Gilbert Parker

“ He had recognized in M. Mornay, who could level him to the dust tomorrow financially, a master of the world's affairs, a prospector of life's fields, who would march fearlessly beyond the farthest frontiers into the unknown. Jean Jacques' admiration of the lion who could, and would, slay him was the best tribute to his own character.
M. Fille's eyes moistened as he realized it; and he knew that nothing he could say or do would make this man accommodate his actions to the hard rules of the business of life; he must for ever be applying to them conceptions of a half-developed mind. ”

“ Jean Jacques' heart was bleeding, but he drew himself up proudly, and caught his hand away from the warm palm of Poucette's widow. As his affairs crumbled his pride grew more insistent. M. Fille had challenged his intellect—his intellect!
"My life has been a procession of practical things," he declared oracularly. "I have been a man of business who designs. I am no dreamer. I think. I act. I suffer. I have been the victim of romance, not its interpreter. Mercy of God, what has broken my life, what but romance—romance, first with one and then with another! ”

“ She did not hear what Mere Langlois called after her, for Mere Langlois had been slow to recover from the unexpected violence dealt by one whom she had always bullied.
"Poor Jean Jacques!" said Virginie Poucette to herself as her horses ate up the ground. "That's another bit of bad luck. He'll not sleep to- night. Ah, the poor Jean Jacques—and all alone—not a hand to hold; no one to rumple that shaggy head of his or pat him on the back! His wife and Ma'm'selle Zoe, they didn't know a good thing when they had it. No, he'll not sleep to-night-ah, my dear Jean Jacques!" ”

“ In Spain there would always be some woman whom he could cajole; some comrade whom he could betray; some priest whom he could deceive, whose pocket he could empty by the recital of his troubles. But if, peradventure, he returned to Spain with money to spare in his pocket, how easy indeed it would all be, and how happy he would find himself amid old surroundings and old friends!
The way had suddenly opened up to him when Jean Jacques had brought home in hard cash, and had locked away in the iron-doored cupboard in the officewall, his last, his cherished, eight thousand dollars. ”

“ For a year after Zoe's flight Jean Jacques wrapped Sebastian Dolores round his neck like a collar, and it choked him like a boaconstrictor. But not Sebastian Dolores alone did that. When things begin to go wrong in the life of a man whose hands have held too many things, the disorder flutters through all the radii of his affairs, and presently they rattle away from the hub of his control. ”

“ M. Fille, after an instant's further hesitation, told him.
"Oh, him—M. Momay !" exclaimed Jean Jacques, with a look of relief, his face lighting. "That's a big man with a most capable and far-reaching mind. He takes a thing in as the ocean mouths a river. If I had had men like that to deal with all my life, what a different ledger I'd be balancing now! Descartes, Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel—he has an ear for them all. That is the intellectual side of him; and in business"—he threw up a hand—"there he views the landscape from the mountain-top. He has vision, strategy, executive. ”

“ I will settle with Him myself. Well, then, do you think I'd care what—what Mere Langlois or the rest of the world would say? . . . I can't bear to think of you going away with nothing, with nobody, when here is something and somebody—somebody who would be good to you. Everybody knows that you've been badly used— everybody. I'm young enough to make things bright and warm in your life, and the place is big enough for two, even if it isn't the Manor Cartier."
"Figure de Christ, do you think I'd let you do it—me?" declared Jean Jacques, with lips trembling now and his shoulders heaving. ”

“ It had been the intention of some friends of Jean Jacques to give him a cheer when he left, and even his sullen local creditors, now that the worst had come, were disposed to give him a good send-off; but the incident of the canary in its cage gave a turn to the feeling of the crowd which could not be resisted. They were not a people who could cut and dry their sentiments; they were all impulse and simplicity, with an obvious cocksure shrewdness too, like that of Jean Jacques—of the old Jean Jacques. He had been the epitome of all their faults and all their virtues. ”

“ More feeling than thinking, Maitre Fille—you say that? Why the Barbilles have ever in the past built up life on a basis of thought and action, and I have added philosophy—the science of thought and act. Jean Jacques Barbille has been the man of design and the man of action also. Don Quixote was a fool, a dreamer, but Jean Jacques is no Don Quixote. He is a man who has done things, but also he is a man who has been broken on the wheel of life. ”

