The Project Gutenberg EBook Pierre And His People, V5, by G. Parker
#6 in our series by Gilbert Parker
Contents:
Antoine And Angelique
The Cipher
A Tragedy Of Nobodies
A Sanctuary Of The Plains
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Title: Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Volume 5.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6178]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 27, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE, V5, PARKER ***
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PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE
TALES OF THE FAR NORTH
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 5.
ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE
THE CIPHER
A TRAGEDY OF NOBODIES
A SANCTUARY OF THE PLAINS
ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE
"The birds are going south, Antoine--see--and it is so early!"
"Yes, Angelique, the winter will be long."
There was a pause, and then: "Antoine, I heard a child cry in the night,
and I could not sleep."
"It was a devil-bird, my wife; it flies slowly, and the summer is dead."
"Antoine, there was a rushing of wings by my bed before the morn was
breaking."
"The wild-geese know their way in the night, Angelique; but they flew by
the house and not near thy bed."
"The two black squirrels have gone from the hickory tree."
"They have hidden away with the bears in the earth; for the frost comes,
and it is the time of sleep."
"A cold hand was knocking at my heart when I said my aves last night, my
Antoine."
"The heart of a woman feels many strange things: I cannot answer, my
wife."
"Let us go also southward, Antoine, before the great winds and the wild
frost come."
"I love thee, Angelique, but I cannot go."
"Is not love greater than all?"
"To keep a pledge is greater."
"Yet if evil come?"
"There is the mine."
"None travels hither; who should find it?"
He said to me, my wife: 'Antoine, will you stay and watch the mine until
I come with the birds northward, again?' and I said: 'I will stay, and
Angelique will stay; I will watch the mine.'"
"This is for his riches, but for our peril, Antoine."
"Who can say whither a woman's fancy goes? It is full of guessing. It
is clouds and darkness to-day, and sunshine--so much--to-morrow. I
cannot answer."
"I have a fear; if my husband loved me--"
"There is the mine," he interrupted firmly.
"When my heart aches so--"
"Angelique, there is the mine."
"Ah, my Antoine!"
And so these two stayed on the island of St. Jean, in Lake Superior,
through the purple haze of autumn, into the white brilliancy of winter,
guarding the Rose Tree Mine, which Falding the Englishman and his
companions had prospected and declared to be their Ophir.
But St. Jean was far from the ways of settlement, and there was little
food and only one hut, and many things must be done for the Rose Tree
Mine in the places where men sell their souls for money; and Antoine and
Angelique, French peasants from the parish of Ste. Irene in Quebec, were
left to guard the place of treasure, until, to the sound of the laughing
spring, there should come many men and much machinery, and the sinking of
shafts in the earth, and the making, of riches.
But when Antoine and Angelique were left alone in the waste, and God
began to draw the pale coverlet of frost slowly across land and water,
and to surround St. Jean with a stubborn moat of ice, the heart of the
woman felt some coming danger, and at last broke forth in words of timid
warning. When she once had spoken she said no more, but stayed and
builded the heaps of earth about the house, and filled every crevice
against the inhospitable Spirit of Winds, and drew her world closer and
closer within those two rooms where they should live through many months.
The winter was harsh, but the hearts of the two were strong. They loved;
and Love is the parent of endurance, the begetter of courage. And every
day, because it seemed his duty, Antoine inspected the Rose Tree Mine;
and every day also, because it seemed her duty, Angelique said many aves.
And one prayer was much with her--for spring to come early that the child
should not suffer: the child which the good God was to give to her and
Antoine.
In the first hours of each evening Antoine smoked, and Angelique sang the
old songs which their ancestors learned in Normandy. One night Antoine's
face was lighted with a fine fire as he talked of happy days in the
parish of Ste. Irene; and with that romantic fervour of his race which
the stern winters of Canada could not kill, he sang, 'A la Claire
Fontaine,' the well-beloved song-child of the 'voyageurs'' hearts.
And the wife smiled far away into the dancing flames--far away, because
the fire retreated, retreated to the little church where they two were
wed; and she did as most good women do--though exactly why, man the
insufficient cannot declare--she wept a little through her smiles. But
when the last verse came, both smiles and tears ceased. Antoine sang it
with a fond monotony:
"Would that each rose were growing
Upon the rose-tree gay,
And that the fatal rose-tree
Deep in the ocean lay.
'I ya longtemps que je t'aime
Jamais je ne t'oublierai."
Angelique's heart grew suddenly heavy. From the rose-tree of the song
her mind fled and shivered before the leafless rose-tree by the mine; and
her old dread came back.
Of course this was foolish of Angelique; of course the wise and great
throw contumely on all such superstition; and knowing women will smile
at each other meaningly, and with pity for a dull man-writer, and will
whisper, "Of course, the child." But many things, your majesties, are
hidden from your wisdom and your greatness, and are given to the simple
--to babes, and the mothers of babes.
It was upon this very night that Falding the Englishman sat with other
men in a London tavern, talking joyously. "There's been the luck of
Heaven," he said, "in the whole exploit. We'd been prospecting for
months. As a sort of try in a back-water we rowed over one night to an
island and pitched tents. Not a dozen yards from where we camped was a
rose-tree-think of it, Belgard, a rose-tree on a rag-tag island of Lake
Superior! 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' 'There's
luck here,' said I; and at it we went just beside the rose-tree. What's
the result? Look at that prospectus: a company with a capital of two
hundred thousand; the whole island in our hands in a week; and Antoine
squatting on it now like Bonaparte on Elbe."
"And what does Antoine get out of this?" said Belgard.
"Forty dollars a month and his keep."
"Why not write him off twenty shares to propitiate the gods--gifts unto
the needy, eh!--a thousand-fold--what?"
"Yes; it might be done, Belgard, if--"
But someone just then proposed the toast, "The Rose Tree Mine!" and the
souls of these men waxed proud and merry, for they had seen the
investor's palm filled with gold, the maker of conquest. While Antoine
was singing with his wife, they were holding revel within the sound of
Bow Bells. And far into the night, through silent Cheapside, a rolling
voice swelled through much laughter thus:
"Gai Ion la, gai le rosier,
Du joli mois de Mai."
The next day there were heavy heads in London; but the next day, also,
a man lay ill in the hut on the island of St. Jean.
Antoine had sung his last song. He had waked in the night with a start
of pain, and by the time the sun was halting at noon above the Rose Tree
Mine, he had begun a journey, the record of which no man has ever truly
told, neither its beginning nor its end; because that which is of the
spirit refuseth to be interpreted by the flesh. Some signs there be, but
they are brief and shadowy; the awe of It is hidden in the mind of him
that goeth out lonely unto God.
When the call goes forth, not wife nor child nor any other can hold the
wayfarer back, though he may loiter for an instant on the brink. The
poor medicaments which Angelique brings avail not; these soothing hands
and healing tones, they pass through clouds of the middle place between
heaven and earth to Antoine. It is only when the second midnight comes
that, with conscious, but pensive and far-off, eyes, he says to her:
"Angelique, my wife."
For reply her lips pressed his cheek, and her fingers hungered for his
neck. Then: "Is there pain now Antoine?"
"There is no pain, Angelique."
He closed his eyes slowly; her lips framed an ave. "The mine," he said,
"the mine--until the spring."
"Yes, Antoine, until the spring."
"Have you candles--many candles, Angelique?"
"There are many, my husband."
"The ground is as iron; one cannot dig, and the water under the ice is
cruel--is it not so, Angelique?"
"No axe could break the ground, and the water is cruel," she said.
"You will see my face until the winter is gone, my wife."
She bowed her head, but smoothed his hand meanwhile, and her throat was
quivering.
He partly slept--his body slept, though his mind was feeling its way to
wonderful things. But near the morning his eyes opened wide, and he
said: "Someone calls out of the dark, Angelique."
And she, with her hand on her heart, replied: "It is the cry of a dog,
Antoine."
"But there are footsteps at the door, my wife."
"Nay, Antoine; it is the snow beating upon the window."
"There is the sound of wings close by--dost thou not hear them,
Angelique?"
"Wings--wings," she falteringly said: "it is the hot blast through the
chimney; the night is cold, Antoine."
"The night is very cold," he said; and he trembled. . . "I hear, O my
wife, I hear the voice of a little child . . . the voice is like thine,
Angelique."
And she, not knowing what to reply, said softly:
"There is hope in the voice of a child;" and the mother stirred within
her; and in the moment he knew also that the Spirits would give her the
child in safety, that she should not be alone in the long winter.
The sounds of the harsh night had ceased--the snapping of the leafless
branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks: the
Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey
forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out
gently: "Angelique . . . Ah, mon Capitaine . . . Jesu" . . .
and then, no more.
Night after night Angelique lighted candles in the place where Antoine
smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul--the
masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its
bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with
this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with
no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth
to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the dead
man's head and feet, dragging herself thither in the cold; and in her
heart she said that the smile on Antoine's face was deeper than it had
been before.
In the early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost
that choked it, with her child for mourner, and herself for sexton and
priest, she buried Antoine with maimed rites: but hers were the prayers
of the poor, and of the pure in heart; and she did not fret because,
in the hour that her comrade was put away into the dark, the world was
laughing at the thought of coming summer.
