Chapter 24

JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED

The Young Doctor of Askatoon had a good heart, and he was exercising it
honourably one winter's day near three years after Jean Jacques had left
St. Saviour's.

"There are many French Canadians working on the railway now, and a good
many habitant farmers live hereabouts, and they have plenty of
children--why not stay here and teach school? You are a Catholic, of
course, monsieur?"

This is what the Young Doctor said to one who had been under his anxious
care for a few, vivid days. The little brown-bearded man with the
grey-brown hair nodded in reply, but his gaze was on the billowing waste
of snow, which stretched as far as eye could see to the pine-hills in the
far distance. He nodded assent, but it was plain to be seen that the
Young Doctor's suggestion was not in tune with his thought. His nod only
acknowledged the reasonableness of the proposal. In his eyes, however,
was the wanderlust which had possessed him for three long years, in which
he had been searching for what to him was more than Eldorado, for it was
hope and home. Hope was all he had left of the assets which had made him
so great a figure--as he once thought--in his native parish of St.
Saviour's. It was his fixed idea--une idee fixe, as he himself said.
Lands, mills, manor, lime-kilns, factories, store, all were gone, and his
wife Carmen also was gone. He had buried her with simple magnificence in
Montreal--Mme. Glozel had said to her neighbours afterwards that the
funeral cost over seventy-five dollars--and had set up a stone to her
memory on which was carved, "Chez nous autrefois, et chez Dieu
maintenant"--which was to say, "Our home once, and God's Home now."

That done, with a sorrow which still had the peace of finality in his
mind, he had turned his face to the West. His long, long sojourning had
brought him to Shilah where a new chapter of his life was closed, and at
last to Askatoon, where another chapter still closed an epoch in his
life, and gave finality to all. There he had been taken down with
congestion of the lungs, and, fainting at the door of a drug-store, had
been taken possession of by the Young Doctor, who would not send him to
the hospital. He would not send him there because he found inside the
waistcoat of this cleanest tramp--if he was a tramp--that he had ever
seen, a book of philosophy, the daguerreotype photo of a beautiful
foreign-looking woman, and some verses in a child's handwriting. The book
of philosophy was underlined and interlined on every page, and every
margin had comment which showed a mind of the most singular simplicity,
searching wisdom, and hopeless confusion, all in one.

The Young Doctor was a man of decision, and he had whisked the little
brown-grey sufferer to his own home, and tended him there like a brother
till the danger disappeared; and behold he was rewarded for his humanity
by as quaint an experience as he had ever known. He had not
succeeded--though he tried hard--in getting at the history of his
patient's life; but he did succeed in reading the fascinating story of a
mind; for Jean Jacques, if not so voluble as of yore, had still moments
when he seemed to hypnotize himself, and his thoughts were alive in an
atmosphere of intellectual passion ill in accord with his condition.

Presently the little brown man withdrew his eyes from the window of the
Young Doctor's office and the snowy waste beyond. They had a curious red
underglow which had first come to them an evening long ago, when they
caught from the sky the reflection of a burning mill. There was distance
and the far thing in that underglow of his eyes. It had to do with the
horizon, not with the place where his feet were. It said, "Out there,
beyond, is what I go to seek, what I must find, what will be home to me."

"Well, I must be getting on," he said in a low voice to the Young Doctor,
ignoring the question which had been asked.

"If you want work, there's work to be had here, as I said," responded the
Young Doctor. "You are a man of education--"

"How do you know that?" asked Jean Jacques.

"I hear you speak," answered the other, and then Jean Jacques drew
himself up and threw back his head. He had ever loved appreciation, not
to say flattery, and he had had very little of it lately.

"I was at Laval," he remarked with a flash of pride. "No degree, but a
year there, and travel abroad--the Grand Tour, and in good style, with
plenty to do it with. Oh, certainly, no thought for sous, hardly for
francs! It was gold louis abroad and silver dollars at home--that was the
standard."

"The dollars are much scarcer now, eh?" asked the Young Doctor
quizzically.

"I should think I had just enough to pay you," said the other, bridling
up suddenly; for it seemed to him the Young Doctor had become ironical
and mocking; and though he had been mocked much in his day, there were
times when it was not easy to endure it.

The truth is the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature,
and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant,
because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the
little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During
the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had been far
from silent, for he joked at his own suffering and kept the housekeeper
laughing at his whimsical remarks; while he won her heart by the
extraordinary cleanliness of his threadbare clothes, and the perfect
order of his scantily-furnished knapsack. It had the exactness of one who
was set upon a far course and would carry it out on scientific
calculation. He had been full of mocking quips and sallies at himself,
but from first to last he never talked. The things he said were nothing
more than surface sounds, as it were--the ejaculations of a mind, not its
language or its meanings.

"He's had some strange history, this queer little man," said the
housekeeper to the Young Doctor; "and I'd like to know what it is. Why,
we don't even know his name."

