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diff --git a/40331-0.txt b/40331-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c75686f --- /dev/null +++ b/40331-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5339 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40331 *** + +Transcriber's Notes: + + 1. Page scan source: + http://www.archive.org/details/richmansrelative01clel + (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) + + 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. + + + + + + + A RICH MAN'S RELATIVES + + + + + + + PRESS NOTICES + + OF + + "INCHBRACKEN," + + A NOVEL BY R. CLELAND + + * * * + + _Westminster Review, October_, 1883. + +"Inchbracken" is a clever sketch of Scottish life and manners at the +time of the "Disruption," or great secession from the Established +Church of Scotland, which resulted in the formation of the Free +Church. The scene of the story is a remote country parish in the north +of Scotland, within a few miles of the highland line. The main +interest centres in the young Free Church minister and his sister and +their relations, on the one hand, with the enthusiastic supporters of +the Disruption movement, mostly of the peasant or small tradesmen +class, with a sprinkling of the smaller landowners; and, on the other +hand, with the zealous supporters of the Established Church, +represented by the Drysdales of Inchbracken, the great family of the +neighbourhood. The story is well and simply told, with many a quiet +touch of humour, founded on no inconsiderable knowledge of human +nature. + + _Academy, 27th October_, 1883. + +There is a great deal of solid writing in "Inchbracken," and they who +read it will hardly do so in vain. It is a story of the Disruption; +and it sets forth, with much pains and not a little spirit, the +humours and scandals of one of the communities affected by the event. +The main incident of the story has nothing to do with the Disruption, +it is true; but its personages are those of the time, and the uses to +which they are put are such as the Disruption made possible. Roderick +Brown, the enthusiastic young Free Church minister, finds on the +sea-shore after wreck and storm, a poor little human waif which the +sea has spared. He takes the baby home, and does his best for it. One +of his parishioners has lost her character, however; and as Roderick, +at the instigation of his beadle, the real author of her ruin, is good +enough to give her money and help, it soon becomes evident to +Inchbracken that he is the villain, and that the baby of the wreck is +the fruit of an illicit amour. How it ends I shall not say. I shall do +no more than note that the story of the minister's trials and the +portraitures--of elders and gossips, hags and maids and village +notables--with which it is enriched are (especially if you are not +afraid of the broadest Scotch, written with the most uncompromising +regard for the national honour) amusing and natural in no mean degree. + + W. E. HENLEY. + + _Athenæum, 17th November_, 1883. + +"Inchbracken" will be found amusing by those who are familiar with +Scotch country life. The period chosen, the "Disruption time," is an +epoch in the religious and social life of Scotland, marking a revival, +in an extremely modified and not altogether genuine form, of the +polemic Puritanism of the early Presbyterians, and so furnishing a +subject which lends itself better to literary treatment than most +sides of Scottish life in this prosaic century. The author has a good +descriptive gift, and makes the most of the picturesque side of the +early Free Church meetings at which declaimers against Erastian +patronage posed in the attitude of the Covenanters of old. The story +opens on a stormy night when Roderick Brown, the young Free Church +minister of Kilrundle, is summoned on a ten-mile expedition to attend +a dying woman, an expedition which involves him in all the troubles +which form the subject of the book. The patient has nothing on her +mind of an urgent character. "No, mem! na!" says the messenger. + +"My granny's a godly auld wife, tho' maybe she's gye fraxious whiles, +an' money's the sair paikin' she's gi'en me; gin there was ocht to +confess she kens the road to the Throne better nor maist. But ye see +there's a maggit gotten intil her heid an' she says she bent to +testifee afore she gangs hence." + +The example of Jenny Geddes has been too much for the poor old +woman:-- + +"Ay, an' I'm thinkin' it's that auld carline, Jenny Geddes, 'at's +raised a' the fash! My granny gaed to hear Mester Dowlas whan he +preached among the whins down by the shore, an' oh, but he was bonny! +An' a graand screed o' doctrine he gae us. For twa hale hours he +preached an expundet an' never drew breath for a' the wind was +skirlin', an' the renn whiles skelpin' like wild. An' I'm thinkin' my +granny's gotten her death o' ta'. But oh! an' he was grand on Jenny +Geddes! an' hoo she up wi' the creepie am' heved it a the Erastian's +heid. An' my granny was just fairly ta'en wi't a', an' she vooed she +beut to be a mither in Israel tae, an' whan she gaed hame she out wi' +the auld hugger 'at she keeps the bawbees in, aneath the hearthstane, +for to buy a creepie o' her ain,--she thocht a new ane wad be best for +the Lord's wark,--an' she coupet the chair whaur hung her grave +claes,' at she airs fonent the fire ilika Saturday at e'en, 'an out +there cam a lowe, an' scorched a hole i' the windin' sheet, an' noo, +puir body, we'll hae to hap her in her muckle tartan plaid. An' +aiblins she'll be a' the warmer e'y moulds for that. But, however, she +says the sheet was weel waur'd, for the guid cause. An' syne she took +til her bed, wi' a sair host, an' sma' winder, for there was a weet +daub whaur she had been sittin' amang the whins. An' noo the host's +settled on her that sair, she whiles canna draw her breath. Sae she +says she maun let the creepie birlin' slide, but she beut to testifee +afore some godly minister or she gangs hence. An' I'm fear'd, sir, ye +maun hurry, for she's real far through." + +The excuse for this long extract must be its excellence as a specimen +of a long-winded statement, just such as a Scotch fisher boy would +make when once the ice was broken. Not less idiomatic is the interview +between Mrs. Boague, the shepherd's wife, and Mrs. Sangster "of +Auchlippie," the great lady of the congregation, when the latter has +had her painful experience of mountain climbing, till rescued by the +"lug and the horn" at the hands of her spiritual pastor. Other good +scenes are the meeting of the two old wives in mutches an the brae +side, and the final discomfiture of the hypocritical scamp Joseph +Smiley by his mother-in-law, Tibbie Tirpie, who rights her daughter's +wrongs and the minister's reputation by a capital _coup de main_. Of +more serious interest, though full of humour, are the trials the +excellent Roderick endures at the hands of his kirk session. Ebenezer +Prittie and Peter Malloch are types of many an elder minister and +ministers' wives have had to groan under, and the race is not extinct. +But all who are interested in such specimens of human nature should +refer to Mr. Cleland, who knows his countrymen as well as he can +describe his country. + + + + + * * * * * + + Select Novels by Popular Authors. + + _Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each_. + + By Florence Marryat. + + MY SISTER THE ACTRESS. + A BROKEN BLOSSOM. + PHYLLIDA. + THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL. + FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS. + + By Annie Thomas. + + ALLERTON TOWERS. + FRIENDS AND LOVERS. + EYRE OF BLENDON. + + + By Mrs. Eiloart. + + THE DEAN'S WIFE. + SOME OF OUR GIRLS. + + + By Lady Constance Howard. + + SWEETHEART AND WIFE. + MOLLIE DARLING. + + + By the Author of "Recommended to Mercy." + + BARBARA'S WARNING. + + + By Mrs. Alexander Fraser. + + A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY. + + + By Harriett Jay. + + TWO MEN AND A MAID. + + + + + + + A + + RICH MAN'S RELATIVES. + + + + BY + + R. CLELAND, + + AUTHOR OF "INCHBRACKEN." + + + + _IN THREE VOLUMES_. + + VOL. I. + + + + + LONDON: + + F. V. WHITE AND CO., + + 31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. + + 1885. + + + + + + + PRINTED BY + KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS; + AND MIDDLE MILL KINGSTON-ON-THAMES. + + + + + + + CONTENTS + + * * * + + CHAP. + + I.--How his Relations vexed the Rich Man. + + II.--Steadfast Mary. + + III.--Little Arcadia. + + IV.--"Ouff." + + V.--Fidèle. + + VI.--The Misses Stanley. + + VII.--The Desolate Mother. + + VIII.--Ralph. + + IX.--At St. Euphrase. + + X.--Ten Years Later. + + XI.--Mahomet and Kadijah. + + XII.--A Garden Tea. + + XIII.--On Account of Strawberries. + + + + + A RICH MAN'S RELATIVES. + + + + + CHAPTER I. + + HOW HIS RELATIONS VEXED THE RICH MAN. + + +One evening early in July, 1858, there might have been seen through +the railings of a villa in a suburban street of Montreal, if only the +thick shrubbery leaves would have permitted the view, a lady--Miss +Judith Herkimer, to wit--seated in a quiet corner of the verandah, and +partially concealed by the clusters of a wisteria trained to the +pillar against which she leaned. Miss Judith had entered on that +uninteresting middle time of life, when, though youth with its graces +is undeniably of the past, the grey hairs which may perchance intrude +among the brown, are not yet a crown of honour; the bloom and the +promise of life are over, but the pathetic dignity of retrospect, with +its suggestions of what has or what might have been, which make age +beautiful, are not yet arrived. It was the sear and dusty afternoon +stage of her pilgrimage and her spinsterhood, and there was a shade of +severity in her aspect, as though living had grown into something to +be struggled with and endured--the season for duty to a serious mind, +seeing that the time for enjoyment is manifestly gone by. + +The flatness with which her hair was laid upon her temples, and then +drawn back tightly without wave or pad to the apex of her head, and +secured in the form of an onion, left no doubt as to the seriousness +of Miss Judith's mind, while the severe ungracefulness of her dress +argued an ascetic tendency of that aggressive kind which says, +"Brother, I would fast, therefore you shall go without your dinner"--a +person tiresome rather than bad, but with the long chin of that +obstinacy which can be so provoking when the understanding and +imagination are too narrow to perceive the true relation of things. + +On the lawn before her stood a mulatto lad of about eighteen, dressed +in the white linen suit of a house servant, and with a long apron +suspended from his neck, as though he had been called from his +glass-washing in the pantry. + +"You say, Miss Judith," he was saying, while he pulled the apron +through his fingers with a puzzled look, "dat I b'long to myself and +not to de cu'nel as owns me? Den w'y dis house as you owns not b'long +to me too?" + +"Because property in our fellow-men is not recognized in this free +country, Cato. But you cannot be expected to understand these +intricate questions all at once. Patience and humility, Cato! Now for +your reading. Have you got your book? Ah! yes. Here is the place. What +does r a t read?" + +"Cat! Miss Judy." + +"Fie! Cato. _C a t_ is cat. That is _rat!_ Begins with an R. You see?" + +"'Cep' de cat hab done gone eaten de rat. Den whaar will he be, Miss +Judy? All cat after dat! I reckon." + +"Cato, you are foolish! Now, attend!" + +"Cato," said another voice from the background, "go to your pantry and +assist Bridget with her tea-things," and Miss Herkimer stepped out on +the verandah from a window not far off. Miss Herkimer was a good many +years older than her sister, but she admitted the fact that she was +elderly, and did not seem to find it interfere with her comfort. Her +hair was white, and hung in curls over her temples, and the folds of +her black silk gown had a free and contented swing which refreshed the +eye after the pinched exactness of Miss Judith's costume. + +"Gerald and his friend have moved into the smoking-room with their +cigars, and as the windows are open I was afraid your instructions +might be overheard; and then, Judith, there would be a commotion which +you would regret." + +"We must think what is right, Susan, do it, and never mind the +consequences." + +"It cannot be right to interfere between our brother Gerald and his +servant. If the customs in his country are different from ours, that +cannot be helped. He follows his own, and while he is our guest, it is +not for us to disturb." + +"Think of the iniquity of slavery, Susan--that that young man should +be held in bondage, in this free Canada! It seems awful. Look at him, +and deny if you can that he is a man and a brother!" + +"I have no objection whatever to admit his being a man and brother, +but I certainly should not like to have to call him _nephew!_ And that +is what it may come to if you provoke Gerald. You know how violent he +can be when he is roused, and if he thought we were tampering with his +negro, or attempting an abolitionist scheme, he is capable even +of--_adopting_ him, we will call it--and leaving him his whole +fortune." + +"Do you think so? That would be most unprincipled conduct on his +part." + +"I know he is quite capable of it; and besides, Judith, I think you +are unnecessarily scrupulous about that ugly word 'slavery.' It really +seems not so bad a thing after all, come to see it in action. Gerald, +now, is extremely kind to the boy--spoils him, indeed, with +indulgence, and makes him do very little work. How much better he is +off than Stephen's foot-boy, with a pony to mind and the garden to +weed when he is not splitting wood or acting butler in the house. It +is Stephen's boy who is the slave, to my thinking. Again, I heard +Gerald say he refused two thousand dollars for him from a barber in +New Orleans. He is quite a valuable boy, and you would tempt him to +leave his master!" + +"Two thousand dollars for a black boy? Why! Stephen's white boy gets +only ten dollars a month and some clothes. Does it not seem +extravagant, now, to have so much money tied up in one negro?--and +sinful? How much good might be done with that money if the boy were +realized! One like Stephen's at ten dollars a month could do his +work--it seems to be only shaving his master, and after that to do +what he is bid--and the rest of the money might do such very great +good. Five hundred dollars might be given to African missions to +enlighten his pagan fellow-countrymen, and would carry the truth to so +many!--and still there would be money over to do much good." + +"And how do you propose to realize a negro boy, sister, except by +selling him to another slave owner? And what about the man and +brother?" + +"True, Susan! Quite true. I admit the force of your objection. +It is another illustration of the mystery our good rector dwelt +upon so touchingly last Sunday, that good and evil walk the earth +hand-in-hand. A solemn thought! But in this case it really seems to me +that the boy's bondage would be well compensated. He is a slave +already, you must remember--has no idea what liberty means--and five +hundred dollars would bring so many darkened savages within the +influence of gospel light. If the poor ignorant creature knew enough +to understand, I am sure he would rejoice to think that so slight a +change in his own circumstances would bring so vast a benefit to his +benighted brethren." + +"And you'd still be fifteen hundred dollars to the good, Judith. Quite +an _operation_ in another man's niggers! Ha, ha! Godliness is +profitable! That's sound evangelical doctrine! Ha, ha, ha!" + +These words rang forth in a discordant voice from a neighbouring +window, the Venetians of which were now pushed open. + +The ladies gasped and turned round in dismay. As they had grown +earnest in their conversation their voices had been rising to the +pitch at which they could not but be heard without eaves-dropping, and +they had been overheard. + +Within the window, which was open, stood the "Gerald" of whom they had +been discoursing--a tall square-framed man, but sadly wasted and +collapsed under prolonged attacks of malarial fever. He was between +fifty and sixty years of age, with features which had once been stern +and resolute, but now, under the stress of continued ill-health, had +grown querulous and peevish in their expression. He had gone to +Louisiana some thirty years before to push his fortune. From +French-speaking Lower Canada to French-understanding Louisiana seemed +less of an expatriation than to English New York or California, and +such Frenchness as he was able to bring--he was English-born after +all, and only Canadian by education--had prepossessed the Louisianians +in his favour. He had pushed his fortune--married the heiress of a +valuable plantation near Natchez, where he had resided ever since--and +amassed wealth. He had lost, however, his wife, his child, and +latterly his good-health; and at last had been compelled to return to +his friends in the North to give his shattered constitution a last +chance to shake off the creeping agues which were dragging him to the +grave. He had been a year already under his sisters' roof, greatly to +his own worriment; for between his fever fits and the prostration +which followed them, there would intervene hours of restless +irritability, when it seemed to him that his affairs were entangling +themselves into a knot of hopeless confusion, deprived as they were of +the master's eye which alone sees clearly. + +"What do you think of that, major?" Gerald continued, turning to his +companion who was gnawing the end of a very large cigar--a tall sallow +man with a much waxed and pointed black moustache and goatee, and an +exuberant display of jewellery in his shirt front. "Who in Natchez +would expect to find me summering in a nest of blazing abolitionists? +Better say nothing when you get home, or I may have to settle with the +vigilance committee when I go back." + +"I did not expect it, colonel," said the major, pulling down his +waistcoat and looking dignified. "Among fanatical Yankees I reckon on +hearing the institootions of my country vilified, and so I give sech +cattle a wide berth; but here, on British terri-tory, I expected some +liberality. Bless my soul! trying to corrupt your servant under your +very nose!" + +The ladies had withdrawn in confusion under their brother's first +attack, or civility to his hostesses must have kept the major silent. +At the same time he felt outraged. To think that he, one of the most +"high-toned" men of his neighbourhood, and with the very soundest +Southern principles, should have been trapped into a den of +lowlived--it was always "lowlived"--abolitionism! His friend Herkimer +too, had always passed for a "high-toned gentleman" of sound +principles when in Natchez, and to find him the member of such a +family was inexpressibly shocking. + +"Yes," said Herkimer, "it is bad--shows what fools women can be when +they don't know, and swallow all the rant that gets into print. After +that they think they know so much that they won't believe a word those +who could tell them can say. If my boy, Cato, now, had not been an +extra good nigger, these sisters of mine would have made him leave me +long ago. When his mother, Amanda, died, I promised her I would always +keep him about myself--and he does, I will say, understand my little +ways--or I never would have ventured to bring him to Canada; but the +fact is, the boy's fond of me, and won't leave me, say what they like. +Still it provokes a man to see his property being tampered with. Then, +too, my sister Judith feels it her dooty, she says, to speak to me +about the sinfulness of having property in human beings. I ask her to +prove that they _are_ human, but she just rolls her eyes and looks +solemn. She calls her talk 'a word in season,' but she chooses the +most unseasonable times to hold forth; generally when my chill is +coming on, and the long yawn creeping up my back that we all know, +when I don't feel man enough to say 'bo' to a goose. My wig! If I +could I'd say more than 'bo' to Judith. She holds on steady till I +begin to grow blue and my teeth chatter, then I pull the bell for Cato +to bring more blankets, and he--good lad--always sends her away, first +tiling. Susan bothers too--money, generally--but I'm free to allow she +has more gumption than Judith. Old maids both. That's a sort of +critter we don't have down Natchez way. There they marry. Reckon you +never saw any before, major? Pecoolier, ain't they?" + +"The ladies are your sisters, colonel. Estimable, I doubt not; but +they do not understand our Southern institootions." + +"Talking of understanding, major, do you see much of my nephew, Ralph? +When he went down to the plantation I gave him a letter to you, as +being my nearest neighbour, and a good friend. I told him he might +place implicit reliance on your opinion in any case of doubt which +might arise. The overseers are men whom I could trust to make a crop +if I was on the spot myself; but of course the young man had to learn, +and circumstances were sure to arise in which your advice would be +most val'able. Do you see him often?" + +Major Considine--I omitted to mention his name earlier, and I may now +add by way of making amends for the neglect, that the "_major_" was a +prefix of courtesy conferred by his neighbours to describe his social +status and the extent of his possessions; Herkimer's colonelcy was of +the same kind, but the higher rank implied a larger holding in land +and negroes--Major Considine coughed dryly, drew himself up, and +looked sallower if possible than his wont, while his eyes sought the +ground. + +"I have seen your nephew, sir," he said, "frequently. When he came +down first I invited him to come and see me, and treated him in all +respects as I would any other gentleman, your friend; but I am bound +to own that lately we have not met;" and he gave the waxed points of +his moustache a further twirl with something of an aggrieved air, as +if to intimate that while he had done _his_ part unimpeachably, he had +reason to complain of the way in which his advances had been met. + +Herkimer frowned and threw away his cigar. "Fact is, major," he said, +"I have a letter from Taine. Taine has been my overseer for a good +many years, as you know, and I have found him a good man. He talks of +leaving my employment at the end of the year, and asks me to send him +a letter stating my satisfaction with him during the years he has been +overseeing for me. I can well do that, but I'd hate to lose him. Good +overseers are scarce. He complains that Ralph has discharged one of +the assistant overseers against his wish, that he interferes with the +field work, and has damaged ten of the hands to the extent of two or +three hundred dollars apiece, and the crop prospect is reduced by +forty or fifty bales. He says that his character for getting more +bales to the hand than any other overseer in the section is at stake, +and he has concluded, if I feel unable to return to the plantation, +that he will leave. What do you think of it?" + +"Not at all surprised, sir; Taine is not to be blamed. Mr. Ralph +Herkimer came to me shortly after he had discharged that assistant you +mention, to ask my advice. It seems they had met accidentally +immediately after the discharge, in some saloon, and Mister Ralph +Herkimer being ignorant, it appears, that in our glorious land of +freedom all white men are equal, had put on some of his plantation +airs. He has those plantation airs mighty strong, having, as you say +yourself, knocked three or four thousand dollars off the value of your +field gangs, by nothing but whipping--clear unmerciful whipping, they +do say around Natchez. Waal, his tale was a good deal mixed, and I +don't pretend to know the rights, but it seems the discharged overseer +asked him to drink, to show he bore no spite. Mr. Ralph Herkimer +refused, said something about white trash, and flung the liquor in his +face. The overseer drew his pistol, and would have fired, but the +folks in the bar-room interfered to protect an unarmed man, and so Mr. +Ralph Herkimer rode safe home, and shortly after arriving there +received a hostile message. He rode over to see me with the letter in +his hand, and that is how I come to know the circumstance, colonel. +And let me add, sir, that though I fear no man living, I would not +have pained your feelin's by alluding to it, if you had not made it +necessary yourself, by bringing up the subject. The young man showed +me his letter of defiance, and I spoke to him, as an older man and a +gentleman, I hope, colonel, should speak to your nephew on such an +occasion. He said he was indignant at being addressed in that style by +a common fellow, and that where there was no equality there could be +no claim to satisfaction. I pointed out to him that under the +constitootion of our State all white men are equal, and that we, the +first families, were always scrupulously courteous to our poorer +neighbours, that being the only way to hold the community together. We +want their help often, I told him, as at election times, in case of +jury trials, when their goodwill goes farther to gain a verdict than +all the blathering of the lawyers; and in case of serious trouble with +the hands we can always depend on a white man, and it is well worth +our while to accord him such equality as he can understand. Our first +families, I told him, yield all that cheerfully, and find they can +still be exclusive enough. As he had gone so far, I assured him he +must fight, which after all would be a high compliment to the poor +devil, and would make him--your nephew--popular with the meaner sort, +which he would find profitable at an election, if by-and-by he were to +naturalize and go into politics. I offered to undertake the management +of the whole affair, and you are aware, colonel, I have some +experience. I even showed him my French case of spring triggers, and +my new patent Colt's revolvers, in case he had any preference as to +arms, the choice resting with him; and--would you believe it, +sir?--but really, really I dare not call up the blush of shame +on your honourable features. The--this young man--declined my offer +with thanks! He said it did not become him as a gentleman to go +cut-throating with common fellows. I suggested that it was often +nothing but a reverse of fortune which turned a gentleman into an +assistant overseer. Then he said that bloodshed on account of a +trifling misunderstanding was against his principles, when I replied +that he must have mistaken Mississippi for Pennsylvania, and warned +him that if he did not fight when it was put upon him, he would be +insulted every time he appeared outside his own plantation. Then he +asked me to use my good offices to accommodate things, but I explained +to him that I could only meet the class to which his adversary +belonged, either to fight them or to order them what they should do. +After that Mr. Ralph Herkimer grew sulky--I thought at one time he was +going to be offensive--but the pistol cases stood open on the table, +and the gentleman don't like firearms I think; anyhow, he simmered +down. I believe he ended by apologizing to the assistant overseer for +not drinking his liquor; but I do know, I have never spoken to Mr. +Ralph Herkimer since." + +"I don't blame you, major," said Herkimer. "The young man is not what +my father's grandson ought to be. He won't do for Mississippi, that's +clear; and I ain't going to let Taine leave me on account of him. I +was wise to let him go down for the first year alone, leaving his wife +and child here till he knew how he liked it. He had better come home +again, for _I_ don't like it, whether he does or no. I had meant him +to succeed me down there, major; but the man who first pays off +overseers and then apologizes to them cannot do that. He is my only +brother Stephen's only son. It is disappointing. My two sisters, whom +you have seen, would not do for planteresses in Mississippi; but I +have another sister yet--young, major, and handsome--my half-sister; +just about the age of Ralph. She might be made my heiress, and if she +marries as I would wish, she shall! I need not conceal the truth from +myself, major. The doctors have as good as told me I shall never +return to Mississippi. You have not seen her yet, Considine, this +sister of mine, Mary. She is just about the age of Jeanne de Beaulieu +when I married her--poor Jeanne!--not unlike her, and quite as +handsome. Strange, would it not be, if Beaulieu went with an heiress +again? Here comes Cato to call us into the drawing-room for tea. We'll +go, Considine, if you have finished your cigar; and--who knows?--we +may see Mary." + + + + + CHAPTER II. + + STEADFAST MARY. + + +It was late in November. The screen of foliage which hid the villa +from the road had grown thin, changing to all gay colours, and +dropping leaf by leaf. Old Gerald's health had not improved. The clear +autumnal airs had failed to invigorate his fever-worn system, or brace +it into vigour. They only chilled him, and forced him to keep his +room. + +The light was fading out of a grey and lifeless afternoon--one of +those days when all things are possible, rain, frost, snow, or even a +revulsion into the sunshine of a last brief remnant of St. Martin's +summer, and yet nothing happens. Gerald sat by the window in his easy +chair, wrapped in a thick dressing-gown and buried under many rugs. +His letters lay at his elbow unread, and the _New Orleans Picayune_ +was on his lap, but he was too listless to look into its contents. His +eyes were turned towards the road, and he watched with as much +impatience as his torpid faculties were capable of feeling. + +"There she is at last!" he muttered after a while. "Glad! She is all +the company I have now, or can expect while I am kept indoors. Susan +and Judith don't count in that way, even if they tried to be +agreeable, which they don't. The one is for ever bothering about my +negroes and my soul, the other about my money. What have I done that +they should imagine they may puzzle their foolish heads over me and my +affairs, or wag their cackling tongues. I am sick, and want nursing, +so they take me for a child? Think of me, who consult no one, being +advised by _them!_ But never mind, here is little Mary. She is always +good company, and she never bothers." + +"But who is the fellow walking with her? Big and strapping. Fair hair, +whiskers and moustache--not bad to look at, but seems most +unnecessarily eager in his attentions. Wonder who he is. Carrying her +music? Very proper; but he need not linger so long before letting go +her hand. Mary shouldn't let him--looks particular--the major would +not like that." + +Presently Mary entered the room. She was flushed, or perhaps the air +had heightened her complexion and brightened her eyes, which shone +like stars; and there were smiles lingering about her lips, in wait, +as it were, to break forth again on the first pretext. + +"Your walk has done you good," said Gerald. "Where have you been? I +have been wearying for you to come home; but now one sees you, it is +impossible to grudge your short constitutional, you are so brightened +up by it. I wish Considine was here to see you." + +"I have been at choir-practising. I promised to take the solo in +Sunday's anthem, and have been trying it over. The booming of the +organ through the empty church rouses, one, I think. I generally feel +brighter after it, and that may account for my looking so cheerful as +you say." + +"And who is the gentleman who carried home your music?" + +"That is Mr. Selby, our organist. A splendid player. If you had not +been such an invalid, you would have known both his playing and +himself ere now." + +"It would seem that you know him very well; and to see you walking +together one would have said that he knows you very well too. You +appear quite intimate, and yet I have never seen him here." + +"No. Susan will not let him be invited to the house. She says his is +not a recognized profession. As if a successful musician were not +better than a bungling doctor or notary! It has something to do with +the _line_ which she says must be drawn--between wholesale and retail, +for instance--if Montreal is to have a Society. A ridiculous line, it +seems to me, which excludes many wealthy and accomplished people as +traders, while it lets in poor Stephen and his wife, with her +superfluous h's, because his little business in needles and pins is +wholesale, seeing that he never sells less than a thousand at a time." + +"Mrs. Stephen is my sister-in-law, and may do with her h's what she +pleases. It is not her fault if she was born in the British +metropolis, and if Stephen is not in opulent circumstances, it is just +because it has so happened. I have known many high-toned families who +were but in a small way _pecooniarily_ speaking. I am surprised to +hear you run Stephen and his family down, though I confess I have been +disappointed myself in his son Ralph." + +"I don't run them down; but why should they be so particular about +others? It was Mrs. Stephen who said to Susan that an organist wasn't +'genteel,'--Mrs. Stephen, who doesn't know one tune from another--and +so Mr. Selby has never been asked to the house. And then Judith chimed +in with her 'higher grounds.' She says that good music is a snare and +device of the High Church party, and that you got on very well without +it long ago in the old church at Stoke-upon-Severn. A funny church it +must have been." + +"So it was, and I reckon you would not have liked it. The village +joiner and the bellows mender played the clarionet and the bassoon in +a little loft over the squire's pew, while the blacksmith's daughter +sang the hymns, and the schoolmaster as clerk said the responses out +loud before the people. But the world has changed since then. Yes! I +daresay an organist might do as well to invite as anybody else. But +what does it matter? What do you want with an organist? You have no +organ." + +"I like to be able to invite my friends just as other people do. If +you knew him, Gerald, you would like him." + +"I dare say. There are many people one would like if one knew them. +Yet if one does not, it seems of little consequence, there are so many +others. If you lived in Natchez, now, you would not see much of your +Canadian friends. You would make friends down there, and very +high-toned and elegant you would find them." + +"Natchez, Gerald? What should I be doing there?" + +"Doing? Living, of course; surrounded by every elegance that money and +the best society can secure. If I live and get well, it is my +intention to carry you back with me, and make you mistress of the +Beaulieu estate--de Bully they call it for short. In case I do not, +and I can see the doctor has not much hope of my recovery, I have +willed the place and all my property to you. Don't stare, Mary. It is +so. I feel it a duty to provide a good mistress for those helpless +creatures who are dependent on me, and you, I am satisfied, will be +that. I have tried Ralph, as you know, and have found him unfit to +take my place. You are the only other member of the family who could +go there. You will marry, and the plantation will prosper. Treat the +poor creatures kindly, Mary. But I know you will, and Considine is an +excellent manager. His place adjoins ours. You will have the finest +estate for miles on that part of the river." + +"Oh! This seems very strange to me." + +"You will get used to it in time. But to tell you the truth, I did not +think the idea would be altogether new to you. I did not think +Considine would have been so backward. He must be hard hit to be so +diffident of his success in taking a girl's fancy. Has he said nothing +to you?" + +"It would have been strange in Major Considine to have divulged your +testamentary intentions. You surely do not think he would speculate to +me about your chances of recovery, or what you would do with your +property. I should have stopped him at once if he had mooted the +subject, you may be sure." + +"I did not suppose that he had divulged my intentions, but I think it +is about time that he had declared his