Ringfield Part 13

"After so long, m'sieu! It is not possible. May St. Anne give you courage, for it is a.s.suredly six or seven years since m'sieu has left his apartment."

"Nine--nine!" said he impatiently. "The year the child came into this world. I vowed then and all St. Ignace knows I have kept the vow--I would never leave my room again."

"M'sieu, all know, it is true, of the vow, but none know the reason for it. I have kept my faith, m'sieu."

"But she, my sister, she is so flighty, so excitable--she may have told a thousand times!"

"I think not, m'sieu."

"Father Rielle is unsuspecting; likewise Dr. Renaud. Well, well, who gains by considering evil? Not one so weak and battered as I.

Nevertheless, I will walk, madame. I will conquer this fear and this weakness and will show the strength and temper of a Clairville, of a De Clairville, I should say. Open then, madame."

Thus with his black skull-cap on his bald head, and the faded claret and silver habit upon his shrunken limbs, he tottered over the threshold of his disorderly, uncared for room which he had occupied without one moment's intermission, night and day, summer and winter, for eight years, ten months and four days, and madame, preceding him, watched in an agony of fear but also of hope--yonder was a new field for her powers of cleansing and purifying. Dust in thick rolls, cobwebs in floating black triangular and looped cl.u.s.ters, stale odours and rubbish--the apartment which had served as bedroom, dining-room, _salon_ and study so long, would naturally be in a disgraceful condition. Henry Clairville's ghost it was that pa.s.sed from that room to the hall, but the ghost walked--more than Henry Clairville had done for nine years.

The door of the chief _salon_ was open, and he entered, Mme. Poussette a.s.sisting him, still with clasped hands and awestruck eyes, and, although all the changes which had been wrought by her indefatigable fingers could not be appreciated by him, as it was so long since he had seen the room, he missed something. The suit, hanging for years upon its common nail, till it was encrusted with flyspecks, riddled with moth-holes, and tarnished, rusty and faded, now covered his meagre frame, but the other things he looked for he failed to find. He gazed at the walls, perceiving the one old, cracked and discoloured painting.

"Where are the others?" he demanded piteously. "There were four others, all valuable, all of great value."

"There was but this one when I came, m'sieu."

"Then Pauline has sold them--to keep that wretched child alive, to pay for its board and keep and _tendresse--tendresse_, perhaps, on part of some one while I--I have been neglected and kept short of the things I might have had--the wine, the comforts, the fruits! Ah--but I am a most unfortunate man, I who should be seigneur of the parish! Is it not so, madame? Here have I been starving and yet--there was money, you see--my sister had money all the time!"

Madame's lips moved; she said nothing. Far from having suffered privation during her stay at Clairville, she had been able to provide both for herself and the invalid, food and drink of the best quality procurable in that part--the Archambaults having h.o.a.rded large quant.i.ties of the supplies sent up by Poussette's "peep". The love of acquisition for its own sake had spread even among the youngest members of the family, and had one demanded suddenly of any of them the simplest meal, one would have been met by violent protestations that there was nothing in the house! To such an extent had this smuggling and h.o.a.rding spread that in looking through the kitchen and cellars madame had encountered a great store of provisions, mostly in good condition; sacks and barrels full of vegetables, apples, winter pears and nuts; tins full of bread and cakes, some mouldy, some fresh, and various kegs and bottles full of wine and spirits.

"Then," he continued, "where are my choice books, my _editions de luxe_? There were some splendid volumes here, rare, you understand, worth money. She must have sold them also. I recollect when she begged me to let her take them out of my room. And a violin--of the most superb--that is gone! You know nothing of all these?"

"I know nothing--truly--m'sieu."

"And my cats? Who has dared to interfere with my cats, my dear friends? Le Cid--Chateaubriand--Phedre--Montcalm--eh? What has been done with them? And the doors, the little doors I had made for them--nailed up, I see! Ah--ah, madame--this is your work! You have killed them! Say then, am I not right? Miserable wretch of a woman!"

He was staggering now about the room between weakness and temper and she a.s.sisted him to a chair.

"You have killed them!" he gasped repeatedly.

"No, m'sieu, not one. Indeed, m'sieu, I speak the truth. The cats of m'sieu were fourteen; how could I kill so many? No, but I fed them and put them away in the barns--yes--and nailed up the little doors, it is true, for I could not do my work with the cats of m'sieu always between the feet. I spoke of them once to you, because there were two who wished to enter your room, lie on the bed----"

"Yes, yes! Le Cid and Montcalm. Good cats, good friends!"

