"I have no such intention, mon pere, I assure you. I am glad Henry has recovered; I shall see him once or twice, of course, and then I shall return to Montreal and not come back here for years—if I can help it. But look at the snow! It is coming faster and faster and growing darker and darker. The wolf's throat is sunshine compared to this. Shall we turn back?"

"No!" said the cure with his sour face steadily turned toward her. "I do not mind the snow nor shall you. I would drive so—like this—beside you and looking at you, to the end of the world, of life. Drive faster, faster yet, till we leave those others behind. Take that opening there on your left. I know of a shelter that will serve—Leduc's barn—you may remember it. Arrived there, you must hear me."

Pauline, irritated though not greatly surprised, stooped, and making a small hard ball of the wet snow lying thickly around their feet, flung it backwards into the priest's face; he caught her left wrist, held it in a tight grip, and although she was a strong woman, he was the stronger, being a man, and she could not escape. The darkness closed down upon them, the snow came down in blinding, tickling clouds, and in her anger and distress she could not drive properly. Poussette's horse being accustomed to being driven to the barn, went in that direction of his own accord, and thus they arrived in a whirlwind of snow—the priest still holding her wrist with something else than sourness showing in his thin features—a few minutes before the hail commenced falling. Pauline, dragging herself as she descended to the ground from an over-zealous admirer, ran into the shelter and tried to fasten the door, but the other, leaving Poussette's horse and voiture to fare as best they might, was quick upon her heels and followed her inside the barn.

Thus they escaped the worst portion of the storm, but the darkness endured; they remained standing looking at one another, and Pauline, though she was both cold and frightened, managed to give her habitual laugh.

"Because you are 'Father Rielle,'" she exclaimed, "you think you are entitled to pursue a recreant sheep of the flock even over here! Oh! it is not on account of the storm—I know that—that you follow me! I have seen this coming for some time, and I have feared it!"

The priest staggered, passed his hands over his eyes and made a hasty sign of the cross. Opportunity, propinquity, a sudden temptation—these had assailed him and for one moment all the devils of hell were let loose in this good man's brain and heart. The silence seemed eternal that followed on his movement; as the air lightened around them she fancied his countenance distorted by suffering, and his averted eyes spoke of his shame and contrition.

"My daughter," he said at length, "fear what you will but never again fear me. You witness my remorse, my tears—yes, behold, my daughter—and you know, you tell yourself that I cannot, will not harm you—nor any woman. But now you would hear what I would say, because you must not refuse. You have left our Holy Catholic communion, you are no longer daughter of the true Church, is it not so, my daughter?"

An old habit asserting itself, Pauline automatically answered; "Oui, mon pere."

"You have gone on the stage, you have developed into a brilliant but wayward coquette; you have for your friend a woman who has left her husband and thinks about marrying another. Is this not so, my daughter?"

And again, despite her experience of his singular lapse from conduct, Pauline's lips answered: "Oui, mon pere."

"Worst of all, you have set yourself to fascinate and wound this young man, this stranger among us, and you are leading him on to think of you night and day, I suppose, as I do!"

"Mon pere—do not confess it!"

"Why not? You will not use your knowledge of my secret since you will not be believed. I—thanks to my training and the example of my glorious Church—can choke, can bridle, can conceal this passion—but not so this other. Can you deny that you have been with him, encouraged him?"

Pauline would have answered hotly, her rudimentary fear of the cure disappearing before the mention of Ringfield, when her eyes fell upon a book that lay at the foot of the ladder, a small green book that she knew well by sight, having read in it with Edmund Crabbe years before, when he was known as "Mr. Hawtree" and had been her lover. The book was a collection of poems by Edwin Arnold, and back into her memory stole those passionate lines:—

The one prize I have longed for Was once to find the goal of those dear lips; Then I could rest, not else; but had you frowned And bade me go, and barred your door upon me, Oh, Sweet! I think I should have come with lamps And axes, and have stolen you like gold!

She stood staring at the cover, for upon it lay three or four large spreading dark patches; were these wet spots caused by the snow? Her eyes, then traversing the ladder, noticed footprints, and cakes of blackened snow upon the steps. To whom belonged these tell-tale signs of occupation? Glancing farther up she saw the end of a stick protruding from the loose piles of straw that trickled over the top of the ladder, and she recognized the stick, a stout one with a peculiar ferule that also belonged to Crabbe. He must be in the loft, either sleeping or keeping silence, and now she found herself in the most uncomfortable position a woman can possibly occupy; to her already crowded list of lovers had been added another, and as the quarry of four strongly contrasted men, each possessing more than average persistence of character, she must have excited pity and sympathy in the breasts of women less fatally attractive, but scarcely one thrill of envy. She recognized in the priest potentially the fiercest lover of them all; a man of only two or three ideas, this one of cruel, hopeless, unattainable passion for herself would easily dominate him and render him, fresh to the emotions and therefore ignorant of how to control and deal with them, utterly unreasonable, even it might be violent and offensive. What wonder then if her thoughts like her eyes turned toward the loft above her. Despite her flighty tendencies, her town and theatre friendships and quarrels, her impulsive and emotional nature, Crabbe was the only man who had gained an ascendancy over her; for him she had forsaken prudence, but for him only, and strongest of associations, closest of ties—he alone had appealed to and satisfied her physical side. She had given him much but not all, and now in this moment of hatred of the cure, of herself, and a moving disgust at the conflicting facts of her difficult life, she thought of the Englishman as a desired refuge. There came crowding into her mind those small delicate acts and gestures which make as we say "the gentleman." She recollected Crabbe as he was when he first presented himself at the metairie, the self-possession of his easy manner, subtly tinctured with that dose of romance necessary to her imagination; the unconscious way, to do him justice, in which his talk of blight and exile and ruined fortunes had aroused all her dormant sympathies.

"Oh," she cried, hoping that if in the loft he would hear, "all this is so dreadful, so different from the life I meant to lead, from the life I believe I was intended to lead! Hear me, Father Rielle: all men I hate and abhor, all, save one, and not the one you are thinking of! Hear me again: if I can find the money I will leave Clairville as I said, for good, for ever. I shall leave the theatre in Montreal, leave Canada, and I will go where my talents shall be understood and requited. It is true I have a temper and a tongue. It is true I am hard to teach and hard to get on with, and how do I know—perhaps there lurks in me a trace of that I fear so in Henry—yet I am resolved to try. If you mean what you say, and are not mad in your turn, will you help me to carry this out? I would leave at once, make my way abroad, study and become the actress I know I could if I got my chance. Perhaps in another country, perhaps if I could reach Paris, where I am not known, where it is not known, where——"

She stopped, following the priest's gaze so that both saw now what happened, the heap of straw at the top of the ladder was dislodged, the stick belonging to Crabbe slid down to the floor of the barn and the moment after he himself appeared. His face was somewhat red and swollen but his attire was neater than usual, and the step with which he descended the ladder almost normally steady, besides, he appeared on the side of morality, and as champion of feminine rights made a better figure than one would have deemed possible in so broken a man.

"Sorry to interrupt this tete-a-tete," said he, stopping to pick bits of straw off himself, "but it seemed about time that somebody interfered. I perceive Miss Clairville is rather tired, and—look here, Father Rielle—I give you two minutes by this old turnip or hour-glass of mine—it was with me on the prairie and may not keep very good time, but it ticks—I give you two minutes to apologize to mademoiselle for your—ah—detention of her, and then you may leave us for the Arctic regions outside. Polar, by Heaven, hail falling as big as walnuts!"

It was true; the darkness still reigned and a terrific noise, caused by the large stones rattling on the roof and splintering the distant forest branches. The priest on hearing that authoritative drawl behind him, cowered, his fear of personal violence from Crabbe, who bore a bad name, mastering his ecclesiastical dignity; but as he perceived that the guide was fairly sober he gathered courage and replied in rapid French:—

"You will not I hope be so evil-minded, monsieur, as to misunderstand my sentiments towards Mademoiselle Clairville, whom I have known from her childhood. I am only saying to her what I have felt for a long time—I would be the means of saving her from herself, from such friends as you, and from the ills attendant on the profession she has chosen. My affection for her is solely that of the parish priest who has watched her career and felt saddened by it, yet who would reward evil by good."

"How would you reward her? By making love to her?"

"I have been in communication with the Mother Superior of a convent near Three Rivers, my birthplace. There is a fine appointment there, waiting for a person of talent—gifted—to instruct in elocution and possibly music. I thought——"

"You thought it would suit me!" cried Pauline, in a frenzy of disgust and irritation. "Me! For the stage and its triumphs a convent with simpering nuns! For Paris with its gay shops and drives, the town of Three Rivers, Province of Quebec, dans le Bas Canada! Oh! I see myself, thank you, in that galere, I assure you! No—no—that honourable extinction is not for me yet awhile. Apres, mon pere, apres—apres, I may return and be glad of the haven, but not now."

