MISFORTUNES COME NOT SINGLY
Judge Carcasson was right. For a year after Zoe's flight Jean Jacques
wrapped Sebastian Dolores round his neck like a collar, and it choked him
like a boaconstrictor. But not Sebastian Dolores alone did that. When
things begin to go wrong in the life of a man whose hands have held too
many things, the disorder flutters through all the radii of his affairs,
and presently they rattle away from the hub of his control.
So it was with Jean Jacques. To take his reprobate father-in-law to his
lonely home would have brought him trouble in any case; but as things
were, the Spaniard became only the last straw which broke his camel's
back. And what a burden his camel carried--flour-mill, saw-mill, ash-
factory, farms, a general store, lime-kilns, agency for lightning-rods
and insurance, cattle-dealing, the project for the new cheese-factory,
and money-lending!
Money-lending? It seemed strange that Jean Jacques should be able to
lend money, since he himself had to borrow, and mortgage also, from time
to time. When things began to go really wrong with him financially, he
mortgaged his farms, his flour-mill, and saw-mill, and then lent money on
other mortgages. This he did because he had always lent money, and it
was a habit so associated with his prestige, that he tied himself up in
borrowing and lending and counter-mortgaging till, as the saying is, "a
Philadelphia lawyer" could not have unravelled his affairs without having
been born again in the law. That he was able to manipulate his tangled
affairs, while keeping the confidence of those from whom he borrowed, and
the admiration of those to whom he lent, was evidence of his capacity.
"Genius of a kind" was what his biggest creditor called it later.
After a personal visit to St. Saviour's, this biggest creditor and
financial potentate--M. Mornay--said that if Jean Jacques had been
started right and trained right, he would have been a "general in the
financial field, winning big battles."
M. Mornay chanced to be a friend of Judge Carcasson, and when he visited
Vilray he remembered that the Judge had spoken often of his humble but
learned friend, the Clerk of the Court, and of his sister. So M. Mornay
made his way from the office of the firm of avocats whom he had
instructed in his affairs with Jean Jacques, to that of M. Fille. Here
he was soon engaged in comment on the master-miller and philosopher.
"He has had much trouble, and no doubt his affairs have suffered,"
remarked M. Fille cautiously, when the ice had been broken and the Big
Financier had referred casually to the difficulties among which Jean
Jacques was trying to maintain equilibrium; "but he is a man who can do
things too hard for other men."
The Big Financier lighted another cigar and blew away several clouds of
smoke before he said in reply, "Yes, I know he has had family trouble
again, but that is a year ago, and he has had a chance to get another
grip of things."
"He did not sit down and mope," explained M. Fille. "He was at work the
next day after his daughter's flight just the same as before. He is a
man of great courage. Misfortune does not paralyse him."
M. Mornay's speech was of a kind which came in spurts, with pauses of
thought between, and the pause now was longer than usual.
"Paralysis--certainly not," he said at last. "Physical activity is one
of the manifestations of mental, moral, and even physical shock and
injury. I've seen a man with a bullet in him run a half-mile--anywhere;
I've seen a man ripped up by a crosscut-saw hold himself together, and
walk--anywhere--till he dropped. Physical and nervous activity is one of
the forms which shattered force takes. I expect that your 'M'sieu' Jean
Jacques' has been busier this last year than ever before in his life.
He'd have to be; for a man who has as many irons in the fire as he has,
must keep running from bellows to bellows when misfortune starts to damp
him down."
The Clerk of the Court sighed. He realized the significance of what his
visitor was saying. Ever Since Zoe had gone, Jean Jacques had been for
ever on the move, for ever making hay on which the sun did not shine.
Jean Jacques' face these days was lined and changeful. It looked
unstable and tired--as though disturbing forces were working up to the
surface out of control. The brown eyes, too, were far more restless than
they had ever been since the Antoine was wrecked, and their owner
returned with Carmen to the Manor Cartier. But the new restlessness of
the eyes was different from the old. That was a mobility impelled by an
active, inquisitive soul, trying to observe what was going on in the
world, and to make sure that its possessor was being seen by the world.
This activity was that of a mind essentially concerned to find how many
ways it could see for escape from a maze of things; while his vanity was
taking new forms. It was always anxious to discover if the world was
trying to know how he was taking the blows of fate and fortune. He had
been determined that, whatever came, it should not see him paralysed or
broken.
