Project Gutenberg's Crowded Out! and Other Sketches, by Susie F. Harrison This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Crowded Out! and Other Sketches Author: Susie F. Harrison Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8652] This file was first posted on July 29, 2003 Last Updated: March 15, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDED OUT! AND OTHER SKETCHES *** Text file produced by Juliet Sutherland, Robert Prince and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team HTML file produced by David Widger
I never pulled a primrose, I, But could I know that there may lie E'en now some small or hidden seed, Within, below, an English mead, Waiting for sun and rain to make A flower of it for my poor sake, I then could wait till winds should tell, For me there swayed or swung a bell, Or reared a banner, peered a star, Or curved a cup in woods afar.I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could not pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The shimmering mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy green, the singing birds and the shallow streams—all the country; the blackened churches, the grass-grown churchyards, the hum of streets the crowded omnibus, the gorgeous shops,—all the town. God! do I not love it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she proclaim it herself, I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will write as no man has ever written about her, for very love of her. I look out to-night from my narrow window and think how the moonlight falls on Tintern, on Glastonbury, on Furness. How it falls on the primrose I would not pluck. How it would like to fall on the tall blue-bells in the wood. I see the lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses rattle by, the people are going to see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen Terry. What line, of mine, what bar, what thought or phrase will turn the silence into song, the copper into gold?—I come back from the window and sit at the square centre table. It is rickety and uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would kick anything that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a French piano is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking if you will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place is filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches. One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp glass is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it though I can't feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about. The soot of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a pot of musk or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I? I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into some bottomless pit or gulf. Here is my opera. This is my magnum opus, very dear, very clear, very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly altogether, by her side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird! You could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you were not for me, you were not for me!—My head droops down, I could go to sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will write another story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London! To love you so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored, forgotten. But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to the theatres, I will see the managers, I will even tell them about myself and about Hortense—but it will be hard. They do not know me, they do not know Hortense. They will laugh, they will say “You fool.” And I shall be helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never listen to me, though I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am nobody. And Hortense, the child with the royal air, Hortense, with her imperial brow and her hair rolled over its cushion, Hortense, the ChâtelaineofBeau Séjour, the delicate, haughty, pale and impassioned daughter of a noble house, that Hortense, my Hortense, is nobody! Who in this great London will believe in me, who will care to know about Hortense or about Beau Séjour? If they ask me, I shall say—oh! proudly—not in Normandy nor in Alsace, but far away across a great water dwells such a maiden in such a château. There by the side of a northern river, ever rippling, ever sparkling in Summer, hard, hard frozen in winter, stretches a vast estate. I remember its impenetrable pinewood, its deep ravine; I see the château, long and white and straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall French windows; I see the terrace where the hound must still sleep; I see the square side tower with the black iron shutters; I see the very window where Hortense has set her light; I see the floating cribs on the river, I hear the boatmen singing—
Descendez â l'ombre, Ma Jolie blonde.And now I am dreaming surely! This is London, not Beau Séjour, and Hortense is far away, and it is that cursed fellow in the street I hear! The morrow comes on quickly. If I were to draw up that crooked blind now I should see the first streaks of daylight. Who pinned those other curtains together? That was well done, for I don't want to see the daylight; and it comes in, you know, Hortense, when you think it is shut out. Somebody calls it fingers, and that is just what it is, long fingers of dawn, always pale, always gray and white, stealing in and around my pillow for me. Never pink, never rosy, mind that; always faint and shadowy and gray. It was all caste. Caste in London, caste in Le Bos Canada, all the same. Because she was a St. Hilaire. Her full name—Hortense Angelique De Repentigny de St. Hilaire—how it grates on me afresh with its aristocratic plentitude. She is well-born, certainly; better born than most of these girls I have seen here in London, driving, walking, riding in the Parks. They wear their hair over cushions too. Freckled skins, high cheek-bones, square foreheads, spreading eyebrows—they shouldn't wear it so. It suits Hortense—with her pale patrician outline and her dark pencilled eyebrows, and her little black ribbon and amulet around her neck. O, Marie, priey pour nous qui avous recours a vous! Once I walked out to Beau Séjour. She did not expect me and I crept through the leafy ravine to the pinewood, then on to the steps, and so up to the terrace. Through the French window I could see her seated at the long table opposite Father Couture. She lives alone with the good Père. She is the last one of the noble line, and he guards her well and guards her money too. “I do remember that it vill be all for ze Church,” she has said to me. And the priest has taught her all she knows, how to sew and embroider, and cook and read, though he never lets her read anything but works on religion. Religion, always religion! He has brought her up like a nun, crushed the life out of her. Until I found her out, found my jewel out. It is Tennyson who says that. But his “Maud” was freer to woo than Hortense, freer to love and kiss and hold—my God! that night while I watched them studying and bending over those cursed works on the Martyrs and the Saints and the Mission houses—I saw him—him—that old priest—take her in his arms and caress her, drink her breath, feast on her eyes, her hair, her delicate skin, and I burst in like a young madman and told Father Conture what I thought. Oh! I was mad! I should have won her first. I should have worked quietly, cautiously, waiting, waiting, biding my time. But I could never bide my time. And now she hates me, Hortense hates me, though she so nearly learned to love me. There where we used to listen to the magical river songs, we nearly loved, did we not Hortense? But she was a St. Hilaire, and I—I was nobody, and I had insulted le bon Pere. Yet if I can go back to her rich, prosperous, independent—What if that happen? But I begin to fancy it will never happen. My resolutions, where are they, what comes of them? Nothing. I have tried everything except the opera. Everything else has been rejected. For a week I have not gone to bed at all. I wait and see those ghastly gray fingers smoothing my pillow. I am not wanted. I am crowded out. My hands tremble and I cannot write. My eyes fail and I cannot see. To the window!
