weak voice. "It would be indecent. I must think."
"Think!" he retorted, bitterly. "Oh, very well. Then you do not love me!"
"Ah, but I do!" she cried, all trembling.
With that he took her in his arms and kissed her, and nothing more was
heard about suicide or any such subject.
"But we must not tell any one yet," she pleaded. "They would not
understand."
He agreed, with the utmost readiness. "We will not tell a soul. It shall
be exactly as you wish. But I may come and see you?"
"Oh, certainly," she responded. "Often,--that is, every day or two,--at
Grande Anse; and perhaps we may happen to meet sometimes in the
village, as well."
"The _Soleil_ will be delaying at St. Esprit for two weeks," he
explained, as they walked along, hand in hand. "She put in for some
repairs. By the end of that time, perhaps"--
"Oh, no, not so soon as that," she interrupted. "We must let a longer
while pass first."
She gazed at him yearningly. "You will be returning by here in the
autumn, at the end of the season on the Banks?"
"We are taking on three men from St. Esprit," he answered. "We shall
stop here on the return to set them ashore. That will be in October,
near the end of the month, if the season is good."
She sighed, as if dreading some disaster; and they looked at each other
again, and the look ended in a kiss. It is not by words, that new love
feeds and grows.
Before they reached the Grande Anse he quitted her; but he gave her
his promise to come again that evening. He did--that evening, and two
evenings later, and so on, every other evening for those two weeks.
Zabette's old mother took a great fancy to him, and gave him every
encouragement; but the old père Fuseau, who had sailed many a voyage, in
younger days, round the Horn, would never speak a good word for him--and
perhaps his hostility only increased the girl's attachment.
"A little grease is all very well for the hair of a young man," he would
say. "But this scented pomade they use nowadays--pah!"
"You object then to a sailor's being a gentleman?" demanded the girl
haughtily.
"Yes, I do," roared the old père Fuseau. "Have a care, Zabette."
Nevertheless, the two lovers found plenty of chances to be alone
together; and they would talk, in low voices, of their happiness and
of the future, which looked very bright to Zabette, despite all the
uncertainties of the sea.
"When we put in on the return from the Banks," said Maxence, "you will
be at the wharf to meet me; and that very day we will announce our
fiancailles. What an astonishment for everybody!"
"And then," she asked--"after that?"
"After that, I will stay ashore for a while. They can do without me on
the _Soleil_. And at the end of a month"--he told her the rest with a
kiss; and surely Zabette had never been so happy in her life.
But for the time being the affair was kept very, very secret, so that
people might not get to gossiping. Even those frequent expeditions of
Maxence to the Grande Anse were not remarked, for he always came after
dusk: and when the fortnight was over and the _Soleil_ once more was
ready for sea, the two sweethearts exchanged keepsakes, and he left her.
"I will send you a letter from St. Pierre Miquelon," he said, to cheer
her, while he wiped away her tears with a silk handkerchief.
"Do you promise?" she asked.
He promised. Three weeks later the letter arrived; and it told her that
his heart was breaking for his dear little Zabette. "Sois fidèle--be
true," were the last words. The letter had a perfume of pomade about it,
and she carried it all summer in her bodice, taking it out many times a
day to scan the loving words again.
In St. Esprit, when the fishing fleet begins to return from the Banks,
they keep an old man on the lookout in the church tower; and as soon as
he sights a vessel in the offing, he rings the bell.
It was the fourth week in October that year before the bell was heard;
and then rapidly, two or three at a time, the schooners came in. First
the _Dame Blanche_, which was always in the lead; then the _Êtoile_, the
_Deux Frères_, the _Lottie B._, and the _Milo_. Every day, morning or
afternoon, the bell would ring, and poor Zabette must find some excuse
or other to be in town. Down at the wharf there was always gathered an
anxious throng, watching for the appearance of the vessel round the
Cape. And when she was visible at last, there would be cries of joy from
some, and silence on the part of others. Zabette was among the silent.
When she saw the happiness about her, tears would swim unbidden in her
eyes; but of course she did not lose heart, for still there were several
vessels to arrive, and no disasters had been reported by the earlier
comers. People noticed her, standing there with expectant mien, and they
wondered what it could be that brought her; but it was not their habit
to ask questions of the fine highstepper.