"Lie on the bed, but I could not allow them. Thus, for three days they sat outside the door of m'sieu."

"And the peac.o.c.k? Is it that I shall find him banished also when I walk forth from my house? Mlle. Pauline has rid herself of him?"

"Not so, m'sieu. I have cared for the bird and indeed for all the animals."

Clairville, quieter now, was thinking.

"Did some one sing to me about cats as I lay there on my bed?"

Madame reddened.

"Yes, m'sieu--it was I who made a song about the 'Cats of Clairville'.

To amuse myself only, m'sieu, I often do like that."

He looked at her, then down at his speckled, bony hands.

"We are both mad, I think," he said in the most matter-of-fact way, "but you, of course, more so than I am. Well, to-day I have walked in here. To-morrow I shall walk all over this house, and next week, madame, next week I shall walk to the village--well, half-way. Some day I may even go to church. Oh--you shall see, you shall see!"

And with that, natural fatigue, engendered by the wholly unusual exercise intervened; his nurse moved a sofa into the hall, and there he slept for many hours, while she routed out his room as well as she could; his physical recovery from that day was miraculously rapid, and in a fortnight he was as quick and light upon his feet and as much given to the open air and walking as he had been previously doggedly convinced that he could not use his legs and that the least breath or whiff of fresh air would destroy him. So much for the after-effects of the "Pic" and the sweet uses of adversity.

The fine November days that followed were the days that Canada can give in wonderful perfection--when the thick canopy of leaves has been caught up, shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky, forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and hillock of withered gra.s.s, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June and a singular mellow haze fills all the forest paths. Now can be closely seen the different forms of the trees, each trunk and each limb no less interesting than the brilliant foliage which lately enveloped them; the abandoned nests are bare, some on the ground transfixed between the bushes, or pendant from the branches of tall trees. The evergreens of various kinds supply the note of colour which alone gives hope and promises relief from neutral brown and grey, and underneath what once was a leafy forest arcade are all the roots of spring--the spotted erythronium, the hepatica, the delicate uvularia, the starry trientalis. Through such s.p.a.cious aisles and along such paths of promise Henry Clairville walked every day while the fine weather lasted, wearing the ancient suit and the black skull-cap, and often attended as far as Lac Calvaire by the white peac.o.c.k and two cats, and always watched from window or door by the faithful Mme. Poussette.

Fear of contagion kept the Archambaults away, all save Antoine, who, const.i.tuting himself a bodyguard for Pauline in the village, took messages to and fro the Manor House.

When M. Clairville had seen the stores and provisions in his cellar, sufficient, with a few additions, for the entire winter months at least, he demanded of madame if she would remain with him and manage his house, and the poor woman a.s.sented with delight. Poussette did not want her; she had no place in the world, no ties; only occasionally was she required to nurse sick people in the village; here was a comfortable remote haven where she might be of use, busied in exercising those faculties remaining to her, which at Poussette's were rotting and rusting away. She remained therefore, to cook and wait upon him; a new existence sprang up for both, and it was when this sort of thing had lasted for a month that the parish priest, Father Rielle, thought it his duty to call.

CHAPTER XIV

FATHER RIELLE

"--his moods Of pain were keen as those of better men, Nay, keener, as his fort.i.tude was less."

