A Dozen Ways Of Love, Lily Dougall [best book club books of all time txt] 📗

like a great fair marigold just beginning to curl in its petals for the night. He worked slowly, for he had something he wanted to say, and when his work was done he summoned up courage and said it. He told her his hopes and fears. He told her the story blunderingly enough, but it had its effect.

'Mon Dieu!' said Saintou, but he said it in a tone that made his sister, who was listening to every word through the door, leave that occupation and dart in to his assistance.

'Qu'elle est morte,' was her brief stern comment. And so it was. The baker's daughter had felt, and she had died.

'This is not wholly unexpected,' said the baker sadly, when he came to carry away the corpse of his daughter. 'We all expected it,' said the neighbours; 'she had heart disease.' And they talked their fill, and never discovered the truth it would have pleased them best to talk about.

The short hair curled softly about the face of the dead girl as she lay in her coffin, and Saintou paid heavily for masses for her sweet soul. When they had laid her in the churchyard he came home, and took the key, and went into the little parlour all alone. She had never seen it. She had never even heard of it. It is sad to bury a baby that is dead; it is sadder, if we but knew it, to bury in darkness and silence a child that has never lived. A joy that has gone from us for ever is a jewel that trembles like a tear on Sorrow's breast, but the brightest stars in her diadem are the memories of hopes that have passed away unrealised and untold. Ah well, perhaps the gay trappings of the little room, by their daily influence on his life, drew him nearer to heaven. He gave the key to his sister afterwards, and they used the room as their own; but that day he locked himself in alone, and, hiding his face in the cushions of her chair, he wept as only a strong man can weep.


VI

A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

Mam'selle Zilda Chaplot keeps the station hotel at St. Armand, in the French country.

The hotel is like a wooden barn with doors and windows, not a very large barn either. The station is merely a platform of planks between the hotel and the rails. The railroad is roughly made; it lies long and straight in a flat land, snow-clad in winter, very dusty in the summer sun, and its line is only softened by a long row of telegraph poles, which seem to waver and tremble as the eye follows their endless repetition into the distance. In some curious way their repetition lends to the stark road a certain grace.

When Zilda Chaplot was young there were fewer wires on these telegraph poles, fewer railway-lines opposite the station, fewer houses in St. Armand, which lies half a mile away. The hotel itself is the same, but in those days it was not painted yellow, as it is now, and was not half so well kept. The world has progressed by twenty years since mam'selle was a girl, and, also, she owns the place herself now, and is a much better inn-keeper than was her father.

Mam'selle Chaplot is a very active person, tall, and somewhat stout. Her complexion is brown; her eyes are very black; over them there is a fringe of iron-grey hair, which she does up in curl-papers every night, and which, in consequence, stands in very tight little curls all day.

Mam'selle Chaplot minds her affairs well; she has a keen eye to the main chance. She is sometimes sharp, a trifle fiery, but on the whole she is good-natured. There are lines about the contour of her chin, and also where the neck sweeps upward, which suggest a more than common power of satisfaction in certain things, such as dinners and good sound sleep, and good inn-keeping--yes, and in spring flowers, and in autumn leaves and winter sunsets. Zilda Chaplot was formed for pleasure, yet there is no tendency latent in her which could have made her a voluptuary. There are some natures which have so nice a proportion of faculties that they are a law of moderation to themselves. They take such keen delight in small pleasures that to them a little is enough.

The world would account Mam'selle Chaplot to have had a life of toil and stern limitations; a prosperous life, truly, for no one could see her without observing her prosperity, but still a hard dry life. Even her neighbours, whose ideas of enjoyment do not soar above the St. Armand level, think that her lot would be softer if she married. Many of the men have offered marriage, not with any disinterested motive, it is true, but with kindly intent. They have been set aside like children who make requests unreasonable, but so natural for them to make that the request is hardly worth noticing. The women relatives of these rejected suitors have boasted to mam'selle of their own domestic joys, and have drawn the contrast of her state in strong colour. Zilda only says 'Chut!' or she lifts her chin a little, so that the pretty upward sweep of the neck is apparent, and lets them talk. Mam'selle is not the woman to be turned out of her way by talk.

The way of single blessedness is not chosen by Zilda Chaplot because of any fiction of loyalty to a quondam lover. Her mind is such that she could not have invented obligations for herself, because she has not the inventive faculty. No, it is simply this: Mam'selle Chaplot loved once, and was happy; her mind still hugs the memory of that happiness with exultant reserve; it is enough; she does not desire other happiness of that sort.

