THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 XDT 
 
 -~
 
 ANNE CARMEL
 
 Harnett waited with his head uncovered."
 
 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 BY 
 
 GWENDOLEN OVERTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE HERITAGE OF UNREST " 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR I. KELLER 
 
 Nefo 2f0rfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1903 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, 
 BY THE MACMILLA.N COMPANY. 
 
 Set up, electrotyped, and published June, 1903. 
 
 Norton oti 
 
 J. 8. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Harriett meets Anne for the first time . . . . .31 
 
 "'Anne,' he told her then, 'you have said a great many 
 things that have hurt me to-day but none so much as 
 this'" 76 
 
 " The Cure stepped in front of Thome and lifted his crucifix " 133 
 
 " She accepted it all quietly, making no useless protestations 
 
 or complaints " 283 
 
 " ' He has given up love for your sake,' Cecily finished, ' and 
 
 now he intends to forego his ambition and his future ' " 317 
 
 " Harnett waited with his head uncovered " . . . . 333
 
 '*
 
 AKN"E OARMEL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FROM the shimmering tin spire of the church of 
 St. Hilaire the Angelus was toning out the close of 
 the day. Over miles upon miles of farms and forest, 
 of hills and valleys, of river and creeks, there was no 
 other bell to answer it. It had the country far and 
 near to itself, and at each stroke of the tongue against 
 the pealing resonance of the bronze the faint, thin 
 yellow of the afterglow seemed to quiver and fade a 
 little away. For the summer hours of ringing the 
 bell were still in effect, though five o'clock was now 
 somewhat before the rising, and seven somewhat after 
 the setting, of the sun. 
 
 Until the last vibration had spread off into the dis 
 tance of the shadowing hills, Jean Carmel and Anne 
 stood waiting. Behind the woods of maple and elm 
 and aspen across the river, the western sky was pulsing 
 yet with hot color. It was reflected over the smooth 
 water and the shining line of beach, and showed the 
 priest and his sister, two fine young types of that race 
 which first made its way through the fastnesses of 
 the Five Nations, across the vast prairies beyond, to
 
 2 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 the northerly ranges of the Cordillera in the west, 
 of the race which gave to the history of the New 
 World the greater part of its most picturesque and 
 romantic figures, Champlain, Frontenac, La Salle, 
 Maisonneuve, and those hero-martyrs in a dubious 
 cause, the Jesuit missionaries of the French colonies ; 
 to say nothing of Madame La Tour and Marguerite 
 de Roberval, Jean Mance and Madeleine Verscheres. 
 
 The time since those, and such as those, ruled and 
 retarded the destinies of their troubled and bitter 
 northern land is gone by long and prospering years, 
 and the race has changed in body, and spirit too. 
 But there remain among it still, in some numbers, 
 men who are worthy of their forefathers, and women 
 as fit for courts of Europe, or cabins in the wilder 
 ness, as were their grandmothers of earlier centuries. 
 
 Jean and Anne Carmel were of these : she, none the 
 less that she wore the dress of any mere habitant girl 
 of the remoter farming districts ; or he, that his big, 
 square-shouldered figure was hung with the black 
 cassock of his order, and his head covered by a wide 
 silk-beaver hat. 
 
 It was because of the large-brimmed hat that the 
 canoe he carried a home-made affair of primitive 
 sort was balanced well out upon his arm. When 
 the Angelus had stopped ringing, he started down to the 
 edge of the beach and walked out with a steady step 
 upon a long board that reached over the water, rest-
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 3 
 
 ing one end on the beach, the other on a big stone. 
 He stooped, and sliding the canoe from his shoulder, 
 set it afloat. Then he turned, holding to the painter, 
 and snapped his fingers. 
 
 A dog had been waiting upon the beach, an eager- 
 eyed, sharp-eared, small animal, whose wiry bristles 
 and general coloring suggested a not very remote 
 Scotch-terrier ancestry, mixed, however, with many 
 bloods. She had been running back and forth on the 
 soft, wet sand, where the little five-dented tracks 
 oozed full of water and shone in the red and purple 
 light, tense in every muscle, shivering all over with 
 anxiety and anticipation, whining to herself when 
 her feelings were too much to be endured in longer 
 silence. She was out upon the board with a spring, 
 but the instant she came beside the canoe she subsided 
 without the need of any warning word. The priest 
 motioned to her, and she jumped in lightly, exactly 
 in the middle, so that it hardly rocked. Then, flatten 
 ing herself under the thwarts, she went forward to the 
 bow and took up her place, sitting on her haunches. 
 Anne had come out, too, upon the plank. She carried 
 the paddle, and, giving it to her brother, bent down 
 and tweaked the dog's ear. "She has the discretion 
 of her famous namesake, hein, Pilote ? " she said. " But 
 it is my place you have there, remember." The gen 
 erous behavior of the female in favor showed forth in 
 Pilote. She turned her head a very little and looked
 
 4 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 at Anne with entire indifference, and did not stir so 
 much as her bit of a tail the breadth of one of its stiff, 
 coarse hairs. She recalled, perhaps, occasions when 
 Anne had had the front place in the canoe and had 
 remained callous to whimpering pleadings and shortly, 
 sharply barked entreaties to be taken in, even if only 
 to be held ignominiously and as a novice in some 
 body's arms. 
 
 Jean Carmel observed the most human manifesta 
 tion. Pilote, he suggested, was as was frequently 
 the case with her betters under very mistaken im 
 pressions regarding the favors she received. And 
 she would perhaps have exerted herself to greater 
 civility had she but realized that she was being gratified 
 by reason precisely of the comparative unimportance 
 of her life. " We are going above the rapids to-night," 
 he added. 
 
 Anne was the descendant of women who had not 
 hampered their men with tender fears, to whom the 
 memory of a man dead in fight or adventure was 
 dearer than the possession of one loving ease and 
 safety for their own sakes. She knew that the rapids 
 were dangerous. But she knew also that neither that 
 nor anything she could say would keep her brother 
 from going above them and shooting them on the 
 return. And so she said nothing. 
 
 He stepped into the canoe, pushed away from 
 the plank, brought himself around with a twist of
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 5 
 
 the ash paddle, and fell to work, kneeling on one 
 knee and putting out to midstream. The river was 
 not a broad one for the greatest part of its length, 
 but at St. Hilaire it spread out to almost a lake, with 
 several small green islands in the midst. One of the 
 village men had driven his horse and wagon down 
 into the rippling shallows, and, standing on the wagon, 
 was filling a barrel with the supply of water which 
 would have to serve his family for the next few days. 
 St. Hilaire was on the river's edge, but water was 
 scarce there, and cost cents or toil for the hauling. 
 In the winter, when the ice was heavy, it was more 
 precious and hoarded still. Two of the dozen chil 
 dren who had made toilsome the villager's score or 
 so years of married life were on the wagon with him. 
 They raised their hats as the Cure went by them, 
 not far away, and then they waited, looking after 
 him. 
 
 Anne, on the end of the board out over the water, 
 looked after him, too, until the canoe, with the big 
 black figure half standing in it, had gone well up the 
 pink and purple current, on the glassy surface of 
 which the streak of wake glistened brightly. When 
 he had disappeared behind a point of aspens a half- 
 mile above, she turned and went along the beach, 
 walking where the sand was dry and hard, the little 
 yellow flowers thick under foot, and the alder bushes 
 growing down to the water line. When she came
 
 6 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 to one of the roads that led up from the river, she 
 took it and went on toward the main street. 
 
 A fine, bright thread of new moon hung in the sky 
 where it was still a little yellow above the branches 
 of the apple trees. The steady song of the crickets 
 was burring dryly through all the evening air. The 
 village people were out in their bits of garden patches 
 and orchards, or sitting with their dogs and cats upon 
 the front porches of their cottages. It made a pretty 
 picture of rest and contentment, now that in the 
 deepening twilight one could not see that the children 
 were ragged and half clothed, and the women lined 
 and made ugly, long before their time, by hard work, 
 stinting, and much motherhood. They gossiped the 
 small matters of the parish as they rested for an 
 hour, sitting in the mild evening, less to enjoy that 
 than to save the burning of candles. All of them 
 spoke to Anne Carmel, and they were pleased when 
 she answered. She could hardly have done less ; but 
 she was of those to whom a mere word and smile will 
 attract more devotion than will great acts of service 
 and self-sacrifice rendered by another. The men and 
 the women looked after her and the children went to 
 the fences and hung over, or peered between the pal 
 ings, following with round eyes the tall figure, quick- 
 gliding and indistinct in the dusk. She had for them 
 all a good deal of the attraction of the unfamiliar, 
 though they saw her every day, and had for eight years.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 7 
 
 But she was not one of them. Neither, for that matter, 
 was the Cure ; yet he was a friend and counsellor a 
 thing altogether new in their experience of parish 
 priests at St. Hilaire. And he was brought into close 
 relation with them in that they had the right to call on 
 him, to expect much of him. He might see them in 
 their homes, at their best or worst. But for his mother 
 and sister they had ways and speech of ceremony. 
 It was only a few of the children of well-to-do 
 farmers who had been sent away for education who 
 could consider themselves on a footing of anything like 
 intimacy with the family at the presbytere. But the 
 village did not resent it. It liked Madame Carmel 
 sufficiently well, and it had a quite intense admiration 
 for Mademoiselle Anne. Not that they thought her 
 beautiful. Less imposing women, more pink and white, 
 with smaller features and meeker look, they understood 
 better, and preferred something on the order of the 
 plaintive Blessed Virgins of the holy pictures and 
 statues. 
 
 There was perhaps, in all the neighborhood, only 
 Paul Tetrault whose admiration of her looks was 
 unreserved. He was the son of one of the well-to-do 
 cultivateurs and had had his tastes formed by metro 
 politan experience, in the college at Montreal. And 
 he was, besides, in love with her. 
 
 He came down from the steps of the post-office now, 
 and joined her as she was passing. Then they stood
 
 8 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 in front of the presbytere talking, Anne leaning her 
 long-limbed body against the white picket fence, and 
 he on the narrow sidewalk of unevenly laid flat stones. 
 He did not go in with her to the house. But he was 
 happy when he left her, and went on out the road to 
 the farm. He sang to himself an air from " La Belle 
 Helene," learned in the days of the Montreal college 
 and the wearing of the blue sash. He affected such 
 tunes as he conceived to be modern, and held the habi 
 tant chanson in a good deal of contempt. 
 
 He had let go his last chance to get Anne's promise 
 to marry him a chance which had been good just 
 then. But he was no more aware of that than are most 
 of us at the moment of making the errors of omission 
 which leave, forever after in our lives, a space that can 
 not be filled. And Anne went along the path between 
 the flower-beds of the presbytere garden. She was 
 happy too, and thinking better of young Tetrault than 
 she was ever to think again. She had watched the 
 canoe going up the river out of sight, and there had 
 come to her a realization that the man in it was only, 
 after all, one upon whose life she had no justifiable 
 claim her brother, to be sure, but in no wise bound 
 by that to let himself be influenced or governed by her 
 wishes and actions, having the unquestionable right to 
 go his own way apart from hers, independent of her, if he 
 should so choose. And she wanted some one who would 
 not have that right. It was because of that she would
 
 ANNE CABMBL 9 
 
 have promised, there by the presbytere gate, the thing 
 to which she had refused to bind herself more than 
 once before, to marry Paul Tetrault. 
 
 As for the Cure, he kept on up the river, making 
 good time, with his strong, steady paddle strokes. He 
 was kneeling now on both knees. The afterglow 
 faded, the new moon sank, and the evening star came 
 blazing out near the earth. The twilight settled into 
 the deep blue of the northern autumn night, and still 
 he headed the canoe against the current, working hard, 
 while the dog sat, without moving a single well-trained 
 muscle, forward in the bow. 
 
 When he had made his portage around the rapids and 
 it was near midnight, he beached his canoe among somo 
 weeds, and, tying it to a tree branch, went upon the 
 shore, the dog with him. He groped for a few dry 
 sticks and built a fire, then stretched himself out in the 
 long grass beside it, propping his head with one 
 hand and watching the crackling flames sputter from 
 one stick to another, and lick and flicker, and then 
 burn. The dog lay herself against him, and he tweaked 
 at one of her stiff and nondescript ears thoughtfully. 
 Now and then he got up and found more sticks back 
 among the thick trees and put them on the fire. And 
 after a while he took out a breviary and went to read 
 ing it by the red, moving light. It was for his pleasure 
 that he did this thing that a better man than he had 
 done for the saving of savage souls, crouching in the
 
 10 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 snow outside of wigwams, straining his smoke-seared 
 eyes in the light of the moon. The mantle of Le Jeune 
 and his followers had become a garment soft and 
 comfortable. 
 
 The dog, in pursuance of the traditions attached to 
 her name, sniffed about in the undergrowth from time 
 to time, or sat with her ears cocked and her eyes angry, 
 looking into some wavering black shadow, bristling 
 and growling in an undertone. She felt her responsi 
 bilities (and, like many of the human race, tended to 
 make herself disagreeable in fulfilling them), though 
 there flowed in her veins none of the blood, whatever it 
 may have been, of that very important factor in Ca 
 nadian colonization, the worthy Pilote, whose fame has 
 been accorded bronze and a monument. 
 
 But if she were not descended from the settlers of 
 Montreal, her master, at least, was. Yet of his own 
 descent he knew only a little more than did the dog of 
 hers. He had known his father, he knew his mother; 
 the fathers and mothers of those were accountable for. 
 But beyond that it did not go. Those who are full of 
 youth and strength and the sense of present, all- 
 absorbing life concern themselves little enough with 
 such matters as a rule having unconsciously, per 
 haps, something the attitude of that master demo 
 crat who proclaimed himself, disdainfully, his own 
 ancestor. 
 
 But if Jean Carmel could have gone back into the
 
 ANNE CARMEL 11 
 
 short and troubled history of his country and could 
 have followed through the confusion of birthrights 
 that resulted from lawlessness, from mixing of races, 
 from the loose manners of a conquering people, part 
 aristocrat, part adventurer and convict, and largely 
 good-for-naught, from the animal unmorality of savage 
 tribes, from vows of celibacy in the church and out of 
 it, if he could have traced his ancestry back through 
 all that, he might have found less of duly solemnized 
 marriages than would have been satisfactory to him ; 
 but his position would not have been worse than that 
 of many another of his people, and he would have 
 come upon some forbears whose places in a romantic 
 history had been fairly won. He was of stock which 
 had produced the military chief of that vision-led band 
 which landed under the sunset shadow of the Mont 
 Real on a day in May, and claimed the island in the 
 name of the Virgin Mother, that undaunted young 
 nobleman from out the most civilized kingdom of 
 Europe, who would obey his orders though every tree 
 on the island were an Iroquois. Men like that, as well 
 as men of the third estate, had made his own existence 
 possible. So too had women such as the fourteen-year- 
 old child who dared to save another woman at the risk 
 of her own life, and who held her feeble Castle Dan 
 gerous on the St. Lawrence for seven days against the 
 swarming red enemy. There had, perhaps, been among 
 his ancestors, as well, one or two of those women whose
 
 12 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 perplexed, well-intentioned fathers had offered them to 
 the white men without the superfluous and incompre 
 hensible form of the Christian marriage service. The 
 companions and successors of the iron-breasted gov 
 ernor, Lutetian, noble and Indian brave, English soldier 
 and Loyalist, French coureur de bois, prosperous and 
 unscrupulous trader, Irish immigrant and quiet cultiva- 
 teur of the St. Lawrence farms all of them had had 
 their share in the production of Jean Carmel, priest 
 at St. Hilaire. 
 
 They were his bodily progenitors. And his spiritual 
 ones were not unlike : the Recollet fathers, who, fore 
 most with the foremost coureur de bois, had carried the 
 Cross to the mountain fastnesses of the gigantic West, 
 who had said the first mass in a new and appalling 
 land, who, driven away by the plotting, intriguing, and 
 favoritism of a far-off court, gave place to those Jesuits 
 who founded not only the monastery, but the Huron 
 Mission as well, and who suffered death by many times 
 more cruel than ever the early Christian martyrs were 
 called upon to meet. 
 
 Among those first priests of Canada there were not 
 only ones who taught and baptized the faithless Indian, 
 and followed the ways of peace and truth there 
 were others who put themselves at the head of soldiers 
 and fought in the van, who stopped at no deceit 
 or subterfuge to claim a convert soul, who preached 
 from their pulpits the massacre of the Protestant
 
 ANNE CABMBL 13 
 
 settlers, and paid with their own hands the bounty 
 money on many an English scalp. Yet, if one be 
 lieves with the historian that the militant priest 
 is at least of more worth in a world of action than 
 that one who withdraws himself into hermitage and 
 contemplation, they were a magnificent band of heroes 
 and martyrs, with all their faults. But the laws are 
 easy now and peace is assured ; the land which starved 
 the Five Nations gives plenty to the peoples who 
 braved the Five Nations 1 tortures ; the children of 
 the daring settlers and men of the woods are habitant 
 peasants and villagers, kept not too intelligent, or 
 drugged with superstition. Or in the cities they are 
 become as other makers of a country's material pros 
 perity law-abiding, both civilly and religiously. So 
 a mission is no longer to the dangerous Hurons, but 
 for the obedient parishioner. And the enemies of the 
 faith being in control of the land itself must be 
 treated by other methods than the Acadian's one of 
 burning their homes and taking their scalps. The 
 chances for a devotion which will satisfy the strenuous 
 soul are not over plentiful. To hear confessions and 
 say masses, to baptize children and a very rare con 
 vert, to marry the youth and bury the dead, is the 
 work that lies ready to the hands of the successors 
 of Brebceuf and Jogues, of Piquet and the Abbe Le 
 Loutre. It can be a good work still, but it is often 
 merely one, like another, for the earning of a liveli-
 
 14 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 hood not too hardly, and at it a man may grow flaccid 
 and careless very easily. 
 
 It had seemed so certainly to Jean Carmel. And 
 when he had entered the priesthood it had been with 
 the fixed intention of becoming flaccid and careless 
 neither morally nor physically nor mentally. He had 
 said so to the bishop who had ordained him. " You 
 remember the little boy who wailed that all the battles 
 were fought, and all the discoveries made, and all the 
 books written, and all the heroic deeds done, and 
 nothing left for a man to accomplish? Well, I am 
 not of the opinion of that boy. There is still all to 
 be done in the world that man can do and more. 
 And I will try to perform my part of it." " Cer 
 tainly," had said the bishop, "certainly, my son." 
 He had met with the enthusiasm of novices before. 
 It was Jean Carmel's first blow against that limp 
 spirit of the world, long encountering with the yield 
 ing of which must almost of necessity take the sinew 
 from one's arms, more or less. But he had not been 
 discouraged then, and he was not as yet. 
 
 He had been eight years in the parish of St. Hilaire 
 his first, and though some of his beliefs had gone, 
 he was not of those feeble ones who let their ideals 
 be taken too. If he had fallen short of any of his 
 intentions, if he had become flaccid and careless in 
 any way, it was mentally. But that was, by very 
 force of circumstances and of his life, little short of
 
 ANNE CARMEL 15 
 
 inevitable. Morally his strength was still intact 
 and physically. 
 
 There had been power in the arras that had sent 
 the canoe heading straight up the current of the 
 stream, and there was power in the bent neck and 
 shoulders as he leaned forward, closer to the fire, 
 reading. There was the ability to hold or to crush 
 in the hand that had the breviary. And his was the 
 love of uninhabited spots of that prophet who predicted 
 woe to them that join house to house, and field to 
 field, " till there be no place that they may be placed 
 alone in the midst of the earth." The great silence 
 and blackness and loneliness and space were good. 
 They are the primal condition of the soul, and the 
 soul must touch them now and again for the gather 
 ing of strength, as the giant of the myth had need 
 to touch his mother Earth. 
 
 When he judged by the stars that it was not many 
 hours from dawn, the Cure covered the cinders of 
 the wood with wet weeds from the beach, for the fire 
 of Miramichi has dwelt in the memory of the Cana 
 dian woodsman. Then he called to the dog, who was 
 snarling back among the trees at something real or 
 imagined. She came, still showing her teeth and 
 looking behind her. They got into the canoe again 
 and pushed outward from the bank. 
 
 The darkness was blacker than when he had landed 
 at midnight, and more thick. Except the dense loom-
 
 16 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 ing of the woods on the near shore, and the steel 
 glitter of the light of some star on a ripple, he 
 could see nothing whatever. But he knew the river 
 well, and, leaning back at rest, keeping close enough 
 to the bank to avoid the centre of the current, he 
 had only to steer. It was not until the first whiten 
 ing of the sky that he came to the rapids, and he 
 shot them in safety. The bow of the canoe swung 
 suddenly from side to side, cut down and sprang out 
 of the water, but Pilote, sitting on her haunches, 
 her fore paws braced, did not move. If she had lost 
 her balance, the Cure's skill with the paddle might 
 have availed very little, and he would, in all proba 
 bility, have' had to make his fight with the waters 
 themselves, breast to breast. That he would have 
 won in the fight was also probable ; the river was 
 not swollen in the autumn, and he swam well. But 
 when he was past the danger-point he looked up to 
 the bluff on the shore above him. In the fading 
 night, paling wanly near the horizon, he could see a 
 high, thin black cross rising against the sky and the 
 fine-sown stars. He knew that there were five other 
 crosses at its base. The breaking of a log jam had 
 sent six men to their deaths here, a few springs before. 
 As he came in sight of the spire of the church 
 of St. Hilaire and heard the Angelus ring again, 
 it was gray dawn. The current was steady and 
 smooth here. He stood up in the canoe and looked
 
 ANNE CARMEL 17 
 
 down the river. On the right bank nearest to him, 
 and across from St. Hilaire there was the thin blue 
 haze of smoke against the dark of the trees, and pres 
 ently he saw the red gleam of a fire. Then a man 
 walked down to the beach and watched the canoe 
 coming toward him in the pale glimmer of daybreak, 
 over the smooth water, a massive black-robed figure 
 standing erect in it. The Cure knelt on one knee and 
 put the canoe over to the right bank. And the man 
 on the shore waited. "A priest by the shades of 
 the Jesuit fathers ! " he said aloud, when he could see 
 that the black garb was a cassock. But there was, 
 after all, nothing so strange in that. He had hunted 
 and fished in Canada too much not to have met with 
 the sportsman type of parish shepherd. And recalling 
 at least one, in the northern salmon regions, whose little 
 irregularities in fish catching and trading had not 
 prevented him from being uncommonly good company 
 in a camp, he hallooed a greeting. The Cure's voice 
 came back over the river, and the canoe headed more 
 sharply inshore. A guide had been back by the tent. 
 He came down now to the sand. He was a half-breed 
 from Oka, of the weedy, thin-bearded sort whose white 
 blood seems to be a poison slowly killing them. 
 
 When the priest was within speaking distance, the 
 Englishman on the beach called again. There was 
 fish and bacon and coffee, if the Cure would land. He 
 spoke in French, badly and with effort. The Cure ran
 
 18 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 his canoe on some water grass and stepped out. He 
 answered the heavy British French in English quite as 
 perfect as the Englishman's own if less practised. 
 The offer of breakfast was tempting but he had 
 mass to celebrate at seven. 
 
 " It is five," said the Englishman. " You can finish 
 and be across in good time." 
 
 The Cure shook his head. He had put on the 
 wide-brimmed beaver now again, and looked more the 
 priest. " I breakfast afterwards," he said. It was a 
 detail the Englishman had forgotten. "But I will 
 swim with you," said the Cure. 
 
 And they swam across the river and back again, 
 while the sun came up and touched the church spire to 
 a point of flame where it showed above the trees, and 
 glistened on the bubbles and froth and ripples, spread 
 ing out behind the two bodies cutting through the 
 water. Pilote, doing her best to keep up with them, 
 her rough yellow head nose up, followed far in the 
 wake of her master's long strokes. And after they 
 had dressed again, and the Englishman sat by the fire 
 drinking his black coffee and eating his camp biscuit 
 and fish, he accounted for his presence shortly and 
 without detail. He was hunting and fishing by the 
 way ; he was from England, and his name was 
 Harnett. 
 
 The priest returned it in kind. He was the Cure 
 of St. Hilaire, he motioned across the river and, if
 
 ANNE CARMEL 19 
 
 Harriett were to be long in the neighborhood, he would 
 be welcome at the presbytere. There was a flat- 
 bottomed, leaky skiff drawn up on the beach near 
 where the canoe lay so the river was evidently not 
 an impassable obstacle. 
 
 Harnett kept an unmoved countenance at the 
 quaint precision of the priest's English. He would 
 be glad, he told him, falling into the Latin formality 
 of it, to call at the presbytere. 
 
 As he finished his breakfast he watched the canoe, 
 with the half-kneeling black figure astern and the 
 rigid dog at the prow, cutting smoothly over to 
 the opposite shore across the sheet of water glinting 
 in all the colors of mother-of-pearl.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IT is to be doubted if there has ever been so 
 many as one of the blessings of progress which has 
 been recognized and hailed as such, at first sight, 
 by those whose habits of life it in anyway altered, 
 whose customs it threw out of equilibrium. And the 
 amount of unhappiness, not to say sometimes tragedy, 
 which compulsory education -can bring about in a 
 community, is something which would very possibly 
 surprise those makers of laws to whom education 
 has been either a foregone conclusion or else a thing 
 worth striving for at any pains. 
 
 In a part of the world where it may yet be cited 
 in an obituary, as among the virtues of the deceased, 
 that she was the typical mother of French Canada, 
 having many children, and knowing neither how to 
 read nor write, the placing of the schools "under 
 control," and the compelling of at least a rudimen 
 tary sort of knowledge, is necessarily very disturbing 
 to the bucolic peace of mind. 
 
 It had disturbed, to a truly pitiable extent, the 
 peace of mind of Marie Louise Gerard. And it fol- 
 
 20
 
 ANNE CARMEL 21 
 
 lowed, therefore, that the Cure was the person of 
 whom to seek comfort. St. Anne, who superin 
 tended the education of the Virgin and might con 
 sequently be expected to be interested in matters 
 having to do with instruction, had entirely failed, 
 though Madame Gerard had commended herself to 
 her with perfect trust. So for several days Madame 
 Gerard had been waiting her chance to see Monsieur 
 Carmel. And now it had come. The Cure was 
 stopping in front of the house to speak to the next 
 to the youngest child. Madame went to the door. 
 She had been spinning and still held the distaff under 
 her left arm. " Bon jour, m'sieu'," she said timidly. 
 Was m'sieu' too hurried to come in for a moment? 
 Monsieur Carmel was never too hurried to be at 
 the service of his parishioners. The cure's before him 
 had never called at the houses unless there were 
 money to be demanded, but Monsieur Carmel was 
 otherwise. He went through the gate now and into 
 the cottage. It was a tiny cottage, built of stone 
 and mortar one room, a pantry closet, and stairs 
 running up to the loft. The family, eight in all, 
 slept in the loft, but in the room downstairs it, for 
 the rest, lived, cooked, ate, and sat about. And 
 since the year after Marie Louise's wedding there 
 had always been a red-and-yellow wooden crib in 
 the corner near the two-story box stove. The door 
 was so low that the Cure had to bend his head as
 
 22 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 he came under it, and the room itself was so small 
 that he took up a very fair part of it. The grand 
 mother, in her close white bonnet, sat knitting the 
 heavy stockings that winter would soon make a ne 
 cessity, and all the children crowded in. Marie 
 Louise had been married at sixteen. She was now 
 twenty-five, and there were five children living and 
 two dead. The youngest, asleep in the red-and- 
 yellow crib, was a month old. To one taking the 
 poet's view of pastoral life it might have been a 
 pretty subject, the neat little old grandmother with 
 her cap and knitting, the sweet young mother with 
 her distaff, the four little girls as hearty and bewitch- 
 ingly attractive as are most small habitant maidens, 
 and the month-old baby in its red-and-yellow crib. 
 But the Cure had had too many dealings with the 
 realities of pastoral life to indulge in much senti 
 mentalizing poetry. He was under no illusions what 
 soever. He knew what the grandmother's life had 
 been, the life of a peasant woman who had toiled in 
 the field like a beast of burden, in her time, ceasing 
 only when she brought into the world another of 
 the children for whom she had no leisure to care, 
 going back the next day to her work. And he knew 
 that these pretty children had not always all they 
 could eat, and that, though their outer garments 
 were whole enough, such scanty underclothing as 
 they had was patched together by their mother's
 
 ANNE CARMEL 23 
 
 careful fingers, from rags of many kinds and various 
 colors. 
 
 As for Madame Gerard he could remember her 
 just after her marriage, and she had been one of the 
 prettiest of soft-eyed, slender young women, altogether 
 adoring the young day workman, her husband, who was 
 as much the inferior of his wife in appearance as the 
 average habitant man. She adored the husband yet, 
 though he was still only a journalier and was likely to 
 remain so, the size of his ever-growing family not jus 
 tifying him in making any bold and hazardous plays 
 for fortune. But the big liquid eyes had become 
 weary and pathetic, and her skin was dead white and 
 drawn over her forehead until the blue veining showed. 
 The mass of her brown hair seemed too heavy a weight, 
 and her shoulders drooped with work and the burden 
 of childish bodies. She was very pretty still, in her 
 appealing way but the Cure could see the time, a 
 few years off, when the sunken blue eyes would be the 
 one beauty left her. It is only in centres of civi 
 lization that one may conceive the woman of thirty as 
 a heroine of romance. And it is only, inversely, where 
 the possibility of romance exists, that a woman keeps 
 herself fit for it. But all thought of other than toil and 
 the bearing of children, and the ultimate terrors of 
 death with which their religion surrounded them, had 
 gone from the lives of these mothers of large fami 
 lies who reckoned their offspring by the living
 
 24 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 and the inevitable dead. The Cure was very sorry 
 for Madame Gerard. He pushed back the hair 
 from his forehead with the flat of his big hand. He 
 did it when he was too near to showing emotion, or 
 when he was ill at ease, sometimes when he was an 
 noyed and thought it better not to say so. Then he 
 bent over and lifted the three-year-old child upon his 
 knee. She was yellow-haired and brown-eyed, so imp 
 ishly pretty that the desire to catch and hold her was 
 irresistible. But she was not of a mind to be held, and 
 she writhed her dainty little body out of the Cure's 
 arms with much skill and prompt success. Madame 
 Gerard bade them go out-of-doors, all of them. When 
 there was only the grandmother left, and the baby, she 
 came to the subject of her trouble at once. Its basis 
 was this new thing of compulsory education. The 
 oldest girl, being now eight years old, could no longer 
 be kept from school, however much she was needed 
 about the house. 
 
 "And she can knit, m'sieu', and spin tena ! " 
 She went over to a cupboard back of the big stove 
 and brought out a gray woollen sock, almost finished, 
 but with the needles still in the toe. " She did that. 
 Judge if she is becoming useful to me. And now, 
 just when she can help me, can do the washing and 
 dress the children and take care of the baby, almost 
 anything that a woman can do, then she must be 
 sent to school."
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 25 
 
 M'sieu' le Cure could see, she went on, that she had 
 need of help herself, with so many children and she so 
 often ill. " I have no strength any more, no health." 
 She took from him the sock he had examined dutifully 
 and approvingly, with that combined air of wisdom and 
 embarrassment a man always brings to such things. 
 She put it back, and he saw how tidy the cupboard was. 
 
 Madame Gerard returned to her chair. All her 
 movements were patiently listless ones. " Yes, but it 
 is not for that I care so much, m'sieu'. It is that 
 when she can read she will think poorly of her mother. 
 I cannot read, you know, m'sieu.' " The big, soft blue 
 eyes were swimming with tears. The delicate pale lips 
 quivered. It was not amusing at all. 
 
 He pushed the hair from his forehead again. He 
 did not think of anything to say which would be 
 likely to do much good. But he made the attempt. 
 It would not be possible for any one to think poorly 
 of her, he said, and surely least of all, the children 
 for whom she had done so much. But she was able to 
 cite too many instances to the contrary in support of 
 her view. The village had plenty of children who 
 held their illiterate parents in contempt. " No, m'sieu', 
 they almost always think less of us." A tear rolled 
 down over the thin, faintly pink cheeks. "It is 
 natural too. It is true. Once they have learned to 
 read we are not so good as they." He reminded 
 her that wisdom was the fear of the Lord, the knowl-
 
 26 ANNE CABMEL 
 
 edge of God ; the best understanding that of right 
 eousness and judgment and equity ; that, with the 
 good God, reading and writing were not counted to 
 the credit of a human soul. But Marie Louise had 
 a vague, unformulated philosophy of her own which 
 made her feel that the soul of a highly intelligent 
 being was surely of more value in the spiritual econ 
 omy than that of an unlettered peasant like herself. 
 She could not express it to the Cure, and had she 
 been able to put it in words even for her own under 
 standing, she might have realized it to be of very 
 heretical tinge. All that she knew definitely was 
 that her daughters, however dutiful, would look down 
 on her once they should learn to read and write, and 
 that they would be justified in doing so. There was 
 only one way to avoid it. She must learn to read 
 herself. She told the Cure so, half despairingly, but 
 it was natural enough that learning to read should 
 not, at first blush, seem any such formidable under 
 taking to Jean Carmel. Like most, he had gone 
 through the process so young himself that the troubles 
 of it were hardly more remembered than those of the 
 coming of the first teeth. It struck him as a very 
 good idea. And he said so heartily. Certainly, if 
 she felt as she did about it, let her learn to read, 
 he advised, relieved that there was so simple an end 
 ing possible to the humble little tragedy. 
 
 But Madame Gerard sat considering him patheti-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 27 
 
 cally with the soft and tearful eyes. "Yet, m'sieu', 
 I cannot go to school," she said. "And I work 
 from five in the morning until after dark, and some 
 times much later. It is easy to tell me to learn, 
 but I thought perhaps you could tell me how to do 
 it." There was never the least hesitation in the par 
 ish about bringing to the young priest all manner of 
 problems, spiritual and temporal, to solve, about re 
 questing him to make the impossible feasible. He 
 was always kind with it ; and he very often found 
 the solution or the means. 
 
 He found them now after he had sat for a moment 
 thinking, sitting, bent forward with one arm thrown 
 over his knees and his brows drawn together. He 
 looked up with a quick smile. He was a man who did 
 not smile often. "I have it, madame. If you could 
 come up to me for one hour each evening after your 
 work is done." The Cure liked his evenings to him 
 self, to read or to walk, to go out in his canoe, to sit 
 with his mother and Anne, or to play cards with visit 
 ing neighbors occasionally. But after all, it would 
 be worth the giving up of one hour to see Madame 
 Gerard's face a little less sadly anxious and deprecat 
 ing. If he could help to lift one of the very many 
 burdens from her young mind, it was obviously noth 
 ing less than his duty. 
 
 But it was one matter to offer the thing, and 
 altogether another to have to receive her thanks.
 
 28 ANNE CARMBL 
 
 He stood up abruptly as her eyes filled again with 
 the tears of gratitude this time. His palm pushed 
 back the hair from his forehead. " Very well, then, 
 madame ; it is arranged," he put in hastily. And he 
 would not be a severe taskmaster, he assured her. 
 He was out on the porch by then, and could retreat 
 if he wished, so he stopped and called the next to 
 the youngest child from where she was playing among 
 the tomato plants in a corner of the bit of yard. 
 The child came, dubiously and very slowly, carrying 
 a large ripe tomato. From her two-year-old view 
 the Cure looked awesomely large and black. Could 
 she give him her name ? he asked her, bending 
 down. 
 
 " Cecile," she told him in a whisper, hanging her 
 flaxen head. "That is a good name," the Cure en 
 couraged, "the name of a saint who made beautiful 
 music, which the angels listened to." 
 
 " Oui, m'sieu," said Cecile. Whatever the Cure said 
 to her, she always answered, "oui, m'sieu'." She had 
 been taught that it was la politesse. 
 
 "Be Monseigneur for M'sieu' Carmel," suggested 
 her mother. The Bishop had been to St. Hilaire in 
 the spring, on his three-yearly confirmation visit, when 
 the cottages along the road had been decorated and he 
 and his suite had made their triumphant entry. Cecile 
 had profited by what she had seen. Her round little 
 pink and white countenance became preternaturally
 
 ANNE CARMEL 29 
 
 solemn, she raised her hand with the mites of fingers 
 ready for the episcopal blessing, and with creased red 
 palm turned outward made the sign of the cross. 
 
 That it might not perhaps be altogether seemly did 
 not occur to the Cure. The likeness to the Bishop 
 was irresistible, and the Bishop was a pompous little 
 man. Monsieur Carmel chuckled over it as he went 
 on his way, swinging up the street.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ANNE had been walking down by the river front in 
 the path through the trees. It was a gray evening, 
 warm and breathless, there was a high mist over the 
 sky, and the water was as colorless as dull silver. A 
 couple of punts were out in the middle of the stream. 
 It was Thursday, and the fish for Friday were to be 
 caught the one time in the week when the villagers 
 used the supply of that food which was there for the 
 mere taking. Anne sat on a big rock and watched 
 them idly. Once she saw a bit of red in the grass 
 under the bushes. The maples had only just begun 
 to turn in a spray here and there, and none of the 
 leaves were falling yet. She went over to see what 
 it was. And she found it to be a little cluster of 
 belated bunchberries. She broke them off and pinned 
 them on her breast. Then she went back to the stone. 
 
 Over on the other shore she could see a camp-fire 
 smouldering among the trees, and two figures moving 
 around it. Before long one of the figures came down 
 to the water's edge, shoved off the boat that was 
 beached there, and stepped into it. He began to row 
 
 30
 
 Harnett meets Anne for the first time.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 31 
 
 across. In the still evening she could hear the even 
 click, click of the oars as they turned on the iron pivots, 
 that and the humming of the cicadas in the grass 
 and trees and the occasional sleepy rustle of a bird 
 up in the leaves. But those were undertones, and 
 the click of the oars was quick and insistent. It came 
 so steadily, so regularly, so distinctly, followed by 
 the faint splash of water. It grew nearer and louder ; 
 it filled the low, gray sky. Then the boat grated 
 suddenly on the little stones. She could not see it 
 now. A clump of alders was in the way. But in a 
 moment more Harnett came toward the bushes. Anne 
 stood up, rising to her full height. 
 
 Harnett was not more easily thrown out than an 
 other of his race and considerable experience, but the 
 apparition of the tall gray woman among the tall 
 trunks of the silver birches, in the misty gray of the 
 evening, made him stop short, looking her straight 
 in the face. Then he lowered his eyes. There was 
 a spot of crimson over her heart. He raised his hunt 
 ing cap slightly and kept on. 
 
 He wondered, as he went toward the village, if the 
 habitant whose wife she doubtless was set a just 
 value by his fine possession. As undoubtedly not. 
 And she was probably the mother of a half-dozen babies 
 or so, whose general effect had been enhanced by the 
 gray dress and the gray twilight, and by the uncom 
 monly fitting surroundings even to the silver lines
 
 32 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 of the birches. In the noonday it was altogether 
 conceivable that closer inspection would prove disen 
 chanting. Even then, nevertheless, with one of the 
 half-naked little fellows that teemed about these vil 
 lage cottages, she would make a very fair conception 
 of sylvan motherhood. It was not, however, with 
 habitant mothers he concerned himself. He had come 
 over to see something more of his acquaintance, the 
 Cure. A young, heroic-built priest, who went canoe 
 ing all night up and down black and silent waterways, 
 who could then swim a strong flowing current and 
 back again, and by far more a test of strength 
 could sit by after that and watch another man eat 
 breakfast, at least he promised to be worth knowing. 
 "And the coffee must have smelt unpleasantly good, 
 too," he said to himself. The self-denial upon a mere 
 religious scruple had impressed him. And there had 
 seemed no sort of cant about it, either. As a rule he 
 had an exceedingly poor opinion of the French-Cana 
 dian priest. The sacerdotal poacher of the north 
 eastern salmon regions, who had turned himself a 
 comfortable fortune and who ruled his parish on the 
 principle of the more ancient feudal baronets of the 
 land, had been, after all, about the nearest to a man 
 he had met amongst them, up to that morning. The 
 others he had found rather often sunk in slothfulness, 
 or with an extent and variety of feminine households of 
 near and remote relationship or even of no relation-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 83 
 
 ship at all which had occurred to him as unwise 
 for the parsonage of a celibate. Without having 
 thought of it, he had the impression that there would 
 be no women around the presbytere of St. Hilaire. 
 
 When he came on the main street of the village 
 he stopped at the hotel, whose painted signboard hung 
 out over the road after the manner of that of an old 
 English inn. There were several women sitting on 
 the porch, women who proved that the beauty of 
 that other down among the silver birches was, at any 
 rate, not the unbroken rule of St. Hilaire. He asked 
 them the way to the presbytere. Was it M. Carmel 
 he wished to see ? they demurred, not quick at taking 
 even a very simple idea. The Cure had not told his 
 name, but Harnett accepted it on the chance. The 
 women pointed out the presbytere to him, and as he 
 went on up the stone walk he knew that they were 
 looking after him and giggling. His hunting clothes, 
 or himself, had usually a way of exciting mirth and 
 quite audible comment among the habitants, as he had 
 found before. 
 
 The presbytere stood next to the big stone church. 
 It was a white house, of rough granite and mortar, 
 with a red tin-shingled roof. And it was at the end 
 of a long garden. The garden ran down hill to the 
 street for about fifty yards, and the path to the porch 
 led him between two rows of double dahlia bushes, 
 blood-red even in the colorless evening. There were
 
 34 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 other beds of flowers ; the garden was gorgeous with 
 them blue larkspur, and pinks, sunflowers, cocks 
 combs, hollyhocks, lady's-slippers, and a few late poppies. 
 But the blood-red dahlias on either side of the path, 
 almost meeting across it, and growing along the white 
 paling fence those were the glory of the place. And 
 the trees were bending under crimson apples and crab- 
 apples, prunes, and native cherries. The snell bushes 
 were red with their unripe fruit. His Cure was no 
 ascetic, at any rate. 
 
 There had been a shorter way from the river to the 
 presbytere through the bushes and across a meadow. 
 Anne had come by it, and by the back gate. Harnett, 
 going up the path through the garden, saw his gray 
 woman of the silver birches turn the corner of the 
 house and move down toward him. The crimson 
 dahlias brushed back from her, and there was still a 
 crimson spot over her heart. Her long steps were 
 hardly the glide of a ghost, but it was rather like some 
 wraith of the dusk, with the stain of her violent death 
 always showing. He stopped and waited for her to 
 reach him. 
 
 "I am Monsieur Carmel's sister," she said to him. 
 He saw the resemblance at once, even in the twilight. 
 Her head was as well poised as the priest's. The 
 Cure, she went on to tell him, had had a letter from 
 Montreal in the morning. It had called him there on 
 the business of the parish. He had taken the after-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 35 
 
 noon malle to the railroad. Harnett was paying less 
 attention to what she said than to the voice that said it. 
 It was curiously deep and rich for a woman the 
 voice. He remembered having once heard a primitive 
 musical instrument made of woods, from which much 
 the same low resonant sound had come when it was 
 struck. It was to hear more of the voice, rather than 
 to meet her mother, that he went up to the house with 
 her. He was not, as a rule, at all keen over making 
 the acquaintance of women, having the constraint in 
 their presence, so long as they were strangers to him, 
 of the average young Englishman. But he had no 
 good reason to give for turning back, and he felt some 
 curiosity as to what the mother of this brother and 
 sister would be like. 
 
 He found her to be a woman evidently well past 
 fifty, not so tall as her daughter, but with the marks of 
 having been even more handsome once, and in a more 
 formidable fashion. She had dark eyes, and brows that 
 were very black, though her hair was iron-streaked. 
 And her hands were cracked with work. He disliked 
 to touch a woman's hand when it was rough and hard. 
 He glanced at Mademoiselle Carmel's hands as she 
 turned up the lamp. They were large and looked 
 firm. But they were not cracked or rough, and they 
 were uncommonly well shaped. 
 
 He sat in the stiff little sitting room, talking to the 
 two women for almost an hour. They spoke English
 
 36 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 as well as the Cure himself. Madame's father had 
 been an Englishman, she told him, and her own hus 
 band had been half American, from a French-Canadian 
 settlement in Massachusetts. It accounted to Har- 
 nett's mind for the superior type of the grandchildren. 
 
 When he went he told them that he was to leave 
 for the mountains at daybreak. In all probability 
 he would not see them again. He looked into Anne 
 Carmel's gray eyes, and could not look away at once. 
 
 Two evenings after that he camped again across the 
 river from St. Hilaire.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THOSE are in the infinitely small minority who plan 
 a course of procedure and deliberately follow it out, 
 and the more especially if the course be a not too 
 creditable one. It is a concession to virtue, in a way, 
 perhaps, though there is less of inherent virtue in it, 
 than of saving one's self-esteem by blinking the possi 
 bilities of one's own unworthiness. And it was not at 
 all with the formed intention of doing Anne Carmel 
 any wrong that Harnett came back to St. Hilaire. 
 
 Sometimes it happens to one to see a certain flower 
 or blade of grass at a distance from where one chances 
 to be in the fields or woods. There is no especial 
 desire to have it. The glance has been quite idle and 
 unthinking. It may be a flower or blade of grass like 
 another, and there are as good or better to be had for 
 the reaching out of the hand. One does not give it a 
 second conscious thought. Yet before long one will 
 rise up and go absently over, and come back again, 
 before realizing that the thing one did not, and does 
 not, particularly want is in one's hands. 
 
 It was the way in which Harnett had come back to 
 
 37
 
 38 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 St. Hilaire. The end of the day's hunt had brought 
 him near there. He went over the river to the pres- 
 bytere and took some game. Monsieur Carmel had 
 not returned. He was still in Montreal, and had 
 planned for a hunting trip of his 'own afterward, with 
 some friends of his college days. He went off in that 
 way once every year when it could be arranged. 
 Anne Carmel told him so as she stood under the arch 
 of the old stone gateway of the cemetery, beside the 
 church. The bell clanged out suddenly. While it 
 kept on they could not make their voices heard. They 
 stood waiting. The tones of bronze were booming 
 through the evening air till the ground seemed to 
 shake and quiver. A ray of the sun, slanting through 
 some elms and across the grass-hidden graves, showed 
 hot red lights in the heavy knot of hair at Mademoiselle 
 Carmel's neck. 
 
 Harnett was glad he had come back. And he was 
 glad the Cure was away. 
 
 Afterward he stayed on near St. Hilaire because 
 he wished to. It was usually, so far as he knew, his 
 only reason for doing things. His was of those direct 
 natures which take care of the actions and let the 
 motives take care of themselves. Motives were things 
 made much of in a certain modern school of emascu 
 lated fiction with which he did not concern himself, 
 and which gave them an undue importance. In the 
 matter of stopping on at St. Hilaire, he had time
 
 ANNE CABMEL 39 
 
 at his disposal to do with as he liked, and having seen 
 Anne Carmel twice he wanted to see her again. He 
 was not aware of any underlying instigation. And 
 he did not take consequences into consideration any 
 more than does the greater part of mankind, which, 
 after all, acts habitually with about as much view to 
 consequences in the least remote as do the beasts that 
 perish; as little heeding as those, apparently that a 
 deed must needs be Janus-faced, according as one 
 looks at it from the future or from the past, a con 
 sequence or a cause, and that it cannot die childless. 
 If Harnett was glad the Cure was away, it was 
 only because, otherwise, he would have had to see 
 more of the brother than of the sister. As it was 
 he met Anne several times by the river front. It was 
 a chance each time, but a chance which both had made 
 possible. Anne had never before gone so often down 
 to the narrow white beach, and Harnett walked on 
 the St. Hilaire side of the river, or spent a great part 
 of his time fishing and rowing about in the leaky, flat- 
 bottomed boat. Anne would hear the clicking of the 
 oars on the iron pivots, and the boat would come 
 around some little point or clump of bushes. So 
 they met several times when no one, except perhaps 
 some villager, knew it; and though Harnett went 
 once to the presbytere again, it happened that Madame 
 Carmel was not there. He sat with Anne upon the 
 porch behind the sheltering madeira vines. And
 
 40 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 when he was leaving to go back to his camp, Anne 
 walked down the long path with him, between the 
 brushing dahlia bushes. They stood by the gate for 
 a time, under the low maples. It was a heavy night, 
 thick with clouds. The darkness was dense and dull 
 and warm. He could not see Anne. But she was 
 close to him, very close. They spoke in low voices, 
 indistinctly, to beat off a silence which was settling 
 down as stifling and fraught as the night. Anne's 
 voice was more deep and more vibrant. The un 
 easy effort grew less, and there was a pause. Harnett 
 was afraid of it. It was numbing him. He could 
 have gone even then. But he did not. Instead he 
 made the last struggle against the silence. He spoke 
 again. But his lips were unsteady, and Anne did not 
 hear him or she could not answer. The silence 
 which had been closing closed then. She was near 
 in the heavy darkness. And there was darkness and 
 silence over his brain too. He put out his hands, and 
 they touched Anne's head. He took it between them 
 and bent down his face against her warm, thick hair. 
 
 When he moved and left her he went back through 
 the still, black village and rowed across the river. 
 The click of his oars on the pivots and the following 
 splash of the oars sounded loud and insistent and even, 
 through all the cloud-dense night. It kept on dully 
 in his ears after he had landed and gone into his tent.
 
 ANNE OARMEL 41 
 
 He heard it until he fell asleep on his spruce bough 
 bed, face downward on his folded arms, feeling yet the 
 warm, thick hair, the pulse of her throat under his 
 palms, and the quiver of the cold lips against his own. 
 
 He awoke to daylight and a hard rain, and when 
 he had had his breakfast with the half-breed guide 
 he lay back on the pile of boughs and blankets again 
 and tried to read a Juvenal of the Cure's that Anne 
 had lent him. But even the sharp-cut Latin of the 
 sentences would not get into his mind. He put down 
 the book, clasped his hands under his neck, and lay 
 looking out at the gray, streaking rain. Certain 
 things were very plain to him ; the rest he refused to 
 see. What was plain was this that he was in love 
 with Anne Carmel a good deal more than he had ever 
 been with any woman in his eight and twenty fairly 
 well experienced years, and that he probably would 
 not be able to marry her. 
 
 It was the first time that he had ever felt any disad 
 vantage in being dependent for his means and liveli 
 hood upon another. So far as that went, it had never 
 concerned him, especially up to then. In the manner 
 of heirs to the estates of aristocratic lands, he had 
 taken it as a matter of course that he should be sup 
 ported without effort of his own by the senior of the 
 family. The senior was, in this case, an uncle, his 
 mother's brother, and he himself was an orphan had 
 been since before he could remember. And he had
 
 42 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 never been an idler, as he saw the thing. He had 
 done himself credit at school and college, and his time 
 since then had gone, for the most part, to study and 
 to employments that were useful to others, if not 
 remunerative to his own purse. He was a man of 
 mountains and plains and forests, rather than of clubs 
 and drawing-rooms and the turf. As a consequence, 
 his self-respect was still intact. And this though he 
 had nothing whatever and was, so far, of no particular 
 consequence. Whereas his uncle had much and was 
 powerful. Upon that uncle depended his present liv 
 ing and any future success. To obtain those he had 
 only not to prove troublesome. 
 
 He would be proving very troublesome in wanting 
 to marry Anne Carmel. The uncle was a man having 
 no notion whatever of that best sort of generosity 
 which permits another to live his own life, even 
 though the manner of doing so may happen to con 
 flict with preconceptions and theories. If his nephew 
 were to run counter to him, he would drop him, once 
 and for all. And his right to do so was unquestion 
 able. 
 
 Harnett knew it. And he knew now that it was 
 humiliating. He had been trained to no profession 
 or work. His life was altogether an agreeable one at 
 present. It would cease to be so in nearly every 
 respect, however, if he were to insist upon marrying 
 Anne Carmel. That his uncle would object to her, he
 
 ANNE CAEMBL 43 
 
 was certain without the trouble of asking. Apart 
 from the fact that it was long planned to dispose of 
 him otherwise matrimonially, there was a yet more 
 serious obstacle. His uncle despised no cue thing 
 more intensely than a French Canadian. The prej 
 udice was the result of personal experience. By 
 reason of interests and of past long residence in the 
 country, Harnett's uncle was as much a Canadian as an 
 Englishman. And he shared the English Canadian's 
 common dislike of and contempt for the French in 
 habitants. But in his case it went even further than 
 the usual political and racial prejudice against a people 
 held as priest-infected, unprogressive, unassimilative, 
 and of a speech and genius forever foreign to those of 
 the Anglo-Saxon. It was a detestation of Gallic blood 
 and characteristics in all their manifestations, worthy 
 the days of the Napoleonic wars. He had come of a 
 line untainted by Norman grafting, and had quarrelled 
 violently with his only sister for that she had married 
 a man whose name of Harnett was proof of cross - 
 channel origin. 
 
