Two Solitudes (21 page)

Abruptly the iron rumble ceased, the river disappeared, and they were out on the plain with farmhouses and barns and fences casting long shadows that pointed toward the east. The river was flushed with the sunset and the trees lining its banks looked frail and small, almost like stalks of grain in the distance. Athanase folded his paper and laid it on the seat beside him. He leaned over and patted her knees, she returned his smile, and for a second they seemed more like old friends. Some of his old gaiety had returned, some of his self-confidence, and he looked younger. He tapped his bulging brief-case. “I've got to go back to school,” he said. “McQueen gave me so much stuff to go through….” He rubbed his hands. “It's fine to have facts to solve for a change, not people.”

Kathleen let him talk. A few days more and her night with Dennis Morey would have slipped away from her, warm and rich in the memory; a few weeks more and it would be almost as remote as though it had happened to someone else. Illogically, she would have been troubled by thoughts of her own disloyalty had she been forced to take part in the conversation, but merely sitting and listening eased her mind. With Athanase so excited and eager, it seemed obvious that her night with Morey had taken nothing from him.

When Athanase first told her about the factory she had been afraid it would mean they could never get away from Saint-Marc. But when she was made to understand that the
financial control would be from Montreal, and the market managed from there, she was relieved. Only technical managers would be forced to live in Saint-Marc itself.

“Of course,” Athanase was explaining now for the third time, “I shall have to spend a lot of time on the spot. For me, this is going to be more than just another factory.” He went on to explain that he would arrange for a mortgage on the Tallard property. Already he had taken steps to convert his bonds into company stock. When the company was incorporated he would be the second largest shareholder.

Kathleen appeared to listen, but from the whole monologue she derived little except the conviction that at last her luck was changing. Living in Montreal, she would be free to be herself. After a while she would persuade Athanase to travel. Through her mind passed a vision of fine hotels in New York, herself dancing to a fine band in Palm Beach by moonlight. Perhaps they might even take a trip to California.

When they drove up the poplar-lined avenue to the house Kathleen was almost glad to be back, to find everything the same; it convinced her that nothing had happened during the past week except a matter-of-fact trip to Montreal on business. Paul was still up and eager to tell her all the things he had done while she was away. She went upstairs with him and sat in his room while he prepared for bed, telling him about the musical comedy she had seen in town. After he had washed and brushed his teeth he crawled between the sheets and lay on his back listening to her, wondering what it would be like next year in the city he had never seen, in a new school. Now that his mother was back the world was once again gay and full of wonder.

 

FOURTEEN

Spring leaped quickly into full summer that year. One day people woke and saw that the buds had become leaves and the mud dried into friable earth. There was great activity over all the parish as the planting was completed. Before it was finished the first blackflies appeared in the spruce of the distant forest; then they were in the maple grove on the ridge behind the Tallard land. By the Queen's birthday on May twenty-fourth it was almost as hot as midsummer. The heat simmered in delicate gossamers along the surface of the plain, cloud formations built themselves up through the mornings, and by afternoon they were majestic above the river. The first green shoots of the seeds that had been consecrated on Saint Marc's Day appeared above the soil in the sunshine.

One afternoon Paul came in with his ears swollen by blackfly bites, asking Julienne to do something for him. She washed them with bay rum, talking all the time, and very grumpy about it. The first hot days were her headache season, and she kept a steady brew of camomile tea on the stove to fill cup after cup. As she washed Paul's bites she asked him if he had an earache also and appeared to be somewhat disappointed when he said no. For years Julienne had an earache every December as soon as the thermometer went below zero, and she treated it by sticking a piece of fried onion in the canal, plugging it with a wad of cotton-wool. Every time Athanase caught her doing it he argued with her and finally threatened to get her to a doctor in order to save her hearing. By the time the argument was over the earache had disappeared.

