had said stern things to them. All during the winter she went out
fishing every day at a great hole in the ice--bitter cold work, and
fit only for a man; but she caught many fish, and little by little laid
aside pennies to buy things to replace what she had sold. It had been a
hard trial to her to sell them. But for the kind-hearted Cure she would
have repined. The worst thing happened, however, when the ring Benoit
had given her dropped from her thin finger into the water where she was
fishing. Then a shadow descended on her, and she grew almost unearthly
in the anxious patience of her face. The Little Chemist’s wife declared
that the look was death. Perhaps it would have been if Medallion had not
sent a lad down to the bottom of the river and got the ring. He gave it
to the Cure, who put it on her finger one day after confession. Then she
brightened, and waited on and on patiently.
She waited for seven years. Then the deceitful Benoit came pensively
back to her, a cripple from a timber accident. She believed what he told
her; and that was where her comedy ended and her tragedy began.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER
Medallion put it into his head on the day that Benoit and Annette were
married. “See,” said Medallion, “Annette wouldn’t have you--and quite
right--and she took what was left of that Benoit, who’ll laugh at you
over his mush-and-milk.”
“Benoit will want flour some day, with no money.” The old man chuckled
and rubbed his hands. “That’s nothing; he has the girl--an angel!” “Good
enough, that is what I said of her--an angel!”
“Get married yourself, Farette.”
For reply Farette thrust a bag of native tabac into Medallion’s hands.
Then they went over the names of the girls in the village. Medallion
objected to those for whom he wished a better future, but they decided
at last on Julie Lachance, who, Medallion thought, would in time
profoundly increase Farette’s respect for the memory of his first wife;
for Julie was not an angel. Then the details were ponderously thought
out by the miller, and ponderously acted upon, with the dry approval of
Medallion, who dared not tell the Cure of his complicity, though he was
without compunction. He had a sense of humour, and knew there could be
no tragedy in the thing--for Julie. But the miller was a careful man and
original in his methods. He still possessed the wardrobe of the first
wife, thoughtfully preserved by his sister, even to the wonderful grey
watered-poplin which had been her wedding-dress. These he had taken out,
shaken free of cayenne, camphor, and lavender, and sent upon the back of
Parpon, the dwarf, to the house where Julie lodged (she was an orphan),
following himself with a statement on brown paper, showing the extent of
his wealth, and a parcel of very fine flour from the new stones in his
mill. All was spread out, and then he made a speech, describing his
virtues, and condoning his one offence of age by assuring her that
every tooth in his head was sound. This was merely the concession of
politeness, for he thought his offer handsome.
Julie slyly eyed the wardrobe and as slyly smiled, and then, imitating
Farette’s manner--though Farette could not see it, and Parpon spluttered
with laughter--said:
“M’sieu’, you are a great man. The grey poplin is noble, also the flour,
and the writing on the brown paper. M’sieu’, you go to Mass, and all
your teeth are sound; you have a dog-churn, also three feather-beds, and
five rag carpets; you have sat on the grand jury.
“M’sieu’, I have a dot; I accept you. M’sieu’, I will keep the brown
paper, and the grey poplin, and the flour.” Then with a grave elaborate
bow, “M’sieu’!”
That was the beginning and end of the courtship. For though Farette came
every Sunday evening and smoked by the fire, and looked at Julie as she
arranged the details of her dowry, he only chuckled, and now and again
struck his thigh and said:
“Mon Dieu, the ankle, the eye, the good child, Julie, there!”
Then he would fall to thinking and chuckling again. One day he asked her
to make him some potato-cakes of the flour he had given her. Her
answer was a catastrophe. She could not cook; she was even ignorant of
buttermilk-pudding. He went away overwhelmed, but came back some
days afterwards and made another speech. He had laid his plans before
Medallion, who approved of them. He prefaced the speech by placing the
blank marriage certificate on the table. Then he said that his first
wife was such a cook, that when she died he paid for an extra Mass and
twelve very fine candles. He called upon Parpon to endorse his words,
and Parpon nodded to all he said, but, catching Julie’s eye, went off
into gurgles of laughter, which he pretended were tears, by smothering
his face in his capote. “Ma’m’selle,” said the miller, “I have thought.
Some men go to the Avocat or the Cure with great things; but I have
been a pilgrimage, I have sat on the grand jury. There, Ma’m’selle!”
His chest swelled, he blew out his cheeks, he pulled Parpon’s ear as
Napoleon pulled Murat’s. “Ma’m’selle, allons! Babette, the sister of my
first wife-ah! she is a great cook also--well, she was pouring into my
plate the soup--there is nothing like pea-soup with a fine lump of pork,
and thick molasses for the buckwheat cakes. Ma’m’selle, allons! Just
then I thought. It is very good; you shall see; you shall learn how to
cook. Babette will teach you. Babette said many things. I got mad and
spilt the soup. Ma’m’selle--eh, holy, what a turn has your waist!”
At length he made it clear to her what his plans were, and to each and
all she consented; but when he had gone she sat and laughed till she
cried, and for the hundredth time took out the brown paper and studied
the list of Farette’s worldly possessions.
The wedding-day came. Julie performed her last real act of renunciation
when, in spite of the protests of her friends, she wore the grey
watered-poplin, made modern by her own hands. The wedding-day was the
anniversary of Farette’s first marriage, and the Cure faltered in the
exhortation when he saw that Farette was dressed in complete mourning,
even to the crape hat-streamers, as he said, out of respect for the
memory of his first wife, and as a kind of tribute to his second. At the
wedding-breakfast, where Medallion and Parpon were in high glee, Farette
announced that he would take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife
to learn cooking from old Babette.
So he went away alone cheerfully, with hymeneal rice falling in showers
on his mourning garments; and his new wife was as cheerful as he, and
threw rice also.
She learned how to cook, and in time Farette learned that he had his one
true inspiration when he wore mourning at his second marriage.
MATHURIN
The tale was told to me in the little valley beneath Dalgrothe Mountain
one September morning. Far and near one could see the swinging of the
flail, and the laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land. There was a
little Calvary down by the riverside, where the flax-beaters used to
say their prayers in the intervals of their work; and it was just at the
foot of this that Angele Rouvier, having finished her prayer, put her
rosary in her pocket, wiped her eyes with the hem of her petticoat, and
said to me:
“Ah, dat poor Mathurin, I wipe my tears for him!”
“Tell me all about him, won’t you, Madame Angele? I want to hear you
tell it,” I added hastily, for I saw that she would despise me if I
showed ignorance of Mathurin’s story. Her sympathy with Mathurin’s
memory was real, but her pleasure at the compliment I paid her was also
real.
“Ah! It was ver’ longtime ago--yes. My gran’mudder she remember dat
Mathurin ver’ well. He is not ver’ big man. He has a face-oh, not ver’
handsome, not so more handsome as yours--non. His clothes, dey hang
on him all loose; his hair, it is all some grey, and it blow about him
head. He is clean to de face, no beard--no, nosing like dat. But his
eye--la, M’sieu’, his eye! It is like a coal which you blow in your
hand, whew!--all bright. My gran’mudder, she say, ‘Voila, you can light
your pipe with de eyes of dat Mathurin!’ She know. She say dat M’sieu’
Mathurin’s eyes dey shine in de dark. My gran’fadder he say he not need
any lights on his cariole when Mathurin ride with him in de night.
“Ah, sure! it is ver’ true what I tell you all de time. If you cut off
Mathurin at de chin, all de way up, you will say de top of him it is
a priest. All de way down from his neck, oh, he is just no better as
yoursel’ or my Jean--non. He is a ver’ good man. Only one bad ting he
do. Dat is why I pray for him; dat is why everybody pray for him--only
one bad ting. Sapristi!--if I have only one ting to say God-have-mercy
for, I tink dat ver’ good; I do my penance happy. Well, dat Mathurin
him use to teach de school. De Cure he ver’ fond of him. All de leetla
children, boys and girls, dey all say: ‘C’est bon Mathurin!’ He is not
ver’ cross--non. He have no wife, no child; jes live by himself all
alone. But he is ver’ good friends with everybody in Pontiac. When he
go ‘long de street, everybody say, ‘Ah, dere go de good Mathurin!’ He
laugh, he tell story, he smoke leetla tabac, he take leetla white wine
behin’ de door; dat is nosing--non.
“He have in de parish five, ten, twenty children all call Mathurin;
he is godfadder with dem--yes. So he go about with plenty of sugar and
sticks of candy in his pocket. He never forget once de age of every
leetla child dat call him godfadder. He have a brain dat work like a
clock. My gran’fadder he say dat Mathurin have a machine in his head. It
make de words, make de thoughts, make de fine speech like de Cure, make
de gran’ poetry--oh, yes!
“When de King of Englan’ go to sit on de throne, Mathurin write ver’
nice verse to him. And by-and-by dere come to Mathurin a letter--voila,
dat is a letter! It have one, two, three, twenty seals; and de King he
say to Mathurin: ‘Merci mille fois, m’sieu’; you are ver’ polite. I tank
you. I will keep your verses to tell me dat my French subjects are
all loyal like M. Mathurin.’ Dat is ver’ nice, but Mathurin is not
proud--non. He write six verses for my granmudder--hein? Dat is
something. He write two verses for de King of Englan’ and he write six
verses for my granmudder--you see! He go on so, dis week, dat week, dis
year, dat year, all de time.
“Well, by-and-by dere is trouble on Pontiac. It is ver’ great trouble.
You see dere is a fight ‘gainst de King of Englan’, and dat is too bad.
It is not his fault; he is ver’ nice man; it is de bad men who make de
laws for de King in Quebec. Well, one day all over de country everybody
take him gun, and de leetla bullets, and say, I will fight de soldier of
de King of Englan’--like dat. Ver’ well, dere was twenty men in Pontiac,
ver’ nice men--you will find de names cut in a stone on de church; and
den, three times as big, you will find Mathurin’s name. Ah, dat is de
ting! You see, dat rebellion you English call it, we call it de War of
de Patriot--de first War of de Patriot, not de second-well, call it what
you like, quelle difference? The King of Englan’ smash him Patriot War
all to pieces. Den dere is ten men of de twenty come back to Pontiac
ver’ sorry. Dey are not happy, nobody are happy. All de wives, dey cry;
all de children, dey are afraid. Some people say, What fools you are;
others say, You are no good; but everybody in him heart is ver’ sorry
all de time.
“Ver’ well, by-and-by dere come to Pontiac what you call a colonel with
a dozen men--what for, you tink? To try de patriots. He will stan’ dem
against de wall and shoot dem to death--kill dem dead. When dey come,
de Cure he is not in Pontiac--non, not dat day; he is gone to anudder
village. De English soldier he has de ten men drew up before de church.
All de children and all de wives dey cry and cry, and dey feel so bad.
Certainlee, it is a pity. But de English soldier he say he will march
dem off to Quebec, and everybody know dat is de end of de patriots.
“All at once de colonel’s horse it grow ver’ wild, it rise up high, and
dance on him hind feet, and--voila! he topple him over backwards, and de
horse fall on de colonel and smaish him--smaish him till he go to die.
Ver’ well; de colonel, what does he do? Dey lay him on de steps of de
church. Den he say: ‘Bring me a priest, quick, for I go to die.’ Nobody
answer. De colonel he say: ‘I have a hunder sins all on my mind; dey
are on my heart like a hill. Bring to me de priest,’--he groan like dat.
Nobody speak at first; den somebody say de priest is not here. ‘Find
me a priest,’ say de colonel; ‘find me a priest.’ For he tink de priest
will not come, becos’ he go to kill de patriots. ‘Bring me a priest,’ he
say again, ‘and all de ten shall go free.’ He say it over and over. He
is smaish to pieces, but his head is all right. All at once de doors
of de church open behin’ him--what you tink! Everybody’s heart it stan’
still, for dere is Mathurin dress as de priest, with a leetla boy to
swing de censer. Everybody say to himself, What is dis? Mathurin is
dress as de priest-ah! dat is a sin. It is what you call blaspheme.
