The village had no thought or care for anything except the Rebellion and news of it; and for several days Ferrol and Christine lived their new life unobserved by the people of the village, even by the household of Manor Casimbault.
It almost seemed that Ferrol’s prophecy regarding himself was coming true, for his cheek took on a heightened colour, his step a greater elasticity, and he flung his shoulders out with a little of the old military swagger: cheerful, forgetful of all the world, and buoyant in what he thought to be his new-found health and permanent happiness.
Vague reports came to the village concerning the Rebellion. There were not a dozen people in the village who espoused the British cause; and these few were silent. For the moment the Lavilettes were popular. Nicolas had made for them a sort of grand coup. He had for the moment redeemed the snobbishness of two generations.
After his secret marriage, Ferrol was not seen in the village for some days, and his presence and nationality were almost forgotten by the people: they only thought of what was actively before their eyes. On the fifth day after his marriage, which was Saturday, he walked down to the village, attracted by shouting and unusual excitement. When he saw the cause of the demonstration he had a sudden flush of anger. A flag-staff had been erected in the centre of the village, and upon it had been run up the French tricolour. He stood and looked at the shouting crowd a moment, then swung round and went to the office of the Regimental Surgeon, who met him at the door. When he came out again he carried a little bundle under his left arm. He made straight for the crowd, which was scattered in groups, and pushed or threaded his way to the flag-staff. He was at least a head taller than any man there, and though he was not so upright as he had been, the lines of his figure were still those of a commanding personality. A sort of platform had been erected around the flag-staff and on it a drunken little habitant was talking treason. Without a word, Ferrol stepped upon the platform, and, loosening the rope, dropped the tricolour half-way down the staff before his action was quite comprehended by the crowd. Presently a hoarse shout proclaimed the anger and consternation of the habitants.
“Leave that flag alone,” shouted a dozen voices. “Leave it where it is!” others repeated with oaths.
He dropped it the full length of the staff, whipped it off the string, and put his foot upon it. Then he unrolled the bundle which he had carried under his arm. It was the British flag. He slipped it upon the string, and was about to haul it up, when the drunken orator on the platform caught him by the arm with fiery courage.
“Here, you leave that alone: that’s not our flag, and if you string it up, we’ll string you up, bagosh!” he roared.
Ferrol’s heavy walking-stick was in his right hand. “Let go my arm-quick!” he said quietly.
He was no coward, and these people were, and he knew it. The habitant drew back.
“Get off the platform,” he said with quiet menace.
He turned quickly to the crowd, for some had sprung towards the platform to pull him off. Raising his voice, he said:
“Stand back, and hear what I’ve got to say. You’re a hundred to one. You can probably kill me; but before you do that I shall kill three or four of you. I’ve had to do with rioters before. You little handful of people here—little more than half a million—imagine that you can defeat thirty-five millions, with an army of half a million, a hundred battle-ships, ten thousand cannon and a million rifles. Come now, don’t be fools. The Governor alone up there in Montreal has enough men to drive you all into the hills of Maine in a week. You think you’ve got the start of Colborne? Why, he has known every movement of Papineau and your rebels for the last two months. You can bluster and riot to-day, but look out for to-morrow. I am the only Englishman here among you. Kill me; but watch what your end will be! For every hair of my head there will be one less habitant in this province. You haul down the British flag, and string up your tricolour in this British village while there is one Britisher to say, ‘Put up that flag again!’—You fools!”
He suddenly gave the rope a pull, and the flag ran up half-way; but as he did so a stone was thrown. It flew past his head, grazing his temple. A sharp point lacerated the flesh, and the blood flowed down his cheek. He ran the flag up to its full height, swiftly knotted the cord and put his back against the pole. Grasping his stick he prepared himself for an attack.
“Mind what I say,” he cried; “the first man that comes will get what for!”
There was a commotion in the crowd; consternation and dismay behind Ferrol, and excitement and anger in front of him. Three men were pushing their way through to him. Two of them were armed. They reached the platform and mounted it. It was the Regimental Surgeon and two British soldiers. The Regimental Surgeon held a paper in his hand.
“I have here,” he said to the crowd, “a proclamation by Sir John Colborne. The rebels have been defeated at three points, and half of the men from Bonaventure who joined Papineau have been killed. The ringleader, Nicolas Lavilette, when found, will be put on trial for his life. Now, disperse to your homes, or every man of you will be arrested and tried by court-martial.”
The crowd melted away like snow, and they hurried not the less because the stone which some one had thrown at Ferrol had struck a lad in the head, and brought him senseless and bleeding to the ground.
