CHAPTER XIII.
PIERRE’S TEMPTATION.
THE grounds attached to Jacques Le Ber’s house were laid out partly as a flower and partly as a kitchen garden. They were divided by broad gravelled walks, bordered with fragrant herbs and deliciously sweet old-fashioned plants. Orange and oleander trees in green boxes stood here and there. Along the side of the wall grew pear trees, currant bushes and grape vines. Sweetness of fragrance and brilliancy of color were everywhere.
Over the garden one morning had hung a dense fog, which, lifting, revealed radiant glimpses of blue sky, distant mountain and shining river. The trees, silvered by the light, seemed to rush gladly out of the mist, and the still fleeing remnants of vapor gave grace and movement to every object over which their trembling shadows passed. The air was sweet with growth and blossom, glad with song of birds, quiver of leaves, and flicker of sunshine and shadow. Pierre Le Ber, strolling leisurely down a shady path with his breviary in his hands, his lips moving in silent prayer, resolutely strove to steel his heart against all the harmonies of nature. His tall, slight figure, emaciated by ceaseless vigils and penances, showed the high and narrow forehead, thin-lipped sensitive mouth, and deep dreamy eyes of the enthusiast. As he walked the sound of a tender lullaby broke upon his meditations. Instead of soothing him, however, the gentle strains seemed to produce a strangely disturbing effect upon the ascetic’s mind. His brow showed deep corrugations, his lips were compressed in quick irritation. With the warm sunshine and the fresh morning air, laden with the scent of opening blossoms, there seemed to glide into his senses, to thrill through every vein and nerve, an instinct of hope and consciousness of pleasure, a sensation of peace and easy indulgence alluring as a child’s dream. He had been troubled in mind; now the very air he breathed seemed to offer consolation. Vainly he tried to forget that he was still young, and that the world was beautiful. He was impatient of his own thoughts, and filled with indignant astonishment that after ceaseless efforts to suppress the claims of the body such trifles should have power to occupy his mind.
As these thoughts crowded upon poor Pierre he made a violent effort to fling them from him as something intrusive. He would go away, he would resist this entrancing influence. Turning hastily he found himself close to Diane de Monesthrol. She was carrying, easily and lightly, little Léon, the crippled orphan whose parents had both perished at the massacre of Le Chesnaye, and who had himself been grievously maimed by blows from an Indian tomahawk. His spine was injured, and he had but now been suffering from one of those paroxysms of pain which occasionally tortured him. The violence of the attack over, the child, soothed and exhausted, was falling asleep; the heavy blue-veined lids were slowly closing, while the girl bent over him with wistful tenderness. She laid the little one down beneath the shade of a wide-spreading tree, supported by cushions, and then, as she turned, encountered Pierre’s earnest gaze. Le Ber’s eldest son was seized with a sincere conviction that he would be better away from his father’s beautiful ward, yet he stood silent, rooted to the spot.
Life just then to Diane was a vague, sweet chaos. Rejoicing in the strength of her ardent youth, it was not easy to accept existence calmly and tranquilly. Every day the sunshine seemed brighter, the sky above her more blue. It was always to her an amusement to tantalize and provoke Pierre, who was curiously sensitive to every girlish taunt. Professing as he did to despise feminine charms, it seemed a frolic to the girl to show him that he was not so invulnerable as he chose to fancy himself. Diane was aware that Anne Barroy was peering anxiously from a side window, and Anne’s sharp, jealous eyes had already detected the weakness which the young man could never have been brought to acknowledge. It was like a child heedlessly playing with fire, for she had formed no conception of what strong human passion might mean. Just to tease Pierre was the impulse of the moment—a thing which she had done a hundred times before and never bestowed a thought upon. Long years afterwards, looking back on her life, it seemed to Diane that on that fragrant summer day, in Le Ber’s sunny garden, she had taken leave forever of her free and careless youth.
“It is thus I would always see you, Diane,” Pierre exclaimed eagerly, “engaged in works of charity.”
“I take charge of the little Léon simply because Nanon is occupied with Madame la Marquise,” Mademoiselle de Monesthrol explained carelessly.
“You spend so much time and thought on those things which are unworthy of you,” the young man could not forbear exhorting her, “lace and low dresses, fontanges and strange trinkets, the immodest curls expressly forbidden by St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as by all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the pomp of sin, the favorite devices of Satan. In their wish to please men, women make themselves the instruments and captives of the arch fiend.”
Diane flashed a swift, bright, audacious glance at him.
“Do the ladies try to win your favor, cousin? I thought they all feared you. You must acknowledge I have never shown any desire to please you.”
In the still sunny air, in the warmth and glow of a life which he could not stifle, standing face to face with the loveliest eyes he had ever seen, Pierre found himself engaged in an unusual conflict, and felt he must utter a vehement protest against the fatal, alluring attraction. The peculiar susceptibility to impressions which rendered him pliant to priestly influence also gave rise to endless complications against which he had no defence.
“Cast from you that levity destructive to the soul,” he urged.
“But it is levity that I delight in,” she replied, tapping a dainty high-heeled shoe upon the gravelled walk. “One can be young but once. When old age overtakes me I shall devote myself to good works. When that time comes then shall we, perhaps, be better friends; at that season I may perchance enjoy your sermons, cousin.”
Pierre strove hard to maintain his tone of gentle superiority and to continue the discussion on a line of persuasive argument, but he was nervously impatient. A tinge of uncertainty was shadowed in his manner, a tumultuous excitement, a badgered, hopeless, still struggling shame. It was not often that he had the opportunity of holding a long conversation with the girl; he felt obliged to make the best of the occasion.
