CHAPTER X. THE DOOR THAT WOULD NOT OPEN

The old Manor House of Pontiac was alive with light and merriment. It

was the early autumn; not cool enough for the doors and windows to be

shut, but cool enough to make dancing a pleasure, and to give spirit to

the gaiety that filled the old house. The occasion was a notable one for

Pontiac. An address of congratulation and appreciation and a splendid

gift of silver had been brought to the Manor from the capital by certain

high officials of the Government and the Army, representing the people

of the Province. At first Madelinette had shrunk from the honour to be

done her, and had so written to certain quarters whence the movement had

proceeded; but a letter had come to her which had changed her mind. This

letter was signed George Fournel. Fournel had a right to ask a favour of

her; and one that was to do her honour seemed the least that she might

grant. He had suffered much at Louis’ hands; he had forborne much;

and by an act of noble forgiveness and generosity, had left Louis

undisturbed in an honour which was not his, and the enjoyment of an

estate to which he had no claim. He had given much, suffered much, and

had had nothing in return save her measureless and voiceless gratitude.

Friendship she could give him; but it was a silent friendship, an

incompanionable friendship, founded upon a secret and chivalrous act. He

was in Quebec and she in Pontiac; and since that day when he had burned

the will before her eyes she had not seen him. She had heard from him

but twice; once to tell her that she need have no fear of Tardif, and

again, when he urged her to accept the testimonial and the gift to be

offered by her grateful fellow-citizens.

The deputation, distinguished and important, had been received by the

people of Pontiac with the flaunting of flags, playing of bands, and

every demonstration of delight. The honour done to Madelinette was an

honour done to Pontiac, and Pontiac had never felt itself so important.

It realised that this kind of demonstration was less expensive, and less

dangerous, than sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion. The vanity of

the habitants could be better exercised in applauding Madelinette and

in show of welcome to the great men of the land, than in cultivating a

dangerous patriotism under the leadership of Louis Racine. Temptations

to conspiracy had been few since the day George Fournel, wounded and

morose, left the Manor House secretly one night, and carried back to

Quebec his resentment and his injuries. Treasonable gossip filtered no

longer from doorway to doorway; carbines were not to be had for a

song; no more nightly drills and weekly meetings gave a spice of great

expectations to their life. Their Seigneur, silent, and pale, and

stooped, lived a life apart. If he walked through the town, it was with

bitter, abstracted eyes that took little heed of their presence. If he

drove, his horses travelled like the wind. At Mass, he looked at no one,

saw no one, and, as it would seem, heard no one.

But Madelinette--she was the Madelinette of old, simple, gracious, kind,

with a smile here and a kind word there: a little child to be caressed

or an old woman to be comforted; the sick to be fed and doctored; the

poor to be helped; the idle to be rebuked with a persuasive smile; the

angry to be coaxed by a humorous word; the evil to be reproved by a

fearless friendliness; the spiteful to be hushed by a still, commanding

presence. She never seemed to remember that she was the daughter of old

Joe Lajeunesse the blacksmith, yet she never seemed to forget it. She

was the wife of the Seigneur, and she was the daughter of the smithy-man

too. She sat in the smithy-man’s doorway with her hand in his; and

she sat at the Manor table with its silver glitter, and its antique

garnishings, with as real an unconsciousness.

Her influence seemed to pierce far and wide. The Cure and the Avocat

adored her; and the proudest, happiest moment of their lives was when

they sat at the Manor table, or, in the sombre drawing-room, watched

her give it light and grace and charm, and fill their hearts with the

piercing delight of her song. So her life had gone on; to the outward

world serene and happy, full of simplicity, charity, and good works.

What it was in reality no one could know, not even herself. Since

the day when Louis had tried to kill George Fournel, life had been a

different thing for them both. On her part she had been deeply hurt;

wounded beyond repair. He had failed her from every vital stand-point,

he had not fulfilled one hope she had ever had of him. But she laid the

blame not at his door; she rather shrank with inner bitterness from

the cynical cruelty of nature, which, in deforming the body, with a

merciless cruelty had deformed a noble mind. These things were between

her and her inmost soul.

To Louis she was ever the same, affectionate, gentle, and unselfish;

but her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge, commanded his

perturbed spirit into the abstracted quiet and bitter silence wherein

he lived, and which she sought to cheer by a thousand happy devices. She

did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him; no word

or act of hers could have suggested to him the sacrifices she had

made. He knew them, still he did not know them in their fulness; he was

grateful, but his gratitude did not compass the splendid self-effacing

devotion with which she denied herself the glorious career that had lain

before her. Morbid and self-centred, he could not understand. Since her

return from Quebec she had sought to give a little touch of gaiety to

their life, and she had not the heart to interfere with his constant

insistence on the little dignities of the position of Seigneur, ironical

as they all were in her eyes. She had sacrificed everything; and since

another also had sacrificed himself to give her husband the honours and

estate he possessed, the game should be delicately played to the unseen

end.

So it had gone on until the coming of the deputation with the

testimonial and the gift. She had proposed the gaieties of the occasion

to Louis with so simple a cheerfulness, that he had no idea of the

torture it meant to her; no realisation of how she would be brought face

to face with the life that she had given up for his sake. But neither

he nor she was aware of one thing, that the beautiful embossed address

contained an appeal to her to return to the world of song which she

had renounced, to go forth once more and contribute to the happiness of

humanity.

When, therefore, in the drawing-room of the Manor, the address was read

to her, and this appeal rang upon her ears, she felt herself turn dizzy

and faint: her whole life seemed to reel backwards to all she had lost,

and the tyranny of the present bore down upon her with a cruel weight.

It needed all her courage and all her innate strength to rule herself to

composure. For an instant the people in the room were a confused mass,

floating away into a blind distance. She heard, however, the quick

breathing of the Seigneur beside her, and it called her back to an

active and necessary confidence.

With a smile she received the address, and, turning, handed it to Louis,

smiling at him too with a winning duplicity, for which she might never

have to ask forgiveness in this world or the next. Then she turned

and spoke. Eloquently, simply, she gave out her thanks for the gift of

silver and the greater gift of kind words; and said that in her quiet

life, apart from that active world of the stage, where sorrow and sordid

experience went hand in hand with song, where the delights of home were

sacrificed to the applause of the world, she would cherish their gift as

a reward that she might have earned, had she chosen the public instead

of the private way of life. They had told her of the paths of glory, but

she was walking the homeward way.

Thus deftly, and without strain, and with an air of happiness even, did

she set aside the words and the appeal which had created a storm in her

soul. A few moments afterwards, as the old house rang to the laughter of

old and young, with dancing well begun, no one would have thought that

the Manor of Pontiac was not the home of peace and joy. Even Louis

himself, who had had his moments of torture and suspicion when the

appeal was read, was now in a kind of happy reaction. He moved about

among the guests with less abstraction and more cheerfulness than he had

shown for months. He carried in his hand the address which Madelinette

had handed him. Again and again he showed it to eager guests.

Suddenly, as he was about to fold it up for the last time and carry it

to the library, he saw the name of George Fournel among the signatures.

Stunned, dumfounded, he left the room. George Fournel, whom he had tried

to kill, had signed this address of congratulation to his wife! Was it

Fournel’s intention thus to show that he had forgiven and forgotten? It

was not like the man to either forgive or forget. What did it mean? He

left the house buried in morbid speculation, and involuntarily made his

way to a little hut of two rooms which he had built in the Seigneury

grounds. Here it was he read and wrote, here he had spent moody hours

alone, day after day, for months past. He was not aware that some one

left the crowd about the house and followed him. Arrived at the hut,

he entered and shut the door; lighted candles, and spread the embossed

parchment out before him upon the table. As he stood looking at it, he

heard the door open behind him. Tardif stood before him.

The face of Tardif had an evil hunted look. Before the astonished

and suspicious Seigneur had chance to challenge him, he said in a low

insolent tone:

“Good evening, M’sieu’! Fine doings at the Manor--eh?

“What are you doing at the Manor, and what are you doing here?” asked

the Seigneur, scanning the face of the man closely; for there was a look

in it he did not understand.

“I have as much right to be here as you, M’sieu’.”

“You have no right at all to be here. You were dismissed your place by

the mistress of this Manor.”

“There is no mistress of this Manor.”

“Madame Racine dismissed you.”

“And I dismissed Madame Racine,” answered the man with a sneer.

“You are training for the horsewhip. You forget that, as Seigneur, I

have power to give you summary punishment.”

“You haven’t power to do anything at all, M’sieu’!” The Seigneur

started. He thought the remark had reference to his physical disability.

His fingers itched to take the creature by the throat, and choke the

tongue from his mouth. Before he could speak, the man continued with a

half-drunken grimace:

“You, with your tributes, and your courts, and your body-guards! Bah!

You’d have a gibbet if you could, wouldn’t you? You with your rebellion

and your tinpot honours! A puling baby could conspire as well as you.

And all the world laughing at you--v’la!”

“Get out of this room and take your feet from my Manor, Tardif,” said

the Seigneur with a deadly quietness, “or it will be the worse for you.”

“Your Manor--pish!” The man laughed a hateful laugh. “Your Manor? You

haven’t any Manor. You haven’t anything but what you carry on your

back.”

A flush passed swiftly over the Seigneur’s face, then left it cold

and white, and the eyes shone fiery in his head. He felt some shameful

meaning in the man’s words, beyond this gross reference to his

deformity.

“I am Seigneur of this Manor, and you have taken wages from me, and

eaten my bread, slept under my roof, and--”

“I’ve no more eaten your bread and slept under your roof than you have.

Pish! You were living then on another man’s fortune, now you’re living

on what your wife earns.”

The Seigneur did not understand yet. But there was a strange light of

suspicion in his eyes, a nervous rage knotting his forehead.

“My land and my earnings are my own, and I have never lived on another

man’s fortune. If you mean that the late Seigneur made a will--that

canard--”

“It was no canard.” Tardif laughed hatefully. “There was a will right

enough.”

“Where is it? I’ve heard that fool’s gossip before.”

“Where is it? Ask your wife; she knows. Ask your loving Tardif, he

knows.”

“Where is the will, Tardif?” asked the Seigneur in a voice that, in his

own ears, seemed to come from an infinite distance; to Tardif’s ears it

was merely tuneless and harsh.

“In M’sieu’ Fournel’s pocket, or Madame’s. What’s the difference? The

price is the same, and you keep your eyes shut and play the Seigneur,

and eat and drink what they give you just the same.”

Now the Seigneur understood. His eyes went blind for a moment, and his

hands twitched convulsively on the embossed address he had been rolling

and unrolling. A terror, a shame, a dreadful cruelty entered into him,

but he was still and numb, and his tongue was thick. He spoke heavily.

“Tell me all,” he said. “You shall be well paid.”

“I don’t want your money. I want to see you squirm. I want to see

her put where she deserves. Bah! Do you think Fournel forgave you for

putting his feet in his shoes, and for that case at law, for nothing?

Why should he? He hated you, and you hated him. His name’s on that paper

in your hand among all the rest. Do you think he eats humble pie and

crawls to Madame and lets you stay here for nothing?”

The Seigneur was painfully quiet and intent, yet his brain was like some

great lens, refracting and magnifying things to monstrous proportions.

“A will was found?” he asked.

