The Money Master, Complete - Gilbert Parker
She saw the weakness of his case at once. "There was his duty to the
living," she said indignantly.
"Ah, forgive me--what a fool I am!" Jean Jacques said repentantly at
once. "There was his little girl, his beloved child, his Carmen Dolores,
so beautiful, with the voice like a flute, and--"
He drew nearer to her, his hand was outstretched to take hers; his eyes
were full of the passion of the moment; pity was drowning all caution,
all the Norman shrewdness in him, when the Antoine suddenly stopped
almost dead with a sudden jolt and shock, then plunged sideways, jerked,
and trembled.
"We've struck a sunk iceberg--the rest of the story to-morrow, Senorita,"
he cried, as they both sprang to their feet.
"The rest of the story to-morrow," she repeated, angry at the stroke of
fate which had so interrupted the course of her fortune. She said it with
a voice also charged with fear; for she was by nature a landfarer, not a
sea-farer, though on the rivers of Spain she had lived almost as much as
on land, and she was a good swimmer.
"The rest to-morrow," she repeated, controlling herself.
CHAPTER III
"TO-MORROW"
The rest came to-morrow. When the Antoine struck the sunken iceberg she
was not more than one hundred and twenty miles from the coast of Gaspe.
She had not struck it full on, or she would have crumpled up, but had
struck and glanced, mounting the berg, and sliding away with a small
gaping wound in her side, broken internally where she had been weakest.
Her condition was one of extreme danger, and the captain was by no means
sure that he could make the land. If a storm or a heavy sea came on, they
were doomed.
As it was, with all hands at the pumps the water gained on her, and she
moaned and creaked and ached her way into the night with no surety that
she would show a funnel to the light of another day. Passengers and crew
alike worked, and the few boats were got ready to lower away when the
worst should come to the worst. Below, with the crew, the little
moneymaster of St. Saviour's worked with an energy which had behind it
some generations of hardy qualities; and all the time he refused to be
downcast. There was something in his nature or in his philosophy after
all. He had not much of a voice, but it was lusty and full of good
feeling; and when cursing began, when a sailor even dared to curse his
baptism--the crime of crimes to a Catholic mind--Jean Jacques began to
sing a cheery song with which the habitants make vocal their labours or
their playtimes:
"A Saint-Malo, beau port de mer,
Trois gros navir's sont arrives,
Trois gros navir's sont arrives
Charges d'avoin', charges de ble.
Charges d'avoin', charges de ble:
Trois dam's s'en vont les marchander."
And so on through many verses, with a heartiness that was a good antidote
to melancholy, even though it was no specific for a shipwreck. It played
its part, however; and when Jean Jacques finished it, he plunged into
that other outburst of the habitant's gay spirits, 'Bal chez Boule':
"Bal chez Boule, bal chez Boule,
The vespers o'er, we'll away to that;
With our hearts so light, and our feet so gay,
We'll dance to the tune of 'The Cardinal's Hat'
The better the deed, the better the day
Bal chez Boule, bal chez Boule!"
And while Jean Jacques worked "like a little French pony," as they say in
Canada of every man with the courage to do hard things in him, he did not
stop to think that the scanty life-belts had all been taken, and that he
was a very poor swimmer indeed: for, as a child, he had been subject to
cramp, and so had made the Beau Cheval River less his friend than would
have been useful now.
He realized it, however, soon after daybreak, when, within a few hundred
yards of the shores of Gaspe, to which the good Basque captain had been
slowly driving the Antoine all night, there came the cry, "All hands on
deck!" and "Lower the boats!" for the Antoine's time had come, and within
a hand-reach of shore almost she found the end of her rickety life. Not
more than three-fourths of the passengers and crew were got into the
boats. Jean Jacques was not one of these; but he saw Carmen Dolores and
her father safely bestowed, though in different boats. To the girl's
appeal to him to come he gave a nod of assent, and said he would get in
at the last moment; but this he did not do, pushing into the boat instead
a crying lad of fifteen, who said he was afraid to die.
So it was that Jean Jacques took to the water side by side with the
Basque captain, when the Antoine groaned and shook, and then grew still,
and presently, with some dignity, dipped her nose into the shallow sea
and went down.
"The rest of the story to-morrow," Jean Jacques had said when the vessel
struck the iceberg the night before; and so it was.