own. After visiting here so +constantly all through the summer, and keeping you singing by the hour +to him downstairs in the drawing-room, he has surely made himself +understood. Still, I wonder he has not spoken. Not that I have a right +to complain, he has declared himself plainly enough to _me_, or you +may be sure I would have put a stop to his visits long ago. Still I +wonder at his backwardness. Where are you running to, Mary? Has he +said nothing?" + +"I want to take off my things," said Mary, her face aflame with +blushes. + +"Tell me before you go. What has he said? Tell me! There is his ring +at the front door. I must speak to him." + +"I don't know. But better say nothing," cried Mary in evident +confusion, escaping from the room. + +Gerald would have recalled her, but the major's heavy step was already +audible on the stairs. He could only throw himself back in his chair +with an impatient snort. + +"Colonel!" said Considine, entering, "I come to make you my +_adieux_"--'adoos' is how he pronounced it, the Major was certainly +not French. "What orders for Taine at the plantation? Any commands for +any one down there? I shall be pleased to be your messenger. I see by +the Memphis paper there was a slight touch of frost the other night, +so the sickly season is over, and I can safely go home to look after +my affairs. They want looking into, I reckon, after five months' +absence. I have to thank you for the very pleasant summer I have put +in here." + +"Do you mean it, major? Going right off? I have reckoned on your being +here till the New Year." + +"The call to go home has come sudden, colonel, but I reckon I had best +obey it." + +"And what about our plan to join the plantations?" + +"I'm agreeable, colonel--anxious I should say; but if the lady ain't, +what can I do?" + +"You don't know, major, till you try. I reckon a sister of mine ain't +just like a ripe persimmon, to drop in a man's mouth before he shakes +the tree." + +"Shakes the tree, colonel? There ain't no man ever shook the tree +harder than I did. I shook in both my shoes for a mortal hour before I +could steady my voice--that shook too--enough to say what I wanted. +All the time I was trying, the lady was diverting herself with her +singing. French songs, and I-talian songs, full of all kind of rare +fandangoes, like a mocking bird in a cherry tree. I couldn't get a +word in endways for ever so long, and when I did, at last, she just +stopped and looked at me out of her eyes. And when I got through, she +said 'Oh! Mr. Considine, it's all a mistake. You have misunderstood, +and I don't understand. I am quite sure I cannot say what you desire, +so we will suppose that you have not asked me to, and that nothing has +been said at all, and we will agree never to recur to the subject.' +And then she asked me if I did not think the last movement in the song +she had been singing very effective, and the bravura passage at the +end powerfully written. By-and-by I got away. You may suppose she did +not play a great deal more music, and that I had got about enough for +that time. I ain't a widower, colonel, as you know; I never was +refused before, and I never backed out of an engagement, so you may +say that I have no experience in these matters; but it appears to me +that the young lady knows her own mind, and there is no use in my +speaking to her again." + +"But she didn't know about the joining our plantations then. I had +only just done explaining that to her when you came in, and she ran +out, which shows that she ain't indifferent to the idea, as who in +their senses could be? The two will make a mighty pretty property, and +you and Mary will look well at the head of it, and raise a fine family +to come after you. She did not know she was heir to my property when +she took you down that time. Ha, ha, major! It makes me laugh to think +of it. You that so long have been boss of the range, and had only to +beckon to fetch any gal in all the country--you to come all the way to +Canada to be took down by a gal that didn't know she had a dollar to +her name!" + +"Sir, the subject of your jests is not a pleasant one. Let us pass +on." + +"I ask your pardon, major. No offence was intended; but if you will +speak to Mary now, I am willing to bet any money her answer will be +different. A man of experience should not mind every word a young +woman says, when it is about marrying. It is the one time in life she +is let have her head, and we must not blame her for taking it, just at +first. Trust me, she has thought better of it already. Try again." + +"It would be useless, colonel." + +"Don't give in, sir! If the gal and the plantation are to your liking, +that is." + +"I think a mighty deal of the lady, sir; and would be fain to repeat +my offer, even if she were as much without fortune as she believed +herself to be last night; but I do not see my way to doing so after +what has passed between us, the more so that now my fortune--a mighty +neat one though it be--will count for less than before, seeing she +knows now how well you have provided for her." + +"I believe that will influence her the other way. However, it is +reasonable you should want to halt and take breath before returning to +the attack. This is a disappointment to me, but I won't cry beat yet, +if you are still minded to persevere. Let me speak to her, and I will +write to you. Now the ice has been broken between you, you will be +able to take up the subject by letter." Considine shortly took his +leave, and Gerald awaited the return of Mary, who did not appear till +Cato had been sent to hammer on her chamber door and request her +presence. + +"Is this true," said Gerald, when she at length entered the room, +"which I hear of you? Have you really gone and said 'No' to +Considine's proposal? Do you know that he owns a hundred and fifty +head of the likeliest niggers in all the Mississippi Valley, besides +land and sundries?--nigh on two hundred thousand dollars, and no +debts. What do you expect to be able to catch if Considine ain't good +enough for you?" + +"I didn't say he was not good enough. He deserves a better wife than I +could make him, and I believe he will have no difficulty in finding +her." + +"But it is in you he thinks he has found her, Mary! Don't be foolish, +you are not likely ever to get a better offer, or another half as +good. The man is steady and well off, a kind man and a perfect +gentleman. What more would you have?" + +"I do not want more, Gerald! But then I do not want--him." + +"What is your objection to him? Is it his appearance, or his temper, +or what? Is he not passably well-looking?" + +"I would almost call him handsome." + +"Does he not succeed in making himself sufficiently agreeable to you? +I can assure you, at any rate, that you have succeeded in being +agreeable to him. He says he would be fain to get you if you had not a +cent to your name. Can a man say more than that?" + +"I do not know that he can." + +"Then what is your fault to him?" + +"I find no fault with him. On the contrary----" + +"Then why won't you marry him?" + +"Because I could not like him in that way." + +"What can a girl like you know about the marrying way?" + +"I know that I could not marry Mr. Considine." + +"Why? Is there some one else?" + +Mary's face flushed hotly and her eyes fell. + +"Ha! Have I caught you? You are engaged already? Why did you never +tell? Surely you might have trusted your big brother. You never saw me +till the other day, it is true, but we have been fast friends for +twelve months now, have we not, Mary? Why did you never tell me?" And +he drew her towards him as he spoke, and kissed her on the forehead. +"Think I feel no interest in my future heir?" + +"Because, Gerald, you do not know him. How could I tell you?" + +"Tell me now, then, dear. Who is he?" + +"You must find out," she answered with a watery smile and changing +colour. "Girls are not expected to say such things, because they +cannot." + +"You say I do not know him? Have I seen him?" + +"Yes." + +"Do I know him by sight? Or have I seen him recently?" + +"Yes, very recently indeed--as recently as could be." + +"What? Then--you do not say? But it cannot be, Mary?" + +There was a self-convicted look in Mary's face which pleaded guilty to +the unspoken indictment. + +"Do you really mean--but no, you cannot mean your friend the +organist?" + +Mary bowed her head in silence and looked expectantly in her brother's +face, till his rising colour and the gathering frown left no doubt as +to his reception of her tidings; then she removed her eyes with a +heavy sigh and let them fall on the carpet. + +"You cannot mean it, Mary? You!--my father's daughter!--my sister!--to +engage yourself to marry a kind of fiddler!" + +"He is _not_ a fiddler, in your sense, Gerald, although he can play +the violin, and indeed most other instruments. He is a cultured +person, and has his university degree--Bachelor of Music--while few of +those who try to look down on him have had the chance even to get +plucked for one, having never gone to college at all." + +"He plays tunes at any rate in a church loft on Sundays for a living. +Is that a fit occupation for the man who would marry my sister?" + +"Remember the great composers, Gerald. More than one of them was a +chapelmaster, which is just an organist." + +"The great fiddlesticks! If you had seen them in their lifetime in +their frowzy little German houses and dirty linen, with their wives +cooking their dinner, such as it was, for there was little enough at +times to put in the pot, you would think less of their greatness. What +good is the greatness which is not found out till after you are dead? +A great fortune! That is the only greatness a sensible woman will +marry to." + +"Shame, Gerald! You do not mean what you say. You have been married +yourself, and I know you loved and honoured your wife. Do you mean now +to say that your wife was a fool because she married you when you were +not rich? Or is it that she was mercenary and married you for your +money?" + +"Tush! Mary. You never saw poor Jeanne, so you cannot speak about her. +The beautiful darling!" Gerald's voice grew husky here, and there was +some coughing before he could resume. + +"No! She was not mercenary, and she was not a fool. She married me +when I was a poor man because we loved one another, and she did not +think about money. But if she had, it was not an unwise thing, as it +turned out, which she did in marrying me, for I managed her property +successfully, and more than doubled its value." + +"Then why will you doubt that another woman--and she your own +sister--may love as well, or that the man she intrusts her future to, +may be as well able as you were to take care of it? Mr. Selby has a +great many pupils, and can very well maintain a wife." + +"A wife, I dare say, but not my sister. It is true my property which I +intend you to have is far more than Jeanne had when she married me; +but I was able to take care of her and of what she had, and the +property throve in my hands. An organist is different. What could such +as he do with a gang of unruly niggers? It needs a clear business head +and a strong arm to make plantation property pay." + +"He does not aspire to your property, Gerald. He does not know of it, +and with his feelings I am not sure that he would consent to become a +slave-owner." + +"Not consent, eh? Never fear. His consent will not be asked, for mine +shall never be given to his owning my negroes. Slave-owning forsooth! +No. Let him manage his chest of whistles. I have no right and no wish +to dictate to you, though I would dearly like to see you marry +Considine; but at least I can make sure, and I will, that your +insidious organ-grinder shall never benefit a cent by my money, I +promise you that, and I shall alter my will accordingly." + + + + + CHAPTER III. + + LITTLE ARCADIA. + + +Four years later, and summer once more. Again it is in a suburban +garden, not a very extensive one, but nicety kept; inclosed by tall +trees and dense shrubbery on every side, and disclosing nothing of +what may stand beyond, but here and there the corner of a chimney +intruding its morsel of red amongst the sunny green of the tree-tops, +and the golden cross on the neighbouring steeple soaring over all, and +shining down its benediction on the peace below. + +The grass is as short, soft, and green as constant mowing and +sprinkling and warmth can make it. The flower-beds are masses of +brilliant colour, and in the centre stands the house, a tin-roofed +wooden cottage painted in the whitest white, relieved by vividly green +Venetians; a broad verandah round the whole, windows descending to the +floor, and above, small casements peering out through the shining tin, +each with its Venetian thrown open to admit the breeze which comes up +at the decline of day. The effect is cool, and home-like, +notwithstanding the keenness of the colours, and quite other than that +of the raw-toned packing-boxes in which so many an American is +condemned to pass the night, and from which he is in so great a hurry +to escape in the morning. It may be merely a peculiarity in the pitch +of a French Canadian roof, or it may be some spiritual association +which lingers about the work of these first settlers and oldest +inhabitants; but there is a personality, permanence, and history about +the newest and frailest of their structures which is wanting in the +buildings of their English speaking neighbours, even when they give +permanence to vulgar commonplace by embodying it in brick or stone. + +The pillars of the verandah are garlanded with roses--pink, crimson, +white, and creamy yellow--blooming profusely, but, to judge from the +ruin of shed petals scattered on the ground, soon to cease. Already, +however, clematis--white, purple, blue--has begun to appear and will +be ready to catch up the song of the roses, though in a minor key, so +soon as their colour harmonies shall fade out. Butterflies are +fluttering in the scented air, and a humming bird flits here and there +where the flowers are thickest. + +In a garden seat is Mary--no longer Herkimer, but Selby, now--and at +her feet is a child, something more than a year old, who rolls and +kicks upon the grass, crowing and babbling the while in a language +which only mothers understand. Mary looks no older than she did in her +brother's sick-room; fresher, perhaps, and fuller of harmonious life, +as well may happen where the desires were reasonable and are all +fulfilled. She is mistress of her own life, and of his in whom she +trusts, as well as of that other at her feet, in whom his and hers are +united and bloom anew; and as for the life, she would not wish it to +be other than it is, even if it were in her power to change it. She is +at work upon some small matter of muslin and lace which busies her +fingers, while it leaves her thoughts free to wander; and their +wanderings are among pleasant places, to judge by her smile and the +big full breath of utter content. + +The winter which was coming on when we saw Gerald last proved more +than his enfeebled system could bear up against; he died before it was +out; and Mary, feeling that her duty at home was accomplished, and +seeing no good reason to sacrifice herself to the family prejudices, +took her fate in her own hands and married the man of her choice. + +"And it has all turned out so beautifully," she was saying to herself +with a well-pleased sigh, when the click of the gate latch roused her +from her reverie. It was Selby with his roll of music. She rose to +meet him, and they made the round of their domain together, observing +what new buds had opened since yesterday, and telling each other the +events of the day. + +"I heard a man down town say that your nephew Ralph is succeeding most +wonderfully since he dropped the law and turned broker." + +"I am glad of that, George. Poor Ralph! It was hard upon him the way +Gerald seemed to take him up at first--sending him down to live upon +the property at Natchez, and letting him expect to inherit it--and +then to recall him and drop him so suddenly. He refused to see him +even, when he came home. Judith says it was Colonel Considine set him +against Ralph, to make him leave everything to me. But I do not think +that. I always found Colonel Considine 'very much of a gentleman,' to +use his own expression--a little high-backed and tiresome, no doubt, +but incapable of a shabbiness like that. What good would it have done +him my getting everything, considering how little we saw or cared for +each other?" + +"Speak for yourself, Mary. I am not so sure that Considine's interest +in you was slight. From little things you have said I suspect--Nay, +never blush for that, dearest, though the crimson is infinitely +becoming--Having gained the prize I am not churl enough to resent +another's having wished for it. Indeed, knowing as I do now how much +he has missed, I could feel sorry for him, and I cannot but respect +his good taste. I really could not believe that he attempted to +undermine Ralph in his uncle's favour; a thing, by-the-way, which +Ralph, according to those who know him best, is well able to do for +himself; he has so many crooked little ways, and is proud of them, and +careless about concealment, because I suppose it does not strike him +that they can shock people, or are at all out of the way--obtuseness +of moral perception, I fancy, it might be called." + +"And yet, George, he was the only one of the family who did not oppose +our marriage, and who has not given me up utterly, even since. Surely +that shows a good heart. I, at least, shall always think kindly of +Ralph for that, if for nothing else." + +"My good innocent darling! Do you not see that that man[oe]uvre alone, +if there were nothing else, would stamp the man as selfish and a +schemer? Remember the terms of your brother's will. He names you as +his heiress, but he provides against contingencies which he fears may +arise. He does not leave the property to you, but to Jordan the +notary, and Considine, as trustees. In case you married Considine the +trust was at an end, and everything passed to you at once. If you did +not, all was to be sold and the money invested in Canada bank-stock +and other securities which he named. You were to have the interest +while you remained single or married with the approval of Mr. Jordan, +in accordance with written instructions left in his hands. If you +married contrary to these instructions, however, you were to receive +nothing. The interest and dividends were to be re-invested as they +fell due, and at the end of twenty years from your brother's death the +whole is to be divided among your children, share and share alike; and +in case you have none it is to go to Ralph's boy. Everything is tied +up with only an annuity of a thousand dollars each to his three +sisters and his brother. Now! Do you recognize the true inwardness of +Ralph's amiability?" + +"And pray, sir," cried Mary, drawing back with eyes wide open, "How +come you to know all this? I would have bitten my tongue out sooner +than tell you. It seems so ungenerous in Gerald to have treated you +so." + +"It shows the generosity of Gerald's sister, and that is all I care +for. But often, I will own it, my conscience has reproached me with +depriving you of your splendid inheritance; only, we are so happy +here; and if love can make up for money--if my love----" + +"Hush, George! I have all I want--more, I think sometimes, than should +fall to one woman's share--and I wonder if it can last. But who told +you about the will?" + +"Who but your sister Judith!" + +"She? I did not think you knew her; and she spoke so unkindly when I +proposed to bring and introduce you. You surprise me." + +"Ah! Miss Judy is a woman of surprises--a woman of energy who does not +stick at trifles; and she is a diplomatist. She would not let you +introduce me, that would have been yielding you a point; but she could +find me out for herself when she wished to speak to me. That was on +what she considered business, and did not oblige her to know me next +time we met. It would have forced _me_ to know _her_ afterwards, if +she had wished it; but that is nothing. Where would be the gain in +being a lady, if rules worked both ways? Miss Judy found me out, and +requested a few minutes' private conversation in the most gracious way +possible. She apologized profusely for the intrusion, with quite a +pretty warming of the complexion and an engaging little twitter behind +her glove tips. Ass that I was, I grew red like a lobster all over my +face, and my heart thumped against my ribs like a smithy hammer. I +imagined your family were relenting towards me--that piety and true +principle had overcome in the second Miss Herkimer her disapproval of +our attachment, and that she had come to tell me so. I could have +knelt down and kissed her hand, so overcome was I with grateful joy. +It was well I did not. The group would have been too ridiculous. Miss +Judy appealed to my feelings as a gentleman and a man of honour 'not +to ruin the prospects of her sweet young sister;' that was her phrase, +and she rendered it in a fine adagio manner, accompanied by a tremolo +of her crumpled pocket-handkerchief, which did her artistic instinct +the greatest credit, and really made the little petition seem both +reasonable and affecting. Judy would have succeeded on the stage, +Mary, I do believe, if they had put her in training early." + +"George, you are profane. It sounds ribald to speak of serious people +in that way." + +"Judy and the playhouse, eh? It _is_ a little incongruous, I admit; +but which has most right to resent the juxtaposition we need not stop +to inquire. Miss Judith told me you had come into a large fortune, and +your family were anxious about your matrimonial prospects, so many +swells were your friends, and you were so highly connected. There was +at least one general officer and a captain of dragoons, besides many +more; but whether they wanted to marry you, or were only your +grandfather's cousins, I did not quite catch. You see my feelings were +a little tumultuous, like those of the man stepping on board a +steamboat to meet his sweetheart, when he misses the plank and drops +into the water. I had a feeling of cold bath all over, and was cross, +I dare say; at least I did not respond to Miss Judy's condescensions +as she had expected. At once she changed her tone, drawing herself up +and looking severely superior. It was scarcely conceivable, she told +me with dignified coldness, that I could seriously have expected +anything more than a little notoriety would result from my appearing +in public conversing with her sister, but if I cherished any delusion +on the subject, it was for my good that she should speak plainly, and +as a Christian she saw it her duty to do so. It was out of the +question, she told me, that you should marry a man in my position, and +one who was not a gentleman. This to me, whose gentlemanly feelings +she had just been appealing to! It sent the blood tingling down to my +fingertips, and revived me after the _douche_ of what she had been +saying before. I told her these were matters I declined to discuss +with a lady whom I had not the honour of being acquainted with, and +that while I enjoyed the privilege of your friendship, none but +yourself should dictate to me the terms. Then she pulled out a paper +which she said was a copy of your brother Gerald's will, and another, +the private instructions he had left with Jordan. She insisted on +reading them both to me, word by word, and was especially emphatic in +her rendering of the instructions in which I am mentioned by name as a +person you were not to marry." + +"I know, George; and I think it was cruel in Gerald to make such a +stipulation. However, it does not matter. I did not want the money, +and you do not grudge to earn money for us both; and what do we want +which we have not got?" + +"True, my darling; and after all, your dividends which fell due before +you disobeyed your kinsman's commands by marrying me have bought us +this cosey little home, so you did not come to me a penniless bride +after all. Talking of these things, by-the-way, reminds me--Did you +observe Considine's name in the war news this morning? He is a general +now. Why, Mary, you might have been one of their great ladies down +there, if you had chosen!" + +"But I did not choose; and I question if a general's lady down there +has much to congratulate herself on. Grant is in Memphis, I see, and +steadily working southwards. The negroes on the plantations are in a +ferment, and Mrs. Dunwiddie, the refugee who is staying with Mrs. +Brown, and called here to-day, says the boxes of silver spoons and +candlesticks the Yankee officers are sending home to their friends by +express are more than the Express Company's car will carry, and they +talk of requisitioning a gunboat to carry their loot North to +Cincinnati. I should not have liked to ride with my plate and +valuables in an ambulance in the rear of even a husband's column. But +is it not fortunate that Gerald's property was realized, and the money +received safely in Canada before these troubles began? You and I may +not be the richer for it, but think of Edith, the little elf; what a +sum it will be when she is old enough to receive it!" + +"Over a million of dollars. Far too much for a girl to have. Let us +hope she may have brothers and sisters to share it with. But where, at +the same time, have you left this great heiress? I have not had a +chance yet to give her a kiss." + +"I called Lisette to come for her when you came in. Ah! There she is, +among the raspberry bushes--ruining her white frock with berry juice, +I'll be bound, for it is Cato who is carrying her. See how she +clutches his curly wool while he picks fruit for her. Her tugging must +be quite sore, but he seems positively to enjoy it, he is so fond of +her." + +"And well he may. Have you forgot Judith's and Ralph's attempt to +'_realize_' him when his master died?--to huddle him over to Buffalo +and sell him into slavery again. Miss Judith thought she could do so +much good with the money, and Ralph encouraged her, and undertook to +arrange the transaction on the American side, when he would quietly +have pocketed the money, I make no doubt. If you had not interfered +and explained things to the poor boy he certainly would have fallen +into their trap, and been disposed of for cash down. He is the only +decent nigger I ever saw, and the only one who could have been so +imposed on. Oh, yes! He would do anything for you or the child." + +"Dinner will be on the table almost at once, George. Come in and get +ready." + +"Ah, yes! Dinner and something cool, after the long broiling day. +By-and-by, when the candles are lit, and the moths and beetles come +droning in from the darkness to singe their wings in the flame, we +will have music and a little singing. Some of those dear old songs by +the masters we used to revel in long ago. Haydn and the rest. Such as +'Gra-a-aceful partner.'" + +"Quite so, your highness. That I may have to respond 'Spouse adorèd,' +my most sovereign lord and master! Ha, ha, ha! What it is to be a lord +of creation! Meanwhile, there is the bell. Hurry to your room." + + + + + CHAPTER IV. + + "OUFF." + + +The hour which saw Mary Selby thus lapping herself in her simple joys, +was the same which witnessed the brewing of the storm destined to +wreck and scatter them. A premonition must have been upon her +spirits--that impalpable tremor and exhilaration preceding a +catastrophe which whets the perceptions to intenser enjoyment before +the destroying assault, like advancing fire which illumines, expands, +and glorifies ere it leaps on its prey and turns it into smoke and +ashes. It is certain at least that her spirits overstepped the limit +of their tranquil wont. She turned over the piles of music with her +husband in search of something to sing, but the measured graces of the +older works were all too serious for her mood. + +"Your masters are prosy, George," she cried; "I could not settle down +to sing them to-night. Let us have that new duet from the 'Grand +Duchesse.'" + +"From Bach to Offenbach," he answered. "What a leap! You really are +exuberant to-night. What next?" + +Five or six miles away, on the lake-like broadening of the river which +stretches upward from Lachine, a canoe was drifting under the lee of +the wooded islands, and in it sat Ralph Herkimer. Remaining in town +through the summer to watch the fluctuations of the gold-room--it was +during the American war--he betook himself each afternoon to Lachine, +to exchange the dust of streets for the breezy coolness of the water. +He had been fishing, and Paul, an Indian from the Indian village of +Caughnawaga near by, managed the canoe. His fishing had not prospered. +It seemed indifferent to him, indeed, whether he got "bites" or not, +but still from time to time he made a cast of the line, with his eyes +brooding on the water where the slackened current drifted lazily by, +with its rhythmic ripples flickering in the reddening light. The sun +went down behind heavy banks of cloud, and the grey twilight stole +silently up with that listening stillness which makes audible the +murmur of the stream, a sound unnoticed in the garish hurry of noon +when the world is vocal with a hundred noises, but heard at eve when +other things with life have sunk to sleep. + +The canoe hung idly among the gathering shadows of the shore where the +waters were black and oily in the shelter of the wooded islands; but +Ralph took no heed of the twilight closing in. The coolness, the +drowsy movement, and the murmur soothed him, and his thoughts flowed +freely in their wonted channels. They were like the streams we read of +which run over golden sands, for they were all about money, shares, +stocks, margins, shorts, longs, bulling and bearing the market, with +sunny visions of a hundred per cent. glittering remotely, like islands +of the blest, and with banks of contingency drifting in between. Then +his memory wandered to the fortune he had missed, and which should +surely have been left to him, his father's only son, and the only male +shoot of the family tree. To think of so much money being deliberately +left past him!---tied up for twenty years to wait for heirs unborn at +the time of Gerald's death. He snorted and moved restlessly in his +seat as he thought of it, till the jerking of his limbs disturbed the +unstable equilibrium of the canoe, and he only composed and controlled +himself in time to avoid a ducking from the rolling over of the +lightly-poised craft. Paul raised his hand and caught the water with +his paddle at the same instant, relapsing into his impassive wont so +soon as the accident was averted. + +"Too bad!" muttered Ralph, when the disturbance of his nerves had +subsided, and his thoughts fell back into their channel. "If the old +man would none of me personally, there was my boy, and he bears his +name and is a Herkimer--nearer to him, surely, than the music master's +brat; and she a girl, too, as it turns out!" Then his thoughts grew +deep again--sank into silence, as the rivers in a limestone country +disappear into the ground, and thread mysterious miles through caves +of night and blackness. + +He whipped the waters with his line, letting it drift anon and +forgetting to draw it in even when an infatuated bass caught hold and +jerked and struggled till he got away again, and even the apathetic +Paul looked up surprised; but then, the ways of the pale faces are not +as those of the red man, so he merely grunted, and became quiescent +again as before. + +"Too bad!" Ralph muttered again. "Only a life between my boy and a +million!--it will be nearer three millions by the end of the twenty +years--just one life between my Gerald and all that; and what a +life! Only a year old--incapable of knowing anything about it, or +taking any satisfaction out of it. A girl, too, at that. Child of an +organ-grinder. Nobody worth knowing will ever care to know her. Of +what use can a million of dollars be to such as she?" Here with a +groan and a snort the black waters of unwholesome thought sunk down +again out of sight, and out of ken of the thinker, if that were +possible, for--under the devil's guidance shall we call it?--one will +sometimes avert the eyes from the working and festering of his own +soul with a sense of conventional shame (hypocrisy is like the polar +frosts which strike a yard or two down into the ground), and still +with the back turned as it were to the evil thought, as a man must +continue to do within himself if he would retain his own good opinion, +there will be a furtive peering glance cast down and backward into the +deeper depths, awaiting till some deeper down conscience is overcome, +which is not the admitted self at all, yet the vanquishment of which +will be so good an excuse for dropping the moral barriers in the upper +stratum of admitted consciousness. To that wave of unstemmable +temptation, a cyclone as it were to which nature in her strength +succumbs, and the best of men may yield, lifting their heads again +after it, like palm trees when the tempest has passed over, and +saying, "A storm; a convulsion beyond human might to withstand; for +yielding to that, who can be blamed? Let us spread our draggled +plumage wide to dry. The gale is over, and we shall soon be as +honorable as before." + +Not that Ralph could be called a hypocrite in the vulgar sense. For +why? He troubled himself little about morals of any kind, that not +being, as he said, his particular "fad." But there is a righteousness +which is not ecclesiastical. There are decencies of life for us all, +and a standard of right and wrong, which it is _base_ to contravene +even when we put on speculative airs and question the Church's +teachings. Right is always right, and wrong wrong, decency decent, and +baseness contemptible, even if there were no God in heaven, and no +account to render at the last day; and there are thoughts which a man +must turn his back on when they pass through his mind, if he would +continue to enjoy his own respect. + +There is a way of seeing sidewise, however, when the eyes are +averted--a policy of reconciliation between doing and eschewing, when +deeds at once vile and profitable are under consideration--and I fear +me much this luckless Ralph Herkimer had found out the trick of it. + +His thoughts, at all events, sank down deep into those sunless +channels where even he himself declined wittingly to follow them +though keeping watch. He whipped the water more briskly than before, +and stared intently at the end of his line; but somehow he did not +lose the thread of his reflections; he kept on thinking all the time +and even with more and more intentness, though still he made pretence +to himself of ignoring the whole of the deep-down discussion--till it +was finished, that is--then he succumbed, as who may not, under +sufficient temptation? It is a question of price or number. Ralph +yielded before the flashing glory of _millions of dollars!_ So Danæ +may have stretched her arms, erewhile so chaste and cold, to welcome +Jove when drest in that disguise he sought the mercenary maid. Was not +gold divine? And has it not continued ever since to be the same? Even +Miss Judy can appraise to a cent the good to be achieved with part in +saving souls, and still leave unexpressed the balance--the pride and +finery which what remains will bring the priests and priestesses of +Goody. + +Millions of dollars! That was the burden and refrain which repeated +itself over and over in Ralph's mind; and it ought by right to be his. +Was not he grandson of the father of this childless Gerald who had +made the money? The only grandson too, and the only person through +whom future generations of Herkimers could connect themselves with +this fortune? And Gerald to pass him over! Gerald who talked so much +about Shropshire, and all the rest of it, things of which he (Ralph) +knew nothing--old Uncle Gerald who would not hear, even, of Aunt +Mary's marrying a music master. That the old man's money should be +tied up for twenty years and then handed over to this very music +master's brats. Gerald could not have meant it; notwithstanding the +little unpleasantness which occurred when he (Ralph) returned from +Natchez, and Gerald refused to admit him to his presence. The bequest +must have been merely a threat which the imprudent old man had +supposed so terrible that nobody would brave it. If he could have +dreamed that Mary would defy him, and marry all the same, he would +have made a different disposition of his property altogether. What he +meant was to go on governing his relations after death as he had ruled +them while in life. + +There seemed at the moment a pathos to this hard and worldly-minded +Ralph, swinging and oscillating silently in the fading light, with air +and tinted greyness all around, and only the heaving, quivering +reflections upon which he swung beneath; there seemed a pathos in it, +and he felt a sympathy with the vanished and disappointed maker +of the fortune, or rather with the straying misdirected wealth. +If he had lived, how different all would have been; and Ralph +looked out into the empty evening air, feeling as if he might +catch some shadowy glimpse of a disembodied presence, which +would look on him friendly-wise, and which he would have greeted--oh, +so reverently!