Part 18

“An’ he got hung, mamma! If you don’t believe it you can ask One-eye Beljus--I guess _he_ knows! An’ you can ask--”

“Hush!”

“An’ he sold this suit that Willie wants to One-eye Beljus when he was in jail, mamma. He sold it to him before he got hung, mamma.”

“Hush, Jane!”

But Jane couldn’t hush now. “An’ he had that suit on when he cut the lady’s head off, mamma, an’ that’s why it’s haunted. They cleaned it all up excep’ a few little spots of bl--”

“_Jane!_” shouted her mother. “You must not talk about such things, and Genesis mustn’t tell you stories of that sort!”

“Well, how could he help it, if he told me about Willie?” Jane urged reasonably.

“Never mind! Did that crazy ch-- Did Willie _leave_ the baskets in that dreadful place?”

“Yes’m--an’ his watch an’ pin,” Jane informed her impressively. “An’ One-eye Beljus wanted to know if Genesis knew Willie, because One-eye Beljus wanted to know if Genesis thought Willie could get the three dollars an’ sixty cents, an’ One-eye Beljus wanted to know if Genesis thought he could get anything more out of him besides that. He told Genesis he hadn’t told Willie he _could_ have the suit, after all; he just told him he _thought_ he could, but he wouldn’t say for certain till he brought him the three dollars an’ sixty cents. So Willie left all his things there, an’ his watch an’--”

“That will do!” Mrs. Baxter’s voice was sharper than it had ever been in Jane’s recollection. “I don’t need to hear any more--and I don’t _want_ to hear any more!”

Jane was justly aggrieved. “But mamma, it isn’t _my_ fault!”

Mrs. Baxter’s lips parted to speak, but she checked herself. “Fault?” she said gravely. “I wonder whose fault it really is!”

And with that she went hurriedly into William’s room, and made a brief inspection of his clothes-closet and dressing-table. Then, as Jane watched her in awed silence, she strode to the window and called loudly:

“Genesis!”

“Yes’m?” came the voice from below.

“Go to that lumber-yard where Mr. William is at work and bring him here to me at once. If he declines to come, tell him--” Her voice broke oddly; she choked, but Jane could not decide with what emotion. “Tell him--tell him I ordered you to use force if necessary! Hurry!”

“_Yes’m!_”

Jane ran to the window in time to see Genesis departing seriously through the back gate.

“Mamma--”

“Don’t talk to me now, Jane,” Mrs. Baxter said crisply. “I want you to go down in the yard, and when Willie comes tell him I’m waiting for him here in his own room. And don’t come with him, Jane. Run!”

“Yes, mamma.” Jane was pleased with this appointment: she anxiously desired to be the first to see how Willie “looked.”

... He looked flurried and flustered and breathless, and there were blisters upon the reddened palms of his hands. “What on earth’s the matter, mother?” he asked, as he stood panting before her. “Genesis said something was wrong, and he said you told him to hit me if I wouldn’t come.”

“Oh, _no_!” she cried. “I only meant I thought perhaps you wouldn’t obey any ordinary message--”

“Well, well, it doesn’t matter, but please hurry and say what you want to because I got to get back and--”

“No,” Mrs. Baxter said quietly. “You’re not going back to count any more shingles, Willie. How much have you earned?”

He swallowed, but spoke bravely. “Thirty-six cents. But I’ve been getting lots faster the last two hours and there’s a good deal of time before six o’clock. Mother--”

“No,” she said. “You’re going over to that horrible place where you’ve left your clothes and your watch and all those other things in the two baskets, and you’re going to bring them home at once.”

“Mother!” he cried aghast. “Who told you?”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t want your father to find out, do you? Then get those things back here as quickly as you can. They’ll have to be fumigated after being in that den.”

“They’ve never been out of the baskets,” he protested hotly, “except just to be looked at. They’re _my_ things, mother, and I had a right to do what I needed to with ’em, didn’t I?” His utterance became difficult. “You and father just _can’t_ understand--and you won’t do anything to help me--”

“Willie, you can go to the party,” she said gently. “You didn’t need those frightful clothes at all.”

“I do!” he cried. “I _got_ to have ’em! I _can’t_ go in my day clo’es! There’s a reason you wouldn’t understand why I can’t. I just _can’t_!”

“Yes,” she said, “you can go to the party.”

“I can’t either! Not unless you give me three dollars and twenty-four cents, or unless I can get back to the lumber-yard and earn the rest before--”

“No!” And the warm color that had rushed over Mrs. Baxter during Jane’s sensational recital returned with a vengeance. Her eyes flashed. “If you’d rather I sent a policeman for those baskets, I’ll send one. I should prefer to do it--much! And to have that rascal arrested. If you don’t want me to send a policeman you can go for them yourself, but you must start within ten minutes, because if you don’t I’ll telephone headquarters. Ten minutes, Willie, and I mean it!”

