Chapter 3

As he knelt to pray before he entered the pulpit, he heard the tinkling of the little bell of honour at the knee of Luc, as Junie and Parpon helped him from the church.

A SON OF THE WILDERNESS

Rachette told the story to Medallion and the Little Chemist's wife on Sunday after Mass, and because he was vain of his English he forsook his own tongue and paid tribute to the Anglo-Saxon.

"Ah, she was so purty, that Norinne, when she drive through the parishes all twelve days, after the wedding, a dance every night, and her eyes and cheeks on fire all the time. And Bargon, bagosh! that Bargon, he have a pair of shoulders like a wall, and five hunder' dollars and a horse and wagon. Bagosh, I say that time: 'Bargon he have put a belt round the world and buckle it tight to him--all right, ver' good.' I say to him: 'Bargon, what you do when you get ver' rich out on the Souris River in the prairie west?' He laugh and throw up his hands, for he have not many words any kind. And the dam little dwarf Parpon, he say: 'He will have flowers on the table and ice on the butter, and a wheel in his head.'

"And Bargon laugh and say: 'I will have plenty for my friends to eat and drink and a ver' fine time.' "'Good,' we all say-'Bagosh!' So they make the trip through twelve parish, and the fiddles go all the time, and I am what you say 'best man' with Bargon. I go all the time, and Lucette Dargois, she go with me and her brother--holy, what an eye had she in her head, that Lucette! As we go we sing a song all right, and there is no one sing so better as Norinne:

"'C'est la belle Francoise, Allons gai! C'est la belle Francoise, Qui veut se marier, Ma luron lurette! Qui veut se marier, Ma luron lure!'

"Ver' good, bagosh! Norinne and Bargon they go out to the Souris, and Bargon have a hunder' acre, and he put up a house and a shed not ver' big, and he carry his head high and his shoulders like a wall; yes, yes. First year it is pretty good time, and Norinne's cheeks--ah, like an apple they. Bimeby a baby laugh up at Bargon from Norinne's lap. I am on the Souris at a saw-mill then, and on Sunday sometime I go up to see Bargon and Norinne. I t'ink that baby is so dam funny; I laugh and pinch his nose. His name is Marie, and I say I marry him pretty quick some day. We have plenty hot cake, and beans and pork, and a little how-you- are from a jar behin' the door.

"Next year it is not so good. There is a bad crop and hard time, and Bargon he owe two hunder' dollar, and he pay int'rest. Norinne, she do all the work, and that little Marie, there is dam funny in him, and Norinne, she keep go, go, all the time, early and late, and she get ver' thin and quiet. So I go up from the mill more times, and I bring fol- lols for that Marie, for you know I said I go to marry him some day. And when I see how Bargon shoulders stoop and his eye get dull, and there is nothing in the jar behin' the door, I fetch a horn with me, and my fiddle, and, bagosh! there is happy sit-you-down. I make Bargon sing 'La Belle Francoise,' and then just before I go I make them laugh, for I stand by the cradle and I sing to that Marie:

"'Adieu, belle Frangoise; Allons gai! Adieu, belle Francoise! Moi, je to marierai, Ma luron lurette! Moi, je to marierai, Ma luron lure!'

"So; and another year it go along, and Bargon he know that if there come bad crop it is good-bye-my lover with himselves. He owe two hunder' and fifty dollar. It is the spring at Easter, and I go up to him and Norinne, for there is no Mass, and Pontiac is too far away off. We stan' at the door and look out, and all the prairie is green, and the sun stan' up high like a light on a pole, and the birds fly by ver' busy looking for the summer and the prairie-flower.

"'Bargon,' I say--and I give him a horn of old rye--'here's to le bon Dieu!'

"'Le bon Dieu, and a good harvest!' he say.

"I hear some one give a long breath behin', and I look round; but, no, it is Norinne with a smile--for she never grumble--bagosh! What purty eyes she have in her head! She have that Marie in her arms, and I say to Bargon it is like the Madonne in the Notre Dame at Montreal. He nod his head. 'C'est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,' he say.

"Before I go I take a piece of palm--it come from the Notre Dame; it is all bless by the Pope--and I nail it to the door of the house. 'For luck,' I say. Then I laugh, and I speak out to the prairie: 'Come along, good summer; come along, good crop; come two hunder' and fifty dollars for Gal Bargon.' Ver' quiet I give Norinne twenty dollar, but she will not take him. 'For Marie,' then I say: 'I go to marry him, bimeby.' But she say: 'Keep it and give it to Marie yourself some day.'

"She smile at me, then she have a little tear in her eye, and she nod to where Bargon stare' houtside, and she say: 'If this summer go wrong, it will kill him. He work and work and fret and worry for me and Marie, and sometimes he just sit and look at me and say not a word.'

