Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Complete - Gilbert Parker
Shon paused and began to fumble with the cards on the table before him,
looking the while at the others.
The Chief Factor was the first to speak. "I don't doubt but he told you
true about the White Hands and the Golden Dogs," he said; "for there's
been war and bad blood between them beyond the memory of man--at least
since the time that the Mighty Men lived, from which these date their
history. But there's nothing to be done to-night; for if we tell old Wind
Driver, there'll be no sleeping at the Fort. So we'll let the thing
stand."
"You believe all this poppy-cock, Chief"? said Lazenby to the Factor, but
laughing in Shon's face the while. The Factor gravely replied: "I knew of
the Tall Master years ago on the Far-Off Metal River; and though I never
saw him I can believe these things--and more. You do not know this world
through and through, Lazenby; you have much to learn."
Pierre said nothing. He took the cards from Shon and passed them to and
fro in his hand. Mechanically he dealt them out, and as mechanically they
took them up and in silence began to play.
The next day there was commotion and excitement at Fort Luke. The Golden
Dogs were making preparations for the battle. Pow-wow followed pow-wow,
and paint and feathers followed all. The H. B. C. people had little to do
but look to their guns and house everything within the walls of the Fort.
At night, Shon, Pierre, and Lazenby were seated about the table in the
common-room, the cards lying dealt before them, waiting for the Factor to
come. Presently the door opened and the Factor entered, followed by
another. Shon and Pierre sprang to their feet.
"The Tall Master," said Shon with a kind of awe; and then stood still.
Their towering visitor slowly unloosed something he carried very
carefully and closely beneath his arm, and laid it on the table, dropping
his compass-like fingers softly on it. He bowed gravely to each, yet the
bow seemed grotesque, his body was so ungainly. With the eyes of all
drawn to him absolutely, he spoke in a low sonorous tone: "I have
followed the traveller fast"--his hand lifted gently towards Shon--"for
there are weighty concerns abroad, and I have things to say and do before
I go again to my people--and beyond. . . . I have hungered for the face
of a white man these many years, and his was the first I saw;"--again he
tossed a long finger towards the Irishman--"and it brought back many
things. I remember . . . " He paused, then sat down; and they all did
the same. He looked at them one by one with distant kindness. "I
remember," he continued, and his strangely articulated fingers folded
about the thing on the table beside him, "when"--here the cards caught
his eye. His face underwent a change. An eager fantastic look shot from
his eye, "when I gambled this away at Lucca,"--his hand drew the bundle
closer to him--"but I won it back again--at a price!" he gloomily added,
glancing sideways as to someone at his elbow.
He remained, eyes hanging upon space for a moment, then he recollected
himself and continued: "I became wiser; I never risked it again; but I
loved the game always. I was a gamester from the start--the artist is
always so when he is greatest,--like nature herself. And once, years
after, I played with a mother for her child--and mine. And yet once again
at Parma with"--here he paused, throwing that sharp sidelong
glance--"with the greatest gamester, for the infinite secret of Art: and
I won it; but I paid the price! . . . I should like to play now."
He reached his hand, drew up five cards, and ran his eye through them.
"Play!" he said. "The hand is good--very good. . . . Once when I played
with the Princess--but it is no matter; and Tuscany is far away! . . .
Play!" he repeated.
Pierre instantly picked up the cards, with an air of cool satisfaction.
He had either found the perfect gamester or the perfect liar. He knew the
remedy for either.
The Chief Factor did not move. Shon and Lazenby followed Pierre's action.
By their positions Lazenby became his partner. They played in silence for
a minute, the Tall Master taking all. "Napoleon was a wonderful player,
but he lost with me," he said slowly as he played a card upon three
others and took them.
Lazenby was so taken back by this remark that, presently, he trumped his
partner's ace, and was rewarded by a talon-like look from the Tall
Master's eye; but it was immediately followed by one of saturnine
amusement.
They played on silently.
"Ah, you are a wonderful player!" he presently said to Pierre, with a
look of keen scrutiny. "Come, I will play with you--for values--the first
time in seventy-five years; then, no more!"
Lazenby and Shon drew away beside the Chief Factor. The two played.
Meanwhile Lazenby said to Shon: "The man's mad. He talks about Napoleon
as if he'd known him--as if it wasn't three-fourths of a century ago.