Ferrol picked up the tricolour and handed it to the Regimental Surgeon.
“I could have done it alone, I believe,” he said; “and, upon my soul, I’m sorry for the poor devils. Suppose we were Englishmen in France, eh?”
The fight was over. The childish struggle against misrule had come to a childish end. The little toy loyalists had been broken all to pieces. A few thousand Frenchmen, with a vague patriotism, had shied some harmless stones at the British flag-staff on the citadel: that was all. Obeying the instincts of blood, religion, race, and language, they had made a haphazard, sidelong charge upon their ancient conquerors, had spluttered and kicked a little, and had then turned tail upon disaster and defeat. An incoherent little army had been shattered into fugitive factors, and every one of these hurried and scurried for a hole of safety into which he could hide. Some were mounted, but most were on foot.
Officers fared little better than men. It was “Save who can”: they were all on a dead level of misfortune. Hundreds reached no cover, but were overtaken and driven back to British headquarters. In their terror, twenty brave rebels of two hours ago were to be captured by a single British officer of infantry speaking bad French.
Two of these hopeless fugitives were still fortunate enough to get a start of the hounds of retaliation and revenge. They were both mounted, and had far to go to reach their destination. Home was the one word in the mind of each; and they both came from Bonaventure.
The one was a tall, athletic young man, who had borne a captain’s commission in Papineau’s patriot army. He rode a sorel horse—a great, wiry raw-bone, with a lunge like a moose, and legs that struck the ground with the precision of a piston-rod. As soon as his nose was turned towards Bonaventure he smelt the wind of home in his nostrils; his hatchet head jerked till he got the bit straight between his teeth; then, gripping it as a fretful dog clamps the bone which his master pretends to wrest from him, he leaned down to his work, and the mud, the new-fallen snow and the slush flew like dirty sparks, and covered man and horse.
Above, an uncertain, watery moon flew in and out among the shifting clouds; and now and then a shot came through the mist and the half dusk, telling of some poor fugitive fighting, overtaken, or killed.
The horse neither turned head nor slackened gait. He was like a living machine, obeying neither call nor spur, but travelling with an unchanging speed along the level road, and up and down hill, mile after mile.
In the rider’s heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind. The horse could not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him. He was conscious of it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it. Yet, if he were overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever it might be. Nicolas Lavilette had begun to unwind the coil of fortune and ambition which his mother had long been engaged in winding.
A mile or two behind was another horse and another rider. The animal was clean of limb, straight and shapely of body, with a leg like a lady’s, and heart and wind to travel till she dropped. This mare the little black notary, Shangois, had cheerfully stolen from beside the tent of the English general. The bridle-rein hung upon the wrist of the notary’s palsied left hand, and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield. He rode like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his body bent forward even with the mare’s neck, his knees gripping the saddle with a frightened tenacity, his small, black eyes peering into the darkness before him, and his ears alert to the sound of pursuers.
Twenty men of the British artillery were also off on a chase that pleased them well. The hunt was up. It was not only the joy of killing, but the joy of gain, that spurred them on; for they would have that little black thief who stole the general’s brown mare, or they would know the reason why.
As the night wore on, Lavilette could hear hoof-beats behind him; those of the mare growing clearer and clearer, and those of the artillerymen remaining about the same, monotonously steady. He looked back, and saw the mare lightly leaning to her work, and a little man hanging to her back. He did not know who it was; and if he had known he would have wondered. Shangois had ridden to camp to fetch him back to Bonaventure for two purposes: to secure the five thousand dollars from Ferrol, and to save Nic’s sister from marrying a highwayman. These reasons he would have given to Nic Lavilette, but other ulterior and malicious ideas were in his mind. He had no fear, no real fear. His body shrank, but that was because he had been little used to rough riding and to peril. But he loved this game too, though there was a troop of foes behind him; and as long as they rode behind him he would ride on.
He foresaw a moment when he would stop, slide to the ground, and with his sabre kill one man—or more. Yes, he would kill one man. He had a devilish feeling of delight in thinking how he would do it, and how red the sabre would look when he had done it. He wished he had a hundred hands and a hundred sabres in those hands. More than once he had been in danger of his life, and yet he had had no fear.
He had in him the power of hatred; and he hated Ferrol as he had never hated anything in his life. He hated him as much as, in a furtive sort of way, he loved the rebellious, primitive and violent Christine.
