Père Champagne

by Gilbert Parker

PÈRE CHAMPAGNE

By Gilbert Parker

"Is it that we stand at the top of the hill, and the end of the travel has come, Pretty Pierre? Why don't you spake?"

"We stand at the top of the hill, and it is the end."

"And Lonely Valley is at our feet and Whitefaced Mountain beyond?"

"One at our feet, and the other beyond, Shon M'Gann."

"It's the sight of my eyes I wish I had in the light of the sun this mornin'. Tell me, what is't you see?"

"I see the trees on the foot-hills, and all the branches shine with frost. There is a path—so wide!—between two groves of pines. On Whitefaced Mountain lies a glacier-field—and all is still."

"The voice of you is far-away-like, Pretty Pierre—it shivers as a white hawk cries. It's the wind, the wind, may be."

"There's not a breath of life from hill or valley."

"But I feel it in my face."

"It is not the breath of life you feel."

"Did you not hear voices coming athwart the wind? Can you see the people at the mines?"

"I have told you what I see."

"You told me of the pine-trees and the glacier and the snow "

"And that is all, Shon M'Gann."

"But in the valley, in the valley, Pretty Pierre!—where all the miners are!"

"I cannot see them."

"Ah! for love of Heaven, don't tell me that the dark is fallin' on your eyes too."

"No, Shon M'Gann, I am not growing blind."

"Ah! will you not tell me what gives the ache to your words?"

"I see in the valley—snow—snow."

"It's a laugh you have at me in your cheek—whin I'd give years of my ill-spent life, to watch the chimney smoke come curlin' up slow through the sharp air in the valley there below."

"There is no chimney and there is no smoke in all the valley."

"Before God, if you're a man, you'll put your hand upon my arm and tell me what trouble quakes your speech."

"Shon M'Gann, it is for you to make the sign of the Cross—there, while I put my hand on your shoulder—so!"

"Your hand is heavy, Pretty Pierre."

"This is the sight of the eyes that see, Shon M'Gann. In the valley there is snow; in the snow, of all that was, there is one poppet-head of the mine that was called St. Gabriel—upon the poppet-head there is the figure of a woman."

"Ah!"

"She does not move——"

"She will never move. Pretty Pierre?"

"She will never move, Shon M'Gann."

"The breath of my body gives hurt to me. There is death in the valley, Pretty Pierre?"

"There is death in the valley."

"It was an avalanche—that path you spake of between the pines?"

"And a great storm after."

"Blessed be God that I cannot behold that thing this day! And the woman, Pretty Pierre—the woman aloft?"

"She went to watch for some one coming, and, as she watched, the avalanche came—and she moves not."

"Do we know that woman?"

"Who can tell?"

"What was it you whispered to yourself then, Pretty Pierre?"

"I whispered no word."

"There, don't you hear it, soft and sighin'? Nathalie!"

"Mon Dieu. It is not of the world."

"It's facin' the poppet-head, where she stands, I'd be."

"Your face is turned toward her."

"Where is the sun?"

"The sun stands still above her head."

"With the bitter over and the avil past, come rest for her and all that lie there!"

"Eh bien, the game is done."

"If we stay here, we shall die also."

"If we go we die—perhaps."

"Don't spake it. We will go, and we will return when the breath of summer comes from the south."

"It shall be so that we go."

"Hush! Did you not hear——"

"I did not hear. I only see an eagle—and it flies toward Whitefaced Mountain."

And Shon M'Gann and Pretty Pierre turned back from the end of their quest—from a mighty grave behind to a lonely waste before. And though one was snow-blind, and the other knew that on him fell the chiefer weight of a great misfortune, since he must provide food and fire and be as a mother to his comrade, they had courage—without which, men are as the standing straw in an unreaped field in winter, but, having which, become like the hooded pine that keepeth green in frost and hath the bounding blood in all its icy branches.

And whence they came and wherefore was as thus:

A French-Canadian once had lived in Lonely Valley. One day great fortune came to him, because it was given him to discover the mine St. Gabriel. And he said to the woman that loved him, "I will go with mules and much gold, that I have hewn and washed and gathered, to a village in the east where my father and my mother are. They are poor, but I will make them rich; and then I will return to Lonely Valley, and a priest shall come with me, and we will dwell here at Whitefaced Mountain, where men are men and not children." And the woman blessed him, and prayed for him, and let him go.

