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Title: The Pomp of the Lavilettes, Volume 1.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6215]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 27, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 1.
INTRODUCTION
I believe that 'The Pomp of the Lavilettes' has elements which justify
consideration. Its original appearance was, however, not made under
wholly favourable conditions. It is the only book of mine which I ever
sold outright. This was in 1896. Mr. Lamson, of Messrs. Lamson &
Wolffe, energetic and enterprising young publishers of Boston, came to
see me at Atlantic City (I was on a visit to the United States at the
time), and made a gallant offer for the English, American and colonial
book and serial rights. I felt that some day I could get the book back
under my control if I so desired, while the chances of the book making an
immediate phenomenal sale were not great. There is something in the
nature of a story which determines its popularity. I knew that 'The
Seats of the Mighty' and 'The Right of Way' would have a great sale, and
after they were written I said as much to my publishers. There was the
element of general appeal in the narratives and the characters. Without
detracting from the character-drawing, the characters, or the story in
'The Pomp of the Lavilettes', I was convinced that the book would not
make the universal appeal. Yet I should have written the story, even
if it had been destined only to have a hundred readers. It had to be
written. I wanted to write what was in me, and that invasion of a little
secluded French-Canadian society by a ne'er-do-well of the over-sea
aristocracy had a psychological interest, which I could not resist.
I thought it ought to be worked out and recorded, and particularly as
the time chosen--1837--marked a large collision between the British and
the French interests in French Canada, or rather of French political
interests and the narrow administrative prejudices and nepotism of the
British executive in Quebec.
It is a satisfaction to include this book in a definitive edition
of my works, for I think that, so far as it goes, it is truthfully
characteristic of French life in Canada, that its pictures are faithful,
and that the character-drawing represents a closer observation than any
of the previous works, slight as the volume is. It holds the same
relation to 'The Right of Way' that 'The Trail of the Sword' holds to
'The Seats of the Mighty', that 'A Ladder of Swords' holds to 'The
Battle of the Strong', that 'Donovan Pasha' holds to 'The Weavers'.
Instinctively, and, as I believe, naturally, I gave to each ambitious,
and--so far as conception goes--to each important novel of mine, an avant
coureur. 'The Trail of the Sword, A Ladder of Swords, Donovan Pasha and
The Pomp of the Lavilettes', are all very short novels, not exceeding in
any case sixty thousand words, while the novels dealing in a larger way
with the same material--the same people and environment, with the same
mise-en-scene, were each of them at least one hundred and forty thousand
words in length, or over two and a half times as long. I do not say that
this is a system which I devised; but it was, from the first, the method
I pursued instinctively; on the basis that dealing with a smaller
subject--with what one might call a genre picture first, I should get
well into my field, and acquire greater familiarity with my material
than I should have if I attempted the larger work at once.
This is not to say that the smaller work was immature. On the contrary,
I believe that at least these shorter works are quite mature in their
treatment and in their workmanship and design. Naturally, however, they
made less demand on all one's resources, they were narrower in scope and
less complicated, than the longer works, like 'The Seats of the Mighty',
which made heavier call upon the capacities of one's art. The only
occasion on which I have not preceded a very long novel of life in a new
field, by a very short one, is in the writing of 'The Judgment House'.
For this book, however, it might be said, that all the last twenty
years was a preparation, since the scenes were scenes in which I had
lived and moved, and in a sense played a part; while the ten South
African chapters of the book placed in the time of the Natal campaign
needed no pioneer narrative to increase familiarity with the material,
the circumstances and the country itself. I knew it all from study on
the spot.
From The 'Pomp of the Lavilettes', with which might be associated 'The
Lane That Had no Turning', to 'The Right of Way', was a natural
progression; it was the emergence of a big subject which must be treated
in a large bold way, if it was to succeed. It succeeded to a degree
which could not fail to gratify any one who would rather have a wide
audience than a contracted one, who believes that to be popular is not
necessarily to be contemptible--as the ancient Pistol put it, "base,
common and popular."
THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES
CHAPTER I
You could not call the place a village, nor yet could it be called a
town. Viewed from the bluff, on the English side of the river, it was a
long stretch of small farmhouses--some painted red, with green shutters,
some painted white, with red shutters--set upon long strips of land,
green, yellow, and brown, as it chanced to be pasture land, fields of
grain, or "plough-land."
These long strips of property, fenced off one from the other, so narrow
and so precise, looked like pieces of ribbon laid upon a wide quilt of
level country. Far back from this level land lay the dark, limestone
hills, which had rambled down from Labrador, and, crossing the River St.
Lawrence, stretched away into the English province. The farmhouses and
the long strips of land were in such regular procession, it might almost
have seemed to the eye of the whimsical spectator that the houses and the
ribbon were of a piece, and had been set down there, sentinel after
sentinel, like so many toy soldiers, along the banks of the great river.
There was one important break in the long line of precise settlement, and
that was where the Parish Church, about the middle of the line, had
gathered round it a score or so of buildings. But this only added to the
strength of the line rather than broke its uniformity. Wide stretches of
meadow-land reached back from the Parish Church until they were lost in
the darker verdure of the hills.
On either side of the Parish Church, with its tall, stone tower, were two
stout-built houses, set among trees and shrubbery. They were low set,
broad and square, with heavy-studded, old-fashioned doors. The roofs
were steep and high, with dormer windows and a sort of shelf at the
gables.
They were both on the highest ground in the whole settlement, a little
higher than the site of the Parish Church. The one was the residence of
the old seigneur, Monsieur Duhamel; the other was the Manor Casimbault,
empty now of all the Casimbaults. For a year it had lain idle, until the
only heir of the old family, which was held in high esteem as far back as
the time of Louis Quinze, returned from his dissipations in Quebec to
settle in the old place or sell it to the highest bidder.
Behind the Manor Casimbault and the Seigneury, thus flanking the church
at reverential distance, another large house completed the acute
triangle, forming the apex of the solid wedge of settlement drawn about
the church. This was the great farmhouse of the Lavilettes, one of the
most noticeable families in the parish.
Of the little buildings bunched beside the church, not the least
important was the post-office, kept by Papin Baby, who was also keeper
of the bridge which was almost at the door of the office. This bridge
crossed a stream that ran into the large river, forming a harbour. It
opened in the middle, permitting boats and vessels to go through. Baby
worked it by a lever. A hundred yards or so above the bridge was the
parish mill, and between were the Hotel France, the little house of
Doctor Montmagny, the Regimental Surgeon (as he was called), the cooper
shop, the blacksmith, the tinsmith and the grocery shops. Just beyond
the mill, upon the banks of the river, was the most notorious, if not the
most celebrated, house in the settlement. Shangois, the travelling
notary, lived in it--when he was not travelling. When he was, he left it
unlocked, all save one room; and people came and went through the house
as they pleased, eyeing with curiosity the dusty, tattered books upon the
shelves, the empty bottles in the corner, the patchwork of cheap prints,
notices of sales, summonses, accounts, certificates of baptism,
memoranda, receipted bills--though they were few--tacked or stuck to the
wall.
No grown-up person of the village meddled with anything, no matter how
curious; for this consistent, if unspoken, trust displayed by Shangois
appealed to their better instincts. Besides, they, like the children,
had a wholesome fear of the disreputable, shrunken, dishevelled little
notary, with the bead-like eyes, yellow stockings, hooked nose and
palsied left hand. Also the knapsack and black bag he carried under his
arms contained more secrets than most people wished to tempt or challenge
forth. Few cared to anger the little man, whose father and grandfather
had been notaries here before him.
Like others in the settlement, Shangois was the last of his race. He
could put his finger upon the secret history and private lives of nearly
every person in a dozen parishes, but most of all in Bonaventure--for
such this long parish was called. He knew to a hair's breadth the social
value of every human being in the parish. He was too cunning and acute
to be a gossip, but by direct and indirect ways he made every person feel
that the Cure and the Lord might forgive their pasts, but he could never
forget them, nor wished to do so. For Monsieur Duhamel, the old
seigneur, for the drunken Philippe Casimbault, for the Cure, and for the
Lavilettes, who owned the great farmhouse at the apex of that wedge of
village life, he had a profound respect. The parish generally did not
share his respect for the Lavilettes.
Once upon a time, beyond the memories of any in the parish, the
Lavilettes of Bonaventure were a great people. Disaster came, debt and
difficulty followed, fire consumed the old house in which their dignity
had been cherished, and at last they had no longer their seigneurial
position, but that of ordinary farmers who work and toil in the field
like any of the fifty-acre farmers on the banks of the St. Lawrence
River.
Monsieur Louis Lavilette, the present head of the house, had not
married well. At the time when the feeling against the English was the
strongest, and when his own fortunes were precarious, he had married a
girl somewhat older than himself, who was half English and half French,
her father having been a Hudson's Bay Company factor on the north coast
of the river. In proportion as their fortunes and their popularity
declined, and their once notable position as an old family became
scarce a memory even, the pride of the Lavilettes increased.
Madame Lavilette made strong efforts to secure her place; but she was
not of an old French family, and this was an easy and convenient weapon
against her. Besides, she had no taste, and her manners were much
inferior to those of her husband. What impression he managed to make by
virtue of a good deal of natural dignity, she soon unmade by her lack of
tact. She had no innate breeding, though she was not vulgar. She lacked
sense a little and sensitiveness much.
The Casimbaults and the wife of the old seigneur made no friends of the
Lavilettes, but the old seigneur kept up a formal habit of calling twice
a year at the Lavilettes' big farmhouse, which, in spite of all
misfortune, grew bigger as the years went on. Probably, in spite of
everything, Monsieur Lavilette and his family would have succeeded better
socially had it not been for one or two unpopular lawsuits brought by the
Lavilettes against two neighbours, small farmers, one of whom was clearly
in the wrong, and the other as clearly in the right.
When, after years had gone by, and the children of the Lavilettes had
grown up, young Monsieur Casimbault came from Quebec to sell his property
(it seemed to the people of Bonaventure like selling his birthright), he
was greatly surprised to find Monsieur Lavilette ready with ten thousand
dollars, to purchase the Manor Casimbault. Before the parish had time to
take breath Monsieur Casimbault had handed over the deed, pocketed the
money, and leaving the ancient heritage of his family in the hands of the
Lavilettes, (who forthwith prepared to enter upon it, house and land),
had hurried away to Quebec again without any pangs of sentiment.
It was a little before this time that impertinent peasants in the parish
began to sing:
"O when you hear my little silver drum,
And when I blow my little gold trompette-a,
You must drop your work and come,
You must leave your pride at home,
And duck your heads before the Lavilette-a!"
