drink at times, given also to card-playing and racing; but he had a way
with him which few women could resist and which made men his friends; and
he had a sense of humour akin to her own. In any case, one day she let
him catch her up in his arms, and there was the end of it. But no, not
the end, after all. It was only the beginning of real life for her. All
that had gone before seemed but playing on the threshold, though it had
meant hard, bitter hard work, and temptation, and patience, and endurance
of many kinds. And now George was gone for ever. But George's little
boy lay there on the bed in a soft sleep, with all his life before him.
She turned from the warm window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to the
bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt
eagerness, and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him,
and her face flushed hot with the passion of motherhood in her.
"All I've got now," she murmured. "Nothing else left--nothing else at
all."
She heard the door open behind her, and she turned round. Aunt Kate was
entering with a bowl in her hands.
"I heard you moving about, and I've brought you something hot to drink,"
she said.
"That's real good of you, Aunt Kate," was the cheerful reply. "But it's
near supper-time, and I don't need it."
"It's boneset tea--for your cold," answered Aunt Kate gently, and put it
on the high dressing-table made of a wooden box and covered with muslin.
"For your cold, Cassy," she repeated.
The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl, lines
growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate
quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked in
a queer, constrained voice.
"It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially
when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some
days."
"Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked softly, eagerly.
Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.
"It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you
used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't,
if that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get
in the East, where it's so damp."
Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the
sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said
in reply:
"It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago, Aunt
Kate; and it's come to stay, I guess. That's why I came back West. But
I couldn't have gone to Lumley's again, even if they were at the Forks
now, for I'm too poor. I'm a back-number now. I had to give up singing
and dancing a year ago, after George died. So I don't earn my living any
more, and I had to come to George's father with George's boy."
Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and it was tactful, too. She did not
understand why Cassy, who had earned so much money all these years,
should be so poor now, unless it was that she hadn't saved--that she and
George hadn't saved. But, looking at the face before her, and the child
on the bed, she was convinced that the woman was a good woman, that,
singer and dancer as she was, there was no reason why any home should be
closed to her, or any heart should shut its doors before her. She
guessed a reason for this poverty of Cassy Mavor, but it only made her
lay a hand on the little woman's shoulders and look into her eyes.
"Cassy," she said gently, "you was right to come here. There's trials
before you, but for the boy's sake you must bear them. Sophy, George's
mother, had to bear them, and Abel was fond of her, too, in his way.
He's stored up a lot of things to say, and he'll say them; but you'll
keep the boy in your mind, and be patient, won't you, Cassy? You got
rights here, and it's comfortable, and there's plenty, and the air will
cure your lung as it did before. It did all right before, didn't it?"
She handed the bowl of boneset tea. "Take it; it'll do you good, Cassy,"
she added.
Cassy said nothing in reply. She looked at the bed where her boy lay,
she looked at the angular face of the woman, with its brooding
motherliness, at the soft, grey hair, and, with a little gasp of feeling,
she raised the bowl to her lips and drank freely. Then, putting it down,
she said:
"He doesn't mean to have us, Aunt Kate, but I'll try and keep my temper
down. Did he ever laugh in his life?"
"He laughs sometimes--kind o' laughs."
"I'll make him laugh real, if I can," Cassy rejoined. "I've made a lot
of people laugh in my time."
The old woman leaned suddenly over, and drew the red, ridiculous head to
her shoulder with a gasp of affection, and her eyes were full of tears.
"Cassy," she exclaimed, "Cassy, you make me cry." Then she turned and
hurried from the room.
Three hours later the problem was solved in the big sitting-room where
Cassy had first been received with her boy. Aunt Kate sat with her feet
on a hassock, rocking gently and watching and listening. Black Andy was
behind the great stove with his chair tilted back, carving the bowl of a
pipe; the old man sat rigid by the table, looking straight before him and
smacking his lips now and then as he was won't to do at meeting; while
Cassy, with her chin in her hands and elbows on her knees, gazed into the
fire and waited for the storm to break.