 A French Canadian, the penniless daughter of a 
 Montreal office-holder, having for brother an obscure 
 village priest, it was the most completely unfavorable 
 combination that could possibly have been hit upon. 
 Anne herself would not weigh a grain against it all in 
 the falsed scales of his uncle's judgment. Neverthe 
 less, he would ask permission to marry her. It would
 
 44 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 not be granted. In that entirely certain event, in 
 what position was he to make any declaration of 
 independence ? He wished angrily and for the first 
 time that he had means of his own, or at least a pro 
 fession. And for the first time, too, there dawned on 
 him the wrong that was done a man bred to the 
 customs and conditions that he himself had been bred 
 to. He was not left the power over his own manhood. 
 
 It was still raining hard, with no prospect of stop 
 ping. But he wanted to see Anne Carmel again, and 
 now. Madame Carmel was to be at the Tetrault farm 
 all the morning, and Anne would be alone. He did 
 not care to see a great deal of madame. She might 
 bethink herself to oblige him to be more explicit than 
 he could very well be just then. It was one thing to 
 be satisfied himself with the integrity of his intentions. 
 It might conceivably be another to satisfy a village 
 woman who could have no notion of the exigencies of 
 station. If she were not satisfied, it might result in his 
 seeing nothing more of Anne, and to see her often 
 was the one wish he was fully conscious of at present. 
 
 In pursuance of it he got up from the blankets and 
 put on his oilskin coat, and rowed himself across the 
 river. As he went along the little side street between 
 the white cottages and the red-weighted, dripping 
 apple trees, the women at the windows beckoned their 
 husbands and children to come and see the tall young 
 Englishman in the wet yellow coat, who trudged dog-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 45 
 
 gedly by in the rain, his shoulders thrust forward. 
 He was Mademoiselle Carmel's lover. They had 
 already settled that. The villagers and children who 
 had seen the meetings by the river shore had not been 
 silent. 
 
 Anne was by a window also. She looked up from 
 the patch quilt she was sewing as she heard the crunch 
 of purposeful feet on the gravel of the walk, and she 
 saw the figure in the glistening yellow oilskin coat 
 coming up between the long rows of crimson dahlias. 
 She laid down the piece of quiltwork, and went to 
 open the door for him. 
 
 If Madame Carmel was away, however, Amelie 
 Latouche, the Cure's servant, was in the house. She 
 had heard the village gossip, and she made it a point 
 during the hour that Harnett stayed to pass the door 
 or the window, or to go in and out of the room con 
 stantly. Harnett fancied being spied upon still less 
 than he would have fancied open questioning. It irri 
 tated him. He jlid not intend to submit to anything 
 of the sort, and he told Anne so. If they were to see 
 each other, it would have to be where that could not 
 go on. 
 
 Anne sat looking at him for a moment. She was 
 seeing deep behind his blue, determined English eyes. 
 She was seeing the thing exactly as it was, that his 
 love for her could be subservient to his stubbornness 
 or his anger. It was less to him to have done with
 
 46 ANNE CA11MEL 
 
 her than to be subjected to annoyance or humiliation. 
 But she was not the first woman to knowingly give a 
 good love for a poorer one and be happy over the 
 barter. There was no one about at the instant. She 
 stood up slowly and went over to him and knelt down 
 beside his chair. She laid her head against his arm, 
 putting her hands in his. 
 
 And for three times after that she met him openly, 
 by daylight, on the river bank, as she had done before. 
 Then Amelie Latouche told Madame Carmel of it. 
 And that day Anne was not at the meeting-place. 
 But late at night she went down through the meadow 
 and heavy bushes, unchained her boat from its rocks 
 and rowed across the river. She had always had a 
 terror of the dark, and she was miserably frightened; 
 and the click of the oars seemed to spread out through 
 the night under the sounding vault of the star-flecked 
 sky. Harnett, lying awake in his tent, heard it, faint 
 and far off across the broad river at first, but coming 
 nearer. He went out and saw a boat under the black 
 shadow of the shore. The half-breed had heard too, 
 and came up beside him. " Go back," ordered Harnett 
 shortly, and went down to the bank alone. He ex 
 pected to see Jean Carmel. When he found that it 
 was Anne he thought of the guide again. " Be quiet," 
 he said, "don't speak." He stepped into the boat 
 himself. "Now," he told her, "put off, and keep in 
 the shadow." Upon her account he did not choose
 
 ANNE CARMEL 47 
 
 to have his guide telling in St. Hilaire that she had 
 come to the camp at midnight. But he was glad that 
 she had come ; and now that she had been the first to 
 make the move, he was more than willing to meet her 
 in some such way again. 
 
 Yet he was not the one who suggested it. It was 
 she herself. " I cannot come in the daylight, because 
 I am watched then," she finished, " but I can come at 
 night, until the time when that also is discouraged." 
 She was like her brother in the choice of her English 
 words, and in her low-pitched voice it gave weight to 
 her meaning. 
 
 Did he remember the quarry in Napoleon Coppee's 
 pasture ? she asked. Harnett had found it one day in 
 his walks. " I will go there," she said. 
 
 He had her put him ashore well above his camp, and 
 he stood waiting and listening until she had reached 
 the opposite shore and the click of the oars had 
 stopped. Then he went back along the beach to his 
 camp. 
 
 The half-breed reached it some minutes before him. 
 
 But the opposition from a source from which he had 
 no disinheritance to fear had its effect upon Harnett. 
 It made him very nearly decide to have Anne at any 
 cost, even at that of his income and his future and his 
 station in life. And those, after all, were really more 
 to him than the mere life itself. A man of the upper 
 classes, thrown suddenly down from them, and de-
 
 48 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 prived, when half his days are already gone, of his 
 accustomed means of support, is as much to be pitied 
 as the workingman who loses the use of the right arm 
 that has gained him his bread. He shrinks from the 
 misfortune but he can hardly be set down as a 
 coward for that. 
 
 Harnett considered the advisability of going directly 
 to Madame Carmel and claiming the right to see Anne 
 openly, as the woman he meant to marry. But it was 
 not advisable. In the event of a break with his uncle, 
 he would not be able to support himself in comfort for 
 several years ahead, at the least, and much less so a 
 wife. And even if madame were to consent to her 
 daughter being bound by any such uncertainty, she 
 might put him to the test of serving for Anne without 
 seeing her. And see Anne to the last possible minute 
 he would. That determination was stronger than his 
 previous honorable habits, stronger than his usual good 
 sense much stronger than his consideration for Anne 
 herself. But he was in a hard position, and he himself 
 was not to blame for it, nor to be punished for it by 
 depriving himself. 
 
 That he ought not to see her at any such hour as 
 midnight, or any such place as the limestone quarry, he 
 knew, however, as well as another man must have 
 known it. A better impulse than his selfishness got 
 the mastery for a while. He decided to put a stop to 
 the meeting, if he could get word to her.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 49 
 
 He was walking, then, on the St. Hilaire side of the 
 river. He turned about on the road and started back 
 toward the village. It was only noon, however, and 
 he had plenty of time to act. So he went slowly, look 
 ing at nothing in particular. He saw the little yellow 
 butterflies flutter and settle on the dusty goldenrod 
 and white daisies and purple vetch, and the grass 
 hoppers snap up from the road into the choked grass 
 by the wayside. He stopped once to try the wild 
 grapes on a vine that hung from a beech tree. They 
 were green yet and acrid. And once he amused him 
 self for a full ten minutes cutting off the path of a 
 soil-powdered caterpillar by putting across its way 
 a switch he was carrying. Yet he was thinking of 
 anything but the trivial plant and insect life about 
 him. Life and all its problems were centred in 
 himself that egoism which is, after all, Heaven- 
 appointed to the perpetuation of the race and the 
 saving of the soul. It is a matter for the jest and 
 smile of the shallow-sighted, the struggle in a human 
 heart between the love of some one creature and the 
 chance of worldly preferment. But it is the struggle 
 between the force of civilization and the force of na 
 ture, concentrated for the time being within himself. 
 
 At the moment the more primitive instinct was 
 mastering Harnett. Then two pink pigs came trot 
 ting out from a gateway and stopped directly in front 
 of him, grunting a challenge, their clean little snouts
 
 50 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 pointed up at him, twitching inquiringly. He stood 
 still, looking down at them. They were quaint 
 beasts, with their appearance of having been, like the 
 cottages of most of the natives, always newly scrubbed, 
 and the expression in their twinkling pink eyes was 
 amusingly impertinent. 
 
 Under ordinary conditions, an ordinary pig was 
 hardly a creature to play with. But he stooped down 
 and held out an empty palm, deceivingly hollowed. 
 They were knowing pigs, however, and they showed 
 the futility of the attempt in the very kink of their 
 tails, then, with another series of grunts, moved off 
 side by side. Their rosy hind quarters were derisive. 
 Harnett looked up and saw that a woman was watch 
 ing him, leaning over the fence, her apron full of ears 
 of sweet corn. 
 
 " M'sieu' likes pigs ? " she said. 
 
 "It depends upon the pigs," Harnett told her, still 
 in the good humor these had induced. 
 
 " We have more," said the woman ; " would m'sieu' 
 care to see them?" 
 
 M'sieu' was not possessed by any special desire to look 
 over the porcine stock of the farm, but it was a habit 
 of his travelling to take in what came in his way 
 and offered. The habitant woman was not lovely, nor 
 had she the appearance of outward cleanliness of her 
 own pigs, but she promised to be talkative, and might 
 be entertaining. Life had been at high tension for
 
 ANNE CARMBL 51 
 
 Harriett in the past week ; he was glad to ease it for 
 a little while. 
 
 The rest of the pigs were in a field of stubble, and 
 were much like the two others except that several 
 of them wore a portable stock of wood which evidently 
 weighed on their spirits as much as on their poor 
 rubbed little necks, and interfered considerably with 
 rooting. " To keep them from going under the wire 
 fences and scratching themselves," explained the 
 woman. She was the wife of Farmer Tetrault, and 
 the Tetraults were proud of their modern farm 
 appliances. The barbed wire fences were, in their 
 opinion, a vast improvement upon the snake or stone 
 ones of the other terres. Madame Tetrault was not 
 only talkative, as it proved she was garrulous and 
 a gossip. She invited Harnett into the house and 
 showed it to him with pride. Her furniture was all 
 from Montreal. Its cheap hideousness was, to his 
 mind, its only distinction. But the woman amused 
 him even more than the pigs had done. He set her 
 down as a simple and communicative soul, of a vul 
 garity so entire and so frank as almost to cease to be 
 such. But however communicative and frankly vul 
 gar Madame Tetrault might be, she was not simple. 
 She had heard of Harnett. She had heard of his meet 
 ings with Anne Carmel, as had every inhabitant of the 
 parish after the last Sunday's mass. She too believed 
 that he was Mademoiselle Carmel's lover, but she put
 
 52 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 a less pleasant interpretation on it than did the rest of 
 the people. And she wanted to get a damaging con 
 fession straight from Harnett's own lips, to use it as 
 an argument with her son and turn his attentions from 
 the Cure's penniless sister to the daughter of rich 
 Farmer Lavisse. Madame Tetrault loved money. 
 
 " You know Anne Carmel ? " began madame, in her 
 barbarous French. Harnett admitted it coolly, with 
 a disconcerting indifference. Madame felt it, but was 
 not to be stopped so easily. " You like her ? " His 
 reply that he did was equally unimpassioned. "You 
 have met her down by the river," she said, nodding her 
 head knowingly, her black eyes taking on something 
 the expression of the pale ones of the pigs. " Ah ! " 
 she shook her finger at him, " I know. But you are 
 not the first. She has had many lovers Mademoiselle 
 Carmel it is a pity and the Cure is so good. If he 
 knew " 
 
 Harnett's own French was not facile, but he was 
 aware of the full difference in the shade of the word 
 "amant" and its English equivalent in literal trans 
 lation. And if he had not, Madame Tetrault's tone 
 and looks would have admitted of no doubt as to 
 her meaning. He had, for an instant, the primitive 
 male instinct to kill the faithless female. Then the 
 customs of generations curdled it to an accommodating 
 cynicism. He did not encourage Madame Tetrault, 
 but neither did he keep her from getting in a few cor-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 53 
 
 roborative details to enforce her insinuation, before he 
 left. Madame invented the details out of hand, carried 
 away with the satisfaction of it. She detested Anne 
 Carmel, but it was the first time she had dared to lie 
 so comprehensively and broadly about her, since the 
 sentiment of the parish was contrary. 
 
 A disease finds best lodgement in a body already 
 enfeebled, and an evil report in a mind not quite strong 
 in its own integrity. And when Harnett went out of 
 the gate and on to the road again, he had already deter 
 mined that he would not trouble to send any word to 
 Anne Carmel. She might meet him at the limestone 
 quarry at midnight as she herself, with the facility 
 born of practice, no doubt, had suggested. Anne paid 
 now the inevitable debt for her step outside the safe 
 guards of convention. He saw her easy surrender to his 
 wishes, and above all her visit to his camp, in a new light. 
 What a fool she must have thought him, to be sure, for 
 his pains to hide her presence from the guide that 
 night, to keep her from landing on the shore. And it 
 was for this Lais of a backwoods settlement that he 
 had worked himself to the verge of heroics. He had 
 been hit hard, and it hurt. So he raised his shoulders 
 and laughed unpleasantly. As instruments of interven 
 tion Fate had made use of two small pink pigs. Two 
 pink pigs with twitching snouts and crinkled tails had 
 stood, not only in the road before him, but in the path he 
 had been taking toward the probable wrecking of his life.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE half-breed guide had not spent a number of 
 absolutely idle days around St. Hilaire for nothing. 
 He had made the acquaintance of the villagers, 
 and, in exchange for their hospitality at the tavern, 
 had kept them accurately informed as to Harnett's 
 doings and his own interpretations thereof. The 
 morning that Harnett listened to Madame Tetrault, 
 the blacksmith and church furnisher, the director of 
 funeral pomps and the tailor, all weighty and im 
 portant citizens, listened to the account of how Anne 
 Carmel had gone to the camp across the river the 
 night before. A few hours later the notary was told 
 of it, and he, in turn repeated it to Paul Tetrault, 
 who was in to see him on business. Paul listened 
 and questioned. But it was not in the spirit in 
 which Harnett had listened to Madame Tetrault and 
 refrained from questioning. A love built upon the 
 sands of mere desire may fall at once before a stream 
 of accusation, but that which has its foundation on 
 the rock of trust stands a better chance. Young 
 Tetrault, to be sure, lacked the experience of life, 
 
 54
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 55 
 
 and of himself, which made scepticism easy to Harnett. 
 The college of Montreal and the parish of St. Hilaire 
 had been about the whole field of his observations. 
 But the rule of the drop of water and the entire 
 sea is that of humanity ; and the village in the back 
 woods is, in little, pretty much as are the wide world 
 and its citizens on a larger scale. That Harnett 
 condemned Anne on the report of one scandal-mon- 
 gering old woman, and that Tetrault refused to upon 
 excellent evidence were mere matters of personality. 
 Harnett decided forthwith to let Anne hurt herself. 
 Tetrault decided as promptly to prevent it if he could. 
 But it was as fruitless and thankless as he might have 
 foreseen. 
 
 Anne listened to what he had to say. She did 
 not have recourse to the cheap device of outraged 
 virtue. In any case, an heroic attitude before such a 
 figure as he made would have been too incongruous. 
 And he was not impressive when he fell back, in 
 his earnestness, on the most colloquial French of 
 his people. Having a standard of comparison close 
 before her, she could not help finding absurd his 
 curly light hair, his pink and white skin, and his 
 general air and dress of a village tailor's beau. He 
 wore several rings with jewels in them on his short- 
 fingered hands. Harnett's hands were long and brown 
 and bare. Anne was thinking of that while Tetrault 
 urged on her, desperately, that her reputation in the
 
 56 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 parish was already as good as gone. She had picked 
 off one of the dahlias and had been standing, pulling 
 out the close crimson petals. She threw it away sud 
 denly with a fillip which snapped the stem. It was 
 a sign of how she threw away any caution. " I can't 
 help it, Paul ; it will have to go," she said. 
 
 Tetrault hesitated, then he brought himself to the 
 point. The pink of his cheeks spread into the roots of 
 his tight curly hair. " Are you going to marry him, 
 Anne ? " he asked. 
 
 Anne hesitated too. Then her eyes met his at a 
 level, and she drew a long breath. Her own face was 
 dead white. " No," she told him. 
 
 He went away and left her after that. But it was 
 not because he had done with her, had washed his 
 hands of the matter. The means of persuasion had 
 failed, to be sure, but there were other ways. That 
 they would make him forever detestable to Anne was 
 no part of the consideration. He was not thinking 
 about his own interests. He had cared for Anne from 
 the time she had been a tall child of seventeen with her 
 hair in two great heavy braids over her shoulders, and 
 he a schoolboy coming back for the summer work in 
 the fields. He was not going to desert her now when 
 she needed him. As for speaking to Madame Carmel, 
 the chances that it would only precipitate trouble were 
 excellent. Her brother could influence Anne, but not 
 her mother; he had seen that often enough. When
 
 ANNE CARMEL 57 
 
 Monsieur Carmel should come back he himself would 
 probably step aside. But until then he meant to pre 
 vent any more night meetings. 
 
 To that end he came in from the farm at dark and 
 took up his station in the shadow of one of the Cure's 
 snell bushes, outside the fence. Anne's room was by 
 itself, built on to the side of the presbytdre. He 
 could watch its windows and the front door and the back 
 gate. She could not go out, or Harnett could not come 
 in, without his seeing it. 
 
 It was a clear night, with only light clouds blown 
 fast across the sky. The wind was dry and strong. 
 It rustled the trees and whipped them up and down. 
 At the horizon was a hot yellow haze. Tetrault kept 
 close into the bush. Once he picked off some of 
 the red fruits and bit into them. He threw them 
 away again. They were unripe and rough. It was 
 lonely work, and the night was an uneasy, forebod 
 ing one. He was uncomfortable. And he was not 
 acting with the support of any set purpose. He did 
 not know what he meant to do, not even just why he 
 was there. His intentions were of the best, but the 
 good intentions of a weak character are apt to be inef 
 fectual. A misdoubting but that his might prove so was 
 making him undecided. And he grew tired waiting. 
 It seemed hours before the light in the presbytere 
 sitting room went out. Then one was carried into 
 Anne's room. He could see her moving about. She
 
 58 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 stopped in front of her mirror and took down her 
 hair. It fell brown and heavy. She stood braiding it 
 into two long braids such as she had worn years before. 
 Tetrault thought of her as she had been then, and 
 drew the back of his thick hand across his eyes. Then 
 she came to the windows, and, leaning out, drew the 
 cumbersome shutters to. The house was quite dark. 
 Tetrault settled himself to a longer waiting. The 
 village was quiet. The last men went home from the 
 tavern, singing as they went, one of the inane, point 
 less, reiterative habitant songs. There was not a 
 footstep after that. 
 
 But at the end of more than an hour it seemed to 
 him that there was in the air, under the rustle of the 
 dry wind in the leaves, an even, regular, clicking sound. 
 He listened. It came from the direction of the river. 
 It was not a night sound. It was something else 
 the click of oars on their iron pivots. One of the 
 impulses for which he trusted to guidance made him 
 run along the fence, across the' meadow, and down to 
 the water. He did not stop to listen again for the 
 sound. But when he reached the beach it was in time 
 to see a boat put into a little cove among some weeds. 
 He heard the grate of the bottom on small stones. He 
 went in the direction, slowly, keeping among the alders, 
 and when Harnett came out, upon a clear stretch f 
 shore, they were within a hundred feet of each other. 
 But Harnett did not know it. And, to Tetrault's sur-
 
 ANNE CABMBL 59 
 
 prise he did not start off in the direction of the pres- 
 bytere, but at right angles to it. Tetrault came out 
 from his hiding-place and followed. He had put on an 
 old pair of bottes indiennes of his father's, and walked 
 as noiselessly as ever had any of his voyageur antece 
 dents. The figure ahead passed up a side street and 
 straight out of the village. Tetrault was puzzled 
 almost to the point of dropping off. But he kept on, 
 more from curiosity now than any better motive. A 
 number of times Harnett looked back. But Tetrault 
 was not showing himself. They passed Coppee's 
 cottage. Just beyond it was the tobacco shed, and a 
 gate -leading into a narrow lane. Harnett opened the 
 gate noiselessly, left it open, and went up the lane. 
 On both sides there were a stone fence and a line of 
 willow trees. Tetrault got in among the willows. 
 Farther on there was a broken-barred gate in the fence. 
 It led into Coppee's pasture. The figure ahead turned 
 in there, and crossed the pasture toward the quarry. 
 He came to the edge of it and looked down, then back 
 over his shoulder. Tetrault was crouching behind the 
 fence. Harnett spoke in a deadened voice. " Anne," 
 he said, "Anne." Tetrault knew well enough what it 
 all meant now. There was no answer. The English 
 man was looking down into the quarry again. His 
 back was toward Tetrault. The habitant crouched, 
 watching, his eyes on a level with the top stones of the 
 fence. There were trees thick about the quarry,
 
 60 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 stunted crab-apples and snells and sumach bushes. 
 They rustled and the branches of the apple trees tossed. 
 There were crickets humming dryly. It was an uneasy 
 night. And Anne, who was so afraid of the dark and 
 loneliness, who always had been, even as a young girl 
 he was letting her come here, the Englishman, letting 
 her come by herself through the black street and the 
 lane where the willow trees made moving shadows. 
 
 And down in the quarry it was darker still it 
 was deep there were jagged rocks and boulders 
 and a pool of stagnant water. Tetrault's hand was 
 on the top of the fence. It was lying on a loose 
 stone. The stone was not big. His fingers shut 
 over it. It was sharp-pointed. His head came above 
 the level of the fence. He was straightening himself 
 cautiously. His eyes were on the figure by the edge 
 of the black, deep quarry in which the rocks were 
 ragged and the pools of water slimy. His arm went 
 out and back then forward with a jerk. The 
 figure staggered, pitched forward, and was gone. The 
 branches of some bushes cracked and some loose stones 
 clattered. 
 
 Tetrault looked behind him down the lane. There 
 was no one in sight. He crouched down against the 
 wall again and waited. He was shaking all over. 
 Perhaps he had killed the Englishman. Perhaps he 
 was a murderer. He was in a hideous fear. The 
 body might be lying down there, the still body of a
 
 ANNE CARMBL 61 
 
 man among the weeds and sumach bushes and pools 
 of stagnant rain water. He could almost have gone 
 to see with that abject terror which is courage again. 
 But some one might come and find him there. They 
 would know he was the murderer, and he would be 
 hung. He gave a low squeal of animal fright between 
 his tight-clinched teeth, and grovelled closer into the 
 wall and the shadow. 
 
 And now some one was coming. It was Anne, hurry 
 ing up the lane and looking behind her. He knew 
 that she was afraid too. She went through the broken- 
 barred gate, and he raised his head and watched her. 
 Would she go away again, when she found her lover 
 was not there? Or would she wait? Or would she 
 go down into the quarry, climb down through the 
 whispering sumach bushes into the big black hollow ? 
 It was an evil place in broad day. Nobody came 
 across the pasture to it once in months at a time. 
 
 She was standing where the Englishman had stood 
 when the stone from an unseen hand had struck him 
 on the very spot. She spoke. He could hear the 
 voice, but not what she said. Then he could see her 
 start and bend forward over the edge of the quarry, 
 listening. She was speaking again. He caught a 
 word or two, in French. " Wait," she said, " I am 
 coming." And she was gone into the thick of the 
 bushes. He heard her pushing her way through, 
 heard her feet slip, and the loose stones fall. She was
 
 62 ANNE CARMBL 
 
 making her way, scrambling down the steep side, 
 where the rock had been quarried out unevenly in 
 small blocks. Tetrault came from under the shadow 
 of the fence and crossed the pasture, bending low as he 
 ran. He dropped quietly down and drew himself to 
 the edge and looked over. He could not see. But 
 sounds came up out of the big black hole, Anne's voice 
 quivering with misery, and a moaned word or two in 
 the voice of a man. Then the Englishman was not 
 dead yet. 
 
 Anne was speaking gone back to her own tongue 
 in the crisis. Could he wait ? It would not take 
 long. But this time Tetrault's straining ears could 
 catch no answer. " Dear," she repeated, " can you 
 wait?" The wretchedness of the tones, the terrible 
 fear shivering behind them Tetrault covered his face 
 with his hand. He had better have let her go about 
 ruining her life in her own way. He could hear her 
 groping up to the level again, hurriedly, giving a des 
 perate low cry when she slipped back. He drew away 
 under the stunted apple tree, against the trunk. Then 
 she pushed out from among the bushes and passed 
 him, not two yards away. He saw that her shawl was 
 gone. 
 
 He followed her as he had followed Harnett, at a 
 distance, but much faster. She was running. She 
 sped down between the willows so quickly that once 
 or twice he lost sight of her. When she came to
 
 ANNE CARMEL 63 
 
 Coppee's cottage she beat on a shutter with both her 
 fists. The shutter was banged open, and she spoke 
 to Coppee and his wife, urging something with en 
 treaties. They demurred, stupid and half asleep and 
 dazed. The shutter closed again, and Anne moved 
 off, walking up and down, beating her palms together. 
 "Make haste," she called, "oh ! make haste, Monsieur 
 Coppee." The door of the cottage was unbarred, and 
 Coppee and his wife came hurrying out. 
 
 Tetrault, hiding among the willows, saw them follow 
 Anne up the lane, and after a long time he saw them 
 coming back. They passed him close. They were 
 carrying a body between them. And Anne walked 
 in front, slowly, holding up Coppee's lantern, light 
 ing the dark lane.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 You may not guess anything of the nature of a man 
 from his rejoicing in the sunlight. The birds of the air, 
 the four-footed beasts, and the lout do as much. But 
 when he looks into the black of the coming storm and 
 rejoices, you may know more. There is a deep, then, 
 answering to a deep, a force that calls to another force. 
 
 Jean Carmel, walking back the five and twenty miles 
 from the railroad, reached the top of a high hill, half 
 a league from St. Hilaire, and stopped there. He 
 could see far away in the cleared atmosphere that 
 comes sometimes before an autumn tempest. The 
 forest was all around him, and a great stillness and 
 loneliness. But there was a space through the trees 
 just in front of him. It was where a big fir had 
 been struck down, not long before, by wind or light 
 ning, and, falling, had crashed others under it. The 
 wood was white and fresh and resinous yet where 
 the trunk and the branches had splintered. 
 
 Through the gap the Cur6 looked away to other hills, 
 showing where the sun's rays cut through and passed 
 every rock and stump and bush, distinct in an 
 
 64
 
 ANNE CARMEL 65 
 
 ash-green glare. And behind them was a sky of 
 dark portent, with drifting clouds of metallic white 
 ness moving slowly across it in the breath of the near- 
 ing storm. Every pine and fir on the ridges stood out 
 plainly. The soil looked brick-pink. 
 
 He took off his beaver and tossed it back of him, on 
 the softness of the vines and pine drift and dead leaves. 
 He shook his head freely and stood with it well 
 up. His nostrils widened. A line out of the varied 
 reading of his boyhood came to him, and he said it 
 aloud : 
 
 Et lui, I'insens^ invoquait la tempete, 
 Comme si dans 1'orage pouvait regner la paix. 
 
 The words went well with the threatening moan of 
 the wind behind the blue-gray, solid clouds. It was a 
 good sound that, recalling that there was even yet a 
 Jehovah of Destruction, a Lord God of the Thunders 
 with the gales in the hollow of His hand, as well as 
 the All Merciful who comforts the sad-hearted, and 
 He who, being omniscient, forgives. 
 
 There was a long moment of the silence of the depths 
 of space. Not one thing moved except the cold white 
 clouds drifting against the wide-stretching dark ones. 
 The stillness was intense. Then there was a deep 
 breathing of wind as it passed through the high tops 
 of the trees and bent them over and tossed them back. 
 The living leaves on the ground vines stirred. The
 
 66 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 tempest he had invoked was coming from above, and one 
 of which he had no expectation from below. He had 
 written that he would be back at St. Hilaire that day, 
 and would walk. And Anne had come out to meet 
 him. She was climbing the hill, as he stood on the 
 crest of it, making her way through a woodman's path, 
 where the gloom was deep and the branches had to be 
 pushed aside, avoiding the road, which had its occa 
 sional passenger. 
 
 He heard a cracking of the underbrush which was 
 not from the wind, and he turned about. His face 
 lighted, and he went toward her with both hands out. 
 " Eh bien, La P'tite Chose," he said. It was the name 
 he had had for her from her babyhood when he, as the 
 twelve-year-older brother, had felt himself her bounden 
 protector a role which had given him enough to do, 
 for, from her toddling days, she had had always the fac 
 ulty of walking determinedly, and with open eyes, 
 into trouble. 
 
 But Anne's face did not light, and she drew her 
 hands away at once. He saw that there was a curious 
 look in her eyes, which was meant to be unabashed 
 and steady, but was not convincing and only rather 
 bold the sort of look he had seen sometimes in the 
 oyes of another kind of woman. And her face was hag 
 gard. He saw it, but he did not intend to question 
 her. The basis of their friendship was a large amount 
 of reserve and non-interference. The forcing of con-
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 67 
 
 fidences was something neither of them ever attempted. 
 And he did not attempt it now, though he knew there 
 was trouble. But, in her black dress, with her old hat 
 of crushed and weather-stained yellow roses, she was in 
 place in the shadows of the forest depth and of the 
 coming storm. He realized it as one realizes external 
 things in the dead pause of a suspense. Then he looked 
 off to the tops of the far ridges, dark beneath the low 
 clouds. The trees were threshing in a pouring wind. 
 
 *' We must go home," he said ; " we will be caught in 
 the rain, as it is," and he started for his hat where it 
 lay on the ground. Anne stopped him. Her voice 
 was lower than ever, more deep, more vibrant with the 
 tenseness of a strain. But he heard it with a sudden 
 distinctness under the roar of the wind. 
 
 " No," she said, " I have something to tell you be 
 fore you hear it," she motioned her head toward the 
 village and her full upper lip shortened with contempt, 
 "down there." She had never been contemptuous of 
 the village before. He did not like the sign. 
 
 There is no calling which impresses its characteristics 
 upon a man even one to whose nature they are in 
 themselves foreign so deeply, so ineradicably, as that 
 of the church. That of arms presses it close, perhaps, 
 but there can be soldiers of long service who remain 
 essentially unmilitary. There can never be a priest 
 whose outward seeming does not subtly bespeak the 
 cleric, the movements, the voice, and the manner.
 
 68 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 And it is not only those; the very instincts and 
 thoughts are altered by the tremendous moral pressure 
 of his creed, till a weak man becomes mildly feeble, 
 but a strong man becomes self-contained, and has 
 learned that violence can never be other than dissi 
 pated force. And it was because Jean Carmel was 
 a strong man that he heard Anne through quietly, 
 without an interruption. 
 
 She had seated herself on the fallen fir, and he stood 
 in front of her, his rusty cassock whipping about his 
 powerful, lean figure. His face had grayed, and his 
 eyes were steady and cold ; but that was all. She told 
 the story baldly, almost without detail, and with no 
 attempt at extenuation of any of her actions, from 
 the night when Harnett had come to the presbytere 
 for the first time, to the evening when she had walked 
 deliberately past her protesting mother, out of the 
 house ; had gone, in the face of the peering village, 
 up the main street to the inn, and to Harnett's room, 
 and had got, before she left there, his promise to 
 leave St. Hilaire on the following day. 
 
 " I wanted him to be gone before you came," she 
 ended, "and in the morning he was well enough to 
 be helped out to the malle and drive to the railroad. 
 That was three days ago. When he is ready to have 
 me, I will follow him." 
 
 *' Will he marry you ? " her brother asked. His 
 voice was hard and even.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 69 
 
 Anne met his eyes as she had met the half-tearful and 
 imploring ones of young Tetrault a week before, and 
 her face was as white as it had been then. "It is I 
 who will not marry Am," she said. It was quiet and 
 it was not defiant, but it had all of her will behind it 
 a will that even Jean had never made anything 
 by trying to oppose. He did not speak at once. He 
 turned into the road and walked back and forth sev 
 eral times. Anne broke off a branch of a red-berried 
 mountain ash before her and brushed the needles 
 from the fir-trunk with it carefully. Jean came back 
 and stopped in front of her again. 
 
 " You will not marry him" he repeated it, " will 
 you tell me why ? " And he stood as still as before, 
 listening, with what might have seemed patience, to 
 what he knew very well were Harnett's specious pre 
 texts, elaborated by Anne's faith and sympathy into a 
 defence, the defence of a man whose despicableness 
 was patent and passing all comprehension, who was 
 ready to take advantage of a woman's generosity and 
 devotion to let her make the sacrifice of everything 
 for his gratification, who would not give even his 
 own temporary ease in exchange. And worse yet, 
 a man who meanly lied, and whined that he was 
 not his own master. Jean Carmel had his opinion 
 of an able-bodied man who could not be his own 
 master, his own breadwinner, and it was untempered 
 in its severity by any traditions of an older land and
 
 70 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 civilization. He was himself the son of nine genera 
 tions of men who had made their own way in the 
 wilderness and in the face of every odds. A man 
 who could forswear his manhood to keep his comfort 
 and station and friends, even his home Jean Carmel 
 had large toleration by nature and by reason of a 
 priest's much knowledge of the human heart, but his 
 charity did not extend to this. 
 
 " You must try to see it as he sees it, Jean," Anne 
 urged on him. "Position and wealth and ambition 
 mean so much more to him than they possibly can to 
 us. We have never had them, nor any hope of them. 
 We cannot judge." But Jean Carmel did judge. "If 
 I were to marry him, I would be ruining his life," said 
 Anne. 
 
 " And you prefer to ruin your own ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," she answered conclusively. She was twirling 
 the branch of mountain ash and watching it. Then she 
 looked up. 
 
 "But it seems to me that a life like yours is the 
 ruined one," she said thoughtfully, and her eyes went 
 over the cassock. "I hope you will never know how 
 ruined." And he saw behind her face the full force 
 of the passion with which he had to deal. He passed 
 his hand across his forehead. 
 
 The wind gave a long moan through the trees and 
 beat even the undergrowth down. A big drop fell 
 on his face. He looked up beyond the tree-tops, far
 
 ANNE CARMEL 71 
 
 above, where he could see a little of the sky. It was 
 almost black. Out through the opening where the 
 fir had fallen, the other hills were no longer visi 
 ble. There was a sheet of swishing rain between, and 
 surging toward him. He turned away deliberately 
 and went to where his hat lay, took it up, and put it 
 under a jut of lichened rock. Then he went back 
 and laid his hand on Anne's shoulder, and drew her 
 away under a big pine. The rain would not come 
 there for some time yet, if at all, and the drifting of 
 needles and leaves and crumbled cones was quite dry. 
 
 The branches were too low for them to stand. Anne 
 sat staring out at the lashing rain. In the gloom her 
 face showed vague and luminous-eyed, and very white 
 under its crushed yellow crown. She did not look 
 uneasily bold now, only tired and broken. 
 
 "Where has he gone Harnett?" asked Jean. She 
 had taken good care to avoid the use of any but the 
 surname. 
 
 Anne shook her head. "I will not tell you," she 
 said. He knew that she would not. 
 
 " Nor in what part of England his home is, I suppose?" 
 
 "Nor where his home is," said Anne. Canada and 
 England were wide for a village priest of small means. 
 It would not be easy to find a man of whom he knew 
 no more than that he was called Harnett. And Anne 
 had thought of all those things, and more, in the week 
 past.
 
 72 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 Did she know who he was, this improbable uncle 
 who seemed the arbiter of the destinies of a grown 
 man ? he inquired. It was a shaft he could not resist. 
 
 " Yes," she told him, unaffected. " I know that, and 
 I know where he lives. He is not improbable." 
 
 "Between him and yourself, at any rate," he sug 
 gested, " this Harnett appears to be a good deal of a 
 shuttlecock." A dull anger was flushing over Anne's 
 face. She was not often angry only once or twice 
 that he could recall but it was a hard and enduring 
 temper, unpleasant to rouse. And it was not worth 
 while rousing it for the poor satisfaction of having his 
 say about the man. It would lose him any little in 
 fluence he might still be able to exert the only influ 
 ence which would have the smallest effect. Madame 
 Carmel's could do nothing but harm. She and Anne 
 had small admiration for one another's characteristics, 
 and no traits whatever in common. 
 
 Madame Carmel was of those who, given several 
 probable motives, always ascribe the least creditable. 
 That it could be possible for an evil course of action 
 to start from good but misguided impulses, from 
 generosity and loyalty, courage and devotion, would 
 be entirely beyond her comprehension. " She thinks 
 all my mind must be unclean," Anne had bitterly 
 put it. He could entirely believe it. And she 
 had blundered inexcusably. She had watched Anne. 
 "At night," had explained his sister. " She thought,
 
 ANNE CARMEL 73 
 
 I suppose, that I would be afraid of the dark." 
 To have watched Anne ! Any one knowing her in the 
 least might have known better than to do that. 
 From the time that she, as a small child, had first 
 been able to act on her own initiative, there had been 
 no way to manage her save only to put her upon her 
 honor. But it was a lesson her mother had never 
 seemed to learn, and a steady antagonism had resulted. 
 
 However, he had Anne's word for it that there 
 had been, so far, no worse than the two night meetings, 
 and those appearances of evil which Harnett had 
 encouraged and she herself had taken not the least 
 care to avoid. And Harnett, moreover, had gone 
 away. The chances of its being the last that Anne 
 would ever hear of him were, Jean Carmel figured 
 it, rather better than good. The gallantries of his 
 wanderings in remote and uncivilized spots, Harnett 
 very probably did not make a habit of carrying on 
 into his conventional life. And that he loved Anne 
 did not even suggest itself to the Cure". His own 
 conception of love did not admit the possibility of 
 harming the beloved, of belittling her or letting 
 her suffer in any way. As he could understand it, 
 its first principle must be a desire to protect. 
 
 So he saw room for hoping a good end. But no 
 good end was to be reached by annoying Anne, stir 
 ring up her long anger. In that event she would be 
 entirely capable of leaving St. Hilaire altogether.
 
 74 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Anne had picked up a pine cone and was crum 
 bling it in her fingers. A drop of rain came through 
 the thick mass of pine and fell on her hand. She 
 brushed it away and shifted her position. She looked 
 sullen and at bay. The storm was at its full force, 
 the wind surged and roared, the trees were creaking 
 and muttering, the lighter ones, the birch and maple 
 and ash, whipped, and the loose leaves on the vines 
 clung and shivered. A chipmunk passed in a red- 
 brown whisk across the road and scurried up a 
 trunk. There was a good fresh smell of wet earth 
 and mould, and of balsams and cedar. 
 
 He changed his sarcasm to a tone of quiet, dispas 
 sionate reasoning, and tried to make her see it all 
 as he saw it, as any one but herself inevitably must. 
 But it made no impression. 
 
 Harnett was not the one to be blamed, she kept to 
 it ; only herself. " I could say to him that he must 
 give up fortune and success and friends and his home 
 and everything for which he had ever cared. I could 
 tell him that he was to spend the rest of his life 
 poor and hard at work and hopeless ; and in exchange 
 for all that I could offer him a love too- selfish to 
 make any sacrifice of its own. He would do it, 
 yes, but, Jean, he would," she insisted, losing 
 patience, "I tell you he would be only too glad to. 
 But do you yourself think that such a bargaining 
 sort of love would be worth the sacrifice ? "
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 75 
 
 " Though he lost all," he reminded her, " yet would 
 he gain his own soul. And the fortune and ambition 
 and friends for which a man must sell his right to 
 his own judgment and conscience and instincts 
 they are worse than not worth having. They are his 
 destruction and so," he added unhesitatingly, "so is 
 the woman who helps him to sin to keep them." 
 
 Anne did not answer. She put up her arms, clasped 
 her hands behind her head and looked out at the 
 driving sheets of rain and the darkening afternoon. 
 
 How much of all this, he asked her presently, had she 
 told her mother. " Nothing," she said shortly. " Any 
 thing that she knows she has found out from others 
 from anybody in the parish who wanted to carry 
 tales, I expect." He could see that the antagonism was 
 stronger than ever. It was unfortunate. "No," she 
 said, " she may think what she pleases and of course 
 it will be the worst." 
 
 She was stubborn and she was not repentant, but, at 
 any rate there was nothing abject about her, and reso 
 lute wrong-doing could have a dignity of its own, the 
 dignity of strength, whether directed ill or well. He 
 could not help an admiration of a sort. It was 
 with some natures as with some big trees, not until 
 they had fallen did you realize their full proportions. 
 
 She turned and faced him abruptly, brushing the 
 crumbled cones from her dress with a sweep of her 
 hands. " I can go away, if you think I should," she
 
 76 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 offered. " I have thought it all over. I can work some 
 where, at something, until he is ready to have me with 
 him. And I am not the sort of a woman to be in a 
 presbytere. I know that well enough. It isn't as if I 
 were repentant then perhaps it would be your duty 
 to take me back. But I am not corry," she was speak 
 ing quickly, trying to make it even and indifferent. " I 
 would have gone before, only I wanted you to know 
 that I am not altogether bad. I knew, of course, that 
 you would never think as mother does," her lips 
 thinned with annoyance, " and that you would not even 
 pity me in the contemptuous way the others do. But I 
 wanted you to understand. What the rest think doesn't 
 matter." It had always mattered so little to Anne what 
 the "rest" should elect to think. "And now that 
 you know," she finished, " I will go away if I had 
 better. You are a cure, and I am not the sort of 
 woman for your home. I will understand." 
 
 But the corners of her mouth quivered in spite of 
 herself, and her hands were pressed together to keep 
 them still. Her eyes had dropped. He sat and looked 
 at her until she had to raise them. His face was stern. 
 "Anne," he told her then, "you have said a great 
 many things that have hurt me to-day, but none 
 so much as this." 
 
 An end of the old, travel-worn, earth-stained cassock 
 was close to her. She put out her fingers and touched 
 it, stroking it softly.
 
 " 'Anne,' he told her then, 'you have said a great many things that 
 have hurt me to-day but none so much as this.'"
 
 ANNE CARMEL 77 
 
 After a while she clasped her hands in her lap again 
 and sat still. Her eyes, shining in the twilight, were 
 not seeing the rain. She was not hearing the swish 
 of the water as it came through the trees and on to 
 the road, soaking into the brown drift and mould and 
 beating the ferns to the earth. She began to rock 
 herself back and forth, slowly. Her head drooped. 
 The warm, brown hair had fallen loose and was curl 
 ing from the knot in little damp tendrils. He reached 
 out and touched it, and a tendril wound itself around 
 one of his fingers. Would he have been more severe 
 if she had been less beautiful or more self-abasing? 
 
 She flung back her head suddenly and looked at 
 him. "Jean, if he should never send for me, if he 
 should change his mind, or forget me, or come to 
 think me like any other woman who is only bad " 
 she caught her breath hard and sat very still for a 
 long moment. Then she threw herself down on the 
 brown pine drift, with her head on her arms. The 
 branches of the dark trees were beating about, and 
 the rain poured down with an even, low roar, drip 
 ping steadily now, through the great pine, upon them 
 both, the priest in his black robe, and Anne huddled 
 on the ground, face downward, a crown of crushed 
 and stained yellow flowers upon her bowed head.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 DOUBTLESS it is because we grow tired of accept 
 ing ourselves as a little lower than the angels that 
 we derive satisfaction from being able occasionally to 
 consider ourselves as a little higher than the fallen 
 Lucifer. We feel pleasure, not exactly in another's 
 abasement, perhaps, but in our elevation by contrast 
 therewith. 
 
 And by contrast with the Cure's sister the parish 
 ioners felt themselves good. That, together with the 
 occupation of watching her and discussing her, gave 
 their lives a more than common interest. The Curd 
 permitted not the most distant reference to the matter, 
 and Madame Carmel had ceased encouraging the 
 topic ; but Amelie Latouche kept her friends informed 
 of Anne's least significant word and act, or such as 
 she chose to consider significant. And the fact that 
 the postmistress was true to the responsibilities of 
 her office, and discussed nothing whatever connected 
 with it, did not keep it from getting around that 
 Anne was receiving letters from the Englishman and 
 sending others to him. And it was Anne's fault. 
 
 78
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 79 
 
 She had gone to the little post-office room the day 
 after Harnett had left the village. There were two 
 women by the counter, who spoke to her with obvious 
 uncertainty as to the effect it might have on their 
 own reputation. Anne met their uncomfortable eyes 
 somewhat arrogantly and answered. Then, with 
 entire indifference to their presence, gave orders to 
 the postmistress that any letters which might thence 
 forth come for herself were to be kept at the office 
 and not sent to the presbytere. 
 
 Some ten days afterward a letter came, and Madame 
 Tetrault was in the office when Anne got it. Madame 
 Tetrault had not spoken to her at all, and had become 
 entirely absorbed in an English Life Insurance Com 
 pany's calendar on the wall, the which she could 
 not read. But as Anne passed the window on the 
 porch outside, the sharp little eyes, made keen by 
 malice, observed enough to justify the inference that 
 the letter was not an ordinary one. 
 
 " It was from her lover ? " she inquired of the 
 postmistress. The postmistress did not know. But 
 Madame Tetrault was in no wise baffled. 
 
 " You know where it was from," she insisted. 
 
 The postmistress had not tried to decipher the 
 postmark, and she said so as she took out the Cure's 
 mail from its pigeonhole and laid it ready for the 
 sexton, who was coming across the street. Madame 
 Tetrault treated that with the incredulity she hon-
 
 80 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 estly thought it deserved. But she went and called 
 on several wives, and gave her surmises for facts. 
 
 Anne took her letter and went through the gate 
 of Coppee's lane, past the shed from which the dry 
 ing tobacco leaves sent out their pungent odor, and 
 up between the willows. They were yellowing and 
 thinning. It was the first time she had come this 
 way since the night when she had gone to meet Har- 
 nett. And she hurried now as she had hurried then. 
 Only then it had been because she was afraid of the 
 darkness, and now it was because she was afraid of 
 the letter. "If he should not send for me, if he 
 should change his mind, or forget me " she had 
 said to Jean. And it was the dread that was always 
 underneath, with Jean's unbelief to foster it. It was 
 because of it that she had brought the letter out to 
 the quarry. If her dread were to be justified, no one 
 should see her at first. 
 
 She went through the broken-barred gate and over 
 to where the sumachs and crab-apples grew around 
 the deep hole. There was nothing alive in sight 
 except a mare and a colt in the pasture, and a blue 
 bird among the bushes. It startled her as it flew 
 out, almost across her face. Her nerves were at the 
 snapping tension. She climbed down into a hollow 
 where a big block of stone had been taken out long 
 enough before for the earth to have gathered again, 
 and weeds and sumachs to have grown. And she
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 81 
 
 sat there, entirely hidden even from any one who 
 might come into the pasture, and read the letter. 
 
 Harnett was in Quebec, and he had neither changed 
 his mind nor forgotten her. His plans were what 
 they had been from the first, as Anne had helped him 
 to make them. He would wait in Canada through 
 the winter, to be a little the nearer her. Then, when 
 his uncle should have got back to London, he would 
 go on himself and ask the permission to marry her 
 it might be in six months or perhaps more. If the 
 permission were refused, the final decision would 
 then remain with her. And Anne saw no avoidance 
 of direct issues in the wording, which was carefully 
 noncommittal. She was satisfied, more than satisfied. 
 She sat for a long time with the letter in one hand 
 and her chin in the palm of the other, bent for 
 ward. Then, after a while, she stood up and clam 
 bered farther down, into the bottom of the quarry. 
 She went to the spot where Harnett had fallen and 
 lain. There was no mark of the fall, no torn ground, 
 no blood on the stones or weeds, though his head 
 had bled so that it had soaked the shawl she had 
 rolled under it when she had left him to go for 
 Coppee. Where the sumach branches had cracked 
 under the crashing weight was almost hidden in the 
 mass of gorgeous leaves. 
 
 Nature does not love the past. She builds upon it 
 and covers it up, absorbing it into always renewing life.
 
 82 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 It is only man who lots off as sacred ground the spot of 
 a tragedy and commemorates it, who marks the lying- 
 places of dead bodies. Nature obliterates quickly 
 the traces of the struggles for life and death, and 
 the uncounted numbers of her dead, little and great, 
 leave no token. The pathway of man is marked 
 with the mound and the cairn and the headstone ; 
 there is rarely a bone by the trail of the wild thing, 
 rarely the tiny, fine, ant-swarming skeleton of a bird 
 beneath the tree where thousands have sung. The 
 dead of Nature buries her dead, and life comes forth 
 a better sign of Faith and of Hope than man can show, 
 and a better Charity. 
 
 Little in the quarry indicated the short human 
 struggle of a few days past, as nothing in the woods 
 beyond the farm clearings gave token of the slaughter 
 of their moose herds a quarter of a century before, 
 when the place had been well named Hormah for its 
 utter destruction, and the air of the mountains had 
 been turned fetid until the hundreds upon hundreds 
 of bodies hide-stripped for the covering of an army's 
 feet had gone back to the soil which was even then 
 coming with swift certainty under the dominion of 
 man. 
 
 Anne took up a dry branch and measured with it 
 the depth of the big rain-pool. It was more than 
 two feet, and large enough to have covered a man's 
 whole body easily. It looked dark in the shadow
 
 ANNE CAEMBL 83 
 
 of the thick bushes, and it was coated with green 
 scum. Harnett had fallen close beside it. Half a 
 yard farther, and not until the summer should have 
 dried down the pool, would any one have known 
 what had become of the English hunter who had 
 camped across the river for a couple of weeks, and 
 who had been seen so often with Mademoiselle Car- 
 mel. No one would have known except he who 
 had thrown the stone. And Anne had found out 
 that it was Paul Tetrault. 
 
 He braved the taunts and wrath of his mother, 
 and refused persistently either to pay court to the 
 daughter of Lavisse, or to ignore Anne Carmel. He 
 went to the presbytere occasionally, just as he had 
 always done, and spoke to Anne openly and before 
 all the assembled parish, after mass. It was after 
 a mass, when they stood on the wide steps of the 
 church, left well to themselves by the other covertly 
 eyeing groups that Anne had asked him composedly 
 why he had tried to kill Harnett. He made shift 
 to deny it. He had not tried to kill Harnett what 
 did she mean ? But the color was all out of his bright 
 cheeks. " I mean," said Anne, " that I am quite sure 
 it was you who threw the stone." 
 
 He kept on trying to insist the contrary, but in 
 the end he admitted it. " It was to save you, Anne. 
 But I did not know what I was doing. It was to 
 save you you won't tell ? " Some of the terror of
 
 84 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 the night, when he had grovelled under the wall 
 and thought of the body down in the bottom of the 
 old quarry, showed in his eyes. She looked at him 
 speculatively. He was a poor sort of man, with his 
 kinking light hair and plump pink cheeks, and his 
 little courage which was not ready to take the con 
 sequences of his own acts. And yet he had the 
 courage to be the only one in the parish who was 
 not decidedly cautious about being seen near her. 
 
 " No," she had said, I will not tell." 
 
 She went back to the presbytere. The Cure was in 
 the garden with the bedeau digging up the bulbs of 
 the dahlias. Anne stood watching them until the 
 man went away to ring the noon bells. " I have had a 
 letter, Jean," she said. He stood with his clumsily 
 booted foot on the spade, and waited. 
 
 " Yes ? " he said. 
 
 " Only that it may be half a year or even more 
 before I go away." Time was what he reckoned with. 
 He was glad to hear it. 
 
