In the Village of Viger

by Duncan Campbell Scott

This seed fell upon ready ground, and bore an unexpected shoot. From that day the widow wore her best cap on week days. Then along came the good friend, Alexis Girouard, with his little hint. “My friend Cuerrier wants to get married; he’s as shy as a bird, but don’t be hard on him.” The plant blossomed at once. The widow shook her finger at her image in the glass, took on all the colors of the rainbow, and dusted off a guitar of her youth.

Cuerrier came in the evenings and sat awhile with the widow, and that discreet second cousin, hiding her withered rose. Sometimes also with a stunted farmer from near Viger, who wore shoe-packs and smelt of native tobacco and oiled leather. This farmer was designed by the widow for that rebel Césarine, who still resisted behind her barricade, now strengthened by secret supplies of roses from an official of the government itself.

“But it is high time to speak,” thought Cuerrier, and one night, when there was not a hint of native tobacco in the air, he said:

“Madame Laroque, I am thinking now of what I would like to happen to me before I grow an old man, and I think to be married would be a good thing. If you make no objection, I would marry the beautiful Césarine here.”

The widow gathered her bitter fruit. “Old beast!” she cried, stamping on the guitar; “old enough to be her great-grandfather!”

She drove the bewildered postmaster out of the house, and locked Césarine into her room. She let her come down to work, but watched her like a cat. Forty times a day she cried out, “The old scoundrel!” and sometimes she would break a silence with a laugh of high mockery, that ended with the phrase, “The idea!” that was like the knot to a whip-lash. She even derided Cuerrier from her chamber window if he dared to walk the street. The postmaster bore it; he pursed up his lips to whistle, and said, “Wait.” He also went to see his friend Alexis. “I have a plan, Alexis,” he said, “if Diana were only out of the road.” But Diana was in the road, she was in league with the widow. “Fancy!” she cried, fiercely, “what is to become of us when old men behave so. Why, the next thing I know, Alexis—Alexis will want to get married.”

Whatever Cuerrier’s plan was, he got no chance to impart it. Diana was always in the road, and reported everything to the widow; she, in turn, watched Césarine. But one night, when Alexis was supposed to be away, he appeared suddenly in Cuerrier’s presence. He had come back unexpectedly, and had not gone home first. The plan was imparted to him. “But to bring the calash out of the yard at half-past twelve at night without Diana hearing, never—never—she has ears like a watch-dog.” But he pledged himself to try. The widow saw him depart, and she and Diana expected a coup d’état. Madame Laroque turned the key on Césarine, and fed her on bread and water; Diana locked her brother’s door every night, when she knew he was in bed, much to Alexis’s perplexity.

The lane that separated the widow’s house from Cuerrier’s was just nine feet wide. The postmaster had reason to know that; Madame Laroque had fought him for years, saying that he had built on her land. At last they had got a surveyor from the city, who measured it with his chain. The widow flew at him. He shrugged his shoulders. “The Almighty made this nine feet,” he said, “you cannot turn the world upside down.”

“Nine feet,” said Cuerrier to himself, “nine feet, and two are eleven.” With that length in his head he walked over to the carpenter’s. That evening he contemplated a two-inch plank eleven feet long in his kitchen. The same evening Alexis was deep in dissimulation. He was holding up an image of garrulous innocence to Diana, who glared at it suspiciously.

The postmaster bored a small hole through the plank about two inches from one end, through this he ran the end of a long rope and knotted it firmly. Then he carried the plank upstairs into a small room over the store. Opposite the window of this room there was a window in Madame Laroque’s house.