Chapter VI

They passed the shed, making a straight march, as swift as might be, for the fallen man; but before they reached him they saw some one coming, a black, increasing form in the snowy distance. Morin hesitated. If the thief had arisen, strong and able-bodied, it was clear that they had again been tricked for an evil purpose. Even Madge looked alarmed, and they both raised a halloo in the patois of the region. The answer that came across the reach of the storm cheered them.

The new-comer, a messenger from the nearest village, became voluble as soon as he was within speaking distance. He addressed Madge in broken English, but so quickly and with so strong a French accent that Courthope only gathered part of his errand. He had come, it seemed, from the stepmother to tell something concerning a certain Xavier, who had been sent to them the evening before. Before he had finished calling, Madge and Morin had come to the place where the thief lay, and, looking down upon him, Madge gave a little cry.

The new-comer came up. He looked as if he might be of the grade of a notary's clerk or a country chemist. He did not seem surprised to see who the man was. He began at once with great activity to chafe his hands and face with handfuls of the snow. Madge and Morin were also active with the restoratives. The thief was lifted and laid upon the toboggan. They trod the snow all about to know that nothing remained, and found only a corkless flask containing a few drops of rum. They were all so busy that Courthope had little to do; he stood aside, wondering above all at the way they rubbed the man with the snow, and at the astonishment that Madge expressed. The stranger was very nimble and very talkative; pouring out words now in French to Madge, he walked with her in all haste to the shed from which the horse again whinnied. Morin, awakening to a sense of urgency, started at a trot, dragging the toboggan behind him; it sank heavily in snow so light. Courthope lent a hand to the loop of rope by which it was drawn. He too essayed the trot of the Canadian. He was growing proficient, and if he did not succeed in keeping up the running pace, he managed to go more quickly than before. They made fair progress. Looking back, Courthope saw Madge and the stranger emerge upon the road with the little horse. He had not time to look back often to see how they helped it to make its way. They were still some distance behind when he and Morin reached the house.

The man called Xavier was carried into the kitchen amid wild exclamations from the Morin women. As they all continued the work of restoring him with a hearty goodwill and an experience of which Courthope could not boast, he was glad to betake himself to his own room, wondering whether he was now a thief or a gentleman in the eyes of this small snow-bound world. There was, in any case, no one at leisure to prohibit him from making free with his own possessions.

When he was dressed a certain shyness prohibited him from entering the dining-room in which he heard Madge, Eliz, and the stranger talking French together. He betook himself to the library, to the Letters of the Portuguese Nun and an easy-chair. They might oust him with severity, but it was as well to enjoy a short interval of luxury. The room was warmed with a stove; the book was in the old-fashioned type; an almost sleepless night was behind him; soon he slept.

It was almost midday when he slept; the afternoon was advancing when he awakened. Madam Morin was standing beside him arranging a tray of food upon the table.

'Eh!' she said, and smiled upon him.

Then she pointed to the food, and demanded in pantomime if it suited him. Courthope concluded that he had ceased to be in disgrace. He would rather, much rather, have been summoned to a family meal, but that was not his lot. He had taken many things philosophically in the course of recent hours, and he took this also. What right had he to intrude himself? He ate his meal alone. His roving glance soon brought him pleasure, for he found that some one had tip-toed into the room while he slept and laid the choicest volumes of romance near his chair.

The wind had dropped, the snow had ceased falling. Before Courthope had finished his luncheon the young man who looked like a notary's clerk came in, using his broken English. He remarked that the storm was over and that they were now going to get out a double team to plough through the road. He suggested that Courthope should help him to drive it, and to transport the prisoner to the gaol in the village. One man must be left to protect the young ladies and the house; one man must help him with the team and its burden. The speaker shrugged his shoulders, suggesting that it would be more suitable for Morin to remain, and said that for his part he would be much obliged and honoured if Courthope would accompany him. Here some plain and easy compliments were thrown in about Courthope's strength and the generous activity he had displayed, but not a word concerning his temporary disgrace; if this man knew of it he did not regard it as of any importance.

He was a matter-of-fact young man, not much interested in Courthope as a stranger, immensely interested in the fact of the theft and all that concerned it. At the slightest question he poured out excited information. Xavier had been a servant in the house. Mrs. King, who was religious and zealous, had found in him a convert. He had become a Protestant to please her. (At this point the narrator shrugged his shoulders again.) Then Xavier had asked higher wages; upon that there was a quarrel, and he had left.

The speaker's scanty English was of the simplest. He said, 'Xavier is a very bad man, much worse than our people usually are. This winter he went to the city and got his wits sharpened, and when he came back he made a scheme. He sent word to Mrs. King that his old father was dying and would like to be converted too. Mrs. King travels at once with a horse and the strongest servant-man. The old father takes a long time to die, so Xavier comes here yesterday to say she will stay all night; but when he did not come back, his wife she got frightened, and she told that the old man was not going to die, that she was afraid there was a scheme. Now we have Xavier very safe. He may get five years.'

Upon Courthope's inquiring after the health of the thief, he was told that beyond being severely frost-bitten he was little the worse. He was again drunk with the stimulants that the Morins had poured down his throat. The visitor ended the interview by saying that if Courthope would be good enough to drive the team through the drifts his own horse and sleigh would be sent after him the next day. Courthope inquired what was the wish of the young mistress of the house. The other replied that mademoiselle approved of his plan. It was evident that poor Madge was no longer the mistress; the clerk was an emissary of Mrs. King's, and as such he had taken the control. Still, as he was an amiable and capable person, Courthope fell in with his suggestion, inwardly vowing that soon of some domain, if not of this one, Madge should again be queen.

