"——Consumed
And vexed and chafed by levity and scorn,
And fruitless indignation, galled by pride,
Made desperate by contempt."

Ringfield, who had confessed to a fixed and abiding ignorance of the stage, was also ignorant of music, except so far as he could recognize a few patriotic airs and old-country ballads. Of church music there was nothing worth speaking of or listening to in the Methodist conventicles of those days, so that he brought an absolutely open mind to a consideration of Miss Clairville's voice and method when he first heard her sing. That had been one evening in an impromptu and carelessly inadequate manner in company with Miss Cordova—whom, with her bleached hair, green eyes accentuated by badly-drawn, purplish-black eyebrows, and a shrill American accent, he was learning to dislike and avoid as much as possible; but now a better opportunity presented itself. A Grand Evening Concert, Concert de Luxe, was to be given at Poussette's for the survivors of Telesphore Tremblay, a woodcutter who lived at the edge of the forest of Fournier, and who had generously left behind him one of those long legacies of thriving sons and daughters for which French Canada is famous. The modest birth-rate of the province of Quebec is not in these days of "race suicide" a thing to be ungrateful for: many Tremblays remain, with their family of eighteen or twenty-four, of sturdy, healthy boys and girls, for the most part pure French, with an occasional streak of Scotch or Irish, and a still rarer tincture of Indian. Frugal, sober, industrious, and intelligent along certain limited lines, the habitant sets an example of domestic bliss, which, in its unalterable and cheerful conviction of what are the duties of parents to the state and to the Church, tends to the eternal and unimpoverished perpetuation of the French Canadian race. The Tremblays were named as follows, and as some interest attaches to the choice of triple, and even quadruple, titles, largely chosen from the saints of the Roman Calendar, augmented by memories of heroes, queens, and great men in history, it is thought well to give them at length. Thus the sons, nine in number, were:—

Alexis Paul Abelard
Joseph Maurice Cleophas
Hector Jerome Panteleon Etienne
Jean Gabriel
Jules Alfred Napoleon
FranÇois-Xavier Hercule Narcisse
Patrick Zenophile
Pierre Joseph Louis-Felippe
Alphonse Arthur

while the daughters were:—

Minnie Archange
Emma Catherine Lucille
Victoria CÉcile
Marie-Antoinette Colombe
Brigide Zenobie
Eugenie Louise Angelique
Bernardette Ste. Anne.

The dining-room at Poussette's was transformed for the occasion into a moderate sized concert hall, by the erection of a platform at one end by Antoine Archambault under Pauline's skilled directions, and by rows of planks crosswise over chairs, the people of the village joining forces with those at Poussette's, just as in towns others conspire together to hold fÊtes and bazaars; but Ringfield stood afar off and would have nothing to say to it. Miss Clairville intercepted him that day after dinner and asked him to assist her.

"I cannot think," said she, "how you remain so narrow in one respect, while broad enough in others! I am sure that sermon yesterday about the widow and the fatherless was the most beautiful thing I ever heard, and that you have ever said. How then—is it wicked to get up a concert, act, sing, and amuse ourselves, and all for a good object, that we make money for the unfortunate? Ah—but I do not understand you at all!"

"No, I suppose I cannot expect you to do so," replied Ringfield sadly. "But I have never approved of similar practices in the city, and it seems to me that I must now include the country. Why not make a personal canvass from house to house, through the mill, and so on, and interest the members of our small community in the Tremblays—I believe you would raise more."

"Ah!" exclaimed Pauline, with a swift shrug of impatience; "see now—how we should quarrel always! Quarrel? I think it would be one grand, great long fight, if I—if I——" she faltered, and he noted with quick passion the drooping of her ordinarily flashing eyes.

"If you——" he repeated softly. "Oh—say the rest, or if you would rather not—I will say it for you. You mean, if you could make up your mind to leave all this, leave everything and everyone you have known, and come to me—is that it?"

They were for a moment completely alone, but as Antoine might approach at any instant, laden with boughs of evergreen for decoration purposes, conversation was of a stolen and hurried kind. Ringfield, in whom first love had rapidly modified all natural shyness of the sex, was no lukewarm lover; he took Pauline's hands, and bringing them to his lips, pressed ardent kisses upon them, urging her to at once decide in his favour and give him the right to guard her interests for ever. How or where they would live was no matter, her best impulses must surely move all her heart towards him, and at last he heard from her a soft answer, which was nevertheless a clear affirmative, and now, not only hands but lips joined in this rare moment, and Pauline, no longer estimating the minister as one unlearned in the subtle lists of love, felt happier than she had done for months. She had made, she told herself, the best choice offered her, and for the moment she swore resolutions of holy living and quiet dying, all in the character of Ringfield's wife. As for him, the kiss had sealed all and changed all.