“By Madame in the library. She left it where she found it--behind the

picture over the Louis Seize table. The day you dismissed me, I saw

her at the cupboard. I found the will and started with it to M’sieu’

Fournel. She followed. You remember when she went--eh? On business--and

such business! she and Havel and the old slut Marie. You remember, eh;

Louis?” he added with unnamable insolence. The Seigneur inclined his

head. “V’la! they followed me, overtook me, and Havel shot me in the

wrist. See there!”--he held out his wrist. The Seigneur nodded. “But I

got to Fournel’s first. I put the will into his hands.

“I told him Madame Madelinette was following. Then I went to bring the

constables to his house to arrest her when he had finished with her.”

He laughed a brutal laugh, which deepened the strange glittering look

in Louis’ eyes. “When I came an hour later, she was there. But--now you

shall see what stuff they are both made of! He laughed at me, said I had

lied; that there was no will; that I was a thief; and had me locked up

in gaol. For a month I was in gaol without trial. Then one day I was let

out without trial. His servant met me and brought me to his house. He

gave me money and told me to leave the country. If I didn’t, I would be

arrested again for trying to shoot Havel, and for blackmail. They could

all swear me off my feet and into prison--what was I to do! I took the

money and went. But I came back to have my revenge. I could cut their

hearts out and eat them.”

“You are drunk,” said the Seigneur quietly. “You don’t know what you’re

saying.”

“I’m not drunk. I’m always trying to get drunk now. I couldn’t have come

here if I hadn’t been drinking. I couldn’t have told you the truth, if

I hadn’t been drinking. But I’m sober enough to know that I’ve done for

him and for her! And I’m even with you too--bah! Did you think she cared

a fig for you? She’s only waiting till you die. Then she’ll go to her

lover. He’s a man of life and limb. Youpish! a hunchback, that all

the world laughs at, a worm--” he turned towards the door laughing

hideously, his evil face gloating. “You’ve not got a stick or stone.

She”--jerking a finger towards the house--“she earns what you eat,

she--”

It was the last word he ever spoke, for, with a low terrible cry,

the Seigneur snatched up a knife from the table and sprang upon him,

catching him by the throat. Once, twice, thrice, the knife went home,

and the ruffian collapsed under it with one loud cry. Not letting go

his grasp of the dying man’s collar, the Seigneur dragged him across the

floor, and, opening the door of the small inner room, pulled him inside.

For a moment he stood beside the body, panting, then he went to the

other room and, bringing a candle, looked at the dead thing in silence.

Presently he stooped, held the candle to the wide-staring eyes, then

felt the heart. “He is gone,” he said in an even voice. Stooping for the

knife he had dropped on the floor, he laid it on the body. He looked at

his hands. There was one spot of blood on his fingers. He wiped it off

with his handkerchief, then blowing out the light, he calmly opened the

door of the hut, locked it, went out, and moved on slowly towards the

house.

As he left the hut he was conscious that some one was moving under the

trees by the window, but his mind was not concerned with things outside

himself and the one other thing left for him to do.

He entered the house and went in search of Madelinette. When he reached

the drawing-room, surrounded by eager listeners, she was beginning to

sing. Her bearing was eager and almost tremulous, for, with this crowd

round her and in the flush of this gaiety and excitement, there was

something of that exhilarating air that greets the singer upon

the stage. Her eyes were shining with a look, half-sorrowful,

half-triumphant. Within the past half-hour she had overcome herself;

she had fought down the blind, wild rebellion that, for one moment as

it were, had surged up in her heart. She was proud and glad, and piteous

and triumphant and deeply womanly all at once.

Going to the piano she had looked round for Louis, but he was not

visible. She smiled to herself, however, for she knew that her singing

would bring him--he worshipped it. Her heart was warm towards him,

because of that moment when she rebelled and was hard at soul. She

played her own accompaniment, and he was hidden from her by the piano

as she sang--sang more touchingly and more humanly, if not more

artistically, than she had ever done in her life. The old art was not

so perfect, perhaps, but there was in the voice all that she had learned

and loved and suffered and hoped. When she rose from the piano to a

storm of applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her,

her own eyes filled with tears. These people--most of them--had known

and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy

or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she

caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his

eyes, and kissed him, saying:

“I learned that from the tunes you played on your anvil, dear

smithy-man.”

Then she turned again to look for Louis. Near the door she saw him, and

with so strange a face, so wild a look, that, unheeding eager requests

to sing again, she responded to the gesture he made, made her way

through the crowd to the hall-way, and followed him up the stairs, and

to the little boudoir beside her bedroom. As she entered and shut the

door, a low sound like a moan broke from him. She went quickly to lay

a hand upon his arm, but he waved her back. “What is it, Louis?” she

asked, in a bewildered voice. “Where is the will?” he said.

“Where is the will, Louis,” she repeated after him mechanically, staring

at his face, ghostly in the moonlight.

“The will you found behind the picture in the library.”

“O Louis!” she cried, and made a gesture of despair. “O Louis!”

“You found it, and Tardif stole it and took it to Quebec.”

“Yes, Louis, but Louis--ah, what is the matter, dear! I cannot bear that

look in your face. What is the matter, Louis?”

“Tardif took it to Fournel, and you followed. And I have been living in

another man’s house, on another’s bread--”

“O Louis, no--no--no! Our money has paid for all.”

“Your money, Madelinette!” His voice rose.

“Ah, don’t speak like that! See, Louis. It can make no difference. How

you have found out I do not know, but it can make no difference. I did

not want you to know--you loved the Seigneury so. I concealed the will;

Tardif found it, as you say. But, Louis, dear, it is all right. Monsieur

Fournel would not take the place, and--and I have bought it.”

She told her falsehood fearlessly. This man’s trouble, this man’s peace,

if she might but win it, was the purpose of her life.

“Tardif said that--he said that you--that you and Fournel--”

She read his meaning in his tone, and shrank back in terror, then with a

flush, straightened herself, and took a step towards him.

“It was natural that you should not care for a hunchback like me,” he

continued, “but--”

“Louis!” she cried, in a voice of anguish and reproach.

“But I did not doubt you. I believed in you when he said it, as I

believe in you now when you stand there like that. I know what you have

done for me--”

“I pleaded with Monsieur Fournel, knowing how you loved the

Seigneury--pleaded and offered to pay three times the price--”

“Yourself would have been a hundred million times the price. Ah, I know

you, Madelinette--I know you now! I have been selfish, but I see all

now. Now when all is over--” he seemed listening to noises with out--“I

see what you have done for me. I know how you have sacrificed all for

me--all but honour--all but honour,” he added, a wild fire in his eyes,

a trembling seizing him. “Your honour is yours forever. I say so. I say

so, and I have proved it. Kiss me, Madelinette--kiss me once,” he added,

in a quick whisper.

“My poor, poor Louis!” she said, laid a soothing hand upon his arm, and

leaned towards him. He snatched her to his breast, and kissed her twice

in a very agony of joy, then let her go. He listened for an instant to

the growing noise without, then said in a hoarse voice:

“Now, I will tell you, Madelinette. They are coming for me--don’t you

hear them? They are coming to take me; but they shall not have me.

They shall not have me--” he glanced to a little door that led into a

bath-room at his right.

“Louis-Louis!” she said in a sudden fright, for though his words seemed

mad, a strange quiet sanity was in all he did. “What have you done? Who

are coming?” she asked in agony, and caught him by the arm.

“I killed Tardif. He is there in the hut in the garden--dead! I was

seen, and they are coming to take me.”

With a cry she ran to the door that led into the hall, and locked it.

She listened, then turned her face to Louis.

“You killed him!” she gasped. “Louis! Louis!” Her face was like ashes.

“I stabbed him to death. It was all I could do, and I did it. He

slandered you. I went mad, and did it. Now--”

There was a knocking at the door, and a voice calling--a peremptory

voice.

“There is only one way,” he said. “They shall not take me. I will not

be dragged to gaol for crowds to jeer at. I will not be sent to the

scaffold, to your shame.”

He ran to the door of the bath-room and flung it open. “If my life is to

pay the price, then--!”

She came blindly towards him, stretching out her hands.

“Louis! Louis!” was all that she could say.

He caught her hands and kissed them, then stepped swiftly back into the

little bath-room, and locked the door, as the door of the room she was

in was burst open, and two constables and a half-dozen men crowded into

the room.

She stood with her back to the bath-room door, panting, and white, and

anguished, and her ears strained to the terrible thing inside the place

behind her.

The men understood, and came towards her. “Stand back,” she said. “You

shall not have him. You shall not have him. Ah, don’t you hear? He

is dying--O God, O God!” she cried, with tearless eyes and upturned

face--“Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon!”

The men stood abashed before her agony. Behind the little door where

she stood there was a muffled groaning. She trembled, but her arms

were spread out before the door as though on a cross, and her lips kept

murmuring: “O God, let him die! Let him die! Oh spare him agony!”

Suddenly she stood still and listened-listened, with staring eyes that

saw nothing. In the room men shrank back, for they knew that death was

behind the little door, and that they were in the presence of a sorrow

greater than death.

Suddenly she turned upon them with a gesture of piteous triumph and

said:

“You cannot have him now.”

Then she swayed and fell forward to the floor as the Cure and George

Fournel entered the room. The Cure hastened to her side and lifted up

her head.

George Fournel pushed the men back who would have entered the bath-room,

and himself, bursting the door open, entered. Louis lay dead upon the

floor. He turned to the constables.

“As she said, you cannot have him now. You have no right here. Go. I had

a warning from the man he killed. I knew there would be trouble. But I

have come too late,” he added bitterly.

An hour later the house was as still as the grave. Madame Marie sat with

the doctor beside the bed of her dear mistress, and in another room,

George Fournel, with the Avocat, kept watch beside the body of the

Seigneur of Pontiac. The face of the dead man was as peaceful as that of

a little child.

.........................

At ninety years of age, the present Seigneur of Pontiac, one Baron

Fournel, lives in the Manor House left him by Madelinette Lajeunesse the

great singer, when she died a quarter of a century ago. For thirty years

he followed her from capital to capital of Europe and America to hear

her sing; and to this day he talks of her in language more French

than English in its ardour. Perhaps that is because his heart beats in

sympathy with the Frenchmen he once disdained.

THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P’TITE LOUISON

The five brothers lived with Louison, three miles from Pontiac, and

Medallion came to know them first through having sold them, at an

auction, a slice of an adjoining farm. He had been invited to their

home, intimacy had grown, and afterwards, stricken with a severe

illness, he had been taken into the household and kept there till he was

well again. The night of his arrival, Louison, the sister, stood with

a brother on either hand--Octave and Florian--and received him with

a courtesy more stately than usual, an expression of the reserve and

modesty of her single state. This maidenly dignity was at all times

shielded by the five brothers, who treated her with a constant and

reverential courtesy. There was something signally suggestive in their

homage, and Medallion concluded at last that it was paid not only to the

sister, but to something that gave her great importance in their eyes.

He puzzled long, and finally decided that Louison had a romance. There

was something which suggested it in the way they said “P’tite

Louison”; in the manner they avoided all gossip regarding marriages

and marriage-feasting; in the way they deferred to her on questions of

etiquette (as, for instance, Should the eldest child be given the family

name of the wife or a Christian name from her husband’s family?). And

P’tite Louison’s opinion was accepted instantly as final, with satisfied

nods on the part of all the brothers, and whispers of “How clever! how

adorable!”

