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_Title:_ Valley of the Stars
_Date of first publication:_ 1938
_Author:_ Louis Arthur Cunningham (1900-1954)
_Date first posted:_ June 17, 2026
_Date last updated:_ June 17, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20260638

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                          [Cover Illustration]

                             _Other Books_
                          _By the Same Author_

                         MOON OVER ACADIE
                         FOG OVER FUNDY
                         TIDES OF THE TANTRAMAR




                             VALLEY OF THE
                                 STARS

                        LOUIS ARTHUR CUNNINGHAM




                          THE PENN PUBLISHING
                         COMPANY • PHILADELPHIA




             COPYRIGHT 1938 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY

                                  NOTE

                     All rights reserved, including
                    the right to reproduce this book
                      or parts thereof in any form

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                CONTENTS

               I. A POET SANG TO ME
              II. THE WINGED GOD
             III. SIMONNE PASSES
              IV. THE GOVERNOR’S GARDEN
               V. “YOU ARE NOT TO CRY”
              VI. VAL MORIN
             VII. DEFIANCE
            VIII. GOD NO LONGER
              IX. THE PIGEON FLIES HOME
               X. WINGS OVER THE VALLEY

                          Valley of the Stars




                               Chapter I
                           A POET SANG TO ME


They lay in the deep grass and the ferns and the bracken high up on the
Beaumont, looking down on the valley, down on the world. Simonne’s chin
was cupped in her hands; Pierre sat, cross-legged, the little
red-covered notebook he always carried, open on his knee, his pencil
poised above it, his brow furrowed. It was so hard to look at Simonne
and then put words on paper. There were no words for what he felt.
Angrily he tore out the sheet he had scribbled upon, crumpled it into a
ball and flung it away. The vagrant wind seized it and rolled it over
the grass.

“Surrender!” She slanted grey-green eyes at him, her full mouth curving.
“I don’t blame you. It’s Spring in Acadie, Pierrot—and would you seek
to put that in words?” She waved her hand at the Valley of Memramcook
where the orchards climbed the slopes in clouds of snowy blossom, where
the sea-wind riffled the high marsh grass and the river wound in
gleaming beauty between the dikes.

“I could do something with that, Simonne; it is you who show me how
small are my talents. I look at you and I want to write an epic.”

“No girl wants an epic, Pierre. I should fall asleep before you had
finished reciting the first canto.”

“I love you, Simonne.”

She looked at him slowly, at his brown face, his black eyes that seemed
to glow, his black hair waved by the wind. Tall Pierre. Strong, slender,
bold Pierre.

“That is epic enough for me,” she said, plucking a blade of grass and
twisting it around her fingers.

“But you do not love me!”

“I dare not. See—” She pointed with the spear-head of grass to the red
house far below them, an old and stately house. “The roof looks good
from here, _mon ami_, but if you were close to it you would know that it
needs shingles; and from here you cannot see how scarred and faded the
paint is, how the sills are sagging, how the gardens are neglected and
the outbuildings ready to fall down and destroy the few poor horses,
cows and pigs that remain to the House of Caron, of which I, Simonne, am
the last frail hope.”

“Why should you take it all on your shoulders? Just because your family
left you a heritage of fame—”

“Why must I remain silent when the village poet and schoolmaster recites
me an epic; turn from him and think most earnestly of worldly things? I
do not know, Pierre. It would be easy, oh, so easy, just to close my
eyes and feel the sunlight on my eyelids and the scent of the
apple-blossoms in my soul—just to swim on a sea of light and warmth and
fragrance—and listen to your verses. But I cannot.” She shook back
impatiently the curling chestnut hair that the wind drove down upon her
brow.

“But what will you do? You are finished at the convent in a few weeks’
time, your house and your farm are only hopeless weights on such little
shoulders; there is nothing here for you.”

“You forget Edmond.” There was forced assurance in her voice. “My
brother, you know, is a great man in France, a great engineer and a
great aviator.”

“But you have not heard from him in months. You do not know—”

“I know he would not fail me.” There was pride—the pride of _grande
dame_, the great lady, in her tone, in the lift of her chin, pride that
would never let her admit the fears that had been born of her brother’s
long silence. Up to this quarter he had paid her way at the Convent of
Ste.-Ursule and sent enough beside to maintain the Caron place at least
after a fashion. Then had come silence, profound and mysterious.

“But if he should. If you are left alone to face the world—”

“Enough, Pierre.” She stood up straight and tall. He too stood up,
facing her, looking down on her, the deep chestnut of her hair, in which
glowed reddish lights, the sweep of her lashes, long and lovely, the
contours of her slender body sculptured by the winds that crossed the
marshland. Bravely she looked at him. “Yes, it may be that I shall be
left alone to make my way. I shall make out as best I know how. Always,
Pierre, I shall have the consolation of knowing that ‘when I was fair
and young, a poet sang to me,’ made poems to me—epic poems in three or
four words.”

“Then you liked my epic?” His arms went out to her, sought to draw her
to him, and for a moment it seemed that she would come to him. She
loosed herself lithely, easily.

“No, Pierre. I want you to have nothing to regret and I do not want to
have too much to remember.”

“I could have no regrets, Simonne. And you—have no remembrances unless
happy ones. I have nothing to offer you now.” He smiled wanly. “A
village-schoolmaster’s prestige and his salary, a cottage on the fringe
of the marsh and a poem or two. Someday I will have more.” His dark eyes
held a prophetic look. “Someday I will have fame, money—” He shook his
head and his eyes looked sad. “And I will want to give it all to have
back this hour, this hour of scent and blossom and green hill and blue
sky and the wind in your hair, on a hilltop in Acadie. And I can never
have it back.”

“Maybe then it will not mean so much to you.”

“Always, Simonne,” he said earnestly, softly. “Always.”

They walked slowly down the Beaumont, down the winding road to
Memramcook Village, and the daisy heads and buttercups were thick along
their way and in the hedges the small birds darted and sang. From the
lowland meadows came the tinkle of the bronze bells on Holstein and
Jersey and the slow sheep on the hillsides looked at them with quiet
interest as they passed. It was sunset time and across the great valley,
the high hills grew blacker and blacker as the sky’s gold deepened into
crimson and grew darker, as the great torch of the sun dropped below the
world. There the steeple of St. Thomas Church pointed its sooty spire
towards heaven and there the white cluster of the Convent of Ste.-Ursule
had windows all of fire as the last light shone upon them.

“You’ll hate to leave the convent, Simonne.”

“In a way, yes. I’ve had peace there—so much peace. But I often wonder
if we are really made for peace. If it doesn’t make us more helpless.
Birds would soon forget how to fly if there were no cats, if there were
lots of food always at hand.”

“You didn’t learn that in the philosophy class of Sœur Brigide.”

She laughed. “But no! There one learns mostly of heaven. She could draw
a map of it, that good sister.”

“I prefer Memramcook,” said Pierre, gazing over the miles of hill and
marsh and the river in the soft, lingering light. “Could heaven be
better?”

She was spared an answer. Young Noë Brideau, the station-agent’s son,
came running up the hill, brandishing a yellow envelope—the second
telegram that had come to Memramcook in his twelve-year-old memory. “For
you, Ma’m’selle Caron! It is just now arrived, and all the way from
France!”

“Thank you, Noë.” She took the telegram with steady hand, but her eyes,
meeting Pierre Gay’s, asked for strength, for courage. She slipped a
brown finger under the flap and slit the envelope. Her face did not
change expression as she read, but she kept staring at the blue lines on
the yellow sheet long, long after she must have learned their import.

Finally, she folded the paper, while Pierre and young Noë watched her
uneasily. “It is well, Noë,” she said quietly. “Here is something for
you.”

The little boy saluted and scampered away. Pierre questioned her with
his eyes, wisely, pityingly. She said, “It is Edmond. He did not fail
me. I knew he would not. But he is dead.”

“Simonne!” He caught her hand in both his. It was cold, her hand. He
felt that all her body was cold and the chill was going into her spirit.
He longed to take her in his arms, to give her warmth, comfort, peace,
but he knew that now, even in this moment of agony, she was farther away
from him than ever before. Her sorrow was her own. No one could ease it,
no one lessen its bitterness. Only tears would help. “Can’t you cry,
Simonne?” The strangeness of her eyes, the shadow over her face that was
the shadow of Death’s black wings, frightened him. “It will help you to
cry.”

“I cry—in here.” She touched her breast, small and round under the blue
convent dress.

“That is not good. Tears should be out.”

“He died cruelly, Pierre. His aeroplane fell, caught fire. It must have
been as if he was cremated. Ashes—and he was big and strong. And if
ashes, they should have been scattered on this wind in his own land that
he loved. They should have been scattered from the top of the Beaumont
where you and I sat among the ferns. He used to love it up
there—Edmond. It was he who took me there first, when I had to be led
by the hand. And he said, ‘From here, Simonne, O, ma Simonne, you can
see as much of the world as ever you’ll need to see and more of beauty
than from any other place.’ But he soon forgot that. He wanted to climb
higher than the Beaumont and look on wider scenes than this. Now I can
cry, Pierre.”

Her cheek lay against his lapel and his chin touched the softness of her
hair. His arm light about her shoulder felt the long, racking sobs that
shook her, that came from the deepest places of her being. Her hair was
fragrant in his nostrils; fragrant as meadow-sweet, as apple-blossoms in
the dew or green ferns on a brook’s brim, was her youth, delicate,
unspoiled, that made him think of a young flower opening, filled with
wonder, epitomizing the great, the beautiful force of the life-stream,
all in one little bud, all in one little body.

“There now, I am better, Pierre. I will go home now. I must hurry for I
have to be back at the convent for Benediction at seven.”

“Yes, it will be good to go there. You will find solace there—more than
I can give you, though, God knows, little Simonne, I’d give my life to
keep you from feeling pain.”

“You are good to me, Pierrot. Sweet to me. And I shall not forget.”

They came to the sagging gateposts of the Caron place—gateposts made of
cobbles set in mortar. Once straight and impressive, they leaned at
crazy angles now and the wrought-iron gates that hung from them were
rusty and broken. Faded and weathered, too, were the walls of the old
house glimpsed afar off up the driveway among the tall spruce and cedars
and the poplars in their new pale green frocks.

“When may I see you again, Simonne?” He hated to lose her, hated to
think of her alone for even a few minutes in that ancient barracks of a
house. “Let me go as far as Ste.-Ursule with you?”

“Please, no, _mon ami_. I have just some books to get, some few things.
Then I will take the train to Pont Lefebvre and from there ride across
to St.-Joseph with Isaie, who carries the mail. And you may not see me
for quite some time. I have my examinations to write and my valedictory
to prepare and, oh, so many things.” She tried to speak brightly of all
these things that, an hour ago, had seemed so important, so
worthwhile—her graduation, the day she had waited for so long, the hall
crowded with parents and friends, the bishops in their purple, the
dignitaries of the province, in morning-coats and dove-grey Ascot ties;
the speeches, the music. But how could she go through with it now? What
would it mean to her, so lonely, so young, with the future a great and
frightening question-mark? Edmond had been her tower of strength,
Edmond, who had always called her “Little Simonne,” always written to
her as if she had not grown a day older since her twelfth birthday, six
years ago, on which he had gone away.

“_Au revoir_, Pierre,” she said quickly, and as quickly kissed his
cheek, and ran up the weed-tangled drive, her hair flying, her full
skirts blowing wildly—a lovely, lost little figure that made his heart
throb achingly and made him hate the poor life that was his, that
rendered him so helpless to do anything at all for her, that made even
his speaking of love seem an act of treachery. How can you think of
love, poor schoolmaster, let alone venture to tell her you love her?
Why, you have only milk and bread and a bit of cheese for supper—and
would you ask Simonne to share such fare! You need a hair-cut these last
few weeks and it is most fortunate that you have the reputation of being
something of a poet, otherwise one would snicker at your hair over your
coat-collar. Simonne is for some man who has wealth and position, who
can give her things worthy of her beauty. Bah, you could give her stale
brioches and ballads—poor things for one so lovely.

And thus sadly thinking young Pierre strode angrily, dourly home to the
little cottage on the edge of the great marsh, flung himself into his
rickety armchair, lit his pipe and stared frowningly, unseeingly at the
pale little stars that looked frightened in at his open door, and all
about him rose the chorus of the birds and then the piping oratorio of
the marsh-dwellers, the myriad frogs in their green-scummed ponds, in
their ditches and sedgy shallows. And the wind sighed among the
pine-trees and firs with gentle, wistful whisperings and the gull’s
wing-beat sounded overhead and the owl hooted distantly from the little
churchyard up the hill. But all these things, that other nights he
loved, he heeded not at all tonight. He thought only of her, of the
childish sweetness of her mouth, the beauty of her that made him catch
his breath and filled him with dreams so beautiful that they were near
to madness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

No one lived at the Caron Place. An ancient dame, Artemise Gautreau,
came from the village once a week to keep the house in order; her still
more ancient husband, Alphonse, looked after the stock and did a little
gardening. Artemise was there, in the kitchen, when Simonne returned.
Her dim eyes could not see the havoc, the ravages of grief, in that
young face. On the table were hot biscuits and jam and on the stove was
tea drawing.

“You will eat your supper now, Ma’m’selle Simonne? It is ready for you.”

“I will try, madame. It is—I do not feel like supper. It is Edmond. He
is dead, madame—burned up in his aeroplane. Just now I have received
the news.”

“Aï!” Artemise waved her hands on high and on her face was an anguished
look. “Aï! My poor little one, but this is sad for you. So alone you
were, but then one thought of Edmond and knew that not always you would
be alone.”

“It is so.” Simonne’s eyes were dry; they had a fixed, unseeing look, as
she sat down at the table and, putting her elbows upon it, rested her
chin in her cupped hands. “I did not mind being alone, for I knew that
he was—was somewhere, and he thought of me and one day I would see him
again. He promised to come home for my graduation and I was so proud, so
happy to think of him there in the audience listening while I read the
valedictory. Ah, Edmond—Edmond—” She covered her eyes for a moment.
The old dame sat down in the rocker by the stove, got up, poured the tea
and brought it to her.

Then it was quiet there, not even the ticking of a clock, only the soft
purr of the fire and now and then the scampering of a mouse deep in the
walls. Lonely, empty, forlorn. Old Artemise remembered well when the big
house rang with voices and laughter and footsteps gay and light, when
Simonne’s grandfather lived and all his sons and daughters thronged
about him. All gone now, all vanished down strange, adventurous paths.
Of the sons, three, including Guy, Simonne’s father, had been killed in
action; of the daughters one, returning from Indo-China, had perished
when the _Georges Philippar_ burned in the Red Sea, another had been in
a car that hurtled off the Corniche road. They had lived gallantly,
recklessly, brightly, these Carons, prodigal of their youth as of their
wealth, careless of any future, forgetful of any past. Now Edmond had
gone to join those tall, dark, laughing ghosts of the Caron men, those
slender, lovely wraiths of the women of his house; and she sat here
alone save for the old crone whose head nodded, who drowsed and awoke
groaning, here in the tumbledown château that had cradled her race.

She got up unsteadily at last and went into the living-room to get the
books she had left there. She stood gazing about her at the shadows,
glad of the dimness of the twilight that mercifully hid the faded and
shabby coverings, the torn and mended curtains, the rugs with their all
but obliterated patterns, the pathetic portraits of those who had died
so young—her father, his brothers, Michel and Yvon, splendid in their
uniforms with the ribbons of valour across their breasts. Edmond, young
and smiling, seeming almost to speak to her, to call to her.

She ran from the room. It was like a tomb. So many things there to
remind one sadly of life, of brightness, of joyous hours, of warm
friendships and tender loves. And nothing—nothing at all remaining.

“I go back to Ste.-Ursule now, madame.” She stopped with her hand on the
knob of the kitchen door. “I think I shall not come back here next
week.”

“But your graduation-dress, Ma’m’selle Simonne!”

“I shall come the afternoon before graduation day. It will be time
enough. I shall come at three and we can try it on then. I could not
come back before that time. I—” She pulled the door open quickly and
ran out into the yard and down the drive where the stars were beginning
to shine among the cedars. Far off she heard the whistle of the train.
It pulled into Memramcook Station just as she reached the platform. At
Pont Lefebvre, only a few miles down the line, Isaie was waiting to pick
up the mail. She climbed into his car and rode across the marsh to the
Village of Ste.-Joseph and the kindly refuge of the convent.

That night, at prayers, the chaplain asked them all to pray for the
repose of the soul of Edmond Caron. She hardly realized what the words
meant, that it was her own brother who was dead, whom now the murmured
prayer was for. “May his soul and the souls of all the faithful
departed, at the mercy of God, rest in peace.” One by one, on the altar,
the tapers were going out; so one by one had all the bright moments of
her life, after burning all too briefly, gone out, never to be
rekindled. Now this, the brightest light she had ever known, had been
snuffed out forever, and all about her was a vast darkness, terrible,
frightening, in which was no tiniest pinpoint of light. Into that
darkness she had to walk, walk not gropingly, timidly, but bravely, head
held high, as was the tradition of her race, of those brave ones who had
marched with Charlemagne, with St. Louis, with Montcalm.

There, the tapers were all out now. The sweet hum of young girls’ voices
died in a swift diminuendo. They rose as one, genuflected, filed from
their benches out of the chapel, through the door to the great
dormitories. Mother Angélique, the Superior, took her arm as she passed
and walked along with her. The old nun’s eyes were dark, bright, living,
strangely young and clear, and her voice was so soft, so soothing—“I do
not need to ask you to be brave, Simonne, nor to counsel you that never
for a moment must you cease to believe that in all things, no matter how
wrong some of them may seem, God’s hand is firm and sure and right, and
that he takes away only to give back a thousand-fold. You believe that,
Simonne?”

“Yes, Mother.” The grey-green innocent eyes looked wide into the wisdom
of the nun’s. “Though God has taken what I most loved away from me, I
shall believe that He knows best.”

“It is well, my little one. God will love you.”

She had sore need of someone’s love in the days that followed—days
without light or hope. She tried to forget, to lose herself in the work
of her classes, the numerous examinations, the busy rush of Commencement
preparations. All about her girls were talking of the dresses they would
wear, this girl of how her mother had gone through all the great stores
of Montreal to find the one most lovely, this other of how her cousin in
New York had bought hers from a grand salon on Fifth Avenue. Then, of
who would come to witness their graduation—“My uncle, Sire Georges
Laporte, comes all the way from Quebec to present the prize he has
donated.” “My Aunt Hortense will come from Sherbrooke and I will go home
in her great car with Jules, her chauffeur, to drive us.”

And for Simonne—nothing. For that great day, nothing; and beyond that
great day, still less. That was the thought that came rudely,
frighteningly, into every hour of her day, and even at night haunted her
dreams—after Commencement, what? Where should she go? What should she
do? One never heard of girls finishing at Ste.-Ursule and going right to
work and making enough money to live. One had to wait and perhaps write
the Civil Service papers and then, if one passed, wait still longer for
a place. And in the meantime one must live, one must eat.

There was the old house, of course, but it was worth nothing at all,
since Edmond had borrowed as much money as he could on it, to finance
his trip to France. True, he had paid some back, but the rest was far
more than she would earn in years of work. She saw compassion in the
eyes of her classmates, in the gentleness of her teachers, in the way
they all spoke to her, favored her, spoiled her. She heard two of the
very smallest girls talking in the playgrounds one day, almost weeping
over her plight. “That poor Simonne—she has no father, no mother, no
one to come to see her. Think of that, Berthe—to have no one in all
this world to come look at your pretty dress and cry for joy over you!”

“What will she do, that lovely Simonne, when the convent is closed? Do
you think, Evangeline, that Mother Angélique will let her stay here?
Perhaps she will become a nun and be here to teach us some day.”

“I think not. One says the schoolmaster in Memramcook, whose name is
Pierre Gay, is much in love with her and would make her his wife if she
at all wanted him. But he is poor, that young man, with only a small
cottage and no money at all.”

“Ah, it is the misery, that.”

“It makes one weep.”

It made Simonne weep. She turned away quietly, quickly. They did not see
her at all. She stumbled down the path to the Grotto and knelt on a
prie-dieu and cried into her cupped hands and prayed incoherently—for
what, she did not know. For courage perhaps, for the strength to go on,
to believe, to have faith in the mercy of this God who had taken her
parents and then taken Edmond, who had been all that remained to her,
all her world. One must believe that He was good, this God, but she had
loved Edmond so much.

The weeping ended quickly. There was some strength in her, some
stiffness that soon put an end to the outward signs of sorrow. She would
not weep, she must not. She would show them all how brave she was. The
day after tomorrow, Closing Day, when she read the farewell-address, her
voice would be firm and clear; it would ring out strongly. But she
thought of the Roman gladiators—_morituri te salutamus_—we who are
about to die, salute you. Like the other girls, she would stand on the
threshold of life, but where their steps took them into bright gardens,
into gracious houses and pleasant fields, hers—into what rough and
stony tracks would her steps take her, into what regions of mist and
darkness, into what places of terror and pain!

She went, next day, to Memramcook, to the old house where Artemise
Gautreau, understudied by Madame Plourde, the village seamstress, waited
to fit her dress. Ah, it was a lovely dress—a lovelier dress even than
the one to find which the shops of Montreal had been turned inside out,
or the one for which Fifth Avenue had been combed. Here was such satin
as those poor girls would never know, such d’Alençon lace, such seed
pearls, such exquisite workmanship—for this was indeed the dress, now
revised by Artemise and Madame Plourde, that Simonne’s mother, Amélie
Labrecque, had worn when she was graduated from the Ursuline Convent in
Quebec, the very dress which she had worn when first Guy Caron’s eyes
rested on her.

“You know well the history of this dress, Ma’m’selle Simonne?” Artemise
spoke through a mouthful of pins that made her look rather like a walrus
with frozen whiskers. “You do not ever forget that, _bein_?”

“I do not forget, madame. It is the dress my good mother was wearing
when he who was to be my father first met her and loved her.”

“And who knows,” began Madame Plourde, pointing her pin-whiskers at
Artemise, “but what—” And Artemise stopped her with a scowl. One knew,
in Memramcook, that the schoolmaster, Pierre Gay, was madly in love with
Simonne Caron, and one did not at all approve of it—most certainly not.
The Carons were a great family. True, they were poor now, they had
nothing. But it was not fitting, even now, that this lovely Simonne
should have to do with a wretched schoolmaster; who also wrote poetry.

“I do not think history will repeat itself, Madame Plourde,” smiled
Simonne, looking down at the creamy beauty that sheathed her body, at
the flaring skirt that billowed away from her slender hips in white
waves of loveliness. “But I love to wear it, this gorgeous dress. I am
proud to wear it—proud—” Her mouth quivered for an instant, then
became firm and in the carriage of her head was a grace, a dignity,
regal, superb, that awed and impressed the two old ones and made them
feel that unease which besets the simple of heart when they meet that
which they cannot understand. But she was always kind and gentle,
Simonne, and thoughtful of those about her, and presently she had the
ancients twittering with pride so honest was her praise of their
handiwork.

She left them to put the finishing touches to the dress and walked
slowly up the Beaumont. She thought of the many, many times she had
climbed that hill, always with the anticipation of fresh discoveries of
beauty. There one always found something new—some violet of a paler
purple in the spring, some maple in the fall that flaunted a flamier
red, some sky of sunset in the winter that spread hues more gorgeous and
varied across the westering sky than any others seen before. Now, in
early summer when the warm sun of June was working its magic with tree
and flower, the road to the Beaumont was the road to Paradise. But, she
thought, the next time I pass this way, all will be different. I,
Simonne, will be different. I will have closed a door upon a part of my
life, and never again can I open that door. And the thought made her
heart heavy and her step slow for she could not see the next door nor
even the way her feet should go.

Pierre was waiting for her, sitting on a flat stone among the ferns. He
was hatless, his thin face looked pale, tired, under its tan. The little
notebook was open on his knee and he rolled a pencil in his fingers, but
there were no words on the page. He got up slowly as she approached,
watched her with intent, adoring eyes as she threaded her way among the
rocks and the hummocks. He took both her hands in his. “I did not dream
two weeks could be so long,” he said earnestly. “I walked over to
St.-Joseph a number of times but always the Convent of Ste.-Ursule
looked as if no one had ever lived there—only closed doors and blank
windows; only the doves in the convent-garden and the fountain—they
were the only things that moved.”

“_Bien!_” She smiled, sat down with him on the stone and folded her
hands. “Convents are made for quiet, Pierre. What would you?”

“Oh, I just wanted to see you, Simonne, O, ma Simonne!”

“You were very disappointed?”

“Very disappointed. But now—well, this makes up for a lot—to have you
near me. And after tomorrow I—I’ll see you often and often. I’ll see
you every day, won’t I?”

“I do not know.” She spread her hands in a gesture eloquent of
hopelessness. “After tomorrow—Who can tell anything about after
tomorrow? Not I.”

“But you’ll stay here in Memramcook? There is no place else—”

“Oh, that is just it. I have thought of it so many times, so much. I
have thought it over and over and over till I feared I would go mad.
There is no place else, yet how can I stay here! I could not keep the
house. I could not work; there is no work. I shall go to Moncton perhaps
and find employment in an office there or in a store.”

“You! In an office! In a store!” He looked at her as if she had uttered
sacrilege. “Why, you could not—”

“I am just a girl, like other girls, Pierre. You have talked to me,
treated me, as if I were a goddess, but the goddess has a pretty good
appetite and likes nice clothes and—”

“Oh, I know all that, Simonne. Just the same, I cannot bear to think of
you rubbing shoulders with God knows what. You are so young, so
untainted—”

“I cannot be always young,” she answered gravely. “Nor—nor perhaps
always untainted. I have to go into that world of God knows what. I’m
not afraid.”

“Simonne! Don’t think of it! Don’t go! Marry me. I love you—love you so
much that I feel my love will make up to you for most of the things I
cannot give you. We’ll be happy. We can live—some way. Next year, it
may be, I shall be paid more and you know I have sold some of my verses
and—and with you always near me I can write such beautiful things—”

“Such as, ‘I love you’. Ah, Pierrot!” She caught his hand and pressed it
close to her. “You are so good, so generous, so kind. You would shelter
me, you would give up anything to keep me from the least little bit of
hardship, I know it; but you offer me more than I would ever ask of any
man.”

“It is that you do not love me enough, Simonne.”

“I have never known love. I am happy when I am with you—but is that
love?”

He caught her roughly in his arms and bent her head back till her eyes,
wide, terrified, outraged, looked up into his. He bent to find the
sweetness of her mouth. All the time she did not resist, but lay
strangely passive across his knees. Only in her eyes was more than she
could have expressed by any sound, any movement. He tried not to look at
her, but the strange eyes drew his and held them and he could not bring
himself to kiss those lips so near, so temptingly near, to his. He
lifted her gently and helped her to stand up.

“That—” She did not look at him, but at her forearm where the marks of
his fingers showed white against the brown skin—“Surely that was not
love, Pierre!”

“I do not know,” he said sullenly. “It was what I wanted to do and
I—and I could not. Perhaps you should go with the good sisters,
Simonne, and—”

She laughed at that. “I think not. No, I love life too much for that.”

“You did not like me to take you in my arms, to kiss you.”

“I thought when I looked at you then that you had forgotten me,
that—that something you wanted was much more important than I was.”

“Perhaps it is so—perhaps love is something greater than the lover or
the loved.”

“Then why me more than any other girl, Pierre?”

“Ah, it is something about you. I could love you, worship you, even if I
were never allowed to touch you or kiss you or smooth your hair.”

“And would that be love, Pierre?”

He laughed outright then and her own silver laughter joined with his and
presently, hand-in-hand, they walked gaily down the hill, forgetting
everything except that they were young and it was June.

Simonne left early for the convent, the lovely dress folded carefully
and packed in a little case, along with a pair of satin slippers and
stockings of cobwebby silk. It made her feel better just to carry all
those wondrous things; it brought her close, somehow, to the mother she
scarcely remembered and it gave her a warm consciousness of still
belonging to the happy, untroubled life of Ste.-Ursule. Yes, for a
little while yet she would belong and these last few hours must be
memorable.

It was almost dusk, a warm blue fragrant dusk, as she followed the road
that leads from Memramcook Village to Pont Lefebvre. Never had she seen
the valley more calm and lovely. The serpentine river was glassy smooth,
mirroring the green walls of the dikes, reflecting the starlight in
little spurts of brightness. Far across the great plain of marshland
tiny lights popped out here and there like blossoms in the gloom. Almost
dusk when a great white car slid up beside her and stopped with velvety
smoothness. She looked, startled, at the driver, glimpsing a dark face
under a grey cap and wide shoulders under a fawn gabardine coat. The
good sisters warned their charges that they must never talk to
strangers, especially strangers who drive cars and, most especially,
cars like this one—long, low and rangy, a veritable rocket of a car.
But he accosted her in exquisite French, such as she seldom heard spoken
in her own land. He said,

“Could you direct me, mademoiselle, to the Village of St.-Joseph?”

And before she could think, the words were out. “Why, it is there I am
going, monsieur. One follows this road to Pont Lefebvre, the next
village; there, one turns right and traverses the iron bridge and then
straight across the marsh and—”

“_Ah, merci!_” His teeth showed white. “But since you are going there,
too, would it not be well for us both if you would ride with me and
issue directions as we go. You may, if you wish, point out such places
of interest as are visible and as may interest a stranger in a strange
land?”

“But, _monsieur_! I do not know—”

“Please.” He slid from under the wheel, stepped out and opened the door
for her. “It would be an act of charity, _mademoiselle_. Think! If I
should become lost on this vast marsh and have to drive aimlessly around
perhaps until the winter comes, then to perish of your terrible
cold—would you ever forgive yourself? After all, we speak the same
tongue.”

In spite of all Mère Angélique’s counsel and all her assurances that
such young men as this were dispatched directly from the dark dwellings
of the evil one, to prowl through the world and seek young girls for
devouring, Simonne stepped into the car and relaxed gratefully against
the deep leather cushions. He got in then, the purr of the engine
deepened until it became like the music of an organ, a singing, rhythmic
sound, and the great tires played a tune of their own on the pavement.

“Is there an inn of some sort in St.-Joseph?” he asked presently.

“Oh, yes, there is la Maison St.-Joseph, kept by Tilmon Bourgeois and
his good wife, Lucille. There you can have room and board, _monsieur_.”

“Thank you. I shall always remember it gratefully if you will direct me
there. Indeed I shall always be grateful to you for—”

“You turn sharply to the left here by the barber-shop of Henri,
_monsieur_.”

“Ah, yes. I should most certainly have gone past that place—”

“And you are about to cross the main line of the Canadian National
Railways, _monsieur_, and it is about time for the Ocean Limited and—”

“So!” He drew up for the crossing. “I will stop, look and listen.” But
he looked mostly at her, she was sure, and felt her cheeks grow hot and
knew they were flushed and was glad of the merciful dusk.

“Now it is safe to go, _monsieur_. Straight across the marsh now and at
the head of the hill by the church you may let me off, please; then you
drive up to the right and the fourth house is la Maison St. Joseph. You
will see the sign and probably Tilmon standing at the door or one
sitting on the verandah.”

“That is clear. Now perhaps, since you have been so helpful, you could
help me some more. Do you know something of the Convent of Ste.-Ursule?”

She smiled quietly and looked sideways at him, wondering if he knew the
convent-dress and if perhaps, knowing it, he wasn’t having a game with
her. But he was very serious, his eyes fixed on the road, his gloved
hands firmly on the wheel.

“But yes,” she said then. “I know something of it. Tomorrow is Closing
Day there.” She pressed the handle of her little case and closed her
eyes to picture the white satin dress and the little fairy slippers.

“Ah!” he said relievedly, “then I am in time!”

“For the closing? Oh, yes. It will begin at ten o’clock in the morning.
You come to see someone graduate, _monsieur_?” How sweet, how wonderful,
to have one like him come from some far place just to see your
graduation, to smile at you, to tell you how lovely you were. Who would
it be—Rosalie Deschamps? The young de Lesseps—she came from France, as
did this young man.

“Yes,” he said absently. “No—I do not think it is her graduation. She
is just a little girl. Perhaps you know her—” Simonne’s heart stopped
utterly—“her name is Simonne Caron.”

Her silence did not arouse his suspicions. He thought she was thinking,
searching her memory to find out if she knew such a one. But, in
reality, she was swallowing, trying to loosen the chords of her throat,
trying to make her mind move. She felt like crying, like laughing, like
throwing her arms about his neck. At last, he glanced at her. “Do you
know a child of that name, mademoiselle? She would be about—oh, from
the way Edmond—he was her brother and my dear friend—spoke of her—I
should say perhaps twelve years old.”

Yes—yes, Edmond would always think of her, as if she never could grow
older—Simonne, O, ma Simonne—little Simonne.

“I—I know that girl, _monsieur_.” It was hard to speak so that he could
understand her. She was so shy of him now, so frightened, she trembled.
She wished she might get out of the car. She kept her hands clenched
until he came to the top of the hill in front of the church. “There,
_monsieur_, if you please, it is necessary that I get out.”

He stopped. “I am so sorry to lose you. And I am so grateful to you.
Perhaps you will be at the closing tomorrow? Perhaps you will help me
find the little Caron?”

“Perhaps.” She stood looking up at him as he held the door open for her.
She saw that his face was very thin, very handsome. He seemed, for the
first time, to get a good look at her. She could tell—and her heart
leapt with the knowledge—that he found her lovely. “I—at any rate, I
shall no doubt see you, _monsieur_, for I shall be there at the
closing.”

“I am so glad. Good night, _mademoiselle_.”

“Good night, _monsieur_.”

She gave him her hand briefly, then hurried quickly away. She heard him
call to her. “But I forgot—oh, _mademoiselle_—what is your name? Mine
is Marcel Bernard—”

But she pretended not to hear him. The pebbles scattered wildly away
from her flying feet. She hugged the little case that held the precious
dress. She looked up at the stars, slowing her gait, dreaming. Marcel
Bernard—yes, Edmond had spoken of this one, his very best friend. And
he had loved Edmond enough to think of his little sister—the little
Caron.

Simonne’s eyes were so bright, her cheeks so softly radiant, that little
Sister Eulalie, the porteress, clapped her hands and Mother Angélique,
coming from her office, stood stockstill at the transformation: she had
been so pale, so listless, so tired, of late. “But you look happy
tonight, Simonne!” Mother Angélique looked at her shrewdly. “What then
has come to you?”

But she could not tell even the kindly Mother. It was too great, too
dear, too precious. She said, “Oh, _ma mère_, it is that I have prayed
long for something, some great favor, for tomorrow—and it has come.”

“Ah, but it is a great thing, the faith; a wondrous thing, the prayer,”
said Mère Angélique. “Have I not so often told you so? Now you will
never doubt. I am very happy over this, Simonne—happy that you will
have what you prayed for.”

If the good Mother had even dreamed that what Simonne had prayed for was
now sitting on the verandah at Tilmon’s inn, smoking a cigarette, gazing
at the stars and thinking how lovely was the girl who had guided him
there, she might not have been quite so happy. Marcel Bernard fished a
little box from his pocket, opened it and looked at the child’s bracelet
it contained. “I should have asked that girl,” he muttered, “if this
would be likely to fit that little one and also how I am going to adapt
myself to the rôle of nursemaid. Ah, well, Edmond, it is for you, _mon
ami_.”




                               Chapter II
                             THE WINGED GOD


Simonne’s bed was in that most prized location—by a radiator and by a
window. The earliest sunbeams found their way in that window and played
gay little games upon her pillow and touched her hair and her lips and
her nose—all part of the game—and finally her eyelids and the long
dark lashes, so that she awakened and caught them but was never, never
angry with them, no matter how tired she might be, no matter how late
she might have lain awake in the darkness, watching the green-shaded
night-lights and thinking of many things.

