Marie Gourdon | Page 9

I hadn't come on this wild-goose chase."
"You have come," said the elder, "so you had better make the best of it."
"Well, a precious lucky fellow this McAllister will be, if he exists. Why, Dunmorton Castle with its woods must be worth half a million sterling."
"Umph!" said the old man. "There is a condition."
"Yes, yes, but not a very dreadful one. Still, I'm not sure that I'd like to marry Lady Janet myself."
"My young friend, your speculation on the subject is idle, for you will never get the chance."
"Well, it doesn't matter," said his young friend philosophically, and with a sentimental air, "my heart is another's."
"Ah, indeed! And who may the un--" (he had nearly said unfortunate, but corrected himself in time) "fortunate damsel be?"
"Miss Sally Perkins. Yes, she is the girl of my choice. Oh! that I had never crossed the briny ocean, so far away from Clapham and my Sally. The Sunday I broke the news of my departure to her I shall never forget. It was at tea; we were eating shrimps and brown bread and butter. She had just poured out tea, and had eaten only two shrimps, when I told her I was going across the broad Atlantic. She could eat no more shrimps that day. She was overcome."
"Poor Miss Perkins!" said his companion. "Sure devotion could no further go. She must be very fond of you."
"She is; and I must go back to England."
"You have come, and now I advise you to wait till I return. And, let me tell you that cabling is very expensive just now. You will only waste your money for nothing, and besides will be snubbed for your pains by Lady McAllister."
The speaker who gave this sage advice was a little old man, with a wizened face like parchment. His keen blue eyes had a shrewd twinkle in them, and altogether he gave one the impression that he could see further into a stone wall than most people. He was the confidential lawyer and intimate friend of Lady McAllister, of Dunmorton Castle in Fife, and had served the family for more than forty years.
His companion was a young Londoner, somewhat of the Cockney stamp, by name Thomas Brown, a youth chiefly celebrated for his immense estimation of his own capabilities.
The two men had arrived a week before by one of the mail steamers, and had, in accordance with Lady McAllister's commands, visited nearly every churchyard in the district to discover the name of McAllister.
Hitherto this had been a thankless task. Now, dispirited and fatigued, they were leaning upon the rough wooden fence which divided the burying ground of Father Point church from the road. This church, dedicated to the Good St. Anne, had been built by the pious efforts of pilots on the ships plying the River St. Lawrence and the Gulf. It was intended to be a thankful recognition to their patron saint for their deliverance from the perils of the deep.
And the church had become a noted place for pilgrimages. Indeed, it was said that miraculous cures were effected by the agency of a sacred relic of St. Anne, and many a sufferer was brought here in the hope that, by performing his devotions at the shrine of St. Anne, he would be cured of his maladies.
There was something very pathetic about the lonely little churchyard of Father Point, with its borders of overgrown raspberry bushes straggling in untidy clusters round the graves. At one end of the ground were five graves, marked each by plain wooden crosses, painted a dull black, with the Christian names in white of those who slept beneath. These rough crosses marked the resting-places of the good nuns, who had spent their lives working in this part of the country. All that is left to serve as remembrance of their struggles, their trials, their brief glimpses of happiness, are these wooden crosses, from which the rain of a few autumn days effaced even the names of those who labored so long and faithfully.
This evening everything is very calm and still, and the peace of nature is only disturbed by the tinkling of the bells on the necks of the cattle as they are driven home by the French Canadian cow-herds. A silence seems to have settled over the whole face of nature. Presently, however, from the open windows of the church comes a song, faint at first, but swelling louder and stronger, on the evening breeze:
"Maria, Maria, ora pro nobis, Ora, ora pro nobis, Sancta Maria."
It is the evening hymn of the curé and his acolytes pealing out on the still evening air. Higher and higher one treble voice goes like the cry of a soul in agonized entreaty:
"Maria, Maria, Sancta Maria, Ora, ora pro nobis."
Then it dies away, and all is still