Romany of the Snows - Gilbert Parker
"We were four months on that bitter travel, and I do not know how it
could have been made at all, had it not been for the deer that I had
heart to eat and none to kill. The days got shorter and shorter, and we
were sometimes eighteen hours in absolute darkness. Thus you can imagine
how slowly we went. Thank God, we could sleep, hid away in our fur bags,
more often without a fire than with one,--mere mummies stretched out on a
vast coverlet of white, with the peering, unfriendly sky above us; though
it must be said that through all those many, many weeks no cloud perched
in the zenith. When there was light there was sun, and the courage of it
entered into our bones, helping to save us. You may think I have been
made feeble-minded by my sufferings, but I tell you plainly that, in the
closing days of our journey, I used to see a tall figure walking beside
me, who, whenever I would have spoken to him, laid a warning finger on
his lips; but when I would have fallen, he spoke to me, always in the
same words. You have heard of him, the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash
Hills. It was he, the Sentinel of the North, the Lover of the Lost. So
deep did his words go into my heart that they have remained with me to
this hour."
"I saw him once in the White Valley," Pierre said in a low voice. "What
was it he said to you?"
The other drew a long breath, and a smile rested on his lips. Then,
slowly, as though liking to linger over them, he repeated the words of
the Scarlet Hunter:
"'O son of man, behold!
If thou shouldest stumble on the nameless trail,
The trail that no man rides,
Lift up thy heart,
Behold, O son of man, thou hast a helper near!
"'O son of man, take heed!
If thou shouldst fall upon the vacant plain,
The plain that no man loves,
Reach out thy hand,
Take heed, O son of man, strength shall be given thee!
"'O son of man, rejoice!
If thou art blinded even at the door,
The door of the Safe Tent,
Sing in thy heart,
Rejoice, O son of man, thy pilot leads thee home?'
"I never seemed to be alone after that--call it what you will, fancy or
delirium. My head was so light that it appeared to spin like a star, and
my feet were so heavy that I dragged the whole earth after me. My Indians
seldom spoke. I never let them drop behind me, for I did not trust their
treacherous natures. But in the end, as it would seem, they also had but
one thought, and that to reach Fort Ungava; for there was no food left,
none at all. We saw no tribes of Indians and no Esquimaux, for we had not
passed in their line of travel or settlement.
"At last I used to dream that birds were singing near me,--a soft,
delicate whirlwind of sound; and then bells all like muffled silver rang
through the aching, sweet air. Bits of prayer and poetry I learned when a
boy flashed through my mind; equations in algebra; the tingling scream of
a great buzz-saw; the breath of a racer as he nears the post under the
crying whip; my own voice dropping loud profanity, heard as a lad from a
blind ferryman; the boom! boom! of a mass of logs as they struck a house
on a flooding river and carried it away. . . .
"One day we reached the end. It was near evening, and we came to the top
of a wooded knoll. My eyes were dancing in my head with fatigue and
weakness, but I could see below us, on the edge of the great bay, a large
hut, Esquimau lodges and Indian tepees near it. It was the Fort, my
cheerless prison-house."
He paused. The dog had been watching him with its flaming eyes; now it
gave a low growl, as though it understood, and pitied. In the interval of
silence the storm without broke. The trees began to quake and cry, the
light snow to beat upon the parchment windows, and the chimney to
splutter and moan. Presently, out on the bay they could hear the young
ice break and come scraping up the shore. Fawdor listened a while, and
then went on, waving his hand to the door as he began: "Think! this, and
like that always: the ungodly strife of nature, and my sick, disconsolate
life."
"Ever since?" asked Pierre. "All the time."
"Why did you not go back?"
"I was to wait for orders, and they never came."
"You were a free man, not a slave."
"The human heart has pride. At first, as when I left the governor at
Lachine, I said, 'I will never speak, I will never ask nor bend the knee.
He has the power to oppress; I can obey without whining, as fine a man as
he.'"
"Did you not hate?"
"At first, as only a banished man can hate. I knew that if all had gone
well I should be a man high up in the Company, and here I was, living
like a dog in the porch of the world, sometimes without other food for
months than frozen fish; and for two years I was in a place where we had
no fire,--lived in a snow-house, with only blubber to eat. And so year
after year, no word!"