As last night. She had heard the convent-clock strike one, strike two,
and she had wished, as when she was a very little girl on the eve of a
great day, that it might jump seven or eight hours and bring her right
up to the longed-for time. Still, anticipation was sweet. She hugged
herself; all her body tingled with delight. How amazed, how happy, how
envious everyone would be when they saw who had come to witness her
graduation! How the little ones’ eyes would pop and the eyes of her
classmates look admiringly at Marcel Bernard and jealously at her.

She thought of him, just a little way up the village-street, at la
Maison St. Joseph. She wondered if they had found a room for him—there
were so many visitors here for the closing. But of course they would
find a room for such a grand young man. The best room would be given
him—maybe Tilmon’s very own room, with the three moose-heads in it,
where Sophie St. Amende’s father, who was a senator, had once stayed and
asked Sophie and her up to see him.

After two before she fell asleep and not yet six when the sunbeams, at
their old happy game, awakened her. How still it was! The little
chirping of the birds seemed to make it stiller, and the distant tinkle
of the cow-bells. She could see the green hillsides across the valley,
see the grey smoke beginning to rise from the chimneys of farm and
cottage, and sometimes a dog barked or a milk pail rattled in the farm
below the convent. She heard the slow crunch-crunch of heavy clogs on
the gravel far below her window and knew that it was old Hippolyte, the
bell-ringer, on his way to St. Thomas Church, to ring the angelus. Yes,
it was ten minutes to six by her wristwatch, the little white-gold watch
Edmond had sent her from France.

She raised her pillow, better to see the beauty of the morning and feel
the warmth of the sun. All about her, other girls were stirring now,
with sleepy eyes and tumbled hair and there were whisperings and
laughter. The last day—who cared for rules on the last day!
Mademoiselle Cloutier, who was dormitory-mistress, might scold and
threaten to her heart’s content today—no one would mind. Some of the
girls were already brushing their hair, others making for the
shower-baths, others packing travelling-cases or eating smuggled
bon-bons. Hermance Lapage, whose bed was below Simonne’s, at the next
window, was boldly smoking a cigarette just as she had vowed to do on
the last day. The smoke smelled nice in the morning air, but it might
not be well for Hermance, even on the last day, if Mademoiselle Cloutier
should catch her.

The angelus boomed out, moving the morning stillness in great waves of
sound as when a rock is dropped into the centre of a still
pond—boom-boom-boom—thunderous golden tones rolling for miles across
the marshland, heard in all the four villages. Pierre, in his little
cottage, perhaps already in his garden, would hear it and love it.
Marcel Bernard would be awakened from his sleep and would perhaps swear
and wonder why he had come to this lost place beyond the rim of the
world just to see some little girl whose brother had been his friend.

“Oh, I hope he will not be angry when he finds out that I deceived him,
that I am not a little girl at all, that I am eighteen instead of
twelve. Perhaps he will not like me. And he must like me! I want him so
to like me!”

She reached for her own mirror and brush and went to work on the thick
wavy tresses, brushing them until they shone—a good hundred strokes.
“One would think you prepared for a lover, Simonne.” Emma Breau, in the
bed across from her, watched her lazily and laughed at her blushes. “Ah,
it is then true! Who is this lover? Surely not the dark-eyed
schoolmaster who makes the pretty verses and interrupts his class to
come to the door and watch us when we pass on promenade!”

“No.” Simonne thought with swift regret how quickly she had forgotten
Pierre. But, for that matter, she had forgotten everything else except
the wondrous fact that one had come especially for her graduation.
Hermance Lapage, in the bed at the next window, had finished her
cigarette and was now indulging in a forbidden pre-breakfast perusal of
La Presse. The big black letters on the front page caught Simonne’s
eyes, but she read the words a number of times without grasping their
significance. When she did, she leapt out of bed and ran to Hermance and
knelt on the floor beside her. “Oh, may I see for a moment, Hermance?
Please—”

“It is dull.” The Lapage, whose mother was an actress in Paris, rolled
big black eyes at her. “What interests you, Simonne? This about Marcel
Bernard flying from Paris to Mo’réal?”

“Yes.” She was reading avidly. “Yes, is it not too marvellous!”

“Pretty smart! Do you know him?” She grinned maliciously. “Maybe he flew
over just to see you!”

“Oh, I think not. He would have come anyway, but—”

Laughter, from Hermance and all within earshot, awakened Simonne to
realities. They were laughing at her, good-humoredly enough, but
laughing none the less. She took a last look at Marcel’s picture as he
stood with the two other men who had accompanied him on his flight.
Noted sportsman and aeroplane-engine designer, the story called him. And
he—he had driven from Montreal all the way down to Memramcook just to
see her!

The other girls were watching her, their laughter quite gone. They knew
Simonne and loved her. And they knew her story. After all, her brother
had been quite an important man in France, his name often in the news
with stories of the advances made in the design of aeronautical engines.
Might it not be—

The convent bell interrupted their speculations. There were few laggards
this morning; everyone tumbled out before the last stroke had died,
before Mademoiselle Cloutier came, blue-nosed as always, from her
cubicle, holding the big bell by its tongue, ready to rap sleepy-heads
with the handle. This morning there were none to rap, and Mademoiselle
Cloutier, who had been at the convent so long that she was as much a
fixture as the statue of St. Anthony, felt vague regret at losing the
very ones who all year made her life a torment. She walked down to
Hermance Lapage’s bed, saw the cigarette-end snuffed out on the floor,
said nothing.

Everyone was putting on her best. There were little cries of admiration,
of envy. When Simonne slipped the white satin, with its narrow waist and
high, broidered bodice, over her head, they all stopped to stare. “_Mon
Dieu_, Simonne!” called the dark Lapage. “You look lovely enough to be a
bride. You will have the bishop making a speech with ‘Vanity of vanities
and all is vanity’ for a text. You are not fair to the rest of us: you
make us look like convent-girls.”

“Ah, it is lovely, Simonne!” Mademoiselle Cloutier’s watery eyes shone
with honest admiration. “How beautiful you will look when you rise to
read the farewell-address! And how sorry we will all be to lose you!”

“As I to lose you, _mademoiselle_, I assure you. You are good to like my
dress: it is the one my mother wore when she finished convent in Quebec.
It is—it is a lucky dress: she was wearing it when love came to her.”

“Ah, but you must today think of higher, nobler things than love,
Simonne.”

The Lapage snickered. Simonne looked properly grave. The bell rang for
morning-prayers and all the bright frocks and shining faces flocked
towards the door. Simonne thought of the long quiet summer nights when
the big _dortoire_ would lie empty and lone in the moonlight, of how the
moonbeams would search in vain for the blonde tresses or the black ones
with which they used to play. And it made her sad to think that tomorrow
morning, when her own little sunbeams came to play their morning game,
she would not be there to greet them. But her sadness, her nostalgia,
passed quickly. She thought of Marcel Bernard—like a young god come
from the sky.

She was in the convent-garden with the others when the big white car
came up the drive. It came slowly, as the vivid black eyes of M. Bernard
searched the faces of the little ones. He is looking among the very
smallest, thought Simonne, for the little Caron. _Sapristi!_ When he
sees his twelve-year-old he will—

He was looking at her now, looking intently. He stopped the car, got
out, strode across the drive and onto the lawn. Simonne could hear the
sharp little intakes of breath all about her. She heard Hermance Lapage
say, “Name of a name of a name! It is he—Marcel Bernard.” He came
directly to Simonne and stood before her. He bowed very low,
straightened and said, “Are not you, mademoiselle, the one who was so
kind as to direct me to the inn last night? It was hard to see in the
dusk and the starlight, but you are one who, once seen in no matter what
light, would not readily be forgotten.”

Simonne felt the battery of eyes all about her, the wonderment, the
envy. “Yes, _monsieur_; it was I who directed you.”

“And you said perhaps you would help me to find the little Simonne
Caron. I have looked among the little ones but I see none—”

Somebody giggled. There was a reaching for handkerchiefs and a reddening
of faces. “I think,” said Simonne, “it will not be hard to find her. If
you will come with me, _monsieur_?”

“My name is Marcel Bernard,” he said. “I was late in asking yours.” They
walked down the path towards the Grotto. She was afraid now, timid of
what he might say when he found out she had been making sport of him.
Yet she could not resist the temptation to prolong the game, and he
aided her by asking, “What is she like, this little Simonne?”

“Oh, she is—” Simonne shrugged—“a rather lonely little person. She
had—only her brother, you know—”

“Yes, I know. Edmond spoke of her constantly. I promised him that if
anything happened to him I would become her guardian.”

“Oh! And—and do you like the prospect?”

“I do not know.” He smiled. “You see, I have never been a guardian
before. Is she troublesome, a handful? Not, I hope, a spoiled little
_gamine_ who will lead me the devil’s own existence?”

“I think not, Monsieur Bernard.” They had come to the rock-pool below
the grotto. There was no one else about. The birds darted and splashed
in the fountain. She stopped, turned to him, smiled up at him, timidly,
her cheeks turning slowly crimson. “I—will you forgive me, monsieur?
Please say you will forgive me!”

“Forgive you, mademoiselle! For what, please, am I to—” He started,
stared at her, wisdom dawning slowly in his eyes. “_Grand dieu!_
You—you do not tell me that you are Simonne Caron!”

She nodded, as if apologizing for the fact. She looked down at the
ground. She prayed earnestly that he would not be angry with her. She
felt his hand under her chin, raising it until she had, perforce, to
look into those bold, arrogant eyes. Thus they stood for moments,
Simonne and Marcel Bernard. Then slowly a smile drove away the gravity
from his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box, opened
it and gave her the tiny bracelet. “The choice,” he said wryly, “lay
between this and a doll that said ‘_Maman_’. I chose this.”

They both laughed then and she found her hand in his. He drew her to a
bench and they sat down and gazed at each other frankly, with a great
shyness on her part, with a well hidden perplexity on his. A
twelve-year-old was one thing; a young woman of eighteen, and a lovely
one, was quite another. He had planned to spend some months in Montreal
and it had been his idea to take his little ward with him and find for
her a competent governess or nursemaid. Now he saw how ridiculous all
his plans, even in their vagueness, had been. But the photo Edmond Caron
had of her was that of a little girl, her hair in pigtails, her eyes
round and wondering; this Simonne had hair such as he had never dreamed
of and lashes long and dark that lifted at the tips, that lay against
her smooth cheek when she closed her eyes. She had lips that seemed
always ever so little parted—full, sweet lips that seemed made for
kisses, that seemed always to wait for them.

“You are not disappointed in Simonne?” She raised the great eyes to him
after a long silence. “You would not rather I was the little one Edmond
pictured? It is six years, you understand, since Edmond last saw me and
for him I did not grow beyond that day.”

“I would not have you any different, Simonne. It is just—just that a
man gets something of a shock when he finds himself bringing playthings
to a young lady. You are finishing at the convent today?”

“Yes. Today. I read the farewell-address. I—I did not look forward to
it”—She smoothed the gleaming satin of her skirt—“after I heard the
news of Edmond’s death. I did not look forward to anything; then, last
night, as I walked along the road to Pont Lefebvre you overtook me and
I—”

He smiled understandingly. “It meant—so much to you, to have someone
come?”

“It meant”—She drew a deep breath—“everything, _monsieur_. It made me
think that, after all, someone cared, that I mattered to someone. Last
night, I could hardly sleep for thinking of you, _monsieur_—” She
caught herself up, her cheeks flooding pale pink, her gaze quickly
averted.

He was silent. He was looking with new light into his own careless
heart, into his own deep soul. He was wishing—he who had the world at
his feet—that he had been a better, stronger man. He felt afraid,
uncomfortable, for he saw that this girl looked upon him, who was of the
earth earthy, as something sent straight from heaven. He was about to
say roughly, “For God’s sake, child, don’t romanticize over me. I’m only
a playboy of Paris and you and I belong to different worlds. I’ll do my
best for you, but, please, no sentiment!”

And he could say nothing of the kind. He who could be ruthless, hard,
calculating, who could discount a woman’s tears as readily as he could
her promises, found himself saying, “It makes me happy, little Simonne,
to find out that my poor presence makes your day a brighter one. I—” He
bit his lip, frowned portentously—“I am your legal guardian, you know,
so it is my duty, _ma petite_, as well as my pleasure, to be here.”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” She was still looking at her fingers, twined in her
lap.

“After—after the exercises are over we shall have luncheon together,
you and I, and we can talk about the future—about what you wish to
do—perhaps further study—perhaps—”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” She looked at him sideways, shyly.

“And you are to worry about nothing, Simonne. You are well provided for
and—”

“I do not worry, _monsieur_, now that you are come.”

“Oh! But I—”

The convent bell rang out, making the doves flutter wildly as if the
sound beat against their wings.

“Now I must go, please.” She stood up. She looked bravely into Bernard’s
dark eyes. “I would like you to wish me luck, _monsieur_—my legal
guardian.”

His voice sounded strange, husky. “All the luck there is, Simonne. I
shall be wishing you luck all the time you are making your address.”

“I shall not be afraid.” She gave him her hand and went quickly up the
path from the Grotto. He stood looking after her until the last glimpse
of white was gone. Then he sat down on the bench once more, stared at
the statue of the Virgin in the niche in the Grotto and wondered if he
wouldn’t feel better if it and all these gentle, mystic things that
surrounded him meant something in his life.

He smiled, thinking of what his friends in Paris, in London, in New
York, would say if they saw him, Marcel Bernard, sitting in the garden
of an Acadian convent, playing parent to a vision in white satin and
lace. He knew what they would say and think and it made him feel a
sudden surge of bitterness that it was so. Presently, as he sat there,
he heard a chorus, far-off, angelic, ethereally sweet and lovely, and he
thought he had never heard in any grand opera-house, anything half so
beautiful. He thought he could distinguish her voice—a warm rich
contralto. He could see her standing there, all in white, her arms and
throat so brown, so rounded and dear.

He did not know how to pray; the things that stirred in his soul, deep
in his soul, were inchoate, incoherent things, but their dominant thread
was some great wish new-born in him, to make himself a better and a
greater man. His hands were clenched when he stood up, and he felt
strength like a great tide flow into his body and life come into his
soul. He glimpsed in that moment how vast is man’s potentiality—how he
can be god or clod, how great forces blow in and out of his soul like
great winds, and how he may respond to those forces or remain untouched
by them, according as he is disposed.

He walked slowly up the path and entered the hall at the rear door,
where he saw people standing. She was on the stage, Simonne, standing in
front of her classmates, a beribboned paper—streamers of purple and
gold—held in her brown hands. Her eyes found his as he entered and for
a moment held his, and her voice faltered, then went on, ringing, clear,
filling his heart with tumult—

“—and as in joy we walked so long together, my friends, so in sorrow we
must part. Our paths have wound through blossomy meadows, beside rivers
sleeping in the sun and there has been joy along our way. Now we turn to
other paths and be they wide or narrow, smooth or rough, go they in dark
places or to the pinnacles of light, let us walk them bravely, let us
love and let us believe—”

All about him he saw faces rapt, intent, eyes fixed upon her as she read
and in every breast the same thing stirred and they lived again, those
grown old, some hour when they had stood on the threshold of a new life
and, looking back, they saw the roads they had travelled, the hills they
had climbed, the dark waters crossed, and they knew whether or not they
had walked bravely, with love and faith.

Now, the bishop and the prime minister, come especially for the
occasion, but, of course, “amply repaid for the sacrifice by being
privileged to share in this concourse of youth and freshness,” made the
usual sounding and impractical speeches; the diplomas and prizes were
read out by Mother Angélique and presented by His Excellency; the
orchestra played and everyone sang Ave Maria Stella, O Canada and God
Save the King. Then, in the chapel there was benediction and the age-old
hymn that is sung at every convent or college-closing in the Acadian
land—_En vous quittant, mère chérie_—“In quitting you, our cherished
mother—” And how it poured forth from those young hearts, some gay,
some sad beyond all knowing—

                   “Always I will be your Mother
                   You will find my altars everywhere.”

Then they streamed from the flower- and incense-scented gloom of the
chapel into the golden warmth of the sun, the green brightness of the
trees and lawns, the wild free chorus of the birds, Marcel Bernard found
himself gazing into the wise, all-seeing eyes of the old Abbess, Mother
Angélique, whose arm protectingly encircled the waist of her favorite
student. He felt himself inadequate, uneasy—he who had walked casually
in courts and senates—before this quiet little nun who gazed up at him
confidingly, trustfully, yet knowingly.

“We are honored, M. Bernard, to have such a brave and gallant gentleman
at our closing, and we are happy to know that Simonne is to be in your
charge.”

“You honor me by what you say, _ma sœur_.” He bowed gravely. “What I
have seen and felt here has impressed me with the seriousness of my
charge and brought home to me my shortcomings. Your valedictory,
Simonne, was most beautiful. I was proud to listen to you.”

“Oh, thank you, _monsieur_!” Her eyes misted. To hear him say that, to
see how he gazed at her, as if she were the most important thing in all
the world! Mother Angélique looked gravely from her to Marcel Bernard
and her thin smooth fingers touched unconsciously the great wooden beads
that hung from her girdle. “I must leave you now,” she said softly to
them both. “God go with you, little Simonne, and with you, Monsieur
Bernard.” With a gentle smile she turned away and they were alone.

Simonne was looking at the convent, the white walls, the bell in its
cross-crowned cupola, the clambering vines and the honeysuckle, the
winding paths among the cedars, the distant silver sheen of the
Memramcook River wide between its dikes. No more, her heart said, no
more. She would come back to it, but as a stranger, and the old rapture
would never be hers again. New voices, new faces, other Junes,
stretching down the years, other girls bidding farewell, feeling this
little sickness, this pain of loss, in their young hearts.

“It makes you sad, Simonne?”

He had been watching the play of memory on her face. She started. “Oh!
Yes, it has been really my home since I was a very little girl. There’s
something safe about it. In there, one feels sheltered, secure. But
then”—She smiled gaily—“the world is a good place, too, is it not? It
offers much that one could never find in Ste.-Ursule.”

Yes, he might have told her, much of disillusionment and pain, as well
as rapture; but he would not try to dispel that brightness from her
eyes. He knew, too, that she would not believe today that the world
could be anything but wonderful. He said, “_Eh bien!_ If you are ready
now, my sweet girl-graduate, we shall repair to the inn of St.-Joseph
and find something good to eat.”

It was a delight for her, that first meal with Marcel. To sit across the
little table from him, to hand him his tea, to wait upon him shyly in a
hundred little ways. Ah, it was such pleasure that she wanted the
luncheon to last forever. She could look at him now to her heart’s
content. She could see the grey hair at his temples, the fine little
lines about the corners of his eyes, the lean strength of his jaw, the
firm, kindly cut of his mouth, and each time he caught her looking at
him she felt utterly confused and timid until he smiled or laughed
outright at her and told her that he did not bite even tender little
convent-girls.

“But I am no longer a little convent-girl. See! There is my diploma on
Tilmon’s buffet. I am learned in shorthand, in typing, in penmanship, in
music—oh, I am a veritable box of knowledge! Ask me a question,
_monsieur_ and see me display my knowledge—a question on any subject.”

He frowned, pursed his lips, broke one of Lucille’s brioches and stared
at the half of it. “Well then, how do you like your new guardian?”

“Eh! Why, I—”

“Yes?”

She looked at the table-cloth as if the answer were written there. Then
she looked up suddenly, looked him full in the eyes and he felt a
quickening of his heartbeat, a turbulence in his blood and cursed
himself for asking such a question and vowed never again to be so rash.
Those eyes of hers, so bright, so clear in the brown of her face, the
wavy, silky hair, so like a little girl’s hair. “That is the easiest
question you could ask me, _mon gardien_. I—I like my new guardian
ever, ever, ever so much. I think, of all the guardians in the world, he
is the nicest.”

“One hundred per-cent correct, Mademoiselle Caron. For that, you shall
receive a prize just as soon as we reach some place where there are
shops. Right now, I suppose you want to go to the train to say goodby to
your friends.”

“If you please, _monsieur_.”

It was heaven to ride in the big car, to lean back against the cushions
of red-oak colored leather, to feel the power and strength and speed
that Marcel handled so deftly, to dart past the slower cars on the
marsh-road and return with a gay wave of the hand the salutations of
their occupants.

On the station-platform at Pont Lefebvre there were tears, kisses and
confusion. Some of those who boarded the train she would never see
again, others perhaps casually once or twice in her lifetime. All the
gay and carefree hours she had spent with these girls came rushing back
to her now, making her heart leaden, filling her with a vast sense of
loss and loneliness which she could not, she felt, have borne, if he had
not been at her side, tall and assured—her guardian.

Quite unaware, he seemed, that everyone among the hundreds there knew
who he was and looked at him with admiration. He smoked his pipe and
while she talked to Hermance Lapage and Emma Breau, he sat on one of the
little wagons used for luggage and gazed pensively at the green vista of
the marshes.

“What a grand time you will have, Simonne!” The dark Lapage looked only
at Marcel Bernard when she spoke. “With such a guardian! Do you know
that a thousand women have loved him? I heard my mother speak of him
often. In France, they call him Don Juan. Ah, how I envy you! I think
all the world will envy you. Where does he take you?”

“I do not know. I—I have not thought about it.” Hermance’s words had
come with shocking impact—“A thousand women have loved him”—yes, who
could help but love him! But that did not mean that he had loved any of
the thousand. She looked at him, sitting so quietly, so contentedly; but
even here in these rustic surroundings, there was a suggestion of the
winged god about him and his gaze seemed to be fixed on far-off things.

“It will be hard for the little schoolmaster,” said Emma teasingly. “He
will be quite eclipsed by this great sun that has risen. He will be left
here to pine away and perish of a broken heart.”

“Bah!” The Lapage’s actress-mother had had three husbands and was now
the darling of a rich _parfumier_. “There is no such thing as a broken
heart—certainly not among men. For a while that rustic bard of yours
will make dreary ballads and sigh ‘Simonne, O ma Simonne’ then he will
meet some other Phyllis or Chloë and, pouf! off with the old love and on
with the new.”

“You are a little cynic, _mademoiselle_.” Lost in the vehement
expounding of her thesis, as the others were lost in listening, she had
not at all noticed Marcel Bernard’s approach. “Such old wisdom from such
young lips!”

Hermance Lapage colored under the makeup which it had caused the good
nuns bitter anguish to behold. “Well, _m’sieur_, is it not truth?”

“Not absolute truth, I think. It is dangerous to say such things and, I
think, fatal to believe them.”

“Then you—”

“Ah, do I believe in broken hearts?” He smiled widely. “Now you come
near home. I have heard of many, but I have seen none. And, for the good
God is merciful and spares His chosen from answers that might
embarrass—here comes the train!”

The dark Lapage looked steadily at him. “Perhaps that was a dangerous
thing to say, Monsieur Bernard. Come to think of it, there are
hearts—and I know at least one such—that could be broken—that are
soft and trusting and gentle and pure.” She gazed full in his eyes a
moment longer and he gazed as steadily into hers. Then, as if satisfied
with what she saw, she smiled, gave him her hand and said, “_Adieu._ It
has been good to meet you. We are happy to leave Simonne in your care.”

“And I thank you for your trust, _mademoiselle_.”

Then they boarded the train, emptying the long platform; the train got
under way, handkerchiefs fluttered from windows—fluttered bravely until
distance blotted them out. Simonne turned from watching Hermance and
Emma on the platform of the observation-car, and put her arm in his. She
said, “I do not feel as sad as I thought I would. In fact, I do not feel
sad at all.”

“That is good. I do not want you to feel sad, ever.”

“Will you come now to my house at Memramcook?”

“Gladly. I want to see the home of the Carons. I know a lot about it
just from listening to Edmond. There are great cedar trees whose spires
touch the stars, and a brook runs past the house and there is a high
hill beyond it called the Beaumont, where often he went with you.”

“That is so.” She smiled sadly. “But, with Edmond, the house was like
me—it did not grow any older. It is something of a ruin now.”

They got into the car and followed the road they had travelled last
night. Only last night! To Simonne it seemed a blissful age ago. Events
before last night were things that had happened in another life and a
new one had begun when she met him. The June sunlight was golden, warm
on her face. She closed her eyes, rested her head on the cushions, felt
the wind toy with her hair. She wondered if he were looking at her, if
he found her at all lovely. He had known so many lovely women that
perhaps she meant nothing to him, just a girl who had been wished upon
him, just a charge to be looked after.

And when she opened her eyes she saw a dark frown on his face and a
certain grimness about his jaw, and he was driving very fast. They were
coming now to the little white schoolhouse at Memramcook. Classes were
being dismissed. She saw the little boys and girls flocking into the
road. “Please be careful, _monsieur_!” She touched his arm urgently. “It
is a school here.”

“Is it the school conducted by the rustic bard of whom the girls were
speaking? Does he really make poems to you?”

“Yes.” She spoke stiffly. “It is the school he teaches, Pierre Gay. He
was—was always very kind to me.”

Marcel muttered something she did not catch. She saw Pierre, his dark
head bare, coming down the path to the schoolyard gate. “Perhaps you
would like to stop, Simonne?” his tone was gentle again. “No doubt he
would like to see you in your lovely costume.”

He stopped the car abreast of Pierre, who looked at them for a moment,
bewildered, startled out of this quietude. Then he recognized Simonne
and the books he carried dropped to the turf. He came quickly around to
her, scarcely glancing at Marcel. And for a while, standing by the car
door, he gazed at her and did not need to speak, for all his soul was in
his eyes. Then he managed to say, “It went well, the closing? Your
valedictory—?”

“All went well, Pierre. It—it was wonderful. I wish you could have been
there. But, Pierre, this is Monsieur Bernard, who comes from France, who
was Edmond’s dear friend and who is to be my guardian.”

The two men looked at each other, measured each other, the quiet country
youth and the man of the boulevards and of the high exploits, and each
knew, somehow, that they met on a common ground in what they felt for
this girl.

“I am honored to know you, Monsieur Bernard.”

“And I to know you, Monsieur Gay.”

That seemed to end it. The motor was still running. She looked almost
piteously at Pierre’s solemn face, at his eyes that seemed tired. She
said, “I will see you soon, Pierre—very soon.”

“Yes, Simonne—very soon. Goodby.”

Marcel nodded. The car moved off. Pierre stood watching it, watching the
bright head so close to Bernard’s shoulder. He caught his lower lip with
his teeth. The road was empty, deserted, all the valley was filled with
the quiet of mid-afternoon, the children, in their magic way, had
vanished. He turned presently and picked up the books he had dropped. A
sheet of paper had fallen from one of them. On it were some verses he
had made while the little ones were writing their themes. He glanced at
them. They were for Simonne on her graduation and he had thought them
good and thought how lovely it would be to read them to her high up on
the Beaumont this afternoon. Now he crumpled the paper into a ball and
flung it into the gully that ran through the schoolyard. He watched it
bob along and disappear down the hill towards the river. The river would
carry it down to Fundy and oblivion—the pre-destined home, he thought
bitterly, of such dreams as his.




                              Chapter III
                             SIMONNE PASSES


The day was kind to the old house of the Carons, the sunlight gilded the
mossy shingles of the roof, the thick green foliage of the vines hid the
cracked and rotting clap-boards of the walls, the leafy birches and
maples concealed the broken shutters, the peeling paint. And, within,
old Artemise had done wonders with the ancient furniture, the worn rugs,
the decrepit hangings. The faded house seemed to have one last splendid
effort, like a war-broken soldier, to stand erect and proud, to do honor
to her, the last of her line.

From room to room and through the neglected gardens to the little brook
where she and Edmond used to swim, she conducted him, talking freely,
gaily. It was so good to have someone who was interested in these things
that were her life, someone to listen sympathetically and share her own
innocent pleasure. But Marcel Bernard’s joy, though she did not know it,
was far more in her than in the house of her fathers. He had never had
such an experience as this, had never known any other girl quite like
her. The thought of the years ahead, years in which she would be always
close to him, filled him with a heady intoxication that gave way to
swift sobriety and, with it, depressing doubts and ponderings.

To be with her and not—love her? He tried to laugh at himself, to tell
himself he was becoming childish. He was past thirty now, she was only
eighteen. He was, already, old and wise in the ways of the world, old
and wise too, he assured himself, in the ways of love. With such as
Simonne he had nothing to do. Her innocence, her sweetness, her
youth—they were not for him. He steeled himself against her and swore
to such gods as he knew, and vowed on her dead brother’s memory, that to
him she would be just a little girl with whose future he had been
sacredly entrusted. But there were times, as when he bent to smell the
flowers she had gathered from the garden, when he caught the fragrance
of her hair, touched the smoothness of her arm, when he felt a wild, mad
drumming in his blood, a desire greater than he had ever before
experienced.

“Bah! It is just the newness of it, the novelty of having this lovely
child in my care. It will wear off. It will have to wear off. Let me
leave her for a while, let me have some time to think, to map out my
course of conduct, and all will be well. If I—if I were to fall in love
with her—how preposterous!—I should never forgive myself.”

So, for his own protection, though he found himself strangely loath to
leave her and lingered with her in the garden until it was almost
sunset, he declined her invitation to supper and, telling her of letters
to write and others to read, he drove slowly back to St.-Joseph and the
quiet of the inn. And, at once, he began to feel lonely for her, began
to know, as never before, how empty and selfish his own life had been.
There had been regret in her eyes when he left her, even though he
promised to come for her around noon the next day—and that look of
wistfulness had made his heart soar, had made him absurdly happy.

“Now, I must come out of this,” he assured himself as he sat on the wide
window sill of his room, gazing out on the blue dusk over the marshes.
“This is like an old man having mumps or some other childish ailment. A
convent-girl, a little one fresh out of school—And you, my wise
Monsieur Bernard, little friend of the Folies-Bergère, little frequenter
of all the hot-spots, and beloved of the croupiers at Monte Carlo—for
you, she is forbidden. You must, without delay, make arrangements for
her future—”

He tapped his teeth with his pipe-stem. “Let us see. There must be a
legacy, and a good one, from Edmond. Just now I can make sure that it is
rather a handsome one, enough certainly to enable her to study further
or find a husband or—_Bon_! I shall take her to Montreal and find there
a wise companion for her and let her meet people. Some good youth with
lots of money and, let us hope, some sense, will quickly discover her;
they will marry and I, conscious of a good deed well done, will take
myself back to France and perhaps marry a forty-year-old widow. That,
_hélas_, is what I deserve. Had I met Simonne eight years ago or—”

He laughed ruefully, swung himself down from the window-seat. “I am such
a grand old man, already guardian to a little orphan! I have played some
queer parts, but never one so strange as this nor one perhaps so
difficult. Still, it will not be difficult unless I make it so. I must
be careful. I must be aloof, impersonal—in short,” he finished gravely,
“I must be a man.”

He thought of Pierre Gay, the shabby, dark-eyed schoolmaster. He had
read Pierre’s story in his eyes as they gazed upon Simonne. “But there
is nothing there for him. She is made for something better than the
poverty-stricken existence of a schoolmaster’s wife. She will be well
away from him; she is so susceptible, so gentle towards everything. But
I think she will have none of him.”

That was so.

Even as Marcel was sitting in the window of the inn, Simonne and Pierre
were walking down the Beaumont. She was far away from Pierre tonight. He
knew it and it made him heart-sick. She tried, too, so hard to be kind,
to be gentle, to make him think that everything was as it always had
been, between them. She chattered gaily of the closing, of the crowds,
of Marcel Bernard, and she did not notice how always her talk came by
not too devious routes back to Marcel Bernard.

“But what do you know of this fellow?” Pierre’s brow was cloudy, his
voice gruff. “He drops down from the skies and you immediately accept
him as one sent straight from heaven.”

Her smile vanished then. It was true. He was always in her thoughts. All
this time she had been with Pierre, all the time she talked of other
things, it was of Marcel Bernard she was thinking. Of how he had looked
when she told him her name in the Grotto, of how their eyes had met when
he came into the assembly-hall, of how she had faltered in her speech,
of how proud he had been of her.

“He—he seemed as one sent from heaven, Pierrot. Think! Had he not come,
who would have been there to see me, to be interested in me, to come to
me after it was over and tell me it was well! Please do not be angry
with me—please! He was Edmond’s friend. It was Edmond who sent him.”

“But to have such a man for a guardian!” Pierre shook his head. “It is
preposterous! It is not right!”

“Why is it not right? He is good, kind—”

“He is a man of the world—very much of the world—and you—you are so
beautiful. To such a man you will be like some rare untasted wine to a
gourmet, like some potent untried drug to an addict. He will—”

She felt her body grow hot and her blood seemed to thicken in her veins.
She knew what Pierre meant—knew vaguely just what he was thinking
about. “And I—have I not something to say about that?”

“What will you say? You are young, impressionable. Half the silly women
in the world are ready to make themselves sillier over men like Marcel
Bernard—adventurers, romantic figures. You will fall in love with him.”

“I—I will not.”

“No doubt you already have—and do not know it.”

“Pierre! You are being mean and cruel. You are hurting me and never
before have you been unkind—”

“I can’t help it. Simonne!” He laid his hand on her arm, stopping her,
making her look at him. “It almost drives me mad to think of you—going
away with him, being with him all the time. I—I could stand not having
you for my own as long as I knew you were here in Memramcook, as long as
I knew you were no one else’s. I was resigned to that. I hoped that in
time you would come to love me enough to—to marry me. Then he
comes—and I feel that I am losing you forever.”

“Do not say that, Pierre!”

“I must say it! Do not go with him, Simonne. Stay here—stay with me. I
promise you I will make you happy, and you will never regret. These
hills, this valley, this place—you always loved it here, your ‘valley
of the stars’ you named it and wondered that Edmond was not content with
it. Now you—”

“But I will come back. You know I will come back.”

“You will not come back to me. I feel it. I know it. You will change. He
is rich. You will be rich. You will meet new friends, learn to love new
things. You will have new values and the poor schoolmaster of Memramcook
with his out-at-elbows suit and his too-long hair—you will laugh at him
and at yourself for ever having bothered to listen to him.”

“No! No, it will never come to that. I shall never forget you,
Pierre—never forget that a poet sang to me when I was young and fair.”

He looked despairingly at her. “But you will go away. I will come up
here on summer evenings to watch the sunset and you will never come.”

“Some night—I promise you.”

“I—I hope you will be happy, Simonne. I want you to be.”

“I will be. Oh, it will not be for long, I tell you. But he—M. Bernard
has plans for my future. I must study something, learn to do something
well, so that you and he will be proud of me. It is a chance I cannot
miss. I was almost in despair, you know, wondering what I should do
after the convent closed; then he came—”

“I know. It is well for you.”

“Yes.” They had come now to the sagging gates of her home and stood
there under an aged elm where the birds chirped softly and the leaves
rustled with little whisperings. The evening was warm, the air soft and
fragrant with the smell of rich earth lately turned by the ploughshare.
“And I shall come back one day, Pierre, and make the old house young
again—new paint, new shingles, new flowers, new curtains—and you then
will come each day and have tea with me. We shall walk up the Beaumont
again and look down upon the world and it will be a better world for I
shall have learned something about it.”

“I do not know if that will make it better. Perhaps it is best when seen
with the eyes of youth and freshness, perhaps there will be a too-old
wisdom in your eyes, Simonne, when you return.”

