Hans slowly shook his head again, smiling sadly. “That iss a lie, Mr. Martin. In the Old Country, perhaps, they have no money, but they have a little land, and a cow, and maybe a horse, and some pigs, and a cottage. Maybe the Government force them to serve in the armies, and maybe at times they are hungry. But they do not work so hard, or if they do, they work for themselves on their own land, among their friends and their own people. But here—” He waved his hands eloquently.
“Good night,” interrupted Martin shortly. He heard Hans’ eager apology, his plea for forgiveness. He did not turn back. His horse was cold, his head drooping, shivering, for the Heckls had no stable. Riding away into the rainy darkness, a deep depression settled upon the young man. They had rescued fifty slaves during the past year, helped them to escape to Canada. Martin knew of the deep devotion that decently treated slaves accorded kind owners; he knew that only those ran away who were desperate from ill-treatment. Only fifty, he thought to himself, with melancholy. It is a handful. Then he thought of the Bohemians, the Czechs and Slavs and Magyars in the shacks near the shops and the lumber mills, and his eyes closed in pain. His loyalty to his clan had made him cold to the foreman, Hans Heckl, but he knew the truth of what the old German had said.
“Cannot men exist without exploiting or killing their fellow men?” he asked himself. “Is there not room for all of us? What mortal sickness of the soul is it that drives a man to become a cannibal? Why cannot he be satisfied with his fire and his children and his garden? Why must he be possessed of something that makes it intolerable for him to have no more than his neighbors?” He remembered something Father Dominick of the Church of the Annunciation had said to him and Jacques a week ago: “All this is because man hates his fellow man, cannot endure to have him enjoy the things he enjoys, cannot stand his smell or his touch, his voice or his breath. He devours because he hates and despises, and not because he is hungry or homeless. He has no wings to lift him, so to reach a high place he must first knock down his fellows and rise on their bodies. Whep men have love, they devour no more, and they find their brothers not only endurable, but pleasant and pitiable.” Then: “It is a mistake to believe that man is a gregarious animal. He is gregarious only when he needs protection from strangers. By nature he is really a solitary, and no creature who is a solitary is kind or just or compassionate. Neither is he civilized. Love alone can destroy the solitary enemy that lives in every man, and make humanity gregarious in a truly holy and noble fashion.” Man, the uncivilized, thought Martin, must hunt alone, eat, kill and destroy alone. But he cannot be saved alone. His salvation civilizes him, makes him really human; but he can find salvation only through the medium of his fellow men.
He thought of Ernest, and he believed that the priest had spoken truly. Ernest was a solitary: uncivilized, cannibalistic, predatory. Thinking of his brother, it was ironical that something very like hatred flared in him. But Martin, like Ernest, had little humor.
Through his depression crept a great loneliness. He spurred up his horse; he felt that he had to see Jacques as soon as possible.
Madam Bouchard and Armand, having built their ugly and sturdy house of stone, planted trees and a garden, bought old-fashioned furniture that exactly fitted the long low rooms, could not be induced to buy a more lavish home or to move into Oldtown or into a better section of Newtown. This was their home; it was now part of them, beloved, snug and familiar. The houses of petty artisans and semi-skilled workmen were creeping shoddily about them, to the very borders of their jealously loved land, but they would not move. In fact, Madam Bouchard, a peasant herself, and honest, found her neighbors congenial. Raoul might grumble and Eugene might scowl, but their parents smiled indulgently and looked fondly about the hideous but comfortable rooms.
It was 11 o’clock when Martin reached the Bouchard house, later than he had guessed. Not a light shone in any window, not even the bedroom windows, except the two low broad ones of the living-dining room. Here, however, the light was dim enough to tell Martin that only a candle or two was burning, and the dull glimmer on the window-panes showed that the fire had fallen low. The Bouchards went to bed early, for they were up at five in the morning. Martin knew that only Jacques waited for him, and he was glad. He wanted no others.
He tied up his horse, knocked lightly on the door. There was a scuffling, the sound of a foot being dragged slowly across the floor; the bolt was drawn, and the door opened. Martin, shaking drops of wetness from his clothes, entered the dim long warm room.
