A JAR IN ST. ELPHÈGE
At noon, on a day late in October, 1786, the Merchant of St. Elphège sat
at the pine dinner-table in his kitchen, opposite his wife, resting his
wooden soup spoon on its butt on the table. The windows, both front and
rear, were wide open, for one of those rare fragrant golden days of late
autumn still permitted it. He was listening, with some of the stolid
Indian manner, to his wife reading Germain's letter. He vouchsafed only
one remark, and that a mercantile one: "Seven weeks, mon Dieu! the
quickest mail I ever got from France!" From time to time, while he
listened, his eyes glanced out with contentment upon the possessions
with which he was surrounded--upon the rich-coloured stubble of his
clearings stretching as far as eye could see down the Assumption, with
their flocks, herds, and brush fences; upon the hamlet to which his
enterprise had given birth, and where he could see, in one cottage, his
_sabotiers_ bent over their benches adding to their piles of wooden
shoes; in others, women at the spinning wheel or loom, making the cloths
of which he had improved the pattern, or weaving the fine and beautiful
arrow-sashes, those _ceintures fléchées_ of which the art is now lost,
yet still known as snowshoers' rareties by the name of "L'Assomption
sashes"; his makers of carved elm-bottom chairs and beef mocassins; and,
within his courtyard, the large and well stocked granaries, fur-attics
and stores for merchandise contained in his four great buildings. His
wife was dressed in cloth much more after the fashion of the world than
the prunella waist, the skirt shot in colors and the kerchief on the
head, which formed the Norman costume of the women seen through the
cottage doors. Her silk stockings and buckled slippers marked a desire
to be the gentlewoman. Her dark eyes struck one as clever. Her first
husband had been the butler of the Marquis de Beauharnois when that
nobleman was Governor of Canada, and she had never ceased to look back
upon the recollections of high life stored away in those days in her
experience.
"There!" she exclaimed, as she flourished the letter at the end of
Germain's account of the reception--"Presented to the Court! Lecour,
when you said I was my boy's ruin, when you grumbled at his abandoning
the apothecary's shop to go to the Seminary and learn fine manners, did
I not tell you my son was baked of Sèvres and not of clay? At the Court
of France! and presented to his Most Christian Majesty! Among Princes,
Counts, Duchesses and Cardinals! What do you say to _that_, Lecour?"
Her husband's eyes twinkled: "That for the moment you are General
Montcalm, victorious; though I remind you that General Montcalm
afterwards had his Quebec."
"Quebec or no, my son is at the Court of France."
"I do not dispute that."
He began assiduously making away with his smoking pea-soup.
"Let us proceed with the letter," said she, for she had indeed shown her
generalship in stopping where she did.
"Ah," she went on, pretending to scan the next words for the first time,
"Germain needs three thousand livres."
"What!"
"Only three thousand."
"But he kept three thousand out of the beaver-skins; the last draft was
for nine hundred; whither is this leading? Have we not to live and carry
on the business? and you grow more fanciful every day, as if we were
seigneurs and not peasants."
"Certainly we are not peasants--_citizens_, if you please: anybody will
tell you that a merchant is not a peasant. There are citizens who are
_noble_, Lecour. Why should _we_ not make ourselves seigneurs? Who is it
but the merchants who are buying up the seigniories and living in the
manor-houses to-day? That is my plan."
"Three or four jackasses. Let them be jackasses. I remain François
Xavier Lecour, the peasant."
"Well, François Xavier Lecour, the peasant, _my_ son, the noble, must
have these livres."
Her black eyes flashed. "Will you have the poor boy disgraced in the act
of doing you credit? Look at me, unnatural father, and reflect that your
child is to experience from you his earliest wrong."
Lecour quailed. His powers of spoken argument were not great. He said
nothing, but rose, threw off his coat suddenly, and sat down again.
"Yes," she exclaimed, angry tears rolling down her cheeks. "Your wife
will sell her wardrobe and her dowry--little enough it was--for my son
shall not want while he has a mother, and that mother owns a stitch."
It was when it came to meeting clap-trap sentiment that trader's
inferior grain showed, and he faltered.
