WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
The Young Doctor did not answer Jean Jacques at once. As he looked at
this wayworn fugitive he knew that another, and perhaps the final crisis
of his life, was come to Jean Jacques Barbille, and the human pity in him
shrank from the possible end to it all. It was an old-world figure this,
with the face of a peasant troubadour and the carriage of an aboriginal--
or an aristocrat. Indeed, the ruin, the lonely wandering which had been
Jean Jacques' portion, had given him that dignity which often comes to
those who defy destiny and the blows of angry fate. Once there had been
in his carriage something jaunty. This was merely life and energy and a
little vain confidence; now there was the look of courage which awaits
the worst the world can do. The life which, according to the world's
logic, should have made Jean Jacques a miserable figure, an ill-nourished
vagabond, had given him a physical grace never before possessed by him.
The face, however, showed the ravages which loss and sorrow had made.
It was lined and shadowed with dark reflection, yet the forehead had a
strange smoothness and serenity little in accord with the rest of the
countenance. It was like the snow-summit of a mountain below which are
the ragged escarpments of trees and rocks, making a look of storm and
warfare.
"Where is she--the child of my Zoe?" Jean Jacques repeated with an
almost angry emphasis; as though the Young Doctor were hiding her from
him.
"She is with the wife of Nolan Doyle, my partner in horse-breeding, not
very far from here. Norah Doyle was married five years, and she had no
child. This was a grief to her, even more than to Nolan, who, like
her, came of a stock that was prolific. It was Nolan who found your
daughter on the prairie--the driver dead, but she just alive when found.
To give her ease of mind, Nolan said he would make the child his own.
When he said that, she smiled and tried to speak, but it was too late,
and she was gone."
In sudden agony Jean Jacques threw up his hands. "So young and so soon
to be gone!" he exclaimed. "But a child she was and had scarce tasted
the world. The mercy of God--what is it!"
"You can't take time as the measure of life," rejoined the Young Doctor
with a compassionate gesture. "Perhaps she had her share of happiness--
as much as most of us get, maybe, in a longer course."
"Share! She was worth a hundred years of happiness!" bitterly retorted
Jean Jacques.
"Perhaps she knew her child would have it?" gently remarked the Young
Doctor.
"Ah, that--that ! . . . Do you think that possible, m'sieu'? Tell
me, do you think that was in her mind--to have loved, and been a mother,
and given her life for the child, and then the bosom of God. Answer that
to me, m'sieu'?"
There was intense, poignant inquiry in Jean Jacques' face, and a light
seemed to play over it. The Young Doctor heeded the look and all that
was in the face. It was his mission to heal, and he knew that to heal
the mind was often more necessary than to heal the body. Here he would
try to heal the mind, if only in a little.
"That might well have been in her thought," he answered. "I saw her
face. It had a wonderful look of peace, and a smile that would reconcile
anyone she loved to her going. I thought of that when I looked at her.
I recall it now. It was the smile of understanding."
He had said the only thing which could have comforted Jean Jacques
at that moment. Perhaps it was meant to be that Zoe's child should
represent to him all that he had lost--home, fortune, place, Carmen and
Zoe. Perhaps she would be home again for him and all that home should
mean--be the promise of a day when home would again include that fled
from Carmen, and himself, and Carmen's child. Maybe it was sentiment in
him, maybe it was sentimentality--and maybe it was not.
"Come, m'sieu'," Jean Jacques said impatiently: "let us go to the house
of that M'sieu' Doyle. But first, mark this: I have in the West here
some land--three hundred and twenty acres. It may yet be to me a home,
where I shall begin once more with my Zoe's child--with my Zoe of Zoe--
the home-life I lost down by the Beau Cheval. . . . Let us go at
once."
"Yes, at once," answered the Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard,
for he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques
with his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a
waif of the prairie had made home what home should be for herself and
Nolan Doyle.
"Read these letters first," he said, and he put the letters found on Zoe
in Jean Jacques' eager hands.
