Jean Jacques had chuckled over that episode, for he had conquered; he had shown M. Savry that he was master in his own household and outside it. That much his philosophy had done for him. No other man in the parish would have dared to speak to the Cure like that. He had never scolded Carmen when she had not gone to church. Besides, there was Carmen’s little daughter always at his side at mass; and Carmen always insisted on Zoe going with him, and even seemed anxious for them to be off at the first sound of the bells of St. Saviour’s. Their souls were busy, hers wanted rest; that was clear. He was glad he had worked it out so cleverly to the Cure—and to his own mind. His philosophy surely had vindicated itself.
But Jean Jacques was far from thinking of these things as he drove back from Vilray and from his episode in Court to the Manor Cartier. He was indeed just praising himself, his wife, his child, and everything that belonged to him. He was planning, planning, as he talked, the new things to do—the cheese-factory, the purchase of a steam-plough and a steam-thresher which he could hire out to his neighbours. Only once during the drive did he turn round to Carmen, and then it was to ask her if she had seen her father of late.
“Not for ten months,” was her reply. “Why do you ask?”
“Wouldn’t he like to be nearer you and Zoe? It’s twelve miles to Beauharnais,” he replied.
“Are you thinking of offering him another place at the Manor?” she asked sharply.
“Well, there is the new cheese-factory—not to manage, but to keep the books! He’s doing them all right for the lumber-firm. I hear that he—”
“I don’t want it. No good comes from relatives working together. Look at the Latouche farm where your cousin makes his mess. My father is well enough where he is.”
“But you’d like to see him oftener—I was only thinking of that,” said Jean Jacques in a mollifying voice. It was the kind of thing in which he showed at once the weakness and the kindness of his nature. He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist.
“If mother doesn’t think it’s sensible, why do it, father?” asked Zoe anxiously, looking up into her father’s face.
She had seen the look in her mother’s eyes, and also she had no love for her grandfather. Her instinct had at one time wavered regarding him; but she had seen an incident with a vanished female cook, and though she had not understood, a prejudice had been created in her mind. She was always contrasting him with M. Fille, who, to her mind, was what a grandfather ought to be.