Nobody except Gregory Thorne and myself knows the history of the Man and
Woman, who lived on the Height of Land, just where Dog Ear River falls
into Marigold Lake. This portion of the Height of Land is a lonely
country. The sun marches over it distantly, and the man of the East--the
braggart--calls it outcast; but animals love it; and the shades of the
long-gone trapper and ‘voyageur’ saunter without mourning through its
fastnesses. When you are in doubt, trust God’s dumb creatures--and the
happy dead who whisper pleasant promptings to us, and whose knowledge is
mighty. Besides, the Man and Woman lived there, and Gregory Thorne
says that they could recover a lost paradise. But Gregory Thorne is
an insolent youth. The names of these people were John and Audrey
Malbrouck; the Man was known to the makers of backwoods history as
Captain John. Gregory says about that--but no, not yet!--let his first
meeting with the Man and the Woman be described in his own words,
unusual and flippant as they sometimes are; for though he is a graduate
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a brother of a Right Honourable, he
has conceived it his duty to emancipate himself in the matter of style
in language; and he has succeeded.
“It was autumn,” he said, “all colours; beautiful and nippy on the
Height of Land; wild ducks, the which no man could number, and bear’s
meat abroad in the world. I was alone. I had hunted all day, leaving my
mark now and then as I journeyed, with a cache of slaughter here, and a
blazed hickory there. I was hungry as a circus tiger--did you ever eat
slippery elm bark?--yes, I was as bad as that. I guessed from what I had
been told, that the Malbrouck show must be hereaway somewhere. I smelled
the lake miles off--oh, you could too if you were half the animal I am;
I followed my nose and the slippery-elm between my teeth, and came at a
double-quick suddenly on the fair domain. There the two sat in front of
the house like turtle-doves, and as silent as a middy after his first
kiss. Much as I ached to get my tooth into something filling, I wished
that I had ‘em under my pencil, with that royal sun making a rainbow of
the lake, the woods all scarlet and gold, and that mist of purple--eh,
you’ve seen it?--and they sitting there monarchs of it all, like that
duffer of a king who had operas played for his solitary benefit. But
I hadn’t a pencil and I had a hunger, and I said ‘How!’ like any
other Injin--insolent, wasn’t it? Then the Man rose, and he said I was
welcome, and she smiled an approving but not very immediate smile, and
she kept her seat,--she kept her seat, my boy,--and that was the first
thing that set me thinking. She didn’t seem to be conscious that there
was before her one of the latest representatives from Belgravia, not
she! But when I took an honest look at her face, I understood. I’m glad
that I had my hat in my hand, polite as any Frenchman on the threshold
of a blanchisserie: for I learned very soon that the Woman had been in
Belgravia too, and knew far more than I did about what was what. When
she did rise to array the supper table, it struck me that if Josephine
Beauharnais had been like her, she might have kept her hold on Napoleon,
and saved his fortunes; made Europe France; and France the world. I
could not understand it. Jimmy Haldane had said to me when I was asking
for Malbrouck’s place on the compass,--‘Don’t put on any side with them,
my Greg, or you’ll take a day off for penitence.’ They were both tall
and good to look at, even if he was a bit rugged, with neck all wire and
muscle, and had big knuckles. But she had hands like those in a picture
of Velasquez, with a warm whiteness and educated--that’s it, educated
hands.
“She wasn’t young, but she seemed so. Her eyes looked up and out at you
earnestly, yet not inquisitively, and more occupied with something in
her mind, than with what was before her. In short, she was a lady; not
one by virtue of a visit to the gods that rule o’er Buckingham Palace,
but by the claims of good breeding and long descent. She puzzled me,
eluded me--she reminded me of someone; but who? Someone I liked, because
I felt a thrill of admiration whenever I looked at her--but it was no
use, I couldn’t remember. I soon found myself talking to her according
to St. James--the palace, you know--and at once I entered a bet with my
beloved aunt, the dowager--who never refuses to take my offer, though
she seldom wins, and she’s ten thousand miles away, and has to take my
word for it--that I should find out the history of this Man and Woman
before another Christmas morning, which wasn’t more than two months off.
You know whether or not I won it, my son.”