"The two minutes are up," said Crabbe laconically. "I'm sorry to turn you out in such an afternoon, Father Rielle, but it is best for you and for mademoiselle. The hail's not quite so big as it was. I advise you to go at once."

The priest, divining some understanding between Crabbe and Pauline, and gradually calling to mind certain episodes of several years back, glanced from one to the other.

"I am not sure that I am not myself in the way," he said grimly. "Such rapid and excessive sensitiveness on behalf of Mlle. Clairville is creditable, but scarcely, I should think, its own reward."

"Do you deny that your being here is a menace to Miss Clairville's peace and that you—you a frocked and tonsured priest—have addressed words of love to her? If I did not utterly despise you, I should kick you out into the storm."

"You need do neither. I do not deny that I love Miss Clairville; I deny only that I have menaced or threatened her in any form. I say this to you—man of unclean, unholy habits—the priest is human. He is as God made him. He lives or dies, loves or hates by the will of God. When I look at Miss Clairville, I think of her as the possible helpmeet of my life, had it been spent in the service of this world instead of in the service of God. I think of her, monsieur, even reverently, purely, as the possible mother of my children."

This astonishing speech had much effect upon Pauline, who commenced weeping; the priest's voice—always a beautiful one—had dropped with a mournful cadence on the four last words, and Crabbe did not reply.

"Who can do more than that?" resumed the cure. "But that I cannot offer. Such care and worship, such devotion and tenderness I may not give. What then! I can at least be the instrument which shall shape her future career. I can point the way and deliver her from all these temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil. I do so now. I ask her to renounce the world now, at this moment, and to enter upon a new life to which it shall be my high and glorious privilege to introduce her."

The subtlety of the priest saved him. The noble melancholy of his words and gestures was abundantly convincing, and suddenly the situation, at one time threatening to become unpleasantly melodramatic, became normal. The reversion to the light commonplaces and glib phrases of society was felt in Crabbe's careless tones as he spoke of the weather, adding:—

"'Tis never too late to be polite. I'm putting my watch back into my pocket, and I'll go with you, Father Rielle. My refuge—a temporary one—is no longer needed, it's lightening very considerably, and I suppose you'll be going on to Clairville."

"But what am I to do?" exclaimed Pauline. "I would rather not be left here alone!"

"I am afraid you must make up your mind to that. Poussette's horse is hardly fit to be driven. Let Father Rielle take him to the Manor House and then come back for you with one of the others."

This was agreed upon, the two men left at once and for the space of ten or fifteen minutes she was alone. At the end of that time she could hear footsteps on a rapid run, and soon Edmund Crabbe re-entered the barn. The cool air had invigorated him, and he flung off his cap and faced her.

"I could not leave you in that summary fashion, after so long," he said, "after so long, Pauline! Well—I have lived to be of some service to you—or so I think. Whether Platonic or not, you had better not encourage his reverence to that extent again, do you hear? A veritable Cassius of a man! And, by the way, you are looking very well just now, lady dear. I never saw you handsomer, Pauline!"

Miss Clairville's colour, already high, leaped more redly in her cheeks and she trembled; the ancient power that this man held over her, the ring of his rich English inflections, the revival of habit and association made her weak as water, so that she suddenly sat down and could find nothing to say. But Crabbe was quite at his ease, the encounter with Father Rielle had sharpened his wits and given him a restored opinion of himself, and in Pauline he saw a very handsome and attractive, warm-hearted and talented woman, still young and once very dear to him. The dormant affection in both was near the surface and Crabbe, knowing from her silence and downcast eyes how she felt, put some check on himself.

"Small use to either of us," he sighed, "to renew those passionate scenes of our youth! But I can still admire you and wish with all my heart—my heart you doubtless think black and altogether corrupt, Pauline—that you were for me to win afresh and wear openly this time, and that I might offer you a future unsullied. I suppose that your Methodist parson is after you, too, and that he will be the lucky one! He's handsome, d——n him—and steady as mountains; he does thy work, O Duty, and knows it not. I have little doubt but that flowers bend before him in their beds, that fragrance in his footing treads, and that the most ancient heavens——what's the rest of it? But you know, Pauline, you know you'll never be happy with him!"

Miss Clairville murmured something he did not catch, and it was a marvel to see how completely she lost her gay, assertive air, her dashing theatrical address in the presence of the guide.

"He's been at me several times about reforming. Well, if I did what would there be for me here? A big, long purse, Pauline, that's what I want—a big, long purse, my girl, and then you and I might leave this place and all these old harrowing associations. What about that Hawthorne business? Do you ever hear?"

"Sometimes," whispered Miss Clairville. "Antoine, as you may have noticed, acts for me. I give him the money, but I never go myself. I could not bear to see it—to see her—and it is not necessary."

"Poor girl!" said Crabbe, with much feeling. "It's hard on you, damned hard, I know. What's the matter? Oh—the swearing! I'm sorry, live too much by myself—forget myself. But Pauline, almost I think Father Rielle's advice will have to be followed. It would be a haven—a haven—better than the stage. If I could reform, could change my skin and lose my spots—but no! Even the fulminations of your latest admirer cannot work that miracle—I'm incorrigible! When I think of what I was, of what I might have been, and of what I am, despair seizes on me and then I'm only fit for—the bottle! There's no help for me, I'm afraid. Why, Pauline, this is Heaven's truth—I'm not perfectly sober now."

As he spoke, again were heard footsteps on a run outside the barn.

"I know you're not," said Miss Clairville in agitation, "but I don't shrink from you as I used to do. Perhaps it was my fault. Oh—who can this be? Father Rielle returning?"

"Hardly. He was told to drive back for you. It's some one seeking shelter, like ourselves. Hark—the hail is stopping, and now the thunder and lightning and a good old-fashioned midwinter storm!"

"I know who it is," said she, still more hurriedly, and pushing Crabbe towards the ladder,—"it is Mr. Ringfield. You must go back to the loft. I could not have him meet you here. He thinks—he thinks—you know what he thinks."

"And he's not far wrong, either," said Crabbe complacently. "But perhaps I'd better do as you say; don't detain him now. When he's gone I'll get you out of this somehow."

Thus in a few minutes Ringfield entered the barn, found Pauline, as he supposed alone; but afterwards, watching from the high road, saw the guide emerge and noted the familiar relation in which they stood in front of the stricken pine.

More than simple religious feeling entered at this moment Ringfield's young and untried heart, his vanity was deeply wounded, and the thought that Miss Clairville could allow Edmund Crabbe to caress her was like irritating poison in his veins. Yet he was in this respect unfair and over-severe; the fact being that Pauline very soon observed, on coming into closer contact with the guide, the traces of liquor, and she then adroitly kept him at a distance, for in that moment of disenchantment Ringfield's image again came uppermost.

It was not possible for her to be wise either before or after the event; she had not sufficient coldness nor shrewdness of character to enable her to break with all these conflicting surroundings and begin life over again as she had eloquently described to the priest, for without money she could not leave St. Ignace, and she could not raise the money without taking some situation which might unfit her for the stage and prolong the time of probation too far into middle life. Pauline might age early, and at thirty-five she saw herself maturing into a gaunt and grizzled dame, incapable of all poetic and youthful impersonations. To be thus crippled was torture to her lively imagination, and in this danse macabre of thought, a grim procession of blasted hopes, withered ideals and torturing ambitions, her mind gave itself first to one issue, then to another, while it was clear that her position at St. Ignace was fast growing untenable and that something would have to be done.

To live at Poussette's on the charity of its host was, although the sister of the seigneur, to invite insult. To yield a second time to the ingratiating addresses of the guide was to lose her self-respect, while to indulge in and encourage a pure affection for Ringfield was a waste of time. She recognized the truth of Crabbe's candid statement—how could she do the young man such an injustice as to marry him!



CHAPTER XVII

REVELRY BY NIGHT

"Two passions both degenerate, for they both Began in honour, ..."

The scene in the kitchen of the Manor House presented a forcible contrast to the wild world without. The near approach of winter and the news that M. Clairville was convalescent and well enough to receive visitors had brought the Abercorns from Hawthorne to pay their somewhat belated respects—they had never called before—and their arrival at the metairie created much astonishment. The rate at which the mare had raced through the Turneresque "Hail, Snow and Rain" relaxed as she neared Lac Calvaire, and they were able to disembark (in the language of the country) in safety if not in comfort at the door opened by Mme. Poussette. The parishes being nine miles apart, one entirely French, the other mostly English, not much gossip penetrated, and the Rev. Marcus and his wife were startled to hear that Henry Clairville had left his room, walked all over his house and even reached half-way to the bridge one afternoon. But as they were both cold and fatigued, madame led them (and shortly after Dr. Renaud and Poussette as well), by dark and tortuous paths, to her kitchen, a large room built on the generous scale of the seventeenth century, with a deep overhanging fireplace, and thick, arched recesses serving as closets, and furnished with swinging shelves and numerous bins where the provisions sent in periodically by Poussette were safely stored, thus being well protected from the rigours of a Lower Canadian winter.