Descendez à l'ombre, Ma Jolie blonde.Only you are petite brune, there is nothing blonde about you, mignonne, my dear mademoiselle, I should say if I were with you of course as I used to do. But surely I amwith you and those lights are the floating cribs I see, and your voice it is that sings, and presently the boatmen hear and they turn and move their hands and join in—Now all together,
Descendez à l'ombre,
Descendez à l'ombre,
Ma Jolie blonde.
“As it was in the Beginning.”
Pour l'ptite Catherine.“What money there was, Père Le Jeune must have appropriated for I saw nothing of any. After the dismal funeral, to which I went, I gathered my effects together and went to the hotel. The first day I could proceed, I returned to Montreal and have not visited Bonneroi since. The family of de la Corne de La Colombière still reside somewhere near Quebec, I believe. The château is called by the charming name of Port Joli, and perhaps some day I may feel called upon to tell them of the strange fate which befell their poor Josephine. Whether the melancholy accident which partly bereft her of her reason was the result of carelessness I cannot say but I shall be able, I think, to prove to them that she never forgot the circumstance, and was to the day of her death occupied in making ready for the little coffin and shroud of her 'p'tite Catherine.' My sketch of the frost bound Montmorenci was never finished, and indeed my winter sketching fell through altogether after that unhappy visit to Bonneroy. I was for weeks haunted by that terrible sight, half ludicrous, half awful, and I have, now that I am married, a strong dislike to scarlet in the gowns or head-gear of my wife and daughter.”
“Dear Sir,—The frend of Etienne D'Alenconrt, he can write you—he can send you a lettre from the Grand Calumet, his island that is green, Monsieur, and full of sweet berries. If you would come, Mossier, you would find Etienne and his mother reddy to do all they can. Still, Monsieur shall in this please alway himself, the friend and benefactor of Etienne Chézy D'Alencourt.”
GRAND CALUMET ISLAND.
“It was at night, when Monsieur had gone home, that I learnt myself
to write and thank him for all teaching from the books beside.”
“E.”
Of course, I would accept the invitation. I decided to go in a week's time
and wrote to that effect. I wished to reprimand him for having overtaxed
his strength as I was sure he had done in sitting up teaching himself how
to write, but respect for the dear fellow's perseverance and ability
restrained me.
Only when I got him again, I said to myself, I would stop that. I took
with me a gun, fishing rods and tackle, a mosquito net, plenty of cigars
and a hamper of tinned meats, tea, coffee and biscuits.
My journey was nearly altogether by water and I enjoyed every inch of the
beautiful river. After I reached the landing stage, a place called
Lichfield, I had to wait an hour before proceeding in the direction which
I had found out it would be necessary to follow in order to find Etienne
and his mother.
I shall never forget the delight of that one hour passed in rambling
through the lonely green wood that covered the island down to the shore.
The ferns were young and freshly unfurled, the moss was everywhere, green
and close and soft like velvet and star-clustering, gray and yellow. The
surviving flowers were the large white blossoms of the woodland lily, and
the incoming Linnæa began to show the faint pink of its twin bells,
afterwards to be so sweet and fragrant.
I thought of that passage in the letter which told of “the island that was
green and full of sweet berries.” Not a bad description for a person whom
the world must perforce term an illiterate man.
When my conveyance arrived, it proved to be a stage of antiquated type and
I suffered horribly during the journey of three hours. At the end of that
time, I was set down with my luggage at the gate of a small log hut, with
a little garden in front, bordered with beautiful pink and green stones,
the like of which I had never seen before. A snake fence ran in front of
this and on two sides, at the back was a thick wood.
Etienne was ready for me at which I rejoiced, fearing to make myself known
to the dame his mother.
Once more I felt that honest and affectionate hand grasp, once more I met
those clear and steady blue eyes, and I noted the flush of pride which
overspread his face when I told him that I had received his letter and
marvelled at it.
“Mossieu know so much and Etienne so ver little.” But when the flush had
died away, I was pained exceedingly to see the pallor of his cheeks and
the prominence of his high cheekbones. His walk was unsteady too, he put
his feet down, I noticed, as if they were light instead of solid supports
for his body, a sure sign of great physical weakness. My worst fears were
realized when I saw on the deal table in the front room, furnished with
home-made rugs drawn from woolen rags dyed all colors and some plain deal
furniture stained brown, a little pile of books. There were two
copy-books, two dictionaries, a small “Histoire de Canada” and some
illustrated magazines. I saw that he could read, too, pretty well, for he
presently drew my attention to a very old book indeed, that lay on a
shelf, a little Roman Catholic missal with tarnished gold clasps and
scarlet edges.
“Dat was belong to my fader,” he said, “for many a year; and it was from
his fader he get it.”
I looked at it eagerly all over. The fly-leaf bore no inscription, but up
in one corner, in faded red ink, was something that looked like a monogram
with a device underneath. I would have examined it at once but that
Etienne was anxious to read me a little of the Latin which he had picked
out with infinite patience, I should think. I promised to help him a
little occasionally, but told him that he was not looking well and had
better be content with ignorance in this lovely summer weather.