"The mail came once every year from the world?" "Yes, once a year the
door of the outer life was opened. A ship came into the bay, and by that
ship I sent out my reports. But no word came from the governor, and no
request went from me. Once the captain of that ship took me by the
shoulders, and said, 'Fawdor, man, this will drive you mad. Come away to
England,--leave your half-breed in charge,--and ask the governor for a
big promotion.' He did not understand. Of course I said I could not go.
Then he turned on me, he was a good man,--and said, 'This will either
make you madman or saint, Fawdor.' He drew a Bible from his pocket and
handed it to me. 'I've used it twenty years,' he said, 'in evil and out
of evil, and I've spiked it here and there; it's a chart for heavy seas,
and may you find it so, my lad.'
"I said little then; but when I saw the sails of his ship round a cape
and vanish, all my pride and strength were broken up, and I came in a
heap to the ground, weeping like a child. But the change did not come all
at once. There were two things that kept me hard."
"The girl?"
"The girl, and another. But of the young lady after. I had a half-breed
whose life I had saved. I was kind to him always; gave him as good to eat
and drink as I had myself; divided my tobacco with him; loved him as only
an exile can love a comrade. He conspired with the Indians to seize the
Fort and stores, and kill me if I resisted. I found it out."
"Thou shalt keep the faith of food and blanket," said Pierre. "What did
you do with him?"
"The fault was not his so much as of his race and his miserable past. I
had loved him. I sent him away; and he never came back."
"Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one
woman."
"For the girl. There was the thing that clamped my heart. Never a message
from her or her brother. Surely they knew, and yet never, thought I, a
good word for me to the governor. They had forgotten the faith of food
and blanket. And she--she must have seen that I could have worshipped
her, had we been in the same way of life. Before the better days came to
me I was hard against her, hard and rough at heart."
"Remember the sorrow of thine own wife." Pierre's voice was gentle.
"Truly, to think hardly of no woman should be always in a man's heart.
But I have known only one woman of my race in twenty-five years!"
"And as time went on?"
"As time went on, and no word came, I ceased to look for it. But I
followed that chart spiked with the captain's pencil, as he had done it
in season and out of season, and by and by I ceased to look for any word.
I even became reconciled to my life. The ambitious and aching cares of
the world dropped from me, and I stood above all--alone in my suffering,
yet not yielding. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Under it a man--"
"Goes mad or becomes a saint--a saint!" Pierre's voice became reverent.
Fawdor shook his head, smiling gently. "Ah no, no. But I began to
understand the world, and I loved the north, the beautiful hard north."
"But there is more?"
"Yes, the end of it all. Three days before you came I got a packet of
letters, not by the usual yearly mail. One announced that the governor
was dead. Another--"
"Another?" urged Pierre.
--"was from Her. She said that her brother, on the day she wrote, had by
chance come across my name in the Company's records, and found that I had
been here a quarter of a century. It was the letter of a good woman. She
said she thought the governor had forgotten that he had sent me here--as
now I hope he had, for that would be one thing less for him to think of,
when he set out on the journey where the only weight man carries is the
packload of his sins. She also said that she had written to me twice
after we parted at Lachine, but had never heard a word, and three years
afterwards she had gone to India. The letters were lost, I suppose, on
the way to me, somehow--who can tell? Then came another thing, so
strange, that it seemed like the laughter of the angels at us. These were
her words: 'And, dear Mr. Fawdor, you were both wrong in that quotation,
as you no doubt discovered long ago.' Then she gave me the sentence as it
is in Cymbeline. She was right, quite right. We were both wrong. Never
till her letter came had I looked to see. How vain, how uncertain, and
fallible, is man!"
Pierre dropped his cigarette, and stared at Fawdor. "The knowledge of
books is foolery," he said slowly. "Man is the only book of life. Go on."
"There was another letter, from the brother, who was now high up in the
Company, asking me to come to England, and saying that they wished to
promote me far, and that he and his sister, with their families, would be
glad to see me."
"She was married then?"
The rashness of the suggestion made Fawdor wave his hand impatiently. He
would not reply to it. "I was struck down with all the news," he said. "I
wandered like a child out into a mad storm. Illness came; then you, who
have nursed me back to life. . . . And now I have told all."
"Not all, bien sur. What will you do?"
"I am out of the world; why tempt it all again? See how those twenty-five
years were twisted by a boy's vanity and a man's tyranny!"
"But what will you do?" persisted Pierre. "You should see the faces of
women and children again. No man can live without that sight, even as a
saint."
