However far Jean Jacques went, however long the day since leaving the
Manor Cartier, he could not escape the signals from his past. He heard
more than once the bells of memory ringing at the touch of the invisible
hand of Destiny which accepts no philosophy save its own. At Montreal,
for one hallowed instant, he had regained his lost Carmen, but he had
turned from her grave--the only mourners being himself, Mme. Glozel and
Mme. Popincourt, together with a barber who had coiffed her wonderful
hair once a week--with a strange burning at his heart. That iceberg
which most mourners carry in their breasts was not his, as he walked
down the mountainside from Carmen’s grave. Behind him trotted Mme.
Glozel and Mme. Popincourt, like little magpies, attendants on
this eagle of sorrow whose life-love had been laid to rest, her
heart-troubles over. Passion or ennui would no more vex her.
She had had a soul, had Carmen Dolores, though she had never known it
till her days closed in on her, and from the dusk she looked out of the
casements of life to such a glowing as Jean Jacques had seen when his
burning mill beatified the evening sky. She had known passion and vivid
life in the days when she went hand-in-hand with Carvillho Gonzales
through the gardens of Granada; she had known the smothering
home-sickness which does not alone mean being sick for a distant home,
but a sickness of the home that is; and she had known what George Masson
gave her for one thrilling hour, and then--then the man who left her in
her death-year, taking not only the last thread of hope which held her
to life. This vulture had taken also little things dear to her daily
life, such as the ring Carvillho Gonzales had given her long ago in
Cadiz, also another ring, a gift of Jean Jacques, and things less
valuable to her, such as money, for which she knew surely she would have
no long use.
As she lay waiting for the day when she must go from the garish scene,
she unconsciously took stock of life in her own way. There intruded on
her sight the stages of the theatres where she had played and danced,
and she heard again the music of the paloma and those other Spanish airs
which had made the world dance under her girl’s feet long ago. At
first she kept seeing the faces of thousands looking up at her from the
stalls, down at her from the gallery, over at her from the boxes; and
the hot breath of that excitement smote her face with a drunken odour
that sent her mad. Then, alas! somehow, as disease took hold of her,
there were the colder lights, the colder breath from the few who
applauded so little. And always the man who had left her in her day of
direst need; who had had the last warm fires of her life, the last brief
outrush of her soul, eager as it was for a joy which would prove she
had not lost all when she fled from the Manor Cartier--a joy which would
make her forget!
What she really did feel in this last adventure of passion only made her
remember the more when she was alone now, her life at the Manor
Cartier. She was wont to wake up suddenly in the morning--the very early
morning--with the imagined sound of the gold Cock of Beaugard crowing in
her ears. Memory, memory, memory--yet never a word, and never a hearsay
of what had happened at the Manor Cartier since she had left it! Then
there came a time when she longed intensely to see Jean Jacques before
she died, though she could not bring herself to send word to him. She
dreaded what the answer might be--not Jean Jacques’ answer, but the
answer of Life. Jean Jacques and her child, her Zoe--more his than hers
in years gone by--one or both might be dead! She dared not write, but
she cherished a desire long denied. Then one day she saw everything in
her life more clearly than she had ever done. She found an old book of
French verse, once belonging to Mme. Popincourt’s husband, who had been
a professor. Some lines therein opened up a chamber of her being never
before unlocked. At first only the feeling of the thing came, then
slowly the spiritual meaning possessed her. She learnt it by heart and
let it sing to her as she lay half-sleeping and half-waking, half-living
and half-dying:
“There is a World; men compass it through tears,
Dare doom for joy of it; it called me o’er the foam;
I found it down the track of sundering years,
Beyond the long island where the sea steals home.
“A land that triumphs over shame and pain,
Penitence and passion and the parting breath,
Over the former and the latter rain,
The birth-morn fire and the frost of death.
“From its safe shores the white boats ride away,
Salving the wreckage of the portless ships
The light desires of the amorous day,
The wayward, wanton wastage of the lips.
“Star-mist and music and the pensive moon
These when I harboured at that perfumed shore;
And then, how soon! the radiance of noon,
And faces of dear children at the door.
“Land of the Greater Love--men call it this;
No light-o’-love sets here an ambuscade;
No tender torture of the secret kiss
Makes sick the spirit and the soul afraid.
“Bright bowers and the anthems of the free,
The lovers absolute--ah, hear the call!
Beyond the long island and the sheltering sea,
That World I found which holds my world in thrall.
“There is a World; men compass it through tears,
Dare doom for joy of it; it called me o’er the foam;
I found it down the track of sundering years,
Beyond the long island where the sea steals home.”