“That is the doctrine of the devil. Canada is indeed the fold of Christ, but the hosts of this world are beleaguering the sanctuary. Diane, is the glory of the Church to suffer prejudice from your actions? We are in the midst of sin. Remember that death is close at hand.”
These words jarred upon Diane’s mood. She resented Pierre’s air of dissatisfied inspection, his assumption that his own judgment must be fundamentally and eternally right.
“Then let me be happy while I may. All have not the vocation to be saints and martyrs. We are young, the sun shines, life is fair and sweet, and God is good.”
Pierre looked at her in evident anger, the wrathful disguise of tortured love. His reason was hampered in its action. He was unable to exercise any discriminating faculty. There was something pathetic in his insistence, for he plainly perceived that his importunities were unavailing. His desire for sympathy was so urgent and all occupying that he could not thrust it aside. The proud, untamable creature, so arch, so kind, so generous, with her whims and caprices and beauty, alive with spirit and energy, seemed to him the embodiment of all he had renounced. Had he only the power to mould her into an entirely different form, to convert her into a bloodless personification of sanctity, he was convinced that he would be saving her soul.
“Diane,”—he could not control the quivering of his voice—“Diane, the Holy Virgin will transform into angels all those who have the happiness to abandon the cares of this life. Will you not drink of the living and abounding waters of grace which have flowed so benignly over this land of New France? Misfortune is about to fall upon this household, how or when I have no power to tell, but it is sorrow and death; when I would pray, a dark presentiment weighs my spirit to the earth—there is no escape from it. Diane,” he cried with yearning entreaty, “though you have cast in your lot with the world, the robe of God’s saints awaits you; but that means suffering deep and terrible, the crucifixion of what is dearest. In my dreams you are ever present, but always among the holy ones, crowned with the exceeding glory of the martyrs worn only by those who have reached the fairest ideal of heaven’s attainment, who have risen above all earthly joys and affections.”
Diane was confused and awed, and withal much annoyed, at this address. It did not touch her as it might have done a woman of wider experience. She had a just faith in her own instincts, and was possessed of all the happy confidence of youth. What had she to do with suffering and misery? she, Diane de Monesthrol, surrounded by affection, to whom the plant of life was daily blossoming out into fuller perfection, the happiest girl in all the colony of New France.
“Oh! listen then, cousin, to the tumult in the street.” Diane was delighted at the diversion. “Is it the voyageurs? nay, but it is the gentlemen.”
“Vive Henri Quatre,
Vive le Roi Vaillant,
Ce diable á quatre
A le triple talent
De boire and de battre
Et d’être un vert galant.”
The jovial strains of the chorus broke on the stillness of the garden like a disturbing influence.
“And the music, cousin, how entrancingly gay! When I hear the music I must dance; the desire is stronger than I.”
Inspired by an impulse of wild mirth and the love of frolic, enlivened by the knowledge that Anne Barroy still kept an inquisitive watch at her shaded window, Diane began to circle and pirouette around the astonished young man. Gradually she surrendered herself to the influence of the music, allowing its rhythm to govern her movements. The lithe young form fell into flexible attitudes; it was a delight to mark the exquisite grace of her gestures, the suppleness of her limbs, the action of her swiftly twinkling feet. This was no wild whirl of abandonment; the smooth, swaying movement was stately and dignified; but to Pierre it meant the essence of sorcery. Was ever fairer creature formed? Her attractions were vivid, imperious, irresistible.
Diane herself was full of intense sensation and susceptibility to every new impression. The color deepened in her soft cheeks. She was no longer a heedless, guileless child; the soul of a woman, ardent and seductive, flamed in her sweet blue eyes. Pierre flushed with sudden mortification. For an instant he hated the girl and hated himself. His glance, first gently pleading, then sternly disapproving, changed swiftly to some keener emotion. He had been tolerably calm until he reached this point, then the blood began to course hotly through his veins; he found himself drifting upon wild unknown currents, carried beyond the safe limits of ecclesiastical restraint.
“Diane! Diane!” he cried, breaking in suddenly as if suffocated. All the girlish fun and mischief faded out of her eyes, Diane de Monesthrol’s cheeks flamed with shame and fierce resentment. What did this new light of revelation mean? In her carelessness had she cruelly injured the son of one who had been her protector? Who was Pierre that he should dare to look at her with such eyes? She could have killed him as he stood. With the keen quivering of heart and soul she gained a glimpse of some of the deeper things of life.
“Hola! Diane and—and Pierre!” As he parted the branches of the thicket and stood revealed before the actors in this extraordinary scene, his surprise quite as great as their own, du Chesne’s expression of utter consternation was so extremely comic that Diane broke into peals of ringing laughter.
This added the last touch to Pierre’s misery. A sudden panic and horror seized him, furrowing his countenance as if with the action of years. As his brother’s frank glance rested on him, giddy, as if buffeted by wind and tide in the midst of heat and passion, he paused with a convulsive shiver. He was conscious of falling from a great height to dread discomfiture and humiliation. The girl’s beauty had kindled an emotion which glowed in his brain, leaped like wildfire from conjecture to conclusion, and carried all before it in an irresistible exhilaration. This was succeeded by the inevitable reaction. A sob, suppressed yet unrestrainable, escaped him. All three, the girl and the two young men, moved by a common instinct, glanced apprehensively up at the window where, from the heights of superior sanctity, the recluse might be looking down upon the trivial worldly passions and interests of her kindred. Pierre disappeared. Diane would have been glad to do the same, but mentally pulling herself together she conquered the cowardly impulse and sank panting down on the grass, shamed to the depths of her soul by du Chesne’s look of mingled wonder and reproach.