The day after Jean Jacques had got a new lease of life and become his own banker, he treated himself to one of those interludes of pleasure from which he had emerged in the past like a hermit from his cave. He sat on the hill above his lime-kilns, reading the little hand-book of philosophy which had played so big a part in his life. Whatever else had disturbed his mind and diverted him from his course, nothing had weaned him from this obsession. He still interlarded all his conversation with quotations from brilliant poseurs like Chateaubriand and Rochefoucauld, and from missionaries of thought like Hume and Hegel.
His real joy, however, was in withdrawing for what might be called a seance of meditation from the world’s business. Some men make celebration in wine, sport and adventure; but Jean Jacques made it in flooding his mind with streams of human thought which often tried to run uphill, which were frequently choked with weeds, but still were like the pool of Siloam to his vain mind. They bathed that vain mind in the illusion that it could see into the secret springs of experience.
So, on as bright a day as ever the New World offered, Jean Jacques sat reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols, wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. The sound of it was good in his ears. He mouthed it as greedily and happily as though he was not sitting on the edge of a volcano instead of the moss-grown limestone on a hill above his own manor.
“The course of events in the life of a man, whatever their gravity or levity, are only to be valued and measured by the value and measure of his own soul. Thus, what in its own intrinsic origin and material should in all outer reason be a tragedy, does not of itself shake the foundations or make a fissure in the superstructure. Again—”
Thus his oracle, but Jean Jacques’ voice suddenly died down, for, as he sat there, the face of a woman made a vivid call of recognition. He slowly awakened from his self-hypnotism, to hear a woman speaking to him; to see two dark eyes looking at him from under heavy black brows with bright, intent friendliness.
“They said at the Manor you had come this way, so I thought I’d not have my drive for nothing, and here I am. I wanted to say something to you, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques.”
It was the widow of Palass Poucette. She looked very fresh and friendly indeed, and she was the very acme of neatness. If she was not handsome, she certainly had a true and sweet comeliness of her own, due to the deep rose-colour of her cheeks, the ivory whiteness round the lustrous brown eyes, the regular shining teeth which showed so much when she smiled, and the look half laughing, half sentimental which dominated all.
Before she had finished speaking Jean Jacques was on his feet with his hat off. Somehow she seemed to be a part of that abstraction, that intoxication, in which he had just been drowning his accumulated anxieties. Not that Virginie Poucette was logical or philosophical, or a child of thought, for she was wholly the opposite-practical, sensuous, emotional, a child of nature and of Eve. But neither was Jean Jacques a real child of thought, though he made unconscious pretence of it. He also was a child of nature—and Adam. He thought he had the courage of his convictions, but it was only the courage of his emotions. His philosophy was but the bent or inclination of a mind with a capacity to feel things rather than to think them. He had feeling, the first essential of the philosopher, but there he stayed, an undeveloped chrysalis.
His look was abstracted still as he took the hand of the widow of Palass Poucette; but he spoke cheerfully. “It is a pleasure, madame, to welcome you among my friends,” he said.
He made a little flourish with the book which had so long been his bosom friend, and added: “But I hope you are in no trouble that you come to me—so many come to me in their troubles,” he continued with an air of satisfaction.
“Come to you—why, you have enough troubles of your own!” she made answer. “It’s because you have your own troubles that I’m here.”
“Why you are here,” he remarked vaguely.
There was something very direct and childlike in Virginie Poucette. She could not pretend; she wore her heart on her sleeve. She travelled a long distance in a little while.
“I’ve got no trouble myself,” she responded. “But, yes, I have,” she added. “I’ve got one trouble—it’s yours. It’s that you’ve been having hard times—the flour-mill, your cousin Auguste Charron, the lawsuits, and all the rest. They say at Vilray that you have all you can do to keep out of the Bankruptcy Court, and that—”
Jean Jacques started, flushed, and seemed about to get angry; but she put things right at once.
“People talk more than they know, but there’s always some fire where there’s smoke,” she hastened to explain. “Besides, your father-in-law babbles more than is good for him or for you. I thought at first that M. Dolores was a first-class kind of man, that he had had hard times too, and I let him come and see me; but I found him out, and that was the end of it, you may be sure. If you like him, I don’t want to say anything more, but I’m sure that he’s no real friend to you-or to anybody. If that man went to confession—but there, that’s not what I’ve come for. I’ve come to say to you that I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life as I do for you. I cried all night after your beautiful mill was burned down. You were coming to see me next day—you remember what you said in M. Fille’s office—but of course you couldn’t. Of course, there was no reason why you should come to see me really—I’ve ‘only got two hundred acres and the house. It’s a good house, though—Palass saw to that—and it’s insured; but still I know you’d have come just the same if I’d had only two acres. I know. There’s hosts of people you’ve been good to here, and they’re sorry for you; and I’m sorrier than any, for I’m alone, and you’re alone, too, except for the old Dolores, and he’s no good to either of us—mark my words, no good to you! I’m sorry for you, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques, and I’ve come to say that I’m ready to lend you two thousand dollars, if that’s any help. I could make it more if I had time; but sometimes money on the spot is worth a lot more than what’s just crawling to you—snailing along while you eat your heart out. Two thousand dollars is two thousand dollars—I know what it’s worth to me, though it mayn’t be much to you; but I didn’t earn it. It belonged to a first-class man, and he worked for it, and he died and left it to me. It’s not come easy, go easy with me. I like to feel I’ve got two thousand cash without having to mortgage for it. But it belonged to a number-one man, a man of brains—I’ve got no brains, only some sense—and I want another good man to use it and make the world easier for himself.”
It was a long speech, and she delivered it in little gasps of oratory which were brightened by her wonderfully kind smile and the heart—not to say sentiment—which showed in her face. The sentiment, however, did not prejudice Jean Jacques against her, for he was a sentimentalist himself. His feelings were very quick, and before she had spoken fifty words the underglow of his eyes was flooded by something which might have been mistaken for tears. It was, however, only the moisture of gratitude and the soul’s good feeling.
