CHAPTER XXXV.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
"Prôneurs de l'ancien régime, dîtes-moi ce que vous faites de ces belles et riches natures de femmes, qui sortent du sang genereux du peuple?"
—ETIENNE PARENT.
During the excitement and bustle, Mr. Chrysler also sometimes fell into the modest society of Josephte. The girl seemed sad at these times, and to be losing the serene peace which at first seemed her characteristic. He remarked this to Madame Bois-Hébert one day as he met her sitting in the shades of the pine-walk reading a devotional work.
Madame was a figure still able to command as well as to attract respect. Dignity and ability had not yet departed from her face and bearing, and quietude was the only effect of age upon her, beyond falling cheeks and increasing absorption in exercises of religion.
"Does it not appear to you that your demoiselle is sad?" he asked.
"It is true, monsieur; her mind is troubled at present."
"The cause is some cavalier."
"You judge correctly. Benoit does not wish her to marry as she desires. And though he wishes her to unite herself to a brute compared with her cavalier, yet the latter is himself an individual of no consequence, and she has been well advised to relinquish him."
"Who is it advises that?"
"Her friends, who see in her a more lovely destiny. The dear child will make perhaps a Saint. You do not know the expiations and indulgences she has earned these several years by prayers and devotions, her pure nature, her admirable conduct. She is not for the world, but for God."
"What did Josepthe herself think?"
That which Madame had said of her nature was correct enough. She was a delight to the sisters in their sad, austere lives. "She is like an angel, and has the movements of one," they said. Very unlike to, for instance, the daughters Jalbert, those bold and idle girls, whose steady occupation was tom-boying scandalously with chance young men, and jeering impudent jeers at everybody.
Her haunts were in removed and shady nooks, such as the little dell behind the log cabin of the Le Bruns. There, one hot afternoon he found her sitting under the shade of the windmill, dressed as usual in neat black, and as usual lately, pale. The little ones ran, sat and played around her; Henri, Rudolphe and Elisâ in the pride of their enterprise tugging the long beam by which horse or man in the preceding century had turned the conical cap of the mill; their efforts cracking and shaking the crazy roof, but availing nothing except to disturb a crow or two near by, among the white birches through whose clusters gleamed the River in the sun.
What brought Josephte to the Le Brun dell?
Et quoi! She was weeping.
Those little children saw not her silent tears. Chrysler beheld them—crystalline drops on pale, soft cheek, emblems of pure heart and secret sorrow; but she checked them when he drew near and sat up composed.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "What is it troubles thee so profoundly? Tell me; I am an old man and thy friend."
"Monsieur, Monsieur, I ask your pardon,"—she broke again into tears. Fortunately, all the children were running off among the trees.—"My sin is great:"
"And what is the offence, my child?"
Josephte was silent, and the blood rushed over her face.
"I mean thee no ill, Mlle. Josephte. Perhaps I can assist or advise thee."
"They have promised me to the good God: alas! and my heart thinks of a mortal! I never could be like the others.—I cannot forget," and she broke completely down, sobbing again and again. In a little while he spoke, hoping to soothe her.
"This may be no more than natural, my dear."
"The natural heart, monsieur, is full of sin; and that is ten times worse for a woman. O if I could love God alone!" and again she sobbed convulsively.
Trained as the highest type of Catholic mind, her imagination habitually pictured two worlds—the one of exquisite spiritual light and purity, and spotless with the presence of saints, of the Virgin; of God the Father: the other the world of mankind,—the "world," shadowed with wickedness and mourning, and whose pleasure is itself a sin. She yearned towards the first; she sank back with acute sensitiveness from the second. For her, to enter a church was to be overpowered with the communion of spirits; to think a single thought leading away from God was to commit a crime. To know such a girl is to respect for ever the nun's orders in which natures like hers take refuge.
"Josephte, ma'amselle," said Chrysler very quietly and pleadingly, "do you not love François?"
