Part 4

“Oh, he will come; as for the rest, we must succeed. But there is one thing, Maurice, you must be the invisible ogre; you must rage about here as wildly as you can, while I am working out our destiny downstairs.”

“My destiny?” he asked, with a falling touch of sadness in his accent.

A few days after this Pierre returned. “May I come in?” he asked, as Eloise held the door open hesitatingly.

“If you wish, Monsieur.” They sat a moment silently in the parlor.

“Monsieur,” said Eloise, commencing hurriedly but determinedly, “in this life everything is uncertain; so much depends upon mere circumstances, which are too obscure for us to control. I am willing to show you the furniture, but how much depends upon that!” She rose with the air of a heroine, and led the way to the foot of the stairs. Pierre followed. She had ascended three steps, and he had his hand on the newel post, when there was a crash in the room above. Eloise turned suddenly and leaned against the banister, glancing up the stairs, and extending her hand to keep Pierre back. “Monsieur, for the love of heaven do not come on, go back—go back into the room, I beg of you.”

“I am leaving you in danger, Mademoiselle.”

“I am accustomed to it. I beg of you.” She accompanied these words with an imploring gesture. Pierre went into the room, where he paced up and down. The noise increased in violence, and then ceased altogether. Eloise returned to the room; she leaned from the window, breathing convulsively; she plucked one of the half-grown lilac leaves and bit it through and through.

“Yet the furniture must be sold,” she said aloud. Pierre took a step toward her.

“Mademoiselle, you are in distress. May I not help you? I am able to. You can command me.”

“Alas, Monsieur, you mean I can command your wealth.” Pierre was profoundly moved at the sorrow in her girlish voice.

“I mean I would help you; I want to do what I can for you.”

“Let us go no farther,” she said, with her eyes fixed on the floor. “I must not come into your happy life.” There was a trace of bitterness in her tone.

“I have undertaken to buy the furniture,” he said, with a smile. “I will not give up so soon.”

“Maurice, Maurice, you are a splendid ogre!” said Eloise, throwing open the door.

“It is terribly exhausting,” he said, with a faint smile.

When Pierre next came it was raining quietly through a silver haze; the little maid opened the door; a moment later Eloise came into the room. When she spoke her voice sounded restrained; and to Pierre she seemed completely different.

“I have deceived you,” she commenced, without prelude, “there is no furniture to sell.” To all his questions or remonstrances she gave him this answer, as if she were afraid to trust herself to other words, standing with her eyes cast to the floor, and an expressionless face. But when she seemed the most distant, as if she could not recede further, she burst into tears. Pierre hurried toward her—“Mademoiselle, I cannot address you by name; you cannot deceive me; you are in great distress. I beg you not to think of the furniture; it is not necessary that these things of wood should trouble you further; to-day I did not come to see it, I came to see you.”

“Oh, Monsieur,” she sobbed, “you must never come here again, never—never!”

“Make no mistake, I will come, at least until I can help you, until I know your story.” He gained her hand.

“Monsieur, I cannot accept your assistance; but your kindness demands my story.”

She told it. She was a lovely girl caught in a net of circumstances. She was an orphan. Her parents had left her and her brother a little money—too little to live on—they existed. Her brother was a cripple—how often had she wished she was dead—he was wicked. She hinted at unkindness, at tyranny. It was necessary to sell these heir-looms. (Here Pierre pressed her hand, “You could not deceive me,” he said.) But he would not hear of it. Her life was intolerable—but she must live it to the end—to the end. “If I could have deceived you, Monsieur, I would have done so.” A smile shimmered through her tears. Pierre pressed her hand; she softly drew it away. Suddenly there was a crash in the room above; a light shower of dry white-wash was thrown down around them; the sound of an inhuman voice came feebly down the stairs. “I must go, do not detain me,” she cried, as Pierre tried to intercept her. He endeavored to hold her at the foot of the stairs. “Do not go, I beg of you.” She turned sweetly toward him. “I must go; it is my duty; you do yours.” The tears were not yet dry on her eyelids. Pierre watched her flutter upstairs like a dove flying into a hawk’s nest. His pulses were pounding at his wrists. “I wish I knew what my duty was,” he said to himself. As he left the house he glanced up at the window, a handkerchief dropped down; he pressed it to his lips and thrust it into his bosom. When he was out of sight he examined it. It was a dainty thing of the most delicate fabric; in one corner were the words, “Eloise Ruelle.”