As he rode on a hundred fancies passed through his brain, and they all had to do with killing or torturing. As a boy dreams of magnificent deeds of prowess, so he dreamed of deeds of violence and cruelty. In his life he had been secret, not vicious; he had enjoyed the power which comes from holding the secrets of others, and that had given him pleasure enough. But now, as if the true passion, the vital principle, asserted itself at the very last, so with the shadow of death behind him, his real nature was dominant. He was entirely sane, entirely natural, only malicious.
The night wore on, and lifted higher into the sky, and the grey dawn crept slowly up: first a glimmer, then a neutral glow, then a sort of darkness again, and presently the candid beginning of day.
As they neared the Parish of Bonaventure, Lavilette looked back again, and saw the little black notary a few hundred yards behind. He recognised him this time, waved a hand, and then called to his own fagged horse. Shangois’s mare was not fagged; her heart and body were like steel.
Not a quarter of a mile behind them both were three of the twenty artillerymen. Lavilette came to the bridge shouting for Baby, the keeper. Baby recognised him, and ran to the lever even as the sorel galloped up. For the first time in the ride, Nic stuck spurs harshly into the sorel’s side. With a grunt of pain the horse sprang madly on. A half-dozen leaps more and they were across, even as the bridge began to turn; for Baby had not recognised the little black notary, and supposed him to be one of Nic’s pursuers; the others he saw further back in the road. It was only when Shangois was a third of the way across, that he knew the mare’s rider. There was no time to turn the bridge back, and there was no time for Shangois to stop the headlong pace of the mare. She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across the chasm, towards the moving bridge. Her front feet struck the timbers, and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains.
Baby looked down and saw the mare’s head thrust above the water, once, twice; then there was a flash of a sabre—and nothing more.
Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure, as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it.
ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the saloon. He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind, alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen. From where he lay he could look down into the village. He was thinking of the tangle into which things had got. Feeling was bitter against him, and against the Lavilettes also, now that the patriots were defeated. It had gone about that he had warned the Governor. The habitants, in their blind way, blamed him for the consequences of their own misdoing. They blamed Nicolas Lavilette. They blamed the Lavilettes for their friend ship with Ferrol. They talked and blustered, yet they did not interfere with the two soldiers who kept guard at the home of the Regimental Surgeon. It was expected that the Cure would speak of the Rebellion from the altar this morning. It was also rumoured that he would have something to say about the Lavilettes; and Christine had insisted upon going. He laughed to think of her fury when he suggested that the Cure would probably have something unpleasant to say about himself. She would go and see to that herself, she said. He was amused, and yet he was not in high spirits, for he had coughed a great deal since the incident of the day before, and his strength was much weakened.
Presently he heard a footstep in the room, and turned over so that he might see. It was Sophie Farcinelle.
Before he had time to speak or to sit up, she had dropped a hand on his shoulder. Her face was aflame.
“You have been badly hurt, and I’m very sorry,” she said. “Why haven’t you been to see me? I looked for you. I looked every day, and you didn’t come, and—and I thought you had forgotten. Have you? Have you, Mr. Ferrol?”
He had raised himself on his elbow, and his face was near hers. It was not in him to resist the appealing of a pretty woman, and he had scarcely grasped the fact that he was a married man, his clandestine meetings with his wife having had, to this point, rather an air of adventure and irresponsibility. It is hard to say what he might have done or left undone; but, as Sophie’s face was within an inch of his own, the door of the room suddenly opened, and Christine appeared. The indignation that had sent her back from mass to Ferrol was turned into another indignation now.
Sophie, frightened, turned round and met her infuriated look. She did not move, however.
“Leave this room at once. What do you want here?” Christine said, between gasps of anger.
“The room is as much mine as yours,” answered Sophie, sullenly.
“The man isn’t,” retorted Christine, with a vicious snap of her teeth.
“Come, come,” said Ferrol, in a soothing tone, rising from the sofa and advancing.
“What’s he to you?” said Sophie, scornfully.
“My husband: that’s all!” answered Christine. “And now, if you please, will you go to yours? You’ll find him at mass. He’ll have plenty of praying to do if he prays for you both—voila!”
“Your husband!” said Sophie, in a husky voice, dumfounded and miserable. “Is that so?” she added to Ferrol. “Is she-your wife?”
“That’s the case,” he answered, “and, of course,” he added in a mollifying tone, “being my sister as well as Christine’s, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be alone with me in the room a few moments. Is there now?” he added to Christine.
The acting was clever enough, but not quite convincing, and Christine was too excited to respond to his blarney.
“He can’t be your real husband,” said Sophie, hardly above a whisper. “The Cure didn’t marry you, did he?” She looked at Ferrol doubtfully.