The boat in which Carmen had been placed was swamped not far from shore,
but she managed to lay hold of a piece of drifting wreckage, and began to
fight steadily and easily landward. Presently she was aware, however, of
a man struggling hard some little distance away to the left of her, and
from the tousled hair shaking in the water she was sure that it was Jean
Jacques.
So it proved to be; and thus it was that, at his last gasp almost, when
he felt he could keep up no longer, the wooden seat to which Carmen clung
came to his hand, and a word of cheer from her drew his head up with what
was almost a laugh.
"To think of this!" he said presently when he was safe, with her swimming
beside him without support, for the wooden seat would not sustain the
weight of two. "To think that it is you who saves me!" he again declared
eloquently, as they made the shore in comparative ease, for she was a
fine swimmer.
"It is the rest of the story," he said with great cheerfulness and aplomb
as they stood on the shore in the morning sun, shoeless, coatless, but
safe: and she understood.
There was nothing else for him to do. The usual process of romance had
been reversed. He had not saved her life, she had saved his. The least
that he could do was to give her shelter at the Manor Cartier yonder at
St. Saviour's, her and, if need be, her father. Human gratitude must have
play. It was so strong in this case that it alone could have overcome the
Norman caution of Jean Jacques, and all his worldly wisdom (so much in
his own eyes). Added thereto was the thing which had been greatly stirred
in him at the instant the Antoine struck; and now he kept picturing
Carmen in the big living-room and the big bedroom of the house by the
mill, where was the comfortable four-poster which had come from the
mansion of the last Baron of Beaugard down by St. Laurent.
Three days after the shipwreck of the Antoine, and as soon as sufficient
finery could be got in Quebec, it was accomplished, the fate of Jean
Jacques. How proud he was to open his cheque-book before the young
Spanish maid, and write in cramped, characteristic hand a cheque for a
hundred dollars or so at a time! A moiety of this money was given to
Sebastian Dolores, who could scarcely believe his good fortune. A
situation was got for him by the help of a good abbe at Quebec, who was
touched by the tale of the wreck of the Antoine, and by the no less
wonderful tale of the refugees of Spain, who naturally belonged to the
true faith which "feared God and honoured the King." Sebastian Dolores
was grateful for the post offered him, though he would rather have gone
to St. Saviour's with his daughter, for he had lost the gift of work, and
he desired peace after war. In other words, he had that fatal trait of
those who strive to make the world better by talk and violence, the vice
of indolence.
But when Jean Jacques and his handsome bride started for St. Saviour's,
the new father-in-law did not despair of following soon. He would greatly
have enjoyed the festivities which, after all, did follow the home-coming
of Jean Jacques Barbille and his Spanische; for while they lacked
enthusiasm because Carmen was a foreigner, the romance of the story gave
the whole proceedings a spirit and interest which spread into adjoining
parishes: so that people came to mass from forty miles away to see the
pair who had been saved from the sea.
And when the Quebec newspapers found their way into the parish, with a
thrilling account of the last hours of the Antoine; and of Jean Jacques'
chivalrous act in refusing to enter a boat to save himself, though he was
such a bad swimmer and was in danger of cramp; and how he sang Bal chez
Boule while the men worked at the pumps; they permitted the apres noces
of M'sieu' and Madame Jean Jacques Barbille to be as brilliant as could
be, with the help of lively improvisation. Even speech-making occurred
again in an address of welcome some days later. This was followed by a
feast of Spanish cakes and meats made by the hands of Carmen Dolores,
"the lady saved from the sea"--as they called her; not knowing that she
had saved herself, and saved Jean Jacques as well. It was not quite to
Jean Jacques' credit that he did not set this error right, and tell the
world the whole exact truth.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Air of certainty and universal comprehension
