The Pomp of the Lavilettes | Page 6

and
cigars. But before this occurred, he had sent his sister to a little
secluded town, where she should be well out of earshot of his doings or
possible troubles. He would have shielded her from harm at the cost of
his life. His loyalty to her was only limited by the irresponsibility of his
nature and a certain incapacity to see the difference between radical
right and radical wrong. His honour was a matter of tradition, such as it
was, and in all else he had the inherent invalidity of some of his distant
forebears. For a time all went well, then discovery came, and only the

kind intriguing of as good friends as any man deserved prevented his
arrest and punishment. But it all got whispered about; and while some
ladies saw a touch of romance in his doing professionally and
wholesale what they themselves did in an amateurish way with laces,
gloves and so on, men viewed the matter more seriously, and advised
Ferrol to leave Quebec.
Since that time he had lived by his wits--and pleasing, dangerous wits
they were--at Montreal and elsewhere. But fatal ill-luck pursued him.
Presently a cold settled on his lungs. In the dead of winter, after
sending what money he had to his sister, he had lived a week or more
in a room, with no fire and little food. As time went on, the cold got no
better. After sundry vicissitudes and twists of fortune, he met Nicolas
Lavilette at a horse race, and a friendship was struck up. He frankly and
gladly accepted an invitation to attend the wedding of Sophie Lavilette,
and to make a visit at the farm, and at the Manor Casimbault afterwards.
Nicolas spoke lightly of the Manor Casimbault, yet he had pride in it
also; for, scamp as he was, and indifferent to anything like personal
dignity or self-respect, he admired his father and had a natural, if
good-natured, arrogance akin to Christine's self-will.
It meant to Ferrol freedom from poverty, misery and financial
subterfuge for a moment; and he could be quiet--for, as he said, "This
confounded cold takes the iron out of my blood."
Like all people stricken with this disease, he never called it anything
but a cold. All those illusions which accompany the malady were his.
He would always be better "to-morrow." He told the two or three
friends who came from their beds in the early morning to see him
safely off from Montreal to Bonaventure that he would be all right as
soon as he got out into the country; that he sat up too late in the town;
and that he had just got a new prescription which had cured a dozen
people "with colds and hemorrhages." His was only a cold--just a cold;
that was all. He was a bit weak sometimes, and what he needed was
something to pull up his strength. The country would do this-plenty of
fresh air, riding, walking, and that sort of thing.
He had left Montreal behind in gay spirits, and he continued gay for

several hours, holding himself' erect in the seat, noting the landscape,
telling stories; but he stumbled with weakness as they got out of the
coach for luncheon. He drank three full portions of whiskey at table,
and ate nothing. The silent landlady who waited on them at last brought
a huge bowl of milk, and set it before him without a word. A flush
passed swiftly across his face and faded away, as, with quick
sensitiveness, he glanced at Nicolas and another passenger, a fat priest.
They took no notice, and, reassured, he said, with a laugh, that the
landlady knew exactly what he wanted. Lifting the dish, he drained it at
a gasp, though the milk almost choked him, and, to the apprehension of
his hostess, set the bowl spinning on the table like a top. Another
illusion of the disease was his: that he succeeded perfectly in deceiving
everybody round him with his pathetic make-believe; and, unlike most
deceivers, he deceived himself as well. The two actions, inconsistent as
they were, were reconciled in him, as in all the race of consumptives,
by some strange chemistry of the mind and spirit. He was on the broad,
undiverging highway to death; yet, with every final token about him
that he was in the enemy's country, surrounded, trapped, soon to be
passed unceremoniously inside the citadel at the end of the avenue, he
kept signalling back to old friends that all was well, and he told himself
that to-morrow the king should have his own again--"To-morrow, and
to- morrow, and to-morrow!"
He was not very thin in body; his face was full, and at times his eyes
were singularly and fascinatingly bright. He had colour--that hectic
flush