--the revisiting shadow of a millionaire, come back +regretfully to make amends to an ill-used relative whom the glamour of +life and the flesh had led him to misjudge. Ralph felt he could meet +his uncle in a fitting spirit, friendly, forgiving, and open to any +suggestions the other state might have enlightened him to make; for +was he not doing his best to remedy the unfortunate and injudicious +dispositions of the will? Had he not already taken the best advice in +the province to remedy them, and been told that the will was good, +sure, fast, and without flaw--that it would stand, and there was no +remedy? + +He peered far off into the shadows, and around on either hand. There +was nothing but a gradual failing in the light--neither sound nor +vision--only, over against him, let the canoe turn as it might, there +sat the Indian Paul, an image brown and still, with dull, quiescent +eyes, gazing into nowhere, ready at a moment to flash into fire and +life, but absent until wanted; plainer than the unseen vision in his +thoughts, yet less to be understood--a mute and dusky image of the +unknowable. The dark unwinking eyes gleamed with no thought or +intelligence; they looked out seemingly beyond, and burned, or rather +smouldered, like coals abstracted from the nether fire, awaiting the +gust of passion to rouse the slumbering blaze. Black like the mirrors +used by necromancers, they showed back, when he looked in them, his +own soul stripped of conventional trappings, looking out of them into +himself, and seeming to have gathered active evil in their dusky +depths--a wish to guide the dubious hand of Fate which deals the cards +promiscuously as though her eyes were bandaged, and influence the +falling of the aces and kings, just one place now and then to the +right or left. We would all like to do that, if we could--just a +little--and bring out more clearly as we think, the poetical justice +of Time; but it comes right in the end, of itself, without our help, +and "if it tarry," as the Prophet says, "wait for it;" it is for the +best. + +Ralph is impatient, however; and it is not, besides, poetic justice +that he is thinking of. Nothing so abstract. It is money, good and +lawful coin of the realm, and it is himself and his children, he +thinks, who should have it. Gerald, too, he takes it, having attained +to that clearer insight which is gained beyond the grave, must wish it +likewise, and if the inheritance under that most pernicious will can +be turned aside, he feels that he will be fulfilling the present and +maturer wishes of the testator. The law may say otherwise; but what of +the law? There is a higher law! We have all heard of it, though +generally, let us hope, when the issue was unconnected with the +possession of dollars. Gerald must have heard of the higher law. Here +was a case involving money, and when one comes to money what is more +sacred? The forger "gets twenty years" for his crime against property; +the culpable homicide five. _His_ fault is only against life, and by +good fortune he may escape with a rebuke from the court. + +Ralph had been meditating and considering, calmly, earnestly, and at +length, in a way he was not accustomed to consider, and out here amid +evening's impressive silence, where the brooding peace suggested +presences far enough removed at other times in the common hubbub of +life; and he felt--what? That he must not give in, or acquiesce in a +fiddler's children getting all that money! + +"The higher fitness" was he to call it?--and old Gerald himself, +who must be near, he was sure, though he could not gain speech of +him--must disapprove the misapplication of so many dollars. But how to +remedy that ill-judged will? If Mary Herkimer, it said, should so far +forget herself as to marry the organist, then the money was to remain +accumulating in Jordan's hands for twenty years, and after that was to +be paid to her children, secured only against the organist by the +provision that in case they died unmarried it should come to the +children of Ralph. And Mary had a child. But the child might die. A +tremor passed through him at the idea. Or how would it be, he set +himself to consider, if the child were lost? Children do get lost +sometimes, and he raised himself in the canoe to shake off any +oppressiveness that might attach to the idea. Suppose the child were +lost--one may innocently suppose anything--suppose it could not be +found, and never _were_ found. What then? After a time it would be +unreasonable to keep the next in succession out of his property; and +this next--his blood tingled to think of it--was his own boy Gerald, a +quiet, gentle little boy, such as strangely sometimes is given to an +unscrupulous father, as if to try how far he will venture to use the +facile tool. If ever _his_ Gerald fell heir to property, Ralph made +sure of being able to dispose of it; it seemed to him that it would be +like money settled on his wife, which he could still use, though no +creditor could lay hands on--a cake quite different from that in the +children's proverb, which one can both eat and have at the same time. + +But at present, to arrange for Mary's child getting--_lost_, seemed +the pressing question. There would be time enough to influence his +boy's plastic mind afterwards. + +The infant's plastic mind need not be taken into account, the infant +being only a year old. There were no impressions inscribed on it so +far, and it would be some time yet before it acquired any. "Get it +away now," he told himself, "and it can do nothing for its own +restoration. In a week or two it will have forgotten its mother and +there will be no troublesome memories in after life tempting it to +suspect and try to unravel a mystery in its fate. Yet how, and through +whom, to manage it?" His eyes wandered questioningly over the extent +of waters, heaving with regulated swell, suggestive of life and +personality and thought; but never an answer came back to him out of +the sullen grey. His eye swept the horizon and the distant shore, and +at last it rested on the apathetic face of his companion; Still as a +mask, and showing not a sign of what might be behind, any more than +the swaying tide on which they hung betrayed the mysteries of the pool +beneath. The man's long straight hair, and the swarthy skin suggestive +of a life apart from civilization, could not but call up the wish that +the child could become of these. Wooden, hard, and cold, with his +bead-like eyes half closed, were the little one in hands like his it +would be as safe as if it were in another planet; thinking such +thoughts as it must, in Iroquois, understanding Canadian French, and +with only enough English to beg or trade with strangers. Paul he knew +as restless, and in some sort a vagabond, attending those who hired +him on fishing or hunting expeditions, at times joining the Governor +of Hudson's Bay as a canoe-man, on his journeys to Fort William, or +wandering on the Ottawa from one Indian settlement to another. If he +would only undertake to superintend the fortunes of this inconvenient +infant, it would become a waif indeed, and lost beyond restoration. + +Ralph sighed with profound relief as the idea passed through his mind. +There had been another shadowy suggestion present there all the +afternoon, which he had been contemplating as it were with averted +eyes, shuddering to consider or reduce to shape, yet refusing to +dismiss it, harbouring it as one may an outlaw, whom it would be +confusion to acknowledge as a guest. If Paul would undertake the +business, the child might live out its life as a squaw among the +wigwams of the upper Ottawa, without troubling any one. Exposure to +the weather would bronze her to the hue of the other children of the +wilderness; and if not, there are few bands now-a-days in which there +are not half-breeds, proving that all men are of one blood, and that +time and circumstances alone are needed to blend the races into a +common stream. How infinitely more satisfactory this would be than any +fatal accident which could be devised! Yes! it must be done, and Ralph +looked up to his companion and in his most friendly tone said,--"Paul." + +Instantly the bead-like eyes awoke and turned upon him, sharp and +interrogative. The propitiatory modulation had not escaped the +delicate ear, bred from infancy to catch and interpret the faintest +whisper of the forest--the rustle of a leaf disturbed by passing game, +or the stroke of a wing raising eddies in the stagnant air. Since Paul +had grown to be a man whiskey and dollars had become the game of his +eagerest pursuit, and the mood of the white man he served for the time +was the hunting ground where these were to be run down. That something +was wanted of him he knew by the extra friendliness of tone. What +Englishman having hired him would speak so softly if he did not want +something beyond the stipulated services, something of value, and +something which he wished to gain cheaply? + +"Ouff," was his answer, dubiously interrogative, and altogether +non-committal as to whether he would be interested in what was to +follow. + +"Have you got children?" + +"No," with a slight head-shake. + +"Would you not like to have one?" + +"Papoose come plenty soon." + +"Then you have a wife." + +"Got squaw;" but still he looked out impassively over the water. + +"Would she like to keep a child for me? do you think?--good pay, you +know." + +"Pay-Ouff?" The words was clearly interrogative now, and the beady +eyes returned from their wandering, and settled on the speaker. + +"A healthy child twelve months old--would make a lusty squaw. She can +make anything of it she likes. No questions will be asked, you know." + +"Yours?" + +"Not exactly. But I have an interest in the child." + +"How much money?" + +"Fifty dollars, as soon as she has done the job." + +The beady eyes kindled into animation, and the lips grew moist, but +the Indian sat motionless as before, and waited in silence for what +was to come. + +"She will have to _take_ the child, you know. It will not be hard for +her to get it at this time of year, when the nurse is out of doors +with it most of the time; on the steps, at the garden gate, or down +the street. She can easily take it away from the nurse, a little slip +of a French girl. A strong Indian woman could easily knock her down +and run away with the child under her blanket. Only she must not be +caught or the child brought back. You must send her to some +reservation far away--up West, say--the farther West the better. I +will pay as soon as she gets clear off. But you must not mix me up in +the thing, mind that! That is why I offer to pay so much for the job." + +"Much for job? Ouff. Le Père Théophile--the judge court--prison long +time. Ouff!" and he shook his head slowly. + +"You must send her where the curé's admonitions will not reach her. +Send her to Brantford, or up the Ottawa; you know better than I do +where. You can do a good deal with fifty dollars, you know, Paul." + +"Ouff. And send 'way my squaw. Fidèle good squaw." + +"Chut! Paul, you rascal! You have plenty more sweethearts you know; +and they do not marry you so tight as us white men." + +Paul grunted. "The Père Théophile very strict. Make squaw confess +right up. Poor Fidèle go to prison--all found out. Paul sent to Isle +aux Noix--you too, then." + +"Stuff, man! No fear of your letting yourself be caught. Send your +squaw away at once, before she has time to go near her priest." + +"Police?" + +"Not much fear of _them_, if you are half sharp. But, let me see. It +might not be a bad idea if she changed clothes with some other girl +before she started West. One squaw is so like another in white folks' +eyes. It might turn pursuit in a wrong direction while she is getting +away." + +"Ouff," Paul grunted again, but nothing more. The two dusky shadows +swung silently on the dim bosom of the waters, whitening now beneath +the glimmer of the rising moon. + +"See here, Paul," Ralph said at last; "I shall be better than my word +after all. Here are ten dollars in hand, for you. Come round to my +office as soon as the work is done and your squaw safely off, and I +will pay you your fifty dollars. Now land us. We shall take first +train to the city. We must not be seen together, so will take +different cars. Wait for me in the shadow of the cabstand, and I will +go up town with you and point out the house." + +"Ouff," again was the only answer, but as Paul's long arm stretched +out to snatch the money, and under a deft stroke or two of the paddle +the canoe shot swiftly down stream to the landing, Ralph understood +that the bargain was struck. + + + + + CHAPTER V. + + FIDÈLE. + + +It was a day or two later, in the early forenoon. The air was +stagnant, breathlessly awaiting the thunderstorm whose cumulus vapour +masses were already drifting up from the distant horizon; though as +yet the sun blazed in cloudless fervour overhead, and the world lay +panting in the intolerable heat. The very light was sultry, and Mary +Selby had drawn close the blinds, to shut it out where she lay on a +sofa trying to stir the thick stillness into motion with her fan; but +the air was heavy with heat and she felt too faint for the exertion. + +She was dropping asleep when Lisette entered with a basket of May +apples. They looked so cool in their green pith-like husks that she +could not refrain from pulling one or two asunder to reach the blob of +fragrant pulp within, tasting and awakening from her langour, before +she asked where they had come from. The maid answered that a squaw +without was offering them for sale, and the mistress had then to rise +and go into an adjoining room to find her purse. + +She took the basket in her lap and began to pull open the fruit, +separating the small eatable portions from the pod-like rind. "What a +feast for Edith!" she said, when she had done; and she called to +Lisette to bring the baby. + +Lisette appeared looking hot and troubled. "She had not seen +Miss Edith," she said, since she brought the fruit to her +mistress--"supposed Cato must have got her. She had been looking for +the squaw to give her her money, but could not find her. She thought +at first she might be prowling round the house looking for something +to steal, but she had looked everywhere now, even in the wood shed and +coal cellar, but could not see a sign." + +Mary rose to join in the search, running out with the maid to question +Cato. Cato was in the far-off corner of the garden, delving with a +will. The sultry fervour of the air, stifling to men of another race, +was like wine to him, recalling the torrid country of his birth, and +he tossed the spadefuls gleefully, perspiring and singing as he +worked. He had been there all the morning, and knew nothing of Edith +or the vanished squaw; but he threw down his spade at once and joined +the searchers. The cook came running from her kitchen to assist, and +the little band now quickening each other's alarm ran hither and +thither over the small domain, peering under every bush, pulling about +melon frames and empty boxes, dropping stones down the well, looking +under all the beds in the house and even up the chimney. By-and-by +they were out of breath and began to think. Then Lisette was sent for +a policeman, and Cato to fetch a cab to carry his mistress in search +of her husband, and to the police-station in case he could not be +found. + +The policeman arrived first with grave importance and a note-book. He +questioned Lisette, but being an Irishman while she was French, he +soon lost himself amongst her voluble but not very lucid English, +emphasized with frequent "_mon Dieux_," and much gesticulation. She +was the only one who had seen the squaw, and the last to see the +child, but what of that? "Them furreigners were of no account, and +nobody could tell what they might be afther intending to mane:" so he +turned to the cook, a countrywoman of his own, and from her got ample +satisfaction. It is true she had seen nothing, and only knew what she +had heard Lisette say, but then she had thought a great deal since; +and the thoughts and the hearsay flowed in a mixed and copious, if not +too coherent stream, which Paddy could readily follow, it was so much +like the meanderings of his own mind. He opened his book and proceeded +to write it all down--how she had just finished washing up her morning +dishes, and the pan of water was in her hands to empty down the sink +at that very moment "whin who should come trapezin' into moy kitchen +but the gurrl, all brithless loike, an' hur hair flyin' ivery way at +wanst. An' thinks oi to meself, 'whativer's the matther wid the +omadhaun?' An' sorr if I was to take me boible oath this moment, +thim's the very worrds that passed through me moind whin I seed hur, +an' ye may safely write them down, for oi'll stand boy thim before all +the judges and juries in the land." + +"Oi'll wroite thim down, mum, ye may depind; an' be me troth, it's +moighty remarkable them worrds are; an' they do ye credit, mum, though +it's me that says it," answered the policeman, relaxing the crooks in +his shoulder and elbow, and the frown on his brow, which were with him +the concomitants of penmanship. He had not in truth the pen of a ready +writer, and it was only by pushing his tongue into one cheek and +closing an eye, that he was able to construct the letters at all. That +was of little consequence, however; the notebook was solely for his +own private eye, or rather for the eye of the public, which could not +but respect a policeman who wrote everything down. + +It impressed the cook immensely, and flattered her too, for never +before had she seen her words put down on paper, and she resolved in +her mind there should be a smoking hot morsel for this "supayrior" +man, whenever he came round to see her of a winter's afternoon. The +man perfectly understood. There were several kitchens on his beat +where he was wont to visit, and the cook before him smiled so +hospitably that he promised himself not to forget her. + +Cato now arrived with the cab for his mistress, and the guardian of +the peace, hitherto engrossed with a more important person, turned to +the poor lady to favour her with a few words at parting. + +"You're purfecly right, ma'am," he said, "to make ivery exurtion. An' +if ye call at the station, ye'll foind the jintlemen there both +poloite an' accommodatin'. An' ye may go wid an aisy mind, for well be +havin' your intherests under consideration all the same as if ye was +here. An' ye may rest assured that the sthrong arrum of the law will +be laid on the aivil doer sooner or later. An' as for the choild, +ma'am, oi'm bound to sthop ivery choild of a year old that's carried +through my bait; but ye must give me marks, ye see, or they would soon +be complainin' of me at head quarthers. Did the choild squint, now, +maybe, ma'am, the purty angel? An' it's moighty becomin' some says +that same is; an' kinvanient too, whin they gits older, an' can look +both ways at wanst. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Or maybe there was +something crooked about wan of its legs, or an arrum, or who knows but +there might be something wrong wid its face. A hare lip, now, would be +a sure mark, and oi'd arrist the first wan I met. No? Well, no +offince, ma'am. Oi cuddn't arrest all the childer I moight meet, ye +see, an' bring thim here for you to oidintifee. How many teeth, thin, +moight your purty darlin' have, ma'am?--though it's misdoubtin' I am +if the law gives me power to open the childher's mouths an' look down +their throats. But we'll do our best, ye may depind on that. An' it's +wishin' ye a plisant dhroive, ma'am, an' thank ye keoindly," as Mary, +driven desperate by his gabble, pushed a dollar into his hand and +hurried to her cab. + +In this way "the law's delays" left the coast clear for the escape of +the kidnapper. It was an hour or two before the police throughout the +city became aware that a squaw had run away with an infant, and by the +time they had begun to be on the alert, the thief had made good her +retreat. Wrapped in her bright blue blanket and broad-leafed straw +hat, she passed swiftly along, as might any of her fellows who hawk +their beadwork and like wares about the streets. A lump of fat, rubbed +in the juice of some narcotic herb, pushed into the little mouth had +stilled the child's cries and made it sleep as though in its nurse's +arms--evidence of the practical wisdom of the wilderness still +lingering among its erewhile people, as yet but partially elevated to +our higher plane of life. Our women may become doctors of divinity, +law, or physic; they can play the piano, or stand in the front rank of +culture; but can they handle a baby like the artless daughters of the +North-West, whose charges, packed in moss and fur, strapped upon a +board and suspended from a branch, sway gently in the breeze, watching +and growing silently, like the plants, for hours together, with never +a cry to disturb the resting sire or the laborious mother? In the +march of improvement some useful knowledge has been dropped by the +way, and there are regrettable losses to set off against the manifest +gains. + +The thunder which had been threatening all the morning began to +rumble, the sky darkened, and soon the rain came down in torrents. The +ferry-boat between Lachine and Caughnawaga had whistled, and was +throwing loose from the wharf, when a squaw--it was Fidèle, Paul's +squaw, of course--rain-soaked and draggled, leaped on board. She +squatted on the deck beside the three or four others who were the only +passengers, cowering over the bundle under her blanket, but not +uncovering its face as did the mothers near her. + +"She has stolen something," the purser observed to the mate, "and is +passing it off for a child. She don't behave to it as the others do. +If there is a constable on the pier, I'll give her in charge. But +there won't be in this heavy rain, and there would be a row if we +attempted to stop her. Best take no notice, I guess; 'taint no +business of ours." + +On reaching the pier, Fidèle was the first to land and flit away +through the village. "I told you so," said the purser, looking wise. +"You just see if we don't hear more about that one. Blue blanket, +with a tear in one corner; straw hat--brim badly broken; face, like +they all have--broad and brown as a butternut; red cheeks--must be +young--and real spry on the pins. Guess I'd know her again--know the +clothes, any way. Injuns are as like one another as copper cents." + +Fidèle reached a cabin in the outskirts, of square logs, whitewashed, +one window and a door, with a "lean-to" addition of boards in the +rear, where the cooking-stove stood in the warm weather. Entering, she +found her sister Thérèse awaiting her, who with very few words +proceeded to strip off her own brightly printed cotton gown. Fidèle +carried the child into the room behind, and returning, removed her +blanket and dripping headgear. + +"Ouff," said Thérèse, undoing the gay handkerchief from her head and +picking up the hat in evident disgust. "No good." + +There was a small silver cross hanging from her neck by a black +riband, to which Fidèle stretched out her hand expecting it to be +taken off likewise. But no. Thérèse drew back with a head-shake, +explaining that that belonged to the ladies of the Convent school, +adding, that it was bad enough to give up the smart frock and kerchief +in exchange for such a hat and a damp blanket. Fidèle reminded her of +the new ones she was to receive from Paul, after she had worn the +blanket for a week, and again snatched at the nuns' silver badge of +merit. Thérèse caught the hand and bit it. Fidèle screamed, and a +battle was imminent, when Paul's growl from the back room, threatening +violence, restored calm, and Thérèse sulkily took up the blanket and +drew it over her head. Presently, Paul looked out to bid her begone, +and Thérèse, through the open door, saw enough to silence +remonstrance, and send her trembling away. + +Paul entered as Thérèse went out, and stood before his squaw. He spoke +in Iroquois, briefly, and in the conclusive tone which admits neither +of question nor reply. Another, Messieurs the Benedicts, of those +natural gifts dropped by the way in the march of improvement. The +squaw never "speaks back," but the "last word" belongs of right to +every self-respecting Christian woman, and she takes it. Ask the +ladies! + +"To work at once," was the purport of Paul's orders, "then sweep up. +Put on your sister's gown, and that black blanket over all. Go out by +the back, into the bush. Hide in the old roothouse by the corner of +the clearing till sundown; then away, across the reservation. Take +care you are not seen. Travel all night, going west. Stay in the woods +to-morrow till dusk. Travel your quickest till you reach Ogdensburg. +Cross the river there, and go west to Brantford, taking your own time. +Go to your brother, and tell him to expect me next winter." And so +saying, he went out by the front of the house, locking the door behind +him. + +Fidèle set her teeth and proceeded to obey. It was a repulsive sight +which she beheld on entering the inner room, and the work set her to +do was horrible. A board or two of the flooring had been pulled up, +and there was a sack filled with the earth brought up through the +opening. The hole was a foot or two deep, and it was shaped like a +grave. Paul must have been terribly in earnest to have it rightly +done, seeing he had dug it himself. There was a box--a soap-box +seemingly, from the village store--hammer and nails, a bundle of +withered grass, and the baby asleep lying on it. The sight of the baby +must have been too much for Paul, for part of an old buffalo robe had +been thrown over it. He had his design fixed and firm, but having also +a squaw why should he likewise discompose himself? Civilization had at +least eaten so far into his nature that to extinguish a helpless and +unresisting life was no longer delightful enough to compensate the +risk--and he had the squaw. + +Fidèle sat down on the ground with the poor little thing in her lap. +How peacefully it slept! Was it angels whispering in those little ears +which made it smile in its sleep, as the ladies of the Convent had +said? Could viewless spirits be hovering around, seeing and noting all +that passed? Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder expecting +almost to behold a presence. Then she shook herself and snorted. Why +should she call up shadowy fears to make harder for herself the work +she had to do? If she failed to do it she knew full surely the terrors +would be all too real--bruises, wounds, possibly death by violence; +assuredly violence in any less degree. + +The child lay sleeping on her lap, so fair and soft of skin, rounded +and dainty in every joint. She could not but recall the picture in the +church, of the Holy Mother with her ever Blessed Son, high up above +the altar, amid the star-like twinkling of the tapers and the cloudy +incense ascending before it in solemn fragrance, while holy nuns and +innocent choristers sang hymns of adoration; and all she had learned +to think of blessedness beyond the grave, attainable only by more than +common goodness, was that it would be like that. The little rings of +hair that framed the face were bright and shining like burnished gold, +a glory like the gilded halos about the heads in that sacred picture; +and the long eyelashes laid peacefully upon the reddening cheeks, like +clouds at daybreak, promising so enhanced a brightness at the +awakening. Fidèle laid her fingers on the little neck. How dark and +evil they looked upon its creamy whiteness! How could she ever grasp +it hard and cruelly, till the heaving bosom grew convulsed to bursting +at the interrupted breath, and the sweet face grew black and distorted +in fruitless gaspings? Her fingers lay more heavily as she thought, +and the slight pressure disturbed the sleeper. The plump round +shoulder and cheek were drawn together as if tickling were the subject +of her dreams; the lips parted in a smile, the eyes unclosed, and the +child awoke with a low and merry laugh. She looked so fearless and +trustful out of her blue eyes and crowed so gleefully, caressing with +her own tiny palms the dusky fingers so near her throat, and with such +fell intent, that surely a fiend must have abandoned the thought of +doing her harm. And Fidèle was no fiend at all. Ignorance and a narrow +horizon had left her sympathies to slumber, but, so far as she could +see or know, she was true and good. To serve her man had seemed the +chief if not the only end of her being, and she had done it blindly +hitherto; but it appeared to her now that to do this thing was more +than she ought, or could. + +The little hands were stretched up now to her face and the lips +strained up to kiss her, and the clear blue light of the eyes +penetrated the blackness of her own with a cooling purifying influence +which made evil intent like a shadow slink away. She stooped and +pressed the little pink lips to her own, and to her forehead and to +her breast, and then with a big breath of resolution she got up and +set the little one down in a corner while she fulfilled in seeming the +orders she had received. She took the dried grass and laid it in the +box which she then closed and placed in the bottom of the little +grave. The grave she then filled up with earth from the sack, tramping +it down tightly, and making the top level with the adjacent soil, and +strewing what earth was left in the rain pools outside the house. She +then nailed down the flooring as before, and swept the house, making +it appear again as it had always been. No one could now suspect that +there was a grave beneath his feet, nor could Paul that that grave was +empty. Then concealing the child under her blanket she stole into the +bush as she had been instructed to do, an instance of how the +scrupulously obedient wife, even while obeying, may contrive to effect +the exact opposite of her instructions; and showing, perhaps, that the +equality and sympathy of the civilized home may secure a man the +fulfilment of his wishes no less, at least, than the despotism of the +barbarian plan. + +In the twilight Fidèle left her place of concealment and stole away +under the dripping-trees. The storm was over, and as the light died +out of the heavens the stars came twinkling forth, awaiting the rising +moon. It was a long and toilsome tramp across the reservation, through +wet and tangled herbage, with many a slough and flooded brook, for she +had been bidden to avoid observation and dared not avail herself of +such paths and rude bridges as suffice the Indians on their own +domain. At length when night had fully come, and home-going stragglers +were no longer likely to be met, she reached a country road. The march +of the stars pointed her way and further she knew not, for she had +never been there before. She hurried along clasping her burden, which +grew heavier as she went, for she had been travelling for hours. It +was late and she had spent a long and a busy day, a day of hard work +and much excitement. The child grew heavier, and as her own strength +grew less, she clasped it the more tightly. Since she had saved the +little one's life, something of a mother's feeling for it had stolen +into her heart. It seemed dependent on her, and her very own; and were +not the tiny fingers even then spreading themselves against her breast +to gather warmth? The night seemed very long, and yet she feared to +stop and rest. A pursuer might be on her track even now to seize her +for child-stealing. And the child in her arms! She could not but be +taken and punished, and the child given back. And even when her +punishment was over, and she let out of jail, there would still be +Paul to reckon with. And what might _he_ not do? Her heart died within +her at the thought, her limbs grew feeble, and the child heavier than +lead. She staggered along looking behind her and before, but all was +still, no one to be seen. And now she was approaching a village. The +moonlight glittered on the tin belfry of the church, and there were +houses, low-browed _habitant_ houses, with deep projecting eaves and +great black shadows lurking under the stoops and porches. Not a soul +was stirring, but from those coverts of obscurity what or who might +not rush forth on her as she went by? The law in some mysterious way +might be lying in wait for her among the dusky shadows, or Paul +himself might be in hiding to watch her pass, and see that he was +obeyed. It would be bad for her if she were to meet him now, and bad +for the child as well. She stopped, faltering as she thought of it, +unable to go on. Ah! there stood one small house at a forking of the +road, where one branch ran uphill through well-fenced woods, +surrounding a mansion, doubtless, for the moonlight glistened on the +tin of the roof; and the other branch ran downward to the village and +the church, and there was a broad river beyond, with perhaps no +bridge, and she might have to wait for morning to be ferried across. +There might be a magistrate in the mansion, she would avoid that, and +down in the village the child might be seen. No! she dared not carry +it in either direction, but here in the corner of the ways stood the +little _habitant_ house, a good half-mile from both. Yet there was no +light visible in the window; the house might be uninhabited; not a dog +or pig was to be seen around. But then it was late. The voiceless +stars and the silent sailing moon were whitening the slumbering world +with dim and hazy dreams. Nothing was awake or moving but the vagrant +breeze which rustled drowsily among the poplar leaves; and--yes, that +decided her--the loose casement of the one window in the roof swaying +back and forth against the flapping curtains within. There must be +people in the house, people asleep, who would not awake till she had +time to escape. She stepped on the little porch, laid down her burden, +knocked, and fled into a neighbouring bank of shadow, where her dark +blanketed figure was swallowed up in the gloom and she could wait and +watch. Her moccasined feet made no sound, but the knock awoke a dog +within. The dog barked, and presently a head looked out of the open +casement. The baby, uncovered to the night air and laid on the hard +boards, began to cry, and the head--it was a woman's and a +mother's--recognized the voice of a _bébé_. The door was opened, the +woman came out and took up the child. + +"Holy Madaleine!