“The English soldier he look up at Mathurin and say: ‘Ah, a priest at
last--ah, M’sieu’ le Cure, comfort me!’ Mathurin look down on him and
say: ‘M’sieu’, it is for you to confess your sins, and to have de office
of de Church. But first, as you have promise just now, you must give up
dese poor men, who have fight for what dey tink is right. You will let
dem go free dis women?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ say de English colonel; ‘dey shall
go free. Only give me de help of de Church at my last.’ Mathurin turn to
de other soldiers and say: ‘Unloose de men.’
“De colonel nod his head and say: ‘Unloose de men.’ Den de men are
unloose, and dey all go away, for Mathurin tell dem to go quick.
“Everybody is ver’ ‘fraid becos’ of what Mathurin do. Mathurin he say to
de soldiers: ‘Lift him up and bring him in de church.’ Dey bring him
up to de steps of de altar. Mathurin look at de man for a while, and it
seem as if he cannot speak to him; but de colonel say: ‘I have give you
my word. Give me comfort of de Church before I die.’ He is in ver’ great
pain, so Mathurin he turn roun’ to everybody dat stan’ by, and tell dem
to say de prayers for de sick. Everybody get him down on his knees
and say de prayer. Everybody say: ‘Lord have mercy. Spare him, O Lord;
deliver him, O Lord, from Thy wrath!’ And Mathurin he pray all de same
as a priest, ver’ soft and gentle. He pray on and on, and de face of de
English soldier it get ver; quiet and still, and de tear drop down his
cheek. And just as Mathurin say at de last his sins dey are forgive,
he die. Den Mathurin, as he go away to take off his robes, he say to
himself: ‘Miserere mei Deus! miserere mei Deus!’
“So dat is de ting dat Mathurin do to save de patriots from de bullets.
Ver’ well, de men dey go free, and when de Governor at Quebec he hear de
truth, he say it is all right. Also de English soldier die in peace and
happy, becos’ he tink his sins are forgive. But den--dere is Mathurin
and his sin to pretend he is a priest! The Cure he come back, and dere
is a great trouble.
“Mathurin he is ver’ quiet and still. Nobody come near him in him house;
nobody go near to de school. But he sit alone all day in de school, and
he work on de blackboar’ and he write on de slate; but dere is no child
come, becos’ de Cure has forbid any one to speak to Mathurin. Not till
de next Sunday, den de Cure send for Mathurin to come to de church.
Mathurin come to de steps of de altar; den de Cure say to him:
“‘Mathurin, you have sin a great sin. If it was two hunderd years ago
you would be put to death for dat.’
“Mathurin he say ver’ soft: ‘Dat is no matter. I am ready to die now. I
did it to save de fadders of de children and de husbands of de wives.
I do it to make a poor sinner happy as he go from de world. De sin is
mine.’
“Den de Cure he say: ‘De men are free, dat is good; de wives have dere
husbands and de children dere fadders. Also de man who confess his
sins--de English soldier--to whom you say de words of a priest of God,
he is forgive. De Spirit of God it was upon him when he die, becos’ you
speak in de name of de Church. But for you, blasphemer, who take upon
you de holy ting, you shall suffer! For penance, all your life you shall
teach a chile no more.’
“Voila, M’sieu’ le Cure he know dat is de greatest penance for de poor
Mathurin! Den he set him other tings to do; and every month for a whole
year Mathurin come on his knees all de way to de church, but de Cure
say: ‘Not yet are you forgive.’ At de end of de year Mathurin he look so
thin, so white, you can blow through him. Every day he go to him school
and write on de blackboar’, and mark on de slate, and call de roll of de
school. But dere is no answer, for dere is no children. But all de time
de wives of de men dat he have save, and de children, dey pray for him.
And by-and-by all de village pray for him, so sorry.
“It is so for two years; and den dey say dat Mathurin he go to die. He
cannot come on his knees to de church; and de men whose life he save,
dey come to de Cure and ask him to take de penance from Mathurin. De
Cure say: ‘Wait till nex’ Sunday.’ So nex’ Sunday Mathurin is carry to
de church--he is too weak to walk on his knees. De Cure he stan’ at de
altar, and he read a letter from de Pope, which say dat Mathurin
his penance is over, and he is forgive; dat de Pope himself pray for
Mathurin, to save his soul. So Mathurin, all at once he stan’ up, and
his face it smile and smile, and he stretch out his arms as if dey are
on a cross, and he say, ‘Lord, I am ready to go,’ and he fall down. But
de Cure catch him as he fall, and Mathurin say: ‘De children--let dem
come to me dat I teach dem before I die.’ And all de children in de
church dey come close to him, and he sit up and smile at dem, and he
say:
“‘It is de class in ‘rithmetic. How much is three times four?’ And dem
all answer: ‘T’ree times four is twelve.’ And he say: ‘May de Twelve
Apostles pray for me!’ Den he ask: ‘Class in geography--how far is it
roun’ de world?’ And dey answer: ‘Twenty-four t’ousand miles.’ He say:
‘Good; it is not so far to God! De school is over all de time,’ he say.
And dat is only everything of poor Mathurin. He is dead.
“When de Cure lay him down, after he make de Sign upon him, he kiss his
face and say: ‘Mathurin, now you are a priest unto God.’”
That was Angele Rouvier’s story of Mathurin, the Master of the School,
for whom the women and the children pray in the parish of Pontiac,
though the school has been dismissed these hundred years and more.
THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER
For a man in whose life there had been tragedy he was cheerful. He had
a habit of humming vague notes in the silence of conversation, as if
to put you at your ease. His body and face were lean and arid, his eyes
oblique and small, his hair straight and dry and straw-coloured; and it
flew out crackling with electricity, to meet his cap as he put it on.
He lived alone in a little but near his lime-kiln by the river, with no
near neighbours, and few companions save his four dogs; and these he fed
sometimes at expense of his own stomach. He had just enough crude poetry
in his nature to enjoy his surroundings. For he was well placed. Behind
the lime-kiln rose knoll on knoll, and beyond these the verdant hills,
all converging to Dalgrothe Mountain. In front of it was the river, with
its banks dropping forty feet, and below, the rapids, always troubled
and sportive. On the farther side of the river lay peaceful areas of
meadow and corn land, and low-roofed, hovering farm-houses, with one
larger than the rest, having a wind-mill and a flag-staff. This building
was almost large enough for a manor, and indeed it was said that it had
been built for one just before the conquest in 1759, but the war had
destroyed the ambitious owner, and it had become a farm-house. Paradis
always knew the time of the day by the way the light fell on the
wind-mill. He had owned this farm once, he and his brother Fabian, and
he had loved it as he loved Fabian, and he loved it now as he loved
Fabian’s memory. In spite of all, they were cheerful memories, both of
brother and house.
At twenty-three they had become orphans, with two hundred acres of land,
some cash, horses and cattle, and plenty of credit in the parish, or
in the county, for that matter. Both were of hearty dispositions, but
Fabian had a taste for liquor, and Henri for pretty faces and shapely
ankles. Yet no one thought the worse of them for that, especially at
first. An old servant kept house for them and cared for them in her
honest way, both physically and morally. She lectured them when at first
there was little to lecture about. It is no wonder that when there came
a vast deal to reprove, the bonne desisted altogether, overwhelmed by
the weight of it.
Henri got a shock the day before their father died when he saw Fabian
lift the brandy used to mix with the milk of the dying man, and pouring
out the third of a tumbler, drink it off, smacking his lips as he did
so, as though it were a cordial. That gave him a cue to his future and
to Fabian’s. After their father died Fabian gave way to the vice. He
drank in the taverns, he was at once the despair and the joy of the
parish; for, wild as he was, he had a gay temper, a humorous mind,
a strong arm, and was the universal lover. The Cure, who did not, of
course, know one-fourth of his wildness, had a warm spot for him in his
heart. But there was a vicious strain in him somewhere, and it came out
one day in a perilous fashion.
There was in the hotel of the Louis Quinze an English servant from the
west, called Nell Barraway. She had been in a hotel in Montreal, and
it was there Fabian had seen her as she waited at table. She was a
splendid-looking creature--all life and energy, tall, fair-haired, and
with a charm above her kind. She was also an excellent servant, could
do as much as any two women in any house, and was capable of more airy
diablerie than any ten of her sex in Pontiac. When Fabian had said to
her in Montreal that he would come to see her again, he told her where
he lived. She came to see him instead, for she wrote to the landlord of
the Louis Quinze, enclosed fine testimonials, and was at once engaged.
Fabian was stunned when he entered the Louis Quinze and saw her waiting
at table, alert, busy, good to behold. She nodded at him with a quick
smile as he stood bewildered just inside the door, then said in English:
“This way, m’sieu’.”
As he sat down he said in English also, with a laugh and with snapping
eyes: “Good Lord, what brings you here, lady-bird?”
As she pushed a chair under him she whispered through his hair: “You!”
and then was gone away to fetch pea-soup for six hungry men.
The Louis Quinze did more business now in three months than it had done
before in six. But it became known among a few in Pontiac that Nell was
notorious. How it had crept up from Montreal no one guessed, and, when
it did come, her name was very intimately associated with Fabian’s. No
one could say that she was not the most perfect of servants, and also no
one could say that her life in Pontiac had not been exemplary. Yet wise
people had made up their minds that she was determined to marry
Fabian, and the wisest declared that she would do so in spite of
everything--religion (she was a Protestant), character, race. She was
clever, as the young Seigneur found, as the little Avocat was forced to
admit, as the Cure allowed with a sigh, and she had no airs of badness
at all and very little of usual coquetry. Fabian was enamoured, and it
was clear that he intended to bring the woman to the Manor one way or
another.
Henri admitted the fascination of the woman, felt it, despaired, went
to Montreal, got proof of her career, came back, and made his final and
only effort to turn his brother from the girl.
He had waited an hour outside the hotel for his brother, and when Fabian
got in, he drove on without a word. After a while, Fabian, who was in
high spirits, said:
“Open your mouth, Henri. Come along, sleepyhead.”
Straightway he began to sing a rollicking song, and Henri joined in with
him heartily, for the spirit of Fabian’s humour was contagious:
“There was a little man,
The foolish Guilleri
Carabi.
He went unto the chase,
Of partridges the chase.
Carabi.
Titi Carabi,
Toto Carabo,
You’re going to break your neck,
My lovely Guilleri!”
He was about to begin another verse when Henri stopped him, saying:
“You’re going to break your neck, Fabian.”
“What’s up, Henri?” was the reply.
“You’re drinking hard, and you don’t keep good company.”
Fabian laughed. “Can’t get the company I want, so what I can get I have,
Henri, my lad.”
“Don’t drink.” Henri laid his freehand on Fabian’s knee.
“Whiskey-wine is meat and drink to me--I was born on New Year’s Day, old
coffin-face. Whiskey-wine day, they ought to call it. Holy! the empty
jars that day.” Henri sighed. “That’s the drink, Fabian,” he said
patiently. “Give up the company. I’ll be better company for you than
that girl, Fabian.”
“Girl? What the devil do you mean!”
“She, Nell Barraway, was the company I meant, Fabian.”
“Nell Barraway--you mean her? Bosh! I’m going to marry her, Henri.”
“You mustn’t, Fabian,” said Henri, eagerly clutching Fabian’s sleeve.
“But I must, my Henri. She’s the best-looking, wittiest girl I ever
saw--splendid. Never lonely with her.”