Her little flashes of humour at dinner had not brightened things,
and she had had an insane desire to turn cart-wheels round the room,
so implacable and highly strained was the attitude of the master of the
house, so unctuous was the grace and the thanksgiving before and after
the meal. Abel Baragar had stored up his anger and his righteous
antipathy for years, and this was the first chance he had had of visiting
his displeasure on the woman who had "ruined" George, and who had now
come to get "rights," which he was determined she should not have. He
had steeled himself against seeing any good in her whatever. Self-will,
self-pride, and self-righteousness were big in him, and so the supper had
ended in silence, and with a little attack of coughing on the part of
Cassy, which made her angry at herself. Then the boy had been put to
bed, and she had come back to await the expected outburst. She could
feel it in the air, and while her blood tingled in a desire to fight this
tyrant to the bitter end, she thought of her boy and his future, and she
calmed the tumult in her veins.
She did not have to wait very long. The querulous voice of the old man
broke the silence.
"When be you goin' back East? What time did you fix for goin'?" he
asked.
She raised her head and looked at him squarely. "I didn't fix any time
for going East again," she replied. "I came out West this time to stay."
"I thought you was on the stage," was the rejoinder.
"I've left the stage. My voice went when I got a bad cold again, and I
couldn't stand the draughts of the theatre, and so I couldn't dance,
either. I'm finished with the stage. I've come out here for good and
all.
"Where did you think of livin' out here?"
"I'd like to have gone to Lumley's, but that's not possible, is it?
Anyway, I couldn't afford it now. So I thought I'd stay here, if there
was room for me."
"You want to board here?"
"I didn't put it to myself that way. I thought perhaps you'd be glad to
have me. I'm handy. I can cook, I can sew, and I'm quite cheerful and
kind. Then there's George--little George. I thought you'd like to have
your grandson here with you."
"I've lived without him--or his father--for eight years, an' I could bear
it a while yet, mebbe."
There was a half-choking sound from the old woman in the rocking-chair,
but she did not speak, though her knitting dropped into her lap.
"But if you knew us better, perhaps you'd like us better," rejoined Cassy
gently. "We're both pretty easy to get on with, and we see the bright
side of things. He has a wonderful disposition, has George."
"I ain't goin' to like you any better," said the old man, getting to his
feet. "I ain't goin' to give you any rights here. I've thought it out,
and my mind's made up. You can't come it over me. You ruined my boy's
life and sent him to his grave. He'd have lived to be an old man out
here; but you spoiled him. You trapped him into marrying you, with your
kicking and your comic songs, and your tricks of the stage, and you
parted us--parted him and me for ever."
"That was your fault. George wanted to make it up."
"With you!" The old man's voice rose shrilly, the bitterness and passion
of years was shooting high in the narrow confines of his mind. The
geyser of his prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. "To come back
with you that ruined him and broke up my family, and made my life like
bitter aloes! No! And if I wouldn't have him with you, do you think
I'll have you without him? By the God of Israel, no!"
Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his
face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of
the rocker.
Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your
mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it.
I'm poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I
married George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he
shared; and I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what
I saved went smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for
myself. I can work awhile yet, but I wanted to see if I could fit in out
here, and get well again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his
grandfather. That's the way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But
give a dog a bad name--ah, you shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me!
I didn't ruin him. I didn't kill him. He never came to any bad through
me. I helped him; he was happy. Why, I--" She stopped suddenly, putting
a hand to her mouth. "Go on, say what you want to say, and let's
understand once for all," she added with a sudden sharpness.
Abel Baragar drew himself up. "Well, I say this. I'll give you three
thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I'll keep the
boy here. That's what I've fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the
boy stays. I ain't goin' to live with you that spoiled George's life."
The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger,
then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy
stepped from behind the stove.
"You are going to stay here, Cassy," he said; "here where you have rights
as good as any, and better than any, if it comes to that." He turned to
his father. "You thought a lot of George," he added. "He was the apple
of your eye. He had a soft tongue, and most people liked him; but George
was foolish--I've known it all these years. George was pretty foolish.