There was another young girl on the wharf, too, who had the air of
looking for some one--a certain Suzanne Benoît, from l'Étang, three
miles inshore, a very pretty girl, with a mild, appealing look in her
brown eyes. Zabette had seen her often here and there; but she had no
acquaintance with her. At the present moment, strangely enough, she
felt herself powerfully drawn to this Suzanne. It came to her, somehow,
that the girl had come thither on a mission similar to her own, she
was so silent, and had not the look of those who had waited on the
wharf in previous years. And so, one afternoon, when two vessels had
rounded the Cape and were entering the harbor, amid a great hubbub of
expectancy,--and neither of them was the _Soleil_,--Zabette surprised
a look of woe in the face of the other which she could not resist. She
went over to her, with some diffidence, and offered a few words of
sympathy.
"You are waiting for some one, too?" she asked her.
The eyes of the other filled quickly to overflowing. "Yes," she
answered. "He has not come yet."
"You must not worry," said Zabette, stoutly. "There are always delays,
you know. Some are ahead; others behind; it is so every year."
The girl gave her a grateful look, and squeezed her hand. "It is a
secret," she murmured.
Zabette smiled. "I have a secret too."
"Then we are waiting together," said Suzanne. "That makes it so much
easier!"
They walked back to the street, arm in arm, as if they had always been
bosom friends. And the next day they were both at the wharf again. The
afternoon was bleak; but as usual they were in their best clothes.
"Oh, it does not seem as if I could wait any longer," whispered Suzanne,
confidingly. "I do hope it will be the _Soleil_ this time."
"The _Soleil_!" exclaimed Zabette, joyfully. "You are waiting for the
_Soleil_?"
And at the other's nod, she went on. "How lovely that we are expecting
the same vessel. Oh, I am sure it will come to-day--or certainly
to-morrow."
The two girls felt themselves very close together, now that they had
shared so much of their secret; and it made the waiting less hard to
bear.
"Is he handsome, your man?" asked Suzanne, timidly.
"Ravishing," replied Zabette, eagerly. "And yours?"
Suzanne sighed with adoration. "Beyond words," was her reply--and the
girls exchanged another of those pressures of the hand which mean so
much where love is concerned. "He has the most beautiful moustache in
the world."
"Oh, no," protested Zabette, smilingly. "Mine has a more beautiful one
yet, and such crisp curly hair, and dark eyes."
Her companion suddenly looked at her. "Large eyes or small?" she asked
in a strange voice.
"Oh," replied Zabette, doubtfully. "Not too large. I would not fancy ox
eyes in a man."
Suzanne freed herself and stood facing her with a flash of hatred in her
mild face which Zabette could not understand.
"And his name!" she demanded, harshly. "His name, then!"
Zabette smiled a little proudly. "That is my secret," she replied. "But,
Suzanne, what is the matter?"
"It is not your secret," laughed the other, bitterly. "It is not your
secret. It is my secret."
"What do you mean?" cried Zabette, with a sudden feeling of terror at
the girl's drawn face.
"His name is Maxence!" Suzanne's laugh was like bones rattling in a
coffin.
It seemed to Zabette as if a flash of lightning had cleft her soul in
two. That was the way the truth came to her. She drew back like a viper
ready to strike.
"Oh, I hate you!" she cried, and turned on her heel, white to the eyes
with anger and shame.
But Suzanne would not leave her. She followed to the other side of
the wharf, and as soon as she could speak again without attracting
attention, she said, more kindly:
"I am very sorry for you, Zabette. It is too bad you were so mistaken.
Why, he was engaged to me the very second day he came ashore."
Zabette stifled back a cry, and retorted, icily, "He was engaged to me
the first day. He followed me all the way to the Grande Anse."
Suzanne's eyes glittered, this time. "He followed me all the way to
l'Étang. He is mine."
Zabette brought out, through white lips, "Leave me alone. He was mine
first."
"He was mine last," retaliated the other, undauntedly. "The very morning
he went away, he came to see me. Did he come to you that day? Did he?
Did he?"
Zabette ignored her question. "He wrote me a letter from St. Pierre
Miquelon," she announced, crisply. "So that settles it, first and last."
The hand of Suzanne suddenly lifted to her bosom, as if feeling for
something. "My letter was written at St. Pierre, too."
