The Money Master, Complete - Gilbert Parker
The world knew that the burning of the mill was a blow to Jean Jacques,
but it did not know how great and heavy the blow was. First one and then
another of his friends said he was insured, and that in another six
months the mill-wheel would be turning again. They said so to Jean
Jacques when he stood with his eyes fixed on the burning fabric, which
nothing could save; but he showed no desire to speak. He only nodded and
kept on staring at the fire with that curious underglow in his eyes. Some
chemistry of the soul had taken place in him in the hour when he drove to
the Manor Cartier from Vilray, and it produced a strange fire, which
merged into the reflection of the sky above the burning mill. Later, came
things which were strange and eventful in his life, but that under-glow
was for ever afterwards in his eyes. It was in singular contrast to the
snapping fire which had been theirs all the days of his life till
now--the snapping fire of action, will and design. It still was there
when they said to him suddenly that the wind had changed, and that the
flame and sparks were now blowing toward the saw-mill. Even when he gave
orders, and set to work to defend the saw-mill, arranging a line of men
with buckets on its roof, and so saving it, this look remained. It was
something spiritual and unmaterial, something, maybe, which had to do
with the philosophy he had preached, thought and practised over long
years. It did not disappear when at last, after midnight, everyone had
gone, and the smouldering ruins of his greatest asset lay mournful in the
wan light of the moon.
Kind and good friends like the Clerk of the Court and the New Cure had
seen him to his bedroom at midnight, leaving him there with a promise
that they would come on the morrow; and he had said goodnight evenly, and
had shut the door upon them with a sort of smile. But long after they had
gone, when Sebastian Dolores and Seraphe Corniche were asleep, he had got
up again and left the house, to gaze at the spot where the big white mill
with the red roof had been-the mill which had been there in the days of
the Baron of Beaugard, and to which time had only added size and
adornment. The gold-cock weathervane of the mill, so long the admiration
of people living and dead, and indeed the symbol of himself, as he had
been told, being so full of life and pride, courage and vigour-it lay
among the ruins, a blackened relic of the Barbilles.
He had said in M. Fille's office not many hours before, "I will fight it
all out alone," and here in the tragic quiet of the night he made his
resolve a reality. In appearance he was not now like the "Seigneur" who
sang to the sailors on the Antoine when she was fighting for the shore of
Gaspe; nevertheless there was that in him which would keep him much the
same man to the end.
Indeed, as he got into bed that fateful night he said aloud: "They shall
see that I am not beaten. If they give me time up there in Montreal I'll
keep the place till Zoe comes back--till Zoe comes home."
As he lay and tried to sleep, he kept saying over to himself, "Till Zoe
comes home."
He thought that if he could but have Zoe back, it all would not matter so
much. She would keep looking at him and saying, "There's the man that
never flinched when things went wrong; there's the man that was a friend
to everyone."
At last a thought came to him--the key to the situation as it seemed, the
one thing necessary to meet the financial situation. He would sell the
biggest farm he owned, which had been to him in its importance like the
flour-mill itself. He had had an offer for it that very day, and a bigger
offer still a week before. It was mortgaged to within eight thousand
dollars of what it could be sold for but, if he could gain time, that
eight thousand dollars would build the mill again. M. Mornay, the Big
Financier, would certainly see that this was his due--to get his chance
to pull things straight. Yes, he would certainly sell the Barbille farm
to-morrow. With this thought in his mind he went to sleep at last, and he
did not wake till the sun was high.
It was a sun of the most wonderful brightness and warmth. Yesterday it
would have made the Manor Cartier and all around it look like Arcady. But
as it shone upon the ruins of the mill, when Jean Jacques went out into
the working world again, it made so gaunt and hideous a picture that, in
spite of himself, a cry of misery came from his lips.
Through all the misfortunes which had come to him the outward semblance
of things had remained, and when he went in and out of the plantation of
the Manor Cartier, there was no physical change in the surroundings,
which betrayed the troubles and disasters fallen upon its overlord. There
it all was just as it had ever been, and seeming to deny that anything
had changed in the lives of those who made the place other than a dead or
deserted world. When Carmen went, when Zoe fled, when his cousin Auguste
Charron took his flight, when defeats at law abashed him, the house and
mills, and stores and offices, and goodly trees, and well-kept yards and
barns and cattle-sheds all looked the same. Thus it was that he had been
fortified. In one sense his miseries had seemed unreal, because all was
the same in the outward scene. It was as though it all said to him: "It
is a dream that those you love have vanished, that ill-fortune sits by
your fireside. One night you will go to bed thinking that wife and child
have gone, that your treasury is nearly empty; and in the morning you
will wake up and find your loved ones sitting in their accustomed places,
and your treasury will be full to overflowing as of old."