“You try to spoil it all for me, Pierre.” She looked darkly at him. “It
seems that you—that you do not want me to have anything. You want me to
bury myself here, to be poor, forgotten, unhappy—”

“No, I do not—indeed I do not. I want your happiness more than anything
else. It is just that I—_Bien_! We will let it pass, little one. Go and
be glad, and, if you will, remember that I always love you, that I will
still be here in these places where we were happy and that I will be
thinking of you.”

“I will not forget, Pierre. Good night.”

He took her hand and carried it to his lips and kissed it. She wanted to
fling herself into his arms, to cling close to him, to comfort him; not
to leave him like this, so unhappy, so forlorn. But he dropped her hand
and went away quickly and she watched his spare, shabby figure go down
the road to the village and it seemed tonight that the road went far,
far away beyond her ken and that Pierre would keep on walking.

She leaned against the gatepost and dried her eyes with her
handkerchief. It had been such a happy day to end on this sad note. They
had been friends so long, she and Pierre. They had spent so many bright
and carefree hours together. Perhaps he was right, perhaps, for him and
her, life would never be the same again. She was on the threshold of a
new world, and gay and enticing that world seemed. It would be the smart
world of fine cars and yachts, of grand hotels, of wealthy,
luxury-loving people—people whose ways were foreign to Pierre Gay,
whose lives, which he called useless and empty, he affected to despise.

She found herself championing Marcel now. There was nothing empty or
useless about Marcel’s life. There couldn’t be. He was so strong, so
vital, so sure of himself. He would show her how to make something of
her life. The future held no terrors for her now. Marcel would mount her
on a winged steed. He would ride with her and they would travel fast and
far.

She walked slowly up the drive where the pines and cedars swayed and
rustled, where the little brook gurgled along the roadside and in the
thickets the birds stirred the dry leaves, and summer insects glowed in
the grass. Artemise was still in the kitchen, sitting in the old rocker,
dozing in the dusk, with Maréchal, her big tortoise-shell cat,
slumbering in her lap.

She awoke from a nap as Simonne stood in the doorway, watching her with
a little smile. The old eyes peered dimly and the thin, hesitant voice
said, “Ah, Madame Amélie, you are then returned! Has M’sieur Guy—” She
stopped, shaking her head. “I was dreaming, Ma’m’selle Simonne. I think
in my dream it is long ago, before you are born, when first your mother
have come here. You are so like her and there in the twilight—It makes
all things the same, the twilight, and the years seem nothing. She used
to come in that door, just at dusk, when she first came here. Like you,
she was always kind to Artemise.”

“It makes me glad to think I am like her.”

“Oh, much like her. Now you go away, _hein_? You go to Mo’réal and be a
great lady. You marry some rich man and come back here in the
summer-times maybe with your little ones.”

“_Aï_, Artemise!” She laughed softly. “You travel too fast, _mon amie_.
I do not think of marrying yet.”

“But that young man—he who is your guardian—he thinks of it.”

“How can you say that! You do not know—”

“My eyes are not so dim. The way he spoke, the way he looked at you—”

“You imagine things, madame. He is a great man, that one, and many girls
have been in love with him. Is it likely then that he would care for me?
It is just because I am Edmond’s sister that he is kind to me. Only
that.”

Artemise shook her head. “It may be that many have loved him, yet he may
never have loved. That is possible.”

Yes, Simonne liked to think so too. She had dreams, so many dreams.
Bidding the old dame goodnight, she took her dreams with her up to the
big room under the eaves that had once been her mother’s, that now was
hers. What if he did love her? What if he found in her something that
made him happier than all those others could make him? What if it should
happen that all her life would be spent with him? She would be Madame
Bernard, and in summer they would come here to Memramcook and perhaps
some day, on the road they would pass Pierre. Pierre would walk in the
dust that billowed up from the wheels of their car—

Vivid, girlish dreams, running hither and thither, but always in bright
places, always in places where there was no cloud, no shadow, no faded
flowers, no stark and winter-stripped tree. Marcel—always Marcel. She
sat at her window until the last light had gone and the stars came out
in the blue sky; sat there happy in her dreaming, not minding the
solitude at all for now she felt she would never again be alone.

“Madame Bernard,” she murmured. “Yes, perhaps it will be like that. And,
oh, I hope Pierre will not hate me then. Pierre was very angry tonight.
Never before have I known him to be cross with me, but tonight he was
like a bear, so dark and scowling.”

Pierre, at that moment, was walking purposefully across the marsh to
St.-Joseph. His brow was still lowering, his eyes still very dark and
cloudy. He raged at his own impotence, tortured himself with the thought
that here she was slipping away from him, going away forever. And to
what? Yes, to what? That was what angered him most, that doubt, that
fear, that question to which he must find an answer. She had no one,
that little girl—no one. Blindly she gave herself into the care of this
stranger. No doubt, of course, that Edmond Caron had duly appointed him
to be her guardian, but Edmond was a wild and harum-scarum sort of
fellow. Irresponsible, himself, it was quite unlikely that he would give
any thought to the kind of man he would want to be his sister’s
guardian.

“Perhaps,” mused Pierre, making a face at Georges Gauvin’s cows as they
cropped the marsh grass by a rail-fence, “I shall do no good at all by
going to him, but go to him I will. She would not thank me. No doubt,
she would be angry with me and tell me I had no right to do such a
thing. She would be wrong. I have a right and to me it is the best right
in the world: I love her and whatever I do is for her.”

He found Marcel Bernard sitting on the rustic bench on the verandah of
la Maison St.-Joseph, smoking his pipe and looking at the stars. He
said, “_Bonsoir_, M. Bernard. It is a lovely night, this.”

“It is a memorable night,” said Bernard. “I have never known one more
lovely nor an air so pure as this nor yet such peace as you have here in
the valley. It is the nearest thing to Paradise that I can imagine.”

It was Paradise, thought Pierre, till you came. He said, “Yes, it is all
you say of it. It is what the English poet Gray describes as ‘far from
the madding crowd’. But you, _monsieur_, belong rather to the madding
crowd, _n’est-ce pas_?”

“Yes.” Bernard spoke after a moment. “If one must belong definitely to
one crowd or the other, I doubtless rank as one of the madding. I have
never thought much about it. I was born into the life I know, just as
you, no doubt, were born into this.”

“Simonne was born into this, _monsieur_.”

He felt Bernard’s hard, clear gaze dart towards him. “Yes?” The
Frenchman’s voice was faintly amused. He guessed now why the
schoolmaster had troubled to stop and talk to him. The poor fellow was
setting himself up as Simonne’s protector.

“Yes.” Pierre’s words came faster now. “This is the only life she has
known ever. True, hers has been superior to the lives of the other
little girls in Memramcook. She has had more opportunities at home,
perhaps, but of the world, your world, M. Bernard, she knows nothing.
She was content with what she had here—the hills and the marshes, the
woods and the river. She would always have been happy here, if you had
not come.”

“Without granting what you say, _mon ami_, has it occurred to you that I
had no choice about coming here? I made a promise to a man who is dead.”

“Yes—yes, I know that. But you did not promise to take her away from
home, to introduce her to the life of the cities.”

“Which must, of course, be a wicked and dangerous life—that is what you
wish to say, isn’t it?”

“It is. I—I question your qualifications, M. Bernard, to act as
guardian to Simonne. You are, if you will pardon my saying so, hardly
the type of man—”

He stopped. Bernard had got to his feet. Pierre stood up, too. Bernard
tapped the dottle from his pipe onto the palm of his hand, and threw the
dry ash and cinders away. “You are a good fellow, Gay,” he said quietly.
“You are sincere and honest. You are also very easy to see through. I am
so used to devious-minded people. You are worried, I take it: over
Simonne; you wonder if I am capable of looking after her, if perhaps she
will not come to harm. I will be honest and sincere with you: she will
come to no harm with me. My sole desire is to help her to find a spot in
life, to guide her, to take her brother’s place.”

Pierre was taken aback by this candid speaking. He had expected Bernard
to be angry, to fly at him or at least to laugh at him. “You—but, if
you will pardon me again, _monsieur_, you are one who has a reputation
with women; Simonne is young, impressionable; to her you are a glamorous
figure and she—”

He could feel Marcel Bernard’s deliberate gaze. He heard him say
deliberately: “I am no glamorous figure to myself, Gay. And that, my old
one, is what matters. I have no illusions about Marcel Bernard. You
agitate yourself needlessly, my friend, if these are the things that
trouble you. She is to me just a little girl, the sister of my dead
friend, entrusted to my care.”

“You speak fair, M. Bernard,” Pierre said grudgingly. “And I believe
you. You will promise me that you—that you will never make love to her,
that you will have nothing to do with her—”

“You talk like a father-confessor—” Bernard grinned—“working on the
village Don Juan.”

“You have been called Don Juan, _monsieur_—and not in a village.”

“Damn it, Gay, you are a persistent fellow! Very well, then, I promise,
if it makes you feel any better, that little Simonne is forever safe
from me.”

“Thank you, monsieur.”

“It makes you feel better?”

“Much better.”

“You care a lot for the little Caron yourself?”

“More than I like to think.”

“It is sad, that. You would not, however, want her to give up her
chances of advancement and bury herself here. Edmond left her some
money, enough to complete her education and give her a little besides.
Perhaps some day she will come back to you.”

“I think not.”

“Ah, you are a pessimist, I fear. But you are a sturdy fellow and she is
fortunate to have such a champion.”

“As she is fortunate in having you, M. Bernard.”

“That is as it may be.” Bernard’s voice was serious. “I feel that this
is a grave responsibility, I assure you. When you came along I was
thinking of it. Indeed, I have thought of little else since I found out
Simonne was not the child I expected to see, but a young lady. What is a
guardian supposed to do, can you tell me?”

“I—I had hoped to be her guardian, her—I think I should have known
what to do—I’d have starved for her, gone in rags for her, suffered
hell for her, killed for her—all those things I was prepared to do.”

“Very heroic, I’m sure—and very poetical. But I mean, in a practical
sense. I can, of course, find good teachers for her, good companions,
good influences. I have no relatives in this country, unfortunately, but
I have a good many friends in Montreal. There is one, Adèle Mercier, who
might do. We shall go see her when we get there.” Abruptly he changed
the subject. “Did you know Edmond Caron very well?”

“Not at all well. He didn’t spend a great deal of time around
here—mostly in Moncton tinkering with aeroplanes. I had only slight
acquaintance with him.”

Yes, thought Marcel, Edmond would find little to interest him in this
rather solemn and mournful young man. Edmond liked swift movement,
whether in persons or things, which was why he had loved airships.
“Edmond was quite a man in France, chief engineer with la Compagnie La
France Aeronatique. He had been working on a new engine that far
surpassed anything we had ever seen. He loved his work. It was a passion
with him.”

“And it cost him his life.”

“Yes, that is the price one sometimes pays—for the thing one loves. And
perhaps it is not too big a price at that.”

“Well, I have detained you too long, M. Bernard. I shall go now. You
will forgive me if I have seemed to overstep some bounds. You will
understand that it is because I care so much for her—so much. I would
kill the one who harmed her, _monsieur_.”

He said it matter-of-factly, but no one could mistake his earnestness,
his purpose. Bernard laid a hand on his shoulder. “It must be a great
thing to care like that, M. Gay. It does you honor. And, believe me, I
understand and appreciate the sentiments that brought you here, that
made you speak as you did. So now, goodnight. Do not worry about her.
She will be safe in my care.”

He sat there, smoking, long after Pierre had gone. Tomorrow he would
return to Montreal, and Simonne would go with him. His delight at the
prospect was quite out of proportion, he knew that. Perhaps, he thought,
it would be better to start out right and let her take the train. But
no, that would be a confession of fear, of weakness. And he was not
afraid of himself nor had he anything but the greatest confidence in his
strength. “Anyway,” he mused, “if I even dared to kiss her that
confounded schoolmaster would find out about it in some occult way and
come after me on murder bent.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Simonne was ready, her trunk all packed and her little cases neatly
arranged on the verandah when he drove up the next day at noon. She had
said all her farewells in the village. “All except Pierre,” she told
Marcel. “I did not see him. There is a substitute teacher there today
and she did not know where he had gone or when he would be back.”

“That is strange. He didn’t say anything last night.”

“You were talking with him last night?”

“Briefly.”

She looked at him, questioning him with her eyes. “He—he came to you to
speak about me.”

“Yes. He—is very fond of you. He came simply to ask me to take good
care of you.”

“He was not angry, not—?”

“Not at all. I can understand how he felt. He loves you, Simonne.”

She colored under his steady regard. “Oh, I do not know.”

“You do not love him?”

“I do not know what love is, _monsieur_.”

He laughed. “In your ignorance, _ma chère_, you are only one of a vast
company.”

“Even you—you do not know?”

“I thought I did—” He began to pick up her travelling-cases and stow
them in the rumble-seat. He wasn’t going to discuss love with a
convent-girl. Confound women, anyway, courtesan or convent-girl, they
were always eager to philosophize on love. He had engaged in too many
such verbal tilts and in their aftermaths.

Alphonse, the aged consort of Artemise Gautreau, came to help him strap
the trunk on the big luggage-carrier. Soon the last buckle was fastened
and they were in the car. Old Artemise was crying into her apron.
Alphonse rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. In the
village-street children and grownups waved cheerily at them and Marcel
sounded the deep-throated horn in reply. Then they left the village
behind and arrowed across the marsh on the Post Road to Quebec. Her eyes
lingered on the valley, vast and peaceful in the sun. She turned in her
seat and gazed at the golden cross atop the spire of the Church of
Lourdes which perches high up on the Beaumont. Quietly, in her heart,
she said goodby to all this. To Pierre, she said goodby. She had a
feeling, amounting to belief, that he was sitting up there on the
Beaumont, among the ferns and the bracken, looking down on the valley,
down on the world, down on the passing of his love.




                               Chapter IV
                         THE GOVERNOR’S GARDEN


The wind rippled past them, hummed steadily in their ears. It played
with Simonne’s hair, impishly plucking out gleaming strands from under
her red beret and making them blow in the sun as if to say, “Here is a
prettier gold than yours, my friend.” The long winding miles of road
slid under the nose of the chrome gargoyle who rode far out in front of
the white car. Cottages, farmsteads, towns fled by them and the great
motor sang with organ tones, smooth, throbbing, beautiful.

Out of Westmorland now and through the quiet country and the sleepy
villages of Kent—Cocagne, Richibucto, Ste-Anne; northward to
Northumberland and the long bridge over the Mirimachi. Here they stopped
to drink pop and here to eat ice-cream. She saw the twinkle in his dark
eyes as he watched her licking the strawberry cone. She colored, smiled
up at him, feeling very young, very awkward, but very happy. He was
looking at her as if she were a little child, he was amused at her
enjoyment of the sweets he bought her, at the way she rounded the
ice-cream with her pink tongue and the way she looked at it as if
measuring it.

“_Bébé!_” he said chidingly, his teeth flashing white.

“But I am not _bébé_!” The grey-green eyes were resentful. “Yes, I like
ice-cream, bon-bons—”

“It is not only that.”

“No? Then what is it, M. Bernard?”

“It is”—He drew a deep breath—“it is just that you seem never to have
had the mothering, the care of parents, the love—”

“I had Edmond. Oh, and I had Artemise and Madame Plourde and Alphonse
and Mère Angélique and—and Pierre.”

“They could not make up to you for what you lacked, Simonne.” He
thought, she has been cheated out of so much love; years that should
have been crammed full of affection, of cherishing, of sweetness, of
warmth, have been dry, empty, lonely, barren, for this little one. Even,
she does not know what it is she has missed. Because she has never known
a deep love, she is ignorant of what such love can mean. She is lonely,
pathetic, making a little world of her own in her heart, living in it,
playing at happiness.

“Are you thinking about me, _monsieur_?”

“Simonne,” he said sternly, “I am being the guardian now, pondering
seriously on my duties. Will you have some more ice-cream?”

“Oh! I—no, I think not, thank you.”

“Well then, we will go on. Tonight, I think, we will stop at Petit
Rocher, leave early in the morning, stay the next night at the Château
Frontenac in Quebec and end up at Montreal the day following. Is it
well?”

“It—it is heavenly, _monsieur_.”

“You have never been to Quebec?”

“I have never been anywhere—except Moncton, Shediac and Cap Brulé. But
I have seen pictures of Quebec and I have read books about it and Sœur
Jeanne d’Arc, who comes from there, talked often of its wonders. How I
shall love to see it, to walk in those places where great men like
Champlain and Frontenac and Talon once walked.”

“And wicked men like François Bigot and Hugues de Paen and ladies like
Angélique des Méloises.”

“They were very wicked, I fear. But they must have been happy some
times, even in their wickedness.”

“Ah, no doubt.” He nodded gravely. “They were wicked in the grand
manner, Simonne—meaning, if you’re sure to have indigestion, you might
as well have it from lobster and champagne as from bread and cheese.”

“I like lobster,” she said gravely as they got into the car again; “I
have never tasted champagne.” He looked at her sharply but the pretty
mouth was quite grave and he could not see the twinkling green imps that
danced in her eyes. He could not keep from glancing at her profile, the
slightly tilted nose, the round, stubborn little chin, the long lashes,
the golden tan of her cheek and neck.

“Are you happy, Simonne?”

“Ever so happy.” Her shoulder moved instinctively closer to his arm,
then drew shyly away. He found himself wishing it had stayed there,
wanting to put his arm about the slim shoulders and draw the warm, vital
little body close to him. He could sense, had sensed from the start, the
utter innocence and sweetness of her. It thrilled and abashed him. It
made him fetch himself up very short right now, made him think darkly,
you’ve done many things in your life that were unworthy and ignoble, but
if you play lightly with this young heart, you are less than a man. And
he thought of his promise to Pierre Gay and thought of Edmond Caron
whose little sister she was.

“Are you always so thoughtful, _monsieur_?” The big round eyes had never
left his face. “You talk to me, I answer; then you become lost in your
own thoughts and think no more about me. Tell me: I am not a care to
you?”

“Of course not, child. How could you ever think that?”

“You are a busy man. You are famous. You must have many things to do;
yet you came for me and—”

“That was a duty I owed to Edmond,” he said, and felt the hurt his words
gave her. “It has turned into a great pleasure.” He smiled down at her.
“You know, I thought I’d have to have a _bonne_ for you and that I’d
have to set up a nursery in my house. Instead, I suppose I’ll have to
advise you about your evening gowns, your car, your sweethearts.”

She was silent for a good part of a mile. He thought she had forgotten
his words, but she said, as if he had only just spoken; “And—will you
like that rôle better than the one of nursemaid?”

In his heart he knew he wouldn’t like it at all. He would hate her
sweethearts—a lot of impossible young pups, no doubt. “I have no
choice,” he said. “I’ll have to like it. Oh, I will like it.”

“You will like it—yes.” She looked down at her hands. He would like it
if she had some other one for sweetheart, some man who would take the
worry of her away from him. He didn’t care for her—not that way. To
him, to the great Marcel Bernard, she was just a little _fille du
convent_—a convent-girl—whom he had to look after because of a promise
made to her brother. She felt sad, thinking so; but she knew it must be
like that.

She didn’t talk much after that. They came at dusk to Petit Rocher and
put up at the inn there. Sitting across from him at the little table she
was happy again. They were seated in a glass-enclosed _salle-à-manger_
that looked out on the smooth waters of Baie des Chaleurs, glinting with
golden light in the sunset. The tables and chairs were painted black and
orange and the glassware was blue. They ate fresh lobster and crisp
lettuce and drank tea.

“And I will smoke, if you please, Monsieur my guardian.” Brown fingers
demanded one of Marcel’s cigarettes. “For now, you see, I have left the
convent behind and am on my way to be a lady.”

“What is your picture of a lady?” The dark eyes were alive with
laughter.

Simonne wrinkled up her nose and blew smoke inexpertly. “Oh, you know.
You have met so many ladies. You are just making fun of me. But wait a
while, _monsieur_. I learn fast. You will see that.”

“Don’t learn too fast, Simonne. Don’t learn too much either. You—you
are very lovely as you are.” Thinking of some of the ladies she might
meet, might seek to pattern herself after, he half wished she were back
in Memramcook. He felt a nervous dread of the days that lay ahead of
him. He wished he were older, wiser; that he might feel more sure of
himself in this new part he had to play.

Dance music from Montreal—Mo-réal, as the sugar-sweet voice of the
announcer caressingly said it—came over the radio, breathing of mystic
moons and heavenly kisses, of moments ecstatic and sweet surrender. She
wished—how she wished!—that he did not look so stern, so pensive; that
he would laugh and be gay and swing her into his arms and dance with
her. He looked up suddenly from a deep contemplation of his cigarette
and his eyes, meeting hers, saw the wistfulness in them.

“You want to dance, Simonne?”

“Oh, very much! You will dance with me?”

He got up without a word. Shyly, hiding her eagerness, her sudden joy,
she came into his arms, all warm and golden. He held her lightly. Her
back was like a boy’s, firm and very straight, but the perfume of her
hair, the beauty of her lashes, the wonder of her eyes—these were a
woman’s, these thrilled him, captivated him. She danced naturally,
beautifully, lost utterly in the swing of the music. He felt that he
never wanted to let her go, felt that already she belonged to him, had
made herself a part of his life. He wanted to hold her close, close, and
press his cheek against her hair.

“I’ll always want to,” he thought bitterly. “More and more as the days
go by, and I dare not. I should not hold her in my arms like this. It
shows me too much the wonder of her. Edmond, my poor friend, you left me
a grave trust to fulfill. Had I known—But no, I’d have undertaken it
anyway. And I’ll fulfill it, _mon ami_; be sure of that.”

“You will have many to dance with in Montreal, Simonne,” he told her.
“All the time there are parties and always dancing. You will have your
fill of it.”

“I like best to dance with you, I think.” She looked up at him with
unconscious coquetry. “And you—do you like dancing with me?”

Too much, he might have told her—far too much. But he said, “Of course,
I shall always claim a dance from my ward.”

“And it will not be just a duty?”

“Never that. You turn all duties into joys, Simonne.”

“I am glad. Sometimes I have been afraid, you see.”

“Don’t ever be. No one could help loving you, child.”

He regretted saying it until he saw the happiness in her eyes, in her
smile. She is sweet, sweet, he thought then. Just a child, pleased with
the things that please a child. I can love her, surely, as I would my
own sister.

“It makes one happy to be loved,” she said gravely. “I have never been
so happy.”

After they wearied of dancing, he walked with her through the little
town. In his own heart was a strange, new elation. He had often thought
that there was nothing else in the world to stir his emotions, to awaken
him, to make him think that life was good. Yet tonight he felt a great
joy, a great lift in his spirits. Tonight he felt strong as he had not
felt in many years. He felt militant, ready to fight, to wage war
against fate—he who had long ago resigned himself to easy apathy.

This she had done to him.

They walked back under the stars, the gay young man of Paris and the
little Acadian convent-girl, and between them was a strange
understanding, an ease, a peace, that made him marvel, that she took
quite for granted but loved nonetheless. At the door of her room they
paused, gazed at each other, smiled.

“Am I a good guardian, Simonne?”

“Oh, _monsieur_!” She lowered her gaze, her cheeks hot with a sudden
blush. She touched the coarse tweed of his sleeve timidly and turned
away. He knew that she was crying and because he knew too that they were
tears of happiness he said only, “Good night, Simonne. I feel you’ll be
always happy with me.”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” It was only a choked whisper. “Always, with you.”
Then she opened the door and went in, closing it softly. He stood for a
moment staring at the dark panels, feeling lonely and bereft, seeing in
one flashing revelation how time could intensify that feeling until it
was torture. He went slowly to his own room and sat down on the bed,
pulling aimlessly at his tie, the myriad thoughts of his too-swift life
crowding, tumbling, jostling in his brain. The world he thought he knew,
the life that he had been so sure was yet in its fluent mold—where were
they now? His hard, uncompromising set of values, the prices he put on
things—what of them?

He lit a cigarette and stood at the window staring out at the blue and
silver mystery of the night over the Baie des Chaleurs. Somewhere out
there, he thought, there is an answer to all things, yet a man must seek
his answers in his own heart—must seek them there all his life or call
himself a failure. And you, Bernard, he thought, have never searched
very much or very deeply into yours. You must look now, look hard, and
let us hope to the kind God that there is some good thing in it.

There could be nothing but good in it, nothing that was not fine and
noble, nothing that was not admirable: so thought Simonne as, at her own
window, she pulled aside the curtains and gazed out. Swiftly, in her
heart, Marcel Bernard had attained godhead. She saw the blue-black
night, its robe so brightly jewelled, only as a vague background against
which thronged the bright pictures of the day, the teeming memories of
what he had said, of what he had done, of how gently, tenderly he had
held her in his arms as they danced. She closed her eyes, picturing his
dark head above her, seeing the clear line of his jaw, the firm bronze
of his neck, dreaming, dreaming—

Life was opening for her, slowly, beautifully. A bud unfolding into
flower, a crescent moon, a melody gathering strength. She could feel
tonight that all her world was changing; the lights, the colors, even
she herself, would be different from now on. The few hundred miles she
had put between herself and the Beaumont were interstellar spaces, so
remote, so of another era, seemed the hours she had spent upon the
hilltop, so unreal the things she had said there and dreamed. Only
Pierre’s epic was real—“I love you.” She could still hear those softly
spoken, earnest words. She would hear them down the endless slopes of
Eternity and she would see the wistful eyes of him and picture him
sitting alone upon the hill watching the roads that lead into the Valley
and out of it; always watching.

She lay awake in the greyish dark of the little white-walled room under
the steeply pitched roof of the inn. She watched the lights of cars
passing on some distant hill as they moved across the ceiling above her
bed, wondering about those who journeyed so late, who they were and
where they went, thinking that perhaps tomorrow night, perhaps on many
nights, the lights of Marcel’s car would shine into cottage windows and
others would wonder about her and him.

            “Who passes by this road so late?
            Compagnon de la Majolaine!
            Who passes by this road so late?
            Always gay!
            Of all the King’s knights ’tis the flower—”

Her lips shaped the lilting words of the old play-song of her days at
Ste.-Ursule. It was Marcel who passed by the road so late and he, of all
the King’s knights, was the flower. Marcel—she said his name, loving
it, loving him not shyly, not shamedly now, but with a great singing in
her spirit, a light that was a glory. “_Bébé_,” she murmured, on the
border between waking and sleeping. “He called me _bébé_. I am not
_bébé_ any longer. I am a woman now—his woman.” And there was a smile
on her lips when she slept, curving their full red beauty, a smile that
still hovered there when she awakened to the sunlight in her room, to
the early morning bustle of Petit Rocher, the pre-breakfast clatter from
the kitchen, the up-and-at-’em tread of commercial-travellers passing
her door on the way down to the eggs and bacon, the goodly savor of
which, mingled with the incense of the coffeepot, came up to meet them.

Today Marcel planned on an early start, so to have extra hours in
Quebec. Simonne wore her little yellow frock and a jaunty woven hat of
fawn color and she had a red polo-coat that Edmond had sent her last
summer from Paris. Marcel had not yet appeared when she went downstairs
and out onto the verandah, out into the golden light and warmth, the
still lingering dew of the morning. Blue coated martens with jolly white
gorgets soared about the little bird-houses in the yard and darted
in-and-out at the tiny doors. At the foot of the steps a tall youth in a
McGill blazer was dusting the bonnet of his car.

“Wasted labor,” he said, grinning up at her, a merry grin. “But off with
the old dust and on with the new. You must be the goddess of Petit
Rocher—or are you just a visiting goddess?”

“I pass by this road,” said Simonne, smiling, thinking of the play-song.

“Alas!” said he. “All the best things pass. You go north, I’ll bet, and
I go south and—” She saw his gaze go past her. She turned and Marcel
was there at her shoulder. There was a shadow on his face and his eyes
were a little bleak. But all that passed when he looked down at her.
“How now, _ma petite_! You still have the convent trick of getting up at
dawn!”

“I shall have it until I acquire the smart world’s trick of going to bed
at that time. The early morning hours are the loveliest.”

“Yes. Well, shall we go to breakfast?”

“If you will, _monsieur_.” She smiled at the boy in the blazer, Marcel
nodded to him. They went in. He thought of the way he had reacted to
seeing her talking to that youth. Quite like a jealous schoolboy, he
told himself, half-amused, half-angry. Why, it is quite natural for her
to talk to young persons like herself. I am turning into a sort of
Bluebeard, I fear. It was jealousy—of all things. I am finding again
all those emotions I used to know, reverting to my childhood; I’ll be
having mumps or measles next.

“Simonne, do you always talk to strangers?”

“But no! That one—he was such a pleasant boy and today I am so happy—”

“Ah, yes—just bubbling over with happiness.”

“You did not mind—my talking to him, _monsieur_?”

“Of course not.” He smiled fondly at her across the crisp white
table-cover. “Today I am so happy myself that I could not be angry with
you no matter what you did. I could not be angry with anyone—not even
myself.”

“You are sometimes angry with yourself?”

“Often. Since I have become your official guardian I have to be very
severe with myself, you understand.”

“I am such a care?”

“Not such a care—unless a casket of precious stones is a care, or a
gold mine.”

“I am so precious! Ah, you make fun of me!”

He laughed, letting her think so, but he had not been making fun of her.
His had been a white night, filled with thoughts of his past, of this
present so utterly different from anything he had looked for. She was
making something different of his life, he knew; even in the short time
her path had merged with his, it was she who led the way. And women, he
had told himself over and over, lying there in the darkness—women were
the same, whether convent-girl or cocotte, whether sixteen or sixty; and
they could play the very devil with a man’s life. This one’s little
fingers can grasp as quickly and hold as strongly as the sharp-nailed
talons of any harpy of the boulevard. I must be careful. I must not make
a fool of myself. And this as much for her sake as for my own.

But he found all those sophisticated thinkings meant very little this
morning and all his worldly-wise resolutions were vanishing like the dew
on the rose leaves by the window where they sat. How bright her eyes
were this morning, how absurdly fast his heart beat when they looked
into his with worship ill-disguised. She reached out the window and
plucked a pink cinnamon-rose and gave it him without a word and he took
it wordlessly and breathed in its fragrance and fastened it to his lapel
as if it were something rare and precious.

Then there were sea-trout and thin slices of potato fried crisply and
soft rolls and honey and coffee. He thought, I could go on like this
forever. The joy of seeing her in the morning more than makes up for the
agony of losing her at night. Simonne, Simonne, what have you done to
me, you little witch, you warm, golden, funny little thing! Most
unguardian-like thoughts. He frowned at his coffee. Well, tomorrow they
would be in Montreal and he would hand her over to Adèle Mercier and go
about his business and forget her.

“_Eh bien!_” He gathered up his change, leaving a generous _pourboire_.
“Off to Quebec now, Simonne. I thought perhaps if we got there early
enough we could go to the Ursulines and talk with the Mother
Superior—you know, about your going to study there.”

“Oh, yes.” She didn’t smile. “But—but that is months away, is it not? I
will not have to study in the summer time or—I mean, M. Bernard, you
will not—” She stopped, utterly confused, trembling. She looked at him
beseechingly. And he knew she wanted to say, “You will not leave me
alone.” He felt guilty, knowing what had been in his mind, knowing that
the last thing in the world he wanted was to leave her alone.

“We will not talk of it now,” he said. “There is lots of time. I want
you to be happy now. _En route!_”

At evening the white car reached the heights of Levis across the broad
St. Lawrence from the lowering rock of Quebec, the Gibraltar of America.
The sunset light seemed to shine upon the centuries here as it
transformed grim grey battlement and bastion and ancient steeple and
sloping roof and winding street into a city of Elfland. “One can
imagine,” said Marcel, “that the great Cardinal Laval still is there in
his palace, that Louis de Buade, the great Frontenac himself, still
paces up and down at the Castle of St.-Louis, that Bigot and his wild
men-friends and gallant ladies still hold high revel at Beaumanoir, that
Jean Talon still looks in at his brewery. All their ghosts live there.
Hear the bells, Simonne!”

The golden pealing of the angelus bells came over the silver water,
striking against the tree-clad heights of Levis, echoing near and far.
They listened, enraptured. Slowly they drove down to the ferry and were
carried across the river to the Lower Town. Then up near-perpendicular
streets to the Château, standing on what was once the site of the Castle
of St.-Louis.

Here, thought Simonne, as, close at his side, she passed through the
arched doors, I enter upon another life, his life. Here was the smart
world of two continents, drinking, dancing, dining. Soft lights and
music attuned to their softness, deep carpets muffling the sound of
hurrying feet. She watched Marcel Bernard, on whom it all had no more
effect than the little inn at Petit Rocher. “You will rest in your room
for a little while, Simonne,” he said at her door. “Presently I will
come for you.”

“If you please, _monsieur_.” She gave him a smile and went into the
great room where the boy had set down her bags. Such a room! She had
heard Sophie St.-Amende and Lapage and others speaking of grand hotels.
She spent moments after the boy had gone, just gazing about her before
exploring the big tiled bathroom and all the other wonders. That took so
long, and the bath that followed it, that she was just brushing her hair
when Marcel came.

He watched her. Each stroke of the brush seemed to make brighter the
golden lights in the thick chestnut waves. She wore a white skirt and
sweater now and a little gold locket nestled in the brown hollow of her
neck. She could see him in the mirror as he sat by the window smoking
pensively, gazing at the river and the slow departure of a great vessel
bound for the sea. Watching him, the swift play of his emotions shown by
the movement of lip or eye, she forgot the hair-brushing. He glanced
over at her and in the mirror their eyes met and their glances locked
and held until both looked away.

“It is wonderful here, M. Bernard.”

“You like it?”

“I love it. Do not you?”

He shook his head. He didn’t like it. He was coming back into his own
world now, the gold and glitter, the laughter and jest, the champagne
and caviar; it had no attractions for him. In his own room he had
thought bitterly, resentfully, Here’s the end of this so happy
interlude, of these hours with her that are so innocent, so happy. And
he didn’t want them to end. He couldn’t see why all his life should not
be like this. But it couldn’t. “_Sapristi!_” he muttered. “I am becoming
soft and senile. I have been taking the nursemaid rôle too seriously.”

“But why don’t you like it?”

“It’s my world, Simonne, and I wearied of it long ago. But I shall enjoy
it tonight because I shall see how happy you are. It is fun for you,
eh?”

“Yes! It is like a fairy-tale for me. I think I am in a dream and fear
that presently I will wake up and find a sunbeam on my nose and hear the
bells of the convent and see Mademoiselle Cloutier standing over me
holding the little bell by the tongue all ready to rap me smartly with
the handle—‘Raise yourself, Simonne, sleepy one. Mark well, that is the
summons for chapel.’”

Marcel laughed. “That would not be such an unpleasant awakening as you
might think. There are lots of worse ones. Well, if you are ready,
_chère_, we will walk through the town and recall the history of New
France.”

But the evening was too warm, too glorious, for history, even such
colored history as Quebec’s. They found a little tea-room high up on the
hill and lingered there over supper until the stars came out above the
great river, over the dark hills that loomed across from them like
ramparts of a weaker fortress. There was a stillness on the city as they
gazed down upon its lights glimmering in the hazy dusk, yet around it
seemed to flow the tide of the centuries and all the splendid, the
gallant, the knavish, the wicked ones who had lived and died below this
frowning crag seemed to have left here something of their brief
existences and all about were shadows and whisperings, shadows of things
long gone, whisperings of words forgotten.