Before another sunrise, the owners of the island of St. Jean claimed what
was theirs; and because that which had happened worked upon their hearts,
they called the child St. Jean, and from that time forth they made him to
enjoy the goodly fruits of the Rose Tree Mine.
THE CIPHER
Hilton was staying his horse by a spring at Guidon Hill when he first
saw her. She was gathering may-apples; her apron was full of them. He
noticed that she did not stir until he rode almost upon her. Then she
started, first without looking round, as does an animal, dropping her
head slightly to one side, though not exactly appearing to listen.
Suddenly she wheeled on him, and her big eyes captured him. The look
bewildered him. She was a creature of singular fascination. Her face
was expressive. Her eyes had wonderful light. She looked happy, yet
grave withal; it was the gravity of an uncommon earnestness. She gazed
through everything, and beyond. She was young--eighteen or so.
Hilton raised his hat, and courteously called a good-morning at her. She
did not reply by any word, but nodded quaintly, and blinked seriously and
yet blithely on him. He was preparing to dismount. As he did so he
paused, astonished that she did not speak at all. Her face did not have
a familiar language; its vocabulary was its own. He slid from his horse,
and, throwing his arm over its neck as it stooped to the spring, looked
at her more intently, but respectfully too. She did not yet stir, but
there came into her face a slight inflection of confusion or perplexity.
Again he raised his hat to her, and, smiling, wished her a good-morning.
Even as he did so a thought sprung in him. Understanding gave place to
wonder; he interpreted the unusual look in her face.
Instantly he made a sign to her. To that her face responded with a
wonderful speech--of relief and recognition. The corners of her apron
dropped from her fingers, and the yellow may-apples fell about her feet.
She did not notice this. She answered his sign with another, rapid,
graceful, and meaning. He left his horse and advanced to her, holding
out his hand simply--for he was a simple and honest man. Her response to
this was spontaneous. The warmth of her fingers invaded him. Her eyes
were full of questioning. He gave a hearty sign of admiration. She
flushed with pleasure, but made a naive, protesting gesture.
She was deaf and dumb.
Hilton had once a sister who was a mute. He knew that amazing primal
gesture-language of the silent race, whom God has sent like one-winged
birds into the world. He had watched in his sister just such looks of
absolute nature as flashed from this girl. They were comrades on the
instant; he reverential, gentle, protective; she sanguine, candid,
beautifully aboriginal in the freshness of her cipher-thoughts. She saw
the world naked, with a naked eye. She was utterly natural. She was the
maker of exquisite, vital gesture-speech.
She glided out from among the may-apples and the long, silken grass, to
charm his horse with her hand. As she started to do so, he hastened to
prevent her, but, utterly surprised, he saw the horse whinny to her
cheek, and arch his neck under her white palm--it was very white. Then
the animal's chin sought her shoulder and stayed placid. He had never
done so to anyone before save Hilton. Once, indeed, he had kicked a
stableman to death. He lifted his head and caught with playful shaking
lips at her ear. Hilton smiled; and so, as we said, their comradeship
began.
He was a new officer of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Guidon. She was
the daughter of a ranchman. She had been educated by Father Corraine,
the Jesuit missionary, Protestant though she was. He had learned the
sign-language while assistant-priest in a Parisian chapel for mutes. He
taught her this gesture-tongue, which she, taking, rendered divine; and,
with this, she learned to read and write.
Her name was Ida.
Ida was faultless. Hilton was not; but no man is. To her, however, he
was the best that man can be. He was unselfish and altogether honest,
and that is much for a man.
When Pierre came to know of their friendship he shook his head
doubtfully. One day he was sitting on the hot side of a pine near his
mountain hut, soaking in the sun. He saw them passing below him, along
the edge of the hill across the ravine. He said to someone behind him
in the shade, who was looking also," What will be the end of that, eh?"
And the someone replied: "Faith, what the Serpent in the Wilderness
couldn't cure."
"You think he'll play with her?"
"I think he'll do it without wishin' or willin', maybe. It'll be a case
of kiss and ride away."
There was silence. Soon Pierre pointed down again. She stood upon a
green mound with a cool hedge of rock behind her, her feet on the margin
of solid sunlight, her forehead bared. Her hair sprinkled round her as
she gently threw back her head. Her face was full on Hilton. She was
telling him something. Her gestures were rhythmical, and admirably
balanced. Because they were continuous or only regularly broken, it was
clear she was telling him a story. Hilton gravely, delightedly, nodded
response now and then, or raised his eyebrows in fascinated surprise.
Pierre, watching, was only aware of vague impressions--not any distinct
outline of the tale. At last he guessed it as a perfect pastoral-birds,
reaping, deer, winds, sundials, cattle, shepherds, hunting. To Hilton it
was a new revelation. She was telling him things she had thought, she
was recalling her life.
Towards the last, she said in gesture: "You can forget the winter, but
not the spring. You like to remember the spring. It is the beginning.
When the daisy first peeps, when the tall young deer first stands upon
its feet, when the first egg is seen in the oriole's nest, when the sap
first sweats from the tree, when you first look into the eye of your
friend--these you want to remember. . . ."
She paused upon this gesture--a light touch upon the forehead, then the
hands stretched out, palms upward, with coaxing fingers. She seemed lost
in it. Her eyes rippled, her lips pressed slightly, a delicate wine
crept through her cheek, and tenderness wimpled all. Her soft breast
rose modestly to the cool texture of her dress. Hilton felt his blood
bound joyfully; he had the wish of instant possession. But yet he could
not stir, she held him so; for a change immediately passed upon her. She
glided slowly from that almost statue-like repose into another gesture.
Her eyes drew up from his, and looked away to plumbless distance, all
glowing and childlike, and the new ciphers slowly said:
"But the spring dies away. We can only see a thing born once. And it
may be ours, yet not ours. I have sighted the perfect Sharon-flower, far
up on Guidon, yet it was not mine; it was too distant; I could not reach
it. I have seen the silver bullfinch floating along the canon. I called
to it, and it came singing; and it was mine, yet I could not hear its
song, and I let it go; it could not be happy so with me. . . .
I stand at the gate of a great city, and see all, and feel the great
shuttles of sounds, the roar and clack of wheels, the horses' hoofs
striking the ground, the hammer of bells; all: and yet it is not mine;
it is far, far away from me. It is one world, mine is another; and
sometimes it is lonely, and the best things are not for me. But I have
seen them, and it is pleasant to remember, and nothing can take from us
the hour when things were born, when we saw the spring--nothing--never!"
Her manner of speech, as this went on, became exquisite in fineness,
slower, and more dream-like, until, with downward protesting motions of
the hand, she said that "nothing--never!" Then a great sigh surged up
her throat, her lips parted slightly, showing the warm moist whiteness of
her teeth, her hands falling lightly, drew together and folded in front
of her. She stood still.
Pierre had watched this scene intently, his chin in his hands, his elbows
on his knees. Presently he drew himself up, ran a finger meditatively
along his lip, and said to himself: "It is perfect. She is carved from
the core of nature. But this thing has danger for her. . . .
'bien!' . . . ah!"
A change in the scene before him caused this last expression of surprise.
Hilton, rousing from the enchanting pantomime, took a step towards her;
but she raised her hand pleadingly, restrainingly, and he paused. With
his eyes he asked her mutely why. She did not answer, but, all at once
transformed into a thing of abundant sprightliness, ran down the
hillside, tossing up her arms gaily. Yet her face was not all
brilliance. Tears hung at her eyes. But Hilton did not see these.
He did not run, but walked quickly, following her; and his face had a
determined look. Immediately, a man rose up from behind a rock on the
same side of the ravine, and shook clenched fists after the departing
figures; then stood gesticulating angrily to himself, until, chancing
to look up, he sighted Pierre, and straightway dived into the underbrush.
Pierre rose to his feet, and said slowly: "Hilton, here may be trouble
for you also. It is a tangled world."
Towards evening Pierre sauntered to the house of Ida's father. Light of
footstep, he came upon the girl suddenly. They had always been friends
since the day when, at uncommon risk, he rescued her dog from a freshet
on the Wild Moose River. She was sitting utterly still, her hands folded
in her lap. He struck his foot smartly on the ground. She felt the
vibration, and looked up. He doffed his hat, and she held out her hand.
He smiled and took it, and, as it lay in his, looked at it for a moment
musingly. She drew it back slowly. He was then thinking that it was the
most intelligent hand he had ever seen. . . . He determined to play a
bold and surprising game. He had learned from her the alphabet of the
fingers--that is, how to spell words. He knew little gesture-language.
He, therefore, spelled slowly: "Hawley is angry, because you love
Hilton." The statement was so matter-of-fact, so sudden, that the girl
had no chance. She flushed and then paled. She shook her head firmly,
however, and her fingers slowly framed the reply: "You guess too much.
Foolish things come to the idle."
"I saw you this afternoon," he silently urged.
Her fingers trembled slightly. "There was nothing to see." She knew he
could not have read her gestures. "I was telling a story."
"You ran from him--why?" His questioning was cruel that he might in the
end be kind.
"The child runs from its shadow, the bird from its nest, the fish jumps
from the water--that is nothing." She had recovered somewhat.