So it was while the picture of his home scene remained unbroken and
serene; but the hideous mass of last night's holocaust was now before his
eyes, with little streams of smoke rising from the cindered pile, and a
hundred things with which his eyes had been familiar lay distorted,
excoriated and useless. He realized with sudden completeness that a
terrible change bad come in his life, that a cyclone had ruined the face
of his created world.
This picture did more to open up Jean Jacques' eyes to his real position
in life than anything he had experienced, than any sorrow he had
suffered. He had been in torment in the past, but he had refused to see
that he was in Hades. Now it was as though he had been led through the
streets of Hell by some dark spirit, while in vain he looked round for
his old friends Kant and Hegel, Voltaire and Rousseau and Rochefoucauld,
Plato and Aristotle.
While gazing at the dismal scene, however, and unheeding the idlers who
poked about among the ruins, and watched him as one who was the centre of
a drama, he suddenly caught sight of the gold Cock of Beaugard, which had
stood on the top of the mill, in the very centre of the ruins.
Yes, there it was, the crested golden cock which had typified his own
life, as he went head high, body erect, spurs giving warning, and a
clarion in his throat ready to blare forth at any moment. There was the
golden Cock of Beaugard in the cinders, the ashes and the dust. His chin
dropped on his breast, and a cloud like a fog on the coast of Gaspe
settled round him. Yet even as his head drooped, something else
happened--one of those trivial things which yet may be the pivot of great
things. A cock crowed--almost in his very ear, it seemed. He lifted his
head quickly, and a superstitious look flashed into his face. His eyes
fastened on the burnished head of the Cock among the ruins. To his
excited imagination it was as though the ancient symbol of the Barbilles
had spoken to him in its own language of good cheer and defiance. Yes,
there it was, half covered by the ruins, but its head was erect in the
midst of fire and disaster. Brought low, it was still alert above the
wreckage. The child, the dreamer, the optimist, the egoist, and the man
alive in Jean Jacques sprang into vigour again. It was as though the Cock
of Beaugard had really summoned him to action, and the crowing had not
been that of a barnyard bantam not a hundred feet away from him. Jean
Jacques' head went up too.
"Me--I am what I always was, nothing can change me," he exclaimed
defiantly. "I will sell the Barbille farm and build the mill again."
So it was that by hook or by crook, and because the Big Financier had
more heart than he even acknowledged to his own wife, Jean Jacques did
sell the Barbille farm, and got in cash--in good hard cash-eight thousand
dollars after the mortgage was paid. M. Mornay was even willing to take
the inadequate indemnity of the insurance policy on the mill, and lose
the rest, in order that Jean Jacques should have the eight thousand
dollars to rebuild. This he did because Jean Jacques showed such amazing
courage after the burning of the mill, and spread himself out in a
greater activity than his career had yet shown. He shaved through this
financial crisis, in spite of the blow he had received by the loss of his
lawsuits, the flitting of his cousin, Auguste Charron, and the farm debts
of this same cousin. It all meant a series of manipulations made possible
by the apparent confidence reposed in him by M. Mornay.
On the day he sold his farm he was by no means out of danger of absolute
insolvency--he was in fact ruined; but he was not yet the victim of those
processes which would make him legally insolvent. The vultures were
hovering, but they had not yet swooped, and there was the Manor saw-mill
going night and day; for by the strangest good luck Jean Jacques received
an order for M. Mornay's new railway (Judge Carcasson was behind that)
which would keep his saw-mill working twenty-four hours in the day for
six months.
"I like his pluck, but still, ten to one, he loses," remarked M. Mornay
to Judge Carcasson. "He is an unlucky man, and I agree with Napoleon that
you oughtn't to be partner with an unlucky man."
"Yet you have had to do with Monsieur Jean Jacques," responded the aged
Judge.