“When the winter comes and you are back at the mill, you can study as much
as you like.”
The old dame was sallow and sunken from a life of incessant hard work. The
climate itself, so changeable as well as inclement in these northern
wilds, is enough to pinch the face and freeze the blood, although at the
time of my visit it was hot, intensely hot for so early in the summer.
Moreover, the old dame was not given to talking. So taciturn a Frenchwoman
I never met elsewhere. They are usually characterized by a vivacious
loquacity which is the seal of their nationality. But this one was silent
in the extreme and had, as her son told me, never once held a conversation
with him on any subject whatever. Of his father he knew literally only
this fact—that he had been a “shantyman” in his time too, and was
killed by a strained rope striking him across the middle. Etienne did not
remember him. The time sped on. They made me as comfortable as they could
in the front or “best” room, but, when I thought it would not offend them,
I slept outside—“couchant à la belle etoile” as Rousseau has
it—and beautiful nights those were I spent in this manner. We had
plenty of fruit—wild strawberries and raspberries—pork and
beans and potatoes forming the staple articles of diet. There was no cow,
no horse, no dog belonging to the house. Fish we could get ourselves in
plenty, and eggs made their appearance in a farmer's wagon about twice a
week. Etienne and I spent entire days out-of-doors, shooting, fishing,
walking, reading. I tried to take his mind off his books, but it was of no
use. He had got so attached to his studies and new pursuits in life that
one day he startled me by asserting that he did not intend to go back to
the mill in future. I remonstrated gently with him, reminding him that as
yet his education was very incomplete, that few situations of the kind he
probably aspired to would be open to him for some time to come, and that
in the meantime he must suffer from want of money, and thus be the cause
of seeing his mother suffer as well. But he startled me further in reply
by stating that he knew himself to be slowly dying of consumption and that
he would shortly be of little use to anyone. His wish was to leave Canada
altogether and die in—France! France, the country of his dreams, the
goal of his dying ambition, the land of the golden fleur de lis, of
the chivalrous soldiers, the holy women and the pious fathers who
colonized the land of his birth!
I remonstrated with him as I have said. I expostulated in every key; I
took his mother into my confidence as well as I could since she knew not a
word of English; I laughed at him, I wept over him, I endeavoured by every
argument in my power to make him change my mind, but—
I failed. Then when I understood how firmly his mind was set upon this
extraordinary idea, I made up my mind to accompany him, in fact, not to
leave him at all until he either grew wiser and stronger, or else died the
death he predicted for himself. I found that the old dame had quite a
store of money saved by her little by little every year from Etienne's
earnings, and from what she made by selling the rugs I mentioned. These
sold for a dollar and upwards according to the size. Putting some of my
own to this fund of hers, I calculated she had enough to go upon for at
least a year. Wants are few in that district. Then I turned my attention
to Etienne. He was growing worse; he would lie for hours reading or
attempting to read with great beads of perspiration mounting on his brow.
The heat was excessive and proved very bad for him. I judged he would be
better in town and after I had been on the island for about two months, I
begged him to return with me. I promised him that once there, I would not
leave him for a day, and would even consider the possibility of taking him
across the ocean. He still maintained his calm and perfect manners and
insisted upon paying his fare down the river which I let him do, knowing
that soon his stock of money would be exhausted and he would then be at my
mercy. No sign of cupidity was apparent in his demeanor, yet I wondered
how he ever thought to reach France unless I paid his way. Like all
consumptives, he had a trick of rallying now and then and appearing better
than he really was. This occurred on our arrival in town. He took long
walks with me again daily and seemed so much stronger that I again dared
to suggest the propriety of his returning to the mill, but to no purpose.
He drooped at the very thought, and I perceived that his apparent recovery
was but a delusion, I soon saw he was weaker than ever. But whenever he
was at all able, he persisted in reading what he could understand and
really his progress was a marvel to me. So it came about that one evening,
towards the close of September where we had sometimes to light the lamp as
early as half-past six, I returned to my rooms about that hour of the day
(we shared rooms together, so fond had I grown of him, and I trust, he of
me) to find him poring over the little Catholic Missal.
“In this light? This will never do. And you could not light the lamp
yourself, my poor Etienne!”
When it was lighted, I saw indeed from his weak and excited appearance
that he was unable to do anything for himself. Lying on my sofa, he had in
one hand the scarlet-edged missal, and in the other the book I have
referred to, which contained a short sketch of Guy Chézy D'Alencourt the
handsome and reckless lieutenant of La Nouvelle France.
He could hardly speak but through his gasping I could gather that he
wished me to examine the words in the corner of fly-leaf I had once
noticed before and believed to be a monogram. I quieted him a little, then
bringing the lamp-light to bear upon the faded ink, I was able to decipher
the device, which comprised a crown, three fleurs-de-lis under, and
a lamb bearing a banner, with the letters I.H.S. upon it.
“The arms of Rouen!” I exclaimed “and above them, some initials, yes, a
monogram!”
My companion sat up in his excitement.
“Ah! dat is what I cannot make quite out! Tree letter—oui, vite,
cher mosdieu, vite!”
I had to look very closely indeed to decipher these, but with the aid of a
small lens I found them to be “G. C. D'A.”