For an instant they glared at each other like wild animals fighting over
prey. Neither said a word. Neither yielded a hair. Each felt that her
life's happiness was at stake. Zabette had thought that this chit of a
girl from l'Étang was mild and timid; but now she realized that she had
met her match for courage. And the thought came to her: "When he sees
us, let him choose."
She was not conscious of having uttered the words. Perhaps her glance,
swiftly directed toward the Cape, conveyed the thought to her rival. At
all events the answer came promptly and with complete self-assurance:
"Yes, let Maxence choose."
Just at that moment the first vessel appeared at the harbor entrance,
while the bell redoubled its jubilation in the church tower on the hill.
"The _Mercure_!" cried an old woman. "Thank God!"
And a few minutes later, there was the _Anne-Marie_, all sail set over
her green hull; and then a vessel which at first no one seemed to
recognize.
"Which is that?" they asked. "Oh, it must be--yes, it is the _Soleil_,
from Rivière Bourgeoise. She has several men from here aboard."
With eyes that seemed to be starting from her head, Zabette watched the
_Soleil_ entering the harbor. She could distinguish forms on deck. She
saw handkerchiefs waving. At last she could begin to make out the faces
a little. But she did not discover the one she sought. Holding tight to
a mooring post, unable to think, unable to do anything but watch, it
seemed to her that hours passed before the schooner cast anchor and a
boat was put over. There were four persons in it: the mate and the three
men from St. Esprit. They rowed rapidly to the wharf; and the three men
threw up their gunny sacks and climbed the ladder, one after the other.
The mate was just about to put off again when Zabette spoke to him. She
leaned over the edge of the wharf, reaching out a detaining hand.
"M'sieur!"
At the same instant the word was uttered by another voice close by. She
looked up and saw Suzanne, very white, in the same attitude.
"What is it, mesdemoiselles?" asked the mate, touching his vizor.
As if by concerted arrangement came the question from both sides.
"And Maxence?"
The man answered them seriously and directly, perceiving from their
manner that his reply was of great import to these two, whatever the
reason for it might be.
"Maxence?--But we do not know where he is. There was a fog. He was out
in a dory, alone. We picked up the dory the next day. Perhaps"--he
shrugged his shoulders incredulously--"perhaps he might have been picked
up by another vessel. Who can say?"
The girls gave him no answer. They reeled, and would have fallen, save
that each found support in the other's arms. Sinking to the string
piece of the wharf, they buried their faces on each other's shoulders
and sobbed. Happy fathers and mothers and sweethearts, gathered on the
wharf, looked at them in wonder, and left them alone, ignorant of the
cause of their grief. So a long time passed, and still they crouched
there, tight clasped, with buried heads.
"He was so good, so brave!" sobbed Suzanne.
"I loved him so much," repeated Zabette, over and over.
"I shall die without him," moaned Suzanne.
"So shall I," responded the other. "I cannot bear to live any longer."
"If only I had a picture of him, that would be some comfort," said the
poor girl from l'Étang.
"I have one," said Zabette, sitting up straight and putting some orderly
touches to her disarranged _mouchoir_. "He gave it to me the very last
night."
Suzanne looked at her enviously, and mopped her red eyes. "All I have,"
she sighed, "is a little shell box he brought me, with the motto, _À
ma chérie_. He gave me that the very last morning of all. It is very
beautiful, but no one but me has seen it yet."
"You must show it to me sometime," said Zabette. "I have a right to see
it."
"If you will let me look at the picture," consented the other, guardedly.
"Yes, you may look at it," said Zabette, "so long as you do not forget
that it belongs to me."
"To you!" retorted the other. "And have you a better right to it than I,
seeing that he would have been my husband in a month's time? You are a
bad, cruel girl; you have no heart. It is a mercy he escaped the traps
you set for him--my poor Maxence!"
A thousand taunting words came to Zabette's lips, but she controlled
herself, rose to her feet with a show of dignity, and quitted the wharf.
She resolved that she would never speak to that Benoît girl again. To do
so was only to be insulted.
She went back to her home on the Grande Anse and endeavored to take up
her everyday life again as though nothing had happened. She hid her
grief from the neighbors, even from her own parents, who had never
suspected the strength of her attachment for Maxence. By day she could
keep herself busy about the house, and the secret would only be a dull
pain; but at night, especially when the wind blew, it would gnaw and
gnaw at her heart like a hungry beast.