M. Mornay nodded indulgently.
"Yes, without risk, up to the burning of the mill. Now I take my chances,
simply because I'm a fool too, in spite of all the wisdom I see in
history and in life's experiences. I ought to have closed him up, but
I've let him go on, you see."
"You will not regret it," remarked the Judge. "He really is worth it."
"But I think I will regret it financially. I think that this is the last
flare of the ambition and energy of your Jean Jacques. That often
happens--a man summons up all his reserves for one last effort. It's
partly pride, partly the undefeated thing in him, partly the gambling
spirit which seizes men when nothing is left but one great spectacular
success or else be blotted out. That's the case with your philosopher;
and I'm not sure that I won't lose twenty thousand dollars by him yet."
"You've lost more with less justification," retorted the Judge, who, in
his ninetieth year, was still as alive as his friend at sixty.
M. Mornay waved a hand in acknowledgment, and rolled his cigar from
corner to corner of his mouth. "Oh, I've lost a lot more in my time,
Judge, but with a squint in my eye! But I'm doing this with no
astigmatism. I've got the focus."
The aged Judge gave a conciliatory murmur-he had a fine persuasive voice.
"You would never be sorry for what you have done if you had known his
daughter--his Zoe. It's the thought of her that keeps him going. He wants
the place to be just as she left it when she comes back."
"Well, well, let's hope it will. I'm giving him a chance," replied M.
Mornay with his wineglass raised. "He's got eight thousand dollars in
cash to build his mill again; and I hope he'll keep a tight hand on it
till the mill is up."
Keep a tight hand on it?
That is what Jean Jacques meant to do; but if a man wants to keep a tight
hand on money he should not carry it about in his pocket in cold, hard
cash. It was a foolish whim of Jean Jacques that he must have the eight
thousand dollars in cash--in hundred-dollar bills--and not in the form of
a cheque; but there was something childlike in him. When, as he thought,
he had saved himself from complete ruin, he wanted to keep and gloat over
the trophy of victory, and his trophy was the eight thousand dollars got
from the Barbille farm. He would have to pay out two thousand dollars in
cash to the contractors for the rebuilding of the mill at once,--they
were more than usually cautious--but he would have six thousand left,
which he would put in the bank after he had let people see that he was
well fortified with cash.
The child in him liked the idea of pulling out of his pocket a few
thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. He had always carried a good
deal of money loose in his pocket, and now that his resources were so
limited he would still make a gallant show. After a week or two he would
deposit six thousand dollars in the bank; but he was so eager to begin
building the mill, that he paid over the stipulated two thousand dollars
to the contractors on the very day he received the eight thousand. A few
days later the remaining six thousand were housed in a cupboard with an
iron door in the wall of his office at the Manor Cartier.
"There, that will keep me in heart and promise," said Jean Jacques as he
turned the key in the lock.
CHAPTER XVIII
JEAN JACQUES HAS AN OFFER
The day after Jean Jacques had got a new lease of life and become his own
banker, he treated himself to one of those interludes of pleasure from
which he had emerged in the past like a hermit from his cave. He sat on
the hill above his lime-kilns, reading the little hand-book of philosophy
which had played so big a part in his life. Whatever else had disturbed
his mind and diverted him from his course, nothing had weaned him from
this obsession. He still interlarded all his conversation with quotations
from brilliant poseurs like Chateaubriand and Rochefoucauld, and from
missionaries of thought like Hume and Hegel.
His real joy, however, was in withdrawing for what might be called a
seance of meditation from the world's business. Some men make celebration
in wine, sport and adventure; but Jean Jacques made it in flooding his
mind with streams of human thought which often tried to run uphill, which
were frequently choked with weeds, but still were like the pool of Siloam
to his vain mind. They bathed that vain mind in the illusion that it
could see into the secret springs of experience.
So, on as bright a day as ever the New World offered, Jean Jacques sat
reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols,
wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. The sound of
it was good in his ears. He mouthed it as greedily and happily as though
he was not sitting on the edge of a volcano instead of the moss-grown
limestone on a hill above his own manor.
"The course of events in the life of a man, whatever their gravity or
levity, are only to be valued and measured by the value and measure of
his own soul. Thus, what in its own intrinsic origin and material should
in all outer reason be a tragedy, does not of itself shake the
foundations or make a fissure in the superstructure. Again--"
Thus his oracle, but Jean Jacques' voice suddenly died down, for, as he
sat there, the face of a woman made a vivid call of recognition. He
slowly awakened from his self-hypnotism, to hear a woman speaking to him;
to see two dark eyes looking at him from under heavy black brows with
bright, intent friendliness.