“Well there, well there,” he said when she had finished, “I’ve never had anything like this in my life before. It’s the biggest thing in the art of being a neighbour I’ve ever seen. You’ve only been in the parish three years, and yet you’ve shown me a confidence immense, inspiring! It is as the Greek philosopher said, ‘To conceive the human mind aright is the greatest gift from the gods.’ And to you, who never read a line of philosophy, without doubt, you have done the thing that is greatest. It says, ‘I teach neighbourliness and life’s exchange.’ Madame, your house ought to be called Neighbourhood House. It is the epitome of the spirit, it is the shrine of—”
He was working himself up to a point where he could forget all the things that trouble humanity, in the inebriation of an idealistic soul which had a casing of passion, but the passion of the mind and not of the body; for Jean Jacques had not a sensual drift in his organism. If there had been a sensual drift, probably Carmen would still have been the lady of his manor, and he would still have been a magnate and not a potential bankrupt; for in her way Carmen had been a kind of balance to his judgment in the business of life, in spite of her own material and (at the very last) sensual strain. It was a godsend to Jean Jacques to have such an inspiration as Virginie Poucette had given him. He could not in these days, somehow, get the fires of his soul lighted, as he was wont to do in the old times, and he loved talking—how he loved talking of great things! He was really going hard, galloping strong, when Virginie interrupted him, first by an exclamation, then, as insistently he repeated the words, “It is the epitome of the spirit, the shrine of—”
She put out a hand, interrupting him, and said: “Yes, yes, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques, that’s as good as Moliere, I s’pose, or the Archbishop at Quebec, but are you going to take it, the two thousand dollars? I made a long speech, I know, but that was to tell you why I come with the money”—she drew out a pocketbook—“with the order on my lawyer to hand the cash over to you. As a woman I had to explain to you, there being lots of ideas about what a woman should do and what she shouldn’t do; but there’s nothing at all for you to explain, and Mere Langlois and a lot of others would think I’m vain enough now without your compliments. I’m a neighbour if you like, and I offer you a loan. Will you take it—that’s all?”
He held out his hand in silence and took the paper from her. Putting his head a little on one side, he read it. At first he seemed hardly to get the formal language clear in his mind; however, or maybe his mind was still away in that abstraction into which he had whisked it when he began his reply to her fine offer; but he read it out aloud, first quickly, then very slowly, and he looked at the signature with a deeply meditative air.
“Virginie Poucette—that’s a good name,” he remarked; “and also good for two thousand dollars!” He paused to smile contentedly over his own joke. “And good for a great deal more than that too,” he added with a nod.
“Yes, ten times as much as that,” she responded quickly, her eyes fixed on his face. She scarcely knew herself what she was thinking when she said it; but most people who read this history will think she was hinting that her assets might be united with his, and so enable him to wipe out his liabilities and do a good deal more besides. Yet, how could that be, since Carmen Dolores was still his wife if she was alive; and also they both were Catholics, and Catholics did not recognize divorce!
Truth is, Virginie Poucette’s mind did not define her feelings at all clearly, or express exactly what she wanted. Her actions said one thing certainly; but if the question had been put to her, whether she was doing this thing because of a wish to take the place of Carmen Dolores in Jean Jacques’ life she would have said no at once. She had not come to that—yet. She was simply moved by a sentiment of pity for Jean Jacques, and as she had no child, or husband, or sister, or brother, or father, or mother, but only relatives who tried to impose upon her, she needed an objective for the emotions of her nature, for the overflow of her unused affection and her unsatisfied maternal spirit. Here, then, was the most obvious opportunity—a man in trouble who had not deserved the bitter bad luck which had come to him. Even old Mere Langlois in the market-place at Vilray had admitted that, and had said the same later on in Virginie’s home.
For an instant Jean Jacques was fascinated by the sudden prospect which opened out before him. If he asked her, this woman would probably loan him five thousand dollars—and she had mentioned nothing about security!
“What security do you want?” he asked in a husky voice.
“Security? I don’t understand about that,” she replied. “I’d not offer you the money if I didn’t think you were an honest man, and an honest man would pay me back. A dishonest man wouldn’t pay me back, security or no security.”
“He’d have to pay you back if the security was right to start with,” Jean Jacques insisted. “But you don’t want security, because you think I’m an honest man! Well, for sure you’re right. I am honest. I never took a cent that wasn’t mine; but that’s not everything. If you lend you ought to have security. I’ve lost a good deal from not having enough security at the start. You are willing to lend me money without security—that’s enough to make me feel thirty again, and I’m fifty—I’m fifty,” he added, as though with an attempt to show her that she could not think of him in any emotional way; though the day when his flour-mill was burned he had felt the touch of her fingers comforting and thrilling.
“You think Jean Jacques Barbille’s word as good as his bond?” he continued. “So it is; but I’m going to pull this thing through alone. That’s what I said to you and Maitre Fille at his office. I meant it too—help of God, it is the truth!”
He had forgotten that if M. Mornay had not made it easy for him, and had not refrained from insisting on his pound of flesh, he would now be insolvent and with no roof over him. Like many another man Jean Jacques was the occasional slave of formula, and also the victim of phases of his own temperament. In truth he had not realized how big a thing M. Mornay had done for him. He had accepted the chance given him as the tribute to his own courage and enterprise and integrity, and as though it was to the advantage of his greatest creditor to give him another start; though in reality it had made no difference to the Big Financier, who knew his man and, with wide-open eyes, did what he had done.
Virginie was not subtle. She did not understand, was never satisfied with allusions, and she had no gift for catching the drift of things. She could endure no peradventure in her conversation. She wanted plain speaking and to be literally sure.
“Are you going to take it?” she asked abruptly.
He could not bear to be checked in his course. He waved a hand and smiled at her. Then his eyes seemed to travel away into the distance, the look of the dreamer in them; but behind all was that strange, ruddy underglow of revelation which kept emerging from shadows, retreating and emerging, yet always there now, in much or in little, since the burning of the mill.
