Ringfield Part 22

She must not marry him! What then, could or in all likelihood would, prevent this consummation? The hours flew by and he thought of no plan. The hard weather still held and grew harder, colder, until the great drifts blocked all the roads, and St. Ignace was cut off from the outside world. Still, any hour a thaw might set in and, at the worst, the railway was hardly ever impracticable for more than a couple of days. Delay there might be, but one could see that Crabbe would not refuse to welcome even delay; he sat at the head of the chief table clad in the regulation tweeds of the country gentleman, and with a kind of fierce and domineering inflation in his manner that subdued the irrepressible hilarity of Poussette, threatening to break out again, for by way of keeping his pledge as to liquor, he seemed to take more beer than was necessary or good for him. The Cordova, held as a willing witness and prospective bridesmaid, had to "learn her place"

under the new _regime_, and felt fully as miserable as she looked, for now no longer revelry graced the night. Poussette's unnaturally long face matched with Pauline's hauteur and Crabbe's careless air of mastery; he, the sullen cad, the drunken loafer, having become the arbiter of manners, the final court of appeal. One day Ringfield had been lashed to even unusual distress and mortification by the offensive manner of the guide, who in the course of conversation at the table had allowed his natural dislike of Dissent and Dissenters to show; "d.a.m.ned Methodists," and all that sort of talk. The very terms annoyed Ringfield; they savoured of the Old Country, not of Canada, where denominational hatred and bigotry should be less p.r.o.nounced, and as he left the room Poussette joined him in the hall.

"Bigosh, Mr. Ringfield, sir--but I don't know how you stand that talk so long--no, sir, I don't know at all!" He patted the other on the back.

"Well, Poussette, I must do the best to stand it that I know how. You and I agree about a good many things. Tell me--do you believe that--that Mr.--that he is really a reformed man, really changed in his habits? And is he going to marry Miss Clairville? You are around with him a good deal; you are likely to know."

"The day is feex," returned Poussette without enthusiasm. "The day is feex, and I am bes' man."

"What do you think about it, though? Don't you think he'll break out again?"

Ringfield's anxious bitter inflections could not escape Poussette.

"Ah-ha! Mr. Ringfield, sir--you remember that I wanted Miss Clairville for myself? Bigosh--but I have got over that, fine! Sir, I tell you this, me, a common man--you can get over anything if you make up the mind. Fonny things happens--and now I snap the finger at Mlle.

Pauline. Why? Because I feex up things with Mees Cordova even better."

"Mme. Poussette----" began Ringfield.

"Mme. Poussette is come no more here on me at all, I tell you. No more on St. Ignace at all."

"But you cannot _marry_ Miss Cordova, Poussette!"

"I know very well that, Mr. Ringfield, sir. No. For that, sir, I will wait. My wife must die some day! Mees Cordova will wait too; she will _menager_ here for me, and I will threat her proper--oh! you shall see how I will threat that one!" Poussette seductively nodded his head.

"I will threat her proper, sir, like a lady. Mme. Poussette--she may stay with Henry Clairville all the rest of her life! I would not take her back now, for she leave me to go nurse him, and not threat me right. No sir, not threat me, her husband, Amable Poussette, right at all."

"I'm in no mood for these difficult distinctions in morality!" cried Ringfield in exasperation. "What day is this wedding--tell me that!"

Poussette gave him the day and hour--eleven o'clock in a certain Episcopal church in Montreal on the 24th of December, and then they parted.

From this moment a steady pursuit of one idea characterized Ringfield's actions. Already charged to explosive point by pressure of emotions both worthy and the reverse, he immediately entered into correspondence with several charitable inst.i.tutions with regard to Angeel, and he also wrote to Mr. Enderby and Mr. Abercorn. It was now the ninth of the month and the snow still held. Sobriety still held and long faces; the American organ was never opened, and Pauline and her satellite, Miss Cordova, were mostly buried in their bedrooms, concocting an impromptu trousseau.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TROUSSEAU OF PAULINE

"--the whole domain To some, too lightly minded, might appear A meadow carpet for the dancing hours."

