This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>



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POMP OF THE LAVILETTES

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 2.



CHAPTER X

Ferrols's recovery from his injuries was swifter than might have been
expected.  As soon as he was able to move about Christine was his
constant attendant.  She had made herself his nurse, and no one had
seriously interfered, though the Cure had not at all vaguely offered a
protest to Madame Lavilette.  But Madame Lavilette was now in the humour
to defy or evade the Cure, whichever seemed the more convenient or more
necessary.  To be linked by marriage with the nobility would indeed be
the justification of all her long-baffled hopes.  Meanwhile, the parish
gossiped, though little of that gossip was heard at the Manor Casimbault.
By and by the Cure ceased to visit the Manor, but the Regimental Surgeon
came often, and sometimes stayed late.  He, perhaps, could have given
Madame Lavilette the best advice and warning; but, in truth, he enjoyed
what he considered a piquant position.  Once, drawing at his pipe, as
little like an Englishman as possible, he tried to say with an English
accent, "Amusing and awkward situation!" but he said, "Damn funny and
chic!" instead.  He had no idea that any particular harm would be done--
either by love or marriage; and neither seemed certain.

One day as Ferrol, entirely convalescent, was sitting in an arbour of the
Manor garden, half asleep, he was awakened by voices near him.

He did not recognise one of the voices; the other was Nic Lavilette's.

The strange voice was saying: "I have collected five thousand dollars--
all that can be got in the two counties.  It is at the Seigneury.  Here
is an order on the Seigneur Duhamel.  Go there in two days and get the
money.  You will carry it to headquarters.  These are General Papineau's
orders.  You will understand that your men--"

Ferrol heard no more, for the two rebels passed on, their voices becoming
indistinct.  He sat for a few moments moveless, for an idea had occurred
to him even as Papineau's agent spoke.

If that money were only his!

Five thousand dollars--how that would ease the situation!  The money
belonged to whom?  To a lot of rebels: to be used for making war against
the British Government.  After the money left the hands of the men who
gave it--Lavilette and the rest--it wasn't theirs.  It belonged to a
cause.  Well, he was the enemy of that cause.  All was fair in love and
war!

There were two ways of doing it.  He could waylay Nicolas as he came from
the house of the old seigneur, could call to him to throw up his hands in
good highwayman fashion, and, well disguised, could get away with the
money without being discovered.  Or again, he could follow Nic from the
Seigneury to the Manor, discover where he kept the money, and devise a
plan to steal it.

For some time he had given up smoking; but now, as a sort of celebration
of his plan, he opened his cigar case, and finding two cigars left, took
one out and lighted it.

"By Jove," he said to himself, "thieving is a nice come-down, I must say!
But a man has to live, and I'm sick of charity--sick of it.  I've had
enough."

He puffed his cigar briskly, and enjoyed the forbidden and deadly luxury
to the full.

Presently he got up, took his stick, came down-stairs, and passed out
into the garden.  The shoulder which had been lacerated by the bear
drooped forward some what, and seemed smaller than the other.  Although
he held himself as erect as possible, you still could have laid your hand
in the hollow of his left breast, and it would have done no more than
give it a natural fulness.  Perhaps it was a sort of vanity, perhaps a
kind of courage, which made him resolutely straighten himself, in spite
of the deadly weight dragging his shoulder down.  He might be melancholy
in secret, but in public he was gay and hopeful, and talked of everything
except himself.  On that interesting topic he would permit no discussion.
Yet there often came jugs and jars from friendly people, who never spoke
to him of his disease--they were polite and sensitive, these humble folk
--but sent him their home-made medicines, with assurances scrawled on
paper that "it would cure Mr. Ferrol's cold, oh, absolutely."

Before the Lavilettes he smiled, and received the gifts in a debonair
way, sometimes making whimsical remarks.  At the same time the jugs and
jars of cordial (whose contents varied from whiskey, molasses and
boneset, to rum, licorice, gentian and sarsaparilla roots) he carried to
his room; and he religiously tried them all by turn.  Each seemed to do
him good for a few days, then to fail of effect; and he straightway tried
another, with renewed hope on every occasion, and subsequent
disappointment.  He also secretly consulted the Regimental Surgeon, who
was too kindhearted to tell him the truth; and he tried his hand at
various remedies of his own, which did no more than to loosen the cough
which was breaking down his strength.

As now, he often walked down the street swinging his cane, not as though
he needed it for walking, but merely for occupation and companionship.
He did not delude the villagers by these sorrowful deceptions, but they
made believe he did.  There were a few people who did not like him; but
they were of that cantankerous minority who put thorns in the bed of the
elect.

To-day, occupied with his thoughts, he walked down the main road, then
presently diverged on a side road which led past Magon Farcinelle's house
to an old disused mill, owned by Magon's father.  He paused when he came
opposite Magon's house, and glanced up at the open door.  He was tired,
and the coolness of the place looked inviting.  He passed through the
gate, and went lightly up the path.  He could see straight through the
house into the harvest-fields at the back.  Presently a figure crossed
the lane of light, and made a cheerful living foreground to the blue sky
beyond the farther door.  The light and ardour of the scene gave him a
thrill of pleasure, and hurried his footsteps.  The air was palpitating
with sleepy comfort round him, and he felt a new vitality pass into him:
his imagination was feeding his enfeebled body; his active brain was
giving him a fresh counterfeit of health.  The hectic flush on his pale
face deepened.  He came to the wooden steps of the piazza, or stoop, and
then paused a moment, as if for breath; but, suddenly conscious of what
he was doing, he ran briskly up the steps, knocked with his cane upon the
door jamb, and, without waiting, stepped inside.

Between him and the outer door, against the ardent blue background, stood
Sophie Farcinelle--the English faced Sophie--a little heavy, a little
slow, but with the large, long profile which is the type of English
beauty--docile, healthy, cow-like.  Her face, within her sunbonnet,
caught the reflected light, and the pink calico of her dress threw a glow
over her cheeks and forehead, and gave a good gleam to her eyes.  She had
in her hands a dish of strawberries.  It was a charming picture in the
eyes of a man to whom the feelings of robustness and health were mostly a
reminiscence.  Yet, while the first impression was on him, he contrasted
Sophie with the impetuous, fiery-hearted Christine, with her dramatic
Gallic face and blood, to the latter's advantage, in spite of the more
harmonious setting of this picture.

Sophie was in place in this old farmhouse, with its dormer windows, with
the weaver's loom in the large kitchen, the meat-block by the fireplace,
and the big bread-tray by the stove, where the yeast was as industrious
as the reapers beyond in the fields.  She was in keeping with the chromo
of the Madonna and the Child upon the wall, with the sprig of holy palm
at the shrine in the corner, with the old King Louis blunderbuss above
the chimney.

Sophie tried to take off her sunbonnet with one hand, but the knot
tightened, and it tipped back on her head, giving her a piquant air.  She
flushed.

"Oh, m'sieu'!" she said in English, "it's kind of you to call.  I am
quite glad--yes."

Then she turned round to put the strawberries upon a table, but he was
beside her in an instant and took the dish out of her hands.  Placing it
on the table, he took a couple of strawberries in his fingers.

"May I?" he asked in French.

She nodded as she whipped off the sunbonnet, and replied in her own
language:

"Certainly, as many as you want."

He bit into one, but got no further with it.  Her back was turned to him,
and he threw the berry out of the window.  She felt rather than saw what
he had done.  She saw that he was fagged.  She instantly thought of a
cordial she had in the house, the gift of a nun from the Ursuline
Convent in Quebec; a precious little bottle which she had kept for the
anniversary of her wedding day.  If she had been told in the morning that
she would open that bottle now, and for a stranger, she probably would
have resented the idea with scorn.

His disguised weariness still exciting her sympathy, she offered him a
chair.

"You will sit down, m'sieu'?" she asked.  "It is very warm."

She did not say: "You look very tired."  She instinctively felt that it
would suggest the delicate state of his health.

The chair was inviting enough, with its chintz cover and wicker seat, but
he would never admit fatigue.  He threw his leg half jauntily over the
end of the table and said:

"No--no, thanks; I'd rather not sit."

His forehead was dripping with perspiration.  He took out his
handkerchief and dried it.  His eyes were a little heavy, but his
complexion was a delicate and unnatural pink and white-like a piece of
fine porcelain.  It was a face without care, without vice, without fear,
and without morals.  For the absence of vice with the absence of morals
are not incongruous in a human face.  Sophie went into another room for a
moment, and brought back a quaint cut-glass bottle of cordial.

"It is very good," she said, as she took the cork out; "better than peach
brandy or things like that."

He watched her pour it out into a wine-glass, and as soon as he saw the
colour and the flow of it he was certain of its quality.

"That looks like good stuff," he said, as she handed him a glass brimming
over; "but you must have one with me.  I can't drink alone, you know."

"Oh, m'sieu', if you please, no," she answered half timidly, flattered by
the glance of his eye--a look of flattery which was part of his stock-in-
trade.  It had got him into trouble all his life.

"Ah, madame, but I plead yes!" he answered, with a little encouraging
nod towards her.  "Come, let me pour it for you."

He took the odd little bottle and poured her glass as full as his own.

"If Magon were only here--he'd like some, I know," she said, vaguely
struggling with a sense of impropriety, though why, she did not know;
for, on the surface, this was only dutiful hospitality to a distinguished
guest.  The impropriety probably lay in the sensations roused by this
visit and this visitor.  "I intended--"

"Oh, we must try to get along without monsieur," he said, with a little
cough; "he's a busy gentleman."  The rather rude and flippant sentiment
seemed hardly in keeping with the fatal token of his disease.

"Of course, he's far away out there in the field, mowing," she said, as
if in apology for something or other.  "Yes, he's ever so far away," was
his reply, as he turned half lazily to the open doorway.

Neither spoke for a moment.  The eyes of both were on the distant
harvest-fields.  Vaguely, not decisively, the hazy, indolent air of
summer was broken by the lazy droning of the locusts and grasshoppers.
A driver was calling to his oxen down the dusty road, the warning bark
of a dog came across the fields from the gap in the fence which he was
tending, and the blades of tho scythes made three-quarter circles of
light as the mowers travelled down the wheat-fields.

When their eyes met again, the glasses of cordial were at their lips.
He held her look by the intentional warmth and meaning of his own,
drinking very slowly to the last drop; and then, like a bon viveur, drew
a breath of air through his open mouth, and nodded his satisfaction.

"By Jove, but it is good stuff!" he said.  "Here's to the nun that made
it," he added, making a motion to drink from the empty glass.

Sophie had not drunk all her cordial.  At least one third of it was still
in the glass.  She turned her head away, a little dismayed by his toast.

"Come, that's not fair," he said.  "That elixir shouldn't be wasted.
Voila, every drop of it now!" he added, with an insinuating smile and
gesture.

"Oh, m'sieu'!" she said in protest, but drank it off.  He still held the
empty glass in his hand, twisting it round musingly.

"A little more, m'sieu'?" she asked, "just a little?"  Perhaps she was
surprised that he did not hesitate.  He instantly held out his glass.

"It was made by a saint; the result should be health and piety--I need
both," he added, with a little note of irony in his voice.

"So, once again, my giver of good gifts--to you!"  He raised his glass
again, toasting her, but paused.  "No, this won't do; you must join me,"
he added.

"Oh, no, m'sieu', no!  It is not possible.  I feel it now in my head and
in all of me.  Oh, I feel so warm all, through, and my heart it beats so
very fast!  Oh, no, m'sieu', no more!"

Her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes had become softer and more
brilliant under the influence of the potent liqueur.

"Well, well, I'll let you off this time; but next time--next time,
remember."

He raised the glass once more, and let the cordial drain down lazily.

He had said, "next time"--she noticed that.  He seemed very fond of this
strong liqueur.  She placed the bottle on the table, her own glass beside
it.

"For a minute, a little minute," she said suddenly, and went quickly into
the other room.

He coolly picked up the bottle of liqueur, poured his glass full once
more, and began drinking it off in little sips.  Presently he stood up,
and throwing back his shoulder, with a little ostentation of health, he
went over to the chintz-covered chair, and sat down in it.  His mood was
contented and brisk.  He held up the glass of liqueur against the
sunlight.

