The Money Master, Complete

CHAPTER III. “TO-MORROW”

The rest came to-morrow. When the Antoine struck the sunken iceberg she was not more than one hundred and twenty miles from the coast of Gaspe. She had not struck it full on, or she would have crumpled up, but had struck and glanced, mounting the berg, and sliding away with a small gaping wound in her side, broken internally where she had been weakest. Her condition was one of extreme danger, and the captain was by no means sure that he could make the land. If a storm or a heavy sea came on, they were doomed.

As it was, with all hands at the pumps the water gained on her, and she moaned and creaked and ached her way into the night with no surety that she would show a funnel to the light of another day. Passengers and crew alike worked, and the few boats were got ready to lower away when the worst should come to the worst. Below, with the crew, the little moneymaster of St. Saviour’s worked with an energy which had behind it some generations of hardy qualities; and all the time he refused to be downcast. There was something in his nature or in his philosophy after all. He had not much of a voice, but it was lusty and full of good feeling; and when cursing began, when a sailor even dared to curse his baptism—the crime of crimes to a Catholic mind—Jean Jacques began to sing a cheery song with which the habitants make vocal their labours or their playtimes:

And so on through many verses, with a heartiness that was a good antidote to melancholy, even though it was no specific for a shipwreck. It played its part, however; and when Jean Jacques finished it, he plunged into that other outburst of the habitant’s gay spirits, ‘Bal chez Boule’:

And while Jean Jacques worked “like a little French pony,” as they say in Canada of every man with the courage to do hard things in him, he did not stop to think that the scanty life-belts had all been taken, and that he was a very poor swimmer indeed: for, as a child, he had been subject to cramp, and so had made the Beau Cheval River less his friend than would have been useful now.

He realized it, however, soon after daybreak, when, within a few hundred yards of the shores of Gaspe, to which the good Basque captain had been slowly driving the Antoine all night, there came the cry, “All hands on deck!” and “Lower the boats!” for the Antoine’s time had come, and within a hand-reach of shore almost she found the end of her rickety life. Not more than three-fourths of the passengers and crew were got into the boats. Jean Jacques was not one of these; but he saw Carmen Dolores and her father safely bestowed, though in different boats. To the girl’s appeal to him to come he gave a nod of assent, and said he would get in at the last moment; but this he did not do, pushing into the boat instead a crying lad of fifteen, who said he was afraid to die.

So it was that Jean Jacques took to the water side by side with the Basque captain, when the Antoine groaned and shook, and then grew still, and presently, with some dignity, dipped her nose into the shallow sea and went down.

“The rest of the story to-morrow,” Jean Jacques had said when the vessel struck the iceberg the night before; and so it was.

The boat in which Carmen had been placed was swamped not far from shore, but she managed to lay hold of a piece of drifting wreckage, and began to fight steadily and easily landward. Presently she was aware, however, of a man struggling hard some little distance away to the left of her, and from the tousled hair shaking in the water she was sure that it was Jean Jacques.

So it proved to be; and thus it was that, at his last gasp almost, when he felt he could keep up no longer, the wooden seat to which Carmen clung came to his hand, and a word of cheer from her drew his head up with what was almost a laugh.

“To think of this!” he said presently when he was safe, with her swimming beside him without support, for the wooden seat would not sustain the weight of two. “To think that it is you who saves me!” he again declared eloquently, as they made the shore in comparative ease, for she was a fine swimmer.

“It is the rest of the story,” he said with great cheerfulness and aplomb as they stood on the shore in the morning sun, shoeless, coatless, but safe: and she understood.

There was nothing else for him to do. The usual process of romance had been reversed. He had not saved her life, she had saved his. The least that he could do was to give her shelter at the Manor Cartier yonder at St. Saviour’s, her and, if need be, her father. Human gratitude must have play. It was so strong in this case that it alone could have overcome the Norman caution of Jean Jacques, and all his worldly wisdom (so much in his own eyes). Added thereto was the thing which had been greatly stirred in him at the instant the Antoine struck; and now he kept picturing Carmen in the big living-room and the big bedroom of the house by the mill, where was the comfortable four-poster which had come from the mansion of the last Baron of Beaugard down by St. Laurent.

Three days after the shipwreck of the Antoine, and as soon as sufficient finery could be got in Quebec, it was accomplished, the fate of Jean Jacques. How proud he was to open his cheque-book before the young Spanish maid, and write in cramped, characteristic hand a cheque for a hundred dollars or so at a time! A moiety of this money was given to Sebastian Dolores, who could scarcely believe his good fortune. A situation was got for him by the help of a good abbe at Quebec, who was touched by the tale of the wreck of the Antoine, and by the no less wonderful tale of the refugees of Spain, who naturally belonged to the true faith which “feared God and honoured the King.” Sebastian Dolores was grateful for the post offered him, though he would rather have gone to St. Saviour’s with his daughter, for he had lost the gift of work, and he desired peace after war. In other words, he had that fatal trait of those who strive to make the world better by talk and violence, the vice of indolence.