There could be little doubt but that Etienne was the lineal descendant of
Guy Chézy D'Alencourt, native of Rouen, who came to Canada in the same
year as Bigot. I told him so and wondered what his thoughts could be, for
clasping my hands with as much force as he possessed—and that is at
times a wonderful force in the clasp of the dying—he said with a
great effort:
“If dat is so, mossieu, if dat is so, I have O le bon Dieu—I
have—mossieu, I have—O if dat is true”—
He fell back and I caught no more. The excitement proved too much for my
poor friend. When I spoke to him, he was unconscious and he never fully
recovered his senses. Alas! he lay in a few weeks, beneath the sod of
Grand Calumet Island, and France is ignorant of the fact that a true
aristocrat and simple-hearted gentleman existed in the humble person of my
friend the habitant, Etienne Guy Chézy D'Alencourt, alias
“Netty.”
“Descendez à l'ombre Ma jolie blonde.”Those were the words they caught, no more, but the tune eluded them. “It's the queerest tune I ever heard!” ejaculated Clarges. He had a smattering of music, and not a bad ear. “Can't get it for the life of me. It's like—I tell you what it's like Bovey, its got the same—you know—the same intervals—that's the word—that the priests chant in! And then, just when you're thinking it has, off it goes into something like opera bouffe or those French rounds our nurse used to sing. But isn't it pretty? I say—where's Lady Violet now, Bovey, eh? Don't you wish she could see us, see you there, quite the pioneer, looking like Queen Elizabeth's giant porter in this queer light? and how she would catch up that tune and bring it out on the piano, and make ever so much more of it with her clever fingers, first like a battle-cry, men marching and marching you know, and then put in a wonderful chord that would make us all creep and sigh as she would glide into the loveliest nocturne, you know—I say, what a nocturne we're having, eh! Do you think it's any livelier now?” “My boy,” said the Hon. Bovyne, solemnly, “You are right, it is a nocturne and a wonderful one. I'm not given to expressing myself poetically as you know, so I shall content myself with saying that its immense, and now will you pass the whiskey? I certainly feel shaky to-night, but I shall sleep out here all the same. What are you going to do?” “I prefer to try the house, I think,” answered Clarges, and so he did. When he was going to bed, heartily grateful that his cousin was as yet ignorant of his interference, he looked long and earnestly from his one window in the roof at the scene outside before he attempted again the process of self-vaccination. He could see the mighty flames of Bovey's camp-fire, a first-class fire, well planned and well plied. He could see the pale outline of the tent and the dark figure of his cousin wrapped in rugs and blankets by the side of the fire. He could see the tall pines and the little firs, the glistening line of river and the circles of gleaming white stones that marked the garden beds in front. The first snow of the year was just beginning to fall in tiny flakelets that melted as soon as they touched the ground. “When they're all covered with snow, it must be pretty,” thought Clarges. “Like all the Christmas trees in the world put together! The winter is beginning, the long cold, constant Canadian winter we have heard so much about. Good-bye, dear Lady Violet, good-bye, dear old England!” Clarges sat on the side of the bed with his arm ready. But the faintness came again, this time with a sickening thrill of frightful pain and apprehension, and he rolled over in a deathly swoon with his own words ringing in his ears. When the morning broke, it broke in bright sunshine and with an inch or so of snow on the ground. The Hon. Bovyne, though feeling unaccountably ill and irritable, was delighted. “Still I fear we are too late in the season for much camping,” he said, “I must see Arthur about it.” He waited till ten, eleven, half-past eleven. No Arthur, not even the old woman about. He wondered very much. He approached the house, and finding nobody coming at his knock, opened the door and went in. Something wrong. He knew that at once. The air was stifling, horrible, with an unknown quantity in it, it seemed to him. He threw open the front room door. Veuve Peter Ross was in her bed, ill, and of small-pox. He could tell her that, for certain. He rushed up-stairs and found Clarges on his bed, raving, delirious. What was it he heard? “Bovey's all right! Bovey's all right?” This was all, repeated over and over. The Hon. Bovyne was neither a fool nor a coward. He tore off his coat and looked at his arm, then he dragged his cousin out of the room, down the stairs and out of the fatal house. Propping him up against a sturdy pine and covering him with all available warm clothing, he sped like wind to the nearest house. But neither the swift, keen self-reproaches of Bovey, nor the skill of the best physician to be found in the town, nor the pure, fresh pine-scented air, nor the yearning perchance of a dead yet present mother could prevail. The young life went out in delirium and in agony, but “thank God,” thought Bovey, “in complete unconsciousness.” When he set about removing his tent and other camping apparatus some time later, he was suddenly struck with the appearance of the tree against which poor Clarges had been propped. He looked again and again. “I must be dreaming,” said the Hon. Bovyne. “That tree—oh! its impossible—nevertheless, that tree has its counterpart in the one opposite it, and both have extraordinary branches! They bend upward, making a kind of—of—what was it Arthur saw in those imaginary trees of his only—yesterday—my God—it is true—a kind of lyre shape! There it is, and the more I look at it the clearer it grows, and to think he has died there—!! And beneath there he is buried, and the raftsmen will pass within a few hundred yards of him where he lies, and will sing the same strain that so fascinated him, but he will not hear it, and learn it and bring it back for Lady Violet, the loveliest woman in England! For he has gone down into the eternal shadow that no man ever penetrates.”
