"A conspicuous flower,Whom he had sensibility to love,Ambition to attempt and skill to win."
Thus the next day and for many days to come Ringfield met the lady of his dreams at breakfast and at dinner; her third meal was served privately to her in her own room at a quarter to seven, and he wondered why until he remembered her vocation. Though at present not acting she evidently retained the habits of the profession, and for the first few days she continued to wear the scarlet silken and spangled drapery in which she had left the theatre, modified by different wraps and scarves; then a trunk arrived and she appeared more discreetly and soberly clad. One evening it became unusually warm for the season, and stepping out on his balcony he perceived her seated on hers; he returned her gracious and encouraging salutation, wholly different from the self-conscious manner she affected at the dining-table, and he hoped now to be able to take up the acquaintance where it had been dropped. For his part he meant to ignore that miserable story of Crabbe's; he would treat her as the lady she was and the sincere, much-tried creature he thought her. Her mood just now chanced to be charming, and as she rose, again wearing the gay dress of the theatre, which showed her throat and elbows in their perfection, Ringfield, even with his slight experience, knew that she was beautiful. That same Nature which was so forced upon his notice in his new resting-place was strong within him this evening, and he could not refuse to harbour certain natural impulses of admiration and delight, especially as she was unusually animated in voice, expression and gesture.
"Do you not think it dreadful, Mr. Ringfield, that poor Mme. Poussette is alone with my brother all this time? Should I not be there too and take my share in some way? Oh, not in this dress of course; I understand your look. I have only put this on because it is cooler than any other I have with me. See—I have pinned up the train around me! I must not scandalize the country-folk! I may tell you this—the people of the village think me very peculiar. In their opinion I might mend my manners."
"Oh,theiropinion!" came from Ringfield with a smile.
"Well, even here, even in St. Ignace, there is a standard, you see."
"Of manners? Yes, I suppose so. And of morality, let us hope."
"You are not certain? What have you found out, what departure from the standard in other places?Mon—Dieu! I hope not—you are thinking of Montreal and the Hotel-Champlain!"
"The chief vice I have encountered here," returned Ringfield firmly, "is drink, and as a result other things connected with it, ensuing naturally."
Miss Clairville sat down suddenly, and as she did so her draperies whorled about her till she looked like some crimson flower with her dark head for its centre. "Oh!" she said under her breath, "surely there are worse things than drink!" Some latent emotion betrayed itself in her voice; small wonder, he thought, if Crabbe were really anything to her.
"Certainly there are, but they are easier to deal with. There is my difficulty, for I know I am going to find it very difficult to make an impression, to work any lasting reform here."
"And you wish to?"
"I wish to if I can."
"I thought at first you were only a preacher."
He laughed. "Only a preacher! That conveys a great deal. You must have but a poor idea of my vocation, of the saving grace and special power of all true religion."
"Religion! But if religion can do so much, why would not Father Rielle succeed as well as you?"
"Ah! there you have a problem, I admit. Perhaps, however, he has been here too long; perhaps he is accustomed to the situation and is not so deeply impressed by it. Besides, I am not so much concerned with the habits of the rough fellows we see about here; as far as I can judge, the lumbermen, mill-hands, labourers, and people of the village are remarkably sober, considering the temptations and loneliness of the life and certain contingencies which prevail. For example, when you take two or three dozen uneducated men and isolate them for months in a lumber camp, or a mine, or send them to work on remote booms and rafts, depriving them of all family ties and Christian influences, and removing them from all standards of conduct and character, what wonder that you are confronted by this grave problem?
"But I was not thinking of such cases. I was thinking rather of a successful man like Poussette, good-hearted, respected by all who know him, and yet so weak! So weak in this respect that he neglects his business and allows himself to be led into disgrace and humiliation by——"
"I never knew Mr. Poussette drank!" exclaimed Miss Clairville hurriedly. "I am quite surprised. He is such a kind man and a friend of Henry's, and Father Rielle thinks highly of him, although he no longer attends his church."
Ringfield was now satisfied that she had broken into his speech purposely to avoid the mention of the Englishman's name, but he determined to stand his ground.
"I was about to say that while I blame Poussette for his weakness I blame still more the individual who in my opinion has led him on. Living in the neighbourhood so long you must recognize the man I mean."
Her attitude did not in the least change, nor was her gay mood impaired, but she did not reply, and the silence was a challenge to him.
"I mean the unfortunate Englishman who runs that grocery and liquor shack across the road, who calls himself a gentleman, Crabbe, the guide. You know him?"
"I have seen him."
"Youknowhim?"
Surprised, she answered less brightly: "Yes, I know him."
"You knew him better perhaps years ago? You knew him when he was master of himself, when he first came here. He is, he tells me, an English university man, and in the course of our conversation one day he quoted from 'In Memoriam' in the intervals of a semi-drunken confession."
He now had all her attention; she tried to maintain her proud air, but something was working in her to the exclusion of all coquetry, all dissimulation.
"If you know him so well, why—why come to me for information? Of course any one living here, as you say, must have met him."
"But he has spoken to me of you as if he knew you very well, as if——" He could not continue, and even in her own uneasiness she felt a pity and tenderness for him.
"Why do you bother yourself about us—about him, I mean? Or me. I shall be going away soon, I hope; you will not remain all your life in such a little place as St. Ignace; try and forget what he has said."
"I cannot. It is with me day and night. Tell me if it is true!"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Because I must know. Because, if a lie, such a tale must be traced back from where it came—the black imagination of a depraved and incorrigible villain. Because if true, if true——" his voice failed him, and although it was now quite dark, Miss Clairville could detect great excitement in his usually calm and pleasantly austere manner.
She leant to him over the balcony.
"But I cannot tell you here! I cannot go to you; will you then come to me? There will be none upstairs at this hour in this house; they are all gone to see the boat come in at the wharf. There is her whistle now! Would you mind coming very much, Mr. Ringfield? Do you think it wrong of me to ask you?"
"Wrong, Miss Clairville?"
"Improper, I mean. Even here there are theconvenances, the proprieties."
"Proprieties! When we are talking of our immortal souls and of our hopes of salvation! When truth is at stake, your character, your future perhaps—think if that had been told to anyone else!" he exclaimed half to himself.
"Then you will come?" Miss Clairville's tone was full of a radiant incredulity. She leant still farther towards him, and her eyes burned into the surrounding darkness of the night.
"I will come at once. I—if I meet anyone I can say that I am calling on you to hear about your brother."
She smiled, then frowned, in the dark. Would it be her lot to teach a good man subtlety? Should she tell the truth? She had not long to wait or think about it, for in five minutes Ringfield was knocking at her door. Nothing subtle as yet looked forth from his earnest eyes, and the grasp with which he took and held her hand was that of the pastor rather than that of the lover, but the night was dark and heavily warm, and although there were stars in the sky he did not look at them. Jupiter was just rising, giving a large mellow light like a house lamp, round and strong, and casting a shadow, but the fall of a sable lock on Miss Clairville's white neck was already more to him. They were soon seated side by side on the balcony. She had regained something other usual manner.
