Gilbert Parker

“ His moments with Jean Jacques at the flume had expanded him in a curious kind of way. His own arguments while he was fighting for his life had, in a way, convinced himself. She was a rare creature, and she was alluring— more alluring than she had ever been; for a tragic sense had made her thinner, had refined the boldness of her beauty, had given a wonderful lustre to her eyes; and suffering has its own attraction to the degenerate. But he, George Masson, had had a great shock, and he had come out of the jaws of death by the skin of his teeth. ”

“ How should he know—yet he ought to have done so, if he really was a philosopher—that a woman would want the cleverest man in the world to be a boy and play the fool sometimes; that she would rather, if she was a healthy woman, go to a circus than to a revelation of the mysteries of the mind from an altar of culture, if her own beloved man was with her.
Carmen had been left too much alone, as M. Fille had said to Judge Carcasson. Her spirits had moments of great dullness, when she was ready to fling herself into the river—or the arms of the schoolmaster or the farrier. ”

“ All the way to his house, Jean Jacques, with something of the rage of passion and the glaze of horror gone from his eyes, and his face not now so ghastly, still brooded over how, after he had had his say, he was to put George Masson out of the world. But it did not come at once. All makers of life-stories find their difficulty at times. Tirelessly they grope along a wall, day in, day out, and then suddenly a great gate swings open, as though to the touch of a spring, and the whole way is clear to the goal. ”

“ It must be getting to mass and getting to confession, and saying aves and doing penance, it is such a busy little soul of mine; but we are not all alike, and madame's body goes in a more stately way. I am like a comet, she is like the sun steady, steady, round and round, with plenty of sleep and the comfortable darkness. Sometimes madame goes hard; so does the sun in summer-shines, shines, shines like a furnace. ”

“ She had determined to go away with the master-carpenter, and though he might feel the same hesitation as that which Jean Jacques had shown—she had read her Norman aright aboard the Antoine—yet, still, George Masson should take her away. A catastrophe had thrown Jean Jacques into her arms; it would not be a catastrophe which would throw the master- carpenter into her arms. It would be that they wanted each other.
The mirror gave her a look of dominance—was it her regular features and her classic head? Does beauty in itself express authority, just because it has the transcendent thing in it? ”

“ So it is with the human soul—I am a philosopher—I think the soul goes hard the same as the body, churning, churning away in the heat of the sun; and then it gets quiet and goes to sleep in the cloudy day, when the body is sick of its bouncing, and it has a rest—the soul has a rest, which is good for it, m'sieu'. ”

“ It was a thing so exquisite that a man of sentiment like Jean Jacques in his younger days would have wept to see. And the feeling was as palpable as the seeing; as in the early spring the new life which is being born in the year, produces a febrile kind of sorrow in the mind. But the glow of Indian summer, that compromise, that after-thought of real summer, which brings her back for another good-bye ere she vanishes for ever—its sadness is of a different kind. Its longing has a sharper edge; there stir in it the pangs of discontent; and the mind and body yearn for solace. ”

“ CHAPTER VII JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP The pensiveness of a summer evening on the Beau Cheval was like a veil hung over all the world. While yet the sun was shining, there was the tremor of life in the sadness; but when the last glint of amethyst and gold died away behind Mont Violet, and the melancholy swish of the river against the osiered banks rose out of the windless dusk, all the region around Manor Cartier, with its cypresses, its firs, its beeches, and its elms, became gently triste. Even the weather-vane on the Manor—the gold Cock of Beaugard, as it was called—did not move ”

