At the beginning he was only a tombstone-cutter. His name was Francois
Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where
the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the
hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the
end of a long hot day's labour, he finished the half-carved tombstone,
and gave the price of it to the widow. Then, going to the Seigneur and
Cure, he asked them to buy the shop and tools for him, and let him pay
rent until he could take the place off their hands.
They did as he asked, and in two years he had bought and paid for the
place, and had a few dollars to the good. During one of the two years
a small-pox epidemic passed over Pontiac, and he was busy night and day.
It was during this time that some good Catholics came to him with an
heretical Protestant suggestion to carve a couplet or verse of poetry on
the tombstones they ordered. They themselves, in most cases, knew none,
and they asked Francois to supply them--as though he kept them in stock
like marble and sand-paper. He had no collection of suitable epitaphs,
and, besides, he did not know whether it was right to use them. Like all
his race in New France he was jealous of any inroads of Protestantism,
or what the Little Chemist called "Englishness." The good M. Fabre,
the Cure, saw no harm in it, but said he could not speak for any one's
grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words
upon the stone. But still Francois might bring all the epitaphs to him
before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or
reject, as the case might be.
At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets,
taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But
presently all that was changed, and the Cure one day had laid before him
three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and
when he passed them back to Francois his eyes were moist, for he was a
man truly after God's own heart, and full of humanity.
"Will you read them to me, Francois?" he said, as the worker in stone
was about to put the paper back in his pocket. "Give the names of the
dead at the same time."
So Francois read:
"Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years-"
"Yes, yes," interrupted the Cure, "the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung by
the English, and cut down just in time to save him--an innocent man. For
thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph."
Francois read it:
"Poor as a sparrow was I,
Yet I was saved like a king;
I heard the death-bells ring,
Yet I saw a light in the sky:
And now to my Father I wing."
The Cure nodded his head. "Go on; the next," he said.
"Annette John, aged twenty years--"
"So. The daughter of Chief John. When Queen Anne of England was on the
throne she sent Chief John's grandfather a gold cup and a hundred pounds.
The girl loved, but would not marry, that she might keep Chief John from
drinking. A saint, Francois! What have they said of her?"
Francois smoothed out the paper and read:
"A little while I saw the world go by
A little doorway that I called my own,
A loaf, a cup of water, and a bed had I,
A shrine of Jesus, where I knelt alone:
And now alone I bid the world good-bye."
The Cure turned his head away. "Go on," he said sadly. "Chief John has
lost his right hand. Go on."
"Henri Rouget"
"Aged thirty years," again interrupted the Cure. "Henri Rouget, idiot;
as young as the morning. For man grows old only by what he suffers, and
what he forgives, and what he sins. What have you to say for Henri
Rouget, my Francois?"
And Francois read:
"I was a fool; nothing had I to know
Of men, and naught to men had I to give.
God gave me nothing; now to God I go,
Now ask for pain, for bread,
Life for my brain: dead,
By God's love I shall then begin to live."
The priest rose to his feet and put a hand on the young man's shoulder.
"Do you know, Francois," he said, half sadly, "do you know, you have the
true thing in you. Come often to me, my son, and bring all these things
--all you write."
While the Cure troubled himself about his future, Francois began to work
upon a monument for the grave of a dozen soldiers of Pontiac who were
killed in the War of the Patriots. They had died for a mistaken cause,
and had been buried on the field of battle. Long ago something would
have been done to commemorate them but that three of them were
Protestants, and difficulties had been raised by the bigoted. But
Francois thought only of the young men in their common grave at St.
Eustache. He remembered when they went away one bright morning, full of
the joy of an erring patriotism, of the ardour of a weak but fascinating
cause: race against race, the conquered against the conquerors, the
usurped against the usurpers.
In the space before the parish church it stands--a broken shaft, with an
unwound wreath straying down its sides; a monument of fine proportions,
a white figure of beaten valour and erring ardour of youth and beautiful
bad ambition. One Saturday night it was not there, and when next morning
the people came to Mass it was there. All night had Francois and his men
worked, and the first rays of the morning sun fell on the tall shivered
shaft set firmly in its place. Francois was a happy man. All else that
he had done had been wholly after a crude, staring convention, after rule
and measure--an artisan's, a tombstone-cutter's labour. This was the
work of a man with the heart and mind of an artist. When the people came
to Mass they gazed and gazed, and now and then the weeping of a woman was
heard, for among them were those whose sons and brothers were made
memorable by this stone.
That day at the close of his sermon the Cure spoke of it, and said at the
last: "That white shaft, dear brethren, is for us a sign of remembrance
and a warning to our souls. In the name of race and for their love they
sinned. But yet they sinned; and this monument, the gift and work of one
young like them, ardent and desiring like them, is for ever in our eyes
the crucifixion of our wrong ambitions and our selfish aims.