A half-hour later, at the horse-breeding ranch, the Young Doctor
introduced Jean Jacques to Norah Doyle, and instantly left the house.
He had no wish to hear the interview which must take place between the
two. Nolan Doyle was not at home, but in the room where they were shown
to Norah was a cradle. Norah was rocking it with one foot while,
standing by the table, she busied herself with sewing.
The introduction was of the briefest. "Monsieur Barbille wishes a word
with you, Mrs. Doyle," said the Young Doctor. "It's a matter that
doesn't need me. Monsieur has been in my care, as you know. . . .
Well, there, I hope Nolan is all right. Tell him I'd like to see him
to-morrow about the bay stallion and the roans. I've had an offer for
them. Good-bye--good-bye, Mrs. Doyle"--he was at the door--"I hope you
and Monsieur Barbille will decide what's best for the child without
difficulty."
The door opened quickly and shut again, and Jean Jacques was alone with
the woman and the child. "What's best for the child!"
That was what the Young Doctor had said. Norah stopped rocking the
cradle and stared at the closed door. What had this man before her, this
tramp habitant of whom she had heard, of course, to do with little Zoe in
the cradle--her little Zoe who had come just when she was most needed;
who had brought her man and herself close together again after an
estrangement which neither had seemed able to prevent.
"What's best for the child!" How did the child in the cradle
concern this man? Then suddenly his name almost shrieked in her brain.
Barbille--that was the name on the letter found on the body of the woman
who died and left Zoe behind--M. Jean Jacques Barbille.
Yes, that was the name. What was going to happen? Did the man intend to
try and take Zoe from her?
"What is your name--all of it?" she asked sharply. She had a very fine
set of teeth, as Jean Jacques saw mechanically; and subconsciously he
said to himself that they seemed cruel, they were so white and regular--
and cruel. The cruelty was evident to him as she bit in two the thread
for the waistcoat she was mending, and then plied her needle again. Also
the needle in her fingers might have been intended to sew up his shroud,
so angry did it appear at the moment. But her teeth had something almost
savage about them. If he had seen them when she was smiling, he would
have thought them merely beautiful and rare, atoning for her plain face
and flat breast--not so flat as it had been; for since the child had come
into her life, her figure, strangely enough, had rounded out, and lines
never before seen in her contour appeared.
He braced himself for the contest he knew was at hand, and replied to
her. "My name is Jean Jacques Barbille. I was of the Manor Cartier, in
St. Saviour's parish, Quebec. The mother of the child Zoe, there, was
born at the Manor Cartier. I was her father. I am the grandfather of
this Zoe." He motioned towards the cradle.
Then, with an impulse he could not check and did not seek to check--why
should he? was not the child his own by every right?--he went to the
cradle and looked down at the tiny face on its white pillow. There
could be no mistake about it; here was the face of his lost Zoe, with
something, too, of Carmen, and also the forehead of the Barbilles. As
though the child knew, it opened its eyes wide-big, brown eyes like those
of Carmen Dolores.
"Ah, the beautiful, beloved thing!" he exclaimed in a low-voice, ere
Norah stepped between and almost pushed him back. An outstretched arm in
front of her prevented him from stooping to kiss the child. "Stand back.
The child must not be waked," she said. "It must sleep another hour. It
has its milk at twelve o'clock. Stand aside. I won't have my child
disturbed."
"Have my child disturbed"--that was what she had said, and Jean Jacques
realized what he had to overbear. Here was the thing which must be
fought out at once.
"The child is not yours, but mine," he declared. "Here is proof--the
letter found on my Zoe when she died--addressed to me. The doctor knew.
There is no mistake."
He held out the letter for her to see. "As you can read here, my
daughter was on her way back to the Manor Cartier, to her old home at
St. Saviour's. She was on her way back when she died. If she had lived
I should have had them both; but one is left, according to the will of
God. And so I will take her--this flower of the prairie--and begin life
again."
The face Norah turned on him had that look which is in the face of an
animal, when its young is being forced from it--fierce, hungering,
furtive, vicious.
