Before Toinette Girard made up her mind to marry Prosper Leclere,--you
remember the man at Abbeville who had such a brave heart that he was
not willing to fight with an old friend,--before Toinette perceived
and understood how brave Prosper was, it seemed as if she were very
much in doubt whether she did not love some one else more than she
loved him, whether he and she really were made for each other,
whether, in short, she cared for him enough to give herself entirely
to him.
But after they had been married six weeks there was no doubt left in
her mind. He was the one man in the world for her. He satisfied her to
the core--although by this time she knew most of his faults. It was
not so much that she loved him in spite of them, but she simply could
not imagine him changed in any way without losing a part of him, and
that idea was both intolerable and incredible to her. Just as he was,
she clung to him and became one with him.
I know it seems ridiculous to describe a love like that, and it is
certainly impossible to explain it. It is not common, nor regular, nor
altogether justifiable by precept and authority. Reason is against it;
and the doctors of the church have always spoken severely of the
indulgence of any human affection that verges on idolatry. But the
fact remains that there are a few women in the world who are capable
of such a passion.
Capable? No, that is not the word. They are created for it. They
cannot help it. It is not a virtue, it is simply a quality. Their
whole being depends upon their love. They hang upon it, as a wreath
hangs from a nail in the wall. If it breaks they are broken. If it
holds they are happy. Other things interest them and amuse them, of
course, but there is only one thing that really counts--to love and to
be loved.
Toinette was a woman of that rare race. To the outward view she was
just a pretty French Canadian girl with an oval face, brown hair, and
eyes like a very dark topaz. Her hands were small, but rather red and
rough. Her voice was rich and vibrant, like the middle notes of a
'cello, but she spoke a dialect that was as rustic as a cabbage. Her
science was limited to enough arithmetic to enable her to keep
accounts, her art to the gift of singing a very lovely contralto by
ear, and her notions of history bordered on the miraculous. She was
obstinate, superstitious, and at times quick-tempered. But she had a
positive genius for loving. That raised her into the first rank, and
enabled her to bestow as much happiness on Prosper as if she had been
a queen.
It was a grief to them, of course, that they had no children. But this
grief did not destroy, nor even diminish, their felicity in each
other; it was like the soft shadow of a cloud passing over a
landscape--the sun was still shining and the world was fair. They were
too happy to be discontented. And their fortunes were thriving, too,
so that they were kept pretty hard at work--which, next to love, is
the best antidote for unhappiness.
After the death of the old _bonhomme_ Girard, the store fell to
Prosper; and his good luck--or his cleverness, or his habit of always
being ready for things, call it what you will--stuck by him. Business
flourished in the _Bon Marche_ of Abbeville. Toinette helped it by her
gay manners and her skill in selling. It did people good to buy of
her: she made them feel that she was particularly glad that they were
getting just what they needed. A pipe of the special shape which
Pierre affected, a calico dress-pattern of the shade most becoming to
Angelique, a brand of baking-powder which would make the batter rise
up like mountains--_v'la, voisine, c'est b'en bon_! Everything that
she sold had a charm with it. Consequently trade was humming, and the
little wooden house beside the store was _b'en trimee_.
The only drawback to the happiness of the Lecleres was the fact that
business required Prosper to go away for a fortnight twice a year to
replenish his stock of goods. He went to Quebec or to Montreal, for he
had a great many kinds of things to get, and he wanted good things and
good bargains, and he did not trust the commercial travellers.
"Who pays those men," he said, "to run around everywhere, with big
watch-chains? You and me! But why? I can buy better myself--because I
understand what Abbeville wants--and I can buy cheaper."
The times of his absence were heavy and slow to Toinette. The hours
were doped out of the day as reluctantly as black molasses dribbles
from a jug. A professional instinct kept her up to her work in the
store. She jollied the customers, looked after the accounts, made good
sales, and even coquetted enough with the commercial travellers to
send them away without ill-will for the establishment which refused to
buy from them.
"A little _badinage_ does no harm," she said, "it keeps people from
getting angry because they can't do any more business."