“I’ve lent a good deal of money without security in my time,” he reflected, “but the only people who ever paid me back were a deaf and dumb man and a flyaway—a woman that was tired of selling herself, and started straight and right with the money I lent her. She had been the wife of a man who studied with me at Laval. She paid me back every penny, too, year by year for five years. The rest I lent money to never paid; but they paid, the dummy and the harlot that was, they paid! But they paid for the rest also! If I had refused these two because of the others, I’d not be fit to visit at Neighbourhood House where Virginie Poucette lives.”
He looked closely at the order she had given him again, as though to let it sink in his mind and be registered for ever. “I’m going to do without any further use of your two thousand dollars,” he continued cheer fully. “It has done its work. You’ve lent it to me, I’ve used it”—he put the hand holding it on his breast—“and I’m paying it back to you, but without interest.” He gave the order to her.
“I don’t see what you mean,” she said helplessly, and she looked at the paper, as though it had undergone some change while it was in his hand.
“That you would lend it me is worth ten times two thousand to me, Virginie Poucette,” he explained. “It gives me, not a kick from behind—I’ve not had much else lately—but it holds a light in front of me. It calls me. It says, ‘March on, Jean Jacques—climb the mountain.’ It summons me to dispose my forces for the campaign which will restore the Manor Cartier to what it has ever been since the days of the Baron of Beaugard. It quickens the blood at my heart. It restores—”
Virginie would not allow him to go on. “You won’t let me help you? Suppose I do lose the money—I didn’t earn it; it was earned by Palass Poucette, and he’d understand, if he knew. I can live without the money, if I have to, but you would pay it back, I know. You oughtn’t to take any extra risks. If your daughter should come back and not find you here, if she returned to the Manor Cartier, and—”
He made an insistent gesture. “Hush! Be still, my friend—as good a friend as a man could have. If my Zoe came back I’d like to feel—I’d like to feel that I had saved things alone; that no woman’s money made me safe. If Zoe or if—”
He was going to say, “If Carmen came back,” for his mind was moving in past scenes; but he stopped short and looked around helplessly. Then presently, as though by an effort, he added with a bravura note in his voice:
“The world has been full of trouble for a long time, but there have always been men to say to trouble, ‘I am master, I have the mind to get above it all.’ Well, I am one of them.”
There was no note of vanity or bombast in his voice as he said this, and in his eyes that new underglow deepened and shone. Perhaps in this instant he saw more of his future than he would speak of to anyone on earth. Perhaps prevision was given him, and it was as the Big Financier had said to Maitre Fille, that his philosophy was now, at the last, to be of use to him. When his wife had betrayed him, and his wife and child had left him, he had said, “Moi je suis philosophe!” but he was a man of wealth in those days, and money soothes hurts of that kind in rare degree. Would he still say, whatever was yet to come, that he was a philosopher?
“Well, I’ve done what I thought would help you, and I can’t say more than that,” Virginie remarked with a sigh, and there was despondency in her eyes. Her face became flushed, her bosom showed agitation; she looked at him as she had done in Maitre Fille’s office, and a wave of feeling passed over him now, as it did then, and he remembered, in response to her look, the thrill of his fingers in her palm. His face now flushed also, and he had an impulse to ask her to sit down beside him. He put it away from him, however, for the present, at any rate-who could tell what to-morrow might bring forth!—and then he held out his hand to her. His voice shook a little when he spoke; but it cleared, and began to ring, before he had said a dozen words.
“I’ll never forget what you’ve said and done this morning, Virginie Poucette,” he declared; “and if I break the back of the trouble that’s in my way, and come out cock o’ the walk again”—the gold Cock of Beaugard in the ruins near and the clarion of the bantam of his barnyard were in his mind and ears—“it’ll be partly because of you. I hug that thought to me.”
“I could do a good deal more than that,” she ventured, with a tremulous voice, and then she took her warm hand from his nervous grasp, and turned sharply into the path which led back towards the Manor. She did not turn around, and she walked quickly away.
There was confusion in her eyes and in her mind. It would take some time to make the confusion into order, and she was now hot, now cold, in all her frame, when at last she climbed into her wagon.
This physical unrest imparted itself to all she did that day. First her horses were driven almost at a gallop; then they were held down to a slow walk; then they were stopped altogether, and she sat in the shade of the trees on the road to her home, pondering—whispering to herself and pondering.
As her horses were at a standstill she saw a wagon approaching. Instantly she touched her pair with the whip, and moved on. Before the approaching wagon came alongside, she knew from the grey and the darkbrown horses who was driving them, and she made a strong effort for composure. She succeeded indifferently, but her friend, Mere Langlois, did not notice this fact as her wagon drew near. There was excitement in Mere Langlois’ face.
“There’s been a shindy at the ‘Red Eagle’ tavern,” she said. “That father-in-law of M’sieu’ Jean Jacques and Rocque Valescure, the landlord, they got at each other’s throats. Dolores hit Valescure on the head with a bottle.”
“He didn’t kill Valescure, did he?”
“Not that—no. But Valescure is hurt bad—as bad. It was six to one and half a dozen to the other—both no good at all. But of course they’ll arrest the old man—your great friend! He’ll not give you any more fur-robes, that’s sure. He got away from the tavern, though, and he’s hiding somewhere. M’sieu’ Jean Jacques can’t protect him now; he isn’t what he once was in the parish. He’s done for, and old Dolores will have to go to trial. They’ll make it hot for him when they catch him. No more fur-robes from your Spanish friend, Virginie! You’ll have to look somewhere else for your beaux, though to be sure there are enough that’d be glad to get you with that farm of yours, and your thrifty ways, if you keep your character.”
Virginie was quite quiet now. The asperity and suggestiveness of the other’s speech produced a cooling effect upon her.
“Better hurry, Mere Langlois, or everybody won’t hear your story before sundown. If your throat gets tired, there’s Brown’s Bronchial Troches—” She pointed to an advertisement on the fence near by. “M. Fille’s cook says they cure a rasping throat.”
