"How shall I trace the change, how bear to tell
How he broke faith——"

The Hotel Champlain is a hostelry not on the list which promises the highest class of entertainment for the tourist; one has not to go there unless one is French or in some way connected with or interested in French life and character, yet the cuisine is excellent and the rooms clean and neat. The occasional presence of pompous Senators from the provinces on their way to the legislative halls of the capital ensures a certain average of cooking and attendance; at other times prevail the naturally comfortable instincts of the host and hostess, M. and Mme. Alphonse Prefontaine, a couple bearing the same initials as the Poussettes, the wife a Natalie too, but extremely different in ideals and character. Thus, monsieur, the host, had voyaged, been to "Paris, France," emphasized in case you should think he meant that village, Paris, Ontario; had written a brochure on his travels and was a great patron of such arts as at that time the French population of Montreal were privileged to offer. Madame, the wife, with well-frizzed black hair, strong features and kindly dark eyes, was handsome enough for a Lady Mayoress, had excellent if a little showy taste in dress and had reared a large and healthy family.

To their comfortable roof Crabbe repaired rather than to any English one, because he was not yet completely reinstated in his own self-respect, and to patronize places suited to him in a prosperous future might now invite too much criticism. The Prefontaines knew Miss Clairville well and had heard from her of the rich Englishman to whom she was about to be married, and Crabbe was therefore received with more than Gallic fervour, assigned one of the best rooms, and after seeing a clergyman and attending to other matters touching the approaching ceremony, shut himself up with certain manuscripts that he wished to look over before mailing them to England. He had arrived at noon on the day of Henry Clairville's death and the next morning accordingly brought him the news in print. He grew thoughtful for a while, meant to dispatch a telegram of condolence to Pauline, then forgot it as he became interested in his work. Two poems in particular came in for much revision: "The Lay of an Exiled Englishman," and "Friends on the Astrachan Ranch," pleased him with their lines here and there, yet the general and final effect seemed disappointing to his fine critical side; like many another he saw and felt better than he could perform.

"A Tennysonian ring, I fear. Yet what man alive and writing now can resist it? It slides into the veins, it creeps along the nerves, it informs us as we speak and move and have our being. I'll read aloud—ghastly perhaps, but the only way to judge effect."

He began, and the long lines rose and fell with precision and academic monotony; he was no elocutionist, but read as authors read their own works, as Schubert played his own music, and as he read the snow fell in thick swirling masses outside his window and the cold grew more and more penetrating and intense. A knock at the door roused him. It was a servant of the house who spoke English. The host had sent to know whether the guest was warm.

"Well, come to think of it," said Crabbe, "I'm not too warm, by any means. You can tell them to fire up downstairs, certainly. What time is luncheon here?"

"Do you mean dinner, sir?"

"Oh, yes, dinner, of course. One o'clock? Very well."

"No order, sir? For the bar, I mean?"

Crabbe stared at the speaker then straightened himself and looked out of the window. Was it snowing at St. Ignace, and on Henry Clairville's grave? Would Pauline go into mourning?

"No, I think not. A bottle of Bass at my dinner—that's all."

The interruption over, he went back to his poetry, and this time read on until he had finished. Then he was silent, staring at the table with his legs straight out in front of him, and his hands in his pockets.

"What rot your own poetry can sound!" he finally observed with a frown.

"Verse certainly needs an audience, and there's a turn, a lilt that reminds me of Carleton occasionally—that won't do. Must go at it again. Must go at it again. Better have a smoke."

He found and lit his pipe, read over the stanzas, this time in his head, and the room grew steadily colder, until he could hardly stand it. He rang the bell.

"Look here! Tell Mr. Prefontaine his guests are freezing in this house. Get him to fire up, there's a good fellow—and—look here? How soon will dinner be ready?"

"Not for some time, sir. Perhaps, if you're cold, a hot Scotch——"

But Crabbe was again buried in his work. At one he dined, very much admired by Mme. Prefontaine and her three daughters; he had his innocent tipple and then went back to his room. By three o'clock it was growing dark and he rose to pull down the blind, when a step outside in the hall arrested him. The step seemed familiar, yet incongruous and uncongenial; it was followed by a knock, and, going forward, Crabbe opened the door to Ringfield.

Astonishment showed in the Englishman's face, but he spoke amiably enough and invited the young man inside. Ringfield's countenance wore its perennial grave aspect, but it could also be seen that at that moment he was suffering from the cold. He wore no muffler, and his hands were encased in mere woollen gloves; he had also the appearance of being a martyr to influenza, and Crabbe regarded him with his usual contemptuous familiarity.

"What's brought you to town this infernally cold day?" he said.
"You're not going to be married, you know."

The pleasantry did not apparently disconcert the other, but he looked carefully around as if searching for something before he answered.

