The Seats of the Mighty, Complete. Gilbert Parker

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СКАЧАТЬ knew he was hinting at the barber’s resentment of the poor Mathilde’s fate. Something strange and devilish leapt into the man’s eyes, and he broke out bitterly,

      “A honey-bee got into a nest of wasps—and died.”

      I thought of the Scarlet Woman on the hill.

      Voban looked for a moment as if he might do some wild thing. His spirit, his devilry, pleased Doltaire, and he laughed. “Who would have thought our Voban had such wit? The trade of barber is double-edged. Razors should be in fashion at Versailles.”

      Then he sat down, while Voban made a pretty show of touching off my person. A few minutes passed so, in which the pealing of bells, the shouting of the people, the beating of drums, and the calling of bugles came to us clearly.

      A half hour afterwards, on our way to the Intendant’s palace, we heard the Benedictus chanted in the Church of the Recollets as we passed—hundreds kneeling outside, and responding to the chant sung within:

      “That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands of all that hate us.”

      At the corner of a building which we passed, a little away from the crowd, I saw a solitary cloaked figure. The words of the chant, following us, I could hear distinctly:

      “That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve Him without fear.”

      And then, from the shadowed corner came in a high, melancholy voice the words:

      “To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

      Looking closer, I saw it was Mathilde.

      Doltaire smiled as I turned and begged a moment’s time to speak to her.

      “To pray with the lost angel and sup with the Intendant, all in one night—a liberal taste, monsieur; but who shall stay the good Samaritan!”

      They stood a little distance away, and I went over to her and said, “Mademoiselle—Mathilde, do you not know me?”

      Her abstracted eye fired up, as there ran to her brain some little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her who I was.

      “There were two lovers in the world,” she said: “the Mother of God forgot them, and the devil came. I am the Scarlet Woman,” she went on; “I made this red robe from the curtains of Hell—”

      Poor soul! My own trouble seemed then as a speck among the stars to hers. I took her hand and held it, saying again, “Do you not know me? Think, Mathilde!”

      I was not sure that she had ever seen me, to know me, but I thought it possible; for, as a hostage, I had been much noticed in Quebec, and Voban had, no doubt, pointed me out to her. Light leapt from her black eye, and then she said, putting her finger on her lips, “Tell all the lovers to hide. I have seen a hundred Francois Bigots.”

      I looked at her, saying nothing—I knew not what to say. Presently her eye steadied to mine, and her intellect rallied. “You are a prisoner, too,” she said; “but they will not kill you: they will keep you till the ring of fire grows in your head, and then you will make your scarlet robe, and go out, but you will never find It—never. God hid first, and then It hides. … It hides, that which you lost—It hides, and you can not find It again. You go hunting, hunting, but you can not find It.”

      My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not know her lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor could but care for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do? It were useless to ask her to go to the Manor; she would not understand.

      Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight, illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane, for she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous finger, “I will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find her. I know the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I have—except the scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples grew. Go,”—she pushed me gently away—“go to your prison, and pray to God. But you can not kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil.” Then she thrust into my hands a little wooden cross, which she took from many others at her girdle. “If you wear that, the ring of fire will not grow,” she said. “I will go by the woodpath, and give her one, too. She shall live with me: I will spread the cedar branches and stir the fire. She shall be safe. Hush! Go, go softly, for their wicked eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!”

      She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning, stole softly away towards the St. Charles River.

      Doltaire’s mockery brought me back to myself.

      “So much for the beads of the addled; now for the bowls of sinful man,” said he.

III. THE WAGER AND THE SWORD

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      As I entered the Intendant’s palace with Doltaire I had a singular feeling of elation. My spirits rose unaccountably, and I felt as though it were a fete night, and the day’s duty over, the hour of play was come. I must needs have felt ashamed of it then, and now, were I not sure it was some unbidden operation of the senses. Maybe a merciful Spirit sees how, left alone, we should have stumbled and lost ourselves in our own gloom, and so gives us a new temper fitted to our needs. I remember that at the great door I turned back and smiled upon the ruined granary, and sniffed the air laden with the scent of burnt corn—the peoples bread; that I saw old men and women who could not be moved by news of victory, shaking with cold, even beside this vast furnace, and peevishly babbling of their hunger, and I did not say, “Poor souls!” that for a time the power to feel my own misfortunes seemed gone, and a hard, light indifference came on me.

      For it is true I came into the great dining-hall, and looked upon the long loaded table, with its hundred candles, its flagons and pitchers of wine, and on the faces of so many idle, careless gentlemen bid to a carouse, with a manner, I believe, as reckless and jaunty as their own. And I kept it up, though I saw it was not what they had looked for. I did not at once know who was there, but presently, at a distance from me, I saw the face of Juste Duvarney, the brother of my sweet Alixe, a man of but twenty or so, who had a name for wildness, for no badness that I ever heard of, and for a fiery temper. He was in the service of the Governor, an ensign. He had been little at home since I had come to Quebec, having been employed up to the past year in the service of the Governor of Montreal. We bowed, but he made no motion to come to me, and the Intendant engaged me almost at once in gossip of the town; suddenly, however, diverging upon some questions of public tactics and civic government. He much surprised me, for though I knew him brave and able, I had never thought of him save as the adroit politician and servant of the King, the tyrant and the libertine. I might have known by that very scene a few hours before that he had a wide, deep knowledge of human nature, and despised it; unlike Doltaire, who had a keener mind, was more refined even in wickedness, and, knowing the world, laughed at it more than he despised it, which was the sign of the greater mind. And indeed, in spite of all the causes I had to hate Doltaire, it is but just to say he had by nature all the great gifts—misused and disordered as they were. He was the product of his age; having no real moral sense, living life wantonly, making his own law of right or wrong. As a lad, I was taught to think the evil person carried evil in his face, repelling the healthy mind. But long ago I found that this was error. I had no reason to admire Doltaire, СКАЧАТЬ