“Un Canadian errant, Banni de ses foyers.”When Sir Robert entered later he found her listless and preoccupied. “You mustn't look like that to-night,” he said. “Don't forget that this is your first important dinner-party: three French members and their wives, and La Colombière, the new Minister of Finance, to whom you must be as charming as possible. This North-West business is quickening as fast as it can. The Métis are really up, there's no doubt about it.” “In rebellion?” asked Cecilia breathlessly. There was an added interest in life directly to the imaginative girl. “Ay,” said her father, “there's a rascal at the bottom of it we've been after for a long time; but now, run away and look bright at dinner, like a good girl.” The small clique of Frenchmen and their wives could not but have been charmed with their reception that evening. The dinner was good, and not too heavy nor long, the wines excellent (for Sir Robert did not as yet favor the “Scott” Act), and the suavity of his manner combined with the appearance and grace of his daughter, in a delicate dress of primrose and brown, with amber in her beautiful golden plaits and round her whitest neck, left nothing to be desired. And yet on that very first night in her capacity as hostess, Cecilia found she had to learn to play a part, the part of woman, which all women who have just left off being girls find so hard to play at first. For naturally the report of the Métis revolt had spread. Sir Robert did a brave thing. He referred to it directly they were seated, and then everybody felt at ease. Now it could be talked about if anybody chose—and Cecilia did so choose. “Who is this young Frenchman,” she asked of La Colombière, “that is identified with this new rising? I have been away, and am ignorant of it all.” “His name is Dubois—Pierre Dubois,” returned La Colombière with a gleaming smile. “He calls himself the representative of the French-Canadian party. Bah! such men!” But Cecilia's heart had given a mighty leap and then stopped, she almost thought, for ever. “Pierre—Pierre Dubois?” she reiterated in her surprise. Her fan of yellow feathers dropped from her lap, and her face showed extraordinary interest for a moment. “You know him M'lle.?” said La Colombière, returning her the fan. For an instant she was the centre of attention. Then with a flutter of the yellow feathers that subjugated the four impressionable Frenchmen completely, she resumed her usual manner. “I know the name, certainly. There was somebody of that name living at Port Joli where we go in the Summer you know.” “Oh!” said Laflamme carelessly, a little man with a bald head and a diplomatist's white moustache, “Dubois is not a new offender. He has been recognized as an agitator for three or four years. He has the eyes of the ox and the wavy hair of the sculptor. He is to be admired—vraiment—and has the gift of speech.” When the dinner was over Cecilia played for them in the drawing-room. Somehow or other, she wandered into the tender yet buoyant melody of the chanson she had hummed earlier in the day.
“Un Canadien errant, Banni de ses foyers.”“Hum-hum,” trolled little Laflamme. “So you know our songs? Ca va bien!” “That was taught me” said Cecilia, “once down the river at Port Joli.” But she did not say who had taught her. Later on when the guests were gone and Sir Robert was preparing to go back to the office, his daughter said very quietly. “Papa do you remember that young man at Port Joli who was staying with the curé for his health, the one who was so kind and showed me so many things, the woods, you know and the water, and who talked so beautifully?” “I remember the one you mean, I think, but not his name. Why, dear child?” “His name was Dubois,” returned Cecilia. “Pierre Dubois!” “Dubois? Are you sure? That is very singular” said her father. “And he talked beautifully you say? It must be this one.” “That is what I think” said Cecilia, seeing her father to the door. Then ensued a period of hard work for Cecilia. She read the papers assiduously, going up every day to the Parliamentary reading-rooms for that purpose that she might lose no aspect of the affair. She followed every detail of the rebellion, even possessing herself of many of her father's papers bearing on the matter. Those details are well known; how the whisper ran through our peaceful land, breathing of war and battle and blood-shed; how our gallant men marched to the front in as superb a faith and as perfect a manhood as ever troops have shown in this country or the Old; how some fell by the way, and how others were reserved to be clasped again to the bosoms of wife and mother and how some met with the finest fate of all, or at least the most fitting fate for a true soldier—death on the battle-field. For a month the country was in a delirium. Then joy-bells rang, and bonfires blazed, and hands were struck in other hands for very delight that the cause of all the mischief, the rebel chief, the traitor Dubois was taken. Cecilia alone sat in her room in horror. “What will they do with the prisoner Dubois?” she said with a vehemence that dismayed Sir Robert. “The prisoner Dubois? Why, they will hang him of course. He has caused too much blood to be shed not to have to give some of his own.” Cecilia writhed as if in extreme pain. Her beauty, her grace, her youth all seemed to leave her in a moment, and she stood faded and old before her father. “Oh, they will not do that! Imprison him or send him away—anything, anything save that! See, they do not know him—poor Pierre, so kind, so good—they do not know him as I knew him. Father, he could not hurt a thing—he would step aside from the smallest living thing in the path when we walked together that summer, and he helped everybody that wanted help, there was nothing he could not do. And he loves his country—at least he did so then. There is that song, 'O mon cher Canada,' he used to sing, and he told me of the future of his country, and how he had prayed to be allowed to aid it and push it forward. And he does not hate the English, only how can he help loving the French more when he is one of them, and has good French blood in his veins—better than many of the so-called English! And he was born to be a leader and to bring men away from their home into battle and make war for them, and where in that does he differ from other heroes we are taught to love and admire? If you had ever heard him talk, and had seen the people all gathered round him when he spoke of all these things—as for his church and the Virgin, and the priests, it would be well if you and all of us thought as much about our religion, and loved and revered it as he did his!” Cecilia broke down into incoherent sobs. Sir Robert sat aghast at this startling confession. No need to tell him that it was prompted by love. “But what if he be insane, my dear?” he asked very quietly. “Then it is still bad—it is worse,” said Cecilia. “Will hanging an insane man bring back the others that are slain? Will it make foul fair and clean still cleaner? Will it bring peace and friendliness, and right feeling, or will it bring a fiercer fire and a sharper sword than our country has yet seen—a hand-to-hand fight between rival races, a civil war based on national distinction!” “What would you do?” said her father, walking up and down the room. “What can I or anybody do? It is common law and common justice; if he be found guilty he must swing for it. Personal intercession—” “Might save him!” said the girl. “Must not be thought of!” said her