--it is a child! And whose? Another, when there are +already six, and the loaf so small, and the _sous_ so hard to come +by!" + +Fidèle saw, and she may have heard; but she could not understand or +enter into the white woman's troubled feelings. _Sous_ scarce and +loaves small were just as she knew them, when she knew them at all, +which was not always. At least it was better, both for herself and the +child, that it should not be with _her_. She waited till the woman had +carried it indoors, and then, like a wandering shadow, she went her +way, westward, with the stars and moon. Her friends, her home, her +man, were all behind her, and she must not return to them. She must go +forward and westward to Upper Canada, a wanderer and alone, with +nothing but the stolid patience of her unawakened mind to bear her up. +But at least her hands were untainted with the stain of blood, and she +could look forward to the long dark winter nights and their howling +winds without fear. There would be no voices in them to make her +tremble, no cry of a murdered child--no image in the darkness of +gasping lips and eyes rolled back in the death-struggle. She could +sleep in peace and still ask God and His saints to shelter her. + + + + + CHAPTER VI. + + THE MISSES STANLEY. + + +The Misses Stanley were sitting up far into the night. They had been +prostrated in the morning by the sultry oppression of the coming +storm. Later, when it burst, and the blackened sky grew ablaze +with lightning, and the very earth was trembling at the deafening +thunder-claps, they fled to the cellar, closing and bolting the door, +in that unreasoning panic which seizes even very sensible people when +the heavens begin to utter their terrible voices; and there they +gasped, and sighed, and panted, and listened, forgetting even the +headache which a while before had nailed their heads to the pillow. +"Ah!" they would whisper to each other, "did you hear that?--and +that?--One of the chimneys has surely been struck! Can that be the +rattle of the falling bricks? Is the roof coming down, do you think? +Are we safe here?" and they caught each other's hands and pressed them +tightly, and leaned against the door with all their might, to keep it +shut against the danger. + +"Do you hear that hissing? Has the house taken fire? Do you smell +smoke?" It was only the first heavy downpour of the rain upon the +resounding tin roof. The steady continuance of the monotone assured +them of that in time, as the thunder grew intermittent and less loud. +Even the hissing of the rain grew faint after a while, and there came +a breath of cooler air down even into the locked-up cellar. + +The terror was past, and they crept out of their hole again into the +light, like the mice and the spiders and other timid folk. The storm +was over and they were happy and safe. They had been able to eat no +breakfast; dinner had been standing on the table cooling and getting +spoiled while they were trembling in the cellar. So they had tea, and +partook of it with relish. The air was purified by the storm; it was +reviving to breathe it, and the world, seen through the open windows, +though wet, was brightened and refreshed by the rain, like a young +girl fresh from the luxury of a good cry. + +It was sweet to be alive now, and drink in the scented air, so crisp +and fresh, yet without a suspicion of cold; and a while since life had +been a burden. The ladies sat and breathed, and sighed, and toyed with +existence, and spoke softly to one another, and were silent; and +evening wore on and night came, and still it was too pleasant to move. +Their lamp was lighted--a dim one, with no garish gleam to disturb +enjoyment within, or lure the flapping night-moths and beetles from +without--and feeling hungry they thought they would have supper, a +most unusual thing. It was but strawberries and cakes with lemonade +and cold tea, but for them it was a carouse; they sat picking and +sipping for very long, forgetful of time, and most other things, and +bathed by gentle stirrings of the soothing air, restful and in soft +shadow, while in the moonlit garden without, the white radiance was +reflected and broken into a hundred glittering sparkles from every +dripping leaf. + +"I declare," said the younger sister, "midnight is decidedly the most +enjoyable part of the day, at this time of year." + +"It is long past midnight, Matilda," her sister answered, "I am afraid +to look what hour of the morning it must be." + +"Morning? To-morrow morning? This is to-morrow then! I like it; +and if we go to bed it will be to-day when we get up again. I prefer +to-morrow myself. Let's sit up all night, Tookey dear, and remain in +the future 'till daylight does appear,' and turns it into to-day +again. Commonplace affair that sun, compared to the moon, and +disagreeably hot at this season, besides. I envy the owls, and mice, +and bats, and things, coming out at night and sleeping all day. _I_ +can't sleep in the daytime." + +"The more need to go to bed at night. Come, Tilly!--or how shall we +get up in the morning? Late rising puts everything out of joint for +all day, and bothers the poor servants sadly." + +"Bother the servants! By all means, say I. 'Never do to-morrow what +should be done to-day.' You know that is a proverb! And this is +to-morrow. It was you who said so; so let us sit still. I think I have +proved my case." + +"Pshaw, Matilda! don't be childish. And the downstairs windows still +to shut up! Bring the light, dear. We'll make the round, and see that +all is fast." + +It was a nightly procession in which these two ladies walked through +all the rooms on the ground floor. Miss Penelope the elder--called +Tookey for short by her sister--went first, trying the locked doors, +closing and bolting the windows, while Matilda with a candle held +aloft, kept close beside her. It fluttered her heart to go into an +empty room after dark, and it caught her breath to remain alone in the +drawing-room while her sister made the rounds, so she accompanied her +close, always within touching distance, and ready to scream should +occasion arise. Last of all they closed the drawing-room windows, and +barred the heavy inside shutters, provided with bells, so that no +housebreaker should be able to enter without ringing; and then with +their candlesticks in their hands, having extinguished the lamp, they +stood taking a last look, as it were, on the scene of their waking +existence, before wending upstairs to sleep and forgetfulness, +when---- + +Bang! The sound seemed deafening, coming as it did so unexpectedly, in +the night stillness, with all the world slumbering save themselves. +Again! Not so loud this time, it seemed, with the ear already +attentive. It was a knock at the hall door. And now the bell was rung, +a jangling peal resounding through the house, and under cover of the +uproar there was a crunching on the gravel as of hasty steps. + +The sisters looked at one another with parted lips, and eyes that +sought help and counsel and assurance each in the other's. Matilda +assuredly had neither strength nor wisdom for their joint support, but +her need was so great and she looked with such fervent trustfulness at +her sister, that Penelope felt she must brace herself up and take +courage for both, though her heart was faint within her. She was the +object of a faith which supported by its helpless reliance, and +stimulated her to effort that it might not prove misplaced. So +strength ere now has been bred of double weakness, though in this case +it was put forth but falteringly at first. + +There was a shuffling now and a whispering in the lobby. Penelope held +the door handle and listened. Matilda threw her weight against the +door, expecting it would be burst open; but it was not, and thus they +stood breathlessly awaiting some unspecified terror which did not +arrive, till doubt grew too painful, and Penelope in very desperation +flung wide the door. Three pale faces were disclosed blinking at the +gleam of the ladies' candles, and Matilda screamed. An answering +scream was raised by the three pale faces startled by the sudden flash +of light in the darkened passage, and already prepared to be +frightened by anything which might happen. + +"How very foolish!" said Miss Penelope, who, having wrought herself up +to do battle of some kind, had her nerves better in hand. "Do you not +see it is the servants? Awakened by the noise, they have come +downstairs, and seeing light in here at such an hour, supposed it was +a thief. Now we must see who is at the front door." + +"No, Penelope! I implore you, do not!" + +"Oh, ma'am," said the cook, "if anything happens to _you_ what will +become of _us?_" and the other maids looked deprecating in concert, +while even Miss Matilda ejaculated, "What, indeed?" + +"We cannot stand here all night! And we could not go to bed with +burglars perhaps waiting on the doorstep till we are asleep." + +"Think, Penelope, if they should burst in when we unbar the door!" + +"They had better not. Is there not my father's gun?" and so saying she +stepped on a chair to reach down that redoubtable weapon from where it +rested on two brass hooks, high up over the fireplace in the hall. +There it had rested ever since the decease of the late lamented Deputy +Assistant Commissary General--called General for short, or perhaps for +honour--the parent of the Misses Stanley. + +"Oh, Tookey! don't!" cried Miss Matilda. "It might go off and hurt +some one," and the maids drew up their shoulders to their ears, and +looked apprehensive in chorus. + +"Nonsense!" answered Miss Stanley severely. "Do you not see I am +pointing it to the ceiling?" + +"One never knows, such strange things happen with guns. The barrels +burst, they say, or else they go off, and shoot the people they have +no business to touch, and let others escape who really ought to have +been hit. Remember how poor Major Hopkins' gun went off, nobody knew +how, and killed papa's spaniel, and let the duck fly away. I shall +never forget how cross poor papa was when he came home, and he never +asked Major Hopkins to come again." And Miss Matilda looked regretful, +as does the Historic Muse when she registers the might-have-beens. +"Pray point the muzzle up the chimney, dear; it is safer." + +Penelope, with a disdainful shrug, moved to the door, raised her +firearm to her shoulder, and motioned the maids to undo the +fastenings and open. They obeyed, and as the door flew back there +entered a puff of wind which blew out the candles and made everybody +scream--everybody except Miss Stanley. She, like a hero, stood to her +gun, and pulled the trigger--she pulled it frequently, in fact, but as +the piece was not loaded, that made no difference. Indeed, it was much +better, her timid companions were saved the dreadful bang, while she +herself had the heroic feeling of having shot a gang of burglars; that +is, she would have shot them if her gun had been loaded, and they had +been there to be shot. But they were not, fortunately for themselves. +There was no one there at all. The band of affrighted females came +slowly to realize the fact, as their panic subsided, and they re-lit +the candles. "But who," they began to inquire, "could it be, who had +knocked so loudly and rung the bell?" As their tremors abated they +ventured out upon the verandah, which ran round the house, to +reconnoitre. There was no one there, and again they grew uneasy. The +visitant must have concealed himself in the shrubbery, and if so, he +must certainly be evil-disposed. Miss Stanley took up her gun again; +she had no misgiving about handling it now, and it looked as +formidable as ever, for of course the man in the shrubbery could not +know that it was unloaded, and she made sure he would not put its +being so to the test. + +"Here is a large parcel, ma'am!" cried the parlour-maid, "shall I +bring it in? It is covered with old matting and tied with a +shoe-string." + +"Take care, Rhoda!" said Matilda. "Let us look at it first. I have +heard of thieves tying themselves up in parcels in order to be taken +into the houses they intended to rob. Perhaps you had better fire your +gun into this, Penelope; I have known that to be done in a story with +the best effects." + +Miss Penelope came to look. "I think we may take this one in, Tilly, +without fear. If it contains a man he cannot be very big. See! I can +lift the bundle myself. Bring it in, Rhoda; we will examine it in the +dining-room." + +"It must be living, ma'am! I see it moving. Will it bite?" and she +took it up suspiciously and with precaution. + +A cry, small and plaintive, was now heard. + +"Do you hear that?" said Miss Matilda, "mewing--I think. Can anybody +have brought us a cat and kittens? A practical joke I suppose they +think it. Yet I like kittens,--soft little balls of fluff and fun," +she went on, putting on her gloves at the same time, "but strange cats +may bite or scratch. Very impertinent, was it not, of the senders? +They mean, I suppose, that we are old maids. Well! If we are, at least +it is from choice, and I venture to say we are more comfortably +situated than the husband or wife of this impertinent." + +"Tush! sister," said Penelope, glancing to the servants standing at +the lower end of the table and full of curiosity. "Have you a +penknife? Quick! No cat ever mewed like that." + +And now indeed it was a lusty cry, distinctly human and articulating +mamma. The string was cut, the wrappings were kicked away by the +struggling contents of the parcel, and a good-sized, healthy infant, +well nourished, well clad, flushing red in the opening paroxysm of a +big cry on waking, was disclosed to view. + +"A little child!" cried Miss Matilda in transports. + +"What a frightful din!" said Miss Stanley, putting her fingers in her +ears. "To think that anything so small should make so much noise! What +ever shall we do with it?" + +"Give it some milk, of course; bathe it, put it to bed. That is +what they always do with babies, I believe. Cook! get hot water at +once--and a large basin--and some milk--and--and--everything else that +is necessary. Quick! you others, and help her," she added, observing +the lingering steps of the maids, yawning now, and utterly disgusted +and wishing themselves back in bed, though a moment ago they had been +all wakefulness and interest. + +It was curious to see how Matilda took the lead, now that her +sympathies were appealed to, while her practical sister, the mistress +and manager of the establishment, stood aside bewildered and confused. +She took the child in her arms and walked up and down, dandling it, +singing, and purring forth floods of baby talk, till the little one +stopped short in the middle of its lament to look at her, and +ascertain who this voluble person might be. Then, finding she could +make out nothing by her scrutiny, she prepared to resume with +augmented vigour, but Matilda would not have it. She sat down with the +doubter in her lap, bent over it, and made a bower for it with her +curls, crooning more volubly than ever, and tickling it with the +ringlet points, till the astonished infant grew confused, forgot that +it had intended to scream, and presently was smiling and crowing and +pulling the ringlets like bell-ropes. + +Miss Matilda's ringlets were perhaps her most noticeable +feature--long, waving, twining masses of falling hair; giving her face +a pensive and romantic expression which has long ceased to be +fashionable, though it once was greatly admired, as was also the +poetry of Moore and Mrs. Hemans about the same time. In her youth, and +that was not so many years before, an officer in Montreal--it was +there the family lived then--had told her she looked like a muse, and +not long after he was ordered away to the Crimean war. Her own father +was ordered there too, but he said he owed a higher duty to his +motherless daughters than to leave them, and he thought he owed it to +his own ease not to let himself be sent ranging over Asia Minor, +Syria, and Egypt, in search of transport mules and donkeys, and so he +left the Service. He lingered in Montreal after the troops were +withdrawn; but soon that community of busy traders grew insupportable +in the absence of his fellow-loungers; he bought a farm near Saint +Euphrase, and there established himself, carrying his daughters with +him. He had already, as he told them, sacrificed his prospects of +advancement to their need of a protector, and now it was for them to +yield the social comforts of town life, bury themselves in the +country, and with grateful assiduity make his home as comfortable, and +his rheumatism as little intolerable as possible. After the fall of +Sebastopol the troops returned to Canada, and "General" Stanley was +able from time to time to relieve the monotony of his retirement with +the society of old friends; but the officer who had called Matilda a +muse never re-appeared, and no other gentleman since had said +anything half as nice. So Matilda cherished her ringlets and her +recollections--not very painful ones--and lived tranquilly on, with no +event to mark the flight of years, till the death of her father, which +took place some three or four years before the time I write of. After +that the sisters lived on as before, only more retiredly still. Miss +Penelope developed considerable business faculty in managing their +affairs, and overlooking Jean Bruneau, the factotum on the farm; and +dropped some of the feminine helplessnesses of her youth, though she +was still as much in terror of thunder, burglars, fire and snakes as +ever. Matilda having less need to exert her powers, continued the same +ringletted damsel she had always been. She busied herself with her +flowers and her birds, a little music not too difficult or new, a +little poetry and fiction, and a good deal of kindness when the need +for it was made plain to her. Her youth was passing or had passed into +middle life, but the current of her days had been so even that she had +not observed their flight. She had had no cares, and her heart slept +peacefully, for it had never been awakened. Captain Lorrimer may have +called her a muse, and Major Hopkins may have looked in her eyes, but +these things had never been carried to a disturbing length; just +enough to afford a little pensive self-consciousness, when she read of +deserted maids, or Love's young dream, and make her fancy that she +understood it all, and ejaculate that "it was so true." Then she would +look up and shake her curls with a quite comfortable sigh, and her +prosaic sister would watch her admiringly, and wonder where the men's +eyes could have been that she was still unmarried. Perhaps it was well +for her that she was so. Perhaps it would be well, at least it would +be comfortable, for many of us if our hearts would sleep through +life, and leave digestion to do its work in peace. How sweet and +enjoyable to lead untroubled lives, free from the ecstasies alike of +joy and woe, as do the flowers, as did this "muse"--this "grass of +Parnassus"--basking in summer suns and drinking dews, without ambition +or desire or strife. + +But this is wandering. We left Miss Penelope desirous of getting to +bed; and Miss Matilda engrossed in her new plaything. + +"I shall certainly keep it, Penelope! The very thing of all others I +should have liked best to have." + +"Is not that rather an odd thing to say?" + +"That I am charmed to have found a living doll?--I think it is quite +natural. _You_ are too sensible, of course, but for other people--for +me--it seems the most natural thing in the world. You know I always +doted on dolls, especially when they could wink their eyes. This one +can do that, and lots of other things besides. It will be delightful. +And to think how I have been mourning the loss of my lame canary these +last few days! You would not believe the tears I have shed every time +I have looked at the empty cage, and how lonely I have felt; and here, +in the middle of the night, just when we are going to bed, arrives +this little pet! Is it not opportune? If I had awakened in the night, +I might have thought of poor dicky, and then I should certainly have +cried. Now I shall take this sweet little image with me, and if I +awake, it will be to think how I can make up to it the loss of its +mother; though indeed the mother who could find it in her breast to +cast her off in this disgraceful way can be no loss." + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + THE DESOLATE MOTHER. + + +It was three months later. The Selbys' shrubbery had changed from the +vigorous greens of summer to russet, paling here into sulphur yellow, +there deepening to orange and crimson which outshone the less vivid +tints of the early chrysanthemums. The autumn flowers, nipped by early +frosts, lay black and ragged on their erewhile brilliant beds. The sun +was warm and the air sweet with the breath of leaves falling softly in +their brightness, one by one, peaceful, beautiful, fragrant, like the +ending of a well-spent life. + +In the parlour the windows were open; and a fire burning in the grate +to temper the air in shady corners proclaimed the fall of the year. + +Stretched on a sofa, thin and wan, with hair pushed back--hair which +three months before had been soft and glossy and of the loveliest +brown, now dry, rusty, grizzled, banded with locks of grey, and mixed +all through with threads of shining white--her fingers shrunk and +bloodless, clasping a baby's bells and coral, and her dim eyes wet +with silent tears, lay the desolate mother mourning for her child. She +had been very ill, and bodily weakness, unable to suffer more, was the +one consoler as yet to mitigate her grief, by benumbing the capacity +for pain. Her George had mingled tears with hers, tears drawn as much +by the sight of what she suffered as by its cause. He had tended and +watched her with more than a woman's tenderness, but after all he was +a man, with his day's work to perform whatever might befall, and the +doing it supported him by bringing distraction and thereby rest. True, +it jarred miserably on the overwrought nerves to keep up the routine +of music lessons, to watch the "fingering" of inattentive pupils and +have his senses pierced by their frequent discords; but it was easier +to find endurance for these physical ills than for the heartstrain he +had felt at home. The patience and fatigue of the outdoor toil brought +the calmness he needed so much in the presence of his stricken wife. + +For her there was no break or respite to the rush of black and +miserable thought. If the child had died she could have borne it. It +would have been grief, but grief of the common kind, and for which +there is consolation in the pious certainties of another life. It +would have been agony to part with her treasure, but agony with a +hope. In time she would have learned to bear the bereavement with +sorrowful patience and resignation--to think of her blossom snatched +away, rather as one transplanted and someday to be recovered in +brighter bloom, growing in immortal gardens; just as she looked on the +other--brother of the lost one, born since her loss, and which had +never seen the light. Oh, if she could but have thought of the two as +with each other! But even the consolations of faith were denied her. +The child had vanished utterly, and she was left to wonder and surmise +whither it might have been carried. Surely if it had died there would +have been found some sign or vestige, and then her mother's heart +would have been at rest. She would have wept and there would have been +an end. She could have rested her thoughts on the armies of the Holy +Innocents, and in her dreams a cherub face would have come to her with +shining wings, whispering hope and consolation. But even this saddened +peace was not for her. She would not entertain the thought that her +baby was dead; it was away somewhere--where, oh where?--and perhaps it +needed her, and was crying for her, and she could not come to it; and +a restlessness seized her, a low dull fever of impotent longing, and +kept her pacing the chamber to and fro, till exhaustion numbed her +senses and she fell asleep. But oh, what sleep! It was more miserable +than waking. Fancy gave shape to her yearnings, and dreams revived +their wretchedness into more tangible shape. The baby's cry, as if in +pain, rang through them all, and sometimes she could see the arms +stretched out to her, but never the face. A shadow undefined came in +between, and bore her darling away into darkness. Sometimes her feet +would be heavy as lead, and scarcely could she drag herself after, +while the shadow fled out of sight, and the cries came to her +fitfully, and far away, borne on the wind. At other times she would be +able to pursue, but that brought little comfort. The shadow still fled +before her, and ah, by what dreary ways! Sometimes it would be dark, +and yet she could see them speeding on before; across a raging river, +where the waters tossed and tumbled about her, lifting her from her +feet, or overwhelming her in their depths; but still she hurried on +and clambered up the slippery rocks on the further shore, and up and +up where there was no foothold, and she felt herself falling through +depths and catching and clinging with her hands and drawing herself +upward and up and up among curling mists to dreary deserts far above +the clouds. And still the shadow sped on before, and she pursued +across the sandy wastes, where horrid reptiles hissed at her as she +went by, and clouds of dust arose and came between, obscuring and +impeding the way. And still she would pursue and seem to be +overtaking. The child's cry would become quite close, and she would +see the very dimples at the finger joints and the streaming hair, and +she would stretch her hand to lay it on the form, and her hand would +pass through it like a shadow and she would awake. It was all a dream, +her darling was gone from her and she was desolate. + +On the day of the theft she had driven about the town in search of her +husband, sometimes hearing of him but never meeting; and then she had +gone to the police station herself, breathless with anxiety and haste, +and there they were so mechanical and full of formalities, and heard +her story with so aggravating an official calm that it wellnigh drove +her mad. The person she addressed on entering was sweltering on two +chairs, without coat or collar, and his boots pulled off. Before he +would listen to a lady he felt it due to himself to rectify his +appearance. The boots were tight and could not be quickly stepped +into; the coat was on a nail in another part of the office. Then the +book of complaints had to be found, and a pen, and so many flies had +drowned themselves in the ink that the stand must be refilled, and +Mary stood wringing her hands and swaying back and forth in agonized +impatience. + +"Calm yourself, madame," he said, while he dipped in the ink his pen, +and then removed first a dead fly from the point, and next a hair. "I +shall now take down your complaints," and he bent over his book, +extending his left elbow and bending his head towards it, with the +eyes squinting across the page he was about to illustrate with his +caligraphy, while with an expert turn of the wrist he made a +preliminary flourish in waiting for this member of the public to begin +stating her grievance; "but stay one moment, madame; I believe I have +mislaid my glasses;" and he started up and laid his hand upon each of +his pockets in turn. "No! I believe I must have lef dem in ze ozer +desk beside ze journaux." + +"Oh man! man!" cried Mary in desperation, "while you are putting off +time my baby is being carried further and further away; and we know +not where she may be or what they are doing to her!" + +"Be tranquillisée madame! Ze occurrence--is of frequent--how you +say?--occurrence. Zere are tree--five!" and he held up his fingers to +show the number--"infants vich make disappearance all ze days, and zey +all turn zemselves up again before to-morrow. Ze leetle tings march in +ze streets voisines, and know not ze retour. Ze police arrest, and +bring here; and voilà!--l'enfant perdu ees on return to ze famille." +At this point the spectacles were discovered, and the speaker returned +to his book. + +"My baby _could_ not run away. She cannot walk yet." Mary answered. +"My baby has been carried off, and you are wasting precious time in +talk." + +"Ze publique ees so déraisonnable! And me. Behold me!"--and he spread +out all his fingers and shrugged his shoulders in philosophic and +forbearing remonstrance--"I attend madame's informations." + +The "informations" were given, recorded and commented on, and the slow +machinery of justice set in motion at last, and the distracted mother +turned away to the grey nunnery where foundlings are received and +cared for. There she left a description of her child, and begged that +if any one resembling hers were presented, she might at once be +informed. Then she went home. What to her was the thunder storm and +lashing rain? A wilder tempest of doubt raged in her own aching heart. +Her husband had arrived before her, and in tears on his shoulder she +found the first momentary easement since her trouble began. The world +was so hard and callous, so busy, every one with his own affairs; +people accepted her desolation so calmly, told her not to fret, that +the child would soon be found. She could not have believed the +atrocious selfishness of mankind if she had not seen it. The street +children, playing after the rain, were as gleeful as ever, without a +thought of her distress; losing their balls across the fence and +coming over after them--breaking in on her very inclosure, sacred to +miserable anxiety, as if nothing were the matter. Her own servants +were no better, they were going on with their cooking and their +housework just as usual. There was the dinner bell! Who could think of +dinner on a day like this? And yet George--and she could not but own +that George had proper feeling, and was as anxious and distressed as a +_man_ well could be--even George seemed to have bodily appetite. He +was not cannibal enough to dine, but he did eat a slice of beef, and +drink a tumbler of wine and water. It seemed incomprehensible to her, +somehow, that even the round heavens should revolve as usual. But they +did. It was growing dark just the same as if nothing had befallen her +baby, and the long still night was before her. There were hours and +hours to wait before another day would arise, with its possibilities +of news or restoration, and how was she to spend them? She could not +sit still, far less lie down. She wondered about the house hour after +hour, and three several times her husband took a cab to the police +head-quarters in vain. There was no news. + +The morrow brought no change; but weariness stilled the restlessness +of her misery. She could not eat or drink or sleep, or even wander to +and fro; she could but wait, seated in the porch and watching the gate +for coming news--for news which did not come. The chief of police +appeared, and questioned Lisette and went again. Another day, and +Lisette was sent for to see Indians taken upon suspicion, and in the +evening she returned having identified one. But still there was no +news of the child. The squaw arrested declared she knew nothing of it, +had not taken it, had not been in the city that day. + +And now Mary's strength gave way. She fainted, and when revived it was +found that she was dangerously ill; and through long weeks her life +trembled on the verge of dissolution, flickering and waning till it +seemed scarce possible the spark should not go out. And then, too weak +to suffer, she began to mend, and in the vacuity of utter exhaustion, +her mind obtained that rest which no doubt saved her reason, sparing +her the weary waitings on for news which never came. In her illness a +son was born--was born and died--but only in her convalescence did she +become aware of her loss. That was a grief, but it was grief of the +more ordinary kind, and one to which the Church's consolations +effectively minister. The little one's earthly sojourn was +accomplished; it needed her care no longer, and the hopes of religion +were a soothing balm to mingle with her tears. But the other?