BITTER-SWEET
To Jean Marcel it had been a happy moment--that of his exoneration by
the hunters of Whale River. For weeks, with rage in his heart, he had
silently borne the black looks of the Crees whom he could not avoid in
going to his net and crossing the post clearing to the trade-house. For
weeks his name had been a byword at the spring trade--Marcel, the man
who had murdered his partners. But now the stain of infamy had been
washed clean from an honored name. In his humble grave in the Mission
Cemetery, Andre Marcel could now sleep in peace, for in the eyes of the
small world of the East Coast, his son had come scathless through the
long snows. The tale would not now travel down the coast in the
Inspector's canoe that another white man had turned murderer for the
scanty food of his friends.
And with his acquittal by the Company and the Crees, his love for Julie
Breton, more poignant from its very hopelessness, gave him no rest. As
he struggled with renunciation, he brought himself to realize that,
after all, it had been but presumption on his part to hope that this
girl with her education of years in a Quebec convent, her acquaintance
with the ways of the great world "outside," should look upon a humble
Company hunter as a possible husband. He had all along mistaken her
kindness, her friendship, for something more which she had never felt.
In comparison with Wallace who, Jean had heard Gillies say, might some
day go to Winnipeg as Assistant Commissioner of the Company, he was as
nothing. Doomed by his inheritance and his training to a life beyond the
pale of civilization, he could offer Julie Breton little but a love that
knew no bounds, no frontiers; that would find no trail, which led to
her, too long; no water too vast; no height too sheer; to separate them,
did she but call him.
So, in the hour of his triumph, the soul-sick Marcel went to one who
never had failed him; who loved him with a singleness of heart but
rarely paralleled by human kind; who, however humble his lot, would give
him the worship accorded to no king--his dog.
Seated beside Fleur with her squealing children crawling over him, he
circled her great neck with his arms and told his troubles to a hairy
ear. She sought his hand with her tongue, her throat rumbling with
content, for had she not there on the grass in the soft June sun, all
her world--her puppies and her God, Jean Marcel?
There, Julie Breton, having in vain announced supper from the Mission
door, found them, man and dog, and led Marcel away, protesting. The girl
wore the frock she had donned in honor of his return, and never to Jean
had she seemed so vibrant with life, never had the color bathed her dark
face so exquisitely, nor the tumbled masses of her hair so allured him.
But as he entered the Mission, he saw Inspector Wallace seated in
conversation with the priest, and his heart went cold.
During the meal, served by a Cree woman, the admiring eyes of Wallace
seldom left Julie's face. At first he seemed surprised at the presence
of Marcel at the table but the priest made it quite evident to the
Company man that Jean was as one of the family. However, as the
Frenchman rarely joined in the conversation and early excused himself,
leaving Wallace a free field, the Inspector's temper at what might have
seemed presumption in a Company hunter was unmarred.
July came and to the surprise of Gillies and Whale River, the big
Company canoe still remained under its tarpaulin on the post landing.
That the priest looked kindly on the possibility of such a
brother-in-law was evident from his hospitality to Wallace, but what
piqued the curiosity of Colin Gillies and McCain was whether Wallace, a
Scotch Protestant, had as yet accepted the Catholic faith, for the
Oblat, Pere Breton, could not marry his sister to a man of another
religious belief. However, deep in the spell of the charming Julie,
Inspector Wallace stayed on after the trade was over, giving as his
reason his desire to go south with the Company steamer which shortly
would be due.
Although to Jean she was the same merry Julie, each morning visiting the
stockade to play with Fleur's puppies, who now had their eyes well open
and were beginning to find an uncertain balance, he avoided her, rarely
seeing her except at meal time. Of the change in their relations he
never spoke, but man-like he was hurt that she failed to take him to
task for his moodiness. In the evening, now, she walked on the
river-shore with Wallace, and talked through the twilight when the sun
lingered below the rim of the world in the west. Jean Marcel had gone
out of her life. He ceased to mention the Inspector's name, and absented
himself from meals when the Scotchman was expected.
Julie had said: "Jean, you are one of us, always welcome. Why do you
stay away when Monsieur Wallace comes?" And he had answered: "You know
why I stay away, Julie Breton."
That was all.