Ringfield Part 2

"Not much. Not anything like what you must have read if you have even gone through a quarter of all these!"

"Ah!"

The strange man, savant, scientist, bibliophile, whatever he was, drew his dirty dressing-gown around him with another flourish of complacent self-admiration.

"I am--you are quite right, Mr. Clergyman--a great reader. I have read every book in this room two, three, many times over. You were--surprised--to see all this book, all this doc.u.ment, all this pamphlette--here, at this place, eh?"

Ringfield, as yet only partly guessing at the peculiarities of his host, a.s.sented politely.

"My name is Ringfield," he said, noting for the first time the strong broken accent of the other and his use of French idiom. "I am a Methodist minister, spending some time at St. Ignace, and yesterday I encountered a lady, who, I believe, lives here. At least, I----"

The other cut him short.

"Ringfield? That is your name? _Anneau, champ_--no the other way, Champanneau. We have not this name with us. Yet, I do not know, it may be a good name."

The young man was superior to the slighting tone because he belonged to the cla.s.s which lives by work, and which has not traced or kept track of its genealogy. He was so far removed from aristocratic tendencies, ideas of caste, traditions of birth, that he scarcely apprehended the importance of such subjects in the mind of anyone.

"The English name, Champney," continued the man in the chair, "you know that--might derive from it, might derive. But I am not so well acquainted with the English names as with the French. You _comprenez pour quoi, sans doute_. I am derive--myself, from a great French name, a great family."

The satisfaction with which he repeated this oracular statement continued to amuse Ringfield, a son of the people, his friends of the people, but it did not amuse the third person who heard it, the lady who, advancing into the dark stuffy room, received a pleased glance from the minister and a half-fearful, half-defiant scowl from the man in the chair.

"Henry!" exclaimed she, with great volubility and a kind of fierce disgust, "how is this? What can you mean by so disobeying me? This is no place to bring strangers! Nor do I want strangers brought into any part of this house at any time of the day! It is suffocating here. Do you not find it very heavy, very close in here?" she added, to Ringfield, who had risen and slightly changed countenance as she p.r.o.nounced the word "stranger".

He looked from the lady to the man in the chair in astonishment, for he saw the former in a new and painful light. So dark was the frown upon her usually serene countenance, so angry the light in her fine hazel eyes, so anxious and perturbed her entire being, that she appeared almost ugly. Not only so, but added to impatience and anger there seemed something like repugnance, disgust, directed at the miserable pedant who under the fires of womanly wrath blinked and smiled, but had no defence ready.

"It is altogether my fault that I am here," said Ringfield quietly; "I took another walk in this direction, hoping for a sight of the peac.o.c.k."

"And you saw something else instead! Ah!--there is much I must explain to you, you who come among us not knowing, not understanding. You see only the outside. But I suppose I must tell you who we are. This is my brother, my only brother, in fact my only living relative, Henry Clairville. I am Miss--Mademoiselle Clairville."

Ringfield bowed to her and to the man in the chair.

"We are the last of what--of what it pleases him to call our Line. It is all most foolish, most absurd. But I cannot tell you here. Since chance has brought you our way again, and as you may take up your residence in the neighbourhood--have you decided yet?--I feel I must make some explanation of how you find us, my brother and myself. Can you row? or paddle?"

Her manner, gradually changing and growing easier every moment, made it easy for Ringfield, who answered her with a smile.

"Of course."

"I asked, because some clergymen are so useless in some directions while good enough in others."

CHAPTER IV

THE HOUSE OF CLAIRVILLE

"High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised."

The hall through which they pa.s.sed was sufficiently dark to prevent the masculine eye of Ringfield noting that long and systematic neglect marked every inch of the wall, every foot of flooring, every window, door, stair, sill and sash. Nothing was clean, nothing was orderly, and as the books and papers contained in the invalid's room had overflowed into the halls, lying on the steps and propped up on chairs and in corners, the dirt and confusion was indescribable. Hideous wallpapers were peeling off the damp and cracking wall, tattered shreds showing, by the acc.u.mulation on their fly-specked yellow edges of thick dust, how long they had waved upon the close air of this uncared-for house. All the woodwork was rough and horrid to the touch by reason of the millions of similar fly-specks; had nothing ever been washed here?

Cats were alarmingly abundant. Three lay about in the hall; four were stretched on the gra.s.s in front of the door, and Ringfield saw two more--so large and brown and with such huge tigers' heads, prowling under the trees, that he scarcely took them for cats. The chain of barns, farm-buildings and sheds was all in the same dilapidated, dirty condition, and it was hardly strange that the vision of that white loveliness--the peac.o.c.k--which had tempted him in this direction, crossed his mind as they proceeded to the landing-place. And yet the Clairvilles were not without servants. Mademoiselle, having regained a measure of her wonted serenity, began to describe her retainers, proving that servants were almost as numerous as cats in that neighbourhood. The elderly woman, the man, the two girls and the boy, were all one family, and living "about" as their mistress carelessly put it, in the barns and out-buildings, divided the work among them.

The woman's husband, Xavier Archambault, employed at the Fall as a.s.sistant to look after the bridge and dam, helped at odd moments in the business of the estate, thus making in all six servants, a rather large contingent for a dwindling concern; and Ringfield, listening to these wonders, could not fail to observe that their united wages must reach a high figure.

"Oh--they are not paid!" exclaimed mademoiselle, "at least, not in money. My brother, who is, as I was going to tell you, a person of stronger character than you might imagine, has never paid a cent of wages to anyone in his life. He has managed to infect all his work-people, and, indeed, many in the village, with his own belief that it is an honour to labour for him and his, he being a De Clairville and the highest in rank in this part of the country. Of course you, having lived in the West, and knowing so much of the world, must see how foolish this is, how it involves us--my brother and myself--in many unpleasant and difficult situations."

