The Money Master, Complete - Gilbert Parker
"Well, I must be getting on," he said in a low voice to the Young Doctor,
ignoring the question which had been asked.
"If you want work, there's work to be had here, as I said," responded the
Young Doctor. "You are a man of education--"
"How do you know that?" asked Jean Jacques.
"I hear you speak," answered the other, and then Jean Jacques drew
himself up and threw back his head. He had ever loved appreciation, not
to say flattery, and he had had very little of it lately.
"I was at Laval," he remarked with a flash of pride. "No degree, but a
year there, and travel abroad--the Grand Tour, and in good style, with
plenty to do it with. Oh, certainly, no thought for sous, hardly for
francs! It was gold louis abroad and silver dollars at home--that was the
standard."
"The dollars are much scarcer now, eh?" asked the Young Doctor
quizzically.
"I should think I had just enough to pay you," said the other, bridling
up suddenly; for it seemed to him the Young Doctor had become ironical
and mocking; and though he had been mocked much in his day, there were
times when it was not easy to endure it.
The truth is the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature,
and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant,
because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the
little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During
the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had been far
from silent, for he joked at his own suffering and kept the housekeeper
laughing at his whimsical remarks; while he won her heart by the
extraordinary cleanliness of his threadbare clothes, and the perfect
order of his scantily-furnished knapsack. It had the exactness of one who
was set upon a far course and would carry it out on scientific
calculation. He had been full of mocking quips and sallies at himself,
but from first to last he never talked. The things he said were nothing
more than surface sounds, as it were--the ejaculations of a mind, not its
language or its meanings.
"He's had some strange history, this queer little man," said the
housekeeper to the Young Doctor; "and I'd like to know what it is. Why,
we don't even know his name."
"So would I," rejoined the Young Doctor, "and I'll have a good try for
it."
He had had his try more than once, but it had not succeeded. Perhaps a
little torture would do it, he thought; and so he had made the rather
tactless remark about the scarcity of dollars. Also his look was
incredulous when Jean Jacques protested that he had enough to pay the
fee.
"When you searched me you forgot to look in the right place," continued
Jean Jacques; and he drew from the lining of the hat he held in his hand
a little bundle of ten-dollar bills. "Here--take your pay from them," he
said, and held out the roll of bills. "I suppose it won't be more than
four dollars a day; and there's enough, I think. I can't pay you for your
kindness to me, and I don't want to. I'd like to owe you that; and it's a
good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness. He remembers it when he
gets older. It helps him to forgive himself more or less for what he's
sorry for in life. I've enough in this bunch to pay for board and
professional attendance, or else the price has gone up since I had a
doctor before."
He laughed now, and the laugh was half-ironical, half-protesting. It
seemed to come from the well of a hidden past; and no past that is hidden
has ever been a happy past.
The Young Doctor took the bills, looked at them as though they were
curios, and then returned them with the remark that they were of a kind
and denomination of no use to him. There was a twinkle in his eye as he
said it. Then he added:
"I agree with you that it's a good thing for a man to lay up a little
credit of kindness here and there for his old age. Well, anything I did
for you was meant for kindness and nothing else. You weren't a bit of
trouble, and it was simply your good constitution and a warm room and a
few fly-blisters that pulled you through. It wasn't any skill of mine. Go
and thank my housekeeper if you like. She did it all."
"I did my best to thank her," answered Jean Jacques. "I said she reminded
me of Virginie Palass Poucette, and I could say nothing better than that,
except one thing; and I'm not saying that to anybody."
The Young Doctor had a thrill. Here was a very unusual man, with mystery
and tragedy, and yet something above both, in his eyes.
"Who was Virginie Palass Poucette?" he asked. Jean Jacques threw out a
hand as though to say, "Attend--here is a great thing," and he began,
"Virginie Poucette--ah, there . . . !"
Then he paused, for suddenly there spread out before him that past, now
so far away, in which he had lived--and died. Strange that when he had
mentioned Virginie's name to the housekeeper he had no such feeling as
possessed him now. It had been on the surface, and he had used her name
without any deep stir of the waters far down in his soul. But the Young
Doctor was fingering the doors of his inner life--all at once this
conviction came to him--and the past rushed upon him with all its
disarray and ignominy, its sorrow, joy, elation and loss. Not since he
had left the scene of his defeat, not since the farewell to his dead
Carmen, that sweet summer day when he had put the lovely, ruined being
away with her words, "Jean Jacques--ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques,"
ringing in his ears, had he ever told anyone his story. He had had a
feeling that, as Carmen had been restored to him without his crying out,
or vexing others with his sad history, so would Zoe also come back to
him. Patience and silence was his motto.