"Better than any Benedictine I ever tasted," he said.  "A dozen bottles
of that would cure this beastly cold of mine.  By Jove! it would.  It's
as good as the Gardivani I got that blessed day when we chaps of the
Ninetieth breakfasted with the King of Savoy."  He laughed to himself at
the reminiscence.  "What a day that was, what a stunning day that was!"

He was still smiling, his white teeth showing humorously, when Sophie
again entered the room.  He had forgotten her, forgotten all about her.
As she came in he made a quick, courteous movement to rise--too quick;
for a sharp pain shot through his breast, and he grew pale about the
lips.  But he made essay to stand up lightly, nevertheless.

She saw his paleness, came quickly to him, and put out her hand to gently
force him back into his seat, but as instantly decided not to notice his
indisposition, and turned towards the table instead.  Taking the bottle
of cordial, she brought it over, and not looking at him, said:

"Just one more little glass, m'sieu'?"  She had in her other hand a plate
of seed-cakes.  "But yes, you must sit down and eat a cake," she added
adroitly.  "They are very nice, and I made them myself.  We are very fond
of them; and once, when the bishop stayed at our house, he liked them
too."

Before he sat down he drank off the whole of the cordial in the glass.

She took a chair near him, and breaking a seed-cake began eating it.  His
tongue was loosened now, and he told her what he was smiling at when she
came into the room.  She was amused, and there was a little awe to her
interest also.  To think--she was sitting here, talking easily to a man
who had eaten at kings' tables--with the king!  Yet she was at ease too--
since she had drunk the cordial.  It had acted on her like some philtre.
He begged that she would go on with her work; and she got the dish of
strawberries, and began stemming them while he talked.

It was much easier talking or listening to him while she was so occupied.
She had never enjoyed anything so much in her life.  She was not clever,
like Christine, but she had admiration of ability, and was obedient to
the charm of temperament.  Whenever Ferrol had met her he had lavished
little attentions on her, had said things to her that carried weight far
beyond their intention.  She had been pleased at the time, but they had
had no permanent effect.

Now everything he said had a different influence: she felt for the first
time that it was not easy to look into his eyes, and as if she never
could again without betraying--she knew not what.

So they sat there, he talking, she listening and questioning now and
then.  She had placed the bottle of liqueur and the seed-cakes at his
elbow on the windowsill; and as if mechanically, he poured out a
glassful, and after a little time, still another, and at last, apparently
unconsciously, poured her out one also, and handed it to her.  She shook
her head; he still held the glass poised; her eyes met his; she made a
feeble sort of protest, then took the glass and drank off the liqueur in
little sips.

"Gad, that puts fat on the bones, and gives the gay heart!" he said.
"Doesn't it, though?"

She laughed quietly.  Her nature was warm, and she had the animal-like
fondness for physical ease and content.

"It's as if there wasn't another stroke of work to do in the world," she
answered, and sat contentedly back in her chair, the strawberries in her
lap.  Her fingers, stained with red, lay beside the bowl.  All the
strings of conscious duty were loose, and some of them were flying.  The
bumble-bee that flew in at the door and boomed about the room contributed
to the day-dream.

She never quite knew how it happened that a moment later he was bending
over the back of her chair, with her face upturned to his, and his lips--
With that touch thrilling her, she sprang to her feet, and turned away
from him towards the table.  Her face was glowing like a peony, and a
troubled light came into her eyes.  He came over to her, after a moment,
and spoke over her shoulders as he just touched her waist with his
fingers.

"A la bonne heure--Sophie!"

"Oh, it isn't--it isn't right," she said, her body slightly inclining
from him.

"One minute out of a whole life--What does it matter!  Ce ne fait rien!
Good-bye-Sophie."

Now she inclined towards him.  He was about to put his arms round her,
when he heard the distant sound of a horse's hoofs.  He let her go, and
turned towards the front door.  Through it he saw Christine driving up
the road.  She would pass the house.

"Good-bye-Sophie," he said again over her shoulder, softly; and, picking
up his hat and stick, he left the house.

Her eyes followed him dreamily as he went up the road.  She sat down in
a chair, the trance of the passionate moment still on her, and began to
brood.  She vaguely heard the rattle of a buggy--Christine's--as it
passed the house, and her thoughts drifted into a new-discovered
hemisphere where life was all a somnolent sort of joy and bodily love.

She was roused at last by a song which came floating across the fields.
The air she knew, and the voice she knew.  The chanson was, "Le Voleur de
grand Chemin!"  The voice was her husband's.

She knew the words, too; and even before she could hear them, they were
fitting into the air:

              "Qui va la!  There's some one in the orchard,
                  There's a robber in the apple-trees;
               Qui va la!  He is creeping through the doorway.
                  Ah, allez-vous-en! Va-t'-en!"

She hurriedly put away the cordial and the seed-cakes.  She picked up the
bottle.  It was empty.  Ferrol had drunk near half a pint of the liqueur!
She must get another bottle of it somehow.  It would never do for Magon
to know that the precious anniversary cordial was all gone--in this way.

She hurried towards the other room.  The voice of the farrier-farmer was
more distinct now.  She could hear clearly the words of the song.  She
looked out.  The square-shouldered, blue-shirted Magon was skirting the
turnip field, making a short cut home.  His straw hat was pushed back on
his head, his scythe was over his shoulder.  He had cut the last swathe
in the field--now for Sophie.  He was not handsome, and she had known
that always; but he seemed rough and coarse to-day.  She did not notice
how well he fitted in with everything about him; and he was so healthy
that even three glasses of that cordial would have sent him reeling to
bed.

As she passed into the dining-room, the words of the song followed her:

              "Qui va la!  If you please, I own the mansion,
                  And this is my grandfather's gun!
               Qui va la!  Now you're a dead man, robber
                  Ah, allez-vous-en!  Va-t'-en!"




CHAPTER XI

"I saw you coming," Ferrol said, as Christine stopped the buggy.

"You have been to see Magon and Sophie?" she asked.

"Yes, for a minute," he answered.  "Where are you going?"

"Just for a drive," she replied.  "Come, won't you?" He got in, and she
drove on.

"Where were you going?" she asked.

"Why, to the old mill," was his reply.  "I wanted a little walk, then a
rest."

Ten minutes later they were looking from a window of the mill, out upon
the great wheel which had done all the work the past generations had
given it to do, and was now dropping into decay as it had long dropped
into disuse.  Moss had gathered on the great paddles; many of them were
broken, and the debris had been carried away by the freshets of spring
and the floods of autumn.

They were silent for a time.  Presently she looked up at him.

"You're much better to-day, "she said; "better than you've been since--
since that night!"

"Oh, I'm all right," he answered; "right as can be."  He suddenly turned
on her, put his hand upon her arm, and said:

"Come, now, tell me what there was between you and Vanne Castine--once
upon a time.

"He was in love with me five years ago," she said.

"And five years ago you were in love with him, eh?" "How dare you say
that to me!" she answered.  "I never was.  I always hated him."

She told her lie with unscrupulous directness.  He did not believe her;
but what did that matter!  It was no reason why he should put her at a
disadvantage, and, strangely enough, he did not feel any contempt for her
because she told the lie, nor because she had once cared for Castine.
Probably in those days she had never known anybody who was very much
superior to Castine.  She was in love with himself now; that was enough,
or nearly enough, and there was no particular reason why he should demand
more from her than she demanded from him.  She was lying to him now
because--well, because she loved him.  Like the majority of men, when
women who love them have lied to them so, they have seen in it a
compliment as strong as the act was weak.  It was more to him now that
this girl should love him than that she should be upright, or moral, or
truthful.  Such is the egotism and vanity of such men.

"Well, he owes me several years of life.  I put in a bad hour that
night."

He knew that "several years of life" was a misstatement; but, then, they
were both sinners.

Her eyes flashed, she stamped her foot, and her fingers clinched.

"I wish I'd killed him when I killed his bear!" she said.

Then excitedly she described the scene exactly as it occurred.  He
admired the dramatic force of it.  He thrilled at the direct simplicity
of the tale.  He saw Vanne Castine in the forearms of the huge beast,
with his eyes bulging from his head, his face becoming black, and he saw
blind justice in that death grip; Christine's pistol at the bear's head,
and the shoulder in the teeth of the beast, and then!

"By the Lord Harry," he said, as she stood panting, with her hands fixed
in the last little dramatic gesture, "what a little spitfire and brick
you are!"

All at once he caught her away from the open window and drew her to him.
Whether what he said that moment, and what he did then, would have been
said and done if it were not for the liqueur he had drunk at Sophie's
house would be hard to tell; but the sum of it was that she was his and
he was hers.  She was to be his until the end of all, no matter what the
end might be.  She looked up at him, her face glowing, her bosom beating
--beating, every pulse in her tingling.

"You mean that you love me, and that--that you want-to marry me?" she
said; and then, with a fervent impulse, she threw her arms round his neck
and kissed him again and again.

The directness of her question dumfounded him for the moment; but what
she suggested (though it might be selfish in him to agree to it) would be
the best thing that could happen to him.  So he lied to her, and said:

"Yes, that's what I meant.  But, then, to tell you the sober truth, I'm
as poor as a church mouse."

He paused.  She looked up at him with a sudden fear in her face.

"You're not married?" she asked, "you're not married?" then, breaking
off suddenly: "I don't care if you are, I don't!  I love you--love you!
Nobody would look after you as I would.  I don't; no, I don't care."

She drew up closer and closer to him.

"No, I don't mean that I was married," he said.  "I meant--what you know
--that my life isn't worth, perhaps, a ten-days' purchase."

Her face became pale again.

"You can have my life," she said; "have it just as long as you live, and
I'll make you live a year--yes, I'll make you live ten years.  Love can
do anything; it can do everything.  We'll be married to-morrow."

"That's rather difficult," he answered.  "You see, you're a Catholic,
and I'm a Protestant, and they wouldn't marry us here, I'm afraid; at
least not at once, perhaps not at all.  You see, I--I've only one lung."

He had never spoken so frankly of his illness before.  "Well, we can go
over the border into the English province--into Upper Canada," she
answered.  "Don't you see?  It's only a few miles' drive to a village.
I can go over one day, get the licence; then, a couple of days after, we
can go over together and be married.  And then, then--"

He smiled.  "Well, then it won't make much difference, will it?  We'll
have to fit in one way or another, eh?"

"We could be married afterwards by the Cure, if everybody made a fuss.
The bishop would give us a dispensation.  It's a great sin to marry a
heretic, but--"

"But love--eh, ma cigale!"  Then he took her eagerly, tenderly into his
arms; and probably he had then the best moment in his life.

Sophie Farcinelle saw them driving back together.  She was sitting at
early supper with Magon, when, raising her head at the sound of wheels,
she saw Christine laughing and Ferrol leaning affectionately towards her.
Ferrol had forgotten herself and the incident of the afternoon.  It meant
nothing to him.  With her, however, it was vital: it marked a change in
her life.  Her face flushed, her hands trembled, and she arose hurriedly
and went to get something from the kitchen, that Magon might not see her
face.




CHAPTER XII

Twenty men had suddenly disappeared from Bonaventure on the day that
Ferrol visited Sophie Farcinelle, and it was only the next morning that
the cause of their disappearance was generally known.

There had been many rumours abroad that a detachment of men from the
parish were to join Papineau.  The Rebellion was to be publicly declared
on a certain date near at hand, but nothing definite was known; and
because the Cure condemned any revolt against British rule, in spite of
the evils the province suffered from bad government, every recruit who
joined Nic Lavilette's standard was sworn to secrecy.  Louis Lavilette
and his wife knew nothing of their son's complicity in the rumoured
revolt--one's own people are generally the last to learn of one's
misdeeds.  Madame would have been sorely frightened and chagrined if
she had known the truth, for she was partly English.  Besides, if the
Rebellion did not succeed, disgrace must come, and then good-bye to the
progress of the Lavilettes, and goodbye, maybe, to her son!

In spite of disappointments and rebuffs in many quarters, she still kept
faith with her ambitions, and, fortunately for herself, she did not see
the abject failure of many of her schemes.  Some of the gentry from the
neighbouring parishes had called, chiefly, she was aware, because of Mr.
Ferrol.  She was building the superstructure of her social ambitions on
that foundation for the present.  She told Louis sometimes, with tears
of joy in her eyes, that a special Providence had sent Mr. Ferrol to
them, and she did not know how to be grateful enough.  He suggested a
gift to the church in token of gratitude, but her thanksgiving did not
take that form.