Through June the heat increased. An altar for the Fête Dieu was set up in the open air just off the river road beyond
the village, in a bower of green branches and garden flowers. The whole parish made a procession to it with holy banners. Children and choir-boys went first, then the women, the unmarried ones in the lead. After the married women Father Beaubien walked alone, and behind him the Host was borne by the churchwardens. Polycarpe Drouin and Frenette were scarcely recognizable in their best suits and freshly cut hair. Older boys and the men followed the Host, and as the column moved out of the village along the road the choir-boys began to lead the singing of hymns. On the wide surface of the plain, with towering clouds above it, the untrained procession looked very small as it moved along the road. When the altar was finally reached, everyone kneeled on the ground and the Host was uplifted. At the end of the service they all returned to the church by the way they had come. That night a soft rain fell and the parish relaxed, for now the crops were in the hands of God.

June passed into July. The peas and beans and carrots and onions that Blanchard had allowed Paul to plant were growing well in his little garden back of the barn. In the large fields the oats, barley and hay were growing to a head. Blanchard was satisfied. Beside the fields on the Tallard land, he had a crop of his own at last. As he walked over the ten acres Athanase had given him, he would pick up a clod of earth and crumble it in his fingers, and if he happened to be in his own field when the angelus rang, he would bow his head reverently, for he felt that the bell now rang especially for him.

This was also the first year John Yardley had seen crops growing on his farm. They gave him a deep satisfaction. He calculated that within another year he would be able to make the farm pay for itself. His small herd of jerseys would be enlarged as soon as it seemed feasible, and next year he would add to the flock of chickens. It might even be wise to get a few
pigs. Every evening when the milking was done he stood on his porch with his old spyglass and swept the river for ships. There were a good many this year. He examined their decks and tried to estimate how well they were being kept, what their cargoes were and what their destinations. Sometimes he felt an acute loneliness as he watched the moving ships, but in spite of it he was fairly content. Janet had given her word to spend the summer with him, and she and the children would soon be here. During the winter he had remodelled one of the upper bedrooms for her, installed a bathroom adjoining it, and fixed up the room beyond as a nursery. Before the planting season he had made a special trip to town to buy a new bed for her, and while he was there he had asked a salesgirl in Morgan's to select the kind of curtains and bedspreads she thought a dainty woman would like. For the two girls he had bought dolls of a size to match the dolls' house he had built for them.

Parliament went into recess early that summer and Athanase returned to Saint-Marc for a long rest. Soon McQueen surveyors would begin to go over the ground for the factory; they would have finished long ago were it not so difficult to get competent men to do the job with the war still on. While he waited, Athanase decided to enjoy himself. He brought rocking chairs out to the front gallery and spent many hours reading there. For a few days he tried to chew gum to break the habit of smoking, but he disliked it so much he went back to his pipe, determined to ration himself to three pipes a day. Now that his future was so full of promise, he felt he must take more care of his health.

But he still fretted about the war. It got into every corner of his mind like sand in one's shoes on a beach. He also worried about Marius, for nothing had been heard of him
since the spring. The conscription board of their military district had written to ask where he was, but he would not have told them had he known. He guessed Marius was being kept under cover by friends in Montreal. It made him wonder constantly if the boy had enough to eat and a decent place to sleep. Feeling an illogical mixture of shame at his attitude and pride in his stubbornness, Athanase was certain only that wherever Marius was he was unhappy, that his hatreds were growing, and his future already turning sour. Once he might have prayed about a situation like this, but he had given up praying a long time ago.

Father Beaubien was also worried. He prayed to God each day for guidance to deal with a problem which had been growing ever since he had come to Saint-Marc. The problem was Athanase Tallard. The priest was further above his people than a ship's captain is ever above his crew. Lately he had felt lonely even with God. In the recesses of his heart he believed he was failing his vocation because he never seemed able to perform a miracle beyond the sacrifice of the Mass. Three years ago he had failed to stop a flood when the river rose through the marsh into neighbouring farms and ruined the crop on two farms that year. After God, in His greater wisdom, had permitted the water to keep on rising, Athanase Tallard had mocked him. Of late he had begun to think of Athanase as the embodiment of all the forces of materialism which threatened French-Canada, and his own parish in particular.

