Romany of the Snows - Gilbert Parker
Father Halen caught his sister as she swayed, and helped her to a chair,
then turned a sad face on Pierre. "Were you--were you one of that ten?"
he asked, overcome; and he held out his hand.
The two river-driving camps joined at Mud Cat Point, where was the crush
of great timber. The two men did not at first come face to face, but it
was noticed by Pierre, who smoked on the bank while the others worked,
that the old man watched his enemy closely. The work of undoing the great
twist of logs was exciting, and they fell on each other with a great
sound as they were pried off, and went sliding, grinding, into the water.
At one spot they were piled together, massive and high. These were left
to the last.
It was here that the two met. Old Magor's face was quiet, if a little
haggard; and his eyes looked out from under his shaggy brows piercingly.
Dugard's manner was swaggering, and he swore horribly at his gang.
Presently he stood at a point alone, working at an obstinate log. He was
at the foot of an incline of timber, and he was not aware that Magor had
suddenly appeared at the top of that incline. He heard his name called
out sharply. Swinging round, he saw Magor thrusting a handspike under a
huge timber, hanging at the top of the incline. He was standing in a
hollow, a kind of trench. He was shaken with fear, for he saw the old
man's design. He gave a cry and made as if to jump out of the way, but
with a laugh Magor threw his whole weight on the handspike, the great
timber slid swiftly down and crushed Dugard from his thighs to his feet,
breaking his legs terribly. The old man called down at him: "A slip--a
little accident, mon ami!" Then, shouldering his handspike, he made his
way through the silent gangs to the shore, and so on homewards.
Magor had done what he wished. Dugard would be a cripple for life; his
beauty was all spoiled and broken: there was much to do to save his life.
II
Nora also about this time took to her bed with fever. Again and again
Pierre rode thirty miles and back to get ice for her head. All were kind
to her now. The vengeance upon Dugard seemed to have wiped out much of
her shame in the eyes of Bamber's Boom. Such is the way of the world. He
that has the last blow is in the eye of advantage. When Nora began to
recover, the child fell ill also. In the sickness of the child the old
man had a great temptation--far greater than that concerning Dugard. As
the mother grew better the child became much worse. One night the doctor
came, driving over from another settlement, and said that if the child
got sleep till morning it would probably live, for the crisis had come.
He left an opiate to procure the sleep, the same that had been given to
the mother. If it did not sleep, it would die. Pierre was present at this
time.
All through the child's illness the old man's mind had been tossed to and
fro. If the child died, the living stigma would be gone; there would be
no reminder of his daughter's shame in the eyes of the world. They could
go away from Bamber's Boom, and begin life again somewhere. But, then,
there was the child itself which had crept into his heart,--he knew not
how, and would not be driven out. He had never, till it was taken ill,
even touched it, nor spoken to it. To destroy its life!--Well, would it
not be better for the child to go out of all possible shame, into peace,
the peace of the grave?
This night he sat down beside the cradle, holding the bottle of medicine
and a spoon in his hand. The hot, painful face of the child fascinated
him. He looked from it to the bottle, and back, then again to the bottle.
He started, and the sweat stood out on his forehead. For though the
doctor had told him in words the proper dose, he had by mistake written
on the label the same dose as for the mother! Here was the responsibility
shifted in any case. More than once the old man uncorked the bottle, and
once he dropped out the opiate in the spoon steadily; but the child
opened its suffering eyes at him, its little wasted hand wandered over
the coverlet, and he could not do it just then. But again the passion for
its destruction came on him, because he heard his daughter moaning in the
other room. He said to himself that she would be happier when it was
gone. But as he stooped over the cradle, no longer hesitating, the door
softly opened, and Pierre entered. The old man shuddered, and drew back
from the cradle. Pierre saw the look of guilt in the old man's face, and
his instinct told him what was happening. He took the bottle from the
trembling hand, and looked at the label.
"What is the proper dose?" he asked, seeing that a mistake had been made
by the doctor.
In a hoarse whisper Magor told him. "It may be too late," Pierre added.
He knelt down, with light fingers opened the child's mouth, and poured
the medicine in slowly. The old man stood for a time rigid, looking at
them both. Then he came round to the other side of the cradle, and seated
himself beside it, his eyes fixed on the child's face. For a long time
they sat there. At last the old man said: "Will he die, Pierre?"