"The child is mine," she exclaimed--"mine and no other's. The prairie
gave it to me. It came to me out of the storm. 'Tis mine-mine only.
I was barren and wantin', and my man was slippin' from me, because there
was only two of us in our home. I was older than him, and yonder was a
girl with hair like a sheaf of wheat in the sun, and she kept lookin' at
him, and he kept goin' to her. 'Twas a man she wanted, 'twas a child he
wanted, and there they were wantin', and me atin' my heart out with
passion and pride and shame and sorrow. There was he wantin' a child,
and the girl wantin' a man, and I only wantin' what God should grant all
women that give themselves to a man's arms after the priest has blessed
them. And whin all was at the worst, and it looked as if he was away
with her--the girl yonder--then two things happened. A man--he was me
own brother and a millionaire if I do say it--he took her and married
her; and then, too, Heaven's will sent this child's mother to her last
end and the child itself to my Nolan's arms. To my husband's arms first
it came, you understand; and he give the child to me, as it should be,
and said he, 'We'll make believe it is our own.' But I said to him,
'There's no make-believe. 'Tis mine. 'Tis mine. It came to me out of
the storm from the hand of God.' And so it was and is; and all's well
here in the home, praise be to God. And listen to me: you'll not come
here to take the child away from me. It can't be done. I'll not have
it. Yes, you can let that sink down into you--I'll not have it."
During her passionate and defiant appeal Jean Jacques was restless with
the old unrest of years ago, and his face twitched with emotion; but
before she had finished he had himself in some sort of control.
"You--madame, you are only thinking of yourself in this. You are only
thinking what you want, what you and your man need. But it's not to be
looked at that way only, and--"
"Well, then it isn't to be looked at that way only," she interrupted.
"As you say, it isn't Nolan and me alone to be considered. There's--"
"There's me," he interrupted sharply. "The child is bone of my bone.
It is bone of all the Barbilles back to the time of Louis XI."--he had
said that long ago to Zoe first, and it was now becoming a fact in his
mind. "It is linked up in the chain of the history of the Barbilles.
It is one with the generations of noblesse and honour and virtue.
It is--"
"It's one with Abel the son of Adam, if it comes to that, and so am I,"
Norah bitingly interjected, while her eyes flashed fire, and she rocked
the cradle more swiftly than was good for the child's sleep.
Jean Jacques flared up. "There were sons and daughters of the family of
Adam that had names, but there were plenty others you whistled to as you
would to a four-footer, and they'd come. The Barbilles had names--always
names of their own back to Adam. The child is a Barbille--Don't rock the
cradle so fast," he suddenly added with an irritable gesture, breaking
off from his argument. "Don't you know better than that when a child's
asleep? Do you want it to wake up and cry?"
She flushed to the roots of her hair, for he had said something for which
she had no reply. She had undoubtedly disturbed the child. It stirred
in its sleep, then opened its eyes, and at once began to cry.
"There," said Jean Jacques, "what did I tell you? Any one that had ever
had children would know better than that."
Norah paid no attention to his mocking words, to the undoubted-truth of
his complaint. Stooping over, she gently lifted the child up. With
hungry tenderness she laid it against her breast and pressed its cheek to
her own, murmuring and crooning to it.
"Acushla! Acushla! Ah, the pretty bird--mother's sweet--mother's
angel!" she said softly.
She rocked backwards and forwards. Her eyes, though looking at Jean
Jacques as she crooned and coaxed and made lullaby, apparently did not
see him. She was as concentrated as though it were a matter of life and
death. She was like some ancient nurse of a sovereign-child, plainly
dressed, while the dainty white clothes of the babe in her arms--ah,
hadn't she raided the hoard she had begun when first married, in the hope
of a child of her own, to provide this orphan with clothes good enough
for a royal princess!