Jacques smiled at him affectionately, as he closed the door.
“It was so long, I was worried,” he said in a low voice, with a mechanically warning gesture toward the bedroom doors. Martin smiled; he noticed that his friend’s face was pale from strain. He walked to the fire, removed his gloves and warmed his hands. He stood with his back to Jacques, his long, well-shaped legs apart, his greatcoat, with its capes, glittering with moisture, his silvery hair gleaming in the candlelight. Jacques sat down slowly, his eyes fixed on his friend. He showed the strain of the past few hours in his complete relaxation and exhaustion. He had laid out a glass decanter of wine and two glasses on a small table nearby, and now he filled the glasses and offered one to Martin. Martin drank. His face was glowing from exercise, and now the glow deepened to the deep blush of a girl. His almost feminine beauty was like a light in the quiet room. Jacques, sipping his wine very delicately and absently, regarded him as though fascinated, yet completely peaceful and contented.
“It went well,” said Martin softly. He lifted up the tails of his coat and sat down opposite his friend. “I was afraid, for the river had risen, and the police have become very strict.” Sighing, he averted his face toward the fire, and Jacques studied his fine profile with a strange intensity, almost a sick yearning. “Of course,” Martin continued, “Carl will be caught eventually.”
“We must then find some one else,” said Jacques serenely.
Martin glanced at him swiftly, and frowned. Sometimes the young Frenchman’s cool logic and dispassionate words antagonized him. He said: “But it won’t be well for Carl. I like Carl. It would break his parents’ hearts. If I could only do it myself! But I must think of my father and mother, too. And little Dorcas. Of course, we would find some one else, as you say. But after all, one must think of Carl.”
Jacques said nothing.
Martin sighed again. “All we have done is only a drop in the bucket—”
“It cannot last forever, this slavery, Martin. There is already too much agitation in the North against slavery for it to continue very long. You must console yourself with that.”
“How can I? Ernest—everybody—is certain that before slavery is abolished there will be a bloody war.” He became very agitated. “And we—all of us—will be furnishing arms and gunpowder for that war. It is a terrible thing to have on our consciences!”
Jacques quickened. “‘Us!’” he echoed, in consternation. “We shall have nothing to do with that, Martin! Have you forgotten that by the time a war breaks out we shall have been gone a long time, have left the World outside, be forgotten, ourselves?”
There was a long and very tense silence. Martin did not speak, but continued to regard the fire, his face averted. Jacques, very white, struggled to an upright position in his chair. He leaned toward Martin, laid his trembling, very transparent hand, on his knee. “Martin! Look at me! What is the matter? Have you forgotten? Surely you cannot have forgotten? Surely you do not intend to change your mind, and desert me, desert Our Lord, after all your vows and promises?” He was so agitated and frightened that tears sprang to his eyes, rolled down his emaciated cheeks.
Martin laid his hand over the shaking fingers on his knee; he thought to himself that those fingers were hardly as firm and big as little Dorcas’ fingers. He tried to smile reassuringly and tenderly at his friend.
“Jacques. You must listen to me, help me, sympathize with me—”
Jacques cried out, once, feebly, snatched away
his hand. He covered his face with it, and through the fingers Martin could see that that face was contorted with agonized grief. Finally tears began to ooze between the fingers, but after that one cry Jacques was silent.
Martin reflected miserably that had Jacques reproached him, argued with him, or accused him, he could have stood this easier. But those silent tears, the look of collapse in the frail and twisted figure opposite him, the bent head, struck at him brutally. He knelt down, removed Jacques’ hand forcibly from his face, held his wrists in his strong young grasp.
“Jacques,” he said earnestly, “you must listen to me. I need your help. You’ve got to console me.” Jacques’ face was quiet now, but strained and ghastly. He looked at Martin steadily and mournfully, waiting. “Today, Jacques, I had a quarrel with my brother.” Almost word for word, he repeated what had taken place that day, from Joseph’s examination of the books to the clash between himself and Ernest. After he had finished, sad resignation passed over Jacques’ face, and he sighed.
