Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Volume 5.

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PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE

TALES OF THE FAR NORTH

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 5.

ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE
THE CIPHER
A TRAGEDY OF NOBODIES
A SANCTUARY OF THE PLAINS

ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE

"The birds are going south, Antoine--see--and it is so early!"

"Yes, Angelique, the winter will be long."

There was a pause, and then: "Antoine, I heard a child cry in the night,
and I could not sleep."

"It was a devil-bird, my wife; it flies slowly, and the summer is dead."

"Antoine, there was a rushing of wings by my bed before the morn was
breaking."

"The wild-geese know their way in the night, Angelique; but they flew by
the house and not near thy bed."

"The two black squirrels have gone from the hickory tree."

"They have hidden away with the bears in the earth; for the frost comes,
and it is the time of sleep."

"A cold hand was knocking at my heart when I said my aves last night, my
Antoine."

"The heart of a woman feels many strange things: I cannot answer, my
wife."

"Let us go also southward, Antoine, before the great winds and the wild
frost come."

"I love thee, Angelique, but I cannot go."

"Is not love greater than all?"

"To keep a pledge is greater."

"Yet if evil come?"

"There is the mine."

"None travels hither; who should find it?"

He said to me, my wife: 'Antoine, will you stay and watch the mine until
I come with the birds northward, again?' and I said: 'I will stay, and
Angelique will stay; I will watch the mine.'"

"This is for his riches, but for our peril, Antoine."

"Who can say whither a woman's fancy goes? It is full of guessing. It
is clouds and darkness to-day, and sunshine--so much--to-morrow. I
cannot answer."

"I have a fear; if my husband loved me--"

"There is the mine," he interrupted firmly.

"When my heart aches so--"

"Angelique, there is the mine."

"Ah, my Antoine!"

And so these two stayed on the island of St. Jean, in Lake Superior,
through the purple haze of autumn, into the white brilliancy of winter,
guarding the Rose Tree Mine, which Falding the Englishman and his
companions had prospected and declared to be their Ophir.

But St. Jean was far from the ways of settlement, and there was little
food and only one hut, and many things must be done for the Rose Tree
Mine in the places where men sell their souls for money; and Antoine and
Angelique, French peasants from the parish of Ste. Irene in Quebec, were
left to guard the place of treasure, until, to the sound of the laughing
spring, there should come many men and much machinery, and the sinking of
shafts in the earth, and the making, of riches.

But when Antoine and Angelique were left alone in the waste, and God
began to draw the pale coverlet of frost slowly across land and water,
and to surround St. Jean with a stubborn moat of ice, the heart of the
woman felt some coming danger, and at last broke forth in words of timid
warning. When she once had spoken she said no more, but stayed and
builded the heaps of earth about the house, and filled every crevice
against the inhospitable Spirit of Winds, and drew her world closer and
closer within those two rooms where they should live through many months.

The winter was harsh, but the hearts of the two were strong. They loved;
and Love is the parent of endurance, the begetter of courage. And every
day, because it seemed his duty, Antoine inspected the Rose Tree Mine;
and every day also, because it seemed her duty, Angelique said many aves.
And one prayer was much with her--for spring to come early that the child
should not suffer: the child which the good God was to give to her and
Antoine.

In the first hours of each evening Antoine smoked, and Angelique sang the
old songs which their ancestors learned in Normandy. One night Antoine's
face was lighted with a fine fire as he talked of happy days in the
parish of Ste. Irene; and with that romantic fervour of his race which
the stern winters of Canada could not kill, he sang, 'A la Claire
Fontaine,' the well-beloved song-child of the 'voyageurs'' hearts.

And the wife smiled far away into the dancing flames--far away, because
the fire retreated, retreated to the little church where they two were
wed; and she did as most good women do--though exactly why, man the
insufficient cannot declare--she wept a little through her smiles. But
when the last verse came, both smiles and tears ceased. Antoine sang it
with a fond monotony:

"Would that each rose were growing
Upon the rose-tree gay,
And that the fatal rose-tree
Deep in the ocean lay.
'I ya longtemps que je t'aime
Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

Angelique's heart grew suddenly heavy. From the rose-tree of the song
her mind fled and shivered before the leafless rose-tree by the mine; and
her old dread came back.

