RALPH.
It was with a sweet and respectful smile that Judith looked at the
curate, and left him to make the first observation. She would have
liked to look up to him; that being her natural mental attitude to men
of his cloth; but physically the thing was impracticable. She was not
notably a tall woman, but he was distinctly a short man; and though
too bulky to be called little, his figure justified Susan's mental
definition of him as "stumpy." He was her junior too, and his
countenance was not impressive. It was blond as regarded hair and
eyes, indefinite in feature, pasty in complexion; still, it was neatly
kept, and relieved from vacuity by that undoubting self-complacency
which comes to those privileged to reprove and exhort unchallenged,
for twenty minutes at a stretch.
Mr. Bunce waited, coughed, observed on the fineness of the weather,
and was silent. Miss Susan agreed with him in her mind, but having
nothing to say on the subject, said nothing, and it was left for
Judith to fan the verbal spark, and nurse it into a conversation. She
opened in dulcet tones, and with a respectful effusiveness, like the
carved nymphs round an old fountain, catching the wasting driblets in
their marble shells. She agreed that the weather was indeed extremely
pleasant, and counted up how many other fine days there had been that
week and the week before. But there had been a shower the week before
that, just when the people were leaving the missionary meeting, where
the good Bishop of Rara Tonga spoke so sweetly. Had Mr. Bunce been
there? No? Ah! then, he had indeed missed a treat. It had been most
instructive. The bishop told about a deacon who remembered having
eaten part of his grandmother, and about the octopus coming out of the
sea, to eat breadfruit on shore on moonlight nights,--perhaps it was
not breadfruit, by the way, it may have been something else; and
perhaps it was not an octopus; but at any rate it was some dreadful
creature, and it did something very curious, and it was all most
interesting; "and indeed, Mr. Bunce, you missed a treat."
Mr. Bunce said he found his parochial duty too heavy and too
engrossing to admit of desultory meeting-going.
"But the heathen! Mr. Bunce, if you take no interest in the octopus."
"We have heathens in Montreal, Miss Herkimer, as ignorant of good as
any South Sea Islander. They want to be taught, and some even to be
fed, for work is scarce this year, and winter coming on."
"Ah, yes!" answered Miss Judith, "it is sad to think of, and," she
added--with a twinge of conscience for what she was about, to say, for
she was of St. Silas, and set no great store by the church activities
of St. Wittikind, but then good manners and Christian charity require
one to stretch a point verbally sometimes--"You are doing much good in
St. Wittikind's, I understand. We in St. Silas are doing what we can
too. We distribute fifty thousand gospel leaflets every month, and
with--well, they must have the best results. So many benighted
Romanists have no other opportunity to get a glimpse of the truth; and
you know, Mr. Bunce, the truth _must_ prevail."
"No doubt. Miss Herkimer, it will, someday. In St. Wittikind's parish,
however, we find so many in physical want, and so many with no
religion at all, that our hands are full, and we do not attempt
controversy."
Miss Judith sighed softly, so as not to be observed. These were not
the views in vogue at St. Silas, and of course they were wrong; but
with her "yearning" towards this curate, who seemed meet for better
things, if he could be won, it seemed her duty to be winning. So she
suppressed her inclination to say something "sound," merely observing
that all souls were alike precious, and then added that she had heard
much of the zealous beneficence exercised at St. Wittikind's, and
"would he explain about those sisterhoods, of which people talked so
much."
This, to use an Americanism, "fetched" the curate--fetched him round,
as it were, to his own shopdoor, the pulpit, into which he at once
stepped, and held forth fluently and minutely, and at very great
length, while Judith listened with interest. Not so Susan, who found
the prelection both tedious and unnecessary. She paid what she thought
she could afford to the different charities recommended by her church,
whose business she considered it to see that its member's money was
well applied; and having paid, she took a receipt in full from her
conscience, and did not wish to hear any more about giving till
that day twelvemonths, when, if convenient, she would renew the
contribution. Every one, she said, had her own preference in
fancy-work and amusements; hers was Berlin wool--as indeed her
drawing-room showed, where every chair and ottoman was bedecked with
representations of impossible herbage in the crudest of colour and
design. Judith's fad was handing tracts to ragged French and Irish
men, an equally harmless exercise, though with less result to show,
seeing the recipients hardly waited till her back was turned before
lighting their pipes with them.
Susan's eyes strayed from one passer-by to the next, in search of
something to interest her more than the clerical monologue proceeding
at her side, and by-and-by she espied a gentleman being driven in the
direction from which she had come. An idea struck her; she hailed the
cab, which stopped before her, and the gentleman within looked out
inquiringly.
"Oh! Mr. Jordan," she said, "forgive my stopping you; but this was the
day that wretched woman who stole our little niece was to be tried,
and I know you have charge of Mr. Selby's interests in the matter. Is
the case decided? What have they done with her? Has she confessed?"
"She has been acquitted, ma'am. I am just now on my way to Mrs.
Selby's, who will no doubt be impatient to hear the result; though,
for myself, I have suspected for some time there was a mistake in
arresting her."