As M. Fille only nodded his head in sorrowful assent, the Big Financier
became more explicit. He was determined to lose nothing by Jean Jacques,
and he was prepared to take instant action when it was required; but he
was also interested in the man who might have done really powerful things
in the world, had he gone about them in the right way.
"M. Barbille has had some lawsuits this year, is it not so?" he asked.
"Two of importance, monsieur, and one is not yet decided," answered M.
Fille.
"He lost those suits of importance?"
"That is so, monsieur."
"And they cost him six thousand dollars--and over?" The Big Financier
seemed to be pressing towards a point.
"Something over that amount, monsieur."
"And he may lose the suit now before the Courts?"
"Who can tell, monsieur!" vaguely commented the little learned official.
M. Mornay was not to be evaded. "Yes, yes, but the case as it stands--
to you who are wise in experience of legal affairs, does it seem at all
a sure thing for him?"
"I wish I could say it was, monsieur," sadly answered the other.
The Big Financier nodded vigorously. "Exactly. Nothing is so
unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose, and it
is murderously expensive when you do lose. You will observe, I know,
that your Jean Jacques is a man who can only be killed once--eh?"
"Monsieur?" M. Fille really did not grasp this remark.
M. Mornay's voice became precise. "I will explain. He has never
created; he has only developed what has been created. He inherited much
of what he has or has had. His designs were always affected by the fact
that he had never built from the very bottom. When he goes to pieces--"
"Monsieur--to pieces!" exclaimed the Clerk of the Court painfully.
"Well, put it another way. If he is broken financially, he will never
come up again. Not because of his age--I lost a second fortune at fifty,
and have a third ready to lose at sixty--but because the primary
initiative won't be in him. He'll say he has lost, and that there's
an end to it all. His philosophy will come into play--just at the last.
It will help him in one way and harm him in another."
"Ah, then you know about his philosophy, monsieur?" queried M. Fille.
Was Jean Jacques' philosophy, after all, to be a real concrete asset of
his life sooner or later?
The Big Financier smiled, and turned some coins over in his pocket rather
loudly. Presently he said: "The first time I ever saw him he treated me
to a page of Descartes. It cost him one per cent. I always charge a man
for talking sentiment to me in business hours. I had to listen to him,
and he had to pay me for listening. I've no doubt his general yearly
expenditure has been increased for the same reason--eh, Maitre Fille? He
has done it with others--yes?" M. Fille waved a hand in deprecation, and
his voice had a little acidity as he replied: "Ah, monsieur, what can we
poor provincials do--any of us--in dealing with men like you, philosophy
or no philosophy? You get us between the upper and the nether mill
stones. You are cosmopolitan; M. Jean Jacques Barbille is a provincial;
and you, because he has soul enough to forget business for a moment and
to speak of things that matter more than money and business, you grind
him into powder."
M. Mornay shook his head and lighted his cigar again. "There you are
wrong, Maitre Fille. It is bad policy to grind to powder, or grind at
all, men out of whom you are making money. It is better to keep them
from between the upper and nether mill-stones.
"I have done so with your Barbille. I could give him such trouble as
would bring things crashing down upon him at once, if I wanted to be
merely vicious in getting my own; but that would make it impossible for
me to meet at dinner my friend Judge Carcasson. So, as long as I can,
I will not press him. But I tell you that the margin of safety on which
he is moving now is too narrow--scarce a foot-hold. He has too much
under construction in the business of his life, and if one stone slips
out, down may come the whole pile. He has stopped building the cheese-
factory--that represents sheer loss. The ash-factory is to close next
week, the saw-mill is only paying its way, and the flour-mill and the
farms, which have to sustain the call of his many interests, can't stand
the drain. Also, he has several people heavily indebted to him, and if
they go down--well, it depends on the soundness of the security he holds.
If they listened to him talk philosophy, encouraged him to do it, and
told him they liked it, when the bargain was being made, the chances are
the security is inadequate."
The Clerk of the Court bridled up. "Monsieur, you are very hard on a man
who for twenty-five years has been a figure and a power in this part of
the province. You sneer at one who has been a benefactor to the place
where he lives; who has given with the right hand and the left; whose
enterprise has been a source of profit to many; and who has got a savage
reward for the acts of a blameless and generous life. You know his
troubles, monsieur, and we who have seen him bear them with fortitude and
Christian philosophy, we resent--"
"You need resent nothing, Maitre Fille," interrupted the Big Financier,
not unkindly. "What I have said has been said to his friend and the
friend of my own great friend, Judge Carcasson; and I am only anxious
that he should be warned by someone whose opinions count with him; whom
he can trust--"
"But, monsieur, alas!" broke in the Clerk of the Court, "that is the
trouble; he does not select those he can trust. He is too confiding.