But in the house she was dull and absent-minded. She went about as if
she had lost something. She sat in her rocking-chair, with her hands
in her lap, as if she were waiting for something. The yellow light of
the lamp shone upon her face and hurt her eyes. A tear fell upon her
knitting. The old _tante_ Bergeron, who came in to keep house for her
while she was busy with the store, diagnosed her malady and was
displeased with it.
"You are love-sick," said she. "That is bad. Especially for a married
woman. It is wrong to love any of God's creatures too much. Trouble
will come of it--_voyons voir_."
"But, aunty," answered Toinette, "Prosper is not just any of God's
creatures. He is mine. How could I love him too much? Besides, I don't
do it. It does itself. How can I help it?"
"It is a malady," sighed the old woman shaking her head. "It is a
malady of youth, my child. There is danger in it--and for Prosper too!
You make an idol of a man and you spoil him. You upset his mind. Men
are like that. You will bring trouble upon your man, if you don't take
care. God will send you a warning--perhaps a countersign of death."
"What is that," cried Toinette, her heart shaking within her breast,
"what do you mean with your countersign of death?"
The old woman nodded her head mysteriously and leaned forward,
putting her gnarled hand on Toinette's round knee and peering with her
faded eyes into the girl's wild-flower face.
"It is the word," said she, "that death speaks before he crosses the
threshold. He gives a sign--sometimes one thing, and sometimes
another--before he comes in. Our folk in Brittany have understood
about that for a long time. My grandmother has told me. It always
comes to one who has gone too far, to one who is like you. You must be
careful. You must go to Mass every day and pray that your malady may
be restrained."
So Toinette, having tasted of the strange chalice of fear, went to the
church early every morning while Prosper was away and prayed that she
might not love him so much as to make God jealous. The absurdity of
such a prayer never occurred to her. She made it with childish
simplicity. Probably it did no harm. For when Prosper came home she
loved him more than ever. Then she went to High Mass every Sunday
morning with him and prayed for other things.
After four years there came a day when Prosper must go away for a
longer absence. There was an affair connected with the Department of
Forests and Fisheries, which could only be arranged at Ottawa. Thither
he must go to see the lawyers, and there he must stay perhaps a month,
perhaps two.
You can imagine that Toinette was desolate. The draught of fear that
_tante_ Bergeron had given her grew more potent and bitter in her
simple heart. And the strange thing was that, although she was
ignorant of it, there was apparently something true in the warning
which the old woman had given. For jealousy--that vine with flying
seeds and strangling creepers--had taken root in the heart of Prosper
Leclere.
Yes, I know it is contrary to all the rules and to all the proverbs,
but so it happened. It is not true that the strongest love is the most
jealous. It is the lesser love, the love which receives more than it
gives, that lies open to the floating germs of mistrust and suspicion.
And so it was Prosper who began to have doubts whether Toinette
thought of him as much when he was away as when he was with her;
whether her gladness when he came home was not something that she put
on to fool him and humour him; whether her _badinage_ with the
commercial travellers (and especially with that good-looking Irishman,
Flaherty from Montreal, of whom the village gossips had much to say)
might not be more serious than it looked; whether--ah, well, you know,
when a man begins to follow fool thoughts like that, they carry him
pretty far astray in the wilderness.
Prosper was a good fellow with a touch of the prig in him. He was a
Catholic with a Puritan temperament and a Gallic imagination. The
idolatry of Toinette had, as a matter of fact, spoiled him a little;
it was so much that he weakly questioned the reality of it, as if it
were too good to be true. All the time he was in Ottawa and on the
journey those fool thoughts hobbled around him and misled him and made
him unhappy.
Meantime Toinette was toiling through the time of separation, with a
laugh for the store, and a sigh for the lonely house, and a prayer for
the church. Tired as she was at night, she did not sleep well, and
her dreams were troubled by aunty Bergeron's warning against loving
too much.