Mrs. Abercorn was glad to come to the fire, her short squat figure lost in the depths of a chair which Mme. Poussette had found in one of the disused rooms, padded and carved, but also torn and moth-eaten; nevertheless a comfortable refuge on such a day, and soon the reverend lady sank into a soothing slumber, while her husband read from a book he carried in his pocket.

It grew dark and madame was lighting a couple of lamps when the priest and Ringfield entered. Explanations were in order, but as neither of them mentioned Edmund Crabbe, Miss Clairville's true position was not made known, and it was arranged that as soon as somebody's clothes were sufficiently dried and somebody's horse rubbed down and fed, somebody should pick her up at Leduc's barn and so return with her to St. Ignace.

"Of course you will go, Dr. Renaud," said Mrs. Abercorn, waking up abruptly and joining in the conversation with her usual judicial air. "But take some supper first."

"Has not mademoiselle already waited overlong?" exclaimed Poussette. "It is nearly six o'clock and dark—shall I not return now, and bring her back with me?"

"I think not," said the doctor, who partly understood the situation. "She will not expect to reach Clairville at all to-night, and, as Mrs. Abercorn says, as soon as I have something to eat, and a little to wash it down with—I myself shall go for her. Here, Poussette—off with your coat! Stir yourself now, and bring us the best the manor affords. It's no secret that since Mme. Archambault and her tribe have cleared out, we are masters of all contained in these generous closets—these roomy cellars I have heard of so often. Madame—the cloth, if you please, the dishes, the plates! Poussette—the wine, the old liqueurs, the glasses!"

"But sir, consider the fate of ma'amselle!" cried Poussette piteously. "She is alone—oh, poor lady—in Leduc's barn, without light, without warmth, with nothing to eat or drink! How then—do you wish to desert her?"

"Not I," said the doctor composedly. "But I know mademoiselle, she is true Canadienne, not afraid of a little snow, a little storm! And the secret of my profession is—always to eat and always to drink when good food and good drink are going. Madame, make haste there!"

"If I could assist you,——" began Mr. Abercorn, but stopped, for his glance wandered to his wife, who had never approved of Miss Clairville.

"You must not dream of such a thing, Marcus. Leave me here in this strange house, and go back by yourself along that awful road? Certainly not. Perhaps Father Rielle is going that way sooner than you, Dr. Renaud. Are you not, sir, anxious to—what do you call it—chercher mademoiselle?" Despite her knowledge of French it was the way of this lady to address the inhabitants of the countryside in English, it "accustomed them to it" and, she fervently hoped, tended to bring about the ultimate "Anglifying of the Province," to borrow a term much used by that distinguished patriot, Louis Honore Papineau, previous to 1857.

The priest, who had as yet no intention of returning to the barn, preferring that others should encounter the uncertain temper of one so recently tried in uncommon and painful ways, professed much interest in her plight, remarking, however, that he feared he did not drive well enough to find his way over the plateau of rock which lay between the road and the shelter.

"Then there is only Mr. Ringfield left!" exclaimed Mrs. Abercorn, much as if she were marshalling people in to dinner. "Yes, yes—you shall go for her, poor thing, but probably she deserves it; living on your charity, I hear, Mr. Poussette, and the other woman too; shocking, I call it! And belonging to quite an old family, quite old, I believe."

The idea of Pauline not paying anything towards her board while staying at Poussette's was painfully new to Ringfield; he had never thought of the matter, but now recalled her chronic condition of impecuniosity, and he saw directly how humiliating this must be for her and why it was necessary that she should find something to do. Henry Clairville, her natural and proper protector, could not apparently help her, the Englishman was fully as impotent, and Ringfield at once decided, while listening to the conversation, to seek her again and offer her a part of his stipend, the first instalment of which had been paid over by Poussette that morning. Everything favoured his quiet withdrawal, for the heat of the fire, the stacks of celery, and the splendid cognac, smuggled from the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, and purchased by Poussette for twenty cents a bottle, were beginning to tell on both Mr. Abercorn and the doctor.

"Twenty cents, did you say?" hastily inquired the former, "I never heard anything like that! I think I must, I really must have a taste, just a drop, just a sip—thank you, Dr., thank you. My dear—a little for you too? No? Well, well, after all that exposure I do not believe, I really do not believe a little would hurt you. Ah! that's it, Dr., a small wineglassful for Mrs. Abercorn. There, my dear, I am sure you require it."

"Do you no harm," said Dr. Renaud. "'Tis fine stuff, the best French. Makes one feel like a boy." And he began to sing.

"Quand j'etais sur mon pere, Je n'avais rien a faire Quand j'etais sui mon pere Qu'une femme a chercher. A present j'en ai une, A present j'en ai une Qui me fait enrage.

"Change that to 'en roulant ma boule' and I'm with you," said Mr. Abercorn, and the Doctor took him at his word; Mrs. Abercorn becoming very sleepy, was provided with rugs and pillows on a sofa in the hall, while the two gentlemen sipped cognac and munched celery till slumbers also overtook them.

Ringfield then moved. "Where is M. Clairville?" he asked Mme. Poussette, tilting his chair back as she passed.

"In his bed, M'sieu. He overwalked this morning and knows nothing of the storm, and after a petit verre of this good cognac he has gone to sleep. It is good for the brain—this cognac; will not M'sieu join the others?"

"No, thank you," he said, smiling, "You know I never touch these things. But I was thinking of going out to see the night. Surely the rain is almost over! Do I go this way?"

"The other door, if you please, M'sieu."

Poussette's anxiety as he noted Ringfield's departure was ludicrous. He overturned bottles, knocked down a chair, while he cast frightened glances at the priest sitting reading his breviary austerely under the lamp. How could he escape? Ah—the horses—they had not been properly attended to! The next moment he was off, out of the kitchen and hastily rummaging in the large and dreary stables for a lantern. A whole row of these usually hung from the ceiling of a small outhouse close at hand, and Ringfield had already taken one, lighted it, and was a quarter of a mile along the road; Poussette, fearing this, made such insane haste, "raw haste, half-sister to Delay," that the blanketing of the horse and the other preliminaries took more time than usual, and he had hardly driven out of the gate when Father Rielle, who had changed his mind, also left the kitchen from where his sharp ears had caught these various sounds, and searching for a third lantern, found one, lighted it, and set off on foot behind Poussette in the buggy.

Thus—a little procession of three men and three lanterns was progressing along the slippery, lonely road towards the barn where Miss Clairville was awaiting rescue, the first of whom to arrive was Ringfield. Striding to the half-open door he boldly called her name, and shoving the lantern inside perceived her to be entirely alone.

"Oh—it is you then! I am so glad—it seems hours since you went away. I have not been exactly frightened, for I know these woods and there is nothing alive in them, but the position of this barn—so remote, so down by itself in the little hollow—if anything did attack me, my voice would never be heard."

"But you were not alone when I left you! You may not be alone now!"

"How did you find that out?" her face changed; she had not calculated on his having seen Crabbe.

"I think I knew all the time; your restlessness, your anxiety to get me away, your pushing me down on that box and changing the subject—why, when I saw him come out, and—and wind his arm around your waist, then I knew you had been lying to me! How could you do it!" He waved the lantern towards the loft but could see nothing there.

"He is gone, gone," said she earnestly; "he has gone to the village to get some rig or other and come back with it for me, but of course I would rather go with you."

"I cannot believe a word you say!" exclaimed Ringfield in an agony, setting the lantern down. "Not a word—not a word. Do you think you can play all your life like this with men? You cannot play with me at all events. There are forces here (he struck his breast), passions here, instincts here I never dreamed of, I never knew I possessed. It is not good, nor wise, nor necessary for me to love you, Pauline, but I do—I do! And you must fear them, you must respect them, these instincts, these forces, as much in me as you would do in other men."

"I do, I do! Only I do not like to see you and that other man together—I always feel something happening, I do not know what! but I will tell you all about it. Father Rielle drove me to this place; we got out, came in, and then he talked most foolishly, most wildly—hurt my wrist—see here! And while I was wondering how I could put him off, get rid of him, I discovered that the other man was in the loft. I saw his stick, then I heard him; and then he came down and he and Father Rielle went away together."

"But he came back—for I saw him, I saw you both. You went outside to look at the tree."