--She was +so sure the little daughter needed her still. Sleeping or waking her +heart yearned to be with her, and often in the night when she awoke, +the baby voice would be ringing in her ears, calling her to come. That +was a dry aching feverish unassuageable grief, on which ordinary +consolation had no power. It might have killed her with its gnawing +carking care, but for the gentler sorrow of the other loss, which +vented itself naturally in tears, and the tears relieved the +over-burdened heart, easing it and strengthening it for the stronger +grief. Then, too, there was George to share her sorrow, and sorrows +are less crushing when they are not borne alone. And there were +friends who came to see her and strove to console. Utterly futile as +was all they could say, their presence and their sympathy were +grateful. It is so desolate after awhile to have to bear our +wretchedness all alone. An ear in which to pour our complaints, an eye +to look pitifully on our pain, soothes and strengthens, if it cannot +mitigate the anguish. And Mary had these. Her nephew Ralph Herkimer +and his wife were, as the servants said, most attentive; and the +sympathy of the wife at least was very genuine, while Ralph's was +equally well expressed. And after all, till men become able to read +each other's souls--a state of things which even the best of us would +not relish--it is the expression which is efficacious or otherwise, +not the prompting spirit. Consider it, oh ye of the hard shell, who +plume yourselves on your good hearts and sweet natures! How many a +cocoanut has been left to rot, because the eaters could not penetrate +the husk! + +Mary's sisters, too, when they heard of her desolation, had relented; +and found they must forgive her having married against their wish. +Being human, even if peculiar, they could not but be sorry, only they +had said so many things in their heat that each felt awkward about +proposing to the other to relax the estrangement so far as to call on +the offender. Public opinion, however decided the matter. Mary's +distress was perfectly well known to every one, and when the ladies of +their acquaintance began to inquire for their sister and to express +sympathy, it was even more "awkward" to acknowledge the estrangement +than to bring it to an end. + +Circumstances were kind to them in their attempt to make friends, and +let them down very gently. When they called the first time their +sister was far too ill to see any one, which spared them the +"awkwardness" of a meeting. They called every day afterwards, and so +had their bulletin ready for inquiring friends, and also had their own +feelings modulated gradually to a gentler frame. By-and-by they were +admitted to the sickroom. Mary was too feeble to talk; she welcomed +them with a faint smile, to which the only possible answer on their +part was a kiss, a kiss of reconciliation as well as sympathy, all the +more reconciling in that no words were possible on either side, for so +soon as it was given the nurse was ready to usher them out again +without parley. + +On the late October day we have mentioned Mary lay with her thin +fingers twined about the baby's plaything, and tears stealing from her +eyes. As each movement of her chest stirred the little bells, their +ringing thrilled her senses like a pain. + +It was the far-away cry of a departed joy, reminding her of its loss. +And yet she clasped the bauble but the tighter for each new sting it +inflicted on her heart; it brought the vanished past a little nearer, +and she almost coveted the pain as a relief from the leaden desolation +under which she lay. So, when a wound begins to heal, one will touch +and trifle with it, reviving the smart as an easement from the weary +numbness of the congested tissues. She was absorbed in her sorrowful +musings and did not note the entrance of her sisters, till, in their +sabled gowns, coming between her and the light, they bent over her. +Susan kissed her on the forehead, and Judith's tightened lips +delivered a peck upon her mouth. Then she opened her eyes with a wan +smile, and faintly bade them welcome, endeavouring to raise herself +the while. + +"Keep still, Mary," said Susan. "Do not attempt to move. You will get +strong all the sooner for taking care now." + +"I think," said Judith, observing the child's coral in her hands, +which she was at the moment slipping away among her coverings, "you +should put away those things. They can do no good, and can only revive +distressing thoughts." + +Mary sighed, and asked if they had walked. + +"Give it to me, Mary!" persisted Judith the energetic, "and let me put +it away and lock it up." + +"Oh, no!" said Mary, clasping it with both hands to her breast, and +smiling sorrowfully. "It comforts me." + +"Very wrong! Foolishly injudicious in Mr. Selby to allow it," and Miss +Judith stood up with a jerk, as though she would take the obnoxious +article by force. "Susan----" + +"Judith! Better let alone," her sister interrupted, attempting to draw +her back to her chair. + +Judith flushed hotly. Like other zealous reformers of their +neighbours, she was irritably intolerant of advice to herself; +because, of course, she must be right--she always was. So are the +others. She turned upon her sister with a frown, and there might have +been words; but at that moment the click of the gate-latch sounded. +The gate opened, and a clergyman appeared--a young clergyman. Judith +admired clergymen, and we all admire youth, at least all who have lost +their own. + +By the time the Reverend Dionysius Bunce entered the room. Miss +Judith's angry flush had cooled down, and her tightened lips had +relaxed into a smile of virgin sweetness. She had a taste for +clergymen, just as some other ladies have a taste for horses, and +some for cats. People talk of "pigeon-fanciers." Miss Judith was a +parson-fancier, that is, she fancied the parsons but she could not +keep them, as the pigeon-fanciers keep _their_ pets; they always flew +away to fresher fields. Mr. Bunce was curate of St. Wittikind's, the +church where Selby was organist and choirmaster. It was a place of +worship which Miss Judith's pietistical scruples would not allow her +to attend. The people there were given to singing harmoniously words +which she held should be said discordantly, and to other practices +equally to be regretted. St. Wittikind's, in fact, was "high," and she +never mentioned it without drawing a long breath, and shaking her head +sadly. Still, if her mind was controversial it was also feminine, and +the curate's trim, ecclesiastical uniform attracted her much. The +linen was so white, so tight, and so starchy, while that of the +married curate of her own St. Silas' was yellow, limp, and even +slovenly, like the services in which he assisted. No doubt it was +right, from her standpoint, that the service should be bald and +unattractive, and she had very decided views about vestments _in_ +church, but in vesture _out_ of church, she had a woman's preference +for neatness, and if she could win this young man from his +unevangelical vagaries, would it not be like plucking a brand from the +burning? She had long known him by sight, as indeed, she knew all the +clergy, but hitherto he had been one of the black sheep in her eyes. +Now, when she met him in a room, he was so neat and seemed so young +and inexperienced, that her heart yearned towards him with a mother's +interest--no! not a mother's interest precisely, but an interest of +the adaptable kind, which may change into any other sort as occasion +dictates. + +In Miss Susan's eyes the curate appeared uninteresting enough. She +thought him stubby, commonplace, and scarcely a gentleman, save that +to a good churchwoman like herself, his orders, like the Queen's +commission in the army, made his position unassailable. But then, Miss +Susan had no enthusiasm, and was disposed to let the brands burn, each +in its own fashion. She would have liked to go now, when she saw the +clergyman sit down beside Mary's sofa, and pull out his book, and had +risen with that intention, when Judith, clasping her black gloves and +smiling with grave sweetness, as one may smile at a christening, asked +if it was absolutely needful that they should go away. "For herself," +she said, "there was no portion of our beautiful liturgy in which she +so much delighted as in those sweet and improving passages which occur +in the 'visitation of the sick,' and if Mr. Bunce did not object, she +would feel it a privilege to be permitted to remain." + +Poor Mr. Bunce could only acquiesce, and go on with his function, +resigning the hope of whatever satisfaction he might otherwise have +found in its performance, and a good deal disturbed by Miss Judith's +sighs of extreme interest in one place, and the fervency of her +responses in another. Susan, too, perforce sat down again, wondering +internally at the queerness of her sister's taste. For herself, she +felt perfectly well, and it only depressed her to listen to the +curate's words. She looked out of the window where the sun was +shining, and could not but think that it would have been far more +cheerful to be walking down the street. + +Having finished, Mr. Bunce would have liked to remain a little for a +quiet chat with Mrs. Selby; but Miss Judith sat still and seemed bent +on taking on herself the entire duty of conversing with him. It might +be well intended, he thought, to save her sister fatigue, but it was +not very interesting, so he quickly rose to leave. Judith did so at +the same time, and when he reached the gate, the reverend man +discovered that fate had condemned him to accompany the two ladies +along more than a mile of suburban street, where he saw no hope of +breaking away. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII. + + RALPH. + + +It was with a sweet and respectful smile that Judith looked at the +curate, and left him to make the first observation. She would have +liked to look up to him; that being her natural mental attitude to men +of his cloth; but physically the thing was impracticable. She was not +notably a tall woman, but he was distinctly a short man; and though +too bulky to be called little, his figure justified Susan's mental +definition of him as "stumpy." He was her junior too, and his +countenance was not impressive. It was blond as regarded hair and +eyes, indefinite in feature, pasty in complexion; still, it was neatly +kept, and relieved from vacuity by that undoubting self-complacency +which comes to those privileged to reprove and exhort unchallenged, +for twenty minutes at a stretch. + +Mr. Bunce waited, coughed, observed on the fineness of the weather, +and was silent. Miss Susan agreed with him in her mind, but having +nothing to say on the subject, said nothing, and it was left for +Judith to fan the verbal spark, and nurse it into a conversation. She +opened in dulcet tones, and with a respectful effusiveness, like the +carved nymphs round an old fountain, catching the wasting driblets in +their marble shells. She agreed that the weather was indeed extremely +pleasant, and counted up how many other fine days there had been that +week and the week before. But there had been a shower the week before +that, just when the people were leaving the missionary meeting, where +the good Bishop of Rara Tonga spoke so sweetly. Had Mr. Bunce been +there? No? Ah! then, he had indeed missed a treat. It had been most +instructive. The bishop told about a deacon who remembered having +eaten part of his grandmother, and about the octopus coming out of the +sea, to eat breadfruit on shore on moonlight nights,--perhaps it was +not breadfruit, by the way, it may have been something else; and +perhaps it was not an octopus; but at any rate it was some dreadful +creature, and it did something very curious, and it was all most +interesting; "and indeed, Mr. Bunce, you missed a treat." + +Mr. Bunce said he found his parochial duty too heavy and too +engrossing to admit of desultory meeting-going. + +"But the heathen! Mr. Bunce, if you take no interest in the octopus." + +"We have heathens in Montreal, Miss Herkimer, as ignorant of good as +any South Sea Islander. They want to be taught, and some even to be +fed, for work is scarce this year, and winter coming on." + +"Ah, yes!" answered Miss Judith, "it is sad to think of, and," she +added--with a twinge of conscience for what she was about, to say, for +she was of St. Silas, and set no great store by the church activities +of St. Wittikind, but then good manners and Christian charity require +one to stretch a point verbally sometimes--"You are doing much good in +St. Wittikind's, I understand. We in St. Silas are doing what we can +too. We distribute fifty thousand gospel leaflets every month, and +with--well, they must have the best results. So many benighted +Romanists have no other opportunity to get a glimpse of the truth; and +you know, Mr. Bunce, the truth _must_ prevail." + +"No doubt. Miss Herkimer, it will, someday. In St. Wittikind's parish, +however, we find so many in physical want, and so many with no +religion at all, that our hands are full, and we do not attempt +controversy." + +Miss Judith sighed softly, so as not to be observed. These were not +the views in vogue at St. Silas, and of course they were wrong; but +with her "yearning" towards this curate, who seemed meet for better +things, if he could be won, it seemed her duty to be winning. So she +suppressed her inclination to say something "sound," merely observing +that all souls were alike precious, and then added that she had heard +much of the zealous beneficence exercised at St. Wittikind's, and +"would he explain about those sisterhoods, of which people talked so +much." + +This, to use an Americanism, "fetched" the curate--fetched him round, +as it were, to his own shopdoor, the pulpit, into which he at once +stepped, and held forth fluently and minutely, and at very great +length, while Judith listened with interest. Not so Susan, who found +the prelection both tedious and unnecessary. She paid what she thought +she could afford to the different charities recommended by her church, +whose business she considered it to see that its member's money was +well applied; and having paid, she took a receipt in full from her +conscience, and did not wish to hear any more about giving till +that day twelvemonths, when, if convenient, she would renew the +contribution. Every one, she said, had her own preference in +fancy-work and amusements; hers was Berlin wool--as indeed her +drawing-room showed, where every chair and ottoman was bedecked with +representations of impossible herbage in the crudest of colour and +design. Judith's fad was handing tracts to ragged French and Irish +men, an equally harmless exercise, though with less result to show, +seeing the recipients hardly waited till her back was turned before +lighting their pipes with them. + +Susan's eyes strayed from one passer-by to the next, in search of +something to interest her more than the clerical monologue proceeding +at her side, and by-and-by she espied a gentleman being driven in the +direction from which she had come. An idea struck her; she hailed the +cab, which stopped before her, and the gentleman within looked out +inquiringly. + +"Oh! Mr. Jordan," she said, "forgive my stopping you; but this was the +day that wretched woman who stole our little niece was to be tried, +and I know you have charge of Mr. Selby's interests in the matter. Is +the case decided? What have they done with her? Has she confessed?" + +"She has been acquitted, ma'am. I am just now on my way to Mrs. +Selby's, who will no doubt be impatient to hear the result; though, +for myself, I have suspected for some time there was a mistake in +arresting her." + +"Acquitted? But the nurse-girl swore positively--did she not?--that +that was the squaw who was at the house! And the ferry-boatmen +corroborated what she said." + +"Yes. The man swore that a squaw with a bundle, which he suspected +might be a baby, crossed in the steamboat that afternoon, and he was +inclined to swear to the identity of the blanket the prisoner wore, on +account of its being torn at one corner. The girl Lisette was very +positive about both the blanket and the wearer, and I fear her being +so will materially prejudice any further attempts we may make, for the +priest swore to the squaw's having been in Caughnawaga all day, and he +produced the school roll of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart to show +that she had not only been there, but had taken the medal of honour +that day." + +"Ah!" ejaculated Judith with emphasis, "what a system is Popery! So +insidious! So soul-destroying!--capable of any subterfuge. I wonder +you don't take out a warrant and have that convent searched." + +Mr. Bunce opened his eyes, startled and shocked that one so much +interested in works of beneficence should have so little charity. + +Mr. Jordan, who knew the lady better, sniffed impatiently but not +loud, as recognizing the ebullition to be constitutional and unworthy +of notice. "The worst of it is," he said, "the girl has sworn so +positively that it will weaken the value of her testimony when we +bring her up by-and-by to identify the real offender, if found. And we +have no other witness to produce. In my professional experience I have +always found that too much zeal is dangerous--far worse than too +little! How do _you_ find it, Mr. Bunce in _your_ profession? Zeal +without knowledge, eh?" and he glanced with a sly smile from Miss +Judy's face to the curate's. + +The curate looked blankly before him. He was too slightly acquainted +with the ladies to feel warranted in poking fun at their +eccentricities; and he was too much of a cleric to welcome a layman's +jest on subjects pertaining to his cloth. It was well, he thought, +that the lady should have a zeal, whether wise or the reverse. The +trouble he had found had oftener been to kindle a zeal than to direct +it, and he doubted not but with judicious guidance this ardent lady +might be brought right--that is, to take views like his own of most +things. + +The pause resulting from Mr. Jordan's wit and the curate's +unresponsiveness was broken by Miss Susan, who was growing restless. +Though no longer young, she retained some of the characteristics of +her departed youth, and had what, to misquote the high-heeled +dignitaries of literature, might be called "the modern spirit." +Had she been thirty years younger than the family bible showed +her to be she would assuredly have said that all men of the +professions--especially successful ones--were prigs, and most of them +bores into the bargain; and, as it was, she thought it. Foolish old +woman! Her weakness, in days of old had been for the red coats, and +though none of them had ever proposed, she was still loyal to her +ancient ideal. Her roving eye descried her nephew Ralph on the other +side of the way, and just as the pause incident to the curate's +silence became notable, she called aloud, "Ralph!" and waved her +parasol. + +Ralph obeyed the signal, and joined the party on the curbstone, around +the cab door. + +"Ah, Ralph!" cried Mr. Jordan. "Going to call on your aunt, I +daresay, and tell her the trial is over and that it is proved now we +have been on a wrong scent these last three months, and must begin all +over again from the beginning. Here, get in; we may as well go +together--or, better still, I will yield you up the cab. You can +explain it all, just as well as I could; it seems like a fresh +disappointment to the poor lady, and the news will come better from a +relative." Then, looking at his watch, "I have a meeting due in ten +minutes from now; I shall still be in time; so good-bye! and thanks." + +"No--you--don't! Mr. Jordan," responded Ralph. "I will not deny that I +intended to call at Selby's; but, since _you_ are so far on your way, +just complete the trip. Take all the credit yourself and charge it in +your bill. I can't do that, you know, being only a broker." + +Jordan looked disgusted, re-seated himself in his cab and drove away. +Susan repeated her expressions of regret at what she still looked on +as a miscarriage of justice; but Ralph replied: + +"Not at all! No one who was present at the trial could have looked for +any other conclusion. We must just try again; but--now that old Jordan +is out of hearing, one may venture to say it--the whole case has been +mismanaged. Why did they not offer a reward at the first? Now, I fear, +it will be too late! The little circumstances which detectives are +able to piece together to so good a purpose are soon forgotten, and so +the clue is lost." + +"Poor Mary!" said Susan, "my heart bleeds for her. It may turn out for +the best, perhaps, and remedy the iniquity of Gerald's preposterous +will, by keeping the money in his own family, but it is very sad. She +seems crushed. If her boy had been spared to her--but to lose them +both! It is turning her hair grey. She who used to be the flower of +our family!" + +Judith's lips tightened at "flower of the family." Herself was that +interesting blossom she thought, but that was not what she said. On +the contrary she expressed herself with evangelical superiority to +such trifles. + +"_I_ regard it as a dispensation, to wean her from earthly joys. It is +in love that, when we make ourselves idols, they are taken away. +Perhaps, too, it may be a judgment on her for marrying in defiance of +those who were older and wiser than herself. There are warnings in all +these mysterious happenings, and food for thought;" and she rolled her +eyes Sibyl-wise over Ralph to the curate. + +There was an irreverent gleam in Ralph's eyes, and he turned to watch +a passing dray till his inclination to laugh went off. The curate was +regarding her with a puzzled expression. He was a well-meaning young +man, who wished both to be and to do good; but who, not being any +wiser than his neighbours, notwithstanding the higher ground on which, +in right of his orders, he believed himself to stand, was often in +doubt both as to what he ought to feel and to say. He was very sure it +would never have occurred to himself to use the language he had +listened to, and he began to wonder if he had stumbled on some +advancedly serious person, whose acquaintance would be improving, +or--or something else. There seemed a fine devotional tone in her +opening words, especially enunciated as they were, with a full and +rounded unction. They were not very novel, perhaps; he seemed to have +heard the like before, and more than once; but then, what that is true +is also new?--as was said, or something not unlike it in sound, by a +late prime minister. Her next proposition rather startled him, +carrying him back to his college days, and reminding him of the +stealing of Jove's thunderbolts; but there was a third-like the third +course beloved by another prime minister, reconciling contradictions +and committing to nothing--"mysterious happenings, food for thought." +That was it! He would think it over; and there was balm in this, +for had she not been listening to him, as they came along, as to +another Gamaliel, while he described the charitable schemes of St. +Wittikind's? and would it not be painful to think otherwise than well +of so responsive a lady? + +Confused by all these thoughts the curate did not speak; and Susan, +thinking it high time to break up the meeting, reminded Judith that +their dressmaker lived hard by, and now would be a good opportunity to +order their winter gowns. Judith said goodbye regretfully and made the +curate promise to come very soon and tell her more about St. +Wittikind's, and the two gentlemen walked townwards together. + +"You seem to know my aunt well," said Ralph. "I am agreeably +surprised. I fancied she was too grimly Low Church to speak to any +clergyman not of St. Silas or St. Zebedee. I hope your acquaintance +will broaden her views, which are rather extreme, and something of a +nuisance in the family. However, Aunt Judy means well. We all allow +that. The trouble is that she will never allow that we mean well, when +we go counter to her advice; and then she treats us to a word in +season, which is apt to be very highly seasoned with brimstone and +what not." + +There was a tone of levity and indifference to his cloth in this talk +which jarred on Mr. Bunce. It was evident that Ralph looked on him as +just like a secular person, or perhaps as less shrewd, and this was +not as he liked. His associations were mostly with the docile of the +other sex, and the more reverential of his own, and the company of +this robust worldling was so unpleasantly bracing that they soon +parted, and Ralph was alone when he reached his office. + +"A man waiting to see you, sir." + +"What sort of man?" + +"An Indian. The same I think who came for your guns last year, when +you went camping out." + +"Tell him I've gone out." + +"He saw you come in through the glass door." + +"Say I'm engaged." + +"He says he will wait till you are at leisure." + +"Bid him come in, then," and presently Paul stood before his employer, +looking in his eyes but saying nothing. + +"Well, Paul?" said Ralph, without looking up from the letter he +appeared to be writing, "deer have been seen near the Lake of Two +Mountains, eh? Too busy! Shall not be able to leave town this Fall. +Hard on a man--is it not? Wish I was an Indian and could do as I +pleased." + +"Ouff," grunted Paul, with an impatient glance, and that slight twitch +of the eyebrows equivalent to a Frenchman's shrug, which says so +plainly "Why all these idle words?" Then, producing a paper from his +bosom he handed it to Ralph. + +"Ze notaire gave dis! Want pay--for Thérèse--Judge court defend." + +"Ah!" said Ralph, taking the paper and glancing over it. "Your bill of +costs. Defending that squaw--eh? You want me to look it over?--Oh yes! +quite right. O.K![1] all correct! Pay it at once, Paul, and finish the +business." + +"Ze dollars?" answered Paul. "You give! I pay." + +"It's all right, Paul! The account, I mean. But you must pay your own +bills, you know--defend your own family. She's your squaw, not mine." + +Paul shot a fiery glance from under his gathered brows. "Zis my squaw +sister! Done for you!--O.K? Squaw get dollars for fetch back papoose. +Easy fetch back." + +"What do you mean, Paul? What will be so easy for you to fetch back?" +said Ralph wheeling round in his chair. + +"Fetch papoose. Got no dollars for pay notaire." + +"Man alive! Did I not pay you as I promised?" + +"Fifty dollars! O.K! Squaw take papoose for pay. Notaire want +sixty-five. Squaw bring back papoose. Get two hundred dollars. Pay +notaire. O.K.!" + +"Come now, Paul!" cried Ralph, not over well pleased, yet with a +business man's pleasure in a bit of smartness, even when it told +against himself. "You've euchred me, I allow it. But don't draw the +string too tight in case it breaks. What do you want?" + +"Two hundred dollars," said Paul. + +"But the bill of costs is only sixty-five." + +"How long live squaw and papoose on hundred dollars?" + +"You leave thirty-five out of the reckoning. However, we will suppose +that goes to you for your smartness. Well! I'm busy, Paul, I'll give +you your two hundred dollars at once to get you away. Not, mind you, +that I couldn't fight you off, if I cared to; but I have other things +to think of." + +"And for Fidèle and the papoose?" + +"That must suffice them for the present. When it is all spent--we will +see--" and so Ralph got rid of his importunate visitor for the +present, though not without misgiving. + + + + + CHAPTER IX. + + AT SAINT EUPHRASE. + + +Saint Euphrase is a village of the usual Lower Canada type, with its +big high-shouldered stone church, made stately in front by square +towers capped with tin belfries, on which the light twinkles as the +bell tinkles to call the people to mass. The village, like a brood of +chickens, nestles around, a cluster of little low-browed wooden +houses, with pillared porches and verandahs, the poorer ones roofed +with weather-stained shingles, the prosperous with red plates or tin; +pierced here and there with little casements, shining yellow in the +afternoon sun, like inquisitive eyes prying into their neighbours' +enclosures. A few tall poplars--sign of a French-speaking +settlement--rise here and there above the roofs, and around are fields +divided by picturesquely ill-kept fences, in whose corners the wild +plum or the slippery elm entwined with brambles form belts of growth +which might be hedges, grateful to the eye after the trim bald farming +of the West. A broad river runs by at about a stone-cast's distance, +but the place used to be too small to have traffic by water; and save +to the boatman who got his living by ferrying people across the river, +was but a desert barrier to the villagers, cutting them off from the +West, whither Transatlantic prosperity ever tends--lonely waters down +which a few rafts of timber passed in the Spring, and peopled only by +the duck and teal frequenting the reedy shores of an island down +stream, a bank raised by opposing currents and gathered out of the +flood by a thicket of ash and willow. The fields sloping upwards on +the other three sides, end in bush, which would cover the general +level of the country but for the farms, with their houses set by the +roadsides and their narrow strips of land running for a mile or more +back into the distance. Of late a good many country houses have been +built by Montrealers desiring something less suburban than their own +island affords. There is a railway, and a few modern shops; and +gaily-dressed townspeople may be seen driving fast horses or playing +lawn tennis in the cool of the afternoon; but these are recent +innovations on the old time when M. le Curé in his long skirts walked +down the street alone among the bowing _habitants_, smiling as he went +and bestowing his blessing. + +"General" Stanley was the earliest outsider to build himself a home in +the sequestered neighbourhood, and not many as yet had followed his +example, at the time we speak of. If it had been dull in his lifetime, +his daughters found it doubly so after his death, and but for the +horrors of moving they would have migrated back to the city. As we +grow older it becomes ever more painful to root up formed habits, +while new ones are less and less able to take their place; and Miss +Stanley, at least, acknowledged that she had reached the age when +change grows irksome. Therefore, while they amused themselves by +talking of removal, and each Spring promised themselves the comforts +of town life for the succeeding Winter, the years slid by and they +found themselves still where they were. The years too made havoc among +their circle of friends, and made the city seem a less desirable +residence, just as the week works changes in our gardens, scarce +noticeable from day to day, but so complete before the month is out. +People die and marry and move away, and the ladies' shopping +expeditions to Montreal grew briefer and less frequent as time went +on, till from lasting over weeks and ending in tender partings from +regretful friends, they dwindled into excursions accomplished between +a morning and an afternoon. Soon, too, there came into the +neighbourhood a sprinkling of English-speaking settlers, which, +productive in the end of life and spirit, was like yeast turbid and +disturbing at first, when dropped into that sweet but stagnant +reservoir of old-world manners; and soon there was on the outskirts of +the village a Protestant mission, a meek little clap-boarded +structure, without spire or bell, but sufficient for the needs of its +few worshippers, and enough to rouse the watchfulnesss of the curé and +the jealous wrath of his flock. However, the parson proved to be a +peace-loving man, and the zeal which at first threatened to become +flagrant, simmered down for want of provocation, into armed +neutrality, if not into more neighbourly feelings. These changes +brought the ladies at least the feeling of a less complete isolation +than they had experienced at first, and eventually, as the grade of +new-comers improved, a little society; while the earlier polemical +excitement passed them by, they being persons content to say their own +prayers in their own fashion, and to leave their neighbours to do +likewise. + + +"Oh, Tookey!" said Miss Matilda, when the sisters met at breakfast on +the morning after the arrival of the baby, "the little darling is +simply delightful! When I took her upstairs Smithers most obligingly +offered to keep her through the night; but it looked so pretty lying +fast asleep in my bed with nothing on but a large pocket handkerchief, +that I really had not the heart to disturb it. We bathed it, you +know, and you cannot think what a dear, soft, plump little morsel it +looked in its bath; and it crowed--positively crowed and smiled to me +myself, for I do not think it minded Smithers much, though it was she +who did the bathing. I daresay her hands felt rough, you know, on +its tender little skin. We laid it in my bed and covered it with a +pocket-handkerchief--dear little morsel--while I went to look for +something small enough to dress it in. I thought of the clothes for my +immense wax doll I was so proud of once, and kept so long after I grew +up; but alas! I gave that to my godchild, and apparently every rag of +its wardrobe; I thought I might find a little shirt or a wrapper--I am +certain they would have been quite large enough for this one--but +Tilly Martindale seems to have got them every one. Is it not a pity? +But, as I was saying, we laid baby in the bed while I was looking for +the things, and she just dropped asleep the moment Smithers laid her +down. So I just sent Smithers off to bed, and lay down beside the dear +little duck, and it has nestled in my arms all night, as soft as a +ball of silk; and oh, Tookey! I don't think I ever slept as pleasantly +before; and in the morning it woke me by stroking my cheeks with its +soft little hands. Did you notice its hands? I never saw anything so +lovely, with a crease round the wrist, a dimple at each knuckle, and +pink little finger-tips like rosebuds." + +"But what are we to do with the infant?" asked the practical Penelope. + +"Do? The first thing to do is to give it some bread and milk! But I +daresay Smither's has done that already. I should have liked to do it +myself but was afraid to try. I remember so well how I hurt my +kitten's mouth, trying to feed it with a teaspoon, and I would'nt make +this little beauty cry for all the world. But I know what I will do. I +have some cambric for pocket-handkerchiefs upstairs, I shall make +it a chemise! Smithers will know how big to make it, or rather how +little--the dear wee love!" + +"Matilda, dearest, let us be sensible. The child must have a _parent_, +and if _we_ can become attached to it so warmly in a few hours what +must the feelings of that parent be to be deprived of her? Ought we +not to endeavour to return the child?" + +"If the parents valued it so highly why did they leave it here, +without asking leave or saying a word? No! They forsook it! I shall +always say so. Besides, how can we give it back, even if we would try? +How find the discreditable parents? And if we could, what a life we +might be giving up the little lamb to!" + +"It does not seem right, our keeping it." + +"And whom, pray, would you give it up to? Would you give it to the +village priest?--to be carried to some convent and brought up for a +nun?--fasting, and scrubbing all her life long for the sisterhood? +Just look at the tiny hands, like little flowers, and the plump little +person. Work and fasting, indeed! Not if _I_ can help it." + +"But there is the parson. Naturally we would give it in charge to our +own church." + +"And how much better would that be? What could an old bachelor do, but +make his housekeeper wrap it in a shawl, and carry it to the +Protestant Orphan Home? A very good place you know--I have been +through it--quite proper for children such as it is meant for--rough +little squalling things, quite tough and hardy. They are cared for, +and taught and brought up to service. A most useful institution and I +shall double my subscription, but it would be no home for _our_ little +fairy. Why, it is a blossom! It would wither away in that rough place +within a week. And better so, than the desecration of rearing it +there! No, no! I shall keep it for my own, if it is not claimed. Of +course if we knew its parents, and they were proper people, it would +be wrong not to let them know; but even then I would pay them money to +let me adopt it. And if they wanted to keep the child, why did they +bring it here? It seems nonsense to think about the parents at all." + +"I do not like the idea of keeping a stray baby whom nobody knows +anything about, Tilly! We should ask advice, at any rate. I think I +had better go over to Montreal and ask Mr. Jordan what we should do." + +"And have yourself laughed at for a fussy old maid, saddled with a +baby! You will make us a laughing stock to all our friends. Just think +how ridiculous it sounds! Besides, what can he advise? I know quite +well what he will say, and can save you your consultation fee. He will +ask you to 'be seated' in his clients' chair--_I_ know, for I visited +him several times about my steamboat shares, and it was always the +same performance--then he lies back in his own chair and takes his +foot upon his knee. After that he takes off his spectacles, wipes them +with his handkerchief and puts them on again, rests his elbows on the +chair arms, clears his voice and begins, ticking off the items of +advice with the fingers of one hand upon those of the other. He makes +it very clear, and it sounds most wise; but when you go away and think +it over, you will find he has told you just what you might have told +yourself, if you had only thought calmly and sensibly about it. There +is no witchcraft in Mr. Jordan's advice. Perhaps that is why people +say he is a sound lawyer. Remember, too, he is apt to divulge the +secrets of her dear friends to his wife. She spoke to _me_ about my +steamboat shares, I remember; and congratulated me upon selling at the +right time. You know how dearly she loves a good story, and if your +dilemma should strike her in an absurd light, she will soon have it +known all over the town. Our dear Amelia has a very long tongue." + +"I only want to do what is right," said Penelope, a little dismayed at +the suggestion, "right to ourselves, and right to this baby. I feel +for the little waif, Tilly, though I do not become rapturous like +you." + +"As to the baby, then, just think. It seems unlikely that it would +have been laid on our verandah if its friends had wanted to keep it at +home. Even if we could return it to them we could not make them keep +it, or use it kindly; and there seem to be only three other ways of +disposing of it--the Protestant Orphans' Home, the Grey Nunnery, or to +adopt it ourselves. Now, suppose we were to do the last--I do not +propose it, mind; but, after there seems no more likelihood of its +being claimed, if we should--would it be nice to have our _protegée_ +spoken of as a foundling, and nobody's child? Would it not tell +against her when she grew up, and we took her into society with us, as +of course we should if we reared her ourselves?" + +"But, my dear, the child has not been twelve hours in the house yet, +and to hear you, one would say you are already dreaming of bringing it +up! I have known you all your life, Tilly, and I never heard you +discuss at such length before; but what you say seems reasonable +enough. It would _not_ be nice to have Amelia making fun of our +perplexities, and yet there is no one else we can go to, whose advice +we could trust in like Mr. Jordan's. For yourself, now, what do you +think we should do?" + +"I think we should do nothing! Nobody can blame us for doing that. It +is no affair of ours, and if only we are kind to the little one till a +claimant appears, or till we see more plainly what we should do, we +can get nothing but praise and thanks for our charity." + +To do nothing is always an inviting course, in times of perplexity, +especially when it is the interest of another rather than our own +which is most deeply involved; we cannot then be blamed for doing the +wrong thing, even if we have failed to do the right one. Time, too, +has a way of winding up affairs left open, which is often more +satisfactory than the half-wise efforts of meddlesome mortals. Miss +Stanley accepted the invitation to inaction and let things take their +course. + +That day was a royal one for Miss Matilda. Instead of loitering +between her flowers and her sofa, fanning herself and dropping asleep, +a new interest had come into her life; and such a pretty one! It crept +and rolled and tumbled about on the matting at her feet; while she sat +at her worktable in the bay window with scissors and cambric, sewing +strange garments, and pricking her fingers a good deal, for the needle +was an unfamiliar implement in her hands; but she went bravely on with +unflagging industry, stopping only to get fresh bread and milk, when +she imagined the little one must be hungry, or to find a pillow when +it wanted to sleep. + +The newspapers came in the afternoon as usual, but she had no leisure +to waste on them; the plaything at her feet was far too engrossing. +Even Penelope only glanced over the column of "Born," "Died" and +"Married"--there is no "Divorced" in a Canadian paper, as in American +ones--in search of any known name, and then sat down to wonder at +Matilda's new-born energy and admire the baby. + +These ladies were not very thorough-going newspaper readers, although +they lived in the country and saw few visitors. The two city +newspapers they received each day were always torn open, the marriages +and deaths glanced at, and sometimes the fashions, if it was their +time for getting new bonnets; but politics bewildered them, and the +local gossip had ceased to be interesting, it was so long since they +had lived in town. Their bookseller sent them magazines and boxes of +books, their home was comfortable, and life moved on smoothly, like a +door on well-oiled hinges. They forgot to crave for outside interests +and excitements, and the energies which in town life might have found +scope in arranging or disarranging their neighbours' concerns, took +gentler exercise over roses, geraniums, chickens, bees, or a rheumatic +habitant, especially if he spoke prettily and was respectful. + +It was only as might be expected, then, that nothing in the newspapers +relating to their little waif ever met their eyes. The parson--their +only visiting neighbour at that time--was away for his summer +vacation; the friends who sometimes came to them from Montreal were at +the seaside, so there was no one to talk with, and they heard nothing; +which indeed was as they liked it best. All through the remainder +of that Summer and Golden Fall, these two women, not very young, +revelled in a new-found joy--the sudden awakening within them of the +holy instinct of motherhood--the double living, living in another +life besides their own, the joyous wondering progressive life of +childhood--re-entering anew a world still dew-bright in the morning +freshness which it loses as life wears on; and their hearts grew purer +and their thoughts simpler, in this unlooked for return to the Eden of +long ago. + +Before two months had passed they had come to recognize their little +visitor as a member of the household and one of the family--"of our +own family, sister," Matilda said one day. "Let us make her a Stanley +and call her our niece--Muriel Stanley. What do you say?" + +"But how can we, with neither brother nor sister, call her that?" said +Penelope the business-minded and literal. "Think of the stories we +should have to make up; and if anybody asked questions we should have +to make some more, and there would be discrepancies, and the most +dreadful things might be said." + +"And pray," cried Matilda the impetuous, "who will presume to ask +questions when we look them in the eye and calmly state the--the fact +that she is our brother's child, and he is dead? Some people are not +very polite, but I never met any one who would dare to disbelieve a +lady to her face; and if we give no particulars and change the subject +at once, there will be no opportunity to ask questions, If we call it +a niece there will be no more to say, and as soon as it is generally +known it will interest nobody. They are all too full of their own +affairs." + +"But, Tilly, we never had a brother." + +"But, Tookey dear, who knows that? Papa married in this country, and +you were born here, but you know he was sent to Bermuda soon after, +and we remained there till you and I were grown. Nobody in Montreal +knows even that mamma was Canadian. Nobody asks anything about the +connections of the military or commissariat. There they are. The +Service is a voucher for their respectability. It is taken for granted +that they are English with no relations in this country, so nobody +troubles to inquire." + +"But our mother's relations, Tilly, in Upper Canada; what are we to +say to _them?