They felt its spell, its glamour, fall upon them like a magic cloak.
When they spoke their voices were low, softly pitched, yet clearly
audible. They did not speak much. He was thinking: in a little while now
this quiet joy will end. There will be no more of this sweet intimacy. I
will hand her over to Adèle. Yes, I can trust Adèle to make something of
her—something good. She is an anachronism, this little Caron. She wears
crinolines in a day of sheath-like skirts and backless dresses, yet, for
all the voluminous coverings of innocence and convent-teaching and
morals she is far less well protected against the wolves than are the
women of Adèle’s world. But she must never become hard, metallic, as
they are. She must not deride everything, as they do. She must keep that
warm glow in her eyes, that sweetness of expression about her mouth, and
she must keep always those little vigil lamps burning before the images
she has in her heart.

He did not know that his image had displaced all others, that before it
a votive fire burned strongly. Even now, watching the glowing tip of his
cigarette, the arc it made in the dusk or the little figures it
described as he gestured when he talked, she kept thinking, I love him.
I have loved him from the moment I saw him. And now I know what love is.
If Pierre asked me now I could tell him; at least I would know what I
wanted to tell him. I might not be able to put it in words. I love
you—_je t’aime_—those were inadequate words. Love—that was this
strange warmth, this tingling happiness, this melody in her heart, this
wonder that made the night and the stars and the little wind in the
trees and the sleepy twittering of the birds and the warm pine-scented
air—that made the whole world different—this was love.

He held the red coat for her when they were leaving. His hand touched
her shoulder and she trembled at his touch. Will he dance with me
tonight, she wondered. Oh, it would be wonderful to dance with him here.
Perhaps when we return to the Château—

When they did return the music lured them. But it was not the music of
the dance. That was elsewhere. Here a string quartette, lilting violins
and deep viola and mellow-singing ’cello, playing now a minuet of Lully,
now a measured sarabande, now Liszt’s “Dream of Love”, completed the
beauty of the night. The gorgeous counterpoint showered down upon them
where they lingered on the terrace.

Now the viols played Schubert’s Ballad from Rosamonde, that Simonne knew
well from the convent music-room—

               “The full moon rises o’er the height,
               But where, my love, art thou?
               And where the kiss of fond delight
               That sealed our truthful vow?”

The star-glow glimmered upon her face. The music seemed made for her,
for him, for this hour. Unspeaking they walked along, she close by his
side, but not touching him. In all her being was a great joy, a great
expectancy, a great readiness. They came to a place of silence and
solitude, yet all about she seemed to hear the rustle of silks, the
whispering of words warm and passionate and from the shadows what bright
and mocking eyes looked out at her and him!

“This was the Governor’s Garden, Simonne,” he said. “And lovers wandered
here under the moon and whispered things that were only the echo of
things whispered down the ages, just as if now—”

He stopped. He wanted to go on. Her face, uplifted to his, urged him to
go on, to say, as he had thought to say: “Just as if now I whisper of
love to you, my own, it will be only the echo of those echoed
whisperings. We are not real, nothing is real, but this thing that we
feel in our hearts, this great and terrible force that possesses us.
This only matters.”

But he did not speak. He looked down at her and slowly his arms came up
and encircled her and drew her close to him and for a moment he gazed on
her face that was like a white flower in the star-glow and for a moment
prayed and for a moment despised himself but for no moment resisted. His
lips came down to hers, lingered on hers lightly, ecstatically. Her own
warm arms were about his neck, clinging like a child’s arms and the
perfume of her hair, of her body, was a rose mist in which he was lost
to all sense of time or place or fitness.

For moments they stood as one. Her eyes were closed. She floated on a
great sea and bursting lights were all about her and in all her being
was surrender and dissolution that brought a weakness, a lassitude into
her limbs, that kept her where she was, wishing she might stay there
always. Then, almost brusquely, he loosed her and her arms slipped from
about his neck and reality came back—reality of flagstone and mortar
and bare night and stars. The music had ceased. The night wind was
suddenly chill as if it blew from the boreal places of Belle-Isle or
from the grey bleakness of Labrador. She felt as if she had tumbled from
the stars. She touched her lips still hot with the ardor of his kiss.
She could feel still the strong clasp of his arms.

“I’m sorry, Simonne.” His voice was as she had never before heard
it—cold, impersonal. “That should not have happened. You must forget
it, you understand. You must consider that it did not happen.”

She could not believe what she heard. Why should he say such things?
Perhaps it was because he had kissed so many women; perhaps he did not
want to be loved by her.

“It was the night, the stars, the music, the magic of this place, the
spell of old dead loves that still lingers here. It was all those
things.”

“And it was not I?”

“It was not you.” He lied, but did not know he lied. Surely, he told
himself, it was not her presence; had it been any other girl he would
have done the same. So it was wrong, it would be making a wrong worse,
to let her get any foolish ideas from this unreal episode. She was a
child, a convent-girl, of a caliber with fools and poets—warm,
romantic, building huge rose-windowed castles on a thing so trifling as
a kiss.

“And I must forget—forget that you—!”

“It will be well to forget.”

Suddenly, she laughed—not the warm, spontaneous laughter that he loved
to hear from her. She laughed as often he had heard other women laugh.
_Dame_, he thought, knowledge is born in them, and they’re sizing up a
man even while they love him.

“Why do you laugh, Simonne?”

For a moment she did not answer him. Her head was lowered and he could
not see her face. He put his finger under her chin and lifted it until
he could see her eyes that were dark, full of mystery, in that strange
light.

“I do not laugh at you, _monsieur_.”

“Then at what?”

“Oh, at a book I read once.”

“Yes?”

“You know Remy de Gourmont?”

“They did not let you read de Gourmont in the convent.”

“No, no, no. It was Edmond’s book. One thing in it I read that came back
to me when you were speaking and made me laugh; it was that a woman
still remembers the first kiss when a man has forgotten the last. I
could not understand it when I read it, but now—” She turned away, her
shoulders drooping.

“Simonne!” He reached out to stay her. He damned himself for ever having
done this thing. “Simonne, listen to me!”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” Obediently. He knew she wasn’t paying attention to
him at all; she was listening only to the sad things her own heart said.
But he floundered along, feeling ridiculous, futile, knowing that he had
fallen from some high place where she had set him. “A kiss is nothing,
Simonne—that is, I mean, you must think nothing of it. You are very
lovely, very sweet, and you are in my charge. Perhaps I should not have
kissed you. Certainly, I should not if it is going to cause you
regret—”

“Oh, no! Please—please do not think that, _monsieur_. Never regret. To
remember it will always make me happy—while it makes me sad, you
understand.”

He looked at her in desperation, started to speak, thought better of it.
They walked back to the Château and went in. There was dance music
here—throbbing, seductive, making one’s feet move to its rhythmic beat.
But now she did not want to dance. In the lobby someone called,
“Marcel!” She saw a red-headed girl in a Nile green evening gown,
sitting with a group of six. The girl had vivid violet-blue eyes, their
size and color accentuated by the extreme pallor of her face and the
garish redness of her mouth.

Marcel muttered something. His hand closed on Simonne’s elbow. “Come,
_petite_. I want you to meet these people. The girl is Adèle Mercier.”

Simonne walked obediently beside him. She felt the appraising, wondering
looks. She was glad of the touch of his hand on her arm. It gave her
strength. These people were so sure, so poised. She heard meaningless
names. A baron—one was a baron—at the convent one used to dream of
meeting a real live baron. It meant nothing now. She was conscious of
the Mercier girl’s wise eyes that seemed to look into her soul,
conscious too of lifted brows and faintly cynical smiles when Marcel
told them of his guardianship.

Some of them had known Edmond. They were kind to her. Adèle drew her
down on the cushions and looked at her as if she were a museum-piece,
amusedly but in friendly fashion. “So! And you are the secret of M.
Bernard’s disappearance from Montreal! You must have been the envy of
the convent when he arrived in all his glory. How does it feel to have
such a guardian?”

“I am afraid I am a burden to him. He expected to find a little girl,
you see, because Edmond always spoke of me as if I were _bébé_. Then
when he found I was not little—”

“Yes.” Adèle Mercier’s hair was like a deep flame. It was thick and she
wore it _en coronet_. Simonne thought, “Someday I shall wear mine like
that. Perhaps—perhaps he likes it like that.” She looked up at Marcel.
He was talking to some of the others. Looking at him, she forgot all
else, forgot where she was, forgot the girl beside her and did not see
the wise, pitying smile that curved Adèle’s mouth. She was thinking of
the Governor’s Garden, of his dear face above her in the stars’ pale
light, of his kiss that had been lovelier than her dreams of heaven.
Forget it, she thought, I could never forget it, _monsieur_—I have too
little to remember.




                               Chapter V
                          “YOU ARE NOT TO CRY”


Adèle Mercier rode with them to Montreal. Simonne was rather glad of her
presence, Marcel definitely so, inconsistently wishing, at the same
time, that she were in Hell or Halifax. But she sat there on the other
side of Simonne, who was pressed close to him as he drove. It didn’t
matter: all the warm, happy intimacy, all the light-hearted talk and
laughter of the road to Quebec, were gone now. Perhaps, if he were alone
with Simonne he could put things right, could chase that serious look
from her eyes, that little droop from her lips.

“I have done a very foolish thing,” he assured himself for the hundredth
time. “Something that it will take months, even longer, to undo. She is
so young, so impressionable. It may be that the moving finger of love
has inscribed something on her heart. But it is love she is concerned
with—not me. She will find the same rapture—and the same
sadness—again, with someone more her own age. She will forget. It is
nonsense, and sentimental nonsense, to say a woman still remembers the
first kiss when a man has forgotten the last. Perhaps I shall be the one
who longer remembers. The memory will be a happy one. I never before
knew such happiness as in that moment, never before hated myself so much
for having lived through other moments that were but a poor shadow of
that one. I wonder what Adèle would say if she knew. Perhaps she does
know. Women have a way of finding out such things without ever asking.”

Adèle knew. From the moment she saw Simonne looking at him, Adèle had
known. It twisted her heart a little to see that rapt, dreaming look in
this little girl’s eyes. There was the glow of first love in that look;
there was worship and surrender. But Adèle knew Marcel Bernard, knew he
was too strong to accept lightly such a precious gift as this little one
was holding out to him. Marcel was mature, of her world. Marcel had
known many loves. A pity this convent-dove should have her heart broken
over him. Still, mused Adèle cynically, watching the rain spatter and
stream on the sloping windshield, it is perhaps as well to have the
heart broken when one is young. That way it has a longer time to heal,
and it is more easily healed, just as it is more easily broken.

A grey murky pall of rain and mist blotted out the river and made the
cottages and church-steeples along their road look ghostly and unreal.
The windshield-wipers clicked back and forth, back and forth, like busy
metronomes marking the beat of the motor’s throbbing song; the tires
swished steadily on the pavement. Simonne sat quietly between them.
Today she could not talk to Marcel as she had on the way up from
Memramcook. It wasn’t because of Adèle’s presence. Had they been alone,
she and Marcel, it would have been no easier for her to talk to him.
Last night, in her room, she had cried herself to sleep. At times she
had hated him, wished he had never come her way. This pain of heart she
felt now was worse than any other ill she had known. Why had he kissed
her, held her like that, if it all must be forgotten? How could one
forget anything so poignantly sweet?

Perhaps, to him, it was neither new nor very sweet. Perhaps this girl of
the flamy hair and vivid blue eyes had known love with him. Perhaps what
she thought of as something godlike and holy meant little or nothing to
persons like Marcel and Adèle. Maybe when one got to know love better,
to have more of it, one didn’t suffer like this.

Today she felt like a stranger and saw in true perspective her position
with regard to Marcel Bernard. She had had no right to take him, to take
everything, so much for granted. He had been too good to her, devoting
all his attention to making her happy. Now he was back in his own busy
world and in it she had no place. Foolish to think that the pleasure of
those first few days was a permanent thing. She felt now that he was
slipping away from her, that whatever of nearness and understanding had
come into their relationship had given way to the bare bond of a
guardian to his ward.

“I was wished on him,” she thought miserably, hating the drab muggy day,
the sodden hedges, the murky sky. “He would have been as good to any
other girl, as kind. I wanted too much of him when he was already giving
me more than I was entitled to. What a silly little country-girl he must
think me! Well, I shall study to be different. I won’t go on looking as
if the heart had died in me, as if I didn’t care to live any longer;
though I feel that way. I won’t show it. I must not show it. Adèle would
never admit that a man had been able to hurt her.”

Adèle was looking at her, comically, with one eye; the other was hidden
by the rakish down-sweeping brim of her tan felt hat. Simonne smiled at
her, shyly. She knew, rather she feared, that Adèle had learned her
secret, that Adèle had guessed in a moment how she felt towards her
guardian. And Adèle was quietly laughing at her, thinking of it all as a
childish crush, much like the affairs one joked about at school.

Adèle said, “You and I will have a good time, Simonne. I won’t let you
become lonesome for your Acadian hills. While M. Bernard is out peddling
his little airships, you and I will go to the big shops, go riding, go
to concerts, to dances. We will be gay. One needs to be gay after years
of convent-life. I know. I served my time at Sault aux Recollets. One
gets quite out of touch with the world.”

“Which is just as well perhaps,” said Marcel, his eyes narrowed, peering
ahead into the slanting rain. “The world is a mess.”

“Ah!” The Mercier girl’s crescent-shaped brows lifted. “How cynical we
are this morning! Lay it to the rain and the foul weather, Simonne. We
weren’t made to go through life by the by-ways, _mes amis_, if we really
want to live we take the highroad. The traffic is thicker there, one
finds thieves, rascals, a thousand dangers—but one lives.”

“High road or low—they lead to the same place,” muttered Marcel
perversely.

“I suppose you’re regretting that you didn’t join the Trappists or some
other cheerful monks, M. Bernard,” mocked Adèle.

Marcel smiled at her wryly. “I have thought stranger thoughts,
_mademoiselle_. Sometimes, flying over those endless miles of ocean,
when it seemed that we must have got away from the world altogether, I
have had a glimpse of the wisdom of such people as do get away from it.”

“You’re flying around in circles, my winged one. Well, here’s where you
come to earth.” A toll-bridge was the bringer to earth. “You find
toll-bridges everywhere,” said Adèle to Simonne, looking slyly at Marcel
Bernard as he paid the fee. “On the road of life just as on the road to
Montreal. And when we can’t pay the toll—why, we just don’t go on.”

Marcel stared at her for a moment. “See what a splendid teacher I have
selected for you, Simonne. She will be philosopher, guide and friend to
you. In short order you will be well versed in the Mercier philosophy.”

“Some of it,” amended Adèle, fishing for a cigarette. “I’m not always
like this, Simonne—mostly on rainy mornings, and we don’t have so many
of those.”

“I shouldn’t mind if we had a lot of them, _mademoiselle_.” Simonne
looked fairly into the violet-blue eyes. “I should like to acquire some
wisdom.”

“_Oh, mon Dieu!_” Adèle almost choked on her cigarette. “So young and
already desirous of acquiring wisdom. Has M. Bernard made you feel that
you lacked wisdom, made you realize that it is a most important thing
for a girl to have?”

“I should just like to have it. Does it make one happier?”

“That depends on how miserable one has been. I think it is a consolation
at most times.”

“And a curse at others,” said Marcel. “Don’t get too much wisdom,
Simonne. You are lovely as you are.”

“Wisdom,” put in Adèle quickly, “would enable you to evaluate that
remark, Simonne. He throws little bouquets like that all along his road
like a king scattering smiles or a cardinal bestowing blessings.”

“I see,” murmured Simonne. She was learning, she thought. Yesterday she
would have taken the remark entirely to herself, would have made much of
it and built dreams and hopes upon it. She had learned already that one
takes the flowers, not forgetting that their freshness and fragrance
soon goes, that one receives the blessing but one still plans on
tomorrow’s breakfast.

They reached Montreal in the late afternoon. The rain had ceased, but
the sky was still grey and overcast. Marcel drove them to an old house
in Jeanne Mance Street. Adèle looked up at the topmost windows and said,
“That, Simonne, is where I live and where you shall live. M. Bernard
dwells in solitary state in Westmount. I helped him find the flat. It
was such fun. First he wanted a nursery for you, then he decided you
might have outgrown nurseries, and wanted a playroom. He has games and
picture-books there for you.”

Marcel laughed gaily. “What fun we had buying those books and games!
Adèle would say, ‘How old would she be? About fifteen?’ I’d say, ‘I
think perhaps not quite that old—say fourteen.’ Then we would march
into a book-shop and make for the juvenile shelves. We did not get you
any roller-skates but there is a nice paint-box and a basket-weaving
set.”

They laughed hilariously all the way upstairs. Simonne wondered if it
wouldn’t have been better if she had proved to be the little girl they
looked for. As it was, she made new problems for them. And if she had
been a little girl Marcel would have taken her home with him, she would
be with him all the time. How often, she wondered, would he come here.

It was a lovely, gracious place, with great, high-ceiled rooms, with
panel mirrors and modernistic furniture upholstered in white leather. It
was spacious, the rooms grander than those at the Château. A domestic,
whom Adèle called Monique, was there to help them. She was a
black-haired, brown-skinned little woman, part Indian.

Marcel, when Adèle asked him to remain, spoke ruefully of his mail, of a
thousand things that awaited his attention. “I will leave you and
Simonne to get acquainted and I will call you very soon. _Au revoir_,
Simonne.”

She gave him her hand, stilling its shakiness. She felt sick. She wanted
to cry, wanted to fling her arms about his neck and say, “Don’t go!
Please don’t leave me. I won’t bother you. I’ll sit in a corner or on
the doorstep—anywhere as long as I am near to you, as long as I can
call to you and you can hear me.” But Adèle was watching them and
Marcel’s mouth, though smiling, was stern. So she said simply, “_Au
revoir_, M. Bernard. You have been so kind to me. Believe me, I am most
grateful to you for—for everything.”

“Your servant, Mademoiselle Caron—always,” he said teasingly. He
touched her cheek lightly with his finger-tips, waved to Adèle and
hurried out of the apartment.

Simonne stared at the blank panels of the door, forgetting Adèle,
forgetting everything, knowing only that he was gone, that she was
alone. “Oh, why did he have to go? Why could he not—”

“First lesson.” Adèle’s voice startled her. “We must never let our eyes
say more than our lips, except to those we love and who love us.”

“Oh!” Simonne turned to her. “Were my eyes then tell-tale?”

“Ever so much.” Adèle came to her, put an arm about her shoulders and
led her to a huge davenport with soft white leather cushions. They sat
there. “Yes, I saw in your eyes last night at the Château Frontenac that
Marcel had become a sort of god to you. That is so, isn’t it? Or maybe
you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I—I don’t know. You see, he has been so good to me, so kind. Perhaps I
do not do well to repay his goodness, his kindness, by—by—”

“By falling in love with him.” Adèle shook her gently. “The only way a
girl of your age ever does fall, is in love, Simonne. Everything is
different then. Love is more important even than living. Then one falls
out of love, for some reason or other, and, oddly enough, the world
still wags on, the sun still rises and sets and one feels a forgotten
thrill at the sight of a box of bon-bons or even a nice lamb-chop with
string beans—which is just what Monique is cooking for us now.”

“That will be nice. It is lovely here. It is lovely of you to have me
here.”

Adèle laughed, “Funny child! I love having you here. I want you to be
happy and to help make you happy.”

“Have you known Marcel—M. Bernard”—hastily—

“Have I known him long?” Adèle helped her. “Five years. I met him when I
was a student at the Sorbonne. He was studying aeronautics then, so was
your brother Edmond. They used both to come to my apartment. We used to
sing and dance and be very gay. Edmond often spoke of you, so that
Marcel and I got to know you very well. We knew too Edmond’s trick of
forgetting that things and persons grow old and we might have realized
that little girls grow into big girls. Marcel must have been surprised
when he saw you.”

“Oh, he was! The morning I told him—it was closing-day—we stood in the
Grotto. I feared he would be angry with me for deceiving him. You see, I
had known him some hours, since the night before, but he did not know
who I was. It made me happy, so happy, to have him come to the
Commencement. I had expected no one—”

“You had no friends there?”

“Oh, yes, some. But no one very close to me. No one I could call really
my own, except Pierre.”

“Who is Pierre?”

“Oh, he—he is the schoolmaster at Memramcook, where I live. He used
often to walk with me, and he writes poetry.”

“How idyllic! I didn’t know anyone wrote poetry now. Strange, too, when
there are so many, especially women, who love to listen to it. Did
Pierre make poems to you?”

“Yes.” Her eyes held a far-off look. “Yes, he made poems to me
sometimes.”

“And you still hear them, I think.” Adèle put her hand on the back of
Simonne’s. “I do not know how much poetry you’ll find here, _mon
enfant_. There isn’t much, and what there is doesn’t ring so true.
Still, there are men who can make a sonnet with a glance, a ballad with
a sigh. Come, we will get ready for our supper. Monique is subject to
black rages when one is late. And one is often late. I live alone, you
see. I have a mother in Europe somewhere; no one else. That is why I am
so glad to have you. I had a husband once—did you know?”

“A—a husband! He is dead then—”

“He is far from dead. We are divorced.”

“Oh!” Simonne looked at her wide-eyed. She had never seen a divorced
person before. In the convent one got the idea that divorced persons
must be somehow different, that they must be rather wicked and
dangerous. But Adèle—she looked like a girl. It had never occurred to
Simonne that she might once have been married.

“I was very young,” said Adèle lightly. “I took my love as seriously as
you take yours. I thought, if I didn’t have that love, that I couldn’t
go on living. Yet I lost it and I have gone on very well. One has
friends. One can always dance and be gay.”

Adèle had friends. They came, some of them, quite early in the
evening—women like herself, smooth, poised, very self-assured young
women, and rather bored-looking men. They sat and talked or danced to
the radio-music. They were interested in Simonne. When Adèle told them
she was Marcel Bernard’s ward, they were even more interested in her. It
seemed to strike them as strange that Marcel should be a guardian.
Simonne remembered that Pierre had found it strange too.

A dark, olive-skinned fellow, impressive in evening-clothes, came over
to her and bowed. She tried to recall his name. There were so many of
them. “Maurice de Haerne,” he said, smiling. Oh, yes, she knew now. He
was a Belgian. She knew it from his pronunciation of French, so much
like Sister Germaine’s. “And you are the little Caron, eh?” He looked at
her appraisingly. “I knew your brother—met him in France.”

“Oh!” Her eyes showed pathetic interest. “I am so glad. You saw him
perhaps not long before—”

De Haerne nodded. “The day before it happened I saw Edmond Caron in
Paris. I am with the Belgian Air-transport. Edmond was, of course, well
known to us and we regret his so untimely end. You, _mademoiselle_, are
in the care of M. Bernard, I understand.”

“Yes. He is my guardian. It was Edmond’s wish.”

De Haerne shrugged. “I do not know of that, of course. It would be in
writing—a thing so important. Where M. Bernard and your brother were on
such bad terms—”

“What is it you say, _monsieur_?” Simonne, who had been watching Adèle
as she danced with a red-headed youth, turned quickly to stare at the
Belgian. “You say my brother and Marcel—M. Bernard—were on bad terms!”

“Oh!” De Haerne looked embarrassed. “It may have been nothing. It is
nothing. I beg you to forget it. Doubtless, it was some trivial thing.”

“It must have been nothing, M. de Haerne. Edmond entrusted me to M.
Bernard’s care.”

“And he would scarcely hand anything so precious over to an enemy, eh?”
De Haerne smiled down at her. “Well, I am sure he will prove worthy of
the trust and will be as good a friend to the sister as to the brother.
I shall come again to pay my respects, if I may, Mademoiselle Caron.”

He bowed stiffly and strolled away. Simonne looked pensively after him.
What he said, rather what he had clearly left unsaid, disturbed her
greatly. Marcel had not said anything of quarreling with Edmond.
Apparently then, if quarrel there was, it had been of no importance.
Edmond, she knew, had been terribly hot-headed and impulsive. He was
likely to quarrel with anyone. He would quarrel furiously one minute and
make a fervent peace the next.

Adèle came to her. Adèle wore a dress that was like a silver sheath over
her willowy body. “Well, Little Pigeon, why aren’t you joining in the
fun? You look so serious, my child—and life is too, too short for
seriousness.”

“I am a little tired, I fear. But tell me, please, who is this M. de
Haerne?”

“De Haerne? Oh, he’s sort of a Belgian police-dog. Reminds you of one,
doesn’t he? I don’t mean he is connected with the police. He sells
aeroplanes or works for an aeroplane company, I think.”

“Is he a friend of M. Bernard’s?”

“An acquaintance only, I think. But why all these questions?”

“Oh, it is nothing. I am too curious. I suppose it is not the correct
thing here to be too curious.”

“Not only that, Simonne; it is sometimes actually dangerous. The less
one knows, the less one has to worry about.”

Monique came, scowling distastefully at the guests. “It is the
telephone,” she announced, and as Adèle moved away, added vindictively,
“For Mademoiselle Simonne.”

“Oh!” Adèle’s smooth masque was undisturbed. “It will be Marcel
instructing you to go to bed early. Be nice to him.”

It was Marcel. His voice sounded cold, impersonal. She did not know he
had debated a good hour with himself whether or not to call her. He
said, “I thought I would find out if you are all right. If there is
anything you need. And, oh, yes, if you can be ready about eleven
o’clock tomorrow morning. I shall come and together we’ll go to the
lawyer’s about your inheritance.”

“I shall be ready, _monsieur_.” She hesitated. “Thank you for calling
me.”

“Oh, it is nothing. Are you enjoying yourself there?”

“Very much. There are many people here—dancing.” She thought of the
time she had danced with him. She wanted him to know that she was not
dancing with anyone here, but something kept her from telling him.

“Ah!” His tone wasn’t quite so impersonal. “Well, it is nice that you
enjoy yourself. But do not tire yourself too much.”

“Very well, _monsieur_.”

“Good night, Simonne.”

“Good night, M. Bernard.”

She heard him hang up. She put the telephone down slowly, hating to go
back to the room of laughter and music, wishing that she were with him
again in the white car riding over the world under a moon, riding on an
endless road. What was there here for her? She did not want to dance, to
flirt, to learn to slough off difficult things as, she was sure, Adèle
Mercier did.

She went back to the big living-room. A blonde youth met her at the door
and smiled at her and said, “Dance with me, _mademoiselle_?” She said
yes. She didn’t care. Surprisedly, she found after a moment that she
enjoyed dancing with him. The music was soft, throbbing, contagious. You
caught its rhythm; you couldn’t help but catch it.

His name was Brossard. She waited for him to tell her he sold aeroplanes
or, at least, parachutes, but it turned out to be bonds. “And you, I
understand, have just come from the convent.”

“Just a few days ago.”

“Do you like this?”

“Yes. Where I come from there isn’t much dancing or much fun. This is
all new to me, but I do like it. You are all so kind.”

“We cannot help it. You are different somehow from the girls one meets.
You attract me. I speak for myself, but I dare say it is the same with
the others.”

“I am different—how?”

“Now that I cannot tell you.” He was looking at her lips, so softly
parted, so unconsciously tempting. His arm tightened about her waist.
She did not resist and presently he loosed it. “Will you let me take you
out some night soon to dinner and a show?”

“I should like that. But it will be necessary to ask—”

“Then you ask, my young one. The name is Antoine Brossard. I won’t try
to sell you any bonds. But I am so glad I found you. Do you really know
these people? The red-headed giant with Adèle is Pete Rosson. He’s a
football-coach. The little fat fellow is Jean Morin. He owns a
biscuit-factory. The girl with him is Rose Menard. She paints pictures
almost as well as she does herself. The blonde is Margot Drouin. The
tall fellow with her is de Haerne—looks like something out of an
Oppenheim thriller.”

“I’ve met him—I met them all of course.”

“Ah! Here is Monique with some cocktails. You will have a cocktail?”

“I have never had one.” She hesitated. “No, I think I will not have one
now, thank you.”

“Still the little _fille du convent_, eh?” Brossard cocked an eye at her
over the rim of his glass. “Well, it’s smart for one not to drink now,
since everyone else does. Your health, Mademoiselle Simonne—and may you
be happy in Mo’réal.” His smile was gay but in his eyes she saw an
earnestness, a question. He was Youth, this Tony Brossard, younger than
Marcel, than Pierre. She wondered if he ever could be very serious.

“Yes, sometimes,” he said. “Isn’t that an answer to the question you
were asking yourself?” He put down his glass and moved close to her,
almost touching her. “You were wondering if I could be serious. Well, I
can be—I could be about you.”

“About me!” The way she colored, the swiftness of her confusion,
thrilled him. He saw in her what Pierre, what Marcel had seen—some
unspoiled, virgin beauty, that was like an aura about her. “You never
saw me before tonight, M. Brossard.”

“You must learn to call me Tony,” he said firmly. “And if, as you say, I
have not seen you before tonight, I can tell you that I have been
looking for you all my life. And that is not just talk. I knew you were
the one as soon as I met you in the doorway.”

“The one? Oh—”

“Tony!” It was Adèle’s voice. “You are not making love already to my
little girl!”

“I am trying. Don’t spoil it now by telling her she is not to believe
me.”

“Shall I let her find it out for herself?”

“I don’t think I could ever disillusion her. I’d hate myself forever
after.”

Innocence, thought Adèle, is ever beautiful. Odd how this shy little
girl seemed to bring out the best that was in men. She didn’t know about
de Haerne, but here was Marcel Bernard going all soft about her, calling
up after being away only a few hours. Here was Tony Brossard, delight of
the debutantes, beginning to wear a Galahad look, to sit erect on his
charger and boldly clutch his sword.

“I have asked Mademoiselle Simonne if I may take her out, Adèle. Does
she have to ask permission from you?”

“As a matter of formality, I suppose. M. Bernard is her guardian, you
know. I am a sort of deputy. I don’t think there’ll be any objection to
her going out with you. Would you like to go with him, Simonne?”

The great eyes looked up at Tony. Adèle sighed. It was the girl’s utter
naturalness, the way she could do things that in others would seem the
height of affectation. “But yes, I should like to go with Tony.”

“Then you shall go.”

“I’ll telephone you tomorrow, Simonne.” He looked at her lingeringly.
The others were preparing to go on to another party. “Please don’t
forget me before tomorrow.”

“Oh, I will not.” Her hand rested in his for a moment. He was such a
nice boy, so clean looking, so fair, his teeth so white. With him one
would be always laughing, always gay. “Good night, _monsieur_.”

“Good night, Simonne.” Adèle felt sure he would have tried to kiss those
soft lips had there been no one else to see. He said, “_A demain_,
Adèle. I am so glad I came tonight. It has been a wonderful night.”

The others came with hats and wraps. There was laughter, gay farewells.
Their echo lingered in the hall, in the living-room when Adèle and
Simonne were alone. Monique went scowling and muttering about the dismal
task of emptying ash-trays, carrying off empty glasses and wiping rings
from tables.

“He is a pleasant one, that Brossard, eh?” Adèle sank back gratefully
against the cushions. “You liked him?”

“Yes. It is hard to be unhappy with such a one. He is always making fun,
always laughing.”

“He has his serious moments, but not many of them. He seemed quite
serious about you.”

“Oh, please! He was just being kind because I am new here.”

“Maybe.” Adèle blew smoke at the ceiling. “Marcel—he is well?”

“Yes. He called to tell me that tomorrow morning he will come to take me
to the lawyer’s.”

“Well, then, we must tuck you in bed soon. He will scold me if he finds
you looking pale and tired. He can be very stern, Marcel.”

“You are not ever afraid of him?”

Adèle laughed. “But I am! All women are. I don’t know why it is, unless
we see in him something too strong to give in to our cunning. One can
talk most men into doing what one wants: not Marcel. He does what he
wants to do.”

“Always?”

“As long as I have known him. I fancy he always will, unless—” She did
not finish. Simonne looked inquiringly at her but did not ask questions.
She did not like to question Adèle. She felt that Adèle, without
seeming, could evade any questions she did not like. Adèle was thinking,
“Yes, he has always done what he wanted to do, he has been master of
himself up to now. And he’s afraid now. But men are fools. He is a fool
even to think of putting his strong destiny into those soft little hands
of yours. They, for all their softness, could twist and mar and
destroy.”

She knew why Marcel had stayed away tonight. She could see what an
impression this quiet little girl had made on him. It is the novelty,
she had decided; perhaps the paternal instinct coming awake in him. But
she had begun to realize it was more than that. He was behaving like a
schoolboy, being noble, deciding to keep away from his beloved, feeling
that she, in some obscure fashion, would know how he suffered and
perhaps suffer herself.

“It is all too absurd,” she decided. “He will get over it in a few days.
Anyway, Tony Brossard, if I mistake not, is definitely in the race, and
that boy travels fast. Probably it will be youth calling to youth.
Something in a young girl succumbs to black hair tinged with grey, but
it’s not the same romantic manifestation as one knows on a moonlight
night with a boy who gazes into one’s eyes—just gazes and says nothing
except with his eyes. She has yet to know that, I’m sure. Unless the
poet was like that. Probably he wasn’t. Probably he was a very serious
and moody sort of person and depressed her even while he charmed her.”

Poor Pierre! Leagues and leagues away, over river and hill and forest,
he wandered in the garden of his cottage. The wind blew cool and sweet
across the marshlands and the stars were thickly strewn in the sky. He
looked at them and it was a consolation, albeit a poor one, to know that
on her, on Simonne, their soft light was shining, that perhaps as she
looked at them she too thought, “They shine on Pierre.” They made a link
between her and him, a tenuous, far-stretched link. Somewhere an owl
hooted, the shadowy shape of a fish-hawk floated overheard, the leaves
of the tall poplar by his kitchen window rustled their eternal rustling.
The land was still.

Strangely, to him, he had been able to write since she went away. He
wrote and wrote. It was the only way he could forget, the only way he
could dull the sharp edge of his pain and loneliness. When he wrote she
was near to him, her spirit one with his, and in what he wrote was much
of the deep feeling he had for her, much of the longing, the beauty of a
love unfulfilled. Morning and evening, he walked to the top of the
Beaumont and sat in the high grass and gradually heart-sickness and
loneliness almost unbearable gave way to resignation, and because he had
the dreamer’s gift, he began to find a strange beauty in his
bereavement, a rapture in his solitude.

Marcel came promptly at eleven. Simonne had been ready for a half hour,
trying hard to hide her impatience from the amused eyes of Adèle,
tiptoeing to the window, hoping each time to see the corsair shape of
the white car sliding down Jeanne Mance Street. She saw it at last, and
Marcel, hatless, his dark head gallant and proud. He looked up at the
window and she waved to him. He waved back.

When Monique let him in, she wanted to run to him and fling her arms
about his neck. How good it was to see him! How good to look upon his
face! She had tried so hard to picture him last night before she fell
asleep, and she could not. Strange, when you loved a face so much, that
it should refuse to take form in your dreaming, that it should be only a
vague blur, elusive, not to be captured ever. She wondered if, when you
came to hate one you loved, you could picture the hated face. But she
could never hate anyone. The sun was golden in Jeanne Mance Street. The
children were playing down there, shouting at their games. And Marcel
was here with her, looking at her, she thought, her heartbeat quickened,
as if it had been a long time since last he saw her.

Adèle said, and her speech made a jarring note there where the morning
light was so freshly golden: “Our little convent-girl captivated them
all last night, from the sinister Maurice de Haerne to the mercuric Tony
Brossard. _Vraiment_, they were laying flowers at her feet, Marcel.”

He smiled, but the smile lost itself in his eyes. He looked at Simonne
questioningly. “De Haerne?” he said. “You met de Haerne?”

“Yes.” The Belgian’s words, saying to little, implying so much,
forgotten through the night, came back to her now. She was startled to
see Marcel’s curiosity about the fact of her having met him. Was there
something Marcel did not want her to know, that he was ashamed to have
her know?