 "Why?" he asked. She told him. He allowed 
 himself no comment. " Where is the uncle ? " he 
 wanted to know. She told him. He was travelling 
 around the world. "I see," he said, and went on 
 with his digging. He was acquiring something like 
 a respect for Harnett's inventive powers. 
 
 Afterward, the long winter that followed in the 
 presbytere was not easy for Anne. She got many
 
 ANNE CARMEL 85 
 
 blows, but they were never of those scourges we braid 
 ourselves for the lashing of our own backs. She was 
 not troubling herself with any regrets, and her brother 
 could not bring her to it. He tried only once, and 
 produced no effect. He abandoned it as useless for a 
 time yet. "Most of us," he finished, "think at the time, 
 that we do well to sell the birthright of contentment 
 for the red pottage of a short felicity and it is not 
 until later that there comes the bitter cry." 
 
 " There will be no bitter cry from me," Anne told 
 him. "I will take what comes without complaining." 
 
 "And then " she leaned forward on the table with 
 her long, firm hands clasped in the circle of the lamp 
 light, and followed out his argument, "and then 
 it seems to me, that to love and be loved is the birth 
 right. The world tries to buy it from us with what it 
 calls honor and a good name, with money or position 
 but it is our birthright, nevertheless." She decided it 
 to her own satisfaction. 
 
 "No," he contradicted her, " it is to do one's duty in 
 that state of life to which one has been called." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 And the state of life to which she was called just 
 then was not pleasant to Anne. The attitude of the 
 parishioners condescension, pity, accentuated kind 
 ness, or holding aloof, according to their stamp of mind 
 was only one degree less unendurable than that of 
 her mother.
 
 86 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Madame Carmel's every look and word was a re 
 proach, taking that form most trying to the sinner's 
 patience, an insistently uncomplaining martyrdom. 
 It was against that that Anne made her one protest, 
 and then only after she had borne it most of the winter. 
 
 Madame Carmel had gone off to bed. Anne had 
 watched the figure, so like her own still, until the door 
 had closed behind it. She spoke then through shut 
 teeth. " Jean, I shall say something I shall be sorry 
 for unless she changes that mournful look for just one 
 hour." He attempted a defence, but she put it off. 
 "She is saddened, yes, of course, and I have hurt 
 her, I know all that. She takes good care that I 
 shall. She wants me to feel how unworthy and wicked 
 I am. But I don't and that is certainly not the way 
 to go about it." Her lip curled. She was getting em 
 bittered. " And she wears that mournful smile of 
 forgiveness whenever I come in sight," she went on 
 angrily ; " she is forever kissing me and taking me in 
 her arms. I don't like that. I never did, and she 
 knows it. I may be a miserable sinner, but I'd rather 
 she'd find some other way of making me realize it." 
 She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the book 
 which was open in front of her. Then she glanced up 
 again. " There are so many fashions of saying ' neither 
 do I condemn thee,' and most of them are more humili 
 ating than to be stoned." 
 
 But the Cure could see another side to it. His
 
 ANNE CARMEL 87 
 
 mother was brought low before the eyes of all the parish. 
 And she was a proud woman, though her pride might 
 not be of that finer temper which disdains to bid for 
 sympathy. She had held her head well up in the 
 village. And she could not now, when it was a charity 
 of any journalier's daughter to speak to her own. She 
 had, too, a dominating nature, the which Anne had 
 deliberately put aside and refused to submit to. Anne 
 had disobeyed flagrantly and set her authority entirely 
 at naught. Madame Carmel had not heavy and meet 
 ing black eyebrows for nothing, and she was enraged 
 a rage that took the form of a fixed smile and 
 caresses. But most of all she was a bigoted woman 
 in her religion, and it was really a terrible thing to 
 her that her daughter neither confessed now, nor re 
 ceived the Blessed Sacrament. To have an outcast 
 upon earth in one's family was bad enough but an 
 outcast from Heaven as well ! Heaven and Hell were 
 as close and real and material to Madame Carmel as 
 ever they were to the Huron missionaries. To be in 
 Heaven oneself and have one's daughter in the eternal 
 abode of sinners would be, on an intensified scale, 
 much the same as to be law-abiding and yet have a 
 child in the penitentiary. Madame saw a stigma at 
 taching to herself hereafter as well as here, in conse 
 quence of Anne's refusal to partake of the mysteries 
 of the faith on the insufficient grounds that her frame 
 of mind was not fitting. The letter and not the spirit
 
 88 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 was the weightier matter of Madame Carmel's religious 
 law, precisely as it was that of those Jesuit fathers 
 who stopped at no untruth or subterfuge to obtain 
 the one drop of water which alone would render the 
 baptism of the most unbelieving convert efficacious. 
 
 The Cure" was not so intolerant of all these things 
 as was Anne ; he had twelve years more of experi 
 ence in life than she, and much more knowledge than 
 she could ever have of the human soul, which had been 
 so often laid bare and bleeding before him. He sym 
 pathized with Anne ; the force of her objection to 
 the persistent smile was apparent to him. But he 
 was also sorry for his mother. 
 
 The mail delivery was more or less uncertain at St. 
 Hilaire in the best of seasons, and many a letter disap 
 peared for good and all somewhere along its route. 
 But in winter the conditions were much worse, and as 
 a result there was an interval of six weeks, toward the 
 close of the winter, during which Anne did not hear 
 from Harnett. The Cure guessed it from the hollow 
 ing of her eyes and other signs, which escaped Madame 
 Carmel, absorbed in her own misfortunes. But he did 
 not question. Then the letters began to come again, 
 two together, the first more than a month old. Anne 
 did her work about the house and the church, and 
 helped her brother with his duties of charity; but the 
 rest of the time she spent in her own cold room, read 
 ing and rereading the letters and writing answers to
 
 ANNE CAilMEL 89 
 
 them. Usually she locked the door. But once she 
 forgot it, and Jean, on his way to his own room, stopped 
 to speak to her. It was already after twelve o'clock. 
 He had been out through the miles of snow to see Ma 
 demoiselle Lavisse, who was dying slowly, for all that 
 she was an heiress, because her father did not recognize 
 the necessity of going to the expense of sending a long 
 distance for a doctor. The Cure opened Anne's door 
 quietly. She was sitting up in her bed, a patch quilt 
 wrapped around her. There were loose sheets of the 
 letters in her lap, and another she held pressed against 
 her cheek with both hands. The light from the can 
 dle glowed red through her hair. Her eyes were 
 shut and she was rocking to and fro, as she had had a 
 way of doing in her childhood, when she was either 
 very happy or very miserable. He knew that she was 
 very happy now. She had not heard the door open. 
 He moved back quietly and shut it and left her alone. 
 And Anne sat holding the letters much farther into 
 the night.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE Cure came out in front of the presbytere. It 
 was only just after sunrise. There had been rain, but 
 it had stopped, and now there was a softly blue sky, with 
 flecking gold and white clouds, mare's-tails of white, 
 sun-tipped, streaming over it, streaks of faint pink 
 above the hills to the north, and the hills themselves 
 sun-crested, with sharp, dark shadows in their ravines. 
 The tree-tops were gold-crested, too, and the smoke, 
 pouring up from the village chimneys, vapory mother- 
 of-pearl, yellow and rose and white. Just over to the 
 right of the church there was a grove of firs, sombre 
 among their trunks, shining on their high tips, and in 
 front of them was a line of birches, a white tracery 
 against the dark green. There were maples by the 
 gate, fluffing delicately out into pale green-yellow, and 
 a red maple here and there, tasselling and etched in 
 crimson. He looked over it all, then went around to 
 his garden at the side of the house. 
 
 There was some one there before him. It was Yvonne 
 Armaille. She was standing under a budding apple 
 tree, and when she saw the Cure coming she backed up 
 
 90
 
 ANNE CARMEL 91 
 
 against the trunk, and put her finger into her mouth, 
 and hung her head to one side. Her bare toes were 
 much turned in. Yvonne was six years old and very 
 plump indeed. Her cheeks puffed out red and round, 
 and her arms and her legs were shapeless. Her hair 
 was braided into two tight, black, short pigtails, that 
 stuck out on either side, stiff, finished with pieces of 
 scarlet cotton torn into strips. She was a funny pic 
 ture of embarrassment, but the Cure refrained from 
 laughing. He only smiled. " Bon jour, ma fille," he 
 said. 
 
 Yvonne did not answer, merely stood with her mouth 
 open and her finger in it. What could he do for her ? 
 he asked. He took it for granted that she wanted 
 something. It was not any one's custom to be in his 
 garden at that hour of the morning, least of all was it 
 Yvonne's. For Yvonne was the victim of extreme and 
 exaggerated bashfulness. The fact that she was the 
 greatest heiress of the parish did not give her assur 
 ance. It merely drew upon her an amount of attention 
 from which she suffered painfully, though not to the 
 detriment of her general health. What could he do 
 for her ? the Cure repeated, going nearer. And she did 
 not answer still. The Cure had had experience with 
 her before, and he thought it probable that with proper 
 preliminaries and the exercise of great tact and diplo 
 macy, and by avoiding anything that might remotely 
 suggest the matter in hand, she might be brought to
 
 92 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 give some sort of utterance to it. So he smiled again 
 and turned his attention to his early spring flowers, 
 pulling up a weed or two and taking off some blighted 
 leaves. He glanced once from under his eyelids. 
 Yvonne's finger was out of her mouth. Unfortunately 
 she saw the glance. The finger went back again and 
 the toes, twisting nervously, turned yet farther in. 
 The Cure resumed the care of his flowers. The result 
 of this, after five minutes, was a deadlock. The Cure 
 decided it must be broken. "Viens regarder mes 
 fleurs," he said, and held out his hand. It was to be 
 obeyed as a command. 
 
 When the Cure said, " Come look at my flowers," 
 one went and looked at his flowers, though one 
 might be enduring all things possible to the bashful. 
 One also put one's hand into the enormously big 
 one that covered it all up, pudgy as it was. Yvonne 
 went to look at the flowers. But she looked straight 
 in front of her, fixedly, her finger in her mouth, her 
 head bobbing on her white, creased neck, as she let 
 herself be half dragged along. She was getting no 
 pleasure out of the Cure's daffodils and tulips and 
 hyacinths, of which he was so proud. To be sure, 
 before the Cure had put in his appearance and terrified 
 her into something approaching coma, she had en 
 joyed the hyacinths. She had bent down over them 
 and smelled them with her nose and mouth. But now 
 she had neither sense nor senses. She was the merest
 
 ANNE CABMEL 93 
 
 piece of fat little girl, stumping along beside an enor 
 mous man in black and that man, yet more awful, 
 the Cure. If she could have spoken, she could not 
 have remembered what it was she had come for. So 
 the elaborate diplomacy of Monsieur Carmel failed in 
 the end, after all. He might talk of flowers, address 
 ing and looking at nothing more personal than the air 
 in front of him, or he might keep silence, or he might 
 question again, as he finally did ; but nothing was to 
 be known. 
 
 Therefore he decided that he would go to see 
 Yvonne's great-grandmother, Elise Segur, the relative 
 with whom she lived. It might be that the old woman 
 had sent the child with a message of importance. 
 " Aliens we will go see the little mamma," he said. 
 
 If the very springs of sound had not been paralyzed, 
 Yvonne would have howled with terror at that. Had 
 she been bad ? She knew she had been incredibly 
 bold. Was she to be taken home to be punished ? It 
 did not occur to the Cure that he had put her in such a 
 state. His tone had been as kind as he could make it. 
 To be sure, he had not looked at her, but that was 
 because he was afraid of embarrassing her yet more. 
 He was quite unaware that it was a victim who was 
 dragged, clumping along beside him, for all that he 
 tried to bring his steps down to hers. 
 
 But it turned out that the great-grandmother 
 wanted nothing. The little wrinkled face inside the
 
 94 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 nightcap was as cheerful as possible. Elise Segur was 
 not ill. She was very active. But she was distressed 
 that her child should have troubled Monsieur the Cure, 
 and she scolded until that small person, completely 
 overcome, let her bowed knees give way under her, and 
 collapsed to the floor still in speechlessness. 
 
 The Cure abandoned his efforts and went back 
 home. But when he came out from mass Yvonne was 
 there again. Her pigtails still stuck out, and her 
 mouth was still open and occupied by a forefinger, and 
 her black eyes fixed themselves on the Cure's face and 
 never left it. They rolled about in round inexpres- 
 siveness, following him as he moved. He made an 
 other attempt with no more success. 
 
 But he was interested now. He was sure there was 
 something she wanted to say. Yvonne either could 
 not or would not tell him, however, so he went into the 
 house and left her standing there, staring after him un 
 happily. He spoke to his mother about it and asked 
 her to make a trial. Madame Carmel went out and 
 used every blandishment. She could not even succeed 
 in getting the child to come near her, and when she 
 herself approached, Yvonne backed off precipitately. 
 
 There is small fact in that which is said of the 
 intuition of children. They are either capricious in 
 their fancies and smile alike on the just and the unjust, 
 the sinner and the saint, the kind-hearted and the 
 cruel, or they are to be lured by benefits. But this
 
 ANNE CARMEL 95 
 
 much is true that they can read anger or steady 
 grief in a face, and the former they are afraid of, the 
 second they shrink from uneasily. If it is a burst of 
 sorrow such as they themselves often know, they can 
 understand and try to comfort. But no man or 
 woman in whose face there is plain anger or plain 
 unhappiness can win over a child. There was unhap- 
 piness writ so large on the face of madame that 
 Yvonne would as soon have touched something 
 baleful. Madame went in, but Yvonne kept on hang 
 ing around. She returned home at midday, but was 
 promptly back. The Cure coming in and out found 
 her always there, round-eyed, ringer in mouth, pigeon- 
 toed. 
 
 Anne tried it next. She almost brought speech 
 by tactics of indifferent fellowship. "Eh bien, la 
 petite ! " she said, as she passed, and patted the smooth- 
 parted, slicked little head. By and by she passed 
 again, tending the flowers, paying no attention to the 
 fixed eyes. " Qu'est-ce-que tu veux, hein? What 
 are you after?" she said, but she did not even wait 
 for the reply. Yvonne visibly took heart. She was 
 summoning up courage. But the procesa was slow. 
 All processes were with her. Nevertheless, she at last 
 approached the hyacinth bed and spoke. Unfortu 
 nately her voice was utterly inaudible. Anne made 
 a dire mistake. She should have kept silence at the 
 juncture, and have allowed Yvonne to speak again at
 
 96 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 her own will. But she looked up and said, "Hein?" 
 Yvonne, startled, was thrown back into frozen silence. 
 It was hopeless. Anne gave it up. She had other 
 things to attend to and she went indoors. 
 
 Yvonne disappeared for a while after that. But 
 she was back yet again. And this time there was ex 
 pression in the round eyes also latent tears. She 
 was miserable. The Cure knew now that something 
 was really the matter. He stooped down and picked 
 her up in his arms. " What is it, little one ? " he said. 
 " Tell the Cure. Don't be afraid." He laid his face 
 against her head. 
 
 Yvonne's heart was melted. She began to cry, 
 and presently she sobbed out the trouble, a word or 
 two at a time. It was her dog, her puppy. The 
 lower lip quivered and went out wofully. Her 
 puppy had a a broken leg. The round head went 
 down on Monsieur the Cure's shoulder, and she wailed 
 aloud. He let her cry for a few minutes, patting her 
 sturdy back. 
 
 " And you want me to see to it ? " he asked then. 
 
 " Voui, M'sieu' le Cu le Cure." He set her down 
 on her feet. 
 
 "I must go to the church now for a little while," 
 he said. "But run and get the little dog. Bring 
 him to me, and I will see what I can do." 
 
 Yvonne hurried off so fast that she fell on the side 
 walk, and as luck would have it her shiny button of
 
 ANNE CARMEL 97 
 
 a nose went just where there was no grass, on the 
 slabs of stone. Under ordinary circumstances she 
 would have wailed aloud again. But she scrambled 
 up and trotted on. Her nose was really considerably 
 skinned, but what did that matter in such a juncture 
 as this ? 
 
 When Monsieur Carmel came out from the vestry, 
 he went over to the side of the house and sat himself 
 down on the doorstep. Yvonne followed him, the 
 puppy in her arms. It was one of the very few dogs 
 in the parish which was not a cur. It promised to 
 be a good collie. The look of pain on its poor little 
 face was truly pathetic. It might have touched the 
 heart of a harder man than the Cure. And besides, 
 the Cure was fond of dogs. His own came now and 
 sat before him, cocking one ear, and wrinkling its 
 forehead more than inclined to be jealous. 
 
 The puppy's paw was unquestionably broken. It 
 had come too near the heifer at milking time the night 
 before smelling the milk that was to be its supper. 
 And the heifer had kicked out. Yvonne grew quite 
 communicative, forgetting herself in her sympathy 
 with the little animal, and keeping her plump hand 
 upon its head, while the Cure examined the leg. The 
 puppy had cried and cried, she said. It had made so 
 much noise that p'tite maman had had it shut up in 
 the barn all night. 
 
 Then Yvonne herself had cried also. The Cure
 
 98 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 managed by valiant effort to remain serious. But he 
 had visions of the irascible old dame, with a whim 
 pering puppy on one side, and Yvonne howling on the 
 other. For there was not usually anything quiet about 
 Yvonne's grief in its acute stages. The child went 
 on. She had wanted p'tite maman to let Jacques, the 
 man, do something for the puppy. But the answer 
 had been that plenty of puppies had broken legs, and 
 got well enough for all practical purposes, in time. 
 Those of the peasants whom hardship and denseness 
 and age had hardened were not over merciful to their 
 beasts. The most that had been allowed the collie 
 had been a saucer of milk. Yvonne had taken that 
 herself, and had wept over the puppy, coaxing it to 
 eat. " But it wouldn't," she told him. " It just cried 
 and cried." 
 
 "And so you thought it a matter to which only 
 the Cure could attend?" 
 
 Yvonne did not understand, but she said "Voui, 
 M'sieu' le Cure." She, too, had been trained in 
 politeness. 
 
 The mending of the paw was a tedious affair. The 
 puppy was good, only whining in an undertone, and 
 just once trying its tiny white teeth on the Cure's 
 finger, when the pain of the neglected fracture was 
 especially sharp. It was not a bite for it knew 
 that what was being done was for its own good 
 only a pressure of protest and suffering. Yvonne
 
 ANNE CARMEL 99 
 
 stroked the silky head and murmured, " Courage, 
 courage," while the tears rolled over her cheeks. 
 Pilote came nearer and licked a pink hind paw that 
 hung out helplessly. Anne stood above them in the 
 doorway, watching. It was she who made a splint 
 out of black-birch bark, and produced bandages. 
 " There is a liniment," suggested the Cure. Once his 
 mother had had a sprained wrist and had used arnica. 
 The bottle was still on hand. Madame found it and 
 brought it, and they all assisted at the surgery. The 
 neighbors saw that something was going on and some 
 of them came to the fence and commented, question 
 ing and giving advice respectfully. The Cure was 
 serious and absorbed ; his big hands were very gentle. 
 
 " And now," he said, when it was all done and the 
 puppy's pink tongue tried a tentative lick at his 
 finger, which unfortunately tasted of arnica "now 
 we will keep the little dog here until it is well, if 
 you like." He did not say so, but he had fears of 
 the great-grandmother's patience with an invalid of 
 the sort. Probably Yvonne had thought that all 
 out previously, for she agreed at once; and under 
 standing the half-expressed was not common with 
 her. 
 
 So the assembled populace dispersed, and the collie 
 was put in a box full of soft rags, by the fire. 
 Yvonne gave it a last pat. Then she stood up and 
 went to the Cure. She took his hand and put her
 
 100 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 crimson lips to it. But, on the instant, she saw that 
 Madame Carmel was watching her. Her bashfulness 
 came back twofold. She ran all four fingers into 
 her opened mouth and sidled slowly out of the room.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 JEAN CARMEL had not had a satisfactory Sunday 
 afternoon. There had been vespers, and he had made 
 a short address. He had talked down to the level of 
 his people. And talking down to a lower understand 
 ing is always much more exhausting than any amount 
 of striving upward toward a higher plane. After that 
 he had come out from the church and had spoken to 
 those who had waited to see him. The conversations 
 had not been uplifting, certainly small woes, and 
 gossip and complaints, or, infinitely worse, small mor- 
 alizings of the cheapest stamp. Very vital to the 
 moralizers, in a few cases, they were perhaps in most, 
 obviously designed to be edifying to the priest. 
 
 Then he had gathered a bunch of the lilacs which 
 were just fully in bloom in the presbytere garden, and 
 had taken them over to Madame Lavisse. The 
 daughter had died at the end of the winter, and grief 
 had left the woman half foolish. She had sobbed over 
 her troubles to-day as he had already heard her do 
 uncounted times before. Lavisse had told, with elab 
 orate detail, of a cow that had calved and of how his 
 
 101
 
 102 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 chickens would not lay. The daughter-in-law had gone 
 into minutiae of her baby's doings. And he had come 
 out feeling that his mind had been made for wider 
 themes. Moreover, the scent of the lilacs he had carried 
 in his arms to Madame Lavisse had brought up to him as 
 he had walked between the meadows the memory of 
 the lilac time in France. Just after his ordination he 
 had travelled on the continent for a year, and made a 
 pilgrimage to Rome with another priest. It was the 
 thing he had enjoyed most in his life. And sometimes 
 he knew what it meant la nostalgic des grandes 
 routes. He had it now, that longing for the open 
 roads and a longing for the speech of open minds. 
 
 But neither was to be gratified, or was justifiable. 
 He stopped thinking about it and walked with a longer 
 stride down the road, and turned off from there into the 
 woods. They were the woods through which the high 
 way from the railroad ran. He struck into that, 
 coming out on it just at the top of a knoll. He was in 
 a grove of maples and birch and beech for the most 
 part, and the trunks were slender, and the leafage light 
 as yet, so that he could look over the village to the 
 sunset where the flaming of the furnace heart burst 
 through a bank of dark clouds and the trees stood 
 out distinct against it, every branch black, as if charred 
 by the fire. 
 
 A big crow, glossy and cumbersome, swooped off 
 from a limb and went flying away straight for the sun-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 103 
 
 set. He watched it. It cawed, and the harsh sound 
 came back to him. Then there was another sound, of 
 voices and footsteps. Some one was coming. He 
 turned to look, but there was a bend in the road a few 
 feet away. A yellow shaft from the sunset fell just 
 then, slanting along the opening between the thin rows 
 of trees. A woman came out into it. She stopped 
 short and stood in the ray, dazzled. Two men were 
 just behind, a young one and an older. They were 
 neither French nor habitant. The Cure's hat was in 
 his hand. His head was erect in the yellow light, 
 outlined by the glow. " Good evening," he said civilly, 
 and moved from the way to let them pass. 
 
 But they did not go on. They came up to him and 
 began to ask questions. Did monsieur speak English ? 
 (and monsieur knew at once that they were from the 
 States). The girl watched him as he bowed the fine 
 head gravely. Then, was that the village of St. Hilaire 
 down below the scattered white houses and the 
 church? He told them that it was. There was an 
 inn there, they had understood. He looked dubious 
 at that. There was an inn, of a sort, yes ; but hardly 
 the sort to which a woman would care to go ; 
 hardly more than a tavern. The Cure's English, as 
 the result of much reading and little practice, was 
 rather classic than colloquial. 
 
 The men were inclined to be resentful. They had 
 been told at the railroad station that there was a good
 
 104 ANNE CAEMBL 
 
 inn at St. Hilaire. They had ridden part of the way in 
 a charette, then they had got out to walk and sent the 
 charette ahead with their bundles. As for themselves, 
 the inn would not matter but The Cure depre 
 cated it. St. Hilaire was not often honored with travel 
 lers, only at best an occasional habitant on his journeys, 
 or a hunter going into the bush, or some one with 
 things to sell. Perhaps there was some house but the 
 families of the villagers were large and the cottages 
 small. " However," he told them, " I have a mother and 
 a sister and the presbytere. is at the service of 
 madame." 
 
 She corrected it with a rather listless smile. 
 "Mademoiselle," she said. 
 
 A young villager and a girl came toward them and 
 passed with a " Bon soi' " and a stare. They were arm 
 in arm, and the man was smoking a pipe. At the 
 turn of the road the man stopped and watched deliber 
 ately. 
 
 The Cure* and the other three stood talking for a few 
 moments. Then they started off in the direction of 
 the village. 
 
 The Cure went fast, because he was accustomed to 
 doing so. Anne was, as a rule, the only woman who 
 could keep up with him. But this one had a long, 
 swinging step as practised as Anne's. In some ways 
 she was not altogether unlike his sister, he thought. 
 She was tall, too, but more slender. She was not so
 
 ANNE CARMEL 105 
 
 erect, and did not give the same impression of strength. 
 Anne was of the forest, but this one was of the garden, 
 rather. Anne's hair was dark brown and full of color ; 
 this one had hair the color of long field grass dried in 
 the sun. She talked with something the listlessness of 
 her smile. The two men, she told him, were her uncle 
 and his son. The one was a naturalist who was study 
 ing the flora and the birds. The other was an artist. 
 He might have learned more, but the uncle came up 
 and she dropped back, walking with her cousin. 
 
 They were on the level now, going into the village. 
 The road was dusty. There was a field on either side 
 yellow with dandelions and white with the star-of- 
 Bethlehem drifting in patches like a thin fall of snow. 
 The shadow of some big knotted willows just coming 
 into leaf fell long over the grass, and the water in a 
 stony little ditch by the wayside rippled along with a 
 clear, sweet sound. Except for that there was only 
 the quick chirp of a flock of robins hopping about in 
 one of the fields, their breasts very red in the low 
 light. 
 
 In the village itself the people gathered in the door 
 ways to look at them. These were the strangers 
 whose fame and effects had preceded them. The effects 
 had gone to the inn, but the strangers passed it by. 
 They went on to the end of the street, to the presby- 
 tere, and stopped at the gate. Then the men came 
 back to the inn and the woman went up the path with
 
 106 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 the Cure. Some of them began to bethink themselves 
 of advice, spiritual or material, they would want that 
 evening. 
 
 There was only one person in the room when the 
 Cure put the door open and stood aside. She was in 
 front of the large open fire, bending over a box from 
 which the head of a small collie puppy showed. A 
 bristly yellow dog was near her. 
 
 " Anne," spoke the Cure. She stood up and turned. 
 " I have brought you a guest," he said. The girl by 
 the fire looked at the one on the threshold in the 
 twilight and their attitudes were those of the woman 
 in disgrace and the woman who has never known it. 
 It was a quick look from Anne. Then her head went 
 back with a defensive movement. Her brother saw it 
 and understood in a flash. There occurred to him then 
 what had occurred to her on the instant. Was she the 
 woman with whom another woman would care to be 
 thrown unwarned ? 
 
 The Cure's voice was determined. " It is my sister, 
 mademoiselle," he said, "Anne Carmel." Anne ac 
 cepted it then. The responsibility was his. The girl 
 on the threshold came forward. " And I," she offered, 
 "am Cecily Thome."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE leaven of the creeds of Revenge is working still 
 in the measures of the creed of Love. And it is a 
 view of the matter eminently Christian that the body 
 and intellect a little less than perfect should be dedi 
 cated to the service of the altar of God though the 
 gods of Eleusis and Delphi, of Thebes and of the North, 
 may have had the best and the sons of Levi were 
 assuredly not weaklings. 
 
 Doubtless there is to account for it the peaceful 
 basis of the faith itself, and the fact that the faithful 
 have not yet recognized and accepted its ultimity in so 
 far as to disassociate forbearance and impotence. 
 
 And it was natural enough that Cecily Thorne should 
 have looked on it as rather a waste of fine material that 
 Jean Carmel should be the cure of a remote backwoods 
 village, devoting distinctly tangible strength to the care 
 of the intangible soul. As a Franciscan or a Jesuit 
 missionary, such as in the old days had gone forth into 
 the wilderness to meet the savage and to share his life, 
 it would have been conceivable that the robes of a priest 
 should have covered the form of an athlete. But there 
 
 107
 
 108 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 was surely a question of its appropriateness here in an 
 habitant parish. A Cure mildly benign in age and a 
 little feeble, or a little heavy with long ease, a small, 
 meagre, or insignificant man, could have served the 
 purpose as well. 
 
 Lying in Anne's bed and looking into the darkness, 
 she seemed to see a bared head outlined against the 
 hot yellow light of the sunset. The head was sugges 
 tive of more power than could be needed in this parish. 
 Yet that perhaps was a distorted view to take of it, 
 after all ; and, since perfection and strength were at the 
 creation, to a normal mind it should have seemed alto 
 gether suitable that here, where nature was none the 
 less magnificent for being peaceful, a priest in keeping 
 with the surroundings should serve the God of Peace. 
 
 And existence itself was surely peaceful here, she con 
 cluded a conclusion old as the dreams of theorists who 
 color life with their fancies, rather than their fancies 
 with life, and who have chosen to ignore that to dwell 
 close to nature is to dwell close to the material, to be 
 in the stage of human development which deals much 
 with the colors of passions and little with the shades of 
 sentiment. 
 
 Cecily Thorne settled it out of hand to her own 
 satisfaction that Anne Carmel was happy. Her life 
 would insure that although it might well be the 
 result of locality rather than of temperament. Anne's 
 temperament was problematical. And it was a prob-
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 109 
 
 lem that Mathew Thorne was already trying to work 
 out. It was to be hoped he would not find it of 
 unduly absorbing interest. She had watched him dur 
 ing the evening when they had all been together in the 
 presbytere sitting room, and she had seen that he was 
 speculating as to Anne. He would do well not to 
 bring any disturbing influences into the little family. 
 
 And the Cure's sister had a lover no doubt, some 
 young French Canadian of the better class, probably. 
 The only wonder was that she was not long since mar 
 ried. She was four and twenty and girls married 
 young here. She would love simply, too, and without 
 splitting the golden cord into a thousand fine wires 
 that would cut first and snap afterward. She would 
 marry and have children, many of them in all likelihood. 
 In due course she would have grandchildren. Then 
 she would die, a good Catholic, quite sure of Heaven, 
 once she should have got absolution from her aged 
 brother, or perhaps from the cure who should have 
 come after, since superb young priests must grow old 
 in their ministrations and pass away to where the 
 beauty and strength of the dust avail not. 
 
 The big pines of these forests became bare in time, 
 and the gray and green lichens covered them, and the 
 moss hung from dried and brittle branches, and they 
 fell, and for a while there was a mound where they 
 were mouldering. Then even that was gone. 
 
 But Anne she would have been satisfied and quite
 
 110 ANNE CARMBL 
 
 happy. What else could happen where there was no field 
 for ambition and hardly more for envy, where wealth 
 and poverty were both moderate, and civilization pro 
 duced no complications ? Everything was surely nor 
 mal here, and the very atmosphere gave rest to the 
 weary such as was Cecily herself and sleep. 
 
 But Anne lay awake all night. She had had a 
 letter, an almost illegible half-dozen lines, from Harnett. 
 He was ill and in a hospital. The wound in his head 
 was giving new trouble. There was rather more than 
 the possibility of danger. 
 
 She had not spoken of it even to Jean, and all the 
 evening, as she had sat with the others around the fire, 
 she had given no sign. But when Mathew Thorne had 
 said good night he had felt that her hand was unsteady 
 and icy cold, and had given a quick look of surprise. 
 
 In the early morning she went into the sitting room. 
 Jean was asleep there. He had turned over his own 
 room to her, and had put a husk mattress in front of 
 the fireplace on the bright striped bit of rag carpet. 
 There was a gray blanket with a red border covering 
 him to the chin, and he looked more like a soldier 
 who had thrown himself down to rest where he might, 
 than like a priest. One hand was uncovered and just 
 touched the collie puppy. He had taken it from its 
 box, and it had curled in close to him, its little white 
 and fawn-colored nose between its paws one of them 
 still splinted and bandaged.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 111 
 
 Anne, like some dark-robed, white-faced embodi 
 ment of a long night tragedy coming out into the 
 dreary day, stood looking down at him. Probably 
 he had read until late. Pilote, on the rag carpet at 
 his head, waked, moved, and got up, stretching and 
 yawning lazily, and came over to Anne, following 
 her when she went out to the kitchen. 
 
 When she came back half an hour later, Jean was 
 up and dressed. He had built the fire there were 
 fires in the hearths and stoves of the presbytere 
 long before and long after any other house in the 
 parish indulged in them. It was looked upon as an 
 extravagance, but excused upon the grounds of Mon 
 sieur Carmel's city birth and upbringing, which had 
 had naturally a sybaritic tendency. 
 
 He was standing on one side of the hearth reading 
 his Testament. Anne had a saucer of milk for the 
 puppy. She set it on the floor, then stood opposite 
 Jean, watching the flames smoking up yellow and blue, 
 from the new wood. 
 
 He stopped reading and observed her. She met 
 his eyes before long, and knowing what they meant, 
 shrugged her shoulders indifferently, forcing herself 
 to smile. But it was a failure, and she gave over 
 the attempt. " If I can help you " he suggested. 
 
 " You can't," she told him ; " nobody can." 
 
 He nodded and went on reading. Then he closed the 
 little book. " There was once a heathen philosopher,"
 
 112 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 he said slowly, " who believed in a very good way of 
 finding peace, to pray, not saying to ourselves, ' How 
 shall I have this thing ? ' but rather, ' How shall I not 
 desire to have it?" 
 
 She stood thinking. The negative attitude of mind 
 was not one to appeal to her especially. "You mean 
 my love, I suppose," she said; "but I don't want to 
 'not desire to have it.' I only you can't under 
 stand, Jean you shouldn't, of course. And no one 
 can explain." 
 
 He did not answer, and moved off to put the Tes 
 tament back on the shelf. Then he went out to the 
 kitchen and came in with an armful of wood, laid 
 it beside the hearth, and brushed the chips and 
 dust from his cassock. 
 
 " It is only," said Anne, without any preface, " that 
 he is very ill." She had never yet let slip Harnett's 
 name. "The wound in his head has been troubling 
 him, and they have cut into it. He may die. He 
 may be dead by now." Jean Carmel put down a 
 quick hope that he might be. 
 
 "He may also be alive by now," he reminded her. 
 
 "Yes," she answered impatiently, "but I want to 
 know." He realized that the suspense must go hard 
 with her. She was of a nature so positive and decisive. 
 What she determined she did forthwith. She was of 
 those who had rather blunder in haste than go right 
 slowly. He remembered how, when she had been a
 
 ANNE CARMEL 113 
 
 child, to be told "We will see," had roused all her 
 temper. "Tell me I may not do it," she had said 
 once, exasperated to shrillness and beating her clenched 
 hands together, " but don't tell me you ' will see if 
 I may.' " Uncertainty must go doubly hard with her. 
 
 She was standing very still, and her face was as 
 gray as the light. The only color about her was the 
 scintillation from the fire in her hair. 
 
 " I wonder how women have stood this always 
 since the very first ? " she said half to herself. " We 
 must always wait always be inactive." Her voice 
 was heavy and monotonous. Where was the use of 
 being shrill and exasperated with Fate ? It was more 
 unalterable than a cautious mother and so much 
 more immovable. 
 
 " I don't see how they have borne it," she repeated. 
 He did not answer her at once. Then he said, "By 
 obeying the first commandment perhaps." 
 
 She brushed it away with a movement of the hand. 
 Consolations of that sort were not what she wanted 
 and she had been reckless of commandments. 
 
 " By realizing," he finished calmly, " their place in a 
 very big universe, and not letting the one personal 
 trouble fill up all their vision." 
 
 It was an appeal to something which answered. 
 And she was not small enough to whine over his 
 severity, a respect in which she was easier to deal 
 with than most women. He laid his hand on her
 
 114 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 head. " Hein, Anne, P'tite Chose ! " he said kindly. 
 Then he left her to think it over. 
 
 She had thought it over to so much purpose that 
 when Cecily Thorne came out of her room a little 
 later, her preconceptions of pastoral peace were not 
 disturbed. The last thing she would have imagined 
 was the fragment of human experience in the early 
 dawn. Anne and her mother a mother for a classic 
 tragedy were putting on their hats to go in to mass. 
 
 Cecily went with them. It was already understood 
 that she was not of their faith. But Madame Carmel 
 had lived long enough among heretics to tolerate them 
 while awaiting their subsequent damnation. 
 
 It was raining when they came out from the church, 
 a rain that fell straight and fine from dark, charged 
 clouds to the dark earth, splashing back from the 
 stones in white drops. But in the east the clouds had 
 not yet quite closed over and there was a light there, 
 as of a pale sun shining through a curtain of thin 
 silver, very clear and very cold. There was not a 
 breath of wind, even the leaves of the flowers only 
 stirred with the falling drops. It was a rain that 
 would last all day. And within half an hour the light 
 had quite gone from the east, the whole sky was an 
 even gray, and the rain came in a downpour, drifting 
 off the roof in puffs of spray. The branches of the 
 climbing roses whipped and rebounded against the 
 windows now, and the purple and white of the lilacs
 
 ANNE CARMEL 115 
 
 surged up and down. At intervals a yellow shine of 
 lightning spread over the curtain of driving water. 
 
 The Cure* was out. Madame Carmel had gone off 
 also, in the presbytere buggy behind the big sorrel 
 horse, which had apparently never in its life been 
 groomed or clipped. She was to spend the whole day 
 with Madame Tetrault, who was ill. Anne was busy 
 in the kitchen with Amelie Latouche. 
 
 Cecily sat in front of the fire playing with the 
 puppy for a while. She looked into the flames with 
 wide-open, soft eyes. There was a world where 
 ambition and restlessness were the measures of suc 
 cess and worth but it was very far away from here. 
 Here there was peace, as brooding as the gray clouds, 
 and a quietness that fell on the mind, bringing up 
 little new seedlings of thought, as the spring rain fell 
 on the soil outside, to bring up the young grass and 
 plants. 
 
 She stroked the puppy's silky hair with one hand, 
 and it devoted itself in turn to washing each one of the 
 fingers of the other hand, from palm to tip, with 
 the minutest care. When she rubbed softly around 
 the splint on the broken paw, it closed its eyes in 
 drowsy bliss. 
 
 After a while she heard the knob of the side door 
 turn with a good deal of rattling. She looked up. 
 The door opened slowly, and a small girl of the most 
 solid build compatible with movement stood there.
 
 116 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 She saw a stranger and was rooted to the spot, unable 
 to so much as get a linger to her mouth. This was 
 terrible beyond any experience she had ever before 
 suffered. She was by no means intuitive, but she 
 divined at once a difference between the person there 
 on the hearth and all the others to whom she was mod 
 erately accustomed. She even connected her vaguely 
 with the strange man who had stood in the doorway 
 of the tavern, just now, as she had passed with a very 
 large and rusty umbrella serving as a background 
 rather than as a protection. The horrible creature 
 had called another man, an older one, to look at her, 
 saying something she did not understand. She had 
 stopped without knowing it. But at the laugh of the 
 older man she had turned and fled, the umbrella close 
 over her head, and only the edge of a skirt and two 
 short, thick, bare legs showing from beneath it. 
 
 But here she was not able to get either forward 
 or back, and then the thing she dreaded happened. 
 The lady spoke to her. What did she want ? She had 
 not the glimmer of an idea what she wanted. She 
 stared into mental vacancy, and her eyes were black 
 and round, and her braids stuck out short and stiff. 
 Did she wish to see the Cure ? She was dumb. The 
 lady in front of the fire put aside the puppy and rose 
 up. Yvonne's terror reached the notch where move 
 ment was again possible. She backed out and shut the 
 door. Cecily went and opened it. But Yvonne edged
 
 ANNE CARMEL 117 
 
 still farther out into the garden. She had put down 
 her umbrella and left it by the doorway, so she stood 
 unprotected in the sheeting rain, amid the daffodils and 
 hyacinths. 
 
 Cecily went then and reported it to Anne. " I seem 
 to have frightened her so that she would rather be 
 drowned than come near me." "It's Yvonne," Anne 
 told her, and went out. She took the little girl up. 
 Yvonne struggled with creditable strength, the surpris 
 ing strength of small animals who use every one of 
 their supple muscles in concert. But it made no im 
 pression upon Anne. She came into the house and shut 
 the door. "This is Mademoiselle Thorne," she said, 
 putting Yvonne down, " and she will not speak to you 
 or look at you. You can play with your dog, or you 
 can take that big umbrella and go home if you had 
 rather. But you shall not stand in the rain and get all 
 wet." Yvonne had backed away until the wall pre 
 vented her going any farther. Her bright black eyes 
 never left Anne's face. "If you don't speak to her, 
 and pay her no attention, she will be contented," 
 Anne said to Cecily. The English, which had been 
 rusty with disuse until Harnett had come, went glibly 
 enough now albeit with an occasional Gallicism. 
 Miss Thome's French was equally easy, and they 
 changed from one to the other with as little trouble 
 as though she herself, like the Carmels, had come from 
 a city of a dual tongue.
 
 118 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 She took the suggestion, and, leaving the fireplace, 
 turned her attention markedly to the books. They 
 filled three good shelves, and ranged from the Latin 
 Testament, the " Journee du Chretien," and "Le Combat 
 Spirituel," to " Juvenal's Satires," a few modern novels, 
 and a much dog-eared and falling-apart life of Abelard 
 and Helo'ise. The battered story of that love, which 
 the intellect c.f the lovers has raised above all others of 
 history, struck her as being a little out of place in the 
 small library of a cure of a St. Hilaire. But the name 
 across the first page was Madame Carmel's. Did the 
 Cure's sister indulge herself in literature of the sort ? 
 she wondered and was her mind soil in which the 
 superb self-abandonment of the reputed niece of the 
 Chanoine Fulbert would take root and bring forth fruit 
 after its kind ? Anne Carmel was apparently of an 
 individuality which caused speculation the result 
 doubtless of her steady gray eyes and restraint of man 
 ner. A woman with inscrutable eyes and a repressed, 
 self-contained manner might be simplicity itself and 
 devoid of all complications and depth, but she would 
 awaken conjecture. 
 
 Anne herself came back into the room. 
 
 The night before, after Miss Thorne had gone to 
 bed, she had spoken to Jean. "Have you told her 
 about me?" she had asked. 
 
 " Assuredly not," he had answered. 
 
 "But she might dislike being here, if she knew," 
 she had opposed.
 
 ANNE CARMBL 119 
 
 It was not in any way humility. It was nearer 
 being a defensive pride that objected to false colors. 
 If her brother had given her the smallest encourage 
 ment, she would have gone to Cecily and have told 
 her everything, and that baldly and crudely, with as 
 little self -justification as possible. But he had failed to 
 encourage her. And after all, he had suggested, what 
 did they themselves know of Miss Thome? "She 
 must take us on trust, as we have taken her." 
 
 Anne, however, was not satisfied. She intended to 
 find out Cecily's attitude on questions of the sort 
 in general, if not in this specific case. The book 
 that she found her reading gave an opening ready to 
 hand. She went and stood by the window in front 
 of her, and began to speak of the story. It appeared 
 then that she had read it. 
 
 Miss Thorne was not inclined to throw in any pebble 
 of liberal philosophy which might perhaps ripple the 
 tranquil waters of this village girl's life. She parried 
 Anne's questions with considerable adroitness, while 
 escaping the condemnation that conventional morality 
 required. "And you what do you think?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " I ? " said Anne. " It is not of much importance. 
 I think she was, not better than the Magdalen, perhaps, 
 but braver because she would not repent." The per 
 sonal note was not to be mistaken. But Miss Thome's 
 dreamy eyes did not change as they looked into the
 
 120 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 unsuspected depth. The vision of pastoral peace was 
 gone in a ray of cold, hard light. 
 
 Even the village of St. Hilaire, the little pres- 
 bytere of its priest, had not only its temptations, but 
 perhaps its falls.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE flock of St. Hilaire was one prone, for the most 
 part, to remain in the green pastures close to the fold. 
 But it had its wandering sheep Antoine, who had been 
 in his youth the property of O'Hara. O'Hara had gone 
 out to the new West in the seventies, had stayed a few 
 years until the fact that he had fallen heir to his 
 father's farm, and also that he was homesick, brought 
 him back to the Lower Province and the sound of the 
 Canadian bells. He had returned with a boy of four or 
 five who was, he gave it out, an orphan Me*tis. But it 
 was commonly believed that, though the child was cer 
 tainly a half-breed, he was not altogether orphaned, that 
 O'Hara himself was, in fact, his father. This, how 
 ever, did not prevent the Irishman's marriage with a 
 most respectable little habitant girl, by whom he had 
 in due time a large family. Antoine was kept to grow 
 up with the legitimate children, an arrangement never 
 satisfactory since the days of the tragedy of the wilder 
 ness of Beer-sheba. Madame O'Hara registered objec 
 tions directly upon the arrival of the first-born. 
 O'Hara, however, did not consider himself bidden of 
 
 121
 
 122 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 God to heed all the words of his wife, and the example 
 of Abraham was one of which he had never heard. He 
 refused to turn the small Me*tis adrift. 
 
 It might have been the better for the child, never 
 theless, had he done so, since there resulted for him a 
 bad life. Madame O'Hara was a woman who had done 
 her share of field work. She had a temper of which even 
 her Irish spouse stood in quaking fear. She could not 
 force him to drive the stranger out, perhaps, but in all 
 things else she had her way, and it was a cruel enough 
 one. Antoine suffered. He was half starved and 
 thoroughly beaten. The beatings were the scandal of 
 the neighborhood, but Monsieur Biret, who was then 
 the cure*, had never seen fit to interfere. He was a 
 brutal man himself, having no aim in life beyond forc 
 ing money out of his parishioners. That a half-breed 
 should be tortured unjustly concerned him not at all. 
 Madame O'Hara paid well and regularly. 
 
 So it went along until Monsieur Carmel came into the 
 village. Monsieur Carmel was not at all keen to get 
 money. He put an end to the abuse forthwith shortly 
 and effectually. " This thing must stop," he told 
 Madame O'Hara, when he found Antoine grovelling on 
 the ground in the agony of a thrashing just ended. And 
 she stopped it. Except in matters pertaining immedi 
 ately to religion, a cure* was not to her habitant mind to 
 be paid much attention to. But this one was not merely 
 a cure*, he was a person to be obeyed.
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 123 
 
 Antoine was grateful, grateful like a little maltreated 
 cur that lies at its rescuer's feet and cowers, and turns 
 up imploring eyes. He never forgot. When O'Hara 
 died he was fourteen years old, and he left the farm at 
 once. The legitimate O'Haras had been sorry to see 
 him go. They regarded him as their brother and called 
 him so. He had been a good playmate, inventive and 
 resourceful. They had no more marked objection to an 
 Indian for a companion than had those forbears of theirs 
 whose governor danced war dances with the savages, 
 and who, for the most part, adopted the customs of the 
 red men quite as often as imposed their own. 
 
 But Antoine left the farm and went out into 
 the world, and thereafter troubled them very little. 
 Now and then he returned to St. Hilaire. When 
 he concerned himself about it at all, he acknowl 
 edged that as his home. For the rest he was coureur 
 de bois, voyageur, guide, river man, hunter, sometimes 
 in the maple sugar and sometimes in the lumber camps, 
 on rafts or snowshoes often, in the hayfields or in the 
 orchards rarely. When he appeared in St. Hilaire, if he 
 had not been away as long as usual, he offered the 
 explanation that he had been " pa'la," jerking his head 
 vaguely north, south, east, or west. At other times he 
 had been "bien loin," and waved his arm to indicate 
 great distance. " Bien loin " might be a hundred 
 leagues or a good deal more. Antoine was never sure. 
 He reckoned his journeys by days ; and as some days
 
 124 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 he went at a dog trot for the whole time, and at others 
 travelled a couple of hours all told, the measurements 
 were not accurate. On the very rare occasions, when 
 he became what was, for him, communicative, and 
 deigned to open his beautiful, sinister lips to speak cut 
 phrases, he volunteered the fact that he had been every 
 where ; to the great plains of the West where his own 
 people, thanks to the rebel Kiel, had now their own 
 land; to the Gasp peninsula where were the white 
 fishing stations ; to Cape Breton and Hudson Bay, across 
 the border into the States, and also to the big cities, 
 Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Winnipeg. It was possibly 
 true, and quite as possibly not. For he never went 
 into details upon which he could be tripped up. Never 
 theless, he was looked upon with admiration by the 
 people of St. Hilaire, who themselves did not go in for 
 indiscriminate and futile travelling, who stayed on their 
 farms and in their shops, and attended to matters directly 
 at hand. They had, in this century, no need to be kept 
 down by the old decrees, which forbade their scattering 
 and adventurous antecedents to run the woods. If one 
 of them nowadays chanced to have been so far as the 
 River or a few leagues into the bush, he had a right to 
 look upon himself as bold above the ordinary. 
 
 It was natural, therefore, that when Antoine came 
 back to the parish he should be a person of interest. 
 And he was now newly returned. It was for the pur 
 pose of attending to his religious duties. Sooner or
 
 ANNE CARMEL 125 
 
 later he could always be counted upon to come in from 
 the great beyond to confess himself to Monsieur Car- 
 mel. Monsieur Biret was accountable for that. He 
 had been hated and dreaded by the half-breed, but he 
 had, in spite of that, burned his own fanaticism and 
 superstition into a mind that took the red-hot brand 
 easily, with a predilection for the horrible equal to that 
 of those Hurons for whom it had been, of old, neces 
 sary to order holy pictures of hell tortures more than 
 commonly atrocious in suggestion. 
 
 So the same day that the three strangers had arrived, 
 Antoine had come home from " pa'la " with intent to 
 confess. It was almost a year since he had done so, 
 and to that he ascribed several pieces of bad luck 
 which had befallen him, as well as one scare from 
 which he had not recovered yet, the appearance of 
 the ghost of a man, a white man, whom he had known 
 in a lumbering camp that winter. The man had 
 gambled with him and lost the whole of his winter's 
 earnings. Subsequently he had killed himself. An 
 toine had not known of that until he had happened 
 to meet another friend who had told him. And the 
 same night the ghost had walked around and around 
 him through the trees. Antoine preferred confession 
 and heavy penance to anything of that unpleasant and 
 intangible sort. And that was why he had come back 
 to get the matter off his mind. 
 
 At the tavern he had met a stranger who had wanted
 
 126 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 forthwith to make a picture of him. Antoine was 
 sufficiently obliging when he was not morose. At the 
 time Mathew Thorne proposed the sketch he was in 
 a good humor. He did not object to keeping still. 
 He could do that for a day at a stretch, and hardly 
 move a muscle, if the mood was on him. Also, the 
 promise of pay was tempting. The American himself, 
 with his pointed yellow beard and white hands, he did 
 not like overmuch ; he talked in a suspicious way 
 about things Antoine did not understand and conse 
 quently mistrusted. " The sinful fascination of a 
 beautiful devil is yours," he had said, considering the 
 Me"tis' face ; and Antoine, whose English was limited in 
 the extreme, had comprehended only the satam'c allu 
 sion, and had scowled. Nevertheless, he had promised 
 to come on the following day. 
 
 He spent the evening at the tavern, and then de 
 parted to pass the night at the cabin of Marcelin 
 Se"ailles, in the woods. .Marcelin, who lived with his 
 sister, was very old, and remembered days that had 
 been better for the ancestors of Antoine's mother than 
 these present ones. He had had plenty of Indian 
 friends himself, and could mumble gory stories that 
 the half-breed liked to listen to. Antoine had listened 
 to them, then gone off to sleep on the floor, and in the 
 morning he had left the cabin and the clearing and 
 taken his way down through the forest path to the 
 village. It was raining, but he did not mind that. He
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 127 
 
 went to the tavern and found Thome there, and settled 
 himself for the picture. It progressed to the satisfac 
 tion of every one in the room, and there were many, 
 since out-of-door work was impossible. 
 
 Thome was interested in the type of head in front 
 of him, and in the sketch, and for a while he paid small 
 attention to the comments, and less to the patois chatter 
 around him. But presently he caught the name of 
 Anne Carmel. And he listened then. It was not 
 spoken with respect, rather with a tone the meaning of 
 which is the same in all languages. So it was this, 
 then, that accounted for a degree of poise and sophis 
 tication in the Cure's sister which had seemed inexpli 
 cable in a girl of a backwoods village. That Anne's 
 earlier girlhood had been spent in a large city had not 
 even made it clear to him. The tone of the villagers did. 
 