Nic was entirely French at heart, and ignored his mother's nationality.
He resented the English blood in his veins, and atoned for it by
increased loyalty to his French origin.  This was probably not so much
a principle as a fancy.  He had a kind of importance also in the parish,
and in his own eyes, because he made as much in three months by buying
and selling horses as most people did in a year.  The respect of
Bonaventure for his ability was considerable; and though it had no marked
admiration for his character, it appreciated his drolleries, and was
attracted by his high spirits.  He had always been erratic, so that when
he disappeared for days at a time no one thought anything of it, and when
he came home to the Manor at unearthly hours it created no peculiar
notice.

He had chosen very good men for his recruits; for, though they talked
much among themselves, they drew a cordon of silence round their little
society of revolution.  They vanished in the night, and Nic with them;
but he returned the next afternoon when the fire of excitement was at its
height.  As he rode through the streets, people stopped him and poured
out questions; but he only shrugged his shoulders, and gave no
information, and neither denied nor affirmed anything.

Acting under orders, he had marched his company to make conjunction with
other companies at a point in the mountains twenty miles away, but had
himself returned to get the five thousand dollars gathered by Papineau's
agent.  Now that the Rebellion was known, Nicolas intended to try and win
his father and his father's money and horses over to the cause.

Because Ferrol was an Englishman he made no confidant of him, and because
he was a dying man he saw in him no menace to the cause.  Besides, was
not Ferrol practically dependent upon their hospitality?  If he had
guessed that his friend knew accurately of his movements since the night
he had seen Vanne Castine hand him his commission from Papineau, he would
have felt less secure: for, after all, love--or prejudice--of country is
a principle in the minds of most men deeper than any other.  When all
other morals go, this latent tendency to stand by the blood of his clan
is the last moral in man that bears the test without treason.  If he had
known that Ferrol had written to the Commandant at Quebec, telling him of
the imminence of the Rebellion, and the secret recruiting and drilling
going on in the parishes, his popular comrade might have paid a high
price for his disclosure.

That morning at sunrise, Christine, saying she was going upon a visit to
the next parish, started away upon her mission to the English province.
Ferrol had urged her to let him go, but she had refused.  He had not yet
fully recovered from his adventure with the bear, she said.  Then he said
they might go together; but she insisted that she must make the way
clear, and have everything ready.  They might go and find the minister
away, and then--voila, what a chance for cancan!  So she went alone.

From his window he watched her depart; and as she drove away in the fresh
morning he fell to thinking what it might seem like if he had to look
forward to ten, twenty, or forty years with just such a woman as his
wife.  Now she was at her best (he did not deceive himself), but in
ten years or less the effects of her early life would show in many ways.
She had once loved Vanne Castine!  and now vanity and cowardice, or
unscrupulousness, made her lie about it.  He would have her at her best
--a young, vigorous radiant nature--for his short life, and then, good-
bye, my lover, good-bye!  Selfish?  Of course.  But she would rather--
she had said it--have him for the time he had to live than not at all.
Position?  What was his position?  Cast off by his family, forgotten by
his old friends, in debt, penniless--let position be hanged!  Self-
preservation was the first law.  What was the difference between this
girl and himself?  Morals?  She was better than himself, anyhow.  She had
genuine passions, and her sins would be in behalf of those genuine
passions.  He had kicked over the moral traces many a time from absolute
selfishness.  She had clean blood in her veins, she was good-looking,
she had a quick wit, she was an excellent horse-woman--what then?  If she
wasn't so "well bred," that was a matter of training and opportunity
which had never quite been hers.  What was he himself?  A loafer, "a
deuced unfortunate loafer," but still a loafer.  He had no trade and no
profession.  Confound it!  how much better off, and how much better in
reality, were these people who had trades and occupations.  In the vigour
and lithe activity of that girl's body was the force of generations of
honest workers.  He argued and thought--as every intelligent man in his
position would have done--until he had come into the old life again, and
into the presence of the old advantages and temptations!

Christine pulled up for a moment on a little hill, and waved her whip.
He shook his handkerchief from the window.  That was their prearranged
signal.  He shook it until she had driven away beyond the hill and was
lost to sight, and still stood there at the window looking out.

Presently Madame Lavilette appeared in the garden below, and he was sure,
from the way she glanced up at the window, and from her position in the
shrubbery, that she had seen the signal.  Madame did not look displeased.
On the contrary, though an alliance with Christine now seemed unlikely,
because of the state of Ferrol's health and his religion and nationality,
it pleased her to think that it might have been.

When she had passed into the house, Ferrol sat down on the broad window-
sill, and looked out the way Christine had gone.  He was thinking of the
humiliation of his position, and how it would be more humiliating when he
married Christine, should the Lavilettes turn against them--which was
quite possible.  And from outside: the whole parish--a few excepted--
sympathised with the Rebellion, and once the current of hatred of the
English set in, he would be swept down by it.  There were only three
English people in the place.  Then, if it became known that he had given
information to the authorities, his life would be less uncertain than it
was just now.  Yet, confound the dirty lot of little rebels, it served
them right!  He couldn't sit by and see a revolt against British rule
without raising a hand.  Warn Nic?  To what good?  The result would be
just the same.  But if harm came to this intended brother-in-law-well,
why borrow trouble?  He was not the Lord in Heaven, that he could have
everything as he wanted it!  It was a toss-up, and he would see the sport
out.  "Have to cough your way through, my boy!" he said, as he swayed
back and forth, the hard cough hacking in his throat.

As he had said yesterday, there was only one thing to do: he must have
that five thousand dollars which was to be handed over by the old
seigneur.  This time he did not attempt to find excuses; he called the
thing by its proper name.

"Well, it's stealing, or it's highway robbery, no matter how one looks at
it," he said to himself.  "I wonder what's the matter with me.  I must
have got started wrong somehow.  Money to spend, playing at soldiering,
made to believe I'd have a pot of money and an estate, and then told one
fine day that a son and heir, with health in form and feature, was come,
and Esau must go.  No profession, except soldiering, debt staring me in
the face, and a nasty mess of it all round.  I wonder why it is that I
didn't pull myself together, be honest to a hair, and fight my way
through?  I suppose I hadn't it in me.  I wasn't the right metal at the
start.  There's always been a black sheep in our family, a gentleman or
a lady, born without morals, and I happen to be the gentleman this
generation.  I always knew what was right, and liked it, and I always did
what was wrong, and liked it--nearly always.  But I suppose I was fated.
I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a
wife in prospect to support.  I suppose if I were to write down all the
decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent
things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for
them.  I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well
bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living provided, and
then I'd do big things.  But that isn't the way of the world; and so I
feel that a morning like this, and the love of a girl like that" (he
nodded towards the horizon into which Christine had gone) "ought to make
a man sing a Te Deum.  And yet this evening, or to-morrow evening, or the
next, I'll steal five thousand dollars, if it can be done, and risk my
neck in doing it--to say nothing of family honour, and what not."

He got up from the window, went to his trunk, opened it, and, taking out
a pistol, examined it carefully, cocking and uncorking it, and after
loading it, and again trying the trigger, put it back again.  There came
a tap at the door, and to his call a servant entered with a glass of milk
and whiskey, with which he always began the day.

The taste of the liquid brought back the afternoon of the day before, and
he suddenly stopped drinking, threw back his head, and laughed softly.

"By Jingo, but that liqueur was stunning--and so was-Sophie .  .  .
Sophie!  That sounds compromisingly familiar this morning, and very
improper also!  But Sophie is a very nice person, and I ought to be well
ashamed of myself.  I needed the bit and curb both yesterday.  It'll
never do at all.  If I'm going to marry Christine, we must have no family
complications.  'Must have'!" he exclaimed.  "But what if Sophie
already?--good Lord!"

It was a strange sport altogether, in which some people were bound to get
a bad fall, himself probably among the rest.  He intended to rob the
brother, he had set the government going against the brother's
revolutionary cause, he was going to marry one sister, and the other
--the less thought and said about that matter the better.

The afternoon brought Nic, who seemed perplexed and excited, but was most
friendly.  It seemed to Ferrol as if Nic wished to disclose something;
but he gave him no opportunity.  What he knew he knew, and he could make
use of; but he wanted no further confidences.  Ever since the night of
the fight with the bear there had been nothing said on matters concerning
the Rebellion.  If Nicolas disclosed any secret now, it must surely be
about the money, and that must not be if he could prevent it.  But he
watched his friend, nevertheless.

Night came, and Christine did not return; eight o'clock, nine o'clock.
Lavilette and his wife were a little anxious; but Ferrol and Nicolas made
excuses for her, and, in the wild talk and gossip about the Rebellion,
attention was easily shifted from her.  Besides, Christine was well used
to taking care of herself.

Lavilette flatly refused to give Nic a penny for "the cause," and stormed
at his connection with it; but at last became pacified, and agreed it was
best that Madame Lavilette should know nothing about Nic's complicity
just yet.  At half past nine o'clock Nic left the house and took the road
towards the Seigneury.




CHAPTER XIII

About half-way between the Seigneury and the main street of the village
there was a huge tree, whose limbs stretched across the road and made a
sort of archway.  In the daytime, during the summer, foot travellers,
carts and carriages, with their drivers, loitered in its shade as they
passed, grateful for the rest it gave; but at night, even when it was
moonlight, the wide branches threw a dark and heavy shadow, and the
passage beneath them was gloomy travel.  Many a foot traveller hesitated
to pass into that umbrageous circle, and skirted the fence beyond the
branches on the further side of the road instead.

When Nicolas Lavilette, returning from the Seigneury with the precious
bag of gold for Papineau, came hurriedly along the road towards the
village, he half halted, with sudden premonition of danger, a dozen feet
or so from the great tree.  But like most young people, who are inclined
to trust nothing but their own strong arms and what their eyes can see,
he withstood the temptation to skirt the fence; and with a little half-
scornful laugh at himself, yet a little timidity also (or he would not
have laughed at all), he hurried under the branches.  He had not gone
three steps when the light of a dark lantern flashed suddenly in his
face, and a pistol touched his forehead.  All he could see was a figure
clothed entirely in black, even to hands and face, with only holes for
eyes, nose and mouth.

He stood perfectly still; the shock was so sudden.  There was something
determined and deadly in the pose of the figure before him, in the touch
of the weapon, in the clearness of the light.  His eyes dropped, and
fixed involuntarily upon the lantern.

He had a revolver with him; but it was useless to attempt to defend
himself with it.  Not a word had been spoken.  Presently, with the
fingers that held the lantern, his assailant made a motion of Hands up!
There was no reason why he should risk his life without a chance of
winning, so he put up his hands.  At another motion he drew out the bag
of gold with his left hand, and, obeying the direction of another
gesture, dropped it on the ground.  There was a pause, then another
gesture, which he pretended not to understand.

"Your pistol!" said the voice in a whisper through the mask.

He felt the cold steel at his forehead press a little closer; he also
felt how steady it was.  He was no fool.  He had been in trouble before
in his lifetime; he drew out the pistol, and passed it, handle first, to
three fingers stretched out from the dark lantern.

The figure moved to where the money and the pistol were, and said, in a
whisper still:

"Go!"

He had one moment of wild eagerness to try his luck in a sudden assault,
but that passed as suddenly as it came; and with the pistol still
covering him, he moved out into the open road, with a helpless anger on
him.

A crescent moon was struggling through floes of fleecy clouds, the stars
were shining, and so the road was not entirely dark.  He went about
thirty steps, then turned and looked back.  The figure was still standing
there, with the pistol and the light.  He walked on another twenty or
thirty steps, and once again looked back.  The light and the pistol were
still there.  Again he walked on.  But now he heard the rumble of buggy
wheels behind.  Once more he looked back: the figure and the light had
gone.  The buggy wheels sounded nearer.  With a sudden feeling of
courage, he turned round and ran back swiftly.  The light suddenly
flashed again.

"It's no use," he said to himself, and turned and walked slowly along the
road.

The sound of the buggy wheels came still nearer.  Presently it was
obscured by passing under the huge branches of the tree.  Then the horse,
buggy and driver appeared at the other side, and in a few moments had
overtaken him.  He looked up sharply, scrutinisingly.  Suddenly he burst
out:

"Holy mother, Chris, is that you!  Where've you been?  Are you all
right?"