“Well, no,” he said; “we were married over in Upper Canada.”
“By a Protestant?” asked Sophie.
Christine interrrupted. “What’s that to you? I hope I’ll never see your face again while I live. I want to be alone with my husband, and your husband wants to be alone with his wife: won’t you oblige us and him—Hein?”
Sophie gave Ferrol a look which haunted him while he lived. One idle afternoon he had sowed the seeds of a little storm in the heart of a woman, and a whirlwind was driving through her life to parch and make desolate the green fields of her youth and womanhood. He had loitered and dallied without motive; but the idle and unmeaning sinner is the most dangerous to others and to himself, and he realised it at that moment, so far as it was in him to realise anything of the kind.
Sophie’s figure as it left the room had that drooping, beaten look which only comes to the stricken and the incurably humiliated.
“What have you said to her?” asked Christine of Ferrol, “what have you done to her?”
“I didn’t do a thing, upon my soul. I didn’t say a thing. She’d only just come in.”
“What did she say to you?”
“As near as I can remember, she said: ‘You have been hurt, and I’m very sorry. Why haven’t you been to see me? I looked for you; but you didn’t come, and I thought you had forgotten me.’”
“What did she mean by that? How dared she!”
“See here, Christine,” he said, laying his hand on her quivering shoulder, “I didn’t say much to her. I was over there one afternoon, the afternoon I asked you to marry me. I drank a lot of liqueur; she looked very pretty, and before she had a chance to say yes or no about it I kissed her. Now that’s a fact. I’ve never spent five minutes with her alone since; I haven’t even seen her since, until this morning. Now that’s the honest truth. I know it was scampish; but I never pretended to be good. It is nothing for you to make a fuss about, because, whatever I am—and it isn’t much one way or another—I am all yours, straight as a die, Christine. I suppose, if we lived together fifty years, I’d probably kiss fifty women—once a year isn’t a high average; but those kisses wouldn’t mean anything; and you, you, my girl”—he bent his head down to her “why, you mean everything to me, and I wouldn’t give one kiss of yours for a hundred thousand of any other woman’s in the world! What you’ve done for me, and what you’d do for me—”
There was a strange pathos in his voice, an uncommon thing, because his usual eloquence was, as a rule, more pleasing than touching. A quick change of feeling passed over her, and her eyes filled with tears. He ran his arm round her shoulder.
“Ah, come, come!” he said, with a touch of insinuating brogue, and kissed her. “Come, it’s all right. I didn’t mean anything, and she didn’t mean anything; and let’s start fresh again.”
She looked up at him with quick intelligence. “That’s just what we’ll have to do,” she said. “The Cure this morning at mass scolded the people about the Rebellion, and said that Nic and you had brought all this trouble upon Bonaventure; and everybody looked at our pew and snickered. Oh, how I hate them all! Then I jumped up—”
“Well?” asked Ferrol, “and what then?”
“I told them that my brother wasn’t a coward, and that you were my husband.”
“And then—then what happened?”
“Oh, then there was a great fuss in the church, and the Cure said ugly things, and I left and came home quick. And now—”
“Well, and now?” Ferrol interrupted.
“Well, now we’ll have to do something.”
“You mean, to go away?” he asked, with a little shrug of his shoulder. She nodded her head.
He was depressed: he had had a hemorrhage that morning, and the road seemed to close in on him on all sides.
“How are we to live?” he asked, with a pitiful sort of smile.
She looked up at him steadily for a moment, without speaking. He did not understand the look in her eyes, until she said:
“You have that five thousand dollars!”
He drew back a step from her, and met her unwavering look a little fearfully. She knew that—she—! “When did you find it out?” he asked.
“The morning we were married,” she replied.
“And you—you, Christine, you married me, a thief!” She nodded again.
“What difference could it make?” she asked. “I wouldn’t have been happy if I hadn’t married you. And I loved you!”
“Look here, Christine,” he said, “that five thousand dollars is not for you or for me. You will be safe enough if anything should happen to me; your people would look after you, and you have some money in your own right. But I’ve a sister, and she’s lame. She never had to do a stroke of work in her life, and she can’t do it now. I have shared with her anything I have had since times went wrong with us and our family. I needed money badly enough, but I didn’t care very much whether I got it for myself or not—only for her. I wanted that five thousand dollars for her, and to her it shall go; not one penny to you, or to me, or to any other human being. The Rebellion is over: that money wouldn’t have altered things one way or another. It’s mine, and if anything happens to me—”
He suddenly stooped down and caught her hands, looking her in the eyes steadily.