"Now at last I shall live again, be a free agent, able to do my work! You can have no conception of what it has been for me to get up my sermons, for example, or to go about among the people here, thinking of you, wondering if you would ever come to me or not. I have pictured you going back to that other man, and I have hated you for it, hated you both!"

"Oh—hush, hush, be careful!" Miss Clairville, like all women, was now afraid of the passion she had awakened. "Let us get to work—some one may come in—you do not mind helping me now?"

"Not—if you mean what you say! Not—if this time you are telling me the truth!"

"You cannot forget that lapse of mine, it seems. Well, I do mean it, I do, I do! And you—you mean it too? You would take me even with my past, and that past unexplained, with my faults and my temper?"

"I have told you before that I would," he returned firmly. "No matter what has happened; no matter what you have done, what anyone else has done, I would, I will, I do take you! You are Heaven's choicest, dearest gift to me—and what am I but an erring man trying to walk straight and see straight!"

Miss Clairville's eyes sparkled with mischief, while her mouth remained solemn.

"Then you must not talk of hating. Love your enemies, Mr. Ringfield, and bless them that persecute you. That isn't in the Catholic Manual in those words perhaps, but I have seen it somewhere, I think in the Testament Nouveau. You see—— I am always 'good Methodist' as our friend Poussette would say."

"You shall be a better one in the future," exclaimed Ringfield, tenderly, and as at that moment Poussette himself appeared, to lend assistance, the interview was at an end.

And now ensued a scene which a week earlier would have sorely tried Ringfield's patience, but which now sufficed to amuse him, so secure was he in Pauline's affection and so contented with her recent promises. The evergreens were brought to her, seated on the platform and wearing gloves to protect her hands; she cut off the branches, trimmed them, and sometimes handed them to Poussette, and sometimes to Ringfield, who then nailed them up at the back of the improvised dais to make a becoming background; she also twined the smaller pieces into festoons and ropes for the side of the room, and Poussette, who could not keep his admiration a secret, hovered about her, continually pressing her fingers as he received the greens, patting her back, offering her the scissors and the ball of twine much more frequently than she required them. It was a relief to the couple most concerned when Miss Cordova entered, wearing an elaborately pleated and not too clean violet dressing gown, over which she had put on a dark blue blanket coat and her host's fur cap to keep her warm. Thus from the ill-assorted trio was formed a comfortable partie carrÉe, for Poussette seemed careless as to which lady he attended and he still bore the cornelian ring upon his finger. Ringfield, forgetting his scruples, had promised to take the chair and introduce the artists; Antoine was door-keeper, and Poussette, clad in tweeds, a white waistcoat and tie of bright blue, would receive the guests in his own effusive way, seating the ladies carefully on the fresh yellow planks with great gallantry and address.

At eight o'clock the room began to fill, the village turning out well, and a few coming all the way from Hawthorne, among these Enderby, the Cockney butcher, and his wife and daughter, and as soon as Ringfield had made a few appropriate remarks, couched this time in safe and secular terms, the first number was given, consisting of an orchestral selection by four players belonging to St. Ignace and to the choir of Father Rielle's big church, St. Jean-Baptiste-on-the-Hill. A cornet, two fiddles and a flute rendered the music with good time and fair intonation, and as it was lighthearted, even gay in character, melodious and tripping, Ringfield thought it must be of operatic origin, but found later on to his intense surprise that it was a transcription of Mozart's Twelfth Mass, interpreted by Alexis Gagnon, the undertaker, as first violin, his eldest son, second violin, FranÇois Xavier Tremblay, one of the beneficiaries, on the cornet, and Adolphe Trudel, a little hunchback, on the flute.

This selection, performed with more gusto and enthusiasm than customary, gave so much satisfaction that it had to be repeated after noisy and prolonged applause, and then Miss Cordova appeared at the side of the platform, dressed in Spanish costume and carrying castanets. The opera of "Carmen," at that time quite new, had been performed in some small towns of the United States by a "scratch" company, including Pauline's acquaintance and—to show that Art is a reality, and some people born into it, at their best in it and unfit for anything else—the lady was greatly changed, not only in Ringfield's eyes, but in her own. The greenish-yellow hair looked dull gold by lamplight; her eyes gleamed blackly from their blue crystallized lids (the bath of indigo being a stage device known to all devotees of the art), and her dancing, which immediately commenced to her own castanets and a subdued "pizzicato" from the two violins, was original and graceful, and free from any taint of vulgarity. Her draperies of handsome black and yellow stuffs were high to the throat and reached to her ankles; her expression was dreamy, almost sad; one would have said she was figuring in some serious rite, so dignified her mien, so chaste and refined her gestures. If Bizet has idealized the heroine of Prosper-MerimÉe's crude but strong little story, Sadie Cordova idealized in her turn the orthodox tempestuous, unhappy Carmen of the modern stage. The beauty of the music with its rhythmic measured beat, and the grace of her swaying changeful poses, riveted all eyes and ears, and Ringfield, to whom such an exhibition was altogether new, was absorbed in watching this woman he had endeavoured not to despise, and whom he certainly would have exhorted in his most earnest fashion to flee St. Ignace directly, had he known that she was a person who had experimented more than once in matrimony, not having waited for the death of her first husband before she married the second, and that she had two children living.