She drove the thought angrily away. There was nothing. Marcel was like a
god. He acted like one, looked like one. So tall and bronzed, so dark,
so vital. “Yes,” he said musingly, “Simonne would be like a rare orchid
to those sniffers of cabbage-roses. I can see all their romantic
gestures falling flat, all their well-worn phrases perishing, when they
came to her.”

“But—but I found them charming, _monsieur_.” She thought of Tony, of
his smile, his fervent earnestness. “I assure you I did.”

“New perhaps.” He shrugged. “_Eh bien_, let us go to see Duplessis. I am
glad you liked the gilded youth.”

“Oh, yes,” Adèle put in. “Tony Brossard wishes to be her squire one
evening soon. I have given my consent, taking it for granted you would
give yours.”

“Brossard?” Marcel frowned. “I think I met him here. Fair-haired
fellow?”

“Quite young,” said Adèle sweetly. “And hectic and romantic.”

“Ah, well.” Marcel sighed. It was just as he had thought it would be. He
hated these young pups. He had an urge to say, “No. Simonne must not go
out with any of them.” It wouldn’t do. “It is all right,” he said. “I am
Simonne’s guardian, not her gaoler. And you are wise, Adèle. You know,
better than I do, what will be good for her.”

“Yes.” Adèle smiled. “Well, it will be good for her to be young, to
laugh, to dance, to throw her weight about a bit, to cast off the pure
white convent-lilies and wear red roses in her hair, to listen to
Offenbach or even Irving Berlin instead of Palestrina and Mozart.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Marcel was thinking of the quiet little grotto at
Ste.-Ursule. It seemed worlds away and ages gone, that time so few
mornings ago—the plash of the fountain, the flutter of the doves, the
silver water falling and the white of the doves’ wings, the fragrance
like incense of the June morning, and Simonne lifting her eyes to his
face so shyly. He was thinking of how he had felt there after she had
left him—lifted up, exalted, purged of a lot of unbeautiful worldly
things. He was wondering if ever again he would recapture that sensation
that had been like a sacrament.

“Ready, Simonne?”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” She went to Adèle and kissed her. “_Au revoir_,
Adèle.”

“I shall come back after we see Duplessis, Adèle, and the three of us
might go somewhere and have luncheon?”

“Sorry, _mon vieux_. I am meeting Pete Rosson at the Ritz Carlton. You
were kind to ask.”

“I am sorry.” He didn’t look sorry. “I’ll take Simonne then.”

“Yes.” She knew there was quiet exultation in his heart at the thought
of having Simonne all to himself. She said, “I’ll be back here by
half-past two.”

“That will suit.”

He and Simonne went out. Ah, it was heaven to be with him again, to hear
his footsteps behind her on the stairs, to brush his arm with hers as he
held the car door open for her, to snuggle against the beloved red
cushions close beside him. She looked at him as he started the car. She
could not keep from looking at him. She wished it were again the moment
of departure from Memramcook, with all those wondrous miles ahead.

“I wish we were starting out again, _monsieur_, on the road to Quebec,
you and I.”

He looked at her quickly. “One can never travel the same road twice,
Simonne—in the same way. There is always something different when we
try to journey old roads again.”

“Could the second journey not be better?”

He shook his head. “I do not know. The first was very lovely—a perfect
thing. I want nothing ever to spoil it.”

“The thought that it can never be again—that spoils it for me,
_monsieur_.” She tried pathetically, with her poor timid weapons, to
penetrate the hard shell of cynicism, of distrust. She saw all her
arrow-points go blind against that armor. She thought, “He does not care
for me. Now, when he has so many other things to occupy him, I do not
matter.”

On St. Catherine’s Street, at the corner of Phillips Square, where the
white-gloved hand of the traffic-policeman held them up, she heard
someone call, “Simonne! Oh, Simonne!”

Tony Brossard stood on the curb, hat in hand. He waved gaily. He made
motions of telephoning. He looked almost ecstatic. She waved a brown
hand at him. “Hello, Tony.” The whistle shrilled. The white car surged
forward at a furious rate. Marcel kept his eyes glued on the traffic. If
she could see the look in his eyes she would surely know his
unhappiness. Well, this was what he had looked for. This was bound to
be. This was Offenbach and Irving Berlin; this was soft, colored lights
and perfume and passion, arms langorously twining about the beloved,
lips on silken, scented hair, dreams of a Sultan’s paradise, blood that
flows warm and pulsing, flame that rushes to meet flame. Nothing in the
convent-garden now but the quiet liquid sounds of the fountain, the
rustling of the poplar-leaves, the cooing of the doves, the noiseless
step of some little nun, the big beads slipping through her fingers.

“Duplessis’ office is here, Simonne.” He stopped before an old building
in St. James’ Street. “Edmond left you some fifty thousand dollars. His
effects I had sent over. They are here in bond. You are not to worry
about anything, Simonne—ever. _Comprends-tu?_”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” She blinked her eyes a dozen times fast. She fumbled
for her handkerchief and rushed it to her mouth. Marcel wet his lips.

“And you are not to cry, Simonne.”

“No, _monsieur_.” The round chin grew stubborn. “I am not to cry.”




                               Chapter VI
                               VAL MORIN


M. Adéodat Duplessis, a grizzled man with a head like a lion and a
walrus moustache, had evidently known the family of Bernard for many
years. He had come from Paris, he informed Simonne. He implied that it
was a mistake for anyone to leave Paris and a greater mistake, once
having left, not to return to that glorious city, queen of the world. He
talked to Marcel like a Dutch uncle and positively winced about
Simonne’s legacy. “A lot of money, a great deal of money for such a
little girl. A temptation to fortune-hunters.”

Marcel laughed. “As if Simonne were not temptation enough herself, M.
Duplessis. You are most unflattering and ungallant. Your long absence
from the Boulevard Haussmann has caused you to lose the great
distinguishing trait of our race.”

“It is so,” sighed M. Duplessis. “I have become a rustic. Permit me,
Mademoiselle Simonne, to correct myself, to say instead that so much
money with a plain girl would make her a temptation, with you no one
could resist, since, added to the money is a jewel beyond all price.”

“_C’est brave!_” laughed Marcel. “Splendid, M. Duplessis!”

“I am skeptical,” pursued the lawyer, “about the efficiency of your
legal guardian. However, it may be that he has qualities I have never
even suspected. The responsibility will do him good.”

“Mine is purely a directorial capacity,” Marcel assured him. “Adèle
Mercier is Simonne’s mentor.”

“Better perhaps.” M. Duplessis looked shrewdly from Simonne to Marcel.
“It is a miracle, my young friend, that you yourself have not fallen in
love with your ward.”

Simonne’s cheeks grew hot. She looked at Marcel and quickly looked away.
His face was expressionless. His voice was calm, easy. “That would be
rather a breach of confidence, I think. I must respect my office.”

“Ah, so! I see your point. Well—” M. Duplessis shrugged, spread his
blunt-fingered hands. “There will be many here to fall in love with her.
Now you will sign papers, if you please.”

They signed papers. It was soon done. And it was good to be out of the
stuffy office, reeking of law-calf, dried-up inkpots, assorted clients
and stale cigar-smoke. “I have three trunks of Edmond’s at the customs,
Simonne. Shall I—”

“Could you keep them for me, please—at your place perhaps—for a while?
Then I could have them sent to Memramcook.”

“Yes, I will do that. They contain mostly books, papers and the like.”

“You have never told me much about Edmond, about his life there, his
friends, what he did. His letters were always brief and sketchy. For a
long time before he died there was no letter, nothing.”

They were getting in the car then. Marcel was behind her, holding the
door open, “He was very busy, Simonne. He worked hard over his engines.
He had some great idea for a new-style motor that he said would
revolutionize flying—something that cut the fuel consumption to a
minimum. How far he got with his work I do not know. He was very
secretive about it all. It may be that his ideas perished with him. He
had a place of his own—that is, the Compagnie la France let him have it
for his own use—where he worked and carried on his experiments. It was
from there he took off on the test flight that finished him.”

“It was very bad, that?”

“It was terrible, Simonne.” He guided the car out into traffic. “I would
not have you know of it. I would forget it myself.”

“You—you were fond of Edmond?”

“I loved Edmond,” he answered simply.

Simonne laid her hand on his arm for a moment. He kept looking straight
ahead. Slowly she removed it. “You prove that, M. Bernard, by your
goodness to me.”

“You must not talk of it. One finds it very easy to be good to you. Now,
if you like, we shall go have luncheon together. We shall celebrate your
coming into your fortune. We shall go to the Mount Royal and everyone
will look with admiration on my lovely ward and I shall be very proud.”

“_Monsieur mon gardien!_” Simonne laughed. “You are so young to have
such tremendous responsibilities.”

“I age a year each day, my little one, worrying about what you will be
when you grow up. What do you want to be?”

“I want to be yours from this minute until the day I die and I want to
meet you in eternity and all that endless time will be too short to
satisfy my love for you,” she said softly in her heart. But to him she
said, “I do not know. I have thought and thought about it, but that has
not helped me.”

“Of course you do not need to be anything unless you wish it. But it is
good for a girl, as for a boy, to have some work ahead. To be sure,
there is always marriage. That is a career in itself, perhaps—oh, most
assuredly, that will be yours.”

“I have thought of that.”

“Oh, you have!” He looked at her for a moment. “Yes, I suppose all girls
do from the time they start to play with dolls. If you
should—_Sapristi!_” He broke off his speech suddenly, stared sharply at
a closed car that waited abreast of them for the traffic-signal. Simonne
looked too. She saw only a blue sedan, driven by a chauffeur, a stout
man in a dark grey suit sitting in the back seat. As she looked the
stout man sat back against the cushions, the shadows hiding his face.

“Is there something?” she asked Marcel.

“I do not know. But I will swear this is the sixth time I have seen that
man since we arrived here yesterday. If it were not too absurd, I would
think he was following me.”

The whistle blew. The cars surged forward. Marcel manoeuvred the blue
car ahead of him and swung the wheel hard over to take them up a side
street. “We don’t want company.” He was frowning. “It is queer. You
know, I’m not carrying the Rajah’s Ruby or the missing pearls or
anything like that. Just the same I feel quite sure I’m an object of
interest to that man.”

They saw no more of the blue car. The luncheon was a gay affair. “It is
a sort of farewell, Simonne,” he said at the end of it. “You see—” He
stopped, seeing all the light go from her face, all the laughter flee
from her eyes. She couldn’t help it. She knew Adèle had told her not to
talk with her eyes except to the man she loved and who loved her. But
his words cut into her heart.

“You are not going away!”

“Oh, no! But I have to devote myself to my work. I came here to get
orders for ships. There is much competition. So I shall have to work
hard and I shall not have much time to be with you. Of course you will
have Adèle and you will soon know lots of people. There will be dances
and parties—”

“Yes.” She had managed by now to control herself, to simulate
indifference. That, she supposed, was what one did when one’s heart felt
like a great piece of lead and there was a lump in one’s throat. “I
would not keep you from your work. With Adèle I shall be all right.
Then—then there is Tony Brossard and—”

“Surely!” Marcel encouraged her. “You’ll soon forget about me. After
all, my job is that of official guardian, which is purely a business
matter.”

“Yes, monsieur.” If he wanted it that way, she thought sadly, let it be
that way. She would try to forget him. She would join in the dancing,
the fun, the laughter. She would put away a lot of little hopes that had
come like young flowers into her life. She wouldn’t encourage them any
more nor further try to nurture them. She would plant new ones—a lot of
them, bright, gay ones that would grow up into lush gorgeous blooms. But
it would be hard. Looking at him, she knew how unbearably lonely she
would be without him. But one met these things in life. Adèle had
forewarned her. Adèle had told her just how she would feel—as if the
bottom had dropped out of things, as if she didn’t care to go on living.
And one recovered. Yes, surely one didn’t go on forever feeling like
this.

Adèle was waiting for them when they returned to Jeanne Mance Street.
Adèle pointed to the telephone and said, “It just rang for you,
Simonne.”

It was Tony Brossard. She felt Marcel’s dark eyes upon her as she
talked, as he and Adèle passed her on their way into the living-room.
“Yes, I can go tonight, thank you. Of course I saw you, and heard you. I
was startled to hear someone call my name right in the middle of the
city. Yes, I was glad to see you. No, I did not forget you.”

He said, “I’ll count the hours until this evening. I wonder if the time
will seem long for you.”

“I will tell you—this evening. Goodby.”

She went into the living-room. Marcel was gazing out at the window.
Adèle, sitting on the arm of a chair was talking about Pete Rosson. It
struck Simonne, coming upon them suddenly, that Adèle’s eyes were sad
when she thought no one was looking at her.

“Tony asked me to have dinner with him tonight and afterwards we go some
place to dance.”

“Good!” Adèle looked at Marcel for approval. He nodded, smiling with his
lips only. “It will be all right. One can trust Simonne to be Simonne,
_n’est-ce pas_?”

“I think so,” said Adèle. “You are never anyone else but yourself, my
child, are you? You haven’t yet learned to dissimulate, to laugh when
your heart is breaking, to be cool when there’s a bonfire inside you.”

Simonne had learnt a little. She had put her first lessons into practice
during the luncheon with Marcel. Even now she was dissimulating. She
wasn’t happy. She knew that these two were not happy. They were
pretending, all three of them. Her happiness was in Marcel Bernard’s
keeping. He didn’t know it or, knowing it, did not believe it. Where lay
Adèle’s happiness? Perhaps in Marcel. Perhaps Adèle was glad that she
was going with Tony Brossard, that Marcel didn’t bother with her.

He moved abruptly away from the window. “I’ll leave you now,” he said,
“much as I hate to go. I have things to do.” He bent over Adèle’s hand.
Simonne’s he pressed lightly. “You are a good dancer,” he said, smiling.
“Do you remember the evening we danced at—where was it?—Petit Rocher?”

“I remember it, _monsieur_. I haven’t so many nice things to remember
that I could so soon forget that.”

“In time you will forget,” he said and a shutter seemed to drop over his
eyes. “One does forget, you know.”

He went. Adèle shrugged. “He was always like that—just out of reach.
Sometimes you think you have him; he’s warm, responsive, human, then
like a flash he’s something else and you can feel yourself being thrust
away out of his life. I would say he was afraid to love if I did not
know better.”

“Then he has loved?”

“Child!” Adèle looked at her pityingly. Simonne flushed at what she saw
in Adèle’s eyes.

“Maybe,” she said defensively, “it was not love—not really love.”

“_Ex ora infantium_—out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Maybe it
wasn’t, but it was what passes for love, anyway. Who shall say what love
is! Have you any idea?”

“I—yes, I think I have.”

“Those are growing pains, Simonne. You are just at the age where love is
the only thing in the world. You will grow out of that, just as soon as
you find there are a lot of other things.”

“I shall hate to grow out of it then.”

“Your eyes look positively starry, my darling infant. I envy you what I
know is in that warm little heart of yours—or do I? It’s heaven, isn’t
it? Well, it’s hell when you find out the reality and compare it with
your dream.”

“Don’t!” Simonne’s lips moved and in her eyes golden flecks danced in
the blue-green depths. “I hate it when you talk like that. You want to
make me think that everything is a lie, that I should uproot every good
thing from my heart and throw it away. What else would I plant there? I
don’t want to have a mind like yours, Adèle. Perhaps you are right about
love, about everything, and I am wrong. I think I’d sooner be wrong.”

Adèle nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s nice to be wrong sometimes. Well, don’t
mind me. I won’t bother you unless I see you making too much of an idiot
of yourself.” Her smile took the sting out of her words. She put her arm
about Simonne and shook her gently. “You won’t with Tony Brossard
anyway, I’m sure. You’ll have fun. And that’s what you need—fun.
Convents are all right, I guess, but the good sisters aren’t much on
streamlining.”

“There are things that don’t change, Adèle.”

“Surely! A model T Ford and Marcel’s Sunbeam run on the same fuel,
but—! Well, don’t bother that pretty head about it. What have you for
an evening gown—something with whalebone in it, I’ll bet.”

“I have none.”

“_Mon seigneur!_ Come on then. We’ll see what we can do in one short
afternoon. With that hair and those eyes and that golden skin, you
should be an easy subject. We’ll make young Tony’s eyes pop when he sees
you.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Tony held up his hands, palms outward. He goggled. He said: “Madonna by
Schiaparelli!” He lowered his hands, shut his eyes and bowed. “You are
adorable, Simonne. But my present surrender can be no more complete than
was last night’s. Mlle. Mercier, I felicitate you on your ward—you and
M. Bernard.”

“It is praise, indeed.” Adèle carried on in his own stilted, joking
vein. “See that you take good care of our handiwork.”

“Oh, the very best. Promise!”

They rode away in Tony’s car, the top down, for the evening was sultry
with heavy white clouds massing above the height of Mount Royal and a
threat of thunder in the air. Tony looked at her happily. She returned
his smile. It wasn’t so nice as riding with Marcel, but she had to admit
it was pleasant. Tony had ceased chattering. “There is a place out on
the river-shore, le Club Maturin, where there is good food, better music
and a view surpassing both. I want to see you against the background of
silver water and dark green forest. Most women lose out in such a
setting. It brings out the artificial things in their makeup. With you
it will be different—you will belong.”

“Yes, I belong to the woods and the rivers. I have begun to miss them.”
She had tonight a home-sickness, a feeling of being lost, out of her
world, here in this teeming cosmopolitan city, a place of two distinct
personalities—the staid and superior English, the vehement and colorful
French, a city whose streets were thronged with characters who seemed to
have stepped from the pages of Honoré de Balzac. She did not belong. She
could in time belong, perhaps. But did she want to? Tonight in
Memramcook there would be a moon over the marshland and on the white
road your shadow would walk with you and the church-spire and the
housetops would look like places of Fairyland in the blue and silver
light.

“You are lonely,” said Tony. “I can see a far-off look in those eyes,
little Acadienne. Surely not pining for your grim old forests and
wretched salt-marshes, not to mention the gibberish tongue of your
peasants.”

Simonne sat up. She did not see Tony’s mischievous smile. “Our forests
are greener, lovelier than yours, _mon ami_, and our marshes are
beautiful always with the river running between the dikes and our people
speak the old French, purer, better, than it is spoken today in France.
Here in Montreal—bah, it is unintelligible. It sounds like nothing I
have ever heard.”

“Bravo!” Tony pounded on the wheel, “_Vive l’Acadie!_ You are a loyal
daughter of the land, Simonne.”

“You were trying to make me say that, M. Brossard.”

“_Monsieur!_ I am still Tony. Of course I was. I had an idea that you
Acadians had rather a low opinion of the Canadians.”

“We merely reflect their opinion of us, I suppose. I will not argue with
you.”

“Good. One would be worse than insane to spoil this night with
arguments. There is the Club Maturin, out on that little point that juts
into the river.” He pressed down on the accelerator, the car went like a
rocket. He drove as Marcel would never drive, heedlessly, careless of
the thousand emergencies that might crop up. She loved to feel the wind
on her cheek and hear it rushing past her ears, but her heart was in her
mouth when Tony turned in on two wheels at the Maturin’s white
gateposts. He grinned at her. “Who rides with Tony Brossard needs to
have lived a good life, Simonne.”

She nodded vehemently. “I am in a state of grace.”

“That is a challenge.” He helped her out of the car. They walked across
the drive carpeted deeply with pine-needles and up the wide steps of the
long one-storied log-structure, its roomy verandah projecting out over
the placid waters of the river. A waiter found them a table in a quiet
corner. The diners were not numerous. People spoke softly, the music of
the dance-band sounded good in the quiet evening. They ordered. “We’ll
dance while we wait, Simonne.” His eyes were eager. “I have so much
wanted to dance with you again. All night I danced with you in my
dreams.”

The grey-green eyes looked full into his, and his did not waver. They
were very earnest. She looked away. They drifted easily to the music of
a waltz. She could close her eyes and dream—dream that it was Marcel
whose arm held her so tenderly, so strongly, whose cheek brushed her
hair, dream that it was blue Chaleur instead of broad St. Lawrence and
that it was the little inn at Petit Rocher rather than this palace of
the rich.

“Dreaming?” Tony’s voice was soft in her ear. “Dreaming of what,
Simonne? Surely not of a far-away land and a far-away lover! Why waste
time on dreams when the reality is here! Why dream of love when—I love
you.”

He felt the straight boyish back stiffen in the circle of his arm. She
did not look up at him. “You must not love me then,” she said.

“I cannot help it. I am not then the first to tell you that?”

“There was one other.”

“Not Marcel Bernard.”

“Never Marcel Bernard.”

“Ah! I am relieved to know that. He would be competition, indeed. Of
course, he is too old for you and he’s too worldly wise and weary. If he
ever marries it will be Adèle Mercier.”

“How do you know that?” Her eyes were wide, wondering, but they looked
only at his lapel.

Tony shrugged. “_Un qui aime, un qui se laisse aimer_—one who does the
loving, one who lets himself be loved. It is that way in all love
affairs. There is never a balance—a balance would destroy the love. In
this case it is Adèle who loves, Bernard who is beloved. One knows that
in Montreal. It was because she couldn’t stop loving Bernard that she
and Ludger Prévost were divorced. Ludger was the one who did the loving
in that match. He wearied. All of which brings us far away from what I
started with. I said I loved you and you told me I must not. Why?”

“Perhaps because you would be the one who loves, I the one—”

“You do learn your lessons fast, young one. But I have so many more to
give. Perhaps even before you have completed the course, you will learn
to love me, your feeling for me will change.” His bantering tone became
one of boyish seriousness. “It must change, Simonne. I want it to so
much. You will give me a chance to try to make you care for me?”

She moved away from him so as to look up into his eyes. “But yes. Why
not?”

“Sweet!” he whispered softly. “All lovely and soft and warm and there
are little gold gleamings in your hair and there is the mystery of old
jade in your eyes.”

“_Sapristi!_ You too are a poet, Tony!”

“I!” He looked amazed. “I am a bond-salesman. It’s just because I am
near to you that I talk like that. You act like hashish, Simonne; you
make me capable of things I never dreamed I was up to. Usually, I’m a
pretty prosaic sort of person. But I breathe marijuana from your hair
and for a while I am a god.”

“_Eh bien!_ Your goddess is hungry.”

“Frenchwomen are at once the most romantic and most practical in the
world,” sighed Tony. “Fancy thinking of onion-soup while talking of
ambrosia.”

“It is very filling, the onion-soup.” She shrugged the golden brown
shoulders above the ivory satin of her gown. “We had it on Wednesday
nights at the convent with brioches left over from the last time, but
good nonetheless—oh, excellent.”

“Onion-soup!” Tony made a wry face. “I can think of nothing more
destructive to romance than onions, in soup form or any other form. Must
you?”

“Well, monsieur, I—”

“Here I have managed a special moon, a fine night, music fit for the
angels and you order onion-soup.”

“I will just eat a little—just some few spoonfuls then.”

Tony roared. “Eat all you want, infant. It becomes a food for the gods
just because you eat it. Will you drink a cocktail tonight?”

“You are stimulant enough, I think—and the moon and the music and the
night.”

“You are intoxicated with the glamour of it all?”

She leaned forward. “I do love it, Tony. I was lonely at first this
evening. Now I am glad. I was thinking of a hilltop high in Acadie
tonight, a place from which one can look down on the world. I dreamt of
sitting there among the daisy heads and clover and having a poet sing to
me. And I closed my eyes and I found that here it was the same and that
you in your fashion are a poet.”

“Oh, I dare say all men in love are poets of a sort. How fortunate they
don’t all write verses. Who is your poet in Acadie, Simonne?”

“Pierre—Pierre Gay. He is the schoolmaster at Memramcook where my home
is.”

“Long hair, I’ll bet.”

Simonne smiled a very little. Sometimes Pierre’s hair was long, but that
was not a matter of temperament so much as economy. “You would like
Pierre, Tony. Like you, he is young and like yours, his soul sometimes
shines up in his eyes.”

Tony looked at her, startled. “You’re something of a witch, aren’t you?
Or are all women given the wisdom of a Sybil at birth? My soul in my
eyes—yes, I dare say it was. You make me feel very juvenile, all angles
and awkwardness, and I’m years older than you are. Still, years don’t
signify much, I suppose. _Voyons!_ Our dinner gets cold.”

They danced on the porch under the round white moon that lifted itself
up from its couch of silver in the river and dripped silver and
reflected it all about. Music and talk and laughter, the tinkle of
glasses, the popping of corks, the glowing tips of countless cigarettes,
the white arms and backs of slender women, the fragrance of the pines,
the pungent spruce-trees, overcoming the odors of scent, of smoke, of
food.

“‘Night of stars and night of love’”—Tony gazed down at her as they
danced. “Happy, Simonne?”

“Yes. It is very lovely, this.” They drifted dreamily, now in sooty
shadow, now in silver light. It was like a dream. She tried to forget
about Marcel, forget about everything and give herself to this opiate
beauty. Perhaps, even, if he spoke again of love to her, she would
listen. Such nights as this were made for love, for tender whisperings,
for heart beating close to heart. But he did not speak except with his
eyes that adored her, with his arm that clasped her lightly, firmly. He
was quiet, for him; subdued. She would like it better, she knew, if he
were not so serious. She was afraid. There was something here that she
did not like. She did not want him to fall in love with her and she
could read worship in his every look and gesture.

“We must go soon now, Tony. It has been wonderful—”

He seemed to awaken. “Wonderful? Yes, more wonderful than I thought it
could be. Simonne, I—I want to have many nights like this—as many as
you can give me. If you are a little bit happy with me, why then give me
the chance to make you happier.”

She could not refuse. It would be foolish, unkind, to tell him she did
not want to go with him again. Perhaps after a few more times, she
thought, he will weary of me. But perhaps I am being foolish to want to
be rid of him.

At Adèle’s door he did not linger. He took her hand and lifted it to his
lips without affectation, in a manner simple and gallant that made her
heart beat faster, that made her lift her face to his. Then swiftly,
lightly, he kissed her lips. It was not like the consuming, passionate,
unforgettable kiss that Marcel had given her in the Governor’s Garden,
but for all that it burned upon her lips and something of its beauty
lingered there after he had gone, after she went into the house.

She was not angry with him. She knew she could never be angry with him.
But she did not want it to happen again. Somehow, it tried to spoil the
memory that was so perfect, of Marcel’s arms about her, of Marcel’s lips
on hers. But it would pass away—yes, a thousand other kisses would rest
only lightly, momentarily on her lips, would go no further, while his,
that had touched her deep heart, would be with her always.

Adèle contributed a page of smart gossip to a Toronto monthly magazine.
She was writing this now in a little nook off the living-room. “Anything
to report for the month’s doings?” she called. “I am short a paragraph.
Do you want me to say you were seen stepping with Tony Brossard?”

Simonne, in the doorway, shook her head. “No, please. But it was a
lovely evening. We went to the Club Maturin and we dined there and
danced. There was a moon over the water and the music was so lovely—”

“And Tony?”

“He was kind. He is nice, Tony.”

“In love with you?”

Simonne shrugged. “How does one know? A man may tell you a thousand
times he loves you. It becomes easier with each repetition. Another may
forbear a thousand times from saying it and for him with each refraining
it becomes harder to speak. Yet one may love as much as the other.”

“You are not becoming cynical, surely! Perhaps it is contagious. But
that is a good observation. I may use it on my page. Oh, by the way, M.
Maurice de Haerne called you on the telephone. He said he would call
later. It is another dinner and dance.”

“I do not know—”

“Oh, he is a fascinating fellow, Maurice. It will be good for you to go
with him.”

“We shall see first if he asks me. Yes—yes, maybe I would go with him.”

She was curious. There were some things she wanted to find out from de
Haerne—things about Edmond. She had tried to forget her brief
conversation with the Belgian, but it would not be forgotten.

“No one else called?” she asked without thinking. Adèle glanced wisely
up from her scribbling. “No one else called.”

Simonne hid her disappointment. She had hoped he would telephone. All
evening that hope had stayed with her. While she danced with Tony and
loved the beauty of the night, the hope had still been there in the
background. Somehow, the evening was spoiled, incomplete. But Marcel had
said, and there had been finality in the way he said it—that she would
see little of him. He had done for her what he had to do. It was a task
completed. Perhaps he regretted the one episode of those brief days that
she had most loved—the night at Quebec when he had held her in his
arms.

“Tomorrow we go to Val Morin,” said Adèle. “I have a cottage there. One
can ride, swim, sail. You will be away from the city. It stifles one
now. You will like that. Of course, it is no great distance and you can
come and go as you please. All my friends come there. You will be happy
there.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure I will like it, Adèle.”

“In the morning we will do some shopping. You need a swim-suit, shorts,
slacks—a thousand other things. I have a boat. Monique, of course,
comes with us. She is slightly more pleasant among the trees. One is
usually on time for meals. Are you going to bed soon? You don’t look
tired.”

“I am going to write a letter to Pierre.”

“Pierre, who writes the poetry? That will be nice. But you have not much
to tell him.”

“He will like it all. He is alone there in Memramcook.”

“And lonesome, no doubt.”

“Yes, I am afraid he will be lonesome. Other summers I was so much with
him. We went for long walks, we swam, we had picnics. It was fun. I miss
it even with all the wonderful things I have here; and he—has nothing
but his garden and his pipe.”

“And his poetry.”

“Yes, that will console him.”

She wrote to Pierre. A simple, straightforward little letter, telling of
the places she had been, the things she had seen, the people she had
met, telling him of Montreal, of Adèle, of this evening’s excursion to
dine and dance. And Pierre reading of all these things in the quiet of
his garden, where the honeysuckle was all gay and the roses amassed in
banks of color, found it hard to picture her among the places and scenes
she described. “She was of the hills and the marshes and the river,” he
muttered. “Streets would stifle her and the city would do something to
her spirit. Because all these things are new to her, she has not found
how empty, how little worthwhile they are. But she will learn and when
disillusionment comes I will be waiting for her.” And he went almost
gaily to his desk and worked through the long, sunbright hours and wrote
and re-wrote and when sometimes, rereading what he had written, he found
something that he knew was beauty, his heart exulted and he forgot that
it had ever despaired.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Simonne was glad of the move to Val Morin, happy to exchange the fumes
of petrol, the dust of the city, the simmering heat of the pavement, for
the pungent fragrance of the conifers, the cool gleamy water, the stars
in the blue night sky. The little chalet, perched on a hillside among
tall cedars, was airy and spacious. Adèle’s friends were legion and
almost every day there were new faces. Tony Brossard came often and took
her out to dine or dance or both. He did not again try to kiss her and
he did not need to speak of love. To her, to everyone, it was obvious
that he adored her.

“It is a conquest complete, my little pigeon,” said Adèle. “I never
thought there could be such a change in Tony. Just since he met you he
has grown up. And his seriousness sits well upon him.”

“I wish he had kept on laughing. I think he had much more fun as he was.
I do not want him to be serious—over me.”

“Why not? Don’t you care for him at all?”

“I like him, yes. But—”

Adèle dived neatly off the float, swam back and said, “Marcel has quite
forgotten us, I assure you. With him, a woman is only a woman, but a
good aeroplane is something to go up in the air about.”

He had not been to see them for a long time. He had telephoned once when
Simonne was out. Maurice de Haerne had telephoned, too. He would be out
of town for a fortnight but hoped she would give him an evening when he
returned. She had promised. She was piqued at Marcel. More, she was
bitterly lonely. The first few days, what with swimming and boating and
new friends and Adèle’s perpetual parties, she hadn’t minded so much.
But as the days passed and he did not come and did not even telephone,
she found herself roaming restlessly about the house or in the woods,
hoping, always hoping that he would come. And each time her
disappointment was deeper. Adèle saw that she became each day quieter,
more withdrawn, and guessed the reason but wisely said nothing.

But he will come, Simonne assured herself; he has to come. And one
afternoon, returning from a solitary ramble in the woods, walking
listlessly, with only faint hope in her heart, up the steps to the
verandah, she saw him sitting there. He stood up. She ran to him,
forgetting everything in the joy of seeing him again. She flung her arms
about his neck and clung to him, almost sobbing with joy, with the
relief of loneliness. Then she felt his fingers on her wrists and her
arms were gently but firmly removed. For a moment, stunned, she looked
into his eyes. She found nothing there. She hung her head, shamedly,
like a schoolgirl caught in some grave misdemeanor. “I—I am sorry, M.
Bernard. I forgot myself. I did not think—”

“It is nothing, Simonne.” His voice was strangely gentle. “I am glad to
see you, too.”

“You—you do not seem glad. You—you let me—” Her mouth quivered,
shook, the tears brimmed to her eyes, flooded. “I think I hate you, M.
Bernard! I think I never want to see you again! I—” She turned quickly
and ran into the house and up to her room. There she flung herself on
the bed, her face hidden in the pillows. There she stayed until she
heard Adèle and the others returning from their swim. She got up then
and bathed quickly and dressed. Adèle had given her lessons in the use
of powder and lipstick. She had acquired skill. And Tony Brossard was
coming to take her to dinner.

She wore the white satin evening gown, almost backless, with a
sheath-like effect at slender hips, a skirt foamily bouffant. Against
the ivory white her skin showed smooth and golden, the arms and
shoulders so firm, so softly rounded. She knew when she came out on the
verandah where they were sitting, drinking cocktails, that she was a
sensation, that Marcel, who had been talking to Adèle, stopped abruptly
and stared, that they all ceased to talk.

Tony, big, wide of shoulder, swift of movement, came quickly to claim
her. “I am sorry, _mes amis_”—He looked around at the company, his
laughing gaze lingering for a longer instant on Marcel Bernard—“but I
must carry off the prize of the evening. I am taking away your sun.” To
Simonne he murmured, “You are adorable.” Then he swept her away to his
car. She waved to the group on the verandah as they drove away. She did
not look up.

She felt an angry triumph in her heart that still beat erratically,
tumultuously. Perhaps this would show Marcel that he was not God. She
felt herself grow hot as she thought of the utter humiliation of that
moment on the verandah when he had put her away from him. Thinking of
it, she tensed in her every muscle and her mouth was bitterly sullen.
He, the Don Juan, the man of so many loves—he casually put away from
him the poor gift she had to offer. All the hours of loneliness, of
waiting, of dreaming—he knew nothing of them; he would not care if he
did.

“_Monsieur_ my guardian,” she muttered. “Merely that. And I must go on
forever adoring him in silence, saying, ‘Yes, _monsieur_’, and ‘No,
_monsieur_’. Acting the little convent-pigeon whom the great Marcel
Bernard, the hero of the air, so graciously took under the shelter of
his mighty wing. Bah, I am a little marshmallow, a little clam! I have
moaned and mooned over him since the night he stopped his car beside me
as I carried _maman’s_ dress back to Ste.-Ursule. He kissed me and told
me to forget all about it. Like a little fool, I fell in love with him;
now I am told, without his having to utter a word, that I am to put all
that away from me. That I am not to dare think of such a thing. I am
just a mean subject, depending for favors on the king’s grace—”

“_Mademoiselle_ is very, very silent.” Tony, grinning, glanced sideways
and down at her. “And very stormy looking and very lovely. When I first
saw you I thought, Here is just a little girl, so timid and shy; tonight
you burst upon me, upon us all—and you are radiant.”

“I am so glad you like me.” Yes, this was salve for her wounds. Tony was
a man who knew women, even as Marcel knew them. And these were not just
words. She had quickly learned how to play this game, how to match
half-truth with half-truth, how to thrust and, more especially, how to
parry.

“You did not have to ask your official guardian, Bernard, for permission
to accompany me tonight?”

“I ask him nothing!”

Tony’s brows lifted momentarily. She could not see the amazed look in
his eyes. “You are not so friendly with him then?”

“Not at all. I despise him.”

