CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE FREEMASON.
Ross de Bleury, the hospitable passenger, was a character. A man of immense physical strength and abounding spirits, soundly and stoutly built, of medium height, brown hair, full eyes and large nostrils, and strong merry lips, always devising some ingenious adventure.
One of his schemes, a quarter joke, three-quarters half-serious, was to band together all persons in the Dominion bearing the Ross name into one Canadian clan, he to be chief! His own surname had first of all been simply Bleury, but energetic genealogical researches having discovered to him that the founder of his line in France was a Scotch adventurer, he made bold to resurrect the original name, and add to it what was already a "Charles Réné Marie-Auguste-Raoul-St. Cyr-de Bleury."
Jest, quip and lively saying shortened his route to the doorway of the Circuit Court, and he insisted on Chrysler's passing to his quarters upstairs. The court-room was stocked with dusty benches and tables, on and about which a small but noisy company were postured. One reckless fellow swinging an ale-mug was singing:—
"Tant qu'on le pourra, larirette,
On se damnera, larirà!"
Two girls stood together near the door laughing brazen giggles.
They were the Jalberts, daughters of the innkeeper, who himself with two young politicians from Montreal were impressing on a habitant: "If you don't vote for Libergent, you can't go to heaven;" Jalbert being an adherent of the Blues in the hope of "running" Dormillière, if they succeeded, for his license had been taken away by the new movement. The bailiff, a wolfish-looking creature, who was always to be had for drink, also sat there trailing his vast loose moustache over a table. When Grandmoulin entered, a little crowd, like the tail of a comet, followed him into the room. As he passed through he said no word, but drew his cloak about him and moved forward sphinx-like to the bar of the court, where he sat down and commenced to converse with Libergent.
Chrysler mounted the stairs with his entertainer and came upon an entirely different scene. De Bleury's spacious attic was appropriated to the rough and ready convenience of himself alone, and there was something quizzical about its expanses of brown dimnesses and darknesses, the cobwebby light that struggled in through the one high dormer window, the closet-like partition in the middle with a ticket-selling orifice, and the three or four rough chairs, which, with table, newspaper, and a basket of bottles, formed the furniture of this apartment. What work was done here, and how any one could choose such a spot to do work in were questions asked you mysteriously by every object about. As soon as he had waved Chrysler to one of the chairs and sank back upon another into a shadow, he stretched out his hand and pulled the basket of bottles towards him.
"Now, sir, the question of fortune to every good man as he enters the world: 'What will you have.' I don't believe in fate: I believe in fortune: good things for everybody; let him choose. It's the man who won't accept good mouthfuls who is miserable. My Lord, what will you have?"
"I never take anything, thank you!"
"Eh, Mon Dieu! You wouldn't have me drink alone! You grieve my soul, Chrysler! Bois, done, my dear friend, we will be merry together. In this cursed country, among these oxen of the farms, we don't often meet a civilized friend." In saying this, he was dexterously pulling the cork from a bottle of champagne, which his right hand now poured into two wine glasses, as skilfully as his left had whisked them out of a corner of the basket.
"Drink quickly,—Eh bien, you do not wish to? Your health then!—May you long survive your principles, and experience a blessed death of gout!"
He quaffed off the glass and poured out another, laughing and chatting on with such bounding, irresistible spirits that his guest caught a kind of sympathetic infection. Glass after glass interminable disappeared down his throat in a kind of intermittent cascade. The Ontarian laughed more than he had done for many a year.
"But, De Bleury," he got breath to say, "what is your important capacity here, that they give you such sumptuous quarters?"
"Commercial traveller in the only commerce of the country. We have no business here, you know, except statesmanship, the trade in voters, le métier de ministre. You see a man;—tell me how much he owns:—I can tell you his election price. The schedule is simply: How much taxes does he pay?—Pay my taxes; I vote your side. There lies the only shame of my Scotch blood that they have never devised a commerce so obvious. It's like a bailiff we used to tease; he had no money, poor devil, so when he came into the bar he used to say to us, 'Make me drunk and have some fun with me.' 'Pay my taxes and have some fun with me:' the same thing, you see. All men are merchandise. Ross de Bleury alone has no price—but for a regular good guzzler, I could embezzle a Returning Officer."
A rap sounded on the door of the stairs.
"I resemble my ancestor, the Chevalier Jean Ross, who, when he was storming a castle in Flanders, exclaimed: 'Victory, companions! we command the door of the wine cellar!'"
The words of a Persian proverb: "You are a liar, but you delight me," passed through Chrysler's mind.
The rap sounded again, and louder, on the door below.
De Bleury's manner changed. He looked at his companion as if revolving some plan; then moving rapidly to the ticket-office-like-closet, he opened a door, and beckoned him in, signing to sit down and keep quiet. The closet was darker than the darkest part of the surrounding garret, for the dormer window in it, similar to the one near the table, was boarded up, all but a single irregular aperture, admitting light enough only to reveal the surroundings after lapse of some time.
De Bleury, however, by holding his purse up to the chink of light, managed to assure himself of the denomination of a bank-note, and then, turning hastily, lifted the sliding door of the ticket-hole a trifle and pushing out the money, left it partly under the slide, letting in a grey beam on their darkness. He then silently applied his eye to an augur-hole above the slide, and waited. Meantime the knock sounded once more and pair of heavy steps came up the stairs, and tramped towards them; and some indefinable recognition of the heavy tread came vaguely to Chrysler. The steps stopped, the note was withdrawn, the tread sank away down the stairs, and De Bleury, rollicking with suppressed laughter, opened the door.
"You have overseen a ceremony of the Freemasons," he said. "Truly. You don't believe it? I am a Freemason, I am, Chrysler," he said, sententiously, with a trace of the champagne, "I have observed a square and compass among the charms at your watch-chain. You know, therefore, your duties towards a brother, not, perhaps, not to see; but having seen, not to divulge. You understand?"
"Perfectly, my dear De Bleury. Excuse me, I have an engagement at the
Manoir."