_" + +"We have been thirteen years in Canada without meeting them. Mamma had +only a sister--Aunt Bunce--who died before we left Bermuda; if her +family live in Upper Canada still, they cannot know much about us. It +is so long since poor mamma died--before Aunt Bunce, even--so very +long that I do not care to count the years; it makes me feel so old." + +"Don't talk of being old, child! You have not aged one bit. Think of +me! But why need we bother with telling fibs about the child? Fibs +always end in bother; I have been taught that all my life." + +"Do you want us to be laughed at? Are you willing to confess yourself +an old maid--a Protestant grey nun--adopting babies left on your +doorstep? I am not, if you are; though I suppose I _am_ older to-day +than I was five years ago," and she shook out her ringlets with a +defiant toss. "Just let it become generally known that we keep an +upper-class foundling asylum, and we shall soon get plenty of pupils! +They will bring them from Vermont, I daresay, or up from Quebec." + +"Tush! Tilly." + +"It is true. Only how should we dispose of them after they were +brought up? Other institutions train them for service; now I do not +think we could do that, so what would become of them? And what will +become of our own little pet if we let her be looked on as a stray, +and different from other children? Think of the slights she will be +exposed to; and the unkind remarks, especially as she is sure to be +pretty. It would be cruelty to bring her up with ourselves, and yet +deprive her of the chance of marrying. Think of her struggles as a +lonely woman to support herself after we are gone. Our gentle nurture +would prove a curse to her and not a blessing." + +"But we could not let a gentleman marry a nameless girl under a false +impression." + +"Certainly not. We would explain all to any gentleman who had a right +to know; and if he _was_ a gentleman, I do not think it would prevent +the marriage; but that is quite different from proclaiming a poor +girl's misfortune." + +"Think the matter over, Penelope, and I am sure you will come to see +it as I do. Meanwhile there is no hurry. We need not converse to +visitors about our _protégée_, she is too little yet to be shown to +company, and as the weather is growing cold, I propose we arrange that +room at the top of the house as a nursery, and establish her there +with Smithers. She will be out of the way both of draughts and idle +curiosity." + + + + + CHAPTER X. + + TEN YEARS LATER. + + +Ten years later. What a startlingly abrupt transition for the onlooker +from the "then" to the "now!" And yet how intimately the two are +connected, and how utterly the one is dependent on the other! Two +cities on the same broad river, the upper spreading along the stream, +set in a fruitful plain, the key to fertile regions farther up, +gathering the produce and shipping it down the current; the other +perched upon cliffs and overhanging shores, and twice each day lapped +by the turning tide from the distant sea whither everything is +tending. Yet to the voyager the transition is gradual enough, and +smooth, and natural. But for the retreating objects along the shore he +would not recognize that he was moving, save when descending a rapid, +or running on a sandbank--the events, marriages, deaths, failures, and +successes of his onward way. It is the same river still, in part the +very drops of water which tumbled over Niagara long ago, passed +through Ontario, and down the rapids to Montreal, and onward through +the broads and the deeps till it meets tide-water at Quebec, and still +with all the gathered tributes it hurries on, a river still for scores +and scores of miles between ever widening banks, on to the misty +everlasting sea, where the voyager disappears for ever from the view. + +Not that my friends have moved their dwelling-place down stream to +Quebec, but there is a sadness in the thought of the slowly passing +years which makes one moralize and grow metaphoric before he is aware. +No, the people of this history are still geographically where they +were, standing on their own ground, while the big tumultuous river +rushes by--but the figure which their permanence suggests is even a +sadder one, that of the fabled maidens drawing water in their sieves, +water which will not be drawn or held, but keeps oozing through and +slipping away, just as the stream runs by and will not wait; for life +is but a sorry comedy with its stayless passing. Yet which of us would +stop it if we could, even at its best? It always seems as if a sweeter +drop were somewhere up the stream, and even if the present could be +held, we would let it pass to taste the fancied sweeter yet to come. + +In ten years the American war had ended and specie payments were +resumed. In ten years Ralph Herkimer had made a fortune and a +"position"--the terms are interchangeable in the moneyed world, and +elsewhere too. No one was better liked or more respected as a good +fellow, a clear-headed business man, and a high-souled altogether +superior person. Even General Considine--who had been taken prisoner +during the war, exchanged, "paroled," withdrawn from the game like the +slaughtered pawn from a chess board--had quite forgotten having +grandly dropped his acquaintance in Natchez and the reasons for so +doing; and, on taking up his abode in Montreal, was very pleased to +renew intimacy with his young friend of _ante bellum_ times. Ralph was +happy to respond. If there ever had been an imputation on his courage, +it seemed well to support the only one who could remember, in +forgetting it; though really, as he told himself, there was nothing to +be ashamed of. He had merely shown disapproval of a bloodthirsty and +barbarous custom in a state of society already passed away; and no one +who was anybody would have the bad taste to be amused at anecdotes +told at the expense of a man so well off as himself, and who +entertained so liberally. Still, since it is wiser to humour fools +than to fight them, he would be civil to this broken-down fireater, +heap coals of fire on his head like a good Christian, and make him +thoroughly ashamed of his rudeness in former years. + +Considine, too, was no very cumbrous _protégé_. He was better supplied +with money than many of his compatriots at that time, having inherited +some property in New York, which the same events which had ruined his +estate in the South had rendered four times as valuable as before, in +the paper money of the period. His deportment exhibited a fair share +of the manly pathos becoming a fallen hero, and made him an +interesting guest to the dwellers in a city at peace. It is true he +wore red studs in his shirt front, as his way of mounting his +country's colours--red and white--and would defiantly puff out his +chest so decorated whenever a Yankee uniform came in sight. But +something must be permitted to the bruised susceptibilities of the +warrior overcome, and at least he did not travesty the conspiracies of +exiled Poles and old time Jacobites by joining in absurd schemes to +capture towns on the lakes, or infect the capital with yellow fever; +in which crack-brained escapades the excitement for the plotters lay +not so much in their design, as in communicating it to one another +with infinite stage mystery of whisperings, signs, passwords, and +secret information. In those days a party of refugees on one of the +St. Lawrence steamboats would make the voyage as interesting to their +fellow-passengers as a pantomime, with their dark glances, stealings +aside, mysterious beckonings to each other, and hasty whispers, +followed by backward glances in search of spies. There may have been +real plots, but they were carried on by practical persons who showed +no sign, and it was rumour of these which impressed the rest, and +filled them with emulation. They imagined they were being watched and +reported on at Washington, though what interest their vagaries could +have for Mr. Lincoln's government it is hard to imagine. Much, +however, should be excused to people deprived by war of their fortunes +and their homes, often with but slender means of support, and no +occupation, driven to spend eight hours of their day in euchre +playing, and the other eight in unending discussions of the war news. +To such, conspiracy must have seemed the most delightful of pastimes, +even if barren of practical results. + +When Considine approached Ralph with a most respectable sheaf of +"greenbacks" under his arm, and appealed to him as an old friend for +advice as to their conversion into specie, and their subsequent +employment, Ralph was genial, and by-and-by showed him the way to the +gold-room, where good Canadians, following the lead of New York, sold +each other stacks of foreign currency which the sellers could not +deliver and the buyers had no wish to receive. The telegraph clerk +hung up the quotations from New York at certain hours, the "operators" +took note and paid their losses--no! "held settlements" is the proper +expression, for this was _business_. Respectable gentlemen, church +members, and heads of families, brushed their hats each morning and +walked down to their offices, gloved and caned, the very pink of +respectability, and from thence went on "'Change," where the money +would change hands with astounding celerity--all in the way of +"business." + +"_Faites votre jeu, Messieurs! Le jeu est fait_"? Not at all! This was +in Montreal not at Monte Carlo. Strictly "business," and thoroughly +respectable. True, many men lost, but some won. And what would you +have? How could it be otherwise? There are but a certain number of +gold pieces in the world; and, if, after an "operation," my bag +contains more, it is certain that my neighbour's must hold less. +Currency, bullion, stocks, shares, grain, cotton, what are any of them +but the tokens to win and lose money upon? But the thing is done "upon +'Change," and 'Change, like church, is a good word, and everything +belonging to it is respectable. If it were round a green-cloth table +now, how different it would be! though the outcome might be the same. +Respectability cannot tolerate the green cloth. And yet, to an +all-seeing eye, there may be less amiss when a man's money falls upon +the _black_ and the _red_. At least the play at Monte Carlo is "on the +square;" there are no misquotations or false telegrams, bogus +prospectuses, lying reports, collusive understandings, and traps for +the unwary, such as have been heard of at times in the places of +better repute. + +Ralph Herkimer made a great deal of money; Considine made some; and +by-and-by, as American finance returned to a normal position, other +fields of enterprise were needed as the possibilities of gambling in +gold and greenbacks grew less; and then Considine's American +connections became a valuable introduction for Ralph to several "good +things." There were estates whose owners, stripped of all their other +property, and still encumbered by their debts, could not wring a +subsistence from the devastated acres, and were willing to part with +them for a trifle; but no one would buy--no one at hand, that is, who +had opportunity to know about the war-ravaged fields and the +intractable labourers. But at a distance, in a land of peace, where a +good title and a veracious statement of the acreage and the yielding +capacity were the data--where, in fact, a pencil and a piece of paper +were the means for judging the promise of the venture--how different +it all was. Here was a country where snows and frosts were scarcely +known, or, so it was said, where the cattle could range without +shelter all through the year, where the gardens were planted with figs +and pomegranates, and pigs fattened in the orchards on peaches too +plentiful to repay the gathering. There were minerals too, every +variety of riches, gold, coal, copper, hidden in the ground, and only +awaiting the capital and skill to dig them up; and forests of pine, +now vastly enhanced in value by the Chicago fire, waiting to be cut +down and converted into lumber if only foreign enterprise would +undertake the task. What could be better calculated to stir the +imagination of people accustomed to contend for three long months of +the year with the fiercest severities of winter, and to wring fixed +and moderate profits by patient industry from a soil which still was +five or ten times the price of these fields of endless summer? The +fevers, malaria, bad water, and general backwardness did not show on +the map, and a dense silence kept them from the knowledge of +investors. + +Ralph and his friend being well-to-do, their statements and +recommendations were implicitly accepted; and, indeed, the statements +in themselves were not untruthful; it was in the counter-balancing +facts, which were left unstated, that those who afterwards considered +themselves their dupes, found the limitation and disillusion of their +hopes, which teach men in the end that Fortune is as likely to find +them out while labouring at home, as to be found by them without +exertion and experience, in distant places. But that was the buyers' +concern--knowledge which came to them later and by degrees, Ralph and +his friend had completed their share of the transaction and pocketed +their commission when the sale was made; what followed had for them no +interest. + +They made many such sales, pocketing large commissions--the larger, +indeed, the worse the property they disposed of--vast tracts in some +cases, containing untold wealth in minerals and forests, where the +buyers sunk fortunes in endeavouring to bring the riches within reach; +and at length, having exhausted their resources, had to subside into +the ranks of the ruined people around them, and wait patiently for a +generation, till the march of time should bring within reach of their +children the sums they had placed out of reach for themselves. There +were smaller farms, too, where sturdy yeomen with their blooming +children went to make rich more quickly; but somehow few appeared to +thrive in those distant migrations. Their livestock was apt to die; +too little rain, or too much, would destroy their crops, and their own +health would fail; and in a year or two they would find their way back +to Canada, with an enlarged experience but a shrunken purse; while of +the children, some would be left behind in the foreign churchyard, and +the rest, yellow and gaunt, bore small resemblance to the bright-eyed +youngsters they had been before. + +In a few years the trade in southern homesteads died out, Canadian +enterprise laid down her telescope and interested herself with things +nearer home. Science, ransacking her own soil, had come on hid +treasure of many kinds, gold, copper, iron, phosphates, and plumbago, +and showed where, instead of sending her savings abroad, she might +sink them at home--her own savings and those of many a sanguine +stranger. On every side Ralph saw opportunities of money-making, and +he was ready to use them; but now his operations, he found, must be on +another footing than before. Hitherto he had been a financier; now, +his neighbours recognized him as a capitalist. The change of standing +was gratifying, but it had its dangers and its drawbacks. + +Finance has been described as the art of transferring money from one +pocket to another--in a Stock Exchange sense, be it understood, not an +Old Bailey one--and the financiers are the artists who perform the +feat. Money is a volatile and also an adhesive substance--matter in a +state of unstable equilibrium, which must not be disturbed or changes +will ensue--wherefore, in the process of transferring, some of it is +certain to be spilled, and that the artist may pick up if he can; it +is his perquisite. A good deal too is apt to stick to the artist's +fingers--perquisites again--and hence the profit of handling other +people's money. If it were one's own already, whence would come the +profit? A man can scarcely gain by paying perquisites to himself; +though, to be sure, he may obviate the necessity of paying them to any +one else. But there cannot be a doubt that the financier escapes much +embarrassment when he is not a capitalist. See, for example, with what +calm unflinching pluck a "general manager" can carry on war with a +rival railway! The next half-yearly dividend may be sacrificed in the +contest, but he does not falter, he goes bravely on. _He_ is not a +shareholder; it makes no matter to _him_. To seek a parallel in the +political world capitalists and financiers stand to one another as +kings to their ministers. When things go well the minister does the +work, the king has the profit and glory; but when they miscarry, +though the minister did the mischief, it is the king who loses his +crown; the minister merely withdraws into privacy, and lives +comfortably in retirement on the emoluments of former office. Yet who, +if he could, would not be a king, to be trembled before and +worshipped? and after all, the successful revolutions are not +numerous. + +Ralph recognized the new danger in his path, and regretted a little, +at times, when he found he must let a profitable opportunity go by, +merely because it was one which only an impecunious promoter durst +undertake; but he had his compensations. Like the man who becomes a +king, he got well grovelled to, and he liked it. He could _influence_, +too, if the after responsibilities of "promoting" were too onerous to +be undertaken. The use by other men of his name, unauthorizedly, as a +heavy holder of their stocks, was worth money; and, as long as he +"unloaded" in time, perfectly safe. He did not now flutter about +'Change, scattering reports and picking up news; he sat in his office, +and was waited on by those who sought his countenance in their schemes +and wished to learn its price. + +Only one disappointment as yet had befallen him. He wished to become +president of a leading bank, and he knew so many of the directors that +he made sure of gaining his point. Unfortunately the directors knew +him as well, and deemed it advisable to choose some one else; but then +of course it was the general body of shareholders who must bear the +blame. The ballot leaves so many things in doubt, and covers up so +much about which there can be no doubt at all. His friends, the +directors, called on him immediately the election was over--the +traitors being probably the first to hurry in--and expressed the most +cordial regret and condolence; and Ralph was too wise not to accept +the profuse explanations with gracious condescension. Their hastening +to explain was a tribute, at any rate, to his weight, and showed that +they feared him; and as one after another he smiled them out, he +promised himself to let them feel yet that their fears had not been +groundless. He was not, therefore, in his most debonair mood, when, on +being informed by a new clerk that a rough-looking man had been +waiting some time, he permitted him to be introduced. + +"Paul?" + +"----day, sir." + +"It seems only the other day since you were here last." + +"Six months." + +"How many six months do you make in a year? + +"Two." + +"Hm--I am not so sure of that. Seems to me you have managed to pack +three into this last year. However--Here, Stinson!" he called to the +clerk appointed to wait without and attend his private behests, while +he scribbled a cheque. "Ask the cashier to cash that. Quick!" he added +as he raised his eyes and saw the stolid figure of his visitor +standing before him, a statue in copper-coloured flesh, motionless and +unregarding, unimpressed by his grandeur or the trembling +assiduousness of his clerk; an embodiment of still impassible waiting, +like the image carved on the granite door-post of an Egyptian temple. +Paul did not even glance about him, he simply stood, and with +unwinking eye gazed into space, inscrutible and indifferent to all +around. + +Ralph threw himself back in his chair, fidgetted impatiently, and +coughed and snorted. So impressive is that which cannot be gauged or +looked into, even if it contain nothing. This was the instrument, too, +and the reminder of a crime, who stood before him; a crime of so long +ago, and which yet, so long as the Indian lives may come to light--may +even be remedied, and leave him unprofited by the deed, as well as +disgraced by its discovery. With wonder he asked himself how he could +have ventured to do what he had done, the chances of failure being +so many, the consequences of detection so ruinous, that to think of +them even now sent a cold thrill through him. Since it was done, +however--and he felt no remorse at the deed--he was content enough to +enjoy the fruits, although his successes since had made him in a +measure independent of them; still his uncle's millions when they +came--came to his boy that is, but he ere then would be his +partner--would, added to his own, gain him a position above rivalry; +and even now in expectancy they enhanced his importance. + +Stinson returned with the proceeds of the cheque, and Ralph counted +over two hundred dollars to hand to Paul. His fingers lingered +lovingly over the bits of paper, touching each dollar with a dainty +caress as though he loved it and was sad to part. + +It is strange how a rich man hates to part with money, while the poor +are free and even lavish so far as their little "pile" will go; but +perhaps we only invert the statement of what is a truism, that they +who dislike to part with their money keep it and grow rich, while they +who spend it lavishly grow poor. At any rate, Ralph lingered while he +counted the two hundred dollars, and the thought occurred to him "how +many times more would this have to be done?" Eight years still before +Gerald's money became payable! Sixteen more half-yearly payments of +two hundred dollars each! Thirty-two hundred dollars in all, besides +interest! It seemed monstrous. Could nothing be done? Could he not be +made to take a round sum down, and be bound to keep silence for ever? +No! That had been tried already, and so soon as the money was spent he +came back for more, saying he must live, and if Ralph would not pay, +assuredly the bereaved parents would. And so it had come about that +Paul was grown an annuitant, and came to claim his little income every +six months. + +"Here you are, Paul," growled Ralph, handing over the money with a +sigh; and Paul with a gleam in his eye laid hands upon the roll of +bills which vanished from view forthwith. + +"Say, Paul," speaking in a more insinuating voice, "would it not suit +you better to get a good big lump of money once for all, than to be +coming here so often drawing it by dribs and drabs? If I were to give +you a thousand dollars now, all at once, see how many things you could +do with it! You could open a tavern up the Ottawa and make your +fortune right away, and you would save all the money you spend for +drink besides." + +"Ah!" said Paul, his face lighting up at the inviting picture, and +bending forward with extended palm to receive the largess at once. + +"I con-sent!" + +"Consent to what?" + +"Take ze money." + +"Of course you will, my fine fellow; I know that. And after you have +got rid of it all you will come back to me for more." + +"Promise to come no more." + +"Of course you do! But you will come all the same. The promise don't +count after the money is spent. I have not forgot last time." + +Paul smiled like a man who receives a compliment. Veracity was not his +point of honour. Rather, it was smartness; and to have "done" this +rich and masterful white man seemed an achievement to be proud of. He +stroked his beardless cheeks with a simper of gratified vanity, and +fairly laughed at last, so tickled was he by the recollection of his +cleverness. + +"No! my fine fellow, you don't come it over me again like that!--no +use supposing it. But I'll tell you what I _will_ do, for I like you, +you see, Paul; though I know you're a rascal. I have been thinking +that if that child were to die it would be bad for you. You could not +try it on with me any more by threatening to carry the kid home to its +people, and so your pension would come to an end, and you'd have to go +to work. How would you like that, Paul, you idle dog, after all these +years? So I have been thinking that if that were to happen--the kid's +death, you know--and you could bring me some proof, I would give you a +lump sum and have done with you." + +"If the papoose die?" + +"Yes." + +"You give thousand dollars?--dollars down?" + +"Down on the nail, if you bring proof." + +"How make sure?" + +"You will tell me how it all happened, and I shall know how to verify +the fact." + +"No, no! Make _me_ sure. Thousand dollars." + +"Ha! I see. You want some assurance that I will pay what I say? Don't +see what more assurance I can give than to say so, or what more you +should want. Have I not kept my word with you before?" + +"Ouff"--and Paul plunged into thought where he stood, while Ralph, +impatient to be rid of him, collected his papers and locked them in +his desk, rose, and took his hat and gloves, as if about to go home. + +This brought Paul's reflections to a point. He turned to Ralph with a +grin and a grunt, and held out his hand. + +"Thousand dollars!" he said with another grunt; and when Ralph, +supposing it a fashion of leave-taking, laid some of his fingers +rather gingerly on the extended palm, he caught and shook them +eagerly, saying: + +"Pay down! Pay down! Papoose dead." + +Ralph drew back. + +"Dead! When? Where? Tell me all about it." + +"Dead at Caughnawaga." + +"How long ago?" + +"Ten year--Day 'twas took. Come, see, if you will. _Au-dessous du +plancher_ at my _cabane_--Thousand dollars!" and he held out his hand +again. + +"Ten years ago! And you have been drawing money from me for that +child's support all this time? And never told!" + +Paul looked gratified, and drew himself up like modest genius when at +length its merit is brought to light. Then he chuckled and moved his +fingers as if to poke Ralph in the ribs. The idea of Ralph's having +been so completely fooled was too delicious. + +"But how could it have happened? You cannot mean that you--murdered +the child?" + +"Ouff," grunted Paul, from whose face the grin was fading. His sly +escapade appeared not to be appreciated as it deserved. He placed his +fingers on his throat now, and let his tongue protrude, to describe +the process of strangulation. + +Ralph drew back in horror. It is one thing to entertain the idea of a +crime hypothetically, and even to incite to the deed. The mind busies +itself in contemplating the results, and the act appears but a +circumstance, a necessary one perhaps, but one on which it is +unnecessary to dwell. It is another thing to confront the deed after +it has been done, and can no longer be overlooked, when it has become +a realized infamy, withering and dwindling the profits and results +into worthless Dead Sea fruit. The bloodhound will pursue its prey for +days together, eager to pull him down and bury its fangs in his flesh, +but if in the heat of the chase it should encounter blood, there is an +end, the scent is lost, the hunt ended. And so was Ralph staggered at +what he heard. This child's life had stood in his way, and he had +striven to set it aside. But to think that it had been murdered, and +that his was the finger which touched the spring and set the murderous +machine in motion! No! He _would_ not think it. It was horrible. The +instrument, the over-zealous instrument which had done too much, must +shoulder the responsibility of his own deed; and, for himself, he +would no longer compromise his respectability by having dealings with +such a ruffian, now that it had become quite safe to break with him. +The blood of the little innocent seemed crying out of the ground for +vengeance, and at least he would wash his hands of the murderer, and +not a cent of blood-money should the homicide receive from him. A +virtuous glow diffused itself through Ralph's pulses as these thoughts +passed through his mind in a space far shorter than it takes to write +or read them; indeed there had been little more than the ordinary +conversational pause between Paul's last grunt of assent and +pantomimic signs, and Ralph's reply as he now looked him squarely in +the face with a frown of the severest virtue, and a demeanour of +dignified rebuke which an ignorant onlooker might have hoped would not +be lost on the poor untaught son of the wilderness. + +"And you have been drawing money from me for that child's support all +these years!" He grew indignant as he thought how he had been imposed +upon; and Paul, quenched the moment before, and astonished at his +demeanour, began to pluck up heart again, and the dawn of a smile at +his own cleverness began to re-appear on his wooden visage; but it +faded again as Ralph proceeded: + +"Do you know that what you have been accusing yourself of is a hanging +offence? A cruel, cowardly murder of a helpless infant? But I will not +be made accessory after the fact! I am done with you, Paul!--Go!--Do +you hear me? Git!" + +Paul looked in his face amazed. What had he meant then when he +promised him money to bring news of the child's death? He was about to +speak, but Ralph stopped him before, in his stupefaction, he could +find words. + +"Go! I say. And never let me see you again. Or----! You can guess +yourself what will happen." + +Confused, crestfallen and crushed, Paul withdrew. A new view of the +inscrutable ways of the great white man had been given him. He could +only draw a great breath in his helplessness and go his way. The white +folks were too much for him, that was the one idea which penetrated +his darkened mind. They would make use of him when they wanted him, +and then cast him aside; but for the future he promised himself to +keep out of their way. + +Ralph coughed and drew on his gloves, not ill-pleased, at the last, at +the turn which affairs had taken, and hurried off to catch the +afternoon train for St. Euphrase, where his family were spending the +summer at a smart new villa which he had built a year or two before. + + + + + CHAPTER XI. + + MAHOMET AND KADIJAH. + + +Ralph Herkimer reached the station as the train was about to start. M. +Rouget was in the act of assisting his wife and daughter into the +parlour car, and Ralph sprang in after him just as the train moved +from the platform. M. Rouget owned the seigniory of La Hache, on the +outskirts of St. Euphrase, an outlying fragment of which Ralph had +purchased and built upon, hoping that with the other products of the +soil there would spring up an intimacy with the Rouget family, +and thereby an entrance to that French circle which so few +English-speaking Canadians ever penetrate. Not that that circle is +more wealthy, or of necessity more cultured than others on the great +American continent; but language, religion, and customs make it less +accessible and more exclusive, and therefore, like other things +difficult, both desirable and distinguished. A certain prescriptive +precedence, too, naturally attaches to the first comers everywhere, if +only they are strong enough to enforce it; and it must be remembered +that these Lower Canada seigniors represent the earliest settlers, and +as a body are the only approach to a landed aristocracy in North +America. North America, it is true, is the chosen home of democracy +and equality; but democratic equality--what is it? Does it not mean, +my brother, that you are on no pretext whatever to claim any sort of +betterness over _me_, while _I_, if I can secure distinction or +superiority am to be protected in the enjoyment of my acquisition; for +is it not a free and a law-abiding country that we live in? Witness +the army of the decorated in democratic France! or the shoals of +colonels, generals, and judges in the United States. Such is +democracy. _You_ must have nothing which I have not, but _I_ may take +whatever I can lay my hands on; and you, sir, are to bow down to me +for having it. It is the autocrat's crown cut up in slices, and placed +on the head of every one self-asserting enough to wear his fraction. + +Ralph had made money--secured a substantial hunch of the bread of +subsistence, and now he was minded to butter it with all the social +distinctions and advantages he could attain to. M. Rouget passed up +the car before him, preceded by madame and the demoiselle, his +daughter. These ladies had not called upon Ralph's wife on her coming +to reside in the neighbourhood; but then Martha, as he told himself, +though a worthy creature, and one who had made him an excellent wife +in his day of small things, was scarcely equal to the promotion which +had overtaken her. She was undeniably diffident and undistinguished; +perhaps even dowdy, he added with a sigh, as the fresh crisp dresses +of the French ladies, befringed, bebugled, and "relieved" with +streamers of lace and ribbon, swam on in front of him. He would claim +his neighbour's acquaintance, he thought, who doubtless would +introduce him to his family; and then he doubted not he should make +himself so pleasant that the ladies would re-consider their previous +reserve and call on Martha forthwith. Already he saw himself at La +Hache, invited to meet Monseigneur the Archbishop and the Honourable +the Minister of Drainage and Irrigation, whom after that, if he were +but civil, he should feel bound to support at future elections, though +hitherto he had voted _rouge_. + +So quick is thought, all this and more had flashed through his mind, +illustrated with _vignettes_ of gracious smiling ladies and +gesticulating Frenchmen--the prismatic glintings of a snob's beatific +vision--and he had not yet reached the middle of the car. M. Rouget +was walking on before. Another step and he would overtake him. Already +his hand was raised to touch the seignior's arm, when, hsh!