The Lane That Had No Turning Part 2

So he was going. Madelinette had urged him to stay, but he had replied that it was too late. The harm was not to be undone.

As Muroc spoke, every one turned towards Medallion. He came over and filled a gla.s.s at the table, and raised it.

"I drink to Madelinette, daughter of that fine old puffing forgeron Lajeunesse," he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room.

Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head. "I knew Madelinette, as did you all, when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories, and listen to her sing French chansons--the best in the world. She has gone on; we stay where we were. But she proves her love to us, by taking her husband from Pontiac and coming back to us. May she never find a spot so good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!"

He drank, and they all did the same. Draining his gla.s.s, Medallion let it fall on the stone floor. It broke into a score of pieces.

He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse. "Give her my love," he said.

"Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses she gave me when she was five and I was twenty."

Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room.

"Why did he drop his gla.s.s?" asked Gingras the shoemaker.

"That's the way of the aristocrats when it's the d.a.m.nedest toast that ever was," said Duclosse the mealman. "Eh, Lajeunesse, that's so, isn't it?"

"What the devil do I know about aristocrats!" said Lajeunesse.

"You're among the best of the land, now that Madelinette's married to the Seigneur. You ought to wear a collar every day."

"Bah!" answered the blacksmith. "I'm only old Lajeunesse the blacksmith, though she's my girl, dear lads. I was Joe Lajeunesse yesterday, and I'll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I'll die Joe Lajeunesse the forgeron--bagos.h.!.+ So you take me as you find me. M'sieu' Racine doesn't marry me. And Madelinette doesn't take me to Paris and lead me round the stage and say, 'This is M'sieu' Lajeunesse, my father.' No. I'm myself, and a d.a.m.n good blacksmith and nothing else am I!"

"Tut, tut, old leather-belly," said Gingras the shoemaker, whose liquor had mounted high, "you'll not need to work now. Madelinette's got double fortune. She gets thousands for a song, and she's lady of the Manor here. What's too good for you, tell me that, my forgeron?"

"Not working between meals--that's too good for me, Gingras. I'm here to earn my bread with the hands I was born with, and to eat what they earn, and live by it. Let a man live according to his gifts--bagos.h.!.+ Till I'm sent for, that's what I'll do; and when time's up I'll take my hand off the bellows, and my leather ap.r.o.n can go to you, Gingras, for boots for a bigger fool than me."

"There's only one," said Benolt, the ne'er-do-weel, who had been to college as a boy.

"Who's that?" said Muroc.

"You wouldn't know his name. He's trying to find eggs in last year's nest," answered Benolt with a leer.

"He means the Seigneur," said Muroc. "Look to your son-in-law, Lajeunesse. He's kicking up a dust that'll choke Pontiac yet. It's as if there was an imp in him driving him on."

"We've had enough of the devil's dust here," said Lajeunesse. "Has he been talking to you, Muroc?"

Muroc nodded. "Treason, or thereabouts. Once, with him that's dead in the graveyard yonder, it was France we were to save and bring back the Napoleons--I have my sword yet. Now it's save Quebec. It's stand alone and have our own flag, and shout, and fight, maybe, to be free of England. Independence--that's it! One by one the English have had to go from Pontiac. Now it's M'sieu' Medallion."

"There's Shandon the Irishman gone too. M'sieu' sold him up and s.h.i.+pped him off," said Gingras the shoemaker.

"Tiens! the Seigneur gave him fifty dollars when he left, to help him along. He smacks and then kisses, does M'sieu' Racine."

"We've to pay tribute to the Seigneur every year, as they did in the days of Vaudreuil and Louis the Saint," said Duclosse. "I've got my notice--a bag of meal under the big tree at the Manor door."

"I've to bring a pullet and a bag of charcoal," said Muroc. "'Tis the rights of the Seigneur as of old."

"Tiens! it is my mind," said Benoit, "that a man that nature twists in back, or leg, or body anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too. There's Parpon the dwarf--G.o.d knows, Parpon is a nut to crack!"

"But Parpon isn't married to the greatest singer in the world, though she's only the daughter of old leather-belly there," said Gingras.

