It was true. Ringfield was forgetting the time.
"Had it not been for the bird—" he began, and from that point the conversation, at one time strongly personal and introspective, became ordinary. Ringfield closed the gate behind him, lifted his hat and turned back along the road without having ascertained the name of the lady or her condition in life. The service hour arrived, so did the small but enthusiastic congregation. The rain had entirely ceased and the air was perceptibly cooler. The preacher had prepared a sermon of more florid style than the one delivered in the morning, and he appeared to have the absorbed attention of those who understood the language, while the French contingent listened respectfully. The passage of Scripture to be read aloud had been chosen since the morning, since the afternoon walk in fact, but there was no one present from the house at Lac Calvaire to hear and understand part of the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, beginning with the verse, "By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?" and ending with the thirteenth verse of the succeeding chapter, "Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?"
CHAPTER III
THE MAN IN THE CHAIR
"From out the crumbling ruins of fallen pride
And chambers of transgression, now forlorn."
The house at Lac Calvaire was, as stated, a fair specimen of the dwellings erected in the first half of the eighteenth century by those Canadians who, living frugally though comfortably, felt that affection for the soil, for the natural features of the wild but picturesque country, even for its severe and strenuous climate, which in many cases prompted them to make homes and found families. In the year 1729, a Clairville, rich trader in furs and skins, built the house five miles from the majestic and lonely Fall. This Clairville was the grandson of a certain François Gaillard, body servant and faithful follower of the Sieur de Clairville—Antoine-Louis-Onesime—who came to New France in 1664. The nobleman in question led a truly chequered life in the gay garrisons of the new world, varied by a couple of voyages to the gayer Court he had left behind, but through all the reckless episodes of his long and stirring career, François was by his side, patient, adroit, silent when necessary, at other times a madcap for freak and fantasy. Faith of a gentleman—François Gaillard was everything his noble master should have been, and that master too often such as the poorest lackey might have been ashamed to be, yet—faith of a gentleman—De Clairville atoned for much ere he died. François, his foster-brother, received at his master's death a gift of land under the Crown to him and his heirs for ever, the name Gaillard to be abandoned for that of Clairville. In 1684 the Sieur de Clairville died; François survived him twenty years, leaving one son and two daughters. These became Clairvilles; there were no De Clairvilles. The son prospered, as did his son, another François, who built the strong stone farm-house and planted the poplars and laid the foundation of a well-known name, respected and quoted far and near in the community. Both house and family seemed to bear charmed lives. Canada was lost to France and in that losing many fine manor-houses and farms were destroyed, but Clairville and Clairville Manor went untouched. For this, the peculiar situation of the house, so far back from the Fall, its existence almost undreamt of by English soldiery, ignorant of the country, was, of course, responsible. A Clairville went to France at the close of the Revolution, made himself useful and remained in some post under the Government. Another went up to Quebec, became a sound lawyer, and batonnier of his district. Both of these individuals, however, died unmarried, and the next owner of the manor neither distinguished himself nor contributed to the glory of his line. That glory, such as it was, for the ignoble François was the founder of it, gradually departed. The Clairvilles deteriorated, sold off large parcels of their land, married undesirable persons, till, in the present generation, the culmination of domestic ruin seemed probable. For the Clairville now inhabiting the manor was not only reduced in purse and delicate in health but suspiciously weak in intellect.
When Ringfield woke on the Monday following his inaugural service, the sun was shining brightly into his room at Poussette's, and it is a fact that in his mind he saw a picture of a dazzling fan of foamy white feathers waving proudly in that sunlight. It really was the bird and not the lady that intercepted other and more pertinent reflections having to do with his future movements. He loitered about all morning, fished, lunched with his guide, made a pencil sketch of the Fall, and then about three o'clock in the afternoon walked out to Lac Calvaire. He neared the house; at first he saw no one, it was the middle-day siesta. No peacock was visible, no lady. Then he saw a face at a window and it stared at him. Ringfield, taken by surprise, returned the stare. To the stare succeeded a weak smile, then a beckoning finger, then an insistent tapping. The window was closed, with a roughly crocheted curtain half-drawn back on a string. The young man had no cause to hesitate, for he knew nothing of what lay inside the house. He was also a clergyman, which means much. It means, if you rightly understand your office, that you must be always ready to go anywhere, to do anything, that may be of the smallest benefit to your fellow-man. It means, that because of that high office, there is nothing really beneath your attention, too insignificant for your study, and yet you are so far above the rest of mankind, the mere lay portion of the world, that, like a God in courage and in calm, you may indeed enter where Angel and Devil alike fear to tread. At least, that is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded and greasy but rather handsome theatrical-looking dressing-gown and seated in a worn arm-chair. As for the room itself, he suppressed an exclamation of mingled surprise and impatient remonstrance, for, although of large proportions and not badly lighted, it was so littered with books, papers, maps, and pamphlets, so overgrown with piles of dusty blue-books, reports, dictionaries and works of reference, thick and antiquated, thin and modern, local and foreign, standing on end, on tables, on the mantel-shelf, extending into the old-fashioned cupboards minus doors, taking up a ragged sofa, a couple of arm-chairs, and a dilapidated armoire, and even the greater portion of a bed, that almost every gleam of sunlight was obscured, and upon this warm damp August afternoon the air was heavy and close with a suggestion of staler odours still.
"I saw you yesterday," said the man in the chair, "from this window, but you did not see me, eh? You were greatly interested in the bird."
He paused, and a weak smile changed to a haughty air, accompanied by a flourish of the hand.
"It is without doubt rare, a great curiosity. But there have been white peacocks at Clairville a long time, many years, many years."