father. “You mean, you may not think of it. But others may—I may. I am a woman, free and untrammelled by either party or personal considerations of any kind. Father, let metry!” “Cecilia, it is madness to take such a thing upon yourself. How is it possible? What are your plans?” “I do not know. I have not thought. All is in a haze through which I see that vision of the hangman and the rope Father, let me try!” Sir Robert thought for a moment, then he said: “Very well, my dear, you shall try, on one condition; that first of all you have an interview with Dubois himself. In fact, for your purpose it is absolutely necessary that you should see him, in order to identify him with the other Dubois you used to know. After that interview, if you still persist in your course, I promise—rash as it certainly seems—to help you. Now hold yourself in readiness to start for the North-West at a moment's notice. I have private information that tells me Dubois will be hung and any intervention on your part or that of anybody else must be set on foot immediately, do you see?” A few days afterwards Cecilia, unveiled, and dressed in an irreproachable walking costume of gray, was taken to the gloomy prison outside the little northern town of ——, where the prisoner Dubois was confined. There was a bit of tricolor in her hat and her cheeks were very pale—As the beautiful daughter of Sir Robert Maxwell her way was sufficiently paved with politeness as she presented her private order to see the prisoner. Her heart was beating tumultuously and the blood surged round her temples. The turnkey showed her into a small whitewashed room, opposite the cell in which Dubois spent his time and informed her that in compliance with strict orders he would have to be present during the interview, to which Cecilia bent her head in assent; she could not have spoken just then. “It is a strange thing that I am doing,” she thought, “but I shall see Pierre—poor Pierre.” Approaching footsteps were soon heard and the prisoner Dubois entered, escorted by two warders. He started when he saw his visitor, and—stared. “Mademoiselle,—” he said, evidently trying to recall her name and failing. “Cecile,” she said, eagerly, “Ma'amselle Cecile you always called me, and I liked it so much better than Cecilia. I think I like it still—Pierre—I—.” The prisoner Dubois frowned. “If Mdme. Dubois had ears through these walls, you had not called me 'Pierre.' But—” laying his hand on his heart and bowing low, “Pierre himself is flattered—oui, mademoiselle—by your attention—oui, vraiment—and he is rejoiced to know that his image is still cherished in that heart so fair, so Anglaise, so pure, so good. Belle-enfant, Je n'ai pas oublié nos amours!” The three men in the room suppressed a smile. Dubois stood with his head thrown back, his arms folded and his soft dark eyes fixed on Cecilia. She was still standing, indeed there was no chair in the room, and her eyes were fixed on him as his upon herself. It was Pierre, and yet not her Pierre. Rather an exaggerated growth—of the man she had once known. The same soft brown hair, only thicker and rougher, one drooping wave looking tangled and unkempt—the dreamy eyes with the latent sneer in them dreamier than ever and yet the sneer more visible, the thin sensitive nose thinner, the satisfied mouth more satisfied and conscious, the weak chin fatally weaker. And he was married, too! Mdme. Dubois—that must be his wife! How strange it was! Cecilia's brain was in a frightful state of doubt and fever and hesitation. It was necessary for her to explain her presence there, however, for she could not but resent the opening speech of the prisoner Dubois. She was growing very tired of standing, moreover, but she would have died rather than have demanded a chair. At length the turnkey observed her fatigue and sent one of the warders for a chair. “Fetch two,” interposed Dubois, with a flourish of his hand. “I myself shall sit down.” When the man returned, bringing only one chair on the plea that he could not find another, Cecilia, whose nerve was returning, offered it to Dubois. He accepted it calmly and sat down upon it, waiting to hear what she had to say. At this signal instance of arch selfishness Cecilia felt her heart tighten and her temples grow cold as if fillets of fire had been exchanged for ribbons of snow. “Sir,” she began, “I am sorry to find you here.” Dubois smiled the smile of a great man who listens with condescension to what an inferior has to say. “I am glad you have not forgotten me, because all the time I was away, and it has been a long time, I never—it is quite true—forgot you—I mean (for Dubois smiled again) I never forgot that summer you spent near us at Port Joli, and the things you talked about, about your future. When I came home I found you had gone so much further than I know you ever intended to, and have been the cause of so much trouble, and the death of brave men, and I was very sorry.” Cecilia leant on the bare table before her, and felt that every moment as it passed brought with it a cooling of the once passionate feeling she had entertained for the Dubois of her childhood. But if the lover were gone, there remained the man, husband and father, maybe the leader, the orator, the martyr, the dear human being. “So I thought that if it were possible at all, some step should be taken to—to prevent the law from taking its course—its final course perhaps.” Cecilia felt her throat tighten as she spoke. “You have plenty of friends—you must have—all the French will help and many, many English, for it is no cause to die for, it is no cause at all! There should never have been bloodshed on either side!” Dubois uncrossed his long legs at last and said in his loftiest tone: “Chère enfant, the French will not let me die. I—I myself—Pierre Dubois—allowed to hang by the neck until I am dead! That will never happen. Voyez-vous donc chérie, I am their King, their prophet, their anointed, their fat priests acknowledge me, their women adore me!” Cecilia shrunk together as she listened. She had sought and she had not found, she had expected and it had been denied her. At this moment, the turnkey signified that time was up. She felt her heart burning in an agony of undefined grief and disappointment in which was also mingled the relief of resignation. The prisoner Dubois bowed low with his hand on his heart and then pressing her own hand lingeringly, gave her a tenderly insinuating glance. As she turned away she heard him exchange a laugh and a jest with one of the wardens, and her cheeks flamed with indignant anger. “Were he a good or suffering man as I dreamed he was, I would have bent low and kissed his hand; as it was, I am sorry I let him take mine.” She was calm when she reached her carriage in which sat her father waiting. He divined at once that his plan had been successful. “You look tired, my dear,” was all he said. “Yes, I have been standing for some time,” Cecilia returned in a peculiar voice. “Could they not find you a chair in the establishment?” “They found one,” she said grimly, “and that was appropriated by the prisoner Dubois.” “The prisoner Dubois!” thought Sir Robert. “It is well. We shall hear no more of Pierre.” Two days before Christmas the prisoner Dubois underwent the extreme penalty of the law. Cecilia sat in her room all that day. She never quite made up her mind as to whether Pierre had been a lunatic or a fanatic, a martyr or a fiend, an inspired criminal or a perverted enthusiast. Perhaps he was a mixture of all.