But he: "The shadow follows the child, the bird comes back to its nest,
the fish cannot live beyond the water. But it is sad when the child, in
running, rushes into darkness, and loses its shadow; when the nest falls
from the tree; and the hawk catches the happy fish. . . . Hawley saw
you also."
Hawley, like Ida, was deaf and dumb. He lived over the mountains, but
came often. It had been understood that, one day, she should marry him.
It seemed fitting. She had said neither yes nor no. And now?
A quick tremor of trouble trailed over her face, then it became very
still. Her eyes were bent upon the ground steadily. Presently a bird
hopped near, its head coquetting at her. She ran her hand gently along
the grass towards it. The bird tripped on it. She lifted it to her
chin, at which it pecked tenderly. Pierre watched her keenly-admiring,
pitying. He wished to serve her. At last, with a kiss upon its head,
she gave it a light toss into the air, and it soared, lark-like, straight
up, and hanging over her head, sang the day into the evening. Her eyes
followed it. She could feel that it was singing. She smiled and lifted
a finger lightly towards it. Then she spelled to Pierre this: "It is
singing to me. We imperfect things love each other."
"And what about loving Hawley, then?" Pierre persisted. She did not
reply, but a strange look came upon her, and in the pause Hilton came
from the house and stood beside them. At this, Pierre lighted a
cigarette, and with a good-natured nod to Hilton, walked away.
Hilton stooped over her, pale and eager. "Ida," he gestured, "will you
answer me now? Will you be my wife?"
She drew herself together with a little shiver. "No," was her steady
reply. She ruled her face into stillness, so that it showed nothing of
what she felt. She came to her feet wearily, and drawing down a cool
flowering branch of chestnut, pressed it to her cheek. "You do not love
me?" he asked nervously.
"I am going to marry Luke Hawley," was her slow answer. She spelled the
words. She used no gesture to that. The fact looked terribly hard and
inflexible so. Hilton was not a vain man, and he believed he was not
loved. His heart crowded to his throat.
"Please go away, now," she begged with an anxious gesture. While the
hand was extended, he reached and brought it to his lips, then quickly
kissed her on the forehead, and walked away. She stood trembling, and as
the fingers of one hand hung at her side, they spelled mechanically these
words: "It would spoil his life. I am only a mute--a dummy!"
As she stood so, she felt the approach of someone. She did not turn
instantly, but with the aboriginal instinct, listened, as it were, with
her body; but presently faced about--to Hawley. He was red with anger.
He had seen Hilton kiss her. He caught her smartly by the arm, but, awed
by the great calmness of her face, dropped it, and fell into a fit of
sullenness. She spoke to him: he did not reply. She touched his arm: he
still was gloomy. All at once the full price of her sacrifice rushed
upon her; and overpowered her. She had no help at her critical hour, not
even from this man she had intended to bless. There came a swift
revulsion, all passions stormed in her at once. Despair was the
resultant of these forces. She swerved from him immediately, and ran
hard towards the high-banked river!
Hawley did not follow her at once: he did not guess her purpose. She had
almost reached the leaping-place, when Pierre shot from the trees, and
seized her. The impulse of this was so strong, that they slipped, and
quivered on the precipitous edge: but Pierre righted then, and presently
they were safe.
Pierre held her hard by both wrists for a moment. Then, drawing her
away, he loosed her, and spelled these words slowly: "I understand. But
you are wrong. Hawley is not the man. You must come with me. It is
foolish to die."
The riot of her feelings, her momentary despair, were gone. It was
even pleasant to be mastered by Pierre's firmness. She was passive.
Mechanically she went with him. Hawley approached. She looked at
Pierre. Then she turned on the other. "Yours is not the best love," she
signed to him; "it does not trust; it is selfish." And she moved on.
But, an hour later, Hilton caught her to his bosom, and kissed her full
on the lips. . . . And his right to do so continues to this day.
A TRAGEDY OF NOBODIES
At Fort Latrobe sentiment was not of the most refined kind. Local
customs were pronounced and crude in outline; language was often highly
coloured, and action was occasionally accentuated by a pistol shot. For
the first few months of its life the place was honoured by the presence
of neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. Yet women lived there.
When some men did bring wives and children, it was noticed that the girl
Blanche was seldom seen in the streets. And, however it was, there grew
among the men a faint respect for her. They did not talk of it to each
other, but it existed. It was known that Blanche resented even the most
casual notice from those men who had wives and homes. She gave the
impression that she had a remnant of conscience.
"Go home," she said to Harry Delong, who asked her to drink with him on
New Year's Day. "Go home, and thank God that you've got a home--and a
wife."
After Jacques, the long-time friend of Pretty Pierre, came to Fort
Latrobe, with his sulky eye and scrupulously neat attire, Blanche
appeared to withdraw still more from public gaze, though no one saw any
connection between these events. The girl also became fastidious in her
dress, and lost all her former dash and smart aggression of manner. She
shrank from the women of her class, for which, as might be expected, she
was duly reviled. But the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests, nor has it been written that a woman may not close her ears,
and bury herself in darkness, and travel alone in the desert with her
people--those ghosts of herself, whose name is legion, and whose slow
white fingers mock more than the world dare at its worst.
Suddenly, she was found behind the bar of Weir's Tavern at Cedar Point,
the resort most frequented by Jacques. Word went about among the men
that Blanche was taking a turn at religion, or, otherwise, reformation.
Soldier Joe was something sceptical on this point from the fact that she
had developed a very uncertain temper. This appeared especially
noticeable in her treatment of Jacques. She made him the target for her
sharpest sarcasm. Though a peculiar glow came to his eyes at times, he
was never roused from his exasperating coolness. When her shafts were
unusually direct and biting, and the temptation to resent was keen, he
merely shrugged his shoulders, almost gently, and said: "Eh, such women!"
Nevertheless, there were men at Fort Latrobe who prophesied trouble,
for they knew there was a deep strain of malice in the French half-breed
which could be the more deadly because of its rare use. He was not
easily moved, he viewed life from the heights of a philosophy which could
separate the petty from the prodigious. His reputation was not wholly
disquieting; he was of the goats, he had sometimes been found with the
sheep, he preferred to be numbered with the transgressors. Like Pierre,
his one passion was gambling. There were legends that once or twice in
his life he had had another passion, but that some Gorgon drew out his
heartstrings painfully, one by one, and left him inhabited by a pale
spirit now called Irony, now Indifference--under either name a fret and
an anger to women.
At last Blanche's attacks on Jacques called out anxious protests from
men like rollicking Soldier Joe, who said to her one night, "Blanche,
there's a devil in Jacques. Some day you'll startle him, and then he'll
shoot you as cool as he empties the pockets of Freddy Tarlton over
there."
And Blanche replied: "When he does that, what will you do, Joe?"
"Do? Do?" The man stroked his beard softly. "Why, give him ditto--
cold."
"Well, then, there's nothing to row about, is there?" And Soldier Joe
was not on the instant clever enough to answer her sophistry; but when
she left him and he had thought awhile, he said, convincingly:
"But where would you be then, Blanche? . . . That's the point."
One thing was known and certain: Blanche was earning her living by
honest, if not high-class, labour. Weir the tavern-keeper said she was
"worth hundreds" to him. But she grew pale, her eyes became peculiarly
brilliant, her voice took a lower key, and lost a kind of hoarseness it
had in the past. Men came in at times merely to have a joke at her
expense, having heard of her new life; but they failed to enjoy their own
attempts at humour. Women of her class came also, some with half-
uncertain jibes, some with a curious wistfulness, and a few with scornful
oaths; but the jibes and oaths were only for a time. It became known
that she had paid the coach fare of Miss Dido (as she was called) to the
hospital at Wapiti, and had raised a subscription for her maintenance
there, heading it herself with a liberal sum. Then the atmosphere round
her became less trying; yet her temper remained changeable, and had it
not been that she was good-looking and witty, her position might have
been insecure. As it was, she ruled in a neutral territory where she was
the only woman. One night, after an inclement remark to Jacques, in the
card-room, Blanche came back to the bar, and not noticing that, while she
was gone, Soldier Joe had entered and laid himself down on a bench in a
corner, she threw her head passionately forward on her arms as they
rested on the counter, and cried: "O my God! my God!"
Soldier Joe lay still as if sleeping, and when Blanche was called away
again he rose, stole out, went down to Freddy Tarlton's office, and
offered to bet Freddy two to one that Blanche wouldn't live a year.
Joe's experience of women was limited. He had in his mind the case
of a girl who had accidentally smothered her child; and so he said:
"Blanche has something on her mind that's killing her, Freddy. When
trouble fixes on her sort it kills swift and sure. They've nothing to
live for but life, and it isn't good enough, you see, for--for--"
Joe paused to find out where his philosophy was taking him.
Freddy Tarlton finished the sentence for him: "For an inner sorrow is a
consuming fire."
Fort Latrobe soon had an unexpected opportunity to study Soldier Joe's
theory. One night Jacques did not appear at Weir's Tavern as he had
engaged to do, and Soldier Joe and another went across the frozen river
to his log-hut to seek him. They found him by a handful of fire,
breathing heavily and nearly unconscious. One of the sudden and
frequently fatal colds of the mountains had fastened on him, and he had
begun a war for life. Joe started back at once for liquor and a doctor,
leaving his comrade to watch by the sick man.
He could not understand why Blanche should stagger and grow white when he
told her; nor why she insisted on taking the liquor herself. He did not
yet guess the truth.
The next day all Fort Latrobe knew that Blanche was nursing Jacques, on
what was thought to be his no-return journey. The doctor said it was a
dangerous case, and he held out little hope. Nursing might bring
him through, but the chance was very slight. Blanche only occasionally
left the sick man's bedside to be relieved by Soldier Joe and Freddy
Tarlton. It dawned on Joe at last, it had dawned on Freddy before, what
Blanche meant by the heart-breaking words uttered that night in Weir's
Tavern. Down through the crust of this woman's heart had gone something
both joyful and painful. Whatever it was, it made Blanche a saving
nurse, a good apothecary; for, one night the doctor pronounced Jacques
out of danger, and said that a few days would bring him round if he was
careful.
Now, for the first time, Jacques fully comprehended all Blanche had done
for him, though he had ceased to wonder at her changed attitude to him.
Through his suffering and his delirium had come the understanding of it.
When, after the crisis, the doctor turned away from the bed, Jacques
looked steadily into Blanche's eyes, and she flushed, and wiped the wet
from his brow with her handkerchief. He took the handkerchief from her
fingers gently before Soldier Joe came over to the bed.
The doctor had insisted that Blanche should go to Weir's Tavern and get
the night's rest, needed so much, and Joe now pressed her to keep her
promise. Jacques added an urging word, and after a time she started.
Joe had forgotten to tell her that a new road had been made on the ice
since she had crossed, and that the old road was dangerous. Wandering
with her thoughts she did not notice the spruce bushes set up for signal,
until she had stepped on a thin piece of ice. It bent beneath her. She
slipped: there was a sudden sinking, a sharp cry, then another, piercing
and hopeless--and it was the one word--"Jacques!" Then the night was
silent as before. But someone had heard the cry. Freddy Tarlton was
crossing the ice also, and that desolating Jacques! had reached his ears.
When he found her he saw that she had been taken and the other left.
But that other, asleep in his bed at the sacred moment when she parted,
suddenly waked, and said to Soldier Joe: "Did you speak, Joe? Did you
call me?"
But Joe, who had been playing cards with himself, replied, "I haven't
said a word."
And Jacques then added: "Perhaps I dream--perhaps."
On the advice of the doctor and Freddy Tarlton, the bad news was kept
from Jacques. When she did not come the next day, Joe told him that she
couldn't; that he ought to remember she had had no rest for weeks, and
had earned a long rest. And Jacques said that was so.
Weir began preparations for the funeral, but Freddy Tarlton took them out
of his hands--Freddy Tarlton, who visited at the homes of Fort Latrobe.
But he had the strength of his convictions such as they were. He began
by riding thirty miles and back to ask the young clergyman at Purple Hill
to come and bury Blanche. She'd reformed and been baptised, Freddy said
with a sad sort of humour. And the clergyman, when he knew all, said
that he would come. Freddy was hardly prepared for what occurred when he
got back. Men were waiting for him, anxious to know if the clergyman was
coming. They had raised a subscription to cover the cost of the funeral,
and among them were men such as Harry Delong.
"You fellows had better not mix yourselves up in this," said Freddy.
But Harry Delong replied quickly: "I am going to see the thing through."
And the others endorsed his words. When the clergyman came, and looked
at the face of this Magdalene, he was struck by its comeliness and quiet.
All else seemed to have been washed away. On her breast lay a knot of
white roses--white roses in this winter desert.
One man present, seeing the look of wonder in the clergyman's eyes, said
quietly: "My--my wife sent them. She brought the plant from Quebec. It
has just bloomed. She knows all about her."
That man was Harry Delong. The keeper of his home understood the other
homeless woman. When she knew of Blanche's death she said: "Poor girl,
poor girl!" and then she had gently added, "Poor Jacques!"
And Jacques, as he sat in a chair by the fire four days after the
tragedy, did not know that the clergyman was reading over a grave on
the hillside, words which are for the hearts of the quick as for the
untenanted dead.
To Jacques's inquiries after Blanche, Soldier Joe had made changing and
vague replies. At last he said that she was ill; then, that she was very
ill, and again, that she was better, almighty better--now. The third day
following the funeral, Jacques insisted that he would go and see her.
The doctor at length decided he should be taken to Weir's Tavern, where,
they declared, they would tell him all. And they took him, and placed
him by the fire in the card-room, a wasted figure, but fastidious in
manner and scrupulously neat in person as of old. Then he asked for
Blanche; but even now they had not the courage for it. The doctor
nervously went out, as if to seek her; and Freddy Tarlton said, "Jacques,
let us have a little game, just for quarters, you know. Eh?"
The other replied without eagerness: "Voila, one game, then!"
They drew him to the table, but he played listlessly. His eyes shifted
ever to the door. Luck was against him. Finally he pushed over a silver
piece, and said: "The last. My money is all gone. 'Bien!'" He lost
that too.
Just then the door opened, and a ranchman from Purple Hill entered. He
looked carelessly round, and then said loudly:
"Say, Joe, so you've buried Blanche, have you? Poor old girl!"
There was a heavy silence. No one replied. Jacques started to his feet,
gazed around searchingly, painfully, and presently gave a great gasp.
His hands made a chafing motion in the air, and then blood showed on his
lips and chin. He drew a handkerchief from his breast.
"Pardon! . . . Pardon!" he faintly cried in apology, and put it to
his mouth.
Then he fell backwards in the arms of Soldier Joe, who wiped a moisture
from the lifeless cheek as he laid the body on a bed.
In a corner of the stained handkerchief they found the word,
Blanche.
A SANCTUARY OF THE PLAINS
Father Corraine stood with his chin in his hand and one arm supporting
the other, thinking deeply. His eyes were fixed on the northern horizon,
along which the sun was casting oblique rays; for it was the beginning of
the winter season.
Where the prairie touched the sun it was responsive and radiant; but on
either side of this red and golden tapestry there was a tawny glow and
then a duskiness which, curving round to the north and east, became blue
and cold--an impalpable but perceptible barrier rising from the earth,
and shutting in Father Corraine like a prison wall. And this shadow
crept stealthily on and invaded the whole circle, until, where the
radiance had been, there was one continuous wall of gloom, rising are
upon are to invasion of the zenith, and pierced only by some intrusive
wandering stars.
And still the priest stood there looking, until the darkness closed down
on him with an almost tangible consistency. Then he appeared to remember
himself, and turned away with a gentle remonstrance of his head, and
entered the hut behind him. He lighted a lamp, looked at it doubtfully,
blew it out, set it aside, and lighted a candle. This he set in the one
window of the room which faced the north and west.
He went to a door opening into the only other room in the hut, and with
his hand on the latch looked thoughtfully and sorrowfully at something in
the corner of the room where he stood. He was evidently debating upon
some matter,--probably the removal of what was in the corner to the other
room. If so, he finally decided to abandon the intention. He sat down
in a chair, faced the candle, again dropped his chin upon his hand, and
kept his eyes musingly on the light. He was silent and motionless a long
time, then his lips moved, and he seemed to repeat something to himself
in whispers.
Presently he took a well-worn book from his pocket, and read aloud from
it softly what seemed to be an office of his Church. His voice grew
slightly louder as he continued, until, suddenly, there ran through the
words a deep sigh which did not come from himself. He raised his head
quickly, started to his feet, and turning round, looked at that something
in the corner. It took the form of a human figure, which raised itself
on an elbow and said: "Water--water--for the love of God!"
Father Corraine stood painfully staring at the figure for a moment, and
then the words broke from him "Not dead--not dead--wonderful!" Then he
stepped quickly to a table, took therefrom a pannikin of water, and
kneeling, held it to the lips of the gasping figure of a woman, throwing
his arm round the shoulder, and supporting the head on his breast. Again
he spoke "Alive--alive! Blessed be Heaven!"
The hands of the woman seized the hand of the priest, which held the
pannikin, and kissed it, saying faintly: "You are good to me. . . .
But I must sleep--I must sleep--I am so tired; and I've--very far--to go
--across the world."
This was said very slowly, then the head thick with brown curls dropped
again on the priest's breast, heavy with sleep. Father Corraine,
flushing slightly at first, became now slightly pale, and his brow was a
place of war between thankfulness and perplexity. But he said something
prayerfully, then closed his lips firmly, and gently laid the figure
down, where it was immediately clothed about with slumber. Then he rose,
and standing with his eyes bent upon the sleeper and his fingers clasping
each other tightly before him, said: "Poor girl! So, she is alive. And
now what will come of it?"
He shook his grey head in doubt, and immediately began to prepare some
simple food and refreshment for the sufferer when she should awake. In
the midst of doing so he paused and repeated the words, "And what will
come of it?" Then he added: "There was no sign of pulse nor heart-beat
when I found her. But life hides itself where man cannot reach it."
Having finished his task, he sat down, drew the book of holy offices
again from his bosom, and read it, whisperingly, for a time; then fell to
musing, and, after a considerable time, knelt down as if in prayer.
While he knelt, the girl, as if startled from her sleep by some inner
shock, opened her eyes wide and looked at him, first with bewilderment,
then with anxiety, then with wistful thankfulness. "Oh, I thought--
I thought when I awoke before that it was a woman. But it is the good
Father Corraine--Corraine, yes, that was the name."
The priest's clean-shaven face, long hair, and black cassock had, in her
first moments of consciousness, deceived her. Now a sharp pain brought
a moan to her lips; and this drew the priest's attention. He rose, and
brought her some food and drink. "My daughter," he said, "you must take
these." Something in her face touched his sensitive mind, and he said,
solemnly: "You are alone with me and God, this hour. Be at peace. Eat."
Her eyes swam with instant tears. "I know--I am alone--with God," she
said. Again he gently urged the food upon her, and she took a little;
but now and then she put her hand to her side as if in pain. And once,
as she did so, she said: "I've far to go and the pain is bad. Did they
take him away?"
Father Corraine shook his head. "I do not know of whom you speak," he
replied. "When I went to my door this morning I found you lying there.
I brought you in, and, finding no sign of life in you, sent Featherfoot,
my Indian, to Fort Cypress for a trooper to come; for I feared that there
had been ill done to you, somehow. This border-side is but a rough
country. It is not always safe for a woman to travel alone."
The girl shuddered. "Father," she said "Father Corraine, I believe you
are?" (Here the priest bowed his head.) "I wish to tell you all, so
that if ever any evil did come to me, if I should die without doin'
what's in my heart to do, you would know, and would tell him if you ever
saw him, how I remembered, and kept rememberin' him always, till my heart
got sick with waitin', and I came to find him far across the seas."
"Tell me your tale, my child," he patiently said. Her eyes were on the
candle in the window questioningly. "It is for the trooper--to guide
him," the other remarked. "'Tis past time that he should be here. When
you are able you can go with him to the Fort. You will be better cared
for there, and will be among women."
"The man--the man who was kind to me--I wish I knew of him," she said.
"I am waiting for your story, my child. Speak of your trouble, whether
it be of the mind and body, or of the soul."
"You shall judge if it be of the soul," she answered.
"I come from far away. I lived in old Donegal since the day that I was
born there, and I had a lover, as brave and true a lad as ever trod the
world. But sorrow came. One night at Farcalladen Rise there was a crack
of arms and a clatter of fleeing hoofs, and he that I loved came to me
and said a quick word of partin', and with a kiss--it's burnin' on my
lips yet--askin' pardon, father, for speech of this to you--and he was
gone, an outlaw, to Australia. For a time word came from him. Then I
was taken ill and couldn't answer his letters, and a cousin of my own,
who had tried to win my love, did a wicked thing. He wrote a letter to
him and told him I was dyin', and that there was no use of farther words
from him. And never again did word come to me from him. But I waited,
my heart sick with longin' and full of hate for the memory of the man
who, when struck with death, told me of the cruel deed he had done
between us two."
She paused, as she had to do several times during the recital, through
weariness or pain; but, after a moment, proceeded. "One day, one
beautiful day, when the flowers were like love to the eye, and the larks
singin' overhead, and my thoughts goin' with them as they swam until they
were lost in the sky, and every one of them a prayer for the lad livin'
yet, as I hoped, somewhere in God's universe--there rode a gentleman down
Farcalladen Rise. He stopped me as I walked, and said a kind good-day to
me; and I knew when I looked into his face that he had word for me--the
whisperin' of some angel, I suppose, and I said to him as though he had
asked me for it, 'My name is Mary Callen, sir.'
"At that he started, and the colour came quick to his face; and he said:
'I am Sir Duke Lawless. I come to look for Mary Callen's grave. Is
there a Mary Callen dead, and a Mary Callen livin'? and did both of them
love a man that went from Farcalladen Rise one wild night long ago?'
"'There's but one Mary Callen,' said I, 'but the heart of me is dead,
until I hear news that brings it to life again?'
"'And no man calls you wife?' he asked.
"'No man, Sir Duke Lawless,' answered I. 'And no man ever could, save
him that used to write me of you from the heart of Australia; only there
was no Sir to your name then.'
"'I've come to that since,' said he.
"'Oh, tell me,' I cried, with a quiverin' at my heart, 'tell me, is he
livin'?'
"And he replied: 'I left him in the Pipi Valley of the Rocky Mountains a
year ago.'
"'A year ago!' said I, sadly.
"'I'm ashamed that I've been so long in comin' here,' replied he; 'but,
of course, he didn't know that you were alive, and I had been parted from
a lady for years--a lover's quarrel--and I had to choose between courtin'
her again and marryin' her, or comin' to Farcalladen Rise at once. Well,
I went to the altar first.'
"'Oh, sir, you've come with the speed of the wind, for now that I've news
of him, it is only yesterday that he went away, not years agone. But
tell me, does he ever think of me?' I questioned.
"'He thinks of you,' he said, 'as one for whom the masses for the dead
are spoken; but while I knew him, first and last, the memory of you was
with him.'
"With that he got off his horse, and said: 'I'll walk with you to his
father's home.'
"'You'll not do that,' I replied; 'for it's level with the ground. God
punish them that did it! And they're lyin' in the glen by the stream
that he loved and galloped over many a time.'
"'They are dead--they are dead, then,' said he, with his bridle swung
loose on his arm and his hat off reverently.
"'Gone home to Heaven together,' said I, 'one day and one hour, and a
prayer on their lips for the lad; and I closin' their eyes at the last.
And before they went they made me sit by them and sing a song that's
common here with us; for manny and manny of the strength and pride of
Farcalladen Rise have sailed the wide seas north and south, and
otherwhere, and comin' back maybe and maybe not.'
"'Hark,' he said, very gravely, 'and I'll tell you what it is, for I've
heard him sing it, I know, in the worst days and the best days that ever
we had, when luck was wicked and big against us and we starvin' on the
wallaby track; or when we found the turn in the lane to brighter days.'
"And then with me lookin' at him full in the eyes, gentleman though he
was,--for comrade he had been with the man I loved,--he said to me there,
so finely and kindly, it ought to have brought the dead back from their
graves to hear, these words:
"'You'll travel far and wide, dear, but you'll come back again,
You'll come back to your father and your mother in the glen,
Although we should be lyin' 'neath the heather grasses then
You'll be comin' back, my darlin'!'
"'You'll see the icebergs sailin' along the wintry foam,
The white hair of the breakers, and the wild swans as they roam;
But you'll not forget the rowan beside your father's home--
You'll be comin' back, my darlin'.'"
Here the girl paused longer than usual, and the priest dropped his
forehead in his hand sadly.
"I've brought grief to your kind heart, father," she said.
"No, no," he replied, "not sorrow at all; but I was born on the Liffey
side, though it's forty years and more since I left it, and I'm an old
man now. That song I knew well, and the truth and the heart of it too.
. . . I am listening."
"Well, together we went to the grave of the father and mother, and the
place where the home had been, and for a long time he was silent, as
though they who slept beneath the sod were his, and not another's;
but at last he said:
"'And what will you do? I don't quite know where he is, though; when
last I heard from him and his comrades, they were in the Pipi Valley.'
"My heart was full of joy; for though I saw how touched he was because of
what he saw, it was all common to my sight, and I had grieved much, but
had had little delight; and I said:
"'There's only one thing to be done. He cannot come back here, and I
must go to him--that is,' said I, 'if you think he cares for me still,
--for my heart quakes at the thought that he might have changed.'
"'I know his heart,' said he, 'and you'll find him, I doubt not, the
same, though he buried you long ago in a lonely tomb,--the tomb of a
sweet remembrance, where the flowers are everlastin'.' Then after more
words he offered me money with which to go; but I said to him that the
love that couldn't carry itself across the sea by the strength of the
hands and the sweat of the brow was no love at all; and that the harder
was the road to him the gladder I'd be, so that it didn't keep me too
long, and brought me to him at last.
"He looked me up and down very earnestly for a minute, and then he said:
'What is there under the roof of heaven like the love of an honest woman!
It makes the world worth livin' in.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'when love has hope, and a place to lay its head.'
"'Take this,' said he--and he drew from his pocket his watch--'and carry
it to him with the regard of Duke Lawless, and this for yourself'--
fetching from his pocket a revolver and putting it into my hands; 'for
the prairies are but rough places after all, and it's better to be safe
than--worried. . . . Never fear though but the prairies will bring
back the finest of blooms to your cheek, if fair enough it is now, and
flush his eye with pride of you; and God be with you both, if a sinner
may say that, and breakin' no saint's prerogative.' And he mounted to
ride away, havin' shaken my hand like a brother; but he turned again
before he went, and said: 'Tell him and his comrades that I'll shoulder
my gun and join them before the world is a year older, if I can. For
that land is God's land, and its people are my people, and I care not
who knows it, whatever here I be.'
"I worked my way across the sea, and stayed awhile in the East earning
money to carry me over the land and into the Pipi Valley. I joined a
party of emigrants that were goin' westward, and travelled far with them.
But they quarrelled and separated, I goin' with these that I liked best.
One night though, I took my horse and left; for I knew there was evil in
the heart of a man who sought me continually, and the thing drove me mad.
I rode until my horse could stumble no farther, and then I took the
saddle for a pillow and slept on the bare ground. And in the morning I
got up and rode on, seein' no house nor human being for manny and manny a
mile. When everything seemed hopeless I came suddenly upon a camp. But
I saw that there was only one man there, and I should have turned back,
but that I was worn and ill, and, moreover, I had ridden almost upon him.
But he was kind. He shared his food with me, and asked me where I was
goin'. I told him, and also that I had quarrelled with those of my party
and had left them nothing more. He seemed to wonder that I was goin' to
Pipi Valley; and when I had finished my tale he said: 'Well, I must tell
you that I am not good company for you. I have a name that doesn't pass
at par up here. To speak plain truth, troopers are looking for me, and
--strange as it may be--for a crime which I didn't commit. That is the
foolishness of the law. But for this I'm making for the American border,
beyond which, treaty or no treaty, a man gets refuge.'
"He was silent after that, lookin' at me thoughtfully the while, but in a
way that told me I might trust him, evil though he called himself. At
length he said: 'I know a good priest, Father Corraine, who has a cabin
sixty miles or more from here, and I'll guide you to him, if so be you
can trust a half-breed and a gambler, and one men call an outlaw. If
not, I'm feared it'll go hard with you; for the Cypress Hills are not
easy travel, as I've known this many a year. And should you want a name
to call me, Pretty Pierre will do, though my godfathers and godmothers
did different for me before they went to Heaven.' And nothing said he
irreverently, father."
Here the priest looked up and answered: "Yes, yes, I know him well--an
evil man, and yet he has suffered too . . . Well, well, my daughter?"
"At that he took his pistol from his pocket and handed it. 'Take that,'
he said. 'It will make you safer with me, and I'll ride ahead of you,
and we shall reach there by sundown, I hope.'
"And I would not take his pistol, but, shamed a little, showed him the
one Sir Duke Lawless gave me. 'That's right,' he said, 'and, maybe, it's
better that I should carry mine, for, as I said, there are anxious
gentlemen lookin' for me, who wish to give me a quiet but dreary home.
And see,' he added, 'if they should come you will be safe, for they sit
in the judgment seat, and the statutes hang at their saddles, and I'll
say this for them, that a woman to them is as a saint of God out here
where women and saints are few.'
"I do not speak as he spoke, for his words had a turn of French; but I
knew that, whatever he was, I should travel peaceably with him. Yet I
saw that he would be runnin' the risk of his own safety for me, and I
told him that I could not have him do it; but he talked me lightly down,
and we started. We had gone but a little distance, when there galloped
over a ridge upon us, two men of the party I had left, and one, I saw,
was the man I hated; and I cried out and told Pretty Pierre. He wheeled
his horse, and held his pistol by him. They said that I should come with
them, and they told a dreadful lie--that I was a runaway wife; but Pierre
answered them they lied. At this, one rode forward suddenly, and
clutched me at my waist to drag me from my horse. At this, Pierre's
pistol was thrust in his face, and Pierre bade him cease, which he did;
but the other came down with a pistol showin', and Pierre, seein' they
were determined, fired; and the man that clutched at me fell from his
horse. Then the other drew off; and Pierre got down, and stooped, and
felt the man's heart, and said to the other: 'Take your friend away, for
he is dead; but drop that pistol of yours on the ground first.' And the
man did so; and Pierre, as he looked at the dead man, added: 'Why did he
make me kill him?'
"Then the two tied the body to the horse, and the man rode away with it.
We travelled on without speakin' for a long time, and then I heard him
say absently: 'I am sick of that. When once you have played shuttlecock
with human life, you have to play it to the end--that is the penalty.
But a woman is a woman, and she must be protected.' Then afterward he
turned and asked me if I had friends in Pipi Valley; and because what he
had done for me had worked upon me, I told him of the man I was goin' to
find. And he started in his saddle, and I could see by the way he
twisted the mouth of his horse that I had stirred him."
Here the priest interposed: "What is the name of the man in Pipi Valley
to whom you are going?"
And the girl replied: "Ah, father, have I not told you? It is Shon
McGann--of Farcalladen Rise."
At this, Father Corraine seemed suddenly troubled, and he looked
strangely and sadly at her. But the girl's eyes were fastened on the
candle in the window, as if she saw her story in it; and she continued:
"A colour spread upon him, and then left him pale; and he said: 'To Shon
McGann--you are going to him? Think of that--that!' For an instant I
thought a horrible smile played upon his face, and I grew frightened, and
said to him: 'You know him. You are not sorry that you are helping me?
You and Shon McGann are not enemies?'
"After a moment the smile that struck me with dread passed, and he said,
as he drew himself up with a shake: 'Shon McGann and I were good friends-
as good as ever shared a blanket or split a loaf, though he was free of
any evil, and I failed of any good.... Well, there came a change. We
parted. We could meet no more; but who could have guessed this thing?
Yet, hear me--I am no enemy of Shon McGann, as let my deeds to you
prove.' And he paused again, but added presently: 'It's better you should
have come now than two years ago.
"And I had a fear in my heart, and to this asked him why. 'Because then
he was a friend of mine,' he said, 'and ill always comes to those who are
such.' I was troubled at this, and asked him if Shon was in Pipi Valley
yet. 'I do not know,' said he, 'for I've travelled long and far from
there; still, while I do not wish to put doubt into your mind, I have a
thought he may be gone. . . . He had a gay heart,' he continued, 'and
we saw brave days together.'
"And though I questioned him, he told me little more, but became silent,
scannin' the plains as we rode; but once or twice he looked at me in a
strange fashion, and passed his hand across his forehead, and a grey look
came upon his face. I asked him if he was not well. 'Only a kind of
fightin' within,' he said; 'such things soon pass, and it is well they
do, or we should break to pieces.'
"And I said again that I wished not to bring him into danger. And he
replied that these matters were accordin' to Fate; that men like him must
go on when once the die is cast, for they cannot turn back. It seemed to
me a bitter creed, and I was sorry for him. Then for hours we kept an
almost steady silence, and comin' at last to the top of a rise of land he
pointed to a spot far off on the plains, and said that you, father, lived
there; and that he would go with me still a little way, and then leave
me. I urged him to go at once, but he would not, and we came down into
the plains. He had not ridden far when he said sharply:
"'The Riders of the Plains, those gentlemen who seek me, are there--see!
Ride on or stay, which you please. If you go you will reach the priest,
if you stay here where I shall leave you, you will see me taken perhaps,
and it may be fightin' or death; but you will be safe with them. On the
whole, it is best, perhaps, that you should ride away to the priest.
They might not believe all that you told them, ridin' with me as you
are.'
"But I think a sudden madness again came upon me. Rememberin' what
things were done by women for refugees in old Donegal, and that this man
had risked his life for me, I swung my horse round nose and nose with
his, and drew my revolver, and said that I should see whatever came to
him. He prayed me not to do so wild a thing; but when I refused, and
pushed on along with him, makin' at an angle for some wooded hills, I saw
that a smile played upon his face. We had almost reached the edge of the
wood when a bullet whistled by us. At that the smile passed and a
strange look came upon him, and he said to me:
"'This must end here. I think you guess I have no coward's blood; but I
am sick to the teeth of fightin'. I do not wish to shock you, but I
swear, unless you turn and ride away to the left towards the priest's
house, I shall save those fellows further trouble by killin' myself here;
and there,' said he, 'would be a pleasant place to die--at the feet of a
woman who trusted you.'
"I knew by the look in his eye he would keep his word. "'Oh, is this
so?' I said.
"'It is so,' he replied, 'and it shall be done quickly, for the courage
to death is on me.'
"'But if I go, you will still try to escape?' I said. And he answered
that he would. Then I spoke a God-bless-you, at which he smiled and
shook his head, and leanin' over, touched my hand, and spoke low: 'When
you see Shon McGann, tell him what I did, and say that we are even now.
Say also that you called Heaven to bless me.' Then we swung away from
each other, and the troopers followed after him, but let me go my way;
from which, I guessed, they saw I was a woman. And as I rode I heard
shots, and turned to see; but my horse stumbled on a hole and we fell
together, and when I waked, I saw that the poor beast's legs were broken.
So I ended its misery, and made my way as best I could by the stars to
your house; but I turned sick and fainted at the door, and knew no more
until this hour. . . . You thought me dead, father?"
The priest bowed his head, and said: "These are strange, sad things, my
child; and they shall seem stranger to you when you hear all."
"When I hear all! Ah, tell me, father, do you know Shon McGann? Can you
take me to him?"
"I know him, but I do not know where he is. He left the Pipi Valley
eighteen months ago, and I never saw him afterwards; still I doubt not he
is somewhere on the plains, and we shall find him--we shall find him,
please Heaven."
"Is he a good lad, father?"
"He is brave, and he was always kind. He came to me before he left the
valley--for he had trouble--and said to me: 'Father, I am going away, and
to what place is far from me to know, but wherever it is, I'll live a
life that's fit for men, and not like a loafer on God's world;' and he
gave me money for masses to be said--for the dead."
The girl put out her hand. "Hush! hush!" she said. "Let me think.
Masses for the dead.... What dead? Not for me; he thought me dead long,
long ago."
"No; not for you," was the slow reply.
She noticed his hesitation, and said: "Speak. I know that there is
sorrow on him. Someone--someone--he loved?"
"Someone he loved," was the reply.
"And she died?" The priest bowed his head.
"She was his wife--Shon's wife?" and Mary Callen could not hide from her
words the hurt she felt.
"I married her to him, but yet she was not his wife." There was a keen
distress in the girl's voice. "Father, tell me, tell me what you mean."
"Hush, and I will tell you all. He married her, thinking, and she
thinking, that she was a widowed woman. But her husband came back.
A terrible thing happened. The woman believing, at a painful time, that
he who came back was about to take Shon's life, fired at him, and wounded
him, and then killed herself."
Mary Callen raised herself upon her elbow, and looked at the priest in
piteous bewilderment. "It is dreadful," she said. . . . "Poor woman!
. . . And he had forgotten--forgotten me. I was dead to him, and am
dead to him now. There's nothing left but to draw the cold sheet of the
grave over me. Better for me if I had never come--if I had never come,
and instead were lyin' by his father and mother beneath the rowan."
The priest took her wrist firmly in his. "These are not brave nor
Christian words, from a brave and Christian girl. But I know that grief
makes one's words wild. Shon McGann shall be found. In the days when I
saw him most and best, he talked of you as an angel gone, and he had
never sought another woman had he known that you lived. The Mounted
Police, the Riders of the Plains, travel far and wide. But now, there
has come from the farther West a new detachment to Fort Cypress, and they
may be able to help us. But listen. There is something more. The man
Pretty Pierre, did he not speak puzzling words concerning himself and
Shon McGann? And did he not say to you at the last that they were even
now? Well, can you not guess?"
Mary Callen's bosom heaved painfully and her eyes stared so at the candle
in the window that they seemed to grow one with the flame. At last a new
look crept into them; a thought made the lids close quickly as though it
burned them. When they opened again they were full of tears that shone
in the shadow and dropped slowly on her cheeks and flowed on and on,
quivering too in her throat.
The priest said: "You understand, my child?"
And she answered: "I understand. Pierre, the outlaw, was her husband."
Father Corraine rose and sat beside the table, his book of offices open
before him. At length he said: "There is much that might be spoken; for
the Church has words for every hour of man's life, whatever it be; but
there comes to me now a word to say, neither from prayer nor psalm, but
from the songs of a country where good women are; where however poor the
fireside, the loves beside it are born of the love of God, though the
tongue be angry now and then, the foot stumble, and the hand quick at a
blow." Then, with a soft, ringing voice, he repeated:
"'New friends will clasp your hand, dear, new faces on you smile--
You'll bide with them and love them, but you'll long for us the while;
For the word across the water, and the farewell by the stile--
For the true heart's here, my darlin'.'"
Mary Callen's tears flowed afresh at first; but soon after the voice
ceased she closed her eyes and her sobs stopped, and Father Corraine sat
down and became lost in thought as he watched the candle. Then there
went a word among the spirits watching that he was not thinking of the
candle, or of them that the candle was to light on the way, nor even of
this girl near him, but of a summer forty years gone when he was a goodly
youth, with the red on his lip and the light in his eye, and before him,
leaning on a stile, was a lass with--
" . . . cheeks like the dawn of day."
And all the good world swam in circles, eddying ever inward until it
streamed intensely and joyously through her eyes "blue as the fairy
flax." And he had carried the remembrance of this away into the world
with him, but had never gone back again. He had travelled beyond the
seas to live among savages and wear out his life in self-denial; and now
he had come to the evening of his life, a benignant figure in a lonely
land. And as he sat here murmuring mechanically bits of an office, his
heart and mind were with a sacred and distant past. Yet the spirits
recorded both these things on their tablets, as though both were worthy
of their remembrance.
He did not know that he kept repeating two sentences over and over to
himself:
"'Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium et a verbo aspero.
Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te: ut custodiant te in omnibus viis
tuis.'"
These he said at first softly to himself, but unconsciously his voice
became louder, so that the girl heard, and she said:
"Father Corraine, what are those words? I do not understand them, but
they sound comforting."
And he, waking from his dream, changed the Latin into English, and said:
"'For he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunter, and from the
sharp sword.
For he hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways.'"
"The words are good," she said. He then told her he was going out, but
that he should be within call, saying, at the same time, that someone
would no doubt arrive from Fort Cypress soon: and he went from the house.
Then the girl rose slowly, crept lamely to a chair and sat down.
Outside, the priest paced up and down, stopping now and then, and
listening as if for horses' hoofs. At last he walked some distance away
from the house, deeply lost in thought, and he did not notice that a man
came slowly, heavily, to the door of the hut, and opening it, entered.
Mary Callen rose from her seat with a cry in which was timidity, pity,
and something of horror; for it was Pretty Pierre. She recoiled, but
seeing how he swayed with weakness, and that his clothes had blood upon
them, she helped him to a chair. He looked up at her with an enigmatical
smile, but he did not speak. "Oh," she whispered, "you are wounded!"
He nodded; but still he did not speak. Then his lips moved dryly. She
brought him water. He drank deeply, and a sigh of relief escaped him.
"You got here safely," he now said. "I am glad of that--though you, too,
are hurt."
She briefly told him how, and then he said: "Well, I suppose you know all
of me now?"
"I know what happened in Pipi Valley," she said, timidly and wearily.
"Father Corraine told me."
"Where is he?"
When she had answered him, he said: "And you are willing to speak with me
still?"
"You saved me," was her brief, convincing reply. "How did you escape?
Did you fight?"
"No," he said. "It is strange. I did not fight at all. As I said to
you, I was sick of blood. These men were only doing their duty. I might
have killed two or three of them, and have escaped, but to what good?
When they shot my horse, my good Sacrament,--and put a bullet into this
shoulder, I crawled away still, and led them a dance, and doubled on
them; and here I am."
"It is wonderful that they have not been here," she said.
"Yes, it is wonderful; but be very sure they will be with that candle in
the window. Why is it there?"
She told him. He lifted his brows in stoic irony, and said: "Well, we
shall have an army of them soon." He rose again to his feet. "I do not
wish to die, and I always said that I would never go to prison. Do you
understand?"
"Yes," she replied. She went immediately to the window, took the candle
from it, and put it behind an improvised shade. No sooner was this done
than Father Corraine entered the room, and seeing the outlaw, said "You
have come here, Pierre?" And his face showed wonder and anxiety.
"I have come, mon pere, for sanctuary."
"For sanctuary! But, my son, if I vex not Heaven by calling you so,
why"--he saw Pierre stagger slightly. "But you are wounded." He put his
arm round the other's shoulder, and supported him till he recovered
himself. Then he set to work to bandage anew the wound, from which
Pierre himself had not unskilfully extracted the bullet. While doing so,
the outlaw said to him:
"Father Corraine, I am hunted like a coyote for a crime I did not commit.
But if I am arrested they will no doubt charge me with other things--
ancient things. Well, I have said that I should never be sent to gaol,
and I never shall; but I do not wish to die at this moment, and I do not
wish to fight. What is there left?"
"How do you come here, Pierre?"
He lifted his eyes heavily to Mary Callen, and she told Father Corraine
what had been told her. When she had finished, Pierre added:
"I am no coward, as you will witness; but as I said, neither gaol nor
death do I wish. Well, if they should come here, and you said, Pierre is
not here, even though I was in the next room, they would believe you, and
they would not search. Well, I ask such sanctuary."
The priest recoiled and raised his hand in protest. Then, after a
moment, he said:
"How do you deserve this? Do you know what you ask?"
"Ah, oui, I know it is immense, and I deserve nothing: and in return I
can offer nothing, not even that I will repent. And I have done no good
in the world; but still perhaps I am worth the saving, as may be seen in
the end. As for you, well, you will do a little wrong so that the end
will be right. So?"
The priest's eyes looked out long and sadly at the man from under his
venerable brows, as though he would see through him and beyond him to
that end; and at last he spoke in a low, firm voice:
"Pierre, you have been a bad man; but sometimes you have been generous,
and of a few good acts I know--"
"No, not good," the other interrupted. "I ask this of your charity."
"There is the law, and my conscience."
"The law! the law!" and there was sharp satire in the half-breed's voice.
"What has it done in the West? Think, 'mon pere!' Do you not know a
hundred cases where the law has dealt foully? There was more justice
before we had law. Law--" And he named over swiftly, scornfully, a
score of names and incidents, to which Father Corraine listened intently.
"But," said Pierre, gently, at last, "but for your conscience, m'sieu',
that is greater than law. For you are a good man and a wise man; and you
know that I shall pay my debts of every kind some sure day. That should
satisfy your justice, but you are merciful for the moment, and you will
spare until the time be come, until the corn is ripe in the ear. Why
should I plead? It is foolish. Still, it is my whim, of which, perhaps,
I shall be sorry tomorrow . . . Hark!" he added, and then shrugged
his shoulders and smiled. There were sounds of hoof beats coming faintly
to them. Father Corraine threw open the door of the other room of the
hut, and said "Go in there--Pierre. We shall see . . . we shall see."
The outlaw looked at the priest, as if hesitating; but, after, nodded
meaningly to himself, and entered the room and shut the door. The priest
stood listening. When the hoof-beats stopped, he opened the door, and
went out. In the dark he could see that men were dismounting from their
horses. He stood still and waited. Presently a trooper stepped forward
and said warmly, yet brusquely, as became his office: "Father Corraine,
we meet again!"
The priest's face was overswept by many expressions, in which marvel and
trouble were uppermost, while joy was in less distinctness.
"Surely," he said, "it is Shon McGann."
"Shon McGann, and no other.--I that laughed at the law for many a year,
though never breaking it beyond repair,--took your advice, Father
Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the
saddle's pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, at your service."
They clasped hands, and the priest said: "You have come at my call from
Fort Cypress?"
"Yes. But not these others. They are after a man that's played ducks
and drakes with the statutes--Heaven be merciful to him, I say. For
there's naught I treasure against him; the will of God bein' in it all,
with some doin' of the Devil, too, maybe."
Pretty Pierre, standing with ear to the window of the dark room, heard
all this, and he pressed his upper lip hard with his forefinger, as if
something disturbed him.
Shon continued. "I'm glad I wasn't sent after him as all these here
know; for it's little I'd like to clap irons on his wrists, or whistle
him to come to me with a Winchester or a Navy. So I'm here on my
business, and they're here on theirs. Though we come together it's
because we met each other hereaway. They've a thought that, maybe,
Pretty Pierre has taken refuge with you. They'll little like to disturb
you, I know. But with dead in your house, and you givin' the word of
truth, which none other could fall from your lips, they'll go on their
way to look elsewhere."
The priest's face was pinched, and there was a wrench at his heart. He
turned to the others. A trooper stepped forward.
"Father Corraine," he said, "it is my duty to search your house; but not
a foot will I stretch across your threshold if you say no, and give the
word that the man is not with you."
"Corporal McGann," said the priest, "the woman whom I thought was dead
did not die, as you shall see. There is no need for inquiry. But she
will go with you to Fort Cypress. As for the other, you say that Father
Corraine's threshold is his own, and at his own command. His home is now
a sanctuary--for the afflicted." He went towards the door. As he did
so, Mary Callen, who had been listening inside the room with shaking
frame and bursting heart, dropped on her knees beside the table, her head
in her arms. The door opened. "See," said the priest, "a woman who is
injured and suffering."
"Ah," rejoined the trooper, "perhaps it is the woman who was riding with
the half-breed. We found her dead horse."
The priest nodded. Shon McGann looked at the crouching figure by the
table pityingly. As he looked he was stirred, he knew not why. And she,
though she did not look, knew that his gaze was on her; and all her will
was spent in holding her eyes from his face, and from crying out to him.
"And Pretty Pierre," said the trooper, "is not here with her?"
There was an unfathomable sadness in the priest's eyes, as, with a slight
motion of the hand towards the room, he said: "You see--he is not here."
The trooper and his men immediately mounted; but one of them, young Tim
Kearney, slid from his horse, and came and dropped on his knee in front
of the priest.
"It's many a day," he said, "since before God or man I bent a knee--more
shame to me for that, and for mad days gone; but I care not who knows it,
I want a word of blessin' from the man that's been out here like a saint
in the wilderness, with a heart like the Son o' God."
The priest looked at the man at first as if scarce comprehending this act
so familiar to him, then he slowly stretched out his hand, said some
words in benediction, and made the sacred gesture. But his face had a
strange and absent look, and he held the hand poised, even when the man
had risen and mounted his horse. One by one the troopers rode through
the faint belt of light that stretched from the door, and were lost in
the darkness, the thud of their horses' hoofs echoing behind them. But a
change had come over Corporal Shon McGann. He looked at Father Corraine
with concern and perplexity. He alone of those who were there had caught
the unreal note in the proceedings. His eyes were bent on the darkness
into which the men had gone, and his fingers toyed for an instant with
his whistle; but he said a hard word of himself under his breath, and
turned to meet Father Corraine's hand upon his arm.
"Shon McGann," the priest said, "I have words to say to you concerning
this poor girl,"
"You wish to have her taken to the Fort, I suppose? What was she doing
with Pretty Pierre?"
"I wish her taken to her home."
"Where is her home, father?" And his eyes were cast with trouble on the
girl, though he could assign no cause for that.
"Her home, Shon,"--the priest's voice was very gentle--"her home was
where they sing such words as these of a wanderer:
"'You'll hear the wild birds singin' beneath a brighter sky,'
The roof-tree of your home, dear, it will be grand and high;
But you'll hunger for the hearthstone where a child you used to lie,
You'll be comin' back, my darlin'."'
During these words Shon's face ran white, then red; and now he stepped
inside the door like one in a dream, and the girl's face was lifted to
his as though he had called her. "Mary--Mary Callen!" he cried. His
arms spread out, then dropped to his side, and he fell on his knees by
the table facing her, and looked at her with love and horror warring in
his face; for the remembrance that she had been with Pierre was like the
hand of the grave upon him. Moving not at all, she looked at him, a numb
despondency in her face. Suddenly Shon's look grew stern, and he was
about to rise; but Father Corraine put a hand on his shoulder, and said:
"Stay where you are, man--on your knees. There is your place just now.
Be not so quick to judge, and remember your own sins before you charge
others without knowledge. Listen now to me."
And he spoke Mary Callen's tale as he knew it, and as she had given it to
him, not forgetting to mention that she had been told the thing which had
occurred in Pipi Valley.
The heroic devotion of this woman, and Pretty Pierre's act of friendship
to her, together with the swift panorama of his past across the seas,
awoke the whole man in Shon, as the staunch life that he had lately led
rendered it possible. There was a grave, kind look upon his face when he
rose at the ending of the tale, and came to her, saying:
"Mary, it is I who need forgiveness. Will you come now to the home you
wanted?" and he stretched his arms to her. . . .
An hour after, as the three sat there, the door of the other room opened,
and Pretty Pierre came out silently, and was about to pass from the hut;
but the priest put a hand on his arm, and said:
"'Where do you go, Pierre?"
Pierre shrugged his shoulder slightly:
"I do not know. 'Mon Dieu!'--that I have put this upon you!--you that
never spoke but the truth."
"You have made my sin of no avail," the priest replied; and he motioned
towards Shon McGann, who was now risen to his feet, Mary clinging to his
arm. "Father Corraine," said Shon, "it is my duty to arrest this man;
but I cannot do it, would not do it, if he came and offered his arms for
the steel. I'll take the wrong of this now, sir, and such shame as there
is in that falsehood on my shoulders. And she here and I, and this man
too, I doubt not, will carry your sin--as you call it--to our graves,
without shame."
Father Corraine shook his head sadly, and made no reply, for his soul was
heavy. He motioned them all to sit down. And they sat there by the
light of a flickering candle, with the door bolted and a cassock hung
across the window, lest by any chance this uncommon thing should be seen.
But the priest remained in a shadowed corner, with a little book in his
hand, and he was long on his knees. And when morning came they had
neither slept nor changed the fashion of their watch, save for a moment
now and then, when Pierre suffered from the pain of his wound, and
silently passed up and down the little room.
The morning was half gone when Shon McGann and Mary Callen stood beside
their horses, ready to mount and go; for Mary had persisted that she
could travel--joy makes such marvellous healing. When the moment of
parting came, Pierre was not there. Mary whispered to her lover
concerning this. The priest went to the door of the but and called him.
He came out slowly.
"Pierre," said Shon, "there's a word to be said between us that had best
be spoken now, though it's not aisy. It's little you or I will care to
meet again in this world. There's been credit given and debts paid by
both of us since the hour when we first met; and it needs thinking to
tell which is the debtor now, for deeds are hard to reckon; but, before
God, I believe it's meself;" and he turned and looked fondly at Mary
Callen.
And Pierre replied: "Shon McGann, I make no reckoning close; but we will
square all accounts here, as you say, and for the last time; for never
again shall we meet, if it's within my will or doing. But I say I am the
debtor; and if I pay not here, there will come a time!" and he caught
his shoulder as it shrunk in pain of his wound. He tapped the wound
lightly, and said with irony: "This is my note of hand for my debt, Shon
McGann. Eh, bien!"
Then he tossed his fingers indolently towards Shon, and turning his eyes
slowly to Mary Callen, raised his hat in good-bye. She put out her hand
impulsively to him, but Pierre, shaking his head, looked away. Shon put
his hand gently on her arm. "No, no," he said in a whisper, "there can
be no touch of hands between us."
And Pierre, looking up, added: "C'est vrai. That is the truth. You go--
home. I got to hide. So--so." And he turned and went into the hut.
The others set their faces northward, and Father Corraine walked beside
Mary Callen's horse, talking quietly of their future life, and speaking,
as he would never speak again, of days in that green land of their birth.
At length, upon a dividing swell of the prairie, he paused to say
farewell.
Many times the two turned to see, and he was there, looking after them;
his forehead bared to the clear inspiring wind, his grey hair blown back,
his hands clasped. Before descending the trough of a great landwave,
they turned for the last time, and saw him standing motionless, the one
solitary being in all their wide horizon.
But outside the line of vision there sat a man in a prairie hut, whose
eyes travelled over the valley of blue sky stretching away beyond the
morning, whose face was pale and cold. For hours he sat unmoving, and
when, at last, someone gently touched him on the shoulder, he only shook
his head, and went on thinking. He was busy with the grim ledger of his
life.
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An inner sorrow is a consuming fire
Philosophy which could separate the petty from the prodigious
Remember your own sins before you charge others
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