"You must not think that I am ungrateful for your interest in me," she said. "I believe that you are a good man, a Christian I suppose you call yourself, outside and above all creed, all ritual, the first I have ever met. No, I am not forgetting Father Rielle. He did the best he could for me, and Henry and others, but I could never follow the rules of the Romish Church, although born and bred a Catholic. With grand music one might stay in that communion, but not as our service is rendered here. And then, the confession! That is all right when you have nothing to confess, but not for me! Oh—Mr. Ringfield, why is it I cannot confess to Father Rielle, but that I can or could to you?"
"Then that story is true?"
"What was the story? What did he say?"
They talked now in whispers, and Ringfield told her in four short and to him abhorrent words. "He said—you were his wife."
Great was his relief when Pauline, starting from her seat, almost screamed aloud her agitated reply.
"No, it is not true! I never married him. That is—at least—no, I entirely deny it. I amnothis wife. I amnotmarried to him."
In his state of mind and inexperience he failed to notice the equivocal nature of this denial. He heard the impassioned negatives; he saw fear, resentment, and a sort of womanly repulsion in the frightened gesture she flung upon the air, and what he wished to hear and prayed to hear, that he heard. Crabbe then had deliberately lied perhaps, considering his condition, he had only boastfully invented.
"Thank God!" he ejaculated, standing up and taking Miss Clairville's finely formed white hand in both of his own. "Thank God!" he repeated, and, with restored confidence and renewed enthusiasm in all good works, he seized the opportunity to speak of what was in his heart. "Now you must listen to me. I believe, I honestly believe, that by His all-wise and all-knowing ruling I have been sent here to help you and be your friend. That letter I wrote to you—you received it I know, for I heard about it. I went West from a sense of duty. I was not required, and again the sense of duty brought me back to St. Ignace and—you."
"Oh, not only me! You would have come back in any case. You say it was Duty, not,—not——" Not Desire? If this were thought in some vague and unapprehended shape, it was not spoken. Ringfield gave her hand a strong and kindly pressure and let it fall.
"It was duty, yes, duty revealed to me by my Maker, to serve and obey whom is not only my duty but my whole desire and pleasure."
"You really mean what you say in telling me this? It sounds like things we read, like the little books they gave us at Sorel-en-haut.Mon Dieu! but those little books! And one big one there was, a story-book about a girl, all about a girl. A girl called Ellen, Ellen something, I have forgotten."
"That must have been 'The Wide, Wide World'. And you read that while you were at school!"
"Yes, when I was a young girl. I am afraid it didn't do me much good."
These interchanges of simple talk marked the progress of their friendship. Any fact about her past or present life, no matter how trivial, was of astonishing interest to him. And to her, the knowledge that she was already and swiftly, passionately, purely dear to a being of Ringfield's earnest mould and serious mien, so different to the other man who had come into her life, gave a sense of delicious triumph and joy. They continued to talk thus, in accents growing momentarily more tender, of many things connected with her youth and his calling, and the fact that they kept their voices down so intimately low lent additional zest and delight to the situation. Only when Ringfield alluded directly to Edmund Crabbe did she show uneasiness.
"You must give me the right to settle this affair with him," said her visitor. "We cannot risk such statements being made to people of the village, to such a man as Poussette, for example."
"Oh—Poussette!" Miss Clairville found it possible and even pleasant now to laugh. "Do you not know then all about Mr. Poussette? He is in love with me, too, or so he says. Yes, I have had a great deal of bother with him. That poor Mme. Poussette! It is not enough that one is faded and worn and has lost one's only little child, but one must also bewished dead, out of the way by one's husband. Ah—you are startled,mais c'est la belle verité! It is a good thing to be a clergyman, like you, Mr. Ringfield; you are removed from all thesebétises, all these foolish imaginings. You do your work and look neither to the right nor the left. How I wish I were like you! I only pray, for I do pray sometimes, that no thought of me will ever darken your young and ardent life; I only hope that no care for me will ever turn you aside from your plain duty."
"Do not, please," broke in Ringfield, pushing back his chair so loudly that she was obliged to beg more caution, "use that tone to me. Twenty-six is not so very young. I should have spoken and felt as I feel and as I speak when I was twenty. So Poussette is added to your list of admirers! Will it be Father Rielle himself next, I wonder? Oh, Miss Clairville—I was right! The theatre is no place for you. I ask you to leave it, to forsake it for ever. This your opportunity. Do not go back to it. I do not, it is true, know anything about it from actual experience, but I can gather that it presents, must present, exceptional temptations. Will you not be guided by me? Will you not take and act upon my advice?"
"But the special troubles that beset me are here, not within the theatre! If Poussette is silly, with his ridiculous attentions when he thinks his wife is not looking, if the other person, if——"
"You mean this man Crabbe?"
She inclined her head; at the mention of the name all spirit seemed to die out of her.
"If he maligns me, slanders and lies about me, that is here—here at St. Ignace, and not at the theatre. Why, then, do you expect me to return here for good? I come back too often as it is. I should leave here altogether, but that some influence, some fate, always draws me back."
"Whose influence? for with fate I will have nothing to do. God and a man's self—with these we front the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Crabbe's evil influence still! You knew him when he called himself by another name?"
"Yes, Mr. Edmund Hawtree. We, we—— I suppose you would call it a flirtation. He was very different then, as you may believe."
Jealousy leapt into Ringfield's breast, the first he had ever known, and a common retort sprang to his lips.
"I should hope so! I cannot bear to think of your having known him well under any circumstances. The man is low! Whether drunk or sober he has nothing to commend him, and I believe him to be utterly irreclaimable and lost."
"In this world perhaps. But not necessarily in the next? Do you decline, then, to continue the work of reformation?"
He winced, and upon recalling what he had said saw his error. "No, I retract that. He is human, therefore a soul to be saved, as one of God's creatures, but whether the man can be reinstated in society is a doubtful matter. You are right to defend him, and I am sad only when I grudge you those memories of him. You knew him then so very well?"
She understood the pleading tone and she endeavoured to be candid, but how explain certain things to a man of Ringfield's calibre? To another, a glance, a smile, the inflection of a word, of a syllable, and all would be clear. How was she to frame an explanation which should receive his tacit and grave but unenlightened approval? How far he could conjecture, disassociate, dissect, limit and analyse, weigh and deduct, the various progresses in a crude amalgamation people call Love, she did not know, and there lay her difficulty.
"I will tell you what I can. I was quite young when I met Mr. Hawtree, 'Crabbe,' as he is now known. It is his second name. He had been unfortunate in money affairs, I understood, and had not been trained to any kind of work. It was after I returned from Sorel that I found him here. He frequently came to visit Henry; they described themselves as gentlemen together, and I suppose they were not wise company for one another, but at first I did not take any notice. He fell in love with me, and talked a great deal to me, improving my English as he called it, and you can understand how little opportunity I had had of reading or continuing my studies. I have no talent for theménage; besides, Henry's methods had been long in practice, and I could not unchange them, at the age of nineteen! Mr. Hawtree and I were thus thrown very much together, yet one thing kept occurring which made me very miserable. I found out that he was drinking, and Henry too! Then another thing—my bad temper. Ah! how I suffered, suffered, in those days with that man, Mr. Ringfield!"
"I can well believe it."