Gatineau the miller, and Baby the keeper of the bridge, gave their
own reasons for the renewed progress of the Lavilettes. They met in
conference at the mill on the eve of the marriage of Sophie Lavilette
to Magon Farcinelle, farrier, farmer and member of the provincial
legislature, whose house lay behind the piece of maple wood, a mile
or so to the right of the Lavilettes' farmhouse. Farcinelle's engagement
to Sophie had come as a surprise to all, for, so far as people knew,
there had been no courting. Madame Lavilette had encouraged, had even
tempted, the spontaneous and jovial Farcinelle. Though he had never made
a speech in the House of Assembly, and it was hard to tell why he was
elected, save because everybody liked him, his official position and his
popularity held an important place in Madame Lavilette's long-developed
plans, which at last were to place her in a position equal to that of the
old seigneur, and launch her upon society at the capital.
They had gone more than once to the capital, where their family had been
well-known fifty years before, but few doors had been opened to them.
They were farmers--only farmers--and Madame Lavilette made no remarkable
impression. Her dress was florid and not in excellent taste, and her
accent was rather crude. Sophie had gone to school at the convent in the
city, but she had no ambition. She had inherited the stolid simplicity
of her English grandfather. When her schooling was finished she let her
school friends drop, and came back to Bonaventure, rather stately, given
to reading, and little inclined to bother her head about anybody.
Christine, the younger sister, had gone to Quebec also, but after a week
of rebellion, bad temper and sharp speaking, had come home again without
ceremony, and refused to return. Despite certain likenesses to her
mother, she had a deep, if unintelligible, admiration for her father,
and she never tired looking at the picture of her great-grandfather in
the dress of a chevalier of St. Louis--almost the only thing that had
been saved from the old Manor House, destroyed so long before her time.
Perhaps it was the importance she attached to her ancestry which made her
impatient with their present position, and with people in the parish who
would not altogether recognise their claims. It was that which made her
give a little jerky bow to the miller and the postmaster when she passed
the mill.
"Come, dusty-belly," said Baby, "what's all this pom-pom of the
Lavilettes?"
The miller pursed out his lips, contracted his brows, and arranged his
loose waistcoat carefully on his fat stomach.
"Money," said he, oracularly, as though he had solved the great question
of the universe.
"La! la! But other folks have money; and they step about Bonaventure no
more louder than a cat."
"Blood," added Gatineau, corrugating his brows still more.
"Bosh!"
"Both together--money and blood," rejoined the miller. Overcome by his
exertions, he wheezed so tremendously that great billows of excitement
raised his waistcoat, and a perspiration broke out upon his mealy face,
making a paste which the sun, through the open doorway, immediately began
to bake into a crust.
"Pah, the airs they have always had, those Lavilettes!" said Baby.
"They will not do this because it is not polite, they will not do that
because they are too proud. They say that once there was a baron in
their family. Who can tell how long ago! Perhaps when John the Baptist
was alive. What is that? Nothing. There is no baron now. All at once
somebody die a year ago, and leave them ten thousand dollars; and then--
mais, there is the grand difference! They have save and save twenty
years to pay their debts and to buy a seigneury, like that baron who live
in the time of John the Baptist. Now it is to stand on a ladder to speak
to them. And when all's done, they marry Ma'm'selle Sophie to a farrier,
to that Magon Farcinelle--bah!"
"Magon was at the Laval College in Quebec; he has ten thousand dollars;
he is the best judge of horses in the province, and he's a Member of
Parliament to boot," said the miller, puffing. "He is a great man
almost."
"He's no better judge of horses than M'sieu' Nic Lavilette--eh, that's a
bully bad scamp, my Gatineau!" responded Baby. "He's the best in the
family. He is a grand sport; yes. It's he that fetched Ma'm'selle
Sophie to the hitching-post. Voila, he can wind them all round his
finger!"
Baby looked round to see if any one was near; then he drew the miller's
head down by pulling at his collar, and whispered in his ear:
"He's hot foot for the Rebellion; that's one good thing," he said. "If
he wipes out the English--"
"Hold your tongue," nervously interrupted Gatineau, for just then two or
three loiterers of the parish came shambling around the corner of the
mill.
Baby stopped short, and as they greeted the newcomers their attention was
drawn to the stage-coach from St. Croix coming over the little hill near
by.
"Here's M'sieu' Nic now--and who's with him?" said Baby, stepping about
nervously in his excitement. "I knew there was something up. M'sieu'
Nic's been writing long letters from Montreal."
Baby's look suggested that he knew more than his position as postmaster
entitled him to know; but the furtive droop at the corner of his eyes
showed also that his secretiveness was equal to his cowardice.
On the seat, beside the driver of the coach, was Nicolas Lavilette,
black-haired, brown-eyed, athletic, reckless-looking, with a cast in his
left eye, which gave him a look of drollery, in keeping with his buoyant,
daring nature. Beside him was a figure much more noticeable and unusual.
Lean, dark-featured, with keen-glancing eyes, and a body with a faculty
for finding corners of ease; waving hair, streaked with grey, black
moustache, and a hectic flush on the cheeks, lending to the world-wise
face a wistful look-that, with near six feet of height, was the picture
of his friend.
"Who is it?" asked the miller, with bulging eyes. "An English
nobleman," answered Baby. "How do you know?" asked Gatineau.
"How do I know you are a fat, cheating miller?" replied the postmaster,
with cunning care and a touch of malice. Malice was the only power Baby
knew.
CHAPTER II
In the matter of power, Baby, the inquisitive postmaster and keeper of
the bridge, was unlike the new arrival in Bonaventure. The abilities of
the Honourable Tom Ferrol lay in a splendid plausibility, a spontaneous
blarney. He could no more help being spendthrift of his affections and
his morals than of his money, and many a time he had wished that his
money was as inexhaustible as his emotions.
In point of morals, any of the Lavilettes presented a finer average than
their new guest, who had come to give their feasting distinction, and
what more time was to show. Indeed, the Hon. Mr. Ferrol had no morals to
speak of, and very little honour. He was the penniless son of an Irish
peer, who was himself well-nigh penniless; and he and his sister, whose
path of life at home was not easy after her marriageable years had
passed, drew from the consols the small sum of money their mother
had left them, and sailed away for New York.
Six months of life there, with varying fortune in which a well-to-do girl
in society gave him a promise of marriage, and then Ferrol found himself
jilted for a baronet, who owned a line of steamships and could give the
ambitious lady a title. In his sick heart he had spoken profanely of the
future Lady of Title, had bade her good-bye with a smile and an agreeable
piece of wit, and had gone home to his flat and sobbed like a schoolboy;
for, as much as he could love anybody, he loved this girl. He and the
faithful sister vanished from New York and appeared in Quebec, where they
were made welcome in Government House, at the citadel, and among all who
cared to know the weight of an inherited title. For a time, the fact
that he had little or no money did not temper their hospitality with
niggardliness or caution. But their cheery and witty guest began to take
more wine than was good for him or comfortable for others; his bills at
the clubs remained unpaid, his landlord harried him, his tailors pursued
him; and then he borrowed cheerfully and well.
However, there came an end to this, and to the acceptance of his I O U's.
Following the instincts of his Irish ancestors, he then leagued with a
professional smuggler, and began to deal in contraband liquors and
cigars. But before this occurred, he had sent his sister to a little
secluded town, where she should be well out of earshot of his doings or
possible troubles. He would have shielded her from harm at the cost of
his life. His loyalty to her was only limited by the irresponsibility of
his nature and a certain incapacity to see the difference between radical
right and radical wrong. His honour was a matter of tradition, such as
it was, and in all else he had the inherent invalidity of some of his
distant forebears. For a time all went well, then discovery came, and
only the kind intriguing of as good friends as any man deserved prevented
his arrest and punishment. But it all got whispered about; and while
some ladies saw a touch of romance in his doing professionally and
wholesale what they themselves did in an amateurish way with laces,
gloves and so on, men viewed the matter more seriously, and advised
Ferrol to leave Quebec.
Since that time he had lived by his wits--and pleasing, dangerous wits
they were--at Montreal and elsewhere. But fatal ill-luck pursued him.
Presently a cold settled on his lungs. In the dead of winter, after
sending what money he had to his sister, he had lived a week or more in
a room, with no fire and little food. As time went on, the cold got no
better. After sundry vicissitudes and twists of fortune, he met Nicolas
Lavilette at a horse race, and a friendship was struck up. He frankly
and gladly accepted an invitation to attend the wedding of Sophie
Lavilette, and to make a visit at the farm, and at the Manor Casimbault
afterwards. Nicolas spoke lightly of the Manor Casimbault, yet he had
pride in it also; for, scamp as he was, and indifferent to anything like
personal dignity or self-respect, he admired his father and had a
natural, if good-natured, arrogance akin to Christine's self-will.
It meant to Ferrol freedom from poverty, misery and financial subterfuge
for a moment; and he could be quiet--for, as he said, "This confounded
cold takes the iron out of my blood."
Like all people stricken with this disease, he never called it anything
but a cold. All those illusions which accompany the malady were his. He
would always be better "to-morrow." He told the two or three friends who
came from their beds in the early morning to see him safely off from
Montreal to Bonaventure that he would be all right as soon as he got out
into the country; that he sat up too late in the town; and that he had
just got a new prescription which had cured a dozen people "with colds
and hemorrhages." His was only a cold--just a cold; that was all. He
was a bit weak sometimes, and what he needed was something to pull up
his strength. The country would do this-plenty of fresh air, riding,
walking, and that sort of thing.
He had left Montreal behind in gay spirits, and he continued gay for
several hours, holding himself' erect in the seat, noting the landscape,
telling stories; but he stumbled with weakness as they got out of the
coach for luncheon. He drank three full portions of whiskey at table,
and ate nothing. The silent landlady who waited on them at last brought
a huge bowl of milk, and set it before him without a word. A flush
passed swiftly across his face and faded away, as, with quick
sensitiveness, he glanced at Nicolas and another passenger, a fat priest.
They took no notice, and, reassured, he said, with a laugh, that the
landlady knew exactly what he wanted. Lifting the dish, he drained it at
a gasp, though the milk almost choked him, and, to the apprehension of
his hostess, set the bowl spinning on the table like a top. Another
illusion of the disease was his: that he succeeded perfectly in deceiving
everybody round him with his pathetic make-believe; and, unlike most
deceivers, he deceived himself as well. The two actions, inconsistent
as they were, were reconciled in him, as in all the race of consumptives,
by some strange chemistry of the mind and spirit. He was on the broad,
undiverging highway to death; yet, with every final token about him that
he was in the enemy's country, surrounded, trapped, soon to be passed
unceremoniously inside the citadel at the end of the avenue, he kept
signalling back to old friends that all was well, and he told himself
that to-morrow the king should have his own again--"To-morrow, and to-
morrow, and to-morrow!"