But when Jean Jacques and his handsome bride started for St. Saviour’s, the new father-in-law did not despair of following soon. He would greatly have enjoyed the festivities which, after all, did follow the home-coming of Jean Jacques Barbille and his Spanische; for while they lacked enthusiasm because Carmen was a foreigner, the romance of the story gave the whole proceedings a spirit and interest which spread into adjoining parishes: so that people came to mass from forty miles away to see the pair who had been saved from the sea.

And when the Quebec newspapers found their way into the parish, with a thrilling account of the last hours of the Antoine; and of Jean Jacques’ chivalrous act in refusing to enter a boat to save himself, though he was such a bad swimmer and was in danger of cramp; and how he sang Bal chez Boule while the men worked at the pumps; they permitted the apres noces of M’sieu’ and Madame Jean Jacques Barbille to be as brilliant as could be, with the help of lively improvisation. Even speech-making occurred again in an address of welcome some days later. This was followed by a feast of Spanish cakes and meats made by the hands of Carmen Dolores, “the lady saved from the sea”—as they called her; not knowing that she had saved herself, and saved Jean Jacques as well. It was not quite to Jean Jacques’ credit that he did not set this error right, and tell the world the whole exact truth.

CHAPTER IV. THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY

It was hard to say which was the more important person in the parish, the New Cure or M’sieu’ Jean Jacques Barbille. When the Old Cure was alive Jean Jacques was a lesser light, and he accepted his degree of illumination with content. But when Pere Langon was gathered to his fathers, and thousands had turned away from the graveyard, where he who had baptised them, confirmed them, blessed them, comforted them, and firmly led them was laid to rest, they did not turn at once to his successor with confidence and affection. The new cure, M. Savry, was young; the Old Cure had lived to be eighty-five, bearing wherever he went a lamp of wisdom at which the people lighted their small souls. The New Cure could command their obedience, but he could not command their love and confidence until he had earned them.

So it was that, for a time, Jean Jacques took the place of the Old Cure in the human side of the life of the district, though in a vastly lesser degree. Up to the death of M. Langon, Jean Jacques had done very well in life, as things go in out-of-the-way places of the world. His mill, which ground good flour, brought him increasing pence; his saw-mill more than paid its way; his farms made a small profit, in spite of a cousin who worked one on halves, but who had a spendthrift wife; the ash-factory which his own initiative had started made no money, but the loss was only small; and he had even made profit out of his lime-kilns, although Sebastian Dolores, Carmen’s father, had at one time mismanaged them—but of that anon. Jean Jacques himself managed the business of money-lending and horse-dealing; and he also was agent for fire insurance and a dealer in lightning rods.

In the thirteen years since he married he had been able to keep a good many irons in the fire, and also keep them more or less hot. Many people in his and neighbouring parishes were indebted to him, and it was worth their while to stand well with him. If he insisted on debts being paid, he was never exacting or cruel. If he lent money, he never demanded more than eight per cent.; and he never pressed his debtors unduly. His cheerfulness seldom deserted him, and he was notably kind to the poor. Not seldom in the winter time a poor man, here and there in the parish, would find dumped down outside his door in the early morning a half-cord of wood or a bag of flour.

It could not be said that Jean Jacques did not enjoy his own generosity. His vanity, however, did not come from an increasing admiration of his own personal appearance, a weakness which often belongs to middle age; but from the study of his so-called philosophy, which in time became an obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent summer months at St. Saviour’s, sought to interest him in science and history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science marched over too jagged a road for his tender intellectual feet; the wild places where it led dismayed him. History also meant numberless dates and facts. Perhaps he could have managed the dates, for he was quick at figures, but the facts were like bees in their hive,—he could scarcely tell one from another by looking at them.

So it was that Jean Jacques kept turning his eyes, as he thought, to the everlasting meaning of things, to “the laws of Life and the decrees of Destiny.” He was one of those who had found, as he thought, what he could do, and was sensible enough to do it. Let the poor fellows, who gave themselves to science, trouble their twisted minds with trigonometry and the formula of some grotesque chemical combination; let the dull people rub their noses in the ink of Greek and Latin, which was no use for everyday consumption; let the heads of historians ache with the warring facts of the lives of nations; it all made for sleep. But philosophy—ah, there was a field where a man could always use knowledge got from books or sorted out of his own experiences!

It happened, therefore, that Jean Jacques, who not too vaguely realized that there was reputation to be got from being thought a philosopher, always carried about with him his little compendium from the quay at Quebec, which he had brought ashore inside his redflannel shirt, with the antique silver watch, when the Antoine went down.

Thus also it was that when a lawyer in court at Vilray, four miles from St. Saviour’s, asked him one day, when he stepped into the witness-box, what he was, meaning what was his occupation, his reply was, “Moi-je suis M’sieu’ Jean Jacques, philosophe—(Me—I am M’sieu’ Jean Jacques, philosopher).”

A little later outside the court-house, the Judge who had tried the case—M. Carcasson—said to the Clerk of the Court:

“A curious, interesting little man, that Monsieur Jean Jacques. What’s his history?”

