Cordova so quickly progressed and of what nature were they? The eye of the Frenchman gave a comprehensive wink. "It is all right, Mr. Ringfield, all right, sir, Mees Cordova—she put the ring on my finger herself; she was just fooling last night and I like to be good friends with her; then she speak for me to Mees Clairville, and so—vous comprenez, sir. But no—I pay no money to these Archambault. It is like this. There have been Clairville many years at St. Ignace; there have also been Archambault too a long tam. They say once one was married with another, but I do not know; I would not ask M'sieu Clairville, and I would not ask Ma'amselle Pauline. This is a long tam ago, I only speak of what I hear. I know this, m'sieu—it is not a nice place, not a nice life for a lady like Mees Clairville. Have you not seen her on the theatre? You would like to see her at that?"

"No, decidedly not. I have never seen a play. I do not approve of the life she leads, and trust that when her brother is better she will not return to her vocation."

"But how—she must make some leetle monee of her own, and it is for why she goes on the theatre. I have seen her act and sing."

"Can she sing?"

"Ah, you shall hear. She will sing for me, m'sieu, and bigosh—excusez, Mr. Ringfield—I'll get her sing to-night. And if I do that, will you, sir, do one great thing for me?"

Ringfield smiled. "I won't promise, Poussette. You're a deeper character than I thought you were. At any rate, I'll do nothing about a divorce—make sure of that, man!"

Poussette, with large, noble gestures, waved the divorce away.

"I say nothing. I will do nothing. But if you will be so kind, sir, as to speak of me to Mees Clairville, should my wife, Mme. Natalie—die! Tell her, sir, how I am good man, au fond, sir, by my nature; how I love the leetle babee, plenty small babee; how I am kind, jolly man, by my nature, sir; how I would like to marry with her, give her good tam. You tell her this, Mr. Ringfield, for me, and make me your best friend, sure?"

Half-laughing, half-shocked, and for the moment forgetting his own views and dreams concerning her, Ringfield acceded to the unusual request.

"And remember, m'sieu—tell her I go no more on the dhrunk after I marry with her—no, sir, go no more 'tall. If we live in Morreall, tell her I'll go no more on that Hotel Champlain neither; a friend of mine, Napoleon Legendre, he has a temperance 'otel in Craig Street; I go there, sir, and never touch even one glass of beer. Tell her that. And tell her I am for selling this place, and p'raps buy Clairville Chateau. Tell her——"

"Enough, enough, my good Poussette!" cried Ringfield, jumping up as he heard feminine voices nearing their retreat. "Your virtuous resolutions do you credit, and may you be enabled to perform and carry them through—if not to the letter at least in the spirit."

"And you don't think me bad, low kind of garcon, eh?"

"I do not, indeed."

"Say"—and Poussette's hand instinctively moved towards the counter—"you will dhrink a leetle glass beer, just one, sir, on that with me?"

"Poussette!"

With an injured expression, and a rapidity amazing for so fat a man, Poussette slipped round behind the counter and brought out two bottles of ginger ale; in a twinkling the tall tumblers were ready and he offered one to Ringfield with a deep and exaggerated bow.

"Ah—I see. I beg your pardon, Poussette. I thought you meant the other kind. Of course I will drink with you and with pleasure."

The glasses were placed side by side, each taking one and looking intently at one another. In that moment all selfishness died out of Ringfield; he felt the importance of the opportunity.

"Will you shake hands first, Poussette?"

"Mais oui, m'sieu! Certainement, but wait, sir, one moment!"

With repeated rubbings on the clean roller-towel behind him, turning back of cuffs and a general straightening of the person and freshening of the attire, the Frenchman at length proffered his fat hand, and Ringfield clasped it with a firm, bold grasp; his muscles were twice as strong as those of the Frenchman, for while the one had been chiefly employed in the kitchen, at a rude desk, and had rusted in long loafing and idling intervals, the other had maintained his rowing and paddling and his interest in other athletic pursuits; even a half-dozen lessons in boxing had he laid to his credit.

"Now I've got you," said he, smiling, as the fat hand lay tightly imprisoned in the lean one, "and I'm not going to let you go till you make me a promise. See here—Poussette—promise me now—not to touch a drop of liquor again for a whole year. We'll let it go at that; I won't say anything about beer. By degrees, man, we'll fight the Devil and all his works. By degrees, and by prayer, and by every argument in favour of right living that I can bring before you—we'll fight this thing out together, you and I. Don't wait for some hysterical occasion, but do your plain duty now, while I hold your hand in mine. If you should marry again, Poussette, and should ever have those little children playing about you—what then? You'd want to lead a straight life then—and before, I know you would. Come—make me the promise now—and if you break it, as you may do, come to me and tell me of it; make it a second time and so—each interval may be longer, do you see—if you 'take the pledge' as it is called, it is likely to be in public, and your friends and fellow-drinkers hear about it, and ridicule you and laugh at the idea, and so you are driven to drink again. What do you say, Poussette?"

"It is then—just between you and me, sir?"

"That's the idea. Of course I shall say nothing about it to a third person. Come—you promise!"

Poussette seemed uneasy.

"But—m'sieu—just you and me? That seems, sir, just same thing as go confess to Father Rielle. Beg pardon, Mr. Ringfield, but bigosh, sir—that is same sure as go on the confession."

Ringfield saw the point.

"I understand, Poussette. You are right. We must not be ashamed of trying to be good. Nothing done in the corner, eh? Well, then, you tell—anybody you like."

"The new lady—Mees Cordova! Will that be all right, sir?"

"Why Miss Cordova? Oh, well—never mind! So long as I've got your word, Poussette, the word of an honest man, eh?"

"I'll thry, sir."

"That's good. That's all right. You're a man, Poussette."

The Frenchman wiped the tumblers thoughtfully and gazed intently into space. Perhaps he saw there the future small Poussettes playing out of doors; perhaps too, he saw the faded, weary woman who bore his name, still watching the sick man in the old manor house.

