Mr. Ferrol seemed honestly to like the old farmhouse, with its low
ceilings, thick walls, big beams and wide chimneys, and he showed
himself perfectly at home. He begged to be allowed to sit for an hour
in the kitchen, beside the great fireplace. He enjoyed this part of his
first appearance greatly. It was like nothing he had tasted since he
used, as a boy, to visit the huntsman’s home on his father’s estate, and
gossip and smoke in that Galway chimney-corner. It was only when he
had to face the too impressive adoration of Madame Lavilette that his
comfort got a twist.
He made easy headway into the affections of his hostess; for, besides
all other predilections, she had an adoring awe of the nobility. It
rather surprised her that Ferrol seemed almost unaware of his title.
He was quite without self-consciousness, although there was that little
touch of irresponsibility in him which betrayed a readiness to sell his
dignity for a small compensation. With a certain genial capacity for
universal blarney, he was at first as impressive with Sophie as he
was attentive to Christine. It was quite natural that presently Madame
Lavilette should see possibilities beyond all her past imaginations.
It would surely advance her ambitions to have him here for
Sophie’s wedding; but even as she thought that, she had twinges of
disappointment, because she had promised Farcinelle to have the wedding
as simple and bourgeois as possible.
Farcinelle did not share the social ambitions of the Lavilettes. He
liked his political popularity, and he was only concerned for that.
He had that touch of shrewdness to save him from fatuity where the
Lavilettes were concerned. He was determined to associate with the
ceremony all the primitive customs of the country. He had come of a race
of simple farmers, and he was consistent enough to attempt to live up to
the traditions of his people. He was entirely too good-natured to take
exception to Ferrol’s easy-going admiration of Sophie.
Ferrol spoke excellent French, and soon found points of pleasant contact
with Monsieur Lavilette, who, despite the fact that he had coarsened
as the years went on, had still upon him the touch of family tradition,
which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect.
With the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent
priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs
to the narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the English
exceedingly; and all Irishmen were English men to him. He resisted
Ferrol’s blarney. His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead seemed
to grow narrower, and his very cassock appeared to contract austerely on
his figure as he talked to the refugee of misfortune.
When the most pardonable of gossips, the Regimental Surgeon, asked him
on his way home what he thought of Ferrol, he shrugged his shoulders,
tightened his lips again, and said:
“A polite, designing heretic.”
The Regimental Surgeon, though a Frenchman, had once belonged to a
British battery of artillery stationed at Quebec, and there he had
acquired an admiration for the English, which betrayed itself in his
curious attempts to imitate Anglo-Saxon bluffness and blunt spontaneity.
When the Cure had gone, he flung back his shoulders, with a laugh, as he
had seen the major-general do at the officers’ mess at the citadel, and
said in English:
“Heretics are damn’ funny. I will go and call. I have also some Irish
whiskey. He will like that; and pipes--pipes, plenty of them!”
The pipe he was smoking at the moment had been given to him by the
major-general, and he polished the silver ferrule, with its honourable
inscription, every morning of his life.
On the morning of the second day after Ferrol came, he was carried off
to the Manor Casimbault to see the painful alterations which were being
made there under the direction of Madame Lavilette. Sophie, who had
a good deal of natural taste, had in the old days fought against her
mother’s incongruous ideas, and once, when the rehabilitation of the
Manor Casimbault came up, she had made a protest; but it was unavailing,
and it was her last effort. The Manor Casimbault was destined to be an
example of ancient dignity and modern bad taste. Alterations were going
on as Madame Lavilette, Ferrol and Christine entered.
For some time Ferrol watched the proceedings with a casual eye, but
presently he begged his hostess that she would leave the tall, old oak
clock where it was in the big hall, and that the new, platter-faced
office clock, intended for its substitute, be hung up in the kitchen.
