The Money Master Part 32

"The good G.o.d would see that--" he began.

"The good G.o.d doesn't interfere in bringing up babies," she retorted.

"That's the work for the fathers and mothers, or G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers."

"You are neither," exclaimed Jean Jacques. "You have no rights at all."

"I have no rights--eh? I have no rights! Look at the child. Look at the way she's clothed. Look at the cradle in which it lies. It cost fifteen dollars; and the clothes--what they cost would keep a family half a year. I have no rights, is it?--I who stepped in and took the child without question, without bein' asked, and made it my own, and treated it as if it was me own. No, by the love of G.o.d, I treated it far, far better than if it had been me own. Because a child was denied me, the hunger of the years made me love the child as a mother would on a desert island with one child at her knees."

"You can get another-one not your own, as this isn't," argued Jean Jacques fiercely.

She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly. She chose her own course to convince. "Nolan loves this child as if it was his," she declared, her eyes all afire, "but he mightn't love another--men are queer creatures. Then where would I be? and what would the home be but what it was before--as cold, as cold and bitter! It was the hand of G.o.d brought the child to the door of two people who had no child and who prayed for one. Do you deny it was the hand of G.o.d that brought your daughter here away, that put the child in my arms? Not its mother, am I not? But I love her better than twenty mothers could. It's the hunger--the hunger--the hunger in me. She's made a woman of me. She has a home where everything is hers--everything. To see Nolan play with her, tossin' her up and down in his arms as if he'd done it all his life--as natural as natural! To take her away from that--all the comfort here where she can have anything she wants! With my old mother to care for her, if so be I was away to market or whereabouts--one that brought up six children, a millionaire among them, praise be to G.o.d as my mother did--to take this delicate little thing away from here, what a sin and crime 'twould be! She herself 'd never forgive you for it, if ever she grew up--though that's not likely, things bein' as they are with you, and you bein' what you are. Ah, there--there she is awake and smilin', and kickin' up her pretty toes this minute! There she is, the lovely little Zoe, with eyes like black pearls.... See now--see now which she'll come to--to you or me, m'sieu'. There, put out your arms to her, and I'll put out mine, and see which she'll take. I'll stand by that--I'll stand by that. Let the child decide. Hold out your arms, and so will I."

With an impa.s.sioned word Jean Jacques reached down his arms to the child, which lay laughing up at them and kicking its pink toes into the air, and Norah Doyle did the same, murmuring an Irish love-name for a child. Jean Jacques was silent, but in his face was the longing of a soul sick for home, of one who desires the end of a toilsome road.

The laughing child crooned and spluttered and shook its head, as though it was playing some happy game. It looked first at Norah, then at Jean Jacques, then at Norah again, and then, with a little gurgle of pleasure, stretched out its arms to her and half-raised itself from the pillow. With a glad cry Norah gathered it to her bosom, and triumph shone in her face.

"Ah, there, you see!" she said, as she lifted her face from the blossom at her breast.

"There it is," said Jean Jacques with shaking voice.

"You have nothing to give her--I have everything," she urged. "My rights are that I would die for the child--oh, fifty times!... What are you going to do, m'sieu'?"

Jean Jacques slowly turned and picked up his hat. He moved with the dignity of a hero who marches towards a wall to meet the bullets of a firing-squad.

"You are going?" Norah whispered, and in her eyes was a great relief and the light of victory. The golden link binding Nolan and herself was in her arms, over her heart.

Jean Jacques did not speak a word in reply, though his lips moved. She held out the little one to him for a good-bye, but he shook his head.

If he did that--if he once held her in his arms--he would not be able to give her up. Gravely and solemnly, however, he stooped over and kissed the lips of the child lying against Norah's breast. As he did so, with a quick, mothering instinct Norah impulsively kissed his s.h.a.ggy head, and her eyes filled with tears. She smiled too, and Jean Jacques saw how beautiful her teeth were--cruel no longer.

He moved away slowly. At the door he turned, and looked back at the two--a long, lingering look he gave. Then he faced away from them again.