"Something doesn't come of nothing, snub-nose," said Lajeunesse. "Mark you, I was born a man of fame, walking b.l.o.o.d.y paths to glory; but, by the grace of Heaven and my baptism, I became a forgeron. Let others ride to glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop."

"You'll be in Parliament yet, Lajeunesse," said Duclosse the mealman, who had been dozing on a pile of untired cart-wheels.

"I'll be hanged first, comrade."

"One in the family at a time," said Muroc. "There's the Seigneur. He's going into Parliament."

"He's a magistrate--that's enough," said Duclosse. "He's started the court under the big tree, as the Seigneurs did two hundred years ago.

He'll want a gibbet and a gallows next."

"I should think he'd stay at home and not take more on his shoulders!"

said the one-eyed shoemaker. Without a word, Lajeunesse threw a dish of water in Gingras's face. This reference to the Seigneur's deformity was unpalatable.

Gingras had not recovered from his discomfiture when all were startled by the distant blare of a bugle. They rushed to the door, and were met by Parpon the dwarf, who announced that a regiment of soldiers was marching on the village.

"'Tis what I expected after that meeting, and the Governor's visit, and the lily-flag of France on the Manor, and the body-guard and the carbines," said Muroc nervously.

"We're all in trouble again-sure," said Benoit, and drained his gla.s.s to the last drop. "Some of us will go to gaol."

The coming of the militia had been wholly unexpected by the people of Pontiac, but the cause was not far to seek. Ever since the Governor's visit there had been sinister rumours abroad concerning Louis Racine, which the Cure and the Avocat and others had taken pains to contradict.

It was known that the Seigneur had been requested to disband his so-called company of soldiers with their ancient livery and their modern arms, and to give them up. He had disbanded the corps, but he had not given up the arms, and, for reasons unknown, the Government had not pressed the point, so far as the world knew. But it had decided to hold a district drill in this far-off portion of the Province; and this summer morning two thousand men marched 'upon the town and through it, horse, foot, and commissariat, and Pontiac was roused out of the last-century romance the Seigneur had sought to continue, to face the actual presence of modern force and the machinery of war. Twice before had British soldiers marched into the town, the last time but a few years agone, when blood had been shed on the stones in front of the parish church. But here were large numbers of well-armed men from the Eastern parishes, English and French, with four hundred regulars to leaven the ma.s.s. Lajeunesse knew only too well what this demonstration meant.

Before the last soldier had pa.s.sed through the street, he was on his way to the Seigneury.

He found Madelinette alone in the great dining-room, mending a rent in the British flag, which she was preparing for a flag-staff. When she saw him, she dropped the flag, as if startled, came quickly to him, took both his hands in hers, and kissed his cheek.

"Wonder of wonders!" she said.

"It's these soldiers," he replied shortly. "What of them?" she asked brightly.

"Do you mean to say you don't know what their coming here means?" he asked.

"They must drill somewhere, and they are honouring Pontiac," she replied gaily, but her face flushed as she bent over the flag again.

He came and stood in front of her. "I don't know what's in your mind; I don't know what you mean to do; but I do know that M'sieu' Racine is making trouble here, and out of it you'll come more hurt than anybody."

"What has Louis done?"

"What has he done! He's been stirring up feeling against the British.

What has he done!--Look at the silly customs he's got out of old coffins, to make us believe they're alive. Why did he ever try to marry you? Why did you ever marry him? You are the great singer of the world.

He's a mad hunchback habitant seigneur!"

She stamped her foot indignantly, but presently she ruled herself to composure, and said quietly: "He is my husband. He is a brave man, with foolish dreams." Then with a sudden burst of tender feeling, she said: "Oh, father, father, can't you see, I loved him--that is why I married him. You ask me what I am going to do? I am going to give the rest of my life to him. I am going to stay with him, and be to him all that he may never have in this world, never--never. I am going to be to him what my mother was to you, a slave to the end--a slave who loved you, and who gave you a daughter who will do the same for her husband--"

"No matter what he does or is--eh?"

"No matter what he is."