Eloise found Maurice almost fainting with his exertion. When he recovered, he said—

“Is the game worth the candle?”

“Well, we will see.”

“Eloise, you have been crying.”

“I cry easily, I do everything easily.”

Maurice turned away and gazed from the window. The rain was so fine it seemed to be a rising mist; the trees were hidden, like plants in the bottom of the sea; somewhere the sun was shining, for there was a silver bar in the mist.

Pierre was not slow in coming again; but, instead of seeing Eloise, he had a note thrust into his hand by the little serving-maid. It ran: “I cannot see you. _He_ forbids it. Who could have told that our last word was ‘good-by.’ If I could have spoken again I would have thanked you. How can I ever do so now? Adieu.” Reading this on the step, he scrawled hurriedly on a leaf of his note-book: “I would not have you thank me, but I must see you again. Your risk is great, but I will be here to-morrow night; we will have the darkness, and all I ask is ten minutes. Is it too much?”

He gave the note to the maid, who shut the door. The house looked absolutely sphinx-like as he walked away from it.

The next night was moist with a touch of frost. A little smoke from burning leaves hung in the air with a pungent odor. The scent of the lilacs fell with the wind when it moved. Eloise was muffled picturesquely in a cloak. Pierre was holding her hand, which she had not reclaimed. “I have dared everything to come,” she said softly.

“You are brave, braver than I was to ask you.”

“You know my story. You are the only one.”

“That binds us.”

“How can I thank you?”

“You must not try, I have done nothing.”

Just then a burning brand was hurled from the window; it fell into the lilac-tree where it devoured a cone of blossom and withered the leaves around it. It threw up a little springing flame which danced a light on Eloise, who had cowered into a corner by the steps, with her hand over her eyes. Pierre went to her. “Tell me,” he said, “what does this mean?”

“Oh,” she moaned, “he suspects we are here; he always has a fire on the hottest nights, and he is throwing the sticks out.” This led Pierre to expect another one. He caught her by the arm.

“You must come out of danger,” he said, “one might fall on your dress.” The brand was glowing in spots. He tore it out of the bush and trampled on it. They went to the other side of the steps. It was the season of quick growth. In one day thousands of violets had lit their little tips of yellow fire in the tangle of the underwood; in one day the tulips were moulded into fragile cups of flame burning steady in the sunlight; in one day the lilacs had burst their little clove-like blooms, and were crowding in the dark-green leaves.

Pierre was saying excitedly: “Listen to me. This thing cannot go further. I love you, I am yours. I must protect you. You cannot deny me.” Eloise tried to stop him with an imploring gesture. “No,” he cried, “you must hear me! you must be mine! I will take you away from here.”

“Oh, do not tempt me!” cried Eloise. “I must stay here. I cannot leave him.”

“You must leave him. What hold has he upon you? I will never let you go back to this torment,—never. Eloise,” he continued seriously, “sometimes we have to decide in a moment the things of a life-time. This is such a moment. Before I pluck this blossom,” he said, leaning down to a dwarf lilac-bush bearing one bloom, “I want you to promise to be my wife.” A moment later he had plucked the flower, but had dropped it, and had caught Eloise in his arms. She stifled a cry, and gave herself to him.

“Maurice, Maurice,” cried Eloise, “look at me, I am triumphant!” He hardly looked at her; he was cowering over the fire, which had smouldered away, and in which the ashes were fluttering about like moths.

“I have done what you asked, that is all,” he said, with an effort.

“But it is everything to me; I will never forget you, Maurice, no matter how powerful I may become.”

“Alas! you need not remember me for long. Perhaps I will have what I wanted here, in some other star.”

* * * * *

A few evenings later Eloise drew the door after her: “Hush!” she said, “the least noise will disturb him.” She hesitated, and left the door ajar.