“Ah!” Tony nodded. “I did not ever guess that. I thought it was rather
the other way—a case of hero-worship. Well, Simonne, you know best and
to me it does not matter how much or whom you hate”—He covered her hand
with his—“as long as you love Tony. I haven’t spoken of love since that
night at the Club Maturin. I have waited, giving you time—waited for an
hour when I hoped perhaps you would listen to me—”

She looked up at him, bravely yet frightenedly and her voice was husky
as if fighting a reluctance to say the words. But she managed
them—“Perhaps, Tony, that hour has come.”




                              Chapter VII
                                DEFIANCE


Tony’s hand tightened on hers, his fingers meshed with hers, their
pressure for a moment fierce and hurting. She wondered if the trembling
of her body was transmitted to him, the quickened heartbeat, the tumult
of her breast. She knew what he had taken from her words. She saw in his
eyes eagerness, expectancy, desire that burns highest when near the time
of fulfillment. And she had given him this hope. She had let him think
that she was ready—

Why not? He loved her, wanted her. He had loved her from the moment he
saw her. And she liked him. Perhaps she loved him. Perhaps love as she
had thought of it did not exist, was only a lie, a delusion. One was a
fool to feel the way she had felt about Marcel. A few moments had proved
that to her—those few moments when his fingers encircled her wrists and
removed her arms from about his neck. Thinking of it, she grew hot with
shame. She hated herself for having let him see so nakedly what was in
her heart, for having spread the page so openly before him. She hated
him for the way he had read it.

Well, if he did not want her, if she meant so little to him, it would be
only a kindness to free him of the necessity of looking after her.
Tonight she felt reckless, careless of what might happen. Nothing
mattered much since what had mattered most had proved itself only a
snare and a delusion. Tony was talking. She aroused herself to listen to
him. She wasn’t going to let herself think these dark thoughts. Life was
good, life was gay, life was far too short for one to waste it in loving
someone who didn’t want to be loved.

“We’ll go again to the Maturin,” Tony was saying. “And we’ll dine there
and dance as before. But tonight it will be different, better. Tonight
is ours, Simonne. Let’s make it ours and let nothing spoil it. I love
you, Simonne—love you with all my heart.”

Dear words, dreamed-of, longed-for words. Why did they not thrill her,
quicken her heartbeat, send all her thoughts spinning? He meant them.
There was fervent earnestness, burning intensity, in the way he said
them, in his sudden, quickly checked movement towards her. “One goes so
slowly!” he muttered, though she was afraid to look at the red needle on
the dial as the car hurtled along. He drove like a madman. It didn’t
matter to her. Even the thought of destruction and death was not so
significant as the consciousness of her own disillusionment and defeat.

“Tonight we will drink champagne,” he said when they were seated in the
Club Maturin. “You will not refuse tonight?”

“I will not refuse.” It would be good to drink champagne, to do
anything, anything, that would help to drive away her anger, her misery,
that would relieve this sense of humiliation and bolster up her pride.
How could she face Marcel Bernard again? Her cheeks flamed at the very
thought of it. She never wanted to see him again, but as long as she
stayed with Adèle they were sure to meet.

“What is bothering you, Simonne?” Tony’s hand captured hers, held it
palm up as if he would read their destiny in its lines. “Did you have a
spat with your overseers?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think you’d call it that. Or maybe it
was a spat I had there and a battle with myself. I don’t want to talk
about it.”

“That suits me. Let’s talk about us and make it a closed-shop. Here
comes the bubbly. We shall drink to our happiness.”

Happiness! Simonne wondered. She would have to form a new idea of
happiness or seek it in other places. She tasted the sparkling amber
wine and returned Tony’s smile through the mist of its effervescence. It
was good. It helped. She found it easier to laugh. It was nice to dance,
to feel his arm about her, his cheek against her hair. In the shadows of
the verandah he put both arms about her and kissed her. She closed her
eyes, trying to find in his kiss some of the rapture she knew a kiss
could bring. It wasn’t there. She loosed herself from his arms. They
danced dreamily. She was so glad to have someone strong, someone who
cared for her, someone who could make her forget. She felt absurdly
grateful to Tony.

“I adore you,” he whispered. “I can’t let you go. You’re going to marry
me, you know. I hate to think of losing another day out of life, and
without you all days are lost. Say you’ll marry me, Simonne!”

“You—you think we would be happy?”

“As in Paradise.” His arm was tight about her waist. She looked up at
him, searching his eyes—those blue reckless eyes. His hair was so
blonde as to be almost white. He was just a boy, an eager, impetuous
boy. He was Youth, and she was Youth. For a while she had been tangled
up with older things, older ideas, which did not belong to her.

“Listen, my darling.” His voice was low, compelling, his lips brushed
her ear. “I’ll get the marriage-license, the ring, tomorrow and I’ll
come for you tomorrow night and we’ll ride away and get married. You’re
not happy where you are. Oh, I dare say Bernard is kind to you and Adèle
is the best ever, but you need someone who really loves you and who can
understand you because he loves.”

“I—but I would have to have my guardian’s consent and—”

“Forget about it! Once we are married, who cares about his consent!
Don’t tell anyone.” His tone altered ever so little. “Certainly don’t
let Adèle know. Oh, I don’t mean that they’d try to stop us or anything
like that, but after all it’s our own business, our own secret and I
hate to share it with anyone, just as I hate to share you. I want you
all to myself—always.”

Why not?

The music they danced to was dreamy, languorous, breathing of nights of
silver moonlight on mystic waters, of two drifting in a gilded barge
down magic waters to a sea that was always calm, of a world apart from
this one, a lovers’ world, where nothing sordid or base could ever
intrude, where there were flowers that never faded and music that never
stilled. The night air was scented, warm, seductive, and the stars hung
low over the spired cedars and the whispering pines. She felt for a
while at peace. One could be satisfied with such peace. Better—perhaps
it was better than love, which seemed to mean longing and denial and
hope deferred and in the end despair.

Why not?

He loved her. His eyes, his fair head bent so close to hers, his lips
that touched her hair, the pressure of his arm, the possessiveness of
his embrace—these belonged to love. It was a good thing he offered her.
And if she refused him she would have nothing. She thought fleetingly of
Pierre, but only fleetingly. This need she felt was a present need. She
had to vindicate her pride—had to show Bernard how little he mattered
to her, how little she respected his authority. He had humiliated her
and she must do something significant, even spectacular, to restore her
self-esteem. And here, to her hand, was the chance. But if love was a
cheat and a lie, marriage, she realized, was very real, and it was for
life.

“Tomorrow night, Simonne.” His voice was pleading, urgent, wooing her,
soothing her doubts, dispelling her fears. “I will make you happy. You
will be always happy. There’ll never be a shadow on your face as there
was tonight at Val Morin. There should always be sunlight on your face.
Say you will come with me!”

“I—I do not know what to say. Please—please do not ask me any more.”

“But I must. I can’t go on like this, wanting you, loving you. Why do
you hesitate?”

“I do not know. But I cannot answer you now, Tony. Oh, forgive me, but I
just cannot.” There was something that held her back from this easy
step, something that prevented her uttering the word that was right on
her lips. Tomorrow—she would tell him tomorrow. Perhaps it was a faint,
unadmitted hope that something would happen in the meantime, something
that would bring her again close to Marcel. Vain, foolish, groundless
hope.

“Tomorrow I will tell you, Tony. I promise.”

“Oh, tomorrow.” His eyes looked sullen. “Why not tonight? Tomorrow is
such a long way off. And will things be any different tomorrow? I’ll be
the same, so will you, but this—this that I feel and that you feel too,
I know—it will have passed.”

“If it is love, it won’t pass.” She knew how foolish this was and
unmeaning and contradictory to all she had learned and experienced. She
had loved Marcel Bernard, and now if she was thinking of giving herself
to another man, love must have passed. But, “Tomorrow,” she repeated
with finality and he saw it would be of no use to urge her further. He
dropped his seriousness, his petulance. He laughed and was very gay. He
drank a lot—too much, she thought, and would not drink with him. There
might be release from sickness of mind in that sparkling wine, but she
felt sure it was such release as to make later imprisonment harder to
bear.

“I will wait for tomorrow, Simonne,” he said when they stood in the
shadows by Adèle’s cottage. “And I will hope. Tell me you will not
change towards me, that you’ll let nothing change you.”

She put her hand on his arm. She was tempted now to give him his answer,
to tell him she would go with him. There would be nothing to change her,
nothing to affect her decision. It was a senseless postponement.
Tomorrow would come; with it this same uncertainty, this hesitation,
this reluctance to take a step that once taken could never be retraced.
But she said only, “It will soon be tomorrow, Tony. We must wait for
it.”

Then they said goodnight. He kissed her once, lightly, and said, “I love
you.”

She hoped Adèle would be sleeping, but Adèle was sitting in the dim
starlight in the sunporch overlooking the water. From where she sat she
could see the driveway. Simonne wondered if she had heard Tony’s voice,
if their secret was known. But Adèle was not curious about her and Tony.
Adèle said, “Well, Pigeon, I’m glad you’re home. You looked like a
little storm-cloud when you left here with Tony Brossard. I was afraid
you might keep on going.”

Simonne started. Yes, that had been her idea all right, when she turned
her back on Marcel—to keep on going, to leave him forever behind. And
she hadn’t done it. She had been weak, undecided, when one word would
have settled the matter. “What made you look like that?” asked Adèle.
“Or am I supposed to know? As for Marcel, after you left he said only
one word, and that was goodby when he went home. Surely you weren’t
quarreling with your guardian!”

“Hardly that. I—” She couldn’t tell her misery, her humiliation to
Adèle. She couldn’t say, “I ran to him, I was so glad to see him. I ran
to him and put my arms about his neck. And he—he took them away and put
me from him as if I were a little dog with muddy paws who might dirty
his nice clean suit.”

“I suppose it’s none of my business,” said Adèle cheerfully. “Don’t talk
about it if you don’t want to. It was just that I hated to see you
unhappy.”

“And you hated to see him upset.”

“Quite.” Adèle’s voice was cold. “I did not like to see him upset.”

“Have you made a god of him too?”

Adèle laughed softly. “Ah, the ‘too’ explains it all, Simonne. But if
you made a god of him, what ever made you angry at the deity?”

“Perhaps it occurred to me that he was a false god. After all, he has
loved many women. You, yourself, said so. He has been wild enough from
all accounts and—”

“And now because he is aloof and chooses to act like a Capuchin, you are
angry at him. Simonne, O ma Simonne! You are quite as illogical as all
your sex.”

“_Eh bien!_ I was illogical in—in letting myself think he was something
he could not be. I—oh, I do not want to talk any more about it. He does
not care for me, anyway. I am just some stray pup, some little one, who
happened into his life and he thinks he has a duty to look after me.”

“If he has authority over you, Simonne, I sometimes wonder why he does
not exert it.”

“How? How would he exert it?” Adèle could almost see the green fires
there in the starlight.

“He could spank you, darling. Tonight I wondered at his forbearance.”

“He would not dare to touch me! If he did I—”

“Yes, yes.” Adèle was gentle. “He has spoiled you, I fear.”

“Oh!” A mist blotted out the green fires now. “You are all for him.
You—” She sobbed. She hated Adèle right now. What did Adèle know of how
she felt, of how she had felt when Marcel turned away from her. Adèle’s
sympathies were all with him. They always would be, no matter what he
might do.

“I did not like what I saw in his eyes tonight—when you went away with
Tony. What does Tony mean to you, Simonne?”

“Much more than M. Bernard, if you would know it. He, at least, is kind
and does not treat me as if I were a child and look at me with
disapproval and—”

“_Pauvre Simonne!_ You are tired. Better go to bed now and sleep it off.
In the morning everything will look different. Maybe, even, your god
will be back upon his throne again. Who knows?”

“I know. He will never be back there for me—never.”

“‘Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall,’” chanted Adèle and switched on the
lights. She looked at Simonne’s hot face, at her eyes swollen from
weeping. Then she went to her and, putting her arms about her, kissed
the flushed cheek and laid her own, so smooth and cool, against it.

“Did you—did you ever cry—over a man, Adèle?”

“Once, Pigeon.”

“Was it worth while?”

“That I will not tell you. It’s something one learns for oneself. And
after all, there are men and men. And speaking of men, I come to the
volatile and fascinating M. Brossard. You say you think more of him than
you do of Marcel. Well, I do not know how much you think of Marcel, so
that tells me very little. But be wary of Tony.”

“Why should I? Tony is—”

“Oh, I know he’s gay and charming and most charming when he’s serious.
But there have been other girls—”

“I do not want to listen. I will go to bed.”

She went up to her room, taking Adèle’s lifted brows, her half-angry,
half-amused shrug of lovely shoulders, as a goodnight. They were both
against her, Adèle and Marcel. They did not want to see her happy. It
was Tony now. What had Adèle against Tony? “It would be the same with
any other man who liked me. Adèle would find out something about him,
would try to separate me from him. I suppose it was M. Bernard, my stern
and serious guardian, who whispered in Adèle’s ear. ‘Don’t you think,
Adèle, that it would be better perhaps if Simonne did not run around so
much with this young Brossard? After all, she is only a child—’ Only a
child!” She looked at the unhappy face in her mirror. One must cease
being a child. If Marcel Bernard’s guardianship did only this for
her—made her wretched, angry, unhappy, she would be better away from
him.

“Perhaps I will leave him. Tomorrow—”

The day that dawned wasn’t the kind to help one make important
decisions. It was grey, dismal, drizzling. Water drip-drip-dripped
steadily, persistently from the low-hanging eaves outside her window
onto the roof of the porch below. In the dark fir-wood across the field
some bedraggled crows were flitting about and hideously cawing. The
smoke from Monique’s morning fire blew low to the ground, touching the
sodden tips of the timothy, the drenched daisy heads in the meadow.

Simonne, awaking, rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. One learned that in
the convent where one slept so soundly that it was very hard to get the
sleep from one’s eyes. Today her eyes smarted and were very tired. That
was because she had cried so much yesterday. The darkness of today did
nothing to dispel the bitterness of yesterday’s experience, but the
thought of marrying Tony Brossard likewise received little encouragement
from the lowering sky and the dreary woods.

Adèle had left for the city when Simonne came down to breakfast. “She
said to tell you that she will not likely return before tonight,” said
Monique. “She would have asked you to go with her but she thought you
still slept.” Monique regarded sleep after sunrise as a crime against
nature.

“It is all right.” Simonne gazed miserably out the dining-room window.
Raining cats-and-dogs now, beating furiously down on the tumbled,
bedraggled flowers in Adèle’s garden. What could one do on such a day?
She thought of Tony and looked for a moment at the telephone. She had an
impulse to call him and give him her answer. It would be no. She felt
differently towards him this morning. Last night, it had been the music,
the seduction of the waltz, the glamour of the starry sky. Things that
were merely props of a stage-setting for love. This morning the scene
was changed, the stage set for misery.

After her lonely breakfast—Monique’s coffee grew colder and colder from
seven o’clock on—she went to her room and tried to write letters to
Hermance Lapage, to Sophie St.-Amende, to Sœur Angélique and to
Artemise. She had no heart for the writing. She felt sure they would be
able to read between the lines and know that she was not happy. Finally,
she tore up the letters, all except the brief one to Artemise. She would
write some other day, some happier day, to her friends.

The post contained a letter from Pierre. It was like a bright sunshaft
rifting the sullen sky. She almost snatched it from the post-boy’s hand.
Home—here was something from home. At home she had loved days like
this, loved to watch the sheeted rain sweeping over the marshes, the
dark, scurrying thunder clouds doing battle over the hills of Acadie.
She carried the letter to her room and curled upon the window-seat to
read it. Darling Pierre, so strong, so sensitive, so skillful at finding
beauty in the drabbest of existences. Pierre who wandered lonely over
the fields and on the hills and by the river, finding beauty everywhere.

—“and a deeper silence broods over the marshes since you went away,
Simonne, and the world for me is an empty place. Long ago I gave up
climbing the Beaumont, for each time I went there I had a foolish hope
that somehow I would find you sitting on the ledge among the ferns, that
I would see your smile and hear your voice. But when I got there I
realized how foolish the hope had been and the solitude made a pain
almost unbearable come in my heart. I could not bear to look upon the
world below me—the river and the marshes and the four villages in the
Valley. I hurried away from there, for in that place where once you were
nearest to me you seemed then most remote.

“In the village it is the same. I think I see you everywhere—at the
store, at the post office. I have fed on hope so long, and on memories,
that I even hear your voice calling to me in the early dusk when I walk
in my garden. What do you do there in the great city? What does it
afford that surpasses the peace of this lovely pastoral place? Is there
any permanence in the joys you find there? The things that are lovely
here are always lovely—the wonder of the dawn, banks of rose-tinted
clouds edged with gold, the great symphony of the birds in the
tranquillity and peace of the long, sun-filled hours, the infinite
variety of the sunsets above the dark ramparts of the hills, and the
angelus bells at even.

“Come back—come back to me, Simonne, O, ma Simonne. We were happy here
together, we would be always happy. I have made many poems to you,
_chère_, but none as good as the epic I gave you on the Beaumont the day
we talked of Ronsard. I send it you again—‘I love you’—and in those
three words is all the happiness and hope of my poor life—”

She folded the letter. The rain dripped mournfully, beating out a dirge
on the shingles. Never before in her life had she felt so lonely, so
oppressed. It was a day for dark thoughts. She tried to drive them away,
but they seemed to come back stronger and more numerous. Thoughts of her
solitary, wistful childhood in the great old house of the Carons, of the
joyous times when Edmond came there, of the hours they had spent
together. And Edmond—today she could picture the horror of his death.
It was so real, so vivid, that she hurried from the room and went
downstairs to sit with the dour and unspeaking Monique.

The hours dragged on into afternoon, into a murky twilight. Soon it
would be time to phone Tony. It would be hard to give him that answer,
harder still to give any reasons for her refusal. She had no reasons
that she could state, but deep in her heart she knew that it was Marcel
Bernard’s tall spare figure that stood between her and Tony Brossard. It
was fear of him or love of him that would make her say no. Angrily she
told herself it was not so, that she neither loved nor feared him. And
yet—

The telephone rang for the first time that day. Simonne started at the
sound. She felt her heart flutter uneasily. She hoped it was not for
her. She let it ring again and was glad when Monique, muttering, came to
answer it and miserable when she heard the dark one say, “Yes, monsieur,
she is here.”

She dreaded talking to Tony. She could think of nothing to say to him
beyond that single word of refusal. She steeled herself as she picked up
the instrument for this ordeal that had to be gone through, but the
voice that answered her was Marcel Bernard’s.

She felt little relief. It was just as hard today to talk to him. She
had not dreamed he would call her up. Was it to make amends for
yesterday, to—

“Simonne”—His voice held a hint of concern. “I have something to tell
you.”

“Yes, _monsieur_.” Just the sound of his voice, calling back a rush of
memories profoundly sweet, brought a weakness to her that made her lean
against the wall and grip the telephone firmly.

“Today, when I returned to my flat, I found that someone had managed to
break in during my absence.”

“Oh, I am so sorry. Was there—was something missing?”

“That is what I don’t know. You see, the only things that were touched
were the trunks belonging to Edmond.”

“To—to Edmond! But why—”

“It has me puzzled. You recall the day we were driving down to the
lawyer’s—I thought we were being followed? Well, I have had the same
idea several times since—as if someone were watching my comings and
goings, trying to find a good moment to enter my flat. Well, they found
it, but I have no means of knowing if they got what they wanted. Perhaps
tomorrow you could come here with Adèle and go through Edmond’s things.”

“You know of nothing of value that he would have in his trunks?”

“His papers, plans and the like. _Mon dieu—!_”

“Yes, _monsieur_?”

There was excitement in Bernard’s voice now. “It may be that Edmond
progressed further with his work than we ever guessed. But someone else
might have learned something. But if so, we are only worse off, since we
are utterly in the dark. I don’t know what to do.”

“Nor I, _monsieur_. Edmond left no will.”

“Only the one by which he willed you to me.”

“A surprise legacy, I think.”

“A lovely surprise, Simonne. You—you looked very beautiful last evening
when you were going away—with Brossard.”

“Thank you, _monsieur_.”

“Oh, by the way, I hope you won’t become too intimate with that fellow.”

“No?” Her voice was very soft, very much controlled. He could not see
the rapid twitching of her nostrils, the whitening of her knuckles, the
quick dilation of her eyes. “Why not, _monsieur_?”

“I have my reasons. I hope you will do as I ask.”

“I will not, _monsieur_.”

“I—what do you say? You will—not?”

“I will not. I am—am taking no more orders from you. I am not a child,
_monsieur_.” The words poured out like a torrent. “Not a child, though
you and Adèle persist in treating me as one. I have feelings: you seem
to forget it. Tony is the only one here who has been able to understand
me, who even tried to understand me. He has been kind and good to me and
I—I am grateful to him.”

“All that is very well, Simonne.” The patience in his tone, the
father-to-child way he said it, made her bite her teeth hard together.
“Just the same, you will please do as I tell you. After all—”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes! After all—after all—” She mimicked him
scandalously. “‘After all, Simonne, I am your guardian. You are my ward.
You were entrusted to my care. I know what is best for you. It is best
to kiss you and tell you to forget all about it. It is best to caress
you one minute and kick you the next—’” She stopped breathless. There
was silence at the other end of the line. The silence maddened her. She
could almost see the sternness of his mouth, the kindling fire in his
dark eyes. She drew a deep breath—

“I am going to run away with Tony Brossard tonight, _Monsieur mon
gardien_, if you care to know. I am going to marry him!”

Panting, she put down the telephone, not heeding a word of what he had
begun to say. Immediately the telephone rang. She ignored it. She told
Monique, who was staring at her in horror, to leave it alone. After a
while it stopped ringing. She called Tony then. She spoke hurriedly,
cutting off all his endearments. She said, “Come for me. No, better,
meet me at the Mount Royal Hotel at seven o’clock. I will go with you.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

In a dark trance of resentment against Marcel Bernard, carried on by her
defiance of him and her bold flouting of his authority, she packed an
overnight-case and was ready, waiting fretfully, when the station-hack
sloshed up the road to the chalet. Monique, as usual, said nothing.
There was nothing could stop her now. She was through with this agony of
being ward to a man who treated her very much as the sister-prefect used
to treat the more recalcitrant spirits among the girls at Ste.-Ursule.
He didn’t himself care for her, or want her, yet he did not wish her to
go with Tony. Well, she was going with Tony.

She wondered, with angry amusement, what Marcel had been saying when she
hung up, what he was doing now. Of course he would try to stop her, but
he had no means of knowing her plans. When she saw him again, if ever
she did, it would be too late for him to do anything. She could picture
his consternation. It would be shared by Adèle. For a moment she hated
herself and thought it contemptible to repay their kindness in this
fashion. But this was best. This would put an end to an intolerable
situation. She was only a burden, a bother to them. She had no claim on
Marcel Bernard and he had no duties towards her save those wished upon
him by a promise perhaps carelessly made long ago to a man since dead.

This would relieve him of all responsibility towards her. What it would
do for her she did not begin to think. She liked Tony. Perhaps that was
enough. He was kind. He had assured her, oh, so earnestly, that they
would be always happy together. “Anyway,” she thought, sitting damp and
defiant in the train speeding towards Montreal, “I cannot be any more
miserable than I was. I cannot be any lonelier, and I can feel that I
matter to him, that he really wants me.”

The city was a place of grey mist and rain, of shining slippery streets,
glistening umbrellas, squelching feet; of clanging trams and madly
hooting motorhorns, of policemen looking like Martians in their great
rubber coats, directing the tangled traffic. It frightened and
bewildered her, all this noise and confusion. It was heavenly relief to
walk into the warmth and soft light of the hotel lobby, relief that
almost made her sob to find Tony Brossard there, waiting, watching
eagerly for her coming.

“Darling!” He held her hand in both his. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t
come. I watched the telephone all day long, but I resisted the
temptation to call you, for something told me if I did call, if I
hurried you, my luck would run out on me. But why did you keep me
waiting so long?”

She couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t tell him that the reason for her
being here was the fact that she had been forbidden to come, the stark
defiance of discipline, the desire to “show” someone, no matter how much
the showing cost. “It was hard to make up my mind, Tony. I needed
something to make it up for me.”

“And something did?”

“Yes, something did. I am tired of being alone, of feeling that I’m just
someone’s official obligation. I—I—” She bit her lip, the golden
lashes quivered.

“Come!” Tony took her arm gently. “We’ll get rid of that wet coat and
your bag, we’ll have a vermouth and something to eat. After that, we
will drive to Repentigny. We can be married there and I have a log-cabin
in the woods, _ma petite_, where we can be lost to the world, you and I,
where there are only trees and a stream and birds all the day long and
only stars and the moon at night.”

The prospect did not thrill her; rather, it frightened her, but she had
gone this far, she would not turn back. She could not now admit defeat
to Marcel Bernard or to herself. No, she would do what she had set out
to do. She would feel better after she was dry and warm. This was
adventure, a glorious adventure. She let him sit close to her in the
lounge while a scarlet-coated, venerable manservant in satin smalls,
silk hose and buckled shoes brought them vermouth and canapés.

Tony was flushed, bright of eye. He had been waiting here for some time
and improving the drizzling hour at the bar. Momentarily, she pictured
the long drive over wet and slippery roads, and wondered—Well, she
wasn’t going to worry, wasn’t going to let herself think about dark or
dismal things. One could laugh, Adèle said—one could be gay; one could
forget the death of an old love by seeking a new. She tried to lift her
spirits to match Tony’s, and in some measure succeeded. When dinner was
over she went almost gaily with him to find his car.

“You will be careful, Tony?” she said when they started out, picking
their slow way through the early evening traffic. “You will not go too
fast?”

“Simonne, I could drive with my eyes shut tonight.” He shot out of a row
of cars into the clear. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But for me you will please drive a little slower, Tony.”

He laughed. “Oh, all right. But you can’t expect a man to go at a
snail’s pace to his wedding. It just isn’t in human nature. I can hardly
wait to hold you in my arms, to know you are all mine, to learn the
wonder and beauty of you.”

She drew away from him, closing her eyes. She had given so little
thought to this that was perhaps the most significant thing in her
life—the surrender of herself, her body, her wellbeing, into this man’s
hands. Tonight, in a few hours, she would be alone with him; shut off
from the world, she would be his to do with what he pleased. And did she
really know him, really know what his heart was like and what she might
expect from him?

She knew he was kind, understanding. He wasn’t ever cold to her, didn’t
ever scold her. Marcel—she thought of what he would say to her if he
could find her now; perhaps, as Adèle had said, he would exercise his
authority and punish her. She wondered what he was doing now, what he
could do. No doubt he had told Adèle, no doubt they were phoning this
one and that for word of Tony Brossard’s movements.

“They’ll never find us now,” she thought, and felt no elation. Tony was
fuming at the seemingly deliberate slowness of the man at the
toll-bridge. Tony had taken quite a bit to drink but the gaiety had worn
off now and he was jumpy, swearing once in a while at cars that he
thought passed too close to him, pushing down on the accelerator
viciously to pass the red eyes that glimmered ahead of him. Once she
clutched his arm as the car side-slipped on a curve. He flung her hand
away furiously and said, “For God’s sake, don’t do that! Want to kill
us!”

“But I’m afraid. Please—”

“Oh, forget it! I can—”

That was all. From a side road, the marking for which Tony had quite
ignored, a huge lorry lumbered out right in their path. Tony swung the
wheel wildly. Simonne could feel the car rock from side to side in its
headlong course towards a culvert. She screamed, covered her eyes with
her hands. Flashingly she could see the horror of shattered glass, of
twisted steel, of blood and ruin that waited for them, and she could see
Marcel Bernard’s eyes with no anger in them, with only pity and
forgiveness—

                 *        *        *        *        *

She heard voices afar off, as if she were lying at the bottom of an
abyss and, from the clifftop whence she had fallen, people were calling
to her. She felt she must lift herself up to listen, to be able to hear
what they were saying. She was in darkness and she must struggle to the
light. It was an effort that seemed to call upon powers deep, deep in
her, that made her feel as if her head would burst, her body break
before she could throw off the weight that held her there.

Now she seemed to be lifted, lifted slowly, up an infinite distance. She
was coming out of darkness, light was dawning slowly. She could see now
a brightness in which all was a blur and confusion. Gradually,
painfully, objects, faces came into focus—objects strange to her, faces
she did not know, eyes filled with pity and concern gazing down at her.
Then, seated at the foot of the bed, she saw Marcel. Her eyes wide,
wondering, remained fixed on his, and they were just as she remembered
seeing them in that last terrible moment—

She screamed. Instantly gentle hands were upon her, soothing voices
spoke to her. Someone held a glass to her lips and said, “Drink it.” She
obeyed. She felt darkness stealing over her again but this time there
was no falling and the darkness held no terrors. Someone was holding her
hand and she knew those strong, slender fingers and clung hard to them.
As long as she clung to them, as long as she did not let go, all would
be well.

“Marcel!” She spoke his name when she again regained consciousness. He
was sitting there, just as if he had been sitting there all the time she
slept.

“You’re better now, Simonne.” His gentleness, the concern in his voice,
in his eyes, reproached her, cut like a knife into her heart. She could
not bear to look at him. She closed her eyes. “How long?” she whispered.

“Days,” he answered. “We were afraid it would be—”

She licked her lips. A nurse held a glass to them. “Tony—?”

No one said anything. Her eyes flew open, stared at Marcel, at the
nurse, reading instantly the terrible truth. “He did not suffer,” said
Marcel. “When you are stronger I will tell you—”

Days later he told her—told her very gently that Tony Brossard had died
with another girl’s name on his lips, a girl who had a great claim upon
him. She listened in silence. For herself she did not mind. She never
had loved him, but all through her life she would be haunted by the
knowledge that she perhaps was in some way to blame for what had
happened.

“It—it was my fault,” she whispered. “If I had not—”

“Don’t say that!” Marcel spoke sharply. “And for the love of the good
God, Simonne, do not reproach yourself with it or let it get into your
life that you had anything to do with it.”

“But I—”

“You were not to blame. Tell me—did you love him very much?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know what love is, monsieur. Growing
pains—that is all I feel. I—I am sorry to have caused you all this
worry. When I am well, I will go away. I have not done right. I have
repaid your goodness in a poor way. I hope you will forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive, little one.” There was deep tenderness in
his regard. “If only,” she thought, “he would touch me now, if only I
could cling to him, if only he would let me love him.” She stretched out
a hand timidly when he was not looking, and almost touched his sleeve,
but she remembered what had happened the last time she touched him, and
drew her hand away.

Adèle came in then. From her, likewise, were no reproaches—only
kindness, a gentle understanding that touched Simonne deeper than
scoldings would have done. “You almost flew away from us, Pigeon.”
Adèle’s soft hand smoothed her forehead. “If you had I should never
forgive myself for leaving you alone that dismal day. As it is, I blame
myself. When you are better I will watch over you more carefully.”

“When I am better”—She looked out at the green foliage of the maples in
the sunny courtyard, at the poplars quivering in the morning breeze, at
the white figures of the nuns on the balcony across the yard—“when I am
well again, I will go back to my own country. I should never have left
it, I think. Oh, do not misunderstand me, please. It is all my own fault
that this has happened. If I stay, perhaps there will be other things”—

She looked at Marcel, trying to read what was in his eyes. Pain, she
thought, and feared that she had hurt him, that she was being
ungrateful. He said, “Do not worry now about anything, Simonne. You must
get well. You have all your life ahead of you and you are far too young
to let anything discourage you. You don’t want to give up.”

“Do you want me to—to go on, _monsieur_?”

“Yes—yes, I want you to.”

“Why are you so good to me—it is not just because I am Simonne—?”

He did not answer. Adèle squeezed her hand. Marcel got up presently and
said he must go. He stood a moment by the bed, looking down at her. She
returned his look bravely, loving him, feeling in her heart the dull
ache of a love unwanted, unrecognized, uncared for. When he had gone she
turned to Adèle: “Was he very angry at me when—when I ran away?”

Adèle nodded. “I thought he would go mad. And it was not you he blamed,
it was himself. He said, and it struck me as very strange, ‘First one,
and now the other’. I asked him what he meant but he only looked at me
as if he didn’t hear.”

“He will never forgive me for doing what I did.”

“He has long since forgiven you.”

“But always he is so aloof, so cold, so indifferent—”

Adèle did not reply. She had a picture of Marcel Bernard as he had been
when he came to the hospital, summoned there after the crash—a picture
she would never forget. She had thought then, as she did now, that it
would be sweet to die just to have him feel that way about her.




                              Chapter VIII
                             GOD NO LONGER


For a few weeks, made bright by Adèle’s daily presence, by frequent,
all-too-brief visits from Marcel, Simonne stayed in the hospital,
recovering from the concussion, the cuts and bruises she had suffered in
the wreck. She was almost sorry to return to Val Morin. It would mean
that Marcel would not come so often. It would be as it had been before.
She would not see him for weeks on end and when he did come she must
hide her joy, must make no demonstration whatever, must say simply,
“Yes, _monsieur_” and “No, _monsieur_.”

Again it would be intolerable. For a while, during her illness, he
seemed to come close to her. There were times when it had seemed he was
again the gay-hearted man who had come to Ste.-Ursule and captured her
heart and made it firmly his on the road to Quebec. Then he would become
aloof, withdrawn, as if some invisible but unscalable barrier had come
between her and him. He would become silent, thoughtful, almost
forgetting her presence, starting when she spoke to him.

“Is it that you are afraid to like me, M. Bernard?” she asked one day
timidly, her pale cheeks coloring with the effort it had cost her. “It
seems that just when we are—are happy together something comes and
makes you different, as if one came and touched you on the shoulder—”

He glanced at her quickly, a startled look in his eyes. “Does it seem
so? I—I think you imagine it, Simonne. No, I am not afraid to like you.
From the first moment I saw you, I liked you. I always will.”

“But not too much, _monsieur_?” She turned her head on the pillow. Her
eyes were tell-tale. She loved him, with a love amounting to worship,
but a very human love nonetheless, a love that demanded response, a love
that harked eternally back to the night he had given her one glimpse of
passion, of the wonder that could be hers.

“It is not well to—to like too much, Simonne,” he said slowly. “Not for
me. I—” He got up from the chair by the bed and walked to the window
and gazed out for a while. He turned to her abruptly as if he were going
to speak. But he did not. He left her soon after that, left her lonely
and hurt and puzzled.

Could one love so much and not be loved in return? Could she go on
forever feeling like this, seeing the bright sun rise when he came and
the darkness fall when he went away? Surely he must know what was in her
heart for him, surely something of this unbearable longing must make
itself known to him. It must then be that he did not care enough. “And
I,” she thought, “can do no more. I have looked at him, talked to him,
in ways that filled me with shame, that must have seemed forward and
bold to him. I could not help it. With him, I forget my pride. He has
made me lose it all. Well, if he does not care for me, I must try to
cease loving him—”

He helped her there. For a week and more after her return to Val Morin
he did not come. She was much better by then. She could go swimming,
riding with Adèle. She could listen, feigning deep interest, when Adèle
talked of her future, of the coming Autumn, of whether she would like to
go to college in Montreal or in Quebec. Adèle would not hear of her
returning to Memramcook. “There may be more of grief in this life, but
there is proportionately more of happiness.” She smiled at Simonne’s
skeptical look. “Oh, you will see—if you stay. If you run from it, of
course, you will never know, but, after, you will think and wonder what
you missed.”

“But if you have no idea—”

“But you will have some idea—you’ll hear faint music, in dreams you’ll
catch glimpses of another life, of bright things that might have been
yours, had you kept to the high road, the dangerous road and not
strolled down the sleepy lane to your Acadian village.”