He was not very thin in body; his face was full, and at times his eyes
were singularly and fascinatingly bright. He had colour--that hectic
flush which, on his cheek, was almost beautiful. One would have turned
twice to see. The quantities of spirits that he drank (he ate little)
would have killed a half-dozen healthy men. To him it was food, taken
up, absorbed by the fever of his disease, giving him a real, not a
fictitious strength; and so it would continue to do till some artery
burst and choked him, or else, by some miracle of air and climate, the
hole in his lung healed up again; which he, in his elation, believed
would be "to-morrow." Perhaps the air, the food, and life of Bonaventure
were the one medicine he needed!
But, in the moment Nicolas said to him that Bonaventure was just over the
hill, that they would be able to see it now, he had a sudden feeling of
depression. He felt that he would give anything to turn back. A
perspiration broke out on his forehead and his cheek. His eyes had a
wavering, anxious look. Some of that old sanity of the once healthy man
was making a last effort for supremacy, breaking in upon illusive hopes
and irresponsible deceptions.
It was only for a moment. Presently, from the top of the hill, they
looked down upon the long line of little homes lying along the banks of
the river like peaceful watchmen in a pleasant land, with corn and wine
and oil at hand. The tall cross on the spire of the Parish Church was
itself a message of hope. He did not define it so; but the impression
vaguely, perhaps superstitiously, possessed him. It was this vague
influence, perhaps (for he was not a Catholic), which made him
involuntarily lift his hat, as did Nicolas, when they passed a calvary;
which induced him likewise to make the sacred gesture when they met a
priest, with an acolyte and swinging censer, hurrying silently on to the
home of some dying parishioner. The sensations were different from
anything he had known. He had been used to the Catholic religion in
Ireland; he had seen it in France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere; but here
was something essentially primitive, archaically touching and convincing.
His spirits came back with a rush; he had a splendid feeling of
exaltation. He was not religious, never could be, but he felt religious;
he was ill, but he felt that he was on the open highway to health; he was
dishonest, but he felt an honest man; he was the son of a peer, but he
felt himself brother to the fat miller by the roadway, to Baby, the
postmaster and keeper of the bridge, to the Regimental Surgeon, who stood
in his doorway, pulling at his moustache and blowing clouds of tobacco
smoke into the air.
Shangois, the notary, met his eye as they dashed on. A new sensation--
not a change in the elation he felt, but an instant's interruption--
came to him. He asked who Shangois was, and Nicolas told him.
"A notary, eh?" he remarked gaily. "Well, why does he disguise himself?
He looks like a ragpicker, and has the eye of Solomon and the devil in
one. He ought to be in some Star Chamber--Palmerston could make use of
him."
"Oh, he's kept busy enough with secrets here!" was Nicolas's laughing
reply.
"It's only a difference of size in the secrets anyhow," was Ferrol's
response in the same vein; and in a few moments they had passed the
Seigneury, and were drawn up before the great farmhouse.
Its appearance was rather comfortable and commodious than impressive, but
it had the air of home and undepreciating use. There was one beautiful
clump of hollyhocks and sunflowers in the front garden; a corner of the
main building was covered with morning-glories; a fence to the left was
overgrown with grape-vines, making it look like a hedge; a huge pear tree
occupied a spot opposite to the pretty copse of sunflowers and
hollyhocks; and the rest of the garden was green, save just round a
little "summer-house," in the corner, with its back to the road, near
which Sophie had set a palisade of the golden-rod flower. Just beside
the front door was a bush of purple lilac; and over the door, in copper,
was the coat-of-arms of the Lavilettes, placed there, at Madame's
insistence, in spite of the dying wish of Lavilette's father, a feeble,
babbling old gentleman in knee-breeches, stock, and swallow-tailed coat,
who, broken down by misfortune, age and loneliness, had gathered himself
together for one last effort for becomingness against his daughter-in-
law's false tastes--and had died the day after. He was spared the
indignity of the coat-of-arms on the tombstone only by the fierce
opposition of Louis Lavilette, who upon this point had his first quarrel
with his wife.
Ferrol saw no particular details in his first view of the house.
The picture was satisfying to a tired man--comfort, quiet, the bread
of idleness to eat, and welcome, admiring faces round him. Monsieur
Lavilette stood in the doorway, and behind him, at a carefully disposed
distance, was Madame, rather more emphatically dressed than necessary.
As he shook hands genially with Madame he saw Sophie and Christine in the
doorway of the parlour. His spirits took another leap. His
inexhaustible emotions were out upon cheerful parade at once.
The Lavilettes immediately became pensioners of his affections. The
first hour of his coming he himself did not know which sister his ample
heart was spending itself on most--Sophie, with her English face, and
slow, docile, well-bred manner, or Christine, dark, petite, impertinent,
gay-hearted, wilful, unsparing of her tongue for others--or for herself.
Though Christine's lips and cheeks glowed, and her eyes had wonderful
warm lights, incredulity was constantly signalled from both eyes and
lips. She was a fine, daring little animal, with as great a talent for
untruth as truth, though, to this point in her life, truth had been more
with her. Her temptations had been few.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Ferrol seemed honestly to like the old farmhouse, with its low
ceilings, thick walls, big beams and wide chimneys, and he showed himself
perfectly at home. He begged to be allowed to sit for an hour in the
kitchen, beside the great fireplace. He enjoyed this part of his first
appearance greatly. It was like nothing he had tasted since he used, as
a boy, to visit the huntsman's home on his father's estate, and gossip
and smoke in that Galway chimney-corner. It was only when he had to face
the too impressive adoration of Madame Lavilette that his comfort got a
twist.
He made easy headway into the affections of his hostess; for, besides all
other predilections, she had an adoring awe of the nobility. It rather
surprised her that Ferrol seemed almost unaware of his title. He was
quite without self-consciousness, although there was that little touch
of irresponsibility in him which betrayed a readiness to sell his dignity
for a small compensation. With a certain genial capacity for universal
blarney, he was at first as impressive with Sophie as he was attentive to
Christine. It was quite natural that presently Madame Lavilette should
see possibilities beyond all her past imaginations. It would surely
advance her ambitions to have him here for Sophie's wedding; but even as
she thought that, she had twinges of disappointment, because she had
promised Farcinelle to have the wedding as simple and bourgeois as
possible.
Farcinelle did not share the social ambitions of the Lavilettes.
He liked his political popularity, and he was only concerned for that.
He had that touch of shrewdness to save him from fatuity where the
Lavilettes were concerned. He was determined to associate with the
ceremony all the primitive customs of the country. He had come of a race
of simple farmers, and he was consistent enough to attempt to live up to
the traditions of his people. He was entirely too good-natured to take
exception to Ferrol's easy-going admiration of Sophie.
Ferrol spoke excellent French, and soon found points of pleasant contact
with Monsieur Lavilette, who, despite the fact that he had coarsened as
the years went on, had still upon him the touch of family tradition,
which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect. With
the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent
priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs to the
narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the English exceedingly;
and all Irishmen were English men to him. He resisted Ferrol's blarney.
His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead seemed to grow narrower, and
his very cassock appeared to contract austerely on his figure as he
talked to the refugee of misfortune.
When the most pardonable of gossips, the Regimental Surgeon, asked him on
his way home what he thought of Ferrol, he shrugged his shoulders,
tightened his lips again, and said:
"A polite, designing heretic."
The Regimental Surgeon, though a Frenchman, had once belonged to a
British battery of artillery stationed at Quebec, and there he had
acquired an admiration for the English, which betrayed itself in his
curious attempts to imitate Anglo-Saxon bluffness and blunt spontaneity.
When the Cure had gone, he flung back his shoulders, with a laugh, as he
had seen the major-general do at the officers' mess at the citadel, and
said in English:
"Heretics are damn' funny. I will go and call. I have also some Irish
whiskey. He will like that; and pipes--pipes, plenty of them!"
The pipe he was smoking at the moment had been given to him by the major-
general, and he polished the silver ferrule, with its honourable
inscription, every morning of his life.
On the morning of the second day after Ferrol came, he was carried off to
the Manor Casimbault to see the painful alterations which were being made
there under the direction of Madame Lavilette. Sophie, who had a good
deal of natural taste, had in the old days fought against her mother's
incongruous ideas, and once, when the rehabilitation of the Manor
Casimbault came up, she had made a protest; but it was unavailing, and it
was her last effort. The Manor Casimbault was destined to be an example
of ancient dignity and modern bad taste. Alterations were going on as
Madame Lavilette, Ferrol and Christine entered.
For some time Ferrol watched the proceedings with a casual eye, but
presently he begged his hostess that she would leave the tall, old oak
clock where it was in the big hall, and that the new, platter-faced
office clock, intended for its substitute, be hung up in the kitchen.
He eyed the well-scraped over-mantel askance and saw, with scarcely
concealed astonishment, a fine, old, carved wooden seat carried out of
doors to make room for an American rocking-chair. He turned his head
away almost in anger when he saw that the beautiful brown wainscoting was
being painted an ultra-marine blue. His partly disguised astonishment
and dissent were not lost upon the crude but clever Christine. A new
sense was opened up in her, and she felt somehow that the ultra-marine
blue was not right, that the over-mantel had been spoiled, that the new
walnut table was too noticeable, and that the American rocking-chair
looked very common. Also she felt that the plush, with which her mother
and the dressmaker at St. Croix had decorated her bodice, was not the
thing. Presently this made her angry.
"Won't you sit down?" she asked a little maliciously, pointing to the
rocking-chair in the salon.
"I prefer standing--with you," he answered, eyeing the chair with a sly
twinkle.
"No, that isn't it," she rejoined sharply. "You don't like the chair."
Then suddenly breaking into English--"Ah! I know, I know. You can't
fool me. I see de leetla look in your eye; and you not like the paint,
and you'd pitch that painter, Alcide, out into the snow if it is your
house."
"I wouldn't, really," he answered--he coughed a little--"Alcide is doing
his work very well. Couldn't you give me a coat of blue paint, too?"
The piquant, intelligent, fiery peasant face interested him. It had
warmth, natural life and passion.
She flushed and stamped her foot, while he laughed heartily; and she was
about to say something dangerous, when the laugh suddenly stopped and he
began coughing. The paroxysm increased until he strained and caught at
his breast with his hand. It seemed as if his chest and throat must
burst.
She instantly changed. The flush of anger passed from her face, and
something else came into it. She caught his hand.