P’tite Louison affected never to hear these remarks, but looked

complacently straight before her, stirring the spoon in her cup, or

benignly passing the bread and butter. She was quite aware of the homage

paid to her, and she gracefully accepted the fact that she was an object

of interest.

Medallion had not the heart to laugh at the adoration of the brothers,

or at the outlandish sister, for, though she was angular, and sallow,

and thin, and her hands were large and red, there was a something deep

in her eyes, a curious quality in her carriage commanding respect. She

had ruled these brothers, had been worshipped by them, for near half a

century, and the romance they had kept alive had produced a grotesque

sort of truth and beauty in the admiring “P’tite Louison”--an

affectionate name for her greatness, like “The Little Corporal” for

Napoleon. She was not little, either, but above the middle height, and

her hair was well streaked with grey.

Her manner towards Medallion was not marked by any affectation. She was

friendly in a kind, impersonal way, much as a nurse cares for a patient,

and she never relaxed a sort of old-fashioned courtesy, which might have

been trying in such close quarters, were it not for the real simplicity

of the life and the spirit and lightness of their race. One night

Florian--there were Florian and Octave and Felix and Isidore and

Emile--the eldest, drew Medallion aside from the others, and they walked

together by the river. Florian’s air suggested confidence and mystery,

and soon, with a voice of hushed suggestion, he told Medallion the

romance of P’tite Louison. And each of the brothers at different times

during the next fortnight did the same, differing scarcely at all in

details, or choice of phrase or meaning, and not at all in general facts

and essentials. But each, as he ended, made a different exclamation.

“Voila, so sad, so wonderful! She keeps the ring--dear P’tite Louison!”

said Florian, the eldest.

“Alors, she gives him a legacy in her will! Sweet P’tite Louison,” said

Octave.

“Mais, the governor and the archbishop admire her--P’tite Louison:” said

Felix, nodding confidently at Medallion.

“Bien, you should see the linen and the petticoats!” said Isidore, the

humorous one of the family. “He was great--she was an angel, P’tite

Louison!”

“Attends! what love--what history--what passion!--the perfect P’tite

Louison!” cried Emile, the youngest, the most sentimental. “Ah,

Moliere!” he added, as if calling on the master to rise and sing the

glories of this daughter of romance.

Isidore’s tale was after this fashion:

“I ver’ well remember the first of it; and the last of it--who can tell?

He was an actor--oh, so droll, that! Tall, ver’ smart, and he play in

theatre at Montreal. It is in the winter. P’tite Louison visit Montreal.

She walk past the theatre and, as she go by, she slip on the snow and

fall. Out from a door with a jomp come M’sieu’ Hadrian, and pick her up.

And when he see the purty face of P’tite Louison, his eyes go all fire,

and he clasp her hand to his breast.

“‘Ma’m’selle, Ma’m’selle,’ he say, ‘we must meet again!’

“She thank him and hurry away queeck. Next day we are on the river, and

P’tite Louison try to do the Dance of the Blue Fox on the ice. While she

do it, some one come up swift, and catch her hand and say: ‘Ma’m’selle,

let’s do it together’--like that! It take her breath away. It is M’sieu’

Hadrian. He not seem like the other men she know; but he have a sharp

look, he is smooth in the face, and he smile kind like a woman. P’tite

Louison, she give him her hand, and they run away, and every one stop to

look. It is a gran’ sight. M’sieu’ Hadrian laugh, and his teeth shine,

and the ladies say things of him, and he tell P’tite Louison that she

look ver’ fine, and walk like a queen. I am there that day, and I see

all, and I think it dam good. I say: ‘That P’tite Louison, she beat them

all’--I am only twelve year old then. When M’sieu’ Hadrian leave, he

give her two seats for the theatre, and we go. Bagosh! that is grand

thing that play, and M’sieu’ Hadrian, he is a prince; and when he say to

his minister, ‘But no, my lord, I will marry out of my star, and where

my heart go, not as the State wills,’ he look down at P’tite Louison,

and she go all red, and some of the women look at her, and there is a

whisper all roun’.

“Nex’ day he come to the house where we stay, but the Cure come also

pretty soon and tell her she must go home--he say an actor is not good

company. Never mind. And so we come out home. Well, what you think?

Nex’ day M’sieu’ Hadrian come, too, and we have dam good time--Florian,

Octave, Felix, Emile, they all sit and say bully-good to him all the

time. Holy, what fine stories he tell! And he talk about P’tite Louison,

and his eyes get wet, and Emile he say his prayers to him--bagosh! yes,

I think. Well, at last, what you guess? M’sieu’ he come and come, and at

last one day, he say that he leave Montreal and go to New York, where he

get a good place in a big theatre--his time in Montreal is finish. So

he speak to Florian and say he want marry P’tite Louison, and he say, of

course, that he is not marry and he have money. But he is a Protestan’,

and the Cure at first ver’ mad, bagosh!

“But at las’ when he give a hunder’ dollars to the Church, the Cure

say yes. All happy that way for while. P’tite Louison, she get ready

quick-sapre, what fine things had she--and it is all to be done in a

week, while the theatre in New York wait for M’sieu’. He sit there with

us, and play on the fiddle, and sing songs, and act plays, and help

Florian in the barn, and Octave to mend the fence, and the Cure to

fix the grape-vines on his wall. He show me and Emile how to play

sword-sticks; and he pick flowers and fetch them to P’tite Louison, and

teach her how to make an omelette and a salad like the chef of the Louis

Quinze Hotel, so he say. Bagosh, what a good time we have! But first

one, then another, he get a choke-throat when he think that P’tite

Louison go to leave us, and the more we try, the more we are bagosh

fools. And that P’tite Louison, she kiss us hevery one, and say to

M’sieu’ Hadrian, ‘Charles, I love you, but I cannot go.’ He laugh at

her, and say, ‘Voila! we will take them all with us:’ and P’tite Louison

she laugh. That night a thing happen. The Cure come, and he look ver’

mad, and he frown and he say to M’sieu’ Hadrian before us all, ‘M’sieu’,

you are married.’

“Sapre! that P’tite Louison get pale like snow, and we all stan’ roun’

her close and say to her quick, ‘Courage, P’tite Louison!’ M’sieu’

Hadrian then look at the priest and say: ‘No, M’sieu’, I was married ten

years ago; my wife drink and go wrong, and I get divorce. I am free like

the wind.’

“‘You are not free,’ the Cure say quick. ‘Once married, married till

death. The Church cannot marry you again, and I command Louison to give

you up.’

“P’tite Louison stan’ like stone. M’sieu’ turn to her. ‘What shall it

be, Louison?’ he say. ‘You will come with me?’

“‘Kiss me, Charles,’ she say, ‘and tell me good-bye till--till you are

free.’

“He look like a madman. ‘Kiss me once, Charles,’ she say, ‘and let me

go.’

“And he come to her and kiss her on the lips once, and he say, ‘Louison,

come with me. I will never give you up.’

“She draw back to Florian. ‘Good-bye, Charles,’ she say. ‘I will wait as

long as you will. Mother of God, how hard it is to do right!’ she say,

and then she turn and leave the room.

“M’sieu’ Hadrian, he give a long sigh. ‘It was my one chance,’ he say.

‘Now the devil take it all!’ Then he nod and say to the Cure: ‘We’ll

thrash this out at Judgment Day, M’sieu’. I’ll meet you there--you and

the woman that spoiled me.’

“He turn to Florian and the rest of us, and shake hands, and say: ‘Take

care of Louison. Thank you. Good-bye.’ Then he start towards the door,

but stumble, for he look sick. ‘Give me a drink,’ he say, and begin to

cough a little--a queer sort of rattle. Florian give him big drink, and

he toss it off-whiff! ‘Thank you,’ he say, and start again, and we see

him walk away over the hill ver’ slow--an’ he never come back. But every

year there come from New York a box of flowers, and every year P’tite

Louison send him a ‘Merci, Charles, mille fois. Dieu to garde.’ It is so

every year for twenty-five year.”

“Where is he now?” asked Medallion.

Isidore shook his head, then lifted his eyes religiously. “Waiting for

Judgment Day and P’tite Louison,” he answered.

“Dead!” said Medallion.

“How long?”

“Twenty year.”

“But the flowers--the flowers?”

“He left word for them to be sent just the same, and the money for it.”

Medallion turned and took off his hat reverently, as if a soul were

passing from the world; but it was only P’tite Louison going out into

the garden.

“She thinks him living?” he asked gently as he watched Louison.

“Yes; we have no heart to tell her. And then he wish it so. And the

flowers kep’ coming.”

“Why did he wish it so?” Isidore mused a while.

“Who can tell? Perhaps a whim. He was a great actor--ah, yes, sublime!”

he said.

Medallion did not reply, but walked slowly down to where P’tite Louison

was picking berries. His hat was still off.

“Let me help you, Mademoiselle,” he said softly. And henceforth he was

as foolish as her brothers.

THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR

“Sacre bapteme!”

“What did he say?” asked the Little Chemist, stepping from his doorway.

“He cursed his baptism,” answered tall Medallion, the English

auctioneer, pushing his way farther into the crowd.

“Ah, the pitiful vaurien!” said the Little Chemist’s wife, shudderingly;

for that was an oath not to be endured by any one who called the Church

mother.

The crowd that had gathered at the Four Corners were greatly disturbed,

for they also felt the repulsion that possessed the Little Chemist’s

wife. They babbled, shook their heads, and waved their hands excitedly,

and swayed and craned their necks to see the offender.

All at once his voice, mad with rage, was heard above the rest, shouting

frenziedly a curse which was a horribly grotesque blasphemy upon the

name of God. Men who had used that oath in their insane anger had been

known to commit suicide out of remorse afterwards.

For a moment there was a painful hush. The crowd drew back involuntarily

and left a clear space, in which stood the blasphemer--a middle-sized,

athletic fellow, with black beard, thick, waving hair, and flashing

brown eyes. His white teeth were showing now in a snarl like a dog’s,

his cap was on the ground, his hair was tumbled, his hands were

twitching with passion, his foot was stamping with fury, and every time

it struck the ground a little silver bell rang at his knee--a pretty

sylvan sound, in no keeping with the scene. It heightened the distress

of the fellow’s blasphemy and ungovernable anger. For a man to curse

his baptism was a wicked thing; but the other oath was not fit for human

ears, and horror held the crowd moveless for a moment.

Then, as suddenly as the stillness came, a low, threatening mumble

of voices rose, and a movement to close in on the man was made; but

a figure pushed through the crowd, and, standing in front of the man,

waved the people back. It was the Cure, the beloved M. Fabre, whose life

had been spent among them, whom they obeyed as well as they could, for

they were but frail humanity, after all--crude, simple folk, touched

with imagination.

“Luc Pomfrette, why have you done this? What provocation had you?”

The Cure’s voice was stern and cold, his usually gentle face had become

severe, his soft eyes were piercing and determined.

The foot of the man still beat the ground angrily, and the little bell

kept tinkling. He was gasping with passion, and he did not answer yet.

“Luc Pomfrette, what have you to say?” asked the Cure again. He motioned

back Lacasse, the constable of the parish, who had suddenly appeared

with a rusty gun and a more rusty pair of handcuffs.

Still the voyageur did not answer.

The Cure glanced at Lajeunesse the blacksmith, who stood near.