“So you see,” said Martin gently, “I cannot leave, now. I cannot tell you how miserable I am about it. But I must stay. My father suspects Ernest, and no doubt he is right. I do not know, for I have never seen anything. But he is so treacherous and cold-blooded. And now my father is very sick; any one can see it. And he is frightened. If I leave now, God knows what Ernest will do. He is capable of anything. Anything. Of ousting my father, and robbing my mother and my sisters.” Incredibly, Martin said this in all good faith and belief, for in his idealistic and other-worldly mind Ernest had taken on the proportions of a monster. Rarely had Martin seen the world logically and truly and understandingly. He had the mind of a recluse, a child and a saint, and was fanatical and deluded to a high degree.
“But,” said Jacques feebly, finding nothing ludicrous in Martin’s simple suspicions, “Father Dominick has expended so much effort and trouble to get us into the monastery in Quebec. Everything is arranged; we are to be accepted just two months from today.” He turned aside, bitterly. “Of course, you being a recent convert, you cannot realize how frightful this is. But one who has been born in the Church can understand.”
“You are being very cruel!” cried Martin, distracted. “I have given up everything! I will have to give up my parents some day, perhaps very soon, when I enter the monastery. Think what it will mean to them! They are not at all religious, and never attend any church in this country, but they are rigid Protestants. What they call ‘Popery’ is a frightful thing to them, and it will break their hearts when they learn that their son has become a ‘Papist.’ But you don’t understand, Jacques. You couldn’t. I will give up more than you, for your mother will be proud. So, knowing what sorrow I am going to cause Pa and Ma, I owe them a duty, now, to shield them against my brother.”
“Your duty is to Our Lord,” said Jacques, through white lips. “Father Dominick has told you that. You must choose between your unbelieving parents and God.” He seized Martin’s shoulders in his shaking hands. “Martin, don’t desert Our Lord! Don’t desert me! I will have to go alone, and without you I should surely die! You speak of your parents: you know that the only way to salvation for them is through your prayers and sacrifice for them in the monastery. Do you not owe them that duty?”
“But I shall enter the monastery!” said Martin, “It is only that I cannot go until I am sure my father is well again, and able to fight Ernest. It will only be a little while. Of course, you cannot go alone, and I only ask you to be patient. Do you not understand that it is a terrible disappointment to me, this delay? Cannot you realize that I hate the world, and want to escape from it? You were born in the Church, and have always had peace and comfort, but I have just come in, and cannot get close enough to it to satisfy me. It is a refuge to me, the only joy I have ever had in my life. Every moment I stay here is unendurable. To me, the monastery is like the old home of my great-aunt in England, with the wet lilacs and the rainy twilight and the fire and the latticed windows and the silence. Peace. You must believe me when I say that this delay is more of a sacrifice to me than it can be to you.”
Jacques wrung his thin hands together, and was silent. He could not tell Martin that he was filled with fear, fear that each day’s delay, each hour’s dragging, might snatch Martin from him, restore him to the world, shut the door of reality forever between them. He was more intelligent than Martin, and more astute; he had none of the dreamy enchantment and exalted devotion of the recent convert. The French blood in him was both subtle and cynical, running cool with logic, and he was well aware that there was more than a little of unreality and tenuous mysticism in Martin’s transports. He lived in terror that the gauzy curtain, spangled with its glittering symbols and signs, might lift, and Martin discover that the world was very close after all. He knew, quite coldly, that had he not been a cripple he would never have wanted to run away as he had now decided to do; his flight was from his own impotence. But Martin was sound and strong, and Jacques more than suspected that there lay passions in him that the right touch could arouse. It was from these passions that Jacques wished to withdraw him, for they were his enemies who would take Martin from his friend. Once together in the monastery, neither passionate devils nor desires could ever separate them again, and Jacques would be safe, forever in possession of his love. So though he said to Martin, stubbornly: “I must go alone,” he knew that he could never do this, for Martin, relieved of his presence, might be relieved of his enchantment also, and might never see him again. Without Martin, he would never have thought of entering a monastery. Martin, to him, was beloved booty with which he would flee to the fortress of religion.