"Nay, let us be wise and let us be good. They who rule us speak with
foreign tongue, but their hearts desire our peace and a mutual regard.
Pray that this be. And pray for the young and the daring and the
foolish. And pray also that he who has given us here a good gift may
find his thanks in our better-ordered lives, and that he may consecrate
his parts and talents to the redeeming actions of this world."
And so began the awakening of Francois Lagarre; and so began his ambition
and his peril.
For, as he passed from the church, the Seigneur touched him on the
shoulder and introduced him to his English grandniece, come on a visit
for the summer, the daughter of a London baronet. She had but just
arrived, and she was feeling that first homesickness which succeeds
transplanting. The face of the young worker in stone interested her; the
idea of it all was romantic; the possibilities of the young man's life
opened out before her. Why should not she give him his real start, win
his gratitude, help him to his fame, and then, when it was won, be
pointed out as a discoverer and a patron?
All these things flashed through her mind as they were introduced. The
young man did not read the look in her eyes, but there was one other
person in the crowd about the church steps who did read it, whose heart
beat furiously, whose foot tapped the ground angrily--a black-haired,
brown-eyed farmer's daughter, who instantly hated the yellow hair and
rosy and golden face of the blue-eyed London lady; who could, that
instant, have torn the silk gown from her graceful figure.
She was not disturbed without reason. And for the moment, even when she
heard impertinent and incredulous fellows pooh-poohing the monument, and
sharpening their rather dull wits upon its corners, she did not open her
lips, when otherwise she would have spoken her mind with a vengeance; for
Jeanne Marchand had a reputation for spirit and temper, and she spared no
one when her blood was up. She had a touch of the vixen--an impetuous,
loving, forceful mademoiselle, in marked contrast to the rather ascetic
Francois, whose ways were more refined than his origin might seem to
warrant.
"Sapre!" said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; "it's like a timber
of cheese stuck up. What's that to make a fuss about?"
"Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any fool
could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!"
"Fish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that Francois has a rattle in his
capote. He'd spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block."
But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man!
"What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can't write his name," she
said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn't remember that
Francois Lagarre made his brother's tombstone, and charged him nothing
for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it!
No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba'tiste the fighter, as brave
as Caroche is a coward! He doesn't remember the verse on Ba'tiste's
tombstone, does he?"
Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at
Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in the
crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he would
not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant
nothing against Francois, the young man recited the words slowly--an
epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid
bully.
Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot's Memory, he said:
"Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken,
Wrestling I've fallen, and I've rose up again;
Mostly I've stood--
I've had good bone and blood;
Others went down, though fighting might and main.
Now death steps in--
Death the price of sin.
The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain,
One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken."
"Good enough for Ba'tiste," said Duclosse the mealman.
The wave of feeling was now altogether with Francois, and presently he
walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd dispersed.
Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening she was
unhappy, for she saw Francois going towards the house of the Seigneur;
and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every three or four
days she saw the same thing.
Meanwhile Francois worked as he had never before worked in his life.
Night and day he was shut in his shop, and for two months he came with
no epitaphs for the Cure, and no new tombstones were set up in the
graveyard. The influence of the lady at the Seigneury was upon him, and
he himself believed it was for his salvation. She had told him of great
pieces of sculpture she had seen, had sent and got from Quebec City,
where he had never been, pictures of some of the world's masterpieces in
sculpture, and he had lost himself in the study of them and in the depths
of the girl's eyes. She meant no harm; the man interested her beyond
what was reasonable in one of his station in life. That was all, and all
there ever was.
Presently people began to gossip, and a story crept round that, in a new
shed which he had built behind his shop, Francois was chiselling out of
stone the nude figure of a woman. There were one or two who professed
they had seen it. The wildest gossip said that the figure was that of
the young lady at the Seigneury. Francois saw no more of Jeanne
Marchand; he thought of her sometimes, but that was all. A fever of work
was on him. Twice she came to the shed where he laboured, and knocked at
the door. The first time, he asked who was there. When she told him he
opened the door just a little way, smiled at her, caught her hand and
pressed it, and, when she would have entered, said: "No, no, another day,
Jeanne," and shut the door in her face.
She almost hated him because he had looked so happy. Still another day
she came knocking. She called to him, and this time he opened the door
and admitted her. That very hour she had heard again the story of the
nude stone woman in the shed, and her heart was full of jealousy, fury,
and suspicion. He was very quiet, he seemed tired. She did not notice
that. Her heart had throbbed wildly as she stepped inside the shed.