Yet how was it that here and now there came an overpowering feeling, that
he must tell this healer of sick bodies the story of an invalid soul?
This man with the piercing dark-blue eyes before him, who looked so
resolute, who had the air of one who could say,
"This is the way to go," because he knew and was sure; he was not to be
denied.
"Who was Virginie Poucette?" repeated the Young Doctor insistently, yet
ever so gently. "Was she such a prize among women? What did she do?"
A flood of feeling passed over Jean Jacques' face. He looked at his hat
and his knapsack lying in a chair, with a desire to seize them and fly
from the inquisitor; then a sense of fatalism came upon him. As though he
had received an order from within his soul, he said helplessly:
"Well, if it must be, it must."
Then he swept the knapsack and his hat from the chair to the floor, and
sat down.
"I will begin at the beginning," he said with his eyes fixed on those of
the Young Doctor, yet looking beyond him to far-off things. "I will start
from the time when I used to watch the gold Cock of Beaugard turning on
the mill, when I sat in the doorway of the Manor Cartier in my pinafore.
I don't know why I tell you, but maybe it was meant I should. I obey
conviction. While you are able to keep logic and conviction hand in hand
then everything is all right. I have found that out. Logic, philosophy
are the props of life, but still you must obey the impulse of the
soul--oh, absolutely! You must--"
He stopped short. "But it will seem strange to you," he added after a
moment, in which the Young Doctor gestured to him to proceed, "to hear me
talk like this--a wayfarer--a vagabond you may think. But in other days I
was in places--"
The Young Doctor interjected with abrupt friendliness that there was no
need to say he had been in high places. It would still be apparent, if he
were in rags.
"Then, there, I will speak freely," rejoined Jean Jacques, and he took
the cherry-brandy which the other offered him, and drank it off with
gusto.
"Ah, that--that," he said, "is like the cordials Mere Langlois used to
sell at Vilray. She and Virginie Poucette had a place together on the
market--none better than Mere Langlois except Virginie Poucette, and she
was like a drink of water in the desert. . . . Well, there, I will begin.
Now my father was--"
It was lucky there were no calls for the Young Doctor that particular
early morning, else the course of Jean Jacques' life might have been
greatly different from what it became. He was able to tell his story from
the very first to the last. Had it been interrupted or unfinished one
name might not have been mentioned. When Jean Jacques used it, the Young
Doctor sat up and leaned forward eagerly, while a light came into his
face-a light of surprise, of revelation and understanding.
When Jean Jacques came to that portion of his life when manifest tragedy
began--it began of course on the Antoine, but then it was not
manifest--when his Carmen left him after the terrible scene with George
Masson, he paused and said: "I don't know why I tell you this, for it is
not easy to tell; but you saved my life, and you have a right to know
what it is you have saved, no matter how hard it is to put it all before
you."
It was at this point that he mentioned Zoe's name--he had hitherto only
spoken of her as "my daughter"; and here it was the Young Doctor showed
startled interest, and repeated the name after Jean Jacques. "Zoe!
Zoe!--ah!" he said, and became silent again.
Jean Jacques had not noticed the Young Doctor's pregnant interruption, he
was so busy with his own memories of the past; and he brought the tale to
the day when he turned his face to the West to look for Zoe. Then he
paused.
"And then?" the Young Doctor asked. "There is more--there is the search
for Zoe ever since."
"What is there to say?" continued Jean Jacques. "I have searched till
now, and have not found."
"How have you lived?" asked the other.
"Keeping books in shops and factories, collecting accounts for
storekeepers, when they saw they could trust me, working at threshings
and harvests, teaching school here and there. Once I made fifty dollars
at a railway camp telling French Canadian tales and singing chansons
Canadiennes. I have been insurance agent, sold lightning-rods, and been
foreman of a gang building a mill--but I could not bear that. Every time
I looked up I could see the Cock of Beaugard where the roof should be.
And so on, so on, first one thing and then another till now--till I came
to Askatoon and fell down by the drug-store, and you played the good
Samaritan. So it goes, and I step on from here again, looking--looking."
