Ringfield Part 17

Ringfield then moved. "Where is M. Clairville?" he asked Mme.

Poussette, tilting his chair back as she pa.s.sed.

"In his bed, M'sieu. He overwalked this morning and knows nothing of the storm, and after a _pet.i.t verre_ of this good cognac he has gone to sleep. It is good for the brain--this cognac; will not M'sieu join the others?"

"No, thank you," he said, smiling, "You know I never touch these things. But I was thinking of going out to see the night. Surely the rain is almost over! Do I go this way?"

"The other door, if you please, M'sieu."

Poussette's anxiety as he noted Ringfield's departure was ludicrous.

He overturned bottles, knocked down a chair, while he cast frightened glances at the priest sitting reading his breviary austerely under the lamp. How could he escape? Ah--the horses--they had not been properly attended to! The next moment he was off, out of the kitchen and hastily rummaging in the large and dreary stables for a lantern. A whole row of these usually hung from the ceiling of a small outhouse close at hand, and Ringfield had already taken one, lighted it, and was a quarter of a mile along the road; Poussette, fearing this, made such insane haste, "raw haste, half-sister to Delay," that the blanketing of the horse and the other preliminaries took more time than usual, and he had hardly driven out of the gate when Father Rielle, who had changed his mind, also left the kitchen from where his sharp ears had caught these various sounds, and searching for a third lantern, found one, lighted it, and set off on foot behind Poussette in the buggy.

Thus--a little procession of three men and three lanterns was progressing along the slippery, lonely road towards the barn where Miss Clairville was awaiting rescue, the first of whom to arrive was Ringfield. Striding to the half-open door he boldly called her name, and shoving the lantern inside perceived her to be entirely alone.

"Oh--it is you then! I am so glad--it seems hours since you went away.

I have not been exactly frightened, for I know these woods and there is nothing alive in them, but the position of this barn--so remote, so down by itself in the little hollow--if anything did attack me, my voice would never be heard."

"But you were not alone when I left you! You may not be alone now!"

"How did you find that out?" her face changed; she had not calculated on his having seen Crabbe.

"I think I knew all the time; your restlessness, your anxiety to get me away, your pus.h.i.+ng me down on that box and changing the subject--why, when I saw him come out, and--and wind his arm around your waist, then I knew you had been lying to me! How could you do it!" He waved the lantern towards the loft but could see nothing there.

"He is gone, gone," said she earnestly; "he has gone to the village to get some rig or other and come back with it for me, but of course I would rather go with you."

"I cannot believe a word you say!" exclaimed Ringfield in an agony, setting the lantern down. "Not a word--not a word. Do you think you can play all your life like this with men? You cannot play with me at all events. There are forces here (he struck his breast), pa.s.sions here, instincts here I never dreamed of, I never knew I possessed. It is not good, nor wise, nor necessary for me to love you, Pauline, but I do--I do! And you must fear them, you must respect them, these instincts, these forces, as much in me as you would do in other men."

"I do, I do! Only I do not like to see you and that other man together--I always feel something happening, I do not know what! but I will tell you all about it. Father Rielle drove me to this place; we got out, came in, and then he talked most foolishly, most wildly--hurt my wrist--see here! And while I was wondering how I could put him off, get rid of him, I discovered that the other man was in the loft. I saw his stick, then I heard him; and then he came down and he and Father Rielle went away together."

"But he came back--for I saw him, I saw you both. You went outside to look at the tree."

"Yes--he went away, but he came back, and while we were talking I heard you coming and so--and--so----"

"You got him out of the way in time! Then after I left he was here again with you?"

"For a little while, just a little while."

Ringfield suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed her hands and bent his stern offended gaze upon her.

"You have been hours with that man, hours--I know it. And to pretend to me that there was no one there, while you allowed me to open my mind and heart to you--the indignity of it, the smallness and vileness of it; oh!--can not you see how I suffer in my pride for myself as well as in my affection for you? As for the man, he knew no better, and I suppose he wished for nothing better, than to listen and look, to watch us, to spy----"

He choked with sorrowful wrath and temper; an access of jealous, injured fury entirely possessed him for an instant, then with a great effort, and an inward prayer, he partly regained his ministerial calm.

