"Yesterday was Sunday and there should have been a service here, but you were absent. How long have you been here? Were you waiting for me?"
"No."
"For him?"
"Yes."
"And he came? Over the bridge?"
In a flash the priest divined, as he thought, the fate of Crabbe.
"_Mon Dieu! M"tenant je comprends_! The hole I pa.s.sed and all-but stumbled through! You cut that, you waited to see him fall through and drown! Perhaps he has ceased to struggle! Ah! that is why the crowd is gathering at Poussette"s!"
Father Rielle rose to his feet and thrust aside the appealing hands of the other, but the strength exerted in this supreme moment was terrific and the priest could not escape.
"No, no," sobbed Ringfield, dry-eyed and trembling. "I know what you think--that I pushed him over, that I pushed him down, but I did not.
I wished to kill him, I wished to put him out of the way, but I had not the courage. He crossed in safety, the hole was not my doing. He stood there on the rock and he lied to me about her, about Miss Clairville, and I struck him and he stumbled and fell."
"You pushed him, G.o.d forgive you, I know you pushed! You have killed him and now you are keeping me here. Let me go, let me go!"
"I did not push, I swear it! Only in my mind, only in my thoughts, did I kill him. I struck him and he fell. But it is true that I am guilty in thought, if not in deed, and I will take my punishment."
"What do you mean? What are you saying? One moment you are innocent of this man"s death; the next you are saying you are guilty."
Ringfield at last removed his heavy clasp from the priest"s arm and stood quietly waiting, it seemed, as if for condemnation or sentence.
"Before G.o.d, it was not my hand that sent him to his death, still, having come to my senses, I desire to suffer for my fault, and I will give myself up to take what punishment I deserve. I have disgraced my calling and my Church. I can never preach again, never live the life of a Christian minister again. Some shelter I must seek, some silence, some reparation I must make----"
He bent his eyes on the ground, his whole mien expressed the contrition of the sinner, but Father Rielle thought more of the affair from the standpoint of crime than from that of sin.
"What do you mean by punishment?" he said, torn between curiosity to know what had really become of the guide and a wish to hear everything Ringfield had to say. While the priest was thus hesitating to move along the road to the point where by making a slight detour among some pines he could cross farther down, a striking but wholly incongruous figure emerged from the trees. With shining top hat, fur-lined coat, gauntlets and cane, M. Lalonde, the Montreal detective, came forward with his professional conceit no whit impaired by juxtaposition with these glacial and solitary surroundings. He handed his card to the priest and bowed to them both.
"_Mon Dieu_!" muttered Father Rielle, "it is true then! You saw it all! You saw it all--I can see!"
"What there was to see, I certainly saw," returned M. Lalonde, with a careless glance of pity at the forlorn figure of Ringfield. "I not only saw, but I heard. I followed this gentleman from the Hotel Champlain as he followed--our late acquaintance--to this place. Permit me, monsieur, permit me, _monsieur le cure_, to testify if necessary that you are entirely guiltless of the death."
"In act, yes, but not in thought," groaned Ringfield in deepest anguish.
"The law cannot punish for sins of thought; we leave that to the Church. If, monsieur, you had but inquired further into what is known now in provincial annals as the Archambault affair, perhaps you might have been spared some misapprehension and much suffering. Mr. Henry Clairville left a wife."
"A wife!"
"You did not know that? Eh? A wife certainly, as well as a child. A daughter."
"But who----"
"I reciprocate your astonishment. The child"s nurse is its mother; she, the empty-headed, the foolish Artemise. She was not of age, it is true, but there--it is done and who cares now, who will interfere or contest? The matter will drop out of sight completely in a few days; meanwhile, monsieur, I return as I came. The morning is fine and I shall enjoy my walk back to the station at Bois Clair. _Monsieur le cure_, you have my card. At any time in your _paroisse_ should you have any more interesting family secrets to divulge, pray do not forget my address. _Allons_! I will walk with you to the scene of the tragedy, as we shall see it shortly described in the papers. As for you, monsieur, have courage and be tranquil. Rest, monsieur, rest for awhile and leave these scenes of strife and unhappiness as soon as you can. I understand your case; my professional knowledge avails me here, but there are some who might not understand, and so make it hard for you."
The priest looked at Lalonde"s card and then at Ringfield.
"Sinner, or worse," he cried, "I cannot, cannot stay. I must go where my duty calls me and see if I can be of use, see whether a man lives or has been shot down to death. Do nothing till I return; at least do nothing desperate. I will seek you as soon as I may. There will be a way out for you yet; I know a haven, a refuge. Only promise me; promise not to give up to remorse and contrition too deeply."
Ringfield stood pale and quiet and gave the promise, but Father Rielle and Lalonde ran along the road leading back from the fall until they reached a point where the river was sufficiently frozen to admit of walking across. Arrived at last among those who had left Poussette"s a quarter of an hour before, they were just in time to view the body of the guide where it lay wedged between two large ice-covered boulders.
In a few minutes Martin drew it forth; Dr. Renaud was speedily summoned, but life was surely quite extinct, and now the priest and physician met in consultation as to the task of breaking the tragic news to Miss Clairville. In a little while the whole of St. Ignace gathered upon the river-bank to discuss the accident in voluble and graphic French. It was seventeen years since any one had gone over the fall in such a manner and only the oldest present remembered it.