With that shot, Virginie Poucette whipped up her horses and drove on. She did not hear what Mere Langlois called after her, for Mere Langlois had been slow to recover from the unexpected violence dealt by one whom she had always bullied.
“Poor Jean Jacques!” said Virginie Poucette to herself as her horses ate up the ground. “That’s another bit of bad luck. He’ll not sleep to-night. Ah, the poor Jean Jacques—and all alone—not a hand to hold; no one to rumple that shaggy head of his or pat him on the back! His wife and Ma’m’selle Zoe, they didn’t know a good thing when they had it. No, he’ll not sleep to-night-ah, my dear Jean Jacques!”
But Jean Jacques did sleep well that night; though it would have been better for him if he had not done so. The contractor’s workmen had arrived in the early afternoon, he had seen the first ton of debris removed from the ruins of the historic mill, and it was crowned by the gold Cock of Beaugard, all grimy with the fire, but jaunty as of yore. The cheerfulness of the workmen, who sang gaily an old chanson of mill-life as they tugged at the timbers and stones, gave a fillip to the spirits of Jean Jacques, to whom had come a red-letter day.
Like Mirza on the high hill of Bagdad he had had his philosophic meditations; his good talk with Virginie Poucette had followed; and the woman of her lingered in the feeling of his hand all day, as something kind and homelike and true. Also in the evening had come M. Fille, who brought him a message from Judge Carcasson, that he must make the world sing for himself again.
Contrary to what Mere Langlois had thought, he had not been perturbed by the parish noise about the savage incident at “The Red Eagle,” and the desperate affair which would cause the arrest of his father-in-law. He was at last well inclined to be rid of Sebastian Dolores, who had ceased to be a comfort to him, and who brought him hateful and not kindly memories of his lost women, and the happy hours of the past they represented.
M. Fille had come to the Manor in much alarm, lest the news of the miserable episode at “The Red Eagle” should bring Jean Jacques down again to the depths. He was infinitely relieved, however, to find that the lord of the Manor Cartier seemed only to be grateful that Sebastian Dolores did not return, and nodded emphatically when M. Fille remarked that perhaps it would be just as well if he never did return.
As M. Fille sat with his host at the table in the sunset light, Jean Jacques seemed quieter and steadier of body and mind than he had been for a long, long time. He even drank three glasses of the cordial which Mere Langlois had left for him, with the idea that it might comfort him when he got the bad news about Sebastian Dolores; and parting with M. Fille at the door, he waved a hand and said: “Well, good-night, master of the laws. Safe journey! I’m off to bed, and I’ll sleep without rocking, that’s very sure and sweet.”
He stood and waved his hand several times to M. Fille—till he was out of sight indeed; and the Clerk of the Court smiled to himself long afterwards, recalling Jean Jacques’ cheerful face as he had seen it at their parting in the gathering dusk. As for Jean Jacques, when he locked up the house at ten o’clock, with Dolores still absent, he had the air of a man from whose shoulders great weights had fallen.
“Now I’ve shut the door on him, it’ll stay shut,” he said firmly. “Let him go back to work. He’s no good here to me, to himself, or to anyone. And that business of the fur-robe and Virginie Poucette—ah, that!”
He shook his head angrily, then seeing the bottle of cordial still uncorked on the sideboard, he poured some out and drank it very slowly, till his eyes were on the ceiling above him and every drop had gone home. Presently, with the bedroom lamp in his hand, he went upstairs, humming to himself the chanson the workmen had sung that afternoon as they raised again the walls of the mill:
“Distaff of flax flowing behind herMargatton goes to the millOn the old grey ass she goes,The flour of love it will blind herAh, the grist the devil will grind her,When Margatton goes to the mill!On the old grey ass she goes,And the old grey ass, he knows!”
He liked the sound of his own voice this night of his Reconstruction Period—or such it seemed to him; and he thought that no one heard his singing save himself. There, however, he was mistaken. Someone was hidden in the house—in the big kitchen-bunk which served as a bed or a seat, as needed. This someone had stolen in while Jean Jacques and M. Fille were at supper. His name was Dolores, and he had a horse just over the hill near by, to serve him when his work was done, and he could get away.
The constables of Vilray had twice visited the Manor to arrest him that day, but they had been led in another direction by a clue which he had provided; and afterwards in the dusk he had doubled back and hid himself under Jean Jacques’ roof. He had very important business at the Manor Cartier.
Jean Jacques’ voice ceased one song, and then, after a silence, it took up another, not so melodious. Sebastian Dolores had impatiently waited for this later “musicale” to begin—he had heard it often before; and when it was at last a regular succession of nasal explosions, he crawled out and began to do the business which had brought him to the Manor Cartier.
He did it all alone and with much skill; for when he was an anarchist in Spain, those long years ago, he had learned how to use tools with expert understanding. Of late, Spain had been much in his mind. He wanted to go back there. Nostalgia had possessed him ever since he had come again to the Manor Cartier after Zoe had left. He thought much of Spain, and but little of his daughter. Memory of her was only poignant, in so far as it was associated with the days preceding the wreck of the Antoine. He had had far more than enough of the respectable working life of the New World; but there never was sufficient money to take him back to Europe, even were it safe to go. Of late, however, he felt sure that he might venture, if he could only get cash for the journey. He wanted to drift back to the idleness and adventure and the “easy money” of the old anarchist days in Cadiz and Madrid. He was sick for the patio and the plaza, for the bull-fight, for the siesta in the sun, for the lazy glamour of the gardens and the red wine of Valladolid, for the redolent cigarette of the roadside tavern. This cold iron land had spoiled him, and he would strive to get himself home again before it was too late. In Spain there would always be some woman whom he could cajole; some comrade whom he could betray; some priest whom he could deceive, whose pocket he could empty by the recital of his troubles. But if, peradventure, he returned to Spain with money to spare in his pocket, how easy indeed it would all be, and how happy he would find himself amid old surroundings and old friends!