“A character, a character, monsieur le juge,” was the reply of M. Amand Fille. “His family has been here since Frontenac’s time. He is a figure in the district, with a hand in everything. He does enough foolish things to ruin any man, yet swims along—swims along. He has many kinds of business—mills, stores, farms, lime-kilns, and all that, and keeps them all going; and as if he hadn’t enough to do, and wasn’t risking enough, he’s now organizing a cheese-factory on the co-operative principle, as in Upper Canada among the English.”

“He has a touch of originality, that’s sure,” was the reply of the Judge.

The Clerk of the Court nodded and sighed. “Monseigneur Giron of Laval, the greatest scholar in Quebec, he said to me once that M’sieu’ Jean Jacques missed being a genius by an inch. But, monsieur le juge, not to have that inch is worse than to be an ignoramus.”

Judge Carcasson nodded. “Ah, surely! Your Jean Jacques lacks a balance-wheel. He has brains, but not enough. He has vision, but it is not steady; he has argument, but it breaks down just where it should be most cohesive. He interested me. I took note of every turn of his mind as he gave evidence. He will go on for a time, pulling his strings, doing this and doing that, and then, all at once, when he has got a train of complications, his brain will not be big enough to see the way out. Tell me, has he a balance-wheel in his home—a sensible wife, perhaps?”

The Clerk of the Court shook his head mournfully and seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “Comme ci, comme ca—but no, I will speak the truth about it. She is a Spaniard—the Spanische she is called by the neighbours. I will tell you all about that, and you will wonder that he has carried on as well as he has, with his vanity and his philosophy.”

“He’ll have need of his philosophy before he’s done, or I don’t know human nature; he’ll get a bad fall one of these days,” responded the Judge. “‘Moi-je suis M’sieu’ Jean Jacques, philosophe’—that is what he said. Bumptious little man, and yet—and yet there’s something in him. There’s a sense of things which everyone doesn’t have—a glimmer of life beyond his own orbit, a catching at the biggest elements of being, a hovering on the confines of deep understanding, as it were. Somehow I feel almost sorry for him, though he annoyed me while he was in the witness-box, in spite of myself. He was as the English say, so ‘damn sure.’”

“So damn sure always,” agreed the Clerk of the Court, with a sense of pleasure that his great man, this wonderful aged little judge, should have shown himself so human as to use such a phrase.

“But, no doubt, the sureness has been a good servant in his business,” returned the Judge. “Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often. But tell me about his wife—the Spanische. Tell me the how and why, and everything. I’d like to trace our little money-man wise to his source.”

Again M. Fille was sensibly agitated. “She is handsome, and she has great, good gifts when she likes to use them,” he answered. “She can do as much in an hour as most women can do in two; but then she will not keep at it. Her life is but fits and starts. Yet she has a good head for business, yes, very good. She can see through things. Still, there it is—she will not hold fast from day to day.”

“Yes, yes, but where did she come from? What was the field where she grew?”

“To be sure, monsieur. It was like this,” responded the other.

Thereupon M. Fille proceeded to tell the history, musical with legend, of Jean Jacques’ Grand Tour, of the wreck of the Antoine, of the marriage of the “seigneur,” the home-coming, and the life that followed, so far as rumour, observation, and a mind with a gift for narrative, which was not to be incomplete for lack of imagination, could make it. It was only when he offered his own reflections on Carmen Dolores, now Carmen Barbille, and on women generally, that Judge Carcasson pulled him up.

“So, so, I see. She has temperament and so on, but she’s unsteady, and regarded by her neighbours not quite as one that belongs. Bah, the conceit of every race! They are all the same. The English are the worst—as though the good God was English. But the child—so beautiful, you say, and yet more like the father than the mother. He is not handsome, that Jean Jacques, but I can understand that the little one should be like him and yet beautiful too. I should like to see the child.”

Suddenly the Clerk of the Court stopped and touched the arm of his distinguished friend and patron. “That is very easy, monsieur,” he said eagerly, “for there she is in the red wagon yonder, waiting for her father. She adores him, and that makes trouble sometimes. Then the mother gets fits, and makes things hard at the Manor Cartier. It is not all a bed of roses for our Jean Jacques. But there it is. He is very busy all the time. Something doing always, never still, except when you will find him by the road-side, or in a tavern with all the people round him, talking, jesting, and he himself going into a trance with his book of philosophy. It is very strange that everlasting going, going, going, and yet that love of his book. I sometimes think it is all pretence, and that he is all vanity—or almost so. Heaven forgive me for my want of charity!”

The little round judge cocked his head astutely. “But you say he is kind to the poor, that he does not treat men hardly who are in debt to him, and that he will take his coat off his back to give to a tramp—is it so?”

“As so, as so, monsieur.”

“Then he is not all vanity, and because of that he will feel the blow when it comes—alas, so much he will feel it!”