He eyed the well-scraped over-mantel askance and saw, with scarcely
concealed astonishment, a fine, old, carved wooden seat carried out of
doors to make room for an American rocking-chair. He turned his head
away almost in anger when he saw that the beautiful brown wainscoting
was being painted an ultra-marine blue. His partly disguised
astonishment and dissent were not lost upon the crude but clever
Christine. A new sense was opened up in her, and she felt somehow that
the ultra-marine blue was not right, that the over-mantel had been
spoiled, that the new walnut table was too noticeable, and that the
American rocking-chair looked very common. Also she felt that the plush,
with which her mother and the dressmaker at St. Croix had decorated her
bodice, was not the thing. Presently this made her angry.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked a little maliciously, pointing to the
rocking-chair in the salon.
“I prefer standing--with you,” he answered, eyeing the chair with a sly
twinkle.
“No, that isn’t it,” she rejoined sharply. “You don’t like the chair.”
Then suddenly breaking into English--“Ah! I know, I know. You can’t fool
me. I see de leetla look in your eye; and you not like the paint,
and you’d pitch that painter, Alcide, out into the snow if it is your
house.”
“I wouldn’t, really,” he answered--he coughed a little--“Alcide is doing
his work very well. Couldn’t you give me a coat of blue paint, too?”
The piquant, intelligent, fiery peasant face interested him. It had
warmth, natural life and passion.
She flushed and stamped her foot, while he laughed heartily; and she was
about to say something dangerous, when the laugh suddenly stopped and he
began coughing. The paroxysm increased until he strained and caught
at his breast with his hand. It seemed as if his chest and throat must
burst.
She instantly changed. The flush of anger passed from her face, and
something else came into it. She caught his hand.
“Oh! what can I do, what can I do to help you?” she asked pitifully. “I
did not know you were so ill. Tell me, what can I do?”
He made a gentle, protesting motion of his free arm--he could not speak
yet--while she held and clasped his other hand.
“It’s the worst I ever had,” he said, after a moment “the very worst!”
He sat down, and again he had a fit of coughing, and the sweat started
out violently upon his forehead and cheek. When his head at last lay
back against the chair, the paroxysm over, a little spot of blood showed
and spread upon his white lips. With a pained, shuddering little gasp
she caught her handkerchief from her bosom, and, running one hand round
his shoulder, quickly and gently caught away the spot of blood, and
crumpled the handkerchief in her hand to hide it from him.
“Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow!” she said. “Oh! poor fellow!”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked at him with that look which
is not the love of a woman for a man, or of a lover for a lover, but
that latent spirit of care and motherhood which is in every woman who is
more woman than man. For there are women who are more men than women.
For himself, a new fact struck home in him. For the first time since
his illness he felt that he was doomed. That little spot of blood in
the crumpled handkerchief which had flashed past his eye was the fatal
message he had sought to elude for months past. A hopeless and ironical
misery shot through him. But he had humour too, and, with the taste
of the warm red drop in his mouth still, his tongue touched his lips
swiftly, and one hand grasping the arm of the chair, and the fingers of
the other dropping on the back of her hand lightly, he said in a quaint,
ironical tone:
“‘Dead for a ducat!’”
When he saw the look of horror in her face, his eyes lifted almost gaily
to hers, as he continued:
“A little brandy, if you can get it, mademoiselle.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll get some for you--some whiskey!” she said, with
frightened, terribly eager eyes.
“Alcide always has some. Don’t stir. Sit just where you are.” She ran
out of the room swiftly--a light-footed, warm-spirited, dramatic little
thing, set off so garishly in the bodice with the plush trimming; but
she had a big heart, and the man knew it. It was the big-heartedness
which was the touch of the man in her that made her companionable to
him.
He said to himself when she left him:
“What cursed luck!” And after a pause, he added: “Good-hearted little
body, how sorry she looked!” Then he settled back in his chair, his eyes
fixed upon her as she entered the room, eager, pale and solicitous. A
half-hour later they two were on their way to the farmhouse, the work
of despoiling going on in the Manor behind them. Ferrol walked with an
easy, half-languid step, even a gay sort of courage in his bearing. The
liquor he had drunk brought the colour to his lips. They were now hot
and red, and his eyes had a singular feverish brilliancy, in keeping
with the hectic flush on his cheek. He had dismissed the subject of
his illness almost immediately, and Christine’s adaptable nature had
instantly responded to his mood.
He asked her questions about the country-side, of their neighbours,
of the way they lived, all in an easy, unintrusive way, winning her
confidence and provoking her candour.
