[A]Included with permission of and by arrangements with Houghton Mifflin Company authorized publishers.
[A]Included with permission of and by arrangements with Houghton Mifflin Company authorized publishers.
One of the privileges Michel esteemed most highly was that of accompanying La Rose occasionally when she went blueberrying over on the barrens—dans les bois, as the phrase still goes in Port l'Évêque, though it is all of sixty years since there were any woods there. The best barrens for blueberrying lay across the harbor. They reached back to the bay four or five miles to southward. Along the edges of several rocky coves, narrow and steep as a sluice, clung a few weatherbeaten fishermen's houses; but there was no other sign of human habitation.
It is what they call a bad country over there. Alder and scrub balsam grow sparsely over the low rocky hills, where little flocks of sheep nibble all day at the thin herbage; and from the marshes that lie, green and mossy, at the foot of every slope, a solitary loon may occasionally be seen rising into the air with a great spread of slow wings. A single thread of a road makes its way somehow across the region, twisting in and out among the small hills, now climbing suddenly to a bare elevation, from which the whole sweep of thesea bursts upon the view, now shelving off along the side of a knoll of rocks, quickly dipping into some close hollow, where the world seems to reach no farther than to the strange sky-line, wheeling sharply against infinite space.
Two miles back from the inner shore, the road forks at the base of a little hill more conspicuously bare than the rest, and close to the naked summit of it, overlooking all the Cape, stands a Calvary. Nobody knows how long it has stood there, or why it was first erected; though tradition has it that long, long ago, a certain man by the name of Toussaint was there set upon by wild beasts and torn to pieces. However that may be, the tall wooden cross, painted black, and bearing on its center, beneath a rude penthouse, a small iron crucifix, has been there longer than any present memory records—an encouragement, as they say, for those who have to cross the bad country after dark.
"That makes courage for you," they say. "It is good to know it is there on the windy nights."
By daylight, however, and especially in the sunshine, the barrens are quite without other terrors than those of loneliness; and upon Michel this remoteness and silence always exercised a kind of spell. He was glad that La Rose was with him, partly because he would have been a little afraid to be there quite by himself, but chiefly because of the imaginative sympathy that at this time existed so strongly between them. La Rose could tell him all about the strange things that had been seen here of winter nights; she herself once, tending a poor old sick woman at Gros Nez, out at the end of the Cape, had heard the hoofs of the white horse that gallops across the barrensclaquin-claquantin the darkness.
"It was just there outside the house, pawing the ground. Almost paralyzed for terror, I ran to the window and looked out. It was as tall as the church door,—that animal,—all white, and there was no head to it.
"'Oh, mère Babinot,' I whispered, scarcely able to make the sound of the words. 'It is as tall as the church door and all white.'
"She sits up in bed and stares at me like a corpse. 'La Rose,' she says,—just like that, shrill as a whistle of wind,—'La Rose, do you see a head to it?'
"'No, not any!'
"'Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu! Then it's sure! It is the very one, the horse without head!'
"And the next day she took only a little spoonful of tea, and in two weeks she was dead, poor mère Babinot; and that's as true as that I made my communion last Easter. Oh, it's often seen hereabouts, that horse. It's a sign that something will happen, and never has it failed yet."
They made their way, La Rose and Michel, slowly over the low hills, picking the blueberries that grew thickly in clumps of green close to the ground. La Rose always wore a faded yellow-black dress, the skirt caught up, to save it, over a red petticoat; and on her small brown head she carried the old Acadianmouchoir, black, brought up to a peak in front, and knotted at the side.
She picked rapidly, with her alert, spry movements, her head always cocked a little to one side, almost humorously, as she peered about among the bushes for the best spots. And wherever he was, Michel heard her chattering softly to herself, in an inconsequential undertone, now humming a scrap of some pious song, now commenting on the quality of the berry crop—never had she seen so few and so small as these last years. Surely there must be something to account for it. Perhaps the birds had learned the habitude of devouring them—now addressing some strayed sheep that had ventured with timid bleats within range: "Te voilà, petit méchant! Little rogue! What are you looking about for? Did the others go off and leave you? Eh bien, that's how it happens, mon petit. They'll leave you. The world's like that. Eh, là, là!"
