FullReads

“‘Pardon!’ We will not quarrel. No; we spend not the Christmas Day after the same fashion, quite. Then, to-morrow at Pardon’s Drive! Adieu!”

Pretty Pierre went out of one door, a malediction between his white teeth, and Aleck went out of another door with a malediction upon his gloomy lips. But both maledictions were levelled at the same person. Poor Aleck.

“Poor Aleck!” That is the way we sometimes think of a good nature gone awry; one that has learned to say cruel maledictions to itself, and against which demons hurl their deadly maledictions too. Alas, for the ne’er-do-weel!

That night a stalwart figure passed from David Humphrey’s door, carrying with him the warm atmosphere of a good woman’s love. The chilly outer air of the world seemed not to touch him, Love’s curtains were drawn so close. Had one stood within “the Hunter’s Room,” as it was called, a little while before, one would have seen a man’s head bowed before a woman, and her hand smoothing back the hair from the handsome brow where dissipation had drawn some deep lines. Presently the hand raised the head until the eyes of the woman looked full into the eyes of the man.

“You will not go to Pardon’s Drive again, will you, Aleck?”

“Never again after Christmas Day, Mab. But I must go to-morrow. I have given my word.”

“I know. To meet Pretty Pierre and all the rest, and for what? Oh, Aleck, isn’t the suspicion about your father enough, but you must put this on me as well?”

“My father must suffer for his wrong-doing if he does wrong, and I for mine.”

There was a moment’s silence. He bowed his head again.

“And I have done wrong to us both. Forgive me, Mab.”

She leaned over and caressed his hair. “I forgive you, Aleck.”

A thousand new thoughts were thrilling through him. Yet this man had given his word to do that for which he must ask forgiveness of the woman he loved. But to Pretty Pierre, forgiven or unforgiven, he would keep his word. She understood it better than most of those who read this brief record can. Every sphere has its code of honour and duty peculiar to itself.

“You will come to me on Christmas morning, Aleck?”

“I will come on Christmas morning.”

“And no more after that of Pretty Pierre?”

“And no more of Pretty Pierre.”

She trusted him; but neither could reckon with unknown forces.

Sergeant Fones, sitting in the barracks in talk with Private Gellatly, said at that moment in a swift silence, “Exactly.”

Pretty Pierre, at Pardon’s Drive, drinking a glass of brandy at that moment, said to the ceiling:

“No more of Pretty Pierre after to-morrow night, monsieur! Bien! If it is for the last time, then it is for the last time. So….so.”

He smiled. His teeth were amazingly white.

The stalwart figure strode on under the stars, the white night a lens for visions of days of rejoicing to come. All evil was far from him. The dolorous tide rolled back in this hour from his life, and he revelled in the light of a new day.

“When I’ve played my last card to-morrow night with Pretty Pierre, I’ll begin the world again,” he whispered.

And Sergeant Fones in the barracks said just then, in response to a further remark of Private Gellatly,–“Exactly.”

Young Aleck fell to singing:

“Out from your vineland come
Into the prairies wild;
Here will we make our home,
Father, mother, and child;
Come, my love, to our home,
Father, mother, and child,
Father, mother, and–” [

He fell to thinking again–“and child–and child,”–it was in his ears and in his heart.

But Pretty Pierre was singing softly to himself in the room at Pardon’s Drive:

“Three good friends with the wine at night
Vive la compagnie!
Two good friends when the sun grows bright
Vive la compagnie!
Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour!
Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour!
Three good friends, two good friends
Vive la compagnie!”