BITTER-SWEET
To Jean Marcel it had been a happy moment—that of his exoneration by the hunters of Whale River. For weeks, with rage in his heart, he had silently borne the black looks of the Crees whom he could not avoid in going to his net and crossing the post clearing to the trade-house. For weeks his name had been a byword at the spring trade—Marcel, the man who had murdered his partners. But now the stain of infamy had been washed clean from an honored name. In his humble grave in the Mission Cemetery, André Marcel could now sleep in peace, for in the eyes of the small world of the East Coast, his son had come scathless through the long snows. The tale would not now travel down the coast in the Inspector's canoe that another white man had turned murderer for the scanty food of his friends.
And with his acquittal by the Company and the Crees, his love for Julie Breton, more poignant from its very hopelessness, gave him no rest. As he struggled with renunciation, he brought himself to realize that, after all, it had been but presumption on his part to hope that this girl with her education of years in a Quebec convent, her acquaintance with the ways of the great world "outside," should look upon a humble Company hunter as a possible husband. He had all along mistaken her kindness, her friendship, for something more which she had never felt. In comparison with Wallace who, Jean had heard Gillies say, might some day go to Winnipeg as Assistant Commissioner of the Company, he was as nothing. Doomed by his inheritance and his training to a life beyond the pale of civilization, he could offer Julie Breton little but a love that knew no bounds, no frontiers; that would find no trail, which led to her, too long; no water too vast; no height too sheer; to separate them, did she but call him.
So, in the hour of his triumph, the soul-sick Marcel went to one who never had failed him; who loved him with a singleness of heart but rarely paralleled by human kind; who, however humble his lot, would give him the worship accorded to no king—his dog.
Seated beside Fleur with her squealing children crawling over him, he circled her great neck with his arms and told his troubles to a hairy ear. She sought his hand with her tongue, her throat rumbling with content, for had she not there on the grass in the soft June sun, all her world—her puppies and her God, Jean Marcel?
There, Julie Breton, having in vain announced supper from the Mission door, found them, man and dog, and led Marcel away, protesting. The girl wore the frock she had donned in honor of his return, and never to Jean had she seemed so vibrant with life, never had the color bathed her dark face so exquisitely, nor the tumbled masses of her hair so allured him. But as he entered the Mission, he saw Inspector Wallace seated in conversation with the priest, and his heart went cold.
During the meal, served by a Cree woman, the admiring eyes of Wallace seldom left Julie's face. At first he seemed surprised at the presence of Marcel at the table but the priest made it quite evident to the Company man that Jean was as one of the family. However, as the Frenchman rarely joined in the conversation and early excused himself, leaving Wallace a free field, the Inspector's temper at what might have seemed presumption in a Company hunter was unmarred.
July came and to the surprise of Gillies and Whale River, the big Company canoe still remained under its tarpaulin on the post landing. That the priest looked kindly on the possibility of such a brother-in-law was evident from his hospitality to Wallace, but what piqued the curiosity of Colin Gillies and McCain was whether Wallace, a Scotch Protestant, had as yet accepted the Catholic faith, for the Oblat, Père Breton, could not marry his sister to a man of another religious belief. However, deep in the spell of the charming Julie, Inspector Wallace stayed on after the trade was over, giving as his reason his desire to go south with the Company steamer which shortly would be due.
Although to Jean she was the same merry Julie, each morning visiting the stockade to play with Fleur's puppies, who now had their eyes well open and were beginning to find an uncertain balance, he avoided her, rarely seeing her except at meal time. Of the change in their relations he never spoke, but man-like he was hurt that she failed to take him to task for his moodiness. In the evening, now, she walked on the river-shore with Wallace, and talked through the twilight when the sun lingered below the rim of the world in the west. Jean Marcel had gone out of her life. He ceased to mention the Inspector's name, and absented himself from meals when the Scotchman was expected.
Julie had said: "Jean, you are one of us, always welcome. Why do you stay away when Monsieur Wallace comes?" And he had answered: "You know why I stay away, Julie Breton."
That was all.