"You see, m'sieu," he said impressively, "if Mme. Poussette was to come right, if she come again on me here, feex up things around the house, be well and jolly, I would not send her away, I would not thry get this divorce. Fonny things happens—but I don't know about my wife. Dr. Renaud think she will always be the same. It is hard for me, Mr. Ringfield, sir—me, jolly kind of man—have a wife go like silly person all over the place, sing and walk by herself, make up songs, fonny chansons. Ah, you don't know how I have hard tam with that one! But, I'll wait till I see how she is in two, three weeks; the doctor—he say Henry Clairville almost well now."

"And it is understood you will leave Miss Clairville alone—and Miss Cordova. Remember, Poussette, you have engaged me to preach in your church and to minister here in this parish. I must refuse to do either if you offend against common decency and morality. Besides—Miss Clairville will never, I am positive, listen to you. You must see as well as I do, her pride in her family connexions, however worthless these are to-day."

"Bien," said Poussette jauntily, "if not Mees Clairville, then Mees Cordova. That is for why I wear her ring. I can persuade, sir—bigosh, excusez m'sieu, I can persuade!"

"So it seems," said the other drily, and would have continued his lecture had not the two ladies, who had been in the hall laughing and smiling around the bar door, now appeared boldly on the scene, and Ringfield made his escape, not before he had promised to look in that evening during an improvised concert at which Miss Sadie Cordova would dance, and Miss Clairville act and sing.



CHAPTER XIII

A SICK SEIGNEUR

"He sits alone On stormy waters in a little boat That holds but him and can contain no more!"

Meanwhile the house of Clairville was undergoing drastic changes at the hands of Mme. Poussette. The patient, propped up in his ancient and tattered bed, was now strong enough to look at books; many hours he passed in this way while madame roamed over the doleful house, setting in order and cleaning as well as she could. Her strength, patience and endurance were remarkable; she could dust, sweep, scrub, hammer, all day long and never experience fatigue; walls were rubbed down, windows opened and washed, furniture drawn forth from dusty armoires and cupboards raked out—and still the work went on, each day bringing to light some dark, unfamiliar nook, some unexplored room or closet. At Poussette's she never worked at all; sensitiveness to strangers and fear of the servants mastered her; at Clairville she worked incessantly, and when her nursing was done, entered upon her labours in this Augean house with steady passionless activity.

Clairville was badly pitted and every remnant of good looks had left him, yet on the first day that he could put his feet to the floor he would have sent madame into the front room, saying:—

"Bring me the suit of clothes you will see hanging on a nail in the wall".

She stared at him, knowing his weakness of body better than he knew it himself.

"What for, m'sieu?"

"What for? What are clothes for, idiot of a woman! To put on, to wear. I shall habit myself as a gentleman. Faith—it is time, too!"

"But, m'sieu——!"

"Bring me that suit, I say."

Madame hesitated, because she had removed the suit in question a week before to an old trunk in an empty room—she was not very clear which one—and it would take her some minutes to find it.

"If m'sieu will get back into his bed——"

"I will do nothing so foolish. I was thinking of getting up. I am up and should be holding a levee— How do you do, my Lord Marquis?—pray enter. M. le Chevalier de Repentigny; open there for my friend, the Intendant! Gentlemen, I greet you. You perceive me at my toilet—but these lackeys are too slow! Fetch me my clothes, I say! Ah—misery! I cannot stand! I cannot—cannot even sit! Help me to bed, you woman there—help me, quick!"

And madame, instead of running for the suit of Court clothes, managed to lay Henry Clairville down again before he fainted. However, the next day he was slightly stronger and the next and the next, so that on the fifth day he was nearly as well as ever, and again demanding the suit, she went to the room upstairs and hunted for it. Its colour was a faded claret, and lacings of dingy silver appeared on the front and round the stiffened skirt that stood out from the waist—a kind of cut to make even a meagre man look well among his fellows; a three-cornered hat went with it, and into this relic of strenuous days, madame soon assisted her charge.

"How does it fit?" he inquired anxiously

"It is without doubt large at present for m'sieu, but m'sieu has been ill. After a while it will fit better."

"And how do you think I look in it?" he continued, gazing with fringeless expressionless eyes on her vacant but concerned countenance. "You see, to meet these gentlemen I must at least try to appear as well as they do. A Sieur de Clairville must guard the appearance at all costs! Where is my sister, Pauline-Archange—why does she not come and assist me in the entertainment of the Court? Of the Court, do I say?"

Here Clairville drew himself up as well as he could, and winking at his nurse gravely informed her that the most Christian King, Louis of France, being in North America for the good of his health, might call at the manor to see its master at any moment.

"If you will be very secret, my good woman, I will tell you this further, but it must be between us only—His Most Christian Majesty of France is just recovering from the 'Pic'. But do not alarm yourself; I have not been with him much. Fear not, madame, neither for yourself nor me."

Madame clasped her hands and looked upwards; she seemed to be crying, and yet she shed no tears. She knew there was something wrong. She was wrong. The Sieur de Clairville was wrong. The old habit of prayer, fervid, poetic, Catholic prayer, asserted itself and accordingly the mystic rosary of Our Lady returned to her.

"Priez pour nous, sainte Mere de Dieu. Mere aimable, priez pour nous. Mere adorable, priez pour nous. Vierge puissante, priez! Vierge fidele, priez pour nous. Rose mysterieuse, priez pour nous. Maison d'or, Etoile du matin, priez pour nous. Sante des infirmes, priez pour nous."

Henry Clairville listened. Gradually he sank into the chair, and the tears, the slow, painful, smarting tears of weak mind and middle age—coursed down his thin, pitted cheeks. Madame sat down too and sobbed.

"Oh, have I offended you, m'sieu? Why did I pray? What makes us pray at all? Is there One who hears a poor woman like me? But she might hear you, m'sieu, a grand gentleman like you—and so I prayed."