The writer has elsewhere stated that the Roman Catholic clergy in this part of the world are easily divided into two cla.s.ses, the rotund, rosy and jolly, and the thin, ascetic and reserved; the _cure_ of St. Ignace belonged to the latter, and possessed a strongly marked characteristic face, the droop of his bitter mouth and the curve of his chiselled nose being almost Dantesque in effect. He had conserved a type of feature which, common enough up to the present, seems to be in danger of extinction; the pa.s.sing of the aquiline, the slow disappearance of the Roman nose, are facts patent to thoughtful observers of national traits. Any contemporaneous collection of portraits of representative men in the higher walks of life reveals the fact that this fine racial curve is rapidly becoming extinct. From the Duke of Wellington down, this nose has been a.s.sociated with men prominent in military and naval affairs, in literature (notably poetry and criticism) and in finance and diplomacy, until the possession of such a significant organ has become almost the _sine qua non_ of an individual destined to be famous or successful. Varieties of course existed, such as when combined with beetling brows and sunken eyes one recognized the professor or arch-critic of his generation. Or, when taken with the square forehead, thin mouth and visionary eyes of the military genius, one saw some great general. Or simply existing in some silly scion of good family, and meaning nothing whatever, in this case usually over-high at the thin bridge, and in profile far too strong for the weak rest of the face. In women of gentle extraction this nose was found beautifully proportioned. In belles of the mid-Victorian era were the lineaments of Caesar clearly revealed, a.s.sociated with the delicacy of colouring and rounded chin and cheek which redeemed them from hard masculinity, so that fifty years ago in any representative gathering of England's fairest and n.o.blest the observer would note a similarity of feature, especially in profile, between peers and peeresses, poets and poetesses, statesmen and the _grandes dames_ of society. Caricatured, it lived in the drawings of Leech and Du Maurier. Taken seriously, it inspired creative artists both of pen and brush when dealing with the heroic. Superficial writers confused it with the Hebraic nose, and in prints of criminal and depraved characters one frequently found it distorted and wrenched to conditions of ugliness. Tennyson and the latest murderer apparently owned the same facial angle, if one corrected the droop of the eyebrow, the curve of the nostril, the set of the ear. Thus the Roman or aquiline nose made itself and its possessor known to the world. Other noses might, if they liked, take a back seat! this nose never. Sala, Lamb, Kingsley--all had varieties of the nose. The American variant is seen in hundreds of nineteeenth century writers, preachers, New England farmers, old Cape Cod characters, Gloucester fishermen, actors, especially of tragic mould; showmen, lecturers, bankers--the nose has prospered in the new world.

The significance of the feature is matched by its endurance, by the persistency with which it appears in every decade up to the present.

For with the opening of a new century the nose, aquiline in its purest state, equine with its accompaniment of cruel gums and sharp teeth in its worst, seems on the point of disappearing. The contemporary portraits of great men and beautiful women no longer display it. There is a new nose. It is to be hoped that it retains the powers with which the organ was originally endowed; for example, we suppose that it still can detect and appreciate, repulse and define odours. But as a sign-post showing the path to glory, as an index of force of character or intellect, it is practically useless. The new nose is modest, retiring, seeketh not its own, is never puffed up. You would know it for a nose, certainly, but its ample and aristocratic proportions are wanting; it lacks a bridge, is spineless, immature, unfinished. Yet it is set in the faces of many eminent thinkers and workers among the younger men; it is already allied to keenness of vision and talent, and may or may not be a.s.sociated with birth and good breeding. The query is--is it a new nose, or only one that has always been with us, but is now gradually supplanting the old one? Did the nose aquiline largely represent cla.s.s, and does the phenomenon of the new semi-straight, semi-nothing nose represent the intrusion of ma.s.s? Against this timid and, it may be, spurious generalization, one may pit the working-man with the nose of a duke, and the young colonial ruler with the unformed, delicate feature of a school-girl. So we accept the fact that in our own day types are pa.s.sing.

The English face is going. It has served its turn, perhaps. Infusion of American and colonial blood will help to change it. The high-nosed country gentleman or landed n.o.ble, with Berserk or Viking blood in his veins, finds that, like Alice in Wonderland, it takes all he can do to keep where he is, and the work entailed takes something, a good deal, out of him. One thing goes, then another; finally, he casts away his birthright, the arch or bridge of his nose, and his son and the younger members of his family appear shorn of that important feature. The plebeian nose, so long as it is neither pug nor pig, is safer, better.

Men are not afraid of it. Syndicates and boards breathe more freely when the barriers of nose are broken down, and a good mediocrity of feature may yet avert a war or preserve a treaty. At all events, a study of our chief contemporaries will bear out a considerable portion of this reasoning. The beauties of society and the stage have a leaning to noses tiptilted like the petals of a flower, or to a nose which is a kind of modification of the Greek, frequently found among Americans. For instance, in Canada there is fast growing up a new type of head, clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amus.e.m.e.nts are lacking; there seems nothing to live for outside work. Nature poets and wild-animal delineators are not among these set, earnest, straight-featured faces. The former are more likely to be denizens of cities. In this slightly dour Canadian face there are but few aquiline noses, and yet such is the danger of generalizing that perhaps the first people readers of this page meet after perusing it might be a group of students, none with Celtic hair and eyes and all with Roman contours. Likewise, on opening the current number of a leading musical journal, the long, high, prominent nasal organ of Sir Edward Elgar confronts us, whose peculiar cast of thought confirms the impression that spirituality, fine artistic conception and capacity to achieve are still the dower of those possessing this fast-disappearing feature.