She had whipped up her horse at first sight of him, thinking he might be
some drunken rough.

"Mais, mon dieu, Nic, is that you?  I thought at first you were a
highwayman!"

"No, you've passed the highwayman!  Come, let me get in."

Five minutes afterwards she knew exactly what had happened to him.

"Who could it be?" she asked.

"I thought at first it was that beast Vanne Castine!" he answered; "he's
the only one that knew about the money, besides the agent and the old
seigneur.  He brought word from Papineau.  But it was too tall for him,
and he wouldn't have been so quiet about it.  Just like a ghost.  It
makes my flesh creep now!"

It did not seem such a terrible thing to her at the moment, for she had
in her pocket the licence to marry the Honourable Tom Ferrol upon the
morrow, and she thought, with joy, of seeing him just as soon as she set
foot in the doorway of the Manor Casimbault.

It was something of a shock to her that she did not see him for quite a
half hour after she arrived home, and that was half past ten o'clock.
But women forget neglect quickly in the delight of a lover's presence;
so her disappointment passed.  Yet she could not help speaking of it.

"Why weren't you at the door to meet me when I came back to-night with
that-that in my pocket?" she asked him, his arm round her.

"I've got a kicking lung, you know," he said, with a half ironical, half
self-pitying smile.

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Tom, my love!" she said as she buried her
face on his breast.




CHAPTER XIV

Before he left for the front next morning to join his company and march
to Papineau's headquarters, Nic came to Ferrol, told him, with rage and
disappointment, the story of the highway robbery, and also that he hoped
Ferrol would not worry about the Rebellion, and would remain at the Manor
Casimbault in any case.

"Anyhow," said he, "my mother's half English; so you're not alone.  We're
going to make a big fight for it.  We've stood it as long as we can.  But
we're friends in this, aren't we, Ferrol?"

There was a pause, in which Ferrol sipped his whiskey and milk, and
continued dressing.  He set the glass down, and looked towards the open
window, through which came the smell of the ripe orchard and the
fragrance of the pines.  He turned to.  Lavilette at last and said, as he
fastened his collar:

"Yes, you and I are friends, Nic; but I'm a Britisher, and my people have
been Britishers since Edward the Third's time; and for this same Quebec
two of my great-grand-uncles fought and lost their lives.  If I were
sound of wind and limb I'd fight, like them, to keep what they helped to
get.  You're in for a rare good beating, and, see, my friend--while I
wouldn't do you any harm personally, I'd crawl on my knees from here to
the citadel at Quebec to get a pot-shot at your rag-tag-and-bobtail
'patriots.'  You can count me a first-class enemy to your 'cause,' though
I'm not a first-class fighting man.  And now, Nic, give me a lift with my
coat.  This shoulder jibs a bit since the bear-baiting."

Lavilette was naturally prejudiced in Ferrol's favour; and this
deliberate and straightforward patriotism more pleased than offended him.
His own patriotism was not a deep or lasting thing: vanity and a restless
spirit were its fountains of inspiration.  He knew that Ferrol was
penniless--or he was so yesterday--and this quiet defiance of events in
the very camp of the enemy could not but appeal to his ebullient, Gallic
chivalry.  Ferrol did not say these things because he had five thousand
dollars behind him, for he would have said them if he were starving and
dying--perhaps out of an inherent stubbornness, perhaps because this
hereditary virtue in him would have been as hard to resist as his sins.

"That's all right, Ferrol," answered Lavilette.  "I hope you'll stay here
at the Manor, no matter what comes.  You're welcome.  Will you?"

"Yes, I'll stay, and glad to.  I can't very well do anything else.  I'm
bankrupt.  Haven't got a penny--of my own," he added, with daring irony.
"Besides, it's comfortable here, and I feel like one of the family; and,
anyhow, Life is short and Time is a pacer!"  His wearing cough emphasised
the statement.

"It won't be easy for you in Bonaventure," said Nicolas, walking
restlessly up and down.  "They're nearly all for the cause, all except
the Cure.  But he can't do much now, and he'll keep out of the mess.
By the time he has a chance to preach against it, next Sunday, every man
that wants to 'll be at the front, and fighting.  But you'll be all
right, I think.  They like you here."

"I've a couple of good friends to see me through," was the quiet reply.

"Who are they?"

Ferrol went to his trunk, took out a pair of pistols, and balanced them
lightly in his hands.  "Good to confuse twenty men," he said.  "A brace
of 'em are bound to drop, and they don't know which one."

He raised a pistol lazily, and looked out along its barrel through the
open, sunshiny window.  Something in the pose of the body, in the curve
of the arm, struck Nicolas strangely.  He moved almost in front of
Ferrol.  There came back to him mechanically the remembrance of a piece
of silver on the butt of one of the highwayman's pistols!

The same piece of silver was on the butt of Ferrol's pistol.  It
startled him; but he almost laughed to him self at the absurdity of the
suggestion.  Ferrol was the last man in the world to play a game like
that, and with him.

Still he could not resist a temptation.  He stepped in front of the
pistol, almost touching it with his forehead, looking at Ferrol as he had
looked at the highwayman last night.

"Look out, it's loaded!" said Ferrol, lowering the weapon coolly, and
not showing by sign or muscle that he understood Lavilette's meaning.
"I should think you'd had enough of pistols for one twenty-four hours."

"Do you know, Ferrol, you looked just then so like the robber last night
that, for one moment, I half thought!--And the pistol, too, looks just
the same--that silver piece on the butt!"

"Oh, yes, this piece for the name of the owner!" said Ferrol, in a
laughing brogue, and he coughed a little.  "Well, maybe some one did use
this pistol last night.  It wouldn't be hard to open my trunk.  Let's
see; whom shall we suspect?"

Lavilette was entirely reassured, if indeed he needed reassurance.
Ferrol coughed still more, and was obliged to sit down on the side
of the bed and rest himself against the foot-board.

"There's a new jug of medicine or cordial come this morning from
Shangois, the notary," said Lavilette.  "I just happened to think of it.
What he does counts.  He knows a lot."

Ferrol's eyes showed interest at once.

"I'll try it.  I'll try it.  The stuff Gatineau the miller sent doesn't
do any good now."

"Shangois is here--he's downstairs--if you want to see him."

Ferrol nodded.  He was tired of talking.

"I'm going," said Lavilette, holding out his hand.  "I'll join my company
to-day, and the scrimmage 'll begin as soon as we reach Papineau.  We've
got four hundred men."

Ferrol tried to say something, but he was struggling with the cough in
his throat.  He held out his hand, and Nicolas took it.  At last he was
able to say:

"Good luck to you, Nic, and to the devil with the Rebellion!  You're in
for a bad drubbing."

Nicolas had a sudden feeling of anger.  This superior air of Ferrol's was
assumed by most Englishmen in the country, and it galled him.

"We'll not ask quarter of Englishmen; no-sacre!" he said in a rage.

"Well, Nic, I'm not so sure of that.  Better do that than break your
pretty neck on a taut rope," was the lazy reply.

With an oath, Lavilette went out, banging the door after him.  Ferrol
shrugged his shoulder with a stoic ennui, and put away the pistols in the
trunk.  He was thinking how reckless he had been to take them out; and
yet he was amused, too, at the risk he had run.  A strange indifference
possessed him this morning--indifference to everything.  He was suffering
reaction from the previous day's excitement.  He had got the five
thousand dollars, and now all interest in it seemed to have departed.

Suddenly he said to himself, as he ran a brush around his coat-collar:

"'Pon my soul, I forgot; this is my wedding day!--the great day in a
man's life, the immense event, after which comes steady happiness or the
devil to pay."

He stepped to the window and looked out.  It was only six o'clock as yet.
He could see the harvesters going to their labours in the fields of wheat
and oats, the carters already bringing in little loads of hay.  He could
hear their marche-'t'-en!  to the horses.  Over by a little house on the
river bank stood an old woman sharpening a sickle.  He could see the
flash of the steel as the stone and metal gently clashed.

Presently a song came up to him, through the garden below, from the
house.  The notes seemed to keep time to the hand of the sickle-
sharpener.  He had heard it before, but only in snatches.  Now it seemed
to pierce his senses and to flood his nerves with feeling.

The air was sensuous, insinuating, ardent.  The words were full of summer
and of that dramatic indolence of passion which saved the incident at
Magon Farcinelle's from being as vulgar as it was treacherous.  The voice
was Christine's, on her wedding day.

              "Oh, hark how the wind goes, the wind goes
               (And dark goes the stream by the mill!)
               Oh, see where the storm blows, the storm blows
               (There's a rider comes over the hill!)

              "He went with the sunshine one morning
               (Oh, loud was the bugle and drum!)
               My soldier, he gave me no warning
               (Oh, would that my lover might come!)

              "My kisses, my kisses are waiting
               (Oh, the rider comes over the hill!)
               In summer the birds should be mating
               (Oh, the harvest goes down to the mill!)

              "Oh, the rider, the rider he stayeth
               (Oh, joy that my lover hath come!)
               We will journey together he sayeth
               (No more with the bugle and drum!)"

He caught sight of Christine for a moment as she passed through the
garden towards the stable.  Her gown was of white stuff, with little
spots of red in it, and a narrow red ribbon was shot through the collar.
Her hat was a pretty white straw, with red artificial flowers upon it.
She wore at her throat a medallion brooch: one of the two heirlooms of
the Lavilette family.  It had belonged to the great-grandmother of
Monsieur Louis Lavilette, and was the one security that this ambitious
family did not spring up, like a mushroom, in one night.  It had always
touched Christine's imagination as a child.  Some native instinct in, her
made her prize it beyond everything else.  She used to make up wonderful
stories about it, and tell them to Sophie, who merely wondered, and was
not sure but that Christine was wicked; for were not these little
romances little lies?  Sophie's imagination was limited.  As the years
went on Christine finally got possession of the medallion, and held it
against all opposition.  Somehow, with it on this morning, she felt
diminish the social distance between herself and Ferrol.

Ferrol himself thought nothing of social distance.  Men, as a rule, get
rather above that sort of thing.  The woman: that was all that was in his
mind.  She was good to look at: warm, lovable, fascinating in her little
daring wickednesses; a fiery little animal, full of splendid impulses,
gifted with a perilous temperament: and she loved him.  He had a kind of
exultation at the very fierceness of her love for him, of what she had
done to prove her love: her fury at Vanne Castine, the slaughter of the
bear, and the intention to kill Vanne himself; and he knew that she would
do more than that, if a great test came.  Men feel surer of women than
women feel of men.

He sat down on the broad window-ledge, still sipping his whiskey and
milk, as he looked at her.  She was very good to see.  Presently she had
to cross a little plot of grass.  The dew was still on it.  She gathered
up her skirts and tip-toed quickly across it.  The action was attractive
enough, for she had a lithe smoothness of motion.  Suddenly he uttered an
exclamation of surprise.

"White stockings--humph!" he said.

Somehow those white stockings suggested the ironical comment of the world
upon his proposed mesalliance; then he laughed good-humouredly.

"Taste is all a matter of habit, anyhow," said he to himself.  "My own
sister wouldn't have had any better taste if she hadn't been taught.  And
what am I?

"What am I?  I drink more whiskey in a day than any three men in the
country.  I don't do a stroke of work; I've got debts all over the world;
I've mulcted all my friends; I've made fools of two or three women in my
time; I've broken every commandment except--well, I guess I've broken
every one, if it comes to that, in spirit, anyhow.  I'm a thief, a fire-
eating highwayman, begad, and here I am, with a perforated lung, going to
marry a young girl like that, without one penny in the world except what
I stole!  What beasts men are!  The worst woman may be worse than the
worst man, but all men are worse than most women.  But she wants to marry
me.  She knows exactly what I am in health and prospects; so why
shouldn't I?"

He drew himself up, thinking honestly.  He believed that he would live if
he married Christine; that his "cold" would get better; that the hole in
his lung would heal.  It was only a matter of climate; he was sure of it.
Christine had a few hundred dollars--she had told him so.  Suppose he
took three hundred dollars of the five thousand dollars: that would leave
four thousand seven hundred dollars for his sister.  He could go away
south with Christine, and could live on five or six hundred dollars a
year; then he'd be fit for something.  He could go to work.  He could
join the Militia, if necessary.  Anyhow, he could get something to do
when he got well.