Of course this was foolish of Angelique; of course the wise and great
throw contumely on all such superstition; and knowing women will smile
at each other meaningly, and with pity for a dull man-writer, and will
whisper, "Of course, the child." But many things, your majesties, are
hidden from your wisdom and your greatness, and are given to the simple
--to babes, and the mothers of babes.

It was upon this very night that Falding the Englishman sat with other
men in a London tavern, talking joyously. "There's been the luck of
Heaven," he said, "in the whole exploit. We'd been prospecting for
months. As a sort of try in a back-water we rowed over one night to an
island and pitched tents. Not a dozen yards from where we camped was a
rose-tree-think of it, Belgard, a rose-tree on a rag-tag island of Lake
Superior! 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' 'There's
luck here,' said I; and at it we went just beside the rose-tree. What's
the result? Look at that prospectus: a company with a capital of two
hundred thousand; the whole island in our hands in a week; and Antoine
squatting on it now like Bonaparte on Elbe."

"And what does Antoine get out of this?" said Belgard.

"Forty dollars a month and his keep."

"Why not write him off twenty shares to propitiate the gods--gifts unto
the needy, eh!--a thousand-fold--what?"

"Yes; it might be done, Belgard, if--"

But someone just then proposed the toast, "The Rose Tree Mine!" and the
souls of these men waxed proud and merry, for they had seen the
investor's palm filled with gold, the maker of conquest. While Antoine
was singing with his wife, they were holding revel within the sound of
Bow Bells. And far into the night, through silent Cheapside, a rolling
voice swelled through much laughter thus:

"Gai Ion la, gai le rosier,
Du joli mois de Mai."

The next day there were heavy heads in London; but the next day, also,
a man lay ill in the hut on the island of St. Jean.

Antoine had sung his last song. He had waked in the night with a start
of pain, and by the time the sun was halting at noon above the Rose Tree
Mine, he had begun a journey, the record of which no man has ever truly
told, neither its beginning nor its end; because that which is of the
spirit refuseth to be interpreted by the flesh. Some signs there be, but
they are brief and shadowy; the awe of It is hidden in the mind of him
that goeth out lonely unto God.

When the call goes forth, not wife nor child nor any other can hold the
wayfarer back, though he may loiter for an instant on the brink. The
poor medicaments which Angelique brings avail not; these soothing hands
and healing tones, they pass through clouds of the middle place between
heaven and earth to Antoine. It is only when the second midnight comes
that, with conscious, but pensive and far-off, eyes, he says to her:
"Angelique, my wife."

For reply her lips pressed his cheek, and her fingers hungered for his
neck. Then: "Is there pain now Antoine?"

"There is no pain, Angelique."

He closed his eyes slowly; her lips framed an ave. "The mine," he said,
"the mine--until the spring."

"Yes, Antoine, until the spring."

"Have you candles--many candles, Angelique?"

"There are many, my husband."

"The ground is as iron; one cannot dig, and the water under the ice is
cruel--is it not so, Angelique?"

"No axe could break the ground, and the water is cruel," she said.

"You will see my face until the winter is gone, my wife."

She bowed her head, but smoothed his hand meanwhile, and her throat was
quivering.

He partly slept--his body slept, though his mind was feeling its way to
wonderful things. But near the morning his eyes opened wide, and he
said: "Someone calls out of the dark, Angelique."

And she, with her hand on her heart, replied: "It is the cry of a dog,
Antoine."

"But there are footsteps at the door, my wife."

"Nay, Antoine; it is the snow beating upon the window."

"There is the sound of wings close by--dost thou not hear them,
Angelique?"

"Wings--wings," she falteringly said: "it is the hot blast through the
chimney; the night is cold, Antoine."

"The night is very cold," he said; and he trembled. . . "I hear, O my
wife, I hear the voice of a little child . . . the voice is like thine,
Angelique."

And she, not knowing what to reply, said softly:

"There is hope in the voice of a child;" and the mother stirred within
her; and in the moment he knew also that the Spirits would give her the
child in safety, that she should not be alone in the long winter.

The sounds of the harsh night had ceased--the snapping of the leafless
branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks: the
Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey
forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out
gently: "Angelique . . . Ah, mon Capitaine . . . Jesu" . . .
and then, no more.