“What blow, monsieur le juge?—but ah, look, monsieur!” He pointed eagerly. “There she is, going to the red wagon—Madame Jean Jacques. Is she not a figure of a woman? See the walk of her—is it not distinguished? She is half a hand-breadth taller than Jean Jacques. And her face, most sure it is a face to see. If Jean Jacques was not so busy with his farms and his mills and his kilns and his usury, he would see what a woman he has got. It is his good fortune that she has such sense in business. When Jean Jacques listens to her, he goes right. She herself did not want her father to manage the lime-kilns—the old Sebastian Dolores. She was for him staying at Mirimachi, where he kept the books of the lumber firm. But no, Jean Jacques said that he could make her happy by having her father near her, and he would not believe she meant what she said. He does not understand her; that is the trouble. He knows as much of women or men as I know of—”

“Of the law—hein?” laughed the great man.

“Monsieur—ah, that is your little joke! I laugh, yes, but I laugh,” responded the Clerk of the Court a little uncertainly. “Now once when she told him that the lime-kilns—”

The Judge, who had retraced his steps down the street of the town—it was little more than a large village, but because it had a court-house and a marketplace it was called a town—that he might have a good look at Madame Jean Jacques and her child before he passed them, suddenly said:

“How is it you know so much about it all, Maitre Fille—as to what she says and of the inner secrets of the household? Ah, ha, my little Lothario, I have caught you—a bachelor too, with time on his hands, and the right side of seventy as well! The evidence you have given of a close knowledge of the household of our Jean Jacques does not have its basis in hearsay, but in acute personal observation. Tut-tut! Fie-fie! my little gay Clerk of the Court. Fie! Fie!”

M. Fille was greatly disconcerted. He had never been a Lothario. In forty years he had never had an episode with one of “the other sex,” but it was not because he was impervious to the softer emotions. An intolerable shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women, and even small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques. Yet even with Zoe, who was so simple and companionable and the very soul of childish confidence, he used to blush and falter till she made him talk. Then he became composed, and his tongue was like a running stream, and on that stream any craft could sail. On it he became at ease with madame the Spanische, and he even went so far as to look her full in the eyes on more than one occasion.

“Answer me—ah, you cannot answer!” teasingly added the Judge, who loved his Clerk of the Court, and had great amusement out of his discomfiture. “You are convicted. At an age when a man should be settling down, you are gallivanting with the wife of a philosopher.”

“Monsieur—monsieur le juge!” protested M. Fille with slowly heightening colour. “I am innocent, yes, altogether. There is nothing, believe me. It is the child, the little Zoe—but a maid of charm and kindness. She brings me cakes and the toffy made by her own hands; and if I go to the Manor Cartier, as I often do, it is to be polite and neighbourly. If Madame says things to me, and if I see what I see, and hear what I hear, it is no crime; it is no misdemeanour; it is within the law—the perfect law.”

Suddenly the Judge linked his arm within that of the other, for he also was little, and he was fat and round and ruddy, and even smaller than M. Fille, who was thin, angular and pale.

“Ah, my little Confucius,” he said gently, “have you seen and heard me so seldom that you do not know me yet, or what I really think? Of course it is within the law—the perfect law—to visit at m’sieu’ the philosopher’s house and talk at length also to m’sieu’ the philosopher’s wife; while to make the position regular by friendship with the philosopher’s child is a wisdom which I can only ascribe to”—his voice was charged with humour and malicious badinage “to an extended acquaintance with the devices of human nature, as seen in those episodes of the courts with which you have been long familiar.”

“Oh, monsieur, dear monsieur!” protested the Clerk of the Court, “you always make me your butt.”

“My friend,” said the Judge, squeezing his arm, “if I could have you no other way, I would make you my butler!”

Then they both laughed at the inexpensive joke, and the Clerk of the Court was in high spirits, for on either side of the street were people with whom he lived every day, and they could see the doyen of the Bench, the great Judge Carcasson, who had refused to be knighted, arm in arm with him. Aye, and better than all, and more than all, here was Zoe Barbille drawing her mother’s attention to him almost in the embrace of the magnificent jurist.

The Judge, with his small, round, quizzical eyes which missed nothing, saw too; and his attention was strangely arrested by the faces of both the mother and the child. His first glance at the woman’s face made him flash an inward light on the memory of Jean Jacques’ face in the witness-box, and a look of reflective irony came into his own. The face of Carmen Dolores, wife of the philosophic miller and money-master, did not belong to the world where she was placed—not because she was so unlike the habitant women, or even the wives of the big farmers, or the sister of the Cure, or the ladies of the military and commercial exiles who lived in that portion of the province; but because of an alien something in her look—a lonely, distant sense of isolation, a something which might hide a companionship and sympathy of a rare kind, or might be but the mask of a furtive, soulless nature. In the child’s face was nothing of this. It was open as the day, bright with the cheerfulness of her father’s countenance, alive with a humour which that countenance did not possess. The contour was like that of Jean Jacques, but with a fineness and delicacy to its fulness absent from his own; and her eyes were a deep and lustrous brown, under a forehead which had a boldness of gentle dignity possessed by neither father nor mother. Her hair was thick, brown and very full, like that of her father, and in all respects, save one, she had an advantage over both her parents. Her mouth had a sweetness which might not unfairly be called weakness, though that was balanced by a chin of commendable strength.