“Do you regret?” whispered Pierre.

“No, but I am leaving everything.”

“Yes, even the old furniture; if it had not been for that I would never have known you,” he said.

“Everything—everything,” murmured Eloise.

She listened for a moment, and then shut the door softly on the empty house: Maurice had gone to the hospital that afternoon; the little maid had been discharged.

“But,” she said, holding Pierre’s arm and leaning away from him with her sweet smile, “I have also gained all—everything.”

The next moment they had gone cautiously away.

This was the beginning of her career.

THE BOBOLINK.

IT was the sunniest corner in Viger where old Garnaud had built his cabin,—his cabin, for it could not be called a house. It was only of one story, with a kitchen behind, and a workshop in front, where Etienne Garnaud mended the shoes of Viger. He had lived there by himself ever since he came from St. Valérie; every one knew his story, every one liked him. A merry heart had the old shoemaker; it made a merry heart to see him bending his white head with its beautiful features above his homely work, and to hear his voice in a high cadence of good-humored song. The broad window of his cabin was covered with a shutter hinged at the top, which was propped up by a stick slanted from the window-sill. In the summer the sash was removed, and through the opening came the even sound of the Blanche against the bridge piers, or the scythe-whetting from some hidden meadow. From it there was a view of a little pool of the stream where the perch jumped clear into the sun, and where a birch growing on the bank threw a silver shadow-bridge from side to side. Farther up, too, were the willows that wore the yellow tassels in the spring, and the hollow where burr-marigolds were brown-golden in August. On the hill slope stood a delicate maple that reddened the moment summer had gone, which old Etienne watched with a sigh and a shake of the head.

If the old man was a favorite with the elder people of Viger, he was a yet greater favorite with the children. No small portion of his earnings went toward the purchase of sugar candy for their consumption. On summer afternoons he would lay out a row of sweet lumps on his window-sill and pretend to be absorbed by his work, as the children, with much suppressed laughter, darted around the corner of his cabin, bearing away the spoils. He would pause every now and then to call, “Aha—Aha! Where are all my sweeties? those mice and rats must have been after them again!” and would chuckle to himself to hear the children trying to keep back the laughter, out of sight around the corner. In the winter, when the boys and girls would come in to see him work, he always managed to drop some candy into their pockets, which they would find afterward with less surprise than the old man imagined.

But his great friend was the little blind daughter of his neighbor Moreau. “Here comes my little fairy,” he would call out, as he saw her feeling her way down the road with her little cedar wand. “Here comes my little fairy,” and he would go out to guide her across the one plank thrown over the ditch in front of his cabin. Then they would sit and chat together, this beautiful old man and the beautiful little girl. She raised her soft brown, sightless eyes to the sound of his voice, and he told her long romances, described the things that lay around them, or strove to answer her questions. This was his hardest task, and he often failed in it; her questions ran beyond his power, and left him mystified.

One spring he bought a bobolink from some boys who had trapped it; and he hung its cage in the sun outside his cabin. There it would sing or be silent for days at a time. Little Blanche would sit outside under the shade of the shutter, leaning half into the room to hear the old man talk, but keeping half in the air to hear the bird sing.

They called him “Jack” by mutual consent, and he absorbed a great deal of their attention. Blanche had to be present at every cage cleaning. One day she said, “Uncle Garnaud, what is he like?”

“Why, dearie, he’s a beauty; he’s black all over, except his wings and tail, and they have white on them.”

“And what are his wings like?”

“Well, now, that finishes me. I am an old fool, or I could tell you.”

“Uncle Garnaud, I never even felt a bird; could I feel Jack?”

“Well, I could catch him; but you mustn’t squeeze him.”

Jack was caught with a sudden dart of the old man’s hand; the little blind girl felt him softly, traced the shape of his outstretched wing, and put him back into the cage with a sigh.

“Tell me, Uncle Garnaud,” she asked, “how did they catch him?”

“Well, you see, they put a little cage on a stump in the oat-field, and by-and-by the bird flew over and went in.”

