The tale was told to me in the little valley beneath Dalgrothe Mountain one September morning. Far and near one could see the swinging of the flail, and the laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land. There was a little Calvary down by the riverside, where the flax-beaters used to say their prayers in the intervals of their work; and it was just at the foot of this that Angele Rouvier, having finished her prayer, put her rosary in her pocket, wiped her eyes with the hem of her petticoat, and said to me:
“Ah, dat poor Mathurin, I wipe my tears for him!”
“Tell me all about him, won’t you, Madame Angele? I want to hear you tell it,” I added hastily, for I saw that she would despise me if I showed ignorance of Mathurin’s story. Her sympathy with Mathurin’s memory was real, but her pleasure at the compliment I paid her was also real.
“Ah! It was ver’ longtime ago—yes. My gran’mudder she remember dat Mathurin ver’ well. He is not ver’ big man. He has a face-oh, not ver’ handsome, not so more handsome as yours—non. His clothes, dey hang on him all loose; his hair, it is all some grey, and it blow about him head. He is clean to de face, no beard—no, nosing like dat. But his eye—la, M’sieu’, his eye! It is like a coal which you blow in your hand, whew!—all bright. My gran’mudder, she say, ‘Voila, you can light your pipe with de eyes of dat Mathurin!’ She know. She say dat M’sieu’ Mathurin’s eyes dey shine in de dark. My gran’fadder he say he not need any lights on his cariole when Mathurin ride with him in de night.
“Ah, sure! it is ver’ true what I tell you all de time. If you cut off Mathurin at de chin, all de way up, you will say de top of him it is a priest. All de way down from his neck, oh, he is just no better as yoursel’ or my Jean—non. He is a ver’ good man. Only one bad ting he do. Dat is why I pray for him; dat is why everybody pray for him—only one bad ting. Sapristi!—if I have only one ting to say God-have-mercy for, I tink dat ver’ good; I do my penance happy. Well, dat Mathurin him use to teach de school. De Cure he ver’ fond of him. All de leetla children, boys and girls, dey all say: ‘C’est bon Mathurin!’ He is not ver’ cross—non. He have no wife, no child; jes live by himself all alone. But he is ver’ good friends with everybody in Pontiac. When he go ‘long de street, everybody say, ‘Ah, dere go de good Mathurin!’ He laugh, he tell story, he smoke leetla tabac, he take leetla white wine behin’ de door; dat is nosing—non.
“He have in de parish five, ten, twenty children all call Mathurin; he is godfadder with dem—yes. So he go about with plenty of sugar and sticks of candy in his pocket. He never forget once de age of every leetla child dat call him godfadder. He have a brain dat work like a clock. My gran’fadder he say dat Mathurin have a machine in his head. It make de words, make de thoughts, make de fine speech like de Cure, make de gran’ poetry—oh, yes!
“When de King of Englan’ go to sit on de throne, Mathurin write ver’ nice verse to him. And by-and-by dere come to Mathurin a letter—voila, dat is a letter! It have one, two, three, twenty seals; and de King he say to Mathurin: ‘Merci mille fois, m’sieu’; you are ver’ polite. I tank you. I will keep your verses to tell me dat my French subjects are all loyal like M. Mathurin.’ Dat is ver’ nice, but Mathurin is not proud—non. He write six verses for my granmudder—hein? Dat is something. He write two verses for de King of Englan’ and he write six verses for my granmudder—you see! He go on so, dis week, dat week, dis year, dat year, all de time.
“Well, by-and-by dere is trouble on Pontiac. It is ver’ great trouble. You see dere is a fight ‘gainst de King of Englan’, and dat is too bad. It is not his fault; he is ver’ nice man; it is de bad men who make de laws for de King in Quebec. Well, one day all over de country everybody take him gun, and de leetla bullets, and say, I will fight de soldier of de King of Englan’—like dat. Ver’ well, dere was twenty men in Pontiac, ver’ nice men—you will find de names cut in a stone on de church; and den, three times as big, you will find Mathurin’s name. Ah, dat is de ting! You see, dat rebellion you English call it, we call it de War of de Patriot—de first War of de Patriot, not de second-well, call it what you like, quelle difference? The King of Englan’ smash him Patriot War all to pieces. Den dere is ten men of de twenty come back to Pontiac ver’ sorry. Dey are not happy, nobody are happy. All de wives, dey cry; all de children, dey are afraid. Some people say, What fools you are; others say, You are no good; but everybody in him heart is ver’ sorry all de time.
