THE OXFORD MAN
"Here Nature was my guide,
The Nature of the dissolute; but Thee,
O fostering Nature! I rejected..."
Ringfield, now committed to his duty at St. Ignace, was experiencing
that reaction which must always follow upon a sudden change in the
affairs of life when the person concerned has a tendency towards the
reflective. The absence from the manor house of that interesting
personality, Miss Clairville, threw him altogether on the society of
the village, but, apart from Poussette, who had become mysteriously
friendly again, the two individuals most in need of his ministrations
were Mme. Poussette and the shambling guide, Edmund Crabbe, in whom
were the dregs of a being originally more than the preacher's equal.
Old world distinctions would seem to be of small account in such a
hamlet as St. Ignace and yet questions of caste were felt even there.
Crabbe, the owner of the "Tennyson," was that melancholy wraith of
breeding, a deteriorated gentleman, spoken of in whispers as an "Oxford
man," slouching along the winding country road, more or less in liquor,
with the gait and air of a labourer, yet once known as the youngest son
of a good county family. Few would have recognized in the whiskered
blear-eyed, stumbling creature an educated Englishman of more than
middle-class extraction. In drink an extraordinary thing occurred. He
then became sober, knew himself, and quoted from the classics; when
sober, he was the sullen loafer, the unmannerly cad, and his service as
guide alone redeemed him from starvation and neglect. Ringfield, who
had seen him, as he supposed, drunk on the Saturday afternoon when Miss
Clairville's departure had been made known, concluded to call upon him
at his shack a few days later, and was considerably surprised to find
the place roughly boarded up, while sounds of talking came from a
shanty at the back. The latter was on the plumed edge of an odorous
hemlock wood; squirrels and chipmunks ran, chattering, hither and
thither in quest of food, and a muskrat, sitting on a log near the
water, looked unconcernedly at Ringfield as he stood, hesitating, for a
few seconds. While he thus remained, a boy came along, looked at the
"store" and scudded away; then came a little girl, and, finally, one of
the maidservants from Poussette's. Muttering her annoyance, she too
waited for a while and was on the point of going away, when the door of
the cabin opened, and Crabbe looked out. He held himself erect, he had
shaved, his faded _negligé_ shirt was clean and laced with blue--a
colour that matched his eyes, and his voice had a certain expressive
and even authoritative drawl in it.
"No supplies to-day, my good people," he said, affecting to suppose
Ringfield a customer. "Call to-morrow, or--ah--the next day. Sorry to
inconvenience you, but I've had to take a few hours off, writing
letters to the Old Country, asking about my remittance and so forth.
So I can't attend to business."
In these polite if slightly satirical cadences there was the element of
superiority; the woman and the girl faded away, while Ringfield hardly
knew how to proceed.
"I have come over just for a chat," he finally said, "if you are not
too much engaged. I have a good deal of time on my hands, and I'm
trying to get to know the people around. I am speaking to Mr. Crabbe,
I think?"
"You are not sure, eh? Want to apologize for calling me a low fellow
to mine host Poussette, I expect! Well, come in and have your chat.
I'm not much in favour of clergymen, but then--you're only a Methodist,
I hear. You don't count."
He shut the door, after piloting the other in, and led the way into a
sort of dining and living room, in the middle of which was a long,
narrow table covered with white oilcloth, graced by a monster bouquet
of wild-flowers, grasses and ferns at the end; at the other end was a
tumbler and a bottle and Ringfield saw clearly enough that it held
whisky. Yet he did not comprehend that Crabbe was drunk, while the
bold, blue eyes, the erect stature and the loud voice did not make a
single suspicion. Indeed, surprise and pity worked in him a kind of
false modesty.
"I certainly should never have used that expression. My defence is,
that Poussette, though a good fellow, is rough, and difficult to
impress in English, you understand, especially when he is about
half-tipsy himself!"