"So would I," rejoined the Young Doctor, "and I'll have a good try for
it."

He had had his try more than once, but it had not succeeded. Perhaps a
little torture would do it, he thought; and so he had made the rather
tactless remark about the scarcity of dollars. Also his look was
incredulous when Jean Jacques protested that he had enough to pay the
fee.

"When you searched me you forgot to look in the right place," continued
Jean Jacques; and he drew from the lining of the hat he held in his hand
a little bundle of ten-dollar bills. "Here--take your pay from them," he
said, and held out the roll of bills. "I suppose it won't be more than
four dollars a day; and there's enough, I think. I can't pay you for your
kindness to me, and I don't want to. I'd like to owe you that; and it's a
good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness. He remembers it when he
gets older. It helps him to forgive himself more or less for what he's
sorry for in life. I've enough in this bunch to pay for board and
professional attendance, or else the price has gone up since I had a
doctor before."

He laughed now, and the laugh was half-ironical, half-protesting. It
seemed to come from the well of a hidden past; and no past that is hidden
has ever been a happy past.

The Young Doctor took the bills, looked at them as though they were
curios, and then returned them with the remark that they were of a kind
and denomination of no use to him. There was a twinkle in his eye as he
said it. Then he added:

"I agree with you that it's a good thing for a man to lay up a little
credit of kindness here and there for his old age. Well, anything I did
for you was meant for kindness and nothing else. You weren't a bit of
trouble, and it was simply your good constitution and a warm room and a
few fly-blisters that pulled you through. It wasn't any skill of mine. Go
and thank my housekeeper if you like. She did it all."

"I did my best to thank her," answered Jean Jacques. "I said she reminded
me of Virginie Palass Poucette, and I could say nothing better than that,
except one thing; and I'm not saying that to anybody."

The Young Doctor had a thrill. Here was a very unusual man, with mystery
and tragedy, and yet something above both, in his eyes.

"Who was Virginie Palass Poucette?" he asked. Jean Jacques threw out a
hand as though to say, "Attend--here is a great thing," and he began,
"Virginie Poucette--ah, there . . . !"

Then he paused, for suddenly there spread out before him that past, now
so far away, in which he had lived--and died. Strange that when he had
mentioned Virginie's name to the housekeeper he had no such feeling as
possessed him now. It had been on the surface, and he had used her name
without any deep stir of the waters far down in his soul. But the Young
Doctor was fingering the doors of his inner life--all at once this
conviction came to him--and the past rushed upon him with all its
disarray and ignominy, its sorrow, joy, elation and loss. Not since he
had left the scene of his defeat, not since the farewell to his dead
Carmen, that sweet summer day when he had put the lovely, ruined being
away with her words, "Jean Jacques--ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques,"
ringing in his ears, had he ever told anyone his story. He had had a
feeling that, as Carmen had been restored to him without his crying out,
or vexing others with his sad history, so would Zoe also come back to
him. Patience and silence was his motto.

Yet how was it that here and now there came an overpowering feeling, that
he must tell this healer of sick bodies the story of an invalid soul?
This man with the piercing dark-blue eyes before him, who looked so
resolute, who had the air of one who could say,

"This is the way to go," because he knew and was sure; he was not to be
denied.

"Who was Virginie Poucette?" repeated the Young Doctor insistently, yet
ever so gently. "Was she such a prize among women? What did she do?"

A flood of feeling passed over Jean Jacques' face. He looked at his hat
and his knapsack lying in a chair, with a desire to seize them and fly
from the inquisitor; then a sense of fatalism came upon him. As though he
had received an order from within his soul, he said helplessly:

"Well, if it must be, it must."

Then he swept the knapsack and his hat from the chair to the floor, and
sat down.

"I will begin at the beginning," he said with his eyes fixed on those of
the Young Doctor, yet looking beyond him to far-off things. "I will start
from the time when I used to watch the gold Cock of Beaugard turning on
the mill, when I sat in the doorway of the Manor Cartier in my pinafore.
I don't know why I tell you, but maybe it was meant I should. I obey
conviction. While you are able to keep logic and conviction hand in hand
then everything is all right. I have found that out. Logic, philosophy
are the props of life, but still you must obey the impulse of the
soul--oh, absolutely! You must--"

He stopped short. "But it will seem strange to you," he added after a
moment, in which the Young Doctor gestured to him to proceed, "to hear me
talk like this--a wayfarer--a vagabond you may think. But in other days I
was in places--"

The Young Doctor interjected with abrupt friendliness that there was no
need to say he had been in high places. It would still be apparent, if he
were in rags.

"Then, there, I will speak freely," rejoined Jean Jacques, and he took
the cherry-brandy which the other offered him, and drank it off with
gusto.