"You must see that I am right," he resumed; "he calls himself a gentleman--you call him one; but is that a gentlemanly thing to do?

Gentleman? To stay here in hiding and let us talk on as we did! And what does it signify that he is or has been 'an Oxford man'--the term has no relevancy here, no meaning or sense whatever. Tell me this once more, for I have grave doubts--has he any legal right over you?"

Pauline resolved to answer this question truthfully. How would Ringfield accept the delicate distinction of a moral right involving only those ties, those obligations, known to themselves and not to the world?

"No," she said, firmly. Then a great burst of colour filled her face as she continued. "But he should have had. Now you know. Now you know all." And Ringfield, as almost any other man would have done, mistakenly concluded that she was the unfortunate mother of the unfortunate child in the distant parish, Angeel! In this, perhaps the crucial moment of his whole existence, his manhood, his innate simple strength, his reason and his faith, all wavered, tottered before him; this experience, this knowledge of evil at first hand in the person of one so dear, flamed round him like some hideous blast from the hot furnace of an accepted h.e.l.l, and he realized the terrors of things he had read about and seen depicted--lost souls, dark and yet lurid pits of destruction, misshapen beasts and angry angels--the blood flowed from his arteries and from his stricken heart up to his frightened brain, and surged there while he stood, not raising his eyes to this ill-starred woman. It was child's play to read one's Bible; it was child's play to read about sin; it was bald and commonplace to receive converts after service, or to attend death-beds of repentance; here was that suffering ent.i.ty, the Sinner, alone with him, weak in her strength and strong through her weakness, and with her delicate, guilty, perverted impulses he had to deal, and no longer with pulpit abstractions. But while they stood thus, another turn in the affairs which revolved around the lonely barn carried with it a new sound; a horse's trot was plainly heard, likewise the humorous lilt of a shanty song.

"It is Mr. Poussette!" whispered Pauline, rus.h.i.+ng to the lantern and extinguis.h.i.+ng it. "He is coming for me and I shall have to go with him. I can manage him--better than the priest--but you--what must I do with you? He is a gossip--that one--and it will work you harm in your religion, in your church, if he finds you here with me."

"Oh, why are you so impetuous!" returned Ringfield. "You should not have blown out the light! He knew doubtless that I was coming for you--there would be nothing in that. Where is the lantern--I will light it again."

"You cannot reach it, I have hidden it down behind those boxes. No, no--I could not have him find you here with me. The loft--the loft!

There is the ladder!"

And in two minutes he found himself, after scrambling up in the dark, crawling about on his hands and knees in the same heap of straw that had served to conceal Edmund Crabbe a few hours before, and doomed, in his turn, to overhear the conversation of any who might be below.

In a few moments the horse came to a standstill, and Poussette approached, carrying his lantern, Miss Clairville receiving him with just that successful mixture of hauteur and coquetry, which kept him admiring but respectful. His delight at being the first, as he supposed, to reach her, was as absurd as it was genuine, but there was no delay, and she was soon comfortably wrapped up in Poussette's _voiture_ and being rapidly driven to the manor-house. When he thought it was quite safe, Ringfield shook himself free from the hay and straw that enc.u.mbered him, and prepared to descend the ladder, but he had scarcely enjoyed the luxury of stretching his long limbs (for he could not stand upright in the loft) when he heard footsteps approaching, and looking down, he perceived Father Rielle enter the barn, lantern in hand, and with thin, high-nosed, sour countenance depicting intense surprise, eagerly explore the place for Pauline. Ringfield held his breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak pulled well over him, settled to a night's rest.