 They left the subject almost immediately, however, 
 and he got no detailed information until well on into 
 the afternoon, when the sketch was finished. Antoine 
 had taken his departure, and he himself was sitting on 
 the porch, smoking. A habitant more garrulous than 
 the others joined him, and Thome led the subject around 
 to where he wanted it. The habitant was nothing 
 loath. He gave Anne's story, with embellishments. 
 When he went he left Thorne with the understanding 
 that the Cure's handsome sister had had more lovers 
 than only the English hunter. Thorne was interested. 
 The prospect of staying idle around St. Hilaire for the
 
 128 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 several days during which his father would be potter 
 ing with plants and birds had not presented any 
 attractions to him before. Now it did. One might 
 put in one's time a good deal worse than with an un 
 commonly effective and intelligent girl who was not 
 averse to man's society. 
 
 He was not sure, however, that he fancied Cecily's 
 proximity to the girl. He was of those males who 
 are virtuously insistent upon the virtue of all who 
 may approach their own women folk excepting only 
 themselves. He had thoughts of getting Cecily away 
 from the contamination. But he reconsidered it. 
 To do it he would have to give his reasons. And 
 that would mean the defeat of his own ends, which 
 were, to be frequently at the priest's house. And 
 Cecily, after all, was a woman of three and twenty, 
 whose head was filled with harmonies, and whose heart 
 had room for nothing but restless ambition. She was 
 entirely able to take care of herself. Upon the whole, 
 he would keep his information to himself, and act upon 
 it. To this latter end he watched the presbytere gate 
 narrowly. He saw Monsieur Carmel come out and go 
 into a house farther down the street. Madame Carmel, 
 he already knew, was away. If Cecily could be dis 
 posed of, the coast would be clear. And his father 
 came to his aid in this. "It is clearing," he said. 
 " I am going to get your cousin for a walk. Will you 
 come?"
 
 ANNE CARMEL 129 
 
 Mathew Thome leaned forward and flicked the 
 ashes of his cigar over the porch rail. Then he shook 
 his head indolently. It was too muddy, he averred. 
 "I will stay here and improve my opportunities of 
 learning village life." His father went without him, 
 and presently he and Cecily disappeared down the 
 road together. 
 
 Thome gave them time to get well off. Then he 
 threw away the end of his cigar and went over to 
 the presbytere. 
 
 The habitant who had imparted the information 
 concerning Anne was leaning over a fence talking 
 with the wife of a neighbor, who was feeding her 
 chickens. He caught sight of Thorne. " Look ! " he 
 called attention. "There will be a Yankee now, as 
 well. The Cur is too trustful. She is alone." 
 
 The sky was brightening in the west, and its golden 
 shine was reflected in the puddles of water, on the 
 flat stones of the sidewalk, and on the wet gravel of 
 the garden path. Thorne took note of the values in 
 yellow produced by that and by the beds of jonquils 
 and daffodils. Then he went up the steps. 
 
 Anne heard his knock, a running tapping of the 
 finger ends, unpleasantly suggestive of a signal. She 
 went to the door and opened it. She met Thome's 
 eyes, and she guessed at once that he had heard the 
 gossip and why he had come. Her face and neck 
 colored with a deep, painful crimson, and then turned
 
 130 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 as painful a white. But she could not turn him 
 away. "My brother is not here," she attempted it; 
 "he has gone to a neighbor's." 
 
 Thorne raised his eyebrows with a look of comprehen 
 sion. " I did not come to see your brother," he said. She 
 put the door wider then, and let him go in. He closed 
 it behind them and followed her into the sitting room. 
 
 It was not more than a quarter of an hour before 
 he came out again, and went down the path to the 
 gate, his own face flushed and annoyed. There was 
 only one person in St. Hilaire, himself included, whom 
 he was not in the mood to despise ; and that was 
 Anne Carmel. 
 
 As for Anne, she stood in the middle of the room, 
 where she had sprung to her feet, still holding behind 
 her the hand he had taken. Her wide eyes did not 
 see the window in front of them, with its vista of 
 young green and of spring flowers, but only her own 
 punishment, coming slowly and steadily upon her, the 
 inevitable punishment which she knew now, for the 
 first time, she could not escape her degradation be 
 fore herself. 
 
 Thorne did not go back to the presbytSre that 
 evening. His father went, but he himself stayed 
 on at the tavern. Antoine was there and in an 
 almost communicative humor. The habitants hung 
 on his few words. And among the men was Paul 
 Tetrault. Paul had been drinking of late rather
 
 ANNE CARMEL 131 
 
 heavily. He had done so to-night. Several of the 
 others were in the same plight. It had taken treat 
 ing to get speech from Antoine, and the host's busi 
 ness had thriven. 
 
 The habitant who had talked to Thorne in the after 
 noon had had his too easy tongue moved to still further 
 loquacity by white whiskey, and it was not long before 
 he had got back to his subject of earlier in the day 
 Anne Carmel. He began to enlarge upon it, with leers 
 of understanding at Thorne. Tetrault had had to hear 
 a good deal of the same sort in the past half-year, but 
 as yet nothing so abominable as this. He stood it in 
 silence for a few moments, then he turned to the man. 
 "Stop that," he said. " It is a lie, and you know it is." 
 The man laughed tipsily, close into the pink and 
 white face with its plump cheeks. Antoine watched, 
 making no offer to interfere as yet, merely moving to 
 a vantage point, leaning against the bar and cross 
 ing his legs easily. But his look was not pleasant. 
 Thorne saw that, and saw, moreover, that unless the 
 slanderer could be stopped there would be trouble. 
 
 The habitant, with his chin still pushed up under 
 young Tetrault's nose, attempted another slur. Thorne 
 caught him by the shoulder and jerked him away, 
 throwing him half across the room. Antoine took 
 note of the fact that the white hands he had despised 
 were creditably strong. The man was too drunk, how 
 ever, to be warned. He turned on Thorne himself
 
 132 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 angrily, with a meaning wink. " Yes," he said, " you 
 went over to the presbyte"re as soon as I told you 
 when they were all away the others. You are one 
 of her friends, too, perhaps." 
 
 Thome's doubled fist hit him full on the mouth, and 
 he went down in a heap. But whether or not the 
 sympathies of the others were with him, at least they 
 were altogether against American interference, upon 
 purely racial and religious grounds. They closed on 
 Thorne, and Tetrault came to his help. Antoine still 
 waited, leaning impassively against the bar. 
 
 There were five habitants as against the stranger 
 and Tetrault. And the latter was of small use, hit 
 ting wildly, windmill fashion, with swinging arms. 
 Thorne was down. The five were atop of him, yelling 
 and snarling and cursing with noisy rage. They were 
 unarmed, but they were sinewy peasants and would 
 make short work of the man. And Thorne had 
 championed some one belonging to Monsieur Carmel. 
 That was his only merit in Antoine's eyes, the only 
 reason for going to the rescue. The half-breed went, 
 whipping out the knife he carried after the fashion of 
 the earliest voyageurs. 
 
 Tetrault was against the wall, Thorne was under 
 neath and struggling hard, and the rest were surging 
 up and down, back and forth. Antoine was upon 
 them, his teeth shut and his eyes gleaming. 
 
 Jean Carmel saw it all as he came into the doorway,

 
 ANNE CARMEL 133 
 
 hurrying from the presbytere with the boy who had run 
 to get him. They were fighting like a pack of sledge 
 dogs, as aimlessly, and confusedly, and indiscriminately. 
 He crossed over and took hold of Antoine, wrenching 
 the knife from him with a single twist. Then he caught 
 one man after another, dragged him back, lifted him, 
 and flung him away. 
 
 Thome got to his feet, and Tetrault slunk off into a 
 corner. The villagers started at Thorne again on an 
 impulse. One of them was cut, and he had an indistinct 
 notion that the American had somehow done it. The 
 Cure stepped in front of Thorne and lifted his crucifix. 
 The other hand held the knife gleaming against the 
 cassock. They fell back. 
 
 Jean Carmel turned to Thorne. "What is the 
 trouble ? " he asked, curt for breathlessness. He looked 
 even larger and more powerful than he was, in the light 
 from the one dull lamp, and the knife and the crucifix 
 made a picturesque enough contrast. The men cowered 
 behind him, and Antoine stood impassive and inscru 
 table again. 
 
 Thorne had his code. He adhered to it. " It was a 
 quarrel," he said, "a quarrel between myself and that 
 man," he pointed to the garrulous habitant who was 
 recovering himself from having been pitched half 
 over the table, " and it did not in any way concern 
 the rest of them." The Cure accepted it that Thorne did 
 not care to go into further particulars.
 
 134 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 But Tetrault's sensibilities were not so fine. He 
 was excited, worked up to the point of hysteria, and 
 filled with an admiration of the American which he 
 wanted to proclaim. " I will tell you, mon pSre," he 
 put in. And disregarding Thome's quick look of 
 warning, he told. Jean Carmel stood and listened, and 
 his face set into drawn lines. He gave back the 
 knife to Antoine without so much as an admonition. 
 Then he turned to Thorne again. " Thank you," he 
 said, and held out his hand. Thorne took it with as 
 much grace as a conscience by no means entirely satis 
 fied would allow him to muster up.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MADAME CARMEL was baking her own bread in the 
 stone oven at the rear of the house. It was a duty 
 never left to. Amelie Latouche, and madame adhered 
 to the custom of the girlhood she had spent on a St. 
 Lawrence farm, preferring the stone oven to any iron 
 one. 
 
 Anne was at the Gerard cottage. Madame Gerard 
 had been taken ill in the night, the eldest daughter had 
 something very like pneumonia, and the grandmother 
 was in need of help. It was her contention that educa 
 tion was to blame directly for all the ills. The child 
 had caught her cold at school, and Marie Louise's 
 failing health was due, she took it, to working from day 
 light until after dark, and then studying in the evening 
 so that she often spelled words at night in her sleep. 
 The grandmother had protested, but all in vain ; and 
 now that her predictions of evil were justified she was 
 not altogether sorry, but she was put to it and needed 
 help. Monsieur Carmel had offered to send Anne, and 
 the suggestion had been accepted with a sudden will 
 ingness to overlook, under the circumstances, sins 
 toward which she was not as a general thing lenient. 
 
 136
 
 136 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Marie Louise, out of innate sweetness of disposition 
 as well as gratitude to Monsieur Carmel, had never 
 been severe upon Anne and had tried to defend her. 
 The grandmother, however, was of sterner stuff and 
 of the unforgivingness which age shares with hard 
 youth. 
 
 Anne had accepted the situation without irony when 
 her brother had told her. She asked nothing of the 
 parish, but she was willing to be of use. And where 
 there were children she was especially glad to go. It 
 was only with children who understood nothing, and 
 Jean, who understood everything, that she could feel 
 herself like any other woman, and not some different 
 and curious manner of creature to be kept away from 
 and watched covertly and discussed. So she had gone 
 over to the cottage early in the morning. 
 
 As for Jean Carmel, he was at leisure for the first time 
 in the thirty-six hours since Cecily Thorne had been in 
 St. Hilaire. He came out from the church, into the gar 
 den by the side gate, and up to where she sat upon the 
 porch. And presently Madame Carmel, turning away 
 from the oven, caught sight of them going up the road 
 together. She watched them from under the wide brim 
 of her hat, and she was not pleased. Since the first she 
 had looked with considerable disfavor upon having Miss 
 Thorne in the presbytere. Her nature was one to take 
 kindly to the contention of those prophets, saints, and 
 doctors who have held that, to the priest of God, women
 
 ANNE CARMEL 137 
 
 must stand His one created unclean thing. And she 
 had frequently, in the earlier days of his orders, im 
 pressed it upon Jean that they were, for such as he, a 
 lure to perdition. He had wearied of it in the end 
 and had protested with some disgust. "After all, 
 mother, they are human beings, too, I suppose," he 
 had said, " and I really cannot be always troubling to 
 remind myself that they are women." 
 
 Apparently he was not troubling to remind himself 
 now that Miss Thome was a woman, since, in the face 
 of all the village, he was going off with her alone. And 
 the two nights before he had talked to her with no more 
 reserve than he had used toward Mathew and the elder 
 Thome. 
 
 Madame Carmel went into the house annoyed. It 
 was surely enough to have one's daughter the scorn of 
 the parish, but that the Cure, whom one had the proud 
 right to call one's son, should also give occasion for 
 scandal, was beyond the bounds of patience. Patience, 
 she knew, would have to be exercised, however, and 
 discretion. She stood in a good deal of awe of Jean, 
 and was not anxious to remonstrate with him and meet 
 his astonished displeasure at evil constructions. 
 
 And he, without the least idea that he might be in 
 curring such, kept on out the road. " We will go to 
 see Marcelin Seailles," he said to Cecily Thome. " He 
 has a little cabin in a clearing two miles from here, 
 and he is the oldest man in many parishes no one
 
 138 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 knows just how old but he talks of the bad times 
 of the Loyalist settlers." 
 
 Anne had already told her of Marcelin, and that 
 he was not to be persuaded from the belief that the 
 first Napoleon still lived, and that Canada was merely 
 leased to the British for ninety-nine years. "The 
 Cure before Jean, Monsieur Biret, gave him that in 
 formation," Anne had explained. " They are not all 
 so honest as Jean the priests, and they, most of them, 
 will do all they can to keep the habitants French 
 and ignorant." 
 
 Cecily spoke of it now. " Anne is not given to mak 
 ing allowances." He defended his predecessor. "Mar 
 celin has been almost stone deaf for uncounted years. 
 He may have misunderstood." 
 
 They went down the road that led to the river. 
 There were fields on either side. A group of chil 
 dren hung over the stone wall of one of them, watch 
 ing a farmer and his wife ploughing with a pair of 
 oxen. They saw the Cure coming, and scrambled 
 down. There were five of them, and they all stood 
 waiting, staring unabashed at the American dame 
 who wore no hat on her head all save Yvonne, who 
 had been enjoying the prestige of previous acquaint 
 ance with the presbytere guest; but in no wise em 
 boldened by that now, had shrunk off against the wall, 
 and stood there, hanging her head and twisting a bare 
 toe into the soil.
 
 ANNE CABMEL 139 
 
 The Cure stopped and spoke to them. They smiled 
 up into his face. The boys' hats were in their hands, 
 and one of them offered him a bunch of meadow-sweet. 
 A little girl had edged close, and was holding to a fold 
 of the cassock. "We will give the flowers to the de 
 moiselle, will we not?" suggested Monsieur Carmel, 
 and held them out to Cecily. 
 
 It was a day for summer rather than for spring. 
 The sky was soft blue, drifting with misty clouds. 
 There was a warm, wet smell from the earth. The 
 meadows were yellow with long-stemmed dandelions 
 that billowed in the southwest breeze. They went 
 through a gap in a fence where the bars of a gate 
 were rotting away, and crossed a field. A fawn-col 
 ored cow was cropping the grass and violets, wrin 
 kling her white nose greedily. She raised her head 
 with a contemplative look in her velvety eyes. Then 
 she went on eating again, undisturbed. 
 
 They came out upon another road, hard and white 
 after the rain, running between a row of fringing red 
 maples on the one side, and of high poplars with their 
 delicate pin-point tracery upon the other. A woman 
 stood at the back of a cottage, feeding some ducks and 
 geese that waddled up from a puddle. She stooped 
 awkwardly, but her red skirt, patched with big pieces 
 of newer stuff, made a good touch of color against the 
 brown of the earth. Her back was turned. Jean 
 Carmel motioned toward her. " There is a heroine,"
 
 140 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 he said ; " not a great one, perhaps, but one for a little 
 village. It is Therese Labiscaye." And he went on to 
 tell her story as they walked. 
 
 There had been a time, seven or eight years before, 
 when Therese had had a lover, a young workingman, 
 the blacksmith's assistant. She had had also, unfortu 
 nately, an old and infirm mother, needing comforts, and 
 a sister married well to a rich man as riches were 
 counted by the farmers and living several parishes 
 away on the St. Lawrence. The sister, having risen 
 from nothing to be a person of importance, had become 
 filled with pride, which was outraged at the prospect of 
 a blacksmith's journalier for a brother-in-law. And 
 Therese had been given to understand, without pity, 
 that her choice must lie between letting the lover go, 
 or having withdrawn the liberal fifteen dollars a month 
 provided by the sister for the old mother's ease. " The 
 mother wanted the comforts, and the blacksmith's boy 
 could not have given them to her," he explained. 
 "Therese obeyed her sister, and the journalier even 
 tually married some one else. It must be some com 
 fort to her to know that they are not happy together. 
 She is good and unselfish, but she has her human 
 points, I suppose. So you see we can watch all the 
 complications of more civilized life here in the hills 
 on a scale that is smaller, perhaps, as to money and 
 ambitions, but quite as large as to passions and suffer 
 ing." Cecily made no comment. She was wondering
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 141 
 
 less about the complications of Therese Labiscaye's 
 affairs than about those of Anne Carmel. 
 
 "She cared for him very much," he said directly, 
 " and it has aged her. She is not yet thirty. There 
 are numbers of such little tragedies among us here 
 a good many, of course, of which nobody but the 
 priest ever hears." Cecily looked back. Therese 
 had turned and seen them. She was watching them, 
 her eyes shaded by her hand. 
 
 "Sometimes," said Jean Carmel, "I have thought 
 that perhaps she did not do what was fundamentally 
 right after all, in considering the superfluous comforts 
 of some one whose life was almost done. In a way 
 it was breaking the law of God, without which other 
 laws could hardly be. But then," he stopped and 
 snapped off a thick branch that had grown across 
 the path at the height of Cecily's head, " but then, the 
 laws of God do not seem to be democratic. There is 
 one set for the lower order of intelligences, and one 
 for a higher. To love and raise young is for the 
 lower. The mere beasts can follow that. It takes 
 something finer to be able to see a duty and follow it 
 to the bitter end if the end of duty can ever be 
 really bitter." 
 
 In Seailles' cabin the old pair made the Cure wel 
 come with much toothless jargon which he appeared 
 to understand, but which was unintelligible to Cecily. 
 " Marcelin was once, they tell me," Monsieur Carmel
 
 142 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 said, "as large a man and as strong as I am." And 
 she looked at him now, shrunken and shrivelled and 
 unsteady, with unpleasant eyes and foolishly mov 
 ing mouth, come to the old age of those who live 
 hard lives. She could not help imagining a picture 
 of Jean Carmel arrived at something of the sort. 
 And it was depressing. Moreover, the one-room cabin, 
 once seen, was not attractive to remain in. Neither 
 it nor its occupants were clean, and Marcelin's worsted 
 toque had a look and odor of greasy decay which made 
 it anything but pleasant to have the tassel flicked in 
 one's face as he pushed close in his efforts to hear. 
 She was glad to get away. 
 
 They went back by another path, and came out through 
 a stile on to a grassy hillside that sloped down to the 
 river, glistening blue between the trunks of aspens and 
 birches. To the right there was a grove of firs. The 
 moss and turf gave under their feet, the dandelions 
 were rippling gold, and the small field violets, that could 
 hardly be seen, made their color felt in a faint purple 
 haze. A big oak was in the midst of the meadow. The 
 dead leaves of the year before were still strewed around 
 it, and the new ones were only just coming fairly out. 
 The sunshine fell through them on the pale hair that 
 seemed to bend Cecily Thome's head forward a little 
 with its weight. Monsieur Carmel saw it as he stood 
 near her. 
 
 They were in sight of the village, in sound of
 
 ANNE CARMEL 143 
 
 occasional calling voices, and he was not minded to go 
 back to the presbytere at once. Out-of-doors was 
 always to be preferred to the house. He had the 
 morning to himself, and he was still not troubling to 
 remember that he was with a woman. He stretched 
 himself out on the grass, and the woman of whose sex 
 he was so frankly unheeding kept back a smile at the 
 contrast between the cassock and the attitude not 
 exactly what one was accustomed to conceiving as 
 clerical, but suggestive certainly of strength in repose, 
 a strength which might have accomplished in some 
 other place a few of the things that cry aloud for the 
 quality and are frequently left unanswered. A man 
 of a different sort would have served to say mass, to 
 teach young Madame Gerard reading and writing, and 
 to hear the pathetic little life histories of such as 
 Therese Labiscaye. It was much what he himself had 
 thought two days before, as he had walked back from 
 the Lavisse farm in the late afternoon. 
 
 Two tiny butterflies, one white and one the blue of 
 the hazy sky, were flickering about over the dandelions 
 and violets. She watched them absently, bending for 
 ward, with her chin on her hand. And he looked off 
 into the deep shadows among the trunks of the fir 
 grove. Now and then, as they talked, he turned his 
 head and met her eyes. They were tawny eyes, with 
 a somewhat appealing look of gentleness. He had 
 noticed it already, and also that it belied the entire self-
 
 144 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 confidence of her nature, which was fully as absolute as 
 Anne's own, if more modified by the habits of another 
 manner of life. Anne's girlhood had been spent for 
 the best part in the forests ; Cecily Thome's in the 
 great city where she had been born. 
 
 Madame Carmel had set forth her judgment of Cecily 
 that same morning. "She is as slender and frail to 
 look at as one of the jonquils in your garden yet she 
 can endure as much as the two men, they tell me. And 
 for all her soft eyes and drooping head and slow voice, 
 she knows what she wants, and will have it, too." 
 
 Her son had answered from his own observations that 
 he was not so certain she would have it. " I should say 
 that she would let it go without much effort, and do 
 almost as well with something else. She must have 
 seen too many sides of life to think that any one is 
 worth more than all the others." 
 
 He thought of it now, and speculated upon what her 
 life had been and was. She had not told them much 
 that was altogether personal. He knew that she had 
 neither father nor mother, and had her own livelihood 
 to gain by her singing. Beyond that she had not gone 
 into detail. She had sung for Anne, but he himself had 
 not heard her. 
 
 Two men came toward the field through the fir 
 groves. He saw them while they were still too far 
 away to recognize, and pointed them out. 
 
 A robin, in a thorn bush close to the oaks, began to
 
 ANNE CARMEL 145 
 
 trill loudly. The two men came nearer. They were 
 Antoine a O'Hara and Cecily's cousin. Until they 
 were within fifty feet, passing down to the river, they 
 did not see the others under the big tree. Then 
 Thome looked up, hesitated perceptibly, raised his cap, 
 spoke, and kept on. 
 
 The song of the robin stopped abruptly. It was 
 frightened and, dropping to the grass, hopped away. 
 In the sudden silence Thorite's voice came distinctly, 
 thrown out from under the roof of thick green and the 
 aisles of trunks. He was making to Antoine a com 
 ment which brought a look in no wise gentle into 
 Cecily's eyes. Jean Carmel stiffened visibly in every 
 limb. But except for that he gave no sign. Not the 
 shadow of a change came over his face. Yet if he had 
 not troubled to remind himself that he was with a 
 woman, Thorne, at least, judging after his kind, 
 had most effectually done it. He reached out for a 
 dead leaf, weather-worn to the lacework of the veins, 
 and twirled it between his fingers. 
 
 "That beautiful Antoine, there, is a dangerous 
 creature," he said imperturbably. " My influence over 
 him does not extend much beyond the bounds of the 
 parish, and not always to there. Last night, for in 
 stance. He might have done some more serious dam 
 age with his knife. But fortunately there was only 
 one severe cut. You can never tell when the sleeping 
 savage will rouse itself in the breed."
 
 146 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 She remembered Mathew Thome's description of the 
 Cure, standing in the midst of the ill-lighted tavern 
 room, the men he had tossed about with such small 
 apparent effort slinking away from him, the crucifix 
 lifted in one hand and the knife he had wrenched 
 from the Metis' sinewy grasp gleaming in the other. 
 
 He was a man whom men respected was he also, 
 she wondered as to it now for the first time, a man 
 whom women loved ? There were many little tragedies 
 here in this parish among the hills, he had said, and 
 many of which no one but the priest ever knew. 
 
 Had any woman, kneeling in the cold, quiet aisles of 
 the little stone church, ever pressed together, as if in 
 prayer, fingers that in her thoughts were touching the 
 brown hair of the head bent before the altar ? Had it 
 ever seemed to one of them, whispering in the confes 
 sional, that the very force of her longing must do away 
 with the barrier between her and the dark form 
 so near that the humanity of it made things of the 
 spirit impossible, made her whole being grope, not for 
 support of the Everlasting Arms, but for the mere 
 mortal ones that could hold her close and give her the 
 rest here for which she would forego without a regret 
 all of eternity's cold peace ? And had the fingers ever 
 been laid on the brown hair, or the barrier ever given 
 way? 
 
 She would have had the answer if she could have 
 known his thoughts, as he sat late that night in front
 
 ANNE CARMEL 147 
 
 of the big chimney place, alone, leaning forward, with 
 his elbows on his knees and a closed book in his hands, 
 looking into the hot coals which had kept the shape 
 of the branches to the last, glowing and pulsing to 
 the heart, falling apart now without a sound, and 
 turning slowly ashen and gray. 
 
 It was more than five years since any woman had 
 come into Jean Carmel's life, even upon the mere 
 neutral territory of the things of the intellect where 
 Cecily Thorne stood to-day. But there had been a 
 time before that, which he had small satisfaction in re 
 calling. He was the son of men and women who for 
 generations since the Conquest at any rate had 
 observed the church's precepts of morality sufficiently 
 well, but who had married early, following the policy 
 which has caused the doubling of their race once in 
 every third of a century. Through much of his 
 manhood, too, he had lived away from centres of 
 civilization, from cities, which may have their en 
 ticements and opportunities, but have also their 
 counterbalancing distractions and interests, their many 
 appeals to the intellectual, ambitious, and striving side 
 of a man's nature. By his calling itself he was led 
 into the way of much temptation, inevitably, to a 
 far greater extent than most men, and yet with far 
 fewer means of withdrawal. And he was, moreover, 
 in no wise oblivious to existing conditions within the 
 hierarchy, patent to almost the least keen, most un-
 
 148 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 suspecting observer, in some of the back country 
 parishes, though less obvious in the more populous 
 ones. Priest's farms were institutions whose purposes 
 he had no choice but to understand. So the breaking 
 of his vows was not only all but forced on him by the 
 past and present, but facilitated, too, for any future 
 that might result. And, nevertheless, he had not 
 broken them. 
 
 It was only the first of the victories over himself 
 that had cost him any lasting pain. In the year of 
 freedom before he had taken his parish at St. Hilaire, 
 or any other, he had turned aside from the routes of 
 shrines, cathedrals, and holy spots, into Picardie, drawn 
 there by the interest which the story of Marguerite de 
 Roberval had always held for him, and by the traditions 
 that it was the starting-place of the family of Carmel. 
 He had been a guest on a farm belonging to the 
 brother of a priest he knew well at home. The man had 
 had a daughter, and the parting from her at the end of 
 a short fortnight had been the one bitter ordeal of Jean 
 Carmel's life. He had not been blameless there, he had 
 met her more than halfway. Yet he had never been able 
 to feel any shame for that brief idyl among the willow 
 lanes of Picardie, and there had been much more of good 
 than of evil in what he had felt. He had loved her. 
 
 But he had not loved the wife of Tetrault's eld 
 est son, though she had left no device untried to 
 pull him down to her level, which was a low one.
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 149 
 
 That struggle had been short and quickly over, when 
 at the last she had brought it on. She had never 
 forgiven him for conquering himself and her. Her 
 dangerous love had turned to a hatred of which she 
 still made little secret. 
 
 And as for Lavisse's child when he had seen her 
 eyes close at the last, it had been with only the regret 
 which one must of necessity feel over the sad ending of 
 a life for the hopelessness of which one has been unwill 
 ingly responsible. He did not wish that the eyes 
 might shine again with the light he had seen in them 
 too often when she had made pretexts to find him alone 
 in the sacristy or the church, or even in the woods. He 
 had never helped her to the planned meetings, and he 
 had not realized that they were such until the day 
 when she had forced the knowledge on him in despair 
 ing passion. Then he had put a stop to them, for once 
 and all, as kindly as he could. She had not made it 
 easy for him. It had been his saving, perhaps, that she 
 was more innocent than the other woman, without a 
 wife's recklessness. He had watched the agony of a 
 breaking heart, and he did not care to go through any 
 thing of the sort again. 
 
 She had not died, after so many intervening years, 
 for love of him merely still loving him, which left 
 him no just cause for self-reproach. Yet he knew that 
 he had been in a large measure at fault, by reason 
 precisely of an obliviousness almost culpable.
 
 150 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 He would have been glad to have had none of all 
 this to remember as he sat, bending forward, his brows 
 drawn together, looking into the fire which had become 
 nearly ashes. So far as the recurrence of such episodes 
 was concerned, the fires of that period of his youth were 
 practically ashes now, too, he believed. Five years ago 
 the suggestion behind Thome's comment to Antoine 
 might have had truth in it. It had not, at present, and 
 never would have again. For Cecily Thorne, coming 
 into his life during a bare three days and going back 
 again to totally different conditions, there was none of 
 that which he had felt for the others. She represented to 
 him to a certain extent the things he had wished for on 
 the afternoon he had envied the farm laborer's contented 
 dulness. That was all. When she should be gone, he 
 might possibly wish again for those but not for her 
 self. 
 
 He passed his hand across his forehead slowly, stood 
 up and laid his book on the table. Then he went for 
 the mattress and laid it down in front of the hearth. 
 It was not long before he had blown out the candle 
 and was asleep, with Pilote curled on the rug at his 
 feet. 
 
 In the morning he went out into the garden on 
 his way to church for the seven o'clock mass and a 
 wedding in exceedingly humble life. For the first time 
 he heard Cecily Thorne singing. He stood, trowel 
 in hand, listening. She was singing to herself as she
 
 ANNE CARMBL 151 
 
 moved around in her room, it seemed. She had told 
 him that she did it as others talked to themselves, 
 that it was the expression of her thoughts when she 
 was alone. The voice was mellow and low pitched. 
 He could not catch the words, because of the trilling 
 of a bird in one of the maples. But they seemed to 
 echo somewhere back into his memory. The song 
 was still in his ears as he crossed the garden and 
 went out through the side gate into the churchyard. 
 To what thoughts had she been giving expression 
 this time, he wondered. 
 
 Four people of interest to the entire parish went 
 out of St. Hilaire a little later in the morning. One 
 of them was Antoine a O'Hara, following the same 
 impulse that sends the bear lumbering off through 
 the forest, the wolf swinging away across the flat, 
 the buffalo wandering over the prairies. The three 
 others were the two Thornes and Cecily, who had 
 walked down the highroad which led to the railway, 
 the charette carrying their bags bumping along a 
 few hundred yards in advance. All the village had 
 been out to see the departure, even to Yvonne, who 
 hid behind a corner of a fence with her head hanging 
 and her small tongue thrust into her cheek, though 
 there was no one to see her. 
 
 Anne had stood with her brother by the gate, then 
 she had gone up with him to the beds of early flowers 
 and watched him working with some pansy seedlings.
 
 152 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 "I told Miss Thome about myself," she said 
 directly. 
 
 "Yes," he queried, "why?" 
 
 "Because I had reason to know that her cousin 
 had heard. I was sure he would tell her and I 
 wanted her to have the truth, at least." On the whole 
 he approved. " She will not be back again," Anne 
 went on. 
 
 " Perhaps," he suggested, " the stillness of our hills 
 is too deep for her, and the air from hundreds of 
 miles of timber and thousands of the Barrens and the 
 Unknown is too rare. She was born to a city." 
 
 " And she is to be married," Anne added. " Did 
 she tell you of it?" 
 
 He shook his head. "No," he said absently. He 
 was thinking not of Cecily Thorne but of himself.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MONSIEUR CARMEL had a class of little boys whom 
 he was preparing for their first communion. He did 
 his best to inculcate some even slightly intelligent idea 
 of the mysteries and meanings of the faith, but it was 
 wearing and, at times, seemingly profitless work. Now 
 and then he gave them a recess, taking into considera 
 tion not only their souls, but also their restless, wrig 
 gling bodies, with heads that turned and hands that 
 strayed, and feet that crossed and uncrossed and 
 swung and sometimes kicked. 
 
 Just at present it had occurred to him as rather a 
 pity to keep them within doors on so fine an early sum 
 mer afternoon, when their minds were visibly wan 
 dering far afield anyway. So he finished his little 
 discourse as quickly as he could. Then he proposed 
 a walk. Would they like to go ? Ah ! voui, mon pSre, 
 they would like to go. Then let them wait a few 
 moments until he should return. It was, "Bien, mon 
 pe"re," in chorus, and he went out of the room. The 
 sound of many voices, raised and freed from restraint, 
 followed him, also that of scuffling. It subsided abruptly 
 when he came back carrying a big wooden bowl full 
 
 153
 
 154 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 of squares of bread and pieces of maple sugar. They 
 strained up their chins eagerly. " That is for us others, 
 M'sieu' le Cure*?" they asked. It appeared that it 
 was, and M'sieu' le Cure* distributed it. But it was 
 not to be eaten now. It was to be put in pockets and 
 saved. There were a few furtive licks at the sugar, 
 but it went into the pockets almost immediately. The 
 boy who was disobedient might be sent home and not 
 allowed to go for the walk, which would be not only 
 a deprivation but a disgrace. 
 
 On the street as they formed into line, the post 
 mistress came across, bringing two letters for Monsieur 
 Carmel. The biweekly mail was just in. One en 
 velope was white and typewritten as to address, the 
 other was gray-blue, and the superscription was femi 
 nine. They were from his grandfather and Cecily 
 Thorne. He knew it without opening them, and put 
 them into his pocket. Then he marshalled the boys 
 and started, two by two, himself holding the hand of 
 the best-conduct boy for the time being also the 
 most proud. The boys began to whistle. It was an 
 accomplishment in which they did not excel, but 
 which they had picked up from a comrade who had 
 "gone up into the States" with his parents, and re 
 turned. The notes were of the breathy quality, usually 
 feminine. The Cur6 asked them the name of the song. 
 The plus sage, whose hand he held, unpuckered his 
 lips momentarily and told him. It was " Appel Blow-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 155 
 
 soms," an American song. Etienne CoppeVs father 
 played it on the fiddle. 
 
 They went on for a little while, crossing a pasture 
 and going through a fir grove into a meadow, in the 
 centre of which grew a big oak. Monsieur took his 
 place under the tree. It was the first time he had 
 been back here since the day he had come with Cecily. 
 There were still some few violets, and the wild azalea 
 was in clumps of purple-pink. The gold of the butter 
 cups was coming to replace that of the dandelions, and 
 the fluffy sweetness of the wild cherry the graceful 
 sprays of the moose berry. The woods themselves 
 were a sunny thicket of green, sombre and light, with 
 the slender birches glistening, and the cherry bark bur 
 nished red. The leafage had not its full denseness 
 yet, but it was much thicker than it had been three 
 weeks before. 
 
 The boys had scattered at once and the Cure took 
 the letters from his pocket. His grandfather's he 
 opened first. Lawrence Dollard was a Canadian who 
 had emigrated to the States, following the way of 
 some two-thirds of his people. He had prospered 
 exceedingly in Massachusetts, and was the owner of 
 considerable manufacturing interests. Once a year 
 he wrote to his grandson with the utmost regularity 
 and persistency traits which had helped him to his 
 success. The letter was always short and friendly, 
 containing precisely the same thing, the assurance
 
 156 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 that Jean was too good for the fate to which the 
 priesthood condemned him, that he should take his 
 place as a man in a world of men. Dollard had fallen 
 away from the church of his youth, and been touched 
 with liberal and heretical views. But he believed in 
 a Personal Providence, and was of the opinion that 
 Jean was defeating its ends in being a priest. He 
 was eighty years old, and had lived in the States forty 
 years, long enough to have imbibed the commercial 
 and progressive spirit. With faith in the efficacy of 
 dropping water he regularly went over the case, and 
 invariably offered his favorite grandson a worldly 
 position by no means to be despised, at any time that 
 the priesthood should be abandoned. Jean Carmel 
 knew the arguments and the offer of old. They made 
 no impression upon him. He put the letter back in 
 its envelope and opened the gray-blue one. 
 
 Cecily had written at some length. When she 
 had left St. Hilaire, he had suggested to her that she 
 might have, from time to time, inclination and leisure 
 to remember a humble cure de village, who had few 
 interests connecting him with the stirring, active 
 world outside the reclusion of the church. 
 
 He read what she had to say of her life in the city 
 where the wealth and effort and success of a great 
 nation converged. Then he leaned back against the 
 tree, looking down to where the sunshine glinted on 
 the river ripples, thinking desultorily.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 157 
 
 He was recalled to the thing at hand. Two boys 
 had come running toward him and fallen at his feet, 
 grappling, righting, and kicking. He stopped them. 
 The boy who was uppermost hesitated, the one who 
 was down waited with his fist lifted. 
 
 " ' But I say unto you,' " quoted Jean Carmel, 
 steadily, '"that whosoever is angry with his brother 
 without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.' " 
 
 It was not that they gave much heed to these echo 
 ing notes of that first sonorous trumpet challenge of 
 Peace, pealed from the mountain side of Galilee. It 
 was the Curb's eye that held them. They moved 
 and drew apart, but with reluctance. " It is not with 
 out a cause, mon pere," and he listened to the story 
 of the squabble, the theft of a piece of maple sugar 
 from a pocket, with criminations and recriminations, 
 accusations and denials, that waxed heated and noisy 
 again. He heard it all through with patience and 
 attention ; then followed out the policy he had always 
 kept to with his flock, a policy they had not hitherto 
 been acquainted with, even theoretically, and which 
 they by no means understood. He put the accused 
 upon his honor. Etienne must take thought of all 
 the consequences and he showed them to him, moral 
 and material then he must speak the truth. There 
 was a pause. Batiste's breath was suspended. The 
 Cur6 watched them both. 
 
 "I did not take it," repeated Etienne.
 
 158 ANNE CABMEL 
 
 Batiste saw his sugar gone, himself reduced to dry 
 bread. " Liar ! " he denounced, " liar ! Ah ! m'sieu', 
 make him show you his pockets, the coup-choux," 
 he implored. 
 
 But Jean Carmel's way was otherwise. "He will 
 do as his conscience tells him to. If he has some 
 reason for not wishing to prove his words it is for 
 him to decide. And you must eat your dry bread, 
 my son. Dry bread with a good conscience is sweeter 
 than maple sugar with an uneasy one." 
 
 Batiste did not in the least subscribe to any such 
 abstruse code of ethics. He turned sharply away, 
 hot with the sense of injustice. He was absolutely 
 sure that Etienne had the sugar. So, for that matter, 
 was the Curd. Etienne lingered. " I will give him 
 my own piece," he ventured, without any especial 
 enthusiasm however. 
 
 The Cure was not affected by this movement of 
 uncalled-for generosity. " There is no reason why you 
 should do that," he said, "if you have not taken 
 his. You must do what you know to be right. 
 I have no need to tell you what that is." 
 
 Etienne waited a little longer. Then he also turned 
 and walked away slowly. 
 
 The eventual outcome of it was that the piece 
 of maple sugar was given back and that no one was 
 deprived when all the boys sat down upon the grass, 
 and, regardless of black gnats and mosquitoes, ate
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 159 
 
 their shares, while Monsieur Carmel told them the 
 story of the martyrdom of Jean Brdbosuf. 
 
 It was a signal triumph of virtue and principles, 
 but a line from his grandfather's letter came back 
 to Jean Carmel as he sat and watched the boys go 
 off again to hunt for columbine by the river shore. 
 " Leave it to some one who is not fitted for larger 
 things to nurse the consciences of women and chil 
 dren." 
 
 He went back into the village in the midst of his 
 class of barefoot, ragged boys. Two of them held 
 his hands now, swinging his arms as they almost 
 ran beside him in their efforts to keep up with his 
 steps. One of them was the good-conduct member, 
 the other the sinner over whose repentance there 
 was much joy Etienne. He was conscious that 
 the sense of virtue was in reality sweeter than maple 
 sugar, and was perfectly willing to talk about his 
 own righteousness, having as yet by no means reached 
 the abstraction of desiring no reward of men. He 
 called attention several times to his peculiar merito- 
 riousness, admiring the beauty of his act of restitution 
 almost impartially. Now, as the Cure* stopped in 
 front of the presbytSre and the other boys raised 
 their hats, he made mention of it again, pulling at 
 the large hand he held in both his own. " I did 
 well, did I not, mon pSre, even when he called me 
 liar and coup-choux ? The Good God will love me ? "
 
 160 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 It is fortunate, perhaps, that for most of us the 
 satisfaction of repentance effaces the very repentance 
 itself, that we are generally much more pleased 
 with ourselves for regretting a sin than we are 
 grieved by the regret. The Cure* knew the state 
 of mind and soul of his young parishioner. He 
 had had occasion to observe it in older ones. It 
 did not do to require a virtue above his comprehension 
 of either man or child. 
 
 The good-conduct boy had a bunch of buttercups and 
 columbine for Madame Carmel, Etienne some sprays 
 of tamarac for the washing of wounds. Madame and 
 Anne were sitting in the garden beside the house 
 under the apple tree. The boys went up with the 
 Cure. They would have found it easier to give the 
 things to Anne. Madame inspired them with awe, 
 much as she did Yvonne Armaille*. When she smiled, 
 they were hardly encouraged. There are smiles which 
 are like a ray of sunshine falling athwart a deep and 
 shadowy gorge. It may light up the gloom, but only 
 to show the depth more appalling. They twisted their 
 old straw hats, from one of which a cow had bitten 
 half the brim, scratched their bare legs, first with one 
 set of toes then with the other, and answered some 
 kindly meant questions. Then they said good-by and 
 went off at a run, calling to another boy to wait for 
 them with a loud Holla ! 
 
 Madame Carmel was knitting, and the bunch of
 
 ANNE CARMKL 161 
 
 flowers lay on her lap against the black gown. Her 
 son stopped before her, took one of the busy hands 
 and lifted it to his lips. She drew it away with a 
 smile and went on knitting. " You should have been 
 an abbe of the old regime, patronized by some fair 
 marquise," she said. 
 
 He disclaimed it as not to his taste. 
 
 "A militant cardinal," suggested Anne, with a glance 
 at his stalwart size. 
 
 " The flesh profiteth nothing much in those matters," 
 he told her. "It was a priest who had to be carried 
 on a sick-litter who subdued the City of the Waters 
 and vanquished Cinq-Mars. No," he finished, " I am 
 where I belong, 'nursing the consciences of women 
 and children.' " He took out the two letters and gave 
 them to be read. 
 
 Madame Carmel went into the house presently, tak 
 ing the flowers and branches. Anne was mending a 
 pile of surplices. She sewed on, and Jean sat -absently 
 watching a swallow that flitted back and forth to its 
 nest under the eaves. A vesper sparrow began its 
 song in the tree overhead. His lines were fallen unto 
 him in pleasant places, the Cure reflected. But the 
 life was too easy. Other priests had spent theirs 
 better, those bold brothers of the mild saint of Assisi 
 who had pressed into the West, carrying the cruci 
 fix and preaching a peace which was not in their 
 own souls ; or the black-robed followers of Loyola.
 
 162 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 As St. Francis himself had, on his mountain side, 
 desired the five wounds of our Lord, almost so the 
 Cure of the village among the forests that had wit 
 nessed martyrdom coveted some such ordeals as those 
 men had undergone who had made straight his own 
 way straight and too smooth.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AFTER the manner of the savage who beats off evil 
 spirits with noises and the pounding of drums, women, 
 as a rule, seek oblivion in much companionship. But 
 some few turn to work and try to drive back men 
 acing Fate by flinging actions in her face. Anne 
 Carmel's was the latter method and in any event 
 there had never been any real companionship for her 
 in St. Hilaire, even before she had debarred herself 
 from such as offered. So she made the most of any 
 duties she could find or invent about the house, the 
 church, and the parish in general. They grew the 
 more numerous, too, as Madame Carmel's health, for 
 the first time in her life, began to fail markedly. The 
 bread-baking and the preparing of preserves from 
 their own berry vines, the sewing and knitting, took 
 some little time. For the rest she worked at yards 
 of lace crocheting, quilting, and rag rug-plaiting, for 
 which there was no need. Cecile Gerard profited by 
 several tiny frocks made over from old ones of Anne's 
 or madame's. And on occasions the women on out 
 lying farms were glad to get the Cure's sister in 
 emergencies. 
 
 163
 
 164 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 Jean Carmel, with the masculine faith in feminine 
 sincerity, concluded that she was forgetting Harnett 
 and his evil influence. He knew nothing further 
 about it than that she was still receiving letters. 
 They had not talked of the matter in months. He 
 decided, however, that he had been right in suppos 
 ing that the man would not return to follow up his 
 passing sylvan courtship. And Anne was apparently 
 coming back, at length, to a normal interest in the 
 life about her. It was long before he made even the 
 most distant reference to it, but toward the close of 
 the summer he found her in the street in front of 
 the house, helping amid delighted laughter to get 
 Yvonne's collie harnessed to a small wooden sled. 
 She did not see him coming, and as he passed he 
 stooped down and rumpled her hair with his hand 
 as he had done when she was a child always the 
 surest way of rousing her indignation in those days. 
 " You are gay, eh, P'tite Chose ? " he said. She 
 looked up at him with a smile, a smile that did not 
 seem altogether spontaneous, however. To have let 
 him guess that her love or her fears for Harnett's 
 life were overmastering her had been one thing. To 
 have him suspect that she was beginning to doubt 
 was another. She had borne all manner of humilia 
 tions up to now, save that one most unendurable to 
 a proud woman, having to confess that the man for 
 whom she has been ready to give everything has not
 
 ANNE CARMEL 165 
 
 been worthy the sacrifice. And she had not yet 
 admitted it fully to herself. 
 
 But her powers of justification were being well 
 tested. Harnett had written to her regularly, though 
 at considerable intervals, even before he had been able 
 to leave the hospital. But the letters were shorter 
 than at first, and, it seemed to her, not a little per 
 functory. Then he had gone home to England, and 
 she had expected some immediate result. His uncle 
 was already before him. He had promised to ask at 
 once for permission to marry her, and in the event of 
 either assent or refusal to return for her before the 
 winter should set in and make travel around St. 
 Hilaire all but impracticable. He had been at home, 
 however, for two months and had not yet taken any 
 action beyond, he explained it, preparing the way for 
 the favorable reception of his demand by a greater 
 than usual effort to be obliging and indispensable. 
 His excuses were detailed and reasonable enough, but 
 there was no mistaking a lack of ardor. He was not 
 enthusiastic. 
 
 Anne had urged upon her brother at the first that 
 those of their own position and walk in life could form 
 no conception of the exigencies of station and wealth 
 in another manner of world, nor of the complications 
 possible in cases such as Harnett's. And she tried to 
 tell herself so now. But Harnett wrote, first, that his 
 uncle was occupied with affairs of a wider than per-
 
 166 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 sonal importance and could not, for the time being, 
 be harassed. Then it was that he himself had been 
 unwillingly obliged to accept an invitation which took 
 him away for some days. Thereafter it was that his 
 uncle's house was filled with visitors and as if the 
 possibility of his word being doubted occurred to 
 him, he sent cuttings from papers in corroboration. 
 He insisted upon his good intentions. If he could 
 have been sure of, could even have hoped for, the 
 granting of his request, he would not have let a mo 
 ment be lost, he told her, only, refusal was little less 
 than a certainty. And, in that event, he could clearly 
 not walk out from his home and away from his guests 
 and hie himself back across the Atlantic forthwith. 
 He would have to use discretion, as well as, unfortu 
 nately, some subterfuge. His uncle must be allowed 
 to think that the refusal had put an end to the matter 
 out of hand. "After that," he wrote, "I can get 
 off for the caribou shooting, we will say." It was 
 the only possible handling of the difficulty. 
 
 To have it called a difficulty was in itself somewhat 
 of a blow to Anne. There was about it too much of a 
 suggestion of self-sacrifice to an obligation become a 
 trifle irksome. Discretion, dilatory tactics, temporiz 
 ing, evading, and waiting for seasonable opportunities 
 were foreign to her own nature. She herself had 
 acted on the impulse of a force that drove one on to 
 break down barriers or be broken against them. Har-
 
 ANNE OAEMEL 167 
 
 nett had written that if his uncle should form sus 
 picions of what they proposed he would take means to 
 prevent it. "It will be too near and too far from 
 a marriage," he had said. And it was quite as 
 probable that disinheritance would follow one as the 
 other. 
 
 It had been precisely to save him from the disin 
 heritance and all it implied that she had, in the first 
 instance, made her stand. But consistency was not 
 equal to suppressing a reproach that he should have 
 been willing to dare more for her than he seemed in 
 the least anxious to. It was a reproach, however, 
 which she kept to herself. Then had come a letter 
 saying that the uncle was ill, that there was now no 
 knowing how long the delay might be. "You must 
 not feel yourself bound to me," he wrote. " If you had 
 rather be free, I will not expect you to keep your prom 
 ise." She saw it as her dismissal. She was alone by 
 the river in the same clump of silver birches where 
 Harnett had first come upon her. The blow had 
 been hard enough to deaden the sensation of pain. 
 She was conscious of an indifference which was a 
 relief. There recurred to her the burden of a habi 
 tant song of ancient French origin : 
 
 Les nouvelles que j'ai apporte 
 Que votre amant vous mande. 
 Que vous fassiez choix d'un amant, 
 Pour lui a une amante.
 
 168 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 She read the letter over again slowly ; then sat with 
 her hands dropped in her lap. She felt hard and 
 philosophical. He had got back to the life in which 
 he belonged and he had reconsidered, that was all. 
 On the whole he had behaved as well as she had any 
 right to expect. She had said to Jean on the hilltop, 
 in the midst of the storm, "If he should change his 
 mind, or come to think me like any other woman 
 who is only bad " Well, he had changed his 
 mind. And possibly he had come to think her like 
 any other bad woman. He wanted her out of his 
 life definitely and was showing the way to her. If 
 she did not take it of her own accord, he would force 
 her to, probably. The best she could do would be 
 to accept the situation once and for all. Certainly 
 she would not whimper, or beg, or reproach. 
 
 She sat thinking it all over for a time. Then she 
 put away the letter, stood up, and started back to the 
 presbytere. On the way she met Paul Tetrault, and 
 the smile she gave him encouraged him to turn and 
 walk home with her. He went in. They were alone, 
 and before he left he drew her to him and kissed her 
 for the first time. She made no protest. She even left 
 her hands in his that felt so thick and hot, and laid her 
 head against his shoulder, which smelled of cheap scent. 
 He was kind to her. And she was heartbroken and 
 tired besides "que vous fassiez choix d'un amant, 
 pour lui a une amante," she thought cynically.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 169 
 
 He left her, and she went into her own room, lock 
 ing the door behind her and standing stupidly in the 
 middle of the floor. 
 
 Paul would ask her to marry him. She knew that. 
 A year ago he would not have kissed her first. She 
 knew that too. But she was not a woman who could 
 be exacting as to the precise degree of respect to 
 be shown her. She would marry him. It did not 
 matter. It was better to marry and be a mother. 
 One man as well as another would do to be the father 
 of her children. If she could ever be warmed into 
 caring for any one again, it might be perhaps for 
 those. And Harnett she drew a slow, uneven 
 breath. He would have children, too. Their mother 
 would be some other woman. She threw the back 
 of her hand suddenly across her eyes and stood so. 
 Her mouth fell open, and she swayed. Then she 
 pitched forward on the floor, face down, her arms 
 outstretched, shaking with spasmodic sobs. 
 
 No one heard her. She was alone in the house and 
 in her misery. After a time she grew quieter. But 
 she lay there still on the worn, elaborate rag mat of 
 her own plaiting. A sigh quivered out at long inter 
 vals. She pillowed her face on her forearm, closing her 
 hot, smarting eyes. 
 
 Madame Carmel came to the door and tried it, speak 
 ing to her. It was dusk. She got to her feet and 
 smoothed back her hair. Then she went to open the
 
 170 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 door, keeping her back to the light. Madame glanced 
 inquiringly around, but she saw no signs of the 
 letter-writing of which she so intensely disapproved, 
 and at which Anne was frequently locked for hours 
 in her room. 
 
 Jean had gone down to the river, she said. Anne 
 remembered that she had promised to go up as far as 
 the tourniquet with him. She stood irresolute, looking 
 out at the dusk. Then she crossed lifelessly over to 
 the row of hooks against the wall and took down her 
 shawl. It was the one she had rolled into a cushion 
 for Harnett's head in the quarry bottom. She had 
 not been able to afford a new one, and she had washed 
 out the blood herself at the river. 
 
