Part 6 (2/2)
”I am under many obligations, my son,” said Father Beret, ”for what you tell me. It was good of you to remember my dear old friend and go to him for his loving messages to me. I am very, very thankful. Help me to another drop of wine, please.”
Now the extraordinary feature of the situation was that Father Beret had known positively for nearly five years that Father Sebastien was dead and buried.
”Ah, yes,” M. Roussillon continued, pouring the claret with one hand and making a pious gesture with the other; ”the dear old man loves you and prays for you; his voice quavers whenever he speaks of you.”
”Doubtless he made his old joke to you about the birth-mark on my shoulder,” said Father Beret after a moment of apparently thoughtful silence. ”He may have said something about it in a playful way, eh?”
”True, true, why yes, he surely mentioned the same,” a.s.sented M.
Roussillon, his face a.s.suming an expression of confused memory; ”it was something sly and humorous, I mind; but it just escapes my recollection. A right jolly old boy is Father Sebastien; indeed very amusing at times.”
”At times, yes,” said Father Beret, who had no birth-mark on his shoulder, and had never had one there, or on any other part of his person.
”How strange!” Alice remarked, ”I, too, have a mark on my shoulder--a pink spot, just like a small, five-petaled flower. We must be of kin to each other, Father Beret.”
The priest laughed.
”If our marks are alike, that would be some evidence of kins.h.i.+p,” he said.
”But what shape is yours, Father?”
”I've never seen it,” he responded.
”Never seen it! Why?”
”Well, it's absolutely invisible,” and he chuckled heartily, meantime glancing shrewdly at M. Roussillon out of the tail of his eye.
”It's on the back part of his shoulder,” quickly spoke up M.
Roussillon, ”and you know priests never use looking-gla.s.ses. The mark is quite invisible therefore, so far as Father Beret is concerned!”
”You never told me of your birth-mark before, my daughter,” said Father Beret, turning to Alice with sudden interest. ”It may some day be good fortune to you.”
”Why so, Father?”
”If your family name is really Tarleton, as you suppose from the inscription on your locket, the birth-mark, being of such singular shape, would probably identify you. It is said that these marks run regularly in families. With the miniature and the distinguis.h.i.+ng birth-mark you have enough to make a strong case should you once find the right Tarleton family.”
”You talk as they write in novels,” said Alice. ”I've read about just such things in them. Wouldn't it be grand if I should turn out to be some great personage in disguise!”
The mention of novels reminded Father Beret of that terrible book, Manon Lescaut, which he last saw in Alice's possession, and he could not refrain from mentioning it in a voice that shuddered.
”Rest easy, Father Beret,” said Alice; ”that is one novel I have found wholly distasteful to me. I tried to read it, but could not do it, I flung it aside in utter disgust. You and mother Roussillon are welcome to hide it deep as a well, for all I care. I don't enjoy reading about low, vile people and hopeless unfortunates; I like sweet and lovely heroines and strong, high-souled, brave heroes.”
”Read about the blessed saints, then, my daughter; you will find in them the true heroes and heroines of this world,” said Father Beret.
M. Roussillon changed the subject, for he always somehow dreaded to have the good priest fall into the strain of argument he was about to begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Roussillon was a Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often forgot ma.s.s. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all his outward show of large and breezy self-sufficiency, he was not altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents. This promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it as long as he lived. Perhaps the very fact that his innermost conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have intensified his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father Beret and Madame Roussillon, to bring her gently but surely to the church. Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all original characters.
A few weeks had pa.s.sed after M. Roussillon's return, when that big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all the inhabitants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic function that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent.
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