He gambled, he bet at races, he speculated--wild. You didn't know it.
He took ten thousand dollars of your money, got from the Wonegosh farm he
sold for you. He--"
Cassy Mavor started forwards with a cry, but Black Andy waved her down.
"No, I'm going to tell it. George lost your ten thousand dollars, dad,
gambling, racing, speculating. He told her--Cassy-two days after they
was married, and she took the money she earned on the stage, and give it
to him to pay you back on the quiet through the bank. You never knew,
but that's the kind of boy your son George was, and that's the kind of
wife he had. George told me all about it when I was East six years ago."
He came over to Cassy and stood beside her. "I'm standing by George's
wife," he said, taking her hand, while she shut her eyes in her misery--
had she not hid her husband's wrong-doing all these years? "I'm standing
by her. If it hadn't been for that ten thousand dollars she paid back
for George, you'd have been swamped when the Syndicate got after you,
and we wouldn't have had Lumley's place, nor this, nor anything. I guess
she's got rights here, dad, as good as any."
The old man sank slowly into a chair. "George--George stole from me--
stole money from me!" he whispered. His face was white. His pride and
vainglory were broken. He was a haggard, shaken figure. His self-
righteousness was levelled in the dust.
With sudden impulse, Cassy stole over to him, and took his hand and held
it tight.
"Don't! Don't feel so bad!" she said. "He was weak and wild then.
But he was all right afterwards. He was happy with me."
"I've owed Cassy this for a good many years, dad," said Black Andy, "and
it had to be paid. She's got better stuff in her than any Baragar."
.........................
An hour later, the old man said to Cassy at the door of her room: "You
got to stay here and git well. It's yours, the same as the rest of us
--what's here."
Then he went downstairs and sat with Aunt Kate by the fire.
"I guess she's a good woman," he said at last. "I didn't use her right."
"You've been lucky with your women-folk," Aunt Kate answered quietly.
"Yes, I've been lucky," he answered. "I dunno if I deserve it. Mebbe
not. Do you think she'll git well?"
"It's a healing air out here," Aunt Kate answered, and listened to the
wood of the house snapping in the sharp frost.
MARCILE
That the day was beautiful, that the harvest of the West had been a great
one, that the salmon-fishing had been larger than ever before, that gold
had been found in the Yukon, made no difference to Jacques Grassette, for
he was in the condemned cell of Bindon Jail, living out those days which
pass so swiftly between the verdict of the jury and the last slow walk
with the Sheriff.
He sat with his back to the stone wall, his hands on his knees, looking
straight before him. All that met his physical gaze was another stone
wall, but with his mind's eye he was looking beyond it into spaces far
away. His mind was seeing a little house with dormer windows, and a
steep roof on which the snow could not lodge in winter-time; with a
narrow stoop in front where one could rest of an evening, the day's work
done; the stone-and-earth oven near by in the open, where the bread for a
family of twenty was baked; the wooden plough tipped against the fence,
to wait the "fall" cultivation; the big iron cooler in which the sap from
the maple trees was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring
opened the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard
by; the fields of the little narrow farm running back from the St.
Lawrence like a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with
their riverine population floating down to Michelin's mill-yards.
For hours he had sat like this, unmoving, his gnarled red hands clamping
each leg as though to hold him steady while he gazed; and he saw himself
as a little lad, barefooted, doing chores, running after the shaggy,
troublesome pony which would let him catch it when no one else could,
and, with only a halter on, galloping wildly back to the farmyard, to be
hitched up in the carriole which had once belonged to the old Seigneur.
He saw himself as a young man, back from "the States" where he had been
working in the mills, regarded austerely by little Father Roche, who had
given him his first Communion--for, down in Massachusetts he had learned
to wear his curly hair plastered down on his forehead, smoke bad cigars,
and drink "old Bourbon," to bet and to gamble, and be a figure at horse-
races.