But the Judge’s eyes found at once this vulnerable point in her character as he had found that of her mother. Delightful the child was, and alert and companionable, with no remarkable gifts, but with a rare charm and sympathy. Her face was the mirror of her mind, and it had no ulterior thought. Her mother’s face, the Judge had noted, was the foreground of a landscape which had lonely shadows. It was a face of some distinction and suited to surroundings more notable, though the rural life Carmen had led since the Antoine went down and her fortunes came up, had coarsened her beauty a very little.

“There’s something stirring in the coverts,” said the Judge to himself as he was introduced to the mother and child. By a hasty gesture Zoe gave a command to M. Fille to help her down. With a hand on his shoulder she dropped to the ground. Her object was at once apparent. She made a pretty old-fashioned curtsey to the Judge, then held out her hand, as though to reassert her democratic equality.

As the Judge looked at Madame Barbille, he was involuntarily, but none the less industriously, noting her characteristics; and the sum of his reflections, after a few moments’ talk, was that dangers he had seen ahead of Jean Jacques, would not be averted by his wife, indeed might easily have their origin in her.

“I wonder it has gone on as long as it has,” he said to himself; though it seemed unreasonable that his few moments with her, and the story told him by the Clerk of the Court, should enable him to come to any definite conclusion. But at eighty-odd Judge Carcasson was a Solon and a Solomon in one. He had seen life from all angles, and he was not prepared to give any virtue or the possession of any virtue too much rope; while nothing in life surprised him.

“How would you like to be a judge?” he asked of Zoe, suddenly taking her hand in his. A kinship had been at once established between them, so little has age, position, and intellect to do with the natural gravitations of human nature.

She did not answer direct, and that pleased him. “If I were a judge I should have no jails,” she said. “What would you do with the bad people?” he asked.

“I would put them alone on a desert island, or out at sea in a little boat, or out on the prairies without a horse, so that they’d have to work for their lives.”

“Oh, I see! If M. Fille here set fire to a house, you would drop him on the prairie far away from everything and everybody and let him ‘root hog or die’?”

“Don’t you think it would kill him or cure him?” she asked whimsically.

The Judge laughed, his eyes twinkling. “That’s what they did when the world was young, dear ma’m’selle. There was no time to build jails. Alone on the prairie—a separate prairie for every criminal—that would take a lot of space; but the idea is all right. It mightn’t provide the proper degree of punishment, however. But that is being too particular. Alone on the prairie for punishment—well, I should like to see it tried.”

He remembered that saying of his long after, while yet he was alive, and a tale came to him from the prairies which made his eyes turn more intently towards a land that is far off, where the miserable miscalculations and mistakes of this world are readjusted. Now he was only conscious of a primitive imagination looking out of a young girl’s face, and making a bridge between her understanding and his own.

“What else would you do if you were a judge?” he asked presently.

“I would make my father be a miller,” she replied. “But he is a miller, I hear.”

“But he is so many other things—so many. If he was only a miller we should have more of him. He is at home only a little. If I get up early enough in the morning, or if I am let stay up at night late enough, I see him; but that is not enough—is it, mother?” she added with a sudden sense that she had gone too far, that she ought not to say this perhaps.

The woman’s face had darkened for an instant, and irritation showed in her eyes, but by an effort of the will she controlled herself.

“Your father knows best what he can do and can’t do,” she said evenly.

“But you would not let a man judge for himself, would you, ma’m’selle?” asked the old inquisitor. “You would judge for the man what was best for him to do?”

“I would judge for my father,” she replied. “He is too good a man to judge for himself.”

“Well, there’s a lot of sense in that, ma’m’selle philosophe,” answered Judge Carcasson. “You would make the good idle, and make the bad work. The good you would put in a mill to watch the stones grind, and the bad you would put on a prairie alone to make the grist for the grinding. Ma’m’selle, we must be friends—is it not so?”

“Haven’t we always been friends?” the young girl asked with the look of a visionary suddenly springing up in her eyes.

Here was temperament indeed. She pleased Judge Carcasson greatly. “But yes, always, and always, and always,” he replied. Inwardly he said to himself, “I did not see that at first. It is her father in her.

“Zoe!” said her mother reprovingly.

CHAPTER V. THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY

A moment afterwards the Judge, as he walked down the street still arm in arm with the Clerk of the Court, said: “That child must have good luck, or she will not have her share of happiness. She has depths that are not deep enough.” Presently he added, “Tell me, my Clerk, the man—Jean Jacques—he is so much away—has there never been any talk about—about.”

“About—monsieur le juge?” asked M. Fille rather stiffly. “For instance—about what?”

“For instance, about a man—not Jean Jacques.”

The lips of the Clerk of the Court tightened. “Never at any time—till now, monsieur le juge.”

“Ah—till now!”