"Acquitted? But the nurse-girl swore positively--did she not?--that
that was the squaw who was at the house! And the ferry-boatmen
corroborated what she said."
"Yes. The man swore that a squaw with a bundle, which he suspected
might be a baby, crossed in the steamboat that afternoon, and he was
inclined to swear to the identity of the blanket the prisoner wore, on
account of its being torn at one corner. The girl Lisette was very
positive about both the blanket and the wearer, and I fear her being
so will materially prejudice any further attempts we may make, for the
priest swore to the squaw's having been in Caughnawaga all day, and he
produced the school roll of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart to show
that she had not only been there, but had taken the medal of honour
that day."
"Ah!" ejaculated Judith with emphasis, "what a system is Popery! So
insidious! So soul-destroying!--capable of any subterfuge. I wonder
you don't take out a warrant and have that convent searched."
Mr. Bunce opened his eyes, startled and shocked that one so much
interested in works of beneficence should have so little charity.
Mr. Jordan, who knew the lady better, sniffed impatiently but not
loud, as recognizing the ebullition to be constitutional and unworthy
of notice. "The worst of it is," he said, "the girl has sworn so
positively that it will weaken the value of her testimony when we
bring her up by-and-by to identify the real offender, if found. And we
have no other witness to produce. In my professional experience I have
always found that too much zeal is dangerous--far worse than too
little! How do _you_ find it, Mr. Bunce in _your_ profession? Zeal
without knowledge, eh?" and he glanced with a sly smile from Miss
Judy's face to the curate's.
The curate looked blankly before him. He was too slightly acquainted
with the ladies to feel warranted in poking fun at their
eccentricities; and he was too much of a cleric to welcome a layman's
jest on subjects pertaining to his cloth. It was well, he thought,
that the lady should have a zeal, whether wise or the reverse. The
trouble he had found had oftener been to kindle a zeal than to direct
it, and he doubted not but with judicious guidance this ardent lady
might be brought right--that is, to take views like his own of most
things.
The pause resulting from Mr. Jordan's wit and the curate's
unresponsiveness was broken by Miss Susan, who was growing restless.
Though no longer young, she retained some of the characteristics of
her departed youth, and had what, to misquote the high-heeled
dignitaries of literature, might be called "the modern spirit."
Had she been thirty years younger than the family bible showed
her to be she would assuredly have said that all men of the
professions--especially successful ones--were prigs, and most of them
bores into the bargain; and, as it was, she thought it. Foolish old
woman! Her weakness, in days of old had been for the red coats, and
though none of them had ever proposed, she was still loyal to her
ancient ideal. Her roving eye descried her nephew Ralph on the other
side of the way, and just as the pause incident to the curate's
silence became notable, she called aloud, "Ralph!" and waved her
parasol.
Ralph obeyed the signal, and joined the party on the curbstone, around
the cab door.
"Ah, Ralph!" cried Mr. Jordan. "Going to call on your aunt, I
daresay, and tell her the trial is over and that it is proved now we
have been on a wrong scent these last three months, and must begin all
over again from the beginning. Here, get in; we may as well go
together--or, better still, I will yield you up the cab. You can
explain it all, just as well as I could; it seems like a fresh
disappointment to the poor lady, and the news will come better from a
relative." Then, looking at his watch, "I have a meeting due in ten
minutes from now; I shall still be in time; so good-bye! and thanks."
"No--you--don't! Mr. Jordan," responded Ralph. "I will not deny that I
intended to call at Selby's; but, since _you_ are so far on your way,
just complete the trip. Take all the credit yourself and charge it in
your bill. I can't do that, you know, being only a broker."
Jordan looked disgusted, re-seated himself in his cab and drove away.
Susan repeated her expressions of regret at what she still looked on
as a miscarriage of justice; but Ralph replied:
"Not at all! No one who was present at the trial could have looked for
any other conclusion. We must just try again; but--now that old Jordan
is out of hearing, one may venture to say it--the whole case has been
mismanaged. Why did they not offer a reward at the first? Now, I fear,
it will be too late! The little circumstances which detectives are
able to piece together to so good a purpose are soon forgotten, and so
the clue is lost."
"Poor Mary!" said Susan, "my heart bleeds for her. It may turn out for
the best, perhaps, and remedy the iniquity of Gerald's preposterous
will, by keeping the money in his own family, but it is very sad. She
seems crushed. If her boy had been spared to her--but to lose them
both! It is turning her hair grey. She who used to be the flower of
our family!"
Judith's lips tightened at "flower of the family." Herself was that
interesting blossom she thought, but that was not what she said. On
the contrary she expressed herself with evangelical superiority to
such trifles.
"_I_ regard it as a dispensation, to wean her from earthly joys. It is
in love that, when we make ourselves idols, they are taken away.
Perhaps, too, it may be a judgment on her for marrying in defiance of
those who were older and wiser than herself. There are warnings in all
these mysterious happenings, and food for thought;" and she rolled her
eyes Sibyl-wise over Ralph to the curate.