"A grand gentleman! Thank you—madame, thank you," said he, trembling. "I believe I am that, or I was once. I have been very ill, I see. You must not take any notice if I go a little out of my head; it is nothing; Pauline is well accustomed to it, and so may you be if you remain here long. Only be lively with me, be always lively and pray aloud no more. I do not like these prayers. But why are you here? Where are my servants—Maman Archambault, Antoine, and the rest?"

"The servants of m'sieu left when m'sieu was taken sick."

"And you are doing their work?"

"As well as I can, m'sieu, when I can leave you. Just a little work I do, to amuse me, keep me from thinking."

Clairville trembled again and could not lift his eyes to this afflicted patient creature.

"I recollect now," he murmured, "you were always a kind woman. It was you who took the child away?"

"It was I, m'sieu."

"Eight years ago, was it not?"

"Nine, m'sieu."

"Nine, then. It was the year of the great snow. Does she—does my sister ever go to see it?"

"I cannot tell, m'sieu. She is not in St. Ignace often, and m'sieu knows that when ma'amselle goes abroad it is to Montreal and to the theatre."

"But you—you know about it, if it lives, if it is well, and has—has its mind?"

"It lives—yes, truly, m'sieu—it is never ill and it has its mind!"

"Mon Dieu!" muttered Henry Clairville. "That has its mind and I—I am sometimes bereft of mine. And you—you——" he pointed to madame, and though innocent and unoffending she quailed before the seigneurial finger. "You even—you woman there—you have not always your mind! Oh—it is dreadful to think of it! I would be ill again and forget. Tell me—is there, is there any resemblance? Say no, madame, say no!"

"I never go to Hawthorne, m'sieu, I cannot tell you. But I do not think so. I have never heard. They are nearly all English in that parish; they would not concern themselves much about that—the poor bebe, the poor Angele. God made her too, m'sieu. Perhaps some day she will be taken away by mademoiselle to a place where such children are cared for. That is why Mademoiselle Pauline works so hard at the theatre to make much money."

"She would need to!" burst from Henry Clairville. "What she does with the money she makes I do not know, it never comes this way! I cannot make money. She ought to remember me sometimes, so that I could establish this place afresh, find new servants, for example. Alas—what shall I do without them?"

He raised his voice and the old peevish tone rang out.

"Be tranquil, m'sieu. It is I—I myself, nursing you, who shall do all that is required."

He sighed heavily, then a sudden fire leapt into his eyes. "Let us see how far I can walk. Open that door, I wish to see if I can cross the hall."

"After so long, m'sieu! It is not possible. May St. Anne give you courage, for it is assuredly six or seven years since m'sieu has left his apartment."

"Nine—nine!" said he impatiently. "The year the child came into this world. I vowed then and all St. Ignace knows I have kept the vow—I would never leave my room again."

"M'sieu, all know, it is true, of the vow, but none know the reason for it. I have kept my faith, m'sieu."

"But she, my sister, she is so flighty, so excitable—she may have told a thousand times!"

"I think not, m'sieu."

"Father Rielle is unsuspecting; likewise Dr. Renaud. Well, well, who gains by considering evil? Not one so weak and battered as I. Nevertheless, I will walk, madame. I will conquer this fear and this weakness and will show the strength and temper of a Clairville, of a De Clairville, I should say. Open then, madame."

Thus with his black skull-cap on his bald head, and the faded claret and silver habit upon his shrunken limbs, he tottered over the threshold of his disorderly, uncared for room which he had occupied without one moment's intermission, night and day, summer and winter, for eight years, ten months and four days, and madame, preceding him, watched in an agony of fear but also of hope—yonder was a new field for her powers of cleansing and purifying. Dust in thick rolls, cobwebs in floating black triangular and looped clusters, stale odours and rubbish—the apartment which had served as bedroom, dining-room, salon and study so long, would naturally be in a disgraceful condition. Henry Clairville's ghost it was that passed from that room to the hall, but the ghost walked—more than Henry Clairville had done for nine years.

The door of the chief salon was open, and he entered, Mme. Poussette assisting him, still with clasped hands and awestruck eyes, and, although all the changes which had been wrought by her indefatigable fingers could not be appreciated by him, as it was so long since he had seen the room, he missed something. The suit, hanging for years upon its common nail, till it was encrusted with flyspecks, riddled with moth-holes, and tarnished, rusty and faded, now covered his meagre frame, but the other things he looked for he failed to find. He gazed at the walls, perceiving the one old, cracked and discoloured painting.

"Where are the others?" he demanded piteously. "There were four others, all valuable, all of great value."

"There was but this one when I came, m'sieu."

"Then Pauline has sold them—to keep that wretched child alive, to pay for its board and keep and tendresse—tendresse, perhaps, on part of some one while I—I have been neglected and kept short of the things I might have had—the wine, the comforts, the fruits! Ah—but I am a most unfortunate man, I who should be seigneur of the parish! Is it not so, madame? Here have I been starving and yet—there was money, you see—my sister had money all the time!"

Madame's lips moved; she said nothing. Far from having suffered privation during her stay at Clairville, she had been able to provide both for herself and the invalid, food and drink of the best quality procurable in that part—the Archambaults having hoarded large quantities of the supplies sent up by Poussette's "peep". The love of acquisition for its own sake had spread even among the youngest members of the family, and had one demanded suddenly of any of them the simplest meal, one would have been met by violent protestations that there was nothing in the house! To such an extent had this smuggling and hoarding spread that in looking through the kitchen and cellars madame had encountered a great store of provisions, mostly in good condition; sacks and barrels full of vegetables, apples, winter pears and nuts; tins full of bread and cakes, some mouldy, some fresh, and various kegs and bottles full of wine and spirits.

"Then," he continued, "where are my choice books, my editions de luxe? There were some splendid volumes here, rare, you understand, worth money. She must have sold them also. I recollect when she begged me to let her take them out of my room. And a violin—of the most superb—that is gone! You know nothing of all these?"

"I know nothing—truly—m'sieu."