He cried out, protesting. She would make him a thing of scorn forever and soil his honor, if she sent a policeman. Mr. Beljus was a fair and honest tradesman, he explained passionately, and had not made the approaches in this matter. Also, the garments in question, though not entirely new, nor of the highest mode, were of good material and in splendid condition. Unmistakably they were evening clothes, and such a bargain at fourteen dollars that William would guarantee to sell them for twenty after he had worn them this one evening. Mr. Beljus himself had said that he would not even think of letting them go at fourteen to anybody else, and as for the two poor baskets of worn and useless articles offered in exchange, and a bent scarfpin and a worn-out old silver watch that had belonged to great-uncle Ben--why, the ten dollars and forty cents allowed upon them was beyond all ordinary liberality; it was almost charity. There was only one place in town where evening clothes were rented, and the suspicious persons in charge had insisted that William obtain from his father a guarantee to insure the return of the garments in perfect condition. So that was hopeless. And wasn’t it better, also, to wear clothes which had known only one previous occupant (as was the case with Mr. Beljus’ offering) than to hire what chance hundreds had hired? Finally, there was only one thing to be considered and this was the fact that William _had_ to have those clothes!

“Six minutes,” said Mrs. Baxter, glancing implacably at her watch. “When it’s ten I’ll telephone.”

And the end of it was, of course, victory for the woman--victory both moral and physical. Three-quarters of an hour later she was unburdening the contents of the two baskets and putting the things back in place, illuminating these actions with an expression of strong distaste--in spite of broken assurances that Mr. Beljus had not more than touched any of the articles offered to him for valuation.

... At dinner, which was unusually early that evening, Mrs. Baxter did not often glance toward her son; she kept her eyes from that white face and spent most of her time in urging upon Mr. Baxter that he should be prompt in dressing for a card-club meeting which he and she were to attend that evening. These admonitions of hers were continued so pressingly that Mr. Baxter, after protesting that there was no use in being a whole hour too early, groaningly went to dress without even reading his paper.

William had retired to his own room, where he lay upon his bed in the darkness. He heard the evening noises of the house faintly through the closed door: voices and the clatter of metal and china from the faraway kitchen, Jane’s laugh in the hall, the opening and closing of the doors. Then his father seemed to be in distress about something: William heard him complaining to Mrs. Baxter; and though the words were indistinct, the tone was vigorously plaintive. Mrs. Baxter laughed and appeared to make light of his troubles, whatever they were--and presently their footsteps were audible from the stairway; the front door closed emphatically, and they were gone.

Everything was quiet now. The open window showed as a greenish oblong set in black, and William knew that in a little while--half an hour, perhaps--there would come through the stillness of that window the distant sound of violins. That was a moment he dreaded with a dread that ached. And as he lay on his dreary bed, he thought of brightly lighted rooms where other boys were dressing eagerly, faces and hair shining, hearts beating high--boys who would possess this last evening, and the “last waltz together,” the last smile and the last sigh.

It did not once enter his mind that he could go to the dance in his “best suit,” or that possibly the other young people at the party would be too busy with their own affairs to notice particularly what he wore. It was the unquestionable and granite fact, to his mind, that the whole derisive World would know the truth about his earlier appearances in his father’s clothes. And that was a form of ruin not to be faced. In the protective darkness and seclusion of William’s bedroom, it is possible that smarting eyes relieved themselves by blinking rather energetically; it is even possible that there was a minute damp spot upon the pillow. Seventeen cannot always manage the little boy yet alive under all the coverings.

There came a tapping upon the door and a soft voice.

“Will-ee?”

With a sharp exclamation William swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Of all things he desired not, he desired no conversation with, or on the part of, Jane. But he had forgotten to lock his door--the handle turned, and a dim little figure marched in.

“Willie, Adelia’s goin’ to put me to bed.”

“You g’way from here,” he said huskily. “I haven’t got time to talk to you. I’m busy.”

“Well, you can wait a minute, can’t you?” she asked reasonably. “I haf to tell you a joke on mamma.”

“I don’t want to hear any jokes!”

“Well, I _haf_ to tell you this one ’cause she told me to! Oh!” Jane clapped her hand over her mouth and jumped up and down, offering a fantastic silhouette against the light of the open door. “Oh, oh, _oh_!”

“What’s matter?”

“She said I mustn’t, _mustn’t_ tell that she told me to tell! My goodness! I forgot that! Mamma took me off alone right after dinner, an’ she told me to tell you this joke on her as soon as she an’ papa had left the house, but she said, ‘Above all _things_,’ she said, ‘_don’t_ let Willie know _I_ said to tell him.’ That’s just what she said, an’ here that’s the very first thing I had to go an’ do!”

