Another week, when the clergyman had come to the island and Caius met him by chance, they had the opportunity of walking up a long snowy hill together, leading their horses. Caius asked him then about Madame Le Maître and O'Shea, and heard a plain consecutive tale of their lives and of their coming to the island, which denuded the subject of all unknown elements and appeared to rob it of special interest.
Captain Le Maître, it appeared, had a life-long lease of the property on Cloud Island, and also some property on the mainland south of Gaspé Basin; but the land was worth little except by tillage, and, being a seaman, he neglected it. His father had had the land before him. Pembroke, the clergyman, had seen his father. He had never happened to see the son, who would now be between forty and fifty years of age; but when Madame Le Maître had come to look after the farm on Cloud Island, she had made herself known to him as in charge of her husband's affairs. She found that she could not get the land worked by the islanders, and had induced O'Shea, who it seemed was an old farm hand of her own father's, to settle upon this farm, which was a richer one than the one he had had upon the mainland. The soil of the islands, Pembroke said, was in reality exceedingly rich, but in no case had it ever been properly worked, and he was in hopes that now Madame Le Maître might produce a model farm, which would be of vast good in showing the islanders how much they lost by their indifferent manner of treating their land.
"Why did she come to the islands?"
"Conscientiousness, I think. The land here was neglected; the people here certainly present a field white to harvest to anyone who has the missionary spirit."
"Is she—is she very devout?" asked Caius.
"Well, yes, in her own way she is—mind, I say in her own way. I couldn't tell you, now, whether she is Protestant or Papist; I don't believe she knows herself."
"He that sitteth between two stools——" suggested Caius, chiefly for want of something to say.
"Well, no, I wouldn't say that. Bless you! the truest hearts on God's earth don't trouble about religious opinions; they have got the essential oil expressed out of them, and that's all they want."
To Caius this subject of the lady's religion appeared a matter in which he had no need to take interest, but the other went on:
"She was brought up in a convent, you know—a country convent somewhere on the Gaspé coast, and, from what she tells me, the nuns had the good policy to make her happy. She tells me that where the convent gardens abutted on the sea, she and her fellows used to be allowed to fish and row about. You see, her mother had been a Catholic, and the father, being an old miser, had money, so I suppose the sisters thought they could make a nun of her; and very likely they would have done, for she is just that sort, but the father stopped that little game by making her marry before he died."