He drank some more whiskey and milk.  "Self-preservation, that's the
thing; that's the first law," he said.  "And more: if the only girl I
ever loved, ever really loved--loved from the crown of her head to the
sole of her feet--were here to-day, and Christine stood beside her,
little plebeian with a big heart, by Heaven, I'd choose Christine.
I can trust her, though she is a little liar.  She loves, and she'll
stick; and she's true where she loves.  Yes; if all the women in the
world stood beside Christine this morning, I'd look them all over, from
duchess to danseuse, and I'd say, 'Christine Lavilette, I'm a scoundrel.
I haven't a penny in the world.  I'm a thief; a thief who believes in
you.  You know what love is; you know what fidelity is.  No matter what I
did, you would stand by me to the end.  To the last day of my life, I'll
give you my heart and my hand; and as you are faithful to me, so I will
be faithful to you, so help me God!'

"I don't believe I ever could have run straight in life.  I couldn't have
been more than four years old when I stole the peaches from my mother's
dressing-table; and I lied just as coolly then as I could now.  I made
love to a girl when I was ten years old."  He laughed to himself at the
remembrance.  "Her father had a foundry.  She used to wear a red dress,
I remember, and her hair was brown.  She sang like a little lark.  I was
half mad about her; and yet I knew that I didn't really love her.  Still,
I told her that I did.  I suppose it was the cursed falseness of my whole
nature.  I know that whenever I have said most, and felt most, something
in me kept saying all the time: 'You're lying, you're lying, you're
lying!'  Was I born a liar?

I wonder if the first words I ever spoke were a lie?  I wonder, when I
kissed my mother first, and knew that I was kissing her, if the same
little devil that sits up in my head now, said then: 'You're lying,
you're lying, you're lying.'  It has said so enough times since.  I loved
to be with my mother; yet I never felt, even when she died--and God knows
I felt bad enough then!

I never felt that my love was all real.  It had some infernal note of
falseness somewhere, some miserable, hollow place where the sound of my
own voice, when I tried to speak the truth, mocked me!  I wonder if the
smiles I gave, before I was able to speak at all, were only blarney?
I wonder, were they only from the wish to stand well with everybody,
if I could?  It must have been that; and how much I meant, and how much
I did not mean, God alone knows!

"What a sympathy I have always had for criminals!  I have always wanted,
or, anyhow, one side of me has always wanted, to do right, and the other
side has always done wrong.  I have sympathised with the just, but I have
always felt that I'd like to help the criminal to escape his punishment.
If I had been more real with that girl in New York, I wonder whether she
wouldn't have stuck to me?  When I was with her I could always convince
her; but, I remember, she told me once that, when I was away from her,
she somehow felt that I didn't really love her.  That's always been the
way.  When I was with people, they liked me; when I was away from them,
I couldn't depend upon them.  No; upon my soul, of all the friends I've
ever had, there's not one that I know of that I could go to now--except
my sister, poor girl!--and feel sure that no matter what I did, they'd
stick to me to the end.  I suppose the fault is mine.  If I'd been worth
the standing by, I'd have been the better stood by.  But this girl, this
little French provincial, with a heart of fire and gold, with a touch of
sin in her, and a thumping artery of truth, she would walk with me to the
gallows, and give her life to save my life--yes, a hundred times.  Well,
then, I'll start over again; for I've found the real thing.  I'll be true
to her just as long as she's true to me.  I'll never lie to her; and I'll
do something else--something else.  I'll tell her--"

He reached out, picked a wild rose from the vine upon the wall, and
fastened it in his button-hole, with a defiant sort of smile, as there
came a tap to his door.  "Come in," he said.

The door opened, and in stepped Shangois, the notary.  He carried a jug
under his arm, which, with a nod, he set down at the foot of the bed.

"M'sieu'," said he, "it is a thing that cured the bishop; and once, when
a prince of France was at Quebec, and had a bad cold, it cured him.  The
whiskey in it I made myself--very good white wine."  Ferrol looked at the
little man curiously.  He had only spoken with him once or twice, but he
had heard the numberless legends about him, and the Cure had told him
many of his sayings, a little weird and sometimes maliciously true to the
facts of life.

Ferrol thanked the little man, and motioned to a chair.  There was,
however, a huge chest against the wall near the window, and Shangois sat
down on this, with his legs hunched up to his chin, looking at Ferrol
with steady, inquisitive eyes.  Ferrol laughed outright.  A grotesque
thought occurred to him.  This little black notary was exactly like the
weird imp which, he had always imagined, sat high up in his brain,
dropping down little ironies and devilries--his personified conscience;
or, perhaps, the truth left out of him at birth and given this form, to
be with him, yet not of him.

Shangois did not stir, nor show by even the wink of an eyelid that he
recognised the laughter, or thought that he was being laughed at.

Presently Ferrol sat down and looked at Shangois without speaking, as
Shangois looked at him.  He smiled more than once, however, as the
thought recurred to him.

"Well?" he said at last.

"What if she finds out about the five thousand dollars--eh, m'sieu'?"

Ferrol was completely dumfounded.  The brief question covered so much
ground--showed a knowledge of the whole case.  Like Conscience itself,
the little black notary had gone straight to the point, struck home.
He was keen enough, however, had sufficient self-command, not to betray
himself, but remained unmoved outwardly, and spoke calmly.

"Is that your business--to go round the parish asking conundrums?" he
said coolly.  "I can't guess the answer to that one, can you?"

Shangois hated cowards, and liked clever people--people who could answer
him after his own fashion.  Nearly everybody was afraid of his tongue and
of him.  He knew too much; which was a crime.

"I can find out," he replied, showing his teeth a little.

"Then you're not quite sure yourself, little devilkin?"

"The girl is a riddle.  I am not the great reader of riddles."

"I didn't call you that.  You're only a common little imp."

Shangois showed his teeth in a malicious smile.

"Why did you set me the riddle, then?" Ferrol continued, his eyes fixed
with apparent carelessness on the other's face.

"I thought she might have told you the answer."

"I never asked her the puzzle.  Have you?"

By instinct, and from the notary's reputation, Ferrol knew that he was in
the presence of an honest man at least, and he waited most anxiously for
an answer, for his fate might hang on it.

"M'sieu', I have not seen her since yesterday morning."

"Well, what would you do if you found out about the five thousand
dollars?"

"I would see what happened to it; and afterwards I would see that a girl
of Bonaventure did not marry a Protestant, and a thief."

Ferrol rose from his chair, coughing a little.  Walking over to Shangois,
he caught him by both ears and shook the shaggy head back and forth.

"You little scrap of hell," he said in a rage, "if you ever come within
fifty feet of me again I'll send you where you came from!"

Though Shangois's eyes bulged from his head, he answered:

"I was only ten feet away from you last night under the elm!"

Suddenly Ferrol's hand slipped down to Shangois's throat.  Ferrol's
fingers tightened, pressed inwards.

"Now, see, I know what you mean.  Some one has robbed Nicolas Lavilette
of five thousand dollars.  You dare to charge me with it, curse you.  Let
me see if there's any more lies on your tongue!"

With the violence of the pressure Shangois's tongue was forced out of his
mouth.

Suddenly a paroxysm of coughing seized Ferrol, and he let go and
staggered back against the window ledge.  Shangois was transformed--an
animal.  No human being had ever seen him as he was at this moment.  The
fingers of his one hand opened and shut convulsively, his arms worked up
and down, his face twitched, his teeth showed like a beast's as he glared
at Ferrol.  He looked as though he were about to spring upon the now
helpless man.  But up from the garden below there came the sound of a
voice--Christine's--singing.

His face quieted, and his body came to its natural pose again, though his
eyes retained an active malice.  He turned to go.

"Remember what I tell you," said Ferrol: "if you publish that lie, you'll
not live to hear it go about.  I mean what I say."  Blood showed upon his
lips, and a tiny little stream flowed down the corner of his mouth.
Whenever he felt that warm fluid on his tongue he was certain of his
doom, and the horror of slowly dying oppressed him, angered him.  It
begot in him a desire to end it all.  He had a hatred of suicide; but
there were other ways.  "I'll have your life, or you'll have mine.  I'm
not to be played with," he added.

The sentences were broken by coughing, and his handkerchief was wet and
red.

"It is no concern of the world," answered Shangois, stretching up his
throat, for he still felt the pressure of Ferrol's fingers--"only of the
girl and her brother.  The girl--I saved her once before from your friend
Vanne Castine, and I will save her from you--but, yes!  It is nothing to
the world, to Bonaventure, that you are a robber; it is everything to
her.  You are all robbers--you English--cochons!"

He opened the door and went out.  Ferrol was about to follow him, but he
had a sudden fit of weakness, and he caught up a pillow, and, throwing it
on the chest where Shangois had sat, stretched himself upon it.  He lay
still for quite a long time, and presently fell into a doze.  In those
days no event made a lasting impression on him.  When it was over it
ended, so far as concerned any disturbing remembrances of it.  He was
awakened (he could not have slept for more than fifteen minutes) by a
tapping at his door, and his name spoken softly.  He went to the door and
opened it.  It was Christine.  He thought she seemed pale, also that she
seemed nervous; but her eyes were full of light and fire, and there was
no mistaking the look in her face: it was all for him.  He set down her
agitation to the adventure they were about to make together.  He stepped
back, as if inviting her to enter, but she shook her head.

"No, not this morning.  I will meet you at the old mill in half an hour.
The parish is all mad about the Rebellion, and no one will notice or talk
of anything else.  I have the best pair of horses in the stable; and we
can drive it in two hours, easy."

She took a paper from her pocket.

"This is--the--license," she added, and she blushed.  Then, with a sudden
impulse, she stepped inside the room, threw her arms about his neck and
kissed him, and he clasped her to his breast.

"My darling Tom!" she said, and then hastened away, with tears in her
eyes.

He saw the tears.  "I wonder what they were for?" he said musingly, as
he opened up the official blue paper.  "For joy?" He laughed a little
uneasily as he said it.  His eyes ran through the document.

"The Honourable Tom Ferrol, of Stavely Castle, County Galway, Ireland,
bachelor, and Christine Marie Lavilette, of the Township of Bonaventure,
in the Province of Lower Canada, spinster, Are hereby granted," etc.,
etc., etc., "according to the laws of the Province of Upper Canada,"
etc., etc., etc.

He put it in his pocket.

"For better or for worse, then," he said, and descended the stairs.

Presently, as he went through the village, he noticed signs of hostility
to himself.  Cries of Vive la Canada!  Vive la France!  a bas l'Anglais!
came to him out of the murmuring and excitement.  But the Regimental
Surgeon took off his cap to him, very conspicuously advancing to meet
him, and they exchanged a few words.

"By the way, monsieur," the Regimental Surgeon added, as he took his
leave, "I knew of this some days ago, and, being a justice of the peace,
it was my duty to inform the authorities--yes of course!  One must do
one's duty in any case," he said, in imitation of English bluffness, and
took his leave.

Ten minutes later Christine and Ferrol were on their way to the English
province to be married.

That afternoon at three o'clock, as they left the little English-speaking
village man and wife, they heard something which startled them both.  It
was a bear-trainer, singing to his bear the same weird song, without
words, which Vanne Castine sang to Michael.  Over in another street they
could see the bear on his hind feet, dancing, but they could not see the
man.

Christine glanced at Ferrol anxiously, for she was nervous and excited,
though her face had also a look of exultant happiness.

"No, it's not Castine!" he said, as if in reply to her look.

In a vague way, however, she felt it to be ominous.




CHAPTER XV

The village had no thought or care for anything except the Rebellion and
news of it; and for several days Ferrol and Christine lived their new
life unobserved by the people of the village, even by the household of
Manor Casimbault.

It almost seemed that Ferrol's prophecy regarding himself was coming
true, for his cheek took on a heightened colour, his step a greater
elasticity, and he flung his shoulders out with a little of the old
military swagger: cheerful, forgetful of all the world, and buoyant in
what he thought to be his new-found health and permanent happiness.