“Christine,” he said, “I want you never to ask me to spend a penny of that money; and I want you to promise me, by the name of the Virgin Mary, that you’ll see my sister gets it, and that you’ll never let her or any one else know where it came from. Come, Christine, will you do it for me? I know it’s very little indeed I give you, and you’re giving me everything; but some people are born to be debtors in this world, and some to be creditors, and some give all and get little, because—”
She interrupted him.
“Because they love as I love you,” she said, throwing her arms round his neck. “Show me where the money is, and I’ll do all you say, if—”
“Yes, if anything happens to me,” he said, and dropped his hand caressingly upon her head. He loved her in that moment.
She raised her eyes to his. He stooped and kissed her. She was still in his arms as the door opened and Monsieur and Madame Lavilette entered, pale and angry.
That night the British soldiers camped in the village. All over the country the rebels had been scattered and beaten, and Bonaventure had been humbled and injured. After the blind injustice of the fearful and the beaten, Nicolas Lavilette and his family were blamed for the miseries which had come upon the place. They had emerged from their isolation to tempt popular favour, had contrived many designs and ambitions, and in the midst of their largest hopes were humiliated, and were followed by resentment. The position was intolerable. In happy circumstances, Christine’s marriage with Ferrol might have been a completion of their glory, but in reality it was the last blow to their progress.
In the dusk, Ferrol and Christine sat in his room: she, defiant, indignant, courageous; he hiding his real feelings, and knowing that all she now planned and arranged would come to naught. Three times that day he had had violent paroxysms of coughing; and at last had thrown himself on his bed, exhausted, helplessly wishing that something would end it all. Illusion had passed for ever. He no longer had a cold, but a mortal trouble that was killing him inch by inch. He remembered how a brother officer of his, dying of an incurable disease, and abhorring suicide, had gone into a cafe and slapped an unoffending bully and duellist in the face, inviting a combat. The end was sure, easy and honourable. For himself—he looked at Christine. Not all her abounding vitality, her warm, healthy body, or her overwhelming love, could give him one extra day of life, not one day. What a fool he had been to think that she could do so! And she must sit and watch him—she, with her primitive fierceness of love, must watch him sinking, fading helplessly out of life, sight and being.
A bottle of whiskey was beside him. During the two hours just gone he had drunk a whole pint of it. He poured out another half-glass, filled it up with milk, and drank it off slowly. At that moment a knock came to the door. Christine opened it, and admitted one of the fugitives of Nicolas’s company of rebels. He saw Ferrol, and came straight to him.
“A letter for M’sieu’ the Honourable,” said he “from M’sieu’ le Capitaine Lavilette.”
Ferrol opened the paper. It contained only a few lines. Nicolas was hiding in the store-room of the vacant farmhouse, and Ferrol must assist him to escape to the State of New York.
He had stolen into the village from the north, and, afraid to trust any one except this faithful member of his company, had taken refuge in a place where, if the worst came to the worst, he could defend himself, for a time at least. Twenty rifles of the rebels had been stored in the farmhouse, and they were all loaded! Ferrol, of course, could go where he liked, being a Britisher, and nobody would notice him. Would he not try to get him away?
While Christine questioned the fugitive, Ferrol thought the matter over. One thing he knew: the solution of the great problem had come; and the means to the solution ran through his head like lightning. He rose to his feet, drank off a few mouthfuls of undiluted whiskey, filled a flask and put it in his pocket. Then he found his pistols, and put on his greatcoat, muffler and cap, before he spoke a word.
Christine stood watching him intently.
“What are you going to do, Tom?” she said quietly. “I am going to save your brother, if I can,” was his reply, as he handed her Nic’s letter.
Half an hour later, as Ferrol was passing from Louis Lavilette’s stables into the road leading to the Seigneury he met Sophie Farcinelle, face to face. In a vague sort of way he was conscious that a look of despair and misery had suddenly wasted the bloom upon her cheek, and given to the large, cow-like eyes an expression of child-like hopelessness. An apathy had settled upon his nerves. He saw things as in a dream. His brain worked swiftly, but everything that passed before his eyes was, as it were, in a kaleidoscope, vivid and glowing, but yet intangible. His brain told him that here before him was a woman into whose life he had brought its first ordeal and humiliation. But his heart only felt a reflective sort of pity: it was not a personal or immediate realisation, that is, not at first.
