_PIERRE’S TEMPTATION._
THE grounds attached to Jacques Le Ber’s house were laid out partly as
a flower and partly as a kitchen garden. They were divided by broad
gravelled walks, bordered with fragrant herbs and deliciously sweet
old-fashioned plants. Orange and oleander trees in green boxes stood
here and there. Along the side of the wall grew pear trees, currant
bushes and grape vines. Sweetness of fragrance and brilliancy of color
were everywhere.
Over the garden one morning had hung a dense fog, which, lifting,
revealed radiant glimpses of blue sky, distant mountain and shining
river. The trees, silvered by the light, seemed to rush gladly out of
the mist, and the still fleeing remnants of vapor gave grace and
movement to every object over which their trembling shadows passed. The
air was sweet with growth and blossom, glad with song of birds, quiver
of leaves, and flicker of sunshine and shadow. Pierre Le Ber, strolling
leisurely down a shady path with his breviary in his hands, his lips
moving in silent prayer, resolutely strove to steel his heart against
all the harmonies of nature. His tall, slight figure, emaciated by
ceaseless vigils and penances, showed the high and narrow forehead,
thin-lipped sensitive mouth, and deep dreamy eyes of the enthusiast. As
he walked the sound of a tender lullaby broke upon his meditations.
Instead of soothing him, however, the gentle strains seemed to produce a
strangely disturbing effect upon the ascetic’s mind. His brow showed
deep corrugations, his lips were compressed in quick irritation. With
the warm sunshine and the fresh morning air, laden with the scent of
opening blossoms, there seemed to glide into his senses, to thrill
through every vein and nerve, an instinct of hope and consciousness of
pleasure, a sensation of peace and easy indulgence alluring as a child’s
dream. He had been troubled in mind; now the very air he breathed seemed
to offer consolation. Vainly he tried to forget that he was still young,
and that the world was beautiful. He was impatient of his own thoughts,
and filled with indignant astonishment that after ceaseless efforts to
suppress the claims of the body such trifles should have power to occupy
his mind.
As these thoughts crowded upon poor Pierre he made a violent effort to
fling them from him as something intrusive. He would go away, he would
resist this entrancing influence. Turning hastily he found himself close
to Diane de Monesthrol. She was carrying, easily and lightly, little
Léon, the crippled orphan whose parents had both perished at the
massacre of Le Chesnaye, and who had himself been grievously maimed by
blows from an Indian tomahawk. His spine was injured, and he had but now
been suffering from one of those paroxysms of pain which occasionally
tortured him. The violence of the attack over, the child, soothed and
exhausted, was falling asleep; the heavy blue-veined lids were slowly
closing, while the girl bent over him with wistful tenderness. She laid
the little one down beneath the shade of a wide-spreading tree,
supported by cushions, and then, as she turned, encountered Pierre’s
earnest gaze. Le Ber’s eldest son was seized with a sincere conviction
that he would be better away from his father’s beautiful ward, yet he
stood silent, rooted to the spot.
Life just then to Diane was a vague, sweet chaos. Rejoicing in the
strength of her ardent youth, it was not easy to accept existence calmly
and tranquilly. Every day the sunshine seemed brighter, the sky above
her more blue. It was always to her an amusement to tantalize and
provoke Pierre, who was curiously sensitive to every girlish taunt.
Professing as he did to despise feminine charms, it seemed a frolic to
the girl to show him that he was not so invulnerable as he chose to
fancy himself. Diane was aware that Anne Barroy was peering anxiously
from a side window, and Anne’s sharp, jealous eyes had already detected
the weakness which the young man could never have been brought to
acknowledge. It was like a child heedlessly playing with fire, for she
had formed no conception of what strong human passion might mean. Just
to tease Pierre was the impulse of the moment—a thing which she had
done a hundred times before and never bestowed a thought upon. Long
years afterwards, looking back on her life, it seemed to Diane that on
that fragrant summer day, in Le Ber’s sunny garden, she had taken leave
forever of her free and careless youth.