“Ver’ well, by-and-by dere come to Pontiac what you call a colonel with a dozen men—what for, you tink? To try de patriots. He will stan’ dem against de wall and shoot dem to death—kill dem dead. When dey come, de Cure he is not in Pontiac—non, not dat day; he is gone to anudder village. De English soldier he has de ten men drew up before de church. All de children and all de wives dey cry and cry, and dey feel so bad. Certainlee, it is a pity. But de English soldier he say he will march dem off to Quebec, and everybody know dat is de end of de patriots.
“All at once de colonel’s horse it grow ver’ wild, it rise up high, and dance on him hind feet, and—voila! he topple him over backwards, and de horse fall on de colonel and smaish him—smaish him till he go to die. Ver’ well; de colonel, what does he do? Dey lay him on de steps of de church. Den he say: ‘Bring me a priest, quick, for I go to die.’ Nobody answer. De colonel he say: ‘I have a hunder sins all on my mind; dey are on my heart like a hill. Bring to me de priest,’—he groan like dat. Nobody speak at first; den somebody say de priest is not here. ‘Find me a priest,’ say de colonel; ‘find me a priest.’ For he tink de priest will not come, becos’ he go to kill de patriots. ‘Bring me a priest,’ he say again, ‘and all de ten shall go free.’ He say it over and over. He is smaish to pieces, but his head is all right. All at once de doors of de church open behin’ him—what you tink! Everybody’s heart it stan’ still, for dere is Mathurin dress as de priest, with a leetla boy to swing de censer. Everybody say to himself, What is dis? Mathurin is dress as de priest-ah! dat is a sin. It is what you call blaspheme.
“The English soldier he look up at Mathurin and say: ‘Ah, a priest at last—ah, M’sieu’ le Cure, comfort me!’ Mathurin look down on him and say: ‘M’sieu’, it is for you to confess your sins, and to have de office of de Church. But first, as you have promise just now, you must give up dese poor men, who have fight for what dey tink is right. You will let dem go free dis women?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ say de English colonel; ‘dey shall go free. Only give me de help of de Church at my last.’ Mathurin turn to de other soldiers and say: ‘Unloose de men.’
“De colonel nod his head and say: ‘Unloose de men.’ Den de men are unloose, and dey all go away, for Mathurin tell dem to go quick.
“Everybody is ver’ ‘fraid becos’ of what Mathurin do. Mathurin he say to de soldiers: ‘Lift him up and bring him in de church.’ Dey bring him up to de steps of de altar. Mathurin look at de man for a while, and it seem as if he cannot speak to him; but de colonel say: ‘I have give you my word. Give me comfort of de Church before I die.’ He is in ver’ great pain, so Mathurin he turn roun’ to everybody dat stan’ by, and tell dem to say de prayers for de sick. Everybody get him down on his knees and say de prayer. Everybody say: ‘Lord have mercy. Spare him, O Lord; deliver him, O Lord, from Thy wrath!’ And Mathurin he pray all de same as a priest, ver’ soft and gentle. He pray on and on, and de face of de English soldier it get ver; quiet and still, and de tear drop down his cheek. And just as Mathurin say at de last his sins dey are forgive, he die. Den Mathurin, as he go away to take off his robes, he say to himself: ‘Miserere mei Deus! miserere mei Deus!’
“So dat is de ting dat Mathurin do to save de patriots from de bullets. Ver’ well, de men dey go free, and when de Governor at Quebec he hear de truth, he say it is all right. Also de English soldier die in peace and happy, becos’ he tink his sins are forgive. But den—dere is Mathurin and his sin to pretend he is a priest! The Cure he come back, and dere is a great trouble.
“Mathurin he is ver’ quiet and still. Nobody come near him in him house; nobody go near to de school. But he sit alone all day in de school, and he work on de blackboar’ and he write on de slate; but dere is no child come, becos’ de Cure has forbid any one to speak to Mathurin. Not till de next Sunday, den de Cure send for Mathurin to come to de church. Mathurin come to de steps of de altar; den de Cure say to him:
“‘Mathurin, you have sin a great sin. If it was two hunderd years ago you would be put to death for dat.’
“Mathurin he say ver’ soft: ‘Dat is no matter. I am ready to die now. I did it to save de fadders of de children and de husbands of de wives. I do it to make a poor sinner happy as he go from de world. De sin is mine.’
“Den de Cure he say: ‘De men are free, dat is good; de wives have dere husbands and de children dere fadders. Also de man who confess his sins—de English soldier—to whom you say de words of a priest of God, he is forgive. De Spirit of God it was upon him when he die, becos’ you speak in de name of de Church. But for you, blasphemer, who take upon you de holy ting, you shall suffer! For penance, all your life you shall teach a chile no more.’