"I say to her that there will be good crop, and next year we will be ver' happy. So, the time go on, and I send up a leetla snack of pork and molass' and tabac, and sugar and tea, and I get a letter from Bargon bimeby, and he say that heverything go right, he t'ink, this summer. He say I must come up. It is not dam easy to go in the summer, when the mill run night and day; but I say I will go.

"When I get up to Bargon's I laugh, for all the hunder' acre is ver' fine, and Bargon stan' hin the door, and stretch out his hand, and say: 'Rachette, there is six hunder' dollar for me.' I nod my head, and fetch out a horn, and he have one, his eyes all bright like a lime-kiln. He is thin and square, and his beard grow ver' thick and rough and long, and his hands are like planks. Norinne, she is ver' happy, too, and Marie bite on my finger, and I give him sugar-stick to suck.

"Bimeby Norinne say to me, ver' soft: 'If a hailstorm or a hot wind come, that is the end of it all, and of my poor Gal.'

"What I do? I laugh and ketch Marie under the arms, and I sit down, and I put him on my foot, and I sing that dam funny English song--'Here We Go to Banbury Cross.' An' I say: 'It will be all as happy as Marie pretty quick. Bargon he will have six hunder' dollar, and you a new dress and a hired girl to help you.'

"But all the time that day I think about a hail-storm or a hot wind whenever I look out on that hunder' acre farm. It is so beautiful, as you can guess--the wheat, the barley, the corn, the potatoes, the turnip, all green like sea-water, and pigeons and wild ducks flying up and down, and the horse and the ox standing in a field ver' comfer'ble.

"We have good time that day, and go to bed all happy that night. I get up at five o'clock, an' I go hout. Bargon stan' there looking hout on his field with the horse-bridle in his hand. 'The air not feel right,' he say to me. I t'ink the same, but I say to him: 'Your head not feel right--him too sof'.' He shake his head and go down to the field for his horse and ox, and hitch them up together, and go to work making a road.

"It is about ten o'clock when the dam thing come. Piff! go a hot splash of air in my face, and then I know that it is all up with Gal Bargon. A month after it is no matter, for the grain is ripe then, but now, when it is green, it is sure death to it all. I turn sick in my stomich, and I turn round and see Norinne stan' hin the door, all white, and she make her hand go as that, like she push back that hot wind.

"'Where is Gal?' she say. 'I must go to him.' 'No,' I say, 'I will fetch him. You stay with Marie.' Then I go ver' quick for Gal, and I find him, his hands all shut like that! and he shake them at the sky, and he say not a word, but his face, it go wild, and his eyes spin round in his head. I put my hand on his arm and say: 'Come home, Gal. Come home, and speak kind to Norinne and Marie.'

"I can see that hot wind lean down and twist the grain about--a dam devil thing from the Arzone desert down South. I take Gal back home, and we sit there all day, and all the nex' day, and a leetla more, and when we have look enough, there is no grain on that hunder' acre farm--only a dry-up prairie, all grey and limp. My skin is bake and rough, but when I look at Gal Bargon I know that his heart is dry like a bone, and, as Parpon say that back time, he have a wheel in his head. Norinne she is quiet, and she sit with her hand on his shoulder, and give him Marie to hold.

"But it is no good; it is all over. So I say: 'Let us go back to Pontiac. What is the good for to be rich? Let us be poor and happy once more.'

"And Norinne she look glad, and get up and say: 'Yes, let us go back.' But all at once she sit down with Marie in her arms, and cry--bagosh, I never see a woman cry like that!

"So we start back for Pontiac with the horse and the ox and some pork and bread and molass'. But Gal Bargon never hold up his head, but go silent, silent, and he not sleep at night. One night he walk away on the prairie, and when he come back he have a great pain. So he lie down, and we sit by him, an' he die. But once he whisper to me, and Norinne not hear: 'You say you will marry him, Rachette?' and I say, 'I will.'

"'C'est le bon Dieu!' he say at the last, but he say it with a little laugh. I think he have a wheel in his head. But bimeby, yiste'day, Norinne and Marie and I come to Pontiac."

The Little Chemist's wife dried her eyes, and Medallion said in French: "Poor Norinne! Poor Norinne! And so, Rachette, you are going to marry Marie, by-and-bye?" There was a quizzical look in Medallion's eyes.

Rachette threw up his chin a little. "I'm going to marry Norinne on New Year's Day," he said. "Bagosh, poor Norinne!" said Medallion, in a queer sort of tone. "It is the way of the world," he added. "I'll wait for Marie myself."

It looks as if he meant to, for she has no better friend. He talks to her much of Gal Bargon; of which her mother is glad.

A WORKER IN STONE

At the beginning he was only a tombstone-cutter. His name was Francois Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the end of a long hot day's labour, he finished the half-carved tombstone, and gave the price of it to the widow. Then, going to the Seigneur and Cure, he asked them to buy the shop and tools for him, and let him pay rent until he could take the place off their hands.

They did as he asked, and in two years he had bought and paid for the place, and had a few dollars to the good. During one of the two years a small-pox epidemic passed over Pontiac, and he was busy night and day. It was during this time that some good Catholics came to him with an heretical Protestant suggestion to carve a couplet or verse of poetry on the tombstones they ordered. They themselves, in most cases, knew none, and they asked Francois to supply them--as though he kept them in stock like marble and sand-paper. He had no collection of suitable epitaphs, and, besides, he did not know whether it was right to use them. Like all his race in New France he was jealous of any inroads of Protestantism, or what the Little Chemist called "Englishness." The good M. Fabre, the Cure, saw no harm in it, but said he could not speak for any one's grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words upon the stone. But still Francois might bring all the epitaphs to him before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or reject, as the case might be.

At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets, taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But presently all that was changed, and the Cure one day had laid before him three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and when he passed them back to Francois his eyes were moist, for he was a man truly after God's own heart, and full of humanity.

"Will you read them to me, Francois?" he said, as the worker in stone was about to put the paper back in his pocket. "Give the names of the dead at the same time."

So Francois read:

"Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years-"

"Yes, yes," interrupted the Cure, "the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung by the English, and cut down just in time to save him--an innocent man. For thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph."

Francois read it:

"Poor as a sparrow was I, Yet I was saved like a king; I heard the death-bells ring, Yet I saw a light in the sky: And now to my Father I wing."

The Cure nodded his head. "Go on; the next," he said.

"Annette John, aged twenty years--"

"So. The daughter of Chief John. When Queen Anne of England was on the throne she sent Chief John's grandfather a gold cup and a hundred pounds. The girl loved, but would not marry, that she might keep Chief John from drinking. A saint, Francois! What have they said of her?"

Francois smoothed out the paper and read:

"A little while I saw the world go by A little doorway that I called my own, A loaf, a cup of water, and a bed had I, A shrine of Jesus, where I knelt alone: And now alone I bid the world good-bye."

The Cure turned his head away. "Go on," he said sadly. "Chief John has lost his right hand. Go on."

"Henri Rouget"

"Aged thirty years," again interrupted the Cure. "Henri Rouget, idiot; as young as the morning. For man grows old only by what he suffers, and what he forgives, and what he sins. What have you to say for Henri Rouget, my Francois?"

And Francois read:

"I was a fool; nothing had I to know Of men, and naught to men had I to give. God gave me nothing; now to God I go, Now ask for pain, for bread, Life for my brain: dead, By God's love I shall then begin to live."

The priest rose to his feet and put a hand on the young man's shoulder.

"Do you know, Francois," he said, half sadly, "do you know, you have the true thing in you. Come often to me, my son, and bring all these things --all you write."

While the Cure troubled himself about his future, Francois began to work upon a monument for the grave of a dozen soldiers of Pontiac who were killed in the War of the Patriots. They had died for a mistaken cause, and had been buried on the field of battle. Long ago something would have been done to commemorate them but that three of them were Protestants, and difficulties had been raised by the bigoted. But Francois thought only of the young men in their common grave at St. Eustache. He remembered when they went away one bright morning, full of the joy of an erring patriotism, of the ardour of a weak but fascinating cause: race against race, the conquered against the conquerors, the usurped against the usurpers.

In the space before the parish church it stands--a broken shaft, with an unwound wreath straying down its sides; a monument of fine proportions, a white figure of beaten valour and erring ardour of youth and beautiful bad ambition. One Saturday night it was not there, and when next morning the people came to Mass it was there. All night had Francois and his men worked, and the first rays of the morning sun fell on the tall shivered shaft set firmly in its place. Francois was a happy man. All else that he had done had been wholly after a crude, staring convention, after rule and measure--an artisan's, a tombstone-cutter's labour. This was the work of a man with the heart and mind of an artist. When the people came to Mass they gazed and gazed, and now and then the weeping of a woman was heard, for among them were those whose sons and brothers were made memorable by this stone.

That day at the close of his sermon the Cure spoke of it, and said at the last: "That white shaft, dear brethren, is for us a sign of remembrance and a warning to our souls. In the name of race and for their love they sinned. But yet they sinned; and this monument, the gift and work of one young like them, ardent and desiring like them, is for ever in our eyes the crucifixion of our wrong ambitions and our selfish aims.

"Nay, let us be wise and let us be good. They who rule us speak with foreign tongue, but their hearts desire our peace and a mutual regard. Pray that this be. And pray for the young and the daring and the foolish. And pray also that he who has given us here a good gift may find his thanks in our better-ordered lives, and that he may consecrate his parts and talents to the redeeming actions of this world."

And so began the awakening of Francois Lagarre; and so began his ambition and his peril.

For, as he passed from the church, the Seigneur touched him on the shoulder and introduced him to his English grandniece, come on a visit for the summer, the daughter of a London baronet. She had but just arrived, and she was feeling that first homesickness which succeeds transplanting. The face of the young worker in stone interested her; the idea of it all was romantic; the possibilities of the young man's life opened out before her. Why should not she give him his real start, win his gratitude, help him to his fame, and then, when it was won, be pointed out as a discoverer and a patron?

All these things flashed through her mind as they were introduced. The young man did not read the look in her eyes, but there was one other person in the crowd about the church steps who did read it, whose heart beat furiously, whose foot tapped the ground angrily--a black-haired, brown-eyed farmer's daughter, who instantly hated the yellow hair and rosy and golden face of the blue-eyed London lady; who could, that instant, have torn the silk gown from her graceful figure.

She was not disturbed without reason. And for the moment, even when she heard impertinent and incredulous fellows pooh-poohing the monument, and sharpening their rather dull wits upon its corners, she did not open her lips, when otherwise she would have spoken her mind with a vengeance; for Jeanne Marchand had a reputation for spirit and temper, and she spared no one when her blood was up. She had a touch of the vixen--an impetuous, loving, forceful mademoiselle, in marked contrast to the rather ascetic Francois, whose ways were more refined than his origin might seem to warrant.

"Sapre!" said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; "it's like a timber of cheese stuck up. What's that to make a fuss about?"

"Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any fool could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!"

"Fish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that Francois has a rattle in his capote. He'd spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block."

But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man!

"What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can't write his name," she said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn't remember that Francois Lagarre made his brother's tombstone, and charged him nothing for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it! No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba'tiste the fighter, as brave as Caroche is a coward! He doesn't remember the verse on Ba'tiste's tombstone, does he?"

Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in the crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he would not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant nothing against Francois, the young man recited the words slowly--an epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid bully.

Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot's Memory, he said:

"Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken, Wrestling I've fallen, and I've rose up again; Mostly I've stood-- I've had good bone and blood; Others went down, though fighting might and main. Now death steps in-- Death the price of sin. The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain, One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken."

"Good enough for Ba'tiste," said Duclosse the mealman.

The wave of feeling was now altogether with Francois, and presently he walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd dispersed. Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening she was unhappy, for she saw Francois going towards the house of the Seigneur; and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every three or four days she saw the same thing.

Meanwhile Francois worked as he had never before worked in his life. Night and day he was shut in his shop, and for two months he came with no epitaphs for the Cure, and no new tombstones were set up in the graveyard. The influence of the lady at the Seigneury was upon him, and he himself believed it was for his salvation. She had told him of great pieces of sculpture she had seen, had sent and got from Quebec City, where he had never been, pictures of some of the world's masterpieces in sculpture, and he had lost himself in the study of them and in the depths of the girl's eyes. She meant no harm; the man interested her beyond what was reasonable in one of his station in life. That was all, and all there ever was.

Presently people began to gossip, and a story crept round that, in a new shed which he had built behind his shop, Francois was chiselling out of stone the nude figure of a woman. There were one or two who professed they had seen it. The wildest gossip said that the figure was that of the young lady at the Seigneury. Francois saw no more of Jeanne Marchand; he thought of her sometimes, but that was all. A fever of work was on him. Twice she came to the shed where he laboured, and knocked at the door. The first time, he asked who was there. When she told him he opened the door just a little way, smiled at her, caught her hand and pressed it, and, when she would have entered, said: "No, no, another day, Jeanne," and shut the door in her face.

She almost hated him because he had looked so happy. Still another day she came knocking. She called to him, and this time he opened the door and admitted her. That very hour she had heard again the story of the nude stone woman in the shed, and her heart was full of jealousy, fury, and suspicion. He was very quiet, he seemed tired. She did not notice that. Her heart had throbbed wildly as she stepped inside the shed. She looked round, all delirious eagerness for the nude figure.

There it was, covered up with a great canvas! Yes, there were the outlines of the figure. How shapely it seemed, even inside the canvas!

She stepped forward without a word, and snatched at the covering. He swiftly interposed and stopped her hand.

"I will see it," she said.

"Not to-day," he answered.

"I tell you I will." She wrenched her hand free and caught at the canvas. A naked foot and ankle showed. He pinioned her wrists with one hand and drew her towards the door, determination and anger in his face.

"You beast, you liar!" she said.

"You beast! beast! beast!"