Suddenly Fawdor's face was shot over with a storm of feeling. He lay very
still, his thoughts busy with a new world which had been disclosed to
him. "Youth hungers for the vanities," he said, "and the middle-aged for
home." He took Pierre's hand. "I will go," he added. "A door will open
somewhere for me."
Then he turned his face to the wall. The storm had ceased, the wild dog
huddled quietly on the hearth, and for hours the only sound was the
crackling of the logs as Pierre stirred the fire.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth
Don't be too honest
Every shot that kills ricochets
Not good to have one thing in the head all the time
Remember the sorrow of thine own wife
Secret of life: to keep your own commandments
She had not suffered that sickness, social artifice
Some people are rough with the poor--and proud
They whose tragedy lies in the capacity to suffer greatly
Think with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman
Youth hungers for the vanities
A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS
BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE"
AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 4.
LITTLE BABICHE
AT POINT O' BUGLES
THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA
THE TRAIL OF THE SUN DOGS
THE PILOT OF BELLE AMOUR
LITTLE BABICHE
"No, no, m'sieu' the governor, they did not tell you right. I was with
him, and I have known Little Babiche fifteen years--as long as I've known
you. . . . It was against the time when down in your world there they
have feastings, and in the churches the grand songs and many candles on
the altars. Yes, Noel, that is the word--the day of the Great Birth. You
shall hear how strange it all was--the thing, the time, the end of it."
The governor of the great Company settled back in a chair, his powerful
face seamed by years, his hair grey and thick still, his keen, steady
eyes burning under shaggy brows. He had himself spent long solitary years
in the wild fastnesses of the north. He fastened his dark eyes on Pierre,
and said: "Monsieur Pierre, I shall be glad to hear. It was at the time
of Noel--yes?"
Pierre began: "You have seen it beautiful and cold in the north, but
never so cold and beautiful as it was last year. The world was white with
sun and ice, the frost never melting, the sun never warming--just a
glitter, so lovely, so deadly. If only you could keep the heart warm, you
were not afraid. But if once--just for a moment--the blood ran out from
the heart and did not come in again, the frost clamped the doors shut,
and there was an end of all. Ah, m'sieu', when the north clinches a man's
heart in anger there is no pain like it--for a moment."
"Yes, yes; and Little Babiche?"
"For ten years he carried the mails along the route of Fort St. Mary,
Fort O'Glory, Fort St. Saviour, and Fort Perseverance within the
circle-just one mail once a year, but that was enough. There he was with
his Esquimaux dogs on the trail, going and coming, with a laugh and a
word for anyone that crossed his track. 'Good-day, Babiche' 'Good-day,
m'sieu'.' 'How do you, Babiche?' 'Well, thank the Lord, m'sieu'.' 'Where
to and where from, Babiche?' 'To the Great Fort by the old trail, from
the Far-off River, m'sieu'.' 'Come safe along, Babiche.' 'Merci, m'sieu';
the good God travels north, m'sieu'.' 'Adieu, Babiche.' 'Adieu, m'sieu'.'
That is about the way of the thing, year after year. Sometimes a night at
a hut or a post, but mostly alone--alone, except for the dogs. He slept
with them, and they slept on the mails--to guard: as though there should
be highwaymen on the Prairie of the Ten Stars! But no, it was his way,
m'sieu'. Now and again I crossed him on the trail, for have I not
travelled to every corner of the north? We were not so great friends,
for--well, Babiche is a man who says his aves, and never was a loafer,
and there was no reason why he should have love for me; but we were good
company when we met. I knew him when he was a boy down on the Chaudiere,
and he always had a heart like a lion-and a woman. I had seen him fight,
I had seen him suffer cold, and I had heard him sing.
"Well, I was up last fall to Fort St. Saviour. Ho, how dull was it!