“Looks and brains isn’t everything, Fabian.”
“Isn’t it, though? Isn’t it? Tiens, you try it!”
“Not without goodness.” Henri’s voice weakened.
“That’s bosh. Of course it is, Henri, my dear. If you love a woman, if
she gets hold of you, gets into your blood, loves you so that the touch
of her fingers sets your pulses going pom-pom, you don’t care a sou
whether she is good or not.”
“You mean whether she was good or not?”
“No, I don’t. I mean is good or not. For if she loves you she’ll travel
straight for your sake. Pshaw, you don’t know anything about it!”
“I know all about it.”
“Know all about it! You’re in love--you?”
“Yes.”
Fabian sat open-mouthed for a minute. “Godam!” he said. It was his one
English oath.
“Is she good company?” he asked after a minute.
“She’s the same as you keep--voila, the same.”
“You mean Nell--Nell?” asked Fabian, in a dry, choking voice.
“Yes, Nell. From the first time I saw her. But I’d cut my hand off
first. I’d think of you; of our people that have been here for two
hundred years; of the rooms in the old house where mother used to be.”
Fabian laughed nervously. “Holy heaven, and you’ve got her in your
blood, too!”
“Yes, but I’d never marry her. Fabian, at Montreal I found out all about
her. She was as bad--”
“That’s nothing to me, Henri,” said Fabian, “but something else is.
Here you are now. I’ll make a bargain.” His face showed pale in the
moonlight. “If you’ll drink with me, do as I do, go where I go, play the
devil when I play it, and never squeal, never hang back, I’ll give her
up. But I’ve got to have you--got to have you all the time, everywhere,
hunting, drinking, or letting alone. You’ll see me out, for you’re
stronger, had less of it. I’m soon for the little low house in the
grass. Stop the horses.”
Henri stopped them and they got out. They were just opposite the
lime-kiln, and they had to go a few hundred yards before they came to
the bridge to cross the river to their home. The light of the fire shone
in their faces as Fabian handed the flask to Henri, and said: “Let’s
drink to it, Henri. You half, and me half.” He was deadly pale.
Henri drank to the finger-mark set, and then Fabian lifted the flask to
his lips.
“Good-bye, Nell!” he said. “Here’s to the good times we’ve had!” He
emptied the flask, and threw it over the bank into the burning lime, and
Garotte, the old lime-burner, being half asleep, did not see or hear.
The next day the two went on a long hunting expedition, and the
following month Nell Barraway left for Montreal.
Henri kept to his compact, drink for drink, sport for sport. One year
the crops were sold before they were reaped, horses and cattle went
little by little, then came mortgage, and still Henri never wavered,
never weakened, in spite of the Cure and all others. The brothers were
always together, and never from first to last did Henri lose his temper,
or openly lament that ruin was coming surely on them. What money Fabian
wanted he got. The Cure’s admonitions availed nothing, for Fabian would
go his gait. The end came on the very spot where the compact had been
made; for, passing the lime-kiln one dark night, as the two rode home
together, Fabian’s horse shied, the bank of the river gave way, and with
a startled “Ah, Henri!” the profligate and his horse were gone into the
river below.
Next month the farm and all were sold, Henri Paradis succeeded the old
lime-burner at his post, drank no more ever, and lived his life in sight
of the old home.
THE WOODSMAN’S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF
The old woodsman shifted the knife with which he was mending his
fishing-rod from one hand to the other, and looked at it musingly,
before he replied to Medallion. “Yes, m’sieu’, I knew the White
Chief, as they called him: this was his”--holding up the knife; “and
this”--taking a watch from his pocket. “He gave them to me; I was with
him in the Circle on the great journey.”
“Tell us about him, then,” Medallion urged; “for there are many tales,
and who knows which is the right one?”
“The right one is mine. Holy, he was to me like a father then! I know
more of the truth than any one.” He paused a moment, looking out on the
river where the hot sun was playing with all its might, then took off
his cap with deliberation, laid it beside him, and speaking as it were
into the distance, began:
“He once was a trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Of his birth some
said one thing, some another; I know he was beaucoup gentil, and
his heart, it was a lion’s! Once, when there was trouble with the
Chipp’ways, he went alone to their camp, and say he will fight their
strongest man, to stop the trouble. He twist the neck of the great
fighting man of the tribe, so that it go with a snap, and that ends it,
and he was made a chief, for, you see, in their hearts they all hated
their strong man. Well, one winter there come down to Fort o’ God
two Esquimaux, and they say that three white men are wintering by the
Coppermine River; they had travel down from the frozen seas when their
ship was lock in the ice, but can get no farther. They were sick with
the evil skin, and starving. The White Chief say to me: ‘Galloir, will
you go to rescue them?’ I would have gone with him to the ends of the
world--and this was near one end.”
The old man laughed to himself, tossed his jet-black hair from his
wrinkled face, and after a moment, went on: “There never was such a
winter as that. The air was so still by times that you can hear the
rustle of the stars and the shifting of the northern lights; but the
cold at night caught you by the heart and clamp it--Mon Dieu, how it
clamp! We crawl under the snow and lay in our bags of fur and wool, and
the dogs hug close to us. We were sorry for the dogs; and one died, and
then another, and there is nothing so dreadful as to hear the dogs
howl in the long night--it is like ghosts crying in an empty world. The
circle of the sun get smaller and smaller, till he only tramp along the
high edge of the north-west. We got to the river at last and found
the camp. There is one man dead--only one; but there were bones--ah,
m’sieu’, you not guess what a thing it is to look upon the bones of men,
and know that--!”
Medallion put his hand on the old man’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said.
Then he poured out coffee for both, and they drank before the rest was
told.
“It’s a creepy story,” said Medallion, “but go on.”
“Well, the White Chief look at the dead man as he sit there in the snow,
with a book and a piece of paper beside him, and the pencil in the book.
The face is bent forward to the knees. The White Chief pick up the book
and pencil, and then kneel down and gaze up in the dead man’s face, all
hard like stone and crusted with frost. I thought he would never stir
again, he look so long. I think he was puzzle. Then he turn and say to
me: ‘So quiet, so awful, Galloir!’ and got up. Well, but it was cold
then, and my head seemed big and running about like a ball of air. But
I light a spirit-lamp, and make some coffee, and he open the dead man’s
book--it is what they call a diary--and begin to read. All at once I
hear a cry, and I see him drop the book on the ground, and go to the
dead man, and jerk his fist as if to strike him in the face. But he did
not strike.”
Galloir stopped, and lighted his pipe, and was so long silent that
Medallion had to jog him into speaking. He puffed the smoke so that his
face was in the cloud, and he said through it: “No, he did not strike.
He get to his feet and spoke: ‘God forgive her!’ like that, and come and
take up the book again, and read. He eat and drunk, and read the book
again, and I know by his face that something more than cold was clamp
his heart.
“‘Shall we bury him in the snow?’ I say. ‘No,’ he spoke, ‘let him sit
there till the Judgmen’. This is a wonderful book, Galloir,’ he went
on. ‘He was a brave man, but the rest--the rest!’--then under his breath
almost: ‘She was so young--but a child.’ I not understand that. We start
away soon, leaving the thing there. For four days, and then I see that
the White Chief will never get back to Fort Pentecost; but he read the
dead man’s book much....”
“I cannot forget that one day. He lies down looking at the
world--nothing but the waves of snow, shining blue and white, on and on.
The sun lift an eye of blood in the north, winking like a devil as I try
to drive Death away by calling in his ear. He wake all at once; but
his eyes seem asleep. He tell me to take the book to a great man
in Montreal--he give me the name. Then he take out his watch--it is
stop--and this knife, and put them into my hands, and then he pat my
shoulder. He motion to have the bag drawn over his head. I do it.... Of
course that was the end!”
“But what about the book?” Medallion asked.
“That book? It is strange. I took it to the man in Montreal--tonnerre,
what a fine house and good wine had he!--and told him all. He whip out a
scarf, and blow his nose loud, and say very angry: ‘So, she’s lost
both now! What a scoundrel he was!...’ Which one did he mean? I not
understan’ ever since.”
UNCLE JIM
He was no uncle of mine, but it pleased me that he let me call him Uncle
Jim.
It seems only yesterday that, for the first time, on a farm “over the
border,” from the French province, I saw him standing by a log outside
the wood-house door, splitting maple knots. He was all bent by years and
hard work, with muscles of iron, hands gnarled and lumpy, but clinching
like a vise; grey head thrust forward on shoulders which had carried
forkfuls of hay and grain, and leaned to the cradle and the scythe,
and been heaped with cordwood till they were like hide and metal; white
straggling beard and red watery eyes, which, to me, were always hung
with an intangible veil of mystery--though that, maybe, was my boyish
fancy. Added to all this he was so very deaf that you had to speak clear
and loud into his ear; and many people he could not hear at all, if
their words were not sharp-cut, no matter how loud. A silent, withdrawn
man he was, living close to Mother Earth, twin-brother of Labour, to
whom Morning and Daytime were sounding-boards for his axe, scythe, saw,
flail, and milking-pail, and Night a round hollow of darkness into which
he crept, shutting the doors called Silence behind him, till the impish
page of Toil came tapping again, and he stepped awkwardly into the
working world once more. Winter and summer saw him putting the kettle
on the fire a few minutes after four o’clock, in winter issuing with
lantern from the kitchen door to the stable and barn to feed the stock;
in summer sniffing the grey dawn and looking out on his fields of rye
and barley, before he went to gather the cows for milking and take the
horses to water.
For forty years he and his worn-faced wife bowed themselves beneath the
yoke, first to pay for the hundred-acre farm, and then to bring up
and educate their seven children. Something noble in them gave them
ambitions for their boys and girls which they had never had for
themselves; but when had gone the forty years, in which the little farm
had twice been mortgaged to put the eldest son through college as a
doctor, they faced the bitter fact that the farm had passed from them to
Rodney, the second son, who had come at last to keep a hotel in a
town fifty miles away. Generous-hearted people would think that these
grown-up sons and daughters should have returned the old people’s long
toil and care by buying up the farm and handing it back to them, their
rightful refuge in the decline of life. But it was not so. They were
tenants where they had been owners, dependants where they had been
givers, slaves where once they were, masters. The old mother toiled
without a servant, the old man without a helper, save in harvest time.
But the great blow came when Rodney married the designing milliner who
flaunted her wares opposite his bar-room; and, somehow, from the date of
that marriage, Rodney’s good fortune and the hotel declined. When he
and his wife first visited the little farm after their marriage the
old mother shrank away from the young woman’s painted face, and ever
afterwards an added sadness showed in her bearing and in her patient
smile. But she took Rodney’s wife through the house, showing her all
there was to show, though that was not much. There was the little
parlour with its hair-cloth chairs, rag carpet, centre table, and iron
stove with black pipes, all gaily varnished. There was the parlour
bedroom off it, with the one feather-bed of the house bountifully piled
up with coarse home-made blankets, topped by a silk patchwork quilt, the
artistic labour of the old wife’s evening hours while Uncle Jim peeled
apples and strung them to dry from the rafters. There was a room,
dining-room in summer, and kitchen dining-room in winter, as clean as
aged hands could scrub and dust it, hung about with stray pictures from
illustrated papers, and a good old clock in the corner “ticking” life,
and youth, and hope away. There was the buttery off that, with its
meagre china and crockery, its window looking out on the field of rye,
the little orchard of winter apples, and the hedge of cranberry bushes.
Upstairs were rooms with no ceilings, where, lying on a corn-husk bed,
you reached up and touched the sloping roof, with windows at the end
only, facing the buckwheat field, and looking down two miles towards
the main road--for the farm was on a concession or side-road, dusty in
summer, and in winter sometimes impassable for weeks together. It was
not much of a home, as any one with the mind’s eye can see, but four
stalwart men and three fine women had been born, raised, and quartered
there, until, with good clothes, and speaking decent English and
tolerable French, and with money in their pockets, hardly got by the old
people, one by one they issued forth into the world.