"I am afraid so," answered Pierre painfully. "But we shall see." Then
early teaching came to him, never to be entirely obliterated, and he
added: "Has the child been baptised?"
The old man shook his head. "'Will you do it?" asked Pierre hesitatingly.
"I can't--I can't," was the reply.
Pierre smiled a little ironically, as if at himself, got some water in a
cup, came over, and said: "Remember, I'm a Papist!"
A motion of the hand answered him.
He dipped his fingers in the water, and dropped it ever so lightly on the
child's forehead.
"George Magor,"--it was the old man's name,--"I baptise thee in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." Then he drew
the sign of the cross on the infant's forehead.
Sitting down, he watched beside the child. After a little he heard a long
choking sigh. Looking up, he saw tears slowly dropping from Magor's eyes.
And to this day the child and the mother of the child are dear to the old
man's heart.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Bad turns good sometimes, when you know the how
How can you judge the facts if you don't know the feeling?
Put the matter on your own hearthstone
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 3.
THE BRIDGE HOUSE
THE EPAULETTES
THE HOUSE WITH THE BROKEN SHUTTER
THE FINDING OF FINGALL
THREE COMMANDMENTS IN THE VULGAR TONGUE
THE BRIDGE HOUSE
It stood on a wide wall between two small bridges. These were approaches
to the big covered bridge spanning the main channel of the Madawaska
River, and when swelled by the spring thaws and rains, the two flanking
channels divided at the foundations of the house, and rustled away
through the narrow paths of the small bridges to the rapids. You could
stand at any window in the House and watch the ugly, rushing current,
gorged with logs, come battering at the wall, jostle between the piers,
and race on to the rocks and the dam and the slide beyond. You stepped
from the front door upon the wall, which was a road between the bridges,
and from the back door into the river itself.
The House had once been a tavern. It looked a wayfarer, like its patrons
the river-drivers, with whom it was most popular. You felt that it had no
part in the career of the village on either side, but was like a rock in
a channel, at which a swimmer caught or a vagrant fish loitered.
Pierre knew the place, when, of a night in the springtime or early
summer, throngs of river-drivers and their bosses sauntered at its doors,
or hung over the railing of the wall, as they talked and smoked.
The glory of the Bridge House suddenly declined. That was because Finley,
the owner, a rich man, came to hate the place--his brother's blood
stained the barroom floor. He would have destroyed the house but that
John Rupert, the beggared gentleman came to him, and wished to rent it
for a dwelling.
Mr. Rupert was old, and had been miserably poor for many years, but he
had a breeding and a manner superior to anyone at Bamber's Boom. He was
too old for a labourer, he had no art or craftsmanship; his little money
was gone in foolish speculations, and he was dependent on his
granddaughter's slight earnings from music teaching and needlework. But
he rented an acre of ground from Finley, and grew vegetables; he gathered
driftwood from the river for his winter fire, and made up the accounts of
the storekeeper occasionally. Yet it was merely keeping off starvation.
He was not popular. He had no tongue for the meaningless village talk.
People held him in a kind of awe, and yet they felt a mean satisfaction
when they saw him shouldering driftwood, and piling it on the shore to be
dragged away--the last resort of the poor, for which they blush.
When Mr. Rupert asked for the House, Finley knew the chances were he
would not get the rental; yet, because he was sorry for the old man, he
gave it to him at a low rate. He closed up the bar-room, however, and it
was never opened afterwards.
So it was that Mr. Rupert and Judith, his granddaughter, came to live
there. Judith was a blithe, lissome creature, who had never known comfort
or riches: they were taken from her grandfather before she was born, and
her father and mother both died when she was a little child. But she had
been taught by her grandmother, when she lived, and by her grandfather,
and she had felt the graces of refined life. Withal, she had a singular
sympathy for the rude, strong life of the river. She was glad when they
came to live at the Bridge House, and shamed too: glad because they could
live apart from the other villagers; shamed because it exposed her to the
curiosity of those who visited the House, thinking it was still a tavern.
But that was only for a time.
One night Jules Brydon, the young river-boss, camped with his men at
Bamber's Boom. He was of parents Scotch and French, and the amalgamation
of races in him made a striking product. He was cool and indomitable, yet
hearty and joyous. It was exciting to watch him at the head of his men,
breaking up a jam of logs, and it was a delight to hear him of an evening
as he sang:
"Have you heard the cry of the Long Lachine,
When happy is the sun in the morning?