"And my cats? Who has dared to interfere with my cats, my dear friends? Le Cid—Chateaubriand—Phedre—Montcalm—eh? What has been done with them? And the doors, the little doors I had made for them—nailed up, I see! Ah—ah, madame—this is your work! You have killed them! Say then, am I not right? Miserable wretch of a woman!"

He was staggering now about the room between weakness and temper and she assisted him to a chair.

"You have killed them!" he gasped repeatedly.

"No, m'sieu, not one. Indeed, m'sieu, I speak the truth. The cats of m'sieu were fourteen; how could I kill so many? No, but I fed them and put them away in the barns—yes—and nailed up the little doors, it is true, for I could not do my work with the cats of m'sieu always between the feet. I spoke of them once to you, because there were two who wished to enter your room, lie on the bed——"

"Yes, yes! Le Cid and Montcalm. Good cats, good friends!"

"Lie on the bed, but I could not allow them. Thus, for three days they sat outside the door of m'sieu."

"And the peacock? Is it that I shall find him banished also when I walk forth from my house? Mlle. Pauline has rid herself of him?"

"Not so, m'sieu. I have cared for the bird and indeed for all the animals."

Clairville, quieter now, was thinking.

"Did some one sing to me about cats as I lay there on my bed?"

Madame reddened.

"Yes, m'sieu—it was I who made a song about the 'Cats of Clairville'. To amuse myself only, m'sieu, I often do like that."

He looked at her, then down at his speckled, bony hands.

"We are both mad, I think," he said in the most matter-of-fact way, "but you, of course, more so than I am. Well, to-day I have walked in here. To-morrow I shall walk all over this house, and next week, madame, next week I shall walk to the village—well, half-way. Some day I may even go to church. Oh—you shall see, you shall see!"

And with that, natural fatigue, engendered by the wholly unusual exercise intervened; his nurse moved a sofa into the hall, and there he slept for many hours, while she routed out his room as well as she could; his physical recovery from that day was miraculously rapid, and in a fortnight he was as quick and light upon his feet and as much given to the open air and walking as he had been previously doggedly convinced that he could not use his legs and that the least breath or whiff of fresh air would destroy him. So much for the after-effects of the "Pic" and the sweet uses of adversity.

The fine November days that followed were the days that Canada can give in wonderful perfection—when the thick canopy of leaves has been caught up, shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky, forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and hillock of withered grass, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June and a singular mellow haze fills all the forest paths. Now can be closely seen the different forms of the trees, each trunk and each limb no less interesting than the brilliant foliage which lately enveloped them; the abandoned nests are bare, some on the ground transfixed between the bushes, or pendant from the branches of tall trees. The evergreens of various kinds supply the note of colour which alone gives hope and promises relief from neutral brown and grey, and underneath what once was a leafy forest arcade are all the roots of spring—the spotted erythronium, the hepatica, the delicate uvularia, the starry trientalis. Through such spacious aisles and along such paths of promise Henry Clairville walked every day while the fine weather lasted, wearing the ancient suit and the black skull-cap, and often attended as far as Lac Calvaire by the white peacock and two cats, and always watched from window or door by the faithful Mme. Poussette. Fear of contagion kept the Archambaults away, all save Antoine, who, constituting himself a bodyguard for Pauline in the village, took messages to and fro the Manor House.

When M. Clairville had seen the stores and provisions in his cellar, sufficient, with a few additions, for the entire winter months at least, he demanded of madame if she would remain with him and manage his house, and the poor woman assented with delight. Poussette did not want her; she had no place in the world, no ties; only occasionally was she required to nurse sick people in the village; here was a comfortable remote haven where she might be of use, busied in exercising those faculties remaining to her, which at Poussette's were rotting and rusting away. She remained therefore, to cook and wait upon him; a new existence sprang up for both, and it was when this sort of thing had lasted for a month that the parish priest, Father Rielle, thought it his duty to call.



CHAPTER XIV

FATHER RIELLE

"—his moods Of pain were keen as those of better men, Nay, keener, as his fortitude was less."

The writer has elsewhere stated that the Roman Catholic clergy in this part of the world are easily divided into two classes, the rotund, rosy and jolly, and the thin, ascetic and reserved; the cure of St. Ignace belonged to the latter, and possessed a strongly marked characteristic face, the droop of his bitter mouth and the curve of his chiselled nose being almost Dantesque in effect. He had conserved a type of feature which, common enough up to the present, seems to be in danger of extinction; the passing of the aquiline, the slow disappearance of the Roman nose, are facts patent to thoughtful observers of national traits. Any contemporaneous collection of portraits of representative men in the higher walks of life reveals the fact that this fine racial curve is rapidly becoming extinct. From the Duke of Wellington down, this nose has been associated with men prominent in military and naval affairs, in literature (notably poetry and criticism) and in finance and diplomacy, until the possession of such a significant organ has become almost the sine qua non of an individual destined to be famous or successful. Varieties of course existed, such as when combined with beetling brows and sunken eyes one recognized the professor or arch-critic of his generation. Or, when taken with the square forehead, thin mouth and visionary eyes of the military genius, one saw some great general. Or simply existing in some silly scion of good family, and meaning nothing whatever, in this case usually over-high at the thin bridge, and in profile far too strong for the weak rest of the face. In women of gentle extraction this nose was found beautifully proportioned. In belles of the mid-Victorian era were the lineaments of Caesar clearly revealed, associated with the delicacy of colouring and rounded chin and cheek which redeemed them from hard masculinity, so that fifty years ago in any representative gathering of England's fairest and noblest the observer would note a similarity of feature, especially in profile, between peers and peeresses, poets and poetesses, statesmen and the grandes dames of society. Caricatured, it lived in the drawings of Leech and Du Maurier. Taken seriously, it inspired creative artists both of pen and brush when dealing with the heroic. Superficial writers confused it with the Hebraic nose, and in prints of criminal and depraved characters one frequently found it distorted and wrenched to conditions of ugliness. Tennyson and the latest murderer apparently owned the same facial angle, if one corrected the droop of the eyebrow, the curve of the nostril, the set of the ear. Thus the Roman or aquiline nose made itself and its possessor known to the world. Other noses might, if they liked, take a back seat! this nose never. Sala, Lamb, Kingsley—all had varieties of the nose. The American variant is seen in hundreds of nineteeenth century writers, preachers, New England farmers, old Cape Cod characters, Gloucester fishermen, actors, especially of tragic mould; showmen, lecturers, bankers—the nose has prospered in the new world. The significance of the feature is matched by its endurance, by the persistency with which it appears in every decade up to the present.

