Part 36 (2/2)
The Notary looked in the large mirror opposite with sad content. ”Ah, it was a good figure, the first time I went to that hut at Four Mountains!”
”We can't always be young. You have a waist yet, and your chest-barrel gives form to a waistcoat. Tut, tut! Think of the twins in the way of vainglory and hypocrisy.”
”'Twins' and 'hypocrisy'; there you have struck the nail on the head, tailor. There is the thing I'm going to tell you about.”
After a cautious glance at the door and the window, Dauphin continued in quick, broken sentences: ”It wasn't an accident at Four Mountains--not quite. It was Paulette Dubois--you know the woman that lives at the Seigneur's gate? Twelve years ago she was a handsome girl. I fell in love with her, but she left here. There were two other men. There was a timber-merchant,--and there was a lawyer after. The timber-merchant was married; the lawyer wasn't. She lived at first with the timber-merchant.
He was killed--murdered in the woods.”
”What was the timber-merchant's name?” interrupted Charley in an even voice.
”Turley--but that doesn't matter!” continued the Notary. ”He was murdered, and then the lawyer came on the scene. He lived with her for a year. She had a child by him. One day he sent the child away to a safe place and told her he was going to turn over a new leaf--he was going to stand for Parliament, and she must go. She wouldn't go without the child. At last he said the child was dead; and showed her the certificate of death. Then she came back here, and for a while, alas!
she disgraced the parish. But all at once she changed--she got a message that her child was alive. To her it was like being born again. It was at this time they were going to drive her from the parish. But the Seigneur and then the Cure spoke for her, and so did I--at last.”
He paused and plaintively admired himself in the mirror. He was grateful that he had been clean-shaved that morning, and he was content to catch the citrine odour of the bergamot upon his hair.
New phases of the most interesting case Charley had ever defended spread out before him--the case which had given him his friend Jo Portugais, which had turned his own destiny. Yet he could not quite trace in it the vital a.s.sociation of this vain Notary now in the confessional mood.
”You behaved very well,” said Charley tentatively.
”Ah, you say that, knowing so little! What will you say when you know all--ah! That I should take a stand also was important. Neither the Seigneur nor the Cure was married; I was. I have been long-suffering for a cause. My marital felicity has been bruised--bruised--but not broken.”
”There are the twins,” said Charley, with a half-closed eye.
”Could woman ask greater proof?” urged the Notary seriously, for the other's voice had been so well masked that he did not catch its satire.
”But see my peril, and mark the ground of my interest in this poor wanton! Yet a woman--a woman-frail creatures, as we know, and to be pitied, not made more pitiable by the stronger s.e.x.... But, see now!
Why should I have perilled mine own conjugal peace, given ground for suspicion even--for I am unfortunate, unfortunate in the exterior with which Dame Nature has honoured me!” Again he looked in the mirror with sad complacency.
On these words his listener offered no comment, and he continued:
”For this reason I lifted my voice for the poor wanton. It was I who wrote the letter to her that her child was alive. I did it with high purpose--I foresaw that she would change her ways if she thought her child was living. Was I mistaken? No. I am an observer of human nature.
Intellect conquered. 'Io triumphe'. The poor fly-away changed, led a new life. Ever since then she has tried to get the man--the lawyer--to tell her where her child is. He has not done so. He has said the child is dead--always. When she seemed to give up belief, then would come another letter to her, telling her the child was living--but not where. So she would keep on writing to the man, and sometimes she would go away searching--searching. To what end? Nothing! She had a letter some months ago, for she had got restless, and a young kinsman of the Seigneur had come to visit at the seigneury for a week, and took much notice of her.
There was danger. Voila, another letter.”
”From you?”
”Monsieur, of course! Will you keep a secret--on your sacred honour?”
”I can keep a secret without sacred honour.”
”Ah, yes, of course! You have a secret of your own--pardon me, I am only saying what every one says. Well, this is the secret of the woman Paulette Dubois. My cousin, Robespierre Dauphin, a notary in Quebec, is the agent of the lawyer, the father of the child. He pities the poor woman. But he is bound in professional honour to the lawyer fellow, not to betray. When visiting Robespierre once I found out the truth-by accident.
”I told him what I intended. He gave permission to tell the woman her child was alive; and, if need be for her good, to affirm it over and over again--no more.”
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