The old mother showed Rodney’s wife what there was for eyes to see,
not forgetting the three hives of bees on the south side, beneath the
parlour window. She showed it with a kind of pride, for it all seemed
good to her, and every dish, and every chair, and every corner in the
little house had to her a glory of its own, because of those who had
come and gone--the firstlings of her flock, the roses of her little
garden of love, blooming now in a rougher air than ranged over the
little house on the hill. She had looked out upon the pine woods to
the east and the meadow-land to the north, the sweet valley between the
rye-field and the orchard, and the good honest air that had blown there
for forty years, bracing her heart and body for the battle of love and
life, and she had said through all, Behold it is very good.
But the pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed
in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death
had hovered over a birth-bed. She looked into the face which Time’s
finger had anointed, and motherhood had etched with trouble, and said:
“‘Tisn’t much, is it? Only a clap-board house, and no ceilings upstairs,
and rag carpets-pshaw!”
And when she came to wash her hands for dinner, she threw aside the
unscented, common bar-soap, and, shrugging her narrow shoulders at the
coarse towel, wiped her fingers on her cambric handkerchief. Any other
kind of a woman, when she saw the old mother going about with her
twisted wrist--a doctor’s bad work with a fracture--would have tucked
up her dress, and tied on an apron to help. But no, she sat and preened
herself with the tissue-paper sort of pride of a vain milliner,
or nervously shifted about, lifting up this and that, curiously
supercilious, her tongue rattling on to her husband and to his mother
in a shallow, foolish way. She couldn’t say, however, that any thing
was out of order or ill-kept about the place. The old woman’s rheumatic
fingers made corners clean, and wood as white as snow, the stove was
polished, the tins were bright, and her own dress, no matter what her
work, neat as a girl’s, although the old graceful poise of the body had
twisted out of drawing.
But the real crisis came when Rodney, having stood at the wood-house
door and blown the dinner-horn as he used to do when a boy, the sound
floating and crying away across the rye-field, the old man came--for,
strange to say, that was the one sound he could hear easily, though, as
he said to himself, it seemed as small as a pin, coming from ever so far
away. He came heavily up from the barn-yard, mopping his red face
and forehead, and now and again raising his hand to shade his eyes,
concerned to see the unknown visitors, whose horse and buggy were in the
stable-yard. He and Rodney greeted outside warmly enough, but there was
some trepidation too in Uncle Jim’s face--he felt trouble brewing; and
there is no trouble like that which comes between parent and child.
Silent as he was, however, he had a large and cheerful heart, and
nodding his head he laughed the deep, quaint laugh which Rodney himself
of all his sons had--and he was fonder of Rodney than any. He washed his
hands in the little basin outside the wood-house door, combed out his
white beard, rubbed his red, watery eyes, tied a clean handkerchief
round his neck, put on a rusty but clean old coat, and a minute
afterwards was shaking hands for the first time with Rodney’s wife. He
had lived much apart from his kind, but he had a mind that fastened upon
a thought and worked it down until it was an axiom. He felt how shallow
was this thin, flaunting woman of flounces and cheap rouge; he saw her
sniff at the brown sugar-she had always had white at the hotel; and he
noted that she let Rodney’s mother clear away and wash the dinner things
herself. He felt the little crack of doom before it came.
It came about three o’clock. He did not return to the rye-field after
dinner, but stayed and waited to hear what Rodney had to say. Rodney did
not tell his little story well, for he foresaw trouble in the old home;
but he had to face this and all coming dilemmas as best he might. With
a kind of shamefacedness, yet with an attempt to carry the thing off
lightly, he told Uncle Jim, while, inside, his wife told the old mother,
that the business of the hotel had gone to pot (he did not say who was
the cause of that), and they were selling out to his partner and coming
to live on the farm.
“I’m tired anyway of the hotel job,” said Rodney. “Farming’s a better
life. Don’t you think so, dad?”
“It’s better for me, Rod,” answered Uncle Jim, “it’s better for me.”
Rodney was a little uneasy. “But won’t it be better for me?” he asked.
“Mebbe,” was the slow answer, “mebbe, mebbe so.”
“And then there’s mother, she’s getting too old for the work, ain’t
she?”
“She’s done it straight along,” answered the old man, “straight along
till now.”
“But Millie can help her, and we’ll have a hired girl, eh?”
“I dunno, I dunno,” was the brooding answer; “the place ain’t going to
stand it.”
“We’ll get more out of it,” answered Rodney. “I’ll stock it up, I’ll put
more under barley. All the thing wants is working, dad. Put more in, get
more out. Now ain’t that right?”
The other was looking off towards the rye-field, where, for forty years,
up and down the hillside, he had travelled with the cradle and the
scythe, putting all there was in him into it, and he answered, blinking
along the avenue of the past:
“Mebbe, mebbe!”
Rodney fretted under the old man’s vague replies, and said: “But darn it
all, can’t you tell us what you think?”
His father did not take his eyes off the rye-field. “I’m thinking,” he
answered, in the same old-fashioned way, “that I’ve been working here
since you were born, Rod. I’ve blundered along, somehow, just boggling
my way through. I ain’t got anything more to say. The farm ain’t mine
any more, but I’ll keep my scythe sharp and my axe ground just as I
always did, and I’m for workin’ as I’ve always worked as long as I’m let
to stay.”
“Good Lord, dad, don’t talk that way! Things ain’t going to be any
different for you and mother than they are now. Only, of course--” He
paused.
The old man pieced out the sentence: “Only, of course, there can’t be
two women rulin’ one house, Rod, and you know it as well as I do.”
Exactly how Rodney’s wife told the old mother of the great change Rodney
never knew; but when he went back to the house the grey look in his
mother’s face told him more than her words ever told. Before they left
that night the pink milliner had already planned the changes which were
to celebrate her coming and her ruling.
So Rodney and his wife came, all the old man prophesied in a few brief
sentences to his wife proving true. There was no great struggle on the
mother’s part; she stepped aside from governing, and became as like a
servant as could be. An insolent servant-girl came, and she and Rodney’s
wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the
hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the
place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with
that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted
soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight
that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the
white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old
man’s heart. He had resentment both for the old wife and himself, and
he hated the pink milliner for the humiliation that she heaped upon them
both. Rodney did not see one-fifth of it, and what he did see lost
its force, because, strangely enough, he loved the gaudy wife who
wore gloves on her bloodless hands as she did the house-work and spent
numberless afternoons in trimming her own bonnets. Her peevishness grew
apace as the newness of the experience wore off. Uncle Jim seldom spoke
to her, as he seldom spoke to anybody, but she had an inkling of the
rancour in his heart, and many a time she put blame upon his shoulders
to her husband, when some unavoidable friction came.
A year, two years, passed, which were as ten upon the shoulders of
the old people, and then, in the dead of winter, an important thing
happened. About the month of March Rodney’s first child was expected.
At the end of January Rodney had to go away, expecting to return in less
than a month. But, in the middle of February, the woman’s sacred trouble
came before its time. And on that day there fell such a storm as had not
been seen for many a year. The concession road was blocked before day
had well set in; no horse could go ten yards in it. The nearest doctor
was miles away at Pontiac, and for any man to face the journey was to
connive with death. The old mother came to Uncle Jim, and, as she looked
out of a little unfrosted spot on the window at the blinding storm, told
him that the pink milliner would die. There seemed to be no other end
to it, for the chances were a hundred to one against the strongest man
making a journey for the doctor, and another hundred to one against the
doctor’s coming.
No one knows whether Uncle Jim could hear the cries from the
torture-chamber, but, after standing for a time mumbling to himself, he
wrapped himself in a heavy coat, tied a muffler about his face, and went
out. If they missed him they must have thought him gone to the barn, or
in the drive-shed sharpening his axe. But the day went on and the old
mother forgot all the wrongs that she had suffered, and yearned over
the trivial woman who was hurrying out into the Great Space. Her
hours seemed numbered at noon, her moments measured as it came towards
sundown, but with the passing of the sun the storm stopped, and a
beautiful white peace fell on the world of snow, and suddenly out of
that peace came six men; and the first that opened the door was the
doctor. After him came Uncle Jim, supported between two others.
Uncle Jim had made the terrible journey, falling at last in the streets
of the county town with frozen hands and feet, not a dozen rods from
the doctor’s door. They brought him to, he told his story, and, with
the abating of the storm, the doctor and the villagers drove down to the
concession road, and then made their way slowly up across the fields,
carrying the old man with them, for he would not be left behind.
An hour after the doctor entered the parlour bedroom the old mother came
out to where the old man sat, bundled up beside the fire with bandaged
hands and feet.
“She’s safe, Jim, and the child too,” she said softly. The old man
twisted in his chair, and blinked into the fire. “Dang my soul!” he
said.
The old woman stooped and kissed his grey tangled hair. She did not
speak, and she did not ask him what he meant; but there and then they
took up their lives again and lived them out.
THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH
No one ever visited the House except the Little Chemist, the Avocat,
and Medallion; and Medallion, though merely an auctioneer, was the only
person on terms of intimacy with its owner, the old Seigneur, who for
many years had never stirred beyond the limits of his little garden. At
rare intervals he might be seen sitting in the large stone porch which
gave overweighted dignity to the house, itself not very large.
An air of mystery surrounded the place: in summer the grass was rank,
the trees seemed huddled together in gloom about the houses, the vines
appeared to ooze on the walls, and at one end, where the window-shutters
were always closed and barred, a great willow drooped and shivered; in
winter the stone walls showed naked and grim among the gaunt trees and
furtive shrubs.
None who ever saw the Seigneur could forget him--a tall figure with
stooping shoulders; a pale, deeply lined, clean-shaven face, and a
forehead painfully white, with blue veins showing; the eyes handsome,
penetrative, brooding, and made indescribably sorrowful by the dark
skin around them. There were those in Pontiac, such as the Cure, who
remembered when the Seigneur was constantly to be seen in the village;
and then another person was with him always, a tall, handsome youth, his
son. They were fond and proud of each other, and were religious and good
citizens in a highbred, punctilious way.
At that time the Seigneur was all health and stalwart strength. But one
day a rumour went abroad that he had quarrelled with his son because
of the wife of Farette the miller. No one outside knew if the thing was
true, but Julie, the miller’s wife, seemed rather to plume herself that
she had made a stir in her little world. Yet the curious habitants came
to know that the young man had gone, and after a few years his having
once lived there had become a mere memory. But whenever the Little
Chemist set foot inside the tall porch he remembered; the Avocat was
kept in mind by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from
time to time; the Cure never forgot, because when the young man went he
lost not one of his flock but two; and Medallion, knowing something
of the story, had wormed a deal of truth out of the miller’s wife.
Medallion knew that the closed, barred rooms were the young man’s; and
he knew also that the old man was waiting, waiting, in a hope which he
never even named to himself.
One day the silent old housekeeper came rapping at Medallion’s door, and
simply said to him: “Come--the Seigneur!”
Medallion went, and for hours sat beside the Seigneur’s chair, while
the Little Chemist watched and sighed softly in a corner, now and
again rising to feel the sick man’s pulse or to prepare a cordial. The
housekeeper hovered behind the high-backed chair, and when the Seigneur
dropped his handkerchief--now, as always, of the exquisite fashion of a
past century--she put it gently in his hand.
Once when the Little Chemist touched his wrist, his dark eyes rested on
him with inquiry, and he said: “Soon?”
It was useless trying to shirk the persistency of that look. “Eight
hours, perhaps, sir,” the Little Chemist answered, with painful shyness.