Vague reports came to the village concerning the Rebellion.  There were
not a dozen people in the village who espoused the British cause; and
these few were silent.  For the moment the Lavilettes were popular.
Nicolas had made for them a sort of grand coup.  He had for the moment
redeemed the snobbishness of two generations.

After his secret marriage, Ferrol was not seen in the village for some
days, and his presence and nationality were almost forgotten by the
people: they only thought of what was actively before their eyes.  On the
fifth day after his marriage, which was Saturday, he walked down to the
village, attracted by shouting and unusual excitement.  When he saw the
cause of the demonstration he had a sudden flush of anger.  A flag-staff
had been erected in the centre of the village, and upon it had been run
up the French tricolour.  He stood and looked at the shouting crowd a
moment, then swung round and went to the office of the Regimental
Surgeon, who met him at the door.  When he came out again he carried a
little bundle under his left arm.  He made straight for the crowd, which
was scattered in groups, and pushed or threaded his way to the flag-
staff.  He was at least a head taller than any man there, and though he
was not so upright as he had been, the lines of his figure were still
those of a commanding personality.  A sort of platform had been erected
around the flag-staff and on it a drunken little habitant was talking
treason.  Without a word, Ferrol stepped upon the platform, and,
loosening the rope, dropped the tricolour half-way down the staff before
his action was quite comprehended by the crowd.  Presently a hoarse shout
proclaimed the anger and consternation of the habitants.

"Leave that flag alone," shouted a dozen voices.  "Leave it where it is!"
others repeated with oaths.

He dropped it the full length of the staff, whipped it off the string,
and put his foot upon it.  Then he unrolled the bundle which he had
carried under his arm.  It was the British flag.  He slipped it upon the
string, and was about to haul it up, when the drunken orator on the
platform caught him by the arm with fiery courage.

"Here, you leave that alone: that's not our flag, and if you string it
up, we'll string you up, bagosh!" he roared.

Ferrol's heavy walking-stick was in his right hand.  "Let go my arm-
quick!" he said quietly.

He was no coward, and these people were, and he knew it.  The habitant
drew back.

"Get off the platform," he said with quiet menace.

He turned quickly to the crowd, for some had sprung towards the platform
to pull him off.  Raising his voice, he said:

"Stand back, and hear what I've got to say.  You're a hundred to one.
You can probably kill me; but before you do that I shall kill three or
four of you.  I've had to do with rioters before.  You little handful of
people here--little more than half a million--imagine that you can defeat
thirty-five millions, with an army of half a million, a hundred battle-
ships, ten thousand cannon and a million rifles.  Come now, don't be
fools.  The Governor alone up there in Montreal has enough men to drive
you all into the hills of Maine in a week.  You think you've got the
start of Colborne?  Why, he has known every movement of Papineau and your
rebels for the last two months.  You can bluster and riot to-day, but
look out for to-morrow.  I am the only Englishman here among you.  Kill
me; but watch what your end will be!  For every hair of my head there
will be one less habitant in this province.  You haul down the British
flag, and string up your tricolour in this British village while there is
one Britisher to say, 'Put up that flag again!'--You fools!"

He suddenly gave the rope a pull, and the flag ran up half-way; but as
he did so a stone was thrown.  It flew past his head, grazing his temple.
A sharp point lacerated the flesh, and the blood flowed down his cheek.
He ran the flag up to its full height, swiftly knotted the cord and put
his back against the pole.  Grasping his stick he prepared himself for an
attack.

"Mind what I say," he cried; "the first man that comes will get what
for!"

There was a commotion in the crowd; consternation and dismay behind
Ferrol, and excitement and anger in front of him.  Three men were pushing
their way through to him.  Two of them were armed.  They reached the
platform and mounted it.  It was the Regimental Surgeon and two British
soldiers.  The Regimental Surgeon held a paper in his hand.

"I have here," he said to the crowd, "a proclamation by Sir John
Colborne.  The rebels have been defeated at three points, and half of
the men from Bonaventure who joined Papineau have been killed.  The
ringleader, Nicolas Lavilette, when found, will be put on trial for his
life.  Now, disperse to your homes, or every man of you will be arrested
and tried by court-martial."

The crowd melted away like snow, and they hurried not the less because
the stone which some one had thrown at Ferrol had struck a lad in the
head, and brought him senseless and bleeding to the ground.

Ferrol picked up the tricolour and handed it to the Regimental Surgeon.

"I could have done it alone, I believe," he said; "and, upon my soul, I'm
sorry for the poor devils.  Suppose we were Englishmen in France, eh?"




CHAPTER XVI

The fight was over.  The childish struggle against misrule had come to a
childish end.  The little toy loyalists had been broken all to pieces.  A
few thousand Frenchmen, with a vague patriotism, had shied some harmless
stones at the British flag-staff on the citadel: that was all.  Obeying
the instincts of blood, religion, race, and language, they had made a
haphazard, sidelong charge upon their ancient conquerors, had spluttered
and kicked a little, and had then turned tail upon disaster and defeat.
An incoherent little army had been shattered into fugitive factors, and
every one of these hurried and scurried for a hole of safety into which
he could hide.  Some were mounted, but most were on foot.

Officers fared little better than men.  It was "Save who can": they were
all on a dead level of misfortune.  Hundreds reached no cover, but were
overtaken and driven back to British headquarters.  In their terror,
twenty brave rebels of two hours ago were to be captured by a single
British officer of infantry speaking bad French.

Two of these hopeless fugitives were still fortunate enough to get a
start of the hounds of retaliation and revenge.  They were both mounted,
and had far to go to reach their destination.  Home was the one word in
the mind of each; and they both came from Bonaventure.

The one was a tall, athletic young man, who had borne a captain's
commission in Papineau's patriot army.  He rode a sorel horse--a great,
wiry raw-bone, with a lunge like a moose, and legs that struck the ground
with the precision of a piston-rod.  As soon as his nose was turned
towards Bonaventure he smelt the wind of home in his nostrils; his
hatchet head jerked till he got the bit straight between his teeth; then,
gripping it as a fretful dog clamps the bone which his master pretends to
wrest from him, he leaned down to his work, and the mud, the new-fallen
snow and the slush flew like dirty sparks, and covered man and horse.

Above, an uncertain, watery moon flew in and out among the shifting
clouds; and now and then a shot came through the mist and the half dusk,
telling of some poor fugitive fighting, overtaken, or killed.

The horse neither turned head nor slackened gait.  He was like a living
machine, obeying neither call nor spur, but travelling with an unchanging
speed along the level road, and up and down hill, mile after mile.

In the rider's heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that
miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the
falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness
which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind.  The horse could
not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him.  He was conscious of
it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it.  Yet, if he were
overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever it might be.
Nicolas Lavilette had begun to unwind the coil of fortune and ambition
which his mother had long been engaged in winding.

A mile or two behind was another horse and another rider.  The animal was
clean of limb, straight and shapely of body, with a leg like a lady's,
and heart and wind to travel till she dropped.  This mare the little
black notary, Shangois, had cheerfully stolen from beside the tent of the
English general.  The bridle-rein hung upon the wrist of the notary's
palsied left hand, and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an
artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield.  He rode
like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his
body bent forward even with the mare's neck, his knees gripping the
saddle with a frightened tenacity, his small, black eyes peering into the
darkness before him, and his ears alert to the sound of pursuers.

Twenty men of the British artillery were also off on a chase that pleased
them well.  The hunt was up.  It was not only the joy of killing, but the
joy of gain, that spurred them on; for they would have that little black
thief who stole the general's brown mare, or they would know the reason
why.

As the night wore on, Lavilette could hear hoof-beats behind him; those
of the mare growing clearer and clearer, and those of the artillerymen
remaining about the same, monotonously steady.  He looked back, and saw
the mare lightly leaning to her work, and a little man hanging to her
back.  He did not know who it was; and if he had known he would have
wondered.  Shangois had ridden to camp to fetch him back to Bonaventure
for two purposes: to secure the five thousand dollars from Ferrol, and to
save Nic's sister from marrying a highwayman.  These reasons he would
have given to Nic Lavilette, but other ulterior and malicious ideas were
in his mind.  He had no fear, no real fear.  His body shrank, but that
was because he had been little used to rough riding and to peril.  But he
loved this game too, though there was a troop of foes behind him; and as
long as they rode behind him he would ride on.

He foresaw a moment when he would stop, slide to the ground, and with his
sabre kill one man--or more.  Yes, he would kill one man.  He had a
devilish feeling of delight in thinking how he would do it, and how red
the sabre would look when he had done it.  He wished he had a hundred
hands and a hundred sabres in those hands.  More than once he had been in
danger of his life, and yet he had had no fear.

He had in him the power of hatred; and he hated Ferrol as he had never
hated anything in his life.  He hated him as much as, in a furtive sort
of way, he loved the rebellious, primitive and violent Christine.

As he rode on a hundred fancies passed through his brain, and they all
had to do with killing or torturing.  As a boy dreams of magnificent
deeds of prowess, so he dreamed of deeds of violence and cruelty.  In his
life he had been secret, not vicious; he had enjoyed the power which
comes from holding the secrets of others, and that had given him pleasure
enough.  But now, as if the true passion, the vital principle, asserted
itself at the very last, so with the shadow of death behind him, his real
nature was dominant.  He was entirely sane, entirely natural, only
malicious.

The night wore on, and lifted higher into the sky, and the grey dawn
crept slowly up: first a glimmer, then a neutral glow, then a sort of
darkness again, and presently the candid beginning of day.

As they neared the Parish of Bonaventure, Lavilette looked back again,
and saw the little black notary a few hundred yards behind.  He
recognised him this time, waved a hand, and then called to his own fagged
horse.  Shangois's mare was not fagged; her heart and body were like
steel.

Not a quarter of a mile behind them both were three of the twenty
artillerymen.  Lavilette came to the bridge shouting for Baby, the
keeper.  Baby recognised him, and ran to the lever even as the sorel
galloped up.  For the first time in the ride, Nic stuck spurs harshly
into the sorel's side.  With a grunt of pain the horse sprang madly on.
A half-dozen leaps more and they were across, even as the bridge began to
turn; for Baby had not recognised the little black notary, and supposed
him to be one of Nic's pursuers; the others he saw further back in the
road.  It was only when Shangois was a third of the way across, that he
knew the mare's rider.  There was no time to turn the bridge back, and
there was no time for Shangois to stop the headlong pace of the mare.
She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across
the chasm, towards the moving bridge.  Her front feet struck the timbers,
and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the
river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains.

Baby looked down and saw the mare's head thrust above the water, once,
twice; then there was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more.

Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a
half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure,
as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over
it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it.




CHAPTER XVII

ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the
saloon.  He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while
the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind,
alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen.  From where he
lay he could look down into the village.  He was thinking of the tangle
into which things had got.  Feeling was bitter against him, and against
the Lavilettes also, now that the patriots were defeated.  It had gone
about that he had warned the Governor.  The habitants, in their blind
way, blamed him for the consequences of their own misdoing.  They blamed
Nicolas Lavilette.  They blamed the Lavilettes for their friend ship with
Ferrol.  They talked and blustered, yet they did not interfere with the
two soldiers who kept guard at the home of the Regimental Surgeon.  It
was expected that the Cure would speak of the Rebellion from the altar
this morning.  It was also rumoured that he would have something to say
about the Lavilettes; and Christine had insisted upon going.  He laughed
to think of her fury when he suggested that the Cure would probably have
something unpleasant to say about himself.  She would go and see to that
herself, she said.  He was amused, and yet he was not in high spirits,
for he had coughed a great deal since the incident of the day before, and
his strength was much weakened.

Presently he heard a footstep in the room, and turned over so that he
might see.  It was Sophie Farcinelle.

Before he had time to speak or to sit up, she had dropped a hand on his
shoulder.  Her face was aflame.

"You have been badly hurt, and I'm very sorry," she said.  "Why haven't
you been to see me?  I looked for you.  I looked every day, and you
didn't come, and--and I thought you had forgotten.  Have you?  Have you,
Mr. Ferrol?"

He had raised himself on his elbow, and his face was near hers.  It was
not in him to resist the appealing of a pretty woman, and he had scarcely
grasped the fact that he was a married man, his clandestine meetings with
his wife having had, to this point, rather an air of adventure and
irresponsibility.  It is hard to say what he might have done or left
undone; but, as Sophie's face was within an inch of his own, the door of
the room suddenly opened, and Christine appeared.  The indignation that
had sent her back from mass to Ferrol was turned into another indignation
now.