He believes those who flatter him, who impose on his good heart.
It has always been so."
"I judge it is so still in the case of Monsieur Dolores, his daughter's
grandfather?" the Big Financier asked quizzically.
"It is so, monsieur," replied M. Fille. "The loss of his daughter shook
him even more than the flight of his wife; and it is as though he could
not live without that scoundrel near him--a vicious man, who makes
trouble wherever he goes. He was a cause of loss to M. Barbille years
ago when he managed the ash-factory; he is very dangerous to women--even
now he is a danger to the future of a young widow" (he meant the widow of
Palass Poucette); "and he has caused a scandal by perjury as a witness,
and by the consequences--but I need not speak of that here. He will do
Jean Jacques great harm in the end, of that I am sure. The very day
Mademoiselle Zoe left the Manor Cartier to marry the English actor, Jean
Jacques took that Spanish bad-lot to his home; and there he stays, and
the old friends go--the old friends go; and he does not seem to miss
them."
There was something like a sob in M. Fille's voice. He had loved Zoe
in a way that in a mother would have meant martyrdom, if necessary,
and in a father would have meant sacrifice when needed; and indeed he
had sacrificed both time and money to find Zoe. He had even gone as far
as Winnipeg on the chance of finding her, making that first big journey
in the world, which was as much to him in all ways as a journey to Bagdad
would mean to most people of M. Mornay's world. Also he had spent money
since in corresponding with lawyers in the West whom he engaged to search
for her; but Zoe had never been found. She had never written but one
letter to Jean Jacques since her flight. This letter said, in effect,
that she would come back when her husband was no longer "a beggar" as her
father had called him, and not till then. It was written en route to
Winnipeg, at the dictation of Gerard Fynes, who had a romantic view of
life and a mistaken pride, but some courage too--the courage of love.
"He thinks his daughter will come back--yes?" asked M. Mornay. "Once he
said to me that he was sorry there was no lady to welcome me at the Manor
Cartier, but that he hoped his daughter would yet have the honour. His
talk is quite spacious and lofty at times, as you know."
"So--that is so, monsieur . . . Mademoiselle Zoe's room is always
ready for her. At time of Noel he sent cards to all the families of the
parish who had been his friends, as from his daughter and himself; and
when people came to visit at the Manor on New Year's Day, he said to each
and all that his daughter regretted she could not arrive in time from the
West to receive them; but that next year she would certainly have the
pleasure."
"Like the light in the window for the unreturning sailor," somewhat
cynically remarked the Big Financier. "Did many come to the Manor on
that New Year's Day?"
"But yes, many, monsieur. Some came from kindness, and some because they
were curious--"
"And Monsieur Dolores?"
The lips of the Clerk of the Court curled, "He went about with a manner
as soft as that of a young cure. Butter would not melt in his mouth.
Some of the women were sorry for him, until they knew he had given one
of Jean Jacques' best bear-skin rugs to Madame Palass Poucette for a New
Year's gift."
The Big Financier laughed cheerfully. "It's an old way to popularity--
being generous with other people's money. That is why I am here. The
people that spend your Jean Jacques' money will be spending mine too, if
I don't take care."
M. Fille noted the hard look which now settled in M. Mornay's face, and
it disturbed him. He rose and leaned over the table towards his visitor
anxiously.
"Tell me, if you please, monsieur, is there any real and immediate danger
of the financial collapse of Jean Jacques?"
The other regarded M. Fille with a look of consideration. He liked this
Clerk of the Court, but he liked Jean Jacques for the matter of that,
and away now from the big financial arena where he usually worked, his
natural instincts had play. He had come to St. Saviour's with a bigger
thing in his mind than Jean Jacques and his affairs; he had come on the
matter of a railway, and had taken Jean Jacques on the way, as it were.
The scheme for the railway looked very promising to him, and he was in
good humour; so that all he said about Jean Jacques was free from that
general irritation of spirit which has sacrificed many a small man on a
big man's altar. He saw the agitation he had caused, and he almost
repented of what he had already said; yet he had acted with a view to
getting M. Fille to warn Jean Jacques.
