Pauline resolved to answer this question truthfully. How would Ringfield accept the delicate distinction of a moral right involving only those ties, those obligations, known to themselves and not to the world?
"No," she said, firmly. Then a great burst of colour filled her face as she continued. "But he should have had. Now you know. Now you know all." And Ringfield, as almost any other man would have done, mistakenly concluded that she was the unfortunate mother of the unfortunate child in the distant parish, Angeel! In this, perhaps the crucial moment of his whole existence, his manhood, his innate simple strength, his reason and his faith, all wavered, tottered before him; this experience, this knowledge of evil at first hand in the person of one so dear, flamed round him like some hideous blast from the hot furnace of an accepted hell, and he realized the terrors of things he had read about and seen depicted—lost souls, dark and yet lurid pits of destruction, misshapen beasts and angry angels—the blood flowed from his arteries and from his stricken heart up to his frightened brain, and surged there while he stood, not raising his eyes to this ill-starred woman. It was child's play to read one's Bible; it was child's play to read about sin; it was bald and commonplace to receive converts after service, or to attend death-beds of repentance; here was that suffering entity, the Sinner, alone with him, weak in her strength and strong through her weakness, and with her delicate, guilty, perverted impulses he had to deal, and no longer with pulpit abstractions. But while they stood thus, another turn in the affairs which revolved around the lonely barn carried with it a new sound; a horse's trot was plainly heard, likewise the humorous lilt of a shanty song.
"It is Mr. Poussette!" whispered Pauline, rushing to the lantern and extinguishing it. "He is coming for me and I shall have to go with him. I can manage him—better than the priest—but you—what must I do with you? He is a gossip—that one—and it will work you harm in your religion, in your church, if he finds you here with me."
"Oh, why are you so impetuous!" returned Ringfield. "You should not have blown out the light! He knew doubtless that I was coming for you—there would be nothing in that. Where is the lantern—I will light it again."
"You cannot reach it, I have hidden it down behind those boxes. No, no—I could not have him find you here with me. The loft—the loft! There is the ladder!"
And in two minutes he found himself, after scrambling up in the dark, crawling about on his hands and knees in the same heap of straw that had served to conceal Edmund Crabbe a few hours before, and doomed, in his turn, to overhear the conversation of any who might be below.
In a few moments the horse came to a standstill, and Poussette approached, carrying his lantern, Miss Clairville receiving him with just that successful mixture of hauteur and coquetry, which kept him admiring but respectful. His delight at being the first, as he supposed, to reach her, was as absurd as it was genuine, but there was no delay, and she was soon comfortably wrapped up in Poussette's voiture and being rapidly driven to the manor-house. When he thought it was quite safe, Ringfield shook himself free from the hay and straw that encumbered him, and prepared to descend the ladder, but he had scarcely enjoyed the luxury of stretching his long limbs (for he could not stand upright in the loft) when he heard footsteps approaching, and looking down, he perceived Father Rielle enter the barn, lantern in hand, and with thin, high-nosed, sour countenance depicting intense surprise, eagerly explore the place for Pauline. Ringfield held his breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak pulled well over him, settled to a night's rest. Ringfield, thus imprisoned, passed for his part a miserable night; he dared not move and his excited brain kept him from sleeping. Towards four o'clock the lantern flickered out; at six, while it was yet dark, the priest arose and went his way, and an hour later Ringfield also retraced his steps to the village. Like a man in an exceedingly unpleasant, but most distinct dream, he found himself bound in a net of intrigue from which there seemed no chance of escape. It was Sunday morning and at eleven he would have to take charge of the service and address the usual congregation as Father Rielle had already partly done, the early mass at St. Jean Baptiste-on-the-Hill being held at half past seven.
The road between the grim leafless trees was now swept clean of both snow and hail by the streams of heavy rain which had poured the previous night, and the air was mild. Much havoc had been wrought in places by the furious storm; the rocky ground was littered with branches and twigs of all sizes; rivers of yellow mud ran where the clay road should be, and against this desolation there glowed occasional plants of bright green, low along the ground, that had escaped the winter's rages of a high level. Crows were silhouetted against the pale blue sky laced with streamers of white, and spring seemed to be in the air rather than late autumn; the excited birds called to each other as they flew high over the forest, as if to hail this pleasant morning, a contrast to the stormy night. Suddenly the sun shone through those cloudy gossamers and irradiated the bright green ferns and orange lichens, drawing the eye to the cross of gold that topped Father Rielle's fine church. Ringfield went out of his way to look at the fall; it was much swollen from the rain and thundered over its brown rocks more loudly than he had ever heard it. Above the bridge were swaying large quantities of floating timber, washed down by the violence of the storm, and as he looked he saw three of these derelicts ride to the brink, and tumble over, and among them a little dog, that had got out there he could not tell how, which for a moment stood on a rolling tree whining piteously, and then fell with it down those ledges of furious frothing waters.
He ran close to the edge, and looked over, but there was no trace of the animal for fully five minutes; then he saw its poor little body emerge, battered, knocked about by stones and trees at the foot of the great cascade, and at the sight his good sense and right feeling seemed to return to him. He had temporarily, as he himself would have put it, forgotten his Creator in the days of his youth; now all came back to him; the duties of his position, its dignity and its obligations, and he strove hard, by prayer and concentration of mind, to be as he had been, and forget Miss Clairville and her tempestuous existence for a while, as he took upon himself the work of the sacred day. He preached later from the verse, "Yet in the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue," and his voice and magnetic delivery were not impaired. The little dog, the little dead dog, figured in the sermon; like the Ancient Mariner when he leaned over the rotting vessel's side and watched the beautiful living things moving in the waters, his heart gushed out with sympathy as the image of the dog, seeing his death, and recognizing no escape from it, remained with him. The eyes of the poor animal seemed ever before him; large, pathetic brown eyes, with soft patches of lighter brown fur above them, a quivering nose and trembling paws—could he not have saved it? No—for motion once given to those rolling logs, they would carry anything on with them, and it was already too late when he first perceived it—a small, shivering, unhappy little object—with fear shining in its large eyes, those eyes he had seen looking directly at him as if to say: "Help me, my brother, help me from this Death! Help me, for the love of God, as you believe in God and in His Omnipotence and Goodness!"