At last the inner thought of it got into her heart, and then it was in
reply to Mme. Glozel, who asked her where her home was, she said: “In
Heaven, but I did not know it!” And thus it was, too, that at the
very last, when Jean Jacques followed the singing bird into her
death-chamber, she cried out, “Ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques!”
And because Jean Jacques knew that, at the last, she had been his, soul
and body, he went down from the mountain-side, the two black magpies
fluttering mournfully and yet hopefully behind him, with more warmth at
his heart than he had known for years. It never occurred to him that the
two elderly magpies would jointly or severally have given the rest of
their lives and their scant fortunes to have him with them either as
husband, or as one who honourably hires a home at so much a day.
Though Jean Jacques did not know this last fact, when he fared forth
again he left behind his canary with Mme. Glozel; also all Carmen’s
clothes, except the dress she died in, he gave to Mme. Popincourt, on
condition that she did not wear them till he had gone. The dress in
which Carmen died he wrapped up carefully, with her few jewels and her
wedding-ring, and gave the parcel to Mme. Glozel to care for till he
should send for it or come again.
“The bird--take him on my birthday to sing at her grave,” he said to
Mme. Glozel just before he went West. “It is in summer, my birthday, and
you shall hear how he will sing there,” he added in a low voice at the
very door. Then he took out a ten-dollar bill, and would have given it
to her to do this thing for him; but she would have none of his money.
She only wiped her eyes and deplored his going, and said that if ever
he wanted a home, and she was alive, he would know where to find it.
It sounded and looked sentimental, yet Jean Jacques was never less
sentimental in a very sentimental life. This particular morning he was
very quiet and grave, and not in the least agitated; he spoke like one
from a friendly, sun-bright distance to Mme. Glozel, and also to Mme.
Popincourt as he passed her at the door of her house.
Jean Jacques had no elation as he took the Western trail; there was not
much hope in his voice; but there was purpose and there was a little
stream of peace flowing through his being--and also, mark, a stream of
anger tumbling over rough places. He had read two letters addressed to
Carmen by the man--Hugo Stolphe--who had left her to her fate; and there
was a grim devouring thing in him which would break loose, if ever the
man crossed his path. He would not go hunting him, but if he passed
him or met him on the way--! Still he would go hunting--to find his
Carmencita, his little Carmen, his Zoe whom he had unwittingly, God
knew! driven forth into the far world of the millions of acres--a wide,
wide hunting-ground in good sooth.
So he left his beloved province where he no longer had a home, and
though no letters came to him from St. Saviour’s, from Vilray or the
Manor Cartier, yet he heard the bells of memory when the Hand Invisible
arrested his footsteps. One day these bells rang so loud that he would
have heard them were he sunk in the world’s deepest well of shame; but,
as it was, he now marched on hills far higher than the passes through
the mountains which his patchwork philosophy had ever provided.
It was in the town of Shilah on the Watloon River that the bells boomed
out--not because he had encountered one he had ever known far down by
the Beau Cheval, or in his glorious province, not because he had
found his Zoe, but because a man, the man--not George Masson, but the
other--met him in the way.
Shilah was a place to which, almost unconsciously, he had deviated his
course, because once Virginie Poucette had read him a letter from there.
That was in the office of the little Clerk of the Court at Vilray. The
letter was from Virginie’s sister at Shilah, and told him that Zoe and
her husband had gone away into farther fields of homelessness. Thus it
was that Shilah ever seemed to him, as he worked West, a goal in his
quest--not the last goal perhaps, but a goal.
He had been far past it by another route, up, up and out into the more
scattered settlements, and now at last he had come to it again, having
completed a kind of circle. As he entered it, the past crowded on to him
with a hundred pictures. Shilah--it was where Virginie Poucette’s sister
lived; and Virginie had been a part of the great revelation of his life
at St. Saviour’s.
As he was walking by the riverside at Shilah, a woman spoke to him,
touching his arm as she did so. He was in a deep dream as she spoke,
but there certainly was a look in her face that reminded him of someone
belonging to the old life. For an instant he could not remember. For a
moment he did not even realize that he was at Shilah. His meditation
had almost been a trance, and it took him time to adjust himself to
the knowledge of the conscious mind. His subconsciousness was very
powerfully alive in these days. There was not the same ceaselessly
active eye, nor the vibration of the impatient body which belonged to
the money-master and miller of the Manor Cartier. Yet the eye had more
depth and force, and the body was more powerful and vigorous than it had
ever been. The long tramping, the everlasting trail on false scents, the
mental battling with troubles past and present, had given a fortitude
and vigour to the body beyond what it had ever known. In spite of
his homelessness and pilgrim equipment he looked as though he had a
home--far off. The eyes did not smile; but the lips showed the goodness
of his heart--and its hardness too. Hardness had never been there in
the old days. It was, however, the hardness of resentment, and not
of cruelty. It was not his wife’s or his daughter’s flight that he
resented, nor yet the loss of all he had, nor the injury done him by
Sebastian Dolores. No, his resentment was against one he had never seen,
but was now soon to see. As his mind came back from the far places where
it had been, and his eyes returned to the concrete world, he saw what
the woman recalled to him. It was--yes, it was Virginie Poucette--the
kind and beautiful Virginie--for her goodness had made him remember
her as beautiful, though indeed she was but comely, like this woman who
stayed him as he walked by the river.