For with the opening of a new century the nose, aquiline in its purest state, equine with its accompaniment of cruel gums and sharp teeth in its worst, seems on the point of disappearing. The contemporary portraits of great men and beautiful women no longer display it. There is a new nose. It is to be hoped that it retains the powers with which the organ was originally endowed; for example, we suppose that it still can detect and appreciate, repulse and define odours. But as a sign-post showing the path to glory, as an index of force of character or intellect, it is practically useless. The new nose is modest, retiring, seeketh not its own, is never puffed up. You would know it for a nose, certainly, but its ample and aristocratic proportions are wanting; it lacks a bridge, is spineless, immature, unfinished. Yet it is set in the faces of many eminent thinkers and workers among the younger men; it is already allied to keenness of vision and talent, and may or may not be associated with birth and good breeding. The query is—is it a new nose, or only one that has always been with us, but is now gradually supplanting the old one? Did the nose aquiline largely represent class, and does the phenomenon of the new semi-straight, semi-nothing nose represent the intrusion of mass? Against this timid and, it may be, spurious generalization, one may pit the working-man with the nose of a duke, and the young colonial ruler with the unformed, delicate feature of a school-girl. So we accept the fact that in our own day types are passing.

The English face is going. It has served its turn, perhaps. Infusion of American and colonial blood will help to change it. The high-nosed country gentleman or landed noble, with Berserk or Viking blood in his veins, finds that, like Alice in Wonderland, it takes all he can do to keep where he is, and the work entailed takes something, a good deal, out of him. One thing goes, then another; finally, he casts away his birthright, the arch or bridge of his nose, and his son and the younger members of his family appear shorn of that important feature. The plebeian nose, so long as it is neither pug nor pig, is safer, better. Men are not afraid of it. Syndicates and boards breathe more freely when the barriers of nose are broken down, and a good mediocrity of feature may yet avert a war or preserve a treaty. At all events, a study of our chief contemporaries will bear out a considerable portion of this reasoning. The beauties of society and the stage have a leaning to noses tiptilted like the petals of a flower, or to a nose which is a kind of modification of the Greek, frequently found among Americans. For instance, in Canada there is fast growing up a new type of head, clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amusements are lacking; there seems nothing to live for outside work. Nature poets and wild-animal delineators are not among these set, earnest, straight-featured faces. The former are more likely to be denizens of cities. In this slightly dour Canadian face there are but few aquiline noses, and yet such is the danger of generalizing that perhaps the first people readers of this page meet after perusing it might be a group of students, none with Celtic hair and eyes and all with Roman contours. Likewise, on opening the current number of a leading musical journal, the long, high, prominent nasal organ of Sir Edward Elgar confronts us, whose peculiar cast of thought confirms the impression that spirituality, fine artistic conception and capacity to achieve are still the dower of those possessing this fast-disappearing feature. Ringfield belonged to the tribe of straight-nosed, grey-eyed thinkers—a finished contrast to Father Rielle, whose worn profile suggested the wormwood and the gall. Looks, however, not being in all cases indications of the character within, the priest was an exceedingly simple and earnest man, constitutionally timid, and physically frail; thus, he passed for what is known as a "deep" man, when he was nothing of the sort, and although it may be a mooted point whether in a Catholic community the local priest has or has not the entire conscience of that community at his mercy by means of the confessional, it was certain that there were a few things that Father Rielle did not know. Had he been social, convivial, fond, like most of his brother priests, of a game of cards, of good living and long drinking, he might have worked more reforms in the countryside, and holding the reins of priestly government stern and tight prevented some lapses from the moral code. That is to say, a worse man might have achieved better results, but as it was not in his nature to haunt Poussette's, make friends with the guides and call at unconventional hours upon his parishioners, he missed several revelations that fell to Ringfield's share. Crabbe was not upon his visiting list, nor Pauline of late years; for Henry Clairville he entertained a certain sad respect, as for a gentleman and landed proprietor fallen from grace indeed, but by the Will of God rather than by personal shortcomings. His tendency to fatalism was Calvinistic in its intensity, and he trod his accustomed path baptizing, marrying, burying, with the sour curve of his thin profile growing sourer every day. Thus this silent, censorious-looking priest presented a strong contrast to the optimistic young Ontarian, yet one emotion was common to them both—Father Rielle had for years nursed a hopeless passion for Miss Clairville.

It happened that the knowledge of Mme. Poussette's remaining on at Clairville as housekeeper to its master came to Father Rielle as something of a shock. Certain things are right and certain things are wrong in certain places; some things are right and some things are wrong in all places. Madame had a husband who, although plainly tired of her, had not yet openly neglected her; she also had a good home, and in her condition of mind it was not wise, according to the priest, that she should leave her husband and home to live with Henry Clairville. Dr. Renaud was questioned, but as medical men are everywhere less concerned with the conventions than are lawyers or priests, he only intimated that madame was probably happier at Clairville than in her own home, and that he saw no reason for disturbing the arrangement.

"But," said Father Rielle in their common tongue, "is it because the wife of Poussette is a little afflicted, light of head while sad of heart, that rules and customs no longer apply to her? I take it—it will make a scandal in the village and every man who is sick must expect some other man's wife to come in and care for him, and finally live in his house and take care of it. Our society may be small, but in some matters it is best conducted as are large communities. I think M. de Clairville should be instructed that his conduct is wrong."