There was an irreverent gleam in Ralph's eyes, and he turned to watch
a passing dray till his inclination to laugh went off. The curate was
regarding her with a puzzled expression. He was a well-meaning young
man, who wished both to be and to do good; but who, not being any
wiser than his neighbours, notwithstanding the higher ground on which,
in right of his orders, he believed himself to stand, was often in
doubt both as to what he ought to feel and to say. He was very sure it
would never have occurred to himself to use the language he had
listened to, and he began to wonder if he had stumbled on some
advancedly serious person, whose acquaintance would be improving,
or--or something else. There seemed a fine devotional tone in her
opening words, especially enunciated as they were, with a full and
rounded unction. They were not very novel, perhaps; he seemed to have
heard the like before, and more than once; but then, what that is true
is also new?--as was said, or something not unlike it in sound, by a
late prime minister. Her next proposition rather startled him,
carrying him back to his college days, and reminding him of the
stealing of Jove's thunderbolts; but there was a third-like the third
course beloved by another prime minister, reconciling contradictions
and committing to nothing--"mysterious happenings, food for thought."
That was it! He would think it over; and there was balm in this,
for had she not been listening to him, as they came along, as to
another Gamaliel, while he described the charitable schemes of St.
Wittikind's? and would it not be painful to think otherwise than well
of so responsive a lady?
Confused by all these thoughts the curate did not speak; and Susan,
thinking it high time to break up the meeting, reminded Judith that
their dressmaker lived hard by, and now would be a good opportunity to
order their winter gowns. Judith said goodbye regretfully and made the
curate promise to come very soon and tell her more about St.
Wittikind's, and the two gentlemen walked townwards together.
"You seem to know my aunt well," said Ralph. "I am agreeably
surprised. I fancied she was too grimly Low Church to speak to any
clergyman not of St. Silas or St. Zebedee. I hope your acquaintance
will broaden her views, which are rather extreme, and something of a
nuisance in the family. However, Aunt Judy means well. We all allow
that. The trouble is that she will never allow that we mean well, when
we go counter to her advice; and then she treats us to a word in
season, which is apt to be very highly seasoned with brimstone and
what not."
There was a tone of levity and indifference to his cloth in this talk
which jarred on Mr. Bunce. It was evident that Ralph looked on him as
just like a secular person, or perhaps as less shrewd, and this was
not as he liked. His associations were mostly with the docile of the
other sex, and the more reverential of his own, and the company of
this robust worldling was so unpleasantly bracing that they soon
parted, and Ralph was alone when he reached his office.
"A man waiting to see you, sir."
"What sort of man?"
"An Indian. The same I think who came for your guns last year, when
you went camping out."
"Tell him I've gone out."
"He saw you come in through the glass door."
"Say I'm engaged."
"He says he will wait till you are at leisure."
"Bid him come in, then," and presently Paul stood before his employer,
looking in his eyes but saying nothing.
"Well, Paul?" said Ralph, without looking up from the letter he
appeared to be writing, "deer have been seen near the Lake of Two
Mountains, eh? Too busy! Shall not be able to leave town this Fall.
Hard on a man--is it not? Wish I was an Indian and could do as I
pleased."
"Ouff," grunted Paul, with an impatient glance, and that slight twitch
of the eyebrows equivalent to a Frenchman's shrug, which says so
plainly "Why all these idle words?" Then, producing a paper from his
bosom he handed it to Ralph.
"Ze notaire gave dis! Want pay--for Thérèse--Judge court defend."
"Ah!" said Ralph, taking the paper and glancing over it. "Your bill of
costs. Defending that squaw--eh? You want me to look it over?--Oh yes!
quite right. O.K![1] all correct! Pay it at once, Paul, and finish the
business."
"Ze dollars?" answered Paul. "You give! I pay."
"It's all right, Paul! The account, I mean. But you must pay your own
bills, you know--defend your own family. She's your squaw, not mine."
Paul shot a fiery glance from under his gathered brows. "Zis my squaw
sister! Done for you!--O.K? Squaw get dollars for fetch back papoose.
Easy fetch back."
"What do you mean, Paul? What will be so easy for you to fetch back?"
said Ralph wheeling round in his chair.
"Fetch papoose. Got no dollars for pay notaire."
"Man alive! Did I not pay you as I promised?"
"Fifty dollars! O.K! Squaw take papoose for pay. Notaire want
sixty-five. Squaw bring back papoose. Get two hundred dollars. Pay
notaire. O.K.!"
"Come now, Paul!" cried Ralph, not over well pleased, yet with a
business man's pleasure in a bit of smartness, even when it told
against himself. "You've euchred me, I allow it. But don't draw the
string too tight in case it breaks. What do you want?"
"Two hundred dollars," said Paul.
"But the bill of costs is only sixty-five."
"How long live squaw and papoose on hundred dollars?"
"You leave thirty-five out of the reckoning. However, we will suppose
that goes to you for your smartness. Well! I'm busy, Paul, I'll give
you your two hundred dollars at once to get you away. Not, mind you,
that I couldn't fight you off, if I cared to; but I have other things
to think of."
"And for Fidèle and the papoose?"
"That must suffice them for the present. When it is all spent--we will
see--" and so Ralph got rid of his importunate visitor for the
present, though not without misgiving.