 She went into the hallway. Madame was waiting in 
 the sitting-room door. "Jean received a present this 
 afternoon," she said ; and her black brows raised mean 
 ingly. She pointed to it. It was a photograph of 
 Cecily Thorne, not as they had seen her, but a crea 
 ture of draperies and laces and flowers, diaphanous and 
 slight. In madame's opinion a sacred picture would 
 have been a more fitting present for a priest if there 
 was need for any whatever. 
 
 "Jean asked her for it," Anne reminded her; "he 
 told us that he had." At any rate, it was to be hoped 
 he would not keep it out for all the parish to see. 
 Anne put it up conspicuously. Then she turned to 
 her mother and kissed her on the forehead. " I should
 
 ANNE CARMEL 171 
 
 not speak to him about it in that way if I were you," 
 she offered. "It will not be good for him." 
 
 She joined Jean on the beach and took her place 
 forward in the canoe. He pushed off. Pilote sprang 
 from the board and swam after them to midstream, 
 but she was left well behind, a wistful yellow head 
 bobbing about above the water and going finally 
 toward shore again. 
 
 Jean and Anne headed up the river and went away 
 into the shadows. He told her, after a while, that he 
 had had a letter from Cecily Thorne. In the begin 
 ning he had showed the letters to her and his mother ; 
 then he had merely read parts of them aloud ; at the 
 end, he came to simply giving them any bits of news. 
 
 Madame had made a point of not questioning. If 
 Jean were receiving from a Protestant young woman 
 letters which he could not have seen by his mother, 
 since she was not to express her disapproval, she, at 
 least, would manifest no interest whatever. Once, when 
 he had spent his free time in the midst of a retreat 
 writing to Miss Thorne, she had gone so far as to in 
 quire with purpose whether the girl was coming into 
 the Church. " Not so far as I am aware," he had said. 
 "I should not think it probable." 
 
 As for Anne, her motives for not questioning were 
 other. Jean did not catechise her as to what she 
 heard from Harnett. And she was not, moreover, 
 given to needless speculation upon the affairs of others.
 
 172 ANNE CARMBL 
 
 That he chose to write voluminously to a girl whom he 
 had known for three short days, and was never to see 
 again, could have no harm in it, and was clearly no 
 one's concern but his own. 
 
 It was a fact that the correspondence, from slight 
 beginnings, had grown to a long letter as often as every 
 month. To Jean Carmel, Cecily Thorne, by reason of 
 her life and of his having no expectation of ever meeting 
 her in the future, was, in a way, an abstraction. They 
 were neither of them restrained by the reticence one 
 retains always toward those who are the nearest in the 
 flesh an instinctive safeguard against the humilia 
 tion and pain which only those brought into close 
 contact with one have the power of inflicting. 
 
 " She is not to be married for some months yet," 
 he said between two strokes of his paddle. Anne did 
 not answer. She sat looking ahead over the dark 
 shimmer of the water. Near by they could see well 
 enough in the starlight. But at a little distance it 
 was black and vague. Her life would be like that 
 from now on. She could only endure it by thinking 
 of nothing but the immediate present, or what was 
 close at hand. Beyond that would be the shadows of 
 hopelessness. She would not answer Harnett's letter. 
 
 That night when she was in her room again she got 
 all his letters from the place where she kept them 
 hidden and sat with them in her lap. She did not 
 take any of them from their envelopes. She could
 
 ANNE CARMBL 173 
 
 not have read them. After a while she gathered them 
 together, wrapped and tied them tightly. The knot 
 would never be undone in all likelihood. She would 
 never look into the package again, but she would keep 
 it. There is always a sense of finality of putting a 
 definite line between the past and the future, when one 
 destroys anything connected closely with a part of 
 one's life. 
 
 When she should marry Paul Tetrault, she might be 
 obliged to burn the letters. He would be jealous, even 
 of the past, and small and petty in a number of ways. 
 However he would be as kind as she had any right 
 to expect, and his affection would be the more insistent 
 because of her very indifference. She shivered. A 
 year ago, when she had been able to think without dis 
 taste of marriage with him, she had been more ignorant 
 than she was now, more innocent. 
 
 It came about as she had expected. After a week or 
 two Tetrault nerved himself to take the serious step 
 of asking a woman in discredit to be his wife. There 
 was an unfortunate suggestion of condescension, and 
 she felt it. The blood came to her face, and for an in 
 stant she thought of refusing him. But if she wanted 
 to punish him, the most ironical manner of doing it 
 would be, after all, to let him marry her. She accepted 
 him. 
 
 And that night there was an ugly scene at the pres- 
 bytere when Madame Tetrault drove in from the
 
 174 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 farm with her husband and attacked Anne with all the 
 rage of the female protecting its young. Her Paul, 
 with his pink and white skin and fair hair, he was her 
 pride and favorite. And he was to be sacrificed to the 
 wiles of a bad woman, who had used her ill-learned 
 devices upon him. Jean Carmel endured as long as he 
 could. Then when Madame Tetrault lost all control 
 of herself and turning to the coolly scrutinizing Anne 
 spit epithets in her face, he walked over and laid his 
 hand upon her shoulder with all its weight. "You 
 will stop that, madame," he said, with deliberation 
 " or you will go out of the house." She went out of the 
 house, Tetrault meek, but angry too, following. 
 
 Jean Carmel shut the door behind them and came 
 back into the room. Anne had gone to the table and 
 was mechanically moving things about, with hands 
 which shook visibly. " Well," he asked her, " what do 
 you intend to do ? " 
 
 She raised her shoulders, her unsteady lips curling. 
 " If Paul wants to change his mind, I will not fall at 
 his feet and beseech him, certainly." 
 
 " Otherwise you will marry him ? " 
 
 " Otherwise I will marry him." 
 
 " Do you care for him ? " 
 
 She smiled at the suggestion. " Is it probable ? " 
 she asked. " But I will be what he wants, his wife, 
 and faithful. You need not be afraid." 
 
 His eyes were stern. " I should advise you to break
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 175 
 
 off the whole affair at once. If you marry him, it will 
 be against my wishes." He did not share Madame 
 Carmel's opinion that Anne was fortunate beyond any 
 thing she might have dared to hope. 
 
 "I have promised," Anne answered. "But Paul 
 may do as he likes. It does not matter to me." 
 
 And Tetrault himself saw that it did not, when he 
 went back to the presbytere, despite the wrath of his 
 parents. The tears came into his eyes. After almost 
 ten years of devotion, after he had, for her sake, dared 
 public opinion and the curses of his parents, when he 
 was ready to endure scorn and some little deprivation 
 for her ! It was not kind. But lost faith and hope 
 bring lost charity, and the most she could feel for him 
 was a contemptuous pity. " Don't cry, Paul," she said. 
 "Men who beat one are better." He drew his wrist 
 across his eyes. He did not want to annoy her. 
 
 And in the end neither the elder Tetraults nor 
 Jean Carmel had their way. Anne and Paul were 
 engaged to be married, and Madame Carmel rallied 
 for a while, because of her satisfaction. Her daughter 
 was to be made an honest woman and the disgrace 
 wiped out. 
 
 Other letters came from Harnett. His uncle was 
 still in a dangerous state. Anne did not miss the 
 fact that he committed himself in nowise as to what 
 he would do in the event of his being left his own 
 master. And whether it were an oversight or an
 
 176 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 intentional evasion, it seemed to her equally inexcus 
 able. She did not reply. 
 
 He complained of her silence several times, not too 
 bitterly. Then she did not hear from him again.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE autumn went, closing finally with the cere 
 monies and confessions of the Toussaint, and the win 
 ter came on with its departure of many of the men 
 and boys for the loggers' camps. The farmers and 
 the storekeepers and the housewives, even the work 
 animals, had less to do than during the rest of the year. 
 It was not so with the Cure. He seemed always to 
 be needed more then than at other times. In the 
 long, confined, inactive season there was more chance 
 to forget nature and its joys, and to think of one's 
 soul and its sorrows. And there were more soirees 
 now, too, when the evenings hung heavy and visiting 
 was done somewhat after the fashion set by the earlier 
 habitants of before the Conquest. The Cure was 
 always asked, and he usually went, occasionally even 
 to the dances ; for his objection to those was not so 
 marked as that of most of the other priests. And he 
 found that when he was there fewer undesirable results 
 followed the freedom and drinking, results of whose 
 gravest evils only he, very often, knew. 
 
 The drives were frequently troublesome and terribly 
 * 177
 
 178 ANNE CAEMBL 
 
 cold ; but he objected not so much to that as to the 
 tedious hours of close, stove-heated rooms, reeking with 
 tobacco smoke and even less pleasant odors and fumes, 
 the pointless bucolic gayety, the excited games of casino, 
 and the long-drawn-out absurdities of tales and love, 
 devoid of either wit or moral. He would have been 
 glad to stop at home with his mother and Anne and 
 his books. In the day he had small leisure for read 
 ing. From the early morning mass on, there was 
 plenty to be done, the business of the church and 
 parish to be attended to, baptisms now and then, the 
 daily offices to be recited, and the sermons for saints' 
 days and Sundays to be prepared. In his determina 
 tion to keep from the mental sloth into which so many 
 of the clergy had sunk, he devoted set hours to study. 
 He had begun again to take certain magazines and 
 journals which he had read regularly upon first coming 
 to St. Hilaire. They were French and English. A 
 priest from Montreal, a friend of his college days, had 
 looked them over questionmgly. They were not by 
 any means what he was accustomed to see on the 
 tables of other confreres whom he visited, in villages, 
 or towns, for that matter. He commented upon 
 them. 
 
 " Even we are not always exempt," Monsieur Carmel 
 said ; " even with us there may be a woman in the 
 case," and he told him of Cecily Thorne. "For 
 my own credit and that of the clergy, I saw that it
 
 ANNE CABMEL 179 
 
 behooved me to be not altogether ignorant of the pro 
 fane modern world. So now," he swept his hand 
 over the table, " I am a paragon of information all 
 things considered." 
 
 At the end of December there came on the holidays, 
 Christmas with its religious observances; New Year's 
 Day with its early morning visits to parents and 
 friends, its good wishes and promiscuous kissing, and 
 its high mass ; and the Epiphany, until after which 
 the loggers could not be got back to their lonely cabins 
 in the forests. 
 
 It was some two weeks from the close of the fetes 
 that Jean Carmel settled himself in an easy-chair near 
 to the fire for a long and satisfactory evening with a 
 mundane review. Madame was knitting and Anne at 
 work upon the crochet lace which was to be for her 
 wedding clothes, and progressed with about the speed 
 of a Penelope's web. 
 
 There was the sound of feet stamping across the 
 porch, and a loud knock followed. Anne put down her 
 lace quickly and went to the door. Her brother had 
 half risen and turned his head, waiting to see who it 
 was had come out at the late hour of nine o'clock and 
 in such a storm, the worst of the winter so far. 
 
 It was Antoine. He stood on the threshold of the 
 sitting room, coated with a fine hoar of ice from the 
 button of his coonskin cap to the soft boots on his 
 feet. His eyes, changing from the darkness into the
 
 180 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 light, expanded and contracted like a cat's. He had 
 come in that day, he said, and he was staying at 
 Seailles' cabin. Marcelin was dying. Would m'sieu' 
 go to him ? "I have stopped for Coppee but he 
 says the storm is too bad." Coppee was Seailles' 
 remote but only relative. 
 
 Monsieur Carmel rose to his feet and put aside the 
 review. For the first time he had ever known her to 
 offer interference in a matter distinctly his own, Anne 
 protested. 
 
 "Jean," she said impatiently, "you cannot do it. 
 It is out of the question. Three miles through the 
 woods on a night like this." 
 
 He ignored it. "Come in," he said to the Metis. 
 "Wait for me," and he started toward his room. 
 Anne flushed angrily. But she had the wisdom to 
 know when to withdraw. 
 
 Madame Carmel had not. She put herself in her son's 
 way. Surely, he was not going to attempt it. It was 
 three miles. " Well ! " he answered, " and if it were 
 six ? " But the night was the worst in years. Even 
 Coppee, who had been brought up to the country, would 
 not go ; and Marcelin was his own relation. Amelie 
 Latouche had come into the doorway and was joining 
 in the objections. Antoine stood watching with the 
 eyes that spread and narrowed and expressed nothing 
 at all. Monsieur Carmel was close to losing his temper. 
 " Antoine has come, nevertheless," he said, moving his
 
 ANNE CARMEL 181 
 
 mother from in front of him. " Antoine! " she answered. 
 "Antoine is a half-breed and a coureur de bois." It 
 was not the right argument. It were a pity if a half- 
 breed coureur de bois could do more for a friend than 
 a priest could do for a parishioner. 
 
 He came out of his room almost immediately, muffled 
 to the bridge of his nose, a fur cap drawn down to his 
 eyebrows. Amelie had lighted his lantern. She gave 
 it to him with a blessing. Monsieur Carmel's lantern 
 was like any other, but Antoine's was a tin one, pierced 
 with tiny holes in circles and patterns. They went out 
 into the shrieking night. And presently from the 
 direction of the church there came the tinkle of the 
 Cure's bell faint on the wild wind. They dropped on 
 their knees, Anne, madame, and the servant, crossing 
 themselves and praying for the departing soul. 
 
 When they rose again to their feet, madame went to 
 the window and stood there, as if she could have seen 
 out through the solid wooden shutters. " Is it snow 
 ing ? " she asked. 
 
 Anne shook her head uneasily, " No," she said, " it is 
 an ice storm and a northeast wind." 
 
 Amelie was guilty of a heresy. It seemed to her, 
 she complained, that a worthless old man like Mar- 
 celin could have died just as well without dragging 
 out monsieur to help him. " At this hour, too," 
 she said, looking toward the clock not because she 
 could read its face, but because she knew its use so far
 
 182 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 as others were concerned. " At this hour, in such a 
 storm ! And he's been as good as dead these twenty 
 years already. By the time monsieur can get there he 
 may be altogether so." She was working herself into 
 spluttering indignation over it. Antoine should have 
 had more sense, she held, even though Marcelin and his 
 sister had not. " If he has behaved himself, I expect 
 he'd go to Heaven just the same without risking a good 
 man's life. And if he hasn't, repenting when he's 
 scared out of the little wits he's got left, won't do 
 him a great deal of good, the bonhomme." Then the 
 thought came to her that she might be referring to a 
 disembodied spirit, and she crossed herself, muttering. 
 
 Neither madame nor Anne subscribed to this view of 
 it. In matters of doctrine and religious duties Anne 
 was only a very little less bigoted than her mother. 
 Toward unbelievers her toleration was wider, but that 
 was all. " You would do better," she told Amelie, 
 whose night-capped face looked half frightened already 
 at her own blasphemy, "you would do better to go to 
 your room and pray for Marcelin." Amelie went off 
 and did so adding a petition for Monsieur Carmel's 
 safety. 
 
 And there was need for it. The Cur6 and Antoine 
 were well into the forest, taking the most direct path, 
 usually the least travelled. If it had not been for the 
 half-breed, Monsieur Carmel would not have been able 
 to follow it, but Antoine with the lantern was keeping
 
 ANNE CARMEL 183 
 
 just ahead. The bell tinkled desultorily now and then, 
 but there was no one to hear it. They were well off 
 from all habitations. The sleet had been falling all 
 day, and freezing as it fell. The ground was ice covered, 
 the trees ice sheathed. In the woods they creaked and 
 crashed as the wind passed through them, roaring, dying 
 down, humming tensely, like the dying vibration of 
 some huge base string, bursting out in a long low howl, 
 beating together the chiming limbs. There were none 
 of the smaller sounds of night. It was all the superb 
 crescendo jubilation in the blackness, of a gale-whipped, 
 icy world, the clashing music of crystal branches 
 through all the hills, beyond and beyond, across the 
 mountains a Walpurgis Nacht of the demon spirits 
 of the Arctic floes. 
 
 Sharp bits of ice were cutting and driving through 
 the night. Brittle boughs were coming down with a 
 sharp ringing. Whole limbs were breaking off and 
 shivering with a clangor. Sometimes a great dead 
 tree, split down the trunk and torn asunder, rent the 
 boreal diapason with a mighty cry as it gave up its 
 ancient soul. 
 
 The Cure pushed on in the wild darkness. His 
 gray woollen mittens were frozen on his hands, his coat 
 was stiff and hard, the muffler over his face was solid, 
 the sleet caked on his eyes. The pain of it made his 
 whole head ache most unendurably. He was dazed 
 from the blow of a snapped-off branch that had struck
 
 184 ANNE CARMBL 
 
 upon his neck. "You may be killed, mon pere," 
 Antoine had warned on the porch of the presbytere as 
 they had started out. He had not even answered it. 
 But he thought now that death in a great storm by 
 land or sea was surely a magnificent thing. To be 
 swirled back into the rush of the elements from which 
 one had come. Once or twice it seemed to him that 
 he was near it. There was a roaring blackness, like 
 that of the night itself, in his head. He could not see 
 the flickering pattern of red gleams from Antoine's 
 lantern, but sharp sparks danced across his eyes. He 
 got a long breath again then, and bent over, keeping 
 on. It was a struggle, but an exultant one. 
 
 Antoine turned back and came beside him, his mouth 
 to his ear. They waited. When there fell a lull, the 
 half-breed shouted. There was a way by a branch 
 path, he said, a yet shorter one. It crossed over the 
 Riviere aux Trembles, by the trunk of a fallen tree. 
 There was a hand-rail, of a sort along the trunk some 
 limbs nailed together. Should they go by there ? It 
 was not safe perhaps, but it would save something more 
 than half a mile, and bring them to the cabane in time, 
 it might be. Monsieur Carmel nodded. Antoine 
 went on again. They neither of them had seen, back 
 through the forest, the gleams of another lantern. 
 They had not looked behind. And the loudest calls 
 could not have been heard at the distance of fifty feet. 
 There was some one following, however, and doing his
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 185 
 
 best to catch them. It was Coppee, whose conscience 
 had reproached him at the sound of the tinkling bell, 
 and who had felt the shame of fearing what a priest 
 and a half-breed did not fear. 
 
 After a few moments Antoine turned off to the right, 
 Jean Carmel close to him. The path was very narrow 
 now. The frozen underbrush cracked and crunched. 
 It was not long before Antoine stopped. He lifted the 
 lantern and threw the wavering flickers of its light upon 
 the fallen trunk stretched across a narrow gulf of black 
 ness. The Cure knew the place. He had come to it, 
 but had never gone beyond. The bridge had seemed 
 too uncertain. There was a stream some thirty feet 
 below it. It was a slippery foothold at any time. 
 And now, when it was all smooth ice 
 
 Antoine was shouting in his ear again. He had 
 made the hand-rail himself ; it was not rotten. Could 
 m'sieu' do it or should they go back by the longer 
 path? 
 
 The Cure thought of Marcelin. A little time might 
 mean much to the old man, peace to his departing soul. 
 And the longer way had its dangers, too. " Go on," 
 he said. Antoine went on. The flecks of his lantern 
 touched the glistening trunk in front of him, but fell 
 upon nothing at either side were swallowed up in 
 black space. A stronger rush of wind beat Monsieur 
 Carmel back for an instant. He waited, turning his 
 back. Then he put his hand on the slight rail, and his
 
 186 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 foot on the round, glassy bridge. Antoine's soft-shod 
 feet had clung almost like an animal's. He was 
 already across, and looking back could see the glow of 
 a lantern which was not the Cure's. But Jean Carmel 
 was not of the lithe Indian breed. His feet were 
 clumsy booted and they slipped. He was leaning the 
 whole of his weight upon the handrail, never strong, 
 and brittle now with the cold. There came another 
 rush of wind, straight down the course of the stream. 
 It swished along fine darts of ice that struck and cut. 
 The big figure balancing unsurely was full in its path. 
 It threw him side wise. The rail cracked and gave. 
 Then it broke like a straw. 
 
 Antoine on one side and Coppee on the other saw the 
 lantern above the black gulf whirl round in mid air, 
 plunge down beside a dark body, and go out. They 
 held their own lanterns as far up as their arms would 
 reach, but the pin-points of glow showed nothing down 
 beneath. They were not more than a few yards apart, 
 but though Coppee put his hands to his mouth and 
 shouted, no sound reached the opposite bank. Antoine 
 signalled with gestures, and the other understood. On 
 the two sides of the falls they began their steep descent 
 to the surface of the frozen creek. It would have been 
 far from easy at any time. And now, when they could 
 not so much as see the slippery rocks in front of their 
 very faces, it was dangerous. They felt for roots or 
 branches or plants by which to clutch. There were
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 187 
 
 almost none. Coppee lost his hold once. He regained 
 it, quivering and giddy. But his lantern had fallen 
 and gone out. There remained only Antoine's. If 
 that were to fail, the daylight might be of small use to 
 them when it should come. Coppee had visions of three 
 wrapped shapes stiff and still on the gleaming ice in 
 the yellow light of a storm-cleared dawn. 
 
 But the half-breed came to the level in safety. And 
 the pattern of little red lights fell on a huddled figure 
 that did not move. 
 
 Later, when Coppee's rubbing and Antoine's burn 
 ing whiskey had had their effect, the Cure struggled up 
 with help and stood on his feet. His right arm hung 
 broken, bent like a short, twisted root. He staggered, 
 sick with the pain of it. They took him up under the 
 shelter of a rock, where the wind passed over them. 
 The two lanterns were found and lighted again. 
 Antoine went off alone along the surface of the stream. 
 There had to be found a way out by which Monsieur 
 Carmel could climb or be lifted. 
 
 Coppee doubted if there were any such within a 
 distance that the Cure could walk. And if so, it must 
 bring them into the woods at a place where there would 
 be no path. It was a bad business. Antoine was a 
 crazy fanatic, thinking only of getting a priest for a 
 moribund dotard, making good and useful men risk 
 their lives. 
 
 Monsieur Carmel was swaying again. His eyes were
 
 188 ANNE CABMEL 
 
 shut. Coppee desisted from his private maledictions 
 of the man who was desirous of saving the soul of 
 his ancient relative, hung the bent arm in a sling made 
 from his own belt, and administered more whiskey. 
 Then he walked the Cure up and down, back and 
 forth. They were suffering cruelly with the sleet and 
 cold. 
 
 It was long before the third lantern came wavering 
 through the night again. But Antoine had found a 
 way. Monsieur, he thought, could be got up with help. 
 There was also a path beyond which would bring them 
 near to Marcelin's cabane. He knew the way. 
 
 It was a long one and difficult, and Monsieur Carmel's 
 full weight fell on their locked arms the last few hun 
 dred battling yards. He had done his utmost, stumbling 
 along with his teeth still clenched, blinded by the drizzle 
 that stung against his eyes and froze there, buffeted by 
 the wind that struck out his breath, and stunned by the 
 roar in his hurt and bruised head. He could have cried 
 like a child with his dread of a falling branch hitting 
 the numb, broken arm. But at last he felt and knew 
 nothing more until he was in front of the great fire 
 place in Seailles' cabin. 
 
 The long life was not quite ended yet. At mid 
 night, though, it came to its close. The Cure was 
 beside the old man at the last struggling instant. He 
 shut down the lids over the pale, shrunk little eyes that 
 stared wide in horror of the storm which was waiting for
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 189 
 
 the soul that must go out upon it. It was the left hand 
 which had held the clutching, desperate fingers, that 
 closed the eyes, and laid the crucifix on the sunken 
 breast. The other hung from the belt sling, livid and 
 blue nailed. Even when it was all done the Cure would 
 have knelt for another prayer, but Antoine did not see 
 the necessity for it now. He had made a pile of skins 
 and blankets in front of the fire upon the floor and 
 forced Monsieur Carmel over to it. He worked over 
 the twisted arm, pulling it straight as best he could 
 with what skill he had learned about lumbering camps 
 and on the hunt. 
 
 And Marcelin's sister tottered around the rough- 
 board bed, and looked at the small, dirty parchment 
 face that seemed, in the candle-light, to work and 
 move. She touched it with the tips of her withered 
 fingers, drawing them away quickly each time, as 
 a child does with something of which it is more 
 than half afraid.. The mind that had never, at the 
 best, been able to take in other than very rudimentary 
 and simple things, was bewildered by all the events of 
 the night. She could not altogether understand that 
 Marcelin was dead. He had looked like that when he 
 slept, as far back as she could recall. For in her 
 memory now he was always withered and old. The 
 time, almost two score years gone by, when he had been 
 a hale old man, was forgotten, as much so as that one 
 infinitely far away when he had been the big boy who
 
 190 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 had permitted a baby sister to toddle after him, and had 
 told her sometimes great tales of how he should fight 
 the English before so very long. He had fought the 
 English, and, led back to submission by his own priests, 
 had resigned himself to the conqueror, and lived on 
 under him peaceably, advancing in no respect beyond 
 the status of the parents who had died in the cholera 
 of '34. And old Marie had not grasped it that he was 
 dead now, her companion of much more than the allot 
 ted lifetime of usefulness. She did not feel grieved 
 only puzzled, baffled, as an animal seems to when with 
 another that is cold and still. 
 
 She had not grasped, either, that the Cure was hurt. 
 She saw him lying there in the light of the fire against 
 the rough, dark furs Antoine on one side of him 
 working with the crooked arm, straightening it gradu 
 ally by sheer strength, Coppee on the other side, squat 
 ting on his heels, the whiskey flask ready, and his eyes 
 watching the gray face with more interest in, than 
 pity for, its signs of pain. Just once when she heard 
 a moaning sigh, she came nearer and watched, too. But 
 there was no expression whatever on her features, and 
 presently she turned away and went back to move 
 stupidly around Marcelin's bed again. 
 
 The men by the fireplace paid no attention to her. 
 To Coppee his ancient relative was a troublesome old 
 crone. And as for Antoine, his charity was a good 
 deal that of the wild animal, to let the disabled go
 
 ANNE CARMEL 191 
 
 under. Both were far too much concerned with the 
 matter in hand to trouble about Marie. The Cure had 
 endured in rigid silence, then he had lost conscious 
 ness again, and for all their efforts he was not to be 
 revived.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE effects of the fall were worse than the badly 
 broken arm, so much worse that they were quite 
 beyond the very inadequate experience and compre 
 hension of the doctor who came from the neighboring 
 parish. Not that he said so to Madame Carmel. No 
 amount of risk to a patient would have induced him 
 to depreciate his own worth. But when the Cure 
 could not be roused for days and lay in the same 
 stupor, he advised that the worst was to be made 
 ready for. " You may pray for his recovery, certainly, 
 since all things are possible to medicine and God," 
 he said, "yet you should also pray for his happy 
 death." 
 
 Madame not only prayed, but vowed various candles, 
 ranging in weight from a few ounces to a pound, 
 to be burned in honor of the Virgin. And the result 
 was apparent. Jean Carmel had come near to dying, 
 but he lived, to the doctor's proud satisfaction. 
 Through half of February, though, he could not be 
 moved from Marcelin's cabin. The place was almost 
 inaccessible at times, when the snowstorms were 
 
 192
 
 ANNE CARMEL 193 
 
 especially heavy. Anne or his mother was always 
 with him. Marie had been sent away temporarily 
 to the Labiscaye cottage. Once or twice Therese 
 brought currant wine and a sumach remedy of home 
 manufacture, for colds. No one at the cabin had a 
 cold, but the expression of good-will remained the 
 same. Antoine never went beyond the clearing, unless 
 it were to the village for supplies. Of these there had 
 been almost none on hand, save the pork and dried peas 
 necessary for soup, some inferior flour, and a good store 
 of acorns. 
 
 The cabin, though it had only one room and a lean-to, 
 was piled high with earth outside for warmth, and it 
 was fairly comfortable after Anne had cleaned it from 
 ceiling to floor, disposing of cobwebs and insects and 
 the accumulated filth of years. Investigation of the 
 iron kettle on the hook in the fireplace disclosed the 
 residue of what seemed to be the pea soup of a gener 
 ation. Anne brought ashes and fire to her aid in puri 
 fying it, and from then on no one fared badly in the 
 matter of food. 
 
 In due course Monsieur Carmel was able to be taken 
 back to St. Hilaire, dragged on a low, wooden sledge 
 by Antoine, and followed by the doctor and Anne. 
 The snow was not heavy, even in the woods, and it 
 was coated over with a hard frost that made it ring 
 under the runners and footfalls. 
 
 Antoine had waited to be certain that he was of no
 
 194 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 further use, then he disappeared without word or 
 warning. 
 
 Madame Carmel's character was of those that 
 rise to great emergencies and fail signally at lesser 
 ones, much as certain machines are calculated to lift 
 large bodies with ease, but cannot so much as close 
 on something small. She had met her responsibilities 
 admirably during Jean's illness. Directly they were 
 at an end she gave way. Anne took care of her, and 
 was glad of the work. It gave her, for one thing, 
 an excuse to discourage Paul Tetrault from being con 
 tinually at the presbytere. He complained of it. As 
 he saw it, it was precisely when she was in need or 
 trouble that his place was near her, to be her support. 
 He waxed pathetic over it. Anne kept down her 
 irritation, but the absurdity of looking to him for sup 
 port was not to be resisted. She smiled and he did not 
 understand it. He was hurt. 
 
 The priest from the next parish came several times 
 on visits, and improved a golden opportunity to give 
 the sister of his friend the good counsels of which he 
 was evidently convinced she stood in need. He was 
 of the universal opinion that Monsieur Carmel was too 
 infatuated with his sister to rebuke or guide her suc 
 cessfully. One did not, surely, defer to and consult 
 and treat as if she were superior to most of her kind, 
 a woman who had followed Anne Carmel's course of 
 action. One was charitable to her, to be sure; one
 
 ANNE CARMEL 196 
 
 showed sympathy, but one expected her to repent of 
 her sins and keep them ever before her. He was a 
 kindly disposed old man, and Anne accepted his well- 
 meant sermons without other protest than a mental one 
 against his untidy appearance much as she had 
 thought about Paul Tetrault's thick hands when he 
 had been trying to make her see that she was taking 
 the way to ruin. 
 
 Her humility, however, encouraged the priest to 
 believe that he had done her good. And he was anxious 
 to be of service to her. He could not help liking her. 
 He liked her, and he was sorry for her. Whatever 
 the way her feet had trod in the past, he was sure that 
 in the present it was not a soft one. She was colorless 
 and thin. He could realize it the better that he only 
 saw her at intervals ; but even her brother had noticed 
 it, and it struck him with especial force one afternoon 
 when she came bringing her sewing to sit beside him 
 where he was reading by the window. He might read 
 to her, she suggested. He began obediently at the 
 page which was open. It was a Latin Horace, and her 
 knowledge of Latin was confined to some few phrases 
 of the mass. She took the book from him and sub 
 stituted another. He accepted it with entire docility. 
 
 She sat sewing and listening to his deep, pulpit- 
 trained voice, keeping her thoughts to it, by an effort 
 of will, for a while. Then they drifted gradually off. 
 She was back in the garden, in the warm, thick dark-
 
 196 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 ness of a September night, under the low-branched 
 maples by the gate. She was feeling Harnett close 
 to her, moving irresistibly nearer, touching her hair 
 with his lips, and then her forehead, and then her 
 own lips, holding her to him through a long silence, 
 his face against hers. Her fingers trembled and were 
 useless; her sight blurred. She put her hand to her 
 throat with a gasp for the breath that seemed going 
 from her in a vacuum of hopelessness. Jean looked 
 up from the book quickly. The last line he had 
 read was in her ear, and she repeated it mechanically. 
 " Yes," she said, " I heard you." He went on 
 reading. 
 
 In his inaction he had now and then amused himself by 
 making left-handed drawings of her at her work about 
 the house. They were awkward and wavering, but he 
 had something of a facility for caricature, and the like 
 ness was unmistakable. He was encouraged to at 
 tempt a laborious slantwise note to Cecily Thorne. 
 Since December she had not written to him. " She is 
 tired of keeping up a correspondence with an unso 
 phisticated country priest," he spoke of it to Anne. 
 "Nevertheless she shall at least have pity upon me 
 while I am disabled. Charity requires it." He wrote. 
 And on an impulse, he slipped into the letter a little 
 silver crucifix worn almost to the thinness of paper. It 
 was one which had belonged long since to a mother 
 superior of the Gray Nuns of Montreal, and had been
 
 ANNE CABMEL 197 
 
 
 
 sent to her by the Holy Father from Rome. The im 
 pulse was one that he took the trouble to explain to 
 himself on the grounds that he was indebted to her for 
 a number of things ranging from her picture to books 
 and a package of rare poppy seeds. He found the ex 
 planation satisfactory. 
 
 "I gave an account of my sufferings calculated to 
 melt a heart of stone," he told his mother. It had 
 been a passing mention, as a reason for the hand 
 writing, that he had broken his arm. 
 
 The desired effect was obtained. Cecily Thome 
 wrote. Having read the letter, Jean Carmel reported 
 that Thome and his son were to return to the neigh 
 borhood in the summer. Thorne had further observa 
 tions to make in the surrounding countiy, and the 
 village had pleased him. 
 
 It was not the Cure himself who brought about the 
 suggestion that Miss Thome should be asked to come 
 with them. It was Anne. There came to him on 
 the instant the possibility of a way to perhaps put 
 a stop to the marriage with Paul Tetrault. If Anne 
 could be made to see the little habitant beau through 
 the eyes of a woman from the outer world, whatever 
 inexplicable, exalted, false-romantic notions were in 
 her head now might be got rid of. "You will be 
 married," he objected. Anne was by no means cer 
 tain as to that, and said so. She was not pressing the 
 time of the wedding.
 
 198 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 * 
 
 If she would agree, he offered, that she would not 
 be married, he would ask Miss Thorne to come. 
 Anne's eyes flashed to her mother's with a quick 
 warning. She had caught a look of disapprobation 
 coming over madame's face, and seen the beginning 
 of a remonstrance. Madame Carmel followed the 
 promptings of submission to a dominant will before 
 she had time to think. The negative which had been 
 on her tongue turned to a coerced consent. And 
 the first time Jean Carmel used his right hand 
 again, it was to write to Cecily Thorne. She could 
 be of service, possibly, he told her, in keeping from 
 a false step a girl who had been near to making one 
 already, and now, in her mistaken estimate of many 
 things, was determined to make another hardly less 
 serious. He read it over. The reason was sufficient 
 and excellent. It satisfied him. 
 
 It was well into May that the answer arrived, when 
 the late spring was brought in on a southeast storm 
 which melted the last ice in the creeks and rivers and 
 lakes. Cecily would come at midsummer. 
 
 Before that time there was more than one change 
 at the presbytSre. 
 
 On Corpus Christi Day Yvonne Armaille walked in 
 the procession from altar to altar, a bunchy little 
 white figure among a score of other small maidens, 
 uncomfortably happy in their robes de fete, and not a 
 little cold by reason of a chilling spring wind. From
 
 ANNE CARMEL 199 
 
 the church she was hurried back by Madame Gerard 
 to her own house to say good-by to the great-grand 
 mother. Madame Gerard was weeping, and the people 
 on the street said " Pauvre p'tite " as she passed, so 
 Yvonne snivelled too, and rubbed her button of a nose 
 shiny red. The little old woman sat in her arm 
 chair to the last. She bequeathed the care of the 
 child to Monsieur Carmel, the only living being in 
 whom she had faith. " Don't let your sister have the 
 training of her, though," she added in her toothless, 
 hissing voice, with senile spite. 
 
 From that day Yvonne, heavily in black, went to 
 live with the Cure*. She was wretched in the new im 
 portance thrust upon her, making her the centre of 
 observation. She was an orphan, and heir to the 
 great-grandmother's land, cottage, and savings, and 
 she was easily the most prominent personage in the 
 parish. Yet she would have foregone the elegant 
 weight and stuffiness of her sable frocks, and all 
 claim to her wealth, to have attracted less attention 
 and sympathy. 
 
 So the presbytere acquired a new inmate. And 
 within a month it lost another. 
 
 The doctor had been of opinion, from the first time he 
 had been consulted, that Madame Carmel's trouble was 
 of the heart. He considered that diagnosis, and the suc 
 cessful outcome of his treatment of the Cur6 on the 
 occasion of the accident at the RiviSre aux Trembles, as
 
 200 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 the two feathers in his professional cap. Madame fell 
 back on her bed as she rose, one morning, and that 
 night she died. There had been no time to send 
 farther for another doctor. And for that matter there 
 had been no money. The parish of St. Hilaire was 
 barely able to raise the necessary four hundred a year 
 to pay its priest. And Jean Carmel was a poor man. 
 It was the first time that he had been actually made to 
 feel it. 
 
 He sat beside his mother's bed for three hours. The 
 chair was stiff and upright, but he had not moved. 
 She was either asleep or bearing pain with her eyes 
 closed, and he did not want to disturb her. The 
 corners of her mouth were drawn down, there was a 
 frowning line deep between her brows, and her face 
 was leaden against the pillow. Anne was in another 
 room with the doctor and the much-subdued Yvonne. 
 Once she came and opened the door noiselessly. 
 He turned his head and motioned her away. Then 
 he resumed his waiting, and watched the rain, fall 
 ing in straight slanting lines from the sombre sky, 
 frothing down the rough fork of a tree just outside the 
 window. 
 
 He believed that his mother had something to say to 
 him. Until she had closed her eyes she had followed 
 him with them, and there had been the expression on 
 her face of one who is upon the very point of speaking, 
 but cannot make the determination. There was the
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 201 
 
 same look when she stirred at last. She had not been 
 asleep, she said. He knew by the twitching of her 
 mouth and the clenching of her teeth that she was in 
 pain. He would have gone for the doctor, but she put 
 out her thin hand, cracked, and bent at the ringer tips 
 like that of a much older woman. She laid it on his, 
 and it was cold. " Wait," she said, between the tight 
 teeth. He obeyed, and when the paroxysm had gone 
 off she drew him nearer and spoke to him. He must 
 not let Cecily Thome come back to St. Hilaire. Her 
 black eyes, a little wild and glassy now, were fixed on 
 his compellingly. It was the first intimation of her dis 
 approval that he had had. He was too much a man 
 to have possessed Anne's comprehension of the unex 
 pressed. He was not intuitive. 
 
 " She is a woman," she said, " the sort of woman that 
 you could love. If she is near you, you will love her. 
 You are ready for it now. And . because you are a 
 priest," she stopped and fought for breath, her face dis 
 torted and fierce with the strain " because you are a 
 priest, it will mean one of three things: unhappiness, 
 or disgrace or sin." 
 
 He took his hand from hers quickly. Then he forced 
 himself to put it back again. After all, she was dying. 
 A physical ordeal would have been easier for him than 
 to have talked of it to her, but he overcame the repug 
 nance. It was to no purpose that he tried to show her 
 the impossibility of the thing, and even as he did his
 
 202 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 best to make her see it, it became less and less evident 
 to himself. There are many faiths and convictions that 
 vanish when we bring them out into the air of contro 
 versy and argument, like the genii of the fairy tales 
 that, once freed from the bottle, melted away into 
 nothing. 
 
 In the end he promised what she wished him to. It 
 was a small matter to him whether or not the girl 
 should come again. And it was a vital one to his 
 mother. 
 
 There was another nearly as vital, it seemed, that 
 Anne should be married as soon as possible now. To 
 that he would not give his promise. He held his ground 
 firmly, for all his gentleness. The marriage was a bad 
 one from every point of view, except, perhaps, that of 
 retrieving her name in the parish. That the man had 
 money, as it was counted here, was of no importance. 
 Anne did not love him, she clearly could not and never 
 would. " She cannot help realizing that she is too 
 good for him," he said. 
 
 " Too good ! " she answered impatiently. 
 
 "Yes," he kept to it, "much too good." 
 
 " No," said his mother, with her bitterness no longer 
 pent up, "it is because she loves the other one still." 
 He raised his brows. As to that, he did not know. 
 But the fact that in the bottom of her heart Anne 
 despised Tetrault, remained. And all the influence 
 which he felt one could be justified in using to change
 
 ANNE CARMEL 203 
 
 the course of another's life, he would use to prevent 
 the marriage. 
 
 She closed the hollow, tragedy-fraught eyes again, 
 and he watched her trying for breath. The struggle 
 went on for hours. Once there was a cessation, and 
 she motioned for Anne and the doctor to go out of the 
 room. She held to her son's hand. Would he not do 
 as she wished? "It is the last thing I shall ever ask 
 of you, remember," she was ungenerous enough to plead. 
 He hesitated. His mouth pressed into a straight line 
 as he nerved himself. " I cannot," he said. 
 
 He met full her look of hard reproach. It was the 
 last she gave him. 
 
 At sunset he and Anne knelt together beside the bed. 
 He rose from his knees and laid his hand on the bowed 
 head. They went over to the window and stood there, 
 looking off to where the leaves of some distant elms 
 were stirring in the evening wind, high against the 
 bright pink and violet of the cleared evening sky. 
 "There are only two of us now, P'tite Chose," he 
 said. 
 
 It was almost a week later that the postmistress gave 
 two letters to Monsieur Carmel. One was for himself, 
 the other for Anne. Anne's mail was sent to the pres- 
 byte~re now, with the rest. He opened his own enve 
 lope. Cecily Thorne wrote that she was already on her 
 way to St. Hilaire, by slow stages, walking much of the
 
 204 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 way and camping frequently. He calculated the dates. 
 And he knew that she could not have received the let 
 ter he had written in fulfilment of the promise to his 
 mother. She had not received it in time, and would 
 not. She was to be at the village within four days. 
 It could not be helped now. He had done his part, 
 but the matter was taken out of his hands. 
 
 Anne had gone into the churchyard and was plant 
 ing flowers on the new grave. The gate under the 
 high stone arch was open, and the rank grass and 
 violets were too thick for his footfalls to be heard. 
 She had finished the work and was standing, looking 
 down. Her black gown had been opened at the neck 
 to make the bending easier, and the sleeves were rolled 
 back above the elbow. She had the strong throat and 
 long arms of Rossetti's women, he thought. She car 
 ried an old stone jug in one hand, and a rusty case- 
 knife in the other. There were earth stains to her 
 wrists. She did not see him coming and was off her 
 guard. The lines that the past two years had put 
 on her face were startling. He had not noticed them 
 until now. They brought out a likeness to her mother, 
 and as a rule there was no resemblance. He could not 
 help knowing that it was a better face than Madame 
 Carmel's had been. The trait in the latter which had 
 made it possible for her to leave him, as a lifelong 
 memory, that her last look had been one of unmerited 
 reproach, was not in Anne.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 205 
 
 She raised her head as he stopped beside her. He 
 held out the letter. The address was uppermost. She 
 glanced down at it indifferently. He saw the change 
 that came over her, and he put out his hand instinc 
 tively. But there was no need for it. She turned with 
 forced deliberation and set down the stone jug. Then 
 she took the letter. Her hand was shaking. She 
 raised her heavy lids slowly and met his look. And 
 she answered the question he would not ask. " Yes," 
 she said, "it is from him." She left him beside the 
 mound and went out through the archway. He heard 
 the side gate of the presbyte*re garden close behind 
 her.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 YVONNE was under the apple tree on the grass when 
 Jean Carmel came out upon the porch of the pres- 
 bytdre. There was a boy with her. It was Etienne, 
 youngest son of Coppe'e, the violin virtuoso of the 
 town. Etienne's devotion to Yvonne was a matter of 
 six weeks' standing now. He spent his days at the 
 presbytere, and his evenings, if he was allowed to. 
 He was her first sweetheart, and, perhaps, the Cure* 
 thought, as he watched the two heads just visible 
 above the brilliant poppy bed, perhaps the only one 
 she would ever have to whom the dowry the fact 
 that she was heiress to what was estimated as high 
 as several thousand dollars was not of the least 
 consequence. He was disinterested. It was a case 
 of lion in love. Etienne's ambition in life hitherto 
 had been to join in the games of the bigger boys, the 
 which were not numerous nor skilful. He had left 
 all that now, forsaken it completely. He played 
 house, and even dolls, and found it rather enjoyable 
 on the whole. The small human male's scorn of dolls 
 is pretty generally an affectation, one of his first con- 
 
 206
 
 ANNE CARMEL 207 
 
 ventional lies, and when the feminine portion of the 
 nursery is not observing, he not infrequently is to be 
 caught watching her mothering with longing eyes. 
 
 Yvonne's knowledge of the accepted establishment, 
 husband, wife, and children, was limited. Her bash- 
 fulness had kept her out of the neighbors' houses for 
 the most part. So Etienne had to teach her. At 
 first it had resulted in difficulties of a common enough 
 domestic nature. As Etienne had observed the work 
 ing out of things, the husband gave orders and the 
 wife, though she might indeed protest, obeyed. In 
 Yvonne's experience it had been precisely the other 
 way. Her great-grandmother had dominated the men 
 about the place. And in the presbytSre there was never 
 any question of authority one way or another. Mon 
 sieur le Cure* and Mademoiselle Anne always wanted 
 the same thing. If you asked permission of made 
 moiselle and it was granted, you can be sure that 
 monsieur would not object and revoke it. And it 
 was also the other way round. 
 
 So Yvonne was not prepared by example to accept 
 the condition of things which Etienne assured her was 
 the only possible one. The reason why her verdict and 
 opinion were not in every way of as much worth as his 
 could not be made clear to her. And she had the firm 
 ness of a stolid nature. Her bashfulness argued no 
 humility or poor opinion of herself whatever. And, 
 besides, she was not bashful with Etienne. Her attitude
 
 208 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 toward him had been, from the first, that of one who 
 deigns to accept homage. That had been natural and 
 proper, of course, until it had come to playing house. 
 Then Etienne had explained that the positions were 
 necessarily reversed. The which Yvonne had so densely 
 refused to see that he had perforce given up the exposi 
 tion in sheer weariness. The housekeeping was now 
 run on the only basis that the young heiress found satis 
 factory. She was the mistress, and Etienne did as she 
 wished and provided for her and his family of two dolls 
 and the collie. Pilote gave the arrangement her sanc 
 tion, but she had too much to do, keeping track of 
 Monsieur Carmel, to play with children. 
 
 The Cure" and Anne had derived no little amuse 
 ment from watching developments. And Anne had 
 rejoiced in the victory of her own sex in a way that 
 caused the much-perplexed Paul uneasiness. Jean 
 Carmel had watched the young husband's mild submis 
 sion, and acceptance of the secondary place. " That," 
 he opined, running his fingers through his hair in 
 serious contemplation of the little human comedy, 
 "that is what we escape when we retreat in time. 
 The only way for us to retain our pleasing belief in 
 the inherent superiority of the male is to enter a mon 
 astery or the priesthood, and never put it to the test." 
 
 The miniature household had run with truly admi 
 rable smoothness, for Yvonne's stubbornness was of 
 the invincibly amiable sort. The two played in peace,
 
 ANNE OARMEL 209 
 
 uninterrupted by squabbles. They were doing so now 
 as Monsieur Carmel stood on the steps and watched 
 them. Then he went over in their direction. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Thome is coming this afternoon," he 
 said. Yvonne sat still and looked up at him, her 
 round, deep red mouth, partly open, and an expression 
 of attention in her black eyes. Etienne paid no heed 
 whatever. He was making the bed for the oldest doll. 
 " You have heard my sister and me speaking of 
 Mademoiselle Thorne," he reminded. The healthy 
 countenance was still quite blank. If she had heard, 
 it was evident that she had not marked. " You re 
 member," he insisted, "the demoiselle who was here 
 last summer when your dog had the broken paw." 
 Still only the attentive black eyes and the half-open 
 crimson mouth. "She had hair like the color of the 
 wheat in late August," he tried it; but though such 
 hair was surely sufficiently different from anything she 
 had ever been accustomed to seeing in St. Hilaire, no 
 picture was called to her mind. She knew the color 
 of wheat in August, but she did not know Cecily 
 Thorne. Either she had been too frightened to re 
 ceive any impression or there had been one of those 
 curious blanks of memory that are common to child 
 hood's extraordinary serene self -absorption. She had 
 no recollection of any such person as Monsieur le Cure 
 tried to describe, and she shook her round head. 
 " Well, at any rate," he abandoned it, " we are to
 
 210 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 have a visitor to-day. Shall we go and gather some 
 flowers for her ? " This was intelligible. The two of 
 them scrambled to their feet at once, and the collie 
 stood ready wagging its tail expectantly. Etienne aban 
 doned the bed-making and the larger doll. Yvonne, 
 more mindful of parental responsibilities, carried the 
 other by its battered head, while its two legs and one 
 arm jerked about. They set off to where there was a 
 meadow full of marguerites. 
 
 The children walked around in the flowers to their 
 waists, bending and picking until their hands were 
 crowded, then making their way over to Monsieur 
 Carmel, where he sat reading in the shade of a willow. 
 The afternoon was hot, and the beaver hat had been 
 laid aside as usual. Yvonne's doll lay limply across 
 it. He gathered the flowers into a man's stiff, un 
 compromising bunches and tied them with the stems, 
 taking his time about it. He had no means of knowing 
 when the Thornes would reach the village, though as 
 the probable moment had come nearer he had given 
 way to an ignominious impulse to put off the meet 
 ing. So he had left the house and called the 
 children into service. In the alchemy of the mind 
 there is sometimes needed only the one dropped 
 word to declare the character of a theretofore doubtful 
 sentiment. And Madame Carmel's warning had 
 effected it for him. He did not love Cecily Thorne, 
 so much he was certain of ; but he was ready to. It
 
 ANNE CARMEL 211 
 
 would have been a relief to have heard that she was 
 not coming after all yet the relief that lies in 
 having the unattainable removed from one's sight 
 a dreary one at best. 
 
 Before long he noticed that the children had 
 stopped work and were standing still, looking toward 
 the road. He turned his head and looked too. Half 
 way across the stretch of daisies he saw two women 
 coming. The quivering yellow sunshine was in his 
 eyes, and for an instant he had only the impression 
 that one was all dark, the other all light. Then he 
 knew that they were Anne and Cecily Thorne. They 
 would have served for figures of Tragedy and Poetry, 
 Anne with her head straight, and that hint of the 
 defensive which had become a habit now, her gown 
 black against the waving stretch of flowers, Cecily 
 with the forward bend of her laden uncovered head, 
 and the pale tan of her dress taking light from the 
 July sun. It had been always in light that he had had 
 his impressions of her as she had come into the ray 
 that had pierced down among the trees into the high 
 road; as she had waited in the doorway of the 
 presbytSre, meeting Anne's repellent look from out 
 the shadow; as she had stood under the shadow 
 of the new-budding oak in the midst of the riverside 
 meadow; as he had seen her going along the street 
 of the village, out of his world, back to hers and 
 now, in this glare of bright white and gold. He
 
 212 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 glanced at the children. Etienne had tried to drag 
 Yvonne forward to do her duty, but she was seized 
 with another stroke of bashfulness. He still held her 
 by one of the fat, green-stained hands and was doing 
 his best to pull her up from where she had plumped 
 down upon the ground in her dismay, her face round, 
 wooden, and red, submerged in the marguerites. 
 
 Jean Carmel strode over to her and flung her aloft 
 upon his shoulders. Etienne went by his side, and so, 
 reenforced, he ploughed his way over to Anne and 
 Cecily through the knee-high field of flowers.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE cabin which had once been Marcelin Seailles' 
 was deserted now. Old Marie was living with Coppee. 
 As a partial offset to the cost of the useless addition to 
 an already fair-sized family, Coppee had possessed him 
 self of all in the place from the iron pot and hook in 
 the hearth to the rough board bed with its high sides, 
 and the square wooden seats. The room was empty of 
 everything, but a short, thick log set on end, which 
 had served as a stool, and a bench of an old axe- 
 smoothed board nailed against the wall. 
 
 Harnett stood and looked around. There was the 
 chill mustiness of all abandoned rooms, although it 
 was a hot summer midmorning. He had shut the 
 clumsy door behind him, and the one window was 
 small, grime-covered, and cobwebbed, so that it let 
 in little light. He walked over to it. The sill was thick 
 with brittle dead flies and mosquitoes. He was a man 
 to be influenced by his surroundings. And these were 
 depressing. So was the long waiting. A squirrel came 
 out into the weed-grown clearing in front of the cabin 
 and ran back and forth, or sat up suddenly, quivering 
 
 213
 
 214 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 its nose as it scented humanity. He watched it. After 
 a time he went to the bench against the wall and sat 
 there, bending forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands 
 hanging. In the silence he could hear the blood sing 
 ing in his own ears. 
 