Always calling to something, for something outside ourselves
Came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers
Grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter
Grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk
He admired, yet he wished to be admired
Inclined to resent his own insignificance
Lyrical in his enthusiasms
No man so simply sincere, or so extraordinarily prejudiced
Of those who hypnotize themselves, who glow with self-creation
Spurting out little geysers of other people's cheap wisdom
Untamed by the normal restraints of a happy married life
THE MONEY MASTER
By Gilbert Parker
EPOCH THE SECOND
IV. THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY
V. THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY
VI. JEAN JACQUES HAD HAD A GREAT DAY
VII. JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP
VIII. THE GATE IN THE WALL
IX. "MOI-JE SUIS PHILOSOPHE"
X. "QUIEN SABE"--WHO KNOWS!
XI. THE CLERK OF THE COURT KEEPS A PROMISE
XII. THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM
CHAPTER IV
THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY
It was hard to say which was the more important person in the parish, the
New Cure or M'sieu' Jean Jacques Barbille. When the Old Cure was alive
Jean Jacques was a lesser light, and he accepted his degree of
illumination with content. But when Pere Langon was gathered to his
fathers, and thousands had turned away from the graveyard, where he who
had baptised them, confirmed them, blessed them, comforted them, and
firmly led them was laid to rest, they did not turn at once to his
successor with confidence and affection. The new cure, M. Savry, was
young; the Old Cure had lived to be eighty-five, bearing wherever he went
a lamp of wisdom at which the people lighted their small souls. The New
Cure could command their obedience, but he could not command their love
and confidence until he had earned them.
So it was that, for a time, Jean Jacques took the place of the Old Cure
in the human side of the life of the district, though in a vastly lesser
degree. Up to the death of M. Langon, Jean Jacques had done very well in
life, as things go in out-of-the-way places of the world. His mill, which
ground good flour, brought him increasing pence; his saw-mill more than
paid its way; his farms made a small profit, in spite of a cousin who
worked one on halves, but who had a spendthrift wife; the ash-factory
which his own initiative had started made no money, but the loss was only
small; and he had even made profit out of his lime-kilns, although
Sebastian Dolores, Carmen's father, had at one time mismanaged them--but
of that anon. Jean Jacques himself managed the business of money-lending
and horse-dealing; and he also was agent for fire insurance and a dealer
in lightning rods.
In the thirteen years since he married he had been able to keep a good
many irons in the fire, and also keep them more or less hot. Many people
in his and neighbouring parishes were indebted to him, and it was worth
their while to stand well with him. If he insisted on debts being paid,
he was never exacting or cruel. If he lent money, he never demanded more
than eight per cent.; and he never pressed his debtors unduly. His
cheerfulness seldom deserted him, and he was notably kind to the poor.
Not seldom in the winter time a poor man, here and there in the parish,
would find dumped down outside his door in the early morning a half-cord
of wood or a bag of flour.
It could not be said that Jean Jacques did not enjoy his own generosity.
His vanity, however, did not come from an increasing admiration of his
own personal appearance, a weakness which often belongs to middle age;
but from the study of his so-called philosophy, which in time became an
obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent
summer months at St. Saviour's, sought to interest him in science and
history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science
marched over too jagged a road for his tender intellectual feet; the wild
places where it led dismayed him. History also meant numberless dates and
facts. Perhaps he could have managed the dates, for he was quick at
figures, but the facts were like bees in their hive,--he could scarcely
tell one from another by looking at them.
So it was that Jean Jacques kept turning his eyes, as he thought, to the
everlasting meaning of things, to "the laws of Life and the decrees of
Destiny." He was one of those who had found, as he thought, what he could
do, and was sensible enough to do it. Let the poor fellows, who gave
themselves to science, trouble their twisted minds with trigonometry and
the formula of some grotesque chemical combination; let the dull people
rub their noses in the ink of Greek and Latin, which was no use for
everyday consumption; let the heads of historians ache with the warring
facts of the lives of nations; it all made for sleep. But philosophy--ah,
there was a field where a man could always use knowledge got from books
or sorted out of his own experiences!
It happened, therefore, that Jean Jacques, who not too vaguely realized
that there was reputation to be got from being thought a philosopher,
always carried about with him his little compendium from the quay at
Quebec, which he had brought ashore inside his redflannel shirt, with the
antique silver watch, when the Antoine went down.
Thus also it was that when a lawyer in court at Vilray, four miles from
St. Saviour's, asked him one day, when he stepped into the witness-box,
what he was, meaning what was his occupation, his reply was, "Moi-je suis
M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosophe--(Me--I am M'sieu' Jean Jacques,
philosopher)."
A little later outside the court-house, the Judge who had tried the
case--M. Carcasson--said to the Clerk of the Court:
"A curious, interesting little man, that Monsieur Jean Jacques. What's
his history?"