“There was no cause--no,” sagely shaking his head said Lajeunesse, “Here

stand we at the door of the Louis Quinze in very good humour. Up come

the voyageurs, all laughing, and ahead of them is Luc Pomfrette, with

the little bell at his knee. Luc, he laugh the same as the rest, and

they stand in the door, and the garcon bring out the brandy--just a

little, but just enough too. I am talking to Henri Beauvin. I am telling

him Junie Gauloir have run away with Dicey the Protestant, when all very

quick Luc push between me and Henri, jump into the street, and speak

like that!”

Lajeunesse looked around, as if for corroboration; Henri and others

nodded, and some one said:

“That’s true; that’s true. There was no cause.”

“Maybe it was the drink,” said a little hunchbacked man, pushing his

way in beside the Cure. “It must have been the drink; there was nothing

else--no.”

The speaker was Parpon the dwarf, the oddest, in some ways the most

foolish, in others the wisest man in Pontiac.

“That is no excuse,” said the Cure.

“It is the only one he has, eh?” answered Parpon. His eyes were fixed

meaningly on those of Pomfrette.

“It is no excuse,” repeated the Cure sternly. “The blasphemy is

horrible, a shame and stigma upon Pontiac for ever.” He looked Pomfrette

in the face. “Foul-mouthed and wicked man, it is two years since you

took the Blessed Sacrament. Last Easter day you were in a drunken sleep

while Mass was being said; after the funeral of your own father you were

drunk again. When you went away to the woods you never left a penny for

candles, nor for Masses to be said for your father’s soul; yet you sold

his horse and his little house, and spent the money in drink. Not a cent

for a candle, but--”

“It’s a lie,” cried Pomfrette, shaking with rage from head to foot.

A long horror-stricken “Ah!” broke from the crowd. The Cure’s face

became graver and colder.

“You have a bad heart,” he answered, “and you give Pontiac an evil name.

I command you to come to Mass next Sunday, to repent and to hear your

penance given from the altar. For until--”

“I’ll go to no Mass till I’m carried to it,” was the sullen, malevolent

interruption.

The Cure turned upon the people.

“This is a blasphemer, an evil-hearted, shameless man,” he said. “Until

he repents humbly, and bows his vicious spirit to holy Church, and his

heart to the mercy of God, I command you to avoid him as you would a

plague. I command that no door be opened to him; that no one offer

him comfort or friendship; that not even a bon jour or a bon soir pass

between you. He has blasphemed against our Father in heaven; to the

Church he is a leper.” He turned to Pomfrette. “I pray God that you have

no peace in mind or body till your evil life is changed, and your black

heart is broken by sorrow and repentance.”

Then to the people he said again: “I have commanded you for your

souls’ sake; see that you obey. Go to your homes. Let us leave the

leper--alone.” He waved the awed crowd back.

“Shall we take off the little bell?” asked Lajeunesse of the Cure.

Pomfrette heard, and he drew himself together, his jaws shutting

with ferocity, and his hand flying to the belt where his voyageur’s

case-knife hung. The Cure did not see this. Without turning his head

towards Pomfrette, he said:

“I have commanded you, my children. Leave the leper alone.”

Again he waved the crowd to be gone, and they scattered, whispering to

each other; for nothing like this had ever occurred in Pontiac before,

nor had they ever seen the Cure with this granite look in his face, or

heard his voice so bitterly hard.

He did not move until he had seen them all started homewards from the

Four Corners. One person remained beside him--Parpon the dwarf.

“I will not obey you, M’sieu’ le Cure,” said he. “I’ll forgive him

before he repents.”

“You will share his sin,” answered the Cure sternly. “No; his

punishment, M’sieu’,” said the dwarf; and turning on his heel, he

trotted to where Pomfrette stood alone in the middle of the road, a

dark, morose figure, hatred and a wild trouble in his face.

Already banishment, isolation, seemed to possess Pomfrette, to surround

him with loneliness. The very effort he made to be defiant of his fate

appeared to make him still more solitary. All at once he thrust a hand

inside his red shirt, and, giving a jerk which broke a string tied round

his neck, he drew forth a little pad--a flat bag of silk, called an

Agnus Dei, worn as a protection and a blessing by the pious, and threw

it on the ground. Another little parcel he drew from his belt, and

ground it into the dirt with his heel. It contained a woman’s hair.

Then, muttering, his hands still twitching with savage feeling, he

picked up his cap, covered with dirt, put it on, and passed away down

the road towards the river, the little bell tinkling as he went. Those

who heard it had a strange feeling, for already to them the man was as

if he had some baleful disease, and this little bell told of the passing

of a leper.

Yet some one man had worn just such a bell every year in Pontiac. It was

the mark of honour conferred upon a voyageur by his fellows, the token

of his prowess and his skill. This year Luc Pomfrette had won it, and

that very day it had been buckled round his leg with songs and toasts.

For hours Pomfrette walked incessantly up and down the river-bank,

muttering and gesticulating, but at last came quietly to the cottage

which he shared with Henri Beauvin. Henri had removed himself and his

belongings: already the ostracising had begun. He went to the bedroom

of old Mme. Burgoyne, his cousin; she also was gone. He went to a little

outhouse and called.

For reply there was a scratching at the door. He opened it, and a dog

leaped out and upon him. With a fierce fondness he snatched at the dog’s

collar, and drew the shaggy head to his knee; then as suddenly shoved

him away with a smothered oath, and going into the house, shut the door.

He sat down in a chair in the middle of the room, and scarcely stirred

for half an-hour. At last, with a passionate jerk of the head, he got to

his feet, looking about the room in a half-distracted way. Outside, the

dog kept running round and round the house, silent, watchful, waiting

for the door to open.

As time went by, Luc became quieter, but the look of his face was more

desolate. At last he almost ran to the door, threw it open, and called.

The dog sprang into the room, went straight to the fireplace, lay

down, and with tongue lolling and body panting looked at Pomfrette with

blinking, uncomprehending eyes.

Pomfrette went to a cupboard, brought back a bone well covered with

meat, and gave it to the dog, which snatched it and began gnawing it,

now and again stopping to look up at his master, as one might look at

a mountain moving, be aware of something singular, yet not grasp the

significance of the phenomenon. At last, worn out, Pomfrette threw

himself on his bed, and fell into a sound sleep. When he awoke, it was

far into the morning. He lighted a fire in the kitchen, got a “spider,”

fried himself a piece of pork, and made some tea. There was no milk in

the cupboard; so he took a pitcher and walked down the road a few rods

to the next house, where lived the village milkman. He knocked, and the

door was opened by the milkman’s wife. A frightened look came upon her

when she saw who it was.

“Non, non!” she said, and shut the door in his face. He stared blankly

at the door for a moment, then turned round and stood looking down

into the road, with the pitcher in his hand. The milkman’s little boy,

Maxime, came running round the corner of the house. “Maxime,” he said

involuntarily and half-eagerly, for he and the lad had been great

friends.

Maxime’s face brightened, then became clouded; he stood still an

instant, and presently, turning round and looking at Pomfrette askance,

ran away behind the house, saying: “Non, non!”

Pomfrette drew his rough knuckles across his forehead in a dazed way;

then, as the significance of the thing came home to him, he broke out

with a fierce oath, and strode away down the yard and into the road.

On the way to his house he met Duclosse the mealman and Garotte the

lime-burner. He wondered what they would do. He could see the fat,

wheezy Duclosse hesitate, but the arid, alert Garotte had determination

in every motion and look. They came nearer; they were about to pass;

there was no sign.

Pomfrette stopped short. “Good-day, lime-burner; good-day, Duclosse,” he

said, looking straight at them.

Garotte made no reply, but walked straight on. Pomfrette stepped swiftly

in front of the mealman. There was fury in his face-fury and danger; his

hair was disordered, his eyes afire.

“Good-day, mealman,” he said, and waited. “Duclosse,” called Garotte

warningly, “remember!” Duclosse’s knees shook, and his face became

mottled like a piece of soap; he pushed his fingers into his shirt and

touched the Agnus Dei that he carried there. That and Garotte’s words

gave him courage. He scarcely knew what he said, but it had meaning.

“Good-bye-leper,” he answered.

Pomfrette’s arm flew out to throw the pitcher at the mealman’s head,

but Duclosse, with a grunt of terror, flung up in front of his face

the small bag of meal that he carried, the contents pouring over

his waistcoat from a loose corner. The picture was so ludicrous that

Pomfrette laughed with a devilish humour, and flinging the pitcher

at the bag, he walked away towards his own house. Duclosse, pale and

frightened, stepped from among the fragments of crockery, and with

backward glances towards Pomfrette joined his comrade.

“Lime-burner,” he said, sitting down on the bag of meal, and

mechanically twisting tight the loose, leaking corner, “the devil’s in

that leper.”

“He was a good enough fellow once,” answered Garotte, watching

Pomfrette.

“I drank with him at five o’clock yesterday,” said Duclosse

philosophically. “He was fit for any company then; now he’s fit for

none.”

Garotte looked wise. “Mealman,” said he, “it takes years to make folks

love you; you can make them hate you in an hour. La! La! it’s easier to

hate than to love. Come along, m’sieu’ dusty-belly.”

Pomfrette’s life in Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a

day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to

him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to

buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer’s flighty wife called

for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had

to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and

gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last,

when he needed a new suit--so torn had his others become at woodchopping

and many kinds of work--he went to the village tailor, and was promptly

told that nothing but Luc Pomfrette’s grave-clothes would be cut and

made in that house.

When he walked down to the Four Corners the street emptied at once, and

the lonely man with the tinkling bell of honour at his knee felt the

whole world falling away from sight and touch and sound of him. Once

when he went into the Louis Quinze every man present stole away in

silence, and the landlord himself, without a word, turned and left

the bar. At that, with a hoarse laugh, Pomfrette poured out a glass

of brandy, drank it off, and left a shilling on the counter. The next

morning he found the shilling, wrapped in a piece of paper, just inside

his door; it had been pushed underneath. On the paper was written: “It

is cursed.” Presently his dog died, and the day afterwards he suddenly

disappeared from Pontiac, and wandered on to Ste. Gabrielle, Ribeaux,

and Ville Bambord. But his shame had gone before him, and people shunned

him everywhere, even the roughest. No one who knew him would shelter

him. He slept in barns and in the woods until the winter came and snow

lay thick upon the ground. Thin and haggard, and with nothing left of

his old self but his deep brown eyes and curling hair, and his unhappy

name and fame, he turned back again to Pontiac. His spirit was sullen

and hard, his heart closed against repentance. Had not the Church and

Pontiac and the world punished him beyond his deserts for a moment’s

madness brought on by a great shock!

One bright, sunshiny day of early winter, he trudged through the

snow-banked street of Pontiac back to his home. Men he once knew well,

and had worked with, passed him in a sled on their way to the great

shanty in the backwoods. They halted in their singing for a moment when

they saw him; then, turning their heads from him, dashed off, carolling

lustily:

“Ah, ah, Babette,

We go away;

But we will come

Again, Babette,

Again back home,

On Easter Day,

Back home to play

On Easter Day,

Babette! Babette!”

“Babette! Babette!” The words followed him, ringing in his ears long

after the men had become a mere fading point in the white horizon behind

him.

This was not the same world that he had known, not the same Pontiac.

Suddenly he stopped short in the road.

“Curse them! Curse them! Curse them all!” he cried in a cracked, strange

voice. A woman hurrying across the street heard him, and went the

faster, shutting her ears. A little boy stood still and looked at him

in wonder. Everything he saw maddened him. He turned sharp round and

hurried to the Louis Quinze. Throwing open the door, he stepped inside.

