Puck — March 27, 1878 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PUCK. Phe Pwo Peightors of finger By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID. CHAPTER III. A TEMPTATION, SA OUR years have passed since Jehan Ker- grist wedded fair Francoise Nevez in the © cathedral of St. Corentin. It had been a gay marriage, and the young couple had had the good will and hearty prayers of most Quim- per folk. Jehan had not hitherto had an enemy in the town, but his marriage had at first cost him his dearest friend. For six months Olivier Logonna disappeared from Quimper, and when he came back he was a changed man; he gave up all the pleasures to which he had been so much addicted, he never went into any company, nor was he often seen out of doors; he spent all his time in his counting-house, or in making journeys con- nected with his business. At first he shunned his old’ friend, but Jehan's frank cordiality broke down Olivier’s coldness, and soon they were to be seen crossing the market-place to- gether as usual, and frequently in one another’s shops} on one point Olivier remained firm—he would not enter his friend's dwelling-house. Uae go nowhere,” he said, and Jehan was obliged to accept the excuse. He accepted it the more readily because Francoise had a strong dislike to Olivier. When she found out that Logonna had known of his friend’s long-cherished love for her, she could not forgive his request to the Abbess for leave to wed her, “You are well rid of such a friend,” she said to her husband; ‘“ he cannot be honest.” “Hush, my child,” Jehan had answered. “ Olivier is one of the first and most highly honored merchants of Quimper.” And so he was — his business went on increas- ing and increasing, and people wondered why he did not marry, for, like Jehan, he was an only son, and had lost his parents early, Jehan Kergrist’s affairs had also prospered, and he had two rosy little sons so like him that Jean Picard often scolded Frangoise, and asked her why she did not bestow some of her own good looks on her little ones. But now, at the end of the four years, war broke out in Brittany; towns were taken and pillaged, and property was no longer safe. Jehan sat in his counting-house, with an open letter in, his hand. It was from England, and it held the offer of a profitable undertaking; indeed, the profits offered were so large that he scarcely felt justified in refusing the business. But yet he shrank from leaving his home at such an uncertain time of strife and bloodshed. He would not tell Francoise—-why should he lay on her his perplexity? ‘There was no one to advise him; his old friend Picard had gone to Normandy to secure some property he held there. So’ Jehan had to keep his troubles to himself, and he went about all that day with an anxious face and a troubled spirit. He met Olivier Logonna in the market-place, but he said nothing to him. Hecould not con- fide to this friend that which was still untold to Frangoise. In the evening, just as he was preparing, in the homely fashion of those days, to close his shop with his apprentice’s help, he met Logonna on the door-step. “T want you to come and see me, Jehan;” Olivier smiled genially. “I haveshut myself up * too long—I mean to admit my friends again, and I will begin with you, the best friend I have.” Jehan hesitated; he knew that in their boy- hood he had always told all his secrets to Oli- | last;.“ your wits are sharper than mine, and | vier, and had received none of his friend’s in return; there seemed, too, a magnetic power in the silent Logonna which had always drawn his friend on to confidence, but he did not want to coufide in him now. And yet if he told’ Francoise as soon as he came home, why should he not ask Olivier’s opinion? He hesi- tated again. Would Frangoise like him to go and spend an evening with the man she so shrank from? “Thank you, my friend,” he said; ‘I fear I cannot come.” “Then,” Olivier looked very sad and down- cast, “it is as I feared—you have never for- given me, Jehan; all your kindness has been a sham.” . He turned to go away, but Jehan caught’ his arm. “Stay—I will come. I will tell Frangoise not to wait for me.” Logonna stopped him. “ Do not say to your wife that you are com- ing to me; you can truly say you have business this evening, for it is business I want to talk with you.” Jehan looked unwilling—but he went back to speak to his wife. Only the maid Gwen and the eldest boy were in the sitting-room. “My mistress is upstairs with Conan,” the girl said. Jehan left a message for Frangoise, and went back to his friend; he was not sorry to miss see- ing his wife. Since his marriage Jehan had added many comforts to his home, and he was greatly struck by the bareness of Olivier’s room, ‘The wea- ther was cold, but there was no fire on the empty hearth; and it seemed to Kergrist that | some of the ancient carved furniture he remem- bered had disappeared. Togonna was very friendly, but as soon as { they were seated he suddenly said— | “Now, Jehan, what ails you? have you made