The next on the programme was a baritone solo from a young habitant, another of the Tremblay family, a portion of a Mass in which he was ill at ease, and over-weighted; this apparently not mattering to the populace, he was encored, and returned to sing, in his own simple fashion and without accompaniment, one of the many beautiful melodies known to him from his childhood—A Chanson Populaire.

Quand un ChrÉtien se determine
A voyager,
Faut bien penser qu'il se destine
A des dangers;
Mille fois a ses yeux la mort
Prend son image,
Mille fois il maudit son sort
Dans le cours du voyage.

Quand tu seras dans les portages,
Pauvre engagÉ,
Les sueurs te couleront dea visages
Pauvre affligÉ,
Loin de jurer, si tu me crois,
Dans ta colÈre,
Pense À Jesus portant sa croix—
Il a montÉ au Calvaire!

What words were these—to be sung at a mixed concert in a summer hotel in the primitive village of St. Ignace? Ringfield knew enough French to follow them, and as the minor plainsong of the melody floated through the hall, he saw Miss Clairville's eyes filling with tears where she sat in the front at one side awaiting her turn. She had often spoken to him of the beautiful national music of her province—this was the first time he had heard it. But quickly now followed Poussette with a solo on the concertina, in which his fat body laboured to and fro, and his fat hands plunged the instrument to one side, then to the other, while his broad smile and twinkling eyes first pleased, then convulsed the audience. After him came Miss Clairville, and Ringfield, nervously reading out the title of the song, did not observe how she was dressed until she had reached the platform and had greeted her audience. The black and scarlet garb so familiar to him was now accompanied by a smart little jacket of red worn rather queerly, since one arm only was thrust in and the empty sleeve caught up in some way he did not understand, while on her head she wore a kind of arch hussar's cap. It was evident that her selection was familiar to some in the audience, those who had seen her as "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein" in Montreal, and a few who had attended similar functions to the present.

"It's only an old turn of mine," she managed to whisper to Ringfield, "but they all like it. Le Sabre de Mon PÈre—I never tire singing it myself. You look stupid enough this minute to be my Fritz—but there—you do not understand!"

The accompaniment was played on the American organ, moved for that occasion up to the platform, but even that could not detract from the passionate pride and fire with which Miss Clairville rendered that spirited song, so far removed from opera "bouffe" or "comic" opera; indeed the noble character of the first strain was considerably enhanced by the church-like quality of the accompaniment. So far Ringfield was greatly surprised, for he had seen and heard nothing that failed to appeal to the artistic and elevated side of life, and Pauline threw additional vigour and life into her representation of the autocratic Duchess, half-acted, half-sung, as she observed her latest captive; new chains were being forged by the unexpected grandeur and beauty of her thrilling voice and all went breathlessly and well until the door at the end of the room opened and a startling figure appeared. This was Edmund Crabbe—but no longer Crabbe the guide, the dilatory postmaster, the drunken loafer; in his stead appeared Crabbe Hawtree, Esquire, the gentleman and "Oxford man," in his right mind and clothed—mirabile dictu—in full and correct evening dress. Piccadilly and Pall Mall need not have been ashamed of him; the regulation coat, waistcoat and trousers were there, a little worn, but still in fashion; the white tie was there, the stiff collar and cuffs, the patent leather pumps, even a white silk handkerchief tucked inside the waistcoat, and some kind of sprig in the buttonhole. He paused, carefully shutting the door behind him, and stood while Pauline finished her song; at its conclusion he walked up through the rows of village people—shanty and mill hands, habitants and farmers—and presented the artist with a handsome bunch of florist's roses, quite in the accepted style of large cities, and her surprise was evident. She started, stared at him, faltered, and might have spoken but for the impassive and nonchalant air with which he faced her. As for Ringfield, a great anger and distress filled his mind. What spasm of reform had animated this fallen, worthless creature to create an impression which could not, in the nature of things, lead to systematic rehabilitation? To ape the garb of worthy men, to stand thus, tricked out in the dress of a remote civilization from which he had thrust himself forever, before the woman he perhaps had wronged, and with so easy and disdainful a bearing, seemed to Ringfield the summit of senseless folly and contemptible weakness. Subjected during the rest of the evening to the cynical, amused and imperturbable gaze of this man, whom, in spite of his Christianity, he hated, Ringfield made but a sorry chairman. His French stuck in his throat; he cast dark and angry looks at the noisy flirtation going on between Poussette and Miss Cordova, and it was with relief that he heard the patriotic strains of "God Save the Queen" from the strength of the company, in which the hoarse bass of the transplanted cockney, Enderby, the Hawthorne butcher, was paramount.