Macgregor, the trader there, has brains like rubber. So I said, I will go
down to Fort O'Glory. I knew someone would be there--it is nearer the
world. So I started away with four dogs and plenty of jerked buffalo, and
so much brown brandy as Macgregor could squeeze out of his eye! Never,
never were there such days--the frost shaking like steel and silver as it
powdered the sunlight, the white level of snow lifting and falling, and
falling and lifting, the sky so great a travel away, the air which made
you cry out with pain one minute and gave you joy the next. And all so
wild, so lonely! Yet I have seen hanging in those plains cities all blue
and red with millions of lights showing, and voices, voices everywhere,
like the singing of soft masses. After a time in that cold up there you
are no longer yourself--no. You move in a dream. Eh bien, m'sieu', there
came, I thought, a dream to me one evening--well, perhaps one afternoon,
for the days are short--so short, the sun just coming over a little bend
of sky, and sinking down like a big orange ball. I come out of a tumble
of little hills, and there over on the plains I saw a sight! Ragged hills
of ice were thrown up, as if they'd been heaved out by the breaking
earth, jutting here and there like wedges--like the teeth of a world.
Alors, on one crag, shaped as an anvil, I saw what struck me like a blow,
and I felt the blood shoot out of my heart and leave it dry. I was for a
minute like a pump with no water in its throat to work the piston and
fetch the stream up. I got sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and
ice I saw a big white bear, one such as you shall see within the Arctic
Circle, his long nose fetching out towards that bleeding sun in the sky,
his white coat shining. But that was not the thing--there was another. At
the feet of the bear was a body, and one clawed foot was on that body--of
a man. So clear was the air, the red sun shining on the face as it was
turned towards me, that I wonder I did not at once know whose it was. You
cannot think, m'sieu', what that was like--no. But all at once I
remembered the Chant of the Scarlet Hunter. I spoke it quick, and the
blood came creeping back in here." He tapped his chest with his slight
forefinger.
"What was the chant?" asked the governor, who had scarce stirred a muscle
since the tale began. Pierre made a little gesture of deprecation. "Ah,
it is perhaps a thing of foolishness, as you may think--"
"No, no. I have heard and seen in my day," urged the governor.
"So? Good. Yes, I remember, you told me years ago, m'sieu'. . . .
"The blinding Trail and Night and Cold are man's: mine is the trail
that finds the Ancient Lodge. Morning and Night they travel with
me; my camp is set by the pines, its fires are burning--are burning.
The lost, they shall sit by my fires, and the fearful ones shall
seek, and the sick shall abide. I am the Hunter, the Son of the
North; I am thy lover where no man may love thee. With me thou
shalt journey, and thine the Safe Tent.
"As I said, the blood came back to my heart. I turned to my dogs, and
gave them a cut with the whip to see if I dreamed. They sat back and
snarled, and their wild red eyes, the same as mine, kept looking at the
bear and the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. Tell me, can you
think of anything like it?--the strange light, the white bear of the
Pole, that has no friends at all except the shooting stars, the great ice
plains, the quick night hurrying on, the silence--such silence as no man
can think! I have seen trouble flying at me in a hundred ways, but this
was different--yes. We come to the foot of the little hill. Still the
bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my knives and my gun, the dogs
began to snarl with anger, and for one little step I shivered, for the
thing seem not natural. I was about two hundred feet away from the bear
when it turned slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body. The dogs
all at once come huddling about me, and I dropped on my knee to take aim,
but the bear stole away from the man and come moving down past us at an
angle, making for the plain. I could see his deep shining eyes, and the
steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very slow and heavy, like as if
he see no one and care for no one, he shambled down, and in a minute was
gone behind a boulder. I ran on to the man--"
The governor was leaning forward, looking intently, and said now: "It's
like a wild dream--but the north--the north is near to the Strangest of
All!"
"I knelt down and lifted him up in my arms, all a great bundle of furs
and wool, and I got my hand at last to his wrist. He was alive. It was
Little Babiche! Part of his face was frozen stiff. I rubbed out the frost
with snow, and then I forced some brandy into his mouth, good old H.B.C.
brandy,--and began to call to him: 'Babiche! Babiche! Come back, Babiche!
The wolf's at the pot, Babiche!' That's the way to call a hunter to his
share of meat. I was afraid, for the sleep of cold is the sleep of death,
and it is hard to call the soul back to this world. But I called, and
kept calling, and got him on his feet, with my arm round him. I gave him
more brandy; and at last I almost shrieked in his ear. Little by little I
saw his face take on the look of waking life. It was like the dawn
creeping over white hills and spreading into day. I said to myself: What
a thing it will be if I can fetch him back! For I never knew one to come
back after the sleep had settled on them. It is too comfortable--all pain
gone, all trouble, the world forgot, just a kind weight in all the body,
as you go sinking down, down to the valley, where the long hands of old
comrades beckon to you, and their soft, high voices cry, 'Hello!