“Voila, M’sieu’ le Cure he know dat is de greatest penance for de poor Mathurin! Den he set him other tings to do; and every month for a whole year Mathurin come on his knees all de way to de church, but de Cure say: ‘Not yet are you forgive.’ At de end of de year Mathurin he look so thin, so white, you can blow through him. Every day he go to him school and write on de blackboar’, and mark on de slate, and call de roll of de school. But dere is no answer, for dere is no children. But all de time de wives of de men dat he have save, and de children, dey pray for him. And by-and-by all de village pray for him, so sorry.
“It is so for two years; and den dey say dat Mathurin he go to die. He cannot come on his knees to de church; and de men whose life he save, dey come to de Cure and ask him to take de penance from Mathurin. De Cure say: ‘Wait till nex’ Sunday.’ So nex’ Sunday Mathurin is carry to de church—he is too weak to walk on his knees. De Cure he stan’ at de altar, and he read a letter from de Pope, which say dat Mathurin his penance is over, and he is forgive; dat de Pope himself pray for Mathurin, to save his soul. So Mathurin, all at once he stan’ up, and his face it smile and smile, and he stretch out his arms as if dey are on a cross, and he say, ‘Lord, I am ready to go,’ and he fall down. But de Cure catch him as he fall, and Mathurin say: ‘De children—let dem come to me dat I teach dem before I die.’ And all de children in de church dey come close to him, and he sit up and smile at dem, and he say:
“‘It is de class in ‘rithmetic. How much is three times four?’ And dem all answer: ‘T’ree times four is twelve.’ And he say: ‘May de Twelve Apostles pray for me!’ Den he ask: ‘Class in geography—how far is it roun’ de world?’ And dey answer: ‘Twenty-four t’ousand miles.’ He say: 'Good; it is not so far to God! De school is over all de time,’ he say. And dat is only everything of poor Mathurin. He is dead.
“When de Cure lay him down, after he make de Sign upon him, he kiss his face and say: ‘Mathurin, now you are a priest unto God.’”
That was Angele Rouvier’s story of Mathurin, the Master of the School, for whom the women and the children pray in the parish of Pontiac, though the school has been dismissed these hundred years and more.
For a man in whose life there had been tragedy he was cheerful. He had a habit of humming vague notes in the silence of conversation, as if to put you at your ease. His body and face were lean and arid, his eyes oblique and small, his hair straight and dry and straw-coloured; and it flew out crackling with electricity, to meet his cap as he put it on. He lived alone in a little but near his lime-kiln by the river, with no near neighbours, and few companions save his four dogs; and these he fed sometimes at expense of his own stomach. He had just enough crude poetry in his nature to enjoy his surroundings. For he was well placed. Behind the lime-kiln rose knoll on knoll, and beyond these the verdant hills, all converging to Dalgrothe Mountain. In front of it was the river, with its banks dropping forty feet, and below, the rapids, always troubled and sportive. On the farther side of the river lay peaceful areas of meadow and corn land, and low-roofed, hovering farm-houses, with one larger than the rest, having a wind-mill and a flag-staff. This building was almost large enough for a manor, and indeed it was said that it had been built for one just before the conquest in 1759, but the war had destroyed the ambitious owner, and it had become a farm-house. Paradis always knew the time of the day by the way the light fell on the wind-mill. He had owned this farm once, he and his brother Fabian, and he had loved it as he loved Fabian, and he loved it now as he loved Fabian’s memory. In spite of all, they were cheerful memories, both of brother and house.
At twenty-three they had become orphans, with two hundred acres of land, some cash, horses and cattle, and plenty of credit in the parish, or in the county, for that matter. Both were of hearty dispositions, but Fabian had a taste for liquor, and Henri for pretty faces and shapely ankles. Yet no one thought the worse of them for that, especially at first. An old servant kept house for them and cared for them in her honest way, both physically and morally. She lectured them when at first there was little to lecture about. It is no wonder that when there came a vast deal to reprove, the bonne desisted altogether, overwhelmed by the weight of it.
Henri got a shock the day before their father died when he saw Fabian lift the brandy used to mix with the milk of the dying man, and pouring out the third of a tumbler, drink it off, smacking his lips as he did so, as though it were a cordial. That gave him a cue to his future and to Fabian’s. After their father died Fabian gave way to the vice. He drank in the taverns, he was at once the despair and the joy of the parish; for, wild as he was, he had a gay temper, a humorous mind, a strong arm, and was the universal lover. The Cure, who did not, of course, know one-fourth of his wildness, had a warm spot for him in his heart. But there was a vicious strain in him somewhere, and it came out one day in a perilous fashion.
There was in the hotel of the Louis Quinze an English servant from the west, called Nell Barraway. She had been in a hotel in Montreal, and it was there Fabian had seen her as she waited at table. She was a splendid-looking creature—all life and energy, tall, fair-haired, and with a charm above her kind. She was also an excellent servant, could do as much as any two women in any house, and was capable of more airy diablerie than any ten of her sex in Pontiac. When Fabian had said to her in Montreal that he would come to see her again, he told her where he lived. She came to see him instead, for she wrote to the landlord of the Louis Quinze, enclosed fine testimonials, and was at once engaged. Fabian was stunned when he entered the Louis Quinze and saw her waiting at table, alert, busy, good to behold. She nodded at him with a quick smile as he stood bewildered just inside the door, then said in English: “This way, m’sieu’.”
As he sat down he said in English also, with a laugh and with snapping eyes: “Good Lord, what brings you here, lady-bird?”
As she pushed a chair under him she whispered through his hair: “You!” and then was gone away to fetch pea-soup for six hungry men.
The Louis Quinze did more business now in three months than it had done before in six. But it became known among a few in Pontiac that Nell was notorious. How it had crept up from Montreal no one guessed, and, when it did come, her name was very intimately associated with Fabian’s. No one could say that she was not the most perfect of servants, and also no one could say that her life in Pontiac had not been exemplary. Yet wise people had made up their minds that she was determined to marry Fabian, and the wisest declared that she would do so in spite of everything—religion (she was a Protestant), character, race. She was clever, as the young Seigneur found, as the little Avocat was forced to admit, as the Cure allowed with a sigh, and she had no airs of badness at all and very little of usual coquetry. Fabian was enamoured, and it was clear that he intended to bring the woman to the Manor one way or another.
Henri admitted the fascination of the woman, felt it, despaired, went to Montreal, got proof of her career, came back, and made his final and only effort to turn his brother from the girl.
He had waited an hour outside the hotel for his brother, and when Fabian got in, he drove on without a word. After a while, Fabian, who was in high spirits, said:
“Open your mouth, Henri. Come along, sleepyhead.”
Straightway he began to sing a rollicking song, and Henri joined in with him heartily, for the spirit of Fabian’s humour was contagious:
“There was a little man,The foolish GuilleriCarabi.He went unto the chase,Of partridges the chase.Carabi.Titi Carabi,Toto Carabo,You’re going to break your neck,My lovely Guilleri!”
He was about to begin another verse when Henri stopped him, saying:
“You’re going to break your neck, Fabian.”
“What’s up, Henri?” was the reply.
“You’re drinking hard, and you don’t keep good company.”
Fabian laughed. “Can’t get the company I want, so what I can get I have, Henri, my lad.”
“Don’t drink.” Henri laid his freehand on Fabian’s knee.
“Whiskey-wine is meat and drink to me—I was born on New Year’s Day, old coffin-face. Whiskey-wine day, they ought to call it. Holy! the empty jars that day.” Henri sighed. “That’s the drink, Fabian,” he said patiently. “Give up the company. I’ll be better company for you than that girl, Fabian.”
“Girl? What the devil do you mean!”
“She, Nell Barraway, was the company I meant, Fabian.”
“Nell Barraway—you mean her? Bosh! I’m going to marry her, Henri.”
“You mustn’t, Fabian,” said Henri, eagerly clutching Fabian’s sleeve.
“But I must, my Henri. She’s the best-looking, wittiest girl I ever saw—splendid. Never lonely with her.”
“Looks and brains isn’t everything, Fabian.”
“Isn’t it, though? Isn’t it? Tiens, you try it!”
“Not without goodness.” Henri’s voice weakened.
“That’s bosh. Of course it is, Henri, my dear. If you love a woman, if she gets hold of you, gets into your blood, loves you so that the touch of her fingers sets your pulses going pom-pom, you don’t care a sou whether she is good or not.”
“You mean whether she was good or not?”
“No, I don’t. I mean is good or not. For if she loves you she’ll travel straight for your sake. Pshaw, you don’t know anything about it!”
“I know all about it.”
“Know all about it! You’re in love—you?”
“Yes.”
Fabian sat open-mouthed for a minute. “Godam!” he said. It was his one English oath.
“Is she good company?” he asked after a minute.
“She’s the same as you keep—voila, the same.”
“You mean Nell—Nell?” asked Fabian, in a dry, choking voice.
“Yes, Nell. From the first time I saw her. But I’d cut my hand off first. I’d think of you; of our people that have been here for two hundred years; of the rooms in the old house where mother used to be.”
Fabian laughed nervously. “Holy heaven, and you’ve got her in your blood, too!”
“Yes, but I’d never marry her. Fabian, at Montreal I found out all about her. She was as bad—”
“That’s nothing to me, Henri,” said Fabian, “but something else is. Here you are now. I’ll make a bargain.” His face showed pale in the moonlight. “If you’ll drink with me, do as I do, go where I go, play the devil when I play it, and never squeal, never hang back, I’ll give her up. But I’ve got to have you—got to have you all the time, everywhere, hunting, drinking, or letting alone. You’ll see me out, for you’re stronger, had less of it. I’m soon for the little low house in the grass. Stop the horses.”
Henri stopped them and they got out. They were just opposite the lime-kiln, and they had to go a few hundred yards before they came to the bridge to cross the river to their home. The light of the fire shone in their faces as Fabian handed the flask to Henri, and said: “Let’s drink to it, Henri. You half, and me half.” He was deadly pale.
Henri drank to the finger-mark set, and then Fabian lifted the flask to his lips.
“Good-bye, Nell!” he said. “Here’s to the good times we’ve had!” He emptied the flask, and threw it over the bank into the burning lime, and Garotte, the old lime-burner, being half asleep, did not see or hear.
The next day the two went on a long hunting expedition, and the following month Nell Barraway left for Montreal.
Henri kept to his compact, drink for drink, sport for sport. One year the crops were sold before they were reaped, horses and cattle went little by little, then came mortgage, and still Henri never wavered, never weakened, in spite of the Cure and all others. The brothers were always together, and never from first to last did Henri lose his temper, or openly lament that ruin was coming surely on them. What money Fabian wanted he got. The Cure’s admonitions availed nothing, for Fabian would go his gait. The end came on the very spot where the compact had been made; for, passing the lime-kiln one dark night, as the two rode home together, Fabian’s horse shied, the bank of the river gave way, and with a startled “Ah, Henri!” the profligate and his horse were gone into the river below.
Next month the farm and all were sold, Henri Paradis succeeded the old lime-burner at his post, drank no more ever, and lived his life in sight of the old home.
The old woodsman shifted the knife with which he was mending his fishing-rod from one hand to the other, and looked at it musingly, before he replied to Medallion. “Yes, m’sieu’, I knew the White Chief, as they called him: this was his”—holding up the knife; “and this”—taking a watch from his pocket. “He gave them to me; I was with him in the Circle on the great journey.”
“Tell us about him, then,” Medallion urged; “for there are many tales, and who knows which is the right one?”
“The right one is mine. Holy, he was to me like a father then! I know more of the truth than any one.” He paused a moment, looking out on the river where the hot sun was playing with all its might, then took off his cap with deliberation, laid it beside him, and speaking as it were into the distance, began:
“He once was a trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Of his birth some said one thing, some another; I know he was beaucoup gentil, and his heart, it was a lion’s! Once, when there was trouble with the Chipp’ways, he went alone to their camp, and say he will fight their strongest man, to stop the trouble. He twist the neck of the great fighting man of the tribe, so that it go with a snap, and that ends it, and he was made a chief, for, you see, in their hearts they all hated their strong man. Well, one winter there come down to Fort o’ God two Esquimaux, and they say that three white men are wintering by the Coppermine River; they had travel down from the frozen seas when their ship was lock in the ice, but can get no farther. They were sick with the evil skin, and starving. The White Chief say to me: ‘Galloir, will you go to rescue them?’ I would have gone with him to the ends of the world—and this was near one end.”
The old man laughed to himself, tossed his jet-black hair from his wrinkled face, and after a moment, went on: “There never was such a winter as that. The air was so still by times that you can hear the rustle of the stars and the shifting of the northern lights; but the cold at night caught you by the heart and clamp it—Mon Dieu, how it clamp! We crawl under the snow and lay in our bags of fur and wool, and the dogs hug close to us. We were sorry for the dogs; and one died, and then another, and there is nothing so dreadful as to hear the dogs howl in the long night—it is like ghosts crying in an empty world. The circle of the sun get smaller and smaller, till he only tramp along the high edge of the north-west. We got to the river at last and found the camp. There is one man dead—only one; but there were bones—ah, m’sieu’, you not guess what a thing it is to look upon the bones of men, and know that—!”
Medallion put his hand on the old man’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. Then he poured out coffee for both, and they drank before the rest was told.
“It’s a creepy story,” said Medallion, “but go on.”
“Well, the White Chief look at the dead man as he sit there in the snow, with a book and a piece of paper beside him, and the pencil in the book. The face is bent forward to the knees. The White Chief pick up the book and pencil, and then kneel down and gaze up in the dead man’s face, all hard like stone and crusted with frost. I thought he would never stir again, he look so long. I think he was puzzle. Then he turn and say to me: ‘So quiet, so awful, Galloir!’ and got up. Well, but it was cold then, and my head seemed big and running about like a ball of air. But I light a spirit-lamp, and make some coffee, and he open the dead man’s book—it is what they call a diary—and begin to read. All at once I hear a cry, and I see him drop the book on the ground, and go to the dead man, and jerk his fist as if to strike him in the face. But he did not strike.”
Galloir stopped, and lighted his pipe, and was so long silent that Medallion had to jog him into speaking. He puffed the smoke so that his face was in the cloud, and he said through it: “No, he did not strike. He get to his feet and spoke: ‘God forgive her!’ like that, and come and take up the book again, and read. He eat and drunk, and read the book again, and I know by his face that something more than cold was clamp his heart.
“‘Shall we bury him in the snow?’ I say. ‘No,’ he spoke, ‘let him sit there till the Judgmen’. This is a wonderful book, Galloir,’ he went on. ‘He was a brave man, but the rest—the rest!’—then under his breath almost: ‘She was so young—but a child.’ I not understand that. We start away soon, leaving the thing there. For four days, and then I see that the White Chief will never get back to Fort Pentecost; but he read the dead man’s book much....”
“I cannot forget that one day. He lies down looking at the world—nothing but the waves of snow, shining blue and white, on and on. The sun lift an eye of blood in the north, winking like a devil as I try to drive Death away by calling in his ear. He wake all at once; but his eyes seem asleep. He tell me to take the book to a great man in Montreal—he give me the name. Then he take out his watch—it is stop—and this knife, and put them into my hands, and then he pat my shoulder. He motion to have the bag drawn over his head. I do it.... Of course that was the end!”
“But what about the book?” Medallion asked.
“That book? It is strange. I took it to the man in Montreal—tonnerre, what a fine house and good wine had he!—and told him all. He whip out a scarf, and blow his nose loud, and say very angry: ‘So, she’s lost both now! What a scoundrel he was!...’ Which one did he mean? I not understan’ ever since.”
He was no uncle of mine, but it pleased me that he let me call him Uncle Jim.
It seems only yesterday that, for the first time, on a farm “over the border,” from the French province, I saw him standing by a log outside the wood-house door, splitting maple knots. He was all bent by years and hard work, with muscles of iron, hands gnarled and lumpy, but clinching like a vise; grey head thrust forward on shoulders which had carried forkfuls of hay and grain, and leaned to the cradle and the scythe, and been heaped with cordwood till they were like hide and metal; white straggling beard and red watery eyes, which, to me, were always hung with an intangible veil of mystery—though that, maybe, was my boyish fancy. Added to all this he was so very deaf that you had to speak clear and loud into his ear; and many people he could not hear at all, if their words were not sharp-cut, no matter how loud. A silent, withdrawn man he was, living close to Mother Earth, twin-brother of Labour, to whom Morning and Daytime were sounding-boards for his axe, scythe, saw, flail, and milking-pail, and Night a round hollow of darkness into which he crept, shutting the doors called Silence behind him, till the impish page of Toil came tapping again, and he stepped awkwardly into the working world once more. Winter and summer saw him putting the kettle on the fire a few minutes after four o’clock, in winter issuing with lantern from the kitchen door to the stable and barn to feed the stock; in summer sniffing the grey dawn and looking out on his fields of rye and barley, before he went to gather the cows for milking and take the horses to water.
For forty years he and his worn-faced wife bowed themselves beneath the yoke, first to pay for the hundred-acre farm, and then to bring up and educate their seven children. Something noble in them gave them ambitions for their boys and girls which they had never had for themselves; but when had gone the forty years, in which the little farm had twice been mortgaged to put the eldest son through college as a doctor, they faced the bitter fact that the farm had passed from them to Rodney, the second son, who had come at last to keep a hotel in a town fifty miles away. Generous-hearted people would think that these grown-up sons and daughters should have returned the old people’s long toil and care by buying up the farm and handing it back to them, their rightful refuge in the decline of life. But it was not so. They were tenants where they had been owners, dependants where they had been givers, slaves where once they were, masters. The old mother toiled without a servant, the old man without a helper, save in harvest time.
But the great blow came when Rodney married the designing milliner who flaunted her wares opposite his bar-room; and, somehow, from the date of that marriage, Rodney’s good fortune and the hotel declined. When he and his wife first visited the little farm after their marriage the old mother shrank away from the young woman’s painted face, and ever afterwards an added sadness showed in her bearing and in her patient smile. But she took Rodney’s wife through the house, showing her all there was to show, though that was not much. There was the little parlour with its hair-cloth chairs, rag carpet, centre table, and iron stove with black pipes, all gaily varnished. There was the parlour bedroom off it, with the one feather-bed of the house bountifully piled up with coarse home-made blankets, topped by a silk patchwork quilt, the artistic labour of the old wife’s evening hours while Uncle Jim peeled apples and strung them to dry from the rafters. There was a room, dining-room in summer, and kitchen dining-room in winter, as clean as aged hands could scrub and dust it, hung about with stray pictures from illustrated papers, and a good old clock in the corner “ticking” life, and youth, and hope away. There was the buttery off that, with its meagre china and crockery, its window looking out on the field of rye, the little orchard of winter apples, and the hedge of cranberry bushes. Upstairs were rooms with no ceilings, where, lying on a corn-husk bed, you reached up and touched the sloping roof, with windows at the end only, facing the buckwheat field, and looking down two miles towards the main road—for the farm was on a concession or side-road, dusty in summer, and in winter sometimes impassable for weeks together. It was not much of a home, as any one with the mind’s eye can see, but four stalwart men and three fine women had been born, raised, and quartered there, until, with good clothes, and speaking decent English and tolerable French, and with money in their pockets, hardly got by the old people, one by one they issued forth into the world.
The old mother showed Rodney’s wife what there was for eyes to see, not forgetting the three hives of bees on the south side, beneath the parlour window. She showed it with a kind of pride, for it all seemed good to her, and every dish, and every chair, and every corner in the little house had to her a glory of its own, because of those who had come and gone—the firstlings of her flock, the roses of her little garden of love, blooming now in a rougher air than ranged over the little house on the hill. She had looked out upon the pine woods to the east and the meadow-land to the north, the sweet valley between the rye-field and the orchard, and the good honest air that had blown there for forty years, bracing her heart and body for the battle of love and life, and she had said through all, Behold it is very good.
But the pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death had hovered over a birth-bed. She looked into the face which Time’s finger had anointed, and motherhood had etched with trouble, and said:
“‘Tisn’t much, is it? Only a clap-board house, and no ceilings upstairs, and rag carpets-pshaw!”
And when she came to wash her hands for dinner, she threw aside the unscented, common bar-soap, and, shrugging her narrow shoulders at the coarse towel, wiped her fingers on her cambric handkerchief. Any other kind of a woman, when she saw the old mother going about with her twisted wrist—a doctor’s bad work with a fracture—would have tucked up her dress, and tied on an apron to help. But no, she sat and preened herself with the tissue-paper sort of pride of a vain milliner, or nervously shifted about, lifting up this and that, curiously supercilious, her tongue rattling on to her husband and to his mother in a shallow, foolish way. She couldn’t say, however, that any thing was out of order or ill-kept about the place. The old woman’s rheumatic fingers made corners clean, and wood as white as snow, the stove was polished, the tins were bright, and her own dress, no matter what her work, neat as a girl’s, although the old graceful poise of the body had twisted out of drawing.
But the real crisis came when Rodney, having stood at the wood-house door and blown the dinner-horn as he used to do when a boy, the sound floating and crying away across the rye-field, the old man came—for, strange to say, that was the one sound he could hear easily, though, as he said to himself, it seemed as small as a pin, coming from ever so far away. He came heavily up from the barn-yard, mopping his red face and forehead, and now and again raising his hand to shade his eyes, concerned to see the unknown visitors, whose horse and buggy were in the stable-yard. He and Rodney greeted outside warmly enough, but there was some trepidation too in Uncle Jim’s face—he felt trouble brewing; and there is no trouble like that which comes between parent and child. Silent as he was, however, he had a large and cheerful heart, and nodding his head he laughed the deep, quaint laugh which Rodney himself of all his sons had—and he was fonder of Rodney than any. He washed his hands in the little basin outside the wood-house door, combed out his white beard, rubbed his red, watery eyes, tied a clean handkerchief round his neck, put on a rusty but clean old coat, and a minute afterwards was shaking hands for the first time with Rodney’s wife. He had lived much apart from his kind, but he had a mind that fastened upon a thought and worked it down until it was an axiom. He felt how shallow was this thin, flaunting woman of flounces and cheap rouge; he saw her sniff at the brown sugar-she had always had white at the hotel; and he noted that she let Rodney’s mother clear away and wash the dinner things herself. He felt the little crack of doom before it came.
It came about three o’clock. He did not return to the rye-field after dinner, but stayed and waited to hear what Rodney had to say. Rodney did not tell his little story well, for he foresaw trouble in the old home; but he had to face this and all coming dilemmas as best he might. With a kind of shamefacedness, yet with an attempt to carry the thing off lightly, he told Uncle Jim, while, inside, his wife told the old mother, that the business of the hotel had gone to pot (he did not say who was the cause of that), and they were selling out to his partner and coming to live on the farm.
“I’m tired anyway of the hotel job,” said Rodney. “Farming’s a better life. Don’t you think so, dad?”
“It’s better for me, Rod,” answered Uncle Jim, “it’s better for me.”
Rodney was a little uneasy. “But won’t it be better for me?” he asked.
“Mebbe,” was the slow answer, “mebbe, mebbe so.”
“And then there’s mother, she’s getting too old for the work, ain’t she?”
“She’s done it straight along,” answered the old man, “straight along till now.”
“But Millie can help her, and we’ll have a hired girl, eh?”
“I dunno, I dunno,” was the brooding answer; “the place ain’t going to stand it.”
“We’ll get more out of it,” answered Rodney. “I’ll stock it up, I’ll put more under barley. All the thing wants is working, dad. Put more in, get more out. Now ain’t that right?”
The other was looking off towards the rye-field, where, for forty years, up and down the hillside, he had travelled with the cradle and the scythe, putting all there was in him into it, and he answered, blinking along the avenue of the past:
“Mebbe, mebbe!”
Rodney fretted under the old man’s vague replies, and said: “But darn it all, can’t you tell us what you think?”
His father did not take his eyes off the rye-field. “I’m thinking,” he answered, in the same old-fashioned way, “that I’ve been working here since you were born, Rod. I’ve blundered along, somehow, just boggling my way through. I ain’t got anything more to say. The farm ain’t mine any more, but I’ll keep my scythe sharp and my axe ground just as I always did, and I’m for workin’ as I’ve always worked as long as I’m let to stay.”
“Good Lord, dad, don’t talk that way! Things ain’t going to be any different for you and mother than they are now. Only, of course—” He paused.
The old man pieced out the sentence: “Only, of course, there can’t be two women rulin’ one house, Rod, and you know it as well as I do.”
Exactly how Rodney’s wife told the old mother of the great change Rodney never knew; but when he went back to the house the grey look in his mother’s face told him more than her words ever told. Before they left that night the pink milliner had already planned the changes which were to celebrate her coming and her ruling.
So Rodney and his wife came, all the old man prophesied in a few brief sentences to his wife proving true. There was no great struggle on the mother’s part; she stepped aside from governing, and became as like a servant as could be. An insolent servant-girl came, and she and Rodney’s wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old man’s heart. He had resentment both for the old wife and himself, and he hated the pink milliner for the humiliation that she heaped upon them both. Rodney did not see one-fifth of it, and what he did see lost its force, because, strangely enough, he loved the gaudy wife who wore gloves on her bloodless hands as she did the house-work and spent numberless afternoons in trimming her own bonnets. Her peevishness grew apace as the newness of the experience wore off. Uncle Jim seldom spoke to her, as he seldom spoke to anybody, but she had an inkling of the rancour in his heart, and many a time she put blame upon his shoulders to her husband, when some unavoidable friction came.
A year, two years, passed, which were as ten upon the shoulders of the old people, and then, in the dead of winter, an important thing happened. About the month of March Rodney’s first child was expected. At the end of January Rodney had to go away, expecting to return in less than a month. But, in the middle of February, the woman’s sacred trouble came before its time. And on that day there fell such a storm as had not been seen for many a year. The concession road was blocked before day had well set in; no horse could go ten yards in it. The nearest doctor was miles away at Pontiac, and for any man to face the journey was to connive with death. The old mother came to Uncle Jim, and, as she looked out of a little unfrosted spot on the window at the blinding storm, told him that the pink milliner would die. There seemed to be no other end to it, for the chances were a hundred to one against the strongest man making a journey for the doctor, and another hundred to one against the doctor’s coming.
No one knows whether Uncle Jim could hear the cries from the torture-chamber, but, after standing for a time mumbling to himself, he wrapped himself in a heavy coat, tied a muffler about his face, and went out. If they missed him they must have thought him gone to the barn, or in the drive-shed sharpening his axe. But the day went on and the old mother forgot all the wrongs that she had suffered, and yearned over the trivial woman who was hurrying out into the Great Space. Her hours seemed numbered at noon, her moments measured as it came towards sundown, but with the passing of the sun the storm stopped, and a beautiful white peace fell on the world of snow, and suddenly out of that peace came six men; and the first that opened the door was the doctor. After him came Uncle Jim, supported between two others.
Uncle Jim had made the terrible journey, falling at last in the streets of the county town with frozen hands and feet, not a dozen rods from the doctor’s door. They brought him to, he told his story, and, with the abating of the storm, the doctor and the villagers drove down to the concession road, and then made their way slowly up across the fields, carrying the old man with them, for he would not be left behind.
An hour after the doctor entered the parlour bedroom the old mother came out to where the old man sat, bundled up beside the fire with bandaged hands and feet.
“She’s safe, Jim, and the child too,” she said softly. The old man twisted in his chair, and blinked into the fire. “Dang my soul!” he said.
The old woman stooped and kissed his grey tangled hair. She did not speak, and she did not ask him what he meant; but there and then they took up their lives again and lived them out.