The flow of the long, white dress of the waif on the dark blue of Norah's
gown, which so matched the deep sapphire of her eyes, caught Jean
Jacques' glance, allured his mind. It was the symbol of youth and
innocence and home. Suddenly he had a vision of the day when his own Zoe
had been given to the cradle for the first time, and he had done exactly
what Norah had done--rocked too fast and too hard, and waked his little
one; and Carmen had taken her up in her long white draperies, and had
rocked to and fro, just like this, singing a lullaby. That lullaby he
had himself sung often afterwards; and now, with his grandchild in
Norah's arms there before him--with this other Zoe--the refrain of it
kept lilting in his brain. In the pause ensuing, when Norah stooped to
put the pacified child again in its nest, he also stooped over the cradle
and began to hum the words of the lullaby:
"Sing, little bird, of the whispering leaves,
Sing a song of the harvest sheaves;
Sing a song to my Fanchonette,
Sing a song to my Fanchonette!
Over her eyes, over her eyes, over her eyes of violet,
See the web that the weaver weaves,
The web of sleep that the weaver weaves--
Weaves, weaves, weaves!
Over those eyes of violet,
Over those eyes of my Fanchonette,
Weaves, weaves, weaves--
See the web that the weaver weaves!"
For quite two minutes Jean Jacques and Norah Doyle stooped over the
cradle, looking at Zoe's rosy, healthy, pretty face, as though
unconscious of each other, and only conscious of the child. When Jean
Jacques had finished the long first verse of the chanson, and would have
begun another, Norah made a protesting gesture.
"She's asleep, and there's no more need," she said. "Wasn't it a good
lullaby, madame?" Jean Jacques asked.
"So, so," she replied, on her defence again.
"It was good enough for her mother," he replied, pointing to the cradle.
"It's French and fanciful," she retorted--"both music and words."
"The child's French--what would you have?" asked Jean Jacques
indignantly.
"The child's father was English, and she's goin' to be English, the
darlin', from now on and on and on. That's settled. There's manny an
English and Irish lullaby that'll be sung to her hence and onward; and
there's manny an English song she'll sing when she's got her voice, and
is big enough. Well, I think she'll sing like a canary."
"Do the birds sing in English?" exclaimed Jean Jacques, with anger in
his face now. Was there ever any vanity like the vanity of these people
who had made the conquest of Quebec, when sixteen Barbilles lost their
lives, one of them being aide-de-camp to M. Vaudreuil, the governor!
"All the canaries I ever heard sung in English," she returned stubbornly.
"How do Frenchmen understand their singing, then?" irritably questioned
Jean Jacques.
"Well, in translation only," she retorted, and with her sharp white teeth
she again bit the black thread of her needle, tied the end into a little
knot, and began to mend the waistcoat which she had laid down in the
first moments of the interview.
"I want the child," Jean Jacques insisted abruptly. "I'll wait till she
wakes, and then I'll wrap her up and take her away."
"Didn't you hear me say she was to be brought up English?" asked Norah,
with a slowness which clothed her fiercest impulses.
"Name of God, do you think I'll let you have her!" returned Jean Jacques
with asperity and decision. "You say you are alone, you and your M'sieu'
Nolan. Well, I am alone--all alone in the world, and I need her--Mother
of God, I need her more than I ever needed anything in my life! You have
each other, but I have only myself, and it is not good company. Besides,
the child is mine, a Barbille of Barbilles, une legitime--a rightful
child of marriage. But if it was a love-child only it would still be
mine, being my daughter's child. Look you, it is no such thing. It is
of those who can claim inheritance back to Louis XI. She will be to me
the gift of God in return for the robbery of death."
He leaned over the cradle, and his look was like that of one who had
found a treasure in the earth.
Now she struck hard. Yet very subtly too did she attack him. "You--you
are thinking of yourself, m'sieu', only of yourself. Aren't you going to
think of the child at all? It isn't yourself that counts so much.
You've had your day, or the part of it that matters most. But her time
is not yet even begun. It's all--all--before her. You say you'll take
her away--well, to what? To what will you take her? What have you got
to give her? What--"
"I have the three hundred and twenty acres out there"--he pointed
westward--"and I will make a home and begin again with her."