He was scarcely conscious that he stood and looked at her for quite two minutes, without motion or speech on the part of either; but the dumb, desolate look in her eyes—a look of appeal, astonishment, horror and shame combined, presently clarified his senses, and he slowly grew to look at her as at his punishment, the punishment of his life. Before—always before—Sophie had been vague and indistinct: seen to-day, forgotten tomorrow; and previous to meeting her scores had affected his senses, affected them not at all deeply.
She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant something, but what, is not quite sure. But the meaning and definiteness were his own. Out of the irresponsibility of his nature, out of the moral ineptitude to which he had been born, moral knowledge came to him at last. Love had not done it; neither the love of Christine, as strong as death, nor the love of his sister, the deepest thing he ever knew—but the look of a woman wronged. He had inflicted on her the deepest wrong that may be done a woman. A woman can forgive passion and ruin, and worse, if the man loves her, and she can forgive herself, remembering that to her who loved much, much was forgiven. But out of wilful idleness, the mere flattery of the senses, a vampire feeding upon the spirits and souls of others, for nothing save emotion for emotion’s sake—that was shameless, it was the last humiliation of a woman. As it were, to lose joy, and glow, and fervour of young, sincere and healthy life, to whip up the dying vitality and morbid brain of a consumptive!
All in a flash he saw it, realised it, and hated himself for it. He knew that as long as he lived, an hour or ten years, he never could redeem himself; never could forgive himself, and never buy back the life that he had injured. Many a time in his life he had kissed and ridden away, and had been unannoyed by conscience. But in proportion as conscience had neglected him before, it ground him now between the stones, and he saw himself as he was. Come of a gentleman’s family, he knew he was no gentleman. Having learned the forms and courtesies of life, having infused his whole career with a spirit of gay bonhomie, he knew that in truth he was a swaggerer; that bad taste, infamous bad taste, had marked almost everything that he had done in his life. He had passed as one of the nobility, but he knew that all true men, all he had ever met, must have read him through and through. He had understood this before to a certain point, had read himself to a certain mark of gauge, but he had never been honestly and truly a man until this moment. His soul was naked before his eyes. It had been naked before, but he had laughed. Born without real remorse, he felt it at last. The true thing started within him. God, the avenger, the revealer and the healer, had held up this woman as a glass to him that he might see himself.
He saw her as she had been, a docile, soft-eyed girl, untouched by anything that defames or shames, and all in a moment the man that had never been in him until now, from the time he laughed first into his mother’s eyes as a babe, spoke out as simply as a child would have spoken, and told the truth. There were no ameliorating phrases to soften it to her ears; there was no tact, there was no blarney, there was no suave suggestion now, no cheap gaiety, no cynicism of the social vampire—only the direct statement of a self-reproachful, dying man.
“I didn’t fully know what I was doing,” he said to her. “If I had understood then as I do now, I would never have come near you. It was the worst wickedness I ever did.”
The new note in his voice, the new fashion of his words, the new look of his eyes, startled her, confused her. She could scarcely believe he was the same man. The dumb desolation lifted a little, and a look of under standing seemed to pierce her tragic apathy. As if a current of thought had been suddenly sent through her, she drew herself up with a little shiver, and looked at him as if she were about to speak; but instead of doing so, a strange, unhappy smile passed across her lips.
He saw that all the goodness of her nature was trying to arouse itself and assure him of forgiveness. It did not deceive him in the least.
“I won’t be so mean now as to say I was weak,” he added. “I was not weak; I was bad. I always felt I was born a liar and a thief. I’ve lied to myself all my life; and I’ve lied to other people because I never was a true man.”
“A thief!” she said at last, scarcely above a whisper, and looking at him with a flash of horror in her eyes. “A thief!”
It was no use; he could not allow her to think he meant a thief in the vulgar, common sense, though that was what he was: just a common criminal.
“I have stolen the kind thoughts and love of people to whom I gave nothing in return,” he said steadily. “There is nothing good in me. I used to think I was good-natured; but I was not, or I wouldn’t have brought misery to a girl like you.”
His truth broke down the barriers of her anger and despair. Something welled up in her heart: it may have been love, it may have been inherent womanliness.
“Why did you marry Christine?” she asked.
