Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Complete - Gilbert Parker
"If not, so much the worse, eh"? returned Pretty Pierre.
"Work the sum out to suit yourself. We've got our necks to save. God'll
have to help the Idiot if we can't."
"You hear, Grah Hamon, Idiot," said Pierre an hour afterwards, "we're
going to leave Fort o' God and make for Rupert House. You've a dragging
leg, you're gone in the savvy, you have to balance yourself with your
hands as you waddle along, and you slobber when you talk; but you've got
to cut away with us quick across the Beaver Plains, and Christ'll have to
help you if we can't. That's what the Factor says, and that's how the
case stands, Idiot--'bien?'"
"Grah want pipe--bubble--bubble--wind blow," muttered the daft one.
Pretty Pierre bent over and said slowly: "If you stay here, Grah, the
Indian get your scalp; if you go, the snow is deep and the frost is like
a badger's tooth, and you can't be carried."
"Oh, Oh!--my mother dead--poor Annie--by God, Grah want pipe--poor Grah
sleep in snow-bubble, bubble--Oh, Oh!--the long wind, fly away."
Pretty Pierre watched the great head of the Idiot as it swung heavily on
his shoulders, and then said: "'Mais,' like that, so!" and turned away.
When the party were about to sally forth on their perilous path to
safety, Gyng stood and cried angrily: "Well, why hasn't some one bundled
up that moth-eaten Caliban? Curse it all, must I do everything myself?"
"But you see," said Pierre, "the Caliban stays at Fort o' God."
"You've got a Christian heart in you, so help me, Heaven!" replied the
other. "No, sir, we give him a chance,--and his Maker too for that
matter, to show what He's willing to do for His misfits."
Pretty Pierre rejoined, "Well, I have thought. The game is all against
Grah if he go; but there are two who stay at Fort o' God."
And that is how, when the Factor and his half-breeds and trappers stole
away in silence towards the Devil's Causeway, Pierre and the Idiot
remained behind. And that is why the flag of the H. B. C. still flew
above Fort o' God in the New Year's sun just twenty years ago to-day.
The Hudson's Bay Company had never done a worse day's work than when they
promoted Gyng to be chief factor. He loathed the heathen and he showed
his loathing. He had a heart harder than iron, a speech that bruised
worse than the hoof of an angry moose. And when at last he drove away a
band of wandering Sioux, foodless, from the stores, siege and ambush took
the place of prayer, and a nasty portion fell to Fort o' God. For the
Indians found a great cache of buffalo meat, and, having sent the women
and children south with the old men, gave constant and biting assurances
to Gyng that the heathen hath his hour, even though he be a dog which is
refused those scraps from the white man's table which give life in the
hour of need. Besides all else, there was in the Fort the thing which the
gods made last to humble the pride of men--there was rum.
And the morning after Gyng and his men had departed, because it was a day
when frost was master of the sun, and men grew wild for action, since to
stand still was to face indignant Death, they, who camped without,
prepared to make a sally upon the wooden gates. Pierre saw their intent,
and hid in the ground some pemmican and all the scanty rum. Then he
looked at his powder and shot, and saw that there was little left. If he
spent it on the besiegers, how should they fare for beast and fowl in
hungry days? And for his rifle he had but a brace of bullets. He rolled
these in his hand, looking upon them with a grim smile. And the Idiot,
seeing, rose and sidled towards him, and said: "Poor Grah want
pipe--bubble--bubble." Then a light of childish cunning came into his
eyes, and he touched the bullets blunderingly, and continued: "Plenty,
plenty b'longs Grah--give poor Grah pipe--plenty, plenty, give you
these."
And Pretty Pierre after a moment replied: "So that's it, Grah?--you've
got bullets stowed away? Well, I must have them. It's a one-sided game in
which you get the tricks; but here's the pipe, Idiot--my only pipe for
your dribbling mouth--my last good comrade. Now show me the bullets. Take
me to them, daft one, quick."
A little later the Idiot sat inside the store, wrapped in loose furs, and
blowing bubbles; while Pretty Pierre, with many handfuls of bullets by
him, waited for the attack.
"Eh," he said, as he watched from a loophole, "Gyng and the others have
got safely past the Causeway, and the rest is possible. Well, it hurts an
idiot as much to die, perhaps, as a half-breed or a factor. It is good to
stay here. If we fight, and go out swift like Grah's bubbles, it is the
game. If we starve and sleep as did Grah's mother, then it also is the
game. It is great to have all the chances against and then to win. We
shall see."
