"Eh, Mon Dieu! You wouldn"t have me drink alone! You grieve my soul, Chrysler! _Bois, done_, my dear friend, we will be merry together. In this cursed country, among these oxen of the farms, we don"t often meet a civilized friend." In saying this, he was dexterously pulling the cork from a bottle of champagne, which his right hand now poured into two wine gla.s.ses, as skilfully as his left had whisked them out of a corner of the basket.
"Drink quickly,--Eh bien, you do not wish to? Your health then!--May you long survive your principles, and experience a blessed death of gout!"
He quaffed off the gla.s.s and poured out another, laughing and chatting on with such bounding, irresistible spirits that his guest caught a kind of sympathetic infection. Gla.s.s after gla.s.s interminable disappeared down his throat in a kind of intermittent cascade. The Ontarian laughed more than he had done for many a year.
"But, De Bleury," he got breath to say, "what is your important capacity here, that they give you such sumptuous quarters?"
"Commercial traveller in the only commerce of the country. We have no business here, you know, except statesmanship, the trade in voters, _le metier de ministre_. You see a man;--tell me how much he owns:--I can tell you his election price. The schedule is simply: How much taxes does he pay?--Pay my taxes; I vote your side. There lies the only shame of my Scotch blood that they have never devised a commerce so obvious. It"s like a bailiff we used to tease; he had no money, poor devil, so when he came into the bar he used to say to us, "Make me drunk and have some fun with me." "Pay my taxes and have some fun with me:" the same thing, you see. All men are merchandise. Ross de Bleury alone has no price--but for a regular good guzzler, I could embezzle a Returning Officer."
A rap sounded on the door of the stairs.
"I resemble my ancestor, the Chevalier Jean Ross, who, when he was storming a castle in Flanders, exclaimed: "Victory, companions! we command the door of the wine cellar!""
The words of a Persian proverb: "You are a liar, but you delight me,"
pa.s.sed through Chrysler"s mind.
The rap sounded again, and louder, on the door below.
De Bleury"s manner changed. He looked at his companion as if revolving some plan; then moving rapidly to the ticket-office-like-closet, he opened a door, and beckoned him in, signing to sit down and keep quiet.
The closet was darker than the darkest part of the surrounding garret, for the dormer window in it, similar to the one near the table, was boarded up, all but a single irregular aperture, admitting light enough only to reveal the surroundings after lapse of some time.
De Bleury, however, by holding his purse up to the c.h.i.n.k of light, managed to a.s.sure himself of the denomination of a bank-note, and then, turning hastily, lifted the sliding door of the ticket-hole a trifle and pushing out the money, left it partly under the slide, letting in a grey beam on their darkness. He then silently applied his eye to an augur-hole above the slide, and waited. Meantime the knock sounded once more and pair of heavy steps came up the stairs, and tramped towards them; and some indefinable recognition of the heavy tread came vaguely to Chrysler. The steps stopped, the note was withdrawn, the tread sank away down the stairs, and De Bleury, rollicking with suppressed laughter, opened the door.
"You have overseen a ceremony of the Freemasons," he said. "Truly. You don"t believe it? I am a Freemason, I _am_, Chrysler," he said, sententiously, with a trace of the champagne, "I have observed a square and compa.s.s among the charms at your watch-chain. You know, therefore, your duties towards a brother, not, perhaps, not to see; but having seen, not to divulge. You understand?"
"Perfectly, my dear De Bleury. Excuse me, I have an engagement at the Manoir."
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
"p.r.o.neurs de l"ancien regime, dites-moi ce que vous faites de ces belles et riches natures de femmes, qui sortent du sang genereux du peuple?"
--ETIENNE PARENT.
During the excitement and bustle, Mr. Chrysler also sometimes fell into the modest society of Josephte. The girl seemed sad at these times, and to be losing the serene peace which at first seemed her characteristic.