So as he wrung his hands together, his lips moving in agony, he was sick with terror. Like many of his countrymen, he was a fine actor, and his acting was all the more intense and convincing because he was emotionally involved. Martin could not endure this grief. With an ardor so innocent and childlike that it would have moved one less emotionally engrossed than Jacques Bouchard, he reiterated over and over, a score or more times, his affection, his faith, his impatience over the delay, his promises. When he had finally driven away the look of despair on Jacques’ face (and in truth Jacques was finding it a little tedious to maintain that look), Martin was totally exhausted. He promised Jacques to see him the next evening, earlier than usual, and was astonished, upon the door closing behind him, to feel a flood of relief, a sense of release from something hot and exigent and smothering, something that clutched. He was struck by the similarity of this sense of release to that which he felt when escaping from Ernest’s proximity. So astounded was he at this thought that he paused with his hand on his horse’s neck, preparing to rise into the saddle. Everyone clutches, urges, seizes upon, he thought in his bemusement. Cannibalism. This word in association with Jacques appalled him, made him shake his head as though trying to rid himself of a stupor. And all he asked of any one was to leave him free, never to grasp him, exhaust him with exigencies! He rode away rapidly, and spurred his horse so fiercely that the surprised animal rose once on his hind legs and circled half about. Martin was frightened, and angered, and more than a little confused.
Jacques had closed the door behind his friend, and had bolted it. He had stood in silence, his hand still on the bolt after he had shut it. The candlelight, falling upon him dimly from a distance, threw his shadow on the door and the ceiling, so that it became a monstrous, deformed caricature of the twisted body huddling below it. Moment after moment went by, and Jacques stood there, still with his hand on the bolt, his emaciated cheek pressed to the wood, as though it had closed between him and something beloved, inexorably. The deathly bitterness of his realization seemed to creep into the most vital parts of him, so that he felt mortally ill. He shuddered. His bent legs became weak under him, so that he slipped slowly to his knees, his cheek still pressed to the door. He fumbled in a pocket and pulled out a rosary, tried to pray. But his fingers felt cold as ice, and completely numb. Finally, the beads slipped impotently from his
fingers and rattled onto the uncarpeted floor. He stared at them stupidly.
“Why!” he said aloud, as though in amazement, “they are only glass and gilt, after all!”
He fell on his face, writhed, bit his fingers, groaned. And then lay still, his body thrusting in agony against the door, as though it would burst the wood and escape. Or pursue.
CHAPTER XVIII
Martin arrived home after midnight, wet, aching and depressed. He found his father alone, sleeping beside a fire that had fallen very low. The room was cold, and had an empty, airless smell; the candles had begun to gutter, throwing wavering and rising and falling shadows over the walls and floor and ceiling.
Martin was surprised to see his father up so late. He tiptoed to a position in front of him, peering at him anxiously in the dim and uncertain light. But poor as the light was, he saw that Joseph looked extremely ill and broken; his skin was stretched with a yellowish cast over his high cheekbones, and his mouth was livid. Apparently he had not shaved that day, for a purplish shadow spread over his chin and under his throat. As he slept, he breathed with a curiously rasping sound, and his arms, hanging over the sides of the chair, swung like those of a dead man. His thin and vital hair was full of gray patches.
Martin knew that his father must have sat up waiting for him. So he laid his hand gently on Joseph’s shoulder and shook him. “Pa,” he said in a low voice. Joseph started, moaned, moved his head restlessly as if in pain, then opened his eyes. He stared blankly at Martin, standing before him, and to his confused vision his son took on the height and aspect of an archangel, silently waiting. He pulled himself upright with evident difficulty.
“It’s late, lad,” he said hoarsely, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his dark, thin fingers. “Oh, yes, I’ve waited for you. A rum time to be coming home,” he added, glancing dourly at the clock. “Can’t you leave that crippled fellow alone for one night?”