All at once he saw that she never could quite understand. Her stand-point would still, in the end, be the stand-point of a woman. He saw that she would have forgiven him, even had he not loved her, if he had not married Christine. For the first time he knew something, the real something, of a woman’s heart. He had never known it before, because he had been so false himself. He might have been evil and had a conscience too; then he would have been wise. But he had been evil, and had had no conscience or moral mentor from the beginning; so he had never known anything real in his life. He thought he had known Christine, but now he saw her in a new light, through the eyes of her sister from whose heart he had gathered a harvest of passion and affection, and had burnt the stubble and seared the soil forever. Sophie could never justify herself in the eyes of her husband, or in her own eyes, because this man did not love her. Even as he stood before her there, declaring himself to her as wilfully wicked in all that he had said and done, she still longed passionately for the thing that was denied her: not her lost truth back, but the love that would have compensated for her suffering, and in some poor sense have justified her in years to come. She did not put it into words, but the thought was bluntly in her mind. She looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears, which dropped down her cheek to the ground.
He was about to answer her question, when, all at once, her honest eyes looked into his mournfully, and she said with an incredible pathos and simplicity:
“I don’t know how I am going to live on with Magon. I suppose I’ll have to keep pretending till I die!”
The bell in the church was ringing for vespers. It sounded peaceful and quiet, as though no war, or rebellion, or misery and shame, were anywhere within the radius of its travel.
Just where they stood there was a tall calvary. Behind it was some shrubbery. Ferrol was going to answer her, when he saw, coming along the road, the Cure in his robes, bearing the host. In front of him trotted an acolyte, swinging the censer.
Ferrol quickly drew Sophie aside behind the bushes, where they should not be seen; for he was no longer reckless. He wished to be careful for the woman’s sake.
The Curb did not turn his head to the right or left, but came along chanting something slowly. The smell of the incense floated past them. When the priest and the lad reached the calvary they turned towards it, bowed, crossed themselves, and the lad rang a little silver bell. Then the two passed on, the lad still ringing. When they were out of sight the sound of the bell came softly, softly up the road, while the bell in the church tower still called to prayer.
The words the priest chanted seemed to ring through the air after he had gone.
“God have mercy upon the passing soul!God have mercy upon the passing soul!Hear the prayer of the sinner, O Lord;Listen to the voice of those that mourn;Have mercy upon the sinner, O Lord!”
When Ferrol turned to Sophie again, both her hands were clasping the calvary, and she had dropped her head upon them.
“I must go,” he said. She did not move.
Again he spoke to her; but she did not lift her head. Presently, however, as he stood watching her, she moved away from the calvary, and, with her back still turned to him, stepped out into the road and hurried on towards her home, never once turning her head.
He stood looking after her for a moment, then turned and, sitting on a log behind the shrubbery, he tore a few pieces of paper out of a note-book and began writing. He wrote swiftly for about twenty minutes or more, then, arising, he moved on towards the village, where crowds had gathered—excited, fearful, tumultuous; for the British soldiers had just entered the place.
Ferrol seemed almost oblivious of the threatening crowd, which once or twice jostled him more than was accidental. He came into the post-office, got an envelope, put his letter inside it, stamped it, addressed it to Christine, and dropped it into the letter-box.
An hour later he stood among a few companies of British soldiers in front of the massive stone store-house of the Lavilettes’ abandoned farmhouse, with its thick shuttered windows and its solid oak doors. It was too late to attempt the fugitive’s escape, save by strategy. Over half an hour Nic had kept them at bay. He had made loopholes in the shutters and the door, and from these he fired upon his assailants. Already he had wounded five and killed two.
Men had been sent for timber to batter down the door and windows. Meanwhile, the troops stood at a respectful distance, out of the range of Nic’s firing, awaiting developments.
Ferrol consulted with the officers, advising a truce and parley, offering himself as mediator to induce Nic to surrender. To this the officers assented, but warned him that his life might pay the price of his temerity. He laughed at this. He had been talking, with his head and throat well muffled, and the collar of his greatcoat drawn about his ears. Once or twice he coughed, a hacking, wrenching cough, which struck the ears of more than one of the officers painfully; for they had known him in his best and gayest days at Quebec.
It was arranged that he should advance, holding out a flag of truce. Before he went he drew aside one of the younger lieutenants, in whose home at Quebec his sister had always been a welcome visitor, and told him briefly the story of his marriage, of his wife and of Nicolas. He sent Christine a message, that she should not forget to carry his last token to his sister! Then turning, he muffled up his face against the crisp, harsh air (there was design in this also), and, waving a white handkerchief, advanced to the door of the store-room.
The soldiers waited anxiously, fearing that Nic would fire, in spite of all; but presently a spot of white appeared at one of the loopholes; then the door was slowly opened. Ferrol entered, and it was closed again.
Nicolas Lavilette grasped his hand.
“I knew you wouldn’t go back on me,” said he. “I knew you were my friend. What the devil do they want out there?”