"A character, a character, monsieur le juge," was the reply of M. Amand
Fille. "His family has been here since Frontenac's time. He is a figure
in the district, with a hand in everything. He does enough foolish things
to ruin any man, yet swims along--swims along. He has many kinds of
business--mills, stores, farms, lime-kilns, and all that, and keeps them
all going; and as if he hadn't enough to do, and wasn't risking enough,
he's now organizing a cheese-factory on the co-operative principle, as in
Upper Canada among the English."
"He has a touch of originality, that's sure," was the reply of the Judge.
The Clerk of the Court nodded and sighed. "Monseigneur Giron of Laval,
the greatest scholar in Quebec, he said to me once that M'sieu' Jean
Jacques missed being a genius by an inch. But, monsieur le juge, not to
have that inch is worse than to be an ignoramus."
Judge Carcasson nodded. "Ah, surely! Your Jean Jacques lacks a
balance-wheel. He has brains, but not enough. He has vision, but it is
not steady; he has argument, but it breaks down just where it should be
most cohesive. He interested me. I took note of every turn of his mind as
he gave evidence. He will go on for a time, pulling his strings, doing
this and doing that, and then, all at once, when he has got a train of
complications, his brain will not be big enough to see the way out. Tell
me, has he a balance-wheel in his home--a sensible wife, perhaps?"
The Clerk of the Court shook his head mournfully and seemed to hesitate.
Then he said, "Comme ci, comme ca--but no, I will speak the truth about
it. She is a Spaniard--the Spanische she is called by the neighbours. I
will tell you all about that, and you will wonder that he has carried on
as well as he has, with his vanity and his philosophy."
"He'll have need of his philosophy before he's done, or I don't know
human nature; he'll get a bad fall one of these days," responded the
Judge. "'Moi-je suis M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosophe'--that is what he
said. Bumptious little man, and yet--and yet there's something in him.
There's a sense of things which everyone doesn't have--a glimmer of life
beyond his own orbit, a catching at the biggest elements of being, a
hovering on the confines of deep understanding, as it were. Somehow I
feel almost sorry for him, though he annoyed me while he was in the
witness-box, in spite of myself. He was as the English say, so 'damn
sure.'"
"So damn sure always," agreed the Clerk of the Court, with a sense of
pleasure that his great man, this wonderful aged little judge, should
have shown himself so human as to use such a phrase.
"But, no doubt, the sureness has been a good servant in his business,"
returned the Judge. "Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit
often. But tell me about his wife--the Spanische. Tell me the how and
why, and everything. I'd like to trace our little money-man wise to his
source."
Again M. Fille was sensibly agitated. "She is handsome, and she has
great, good gifts when she likes to use them," he answered. "She can do
as much in an hour as most women can do in two; but then she will not
keep at it. Her life is but fits and starts. Yet she has a good head for
business, yes, very good. She can see through things. Still, there it
is--she will not hold fast from day to day."
"Yes, yes, but where did she come from? What was the field where she
grew?"
"To be sure, monsieur. It was like this," responded the other.
Thereupon M. Fille proceeded to tell the history, musical with legend, of
Jean Jacques' Grand Tour, of the wreck of the Antoine, of the marriage of
the "seigneur," the home-coming, and the life that followed, so far as
rumour, observation, and a mind with a gift for narrative, which was not
to be incomplete for lack of imagination, could make it. It was only when
he offered his own reflections on Carmen Dolores, now Carmen Barbille,
and on women generally, that Judge Carcasson pulled him up.
"So, so, I see. She has temperament and so on, but she's unsteady, and
regarded by her neighbours not quite as one that belongs. Bah, the
conceit of every race! They are all the same. The English are the
worst--as though the good God was English. But the child--so beautiful,
you say, and yet more like the father than the mother. He is not
handsome, that Jean Jacques, but I can understand that the little one
should be like him and yet beautiful too. I should like to see the
child."
Suddenly the Clerk of the Court stopped and touched the arm of his
distinguished friend and patron. "That is very easy, monsieur," he said
eagerly, "for there she is in the red wagon yonder, waiting for her
father. She adores him, and that makes trouble sometimes. Then the mother
gets fits, and makes things hard at the Manor Cartier. It is not all a
bed of roses for our Jean Jacques. But there it is. He is very busy all
the time. Something doing always, never still, except when you will find
him by the road-side, or in a tavern with all the people round him,
talking, jesting, and he himself going into a trance with his book of
philosophy. It is very strange that everlasting going, going, going, and
yet that love of his book. I sometimes think it is all pretence, and that
he is all vanity--or almost so. Heaven forgive me for my want of
charity!"