He remarked this to Madame Bois-Hebert one day as he met her sitting in the shades of the pine-walk reading a devotional work.
Madame was a figure still able to command as well as to attract respect.
Dignity and ability had not yet departed from her face and bearing, and quietude was the only effect of age upon her, beyond falling cheeks and increasing absorption in exercises of religion.
"Does it not appear to you that your demoiselle is sad?" he asked.
"It is true, monsieur; her mind is troubled at present."
"The cause is some cavalier."
"You judge correctly. Benoit does not wish her to marry as she desires.
And though he wishes her to unite herself to a brute compared with her cavalier, yet the latter is himself an individual of no consequence, and she has been well advised to relinquish him."
"Who is it advises that?"
"Her friends, who see in her a more lovely destiny. The dear child will make perhaps a Saint. You do not know the expiations and indulgences she has earned these several years by prayers and devotions, her pure nature, her admirable conduct. She is not for the world, but for G.o.d."
"What did Josepthe herself think?"
That which Madame had said of her nature was correct enough. She was a delight to the sisters in their sad, austere lives. "She is like an angel, and has the movements of one," they said. Very unlike to, for instance, the daughters Jalbert, those bold and idle girls, whose steady occupation was tom-boying scandalously with chance young men, and jeering impudent jeers at everybody.
Her haunts were in removed and shady nooks, such as the little dell behind the log cabin of the Le Bruns. There, one hot afternoon he found her sitting under the shade of the windmill, dressed as usual in neat black, and as usual lately, pale. The little ones ran, sat and played around her; Henri, Rudolphe and Elisa in the pride of their enterprise tugging the long beam by which horse or man in the preceding century had turned the conical cap of the mill; their efforts cracking and shaking the crazy roof, but availing nothing except to disturb a crow or two near by, among the white birches through whose cl.u.s.ters gleamed the River in the sun.
What brought Josephte to the Le Brun dell?
_Et quoi!_ She was weeping.
Those little children saw not her silent tears. Chrysler beheld them--crystalline drops on pale, soft cheek, emblems of pure heart and secret sorrow; but she checked them when he drew near and sat up composed.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "What is it troubles thee so profoundly? Tell me; I am an old man and thy friend."
"Monsieur, Monsieur, I ask your pardon,"--she broke again into tears.
Fortunately, all the children were running off among the trees.--"My sin is great:"
"And what is the offence, my child?"
Josephte was silent, and the blood rushed over her face.
"I mean thee no ill, Mlle. Josephte. Perhaps I can a.s.sist or advise thee."
"They have promised me to the good G.o.d: alas! and my heart thinks of a mortal! I never could be like the others.--I cannot forget," and she broke completely down, sobbing again and again. In a little while he spoke, hoping to soothe her.
"This may be no more than natural, my dear."
"The natural heart, monsieur, is full of sin; and that is ten times worse for a woman. O if I could love G.o.d alone!" and again she sobbed convulsively.
Trained as the highest type of Catholic mind, her imagination habitually pictured two worlds--the one of exquisite spiritual light and purity, and spotless with the presence of saints, of the Virgin; of G.o.d the Father: the other the world of mankind,--the "world," shadowed with wickedness and mourning, and whose pleasure is itself a sin. She yearned towards the first; she sank back with acute sensitiveness from the second. For her, to enter a church was to be overpowered with the communion of spirits; to think a single thought leading away from G.o.d was to commit a crime. To know such a girl is to respect for ever the nun"s orders in which natures like hers take refuge.
"Josephte, ma"amselle," said Chrysler very quietly and pleadingly, "do you not love Francois?"
The blood swept over her forehead again, and changed it once more from white to red. The tears stopped in her eyes and she regarded him for a moment with an intense look.
"Francois loves you," he proceeded.
He went on: "Where is the difficulty? Is it not very cruel to deny Francois your love? Who made you promise that?"
"O sir, they willed that I should marry another."