Carnac thrust out a hand that said silence. "Denzil, I'll never forget what you've told me about yourself. Some day you'll have to tell it to the priest, and then--"

"I'll never tell it till I'm on my death-bed. Then I'll tell it, sacre bapteme, yes!"

"You're a bad Catholic, Denzil," remarked Carnac with emotion, but a smile upon his face.

"I may be a bad Catholic, but the man deserved to die, and he died.

What's the difference, so far's the world's concerned, whether he died by accident, or died--as he died. It's me that feels the fury of the d.a.m.ned, and want my girl back every hour: and she can't come. But some day I'll go to M'sieu' Luke Tarboe, and tell him the truth, as I've told it you--bagosh, yes!"

"I think he'd try and kill you, if you did. That's the kind of man he is."

"You think if he knew the truth he'd try and kill me--he!"

Carnac paused. He did not like to say everything in his mind. "Do you think he'd say much and do little?"

"I dunno, I dunno, but I'll tell him the truth and take my chance."

Suddenly he swung round and stretched out appealing hands. "Haven't you got any sense, m'sieu'? Don't you see what you should do? Ma'm'selle Junia cares for you. I know it--I've seen it in her eyes often--often."

With sudden vehemence Carnac caught the wrists of the other. "It can't be, Denzil. I can't tell you why yet. I'm going away. If Tarboe wants her--good--good; I must give her a chance."

Denzil shrank. "There's something wrong, m'sieu'," he said. Then his eyes fastened on Carnac's. Suddenly, with a strange, shining light in them, he added "It will all come right for you and her. I'll live for that. If you go away, I'll take good care of her."

"Even if--" Carnac paused.

"Yes, even if he makes love to her. He'll want to marry her, surelee."

"Well, that's not strange," remarked Carnac.

CHAPTER XI. CARNAC'S TALK WITH HIS MOTHER

Carnac went slowly towards his father's house on the hill. Fixed, as his mind was, upon all that had just happened, his eye took fondly from the gathering dusk pictures which the artist's mind cherishes--the long roadway, with the maples and pines, the stump fences; behind which lay the garnered fields, where the plough had made ready the way for the Fall wheat; the robins twittering in the scattered trees; the cooing of the wood-pigeon; over all, the sky in its perfect purpling blue, and far down the horizon the evening-star slowly climbing. He noted the lizards slipping through the stones; he saw where the wheel of a wagon had crushed some wild flower-growth; he heard the far call of a milkmaid to the cattle; he caught the sweet breath of decaying verdure, and through all, the fresh, biting air of the new-land autumn, pleasantly stinging his face.

Something kept saying to his mind: "It's all good. It's life and light, and all good." But his nerves were being tried; his whole nature was stirred.

He took the letter from his pocket again, and read it in the fading light. It was native, naive, brutal, and unconsciously clever--and the girl who had written it was beautiful. It had only a few lines. It asked him why he had deserted her, his wife. It said that he would find American law protected the deluded stranger. It asked if he had so soon forgotten the kisses he had given her, and did he not realize they were married? He felt that, with her, beneath all, there was more than malice; there was a pa.s.sion which would run risks to secure its end.

A few moments later he was in the room where his mother, with her strong, fine, lonely face, sat sewing by the window. The door opened squarely on her, and he saw how refined and sad, yet self-contained, was the woman who had given him birth. The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him. Her own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered she saw something was vexing him.

"Dear lad!" she said.

He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek. "Best of all the world,"

he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little.

"Are you in trouble?" she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder.

The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong.

It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surrept.i.tious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance, a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood.

John Grier was not the boy's father. Carnac was the son of Barode Barouche.

After a moment he said: "Mother, I know why I've come to you. It's because I feel when I'm in trouble, I get helped by being with you."

"How do I help, my boy?" she asked with a sad smile, for he had said the thing dearest to her heart.

"When I'm with you, I seem to get a hold on myself. I've always had a strange feeling about you. I felt when I was a child that you're two people; one that lives on some distant, lonely prairie, silent, shadowy and terribly loving; and the other, a vocal person, affectionate, alert, good and generous."

He paused, but she only shook her head. After a moment he continued: "I know you aren't happy, mother, but maybe you once were--at the start."

She got to her feet, and drew herself up.

"I'm happy in your love, but all the rest--is all the rest. It isn't your father's fault wholly. He was busy; he forgot me. Dear, dear boy, never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people."

She was naturally straight and composed; yet as she stood there, she had a certain lonely splendour like some soft metal burning. Among her fellow-citizens she had place and position, but she took no lead; she was always an isolated attachment of local enterprises. It was in her own house where her skill and adaptability had success. She had brought into her soul misery and martyrdom, and all martyrs are lonely and apart.

Sharp visions of what she was really flashed through Carnac's mind, and he said:

"Mother, there must be something wrong with you and me. You were naturally a great woman, and sometimes I have a feeling I might be a great man, but I don't get started for it. I suppose, you once had an idea you'd play a big part in the world?"

"Girls have dreams," she answered with moist eyes, "and at times I thought great things might come to me; but I married and got lost."

"You got lost?" asked Carnac anxiously, for there was a curious note in her voice.

She tried to change the effect of her words.

"Yes, I lost myself in somebody else's ambitions I lost myself in the storm."

Carnac laughed. "Father was always a blizzard, wasn't he? Now here, now there, he rushed about making money, humping up his business, and yet why shouldn't you have ranged beside him. I don't understand."

"No, that's the bane of life," she replied. "We don't understand each other. I can't understand why you don't marry Junia. You love her. You don't understand why I couldn't play as big a part as your father--I couldn't. He was always odd--masterful and odd, and I never could do just as he liked."

There was yearning sadness in her eyes. "Dear Carnac, John Grier is a whirlwind, but he's also a still pool in which currents are secretly twisting, turning. His imagination, his power is enormous; but he's Oriental, a barbarian."

"You mean he might have had twenty wives?"

"He might have had twenty, and he'd have been the same to all of them, because they play no part, except to make his home a place where his body can live. That's the kind of thing, when a wife finds it out, that either kills her slowly, or drives her mad."

"It didn't kill you, mother," remarked Carnac with a little laugh.

"No, it didn't kill me."

"And it didn't drive you mad," he continued.

She looked at him with burning intensity. "Oh, yes, it did--but I became sane again." She gazed out of the window, down the hillside. "Your father will soon be home. Is there anything you want to say before that?"

Carnac wanted to tell his tragic story, but it was difficult. He caught his mother's hand.