The little round judge cocked his head astutely. "But you say he is kind
to the poor, that he does not treat men hardly who are in debt to him,
and that he will take his coat off his back to give to a tramp--is it
so?"
"As so, as so, monsieur."
"Then he is not all vanity, and because of that he will feel the blow
when it comes--alas, so much he will feel it!"
"What blow, monsieur le juge?--but ah, look, monsieur!" He pointed
eagerly. "There she is, going to the red wagon--Madame Jean Jacques. Is
she not a figure of a woman? See the walk of her--is it not
distinguished? She is half a hand-breadth taller than Jean Jacques. And
her face, most sure it is a face to see. If Jean Jacques was not so busy
with his farms and his mills and his kilns and his usury, he would see
what a woman he has got. It is his good fortune that she has such sense
in business. When Jean Jacques listens to her, he goes right. She herself
did not want her father to manage the lime-kilns--the old Sebastian
Dolores. She was for him staying at Mirimachi, where he kept the books of
the lumber firm. But no, Jean Jacques said that he could make her happy
by having her father near her, and he would not believe she meant what
she said. He does not understand her; that is the trouble. He knows as
much of women or men as I know of--"
"Of the law--hein?" laughed the great man.
"Monsieur--ah, that is your little joke! I laugh, yes, but I laugh,"
responded the Clerk of the Court a little uncertainly. "Now once when she
told him that the lime-kilns--"
The Judge, who had retraced his steps down the street of the town--it was
little more than a large village, but because it had a court-house and a
marketplace it was called a town--that he might have a good look at
Madame Jean Jacques and her child before he passed them, suddenly said:
"How is it you know so much about it all, Maitre Fille--as to what she
says and of the inner secrets of the household? Ah, ha, my little
Lothario, I have caught you--a bachelor too, with time on his hands, and
the right side of seventy as well! The evidence you have given of a close
knowledge of the household of our Jean Jacques does not have its basis in
hearsay, but in acute personal observation. Tut-tut! Fie-fie! my little
gay Clerk of the Court. Fie! Fie!"
M. Fille was greatly disconcerted. He had never been a Lothario. In forty
years he had never had an episode with one of "the other sex," but it was
not because he was impervious to the softer emotions. An intolerable
shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women, and even
small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with
little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques. Yet even with Zoe, who
was so simple and companionable and the very soul of childish confidence,
he used to blush and falter till she made him talk. Then he became
composed, and his tongue was like a running stream, and on that stream
any craft could sail. On it he became at ease with madame the Spanische,
and he even went so far as to look her full in the eyes on more than one
occasion.
"Answer me--ah, you cannot answer!" teasingly added the Judge, who loved
his Clerk of the Court, and had great amusement out of his discomfiture.
"You are convicted. At an age when a man should be settling down, you are
gallivanting with the wife of a philosopher."
"Monsieur--monsieur le juge!" protested M. Fille with slowly heightening
colour. "I am innocent, yes, altogether. There is nothing, believe me. It
is the child, the little Zoe--but a maid of charm and kindness. She
brings me cakes and the toffy made by her own hands; and if I go to the
Manor Cartier, as I often do, it is to be polite and neighbourly. If
Madame says things to me, and if I see what I see, and hear what I hear,
it is no crime; it is no misdemeanour; it is within the law--the perfect
law."
Suddenly the Judge linked his arm within that of the other, for he also
was little, and he was fat and round and ruddy, and even smaller than M.
Fille, who was thin, angular and pale.
"Ah, my little Confucius," he said gently, "have you seen and heard me so
seldom that you do not know me yet, or what I really think? Of course it
is within the law--the perfect law--to visit at m'sieu' the philosopher's
house and talk at length also to m'sieu' the philosopher's wife; while to
make the position regular by friendship with the philosopher's child is a
wisdom which I can only ascribe to"--his voice was charged with humour
and malicious badinage "to an extended acquaintance with the devices of
human nature, as seen in those episodes of the courts with which you have
been long familiar."