The way had suddenly opened up to him when Jean Jacques had brought home in hard cash, and had locked away in the iron-doored cupboard in the officewall, his last, his cherished, eight thousand dollars. Six thousand of that eight were still left, and it was concern for this six thousand which had brought Dolores to the Manor this night when Jean Jacques snored so loudly. The events of the day at “The Red Eagle” had brought things to a crisis in the affairs of Carmen’s father. It was a foolish business that at the tavern—so, at any rate, he thought, when it was all over, and he was awake to the fact that he must fly or go to jail. From the time he had, with a bottle of gin, laid Valescure low, Spain was the word which went ringing through his head, and the way to Spain was by the Six Thousand Dollar Route, the New World terminal of which was the cupboard in the wall at the Manor Cartier.
Little cared Sebastian Dolores that the theft of the money would mean the end of all things for Jean Jacques Barbille-for his own daughter’s husband. He was thinking of himself, as he had always done.
He worked for two whole hours before he succeeded in quietly forcing open the iron door in the wall; but it was done at last. Curiously enough, Jean Jacques’ snoring stopped on the instant that Sebastian Dolores’ fingers clutched the money; but it began cheerfully again when the door in the wall closed once more.
Five minutes after Dolores had thrust the six thousand dollars into his pocket, his horse was galloping away over the hills towards the River St. Lawrence. If he had luck, he would reach it by the morning. As it happened, he had the luck. Behind him, in the Manor Cartier, the man who had had no luck and much philosophy, snored on till morning in unconscious content.
It was a whole day before Jean Jacques discovered his loss. When he had finished his lonely supper the next evening, he went to the cupboard in his office to cheer himself with the sight of the six thousand dollars. He felt that he must revive his spirits. They had been drooping all day, he knew not why.
When he saw the empty pigeon-hole in the cupboard, his sight swam. It was some time before it cleared, but, when it did, and he knew beyond peradventure the crushing, everlasting truth, not a sound escaped him. His heart stood still. His face filled with a panic confusion. He seemed like one bereft of understanding.
It is seldom that Justice travels as swiftly as Crime, and it is also seldom that the luck is more with the law than with the criminal. It took the parish of St. Saviour’s so long to make up its mind who stole Jean Jacques’ six thousand dollars, that when the hounds got the scent at last the quarry had reached the water—in other words, Sebastian Dolores had achieved the St. Lawrence. The criminal had had near a day’s start before a telegram was sent to the police at Montreal, Quebec, and other places to look out for the picaroon who had left his mark on the parish of St. Saviour’s. The telegram would not even then have been sent had it not been for M. Fille, who, suspecting Sebastian Dolores, still refrained from instant action. This he did because he thought Jean Jacques would not wish his beloved Zoe’s grandfather sent to prison. But when other people at last declared that it must have been Dolores, M. Fille insisted on telegrams being sent by the magistrate at Vilray without Jean Jacques’ consent. He had even urged the magistrate to “rush” the wire, because it came home to him with stunning force that, if the money was not recovered, Jean Jacques would be a beggar. It was better to jail the father-in-law, than for the little money-master to take to the road a pauper, or stay on at St. Saviour’s as an underling where he had been overlord.
As for Jean Jacques, in his heart of hearts he knew who had robbed him. He realized that it was one of the radii of the comedy-tragedy which began on the Antoine, so many years before; and it had settled in his mind at last that Sebastian Dolores was but part of the dark machinery of fate, and that what was now had to be.
For one whole day after the robbery he was like a man paralysed—dispossessed of active being; but when his creditors began to swarm, when M. Mornay sent his man of business down to foreclose his mortgages before others could take action, Jean Jacques waked from his apathy. He began an imitation of his old restlessness, and made essay again to pull the strings of his affairs. They were, however, so confused that a pull at one string tangled them all.
When the constables and others came to him, and said that they were on the trail of the robber, and that the rogue would be caught, he nodded his head encouragingly; but he was sure in his own mind that the flight of Dolores would be as successful as that of Carmen and Zoe.
This is the way he put it: “That man—we will just miss finding him, as I missed Zoe at the railroad junction when she went away, as I missed catching Carmen at St. Chrisanthine. When you are at the shore, he will be on the river; when you are getting into the train, he will be getting out. It is the custom of the family. At Bordeaux, the Spanish detectives were on the shore gnashing their teeth, when he was a hundred yards away at sea on the Antoine. They missed him like that; and we’ll miss him too. What is the good! It was not his fault—that was the way of his bringing up beyond there at Cadiz, where they think more of a toreador than of John the Baptist. It was my fault. I ought to have banked the money. I ought not to have kept it to look at like a gamin with his marbles. There it was in the wall; and there was Dolores a long way from home and wanting to get back. He found the way by a gift of the tools; and I wish I had the same gift now; for I’ve got no other gift that’ll earn anything for me.”
These were the last dark or pessimistic words spoken at St. Saviour’s by Jean Jacques; and they were said to the Clerk of the Court, who could not deny the truth of them; but he wrung the hand of Jean Jacques nevertheless, and would not leave him night or day. M. Fille was like a little cruiser protecting a fort when gunboats swarm near, not daring to attack till their battleship heaves in sight. The battleship was the Big Financier, who saw that a wreck was now inevitable, and was only concerned that there should be a fair distribution of the assets. That meant, of course, that he should be served first, and then that those below the salt should get a share.
Revelation after revelation had been Jean Jacques’ lot of late years, but the final revelation of his own impotence was overwhelming. When he began to stir about among his affairs, he was faced by the fact that the law stood in his way. He realized with inward horror his shattered egotism and natural vanity; he saw that he might just as well be in jail; that he had no freedom; that he could do nothing at all in regard to anything he owned; that he was, in effect, a prisoner of war where he had been the general commanding an army.
Yet the old pride intervened, and it was associated with some innate nobility; for from the hour in which it was known that Sebastian Dolores had escaped in a steamer bound for France, and could not be overhauled, and the chances were that he would never have to yield up the six thousand dollars, Jean Jacques bustled about cheerfully, and as though he had still great affairs of business to order and regulate. It was a make-believe which few treated with scorn. Even the workmen at the mill humoured him, as he came several times every day to inspect the work of rebuilding; and they took his orders, though they did not carry them out. No one really carried out any of his orders except Seraphe Corniche, who, weeping from morning till night, protested that there never was so good a man as M’sieu’ Jean Jacques; and she cooked his favourite dishes, giving him no peace until he had eaten them.