“Well, didn’t he know they would not let him out if he once went in?”

“Well, you know, he hadn’t any old uncle to tell him so.”

“Well, but birds must have uncles, if they have fathers just like we have.”

Old Etienne puckered up his eyes and put his awl through his hair. The bird ran down a whole cadence, as if he was on the wind over a wheat-field; then he stopped.

“There, Uncle Garnaud, I know he must mean something by that. What did he do all day before he was caught?”

“I don’t think he did any work. He just flew about and sang all day, and picked up seeds, and sang, and tried to balance himself on the wheat-ears.”

“He sang all day? Well, he doesn’t do that now.”

The bird seemed to recall a sunny field-corner, for his interlude was as light as thistledown, and after a pause he made two little sounds like the ringing of bells at Titania’s girdle.

“Perhaps he doesn’t like to be shut up and have nobody but us,” she said, after a moment.

“Well,” said the old man, hesitatingly, “we might let him go.”

“Yes,” faltered the child, “we might let him go.”

The next time little Blanche was there she said, “And he didn’t do anything but that, just sing and fly?”

“No, I think not.”

“Well, then, he could fly miles and miles, and never come back, if he didn’t want to?”

“Why, yes; he went away every winter, so that the frost wouldn’t bite him.”

“Oh! Uncle Garnaud, he didn’t, did he?”

“Yes, true, he did.”

The little girl was silent for a while; when the old man looked at her the tears were in her eyes.

“Why, my pretty, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that why he didn’t sing was because he only saw you and me, and the road, and our trees, when he used to have everything.”

“Well,” said the old man, stopping his work, “he might have everything again, you know.”

“Might he?” she asked, doubtfully.

“Why, we might let him fly away.”

The bird dropped a clear note or two.

“Oh, Uncle Garnaud, do let him go!”

“Why, beauty, just as you say.”

The old man put off his apron and took the cage down.

“Here, little girl, you hold the cage, and we’ll go where he can fly free.”

Blanche carried the cage and he took her hand. They walked down to the bridge, and set the cage on the rail.

“Now, dearie, open the door,” said the old man.

The little child felt for the slide and pushed it back. In a moment the bird rushed out and flew madly off.

“He’s gone,” she said, “Jack’s gone. Where did he go, Uncle?”

“He flew right through that maple-tree, and now he’s over the fields, and now he’s out of sight.”

“And didn’t he even once look back?”

“No, never once.”

They stood there together for a moment, the old man gazing after the departed bird, the little girl setting her brown, sightless eyes on the invisible distance. Then, taking the empty cage, they went back to the cabin. From that day their friendship was not untinged by regret; some delicate mist of sorrow seemed to have blurred the glass of memory. Though he could not tell why, old Etienne that evening felt anew his loneliness, as he watched a long sunset of red and gold that lingered after the footsteps of the August day, and cast a great color into his silent cabin above the Blanche.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE SEIGNIORY.

THERE was a house on the outskirts of Viger called, by courtesy, the Seigniory. Passing down one of the side-streets you caught sight of it, set upon a rise, having nothing to do with the street, or seemingly with any part of the town. Built into the bank, as it was, the front had three stories, while the back had but two. The lower flat, half cellar, half kitchen, was lighted from a broad door and two windows facing the southeast. Entrance to the second floor was had by a flight of steps to a wide gallery running completely across the front of the house. Then, above this second story, there was a sharply-peaked roof, with dormer-windows. The walls of the kitchen story were rough stone, while the upper part had been plastered and overlaid with a buff-colored wash; but time had cracked off the plaster in many places, and showed the solid stones.

With all the ravages of time upon it, and with all its old surroundings gone, it yet had an air of some distinction. With its shoulder to the street, and its independent solidity, it made men remember days gone by, when it was only a farm-house on the Estate of the Rioux family. Yet of that estate this old house, with its surrounding three acres of land, was all that remained; and of the retainers that once held allegiance to this proud name, Louis Bois was the last.