“I do not know, Adèle.” She shook her head stubbornly. “I have been only
a little while on the high road, and the way has not been good—”

“You must travel on, Pigeon. Presently it will lead into lovelier
places.”

“Very well then, I will travel on.”

Maurice de Haerne claimed the long-deferred dinner and dance. Simonne
went at Adèle’s urging. “You are not to bury yourself here. By all means
go with him. He seems to be interested in you.”

“Well, I will go.” She had often recalled her brief conversation with
the Belgian, often wondered what were the things he had left unsaid.
Perhaps tonight he would talk. There was something—something that
baffled and troubled her in all her relations with Marcel Bernard. It
might be that de Haerne had the answer.

He was smooth, solicitous for her health. He drove very slowly over the
country roads to a quiet inn deep in the Laurentians on the shore of a
lake. He could be very charming, she found, when he wished to be.
Through his talk she got glimpses of the ant-hill that is Europe, of the
myriad pigmy creatures working incessantly to build up their
funeral-pyre. “We are in the midst of all that,” he said, spreading his
hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We who build and sell aeroplanes.
Even here, in this peaceful land where one looks only with idle
curiosity at the airship in the sky, we of Europe are not away from it.
There is always intrigue, always struggle, always the fear of one’s
outdistancing the other. Well, we will not bother your pretty head with
it, Simonne. It becomes late now and you are not yet too strong. We
shall go home.”

She was disappointed. He had not mentioned Marcel Bernard, had not
spoken of Edmond. She wanted to question him but they were well on their
way before she could bring herself to do it. It was de Haerne who, after
all, helped her. “You and M. Bernard—you get along well? He is a good
guardian, _hein_?”

“I do not see much of him.”

“No.” The Belgian nodded. “I can understand that. To me, while in some
ways I admire Bernard, it seems a marvel that he can look you in the
eyes—after all it must be hard for a man to face the sister of the one
he murdered.”

She stared at de Haerne, lips parted, eyes fixed on his sharp, aquiline
visage. Trees, homes fronted by neat gardens, white-painted posts
flitted by. Somewhere a deep bell was ringing slowly, monotonously,
calling reluctant souls. Simonne shook her head like one coming up out
of deep water, blinded, suffocated, lost. This couldn’t be. This was
some grave frightening mistake. “I loved Edmond.” Marcel’s words came
back to her. She could hear his voice, deep and earnest. How could he be
guilty of this terrible thing—

“You—you will please explain, M. de Haerne. I do not understand. I do
not know if I heard correctly what you said to me.”

“I think you heard, _mademoiselle_.” The Belgian’s long jaw was grim.
“You will realize, of course, that there are other, deadlier ways of
sending a man to his death than by shooting him or sticking a knife into
him. Your brother, the day he was killed, was a sick man, unfit for any
work that required quickness of thought and action. He told Bernard that
and was ordered to fly. You know the result.”

“It was—was Marcel Bernard who made him do it!” She choked on the
words. A thousand thoughts came trailing after this ugly idea that had
been planted in her mind. “Can you be sure of that?”

“Perfectly sure. If you doubt me, you have merely to ask Bernard. He
will not dare lie to you, I fancy. It is well known in France, this
story. It was partly to escape the stir of ill-feeling caused by his
action that Bernard made the ocean-hop, that he is staying here.”

“And it is to try to atone for what he did,” thought Simonne, “that he
has been so kind to me.” She touched de Haerne’s arm. “He could not be
punished for what he did?”

“There is no law to punish him. The censure of his fellows, of the
press, the bite of his own conscience—if he has one, the scorn that you
must feel for him—those things will punish him in part.”

“Not enough!” Simonne’s mouth was twisted. “Not nearly enough. He is a
Judas as well as a murderer. And he was not man enough to tell me this
himself.”

“For that, Simonne, there may be another reason.”

“What other reason?”

“I have said enough. Anyway, I do not know definitely about that. But
what I have told you is truth. And I told you because I felt from the
first that you should know what manner of man you had as a guardian. Of
course, that arrangement was made long before he and your brother had
the falling-out—so it stood. But you can break it. No court would
expect you to be the ward of such a man—certainly none in France, and
the facts will weigh the same in this country.”

“Why did my brother quarrel with him? What made them hate each
other—since, I take it, they did hate?”

“That I cannot tell you. I can only surmise. Bernard, you may have
gathered, is something of a slave-driver. Your brother liked to have a
good time. It may have been on that account. Perhaps Bernard will tell
you. But do not be too credulous. He told you a lie by keeping you in
the dark about the facts of Edmond Caron’s death. He would have
continued to act that lie.”

“It was because of that,” she thought, “that he told me I must forget
his kiss, that he avoided me, that he took my arms from about his neck.
I hate myself, despise myself for ever having loved him. How could he
ever hope to make up to me for the loss of my brother!”

Then her heart cried, “Marcel! Marcel!”

She thought of how sometimes his eyes looked tired, his face lined and
drawn; of how he would lose himself so often in his own thoughts and all
but forget her presence. Now she understood those silences, understood
better his confusion at finding she was not a child—a child who could
be won easily and made to forget. Had he made a confidante of Adèle, she
wondered. Well, if this was true—Perhaps it was not true, perhaps de
Haerne and everyone else was wrong. There was one sure way to find out—

“I fear I have spoiled our evening,” de Haerne remarked. “But there will
be others. Believe me, I am your friend.”

“I believe you, _monsieur_.”

“If you need help, advice, come to me.”

“You are kind.”

The sharp black eyes studied her approvingly from under heavy,
olive-colored lids. No other man had looked at her in quite that way. It
unnerved her, made her hotly conscious of her body, of the swiftly
forming contours of womanhood. When he had asked her to dance, she had
wanted to refuse but could find no reason for doing so. She was not
happy in his arms and she hated the way he held her, the way he looked
at her.

“I can understand,” he said softly in his sibilant way, “why Bernard
would be anxious to put himself right with you. For one so lovely—”

“You are wrong,” she answered coldly. “He does not care about my
loveliness—as you call it.”

“No! You mean he seems indifferent.” The Belgian smiled without parting
his thin lips. “It is only a pose, that. A sure way to win some women.”

“He would not dare—” But he had dared to kiss her. Then he had hated
himself. He had kept away from her. That, at least, was to his credit.
Perhaps he really did love her and it was the consciousness of what he
had done that kept him from her. The thought made a warmth come in her
heart and she was ashamed of it.

From a roadside inn she called Val Morin and talked to Adèle. She tried
to speak casually. She managed to control her voice when she asked if
Marcel Bernard was there. Adèle had expected him. No, he had gone
shortly before she called. “He said he was going home. He didn’t seem at
all happy. What have you done to him, Simonne?”

“I am wondering, _mon amie_, what he has done to me.”

Adèle did not understand. She laughed softly. “You are not too happy
with de Haerne, I take it. Ah well, it takes all kinds. You will be home
soon?”

“Yes, quite soon.”

When she returned to de Haerne she said, “I wonder if you would mind
driving me to Westmount to M. Bernard’s place?”

“You wish to go there tonight?”

“I will not wait a moment longer than I can help.”

De Haerne shrugged. “Since you think it necessary to verify what most
people in France know for a fact—”

“I must hear it from his own lips.” Simonne’s cheeks were white under
their tan. There was a strange golden gleam in her eyes. “You are
magnificent when you are angry,” murmured de Haerne. His hands rested
briefly on her arm as he helped her into the car. She hated the touch.
She moved quickly away from him. He smiled thinly.

At a block of apartment houses in Westmount he stopped the car. “There
you are, Simonne. I fear it will not be a pleasant interview—for either
of you. I will wait.”

Her heart beats were loud—so loud that she felt sure even the lift-boy
could hear them. Her nervous fingers made a ball of her handkerchief,
rolling and kneading it. She thrust it in the pocket of her wrap. She
pressed the bell push with trembling finger. In all her body was a
trembling and a weakness, but there was a determination in her heart to
know the truth once and for all. Tonight she would have truth from him,
and when he opened the door and looked at her, unspeaking, she felt sure
she would have it.

He said, “_Entrez_,” as if he had been waiting for her. In the big
living-room a single light burned beside his chair. He switched on a few
more. He was wearing a blue-silk dressing-gown, his white shirt was open
at the throat, showing the leanness, the strength of his neck.

“Won’t you sit down?” He picked up a review off a chair and moved the
cushion. Simonne did not sit down. She kept looking at him steadily as
if just by looking she could see what was in his mind.

“You are not surprised to see me, _monsieur_?”

“Not very, Simonne.”

“Then you—it is true—true that you sent Edmond to his death! You knew
he was sick, too ill to fly—yet you made him go up and because of that
he died a horrible death.” She leaned forward. “That is true?”

He looked suddenly tired and defeated. “I ordered him to fly, yes. It
was his duty.”

“Duty! _O mon dieu!_ You speak of duty when you can picture that
scorched and charred and ruined thing that was my brother! You can—”

“Don’t!”

“But I will—I must! How could you then come to me and lie to me—for
your not speaking was a lie! How could you let me think you were good
and kind! Why, I made a god of you. I could see no wrong in you. I hated
you because—because you would not have my love. Now I hate you because
of what you did to my brother and to me. You killed him, you took him
from me.”

“I tried, in my fashion, to make it up to you, Simonne.” His voice was
quiet. He gazed into her stormy eyes and looked away. “I can in no way
extenuate my guilt—” He seemed to speak to himself—“I suppose it is
guilt. I told him, sick or not, he must fly. He screamed at me, called
me a murderer. Perhaps I am. But I had seen him fly other times when he
felt no better.”

“Why did you not tell me this at the start, M. Bernard?”

He shook his head. “I came prepared to find a child to whom by long
devotion I could make amends for being the cause of all her loneliness.
Then I found you—and you were not a child. I wanted to tell you. I
postponed it, kept putting it off. Each day it became harder and finally
it became impossible. Then—then I knew I must stay away from you, and
that I have done. Edmond and I had not been friends for quite a while,
but the arrangement we made about you long ago still stood.”

“It would have been better, kinder, to have given the task to someone
else. You committed another wrong by undertaking it.”

“Yes.” He walked over to the cold hearth and stared moodily at it. “Yes,
I did. But, as I told you, I thought you were a child who might learn to
like me enough to forgive me for what I had done, instead of a girl old
enough to hate me. Anyway,” he finished flatly, “I have done all there
is to do for you, Simonne. I will stay out of your life. I would have,
anyway. Perhaps, in time you will not think of me bitterly. Believe me,
I have suffered.”

“You do not know what suffering is, _monsieur_. Hell is the most hideous
thing we know and hell is flame, and Edmond—_Bien!_” She turned to the
door. “I will go now.”

He did not try to stop her. He had been waiting for this hour, dreading
it, preparing but never getting ready for it. He could not plead for
himself, not even with her. He could not bring in numerous things that
might have served to lessen his guilt. The fact was there. His were the
orders that had sent Edmond Caron up into the dark and sullen sky that
lowered over the quiet Breton _paysage_—the last orders that Edmond
would ever obey.

“I have done my best for her, anyway,” he muttered, rubbing the back of
his hand across his brow. “At least I was faithful to my promise.
Perhaps I was a fool not to have taken her love when it was offered. The
chance will never come again. Still, she would think much less of me if
I had made love to her when she was ignorant of all this. It was de
Haerne, of course, who told her the wretched story. Someday she would
have found it out, and perhaps better soon than late.”

Simonne got into the car beside de Haerne and for several blocks sat
with her lips tight-shut, her eyes fixed on nothingness. He was wise
enough to respect her silence, even while he burned to know what had
passed between her and Marcel Bernard. It had not ended pleasantly, that
interview. One could see that. She was going over and over it in her
mind. He saw her hands clench and open in her lap, saw her lips move as
if she were speaking. At last she said,

“You were right, _monsieur_. Forgive me for wanting to verify what you
told me. It was a shock to hear, you understand. Hard to believe of one
you—you trusted and set above all other men.”

“That I can imagine. Bernard said nothing in his own defence?”

“What could he say? He admitted responsibility for Edmond’s being aloft
that day, admitted that he knew my brother was ill and not fit to fly.”

“He is still your guardian, Simonne.”

“Yes, legally he is, until I am twenty-one. It means nothing to me.”

“But it may to him.”

“How so?”

“He has authority over you.”

“Pouf! Let him try to exercise it! Anyway, I do not think he will. I—I
do not think he will ever want to see me again.”

“And what about you?”

“I shall never see him again if I can help it. I do not know what I
shall do now. Perhaps I’ll leave Montreal, go back home.”

The thought of home was sweet, the memory of the old house of the
Carons, of the quiet sleepy village, the peace of the valley, the gentle
care of old Artemise, the constant affection of Pierre. In those things
was no deceit like this, no unsuspected treachery to come suddenly
before one and set the world on end.

“You will think better of that,” said de Haerne. “After a little taste
of life you will find the country has lost its savor for you. I do not
think you were made to bury yourself in a lot of fields and woods. You
are too beautiful.”

“If I have beauty, I have begun to distrust it. I am just a
country-girl; all this bewilders and frightens me. Things seem to have
no permanence here—not even truth, not even love.”

“That is because this experience of yours has been so unfortunate. But
you must not be distrustful of everything just because of this.”

She scarcely heard de Haerne’s suave platitudes. She longed for the ride
to end. At Val Morin she thanked him and quickly said goodnight. She
found herself wishing she had never met him. She might then have gone on
forever, believing in Marcel, at least believing that he was strong and
good.

“It was not a nice thing to see him so,” she thought, picturing him as
he had listened to what she had to say. She had had the upper hand
there, it had been all her own way, but she felt shamedly that it had
not been a fair fight, that she had been striking at someone who was
defenseless, who had to stand there and take it all and suffer and say
nothing.

“But he deserved it, all of it.”

She heard Adèle coming along the hall to her room. She wondered if Adèle
knew the story. She thought not. Adèle, even if she did know, would
defend Marcel. Adèle loved him and Adèle could have him.

Adèle came in and sat wearily down on the bed. Simonne, in front of the
mirror, pretended to have but one thought and aim in all the world—a
hundred strokes with the brush. For a dozen of those Adèle watched in
silence. Then she said, “What happened between you and Monsieur de
Haerne? One could tell when you came upstairs that you were out to
flatten someone after first knocking him over. You had a quarrel with
him?”

“Not with him—with Marcel Bernard. It—well, it was my fault anyway.”
She turned briefly to Adèle. “I forgot my lessons. I put my hand into
the fire and got my fingers burned.”

“I think I see,” said Adèle slowly. “I still do not understand. Marcel,
it seems to me, is being very, very noble about you for some reason. I
think a women hates to have a man go noble on her. There is something
terribly unreal about it. Maybe when they wore armor and rode on great
white chargers and carried big swords, it was all right, but it doesn’t
go with the streamline age. You’re crazy about Marcel, aren’t you,
Pigeon?”

This time she faced Adèle squarely. “I am not, Adèle. You were right. It
was a case of hero-worship, of being in love with love. It is all over
now.”

“You really mean it?”

“I mean it. I had my lesson. It was hard when one has to do all the
loving while the other complacently takes the love as his due. I am only
a schoolgirl to him—and a troublesome one.”

“Somehow I thought you were more. But you know best. It seemed to me
that something was keeping him away from you, that he was deliberately
avoiding us. I may have been wrong. It may have been just that he was
indifferent. He is a hard man to figure on, Marcel. Most of them are so
transparent. If ever he seems so, that is the time when he is most
opaque.”

“It does not matter to me, Adèle. He made it clear that he did not want
me. Now if he should change, if he should want me, he could never have
me. Is it presumptuous for me to talk that way?”

“You are just a child.”

“No. You are wrong there. I am a woman now, I think. Perhaps some of the
symptoms you noticed were growing pains, as you called them, but there
have been others that bit deeper.”

“Has the dark M. de Haerne anything to do with this?” Adèle’s gaze was
shrewd.

“It is all due to Monsieur my guardian—to the great M. Bernard.”

Adèle sighed. “Oh, well, one recovers—very quickly when one is young
like you. And there is still your poet-schoolmaster in far-off Acadie.”

Yes, there was always Pierre. Lying awake in the darkness of her room
she could see the sky beyond her window, and the wakeful little stars
shining steadily on while the world slumbered. She had cried a little
when she first put her head on the pillow, wept for the sudden death of
a dream. Now she thought perplexedly about the future. She would impose
no longer upon Marcel Bernard or his friends. His kindness, when she had
thought it sprung from his love for Edmond, had seemed good and right;
now since she saw it as only a means of atonement, of making up to her
for what he had done, she would have none of it. She could free herself
from his guardianship. He would not try to hold her. Then she would go
away from him, from Adèle, from all the associations she had formed
here. She felt like an interloper now, a stranger, to whom they were
being kind because it was a duty.

Pierre loved her. He wanted her to marry him. Well, why not? Did she
love him? That made her smile much as Adèle would have smiled. Did love
really matter so much? She liked Pierre. She had been happy in his
company. Marriage with him would settle her future, would write the end
to this early chapter of her life.

She watched the moonbeams creep about her room as often at Ste.-Ursule
she had marked their silvery course. Ste.-Ursule seemed a million miles
away now. All that she had known there had an unreality, a nebulous
quality in her mind. The little girl who had lived through those quiet
golden years, who had studied there and sung and played—that was
another girl, another Simonne Caron. And she who lay awake in the
bluish-silver light had stepped out of that other creation the moment
Marcel Bernard first spoke to her, and perhaps from her now still
another girl would spring, one with eyes a little wiser, with mouth a
little harder, one who had been born when he took her arms from about
his neck and put her lightly from him.

It was cock-light before she fell asleep and the morning sun, showering
its warm gold upon her, awakened her not long afterwards. Sleeping or
waking, nothing much mattered. She got out of bed and put on the red
bathing suit she and Adèle had bought the morning before they came to
Val Morin. She hurried downstairs and out of the house and soon the
smoothness of the water broke in gleaming ripples as she swam. It would
be nice, she thought, rolling on her back, closing her eyes and
drifting, drifting, to let oneself go, to float away forever on the
bosom of the waters, to forget the pain of love and the cruel reality of
death and the power of hate. But one kept on. One walked on the
highroad, Adèle said, if one really wanted to live. And yes, there was a
purpose, an aim to life. One pictured a shining goal for oneself and
moved towards it, keeping one’s eyes forever fixed upon the height from
which it shone. She had seen a winged god on a mountain top but before
her climb was well begun the sun and the winds and the storms had
tarnished him and broken off his wings.

Of Tony Brossard she had never made a god, yet for him she felt a deep
pity, a great remorse. Marcel had bidden her to forget that, to rid
herself of the idea that she was in any way responsible for what had
happened. Perhaps he had tried to absolve himself of all blame for
Edmond’s death and perhaps, having failed, he knew how much of havoc,
what anguish of mind, such macabre thoughts could cause one. She had
lived over and over those last hours with Tony, thinking how
light-heartedly he had driven into the very jaws of death. Perhaps that
was a good way to die, to be snuffed out suddenly, perhaps never to know
that this was death one met. But he was so young, Tony, so prodigal of
life, so careless of his responsibilities. Life had been his plaything
until suddenly it turned into a juggernaut and crushed him beneath its
wheels.

She had never seen the girl, a stenographer from the brokerage-house
where he worked, Adèle said, who had been with him in his last moments.
Sometimes she felt a queer desire to meet that girl, to talk with her,
to find out how she had felt towards Tony before his death, how she felt
now. If in her heart was bitterness or only regret, only the memory of
lost laughter.

“I have that memory—of the living as well as of the dead,” she thought.
“We used to laugh together, Marcel and I, but all the time he was
laughing there was something holding him back and something would always
intrude upon his laughter. I told him that day in the hospital that it
seemed as if someone touched him on the shoulder and made him remember
what he was trying to forget. It was Death that touched him. It will
come now to touch me.”

Dark thoughts for this glorious morning of bright blue sky and soft
white clouds, of sunlight warm and golden—a day for youth, for love,
for forgetfulness. “But today I will go home,” she thought. “Back where
I came from. I should never have left there. I’ll find Pierre waiting
for me. I’ll climb the Beaumont with Pierre tomorrow at sunset time.
With him, up there among the clouds, I can forget all this. It will seem
like a dream from which I have awakened and I’ll reach out and pluck the
grass and the ferns and the flowers. I’ll smell their green freshness.
I’ll lay my cheek against the earth and know that what I have is real,
that it will not turn to dust in my hand or to ashes in my heart.”

She swam ashore. Adèle was sitting on the verandah-steps. She was
lovely, Adèle, her red-gold hair piled in glorious confusion, a green
bathing suit revealing the beautiful contours of her body. Many men
loved her, yet Simonne knew that she had no love to give them in return.
Marcel Bernard owned it all even if he seemed to take for granted. “She
is a fool to love him so,” thought Simonne, looking down at her. “But
then I, too, have been one. Perhaps women are born with an aptitude for
being fools.”

“You look very serious this morning.” Adèle surveyed her drowsily
through dark lashes. “Did you decide the fate of the world while you
were floating out there staring at the sky?”

Simonne smiled and shook the mane of chestnut hair released from the red
rubber cap. Adèle loved the lights that glinted in its thick waves. How
beautiful, how dewily fresh the child was, she thought. She felt a
sudden pang, thinking of the Adèle Mercier of ten years ago, who had
been so much like this little one, who had merged gradually into the
woman who waited with scant hope but with joy in the waiting.

“I am going home, Adèle. That I have decided.”

Adèle sat up, all the drowsiness gone from her eyes. “Going home? But
why, name of a name. Have you just now decided this? What has made
you—”

“I have learned something.”

“Yes?”

“I have found out why M. Bernard has been so good to me, why he has put
up with my wilfulness and why, at the same time, he has kept himself so
withdrawn. It is because of Edmond, because it was he who—who caused
Edmond’s death.”

“You little fool!” Adèle glowered at her, stood up to face her. There
was much of the tigress in Adèle. “Just because your brother wasn’t fit
to do his job—”

“Oh, then, you know. You knew all the time!”

“A good many people know and very few of them besides yourself and
Maurice de Haerne, who hates Marcel, anyway, blame him for what
happened. He is man enough, or fool enough—I do not know which—to
blame himself. Your brother—”

With an effort she stopped talking, held her lips compressed, staring at
the ground. She looked up at last. Her face was white with two spots of
angry crimson below the high cheekbones. “I am all for Marcel Bernard,
as you know,” she said in a voice entirely changed. “I promised him I
would never talk to you of this. I forgot myself. You are free to
believe what you will, Simonne; to condemn him if you want to condemn. I
can tell you that he went to the convent to find a little girl for whom
he was going to do great things. He is a dreamer, Marcel—an idealist
for all his hardness and strength. I am sure, if he had known you were a
woman instead of the child he looked for, he would not have gone. But
once there, once having made himself known to you, he was in for it.”

“It would have been kinder, better, to have told me the truth, then,
rather than let me find it out after—”

“Yes, he should have told you. But it was too hard for him. Well, you
know now.”

“Yes, I know now.”

“How little you know,” thought Adèle, half-pitying her, half-hating
her—“how very little! I could tell you, oh, so much that would open
your eyes. But he made me promise I would not and I am glad, glad, that
I did promise!”

“And you are determined to go home?”

“Yes, I will go today. I am grateful to you for all your kindness to me.
I have not been very good, I fear. You both—you and M. Bernard—have
been so patient. He has done more for me than he needed to do.”

“But you will see him before you go?”

Simonne hesitated. She wanted to see him more than she dared confess,
but she knew it would make it harder for her to go. She knew that if he
spoke even a few words of kindness to her she would cry, she would
forget what he had done to Edmond, to her—forget everything except that
she loved him.

“No, Adèle. I think I had better not. He will know why I went away. He
will forget me. And that will be best.”




                               Chapter IX
                         THE PIGEON FLIES HOME


Adèle, too, thought it would be best. She knew how little it would take,
now that the truth was out, to bring Simonne into his arms. She knew how
those arms ached to hold her, how only some near-Quixotic idea of
Marcel’s had kept him and would perhaps always keep him from declaring
his love for Edmond Caron’s sister.

“I feel that I caused his death, Adèle. But for me he would still be
alive and this little one would not be an orphan.” He had said this to
Adèle the day she met the big plane at the end of its ocean flight, at
St. Hubert Aerodrome. “Every time I look at her,” he said miserably, “I
will remember Edmond. My only hope is that I can do enough for her to
make her happy. I can never restore her brother to her and all I may
accomplish will fall far short of what she has lost through me. But I
will do what I can. I will devote my life to her.”

“That is more than Edmond did, or more than he ever would do,” she had
pointed out wisely. “And it’s far more than you are bound to do.
Devotion—even such as yours, Marcel—too often fails of its object.
After all, you were only doing your duty when you told Edmond to take
his plane up. If he was jittery, shot with his excesses and his constant
dissipation—”

“You must say nothing of that! Nothing, Adèle.” He had looked at her
fiercely. “It is all beside the point.”

She did not see that it was, but she had learned long ago in Paris that
it would never do to defy him. Willingly, she had helped him prepare for
his guardianship of Simonne and she had been glad to have Simonne in her
keeping—yes, even when she saw that Marcel’s expiation had brought love
with it, that his ward had come to mean so much to him. With Marcel, it
was Simonne—always Simonne. When he talked with her it was of Simonne
he talked, of what they must do for her, of what the years would bring
for her. She saw that he tortured himself with the dark thought that
Simonne would turn from him once she learned the truth.

“She will think I have been good to her just because of what happened,”
he said miserably. “At the beginning, before I came to know her, it was
so. But now—”

“Yes.” Adèle understood, but loving him fiercely, herself, she was glad
that Edmond Caron’s ghost stood between Marcel and the little
convent-pigeon. While Simonne remained in ignorance of the circumstances
of Edmond’s passing, Marcel would never make love to her; and once she
knew the truth, she would most certainly turn away from him. To her he
would be the man who had killed her brother and who had been afraid to
tell her so, who had tried to solace his conscience by showering
kindnesses on her and assuage his sense of guilt by playing the noble
rôle of protector to the girl he had made an orphan.

But Adèle knew he would feel bitterly if Simonne went away without
seeing him. Perhaps it was the kindest, the best way to go, to slip out
of his life and be seen no more. But could it be done that easily? How
much had this girl begun to matter to him? And, after all, no matter
what he had done, he was Simonne’s guardian, he had an obligation to her
distinct from the one he had made for himself.

“I think, Simonne, you had better see Marcel before you go. If you do
not, he will be very unhappy. All you have to say is goodby.”

“All!” Simonne tried to smile, but her lips began to tremble and she
dashed the quick tears from her eyes. “That will not be an easy thing to
say. I think I cannot say it, Adèle. Please do not ask me. I will hurry
now. There is a train at noon. You can send my things on to me at
Memramcook.”

“I wish you were not going.”

“Somehow I wish it, too, but it was a mistake for me ever to come here
and it would be a greater one if I stayed. And, after all—” She put her
arm about Adèle’s shoulders—“you will have him now. You are the one for
him. Watching you, I have learned what love is—how patient, how
undemanding, how loyal it is.”

“It is that—when it can be nothing else. A woman loves and if she
cannot make the man accept her love as it is, why then it changes into
those things you speak of—patience, understanding, loyalty. But it is
pathetic that it should be so. Have you not noticed that, too?”

Simonne had noticed. “Why then do you go on loving him?”

“Why do you, Simonne?”

“But I do not,” she lied bravely. “I assure you I do not. Oh, yes, I
feel something in here”—She touched her breast. “It hurts, too, but it
will go away. You think it will go away, don’t you?”

“In time, perhaps. Anyway, it will cease to hurt so much. I am used to
it—like a little cross I have learned to carry.”

They sat there for a while unspeaking, two who loved him, the one
knowing that if ever he came to her, it would be only a compromise, the
other thinking of the distance that would soon be between them, of what,
more than distance, would keep her from him.

Presently, Simonne went to her room to pack. It was a dreary business.
She sat on the bed, the evening gown of white satin, the first she had
ever owned, clutched tightly to her breast. She would not take it with
her. She would never be able to look at it or touch it without feeling
an agony in her heart, without seeing Marcel’s troubled eyes, without
hearing the gay reckless laughter of Tony Brossard—laughter that ended
in a strangled moan.

She put the dress aside. It didn’t belong to her, it was the cocoon from
which she had stepped, wiser, sadder, in some way better. In that lovely
candent garment she had danced and laughed—and cried. All the things it
connoted had gone from her, gone, most of them, forever, and it was a
shroud for a lot of perished hopes and dreams and with them it must be
laid away.

She finished. She took a last look around the little room shaded by the
chalet’s drooping eaves, curtained by the bright green leaves of
Virginia creeper. She thought of the dismal day of rain and murk, of how
the drip-drip had pounded into her brain so that always afterward in
that room she could hear it; nights, she had wakened terrified, heart
wildly beating, thinking she heard that infernal sound like a drum-beat
summoning her to ride over a rain-swept road where Death lurked at every
curve and crossing.

She wore the skirt and sweater, the little beret, that she had worn the
day she left Memramcook. That was not so long ago, as time is measured,
but in those short weeks she had learned of love and death and pain and
sacrifice. The things she had learned were not clear in her mind, but
there were pictures, scenes, that presently would have meaning and
sequence and reality.

She closed the door softly behind her and went downstairs. Midway on the
steps she paused, frightened, ready to turn back. Marcel was in the
living-room, standing by the wide window that looked out on the valley,
his tall figure, his dark head limned against the light. He turned
slowly and looked at her. She went down the remaining steps, setting her
travelling-case down by the door. For a while they looked at each other
in silence. Her heart was beating wildly, like a captive bird beating
its wings against the imprisoning bars. She saw no reproach in his eyes,
in his smile. Perhaps, she thought sadly, he is glad that I am going.

“Adèle has told me,” he said at last. “I—I could hardly believe it. But
I have since been thinking about it all and perhaps you are doing what
is best.” He paused a moment. “I know how intolerable it would be for
you after—after what you have learned. I deserve to have you hate me.
All the times I was with you I felt guilty for I was acting under false
pretences. At moments, as you know, I would forget, but then the
realization would come back. You were right when you said that someone
touched me on the shoulder—and made me remember. But you gave me much
happiness, Simonne—stolen happiness that I had no right to, that I did
not deserve.”

“Please”—She held out her hand. “Please do not think that, monsieur. It
is I who am in your debt—always in your debt.”

“No, child. You owe me only your unhappiness. I can never forget that,
much less could you. I hope you will find contentment, some measure of
joy, in your lovely homeland. There is peace in those long low hills, in
the great marshlands and rivers. And there is Pierre Gay waiting for
you, I suppose.”

“Yes. Pierre waits.”

“Well—he loves you, Simonne, and there is nothing to spoil his love—to
turn it into shame and reproach and bitterness—” He shrugged. “_Eh
bien_, if you like I will drive you to the train. I have my car here.
You used to like to ride in my car.”

She did not speak. She could not. Adèle came in, looked from one to the
other, went to Simonne and kissed her. “Goodby, Pigeon. You’re flying
home and I hate to see you go. You won’t forget Adèle?”

“I won’t forget—anything.” Blindly she pushed open the screen-door and
went out onto the verandah. The white Sunbeam was waiting there. She
wanted to caress its red cushions, to rest her cheek against them. She
got in, Marcel followed. She waved to Adèle. Goodby.

“You will not forget,” he said after a while, “that I am still your
guardian, Simonne. If you are in trouble, if you need
advice—anything—you have only to call on me. I started my guardianship
on the wrong foot, yet if I had told you the truth the day I met
you—well, I might never have had you at all, never have known how sweet
you were.”

If only now he would speak of love to her, put his arm about her, make
her forget everything except that she adored him—but he did nothing,
said no more. At the Windsor Station he helped her with her tickets, her
berth and saw her to the barrier. He was not happy. He said, “It is
goodby now,” and his voice sounded strained, as if it were an effort to
speak. “Goodby and good luck and all the happiness you deserve.”

“Thank you, _monsieur_.” Her eyes were wretched, red with crying. But
she could not cry any more. She turned quickly, called “Goodby” over her
shoulder and hurried towards the waiting train. Once in her seat she
rushed her handkerchief to her lips and cowered there in the corner,
utterly lost and bereaved. Not until the train gave the usual spasmodic
jerks that prelude departure did she look out the window.

She saw among the crowd on the platform the tall figure of Maurice de
Haerne in the semi-formal costume he affected—Oxford grey coat and
waist-coat, striped trousers, pearl grey spats. He was talking to a
stout man in a grey suit, at whom Simonne stared with sudden interest.
It was the man whom Marcel had suspected of shadowing him. She watched
to see if they were boarding the train and felt relieved when she saw
them shake hands with some others, then leave the platform. She was glad
to be quit of de Haerne. He looked like the Belgian police-dog Adèle had
likened him to, he looked like one who would relish stamping on the
graves of his enemies.

The train pulled out, rolled past the drab grim backs of tenements,
crossed the long bridge and sped through the quiet Canadian land—so
much like her own country—neat villages, tall-spired churches towering
above the cottages of the habitants. In the fields men were cutting hay.
She could almost smell its sweetness. At home now on the broad Caron
acres, Alphonse would be at work. She thought of how she used to ride
atop the mighty loads of hay and play in the great mow, almost drowning
in the fragrant grassy depths of the scented timothy and clover.

Tomorrow she would be home in her valley of the stars. She could picture
Pierre’s joy, his astonishment. He would wonder that she had come back
so soon. He would not question her though. He would be so glad to have
her with him once more, to wander with her through the green meadows,
along the quiet leafy lanes, beside the river.

The old house would welcome her, fold her protectingly to its weathered
bosom. She had money now to spend upon it, to restore it to its former
glory. But she would be alone, through the long nights, through most of
the days. The months, the years, loomed monotonous ahead of her.
Boredom, ennui, would come to her and they would beget either bitterness
or resignation. Peace—she would have peace. She saw clearly now what
Adèle had meant when she spoke of following the highroad, dodging its
dangers and pitfalls, braving its perils, rather than going easily by
the quiet ways.

When she passed through the ancient city on the rock, capped by its grey
citadel, her heart was near to breaking. It was a golden evening and the
slanting light shone on dome and spire and the glory of the bells rolled
over hill and river. She thought with an ache in her breast of her first
sight of it, when she and Marcel had come out upon the heights of Levis
just at this time of day. It had been a breathless, beautiful moment,
that, one of a golden chain that ended under the moon in the Governor’s
Garden.

“How many women of my race,” she wondered, “must have cherished memories
of that place. I wonder how many there were who found lasting happiness
there, how many, like myself, who found only something to think sadly
back upon. That night I was there with him, it seemed that there were
ghostly whisperings and rustlings all about, that bright eyes were
peeping at us from the bowers and the thickets. There were ghosts of
other lovers and he said—he said that our ghosts would come there—to
embrace in the moonlight, to kiss and vanish. It was too brief and too
unkind.”

There was no one but old Theodule Ringuette, the station-master, on the
platform at Memramcook when the Ocean Limited stopped there next
morning. She was glad. There would be any amount of curious speculation
about her sudden return and she was in no hurry for the questioning to
begin. She rode up the hill to the Caron Place with Prémélite Gauthier,
whom she met on the road, on his truck laden with milk cans, the noise
of which kept her from hearing most of his questions and him from
hearing her answers.

“One is glad to see you back in Memramcook, Mlle. Simonne,” he assured
her as he helped her down at the entrance to her driveway. “By cripe,
_mon homme_, the country is the place to live. We were saying that you
will be back. Always there is a Caron in Memramcook. Those Québécois you
would not like. They are bad-civilized, one knows.”