"And he with me! Perhaps some other kind of woman would have suited him better, a timid, angelic, gentle little being who would have appealed to him more. When we quarrelled he grew like all you English, haughty and sneering—ah! when I think of it! And I changed to a fury—the Clairville temper—and gave back even more, even worse, than I got. But do not let us talk any more about it! You have discovered what I would have hidden, and for my part I get on better when I make myself forget it and him altogether."
He was silent; new and conflicting ideas clashed in his brain, while very close to him in the warm, fragrant night sat this alluring, sorely tried and lonely creature, who soon found the silence insupportable. To keep talking was safe; to be long silent impossible, since they seemed to draw nearer and nearer with every moment, and soon it would either be Ringfield's hand upon that dark lock he perceived adorning her white neck, or her head with its crown of hair stealing tenderly towards his shoulder. From such a precipitation of events they were saved by timely recollection of their position and the sounds which reached them from the road. The boat was leaving again, and they knew they had been thus together for an hour. Ringfield rose.
"There is now only the man himself to be seen and made to understand that such stories about you must cease. I shall speak to him at once, to-night perhaps, certainly to-morrow."
At this she quailed and could not control herself; she laid her hands on his arm and all the delicate art of the actress was called upon to assist her pleading.
"Oh!" she cried, "do you not see that it is better left alone? You take my word—you take my word of honour with you this night—I was never married to that man. Let it rest there. Do not speak with him about me. I could not bear it! I should be so ill, so worried, so unhappy. We scarcely see each other now; let it all be dropped and forgotten. He—he—exaggerated, forgets—— Oh! I do not know how to put it, but you must not speak of it. He did not know what he was saying, you know that yourself."
"That was what I thought at first, certainly."
They remained standing; eye on eye and her firm hands still clasping his arm. "You will promise me?"
He reflected a moment and then gave her his promise.
"On this condition, that if he speaks of it again, to my knowledge, to anyone, anywhere, I must then confront him and prove it a lie on your own showing."
Miss Clairville, only too glad to have gained her point, readily acceded, and Ringfield at once withdrew, fortunately without meeting anyone on the stairs or verandah. And now once more for him prospects were partly fair. Pauline's denial satisfied him; easily deceived on such a score, he knew nothing of intermediate stages of unlicensed and unsanctified affection. In his opinion women were either good or bad, married or unmarried, and to find this coveted one free was enough. The problem was how to manage the future; whether he would ever be in a position to marry, for it had come to that, and whether Miss Clairville would consent to leave the stage; as far as he was concerned the sooner the better.
"…. The charmOf pious sentiment diffused afarAnd human charity and social love."
There is an idea which prevails among many thoughtful people, but which is nevertheless a good deal of a fallacy, that in the complex and congested life of cities greater opportunities for observation of character can be found than in the country. Ringfield, for example, would have combated this idea, feeling that he might have left college and taken up his work in some large Western town, preaching every Sunday to a numerous and flourishing congregation, and continued thus for several years without encountering the strongly marked types he had met within a few weeks at St. Ignace. It may be said in general of life in cities of the new world that dwellers in such populous centres are apt to undergo considerable change of character; their natural traits become altered or turned aside, dissimulation and caution are engendered by force of circumstances, while conformity to usage and imitation enter largely into daily conduct. Thus, environment becomes stronger than heredity; respectability at least is demanded, individualities disappear, and the natural man is outwardly vanquished. In the village, family failings, vices and virtues remain on exhibition, as it were, for years, known to all about. The blend here and there is recognized; individuals are often remarkable for peculiarities or defects of moral and physical construction, and heredity is strong. The simplicity of surrounding life supplies an impressive background for the elemental passions which reveal themselves in primitive or aboriginal force. Absence of standards, absence of amusements, the lack of contrast, these are a few of the causes that contribute towards the self-centred existence led by most inhabitants of rural communities. To prove this, one has but to think of a cripple, or a dwarf, or a drunken man, or a maniac; also, to revert to pleasanter images, of an unusual flower or animal, or of convincing and conspicuous personal beauty. What is a cripple in the city? He is passed by without a glance, for there are, alas! many like him. What is a dwarf? He only suggests the unnatural or unpleasant; the last circus or a fairy-book. What is a drunken man in a city? Or what a poor maniac? Officers of the police, and places of correction, physicians and nurses are at hand; the suffering and the evildoer are taken away and we know them no more.
But if we change a little part of speech and write the cripple, and proceed to think of the cripple in a village, or the dwarf, or the drunken man or the maniac, we instantly perceive how their presence must greatly colour the limited society in which they exist; how they must either amuse or disgust, arouse sympathy or create fear, as the case may be, and although a calla lily and a red-blooming cactus, a parrot or Persian kitten, are scarcely regarded as curiosities or rarities in the city, they may easily come to be regarded as such in the village.
From uninteresting and unimpersonal generalizations and aggregations such as dwarfs, cripples, lunatics, cats and parrots, we turn to the individuals of the species and behold—it is now The Cripple, The Dwarf, The Maniac, and so on, and how profoundly important the appearance and conduct, habits and dwellings of these—our companions—immediately become. We cannot get away from them, nor they from us. And the beautiful young girl! She is often safer in the city, where a kind of dove-like wisdom soon informs and protects, than in the lonely and silent places of the wilderness. The beauty that was fatally conspicuous in the village finds its rival and its level in the town.
Ringfield had certainly had his full share of ministering to the decadent and the unhappy at St. Ignace, and he was therefore very pleased one day to be called on by the Rev. Mr. Abercorn, incumbent of St Basil's at Hawthorne, the latter a small settlement, about nine miles distant, in which the English element predominated. Once a year the congregation of St. Basil's gave a picnic tea, when members of surrounding denominations met tranquilly on common ground and neutral territory. Macaulay's description of the peculiar position of the Church of England is nowhere truer than in some isolated districts like these Lower Canadian hamlets. She does, indeed, occupy a happy middle place between the unadorned wooden temples with whitewashed windows of the sects, and the large, aggressive stone churches of the Romish faith. Were her clergy as alive to the situation and the peculiar wants of thepeuple gentil-hommeas they ought to be, one would meet with greater numbers of adherents to the Episcopal ritual.
Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn were fully in sympathy with the countryside, and acted themselves as runners and scouts in connexion with the picnic tea, the lady seconding her husband in the most able and sagacious manner, the latter bringing to his duties all those charms of culture and presence which ministers of the Episcopal Church so often possess, even when not too richly dowered with profound theological learning or magnetic gifts of oratory. Moral and social wisdom, tact and experience of the world, often atone for intellectual shortcomings, especially in rural districts, and Ringfield was compelled to admit that he was not the only worker in the neighbourhood capable of understanding the wants of the people. Mr. Abercorn was about fifty, but as enthusiastic and energetic as a much younger man.
"I knew something of French life and character before I came out here. My wife is a native of Jersey. Our severe climate with its long, rigorous winter and short but hot summer has helped to form the national character; also the scenery. I mean that the beauty of the place, of all these fine but lonely, austere rivers and forests creates a melancholy, reflective tendency, and this makes it difficult in the matter of recreation, which last is what so many of our people require, particularly the French. I would have amusements going all the time if I could afford it, but that, of course, is not feasible; thejoie de vivreis only to be arrived at modestly, and in our small way we try to make our picnic tea a success. We hope you will come over and join us on that occasion. We shall be having it later than usual this year, one reason for this being the fact that such serious illness exists in your own parish. I refer to Mr. Henry Clairville. It would not do to have much visiting between the parishes. And how is he getting on, for I suppose you hear all about him from time to time."
