HIS GREATEST ASSET
Jean Jacques did not go to the house of the widow of Palass Poucette
"next day" as he had proposed: and she did not expect him. She had seen
his flour-mill burned to the ground on the-evening when they met in the
office of the Clerk of the evening Court, when Jean Jacques had learned
that his Zoe had gone into farther and farther places away from him.
Perhaps Virginie Poucette never had shed as many tears in any whole year
of her life as she did that night, not excepting the year Palass Poucette
died, and left her his farm and seven horses, more or less sound, and a
threshing-machine in good condition. The woman had a rare heart and
there was that about Jean Jacques which made her want to help him. She
had no clear idea as to how that could be done, but she had held his hand
at any rate, and he had seemed the better for it. Virginie had only an
objective view of things; and if she was not material, still she could
best express herself through the medium of the senses.
There were others besides her who shed tears also--those who saw Jean
Jacques' chief asset suddenly disappear in flame and smoke and all his
other assets become thereby liabilities of a kind; and there were many
who would be the poorer in the end because of it. If Jean Jacques went
down, he probably would not go alone. Jean Jacques had done a good fire-
insurance business over a course of years, but somehow he had not insured
himself as heavily as he ought to have done; and in any case the fire-
policy for the mill was not in his own hands. It was in the safe-keeping
of M. Mornay at Montreal, who had warned M. Fille of the crisis in the
money-master's affairs on the very day that the crisis came.
No one ever knew how it was that the mill took fire, but there was one
man who had more than a shrewd suspicion, though there was no occasion
for mentioning it. This was Sebastian Dolores. He had not set the mill
afire. That would have been profitable from no standpoint, and he had no
grudge against Jean Jacques. Why should he have a grudge? Jean Jacques'
good fortune, as things were, made his own good fortune; for he ate and
drank and slept and was clothed at his son-in-law's expense. But he
guessed accurately who had set the mill on fire, and that it was done
accidentally. He remembered that a man who smoked bad tobacco which had
to be lighted over and over again, threw a burning match down after
applying it to his pipe. He remembered that there was a heap of flour-
bags near where the man stood when the match was thrown down; and that
some loose strings for tying were also in a pile beside the bags. So it
was easy for the thing to have happened if the man did not turn round
after he threw the match down, but went swaying on out of the mill, and
over to the Manor Cartier, and up staggering to bed; for he had been
drinking potato-brandy, and he had been brought up on the mild wines of
Spain! In other words, the man who threw down the lighted match which
did the mischief was Sebastian Dolores himself.
He regretted it quite as much as he had ever regretted anything; and on
the night of the fire there were tears in his large brown eyes which
deceived the New Cure and others; though they did not deceive the widow
of Palass Poucette, who had found him out, and who now had no pleasure at
all in his aged gallantries. But the regret Dolores experienced would
not prevent him from doing Jean Jacques still greater injury if, and
when, the chance occurred, should it be to his own advantage.
Jean Jacques shed no tears on the night that his beloved flour-mill
became a blackened ruin, and his saw-mill had a narrow escape. He was
like one in a dream, scarcely realizing that men were saying kind things
to him; that the New Cure held his hand and spoke to him more like a
brother than one whose profession it was to be good to those who
suffered. In his eyes was the same half-rapt, intense, distant look
which came into them when, at Vilray, he saw that red reflection in the
sky over against St. Saviour's, and urged his horses onward.
The world knew that the burning of the mill was a blow to Jean Jacques,
but it did not know how great and heavy the blow was. First one and then
another of his friends said he was insured, and that in another six
months the mill-wheel would be turning again. They said so to Jean
Jacques when he stood with his eyes fixed on the burning fabric, which
nothing could save; but he showed no desire to speak. He only nodded and
kept on staring at the fire with that curious underglow in his eyes.
Some chemistry of the soul had taken place in him in the hour when he
drove to the Manor Cartier from Vilray, and it produced a strange fire,
which merged into the reflection of the sky above the burning mill.
Later, came things which were strange and eventful in his life, but that
under-glow was for ever afterwards in his eyes. It was in singular
contrast to the snapping fire which had been theirs all the days of his
life till now--the snapping fire of action, will and design. It still
was there when they said to him suddenly that the wind had changed, and
that the flame and sparks were now blowing toward the saw-mill. Even
when he gave orders, and set to work to defend the saw-mill, arranging a
line of men with buckets on its roof, and so saving it, this look
remained. It was something spiritual and unmaterial, something, maybe,
which had to do with the philosophy he had preached, thought and
practised over long years. It did not disappear when at last, after
midnight, everyone had gone, and the smouldering ruins of his greatest
asset lay mournful in the wan light of the moon.