She looked round, all delirious eagerness for the nude figure.
There it was, covered up with a great canvas! Yes, there were the
outlines of the figure. How shapely it seemed, even inside the canvas!
She stepped forward without a word, and snatched at the covering. He
swiftly interposed and stopped her hand.
"I will see it," she said.
"Not to-day," he answered.
"I tell you I will." She wrenched her hand free and caught at the
canvas. A naked foot and ankle showed. He pinioned her wrists with one
hand and drew her towards the door, determination and anger in his face.
"You beast, you liar!" she said.
"You beast! beast! beast!"
Then, with a burst of angry laughter, she opened the door herself. "You
ain't fit to know," she said; "they told the truth about you. Now you
can take the canvas off her. Good-bye!" With that she was gone. The
following day was Sunday. Francois did not attend Mass, and such strange
scandalous reports had reached the Cure that he was both disturbed and
indignant. That afternoon, after vespers (which Francois did not
attend), the Cure made his way to the sculptor's workshop, followed
by a number of parishioners.
The crowd increased, and when the Cure knocked at the door it seemed as
if half the village was there. The chief witness against Francois had
been Jeanne Marchand. That very afternoon she had told the Cure, with
indignation and bitterness, that there was no doubt about it; all that
had been said was true.
Francois, with wonder and some confusion, admitted the Cure. When M.
Fabre demanded that he be taken to the new workshop, Francois led the
way. The crowd pushed after, and presently the place was full. A
hundred eyes were fastened upon the canvas-covered statue, which had been
the means of the young man's undoing.
Terrible things had been said--terrible things of Francois, and of the
girl at the Seigneury. They knew the girl for a Protestant and an
Englishwoman, and that in itself was a sort of sin. And now every ear
was alert to hear what the Cure should say, what denunciation should come
from his lips when the covering was removed. For that it should be
removed was the determination of every man present. Virtue was at its
supreme height in Pontiac that day. Lajeunesse the blacksmith, Muroc the
charcoal-man, and twenty others were as intent upon preserving a high
standard of morality, by force of arms, as if another Tarquin were
harbouring shame and crime in this cedar shed.
The whole thing came home to Francois with a choking, smothering force.
Art, now in its very birth in his heart and life, was to be garroted. He
had been unconscious of all the wicked things said about him: now he knew
all!
"Remove the canvas from the figure," said the Cure sternly. Stubbornness
and resentment filled Francois's breast. He did not stir.
"Do you oppose the command of the Church?" said the Cure, still more
severely. "Remove the canvas."
"It is my work--my own: my idea, my stone, and the labour of my hands,"
said Francois doggedly.
The Cure turned to Lajeunesse and made a motion towards the statue.
Lajeunesse, with a burning righteous joy, snatched off the canvas.
There was one instant of confusion in the faces of all-of absolute
silence.
Then the crowd gasped. The Cure's hat came off, and every other hat
followed. The Cure made the sign of the cross upon his breast and
forehead, and every other man, woman, and child present did the same.
Then all knelt, save Francois and the Cure himself.
What they saw was a statue of Christ, a beautiful benign figure;
barefooted, with a girdle about his waist: the very truth and semblance
of a man. The type was strong and yet delicate; vigorous and yet
refined; crude and yet noble; a leader of men--the God-man, not the
man-God.
After a moment's silence the Cure spoke. "Francois, my son," said he,
"we have erred. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have followed
each after his own way, but God hath laid on Him'--he looked towards the
statue--'the iniquity of us all.'"
Francois stood still a moment gazing at the Cure, doggedly, bitterly;
then he turned and looked scornfully at the crowd, now risen to their
feet again. Among them was a girl crying as if her heart would break.
It was Jeanne Marchand. He regarded her coldly.
"You were so ready to suspect," he said.
Then he turned once more to the Cure. "I meant it as my gift to the
Church, monsieur le Cure--to Pontiac, where I was born again. I waked
up here to what I might do in sculpture, and you--you all were so ready
to suspect! Take it, it is my last gift."
He went to the statue, touched the hands of it lovingly, and stooped and
kissed the feet. Then, without more words, he turned and left the shed
and the house.
Pouring out into the street the people watched him cross the bridge that
led into another parish--and into another world: for from that hour
Francois Lagarre was never seen in Pontiac.
The statue that he made stands upon a little hill above the valley where
the beaters of flax come in the autumn, through which the woodsmen pass
in winter and in spring. But Francois Lagarre, under another name, works
in another land.
While the Cure lived he heard of him and of his fame now and then, and to
the day of his death he always prayed for him. He was wont to say to the
little Avocat whenever Francois's name was mentioned:
"The spirit of a man will support him, but a wounded spirit who can
bear?"