“He’s sure to come?”
“Of course. I found out about that. She’s got a big consignment to people in Quebec. Something has gone wrong, but she’ll be here—yes.”
“What will you do if you get the money?” she asked. Tarboe laughed heartily. “My faith! Come play up those scarlet hose, Bissonnette! My faith, I’ll go into Parliament at Quebec. Thunder! I will have sport with them. I’ll reform the customs. There shan’t be any more smuggling. The people of Quebec shall drink no more good wine—no one except Black Tarboe, the member for Isle of Days.”
Again he laughed, and his eyes spilt fire like revolving wheels. For a moment Joan was quiet; her face was shining like the sun on a river. She saw more than her father, for she saw release. A woman may stand by a man who breaks the law, but in her heart she always has bitterness, for that the world shall speak well of herself and what she loves is the secret desire of every woman. In her heart she never can defy the world as does a man.
She had carried off the situation as became the daughter of a daring adventurer, who in more stirring times might have been a Du Lhut or a Rob Roy, but she was sometimes tired of the fighting, sometimes wishful that she could hold her position easier. Suppose the present good cure should die and another less considerate arrive, how hard might her position become! Then, she had a spirit above her station, as have most people who know the world and have seen something of its forbidden side; for it is notable that wisdom comes not alone from loving good things, but from having seen evil as well as good. Besides Joan was not a woman to go singly to her life’s end.
There was scarcely a man on Isle of Days and in the parish of Ste. Eunice, on the mainland, but would gladly have taken to wife the daughter of Tarboe the smuggler, and it is likely that the cure of either parish would not have advised against it.
Joan had had the taste of the lawless, and now she knew, as she sat and listened to Bissonnette’s music, that she also could dance for joy, in the hope of a taste of the lawful. With this money, if it were got, there could be another life—in Quebec. She could not forbear laughing now as she remembered that first day she had seen Orvay Lafarge, and she said to Bissonnette: “Loce, do you mind the keg in the water-pail?” Bissonnette paused on an out-pull, and threw back his head with a soundless laugh, then played the concertina into contortions.
“That Lafarge! H’m! He is very polite; but pshaw, it is no use that, in whisky-running! To beat a great man, a man must be great. Tarboe Noir can lead M’sieu’ Lafarge all like that!”
It seemed as if he were pulling the nose of the concertina. Tarboe began tracing a kind of maze with his fingers on the deck, his eyes rolling outward like an endless puzzle. But presently he turned sharp on Joan.
“How many times have you met him?” he asked. “Oh, six or seven—eight or nine, perhaps.”