He liked to go to the other side of the hill, out of sight of her, where he could imagine that he was lostdans les bois. Then he would listen for her continual soft garrulity; and if he could not hear it he would wait quietly for a minute in the silence, feeling a strange exhilaration, which was almost pain, in the presence of the great sombre spaces, the immense emptiness of the overhanging sky, until he could endure it no longer.
"La Rose!" he would call. "Êtes-vous toujours là?"
"Mais oui, mon enfant. What do you want?"
"Nothing. It is only that I was thinking."
"The strange child that you are!" she would exclaim. "You are not like the others."
"La Rose," he would ask, "was it by here that La Belle Mélanie passed on the night she saw the death fire?"
"Yes, by this very spot. She was on her way to Pig Cove, over beyond the Calvary to the east. It is a desolate little rat-hole, Pig Cove, nowadays; but then it was different—as many as two dozen houses. My stepmother lived in one of them. Now there are scarcely six, and falling to pieces at that. La Belle Mélanie, she was a Boudrot, sister of the Pierre Boudrot whose son, Théobald, was brother-in-law of stepmother. That was many years ago. They are all dead now, or gone away from here—to Boston, I daresay."
"Will you tell me about that again,—thefeu folletand Mélanie?"
It was the story Michel liked the best, most of all when he could sit beside La Rose, on a moss-hummock of some rough hill on the barrens. Perhaps there would be cloud shadows flitting like dream presences across the shining face of the moor. In the distance, over the backs of the hills that crouched so thickly about them, he saw the stretch of the ocean, a motionless floor of azure and purple, flecked, it might be, by a leaning sail far away; and now and then a gull or two would fly close over their heads, wheeling andscreaming for a few seconds, and then off again through the blue.
"S'il vous plaît, tante La Rose, see how many berries I have picked already!"
The little woman was not difficult of persuasion.
"It was in November," she began. "There had not been any snow yet; but the nights were cold and terribly dark under a sky of clouds. That autumn, as my stepmother often told me, many people had seen the horse without head as it gallopedclaquin-claquantacross the barrens. At Gros Nez it was so bad that no one dared go out after dark, unless it was to run with all one's force to the neighbors—but not across the woods to save their souls. Especially because of thefeu follet.
"Now you must know that thefeu folletis of all objects whatever in the world the most mysterious. No one knows what it is or when it will come. You might walk across the barrens every night of your life and never encounter it; and again it might come upon you all unawares, not more than ten yards from your own threshold. It is more like a ball of fire than any other mortal thing, now large, now small, and always moving. Usually it is seen first hovering over one of the marshes, feeding on the poison vapors that rise from them at night: it floats there, all low, and like a little luminous cloud, so faint as scarcely to be seen by the eye. And sometimes people can travel straight by it, giving no attention, as if they did not know it was there, but keeping the regard altogether ahead of themon the road, and thefeu folletwill let them pass without harm.
"But that does not happen often, for there are not many who can keep their wits clear enough to manage it. It brings a sort of dizziness, and one's legs grow weak. And then thefeu folletdraws itself together into a ball of fire and begins to pursue. It glides over the hills and flies across the marshes, sometimes in circles, sometimes bounding from rock to rock, but all the while stealing a little closer and a little closer, no matter how fast you run away. And finally—bff! like that—it's upon you—and that's the end. Death for a certainty. Not all the medicine in the four parishes can help you.
"Indeed, there are only two things in all the world that can save you from thefeu folletonce 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, thefeu folletgets 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 gladto 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 thefeu 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. Thefeufolletwas 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 thefeu 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. Thefeu folletrushed 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 contraryintentions 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...."
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 theharbor. 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. Hecommands 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. Andyou 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 backagain 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 atPort 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 aninstant—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 inthe 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 hishand 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 outjust 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...."
A CALVAIRE
A CALVAIRE
AT A BRETON CALVAIRE
Upon that cape that thrusts so bareIts crest above the wasting sea—Grey rocks amidst eternity—There stands an old and frail calvaire,Upraising like an unvoiced cryIts 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 bloodThat ran once on its brow and side,And in its feet the seams are wide.But when the boats put out to seaAt 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 shrillThen 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 byAcross that melancholy land,—Dead that were cast up on the strandBeneath a black and whirling sky,—They pause before the old calvaire;They cross themselves and say a prayer.
Upon that cape that thrusts so bareIts crest above the wasting sea—Grey rocks amidst eternity—There stands an old and frail calvaire,Upraising like an unvoiced cryIts 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 bloodThat ran once on its brow and side,And in its feet the seams are wide.
But when the boats put out to seaAt 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 shrillThen 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 byAcross that melancholy land,—Dead that were cast up on the strandBeneath 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!
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
To-day I can think about only one thing. It is in vain I have tried to busy myself with my sermon for next Sunday. Last week, for another reason, I had recourse to an old sermon; but I dislike to make a practice of so doing, even though I strongly suspect that none of our little Salmon River congregation would know the difference. We are a very simple people, in this out-of-the-way Cape Breton parish, called mostly to be fishers, like Our Lord's apostles, and recking not a whit of the finer points of doctrine. Nevertheless, it is an hireling shepherd who is faithless only because the flock do not ask to be fed with the appointed manna; and I shall broach the sermon again, once I have set down the thing that is so heavy on my heart.
For all I can think of just now is that Renny and Suse, out there on Halibut Head, four miles away, are alone; alone for the first time in well-nigh thirty years. The last of the brood has taken wing.
Yet it came to me this morning, as I watched Renny on the wharf saying good-by to the boy, and bidding him wrap the tippet snug about his neck in case the wind would be raw—it came to me that there is a triumph about the nest when it is empty that it could never have earlier. I saw the look of it in Renny's face—not defeat, but exultation.
"And what are you going to do now, Renny?" I asked him, as the steamer slipped out of sight behind the lighthouse rock.
He stared at me a little contemptuously, a manner he has always had.
"Do, Mr. Biddles?" says he, with a queer laugh. "Why, whatwouldI do, sor? They ain't no less fish to be catched, is they, off Halibut Head, just because I got quit of a son or two?"
He left me, with a toss of his crisp, tawny-gray curls, jumped into his little two-wheeled cart, and was off. And I thought, "Ah, Renny Marks, outside you are still the same wild beast as when I had my first meeting with you, two-and-thirty years ago; but inside—yes, I knew then it must come; and it was not for me to order the how of it."
So as I took my way homeward, alone, toward the Rectory, I found myself recalling, as if it were yesterday, the first words I had ever exchanged with that tawny giant, just then in his first flush of manhood, and with a face as ruddy and healthy-looking as one of these early New Rose potatoes. Often, to be sure, I had seen him already in church, of a Sunday, sitting defiant and uncomfortable on one of the rear benches, struggling vainly to keep his eyes open; but before the last Amen was fairly out of the people's mouth, he had always bolted for the door; and I had never come, as you may say, face to face with him until this afternoon when I was footing it back, by the cove road, from a visit to an old sick woman, Nannie Odell. Andhere comes Renny Marks on his way home from the boat; and over his shoulder was the mainsail and gaff and a mackerel-seine and two great oars; and by one arm he had slung the rudder and tackle and bait-pot; and under the other he lugged a couple of bundles of lath for to mend his traps; and so he was pacing along there as proud and careless as Samson bearing away the gates of Gaza on his back (Judgesxvi, 3).
Now I had entertained the belief for some time that it was my duty, should the occasion offer, to have a serious word with Renny about matters not temporal; and this was clearly the moment. Yet even before we had met he gave me one of those proud, distrustful, I have said contemptuous, looks of his; and I seemed suddenly to perceive the figure I must cut in his eyes, pattering along there so trimly in my clerical garb, and with my book of prayers under one arm; and, do you know, I was right tongue-tied; and so we came within hand-reach, and still never a word.
At last, "Good-day to ye, Mister Biddles," says he, with a scant, off-hand nod; and, as if he knew I must be admiring of his strength, "I can fetch twice this load, sor," says he, "without so mucht as knowing the difference."
"It's a fine thing, Renny Marks," said I, gaining my tongue again, at his boast, "a fine thing to be the strongest man in three parishes, if that's what ye be, as they tell me."
"It is that, sor," says he. "I never been cast yet; and I don't never expect for to be."
"But it's still finer a thing, Renny," I went on, "to use that strength in the honor of your Maker. Tell me, do you remember to say your prayers every night before you go to bed?"
Never shall I forget the horse-laugh the young fellow had at those words.
"Why, sor," he exclaimed, as if I had suggested the most unconscionable thing in the world, "saying prayers! that's for the likes of them as wash their face every day. I say my prayers on Sunday; and that's enough for the likes of me!"
And with that, not even affording me a chance to reply, he strode off up the beach road; and in every movement of his great limbs I seemed to see the pride and glory of life. Doubtless I was to blame for not pressing home to him more urgently at that moment the claims of religion; but as I stood there, watching him, it came to me that after all he was almost to be pardoned for being proud. For surely there is something to warm the heart in the sight of the young lion's strength and courage; and even the Creator, I thought, must have taken delight in turning out such a fine piece of mortal handiwork as that Renny Marks.
But with that thought immediately came another: "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Hebrewsxii, 6). And I went home sadly, for I seemed to see that Renny had bitter things ahead of him before he should learn the great lesson of life.
Well, and this is the way it came to him. At the ageof four-and-twenty, he married this Suse Barlow from down the coast a piece,—Green Harbor was the name of the town,—and she was a sweet young thing, gentle and ladylike, though of plainest country stock, and with enough education so they'd let her keep school down there. He built a little house for her, the one they still live in, with his own hands, at Halibut Head; and I never saw anything prettier than the way that young giant treated his wife—like a princess! It was the first time in his life, I dare say, he had ever given a thought to anything but himself; and in a fashion, I suppose, 'twas still but a satisfaction of his pride, to have her so beautiful, and so well-dressed.
I remember of how often they would come in late to church,—even as late as the Te Deum,—and I could almost suspect him of being behindhand of purpose, for of course every one would look around when he came creaking down the aisle in his big shoes, with a wide smile on his ruddy face that showed all his white teeth through his beard; and none could fail to observe how fresh and pretty Suse was, tripping along there behind him, and looking very demure and modest in her print frock, and oh, so very, very sorry to be late! And during the prayers I had to remark how his face would always be turned straight toward her, as if it were to her he was addressing his supplications; the young heathen!
Now there is one thing I never could seem to understand, though I have often turned it over in my mind, and that is, why it should be that a young Samson likeRenny Marks, and a fine, bouncing girl like that Suse of his, should have children who were too weak and frail to stay long on this earth; but such was the case. They saved only three out of six; and the oldest of those three, Michael John, when he got to be thirteen years of age, shipped as cabin boy on a fisherman down to the Grand Banks, and never came back. So that left only Bessie Lou, who was twelve, and little Martin, who was the baby.
If ever children had a good bringing up, it was those two. I never saw either of them in a dirty frock or in bare feet; and that means something, you must allow, when you consider the hardness of the fisherman's life, and how often he has nothing at all to show for a season's toil except debts! But work—I never saw any one work like that Renny; and he made a lovely little farm out there; and Suse wasn't ashamed to raise chickens and sell them in Salmon River; and she dyed wool, and used to hook these rugs, with patterns of her own design, baskets of flowers, or handsome fruit-dishes; and almost always she could get a price for them. But, as you may believe, she couldn't keep her sweet looks with work like that. Before she was thirty she began to look old, as is so often true in a hard country like ours; and not often would she be coming in to church any more, because, she said, of the household duties; but my own belief is that she did not have anything to wear. But Bessie Lou and little Martin, when the boy was well enough, were there every fine Sunday, as pretty as pictures, and able torecite the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and the Collects, and the Commandments, quite like the children of gentlefolk.
Well, when Bessie Lou got to be sixteen, she took it into her head that she must go off to Boston, where she would be earning her own living, and see something more of the world than is possible for a girl in Salmon River. Our girls all get that notion nowadays; they are not content to stay at home as girls used to do; but off they go in droves to the States, where wages are big, and there is excitement and variety. So the old people finally said yes, and off goes Bessie Lou, like the others; and in two years we heard she was to be married to a mechanic in Lynn (I think that is the name of the city) somewhere outside of Boston. She has been gone eight years now, and has three children; and she writes occasionally. She is always wishing she could come down and visit the old folks; but it is hard to get away, I presume, and they are plain working people.
So after Bessie Lou's going, all they had left at home was Martin, who was always ailing more or less. And on my word, I never saw anything like the care they gave that boy. There wasn't anything too good for him. All these most expensive tonics and patent medicines they would be for trying, one after another, and telling themselves every time that at last they had found just the right thing, because he'd seem to be bracing up a bit, and getting more active. And then he would take another of his bad spells, and lose ground again; and they would put by that bottle andtry something else. One day when I was out there his ma showed me all of twenty bottles of patent medicine, some of them scarcely touched, that Renny had got for him, one time or another.
You see, Martin couldn't run about outdoors very much because of his asthma; and then, his eyes being bad, that made him unhappy in the house, for he couldn't be reading or studying. His father got him an old fiddle once, he'd picked up at an auction, and the boy took to it something wonderful; but not having any teacher and no music he soon grew tired of it. And whenever old Renny would be in the village, he must always be getting some little thing to take out to Martin: a couple of bananas, say, or a jack-knife, or one of those American magazines with nice pictures, especially pictures of ships and other sailing craft, of which the lad was very fond.
Well, and so last winter came, which was a very bad winter indeed, in these parts; and the poor lamb had a pitiful hard time; and whenever Renny got in to church, it was plain to see that he was eating his heart out with worry. He still had his old way of always snoring during the sermon; but oh, if you could see once the tired, anxious, supplicating look in his face, as soon as his proud eyes shut, you never would have had the heart to wish anything but "Sleep on now, and take your rest" (Markxiv, 41), for you knew that perhaps, for a few minutes, he had stopped worrying about that little lad of his.
Spring came on, at last, and Martin was out againfor a while every day in the sun; and sometimes the old man would be taking him abroad for a drive or for a little sail in the boat, when he was going out to his traps; and it appeared that the strain was over again for the time being. That is why I was greatly surprised and troubled one day, about two months ago, to see Renny come driving up toward the Rectory like mad, all alone in his cart.
I had just been doing a turn of work myself at the hay; for it is hard to get help with us when you need it most; and as I came from the barn, in my shirt-sleeves, Renny turned in at the gate.
"Something has happened to the boy," was my thought; and I was all but certain of it when I saw the man's face, sharp set as a flint stone, and all the blood gone from his ruddy skin so that it looked right blue. He jumped out before the mare stopped, and came up to me.
"Can I have a word with ye?" said he; and when he saw my look of question, he added, "It ain't nothink, sor. He's all right."
I put my hand on his shoulder, and led him into my study, and we sat down there, just as we were, I in my shirt-sleeves, and still unwashed after the hayfield.
"What is it, Renny, man?" says I.
It seemed like he could not make his lips open for a moment, and then, suddenly, he began talking very fast and excitedly, pecking little dents in the arms of the chair with his big black fingernails.
"That Bessie Lou of oors up to Boston," said he, asif he were accusing some one of an outrage, "we got a letter from 'er last night, we did, and she sayse, says she, why wouldn't we be for a-sending o' the leetle lad up theyr? They'd gladly look oot for him, she sayse; and the winter ain't severe, she sayse; and he could go to one o' them fine city eye-doctors and 'ave his eyes put right with glasses or somethink; and prob'ly he could be for going to school again and a-getting of his learning, which he's sadly be'indhand in, sor, becaust he's ben ailing so much."
His eyes flashed, and the sweat poured down his forehead in streams.
I don't know why I was so slow to understand; but I read his look wrong, there seemed so much of the old insolence and pride in it, and I replied, I daresay a little reproachfully,—
"Well, and why wouldn't that be an excellent thing, Renny? I should think you would feel grateful."
He stared at me for a second, as if I had struck him. Ah, we can forget the words people say to us, even in wrath; but can we ever free ourselves from the memory of such a look? Without knowing why, I had the feeling of being a traitor. And then, all of a sudden, there he had crumpled down in his chair, and put his head in his big hands, and was sobbing.
"I cain't—I cain't let him go," he groaned. "I woon't let him go. He's all what we got left."
I sat there for a time, helpless, looking at him. You might think that a priest, with the daily acquaintance he has with the bitter things of life, ought to know howto face them calmly; but so far as my own small experience goes, I seem to know nothing more about all that than at the beginning. It always hurts just as much; it's always just as bewildering, just as terrible, as if you had never seen anything like it before. And when I saw that giant of a Renny Marks just broken over there like some big tree shattered by lightning, it seemed as if I could not bear to face such suffering. Then I remembered that he had been committed into my care by God, and that I must not be only an hireling shepherd. So I said:—
"Renny, lad, it isn't for ourselves we must be thinking. It's for him."
He lifted up his head, with the shaggy, half-gray hair all rumpled on his wet forehead, and pulled his sleeve across his eyes.
"Hark'e, Mister Biddles," he commanded harshly. "Ain't we did the best we could for him? Who dares say we ain't did the best we could for him?You?"
I made no answer, and for a minute we faced each other, while he shook his clenched fists at me, and the creature in him that had never yet been cast challenged all the universe.
"They're tryin' to tak my boy away from me," he roared, "and they cain't do it—I tell you they cain't. He's all what we got left, now."
"And so you mean to keep him for yourself?" I asked.
"Ay, that I do," he cried, jumping out of his chair, and striding up and down the room as if clean out ofhis wits. "I do! I do! Whywouldn'tI mean to, hey? Ain't he mine? Who's got a better right to him?"
Of a sudden he comes to a dead halt in front of me, with his arms crossed. "Mister Biddles," he says, very bitterly, "you may well be thankfu' you never wast a father yoursel'. Nobody ain't for trying to tak nothink away from you."
"That's quite true, Renny," said I. "But remember," I said, not intending any irreverence, but uttering such poor words as were given to me in my extremity, "remember, Renny, it's to a Father you say your prayers in church every Sunday; and you needn't think as that Father doesn't know full as well as you what it is to give up an only Son for love's sake."
"Hey?—What's that, sor?" cries Renny, with a face right like a dead thing.
"And would He be asking of you for to let yours go, if He didn't know there was love enough in your heart to stand the test?"
Renny broke out with a terrible groan, like the roar of anguish of a wild beast that has got a mortal wound; and the same instant the savage look died in his eyes, and the bigger love in him had triumphed over the smaller love. I could see it, I knew it, even before he spoke. He caught at my hand, blunderingly, and gave it a twist like a winch.
"He shall go, sor. He shall go for all of I. And Mr. Biddles, while I'm for telling the old woman and the boy, would ye be so condescending as to say over some of them there prayers, so I could have the feeling, as you might say, that some one was keeping an eye on me? It'll all be done in less nor a half-hour."
And with that, off he goes, and jumps into his cart, and whips up the mare, tearing down the road like a whirlwind, just as he had come, without so much as saying good-by. And the next day I heard them saying in the village that Renny Marks's boy was to go up to the States to be raised with his sister's family.
Ah, well, that's only a common sort of a story, I know. The same kind of things happen near us every day. I can't even quite tell why I wanted to set it down on paper like this, only that, some way, it makes me believe in God more; even when I have to remember, and it seems to me just now like I could never stop remembering it, that Renny and Suse are all alone to-day out there on Halibut Head. Renny is at the fish, of course; and Suse, I daresay, is working in her little potato patch; and Martin is out there on the sea, being borne to a world far away, and from which, I suppose, he will not be very anxious to return; for few of them do come back, nowadays, to the home country.