"Ah, that--that," he said, "is like the cordials Mere Langlois used to
sell at Vilray. She and Virginie Poucette had a place together on the
market--none better than Mere Langlois except Virginie Poucette, and she
was like a drink of water in the desert. . . . Well, there, I will begin.
Now my father was--"

It was lucky there were no calls for the Young Doctor that particular
early morning, else the course of Jean Jacques' life might have been
greatly different from what it became. He was able to tell his story from
the very first to the last. Had it been interrupted or unfinished one
name might not have been mentioned. When Jean Jacques used it, the Young
Doctor sat up and leaned forward eagerly, while a light came into his
face-a light of surprise, of revelation and understanding.

When Jean Jacques came to that portion of his life when manifest tragedy
began--it began of course on the Antoine, but then it was not
manifest--when his Carmen left him after the terrible scene with George
Masson, he paused and said: "I don't know why I tell you this, for it is
not easy to tell; but you saved my life, and you have a right to know
what it is you have saved, no matter how hard it is to put it all before
you."

It was at this point that he mentioned Zoe's name--he had hitherto only
spoken of her as "my daughter"; and here it was the Young Doctor showed
startled interest, and repeated the name after Jean Jacques. "Zoe!
Zoe!--ah!" he said, and became silent again.

Jean Jacques had not noticed the Young Doctor's pregnant interruption, he
was so busy with his own memories of the past; and he brought the tale to
the day when he turned his face to the West to look for Zoe. Then he
paused.

"And then?" the Young Doctor asked. "There is more--there is the search
for Zoe ever since."

"What is there to say?" continued Jean Jacques. "I have searched till
now, and have not found."

"How have you lived?" asked the other.

"Keeping books in shops and factories, collecting accounts for
storekeepers, when they saw they could trust me, working at threshings
and harvests, teaching school here and there. Once I made fifty dollars
at a railway camp telling French Canadian tales and singing chansons
Canadiennes. I have been insurance agent, sold lightning-rods, and been
foreman of a gang building a mill--but I could not bear that. Every time
I looked up I could see the Cock of Beaugard where the roof should be.
And so on, so on, first one thing and then another till now--till I came
to Askatoon and fell down by the drug-store, and you played the good
Samaritan. So it goes, and I step on from here again, looking--looking."

"Wait till spring," said the Young Doctor. "What is the good of going on
now! You can only tramp to the next town, and--"

"And the next," interposed Jean Jacques. "But so it is my orders." He put
his hand on his heart, and gathered up his hat and knapsack.

"But you haven't searched here at Askatoon."

"Ah? . . . Ah-well, surely that is so," answered Jean Jacques wistfully.
"I had forgotten that. Perhaps you can tell me, you who know all. Have
you any news about my Zoe for me? Do you know--was she ever here? Madame
Gerard Fynes would be her name. My name is Jean Jacques Barbille."

"Madame Zoe was here, but she has gone," quietly answered the Young
Doctor.

Jean Jacques dropped the hat and the knapsack. His eyes had a glad, yet
staring and frightened look, for the Young Doctor's face was not the
bearer of good tidings.

"Zoe--my Zoe! You are sure? . . . When was she here?" he added huskily.

"A month ago."

"When did she go?" Jean Jacques' voice was almost a whisper.

"A month ago."

"Where did she go?" asked Jean Jacques, holding himself steady, for he
had a strange dreadful premonition.

"Out of all care at last," answered the Young Doctor, and took a step
towards the little man, who staggered, then recovered himself.

"She--my Zoe is dead! How?" questioned Jean Jacques in a ghostly sort of
voice, but there was a steadiness and control unlike what he had shown in
other tragic moments.

"It was a blizzard. She was bringing her husband's body in a sleigh to
the railway here. He had died of consumption. She and the driver of the
sleigh went down in the blizzard. Her body covered the child and saved
it. The driver was lost also."

"Her child--Zoe's child?" quavered Jean Jacques. "A little girl--Zoe. The
name was on her clothes. There were letters. One to her father--to you.
Your name is Jean Jacques Barbille, is it not? I have that letter to you.
We buried her and her husband in the graveyard yonder." He pointed.
"Everybody was there--even when they knew it was to be a Catholic
funeral."

"Ah! she was buried a Catholic?" Jean Jacques' voice was not quite so
blurred now.

"Yes. Her husband had become Catholic too. A priest who had met them in
the Peace River Country was here at the time."

At that, with a moan, Jean Jacques collapsed. He shed no tears, but he
sat with his hands between his knees, whispering his child's name.

The Young Doctor laid a hand on his shoulder gently, but presently went
out, shutting the door after him. As he left the room, however, he turned
and said, "Courage, Monsieur Jean Jacques! Courage!"

When the Young Doctor came back a half-hour later he had in his hand the
letters found in Zoe's pocket. "Monsieur Jean Jacques," he said gently to
the bowed figure still sitting as he left him.

Jean Jacques got up slowly and looked at him as though scarce
understanding where he was.

"The child--the child--where is my Zoe's child? Where is Zoe's Zoe?" he
asked in agitation. His whole body seemed to palpitate. His eyes were all
red fire.

Chapter 24

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