The rapids long and the banks of green,
As we ride away in the morning,
On the froth of the Long Lachine?"
One day, soon after they came, the dams and booms were opened above, and
forests of logs came riding down to Bamber's Boom. The current was
strong, and the logs came on swiftly. As Brydon's gang worked, they saw a
man out upon a small raft of driftwood, which had been suddenly caught in
the drive of logs, and was carried out towards the middle channel. The
river-drivers laughed, for they failed to see that the man was old, and
that he could not run across the rolling logs to the shore. The old man,
evidently hopeless, laid down his pike-pole, folded his hands, and
drifted with the logs. The river-drivers stopped laughing. They began to
understand.
Brydon saw a woman standing at a window of the House waving her arms, and
there floated up the river the words, "Father! father!" He caught up a
pikepole, and ran over that spinning floor of logs to the raft. The old
man's face was white, but there was no fear in his eyes.
"I cannot run the logs," he said at once; "I never did; I am too old, and
I slip. It's no use. It is my granddaughter at that window. Tell her that
I'll think of her to the last. . . . Good-bye!"
Brydon was eyeing the logs. The old man's voice was husky; he could not
cry out, but he waved his hand to the girl.
"Oh, save him!" came from her faintly.
Brydon's eyes were now on the covered bridge. Their raft was in the
channel, coming straight between two piers. He measured his chances. He
knew if he slipped, doing what he intended, that both might be drowned,
and certainly Mr. Rupert; for the logs were close, and to drop among them
was a bad business. If they once closed over there was an end of
everything.
"Keep quite still," he said, "and when I throw you catch."
He took the slight figure in his arms, sprang out upon the slippery logs,
and ran. A cheer went up from the men on the shore, and the people who
were gathering on the bridges, too late to be of service. Besides, the
bridge was closed, and there was only a small opening at the piers. For
one of these piers Brydon was making. He ran hard. Once he slipped and
nearly fell, but recovered. Then a floating tree suddenly lunged up and
struck him, so that he dropped upon a knee; but again he was up, and
strained for the pier. He was within a few feet of it as they came to the
bridge. The people gave a cry of fear, for they saw that there was no
chance of both making it; because, too, at the critical moment a space of
clear water showed near the pier. But Brydon raised John Rupert up,
balanced himself, and tossed him at the pier, where two river-drivers
stood stretching out their arms. An instant afterwards the old man was
with his granddaughter. But Brydon slipped and fell; the roots of a tree
bore him down, and he was gone beneath the logs!
There was a cry of horror from the watchers, then all was still. But
below the bridge they saw an arm thrust up between the logs, and then
another arm crowding them apart. Now a head and shoulders appeared.
Luckily the piece of timber which Brydon grasped was square, and did not
roll. In a moment he was standing on it. There was a wild shout of
encouragement. He turned his battered, blood-stained face to the bridge
for an instant, and, with a wave of the hand and a sharp look towards the
rapids below, once more sprang out. It was a brave sight, for the logs
were in a narrower channel and more riotous. He rubbed the blood out of
his eyes that he might see his way. The rolling forest gave him no
quarter, but he came on, rocking with weakness, to within a few rods of
the shore. Then a half-dozen of his men ran out on the logs,--they were
packed closely here,--caught him up, and brought him to dry ground.
They took him to the Bridge House. He was hurt more than he or they
thought. The old man and the girl met them at the door. Judith gave a
little cry when she saw the blood and Brydon's bruised face. He lifted
his head as though her eyes had drawn his, and, their looks meeting, he
took his hat off. Her face flushed; she dropped her eyes. Her grandfather
seized Brydon's big hand, and said some trembling words of thanks. The
girl stepped inside, made a bed for him upon the sofa, and got him
something to drink. She was very cool; she immediately asked Pierre to go
for the young doctor who had lately come to the place, and made ready
warm water with which she wiped Brydon's blood-stained face and hands,
and then gave him some brandy. His comrades standing round watched her
admiringly, she was so deft and delicate. Brydon, as if to be nursed and
cared for was not manly, felt ashamed, and came up quickly to a sitting
posture, saying, "Pshaw! I'm all right!" But he turned sick immediately,
and Judith's arms caught his head and shoulders as he fell back. His face
turned, and was pillowed on her bosom. At this she blushed, but a look of
singular dignity came into her face. Those standing by were struck with a
kind of awe; they were used mostly to the daughters of habitants and
fifty-acre farmers. Her sensitive face spoke a wonderful language: a
divine gratitude and thankfulness; and her eyes had a clear moisture
which did not dim them. The situation was trying to the river-drivers--it
was too refined; and they breathed more freely when they got outside and
left the girl, her grandfather, Pierre, and the young doctor alone with
the injured man.