REV. LUKE FIELDING, Pastor, Congregational Church, Phippsville, Vermont.A week or ten days after, Miss De Grammont, seated—not, in the gilded hammock though it still swung gracefully before the glowing fire—but in the cushions which graced her window looking on the front of the house, saw a gentleman arrive in a cab. She rose hastily and opened the door of the room herself for her visitor. This was the Rev. Luke Fielding, a gentleman of the severest Puritanical cut and a true New Englander to boot. With his hat in his hand he advanced with an expression on his face of the deepest amazement and dismay which increased momentarily as he saw not only the gorgeous coloring and appointments of the room but the fair figure of its occupant. To be sure, she had with infinite difficulty selected the plainest dress she could find in her wardrobe to receive him in, a gown of dark green velvet made very simply, and high to the throat. But alas! there was no disguising the priceless lace at her wrists, or the gems that glittered on her firm white hands. “My dear cousin!” said the lady, giving him both her hands. “My dear cousin Isabel,” returned the minister, laying his hat down on a plush-covered chair on which it looked curiously out of place, and taking her hands in his. “My dear cousin Isabel, after so many years!” “It is only eight years, cousin,” returned the lady. “True,” replied the minister gravely. “Yet to one like myself that seems a long time. You sent for me, cousin.” His gaze wandered round the room and then fastened once more upon Miss De Grammont. “Yes,” she said faintly. “I could not tell you all in my letter. I wanted—I want still—somebody's help.” “And it is very natural you should apply for mine, cousin, I will do anything I can. I have”—the minister grew sensibly more severe, more grave—“I have this day, on the train, seen a paper—a new kind of paper to me, I confess,—aSociety Journal it calls itself, in which a name is mentioned. Is your—trouble—connected with that?” Miss De Grammont blushed deeply. “Yes. That is my name. I would not have troubled you—but I must ask your advice, for you are the only one of the family, of my mother's family—” Her voice broke. “Yes, cousin, you are right.” The minister rose and stood up before her, a stern though not unsympathetic figure in his stiff black coat and iron gray hair. “I know what you are going to ask me to do. You will ask me to see these people, these editors, reviewers, whatever they are, to talk to them, to impress upon them what you are and who you are, and who your mother was, and what is the end of the base man who imagines lies and the end of all the workers of iniquity. You will ask me to tell them that it is all false, all abominable intrigue and treachery and I shall demand in your name and in my own as your only near relative and a minister of the Gospel, an apology. It is but jealousy, cousin. Forgive me, but you are too beautiful and too young to live alone in such a house, in such a manner. You must marry. Or else you must give up such a life. It maketh enemies within your gates and behold! there shall be no man to say a good thing of thee!” The minister had lifted up his voice as if he had been in the pulpit and for one instant laid his hand on his cousin's hair. Then he went back to his seat. Miss De Grammont was profoundly moved. Great tears coursed down her cheeks and until they had stopped she could not trust herself to speak. “The paper!” she said dismally. “You have seen a paper, you say, with—my—my name in it! There is nothing new in that. I have been in the papers for months past. I am never out of them. And this one says—” The minister drew it out of his pocket. “That with you, in this house lives, in the character of a butler, an exiled Italian Prince who committed grave personal and political offences many years ago and was sent to prison. That you are married to him. My dear cousin, it is monstrous!” Miss De Grammont took out her handkerchief already wet through with her tears and pressed it to her eyes. “It is not monstrous,” she said, “but it is most extraordinary. He is an Italian Prince, and I ammarried to him.” To use a hackneyed phrase, the room swam around Mr. Fielding for an instant When he recovered he could only sit and gaze at the beautiful woman before him. The details of village life, in Vermont had not educated him up to exigencies of this sort. A fearful chasm seemed to have opened under his feet, and he began to comprehend dimly that there were other lives than his own and that of his estimable but commonplace wife being daily lived out in this world. “Yes,” said Miss De Grammont, a little more bravely now that the worst shock was over. “That is quite true. And the extraordinary part of it is that they can only have guessed at it; evolved it, as it were from the depths of their inner consciousness, they can't possible have discovered it. It isn't known anywhere, save perhaps to one or two in Italy.” “In Italy,” murmured the Rev. Mr. Fielding. “You met him in Italy? And why keep it secret? My dear cousin, you have made a great mistake. And all this sad and singular story is true?” “Very nearly true. All but the offences. They never happened.” “Your husband is not a political character then?” “Oh! not in the least. He knows nothing of politics. My José! he couldn't hurt anything, moreover!” “José is a Spanish name, surely,” said Mr. Fielding. “His mother was a Castilian, fair and proud as only a Castilian can be. She named him José—But he has other names, three, all Italian—Antonio—” “I see,” said the minister dryly. “I am sorry that I cannot give you all the