The days, the weeks went on, with Jean Jacques growing thinner and thinner, but going about with his head up like the gold Cock of Beaugard, and even crowing now and then, as he had done of yore. He faced the inevitable with something of his old smiling volubility; treating nothing of his disaster as though it really existed; signing off this asset and that; disposing of this thing and that; stripping himself bare of all the properties on his life’s stage, in such a manner as might have been his had he been receiving gifts and not yielding up all he owned. He chatted as his belongings were, figuratively speaking, being carried away—as though they were mechanical, formal things to be done as he had done them every day of a fairly long life; as a clerk would check off the boxes or parcels carried past him by the porters. M. Fille could hardly bear to see him in this mood, and the New Cure hovered round him with a mournful and harmlessly deceptive kindness. But the end had to come, and practically all the parish was present when it came. That was on the day when the contents of the Manor were sold at auction by order of the Court. One thing Jean Jacques refused absolutely and irrevocably to do from the first—refused it at last in anger and even with an oath: he would not go through the Bankruptcy Court. No persuasion had any effect. The very suggestion seemed to smirch his honour. His lawyer pleaded with him, said he would be able to save something out of the wreck, and that his creditors would be willing that he should take advantage of the privileges of that court; but he only said in reply:
“Thank you, thank you altogether, monsieur, but it is impossible—‘non possumus, non possumus, my son,’ as the Pope said to Bonaparte. I owe and I will pay what I can; and what I can’t pay now I will try to pay in the future, by the cent, by the dollar, till all is paid to the last copper. It is the way with the Barbilles. They have paid their way and their debts in honour, and it is in the bond with all the Barbilles of the past that I do as they do. If I can’t do it, then that I have tried to do it will be endorsed on the foot of the bill.”
No one could move him, not even Judge Carcasson, who from his armchair in Montreal wrote a feeble-handed letter begging him to believe that it was “well within his rights as a gentleman”—this he put in at the request of M. Mornay—to take advantage of the privileges of the Bankruptcy Court. Even then Jean Jacques had only a few moments’ hesitation. What the Judge said made a deep impression; but he had determined to drink the cup of his misfortune to the dregs. He was set upon complete renunciation; on going forth like a pilgrim from the place of his troubles and sorrows, taking no gifts, no mercies save those which heaven accorded him.
When the day of the auction came everything went. Even his best suit of clothes was sold to a blacksmith, while his fur-coat was bought by a horse-doctor for fifteen dollars. Things that had been part of his life for a generation found their way into hands where he would least have wished them to go—of those who had been envious of him, who had cheated or deceived him, of people with whom he had had nothing in common. The red wagon and the pair of little longtailed stallions, which he had driven for six years, were bought by the owner of a rival flour-mill in the parish of Vilray; but his best sleigh, with its coon-skin robes, was bought by the widow of Palass Poucette, who bought also the famous bearskin which Dolores had given her at Jean Jacques’ expense, and had been returned by her to its proper owner. The silver fruitdish, once (it was said) the property of the Baron of Beaugard, which each generation of Barbilles had displayed with as much ceremony as though it was a chalice given by the Pope, went to Virginie Poucette. Virginie also bought the furniture from Zoe’s bedroom as it stood, together with the little upright piano on which she used to play. The Cure bought Jean Jacques’ writing-desk, and M. Fille purchased his armchair, in which had sat at least six Barbilles as owners of the Manor. The beaver-hat which Jean Jacques wore on state occasions, as his grandfather had done, together with the bonnet rouge of the habitant, donned by him in his younger days—they fell to the nod of Mere Langlois, who declared that, as she was a cousin, she would keep the things in the family. Mere Langlois would have bought the fruit-dish also if she could have afforded to bid against Virginie Poucette; but the latter would have had the dish if it had cost her two hundred dollars. The only time she had broken bread in Jean Jacques’ house, she had eaten cake from this fruit-dish; and to her, as to the parish generally, the dish so beautifully shaped, with its graceful depth and its fine-chased handles, was symbol of the social caste of the Barbilles, as the gold Cock of Beaugard was sign of their civic and commercial glory.
Jean Jacques, who had moved about all day with an almost voluble affability, seeming not to realize the tragedy going on, or, if he realized it, rising superior to it, was noticed to stand still suddenly when the auctioneer put up the fruit-dish for sale. Then the smile left his face, and the reddish glow in his eyes, which had been there since the burning of the mill, fled, and a touch of amazement and confusion took its place. All in a moment he was like a fluttered dweller of the wilds to whom comes some tremor of danger.
His mouth opened as though he would forbid the selling of the heirloom; but it closed again, because he knew he had no right to withhold it from the hammer; and he took on a look like that which comes to the eyes of a child when it faces humiliating denial. Quickly as it came, however, it vanished, for he remembered that he could buy the dish himself. He could buy it himself and keep it.... Yet what could he do with it? Even so, he could keep it. It could still be his till better days came.
The auctioneer’s voice told off the value of the fruitdish—“As an heirloom, as an antique; as a piece of workmanship impossible of duplication in these days of no handicraft; as good pure silver, bearing the head of Louis Quinze—beautiful, marvellous, historic, honourable,” and Jean Jacques made ready to bid. Then he remembered he had no money—he who all his life had been able to take a roll of bills from his pocket as another man took a packet of letters. His glance fell in shame, and the words died on his lips, even as M. Manotel, the auctioneer, was about to add another five-dollar bid to the price, which already was standing at forty dollars.