The Seigneur seemed to draw himself up a little, and his hand grasped
his handkerchief tightly for an instant; then he said: “Soon. Thank
you.”
After a little, his eyes turned to Medallion and he seemed about to
speak, but still kept silent. His chin dropped on his breast, and for
a time he was motionless and shrunken; but still there was a strange
little curl of pride--or disdain--on his lips. At last he drew up his
head, his shoulders came erect, heavily, to the carved back of the
chair, where, strange to say, the Stations of the Cross were figured,
and he said, in a cold, ironical voice: “The Angel of Patience has
lied!”
The evening wore on, and there was no sound, save the ticking of the
clock, the beat of rain upon the windows, and the deep breathing of the
Seigneur. Presently he started, his eyes opened wide, and his whole body
seemed to listen.
“I heard a voice,” he said.
“No one spoke, my master,” said the housekeeper.
“It was a voice without,” he said.
“Monsieur,” said the Little Chemist, “it was the wind in the eaves.”
His face was almost painfully eager and sensitively alert.
“Hush!” he said; “I hear a voice in the tall porch.”
“Sir,” said Medallion, laying a hand respectfully on his arm, “it is
nothing.”
With a light on his face and a proud, trembling energy, he got to his
feet. “It is the voice of my son,” he said. “Go--go, and bring him in.”
No one moved. But he was not to be disobeyed.
His ears had been growing keener as he neared the subtle atmosphere of
that Brink where man strips himself to the soul for a lonely voyaging,
and he waved the woman to the door.
“Wait,” he said, as her hand fluttered at the handle. “Take him to
another room. Prepare a supper such as we used to have. When it is ready
I will come. But, listen, and obey. Tell him not that I have but four
hours of life. Go, good woman, and bring him in.”
It was as he said. They found the son weak and fainting, fallen within
the porch--a worn, bearded man, returned from failure and suffering and
the husks of evil. They clothed him and cared for him, and strengthened
him with wine, while the woman wept over him and at last set him at the
loaded, well-lighted table. Then the Seigneur came in, leaning his
arm very lightly on that of Medallion with a kind of kingly air; and,
greeting his son before them all, as if they had parted yesterday, sat
down. For an hour they sat there, and the Seigneur talked gaily with a
colour to his face, and his great eyes glowing. At last he rose, lifted
his glass, and said: “The Angel of Patience is wise. I drink to my son!”
He was about to say something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over
his face. He drank off the wine, and as he put the glass down, shivered,
and fell back in his chair.
“Two hours short, Chemist!” he said, and smiled, and was Still.
PARPON THE DWARF
Parpon perched in a room at the top of the mill. He could see every
house in the village, and he knew people a long distance off. He was a
droll dwarf, and, in his way, had good times in the world. He turned the
misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it from his high little
eyrie with the dormer window. He had lived with Farette the miller for
some years, serving him with a kind of humble insolence.
It was not a joyful day for Farette when he married Julie. She led him a
pretty travel. He had started as her master; he ended by being her slave
and victim.
She was a wilful wife. She had made the Seigneur de la Riviere, of
the House with the Tall Porch, to quarrel with his son Armand, so that
Armand disappeared from Pontiac for years.
When that happened she had already stopped confessing to the good Cure;
so it may be guessed there were things she did not care to tell, and
for which she had no repentance. But Parpon knew, and Medallion the
auctioneer guessed; and the Little Chemist’s wife hoped that it was not
so. When Julie looked at Parpon, as he perched on a chest of drawers,
with his head cocked and his eyes blinking, she knew that he read the
truth. But she did not know all that was in his head; so she said sharp
things to him, as she did to everybody, for she had a very poor opinion
of the world, and thought all as flippant as herself. She took nothing
seriously; she was too vain. Except that she was sorry Armand was gone,
she rather plumed herself on having separated the Seigneur and his
son--it was something to have been the pivot in a tragedy. There came
others to the village, as, for instance, a series of clerks to the
Avocat; but she would not decline from Armand upon them. She merely made
them miserable.
But she did not grow prettier as time went on. Even Annette, the sad
wife of the drunken Benoit, kept her fine looks; but then, Annette’s
life was a thing for a book, and she had a beautiful child. You cannot
keep this from the face of a woman. Nor can you keep the other: when the
heart rusts the rust shows.
After a good many years, Armand de la Riviere came back in time to see
his father die. Then Julie picked out her smartest ribbons, capered at
the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal, because she thought that
he would ask her to meet him at the Bois Noir, as he had done long
ago. The days passed, and he did not come. When she saw Armand at the
funeral--a tall man with a dark beard and a grave face, not like the
Armand she had known, he seemed a great distance from her, though she
could almost have touched him once as he turned from the grave. She
would have liked to throw herself into his arms, and cry before them
all: “Mon Armand!” and go away with him to the House with the Tall
Porch. She did not care about Farette, the mumbling old man who hungered
for money, having ceased to hunger for anything else--even for Julie,
who laughed and shut her door in his face, and cowed him.
After the funeral Julie had a strange feeling. She had not much brains,
but she had some shrewdness, and she felt her romance askew. She stood
before the mirror, rubbing her face with oatmeal and frowning hard.
Presently a voice behind her said: “Madame Julie, shall I bring another
bag of meal?”
She turned quickly, and saw Parpon on a table in the corner, his legs
drawn up to his chin, his black eyes twinkling.
“Idiot!” she cried, and threw the meal at him. He had a very long, quick
arm. He caught the basin as it came, but the meal covered him. He
blew it from his beard, laughing softly, and twirled the basin on a
finger-point.
“Like that, there will need two bags!” he said.
“Imbecile!” she cried, standing angry in the centre of the room.
“Ho, ho, what a big word! See what it is to have the tongue of fashion!”
She looked helplessly round the room. “I will kill you!”
“Let us die together,” answered Parpon; “we are both sad.”
She snatched the poker from the fire, and ran at him. He caught her
wrists with his great hands, big enough for tall Medallion, and held
her.
“I said ‘together,”’ he chuckled; “not one before the other. We might
jump into the flume at the mill, or go over the dam at the Bois Noir;
or, there is Farette’s musket which he is cleaning--gracious, but it
will kick when it fires, it is so old!”
She sank to the floor. “Why does he clean the musket?” she asked;
fear, and something wicked too, in her eye. Her fingers ran forgetfully
through the hair on her forehead, pushing it back, and the marks of
small-pox showed. The contrast with her smooth cheeks gave her a weird
look. Parpon got quickly on the table again and sat like a Turk, with
a furtive eye on her. “Who can tell!” he said at last. “That musket
has not been fired for years. It would not kill a bird; the shot would
scatter: but it might kill a man--a man is bigger.”
“Kill a man!” She showed her white teeth with a savage little smile.
“Of course it is all guess. I asked Farette what he would shoot, and he
said, ‘Nothing good to eat.’ I said I would eat what he killed. Then
he got pretty mad, and said I couldn’t eat my own head. Holy! that was
funny for Farette. Then I told him there was no good going to the Bois
Noir, for there would be nothing to shoot. Well, did I speak true,
Madame Julie?”
She was conscious of something new in Parpon. She could not define it.
Presently she got to her feet and said: “I don’t believe you--you’re a
monkey.”
“A monkey can climb a tree quick; a man has to take the shot as it
comes.” He stretched up his powerful arms, with a swift motion as of
climbing, laughed, and added: “Madame Julie, Farette has poor eyes; he
could not see a hole in a ladder. But he has a kink in his head about
the Bois Noir. People have talked--”
“Pshaw!” Julie said, crumpling her apron and throwing it out; “he is a
child and a coward. He should not play with a gun; it might go off and
hit him.”
Parpon hopped down and trotted to the door. Then he turned and said,
with a sly gurgle: “Farette keeps at that gun. What is the good! There
will be nobody at the Bois Noir any more. I will go and tell him.”
She rushed at him with fury, but seeing Annette Benoit in the road, she
stood still and beat her foot angrily on the doorstep. She was ripe for
a quarrel, and she would say something hateful to Annette; for she never
forgot that Farette had asked Annette to be his wife before herself was
considered. She smoothed out her wrinkled apron and waited.
“Good day, Annette,” she said loftily.
“Good day, Julie,” was the quiet reply.
“Will you come in?”
“I am going to the mill for flax-seed. Benoit has rheumatism.”
“Poor Benoit!” said Julie, with a meaning toss of her head.
“Poor Benoit,” responded Annette gently. Her voice was always sweet. One
would never have known that Benoit was a drunken idler.
“Come in. I will give you the meal from my own. Then it will cost you
nothing,” said Julie, with an air.
“Thank you, Julie, but I would rather pay.”
“I do not sell my meal,” answered Julie. “What’s a few pounds of meal to
the wife of Farette? I will get it for you. Come in, Annette.”
She turned towards the door, then stopped all at once. There was the
oatmeal which she had thrown at Parpon, the basin, and the poker. She
wished she had not asked Annette in. But in some things she had a quick
wit, and she hurried to say: “It was that yellow cat of Parpon’s. It
spilt the meal, and I went at it with the poker.”
Perhaps Annette believed her. She did not think about it one way or the
other; her mind was with the sick Benoit. She nodded and said nothing,
hoping that the flax-seed would be got at once. But when she saw that
Julie expected an answer, she said: “Cecilia, my little girl, has a
black cat-so handsome. It came from the house of the poor Seigneur de la
Riviere a year ago. We took it back, but it would not stay.”
Annette spoke simply and frankly, but her words cut like a knife.
Julie responded, with a click of malice: “Look out that the black cat
doesn’t kill the dear Cecilia.” Annette started, but she did not believe
that cats sucked the life from children’s lungs, and she replied calmly:
“I am not afraid; the good God keeps my child.” She then got up and came
to Julie, and said: “It is a pity, Julie, that you have not a child. A
child makes all right.”
Julie was wild to say a fierce thing, for it seemed that Annette was
setting off Benoit against Farette; but the next moment she grew hot,
her eyes smarted, and there was a hint of trouble at her throat. She had
lived very fast in the last few hours, and it was telling on her. She
could not rule herself--she could not play a part so well as she wished.
She had not before felt the thing that gave a new pulse to her body and
a joyful pain at her breasts. Her eyes got thickly blurred so that she
could not see Annette, and, without a word, she hurried to get the
meal. She was silent when she came back. She put the meal into Annette’s
hands. She felt that she would like to talk of Armand. She knew now
there was no evil thought in Annette. She did not like her more for
that, but she felt she must talk, and Annette was safe. So she took her
arm. “Sit down, Annette,” she said. “You come so seldom.”
“But there is Benoit, and the child--”
“The child has the black cat from the House!” There was again a sly ring
to Julie’s voice, and she almost pressed Annette into a chair.
“Well, it must only be a minute.”
“Were you at the funeral to-day?” Julie began.
“No; I was nursing Benoit. But the poor Seigneur! They say he died
without confession. No one was there except M’sieu’ Medallion, the
Little Chemist, Old Sylvie, and M’sieu’ Armand. But, of course, you have
heard everything.”
“Is that all you know?” queried Julie.
“Not much more. I go out little, and no one comes to me except the
Little Chemist’s wife--she is a good woman.”
“What did she say?”
“Only something of the night the Seigneur died. He was sitting in his
chair, not afraid, but very sad, we can guess. By-and-by he raised his
head quickly. ‘I hear a voice in the Tall Porch,’ he said. They thought
he was dreaming. But he said other things, and cried again that he heard
his son’s voice in the Porch. They went and found M’sieu’ Armand. Then
a great supper was got ready, and he sat very grand at the head of the
table, but died quickly, when making a grand speech. It was strange he
was so happy, for he did not confess-he hadn’t absolution.”
This was more than Julie had heard. She showed excitement.