Sophie, frightened, turned round and met her infuriated look.  She did
not move, however.

"Leave this room at once.  What do you want here?" Christine said,
between gasps of anger.

"The room is as much mine as yours," answered Sophie, sullenly.

"The man isn't," retorted Christine, with a vicious snap of her teeth.

"Come, come," said Ferrol, in a soothing tone, rising from the sofa and
advancing.

"What's he to you?" said Sophie, scornfully.

"My husband: that's all!" answered Christine.  "And now, if you please,
will you go to yours?  You'll find him at mass.  He'll have plenty of
praying to do if he prays for you both--voila!"


"Your husband!" said Sophie, in a husky voice, dumfounded and miserable.
"Is that so?" she added to Ferrol.  "Is she-your wife?"

"That's the case," he answered, "and, of course," he added in a
mollifying tone, "being my sister as well as Christine's, there's no
reason why you shouldn't be alone with me in the room a few moments.
Is there now?" he added to Christine.

The acting was clever enough, but not quite convincing, and Christine was
too excited to respond to his blarney.

"He can't be your real husband," said Sophie, hardly above a whisper.
"The Cure didn't marry you, did he?" She looked at Ferrol doubtfully.

"Well, no," he said; "we were married over in Upper Canada."

"By a Protestant?" asked Sophie.

Christine interrrupted.  "What's that to you?  I hope I'll never see your
face again while I live.  I want to be alone with my husband, and your
husband wants to be alone with his wife: won't you oblige us and him--
Hein?"

Sophie gave Ferrol a look which haunted him while he lived.  One idle
afternoon he had sowed the seeds of a little storm in the heart of a
woman, and a whirlwind was driving through her life to parch and make
desolate the green fields of her youth and womanhood.  He had loitered
and dallied without motive; but the idle and unmeaning sinner is the most
dangerous to others and to himself, and he realised it at that moment,
so far as it was in him to realise anything of the kind.

Sophie's figure as it left the room had that drooping, beaten look which
only comes to the stricken and the incurably humiliated.

"What have you said to her?" asked Christine of Ferrol, "what have you
done to her?"

"I didn't do a thing, upon my soul.  I didn't say a thing.  She'd only
just come in."

"What did she say to you?"

"As near as I can remember, she said: 'You have been hurt, and I'm very
sorry.  Why haven't you been to see me?  I looked for you; but you didn't
come, and I thought you had forgotten me.'"

"What did she mean by that?  How dared she!"

"See here, Christine," he said, laying his hand on her quivering
shoulder, "I didn't say much to her.  I was over there one afternoon, the
afternoon I asked you to marry me.  I drank a lot of liqueur; she looked
very pretty, and before she had a chance to say yes or no about it I
kissed her.  Now that's a fact.  I've never spent five minutes with her
alone since; I haven't even seen her since, until this morning.  Now
that's the honest truth.  I know it was scampish; but I never pretended
to be good.  It is nothing for you to make a fuss about, because,
whatever I am--and it isn't much one way or another--I am all yours,
straight as a die, Christine.  I suppose, if we lived together fifty
years, I'd probably kiss fifty women--once a year isn't a high average;
but those kisses wouldn't mean anything; and you, you, my girl"--he bent
his head down to her "why, you mean everything to me, and I wouldn't give
one kiss of yours for a hundred thousand of any other woman's in the
world!  What you've done for me, and what you'd do for me--"

There was a strange pathos in his voice, an uncommon thing, because his
usual eloquence was, as a rule, more pleasing than touching.  A quick
change of feeling passed over her, and her eyes filled with tears.  He
ran his arm round her shoulder.

"Ah, come, come!" he said, with a touch of insinuating brogue, and
kissed her.  "Come, it's all right.  I didn't mean anything, and she
didn't mean anything; and let's start fresh again."

She looked up at him with quick intelligence.  "That's just what we'll
have to do," she said.  "The Cure this morning at mass scolded the people
about the Rebellion, and said that Nic and you had brought all this
trouble upon Bonaventure; and everybody looked at our pew and snickered.
Oh, how I hate them all!  Then I jumped up--"

"Well?" asked Ferrol, "and what then?"

"I told them that my brother wasn't a coward, and that you were my
husband."

"And then--then what happened?"

"Oh, then there was a great fuss in the church, and the Cure said ugly
things, and I left and came home quick.  And now--"

"Well, and now?" Ferrol interrupted.

"Well, now we'll have to do something."

"You mean, to go away?" he asked, with a little shrug of his shoulder.
She nodded her head.

He was depressed: he had had a hemorrhage that morning, and the road
seemed to close in on him on all sides.

"How are we to live?" he asked, with a pitiful sort of smile.

She looked up at him steadily for a moment, without speaking.  He did not
understand the look in her eyes, until she said:

"You have that five thousand dollars!"

He drew back a step from her, and met her unwavering look a little
fearfully.  She knew that--she--!  "When did you find it out?" he asked.

"The morning we were married," she replied.

"And you--you, Christine, you married me, a thief!"  She nodded again.

"What difference could it make?" she asked.  "I wouldn't have been happy
if I hadn't married you.  And I loved you!"

"Look here, Christine," he said, "that five thousand dollars is not for
you or for me.  You will be safe enough if anything should happen to me;
your people would look after you, and you have some money in your own
right.  But I've a sister, and she's lame.  She never had to do a stroke
of work in her life, and she can't do it now.  I have shared with her
anything I have had since times went wrong with us and our family.  I
needed money badly enough, but I didn't care very much whether I got it
for myself or not--only for her.  I wanted that five thousand dollars for
her, and to her it shall go; not one penny to you, or to me, or to any
other human being.  The Rebellion is over: that money wouldn't have
altered things one way or another.  It's mine, and if anything happens to
me--"

He suddenly stooped down and caught her hands, looking her in the eyes
steadily.

"Christine," he said, "I want you never to ask me to spend a penny of
that money; and I want you to promise me, by the name of the Virgin Mary,
that you'll see my sister gets it, and that you'll never let her or any
one else know where it came from.  Come, Christine, will you do it for
me?  I know it's very little indeed I give you, and you're giving me
everything; but some people are born to be debtors in this world, and
some to be creditors, and some give all and get little, because--"

She interrupted him.

"Because they love as I love you," she said, throwing her arms round his
neck.  "Show me where the money is, and I'll do all you say, if--"

"Yes, if anything happens to me," he said, and dropped his hand
caressingly upon her head.  He loved her in that moment.

She raised her eyes to his.  He stooped and kissed her.  She was still in
his arms as the door opened and Monsieur and Madame Lavilette entered,
pale and angry.




CHAPTER XVIII

That night the British soldiers camped in the village.  All over the
country the rebels had been scattered and beaten, and Bonaventure had
been humbled and injured.  After the blind injustice of the fearful and
the beaten, Nicolas Lavilette and his family were blamed for the miseries
which had come upon the place.  They had emerged from their isolation to
tempt popular favour, had contrived many designs and ambitions, and in
the midst of their largest hopes were humiliated, and were followed by
resentment.  The position was intolerable.  In happy circumstances,
Christine's marriage with Ferrol might have been a completion of their
glory, but in reality it was the last blow to their progress.

In the dusk, Ferrol and Christine sat in his room: she, defiant,
indignant, courageous; he hiding his real feelings, and knowing that all
she now planned and arranged would come to naught.  Three times that day
he had had violent paroxysms of coughing; and at last had thrown himself
on his bed, exhausted, helplessly wishing that something would end it
all.  Illusion had passed for ever.  He no longer had a cold, but a
mortal trouble that was killing him inch by inch.  He remembered how a
brother officer of his, dying of an incurable disease, and abhorring
suicide, had gone into a cafe and slapped an unoffending bully and
duellist in the face, inviting a combat.  The end was sure, easy and
honourable.  For himself--he looked at Christine.  Not all her abounding
vitality, her warm, healthy body, or her overwhelming love, could give
him one extra day of life, not one day.  What a fool he had been to think
that she could do so!  And she must sit and watch him--she, with her
primitive fierceness of love, must watch him sinking, fading helplessly
out of life, sight and being.

A bottle of whiskey was beside him.  During the two hours just gone he
had drunk a whole pint of it.  He poured out another half-glass, filled
it up with milk, and drank it off slowly.  At that moment a knock came
to the door.  Christine opened it, and admitted one of the fugitives of
Nicolas's company of rebels.  He saw Ferrol, and came straight to him.

"A letter for M'sieu' the Honourable," said he "from M'sieu' le Capitaine
Lavilette."

Ferrol opened the paper.  It contained only a few lines.  Nicolas was
hiding in the store-room of the vacant farmhouse, and Ferrol must assist
him to escape to the State of New York.

He had stolen into the village from the north, and, afraid to trust any
one except this faithful member of his company, had taken refuge in a
place where, if the worst came to the worst, he could defend himself,
for a time at least.  Twenty rifles of the rebels had been stored in the
farmhouse, and they were all loaded!  Ferrol, of course, could go where
he liked, being a Britisher, and nobody would notice him.  Would he not
try to get him away?

While Christine questioned the fugitive, Ferrol thought the matter over.
One thing he knew: the solution of the great problem had come; and the
means to the solution ran through his head like lightning.  He rose to
his feet, drank off a few mouthfuls of undiluted whiskey, filled a flask
and put it in his pocket.  Then he found his pistols, and put on his
greatcoat, muffler and cap, before he spoke a word.

Christine stood watching him intently.

"What are you going to do, Tom?" she said quietly.  "I am going to save
your brother, if I can," was his reply, as he handed her Nic's letter.




CHAPTER XIX

Half an hour later, as Ferrol was passing from Louis Lavilette's stables
into the road leading to the Seigneury he met Sophie Farcinelle, face to
face.  In a vague sort of way he was conscious that a look of despair and
misery had suddenly wasted the bloom upon her cheek, and given to the
large, cow-like eyes an expression of child-like hopelessness.  An apathy
had settled upon his nerves.  He saw things as in a dream.  His brain
worked swiftly, but everything that passed before his eyes was, as it
were, in a kaleidoscope, vivid and glowing, but yet intangible.  His
brain told him that here before him was a woman into whose life he had
brought its first ordeal and humiliation.  But his heart only felt a
reflective sort of pity: it was not a personal or immediate realisation,
that is, not at first.

He was scarcely conscious that he stood and looked at her for quite two
minutes, without motion or speech on the part of either; but the dumb,
desolate look in her eyes--a look of appeal, astonishment, horror and
shame combined, presently clarified his senses, and he slowly grew to
look at her as at his punishment, the punishment of his life.  Before
--always before--Sophie had been vague and indistinct: seen to-day,
forgotten tomorrow; and previous to meeting her scores had affected his
senses, affected them not at all deeply.

She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant
something, but what, is not quite sure.  But the meaning and definiteness
were his own.  Out of the irresponsibility of his nature, out of the
moral ineptitude to which he had been born, moral knowledge came to him
at last.  Love had not done it; neither the love of Christine, as strong
as death, nor the love of his sister, the deepest thing he ever knew--but
the look of a woman wronged.  He had inflicted on her the deepest wrong
that may be done a woman.  A woman can forgive passion and ruin, and
worse, if the man loves her, and she can forgive herself, remembering
that to her who loved much, much was forgiven.  But out of wilful
idleness, the mere flattery of the senses, a vampire feeding upon the
spirits and souls of others, for nothing save emotion for emotion's sake
--that was shameless, it was the last humiliation of a woman.  As it
were, to lose joy, and glow, and fervour of young, sincere and healthy
life, to whip up the dying vitality and morbid brain of a consumptive!

All in a flash he saw it, realised it, and hated himself for it.  He knew
that as long as he lived, an hour or ten years, he never could redeem
himself; never could forgive himself, and never buy back the life that he
had injured.  Many a time in his life he had kissed and ridden away, and
had been unannoyed by conscience.  But in proportion as conscience had
neglected him before, it ground him now between the stones, and he saw
himself as he was.  Come of a gentleman's family, he knew he was no
gentleman.  Having learned the forms and courtesies of life, having
infused his whole career with a spirit of gay bonhomie, he knew that in
truth he was a swaggerer; that bad taste, infamous bad taste, had marked
almost everything that he had done in his life.  He had passed as one of
the nobility, but he knew that all true men, all he had ever met, must
have read him through and through.  He had understood this before to a
certain point, had read himself to a certain mark of gauge, but he had
never been honestly and truly a man until this moment.  His soul was
naked before his eyes.  It had been naked before, but he had laughed.
Born without real remorse, he felt it at last.  The true thing started
within him.  God, the avenger, the revealer and the healer, had held up
this woman as a glass to him that he might see himself.

