THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
"Prôneurs de l'ancien régime, dîtes-moi ce que vous faites de ces belles
et riches natures de femmes, qui sortent du sang genereux du peuple?"
--ETIENNE PARENT.
During the excitement and bustle, Mr. Chrysler also sometimes fell into
the modest society of Josephte. The girl seemed sad at these times, and
to be losing the serene peace which at first seemed her characteristic.
He remarked this to Madame Bois-Hébert one day as he met her sitting in
the shades of the pine-walk reading a devotional work.
Madame was a figure still able to command as well as to attract respect.
Dignity and ability had not yet departed from her face and bearing, and
quietude was the only effect of age upon her, beyond falling cheeks and
increasing absorption in exercises of religion.
"Does it not appear to you that your demoiselle is sad?" he asked.
"It is true, monsieur; her mind is troubled at present."
"The cause is some cavalier."
"You judge correctly. Benoit does not wish her to marry as she desires.
And though he wishes her to unite herself to a brute compared with her
cavalier, yet the latter is himself an individual of no consequence, and
she has been well advised to relinquish him."
"Who is it advises that?"
"Her friends, who see in her a more lovely destiny. The dear child will
make perhaps a Saint. You do not know the expiations and indulgences she
has earned these several years by prayers and devotions, her pure
nature, her admirable conduct. She is not for the world, but for God."
"What did Josepthe herself think?"
That which Madame had said of her nature was correct enough. She was a
delight to the sisters in their sad, austere lives. "She is like an
angel, and has the movements of one," they said. Very unlike to, for
instance, the daughters Jalbert, those bold and idle girls, whose steady
occupation was tom-boying scandalously with chance young men, and
jeering impudent jeers at everybody.
Her haunts were in removed and shady nooks, such as the little dell
behind the log cabin of the Le Bruns. There, one hot afternoon he found
her sitting under the shade of the windmill, dressed as usual in neat
black, and as usual lately, pale. The little ones ran, sat and played
around her; Henri, Rudolphe and Elisâ in the pride of their enterprise
tugging the long beam by which horse or man in the preceding century had
turned the conical cap of the mill; their efforts cracking and shaking
the crazy roof, but availing nothing except to disturb a crow or two
near by, among the white birches through whose clusters gleamed the
River in the sun.
What brought Josephte to the Le Brun dell?
_Et quoi!_ She was weeping.
Those little children saw not her silent tears. Chrysler beheld
them--crystalline drops on pale, soft cheek, emblems of pure heart and
secret sorrow; but she checked them when he drew near and sat up
composed.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "What is it troubles thee so profoundly? Tell
me; I am an old man and thy friend."
"Monsieur, Monsieur, I ask your pardon,"--she broke again into tears.
Fortunately, all the children were running off among the trees.--"My sin
is great:"
"And what is the offence, my child?"
Josephte was silent, and the blood rushed over her face.
"I mean thee no ill, Mlle. Josephte. Perhaps I can assist or advise
thee."
"They have promised me to the good God: alas! and my heart thinks of a
mortal! I never could be like the others.--I cannot forget," and she
broke completely down, sobbing again and again. In a little while he
spoke, hoping to soothe her.
"This may be no more than natural, my dear."
"The natural heart, monsieur, is full of sin; and that is ten times
worse for a woman. O if I could love God alone!" and again she sobbed
convulsively.
Trained as the highest type of Catholic mind, her imagination habitually
pictured two worlds--the one of exquisite spiritual light and purity,
and spotless with the presence of saints, of the Virgin; of God the
Father: the other the world of mankind,--the "world," shadowed with
wickedness and mourning, and whose pleasure is itself a sin. She yearned
towards the first; she sank back with acute sensitiveness from the
second. For her, to enter a church was to be overpowered with the
communion of spirits; to think a single thought leading away from God
was to commit a crime. To know such a girl is to respect for ever the
nun's orders in which natures like hers take refuge.
"Josephte, ma'amselle," said Chrysler very quietly and pleadingly, "do
you not love François?"