“The Seigneur and M’sieu’ Armand were good friends when he died?” she
asked.
“Quite.”
All at once Annette remembered the old talk about Armand and Julie. She
was confused. She wished she could get up and run away; but haste would
look strange.
“You were at the funeral?” she added, after a minute.
“Everybody was there.”
“I suppose M’sieu’ Armand looks very fine and strange after his long
travel,” said Annette shyly, rising to go.
“He was always the grandest gentleman in the province,” answered Julie,
in her old vain manner. “You should have seen the women look at him
to-day! But they are nothing to him--he is not easy to please.”
“Good day,” said Annette, shocked and sad, moving from the door.
Suddenly she turned, and laid a hand on Julie’s arm. “Come and see my
sweet Cecilia,” she said. “She is gay; she will amuse you.”
She was thinking again what a pity it was that Julie had no child.
“To see Cecilia and the black cat? Very well--some day.”
You could not have told what she meant. But, as Annette turned away
again, she glanced at the mill; and there, high up in the dormer window,
sat Parpon, his yellow cat on his shoulder, grinning down at her. She
wheeled and went into the house.
II. Parpon sat in the dormer window for a long time, the cat purring
against his head, and not seeming the least afraid of falling, though
its master was well out on the window-ledge. He kept mumbling to
himself:
“Ho, ho, Farette is below there with the gun, rubbing and rubbing at the
rust! Holy mother, how it will kick! But he will only meddle. If she
set her eye at him and come up bold and said: ‘Farette, go and have your
whiskey-wine, and then to bed,’ he would sneak away. But he has heard
something. Some fool, perhaps that Benoit--no, he is sick--perhaps the
herb-woman has been talking, and he thinks he will make a fuss. But it
will be nothing. And M’sieu’ Armand, will he look at her?” He chuckled
at the cat, which set its head back and hissed in reply. Then he sang
something to himself.
Parpon was a poor little dwarf with a big head, but he had one thing
which made up for all, though no one knew it--or, at least, he thought
so. The Cure himself did not know. He had a beautiful voice. Even in
speaking it was pleasant to hear, though he roughened it in a way. It
pleased him that he had something of which the finest man or woman
would be glad. He had said to himself many times that even Armand de la
Riviere would envy him.
Sometimes Parpon went off away into the Bois Noir, and, perched there in
a tree, sang away--a man, shaped something like an animal, with a voice
like a muffled silver bell.
Some of his songs he had made himself: wild things, broken thoughts, not
altogether human; the language of a world between man and the spirits.
But it was all pleasant to hear, even when, at times, there ran a weird,
dark thread through the woof. No one in the valley had ever heard the
thing he sang softly as he sat looking down at Julie:
“The little white smoke blows there, blows here,
The little blue wolf comes down--
C’est la!
And the hill-dwarf laughs in the young wife’s ear,
When the devil comes back to town--
C’est la!”
It was crooned quietly, but it was distinct and melodious, and the cat
purred an accompaniment, its head thrust into his thick black hair. From
where Parpon sat he could see the House with the Tall Porch, and, as he
sang, his eyes ran from the miller’s doorway to it.
Off in the grounds of the dead Seigneur’s manor he could see a man push
the pebbles with his foot, or twist the branch of a shrub thoughtfully
as he walked. At last another man entered the garden. The two greeted
warmly, and passed up and down together.
III. “My good friend,” said the Cure, “it is too late to mourn for those
lost years. Nothing can give them back. As Parpon the dwarf said--you
remember him, a wise little man, that Parpon--as he said one day,
‘For everything you lose you get something, if only how to laugh at
yourself.”’
Armand nodded thoughtfully and answered: “You are right--you and Parpon.
But I cannot forgive myself; he was so fine a man: tall, with a grand
look, and a tongue like a book. Yes, yes, I can laugh at myself--for a
fool.”
He thrust his hands into his pockets, and tapped the ground nervously
with his foot, shrugging his shoulders a little. The priest took off his
hat and made the sacred gesture, his lips moving. Armand caught off his
hat also, and said: “You pray--for him?”
“For the peace of a good man’s soul.”
“He did not confess; he had no rites of the Church; he had refused you
many years.”
“My son, he had a confessor.”
Armand raised his eyebrows. “They told me of no one.”
“It was the Angel of Patience.”
They walked on again for a time without a word. At last the Cure said:
“You will remain here?”
“I cannot tell. This ‘here’ is a small world, and the little life may
fret me. Nor do I know what I have of this,”--he waved his hands towards
the house,--“or of my father’s property. I may need to be a wanderer
again.”
“God forbid! Have you not seen the will?”
“I have got no farther than his grave,” was the sombre reply.
The priest sighed. They paced the walk again in silence. At last the
Cure said: “You will make the place cheerful, as it once was.”
“You are persistent,” replied the young man, smiling. “Whoever lives
here should make it less gloomy.”
“We shall soon know who is to live here. See, there is Monsieur Garon,
and Monsieur Medallion also.”
“The Avocat to tell secrets, the auctioneer to sell them--eh?”
Armand went forward to the gate. Like most people, he found Medallion
interesting, and the Avocat and he were old friends.
“You did not send for me, monsieur,” said the Avocat timidly, “but
I thought it well to come, that you might know how things are; and
Monsieur Medallion came because he is a witness to the will, and, in
a case”--here the little man coughed nervously--“joint executor with
Monsieur le Cure.”
They entered the house. In a business-like way Armand motioned them
to chairs, opened the curtains, and rang the bell. The old housekeeper
appeared, a sorrowful joy in her face, and Armand said: “Give us a
bottle of the white-top, Sylvie, if there is any left.”
“There is plenty, monsieur,” she said; “none has been drunk these twelve
years.”
The Avocat coughed, and said hesitatingly to Armand: “I asked Parpon the
dwarf to come, monsieur. There is a reason.”
Armand raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Very good,” he said. “When will
he be here?”
“He is waiting at the Louis Quinze hotel.”
“I will send for him,” said Armand, and gave the message to Sylvie, who
was entering the room.
After they had drunk the wine placed before them, there was silence for
a moment, for all were wondering why Parpon should be remembered in the
Seigneur’s Will.
“Well,” said Medallion at last, “a strange little dog is Parpon. I could
surprise you about him--and there isn’t any reason why I should keep the
thing to myself. One day I was up among the rocks, looking for a
strayed horse. I got tired, and lay down in the shade of the Rock of Red
Pigeons--you know it. I fell asleep. Something waked me. I got up and
heard the finest singing you can guess: not like any I ever heard; a
wild, beautiful, shivery sort of thing. I listened for a long time. At
last it stopped. Then something slid down the rock. I peeped out, and
saw Parpon toddling away.”
The Cure stared incredulously, the Avocat took off his glasses and
tapped his lips musingly, Armand whistled softly.
“So,” said Armand at last, “we have the jewel in the toad’s head. The
clever imp hid it all these years--even from you, Monsieur le Cure.”
“Even from me,” said the Cure, smiling. Then, gravely: “It is strange,
the angel in the stunted body.”
“Are you sure it’s an angel?” said Armand.
“Who ever knew Parpon do any harm?” queried the Cure.
“He has always been kind to the poor,” put in the Avocat.
“With the miller’s flour,” laughed Medallion: “a pardonable sin.”
He sent a quizzical look at the Cure. “Do you remember the words of
Parpon’s song?” asked Armand.
“Only a few lines; and those not easy to understand, unless one had an
inkling.”
“Had you the inkling?”
“Perhaps, monsieur,” replied Medallion seriously. They eyed each other.
“We will have Parpon in after the will is read,” said Armand suddenly,
looking at the Avocat. The Avocat drew the deed from his pocket. He
looked up hesitatingly, and then said to Armand: “You insist on it being
read now?”
Armand nodded coolly, after a quick glance at Medallion. Then the Avocat
began, and read to that point where the Seigneur bequeathed all his
property to his son, should he return--on a condition. When the Avocat
came to the condition Armand stopped him.
“I do not know in the least what it may be,” he said, “but there is
only one by which I could feel bound. I will tell you. My father and I
quarrelled”--here he paused for a moment, clinching his hands before him
on the table--“about a woman; and years of misery came. I was to blame
in not obeying him. I ought not to have given any cause for gossip.
Whatever the condition as to that matter may be, I will fulfil it. My
father is more to me than any woman in the world; his love of me was
greater than that of any woman. I know the world--and women.”
There was a silence. He waved his hand to the Avocat to go on, and as he
did so the Cure caught his arm with a quick, affectionate gesture. Then
Monsieur Garon read the conditions: “That Farette the miller should
have a deed of the land on which his mill was built, with the dam of
the mill--provided that Armand should never so much as by a word again
address Julie, the miller’s wife. If he agreed to the condition, with
solemn oath before the Cure, his blessing would rest upon his dear son,
whom he still hoped to see before he died.”
When the reading ceased there was silence for a moment, then Armand
stood up, and took the will from the Avocat; but instantly, without
looking at it, handed it back. “The reading is not finished,” he said.
“And if I do not accept the condition, what then?”
Again Monsieur Garon read, his voice trembling a little. The words of
the will ran: “But if this condition be not satisfied, I bequeath to
my son Armand the house known as the House with the Tall Porch, and
the land, according to the deed thereof; and the residue of my
property--with the exception of two thousand dollars, which I leave to
the Cure of the parish, the good Monsieur Fabre--I bequeath to Parpon
the dwarf.”
Then followed a clause providing that, in any case, Parpon should have
in fee simple the land known as the Bois Noir, and the hut thereon.
Armand sprang to his feet in surprise, blurting out something, then sat
down, quietly took the will, and read it through carefully. When he had
finished he looked inquiringly, first at Monsieur Garon, then at the
Cure. “Why Parpon?” he said searchingly.
The Cure, amazed, spread out his hands in a helpless way. At that moment
Sylvie announced Parpon. Armand asked that he should be sent in. “We’ll
talk of the will afterwards,” he added.
Parpon trotted in, the door closed, and he stood blinking at them.
Armand put a stool on the table. “Sit here, Parpon,” he said. Medallion
caught the dwarf under the arms and lifted him on the table.
Parpon looked at Armand furtively. “The wild hawk comes back to its
nest,” he said. “Well, well, what is it you want with the poor Parpon?”
He sat down and dropped his chin in his hands, looking round keenly.
Armand nodded to Medallion, and Medallion to the priest, but the priest
nodded back again. Then Medallion said: “You and I know the Rock of
Red Pigeons, Parpon. It is a good place to perch. One’s voice is all
to one’s self there, as you know. Well, sing us the song of the little
brown diver.”
Parpon’s hands twitched in his beard. He looked fixedly at Medallion.
Presently he turned towards the Cure, and shrank so that he looked
smaller still.
“It’s all right, little son,” said the Cure kindly. Turning sharply on
Medallion, Parpon said: “When was it you heard?”
Medallion told him. He nodded, then sat very still. They said nothing,
but watched him. They saw his eyes grow distant and absorbed, and his
face took on a shining look, so that its ugliness was almost beautiful.
All at once he slid from the stool and crouched on his knees. Then he
sent out a low long note, like the toll of the bell-bird. From that time
no one stirred as he sang, but sat and watched him. They did not even
hear Sylvie steal in gently and stand in the curtains at the door.
The song was weird, with a strange thrilling charm; it had the slow
dignity of a chant, the roll of an epic, the delight of wild beauty.
It told of the little good Folk of the Scarlet Hills, in vague allusive
phrases: their noiseless wanderings; their sojourning with the eagle,
the wolf, and the deer; their triumph over the winds, the whirlpools,
and the spirits of evil fame. It filled the room with the cry of the
west wind; it called out of the frozen seas ghosts of forgotten worlds;
it coaxed the soft breezes out of the South; it made them all to be at
the whistle of the Scarlet Hunter who ruled the North.