Looking around, the sight of faded photographs of English scenes on the
wall, of a large lithograph of Tennyson and of many well-bound books
and other evidences of refinement, led Ringfield to say, in vague
apology, "If I had known----"
"Known what?" said Crabbe in loud, dictatorial, dangerous tones, all
shiftiness gone. "That I was a gentleman, eh? Well, gentle is as
gentle does, I suppose, and I've never scored anywhere, so here I am,
here I _am_, Ringfield (bringing his hand down on the table) that's
your name, I believe--and I've not worn so badly all these years. From
Oxford to Manitoba; then robbed and ruined by a shark of a farming
agent, damn him, down here to this wilderness and hole of a Quebec
Province for a change. For keeps, I imagine."
He went round the table and poured out some whisky, drank it off raw,
and still Ringfield did not understand. He thought this was the sober
phase, the other, the drunken one, and feeling his way, ventured on
general topics.
"Well, I'm here too by a curious twist of circumstances. I'm a
'varsity' man--Toronto, you know--and might look for something
different from St. Ignace."
"You're a what?" cried the other. "O Lord!" and a strange kind of rude
contempt filled the rich cadences with which he spoke, so different
from the surly repression of his ordinary tone.
"O I see!" he drawled presently. "I'm an Oxford man myself--worse
luck--and much good it's done me; hope you've benefited more thereby.
What disgusting rot, Ringfield, filling us up with Horace and Virgil,
and then sending us out to a land like this! I'm the youngest of five;
there was nothing left for me at home, and then there was fuss about a
woman--there always is."
"Is there?" echoed the other sweetly, determined not to be annoyed.
"Don't lay everything at their door. Our mothers, Crabbe, our
sisters----"
The Englishman suddenly ran amuck, as it were.
"In God's name, Ringfield, drop that! I can see you know nothing about
it, nothing about life or women--God, Ringfield, women are the Devil!
If I thought you'd listen and not preach----"
The other's hand, which had been lifted in horror and deprecation, came
down again.
"I don't care to listen," he said, "but I can gather your meaning--all
the same! Don't take any more of that vile stuff, you'll make yourself
drunk. Here----" and then, with sudden fury, the preacher grabbed the
bottle, threw it out of the window among the debris of rotting fruit
and rusty cans and faced the Englishman.
For a moment Crabbe looked, spat, and swore like a fiend; then he
collapsed into his chair, though still gazing at Ringfield with those
full, rolling eyes and that hateful, superior smile.
"I'll hear anything you have to tell about yourself," continued
Ringfield, "but I won't listen to tales of other people, men or women.
And what's the use of telling me about yourself? That won't do any
good. Put it all back in the past, man; put it all away. Now is your
accepted time, now is your day of salvation, right here, this moment.
But I won't preach to you. I won't vindicate my calling and talk
religion, as you'd call it, in this place and at this hour, because I
see you're not ready. I thought you were sober. Now I see my mistake,
and now, I don't know _how_ to talk to you. I don't know how to begin!
I've never tasted the stuff myself--not even a glass of wine has ever
passed my lips, and my mother, Crabbe, used to make home-made wine and
give it to us--all but me. I wouldn't taste it. If I understood the
fascination of it, if I could follow the process, if I could sympathize
at all with you, then I might appreciate the difficulty and realize the
force of the temptation. But I can't! Other vices, take theft or
treachery, or cowardice, or insubordination; the seed of hatred
suffered to grow till the black Death Flower of Murder be born;
covetousness, sins of temper, all these I understand. And in some
degree those other temptations to which you have alluded."
A slight wave of colour surged in the young minister's cheeks. Crabbe
was apparently beyond impressing. He sat and whistled, looking wisely
at his nails. The loss of the whisky did not trouble him, for he
remembered where he had a second bottle hidden, and a small quantity
yet remained at the bottom of the tumbler, unnoticed by Ringfield. But
presently he broke out again.
"As for women," he cried thickly, as if he had not heard the other's
latest speech. "I've had enough of them, too much, as I said before.
You be warned, Ringfield! You keep out of trouble! I wouldn't swear
that I did not take to drink on account of them, and then, look
here--the trouble followed me out to this country, even to St. Ignace,
even to this hut and hole. What d'ye think of that?"