The Clerk of the Court blushed. What he was about to say was difficult, but he alone of all the world guessed at the tragedy which was hovering over Jean Jacques’ home. By chance he had seen something on an afternoon of three days before, and he had fled from it as a child would fly from a demon. He was a purist at law, but he was a purist in life also, and not because the flush of youth had gone and his feet were on the path which leads into the autumn of a man’s days. The thing he had seen had been terribly on his mind, and he had felt that his own judgment was not sufficient for the situation, that he ought to tell someone.

The Cure was the only person who had come to his mind when he became troubled to the point of actual mental agony. But the new curb, M. Savry, was not like the Old Cure, and, besides, was it not stepping between the woman and her confessional? Yet he felt that something ought to be done. It never occurred to him to speak to Jean Jacques. That would have seemed so brutal to the woman. It came to him to speak to Carmen, but he knew that he dared not do so. He could not say to a woman that which must shame her before him, she who had kept her head so arrogantly high—not so much to him, however, as to the rest of the world. He had not the courage; and yet he had fear lest some awful thing would at any moment now befall the Manor Cartier. If it did, he would feel himself to blame had he done nothing to stay the peril. So far he was the only person who could do so, for he was the only person who knew!

The Judge could feel his friend’s arm tremble with emotion, and he said: “Come, now, my Plato, what is it? A man has come to disturb the peace of Jean Jacques, our philosophe, eh?”

“That is it, monsieur—a man of a kind.”

“Oh, of course, my bambino, of course, a man ‘of a kind,’ or there would be no peace disturbed. You want to tell me, I see. Proceed then; there is no reason why you should not. I am secret. I have seen much. I have no prejudices. As you will, however; but I can see it would relieve your mind to tell me. In truth I felt there was something when I saw you look at her first, when you spoke to her, when she talked with me. She is a fine figure of a woman, and Jean Jacques, as you say, is much away from home. In fact he neglects her—is it not so?”

“He means it not, but it is so. His life is full of—”

“Yes, yes, of stores and ash-factories and debtors and lightning-rods and lime-kilns, and mortgaged farms, and the price of wheat—but certainly, I understand it all, my Fille. She is too much alone, and if she has travelled by the compass all these thirteen years without losing the track, it is something to the credit of human nature.”

“Ah, monsieur, a vow before the good God—!” The Judge interrupted sharply. “Tut, tut—these vows! Do you not know that a vow may be a thing that ruins past redemption? A vow is sacred. Well, a poor mortal in one moment of weakness breaks it. Then there is a sense of awful shame of being lost, of never being able to put right the breaking of the vow, though the rest can be put right by sorrow and repentance! I would have no vows. They haunt like ghosts when they are broken, they torture like fire then. Don’t talk to me of vows. It is not vows that keep the world right, but the prayer of a man’s soul from day to day.”

The Judge’s words sounded almost blasphemous to M. Fille. A vow not keep the world right! Then why the vows of the Church at baptism, at confirmation, at marriage? Why the vows of the priests, of the nuns, of those who had given themselves to eternal service? Monsieur had spoken terrible things. And yet he had said at the last: “It is not vows that keep the world right, but the prayer of a man’s soul from day to day.” That was not heretical, or atheistic, or blasphemous. It sounded logical and true and good.

He was about to say that, to some people, vows were the only way of keeping them to their duty—and especially women—but the Judge added gently: “I would not for the world hurt your sensibilities, my little Clerk, and we are not nearly so far apart as you think at the minute. Thank God, I keep the faith that is behind all faith—the speech of a man’s soul with God.... But there, if you can, let us hear what man it is who disturbs the home of the philosopher. It is not my Fille, that’s sure.”

He could not resist teasing, this judge who had a mind of the most rare uprightness; and he was not always sorry when his teasing hurt; for, to his mind, men should be lashed into strength, when they drooped over the tasks of life; and what so sharp a lash as ridicule or satire!

“Proceed, my friend,” he urged brusquely, not waiting for the gasp of pained surprise of the little Clerk to end. He was glad to see the figure beside him presently straighten itself, as though to be braced for a task of difficulty. Indignation and resentment were good things to stiffen a man’s back.

“It was three days ago,” said M. Fille. “I saw it with my own eyes. I had come to the Manor Cartier by the road, down the hill—Mont Violet—behind the house. I could see into the windows of the house. There was no reason why I should not see—there never has been a reason,” he added, as though to justify himself.

“Of course, of course, my friend. One’s eyes are open, and one sees what one sees, without looking for it. Proceed.”

“As I looked down I saw Madame with a man’s arms round her, and his lips to hers. It was not Jean Jacques.”

“Of course, of course. Proceed. What did you do?”

“I stopped. I fell back—”

“Of course. Behind a tree?”

“Behind some elderberry bushes.”

“Of course. Elderberry bushes—that’s better than a tree. I am very fond of elderberry wine when it is new. Proceed.”

The Clerk of the Court shrank. What did it matter whether or no the Judge liked elderberry wine, when the world was falling down for Jean Jacques and his Zoe—and his wife. But with a sigh he continued: “There is nothing more. I stayed there for awhile, and then crept up the hill again, and came back to my home and locked myself in.”