Then, passing through veil after veil of mystery, it told of a grand
Seigneur whose boat was overturned in a whirlpool, and was saved by a
little brown diver. And the end of it all, and the heart of it all, was
in the last few lines, clear of allegory:
“And the wheel goes round in the village mill, And the little brown
diver he tells the grain... And the grand Seigneur he has gone to meet
The little good Folk of the Scarlet Hills!”
At first, all were so impressed by the strange power of Parpon’s voice,
that they were hardly conscious of the story he was telling. But when
he sang of the Seigneur they began to read his parable. Their hearts
throbbed painfully.
As the last notes died away Armand got up, and standing by the table,
said: “Parpon, you saved my father’s life once?”
Parpon did not answer.
“Will you not tell him, my son?” said the Cure, rising. Still Parpon was
silent.
“The son of your grand Seigneur asks you a question, Parpon,” said
Medallion soothingly.
“Oh, my grand Seigneur!” said Parpon, throwing up his hands. “Once he
said to me, ‘Come, my brown diver, and live with me.’ But I said, ‘No,
I am not fit. I will never go to you at the House with the Tall Porch.’
And I made him promise that he would never tell of it. And so I have
lived sometimes with old Farette.” Then he laughed strangely again, and
sent a furtive look at Armand.
“Parpon,” said Armand gently, “our grand Seigneur has left you the Bois
Noir for your own. So the hills and the Rock of Red Pigeons are for
you--and the little good people, if you like.”
Parpon, with fiery eyes, gathered himself up with a quick movement, then
broke out: “Oh, my grand Seigneur--my grand Seigneur!” and fell forward,
his head in his arms, laughing and sobbing together.
Armand touched his shoulder. “Parpon!” But Parpon shrank away.
Armand turned to the rest. “I do not understand it, gentlemen. Parpon
does not like the young Seigneur as he liked the old.”
Medallion, sitting in the shadow, smiled. He understood. Armand
continued: “As for this ‘testament, gentlemen, I will fulfil its
conditions; though I swear, were I otherwise minded regarding the
woman”--here Parpon raised his head swiftly--“I would not hang my hat
for an hour in the Tall Porch.”
They rose and shook hands, then the wine was poured out, and they drank
it off in silence. Parpon, however, sat with his head in his hands.
“Come, little comrade, drink,” said Medallion, offering him a glass.
Parpon made no reply, but caught up the will, kissed it, put it into
Armand’s hand, and then, jumping down from the table, ran to the door
and disappeared through it.
IV. The next afternoon the Avocat visited old Farette. Farette was
polishing a gun, mumbling the while. Sitting on some bags of meal was
Parpon, with a fierce twinkle in his eye. Monsieur Garon told Farette
briefly what the Seigneur had left him. With a quick, greedy chuckle
Farette threw the gun away.
“Man alive!” said he; “tell me all about it. Ah, the good news!”
“There is nothing to tell: he left it; that is all.”
“Oh, the good Seigneur,” cried Farette, “the grand Seigneur!”
Some one laughed scornfully in the doorway. It was Julie.
“Look there,” she cried; “he gets the land, and throws away the gun!
Brag and coward, miller! It is for me to say ‘the grand Seigneur!’”
She tossed her head: she thought the old Seigneur had relented towards
her. She turned away to the house with a flaunting air, and got her hat.
At first she thought she would go to the House with the Tall Porch, but
she changed her mind, and went to the Bois Noir instead. Parpon followed
her a distance off. Behind, in the mill, Farette was chuckling and
rubbing his hands.
Meanwhile, Armand was making his way towards the Bois Noir. All at
once, in the shade of a great pine, he stopped. He looked about him
astonished.
“This is the old place. What a fool I was, then!” he said.
At that moment Julie came quickly, and lifted her hands towards him.
“Armand--beloved Armand!” she said.
Armand looked at her sternly, from her feet to her pitted forehead, then
wheeled, and left her without a word.
She sank in a heap on the ground. There was a sudden burst of tears, and
then she clinched her hands with fury.
Some one laughed in the trees above her--a shrill, wild laugh. She
looked up frightened. Parpon presently dropped down beside her.
“It was as I said,” whispered the dwarf, and he touched her shoulder.
This was the full cup of shame. She was silent.
“There are others,” he whispered again. She could not see his strange
smile; but she noticed that his voice was not as usual. “Listen,” he
urged, and he sang softly over her shoulder for quite a minute. She was
amazed.
“Sing again,” she said.
“I have wanted to sing to you like that for many years,” he replied; and
he sang a little more. “He cannot sing like that,” he wheedled, and he
stretched his arm around her shoulder.
She hung her head, then flung it back again as she thought of Armand.
“I hate him!” she cried; “I hate him!”
“You will not throw meal on me any more, or call me idiot?” he pleaded.
“No, Parpon,” she said.
He kissed her on the cheek. She did not resent it. But now he drew away,
smiled wickedly at her, and said: “See, we are even now, poor Julie!”
Then he laughed, holding his little sides with huge hands. “Imbecile!”
he added, and, turning, trotted away towards the Rock of Red Pigeons.
She threw herself, face forward, in the dusty needles of the pines.
When she rose from her humiliation, her face was as one who has seen the
rags of harlequinade stripped from that mummer Life, leaving only naked
being. She had touched the limits of the endurable; her sordid little
hopes had split into fragments. But when a human soul faces upon its
past, and sees a gargoyle at every milestone where an angel should be,
and in one flash of illumination--the touch of genius to the smallest
mind--understands the pitiless comedy, there comes the still stoic
outlook.
Julie was transformed. All the possible years of her life were gathered
into the force of one dreadful moment--dreadful and wonderful. Her mean
vanity was lost behind the pale sincerity of her face--she was sincere
at last. The trivial commonness was gone from her coquetting shoulders
and drooping eyelids; and from her body had passed its flexuous
softness. She was a woman; suffering, human, paying the price.
She walked slowly the way that Parpon had gone. Looking neither to right
nor left, she climbed the long hillside, and at last reached the summit,
where, bundled in a steep corner, was the Rock of Red Pigeons. As
she emerged from the pines, she stood for a moment, and leaned with
outstretched hand against a tree, looking into the sunlight. Slowly her
eyes shifted from the Rock to the great ravine, to whose farther side
the sun was giving bastions of gold. She was quiet. Presently she
stepped into the light and came softly to the Rock. She walked slowly
round it as though looking for some one. At the lowest side of the Rock,
rude narrow hollows were cut for the feet. With a singular ease she
climbed to the top of it. It had a kind of hollow, in which was a rude
seat, carved out of the stone. Seeing this, a set look came to her face:
she was thinking of Parpon, the master of this place. Her business was
with him.
She got down slowly, and came over to the edge of the precipice.
Steadying herself against a sapling, she looked over. Down below was a
whirlpool, rising and falling-a hungry funnel of death. She drew back.
Presently she peered again, and once more withdrew. She gazed round,
and then made another tour of the hill, searching. She returned to the
precipice. As she did so she heard a voice. She looked and saw Parpon
seated upon a ledge of rock not far below. A mocking laugh floated up to
her. But there was trouble in the laugh too--a bitter sickness. She did
not notice that. She looked about her. Not far away was a stone, too
heavy to carry but perhaps not too heavy to roll!
Foot by foot she rolled it over. She looked. He was still there. She
stepped back. As she did so a few pebbles crumbled away from her feet
and fell where Parpon perched. She did not see or hear them fall. He
looked up, and saw the stone creeping upon the edge. Like a flash he
was on his feet, and, springing into the air to the right, caught a tree
steadfast in the rock. The stone fell upon the ledge, and bounded off
again. The look of the woman did not follow the stone. She ran to the
spot above the whirlpool, and sprang out and down.
From Parpon there came a wail such as the hills of the north never heard
before. Dropping upon a ledge beneath, and from that to a jutting tree,
which gave way, he shot down into the whirlpool. He caught Julie’s body
as it was churned from life to death: and then he fought. There was
a demon in the whirlpool, but God and demon were working in the man.
Nothing on earth could have unloosed that long, brown arm from Julie’s
drenched body. The sun lifted an eyelid over the yellow bastions of
rock, and saw the fight. Once, twice, the shaggy head was caught beneath
the surface--but at last the man conquered.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, Parpon, with the lifeless Julie clamped in
one arm, climbed the rough wall, on, on, up to the Rock of Red Pigeons.
He bore her to the top of it. Then he laid her down, and pillowed her
head on his wet coat.
The huge hands came slowly down Julie’s soaked hair, along her blanched
cheek and shoulders, caught her arms and held them. He peered into her
face. The eyes had the film which veils Here from Hereafter. On the lips
was a mocking smile. He stooped as if to kiss her. The smile stopped
him. He drew back for a time, then he leaned forward, shut his eyes, and
her cold lips were his.
Twilight-dusk-night came upon Parpon and his dead--the woman whom an
impish fate had put into his heart with mockery and futile pain.
TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC
It was soon after the Rebellion, and there was little food to be had
and less money, and winter was at hand. Pontiac, ever most loyal to old
France, though obedient to the English, had herself sent few recruits to
be shot down by Colborne; but she had emptied her pockets in sending to
the front the fulness of her barns and the best cattle of her fields.
She gave her all; she was frank in giving, hid nothing; and when her own
trouble came there was no voice calling on her behalf. And Pontiac
would rather starve than beg. So, as the winter went on, she starved in
silence, and no one had more than sour milk and bread and a potato now
and then. The Cure, the Avocat, and the Little Chemist fared no better
than the habitants; for they gave all they had right and left, and
themselves often went hungry to bed. And the truth is that few outside
Pontiac knew of her suffering; she kept the secret of it close.
It seemed at last, however, to the Cure that he must, after all, write
to the world outside for help. That was when he saw the faces of the
children get pale and drawn. There never was a time when there were so
few fish in the river and so little game in the woods. At last, from
the altar steps one Sunday, the Cure, with a calm, sad voice, told the
people that, for “the dear children’s sake,” they must sink their pride
and ask help from without. He would write first to the Bishop of Quebec;
“for,” said he, “Mother Church will help us; she will give us food, and
money to buy seed in the spring; and, please God, we will pay all back
in a year or two!” He paused a minute, then continued: “Some one
must go, to speak plainly and wisely of our trouble, that there be no
mistake--we are not beggars, we are only borrowers. Who will go? I may
not myself, for who would give the Blessed Sacrament, and speak to the
sick, or say Mass and comfort you?”
There was silence in the church for a moment, and many faces meanwhile
turned instinctively to M. Garon the Avocat, and some to the Little
Chemist.
“Who will go?” asked the Cure again. “It is a bitter journey, but our
pride must not be our shame in the end. Who will go?”
Every one expected that the Avocat or the Little Chemist would rise; but
while they looked at each other, waiting and sorrowful, and the Avocat’s
fingers fluttered to the seat in front of him, to draw himself up, a
voice came from the corner opposite, saying: “M’sieu’ le Cure, I will
go.”
A strange, painful silence fell on the people for a moment, and then
went round an almost incredulous whisper: “Parpon the dwarf!”
Parpon’s deep eyes were fixed on the Cure, his hunched body leaning on
the railing in front of him, his long, strong arms stretched out as
if he were begging for some good thing. The murmur among the people
increased, but the Cure raised his hand to command silence, and his eyes
gazed steadily at the dwarf. It might seem that he was noting the huge
head, the shaggy hair, the overhanging brows, the weird face of this
distortion of a thing made in God’s own image. But he was thinking
instead of how the angel and the devil may live side by side in a man,
and neither be entirely driven out--and the angel conquer in great times
and seasons.