Half-a-dozen men were there with the landlord. When they saw him, they

started, confused and dismayed. He stood still for a moment, looking at

them with glowering brows.

“Good-day,” he said. “How goes it?”

No one answered. A little apart from the others sat Medallion the

auctioneer. He was a Protestant, and the curse on his baptism uttered

by Pomfrette was not so heinous in his sight. For the other oath, it was

another matter. Still, he was sorry for the man. In any case, it was

not his cue to interfere; and Luc was being punished according to his

bringing up and to the standards familiar to him. Medallion had never

refused to speak to him, but he had done nothing more. There was no

reason why he should provoke the enmity of the parish unnecessarily; and

up to this-point Pomfrette had shifted for himself after a fashion, if a

hard fashion.

With a bitter laugh, Pomfrette turned to the little bar.

“Brandy,” he said; “brandy, my Bourienne.”

The landlord shrugged his shoulder, and looked the other way.

“Brandy,” he repeated. Still there was no sign.

There was a wicked look in his face, from which the landlord shrank

back-shrank so far that he carried himself among the others, and stood

there, half frightened, half dumfounded.

Pomfrette pulled out a greasy dollar-bill from his pocket--the last he

owned in the world--and threw it on the counter. Then he reached over,

caught up a brandy-bottle from the shelf, knocked off the neck with a

knife, and, pouring a tumblerful, drank it off at a gasp.

His head came up, his shoulders straightened out, his eyes snapped fire.

He laughed aloud, a sardonic, wild, coarse laugh, and he shivered once

or twice violently, in spite of the brandy he had drunk.

“You won’t speak to me, eh? Won’t you? Curse you! Pass me on the other

side--so! Look at me. I am the worst man in the world, eh? Judas is

nothing--no! Ack, what are you, to turn your back on me? Listen to me!

You, there, Muroc, with your charcoal face, who was it walk thirty miles

in the dead of winter to bring a doctor to your wife, eh? She die,

but that is no matter--who was it? It was Luc Pomfrette. You, Alphonse

Durien, who was it drag you out of the bog at the Cote Chaudiere? It was

Luc Pomfrette. You, Jacques Baby, who was it that lied for you to the

Protestant girl at Faribeau? Just Luc Pomfrette. You two, Jean and

Nicolas Mariban, who was it lent you a hunderd dollars when you lose all

your money at cards? Ha, ha, ha! Only that beast Luc Pomfrette! Mother

of Heaven, such a beast is he--eh, Limon Rouge?--such a beast that used

to give your Victorine little silver things, and feed her with bread

and sugar and buttermilk pop. Ah, my dear Limon Rouge, how is it all

different now!”

He raised the bottle and drank long from the ragged neck. When he took

it away from his mouth not much more than half remained in the quart

bottle. Blood was dripping upon his beard from a cut on his lip, and

from there to the ground.

“And you, M’sieu’ Bourienne,” he cried hoarsely, “do I not remember that

dear M’sieu’ Bourienne, when he beg me to leave Pontiac for a little

while that I not give evidence in court against him? Eh bien! you

all walk by me now, as if I was the father of smallpox, and not Luc

Pomfrette--only Luc Pomfrette, who spits at every one of you for a pack

of cowards and hypocrites.”

He thrust the bottle inside his coat, went to the door, flung it open

with a bang, and strode out into the street, muttering as he went. As

the landlord came to close the door Medallion said:

“The leper has a memory, my friends.” Then he also walked out, and went

to his office depressed, for the face of the man haunted him.

Pomfrette reached his deserted, cheerless house. There was not a stick

of fire-wood in the shed, not a thing to eat or drink in cellar or

cupboard. The door of the shed at the back was open, and the dog-chains

lay covered with frost and half embedded in mud. With a shiver of misery

Pomfrette raised the brandy to his mouth, drank every drop, and threw

the bottle on the floor. Then he went to the front door, opened it, and

stepped outside. His foot slipped, and he tumbled head forward into the

snow. Once or twice he half raised himself, but fell back again, and

presently lay still. The frost caught his ears and iced them; it began

to creep over his cheeks; it made his fingers white, like a leper’s.

He would soon have stiffened for ever had not Parpon the dwarf, passing

along the road, seen the open door and the sprawling body, and come and

drawn Pomfrette inside the house. He rubbed the face and hands and ears

of the unconscious man with snow till the whiteness disappeared, and,

taking off the boots, did the same with the toes; after which he drew

the body to a piece of rag carpet beside the stove, threw some blankets

over it, and, hurrying out, cut up some fence rails, and soon had a fire

going in the stove.

Then he trotted out of the house and away to the Little Chemist, who

came passively with him. All that day, and for many days, they fought

to save Pomfrette’s life. The Cure came also; but Pomfrette was in fever

and delirium. Yet the good M. Fabre’s presence, as it ever did, gave an

air of calm and comfort to the place. Parpon’s hands alone cared for the

house; he did all that was to be done; no woman had entered the place

since Pomfrette’s cousin, old Mme. Burgoyne, left it on the day of his

shame.

When at last Pomfrette opened his eyes, and saw the Cure standing beside

him, he turned his face to the wall, and to the exhortation addressed

to him he answered nothing. At last the Cure left him, and came no more;

and he bade Parpon do the same as soon as Pomfrette was able to leave

his bed.

But Parpon did as he willed. He had been in Pontiac only a few days

since the painful business in front of the Louis Quinze. Where he

had been and what doing no one asked, for he was mysterious in his

movements, and always uncommunicative, and people did not care to tempt

his inhospitable tongue. When Pomfrette was so far recovered that he

might be left alone, Parpon said to him one evening:

“Pomfrette, you must go to Mass next Sunday.”

“I said I wouldn’t go till I was carried there, and I mean it--that’s

so,” was the morose reply.

“What made you curse like that--so damnable?” asked Parpon furtively.

“That’s my own business. It doesn’t matter to anybody but me.”

“And you said the Cure lied--the good M’sieu’ Fabre--him like a saint.”

“I said he lied, and I’d say it again, and tell the truth.”

“But if you went to Mass, and took your penance, and--”

“Yes, I know; they’d forgive me, and I’d get absolution, and they’d all

speak to me again, and it would be, ‘Good-day, Luc,’ and ‘Very good,

Luc,’ and ‘What a gay heart has Luc, the good fellow!’ Ah, I know. They

curse in the heart when the whole world go wrong for them; no one hears.

I curse out loud. I’m not a hypocrite, and no one thinks me fit to live.

Ack, what is the good!”

Parpon did not respond at once. At last, dropping his chin in his hand

and his elbow on his knee, as he squatted on the table, he said:

“But if the girl got sorry--”

For a time there was no sound save the whirring of the fire in the stove

and the hard breathing of the sick man. His eyes were staring hard at

Parpon. At last he said, slowly and fiercely:

“What do you know?”

“What others might know if they had eyes and sense; but they haven’t.

What would you do if that Junie come back?”

“I would kill her.” His look was murderous.

“Bah, you would kiss her first, just the same!”

“What of that? I would kiss her because--because there is no face like

hers in the world; and I’d kill her for her bad heart.”

“What did she do?” Pomfrette’s hands clinched.

“What’s in my own noddle, and not for any one else,” he answered

sulkily.

“Tiens, tiens, what a close mouth! What did she do? Who knows? What you

think she do, it’s this. You think she pretends to love you, and you

leave all your money with her. She is to buy masses for your father’s

soul; she is to pay money to the Cure for the good of the Church; she

is to buy a little here, a little there, for the house you and she are

going to live in, the wedding and the dancing over. Very well. Ah,

my Pomfrette, what is the end you think? She run away with Dicey the

Protestant, and take your money with her. Eh, is that so?”

For answer there came a sob, and then a terrible burst of weeping and

anger and passionate denunciations--against Junie Gauloir, against

Pontiac, against the world.

Parpon held his peace.

The days, weeks, and months went by; and the months stretched to three

years.

In all that time Pomfrette came and went through Pontiac, shunned and

unrepentant. His silent, gloomy endurance was almost an affront to

Pontiac; and if the wiser ones, the Cure, the Avocat, the Little

Chemist, and Medallion, were more sorry than offended, they stood aloof

till the man should in some manner redeem himself, and repent of his

horrid blasphemy. But one person persistently defied Church and people,

Cure and voyageur. Parpon openly and boldly walked with Pomfrette,

talked with him, and occasionally visited his house.

Luc made hard shifts to live. He grew everything that he ate, vegetables

and grains. Parpon showed him how to make his own flour in primitive

fashion, for no miller in any parish near would sell him flour, and he

had no money to buy it, nor would any one who knew him give him work.

And after his return to Pontiac he never asked for it. His mood was

defiant, morbid, stern. His wood he chopped from the common known as

No-Man’s Land. His clothes he made himself out of the skins of deer that

he shot; when his powder and shot gave out, he killed the deer with bow

and arrow.

The end came at last. Luc was taken ill. For four days, all alone, he

lay burning with fever and inflammation, and when Parpon found him he

was almost dead. Then began a fight for life again, in which Parpon was

the only physician; for Pomfrette would not allow the Little Chemist or

a doctor near him. Parpon at last gave up hope; but one night, when he

came back from the village, he saw, to his joy, old Mme. Degardy (“Crazy

Joan” she was called) sitting by Pomfrette’s bedside. He did not disturb

her, for she had no love for him, and he waited till she had gone. When

he came into the room again he found Pomfrette in a sweet sleep, and

a jug of tincture, with a little tin cup, placed by the bed. Time and

again he had sent for Mme. Degardy, but she would not come. She had

answered that the dear Luc could go to the devil for all of her; he’d

find better company down below than in Pontiac.

But for a whim, perhaps, she had come at last without asking, and as a

consequence Luc returned to the world, a mere bundle of bones.

It was still while he was only a bundle of bones that one Sunday

morning, Parpon, without a word, lifted him up in his arms and carried

him out of the house. Pomfrette did not speak at first: it seemed

scarcely worth while; he was so weak he did not care.

“Where are you going?” he said at last, as they came well into the

village. The bell in St. Saviour’s had stopped ringing for Mass, and the

streets were almost empty.

“I’m taking you to Mass,” said Parpon, puffing under his load, for

Pomfrette made an ungainly burden. “Hand of a little devil, no!” cried

Pomfrette, startled. “I said I’d never go to Mass again, and I never

will.

“You said you’d never go to Mass till you were carried; so it’s all

right.”

Once or twice Pomfrette struggled, but Parpon held him tight, saying:

“It’s no use; you must come; we’ve had enough. Besides--”

“Besides what?” asked Pomfrette faintly. “Never mind,” answered Parpon.

At a word from Parpon the shrivelled old sexton cleared a way through

the aisle, making a stir, through which the silver bell at Pomfrette’s

knee tinkled, in answer, as it were, to the tinkling of the acolyte’s

bell in the sanctuary. People turned at the sound, women stopped telling

their beads, some of the choir forgot their chanting. A strange feeling

passed through the church, and reached and startled the Cure as he

recited the Mass. He turned round and saw Parpon laying Pomfrette down

at the chancel steps. His voice shook a little as he intoned the ritual,

and as he raised the sacred elements tears rolled down his cheeks.

From a distant corner of the gallery a deeply veiled woman also looked

down at Pomfrette, and her hand trembled on the desk before her.