Two or three times, however, her face suddenly flushed with the memory
of the scene in the Manor, and her first real awakening to her social
insufficiency; for she of all the family had been least careful to see
herself as others might see her. She was vain; she was somewhat of a
barbarian; she loved nobody and nobody’s opinion as she loved herself
and her own opinion. Though, if any people really cared for her, and she
for them, they were the Regimental Surgeon and Shangois the notary.
Once, as they walked on, she turned and looked back at the Manor House,
but only for an instant. He caught the glance, and said:
“You’ll like to live there, won’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered almost sharply. “But if the Casimbaults
liked it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
There was a challenge in her voice, defiance in the little toss of her
head. He liked her spirit in spite of the vanity. Her vanity did not
concern him greatly; for, after all, what was he doing here? Merely
filling in dark days, living a sober-coloured game out. He had one
solitary hundred dollars--no more; and half of that he had borrowed, and
half of it he got from selling his shooting-traps and his hunting-watch.
He might worry along on that till the end of the game; but he had no
money to send his sister in that secluded village two hundred miles
away. She had never known how really poor he was; and she had lived in
her simple way without want and without any unusual anxiety, save for
his health. More than once he had practically starved himself to send
money to her. Perhaps also he would have starved others for the same
purpose.
“I’ll warrant the Casimbaults never enjoyed the Manor as much as I’ve
done that big kitchen in your house,” he said, “and I can’t see why you
want to leave it. Don’t you feel sorry you are going to leave the old
place? Hadn’t you got your own little spots there, and made friends with
them? I feel as if I should like to sit down by the side of your
big, warm chimney-corner, till the wind came along that blows out the
candle.”
“What do you mean by ‘blowing out the candle’?” she asked.
“Well,” he answered, “it means, shut up shop, drop the curtain, or
anything you like. It means X Y Z and the grand finale!”
“Oh!” she said, with a little start, as the thing dawned upon her.
“Don’t speak like that; you’re not going to die.”
“Give me your handkerchief,” he answered. “Give it to me, and I’ll tell
you--how soon.”
She jammed her hand down in her pocket. “No, I won’t,” she answered. “I
won’t!”
She never did, and he liked her none the less for that. Somehow, up to
this time, he had always thought that he would get well, and to-morrow
he would probably think so again; but just for the moment he felt the
real truth.
Presently she said (they spoke in French):
“Why is it you like our old kitchen so much? It isn’t nearly as nice as
the parlour.”
“Well, it’s a place to live in, anyhow; and I fancy you all feel more at
home there than anywhere else.”
“I feel just as much at home in the parlour as there,” she retorted.
“Oh, no, I think not. The room one lives in the most is the room for any
one’s money.”
She looked at him in a puzzled way. Too many sensations were being born
in her all at once; but she did recognise that he was not trying to
subtract anything from the pomp of the Lavilettes.
He belonged to a world that she did not know--and yet he was so
perfectly at home with her, so idly easygoing.
“Did you ever live in a castle?” she asked eagerly. “Yes,” he said,
with a dry little laugh. Then, after a moment, with the half-abstracted
manner of a man who is recalling a long-forgotten scene, he added: “I
lived in the North Tower, looking out on Farcalladen Moor. When I wasn’t
riding to the hounds myself I could see them crossing to or from the
meet. The River Stavely ran between; and just under the window of the
North Tower is the prettiest copse you ever saw. That was from one side
of the tower. From the other side you looked into the court-yard. As a
boy, I liked the court-yard just as well as the moor; for the pigeons,
the sparrows, the horses and the dogs were all there. As a man, I liked
the moor better. Well, I had jolly good times in Castle Stavely--once
upon a time.” “Yet, you like our kitchen!” she again urged, in a maze of
wonderment.
“I like everything here,” he answered; “everything--everything, you
understand!” he said, looking meaningly into her eyes.
“Then you’ll like the wedding--Sophie’s wedding,” she answered, in a
little confusion.
A half-hour later, he said much the same sort of thing to Sophie, with
the same look in his eyes, and only the general purpose, in either case,
of being on easy terms with them.