“What had you done that you should lock yourself in?”

“Ah, monsieur, how can I explain such things? Perhaps I was ashamed that I had seen things I should not have seen. I do not blush that I wept for the child, who is—but you saw her, monsieur le juge.”

“Yes, yes, the little Zoe, and the little philosopher. Proceed.”

“What more is there to tell!”

“A trifle perhaps, as you will think,” remarked the Judge ironically, but as one who, finding a crime, must needs find the criminal too. “I must ask you to inform the Court who was the too polite friend of Madame.”

“Monsieur, pardon me. I forgot. It is essential, of course. You must know that there is a flume, a great wooden channel—”

“Yes, yes. I comprehend. Once I had a case of a flume. It was fifteen feet deep and it let in the water of the river to the mill-wheels. A flume regulates, concentrates, and controls the water power. I comprehend perfectly. Well?”

“So. This flume for Jean Jacques’ mill was also fifteen feet deep or more. It was out of repair, and Jean Jacques called in a master-carpenter from Laplatte, Masson by name—George Masson—to put the flume right.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A month ago. But Masson was not here all the time. It was his workmen who did the repairs, but he came over to see—to superintend. At first he came twice in the week. Then he came every day.”

“Ah, then he came every day! How do you know that?”

“It was my custom to walk to the mill every day—to watch the work on the flume. It was only four miles away across the fields and through the woods, making a walk of much charm—especially in the autumn, when the colours of the foliage are so fine, and the air has a touch of pensiveness, so that one is induced to reflection.”

There was the slightest tinge of impatience in the Judge’s response. “Yes, yes, I understand. You walked to study life and to reflect and to enjoy your intimacy with nature, but also to see our friend Zoe and her home. And I do not wonder. She has a charm which makes me sad—for her.”

“So I have felt, so I have felt for her, monsieur. When she is gayest, and when, as it might seem, I am quite happy, talking to her, or picnicking, or idling on the river, or helping her with her lessons, I have sadness, I know not why.”

The Judge pressed his friend’s arm firmly. His voice grew more insistent. “Now, Maitre Fille, I think I understand the story, but there are lacunee which you must fill. You say the thing happened three days ago—now, when will the work be finished?”

“The work will be finished to-morrow, monsieur. Only one workman is left, and he will be quit of his task to-night.”

“So the thing—the comedy or tragedy will come to an end to-morrow?” remarked the Judge seriously. “How did you find out that the workmen go tomorrow, maitre?”

“Jean Jacques—he told me yesterday.”

“Then it all ends to-morrow,” responded the Judge.

The puzzled subordinate stood almost still, and looked at the Judge in wonder. Why should it all end to-morrow simply because the work was finished at the flume? At last he spoke.

“It is only twelve miles to Laplatte where George Masson lives, and he has, besides, another contract near here, but three miles from the Manor Cartier. Also besides, how can we know what she will do—Jean Jacques’ wife. How can we tell but that she will perhaps go and leave the beloved Zoe alone!”

“And leave our little philosopher—miller also alone?” remarked the Judge quizzically, yet with solemnity. M. Fille was agitated; he made a protesting gesture. “Jean Jacques can find comfort, but the child—ah, no, it is too terrible! Someone should speak. I tried to do it—to Madame Carmen, to Jean Jacques; but it was no use. How could I betray her to him, how could I tell her that I knew her shame!”

The Judge turned brusquely and caught his friend by the shoulders, fastening him with the eyes which had made many a witness forget to lie.

“If you were an avocat in practice I would ruin your reputation, Fille,” he said. “A fool would tell Jean Jacques, or speak to the woman, and spoil all; for women go mad when they are in danger, and they do the impossible things. But did it not occur to you that the one person to have in a quiet room with the doors shut, with the light of the sun in his face, with the book of the law open on your desk and the damages to be got by an injured husband, in a Catholic province with a Catholic Judge, written down on a piece of paper, to hand over at the right moment—did it not strike you that that person was your George Masson?”

M. Fille’s head dropped before the disdainful eyes of M. Carcasson. He who prided himself in keeping the court right on points of procedure, who was looked upon almost with the respect given the position of the Judge himself, that he should fail in thinking of the obvious thing was humiliating, and alas! so disconcerting.

“I am a fool, an imbecile,” he responded, in great dejection.

“This much must be said, my imbecile, that every man some time or other makes just such a fool of his intelligence,” was the soft reply.

A thin hand made a gesture of dissent. “Not you, monsieur. Never!”

“If it is any comfort to you, know then, my Solon, that I have done so publicly in my time, while you have only done it privately. But let us see. That Masson must be struck of a heap. What sort of a man is he to look at? Apart from his morals, what class of creature is he?”

“He is a man of strength, of force in his way, monsieur. He made himself from an apprentice without a cent, and he has now thirty men at work.”

“Then he does not drink or gamble?”

“Neither, monsieur.”

“Has he a family?”

“No, monsieur.”

“How old is he?”

“Forty or thereabouts, monsieur.”

