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Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie.
It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on the family estate in Galway. Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman. "You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind not so big enough to see hein?"
Bourassa, whose hostility to Laurier was beginning to take an active form, an opportunity to represent Laurier as the betrayer of French Catholic interests and to put himself forward as their true champion. "Our friend, Bourassa," wrote Sir Wilfrid to a friend in April, 1905, "has begun in Quebec a campaign that may well cause us trouble."
The disposition was to get together under a common leadership. It was still a question as to whether, in the long run, that leader should be Laurier or Bourassa; but all the conditions favored Laurier. For one thing, he could command a large body of support outside of his own province which it was quite beyond the power of Bourassa to duplicate.
But as she moved along the river-bank among the trees, she met the little niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing as though she was born but to sing, a song which Finden had written and Father Bourassa had set to music. Did not the distant West know Father Bourassa's gift, and did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play the organ afterwards?
But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in evident danger. Varley had come, and had now been with the patient for some time. At last the door opened and Varley came in quickly. He beckoned to Mrs. Meydon and to Father Bourassa. "He wishes to speak with you," he said to her. "There is little time."
Afterward Father Bourassa made up his mind that the confession had a purpose behind it other than repentance, and he deeply resented the use to which he thought he was being put a kind of spy upon the beautiful woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of any outward flippancy, was above reproach.
The priest looked thoughtfully out of the window; Finden's eyes were screwed up in a questioning way, but neither made any response to Varley's remarks. There was a long minute's silence. They were all three roused by hearing a light footstep on the veranda. Father Bourassa put down his glass and hastened into the hallway.
The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed it would have seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances the cup of trembling must be drunk to the dregs. Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep into which he had fallen when Varley left.
He advanced the argument, which was put forward so persistently a year later, that it must be made possible for him to keep control of Quebec province, since the only alternative was the triumph of Bourassa extremism, which might involve the whole Dominion in conflict and ruin. The episode passed apparently without disruptive results; but surface indications were misleading.
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