"Yes—he went away, but he came back, and while we were talking I heard you coming and so—and—so——"

"You got him out of the way in time! Then after I left he was here again with you?"

"For a little while, just a little while."

Ringfield suddenly snatched her hands and bent his stern offended gaze upon her.

"You have been hours with that man, hours—I know it. And to pretend to me that there was no one there, while you allowed me to open my mind and heart to you—the indignity of it, the smallness and vileness of it; oh!—can not you see how I suffer in my pride for myself as well as in my affection for you? As for the man, he knew no better, and I suppose he wished for nothing better, than to listen and look, to watch us, to spy——"

He choked with sorrowful wrath and temper; an access of jealous, injured fury entirely possessed him for an instant, then with a great effort, and an inward prayer, he partly regained his ministerial calm.

"You must see that I am right," he resumed; "he calls himself a gentleman—you call him one; but is that a gentlemanly thing to do? Gentleman? To stay here in hiding and let us talk on as we did! And what does it signify that he is or has been 'an Oxford man'—the term has no relevancy here, no meaning or sense whatever. Tell me this once more, for I have grave doubts—has he any legal right over you?"

Pauline resolved to answer this question truthfully. How would Ringfield accept the delicate distinction of a moral right involving only those ties, those obligations, known to themselves and not to the world?

"No," she said, firmly. Then a great burst of colour filled her face as she continued. "But he should have had. Now you know. Now you know all." And Ringfield, as almost any other man would have done, mistakenly concluded that she was the unfortunate mother of the unfortunate child in the distant parish, Angeel! In this, perhaps the crucial moment of his whole existence, his manhood, his innate simple strength, his reason and his faith, all wavered, tottered before him; this experience, this knowledge of evil at first hand in the person of one so dear, flamed round him like some hideous blast from the hot furnace of an accepted hell, and he realized the terrors of things he had read about and seen depicted—lost souls, dark and yet lurid pits of destruction, misshapen beasts and angry angels—the blood flowed from his arteries and from his stricken heart up to his frightened brain, and surged there while he stood, not raising his eyes to this ill-starred woman. It was child's play to read one's Bible; it was child's play to read about sin; it was bald and commonplace to receive converts after service, or to attend death-beds of repentance; here was that suffering entity, the Sinner, alone with him, weak in her strength and strong through her weakness, and with her delicate, guilty, perverted impulses he had to deal, and no longer with pulpit abstractions. But while they stood thus, another turn in the affairs which revolved around the lonely barn carried with it a new sound; a horse's trot was plainly heard, likewise the humorous lilt of a shanty song.

"It is Mr. Poussette!" whispered Pauline, rushing to the lantern and extinguishing it. "He is coming for me and I shall have to go with him. I can manage him—better than the priest—but you—what must I do with you? He is a gossip—that one—and it will work you harm in your religion, in your church, if he finds you here with me."

"Oh, why are you so impetuous!" returned Ringfield. "You should not have blown out the light! He knew doubtless that I was coming for you—there would be nothing in that. Where is the lantern—I will light it again."

"You cannot reach it, I have hidden it down behind those boxes. No, no—I could not have him find you here with me. The loft—the loft! There is the ladder!"

And in two minutes he found himself, after scrambling up in the dark, crawling about on his hands and knees in the same heap of straw that had served to conceal Edmund Crabbe a few hours before, and doomed, in his turn, to overhear the conversation of any who might be below.

In a few moments the horse came to a standstill, and Poussette approached, carrying his lantern, Miss Clairville receiving him with just that successful mixture of hauteur and coquetry, which kept him admiring but respectful. His delight at being the first, as he supposed, to reach her, was as absurd as it was genuine, but there was no delay, and she was soon comfortably wrapped up in Poussette's voiture and being rapidly driven to the manor-house. When he thought it was quite safe, Ringfield shook himself free from the hay and straw that encumbered him, and prepared to descend the ladder, but he had scarcely enjoyed the luxury of stretching his long limbs (for he could not stand upright in the loft) when he heard footsteps approaching, and looking down, he perceived Father Rielle enter the barn, lantern in hand, and with thin, high-nosed, sour countenance depicting intense surprise, eagerly explore the place for Pauline. Ringfield held his breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak pulled well over him, settled to a night's rest. Ringfield, thus imprisoned, passed for his part a miserable night; he dared not move and his excited brain kept him from sleeping. Towards four o'clock the lantern flickered out; at six, while it was yet dark, the priest arose and went his way, and an hour later Ringfield also retraced his steps to the village. Like a man in an exceedingly unpleasant, but most distinct dream, he found himself bound in a net of intrigue from which there seemed no chance of escape. It was Sunday morning and at eleven he would have to take charge of the service and address the usual congregation as Father Rielle had already partly done, the early mass at St. Jean Baptiste-on-the-Hill being held at half past seven.

The road between the grim leafless trees was now swept clean of both snow and hail by the streams of heavy rain which had poured the previous night, and the air was mild. Much havoc had been wrought in places by the furious storm; the rocky ground was littered with branches and twigs of all sizes; rivers of yellow mud ran where the clay road should be, and against this desolation there glowed occasional plants of bright green, low along the ground, that had escaped the winter's rages of a high level. Crows were silhouetted against the pale blue sky laced with streamers of white, and spring seemed to be in the air rather than late autumn; the excited birds called to each other as they flew high over the forest, as if to hail this pleasant morning, a contrast to the stormy night. Suddenly the sun shone through those cloudy gossamers and irradiated the bright green ferns and orange lichens, drawing the eye to the cross of gold that topped Father Rielle's fine church. Ringfield went out of his way to look at the fall; it was much swollen from the rain and thundered over its brown rocks more loudly than he had ever heard it. Above the bridge were swaying large quantities of floating timber, washed down by the violence of the storm, and as he looked he saw three of these derelicts ride to the brink, and tumble over, and among them a little dog, that had got out there he could not tell how, which for a moment stood on a rolling tree whining piteously, and then fell with it down those ledges of furious frothing waters.

He ran close to the edge, and looked over, but there was no trace of the animal for fully five minutes; then he saw its poor little body emerge, battered, knocked about by stones and trees at the foot of the great cascade, and at the sight his good sense and right feeling seemed to return to him. He had temporarily, as he himself would have put it, forgotten his Creator in the days of his youth; now all came back to him; the duties of his position, its dignity and its obligations, and he strove hard, by prayer and concentration of mind, to be as he had been, and forget Miss Clairville and her tempestuous existence for a while, as he took upon himself the work of the sacred day. He preached later from the verse, "Yet in the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue," and his voice and magnetic delivery were not impaired. The little dog, the little dead dog, figured in the sermon; like the Ancient Mariner when he leaned over the rotting vessel's side and watched the beautiful living things moving in the waters, his heart gushed out with sympathy as the image of the dog, seeing his death, and recognizing no escape from it, remained with him. The eyes of the poor animal seemed ever before him; large, pathetic brown eyes, with soft patches of lighter brown fur above them, a quivering nose and trembling paws—could he not have saved it? No—for motion once given to those rolling logs, they would carry anything on with them, and it was already too late when he first perceived it—a small, shivering, unhappy little object—with fear shining in its large eyes, those eyes he had seen looking directly at him as if to say: "Help me, my brother, help me from this Death! Help me, for the love of God, as you believe in God and in His Omnipotence and Goodness!"



CHAPTER XVIII

A CONCERT DE LUXE

"——Consumed And vexed and chafed by levity and scorn, And fruitless indignation, galled by pride, Made desperate by contempt."

Ringfield, who had confessed to a fixed and abiding ignorance of the stage, was also ignorant of music, except so far as he could recognize a few patriotic airs and old-country ballads. Of church music there was nothing worth speaking of or listening to in the Methodist conventicles of those days, so that he brought an absolutely open mind to a consideration of Miss Clairville's voice and method when he first heard her sing. That had been one evening in an impromptu and carelessly inadequate manner in company with Miss Cordova—whom, with her bleached hair, green eyes accentuated by badly-drawn, purplish-black eyebrows, and a shrill American accent, he was learning to dislike and avoid as much as possible; but now a better opportunity presented itself. A Grand Evening Concert, Concert de Luxe, was to be given at Poussette's for the survivors of Telesphore Tremblay, a woodcutter who lived at the edge of the forest of Fournier, and who had generously left behind him one of those long legacies of thriving sons and daughters for which French Canada is famous. The modest birth-rate of the province of Quebec is not in these days of "race suicide" a thing to be ungrateful for: many Tremblays remain, with their family of eighteen or twenty-four, of sturdy, healthy boys and girls, for the most part pure French, with an occasional streak of Scotch or Irish, and a still rarer tincture of Indian. Frugal, sober, industrious, and intelligent along certain limited lines, the habitant sets an example of domestic bliss, which, in its unalterable and cheerful conviction of what are the duties of parents to the state and to the Church, tends to the eternal and unimpoverished perpetuation of the French Canadian race. The Tremblays were named as follows, and as some interest attaches to the choice of triple, and even quadruple, titles, largely chosen from the saints of the Roman Calendar, augmented by memories of heroes, queens, and great men in history, it is thought well to give them at length. Thus the sons, nine in number, were:—

Alexis Paul Abelard Joseph Maurice Cleophas Hector Jerome Panteleon Etienne Jean Gabriel Jules Alfred Napoleon Francois-Xavier Hercule Narcisse Patrick Zenophile Pierre Joseph Louis-Felippe Alphonse Arthur

while the daughters were:—

Minnie Archange Emma Catherine Lucille Victoria Cecile Marie-Antoinette Colombe Brigide Zenobie Eugenie Louise Angelique Bernardette Ste. Anne.