"Wait till spring," said the Young Doctor. "What is the good of going on
now! You can only tramp to the next town, and--"
"And the next," interposed Jean Jacques. "But so it is my orders." He put
his hand on his heart, and gathered up his hat and knapsack.
"But you haven't searched here at Askatoon."
"Ah? . . . Ah-well, surely that is so," answered Jean Jacques wistfully.
"I had forgotten that. Perhaps you can tell me, you who know all. Have
you any news about my Zoe for me? Do you know--was she ever here? Madame
Gerard Fynes would be her name. My name is Jean Jacques Barbille."
"Madame Zoe was here, but she has gone," quietly answered the Young
Doctor.
Jean Jacques dropped the hat and the knapsack. His eyes had a glad, yet
staring and frightened look, for the Young Doctor's face was not the
bearer of good tidings.
"Zoe--my Zoe! You are sure? . . . When was she here?" he added huskily.
"A month ago."
"When did she go?" Jean Jacques' voice was almost a whisper.
"A month ago."
"Where did she go?" asked Jean Jacques, holding himself steady, for he
had a strange dreadful premonition.
"Out of all care at last," answered the Young Doctor, and took a step
towards the little man, who staggered, then recovered himself.
"She--my Zoe is dead! How?" questioned Jean Jacques in a ghostly sort of
voice, but there was a steadiness and control unlike what he had shown in
other tragic moments.
"It was a blizzard. She was bringing her husband's body in a sleigh to
the railway here. He had died of consumption. She and the driver of the
sleigh went down in the blizzard. Her body covered the child and saved
it. The driver was lost also."
"Her child--Zoe's child?" quavered Jean Jacques. "A little girl--Zoe. The
name was on her clothes. There were letters. One to her father--to you.
Your name is Jean Jacques Barbille, is it not? I have that letter to you.
We buried her and her husband in the graveyard yonder." He pointed.
"Everybody was there--even when they knew it was to be a Catholic
funeral."
"Ah! she was buried a Catholic?" Jean Jacques' voice was not quite so
blurred now.
"Yes. Her husband had become Catholic too. A priest who had met them in
the Peace River Country was here at the time."
At that, with a moan, Jean Jacques collapsed. He shed no tears, but he
sat with his hands between his knees, whispering his child's name.
The Young Doctor laid a hand on his shoulder gently, but presently went
out, shutting the door after him. As he left the room, however, he turned
and said, "Courage, Monsieur Jean Jacques! Courage!"
When the Young Doctor came back a half-hour later he had in his hand the
letters found in Zoe's pocket. "Monsieur Jean Jacques," he said gently to
the bowed figure still sitting as he left him.
Jean Jacques got up slowly and looked at him as though scarce
understanding where he was.
"The child--the child--where is my Zoe's child? Where is Zoe's Zoe?" he
asked in agitation. His whole body seemed to palpitate. His eyes were all
red fire.
CHAPTER XXV
WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
The Young Doctor did not answer Jean Jacques at once. As he looked at
this wayworn fugitive he knew that another, and perhaps the final crisis
of his life, was come to Jean Jacques Barbille, and the human pity in him
shrank from the possible end to it all. It was an old-world figure this,
with the face of a peasant troubadour and the carriage of an
aboriginal--or an aristocrat. Indeed, the ruin, the lonely wandering
which had been Jean Jacques' portion, had given him that dignity which
often comes to those who defy destiny and the blows of angry fate. Once
there had been in his carriage something jaunty. This was merely life and
energy and a little vain confidence; now there was the look of courage
which awaits the worst the world can do. The life which, according to the
world's logic, should have made Jean Jacques a miserable figure, an
ill-nourished vagabond, had given him a physical grace never before
possessed by him. The face, however, showed the ravages which loss and
sorrow had made. It was lined and shadowed with dark reflection, yet the
forehead had a strange smoothness and serenity little in accord with the
rest of the countenance. It was like the snow-summit of a mountain below
which are the ragged escarpments of trees and rocks, making a look of
storm and warfare.
"Where is she--the child of my Zoe?" Jean Jacques repeated with an almost
angry emphasis; as though the Young Doctor were hiding her from him.
"She is with the wife of Nolan Doyle, my partner in horse-breeding, not
very far from here. Norah Doyle was married five years, and she had no
child. This was a grief to her, even more than to Nolan, who, like her,
came of a stock that was prolific. It was Nolan who found your daughter
on the prairie--the driver dead, but she just alive when found. To give
her ease of mind, Nolan said he would make the child his own. When he
said that, she smiled and tried to speak, but it was too late, and she
was gone."