Does he think we're all born idiots? Why, he's not over sixty years old
now. But where the deuce did he come from with that Italian face? And the
funniest part of it is, he reminds me of someone. Did you notice how he
limped--the awkward beggar!"
Lazenby had unconsciously lifted his voice, and presently the Tall Master
turned and said to him: "I ran a nail into my foot at Leyden seventy-odd
years ago."
"He's the devil himself," rejoined Lazenby, and he did not lower his
voice.
"Many with angelic gifts are children of His Dark Majesty," said the Tall
Master, slowly; and though he appeared closely occupied with the game, a
look of vague sadness came into his face.
For a half-hour they played in silence, the slight, delicate-featured
half-breed, and the mysterious man who had for so long been a thing of
wonder in the North, a weird influence among the Indians.
There was a strange, cold fierceness in the Tall Master's face. He now
staked his precious bundle against the one thing Pierre prized--the gold
watch received years ago for a deed of heroism on the Chaudiere. The
half-breed had always spoken of it as amusing, but Shon at least knew
that to Pierre it was worth his right hand.
Both men drew breath slowly, and their eyes were hard. The stillness
became painful; all were possessed by the grim spirit of Chance. . . .
The Tall Master won. He came to his feet, his shambling body drawn
together to a height. Pierre rose also. Their looks clinched. Pierre
stretched out his hand. "You are my master at this," he said.
The other smiled sadly. "I have played for the last time. I have not
forgotten how to win. If I had lost, uncommon things had happened.
This,"--he laid his hand on the bundle and gently undid it,--"is my
oldest friend, since the warm days at Parma . . . all dead . . . all
dead." Out of the velvet wrapping, broidered with royal and ducal arms,
and rounded by a wreath of violets--which the Chief Factor looked at
closely--he drew his violin. He lifted it reverently to his lips.
"My good Garnerius!" he said. "Three masters played you, but I am chief
of them all. They had the classic soul, but I the romantic heart--'les
grandes caprices.'" His head lifted higher. "I am the master artist of
the world. I have found the core of Nature. Here in the North is the
wonderful soul of things. Beyond this, far beyond, where the foolish
think is only inviolate ice, is the first song of the Ages in a very
pleasant land. I am the lost Master, and I shall return, I shall return
. . . but not yet . . . not yet."
He fetched the instrument to his chin with a noble pride. The ugliness of
his face was almost beautiful now.
The Chief Factor's look was fastened on him with bewilderment; he was
trying to remember something: his mind went feeling, he knew not why, for
a certain day, a quarter of a century before, when he unpacked a box of
books and papers from England. Most of them were still in the Fort. The
association of this man with these things fretted him.
The Tall Master swung his bow upward, but at that instant there came a
knock, and, in response to a call, Wind Driver and Wine Face entered.
Wine Face was certainly a beautiful girl; and Lazenby might well have
been pardoned for throwing in his fate with such a heathen, if he
despaired of ever seeing England again. The Tall Master did not turn
towards these. The Indians sat gracefully on a bearskin before the fire.
The eyes of the girl were cast shyly upon the Man as he stood there
unlike an ordinary man; in his face a fine hardness and the cold light of
the North. He suddenly tipped his bow upward and brought it down with a
most delicate crash upon the strings. Then softly, slowly, he passed into
a weird fantasy. The Indians sat breathless. Upon them it acted more
impressively than the others: besides, the player's eye was searching
them now; he was playing into their very bodies. And they responded with
some swift shocks of recognition crossing their faces. Suddenly the old
Indian sprang up. He thrust his arms out, and made, as if unconsciously,
some fantastic yet solemn motions. The player smiled in a far-off
fashion, and presently ran the bow upon the strings in an exquisite cry;
and then a beautiful avalanche of sound slid from a distance, growing
nearer and nearer, till it swept through the room, and imbedded all in
its sweetness.
At this the old Indian threw himself forward at the player's feet. "It is
the song of the White Weaver, the maker of the world--the music from the
Hills of the Mighty Men. . . . I knew it--I knew it--but never like that.
. . . It was lost to the world; the wild cry of the lofty stars. . . ."
His face was wet.
The girl too had risen. She came forward as if in a dream and reverently
touched the arm of the musician, who paused now, and was looking at them
from under his long eyelashes. She said whisperingly: "Are you a spirit?
Do you come from the Hills of the Mighty Men?"
He answered gravely: "I am no spirit. But I have journeyed in the Hills
of the Mighty Men and along their ancient hunting-grounds. This that I
have played is the ancient music of the world--the music of Jubal and his
comrades. It comes humming from the Poles; it rides laughing down the
planets; it trembles through the snow; it gives joy to the bones of the
wind. . . . And I am the voice of it," he added; and he drew up his loose
unmanageable body till it looked enormous, firm, and dominant.
The girl's fingers ran softly over to his breast. "I will follow you,"
she said, "when you go again to the Happy Valleys."
Down from his brow there swept a faint hue of colour, and, for a breath,
his eyes closed tenderly with hers. But he straightway gathered back his
look again, his body shrank, not rudely, from her fingers, and he
absently said: "I am old-in years the father of the world. It is a man's
life gone since, at Genoa, she laid her fingers on my breast like that.
. . . These things can be no more . . . until the North hath its summer
again; and I stand young--the Master--upon the summits of my renown."
The girl drew slowly back. Lazenby was muttering under his breath now; he
was overwhelmed by this change in Wine Face. He had been impressed to awe
by the Tall Master's music, but he was piqued, and determined not to give
in easily. He said sneeringly that Maskelyne and Cooke in music had come
to life, and suggested a snake-dance.
The Tall Master heard these things, and immediately he turned to Lazenby
with an angry look on his face. His brows hung heavily over the dull fire
of his eyes; his hair itself seemed like Medusa's, just quivering into
savage life; the fingers spread out white and claw-like upon the strings
as he curved his violin to his chin, whereof it became, as it were, a
piece. The bow shot out and down upon the instrument with a great
clangour. There eddied into a vast arena of sound the prodigious elements
of war. Torture rose from those four immeasurable chords; destruction was
afoot upon them; a dreadful dance of death supervened.
Through the Chief Factor's mind there flashed--though mechanically, and
only to be remembered afterwards--the words of a schoolday poem. It
shuttled in and out of the music:
"Wheel the wild dance,
While lightnings glance,
And thunders rattle loud;
And call the brave to bloody grave,
To sleep without a shroud."
The face of the player grew old and drawn. The skin was wrinkled, but
shone, the hair spread white, the nose almost met the chin, the mouth was
all malice. It was old age with vast power: conquest volleyed from the
fingers.
Shon McGann whispered aves, aching with the sound; the Chief Factor
shuddered to his feet; Lazenby winced and drew back to the wall, putting
his hand before his face as though the sounds were striking him; the old
Indian covered his head with his arms upon the floor. Wine Face knelt,
her face all grey, her fingers lacing and interlacing with pain. Only
Pierre sat with masterful stillness, his eyes never moving from the face
of the player; his arms folded; his feet firmly wedded to the floor. The
sound became strangely distressing. It shocked the flesh and angered the
nerves. Upon Lazenby it acted singularly. He cowered from it, but
presently, with a look of madness in his eyes, rushed forward, arms
outstretched, as though to seize this intolerable minstrel. There was a
sudden pause in the playing; then the room quaked with noise, buffeting
Lazenby into stillness. The sounds changed instantly again, and music of
an engaging sweetness and delight fell about them as in silver drops--an
enchanting lyric of love. Its exquisite tenderness subdued Lazenby, who,
but now, had a heart for slaughter. He dropped on his knees, threw his
head into his arms, and sobbed hard. The Tall Master's fingers crept
caressingly along one of those heavenly veins of sound, his bow poising
softly over it. The farthest star seemed singing.
At dawn the next day the Golden Dogs were gathered for war before the
Fort. Immediately after the sun rose, the foe were seen gliding darkly
out of the horizon. From another direction came two travellers. These
also saw the White Hands bearing upon the Fort, and hurried forward. They
reached the gates of the Fort in good time, and were welcomed. One was a
chief trader from a fort in the west. He was an old man, and had been
many years in the service of the H. B. C.; and, like Lazenby, had spent
his early days in London, a connoisseur in all its pleasures; the other
was a voyageur. They had posted on quickly to bring news of this crusade
of the White Hands.
The hostile Indians came steadily to within a few hundred yards of the
Golden Dogs. Then they sent a brave to say that they had no quarrel with
the people of the Fort; and that if the Golden Dogs came on they would
battle with them alone; since the time had come for "one to be as both,"
as their Medicine Men had declared since the days of the Great Race. And
this signified that one should destroy the other.
At this all the Golden Dogs ranged into line. The sun shone brightly, the
long hedge of pine woods in the distance caught the colour of the sky,
the flowers of the plains showed handsomely as a carpet of war. The
bodies of the fighters glistened. You could see the rise and fall of
their bare, strenuous chests. They stood as their forefathers in battle,
almost naked, with crested head, gleaming axe, scalp-knife, and bows and
arrows. At first there was the threatening rustle of preparation; then a
great stillness came and stayed for a moment; after which, all at once,
there sped through the air a big shout of battle, and the innumerable
twang of flying arrows; and the opposing hosts ran upon each other.
Pierre and Shon McGann, watching from the Fort, cried out with
excitement.
"Divils me darlin'!" called Shon, "are we gluin' our eyes to a chink in
the wall, whin the tangle of battle goes on beyand? Bedad, I'll not stand
it! Look at them twistin' the neck o' war! Open the gates, open the gates
say I, and let us have play with our guns."
"Hush! 'Mon Dieu!'" interrupted Pierre. "Look! The Tall Master!"
None at the Fort had seen the Tall Master since the night before. Now he
was covering the space between the walls and the battle, his hair
streaming behind him.
When he came near to the vortex of fight he raised his violin to his
chin, and instantly a piercingly sweet call penetrated the wild uproar.
The Call filled it, drained through it, wrapped it, overcame it; so that
it sank away at last like the outwash of an exhausted tide: the weft of
battle stayed unfinished in the loom.
Then from the Indian lodges came the women and children. They drew near
to the unearthly luxury of that Call, now lifting with an unbounded joy.
Battleaxes fell to the ground; the warriors quieted even where they stood
locked with their foes. The Tall Master now drew away from them, facing
the north and west. That ineffable Call drew them after him with grave
joy; and they brought their dead and wounded along. The women and
children glided in among the men and followed also. Presently one girl
ran away from the rest and came close into the great leader's footsteps.
At that instant, Lazenby, from the wall of the Fort, cried out madly,
sprang down, opened the gates, and rushed towards the girl, crying: "Wine
Face! Wine Face!"
She did not look behind. But he came close to her and caught her by the
waist. "Come back! Come back! O my love, come back!" he urged; but she
pushed him gently from her.
"Hush! Hush!" she said. "We are going to the Happy Valleys. Don't you
hear him calling"? . . . And Lazenby fell back.
The Tall Master was now playing a wonderful thing, half dance, half
carnival; but with that Call still beating through it. They were passing
the Fort at an angle. All within issued forth to see. Suddenly the old
trader who had come that morning started forward with a cry; then stood
still. He caught the Factor's arm; but he seemed unable to speak yet; his
face was troubled, his eyes were hard upon the player.
The procession passed the empty lodges, leaving the ground strewn with
their weapons, and not one of their number stayed behind. They passed
away towards the high hills of the north-west-beautiful austere barriers.
Still the trader gazed, and was pale, and trembled. They watched long.
The throng of pilgrims grew a vague mass; no longer an army of
individuals; and the music came floating back with distant charm. At last
the old man found voice. "My God, it is--"
The Factor touched his arm, interrupting him, and drew a picture from his
pocket--one but just now taken from that musty pile of books, received so
many years before. He showed it to the old man.
"Yes, yes," said the other, "that is he. . . . And the world buried him
forty years ago!"
Pierre, standing near, added with soft irony: "There are strange things
in the world. He is the gamester of the world. 'Mais' a grand comrade
also."
The music came waving back upon them delicately but the pilgrims were
fading from view.
Soon the watchers were alone with the glowing day.
THE CRIMSON FLAG
Talk and think as one would, The Woman was striking to see; with
marvellous flaxen hair and a joyous violet eye. She was all pulse and
dash; but she was as much less beautiful than the manager's wife as Tom
Liffey was as nothing beside the manager himself; and one would care
little to name the two women in the same breath if the end had been
different. When The Woman came to Little Goshen there were others of her
class there, but they were of a commoner sort and degree. She was the
queen of a lawless court, though she never, from first to last, spoke to
one of those others who were her people; neither did she hold commerce
with any of the ordinary miners, save Pretty Pierre, but he was more
gambler than miner,--and he went, when the matter was all over, and told
her some things that stripped her soul naked before her eyes. Pierre had
a wonderful tongue. It was only the gentlemen-diggers--and there were
many of them at Little Goshen--who called upon her when the lights were
low; and then there was a good deal of muffled mirth in the white house
among the pines. The rougher miners made no quarrel with this, for the
gentlemen-diggers were popular enough, they were merely sarcastic and
humorous, and said things which, coming to The Woman's ears, made her
very merry; for she herself had an abundant wit, and had spent wild hours
with clever men. She did not resent the playful insolence that sent a
dozen miners to her house in the dead of night with a crimson flag, which
they quietly screwed to her roof; and paint, with which they deftly put a
wide stripe of scarlet round the cornice, and another round the basement.
In the morning, when she saw what had been done, she would not have the
paint removed nor the flag taken down; for, she said, the stripes looked
very well, and the other would show that she was always at home.
Now, the notable thing was that Heldon, the manager, was in The Woman's
house on the night this was done. Tom Liffey, the lumpish guide and
trapper, saw him go in; and, days afterwards, he said to Pierre: "Divils
me own, but this is a bad hour for Heldon's wife--she with a face like a
princess and eyes like the fear o' God. Nivir a wan did I see like her,
since I came out of Erin with a clatter of hoofs behoind me and a squall
on the sea before. There's wimmin there wid cheeks like roses and
buthermilk, and a touch that'd make y'r heart pound on y'r ribs; but none
that's grander than Heldon's wife. To lave her for that other, standin'
hip-high in her shame, is temptin' the fires of Heaven, that basted the
sinners o' Sodom."
Pierre, pausing between the whiffs of a cigarette, said: "So? But you
know more of catching foxes in winter, and climbing mountains in summer,
and the grip of the arm of an Injin girl, than of these things. You are
young, quite young in the world, Tom Liffey."
"Young I may be with a glint o' grey at me temples from a night o'
trouble beyand in the hills; but I'm the man, an' the only man, that's
climbed to the glacier-top--God's Playground, as they call it: and nivir
a dirty trick have I done to Injin girl or any other; and be damned to
you there!"
"Sometimes I think you are as foolish as Shon McGann," compassionately
replied the half-breed.
"You have almighty virtue, and you did that brave trick of the glacier;
but great men have fallen. You are not dead yet. Still, as you say,
Heldon's wife is noble to see. She is grave and cold, and speaks little;
but there is something in her which is not of the meek of the earth. Some
women say nothing, and suffer and forgive, and take such as Heldon back
to their bosoms; but there are others--I remember a woman--bien, it is no
matter, it was long ago; but they two are as if born of one mother; and
what comes of this will be mad play--mad play."
"Av coorse his wife may not get to know of it, and--"
"Not get to know it! 'Tsh, you are a child--"
"Faith, I'll say what I think, and that in y'r face! Maybe he'll tire of
the handsome rip--for handsome she is, like a yellow lily growin' out o'
mud--and go back to his lawful wife, that believes he's at the mines,
when he's drinkin' and colloguin' wid a fly-away."
Pierre slowly wheeled till he had the Irishman straight in his eye. Then
he said in a low, cutting tone: "I suppose your heart aches for the
beautiful lady, eh?" Here he screwed his slight forefinger into Tom's
breast; then he added sharply: "'Nom de Dieu,' but you make me angry! You
talk too much. Such men get into trouble. And keep down the riot of that
heart of yours, Tom Liffey, or you'll walk on the edge of knives one day.
And now take an inch of whisky and ease the anxious soul. 'Voila!'" After
a moment he added: "Women work these things out for themselves." Then the
two left the hut, and amiably strolled together to the centre of the
village, where they parted. It was as Pierre had said: the woman would
work the thing out for herself. Later that evening Heldon's wife stood
cloaked and veiled in the shadows of the pines, facing the house with The
Crimson Flag. Her eyes shifted ever from the door to the flag, which was
stirred by the light breeze. Once or twice she shivered as with cold, but
she instantly stilled again, and watched. It was midnight. Here and there
beyond in the village a light showed, and straggling voices floated
faintly towards her. For a long time no sound came from the house. But at
last she heard a laugh. At that she drew something from her pocket, and
held it firmly in her hand. Once she turned and looked at another house
far up on the hill, where lights were burning. It was Heldon's house--her
home. A sharp sound as of anguish and anger escaped her; then she
fastened her eyes on the door in front of her.
At that moment Tom Liffey was standing with his hands on his hips looking
at Heldon's home on the hill; and he said some rumbling words, then
strode on down the road, and suddenly paused near the wife. He did not
see her. He faced the door at which she was looking, and shook his fist
at it.