Living alone in the old house, growing old with it, guarding some secret and keeping at a proper distance the inquisitive and loquacious villagers, had given Louis also some distinction. He was reported an old soldier, and bore about the witness of it in a wooden leg. He swore, when angry, in a cavalier fashion, using the heavier English oaths with some freedom. His bravery, having never been put to proof, rested securely upon these foundations. But he had a more definite charm for the villagers; he was supposed to have money of his own, and afforded the charming spectacle of a human being vegetating like a plant, without effort and without trouble. Louis Bois had grown large in his indolence, and towards the end of his career he moved with less frequency and greater difficulty. His face was round and fat; the hair had never grown on it, and the skin was fine and smooth as an orange, without wrinkles, but marked with very decided pores. The expression of amiability that his mouth promised was destroyed by an eye of suspicious restlessness. About fifteen years before the time of his release Louis had been sworn to his post by the last of the Rioux family—Hugo Armand Theophile.

This young man, of high spirit and passionate courage, found himself, at the age of twenty-five, after two years of intermittent study at a Jesuit College, fatherless, and without a sou to call his own. Of the family estate, the farm-house, round which Viger had closed, was all that remained, and from its windows this fiery youth might look across the ten acres that were his, over miles of hill and wood to which his grandfather had been born. This vista tortured him for three days, when he sold seven of his acres, keeping the rest from pride. Then he shook off the dust of Viger, but not before swearing Louis Bois, who was old enough to be his father, and loved him as such, to stay and watch the forlorn hope of the Rioux Estate until he, the last of the line, should return and redeem his ancient heritage. He would be gone ten years, he said; and Louis reflected with pride that his own money would keep him that long, and longer.

At first he kept the whole house open, and entertained some of his friends; but he soon discovered that he lost money by that, and gradually he boarded up the windows and lived in the kitchen and one room of the upper flat.

He was a sensitive being, this, and his master’s idea had taken hold upon him. His burly frame contained a faint heart; he had no physical courage; and he was as suspicious as a savage. Moreover, he was superstitious, as superstitious as an old wife, and odd occurrences made him uneasy. If he could have been allowed to doze on his gallery in the sun all his days, and sleep secure of dreams and visitations all his nights, his life might have been bearable. The first three years of his stewardship were comparatively uneventful. He traced his liege’s progress through the civilized world by the post-mark on his letters, which sometimes contained a bill of exchange, of which the great and safe bank of Bardé Brothers took charge. As yet his master had not captured a treasure ship; but seven years remained.

At the beginning of his fourth year something happened which disturbed Louis’ existence to its centre. An emissary of the devil, in the guise of a surveyor, planted his theodolite, and ran a roadway which took off a corner of his three acres, and for this he received only an arbitrator’s allowance. In vain he stumped up and down his gallery, and in vain his English oaths—the roadway went through. To add to his trouble, the letters from the wanderer ceased. Was he dead? Had he forgotten? No more money was coming in, and Louis had the perpetual sight of the alienated lands before his eyes.

One day, when he was coming home from the bank, his eye caught a poster that made him think; it was an announcement of a famous lottery. Do what he would he could not get it out of his head; and that evening, when he was cooking his supper, he resolved to make money after a fashion of his own. He saw himself a suddenly rich man, the winner of the seventy-five-thousand-dollar prize. He felt his knee burn under him, and felt also what a dead thing his wooden leg was.

He began to venture small sums in the lottery, hoarding half his monthly allowance until he should have sufficient funds to purchase a ticket. Waiting for the moment when he could buy, and then waiting for the moment when he could receive news of the drawing, lent a feverish interest to his life. But he failed to win. With his failure grew a sort of exasperation—he would win, he said, if he spent every cent he owned. He had moments when he suspected that he was being duped, but he was always reassured upon spelling out the lottery circular, where the drawing by the two orphan children was so touchingly described.

At last, after repeated failures, he drew every cent of his own that he could muster, and bought a whole ticket. He never rested a moment until the returns came. He had days of high spirits, when he touched his gains and saw them heaped before him, and other days of depression when he cursed his ill luck, and saw blanks written everywhere. When he learned the result his last disappointment was his greatest. He had drawn a blank.