The body of the unfortunate Englishman was taken to Gagnon"s establishment and placed in the room recently occupied by Ringfield, who went home with the priest and to whom he seemed to turn in ever-increasing confidence and respect.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE WILL OF G.o.d
"I hope, said she, that Heaven Will give me patience to endure the things Which I behold at home...."
The glorious noonday sun was lighting up all the road to Clairville and making it possible for the peac.o.c.k to revive his display of a glistening fan of feathers tipped with frosted filaments that were only rivalled by the pendant encrustations of the surrounding trees, and in a window of the manor Pauline was standing looking at the bird after showing Angeel the various little trifles she had brought with her.
The child"s infirmity did not prevent her from enjoying the good things of life; indeed, as frequently occurs in such cases, her senses were almost preternaturally acute and her faculties bright and sensitive in the extreme. In place of any system of general education, impossible during those sequestered years at Hawthorne in charge of her incapable mother, she had picked up one or two desultory talents which might yet stand her instead of mere bookishness; she was never without a pencil in her long white fingers and busied herself by the hour with little drawings and pictures of what she had seen in her limited experience, and some of these she had been exhibiting now to the person she held both in awe and adoration. Her kinship to this elegant, dark-haired lady had only recently been explained, and Pauline was trying to accustom herself to being addressed as "ma tante" and "tante cherie"
with other endearing and embarra.s.sing terms of regard.
But the time was going on and Miss Clairville turned from the window; a very little of Angeel was all she could stand just now.
"At this rate our beautiful view will soon disappear," she said, sitting down beside the basket-chair. "See then, _mon enfant_, how already the ice drips off the trees and all the pretty gla.s.s tubes are melting from the wires overhead! It is so warm too, like a day in spring. _Eh! bien_, I must go now back to my friends who are waiting for me. I have nothing more to show little girls. You have now the beads, the satin pincushion, and the little red coat that is called a Zouave jacket--see how gay! and you will find it warm and pleasant to wear when your kind _maman_ makes it to fit you. And here too are the crayons to paint with and a new slate. _Soyez toujours bonne fille, p"t.i.te_, and perhaps some day you will see your poor aunt again."
"Not my poor aunt! My rich, _rich_ aunt."
"Ah--_tais toi, ma p"t.i.te_! But you, too, are not poor any longer.
That reminds me, I must have a little talk with your kind _maman_."
With some difficulty overcoming her dislike of the individual and aversion to the entire family arrangement, Pauline walked out to the hall which separated the faded _salon_, where she had been sitting, from the still untidy bedroom and called for Artemise. In a few moments the widow of Henry Clairville came in sight at the top of the staircase leading to the upper room, her bright black eyes dulled and frightened and her hands trembling visibly, for was not Mlle.
Clairville her enemy, being not only a relative now by marriage but her late mistress, tyrant and superior? But the certainty of leaving the neighbourhood in a very few days put Pauline so much at her ease that she could afford to show her brightest and most amiable side to her sister-in-law, and thus she made a graceful if authoritative advance to the bottom of the staircase and stretched forth both her white hands, even going the length of imprinting a slow kiss on the other"s sunburnt cheek. Few could at any time have resisted the mingled charms of so magnetic a personality, with something of the stage lingering in it, an audacity, an impulsiveness, rare among great ladies, and it must be remembered that in the limited society of St. Ignace, Miss Clairville pa.s.sed as a great lady, and was one indeed in all minor traits. Then the touch of her skin was so soft, there always exhaled a delicate, elusive, but sweet perfume from her clothes and hair, and even in her mourning she had preserved the artistic touches necessary to please.
No wonder that the poor Artemise should burst into weak tears and cry for pity and forgiveness as that soft kiss fell upon her cheek and those proud hands grasped her own.
"_Chut_!" cried Miss Clairville, drawing the other into the _salon_.
"I am not angry with you, child! If Henry made you his wife it was very right of him and no one shall blame you nor complain. Only had I known--ah, well, it might not have made so much difference after all.
You are going to be very comfortable here, Artemise, and I shall write to you from time to time--oh, have no fear! regularly, my dear! And Dr. Renaud and his Reverence are to see about selling Henry"s books and papers, and it is possible that they bring you a nice sum of money.
With that, there is one thing I should like you to do. Are you listening to me, Artemise?"
"_Bien_, mademoiselle," answered Artemise, through her sobs. "I listen, I will do anything you say. I am sorry, ma"amselle. I should not be here, I know; it is you who should be here, here at Clairville, and be its mistress."
Still secure in her ideas of impending ease and happiness, and unaware of the course of tragic accident which was operating at that same moment against her visions of release and freedom and depriving her of the future she relied on, Pauline laughed musically at the notion.
"Oh, that--for me? No, thank you, my dear. In any case I had done with Clairville. If not marriage, then the stage. If not the stage--and there were times when it wearied and disgusted me, with the uneducated people one met and the vagaries of that man, Jean Roch.e.l.le--then a paid situation somewhere. The last--very difficult for me, a Clairville [and again she very nearly used the prefix, a tardy endorsing of Henry"s pet project], and with my peculiar needs.
To be sure, a religious house had offered me a good place, thanks to Father Rielle, at a good figure for Canada, but there are other countries, Artemise, there are other countries, and I am still young, _n"est-ce-pas_?"
"Mademoiselle will never be old. She has the air of a princess, the complexion--_d"une vierge_!"