Ringfield, thus imprisoned, pa.s.sed for his part a miserable night; he dared not move and his excited brain kept him from sleeping. Towards four o'clock the lantern flickered out; at six, while it was yet dark, the priest arose and went his way, and an hour later Ringfield also retraced his steps to the village. Like a man in an exceedingly unpleasant, but most distinct dream, he found himself bound in a net of intrigue from which there seemed no chance of escape. It was Sunday morning and at eleven he would have to take charge of the service and address the usual congregation as Father Rielle had already partly done, the early ma.s.s at St. Jean Baptiste-on-the-Hill being held at half past seven.

The road between the grim leafless trees was now swept clean of both snow and hail by the streams of heavy rain which had poured the previous night, and the air was mild. Much havoc had been wrought in places by the furious storm; the rocky ground was littered with branches and twigs of all sizes; rivers of yellow mud ran where the clay road should be, and against this desolation there glowed occasional plants of bright green, low along the ground, that had escaped the winter's rages of a high level. Crows were silhouetted against the pale blue sky laced with streamers of white, and spring seemed to be in the air rather than late autumn; the excited birds called to each other as they flew high over the forest, as if to hail this pleasant morning, a contrast to the stormy night. Suddenly the sun shone through those cloudy gossamers and irradiated the bright green ferns and orange lichens, drawing the eye to the cross of gold that topped Father Rielle's fine church. Ringfield went out of his way to look at the fall; it was much swollen from the rain and thundered over its brown rocks more loudly than he had ever heard it. Above the bridge were swaying large quant.i.ties of floating timber, washed down by the violence of the storm, and as he looked he saw three of these derelicts ride to the brink, and tumble over, and among them a little dog, that had got out there he could not tell how, which for a moment stood on a rolling tree whining piteously, and then fell with it down those ledges of furious frothing waters.

He ran close to the edge, and looked over, but there was no trace of the animal for fully five minutes; then he saw its poor little body emerge, battered, knocked about by stones and trees at the foot of the great cascade, and at the sight his good sense and right feeling seemed to return to him. He had temporarily, as he himself would have put it, forgotten his Creator in the days of his youth; now all came back to him; the duties of his position, its dignity and its obligations, and he strove hard, by prayer and concentration of mind, to be as he had been, and forget Miss Clairville and her tempestuous existence for a while, as he took upon himself the work of the sacred day. He preached later from the verse, "Yet in the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue," and his voice and magnetic delivery were not impaired. The little dog, the little dead dog, figured in the sermon; like the Ancient Mariner when he leaned over the rotting vessel's side and watched the beautiful living things moving in the waters, his heart gushed out with sympathy as the image of the dog, seeing his death, and recognizing no escape from it, remained with him.

The eyes of the poor animal seemed ever before him; large, pathetic brown eyes, with soft patches of lighter brown fur above them, a quivering nose and trembling paws--could he not have saved it? No--for motion once given to those rolling logs, they would carry anything on with them, and it was already too late when he first perceived it--a small, s.h.i.+vering, unhappy little object--with fear s.h.i.+ning in its large eyes, those eyes he had seen looking directly at him as if to say: "Help me, my brother, help me from this Death! Help me, for the love of G.o.d, as you believe in G.o.d and in His Omnipotence and Goodness!"

CHAPTER XVIII

A CONCERT DE LUXE

"----Consumed And vexed and chafed by levity and scorn, And fruitless indignation, galled by pride, Made desperate by contempt."