"Oh! what can I do, what can I do to help you?" she asked pitifully.
"I did not know you were so ill. Tell me, what can I do?"
He made a gentle, protesting motion of his free arm--he could not speak
yet--while she held and clasped his other hand.
"It's the worst I ever had," he said, after a moment "the very worst!"
He sat down, and again he had a fit of coughing, and the sweat started
out violently upon his forehead and cheek. When his head at last lay
back against the chair, the paroxysm over, a little spot of blood showed
and spread upon his white lips. With a pained, shuddering little gasp
she caught her handkerchief from her bosom, and, running one hand round
his shoulder, quickly and gently caught away the spot of blood, and
crumpled the handkerchief in her hand to hide it from him.
"Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow!" she said. "Oh! poor fellow!"
Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked at him with that look which
is not the love of a woman for a man, or of a lover for a lover, but that
latent spirit of care and motherhood which is in every woman who is more
woman than man. For there are women who are more men than women.
For himself, a new fact struck home in him. For the first time since
his illness he felt that he was doomed. That little spot of blood in
the crumpled handkerchief which had flashed past his eye was the fatal
message he had sought to elude for months past. A hopeless and ironical
misery shot through him. But he had humour too, and, with the taste of
the warm red drop in his mouth still, his tongue touched his lips
swiftly, and one hand grasping the arm of the chair, and the fingers of
the other dropping on the back of her hand lightly, he said in a quaint,
ironical tone:
"'Dead for a ducat!'"
When he saw the look of horror in her face, his eyes lifted almost gaily
to hers, as he continued:
"A little brandy, if you can get it, mademoiselle."
"Yes, yes. I'll get some for you--some whiskey!" she said, with
frightened, terribly eager eyes.
"Alcide always has some. Don't stir. Sit just where you are." She ran
out of the room swiftly--a light-footed, warm-spirited, dramatic little
thing, set off so garishly in the bodice with the plush trimming; but she
had a big heart, and the man knew it. It was the big-heartedness which
was the touch of the man in her that made her companionable to him.
He said to himself when she left him:
"What cursed luck!" And after a pause, he added: "Good-hearted little
body, how sorry she looked!" Then he settled back in his chair, his eyes
fixed upon her as she entered the room, eager, pale and solicitous. A
half-hour later they two were on their way to the farmhouse, the work of
despoiling going on in the Manor behind them. Ferrol walked with an
easy, half-languid step, even a gay sort of courage in his bearing. The
liquor he had drunk brought the colour to his lips. They were now hot
and red, and his eyes had a singular feverish brilliancy, in keeping with
the hectic flush on his cheek. He had dismissed the subject of his
illness almost immediately, and Christine's adaptable nature had
instantly responded to his mood.
He asked her questions about the country-side, of their neighbours, of
the way they lived, all in an easy, unintrusive way, winning her
confidence and provoking her candour.
Two or three times, however, her face suddenly flushed with the memory
of the scene in the Manor, and her first real awakening to her social
insufficiency; for she of all the family had been least careful to see
herself as others might see her. She was vain; she was somewhat of a
barbarian; she loved nobody and nobody's opinion as she loved herself and
her own opinion. Though, if any people really cared for her, and she for
them, they were the Regimental Surgeon and Shangois the notary.
Once, as they walked on, she turned and looked back at the Manor House,
but only for an instant. He caught the glance, and said:
"You'll like to live there, won't you?"
"I don't know," she answered almost sharply. "But if the Casimbaults
liked it, I don't see why we shouldn't."
There was a challenge in her voice, defiance in the little toss of her
head. He liked her spirit in spite of the vanity. Her vanity did not
concern him greatly; for, after all, what was he doing here? Merely
filling in dark days, living a sober-coloured game out. He had one
solitary hundred dollars--no more; and half of that he had borrowed, and
half of it he got from selling his shooting-traps and his hunting-watch.
He might worry along on that till the end of the game; but he had no
money to send his sister in that secluded village two hundred miles away.
She had never known how really poor he was; and she had lived in her
simple way without want and without any unusual anxiety, save for his
health. More than once he had practically starved himself to send money
to her. Perhaps also he would have starved others for the same purpose.
"I'll warrant the Casimbaults never enjoyed the Manor as much as I've
done that big kitchen in your house," he said, "and I can't see why you
want to leave it. Don't you feel sorry you are going to leave the old
place? Hadn't you got your own little spots there, and made friends with
them? I feel as if I should like to sit down by the side of your big,
warm chimney-corner, till the wind came along that blows out the candle."
"What do you mean by 'blowing out the candle'?" she asked.
"Well," he answered, "it means, shut up shop, drop the curtain, or
anything you like. It means X Y Z and the grand finale!"
"Oh!" she said, with a little start, as the thing dawned upon her.
"Don't speak like that; you're not going to die."
"Give me your handkerchief," he answered. "Give it to me, and I'll tell
you--how soon."
She jammed her hand down in her pocket. "No, I won't," she answered.
"I won't!"
She never did, and he liked her none the less for that. Somehow, up to
this time, he had always thought that he would get well, and to-morrow he
would probably think so again; but just for the moment he felt the real
truth.
Presently she said (they spoke in French):
"Why is it you like our old kitchen so much? It isn't nearly as nice as
the parlour."
"Well, it's a place to live in, anyhow; and I fancy you all feel more at
home there than anywhere else."
"I feel just as much at home in the parlour as there," she retorted.
"Oh, no, I think not. The room one lives in the most is the room for any
one's money."
She looked at him in a puzzled way. Too many sensations were being born
in her all at once; but she did recognise that he was not trying to
subtract anything from the pomp of the Lavilettes.
He belonged to a world that she did not know--and yet he was so perfectly
at home with her, so idly easygoing.
"Did you ever live in a castle?" she asked eagerly. "Yes," he said,
with a dry little laugh. Then, after a moment, with the half-abstracted
manner of a man who is recalling a long-forgotten scene, he added: "I
lived in the North Tower, looking out on Farcalladen Moor. When I wasn't
riding to the hounds myself I could see them crossing to or from the
meet. The River Stavely ran between; and just under the window of the
North Tower is the prettiest copse you ever saw. That was from one side
of the tower. From the other side you looked into the court-yard. As a
boy, I liked the court-yard just as well as the moor; for the pigeons,
the sparrows, the horses and the dogs were all there. As a man, I liked
the moor better. Well, I had jolly good times in Castle Stavely--once
upon a time." "Yet, you like our kitchen!" she again urged, in a maze
of wonderment.
"I like everything here," he answered; "everything--everything, you
understand!" he said, looking meaningly into her eyes.
"Then you'll like the wedding--Sophie's wedding," she answered, in a
little confusion.
A half-hour later, he said much the same sort of thing to Sophie, with
the same look in his eyes, and only the general purpose, in either case,
of being on easy terms with them.
CHAPTER IV
The day of the wedding there was a gay procession through the parish of
the friends and constituents of Magon Farcinelle. When they came to his
home he joined them, and marched at the head of the procession as had
done many a forefather of his, with ribbons on his hat and others at his
button-hole. After stopping for exchange of courtesies at several houses
in the parish, the procession came to the homestead of the Lavilettes,
and the crowd were now enough excited to forget the pride which had
repelled and offended them for many years.
Monsieur Lavilette made a polite speech, sending round cider and "white
wine" (as native whiskey was called) when he had finished. Later,
Nicolas furnished some good brandy, and Farcinelle sent more. A good
number of people had come out of curiosity to see what manner of man the
Englishman was, well prepared to resent his overbearing snobbishness--
they were inclined to believe every Englishman snobbish. But Ferrol was
so entirely affable, and he drank so freely with everyone that came to
say "A votre sante, M'sieu' le Baron," and kept such a steady head in
spite of all those quantities of white wine, brandy and cider, that they
were almost ready to carry him on their shoulders; though, with their
racial prejudice, they would probably have repented of that indiscretion
on the morrow.
Presently, dancing began in a paddock just across the road from
the house; and when Madame Lavilette saw that Mr. Ferrol gave such
undisguised countenance to the primitive rejoicings, she encouraged the
revellers and enlarged her hospitality, sending down hampers of eatables.
She preened with pleasure when she saw Ferrol walking up and down in very
confidential conversation with Christine. If she had been really
observant she would have seen that Ferrol's tendency was towards an
appearance of confidential friendliness with almost everybody. Great
ideas had entered Madame's head, but they were vaguely defining
themselves in Christine's mind also. Where might not this friendship
with Ferrol lead her?
Something occurred in the midst of the dancing which gave a new turn to
affairs. In one of the pauses a song came monotonously lilting down the
street; yet it was not a song, it was only a sort of humming or chanting.
Immediately there was a clapping of hands, a flutter of female voices,
and delighted exclamations of children.
"Oh, it's a dancing bear, it's a dancing bear!" they cried.
"Is it Pito?" asked one.
"Is it Adrienne?" cried another.
"But no; I'll bet it's Victor!" exclaimed a third. As the man and the
bear came nearer, they saw it was neither of these. The man's voice was
not unpleasant; it had a rolling, crooning sort of sound, a little weird,
as though he had lived where men see few of their kind and have much to
do with animals.
He was bearded, but young; his hair grew low on his forehead, and,
although it was summer time, a fur cap was set far back, like a fez, upon
his black curly hair. His forehead was corrugated, like that of a man of
sixty who had lived a hard life; his eyes were small, black and piercing.
He wore a thick, short coat, a red sash about his waist, a blue flannel
shirt, and a loose red scarf, like a handkerchief, at his throat. His
feet were bare, and his trousers were rolled half way up to his knee. In
one hand he carried a short pole with a steel pike in it, in the other a
rope fastened to a ring in the bear's nose.
The bear, a huge brown animal, upright on his hind legs, was dancing
sideways along the road, keeping time to the lazy notes of his leader's
voice.
In front of the Hotel France they halted, and the bear danced round and
round in a ring, his eyes rolling savagely, his head shaking from side to
side in a bad-tempered way.
Suddenly some one cried out: "It's Vanne Castine! It's Vanne!"
People crowded nearer: there was a flurry of exclamations, and then
Christine took a few steps forward where she could see the man's face,
and as swiftly drew back into the crowd, pale and distraite.
The man watched her until she drew away behind a group, which was
composed of Ferrol, her brother and her sister Sophie. He dropped no
note of his song, and the bear kept jigging on. Children and elders
threw coppers, which he picked up, with a little nod of his head, a
malicious sort of smile on his lips. He kept a vigilant eye on the bear,
however, and his pole was pointed constantly towards it. After about
five minutes of this entertainment he moved along up the road. He spoke
no word to anybody though there were some cries of greeting, but passed
on, still singing the monotonous song, followed by a crowd of children.