With a sharp relish in his eye he watched the enemy coming slowly
forward. Yet he talked almost idly to himself: "I have a thought of so
long ago. A woman--she was a mother, and it was on the Madawaska River,
and she said: 'Sometimes I think a devil was your father, an angel
sometimes. You were begot in an hour between a fighting and a mass:
between blood and heaven. And when you were born you made no cry. They
said that was a sign of evil. You refused the breast, and drank only of
the milk of wild cattle. In baptism you flung your hand before your face
that the water might not touch, nor the priest's finger make a cross upon
the water. And they said it were better if you had been born an idiot
than with an evil spirit; and that your hand would be against the loins
that bore you. But Pierre, ah Pierre, you love your mother, do you not?'"
. . . And he standing now, his eye closed with the gate-chink in front of
Fort o' God, said quietly: "She was of the race that hated these--my
mother; and she died of a wound they gave her at the Tete Blanche Hill.
Well, for that you die now, Yellow Arm, if this gun has a bullet cold
enough."
A bullet pinged through the sharp air, as the Indians swarmed towards the
gate, and Yellow Arm, the chief, fell. The besiegers paused; and then, as
if at the command of the fallen man, they drew back, bearing him to the
camp, where they sat down and mourned.
Pierre watched them for a time; and, seeing that they made no further
move, retired into the store, where the Idiot muttered and was happy
after his kind. "Grah got pipe--blow away--blow away to Annie--pretty
soon."
"Yes, Grah, there's chance enough that you'll blow away to Annie pretty
soon," remarked the other.
"Grah have white eagles--fly, fly on the wind--oh, oh, bubble, bubble!"
and he sent the filmy globes floating from the pipe that a camp of
river-drivers had given the half-breed winters before.
Pierre stood and looked at the wandering eyes, behind which were the
torturings of an immense and confused intelligence; a life that fell
deformed before the weight of too much brain, so that all tottered from
the womb into the gutters of foolishness, and the tongue mumbled of chaos
when it should have told marvellous things. And the half-breed, the
thought of this coming upon him, said: "Well, I think the matters of hell
have fallen across the things of heaven, and there is storm. If for one
moment he could think clear, it would be great."
He bethought him of a certain chant, taught him by a medicine man in
childhood, which, sung to the waving of a torch in a place of darkness,
caused evil spirits to pass from those possessed, and good spirits to
reign in their stead. And he raised the Idiot to his feet, and brought
him, maundering, to a room where no light was. He kneeled before him with
a lighted torch of bear's fat and the tendons of the deer, and waving it
gently to and fro, sang the ancient rune, until the eye of the Idiot,
following the torch at a tangent as it waved, suddenly became fixed upon
the flame, when it ceased to move. And the words of the chant ran through
Grah's ears, and pierced to the remote parts of his being; and a
sickening trouble came upon his face, and the lips ceased to drip, and
were caught up in twinges of pain. . . . The chant rolled on: "Go forth,
go forth upon them, thou, the Scarlet Hunter! Drive them forth into the
wilds, drive them crying forth! Enter in, O enter in, and lie upon the
couch of peace, the couch of peace within my wigwam, thou the wise one!
Behold, I call to thee!"
And Pierre, looking upon the Idiot, saw his face glow, and his eye stream
steadily to the light, and he said, "What is it that you see,
Grah?--speak!"
All pitifulness and struggle had gone from the Idiot's face, and a strong
calm fell upon it, and the voice of a man that God had created spoke
slowly: "There is an end of blood. The great chief Yellow Arm is fallen.
He goeth to the plains where his wife will mourn upon his knees, and his
children cry, because he that gathered food is gone, and the pots are
empty on the fire. And they who follow him shall fight no more. Two shall
live through bitter days, and when the leaves shall shine in the sun
again, there shall good things befal. But one shall go upon a long
journey with the singing birds in the path of the white eagle. He shall
travel, and not cease until he reach the place where fools, and children,
and they into whom a devil entered through the gates of birth, find the
mothers who bore them. But the other goeth at a different time--" At this
point the light in Pretty Pierre's hand flickered and went out, and
through the darkness there came a voice, the voice of an idiot, that
whimpered: "Grah want pipe--Annie, Annie dead."
The angel of wisdom was gone, and chaos spluttered on the lolling lips
again; the Idiot sat feeling for the pipe that he had dropped.
