JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED.
XXV. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER XXII
BELLS OF MEMORY
However far Jean Jacques went, however long the day since leaving the
Manor Cartier, he could not escape the signals from his past. He heard
more than once the bells of memory ringing at the touch of the invisible
hand of Destiny which accepts no philosophy save its own. At Montreal,
for one hallowed instant, he had regained his lost Carmen, but he had
turned from her grave--the only mourners being himself, Mme. Glozel and
Mme. Popincourt, together with a barber who had coiffed her wonderful
hair once a week--with a strange burning at his heart. That iceberg which
most mourners carry in their breasts was not his, as he walked down the
mountainside from Carmen's grave. Behind him trotted Mme. Glozel and Mme.
Popincourt, like little magpies, attendants on this eagle of sorrow whose
life-love had been laid to rest, her heart-troubles over. Passion or
ennui would no more vex her.
She had had a soul, had Carmen Dolores, though she had never known it
till her days closed in on her, and from the dusk she looked out of the
casements of life to such a glowing as Jean Jacques had seen when his
burning mill beatified the evening sky. She had known passion and vivid
life in the days when she went hand-in-hand with Carvillho Gonzales
through the gardens of Granada; she had known the smothering
home-sickness which does not alone mean being sick for a distant home,
but a sickness of the home that is; and she had known what George Masson
gave her for one thrilling hour, and then--then the man who left her in
her death-year, taking not only the last thread of hope which held her to
life.
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