The blood swept over her forehead again, and changed it once more from white to red. The tears stopped in her eyes and she regarded him for a moment with an intense look.
"François loves you," he proceeded.
He went on: "Where is the difficulty? Is it not very cruel to deny
François your love? Who made you promise that?"
"O sir, they willed that I should marry another."
"It is only your father who wished you to marry Cuiller."
"Madame la Seigneuresse wished me to enter the convent." Again she burst into bitter tears. Rocking to and fro she continued with breaking heart, "I promised it to God himself."
Chrysler had no wish to meddle with the belief of his new friends. Here, however, it was a matter of humanity and common sense. He could not let the young girl's life be ruined. He said: "My child, le bon Dieu never asks the unreasonable. Is not God kinder than you; and will he demand of you and François what you would not of another?"
"Monsieur, is it possible that that is true?" sobbed she, weeping freer.
"Does not your heart say so?" said he.
"I know not. It must be so. You speak like a priest."
"Think," he said, "and pray to Him about it, and hope a little for
François. He loves you. It would be so cruel to him to lose you."
Henri's voice broke joyously out of the shrubbery:—
"Good at all times
Is sweet bread,
But specially when
With sugar spread."
Chrysler moved away, and passing through the trees stood on the bank, looking down on the beach and the sunny surface of the River. He had helped to right one little matter anyway, in Dormillière.
A guttural call in a low voice startled him,—a subdued longdrawn "Hoioch!—hoioch!—hoioch!" followed by a few words of instructions rapidly uttered in what seemed a kind of patois—and on turning he saw below, along the shore at the left, the little figure of the Bonhomme rapidly pulling in one end of a net through the water, while the other end was managed by a younger fisherman attired as rudely and queerly. It needed a close glance to see that the second man was François, assisting his father. Together they suggested that strange caste—the fishers of the great river—a caste living in the midst of a civilization, yet as little of it as the gipsies—families handing down apart among themselves from generation to generation manners, customs, haunts, unique secrets of localities, and sometimes apparently a marvellous skill. These are the true geographers and unboasting Nimrods. You who have ever seen the strange sight of the spearing under the flame of immense torches in the rapids of the Buisson, where no straining of your own eyes could ever discern the trace of a fish; and you with whom it was an article of faith that certain death waited in every channel, swirl and white horse of the thundering Lachine Rapids, until one day some one speculated how the market boats of the lake above could turn up every morning safe and regular at the Bonsecours Market,—will be ready to understand.
However, it was not long before the net was drawn up and Chrysler stood beside them, the greetings were over and all three were duly seated, each on his chosen boulder under the green poplar saplings, talking:
"François," said the Bonhomme to his son, "Monsieur does not think it probable that Cuiller will marry Josephte."
The young man's unconquerable cheerfulness faded for a moment. He was silent.
"Why is it Mr. Benoit will not accept you?"—Chrysler asked, very interested.
"Solely because I lost my money, air. I was coming to receive his blessing on our wishes."
"How was the money lost? That was a singular circumstance."
"I had seven hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket. It was on the steamboat down from Montreal, at night time, in the lower cabin. I got a corner with Cuiller between two barrels and a bale of blankets and went to sleep from time to time. The lamps did not burn well. There was a crowd of people. A pedlar was next me whose features I have forgotten. Cuiller says it was that pedlar who took my money. I will not blame a man without knowing something about him; but the truth is that when I got up and searched my pockets, my purse, my money, my pleasure, my life's profit,—all were lost, and I had nothing for it but to sit down and cry tears, after enquiring of all the people."
"In what pieces was your money?"
"Six bills of a hundred, ten tens and ten fives, sir!"
"Don't you recollect anything about the pedlar?"
"I was certain I recollected him getting off, but Cuiller saw him later."
"If Cuiller knew he took your purse why didn't he wake you or stop him?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Cuiller is as much to blame as the pedlar."
"You think so?" said the simple Bonhomme.