At last she could keep it to herself no longer. She must share her
misery. But there was only one person in the world who could understand.
She declared to herself that nothing would induce her to go to l'Étang;
and yet, as if under a spell, she made ready for the journey.
"Where are you going, my Zabette?" asked her old mother.
"To l'Étang," she answered. "I hear there is a girl there who makes a
special brown dye for wool."
"Well, the walk will do you good, ma fille. You have been indoors too
much lately. You are growing right pale and ill-looking."
"Oh, it is nothing, maman. I never feel very brisk, you know, in
November. 'Tis such a dreary month."
She took a back road across the barrens to l'Étang. Scarcely any one
traveled it except in winter to fetch kindling wood from the scrub fir
that grew there. Consequently Zabette was much surprised, after walking
about a mile and a half, to discover that some one was approaching from
the opposite direction--a woman, with a red shawl across her shoulders.
Gradually the distance between them lessened; and then she saw, with
a start, that it was Suzanne Benoît. Her knees began to tremble under
her. When they met, at last, no words would come to her lips: they only
looked at each other with questioning, hunted eyes, then embraced,
weeping, and sat down silently on a moss-hummock beside the road.
Zabette had not felt so comforted since the disaster of October. For the
first time she could let the tears flow without any fear of detection.
At last she said, very calmly:
"I have brought the picture."
She drew it out from under her coat, and held it on her knees, where
Suzanne could see it.
"And here is the shell box," rejoined her companion. "I do not
know how to read, me; but there are the words--_À ma chérie_. It's
pretty--_hein_?"
Each gazed at the other's treasure.
"Ah," sighed Suzanne, mournfully. "How handsome he was to look at--and
so true and brave!"
"I shall never love another," said Zabette, with sad conviction--"never.
Love is over for me."
"And for me," said Suzanne. "But we have our memories."
"Mine," corrected Zabette. "You are forgetting."
"Did he ever give you a present that said _À ma chérie_?" demanded
Suzanne, pointedly.
The other explained blandly: "You cannot say anything, my dear, on the
back of a tintype.--But I have my letter from St. Pierre."
She showed it.
"Even if I cannot read mine," declared the girl from l'Étang, hotly, "I
know it is fully as nice as yours. Nicer!"
"Oh, can I never see you but you must insult me!" cried Zabette. "Keep
your old box and your precious letter from St. Pierre Miquelon. What can
they matter to me?"
Without a word of good-by she sprang to her feet and set out for the
Grande Anse. She did not see the Benoît girl again that winter; but she
could not help thinking about her, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes
with bitter hatred. The young men came flocking to her home, as usual,
vying with one another in attentions to her, for not only was Zabette
known as the handsomest girl in three parishes, but also as an excellent
housekeeper--"good saver, rare spender."
She would not encourage any of them, however.
"If I marry," she said to herself, "it is giving Maxence over to that
l'Étang girl. She will crow about it. She will say, 'At last he is mine
altogether. She has surrendered.' No, I could not stand that."
So that winter passed, and the next summer, and other winters and
summers. Zabette did not marry; and after a time she began hearing
herself spoken of as an old maid. The young men flocked to other houses,
not hers. At the end of twelve years both her father and mother were
dead, and she was alone in the world, thirty, and unprovided for.
It was, of course, fated, that these two women whose lives had been so
strangely entangled should drift together again, sooner or later. So
long as both were young and could claim love for themselves, jealousy
was bound to separate them; but when they found themselves quite alone
in the world, no longer beautiful, no longer arousing thoughts of love
in the breast of another, the memory of all that was most precious in
their lives drew them together as surely as a magnet draws two bits of
metal.
It was after mass, one Sunday, that Zabette sought out her rival finally
and found the courage to propose a singular plan.
"You are alone, Suzanne," she said. "So am I. We are both poor. Come and
live with me."
"And you will give me Maxence?" asked Suzanne, a little hardly.
"No. But I will give you half of him. See, why should we quarrel any
more? He is dead. Let us be reasonable. After this he shall belong to
both of us."
Still the _vieille fille_ from l'Étang held back, though her eyes
softened.
"All these years," she said, with a remnant of defiance--"all these
years he has been mine. I did not get married, me, because that would
have let him belong to you."