He saw her as she had been, a docile, soft-eyed girl, untouched by
anything that defames or shames, and all in a moment the man that had
never been in him until now, from the time he laughed first into his
mother's eyes as a babe, spoke out as simply as a child would have
spoken, and told the truth.  There were no ameliorating phrases to soften
it to her ears; there was no tact, there was no blarney, there was no
suave suggestion now, no cheap gaiety, no cynicism of the social vampire
--only the direct statement of a self-reproachful, dying man.

"I didn't fully know what I was doing," he said to her.  "If I had
understood then as I do now, I would never have come near you.  It was
the worst wickedness I ever did."

The new note in his voice, the new fashion of his words, the new look of
his eyes, startled her, confused her.  She could scarcely believe he was
the same man.  The dumb desolation lifted a little, and a look of under
standing seemed to pierce her tragic apathy.  As if a current of thought
had been suddenly sent through her, she drew herself up with a little
shiver, and looked at him as if she were about to speak; but instead of
doing so, a strange, unhappy smile passed across her lips.

He saw that all the goodness of her nature was trying to arouse itself
and assure him of forgiveness.  It did not deceive him in the least.

"I won't be so mean now as to say I was weak," he added.  "I was not
weak; I was bad.  I always felt I was born a liar and a thief.  I've lied
to myself all my life; and I've lied to other people because I never was
a true man."

"A thief!" she said at last, scarcely above a whisper, and looking at him
with a flash of horror in her eyes.  "A thief!"

It was no use; he could not allow her to think he meant a thief in the
vulgar, common sense, though that was what he was: just a common
criminal.

"I have stolen the kind thoughts and love of people to whom I gave
nothing in return," he said steadily.  "There is nothing good in me.
I used to think I was good-natured; but I was not, or I wouldn't have
brought misery to a girl like you."

His truth broke down the barriers of her anger and despair.  Something
welled up in her heart: it may have been love, it may have been inherent
womanliness.

"Why did you marry Christine?" she asked.

All at once he saw that she never could quite understand.  Her stand-
point would still, in the end, be the stand-point of a woman.  He saw
that she would have forgiven him, even had he not loved her, if he had
not married Christine.  For the first time he knew something, the real
something, of a woman's heart.  He had never known it before, because he
had been so false himself.  He might have been evil and had a conscience
too; then he would have been wise.  But he had been evil, and had had no
conscience or moral mentor from the beginning; so he had never known
anything real in his life.  He thought he had known Christine, but now he
saw her in a new light, through the eyes of her sister from whose heart
he had gathered a harvest of passion and affection, and had burnt the
stubble and seared the soil forever.  Sophie could never justify herself
in the eyes of her husband, or in her own eyes, because this man did not
love her.  Even as he stood before her there, declaring himself to her as
wilfully wicked in all that he had said and done, she still longed
passionately for the thing that was denied her: not her lost truth back,
but the love that would have compensated for her suffering, and in some
poor sense have justified her in years to come.  She did not put it into
words, but the thought was bluntly in her mind.  She looked at him, and
her eyes filled with tears, which dropped down her cheek to the ground.

He was about to answer her question, when, all at once, her honest eyes
looked into his mournfully, and she said with an incredible pathos and
simplicity:

"I don't know how I am going to live on with Magon.  I suppose I'll have
to keep pretending till I die!"

The bell in the church was ringing for vespers.  It sounded peaceful and
quiet, as though no war, or rebellion, or misery and shame, were anywhere
within the radius of its travel.

Just where they stood there was a tall calvary.  Behind it was some
shrubbery.  Ferrol was going to answer her, when he saw, coming along the
road, the Cure in his robes, bearing the host.  In front of him trotted
an acolyte, swinging the censer.

Ferrol quickly drew Sophie aside behind the bushes, where they should not
be seen; for he was no longer reckless.  He wished to be careful for the
woman's sake.

The Curb did not turn his head to the right or left, but came along
chanting something slowly.  The smell of the incense floated past them.
When the priest and the lad reached the calvary they turned towards it,
bowed, crossed themselves, and the lad rang a little silver bell.  Then
the two passed on, the lad still ringing.  When they were out of sight
the sound of the bell came softly, softly up the road, while the bell in
the church tower still called to prayer.

The words the priest chanted seemed to ring through the air after he had
gone.

              "God have mercy upon the passing soul!
               God have mercy upon the passing soul!
               Hear the prayer of the sinner, O Lord;
               Listen to the voice of those that mourn;
               Have mercy upon the sinner, O Lord!"

When Ferrol turned to Sophie again, both her hands were clasping the
calvary, and she had dropped her head upon them.

"I must go," he said.  She did not move.

Again he spoke to her; but she did not lift her head.  Presently,
however, as he stood watching her, she moved away from the calvary, and,
with her back still turned to him, stepped out into the road and hurried
on towards her home, never once turning her head.

He stood looking after her for a moment, then turned and, sitting on a
log behind the shrubbery, he tore a few pieces of paper out of a note-
book and began writing.  He wrote swiftly for about twenty minutes or
more, then, arising, he moved on towards the village, where crowds had
gathered--excited, fearful, tumultuous; for the British soldiers had just
entered the place.

Ferrol seemed almost oblivious of the threatening crowd, which once or
twice jostled him more than was accidental.  He came into the post-
office, got an envelope, put his letter inside it, stamped it, addressed
it to Christine, and dropped it into the letter-box.




CHAPTER XX

An hour later he stood among a few companies of British soldiers in front
of the massive stone store-house of the Lavilettes' abandoned farmhouse,
with its thick shuttered windows and its solid oak doors.  It was too
late to attempt the fugitive's escape, save by strategy.  Over half an
hour Nic had kept them at bay.  He had made loopholes in the shutters and
the door, and from these he fired upon his assailants.  Already he had
wounded five and killed two.

Men had been sent for timber to batter down the door and windows.
Meanwhile, the troops stood at a respectful distance, out of the range of
Nic's firing, awaiting developments.

Ferrol consulted with the officers, advising a truce and parley, offering
himself as mediator to induce Nic to surrender.  To this the officers
assented, but warned him that his life might pay the price of his
temerity.  He laughed at this.  He had been talking, with his head and
throat well muffled, and the collar of his greatcoat drawn about his
ears.  Once or twice he coughed, a hacking, wrenching cough, which struck
the ears of more than one of the officers painfully; for they had known
him in his best and gayest days at Quebec.

It was arranged that he should advance, holding out a flag of truce.
Before he went he drew aside one of the younger lieutenants, in whose
home at Quebec his sister had always been a welcome visitor, and told him
briefly the story of his marriage, of his wife and of Nicolas.  He sent
Christine a message, that she should not forget to carry his last token
to his sister!  Then turning, he muffled up his face against the crisp,
harsh air (there was design in this also), and, waving a white
handkerchief, advanced to the door of the store-room.

The soldiers waited anxiously, fearing that Nic would fire, in spite of
all; but presently a spot of white appeared at one of the loopholes; then
the door was slowly opened.  Ferrol entered, and it was closed again.

Nicolas Lavilette grasped his hand.

"I knew you wouldn't go back on me," said he.  "I knew you were my
friend.  What the devil do they want out there?"

"I am more than your friend: I'm your brother," answered Ferrol,
meaningly.  Then, quickly taking off his greatcoat, cap, muffler and
boots: "Quick, on with these!" he said.  "There's no time to lose!"

"What's all this?" asked Nic.

"Never mind; do exactly as I say, and there's a chance for you."

Nic put on the overcoat.  Ferrol placed the cap on his head, and muffled
him up exactly as he himself had been, then made him put on his own top-
boots.

"Now, see," he said, "everything depends upon how you do this thing.
You are about my height.  Pass yourself off for me.  Walk loose and long
as I do, and cough like me as you go."

There was no difficulty in showing him what the cough was like: he
involuntarily offered an illustration as he spoke.

"As soon as I shut the door and you start forward, I'll fire on them.
That'll divert their attention from you.  They'll take you for me, and
think I've failed in persuading you to give yourself up.  Go straight on-
don't hurry--coughing all the time; and if you can make the dark, just
beyond the soldiers, by the garden bench, you'll find two men.  They'll
help you.  Make for the big tree on the Seigneury road--you know: where
you were robbed.  There you'll find the fastest horse from your father's
stables.  Then ride, my boy, ride for your life to the State of New
York!"

"And you--you?" asked Nicolas.  Ferrol laughed.

"You needn't worry about me, Nic.  I'll get out of this all right; as
right as rain!  Are you ready?  Steady now, steady.  Let me hear you
cough."  Nic coughed.

"No, that isn't it.  Listen and watch."  Ferrol coughed.  "Here," he
said, taking something from his pocket, "open your mouth."  He threw some
pepper down the other's throat.  "Now try it."

Nic coughed almost convulsively.

"Yes, that's it, that's it!  Just keep that up.  Come along now.  Quick-
not a moment to lose!  Steady!  You're all right, my boy; you've got
nerve, and that's the thing.  Good-bye, Nic, good luck to you!"

They grasped hands: the door opened swiftly, and Nic stepped outside.  In
an instant Ferrol was at the loophole.  Raising a rifle, he fired, then
again and again.  Through the loophole he could see a half-dozen men lift
a log to advance on the door as Nic passed a couple of officers, coughing
hard, and making spasmodic motions with his hand, as though exhausted and
unable to speak.

He fired again, and a soldier fell.  The lust of fighting was on him now.
It was not a question of country or of race, but only a man crowding the
power of old instincts into the last moments of his life.  The vigour and
valour of a reconquered youth seemed to inspire him; he felt as he did
when a mere boy fighting on the Danube.  His blood rioted in his veins;
his eyes flashed.  He lifted the flask of whiskey and gulped down great
mouthfuls of it, and fired again and again, laughing madly.

"Let them come on, let them come on," he cried.  "By God, I'll settle
them!"  The frenzy of war possessed him.  He heard the timber crash
against the door--once, twice, thrice, and then give away.  He swung
round and saw men's faces glowing in the light of the fire, and then
another face shot in before the others--that of Vanne Castine.

With a cry of fury he ran forward into the doorway.  Castine saw him at
the same moment.  With a similar instinct each sprang for the other's
throat, Castine with a knife in his hand.

A cry of astonishment went up from the officers and the men without.
They had expected to see Nic; but Nic was on his way to the horse beneath
the great elm tree, and from the elm tree to the State of New York--and
safety.

The men and the officers fell back as Castine and Ferrol clinched in a
death struggle.  Ferrol knew that his end had come.  He had expected it,
hoped for it.  But, before the end, he wanted to kill this man, if he
could.  He caught Castine's head in his hands, and, with a last effort,
twisted it back with a sudden jerk.

All at once, with the effort, blood spurted from his mouth into the
other's face.  He shivered, tottered and fell back, as Castine struck
blindly into space.  For a moment Ferrol swayed back and forth, stretched
out his hands convulsively and gasped, trying to speak, the blood welling
from his lips.  His eyes were wild, anxious and yearning, his face deadly
pale and covered with a cold sweat.  Presently he collapsed, like a
loosened bundle, upon the steps.

Castine, blinded with blood, turned round, and the light of the fire upon
his open mouth made him appear to grin painfully--an involuntary grimace
of terror.

At that instant a rifle shot rang out from the shrubbery, and Castine
sprang from the ground and fell at Ferrol's feet.  Then, with a
contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face
downward upon the ground-dead.

A girl ran forward from the trees, with a cry, pushing her way through to
Ferrol's body.  Lifting up his head, she called to him in an agony of
entreaty.  But he made no answer.

"That's the woman who fired the shot!" said a subaltern officer
excitedly.  "I saw her!"

"Shut up, you fool--it was his wife!" exclaimed the young captain to
whom Ferrol had given his last message for Christine.




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