Part 22 (1/2)
”I hope” (Turrif spoke with a shade of greater gravity on his placid face)--”I hope sat you are going to some city where sere is money to be made, and where sere is ladies and other genteel-men like you.”
”I knew you would think me mad. I'm going to Bates's clearing to cut down his trees.”
”Why?” The word came with a certain authority.
”You would almost be justified in writing to the authorities to lock me up in an asylum, wouldn't you? But just consider what an awful condition of loneliness that poor wretch must be in by this time. You think I've been more alone than's good for me; think of him, shut up with an old woman in her dotage. He was awfully cut up about this affair of old Cameron and the girl, and he is losing all his winter's lumbering for want of a man. Now, there's a fix, if you will, where I say a man is to be pitied.”
”Yes,” said Turrif, gravely, ”it is sad; but sat is _hees_ trouble.”
”Look here: he's not thirty miles away, and you and I know that if he isn't fit to cut his throat by this time it isn't for want of trouble to make him, and you say that that state of things ought to be only his own affair?”
”Eh?”
”Well, I say that you and I, or at least I, have something to do with it. You know very well I might go round here for miles, and offer a hundred pounds, and I couldn't get a single man to go and work for Bates; they're all scared. Well, if they're scared of a ghost, let them stay away; but _I'm_ not frightened, and I suppose I could learn to chop down trees as well as any of them. He's offered good wages; I can take his wages and do his work, and save him from turning into a blethering idiot.”
Probably, in his heat to argue, he had spoken too quickly for the Frenchman to take in all his words. That his drift was understood and pondered on was evident from the slow answer.
”It would be good for Monsieur Bates, but poor for you.”
”I'm not going to turn my back on this country and leave the fellow in that pickle. I should feel as if his blood were on my head.”
”Since?”
”How since?”
”Since what day did you have his care on you? Last time you came you did not mean sen to help him.” It was true, but so strongly did Trenholme see his point that he had not realised how new was the present aspect of the case to him.
”Well,” said he, meaning that this was not a matter of importance.
”But why?” said Turrif again.
”Oh, I don't know.” Trenholme looked down at his moccasined feet. ”I thought” (he gave a laugh as if he were ashamed) ”I'd turn over a new leaf this year, and do something that's more worth doing. I was well enough off here so far as looking out for myself was concerned.”
Turrif looked at him with kind and serious disapproval.
”And when will you begin to live se life of a _man_?”
”How do you mean--'a man'?”
”When will you make money and get married?”
”Do you think time is all wasted when one isn't making money and getting married?”
”For a _boy_, no; for a _man_, yes.”
Trenholme rose. ”Good-bye, and thank you for all your hospitality,” said he. ”I'll come back in spring and tell you what I'm going to do next.”
He was moving out, when he looked again at the little shrine in the middle of the wall, the picture of the Virgin, and, below, the little altar shelf, with its hideous paper roses. He looked back as it caught his eye, arrested, surprised, by a difference of feeling in him towards it.
Noticing the direction of Trenholme's glance, the Frenchman crossed himself.