Ringfield, as it happened, knew very little of what was transpiring at the Manor House, but remarked that the worst was over, that the wife of Poussette was still absent from her home, and that Miss Clairville had not returned to her vocation.
"Ah," ejaculated Mr. Abercorn thoughtfully, "a peculiar family, a peculiar family indeed; but they are very fortunate in having you here. Oh, yes, I am not in the least bigoted, you know,—can't afford to be down here,—and I only hope you'll stay and make a great success of the new church. If everything goes well, we'll hold our picnic on the 1st of November, sort of Harvest Festival and Thanksgiving all in one, and either I or Mrs. Abercorn will drive over for you, as I suppose you will not be setting up a horse just yet."
On the day appointed Ringfield was sitting dully enough in his room over the carpenter's shop. Pauline was lingering on at Poussette's, partly because she had no other place to go, and partly because Ringfield was near. Their relations had not outwardly progressed since the evening on her balcony; several other meetings had taken place, but once assured that she was free, Ringfield settled to his work, preferring to put the whole episode from him for a while, until he could feel satisfied that she might be approached on the subject of the theatre. Thus their feelings were like Tennyson's wood, all in a mist of green with nothing perfect; meanwhile only a couple of planks separated them at this very instant, and, as usual, his thoughts were hovering about her at this hour, about half-past one o'clock, when he heard his name called by a younger member of the Gagnon family (a numerous one of five boys and four little girls), and descended to meet Mrs. Abercorn. This lady was taking the opportunity, in her rôle of auxiliary parson and general parochial assistant, of putting in a good word for Hawthorne and St. Basil's as she sat in her buggy at the door, surrounded by Poussette, Martin, and eight or ten children.
An intractable little mare pawed and shuffled in an uncertain frame of mind, apparently viewing with special disfavour the fiddling of Antoine Archambault, who had been hanging around the village ever since Pauline's return. Glancing consciously up, Ringfield thought he perceived a white hand and gleaming bracelet at the window of his old room.
"We have a rough drive before us, with a bad four miles in one place," said Mrs. Abercorn, "so we'll get away at once. You haven't been over to Hawthorne yet, Mr. Ringfield, how is that? But never mind, you'll be one of us after this afternoon at any rate. Do you play croquet?"
Looking rather astonished, Ringfield said "No," and the emphasis led Mrs. Abercorn to smile as she observed him more closely. She herself was one of those people of good birth who instinctively ask, no matter where they are placed, of everybody they meet, "Is she alady?" "Is he agentleman?" but who, in spite of this inherent and clannish trait, manage to make friends with the mammon of No-Family. She was literally as broad as she was high; short hair, turning grey, was fantastically curled about her clever, dark eyes; she had two hats, one for summer and one for winter, the latter a man's old seal cap; her skirts and jackets were skimp and dowdy, and her features and complexion unattractive, yet the authority and ease, the whole manner of the true lady made her a delightful companion, and she would have been equally diverting and diverted at a Royal Audience in Buckingham Palace or at a bean-feast on an Indian reserve. She displayed ornaments that were not precisely jewels, the value of which was of genealogical order; thus, she wore her grandfather's fobs and seals, her mother's bracelets of bog-oak and lava, and her brooch contained the hair of her only child, long deceased. She had had one dinner-dress for ten years of black "uncrushable grenadine," cut square, and it was quite true that she was the niece of an earl and the daughter of an admiral, and that she had eloped with the Rev. Marcus Abercorn eighteen years ago.
Ringfield had never met any one like her before, but in spite of her accent, so extremely English that in the Canadian country it was almost certain to be dubbed "affected," and in spite of a bright worldliness he found unusual in a clergyman's wife, he liked her very much and watched her manipulation of the mare—Flora Macdonald—with great interest, and not a little apprehension.
The bad four miles turned out to consist of alternate patches of ancient corduroy road, the logs exposed for a foot or so above the soil, and a long hogs-back of dyke-veined limestone, the ridges of spar and quartz cutting deep into the rock.
Mrs. Abercorn sighed eloquently for the lanes of Old England as the mare pranced, and the buggy flew over the various obstructions, bumping and swinging in a reckless manner Ringfield had never seen equalled.
"We are a little late," said his aristocratic charioteer, her hat crooked and her mouth quite as vicious as Flora's when touched up with a ragged whip, "but we'll be in time for a game of croquet before tea. We have the tea at five, because it's beginning to darken so early, and then we have a nice little show in the school-house: Marcus and I both believe in amusing the people. So you see it's not exactly a picnic, but quite a lot of things put together. You'll see presently."
And he did. Father and mother of their people, Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn had instituted a remarkable series of "events," as they say on regatta programmes—nautical, terpsichorean, athletic, musical and histrionic—grouped under the head of "games" and the large and delighted crowd drawn from several parishes rewarded their cheerful and untiring efforts. The Rector was not only all things to all men but to many women and numerous children as well, and Ringfield noted that, unlike the West, the men assembled were nearly all old men; there was a marked scarcity of boys and youths, and these old men appeared to be many years older than they had any right to appear. Many of them possessed but a couple of sound teeth apiece, others had retained the lower set more or less horribly intact, while a single tusk adorned the upper gum. Absence of regular visits to the dentist, or indeed of any visits at all, had wrought this ruin in faces also wrinkled and weather-beaten by exposure to the strenuous climate. The women showed to better advantage than the men, and the French were more prepossessing and better preserved than the English, especially in the matter of teeth, owing probably to a steady diet of onions and comparative lack of meat.
Diversity among the ladies included the fat, motherly looking ones, several of whom were spinsters; the young, too-smartly dressed daughters of farmers, possessing very little beauty, but of good height and figure; one person clothed entirely in black silk and very conscious of a new kind of watch, of gold and colours and small, pinned to her left bosom; and last, a couple of conventional Englishwomen staying at the Rectory.
It was natural that Mrs. Abercorn should desire to present to her friends and a few of the "quality" so good-looking a young man as Ringfield, and as soon as the buggy had been tied up under a grove of maples, he was led about by the energetic queen of the feast, whose attire, weird enough while driving, had now culminated in a highly rational although unusual aspect. Everything upon her partook of an unpleasing and surely unnecessary brevity; thus her figure was too short for her breadth, and her skirts too short for her figure; her jacket was too short over her hips, and her gloves too short over her wrists; her hair was too short on her neck and her veil too short over her nose. Yet the rakish hat settled, and the fobs and seals shaken out, she appeared mentally fresh and charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, and he was happy in experiencing for the first time in his life that amiable naturalness, inimitable airiness, ease and adaptability, which characterize the Anglican clergy and their method of doing things. Attenuated tennis, Lilliputian Badminton, swings, a greased pole, potato and sack races, fiddling, and dancing on a platform, for the French, all these he passed in review with Mrs. Abercorn and the English ladies, presently participating in a merry game of croquet on a rocky, uneven, impossible kind of ground. The Rev. Marcus, and the person in black silk joined in this game of croquet, the latter so exclusive that it gave Ringfield the feeling that people must have when they are chosen for aquadrille d'honneur.