“Well, what of it?”

Jane quieted down. The pangs of her remorse were lost in her love of sensationalism, and her voice sank to the thrilling whisper which it was one of her greatest pleasures to use. “Did you hear what a fuss papa was makin’ when he was dressin’ for the card-party?”

“I don’t care if--”

“He had to go in his reg’lar clo’es!” whispered Jane triumphantly. “An’ this is the joke on mamma: you know that tailor that let papa’s dress-suit way, way out; well, mamma thinks that tailor must think she’s crazy, or somep’m, ’cause she took papa’s dress-suit to him last Monday to get it pressed for this card-party, an’ she guesses he must of understood her to tell him to do lots besides just pressin’ it. Anyway, he went an’ altered it, an’ he took it way, way in again; an’ this afternoon when it came back it was even tighter’n what it was in the first place, an’ papa couldn’t _begin_ to get into it! Well, an’ so it’s all pressed an’ everything, an’ she stopped on the way out, an’ whispered to me that sh’d got so upset over the joke on her that she couldn’t remember where she put it when she took it out o’ papa’s room after he gave up tryin’ to get inside of it. An’ that,” cried Jane--“that’s the funniest thing of all! Why, it’s layin’ right on her bed this very minute!”

In one bound William leaped through the open door. Two seconds sufficed for his passage through the hall to his mother’s bedroom--and there, neatly spread upon the lace coverlet and brighter than coronation robes, fairer than Joseph’s sacred coat It lay!

_The People’s Home Journal_

THE BELL OF SAINT GREGOIRE

BY

AGNES ROSS WHITE

THE BELL OF SAINT GREGOIRE[9]

By AGNES ROSS WHITE

Not everywhere does the Virgin reach down to help those who pray to her as she does at St. Gregoire, but not everywhere do people pray with such simple faith, such surety, as do the _habitants_ in this little parish up among the Laurentides.

For there was the never-to-be-forgotten time, when Our Lady came to help Diâne Doré, the year the bell was hung in the old church, more than a hundred years ago.

Diâne was the child of her native hills, beautiful, wild and solemn; so beautiful that the country people, not understanding, called her look strange; wild with a quiet, pagan wildness, and solemn as a seer who beholds the heart of the world. When her parents died, every home in the parish was opened to her, for that is the way of the _habitants_, but everywhere she was an alien. Only gray-haired Père Dufresne recognized the miracle of her beauty and marveled at it, or listened to her words, even though he wondered at them and was puzzled; and only Père Dufresne loved the child. So it came that she made his house her home; and there she lived her unchildlike life, roaming the hills by day, and telling the curé strange tales as they sat by the firelight after the darkness came, till the priest wondered if another Joan the Maid sat at his knee.

From the solitudes she had brought strange fancies; fantastic forms and faces had she seen in the mist on the river, a throb of divine heart-break had she caught in the moaning before the storm, or a strain of weird, unearthly music in the song of the hermit thrush, “but never Voices,” thought the curé, “she never says she has heard Voices,” and he waited, half expectant.

But Diâne grew as a child grows; and lo, there came a day when the priest looked at her, amazed, that she had grown up so soon. Then his trouble became an insistent thing. She was fifteen; there was no place for her in the village, surely none in the great world outside; there was the veil--and yes, he would speak to Monseigneur about that when next the good Bishop should come to St. Gregoire.

But before the Bishop came, St. Gregoire had been jostled by the world beyond the hills. Men from the outside came into the valley, drawing lines and measuring and placing markers here and there; the iron road was coming through St. Gregoire, perhaps.

From an eyrie on the mountain side Diâne watched the work of the strangers with curiosity. She could understand the work of the beavers and the foxes and the birds, of the wind and the rain, the frost and sunshine, even the work of the unseen things, but these strangers she could not explain.

Then one day, away up at little Lake in the Sky, she came upon one of them. He was young, very young, and never before had Diâne seen eyes the color of the sky, nor hair that shone like sunlight, for the blood of the Indian women of the past was very persistent in St. Gregoire.

To his words in English Diâne shook her head; to his halting French she answered: “I am Diâne Doré, and I live down there,” pointing to the valley.

But Diâne asked no questions; she had found him in the forest on the mountain, as she had found nearly every thing of which she knew; there was nothing unusual in question. And so it was that youth, strong and virile, met youth in its virgin freshness and they walked hand in hand, unconscious and content.

But Père Dufresne was not content. “No, no, my child,” said he, “you must not be with the stranger. It is not well for thee, it is not well.”

“But why not, _mon père_?” asked Diâne in surprise. “I like to be with him; I tell him many things; he knows so little of all this,” with a sweep of her hand toward the hills, the river and the sky, “and he is glad to know, very glad. Why should I not be with him to tell him?”