“ He was an archaic little official, and apparently quite unsophisticated; yet there was hidden behind his ascetic face a quiet astuteness which would have been a valuable asset to a worldly-minded and ambitious man. Besides, affection sharpens the wits. Through it the hovering, protecting sense becomes instinctive, and prescience takes on uncanny certainty. He had a real and deep affection for Jean Jacques and his Carmen, and a deeper one still for the child Zoe; and the danger to the home at the Manor Cartier now became again as sharp as the knife of the guillotine. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Such a stroke kills some men, either at once, or by lengthened torture; others it sends mad, so that they make a clamour which draws the attention of the astonished and not sympathetic world; but it only paralysed Jean Jacques. For a time he sat fascinated by the ferocity of the event, his eyes following the hurrying wife and the jaunty, swaggering master-carpenter with a strange, animal-like dismay and apprehension. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But all the time the people say, 'That is Jean Jacques Barbille, but you should see his wife. She is a wonder. She is at home at the Manor with the cows and the geese. Jean Jacques travels alone through the parish to Quebec, to Three Rivers, to Tadousac, to the great exhibition at Montreal, but madame, she stays at home. M'sieu' Jean Jacques is nothing beside her'—that is what the people say. They admire you for your brains, but they would have fallen down before your wife, if you had given her half a chance. ”

“ Jean Jacques waved a hand. "T'sh, you are not the Pope. You are not even an abbe. You were only a deacon a few years ago. You did not know how to hold a baby for the christening when you came to St. Saviour's first. For the mass, you have some right to speak; it is your duty perhaps; but the confession, that is another thing; that is the will of every soul to do or not to do. What do you know of a woman's soul-well, perhaps, you know what they have told you; but madame's soul—"
"Madame has never been to confession to me," interjected M. Savry indignantly. Jean Jacques chuckled. ”

“ The master-carpenter raised a protesting hand. "There you are mistaken; but it is no matter. At the end of to-day I would have been an adulterer, if you hadn't found out. I don't complain of the word. But see, as a philosopher"—Jean Jacques jerked a haughty assent—"as a philosopher you will want to know how and why it is. Carmen will never tell you—a woman never tells the truth about such things, because she does not know how. She does not know the truth ever, exactly, about anything. It is because she is a woman. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jean Jacques rocked to and fro over the lever in his agitation, yet he made no motion to move it. He was under a spell.
Straight home drove the master-carpenter's reasoning now. "Kill me, and you lose her for ever. Kill me, and she will hate you. You think she will not find out? Then see: as I die I will shriek out so loud that she can hear me, and she will understand. She will go mad, and give you over to the law. And then—and then! Did you ever think what will become of your child, of your Zoe, if you go to the gallows? ”

“ Give me a minute till I tell you something; then you can open the gates. You will have a long time to live—yes, yes, you are the kind that live long. Well, a minute or two is not much to ask. If you want to murder, you will open the gates at once; but if it is punishment, if you are an executioner, you will give me time to pray."
Jean Jacques did not soften. His voice was harsh and grim. "Well, get on with your praying, but don't talk. You are going to die," he added, his hands gripping the lever tighter.
The master-carpenter had had the true inspiration in his hour of danger. ”

“ There was not a more restless soul or body in all the hemisphere than the soul and body of Carmen Barbille, as she went from this to that on the morning when Jean Jacques had refrained from killing the soul-disturber, the master-carpenter, who had with such skill destroyed the walls and foundations of his home. ”

“ No good comes from relatives working together. Look at the Latouche farm where your cousin makes his mess. My father is well enough where he is."
"But you'd like to see him oftener—I was only thinking of that," said Jean Jacques in a mollifying voice. It was the kind of thing in which he showed at once the weakness and the kindness of his nature. He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist.
"If mother doesn't think it's sensible, why do it, father?" asked Zoe anxiously, looking up into her father's face. ”

“ More flushed and agitated than when he had faced Jean Jacques in the flume, the master- carpenter said: "If she wants a few words-of farewell—alone with me, she must have it, M'sieu' Fille. The other room—eh? Outside there"—he jerked a finger towards the street—"they won't know that you are not with us; and as for Jean Jacques, isn't it possible for a Clerk of the Court to stretch the truth a little? Isn't the Clerk of the Court a man as well as a mummy? ”

“ There would be no cheese-factory built at St. Saviour's for many a year to come. The man of initiative, the man of the hundred irons would not have the hundred and one, or keep the hundred hot any more; because he would be so busy with the iron which had entered into his soul.
When the paper had been made one with the earth, a problem buried for ever, Jean Jacques pulled himself up to his full height, as though facing a great thing which he must do. ”