Then he saw himself, his money all gone, but the luck still with him,
at Mass on the Sunday before going to the backwoods lumber-camp for the
winter, as boss of a hundred men. He had a way with him, and he had
brains, had Jacques Grassette, and he could manage men, as Michelin the
lumber-king himself had found in a great river-row and strike, when
bloodshed seemed certain. Even now the ghost of a smile played at his
lips, as he recalled the surprise of the old habitants and of Father
Roche when he was chosen for this responsible post; for to run a great
lumber-camp well, hundreds of miles from civilisation, where there is no
visible law, no restraints of ordinary organised life, and where men, for
seven months together, never saw a woman or a child, and ate pork and
beans, and drank white whisky, was a task of administration as difficult
as managing a small republic new-created out of violent elements of
society. But Michelin was right, and the old Seigneur, Sir Henri
Robitaille, who was a judge of men, knew he was right, as did also
Hennepin the schoolmaster, whose despair Jacques had been, for he never
worked at his lessons as a boy, and yet he absorbed Latin and mathematics
by some sure but unexplainable process. "Ah! if you would but work,
Jacques, you vaurien, I would make a great man of you," Hennepin had said
to him more than once; but this had made no impression on Jacques. It
was more to the point that the ground-hogs and black squirrels and
pigeons were plentiful in Casanac Woods.
And so he thought as he stood at the door of the Church of St. Francis on
that day before going "out back" to the lumber-camp. He had reached the
summit of greatness--to command men. That was more than wealth or
learning, and as he spoke to the old Seigneur going in to Mass, he still
thought so, for the Seigneur's big house and the servants and the great
gardens had no charm for him. The horses--that was another thing; but
there would be plenty of horses in the lumber-camp; and, on the whole, he
felt himself rather superior to the old Seigneur, who now was Lieutenant-
Governor of the province in which lay Bindon Jail.
At the door of the Church of St. Francis he had stretched himself up
with good-natured pride, for he was by nature gregarious and friendly,
but with a temper quick and strong, and even savage when roused; though
Michelin the lumber-king did not know that when he engaged him as boss,
having seen him only at the one critical time, when his superior brain
and will saw its chance to command, and had no personal interest in the
strife. He had been a miracle of coolness then, and his six-foot-two of
pride and muscle was taking natural tribute at the door of the Church of
St. Francis, where he waited till nearly everyone had entered, and Father
Roche's voice could be heard in the Mass.
Then had happened the real event of his life: a blackeyed, rose-checked
girl went by with her mother, hurrying in to Mass. As she passed him
their eyes met, and his blood leapt in his veins. He had never seen her
before, and, in a sense, he had never seen any woman before. He had
danced with many a one, and kissed a few in the old days among the flax-
beaters, at the harvesting, in the gaieties of a wedding, and also down
in Massachusetts. That, however, was a different thing, which he forgot
an hour after; but this was the beginning of the world for him; for he
knew now, of a sudden, what life was, what home meant, why "old folks"
slaved for their children, and mothers wept when girls married or sons
went away from home to bigger things; why in there, in at Mass, so many
were praying for all the people, and thinking only of one. All in a
moment it came--and stayed; and he spoke to her, to Marcile, that very
night, and he spoke also to her father, Valloir the farrier, the next
morning by lamplight, before he started for the woods. He would not be
gainsaid, nor take no for an answer, nor accept, as a reason for refusal,
that she was only sixteen, and that he did not know her, for she had been
away with a childless aunt since she was three. That she had fourteen
brothers and sisters who had to be fed and cared for did not seem to
weigh with the farrier. That was an affair of le bon Dieu, and enough
would be provided for them all as heretofore--one could make little
difference; and though Jacques was a very good match, considering his
prospects and his favour with the lumber-king, Valloir had a kind of fear
of him, and could not easily promise his beloved Marcile, the flower of
his flock, to a man of whom the priest so strongly disapproved. But it
was a new sort of Jacques Grassette who, that morning, spoke to him
with the simplicity and eagerness of a child; and the suddenly conceived
gift of a pony stallion, which every man in the parish envied Jacques,
won Valloir over; and Jacques went "away back" with the first timid kiss
of Marcile Valloir burning on his cheek.