"Why, who is there here?" exclaimed Ringfield, but as he spoke he had a
vision; the foolish wife of Poussette seemed to come along the path,
chanting as she came some minor French refrain and tapping at the
uncared for window as she passed. She might have been attractive once,
and Crabbe was not a very young man now. Some graces she must have
had; a way of catching at the side of her skirt, suggesting a curtsy;
plenty of fair hair and a child's smile playing at the corners of her
mouth--not so foolish then. But wise or foolish, she had been another
man's wife, unless he had encountered her in her maiden days, which
seemed improbable.
"I cannot think," went on Ringfield, striving to shut this vision out,
"how women, any woman, plain or fair, sane or mad, could bring herself
to care for you,--and not because,--hear me, Crabbe, you are beyond
caring about. God forbid!--but because your form of vice must ever be
so distasteful to a woman. And then you are all wrong about your
surroundings. You are, you have been, at least, a man of education,
and yet you call this a hut and a hole. It is you who make it so! You
vilify, where you might ennoble. You defile where you should enrich
and keep pure. You are set here, in the midst of the most beautiful
scenes of Nature, scenes that cannot be matched anywhere in the world,
and yet you despise them and use them for your own undoing and that of
others. Nature lies at your door and you are answerable for your
treatment other."
Crabbe laughed surlily. "She's no business lying--where'd you say--at
my door. Nature, always Nature! Much good it's done me, Nature, and
all that rubbish. I hate it, I hate and abhor it, Ringfield. That's
what makes me drink. Too much Nature's been my ruin. I'd be sober
enough in a big town with lively streets and bustle and riot and row.
I wouldn't drink there. I'd show them the pace, I'd go it myself once
more and be d----d to all this rot and twaddle about Nature! Nature
doesn't care for me. So careful of the type she seems, but so careless
of the single life. She doesn't bother her head about me, or you, or
Henry Clairville or Pauline!"
He paused, and Ringfield shivered with sudden poignancy of
recollection. What right had this miserable scion of good family, so
fallen from grace, so shaken and so heartless, to call the lady of
Clairville Manor by her Christian name?
"Or Mme. Poussette!" said the minister hurriedly, but with meaning, as
he pronounced the name, his voice trembling in spite of himself.
"Nature, it is true, does not care for any of us. Nature will let you
starve, get drunk, go mad. Therefore, we need a greater than Nature.
Therefore, having this committed unto us we speak as----"
"O Mme. Poussette!" interrupted Crabbe, pouring the contents of the
tumbler down his throat. "Shall I get you some? No? Well, I don't
blame you, don't blame you. Mme. Poussette, poor creature! I have
heard she was pretty once. That was before I came, before--God's truth
this, Ringfield--before I taught her husband to drink deep."
"I might have known!" escaped from the other. "Our own people rarely
drink--like you."
"He was no innocent! He tippled, tippled. Then I came along and set
up my sign, Edmund Crabbe Hawtree, Esquire; no, we'll drop the last and
stick to E. Crabbe without the Esquire, d----n it! Lord! what a mess
I've made of it, and this rankles, Ringfield. Listen. Over at Argosy
Island there's a slabsided, beastly, canting Methodist Yankee who has a
shop too. Must copy the Britisher, you see. Must emulate--gentleman."
His sentences were beginning to be less clear now. His head was
falling forward. "Well! then--this fine fellow does well out of _his_
shop; sets up another down the river and yet another over at Beausoley.
He's made money! He's rich, married, and has a big family. Why don't
I make money, Ringfield, and get away from here? Why don't you make
money and not go about preaching? Eh? So careless of the single life!
Who said that? Whoever said that, knew what--was talking about. I
know what I'm talking about. I'm a gentleman, that's what I am,
Ringfield, and yet I can't make money."
The wagging head toppled--he fell over on the table. The fire and
youth Ringfield had observed were gone and in their place were the
decrepit tone and the surly animalism which one associated with the
guide. Here, then, thought the young and impressionable minister, is
the living result of two corroding vices; the man is a sot, but
something beside the lust for liquor has helped to make him one. He
has followed after sin in the shape of his neighbour's wife, and
perhaps the latter's decline may be traced to the working of remorse
and the futile longing after a better life.
As he was thus thinking, the vision of his thought actually flitted
past the window without turning her head. Still with those thin hands
picking at her shabby skirts and with that tremulous smile she emerged
from the wood and Ringfield heard her singing long after the rustling
of the closely arched branches had ceased. Crabbe seemed to be
dropping asleep when Ringfield touched him on the arm and tried again
to reason with him.