The blood swept over her forehead again, and changed it once more from
white to red. The tears stopped in her eyes and she regarded him for a
moment with an intense look.
"François loves you," he proceeded.
He went on: "Where is the difficulty? Is it not very cruel to deny
François your love? Who made you promise that?"
"O sir, they willed that I should marry another."
"It is only your father who wished you to marry Cuiller."
"Madame la Seigneuresse wished me to enter the convent." Again she burst
into bitter tears. Rocking to and fro she continued with breaking heart,
"I promised it to God himself."
Chrysler had no wish to meddle with the belief of his new friends. Here,
however, it was a matter of humanity and common sense. He could not let
the young girl's life be ruined. He said: "My child, _le bon Dieu_ never
asks the unreasonable. Is not God kinder than you; and will he demand of
you and François what you would not of another?"
"Monsieur, is it possible that that is true?" sobbed she, weeping freer.
"Does not your heart say so?" said he.
"I know not. It must be so. You speak like a priest."
"Think," he said, "and pray to Him about it, and hope a little for
François. He loves you. It would be so cruel to him to lose you."
Henri's voice broke joyously out of the shrubbery:--
"Good at all times
Is sweet bread,
But specially when
With sugar spread."
Chrysler moved away, and passing through the trees stood on the bank,
looking down on the beach and the sunny surface of the River. He had
helped to right one little matter anyway, in Dormillière.
A guttural call in a low voice startled him,--a subdued longdrawn
"Hoioch!--hoioch!--hoioch!" followed by a few words of instructions
rapidly uttered in what seemed a kind of patois--and on turning he saw
below, along the shore at the left, the little figure of the Bonhomme
rapidly pulling in one end of a net through the water, while the other
end was managed by a younger fisherman attired as rudely and queerly. It
needed a close glance to see that the second man was François, assisting
his father. Together they suggested that strange caste--the fishers of
the great river--a caste living in the midst of a civilization, yet as
little of it as the gipsies--families handing down apart among
themselves from generation to generation manners, customs, haunts,
unique secrets of localities, and sometimes apparently a marvellous
skill. These are the true geographers and unboasting Nimrods. You who
have ever seen the strange sight of the spearing under the flame of
immense torches in the rapids of the Buisson, where no straining of your
own eyes could ever discern the trace of a fish; and you with whom it
was an article of faith that certain death waited in every channel,
swirl and white horse of the thundering Lachine Rapids, until one day
some one speculated how the market boats of the lake above could turn up
every morning safe and regular at the Bonsecours Market,--will be ready
to understand.
However, it was not long before the net was drawn up and Chrysler stood
beside them, the greetings were over and all three were duly seated,
each on his chosen boulder under the green poplar saplings, talking:
"François," said the Bonhomme to his son, "Monsieur does not think it
probable that Cuiller will marry Josephte."
The young man's unconquerable cheerfulness faded for a moment. He was
silent.
"Why is it Mr. Benoit will not accept you?"--Chrysler asked, very
interested.
"Solely because I lost my money, air. I was coming to receive his
blessing on our wishes."
"How was the money lost? That was a singular circumstance."
"I had seven hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket. It was on the
steamboat down from Montreal, at night time, in the lower cabin. I got a
corner with Cuiller between two barrels and a bale of blankets and went
to sleep from time to time. The lamps did not burn well. There was a
crowd of people. A pedlar was next me whose features I have forgotten.
Cuiller says it was that pedlar who took my money. I will not blame a
man without knowing something about him; but the truth is that when I
got up and searched my pockets, my purse, my money, my pleasure, my
life's profit,--all were lost, and I had nothing for it but to sit down
and cry tears, after enquiring of all the people."
"In what pieces was your money?"
"Six bills of a hundred, ten tens and ten fives, sir!"
"Don't you recollect anything about the pedlar?"
"I was certain I recollected him getting off, but Cuiller saw him
later."
"If Cuiller knew he took your purse why didn't he wake you or stop him?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Cuiller is as much to blame as the pedlar."
"You think so?" said the simple Bonhomme.