a bad bargain, or lost a cargo of mer- chandise? something is troubling you." His dark eyes glowed as he fixed them on Jehan’s face; the long and narrow gaze had the | strange fascination of a serpent. Jehan struggled; he tried to withdraw his eyes from Logonna’s, but he could not, and without his will his tongue answered: “ Yes, my friend, 1 have a trouble.” “Ah,” Olivier sighed, but he kept silence; he trusted to his eyes more than to his tongue. Kergrist grew restless under the long narrow gaze; he fidgeted and tried to look away. In vain; his eyes came back and settled with an increasing expression of trust on his friend's face. ‘It seems selfish,” he began, ‘“‘to troubie you with my troubles; besides, 1 ought to be man enough to bear them myself.”" “That is not the teaching we get in church,” said Olivier; “ the sermon of last Sunday told us to ‘ bear one another's burdens.’” He looked devout, apd crossed himself, that his friend might see he was in earnest. Jehan looked puzzled and touched. Olivier had never taken this tone with him before; it was rather the sort of reasoning he might have expected from Franyoise. “Twill tell you, my perplexity,” he said at you will help me to see what I should do.” Olivier listened with fixed attention, but when Jehah spoke of the offer that had been made him, a fierce light shone in Logonna’s eyes; he checked this, and forced his lips into a smile of congratulation. “You would have to be absent for some time,” he said. : “Yes,” Jehan sighed, ‘there is my trouble; who can say what may happen to Quimper in two or three months, even in seven or eight weeks, and I might be longer; am I right to tisk so much for profit?” Olivier closed his eyes till they‘looked like two black oblique lines. He sat thinking for a few moments. “You say there is no time to lose,” he said; “you must go at once or relinquish the affair; well, let us consider.” His heavy eyebrows met, and his lips closed tightly. For a moment he thought he would make Kergrist give up the enterprise, and snatch at it himself; but this could not be done secretly, and he must not lose his character in Quimper for fair dealing. Suddenly he looked up, his face-aglow as he smiled brightly at his friend. “I have it, Jehan; you can do it safely, Sell your stock and your house — you will easily find a purchaser - convert all you have into money, and then you can go away happy.” “And my wife and children ?” Jehan looked angry. Did Olivier then suppose ihat he cared more for his goods than he did for his family ? “Your wife and children will be safe with Jean Picard, and surely, Jehan, you will also zely on my devotion.” Kergrist looked unwilling, but he grasped his friend’s outstretched hand. ‘ And the money, what can I do with it? In such times as these, whose money is safe? 1 cannot leave it with Jean Picard, he is getting old.” “I will take charge of it,” said Olivier. “I promise you that I will watch over it as care- fully as if it were my own. Come, Jehan, trust my counsel; be at rest; a husband and a father has no right to lose such a splendid chance of doubling his fortune.” CHAPTER IV. A TRAITOR. A tirter way out of Quimper, beside the tree-shaded river, there was a pleasant many- gabled stone house, with a quaint round stair- case tower at two of its corners. ‘The wall that shut, it in fronr the path beside the river was built of regular blocks of the same dark gray greenstone, and in front between this wall and the house itself was a pleasant strip of garden planted with quaint starry flowers and aromatic erbs. Behind the house, and on each side where the space was larger, were orchards with purple plums and rich brown pears ripening in the warm August sunshine. Looking under the trees, you might have seen beyond them a plot of open ground, green and gold just now, with its crop of gourds and cabbages, over which a few butterflies still hovered, but over the herb-bed in front hung quite a colony of busy bees, filling the air with their soft humming. ‘There was a cheerful glow about the scene, and when presently two fat square-faced child- ren, in long jackets and baggy breeches, came running out of the house, their merry faces and shrill outcries of joy seemed quite in keeping | with the rest. ‘Mother, mother,” they cried joyfully, “there are more bees than ever to-day.” Frangoise came out of the low round-headed doorway. She smiled at her children’s words, but the smile faded at once from her pale face. She turned away and walked on till she reached the right-hand corner of the house, and then she went slowly into the orchard, her black dress and white cap in harmony with the green below and around her. “Ah, my husband,” she was saying to her- self, ‘‘ what can keep you from me ?—a year to- morrow Since you went away—what can it be ?” She had shrunk with a fear she could not give a reason for from her husband’s undertak- ing; but Jean Picard loudly advocated it, and offered so heartily to take the young wife and children to his home beside the Odet, that comicbooks.com