"I will go as far as a thousand. It is all it is worth."
By that word he exposed the small side of an otherwise worthy nature.
She sprang to the attack.
"_Diable!_ am I linked to a skinflint?"
"A skinflint, forsooth, at a thousand livres!"
"Yes," she cried in a fresh flood of tears. "A wretch, a miser. You are
unworthy, sir, to be linked to a family from whom Germain takes his
gentlemanly qualities. Had he nothing but you in him, he would be a
grovelling clod-hopper to-day instead of a favourite of kings."
Lecour laid down his wooden spoon in his pea-soup-bowl. He
phlegmatically took his clasp knife from its pouch, hung round his neck
by a string, struck his blade into the piece of cold pork upon the table
and cut off a large corner, in defiant silence. But his heart was heavy.
It was no pleasure to wrangle with so able a wife. He had no wish to
quarrel. Only, he knew the value of a livre. Germain was really becoming
a shocking expense. He felt that his wife would in the end persuade him
against his better judgment. In truth he liked to hear of his son's
successes, but it went against his prudence. There was to him something
out of joint in the son of a man of his condition attempting to figure
among the long-lined contemptuous elegants who had commanded him in the
army during his youth. The gulf, he felt, was not passable with security
nor credit.
Just as he was hacking off the piece of pork, a high-spirited black pony
dashed into the courtyard, attached to a calash driven by a very stout,
merry-eyed priest, who pulled up at the doorstep.
Lecour and Madame at once rose and hurried out to welcome him. At the
same time an Indian dwarf in Lecour's service moved up silently and took
the reins out of the Curé's hands. The latter came joyously in and sat
down.
"Oho," he cried, surveying the preparations on the table. "My good
Madame Lecour, I was right when I said an hour ago I knew where to stop
at noon in my parish of Répentigny."
"Father, I have something extra for you this time," she replied
laughing, and crossing to her cupboard, exhibited triumphantly a fine
cold roast duck.
"You shall have absolution without confession," he cried. "Let me
prepare for that with some of the magnificent pea-soup à la Lecour. Oh,
day of days!"
She went to the crane at the fireplace, uncovered the hanging pot, and
ladled out a deep bowl of steaming soup. At the same time she told him
excitedly of Germain's presentation at Court.
"What! what! these are fine proceedings. The Lecours are always going
up, up, up. Our Germain's distinction is a glory for the whole parish.
Lecour here ought to be proud of it."
Flattery from his Curé weighed more with Lecour _père_ than bushels of
argument. The wife saw her accidental advantage and took it.
"He does not like to pay for it," she remarked demurely.
"What! what! my rich friend Lecour. The owner of seventeen good farms,
of three great warehouses, of four hundred cattle, of untold
merchandise, and a credit of 500,000 livres in London, the best payer of
tithes in the country, the father of the most brilliant son in the
province, the husband of the finest wife, a woman fit to adorn the
castle of the governor," cried the ecclesiastic, finishing his soup and
attacking the duck.
Lecour thawed fast. But he reserved a doubt for the consideration of his
confessor.
"Is it honest to pass for a noble when one is not one?"
"I do not see that he has done so. It is not his fault, in the manner
that he has explained it. Let the young man enjoy himself a little and
see a little of life. We are only young once, and you laics must not be
too severely impeccable, otherwise what would become of us granters of
absolution. Furthermore, we must not be too old-fashioned. Our people
here are getting out of the strictness of the old social distinctions.
It may be so too in France. On my advice, dear Lecour, accept every
honour to your family your son may bring, and pay for it in the station
fitted to your great means, that I may be proud of all the Lecour family
when I go to Quebec and boast about my parish at the dinner-table of the
Bishop. Come," exclaimed he, at length, pushing aside his plate with the
ruins of the duck, "bring out that game of draughts, and let us see if
the honours of Germain have not put new skill into the play of a proud
father."
Madame brought out the checkerboard. She brought besides for the Curé a
little glass of imported _eau de vie_, and her husband, taking out his
bladder tobacco pouch, commenced to fill his pipe, and that of his
Reverence, and to smoke himself into a condition of bliss.