Presently he turned a corner, and was lost to sight. For a moment longer
the lullaby floated across the garden and the green fields, then the
cornet and the concertina began again, and Ferrol turned towards
Christine.
He had seen her paleness and her look of consternation, had observed the
sulky, penetrating look of the bear-leader's eye, and he knew that he was
stumbling upon a story. Her eye met his, then swiftly turned away. When
her look came to his face again it was filled with defiant laughter, and
a hot brilliancy showed where the paleness had been.
"Will you dance with me?" Ferrol asked.
"Dance with you here?" she responded incredulously.
"Yes, just here," he said, with a dry little laugh, as he ran his arm
round her waist and drew her out upon the green.
"And who is Vanne Castine?" he asked as they swung away in time with the
music.
The rest stopped dancing when they saw these two appear in the ring-
through curiosity or through courtesy.
She did not answer immediately. They danced a little longer, then he
said:
"An old friend, eh?"
After a moment, with a masked defiance still, and a hard laugh, she
answered in English, though his question had been in French:
"De frien' of an ol frien'."
"You seem to be strangers now," he suggested. She did not answer at all,
but suddenly stopped dancing, saying: "I'm tired."
The dance went on without them. Sophie and Farcinelle presently withdrew
also. In five minutes the crowd had scattered, and the Lavilettes and
Mr. Ferrol returned to the house.
Meanwhile, as they passed up the street, the droning, vibrating voice of
the bear-leader came floating along the air and through the voices of the
crowd like the thread of motive in the movement of an opera.
CHAPTER V
That night, while gaiety and feasting went on at the Lavilettes', there
was another sort of feasting under way at the house of Shangois, the
notary.
On one side of a tiny fire in the chimney, over which hung a little black
kettle, sat Shangois and Vanne Castine. Castine was blowing clouds of
smoke from his pipe, and Shangois was pouring some tea leaves into a
little tin pot, humming to himself snatches of an old song as he did so:
"What shall we do when the King comes home?
What shall we do when he rides along
With his slaves of Greece and his serfs of Rome?
What shall we sing for a song--
When the King comes home?
"What shall we do when the King comes home?
What shall we do when he speaks so fair?
Shall we give him the house with the silver dome
And the maid with the crimson hair
When the King comes home?"
A long, heavy sigh filled the room, but it was not the breath of Vanne
Castine. The sound came from the corner where the huge brown bear
huddled in savage ease. When it stirred, as if in response to Shangois's
song, the chains rattled. He was fastened by two chains to a staple
driven into the foundation timbers of the house. Castine's bear might
easily be allowed too much liberty!
Once he had killed a man in the open street of the City of Quebec,
and once also he had nearly killed Castine. They had had a fight and
struggle, out of which the man came with a lacerated chest; but since
that time he had become the master of the bear. It feared him; yet, as
he travelled with it, he scarcely ever took his eyes off it, and he never
trusted it. That was why, although Michael was always near him, sleeping
or waking, he kept him chained at night.
As Shangois sang, Castine's brow knotted and twitched and his hand
clinched on his pipe with a sudden ferocity.
"Name of a black cat, what do you sing that song for, notary?" he broke
out peevishly. "Nose of a little god, are you making fun of me?"
Shangois handed him some tea. "There's no one to laugh--why should I
make fun of you?" he asked, jeeringly, in English, for his English was
almost as good as his French, save in the turn of certain idioms.
"Come, my little punchinello, tell me, now, why have you come back?"
Castine laughed bitterly.
"Ha, ha, why do I come back? I'll tell you." He sucked at his pipe.
"Bon'venture is a good place to come to-yes. I have been to Quebec,
to St. John, to Fort Garry, to Detroit, up in Maine and down to New York.
I have ride a horse in a circus, I have drive a horse and sleigh in a
shanty, I have play in a brass band, I have drink whiskey every night for
a month--enough whiskey. I have drink water every night for a year--it
is not enough. I have learn how to speak English; I have lose all my
money when I go to play a game of cards. I go back to de circus; de
circus smash; I have no pay. I take dat damn bear Michael as my share--
yes. I walk trough de State of New York, all trough de State of Maine to
Quebec, all de leetla village, all de big city--yes. I learn dat damn
funny song to sing to Michael. Ha, why do I come to Bon'venture? What
is there to Bon'venture? Ha! you ask that? I know and you know,
M'sieu' Shangois. There is nosing like Bon'venture in all de worl'.
"What is it you would have? Do you want nice warm house in winter,
plenty pork, molass', patat, leetla drop whiskey 'hind de door in de
morning? Ha! you come to Bon'venture. Where else you fin' it? You
want people say: 'How you do, Vanne Castine--how you are? Adieu, Vanne
Castine; to see you again ver' happy, Vanne Castine.' Ha, that is what
you get in Bon'venture. Who say 'God bless you' in New York! They say
'Damn you!'--yes, I know.
"Where have you a church so warm, so ver' nice, and everybody say him
mass and God-have-mercy? Where you fin' it like that leetla place on de
hill in Bon'venture? Yes. There is anoser place in Bon'venture, ver'
nice place--yes, ha! On de side of de hill. You have small-pox, scarlet
fev', difthere; you get smash your head, you get break your leg, you fall
down, you go to die. Ha, who is there in all de worl' like M'sieu'
Vallier, the Cure? Who will say to you like him: 'Vanne Castine, you
have break all de commandments: you have swear, you have steal, you have
kill, you have drink. Ver' well, now, you will be sorry for dat, and say
your prayer. Perhaps, after hunder fifty tousen' years of purgator', you
will be forgive and go to Heaven. But first, when you die, we will put
you way down in de leetla warm house in de ground, on de side of de hill,
in de Parish of Bon'venture, because it is de only place for a gipsy like
Vanne Castine.'
"You ask me-ah! I see you look at me, M'sieu' le Notaire, you look at me
like a leetla dev'. You t'ink I come for somet'ing else"--his black eyes
flashed under his brow, he shook his head, and his hands clinched--"You
ask me why I come back? I come back because there is one thing I care
for mos' in all de worl'. You t'ink I am happy to go about with a damn
brown bear and dance trough de village? Moi?--no, no, no! What a Jack
I look when I sing--ah, that fool's song all down de street! I come back
for one thing only, M'sieu' Shangois.
"You know that night--ah, four, five years ago? You remember, M'sieu'
Shangois? Ah! she was so beautiful, so sweet; her hair it fall down
about her face, her eyes all black, her cheeks like the snow, her lips,
her lips!--You rememb' her father curse me, tell me to go. Why? Because
I have kill a man! Eh bien, what if I kill a man! He would have kill
me: I do it to save myself. I say I am not guilty; but her father say I
am a sc'undrel, and turn me out de house.
"De girl, Christine, she love me. Yes, she love Vanne Castine. She say
to me, 'I will go with you. Go anywhere, and I will go!'
"It is night and it is all dark. I wait at de place, an' she come. We
start to walk to Montreal. Ah! dat night, it is like fire in my heart.
Well, a great storm come down, and we have to come back. We come to your
house here, light a fire, and sit just in de spot where I am, one hour,
two hour, three hour. Saprie, how I love her! She is in me like fire,
like de wind and de sea. Well, I am happy like no other man. I sit here
and look at her, and t'ink of to-morrow-for ever. She look at me; oh, de
love of God, she look at me! So I kneel down on de floor here beside her
and say, 'Who shall take you from me, Christine, my leetla Christine?'
"She look at me and say: 'Who shall take you from me, my big Vanne?'
"All at once the door open, and--"
"And a little black notary take her from you," said Shangois, dryly, and
with a touch of malice also. "You, yes, you lawyer dev', you take her
from me! You say to her it is wicked. You tell her how her father will
weep and her mother's heart will break. You tell her how she will be
ashame', and a curse will fall on her. Then she begin to cry, for she is
afraid. Ah, where is de wrong? I love her; I would go to marry her--but
no, what is that to you! She turn on me and say, 'I will go back to my
father.' And she go back. After that I try to see her; but she will not
see me. Then I go away, and I am gone five years; yes."
Shangois came over, and with his thin beautiful hand (for despite the
ill-kept finger nails, it was the one fine feature of his body-long,
shapely, artistic) tapped Castine's knee.
"I did right to save Christine. She hates you now. If she had gone with
you that night, do you suppose she would have been happy as your wife?
No, she is not for Vanne Castine."
Suddenly Shangois's manner changed; he laid his hand upon the other's
shoulder.
"My poor, wicked, good-for-nothing Vanne Castine, Christine Lavilette was
not made for you. You are a poor vaurien, always a poor vaurien. I knew
your father and your two grandfathers. They were all vauriens; all as
handsome as you can think, and all died, not in their beds. Your
grandfather killed a man, your father drank and killed a man. Your
grandfather drove his wife to her grave, your father broke your mother's
heart. Why should you break the heart of any girl in the world? Leave
her alone. Is it love to a woman when you break all the commandments,
and shame her and bring her down to where you are--a bad vaurien? When
a man loves a woman with the true love, he will try to do good for her
sake. Go back to that crazy New York--it is the place for you.
Ma'm'selle Christine is not for you."
"Who is she for, m'sieu' le dev'?"
"Perhaps for the English Irishman," answered Shangois, in a low
suggestive tone, as he dropped a little brandy in his tea with light
fingers.
"Ah, sacre! we shall see. There is vaurien in her too," was the half-
triumphant reply.
"There is more woman," retorted Shangois; "much more."
"We'll see about that, m'sieu'!" exclaimed Castine, as he turned towards
the bear, which was clawing at his chain.
An hour later, a scene quite as important occurred at Lavilette's great
farmhouse.
CHAPTER VI
It was about ten o'clock. Lights were burning in every window. At a
table in the dining-room sat Monsieur and Madame Lavilette, the father of
Magon Farcinelle, and Shangois, the notary. The marriage contract was
before them. They had reached a point of difficulty. Farcinelle was
stipulating for five acres of river-land as another item in Sophie's dot.
The corners tightened around Madame's mouth. Lavilette scratched his
head, so that the hair stood up like flying tassels of corn. The land
in question lay next a portion of Farcinelle's own farm, with a river
frontage. On it was a little house and shed, and no better garden-stuff
grew in the parish than on this same five acres.
"But I do not own the land," said Lavilette. "You've got a mortgage on
it," answered Farcinelle. "Foreclose it."
"Suppose I did foreclose; you couldn't put the land in the marriage
contract until it was mine."
The notary shrugged his shoulder ironically, and dropped his chin in his
hand as he furtively eyed the two men. Farcinelle was ready for the
emergency. He turned to Shangois.