Without relief or intermission the amusements held sway till about half-past four, when even the quality tired of their croquet; the day, though bright, was cold, and a bonfire on the rocks was greatly patronized by the very old and very young, while distant preparations for tea were viewed, at first with stealthy, half-reluctant admiration, and then with open restlessness. The patriarchs—toothless and wrinkled, yet not a man of them over fifty-eight—stood around in expectant silent clusters, and also in their best clothes, of which a great deal of faded red neck-tie and pepper and salt trousers seemed chiefly to strike the eye.
The tea was to be served in the large barn adjoining the church, surrounded on two sides by tall plantations of Indian corn, a rough kind known as horse corn, and not used at table. Very soon those engaged in the games fell away by twos and threes, and the rector and his wife gaily beating the covers afforded by forest and grove, all gradually converged to the meeting point outside the big doors of the barn, through which were now passing the wives and daughters of the plough, bearing coarse bedroom jugs of tea and coffee, plates of cakes, pies, and sandwiches. The people waiting thus in patient content at the doors were orderly and sober, and none ventured to enter till their rector, having unearthed even the remotest and shyest member of his flock, advanced in florid hurry and taking his wife and Ringfield with him, passed under the hanging branches of maize, asparagus, fern and crabapples which decorated the great door. The floor of the barn, although partially cleared, was still half full of straw, and flecks of it flew through the air as the people trooped in, decently awed but amused too, for the ripple of lowered laughter and pleased hum of voices resounded throughout the building. The walls, draped with flags and coloured curtains, held sheaves of grasses and several lamps in brackets at the sides, and the food, good, plain, with plenty of it, adorned the two long tables that ran down the middle. Ringfield, at the head of a table, was comparing the scene with some Harvest Homes of his youth, and wondering who would start the Doxology, when he heard the rector say, standing a long way off at the end of the other table:—
"We have the Rev. Mr. Ringfield of St. Ignace with us this afternoon, and I have no doubt that he is already as anxious as the rest of you for a share of the good things we see here before us, so I am going to ask him to say—ah—Grace, then we can fall to. Mr. Ringfield, will you be kind enough to ask the blessing?"
There was a pause, not because Ringfield was unready on these occasions nor because of any fear lest his special kind of intercessory gastronomic prayer might fail to carry conviction with it, but on account of the intrusion of two belated arrivals down by the door. He could not distinguish very clearly, but there seemed to be some one either invalided or very young in a basket-chair, wheeled in by a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three, who entering brusquely, on a run, and laughing, was silenced, and the chair and its occupant pushed back against the wall. This slight but untimely interruption over, Ringfield gazed solemnly around—it was already growing a little dim in the barn—and spoke as follows, with head thrown back, and closed eyes:—
"O Lord, the giver of all good things, who sendest seed-time and harvest, rain and sun on the fruits of the earth and crownest the year with fatness, look down on us at this time and bless us." At this point the Anglicans present sat down under the impression that the "grace" was over. They rose again in confusion as Ringfield continued:—
"We thank Thee for these, Thy temporal blessings vouchsafed unto us as a people. We have Thy pledge in the book of Thy Holy Word, that while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not fail. We thank Thee for the fields white with harvest. We thank Thee for our great and beautiful country; for its beneficent laws, its opportunities, its great and unequalled privileges, and we pray for our rulers, for all in authority, for all engaged in the ministry of whatever denomination, for the Queen and the Royal Family. We pray for him whose duty it is to go in and out before this assembly; grant him wisdom and spiritual strength; bless also the partner of his life work, and may their united labours prevail and resound to Thy glory and the honour of Thy name, and while we remember at this time to thank Thee with full hearts for these temporal gifts, let us be swift to remember also Thy choicer, greater, holier gift of Free Salvation; Mercy, Pardon, Peace, and glorious relief from sin and its thraldom—these may be ours for the asking. O Lord, if any sinner lurk among us, if any poor sinner be at this board to-night, search him, O Lord, and purge his mortal body, try it with Thy true refiner's fire. As our snows are pure, so let us be pure. As our waters are deep yet clear, let our minds be clear of evil, and rid of all offence; and for all who by reason of sin, or pain, or sickness, or any other infirmity either of body or of mind cannot be with us at this time, we pray that Thou wilt comfort, uplift, forgive and relieve them. All—for Christ's sake—Amen."
"Like a sheep enthralled'Mid thorns and brambles."
On the conclusion of this address, which was Ringfield's idea of a "grace" and which was modelled on the Methodist formula customary on such occasions, the people, whose appetites had been held over-long in check, took their seats with expressions of relief and in some cases with audible grunts and whispers of annoyance. The truth was, Ringfield had exhibited a want of tact in expatiating in an eloquent prayer on things better left alone, from the village point of view. It was bad enough to occupy so much time when already it was darkening and soon the lamps would have to be lighted; it was bad enough to pray in public for the rector and his wife; it was entirely inexcusable to hint at the presence of a sinner in their midst, at the very board now covered with the home-made dainties cooked and sent in by the ladies of Hawthorne. In itself perhaps the prayer, though trite and redundant (Ringfield was not in his best vein, no longer single-minded), was eloquent and pointed, and the reference to the snows and rivers of the country extremely poetic and suggestive, yet it was not in accordance with the best taste, although prompted by the best feeling. The rector and his wife, ignoring their own sentiments, made haste to smooth away the little difficulty that had thus unexpectedly arisen, and in a few minutes all was in a pleasant clatter and babble with the pouring of tea, cutting of huge three-decker cakes, and passing of large, solid plates holding pyramids of equally large and solid sandwiches. Ringfield, devoting himself to the English visitors and the person in black silk, who was the widow of a deceased lumber king correctly reputed to have left an enormous fortune, was by the nature of things the last to perceive that he had wounded the delicate sensibilities of the company, and therefore he made a good meal, unconscious of the comments lower down his table and also around the rector.
"It's always the way with them Methodists," said one speaker in a careful undertone, a venerable body of fifty or so, with four teeth left in his head, bent, bald and wrinkled. "They pride themselves on what they call 'extem-pore' speaking." He gave the word only three syllables of course. "Why, it's mostly out of the Prayer Book anyway! He said 'any other infirmity,' did you notice? And we say, 'any other adversity,' don't we? Well, where's the difference?"
"The tairms are not precisely in the nature of synonyms," remarked the schoolmaster, a Scotchman of sandy and freckled appearance, who was cutting a sandwich into small pieces with his penknife and then frugally conveying them to his mouth with the aid of the same useful implement. "But in a sairtain sense ye cancallthem synonyms."
"It's out of course and all irregular like to pray for the Queen and the Royal Family on a day like this. 'Twould be best keep that for Sundays where it belongs," said the wife of the ancient who had spoken first.
"What can ye expect, ma'am, when they come to it without their notes? Stands to reason, if any man's going to preach earnest,earnest, mind you, he'll require some notes or heads jotted down, clear and easy to be got at, before him." This was the opinion of another elderly man, but of a fat and comfortable if blustering variety, who had come out from the English provinces thirty years before as cook with a regiment, and was now the Hawthorne butcher and general store-keeper, also accounted a rich man.