I had frequently hinted to Gregory that I was old enough to be his
father, and that in calling me his son, his language was misplaced; and
I repeated it at that moment. He nodded good-humouredly, and continued:
“I was born insolent, my s--my ancestor. Well, after I had cleared a
space at the supper table, and had, with permission, lighted my pipe,
I began to talk... Oh yes, I did give them a chance occasionally; don’t
interrupt.... I gossiped about England, France, the universe. From the
brief comments they made I saw they knew all about it, and understood my
social argot, all but a few words--is there anything peculiar about any
of my words? After having exhausted Europe and Asia I discussed
America; talked about Quebec, the folklore of the French Canadians, the
‘voyageurs’ from old Maisonneuve down. All the history I knew I rallied,
and was suddenly bowled out. For Malbrouck followed my trail from the
time I began to talk, and in ten minutes he had proved me to be a baby
in knowledge, an emaciated baby; he eliminated me from the equation. He
first tripped me on the training of naval cadets; then on the Crimea;
then on the taking of Quebec; then on the Franco-Prussian War; then,
with a sudden round-up, on India. I had been trusting to vague outlines
of history; I felt when he began to talk that I was dealing with a man
who not only knew history, but had lived it. He talked in the fewest
but directest words, and waxed eloquent in a blunt and colossal way. But
seeing his wife’s eyes fixed on him intently, he suddenly pulled up, and
no more did I get from him on the subject. He stopped so suddenly that
in order to help over the awkwardness, though I’m not really sure there
was any, I began to hum a song to myself. Now, upon my soul, I didn’t
think what I was humming; it was some subterranean association of
things, I suppose--but that doesn’t matter here. I only state it to
clear myself of any unnecessary insolence. These were the words I was
maundering with this noble voice of mine:
“‘The news I bring, fair Lady,
Will make your tears run down
Put off your rose-red dress so fine
And doff your satin gown!
Monsieur Malbrouck is dead, alas!
And buried, too, for aye;
I saw four officers who bore
His mighty corse away.
.............
We saw above the laurels,
His soul fly forth amain.
And each one fell upon his face
And then rose up again.
And so we sang the glories,
For which great Malbrouck bled;
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine,
Great Malbrouck, he is dead.’
“I felt the silence grow peculiar, uncomfortable. I looked up. Mrs.
Malbrouck was rising to her feet with a look in her face that would make
angels sorry--a startled, sorrowful thing that comes from a sleeping
pain. What an ass I was! Why, the Man’s name was Malbrouck; her name was
Malbrouck--awful insolence! But surely there was something in the story
of the song itself that had moved her. As I afterward knew, that was it.
Malbrouck sat still and unmoved, though I thought I saw something stern
and masterful in his face as he turned to me; but again instantly
his eyes were bent on his wife with a comforting and affectionate
expression. She disappeared into the house. Hoping to make it appear
that I hadn’t noticed anything, I dropped my voice a little and went on,
intending, however, to stop at the end of the verse:
“‘Malbrouck has gone a-fighting,
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!’
“I ended there; because Malbrouck’s heavy hand was laid on my shoulder,
and he said: ‘If you please, not that song.’
“I suspect I acted like an idiot. I stammered out apologies, went down
on my litanies, figuratively speaking, and was all the same confident
that my excuses were making bad infernally worse. But somehow the old
chap had taken a liking to me.--No, of course you couldn’t understand
that. Not that he was so old, you know; but he had the way of retired
royalty about him, as if he had lived life up to the hilt, and was all
pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting
and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India;
and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of
Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger,
with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now--the bound in the
blood as I caught at Malbrouck’s arm and said: ‘By George, I must kill
moose; that’s sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking--or
a gladiator.’ Malbrouck at once replied that he would give me some
moose-hunting in December if I would come up to Marigold Lake. I
couldn’t exactly reply on the instant, because, you see, there wasn’t
much chance for board and lodging thereabouts, unless--but he went on
to say that I should make his house my ‘public,’ perhaps he didn’t say
it quite in those terms, that he and his wife would be glad to have me.
With a couple of Indians we could go north-west, where the moose-yards
were, and have some sport both exciting and prodigious. Well, I’m a
muff, I know, but I didn’t refuse that. Besides, I began to see the safe
side of the bet I had made with my aunt, the dowager, and I was more
than pleased with what had come to pass so far. Lucky for you, too, you
yarn-spinner, that the thing did develop so, or you wouldn’t be getting
fame and shekels out of the results of my story.