The Judge cogitated for a moment, then said: “Ah, that’s bad—unmarried and forty, and no vices except this. It gives him few escape-valves. Is he good-looking? What is his appearance?”

“Nor short, nor tall, and square shoulders. His face like the yellow brown of a peach, hair that curls close to his head, blue eyes that see everything, and a big hand that knows what it is doing.”

The Judge nodded. “Ah, you have watched him, maitre.... When? Since then?”

“No, no, monsieur, not since. If I had watched him since, I should perhaps have thought of the right thing to do. But I did not. I used to study him while the work was going on, when he first came, but I have known him some time from a distance. If a man makes himself what he is, you look at him, of course.”

“Truly. His temper—his disposition, what is it?” M. Fille was very much alive now. He replied briskly. “Like the snap of a whip. He flies into anger and flies out. He has a laugh that makes men say, ‘How he enjoys himself!’ and his mind is very quick and sure.”

The Judge nodded with satisfaction. “Well done! Well done! I have got him in my eye. He will not be so easy to handle; but, if he has brains, he will see that you have the right end of the stick; and he will kiss and ride away. It will not be easy, but the game is in your hands, my Fille. In a quiet room, with the book of the law open, and figures of damages given by a Catholic court and Judge—I think that will do it; and then the course of true philosophy will not long be interrupted in the house of Jean Jacques Barbille.”

“Monsieur—monsieur le juge, you mean that I shall do this, shall see George Masson and warn him—me?”

“Who else? You are a friend of the family. You are a public officer, to whom the good name of your parish is dear. As all are aware, no doubt, you are the trusted ancient comrade of the daughter of the woman—I speak legally—Carmen Barbille nee Dolores, a name of charm to the ear. Who but you then to do it?”

“There is yourself, monsieur.”

“Dismiss me from your mind. I go to Quebec to-night, as you know, and there is not time; but even if there were, I should not be the best person to do this. I am known to few; you are known to all. I have no locus standi. You have. No, no, it would not be for me.”

Suddenly, in his desperation, the Clerk of the Court sought release for himself from this solemn and frightening duty.

“Monsieur,” he said eagerly, “there is another. I had forgotten. It is Madame Carmen’s father, Sebastian Dolores.”

“Ah, a father! Yes, I had forgotten to ask about him; so we are one in our imbecility, my little Aristotle. This Sebastian Dolores, where is he?”

“In the next parish, Beauharnais, keeping books for a lumber-firm. Ah, monsieur, that is the way to deal with the matter—through Sebastian Dolores, her father!”

“What sort is he?”

The other shook his head and did not answer. “Ah, not of the best? Drinks?”

M. Fille nodded.

“Has a weak character?”

Again M. Fille nodded.

“Has no good reputation hereabouts?”

The nod was repeated. “He has never been steady He goes here and there, but always he comes back to get Jean Jacques’ help. He and his daughter are not close friends, and yet he likes to be near her. She can endure him at least. He can command her interest. He is a stranger in a strange land, and he drifts back to where she is always. But that is all.”

“Then he is out of the question, and he would be always out of the question except as a last resort; for sooner or later he would tell his daughter, and challenge our George Masson too; and that is what you do not wish, eh?”

“Precisely so,” remarked M. Fille, dropping back again into gloom. “To be quite honest, monsieur, even though it gives me a task which I abhor, I do not think that M. Dolores could do what is needed without mistakes which could not be mended. At least I can—” He stopped.

The Judge interposed at once, well pleased with the way things were going for this “case.” “Assuredly. You can as can no other, my Solon. The secret of success in such things is a good heart, a right mind, a clear intelligence and some astuteness, and you have it all. It is your task and yours only.”

The little man’s self-respect seemed restored. He preened himself somewhat and bowed to the Judge. “I take your commands, monsieur, to obey them as heaven gives me power so to do. Shall it be tomorrow?”

The Judge reflected a moment, then said: “Tonight would be better, but—”

“I can do it better to-morrow morning,” interposed M. Fille, “for George Masson has a meeting here at Vilray with the avocat Prideaux at ten o’clock to sign a contract, and I can ask him to step into my office on a little affair of business. He will not guess, and I shall be armed”—the Judge frowned—“with the book of the law on such misdemeanours, and the figures of the damages,”—the Judge smiled—“and I think perhaps I can frighten him as he has never been frightened before.”

A courage and confidence had now taken possession of the Clerk in strange contrast to his timidity and childlike manner of a few minutes before. He was now as he appeared in court, clothed with an austere authority which gave him a vicarious strength and dignity. The Judge had done his work well, and he was of those folk in the world who are not content to do even the smallest thing ill.

Arm in arm they passed into the garden which fronted the vine-covered house, where Maitre Fille lived alone with his sister, a tiny edition of himself, who whispered and smiled her way through life.

She smiled and whispered now in welcome to the Judge; and as she did so, the three saw Jean Jacques, laughing, and cracking his whip, drive past with his daughter beside him, chirruping to the horses; while, moody and abstracted, his wife sat silent on the backseat of the red wagon.