"You call him 'de' Clairville, I see," replied the doctor from his buggy outside Gagnon's carpenter shop. "Well, it does not matter! Faith—he is both vicious and mad enough to be in truth the seigneur of all the parish as he styles himself—as nobles and seigneurs used to go. I have little knowledge of such myself! I am a plain man! my father was Renaud the harness-maker of Three Rivers. First I was fond of horses, then I was fond of gathering herbs and flowers, then I was fond of mixing medicines and quacking my friends when they were ill; then my mother saved some money and sent me to college and then one fine day I awoke, and I am Dr. Renaud! And you—you are one of the three Rielle brothers, likewise from Three Rivers; one is a notary, one a priest—yourself—and the youngest keeps the Hotel Jacques Cartier at Sorel-en-haut. That is funny, that! You should have made him something else."

"It is true," replied the priest mildly, "I am not in love with his calling, but people who travel must be lodged. I use his place myself once or twice a year; it is the Will of God that such places must be; it is clean, and his wife, at the age of seventeen, already cooks well; he is lately married at the age of thirty-five. I myself am four years older. But of M. de Clairville I would say—that he must be brought to see that he is doing this poor Mme. Poussette a wrong, and I was going to ask you if you would drive me out to visit him this afternoon. That is, if, as I hear, it is quite safe to go there now."

"It would afford me pleasure indeed, mon pere," said Dr. Renaud, "but unfortunately I am waiting here for the young man who has charge of the new church by the river,—Poussette's fancy, Mr. Ringfield."

"You are driving him to Clairville?" A quick jealousy animated the priest's eager question.

"I am, but we can make room for you. Certainly, my friend, we are neither of us so very stout and you are thin; you shall sit in our laps—oh yes, I take no denial! You shall come with us, Father Rielle, and we three shall descend upon this sick seigneur of yours and his housekeeper and see what they are doing. Drive her back in the evening, if you like."

While the priest hesitated, Ringfield and Poussette appeared at the door, and the instant the latter heard of the expedition he also wished to go.

"I cannot see why!" cried Dr. Renaud angrily. "One charrette will not hold us all; it is going to snow and I must get back before dark. I'm calling here to leave an order for Gagnon about a coffin for old Telesphore Tremblay who died yesterday, and I have promised to see his poor wife to-night."

"Then I shall take my own buggy and Mr. Ringfield can go with me. The cure can go with you, sir."

"Well, if the whole village wishes to pay its respects to a crazy man all at the same time, let them come!" roared the irascible doctor. "You didn't care to go till you saw us going. But put your horse in, put him in; we will wait for you."

"Bien, M'sieu! I have three hams and a sack of potatoes; they shall go too."

This dialogue had been overheard by Pauline, sitting at cards with Miss Cordova in the front room, and with her natural impetuosity she jumped up, declaring that if Henry were well enough to see "these others," he was well enough to see her. Her impulsive movements sent the cards and counters flying up through the air, and one card hit Miss Cordova on the left eye directly over the pupil. As lightly as if flicked by a clever finger, but as unerringly as if deliberately and viciously aimed at her, one of the four sharp points of cardboard selected her dark eye for its target, and with a scream she too sprang up, overturning the table and seizing Pauline by the shoulder. The pain and distress were considerable, and Miss Clairville, opening the window, called for Dr. Renaud, who came at once to look at the eye and recommended bathing, bandages and complete rest. The exquisite tenderness of the inflamed organ gave Miss Cordova so much annoyance that after ten minutes she retired to her room, and the doctor again proposed himself ready to start for Lac Calvaire. The weather, fine and mild for so long, was changing now with every hour, and it was becoming strangely dark overhead.

"Whoever comes with me must prepare for a storm," said he, glancing at the blackening sky, "only a few flurries of snow, perhaps, but one cannot tell—it may prove more."

"You are sure there can be no danger of infection?" asked Ringfield, with an anxious glance at Pauline, who had raced to her room, stuck imitation solitaires in her ears, donned a worn-out but well-fitting seal jacket and muff and a dashing black and scarlet hat, and now stood in the village street—the embodiment of piquant French womanhood—quite conscious of her charms and insufferably weary of having no audience to show them off to! A certain disdain sprang into her treatment of Ringfield at this time, and it was a question with her, should he ever ask her to be his wife, whether she would not inevitably tire of the high aims and lofty ideals he no doubt would impose upon her.

"You don't suppose I'd be going if there were, do you?" she remarked in English tartly, curving her arching black brows at him; "how many are we—five? That's three too many, in my opinion. Father Rielle—I go with you in Mr. Poussette's buggy; you others there, you three messieurs—you can go how you please."

The priest flushed, then a sudden glance passed between him and Ringfield, and in that look each knew what the other wished and hated him for it! Still, Father Rielle followed Pauline instantly, and there was no opposition as she lightly leapt into Poussette's buggy, and with a wave of her muff, adorned by a bright scarlet bow, two of the five were soon out of sight.



CHAPTER XV

THE STORM

"Snow is at the door Assaulting and defending, and the wind, A sightless labourer, whistles at his work."

Dr. Renaud now called on the minister and Poussette to make haste; he had been delayed by the accident to Miss Cordova and already large flat flakes were falling.

"Just the size of half-dollars, eh? The idea is, Poussette, to bring madame home; that is to say, the cure's idea, but he's gone off with another woman. I suppose you are jealous now, of this one I mean, not the other."

"Not me, much. Father Rielle, he's no harm. He cannot marry mademoiselle nor any one else; besides, he has no money. Mlle. Pauline—she is for the money."

"Ah—ha, I believe you. We used to read or sing, I forget which, at college, about 'Les beaux yeux de sa Cassette'. I do not know the origin of the quotation, but you understand, Mr. Ringfield, what it means, and our young lady in front there has learnt in a bitter school the value of money. Cassette—cassette—cash-box; you will see, if she ever settles down, it will be, as our friend Poussette says, for the money."