"Tra-la!" sang Miss Clairville, as she pressed heavily on the folds of a purple cloth skirt which had once done service in the "Grand d.u.c.h.ess," but was now being transformed by hot irons, rows of black braid and gilt b.u.t.tons into a highly respectable travelling dress.

"I thought at first of giving this old thing away, but see how well it's going to look, after all!"

The Cordova, busy heating an iron on the "drum" which stood in a corner of the room, looked at the skirt and at first said nothing.

"It's too dark for a bride's travelling-dress," she said after a while.

"Do you think so? But not for a dark bride," said the other with an uneasy frown. "Well, I'm not a girl, you see; besides, without a sewing machine you and I could never manufacture an entire costume. I meant to give it to you; in fact, I had it tied up in that bundle once, then I changed my mind--woman's prerogative--and here it is."

"Thank you, but I shouldn't care for it anyhow, purple's not my colour; it looks awful with my kind of hair."

Pauline glanced up coldly at the bleached head bending over the irons.

"Perhaps it does. Well--it's too late now even if you did care for it.

I'll wear plenty of white around my neck and down the front; a cascade, _jabot_ effect always suits me."

She wound a white scarf around her as she spoke, and bent an old black hat into a three-cornered shape on top of her head.

"There, my dear, there is the true French face, only you don't know it!

If I could take you to my home, you would see--well, you would not see much beyond Henry and his eternal books, though they tell me he reads no more. I'm thinking of an old portrait I resemble."

Miss Clairville now sat on the bed, having relinquished the work of doing over the cloth skirt to her friend.

"Why are you keeping that red and black dress there, the theatre dress?

You will never need that, travelling!"

"No, I suppose not, only----"

Pauline eyed the dress. The family trait of acquisitiveness combined with a love of h.o.a.rding was a.s.serting itself, and she could scarcely make up her mind to part with things when the time came. Besides, this dress carried her back to meetings with Ringfield, and again she saw the pa.s.sionate admiration in his eyes as they talked in whispers on her balcony.

"Oh--a fancy of mine! I look well in it. I wore it when Henry was taken ill with the 'pic'."

With a loud shriek Miss Cordova dropped an iron on the floor.

"What is it now? _Quelle betise_! Stupid--I wasn't with him! I meant--about that time. But if you want the dress, take it, take it!

_Mon Dieu_! what a state your nerves must be in!"

"I'm much better than when I came here," said Miss Cordova quickly.

"Say, Pauline,--did you know I thought of sending for the children?"

"Your children? To come here?"

"Yes. Now, Pauline, it sounds queer, I know, and worse than anything I've ever done, yet--it isn't as bad as it sounds. But, but--well, I may just as well out with it. Mr. Poussette has proposed!"

"To you?"

Miss Cordova stopped in her work. "Yes. He seems to be serious and I like it here, like him too, so I guess we'll fix it up somehow. Of course his wife's living, but she's not right in her head, so she don't count."

"And your two husbands are alive, but as one drinks and the other was married when he met you, _they_ don't count." Miss Clairville was staring in front of her. "My dear girl--have you never heard of such a thing as bigamy? You're talking nonsense, and you must not allow Mr.

Poussette to get you into trouble. You can't marry him, Sara!"

"Of course. I know that. But we are both willing to wait. Schenk can't last long; he's drinking harder than ever from last accounts, and Stanbury--well, perhaps I'd better stop short of saying anything about English swells, but Charlie Stanbury had no right to me in the first instance, and now I'm not going to let the faintest thought of him stop me in my last chance of a home and quiet, peaceful living.

Oh--Pauline--I was never the same after I discovered how Stanbury wronged me! Nothing seemed to matter and I went from bad to worse.

But since I've been here, I've seen things in a different light, and I'd like to stay here and bring the children away from New York and let them grow up where they'll never hear a word about their father or about me and Schenk."

She spoke with sad conviction, her eyes filling, her hands trembling as she worked on at Pauline's skirt.

"You'd give up the theatre and all the rest of it, and come and live at St. Ignace if you could?"