Night after night Angelique lighted candles in the place where Antoine
smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul--the
masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its
bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with
this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with
no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth
to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the dead
man's head and feet, dragging herself thither in the cold; and in her
heart she said that the smile on Antoine's face was deeper than it had
been before.

In the early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost
that choked it, with her child for mourner, and herself for sexton and
priest, she buried Antoine with maimed rites: but hers were the prayers
of the poor, and of the pure in heart; and she did not fret because,
in the hour that her comrade was put away into the dark, the world was
laughing at the thought of coming summer.

Before another sunrise, the owners of the island of St. Jean claimed what
was theirs; and because that which had happened worked upon their hearts,
they called the child St. Jean, and from that time forth they made him to
enjoy the goodly fruits of the Rose Tree Mine.

THE CIPHER

Hilton was staying his horse by a spring at Guidon Hill when he first
saw her. She was gathering may-apples; her apron was full of them. He
noticed that she did not stir until he rode almost upon her. Then she
started, first without looking round, as does an animal, dropping her
head slightly to one side, though not exactly appearing to listen.
Suddenly she wheeled on him, and her big eyes captured him. The look
bewildered him. She was a creature of singular fascination. Her face
was expressive. Her eyes had wonderful light. She looked happy, yet
grave withal; it was the gravity of an uncommon earnestness. She gazed
through everything, and beyond. She was young--eighteen or so.

Hilton raised his hat, and courteously called a good-morning at her. She
did not reply by any word, but nodded quaintly, and blinked seriously and
yet blithely on him. He was preparing to dismount. As he did so he
paused, astonished that she did not speak at all. Her face did not have
a familiar language; its vocabulary was its own. He slid from his horse,
and, throwing his arm over its neck as it stooped to the spring, looked
at her more intently, but respectfully too. She did not yet stir, but
there came into her face a slight inflection of confusion or perplexity.
Again he raised his hat to her, and, smiling, wished her a good-morning.
Even as he did so a thought sprung in him. Understanding gave place to
wonder; he interpreted the unusual look in her face.

Instantly he made a sign to her. To that her face responded with a
wonderful speech--of relief and recognition. The corners of her apron
dropped from her fingers, and the yellow may-apples fell about her feet.
She did not notice this. She answered his sign with another, rapid,
graceful, and meaning. He left his horse and advanced to her, holding
out his hand simply--for he was a simple and honest man. Her response to
this was spontaneous. The warmth of her fingers invaded him. Her eyes
were full of questioning. He gave a hearty sign of admiration. She
flushed with pleasure, but made a naive, protesting gesture.

She was deaf and dumb.

Hilton had once a sister who was a mute. He knew that amazing primal
gesture-language of the silent race, whom God has sent like one-winged
birds into the world. He had watched in his sister just such looks of
absolute nature as flashed from this girl. They were comrades on the
instant; he reverential, gentle, protective; she sanguine, candid,
beautifully aboriginal in the freshness of her cipher-thoughts. She saw
the world naked, with a naked eye. She was utterly natural. She was the
maker of exquisite, vital gesture-speech.

She glided out from among the may-apples and the long, silken grass, to
charm his horse with her hand. As she started to do so, he hastened to
prevent her, but, utterly surprised, he saw the horse whinny to her
cheek, and arch his neck under her white palm--it was very white. Then
the animal's chin sought her shoulder and stayed placid. He had never
done so to anyone before save Hilton. Once, indeed, he had kicked a
stableman to death. He lifted his head and caught with playful shaking
lips at her ear. Hilton smiled; and so, as we said, their comradeship
began.

He was a new officer of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Guidon. She was
the daughter of a ranchman. She had been educated by Father Corraine,
the Jesuit missionary, Protestant though she was. He had learned the
sign-language while assistant-priest in a Parisian chapel for mutes. He
taught her this gesture-tongue, which she, taking, rendered divine; and,
with this, she learned to read and write.

Her name was Ida.

Ida was faultless. Hilton was not; but no man is. To her, however, he
was the best that man can be. He was unselfish and altogether honest,
and that is much for a man.

When Pierre came to know of their friendship he shook his head
doubtfully. One day he was sitting on the hot side of a pine near his
mountain hut, soaking in the sun. He saw them passing below him, along
the edge of the hill across the ravine. He said to someone behind him
in the shade, who was looking also," What will be the end of that, eh?"