"I've got everything ready for the foreclosure," said he. "Couldn't it
be done to-night, Shangois?"
"Hardly to-night. You might foreclose, but the property couldn't be
Monsieur Lavilette's until it is duly sold under the mortgage."
"Here, I'll tell you what can be done," said Farcinelle. "You can put
the mortgage in the contract as her dot, and, name of a little man! I'll
foreclose it, I can tell you. Come, now, Lavilette, is it a bargain?"
Shangois sat back in his chair, the fingers of both hands drumming on the
table before him, his head twisted a little to one side. His little
reflective eyes sparkled with malicious interest, and his little voice
said, as though he were speaking to himself:
"Excuse, but the land belongs to the young Vanne Castine--eh?"
"That's it," exclaimed Farcinelle.
"Well, why not give the poor vaurien a chance to take up the mortgage?"
"Why, he hasn't paid the interest in five years!" said Lavilette.
"But--ah--you have had the use of the land, I think, monsieur. That
should meet the interest." Lavilette scowled a little; Farcinelle
grunted and laughed.
"How can I give him a chance to pay the mortgage?" said Lavilette. "He
never had a penny. Besides, he hasn't been seen for five years."
A faint smile passed over Shangois's face. "Yesterday," he said, "he had
not been seen for five years, but to-day he is in Bonaventure."
"The devil!" said Lavilette, dropping a fist on the table, and staring
at the notary; for he was not present in the afternoon when Castine
passed by.
"What difference does that make?" snarled Farcinelle. "I'll bet he's
got nothing more than what he went away with, and that wasn't a sou
markee!"
A provoking smile flickered at the corners of Shangois's mouth, and he
said, with a dry inflection, as he dipped and redipped his quill pen in
the inkhorn:
"He has a bear, my friends, which dances very well." Farcinelle
guffawed. "St. Mary!" said he, slapping his leg, "we'll have the bear
at the wedding, and I'll have that farm of Vanne Castine's. What does he
want of a farm? He's got a bear. Come, is it a bargain? Am I to have
the mortgage? If you don't stick it in, I'll not let my boy marry your
girl, Lavilette. There, now, that's my last word."
"'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, nor his wife, nor his maid,
nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his,"' said the notary,
abstractedly, drawing the picture of a fat Jew on the paper before him.
The irony was lost upon his hearers. Madame Lavilette had been thinking,
however, and she saw further than her husband.
"It amounts to the same thing," she said. "You see it doesn't go away
from Sophie; so let him have it, Louis."
"All right," responded monsieur at last, "Sophie gets the acres and the
house in her dot."
"You won't give young Vanne Castine a chance?" asked the notary. "The
mortgage is for four hundred dollars and the place is worth seven
hundred!"
No one replied. "Very well, my Israelites," added Shangois, bending over
the contract.
An hour later, Nicolas Lavilette was in the big storeroom of the
farmhouse, which was reached by a covered passage from the hall between
the kitchen and the dining-room. In his off-hand way he was getting out
some flour, dried fruit and preserves for the cook, who stood near as he
loaded up her arms. He laughingly thrust a string of green peppers under
her chin, and added a couple of sprigs of summer-savoury, then suddenly
turned round, with a start, for a peculiar low whistle came to him
through the half-open window. It was followed by heavy stertorous
breathing.
He turned back again to the cook, gaily took her by the shoulders, and
pushed her to the door. Closing it behind her, he shot the bolt and ran
back to the window. As he did so, a hand appeared on the windowsill,
and a face followed the hand.
"Ha! Nicolas Lavilette, is that you? So, you know my leetla whistle
again!"
Nicolas's brow darkened. In old days he and this same Vanne Castine had
been in many a scrape together, and Vanne, the elder, had always borne
the responsibility of their adventures. Nicolas had had enough of those
old days; other ambitions and habits governed him now. He was not
exactly the man to go back on a friend, but Castine no longer had any
particular claims to friendship. The last time he had heard Vanne's
whistle was a night five years before, when they both joined a gang of
river-drivers, and made a raid on some sham American speculators and
surveyors and labourers, who were exploiting an oil-well on the property
of the old seigneur. The two had come out of the melee with bruised
heads, and Vanne with a bullet in his calf. But soon afterwards came
Christine's elopement with Vanne, of which no one knew save her father,
Nicolas, Shangois and Vanne himself. That ended their compact, and,
after a bitter quarrel, they had parted and had never met nor seen each
other till this very afternoon.
"Yes, I know your whistle all right," answered Nicolas, with a twist of
the shoulder.
"Aren't you going to shake hands?" asked Castine, with a sort of sneer
on his face.
Nicolas thrust his hands down in his pockets. "I'm not so glad to see
you as all that," he answered, with a contemptuous laugh.
The black eyes of the bear-leader were alive with anger.
"You're a damn' fool, Nic Lavilette. You think because I lead a bear--
eh? Pshaw! you shall see. I am nothing, eh? I am to walk on! Nic
Lavilette, once he steal the Cure's pig and--"
"See you there, Castine, I've had enough of that," was the half-angry,
half-amused interruption. "What are you after here?"
"What was I after five years ago?" was the meaning reply.
Lavilette's face suddenly flushed with fury. He gripped the window with
both hands, and made as if he would leap out; but beside Castine's face
there appeared another, with glaring eyes, red tongue, white vicious
teeth, and two huge claws which dropped on the ledge of the window in
much the same way as did Lavilette's.
There was a moment's silence as the man and the beast looked at each
other, and then Castine began laughing in a low, sneering sort of way.
"I'll shoot the beast, and I'll break your neck if ever I see you on this
farm again," said Lavilette, with wild anger.
"Break my neck--that's all right; but shoot this leetla Michael! When
you do that you will not have to wait for a British bullet to kill you.
I will do it with a knife--just where you can hear it sing under your
ear!"
"British bullet!" said Lavilette, excitedly; "what about a British
bullet--eh--what?"
"Only that the Rebellion's coming quick now," answered Castine, his
manner changing, and a look of cunning crossing his face. "You've given
your name to the great Papineau, and I am here, as you see."
"You--you--what have you got to do with the Revolution? with Papineau?"
"Pah! do you think a Lavilette is the only patriot! Papineau is my
friend, and--"
"Your friend--"
"My friend. I am carrying his message all through the parishes.
Bon'venture is the last--almost. The great General Papineau sends you
a word, Nic Lavilette--here."
He drew from his pocket a letter and handed it over. Lavilette tore it
open. It was a captain's commission for M. Nicolas Lavilette, with a
call for money and a company of men and horses.
"Maybe there's a leetla noose hanging from the tail of that, but then--
it is the glory--eh? Captain Lavilette--eh?" There was covert malice in
Castine's voice. "If the English whip us, they won't shoot us like grand
seigneurs, they will hang us like dogs."
Lavilette scarcely noticed the sneer. He was seeing visions of a
captain's sword and epaulettes, and planning to get men, money and horses
together--for this matter had been brooding for nearly a year, and he had
been the active leader in Bonaventure.
"We've been near a hundred years, we Frenchmen, eating dirt in the
country we owned from the start; and I'd rather die fighting to get back
the old citadel than live with the English heel on my nose," said
Lavilette, with a play-acting attempt at oratory.
"Yes, an' dey call us Johnny Pea-soups," said Castine, with a furtive
grin. "An' perhaps that British Colborne will hang us to our barn doors
--eh?"
There was silence for a moment, in which Lavilette read the letter over
again with gloating eyes. Presently Castine started and looked round.
"What's that?" he said in a whisper. "I heard nothing."
"I heard the feet of a man--yes."
They both stood moveless, listening. There was no sound; but, at the
same time, the Hon. Mr. Ferrol had the secret of the Rebellion in his
hands.
A moment later Castine and his bear were out in the road. Lavilette
leaned out of the window and mused. Castine's words of a few moments
before came to him:
"That British Colborne will hang us to our barn doors--eh?"
He shuddered, and struck a light.
CHAPTER VII
Mr. Ferrol slept in the large guest-chamber of the house. Above it was
Christine's bedroom. Thick as were the timbers and boards of the floor,
Christine could hear one sound, painfully monotonous and frequent, coming
from his room the whole night--the hacking, rending cough which she had
heard so often since he came. The fear of Vanne Castine, the memories of
the wild, half animal-like love she had had for him in the old days, the
excitement of the new events which had come into her life; these kept her
awake, and she tossed and turned in feverish unrest. All that had
happened since Ferrol had arrived, every word that he had spoken, every
motion that he had made, every look of his face, she recalled vividly.
All that he was, which was different from the people she had known, she
magnified, so that to her he had a distant, overwhelming sort of
grandeur. She beat the bedclothes in her restlessness. Suddenly she sat
up straight in bed.
"Oh, if I hadn't been a Lavilette! If I'd only been born and brought up
with the sort of people he comes from, I'd not have been ashamed of
myself or him of me."
The plush bodice she had worn that day danced before her eyes. She knew
how horribly ugly it was. Her fingers ran over the patchwork quilt on
her bed; and although she could not see it, she loathed it, because she
knew it was a painful mess of colours. With a little touch of dramatic
extravagance, she leaned over and down, and drew her fingers
contemptuously along the rag-carpet on the floor. Then she cried a
little hysterically:
"He never saw anything like that before. How he must laugh as he sits
there in that room!"
As if in reply, the hacking cough came faintly through the time-worn
floor.
"That cough's going to kill him, to kill him," she said.
Then, with a little start and with a sort of cry, which she stopped by
putting both hands over her mouth, she said to herself, brokenly:
"Why shouldn't he--why shouldn't he love me! I could take care of him;
I could nurse him; I could wait on him; I could be better to him than any
one else in the world. And it wouldn't make any difference to him at all
in the end. He's going to die before long--I know it. Well, what does
it matter what becomes of me afterwards? I should have had him; I should
have loved him; he should have been mine for a little while anyway. I'd
be good to him; oh, I'd be good to him! Who else is there? He'll get
worse and worse; and what will any of the fine ladies do for him then,
I'd like to know. Why aren't they here? Why isn't he with them? He's
poor--Nic says so--and they're rich. Why don't they help him? I would.
I'd give him my last penny and the last drop of blood in my heart. What
do they know about love?"
Her little teeth clinched, she shook her brown hair back in a sort of
fury.
"What do they know about love? What would they do for it? I'd have my
fingers chopped off one by one for it. I'd break every one of the ten
commandments for it. I'd lose my soul for it.
