The Money Master

Chapter 3

"TO-MORROW"

The rest came to-morrow. When the Antoine struck the sunken iceberg she

was not more than one hundred and twenty miles from the coast of Gaspe.

She had not struck it full on, or she would have crumpled up, but had

struck and glanced, mounting the berg, and sliding away with a small

gaping wound in her side, broken internally where she had been weakest.

Her condition was one of extreme danger, and the captain was by no means

sure that he could make the land. If a storm or a heavy sea came on, they

were doomed.

As it was, with all hands at the pumps the water gained on her, and she

moaned and creaked and ached her way into the night with no surety that

she would show a funnel to the light of another day. Passengers and crew

alike worked, and the few boats were got ready to lower away when the

worst should come to the worst. Below, with the crew, the little

moneymaster of St. Saviour's worked with an energy which had behind it

some generations of hardy qualities; and all the time he refused to be

downcast. There was something in his nature or in his philosophy after

all. He had not much of a voice, but it was lusty and full of good

feeling; and when cursing began, when a sailor even dared to curse his

baptism--the crime of crimes to a Catholic mind--Jean Jacques began to

sing a cheery song with which the habitants make vocal their labours or

their playtimes:

He realized it, however, soon after daybreak, when, within a few hundred

yards of the shores of Gaspe, to which the good Basque captain had been

slowly driving the Antoine all night, there came the cry, "All hands on

deck!" and "Lower the boats!" for the Antoine's time had come, and within

a hand-reach of shore almost she found the end of her rickety life. Not

more than three-fourths of the passengers and crew were got into the

boats. Jean Jacques was not one of these; but he saw Carmen Dolores and

her father safely bestowed, though in different boats. To the girl's

appeal to him to come he gave a nod of assent, and said he would get in

at the last moment; but this he did not do, pushing into the boat instead

a crying lad of fifteen, who said he was afraid to die.

So it was that Jean Jacques took to the water side by side with the

Basque captain, when the Antoine groaned and shook, and then grew still,

and presently, with some dignity, dipped her nose into the shallow sea

and went down.

"The rest of the story to-morrow," Jean Jacques had said when the vessel

struck the iceberg the night before; and so it was.

The boat in which Carmen had been placed was swamped not far from shore,

but she managed to lay hold of a piece of drifting wreckage, and began to

fight steadily and easily landward. Presently she was aware, however, of

a man struggling hard some little distance away to the left of her, and

from the tousled hair shaking in the water she was sure that it was Jean

Jacques.

So it proved to be; and thus it was that, at his last gasp almost, when

he felt he could keep up no longer, the wooden seat to which Carmen clung

came to his hand, and a word of cheer from her drew his head up with what

was almost a laugh.

"To think of this!" he said presently when he was safe, with her swimming

beside him without support, for the wooden seat would not sustain the

weight of two. "To think that it is you who saves me!" he again declared

eloquently, as they made the shore in comparative ease, for she was a

fine swimmer.

"It is the rest of the story," he said with great cheerfulness and aplomb

as they stood on the shore in the morning sun, shoeless, coatless, but

safe: and she understood.

There was nothing else for him to do. The usual process of romance had

been reversed. He had not saved her life, she had saved his. The least

that he could do was to give her shelter at the Manor Cartier yonder at

St. Saviour's, her and, if need be, her father. Human gratitude must have

play. It was so strong in this case that it alone could have overcome the

Norman caution of Jean Jacques, and all his worldly wisdom (so much in

his own eyes). Added thereto was the thing which had been greatly stirred

in him at the instant the Antoine struck; and now he kept picturing

Carmen in the big living-room and the big bedroom of the house by the

mill, where was the comfortable four-poster which had come from the

mansion of the last Baron of Beaugard down by St. Laurent.

Three days after the shipwreck of the Antoine, and as soon as sufficient

finery could be got in Quebec, it was accomplished, the fate of Jean

Jacques. How proud he was to open his cheque-book before the young

Spanish maid, and write in cramped, characteristic hand a cheque for a

hundred dollars or so at a time! A moiety of this money was given to

Sebastian Dolores, who could scarcely believe his good fortune. A

situation was got for him by the help of a good abbe at Quebec, who was

touched by the tale of the wreck of the Antoine, and by the no less

wonderful tale of the refugees of Spain, who naturally belonged to the

true faith which "feared God and honoured the King." Sebastian Dolores

was grateful for the post offered him, though he would rather have gone

to St. Saviour's with his daughter, for he had lost the gift of work, and

he desired peace after war. In other words, he had that fatal trait of

those who strive to make the world better by talk and violence, the vice

of indolence.

But when Jean Jacques and his handsome bride started for St. Saviour's,

the new father-in-law did not despair of following soon. He would greatly

have enjoyed the festivities which, after all, did follow the home-coming

of Jean Jacques Barbille and his Spanische; for while they lacked

enthusiasm because Carmen was a foreigner, the romance of the story gave

the whole proceedings a spirit and interest which spread into adjoining

parishes: so that people came to mass from forty miles away to see the

pair who had been saved from the sea.

And when the Quebec newspapers found their way into the parish, with a

thrilling account of the last hours of the Antoine; and of Jean Jacques'

chivalrous act in refusing to enter a boat to save himself, though he was

such a bad swimmer and was in danger of cramp; and how he sang Bal chez

Boule while the men worked at the pumps; they permitted the apres noces

of M'sieu' and Madame Jean Jacques Barbille to be as brilliant as could

be, with the help of lively improvisation. Even speech-making occurred

again in an address of welcome some days later. This was followed by a

feast of Spanish cakes and meats made by the hands of Carmen Dolores,

"the lady saved from the sea"--as they called her; not knowing that she

had saved herself, and saved Jean Jacques as well. It was not quite to

Jean Jacques' credit that he did not set this error right, and tell the

world the whole exact truth.