"I repeat what I said," he now replied. "Monsieur Jean Jacques' affairs
are too nicely balanced. A little shove one way or another and over goes
the whole caboose. If anyone here has influence over him, it would be a
kindness to use it. That case before the Court of Appeal, for instance;
he'd be better advised to settle it, if there is still time. One or two
of the mortgages he holds ought to be foreclosed, so that he may get out
of them all the law will let him. He ought to pouch the money that's
owing him; he ought to shave away his insurance, his lightning-rod, and
his horsedealing business; and he ought to sell his farms and his store,
and concentrate on the flour-mill and the saw-mill. He has had his
warnings generally from my lawyers, but what he wants most is the gentle
hand to lead him; and I should think that yours, M. Fille, is the hand
the Almighty would choose if He was concerned with what happens at St.
Saviour's and wanted an agent."
The Clerk of the Court blushed greatly. This was a very big man
indeed in the great commercial world, and flattery from him had unusual
significance; but he threw out his hands with a gesture of helplessness,
and said: "Monsieur, if I could be of use I would; but he has ceased to
listen to me; he--"
He got no further, for there was a sharp knock at the street door of the
outer office, and M. Fille hastened to the other room. After a moment he
came back, a familiar voice following him.
"It is Monsieur Barbille, monsieur," M. Fille said quietly, but with
apprehensive eyes.
"Well--he wants to see me?" asked M. Mornay. "No, no, monsieur.
It would be better if he did not see you. He is in some agitation."
"Fille! Maitre Fille--be quick now," called Jean Jacques' voice from the
other room.
"What did I say, monsieur?" asked the Big Financier. "The mind that's
received a blow must be moving--moving; the man with the many irons must
be flying from bellows to bellows!"
"Come, come, there's no time to lose," came Jean Jacques' voice again,
and the handle of the door of their room turned.
M. Fille's hand caught the handle. "Excuse me, Monsieur Barbille,
--a minute please," he persisted almost querulously. "Be good enough to
keep your manners . . . monsieur!" he added to the Financier, "if you
do not wish to speak with him, there is a door"--he pointed--"which will
let you into the side-street."
"What is his trouble?" asked M. Mornay.
M. Fille hesitated, then said reflectively: "He has lost his case in the
Appeal Court, monsieur; also, his cousin, Auguste Charron, who has been
working the Latouche farm, has flitted, leaving--"
"Leaving Jean Jacques to pay unexpected debts?"
"So, monsieur."
"Then I can be of no use, I fear," remarked M. Mornay dryly.
"Fille! Fille !" came the voice of Jean Jacques insistently from the
room.
"And so I will say au revoir, Monsieur Fille," continued the Big
Financier.
A moment later the great man was gone, and M. Fille was alone with the
philosopher of the Manor Cartier.
"Well, well, why do you keep me waiting! Who was it in there--anyone
that's concerned with my affairs?" asked Jean Jacques.
In these days he was sensitive when there was no cause, and he was
credulous where he ought to be suspicious. The fact that the little man
had held the door against him made him sure that M. Fille had not wished
him to see the departed visitor.
"Come, out with it--who was it making fresh trouble for me?" persisted
Jean Jacques.
"No one making trouble for you, my friend," answered the Clerk of the
Court, "but someone who was trying to do you a good turn."
"He must have been a stranger then," returned Jean Jacques bitterly.
"Who was it?"
M. Fille, after an instant's further hesitation, told him.
"Oh, him--M. Momay !" exclaimed Jean Jacques, with a look of relief, his
face lighting. "That's a big man with a most capable and far-reaching
mind. He takes a thing in as the ocean mouths a river. If I had had
men like that to deal with all my life, what a different ledger I'd be
balancing now! Descartes, Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel--he has
an ear for them all. That is the intellectual side of him; and in
business"--he threw up a hand--"there he views the landscape from the
mountain-top. He has vision, strategy, executive. He is Napoleon and
Anacreon in one. He is of the builders on the one hand, of the
Illuminati and the Encyclopedistes on the other."
Even the Clerk of the Court, with his circumscribed range of thought and
experience, in that moment saw Jean Jacques as he really was. Here was a
man whose house of life was beginning to sway from an earthquake; who had
been smitten in several deadly ways, and was about to receive buffetings
beyond aught he had yet experienced, philosophizing on the tight-rope--
Blondin and Plato in one. Yet sardonically piteous as it was, the
incident had shown Jean Jacques with the germ of something big in him.