"Well, bagosh, you are a wonder!" said Jacques' father, when he told him
the news, and saw Jacques jump into the carriole and drive away.
Here in prison, this, too, Jacques saw--this scene; and then the wedding
in the spring, and the tour through the parishes for days together, lads
and lasses journeying with them; and afterwards the new home with a
bigger stoop than any other in the village, with some old gnarled crab-
apple trees and lilac bushes, and four years of happiness, and a little
child that died; and all the time Jacques rising in the esteem of
Michelin the lumber-king, and sent on inspections, and to organise camps;
for weeks, sometimes for months, away from the house behind the lilac
bushes--and then the end of it all, sudden and crushing and unredeemable.
Jacques came back one night and found the house empty. Marcile had gone
to try her luck with another man.
That was the end of the upward career of Jacques Grassette. He went out
upon a savage hunt which brought him no quarry, for the man and the woman
had disappeared as completely as though they had been swallowed by the
sea. And here, at last, he was waiting for the day when he must settle
a bill for a human life taken in passion and rage.
His big frame seemed out of place in the small cell, and the watcher
sitting near him, to whom he had not addressed a word nor replied to a
question since the watching began, seemed an insignificant factor in the
scene. Never had a prisoner been more self-contained, or rejected more
completely all those ministrations of humanity which relieve the horrible
isolation of the condemned cell. Grassette's isolation was complete. He
lived in a dream, did what little there was to do in a dark abstraction,
and sat hour after hour, as he was sitting now, piercing, with a brain at
once benumbed to all outer things and afire with inward things, those
realms of memory which are infinite in a life of forty years.
"Sacre!" he muttered at last, and a shiver seemed to pass through him
from head to foot; then an ugly and evil oath fell from his lips, which
made his watcher shrink back appalled, for he also was a Catholic, and
had been chosen of purpose, in the hope that he might have an influence
on this revolted soul. It had, however, been of no use, and Grassette
had refused the advances and ministrations of the little good priest,
Father Laflamme, who had come from the coast of purpose to give him the
offices of the Church. Silent, obdurate, sullen, he had looked the
priest straight in the face and had said in broken English, "Non, I pay
my bill. Nom de diable, I will say my own Mass, light my own candle, go
my own way. I have too much."
Now, as he sat glooming, after his outbreak of oaths, there came a
rattling noise at the door, the grinding of a key in the lock, the
shooting of bolts, and a face appeared at the little wicket in the door.
Then the door opened and the Sheriff stepped inside, accompanied by a
white-haired, stately old man. At sight of this second figure--the
Sheriff had come often before, and would come for one more doleful walk
with him--Grassette started. His face, which had never whitened in all
the dismal and terrorising doings of the capture and the trial and
sentence, though it had flushed with rage more than once, now turned a
little pale, for it seemed as if this old man had stepped out of the
visions which had just passed before his eyes.
"His Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Henri Robitaille, has come to
speak with you. . . . Stand up," the Sheriff added sharply, as
Grassette kept his seat.
Grassette's face flushed with anger, for the prison had not broken his
spirits; then he got up slowly. "I not stand up for you," he growled at
the Sheriff; "I stand up for him." He jerked his head towards Sir Henri
Robitaille. This grand Seigneur, with Michelin, had believed in him in
those far-off days which he had just been seeing over again, and all his
boyhood and young manhood was rushing back on him. But now it was the
Governor who turned pale, seeing who the criminal was.
"Jacques Grassette!" he cried in consternation and emotion, for under
another name the murderer had been tried and sentenced, nor had his
identity been established--the case was so clear, the defence had been
perfunctory, and Quebec was very far away.
"M'sieu'!" was the respectful response, and Grassette's fingers
twitched.
"It was my sister's son you killed, Grassette," said the Governor in a
low, strained voice.
"Nom de Dieu!" said Grassette hoarsely.