“It is thus I would always see you, Diane,” Pierre exclaimed eagerly,
“engaged in works of charity.”
“I take charge of the little Léon simply because Nanon is occupied with
Madame la Marquise,” Mademoiselle de Monesthrol explained carelessly.
“You spend so much time and thought on those things which are unworthy
of you,” the young man could not forbear exhorting her, “lace and low
dresses, fontanges and strange trinkets, the immodest curls expressly
forbidden by St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as by all the Fathers and
Doctors of the Church, the pomp of sin, the favorite devices of Satan.
In their wish to please men, women make themselves the instruments and
captives of the arch fiend.”
Diane flashed a swift, bright, audacious glance at him.
“Do the ladies try to win your favor, cousin? I thought they all feared
you. You must acknowledge I have never shown any desire to please you.”
In the still sunny air, in the warmth and glow of a life which he could
not stifle, standing face to face with the loveliest eyes he had ever
seen, Pierre found himself engaged in an unusual conflict, and felt he
must utter a vehement protest against the fatal, alluring attraction.
The peculiar susceptibility to impressions which rendered him pliant to
priestly influence also gave rise to endless complications against which
he had no defence.
“Cast from you that levity destructive to the soul,” he urged.
“But it is levity that I delight in,” she replied, tapping a dainty
high-heeled shoe upon the gravelled walk. “One can be young but once.
When old age overtakes me I shall devote myself to good works. When that
time comes then shall we, perhaps, be better friends; at that season I
may perchance enjoy your sermons, cousin.”
Pierre strove hard to maintain his tone of gentle superiority and to
continue the discussion on a line of persuasive argument, but he was
nervously impatient. A tinge of uncertainty was shadowed in his manner,
a tumultuous excitement, a badgered, hopeless, still struggling shame.
It was not often that he had the opportunity of holding a long
conversation with the girl; he felt obliged to make the best of the
occasion.
“That is the doctrine of the devil. Canada is indeed the fold of Christ,
but the hosts of this world are beleaguering the sanctuary. Diane, is
the glory of the Church to suffer prejudice from your actions? We are in
the midst of sin. Remember that death is close at hand.”
These words jarred upon Diane’s mood. She resented Pierre’s air of
dissatisfied inspection, his assumption that his own judgment must be
fundamentally and eternally right.
“Then let me be happy while I may. All have not the vocation to be
saints and martyrs. We are young, the sun shines, life is fair and
sweet, and God is good.”
Pierre looked at her in evident anger, the wrathful disguise of tortured
love. His reason was hampered in its action. He was unable to exercise
any discriminating faculty. There was something pathetic in his
insistence, for he plainly perceived that his importunities were
unavailing. His desire for sympathy was so urgent and all occupying that
he could not thrust it aside. The proud, untamable creature, so arch, so
kind, so generous, with her whims and caprices and beauty, alive with
spirit and energy, seemed to him the embodiment of all he had renounced.
Had he only the power to mould her into an entirely different form, to
convert her into a bloodless personification of sanctity, he was
convinced that he would be saving her soul.
“Diane,”—he could not control the quivering of his voice—“Diane, the
Holy Virgin will transform into angels all those who have the happiness
to abandon the cares of this life. Will you not drink of the living and
abounding waters of grace which have flowed so benignly over this land
of New France? Misfortune is about to fall upon this household, how or
when I have no power to tell, but it is sorrow and death; when I would
pray, a dark presentiment weighs my spirit to the earth—there is no
escape from it. Diane,” he cried with yearning entreaty, “though you
have cast in your lot with the world, the robe of God’s saints awaits
you; but that means suffering deep and terrible, the crucifixion of what
is dearest. In my dreams you are ever present, but always among the holy
ones, crowned with the exceeding glory of the martyrs worn only by those
who have reached the fairest ideal of heaven’s attainment, who have
risen above all earthly joys and affections.”