"But that's not the point," he went on with husky and stertorous fervour. "The point is not whether what he said was well said or ill said; the point is, he should never have spoke them words at all. Point? To almost point the finger at us sitting around this hospitable board declaring we were all sinners! So we are, all of us. The Litany says so, don't it? Don't it say, 'miserable sinners'?"
"It does, it does," murmured a sympathetic female engaged in feeding two out of eleven kinds of cake to a child on her lap.
"And the rector leaves it there, where it ought to be left. In my opinion, ma'am, it don't do no good to pray nor preach too direct. It's casting a stone, that's what it is, it's casting a stone."
"Perhaps he was nervous, poor young man, at seeing so many people," said the young mother of the child who was crumbling the cake all over its mouth and fingers and dress without swallowing any, having previously been regaled with maple sugar and molasses candy outside, and consequently not feeling very hungry. "Perhaps he has heard about Angeel."
The latter was the common pronunciation of Angele, the name of the little girl in the basket-chair who was engaged like the rest in eating and drinking in company with her nurse not far from Mr. Abercorn.
At the word "Angeel" several warning coughs around her, winks, nudges and a kick under the table, made the young woman so flurried that she slapped the child for not eating properly, and the child immediately beginning to cry, a diversion was created, but not before Ringfield had overheard a few remarks touching his recent prayer, not exactly flattering to his self-esteem. Soon the conversation lapsed as the piles of cake, custard and pumpkin pies and jugs of tea were depleted; and Mr. Abercorn, upon whom the quiet and gathering gloom had a depressing effect, jumped up and asked for volunteers to assist in lighting the lamps.
"We usually get through without artificial aid to our eyes and our mouths, but that is when the picnic tea is held in October. We are at least a fortnight late this year. We shall want the tall men for this—Jacobs, Enderby, Anselme—you take these three lamps on the other side while I find somebody to help me with mine."
"On the score of height, at least," said Ringfield pleasantly, leaving his seat and striding down the centre of the barn, "I can offer my services. Which are the ones to be lighted? These two and the one just over our heads?"
"Very good of you, I'm sure," responded the rector briefly. "They are quite steady on their brackets, I suppose, men? Now shut those doors; we don't want any draught. Be careful with the matches, everybody!"
The others had got to work first, and along their side of the wall, Anselme, Jacobs, and Enderby, the butcher, slowly lit their three lamps, when, Ringfield, busy over a refractory wick and just in the act of applying a match, in turning his head, saw directly beneath him the basket-chair and its occupant as well as the young woman in charge of it.
The shock of perceiving what was in reality more of a Thing than a person, being an unfortunate child of about nine years of age, otherwise well formed, but with a weak and hanging head enlarged very much beyond its normal size and yet with a pair of shrewd eyes and a smiling mouth, told upon his nerves. He started, leant too heavily on the bracket, and in a second the lighted lamp, as yet without a chimney, fell on the floor.
In another second the straw and decorations were all in a blaze, the barn full of smoke and commotion; and he was conscious only of himself and the rector wildly stamping, grovelling, and pushing with might and main for what seemed hours of fear and suspense. The men tore the great doors open; there were, happily, no corridors to tread, no stairs to descend; the women and children first, and then their husbands and fathers, rushed out, mostly uninjured, into the cool twilight air, and when Ringfield came to himself he found that in some way he too was outside the barn, holding on to the basket-chair, nearly hysterical from the fright he had sustained, but still endeavouring to calm the dreadful child and its nurse, both of whom were shrieking wildly.
"Angeel! Angeel!" cried the girl, and then in French: "Oh, what would they say to me if anything happened to you! It doesn't matter about me, only you, Angeel, only you!"
Ringfield looked around, dazed. The comfort, jollity, and abandon of the picnic tea were things of the past. The barn had been saved and the fire was out, but the groups of excited, tearful women and coatless, dishevelled men, the rector with one hand badly burnt, Mrs. Abercorn loudly deploring the loss of her hat and an antique bracelet—all was forlorn, changed, miserable! And all this was his fault, his doing, the result of his carelessness! He could scarcely frame the words with which to deeply lament the unfortunate accident, but his very genuine contrition softened the rector's heart even while he felt some resentment at the sudden fatality which had spoiled the day and in his own case was destined to leave a very unpleasant remembrance.
"The question is," said Mr. Abercorn, talking to Enderby and the schoolmaster, "whether we are to go on with the rest of the programme. I'm the only one, happy to say, at all injured, and already the pain is better. Plunge in, men, and get out all the burnt stuff and tidy the tables. It might have been worse; thank God, none were hurt! And we mustn't let Mr. Ringfield feel badly about it. The bracket was weak, I'm sure it was weak, and he's a stranger among us. What are you saying, Enderby? A judgment on him? Nonsense. I thought you had more sense. Ask him to remain for the evening and everything shall go on as we intended to have it."
But Ringfield did not care to stay. Everything was against him; for the first time in his life he felt himself a failure,—in the way. How had he come to be so careless? Well he knew, for the face of the dreadful child, in spite of its deformity, evinced a strong, strong, insistent resemblance to a face he knew. The dark hair and eyes, the shape of the forehead, the way the hair grew on the forehead—where had he seen it all reproduced not so very long ago? Miss Clairville's expression, colouring, and animated play of gesture lived again in this mysterious child.
About seven o'clock, just as Mrs. Abercorn's "nice little show" was beginning, he took his way home. The path lay along the darkest road he had ever seen; there was neither moon nor stars, and the blackness of a country road bordered by dense forests can only be understood by those who have travelled at such a time, and for the nine miles that he plodded stupidly along—for he declined to wait to be driven—given up to sombre and sinister thoughts, he was a most unhappy man.
"Yet is the creature rational—endowedWith foresight, hears too, every Sabbath day,The Christian promise with attentive ear,Nor disbelieves the tidings which he hears, …"
About a week later, Ringfield was descending the hilly road behind Poussette's at four o'clock in the afternoon, when he discerned a new arrival at the wharf, and as the tourist season was over, the boat only making a few occasional trips, he was curious concerning the lady who, showily if neither correctly nor expensively attired, was looking about her in disappointment and consternation. Poussette himself hurried out in his character of host; his manner was more than usually warm and familiar as he took her bag and umbrella, and Ringfield soon learnt that she was Miss Sadie Cordova from Montreal, although originally from New York, a member of the Theatre of Novelties, who had come to pay Miss Clairville a visit. This new acquisition to St. Ignace society was more consistently lively than Pauline, not being troubled with moods, and she brightened the place up very considerably in various directions; she did not share Pauline's room, for Poussette gallantly led her to the apartment vacated by Mme. Poussette, but the two friends were constantly together, and Ringfield at first rejoiced in the advent of the gay Cordova, as it intimated a sensible enjoyment of life on Pauline's part in place of moping and brooding, and as it also appeared to keep Edmund Crabbe off the premises. But these two good ends were gained at the expense of a third, for the constant and animated, even tender attentions of the host were altogether too obvious, although at first no complaint could be made, since so much feminine society served to keep Poussette also steady and sober. Still, card-playing in the mornings, noisy operatic music in the afternoons (there was no piano, only an old American organ, in the house) and coquettish scufflings, dancing, and conscious gigglingtête-à-têtesin the hall every long, lamp-lit evening soon became wearisome, and Ringfield, made vaguely uneasy, took on himself to reprove Poussette.