The dining-room at Poussette's was transformed for the occasion into a moderate sized concert hall, by the erection of a platform at one end by Antoine Archambault under Pauline's skilled directions, and by rows of planks crosswise over chairs, the people of the village joining forces with those at Poussette's, just as in towns others conspire together to hold fetes and bazaars; but Ringfield stood afar off and would have nothing to say to it. Miss Clairville intercepted him that day after dinner and asked him to assist her.

"I cannot think," said she, "how you remain so narrow in one respect, while broad enough in others! I am sure that sermon yesterday about the widow and the fatherless was the most beautiful thing I ever heard, and that you have ever said. How then—is it wicked to get up a concert, act, sing, and amuse ourselves, and all for a good object, that we make money for the unfortunate? Ah—but I do not understand you at all!"

"No, I suppose I cannot expect you to do so," replied Ringfield sadly. "But I have never approved of similar practices in the city, and it seems to me that I must now include the country. Why not make a personal canvass from house to house, through the mill, and so on, and interest the members of our small community in the Tremblays—I believe you would raise more."

"Ah!" exclaimed Pauline, with a swift shrug of impatience; "see now—how we should quarrel always! Quarrel? I think it would be one grand, great long fight, if I—if I——" she faltered, and he noted with quick passion the drooping of her ordinarily flashing eyes.

"If you——" he repeated softly. "Oh—say the rest, or if you would rather not—I will say it for you. You mean, if you could make up your mind to leave all this, leave everything and everyone you have known, and come to me—is that it?"

They were for a moment completely alone, but as Antoine might approach at any instant, laden with boughs of evergreen for decoration purposes, conversation was of a stolen and hurried kind. Ringfield, in whom first love had rapidly modified all natural shyness of the sex, was no lukewarm lover; he took Pauline's hands, and bringing them to his lips, pressed ardent kisses upon them, urging her to at once decide in his favour and give him the right to guard her interests for ever. How or where they would live was no matter, her best impulses must surely move all her heart towards him, and at last he heard from her a soft answer, which was nevertheless a clear affirmative, and now, not only hands but lips joined in this rare moment, and Pauline, no longer estimating the minister as one unlearned in the subtle lists of love, felt happier than she had done for months. She had made, she told herself, the best choice offered her, and for the moment she swore resolutions of holy living and quiet dying, all in the character of Ringfield's wife. As for him, the kiss had sealed all and changed all.

"Now at last I shall live again, be a free agent, able to do my work! You can have no conception of what it has been for me to get up my sermons, for example, or to go about among the people here, thinking of you, wondering if you would ever come to me or not. I have pictured you going back to that other man, and I have hated you for it, hated you both!"

"Oh—hush, hush, be careful!" Miss Clairville, like all women, was now afraid of the passion she had awakened. "Let us get to work—some one may come in—you do not mind helping me now?"

"Not—if you mean what you say! Not—if this time you are telling me the truth!"

"You cannot forget that lapse of mine, it seems. Well, I do mean it, I do, I do! And you—you mean it too? You would take me even with my past, and that past unexplained, with my faults and my temper?"

"I have told you before that I would," he returned firmly. "No matter what has happened; no matter what you have done, what anyone else has done, I would, I will, I do take you! You are Heaven's choicest, dearest gift to me—and what am I but an erring man trying to walk straight and see straight!"

Miss Clairville's eyes sparkled with mischief, while her mouth remained solemn.

"Then you must not talk of hating. Love your enemies, Mr. Ringfield, and bless them that persecute you. That isn't in the Catholic Manual in those words perhaps, but I have seen it somewhere, I think in the Testament Nouveau. You see—— I am always 'good Methodist' as our friend Poussette would say."

"You shall be a better one in the future," exclaimed Ringfield, tenderly, and as at that moment Poussette himself appeared, to lend assistance, the interview was at an end.

And now ensued a scene which a week earlier would have sorely tried Ringfield's patience, but which now sufficed to amuse him, so secure was he in Pauline's affection and so contented with her recent promises. The evergreens were brought to her, seated on the platform and wearing gloves to protect her hands; she cut off the branches, trimmed them, and sometimes handed them to Poussette, and sometimes to Ringfield, who then nailed them up at the back of the improvised dais to make a becoming background; she also twined the smaller pieces into festoons and ropes for the side of the room, and Poussette, who could not keep his admiration a secret, hovered about her, continually pressing her fingers as he received the greens, patting her back, offering her the scissors and the ball of twine much more frequently than she required them. It was a relief to the couple most concerned when Miss Cordova entered, wearing an elaborately pleated and not too clean violet dressing gown, over which she had put on a dark blue blanket coat and her host's fur cap to keep her warm. Thus from the ill-assorted trio was formed a comfortable partie carree, for Poussette seemed careless as to which lady he attended and he still bore the cornelian ring upon his finger. Ringfield, forgetting his scruples, had promised to take the chair and introduce the artists; Antoine was door-keeper, and Poussette, clad in tweeds, a white waistcoat and tie of bright blue, would receive the guests in his own effusive way, seating the ladies carefully on the fresh yellow planks with great gallantry and address.

At eight o'clock the room began to fill, the village turning out well, and a few coming all the way from Hawthorne, among these Enderby, the Cockney butcher, and his wife and daughter, and as soon as Ringfield had made a few appropriate remarks, couched this time in safe and secular terms, the first number was given, consisting of an orchestral selection by four players belonging to St. Ignace and to the choir of Father Rielle's big church, St. Jean-Baptiste-on-the-Hill. A cornet, two fiddles and a flute rendered the music with good time and fair intonation, and as it was lighthearted, even gay in character, melodious and tripping, Ringfield thought it must be of operatic origin, but found later on to his intense surprise that it was a transcription of Mozart's Twelfth Mass, interpreted by Alexis Gagnon, the undertaker, as first violin, his eldest son, second violin, Francois Xavier Tremblay, one of the beneficiaries, on the cornet, and Adolphe Trudel, a little hunchback, on the flute.

This selection, performed with more gusto and enthusiasm than customary, gave so much satisfaction that it had to be repeated after noisy and prolonged applause, and then Miss Cordova appeared at the side of the platform, dressed in Spanish costume and carrying castanets. The opera of "Carmen," at that time quite new, had been performed in some small towns of the United States by a "scratch" company, including Pauline's acquaintance and—to show that Art is a reality, and some people born into it, at their best in it and unfit for anything else—the lady was greatly changed, not only in Ringfield's eyes, but in her own. The greenish-yellow hair looked dull gold by lamplight; her eyes gleamed blackly from their blue crystallized lids (the bath of indigo being a stage device known to all devotees of the art), and her dancing, which immediately commenced to her own castanets and a subdued "pizzicato" from the two violins, was original and graceful, and free from any taint of vulgarity. Her draperies of handsome black and yellow stuffs were high to the throat and reached to her ankles; her expression was dreamy, almost sad; one would have said she was figuring in some serious rite, so dignified her mien, so chaste and refined her gestures. If Bizet has idealized the heroine of Prosper-Merimee's crude but strong little story, Sadie Cordova idealized in her turn the orthodox tempestuous, unhappy Carmen of the modern stage. The beauty of the music with its rhythmic measured beat, and the grace of her swaying changeful poses, riveted all eyes and ears, and Ringfield, to whom such an exhibition was altogether new, was absorbed in watching this woman he had endeavoured not to despise, and whom he certainly would have exhorted in his most earnest fashion to flee St. Ignace directly, had he known that she was a person who had experimented more than once in matrimony, not having waited for the death of her first husband before she married the second, and that she had two children living.

The next on the programme was a baritone solo from a young habitant, another of the Tremblay family, a portion of a Mass in which he was ill at ease, and over-weighted; this apparently not mattering to the populace, he was encored, and returned to sing, in his own simple fashion and without accompaniment, one of the many beautiful melodies known to him from his childhood—A Chanson Populaire.