"To be candid, I followed you here to have a talk with you."

"The deuce you did—white choker and all! You have a cheek, haven't you? Then you must be pretty flush, after all, even if you have not any expectations, like me, Ringfield. You've never congratulated me, but let that pass. As you are here, what do you want to talk about?"

The two stood facing each other, with the paper-strewn table between them.

"I should almost think you could guess," murmured Ringfield with an effort to be easy. "But before I, at least, can do any talking I must get warm. I'm chilled—chilled to the bone." And indeed he looked it. His hollow eyes, his bluish lips, his red hands and white fingers indicated his condition, and he had also a short, spasmodic cough, which Crabbe had never noticed at St. Ignace. Suddenly in the guide there awoke the host, the patron, and he drew the blind, placed chairs and grumbled at the stove-pipe.

"Oh for an open fire!" he cried. "Eh, Ringfield? One of your little Canadian open stoves would do, a grate—anything to sit before! Why, man, I'm afraid you have got a touch of the ague, or something worse, perhaps pneumonia."

"Not as bad as that, surely," returned the other with his wry smile. "I walked from the station to save a cab, and I'm only a little chilled."

"A warm drink!" cried Crabbe, from the depths of his new and hospitable instincts. "Say the word, and I'll order it. By heaven, Ringfield,—you look poorly, and I've wanted one myself all day." His hand was on the bell.

"No, no! Don't make a fuss over me. I shall be all right after a while. Besides I never take anything of the kind you mean, I fancy. Some camphor—if you had that, or a cup of boiling hot tea. I'll go downstairs and ask for that. Or coffee."

"Tea! Good Lord! Tea, to a man sickening with pneumonia!"

"But I'm not—really I'm not. I'm feeling warmer already."

"I know better. 'A hot Scotch,'" he said. "Oh for some of the
Clairville brandy now, eh? By the way, her brother's dead."

Ringfield shivered, but not this time on account of the cold. Some strange sensation always attacked him when Crabbe spoke of Pauline.

"Yes. I did not hear of it until she returned."

"She went to see him, then?"

"Yes."

"That must have been after I left. Poor girl! Well, was she very knocked up? Have you seen her?"

Ringfield shook his head and the guide attributed the action more to cold than to sympathy. His mind was made up; Ringfield must take something, must be warmed up and made fit, and whisky was the only means known to the Englishman, who did not own a "Manual of Homoeopathy". Whisky it must be. Again his hand went to the bell, and again Ringfield remonstrated, but his gauche utterances were of no avail in face of Crabbe's decision of character and natural lording of it. The boy appeared, the order was dispatched, and as Ringfield noticed the growing exaltation in the guide's manner, a sort of sickness stole upon him. Here, thrust into his hand, was the greatest opportunity yet given to him to preserve a human soul and to save the woman he loved, but he looked on, dazed, uncomfortable, half guilty.

"If this works you harm," he said, "it will be through me, through me.
I'd rather not, Crabbe; I'd rather not."

But the word of the guide prevailed, and in three minutes a couple of hot strong glasses were on the table. Crabbe for his part was really curious. Could it be that this man, his visitor, had never tasted spirituous liquor? Wine, of course, he must have taken, being a clergyman. This thought immediately attracted him, and with a sense of its literary value he sought to question Ringfield as to the effect of the Communion wine upon a teetotal community. By this time there was no doubt the minister had suffered a severe chill and the temptation became very strong to try the hot glass that stood in front of him.

Crabbe jeered.

"What do you suppose will happen to you if you taste it, even if you drain it? What can one glass do? Nonsense. I've taken a whole bottle of Glenlivet in an evening—then you might talk!"

His hand played with the glasses, and watching him, Ringfield felt all the awful responsibility of his office. Once before he had shattered a hateful bottle, once he had lifted up his voice in self-righteous denunciation of the sin of drink and the black fruit thereof, but now he appeared helpless, paralyzed.

At what moment the evil finally entered into him and conquered him does not signify; horrible visions of Pauline and this man going away together, laughing and chatting, embracing and caressing, swam before his jaundiced eyes. To delay, to prevent the marriage had been his dream for weeks, and now he saw one way to accomplish this wished-for hindrance to their union. Should Crabbe be made drunk, should he yield again after so long abstinence from liquor, who could say what the consequences might prove? A shred only of common compunction animated him as he said: "I tell you frankly I'm afraid of the stuff. And I'm afraid for you."

Yet all this time he was watching the guide's expression.

Already the steaming fumes were working upon him; the familiar, comforting, stimulating odour was there, his hand was clasping the glass, in another moment he would drain it, then what would happen!