"Three hundred and twenty acres--'out there'!" she exclaimed in scorn.
"Any one can have a farm here for the askin'. What is that? Is it a
home? What have you got to start a home with? Do you deny you are no
better than a tramp? Have you got a hundred dollars in the world? Have
you got a roof over your head? Have you got a trade? You'll take
her where--to what? Even if you had a home, what then? You would have
to get someone to look after her--some old crone, a wench maybe, who'd be
as fit to bring up a child as I would be to--" she paused and looked
round in helpless quest for a simile, when, in despair, she caught sight
of Jean Jacques' watch-chain--"as I would be to make a watch !" she
added.
Instinctively Jean Jacques drew out the ancient timepiece he had worn on
the Grand Tour; which had gone down with the Antoine and come up with
himself. It gave him courage to make the fight for his own.
"The good God would see that--" he began.
"The good God doesn't interfere in bringing up babies," she retorted.
"That's the work for the fathers and mothers, or godfathers and
godmothers."
"You are neither," exclaimed Jean Jacques. "You have no rights at all."
"I have no rights--eh? I have no rights! Look at the child. Look at
the way she's clothed. Look at the cradle in which it lies. It cost
fifteen dollars; and the clothes--what they cost would keep a family half
a year. I have no rights, is it?--I who stepped in and took the child
without question, without bein' asked, and made it my own, and treated it
as if it was me own. No, by the love of God, I treated it far, far
better than if it had been me own. Because a child was denied me, the
hunger of the years made me love the child as a mother would on a desert
island with one child at her knees."
"You can get another-one not your own, as this isn't," argued Jean
Jacques fiercely.
She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly. She chose her
own course to convince. "Nolan loves this child as if it was his," she
declared, her eyes all afire, "but he mightn't love another--men are
queer creatures. Then where would I be? and what would the home be but
what it was before--as cold, as cold and bitter! It was the hand of God
brought the child to the door of two people who had no child and who
prayed for one. Do you deny it was the hand of God that brought your
daughter here away, that put the child in my arms? Not its mother,
am I not? But I love her better than twenty mothers could. It's the
hunger--the hunger--the hunger in me. She's made a woman of me. She has
a home where everything is hers--everything. To see Nolan play with her,
tossin' her up and down in his arms as if he'd done it all his life--as
natural as natural! To take her away from that--all the comfort here
where she can have annything she wants! With my old mother to care for
her, if so be I was away to market or whereabouts--one that brought up
six children, a millionaire among them, praise be to God as my mother
did--to take this delicate little thing away from here, what a sin and
crime 'twould be! She herself 'd never forgive you for it, if ever she
grew up--though that's not likely, things bein' as they are with you, and
you bein' what you are. Ah, there--there she is awake and smilin', and
kickin' up her pretty toes this minute! There she is, the lovely little
Zoe, with eyes like black pearls. . . . See now--see now which she'll
come to--to you or me, m'sieu'. There, put out your arms to her, and
I'll put out mine, and see which she'll take. I'll stand by that--I'll
stand by that. Let the child decide. Hold out your arms, and so will I"
With an impassioned word Jean Jacques reached down his arms to the child,
which lay laughing up at them and kicking its pink toes into the air, and
Norah Doyle did the same, murmuring an Irish love-name for a child. Jean
Jacques was silent, but in his face was the longing of a soul sick for
home, of one who desires the end of a toilsome road.
The laughing child crooned and spluttered and shook its head, as though
it was playing some happy game. It looked first at Norah, then at Jean
Jacques, then at Norah again, and then, with a little gurgle of pleasure,
stretched out its arms to her and half-raised itself from the pillow.
With a glad cry Norah gathered it to her bosom, and triumph shone in her
face.
"Ah, there, you see!" she said, as she lifted her face from the blossom
at her breast.
"There it is," said Jean Jacques with shaking voice.