“Oh, they are not so bad, Prémélite. They were all very nice to me.”

“That M’sieur Bernard, that great _aviateur_, one said you would surely
marry on him.”

“One was wrong then, _mon ami_. He is my guardian _tout simplement_.”

Prémélite looked doubtful. In the village and in all the valley it had
been sagely decided that Simonne would “marry on” the Frenchman and that
Pierre Gay would be forgotten. This was quite an upset and would call
for a general revision of ideas that had become firmly fixed in the
rustic minds.

Simonne walked slowly up the weed-tangled driveway to the old house
hidden by the green thickness of the trees’ summer garb. It was the
same—a little more dilapidated, a little more forlorn, a little smaller
seemingly, as if it had shrunk during her absence. But there was old
Artemise sitting on the back porch with her sewing-basket at her feet
and a yellow tabby playing with a spool of mending cotton. And the old
dame’s embrace was warm and motherly and the tears in her dim eyes were
real and there was more joy in this homecoming than Simonne had looked
for.

She walked through the house, from room to room, gazing at the faded
splendor, the painted faces on the walls, feeling an almost terrifying
sense of strangeness, as if she were not the girl who had lived all her
early life among these things, but some changeling, some creature from
another world.

She stood in front of Edmond’s picture gazing at the weak but handsome
face of the last man of the Carons, trying to recapture the sensations
of long ago, the sense of belonging, of being one with this house and
all it stood for. And it came to her that she was an alien, that the
Simonne who had said goodby to this place of desuetude and decay had
said goodby to herself. She could never again be that girl nor could
these things ever again mean to her what so long they had stood for.

“Edmond!” she said softly. “In life you left me alone to eat out my
heart, to live a make-believe existence in a world of make-believe; in
death, even in death, you doom me to loneliness, you keep from me the
greatest happiness I could ever know. You stand between me and him and
it will be that way always. I forgive him now, but I know he does not
forgive himself. But he was good to me. I hope you know that. He was
good and kind always, and if he committed a crime against you, he is
paying for it—and I am paying too.”

She thought of de Haerne at this moment—of the man who had followed
Marcel—the two of them together; of the trunks belonging to Edmond,
that someone had rifled. She could make no sense of it. Perhaps Edmond
had left something of value that only these people knew about. She had
never got to Marcel’s flat, as planned, to look through the trunks.
Well, if anything had been stolen she would not know. Marcel would send
all of Edmond’s things to Memramcook, and for her that would end the
story. Perhaps there was more to it. She had never learned why her
brother and Marcel Bernard, so long close friends, had become enemies.
And it did not matter now. Death has a way of cutting off hatreds as
well as loves.

She did not go out until it was almost sunset time, and the shadows of
the tall cedars were lengthening on the overgrown lawns and ruined
parterres. She went then through the fields behind the house, crossed
the brook, now dwindled in the summer-drought to a mere trickle of
water, climbed over a stile and walked swiftly up the Beaumont in the
ruddy golden light.

At first she did not see him sitting there on the ledge, so high the
ferns had grown and the wide bladed grass. She stood there gazing down
on the valley, on the wide river winding smooth and somnolent between
its dikes, curving this way and that like some mammoth serpent; on the
roof-tops of Memramcook, the spire of St. Thomas Church across the
marsh, the white cluster of buildings that was the Convent of
Ste.-Ursule. The same, but not the same for her. She could never again
look at it with the same unclouded eyes, never again look upon it
without seeing the place on the road to Pont Lefebvre, hard-by Ovide
Lebrun’s farm, where on that June night Marcel Bernard had overtaken her
and life had begun. Once she had thought she belonged to this place
beyond ever being able to separate her identity from it, once it was her
little universe and beyond its hills was only a vague world about which
she had little curiosity. But now—

“Simonne!” She thought it was fancy, just an echo of her name so often
spoken there. But she heard his footsteps in the tall grass, its swish
as he walked through it. She turned to meet him, hands outstretched,
searching his face with eager eyes, seeking to find there an answer to
some great question that could never be put in words.

He took her hands, held them firmly, stared into her eyes with no
question, with knowledge and belief, in the darkness of his own.
Love—yes, she knew love now. It was love she saw in his rapt look, and
heard in his half-whispered words. “I heard you had returned. I have
been here for hours and I think they were among the happiest hours I
will ever know. For I knew you would come. Then I watched you standing
there. I was watching you all the time, and I could not speak for fear
it would break the spell and you would vanish. It is so hard to believe
that it is you—really you, Simonne. There were times when I feared you
never would come back to me.”

“You are the same, Pierre.” She had been looking at him frankly, without
self-consciousness—at his face burned to a deep tan by sun and wind, at
his black hair unruly in the breeze that blows eternally across the
Tantramar and the Memramcook Marshes, at his thin strong body, at the
sturdy hands that held hers as if they never would let go.

“And you,” he said, “are the same? There were moments there as I watched
you that you seemed like an alien—something in the way you stood, in
the set of your mouth. It must have been fancy or the sunlight or both,
for you are Simonne with all Simonne’s beauty and mystery and wonder.”

She shook her head. “No, I am not the same. You were right, Pierrot.
Your fancy did not play you false. I felt that sensation of strangeness,
of being an alien when I walked through the house this afternoon. I felt
it again just now when I looked down on the valley. Everything here is
the same, unchanging, unchangeable, but I—I am not the same.”

“Then what has changed you?” He frowned, looked away, slowly released
her hands. “I can see in your eyes that you have been unhappy. I can
tell that you have cried. Why? Who has made you unhappy? It was this
man, Bernard!”

“It was not. He was always good and kind to me. But I was at times
unhappy, yes. And it was to get away from unhappiness that I left
Montreal and came back home. I have things to forget—that I must try to
forget. I do not know how well I will succeed, for some of them are more
real here than they were in the city.”

“_Pauvre Simonne!_” He was smiling at her fondly now. “Your wings were
clipped before ever you could take flight. By what, I wonder. Yet if you
do not wish to tell me then it is all right with me. It is more than all
right, since you have come back to me. Will you come to see my cottage
and my garden? I have been working hard. I—I had to work hard. It was
so lonely after you went, I thought I should go mad. But I assured
myself you would be back. Each night I said to myself, ‘She will come
tomorrow’ and each morning I said, ‘She will come today’. And you did
come.”

They walked slowly down the hill as often they had walked of old, not
speaking, hand-in-hand, looking now at the magic tapestry of river and
field and hill and sky, now into each other’s eyes with an understanding
that required no words. But here again, for her, there was something
lacking; rather there was present something new, intangible, elusive,
something that kept her from complete abandonment to the quiet beauty of
this time, some tug of memory, some threads that bound her to distant
scenes, that would not be broken.

The last roses were lingering in Pierre’s garden, their white, pink and
yellow blooms lovely in the dusk, their fragrance drenching the evening
with beauty. He had built an arbor over which the ramblers sprawled in
lovely confusion and he had made a little waterfall in the brook and a
pool in which it fell. He had painted and furbished his cottage until it
was like a white and green jewel in an emerald setting. And she knew
that with each stroke of the brush, each blow of the hammer or push of
the plane he had thought of her, for now his eyes sought wistfully her
approval and there was eagerness almost pathetic in his voice that asked
her how she liked it all.

“I love it, Pierre,” she said quite honestly. “You can make poems with
brick and wood and with flowers and a brook.”

“What does this poem say, Simonne? You are right, it all is a poem to
you. Do you know what it says?”

She plucked a pale pink rose already touched with dew and held its
fragrance to her nostrils. Yes, she knew. She was beloved. He loved her
utterly, completely. She filled his thoughts, his life, his work. Even
absence had done nothing to this love unless to strengthen and ennoble
it. Beside this love of his, Tony Brossard’s had been only a poor
passion; what Marcel Bernard’s love might be she could not know, for it
had never been given to her, never shown to her beyond a single
kiss—and she would never know it now.

“I know what it says, Pierre. I have always known.”

“And the answer—the answer, Simonne!” He took her hand in both his and
lifted it to his lips. His kiss seemed to burn upon her fingers. “Can
you give me the answer?”

“Perhaps soon, Pierre”—Oh, why not now! Such love as his, so constant,
so true, so patient, should not be treated lightly. “Perhaps now,” she
whispered. “It was to you I turned when all else seemed to fail me. And
you were here, you were always here, had it been years instead of this
short time, I would still have found you.”

His arms were about her lightly, his cheek against her hair. “Then—then
you do care, Simonne—care enough to—!”

“Yes.” It was a mere whisper. She closed her eyes beneath his kiss that
rested lightly on the lids, that found her lips with passion that she
tried to answer only to find in her heart the cruel knowledge that he
sought to possess what he never could, what she could never give him.
But he must not know. She would never let him know. At least, she could
be happy with him. She could rejoice in the knowledge that she brought
to him a bliss outmatching heaven. She listened, smiling gently, while
he talked of their future, of the happiness that would be theirs. They
sat in the rose arbor until the moon came and made a tracery of twigs
and trellis across the white of his blouse, across the tan of his cheek,
across the black of his hair.

In that magic of moon-arabesque she closed her eyes and thought
traitorously of another moon, of flowers silvered by the moonlight, of
velvet shadows in an ancient garden, of ghostly whisperings and
rustlings, of half-heard footfalls on the flags, of a single kiss that
had in it something of eternity; of a loved voice saying—“And lovers
wandered here under the moon and whispered things that were only the
echo of things whispered down the ages—”




                               Chapter X
                         WINGS OVER THE VALLEY


The little sunbeam that awakened her was like an old friend. It crept
slowly across the pillow. She reached out her hand and let the bright
golden thing caress it. “You are little brother to the ones who used to
come in the dormitory window at Ste.-Ursule, are you not?” she said.
“Oh, you are a prettier sunbeam than those of Quebec. I think you came
purposely to welcome me.”

She clasped her hands at the nape of her neck and gazed about the little
room. This was home. Today she felt less alien, today it seemed as if
she had never been away, as if all that had happened were not real,
merely something she had seen in a dream. Here all about her was
beautiful reality. Through the open casement she could see the little
houses on the far side of the Memramcook Valley, with the smoke of the
breakfast-fires rising straight up, grey-blue, into the pellucid air.
She could watch the dark green marching hosts of the conifers on the
ridges, like a great army of mighty spears. The air was fragrant with
the sweet scent of the marsh hay and she could hear the wagons creaking
through Memramcook Proper and the teamsters shouting to their horses.
Cow-bells tinkled in the morning stillness as the stolid Jerseys and
Holsteins sauntered back to their pastures. Below-stairs, old Artemise
was making a great clatter with the stove-lids. This morning there would
be buckwheat-pancakes and _croissants_, as only Artemise knew how to
make them.

Pierre had told her he would be up to greet the dawn of this day, this
most memorable day, the first after she had given him the greatest
happiness of his life. Thinking of those hours in his garden, she closed
her eyes, trying to recapture what had been said and done. She had
consented to marry him. She had seen rapture in his eyes, had found in
him a tenderness, a gentle strength that humbled her even while she
rejoiced in it. So confidently, so proudly, he had talked of the years
to come, until she pictured a wide road that ran always through flowery
meadows by a silver stream. And they would traverse that road
hand-in-hand.

She had listened to his rhapsodies, believing in them, feeling quite
sure that he had it in him to make all his dreams into realities, that
his power of accomplishment was great, knowing that she should be proud
and happy in his love, hating herself for lacking the fire, the passion
that such love should evoke. It was not there, it might never be there
for him. Her loyalty, her tenderness, her life’s devotion, all these he
could have, but the flame and fire that is love burned not for him in
her heart.

“He does not know,” she thought. “He will never know. In my life I have
been selfish, wilful, headstrong, now I can think of someone else, now I
can forget myself and seek only to please him and to make him happy.”

They would be married soon. Pierre had insisted and she had agreed. She
was swept along by the tide of his love. She could not deny it. Now
there was no reason for making him wait longer. He was making more money
and she had, anyway, sufficient for them both. He was working on a book.
He had read parts of it to her in the lamplit cottage. She loved it. A
book such as only Pierre could write, sentences that dripped beauty,
imagery rich and powerful, a pageant of colored dreams. It left her
breathless, wondering, marvelling that such things should come from this
shy and quiet Pierre she had known so long.

“It was my love for you,” he said simply, putting down the closely
written sheets. “It was too much to store up in my heart—so I poured it
out in this writing and it was like an exaltation, a prayer—”

It was sweet to be loved like that, yet it made her fearful, brought
doubts to her that troubled her this morning, doubts of her own
worthiness, her own ability to match his passion with one as great. “He
has made an image of me in his heart and it is a perfect, flawless thing
and I am not like that. I am one who sits with him in a rose-garden at
dusk and listens starry-eyed while he reads poetry to me—but I am
likewise the one who must keep his house, prepare his food, mend his
clothes. He is all poetry, and there is so much prose in life—”

Very little of prose in the days that followed. The long hours with
Pierre were filled with sunshine and flower-fragrance, with the crimson
glory of the sunset, the pastoral beauty of the Acadian land. They were
sanctified, these hours, by the love, the worship in his eyes. High up
on the Beaumont they would sit on the little ledge among the bracken
that had been their trysting-place so long. Pierre would write, his
curly head bent over the pad on his knee, his pencil flying busily
along, and ever and often he would stop, looking up at her as if to be
sure she was still there, and smile and go on.

But sometimes when he looked up her own gaze was fixed upon far-off,
invisible things, on something far, far beyond the rim of the valley and
he would be looking at her moments on end before she became aware of his
regard. Then it would be a troubled regard and she would catch a dull
glint of pain in his eyes.

“You know,” he said once, arousing her from those dreams he did not
share, “I think sometimes you have left a part of yourself in the life
you came from, that you are not all mine. Perhaps there is something of
you that never can be mine.”

“Foolish Pierrot,” she said then quickly, earnestly, fearing the truth
in his words. For it was so; there were remembered things, loved things
that he could never share, there was a place in her heart that he could
never enter, a shrine, a sanctuary where there would be always fresh
flowers and tiny deathless tapers.

“But I want you, all of you, Simonne,” he said. “And I hate these times
when you are lost to me. You sit there near me, your body is there, but
your spirit takes wings and flies far away from me. And where does it go
and to whom? Oh, I know I am too greedy of your love, too demanding. You
must forgive me.”

She touched his hair gently. “You have never done anything that asks
forgiveness. I am proud of your love, Pierre. It is so good, so fine,
that it makes me feel unworthy. What am I to be so loved?”

“You are Simonne,” he said quietly. “You are my sun, but sometimes I see
clouds coming between my sun and me.”

“They pass, if there are any. You must not fancy things. I am your sun.
I shine for you alone.”

But he knew in his heart that her light went further. He fretted at
something in her aloof, unattainable, something that the more he tried
to possess it, the further receded from him. This was hard and cruel.
His love of her was all in all to him, such a love as finds bewilderment
and pain when all that it demands is not given to it.

“But in time,” he thought. “In time she will come to me entire and these
images will fade and vanish from her heart. I love her and my love is
great enough for us both. I will make her forget everything else, I will
love her so.”

And in St. Thomas Church on Sunday the mouths of the good peasants hung
agape and their eyes grew wide with wonder when old Père Berthelet
announced that there was a promise of marriage between the last Caron
and Pierre Gay, the schoolmaster of Memramcook. There was a great
buzzing and shaking of heads among the groups that clustered about the
church steps after mass, to bask in the warmth of the sun and the
satisfying luxury of the week’s gossip. After all, it was decided,
perhaps it was better that she should marry one of her own people rather
than this man from Paris, a very wicked city. But then, again, she was a
Caron, one of those who wore silks and ermine, one whose ancestors had
held the first _baronnie_ in the Acadian land; while he was only a
fustian schoolmaster who spent half his time dreaming along the dikes or
scribbling a lot of nonsense in his garden.

But Pierre walked proudly among them, conscious of the power of his
dreams, the truth of his vision. He loved the people but he knew that
their eyes saw not beyond the hills that rimmed the valley, that light
shone not deeply in their spirits, that in them was something stolid,
placid, limited, as in the stolid animals that grazed their meadows.
This one saw in the slow, deliberate movements of the men, in the great
ox eyes of the women in which was something bovine, something that
prevented their ever looking deeply into things. “And it is as well
perhaps,” he thought, “for the deeper one sees the more confusion one
finds, the more one speculates and torments one’s self with questions
that defy answering.”

He was thinking then of Simonne, thinking that it would be well if he
could take her without too much thought of love, without consulting too
deeply her own desires, without wondering if she was fully his, without
fearing, dreading, things he could not name. This Sunday, as she sat
beside him in the church, as the banns were published, he had looked at
her and had seen or fancied a wistfulness about the lovely, parted lips,
in the depths of the grey-green eyes, in the quiet way she sat. He had
touched her hand lightly and then a slow smile, gentle, tender, curved
her lips and made a dimple come in her cheek, but in that smile he read
resignation, submission. He could not read in it what he wanted to read
and his spirit was darkened, saddened. He thought again of those times
he had climbed the hill alone and felt now, with her sitting so near to
him, pledged to him, that same awful feeling of solitude, of loneliness,
as if her hand were withdrawn from his and she had gone away forever.

But this was foolish fear, he assured himself, and it would pass. She
would come closer to him, their lives would have that oneness, that
complete identity that was his prayer and his dream. As he was all hers,
she must be all his. He hated the idea that any of her thoughts should
be of another. His was a love all-possessive, all-exacting, demanding
everything or nothing.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She wrote to Marcel briefly, to Adèle at greater length. She wanted them
to know she was happy. She told Adèle about Pierre, about his garden,
his book, about all the wonderful things he would do. “And it will be a
joy for me to help him,” she wrote, “as it is to share in all his
dreams, his visions. When I sit there in the evening with him and close
my eyes as he reads to me, I am content. One should be glad to be
content, _n’est-ce-pas_? One should not greedily ask for more than
that—”

Thus she tried to assure herself that she was getting from life as much
as any girl should want. She would be loved, sheltered, cherished. What
more should she ask? If there would be no high, exalted moments, no
times when she was lifted to the clouds on the wings of a soaring
passion or joyously blinded by a great light, she would have a steady
measure of happiness, of quiet contentment. Adèle Mercier smiled almost
sadly over this letter, seeing with wiser eyes that this was the girl’s
effort to make the best of things, this was the metamorphosis of the
glory that is love into those virtues of patience and loyalty and faith.
And when Marcel Bernard said, “Simonne is happy now,” she did not answer
him.

Edmond’s trunks and boxes arrived from Montreal and were hauled from the
station by Alphonse and carried to the attic. Simonne went there the day
they came. New locks had been put on some of them. She could see the
marks where the old ones had been pried. Pensively she looked at them.
There were trunks there she knew—old ones that had belonged to her
father, to others of the family. There was an antique affair that Edmond
had always prized since it had journeyed back and forth over the
Atlantic and had once, they believed, gone to French Indo-China with an
adventurous Caron. That trunk—She went to it first. It had always been
the storehouse of Edmond’s boyish treasures—his marbles, his books, his
playthings. There was a queer bottom to it that once in an expansive
moment he had showed her, claiming that the Caron who had been in
Indo-China had hidden there the jewels taken from an ancient temple.
Perhaps in that secret compartment she could find something to dispel
the mystery of the attempt made to pry into Edmond’s effects, of the
vague allusions de Haerne had made—It was like opening a tomb, she
thought, and had no relish for the task. But it must be done—

The days passed quickly now—almost too quickly. She had her wedding to
prepare for, only a few weeks away. She went busily about it. Artemise
and Madame Plourde went swimming in a sea of silk and satin, lace and
tulle, but often when frantically they sought her to try on this or
that, she was not to be found, but would come back hours later, flushed
with the sun, weary from long rambles on the hills or across the
marshland. Each evening she walked with Pierre or sat quietly in his
garden listening while he read to her what he had written through the
day, listening dreamily to the musical flow of words, feeling the
emotions that animated him as he wrote, and gradually as the story
unfolded she began to see into his heart, to live in his ideas, to see
her own place in the scheme of his life, to understand his love for her.
And she heard there too, like an overtone, some note of sadness, of
bitter unhappiness, some questing that brought no reward, some longing
that was balked of fulfillment. And at times her eyes misted with tears
conjured up swiftly by his magic and she wondered, seeing clearly what
he meant, if he knew himself whence sprung this plaintive, minor theme
that was like a wail and a crying in the darkness.

“It is what I deny to him,” she thought, “what I cannot give to him
because already it has been given. He knows it, something in him knows
it, though he does not seem to show it or even realize it himself. He
seems content with such love as I can show him. He seems to think he
owns me—all of me, that I am utterly given to him. Does he know there
is something of me that can never be his, because it has already been
given and can never be recalled?”

Seemingly, he did not know. He never questioned her love, never again
alluded to her moments of abstraction when forgetting him her mind
ranged afar to the distant Laurentian Hills, to Quebec, to the city
where Marcel Bernard walked alone. She tried to forget the things that
had been, but there was no forgetting. She had tasted of a fruit that,
once tasted, forever after piques the palate. All through the years with
him she would remember it and perhaps long for it and the thought that
her longing must go unsatisfied made her sad at times and
unhappy—unhappy more for Pierre than for herself. He deserved the best,
to be loved without reservation, to be shown an affection, a passion, as
fervent as his own. And she could not—could not—

He walked home with her under the stars, walking slowly, prolonging the
time before he had to leave her. A warm wind blew across the marshes
tonight, rustling the leaves of the poplars, the great elms that made a
dark canopy overhead. “Only a few more nights, Simonne,” he said at
parting, “and I will have you always.” He lifted her hand and pressed it
against his cheek. “So long I have waited, wanting you, all of you. And
it seemed too great a happiness for one man to have, as if I asked too
much of God when I asked for you.”

“I am nothing, Pierre. It is your love that makes me desirable to you.
Your love endows me with a thousand virtues, a thousand splendid
qualities that are not mine. I am just Simonne, just a girl, so like a
million other girls. Once we decided, you and I, that love was greater
than the lover or the beloved. It is a force like a great sea sweeping
humans along on its waves. We have no say about it, no control over it.”

“That is so.” She saw the gleam of his dark eyes in the bright stars’
light. “We can make no laws for it. We cannot expect it to do what we
wish it to do. We cannot say who shall love or who shall be loved—”

_Un qui aime, un qui se laisse aimer_—one who loves, one who lets
himself be loved. She recalled Tony Brossard’s words. Was it so in all
loves, or could there be two who would bring to their love the same
degree of passion, of longing or was it the way of life that two such
must always be kept apart?

He kissed her and said goodnight. She walked slowly up the drive. She
would be alone tonight, for Artemise was with the sister of Alphonse,
who was dying, and would not return until tomorrow. She did not mind
being alone: she had been in her short life so much alone, thrown upon
her own resources.

A letter from Marcel had come today—a brief, kindly letter. She went
into the library where she had left it and sat down wearily in the
ancient leather chair that had been her father’s, to read it again. Was
it fancy or did she detect in those brief lines something of longing and
regret, in those honestly-expressed wishes for her happiness something
of pain and renunciation.

She touched the letter fondly, loving it because he had touched it,
because in it there was something of him, of his gentleness, his
strength, his quiet charm. She would always see him, always dream of him
as he had looked that morning in the grotto at Ste.-Ursule, with a
dawning wonder in his eyes at the knowledge that she was Simonne—

She dropped the letter. She jerked erect in her chair, her eyes staring
with a wild fixation beyond the zone of bright light cast by the reading
lamp. Her hand flew to her lips, stifling a scream. For moments she sat
like that, her heart ceasing to beat, then beating thunderously and a
chill succeeding the heat of fear, prickling her flesh. Then the shadowy
figure in the library door moved forward into the light and stood above
her, staring down at her with a twisted grin.

“Edmond!” Her lips shaped the word. There was no sound.

“Yes, Edmond.” His voice had a sullen note. “You thought I was a charred
stump too, eh? I might well have been if I had flown in the rotten
crate. Instead, my dear little sister, I went to England and got drunk
and stayed there.”

He grinned again at the wide eyes and breathlessly parted lips. She got
up and put her arms about his neck. There was little response. He was
like a stranger. He even looked different, his face so hard and lined.
He put her away from him.

“Why—why did you not tell me—why did you let me think—”

“Oh, it was luck for me. What they found in the wreckage of the plane
was once a fellow named Huguard. He happened along that day and I let
him fly her. No one missed him. He had no one. I was just as glad to be
dead, so I stayed dead till now. I was pretty sick, anyway.”

“But why? Why?”

“Oh, reasons. One was that I might have gone to gaol if I stayed alive.
There were some thousands of dollars missing from the company’s treasury
and Bernard had been riding me pretty hard and—”

“You—you mean you stole—”

He laughed. “Call it that.”

“But—but the money you left me—all that money—”

“Money I left you!” It was he who stared now. “Is it likely, after, as I
just told you, I—”

“Then he—Marcel gave me his own money. He—he let me think it was
yours. He let me think you were a man, Edmond; he let me hate him and
say rotten things to him and blame him for your death.”

“He was always a plaster saint,” said Edmond carelessly. “Even his
reputation with women was a myth. He’s a beastly monk. He played the
fond guardian for you, eh?”

She did not answer. She could not. She looked with loathing, with horror
and contempt she could not conceal at this creature that had once been
beloved. She could see where drink, debauchery, a dozen kinds of vice
had run their course. And it was for this man Marcel had suffered and
sacrificed and denied even love. And she—that was her guilt, her
folly—

“My trunks,” he said, scowling at her, resenting the way she looked at
him. “I’m not going to stay here you know, Simonne. Bernard faked-up an
inheritance for you; there’s nothing I need do. But there is something I
must get from my trunks. Where are they?”

“In the attic. I’ll show you if you like. But your trunks were broken
into while they were at M. Bernard’s.”

“I know. That fool de Haerne and his henchmen. They couldn’t find what
they looked for, even though I gave them directions.” He hurried out of
the room. She heard him go rapidly upstairs, heard the trap-door of the
attic bang back against the floor. She did not move. Her mind raced
madly, thoughts tumbling, jostling each other, making a chaos, a
terrible confusion. Edmond had done a hideous wrong, yet he could laugh
at the very ones he had caused to suffer. She thought, with an ache
intolerable in her breast, of Marcel Bernard, of what might have been
for her and him. Too late now—too late.

Edmond came into the room, his face grey and ghastly, his teeth bared
like an angry beast’s, his fingers curved. He stared at her wildly, in a
near-frenzy. “He screamed at me—called me a murderer.” Marcel’s words
flashed on the screen of her mind.

“Gone!” He said. “They are gone. They lied to me—that foul snake de
Haerne. They found my plans, do you hear? They stole them—years of
work—gone—”

“It’s not gone.”

“What do you mean—not gone!”

“I found the papers you had hidden in the bottom of your play-trunk,
Edmond.”

“Oh, thank God. They mean a fortune to me, to us. I’ll see that you get
plenty, Simonne. I’ve been pretty rotten I know, but now—”

“I sent them to Marcel Bernard.”

“You—” His pale lips hung open. The dark pupils of his eyes were wide,
wide. He tried to speak and could not. He took an ape-like step towards
her, hands held out as if he would strangle her.

“I read some of the papers,” she said. “You worked for Marcel Bernard’s
company. Your work was their work. You stole from them, cheated them;
then when you found something good you tried to sell it to a rival
concern, rather than let them share in it as was their due. You know
Marcel Bernard will treat you fairly. He is honest. He makes me ashamed
to think I have to call you my brother. If you are a man at all, go to
Montreal, go to him—”

“Go and crawl to him! I’ll see him damned first, and you with him, you
meddlesome little brat!” He flung out of the room. She heard him go
upstairs and shut himself in a bedroom. In the morning when she went
there he was gone.

She did not regret his going. She never wanted to see him again. The
very thought of him sickened her. She wondered what he would do about
his precious plans. He wasn’t likely to let all the profits slip from
him just because he hated Marcel. He had said in his braggart way that
he wouldn’t crawl to Bernard, but she had an idea he would do that very
thing.

“For me he is dead—even more so than he was before. He succeeded in
killing a lot of pleasant memories and fond illusions I had about him.
It would have been better somehow if he had died.”

He had trampled down some flowers in her heart, flowers of his own
planting that had grown there since childhood, that the false report of
his death had brought to lovely bloom, that memory would have kept
alive. Gone now, and in the place where they had been the flower that
was her love for Marcel Bernard stood beautiful and alone. She could
love him now without fear or reproach. He was all that she had ever
thought him. He was a god with wings untarnished, but like a god he must
be adored from afar. That morning she stayed with Artemise and Madame
Plourde and was very gay when she tried on her wedding-dress: sometimes
one can be gayest when one’s heart is breaking.

That night in Pierre’s garden she told him of Edmond, of the cruel
deception put upon her, of the sad awakening to the fact that the
brother she had once idolized had turned into a knave, into a man lost
to all sense of honor and decency. “I truly believe,” she said, “that
Edmond is dead and this one who came to me is another, an evil spirit,
wearing Edmond’s body. Yet even that body is different. I tell you,
Pierre, I shuddered. I was terribly afraid, the way he looked at me
after I told him what I had done.”

She trembled now, thinking of that moment, of the berserk look in
Edmond’s eyes, a look of madness. “And then, Pierre, I must restore to
Marcel the great sum of money he gave me and to which I have no right
whatsoever. Why, think of it, I had no right to any of the kindnesses he
did for me. I can see that for years he covered up Edmond’s crimes and
his excesses and that he would have gone on providing for me just
because he felt it was an obligation.”

“Are you sure just because of that? For no other reason?”

“For—for what other reason, Pierre?” she faltered.

“It is clear he loves you, Simonne. No man would do what he did just
from a sense of duty. He loves you! And you, why did you go away from
him?”

“It does not matter, Pierre—not now.” She laid her hand on his. “There
is only you and me to think of now. All the rest of it is over and done
with. We will be happy, you and I, here in the valley. You will write
your beautiful things and read them to me, each day will be lovelier
than the last, the roses will fade and die, but there will always be
another spring.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “There is always another spring—for the roses—”

She thought then, as he was thinking, of a song—“For the broken heart
knows no second spring.”

That was truth. Once she had attained a height of happiness that she
would never reach again. Once she had had a glimpse of another realm
where was that magic thing called love. Once she had been in his arms,
her heart beating close to his, her life and strength seemingly
concentrated in the kiss so eagerly returned. To think of it now was
pain, was ecstasy ineffably sweet and poignant. Bitter to reach the high
mountain and gaze over the clouds, then to plummet down and know that
you can never climb again.

She awoke from her day-dream, blushingly, guiltily conscious of Pierre’s
brooding dark eyes. He sat on the grass at her feet gazing up at her.
There was a book of verse open on his knee and she saw that it was the
poems of Ronsard. He had read them to her so often that she knew many of
them by heart.

“Sometimes, Pierre,” she said lightly. “I think you are a reincarnation
of Ronsard.”

“Sometimes I think so myself, Simonne.” He closed the book and studied
the lettering on the cover. “The thought does not make me happy, for you
see, if I am Ronsard, I must make a ballad to you who are my love
and—it could be like his—

            “‘Ah! dreary thoughts and dreams are these!
            But wherefore yield me to despair,
            While yet the poet’s bosom glows,
            While yet the dame is peerless fair!
            Sweet lady mine! while yet ’tis time
            Requite my passion and my truth,
            And gather in your blushing prime
            The roses of your youth!’

“Ah, yes. But I think of the first part of that song, Simonne, O ma
Simonne. Well, it is only fancy. Away with it!” He put the book aside.
“I am not Ronsard, I am Pierre Gay, and you are Simonne, and I love you.
This is love, is it not? This burning, this pain, this agony, this
rapture—!”

Wild and strange he looked and the fire in his eyes did not match the
jester’s words. He stood up, took her hands and drew her up to him.
“That is love, Simonne, is it not?”

“Yes—yes, that is love, Pierre.”

“Have you known it, Simonne?”

“Yes,—I have known it.”

“I know you have, little Simonne. After one has known love, one is never
again the same. But I keep you late, so near to your wedding day. Come
now, it is time. You will have so many things to do to prepare for your
marriage.”

“Oh, lots and lots of things.” She tried to be gay, to shake off the
depression, the pain that had come into her heart when he spoke of love.
Yes, she had felt love, she knew what it was—this burning, this pain,
this agony, this rapture. But it was acting a lie not to tell him that
it was for another she had felt it—not for him.

“But I will never tell him—never. I would not spoil his happiness.
Though I do not love him as he would be loved I can give him loyalty and
understanding. And that will do, that must do.”

Up to the eve of her wedding she sewed with old Artemise and Madame
Plourde, sewed busily and made a hundred tasks for herself, just to keep
from thinking. For now the far off voices called louder and distant
scenes beckoned more urgently, and she could not look upon the King’s
Highway where it swept through Memramcook without thinking of the places
it led to, without feeling an urge to arise and go—go before it was too
late.

But she knew she would never go of her own volition. She would linger
here in this quiet backwater out of the turgid, on-sweeping stream of
the world, and she would find here a measure of happiness.

Here, sitting with Pierre in the little garden of his cottage, on so
many nights like this; here, growing old, the short bright visions of
youth fading gradually, losing whatever little of reality they had once
held.

“Tomorrow I will be your wife, Pierre,” she said suddenly. “I will try
to be a good wife to you.”

He bent to her and kissed her. His lips were trembling. She thought his
eyes looked queer. She thought how proud, how heroic was his head, how
there was something of the sublime about him and about his quiet,
secluded life. A village-schoolmaster, yes, but some divine fire burned
in him. The ruddy sunlight was on his face, molding its fine,
priest-like lines, throwing a glory into his eyes.

He was looking at the sunset, then he turned and gazed up the valley to
where a small speck like a gull or a hawk appeared in the far distance,
grew larger and larger, heralded by a drumming as of mighty wings.

A white plane glided easily down onto the new stubble in the meadow
below the cottage. Pierre said, “I have to run up to the village for a
few minutes. You will wait here for me?”

“But—”

He smiled at her—an odd, unhappy smile, and walked out of the garden.
She stared after him, frowning. It was not like him to—

She turned and gazed at the meadow where the thing like a great white
bird had come to rest. She saw a man crossing the field, climbing the
fence at the foot of Pierre’s garden. Life seemed to go out of her then,
only to flow back with a great rush and power.

Marcel!

He came to her. Without a word he took her in his arms, hungrily,
strongly, and looked into her eyes with only one hope, one wish, in his.
Her own reflected what she saw there, then his lips were on hers and all
was a great wonder, a searing ecstasy, a response that left her weak and
trembling. She had forgotten Pierre, forgotten her wedding day,
forgotten everything.

“Simonne! Oh, Simonne!” He was laughing down at her. “You did not need
to send me any message. When I learned about Edmond nothing could keep
me from you—”

“Message—I sent no message.”

He drew a telegram from his pocket. She read it. There was only one
word—COME—and her name.

“Pierre!” she whispered. “It was Pierre. That is why he left me when he
saw the plane. We—we were to be married tomorrow. I was ready. I
thought—”

“But you love me, Simonne. You must love me. You—I have wanted you—”

“I love you, yes, _monsieur_. But he—”

They waited. He did not return. When, late, he did come back, the little
garden was empty and forlorn, the volume of Ronsard lay open on the
bench where they had sat. He picked it up idly, seemed to weigh it in
his hand—

     “Old tales are told,” he said softly, “Old songs are sung,
     Old days come back to memory;
     You say, ‘When I was fair and young,
     A poet sang to me!’”




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

     [The end of _Valley of the Stars_ by Louis Arthur Cunningham]