“ I will tell you the truth. I left the West because of a woman—of two women. I had a good business, but I could not keep out of trouble with women. They made it too easy for me."
"Peacock-pig!" exclaimed Jean Jacques with an ugly sneer.
"Let a man when he is dying tell all the truth, to ease his mind," said the master-carpenter with a machiavellian pretence and cunning. "It was vanity, it was, as you say; it was the peacock in me made me be the friend of many women and not the husband of one. I came down here to Quebec from the Far West to get away from consequences. It was expensive. ”

“ She desired always that her visible corporeal self should be admired and desired, that men should say, "What a splendid creature!" It was in her veins, an undefined philosophy of life; and she had ever measured the love of Jean Jacques by his caresses. ”

“ He had told the truth, as a Clerk of the Court should. He said that Jean Jacques' voice was not as he had so often heard it; but he would also frankly admit that he did not think madame played the song as he had heard her play it aforetime, and that covered indeed twelve years or more—in fact, since the birth of the renowned Zoe.
M. Fille had wondered much that night of June at the listless manner and listless playing of Carmen Barbille. For a woman of such spirit and fire it would seem as though she must be in ill-health to play like that. ”

“ He saw himself standing at the head of the flume out there by the Mill Cartier with his hand on the lever. Below him in the empty flume was the master-carpenter giving a last inspection to the repairs. Beyond the master-carpenter—far beyond—was the great mill-wheel! Behind himself, Jean Jacques, was the river held back by the dam; and if the lever was opened,—the river would sweep through the raised gates down the flume to the millwheel—with the man. And then the wheel would turn and turn, and the man would be in the wheel. ”

“ If you kill me, I will have my revenge in death, for it is the end of all things for you. You lose your wife for ever. You need not do so. She would have gone with me, not because of me, but because I was a man who she thought would treat her like a friend, like a comrade; who would love her—sacre, what husband could help make love to such a woman, unless he was in love with himself instead of her! ”

“ He said it with an air of conflict, and with full intent to make his supremacy complete.
"No Catholic should speak like that," returned the shocked priest.
"No priest should speak to me as you have done," rejoined Jean Jacques. "What do you know of the reasons for the abstention of madame? The soul must enjoy rest as well as the body, and madame has a—mind which can judge for itself. I have a body that is always going, and it gets too little rest, and that keeps my soul in a flutter too. ”

“ If he had had any real observation he would have noticed that Carmen's eyes at once kindled, and that the guitar became a different thing, when M. Colombin, the young schoolmaster, one of the guests, caught up the refrain of A la Claire Fontaine, and in a soft tenor voice sang it with Jean Jacques to the end, and then sang it again with Zoe. Then Carmen's dark eyes deepened with the gathering light in them, her body seemed to vibrate and thrill with emotion ”

“ It did not occur to him that Jean Jacques had acted weakly. He would not have done what Jean Jacques had done, had Jean Jacques spoiled his home. He would have sprung the lever; but he was not so mean as to despise Jean Jacques because he had foregone his revenge. This master-carpenter had certain gifts, or he could not have caused so much trouble in the world. There is a kind of subtlety necessary to allure or delude even the humblest of women, if she is not naturally bad ”

“ If he had been a real genius, rather than a mere lively variation of the commonplace—a chicken that could never burst its shell, a bird which could not quite break into song—he might have made his biographer guess hard and futilely, as to what he would do after having seen his wife's arms around the neck of another man than himself—a man little more than a manual labourer, while he, Jean Jacques Barbille, had come of the people of the Old Regime. ”

“ At first you were almost always thinking of her and what a fine woman she was, and because everyone admired her, you played the peacock, too. I am not the only peacock. You are a good man —no one ever said anything against your character. But always, always, you think most of yourself. It is everywhere you go as if you say, 'Look out. I am coming. I am Jean Jacques Barbille.
"'Make way for Jean Jacques. I am from the Manor Cartier. ”