That was how the thing began. Pierre saw the conclusion of events from
the start. The young doctor did not. From the hour when he bound up
Brydon's head, Judith's fingers aiding him, he felt a spring in his blood
new to him. When he came to know exactly what it meant, and acted, it was
too late. He was much surprised that his advances were gently repulsed.
He pressed them hard: that was a mistake. He had an idea, not uncommon in
such cases, that he was conferring an honour. But he was very young. A
gold medal in anatomy is likely to turn a lad's head at the start. He
falls into the error that the ability to demonstrate the medulla
oblongata should likewise suffice to convince the heart of a maid. Pierre
enjoyed the situation; he knew life all round; he had boxed the compass
of experience.
He believed in Judith. The old man interested him: he was a wreck out of
an unfamiliar life.
"Well, you see," Pierre said to Brydon one day, as they sat on the high
cross-beams of the little bridge, "you can't kill it in a man--what he
was born. Look, as he piles up the driftwood over there. Broken down, eh?
Yes, but then there is something--a manner, an eye. He piles the wood
like champagne bottles. On the raft, you remember, he took off his hat to
death. That's different altogether from us."
He gave a sidelong glance at Brydon, and saw a troubled look.
"Yes," Brydon said, "he is different; and so is she."
"She is a lady," Pierre said, with slow emphasis. "She couldn't hide it
if she tried. She plays the piano, and looks all silk in calico. Made for
this?"--he waved his hand towards the Bridge House. "No, no! made for--"
He paused, smiled enigmatically, and dropped a bit of wood on the swift
current.
Brydon frowned, then said: "Well, made for what, Pierre?"
Pierre looked over Brydon's shoulder, towards a pretty cottage on the
hillside. "Made for homes like that, not this," he said, and he nodded
first towards the hillside, then to the Bridge House. (The cottage
belonged to the young doctor.) A growl like an animal's came from Brydon,
and he clinched the other's shoulder. Pierre glanced at the hand, then at
Brydon's face, and said sharply: "Take it away."
The hand dropped; but Brydon's face was hot, and his eyes were hard.
Pierre continued: "But then women are strange. What you expect they will
not--no. Riches?--it is nothing; houses like that on the hill, nothing.
They have whims. The hut is as good as the house, with the kitchen in the
open where the river welts and washes, and a man--the great man of the
world to them--to play the little game of life with. . . . Pshaw! you are
idle: move; you are thick in the head: think hard; you like the girl:
speak."
As he said this, there showed beneath them the front timbers of a small
crib of logs with a crew of two men, making for the rapids and the slide
below. Here was an adventure, for running the rapids with so slight a
craft and small a crew was smart work. Pierre, measuring the distance,
and with a "Look out, below!" swiftly let himself down by his arms as far
as he could, and then dropped to the timbers, as lightly as if it were a
matter of two feet instead of twelve. He waved a hand to Brydon, and the
crib shot on. Brydon sat eyeing it abstractedly till it ran into the
teeth of the rapids, the long oars of the three men rising and falling to
the monotonous cry. The sun set out the men and the craft against the
tall dark walls of the river in strong relief, and Brydon was carried
away from what Pierre had been saying. He had a solid pleasure in
watching, and he sat up with a call of delight when he saw the crib drive
at the slide. Just glancing the edge, she shot through safely. His face
blazed.
"A pretty sight!" said a voice behind him.
Without a word he swung round, and dropped, more heavily than Pierre,
beside Judith.
"It gets into our bones," he said. "Of course, though it ain't the same
to you," he added, looking down at her over his shoulder. "You don't care
for things so rough, mebbe?"
"I love the river," she said quietly.
"We're a rowdy lot, we river-drivers. We have to be. It's a rowdy
business."
"I never noticed that," she replied, gravely smiling. "When I was small I
used to go to the river-drivers' camps with my brother, and they were
always kind to us. They used to sing and play the fiddle, and joke; but I
didn't think then that they were rowdy, and I don't now. They were never
rough with us."