"Moi je suis philosophe," he said gently, and opened the door and stepped out and away into the frozen world.

EPILOGUE.

Change might lay its hand on the parish of St. Saviour's, and it did so on the beautiful sentient living thing, as on the thing material and man-made; but there was no change in the sheltering friendship of Mont Violet or the flow of the ill.u.s.trious Beau Cheval. The autumns also changed not at all. They cast their pensive canopies over the home-scene which Jean Jacques loved so well, before he was exhaled from its bosom.

One autumn when the hillsides were in those colours which none but a rainbow of the moon ever had, so delicately sad, so tenderly a.s.suring, a traveller came back to St. Saviour's after a long journey. He came by boat to the landing at the Manor Cartier, rather than by train to the railway-station, from which there was a drive of several miles to Vilray. At the landing he was met by a woman, as much a miniature of the days of Orleanist France as himself. She wore lace mits which covered the hands but not the fingers, and her gown showed the outline of a meek crinoline.

"Ah, Fille--ah, dear Fille!" said the little fragment of an antique day, as the Clerk of the Court--rather, he that had been for so many years Clerk of the Court--stepped from the boat. "I can scarce believe that you are here once more. Have you good news?"

"It was to come back with good news that I went," her brother answered smiling, his face lighted by an inner exaltation.

"Dear, dear Fille!" She always called him that now, and not by his Christian name, as though he was a peer. She had done so ever since the Government had made him a magistrate, and Laval University had honoured him with the degree of doctor of laws.

She was leading him to the pony-carriage in which she had come to meet him, when he said:

"Do you think you could walk the distance, my dear?... It would be like old times," he added gently.

"I could walk twice as far to-day," she answered, and at once gave directions for the young coachman to put "His Honour's" bag into the carriage. In spite of Fille's reproofs she insisted in calling him that to the servants. They had two servants now, thanks to the legacy left them by the late Judge Carca.s.son. Presently M. Fille took her by the hand. "Before we start--one look yonder," he murmured, pointing towards the mill which had once belonged to Jean Jacques, now rebuilt and looking almost as of old. "I promised Jean Jacques that I would come and salute it in his name, before I did aught else, and so now I do salute it."

He waved a hand and made a bow to the gold c.o.c.k of Beaugard, the pride of all the vanished Barbilles. "Jean Jacques Barbille says that his head is up like yours, M. le Coq, and he wishes you many, many winds to come," he recited quite seriously, and as though it was not out of tune with the modern world.

The gold c.o.c.k of Beaugard seemed to understand, for it swung to the left, and now a little to the right, and then stood still, as if looking at the little pair of exiles from an ancient world--of which the only vestiges remaining may be found in old Quebec.

This ceremony over, they walked towards Mont Violet, averting their heads as they pa.s.sed the Manor Cartier, in a kind of tribute to its departed master--as a Stuart Legitimist might pa.s.s the big palace at the end of the Mall in London. In the wood-path, Fille took his sister's hand.

"I will tell you what you are so trembling to hear," he said. "There they are at peace, Jean Jacques and Virginie--that best of best women."

"To think--married to Virginie Poucette--to think of that!" His sister's voice fluttered as she spoke. "But entirely. There was nothing in the way--and she meant to have him, the dear soul! I do not blame her, for at bottom he is as good a man as lives. Our Judge called him 'That dear fool, Jean Jacques, a man of men in his way, after all,' and our Judge was always right--but yes, nearly always right."

After a moment of contented meditation he resumed. "Well, when Virginie sold her place here and went to live with her sister out at Shilah in the West, she said, 'If Jean Jacques is alive, he will be on the land which was Zoe's, which he bought for her. If he is alive--then!' So it was, and by one of the strange accidents which chance or women like Virginie, who have plenty of courage in their simpleness, arrange, they met on that three hundred and sixty acres. It was like the genius of Jean Jacques to have done that one right thing which would save him in the end--a thing which came out of his love for his child--the emotion of an hour. Indeed, that three hundred and sixty acres was his salvation after he learned of Zoe's death, and the other little Zoe, his grandchild, was denied to him--to close his heart against what seemed that last hope, was it not courage? And so, and so he has the reward of his own soul--a home at last once more."