“Well, I got one thing out of the night’s experience; and it was that
the Malbroucks were no plebs., that they had had their day where plates
are blue and gold and the spoons are solid coin. But what had sent them
up here among the moose, the Indians, and the conies--whatever THEY are?
How should I get at it? Insolence, you say? Yes, that. I should come
up here in December, and I should mulct my aunt in the price of a new
breech-loader. But I found out nothing the next morning, and I left with
a paternal benediction from Malbrouck, and a smile from his wife that
sent my blood tingling as it hadn’t tingled since a certain season in
London, which began with my tuneful lyre sounding hopeful numbers and
ended with it hanging on the willows.
“When I thought it all over, as I trudged back on yesterday’s track,
I concluded that I had told them all my history from my youth up until
now, and had got nothing from them in return. I had exhausted my family
records, bit by bit, like a curate in his first parish; and had gone
so far as to testify that one of my ancestors had been banished to
Australia for political crimes. Distinctly they had me at an advantage,
though, to be sure, I had betrayed Mrs. Malbrouck into something more
than a suspicion of emotion.
“When I got back to my old camp, I could find out nothing from the other
fellows; but Jacques Pontiac told me that his old mate, Pretty Pierre,
who in recent days had fallen from grace, knew something of these people
that no one else guessed, because he had let them a part of his house
in the parish of St. Genevieve in Quebec, years before. Pierre had
testified to one fact, that a child--a girl--had been born to Mrs.
Malbrouck in his house, but all further knowledge he had withheld.
Pretty Pierre was off in the Rocky Mountains practising his
profession--chiefly poker--and was not available for information. What
did I, Gregory Thorne, want of the information anyway? That’s the
point, my son. Judging from after-developments I suppose it was what the
foolish call occult sympathy. Well, where was that girl-child? Jacques
Pontiac didn’t know. Nobody knew. And I couldn’t get rid of Mrs.
Malbrouck’s face; it haunted me; the broad brow, deep eyes, and
high-bred sweetness--all beautifully animal. Don’t laugh: I find
astonishing likenesses between the perfectly human and the perfectly
animal. Did you never see how beautiful and modest the faces of deer
are; how chic and sensitive is the manner of a hound; nor the keen, warm
look in the eye of a well-bred mare? Why, I’d rather be a good horse
of blood and temper than half the fellows I know. You are not an animal
lover as I am; yes, even when I shoot them or fight them I admire them,
just as I’d admire a swordsman who, in ‘quart,’ would give me death by
the wonderful upper thrust. It’s all a battle; all a game of love and
slaughter, my son, and both go together.
“Well, as I say, her face followed me. Watch how the thing developed. By
the prairie-track I went over to Fort Desire, near the Rockies, almost
immediately after this, to see about buying a ranch with my old chum at
Trinity, Polly Cliffshawe--Polydore, you know. Whom should I meet in a
hut on the ranch but Jacques’s friend, Pretty Pierre. This was luck; but
he was not like Jacques Pontiac, he was secretive as a Buddhist deity.
He had a good many of the characteristics that go to a fashionable
diplomatist: clever, wicked, cool, and in speech doing the vanishing
trick just when you wanted him. But my star of fortune was with me. One
day Silverbottle, an Indian, being in a murderous humour, put a bullet
in Pretty Pierre’s leg, and would have added another, only I stopped it
suddenly. While in his bed he told me what he knew of the Malbroucks.
“This is the fashion of it. John and Audrey Malbrouck had come to Quebec
in the year 1865, and sojourned in the parish of St. Genevieve, in the
house of the mother of Pretty Pierre. Of an inquiring turn of mind,
the French half-breed desired to know concerning the history of these
English people, who, being poor, were yet gentle, and spoke French
with a grace and accent which was to the French-Canadian patois as
Shakespeare’s English is to that of Seven Dials. Pierre’s methods of
inquisitiveness were not strictly dishonest. He did not open letters,
he did not besiege dispatch-boxes, he did not ask impudent questions; he
watched and listened. In his own way he found out that the man had been
a soldier in the ranks, and that he had served in India. They were most
attached to the child, whose name was Marguerite. One day a visitor, a
lady, came to them. She seemed to be the cause of much unhappiness
to Mrs. Malbrouck. And Pierre was alert enough to discover that this
distinguished-looking person desired to take the child away with her. To
this the young mother would not consent, and the visitor departed with
some chillingly-polite phrases, part English, part French, beyond the
exact comprehension of Pierre, and leaving the father and mother and
little Marguerite happy. Then, however, these people seemed to become
suddenly poorer, and Malbrouck began farming in a humble, but not
entirely successful way. The energy of the man was prodigious; but his
luck was sardonic. Floods destroyed his first crops, prices ran low,
debt accumulated, foreclosure of mortgage occurred, and Malbrouck and
the wife and child went west.