At last the Cure came forward to the chancel steps. “What is it,

Parpon?” he asked gravely.

“It is Luc Pomfrette, M’sieu’ le Cure.” Pomfrette’s eyes were closed.

“He swore that he would never come to Mass again,” answered the good

priest.

“Till he was carried, M’sieu’ le Cure--and I’ve carried him.”

“Did you come of your own free will, and with a repentant heart, Luc

Pomfrette?” asked the Cure.

“I did not know I was coming--no.” Pomfrette’s brown eyes met the

priest’s unflinchingly.

“You have defied God, and yet He has spared your life.”

“I’d rather have died,” answered the sick man simply.

“Died, and been cast to perdition!”

“I’m used to that; I’ve had a bad time here in Pontiac.”

His thin hands moved restlessly. His leg moved, and the little bell

tinkled--the bell that had been like the bell of a leper these years

past.

“But you live, and you have years yet before you, in the providence of

God. Luc Pomfrette, you blasphemed against your baptism, and horribly

against God himself. Luc”--his voice got softer--“I knew your mother,

and she was almost too weak to hold you when you were baptised, for you

made a great to-do about coming into the world. She had a face like a

saint--so sweet, so patient. You were her only child, and your baptism

was more to her than her marriage even, or any other thing in this

world. The day after your baptism she died. What do you think were her

last words?”

There was a hectic flush on Pomfrette’s face, and his eyes were intense

and burning as they looked up fixedly at the Cure.

“I can’t think any more,” answered Pomfrette slowly. “I’ve no head.”

“What she said is for your heart, not for your head, Luc,” rejoined

the Cure gently. “She wandered in her mind, and at the last she raised

herself up in her bed, and lifting her finger like this”--he made the

gesture of benediction--“she said, ‘Luc Michele, I baptise you in the

name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’ Then

she whispered softly: ‘God bless my dear Luc Michee! Holy Mother pray

for him!’ These were her last words, and I took you from her arms. What

have you to say, Luc Michee?”

The woman in the gallery was weeping silently behind her thick veil, and

her worn hand clutched the desk in front of her convulsively. Presently

she arose and made her way down the stair, almost unnoticed. Two or

three times Luc tried to speak, but could not. “Lift me up,” he said

brokenly, at last.

Parpon and the Little Chemist raised him to his feet, and held him, his

shaking hands resting on their shoulders, his lank body tottering above

and between them.

Looking at the congregation, he said slowly: “I’ll suffer till I die for

cursing my baptism, and God will twist my neck in purgatory for--”

“Luc,” the Cure interrupted, “say that you repent.”

“I’m sorry, and I ask you all to forgive me, and I’ll confess to the

Cure, and take my penance, and--” he paused, for breathing hurt him.

At that moment the woman in black who had been in the gallery came

quickly forward. Parpon saw her, frowned, and waved her back; but she

came on. At the chancel steps she raised her veil, and a murmur of

recognition and wonder ran through the church. Pomfrette’s face was

pitiful to see--drawn, staring.

“Junie!” he said hoarsely.

Her eyes were red with weeping, her face was very pale. “M’sieu’ le

Cure” she said, “you must listen to me”--the Cure’s face had become

forbidding--“sinner though I am. You want to be just, don’t you?

Ah, listen! I was to be married to Luc Pomfrette, but I did not love

him--then. He had loved me for years, and his father and my father

wished it--as you know, M’sieu’ le Cure. So after a while I said I

would; but I begged him that he wouldn’t say anything about it till

he come back from his next journey on the river. I did not love him

enough--then. He left all his money with me: some to pay for Masses for

his father’s soul, some to buy things for--for our home; and the rest to

keep till he came back.”

“Yes, yes,” said Pomfrette, his eyes fixed painfully on her face--“yes,

yes.”

“The day after Luc went away John Dicey the Protestant come to me. I’d

always liked him; he could talk as Luc couldn’t, and it sounded nice.

I listened and listened. He knew about Luc and about the money and all.

Then he talked to me. I was all wild in the head, and things went round

and round, and oh, how I hated to marry Luc--then! So after he had

talked a long while I said yes, I would go with him and marry him--a

Protestant--for I loved him. I don’t know why or how.”

Pomfrette trembled so that Parpon and the Little Chemist made him sit

down, and he leaned against their shoulders, while Junie went on:

“I gave him Luc’s money to go and give to Parpon here, for I was too

ashamed to go myself. And I wrote a little note to Luc, and sent it with

the money. I believed in John Dicey, of course. He came back, and said

that he had seen Parpon and had done it all right; then we went away to

Montreal and got married. The very first day at Montreal, I found out

that he had Luc’s money. It was awful. I went mad, and he got angry and

left me alone, and didn’t come back. A week afterwards he was killed,

and I didn’t know it for a long time. But I began to work, for I wanted

to pay back Luc’s money. It was very slow, and I worked hard. Will

it never be finished, I say. At last Parpon find me, and I tell him

all--all except that John Dicey was dead; and I did not know that. I

made him promise to tell nobody; but he knows all about my life since

then. Then I find out one day that John Dicey is dead, and I get from

the gover’ment a hundred dollars of the money he stole. It was found

on him when he was killed. I work for six months longer, and now I come

back--with Luc’s money.”

She drew from her pocket a packet of notes, and put it in Luc’s hands.

He took it dazedly, then dropped it, and the Little Chemist picked it

up; he had no prescription like that in his pharmacopoeia.

“That’s how I’ve lived,” she said, and she handed a letter to the Cure.

It was from a priest in Montreal, setting forth the history of her

career in that city, her repentance for her elopement and the sin of

marrying a Protestant, and her good life. She had wished to do her

penance in Pontiac, and it remained to M’sieu’ le Cure; to set it.

The Cure’s face relaxed, and a rare gentleness came into it.

He read the letter aloud. Luc once more struggled to his feet, eagerly

listening.

“You did not love Luc?” the Cure asked Junie, meaningly.

“I did not love Luc--then,” she answered, a flush going over her face.

“You loved Junie?” the Cure said to Pomfrette. “I could have killed

her, but I’ve always loved her,” answered Luc. Then he raised his voice

excitedly: “I love her, love her, love her--but what’s the good! She’d

never ‘ve been happy with me. Look what my love drove her to! What’s the

good, at all!”

“She said she did not love you then, Luc Michee,” said Parpon,

interrupting. “Luc Michee, you’re a fool as well as a sinner. Speak up,

Junie.”

“I used to tell him that I didn’t love him; I only liked him. I was

honest. Well, I am honest still. I love him now.”

A sound of joy broke from Luc’s lips, and he stretched out his arms to

her, but the Cure; stopped that. “Not here,” he said. “Your sins must

first be considered. For penance--” He paused, looking at the two sad

yet happy beings before him. The deep knowledge of life that was in him

impelled him to continue gently:

“For penance you shall bear the remembrance of each other’s sins. And

now to God the Father--” He turned towards the altar, and raised his

hands in the ascription.

As he knelt to pray before he entered the pulpit, he heard the tinkling

of the little bell of honour at the knee of Luc, as Junie and Parpon

helped him from the church.

A SON OF THE WILDERNESS

Rachette told the story to Medallion and the Little Chemist’s wife on

Sunday after Mass, and because he was vain of his English he forsook his

own tongue and paid tribute to the Anglo-Saxon.

“Ah, she was so purty, that Norinne, when she drive through the parishes

all twelve days, after the wedding, a dance every night, and her eyes

and cheeks on fire all the time. And Bargon, bagosh! that Bargon, he

have a pair of shoulders like a wall, and five hunder’ dollars and a

horse and wagon. Bagosh, I say that time: ‘Bargon he have put a belt

round the world and buckle it tight to him--all right, ver’ good.’ I say

to him: ‘Bargon, what you do when you get ver’ rich out on the Souris

River in the prairie west?’ He laugh and throw up his hands, for he have

not many words any kind. And the dam little dwarf Parpon, he say: ‘He

will have flowers on the table and ice on the butter, and a wheel in his

head.’

“And Bargon laugh and say: ‘I will have plenty for my friends to eat and

drink and a ver’ fine time.’ “‘Good,’ we all say-’Bagosh!’ So they make

the trip through twelve parish, and the fiddles go all the time, and I

am what you say ‘best man’ with Bargon. I go all the time, and Lucette

Dargois, she go with me and her brother--holy, what an eye had she in

her head, that Lucette! As we go we sing a song all right, and there is

no one sing so better as Norinne:

“‘C’est la belle Francoise,

Allons gai!

C’est la belle Francoise,

Qui veut se marier,

Ma luron lurette!

Qui veut se marier,

Ma luron lure!’

“Ver’ good, bagosh! Norinne and Bargon they go out to the Souris, and

Bargon have a hunder’ acre, and he put up a house and a shed not ver’

big, and he carry his head high and his shoulders like a wall; yes, yes.

First year it is pretty good time, and Norinne’s cheeks--ah, like an

apple they. Bimeby a baby laugh up at Bargon from Norinne’s lap. I am

on the Souris at a saw-mill then, and on Sunday sometime I go up to see

Bargon and Norinne. I t’ink that baby is so dam funny; I laugh and pinch

his nose. His name is Marie, and I say I marry him pretty quick

some day. We have plenty hot cake, and beans and pork, and a little

how-you-are from a jar behin’ the door.

“Next year it is not so good. There is a bad crop and hard time, and

Bargon he owe two hunder’ dollar, and he pay int’rest. Norinne, she

do all the work, and that little Marie, there is dam funny in him, and

Norinne, she keep go, go, all the time, early and late, and she get

ver’ thin and quiet. So I go up from the mill more times, and I bring

fol-lols for that Marie, for you know I said I go to marry him some

day. And when I see how Bargon shoulders stoop and his eye get dull, and

there is nothing in the jar behin’ the door, I fetch a horn with me, and

my fiddle, and, bagosh! there is happy sit-you-down. I make Bargon sing

‘La Belle Francoise,’ and then just before I go I make them laugh, for I

stand by the cradle and I sing to that Marie:

“‘Adieu, belle Francoise;

Allons gai!

Adieu, belle Francoise!

Moi, je to marierai,

Ma luron lurette! Moi,

je to marierai,

Ma luron lure!’

“So; and another year it go along, and Bargon he know that if there come

bad crop it is good-bye-my lover with himselves. He owe two hunder’

and fifty dollar. It is the spring at Easter, and I go up to him and

Norinne, for there is no Mass, and Pontiac is too far away off. We stan’

at the door and look out, and all the prairie is green, and the sun

stan’ up high like a light on a pole, and the birds fly by ver’ busy

looking for the summer and the prairie-flower.

“‘Bargon,’ I say--and I give him a horn of old rye--‘here’s to le bon

Dieu!’

“‘Le bon Dieu, and a good harvest!’ he say.

“I hear some one give a long breath behin’, and I look round; but, no,

it is Norinne with a smile--for she never grumble--bagosh! What purty

eyes she have in her head! She have that Marie in her arms, and I say to

Bargon it is like the Madonne in the Notre Dame at Montreal. He nod his

head. ‘C’est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,’ he say.

“Before I go I take a piece of palm--it come from the Notre Dame; it

is all bless by the Pope--and I nail it to the door of the house. ‘For

luck,’ I say. Then I laugh, and I speak out to the prairie: ‘Come along,

good summer; come along, good crop; come two hunder’ and fifty dollars

for Gal Bargon.’ Ver’ quiet I give Norinne twenty dollar, but she will

not take him. ‘For Marie,’ then I say: ‘I go to marry him, bimeby.’ But

she say: ‘Keep it and give it to Marie yourself some day.’