He had recognized in M. Mornay, who could level him to the dust tomorrow
financially, a master of the world's affairs, a prospector of life's
fields, who would march fearlessly beyond the farthest frontiers into the
unknown. Jean Jacques' admiration of the lion who could, and would, slay
him was the best tribute to his own character.
M. Fille's eyes moistened as he realized it; and he knew that nothing he
could say or do would make this man accommodate his actions to the hard
rules of the business of life; he must for ever be applying to them
conceptions of a half-developed mind.
"Quite so, quite so, Jean Jacques," M. Fille responded gently, "but"
--here came a firmer note to his voice, for he had taken to heart the
lesson M. Mornay had taught him, and he was determined to do his duty now
when the opportunity was in his hand--"but you have got to deal with
things as they are; not as they might have been. If you cannot have the
great men you have to deal with the little men like me. You have to
prove yourself bigger than the rest of us by doing things better. A man
doesn't fail only because of others, but also because of himself. You
were warned that the chances were all against you in the case that's just
been decided, yet you would go on; you were warned that your cousin,
Auguste Charron, was in debt, and that his wife was mad to get away from
the farm and go West, yet you would take no notice. Now he has gone, and
you have to pay, and your case has gone against you in the Appellate
Court besides. . . . I will tell you the truth, my friend, even if it
cuts me to the heart. You have not kept your judgment in hand; you have
gone ahead like a bull at a gate; and you pay the price. You listen to
those who flatter, and on those who would go through fire and water for
you, you turn your back--on those who would help you in your hour of
trouble, in your dark day."
Jean Jacques drew himself up with a gesture, impatient, masterful and
forbidding. "I have fought my fight alone in the dark day; I have not
asked for any one's help," he answered. "I have wept on no man's
shoulder. I have been mauled by the claws of injury and shame, and I
have not flinched. I have healed my own wounds, and I wear my scars
without--"
He stopped, for there came a sharp rat-tat-tat at the door which opened
into the street. Somehow the commonplace, trivial interruption produced
on both a strange, even startling effect. It suddenly produced in their
minds a feeling of apprehension, as though there was whispered in their
ears, "Something is going to happen--beware!"
Rat-tat-tat! The two men looked at each other. The same thought was in
the mind of both. Jean Jacques clutched at his beard nervously, then
with an effort he controlled himself. He took off his hat as though he
was about to greet some important person, or to receive sentence in a
court. Instinctively he felt the little book of philosophy which he
always carried now in his breast-pocket, as a pietist would finger his
beads in moments of fear or anxiety. The Clerk of the Court passed his
thin hand over his hair, as he was wont to do in court when the Judge
began his charge to the Jury, and then with an action more impulsive than
was usual with him, he held out his hand, and Jean Jacques grasped it.
Something was bringing them together just when it seemed that, in the
storm of Jean Jacques' indignation, they were about to fall apart.
M. Fille's eyes said as plainly as words could do, "Courage, my friend!"
Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat! The knocking was sharp and imperative now.
The Clerk of the Court went quickly forward and threw open the door.
There stepped inside the widow of Palass Poucette. She had a letter in
her hand. "M'sieu', pardon, if I intrude," she said to M. Fille; "but I
heard that M'sieu' Jean Jacques was here. I have news for him."
"News!" repeated Jean Jacques, and he looked like a man who was waiting
for what he feared to hear. "They told me at the post-office that you
were here. I got the letter only a quarter of an hour ago, and I thought
I would go at once to the Manor Cartier and tell M'sieu' Jean Jacques
what the letter says. I wanted to go to the Manor Cartier for something
else as well, but I will speak of that by and by. It is the letter now."
She pulled off first one glove and then the other, still holding the
letter, as though she was about to perform some ceremony. "It was a good
thing I found out that M'sieu' Jean Jacques was here. It saves a four-
mile drive," she remarked.
"The news--ah, nom de Dieu, the slowness of the woman--like a river going
uphill!" exclaimed Jean Jacques, who was finding it hard to still the
trembling of his limbs.
The widow of Palass Poucette flushed, but she had some sense in her head,
and she realized that Jean Jacques was a little unbalanced at the moment.