A note of challenge in her voice led Ringfield, who had taken off his coat and was paddling, to stop sharply and observe her.

"Pray be careful!" she cried in sudden alarm. "When I was at home all the time I could stand any kind of behaviour in a canoe, but lately I seem to be losing my nerve. I suppose you _must_ kneel?"

"Certainly. Much the easier, therefore the safer way."

"Therefore! All easy things--safe?"

He was clumsy at this kind of refined innuendo, and considered before replying.

"No, perhaps not. But I give you my word not to disturb the equilibrium again."

The lake, a basin of clear water, small as Lower Canadian lakes go, and framed with thick foliage reaching to the edge, was absolutely silent, absolutely deserted, on this warm afternoon. Ringfield found it almost too hot to talk, but his companion seemed to enjoy the unburdening of various confidences, and as she had such a willing listener she had every opportunity, of taking her own time, and of delivering herself in her own way, of a remarkable tale.

That, within two days of his enforced sojourn at St. Ignace, the young preacher found himself thus--floating on a silent desolate lake in one of the remotest parishes of Quebec, listening to a family history of mediaeval import from the lips of a woman, young too, cultivated, self-possessed to the degree of hauteur, whose Christian name was as yet unknown to him, was in itself remarkable.

Ringfield, ardent, gifted, good, inherited directness of aim, purity of ideals, and narrowness of vision, from the simple working stock from which he had sprung, and it would have been easy for a man of the world to foresee the limitations existing in such a nature. When mademoiselle therefore began the Clairville history by relating some circ.u.mstances in the flighty career of the Sieur De Clairville, hinting at certain deflections and ridiculing uncertain promises of reformation, of reparation--for even the seventeenth century had its cant--the matter was far from being either real or relevant to her listener. What had he to do with a bundle of old-world memoirs, even when edited and brought up to date by an interesting woman! What to him was the spotless character of the ign.o.ble Francois, son of a butcher, created a Clairville for his plebeian virtues, or the lives of each succeeding descendant of Francois, growing always a little richer, a little more polished, till in time the wheel turned and the change came in the fortunes of the house which culminated in the present! All these were mere abstractions, dull excerpts from some period of remote and unfamiliar history, because that system which gave him his secular education did not include knowledge of his country from an historical standpoint.

Macaulay and Alison, Gibbon and Grote, Motley and Bancroft--but not yet Garneau or Parkman. The lady might have romanced indeed, with glib falseness gilding picturesque invention, and he would not have detected it.

As it was, the truth remained sufficiently high coloured. He listened, he apprehended, but he could not see that it mattered.

"So now," remarked mademoiselle, trailing her large firm white hand through the water and knitting her firm black brows still closer, "I have brought the story up to the appearance on the scene of my brother, whom you have met, no doubt pondered over, perhaps shrunk from."

"No, no!" cried Ringfield. "You mistake. I was conscious only of having no right to enter."

"Ah--I could see, I could see. Poor Henry! He is the victim of many delusions. One--that he is a great invalid and cannot leave his room, that room you saw him in to-day. Another--that we are properly De Clairvilles, but that we have somehow lost the prefix, the 'De,' in course of years, and that a Bill may have to pa.s.s in Parliament to permit us using it legally. There has been already in this antiquated province a case very similar to ours, but it was a genuine case, which ours is not. My brother owns the largest collection of old French and old French-Canadian memoirs and books in the country, I believe, and it may be that out of constant poring over them has come this ruling pa.s.sion, this dominant idea, to prove himself a seigneur, and more, a n.o.ble, _grand seigneur de France_! Voila! but I forget, Mr. Ringfield hardly speaks French, and I--hate the sound of it, only it crops out sometimes."

"But why--and you--how do _you_ speak such good English? I have been wondering over that much more than over the case of your brother."

Ringfield, as he asked the question, stopped paddling and sat down cautiously opposite his companion. Her dark brows clouded even more and the warm colouring of her face went white; she again resembled the fury who had lectured the unfortunate pedant in the arm-chair.

"I knew you would ask that. Every one does. I suppose it is to be expected. Well then, my mother was English and I was educated at a mixed school, ladies' school at Sorel, not a convent. I was quick at the language--_voila_!"

"Perhaps it was rude in me to ask. I believe I am deficient in manners; my friends often tell me so. But you spoke such _good_ English; better far than mine."

"That would not be difficult. You have the accent strange to me, that of the West. Then I have studied for the stage, in fact, and now I suppose I shall frighten you altogether and make you upset the canoe when I tell you that I am _on_ the stage."

It only needed some such declaration to convince Ringfield that, still floating on this silent, desolate lake he was indeed removed from all his usual convictions, prejudices and preferences. What had he to do with the stage! To the Methodist of his day the Stage was deliberately ignored in the study of social conditions. It was too evil to be redeemed. Its case was hopeless. Then let it alone and let us pretend it does not exist. This in effect was his actual state of mind.

"I have never been to the theatre," he said simply. "They say that at some future day we, as Methodists, may have to take up the question of amus.e.m.e.nts and consider the theatre seriously. It may be that we shall have to face other facts--the craving in this age of people, especially our young people, for greater liberty of thought, and I suppose, corresponding liberty of action. But so far these questions have not come very much before me, and I must plead entire ignorance of all matters connected with the profession to which you belong."

Mademoiselle Clairville's brow was now completely serene; a laugh was on her lips and a smile in her eyes as she listened to the staid phrases of her new friend.