“I am more than your friend: I’m your brother,” answered Ferrol, meaningly. Then, quickly taking off his greatcoat, cap, muffler and boots: “Quick, on with these!” he said. “There’s no time to lose!”
“What’s all this?” asked Nic.
“Never mind; do exactly as I say, and there’s a chance for you.”
Nic put on the overcoat. Ferrol placed the cap on his head, and muffled him up exactly as he himself had been, then made him put on his own top-boots.
“Now, see,” he said, “everything depends upon how you do this thing. You are about my height. Pass yourself off for me. Walk loose and long as I do, and cough like me as you go.”
There was no difficulty in showing him what the cough was like: he involuntarily offered an illustration as he spoke.
“As soon as I shut the door and you start forward, I’ll fire on them. That’ll divert their attention from you. They’ll take you for me, and think I’ve failed in persuading you to give yourself up. Go straight on-don’t hurry—coughing all the time; and if you can make the dark, just beyond the soldiers, by the garden bench, you’ll find two men. They’ll help you. Make for the big tree on the Seigneury road—you know: where you were robbed. There you’ll find the fastest horse from your father’s stables. Then ride, my boy, ride for your life to the State of New York!”
“And you—you?” asked Nicolas. Ferrol laughed.
“You needn’t worry about me, Nic. I’ll get out of this all right; as right as rain! Are you ready? Steady now, steady. Let me hear you cough.” Nic coughed.
“No, that isn’t it. Listen and watch.” Ferrol coughed. “Here,” he said, taking something from his pocket, “open your mouth.” He threw some pepper down the other’s throat. “Now try it.”
Nic coughed almost convulsively.
“Yes, that’s it, that’s it! Just keep that up. Come along now. Quick-not a moment to lose! Steady! You’re all right, my boy; you’ve got nerve, and that’s the thing. Good-bye, Nic, good luck to you!”
They grasped hands: the door opened swiftly, and Nic stepped outside. In an instant Ferrol was at the loophole. Raising a rifle, he fired, then again and again. Through the loophole he could see a half-dozen men lift a log to advance on the door as Nic passed a couple of officers, coughing hard, and making spasmodic motions with his hand, as though exhausted and unable to speak.
He fired again, and a soldier fell. The lust of fighting was on him now. It was not a question of country or of race, but only a man crowding the power of old instincts into the last moments of his life. The vigour and valour of a reconquered youth seemed to inspire him; he felt as he did when a mere boy fighting on the Danube. His blood rioted in his veins; his eyes flashed. He lifted the flask of whiskey and gulped down great mouthfuls of it, and fired again and again, laughing madly.
“Let them come on, let them come on,” he cried. “By God, I’ll settle them!” The frenzy of war possessed him. He heard the timber crash against the door—once, twice, thrice, and then give away. He swung round and saw men’s faces glowing in the light of the fire, and then another face shot in before the others—that of Vanne Castine.
With a cry of fury he ran forward into the doorway. Castine saw him at the same moment. With a similar instinct each sprang for the other’s throat, Castine with a knife in his hand.
A cry of astonishment went up from the officers and the men without. They had expected to see Nic; but Nic was on his way to the horse beneath the great elm tree, and from the elm tree to the State of New York—and safety.
The men and the officers fell back as Castine and Ferrol clinched in a death struggle. Ferrol knew that his end had come. He had expected it, hoped for it. But, before the end, he wanted to kill this man, if he could. He caught Castine’s head in his hands, and, with a last effort, twisted it back with a sudden jerk.
All at once, with the effort, blood spurted from his mouth into the other’s face. He shivered, tottered and fell back, as Castine struck blindly into space. For a moment Ferrol swayed back and forth, stretched out his hands convulsively and gasped, trying to speak, the blood welling from his lips. His eyes were wild, anxious and yearning, his face deadly pale and covered with a cold sweat. Presently he collapsed, like a loosened bundle, upon the steps.
Castine, blinded with blood, turned round, and the light of the fire upon his open mouth made him appear to grin painfully—an involuntary grimace of terror.
At that instant a rifle shot rang out from the shrubbery, and Castine sprang from the ground and fell at Ferrol’s feet. Then, with a contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face downward upon the ground-dead.
A girl ran forward from the trees, with a cry, pushing her way through to Ferrol’s body. Lifting up his head, she called to him in an agony of entreaty. But he made no answer.
“That’s the woman who fired the shot!” said a subaltern officer excitedly. “I saw her!”
“Shut up, you fool—it was his wife!” exclaimed the young captain to whom Ferrol had given his last message for Christine.