“ Some men make celebration in wine, sport and adventure; but Jean Jacques made it in flooding his mind with streams of human thought which often tried to run uphill, which were frequently choked with weeds, but still were like the pool of Siloam to his vain mind. They bathed that vain mind in the illusion that it could see into the secret springs of experience.
So, on as bright a day as ever the New World offered, Jean Jacques sat reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols, wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. ”

“ It's the biggest thing in the art of being a neighbour I've ever seen. You've only been in the parish three years, and yet you've shown me a confidence immense, inspiring! It is as the Greek philosopher said, 'To conceive the human mind aright is the greatest gift from the gods.' And to you, who never read a line of philosophy, without doubt, you have done the thing that is greatest. ”

“ I've seen a man with a bullet in him run a half-mile—anywhere; I've seen a man ripped up by a crosscut-saw hold himself together, and walk—anywhere—till he dropped. Physical and nervous activity is one of the forms which shattered force takes. I expect that your 'M'sieu' Jean Jacques' has been busier this last year than ever before in his life. He'd have to be; for a man who has as many irons in the fire as he has, must keep running from bellows to bellows when misfortune starts to damp him down. ”

“ You know his troubles, monsieur, and we who have seen him bear them with fortitude and Christian philosophy, we resent—"
"You need resent nothing, Maitre Fille," interrupted the Big Financier, not unkindly. "What I have said has been said to his friend and the friend of my own great friend, Judge Carcasson; and I am only anxious that he should be warned by someone whose opinions count with him; whom he can trust—"
"But, monsieur, alas!" broke in the Clerk of the Court, "that is the
trouble; he does not select those he can trust. He is too confiding. ”

“ Jean Jacques put out a hand as though to argue with her. "Sometimes it is the other way," he retorted. "Most of us have seen it like that."
"Well, for sure, you're right enough there, m'sieu'," was the response. "I've got nothing to say to that, except that it's a man that runs away with a woman, or that gets her to leave her husband when she does go. There's always a man that says, 'Come along, I'm the better chap for you.'"
Jean Jacques wearily turned his head away towards the cage where his canary was beginning to pipe its evening lay. ”

“ That often happens—a man summons up all his reserves for one last effort. It's partly pride, partly the undefeated thing in him, partly the gambling spirit which seizes men when nothing is left but one great spectacular success or else be blotted out. That's the case with your philosopher; and I'm not sure that I won't lose twenty thousand dollars by him yet."
"You've lost more with less justification," retorted the Judge, who, in his ninetieth year, was still as alive as his friend at sixty.
M. Mornay waved a hand in acknowledgment, and rolled his cigar from corner to corner of his mouth. ”

“ I could make it more if I had time; but sometimes money on the spot is worth a lot more than what's just crawling to you—snailing along while you eat your heart out. Two thousand dollars is two thousand dollars—I know what it's worth to me, though it mayn't be much to you; but I didn't earn it. It belonged to a first-class man, and he worked for it, and he died and left it to me. It's not come easy, go easy with me. I like to feel I've got two thousand cash without having to mortgage for it. ”

“ And so the poor sick thing has not a single pleasure in the world. She can't read, because it makes her head ache, she says; and she never writes to any one. One day she tried to sing a little, but it seemed to hurt her, and she stopped before she had begun almost. Yes, m'sieu', there she is without a single pleasure in the long hours when she doesn't sleep."
"There's my canary—that would cheer her up," eagerly said Jean Jacques, who, as the story of the chirruping landlady continued, became master of his agitation, and listened as though to the tale of some life for which he had concern. ”

“ Ah, m'sieu', it is a need both sides! You want someone to look after you; you want a chance again to do things; but you want someone to look after you, and it is all waiting there on the farm. Palass Poucette left behind him seven sound horses, and cows and sheep, and a threshing- machine and a fanning-mill, and no debts, and two thousand dollars in the bank. You will never do anything away from here. You must stay here, where—where I can look after you, Jean Jacques. ”

“ It is the epitome of the spirit, it is the shrine of—"
He was working himself up to a point where he could forget all the things that trouble humanity, in the inebriation of an idealistic soul which had a casing of passion, but the passion of the mind and not of the body; for Jean Jacques had not a sensual drift in his organism. If there had been a sensual drift, probably Carmen would still have been the lady of his manor, and he would still have been a magnate and not a potential bankrupt ”