And never again through the days that came and went could Pierre, by any
conjuring, or any swaying torch, make the fool into a man again. The
devils of confusion were returned forever. But there had been one glimpse
of the god. And it was as the Idiot had said when he saw with the eyes of
that god: no more blood was shed. The garrison of this fort held it
unmolested. The besiegers knew not that two men only stayed within the
walls; and because the chief begged to be taken south to die, they left
the place surrounded by its moats of ice and its trenches of famine; and
they came not back.
But other foes more deadly than the angry heathen came, and they were
called Hunger and Loneliness. The one destroyeth the body and the other
the brain. But Grah was not lonely, nor did he hunger. He blew his
bubbles, and muttered of a wind whereon a useless thing--a film of water,
a butterfly, or a fool--might ride beyond the reach of spirit, or man, or
heathen. His flesh remained the same, and grew not less; but that of
Pierre wasted, and his eye grew darker with suffering. For man is only
man, and hunger is a cruel thing. To give one's food to feed a fool, and
to search the silent plains in vain for any living thing to kill, is a
matter for angels to do and bear, and not mere mortals. But this man had
a strength of his own like to his code of living, which was his own and
not another's. And at last, when spring leaped gaily forth from the grey
cloak of winter, and men of the H. B. C. came to relieve Fort o' God, and
entered at its gates, a gaunt man, leaning on his rifle, greeted them
standing like a warrior, though his body was like that of one who had
lain in the grave. He answered to the name of Pierre without pride, but
like a man and not as a sick woman. And huddled on the floor beside him
was an idiot fondling a pipe, with a shred of pemmican at his lips.
As if in irony of man's sacrifice, the All Hail and the Master of Things
permitted the fool to fulfil his own prophecy, and die of a sudden
sickness in the coming-on of summer. But he of God's Garrison that
remained repented not of his deed. Such men have no repentance, neither
of good nor evil.
A HAZARD OF THE NORTH
Nobody except Gregory Thorne and myself knows the history of the Man and
Woman, who lived on the Height of Land, just where Dog Ear River falls
into Marigold Lake. This portion of the Height of Land is a lonely
country. The sun marches over it distantly, and the man of the East--the
braggart--calls it outcast; but animals love it; and the shades of the
long-gone trapper and 'voyageur' saunter without mourning through its
fastnesses. When you are in doubt, trust God's dumb creatures--and the
happy dead who whisper pleasant promptings to us, and whose knowledge is
mighty. Besides, the Man and Woman lived there, and Gregory Thorne says
that they could recover a lost paradise. But Gregory Thorne is an
insolent youth. The names of these people were John and Audrey Malbrouck;
the Man was known to the makers of backwoods history as Captain John.
Gregory says about that--but no, not yet!--let his first meeting with the
Man and the Woman be described in his own words, unusual and flippant as
they sometimes are; for though he is a graduate of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and a brother of a Right Honourable, he has conceived it his
duty to emancipate himself in the matter of style in language; and he has
succeeded.
"It was autumn," he said, "all colours; beautiful and nippy on the Height
of Land; wild ducks, the which no man could number, and bear's meat
abroad in the world. I was alone. I had hunted all day, leaving my mark
now and then as I journeyed, with a cache of slaughter here, and a blazed
hickory there. I was hungry as a circus tiger--did you ever eat slippery
elm bark?--yes, I was as bad as that. I guessed from what I had been
told, that the Malbrouck show must be hereaway somewhere. I smelled the
lake miles off--oh, you could too if you were half the animal I am; I
followed my nose and the slippery-elm between my teeth, and came at a
double-quick suddenly on the fair domain. There the two sat in front of
the house like turtle-doves, and as silent as a middy after his first
kiss. Much as I ached to get my tooth into something filling, I wished
that I had 'em under my pencil, with that royal sun making a rainbow of
the lake, the woods all scarlet and gold, and that mist of purple--eh,
you've seen it?--and they sitting there monarchs of it all, like that
duffer of a king who had operas played for his solitary benefit. But I
hadn't a pencil and I had a hunger, and I said 'How!' like any other
Injin--insolent, wasn't it? Then the Man rose, and he said I was welcome,
and she smiled an approving but not very immediate smile, and she kept
her seat,--she kept her seat, my boy,--and that was the first thing that
set me thinking. She didn't seem to be conscious that there was before
her one of the latest representatives from Belgravia, not she! But when I
took an honest look at her face, I understood. I'm glad that I had my hat
in my hand, polite as any Frenchman on the threshold of a blanchisserie:
for I learned very soon that the Woman had been in Belgravia too, and
knew far more than I did about what was what. When she did rise to array
the supper table, it struck me that if Josephine Beauharnais had been
like her, she might have kept her hold on Napoleon, and saved his
fortunes; made Europe France; and France the world. I could not
understand it. Jimmy Haldane had said to me when I was asking for
Malbrouck's place on the compass,--'Don't put on any side with them, my
Greg, or you'll take a day off for penitence.' They were both tall and
good to look at, even if he was a bit rugged, with neck all wire and
muscle, and had big knuckles. But she had hands like those in a picture
of Velasquez, with a warm whiteness and educated--that's it, educated
hands.