Indeed, Jean Jacques was not so old that she would have found it
difficult to take a well-defined and warm interest in him, were
circumstances propitious. She held out the letter to him at once.
"It is from my sister in the West--at Shilah," she explained. "There is
nothing in it you can't read, and most of it concerns you." Jean Jacques
took the letter, but he could not bring himself to read it, for Virginie
Poucette's manner was not suggestive of happy tidings. After an
instant's hesitation he handed the letter to M. Fille, who pressed
his lips with an air of determination, and put on his glasses.
Jean Jacques saw the face of the Clerk of the Court flush and then turn
pale as he read the letter. "There, be quick!" he said before M. Fille
had turned the first page.
Then the widow of Palass Poucette came to him and, in a simple harmless
way she had, free from coquetry or guile, stood beside him, took his hand
and held it. He seemed almost unconscious of her act, but his fingers
convulsively tightened on hers; while she reflected that here was one who
needed help sorely; here was a good, warm-hearted man on whom a woman
could empty out affection like rain and get a good harvest. She really
was as simple as a child, was Virginie Poucette, and even in her
acquaintance with Sebastian Dolores, there had only been working in her
the natural desire of a primitive woman to have a man saying that which
would keep alive in her the things that make her sing as she toils; and
certainly Virginie toiled late and early on her farm. She really was
concerned for Jean Jacques. Both wife and daughter had taken flight, and
he was alone and in trouble. At this moment she felt she would like to
be a sister to him--she was young enough to be his daughter almost. Her
heart was kind.
"Now!" said Jean Jacques at last, as the Clerk of the Court's eyes
reached the end of the last page. "Now, speak! It is--it is my Zoe?"
"It is our Zoe," answered M. Fille.
"Figure de Christ, what do you wait for--she is not dead?" exclaimed
Jean Jacques with a courage which made him set his feet squarely.
The Clerk of the Court shook his head and began. "She is alive.
Madame Poucette's sister saw her by chance. Zoe was on her way up the
Saskatchewan River to the Peace River country with her husband. Her
husband's health was bad. He had to leave the stage in the United States
where he had gone after Winnipeg. The doctors said he must live the
open-air life. He and Zoe were going north, to take a farm somewhere."
"Somewhere! Somewhere!" murmured Jean Jacques. The farther away from
Jean Jacques the better--that is what she thinks."
"No, you are wrong, my friend," rejoined M. Fille. "She said to Madame
Poucette's sister"--he held up the letter--"that when they had proved
they could live without anybody's help they would come back to see you.
Zoe thought that, having taken her life in her own hands, she ought to
justify herself before she asked your forgiveness and a place at your
table. She felt that you could only love her and be glad of her, if her
man was independent of you. It is a proud and sensitive soul--but there
it is!"
"It is romance, it is quixotism--ah, heart of God, what quixotism!"
exclaimed Jean Jacques.
"She gets her romance and quixotism from Jean Jacques Barbille," retorted
the Clerk of the Court. "She does more feeling than thinking--like you."
Jean Jacques' heart was bleeding, but he drew himself up proudly, and
caught his hand away from the warm palm of Poucette's widow. As his
affairs crumbled his pride grew more insistent. M. Fille had challenged
his intellect--his intellect!
"My life has been a procession of practical things," he declared
oracularly. "I have been a man of business who designs. I am no
dreamer. I think. I act. I suffer. I have been the victim of romance,
not its interpreter. Mercy of God, what has broken my life, what but
romance--romance, first with one and then with another! More feeling
than thinking, Maitre Fille--you say that? Why the Barbilles have ever
in the past built up life on a basis of thought and action, and I have
added philosophy--the science of thought and act. Jean Jacques Barbille
has been the man of design and the man of action also. Don Quixote was a
fool, a dreamer, but Jean Jacques is no Don Quixote. He is a man who has
done things, but also he is a man who has been broken on the wheel of
life. He is a man whose heart-strings have been torn--"
He had worked himself up into a fit of eloquence and revolt. He was
touched by the rod of desperation, which makes the soul protest that it
is right when it knows that it is wrong.
Suddenly, breaking off his speech, he threw up his hands and made for the
door.
"I will fight it out alone!" he declared with rough emotion, and at the
door he turned towards them again. He looked at them both as though he
would dare them to contradict him. The restless fire of his eyes seemed
to dart from one to the other.