In the cold drab dawn of a March morning it seemed to her as if the
church bell had just stopped ringing as she awaked from a dream of
Prosper. She put on her clothes quickly and hurried out. The road was
deserted. In the snowy fields the little fir-trees stood out as black
as ink. Against the sky rose the gray-stone church like a fortress of
refuge.
But as she entered the door, instead of five or six well-known
neighbours, kneeling in the half-darkness, she saw that the church was
filled with a strange, thick, blinding radiance, like a mist of light.
Everything was blurred and confused in that luminous fog. There was
not a face to be seen. Yet she felt the presence of a vast
congregation all around her. There were movements in the mist. The
rustling of silks, the breath of rich and strange perfumes, a low
rattling as of hidden chains, came to her from every side. There were
voices of men and women, young and old, rough and delicate, hoarse and
sweet, all praying the same prayer in many tongues. She could not
hear it clearly, but the sound of their murmurs and sighs was like the
whisper of the fir-wood when the wind walks through it.
She was bewildered and frightened. Part of going to church means
having people that you know near you. Her heart fluttered with a vague
terror, and she sank into the first seat by the door.
She could not see the face of the priest at the altar. His voice was
unfamiliar. The tinkle of the bell sounded from an infinite distance.
The sound of footsteps came down the aisle. It must be some one
carrying the plate for the offering. As he advanced slowly she could
hear the clink of the coins dropping into it. Mechanically she put her
hand in her pocket and drew out the little piece of silver and the
four coppers that by chance were there.
When the man came near she saw that he was dressed in a white robe
with a hood over his face. The plate was full of golden coins. She
held out her poor little offering. The man in the cowl shook his head
and drew back the plate.
"It is for the souls of the dead," he whispered, "the dead whom we
have loved too much. Nothing but gold is good enough for this
offering."
"But this is all I have," she stammered.
"There is a ring on your hand," he answered in a voice which pierced
her heart.
Shivering dumbly like a dog, palsied with pain, yet compelled by an
instinct which she dared not resist, she drew her wedding-ring from
her finger and dropped it into the plate.
As it fell there was a clang as if a great bell had tolled; and she
rose and ran from the church, never stopping until she reached her own
room and fell on her knees beside her bed, sobbing as if her heart
would break.
The first thing that roused her was the clatter of the dishes in the
kitchen. The yellow light of morning filled the room. She wondered to
find herself fully dressed and kneeling by the bed instead of sleeping
in it. It was late, she had missed the hour of Mass. Her glance fell
upon her left hand, lying stretched out upon the bed. The third finger
was bare.
All the scene in the church rushed over her like a drive of logs in
the river when the jam breaks. She felt as helpless as a little child
in a canoe before the downward sweeping flood. She did not wish to cry
out, to struggle--only to crouch down, and cover her eyes, and wait.
Whatever was coming would come.
Then the force of youth and hope and love rose within her and she
leaped to her feet. "Bah!" she said to herself, "I am a baby. It was
only a dream,--the cure has told us not to be afraid of them,--I snap
my fingers at that old Bergeron with her stupid countersigns,--_je
m'en fricasse_! But, my ring--my ring? I have dropped it, that's all,
while I was groping around the room in my sleep. After a while I will
look for it and find it."
She washed her face and smoothed her hair and walked into the kitchen.
Breakfast was ready and the old woman was grumbling because it had
been kept waiting.
"You are lazy," she said, "a love-sick woman is good for nothing. Your
eyes are red. You look bad. You have seen something. A countersign!"
She peered at the girl curiously, the wrinkles on her yellow face
deepening like the cracks in drying clay, and her thin lips working as
if they mumbled a delicious morsel,--a foretaste of the terrible.
"Let me alone with your silly talk," cried Toinette gaily. "I am
hungry. Besides, I have a headache. You must take care of the store
this morning. I will stay here. Prosper will come home to-day."
"_Frivolante_," said the old woman, with her sharp eyes fixed on the
girl's left hand, "why do you think that? Where is your wedding-ring?"
"I dropped it," replied Toinette, drawing back her hand quickly and
letting it fall under the table-cloth, "it must be somewhere in my
room."