Quand un Chretien se determine A voyager, Faut bien penser qu'il se destine A des dangers; Mille fois a ses yeux la mort Prend son image, Mille fois il maudit son sort Dans le cours du voyage.

Quand tu seras dans les portages, Pauvre engage, Les sueurs te couleront dea visages Pauvre afflige, Loin de jurer, si tu me crois, Dans ta colere, Pense a Jesus portant sa croix— Il a monte au Calvaire!

What words were these—to be sung at a mixed concert in a summer hotel in the primitive village of St. Ignace? Ringfield knew enough French to follow them, and as the minor plainsong of the melody floated through the hall, he saw Miss Clairville's eyes filling with tears where she sat in the front at one side awaiting her turn. She had often spoken to him of the beautiful national music of her province—this was the first time he had heard it. But quickly now followed Poussette with a solo on the concertina, in which his fat body laboured to and fro, and his fat hands plunged the instrument to one side, then to the other, while his broad smile and twinkling eyes first pleased, then convulsed the audience. After him came Miss Clairville, and Ringfield, nervously reading out the title of the song, did not observe how she was dressed until she had reached the platform and had greeted her audience. The black and scarlet garb so familiar to him was now accompanied by a smart little jacket of red worn rather queerly, since one arm only was thrust in and the empty sleeve caught up in some way he did not understand, while on her head she wore a kind of arch hussar's cap. It was evident that her selection was familiar to some in the audience, those who had seen her as "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein" in Montreal, and a few who had attended similar functions to the present.

"It's only an old turn of mine," she managed to whisper to Ringfield, "but they all like it. Le Sabre de Mon Pere—I never tire singing it myself. You look stupid enough this minute to be my Fritz—but there—you do not understand!"

The accompaniment was played on the American organ, moved for that occasion up to the platform, but even that could not detract from the passionate pride and fire with which Miss Clairville rendered that spirited song, so far removed from opera "bouffe" or "comic" opera; indeed the noble character of the first strain was considerably enhanced by the church-like quality of the accompaniment. So far Ringfield was greatly surprised, for he had seen and heard nothing that failed to appeal to the artistic and elevated side of life, and Pauline threw additional vigour and life into her representation of the autocratic Duchess, half-acted, half-sung, as she observed her latest captive; new chains were being forged by the unexpected grandeur and beauty of her thrilling voice and all went breathlessly and well until the door at the end of the room opened and a startling figure appeared. This was Edmund Crabbe—but no longer Crabbe the guide, the dilatory postmaster, the drunken loafer; in his stead appeared Crabbe Hawtree, Esquire, the gentleman and "Oxford man," in his right mind and clothed—mirabile dictu—in full and correct evening dress. Piccadilly and Pall Mall need not have been ashamed of him; the regulation coat, waistcoat and trousers were there, a little worn, but still in fashion; the white tie was there, the stiff collar and cuffs, the patent leather pumps, even a white silk handkerchief tucked inside the waistcoat, and some kind of sprig in the buttonhole. He paused, carefully shutting the door behind him, and stood while Pauline finished her song; at its conclusion he walked up through the rows of village people—shanty and mill hands, habitants and farmers—and presented the artist with a handsome bunch of florist's roses, quite in the accepted style of large cities, and her surprise was evident. She started, stared at him, faltered, and might have spoken but for the impassive and nonchalant air with which he faced her. As for Ringfield, a great anger and distress filled his mind. What spasm of reform had animated this fallen, worthless creature to create an impression which could not, in the nature of things, lead to systematic rehabilitation? To ape the garb of worthy men, to stand thus, tricked out in the dress of a remote civilization from which he had thrust himself forever, before the woman he perhaps had wronged, and with so easy and disdainful a bearing, seemed to Ringfield the summit of senseless folly and contemptible weakness. Subjected during the rest of the evening to the cynical, amused and imperturbable gaze of this man, whom, in spite of his Christianity, he hated, Ringfield made but a sorry chairman. His French stuck in his throat; he cast dark and angry looks at the noisy flirtation going on between Poussette and Miss Cordova, and it was with relief that he heard the patriotic strains of "God Save the Queen" from the strength of the company, in which the hoarse bass of the transplanted cockney, Enderby, the Hawthorne butcher, was paramount.

Crabbe was waiting for Pauline and gave her his arm down from the platform.

"Well," said he, openly displaying his admiration, "you gave us a Gregorian Grand Duchess to-night, but I, for one, will not quarrel with you for that. All the old time vivacity and charm were there, I assure you, and I do not find as much alteration in your style and appearance as I expected from hearing that you had joined the Methodists!"

Pauline glanced quickly from Crabbe to Ringfield; she foresaw an open and unseemly quarrel, and as one could never tell when Crabbe was sober, she rather feared than welcomed the bright audacity of his manner, the amiable ease with which he held the situation. In the presence of the guide Ringfield always lost his austere calm; his manners underwent deterioration and he stood now with a rigid gaucherie spoiling his fine presence, and a pitiful nervousness prompting him to utter and do the wrong thing.

"I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Methodists all the same, you know," continued Crabbe, giving her arm a final and caressing pat as he released her, "but still I've seen better chairmen." Crabbe was now leaning lazily against the wall and occasionally moved his arm across Miss Clairville's back, as if he might at any moment fold it around her waist as he had done outside the barn.

"Your French needs polishing up a bit. How would a course at one of our theological colleges down here do for you? It's a pity you couldn't have six months even at Laval—but, of course, Sabrevois and the long procession of colporteurs is more in your line. But in spite of such small defects you remain a man of cheerful yesterdays, and we may presume—equally confident tomorrows, and therefore, to be envied."

The three stood comparatively alone, the people having passed out and Poussette and Enderby talking apart in a corner. Every vestige of healthy colour fled from the minister's face, and his hands clasped and unclasped with peculiar and unnatural tension. In his brain a prayer had formed. "My Dear God—" he kept saying to himself—"my Dear God—help me from myself! Protect me now lest I offend Thee, and be forever cast from Thy Holy Presence. Remove this temptation from me, or give me strength to meet it and endure, and so rise triumphant."

His lips moved and the word "God" made itself faintly heard. Pauline went closer to him and saw the set strain of his face and watched the tightening fingers.

"Oh, you are right—we torture you, he and I, with our foolish ways that you do not understand!"

"I understand well enough," he returned below his breath; "I understand better than you think. But come now, come away with me!"

"Come—where? I am living here, remember!"

"Come away—away!"

A new recklessness animated Ringfield; he was now the one to dash aside convention and make a bold attempt for mastery. "It is not yet very late. The snow is dry and hard—we can walk for half an hour."

Crabbe smiled in a slow infuriating way.

"I claim, I demand the lady for something better than a walk, under dreary midnight skies, over cold and inhospitable winter snows! Like a man in a certain chronicle I have made a supper and would bid you both attend—one at least."

"A supper? But whom——" Pauline stopped, although glad of the diversion Crabbe's words offered. She had seen him hand a couple of bills towards the Tremblay fund; she now recollected preparations towards extra cooking during that day, which she had set down to Poussette's mania for treating and feeding people, but which now must be attributed to the guide, and in her hand were the forced roses sent from Montreal—there was no nearer place. Crabbe must be out of his senses, for never before even in the old days when his remittance came to hand had she seen him so lavish. He read her meaning.

"Who pays, eh! Is that it, my lady? Well, I do on this occasion, and the fact is—well, I'll tell you all about it at supper."

Pauline, still incredulous but extremely curious, took small notice of Ringfield after this, and as Enderby was approaching, and she particularly avoided meeting anyone from Hawthorne on all occasions, she departed with the guide. There was a very attractive supper ready for her in a private room, where Miss Cordova was also present in her Spanish costume, a giddy chaperone who soon retired and left the two together, and Pauline could hardly credit the fact that Crabbe was genuinely sober, clad in his irreproachable evening suit, his hair neatly brushed with a kind of military cut, and his features composed and pleased, recalling much of what he had been when first they met; and she also observed with much surprise that Poussette was present at the feast altogether in the character of menial and inferior, with his coat off, bustling about with the glasses, corkscrews and towels. Instead of hobnobbing with the guide, he waited upon him with discretion and assiduity, and Pauline even fancied that towards herself there was a grain more of respect than of admiration in the hotel keeper's bearing.



CHAPTER XIX

REHABILITATION

"Cast from the pedestal of pride with shocks."

All through the little supper, made gay by the brilliant dresses of the ladies and the bunches of roses in the middle of the table, a restlessness marked the guide's manner; he was clearly anxious to have it over, get rid of Poussette and Miss Cordova, and be alone with Pauline.