"That's the way it is," said the widow of Palass Poucette coming quickly
forward to him. "It's always the way. We must fight our battles alone,
but we don't have to bear the wounds alone. In the battle you are alone,
but the hand to heal the wounds may be another's. You are a philosopher
--well, what I speak is true, isn't it?"
Virginie had said the one thing which could have stayed the tide of Jean
Jacques' pessimism and broken his cloud of gloom. She appealed to him in
the tune of an old song. The years and the curses of years had not
dispelled the illusion that he was a philosopher. He stopped with his
hand on the door.
"That's so, without doubt that's so," he said. "You have stumbled on a
truth of life, madame."
Suddenly there came into his look something of the yearning and hunger
which the lonely and forsaken feel when they are not on the full tide of
doing. It was as though he must have companionship, in spite of his
brave announcement that he must fight his fight alone. He had been
wounded in the battle, and here was one who held out the hand of healing
to him. Never since his wife had left him the long lonely years ago had
a woman meant anything to him except as one of a race; but in this moment
here a woman had held his hand, and he could feel still the warm palm
which had comforted his own agitated fingers.
Virginie Poucette saw, and she understood what was passing in his mind.
Yet she did not see and understand all by any means; and it is hard to
tell what further show of fire there might have been, but that the Clerk
of the Court was there, saying harshly under his breath, "The huzzy!
The crafty huzzy!"
The Clerk of the Court was wrong. Virginie was merely sentimental, not
intriguing or deceitful; for Jean Jacques was not a widower--and she was
an honest woman and genuinely tender-hearted.
"I'm coming to the Manor Cartier to-morrow," Virginie continued. "I have
a rug of yours. By mistake it was left at my house by M'sieu' Dolores."
"You needn't do that. I will call at your place tomorrow for it,"
replied Jean Jacques almost eagerly. "I told M'sieu' Dolores to-day
never to enter my house again. I didn't know it was your rug. It was
giving away your property, not his own," she hurriedly explained, and her
face flushed.
"That is the Spanish of it," said Jean Jacques bitterly. His eyes were
being opened in many directions to-day.
M. Fille was in distress. Jean Jacques had had a warning about Sebastian
Dolores, but here was another pit into which he might fall, the pit
digged by a widow, who, no doubt, would not hesitate to marry a divorced
Catholic philosopher, if he could get a divorce by hook or by crook.
Jean Jacques had said that he was going to Virginie Poucette's place
the next day. That was as bad as it could be; yet there was this to the
good, that it was to-morrow and not to-day; and who could tell what might
happen between to-day and to-morrow!
A moment later the three were standing outside the office in the street.
As Jean Jacques climbed into his red wagon, Virginie Poucette's eyes were
attracted to the northern sky where a reddish glow appeared, and she gave
an exclamation of surprise.
"That must be a fire," she said, pointing.
"A bit of pine-land probably," said M. Fille--with anxiety, however, for
the red glow lay in the direction of St. Saviour's where were the Manor
Cartier and Jean Jacques' mills. Maitre Fille was possessed of a
superstition that all the things which threaten a man's life to wreck it,
operate awhile in their many fields before they converge like an army in
one field to deliver the last attack on their victim. It would not have
seemed strange to him, if out of the night a voice of the unseen had said
that the glow in the sky came from the Manor Cartier. This very day
three things had smitten Jean Jacques, and, if three, why not four or
five, or fifty!
With a strange fascination Jean Jacques' eyes were fastened on the glow.
He clucked to his horses, and they started jerkily away. M. Fille and
the widow Poucette said good-bye to him, but he did not hear, or if he
heard, he did not heed. His look was set upon the red reflection which
widened in the sky and seemed to grow nearer and nearer. The horses
quickened their pace. He touched them with the whip, and they went
faster. The glow increased as he left Vilray behind. He gave the horses
the whip again sharply, and they broke into a gallop. Yet his eyes
scarcely left the sky. The crimson glow drew him, held him, till his
brain was afire also. Jean Jacques had a premonition and a conviction
which was even deeper than the imagination of M. Fille.
In Vilray, behind him, the telegraph clerk was in the street shouting to
someone to summon the local fire-brigade to go to St. Saviour's.
"What is it--what is it?" asked M. Fille of the telegraph clerk in
marked agitation.
"It's M'sieu' Jean Jacques' flour-mill," was the reply.
Wagons and buggies and carts began to take the road to the Manor Cartier;
and Maitre Fille went also with the widow of Palass Poucette.