 When almost an hour had gone by, he got up and 
 went back to the window. Even the squirrel was not 
 in sight now. There was nothing but the clearing, 
 fast being eaten up by the encroaching forest again, 
 since even this soon two or three young red-maple 
 shoots had a good start beyond the dense green of 
 the trees a few yards away, Nature vanquishing 
 man, as always, patiently, quietly denying his con 
 ceited claim to dominion over all the earth and over 
 "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth"; 
 persistent, as slow as the moving of her glaciers which 
 had ground smooth the surface of that rock at the edge 
 of the open as irresistible. Where was the use of 
 attempting to evade her? You yourself might succeed 
 for the very reason that you were so grotesquely short 
 lived, the mere individual of whom she in her concern 
 of the species made small account. Yet her principles 
 would be quite unchanged and unaffected. You cleared 
 your patch in the forest. When you had yourself 
 gone the way of the leaves of the year before, the 
 forest would return. You defeated your love. But 
 the instinct would have its way with the race. And to 
 what purpose would have been the desperate wretched
 
 ANNE CARMBL 215 
 
 struggle of an atom of humanity driven by a figment 
 of its own brain to opposing a cosmic force ? " A wave 
 of the great waves of Destiny, convulsed at a checked 
 impulse of the heart " yet why check it when all the 
 others would come rolling and surging on precisely 
 the same? 
 
 The branches and foliage were not stirring in the 
 warm morning, though there was sometimes a flicker of 
 wings back among them. If there were a sound in the 
 woods, it did not come into the cabin. The traces of 
 where two paths emerged into the clearing were still 
 fairly plain, though the undergrowth and higher boughs 
 were filling them up. Before long he knew that some 
 thing dark was moving along one. He drew back out 
 of sight and thought hurriedly of what his best course 
 would be in the event of any one trying to get in. 
 
 Anne came into the open space, gave a quick look 
 around, and at the window, then pushed open the door, 
 shut it again, and faced him. 
 
 Half the width of the cabin was between them, and 
 she was in the shadow. Neither of them spoke. He 
 was the first to move. He went toward her with both his 
 hands held out. She drew back, and he stopped, drop 
 ping his arms at his sides. "Very well," he said 
 coldly. "You are probably right. I thought," he 
 added, "that you had decided not to come." 
 
 "I wrote you that I would," she told him. "It was 
 not easy to get away. I had to wait my chance, and I
 
 216 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 was delayed. I must be back before noon. And now 
 that I am here what is it you want ? " 
 
 He turned away and walked to the farther corner. 
 "I don't know," he answered, "unless it is you." 
 Their eyes met again. He saw in hers the unhappiness 
 he had put there ; and she saw in his one of which she 
 had no knowledge, yet against which she could tell that 
 he was in rebellion. 
 
 " You have been a long time deciding that," she said. 
 She was not bitter, hardly even reproachful. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " I have been a long time. 
 Why," he asked her abruptly, "why did you stop 
 writing to me ? " 
 
 " Don't do that, please," she said quietly. " Don't try 
 to shift any of the responsibility on me. If you are 
 not going to be honest with yourself, with us both, 
 I may as well go back now. You know why I did not 
 write." 
 
 " At least," he insisted, " you might have let me 
 know that you had done with me. You might have 
 given me the chance to defend myself, Anne." 
 
 " I might have complained ? " She shook her head. 
 "My love was too good to beg even you to keep it." 
 
 " But I imagined all manner of things and, God 
 knows, I had enough to worry me without that. I 
 thought perhaps your letters or mine were miscarrying 
 or that you had stopped caring for me." 
 
 " You didn't really think that," she corrected him,
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 217 
 
 confidently. " You were only willing to let yourself try 
 to." 
 
 She crossed over to the log and sat on it, in front of 
 the black and empty fireplace. " It is very curious how 
 one can lie to oneself," she said reflectively. It was 
 hardly an original bit of philosophizing, but the per 
 sonal tone struck him. 
 
 " Have you done it ? " he questioned. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. 
 
 " As to what ? " he wanted to know. 
 
 " As to my doing well enough by marrying a man I 
 detest." 
 
 He started. " You are not married Anne ? " 
 
 "No," she told him ; " I am to be." 
 
 His face darkened. " To whom ? " 
 
 "To Paul Tetrault." 
 
 He burst out with an unpleasant laugh. Then he 
 checked himself. " Are you going to give yourself 
 to that pink and white, frizzed petit maitre of a 
 habitant parish? Is he going to have the right to 
 call your fine soul and beautiful body his ? Is he to 
 have those long firm hands of yours for his property, 
 and to bury his own thick, ring-covered, peasant ones 
 in all that mass of brown hair of yours ? Good God, 
 Anne I you might better have come to me on any 
 terms. It would have been less indecent, less disgust 
 ing much less wrong." 
 
 " I was ready to," she reminded him.
 
 218 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 He went over to the bench and put one foot upon it, 
 leaning on his raised knee. "Are you ready to now ? " 
 he asked deliberately, watching her closely. 
 
 " Is that what you came for ? " she said. 
 
 " I don't know," he repeated, frowning uncertainly. 
 He seemed to be thinking, and she sat waiting im 
 movably. " You remember," he began, " the first time 
 I met you the evening when I came upon you among 
 these birches by the river and afterwards when you 
 walked down the path through the garden and the 
 deep red dahlias ? You remember that I went away 
 the next day ? I had no notion then of returning. I 
 hadn't thought about you at all, except as an uncom 
 monly handsome girl, and not at all the sort I had found 
 in other small parishes. Then, the first thing I knew, 
 I was back at St. Hilaire, and over at the village on 
 a trivial excuse. I hadn't intended going there. 
 But I went as irresistibly as a man who is lost in a 
 blizzard walks in a circle. And that is about how 
 I've done it this time. Only this time I knew I 
 wanted to see you, and then I didn't. 
 
 " Wanted to see you ! " He stood straight suddenly. 
 " You can't think how I've wanted it. Some men will 
 drink when they hate themselves for it, could almost 
 kill themselves to escape it and do very often 
 when they know it is their ruin. And even that is as 
 nothing to this." He waited a minute, then went back 
 to his position with one foot on the bench.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 219 
 
 " I was told that I had to come over here on business," 
 he went on, holding himself down to quiet. " It was my 
 uncle who sent me. I objected oh, yes ! I objected, 
 but just short of enough to make him send some one 
 else. He would have done it if I'd showed him I was in 
 real earnest. The trouble was I was mightily afraid 
 he would. Otherwise I should have told him why it 
 was best for me not to be in this part of the world, and 
 he'd have been only too quick to save me. I question 
 if we ever mean from the bottom of our hearts, ' lead us 
 not into temptation.' I didn't, at any rate. If any one 
 had tried to lead me off from it, I'd probably have 
 broken away and worked up a fiction for my own 
 satisfaction to the effect that avoiding a danger was un 
 worthy." His lip raised in disdain of himself. "How 
 ever, I said I'd rather not come over ; and at the first 
 indication of his taking me at my word, I had my traps 
 ready inside of two hours. He commended my willing 
 ness and alacrity. And it never entered his politics- 
 filled mind that it might have anything to do with the 
 woman he'd refused his consent to having me marry." 
 
 " Then " Anne began and stopped. 
 
 He raised his head and looked at her. " You mean did 
 I ever ask the permission ? Yes ; I asked it. And I got 
 the answer I fully expected, of course. When I stuck to it 
 rather doggedly he was so good as to tell me that I was 
 of age and could follow my own picturesque fancy if I 
 chose to, and that if I were determined to he would give
 
 220 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 me for wedding present the cash I had in my pocket, 
 which was ten pounds just then, and the clothes I had 
 in my wardrobe." His fingers played an angry tattoo 
 on the wall, and he gave a sneering laugh. " But I 
 began to tell you how I came here. When I was on the 
 steamer I made all manner of solemn vows that I would 
 attend to my business in the cities and then go down to 
 the States direct. Part of my errand takes me there, 
 too. I knew all the while that I wouldn't do anything 
 of the sort. When I finished the business and I 
 dragged it out unconscionably in the daytime by every 
 ingenious device, although I lay awake at night thrash 
 ing around in my impatience to have done with it 
 when I finished the business, I went posting down to buy 
 my ticket for the States. I didn't buy it. I asked some 
 questions and said I would be back. Then I went to 
 the hotel and wrote to you. I waited until you answered, 
 but I'd have come here whether you had or not. I 
 almost made up my mind not to lose the time, as it was. 
 I did some more convincing myself that I only wanted 
 to see how you were and try to set myself a little right 
 with you and explain things if you despised me or if 
 you didn't despise me, to try and show you that you 
 ought to." He began to walk back and forth across the 
 boards, his hands in his pockets and his head down. 
 Anne was not watching him. She was looking into 
 the blackened fireplace. 
 
 " I assured myself I had only the most indifferently
 
 ANNE CARMEL 221 
 
 friendly feeling for you, such as any man would be 
 likely to have for a girl who had once been a great 
 deal to him and who had loved him. I simply wanted 
 to smooth things out and show my good inclinations. 
 I didn't want to leave you with any bitterness or re 
 grets. And I owed you some sort of explanation of 
 a good many things. Yes as you say, it is extraordi 
 nary how you can lie to yourself and believe it, though 
 it may all be so specious and flimsy that if you were to 
 tell any one else, he'd laugh in your face." 
 
 He came in front of her and stopped. " Look up at 
 me," he commanded, and laid his hand on her shoulder 
 heavily. " Do you still care for me, Anne ? " 
 
 In the silence that followed, the whistling of a bird 
 in the forest came faintly in to them. He caught her 
 two hands from her lap and held them to his face and 
 lips. Then he dropped them roughly and went away 
 to the window. In one of those blanks of respite that 
 come to the mind's pain, as well as to the body's, he 
 noticed the dead flies and mosquitoes again, and felt 
 the dreariness of the spot. He took a burnt match 
 which lay on the sill and traced a spiral in the caked 
 dust of the panes. 
 
 He threw the match away and faced around. 
 
 " Anne I am married," he said. 
 
 He watched a twitching, meaningless smile come 
 over her mouth. Her whole face contracted once, 
 and was quiet. He had been close, at one time, to
 
 222 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 a man who had been shot cleanly through the heart. 
 And the man had done just that. 
 
 There was another long silence. He stood by her 
 and put his hand on her head. She did not move. 
 " Shall I go away now ? " he asked. " Or will you let 
 me tell you let me set myself right the little I can ? " 
 He took it for consent that she did not answer. He 
 bent over and looked into her face. She was not cry 
 ing. There were no tears in the wide gray eyes. They 
 did not seem to see him. " Anne ! " he spoke uneasily. 
 
 " Yes, tell me," she said. " It doesn't matter." 
 
 He put his arm around her and she was passive. 
 " Have I broken your heart, dear ? " he said. There 
 was the twitching, blank half -smile again, but the eyes 
 were as without expression as if she had been blind. 
 
 " I thought it was broken a long while ago," she told 
 him. " But I must have had some hope without quite 
 realizing it a very little." 
 
 " And now you have none ? " he said, with a faint 
 note of dissatisfaction. 
 
 " How could I have ? " she asked monotonously. 
 
 He left her and crossed again to the board against 
 the wall, sitting on it, and clasping his hands about his 
 knees. " Do you recall that I told you once when we 
 were talking over our future that it was planned for 
 me to marry some one, with the choosing of whom I had 
 had nothing whatever to do ? " 
 
 She nodded mechanically.
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 223 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I tried to make you understand 
 that the thing is done now and then in England, 
 in all old countries. Your men and women here in the 
 New World won't put up with it ; and as one never has 
 to put up with anything when one won't, they don't 
 have to. Conditions are different here, too, and that 
 counts for a good deal, though perhaps it oughtn't to. 
 Circumstances aren't like the good old mediaeval tor 
 ture, which kept a man from just stretching out to his 
 full stature in any direction. There isn't the screw- 
 pressure of generations of tradition brought to bear on 
 him." He looked at her to see if she was understand 
 ing, but her face told nothing. 
 
 " Well," he went on, " from the time that I went to 
 my uncle's care, from the time I was half a dozen years 
 old, it was planned that I was to marry the girl. She 
 hadn't been out of swaddling clothes quite as long as I 
 had. There were all manner of reasons for our mar 
 riage, except only the entirely trivial one of our caring 
 for one another. And we were to have been joined 
 together when I should have been twenty-one and she 
 nineteen. It was an ideal arrangement. Only unfor 
 tunately we didn't fit in with the plans altogether. I 
 wasn't sure what her attitude was, and I didn't take 
 the trouble to find out. When the time appointed for 
 the engagement came around, I was absorbed in an 
 infatuation. I was twenty, and I was sure I had found 
 the only woman I could ever think about for a moment.
 
 224 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 She was nobody at all, so I was torn away from her 
 and sent a-travelling. Long before I got back I had 
 forgotten all about her, of course. But I wasn't any 
 more inclined to marry, as it was arranged for me, 
 than I had ever been. The matter wasn't pressed. 
 So it slid on that way from year to year, until after 
 I had known you and gone home." 
 
 He changed his position, clasping his hands behind 
 his head and leaning against the split logs of the wall. 
 " I wrote you that I had to go on a visit ? " She 
 nodded again. " It was to her place. And I wrote 
 you that our house was filled with people. She and 
 her mother and her relatives and backers generally, 
 they were. Every one of them were after me in one 
 fashion or another." He turned quickly. "All but 
 herself, that is. It was none of her fault, poor girl." 
 If she had doubted all his words, she could not have 
 doubted the cool pity of the tone, the mere sympathy 
 and fellow-feeling. 
 
 " Then my uncle came after me with some gentle per 
 suasion in the shape of my duty to myself and the girl 
 and the generation yet unborn. He enforced it with 
 some ambitious inducements, a good beginning in life 
 generally and some financial considerations. I evaded 
 the issue even then. And after that there came the ill 
 ness I wrote you of." He looked at her gravely. "It was 
 the time that I needed your letters the most and your 
 faith. The time that every pressure was being brought
 
 ANNE CARMEL 225 
 
 to bear on me. A great deal is my fault. But that 
 much is yours. I admit you had your justification'. 
 Only you were in no position to judge of me and my 
 actions. If you had trusted me, even when I seemed 
 most untrustworthy, it might have been better." He 
 could see that it had its effect, and hers was of those 
 generous characters to which there is no appeal so pow 
 erful as that they have been unkind or unjust. 
 
 "So then," he said, "when he was up and about 
 again, and back at the subject, I brought myself to it 
 and told him I wanted to marry you. He wouldn't 
 even so much as take it seriously at first. A Roman 
 Catholic priest's penniless sister, dwelling among the 
 mountains and beautiful ! Yes, he could believe that 
 she might be beautiful; some of the most alluring women 
 he had ever seen in any part of the world he admitted, 
 had been the better class French-Canadians. He said 
 it was delightful, and all that could be desired from the 
 standpoint of the picturesque ; altogether on the russet 
 gown and single rose order." His voice was angry 
 with recollection of the sarcasm. " When I grew per 
 sistent, he changed his tactics. I might have my ten 
 pounds and you, by all means, if I were determined upon 
 it." He stopped. "I wonder if you've faith enough 
 in me left, to believe that I wish now, I had ? " He 
 was walking back and forth again. 
 
 She looked away from the fireplace and at his face. 
 The dim light from the window was on it, and she could
 
 226 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 see it well. There was showing all the harrying of the 
 time he was telling her about. He looked hunted and 
 driven. His blue eye had grown slate-color and hard. 
 " Yes," she said slowly, " I believe that. Yet, if you 
 were to have it to do over again to-morrow I wonder 
 if you would not do the same thing ? " 
 
 He laughed shortly. She had herself and the sit 
 uation very fairly in hand and himself, too. She 
 was sure of herself, for all that she was unhappy. A 
 woman sure of herself and not foolishly innocent was 
 well armed. " You have grown sceptical ; " he fell into 
 sarcasm himself. " Your knowledge of me has broad 
 ened. And I have only myself to thank for it. Well 
 perhaps I might. I have never shown so much strength 
 of purpose that you could be justified in putting un 
 limited belief in me, certainly." He went on with his 
 restless walking. " To continue the story, then : I 
 stormed and raised merry Cain to an extent, but he 
 isn't the man to be moved by anything of that kind. 
 He added up a column of figures, statistics, while I 
 raved about the primitive rights of man. And when 
 he had finished, he suggested that Werther and the 
 Nouvelle Heloise style were obsolete." 
 
 There was a sound outside the cabin. Harnett 
 crossed softly and quickly to the window. " It's a 
 man," he said, whispering. She had disappeared into 
 the lean-to, already. He slid the clumsy wooden bolt 
 quietly; then waited ready to resist if it should be
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 227 
 
 forced. It was the first time he had stood to her as a 
 protector. Her certainty of herself weakened as she 
 watched him. He had already appealed to her gener 
 osity, and now it was to her femininity. 
 
 The attempt on the door was given over. A face 
 was pressed to the window, but the cabin was almost 
 dark, and the corner where Harnett stood was not vis 
 ible from there. The man went away and plunged 
 in among the trees. Anne came out. "It was An- 
 toine," she said. " He used to come here to stay with 
 Seailles when he was in the neighborhood." 
 
 She leaned against the chimney now instead of taking 
 the log stool again. Harnett went on with the account : 
 "I came down by degrees from my lofty flights," he 
 said, " I might tell you that it was for the girl's sake 
 or from a sense of duty. But I am not trying to color it 
 prettily and it was neither more nor less than that I 
 was ambitious and was unwilling to give up what I had 
 been born to, what I was accustomed to having. He 
 had the girl and her supporters at the house again, 
 and before the house-party broke up, I was engaged." 
 He saw a question on Anne's face. 
 
 " Are you wondering why I didn't come for you 
 whether or no, as we had agreed? You may not believe 
 it, but I have my better moments have had, at any 
 rate. I thought of it. I was within an inch of doing 
 it. Once I even made some arrangements. Then I told 
 myself that the only thing I could do for you which
 
 228 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 would really be worthy the name of love would be 
 not to lose you body and soul. I was right, too. For 
 once I didn't consider myself, and I was right. We 
 had drifted apart, and you hadn't answered my letters. 
 Not that they deserved answering, I admit. You might 
 have forgotten me, or found you didn't care for me so 
 much after all. Perhaps you'd come to despise me. 
 Whatever it was you were a good woman and de 
 served a last vestige of respect from me." She turned 
 to him with a look he had not seen since the days, two 
 years gone by, when he had come to the meeting places, 
 a look of so much happiness that he cut himself off 
 abruptly. 
 
 " Did you always think of me as good, never that I 
 was like any other who " she hesitated. 
 
 " Except that one time when I listened to the Tetrault 
 hag and let you meet me at the quarry, Anne except 
 that one time I had not the shadow of a doubt of 
 you." The first tears came into her eyes. But there 
 was a smile behind them. 
 
 " And then," he said, " I knew very well that, 
 though you had sworn the contrary, if I were to have 
 given up everything and come back here and have made 
 you marry me, you couldn't have withstood me." She 
 started to protest. "No, you couldn't," he contra 
 dicted. "You would have married me, and I was 
 perfectly aware of it. I was afraid of being a beg 
 gar, or the next thing to it. And my world had a
 
 ANNE CARMEL 229 
 
 great deal to offer me. Oh ! I have had my chance," 
 he said bitterly. " I've had my chance to marry the 
 woman I should have taken the one that was meant 
 for me if you believe in that. But I considered 
 money and a few other things. I sold what I was 
 entitled to." 
 
 She remembered Jean's argument of long before, when 
 they had talked together in the lamplight after their 
 mother had left them alone. "Your birthright," she 
 said. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " I bartered it ; and now I am 
 weak enough to make complaint." 
 
 " So I was duly married," he brought about the con 
 clusion. " That evening, when we were alone there 
 was an explanation." He took his place on the bench 
 once more, with his hands about his knee, and watched 
 his foot swinging, with considerable apparent interest. 
 " We did each other the one possible service, and told 
 the whole truth. She let me know that she had been 
 forced to the marriage quite as neatly as I had, and that 
 there was another chap had been for years. He was 
 poor, poor devil. I could more or less parallel the 
 case, with just a reversal of the sexes. The beauty of 
 the situation was something appalling." He shifted 
 his position and sat as he had while he had been wait 
 ing for her, his hands hanging inertly and his head 
 down. 
 
 " However," he said, and his voice came hard, " they
 
 230 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 had got what they wanted all but we two. The for 
 tunes and the estates were married. They wonder 
 occasionally, I have been told, why we neither of us 
 seem as ecstatically happy as we might surely be ex 
 pected to." He was silent for a long minute. "The 
 first time I saw you, and thought of you, Anne," he 
 said dully, " it was to fancy you as the type of a fine 
 motherhood. I have no child." 
 
 He felt her coming deliberately toward him, and saw 
 the bottom of her black skirt on the dusty boards, as 
 she stopped in front of him. Yet he did not look up 
 at once. She stood there, and he raised his eyes wearily, 
 indifferently. 
 
 A ray of the morning sunlight had reached the dusty 
 window, and it fell through, deadened, straight upon 
 his face, haggard and worn, with all the youth gone. 
 
 She put out her two hands. For a moment he 
 seemed to doubt her meaning. Then he took them. 
 He rose slowly, and as slowly he took off her hat and 
 dropped it on the floor, drew her into his arms, and 
 kissed her. 
 
 After a time her head lay on his shoulder ; her eyes 
 were closed and her lips apart. His cheek rested 
 against the warm thickness of her hair.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IT is a commonplace of human nature that character 
 istics entirely foreign to one's own are frequently those 
 which most arouse one's admiration. And it was pos 
 sibly because his every trait was opposed to the require 
 ments of the " Manual of Spiritual Exercises," and to 
 the maxims and ethics of the ex-soldier of Pampeluna 
 that Jean Carmel found much to admire in both the 
 theory and history of that Company of Jesus opposed 
 of popes which from the first has lurked behind mas 
 sacres and murders, yet has instituted the reformation 
 of morals within the church, which has poured out its 
 best blood on the soil of foreign missions, the while it 
 stooped to assimilation with the faiths of the idolaters 
 it would have won, and which, for all the ingenious 
 militarism of its organization, has met so often with the 
 final failure of its most ambitious aims. 
 
 He was himself too normal and healthy-minded a 
 man not to class the visions of the Jesuit novitiate 
 as aberrations brought about by solitary confinement 
 and an overwrought brain. And the right to one's 
 own conscience, the obligation to follow it, was the 
 
 231
 
 232 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 rule upon which he had led his life and done his work 
 as a priest. Yet he knew that it must needs be not 
 a weakling, but a man of strength above the average, 
 who can give up his will to be broken on the wheel 
 of discipline and espionage, and submit it to another 
 so completely that it ceases in the end to exist. And 
 it was that strength though its results were repulsive 
 to his own uncompromising honesty which held a 
 powerful attraction for him. It was born of a sense 
 of duty. Men did not li ve the lives of Jogues, Bres- 
 sani, or Bre*bceuf, nor die their deaths, with a meaner 
 motive. And though it might have led, upon the one 
 hand, to the treachery, deceit, and falsehood which has 
 made the name of Jesuitry the synonyme for baseness, 
 on the other it had led to a tale of adventures such as 
 no writer of romance would dare or imagine, of a hero 
 ism to the conception of which the poets of early civil 
 izations never reached, a great tragedy of suffering, 
 devotion, bigotry, and self-immolation acted by the 
 light of the fires of human martyrdom against the dark 
 scenery of the mountains and forests of savage new 
 worlds. 
 
 It was the tale he was reading now in the volume 
 of a long dead historian whose quaint French might 
 have been anything but easy for one not used to it. 
 But Jean Carmel had read much of the same sort in 
 ancient tomes from the priests' libraries in the cities. 
 He knew the history of his country in all its phases
 
 ANNE CARMEL 233 
 
 and in its spirit, that necessary foundation to the 
 thorough knowing of oneself. 
 
 " It must have its effect upon the people of to-day 
 that the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu 
 ries founded the nation by the impulse of religion and 
 superstition and adventure," he had said in the earlier 
 evening to Cecily Thorne. "In the stories of your 
 country and mine there is the essential difference that 
 the one was born of intellect, the other of the feelings. 
 Can you imagine the Pilgrim Fathers erecting an altar 
 upon Plymouth Rock, trimming it with flowers, and 
 wreathing it with fireflies, as did the founders of Mon 
 treal. It was a waste of time which should have been 
 put to the building of stockades. But it was beautiful, 
 and it had the element of the picturesque which you 
 have lacked." 
 
 "We are not all of us typical in this or any other 
 country," he had gone on to set forth his theory. 
 " Perhaps the majority never are. Not all of us con 
 tain in ourselves the spirit of the whole. But there 
 must be always a certain number of individuals who 
 do, to an extent in greater or less degree. Anne, 
 my mother, and myself," he made it personal, "we 
 are the results of Maisonneuve, Le Loutre, Lavalle, 
 Bollard, Marie de 1'Incarnation, and" he thought of 
 his sister "even of Marguerite de Roberval. Each 
 one of those is the impersonation of some national 
 trait, traits which the Loyalists and the conquerors
 
 234 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 have modified to a great degree, but upon which" 
 he had smiled over that "the Americans have had, 
 I think, no influence." 
 
 " Our influence," she told him, " may be yet to 
 come." It had stopped there with an appeal of aid 
 from Yvonne, who had been sitting on the floor, the 
 tip of her pink tongue between her teeth, absorbed 
 in the difficulties of cutting out a sheet of paper 
 dolls which had been brought her from up in the 
 States. She had lost all her dread of the strange 
 demoiselle now, and had no hesitation whatever about 
 making use of her. 
 
 Later, when he had been left alone, Jean Carmel 
 had gone out to the graveyard, to the mound of earth 
 showing brown and damp yet in the vague light of 
 a quarter-moon behind a hazy sky. Then he had 
 come in and taken the book from the shelf and sat 
 down with it at his desk. It was close upon midnight 
 now, but he kept reading from page to page. 
 
 When he stopped at last, he sat looking at a picture 
 in front of him, leaning against the wall. Cecily had 
 brought it to him in memory of an account of one 
 of his own expeditions. It was a small etching, the 
 black surface of some great river, the blacker shadows 
 of the trees on its shore, an Indian standing in his 
 canoe, moving down with the current through the 
 night, and startled by a wild goose flapping suddenly 
 out from the forest. The gleam of a star ray on a
 
 ANNE OARMEL 235 
 
 ripple, the dim brave in the canoe, the gray whiteness 
 of the bird, with its neck outstretched those were 
 all that were not deep darkness. It was the "Soli 
 tude," it was named, so tense that one heard shivering 
 through it the wild fowl's harsh squawk. And it was a 
 solitude he himself knew. 
 
 Anne opened the door of her room, and he did not 
 hear her. She stood watching him. 
 
 She would remember him as he was now in the years 
 to come. In the dark future which was surely ahead 
 for her she would see the circle of lamplight, the broad 
 shoulders in the cassock, the big, browned hand on 
 the open pages of the book, the rough-cut features, 
 the eyes looking from under heavy brows, keen and 
 direct. She would remember him, too, as he had stood 
 before the altar of the church he himself had built, as 
 he had listened with the patience of strength to the 
 garrulous plaints of old men and women, as he had won 
 the confidence of children, as he had entered with real 
 sympathy into the pleasures and sorrows of all the 
 parish, pleasures and sorrows which had never held 
 great interest for her. There would be so much to 
 remember. He had been her sturdy protector in the 
 time of her troublous childhood, when there had been 
 only two considerations which would withhold her from 
 all the sins of infancy that she had consented to be 
 put upon her honor, or that she would be hurting Jean. 
 
 And after that he had been her friend, from the
 
 236 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 circumstances of her life, the only one. Harnett could 
 never be to her what this brother had been. It would 
 be Jean she would need when troubles should begin to 
 close in, his respect she would want when she should 
 have forfeited any other, and it would be of him she 
 would think when the end of it all should come, when 
 she should be a fallen woman dying unrepentant, and 
 he the priest, going the way of his duties still, sad 
 dened somewhat and quite alone. 
 
 Her eyes were burning and her throat ached with the 
 tears she was forcing back. She drew a long, steady 
 ing breath. Then she went forward and stood beside 
 the desk. He came out from the night and the forest 
 and looked up astonished. He had supposed her long 
 since asleep. " Well P'tite Chose ? " he queried. 
 Her hand was lying on the edge of the desk. He laid 
 his own upon it, and smiled at her. Gradually the 
 smile went out of his eyes and left them hard and quiet. 
 She had not answered in words, but he had understood 
 what the meaning of it must be, could only be, that the 
 lifelessness of the past year and more was gone. The 
 sense of life, intense and compelling, could be felt in 
 her, the life that is in a fixed idea which knows no 
 other considerations, which has taken to itself the 
 strength of all other thoughts and is an almost visible 
 force. And he had remembered the letter. 
 
 She felt the hand that was over hers growing cold. 
 He took it away. She could have thrown her arms
 
 ANNE CARMEL 237 
 
 about his neck and have dropped her head upon the 
 shoulders which were bracing to the strain. But she 
 stood where she was and made no movement of any 
 sort. 
 
 " He has come back ? " he said. 
 
 "Yes," she told him. 
 
 " And ? " he waited. 
 
 "And I am going away with him," she finished it, 
 " not at once, but soon." He knew the uselessness 
 of asking if there were to be even so much as that 
 civil marriage which the church could not recognize 
 as a sacrament, yet which prevented dishonor. Never 
 theless he asked it. "He is married," Anne said. 
 
 She started back against the wall, a quick, unthinking 
 movement of self-preservation. He looked upon the 
 point of violence. But he had forced himself back 
 into the chair, and he sat with his mouth pressed shut, 
 looking at her, beyond her, where she stood throwing a 
 short, heavy shadow against the boards. 
 
 " You have seen him ? " he asked, after some time. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. 
 
 " I warn you," he said, " I shall do my best to find 
 him." 
 
 "Do you think," she questioned, "that I should 
 have told you if I had not been sure he was well 
 beyond your reach? By to-morrow he will be hun 
 dreds of miles away in the States." 
 
 He was beaten there, and he had no choice but to
 
 238 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 accept it, together with the realization that neither 
 she nor Harnett would ever risk the meeting, that 
 they would plan to prevent it, and succeed. She need 
 not have let him know anything, she reminded him 
 now. At first she had determined not to. " Then 
 I thought it over," she said, " and I owed you that 
 much, it seemed to me. I decided that it would be 
 better." 
 
 "Yes," he agreed coldly. "It is better kinder upon 
 the whole." He asked her for the story of Harnett's 
 marriage, and she gave it to him. But he was not 
 moved by it to anything but a contempt he made no 
 effort to hide. It was incomprehensible to him that 
 she should be so utterly incapable of seeing the weak 
 ling the man was. " After all," he said, when she had 
 come to the end of it, " stripped of all his self -justifica 
 tion and your sympathy there remain the bare facts. 
 He could have married you and he did not. And he 
 did not because he valued ease and fortune considerably 
 above you very considerably." 
 
 She shook her head. "Those are the bare facts," 
 she admitted, "but bare facts are no more the truth 
 sometimes than " she hesitated for a simile "than 
 bed rock stripped of its covering would be the earth. 
 It is the modification of the facts that is the truth 
 very often." And she tried again, with the persistency 
 she might have put to impressing something upon a 
 child, to make him understand the thing from Harnett's
 
 ANNE CARMEL 239 
 
 position and her own. He would only see it that the 
 sacrifice was to be all hers. 
 
 "A little cheap melodrama, and easy love-making 
 is all he has to pay that and the price of keeping 
 you until he shall have done with you. It is you 
 who are to give all the rest, all that you have to give, 
 body and soul and self-respect. 
 
 " There is nothing so common and so facile," he 
 told her, "as a love of this man's sort to tell a 
 woman that you have not been able to keep away 
 from her! If she if you could only be made to 
 understand the poor compliment of that ! If to have 
 the woman you want is to ruin her then the best 
 sort of love, it would seem to me, is to keep away 
 from her." 
 
 " Ah ! the best sort of love " she said dubiously, 
 " how much of that do you find ? And how are you 
 to know that it is not only a cooler sort?" 
 
 "At least," he suggested, "you could know that 
 it was not a selfish passion." 
 
 All strong passions were selfish, she supposed, with 
 out resentment. And she quoted a line from one of 
 his favorite romances : " Quel est 1'amour ou il n'y a 
 pas d'e"goisme? Quel est celui d'entre nous qui aime 
 uniquement pour 1'objet aime"?" 
 
 He did not answer at once. It took thought to 
 oppose the thought she had given to all this. She 
 was not a woman who kept to sophistries and illusion.
 
 240 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 In any one else he would have said that where there 
 was so much reasoning, even faulty and incomplete, 
 there must be less love. But he knew that it was not 
 the case here. A passion that did not shirk argument, 
 but enforced itself with it, was far more difficult to deal 
 with and frustrate than any headlong, inconsequent one. 
 
 But the splitting of these abstractions might go 
 on forever. He stopped it. Had she considered, he 
 asked her, the wrong she was doing to Harnett's wife ? 
 She was doing her no wrong, she answered. "I am 
 taking nothing she has ever had, or ever wanted. 
 She does not care for him, and she never has. She 
 does not want him to care for her. Both of them 
 understand all that. And I should not do it," she 
 told him, confidently, "if I were breaking another 
 woman's heart." 
 
 He could not but believe her. " And the children ? " 
 he offered. 
 
 She pressed her hands back against the wall and 
 looked at him intractably. "There are no children," 
 she answered. 
 
 He frowned angrily. Then he leaned toward her 
 across the desk. " I wonder if you know the effect of 
 this upon yourself, upon what has been up to now a fine 
 and honest character?" 
 
 She had a quick vision of the short scene with 
 Mathew Thorne here in this same room once before ; 
 and he could see that he had struck home. "Oh! I
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 241 
 
 know," she said disdainfully, " that there is no disgrace 
 for a woman so bitter as to be herself." 
 
 He ignored it. "Your nature is deteriorating. It 
 has done so already. In women who have come low 
 there is always the wretched desire to conciliate, and 
 at the same time a smouldering resentment against 
 having to eat the fruit of their own planting. Neither 
 is ennobling. You think you will have a happiness that 
 will keep you above all those miserable, petty things, 
 but the happiness of a woman without the name and 
 rights of a wife it is that of those who tread their 
 wine-presses and suffer thirst. And it will not last, Anne. 
 The time will come when he will grow tired of you." 
 
 " I expect it," she said quietly. She was very white. 
 "There have been cases, I suppose, where it has not 
 followed. But I am not counting on mine to be one of 
 the exceptions. I never have." 
 
 "And in that event," he asked, "what will you 
 be? disreputable, debased, whether he chooses to 
 make you an object of charity or to let you die at 
 the edge of the gutter." 
 
 He had pushed back his chair and risen from it, 
 and was walking back and forth across the room. His 
 voice was guarded, not to reach Amelie or Cecily 
 Thorne. He came close to her and stopped. 
 
 He believed that she might have shirked the one 
 issue which could admit of no specious self-justification, 
 to defy which was not to show a kind of admiration
 
 242 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 compelling courage, but the most despicable of all 
 cowardice. 
 
 " If you have no children of the wife's to consider 
 and if it is only for you and him to decide to bear 
 what you may bring upon yourselves here and here 
 after, yet by what right do you inflict upon those who 
 may be brought into the world through you the suf 
 fering and blighted life of the illegitimate ? " She had 
 nothing to answer. 
 
 "That is the most cruel of any of the forms of 
 egoism that such love as yours takes, Anne," he told 
 her, when she stood with her lips pressed together, 
 all that was merely stubborn and self-willed showing, 
 "to entail upon helpless children all that shame and 
 misery and mortification. There is not one single argu 
 ment by which that can be made to appear other than 
 despicable and unworthy, so despicable and unworthy 
 that it spreads backward and forward over all the rest 
 and makes that equally so." 
 
 His own love for children made him feel their 
 dependence as so much an obligation to protect them. 
 
 Anne's eyes fell. But it was useless. He saw that 
 it was. "Perhaps that will not follow," was all she 
 had to say. In the unpleasant silence which came 
 after, she lifted her eyes again and saw his face. It 
 had never looked the disapproval that was on it now, 
 and she would far rather have seen anger anything. 
 She could not meet it. She avoided it uncomfortably. 
 But she was not changed.
 
 ANNE OAKMEL 243 
 
 There was only one appeal left which he had not 
 yet made, that to sheer Right the highest of all, yet 
 of small use, he could not but think, against the intense 
 personality it had to meet. 
 
 Nevertheless he made it, from the fulness of his 
 heart and conviction. He had never spoken in any 
 sermon as he did now. It was Right for itself that 
 he urged, all finite and temporal and personal con 
 siderations aside. She put out her hand at length to 
 check him. "I know all that, Jean. You can't tell 
 me anything that I have not already thought of until 
 I am sick and weary. It is all of no use to talk to 
 me of the higher laws of God. If He has higher 
 and lower ones then I am following a lower, and 
 a very strong one, and it was the law before those 
 of marriage or the church or even society." 
 
 " If his love had been nearly so great as yours," her 
 brother answered, " then marriage and the church and 
 society would all have helped you to have one another. 
 It is because his greed was the greater, that they stand 
 between you." 
 
 " Then the greatness of my love must make up for 
 any weakness of his," she said doggedly. 
 
 He turned and went over to the open window. A 
 vine was growing around the casing, and a bit of it 
 hung over. He snapped it off and stood, holding it, 
 looking out into the blackness of the midsummer night, 
 in which there was no sound save the little stirring
 
 244 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 of some bird in the apple tree outside, and the singing 
 murmur of frogs. 
 
 Anne watched him. She would remember him this 
 way, too, in the times ahead, oftenest, if might be, of all 
 
 in the deep shadow, his back turned to her, his head 
 down. 
 
 He faced about slowly and came back to his chair. 
 
 " When the time comes that you want me, P'tite 
 Chose," he said gently, " will you let me know or 
 come home to me?" The tears sprang into her eyes 
 on the instant. 
 
 But she shook her head determinedly. "It would 
 not be just to you, Jean. When I go, it must be out 
 of your life for good and all. You have every chance 
 for advancement, and it must not be always hanging 
 over you, hampering your future, that a fallen sister 
 may return to you at any time. If you were to stay on 
 in St. Hilaire, it might not matter. But your house 
 keeper in more important parishes could not be what 
 I will be." 
 
 He put out his hand to her. She hesitated, then she 
 went up to him, and he drew her nearer. "Listen, 
 Anne," he said. " It is not as if I could ever forget you 
 
 as if I could go on and make for myself the sort of 
 happiness that a man might who could have a wife and 
 children, a family of his own. Except for you, I am 
 alone in the world, quite alone, and I must always be. 
 There will be only one thing left for me to hope of this
 
 ANNE CARMEL 245 
 
 world when you are gone. It is that I may some day 
 be of use to you, when others shall have failed, that I 
 may see you and have you with me again." 
 
 She tried to answer, but he would not let her. He 
 kept on. " The time will come, P'tite Chose, when you 
 will see in the eyes of this man, for whom you are 
 giving everything, that which I have just seen in 
 yours, when you will know as I did a little while ago 
 and without being told it in words, that he has come 
 to say good-by. You will have wished for the big 
 brother who has always been your protector, before 
 that often, I think, but never as you will wish for 
 him then." 
 
 She had dropped down on her knees beside him and 
 hidden her face against his shoulder, sobbing and hold 
 ing to him. He put his arm about her firmly, and 
 stroked the hair which showed all its warm gleams in 
 the lamplight. His mouth quivered. But he pressed 
 his lips together and went on. " When that happens, 
 Anne," he said, bending over her, " will you come back 
 to the one who will be faithful to you, though others 
 fail to the lonely old Cure who will be waiting for 
 you always in his little presbytere ? " 
 
 He had never meant to stoop to the selfish plea, to 
 work upon her affection for him. It had always 
 seemed to him that such a course was unfair, almost 
 like taking advantage of some bodily weakness in gain 
 ing one's ends. But he came to it now. For that
 
 246 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 picture of the future was before him, and he was seeing 
 the one thing he dreaded most of all, an abandoned 
 woman, debased and desperate, dying by her own act 
 in her wretchedness and her sin. If he should have 
 been able to save her from nothing else, at least he 
 must have tried every means to prevent that. " It is 
 not for yourself I am asking it," he whispered to her. 
 "This time it is for the big brother who has always 
 thought more of you than of any one in the world, 
 for the lonely priest for just myself. Will you 
 promise it for me?" He held her yet closer and 
 his hand still stroked her hair. But it was trembling. 
 He waited with his face near to hers. She was catch 
 ing her breath, trying to answer him. The one hope 
 left him hung on the word he was listening for. 
 
 " Will you come back, little sister ? " he repeated. 
 The word would not be spoken yet, but the down- 
 bowed head moved in assent.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IT was only the front and sides of the presbytere 
 which were given over exclusively to beauty. The 
 back was devoted to practical usefulness. The barn 
 was there, the cow stable and the store shed. There 
 were also a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and berry 
 vines. The Cur was at work in the vegetable 
 garden, and Amelie Latouche was going back and 
 forth. She did not in the least approve of her mas 
 ter's working among the vegetables. In her opinion it 
 did not become the dignity of his office, and she re 
 fused to be converted, even by his argument that the 
 great Champlain himself had had his kitchen patch 
 and toiled in it. Who, in any event, was Champlain ? 
 She for one did not know and had no intention of 
 asking. 
 
 This morning she was in a bad humor with all the 
 world. And Jean Carmel had observed as much, and 
 drawn conclusions to the effect that it was due to the 
 rough running of the course of an affair of the heart of 
 long standing between herself and the sexton. For 
 a matter of five years, off and on, Amelie had, been 
 
 247
 
 248 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 going to marry the sexton aged sixty, and already 
 twice a widower. And something had, time and again, 
 prevented it. The something had been almost invariably 
 the sexton's youngest son, a scapegrace of twenty, who 
 managed to get into financial difficulties with surpris 
 ing aptness, precisely at the moment that his father 
 had saved enough to make a third matrimonial ven 
 ture seem feasible. The old man, tender of sentiment 
 toward his last-born, would come to the rescue ; his fif 
 teen or twenty dollars would go to pay debts of a sort 
 he himself, always exemplary, had never even in his 
 earliest youth contracted, debts for gambling and for 
 white whiskey. Then the marriage would be postponed. 
 Amelie knew her own worth as a woman, and a bread 
 winner, and, though a spinster anxious for matronhood, 
 had refused to throw herself away upon a man who had 
 barely the dollar to pay the priest. But of late fortune 
 had appeared propitious. The son had given over evil 
 habits, with a completeness which might have aroused 
 suspicions, baptisms had been so frequent that the sex 
 ton had made quite a comfortable sum ringing the bell, 
 and the wedding had consequently been set for the 
 middle of July. 
 
 Then, when all had seemed as good as done, the son 
 had frustrated the plans again. This time it was 
 neither gambling nor tavern debts. It was matrimony 
 upon his own account. He had engaged himself to 
 a girl at Les Trembles, and they were to be called for
 
 ANNE CARMEL 249 
 
 the first time at the church the next high mass. Love 
 and no higher motive had actuated his reformation, it 
 now transpired. And he threatened that, in the event 
 of his father's refusal to furnish him a decent and seemly 
 sum for a wedding and attendant festivities, he would 
 return to the path of vice and travel it faster. Amelie, 
 consulted in the dilemma, had counselled allowing him 
 to do it promptly and at once, since it was certain that 
 he would, sooner or later, in any case. She was of the 
 opinion of many of greater worldly knowledge, that 
 the devil never yet gave up hopes of a man who was 
 reformed by infatuation for a woman. 
 
 But the son was the apple of the sexton's eye, 
 for all that he was a prodigal. "At our age," he 
 had tried to show Amelie, " there is no great haste ; 
 at his there is. I must give him this last chance. 
 After that yes, but this time I will adhere to my 
 word after that he must shift for himself. The girl 
 is sensible, and not extravagant. She will help him. 
 Then I will save up again ; and there should be, 
 at least, " he considered, marking off on his fingers, 
 " six more baptisms that I know of, before the winter. 
 We will be married in November, if all goes well." 
 And Amelie had seen her chance at being promoted to 
 a wife recede. She did not fancy that, and decided to 
 forego her avarice. 
 
 " Who knows I may be dead by November," she had 
 explained to the Cure, lugubrious and dissatisfied. " It is
 
 250 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 not," she added, " that I am afraid to die more than the 
 next one. But you see for yourself, mon pdre, that it 
 would look better to be married first. He has not two 
 dollars yet I will marry him." 
 
 It was one of the sexton's duties to keep the woodpile 
 in the barn replenished with sticks of a suitable size 
 for Amelie's kitchen stove. This morning the sticks 
 were apparently all too large. She swept out the 
 kitchen with her broom of twigs, sorted the pota 
 toes in the store shed, then came and complained of 
 the wood. " I can't burn logs the size of those, in my 
 stove," she said. 
 
 Monsieur Carmel was training some strong-smell 
 ing tomato vines, and he went on with his work. " Theo- 
 phile ought to be somewhere around the church," he 
 suggested equably. Theophile was the too paternal 
 suitor. 
 
 Amelie, standing under a big sunflower, her hands on 
 her hips, her enormous brimmed hat on over her night 
 cap, sneered. Theophile ! he never attended to his 
 duties properly. The wood was always too big ; besides, 
 he was not around the church, he was probably off with 
 his worthless son. If there was no small wood, there 
 could be no midday dinner, that was all. 
 
 The Cure left his tomato vines. "We must have 
 dinner evidently, " he said good-humoredly. He 
 went into the woodshed, picked up the axe, and split 
 several armfuls of pieces.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 251 
 
 Amelie stood in the doorway and looked on, consid 
 erably disconcerted. It was not meet that a priest 
 should perform the neglected work of a beadle, she 
 opined grumblingly. She had not meant m'sieu to do 
 that. 
 
 " As a matter of fact," he told her, putting by the axe, 
 " I am inclined to think that any one of the sticks would 
 have gone into the stove, without much trouble ; " and 
 he met her injured and indignant protestations to the 
 contrary with a smile. 
 
 He went back to his vegetable garden, and worked at 
 it for some time longer, in pursuance of a formed deter 
 mination to be with Cecily Thorne no more often than 
 civility required. 
 
 It was not until almost an hour later that he came 
 round from the kitchen patch, through a path between 
 the blackberry bushes, carrying a big wooden bowl full 
 of radishes, tomatoes, and lettuce. He stopped, and 
 stood looking at what was going on in the flower gar 
 den. Mathew Thorne was doing a much-discussed 
 sketch in oils. He had put up his easel in the shade of 
 one of the church elms, and had, with admirable oblivi- 
 ousness of what effect the sun he himself was avoiding 
 might have upon Anne, posed her in the midst of two 
 beds of poppies, which were Monsieur Carmel's pride. 
 The poppies were great, flaming scarlet ones on furry 
 stems, black-stained at their fierce, hot hearts. Two of 
 them, wide-opened to falling, were in Anne's hands, and
 
 252 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 one, with a green seed-pod, drooped on her hair. Her 
 face was colorless, and her eyes heavy. It did not 
 heighten her beauty perhaps, but it added suggestion to 
 the pose. 
 
 Thome glanced up from his block. He took in 
 the effect of the priest's cassock, the bowl of garden 
 stuff, and the mortar and stone wall of the house. 
 When he should have finished the sister, he called, it 
 might be well to do the brother as "The Cure's 
 Salad," or "The Earth's Increase." He had a feel 
 ing at once that the flippancy had been a little ill 
 advised. Jean Carmel had walked over to the porch 
 and set down the bowl, without replying. Thorne, 
 with a sudden realization that a priest's robe in con 
 junction with an armful of vegetables did not preclude 
 dignity, cast a sidewise look at his cousin, who was 
 leaning against the fence near him, watching progress. 
 His brows raised. Her face had flushed with plain 
 annoyance, and the color deepened under his quizzical 
 scrutiny. "A blush," he commented, in a dropped 
 voice, meant for only her ears, "like the scarlet 
 flag of Jeanne d'Arc at Rouen, shows sometimes 
 where there is weakness in the walls." 
 
 Jean Carmel, dusting the soil from his hands and 
 cassock, came over and took up his place back of 
 Thorne. Whatever his opinion of the man, and it 
 was not extravagantly high, there could be no ques 
 tion as to the ability of the artist. The effect of the
 
 ANNE CARMEL 253 
 
 upward reflection of the scarlet flowers upon the dead 
 paleness of the skin was managed with admirable 
 technique. And there was the heat of midsummer 
 noon beating in the atmosphere. 
 
 He had grave doubts as to the advisability of Anne's 
 standing for so long in the full sun. The strain of 
 the day and night before had been heavy enough 
 upon her, as it was. To him she showed it cruelly. 
 And it must be evident, he thought, to Thorne, since 
 the look had been caught exactly in the sketch. He 
 was inclined to resent it that Anne's unhappiness 
 should be laid bare to speculation. But Thorne had 
 that species of egoism which connects all things, in 
 one way or another, with itself. He had taken due 
 note of Anne's abstraction. But he had set it down 
 to continuing resentment of the episode of the year 
 before, and reflected upon the manifest advantages 
 of worldly training, which enabled himself to ignore 
 that unfortunate mischance as entirely as if it had 
 never taken place. The same training in Anne Car- 
 mel, he could not but think, would have added to 
 the general comfort his own in particular. As it 
 was, he was made to feel a trifle like the villain of 
 melodrama who has insulted helpless innocence. It 
 bordered the mock-heroic and absurd, and was, more 
 over, hardly fair, all things considered. Since he was 
 ready to forget, to all intents and purposes, her own 
 not too creditable history, she might have had the
 
 254 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 grace to do the same by his one very natural misin 
 terpretation thereof. 
 
 Cecily Thorne had gone away to the corner of the 
 garden under the apple tree. Jean Carmel crossed over 
 to her. Yvonne's dolls were lying in a chair. He took 
 them up and sat down, putting them across his knees, 
 with a complete lack of any self-consciousness 
 which might have suggested to another man that a 
 muscular young priest, with two large, badly damaged, 
 and untidy dolls, stretched in his lap in attitudes of 
 limp, despairing abandonment, was, to say the least of it, 
 quaint. The chair was close to Cecily. He settled 
 back into it and absently took the arm of one of the 
 dolls between his thumb and finger, moving it up and 
 down. He still watched Anne, where she stood in the 
 midst of the poppies. Next year, when the poppies 
 should come again, burning out in the summer heat, 
 she would not be there nor the year after, nor for 
 years to come, if ever. It might be better, upon the 
 whole, to let the garden go, do the best it could alone, 
 growing over gradually with the weeds and grasses 
 and blackberry vines. He could put his time to other 
 things, study, the work of the parish, and the hunt 
 ing and fishing and canoeing which were better for loneli 
 ness the things in which one might forget the need of 
 women in the world. A garden presupposed a woman 
 since the one eastward in Eden. The poppies 
 without Anne would lose half their glory. He had
 
 ANNE CARMEL 255 
 
 always connected her with them, as he did the spring 
 daffodils. 
 
 He turned to Cecily Thome. " When you shall be a 
 world-known singer," he said, " and shall come back one 
 day to visit the spot you once knew for a few short 
 days of your youth, you will knock at the door of the 
 presbytere, and it will be opened by a big, bent, gray- 
 haired priest, his life waxen old with heaviness. His 
 sight will not be what it had been, but when you shall 
 have told him who you are, he will be glad to see you. 
 And he will take you out among the weeds of the yard, 
 and remind you where were the daffodils the first time 
 you came into the garden. He will point out where 
 the great poppies were among which his sister stood, on 
 a summer's day " He stopped abruptly and laughed 
 it off. " I beg your pardon," he said. 
 
 She called to Yvonne's collie, which had come up 
 along the path. " Voyons Dagobert," she said to him, 
 taking his head into her lap. " When we come back, 
 will you know us too or will you bark and try to 
 bite?" 
 
 " He will be long since dead," said Jean Carmel, 
 shortly. And his voice was rude. 
 