Poor Père Dufresne stammered in embarrassment. Surely the Evil One was digging pitfalls and laying snares to entrap him, for never before had his work brought him such a problem as this, never before had one been so dear to him as Diâne, for she had touched the man-father in the priest, and it wrung his heart to say aught to change the child--“_ma petite pucelle_,” he called her in his thoughts. Why could she not have been like all the rest to him, and why need this stranger have come to St. Gregoire--St. Gregoire so little and almost lost away back of the hills?

“He is English and perhaps a heretic,” he argued, hoping thus to avoid the difficulty.

“I do not know that,” she answered doubtfully. “He signs the cross as I have told him. I will ask him.”

And so Père Dufresne, tender-hearted old man that he was, left the matter, hoping--as so many a wiser man has done--that _le bon Dieu_ in His omnipotence would order the matter to his liking.

In good time the engineers finished their work and went on, but the boy remained, for he was not of them. He had come for the fishing, the shooting, for the primitive life he might find; he might go or stay as he chose, and the unreckoning will of youth said, “I have found that which is good in my sight; I shall stop to enjoy.”

Days are to youth what years are to age, and well might Père Dufresne be dismayed at the result of his indecision. Who shall say when boyhood goes and manhood comes? Who shall say, that minute love was not, this minute it is? Certain it was that the boy listened to Diâne’s half-savage, half-religious mysticism, charmed and absorbed. The old druid spirit, that had worshipped under the oak trees of Britain lived again in this son of an ancient soil, and in the reincarnation the boy became a man and loved this woman, unconsciously and naturally as the flower loves the sunlight, or the bird the freedom of the air.

But when she was not with him, when he sat by his campfire with the darkness about him, he remembered that he was from beyond the hills; he saw his lady-mother and the ivy-grown walls of home, a home which would be prison to Diâne, a home in which he knew she could never have a place. Then he saw Diâne, saw the beauty of her eyes, heard the sweetness of her voice, above all felt the purity of her spirit; and it was Diâne of whom he dreamed.

These musings by his campfire kept alive the man of convention, and he knew he must go down to the priest in the valley and claim this woman in the way decreed by man.

Summer passed and the foliage glowed and faded. Indian summer came, like a flower flung back by a band of revelers as they danced madly and merrily away; then the nights became crisp and frosty, and the day arrived when he said to Diâne as they sat watching the passing of the wild geese: “I saw the geese yesterday; I saw them the day before; to-day--to-morrow, perhaps--soon I must follow. I must leave the hills.”

* * * * *

She turned to him quickly with a look and gesture of startled bewilderment. He leaned forward and laid his hand on hers.

“Look at me, Diâne--straight in my eyes as I talk to you. You can come with me. Think of it. Away together to see more beautiful things, away to the southward with the wild geese, till the cold is gone, then to rivers and lakes and mountains again. We shall be together all the days--always; we shall watch the sunrise and sunset together; we shall stand before the priest and he shall send us away man and wife. Do you know why people marry, Diâne? Because they want each other as I want you, to have against all others--because they love. Do you know what I mean? Can you want me like that, Diâne?”

As he bent nearer to her she felt the hand clasping hers tighten, and the blood throbbing in his fingers. For a long time they sat and her gaze did not falter. The companionship of the weeks had changed, and she felt a new knowledge and a new joy, indefinable yet overwhelming. Then slowly she answered him.

“Yes, I want you like that. I know what you mean. But--there is more. I cannot tell what it is; perhaps I know not the words. Can you say it?”

“No, Diâne, sweetheart, only that it is love, and no one can tell what it is. It is like life, we can only live it, dear.”

“Then we will live it together, you and I,” she said.

And she listened to Love’s old tale, not with blushes, not with downcast eyes, but with face and eyes lifted to her lover with a glad new light in them. And he said not that the world was well lost for love--the world was forgotten.

* * * * *

They went hand in hand down the hillside, straight to the priest’s door. The old man wept with remorse, and blamed himself for neglected duty, while Diâne stood in silent distress. At last, falling on her knees by his side, she pressed his fingers to her lips and pleaded.

“Ah, _mon père_, _mon père_, you hurt me so. Is it you do not now love your little Diâne? Look at the others in the parish; you have blessed them and let them go away together, and you did not weep. I love you, _mon père_, but I must go, I must go. Let me go like the rest.”

Sadly Père Dufresne placed his hand on her bowed head and smoothed her heavy, black hair. “It has come, even to my little maid, _ma petite pucelle_, whom I had thought so far removed from man’s love. My daughter, this love of man brings labor and sorrow, brings pain and tears, and you would go even if it must be that you shall bear pain and sorrow and weep your tears alone?”

He spoke more to himself than to her, but she raised her head and answered quickly as if understanding his meaning, or it may be the new-born woman spoke within her.