"Afraid! Afraid? Of one glass! Ringfield—you're a fool, a prig, and a baby. Besides, the spirit is all burnt out by this time, evaporated, flown thence. Come—I'll set you the example. Drink first and preach afterwards."

And with the peculiar gloating eye, the expressively working, watering mouth that the drunkard sometimes shows, the Englishman led off. It was a long, hot drink, but he threw his head back and never paused till he had drained the last drop, and once again tipped the glass towards his throat. Ringfield, alarmed, fascinated, deeply brooding, watched the proceeding in silence, his nature so changed that there was no impulse to seize the offending glass, dash it on the ground or pour the contents on the floor, watched ardently, hungrily, for the sequel. Would Crabbe remain as he had been after the enlivening draught, or would he by rapid and violent stages decline to the low being of former days? While Ringfield thus watched the guide the latter stared back, broadly smiling.

"Still shaking!" he cried; "still 'chilled to the bone' and shivering? You are such an impossible fellow—you will not give my remedy a chance. Perhaps whisky doesn't suit you. I know—it was gin you wanted. 'The gin within the juniper began to make him merry.' Lots of people don't know that's Tennyson. Eh, Ringfield? Afraid? Afraid of imperilling your immortal soul? Nuisance—a soul. Great nuisance. Great mistake. Well—are you or are you not going to drink this other glass? I can't see good stuff wasted. I'm astonished at you. I'm—'stonished."

He leant forward and bent his elbows on the table; the papers fluttered in all directions, but he had forgotten about them. His gaze—wide, blue and choleric—was alternately bent on Ringfield and on the tumbler.

The minister went pale, his heart beat spasmodically and his fingers curled and tingled. No power, no wish to pray was left in him, no sense of responsibility; he was too far gone in jealous vindictiveness to be his own judge or critic, and he stared at the guide, saying: "If you get drunk it is your own fault. You'll be doing it yourself. I have nothing to do with it, nothing. I will not touch the stuff, you shall not make me."

Yet he did not attempt to remove the glass and Crabbe sniffed at the tempting fumes. His right hand embraced them, his hair fell over his forehead, his eyes and mouth worked strangely, and in a twinkling what the other had foreseen happened. With an unsteady, leering flourish Crabbe raised the coveted tumbler to his lips and drank it off.

Appalled and conscience-stricken, Ringfield fell back against the door, the room being small and contracted, and covered his face with his hands. In ten minutes the guide was coarsely drunk, but sensible enough to ring the bell and demand more whisky. Committed to his wrong course, the minister interfered no longer, and suffered a servant to deliver the stuff into his hands at the door, on the plea that the gentleman inside was not very well. Thus things went from bad to worse, Crabbe noisily reciting passages from English poets and the Greek anthology, and insisting on reading his lines to Ringfield after a third "go" of spirits.

"How does this strike you?" he cried, whipping a narrow piece of writing-paper out of his pocket; "I've written many an epitaph, but none that I liked better than this:—

"Chaste I was not, neither honourable, only kind;
And lo—the streets with mourners at my death were lined!"

And he added gravely that it was in the best Greek style. "I've got another, 'On a Woman Who Talked too Much,' but I can't remember it. Don't you write poetry? You don't? Oh! I remember now. You're the parson. Want to convert me, want to reform me, eh, Ringfield? You write something better than poetry—sermons. Look here—Ringfield—did you know I was intended for the Church myself at one time? I was. Honour bright—before I came out to this blasted country—excuse freedom of speech—before I knew you, and before I met Henry Clairville and Pauline."

The name seemed to convey some understanding of his condition with it, and he stopped a minute in his talk. The other man was still leaning by the door; it might be expedient to keep people of the house from seeing Crabbe's condition.

"Now—don't you say this isn't your fault," continued the guide, shaking his head wisely. "You ordered the whisky, you know you did. You were 'chilled to the bone' and you ordered it. And you're a parson all the same, can't get over that, can't help yourself, can you, Ringfield? Remember meetin' you many years ago somewhere, there was whisky too on that occasion, and you c'ngratulated me, you know, on going to be married. But you were—premature, that's what you were, Ringfield—premature. Wonder where I met you before! Must have been in the Old Country; must have been at Oxford together."

He now raised his head, and drinking off the fourth and last strong tumblerful of spirit, smiled vacantly in the other's face, and collapsed upon the table.

Ringfield, ashamed and bitter, stood and watched this sad scene with folded arms and tightly drawn mouth. Was it true? Was this his work? This dishevelled, staring-eyed, sodden, incoherent creature, shrewdly wise in his cups, had taken the place of the elegant and easy English gentleman, the educated Oxford man, dabbler in high-class verse and prospective happy bridegroom, and what woman would care to have his arm around her now? With the thought came a wave of self-righteous indignation; he had partially effected what he had hoped to bring about in some other way, the gradual but sure alienation of Crabbe from Pauline, and with a half-guilty satisfaction driving out remorse he descended and found M. Prefontaine, having first locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Explanations of his friend's seizure were made, apparently in good faith, and much solicitude expressed.