In sudden agony Jean Jacques threw up his hands. "So young and so soon to
be gone!" he exclaimed. "But a child she was and had scarce tasted the
world. The mercy of God--what is it!"
"You can't take time as the measure of life," rejoined the Young Doctor
with a compassionate gesture. "Perhaps she had her share of happiness--as
much as most of us get, maybe, in a longer course."
"Share! She was worth a hundred years of happiness!" bitterly retorted
Jean Jacques.
"Perhaps she knew her child would have it?" gently remarked the Young
Doctor.
"Ah, that--that! . . . Do you think that possible, m'sieu'? Tell me, do
you think that was in her mind--to have loved, and been a mother, and
given her life for the child, and then the bosom of God. Answer that to
me, m'sieu'?"
There was intense, poignant inquiry in Jean Jacques' face, and a light
seemed to play over it. The Young Doctor heeded the look and all that was
in the face. It was his mission to heal, and he knew that to heal the
mind was often more necessary than to heal the body. Here he would try to
heal the mind, if only in a little.
"That might well have been in her thought," he answered. "I saw her face.
It had a wonderful look of peace, and a smile that would reconcile anyone
she loved to her going. I thought of that when I looked at her. I recall
it now. It was the smile of understanding."
He had said the only thing which could have comforted Jean Jacques at
that moment. Perhaps it was meant to be that Zoe's child should represent
to him all that he had lost--home, fortune, place, Carmen and Zoe.
Perhaps she would be home again for him and all that home should mean--be
the promise of a day when home would again include that fled from Carmen,
and himself, and Carmen's child. Maybe it was sentiment in him, maybe it
was sentimentality--and maybe it was not.
"Come, m'sieu'," Jean Jacques said impatiently: "let us go to the house
of that M'sieu' Doyle. But first, mark this: I have in the West here some
land--three hundred and twenty acres. It may yet be to me a home, where I
shall begin once more with my Zoe's child--with my Zoe of Zoe--the
home-life I lost down by the Beau Cheval. . . . Let us go at once."
"Yes, at once," answered the Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard, for
he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques with
his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a waif of
the prairie had made home what home should be for herself and Nolan
Doyle.
"Read these letters first," he said, and he put the letters found on Zoe
in Jean Jacques' eager hands.
A half-hour later, at the horse-breeding ranch, the Young Doctor
introduced Jean Jacques to Norah Doyle, and instantly left the house. He
had no wish to hear the interview which must take place between the two.
Nolan Doyle was not at home, but in the room where they were shown to
Norah was a cradle. Norah was rocking it with one foot while, standing by
the table, she busied herself with sewing.
The introduction was of the briefest. "Monsieur Barbille wishes a word
with you, Mrs. Doyle," said the Young Doctor. "It's a matter that doesn't
need me. Monsieur has been in my care, as you know. . . . Well, there, I
hope Nolan is all right. Tell him I'd like to see him to-morrow about the
bay stallion and the roans. I've had an offer for them.
Good-bye--good-bye, Mrs. Doyle"--he was at the door--"I hope you and
Monsieur Barbille will decide what's best for the child without
difficulty."
The door opened quickly and shut again, and Jean Jacques was alone with
the woman and the child. "What's best for the child!"
That was what the Young Doctor had said. Norah stopped rocking the cradle
and stared at the closed door. What had this man before her, this tramp
habitant of whom she had heard, of course, to do with little Zoe in the
cradle--her little Zoe who had come just when she was most needed; who
had brought her man and herself close together again after an
estrangement which neither had seemed able to prevent.
"What's best for the child!" How did the child in the cradle concern this
man? Then suddenly his name almost shrieked in her brain. Barbille--that
was the name on the letter found on the body of the woman who died and
left Zoe behind--M. Jean Jacques Barbille.
Yes, that was the name. What was going to happen? Did the man intend to
try and take Zoe from her?
"What is your name--all of it?" she asked sharply. She had a very fine
set of teeth, as Jean Jacques saw mechanically; and subconsciously he
said to himself that they seemed cruel, they were so white and
regular--and cruel. The cruelty was evident to him as she bit in two the
thread for the waistcoat she was mending, and then plied her needle
again. Also the needle in her fingers might have been intended to sew up
his shroud, so angry did it appear at the moment. But her teeth had
something almost savage about them. If he had seen them when she was
smiling, he would have thought them merely beautiful and rare, atoning
for her plain face and flat breast--not so flat as it had been; for since
the child had come into her life, her figure, strangely enough, had
rounded out, and lines never before seen in her contour appeared.