Diane was confused and awed, and withal much annoyed, at this address.
It did not touch her as it might have done a woman of wider experience.
She had a just faith in her own instincts, and was possessed of all the
happy confidence of youth. What had she to do with suffering and misery?
she, Diane de Monesthrol, surrounded by affection, to whom the plant of
life was daily blossoming out into fuller perfection, the happiest girl
in all the colony of New France.
“Oh! listen then, cousin, to the tumult in the street.” Diane was
delighted at the diversion. “Is it the voyageurs? nay, but it is the
gentlemen.”
_“Vive Henri Quatre,_
_Vive le Roi Vaillant,_
_Ce diable á quatre_
_A le triple talent_
_De boire and de battre_
_Et d’être un vert galant.”_
The jovial strains of the chorus broke on the stillness of the garden
like a disturbing influence.
“And the music, cousin, how entrancingly gay! When I hear the music I
must dance; the desire is stronger than I.”
Inspired by an impulse of wild mirth and the love of frolic, enlivened
by the knowledge that Anne Barroy still kept an inquisitive watch at her
shaded window, Diane began to circle and pirouette around the astonished
young man. Gradually she surrendered herself to the influence of the
music, allowing its rhythm to govern her movements. The lithe young form
fell into flexible attitudes; it was a delight to mark the exquisite
grace of her gestures, the suppleness of her limbs, the action of her
swiftly twinkling feet. This was no wild whirl of abandonment; the
smooth, swaying movement was stately and dignified; but to Pierre it
meant the essence of sorcery. Was ever fairer creature formed? Her
attractions were vivid, imperious, irresistible.
Diane herself was full of intense sensation and susceptibility to every
new impression. The color deepened in her soft cheeks. She was no longer
a heedless, guileless child; the soul of a woman, ardent and seductive,
flamed in her sweet blue eyes. Pierre flushed with sudden mortification.
For an instant he hated the girl and hated himself. His glance, first
gently pleading, then sternly disapproving, changed swiftly to some
keener emotion. He had been tolerably calm until he reached this point,
then the blood began to course hotly through his veins; he found himself
drifting upon wild unknown currents, carried beyond the safe limits of
ecclesiastical restraint.
“Diane! Diane!” he cried, breaking in suddenly as if suffocated. All the
girlish fun and mischief faded out of her eyes, Diane de Monesthrol’s
cheeks flamed with shame and fierce resentment. What did this new light
of revelation mean? In her carelessness had she cruelly injured the son
of one who had been her protector? Who was Pierre that he should dare to
look at her with such eyes? She could have killed him as he stood. With
the keen quivering of heart and soul she gained a glimpse of some of the
deeper things of life.
“_Hola!_ Diane and—and Pierre!” As he parted the branches of the
thicket and stood revealed before the actors in this extraordinary
scene, his surprise quite as great as their own, du Chesne’s expression
of utter consternation was so extremely comic that Diane broke into
peals of ringing laughter.
This added the last touch to Pierre’s misery. A sudden panic and horror
seized him, furrowing his countenance as if with the action of years. As
his brother’s frank glance rested on him, giddy, as if buffeted by wind
and tide in the midst of heat and passion, he paused with a convulsive
shiver. He was conscious of falling from a great height to dread
discomfiture and humiliation. The girl’s beauty had kindled an emotion
which glowed in his brain, leaped like wildfire from conjecture to
conclusion, and carried all before it in an irresistible exhilaration.
This was succeeded by the inevitable reaction. A sob, suppressed yet
unrestrainable, escaped him. All three, the girl and the two young men,
moved by a common instinct, glanced apprehensively up at the window
where, from the heights of superior sanctity, the recluse might be
looking down upon the trivial worldly passions and interests of her
kindred. Pierre disappeared. Diane would have been glad to do the same,
but mentally pulling herself together she conquered the cowardly impulse
and sank panting down on the grass, shamed to the depths of her soul by
du Chesne’s look of mingled wonder and reproach.