“She smile at me, then she have a little tear in her eye, and she nod to

where Bargon stare’ houtside, and she say: ‘If this summer go wrong, it

will kill him. He work and work and fret and worry for me and Marie, and

sometimes he just sit and look at me and say not a word.’

“I say to her that there will be good crop, and next year we will be

ver’ happy. So, the time go on, and I send up a leetla snack of pork

and molass’ and tabac, and sugar and tea, and I get a letter from Bargon

bimeby, and he say that heverything go right, he t’ink, this summer.

He say I must come up. It is not dam easy to go in the summer, when the

mill run night and day; but I say I will go.

“When I get up to Bargon’s I laugh, for all the hunder’ acre is ver’

fine, and Bargon stan’ hin the door, and stretch out his hand, and say:

‘Rachette, there is six hunder’ dollar for me.’ I nod my head, and fetch

out a horn, and he have one, his eyes all bright like a lime-kiln. He is

thin and square, and his beard grow ver’ thick and rough and long, and

his hands are like planks. Norinne, she is ver’ happy, too, and Marie

bite on my finger, and I give him sugar-stick to suck.

“Bimeby Norinne say to me, ver’ soft: ‘If a hailstorm or a hot wind

come, that is the end of it all, and of my poor Gal.’

“What I do? I laugh and ketch Marie under the arms, and I sit down, and

I put him on my foot, and I sing that dam funny English song--‘Here

We Go to Banbury Cross.’ An’ I say: ‘It will be all as happy as Marie

pretty quick. Bargon he will have six hunder’ dollar, and you a new

dress and a hired girl to help you.’

“But all the time that day I think about a hail-storm or a hot wind

whenever I look out on that hunder’ acre farm. It is so beautiful,

as you can guess--the wheat, the barley, the corn, the potatoes, the

turnip, all green like sea-water, and pigeons and wild ducks flying up

and down, and the horse and the ox standing in a field ver’ comfer’ble.

“We have good time that day, and go to bed all happy that night. I get

up at five o’clock, an’ I go hout. Bargon stan’ there looking hout on

his field with the horse-bridle in his hand. ‘The air not feel right,’

he say to me. I t’ink the same, but I say to him: ‘Your head not feel

right--him too sof’.’ He shake his head and go down to the field for his

horse and ox, and hitch them up together, and go to work making a road.

“It is about ten o’clock when the dam thing come. Piff! go a hot splash

of air in my face, and then I know that it is all up with Gal Bargon. A

month after it is no matter, for the grain is ripe then, but now, when

it is green, it is sure death to it all. I turn sick in my stomich, and

I turn round and see Norinne stan’ hin the door, all white, and she make

her hand go as that, like she push back that hot wind.

“‘Where is Gal?’ she say. ‘I must go to him.’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘I will fetch

him. You stay with Marie.’ Then I go ver’ quick for Gal, and I find him,

his hands all shut like that! and he shake them at the sky, and he say

not a word, but his face, it go wild, and his eyes spin round in his

head. I put my hand on his arm and say: ‘Come home, Gal. Come home, and

speak kind to Norinne and Marie.’

“I can see that hot wind lean down and twist the grain about--a dam

devil thing from the Arzone desert down South. I take Gal back home, and

we sit there all day, and all the nex’ day, and a leetla more, and when

we have look enough, there is no grain on that hunder’ acre farm--only a

dry-up prairie, all grey and limp. My skin is bake and rough, but when

I look at Gal Bargon I know that his heart is dry like a bone, and, as

Parpon say that back time, he have a wheel in his head. Norinne she is

quiet, and she sit with her hand on his shoulder, and give him Marie to

hold.

“But it is no good; it is all over. So I say: ‘Let us go back to

Pontiac. What is the good for to be rich? Let us be poor and happy once

more.’

“And Norinne she look glad, and get up and say: ‘Yes, let us go back.’

But all at once she sit down with Marie in her arms, and cry--bagosh, I

never see a woman cry like that!

“So we start back for Pontiac with the horse and the ox and some pork

and bread and molass’. But Gal Bargon never hold up his head, but go

silent, silent, and he not sleep at night. One night he walk away on the

prairie, and when he come back he have a great pain. So he lie down, and

we sit by him, an’ he die. But once he whisper to me, and Norinne not

hear: ‘You say you will marry him, Rachette?’ and I say, ‘I will.’

“‘C’est le bon Dieu!’ he say at the last, but he say it with a little

laugh. I think he have a wheel in his head. But bimeby, yiste’day,

Norinne and Marie and I come to Pontiac.”

The Little Chemist’s wife dried her eyes, and Medallion said in French:

“Poor Norinne! Poor Norinne! And so, Rachette, you are going to marry

Marie, by-and-bye?” There was a quizzical look in Medallion’s eyes.

Rachette threw up his chin a little. “I’m going to marry Norinne on New

Year’s Day,” he said. “Bagosh, poor Norinne!” said Medallion, in a queer

sort of tone. “It is the way of the world,” he added. “I’ll wait for

Marie myself.”

It looks as if he meant to, for she has no better friend. He talks to

her much of Gal Bargon; of which her mother is glad.

A WORKER IN STONE

At the beginning he was only a tombstone-cutter. His name was Francois

Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where

the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the

hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the

end of a long hot day’s labour, he finished the half-carved tombstone,

and gave the price of it to the widow. Then, going to the Seigneur and

Cure, he asked them to buy the shop and tools for him, and let him pay

rent until he could take the place off their hands.

They did as he asked, and in two years he had bought and paid for the

place, and had a few dollars to the good. During one of the two years a

small-pox epidemic passed over Pontiac, and he was busy night and day.

It was during this time that some good Catholics came to him with an

heretical Protestant suggestion to carve a couplet or verse of poetry on

the tombstones they ordered. They themselves, in most cases, knew none,

and they asked Francois to supply them--as though he kept them in stock

like marble and sand-paper. He had no collection of suitable epitaphs,

and, besides, he did not know whether it was right to use them. Like all

his race in New France he was jealous of any inroads of Protestantism,

or what the Little Chemist called “Englishness.” The good M. Fabre,

the Cure, saw no harm in it, but said he could not speak for any one’s

grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words

upon the stone. But still Francois might bring all the epitaphs to him

before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or

reject, as the case might be.

At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets,

taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But

presently all that was changed, and the Cure one day had laid before him

three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and

when he passed them back to Francois his eyes were moist, for he was a

man truly after God’s own heart, and full of humanity.

“Will you read them to me, Francois?” he said, as the worker in stone

was about to put the paper back in his pocket. “Give the names of the

dead at the same time.”

So Francois read:

“Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years-”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Cure, “the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung

by the English, and cut down just in time to save him--an innocent man.

For thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph.”

Francois read it:

“Poor as a sparrow was I,

Yet I was saved like a king;

I heard the death-bells ring,

Yet I saw a light in the sky:

And now to my Father I wing.”

The Cure nodded his head. “Go on; the next,” he said.

“Annette John, aged twenty years--”

“So. The daughter of Chief John. When Queen Anne of England was on

the throne she sent Chief John’s grandfather a gold cup and a hundred

pounds. The girl loved, but would not marry, that she might keep Chief

John from drinking. A saint, Francois! What have they said of her?”

Francois smoothed out the paper and read:

“A little while I saw the world go by

A little doorway that I called my own,

A loaf, a cup of water, and a bed had I,

A shrine of Jesus, where I knelt alone:

And now alone I bid the world good-bye.”

The Cure turned his head away. “Go on,” he said sadly. “Chief John has

lost his right hand. Go on.”

“Henri Rouget”

“Aged thirty years,” again interrupted the Cure. “Henri Rouget, idiot;

as young as the morning. For man grows old only by what he suffers,

and what he forgives, and what he sins. What have you to say for Henri

Rouget, my Francois?”

And Francois read:

“I was a fool; nothing had I to know

Of men, and naught to men had I to give.

God gave me nothing; now to God I go,

Now ask for pain, for bread,

Life for my brain: dead,

By God’s love I shall then begin to live.”

The priest rose to his feet and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Do you know, Francois,” he said, half sadly, “do you know, you have

the true thing in you. Come often to me, my son, and bring all these

things--all you write.”

While the Cure troubled himself about his future, Francois began to work

upon a monument for the grave of a dozen soldiers of Pontiac who were

killed in the War of the Patriots. They had died for a mistaken cause,

and had been buried on the field of battle. Long ago something

would have been done to commemorate them but that three of them were

Protestants, and difficulties had been raised by the bigoted. But

Francois thought only of the young men in their common grave at St.

Eustache. He remembered when they went away one bright morning, full of

the joy of an erring patriotism, of the ardour of a weak but fascinating

cause: race against race, the conquered against the conquerors, the

usurped against the usurpers.

In the space before the parish church it stands--a broken shaft, with an

unwound wreath straying down its sides; a monument of fine proportions,

a white figure of beaten valour and erring ardour of youth and beautiful

bad ambition. One Saturday night it was not there, and when next morning

the people came to Mass it was there. All night had Francois and his men

worked, and the first rays of the morning sun fell on the tall shivered

shaft set firmly in its place. Francois was a happy man. All else that

he had done had been wholly after a crude, staring convention, after

rule and measure--an artisan’s, a tombstone-cutter’s labour. This was

the work of a man with the heart and mind of an artist. When the people

came to Mass they gazed and gazed, and now and then the weeping of a

woman was heard, for among them were those whose sons and brothers were

made memorable by this stone.

That day at the close of his sermon the Cure spoke of it, and said

at the last: “That white shaft, dear brethren, is for us a sign of

remembrance and a warning to our souls. In the name of race and for

their love they sinned. But yet they sinned; and this monument, the gift

and work of one young like them, ardent and desiring like them, is for

ever in our eyes the crucifixion of our wrong ambitions and our selfish

aims.

“Nay, let us be wise and let us be good. They who rule us speak with

foreign tongue, but their hearts desire our peace and a mutual regard.

Pray that this be. And pray for the young and the daring and the

foolish. And pray also that he who has given us here a good gift may

find his thanks in our better-ordered lives, and that he may consecrate

his parts and talents to the redeeming actions of this world.”

And so began the awakening of Francois Lagarre; and so began his

ambition and his peril.

For, as he passed from the church, the Seigneur touched him on the

shoulder and introduced him to his English grandniece, come on a visit

for the summer, the daughter of a London baronet. She had but just

arrived, and she was feeling that first homesickness which succeeds

transplanting. The face of the young worker in stone interested her; the

idea of it all was romantic; the possibilities of the young man’s life

opened out before her. Why should not she give him his real start,

win his gratitude, help him to his fame, and then, when it was won, be

pointed out as a discoverer and a patron?

All these things flashed through her mind as they were introduced. The

young man did not read the look in her eyes, but there was one other

person in the crowd about the church steps who did read it, whose heart

beat furiously, whose foot tapped the ground angrily--a black-haired,

brown-eyed farmer’s daughter, who instantly hated the yellow hair and

rosy and golden face of the blue-eyed London lady; who could, that

instant, have torn the silk gown from her graceful figure.