“You are M’sieu’ Jean Jacques Barbille?” she said questioningly.
“How did you know?” he asked.... “Is Virginie Poucette here?”
“Ah, you knew me from her?” she asked.
“There was something about her--and you have it also--and the look in
the eyes, and then the lips!” he replied.
Certainly they were quite wonderful, luxurious lips, and so shapely
too--like those of Virginie.
“But how did you know I was Jean Jacques Barbille?” he repeated.
“Well, then it is quite easy,” she replied with a laugh almost like a
giggle, for she was quite as simple and primitive as her sister. “There
is a photographer at Vilray, and Virginie got one of your pictures
there, and sent, it to me. ‘He may come your way,’ said Virginie to me,
‘and if he does, do not forget that he is my friend.’”
“That she is my friend,” corrected Jean Jacques. “And what a
friend--merci, what a friend!” Suddenly he caught the woman’s arm. “You
once wrote to your sister about my Zoe, my daughter, that married and
ran away--”
“That ran away and got married,” she interrupted.
“Is there any more news--tell me, do you know-?”
But Virginie’s sister shook her head. “Only once since I wrote Virginie
have I heard, and then the two poor children--but how helpless they
were, clinging to each other so! Well, then, once I heard from Faragay,
but that was much more than a year ago. Nothing since, and they were
going on--on to Fort Providence to spend the winter--for his health--his
lungs.”
“What to do--on what to live?” moaned Jean Jacques.
“His grandmother sent him a thousand dollars, so your Madame Zoe wrote
me.”
Jean Jacques raised a hand with a gesture of emotion. “Ah, the blessed
woman! May there be no purgatory for her, but Heaven at once and
always!”
“Come home with me--where are your things?” she asked.
“I have only a knapsack,” he replied. “It is not far from here. But I
cannot stay with you. I have no claim. No, I will not, for--”
“As to that, we keep a tavern,” she returned. “You can come the same
as the rest of the world. The company is mixed, but there it is. You
needn’t eat off the same plate, as they say in Quebec.”
Quebec! He looked at her with the face of one who saw a vision. How like
Virginie Poucette--the brave, generous Virginie--how like she was!
In silence now he went with her, and seeing his mood she did not talk to
him. People stared as they walked along, for his dress was curious and
his head was bare, and his hair like the coat of a young lion. Besides,
this woman was, in her way, as brave and as generous as Virginie
Poucette. In the very doorway of the tavern by the river a man jostled
them. He did not apologize. He only leered. It made his foreign-looking,
coarsely handsome face detestable.
“Pig!” exclaimed Virginie Poucette’s sister. “That’s a man--well, look
out! There’s trouble brewing for him. If he only knew! If suspicion
comes out right and it’s proved--well, there, he’ll jostle the door-jamb
of a jail.”
Jean Jacques stared after the man, and somehow every nerve in his
body became angry. He had all at once a sense of hatred. He shook the
shoulder against which the man had collided. He remembered the leer on
the insolent, handsome face.
“I’d like to see him thrown into the river,” said Virginie Poucette’s
sister. “We have a nice girl here--come from Ireland--as good as can be.
Well, last night--but there, she oughtn’t to have let him speak to her.
‘A kiss is nothing,’ he said. Well, if he kissed me I would kill him--if
I didn’t vomit myself to death first. He’s a mongrel--a South American
mongrel with nigger blood.”
Jean Jacques kept looking after the man. “Why don’t you turn him out?”
he asked sharply.
“He’s going away to-morrow anyhow,” she replied. “Besides, the girl,
she’s so ashamed--and she doesn’t want anyone to know. ‘Who’d want to
kiss me after him’ she said, and so he stays till to-morrow. He’s not in
the tavern itself, but in the little annex next door-there, where he’s
going now. He’s only had his meals here, though the annex belongs to us
as well. He’s alone there on his dung-hill.”
She brought Jean Jacques into a room that overlooked the river--which,
indeed, hung on its very brink. From the steps at its river-door, a
little ferry-boat took people to the other side of the Watloon, and very
near--just a few hand-breadths away--was the annex where was the man who
had jostled Jean Jacques.