"She dropped it," repeated the old woman, with wagging head, "_tiens!_
what a pity! The ring that not even death should take from her
finger,--she dropped it! But that is a bad sign,--the worst of all,--a
countersign of----"
"Will you go? Old babbler," cried Toinette, springing up in anger, "I
tell you to go to the store. I am mistress in this house."
_Tante_ Bergeron clumped sullenly away, muttering, "A mistress without
a wedding-ring! Oh, la-la, la-la! There's a big misery in that."
Toinette rolled up her sleeves and washed the dishes. She tried to
sing a little at her work, because she knew that Prosper liked it, but
the notes seemed to stick in her throat. She wiped her eyes with the
hem of her apron, and went upstairs, bare-armed, to search for her
ring.
She looked and felt in every corner of the room, took up the
rag-carpet rugs and shook them, moved every chair and the big chest of
drawers and the wash-stand, pulled the covers and the pillows and the
mattress off the bed and threw them on the floor. When she had
finished the room looked as if the big north-west wind had passed
through it.
Then Toinette sat down on the bed, rubbing the little white mark on
her finger where the ring had been, and staring through the window at
the church as if she were hypnotised. All sorts of dark and cloudy
thoughts were trooping around her. Perhaps Prosper had met with an
accident, or he was sick; or perhaps the suspicions and unjust
reproaches with which he had sometimes wounded her lately had grown
into his mind, so that he was angry with her and did not want to see
her. Perhaps some one had been telling lies to him, and made him mad,
and there was a fight, and a knife--she could see him lying on the
floor of a tavern, in a little red puddle, with white face and staring
eyes, cold and reproachful. Would he never come back, come home?
In the front of the store sleigh-bells jingled. It was probably some
customer. No, she knew in her heart it was her husband!
But she could not go to him,--he must come to her, here, away from
that hateful old woman. A step sounded in the hall, the door opened,
Prosper stood before her. She ran to him and threw her arms around
him. But he did not answer her kiss. His voice was as cold as his
hands.
"Well," he said, "I come back sooner than you expected, eh? A little
surprise--like a story-book."
She could not speak, her heart was beating in her throat, her arms
dropped at her side.
"You are fond of your bed," he went on, "you rise late, and your
room,--it looks like mad. Perhaps you had company. A party?--or a
fracas?"
Her cheeks flamed, her eyes filled with tears, her mouth quivered, but
no words came.
"Well," he continued, "you don't say much, but you look well. I
suppose you had a good time while I was gone. Why have you taken off
your wedding-ring? When a woman does that, she----"
Her face went very white, her eyes burned, she spoke with her deepest,
slowest note.
"Stop, Prosper, you are unjust, something has made you crazy, some one
has told you lies. You are insulting me, you are hurting me,--but
I,--well, I am the one that loves you always. So I will tell you what
has happened. Sit down there on the bed and be quiet. You have a right
to know it all,--and I have the right to tell you."
Then she stood before him, with her right hand covering the white mark
on the ring-finger, and told him the strange story of the Mass for the
dead who had been too much loved. He listened with changing eyes, now
full of doubt, now full of wonder and awe.
"You tell it well," he said, "and I have heard of such things before.
But did this really happen to you? Is it true?"
"As God lives it is true," she answered. "I was afraid I had loved you
too much. I was afraid you might be dead. That was why I gave my
wedding-ring--for your soul. Look, I will swear it to you on the
crucifix."
She went to the wall behind the bed where the crucifix was hanging.
She lifted her hand to take it down.
There, on the little shelf at the feet of the wounded figure, she saw
her wedding-ring.
Her hands trembled as she put it on her finger. Her knees trembled as
she went back to Prosper and sat beside him. Her voice trembled as she
said, "Here it is,--_He_ has given it back to us."
A river of shame swept over him. It seemed as if chains fell from his
heart. He drew her to him. He felt her bare arms around his neck. Her
head fell back, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her breath came
soft and quick. He waited a moment before he dared to kiss her.
"My dove," he whispered, "the sin was not that you loved too much, but
that I loved too little."