Crabbe was waiting for Pauline and gave her his arm down from the platform.

"Well," said he, openly displaying his admiration, "you gave us a Gregorian Grand Duchess to-night, but I, for one, will not quarrel with you for that. All the old time vivacity and charm were there, I assure you, and I do not find as much alteration in your style and appearance as I expected from hearing that you had joined the Methodists!"

Pauline glanced quickly from Crabbe to Ringfield; she foresaw an open and unseemly quarrel, and as one could never tell when Crabbe was sober, she rather feared than welcomed the bright audacity of his manner, the amiable ease with which he held the situation. In the presence of the guide Ringfield always lost his austere calm; his manners underwent deterioration and he stood now with a rigid gaucherie spoiling his fine presence, and a pitiful nervousness prompting him to utter and do the wrong thing.

"I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Methodists all the same, you know," continued Crabbe, giving her arm a final and caressing pat as he released her, "but still I've seen better chairmen." Crabbe was now leaning lazily against the wall and occasionally moved his arm across Miss Clairville's back, as if he might at any moment fold it around her waist as he had done outside the barn.

"Your French needs polishing up a bit. How would a course at one of our theological colleges down here do for you? It's a pity you couldn't have six months even at Laval—but, of course, Sabrevois and the long procession of colporteurs is more in your line. But in spite of such small defects you remain a man of cheerful yesterdays, and we may presume—equally confident tomorrows, and therefore, to be envied."

The three stood comparatively alone, the people having passed out and Poussette and Enderby talking apart in a corner. Every vestige of healthy colour fled from the minister's face, and his hands clasped and unclasped with peculiar and unnatural tension. In his brain a prayer had formed. "My Dear God—" he kept saying to himself—"my Dear God—help me from myself! Protect me now lest I offend Thee, and be forever cast from Thy Holy Presence. Remove this temptation from me, or give me strength to meet it and endure, and so rise triumphant."

His lips moved and the word "God" made itself faintly heard. Pauline went closer to him and saw the set strain of his face and watched the tightening fingers.

"Oh, you are right—we torture you, he and I, with our foolish ways that you do not understand!"

"I understand well enough," he returned below his breath; "I understand better than you think. But come now, come away with me!"

"Come—where? I am living here, remember!"

"Come away—away!"

A new recklessness animated Ringfield; he was now the one to dash aside convention and make a bold attempt for mastery. "It is not yet very late. The snow is dry and hard—we can walk for half an hour."

Crabbe smiled in a slow infuriating way.

"I claim, I demand the lady for something better than a walk, under dreary midnight skies, over cold and inhospitable winter snows! Like a man in a certain chronicle I have made a supper and would bid you both attend—one at least."

"A supper? But whom——" Pauline stopped, although glad of the diversion Crabbe's words offered. She had seen him hand a couple of bills towards the Tremblay fund; she now recollected preparations towards extra cooking during that day, which she had set down to Poussette's mania for treating and feeding people, but which now must be attributed to the guide, and in her hand were the forced roses sent from Montreal—there was no nearer place. Crabbe must be out of his senses, for never before even in the old days when his remittance came to hand had she seen him so lavish. He read her meaning.

"Who pays, eh! Is that it, my lady? Well, I do on this occasion, and the fact is—well, I'll tell you all about it at supper."

Pauline, still incredulous but extremely curious, took small notice of Ringfield after this, and as Enderby was approaching, and she particularly avoided meeting anyone from Hawthorne on all occasions, she departed with the guide. There was a very attractive supper ready for her in a private room, where Miss Cordova was also present in her Spanish costume, a giddy chaperone who soon retired and left the two together, and Pauline could hardly credit the fact that Crabbe was genuinely sober, clad in his irreproachable evening suit, his hair neatly brushed with a kind of military cut, and his features composed and pleased, recalling much of what he had been when first they met; and she also observed with much surprise that Poussette was present at the feast altogether in the character of menial and inferior, with his coat off, bustling about with the glasses, corkscrews and towels. Instead of hobnobbing with the guide, he waited upon him with discretion and assiduity, and Pauline even fancied that towards herself there was a grain more of respect than of admiration in the hotel keeper's bearing.