And the someone replied: "Faith, what the Serpent in the Wilderness
couldn't cure."

"You think he'll play with her?"

"I think he'll do it without wishin' or willin', maybe. It'll be a case
of kiss and ride away."

There was silence. Soon Pierre pointed down again. She stood upon a
green mound with a cool hedge of rock behind her, her feet on the margin
of solid sunlight, her forehead bared. Her hair sprinkled round her as
she gently threw back her head. Her face was full on Hilton. She was
telling him something. Her gestures were rhythmical, and admirably
balanced. Because they were continuous or only regularly broken, it was
clear she was telling him a story. Hilton gravely, delightedly, nodded
response now and then, or raised his eyebrows in fascinated surprise.
Pierre, watching, was only aware of vague impressions--not any distinct
outline of the tale. At last he guessed it as a perfect pastoral-birds,
reaping, deer, winds, sundials, cattle, shepherds, hunting. To Hilton it
was a new revelation. She was telling him things she had thought, she
was recalling her life.

Towards the last, she said in gesture: "You can forget the winter, but
not the spring. You like to remember the spring. It is the beginning.
When the daisy first peeps, when the tall young deer first stands upon
its feet, when the first egg is seen in the oriole's nest, when the sap
first sweats from the tree, when you first look into the eye of your
friend--these you want to remember. . . ."

She paused upon this gesture--a light touch upon the forehead, then the
hands stretched out, palms upward, with coaxing fingers. She seemed lost
in it. Her eyes rippled, her lips pressed slightly, a delicate wine
crept through her cheek, and tenderness wimpled all. Her soft breast
rose modestly to the cool texture of her dress. Hilton felt his blood
bound joyfully; he had the wish of instant possession. But yet he could
not stir, she held him so; for a change immediately passed upon her. She
glided slowly from that almost statue-like repose into another gesture.
Her eyes drew up from his, and looked away to plumbless distance, all
glowing and childlike, and the new ciphers slowly said:

"But the spring dies away. We can only see a thing born once. And it
may be ours, yet not ours. I have sighted the perfect Sharon-flower, far
up on Guidon, yet it was not mine; it was too distant; I could not reach
it. I have seen the silver bullfinch floating along the canon. I called
to it, and it came singing; and it was mine, yet I could not hear its
song, and I let it go; it could not be happy so with me. . . .
I stand at the gate of a great city, and see all, and feel the great
shuttles of sounds, the roar and clack of wheels, the horses' hoofs
striking the ground, the hammer of bells; all: and yet it is not mine;
it is far, far away from me. It is one world, mine is another; and
sometimes it is lonely, and the best things are not for me. But I have
seen them, and it is pleasant to remember, and nothing can take from us
the hour when things were born, when we saw the spring--nothing--never!"

Her manner of speech, as this went on, became exquisite in fineness,
slower, and more dream-like, until, with downward protesting motions of
the hand, she said that "nothing--never!" Then a great sigh surged up
her throat, her lips parted slightly, showing the warm moist whiteness of
her teeth, her hands falling lightly, drew together and folded in front
of her. She stood still.

Pierre had watched this scene intently, his chin in his hands, his elbows
on his knees. Presently he drew himself up, ran a finger meditatively
along his lip, and said to himself: "It is perfect. She is carved from
the core of nature. But this thing has danger for her. . . .
'bien!' . . . ah!"

A change in the scene before him caused this last expression of surprise.

Hilton, rousing from the enchanting pantomime, took a step towards her;
but she raised her hand pleadingly, restrainingly, and he paused. With
his eyes he asked her mutely why. She did not answer, but, all at once
transformed into a thing of abundant sprightliness, ran down the
hillside, tossing up her arms gaily. Yet her face was not all
brilliance. Tears hung at her eyes. But Hilton did not see these.
He did not run, but walked quickly, following her; and his face had a
determined look. Immediately, a man rose up from behind a rock on the
same side of the ravine, and shook clenched fists after the departing
figures; then stood gesticulating angrily to himself, until, chancing
to look up, he sighted Pierre, and straightway dived into the underbrush.
Pierre rose to his feet, and said slowly: "Hilton, here may be trouble
for you also. It is a tangled world."