When she looks out on the little station platform and sees the loungers upon it, once and again she lets her busy mind stop in its business to think of some one else she was once accustomed to see there. When she looks with well-practised critical eye down the hotel dining-room, which is now quite clean and orderly, when she is scolding a servant, or serving a customer, her mind will revert to the room in its former rough state, and she will remember another customer who used to eat there. When the spring comes, and far and near there is the smell of wet moss, and shrubs on the wide flat land shoot forth their leaves, and the fields are carpeted with violets, then mam'selle looks round and hugs her memories, and thinks to herself, 'Ah! well, I have had my day.' And because of the pleasant light of that day she is content with the present twilight, satisfied with her good dinners and her good management.

This is the story of what happened twenty years ago.

St. Armand is in the French country which lies between the town of Quebec and the townships where the English settlements are. At that time the railway had not been very long in existence; two trains ran southward from the large towns in the morning, and two trains ran northward to the large towns in the evening; besides these, there was just one local train which came into St. Armand at noon, and passengers arriving at noon were obliged to wait for the evening train to get on farther.

There were not many passengers by this short local line. Even on the main line there was little traffic that affected St. Armand. Yet most of the men of the place found excuse of business or pleasure to come and watch the advent of the trains. The chief use of the station platform seemed to be for these loungers; the chief use of the bar at the hotel was to slake their thirst, although they were not on the whole an intemperate lot. They stood about in homespun clothes and smoked. A lazy, but honest set of humble-minded French papists were the men at St. Armand.

It was on the station platform that Zilda Chaplot came out in society, as the phrase might be. She was not a child, for when her father took the place she was twenty-four. There was red in her cheeks then, and the lashes of her eyes were long; her hair was not curled, for it was not the fashion, but brushed smoothly back from broad low brows. She was tall, and not at all thin. She was very strong, but less active in those days, as girls are often less active than women. When Zilda had leisure she used to stand outside the hotel and watch the men on the platform. She was always calm and dignified, a little stupid perhaps. She did not attract a great deal of attention from them.

They were all French at St. Armand, but most of the strangers which chance brought that way spoke English, so that the St. Armand folks could speak English also.

Anything which is repeated at appreciable intervals has to occur very often before the unscientific mind will perceive the law of its repetition. There was a little red-haired Englishman, John Gilby by name, who travelled frequently that way. It was a good while before the loungers at the station remarked that upon a certain day in the week he always arrived by the local train and waited for the evening train to take him on to Montreal. It was, in fact, Gilby himself who pointed out to them the regularity of his visits, for he was of a social disposition, and could not spend more than a few afternoons at that dull isolated station without making friends with some one. He travelled for a firm in Montreal; it was his business to make a circuit of certain towns and villages in a certain time. He had no business at St. Armand, but fate and the ill-adjusted time-table decreed that he should wait there.

This little red-haired gentleman--for gentleman, in comparison with the St. Armand folk he certainly was--was a thorough worldling in the sense of knowing the world somewhat widely, and corresponding to its ways, although not to its evil deeds. Indeed, he was a very good sort of man, but such a worldling, with his thick gold chain, and jaunty clothes, and quick way of adjusting himself to passing circumstances, that it was some time before his good-natured sociableness won in the least upon the station loungers. They held aloof, as from an explosive, not knowing when it would begin to emit sparks. He was short in stature, much shorter than the hulking fellows who stood and surveyed him through the smoke of their pipes, but he had such a cocky little way with him that he overawed them much more than a big man would have done. Out of sheer dulness he took to talking to Zilda.

Zilda stood with her back against the wall.

'Fine day,' said Gilby, stopping beside her.

'Oui, monsieur.'

Gilby had taken his cigar from his mouth, and held it between two fingers of his right hand. Her countrymen commonly held their pipes between their thumb and finger. To Zilda, Gilby's method appeared astonishingly elegant, but she hardly seemed to observe it.

'You have a flat country here,' said he, looking round at the dry summer fields; 'rather dull, isn't it?'

'Oui, monsieur.'

'Don't you speak English?'

'Yes, sir,' said Zilda.

This was not very interesting for Gilby. He had about him a good deal of the modern restlessness that cannot endure one hour without work or amusement. He made further efforts to make up to