--the prod +of a parasol point dexterously planted in the small of his back made +him start, exclaim, stop, and turn round. + +In the corner of a sofa he had passed, a wizened little woman, +somewhat dusty and tumbled was smiling, to him from under the frizzes +of her false front, wide-mouthedly smiling, till every gold pin in her +best set of teeth shone in the slanting sunbeams of the afternoon. She +held out a clawlike hand in a cotton glove, by way of welcome, making +room on the sofa beside her, and dropping the parasol point, as the +wild Indian lays down his tomahawk in sign of amity. + +"Judy!" said Ralph in some disgust; but while he spoke he saw the +Rouget party seat themselves with some friends, and recognized that +the opportunity for his little _coup_ was past, so he recovered +himself and dropped into the place so effusively offered. + +"And how come _you_ to be here, ma'am? The general car does not seem +over-crowded. If the treasurer of the diocesan fund were to see you +travelling in parlour cars, he would doubt the need of that +augmentation we have been petitioning for." + +"It would be just like him if he did. He is mean enough for anything +in the way of prying into the private affairs of the rural clergy. I +wonder how he would like it himself? Still, there _are_ a few whose +goings on he might inquire into more closely. But he has favourites. I +wish Synod would make a change." + +"But they will say _you_ are a favourite if you travel in this +regardlessly extravagant way." + +"Let them, if they dare! But there is no fear of that. They cannot but +know that on the five hundred dollars of stipend they allow Mr. Bunce, +a clergyman's family cannot travel at all, except on foot; and even +that takes more shoe leather than they can afford. They understand +perfectly well, that, but for my little income, Mr. Bunce could not +have afforded to accept the parish of St. Euphrase at all--a fact +which is no credit to our church. And I think, Ralph, it would have +been more respectful to Mr. Bunce, and kinder to me, if you had not +alluded to our pecuniary circumstances. We cannot all be brokers, you +must remember." + +"Beg pardon, Judy. No offence. And you remind me that I have not yet +inquired after the health of my respected uncle," he added with an +impertinent laugh. "I hope he is well." + +Ralph's acquisition of an uncle on his Aunt Judith's marriage was +rather an ancient ground of amusement by this time, for the marriage +had taken place years before; but the idea of his maiden aunt created +a wife, and the cleric, his junior, transformed into his uncle, was a +perennial joke, from which time and familiarity could not rub the +point. His other uncle, Gerald, had been one to make a nephew quail; +and that this mild, shaven, unwealthy, and, so far, youthful parson +should have stepped into the redoubtable title, was inexhaustibly +droll. It is notable how long the same quip and jest will serve to +tickle the busy man engrossed in material interests; but in this case +there was the excuse that the Bunces really were an oddly-assorted +pair. A stranger could not but have inquired how they had come to +marry each other--she, so mature, he, with his drab-coloured hair and +round smooth cheeks. "Cherubical," his bride had called the cheeks to +her bridesmaid in a moment of enthusiasm and confidence; but they were +too loose and pasty to deserve the title, or if not, the cherub must +have been out of health--cloyed with ambrosia perhaps, or too much +nectar, in the Elysian Fields. + +Judith herself had rejuvenated, or brightened, perhaps, since we saw +her first, with hair and clothing severely plain, and a look of +reproving superiority to all things pleasant. She was an old young +woman in those days, and now she was a young old one. Then, leanness +and the tight-drawn skin prevented the crows' feet round the eyes from +being strongly marked, and the low-toned colouring harmonized in its +way with the grizzling of the hair; now, with some gain of adipose +tissue, and the relaxed tension incident to a mind relieved from the +imaginary reproach of spinsterhood, the lines and creases showed quite +clearly, like ripple marks on the sand left by the ebbing waves of +time. The hair, too, with its faded browns sympathizing with the +greyness of the flesh tints was changed; for now the lady shone in a +new capillary outfit, and seemingly, when buying it, she had chosen to +revert to the livelier colouring of her youth. The "front," "bang," +"fringe," or whatever she may have called it, was of a cheerful +gingerbread hue, which quenched any lingering lustre of the eye, or +aspiration toward pinkness in the cheek, and gave her somewhat the +look of a mummy, which, after ages wasted in darkness, comes forth +again to taste the happiness of life, and the warmth of the upper +world. + +The love tale of these two had no doubt been as thrilling an idyl to +themselves as that of any pair of nightingales in all Arcadia, but it +appeared rather a drab-coloured romance, or, better, no romance at +all, to their friends, who opened their eyes in blank amaze when the +project of marriage was announced, and vowed the strangely-assorted +couple had lost their wits. Judith, the severely Protestant virgin of +St. Silas, to the High Church--the very high--curate of St. +Wittikind's! It seemed incredible. It was true that for some time she +had visited a good deal among the poor of St. Wittikind's parish, +frequented its schools, guilds and sisterhoods, where things were +conducted not precisely as the good people of St. Silas thought best; +but still that was "Church work," and as she continued to distribute +tracts as copiously as ever in the Catholic neighbourhood selected by +the St. Silas' ladies as their experimental farm of controversy, they +had agreed to regard the vagary as only showing great breadth of view, +and a largely comprehensive charity, which they hoped would lead to +reciprocity, and bring some darkling wanderer from the other pen to +their own better-lighted fold. + +The reality of the case was far otherwise. Miss Judith had a leisure +and energy ravenous of occupation, and which would not be filled up, +and appeased with fancy-work, and dispensing printed leaves to French +people who could not understand what she said. These are pleasing +occupations, but they grow monotonous after a time. She had tried +improving her mind, too, a good work, but it postulates a mind capable +of being improved by printed matter, and the minds of many who have +done the world's work, and done it well, have not been of that kind. +Miss Judith's mind was practical rather than contemplative, and her +studies did not go great lengths, while nature had blessed her with a +sustaining self-content. When her book wearied her she laid it down +and sought some other occupation--somebody else to improve, when her +own mind had had enough of it. Her sister Susan declined her offices, +knowing the teacher too well to set much store by the lessons, and +therefore she had to carry her instructions farther afield. + +Such is the sad lot of spinsterhood in modern life, when woman misses +her natural vocation of house-mother, and fortune exempts her from the +need to earn her living. The instincts and traits which society for +its own entertainment encouraged and cultivated in youth lose their +power to please when bloom and sprightliness have vanished. Then the +love of applause and excitement so attractive in the youthful beauty +turn like famished hounds on their forsaken mistress, and rend her own +heart when she can furnish them no other game. She has been taught to +think highly of herself, and to claim much, and she may have learned +the world and its lessons well, but the world has grown weary of her, +and goes its way in search of a fresher plaything. There is tragedy in +this of the unspoken kind, but it is so common, and it drags its +course so slowly--for people do not easily die of spinsterhood--that +we fail to note the restless gnawing of hearts and brains condemned to +inaction, and only laugh at the _bizarrerie_, when, growing +intolerable, it breaks out into lady-doctors of divinity, law, or +physic. + +When Judith made the acquaintance of the Rev, Dionysius Bunce, it was +with something of the trepidation with which an explorer clambers up +the side of an unknown volcano. "Could he be a Jesuit in disguise, as +some people said?" she wondered, "or was he a well-meaning but +uninstructed person who had lost his way, and now unwittingly was +travelling the broad and flowery road, whose course is ever downward, +and which leads, we all know whither?" What an achievement it would be +could she lead back the wanderer, if indeed he were astray! Or if he +were, as she had been taught to think, a wolf in sheep's clothing, +what a privilege to unmask him and save true Protestantism from his +insidious wiles! + +But there was a single-minded earnestness in this young man which +interested her from the first, and soon assured her he was no Jesuit; +and he was so strangely willing to listen, to discuss, and even to +admit that there might be much in her view of a question. This was new +to Judith, whose guides hitherto, knowing all about everything, had +tolerated no differences of opinion, and had shown her the path of +orthodoxy laid down with square and compass from which no one must +venture to diverge under pain of running up against some text of +Scripture, set like a curbstone by the wayside, to the peril of unwary +wheels meandering off the track. Dionysius was self-denying in his +charity, too. He would give his dinner to the poor any day, instead of +dining first and bestowing the leavings, as is more usual; and +self-denial is a virtue which enthusiastic women delight in. +Enthusiasm is catching, and when it has caught, it makes scattered +units run together and cohere like drops of quicksilver. Judith had +caught it from him as had the members of his guilds; and they worked +away with a happy feeling of earnestness which made things very +pleasant, and over-rode all misgivings as to whether the dance were +worth the candle, or at least as to the usefulness or wisdom of what +they were about. + +Judith was drawn by the fervour of St. Wittikind's curate into +visiting his poor, and even decorating his sanctuary--a Low Church +lady actually embroidering crosses and polemical symbols!--and yet in +her new frame of mind it did not occur to her she had at first +discussed with disapproval the use of papistical emblems. He had +treated her view with every respect while differing from it, and then +had talked round the point to the other side, and shown the amiable +and pious feeling in which such things may be done when looked at the +other way, till Judith, won by his toleration, could not but be +tolerant too, and actually joined in the work. + +It must have been this mixture of docility and independence which won +on Dionysius, and recalled the sacred feelings with which in his +boyhood he had regarded a venerable aunt and a saintly mother both +deceased. He was a young man of a pre-eminently earnest cast of mind, +which turned churchwards. He greatly admired and fain would have +copied the saints and heroes of early times. Had the Church of Canada +kept a wilderness for retiring into, like the Thebæid of antiquity, he +would have turned hermit; or had there been some real genuine pagans +within its confines he would have been a missionary; but the Indian of +the North-West, part horse-thief, part fur-trader, and altogether +indifferent, offers no opening to aspirants to the rank of martyr or +confessor; so he was forced to do like the rest, and stay at home. + +He did what he could in St. Wittikind's, but it was discouraging work. +The men there were mostly wealthy, and all engrossed in business. They +could not be induced to attend either daily matins or evensong, and +though scrupulously polite when he approached them, were sure to have +an important appointment somewhere, and forced to hurry away. The +young ladies of course were ready, nay charmed, to attend matins or +anything else, provided the hour was reasonable and there had been no +ball overnight. Evensong he found unpopular with them, as interfering +with "home duties," to wit afternoon tea; but they were eager for +"Church work," at least in the shape of elaborate embroideries in gold +thread and ecclesiastical patterns. If Dionysius would have interested +himself in croquet or lawn tennis, or if he would have nourished a +taste for music of a form less severe than Gregorians, he would have +come to have influence; but the young man at that stage of his growth +was too single-minded to have any mistress but Religion; and Mrs. +Silvertongue, his rector's worldly-minded wife, was heard to compare +him to a shaggy young Baptist broke loose from the desert, when Judith +rushed to the rescue by declaring that he seemed to be a very sound +Churchman indeed, and everybody laughed at both the ladies. + +As years went on, the intimacy grew closer. Judith found it delightful +to be busy and of importance--to be authorized to interfere with +people too poor to dare resent it; telling them what they must do, +scolding and physicking them as seemed best, and really being kind, +though in a provoking way; consulting with a clergyman, talking and +being listened to by a gentleman with interest and respect. It was so +very long ago since any gentleman had shown interest in her +conversation, or anything but weariness, and now this ordained pastor +sometimes even consulted her. It made her feel that she was not yet +all of the past, that there was something to live for still, and +afforded some of the old time satisfaction in being minded by one of +the stronger sex, mixed at once with the reverence she owed a +spiritual guide, and motherly interest in one so much her junior. + +Dionysius, too, grew attached, though not precisely in the same way as +if she had been twenty years younger. He was so good a young man, and +so shy, that he failed, perhaps, to fill all the social uses of a +curate, and grew somewhat out of intimacy with the younger ladies of +his cure, who, though they saw him daily at matins, had learned not to +look for his presence at garden parties and afternoon teas. Judith +listened to him with so ardent an interest that he forgot his +diffidence and reserve in conversing with her, and grew even eloquent +at times, as he knew by the admiring reverence in her face; and then, +in the gratification of appreciated merit, he would forget the +disparity in their ages, and hail her as a sister spirit travelling +the same heavenward road with himself. And so they continued to fare +on together in amity and trust, the brother uttering words of wisdom, +the sister accepting them humbly, and ignorant that they were leading +her far from the truth according to St. Silas, where with her sister +on Sundays she still went to church; for Judith's theological mind was +of the emotional not the argumentative sort; though she loved to use +the party catch-words, and believed she set great store by them, they +conveyed to her no clearly defined ideas. Warmth was what she longed +for, and friendship, and these she drew most readily from the curate +of St. Wittikind. + +The intimacy between the two might have gone on for ever unchanged, +but at length Dionysius fell ill, and then the crisis in their +friendship and their lives arrived. Judith called regularly at her +friend's lodging to inquire for his health. By-and-by she had messages +to carry him from his poor, she sat down by his bedside and conversed, +and he declared himself so much refreshed by her visit that it would +have been inhuman if she had not called again. She did call again, and +again; and by-and-by she fell into the way of bringing jellies and +little dainties to tempt the sick man's appetite. One day as he was +dining on a warm and greasy broth, misnamed beef tea, he laid it down +scarce tasted on her entrance, and with manifest disrelish pushed it +away. Judith peered and sniffed at the ungrateful preparation, and +pressed him to try her jelly instead. "I know how beef-tea should be +made, and I shall bring your landlady a supply, and then she will only +have to warm a little from time to time as you want it." + +The next day Judith arrived, carrying upstairs with difficulty a large +stone jar in a basket. In the study, which was also the ante-chamber +to the sick-room, she encountered the landlady coming out. Mrs. +McQuirter looked her full in the face, flushing indignantly and eyeing +with a sniff and a toss of the head the jar which Judith was lifting +with difficulty to the table. + +"Good morning, Mrs. McQuirter," said Judith in her most conciliatory +manner. + +"Morning, miss," replied the other with a side-long glance which was +far from friendly. + +"How do you think Mr. Bunce is to-day, Mrs. McQuirter?" + +"Guess you're going in, miss, and will see for yourself; so there's no +good me telling you. You'd be sure to think you knew a deal better," +and she sailed towards the door in her grandest style; then turning as +if an idea had struck her, and as if fearing that she had not already +been sufficiently provoking, she added: + +"Say, miss! Is that sleigh as brought you and your basket still at the +door? We've a deal of old crockery here as don't belong to us, and +we'd be right glad to be rid on. Odd bowls, and plates, and chipped +jelly glasses as don't match our sets, and make me feel kind o' mean +when neighbours come in at dish-washing time with their 'Laws, Mrs. +McQuirter, now! and where in goodness did you ever pick up all them +cracked dishes?' If you're agreeable, I will just get 'em all together +and send them back by the carman before they get broke, for it 'ud +cost more than the valy of all the messes they brought here to replace +'em with new." + +Judith felt indignant, and coloured deeply, but as to reply in kind +would have been to raise a dragon in the path to her friend's bedside, +she restrained herself, and merely answered: "By all means, Mrs. +McQuirter. Kindly help me to lift this jar out of the basket, and then +you can take it." + +"And what may you be bringing here in your large crock, miss?" asked +the landlady contemptuously. It seemed so impossible to irritate this +old maid into the scolding match she thirsted for, that she was +growing to despise as well as detest her. + +"This is some beef-tea--a most excellent form in which to give +nourishment to invalids like Mr. Bunce." + +"Beef-tea, indeed! It's more like half-melted glue to look at. Ugh!" + +"Quite natural in you to say so, Mrs. McQuirter. So few people know +what beef-tea really should be like. It is the strength of the stock, +which has jellied in cooling, that gives it the appearance you allude +to. If you will just warm a cupful in a saucepan as it is wanted, +without letting it boil, you will find it delicious. Try a little of +it yourself, I know you will like it." + +"Not me! And do you know, miss, how many large knuckles of beef I have +boiled into tea in the last ten days? And scarce a drop has he let +pass his lips! All clean gone to waste. I don't hold with beef-tea for +Mr. Bunce no ways. He seems to hate it like pizen." + +"I am not surprised at his having refused the decoction I saw sent up +to him yesterday," said Judith with a relish. It seemed that +notwithstanding her forbearance she was to have an innings, and she +meant to use it in truly Christian fashion; not to exult openly, but +to rub any blistering truth which came to hand well into the bone. "In +making beef-tea all fat is carefully removed, and the meat is then +placed in a jar with salt and cold water, near the fire, where it must +stand for hours without boiling or even simmering. Now, really, Mrs. +McQuirter," and she dipped a teaspoon in the jar, "just taste how good +it is! If you will warm a cup or so of it two or three times a day I +am confident you will have no difficulty in getting Mr. Bunce to drink +it." + +"I think I see me trying it, miss! And it shows your assurance to be +evening me to the like. You are but a young lady yet, so to say, +though you were born ten years before myself, I guess, as am the +mother of six--leastways you are but an old maid, when all is said, +and to take upon you to tell me how to make beef-tea! Me, as am the +mother of six, and has buried a good husband. And many a bowl of my +beef-tea the poor man drank, and him lying on the very feather bed +where the parson lies now." + +"And he died, Mrs. McQuirter? I am not surprised," said Miss Judith, +thinking more of her argument and less of conciliation as the talk +went on. "I observed the mixture yesterday when Mr. Bunce was unable +to swallow it--a mere mixture of grease and warm water. Do you not +know that at boiling point albumen coagulates, and becomes insoluble, +like the white of a hard-boiled egg? You would not expect the water +you boil eggs in to be very nourishing? Your beef-tea is just like +that, and if your late husband's dietary contained no more nourishing +items, I cannot wonder that he did not survive." + +"You owdacious old maid, you! How daar you? To insinniwate that me as +has fairly slaved for my man and his children had a hand to his taking +off. But I'll have the law of you, I will! and I take Mr. Bunce in +there as must have heard ye, if he's awake yet, to witness that you +said it. Me, the mother of six, to be insulted and put upon by an old +thing as never was able to get married at all! And it shows the men's +good sense, that same. And here you come with your broths and your +messes after my poor young gentleman, as is laid on the broad of his +back, and too sick to run away from you like the rest. And it's a +disgrace to your sect, you are, miss! for all your silk, and your +sealskin, and me but a poor lone widdy with a quiet lodger--to be +coming here at all hours acourting a gentleman as don't want you--you +that are old enough to be his grandmother and should be at home making +your soul, for your change as must come before long, 'stead of running +that shameless after the men to make them marry you." + +"Oh!" was all that Judith could utter, throwing up her black gloved +hands to the ceiling and then dropping in a heap on a stool in the +corner and burying her face in her handkerchief. The wordy hurricane +had fallen on the flower--an elderflower--and beaten it down and +crushed it; and there she cowered in her confusion, convulsed with +sobs, while the hurricane whistled but the more wildly in its triumph, +and would fain have scattered and dispersed the ruin it had already +made. + +"And well may you hide your face after sich ongoings! and it don't +become one as sets up for quality to have done the like; to be coming +here a worritting of a poor young gentleman to marry her, as it's +quite oncertain if he will see the light of next week! Or is it that +you think you will make the people say he has treated you bad if he +don't, after you coming here so often? But the people knows better, +miss! and they say you're too old for him; and that you've been +worritting around him that long, it's a fair amazement between his +patience and your perseverance whatever comes of it. The very rector +of the parish takes notice on it, and the rector's lady says its +shameless the way you go on to make him marry you!" + +"Silence, Mrs. McQuirter! with your bad and cruel tongue." + +Mrs. McQuirter turned and stood aghast. The door of the sleeping-room +had opened without noise, and framed in the opening stood Dionysius, +like the picture of his canonized namesake stepped out of some Gothic +window. One arm was thrust into the sleeve of a purple dressing-gown +which was wrapped about him, leaving exposed his chest and other arm +clothed in their snowwhite sleeping gear. Excitement caused by the +altercation he must have overheard, and the exertion of rising had +brought a feverish flush to his cheeks, burning into hectic spots amid +the pallor of illness, and there was a lustre in his eye, which could +the world have seen, it would have reconsidered its judgment of his +appearance as ordinary and commonplace. + +"How dare you address my kind visitor--my friend--in the wicked words +I have heard you use?" + +Mrs. McQuirter was taken aback; but being now, to use her own phrase, +"in for it," as having sinned beyond forgiveness, and sure to lose her +lodger, it seemed best to retreat in good order, and show neither fear +nor remorse. + +"What a lone widdy like me says, Mr. Bunce, ain't of no 'count to a +gentleman like you, sir, and I have always done my very best to make +you comfortable, so my mind's easy. It's what the rector's lady says, +and the quality in your church, and if you like to have them speaking +that way of you and that--that female there, as is ashamed to look an +honest woman in the face, 'taint no affairs of mine." + +Judith felt as if she would gladly die, and sank from the stool to the +carpet in a collapsed heap. If the ground would have opened and +swallowed her, how thankful she would have been; but it did not, and +she could but bury her face deeper in her lap. + +"The lady you have presumed to scandalize so shamefully," the curate +resumed, "has called here at my earnest request. If I could induce her +to come more frequently she would be even more welcome; and in case +you should still have any doubts, let me tell you plainly that if this +lady would condescend to accept me, there is no one I would so gladly +make my wife. Now! I have said all that can possibly interest you. +Leave the room instantly, and close the door." + +The door closed behind Mrs. McQuirter and the two were left together. +Judith's confusion was too great to permit her to lift her head, but +there was a tremor of expectancy in the heap of silk and sealskin into +which she had collapsed, which made itself felt in the surrounding +air. She had ceased to sob, and became all ear. Even the silk of her +gown, though she was crouched so close that to draw breath without a +movement seemed impossible, forbore to rustle. + +Dionysius stood still in his white and purple like a Gothic saint, but +less erect now that the impulse of battle had spent itself. He stood a +committed man, yet a man who has not yet spoken, shivering on the +brink of the proposal which he has bound himself to make. You remember +the feeling, my married friend, when the words grew too unwieldy to +articulate, and there was a pause. The leading up to the grand climax +had been achieved, the lady and the universe were waiting, the very +next word must be the word of fate, and you were not dreaming of +drawing back, but still it lingered; and oh! the effort it took to +launch that ill-formed sentence! Dionysius stood, and his strength was +waning. Before him there was the prostrate heap of clothing which +waited but made no sign, and the air around was still and listening. +The very fire forgot to blaze and crackle, and looked at him silently +in red unblinking expectation. Only the clock on the mantelpiece went +on unmoved, counting the fleeting seconds as they sped with +dispassionate calmness. They were slipping away, and so too was his +strength, and yet he had not spoken. + +"Judith," he said at last with a great effort; but when he had so far +found his voice the words came easier. + +"Judith, my fr----Judith!" and he went and laid a tremulous hand upon +her shoulder. "You have heard the words I spoke to Mrs. McQuirter. +Will you forgive me that I should thus have declared myself in the +presence of a stranger before having spoken to yourself. Believe me, +dear, it was from no disrespect, no lack of appreciation; but you know +how we have been with each other. Our close fellowship in the higher +life may have made us forgetful of mere earthly relations, but we must +remedy that now. This foolish woman, with her idle tongue, has spoken +words of more wisdom than she knew, and if we are to be companions on +the heavenward way, is it not well that our earthly paths should be +united?" + +A thrill ran all through Judith's frame. He felt her tremble beneath +his hand, but still she did not lift her head. + +"Judith, my own dear, you must marry me! It is necessary for your good +name. If that is not enough to move you, it is necessary for mine. I +will not have them say that I could trifle with a woman's regard. +Though what care we, either you or I, for people's idle talk? Have we +not been walking hand-in-hand, each helping and supporting the other +to live aright? And has not our companionship been for good to both? +Let us marry, Judith! and silence babbling tongues. It will be best +so. Look up, my friend, and answer. And yet, Judith, I must own it, I +am poor. I have nothing but the stipend of my curacy; and when the +poor, my brothers, have had their share, and my yearly bills are paid, +there is nothing over. Not a cent. It will explain to you how I never +came to think of marriage before." + +Then Judith raised her face suffused with blushes, and lighted with a +happy eager look which had not been seen there before in twenty years; +and under the transfiguring influence of an unexpected joy, she looked +for the moment almost beautiful. So, when the fogs and rain of autumn +have spent their strength, and the frosts of winter still linger in +their coming, there fall halcyon days, when nature, not yet stripped +bare of flower and foliage, blooms out again in her Indian summer. The +trees are hung with wreaths of gold-bright leaves, or garlanded with +crimson, the sod renewed by rains after the summer scorchings, is +green with a greenness unseen at other times; the garden is still +cheered by marigolds and asters, larkspur and phlox, and the sky and +the waters have a sunny blueness, shining but the brighter for the +smoky grey which conceals the distance--the distance which harbours +winter, tempest, rain, too soon to be let loose. + +A tear was quivering on Judith's eyelash. A happy sob gave a tremor to +her voice when she tried to speak. + +"Dionysius. And do you mean it? Marry--marry me! But it is only your +gentlemanly feeling which will not have me talked about. I dare not +take you at your word, however--however much--I might----" and her +colour deepened, and the drops rained down, and again she hid her +face. + +"Indeed, it is not so, Judith. You may indeed believe me--if only you +will have it so. And we have been so much to each other--and now we +must be nothing any more, unless you will consent to marry." + +Judith moved as if trying to gain her feet, and Dionysius took her +hand to lend assistance, and so it came about that they stood with +their arms entwined. Judith's head dropped on the curate's shoulder, +and felt as if it would gladly linger there for ever. And he, the lady +clinging and half-supported in his arms, had a vague sense of heroic +worth and power as man; standing thus before the universe, lord of +another life besides his own; and many other feelings, surging and +confused, which would not lend themselves to words. And little more +was said, though much was understood and agreed between them; and +by-and-by the striking of the clock recalled them to common life, and +both sat down. Then Dionysius, exhausted with excitement, grew faint +and returned to his room. + +Judith lingered till she was assured that the faintness was wearing +off, and then she stole softly downstairs on her way home. Softly as +she stepped, however, she was overheard, and ere she could reach the +door, Mrs. McQuirter stood before her blocking the way; but it was +Mrs. McQuirter in a different part from the one she had played so +lately. Then, she was the dragon landlady ready to devour an intrusive +and defenceless spinster, now she was the lone widow, the mother of +six. One little toddler held on to her gown, she led another by the +hand, while her other hand held a napkin saturated with the moisture +which ran from her streaming eyes and bedewed her face. + +"Oh, miss!" she cried with a sob, and the little ones piped a small +chorus of sympathy, "I was wishful to speak to you as you went out, to +make it up with you for what I said upstairs. And I'm free to confess, +miss, it was not my place to speak the way I did. But I'm hot by +nature, miss, and when once I begin, my tongue runs clean away from +me. But I bear no malice, miss, as John McQuirter often said. 