He beckoned to Parpon to come over, and the dwarf trotted with a
sidelong motion to the chancel steps. Every face in the congregation was
eager, and some were mystified, even anxious. They all knew the singular
power of the little man--his knowledge, his deep wit, his judgment,
his occasional fierceness, his infrequent malice; but he was kind to
children and the sick, and the Cure and the Avocat and their little
coterie respected him. Once everybody had worshipped him: that was when
he had sung in the Mass, the day of the funeral of the wife of Farette
the miller, for whom he worked. It had been rumoured that in his hut
by the Rock of Red Pigeons, up at Dalgrothe Mountain, a voice of most
wonderful power and sweetness had been heard singing; but this was only
rumour. Yet when the body of the miller’s wife lay in the church, he had
sung so that men and women wept and held each other’s hands for joy. He
had never sung since, however; his voice of silver was locked away in
the cabinet of secret purposes which every man has somewhere in his own
soul.
“What will you say to the Bishop, Parpon?” asked the Cure.
The congregation stirred in their seats, for they saw that the Cure
intended Parpon to go.
Parpon went up two steps of the chancel quietly and caught the arm of
the Cure, drawing him down to whisper in his ear.
A flush and then a peculiar soft light passed over the Cure’s face, and
he raised his hand over Parpon’s head in benediction and said: “Go, my
son, and the blessing of God and of His dear Son be with you.”
Then suddenly he turned to the altar, and, raising his hands, he tried
to speak, but only said: “O Lord, Thou knowest our pride and our vanity,
hear us, and--”
Soon afterwards, with tearful eyes, he preached from the text:
“And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it
not.”
.......................
Five days later a little, uncouth man took off his hat in the chief
street of Quebec, and began to sing a song of Picardy to an air which no
man in French Canada had ever heard. Little farmers on their way to
the market by the Place de Cathedral stopped, listening, though
every moment’s delay lessened their chances of getting a stand in the
market-place. Butchers and milkmen loitered, regardless of waiting
customers; a little company of soldiers caught up the chorus, and, to
avoid involuntary revolt, their sergeant halted them, that they might
listen. Gentlemen strolling by--doctor, lawyer, officer, idler--paused
and forgot the raw climate, for this marvellous voice in the unshapely
body warmed them, and they pushed in among the fast-gathering crowd.
Ladies hurrying by in their sleighs lost their hearts to the thrilling
notes of:
“Little grey fisherman,
Where is your daughter?
Where is your daughter so sweet?
Little grey man who comes Over the water,
I have knelt down at her feet,
Knelt at your Gabrielle’s feet---ci ci!”
Presently the wife of the governor stepped out from her sleigh, and,
coming over, quickly took Parpon’s cap from his hand and went round
among the crowd with it, gathering money.
“He is hungry, he is poor,” she said, with tears in her eyes. She had
known the song in her childhood, and he who used to sing it to her was
in her sight no more. In vain the gentlemen would have taken the cap
from her; she gathered the money herself, and others followed, and
Parpon sang on.
A night later a crowd gathered in the great hall of the city, filling it
to the doors, to hear the dwarf sing. He came on the platform dressed
as he had entered the city, with heavy, home-made coat and trousers,
and moccasins, and a red woollen comforter about his neck--but this
comforter he took off when he began to sing. Old France and New France,
and the loves and hates and joys and sorrows of all lands, met that
night in the soul of this dwarf with the divine voice, who did not give
them his name, so that they called him, for want of a better title,
the Provencal. And again two nights afterwards it was the same, and yet
again a third night and a fourth, and the simple folk, and wise folk
also, went mad after Parpon the dwarf.
Then, suddenly, he disappeared from Quebec City, and the next Sunday
morning, while the Cure was saying the last words of the Mass, he
entered the Church of St. Saviour’s at Pontiac. Going up to the chancel
steps he waited. The murmuring of the people drew the Cure’s attention,
and then, seeing Parpon, he came forward.
Parpon drew from his breast a bag, and put it in his hands, and
beckoning down the Cure’s head, he whispered.
The Cure turned to the altar and raised the bag towards it in ascription
and thanksgiving, then he turned to Parpon again, but the dwarf was
trotting away down the aisle and from the church.
“Dear children,” said the Cure, “we are saved, and we are not shamed.”
He held up the bag. “Parpon has brought us two thousand dollars: we
shall have food to eat, and there shall be more money against seed-time.
The giver of this good gift demands that his name be not known. Such is
all true charity. Let us pray.”
So hard times passed from Pontiac as the months went on; but none save
the Cure and the Avocat knew who had helped her in her hour of need.
MEDALLION’S WHIM
When the Avocat began to lose his health and spirits, and there crept
through his shrewd gravity and kindliness a petulance and dejection,
Medallion was the only person who had an inspiriting effect upon him.
The Little Chemist had decided that the change in him was due to bad
circulation and failing powers: which was only partially true.
Medallion made a deeper guess. “Want to know what’s the matter with
him?” he said. “Ha, I’ll tell you! Woman.”
“Woman--God bless me!” said the Little Chemist, in a frightened way.
“Woman, little man; I mean the want of a woman,” said Medallion.
The Cure, who was present, shrugged his shoulders. “He has an excellent
cook, and his bed and jackets are well aired; I see them constantly at
the windows.”
A laugh gurgled in Medallion’s throat. He loved these innocent folk; but
himself went twice a year to Quebec City and had more expanded views.
“Woman, Padre”--nodding to the priest, and rubbing his chin so that it
rasped like sand-paper--“Woman, my druggist”--throwing a sly look at the
Chemist----“woman, neither as cook nor bottle-washer, is what he needs.
Every man-out of holy orders”--this in deference to his good friend the
Cure--“arrives at the time when his youth must be renewed or he becomes
as dry bones--like an empty house--furniture sold off. Can only be
renewed one way--Woman. Well, here’s our Avocat, and there’s his remedy.
He’s got the cooking and the clean fresh linen; he must have a wife, the
very best.”
“Ah, my friend, you are droll,” said the Cure, arching his long fingers
at his lips and blowing gently through them, but not smiling in the
least; rather serious, almost reproving.
“It is such a whim, such a whim!” said the Little Chemist, shaking his
head and looking through his glasses sideways like a wise bird.
“Ha--you shall see! The man must be saved; our Cure shall have his fees;
our druggist shall provide the finest essences for the feast--no more
pills. And we shall dine with our Avocat once a week--with asparagus in
season for the Cure, and a little good wine for all. Ha!”
His Ha! was never a laugh; it was unctuous, abrupt, an ejaculation of
satisfaction, knowledge, solid enjoyment, final solution.
The Cure shook his head doubtfully; he did not see the need; he did not
believe in Medallion’s whim; still he knew that the man’s judgment was
shrewd in most things, and he would be silent and wait. But he shrank
from any new phase of life likely to alter the conditions of that old
companionship, which included themselves, the Avocat, and the young
Doctor, who, like the Little Chemist, was married.
The Chemist sharply said: “Well, well, perhaps. I hope. There is a
poetry (his English was not perfect, and at times he mixed it with
French in an amusing manner), a little chanson, which runs:
“‘Sorrowful is the little house,
The little house by the winding stream;
All the laughter has died away
Out of the little house.
But down there come from the lofty hills
Footsteps and eyes agleam,
Bringing the laughter of yesterday
Into the little house,
By the winding stream and the hills.
Di ron, di ron, di ron, di ron-don!’”
The Little Chemist blushed faintly at the silence that followed his
timid, quaint recital. The Cure looked calm and kind, and drawn away
as if in thought; but Medallion presently got up, stooped, and laid his
long fingers on the shoulder of the apothecary.
“Exactly, little man,” he said; “we’ve both got the same idea in our
heads. I’ve put it hard fact, you’ve put it soft sentiment; and it’s
God’s truth either way.”
Presently the Cure asked, as if from a great distance, so meditative was
his voice: “Who will be the woman, Medallion?”
“I’ve got one in my eye--the very right one for our Avocat; not here,
not out of Pontiac, but from St. Jean in the hills--fulfilling your
verses, gentle apothecary. She must bring what is fresh--he must feel
that the hills have come to him, she that the valley is hers for the
first time. A new world for them both. Ha!”
“Regardez Ca! you are a great man,” said the Little Chemist.
There was a strange, inscrutable look in the kind priest’s eyes. The
Avocat had confessed to him in his time.
Medallion took up his hat.
“Where are you going?” said the Little Chemist. “To our Avocat, and then
to St. Jean.”
He opened the door and vanished. The two that were left shook their
heads and wondered.
Chuckling softly to himself, Medallion strode away through the lane of
white-board houses and the smoke of strong tabac from these houses,
now and then pulling suddenly up to avoid stumbling over a child, where
children are numbered by the dozen to every house. He came at last to a
house unlike the others, in that it was of stone and larger. He leaned
for a moment over the gate, and looked through a window into a room
where the Avocat sat propped up with cushions in a great chair, staring
gloomily at two candles burning on the table before him. Medallion
watched him for a long time. The Avocat never changed his position; he
only stared at the candle, and once or twice his lips moved. A woman
came in and put a steaming bowl before him, and laid a pipe and matches
beside the bowl. She was a very little, thin old woman, quick and quiet
and watchful--his housekeeper. The Avocat took no notice of her. She
looked at him several times anxiously, and passed backwards and forwards
behind him as a hen moves upon the flank of her brood. All at once she
stopped. Her small, white fingers, with their large rheumatic knuckles,
lay flat on her lips as she stood for an instant musing; then she
trotted lightly to a bureau, got pen and paper and ink, reached down a
bunch of keys from the mantel, and came and put them all beside the bowl
and the pipe. Still the Avocat did not stir, or show that he recognised
her. She went to the door, turned, and looked back, her fingers again
at her lips, then slowly sidled out of the room. It was long before
the Avocat moved. His eyes had not wavered from the space between the
candles. At last, however, he glanced down. His eye caught the bowl,
then the pipe. He reached out a slow hand for the pipe, and was taking
it up, when his glance fell on the keys and the writing material. He put
the pipe down, looked up at the door through which the little old woman
had gone, gazed round the room, took up the keys, but soon put them
down again with a sigh, and settled back in his chair. Now his gaze
alternated between that long lane, sloping into shadow between the
candles, and the keys.
Medallion threw a leg over the fence and came in a few steps to the
door. He opened it quietly and entered. In the dark he felt his way
along the wall to the door of the Avocat’s room, opened it, and thrust
in his ungainly, whimsical face.
“Ha!” he laughed with quick-winking eyes. “Evening, Garon. Live the Code
Napoleon! Pipes for two.” A change came slowly over the Avocat. His eyes
drew away from that vista between the candles, and the strange distant
look faded out of them.
“Great is the Code Napoleon!” he said mechanically. Then, presently:
“Ah, my friend, Medallion!”
His first words were the answer to a formula which always passed between
them on meeting. As soon as Garon had said them, Medallion’s lanky body
followed his face, and in a moment he had the Avocat’s hand in his,
swallowing it, of purpose crushing it, so that Monsieur Garon waked
up smartly and gave his visitor a pensive smile. Medallion’s cheerful
nervous vitality seldom failed to inspire whom he chose to inspire with
Something of his own life and cheerfulness. In a few moments both the
Avocat and himself were smoking, and the contents of the steaming bowl
were divided between them. Medallion talked on many things. The little
old housekeeper came in, chirped a soft good-evening, flashed a small
thankful smile at Medallion, and, after renewing the bowl and lighting
two more tall candles, disappeared. Medallion began with the parish,
passed to the law, from the law to Napoleon, from Napoleon to France,
and from France to the world, drawing out from the Avocat something of
his old vivacity and fire. At last Medallion, seeing that the time was
ripe, turned his glass round musingly in his fingers before him and
said: