from the _feu follet_ once it gets after you. One is, if you are in a
state of grace, all your sins confessed; which does not happen often
to the inhabitants of Pig Cove, for even at this day Père Galland
reproaches them for their neglect. And the other is, if you have a
needle with you. So little a thing as a needle is enough, incredible as
it may seem; for if you stick the needle upright--like that--in an old
stump, the _feu follet_ gets all tangled up in the eye of it. Try as it
will, it cannot free itself; and meanwhile you run away, and are safe
before it reappears. That is why all the inhabitants of the Cape used
to carry a needle stuck somewhere in their garments, to use on such an
occasion.
"Well, I must tell you about La Belle Mélanie. That is the name she
was known by in all parts, for she was beautiful as a lily flower, and
no lily was ever more pure and sweet than she. Mélanie lived with her
mother, who was aged almost to helplessness, and she cared for her with
all the tenderness imaginable. You may believe that she was much sought
after by the young fellows of the Cape--yes, and of Port l'Évêque as
well, which used to hold its head in the air in those days; but her
mother would hear nothing of her marrying.
"'You are only seventeen,' she said, 'ma Mélanie. I will hear nothing
of your marrying, no, not for five years at the least. By that time we
shall see.'
"And Mélanie tried to be obedient to all her mother's commands,
difficult as they often were for a young girl, who naturally desires a
little to amuse herself sometimes. For even had her mother forbidden her
to speak alone to the young men of the neighborhood, so fearful was she
lest her daughter should think of marriage.
"Eh bien, and so that was how things went for quite a while, and every
day Mélanie grew more beautiful. And one Saturday afternoon in November
she had been in to Port l'Évêque to make her confession, for she was a
pious girl. And when she went to meet her companions in order to return
to Pig Cove with them, they said they were not going back that night,
for there was to be a dance at the courthouse, and they were going to
spend the night with some parents by marriage of theirs. Poor Mélanie!
she would have been glad to stay, but alas, her poor mother, aged and
helpless, was expecting her, and she dared not disappoint the poor soul.
"So finally one of the young men said he would put her across the
harbor, if she did not mind traversing the woods alone; and she said,
no, why should she mind? It was still plain daylight. And so he put her
across. And she said good-night to him and set off along the solitary
road to the Cape, little imagining what an adventure was ahead of her.
"For scarcely had she gone so much as a mile when it had grown almost
night, so suddenly at that time of the year does the daylight extinguish
itself. The sky had grown dark, dark, and there was a look of storm in
it. La Belle Mélanie began to grow uneasy of mind. And she thought then
of the _feu follet_, and put her hand to her bodice to assure herself of
her needle. What then! Alas! it was gone, by some accident, whether or
not she had lost it on the road or in the church.
"With that Mélanie began to feel a terror creep over her; and this was
not lessened, as you may well believe, when, a few minutes later, she
perceived a floating thing like a luminous cloud in a marsh some long
distance from the road. The night was now all black; scarcely could she
perceive the road ahead, always winding there among the hills.
"She had the idea of running; but alas, her legs were like lead; she
could not make them march in front of her. She saw herself already dead.
The _feu follet_ was beginning to move, first very slowly and all
uncertain, but then drawing itself together into a ball of fire, and
leaping as if in play from one hummock of moss to another, just as a cat
will leave a poor little mouse half dead on the floor while it amuses
itself in another way.
"What the end would have been, who would have the courage to say, if
just at this moment, all ready to fall to the ground for terror, poor
Mélanie had not bethought herself of her rosary. It was in her pocket.
She grasped it. She crossed herself. She saluted the crucifix. And then
she commenced to say her prayers; and with that, wonderful to say, her
strength came back to her, and she began to run. She had never ran like
that before--swift as a horse, not feeling her legs under her, and
praying with high voice all the time.
"But for all that, the death fire followed, always faster and faster,
now creeping, now flying, now leaping from rock to rock, and always
drawing nearer, and nearer, with a strange sound of a hissing not of
this world. Mélanie began to feel her forces departing. She was almost
exhausted. She would not be able to run much more.
"And suddenly, just ahead, on a bare height, there was the tall
Calvaire, and a new hope came to her. If she could only reach it! She
summoned all her strength and struggled up. She climbs the ascent. Alas,
once more it seems she will fail! There is a fence, as you know, built
of white pales, about the cross. She had not the power to climb it. She
sinks to the ground. And it was at that last minute, all flat on the
ground in fear of death, that an idea came to her, as I will tell you.
"She raises herself to her feet by clinging to the white palings; she
faces the _feu follet_, already not more than ten yards away; she holds
out the rosary, making the holy sign in the air.
"'I did not make a full confession!' she cries. 'I omitted one thing. My
mother had forbidden me to have anything to do with a young man; and one
day when I was looking for Fanchette, our cow, who had wandered in the
woods, I met André Babinot, and he kissed me.'
"That was what saved her. The _feu follet_ rushed at her with a roar of
defeat, and in the same instant it burst apart into a thousand flames
and disappeared.
"As for Mélanie, she fell to the ground again, and lay there for a
while, quite unconscious. At last the rain came on, and she revived, and
set out for home, but not very vigorously. Ah, mon Dieu! if her poor
mother was glad to see her alive again! She embraced her most tenderly,
and with encouraging voice inquired what had happened, for Mélanie
was still as white as milk, and there was a strange smell of fire in
her garments, and still she held in her hands the little rosary; and
so finally Mélanie told her everything, not even concealing the last
confession about André, and with that her mother burst into tears, and
said:
"'Mélanie,' she said, 'I have been wrong, me. A young girl will be a
young girl despite all the contrary intentions of her mother. To show
how grateful to God I am that you are returned to me safe and sound, you
shall marry André as soon as you like.'
"So they were married the next year. And there is a lesson to this
story, too, which is that one should always tell the truth; because if
La Belle Mélanie had told all the truth at the beginning she would not
have had all that fright.
"And to show that the story is true, there were found the marks of
flames on the white fence of the Calvaire the next day; and as often as
they painted it over with whitewash, still the darkness of the scorched
wood would show through, as I often saw for myself; but now there is a
new fence there...."
LA ROSE WITNESSETH
_Of How Old Siméon's Son Came Home Again_
In the old cemetery above the church some men were at work setting up a
rather ornate monument at the head of two long-neglected and overgrown
graves. La Rose had noticed what was going on, as she came out from
early mass, and had informed herself about it; and since then, she said,
all through the day, her thoughts had been traveling back to things that
happened many years ago.
"Is it not strange," she observed musingly, sitting about dusk with
Michel on the doorsill of the kitchen, while Céleste finished the
putting-away of the supper dishes--"is it not strange how things go
in this world? So often they turn out sorrowfully, and you cannot
understand why that should be so. Think of that poor Léonie Gilet, who
was taken so suddenly in the chest last winter and died all in a month,
and she one of the purest and sweetest lilies that ever existed, and the
next year she was to be married to a good man that loved her better than
both his two eyes. Ah, mon Dieu, sometimes I think the sadness comes
much more often than the joy down here."
She looked out broodingly, and with eyes that did not see anything,
across the captain's garden and the hayfield below, dipping gently
to the margin of the harbor. Michel was silent. La Rose's fits of
melancholy interested him even when he only dimly sensed the burden of
them.
"And then," she resumed, after a moment, "sometimes the ending to things
is happy. For a while all looks dark, dark, and there is grief, perhaps,
and some tears; and then, just at the worst moment--tiens!--there is a
change, and the happiness comes again, very likely even greater than
it was at first. It is as if this good God up there, he could not bear
any longer to see it so heartbreaking, and so he must take things into
his own hands and set them right. And so, sometimes, when I find myself
feeling sad about things, I like to remember what arrived to that poor
Siméon Leblanc, whose son is just having them place a fine tombstone for
him up there in the cimetière; for if ever happiness came to any man,
it came to him, and that after a long time of griefs. Did you ever hear
about this old Siméon Leblanc?"
"Never, tante La Rose," answered the boy, gravely. "But if it has a
pleasant ending, I wish you would tell me about it, and I don't mind if
it makes me cry a little in the middle."
By this, Céleste, the stout domestic, had finished her kitchen work, and
throwing an apron over her stocky head and shoulders, she clumped out
into the yard.
"I am running over to Alec Samson's," she explained, "to get a mackerel
for breakfast, if he caught any to-day."
The gate clicked after her, and there was a silence. At last La Rose
began, a little absently and as if, for the moment at least, unaware of
her auditor....
"This Siméon Leblanc, he lived over there on the other side of the
harbor, just beyond the place where the road turns off to go to the
Cape. My poor stepmother when coming in to Port l'Évêque to sell some
eggs or berries--three gallons, say, of blueberries, or perhaps some of
those large strawberries from Pig Cove--she would often be running in
there for a little rest and a talk with his wife, Célie--who always was
glad to see any one, for that matter, the poor soul, for this Siméon was
not too gentle, and often he made her unhappy with his harsh talk.
"'Ah, mon amie,' she would say to my stepmother, at the same time
wetting her eyes with tears--'Ah, I have such a fear, me, that he will
do himself a harm, one day, with the temper he has. He frightens me to
death sometimes--especially about that Tommy.'
"Now you must understand that this Tommy was the son they had, and in
some ways he resembled to his father, and in some ways to his mother.
For it is certain he had a pride of the most incredible, which I daresay
made him a little hard to manage; and yet in his heart there was a
softness.
"'That Tommy,' said his mother, 'he wants to be loved. That is the way
to get him to do anything. There is no use in always punishing him and
treating him hardly.'
"But for all that, old Siméon must have his will, and so he does not
cease to be scolding the boy. He commands him now to do this thing, now
that--here, there. He forbids him to be from home at night. He tells him
he is a disgrace of a son to be so little laborious. Oh, it was a horror
the way that poor lamb of a Tommy was treated; and finally, one day,
when he was seventeen or eighteen, there was a great quarrel, and that
Siméon called him by some cruel name, and white as a corpse cries out
Tommy:
"'My father, that is not true. You shall not say it!'--and the other,
furious as an animal: 'I shall say what I choose!' And he says the same
thing again. And Tommy: 'After that, I will not endure to stay here
another day. I am tired of being treated so. You will not have another
chance.'
"And with that he places a kiss on the forehead of his poor mother, who
was letting drop some tears, and walks out of the house without so much
as turning his head again; and he marches over to Petit Ingrat, where
there was an American fisherman which had put in for some bait, and he
says to the captain: 'Will you give me a place?' and the captain says,
'We are just needing another man. Yes, we will give you a place.' So
this Tommy, he got aboard, and a little later they put out and went off
to the Banks for the fish.
"Well, it was not very long before that Siméon got over his bad wicked
rage; and then he was sorry enough for what he had done, especially
because there was no longer any son in the house, and that poor Célie
must always be grieving herself after him. And you may believe that
Siméon got little pity from the neighbors.
"'It is good enough for him,' they would say--'a man like that, who is
not decent to his own son.'
"But they were sorry for Célie, most of all when she began to grow
thinner and thinner and had a strange look in her eyes that was not
entirely of this world. The old man said, 'She will be all right again
when that schooner comes back,' and he was always going over to Petit
Ingrat to find out if it had returned yet; but you see, of course there
would not be any need of bait when the season was finished, and so
the schooner did not put in at all; and the autumn came, and went by,
and then followed the winter, and still no news, but only waiting and
waiting, and a little before Easter that poor Célie went away among the
angels. I think her heart was quite broken in two, and it did not seem
to her that she needed to stay any longer in this hustling world. And so
they buried her in the old cimetière--I saw her grave to-day, next to
Siméon's, and this fine new monument is to be for the two of them; but
for all these years there has been just a wooden cross there, like the
other graves.
"But still no word came of Tommy, and the old Siméon was all alone in
the house. Oh, I can remember him well, well, although I was only a
young tiny girl then and had not had any sorrow myself. We would see him
walking along the Petit Ingrat road, all bent over and trailing one leg
a little.
"'Hst!' one of my companions would whisper, 'that is old Siméon, who
drove his son from home; and his poor wife is dead with grief. He is
going across there to see if a schooner will have come in yet with any
news.'
"And that was true. He took this habitude of making a promenade
almost every day to Petit Ingrat during that season of the year when
the Americans are going down to the fish--là-bas--and if there was a
schooner in the harbor, he finds the captain or one of the crew, and he
says, 'Is it, m'sieu, for example, that you have seen a boy anywhere
named Tommy Leblanc? It is my son--you understand?--a very pretty
young boy, with black hair and fine white teeth and a little curly
mustache--so--just beginning to sprout.' And he would go on to describe
that Tommy, but of course, for one thing they could not understand his
French very well, for the Americans, as you know, do not speak that
language among themselves; and anyway, you may depend that none of them
had ever heard of Tommy Leblanc; and sometimes they would have a little
mockery of the old man; and sometimes, on the contrary, they would feel
pity, and would say, well, God's name, it was a damage, but they could
not tell him anything.
"And then the old man would say, 'Well, if ever you should see him
anywhere, will you please tell him that his father is wanting him
to come home, if he will be so kind as to do it; because it is very
lonesome without him, and the mother is dead.'
"Then after he had said that, he would go back again along the road
to the Cape, not speaking to anybody unless they spoke to him first,
and trailing one leg after him a little, like one of these horses you
see sometimes with a weight tied to a hind foot so that it cannot run
away--or at least not very far. That is how I remember old Siméon from
the time when I was a little girl--walking there along the road to or
from Petit Ingrat. I used to hear people say: 'Ah, my God, how old he
is grown all in these few years! He is not the same man--so quiet and
so timid'--and others: 'But can one say how it is possible for him to
live there all alone like that?'--and someone replied: 'You could not
persuade him to live anywhere else, for that is where he has all his
memories, both the good and the bad, and what else is left for him
now--that, and the crazy idea he has that his Tommy will one day come
home again?'
"You see, as the years passed, everybody took the belief that Tommy must
be dead, at sea or somewhere, seeing that not one word was heard of him;
but of course they guarded themselves well from saying anything like
that to poor old Siméon.
"Well, it was about the time when your poor father, Amédée, was a boy
of your age, or a little older, that all this sorrow came to an end;
and this is the pleasant part of the story. I was living at Madame
Paon's then, down near the post-office wharf, and we had the habitude
of looking out of the window every day when the packet-boat came in
(which was three times a week) to see if anybody would be landing at
Port l'Évêque. Well, and one afternoon whom should we see but a fine
m'sieu with black beard, carrying a cane, dressed like an American; and
next, a lovely lady in clothes of the most fashionable and magnificent;
and then, six beautiful young children, all just as handsome as dolls,
and holding tightly one another by the hand, with an affection the most
charming in the world. Ah, ma foi, if I shall ever forget that sight!
"And Madame Paon to me: 'Rose,--La Rose,--in God's name, who can they
be! Perhaps some millionaires from Boston--for look, the trunks that
they have!'
"And that was the truth, for the trunks and bags were piled all over the
wharf; and opening the window a little, we hear m'sieu giving directions
to have them taken to the Couronne d'Or--'and who,' he asks in French,
'is the proprietor there now?'--and they say: 'Gaston Lebal'--and he
says: 'What! Gaston Lebal! Is it possible!'
"'He knows Port l'Évêque, it seems,' says Madame Paon, all excitement;
and just then the first two trunks go by the windows, and she tells me,
'It is an English name, or an American.' And then, spelling out the
letters, for she reads with a marvel of ease, she says, 'W-H-I-T-E is
what the trunks say on them; but I can make nothing out of that. I am
going outside, me,' she says, 'and perhaps I shall learn something.'
"She descends into the garden, and seems to be working a little at
the flowers, and a minute later, here comes the fine m'sieu, and he
looks at her for an instant--right in the face, so, and as if asking
a question--and then: 'Ah, mon Dieu, it is Suzon Boudrot!' he cries,
using the name she was born with. 'Can you not remember me?--That Tommy
Leblanc who ran away twenty years ago?'
"Madame Paon gives a scream of joy, and they embrace; and then he
presents this Mees W'ite, qui est une belle Américaine, and then he
says: 'What is there of news about my dear mother and my father?'--and
she: 'Did you not know your poor mother was dead the year after you
went!'--and he: 'Ma mère--she is dead?'--and the tears jump out of his
eyes, and his voice trembles as if it had a crack in it. 'Well, she is
with the blessed angels, then,' says he.
"'But your poor old father,' goes on Madame Paon, 'he is still waiting
for you every day. He has waited all these twenty years for you to come
back.'
"'He is still in the old place?' asks he.
"'Yes, he would not leave it.'
"'We shall go over there at once,' he says, opening out his two
arms--so!--'before ever we set foot in another house. It is my duty as a
son.'
"So while André Gilet--the father of that dear Léonie who was taken in
the chest--while he is getting the boat ready to cross the harbor, Tommy
tells her how he has been up there in Boston all these years--at a place
called Shee-cahgo, a big city--and has been making money; and how he
changed his name to W'ite, which means the same as Leblanc and is more
in the mode; and how he married this lovely Américaine, whose name was
Finnegan, and had all these sweet little children; but always, he said,
he had desired to make a little visit at home, only it was so far to
come; and he was afraid that his father would still be angry at him.
"'Ah,' says Madame Paon, with emotion, 'you will not know your father.
He is so different: just as mild as a sheep. Everyone has come to love
him.' ...
"Now for the rest of the story, all I know is what that André told us,
for he put all this family across to the other side in his boat. So when
they reached the shore, M'sieu Tommy, he says: 'You will all wait here
until I open the door and beckon: and then you, Maggie, will come up;
and then, a little later, we will have the children in, all together.'
"And with that he leaves them, and goes up to the old house, and
knocks, and opens the door, and walks in--and who can say the joy and
the comfort of the meeting that happened then? And quite a long while
passed, André said; and that lovely lady sat there on the side of the
boat, all as white as milk, and never saying a word; and those six
lambs, whispering softly among themselves--and one of them said, just a
little above its breath:
"'It will be nice to have a grandpa all for ourselves, don't you
think?'--and was not that a dear sweet little thing for it to say?...
"And finally the door opens again, and see! and his hand makes a sign;
and that lady, swift as one of these sea-gulls, leaps ashore. And up the
hill; and through the gate; and into the house! And the door shuts again.
"And another wait, while those six look at each other, and say their
little things. And at last they are called too, and away they go, all
together, just like one of these flocks of curlew that fly over the
Cape, making those soft little sounds; and then into the house; and
André said he had to wipe two tears out of his eyes to see a thing like
that.
"Well, this was the end of old Siméon's grief, as you may well believe.
Those W'ites stay at the Couronne d'Or for as much as nine or ten days,
and every morning they will be going across to see their dear dear
grandfather; and finally when they went away, they had hired that widow
Bergère to keep his house comfortable for him; and M'sieu Tommy left
money for all needs.
"And every Christmas after that, so long as old Siméon existed, there
would come boxes of presents from that place in Boston. Oh, I assure
you, he did not lack that good care. And always he must be talking about
that Tommy of his, who was so rich, and was some great personage in the
city--what they called an alderman--and yet he had not forgotten his
poor old father, who had waited all those years to see him.
"So this story shows that sometimes things turn out just as well in
this life down here as they do in those silly stories they tell you
about princesses and all those things that are not so; and that is a
comfort sometimes, when you see so much that is sad and heartbreaking in
this world...."
[Illustration: A CALVAIRE]
AT A BRETON CALVAIRE
AT A BRETON CALVAIRE
Upon that cape that thrusts so bare
Its crest above the wasting sea--
Grey rocks amidst eternity--
There stands an old and frail calvaire,
Upraising like an unvoiced cry
Its great black arms against the sky.
For storm-beat years that cross has stood:
It slants before the winter gale;
And now the Christ is marred and pale;
The rain has washed away the blood
That ran once on its brow and side,
And in its feet the seams are wide.
But when the boats put out to sea
At earliest dawn before the day,
The fishermen, they turn and pray,
Their eyes upon the calvary:
"O Jesu, Son of Mary fair,
Our little boats are in thy care!"
And when the storm beats hard and shrill
Then toil-bent women, worn with fear,
Pray for the lives they hold so dear,
And seek the cross upon the hill:
"O Jesu, Son of Mary mild,
Be with them where the waves are wild!"
And when the dead they carry by
Across that melancholy land,--
Dead that were cast up on the strand
Beneath a black and whirling sky,--
They pause before the old calvaire;
They cross themselves and say a prayer.
* * * * *
O Jesu, Son of Mary fair!
O Faith, that seeks thy cross of pain!
Their voices break above the rain,
The wind blows hard, the heart lies bare:
Clutching through dark, their hands find Thee,
O Christ, that died on Calvary!
THE PRIVILEGE
THE PRIVILEGE