"Tell me, I ask it for your own good and for that of the poor
unfortunate woman who has just gone by, tell me what there is between
you, how far the matter went, how long ago it was. Tell me, and I will
help you perhaps to get away, leave this place and all in it. That
would be the best thing. Come, Crabbe, I'll believe in you if you've
lost belief in yourself. Can I, can anyone, do more than that?"
The Englishman rallied, passed a hand across his brow, then rose
unsteadily to his feet, looking around the cabin. Habit called for a
drink at this juncture and he saw nothing to drink. Anger awoke in
him; he grew maniacal, dangerous, and the late September shadows filled
the room.
"What woman do you mean?" he cried. "_In vino veritas_! You thought I
was sober. So I was. Sober enough before you, the preacher, to know
that I'm getting drunk rapidly, beastly drunk too, and being so, and
the gentleman I am, or meant to be, I don't thank you for interference
in my affairs. What woman are you thinking of? What woman passed my
window?"
"Mme. Poussette."
The guide's face stared, then broke into unmistakable and contemptuous
laughter.
"Didn't I tell you I was a gentleman? You've made a big mistake,
Ringfield. Even in my deterioration" (he had difficulty with this
word) "I remember who I am, and I don't go after married women.
Matrimony's one of the Church's sacraments, Ringfield, isn't it?
Perhaps not; I have forgotten. Anyway, Mme. Poussette is the wife of
my best friend, my best friend I tell you, and whoever cares for her
faded hair and finicking ways it isn't I. Sweeter pastures once were
mine. Have I named the lady of my choice or have I not? The gay
Pauline, the witty Pauline, the handsome Pauline! Ah! You admire her
yourself. You wrote her a letter. I gave it to her and we read it
together and laughed at it. 'Yours in Christ.' Ha-ha! We laughed at
it, Ringfield."
Even in his foolish insults he paused, for an awful expression appeared
for a moment on the other's face. In that moment Ringfield realized
what Miss Clairville had become to him. No one can bear to hear his
love traduced, and he believed that in his cups this villain, Crabbe,
was lying. They faced each other and Ringfield was not the cooler nor
the saner of the two.
"Pauline! Miss Clairville! What can she be to you? Hanger on of
womanly footsteps," burst from him, scarcely knowing what words formed
in his brain and emptied themselves upon the darkening air of the
cabin. "Stealthy and gloating admirer of her beauty, even the despised
companion and disloyal friend of her brother--all these you may be, but
surely nothing more to her."
"What I am to her I know well enough and can tell you easily enough.
She's done with me, hates and fears me, won't have anything to do with
me, and yet she belongs to me and I'm not likely to forget it. And I
belong to her. That's another reason why I wouldn't go after Mme.
Poussette."
"You mean--that she is, that you are--oh! impossible! You mean--what
do you mean? Not that you are married to her?"
Extreme agony and repulsion gave shrillness to Ringfield's voice. To
have met and loved, to have coveted and dreamed of that warm, imperious
yet womanly presence, and to hear this dreadful truth concerning
her--if it were the truth.
"Well, you've guessed it. Yes, married to her, by heaven!" said
Crabbe, and he lurched forward and fell.
Ringfield saw and heard him fall, but he was already out of the shack
and speeding through the forest paths; dim arcades of larch and pine
met over his head while upon the river and the great Fall were stealing
long bars of bright silvery light from the level sun. Soon the silver
would mellow to gold as the daily marvel of the sunset was
accomplished, but Ringfield was beyond such matters now. Nature could
do no more for him in this crisis than it had done for Edmund Crabbe,
and the virginity, the silence and fragrance of the noble wood, brought
him no solace. Yet as he sped he could not choose but breathe and the
air filled his breast and then fed his mind so that presently coming
upon a glade or opening in which was a large slab of grey lichened rock
he lay down at length to think. And that Nature which could do nothing
for him spiritually in this hour of trial conspired to comfort and
restore him physically. He could not pray. His accustomed resources
had failed him; instead, as it grew quite dark around, he fell asleep.