 In the awkward pause that followed he looked 
 straight ahead of him, his eyes more direct and stern 
 than commonly. Dagobert licked Cecily's fingers. 
 
 He had come into the garden with his mistress and 
 Etienne Coppee. And the two children were following
 
 256 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 him; Yvonne in advance, Etienne dutifully behind. 
 They had painstakingly avoided Mathew Thome's 
 neighborhood. Yvonne's terror of him was not to be 
 overcome. The memory of the rainy day and of his 
 laugh and comment from the tavern door, refused to 
 be eradicated. She looked with uncomprehending 
 puzzlement at Anne, standing so still in the sun, hat- 
 less, and with poppies in her hands and hair. It was 
 a most extraordinary and inexplicable proceeding. 
 "What is she doing?" she asked of Miss Thorne. 
 Cecily explained. " Oh ! " said Yvonne slowly, as the 
 idea worked itself into her brain. And what had she 
 herself been doing, Cecily asked. " Buying groceries," 
 she replied, with all the solemnity of a plump house- 
 mistress. " Show them, Etienne." 
 
 Etienne carried a newspaper bundle of small propor 
 tions. He came up and opened it, displaying the con 
 tents, four fancy crackers, some candy gooseberries, and 
 a burnt almond, also a few coffee beans representing 
 the purchasing power of a ten-cent piece which Cecily 
 had contributed toward the domestic funds. It was for 
 dinner, Etienne explained, twisting up the top of the 
 paper tightly again. " We went to the pasture to milk 
 the cow," said Etienne, who had the confessing habit to 
 a troublesome degree, together with the trait of his 
 first father, of dragging the woman in. " And Yvonne 
 left the gate open, and the cow got out. And Theo- 
 phile is chasing her."
 
 ANNE CARMEL 257 
 
 He waited for Monsieur Carmel's remarks, but none 
 were forthcoming. Monsieur did not seem to have 
 listened. " Come on," said Yvonne, not approving 
 the trend of Etienne's conversation, and desirous 
 of changing the subject, "we must cook dinner." 
 Then she bethought herself of their family. She 
 glanced at the chair in which the Cure* sat, an 
 expression of intense indignation coming over her 
 rubicund countenance. It died out. She saw the dolls 
 on his lap. He was not sitting on them, after all. She 
 made a grab for them. But he was too quick. One in 
 each hand he held them high above his head. Yvonne 
 reached fruitlessly. She climbed upon the rungs of the 
 chair and reached again. Then she hung her whole 
 very creditable weight on the arm, and tried to pull it 
 down. 
 
 The limb of a tree had not been more firm. " Give 
 them to me," she demanded, " give them to me. They 
 must have their dinner." She was panting with 
 exertion. "Etienne," she called. Masculine assist 
 ance was desirable on occasions ; in such a crisis as 
 this, for instance. "Etienne, come and help." But 
 Monsieur Carmel was the Cure, and not to be climbed 
 over and battered even when he chose to descend 
 from his lofty dignity to tease. Etienne failed his 
 helpmeet in the emergency. 
 
 She looked at him with contempt beyond mere inade 
 quate speech. " I won't be married to you any more,"
 
 258 ANNE CABMBL 
 
 she said, and turned on her heel and walked away, over 
 to the back of the garden, near the latticed cellar door, 
 where their house was an old shawl stretched from the 
 edge of the well to a tree. 
 
 Etienne, divorced by a process of more than Mosaic 
 simplicity, stood hesitating, looking dejectedly after her. 
 The Cur6 repented and took pity upon him. "This 
 is not sufficient cause for separation," he said to Cecily. 
 " I will have to mediate. There are disadvantages 
 in living under the roof of an heiress." He took 
 Etienne by the hand, and, carrying the dolls carefully, 
 went toward the playhouse, under the shadow of 
 which Yvonne sat, with her back resolutely turned. 
 
 The matter was, in the end, satisfactorily arranged 
 for all parties, the wife placated, the husband rein 
 stated in favor, and the children rendered up to their 
 legal owners. 
 
 Jean Carmel did not go back to his place under 
 the wide-branched apple tree again.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THERE is a class of charity among those so situated 
 in the world that they have little other to dispense, 
 which ceases in the ranks of those esteemed more for 
 tunate, and who, with the comfortable philosophy of 
 Zacchssus, stand forth and say unto the Lord that, hav 
 ing given half their goods to the poor, if they have done 
 any wrong to any man, they thereby restore fourfold. It 
 is that charity which covers sins and is ready to ignore 
 them, to give the sinner a new chance, a fresh start, a 
 clean sheet for the writing of his future life. 
 
 Anne Carmel had outlived her disgrace in the par 
 ish, and the past was not generally remembered against 
 her. She was to marry a respectable man and begin 
 over fairly. And it was not deemed necessary to the 
 maintenance of a standard of virtue to recall bygones 
 persistently. The drawing away from her neighbor 
 hood and watching her askance had some time since 
 ceased. 
 
 Two days after she had met Harnett in the deserted 
 log hut, it began again. It was a Sunday, and the 
 assembling for high mass meant always the spreading 
 
 259
 
 260 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 of gossip. A habitant on an outlying farm had seen 
 Harnett riding upon a sorry beast toward St. Hilaire. 
 Another knew that he had stayed over night in the next 
 parish, in the tavern at Les Trembles. 
 
 In the open space near the church, where they tied 
 their buggies and charettes, they told it to shifting 
 groups. One bit of information attracted another and 
 dovetailed with it. There was Antoine's account of 
 the closed door at Se*ailles' cabin. Coppe'e had insisted 
 that it had been left unbarred, as indeed it was obliged 
 to be, since the bars could only be dropped from within. 
 And Madame Gerard's mother had met Mademoiselle 
 Carmel coming from the direction of the cabin rather 
 after noon, on Friday, her gray eyes shining vaguely 
 and seeming to see nothing, her face like that of some 
 one who might have encountered a loup-garrou. 
 
 Anne, waiting for Cecily Thorne by the church en 
 trance, saw a lot of habitants glancing toward her cov 
 ertly. She had not expected it. She grew cold and 
 trembled nervously. But she showed the same indif 
 ferent front with which she had faced the same thing 
 before. 
 
 Only before the indifference had been genuine. Now 
 it was not. In that rebelliousness against having to eat 
 the fruit of her own deeds which her brother had fore 
 told, she felt a bitter dislike of them all for a set of 
 persecuting Pharisees, and an angry satisfaction that 
 she would soon outrage their narrow sense of the pro-
 
 ANNE CABMEL 261 
 
 prieties more flagrantly yet since there are, illogically 
 enough, none so resentful against the public opinion 
 which dares to judge them unfavorably as those same 
 ones who have, in the beginning, flouted and disdained 
 it. What right had they to judge of her actions ? And 
 how did they know of them in any case ? Who had 
 found out the meeting in the cabin, and been busybody 
 enough to spread it? When Antoine had pressed his 
 face against the window, had he seen more than he 
 had seemed to? And under all her indignation she 
 was uneasily conscious of that very deterioration which 
 Jean had warned her of. Chafing and fretting against 
 what she had brought on herself, vindictive annoyance 
 with those who showed themselves inclined to keep 
 aloof, were not motives having any dignity, and she 
 knew it. 
 
 She stood her ground until Cecily arrived. Then 
 they went into the church. 
 
 Paul Tetrault had been in one of the groups at the 
 hitching rails. After the mass he did not meet Anne, 
 as was his custom. He could not help believing that 
 the story was true, that Harnett was back and that 
 Anne had seen him. He was hurt and angry at the 
 treachery, though he still refused to accept any doubts 
 of her virtue. But he was more than a little afraid 
 to face Anne alone. He wanted backing. And he 
 went for it to the Cure". Jean Carmel would surely 
 recognize that he, Paul Tetrault, had been badly
 
 262 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 treated, and would sympathize with him, and join 
 him in condemning Anne's behavior. 
 
 Monsieur Carmel was in the sacristy, and Tetrault 
 asked to speak to him alone. There were a couple 
 of acolytes lingering. " Make haste ! " the priest told 
 them, more curtly than was his habit. He closed the 
 door after them. Then he turned back to Tetrault. 
 " Yes ? " he said. It was hardly the tone of sympathy. 
 He had never showed the friendliness that was surely 
 to be expected from a prospective brother-in-law. Nev 
 ertheless, Paul adhered to his purpose. 
 
 There was talk of a very unpleasant sort in the 
 parish, he began. No helping interrogation followed. 
 He kept on, uncomfortably. The Englishman, Har- 
 nett, had been seen in the neighborhood on Friday 
 and had slept at Les Trembles on Thursday night. 
 
 The surprise and wrath upon which he had counted 
 failed to be manifested. There was still the dis 
 couraging silence. Had Jean Carmel known it ? he 
 asked. Yes, he had known it. And that Anne was 
 said to have met the man at Seailles' cabin? 
 
 The priest stood looking at him. "I should advise 
 you," he said, " to go directly to Anne. It is not neces 
 sary to come to me for information nor for assistance." 
 
 Tetrault's easy blush surged over his face. He 
 stammered an unhappy apology. " It is due to my 
 sister," Jean Carmel answered, and busied himself with 
 the vestments he had just taken off, folding his stole.
 
 ANNE CAEMBL 263 
 
 By what code of common sense or even chivalry 
 apologies should be due to Anne under the circum 
 stances, was very much beyond Paul's understanding. 
 It was true, what was said of the Cure, that his atti 
 tude toward his sister and that which he exacted from 
 others was not reasonable. It was absurd to demand, 
 for a woman who had put herself in Anne's position, 
 considerably more deference than was customarily 
 acknowledged as the due of even the most entirely 
 blameless. He was angry and conscious of being 
 undeservedly ill used. 
 
 And Anne admitted his justification. She offered 
 none for herself a humility in which there was yet 
 no self-abasement. That, in the end, was all upon 
 Tetrault's side. He fell on his knees in front of her 
 chair, clinging to her hands, the tears running down 
 his plump cheeks, pleading with her. If she would 
 send Harnett away, even if she were not ready to 
 marry himself now, he would wait, wait as long as 
 she might choose. She shrank with disgust, a mental 
 and physical aversion. She could have struck him 
 off, and she loathed her own flesh because he was 
 touching her; but she forced herself to be kind. It 
 was her punishment for the harm she had done him 
 in sheer selfishness, and she made herself take it with 
 out visible flinching. 
 
 " It is no use, Paul," she told him. " You have been 
 good to me when no one else, except my brother,
 
 264 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 was. And you believed in me against everything. You 
 have stood a great deal for me. I know it. And I 
 will remember it. But you must understand me. 
 If I were never to see him again, if he were to die 
 to-morrow, I know now that I could never marry you." 
 
 He dropped his forehead upon her lap. She was 
 cruel to him, he moaned cruel. 
 
 Her nerves were creeping. But she raised his head 
 and looked into his swimming eyes. " There are a 
 great many wrongs that I have done you and myself, 
 Paul," she said. "But believe this the greatest to 
 both was when I meant to marry you." 
 
 When he had accepted it at last, and was going, he 
 stopped with his hand on the door, hesitating. Then 
 he brought the question out. Was she going away 
 with the other? With such gentleness as she could 
 bring to it, she reminded him that they had no longer 
 the right to require one another's confidences. He 
 went down the garden, openly mopping his eyes. 
 
 Anne stood where he had left her, shivering audibly, 
 her muscles quivering, her fingers twisted together and 
 strained. 
 
 In the late afternoon the village was still almost 
 as full as it had been in the morning. It was known 
 that Cecily Thorne was to sing at vespers, and it had 
 spread abroad that she had fame in her own land. 
 Tetrault and his wife drove in. 
 
 Madame Tetrault's whole figure told of satisfaction
 
 ANNE CARMEL 265 
 
 and triumph. She collected a half-dozen friends and 
 took up her stand close to the door of the church, 
 her husband beside her. Anne, coming with Cecily 
 Thorne through the front gate of the presbytere and 
 up the church steps, passed her, of necessity, within 
 a few feet. Madame's voice became painstakingly 
 audible. "Yes," she was telling it, "Paul heard this 
 morning that the Englishman had returned, and had 
 been meeting Mademoiselle Carmel in Seailles' cabin. 
 And, of course, he was obliged to refuse to marry her." 
 
 Anne's face went the color of the stone of the 
 church, as gray and as hard. But Cecily Thorne 
 might have heard nothing of more import than the 
 first squeaky, wheezy notes of the organ to which she 
 was to sing. She went on up to the loft from whence 
 they came, and Anne passed into the church alone. 
 
 Neither the organ nor the choir at St. Hilaire were 
 such as to afford satisfaction or pride to Jean Carmel, 
 whose appreciation of melody was, nevertheless, as 
 can happen with those yet quite devoid of any 
 ability to produce it, the most deep and sensuous. 
 
 The soprano was one whose voice proved that not 
 every Canadian village could produce its Albani. 
 
 Cecily, from her place high up at the back of the 
 building, looked down over the congregation, square- 
 built mothers and daughters, lost to even the pictur 
 esque in their Sunday costumes, grandmothers whose 
 youth had known field work and whose shoulders
 
 266 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 were too much bent, fathers and sons, ungainly in 
 their best suits and hats, and grandfathers, quaint in 
 ill-fitting homespun. Anne was in shadow, close to 
 a pillar, kneeling, the beads passing through her 
 fingers. The acolytes had come in from the sacristy 
 door to the right of the chancel, bearing each a wax 
 candle, the flames of which streamed backward in 
 the pale daylight. The altar of Mary was elaborate 
 in laces and ornaments and flowers. And the priest 
 in his golden robes stood before the golden main 
 altar, in the midst of the flickering lights. There 
 was much in this church, Cecily could not but think, 
 to appeal to emotional, earthly, and fallible man, be 
 cause of those very qualities in itself compromises, 
 they might be, with the less high, but making it the 
 truer to human nature for that, and so the better 
 able to appeal to it, the better understood by it. 
 There was much asked of the heart and soul of these 
 faithful peasants, nothing of their intellect. The 
 latter was rather to be lulled to sleep, making the 
 faith a haven of repose, which the more exacting 
 Protestant ones could never be. 
 
 There came back to her the memory of her specu 
 lations, the day she had watched him in the meadow 
 by the river, under the new-leafing oak tree. Had any 
 woman, kneeling down there in the church, pressed 
 together, in prayer, fingers which in her thoughts were 
 touching the brown hair of the bending head?
 
 ANNE CARMEL 267 
 
 The harsh little organ was complaining a prelude. 
 The tenor opened her music and held it out to her. 
 And to Jean Carmel there floated down the same voice 
 he had heard once before as he had waited, listening, 
 in the cold pink stillness of a new day. 
 
 But now the soft notes were rich in the sonorous 
 Latin, and swelled and fell without a break, swelled 
 and fell and rose again. 
 
 The little thurif er swung his silver censer ; the glitter 
 ing Host was exposed before the congregation, set on 
 high ; the incense smoked, shimmering and iridescent 
 in the light of the candles, up to the painted images 
 above the altar ; the one mellow voice soared out in the 
 triumph of its song, while the sun fell through a win 
 dow, across the chancel, and full on the priest, his head 
 bowed, his soul and senses thrilled with the beauty of 
 sound. 
 
 He came to her afterward, when the villagers had 
 gone on their ways at last, their minds diverted for 
 the nonce from the Cure's sister to his guest. She 
 was wandering in the high-walled churchyard, through 
 the thick grass and violet plants, looking at the head 
 stones, greened and damp with moss, and the black 
 crosses, little and tall, of wood or iron. " Ici-git, Ici- 
 repose, Priez pour lui " the names and the dates. 
 
 And when all was said and done, it mattered so 
 slightly whether the dates were close together or well 
 apart. Even the last-named year on some of the de-
 
 268 ANNE CABMBL 
 
 faced older stones was quite a time away, and the rank 
 grass and thick violet leaves were straggling where 
 had been a mound, and now was only a sinking of the 
 earth. Those were the dead, forgotten and out of 
 mind. And not only they. Others, over whose low- 
 lying heads only a few seasons had passed, were no 
 more remembered, though there still lived some in 
 whose lives they had closely shared. Whether or no 
 it had been the fault of themselves, their places must 
 have been soon filled. The flowers on their graves 
 were brown sheaves, or dried stems in some old, 
 cracked goblet or jug. Or perhaps a red earthen 
 ware pot was broken apart, showing worthless roots. 
 They were more dreary, those, than the hollows be 
 neath the toppling slabs. 
 
 "There is one who has not been forgotten," Jean 
 Carmel said to her. He took her to the corner near 
 the high-arched gate and pointed out a stone. " It was 
 here," he told her, " before I built the church. A good 
 many of the graves were; it was the burying place 
 then." There was only one name on the stone 
 Pierrot, and the dates beneath it were but four years 
 apart, to the day. He gave her the story. 
 
 Pierrot had been the little son of a woman who had 
 lived here on her terre among the forests, before the 
 village had come to be, and he had died almost half a 
 century before. Yet twice every week in all that time, 
 winter and summer, the mother had toiled here from
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 269 
 
 the patch of land she called her farm. She was a very 
 old woman now, a grandmother ; but her dead was not 
 out of mind. In winter the snow was always scraped 
 off from this one grave ; in summer the withered arms 
 still swung the scythe which cut down the grass, and 
 the flowers were always new. He stood, considering 
 the little well-tended oblong of ground. "The case 
 could never have been reversed," he said slowly. " It 
 could never be a child who would remember so long. 
 With the animals filial affection does not exist ; and with 
 us it is a cultivated sentiment, not an inherent one. It 
 is the divine plan, it seems, for love to flow, not back 
 ward, but on." He turned sharply away, throwing back 
 his head. " And the priest of the church must frustrate 
 it at its source," he said. But it was between his teeth, 
 and she did not hear. 
 
 The whole family of the Gerards had come in 
 through the stone gateway, and madame carried a 
 bunch of marguerites to lay on her father's grave. 
 Ce"cile preceded her, with a tiny bunch of her own. 
 Jean Carmel went toward them and stood talking. He 
 bent over and held out his hand to the child. She put 
 her's gravely into it. Then they kept on. But Cecile 
 stopped short upon a sudden, and turned up to her 
 mother a cherub face, in a mist of flaxen hair. 
 " Why " she asked, and the childish treble of her 
 lisp carried far "why does M'sieu' le Cure" call me 
 sometimes Ce-cie-lie ? "
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE big scarlet poppies were not the only ones in the 
 presbyter e garden. By the other side of the house 
 there was a long, narrow bed of more delicate ones, 
 pink and crimson and white, on slender stems, needing 
 much care and the finest weather, both of which they 
 had had. They were just beneath the window of 
 Cecily's room, and in the misty gray of the early 
 morning she put back the cumbersome, solid shutter, 
 and leaned out, looking down at them the results of 
 the package of seeds which she herself had sent. 
 
 The breeze was still lost in the soft cloud fleece, and 
 the air was full of a fine vapor, clinging to everything, 
 frosting the leaves of the vines, and making the poppies 
 hang down limp and dripping heads. Then there 
 came the first soft gust of south wind, and they tossed 
 about, opening, nodding to the scattering river fog and 
 to the bits of faintly blue sky which began to show. 
 
 She had reached out and snapped off a gauzy white 
 one. It had been coldly colorless until the sun had 
 touched it, then it had seemed to quiver through all its 
 petals, showing the yellow of the stamens, and lights 
 
 270
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 271 
 
 like the fire of opals, shimmering pink stains, blue and 
 amber gleams, chill tints, dainty and elusive as those 
 of dawn. 
 
 Cecily felt that some one was watching her. It was 
 Jean Carmel. He had come to within a few feet, 
 along the grass at the edge of the gravel path, and 
 had stopped there, watching how the sun which had 
 brought rainbow hues into the poppy had glinted 
 through the pale hair of the head framed in the win 
 dow casing and the drooping pink honeysuckle vine. 
 
 He had broken a crimson rose from one of the bushes 
 at the front of the house, and he went over now and 
 reached it out to her across the multicolored bed. 
 " This," he said, " will keep its beauty whether in 
 sun or shadow. It will send out its sweetness even 
 when it is dying, and afterward the petals can be kept 
 and will give out their perfume still. But that poppy 
 take it from the sunshine, and its beauty is gone 
 at once. It will last but a little time at the best. 
 Then you will find a thin, wisp of stem, with a halo of 
 yellow rays. The petals will be lying shrivelled on 
 the floor, fit for nothing but to be thrown away." 
 
 " And the key to the parable ? " she inquired. 
 
 " The key to the parable the which is spon 
 taneous, by the bye, upon the inspiration of the 
 moment, and most creditable too for half after six 
 o'clock the key is this : that the rose is for those 
 whose beauty is from within, and whose soul sends out
 
 272 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 its own influence ; the poppy, for those whose life 
 must come all from without, and who are only lovely in 
 the sunlight of happiness. Some day," he finished, 
 with an air of much satisfaction, " I shall incorporate 
 that in a sermon as a flower of speech." 
 
 The sexton came around from the front. He was in 
 garments of ceremony and carried white cotton gloves. 
 Monday and the mass being the preferred time for 
 weddings, he was to be married that morning to Ame- 
 lie Latouche. And there was to follow festivity 
 with Coppee to furnish music for dancing in the one- 
 room cottage which was the sexton's abode, and would 
 henceforth be Amelie's, save during the day, when she 
 would continue to work for Pere Carmel. 
 
 The sexton had arrangements to make with m'sieu', 
 who went off with him, returned for breakfast after the 
 ceremony, and took his departure again immediately. 
 
 Amelie being, in consideration of the event, excused 
 from domestic duties for the day, those fell upon Anne, 
 who, believing that, though an heiress, Yvonne should 
 nevertheless learn to become a house-mistress, had 
 pressed that sturdy small damsel into service. 
 
 Cecily sat in the garden reading for a while. Then 
 she started off into the woods. 
 
 About a third of a league from the village, and 
 beside a path which led more directly than the road 
 to the Tetrault farm, there was a small lake where 
 the water-lilies and iris grew thickly, and were, as a
 
 ANNE CARMEL 278 
 
 general thing, left severely alone by the utilitarian 
 habitant. Cecily meant to gather some of the lilies 
 for Anne, reaching from the bank or going out on 
 jutting stones ; but it was still too soon to go directly 
 back with them. She went in among the trees, and 
 lay down on a grassy slope in a little open space, her 
 hands clasped under her head, looking indolently up 
 through her lashes at the branches far against the blue 
 sky, watching the drifting over of occasional gray- 
 edged clouds. 
 
 The usual safety of hill districts was enhanced by 
 the generally law-abiding character of the people, and 
 there was little to fear from the molestation of either 
 man or beast. Nevertheless, when, after a time, she 
 heard the faint crackling of the bushes, she raised 
 herself quickly, and her hand went to the pocket which 
 always held a tiny revolver. 
 
 It was only, however, Jean Carmel, coming along 
 the path, through the isle of trees, and still some dis 
 tance away in the flickering sunshine and shade. He 
 walked with the movements of the woodsman, but he 
 had not just then the woodsman's roving eye, which 
 misses no signs or tracks. He was looking directly 
 down the path as he came on, and, until Cecily spoke 
 to him, did not see her. He glanced around quickly, 
 taken unprepared and stopping short. Then, with 
 the air of one who gives up the effort against contrary 
 
 Fate, and has no choice left him but to make the best 
 T
 
 274 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 of a situation, he turned aside, and sat down at a little 
 distance from her, on a fallen trunk. He had been, 
 he explained, to see a parishioner, who, being ill and 
 repentant, had sent for him. "It was a trivial mat 
 ter. I have noticed that there is usually most to-do 
 over little sins. Those sting the conscience, I suppose. 
 The larger stun it, probably." 
 
 She looked at him speculatively, biting at the ten 
 der white root of a blade of grass she had pulled. 
 And, almost without her own intention, there passed 
 her lips the question she had never yet asked, either 
 of him or Anne how it had come about that he had 
 chosen the priesthood for his life-work. 
 
 It was not in the least the story of fervent impulse 
 and vocation admitting of no refusal, and neither was 
 it that of the self-deception she had more than half 
 expected. To her Protestant mind, trained in the 
 midst of totally different conditions from the almost 
 mediaeval ones among which Jean Carmel had grown 
 up, it was perplexing that a man completely hon 
 est with himself could hold the doctrines he did in 
 all sincerity. But the tale was a very commonplace 
 one of the choice of an occupation, guided by the 
 wishes of parents who had planned it for him, even 
 before his birth and from his childhood on, kept the 
 end in view. As prosaic a matter, upon the whole, 
 she concluded, as the taking of orders by the average 
 English cleric. The family of a priest here, he ex-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 275 
 
 plained to her, was bound to be respectable, and the 
 calling itself was looked upon as creditable. Perhaps 
 too frequently, also, it was looked upon as a means of 
 making a better income than some of them would 
 otherwise be likely to. But, in his own case, there 
 had not been that motive. " Until just before I came 
 to this parish," he said simply, " we were by no means 
 poor." And his grandfather, he told her, was still a 
 rich man, "who holds out to me," he added, "by 
 way of inducement to forsake my present walk of life 
 for that of other men, offers of a worldly sort not to 
 be scorned." He was apparently willing to talk of 
 himself and his affairs now, and as a rule he was dis 
 tinctly taciturn upon the subject. Had he ever, she 
 asked him, thought of accepting the offer ? He snapped 
 a twig from the trunk and tossed it over at the lake. 
 "Yes," he said, "I have thought of it." The tone by 
 no means encouraged her to ask further. She sat, 
 bending forward, with her chin in her hand, seeing 
 the lush stretch of moving brake in the distance of 
 the woods. 
 
 As a rule he was a man of long silences, given to 
 reserve, but he spoke now as one who wanted speech 
 upon any terms, and he brought it with a question of 
 his own, intended as an audible barrier to his own 
 thoughts, a plain reminder to himself of the actual 
 conditions which separated him from her. When, he 
 asked, was she to be married? She did not change
 
 276 ANNE CABMEL 
 
 her position or turn her eyes to him. " I am not to be 
 married," she said. " I decided it some time ago." 
 
 A cedar-bird flew slowly away from above their 
 heads, showing the flecks of crimson under the wings, 
 and dropped down into the thicket, misty in the dis 
 tance of little straight trunks, dead branches, and gray 
 hanging moss. There was the crisp, dry rustle of the 
 glittering-leaved aspens by the edge of the pond where 
 the lilies stirred in a breeze. A chipmunk came out 
 on the limb of a fluffy stone pine, rough Avith lichen. 
 It looked down, twinkling its eyes, then, switching its 
 tail behind its head, sat up and scolded squeakily. 
 
 Jean Carmel had got to his feet. " It must be near 
 noon," he said, sighting the sun. And he waited for 
 her to rise. He made no offer to help her. They 
 went down to the path, and he stood aside to let her 
 pass. It was too narrow for them to walk side by side. 
 She went on, without speaking, feeling that he was just 
 behind, and that his eyes were on her. Against her 
 will she turned her head and looked up at him. " The 
 poppy in your hair is dead," he said. His voice was 
 being controlled. She gave a nervous half-laugh, and, 
 taking the flower out, let it drop from unsteady fin 
 gers. It touched a big spray of bracken, and all the 
 wilted white petals fell off. A breath of wind puffed 
 them away. 
 
 As she walked on in front of him she could see one 
 of his hands. It was strained shut until the knuckles
 
 ANNE CARMEL 277 
 
 showed livid through the brown. One of the heavy 
 clouds which had been in the sky all the forenoon had 
 hidden the sun. It passed, and the whole forest burst 
 into light, glinting far off among the trunks, bringing 
 out a white or silver birch, or a burnished red cherry, 
 touching a pine to bright green, and spreading over the 
 soft sea of brake. 
 
 The shimmering film of a big, drifting cobweb floated 
 down and settled upon her hair and face. It clung in 
 her lashes, blinding and dazzling her. She tripped on 
 an uncovered root, and threw out her hand. It touched 
 another, and was caught and held.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 PAUL TETRAULT had been on his way home for 
 the midday dinner. He had taken neither the road nor 
 the path, but had kept near the latter among the big 
 rocks along the edge of the hill, just above, where there 
 was always twilight, even at noon, where the dew was 
 never dry on the leaves of the little pale plants the 
 bunch-berries and jacks and lilies that came up sparsely 
 in the shade. Looking down, his eyes had caught a 
 glint of tan which was not that of the sunlight on the 
 dry pine drift. 
 
 It moved, and he thought it must be some woman's 
 dress, Cecily Thome's most probably. And for no 
 other reason than that he was not in haste, and felt 
 idly inclined to make sure, he turned a little aside 
 and went nearer down through the shadow, where his 
 footsteps made no noise on the springy depths of 
 moss and needles and mould. He stopped abruptly. It 
 was not only Cecily Thome in the sun-flooded space 
 of the pathway. It was Monsieur Carmel as well. 
 He moved over to a tree, and, leaning against it, folded 
 his arms on his chest, deliberately watching. His 
 
 278
 
 ANNE CABMBL 279 
 
 eyebrows were raised knowingly, and he nodded his 
 head at intervals, with that satisfaction which one finds 
 in seeing one's worst beliefs or prophecies justified, 
 deriving, upon the whole, more contentment from that 
 than from the keeping of a faith or an ideal. He had 
 hinted of this to Anne, and she had shrivelled his very 
 soul with one look. And, moreover, Jean Carmel had 
 indubitably behaved toward him in a way that had 
 been anything but encouraging, during all the time of 
 his engagement. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was a good impulse which, as soon as 
 the two in the path below had gone on, started him 
 back to the village, by the way he had come. Anne, 
 the only one who could possibly avert evil, ought to be 
 warned. It was to warn her that he was going 
 until he was almost at the presbytere it was only that. 
 Then another thought came to him, mixing the mo 
 tives. He had been hurrying by short cuts ; but the 
 startling possibilities struck him still and gasping, the 
 possibilities that would lie in making the right use of 
 what he had just seen. Told abroad told even into 
 one well-chosen ear, his mother's, for instance, it 
 would mean the disgracing of Jean Carmel in the parish 
 and farther. But he would not tell it. He would 
 keep it to himself, now and always, on one condition 
 that Anne should marry him. 
 
 It would lie with her to buy his silence and her 
 brother's honor. And she would pay the price he meant
 
 280 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 to ask. As to that he had no doubts. Of the legitimacy 
 of such methods of compulsion he had, however. But 
 he allayed those sufficiently well. Was he not saving 
 her from Harnett and ruin, saving her name and soul? 
 He was even able to work himself to a frame of mind 
 closely approaching virtuous self-satisfaction over this 
 phase of it. 
 
 His love for Anne had changed its character from 
 the self-abnegating affection of the past. Then she 
 had been the young girl whom he revered from afar, 
 humbly conscious of her manifold superiorities. Now 
 she was a woman, wholly of the earth in her tempta 
 tions and faults, wholly of the flesh in her hold on 
 him. She had come too near to being his wife to make 
 giving her up a mere matter of foregoing a sentiment. 
 He wanted her now, and in any way that he could get 
 her. 
 
 He not only hurried on to the presbytere. He ran. 
 
 Yvonne was the only one in the house. She was in 
 the kitchen. When he asked for Anne she stared at 
 him because he was breathless. Then gradually she 
 pointed to the barn, with a big spoon, all purple and 
 dripping with the juice of some stewing prunes she had 
 just stirred. And, suddenly observing the syrupy 
 drops on the floor, she put the spoon back in the pot, 
 and, falling on her knees, began to wipe them up with 
 the big gingham apron of Anne's which was tied 
 around her neck and hung to the ground.
 
 ANNE CARMBL 281 
 
 Tetrault went out to the barn. It was not only the 
 woodshed and the old sorrel's stable ; it was also the 
 favorite laying place of the chickens. 
 
 Anne had gone out to hunt for eggs ; and Antoine, 
 having come slouching aimlessly in, had been told to 
 climb in back of a pile of wood and a diminished stack 
 of last year's hay, to help in the search. He was not 
 visible when Paul appeared in the wide doorway. To 
 all seeming Anne was alone. She looked her astonish 
 ment at seeing him at all, and that with a flushed and 
 agitated face, the perspiration trickling over it from 
 his damp curls. Then she had a quick fear. Was it 
 Jean had anything happened to her brother ? 
 
 Yes, it was Jean, he said meaningly. He put out his 
 hand and pushed her back. Monsieur Carmel was not 
 hurt neither in danger. And he did not keep her in 
 suspense. He was by no means anxious to have the 
 Cure and Miss Thorne, nor any one else, for that 
 matter, arrive upon the scene before he should have 
 brought things to where he wanted them. Anne had no 
 time to warn him of Antoine and cut him off. He had 
 come out, in a dozen words that tripped one other in 
 their haste, with what he had seen in the path no 
 more, to be sure, than would have been right and 
 proper and even desirable between all other young 
 men and maidens, but was clearly, here, an evil and a 
 shameful thing. 
 
 He had gone near to Anne and closed his coarse
 
 282 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 fingers on her wrist, with the tyranny of a small will 
 given power. She jerked herself free, but she shrank a 
 little too. Antoine came clambering over the haystack, 
 carrying with utmost care his remains of a straw hat 
 three eggs inside the crown. There was nothing in his 
 face by which to judge how much or how little he had 
 heard. His was no habitant density, but the quickness 
 of Irishman and Indian combined. And, without demur, 
 he obeyed Anne's suggestion that he should take the 
 eggs in to Yvonne going forthwith. 
 
 He returned also, but neither Anne nor Paul knew 
 that. He was fairly well hidden behind the cow shed, 
 and his ear and his eye were alternately pressed to a 
 knothole most advantageously located for his purposes. 
 He heard Tetrault make his proposition, setting forth 
 the wisdom of accepting it out of hand, concisely and 
 with small pains to pick pleasant words. Anne should 
 promise to marry him, then and there, or the parish 
 should learn his story. 
 
 Antoine, not hearing anything further at once, used 
 his eye. There was nothing to be seen but Tetrault 
 waiting, with plain impatience, casting a glance out of 
 the door from time to time, and Anne, standing still, 
 twisting a breastpin on the front of her gown. Her 
 lips moved, and Antoine listened again. It seemed 
 that she had expressed doubts of the story. Tetrault 
 laughed rudely. "It is true," he said. "And you 
 know it is. So will all the parish, if I tell it. They
 
 She accepted it all quietly, making no useless protestations 
 or complaints."
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 283 
 
 have wondered why the girl came back. They will find 
 this the explanation." He held the whip and was crack 
 ing it over her. He specified conditions. With fine 
 instinct for his own safety her brother was to know 
 nothing of the cause of her changed decision. And, 
 with equal astuteness she was not to see Harnett at 
 all again. She might write, once only, but he himself 
 was to first read the letter. She accepted it all quietly, 
 making no useless protestations or complaints. 
 
 And in reward for her docility he deigned to give his 
 consent to her one request, that for a week he should 
 keep the renewed engagement to himself. He was not 
 loath to do that, in any case, since the evil hour with 
 his parents would be postponed thereby. 
 
 He made her seal the barter with a kiss. Then he 
 went. Antoine went, too, but by the back gate. 
 
 And Anne stood where she was, in the half -gloom of 
 the quiet barn. The wide-open door showed the puls 
 ing sunlight, the pigeons moving about on the ground, 
 Pilote asleep with her nose between her paws, and two 
 new little chickens hopping over her back and head, in 
 vestigating, and inquiringly pecking at her hair without 
 disturbing her. She was conscious of all that, and of the 
 murmuring heat song of the dusting hens, keeping up 
 steadily and incessantly. In some distant yard another 
 hen was cackling with insistence, and a calf somewhere, 
 was baaing for its mother. The bees who had been told 
 off from the hive to keep it cool that day were buzzing
 
 284 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 steadily by the opening, making a tiny draught and an 
 even droning sound with their hard-working wings. 
 
 She went slowly over to the empty stall and laid her 
 arm upon the edge, bowing her head on it. She was 
 very still. A pigeon came waddling upon its thin 
 red legs, crossing the rough floor, picking some stray 
 bits of white and yellow corn, at the very edge of her 
 skirt. Once she looked up and stared blindly at the 
 line of light showing through a crack in the boards in 
 front of her. Then her head went down again, mov 
 ing from side to side in the restlessness of suffering. 
 
 She heard Jean's voice calling to her, and she 
 straightened herself, resolutely gathering courage. 
 He was coming toward the barn, looking for her. It 
 was incredible, the power of expressing nothing, of the 
 human face and eyes. In his there was not a trace of 
 emotion of any sort, happiness, or trouble, or shame. 
 She could almost have doubted Tetrault, yet her 
 brother substantiated the story in so far as to say that 
 he had come by the lake path and had met Cecily. 
 And there was a bit of thin silver chain showing 
 against Cecily's neck. Paul had said that she had 
 drawn forth a little silver cross and showed it to Jean, 
 and Anne had recalled that it was long since she had 
 seen the Gray Nun's cross. The poppy was not in the 
 pale hair. Paul had told her how it had been taken 
 out and dropped. 
 
 Yet they spoke, the three of them, of Amelie's wed-
 
 ANNE CARMEL 285 
 
 ding dance, which had been going on all the morning. 
 And there came over Anne the dazing sense of that 
 doubleness of life which, sometimes, in one normal 
 moment, makes all the passion and tragedy of the 
 moment before seem not quite real. She felt a 
 wretched disgust with all human nature which could 
 be so outwardly false to itself, which was so false to 
 itself in her as she talked of indifferent things. 
 
 It was against Cecily she was bitter. The soft, con 
 templative eyes, and the almost deprecating forward 
 droop of the head Madame Carmel had insisted they 
 were to be distrusted. And she had been right. 
 
 Under different circumstances, Anne wondered, 
 would she have so much as noticed the silences that 
 came over them while they sat at dinner. Would it 
 have seemed to her that Jean was a little absent, and 
 Cecily somewhat quiet and dreamy? Jean was often 
 absent when he had parish matters on his mind. And 
 it was Cecily's way, frequently, to dream. 
 
 But it was afterward that the unmistakably un 
 wonted happened, when her brother went to his own 
 room, turning the key in the lock, and Cecily, pleading 
 the need for rest, went away also. 
 
 Anne was left alone. She took her work out to the 
 garden. Yvonne was playing under her shawl house, 
 by the cellar door. Etienne was not with her. She 
 left the dolls and came over to the apple tree, swinging 
 against one of the low boughs, and asking for a story.
 
 286 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Anne gave her one mechanically, out of the store of 
 miscellaneous bits of history she had got from her 
 brother and his books. She knew it by heart and told 
 it without thinking what she said. Yvonne, with a 
 child's quick feeling in such matters, realized the lack 
 of interest and enthusiasm in the teller, and reflected 
 it. She waited to the finish, studying Anne critically 
 and without approval, her round, black eyes fixed, 
 chewing meditatively at the end of one of her braids. 
 She did not ask for more, but, by a method of rolling 
 her body over and using hands and knees, scrambled 
 up and departed back to the shawl house. 
 
 Anne hardly noticed that she had gone. 
 
 The old lifelong habits of reticence between herself 
 and Jean, their rule of forcing no confidences from each 
 other made her hesitate to ask the direct question which 
 would determine the truth or falsehood of Paul 
 Tetrault's informing. Yet she would do it. Without 
 definite knowledge she would not give herself to that 
 marriage. If it were true, Jean need not know from 
 whence she had it. 
 
 There were, as she saw it, three loopholes of escape 
 for her. The first was that everything had been a 
 fiction of Paul's own inventing. But she had no hope 
 of that. Paul lacked the daring and wit to plan in 
 any such complicated wise. And was not the circum 
 stantial evidence of the bit of silver chain, the poppy, 
 and the meeting, little short of unquestionable?
 
 ANNE CARMEL 287 
 
 As for the second chance, it was hardly one that 
 she wished for, even to get her own release. It was 
 that Jean should mean to marry Cecily, as he could 
 easily do, so far as mere worldly considerations were 
 concerned. The keeping of the secret would be of no 
 avail, in that case. And he would marry her or re 
 nounce her altogether. As to there being for him any 
 middle course, it was not worth the considering. He 
 had said once, in one of his fruitless attempts to show 
 her Harnett with his own eyes, "To care for a 
 woman would mean, for me, to protect her even 
 from myself." And she knew that it was so. The 
 third chance was that Antoine had heard, and would 
 tell, upon his own account. That, however, was very 
 improbable. The Metis was not talkative, and he was 
 loyal. Nevertheless, he must be seen and silenced. 
 
 And precisely at the moment he appeared at the 
 front gate, opened it, and came in. 
 
 He took the chair near Anne's and leaned toward 
 her. " I heard," he said. 
 
 " I supposed so," said Anne, going on with her knit 
 ting. " But you will not repeat it, of course ? " It 
 was less a question than an assertion. 
 
 "No," said Antoine, "I wont repeat it." And she 
 asked for no further assurance. It was not neces 
 sary. He sat considering her quick needles. Then 
 he began again. " You need not marry Paul Tetrault," 
 he said. She turned to him quickly. He was in no
 
 288 ANNE CABMBL 
 
 wise disturbed. " You need not," he repeated, " unless 
 you want to." She did not have to ask him how he 
 knew anything of all that. She guessed at once. He 
 had managed in some way to listen. 
 
 "I went after him," he continued. "He took the 
 path, the same path, and I followed. When we were 
 by the pond where the lilies are, I made him stop. And 
 you won't have to marry him. I am telling you so 
 now, and before to-night he will come and tell you 
 so, too." It took some diplomacy to bring about even 
 the outline of an explanation. But Anne pieced to 
 gether, with considerable supply of imagination, that 
 Antoine had blocked Paul's way, putting himself in 
 the path and refusing to move until he had pointed 
 out to the terrified habitant that to open his mouth as 
 to the Cure and the American woman would be to 
 bring upon himself certain and unpleasant death. " If 
 I hear that you have told this thing to any one when 
 I come back next winter, five, ten, twenty, fifty years 
 from now, I will kill you," Antoine had warned, and it 
 appeared that Paul had been greatly agitated. But 
 some one else might tell, he had protested. To which 
 Antoine had made reply that Paul by his own previous 
 statement to Anne had been the only observer. An- 
 toine's finely cut, satanic lips curled in a smile which 
 had nothing in the least reassuring. " I told him that 
 I am a Metis, that I should like to kill some one in 
 a way that would give pain." And his wolf eyes
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 289 
 
 looked it. " It was the only way," lie informed her, 
 with superior wisdom and complete confidence in his 
 own actions and judgment. "It would have done no 
 good to marry him. Afterward or sometime when 
 he was drunk, he would have told. I know him," and 
 he jerked his head assertively. "But now he will 
 hold his tongue, because it will be stiff with fear." 
 And he smiled again, with more keen enjoyment than 
 he wanted to show. 
 
 Anne suspected that Paul had had a bad time. But 
 Antoine had nothing more to say about it. " You 
 won't marry him ? " he asked. She was only too 
 glad to be able to tell him that she would not. He 
 nodded approval and satisfaction, and, turning on his 
 run-down heel, left her. 
 
 It was a loophole of escape she had not counted 
 upon. Only, as in certain inquisitorial dungeons, it 
 seemed to her that she had been permitted to find 
 her way out of one, merely to discover herself in 
 another. 
 
 She was the child of a country of which it had been 
 said, after the edict of Richelieu, that it contained 
 no heretics, the daughter of the church through un 
 known numbers of generations. Its teachings had 
 grown into that second nature which so often becomes 
 the more influential of thoughts and of actions which 
 have time for consideration. It was bred in her from 
 remote centuries the horror of forsworn sacerdotal
 
 290 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 vows. The breaking of the decalogue could hardly 
 have appeared so despicable ; the difference in the 
 secular world between a departure from the code of 
 honor and the mere committing of a crime. An apos 
 tate priest the name was opprobrium, an abomination, 
 the thing itself an outcast, a pariah shunned of men. 
 From that it would lie with her, very possibly, to 
 save her brother. If he should determine, if he had 
 already determined, to forsake the priesthood and 
 marry, she would have only to go to him and offer 
 the sacrifice of her own love for that of his. And 
 he would give it, without hesitation, whatever the 
 cost to himself, or even to Cecily. It was not for 
 the mere argument and effect of the words he 
 had held against her, that not the following of in 
 clination but the doing of duty was the thing which 
 one was born into the world destined to have for 
 one's portion, that in the choice between the two lay 
 the issue of life. He would see it as his duty to 
 save her, and he would accept it. She would have 
 only to say to him that she would never see Harnett 
 again if he himself would promise the same as to 
 Cecily Thome. And if the need came, she must 
 do it. 
 
 A quavering and distressed voice close to her 
 inquired, "What is the matter, Ma'amselle?" It was 
 Etienne. He had come around from the other side 
 of the house and had stopped a few feet away. He
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 291 
 
 was not so young but that he had already seen death, 
 and he had thought that Anne might perhaps be 
 dying. Her eyes were shut, and her face was so 
 white and drawn. When he found that she was not, 
 he began, in his relief, to snivel, and Yvonne, coming 
 up, expressed her opinion of boys who cried, quoting 
 to back it, moreover, that of Monsieur Carmel a habit 
 she had acquired since her residence in the presbytere, 
 and which lent weight to her views. 
 
 Etienne resented it, and there was very nearly the 
 first pitched battle. Anne came in between them and 
 brought about peace, of a sort. Etienne, however, 
 betook himself and his injured dignity away. He 
 would play with boys, and Yvonne called after him 
 that she didn't care and preferred being alone, in any 
 case. 
 
 It was the time-old feminine defiance, disproved, as 
 usual, by a prompt loss of interest in things in general, 
 after a very short period of too ostentatious enjoyment. 
 Anne saw the accentuated attempts at having a good 
 time gradually abandoned for a picture book, and finally 
 for dreary meditation. Yet Etienne was playing in 
 front of the church, shouting. His good time was not 
 feigned at all. It was a hard world for women little 
 and big. 
 
 But the commonplace and trivial, so deadly to high 
 emotion, had intervened for Anne. The impulse to 
 tragedy and self-sacrifice was lessening. She began to
 
 292 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 come out from the influence of inherited prejudices. A 
 prejudice of any sort was not apt to govern her for 
 long. The elemental was too strong in her. Save in 
 the doctrines of the faith, which she accepted with that 
 docility which has called upon French Canada the 
 praise of popes, she insisted upon reasoning all things 
 from a logical premise. 
 
 The influence of the convent school and of her first 
 confessor had both been inadequate to affect her in this. 
 For herself approved by her brother and discouraged 
 by her father and mother she had worked it out to her 
 own satisfaction and definitely decided, while she was 
 still almost a child, that pilgrimages to Oka and Ste. 
 Anne, to shrines in general, or reciting prayers in front 
 of tiny bronze St. Peter's could not obtain indulgences ; 
 that absolution was, moreover, to be bought, not by 
 confession and penances, but only by that reality of 
 repentance which was so little dwelt upon. None of 
 all this had constituted heresy in itself, but was dis 
 countenanced by her parents, by the nuns, and the 
 priests, as a tendency thereto, possibly inherited from a 
 recalcitrant grandfather, and desirable to check. Their 
 combined forces, however, had failed to check it. Jean 
 had given his sanction to her scheme of morality and 
 helped her to it, and Jean was the ultimate court of 
 appeal. For them a sin lay in the uncurbed inclination 
 fully as much as in the act ; a wrong which one did not 
 commit only because of the prevention of exterior cir-
 
 ANNE CABMBL 293 
 
 cumstances was none the less committed to all intents 
 and purposes, and laid to one's count. As a man 
 thought in his heart, so he was. 
 
 And what, therefore, would it avail her brother's 
 salvation that she should coerce him into outward com 
 pliance with the law if in his heart he should be long 
 ing to break it ? The saving of the soul was the affair 
 of the soul's self. There could be no other way. As 
 for the saving of a good name that was the least of 
 all arguments. In her own case it had not weighed as 
 a feather. Even in her brother's, it did not, enough to 
 determine her course. 
 
 What was to be avoided was that failing most abhor 
 rent of all to her, hypocrisy. A renegade priest was 
 at least less sunk in disgrace and infamy than one who 
 would be mocking the service of God with devout hand 
 and lip, the while rebelling within himself. The dete 
 rioration of a finer nature which Jean had feared for her 
 as a fallen woman, she feared for him as a priest held to 
 his work by nothing more than constraint of circum 
 stances, forced into outward acceptance of his lot. 
 There could in no wise be honesty in that. There 
 could be in openly forsworn vows. 
 
 In the end she reversed her first decision. If her 
 brother should determine to deny his vows and marry, 
 she would try to prevent it only in so far as one could 
 be justified in seeking to change the course of another's 
 life by influence. But the pettiness of offering him
 
 294 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 her own social salvation in exchange for his, she would 
 not stoop to that. 
 
 Cecily Thome would be leaving in another day. 
 The interval would bring forth results one way or 
 another. It was precisely that she might wait for 
 those, and act accordingly, that she had made Paul 
 Tetrault concede her a week's secrecy as to the renewed 
 promise of marriage the compelled promise from 
 which she did not at all hesitate to accept Antoine's 
 help at escape. 
 
 There'se Labiscaye was coming across the street tow 
 ard the presbytere. Anne laid down her work and 
 went to meet her at the gate.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 JEAN CAEMEL had drawn his one chair out to the 
 middle of his room, and he sat there, his arms folded 
 and his square chin sunk down, looking out to where 
 the pink and white and crimson poppies in the bed 
 beneath Anne's window were blurring with color in 
 the sun. 
 
 For the most part moral development goes on un 
 consciously, gradually, little by little, and unfelt. But 
 in almost every life worthy the name there comes the 
 period when all the influences which have been at work 
 from the beginning, heeded or unrealized, converge and 
 focus in two distinct forces contending against each 
 other, as Jacob and Esau within Rebecca. And even as 
 Esau was a man of nature and Jacob a plain man dwell 
 ing in tents, so are the striving elements that of the 
 untrained, simple, primitive creature, the elder, and 
 that of he who inclines to the quiet ways which make 
 for peace and order and the building up of peoples and 
 societies later born. 
 
 Yet of Jacob and Esau it was foretold (symbol of the 
 history of civilization) that the first must serve the 
 
 295
 
 296 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 second in the end. And of the individual man it is 
 not predestined. The outcome must be determined in 
 each case the future mastery. It was the crisis which 
 Jean Carmel was facing. 
 
 In his adoption of the priesthood there had been no 
 question of vocation at any time, hardly even of his 
 own volition. Before he had come into the world, his 
 mother had prayed with all the fervency of a zealot's 
 nature that her firstborn might be a son who could be 
 devoted to the service of God in the church, and atone, 
 in the third generation, for the sin of the grandfather 
 who was, even then, in an heretical land, forsaking the 
 faith, and rousing thereby the bitter anger, condem 
 nation, and disapproval of his daughter. The desire 
 had had no effect upon the bent of the child ; he had de 
 veloped no religious zeal. But from the time he could 
 grasp the meaning of the word " future " it had been 
 given him to understand that his own was to be the 
 priesthood. All plans, all arrangements, and all his 
 education had been with that end in view. And he 
 himself had acquiesced, if with no especial enthusiasm, 
 at least, without objection. He had recognized that 
 a man had necessarily an occupation. That of a priest 
 was distinctly a creditable one in itself, presupposing in 
 his country at any rate, a respectable family in good 
 standing. And he had had none of his grandfather's 
 scepticism, had never been exposed to influences which 
 might have caused it.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 297 
 
 He had accepted his work in life and, in due time, 
 had been ordained. The vow of celibacy had meant 
 almost nothing to him at the time, had been perhaps 
 the one of all to which he had given least thought. 
 Marriage had never entered into any of his calcula 
 tions, nor love into his experience. Up to then his 
 outlook upon life and history had been restricted. 
 It was only after he had become a priest, and to an 
 extent his own master, that his eyes had been opened 
 to his surroundings and to much of the stoiy of the 
 past. Then he had had his first doubts of the desir 
 ability of that celibate priesthood, finally insisted upon 
 by a master-mind in statecraft, not for the greater 
 glory of God, so much as for the greater power of 
 a hierarchy bound to no family or country owing 
 but one allegiance. If a tree was to be judged by 
 its fruit, the fruit of celibacy had been too often 
 such as the church might well dislike to name. He 
 could not but know it, and knowing it could not but 
 reach his own conclusion one unaffected then by 
 any personal inclinations. 
 