It was at this moment Jean Jacques heard a woman’s voice bidding, then two women’s voices. Looking up he saw that one of the women was Mere Langlois and the other was Virginie Poucette, who had made the first bid. For a moment they contended, and then Mere Langlois fell out of the contest, and Virginie continued it with an ambitious farmer from the next county, who was about to become a Member of Parliament. Presently the owner of a river pleasure-steamer entered into the costly emulation also, but he soon fell away; and Virginie Poucette stubbornly raised the bidding by five dollars each time, till the silver symbol of the Barbilles’ pride had reached one hundred dollars. Then she raised the price by ten dollars, and her rival, seeing that he was face to face with a woman who would now bid till her last dollar was at stake, withdrew; and Virginie was left triumphant with the heirloom.
At the moment when Virginie turned away with the handsome dish from M. Manotel, and the crowd cheered her gaily, she caught Jean-Jacques’ eye, and she came straight towards him. She wanted to give the dish to him then and there; but she knew that this would provide annoying gossip for many a day, and besides, she thought he would refuse. More than that, she had in her mind another alternative which might in the end secure the heirloom to him, in spite of all. As she passed him, she said:
“At least we keep it in the parish. If you don’t have it, well, then...”
She paused, for she did not quite know what to say unless she spoke what was really in her mind, and she dared not do that.
“But you ought to have an heirloom,” she added, leaving unsaid what was her real thought and hope. With sudden inspiration, for he saw she was trying to make it easy for him, he drew the great silver-watch from his pocket, which the head of the Barbilles had worn for generations, and said:
“I have the only heirloom I could carry about with me. It will keep time for me as long as I’ll last. The Manor clock strikes the time for the world, and this watch is set by the Manor clock.”
“Well said—well and truly said, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques,” remarked the lean watchmaker and so-called jeweller of Vilray, who stood near. “It is a watch which couldn’t miss the stroke of Judgment Day.”
It was at that moment, in the sunset hour, when the sale had drawn to a close, and the people had begun to disperse, that the avocat of Vilray who represented the Big Financier came to Jean Jacques and said:
“M’sieu’, I have to say that there is due to you three hundred and fifty dollars from the settlement, excluding this sale, which will just do what was expected of it. I am instructed to give it to you from the creditors. Here it is.”
He took out a roll of bills and offered it to Jean Jacques.
“What creditors?” asked Jean Jacques.
“All the creditors,” responded the other, and he produced a receipt for Jean Jacques to sign. “A formal statement will be sent you, and if there is any more due to you, it will be added then. But now—well, there it is, the creditors think there is no reason for you to wait.”
Jean Jacques did not yet take the roll of bills. “They come from M. Mornay?” he asked with an air of resistance, for he did not wish to be under further obligations to the man who would lose most by him.
The lawyer was prepared. M. Mornay had foreseen the timidity and sensitiveness of Jean Jacques, had anticipated his mistaken chivalry—for how could a man decline to take advantage of the Bankruptcy Court unless he was another Don Quixote! He had therefore arranged with all the creditors for them to take responsibility with ‘himself, though he provided the cash which manipulated this settlement.
“No, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques,” the lawyer replied, “this comes from all the creditors, as the sum due to you from all the transactions, so far as can be seen as yet. Further adjustment may be necessary, but this is the interim settlement.”
Jean Jacques was far from being ignorant of business, but so bemused was his judgment and his intelligence now, that he did not see there was no balance which could possibly be his, since his liabilities vastly exceeded his assets. Yet with a wave of the hand he accepted the roll of bills, and signed the receipt with an air which said, “These forms must be observed, I suppose.”
What he would have done if the three hundred and fifty dollars had not been given him, it would be hard to say, for with gentle asperity he had declined a loan from his friend M. Fille, and he had but one silver dollar in his pocket, or in the world. Indeed, Jean Jacques was living in a dream in these dark days—a dream of renunciation and sacrifice, and in the spirit of one who gives up all to some great cause. He was not yet even face to face with the fulness of his disaster. Only at moments had the real significance of it all come to him, and then he had shivered as before some terror menacing his path. Also, as M. Mornay had said, his philosophy was now in his bones and marrow rather than in his words. It had, after all, tinctured his blood and impregnated his mind. He had babbled and been the egotist, and played cock o’ the walk; and now at last his philosophy was giving some foundation for his feet. Yet at this auction-sale he looked a distracted, if smiling, whimsical, rather bustling figure of misfortune, with a tragic air of exile, of isolation from all by which he was surrounded. A profound and wayworn loneliness showed in his figure, in his face, in his eyes.
The crowd thinned in time, and yet very many lingered to see the last of this drama of lost fortunes. A few of the riff-raff, who invariably attend these public scenes, were now rather the worse for drink, from the indifferent liquor provided by the auctioneer, and they were inclined to horseplay and coarse chaff. More than one ribald reference to Jean Jacques had been checked by his chivalrous fellow-citizens; indeed, M. Fille had almost laid himself open to a charge of assault in his own court by raising his stick at a loafer, who made insulting references to Jean Jacques. But as the sale drew to a close, an air of rollicking humour among the younger men would not be suppressed, and it looked as though Jean Jacques’ exit would be attended by the elements of farce and satire.
In this world, however, things do not happen logically, and Jean Jacques made his exit in a wholly unexpected manner. He was going away by the train which left a new railway junction a few miles off, having gently yet firmly declined M. Fille’s invitation, and also the invitations of others—including the Cure and Mere Langlois—to spend the night with them and start off the next day. He elected to go on to Montreal that very night, and before the sale was quite finished he prepared to start. His carpet-bag containing a few clothes and necessaries had been sent on to the junction, and he meant to walk to the station in the cool of the evening.
M. Manotel, the auctioneer, hoarse with his heavy day’s work, was announcing that there were only a few more things to sell, and no doubt they could be had at a bargain, when Jean Jacques began a tour of the Manor. There was something inexpressibly mournful in this lonely pilgrimage of the dismantled mansion. Yet there was no show of cheap emotion by Jean Jacques; and a wave of the hand prevented any one from following him in his dry-eyed progress to say farewell to these haunts of childhood, manhood, family, and home. There was a strange numbness in his mind and body, and he had a feeling that he moved immense and reflective among material things. Only tragedy can produce that feeling. Happiness makes the universe infinite and stupendous, despair makes it small and even trivial.