Ringfield belonged to the tribe of straight-nosed, grey-eyed thinkers--a finished contrast to Father Rielle, whose worn profile suggested the wormwood and the gall. Looks, however, not being in all cases indications of the character within, the priest was an exceedingly simple and earnest man, const.i.tutionally timid, and physically frail; thus, he pa.s.sed for what is known as a "deep" man, when he was nothing of the sort, and although it may be a mooted point whether in a Catholic community the local priest has or has not the entire conscience of that community at his mercy by means of the confessional, it was certain that there were a few things that Father Rielle did not know. Had he been social, convivial, fond, like most of his brother priests, of a game of cards, of good living and long drinking, he might have worked more reforms in the countryside, and holding the reins of priestly government stern and tight prevented some lapses from the moral code. That is to say, a worse man might have achieved better results, but as it was not in his nature to haunt Poussette's, make friends with the guides and call at unconventional hours upon his parishioners, he missed several revelations that fell to Ringfield's share. Crabbe was not upon his visiting list, nor Pauline of late years; for Henry Clairville he entertained a certain sad respect, as for a gentleman and landed proprietor fallen from grace indeed, but by the Will of G.o.d rather than by personal shortcomings.

His tendency to fatalism was Calvinistic in its intensity, and he trod his accustomed path baptizing, marrying, burying, with the sour curve of his thin profile growing sourer every day. Thus this silent, censorious-looking priest presented a strong contrast to the optimistic young Ontarian, yet one emotion was common to them both--Father Rielle had for years nursed a hopeless pa.s.sion for Miss Clairville.

It happened that the knowledge of Mme. Poussette's remaining on at Clairville as housekeeper to its master came to Father Rielle as something of a shock. Certain things are right and certain things are wrong in certain places; some things are right and some things are wrong in all places. Madame had a husband who, although plainly tired of her, had not yet openly neglected her; she also had a good home, and in her condition of mind it was not wise, according to the priest, that she should leave her husband and home to live with Henry Clairville.

Dr. Renaud was questioned, but as medical men are everywhere less concerned with the conventions than are lawyers or priests, he only intimated that madame was probably happier at Clairville than in her own home, and that he saw no reason for disturbing the arrangement.

"But," said Father Rielle in their common tongue, "is it because the wife of Poussette is a little afflicted, light of head while sad of heart, that rules and customs no longer apply to her? I take it--it will make a scandal in the village and every man who is sick must expect some other man's wife to come in and care for him, and finally live in his house and take care of it. Our society may be small, but in some matters it is best conducted as are large communities. I think M. de Clairville should be instructed that his conduct is wrong."

"You call him 'de' Clairville, I see," replied the doctor from his buggy outside Gagnon's carpenter shop. "Well, it does not matter!

Faith--he is both vicious and mad enough to be in truth the seigneur of all the parish as he styles himself--as n.o.bles and seigneurs used to go. I have little knowledge of such myself! I am a plain man! my father was Renaud the harness-maker of Three Rivers. First I was fond of horses, then I was fond of gathering herbs and flowers, then I was fond of mixing medicines and quacking my friends when they were ill; then my mother saved some money and sent me to college and then one fine day I awoke, and I am Dr. Renaud! And you--you are one of the three Rielle brothers, likewise from Three Rivers; one is a notary, one a priest--yourself--and the youngest keeps the Hotel Jacques Cartier at Sorel-en-haut. That is funny, that! You should have made him something else."

"It is true," replied the priest mildly, "I am not in love with his calling, but people who travel must be lodged. I use his place myself once or twice a year; it is the Will of G.o.d that such places must be; it is clean, and his wife, at the age of seventeen, already cooks well; he is lately married at the age of thirty-five. I myself am four years older. But of M. de Clairville I would say--that he must be brought to see that he is doing this poor Mme. Poussette a wrong, and I was going to ask you if you would drive me out to visit him this afternoon. That is, if, as I hear, it is quite safe to go there now."

"It would afford me pleasure indeed, _mon pere_," said Dr. Renaud, "but unfortunately I am waiting here for the young man who has charge of the new church by the river,--Poussette's fancy, Mr. Ringfield."

"You are driving him to Clairville?" A quick jealousy animated the priest's eager question.

"I am, but we can make room for you. Certainly, my friend, we are neither of us so very stout and you are thin; you shall sit in our laps--oh yes, I take no denial! You shall come with us, Father Rielle, and we three shall descend upon this sick seigneur of yours and his housekeeper and see what they are doing. Drive her back in the evening, if you like."