“ Quickly as it came, however, it vanished, for he remembered that he could buy the dish himself. He could buy it himself and keep it. . . . Yet what could he do with it? Even so, he could keep it. It could still be his till better days came.
The auctioneer's voice told off the value of the fruitdish—"As an heirloom, as an antique; as a piece of workmanship impossible of duplication in these days of no handicraft; as good pure silver, bearing the head of Louis Quinze—beautiful, marvellous, historic, honourable," and Jean Jacques made ready to bid. ”

“ If they listened to him talk philosophy, encouraged him to do it, and told him they liked it, when the bargain was being made, the chances are the security is inadequate."
The Clerk of the Court bridled up. "Monsieur, you are very hard on a man who for twenty-five years has been a figure and a power in this part of the province. You sneer at one who has been a benefactor to the place where he lives; who has given with the right hand and the left; whose enterprise has been a source of profit to many; and who has got a savage reward for the acts of a blameless and generous life. ”

“ The Big Financier nodded vigorously. "Exactly. Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose, and it is murderously expensive when you do lose. You will observe, I know, that your Jean Jacques is a man who can only be killed once—eh?"
"Monsieur?" M. Fille really did not grasp this remark.
M. Mornay's voice became precise. "I will explain. He has never created; he has only developed what has been created. He inherited much of what he has or has had. His designs were always affected by the fact that he had never built from the very bottom. ”

“ He'll say he has lost, and that there's an end to it all. His philosophy will come into play—just at the last. It will help him in one way and harm him in another."
"Ah, then you know about his philosophy, monsieur?" queried M. Fille. Was Jean Jacques' philosophy, after all, to be a real concrete asset of his life sooner or later?
The Big Financier smiled, and turned some coins over in his pocket rather loudly. Presently he said: "The first time I ever saw him he treated me to a page of Descartes. It cost him one per cent. I always charge a man for talking sentiment to me in business hours. ”

“ You get us between the upper and the nether mill stones. You are cosmopolitan; M. Jean Jacques Barbille is a provincial; and you, because he has soul enough to forget business for a moment and to speak of things that matter more than money and business, you grind him into powder."
M. Mornay shook his head and lighted his cigar again. "There you are wrong, Maitre Fille. It is bad policy to grind to powder, or grind at all, men out of whom you are making money. It is better to keep them from between the upper and nether mill-stones. ”

“ And what a burden his camel carried—flour-mill, saw-mill, ash- factory, farms, a general store, lime-kilns, agency for lightning-rods and insurance, cattle-dealing, the project for the new cheese-factory, and money-lending!
Money-lending? It seemed strange that Jean Jacques should be able to lend money, since he himself had to borrow, and mortgage also, from time to time. When things began to go really wrong with him financially, he mortgaged his farms, his flour-mill, and saw-mill, and then lent money on other mortgages. ”

“ But now—well, there it is, the creditors think there is no reason for you to wait."
Jean Jacques did not yet take the roll of bills. "They come from M. Mornay?" he asked with an air of resistance, for he did not wish to be under further obligations to the man who would lose most by him.
The lawyer was prepared. M. Mornay had foreseen the timidity and sensitiveness of Jean Jacques, had anticipated his mistaken chivalry—for how could a man decline to take advantage of the Bankruptcy Court unless he was another Don Quixote! ”

“ It was towards the late afternoon of a Saturday, when the streets were full of people going to and from the shops in a marketing quarter, that Madame Glozel came to him and said:
"M'sieu', I have an idea, and you will not think it strange, for you have a kind heart. There is a woman—look you, it is a sad, sad story hers. She is ill and dying in a room a little way down the street. ”

“ Even old Mere Langlois in the market-place at Vilray had admitted that, and had said the same later on in Virginie's home.
For an instant Jean Jacques was fascinated by the sudden prospect which opened out before him. If he asked her, this woman would probably loan him five thousand dollars—and she had mentioned nothing about security!
"What security do you want?" he asked in a husky voice.
"Security? I don't understand about that," she replied. "I'd not offer you the money if I didn't think you were an honest man, and an honest man would pay me back. ”