Kind and good friends like the Clerk of the Court and the New Cure had
seen him to his bedroom at midnight, leaving him there with a promise
that they would come on the morrow; and he had said goodnight evenly, and
had shut the door upon them with a sort of smile. But long after they
had gone, when Sebastian Dolores and Seraphe Corniche were asleep, he had
got up again and left the house, to gaze at the spot where the big white
mill with the red roof had been-the mill which had been there in the days
of the Baron of Beaugard, and to which time had only added size and
adornment. The gold-cock weathervane of the mill, so long the admiration
of people living and dead, and indeed the symbol of himself, as he had
been told, being so full of life and pride, courage and vigour-it lay
among the ruins, a blackened relic of the Barbilles.
He had said in M. Fille's office not many hours before, "I will fight it
all out alone," and here in the tragic quiet of the night he made his
resolve a reality. In appearance he was not now like the "Seigneur" who
sang to the sailors on the Antoine when she was fighting for the shore of
Gaspe; nevertheless there was that in him which would keep him much the
same man to the end.
Indeed, as he got into bed that fateful night he said aloud: "They shall
see that I am not beaten. If they give me time up there in Montreal I'll
keep the place till Zoe comes back--till Zoe comes home."
As he lay and tried to sleep, he kept saying over to himself, "Till Zoe
comes home."
He thought that if he could but have Zoe back, it all would not matter so
much. She would keep looking at him and saying, "There's the man that
never flinched when things went wrong; there's the man that was a friend
to everyone."
At last a thought came to him--the key to the situation as it seemed, the
one thing necessary to meet the financial situation. He would sell the
biggest farm he owned, which had been to him in its importance like the
flour-mill itself. He had had an offer for it that very day, and a
bigger offer still a week before. It was mortgaged to within eight
thousand dollars of what it could be sold for but, if he could gain time,
that eight thousand dollars would build the mill again. M. Mornay, the
Big Financier, would certainly see that this was his due--to get his
chance to pull things straight. Yes, he would certainly sell the
Barbille farm to-morrow. With this thought in his mind he went to sleep
at last, and he did not wake till the sun was high.
It was a sun of the most wonderful brightness and warmth. Yesterday it
would have made the Manor Cartier and all around it look like Arcady.
But as it shone upon the ruins of the mill, when Jean Jacques went out
into the working world again, it made so gaunt and hideous a picture
that, in spite of himself, a cry of misery came from his lips.
Through all the misfortunes which had come to him the outward semblance
of things had remained, and when he went in and out of the plantation of
the Manor Cartier, there was no physical change in the surroundings,
which betrayed the troubles and disasters fallen upon its overlord.
There it all was just as it had ever been, and seeming to deny that
anything had changed in the lives of those who made the place other than
a dead or deserted world. When Carmen went, when Zoe fled, when his
cousin Auguste Charron took his flight, when defeats at law abashed him,
the house and mills, and stores and offices, and goodly trees, and well-
kept yards and barns and cattle-sheds all looked the same. Thus it was
that he had been fortified. In one sense his miseries had seemed unreal,
because all was the same in the outward scene. It was as though it all
said to him: "It is a dream that those you love have vanished, that ill-
fortune sits by your fireside. One night you will go to bed thinking
that wife and child have gone, that your treasury is nearly empty; and in
the morning you will wake up and find your loved ones sitting in their
accustomed places, and your treasury will be full to overflowing as of
old."
So it was while the picture of his home scene remained unbroken and
serene; but the hideous mass of last night's holocaust was now before his
eyes, with little streams of smoke rising from the cindered pile, and
a hundred things with which his eyes had been familiar lay distorted,
excoriated and useless. He realized with sudden completeness that a
terrible change bad come in his life, that a cyclone had ruined the face
of his created world.
This picture did more to open up Jean Jacques' eyes to his real position
in life than anything he had experienced, than any sorrow he had
suffered. He had been in torment in the past, but he had refused to see
that he was in Hades. Now it was as though he had been led through the
streets of Hell by some dark spirit, while in vain he looked round for
his old friends Kant and Hegel, Voltaire and Rousseau and Rochefoucauld,
Plato and Aristotle.
While gazing at the dismal scene, however, and unheeding the idlers who
poked about among the ruins, and watched him as one who was the centre of
a drama, he suddenly caught sight of the gold Cock of Beaugard, which had
stood on the top of the mill, in the very centre of the ruins.
Yes, there it was, the crested golden cock which had typified his own
life, as he went head high, body erect, spurs giving warning, and a
clarion in his throat ready to blare forth at any moment. There was the
golden Cock of Beaugard in the cinders, the ashes and the dust. His chin
dropped on his breast, and a cloud like a fog on the coast of Gaspe
settled round him. Yet even as his head drooped, something else
happened--one of those trivial things which yet may be the pivot of great
things. A cock crowed--almost in his very ear, it seemed. He lifted his
head quickly, and a superstitious look flashed into his face. His eyes
fastened on the burnished head of the Cock among the ruins. To his
excited imagination it was as though the ancient symbol of the Barbilles
had spoken to him in its own language of good cheer and defiance. Yes,
there it was, half covered by the ruins, but its head was erect in the
midst of fire and disaster. Brought low, it was still alert above the
wreckage. The child, the dreamer, the optimist, the egoist, and the man
alive in Jean Jacques sprang into vigour again. It was as though the
Cock of Beaugard had really summoned him to action, and the crowing had
not been that of a barnyard bantam not a hundred feet away from him.