Ringfield, who had confessed to a fixed and abiding ignorance of the stage, was also ignorant of music, except so far as he could recognize a few patriotic airs and old-country ballads. Of church music there was nothing worth speaking of or listening to in the Methodist conventicles of those days, so that he brought an absolutely open mind to a consideration of Miss Clairville's voice and method when he first heard her sing. That had been one evening in an impromptu and carelessly inadequate manner in company with Miss Cordova--whom, with her bleached hair, green eyes accentuated by badly-drawn, purplish-black eyebrows, and a shrill American accent, he was learning to dislike and avoid as much as possible; but now a better opportunity presented itself. A Grand Evening Concert, Concert de Luxe, was to be given at Poussette's for the survivors of Telesph.o.r.e Tremblay, a woodcutter who lived at the edge of the forest of Fournier, and who had generously left behind him one of those long legacies of thriving sons and daughters for which French Canada is famous. The modest birth-rate of the province of Quebec is not in these days of "race suicide" a thing to be ungrateful for: many Tremblays remain, with their family of eighteen or twenty-four, of st.u.r.dy, healthy boys and girls, for the most part pure French, with an occasional streak of Scotch or Irish, and a still rarer tincture of Indian. Frugal, sober, industrious, and intelligent along certain limited lines, the habitant sets an example of domestic bliss, which, in its unalterable and cheerful conviction of what are the duties of parents to the state and to the Church, tends to the eternal and unimpoverished perpetuation of the French Canadian race. The Tremblays were named as follows, and as some interest attaches to the choice of triple, and even quadruple, t.i.tles, largely chosen from the saints of the Roman Calendar, augmented by memories of heroes, queens, and great men in history, it is thought well to give them at length. Thus the sons, nine in number, were:--

Alexis Paul Abelard Joseph Maurice Cleophas Hector Jerome Panteleon Etienne Jean Gabriel Jules Alfred Napoleon Francois-Xavier Hercule Narcisse Patrick Zenophile Pierre Joseph Louis-Felippe Alphonse Arthur

while the daughters were:--

Minnie Archange Emma Catherine Lucille Victoria Cecile Marie-Antoinette Colombe Brigide Zen.o.bie Eugenie Louise Angelique Bernardette Ste. Anne.

The dining-room at Poussette's was transformed for the occasion into a moderate sized concert hall, by the erection of a platform at one end by Antoine Archambault under Pauline's skilled directions, and by rows of planks crosswise over chairs, the people of the village joining forces with those at Poussette's, just as in towns others conspire together to hold fetes and bazaars; but Ringfield stood afar off and would have nothing to say to it. Miss Clairville intercepted him that day after dinner and asked him to a.s.sist her.

"I cannot think," said she, "how you remain so narrow in one respect, while broad enough in others! I am sure that sermon yesterday about the widow and the fatherless was the most beautiful thing I ever heard, and that you have ever said. How then--is it wicked to get up a concert, act, sing, and amuse ourselves, and all for a good object, that we make money for the unfortunate? Ah--but I do not understand you at all!"

"No, I suppose I cannot expect you to do so," replied Ringfield sadly.

"But I have never approved of similar practices in the city, and it seems to me that I must now include the country. Why not make a personal canva.s.s from house to house, through the mill, and so on, and interest the members of our small community in the Tremblays--I believe you would raise more."

"Ah!" exclaimed Pauline, with a swift shrug of impatience; "see now--how we should quarrel always! Quarrel? I think it would be one grand, great long fight, if I--if I----" she faltered, and he noted with quick pa.s.sion the drooping of her ordinarily flas.h.i.+ng eyes.

"If you----" he repeated softly. "Oh--say the rest, or if you would rather not--I will say it for you. You mean, if you could make up your mind to leave all this, leave everything and everyone you have known, and come to me--is that it?"

They were for a moment completely alone, but as Antoine might approach at any instant, laden with boughs of evergreen for decoration purposes, conversation was of a stolen and hurried kind. Ringfield, in whom first love had rapidly modified all natural shyness of the s.e.x, was no lukewarm lover; he took Pauline's hands, and bringing them to his lips, pressed ardent kisses upon them, urging her to at once decide in his favour and give him the right to guard her interests for ever. How or where they would live was no matter, her best impulses must surely move all her heart towards him, and at last he heard from her a soft answer, which was nevertheless a clear affirmative, and now, not only hands but lips joined in this rare moment, and Pauline, no longer estimating the minister as one unlearned in the subtle lists of love, felt happier than she had done for months. She had made, she told herself, the best choice offered her, and for the moment she swore resolutions of holy living and quiet dying, all in the character of Ringfield's wife. As for him, the kiss had sealed all and changed all.