hello-o!'" Pierre nodded his head towards the distance, and a musing
smile divided his lips on his white teeth. Presently he folded a
cigarette, and went on:
"I had saved something to the last, as the great test, as the one thing
to open his eyes wide, if they could be opened at all. Alors, there was
no time to lose, for the wolf of Night was driving the red glow-worm down
behind the world, and I knew that when darkness came altogether--darkness
and night--there would be no help for him. Mon Dieu! how one sleeps in
the night of the north, in the beautiful wide silence! . . . So, m'sieu',
just when I thought it was the time, I called, 'Corinne! Corinne!' Then
once again I said, 'P'tite Corinne! P'tite Corinne! Come home! come home!
P'tite Corinne!' I could see the fight in the jail of sleep. But at last
he killed his jailer; the doors in his brain flew open, and his mind came
out through his wide eyes. But he was blind a little and dazed, though it
was getting dark quick. I struck his back hard, and spoke loud from a
song that we used to sing on the Chaudiere--Babiche and all of us, years
ago. Mon Dieu! how I remember those days--
"'Which is the way that the sun goes?
The way that my little one come.
Which is the good path over the hills?
The path that leads to my little one's home--
To my little one's home, m'sieu', m'sieu'!'
"That did it. 'Corinne, ma p'tite Corinne!' he said; but he did not look
at me--only stretch out his hands. I caught them, and shook them, and
shook him, and made him take a step forward; then I slap him on the back
again, and said loud: 'Come, come, Babiche, don't you know me? See
Babiche, the snow's no sleeping-bunk, and a polar bear's no good friend.'
'Corinne!' he went on, soft and slow. 'Ma p'tite Corinne!' He smiled to
himself; and I said, 'Where've you been, Babiche? Lucky I found you, or
you'd have been sleeping till the Great Mass.' Then he looked at me
straight in the eyes, and something wild shot out of his. His hand
stretched over and caught me by the shoulder, perhaps to steady himself,
perhaps because he wanted to feel something human. Then he looked round
slow-all round the plain, as if to find something. At that moment a
little of the sun crept back, and looked up over the wall of ice, making
a glow of yellow and red for a moment; and never, north or south, have I
seen such beauty--so delicate, so awful. It was like a world that its
Maker had built in a fit of joy, and then got tired of, and broke in
pieces, and blew out all its fires, and left--ah yes--like that! And out
in the distance I--I only saw a bear travelling eastwards."
The governor said slowly:
And I took My staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break
My covenant which I had made with all the people.
"Yes--like that." Pierre continued: "Babiche turned to me with a little
laugh, which was a sob too. 'Where is it, Pierre?' said he. I knew he
meant the bear. 'Gone to look for another man,' I said, with a gay look,
for I saw that he was troubled. 'Come,' said he at once. As we went, he
saw my dogs. He stopped short and shook a little, and tears came into his
eyes. 'What is it, Babiche?' said I. He looked back towards the south.
'My dogs--Brandy-wine, Come-along, 'Poleon, and the rest--died one night
all of an hour. One by one they crawl over to where I lay in my fur bag,
and die there, huddling by me--and such cries--such cries! There was
poison or something in the frozen fish I'd given them. I loved them every
one; and then there was the mails, the year's mails--how should they be
brought on? That was a bad thought, for I had never missed--never in ten
years. There was one bunch of letters which the governor said to me was
worth more than all the rest of the mails put together, and I was to
bring it to Fort St. Saviour, or not show my face to him again. I leave
the dogs there in the snow, and come on with the sled, carrying all the
mails. Ah, the blessed saints, how heavy the sled got, and how lonely it
was! Nothing to speak to--no one, no thing, day after day. At last I go
to cry to the dogs, "Come-along! 'Poleon! Brandy-wine!"--like that! I
think I see them there, but they never bark and they never snarl, and
they never spring to the snap of the whip.... I was alone. Oh, my head!
my head! If there was only something alive to look at, besides the wide
white plain, and the bare hills of ice, and the sun-dogs in the sky! Now
I was wild, next hour I was like a child, then I gnash my teeth like a
wolf at the sun, and at last I got on my knees. The tears froze my
eyelids shut, but I kept saying, "Ah, my great Friend, my Jesu, just
something, something with the breath of life! Leave me not all alone!"
and I got sleepier all the time.