He travelled far through passes of the mountains, and came at last where new cities lay upon the plains, and where men were full of evil and of lust of gold. And he was free of hand and light of heart; and at a place called Diamond City false friends came about him, and gave him champagne wine to drink, and struck him down and robbed him, leaving him for dead.

And he was found, and his wounds were all healed; all save one, and that was in the brain. Men called him mad.

He wandered through the land, preaching to men to drink no wine and to shun the sight of gold. And they laughed at him, and called him Père Champagne.

But one day much gold was found at a place called Reef o' Angel, and jointly with the gold came a plague which scars the face and rots the body; and Indians died by hundreds and white men by scores; and Père Champagne, of all who were not stricken down, feared nothing and did not flee, but went among the sick and dying, and did those deeds which gold cannot buy, and prayed those prayers which were never sold. And who can count how high the prayers of the feckless go!

When none was found to bury the dead, he gave them place himself beneath the prairie earth—consecrated only by the tears of a fool—and for extreme unction he had but this—"God be merciful to me, a sinner!"

And Pretty Pierre the gambler and Shon M'Gann the miner, who travelled westward, came upon this desperate battlefield, and saw how Père Champagne dared the elements of scourge and death; and they paused and labored with him—to save where saving was granted of Heaven, and to bury when the Reaper reaped and would not stay his hand. At last the plague ceased, because winter stretched its wings out swiftly o'er the plains from frigid ranges in the west. And then Père hampagne fell ill again.

And this last great sickness cured his madness; and he remembered whence he had come, and what befell him at Diamond City so many moons agone. And he prayed them, when he knew his time was come, that they would go to Lonely Valley and tell his story to the woman whom he loved; and say that he was going to a strange but pleasant land, and that there he would await her coming. And he begged them that they would go at once, that she might know, and not strain her eyes to blindness and be sick at heart because he came not. And he told them her name, and drew the coverlet up about his head and seemed to sleep; but he waked between the day and dark, and gently cried: "The snow is heavy on the mountain—and—the valley is below. Gardez! mon Père! Ah, Nathalie! " And they buried him between the dark and dawn.

Though winds were fierce and travel full of peril, they kept their word and passed along wide steppes of snow until they entered passes of the mountains, and again into the plains; and at last one poudre day, when frost was shaking like shreds of faintest silver through the air, Shon M'Gann's sight fled. But he would not turn back. A promise to a dying man was sacred, and he could follow if he could not lead; and there was still some peramican, and there were martens in the woods, and wandering deer that good spirits hunted into the way of the needy; and Pretty Pierre's finger along the gun was sure.

Pretty Pierre did not tell Shon M'Gann that for many days they travelled woods where no sunshine entered, where no trail had ever been nor foot of man had trod—that they had lost their way. Nor did he make his comrade know that one night he sat and played a game of solitaire to see if they would ever reach the place called Lonely Valley. Before the cards were dealt he made a sign upon his breast and forehead. Three times he played, and three times he counted victory; and before three suns had come and gone they climbed a hill that perched over Lonely Valley. And of what they saw and their hearts felt, we know.

And when they turned their faces eastward they were as men who go to meet a final and a conquering enemy; but they had kept their honor with the man upon whose grave-tree Shon M'Gann had carved beneath his name these words: "A Brother of Aaron."

Upon a lonely trail they wandered, the spirits of lost travellers hungering in their wake—spirits that mumbled in cedar thickets and whimpered down the flumes of snow. And Pretty Pierre, who knew that evil things are exorcised by mighty conjuring, sang loudly, from a throat made thin by forced fasting, a song with which his mother sought to drive away the devils of dreams that flaunted on his pillow when a child—it was the song of the Scarlet Hunter. And the charm sufficed; for suddenly, of a cheerless morning, they came upon a trapper's hut in the wilderness, where their sufferings ceased, and the sight of Shon M'Gann's eyes came back. When strength returned also, they journeyed to an Indian village, where a priest labored—and him they besought; and when spring came they set forth to Lonely Valley again, that the woman and the smothered dead—if it might chance so—should be put away into peaceful graves. But, thither coming, they only saw a gray and churlish river; and the poppet-head of the mine of St. Gabriel had vanished and she who had knelt thereon was gone into solitudes where even Père Champagne's friends could not follow.

But the priest prayed humbly for the dead and their so swiftly summoned souls.