Jean Jacques' head went up too.
"Me--I am what I always was, nothing can change me," he exclaimed
defiantly. "I will sell the Barbille farm and build the mill again."
So it was that by hook or by crook, and because the Big Financier had
more heart than he even acknowledged to his own wife, Jean Jacques did
sell the Barbille farm, and got in cash--in good hard cash-eight thousand
dollars after the mortgage was paid. M. Mornay was even willing to take
the inadequate indemnity of the insurance policy on the mill, and lose
the rest, in order that Jean Jacques should have the eight thousand
dollars to rebuild. This he did because Jean Jacques showed such amazing
courage after the burning of the mill, and spread himself out in a
greater activity than his career had yet shown. He shaved through this
financial crisis, in spite of the blow he had received by the loss of his
lawsuits, the flitting of his cousin, Auguste Charron, and the farm debts
of this same cousin. It all meant a series of manipulations made
possible by the apparent confidence reposed in him by M. Mornay.
On the day he sold his farm he was by no means out of danger of absolute
insolvency--he was in fact ruined; but he was not yet the victim of those
processes which would make him legally insolvent. The vultures were
hovering, but they had not yet swooped, and there was the Manor saw-mill
going night and day; for by the strangest good luck Jean Jacques received
an order for M. Mornay's new railway (Judge Carcasson was behind that)
which would keep his saw-mill working twenty-four hours in the day for
six months.
"I like his pluck, but still, ten to one, he loses," remarked M. Mornay
to Judge Carcasson. "He is an unlucky man, and I agree with Napoleon
that you oughtn't to be partner with an unlucky man."
"Yet you have had to do with Monsieur Jean Jacques," responded the aged
Judge.
M. Mornay nodded indulgently.
"Yes, without risk, up to the burning of the mill. Now I take my
chances, simply because I'm a fool too, in spite of all the wisdom I see
in history and in life's experiences. I ought to have closed him up, but
I've let him go on, you see."
"You will not regret it," remarked the Judge. "He really is worth it."
"But I think I will regret it financially. I think that this is the last
flare of the ambition and energy of your Jean Jacques. That often
happens--a man summons up all his reserves for one last effort. It's
partly pride, partly the undefeated thing in him, partly the gambling
spirit which seizes men when nothing is left but one great spectacular
success or else be blotted out. That's the case with your philosopher;
and I'm not sure that I won't lose twenty thousand dollars by him yet."
"You've lost more with less justification," retorted the Judge, who, in
his ninetieth year, was still as alive as his friend at sixty.
M. Mornay waved a hand in acknowledgment, and rolled his cigar from
corner to corner of his mouth. "Oh, I've lost a lot more in my time,
Judge, but with a squint in my eye! But I'm doing this with no
astigmatism. I've got the focus."
The aged Judge gave a conciliatory murmur-he had a fine persuasive voice.
"You would never be sorry for what you have done if you had known his
daughter--his Zoe. It's the thought of her that keeps him going. He
wants the place to be just as she left it when she comes back."
"Well, well, let's hope it will. I'm giving him a chance," replied M.
Mornay with his wineglass raised. "He's got eight thousand dollars in
cash to build his mill again; and I hope he'll keep a tight hand on it
till the mill is up."
Keep a tight hand on it?
That is what Jean Jacques meant to do; but if a man wants to keep a tight
hand on money he should not carry it about in his pocket in cold, hard
cash. It was a foolish whim of Jean Jacques that he must have the eight
thousand dollars in cash--in hundred-dollar bills--and not in the form of
a cheque; but there was something childlike in him. When, as he thought,
he had saved himself from complete ruin, he wanted to keep and gloat over
the trophy of victory, and his trophy was the eight thousand dollars got
from the Barbille farm. He would have to pay out two thousand dollars in
cash to the contractors for the rebuilding of the mill at once,--they
were more than usually cautious--but he would have six thousand left,
which he would put in the bank after he had let people see that he was
well fortified with cash.
The child in him liked the idea of pulling out of his pocket a few
thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. He had always carried a good
deal of money loose in his pocket, and now that his resources were so
limited he would still make a gallant show. After a week or two he would
deposit six thousand dollars in the bank; but he was so eager to begin
building the mill, that he paid over the stipulated two thousand dollars
to the contractors on the very day he received the eight thousand. A few
days later the remaining six thousand were housed in a cupboard with an
iron door in the wall of his office at the Manor Cartier.
"There, that will keep me in heart and promise," said Jean Jacques as he
turned the key in the lock.