"I've got twenty times as much heart as any one of them, I don't care who
they are. I'd lie for him; I'd steal for him; I'd kill for him. I'd
watch everything that he says, and I'd say it as he says it. I'd be
angry when he was angry, miserable when he was miserable, happy when he
was happy. Vanne Castine--what was he! What was it that made me care
for him then? And now--now he travels with a bear, and they toss coppers
to him; a beggar, a tramp--a dirty, lazy tramp! He hates me, I know--or
else he loves me, and that's worse. And I'm afraid of him; I know I'm
afraid of him. Oh, how will it all end? I know there's going to be
trouble. I could see it in Vanne's face. But I don't care, I don't
care, if Mr. Ferrol--"
The cough came droning through the floor.
"If he'd only--ah! I'd do anything for him, anything; anybody would.
I saw Sophie look at him as she never looked at Magon. If she did--
if she dared to care for him--"
All at once she shivered as if with shame and fright, drew the bedclothes
about her head, and burst into a fit of weeping. When it passed, she lay
still and nerveless between the coarse sheets, and sank into a deep sleep
just as the dawn crept through the cracks of the blind.
CHAPTER VIII
The weeks went by. Sophie had become the wife of the member for the
country, and had instantly settled down to a quiet life. This was
disconcerting to Madame Lavilette, who had hoped that out of Farcinelle's
official position she might reap some praise and pence of ambition.
Meanwhile, Ferrol became more and more a cherished and important figure
in the Manor Casimbault, where the Lavilettes had made their home soon
after the wedding. The old farmhouse had also secretly become a
rendezvous for the mysterious Nicolas Lavilette and his rebel comrades.
This was known to Mr. Ferrol. One evening he stopped Nic as he was
leaving the house, and said:
"See, Nic, my boy, what's up? I know a thing or so--what's the use of
playing peek-a-boo?"
"What do you know, Ferrol?"
"What's between you and Vanne Castine, for instance. Come, now, own up
and tell me all about it. I'm British; but I'm Nic Lavilette's friend
anyhow."
He insinuated into his tone that little touch of brogue which he used
when particularly persuasive. Nic put out his hand with a burst of good-
natured frankness.
"Meet me in the store-room of the old farmhouse at nine o'clock, and I'll
tell you. Here's a key." Handing over the key, he grasped Ferrol's hand
with an effusive confidence, and hurried out. Nic Lavilette was now
an important person in his own sight and in the sight of others in
Bonaventure. In him the pomp of his family took an individual form.
Earlier than the appointed time, Ferrol turned the key and stepped inside
the big despoiled hallway of the old farmhouse. His footsteps sounded
hollow in the empty rooms. Already dust had gathered, and an air of
desertion and decay filled the place in spite of the solid timbers and
sound floors and window-sills. He took out his watch; it was ten minutes
to nine. Passing through the little hallway to the store-room, he opened
the door. It was dark inside. Striking a match, he saw a candle on the
window-sill, and, going to it, he lighted it with a flint and steel lying
near. The window was shut tight. From curiosity only he tried to open
the shutter, but it was immovable. Looking round, he saw another candle
on the window-sill opposite. He lighted it also, and mechanically tried
to force the shutters of the window, but they were tight also.
Going to the door, which opened into the farmyard, he found it securely
fastened. Although he turned the lock, the door would not open.
Presently his attention was drawn by the glitter of something upon one of
the crosspieces of timber halfway up the wall. Going over, he examined
it, and found it to be a broken bayonet--left there by a careless rebel.
Placing the steel again upon the ledge, he began walking up and down
thoughtfully.
Presently he was seized with a fit of coughing. The paroxysm lasted a
minute or more, and he placed his arm upon the window-sill, leaning his
head upon it. Presently, as the paroxysm lessened, he thought he heard
the click of a lock. He raised his head, but his eyes were misty, and,
seeing nothing, he leaned his head on his arm again.
Suddenly he felt something near him. He swung round swiftly, and saw
Vanne Castine's bear not fifteen-feet away from him! It raised itself on
its hind legs, its red eyes rolling, and started towards him. He picked
up the candle from the window-sill, threw it in the animal's face, and
dashed towards the door.
It was locked. He swung round. The huge beast, with a loud snarl, was
coming down upon him.
Here he was, shut within four solid walls, with a wild beast hungry for
his life. All his instincts were alive. He had little hope of saving
himself, but he was determined to do what lay in his power.
His first impulse was to blow out the other candle. That would leave him
in the dark, and it struck him that his advantage would be greater if
there were no light. He came straight towards the bear, then suddenly
made a swift movement to the left, trusting to his greater quickness of
movement. The beast was nearly as quick as he, and as he dashed along
the wall towards the candle, he could hear its breath just behind him.
As he passed the window, he caught the candle in his hands, and was about
to throw it on the floor or in the bear's face, when he remembered that,
in the dark, the bear's sense of smell would be as effective as eyesight,
while he himself would be no better off.
He ran suddenly to the centre of the room, the candle still in his hand,
and turned to meet his foe. It came savagely at him. He dodged, ran
past it, turned, doubled on it, and dodged again. A half-dozen times
this was repeated, the candle still flaring. It could not last long.
The bear was enraged. Its movements became swifter, its vicious teeth
and lips were covered with froth, which dripped to the floor, and
sometimes spattered Ferrol's clothes as he ran past. No matador ever
played with the horns of a mad bull as Ferrol played his deadly game with
Michael, the dancing bear. His breath was becoming shorter and shorter;
he had a stifling sensation, a terrible tightness across his chest. He
did not cough, however, but once or twice he tasted warm drops of his
heart's blood in his mouth. Once he drew the back of his hand across his
lips mechanically, and a red stain showed upon it.
In his boyhood and early manhood he had been a good sportsman; had been
quick of eye, swift of foot, and fearless. But what could fearlessness
avail him in this strait? With the best of rifles he would have felt
himself at a disadvantage. He was certain his time had come; and with
that conviction upon him, the terror of the thing and the horrible
physical shrinking almost passed away from him. The disease, eating away
his life, had diminished that revolt against death which is in the
healthy flesh of every man. He was levying upon the vital forces
remaining in him, which, distributed naturally, might cover a year or so,
to give him here and now a few moments of unnatural strength for the
completion of a hopeless struggle.
It was also as if two brains in him were working: one busy with all the
chances and details of his wild contest, the other with the events of his
life.
Pictures flashed before him. Some having to do with the earliest days of
his childhood; some with fighting on the Danube, before he left the army,
impoverished and ashamed; some with idle hours in the North Tower in
Stavely Castle; and one with the day he and his sister left the old
castle, never to return, and looked back upon it from the top of
Farcalladen Moor, waving a "God bless you" to it. The thought of his
sister filled him with a desire, a pitiful desire to live.
Just then another picture flashed before his eyes. It was he himself,
riding the mad stallion, Bolingbroke, the first year he followed the
hounds: how the brute tried to smash his leg against a stone wall; how it
reared until it almost toppled over and backwards; how it jibbed at a
gate, and nearly dashed its own brains out against a tree; and how, after
an hour's hard fighting, he made it take the stiffest fence and water-
course in the county.
This thought gave him courage now. He suddenly remembered the broken
bayonet upon the ledge against the wall. If he could reach it there
might be a chance--chance to strike one blow for life. As his eye
glanced towards the wall he saw the steel flash in the light of the
candle.
The bear was between him and it. He made a feint towards the left, then
as quickly to the right. But doing so, he slipped and fell. The candle
dropped to the floor and went out. With a lightning-like instinct of
self-preservation he swung over upon his face just as the bear, in its
wild rush, passed over his head. He remembered afterwards the odour of
the hot, rank body, and the sprawling huge feet and claws. Scrambling to
his feet swiftly, he ran to the wall. Fortune was with him. His hand
almost instantly clutched the broken bayonet. He whipped out his
handkerchief, tore the scarf from his neck, and wound them around his
hand, that the broken bayonet should not tear the flesh as he fought for
his life; then, seizing it, he stood waiting for the bear to come on.
His body was bent forwards, his eyes straining into the dark, his hot
face dripping, dripping sweat, his breath coming hard and laboured from
his throat.
For a minute there was absolute silence, save for the breathing of the
man and the savage panting of the beast. Presently he felt exactly where
the bear was, and listened intently. He knew that it was now but a
question of minutes, perhaps seconds. Suddenly it occurred to him that
if he could but climb upon the ledge where the bayonet had been, there
might be safety. Yet again, in getting up, the bear might seize him, and
there would be an end to all immediately. It was worth trying, however.
Two things happened at that moment to prevent the trial: the sound of
knocking on a door somewhere, and the roaring rush of the bear upon him.
He sprang to one side, striking at the beast as he did so. The bayonet
went in and out again. There came voices from the outside; evidently
somebody was trying to get in.
The bear roared again and came on. It was all a blind man's game. But
his scent, like the animal's, was keen. He had taken off his coat, and
he now swung it out before him in a half-circle, and as it struck the
bear it covered his own position. He swung aside once more and drove his
arm into the dark. The bayonet struck the nose of the beast.
Now there was a knocking and a hammering at the window, and the wrenching
of the shutters. He gathered himself together for the next assault.
Suddenly he felt that every particle of strength had gone out of him. He
pulled himself up with a last effort. His legs would not support him; he
shivered and swayed. God, would they never get that window open!
His senses were abnormally acute. Another sound attracted him: the
opening of the door, and a voice--Vanne Castine's--calling to the bear.
His heart seemed to give a leap, then slowly to roll over with a thud,
and he fell to the floor as the bear lunged forwards upon him.
A minute afterwards Vanne Castine was goading the savage beast through
the door and out to the hallway into the yard as Nic swung through the
open window into the room.
Castine's lantern stood in the middle of the floor, and between it and
the window lay Ferrol, the broken bayonet still clutched in his right
hand. Lavilette dropped on his knees beside him and felt his heart. It
was beating, but the shirt and the waistcoat were dripping with blood
where the bear had set its claws and teeth in the shoulder of its victim.
An hour later Nic Lavilette stood outside the door of Ferrol's bedroom in
the Manor Casimbault, talking to the Regimental Surgeon, as Christine,
pale and wildeyed, came running towards them.
CHAPTER IX
"Is he dead? is he dead?" she asked distractedly. "I've just come from
the village. Why didn't you send for me? Tell me, is he dead? Oh, tell
me at once!"
She caught the Regimental Surgeon's arm. He looked down at her, over his
glasses, benignly, for she had always been a favourite of his, and
answered:
"Alive, alive, my dear. Bad rip in the shoulder--worn out--weak--
shattered--but good for a while yet--yes, yes--certainement!"
With a wayward impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him
on the cheek. The embrace disarranged his glasses and flushed his face
like a schoolgirl's, but his eyes were full of embarrassed delight.