Ringfield's throat was dry, he did not speak; his stern gaze, directed at the leafless landscape over which the first slow snows were falling, gave no indication of the tumult within; besides, the aspect of the road and condition of the elements were calculated to banish personal emotions, for even Poussette's hilarity was silenced by the increasing velocity of the wind and the darkness dropping upon them. It was only five miles to the metairie, but at the end of the second mile the sky was absolutely blank and the snow so thick that heaps of it lay on the horse's flanks and on their own laps and hands. It kept increasing at such magical rate that the roadway was obscured and twice Dr. Renaud found himself out on the rocky plateau at the left, instead of the middle path. The priest and Miss Clairville had vanished in front, but the three men could hear the sound of a horse on the slabs of rock behind them, coming very swiftly too, and in a few minutes a second buggy dashed madly by. The horse was running away, no doubt badly frightened by the violence of the storm, and Ringfield recognized Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn in the agonized couple holding bravely on, while the excitable little mare dashed through the snow.

"My hands are freezing!" cried Dr. Renaud. "This is a big surprise—a regular blizzard. We'll have to stop somewhere till it's over. I never beheld such darkness—at three o'clock in the afternoon—nor such sudden heaps of snow. Lucky for us if it does not turn to hail." He had scarcely uttered the words when the snow flagged, ceased to fall, then the hail began. Colder and colder grew the air with a strange, unnatural feel in it as if in the proximity of icebergs, or of the hour closest on dawn, and the hail, at first small and round, pretty and harmless, came gently chattering about the horse's ears and back, came faster and larger, came at last too fast and too large, came as stones come that are flung by enemies and rioting mobs of people anxious for vengeance. The doctor was afraid for his horse; one ear was cut and bleeding and the animal could no longer face the blinding streams of hail; he was covered and the men all got out, burying their heads in their coats; but Ringfield, the worst off, since he had come without gloves or muffler, was for ever casting anxious glances ahead, which Poussette and the doctor understood.

"I bette you!" cried the former; "Mr. Ringfield, sir, the cure—he don't know what to do with Miss Clairville. He'll never get her home, sure. He's no good with a horse—my horse too—I guess we better go after him, eh?"

"Stay where you are!" shouted the doctor. "Farther along the forest begins again, and these hailstones are snapping off the branches as if they had been slashed with axes. I can hear. You may be killed. Surely this cannot last long!"

But there seemed no diminution of the hail; it lay a foot deep in pieces the size of marbles or of small apples, and the autumnal grasses and bushes of juniper and sumach were beaten flat with the rocky ground from which they derived scant sustenance.

The three men were by this time suffering greatly from the sudden and unexpected cold, and as it was impossible to continue the drive to Calvaire in face of the biting hail, they were about to attempt to return to St. Ignace when the darkness partly lifted, the air grew gradually milder, and streams of steady rain came pouring down; overhead the clouds met, charged, and thunder raged at intervals.

Ringfield, now greatly alarmed and fancying he heard noises from the wood in front, even cries of distress, could no longer be detained, but bidding farewell to the others strode forward in the direction of the forest, slipping as he walked and already drenched to the skin, his clothes freezing upon him and clogging his difficult steps. Fortunately, for one who did not know the locality well, the daylight had partly returned. He judged that by keeping to the road he ran no risk of losing his way, but when a turn revealed another road, he was naturally perplexed, as the face of the country had greatly changed since he had made his last visit to the Manor House. Afraid to stand long, for trees were thick about him and the lightning still flashing, he went on again up the new road, and after a few minutes running saw a deserted barn in a hollow and made for it. In this dell or glade the trees had been thinned out, either by forest fires or by the owner, but one tall pine remained beside the forlorn and ruined barn as if for companionship—a lonely sentinel.

Ringfield, wet and shivering, rushed up to the barn door, and finding it half-open had nearly flung himself through it when he was arrested by voices within, or rather a voice—that of a woman. He did not immediately think of Miss Clairville, for no horse nor conveyance were outside, but, had he listened more carefully, he would have recognized her educated accents; as it was, in a moment or two she herself came to the door, and upon seeing Ringfield started, but asked him to enter.

The barn contained some old boxes and rusty tools, a short ladder led to a loft above full of dry hay, and there Miss Clairville explained she had taken refuge when the hail first began.

"But Father Rielle——" said Ringfield looking vaguely around.

"Oh, you shall not meet with him here. He left me and said he would try to go on to Clairville, get a fresh horse—Poussette's was badly cut—and come back for me. You have not met him?"

"No, then you are alone?"

"Of course, and neither wet nor frightened, while you appear to be both!" said she, gaily at first, but catching her breath as she observed his stern, anxious gaze.

Ringfield, drawing a deep sigh, suddenly lost his self-control.

"Oh, how you torture me!" he cried, extending his arms as if to enfold her, then dropping them as he recollected his condition.

"Torture you? You—Mr. Ringfield, so calm and self-contained, the Reverend Mr. Ringfield of St. Ignace! I torture YOU! Why what have I done to-day, then? Have I made the weather or caused the storm? Is it MY snow or MY rain, or MY hail, and ecoutez bien—MY thunder and MY lightning raging there?"

"No—no—but to run off like that, and with that poor priest—poor fellow—I saw how it was with him! You are sure he is not here now?" Ringfield cast an eye up at the loft.

"Certainly not! Would he let you talk like that about him? But listen to this fearful storm! How can we think of anything else—and you—you so wet—wet and tired! It seems a little calmer now; perhaps you had better try again and walk on to Clairville. There you may fall in with the cure or Dr. Renaud and then come back for me."

"I will not leave you in this desolate place for a moment! Yet I feel as if we were surrounded by people—why is it—I cannot understand why! To whom were you talking while I was outside?"

"Ah, there, tais-toi, mon ami!"

Miss Clairville pushed him down on one of the boxes and tried to draw off his stiff and dripping coat, but he restrained her; their hands meeting sent him beside himself, and, seizing one, he pressed a warm, lingering kiss upon it. Adept in these matters, Pauline kept up a gay chatter, and as she drew her hand away seemed only uneasy—neither fluttered nor deeply moved.