"You have nothing to give her--I have everything," she urged. "My rights
are that I would die for the child--oh, fifty times! . . . What are
you going to do, m'sieu'?"
Jean Jacques slowly turned and picked up his hat. He moved with the
dignity of a hero who marches towards a wall to meet the bullets of a
firing-squad.
"You are going?" Norah whispered, and in her eyes was a great relief and
the light of victory. The golden link binding Nolan and herself was in
her arms, over her heart.
Jean Jacques did not speak a word in reply, though his lips moved. She
held out the little one to him for a good-bye, but he shook his head. If
he did that--if he once held her in his arms--he would not be able to
give her up. Gravely and solemnly, however, he stooped over and kissed
the lips of the child lying against Norah's breast. As he did so, with a
quick, mothering instinct Norah impulsively kissed his shaggy head, and
her eyes filled with tears. She smiled too, and Jean Jacques saw how
beautiful her teeth were--cruel no longer.
He moved away slowly. At the door he turned, and looked back at the two
--a long, lingering look he gave. Then he faced away from them again.
"Moi je suis philosophe," he said gently, and opened the door and stepped
out and away into the frozen world.
EPILOGUE
Change might lay its hand on the parish of St. Saviour's, and it did so
on the beautiful sentient living thing, as on the thing material and man-
made; but there was no change in the sheltering friendship of Mont Violet
or the flow of the illustrious Beau Cheval. The autumns also changed not
at all. They cast their pensive canopies over the home-scene which Jean
Jacques loved so well, before he was exhaled from its bosom.
One autumn when the hillsides were in those colours which none but a
rainbow of the moon ever had, so delicately sad, so tenderly assuring,
a traveller came back to St. Saviour's after a long journey. He came by
boat to the landing at the Manor Cartier, rather than by train to the
railway-station, from which there was a drive of several miles to Vilray.
At the landing he was met by a woman, as much a miniature of the days of
Orleanist France as himself. She wore lace mits which covered the hands
but not the fingers, and her gown showed the outline of a meek crinoline.
"Ah, Fille--ah, dear Fille!" said the little fragment of an antique day,
as the Clerk of the Court--rather, he that had been for so many years
Clerk of the Court--stepped from the boat. "I can scarce believe that
you are here once more. Have you good news?"
"It was to come back with good news that I went," her brother answered
smiling, his face lighted by an inner exaltation.
"Dear, dear Fille!" She always called him that now, and not by his
Christian name, as though he was a peer. She had done so ever since the
Government had made him a magistrate, and Laval University had honoured
him with the degree of doctor of laws.
She was leading him to the pony-carriage in which she had come to meet
him, when he said:
"Do you think you could walk the distance, my dear? . . . It would be
like old times," he added gently.
"I could walk twice as far to-day," she answered, and at once gave
directions for the young coachman to put "His Honour's" bag into the
carriage. In spite of Fille's reproofs she insisted in calling him that
to the servants. They had two servants now, thanks to the legacy left
them by the late Judge Carcasson. Presently M. Fille took her by the
hand. "Before we start--one look yonder," he murmured, pointing towards
the mill which had once belonged to Jean Jacques, now rebuilt and looking
almost as of old. "I promised Jean Jacques that I would come and salute
it in his name, before I did aught else, and so now I do salute it."
He waved a hand and made a bow to the gold Cock of Beaugard, the pride of
all the vanished Barbilles. "Jean Jacques Barbille says that his head is
up like yours, M. le Coq, and he wishes you many, many winds to come," he
recited quite seriously, and as though it was not out of tune with the
modern world.
The gold Cock of Beaugard seemed to understand, for it swung to the left,
and now a little to the right, and then stood still, as if looking at the
little pair of exiles from an ancient world--of which the only vestiges
remaining may be found in old Quebec.
This ceremony over, they walked towards Mont Violet, averting their heads
as they passed the Manor Cartier, in a kind of tribute to its departed
master--as a Stuart Legitimist might pass the big palace at the end of
the Mall in London. In the wood-path, Fille took his sister's hand.