"There, there," he said, "we'll take care of him--!" Then suddenly he
paused, for the real significance of her action dawned upon him.
"Dear me," he said in disturbed meditation; "dear me!"
She suddenly opened the bedroom door and went in, followed by Nic. The
Regimental Surgeon dropped his mouth and cheeks in his hand reflectively,
his eyes showing quaintly and quizzically above the glasses and his
fingers.
"Well, well! Well, well!" he said, as if he had encountered a
difficulty. "It--it will never be possible. He would not marry her,"
he added, and then, turning, went abstractedly down the stairs.
Ferrol was in a deep sleep when Christine and her brother entered the
chamber. Her face turned still more pale when she saw him, flushed, and
became pale again. There were leaden hollows round his eyes, and his
hair was matted with perspiration. Yet he was handsome--and helpless.
Her eyes filled with tears. She turned her head away from her brother
and went softly to the window, but not before she had touched the pale
hand that lay nerveless upon the coverlet.
"It's not feverish," she said to Nic, as if in necessary explanation of
the act.
She stood at the window for a moment, looking out, then said:
"Come here, Nic, and tell me all about it."
He told her all he knew: how he had come to the old house by appointment
with Ferrol; had tried to get into the store-room; had found the doors
bolted; had heard the noise of a wild animal inside; had run out, tried a
window, at last wrenched it open and found Ferrol in a dead faint. He
went to the table and brought back the broken bayonet.
"That's all he had to fight with," he said. "Fire of a little hell, but
he had grit--after all!"
"That's all he had to fight with!" she repeated, as she untwisted the
handkerchief from the hilt end. "Why did you say he had true grit--
'after all'? What do you mean by that 'after all'?"
"Well, you don't expect much from a man with only one lung--eh?"
"Courage isn't in the lungs," she answered. Then she added: "Go and
fetch me a bottle of brandy--I'm going to bathe his hands and feet in
brandy and hot water as soon as he's awake."
"Better let mother do that, hadn't you?" he asked rather hesitatingly,
as he moved towards the door.
Her eyes snapped fire. "Nic--mon Dieu, hear the nice Nic!" she said.
"The dear Nic, who went in swimming with--"
She said no more, for he had no desire to listen to an account of his
misdeeds, which were not a few,--and Christine had a galling tongue.
When the door was shut she went to the bed, sat down on a chair beside
it, and looked at Ferrol earnestly and sadly.
"My dear! my dear, dear, dear!" she said in a whisper, "you look so
handsome and so kind as you lie there--like no man I ever saw in my life.
Who'd have fought as you fought--and nearly dead! Who'd have had brains
enough to know just what to do! My darling, that never said 'my darling'
to me, nor heard me call you so. Suppose you haven't a dollar, not a
cent, in the world, and suppose you'll never earn a dollar or a cent in
the world, what difference does that make to me? I could earn it; and
I'd give more for a touch of your finger than a thousand dollars; and
more for a month with you than for a lifetime with the richest man in the
world. You never looked cross at me, or at any one, and you never say an
unkind thing, and you never find fault when you suffer so. You never
hurt any one, I know. You never hurt Vanne Castine--"
Her fingers twitched in her lap, and then clasped very tight, as she went
on:
"You never hurt him, and yet he's tried to kill you in the most awful
way. Perhaps you'll die now--perhaps you'll die to-night--but no, no,
you shall not!" she cried in sudden fright and eagerness, as she got up
and leaned over him. "You shall not die; you shall live--for a while--
oh! yes, for a while yet," she added, with a pitiful yearning in her
voice; "just for a little while--till you love me, and tell me so! Oh,
how could that devil try to kill you!"
She suddenly drew herself up.
"I'll kill him and his bear too--now, now, while you lie there sleeping.
And when you wake I'll tell you what I've done, and you'll--you'll love
me then, and tell me so, perhaps. Yes, yes, I'll--"
She said no more, for her brother entered with the brandy.
"Put it there," she said, pointing to the table. "You watch him till I
come. I'll be back in an hour; and then, when he wakes, we'll bathe him
in the hot water and brandy."
"Who told you about hot water and brandy?" he asked her, curiously.
She did not answer him, but passed through the door and down the hall
till she came to Nic's bedroom; she went in, took a pair of pistols from
the wall, examined them, found they were fully loaded, and hurried from
the room.
About a half-hour later she appeared before the house which once had
belonged to Vanne Castine. The mortgage had been foreclosed, and the
place had passed into the hands of Sophie and Magon Farcinelle;
but Castine had taken up his abode in the house a few days before,
and defied anyone to put him out.
A light was burning in the kitchen of the house. There were no curtains
to the window, but an old coat had been hung up to serve the purpose, and
light shone between a sleeve of it and the window-sill. Putting her face
close to the window, the girl could see the bear in the corner, clawing
at its chain and tossing its head from side to side, still panting and
angry from the fight.
Now and again, also, it licked the bayonet-wound between its shoulders,
and rubbed its lacerated nose on its paw. Castine was mixing some tar
and oil in a pan by the fire, to apply to the still bleeding wounds of
his Michael. He had an ugly grin on his face.
He was dressed just as in the first day he appeared in the village, even
to the fur cap; and presently, as he turned round, he began to sing the
monotonous measure to which the bear had danced. It had at once a
soothing effect upon the beast.
After he had gone from the store-room, leaving Ferrol dead, as he
thought, it was this song alone which had saved himself from peril; for
the beast was wild from pain, fury and the taste of blood. As soon as
they had cleared the farmyard, he had begun this song, and the bear,
cowed at first by the thrusts of its master's pike, quieted to the well-
known ditty.
He approached the bear now, and, stooping, put some of the tar and oil
upon its nose. It sniffed and rubbed off the salve, but he put more on;
then he rubbed it into the wound of the breast. Once the animal made a
fierce snap at his shoulder, but he deftly avoided it, gave it a thrust
with a sharp-pointed stick, and began the song again. Presently he rose
and came towards the fire.
As he did so he heard the door open. Turning round quickly, he saw
Christine standing just inside. She had a shawl thrown round her, and
one hand was thrust in the pocket of her dress. She looked from him to
the bear, then back again to him.
He did not realise why she had come. For a moment, in his excited state,
he almost thought she had come because she loved him. He had seen her
twice since his return; but each time she would say nothing to him
further than that she wished not to meet or to speak to him at all. He
had pleaded with her, had grown angry, and she had left him. Who could
tell--perhaps she had come to him now as she had come to him in the old
days. He dropped the pan of tar and oil. "Chris!" he said, and started
forward to her.
At that moment the bear, as if it knew the girl's mission, sprang
forward, with a growl. Its huge mouth was open, and all its fierce lust
for killing showed again in its wild lunges. Castine turned, with an
oath, and thrust the steel-set pike into its leg. It cowered at the
voice and the punishment for an instant, but came on again.
Castine saw the girl raise a pistol and fire at the beast. He was so
dumfounded that at first he did not move. Then he saw her raise another
pistol. The wounded bear lunged heavily on its chain--once--twice--in a
devilish rage, and as Christine prepared to fire, snapped the staple
loose and sprang forward.
At the same moment Castine threw himself in front of the girl, and caught
the onward rush. Calling the beast by its name, he grappled with it.
They were man and servant no longer, but two animals fighting for their
lives. Castine drew out his knife, as the bear, raised on its hind legs,
crushed him in its immense arms, and still calling, half crazily,
"Michael! Michael! down, Michael!" he plunged the knife twice in the
beast's side.
The bear's teeth fastened in his shoulder; the horrible pressure of its
arms was turning his face black; he felt death coming, when another
pistol shot rang out close to his own head, and his breath suddenly came
back. He staggered to the wall, and then came to the floor in a heap as
the bear lurched downwards and fell over on its side, dead.
Christine had come to kill the beast and, perhaps, the man. The man had
saved her life, and now she had saved his; and together they had killed
the bear which had maltreated Tom Ferrol.
Castine's eyes were fixed on the dead beast. Everything was gone from
him now--even the way to his meagre livelihood; and the cause of it all,
as he in his blind, unnatural way thought, was this girl before him--this
girl and her people. Her back was towards the door. Anger and passion
were both at work in him at once.
"Chris," he said, "Chris, let's call it even-eh? Let's make it up.
Chris, ma cherie, don't you remember when we used to meet, and was fond
of each other? Let's make it up and leave here--now--to-night-eh?
"I'm not so poor, after all. I'll be paid by Papineau, the leader of the
Rebellion--" He made a couple of unsteady steps towards her, for he was
weak yet. "What's the good--you're bound to come to me in the end!
You've got the same kind of feelings in you; you've--"
She had stood still at first, dazed by his words; but she grew angry
quickly, and was about to speak as she felt, when he went on:
"Stay here now with me. Don't go back. Don't you remember Shangois's
house? Don't you remember that night--that night when--ah! Chris, stay
here--"
Her face was flaming. "I'd rather stay in a room full of wild beasts
like that"--she pointed to the bear" than be with you one minute--you
murderer!" she said, with choking anger.
He started towards her, saying:
"By the blood of Joseph! but you'll stay just the same; and--"
He got no further, for she threw the pistol in his face with all her
might. It struck between his eyes with a thud, and he staggered back,
blind, bleeding and faint, as she threw open the door and sped away in
the darkness.
Reaching the Manor safely, she ran up to her room, arranged her hair,
washed her hands, and came again to Ferrol's bedroom. Knocking softly
she was admitted by Nic. There was an unnatural brightness in her eyes.
"Where've you been?" he asked, for he noticed this. "What've you been
doing?"
"I've killed the bear that tried to kill him," she answered.
She spoke louder than she meant. Her voice awakened Ferrol.
"Eh, what?" he said, "killed the bear, mademoiselle,--my dear friend,"
he added, "killed the bear!" He coughed a little, and a twinge of pain
crossed over his face.
She nodded, and her face was alight with pleasure. She lifted up his
head and gave him a little drink of brandy. His fingers closed on hers
that held the glass. His touch thrilled her.
"That's good, that's easier," he remarked.
"We're going to bathe you in brandy and hot water, now--Nic and I," she
said.
"Bathe me! Bathe me!" he said, in amused consternation.
"Hands and feet," Nic explained.
A few minutes later as she lifted up his head, her face was very near
him; her breath was in his face. Her eyes half closed, her fingers
trembled. He suddenly drew her to him and kissed her. She looked round
swiftly, but her brother had not noticed.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Illusive hopes and irresponsible deceptions
She lacked sense a little and sensitiveness much
To be popular is not necessarily to be contemptible
Who say 'God bless you', in New York! they say 'Damn you!'
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