"She wasn't young, but she seemed so. Her eyes looked up and out at you
earnestly, yet not inquisitively, and more occupied with something in her
mind, than with what was before her. In short, she was a lady; not one by
virtue of a visit to the gods that rule o'er Buckingham Palace, but by
the claims of good breeding and long descent. She puzzled me, eluded
me--she reminded me of someone; but who? Someone I liked, because I felt
a thrill of admiration whenever I looked at her--but it was no use, I
couldn't remember. I soon found myself talking to her according to St.
James--the palace, you know--and at once I entered a bet with my beloved
aunt, the dowager--who never refuses to take my offer, though she seldom
wins, and she's ten thousand miles away, and has to take my word for
it--that I should find out the history of this Man and Woman before
another Christmas morning, which wasn't more than two months off. You
know whether or not I won it, my son."
I had frequently hinted to Gregory that I was old enough to be his
father, and that in calling me his son, his language was misplaced; and I
repeated it at that moment. He nodded good-humouredly, and continued:
"I was born insolent, my s--my ancestor. Well, after I had cleared a
space at the supper table, and had, with permission, lighted my pipe, I
began to talk. . . Oh yes, I did give them a chance occasionally; don't
interrupt. . . . I gossiped about England, France, the universe. From the
brief comments they made I saw they knew all about it, and understood my
social argot, all but a few words--is there anything peculiar about any
of my words? After having exhausted Europe and Asia I discussed America;
talked about Quebec, the folklore of the French Canadians, the
'voyageurs' from old Maisonneuve down. All the history I knew I rallied,
and was suddenly bowled out. For Malbrouck followed my trail from the
time I began to talk, and in ten minutes he had proved me to be a baby in
knowledge, an emaciated baby; he eliminated me from the equation. He
first tripped me on the training of naval cadets; then on the Crimea;
then on the taking of Quebec; then on the Franco-Prussian War; then, with
a sudden round-up, on India. I had been trusting to vague outlines of
history; I felt when he began to talk that I was dealing with a man who
not only knew history, but had lived it. He talked in the fewest but
directest words, and waxed eloquent in a blunt and colossal way. But
seeing his wife's eyes fixed on him intently, he suddenly pulled up, and
no more did I get from him on the subject. He stopped so suddenly that in
order to help over the awkwardness, though I'm not really sure there was
any, I began to hum a song to myself. Now, upon my soul, I didn't think
what I was humming; it was some subterranean association of things, I
suppose--but that doesn't matter here. I only state it to clear myself of
any unnecessary insolence. These were the words I was maundering with
this noble voice of mine:
"'The news I bring, fair Lady,
Will make your tears run down
Put off your rose-red dress so fine
And doff your satin gown!
Monsieur Malbrouck is dead, alas!
And buried, too, for aye;
I saw four officers who bore
His mighty corse away.
.............
We saw above the laurels,
His soul fly forth amain.
And each one fell upon his face
And then rose up again.
And so we sang the glories,
For which great Malbrouck bled;
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine,
Great Malbrouck, he is dead.'
"I felt the silence grow peculiar, uncomfortable. I looked up. Mrs.
Malbrouck was rising to her feet with a look in her face that would make
angels sorry--a startled, sorrowful thing that comes from a sleeping
pain. What an ass I was! Why, the Man's name was Malbrouck; her name was
Malbrouck--awful insolence! But surely there was something in the story
of the song itself that had moved her. As I afterward knew, that was it.
Malbrouck sat still and unmoved, though I thought I saw something stern
and masterful in his face as he turned to me; but again instantly his
eyes were bent on his wife with a comforting and affectionate expression.
She disappeared into the house. Hoping to make it appear that I hadn't
noticed anything, I dropped my voice a little and went on, intending,
however, to stop at the end of the verse:
"'Malbrouck has gone a-fighting,
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!'
"I ended there; because Malbrouck's heavy hand was laid on my shoulder,
and he said: 'If you please, not that song.'
"I suspect I acted like an idiot. I stammered out apologies, went down on
my litanies, figuratively speaking, and was all the same confident that
my excuses were making bad infernally worse. But somehow the old chap had
taken a liking to me.--No, of course you couldn't understand that. Not
that he was so old, you know; but he had the way of retired royalty about
him, as if he had lived life up to the hilt, and was all pulse and
granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting and
fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India; and
wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of
Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger,
with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now--the bound in the blood
as I caught at Malbrouck's arm and said: 'By George, I must kill moose;
that's sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking--or a
gladiator.' Malbrouck at once replied that he would give me some
moose-hunting in December if I would come up to Marigold Lake. I couldn't
exactly reply on the instant, because, you see, there wasn't much chance
for board and lodging thereabouts, unless--but he went on to say that I
should make his house my 'public,'perhaps he didn't say it quite in those
terms, that he and his wife would be glad to have me. With a couple of
Indians we could go north-west, where the moose-yards were, and have some
sport both exciting and prodigious. Well, I'm a muff, I know, but I
didn't refuse that. Besides, I began to see the safe side of the bet I
had made with my aunt, the dowager, and I was more than pleased with what
had come to pass so far. Lucky for you, too, you yarn-spinner, that the
thing did develop so, or you wouldn't be getting fame and shekels out of
the results of my story.
"Well, I got one thing out of the night's experience; and it was that the
Malbroucks were no plebs., that they had had their day where plates are
blue and gold and the spoons are solid coin. But what had sent them up
here among the moose, the Indians, and the conies--whatever THEY are? How
should I get at it? Insolence, you say? Yes, that. I should come up here
in December, and I should mulct my aunt in the price of a new
breech-loader. But I found out nothing the next morning, and I left with
a paternal benediction from Malbrouck, and a smile from his wife that
sent my blood tingling as it hadn't tingled since a certain season in
London, which began with my tuneful lyre sounding hopeful numbers and
ended with it hanging on the willows.
"When I thought it all over, as I trudged back on yesterday's track, I
concluded that I had told them all my history from my youth up until now,
and had got nothing from them in return. I had exhausted my family
records, bit by bit, like a curate in his first parish; and had gone so
far as to testify that one of my ancestors had been banished to Australia
for political crimes. Distinctly they had me at an advantage, though, to
be sure, I had betrayed Mrs. Malbrouck into something more than a
suspicion of emotion.
"When I got back to my old camp, I could find out nothing from the other
fellows; but Jacques Pontiac told me that his old mate, Pretty Pierre,
who in recent days had fallen from grace, knew something of these people
that no one else guessed, because he had let them a part of his house in
the parish of St. Genevieve in Quebec, years before. Pierre had testified
to one fact, that a child--a girl--had been born to Mrs. Malbrouck in his
house, but all further knowledge he had withheld. Pretty Pierre was off
in the Rocky Mountains practising his profession--chiefly poker--and was
not available for information. What did I, Gregory Thorne, want of the
information anyway? That's the point, my son. Judging from
after-developments I suppose it was what the foolish call occult
sympathy. Well, where was that girl-child? Jacques Pontiac didn't know.
Nobody knew. And I couldn't get rid of Mrs. Malbrouck's face; it haunted
me; the broad brow, deep eyes, and high-bred sweetness--all beautifully
animal. Don't laugh: I find astonishing likenesses between the perfectly
human and the perfectly animal. Did you never see how beautiful and
modest the faces of deer are; how chic and sensitive is the manner of a
hound; nor the keen, warm look in the eye of a well-bred mare? Why, I'd
rather be a good horse of blood and temper than half the fellows I know.
You are not an animal lover as I am; yes, even when I shoot them or fight
them I admire them, just as I'd admire a swordsman who, in 'quart,' would
give me death by the wonderful upper thrust. It's all a battle; all a
game of love and slaughter, my son, and both go together.
"Well, as I say, her face followed me. Watch how the thing developed. By
the prairie-track I went over to Fort Desire, near the Rockies, almost
immediately after this, to see about buying a ranch with my old chum at
Trinity, Polly Cliffshawe--Polydore, you know. Whom should I meet in a
hut on the ranch but Jacques's friend, Pretty Pierre. This was luck; but
he was not like Jacques Pontiac, he was secretive as a Buddhist deity. He
had a good many of the characteristics that go to a fashionable
diplomatist: clever, wicked, cool, and in speech doing the vanishing
trick just when you wanted him. But my star of fortune was with me. One
day Silverbottle, an Indian, being in a murderous humour, put a bullet in
Pretty Pierre's leg, and would have added another, only I stopped it
suddenly. While in his bed he told me what he knew of the Malbroucks.