"However, I think you had better leave him entirely alone this evening, and I can look in later," concluded Ringfield, whose serious mien and clerical garb commended him; "I am familiar with his attacks and I will also see him in the morning before I leave, in case he requires anything, although by that time he will very probably have quite recovered."

This sounding perfectly frank and natural, M. Prefontaine took no more thought of the guest in No. 9, and gave Ringfield the room opposite, No. 8, from which he could listen for his friend's "attacks" and render assistance if required.

At half-past ten, therefore, he unlocked Crabbe's door, and found the guide almost as he had left him, his head on the table and his legs stretched out underneath, but Ringfield, scanning the room with a careful eye as he had done earlier in the day, on his arrival, at length perceived what he had expected and desired to see—a travelling-flask of wicker and silver-plate half hidden on the dressing table behind a tall collar-box. Turning the gas low, but not completely out, he went away quietly, again locking the door behind him. What Poussette had told him then was true, and it was this, that before his departure for Montreal the guide had purchased enough spirit to fill a large flask, and whether shallow subterfuge or not, Crabbe certainly had a standing temptation at his elbow which he must have forgotten when Ringfield entered, cold and shivering and plainly in need of a stimulant. Poussette's theory—that the Englishman had absented himself in order to enjoy a deliberate "spree" as it is called, was incorrect. Crabbe had simply brought the stuff with him from force of habit, the conventional notion of preparing for a journey, particularly in such a climate. Therefore the burden of his recent fall certainly must be laid to Ringfield, who had lifted neither voice nor hand to hinder; for while pursuing an evil course the latter seemed powerless to cast out the emotions of blinding hate and jealousy that tore at his vitals and rendered him a changed and miserable creature. The next morning he visited Crabbe again and found him, as he had hoped, absolutely sodden and useless; his elasticity and nerve, his good looks, his air of authority, having all disappeared, and a wretched physical sickness begun. He knew his plight, but did not recognize his tempter, did not mention Pauline's name and seemed to wish to be left alone. Ringfield candidly and sorrowfully made further explanations to M. Prefontaine, who promised to say nothing of the matter and to look after Crabbe as soon as he was able.

"Mlle. Clairville has written to us of the gentleman, and we regret this should have happened. You will carry her our best regards and good wishes for her wedding. These Englishmen are sometimes great drinkers, but they recover quickly."

Ringfield paid his bill and walked out as he had walked in, with the same constrained, unhappy expression, and the same cold hand grasping a florid carpet-bag. He had told M. Prefontaine that he was returning to St. Ignace, but he had no such intention; he went along Jacques Cartier Square a few yards, and then disappearing around a corner, found a quiet back street, where, over antiquated shop-fronts, he saw several cards of appartements À louer and one with a similar legend in English. Here he entered and secured a front room, so situated that its view commanded that side of the square on which stood the Hotel Champlain. He had made up his mind to remain there until he saw Crabbe emerge, when, if possible, he would again detain, hinder, or, in some unthought-out way, keep him from St. Ignace and Miss Clairville. Thus he passed the hours, patiently waiting at his narrow window in the Rue St. Dominique for a sight of his unfortunate rival.

Now M. Alphonse Prefontaine had a friend named Lalonde, a very clever man and a member of that useful profession which lives upon the lives and secrets and follies and crimes of others—in fine, a detective, and having quite recently lost his wife (a cousin of Mme. Prefontaine) he had given up his house and come to live at the Hotel Champlain. He had been present when Ringfield first appeared in the rotunda with his countrified carpet-bag, had heard him ask for his friend, had seen him again later in the afternoon, and also in the morning, and having naturally a highly-developed trait of curiosity, had sauntered out when Ringfield did, and discovered that, instead of returning to the country, the young man with the clergyman's tie and troubled face was lodging in the next street. To anyone else, even to the Prefontaines, this would have signified nothing, but Lalonde was good at his business, and the discovery at least interested him; he could say nothing more. He, too, knew Miss Clairville well, and was expecting to see her on her wedding-day, so that it was quite natural he should express a desire to meet Crabbe, even if the latter were scarcely in a condition to receive callers. M. Prefontaine accordingly took him up, but all they saw was an exceedingly stupid, fuddled, untidy wretch who was not yet conscious of the great mistake he had made in giving way to his deplorable appetite, and who did not realize the import of what was said to him. Lalonde was sufficiently curious to examine the flask and Crabbe's valise, but he retired satisfied that the guide had not been tampered with. Drunkenness and that alone had caused the present sad state of affairs.