“Five years later, Pretty Pierre saw them again at Marigold Lake:
Malbrouck as agent for the Hudson’s Bay Company--still poor, but
contented. It was at this period that the former visitor again appeared,
clothed in purple and fine linen, and, strange as it may seem, succeeded
in carrying off the little child, leaving the father and mother broken,
but still devoted to each other.
“Pretty Pierre closed his narration with these words: ‘‘Bien,’ that
Malbrouck, he is great. I have not much love of men, but he--well, if
he say,--“See, Pierre, I go to the home of the white bear and the winter
that never ends; perhaps we come back, perhaps we die; but there will
be sport for men--” ‘voila!’ I would go. To know one strong man in this
world is good. Perhaps, some time I will go to him--yes, Pierre, the
gambler, will go to him, and say: It is good for the wild dog that he
live near the lion. And the child, she was beautiful; she had a light
heart and a sweet way.’”
It was with this slight knowledge that Gregory Thorne set out on his
journey over the great Canadian prairie to Marigold Lake, for his
December moose-hunt.
Gregory has since told me that, as he travelled with Jacques Pontiac
across the Height of Land to his destination, he had uncomfortable
feelings; presentiments, peculiar reflections of the past, and
melancholy--a thing far from habitual with him. Insolence is all very
well, but you cannot apply it to indefinite thoughts; it isn’t effective
with vague presentiments. And when Gregory’s insolence was taken away
from him, he was very like other mortals; virtue had gone out of him;
his brown cheek and frank eye had lost something of their charm. It was
these unusual broodings that worried him; he waked up suddenly one night
calling, “Margaret! Margaret!” like any childlike lover. And that did
not please him. He believed in things that, as he said himself, “he
could get between his fingers;” he had little sympathy with morbid
sentimentalities. But there was an English Margaret in his life; and he,
like many another childlike man, had fallen in love, and with her--very
much in love indeed; and a star had crossed his love to a degree that
greatly shocked him and pleased the girl’s relatives. She was the
granddaughter of a certain haughty dame of high degree, who regarded
icily this poorest of younger sons, and held her darling aloof. Gregory,
very like a blunt unreasoning lover, sought to carry the redoubt by wild
assault; and was overwhelmingly routed. The young lady, though
finding some avowed pleasure in his company, accompanied by brilliant
misunderstanding of his advances and full-front speeches, had never
given him enough encouragement to warrant his playing young Lochinvar in
Park Lane; and his cup became full when, at the close of the season, she
was whisked off to the seclusion of a country-seat, whose walls to him
were impregnable. His defeat was then, and afterwards, complete. He
pluckily replied to the derision of his relatives with multiplied
derision, demanded his inheritance, got his traps together, bought a fur
coat, and straightway sailed the wintry seas to Canada.
His experiences had not soured his temper. He believed that every dog
has his day, and that Fate was very malicious; that it brought down the
proud, and rewarded the patient; that it took up its abode in marble
halls, and was the mocker at the feast. All this had reference, of
course, to the time when he should--rich as any nabob--return to London,
and be victorious over his enemy in Park Lane. It was singular that he
believed this thing would occur; but he did. He had not yet made his
fortune, but he had been successful in the game of buying and selling
lands, and luck seemed to dog his path. He was fearless, and he had a
keen eye for all the points of every game--every game but love.
Yet he was born to succeed in that game too. For though his theory was,
that everything should be treated with impertinence before you could
get a proper view of it, he was markedly respectful to people. Few
could resist him; his impudence of ideas was so pleasantly mixed with
delicately suggested admiration of those to whom he talked. It was
impossible that John Malbrouck and his wife could have received him
other than they did; his was the eloquent, conquering spirit.