The place was the bar—always the most attractive spot in the house, for the Indian guide, a sober, worthy man, kept it absolutely clean and tidy, and there were comfortablehabitantchairs and a wide hearth for logs. These were burning brightly now, as the first November snows were falling, and while Ringfield expostulated with Poussette, the latter spread out his fat hands to the blaze. Upon the little finger of the left hand sat a square seal ring of pale cornelian, and as Ringfield looked he clearly saw the capital letter "C" picked out in red upon the white. New and hateful pangs, suspicions, jealousies, assailed him; he was sure that this must be Pauline's ring, although he had never noticed her wearing it, and the thoughts thereby engendered did not tend to make him listen calmly to Poussette's line of defence. So far from being offended at the clerical interest in his affairs, the Frenchman was immensely flattered and encouraged to speak out.
"And are you quite sure," said Ringfield in conclusion, "are you perfectly certain that Miss Cordova knows you are a married man? In my opinion there is small harm in the lady! the poor, thoughtless creature is too much occupied with her silly clothes and music and trivial passing of the time to work lasting mischief, but I remember that she follows a godless calling—she is an actress and has been one longer than Miss Clairville. You must be careful. It is time Mme. Poussette was relieved from her charge and came home."
"But how—come home? Come at this place again? Bigosh—but that will not do, Mr. Ringfield—at all, sir! Beeg fuss, sure—my wife come at this place so soon after leave nurse Henry Clairville! Dr. Renaud will tell you that. No, sir,—Madame is come no more on me, on St. Ignace at all. When she leave me, go nurse seeck man down with the 'Pic,' she is no more for me.Voyez—m'sieu, I am tired of my wife. I shall try get a divorce."
Ringfield was astounded. "You, Poussette! A divorce! From that poor, unhappy woman who has done you no harm, and will have nothing to live upon? How can you do such a thing? Why, you must not let your mind dwell on such a thing for an instant! I do not believe in divorce, or at least only in rare and exceptional cases, and yours is not one of these. You understand me—your wife may be delicate, even afflicted, but no man puts his wife away for these reasons. All the more you must cherish her, comfort her, keep her by you. If she grew worse you would be justified in putting her, as we say, under restraint, or in the care of those best fitted to look after her, but even then you would remain her husband. That is the unwritten law of our and of all true religion."
Poussette spat into the fire and considered. Father Rielle had told him this in almost the same words many times over; he had left the Catholic communion for that reason, and had hoped for better things from the young minister.
"Don't Methodists divorce?" said this nineteenth-century rural Henry the Eighth.
Ringfield moved uneasily in his chair. "They may—they can—they do—but as I have told you, the causes must be exceptional ones. Bitter tragedy—abhorrent false conduct, you understand me?"
The other nodded. "My wife—nothing like that the matter with her. All the contree, all the reever know Mme. Natalie Poussette—good woman, sure. No—but see now, m'sieu, now I am talking, and I tell you my trouble. I'm not so badgarçon, you know; kind of fond of drink now and then—I 'pologize, 'pologize, m'sieu, for you see me a leetle bit dhrunk. Now—understand. I'm by nature a most loving kind of man, and I'm fond of leetle children. Yes, sir, bigosh,excuseza leetle bit of swear—but that is my nature, that is me, and I would like, sir, some leetle babee of my own. I make quite a bit of monee, m'sieu, with the 'otel and the mill, and a leetle bet and a leetle horses.Bien—what you say? Very well. What must I do with this monee—while I live, and if I die? 'Give it to the Church,' Father Rielle, he say. 'No, sir,' I say!"
And Poussette jammed a couple of smouldering logs with his heel; they instantly knit together and sent out a big crackling shower of sparks that caused both men to retire their chairs farther from the hearth.
A suspicion crossed Ringfield's mind. "Did you send your wife to nurseHenry Clairville or did she go of her own accord?"
"Certainement—my wife go herself. Dr. Renaud—come for her. She will not take the 'pic'. She will take nothing. She will nevaire die, that woman!"
The remark was saved from being distasteful to the listener by the fact that it was given with a melancholy despairing gesture, which to a less serious person than Ringfield might have been amusing. But his sense of humour, originally meagre, was not developing at St. Ignace as fast as it might, and he saw nothing humorous in this view of madame's immunity from disease. Before he could frame a reply, Poussette went on:—
"So you see, I like you, Mr. Ringfield, and I'm going to pay you good monee, and I believe you—good Christian man, and I want you to help me get a divorce. Mme. Poussette (you can say like this to the Government)—Mme. Natalie Poussette, poor woman—she is so delicate, so fonny, so—so ill, she cannot have any leetle babee; no leetle children play round their fader—that's me, Amable Poussette, beeg man, rich man, good Methodist, built a fine church on top of the Fall. So this Mister Poussette after many years live with his wife, after long time he wants to marry another woman and have plenty small babee, play round in the summertime (here Poussette hushed his voice) under the beeg trees, and in the water, learn to swim in the reever, splash like old duck, old feesh! Many a time I feel like go on the dhrunk. Well sir, nice, bright, young wife, sing, act, dance—we'd have beeg tam together, and I'd dhrink nothing but tea, sure! Go to Morréall, buytiquetteon the theatre, ride on the street car, make transfer to Hochelaga Park, get out, have nice glass beer—just one, m'sieu—go on theboutiques, buy nice bonnett, eh? I have monee to do like that, but [with the national shrug] I have no wife. I am tole there is everything very fonny there all year round, but me—I have only been there two, three tam; no good go alone, meet bad company, get on the dhrunk then, sure. Bigosh—excusez, Mr. Ringfield, there's nothing like young, handsome wife and plenty babee keep their father straight. Eh? So I tell you what I want to do. I will be for selling this place; get three thousand dollar for it; go to Morréall every winter; perhaps go on that Hotel Champlain or some other nicemaison pensionand have big tam—what do you say? That's no bad thing—" Poussette was very earnest here—"for me—to wish young wife, clever wife, and leetle babee play round! Before I have the hairs gray, or lose what I have.Regardez un peu, m'sieu!"
And Ringfield could not refuse to examine the fine head of black hair thrust towards him. He was touched in spite of clerical scruples.
"No, no, certainly not a bad thing," he said gently, "not at all an unnatural thing. I think I understand, Poussette, I can see——" and Ringfield seemed to feel something in his throat, at any rate he coughed and hesitated. "I can see that your position has its difficulties and its—its trials. But, Poussette, we all have those. We all have to deny ourselves in some way, in some unexpected quarter. We cannot always have what we want, that is, in fact, at the root of all religious feeling, and, if I am not mistaken, at the root of all religious belief as well. If the great Creator of the universe has had to suffer and deny Himself, as we know, in the past, has He not still to suffer as He looks on at the wickedness and sinful passions of the sons of men? The universe is not absolutely happy, perfect—would that it were! And so this law of suffering runs through everything and assails everybody. None can hope to escape. We—ministers of the Gospel—we do not question this; we recognize that it is so, and all we can do is to impress it upon you who listen to us. I have tried to do this; I have preached upon this—that to each individual man, woman and child, there comes—there must and will come a time, when material success, health, wealth and happiness are non-important, and when moral issues, when duty, character and conduct are the great essential facts of life to be met and grappled with. You—Poussette—have been no exception to this rule in the past—you know the habit of life to which I refer—and now here is this new trial, this new difficulty about your wife. Even were I able to do anything for you—because it is a lawyer, a notary you require, not a minister—I could have nothing to do with your marrying again. That—I must tell you plainly—is out of the question. It is not good for man—some men—to live alone; my Church, my Bible tell me this, and may be I am learning to know it from experience of such cases as yours; but once married, and married to one in whom there is no fault, you must not seek to lightly undo what God and the sacraments of the Church in which you were united have wrought. I fear, Poussette, that in leaving Father Rielle and coming to me, you were not acting honestly, openly."