It was when he had reached the little office where he had done the business of his life—a kind of neutral place where he had ever isolated himself from the domestic scene—that the final sensation, save one, of his existence at the Manor came to him. Virginie Poucette had divined his purpose when he began the tour of the house, and going by a roundabout way, she had placed herself where she could speak with him alone before he left the place for ever—if that was to be. She was not sure that his exit was really inevitable—not yet.
When Jean Jacques saw Virginie standing beside the table in his office where he lead worked over so many years, now marked Sold, and waiting to be taken away by its new owner, he started and drew back, but she held out her hand and said:
“But one word, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques; only one word from a friend—indeed a friend.”
“A friend of friends,” he answered, still in abstraction, his eyes having that burnished light which belonged to the night of the fire; but yet realizing that she was a sympathetic soul who had offered to lend him money without security.
“Oh, indeed yes, as good a friend as you can ever have!” she added.
Something had waked the bigger part of her, which had never been awake in the days of Palass Poucette. Jean Jacques was much older than she, but what she felt had nothing to do with age, or place or station. It had only to do with understanding, with the call of nature and of a motherhood crying for expression. Her heart ached for him.
“Well, good-bye, my friend,” he said, and held out his hand. “I must be going now.”
“Wait,” she said, and there was something insistent and yet pleading in her voice. “I’ve got something to say. You must hear it.... Why should you go? There is my farm—it needs to be worked right. It has got good chances. It has water-power and wood and the best flax in the province—they want to start a flax-mill on it—I’ve had letters from big men in Montreal. Well, why shouldn’t you do it instead? There it is, the farm, and there am I a woman alone. I need help. I’ve got no head. I have to work at a sum of figures all night to get it straight.... Ah, m’sieu’, it is a need both sides! You want someone to look after you; you want a chance again to do things; but you want someone to look after you, and it is all waiting there on the farm. Palass Poucette left behind him seven sound horses, and cows and sheep, and a threshing-machine and a fanning-mill, and no debts, and two thousand dollars in the bank. You will never do anything away from here. You must stay here, where—where I can look after you, Jean Jacques.”
The light in his eyes flamed up, died down, flamed up again, and presently it covered all his face, as he grasped what she meant.
“Wonder of God, do you forget?” he asked. “I am married—married still, Virginie Poucette. There is no divorce in the Catholic Church—no, none at all. It is for ever and ever.”
“I said nothing about marriage,” she said bravely, though her face suffused.
“Hand of Heaven, what do you mean? You mean to say you would do that for me in spite of the Cure and—and everybody and everything?”
“You ought to be taken care of,” she protested. “You ought to have your chance again. No one here is free to do it all but me. You are alone. Your wife that was—maybe she is dead. I am alone, and I’m not afraid of what the good God will say. I will settle with Him myself. Well, then, do you think I’d care what—what Mere Langlois or the rest of the world would say?... I can’t bear to think of you going away with nothing, with nobody, when here is something and somebody—somebody who would be good to you. Everybody knows that you’ve been badly used—everybody. I’m young enough to make things bright and warm in your life, and the place is big enough for two, even if it isn’t the Manor Cartier.”
“Figure de Christ, do you think I’d let you do it—me?” declared Jean Jacques, with lips trembling now and his shoulders heaving. Misfortune and pain and penalty he could stand, but sacrifice like this and—and whatever else it was, were too much for him. They brought him back to the dusty road and everyday life again; they subtracted him from his big dream, in which he had been detached from the details of his catastrophe.
“No, no, no,” he added. “You go look another way, Virginie. Turn your face to the young spring, not to the dead winter. To-morrow I’ll be gone to find what I’ve got to find. I’ve finished here, but there’s many a good man waiting for you—men who’ll bring you something worth while besides themselves. Make no mistake, I’ve finished. I’ve done my term of life. I’m only out on ticket-of-leave now—but there, enough, I shall always want to think of you. I wish I had something to give you—but yes, here is something.” He drew from his pocket a silver napkin-ring. “I’ve had that since I was five years old. My uncle Stefan gave it to me. I’ve always used it. I don’t know why I put it in my pocket this morning, but I did. Take it. It’s more than money. It’s got something of Jean Jacques about it. You’ve got the Barbille fruit-dish-that is a thing I’ll remember. I’m glad you’ve got it, and—”
“I meant we should both eat from it,” she said helplessly.
“It would cost too much to eat from it with you, Virginie—”
He stopped short, choked, then his face cleared, and his eyes became steady.
“Well then, good-bye, Virginie,” he said, holding out his hand.
“You don’t think I’d say to any other living man what I’ve said to you?” she asked.
He nodded understandingly. “That’s the best part of it. It was for me of all the world,” he answered. “When I look back, I’ll see the light in your window—the light you lit for the lost one—for Jean Jacques Barbille.”
Suddenly, with eyes that did not see and hands held out before him, he turned, felt for the door and left the room.
She leaned helplessly against the table. “The poor Jean Jacques—the poor Jean Jacques!” she murmured. “Cure or no Cure, I’d have done it,” she declared, with a ring to her voice. “Ah, but Jean Jacques, come with me!” she added with a hungry and compassionate gesture, speaking into space. “I could make life worth while for us both.”
A moment later Virginie was outside, watching the last act in the career of Jean Jacques in the parish of St. Saviour’s.
This was what she saw.
The auctioneer was holding up a bird-cage containing a canary-Carmen’s bird-cage, and Zoe’s canary which had remained to be a vocal memory of her in her old home.
“Here,” said the rhetorical, inflammable auctioneer, “here is the choicest lot left to the last. I put it away in the bakery, meaning to sell it at noon, when everybody was eating-food for the soul and food for the body. I forgot it. But here it is, worth anything you like to anybody that loves the beautiful, the good, and the harmonious. What do I hear for this lovely saffron singer from the Elysian fields? What did the immortal poet of France say of the bird in his garret, in ‘L’Oiseau de Mon Crenier’? What did he say: