The Lane That Had No Turning | Page 8

forgeron
Lajeunesse," he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room.
Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head. "I knew Madelinette, as did
you all, when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories,
and listen to her sing French chansons--the best in the world. She has
gone on; we stay where we were. But she proves her love to us, by
taking her husband from Pontiac and coming back to us. May she never
find a spot so good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!"
He drank, and they all did the same. Draining his glass, Medallion let it
fall on the stone floor. It broke into a score of pieces.
He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse. "Give her my love," he said.
"Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses she
gave me when she was five and I was twenty."
Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room.
"Why did he drop his glass?" asked Gingras the shoemaker.
"That's the way of the aristocrats when it's the damnedest toast that ever

was," said Duclosse the mealman. "Eh, Lajeunesse, that's so, isn't it?"
"What the devil do I know about aristocrats!" said Lajeunesse.
"You're among the best of the land, now that Madelinette's married to
the Seigneur. You ought to wear a collar every day."
"Bah!" answered the blacksmith. "I'm only old Lajeunesse the
blacksmith, though she's my girl, dear lads. I was Joe Lajeunesse
yesterday, and I'll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I'll die Joe
Lajeunesse the forgeron--bagosh! So you take me as you find me.
M'sieu' Racine doesn't marry me. And Madelinette doesn't take me to
Paris and lead me round the stage and say, 'This is M'sieu' Lajeunesse,
my father.' No. I'm myself, and a damn good blacksmith and nothing
else am I"
"Tut, tut, old leather-belly," said Gingras the shoemaker, whose liquor
had mounted high, "you'll not need to work now. Madelinette's got
double fortune. She gets thousands for a song, and she's lady of the
Manor here. What's too good for you, tell me that, my forgeron?"
"Not working between meals--that's too good for me, Gingras. I'm here
to earn my bread with the hands I was born with, and to eat what they
earn, and live by it. Let a man live according to his gifts--bagosh! Till
I'm sent for, that's what I'll do; and when time's up I'll take my hand off
the bellows, and my leather apron can go to you, Gingras, for boots for
a bigger fool than me."
"There's only one," said Benolt, the ne'er-do-weel, who had been to
college as a boy.
"Who's that?" said Muroc.
"You wouldn't know his name. He's trying to find eggs in last year's
nest," answered Benolt with a leer.
"He means the Seigneur," said Muroc. "Look to your son-in-law,
Lajeunesse. He's kicking up a dust that'll choke Pontiac yet. It's as if

there was an imp in him driving him on."
"We've had enough of the devil's dust here," said Lajeunesse. "Has he
been talking to you, Muroc?"
Muroc nodded. "Treason, or thereabouts. Once, with him that's dead in
the graveyard yonder, it was France we were to save and bring back the
Napoleons--I have my sword yet. Now it's save Quebec. It's stand alone
and have our own flag, and shout, and fight, maybe, to be free of
England. Independence--that's it! One by one the English have had to
go from Pontiac. Now it's M'sieu' Medallion."
"There's Shandon the Irishman gone too. M'sieu' sold him up and
shipped him off," said Gingras the shoemaker.
"Tiens! the Seigneur gave him fifty dollars when he left, to help him
along. He smacks and then kisses, does M'sieu' Racine."
"We've to pay tribute to the Seigneur every year, as they did in the days
of Vaudreuil and Louis the Saint," said Duclosse. "I've got my notice--a
bag of meal under the big tree at the Manor door."
"I've to bring a pullet and a bag of charcoal," said Muroc. "'Tis the
rights of the Seigneur as of old."
"Tiens! it is my mind," said Benoit, "that a man that nature twists in
back, or leg, or body anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too. There's
Parpon the dwarf--God knows, Parpon is a nut to crack!"
"But Parpon isn't married to the greatest singer in the world, though
she's only the daughter of old leather-belly there," said Gingras.
"Something doesn't come of nothing, snub-nose," said Lajeunesse.
"Mark you, I was born a man of fame, walking bloody paths to glory;
but, by the grace of Heaven and my baptism, I became a forgeron. Let
others ride to glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop."
"You'll