 Even the little maiden of Picardy had not caused 
 him to wish seriously for freedom and much less to 
 contemplate obtaining it. But now he asked himself 
 by what right he or any man dared to renounce before 
 hand something of which he had no knowledge, to 
 try to determine for himself his own future contrary 
 to the plans of Heaven for the race, to attempt the
 
 298 ANNE CAllMEL 
 
 forestalling of Destiny and checking the will of his 
 Creator. It was not virtuous; it was impious. The 
 touch of a woman's hand had been the call to every 
 impulse of youth and life and temperament which 
 were strong in him. And he had answered it. Was 
 he not as other men who did their part in the up 
 building, the perpetuating of peoples? that duty 
 impressed by Holy Writ to the fostering of the love 
 of nation only less sacred than the love of God, a 
 duty never denied or depreciated until after the 
 Master had returned whence he had come and left 
 half-comprehending disciples and converts to misin 
 terpret too many of his words, twisting them, adapt 
 ing them, to their own tastes or preconceptions. And 
 had not St. Paul himself whose aceticism was 
 late born as his faith been in his younger manhood 
 a member of the Sanhedrin and so the husband of a 
 wife? Had not that which he had written to the 
 Corinthians overreached unjustifiably through mis 
 guided zeal any possible deduction to be drawn or 
 wrenched from the guarded, matter-of-fact answer of 
 Christ to the questioning Pharisees? 
 
 A man's right to love some one woman and have her 
 for himself before heaven and earth was older than 
 Christianity, older than the church, older than the 
 third century council, which first had proposed the 
 terms of celibacy as old as creation. It was a right 
 furthered by lawgivers and philosophers of wisdom
 
 ANNE CARMEL 299 
 
 from time beyond reckoning. Nature herself, which 
 gave the lesser chance of life to the unmarried, spoke 
 for it unequivocally. 
 
 And what though he had, in his ignorance, bound 
 himself with an oath? Was a man to be held by 
 moral law to a pledge of wrong-doing, when even by 
 the law of man he might not be ? Such an oath, 
 ought it not properly to be as abhorrent to all normal 
 men as those unnatural ones of Abraham, Agamemnon, 
 or Jeptha, to which it was near akin, after all? Was 
 one bound in honor to adhere to it? Truly, it was 
 written that " if a man vow a vow unto the Lord, he 
 shall not break his bond" and much more of the sort. 
 Yet, was an evil vow to be counted as made to the 
 Lord ? " That which is gone out of thy lips thou 
 shalt keep and perform," one had commanded. Yet 
 a Greater had said, "Swear not at all, because thou 
 canst not make one hair white or black." And that 
 One had come down to the foundation of this as of 
 all things. The fundamental wrong lay in swearing 
 at all. Yet to forswear ! He was no sophist. Did 
 two wrongs make one right? 
 
 Anne spoke to him through the locked door. He 
 
 stood up mechanically and went to open it. The're'se 
 
 Labiscaye was asking for him. And it was a rule of 
 
 the presbyte~re that none was ever to be denied access 
 
 to him at any hour of the day or night. 
 
 The part of priest did not come easy to him in the
 
 300 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 very moment of revolt, of contemplating abjuring it 
 for good and all. Nevertheless, he went out at once. 
 
 There'se's troubles had been more than usually bitter 
 of late. The mother, for whom she had sacrificed her 
 own life happiness, had been querulous and dissatisfied, 
 the sister contemptuous in her rare letters, which, to 
 make the humiliation greater, had to be taken to 
 strangers for reading, and the work of the little farm 
 patch very hard. 
 
 " Look, mon pere, if you do not believe that I am 
 tired." She bent awkwardly forward from her chair 
 and stretched out to him two blunted, knuckled hands, 
 cracked and reddened and sore. They shook like an 
 old woman's. She jerked them back suddenly and 
 dropped her face on them, doubling over and huddling 
 down, her forehead upon her knees. She was not cry 
 ing or sobbing, not making a sound. Jean Carmel sat 
 looking at her as the embodiment of his own future, 
 sent to typify what he would be if he should do as 
 she had done and turn away from the love that offered. 
 He took his cljair nearer to hers and laid his hand on 
 her shoulder, bent and thin and angular. Just then 
 he did not attempt to speak to her. After a while she 
 lifted her head and leaned back in the chair, her eyes 
 on the floor, sullen. 
 
 "I am only thirty years old," she said resentfully, 
 "and half of my life is still to come this life." 
 
 He felt the impotence of the conventional religious
 
 ANNE CARMEL 301 
 
 consolations she would be able to understand. To 
 some ascetic, visionary half-saint they might have 
 brought hope and peace. They were meant for such, 
 conceived by such. But to a dulled woman of hardly 
 more sensibility than some of those beasts of burden 
 like which she toiled, they had no real meaning. He 
 recognized helplessly, as he had done before now, the 
 difficulty of reaching those who are in great suffering 
 of mind and soul, and whose religion is founded on 
 dogma rather than on the spirit of unformulated Chris 
 tianity. 
 
 Religion to TheVese Labiscaye was the dogma of 
 the church and its symbols, and there is a depth of 
 sheer human wretchedness which such cannot reach. 
 The all-penetrating comfort of the simple faith of the 
 two great commandments of love might have touched 
 her. But that faith was something which circum 
 stances and Monsieur Biret had not prepared her to 
 understand. The Good God Himself was to her the 
 benign and bearded form in man's likeness which she 
 had seen in sacred prints. She was willing to accept 
 the faith that He would reward her with heaven if she 
 were to do well, confess at intervals, and receive the 
 Blessed Sacrament; that He would punish her if she 
 should sin, and forgive her in time, appeased with 
 penances, if she were repentant. Her God had the 
 advantage over the heathen's only in that he inclined 
 to virtue. He was as real, as corporeal, to her as had
 
 302 
 
 been to Marie de 1'Incarnation three centuries before, 
 when faith was alive, the Saviour to Whom she addressed 
 unlovely rhapsodies. And He served her usual needs. 
 But He was not the God to comfort the rebellion of 
 dead despair. And Jean Carmel did not invoke Him. 
 
 He talked to her, not in his capacity of a priest, but 
 as a man who has himself seen life stretching before 
 him at times as a dreary outlook, yet has kept on his 
 way, found his reward in usefulness, and discovered 
 that, seen closer, from day to day there was much of 
 interest and of good. 
 
 She sat at first, without looking at him, twisting the 
 end of a scarf she wore around her neck. Then at 
 length she broke down and cried, and the sullenness 
 and rebellion passed. She stayed a long time, and 
 went away more contented. 
 
 He shut himself into his own room again, and, return 
 ing to his place on the stiff willow chair in the middle 
 of the floor, his arms on his chest and his chin sunk 
 again, took up the argument with himself where he had 
 left it. Like the story of the arctic traveller who was 
 himself revived and warmed in the effort of reviving a 
 companion, he had been helped in helping The'rese. 
 He too was less rebellious against existing conditions. 
 It was largely he himself who had made them ; he was 
 bound to admit that. He had been a man, and one of any 
 thing but facile disposition, when he had been ordained. 
 No one had forced him, reluctant, to it. By his own
 
 ANNE CARMEL 303 
 
 act, his own vows, freely taken, he was become, more 
 than the majority of men, an example. As he should 
 do, many others would do. In proportion to his promi 
 nence was his responsibility. Far and near, now and 
 in the future, he could in no wise see all the wrongs to 
 which his own breaking of faith with those who be 
 lieved in him and who trusted him might lead. He 
 knew that, more than many priests, he was looked up 
 to in his parish. And the harm which is done by the 
 loss of confidence in one who has been entirely believed 
 in may well be incalculable. With all but the best and 
 strongest characters the distrust will spread out beyond 
 the one to the many, causing doubt of all mankind, in 
 cluding inevitably, in the end, the Creator of so much 
 imperfection. He would have much to answer for who 
 should betray the trust of even the least of these. The 
 near consequences he could, in a measure, foresee, now. 
 The remote he could never know, but they would be 
 none the less surely his to account for. 
 
 There was a duty he owed to the woman beyond 
 question, and it was the one nearest to his heart. Yet 
 it was only one. And the conception of obligation had 
 no right to be narrow. The duty at hand was by no 
 means always the one to be done. It was frequently 
 short-visioned moralists to the contrary notwithstand 
 ing the one to be passed over for a larger, as the his 
 tory of nearly all reforms and charities could show. 
 The greatest good of the greatest number was that
 
 304 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 upon which the decision of his action could alone be 
 based. 
 
 Then he felt in memory the clinging touch of the 
 woman's hand over which his own had closed. He rose 
 sharply and crossed the little bare room. And, coming 
 to a stop by the wall, he caught sight of the woman her 
 self. She was at the farther window of the wing which 
 formed her room, the afternoon light coming in behind 
 her. She was standing, and the hand which rested 
 on the deep masonry sill held a wilted red rose and 
 what seemed to be a dried, pressed spray of some white 
 flower. He recalled the morning in the month of May, 
 when the pastures had rippled in gold and green, when 
 the maples had been fringing out in yellow and russet, 
 when the farmers had been ploughing their fields, and 
 a group of children, hanging over the stone fence, had 
 been watching one of them. He recalled the handful 
 of meadowsweet one of them had shyly offered him, 
 and which he had passed on to Cecily. The duty 
 toward the greatest number, what was that to him? 
 Himself and the woman he loved, those were all his 
 world, and ought rightly to be. He would think of 
 himself and her the others might fight their souls' 
 battles for themselves. 
 
 Then he remembered Anne and the promise he had 
 made her give him, that she would come back to him 
 when she should have no other where to go. Could 
 she and would she come to a house which held his
 
 ANNE CARMEL 305 
 
 wife and children the woman that she would be by 
 then ? Would he himself want her to do so ? 
 
 He stood where he was, thinking it over in all its 
 aspects, looking at it from every side. But all that 
 showed itself to him unmistakably, beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt, was that, if his sister were to come back to 
 him, she must find him alone as he had taken his vow 
 to be, and must remain. And at least one reason and 
 excuse for, one object of that vow was apparent to him 
 now. In the doing of his duty it left a man with no 
 one to consider save himself. 
 
 He went back to his chair once more. It was a long 
 while before he moved. When he did the face that he 
 lifted had aged by years. From the face of a man in 
 the full of youth, which it had been before, it had be 
 come that of a man past the best of his life. And there 
 came back to him Anne's words, spoken in the dense 
 forest of the hill crest, in the blackness of the gathering 
 storm, 
 
 "It is your life which is the ruined one I hope 
 you will never know how ruined." 
 
 The knowledge had come.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 SOME one went by in the street, singing cheerfully 
 and discordantly to the night : 
 
 Chante, rossignol, chante 
 Toi qui as le cceur gai. 
 Tu as le cceur k rire 
 Moi je Tai-t'-k pleurer. 
 
 Jean Carmel, sitting at his desk, heard it through the 
 open window, and it was entirely applicable to his own 
 frame of mind, if not judging from the exuberant 
 shouting to that of the singer. He had been reread 
 ing a letter which had come to him late in the afternoon, 
 and which had given him practically the assurance that 
 his days at St. Hilaire were reaching their end, and that 
 his work would be thenceforth in Montreal. There 
 would have been a time when it would have been good 
 news, untempered by any regrets, beyond a slight one at 
 leaving the parishioners who were attached to him. But 
 now it had come too late. Two years ago it would have 
 saved Anne. And two years ago it would have spared 
 Cecily. As for himself, he did not wish to have been 
 spared. Two years ago this parish, in which he had 
 
 306
 
 ANNE CABMEL 307 
 
 done the work of his youth, whose church and presby- 
 tere he had built, would not have been endeared to him 
 by the grave of his mother, and yet more by the recol 
 lections of a meadow sloping down to the river edge, a 
 field waving with the gold and white of great daisies, the 
 path to the Tetrault farm, the garden where the white 
 lilacs and the daffodils had blossomed when the woman 
 who was to be so much to him had first come into it. 
 
 In the city there could be no garden of his own, where 
 he could grow so much as one bed of the fragile single 
 poppies. At least none of those should be left to his 
 successor, whoever that might be. Everything else he 
 might have, to plant and profit by, if he should care to 
 work over them as the chances were he would not. 
 But the frail flowers of sleep which had come from her, 
 those should be torn up and burned threadlike roots, 
 brittle stems, and petals of brilliant gauze. 
 
 Yet it was not probable that he would have to leave 
 St. Hilaire unless he wished to. And he would not 
 wish to now. It would be better that he should stay 
 on in the presbytere to which he had grown accustomed, 
 with the parishioners who knew and cared for him, 
 becoming old among them and their children's children 
 in the seclusion of the ancient hills. It would be the 
 best place for Anne to find him when she should stand 
 in need of him. He had duly considered it all and specu 
 lated upon what his course would have been had things 
 been as they were not.
 
 308 ANNE CAEMEL 
 
 He would have gone with Anne to the city, where they 
 would have been at once among many friends. Anne 
 would have married. That would have been little short 
 of inevitable. Her beauty and her own temperament 
 assured it. Precisely because her love for this ona 
 man was of the character he could not but know it to 
 be, it would not absorb her whole life if she had nothing 
 more actual than memory to feed it upon. Only with 
 the idealist did such passions exist. And Anne was in 
 no sense an idealist. She could be able to, she would 
 be obliged to, love again with almost equal self-abandon 
 ment, if conditions should be favorable. 
 
 As for himself, he might, in course of time, have 
 hoped to rise considerably above his present rank in 
 the church, and importance in the world. He believed 
 his talents and his friends to be such as to assure that. 
 And he was ambitious at bottom intensely so. But 
 as matters stood he must perforce put aside ambition. 
 A priest could not advance far who would persist in 
 keeping with him a sister who would be a woman of 
 tarnished name. Such were not the companions of 
 church dignitaries. 
 
 To be sure, it would always be possible to provide for 
 her away from himself. But it was not in that manner 
 and spirit he contemplated receiving her back. So far 
 as he was concerned, she should be to him at any time 
 in the future, under any and all conditions, precisely as 
 she was now. And therefore advancement could not
 
 ANNE CARMBL 309 
 
 well be for him, unless perhaps in the very unlikely 
 event of Anne's deciding at the last moment to give 
 Harnett up an occurrence not to be looked for or 
 counted upon, yet one which would have made all and 
 any sacrifice seem to him amply repaid. 
 
 He took up a pencil which lay on the desk and 
 began marking straight lines and X's and scrolls on 
 the back of the envelope. Somewhere outside a gray 
 owl hooted several times. He turned in his chair 
 impatiently. By the dim light he could just see the 
 photograph of Cecily upon the mantelpiece, the picture 
 of the woman of another world than this of the forests 
 and fields of another world than his, and destined to 
 remain so henceforth. 
 
 He had told her so that evening as they had stood 
 together in the sorrel and tall seeding grass, in a neg 
 lected corner of the yard. They had talked for a long 
 while, until many stars had come out in the vault of 
 night blue, yet a little pale with the daylight which had 
 not quite faded away. He had showed her everything 
 in the past and present exactly as it was, had told her 
 of his mother's forebodings and of the letter which he 
 had written in fulfilment of his promise, the letter which 
 a Fate, bound apparently to have its way, had made use 
 less. She had taken it very quietly and listlessly, he 
 could not help thinking, with something the indiffer 
 ence of one who from the first expects little better of 
 life and so does not rebel. He was not to her all that
 
 310 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 she was to him. He recognized that. And he had 
 been right when he had read her as one who would do 
 well enough without the thing she desired, partly be 
 cause of a latent philosophy inherent in her, partly 
 because she had seen too many sides of life to find any 
 one more important than all the rest. 
 
 But for him it had been the black hour of tragedy. 
 The night about him, the present, and the future were 
 dark. They offered him nothing beyond the hope of 
 being yet of some use to Anne and his parishioners. 
 "If the end of duty can ever be really bitter," he 
 remembered that he had once said, when they had been 
 speaking of Therese Labiscaye. He was learning now 
 if it could be. Yet it was not the end, after all, only 
 the beginning; and it must be worse before time 
 should make it better. 
 
 He blew out the candle and got up, groping his way 
 to the fireplace and taking down the picture he had 
 been looking up to, but could not see now. It was cool 
 and smooth against his aching forehead. 
 
 After a few minutes the door from the hallway 
 opened. He heard it, and heard some one coming 
 across the room. In the darkness he could just see 
 the white blur of a dress. It was Cecily. The blood 
 in his temples beat cold. The hands that held the 
 photograph trembled uncontrollably. When she was 
 within only a few feet of him she stopped, hesitating 
 for her next step. He could have stretched out his
 
 ANNE CARMEL 311 
 
 arms and touched her. She moved on cautiously. 
 And then he did reach toward her. But she was too 
 far away. It was the symbol of his life that the arms 
 closed upon only the shadows and the air. 
 
 He choked back a desperate moan of disappointment. 
 But she had gone on, unconscious even that he was 
 there. 
 
 She rapped softly at Anne's door, opened it, was 
 outlined for an instant, diaphanous against the candle 
 light, then the door closed behind her. 
 
 He stood where he was. The beating of his pulses 
 died down. He was glad that she had been the one 
 step too far out of his reach. It was better so. The 
 volume of the story of their two lives together had fin 
 ished out there in the garden and the twilight. A day 
 more, and it would be closed, clasped shut for good 
 
 and all. 
 
 **##*** 
 
 Anne was kneeling upright by the open window, 
 and the yellow glow of the one candle burning low 
 in the socket fell on the white of her nightgown. 
 She had only turned her head at first. Then she 
 rose slowly, growing cold to the hands which hung 
 before her, holding the rosary, and to the bare feet 
 on the boards. Cecily stopped irresolute, the forward 
 droop of her head against which Madame Carmel had 
 animadverted as a lure to strong men, a little more 
 marked than ever.
 
 312 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Anne, nevertheless, was afraid of her. She was 
 afraid to see her lips move. And when they did she 
 could not hear the first time. Cecily repeated it. 
 She had something to tell her should she stay now 
 or come back ? She reached out her hand to the 
 latch again. But Anne was one to cut the thread 
 and have done with it rather than wait for the fall 
 ing of the sword. She checked her. Cecily left the 
 door and glanced over to the little bed where Yvonne 
 lay flat on her back, with her red mouth open roundly, 
 and a stiff tail of hair sticking out upon either side 
 of her neck. Anne saw the glance. Yvonne would 
 not wake, she said ; and Cecily crossed to the window 
 and sat on the wide sill. For all the slight hesitation 
 and diffidence of her manner, Anne felt the determina 
 tion underlying it, the self-possession. And it had 
 its effect upon her. She herself in crucial moments 
 was never self-possessed however much she might 
 be so of the spirits of resistance, or set decision, or 
 dogged purpose. 
 
 They were looking full at each other ; and Cecily 
 Thorne needed no telling that Anne was forewarned. 
 Upon the whole it was better that she should have 
 been. It saved explanations which would have been, 
 of necessity, difficult. In the hope of making what 
 little reparation might lie in her power she had obliged 
 herself to overcome a reticence natural and culti 
 vated in her, a reluctance to approaching the subject
 
 ANNE CARMEL 313 
 
 of sentiment, unless it were of the most impersonal 
 sort. To deny an enthusiasm or affection, in action 
 and even in word, was her manner of keeping it sacred 
 and intact to herself, as the Oriental keeps hidden 
 from the eyes of all other men, and ignores in speech 
 the woman upon whom he sets most value. And she 
 shrivelled and recoiled from the touch of sympathy. 
 It was not easy for her to do what she meant to. Yet, 
 if Anne Carmel's gratitude could be worked upon by 
 putting plainly in front of her the extent to which 
 her brother was, for her sake, carrying his renuncia 
 tion of happiness and ambition and hope, there might 
 still be brought some good out of so much evil. 
 Anne was generous, and her generosity might prove 
 the one compulsion which would make her give over 
 Harnett, where all else had failed. At any rate it 
 had seemed to Cecily worth the chance. 
 
 "Has some one told you?" she asked now quietly. 
 "Or have you seen for yourself?" Anne delayed her 
 answer ; then she gave it. She had not seen for herself ; 
 some one had told her. Had it been Jean, Cecily ques 
 tioned ? The use of the name slapped Anne in the face. 
 She bit her underlip. It had not been her brother. 
 No. Cecily accepted the rebuke. " I will call him Mon 
 sieur Carmel, if you prefer," she said with much un 
 concern. 
 
 Anne had somewhat the quickness of phrase always 
 resulting from habitual speech in the language of
 
 314 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 courts. "You must call him," she said, "by what 
 ever name you know that you have the right to use." 
 But it was a courtesy a trifle too elaborate in view of 
 the other's simplicity. It struck false, and she felt it. 
 
 If it had not been Monsieur Carmel who had told 
 her, Cecily asked, would she let her know who it was? 
 
 Anne thought a moment. There was, perhaps, no 
 real reason why she should not have told, beyond the 
 force of the habit of keeping her own counsel. She shook 
 her head. " No," she said ; " but it was some one who 
 passed through the woods, just above the path." Even 
 by the wavering candle-light she could see that Cecily 
 reddened painfully to the eyes. 
 
 " I am sorry," she answered, " very sorry ; not so 
 much for myself that is of little importance one way 
 or another but for your brother. As for me, these 
 people are not mine, and their opinion is of no con 
 sequence to me." 
 
 It would not go any farther, Anne told her with cold 
 reassurance. It seemed to her rather late to be think 
 ing of Jean. The time to have done that would have 
 been before returning to St. Hilaire ; and she suggested 
 as much now. 
 
 Cecily showed no resentment. It was not to fall 
 into recriminations that she had forced herself to 
 go through with this distasteful episode. "I real 
 ize that," she answered in the low voice, leaning her 
 head back against the masonry. "And I wish now
 
 ANNE CARMEL 315 
 
 that I had not come back. But whatever else my 
 faults may have been, deliberate intention to do wrong 
 was not one of them." She leaned toward her earnestly. 
 "I want you to believe this much, Anne," she urged, 
 impressing it : " that until to-day I thought in all 
 sincerity that the only woman who was more to your 
 brother than a casual, passing interest was yourself." 
 
 Anne did not answer. Her loose hair was over her 
 shoulders, hanging almost to her knees in waves of 
 shadowy brown. She flung it back with her hands and 
 a throw of the head. Cecily looked away from her to 
 where the trunk and thickly leaved branches of a tree 
 a few feet away showed vague in the dull night. It was 
 raining, a fine drifting mist which made no sound except 
 a regular dripping from the eaves. Presently she looked 
 back at Anne. "You remember Madame Tetrault's 
 loud comment by the church door, before vespers ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Anne. 
 
 "And you remember that when I was here a year 
 ago you told me a good deal about yourself ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said again, with a questioning inflection. 
 "It is inevitable that we strangers should hear some of 
 the gossip of the village; you realize that? And it is 
 equally inevitable that I should have pieced together 
 all my scraps of information and report, and, with a 
 very little filling in on my own part, have concluded 
 that you had gone back to your first intention, that you 
 intend again to leave St. Hilaire ? "
 
 316 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 " If there had been any reason for telling you, I 
 should have done so myself," Anne said in defensive 
 challenge of any possible imputation of shamed secrecy. 
 
 " Yes," Cecily accepted it ; " but there was no reason 
 why you should have told me anything whatever. All I 
 want you to see," she said, speaking distinctly, " is this 
 that your brother himself has told me nothing con 
 cerning you which I did not already know, and that not 
 until I showed him I knew did he speak unreservedly." 
 She stopped and sat looking down at the floor, choosing 
 the words. Then she raised her eyes to Anne's deliber 
 ately. " And I knew then that I had been right from 
 the first, after all. There is no woman he has ever 
 placed before you and there is not now. If it had 
 not been for you, I believe that his vows and what he 
 sees as his duties would not have won in the end. If 
 it had not been to keep a home ready for you in the 
 future, he would have given up all the rest for me." 
 
 Anne had the way of remaining for long stretches in 
 one position without moving, a habit like that of con 
 tinued silence which can give a strong negative force 
 of its own and which can make final movement of tell 
 ing effect. She had not changed from where she had 
 stood at the first upon rising from her knees at the 
 opening of the door. Now she came a sudden step 
 forward. " Then " she began. Her lips were apart, 
 she was holding her breath, a white figure of painful 
 eagerness and keen anxiety.
 
 " 'He has given up love for your sake,' Cecily finished, 'and now 
 he intends to forego his ambition and his future.' "
 
 ANNE CAKMEL 317 
 
 "After to-morrow," Cecily answered, " he will never 
 see me again." 
 
 For some little space neither of them spoke. Then 
 Cecily followed up the advantage she knew she had 
 gained. " There was a letter which came to him this 
 afternoon," she said. " Have you seen it ? " 
 
 "No," said Anne, and showed by the look that 
 crossed her face the inevitable jealousy of one 
 from whom the confidence she has always been ac 
 customed to monopolizing has been taken to be given 
 another. 
 
 Cecily saw it. And it was by no means annoyance 
 against Jean Carmel she wished to rouse in Anne. "No," 
 she said, considering. " I should suppose not. He is 
 hardly the man to let his sacrifices be known to the 
 one for whom they are made. " Anne waited, not ques 
 tioning, but expectant and clearly impatient. Cecily 
 told her of the contents of the letter. " He has given 
 up love for your sake," she finished the recital "and 
 now he intends to forego his ambition and his future." 
 
 She could see Anne shiver. The air that came 
 through the window was damp and cool. It caught 
 up long tendrils of Anne's hair and blew them against 
 Cecily's face. A bird disturbed in the tree outside 
 fluttered and chirped and was still again. 
 
 The candle had been guttering down in the stick. 
 It flared up redly and went out. Yvonne sighed and 
 moaned, turning over in her bed.
 
 318 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Cecily rose, and they faced each other in the dark 
 ness. Then she felt for the two firm, long hands, lifted 
 them, and pressed the palms against her cheeks. 
 
 She dropped them and went noiselessly out of the 
 room.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 ANNE stopped at the top of a divide she had just 
 climbed. She glanced behind her in the direction of St. 
 Hilaire. It was already eight or nine miles away, and 
 not even the spire of the church was to be seen. She 
 had left there at seven o'clock, telling Ame'lie that she 
 would be absent all day, which had had the effect of 
 making the good woman exceedingly anxious. 
 
 Jean Carmel had not been at the presbytere. On 
 Monday he had gone to one of the other parishes of 
 the diocese, some distance away, taking part in the 
 yearly retreat of priests and profiting by the sermons 
 of an eloquent Franciscan. It was Saturday now. 
 The exercises would be over in the morning, and by 
 night he would be at home again. More than a 
 week had passed since he and she had stood together 
 in the street, watching three people going away along 
 the road, Cecily and the two Thornes. 
 
 Just as Cecily had come to the bend, which would 
 take them out of sight, she had dropped behind a few 
 steps and had looked back. Then she had rejoined 
 the others, and Jean Carmel had seen her for the 
 last time. Yvonne had been watching, too. He had 
 
 319
 
 320 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 caught her, flung her upon his shoulder, and, turning 
 his face until it had been hidden against the soft, 
 childish body, he had gone into the house quickly. 
 But Anne had seen the face. 
 
 #####** 
 
 It had decided her. And now she was carrying 
 out the decision. 
 
 St. Hilaire was well behind her, and Les Trembles 
 not three miles ahead. A mountain hawk was cir 
 cling widely in the blue of the sky and seemed to be 
 directly above it. She could see the white houses 
 and the church and even the straight lines of the 
 Lombardy poplars which had been planted in long, 
 even rows by some seigneur and his censitaires in 
 memory of France. The sun went behind a high 
 cloud, then shone out again, bringing forth a rainbow 
 that token of the covenant between heaven and 
 earth which the savages of these woods and mountains 
 had once named strings of the sun. It touched the 
 wheat in a far-off field to a broad band of chrome 
 yellow and the oats to frosted, rippling green. 
 
 Anne went aside from the road a little way and 
 sat herself on a big slate boulder. A wild rosebush, 
 pink with bloom, was growing close to her. Without 
 in the least knowing that she did it, she reached out, 
 carefully broke off a rose with no stem, and pulled 
 the petals from it, letting them drift down to the ground. 
 She did it with another and another.
 
 ANNE CARMEL 321 
 
 Over at Les Trembles Harnett would be waiting. 
 She had written him to meet her, not in the village, 
 where she was known, but outside, among the ruins 
 of an old seignorial grist-mill. She had not wished him 
 to come to St. Hilaire again. Her movements about 
 there were often spied upon by some of the villagers. 
 Several times when she had gone walking alone, she 
 had found that some child had stealthily followed her 
 set on, doubtless, by his elders and was peering 
 from over a rock or from behind a bush. 
 
 The rose petals were being scattered over the grass. 
 She saw them for the first time and stopped the pur 
 poseless destruction. But she still sat where she was, 
 thinking desultorily. 
 
 Other lovers had met in the old moulin banal. 
 Once a man had killed his sweetheart there. It had 
 happened since Anne had come to St. Hilaire. He 
 had believed the girl faithless mistakenly and had 
 taken up one of the stones which had fallen from 
 the crumbling walls, beating her on the head with it. 
 Anne imagined how it had been the first blow, the 
 clinging to the uplifted arm, then to the knees, the 
 falling to lie limp and stunned at the man's feet. It 
 would not be so bad a death, better than many, it 
 seemed to her, and much better than what was before 
 herself. 
 
 She looked over to the top of another hill she had 
 left behind. By the roadside was a big black cross
 
 322 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 of wood. It stood out against the sky, marking the 
 parish boundary. The sun was striking the glass of 
 the niche beneath it, which glittered with the reflec 
 tion. She remembered how one of the heartsick and 
 weary early fathers had said that to the eye of the 
 flesh there seemed to be in New France only des bois 
 et des croix. The woods those had been always 
 here, since the Laurentine hills had risen and formed 
 the oldest of ridges. But the crosses the first had 
 been that one thirty feet high and bearing the arms 
 of France, planted by Cartier at Gaspe", forerunner of 
 the thousands to come. Even far up the Saguenay, 
 where no priest had been before him, a missionary had 
 found a rude cross. A little band of starving Indians, 
 to whom Christianity conveyed only suggestions of 
 necromancy and flesh-pots, had raised it, hoping it 
 would bring game, very probably. 
 
 And on the Isle of Demons had been crosses, too, 
 there, where the evil spirits had shrieked through the 
 woods, and haunted Marguerite de Roberval as she 
 had watched die the lover who had been thrown to 
 perish with her for their sin, the child born to them, 
 and the woman who had been her own nurse in far-off 
 Picardy. She had buried them all three with her own 
 hands the hands which had worked at broideries 
 and tapestries in the halls of the castle of Vimen, yet 
 had fired the arquebuse in the boar arid stag hunts 
 of France, as well, in merciful preparation, it seemed,
 
 ANNE CARMEL 323 
 
 for that which Fate had in store for her. She had made 
 three crosses and had put them at the heads of the graves. 
 But she had been rescued at last after three years by 
 passing sailors, a creature clad in beast skins and half- 
 savage from loneliness, grief, terrors, and suffering. 
 She had been carried back to Picardy and had died 
 there, herself, long afterwards. Had she never wished 
 she might live again through those three years, hideous 
 as they had been, or that she, too, had died of cold 
 and hunger in the fastnesses of the far North, where 
 lay the man she had too much loved and their child ? 
 
 Anne considered absently the pink petals upon the 
 grass. Then she brushed some from her skirt, stood 
 up slowly, and kept on her way. 
 
 As she came near to the mill she went off from the 
 road, in among the trees. People might be coming 
 in and out of the village, and she did not want to be 
 seen. Harnett was waiting in among the ruins. She 
 could see him while she herself was still hidden by 
 the undergrowth. He was just within the crumbling 
 doorway, standing, leaning against it, watching the 
 road. She stopped under a tree, holding to a branch 
 with raised arm, putting off the step which would 
 bring her into sight. She knew now that she ought 
 not to have come. All the moral strength she had 
 brought to her help was going from her. It did not 
 need even his voice or his touch ; only to see him was 
 enough to bring her down again weakly under his
 
 324 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 power, the power which made her take wrong for right 
 worse than that, knowing wrong for what it was, 
 accept it with defiance. 
 
 She would go back, and she started to, making a few 
 resolute steps by the way she had come. But she 
 turned her head, and saw him again, standing there in 
 the broken doorway, looking up the road with keen- 
 sighted, hard, blue eyes. 
 
 She was out of the underbrush, and among the piles 
 of loose stones and fallen wall, before he knew that she 
 was anywhere near. Then he heard one of the stones 
 slip, rattling, and he faced about quickly. She was 
 in the shadow of a corner, by a big oak that grew out 
 over where the roof had once been, long since. He 
 went to her, and took her into his arms. She put her 
 own about his neck. 
 
 The dark leaves of the oak were not moving. No 
 flicker of sunshine fell down through them, no bird 
 stirred in the branches. There was not a sound. 
 
 Anne took away the hand that was half buried in the 
 coil of hair at her neck, pressed it against her lips for a 
 long moment ; then drew off from him, going back a 
 few steps to the wall. 
 
 Harnett was not imaginative, not sensitive to the in 
 fluence of the unspoken word, but he felt an indefinite 
 oppressing dread, the uneasiness of one who is facing a 
 higher moral force some intangible and resented con 
 trol. He went toward her again, impulsively. She put
 
 ANNE CARMEL 325 
 
 out her hand to stop him, holding him away. "Not 
 again," she begged, " it only makes it harder for us 
 both." Her voice was dull and broken. 
 
 He had taken the outstretched hand, and he kept 
 it in his. He was thwarted, and his brows came to 
 gether, frowning with annoyance and fear. "Makes 
 what harder for us ? " he asked. " What do you mean ? " 
 She dropped her head, and looked away from him. He 
 repeated it. " Makes what harder, Anne ? Answer me." 
 She did her best to get the hand away, but he would 
 not let it go, and she was forced to look up into his face. 
 It was close to hers, bending down. She gathered the 
 courage that was going from her, and answered. 
 
 He let the hand go, instantly. The minutes passed 
 and neither of them spoke. It was he who did, at 
 last, and the only trace of feeling in his face or tone 
 was that they were too unmoved. 
 
 " You only came to say good-by ? " he repeated it. 
 " Do you mean it to be final ? " She bowed her head. 
 He took her by the wrist so that she twisted in the 
 grasp. 
 
 " Tell me why," he commanded. 
 
 "Because "she tried to free herself, "because I 
 must." 
 
 He saw that he was hurting her, and loosed his hold 
 a little. "Tell me why," he insisted relentlessly. 
 "That is no reason." 
 
 And it appeared to him still no reason when she
 
 326 ANNE CAKMEL 
 
 had tried to show it to him. Even to herself it was 
 not, put into words, so good a one as it had seemed 
 before. And the explanation was halting, and in 
 complete, giving, she could not but know it herself, 
 the effect of double purpose, because she would say 
 nothing of Cecily Thorne even by suggestion. That 
 was Jean's own most personal affair, had come near 
 to being his shame. And rather than speak of it, she 
 would have met the death which the habitant girl had 
 met here in the ruins. It would have been easier 
 than meeting Harnett's look of angry suspicion and 
 unbelief. At the best as he was able to see it 
 from what little she would tell him she had been 
 played upon with a priest's truly admiration-compelling 
 cleverness and understanding of character. Argument, 
 entreaty, and remonstrance having failed, Jean Carmel 
 had had recourse to that of which he could be sure, 
 Anne's affection, and, yet more, her gratitude, to 
 say nothing of her somewhat emotionally generous 
 nature. It was justifiable enough, undoubtedly. That 
 much Harnett conceded. 
 
 " I should have done it myself," he told Anne. " I 
 should have worked on you by any method that would 
 have gained my ends. For the matter of that, persua 
 sion failing, I should have used force, had you been 
 my sister." It had already struck him more than 
 once as extraordinary that the big priest, who had 
 denied himself food with a strength of purpose border-
 
 ANNE CARMBL 327 
 
 ing upon heroism, and had swum the river with great 
 strokes, showing thereby power of will and body 
 beyond the common, should not have constrained 
 Anne to do his wish. "Nevertheless," he added, 
 "you can hardly expect me to rise to any such 
 sublime heights of disinterestedness as to be pleased 
 with your putting his happiness before my own." 
 And he refused to admit it to her as anything more 
 than just that. " Rather than let your brother forego 
 a possible bishopric in the distant future, or sacrifice 
 himself entirely unnecessarily to keep you a home 
 which you would never have needed, you will let me 
 forego the one happiness the world has to offer me, 
 and sacrifice me without the least qualm." She looked 
 at him with a misery which might have stopped him. 
 But he went on unpityingly. "As for the other 
 vague, mystery-wrapped act of self-abnegation, you 
 must own that, as I cannot be told of it, it can hardly 
 move me very much." 
 
 " I would tell you, if I could," she said. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders incredulously. " No," he 
 reiterated it, "he calculated skilfully on his knowl 
 edge of you, and worked on you in the surest way he 
 could have chosen, through your sense of gratitude." 
 
 She denied it earnestly. Her brother had not 
 worked upon her only, at any rate, in so far as to 
 get her promise to come back to him if she should 
 ever need a home.
 
 328 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 Of the sacrifices he had meant to make upon her 
 account he himself had never spoken, and did not so 
 much as know that she had learned of them. She was 
 ready to defend Jean, but it was a new experience 
 for her to protest her own truthfulness to any one. 
 Heretofore those who had not been willing to take 
 her word, at once and without question, she had ignored 
 with complete indifference. Yet she was begging Har- 
 nett to believe her, without the details and explanations 
 which she might not give. " I have told you all that 
 I have the right to, more perhaps," she urged, " and 
 it is true, indeed it is. So far as Jean knows, I have 
 simply thought better of it, changed my mind." Har- 
 nett assented promptly, taking up the phrase. That, 
 it appeared to him, was exactly what she had done 
 found, when it came to the crisis, that she loved 
 him less than she had for a while supposed, and per 
 suaded herself easily, as a consequence, that her duty 
 and her inclination lay together. 
 
 " You are sincere, of course," he granted her, " but 
 you could never have done this if you had really cared 
 for me." And there occurred to neither of them the 
 fine unconscious humor of it that the reproach should 
 come from him. 
 
 He went over to a heap of debris and sat upon it, 
 reaching down to pick up the heavy walking stick he 
 had dropped at sight of her. He turned over a stone 
 with the end of it, a sharp-pointed, small stone, upon
 
 ANNE CARMEL 329 
 
 which a man's hand could have closed. Anne won 
 dered if it might, by any chance, be the same one the 
 habitant had used, and she felt a weary envy of the 
 girl who had been given unconsciousness. 
 
 " I am to trust you implicitly," Harnett was saying. 
 " I am to accept your word for everything, whether 
 I can understand it or not. But I may by no means 
 have such trust from you. You take it for granted that 
 I will tire of you and send you adrift sooner or later. 
 You are so prepared for it that you even plan with 
 your brother for your home when it shall have hap 
 pened." He laughed angrily. "It is probably what 
 you have every reason to think of me but it is hardly 
 flattering. And it hardly argues the blind faith of a 
 really genuine love." "You expect rather too much 
 of a man," he kept on after a pause, " why should I 
 believe you?" 
 
 " Do you think," she asked him, " that this is all 
 so easy for me that I am doing it for my pleasure? 
 Do you think I would do it if I did not feel that 
 I ought to that I must? Surely," she pleaded, 
 "surely, dear, you might have some little mercy on 
 me, some little pity for me." He struck the stone 
 so sharply that she winced. Then he controlled him 
 self and twirled the stick in the air with exact attention 
 to its balance. 
 
 " It looks to me," he said, " uncommonly like a case 
 of cooled ardor. Either you have found that I am not
 
 330 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 worth to you so much as your respectability . in which, 
 of course, you would be quite right, though a good 
 deal smaller sort of woman than I thought you; or 
 else, or else I have been supplanted." 
 
 With a deliberation entirely equal to his own now, 
 she backed off to the wall and pressed the palms of her 
 hands against it. They worked, rubbing over the old 
 masonry ; and the muscles of all her strong, lithe body 
 were moving as those of a brute move while it crouches 
 and gathers rage. There were dull lights behind her 
 eyes, and her lips were tightening across her teeth. 
 "Perhaps," kept on Harnett, "perhaps the American 
 artist is more fortunate than I. I can only offer you 
 my love. But possibly his name also is his to dispose 
 of. And a woman sets a very just value on the 
 name." 
 
 It brought no answer. She was an uncomfortable 
 creature, this woman who he knew it would have 
 endured anything now before she would have stooped 
 to defending herself. And he had not believed his 
 own taunts, any of them. He had made them in the 
 blind instinct of hurting again because he himself was 
 being hurt. He got up from his pile of stones and 
 walked over to the door, looked aimlessly out to the 
 road, up and down it. Then he came back and stood 
 in front of her, holding tightly to the stick with both 
 hands. 
 
 " Never mind all that, Anne," he said, with frank
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 331 
 
 contrition. "I don't mean it, or believe it. I have 
 done you wrong enough already, heaven knows, with 
 out adding that to it. I trust you in the bottom 
 of my heart, absolutely. And I always shall what 
 ever happens, whatever you do." The anger went 
 instantly, and the tears came to her eyes. He walked 
 away, then returned. " Whatever your reasons are," 
 he told her, " I accept them without any question. 
 And if you had none but that you ought not to come 
 to me, you would be altogether right ; I am not fit 
 and never have been to get you or your affection." 
 
 She threw out both hands with a cry of denial. 
 It was more than he could stand, so near to her and 
 resist. He had held to the stick that he might not 
 give away to his desire to take her in his arms again, 
 but he flung it off and it struck ringing against the 
 wall. " Anne," he begged her, " Anne, my darling, 
 don't send me away without you. Don't." 
 
 ######* 
 
 The shadow of the oak on the rough gray wall had 
 changed perceptibly. It fell now to the east. 
 
 Harnett stood with Anne's hands in his own. 
 "Then if it must be good-by, if it is really to be 
 let me say it like some sort of a man." 
 
 He tried to smile down into her wan, colorless face, 
 but it was not a success, and she had no smile to 
 answer. He lifted the lifeless fingers and kissed them. 
 " Good-by, dear," he said.
 
 332 ANNE CARMEL 
 
 She turned away and walked out through the breach 
 in the side of the mill, by which she had come. He 
 looked after her as she went among the trees. 
 
 When she had come again to the top of the hill 
 from which she had looked back toward St. Hilaire, 
 and down on the nearer town, she found the hidden 
 nook among the wild rose bushes once more, and she 
 crouched down on the slate boulder, folded her arms 
 on her knees, and dropped her forehead upon them, 
 It was early afternoon then. It was early evening 
 when she raised her head again. She stood up stiffly 
 and looked around. But she did not see anything 
 neither the stony pastures and full fields toward the 
 village, nor the little creek of Les Trembles which 
 flowed below, going in the direction of St. Hilaire, 
 a thin glistening streak nor the soft dark tree-tops 
 against the shimmering sky, and the valley lying 
 purple below. She did not see Harnett where he 
 had moved behind a low-growing young spruce a dozen 
 yards away. 
 
 The midday had been clear and fair. Now a dreary 
 wind was tossing the branches above her forebodingly. 
 She had promised Amelie that she would be back 
 by nightfall. That would be impossible, as it was. 
 She went quickly out to the road, and on toward St. 
 Hilaire. 
 
 Harnett came out from behind the spruce, and, 
 keeping among the trees and bushes, followed her at
 
 ANNE CAEMEL 333 
 
 a distance. She reached the top of the next hill, where 
 the big parish boundary cross stood, with its figures of 
 the Virgin and Child in a little glass case, hung around 
 with votive trinkets. She stopped. No one was in 
 sight, forward or backward, along the road, nor yet 
 on the great sweep of stone-blue hills. She knelt in 
 front of the cross, pressing her face against it, and 
 finding the satisfaction of a sentient nature in the 
 mere beauty of the sonorous, time-enriched words, she 
 repeated with no great thought of their meaning, choos 
 ing the Latin rather than the vulgar tongue for the 
 solace of the sound "Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. 
 Pater de Coelis Deus, miserere nobis. Virgo clemens, 
 Refugium peccatorum, Consolatrix afflictorum, ora pro 
 nobis." 
 
 Harnett waited with his head uncovered. 
 
 When Anne rose up at last, he saw her open the 
 front of the niche, take something from off her own 
 neck, and put it around that of the little painted image 
 of the Mother. She waited still, looking back at Les 
 Trembles, before she should pass the boundary of the 
 parish and lose sight of it. The little white houses and 
 the silvery Lombard poplars were still visible. Sombre 
 gray storm-clouds had banked up upon the horizon and 
 spread out into a hot flush from the sunset over half 
 the sky a fiery mist. 
 
 But above St. Hilaire the darkness of a threatening 
 evening was settling down.
 
 334 ANNE CABMEL 
 
 Anne went on. 
 
 When she was down at the foot of the hill, and would 
 not have been able to see him even if she had turned, 
 Harnett went near to the cross and looked at the gaudy 
 little figure, with its trashy votive offerings, brass finger 
 rings, miniature wooden arms and legs and hands, glass 
 jewellery, a battered, cheap watch an old pipe, even. 
 But there was a tiny gold chain about the Madonna's 
 neck, hanging to the bottom of her heavy plaster 
 draperies. He looked at it closely. It was the chain 
 he had given Anne, bought in Quebec, and sent to her 
 the first time he had gone away. There had been a 
 locket on it, which had held his picture. That was 
 not here. She had taken it off. 
 
 He kept her always just in sight. The loneliness of 
 these roads among the hills might have had dangers for 
 a woman at any hour, but the more so, it seemed to him, 
 toward dusk. As it grew darker he went nearer, and 
 when night had quite settled down, he was so close that 
 he fancied she must surely hear his footsteps, since he 
 had been obliged to come out upon the road now, too. 
 
 The fireflies glimmered back and forth, lighting and 
 darting and disappearing. A will-o'-the-wisp made its 
 weird light among the trees, now here, and instantly 
 far off. 
 
 Anne did not go up through the village street. A 
 couple of lanterns which visiting neighbors had hung 
 against the walls, beside doorways, might have showed
 
 ANNE CARMBL 335 
 
 her, or a dog might have brought some one out to see 
 who was passing. She took a back path instead, one 
 which would bring her out behind her own house. 
 
 There was a lamp burning in the presbyt&re. The 
 curtain was not drawn, and the light shone out of the 
 window, across the bed of red poppies a great pool of 
 blood-color in the night. 
 
 Anne pushed the rear gate and went through. 
 
 It was by that way she had come, Harnett remem 
 bered, on the evening when he had first spoken to her 
 a tall gray apparition, with a crimson stain of bunch- 
 berries upon her breast. 
 
 The gate creaked as it had turned on its hinges. 
 In a moment the side door of the presbytre opened. 
 Jean Carmel came out upon the steps, and stood against 
 the oblong of light. He peered about. 
 
 Anne stopped in front of him. They spoke together 
 for a moment. Then it seemed that Anne was swaying 
 forward. Jean Carmel lifted her in his arms and carried 
 her into the house. The door was shut behind them, 
 and there was only the glow through the window upon 
 the leaves of the apple tree, and across the bed of great, 
 deep red poppies. 
 
 Harnett turned away, going back down the path and 
 out of the town.
 
 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 
 
 BY 
 
 GWENDOLEN OVERTON 
 Cloth. i2mo. $1.50 
 
 A novel of the army on the frontier during the time of the Indian 
 outbreaks under Geronimo and others in the late seventies. His 
 torically the book is valuable though this is nearly forgotten in 
 its interest as a picture of scenes that can never be repeated ; a 
 book which American social literature could ill afford to lose 
 while it is also an absorbing love story. 
 
 " A picture of the great West the West of the days of the 
 Apache raids clear and vivid." Baltimore Sun. 
 
 " ' The Heritage of Unrest ' is a remarkable book, and in all 
 respects it is an interesting departure from the current line of 
 fiction. It is a story of American army life fully matching the 
 frontier sketches of Owen Wister, and told with such touches of 
 offhand colloquialism, now and again, as might mark the work of a 
 Yankee Kipling." New York World. 
 
 "In every respect character, plot, style, scenes, descriptions, 
 and personages the book is unconventional . . . refreshing." 
 
 Boston Herald. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
 THE VIRGINIAN 
 
 A HORSEMAN OF THE PLAINS 
 By OWEN WISTER 
 
 Author of "Lin McLean," " U. S. Grant: a Biography/' etc. 
 
 With eight full-page illustrations by ARTHUR I. KELLER 
 
 Cloth J2mo $1.50 
 
 " There is not a page in Mr. Wister's new book which is not interesting. 
 This is its first great merit, that it arouses the sympathy of the reader and 
 holds him absorbed and amused to the end. It does a great deal more for 
 him. . . . Whoever reads the first page will find it next to impossible to put 
 the book down until he has read every one of the five hundred and four in 
 the book, and then he will wish there were more of them." 
 
 The New York Tribune. 
 
 "Mr. Wister has drawn real men and real women, and a day that 
 America has centuries of reason for pride in, now passing away forever. . . . 
 No one writes of the frontier with more interest than this young Philadelphia 
 author, and no one writes literature more essentially American. In The Vir 
 ginian he has put forth a book that will be remembered and read with inter 
 est for many years hence. May he soon write another as good ! " 
 
 The Chicago American. 
 
 " Mr. Wister is an engaging story teller. His descriptions are always 
 graphic, and he increases his reputation for narrative bristling with American 
 ism in this volume. He knows the West by long and intimate personal con 
 tact, and he brings to his subject a depth of appreciation and understanding 
 unsurpassed by any other writer who has chosen the Far West as a theme in 
 fiction. . . . The story is human and alive. It has the ' touch and go ' of 
 the vibrating life of the expansive American West and puts the country and 
 the people vividly before the reader." 
 
 Philadelphia Times' Saturday Review.
 
 RONALD CARNAQUAY 
 
 A Commercial Clergyman 
 
 By BRADLEY OILMAN 
 
 Author of "The Parsonage Porch," "Back to the Soil," etc., etc. 
 
 Cloth. J2mo. $1.50 
 
 "Will be sure to make comment, especially in clerical 
 circles. Its title fairly indicates its character, though its 
 interest is of a broadly human sort, and by no means con 
 fined to the somewhat caustic pictures which it gives of some 
 conditions that are all too prevalent in the churches of the 
 present day. ... In short, the author has shown a man 
 gifted with what in business life are real virtues, who makes 
 a detestable figure as a priest, and the reproach is laid where 
 it belongs not on an individual, but on the conditions which 
 tempt such men into the priesthood, and give them oppor 
 tunities to outshine those who have a true spiritual calling. 
 In this Mr. Gilman is quite fair, and though his book is often 
 sharp, it is free from bitterness, and all the more likely for 
 that reason to achieve the desired purpose." 
 
 Springfield Republican. 
 
 " Mr. Gilman has written a book which must be read with 
 pleasure by all who admire the ability to reproduce phases of 
 contemporary life with etching-like fidelity. 1 ' 
 
 New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " Throughout the book shows the stroke of an author who 
 
 writes correctly and with full information about his subject." 
 
 Chicago Tribune. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
 RODERICK TALIAFERRO 
 
 A Story of Maximilian's Empire 
 By GEORGE CRAM COOK 
 
 With Illustrations by SEYMOUR M. STONE 
 doth. 12mo. $1.50 
 
 "The war history involved is kept at all stages in its 
 proper place as the background of a brilliant, passionate love 
 story, wherein the hero wins the love of a beautiful Mexican 
 girl and the enmity of a powerful rival also in the army." 
 
 Chicago Tribune. 
 
 " Every page contains some incident or some description 
 that grips the reader's interest ; over all is the glamour of 
 youth and beauty and passion stronger than love of life or 
 fear of death ; . . . noteworthy for the power with which one 
 of the great tragedies of the last half-century is told." 
 
 San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 "Lovers of stories of action will find here much that is 
 thrilling and dramatic. The book distinctly rises above the 
 level of the sensational novel. . . . The episode of the bull 
 fight is alone enough to make the story worth reading." 
 
 The Outlook. 
 
 u A vivid story of romantic love and adventure. ... A 
 tale of real dramatic power." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " A rattling novel of love and fighting. . . . Mr. Cook's 
 dialogue sparkles with wit, his pathos is well timed and mov 
 ing, and his love scenes are adorable. There are some spirited 
 pictures in the book." Chicago Tribune. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
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