If only he could collect enough facts on which to administer a reprimand he would be less worried. During the night when Marius had slept at the presbytery more than two months ago, the boy had told him many things, and Father Beaubien had reason to believe most of what he said. But
Marius was excitable and in no state of grace, for he refused to relinquish this passionate hatred of his father. The Tallard family were his parishioners and he felt he should be able to think for all of them. It was his duty to exercise over them the authority of an infallible church. But Athanase made the task as difficult as he could.

Father Beaubien knew he had not been trained to meet a man like the head of the Tallard family in such a situation. He had been born in one of the poorest parishes on the lower river below Quebec City. All the families had been equal there. The father of each one of them had obeyed the curé, and all without question had partaken of the life of the parish as the soil and the priest ordained it. There had been no rich men in that vicinity able to hire labour for their farms instead of working themselves and having a large family of sons to help. But here, after two marriages, Tallard had only two children. Of all the charges which he was harbouring against him, this seemed the most impious to Father Beaubien.

When the situation had been turned over with a faithful admixture of prayers to the point of action, Father Beaubien set out for the Tallard house. He walked quickly up the drive and lifted the iron knocker shaped like a wolf's head that was set squarely in the middle of the wide maple door. With determination he let it fall, and then he stood there waiting, black as a raven in his soutane against the whitewashed stone of the house. Only his face and the backs of his hands were not black; their tan was flushed over by the heat of the day.

When the door opened and Julienne recognized the caller, she bobbed and took his black straw hat with a great show of respect. He passed his hand over the close-cropped cap of his hair and followed her to the library after he had been announced. He found Athanase with his books and papers in
confusion about him. It was the first time he had been in this room of the house and he had never seen so many books before in his life, except in the library of the seminary.

“Well, Father–this is a pleasure.” They shook hands and Athanase gravely waited until Father Beaubien had chosen a chair facing the desk. With a quick movement the priest swept his soutane under him and folded his powerful brown hands in his lap. He was clearly not at ease.

Athanase returned to his swivel chair and swung around to face his visitor, his long legs crossed. The priest glanced up at the prints of Voltaire and Rousseau. With an attempt to meet the polished courtesy of his host, he said, “Those pictures look old. Are they family portraits?”

“No, Father.”

The priest's eyes, large behind his thick glasses, looked around the library, noting what seemed to him the wealth of it. As his eyes found the many English titles on the shelves he could hardly conceal his distrust. “I have little time to read books,” he said. He swung his eyes back to Athanase. “Marius tells me you are writing a book on religion, Mr. Tallard. I'm surprised you find the time yourself.”

The tufts of Athanase's eyebrows rose. “How Marius knows anything about what I'm writing I can't imagine. I've never discussed it with him.”

Father Beaubien leaned forward, his knees parted and his hands folded in the hammock-spread of his soutane. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I don't want to take up too much of your time. I've come to speak to you of several matters. About Marius first of all.”

Athanase frowned. “I understand he spent a night with you not so long ago.”

The two men looked at each other like strange dogs.
Athanase had dropped any attempt to be gracious, and Father Beaubien was taken aback by his attitude. Even though he had expected something like it, he found it difficult to accept. Athanase Tallard was unlike any other man he had known. Once, when he had been curate in an industrial town, he had known men who had been corrupted by the life of the place, had became entangled in labour disputes and had lost their faith. But those men had been ignorant. They could only express their opposition to the priest by sullenness, and in a way he had been able to pity them. Now, looking at the ironic expression on the face of Athanase, the priest felt the beginnings of anger. All the other men in the parish knew that he loved and watched over them. All the others knew that the cloth he wore had raised him above ordinary mortals.