sympathy in this matter that you may desire, but you have entered on a course of action which is perplexing at least, to say no more. I feel, my dear cousin, that as a—married woman—your confidences are—ill placed and I must ask you to withdraw them. You must settle this matter with your—ahem—husband.” Mr. Fielding took up his hat and in another moment would have been gone forever, but that turning at the door he saw such intense supplication in his cousin's eyes that his orthodox heart melted. “Forgive me cousin,” he said coming back. “There may be still a way out of it. Will you tell me all?” Miss De Grammont then related her different heart episodes abroad, entanglements, half-engagements, desperate flirtations and all the rest of it to this sober, black-coated gentleman. Such a revelation poured forth in truly feminine style nearly drove him away the second time, but true to his word, he remained nevertheless, sitting bolt upright in a padded chair only meant for lounging. Finally, she told him of her snares to catch lovers and how one day she was caught herself by the dark-browed, eloquent Prince Corunna. She fell in love herself for the first time in her life, and he with her, so he declared. But he was miserably poor and with the pride of a Castilian would not woo her because of her money. She hated it, yet she could not live without it. The minister smiled pityingly. However she made him marry her, and then proposed as a test, in which he joyfully acquiesced, that he should make himself of use to her, be in fact, her major-domo, steward, butler, amanuensis, anything and everything. “It is most unprecedented,” sighed the minister. “That a man with Castilian blood in his veins—” Miss De Grammont interrupted him. “He was happier so, dear cousin. But I—I grew most unhappy. And since I have been here, I have been very unhappy still. We are both in a false position and now—thanks to that unlucky hammock—our secret has become common property.” “The hammock!” said Mr. Fielding. “What has that got to do with it? It is a pretty idea.” “So I think,” said Miss De Grammont, delighted beyond measure. Then she told him about the paragraphs, large and small, the confidential friends, the small beginnings that had lead insensibly up to the culminating point—that of scandal. “I am being dropped gradually,” she said. “Of course you are,” said the minister. “Of course you are. Soon you will be—forgive me—a dead letter. There is only one thing to be done and that I can do at once. A letter must be written to this paper, stating calmly in as few words as possible that this paragraph is true, that you are married to Prince—ah—Corunna, that he is a political offender and for that reason the marriage was kept secret, but that now of course as informers must already have given the secret away, you are obliged to endorse it yourself.” “But José is not a political offender! Never did anything wrong in his life!” “Of course not,” said the minister. “Some of us others, even clergymen, are not so fortunate. Now that must be included, else there is no good reason for having kept your marriage secret. Other explanations will not be taken. Besides this will entitle you to sympathy at once. Will you write the letter and I can leave it at the office for you? There is time for me to do that before my train starts.” Miss De Grammont wrote her letter as dictated by her cousin. He put it in his pocket and rose to go. “Will you not stay and see my husband?” she said timidly. “Thank you, no.” returned Mr. Fielding. “I haven't met many foreigners. I don't think, perhaps, we should get on. Down in Phippsville—well, my circle is so different from yours, Isabel. It is the fashion I hear to live abroad now, and desert America—at least to depreciate it, and not to care about its opinion—but that hasn't spread yet to our little village. It seems as if it might have been better for instance, had you stayed in Europe. You see, having married an Italian, all this trouble would have been avoided—I mean—it could have gone on over there—but now—well, riches are a snare, my dear cousin, as you have by this time found. Good-bye, dear cousin, and God be with you.” When a letter addressed to the editor of the Society Journal appeared the next day signed Isabel Corunna (née De Grammont) with its paralysing statement in a few concise words, New York was startled to its foundation. Public opinion which for a week had been at the culminating point of distrust, malevolence and resentment, turned the corner in a moment and for the moment believed implicitly in the faith of the lady it had abandoned. The greatest sympathy was shown Madame La Princesse Corunna, or Princess Corunna, or Miss De Grammont that was, or whatever her friends chose to call her. The butler disappeared for ever and the Prince came in. It was a transformation scene equal to Beauty and the Beast. Dark-browed and eloquent as ever, the Prince was a social success whenever he chose to be, but as time went on, he and his wife became more and more absorbed in each other and the world saw little of either of them. For a time he posed as a political offender which gave his wife no end of amusement. They were so far reinstated into public favor that the hammock—source of mingled joy and woe—was again considered as a thing of beauty and a thing to be imitated. There are a dozen such hammocks now in New York City. But there are still a few ill-natured people, dowagers, matrons, an old love or two, and a handful of shrivelled spinsters who declare that the Prince is no Prince at all, but a Pastrycook.
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