"I assure you," she exclaimed brightly, "I am quite safe here. I am not in the least wet, my old coat has done me good service—voyez—my feet are dry, and all I would ask is a light to cheer me while you are absent, but that I cannot have and I must be content. Although that unnatural dark is over, the shades of the true night will soon be falling and it is lonely here. So the sooner you go the better."

"But where can I go? Will it not be better to remain here with you until Father Rielle returns?"

"I think not—he is slow—that priest! See—if you go now, you will surely overtake him. Keep to your right after regaining the road and you will soon find the lake."

"Well, then, I will go," said Ringfield rising. "But if I might speak to you now, might tell you all I hope and fear and think almost continually, if I might ask you, too, to think about it, and tell me—tell me—it is so difficult for me to say what I wish to—you seem so gay, so satisfied, so——" His voice broke off, for her face changed ominously, and the strongest argument he could have adduced, the folding of her to his heart, the silent embrace which should make her his, was still denied him. To the outsider there might have been a touch of humour in the situation, but not so to either person concerned. She echoed his last words.

"Satisfied! Me! You think I am that? My God, yes, I have to say it in English—it means more! I—satisfied! Happy—you will say next, I suppose. Me—happy and satisfied. I'm the most miserable woman on God's earth! I have had ideals, aspirations—but how could I fulfil, achieve them, living in this place and with my temper, my heredity. Look at Henry. I tell you he is mad—mad and worse! Think of having lived with him! Think of Clairville! You do not know half of what I have gone through!"

A dreadful thought, a dreadful question occurred to Ringfield as he marked the dark wave of hair on Miss Clairville's brow, and again he saw the child in the basket chair at Hawthorne, but he frantically stifled the thought and forbore to question, and the next moment she was weeping and pushing him towards the door.

"Go now," she sobbed. "Go before it gets darker. You might lose your way. Go—go."

He went out at once, pulling the door after him as well as he could and ran through the hollow till he reached the road, where it seemed brighter. The rain gave signs of falling less steadily, when, as often occurs after a protracted storm, there came a lull, followed by one terrific and astounding burst and explosion of thunder, accompanied by a vivid blue and orange blaze and afterwards complete silence and a great calm. The storm now rolled onward, having spent itself in that locality; but knowing from the sound that some place or object had been struck, Ringfield stopped, stepped behind a mass of boulders and juniper bushes and looked back down into the little hollow. The barn was apparently uninjured but the noble pine had suffered. The ripping, tearing sound he had heard was explained by the sight of a broad orange-coloured strip or band that ran longitudinally from the top of the tree to the bottom, indicating where the bark had been peeled off by the force of the fierce current. As he stood gazing thus at the seared and stricken pine, the door opened from the side of the barn and Miss Clairville slowly stepped out, followed by a man in whom, with an exclamation of extremest repulsion and surprise, Ringfield clearly recognized Edmund Crabbe.

The shock of this and the full meaning of it set Ringfeld's nerves and pulses tingling, and he stepped farther back into the shade as he watched them. They advanced to the great pine, examined it, and he could see that Crabbe's arm went around her waist. The guide himself seemed, even at that distance, to be more neatly dressed than usual, he wore a tweed cap with coat to match and did not look as if he had been drinking, but as with him that was the sign that he was about at his worst, Ringfield could only turn away in disgust and pursue his way to Clairville. It was not a pleasant thought that Crabbe must have been in the loft, while a somewhat tender scene had been enacted, and he suddenly felt a contempt and pity for the woman who could play two men at the same time in such barefaced fashion. Then, as lovers will, he rebuked himself for this; perhaps Crabbe had taken refuge in the loft without her knowledge, and the great final crash had brought him down; perhaps she had known he was there, but was ashamed of producing him in a semi-drunken condition, perhaps—then Ringfield saw the distant lights of the Manor House and hastened towards them. A little farther on he overtook the priest, leading Poussette's horse and buggy, and it was not long before they were able to take off their wet clothes at madame's fire and exchange confidences about the storm.

In the large kitchen were also Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn, Dr. Renaud and Poussette, and the priest, who was naturally held accountable for Pauline's safety, reported her as resting comfortably in the barn.

Ringfield did not say much; of Crabbe no mention was made by the others, and it was probable that nobody had seen him, or dreamt of his being out in the neighbourhood on such a day.



CHAPTER XVI

IN THE BARN

"Poor now in tranquil pleasure, he gave way To thoughts of troubled pleasure."

Pauline had yielded to an erratic but harmless impulse in driving off recklessly with the priest; her nature, so long restrained by residence in a dull, circumscribed village instead of a lively town, needed some such prank to reanimate and amuse it. She seized the reins dramatically, insisted upon driving, and Father Rielle was nothing loath since he did not care about nor understand horses very well, and since it was dangerously novel and bitterly pleasant to sit and watch Miss Clairville. Her fine features and splendid colouring showed well against the dull background of sky and forest; the ribbon on which her muff was slung, tied moreover in a dashing bow, was a bit of true scarlet matching some rosettes in her hat. As she looked behind for a wilful instant she caught sight of Ringfield sitting up stiffly on the two fat laps provided by Amable Poussette and the doctor, and her laugh rang musically in the priest's ear.

"Poussette's is the fastest horse in the village!" cried she. "See—I will give him a little of the whip. Voila—now he will think he has his master behind him. March-ch, donc, animal. Get up—bigosh, excusez, mon pere. That's it! Watch him now! I'm not an actress for nothing. See now—he'll be galloping presently, but trotting is all we care for, my good beast! So you are going to bring Mme. Poussette back with you, I understand,—tear the fair lady from my poor brother!"

"Who has told you that canard?" said the priest, folding his arms and leaning back as far as the little caleche would allow. "No, I did not think of doing so to-day; you doubtless heard me talking of the matter to Dr. Renaud. I cannot tell what you think of it, but in the absence of all servants it seems to me that Poussette's wife should return to her home while you both make new arrangements for managing his house. But perhaps you intend remaining there to-night, mademoiselle?"