Courthope received a message to the effect that the young ladies wished to see him. There was something in the formal wording of this message, coming after his solitary meal, which made him know that they were ill at ease, that they had taken their mistake more deeply to heart than he would have wished. He had no sooner entered the room where Madge stood than he wished he were well out of it again, so far did his sympathy with her discomfort transcend his own pleasure at being in her presence.

Madge stood, as upon the first night, behind her sister's chair. Eliz looked frightened and excited, yet as half enjoying the novel excitement. Madge, pale-faced and distressed, showed only too plainly that she had need of all the courage she possessed to lift her eyes to his. Yet she was not going to shirk her duty; she was going to make her apology, and the apology of the household, just as the judge, her father, would have wished to have it made.

It was a little speech, conned beforehand, which she spoke—a quaint mixture of her own girlish wording and the formal phrases which she felt the occasion demanded. Courthope never knew precisely what she said. His feelings were up and in tumult, like the winds on a gusty day, and he was embarrassed for her embarrassment, while he smiled for the very joy of it all.

Madge confessed with grief that Eliz had mistaken Xavier for Courthope. She said the man from the village had shown them what folly it was to suppose that the gentleman could be Xavier's accomplice. She begged that same gentleman's pardon very humbly. At the end he heard some words faltered: she wished it was in their power 'to make any amends.'

Almost before she ceased speaking he took up the word, and his own voice sounded to him merry and bold in comparison with her soft distressful speech; but he could not help that, he must speak with such powers as nature gave him.

'There are two ways by which you can make amends, and first I would beg that none of our friends who were here last night should be told of it. I should not like to think that Emma and Elizabeth, and Evelina or Marianna Alcoforado should ever hear that I was taken for a thief.'

'You are laughing at us,' said Eliz sharply. 'We know that you will go away and make fun of us to all your friends.'

'If I do you will have one way of punishing me that would give me more pain than I could well endure, you can shut me out next time I come to ask for shelter.'

'Oh, but you can't come again,' said Eliz, with vibrating note of fierce discontent; 'our stepmother will be here.'

He looked at Madge.

'I was going to say that the other way in which you could make amends would be to give me leave to come back; and if you give me leave I will come, even if it be necessary, to that end, to get an introduction from all the clergy in Great Britain, or from the Royal Family.'

A ray of hope shot into Madge's dark eyes, the first glimmer of a smile began to show through her distress.

'It is an old adage that "where there is a will there is a way," and did I not walk on your most impossible snow-shoes and bring back your silver?'

Madge looked down, a pretty red began to mantle her pale face, and, as if the angels who manage the winds and clouds did not wish that the blush of so dear a maiden should betray too much, a ray of scarlet light from the sinking sun just then came winging through the dispersing storm-clouds and caused all the white snow-world to redden, and dyed the frost-flowers on the window-pane, and, entering where the pane was bare, lit all the room with soft vermilion light. So, in the wondrous blush of the white world, the girl's cheeks glowed and yet did not confess too much.

'You will allow me to send in your compliments and inquire after Mr. Woodhouse as I pass?' This was Courthope's farewell to Eliz, and she called joyfully in reply:—

'You need not send back his message, for we shall know that they are "all very indifferent."'

Into the scarlet shining of the western sun, an omen of fair weather and delight, Courthope set forth again from the square tin-roofed house, 'leaving,' as the saying is, 'his heart behind him.' The large farm-horses, restive from long confinement and stimulated by the frost, shook their bells with energy. The Morin women displayed such goodwill and even tenderness in their attentions to the comfort of the second prisoner, in whom they had found an old friend, that, tied in a blanket and lying full length on the straw of a box-sleigh, he looked content with himself and the world, albeit he had not as yet returned from the happy roving-places of the drunken brain. The talkative clerk was glad enough to give Courthope the reins of the masterful horses; he sat on one edge of the blue-painted box and Courthope on the other; thus they started, bravely plunging into the drifts between the poplars. The drifts were all tinged with pink; the poplars, intercepting the red light upon their slender upright boughs, cast, each of them, a clear shadow that seemed to lie in endless length athwart the glowing sward.

Courthope looked back at the house which had been so dim and phantom-like the night before; the red sun lit the icicles that hung from eaves and lintels, tinged the drifts, glowed upon the windows as if with light from within, and turned the steep tin roof into a gigantic rose; but all his glance was centred upon his lady-love, who stood, regardless of the cold, at the entrance of the drift-encircled porch and watched them as long as the sunlight lay upon the land. Was she looking at the plunging sleigh and at its driver, or at the chasms of light in the rent cloud beyond? His heart told him, as he drove on into the very midst of the sunset which had embraced the glistening land, that the maid, although not regardless of the outer glory, only rejoiced in its beauty because the vision of her heart was focused upon him. His heart, in telling him this, taught him no pride, for had he not learned in the same small space of time only to count himself rich in what she gave?

Slow was the progress of the great horses; they passed the grove of high elms and birches that, dressed in the snowflakes that had lodged in boughs and branches when the wind dropped, stood up clear against the gulfs of blue that now opened above and beyond. Then the house was hidden, and after that, by degrees, the light of the sunset passed away.

THE END.

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.