Zabette sighed wearily. "And all these years I have been saying the same
thing. And yet I could never forget the shell box and your letter from
St. Pierre Miquelon. Come, don't you see how much easier it will be--how
much more natural--if we put our treasures together: all we have of
Maxence, and call him _ours_?"
Suzanne was beginning to yield, but doubtfully. "If it would be proper,"
she said.
"Not if he were living, of course," replied the other, with assurance.
"The laws of the church forbid that. But in the course of a lifetime a
husband may have more than one wife. I do not see why, when a husband is
dead, two wives should not have him. Do you?"
"I will come," said Suzanne, softly and gratefully. "I am so lonely."
Three years later the two women moved from the Grande Anse into the
village, renting the little cottage with the dormer windows in which
they have lived ever since. You must look far to find so devoted a pair.
They are more than sisters to each other. If their lives have not been
happy, as the world judges happiness, they have at least been illumined
by two great and abiding loves,--which does not happen often,--that for
the dead, and that for each other.
GARLANDS FOR PETTIPAW
GARLANDS FOR PETTIPAW
Towns, like persons, I suppose, wake up now and then to find themselves
famous; but I doubt if any town having this experience could be more
amazed by it, more dazed by it, than was Three Rivers, one day last
March, when we opened our newspapers from Boston and Montreal and lo,
there was our own name staring at us from the front page! Three Rivers
is in the Province of Quebec, on the shore of the Bay de Chaleurs; but
we receive our metropolitan papers every day, only thirty-six hours off
the presses; and this makes us feel closely in touch with the outside
world. Until the railroad from Matapedia came through, four years ago,
mail was brought by stage, every second day. The coming of the railroad
had seemed an important event then; but it had never put Three Rivers on
the front page of the Boston _Herald_.
The news-item in question was to the effect that the S. S. _Maid
of the North_, Captain Pettipaw of Three Rivers, P. Q., had been
torpedoed, forty miles off Fastnet, while en route from Sydney, N. S.,
to Liverpool, with a cargo of pig-iron. The captain and crew (said the
item) had been allowed to take to the boats; but only one of the two
boats had been heard from. That one was in command of the mate, and had
been rescued by a trawler.
Captain Pettipaw of Three Rivers! _Our_ Captain Pettipaw! How well we
knew him; and who among us had ever thought of him as one likely to
make Three Rivers figure on the front page of the world's news! Yet
this had come to pass; and even amid the anxiety we felt as to the fate
of Captain Joe, we could but be agreeably conscious of the distinction
that had come to our little community. All that afternoon poor Mrs.
Pettipaw's house was thronged with neighbors who hurried over there,
newspaper in hand, ready to congratulate or to condole as might seem
most called for.
"Poor Mrs. Pettipaw" or "poor Melina" was the way we always spoke
of her, partly, I suppose, because of her nine children, and partly
because--I hesitate to say it--she was Captain Joe's wife. But now that
it seemed so very likely she might be his widow, our hearts went out
to her the more. You see Captain Joe was, in our local phrase, "one
of those Pettipaws." Pettipaws never seemed to get anywhere or to do
anything that mattered. Pettipaws were always behindhand. Pettipaws were
always in trouble, one way or another. It was a family characteristic.
Only five or six years ago Captain Joe's new schooner, the _Melina
P._, had broken from her harbor moorings under a sudden gale from the
northwest and driven square on the Fiddle Reef, where she foundered
before our eyes. Other vessels were anchored close by the _Melina P._;
but not one of them broke loose. All the Captain's savings for years and
years had gone into the new schooner, not to speak of several hundreds
borrowed from his fellow-townsmen.
And the very next winter his house had burned to the ground; and the
seven children--there were only seven then--had been parceled out
amongst the neighbors for six or seven months until, about midsummer,
the new house was roofed over and the windows set; and then the family
moved in, and there they lived for several more months, "sort of
camping-out fashion," as poor Melina cheerfully put it, while Captain
Joe was occasionally seen putting on a row of shingles or sawing a
board. At last, after the snow had begun to fly, the neighbors came
once more to the rescue. A collection was made for the stricken family;
carpenters finished the house; a mason built the chimney and plastered
the downstairs partitions; curtains were donated for the windows; and
the Pettipaws spent the winter in comfort.