"I will tell you what you are so trembling to hear," he said. "There
they are at peace, Jean Jacques and Virginie--that best of best women."
"To think--married to Virginie Poucette--to think of that!" His sister's
voice fluttered as she spoke. "But entirely. There was nothing in the
way--and she meant to have him, the dear soul! I do not blame her, for
at bottom he is as good a man as lives. Our Judge called him 'That dear
fool, Jean Jacques, a man of men in his way, after all,' and our Judge
was always right--but yes, nearly always right."
After a moment of contented meditation he resumed. "Well, when Virginie
sold her place here and went to live with her sister out at Shilah in the
West, she said, 'If Jean Jacques is alive, he will be on the land which
was Zoe's, which he bought for her. If he is alive--then!' So it was,
and by one of the strange accidents which chance or women like Virginie,
who have plenty of courage in their simpleness, arrange, they met on that
three hundred and sixty acres. It was like the genius of Jean Jacques to
have done that one right thing which would save him in the end--a thing
which came out of his love for his child--the emotion of an hour.
Indeed, that three hundred and sixty acres was his salvation after he
learned of Zoe's death, and the other little Zoe, his grandchild, was
denied to him--to close his heart against what seemed that last hope, was
it not courage? And so, and so he has the reward of his own soul--a home
at last once more."
"With Virginie Poucette--Fille, Fille, how things come round!" exclaimed
the little lady in the tiny bonnet with the mauve strings.
"More than Virginie came round," he replied almost oracularly. "Who,
think you, brought him the news that coal was found on his acres--who but
the husband of Virginie's sister! Then came Virginie. On the day Jean
Jacques saw her again, he said to her, 'What you would have given me at
such cost, now let me pay for with the rest of my life. It is the great
thought which was in your heart that I will pay for with the days left to
me.'"
A flickering smile brightened the sensitive ascetic face, and humour was
in the eyes. "What do you think Virginie said to that? Her sister told
me. Virginie said to that, 'You will have more days left, Jean Jacques,
if you have a better cook. What do you like best for supper?' And Jean
Jacques laughed much at that. Years ago he would have made a speech at
it!"
"Then he is no more a philosopher?"
"Oh always, always, but in his heart, and not with his tongue. I cried,
and so did he, when we met and when we parted. I think I am getting old,
for indeed I could not help it: yet there was peace in his eyes--peace."
"His eyes used to rustle so."
"Rustle--that is the word. Now, that is what, he has learned in life--
the way to peace. When I left him, it was with Virginie close beside
him, and when I said to him, 'Will you come back to us one day, Jean
Jacques?' he said, 'But no, Fille, my friend; it is too far. I see it--
it is a million miles away--too great a journey to go with the feet, but
with the soul I will visit it. The soul is a great traveller. I see it
always--the clouds and the burnings and the pitfalls gone--out of sight--
in memory as it was when I was a child. Well, there it is, everything
has changed, except the child-memory. I have had, and I have had not;
and there it is. I am not the same man--but yes, in my love just the
same, with all the rest--' He did not go on, so I said, 'If not the
same, then what are you, Jean Jacques?'"
"Ah, Fille, in the old days he would have said that he was a philosopher"
--said his sister interrupting. "Yes, yes, one knows--he said it often
enough and had need enough to say it. Well, said he to me, 'Me, I am a'
--then he stopped, shook his head, and so I could scarcely hear him,
murmured, 'Me--I am a man who has been a long journey with a pack on his
back, and has got home again.' Then he took Virginie's hand in his."
The old man's fingers touched the corner of his eye as though to find
something there; then continued. "'Ah, a pedlar!' said I to him, to hear
what he would answer. 'Follies to sell for sous of wisdom,' he answered.
Then he put his arm around Virginie, and she gave him his pipe."
"I wish M. Carcasson knew," the little grey lady remarked.
"But of course he knows," said the Clerk of the Court, with his face
turned to the sunset.
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She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly
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The soul is a great traveller
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