She was not disturbed without reason. And for the moment, even when she

heard impertinent and incredulous fellows pooh-poohing the monument, and

sharpening their rather dull wits upon its corners, she did not open her

lips, when otherwise she would have spoken her mind with a vengeance;

for Jeanne Marchand had a reputation for spirit and temper, and she

spared no one when her blood was up. She had a touch of the vixen--an

impetuous, loving, forceful mademoiselle, in marked contrast to the

rather ascetic Francois, whose ways were more refined than his origin

might seem to warrant.

“Sapre!” said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; “it’s like a timber

of cheese stuck up. What’s that to make a fuss about?”

“Fig of Eden,” muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, “any

fool could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!”

“Fish,” said fat Caroche the butcher, “that Francois has a rattle in his

capote. He’d spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block.”

But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man!

“What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can’t write his name,” she

said in a fury; “the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn’t remember that

Francois Lagarre made his brother’s tombstone, and charged him nothing

for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it!

No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba’tiste the fighter, as brave

as Caroche is a coward! He doesn’t remember the verse on Ba’tiste’s

tombstone, does he?”

Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked

at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in

the crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he

would not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant

nothing against Francois, the young man recited the words slowly--an

epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid

bully.

Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot’s Memory, he said:

“Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken,

Wrestling I’ve fallen, and I’ve rose up again;

Mostly I’ve stood--

I’ve had good bone and blood;

Others went down, though fighting might and main.

Now death steps in--

Death the price of sin.

The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain,

One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken.”

“Good enough for Ba’tiste,” said Duclosse the mealman.

The wave of feeling was now altogether with Francois, and presently

he walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd

dispersed. Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening

she was unhappy, for she saw Francois going towards the house of the

Seigneur; and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every

three or four days she saw the same thing.

Meanwhile Francois worked as he had never before worked in his life.

Night and day he was shut in his shop, and for two months he came with

no epitaphs for the Cure, and no new tombstones were set up in the

graveyard. The influence of the lady at the Seigneury was upon him, and

he himself believed it was for his salvation. She had told him of great

pieces of sculpture she had seen, had sent and got from Quebec City,

where he had never been, pictures of some of the world’s masterpieces

in sculpture, and he had lost himself in the study of them and in the

depths of the girl’s eyes. She meant no harm; the man interested her

beyond what was reasonable in one of his station in life. That was all,

and all there ever was.

Presently people began to gossip, and a story crept round that, in a new

shed which he had built behind his shop, Francois was chiselling out of

stone the nude figure of a woman. There were one or two who professed

they had seen it. The wildest gossip said that the figure was that

of the young lady at the Seigneury. Francois saw no more of Jeanne

Marchand; he thought of her sometimes, but that was all. A fever of work

was on him. Twice she came to the shed where he laboured, and knocked at

the door. The first time, he asked who was there. When she told him he

opened the door just a little way, smiled at her, caught her hand and

pressed it, and, when she would have entered, said: “No, no, another

day, Jeanne,” and shut the door in her face.

She almost hated him because he had looked so happy. Still another day

she came knocking. She called to him, and this time he opened the door

and admitted her. That very hour she had heard again the story of the

nude stone woman in the shed, and her heart was full of jealousy, fury,

and suspicion. He was very quiet, he seemed tired. She did not notice

that. Her heart had throbbed wildly as she stepped inside the shed. She

looked round, all delirious eagerness for the nude figure.

There it was, covered up with a great canvas! Yes, there were the

outlines of the figure. How shapely it seemed, even inside the canvas!

She stepped forward without a word, and snatched at the covering. He

swiftly interposed and stopped her hand.

“I will see it,” she said.

“Not to-day,” he answered.

“I tell you I will.” She wrenched her hand free and caught at the

canvas. A naked foot and ankle showed. He pinioned her wrists with one

hand and drew her towards the door, determination and anger in his face.

“You beast, you liar!” she said.

“You beast! beast! beast!”

Then, with a burst of angry laughter, she opened the door herself. “You

ain’t fit to know,” she said; “they told the truth about you. Now you

can take the canvas off her. Good-bye!” With that she was gone. The

following day was Sunday. Francois did not attend Mass, and such strange

scandalous reports had reached the Cure that he was both disturbed

and indignant. That afternoon, after vespers (which Francois did not

attend), the Cure made his way to the sculptor’s workshop, followed by a

number of parishioners.

The crowd increased, and when the Cure knocked at the door it seemed as

if half the village was there. The chief witness against Francois had

been Jeanne Marchand. That very afternoon she had told the Cure, with

indignation and bitterness, that there was no doubt about it; all that

had been said was true.

Francois, with wonder and some confusion, admitted the Cure. When M.

Fabre demanded that he be taken to the new workshop, Francois led the

way. The crowd pushed after, and presently the place was full. A hundred

eyes were fastened upon the canvas-covered statue, which had been the

means of the young man’s undoing.

Terrible things had been said--terrible things of Francois, and of

the girl at the Seigneury. They knew the girl for a Protestant and an

Englishwoman, and that in itself was a sort of sin. And now every ear

was alert to hear what the Cure should say, what denunciation should

come from his lips when the covering was removed. For that it should be

removed was the determination of every man present. Virtue was at its

supreme height in Pontiac that day. Lajeunesse the blacksmith, Muroc the

charcoal-man, and twenty others were as intent upon preserving a high

standard of morality, by force of arms, as if another Tarquin were

harbouring shame and crime in this cedar shed.

The whole thing came home to Francois with a choking, smothering force.

Art, now in its very birth in his heart and life, was to be garroted.

He had been unconscious of all the wicked things said about him: now he

knew all!

“Remove the canvas from the figure,” said the Cure sternly. Stubbornness

and resentment filled Francois’s breast. He did not stir.

“Do you oppose the command of the Church?” said the Cure, still more

severely. “Remove the canvas.”

“It is my work--my own: my idea, my stone, and the labour of my hands,”

said Francois doggedly.

The Cure turned to Lajeunesse and made a motion towards the statue.

Lajeunesse, with a burning righteous joy, snatched off the canvas. There

was one instant of confusion in the faces of all-of absolute silence.

Then the crowd gasped. The Cure’s hat came off, and every other hat

followed. The Cure made the sign of the cross upon his breast and

forehead, and every other man, woman, and child present did the same.

Then all knelt, save Francois and the Cure himself.

What they saw was a statue of Christ, a beautiful benign figure;

barefooted, with a girdle about his waist: the very truth and semblance

of a man. The type was strong and yet delicate; vigorous and yet

refined; crude and yet noble; a leader of men--the God-man, not the

man-God.

After a moment’s silence the Cure spoke. “Francois, my son,” said he,

“we have erred. ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have followed

each after his own way, but God hath laid on Him’--he looked towards the

statue--‘the iniquity of us all.’”

Francois stood still a moment gazing at the Cure, doggedly, bitterly;

then he turned and looked scornfully at the crowd, now risen to their

feet again. Among them was a girl crying as if her heart would break. It

was Jeanne Marchand. He regarded her coldly.

“You were so ready to suspect,” he said.

Then he turned once more to the Cure. “I meant it as my gift to the

Church, monsieur le Cure--to Pontiac, where I was born again. I waked up

here to what I might do in sculpture, and you--you all were so ready to

suspect! Take it, it is my last gift.”

He went to the statue, touched the hands of it lovingly, and stooped and

kissed the feet. Then, without more words, he turned and left the shed

and the house.

Pouring out into the street the people watched him cross the bridge

that led into another parish--and into another world: for from that hour

Francois Lagarre was never seen in Pontiac.

The statue that he made stands upon a little hill above the valley where

the beaters of flax come in the autumn, through which the woodsmen pass

in winter and in spring. But Francois Lagarre, under another name, works

in another land.

While the Cure lived he heard of him and of his fame now and then, and

to the day of his death he always prayed for him. He was wont to say to

the little Avocat whenever Francois’s name was mentioned:

“The spirit of a man will support him, but a wounded spirit who can

bear?”

THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE

The chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the pieces of linen, and the

pile of yarn had been ready for many months. Annette had made inventory

of them every day since the dot was complete--at first with a great deal

of pride, after a time more shyly and wistfully: Benoit did not come.

He had said he would be down with the first drive of logs in the summer,

and at the little church of St. Saviour’s they would settle everything

and get the Cure’s blessing. Almost anybody would have believed in

Benoit. He had the brightest scarf, the merriest laugh, the quickest

eyes, and the blackest head in Pontiac; and no one among the river

drivers could sing like him. That was, he said gaily, because his

earrings were gold, and not brass like those of his comrades. Thus

Benoit was a little vain, and something more; but old ladies such as the

Little Chemist’s wife said he was galant. Probably only Medallion

the auctioneer and the Cure did not lose themselves in the general

admiration; they thought he was to Annette like a farthing dip to a holy

candle.

Annette was the youngest of twelve, and one of a family of thirty-for

some of her married brothers and sisters and their children lived in her

father’s long white house’ by the river. When Benoit failed to come in

the spring, they showed their pity for her by abusing him; and when

she pleaded for him they said things which had an edge. They ended by

offering to marry her to Farette, the old miller, to whom they owed

money for flour. They brought Farette to the house at last, and she was

patient while he ogled her, and smoked his strong tabac, and tried to

sing. She was kind to him, and said nothing until, one day, urged by her

brother Solime, he mumbled the childish chanson Benoit sang the day he

left, as he passed their house going up the river:

“High in a nest of the tam’rac tree,

Swing under, so free, and swing over;

Swing under the sun and swing over the world,

My snow-bird, my gay little lover

My gay little lover, don, don!... don, don!

“When the winter is done I will come back home,

To the nest swinging under and over,

Swinging under and over and waiting for me,

Your rover, my snow-bird, your rover--

Your lover and rover, don, don!... don, don!”

It was all very well in the mouth of the sprightly, sentimental Benoit;

it was hateful foolishness in Farette. Annette now came to her feet

suddenly, her pale face showing defiance, and her big brown eyes

flicking anger. She walked up to the miller and said: “You are old and

ugly and a fool. But I do not hate you; I hate Solime, my brother, for

bringing you here. There is the bill for the flour? Well, I will pay it

myself--and you can go as soon as you like.”

Then she put on her coat and capote and mittens, and went to the door.

“Where are you going, Ma’m’selle?” cried Solime, in high rage.

“I am going to M’sieu’ Medallion,” she said.

Hard profane words followed her, but she ran, and never stopped till she

came to Medallion’s house. He was not there. She found him at the

Little Chemist’s. That night a pony and cart took away from the house of

Annette’s father the chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the pieces

of linen, and the pile of yarn which had been made ready so long against

Benoit’s coming. Medallion had said he could sell them at once, and he

gave her the money that night; but this was after he had had a talk with

the Cure, to whom Annette had told all. Medallion said he had been

able to sell the things at once; but he did not tell her that they were

stored in a loft of the Little Chemist’s house, and that the Little

Chemist’s wife had wept over them and carried the case to the shrine of

the Blessed Virgin.

It did not matter that the father and brothers stormed. Annette was

firm; the dot was hers, and she would do as she wished. She carried the

money to the miller. He took it grimly and gave her a receipt, grossly

mis-spelled, and, as she was about to go, brought his fist heavily

down on his leg and said: “Mon Dieu, it is brave--it is grand--it is an

angel.” Then he chuckled: “So, so! It was true. I am old, ugly, and a

fool. Eh, well, I have my money!” Then he took to counting it over in

his hand, forgetting her, and she left him growling gleefully over it.