"They said at the Manor you had come this way, so I thought I'd not have
my drive for nothing, and here I am. I wanted to say something to you,
M'sieu' Jean Jacques."
It was the widow of Palass Poucette. She looked very fresh and friendly
indeed, and she was the very acme of neatness. If she was not handsome,
she certainly had a true and sweet comeliness of her own, due to the deep
rose-colour of her cheeks, the ivory whiteness round the lustrous brown
eyes, the regular shining teeth which showed so much when she smiled, and
the look half laughing, half sentimental which dominated all.
Before she had finished speaking Jean Jacques was on his feet with his
hat off. Somehow she seemed to be a part of that abstraction, that
intoxication, in which he had just been drowning his accumulated
anxieties. Not that Virginie Poucette was logical or philosophical, or a
child of thought, for she was wholly the opposite-practical, sensuous,
emotional, a child of nature and of Eve. But neither was Jean Jacques a
real child of thought, though he made unconscious pretence of it. He also
was a child of nature--and Adam. He thought he had the courage of his
convictions, but it was only the courage of his emotions. His philosophy
was but the bent or inclination of a mind with a capacity to feel things
rather than to think them. He had feeling, the first essential of the
philosopher, but there he stayed, an undeveloped chrysalis.
His look was abstracted still as he took the hand of the widow of Palass
Poucette; but he spoke cheerfully. "It is a pleasure, madame, to welcome
you among my friends," he said.
He made a little flourish with the book which had so long been his bosom
friend, and added: "But I hope you are in no trouble that you come to
me--so many come to me in their troubles," he continued with an air of
satisfaction.
"Come to you--why, you have enough troubles of your own!" she made
answer. "It's because you have your own troubles that I'm here."
"Why you are here," he remarked vaguely.
There was something very direct and childlike in Virginie Poucette. She
could not pretend; she wore her heart on her sleeve. She travelled a long
distance in a little while.
"I've got no trouble myself," she responded. "But, yes, I have," she
added. "I've got one trouble--it's yours. It's that you've been having
hard times--the flour-mill, your cousin Auguste Charron, the lawsuits,
and all the rest. They say at Vilray that you have all you can do to keep
out of the Bankruptcy Court, and that--"
Jean Jacques started, flushed, and seemed about to get angry; but she put
things right at once.
"People talk more than they know, but there's always some fire where
there's smoke," she hastened to explain. "Besides, your father-in-law
babbles more than is good for him or for you. I thought at first that M.
Dolores was a first-class kind of man, that he had had hard times too,
and I let him come and see me; but I found him out, and that was the end
of it, you may be sure. If you like him, I don't want to say anything
more, but I'm sure that he's no real friend to you-or to anybody. If that
man went to confession--but there, that's not what I've come for. I've
come to say to you that I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life as I
do for you. I cried all night after your beautiful mill was burned down.
You were coming to see me next day--you remember what you said in M.
Fille's office--but of course you couldn't. Of course, there was no
reason why you should come to see me really--I've 'only got two hundred
acres and the house. It's a good house, though--Palass saw to that--and
it's insured; but still I know you'd have come just the same if I'd had
only two acres. I know. There's hosts of people you've been good to here,
and they're sorry for you; and I'm sorrier than any, for I'm alone, and
you're alone, too, except for the old Dolores, and he's no good to either
of us--mark my words, no good to you! I'm sorry for you, M'sieu' Jean
Jacques, and I've come to say that I'm ready to lend you two thousand
dollars, if that's any help. I could make it more if I had time; but
sometimes money on the spot is worth a lot more than what's just crawling
to you--snailing along while you eat your heart out. Two thousand dollars
is two thousand dollars--I know what it's worth to me, though it mayn't
be much to you; but I didn't earn it. It belonged to a first-class man,
and he worked for it, and he died and left it to me. It's not come easy,
go easy with me. I like to feel I've got two thousand cash without having
to mortgage for it. But it belonged to a number-one man, a man of
brains--I've got no brains, only some sense--and I want another good man
to use it and make the world easier for himself."