Towards evening Pierre sauntered to the house of Ida's father. Light of
footstep, he came upon the girl suddenly. They had always been friends
since the day when, at uncommon risk, he rescued her dog from a freshet
on the Wild Moose River. She was sitting utterly still, her hands folded
in her lap. He struck his foot smartly on the ground. She felt the
vibration, and looked up. He doffed his hat, and she held out her hand.
He smiled and took it, and, as it lay in his, looked at it for a moment
musingly. She drew it back slowly. He was then thinking that it was the
most intelligent hand he had ever seen. . . . He determined to play a
bold and surprising game. He had learned from her the alphabet of the
fingers--that is, how to spell words. He knew little gesture-language.
He, therefore, spelled slowly: "Hawley is angry, because you love
Hilton." The statement was so matter-of-fact, so sudden, that the girl
had no chance. She flushed and then paled. She shook her head firmly,
however, and her fingers slowly framed the reply: "You guess too much.
Foolish things come to the idle."

"I saw you this afternoon," he silently urged.

Her fingers trembled slightly. "There was nothing to see." She knew he
could not have read her gestures. "I was telling a story."

"You ran from him--why?" His questioning was cruel that he might in the
end be kind.

"The child runs from its shadow, the bird from its nest, the fish jumps
from the water--that is nothing." She had recovered somewhat.

But he: "The shadow follows the child, the bird comes back to its nest,
the fish cannot live beyond the water. But it is sad when the child, in
running, rushes into darkness, and loses its shadow; when the nest falls
from the tree; and the hawk catches the happy fish. . . . Hawley saw
you also."

Hawley, like Ida, was deaf and dumb. He lived over the mountains, but
came often. It had been understood that, one day, she should marry him.
It seemed fitting. She had said neither yes nor no. And now?

A quick tremor of trouble trailed over her face, then it became very
still. Her eyes were bent upon the ground steadily. Presently a bird
hopped near, its head coquetting at her. She ran her hand gently along
the grass towards it. The bird tripped on it. She lifted it to her
chin, at which it pecked tenderly. Pierre watched her keenly-admiring,
pitying. He wished to serve her. At last, with a kiss upon its head,
she gave it a light toss into the air, and it soared, lark-like, straight
up, and hanging over her head, sang the day into the evening. Her eyes
followed it. She could feel that it was singing. She smiled and lifted
a finger lightly towards it. Then she spelled to Pierre this: "It is
singing to me. We imperfect things love each other."

"And what about loving Hawley, then?" Pierre persisted. She did not
reply, but a strange look came upon her, and in the pause Hilton came
from the house and stood beside them. At this, Pierre lighted a
cigarette, and with a good-natured nod to Hilton, walked away.

Hilton stooped over her, pale and eager. "Ida," he gestured, "will you
answer me now? Will you be my wife?"

She drew herself together with a little shiver. "No," was her steady
reply. She ruled her face into stillness, so that it showed nothing of
what she felt. She came to her feet wearily, and drawing down a cool
flowering branch of chestnut, pressed it to her cheek. "You do not love
me?" he asked nervously.

"I am going to marry Luke Hawley," was her slow answer. She spelled the
words. She used no gesture to that. The fact looked terribly hard and
inflexible so. Hilton was not a vain man, and he believed he was not
loved. His heart crowded to his throat.

"Please go away, now," she begged with an anxious gesture. While the
hand was extended, he reached and brought it to his lips, then quickly
kissed her on the forehead, and walked away. She stood trembling, and as
the fingers of one hand hung at her side, they spelled mechanically these
words: "It would spoil his life. I am only a mute--a dummy!"

As she stood so, she felt the approach of someone. She did not turn
instantly, but with the aboriginal instinct, listened, as it were, with
her body; but presently faced about--to Hawley. He was red with anger.
He had seen Hilton kiss her. He caught her smartly by the arm, but, awed
by the great calmness of her face, dropped it, and fell into a fit of
sullenness. She spoke to him: he did not reply. She touched his arm: he
still was gloomy. All at once the full price of her sacrifice rushed
upon her; and overpowered her. She had no help at her critical hour, not
even from this man she had intended to bless. There came a swift
revulsion, all passions stormed in her at once. Despair was the
resultant of these forces. She swerved from him immediately, and ran
hard towards the high-banked river!

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