"With Virginie Poucette--Fille, Fille, how things come round!" exclaimed the little lady in the tiny bonnet with the mauve strings.

"More than Virginie came round," he replied almost oracularly. "Who, think you, brought him the news that coal was found on his acres--who but the husband of Virginie's sister! Then came Virginie. On the day Jean Jacques saw her again, he said to her, 'What you would have given me at such cost, now let me pay for with the rest of my life. It is the great thought which was in your heart that I will pay for with the days left to me.'"

A flickering smile brightened the sensitive ascetic face, and humour was in the eyes. "What do you think Virginie said to that? Her sister told me. Virginie said to that, 'You will have more days left, Jean Jacques, if you have a better cook. What do you like best for supper?' And Jean Jacques laughed much at that. Years ago he would have made a speech at it!"

"Then he is no more a philosopher?"

"Oh always, always, but in his heart, and not with his tongue. I cried, and so did he, when we met and when we parted. I think I am getting old, for indeed I could not help it: yet there was peace in his eyes--peace."

"His eyes used to rustle so."

"Rustle--that is the word. Now, that is what, he has learned in life--the way to peace. When I left him, it was with Virginie close beside him, and when I said to him, 'Will you come back to us one day, Jean Jacques?' he said, 'But no, Fille, my friend; it is too far. I see it--it is a million miles away--too great a journey to go with the feet, but with the soul I will visit it. The soul is a great traveller. I see it always--the clouds and the burnings and the pitfalls gone--out of sight--in memory as it was when I was a child. Well, there it is, everything has changed, except the child-memory. I have had, and I have had not; and there it is. I am not the same man--but yes, in my love just the same, with all the rest--' He did not go on, so I said, 'If not the same, then what are you, Jean Jacques?'"

"Ah, Fille, in the old days he would have said that he was a philosopher"--said his sister interrupting. "Yes, yes, one knows--he said it often enough and had need enough to say it. Well, said he to me, 'Me, I am a'--then he stopped, shook his head, and so I could scarcely hear him, murmured, 'Me--I am a man who has been a long journey with a pack on his back, and has got home again.' Then he took Virginie's hand in his."

The old man's fingers touched the corner of his eye as though to find something there; then continued. "'Ah, a pedlar!' said I to him, to hear what he would answer. 'Follies to sell for sous of wisdom,' he answered.

Then he put his arm around Virginie, and she gave him his pipe."

"I wish M. Carca.s.son knew," the little grey lady remarked.

"But of course he knows," said the Clerk of the Court, with his face turned to the sunset.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Air of certainty and universal comprehension Always calling to something, for something outside ourselves Being generous with other people's money Came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often Courage which awaits the worst the world can do Enjoy his own generosity Good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness Grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter Grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk Had the slight flavour of the superior and the paternal He had only made of his wife an incident in his life He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist He was not always sorry when his teasing hurt He admired, yet he wished to be admired He hated irony in anyone else I had to listen to him, and he had to pay me for listening I can't pay you for your kindness to me, and I don't want to I said I was not falling in love--I am in love If you have a good thought, act on it Inclined to resent his own insignificance Lacks a balance-wheel. He has brains, but not enough Law. It is expensive whether you win or lose Lyrical in his enthusiasms Man who tells the story in a new way, that is genius Missed being a genius by an inch No past that is hidden has ever been a happy past No man so simply sincere, or so extraordinarily prejudiced Not content to do even the smallest thing ill Of those who hypnotize themselves, who glow with self-creation Philosophers are often stupid in human affairs Protest that it is right when it knows that it is wrong She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly Spurting out little geysers of other people's cheap wisdom That iceberg which most mourners carry in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s The beginning of the end of things was come for him The soul is a great traveller Untamed by the normal restraints of a happy married life You can't take time as the measure of life You went north towards heaven and south towards h.e.l.l