It was a long speech, and she delivered it in little gasps of oratory
which were brightened by her wonderfully kind smile and the heart--not to
say sentiment--which showed in her face. The sentiment, however, did not
prejudice Jean Jacques against her, for he was a sentimentalist himself.
His feelings were very quick, and before she had spoken fifty words the
underglow of his eyes was flooded by something which might have been
mistaken for tears. It was, however, only the moisture of gratitude and
the soul's good feeling.
"Well there, well there," he said when she had finished, "I've never had
anything like this in my life before. It's the biggest thing in the art
of being a neighbour I've ever seen. You've only been in the parish three
years, and yet you've shown me a confidence immense, inspiring! It is as
the Greek philosopher said, 'To conceive the human mind aright is the
greatest gift from the gods.' And to you, who never read a line of
philosophy, without doubt, you have done the thing that is greatest. It
says, 'I teach neighbourliness and life's exchange.' Madame, your house
ought to be called Neighbourhood House. It is the epitome of the spirit,
it is the shrine of--"
He was working himself up to a point where he could forget all the things
that trouble humanity, in the inebriation of an idealistic soul which had
a casing of passion, but the passion of the mind and not of the body; for
Jean Jacques had not a sensual drift in his organism. If there had been a
sensual drift, probably Carmen would still have been the lady of his
manor, and he would still have been a magnate and not a potential
bankrupt; for in her way Carmen had been a kind of balance to his
judgment in the business of life, in spite of her own material and (at
the very last) sensual strain. It was a godsend to Jean Jacques to have
such an inspiration as Virginie Poucette had given him. He could not in
these days, somehow, get the fires of his soul lighted, as he was wont to
do in the old times, and he loved talking--how he loved talking of great
things! He was really going hard, galloping strong, when Virginie
interrupted him, first by an exclamation, then, as insistently he
repeated the words, "It is the epitome of the spirit, the shrine of--"
She put out a hand, interrupting him, and said: "Yes, yes, M'sieu' Jean
Jacques, that's as good as Moliere, I s'pose, or the Archbishop at
Quebec, but are you going to take it, the two thousand dollars? I made a
long speech, I know, but that was to tell you why I come with the
money"--she drew out a pocketbook--"with the order on my lawyer to hand
the cash over to you. As a woman I had to explain to you, there being
lots of ideas about what a woman should do and what she shouldn't do; but
there's nothing at all for you to explain, and Mere Langlois and a lot of
others would think I'm vain enough now without your compliments. I'm a
neighbour if you like, and I offer you a loan. Will you take it--that's
all?"
He held out his hand in silence and took the paper from her. Putting his
head a little on one side, he read it. At first he seemed hardly to get
the formal language clear in his mind; however, or maybe his mind was
still away in that abstraction into which he had whisked it when he began
his reply to her fine offer; but he read it out aloud, first quickly,
then very slowly, and he looked at the signature with a deeply meditative
air.
"Virginie Poucette--that's a good name," he remarked; "and also good for
two thousand dollars!" He paused to smile contentedly over his own joke.
"And good for a great deal more than that too," he added with a nod.
"Yes, ten times as much as that," she responded quickly, her eyes fixed
on his face. She scarcely knew herself what she was thinking when she
said it; but most people who read this history will think she was hinting
that her assets might be united with his, and so enable him to wipe out
his liabilities and do a good deal more besides. Yet, how could that be,
since Carmen Dolores was still his wife if she was alive; and also they
both were Catholics, and Catholics did not recognize divorce!
Truth is, Virginie Poucette's mind did not define her feelings at all
clearly, or express exactly what she wanted. Her actions said one thing
certainly; but if the question had been put to her, whether she was doing
this thing because of a wish to take the place of Carmen Dolores in Jean
Jacques' life she would have said no at once. She had not come to
that--yet. She was simply moved by a sentiment of pity for Jean Jacques,
and as she had no child, or husband, or sister, or brother, or father, or
mother, but only relatives who tried to impose upon her, she needed an
objective for the emotions of her nature, for the overflow of her unused
affection and her unsatisfied maternal spirit. Here, then, was the most
obvious opportunity--a man in trouble who had not deserved the bitter bad
luck which had come to him. Even old Mere Langlois in the market-place at
Vilray had admitted that, and had said the same later on in Virginie's
home.