Poussette, in admiration of his hero's beautiful pastoral diction, felt no resentment and exhibited no temper. "No fault!" he exclaimed. "Ah, but there—that is not so, Mr. Ringfield. Look, sir, look now, there is fault enough—beeg fault—what I have said. That is enough, and I have plenty monee to make it more than enough."
"Money—money!" Ringfield exclaimed in his turn, "The root of many kinds of evil. How much money have you, my friend? You are accounted rich, as it goes in St. Ignace, at Bois Clair, in Hawthorne, but in Quebec, in Three Rivers, in Montreal—no! You would soon find the difference. The rich man of the country might easily become the poor man of the town; living is expensive there—you might find your business here—I mean the mill—not pay so well with you absent; in short, Poussette, you would be foolish to change your way of life! It is not worth your while to leave St. Ignace, but I know who ought to go, to be sent to the right about pretty quickly too, and that is—this man, Edmund Crabbe. What do you think of helping me to get him away? He's a public nuisance in spite of his education, and we should all do better without him."
Ringfield was always torn by painful, shameful jealousy when he thought of the Englishman, and his entire nature appeared to change. He could not have called him "Hawtree" or "Mr." for his life; that savoured of gentility and the fervid past when the man was perhaps a picturesque figure, quoting the English classics in the guise of an unfortunate exile. Besides, if he fathomed Poussette's feelings correctly, the latter in his own jealousy of Crabbe might be found a powerful ally. The plain truth was—three men wanted the same woman; and vaguely, it seemed to Ringfield as if he—the worthiest—had chief right to her; he feared not Poussette, the married and the marred, the uneducated, the inferior one of her own race, but he still feared the perversely cultured, doubtlessly gifted, decadent "Oxford man," the social superior of every one in the village.
Poussette again reflected. Any latent jealousy he had entertained of the minister tended to disappear under the fire of these inquisitorial interviews, and Ringfield might always be credited with having fine command over his features.
"Ah, well, m'sieu," said the Frenchman, sagaciously nodding, "Crabbe is no harm. You get me my divorce; let me marry Ma'amselle Pauline, live with her at the beeg house, and I'll promise—parole d'honneur, m'sieu—to see no more that man."
"The Manor House! It will be a long time before any one can live there, I should think!" said Ringfield impatiently, concealing the spasm of tortured pride that passed over him as he heard Poussette's tactics defined. "And what if she will not marry you? Mlle. Clairville is wedded to the theatre, she tells me, and although of that I cannot approve, it would not be so bad as marrying a divorced person."
"But we are great friends, sir! Many a tam I have kept that house, many, many months, m'sieu, supply well with food—the meat and the dhrink, the chickenne and the wine. Her brother isfou—mad, he has not one cent monee. How then shall mademoiselle fare? I am good tenant of her brother, the Sieur, Seigneur of St. Ignace, and I send my peep there with good things to eat; he will tell you, sir, of the old tam and all about thecorvéewhen every one in theparoissedo same thing; one man feesh, another man beeg chickenne or turkey, another patackes, another flour from the mill. Why, sir, if it was not that I, Amable Poussette, was good friend there, I don't know, I don'tknow, m'sieu, how they get along 'tall! Those Archambault—all bad peep—all bad together; the old woman, the old man, the girl, the boy—all the same, sure."
"Who pays them?—You?"
"No, m'sieu; do better things with my monee."
"But they don't believe in thecorvée, surely?"
"It is like this." And Poussette tapped the other's knee with his fat fingers, thereby displaying the cornelian ring to much advantage, and Ringfield saw with satisfaction that on top of the large "C" was cut a little "S". Had the relations between Poussette and Miss Cordova so quickly progressed and of what nature were they? The eye of the Frenchman gave a comprehensive wink. "It is all right, Mr. Ringfield, all right, sir, Mees Cordova—she put the ring on my finger herself; she was just fooling last night and I like to be good friends with her; then she speak for me to Mees Clairville, and so—vous comprenez, sir. But no—I pay no money to these Archambault. It is like this. There have been Clairville many years at St. Ignace; there have also been Archambault too a long tam. They say once one was married with another, but I do not know; I would not ask M'sieu Clairville, and I would not ask Ma'amselle Pauline. This is a long tam ago, I only speak of what I hear. I know this, m'sieu—it is not a nice place, not a nice life for a lady like Mees Clairville. Have you not seen her on the theatre? You would like to see her at that?"
"No, decidedly not. I have never seen a play. I do not approve of the life she leads, and trust that when her brother is better she will not return to her vocation."
"But how—she must make some leetle monee of her own, and it is for why she goes on the theatre. I have seen her act and sing."
"Can she sing?"
"Ah, you shall hear. She will sing for me, m'sieu, and bigosh—excusez, Mr. Ringfield—I'll get her sing to-night. And if I do that, will you, sir, do one great thing for me?"
Ringfield smiled. "I won't promise, Poussette. You're a deeper character than I thought you were. At any rate, I'll do nothing about a divorce—make sure of that, man!"
Poussette, with large, noble gestures, waved the divorce away.
"I say nothing. I will do nothing. But if you will be so kind, sir, as to speak of me to Mees Clairville, should my wife, Mme. Natalie—die! Tell her, sir, how I am good man,au fond, sir, by my nature; how I love the leetle babee, plenty small babee; how I am kind, jolly man, by my nature, sir; how I would like to marry with her, give her good tam. You tell her this, Mr. Ringfield, for me, and make me your best friend, sure?"
Half-laughing, half-shocked, and for the moment forgetting his own views and dreams concerning her, Ringfield acceded to the unusual request.
"And remember, m'sieu—tell her I go no more on the dhrunk after I marry with her—no, sir, go no more 'tall. If we live in Morréall, tell her I'll go no more on that Hotel Champlain neither; a friend of mine, Napoleon Legendre, he has a temperance 'otel in Craig Street; I go there, sir, and never touch even one glass of beer. Tell her that. And tell her I am for selling this place, and p'raps buy Clairville Château. Tell her——"
"Enough, enough, my good Poussette!" cried Ringfield, jumping up as he heard feminine voices nearing their retreat. "Your virtuous resolutions do you credit, and may you be enabled to perform and carry them through—if not to the letter at least in the spirit."
"And you don't think mebad, lowkind ofgarçon, eh?"
"I do not, indeed."
"Say"—and Poussette's hand instinctively moved towards the counter—"you will dhrink a leetle glass beer, just one, sir, on that with me?"