'She +bears no malice,' he'd say, and them's his very words." + +"It is of no consequence, Mrs. McQuirter; I'm willing to overlook," +and Judith endeavoured to slide past in the narrow hallway, but the +little ones, with faces damp and sticky, and threatening damage to any +article of apparel which might rub against them in passing, blocked +the way. + +"And it's good of you to say so much, miss; and it does credit to Mr. +Bunce's choice. And oh, Miss! you'll remember, will you not? I'm a +lone widdy, and the mother of six! And it's hoping you'll have a fine +family of your own some day," which made Judith blush. "And you won't +be for allowing Mr. Bunce to change his lodging, and all along of a +few thoughtless words, as I'm truly sorry for the saying on. You won't +now? Will'e, miss? Like a dear." + +"I have told you, already, Mrs. McQuirter, I shall overlook the +offence. Mr. Bunce is too ill to think of moving. He feels quite faint +after the disturbance you caused him, and he needs nourishment. You +had better warm him a cupful of that beef-tea I brought. Warm it in a +saucepan, but don't let it boil; and send up a few sippets of dry +toast along with it. The sooner you can let him have it the better." +And having prescribed this penance to the spirit-broken mother of six, +she got away. + +It was near the end of Lent before the secret of the engagement was +divulged, though the wedding was to be immediately after Easter; but +then a storm of ridicule arose which could not but offend those most +interested. Judith's own family were as provokingly sarcastic as any +one in the churches of St. Silas or St. Wittikind, and that is saying +much. It became clear to the young couple that they must leave the +city; so Dionysius resigned his curacy and accepted the small +missionary parish of St. Euphrase. The emoluments there were less than +he had enjoyed in the city, but his wife was possessed of a modest +competency, on which in that sequestered place, they contrived to live +in comfort and respect. + +If the taste in which Judith had endeavoured to rejuvenate her +appearance was doubtful, the acquisition of a spouse had still had the +best influence in softening and sweetening her nature, and her +gratitude and devotion to the man who had looked on her in her +loneliness were pleasant to see. For him, it was only after marriage +and the worship which it brought him at his own fireside, that it +began to dawn on Mr. Bunce what a very superior man he must surely be, +and he felt beholden to his helpmate for making the discovery. So +Mahomet no doubt, felt to the elderly Kadijah, his first wife, the +earliest of his converts, and the first to recognize him as a prophet. +In after years he married women younger and more beautiful, but none +ever held a place so high in his affection as the wealthy widow who +had married him in his poverty and youth. + + + + + CHAPTER XII. + + A GARDEN TEA. + + +It was on the same afternoon as that referred to, previous to the long +digression in the last chapter, but perhaps a trifle earlier, though +the torrid glare of mid-day had passed, and the cool shadows below the +trees had begun to creep eastward on the shaven lawn. The air was full +of warmth and sunshine, with just stir enough to move the aspen leaves +upon the tree, and scatter more faint and widely the scent of roses +beyond the alleys, where it hung in drowsy sweetness, mingling with +the droning of bees and inviting to mid-day sleep, that crowning +deliciousness of summer weather. + +The Misses Stanley were in their grounds, and they had friends. They +were in their grounds, that is to say in a shady corner of the lawn by +the house, where three or four grand hemlocks, survivors of the +forest, spread out umbrageous arms over a glimmering arcade of gloom, +where never sunbeam stole, and the shady air was fresh with the +fragrant breath of resins drawn from the upper branches by the sun. +There, lounging on cane chairs and garden seats, they plied their +fans calmly, and chatted, but not too much or loud, in sociable +repose. It was early in July, when everything is green and fresh and +vigorous--bud, bloom, and spray instinct with brimming life, and not a +yellowing leaf to tell of memories or regret, all hope and promise and +delight in the flowery present and the fruitful days to come. Great +butterflies were tumbling in the brightness, and there was a low +continuous murmur in the grass from the thousand living things too +small to be separately or distinctly heard; and ever and anon from +around the banks of shrubs would come the gurgling laughter of +youthful voices, so lightsome in its freedom from care and adult +emotion. + +There were six of them, those youthful ones, whose merry voices +disturbed the slumbrous heat, walking or running, heedless alike of +shade and sunshine, their hands full of roses. Muriel was one of them, +the ladies' niece, and Tilly Martindale, Miss Matilda's goddaughter, +and Betsey Bunce, a niece of the rector, and so a sort of cousin to +the family. There was Gerald Herkimer, Ralph's only child, whose +mother Martha was sitting with the ladies in the shade, and Randolph +Jordan, the son of Matilda's friend Amelia who was sitting by her at +that moment. And, last, there was Pierre Bruneau, a black-eyed +_habitant_ boy, the son of Jean, who managed the farm. He had been +working in the garden, and seeing Muriel, had found some small service +to render her, and had lingered near, unconscious of the sidelong +glances of her companions. She had given him her flowers to carry and +bade him bring them to the house, and he, intoxicated with their +fragrance, or rather, perhaps, at being permitted to carry them for +his mistress when the young gentlemen were by, joined gaily in the +general laughter, and even ventured to put in a jest in his queer +French-English, to the amusement and placation of the not over-well +pleased company. + +They were all between fifteen and seventeen years old, all except +Muriel. Muriel was eleven, and all the promise of her babyhood, which +had dropped so unexpectedly into the ladies' arms, had been more than +fulfilled. The roses and the butterflies were pale dim things beside +her, as she skipped among the rest, her long hair shining like threads +of gold where it caught the light, and melting into a warm shadow +beneath the leaf of her spreading garden-hat, from beneath whose brim +there shone a pair of eyes luminous in their glee and innocency, +penetrating without sharpness and soft without being dull; lips short, +red, and parted, displaying teeth small, regular, well apart, like a +string of evenly-assorted pearls. + +The fête was hers--her birthday it was called--and in reality it was +the anniversary of her appearance in her present life, on the night +after the thunderstorm, when the ladies had found her on their +doorsteps. Penelope, prudent and timid, would rather have left the day +unmarked, in case talk should arise; but Matilda, emboldened by +success in her plan of adoption, insisted that fears were now idle, +"that their darling must keep her birthday like other children, and +that it would be unthankful to the good Providence who had sent the +little one to brighten their humdrum lives, if they kept the feast on +any other day." Besides, what was there to fear? Every servant in the +house had been changed over and over in the ten years which had +intervened since then; even Smithers the nurse, who had stayed the +longest, was gone these three years, and she had not only been paid to +hold her tongue, but was too fond of the child to let slip a word +which could injure her. Only Bruneau and his family remained about the +place, and they were such quiet and respectful _habitants_ they would +not babble; and even if they would, who could understand them? The +servants did not understand French, and Jean's and his wife's English +was so awkward and hard to come, they never spoke to any of them if it +could be avoided. There was the boy Pierre, to be sure, "But remember, +sister, how respectful he has always been, even when, years ago, we +used to send for him to come and play with Muriel; and now that he has +grown big and able to work, he seems to pay far more attention to the +orders she gives him than to any of ours." So Penelope shrugged her +shoulders with a sigh, as she always did in the end when Matilda was +"positive," and yielded the point. + +"What a pretty, graceful child Muriel is," said Mrs. Martindale, +Tilly's mother, a widow. They had come from Montreal for the fête. + +"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Jordan, "she will make a sensation in +Montreal when you bring her out, Matilda; but that is some years in +the future yet. The other girls had better make haste and arrange +themselves before she appears," and she glanced at Mrs. Martindale, +which was gratuitously unkind, seeing that Tilly, being only fifteen, +would not appear in the world for two winters to come, and she +promised to be a remarkably fine girl, and in quite a different style. +But then her boy Randolph had been essaying to pipe his first small +note for ladies' ears in those of the damsel, and she, though not yet +out, was grown woman enough to desiderate whiskers or a moustache in +an admirer, and to scorn with youth's uncompromising freedom the +advances of a callow swain of her own tender years. Ten years later, +how different her views will be! But so, in ten years' time, will his +be too--and the gentleman will have the pull then, as much as the lady +has it now. Wherefore, my dear Mrs. Amelia, you might very well have +forborne to resent the seeming slight upon your boy! But women are +such partisans, especially the good ones; and she who is not, even if +she be half a philosopher, is but half a woman--and not the best half +either. + +And now the creaking of the entrance gate was heard, and the crunching +of wheels on the gravel; and presently from among the clumps of +shrubbery which screened them from the road there issued a _calèche_, +the French Canadian substitute for an American buggy, high set and +hung on leather straps instead of springs; and in it swung the rector +and his spouse, trundling along to the front of the house. + +Mrs. Jordan lifted her _pince-nez_ to her eyes. "Ha! a calash! Mr. +Bunce, of course. Nobody else would get into such a thing." + +"Do you know, I like them, and they are very much used down at +Quebec," observed Mrs. Martindale, rendered generally contradictious +by the tone of the other's recent remarks. + +"They make me seasick. I feel as if I were in a cradle." + +"Was that the effect your cradle had, Amelia dear? You have certainly +an uncommon memory to recollect so well; for surely you were in the +advanced class at Mrs. Jones' when I was learning my letters." + +"Quite true, Louisa," said the other, biting her lip; "but you know +you were a backward child. Great talent is often slow in showing +itself, you know. What a droll pair those two make, swinging up there +in company--as contented as Darby and Joan carrying their eggs to +market. Ah, now they are out of sight--gone round to the front door. I +am told that on their wedding tour they were mistaken for mother and +son--and, strange to say, the error did not put them out in the +least." + +"I think it nice, myself," said Penelope, "to see people so content to +be happy in their own way, and so indifferent to the world's idle +talk. It is idle talk, Amelia. When two people find each other's +company desirable, are they not foolish to give it up for fear that +somebody else will laugh? How much would that somebody else do to make +either of them happy? And how little he _could_ do. Perhaps you do not +know, Amelia, that Mr. Bunce is our cousin, and therefore we feel +bound to like him. At the same time he is your rector, of course, +while you are living at St. Euphrase, and I admit your right to +criticise him." + +And here the clerical pair coming through a window from the +drawing-room descried the party in the shade and joined them, which +changed the conversation; at the same time the crunching gravel gave +notice of other arrivals. First, a waggonette carrying Jordan, +Considine and Ralph; and before these had time to alight and join the +rest, a rockaway, with the family from La Hache. Mrs. Martha Herkimer, +who had been enjoying the heat and the coolness and the buzz of talk +in a large lounging chair, with her fan drooping listlessly in her +hand, and her pose indicating enjoyment of the quiescent if not +somnolent kind, roused herself, shook out her skirts, and sat down +again bolt upright, ready to become acquainted with the French people +her husband so wished to know, as soon as possible. + +Madame Rouget led by her lord, hat in hand, and followed by her +daughter, all smiles and sweetness, fluttered through the window to +the grass, where her hostesses met her and exchanged salutations eked +out with gesture, in which gloves a little brighter and eyebrows a +trifle more arched than the Anglo-Saxon pattern bore an important +part. Madame's English was not fluent; the Misses Stanley, with the +backwardness of their nation, did not venture to use French, and there +was some obscurity and delay in the opening phrases, during which M. +Rouget stood benevolently by, still uncovered and regardless of sun +and sunstroke. In time they reached the grateful shade of the +hemlocks, where the newcomers inhaled the perfumed coolness with +infinite relish, after the glare and dust of their recent drive; and +then there came presentations of the lately come neighbours, with +profuse explanations from Madame, "that her English so _difficile_ had +made her delay, till she was so _comblée_ of confusions, that---- Ah, +well! she prayed the ladies to excuse;" and she smiled very +graciously, and pressed the hands of Amelia and Martha, lisping hopes +to be better acquainted; meaning, no doubt, as with Penelope and her +sister, the exchange of half-yearly visits, which, in view of +differences of church as well as language, was as much as could be +expected. That church counted for a great deal became evident when +"Mrs. Bunce, the wife of my cousin the rector," was next presented. +The smile died out of Madame's face, and the _empressement_ faded from +her manner as she bowed more deeply than before with eyes fastened on +the ground. "The _bêtise_," as she said to her daughter afterwards, +"of those English! To introduce the wife of one of their married +priests to me, the niece of My Lord the Archbishop!" + +"But he is of their family, we must recollect, my mother," replied +this judicious young person. "And perhaps they do not know of my great +uncle the Archbishop. At least the ladies intended to be kind, and +Monsieur Gerald Herkimaire, and Monsieur Randolphe are both _trés +comme il faut?_" On which Madame patted the precocious utterer of so +much wisdom--she was not yet sixteen--with her fan, and laughed +heartily. But this did not occur till the following morning. + +Penelope was not slow to perceive that the last presentation had not +been a success, and came promptly to the rescue, by asking Mrs. Bunce +a question, while Matilda drew off the attention of the others by +asking Mademoiselle if she would not join the young people, and +leading her away, while the mother and the rest fell into conversation +with the gentlemen. + +The young ones by this time had sent Pierre to the house with their +flowers, and were lingering on Muriel's croquet ground until Miss +Martindale should persuade herself that she was not too grown up to +play, a conclusion which she speedily arrived at on the appearance of +the new comer, who was quite as advanced as herself and seemed eager +to begin. + +"How your niece is most _gracieuse_, and so prettee!" said the +Frenchwoman to Matilda when she rejoined the elders. + +"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Martindale, "she is one of the very nicest +little girls I know; and so clever. You should hear her play. It is +more like a grown person's performance than a child's. And to think +she should never have had any governess but dear Matilda here! I call +it quite remarkable." + +"Ah!" said Madame sympathetically. It is always a safe observation to +make, especially in reply to what has not been very clearly +understood, and the inflection of the voice can make it stand for so +many things, that if it is only uncertain it will mean whatever the +hearer likes best. + +"It is a loss to society that women like you should be independent, +Matilda," said Amelia. "What a governess you would have made! You need +not shrug; it is a compliment, and one which very few people can +claim. If you knew the troubles of governess-ridden mothers, you would +understand me; so few are worth much, and those few keep one in +constant dread of their growing dissatisfied and leaving, till the +mother's life becomes a burden. I am so glad my family consists only +of a boy, and it is Jordan's business to think what is to become of +him," glancing at the croquet players. + +"That young gentleman," said Madame, following the direction of the +other's eyes. "_Distingué!_ What joy to have one so fine son!" + +Mrs. Jordan smiled her gratification and could not help glancing +across at Mrs. Martindale, whose daughter's depreciation of the +paragon must have ruffled her maternal plumage not a little. + +"Yes," she said, "he is a dear boy--so manly and yet so affectionate," +and her eyes drooped, and her voice fell, as it will when one talks of +something near the heart; and there were signs--woman of the world +though she was--of her maundering on upon the same sweet theme, if +only there were an attentive silence. + +But this Mrs. Martha's patience could not yield. She saw nothing so +remarkable in the Jordan boy "for that affected French woman to make a +fuss about. If it had been her Gerald now, there might have been some +sense in it--with his delicate fair skin like a girl's, and his sturdy +broad shoulders. It was true young Jordan had the advantage in height; +but what matters half an inch? And as to the manliness----" And again +she seemed to be standing in an upper window of her town house, +securely hid behind a curtain, looking down on the two boys in a +tussle. How her boy tumbled the other over, let him get up and knocked +him down again, and pummelled him till he had had enough. And she? Had +she been a right-minded person--taken in the abstract--of course she +would have interfered; but being only a woman and a mother, and seeing +it was her side which played the winning game, she merely stood and +looked on. Lady lecturers and authors often tell us of the higher +moral plane from which the gentle sex surveys the world's affairs, but +for honest old-world delight in sheer physical force and muscular +prowess, can a woman be equalled? It must be a survival from the days +of savagery and marriage by capture. The learned professor's wife may +expect to be led out to dinner before plain mistress, but as likely as +not she is innocent of even a smattering of the "ology" on which her +husband's reputation is built; but she whom good fortune has wed to a +Victoria Cross knows every detail of his achievements and believes +herself married to a demigod. + +But this is digression. It seemed to Martha that Amelia was about to +moralize aloud upon her boy, and having a kindness for her and being +unwilling that she should make herself absurd, she broke the momentary +silence with + +"And really. Miss Matildy now"--Martha was a lady 'Noo +Hampshire'--"doo tell! Have you taught the child her letters and +pothooks and some of the multiplication table all by yourself; and you +not married? Well, now, I call it real smart--you might almost do for +a school marm. That you might, with just taking pains--at least, if +you, had begun earlier." + +Ralph was standing within earshot, and it is not unlikely that he +wished his wife had not spoken. She was a good soul, he well knew. She +had been a beauty, and once there had seemed a quaint charm in the +direct and high-pitched utterances which stole from between those +coral lips. But that was years ago. The lips were withered now; it was +on account of her poor health they had come to live at St. Euphrase, +and only the unusual and impolite utterances remained to wound the +sensibilities of polished ears--now, too, when he had become rich, and +he could buy her whatever she wanted, and would have bought her some +conventional refinement as gladly as her diamonds from Tiffany's. It +was Matilda, however, who replied in support of her own achievements. + +"Letters and pothooks, my dear Mrs. Herkimer? Muriel can read the +newspapers and even 'Paradise Lost' perfectly well. She reads me to +sleep every Sunday afternoon with 'Paradise Lost' or Young's 'Night +Thoughts.' I think poetry is improving for the child, you know, and I +enjoy it myself. It soothes me. And, by-the-way, it was she who wrote +asking you to come here to-day." + +"Well now! You don't----" ejaculated Martha; but Matilda, though +mollified, ran on: "Indeed, I believe I have gained quite as much as +Muriel by her lessons. One must know a thing in order to teach it. I +found my own education had grown sadly rusty, and needed brushing up. +I had no idea there was so much interesting information to be got from +'Mangnall's Questions' and 'The Child's History of England' till I +went over them with Muriel. As to music, I used to play, but was +getting out of practice; she has revived my interest in it, and now we +both play and sing together--in a mild way, my dear Amelia; pray do +not look apprehensive, I am not meditating an exhibition. But I was +going to say, I think Muriel needs better teaching than mine, now; so +we propose going to Montreal for the winter. I cannot teach languages, +and her voice seems worth cultivating." + +"Take her to Selby, Miss Matildy," cried the worthy Martha, little +dreaming how her husband and his aunt wished her a lockjaw. "He is +married to a sister of Judy's there--plays the organ at St. +Wittikind's--does it beautiful, my dear, but you will have heard +him--and if there is any sing in the child it is he will bring it out. +He'd make the kettle sing." + +"We can all do that," said Judith disgusted. "Put another stick in the +stove, that's all it wants. And this is little Muriel's birthday. Miss +Matilda? How old is she today? Twelve? Ah--Pretty child, but not very +tall. But that is in the family, I suppose. Dionysius is almost short, +and Betsey there is really stumpy. But I do not see much resemblance +in her to Betsey." + +"Neither do I." + +"But one would expect to see a family-likeness." + +"Between second cousins? I do not see the necessity." + +"Blood always tells, you know. Yet she is not even like +Dionysius----no trace of his square intellectual forehead, or +anything." + +"Your niece and her uncle are Bunces, perhaps, and Muriel a Stanley." + +"But she is not like you either." + +"I confess I never was clever about seeing likenesses, but I am sure I +could not be fonder of the child if she were ever so like me. +Penelope, do you not think we might have tea, now?" + +Considine had heard Martha's mention of Selby. It was the first time +in years that he had heard the name. It awoke recollections which had +long been asleep. Jordan, his co-trustee in the Herkimer fortune had +no doubt told him the family story on his return to Montreal, but at +that time his mind was full of his own cares, and since then the mere +periodical investment of dividends had not called for a recurrence to +the subject. Though, doubtless, he remembered his old attachment, and +would still have felt a kindness for its object had his thoughts +wandered that way, the preoccupations of business led them in other +directions; the tender passages were relegated to the same limbo as +the memories of childhood, and his _ante bellum_ possessions wiped out +of existence by the event of war. Love-dreams, longings, the yearnings +of what we call our "hearts," are luxuries of the well-to-do, living +at their ease. When the wolf comes to the door, and the means of +subsistence are in doubt or danger, Cupid, the ethereal sprite, +feeding daintily on sighs and idle fancies, wings himself way; and in +the turmoil of hard material facts, he is not missed. It is best so. +The heart wounds, forgotten, skin over and heal, where head and arms +are in danger from the blows of fortune; and so the undivided energies +are free for the combat. But now, his personal affairs having arranged +themselves in an easy well-to-do routine which gave no anxiety, his +mind was open to other interests, and of these there were not enough +to engage it. He often felt dull and lonely. He would now and then +accompany Ralph to St. Euphrase, remaining over night and returning to +town in the morning, thereby killing a long afternoon, as on the +present occasion; but this could be only an occasional palliation. The +"planting" years of his youth, as he called them, and the fighting +years which followed, had not been the apprenticeship to make him take +an undivided interest in business for its own sake after he had +secured income sufficient for his needs. He had outlived his relish +for the society of young men--young men of business, at least--the +middle-aged had withdrawn into domestic life, and he found himself a +good deal alone. + +The mention of Selby's name stirred old associations which time and +adventure had long deprived of bitterness; and now he looked back with +only a plaintive yearning to the happiness which might have been, if +he had had his way, and pitied himself in his solitary estate. If he +had married, what wealth of love was his to have bestowed! And how he +could have enjoyed being cosseted and purred to by a wife of his own, +instead of depending on hirelings whose servile smile betrayed the +hollowness of their attentions. The smoking-room at his club, and his +own rooms at the hotel rose before his eye in their dull solid +unsatisfying comfort, and he could not but compare them with the +clean, unsmoky freshness and brightness of the woman's world around +him, and confess the two as different and apart as the close warm +stuffiness of a winter sick-room, from the clear keen day out of doors +in early spring. + +"What ails you, gineral? You look that glum you might have been +hearing of your brother's death," said Martha, making room for him on +the garden seat where she sat. + +"I am well, madam. I heard you allude just now to a Mr. Selby as +having married the sister of Mrs. Bunce. Are you acquainted with the +lady?" + +"To be sure I am. She is Ralph's aunt. A dear good soul as ever lived, +but real sorrowful-like and sickly now--she that used to be as peart +and blooming as the flowers in May. It's heart-breaking to see her. +She has never got over the loss of her child ten years ago, and it has +fairly broke her up. Her hair is white like a woman of sixty. She +might be older than Judy, there; and yet she is just one age with +Ralph--not forty yet." + +"I recollect her very distinctly in her brother Gerald's lifetime--a +beautiful young lady. That was before the war; the first time I was in +Canada." + +"Were you in Canady then? But to be sure you were! You were Gerald's +friend, and are a trustee of his property. Ah, yes! I recollect. And +you were----" + +But she did not say any more; only she looked in his face with a new +interest, and what would have been a kind and sympathizing smile if +good manners had not restrained the manifestation. Nothing awakens the +interest of a good woman so warmly as a story of true enduring love. +If the love have been unrequited, its constancy seems but the more +rarely and touchingly beautiful. It is something to be dealt with +delicately, and spoken to in low, soft, ambiguous words that may +soothe but will not flutter the tender thing. It was such love that +Martha dreamed of in her youth, and humbly hoped for; and when Ralph, +young, eager and impetuous, found her in the New England homestead, +she dreamed the divine influence had descended to stir the hushed and +waiting waters of her life. She cheerfully left home and kindred to +dwell with the man who loved her, and she had been his true and +devoted wife. Yet often when she recalled the enthusiasm of that early +time it seemed to her that the love-feast had been but a Barmecide's +banquet after all, or like the husks with which another adventurer had +to stay his hunger when he left the shelter of the paternal home. She +lavished the wealth of her own affection, but the return had seemed +but slender and humdrum to her high-wrought expectations. The young +couple went to housekeeping, which is something quite different from +the life of the hummingbirds among the flowers: Love's dainty fare of +sighs and kisses gave place to the grosser nourishment of bread and +beef. The bread had to be earned, the house had to be kept, and very +soon the pair of Arcadians found themselves toilers like the rest of +the world. He toiled with a will, nay with a relish; it was what he +was better fitted for than the fantastic joys of feeling; and she did +her part at least without repining. It was what she had promised, and +she did it loyally, if wearily at times, in the colourless greyness of +daily life, when she recalled the rosy dawn of maiden love, with the +heavens above all shining and the world sparkling with dew. So Eve, +mayhap, looked back on Paradise when she was sent forth with her lord +into common life, and doubtless she would sigh at times to remember +it, even with her boys growing up around her. And so with Martha in +her prosperity, to fancy Considine cherishing the ashes of a blighted +love, stirred feelings not dead, but long since grown to be a mere +luxurious pain--a poignancy of plaintive delight. + +"Yes," said Considine, after allowing time for the completion of +Martha's interrupted sentence, "yes, I believe it was to Miss Mary's +adherence to her own choice in the matter of a husband that I owe my +association with Jordan as trustee under that eccentric will. People +cannot control their likings, I suppose, and I do think the young lady +was hardly dealt with. I hope the marriage she was so set on has +turned out well. Is she in good circumstances?" + +"They are very comfortable; but not rich, of course. People do not +make fortunes in Selby's profession; but when a woman throws away one +fortune she has no right to expect another. However they'd have done +well enough if it had not been for losing the child. That has fairly +broke them up. They live retired, and don't care to see anybody. Mary +keeps her room half the time, and if it was not for Susan, who lives +with them since Judy married, I don't know what they would do. But it +gives me the dumps to think of them. Is this not a nice place, +gineral? And how do you like the ladies? Seems to me Miss Matildy is +just too altogether awful nice for anything." + +And so she ran on, good soul. She was bent on withdrawing Considine +from what she considered his "just too beautiful" contemplation of an +ancient grief, and resolved to find him a suitable consoler. The +consoler, indeed, was already fixed upon in her own mind, and ere she +went home that afternoon, she had already begun to depict the +interesting bachelor in colours which, but for the incipient baldness +above his temples, the shaggy moustache, and the absence of wings, +might have stood for the Cupid on an old-fashioned valentine. + +Her auditor was quite interested, in a pleasant heart-whole way, and +much as she might have been over a new variety of Brahmah or other +fowl; for besides her lively sensibility, Matilda had a considerable +fund of sober sense, though she was scarcely herself aware of it. +Nevertheless, it _was_ interesting to hear of the vanquished hero. +Martha dwelt much on his warlike exploits, and his cherishing +through years and battles the memory of his old attachment. Captain +Lorrimer--who knew?--might have done the same, and Matilda still +thought kindly of him, though she had never read his name in any list +of killed or wounded, and she had seen or heard nothing of him since +he marched his men on board the steamer to the strains of "The girl I +left behind me," amid the waving handkerchiefs of the ladies on the +wharf; and henceforth Matilda felt very friendly and exerted herself +to be pleasant whenever she found herself in Considine's company. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII. + + ON ACCOUNT OF STRAWBERRIES. + + +The tea-table was set on the lawn where the lengthening shadows +inscribed themselves map-wise in islands and peninsulas of coolness; +and within the opened windows on the verandah were other refreshments, +whither the gentlemen were invited to bend their steps, while the +ladies with their ices remained out of doors. Muriel looking up, saw +Pierre disappearing among the bushes along the approach. + +"Auntie," she whispered to Matilda, "give me a big heaped-up plate of +strawberries and ice-cream for poor Pierre. See, there he goes away +home, all by himself. How lonely he must feel! and hot, and thirsty, +to see us all sitting out here eating nice things. Quick! Tilly, dear, +or he will be through the gate, and at his own door before I can catch +him; and then I may meet Annette, who is never nice to me. I don't +like Annette." + +The plate was speedily filled and heaped up, and away she ran. + +To Pierre, trudging along the gravel in his heavy boots, the light +footsteps in pursuit were inaudible; and it was not till passing the +gate, he stopped to close it behind him, that he heard his name +called, and looking up, saw Muriel running towards him. Of course he +stopped, and of course, too, being French, and a civil lad, he pulled +off his cap and waited. An English lad would probably have turned back +to meet the young mistress; but Pierre was apt to grow confused when +Muriel appeared suddenly, she was so airy and different from his own +heavy lumbering self. So there he stood, stock still like Jack +stepping off his bean-stalk, when the fairy tripping down the meadow +from the giant's castle, accosted him. + +"Here, Pierre, I have brought you these. I wish I had seen you to give +them sooner. You could have eaten them in the garden then, which would +have been nicer." + +"Oh! mademoiselle ees too kind," mumbled Pierre, reddening to the +roots of his hair and looking sheepishly grateful. "Too moosh of +trouble to give mademoiselle," and the burning black eyes looked out +from under their lashes as if they would have spoken things forbidden +to the stammering tongue. But there came a shrill call up the road +just then, "Pier-r-re!" which quenched their lustre in a moment, and +brought a faint frown of impatience even to Muriel's sunny brow. + +"Your mother is calling you, Pierre. Good night. _Bon appétit_. + +"Ah! _coquin!_ What is it thou dost there?" was the greeting which met +him as he drew near, from his mother standing in the road before the +door. "_Cochon! Bête!_ And thou lingerest at the gate with the +_donzelle_, forsooth. Thou!--Deny it not! Undutiful! And I have beaten +thee for it when thou wert small, till my poor heart ached more than +the bruises on thy little skin. And still thou wilt persist. I pray +the heavenly queen upon my knees, and all the saints, to let thee die +sooner than come to love her. 'Twere mortal sin." + +"My mother? Calm yourself It was only that the demoiselle ran after me +to give this plate of fruit. Will you not taste it?" + +"Taste gift of hers? _Enfante fausse!_" and she pushed aside the +offered strawberries which rolled plentifully from the plate and were +scattered on the ground. + +"Ah, no, my mother! Not false! The youngest angel in heaven is not +more true and good than Mademoiselle Muriel. But you will not think +so--I remind me often how you beat me for her sake. Beat me again, my +mother, if so it please you; but she is good and very beautiful." + +"_Sacr-ré!_" she ground out from between her clenched teeth, with +flashing eyes glancing up and down the road; and then she started with +a sob of afright, and a tremor ran through her frame as she composed +herself to speak quite calmly. "I see thy father coming home. He must +not know of what we have spoken, if thou would'st have thy mother's +blessing when I die. Pick up thy berries. It was a heedless gesture of +my arm which upset them. Thou can'st say so much." And she went +indoors, leaving Pierre in bewilderment to gather the fruit. + +That his mother, so gentle and fond, so sober, industrious and +sensible, should break out like one beside herself, if their ladies' +niece were but named, was unaccountable. A mystery, and one he dared +not even try to solve. She had threatened to curse him if he did but +inquire. And yet it was only before himself that she betrayed her +feeling. In his father's presence she showed no sign, but would +discuss the niece of their mistresses with him with the same composure +as their horses, sheep or cattle. And yet mademoiseile was so sweet! +And as he thought of her the bewilderment vanished in his mind like +mist before the morning sun, and he forgot even to pick up his +strawberries scattered around, while he knelt on the threshold. + +"Heh, Pierre! On thy knees before sundown? Will the rosary not keep +till bedtime?" said Jean, the father, stepping past him into the +house. + +"I am picking up some strawberries I let fall just now. Mademoiselle +Muriel brought me them as I went home." + +"She is an angel of considerateness and kindness--never forgets the +poor for the sake of the rich--just like monsieur the general, her +grandfather, if so please the ladies, and the demoiselles his +daughters. A family most generous, even if they are not French and +good Catholics;" and he crammed half-a-dozen large strawberries into +his mouth at once, and gave them a crunch as though to drink the +family's health in a bumper of strawberry wine. + +Annette looked up from the baby she was nursing, and there was a gleam +of red and smothered fire lurking in her eye, and she set her teeth +tight to hold back the struggling wish that the girl's gift might +choke him; while sire and son seated themselves on the door-sill to +consume the collation, the elder, at least, utterly unconscious that +aught was amiss. + + + + FOOTNOTE: + +[Footnote 1: All right. First used by an auditor of accounts in +Kentucky, who it was believed meant the letters to stand for Oll Kreck +(all correct).] + + + + END OF VOL I. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Rich Man's Relatives (Vol. 1 of 3), by +Robert Cleland + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40331 *** |