It was a quarter to twelve when this was arrived at, and Crabbe took the precaution of closing the door securely after the Frenchman, and of seeing that the blind was sufficiently lowered over the one window which looked on the side of the cleared yard nearer the river, but he did not think of looking out of the window. Perhaps if he had he would not have recognized Ringfield in the straight dark shadow that kept walking up and down, up and down, as long as the light shone from that room. When he at last found himself secure and alone, the Englishman's stoicism, pride, and remorse, all came forth at one bound. He sat down and swept the dishes away from him, reached for Pauline's hand, and bent his head down over it upon the table, smothering different ejaculations, which, warm and earnest enough, were totally removed from his usual style of impassioned speech—he uttered nothing profane. But he sobbed—sobbed.

"Oh, what is it?" cried Miss Clairville in alarm. "What has happened? I never saw you like this before. It frightens me—why you sound as if you were crying, but that would be impossible. Oh, tell me, tell me!"

He grew calmer, lifted his head and felt for his handkerchief. "Yes, it's quite possible! I believe I have shed a tear or two. The first in how many years, Pauline? Ah—that I could not, would not wish to compute, but it's over now, I——"

He stopped, released her hand and began settling his clothes with the familiar touches she remembered so well. "I—well; Pauline, it's this; I've come into money. Now you know. Now you understand. And another thing—I know how to make money—what's more. Nothing succeeds like success, you see, and by Heaven—one thing followed on another till I could have gambled for luck, lost all, and won all back! Oh—I don't know what I'm saying, but I mean that one thing would have been enough, and there came two, two at once, here in the middle of this gloomy wood, this Inferno of a place I have hated so well and so long. Gad—it isn't half bad to-night though! I feel like a gentleman, I hope I look like one; I can act like one at least: pay my way, pay for this little spread, pay for your roses—what did you think when you saw them?"

Pauline did not take her eyes off him. She was alarmed, not believing a word he said, and she did not answer with her usual spirit.

"I thought them very wonderful of course in this out-of-the-way place. Did you send for them?"

"My lady is cautious. New for her. Where is our Gallic zeal and impetuosity gone? You're afraid of me! I see it. You think I'm drunk?"

She shook her head, but her smile was somewhat wan.

"Here, I'll convince you. Take my hands, both of them. Both of them, I say. At once, madam."

She did so and he drew her near, nearer, till their knees were touching.

"Now you answer me. Are they steady?"

"Yes."

"Very reluctantly given. Are they quite steady and firm like your own or like those of your parson friend?"

"Oh, don't, don't! Yes—quite firm, quite steady."

"You see! Now look at my eyes, look into them, lady dear. At once, madam. You find that trying, do you, but persevere. Well—what do you find? Are they wild, bloodshot, glazed, glaring? No? Only your image therein. And by God, Pauline, there never was and never will be any image half so beautiful, half so dear. That you must and will believe. Well, then—no, don't draw your hands away—about this money, for I'm perfectly sober and desirous of telling you the truth. You have the right to know. One thing led to another, but the first of it was like this. I've always been a scribbler in my lazy moments, as you know, but perhaps you can't be expected to know that I have put care and strong thought, art and heart both, into some verse that I occasionally would take out and look over, and then lock away again. How could I, forlorn and degraded, an outcast from society, hope to effect anything in literature! Yet I never destroyed any of these pet lucrubations of mine, and one day, a few months ago, I picked out a poem, copied it fair when my hand wasn't shaking, and sent it to a magazine in England. They took it—and I was so surprised that I went on a good long drunk. But when I got straight again I found a handsome cheque awaiting me and the hope, very warmly expressed by the way, that I would let him, the editor, have many more in the same vein. Many more, mind you, with cheques to match, so long as my industry holds out and I can find enough to say. Now consider for a moment what that signifies to a man like me, fallen so low, I confess it, ostracized and exiled, cut off from all old associations and without hope of overcoming my fault sufficiently to enable me to make a fresh start. It meant not only money, but employment, and congenial employment. It meant that after all, these years of leanness have not been wasted, that I have something to say if I can only retain the knack, the trick, of saying it in the way people will like, the public like. This alone would be much, but with it goes, you see, some money, so, as I said, one thing brings another; and money after all, Pauline, is what many a man as lost as I am mostly requires. It isn't as if I'd had money, squandered it and lost it; I never had it—I never had it."

He paused, and for a moment there had sounded that high dangerous ring in his voice she knew so well, and Miss Clairville drew her hands away.

"But that was not all," she said coldly. "You spoke of something else, of two things that had happened. What was the other?"

"The second grew out of the first, out of what I have told you. The poems—they were a couple of ranch episodes,—I'll let you see them presently—were signed by my full name, Edmund Crabbe Hawtree. I never supposed any one I knew would see them, or seeing them trouble their heads about the writer; in fact, I never thought about the matter. But somebody did see them and did remember me, and did take the trouble to find out who I was, and where I was, and I've had within the last fortnight two letters from a well known firm of lawyers in London informing me that I am without doubt the man they have been searching for during the past year, and that quite a respectable little fortune awaits me. There have been a few deaths in the family; I am next of kin and so that's all there is about it. Simple as you like, but true beyond a doubt, and so I thought I'd celebrate the event to-night with you, Pauline, and perhaps confer with you—you woman of the world, with your knowledge of life and of me—of me, alas! Me at my worst, Pauline, but let us hope really my worst."

He rose and walked around the room, unconscious of the dark shadow that also walked austerely outside the window. "This money—it is a great thing that has happened to me. It is difficult to realize. Don't mind my walking up and down; it soothes me and I'm excited too, I think."

Pauline seemed dazed.

"Is there a title? Is it much—the money that has been left you, I mean? Very much?"

"A good deal, but no title." And Crabbe could not and did not try to suppress the satisfied smile which told how he had gained in self-respect during the last few days.

"I expect you'll think it a good deal. Of course in England it will be different. There must be two houses with it; a town house—no, that was sold a long while ago, I believe; anyway, there would be more to do with it over there than on this side. I wonder how soon I ought to go."

"Go! You are going! But how much is it?"

"Oh! Didn't I say? About ten thousand; pounds you know, Pauline, pounds, not dollars."

"Ten thousand pounds!"

"A nice little sum, lady dear?"

"All that money yours?"

"Yes, and not a penny too much, not a penny too much. I have to revenge myself on fate, or Providence, or whatever you call it, for these years of misery. I have to think of what I might have done and lose no time in doing it. Pauline, I must think of you."

A softer mood held him now and he dropped upon his knee and laid his head upon her lap, but she could not follow his swift changes of emotion; the mention of the money had obliterated every other thought, and whether it was the woman in her or the potential miserliness of her race—the Clairvilles were traditionally stingy—she seemed unable to get away from the mere image of the ten thousand pounds.

"But, Mon Dieu, what a great change there will be! You will be everything and I shall be nothing! A poor actress, a doubtful lady! Oh! I shall be nothing to you, I can see, I can see! Mon Dieu, but this is only to bring more trouble upon me!"

Crabbe, as he will still be called, was at this much astonished. To do him justice he had for some time, ever since Ringfield's advent in the village in fact, found himself wishing that he might sincerely reform and offer Pauline the honour of marriage, and with it some hopes of a respectable competence.

"What nonsense are you saying?" he returned angrily. "Isn't money what we both require, what we have always required? And here it is now, as much as we want, and more, a great deal more, than we deserve or we expected! Why, I'll marry you now, Pauline, and you'll keep me steady; you and the travel and all the strangeness and the glory of it. You don't need any educating, any furbishing up—thank Heaven you were always a lady!—but we'll go abroad, of course, for a while and I'll show you Paris, Pauline, Paris, where you told Father Rielle you wanted to go and act; and you shall buy all you want at the shops, and I'll take you to the Louvre. Oh, yes, and you must go and see Mme. Bernhardt if she is acting; you might have been her rival if you'd begun earlier, with your moods and fancies and tempers. Then we'll come back to London, and I'll take you for a day to my old lodgings in Jermyn St., just to square up things. Then we'll progress quietly to the Towers, Langmere, Suffolk; that's the estate; not the most interesting of counties, but everything will be new and equally interesting to you, and thus we'll sober down to the regulation old English married couple. Dost like the picture, my lady of St. Ignace, my chatelaine of Clairville?"

"Always Clairville, always St. Ignace." She clasped her hands above her head in weariness. "If something could happen like what you describe, but no—it is impossible. They say that Henry's sight is going now, that very soon he will not be able to walk about by himself at all, that he is better in body but worse in mind, that he is forgetting all caution and speaking openly of the child—what is to be the end of it?"

"If anything could happen! Something has happened. What I am telling you is true. I am rich, able to take care of you, to put an end to this sordid existence; you shall be taken away from Henry and the child, and the old associations. Don't you believe me?"

"I should like to; but it's too much, too sudden, too good to be true."

