“You don’t mean to say that you can love him as he is. It isn’t natural. But no, it isn’t.”
“What would you have said, if any one had asked you if you loved my mother that last year of her life, when she was a cripple, and we wheeled her about in a chair you made for her?”
“Don’t say any more,” he said slowly, and took up his hat, and kept turning it round in his hand. “But you’ll prevent him getting into trouble with the Gover’ment?” he urged at last.
“I have done what I could,” she answered. Then with a little gasp: “They came to arrest him a fortnight ago, but I said they should not enter the house. Havel and I prevented them—refused to let them enter. The men did not know what to do, and so they went back. And now this—!” she pointed to where the soldiers were pitching their tents in the valley below. “Since then Louis has done nothing to give trouble. He only writes and dreams. If he would but dream and no more—!” she added, half under her breath.
“We’ve dreamt too much in Pontiac already,” said Lajeunesse, shaking his head.
Madelinette reached up her hand and laid it on his shaggy black hair. “You are a good little father, big smithy-man,” she said lovingly. “You make me think of the strong men in the Niebelungen legends. It must be a big horse that will take you to Walhalla with the heroes,” she added.
“Such notions—there in your head,” he laughed. “Try to frighten me with your big names-hein?” There was a new look in the face of father and of daughter. No mist or cloud was between them. The things they had long wished to say were uttered at last. A new faith was established between them. Since her return they had laughed and talked as of old when they had met, though her own heart was aching, and he was bitter against the Seigneur. She had kept him and the whole parish in good humour by her unconventional ways, as though people were not beginning to make pilgrimages to Pontiac to see her—people who stared at the name over the blacksmith’s door, and eyed her curiously, or lay in wait about the Seigneury, that they might get a glimpse of Madame and her deformed husband. Out in the world where she was now so important, the newspapers told strange romantic tales of the great singer, wove wild and wonderful legends of her life. To her it did not matter. If she knew, she did not heed. If she heeded it—even in her heart—she showed nothing of it before the world. She knew that soon there would be wilder tales still when it was announced that she was bidding farewell to the great working world, and would live on in retirement. She had made up her mind quite how the announcement should read, and, once it was given out, nothing would induce her to change her mind. Her life was now the life of the Seigneur.
A struggle in her heart went on, but she fought it down. The lure of a great temptation from that far-off outside world was before her, but she had resolved her heart against it. In his rough but tender way her father now understood, and that was a comfort to her. He felt what he could not reason upon or put into adequate words. But the confidence made him happy, and his eyes said so to her now.
“See, big smithy-man,” she said gaily, “soon will be the fete of St. Jean Baptiste, and we shall all be happy then. Louis has promised me to make a speech that will not be against the English, but only words which will tell how dear the old land is to us.”
“Ten to one against it!” said Lajeunesse anxiously. Then he brightened as he saw a shadow cross her face. “But you can make him do anything—as you always made me,” he added, shaking his tousled head and taking with a droll eagerness the glass of wine she offered him.