"No one'd ever be rough with you," was the reply. "Oh yes," she said
suddenly, and turned her head away. She was thinking of what the young
doctor had said to her that morning; how like a foolish boy he had acted:
upbraiding her, questioning her, saying unreasonable things, as young
egoists always do. In years she was younger than he, but in wisdom much
older: in all things more wise and just. He had not struck her, but with
his reckless tongue he had cut her to the heart. "Oh yes," she repeated,
and her eyes ran up to his face and over his great stalwart body; and
then she leaned over the railing and looked into the water.
"I'd break the man into pieces that was rough with you," he said between
his teeth.
"Would you?" she asked in a whisper. Then, not giving him a chance to
reply, "We are very poor, you know, and some people are rough with the
poor--and proud. I remember," she went on, simply, dreamily, and as if
talking to herself, "the day when we first came to the Bridge House. I
sat down on a box and looked at the furniture--it was so little--and
cried. Coming here seemed the last of what grandfather used to be. I
couldn't help it. He sat down too, and didn't say anything. He was very
pale, and I saw that his eyes ached as he looked at me. Then I got angry
with myself, and sprang up and went to work--and we get along pretty
well."
She paused and sighed; then, after a minute: "I love the river. I don't
believe I could be happy away from it. I should like to live on it, and
die on it, and be buried in it."
His eyes were on her eagerly. But she looked so frail and dainty that his
voice, to himself, sounded rude. Still, his hand blundered along the
railing to hers, and covered it tenderly--for so big a hand. She drew her
fingers away, but not very quickly. "Don't!" she said, "and--and someone
is coming!"
There were footsteps behind them. It was her grandfather, carrying a
board fished from the river. He grasped the situation, and stood
speechless with wonder. He had never thought of this. He was a gentleman,
in spite of all, and this man was a common river-boss. Presently he drew
himself up with an air. The heavy board was still in his arms. Brydon
came over and took the board, looking him squarely in the eyes.
"Mr. Rupert," he said, "I want to ask something." The old man nodded.
"I helped you out of a bad scrape on the river?" Again the old man
nodded.
"Well, mebbe, I saved your life. For that I'm going to ask you to draw no
more driftwood from the Madawaska--not a stick, now or ever."
"It is the only way we can keep from freezing in winter." Mr. Rupert
scarcely knew what he said. Brydon looked at Judith, who turned away,
then answered: "I'll keep you from freezing, if you'll let me, you--and
Judith."
"Oh, please let us go into the house," Judith said hastily.
She saw the young doctor driving towards them out of the covered bridge!
When Brydon went to join his men far down the river he left a wife behind
him at the Bridge House, where she and her grandfather were to stay until
the next summer. Then there would be a journey from Bamber's Boom to a
new home.
In the late autumn he came, before he went away to the shanties in the
backwoods, and again in the winter just before the babe was born. Then he
went far up the river to Rice Lake and beyond, to bring down the drives
of logs for his Company. June came, and then there was a sudden sorrow at
the Bridge House. How great it was, Pierre's words as he stood at the
door one evening will testify. He said to the young doctor: "Save the
child, and you shall have back the I O U on your house." Which was also
evidence that the young doctor had fallen into the habit of gambling.
The young doctor looked hard at him. He had a selfish nature. "You can
only do what you can do," he said.
Pierre's eyes were sinister. "If you do not save it, one would guess
why."
The other started, flushed, was silent, and then said: "You think I'm a
coward. We shall see. There is a way, but it may fail."
And though he sucked the diphtheria poison from the child's throat, it
died the next night.
Still, the cottage that Pierre and Company had won was handed back with
such good advice as only a worldwise adventurer can give.
Of the child's death its father did not know. They were not certain where
he was. But when the mother took to her bed again, the young doctor said
it was best that Brydon should come. Pierre had time and inclination to
go for him. But before he went he was taken to Judith's bedside. Pierre
had seen life and death in many forms, but never anything quite like
this: a delicate creature floating away upon a summer current travelling
in those valleys which are neither of this life nor of that; but where
you hear the echoes of both, and are visited by solicitous spirits. There
was no pain in her face--she heard a little, familiar voice from high and
pleasant hills, and she knew, so wise are the dying, that her husband was
travelling after her, and that they would be all together soon. But she
did not speak of that. For the knowledge born of such a time is locked up
in the soul.