"But it is true; here are the letters; here is money, a little of what is due, and here are the poems. You see, even if there were any mistake, any hitch about the estate, I still have a career open to me. There's an old manuscript novel of mine lying about somewhere; I believe I can get that taken; and I feel, I know there's something in it,—life, truth, suffering! But there's no hitch, no mistake, I swear it to you, Pauline; and whenever you're ready, I am; and we will, in melodramatic language, fly together from these dreary wilds. Fortunately residence at St. Ignace doesn't imply creditors. I've taken a room here at Poussette's, and I shall live in comfort for the short time that may elapse before we start. One thing, I hope, I hope, I shall keep sober. Would you take me if you thought I wouldn't, lady dear?"

He sat, stooping forward, his hair slightly disarranged, his blue eyes no longer choleric but gently smiling. She realized that he was still goodlooking, still a gentleman, a man of culture and even talent, young enough to move the world, and almost as young in appearance as herself; for mental anxiety and care of any kind always showed directly in her mobile features, and she was already beginning to track a few grey hairs and a few unbecoming wrinkles.

"There's another reason," she said evasively. "You have no idea how persistent this young man, the minister, has become. I have warned him, I have told him—not everything, of course, but a great deal—yet still he follows me, and to-day, I cannot remember what I said; but I have certainly led him to expect that I shall marry him."

"What! The parson! I thought you had more sense. Never do, never in the world. And now in the light of my proposals, see what you would be throwing away."

"But he is very earnest, very determined. He may keep me to my word. He may not get over it if I refuse, if I manage to leave St. Ignace with you."

Crabbe laughed and kissed her lightly on the ear. He said nothing, but produced first letters and papers from his pocket and then a small case. Pauline opened it; a pair of beautiful ear-rings flashed in the lamp light. In her ears were the imitation ones; she thought no longer of anything but whisking these out and putting on the others. Together they studied the papers and read the letters; and before they parted for the rest of the night she had promised to be ready in a month to marry him wherever he would prefer to have the ceremony performed, and to go abroad with him. She was to say that he had certainly come into some money but not to say how much; she was to busy herself with making arrangements for her brother's future comfort, as in all probability the pair would never revisit St. Ignace; and she was to make in particular a visit of a few days to Hawthorne on special and private business connected with the child Angeel.



CHAPTER XX

A RURAL AUTOCRAT

"The discipline of slavery is unknown Amongst us—hence the more do we require The discipline of virtue."

The presence of Enderby at the Tremblay concert had not been altogether due to the excellence of the programme or the merit of the beneficiaries; he had in fact driven over with the intention of speaking to Ringfield on a subject of some importance—the future of the child in the basket chair. This excellent but domineering storekeeper was the leader of society at Hawthorne; the settlement was not rich in old families, either English or French, and very early in his career he and his wife had taken the helm and continued to hold it, preserving strict notions of etiquette and maintaining a decorous state which would have become the Lieut.-Governor of a Province. Large, stern and florid, he was always the same in manner whether serving behind his counter or taking up the money on Sundays: shining example of intelligence, thrift, and British insularity, such a man as Clarence Enderby carries the love of British institutions all over the globe, and one forgives his syntax for the sake of his sincerity. He had always been a fiery conservative and a staunch member of the Church of England; and two or three months before Ringfield's arrival he had organized what was known to all beholders passing his shop by a japanned sign hanging outside as the "Public Library," a collection of forty-seven volumes of mixed fiction in which the charming and highly illuminative works of E. P. Roe were chiefly conspicuous, reposing in a select corner of the establishment, somewhat towards the centre, and equidistant from the dry goods, rubbers, hardware and hammocks, and from the candies, groceries, fancy jewellery and sheet music. The proprietors of these country "general stores" are great men in their way: years ago they rolled up fortunes for themselves in their district; potential Whiteleys and Wanamakers, they were the true pioneers in the departmental store business, and on a lilliputian scale "Enderby's" would have compared very well with the Army and Navy Stores of London. Absence of competition creates a monopoly, and Enderby's was the best store in a large district including Hawthorne, St. Ignace, Beauscley, his only rival being the Yankee referred to by Crabbe, who did not, however, bear a very good character, having been detected in smuggling some of those old French brandies and liqueurs, although he was outwardly a teetotaller and his place had no licence. Enderby, on the other hand, always drank a glass of beer with his Sunday dinner; indeed, the arrival of the malt of which his wife and daughter also partook, was a part of Sunday observance, while on birthdays and other anniversaries wine or toddy made their appearance. But extreme regularity and temperance in all things was a strong feature of his character, and he was therefore exceedingly jealous of the honour and good moral standing of the village, and the harbouring of Angeel had been for a long time a matter involving much worry. At the picnic Ringfield's ill-timed allusion to "sinners" had hurt him most particularly, and the more he thought of it the more he grew convinced that the minister could throw some light on the origin of the child and the manner in which it had come to be living at Hawthorne; for up to the present time almost complete ignorance prevailed. This was in itself extraordinary since the area was so small and the population so settled, but shrewd guessers were nearly hitting the mark when they supposed, from certain memories, inferences, and coincidences, that the child belonged to Miss Clairville, and this was precisely the point which offended the store-keeper; had the affair originated in his own parish, no matter how disreputably, he would have guarded the secret, striven to make the best of it, or, if the case abounded in direct violations of morality by those above him in station, all the more he would have preserved an absolutely rigid silence. His contention was—that the business belonged to some other parish, probably that of St. Ignace, and that when strangers, ignorant of this, visited Hawthorne, they took it for granted that Angeel was part of the village, thus bringing undeserved slur and unmerited obloquy upon an innocent community, and he took advantage of the concert to ask for a few words with Ringfield. The latter had just been compelled to witness the desertion of Pauline as she went off with Crabbe and Miss Cordova when he turned to find Enderby waiting to speak to him. Poussette had withdrawn.

"I hardly know, sir, just how I ought to introduce the subject," said the butcher, in his loftiest manner, eyeing the minister up and down. "For I have hardly ever spoke to a clergyman of your denomination before."

Ringfield with a somewhat constrained smile assured the speaker that he was mortal and fairly rational, although he was a Methodist.

"Yes, of course, I know that, and there is those who might have found great enjoyment in that there prayer you gave us, sir, some time back, great profit I may say, without fear of exaggeration."

"Prayer?" repeated the other, for a moment forgetting the incident alluded to. "Oh, yes, I know what you mean; it was, I understand, a trifle long for the occasion, a trifle long perhaps, but I spoke from my heart and with my heart, and I forgot probably that you were all waiting, and the viands were kept waiting too and so forth. I shan't offend again, I hope."

"I 'ope not, sir, I 'ope not. Now this evening you did it all to perfection, and all were very much obliged to you."

"Thank you, thank you very much," said Ringfield, his gaze wandering off to the hall where glimpses of drapery and musical clinking of bangles and bracelets assailed his senses. Miss Clairville was never without earrings and other jewelry, and if the proper idea of ornament is to attract attention to the parts thus graced, in her case there was reason for her wearing such, since she possessed both beautifully shaped ears and fine hands and arms.

"But, sir, the length of prayers is not all! Some of us could—I say this without fear of exaggeration—could go through the entire Litany and the Apostles' Creed backwards, which would take a man some time, and yet what would be the good of it? Stands to reason, sir, there must be something more than length, mere length of time in prayers."

"Of course, of course. You are quite right, Enderby."

"There must be appropriateness and truth and feeling, but none of it must bear too direct, says you—on the parties present or the occasion, be it wedding or funeral, or christening, or a mere social affair like the Harvest Home yonder. I see how it is with you; you can't always help it, for you can't always control your thoughts and likewise your words, not having no notes."

"But what did I say amiss on that occasion?" began Ringfield, nervously divining that this lecture was but the prelude to the statement that in some way he had offended. "I am quite sure, I am positively certain, that I had no intention of using words or phrases which were the reverse of appropriate or true, yet you seem to think that I was thus unfortunate."

Enderby gave a great sigh. "If you don't remember you mustn't find fault with my remembering, for it made quite a stir at the time. It quite took my wife's appetite away, sir."

"What did?" said Ringfield shortly.

"Your saying in that grieved, yet bold way, that we were all sinners, and that sinners were sitting even then at that very board."

"Was that all?" exclaimed the minister with sudden relief, and an uncontrollable smile. "Surely you are accustomed to that. Surely you do not consider yourselves in Hawthorne to be so perfect, so infallible, as to be beyond criticism and impatient of censure! If so, all I can say is I am very glad I used those terms, and I should say, I should think, that no matter what Church you belong to, you, Enderby, would see the absurdity of rating me for offering a prayer couched in the language most natural to me, and of which I am not ashamed. Do you deny that we are all sinners?"