He braced himself for the contest he knew was at hand, and replied to
her. "My name is Jean Jacques Barbille. I was of the Manor Cartier, in
St. Saviour's parish, Quebec. The mother of the child Zoe, there, was
born at the Manor Cartier. I was her father. I am the grandfather of this
Zoe." He motioned towards the cradle.
Then, with an impulse he could not check and did not seek to check--why
should he? was not the child his own by every right?--he went to the
cradle and looked down at the tiny face on its white pillow. There could
be no mistake about it; here was the face of his lost Zoe, with
something, too, of Carmen, and also the forehead of the Barbilles. As
though the child knew, it opened its eyes wide-big, brown eyes like those
of Carmen Dolores.
"Ah, the beautiful, beloved thing!" he exclaimed in a low-voice, ere
Norah stepped between and almost pushed him back. An outstretched arm in
front of her prevented him from stooping to kiss the child. "Stand back.
The child must not be waked," she said. "It must sleep another hour. It
has its milk at twelve o'clock. Stand aside. I won't have my child
disturbed."
"Have my child disturbed"--that was what she had said, and Jean Jacques
realized what he had to overbear. Here was the thing which must be fought
out at once.
"The child is not yours, but mine," he declared. "Here is proof--the
letter found on my Zoe when she died--addressed to me. The doctor knew.
There is no mistake."
He held out the letter for her to see. "As you can read here, my daughter
was on her way back to the Manor Cartier, to her old home at St.
Saviour's. She was on her way back when she died. If she had lived I
should have had them both; but one is left, according to the will of God.
And so I will take her--this flower of the prairie--and begin life
again."
The face Norah turned on him had that look which is in the face of an
animal, when its young is being forced from it--fierce, hungering,
furtive, vicious.
"The child is mine," she exclaimed--"mine and no other's. The prairie
gave it to me. It came to me out of the storm. 'Tis mine-mine only. I was
barren and wantin', and my man was slippin' from me, because there was
only two of us in our home. I was older than him, and yonder was a girl
with hair like a sheaf of wheat in the sun, and she kept lookin' at him,
and he kept goin' to her. 'Twas a man she wanted, 'twas a child he
wanted, and there they were wantin', and me atin' my heart out with
passion and pride and shame and sorrow. There was he wantin' a child, and
the girl wantin' a man, and I only wantin' what God should grant all
women that give themselves to a man's arms after the priest has blessed
them. And whin all was at the worst, and it looked as if he was away with
her--the girl yonder--then two things happened. A man--he was me own
brother and a millionaire if I do say it--he took her and married her;
and then, too, Heaven's will sent this child's mother to her last end and
the child itself to my Nolan's arms. To my husband's arms first it came,
you understand; and he give the child to me, as it should be, and said
he, 'We'll make believe it is our own.' But I said to him, 'There's no
make-believe. 'Tis mine. 'Tis mine. It came to me out of the storm from
the hand of God.' And so it was and is; and all's well here in the home,
praise be to God. And listen to me: you'll not come here to take the
child away from me. It can't be done. I'll not have it. Yes, you can let
that sink down into you--I'll not have it."
During her passionate and defiant appeal Jean Jacques was restless with
the old unrest of years ago, and his face twitched with emotion; but
before she had finished he had himself in some sort of control.
"You--madame, you are only thinking of yourself in this. You are only
thinking what you want, what you and your man need. But it's not to be
looked at that way only, and--"
"Well, then it isn't to be looked at that way only," she interrupted. "As
you say, it isn't Nolan and me alone to be considered. There's--"
"There's me," he interrupted sharply. "The child is bone of my bone. It
is bone of all the Barbilles back to the time of Louis XI."--he had said
that long ago to Zoe first, and it was now becoming a fact in his mind.
"It is linked up in the chain of the history of the Barbilles. It is one
with the generations of noblesse and honour and virtue. It is--"
"It's one with Abel the son of Adam, if it comes to that, and so am I,"
Norah bitingly interjected, while her eyes flashed fire, and she rocked
the cradle more swiftly than was good for the child's sleep.