The Lane that had No Turning/A Worker in Stone
A WORKER IN STONE
AT the beginning he was only a tombstone-cutter. His name was François Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the end of a long hot day’s labour, he finished the half-carved tombstone, and gave the price of it to the widow. Then, going to the Seigneur and Curé, he asked them to buy the shop and tools for him, and let him pay rent until he could take the place off their hands.
They did as he asked, and in two years he had bought and paid for the place, and had a few dollars to the good. During one of the two years a small-pox epidemic passed over Pontiac, and he was busy night and day. It was during this time that some good Catholics came to him with an heretical Protestant suggestion to carve a couplet or verse of poetry on the tombstones they ordered. They themselves, in most cases, knew none, and they asked François to supply them—as though he kept them in stock like marble and sand-paper. He had no collection of suitable epitaphs, and, besides, he did not know whether it was right to use them. Like all his race in New France he was jealous of any inroads of Protestantism, or what the Little Chemist called “Englishness.” The good M. Fabre, the Curé, saw no harm in it, but said he could not speak for any one’s grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words upon the stone. But still François might bring all the epitaphs to him before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or reject, as the case might be.
At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets, taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But presently all that was changed, and the Curé one day had laid before him three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and when he passed them back to François his eyes were moist, for he was a man truly after God’s own heart, and full of humanity.
"Will you read them to me, François?" he said, as the worker in stone was about to put the paper back in his pocket. "Give the names of the dead at the same time."
So François read:
"Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years"
"Yes, yes," interrupted the Curé, "the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung by the English, and cut down just in time to save him—an innocent man. For thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph."
François read it:
"Poor as a sparrow was I,
Yet I was saved like a king;
I heard the death-bells ring,
Yet I saw a light in the sky:
And now to my Father I wing."
The Curé nodded his head. "Go on; the next," he said.
"Annette John, aged twenty years"
"So. The daughter of Chief John. When Queen Anne of England was on the throne she sent Chief John’s grandfather a gold cup and a hundred pounds. The girl loved, but would not marry, that she might keep Chief John from drinking. A saint, François! What have they said of her?"
François smoothed out the paper and read:
"A little while I saw the world go by—
A little doorway that I called my own,
A loaf, a cup of water, and a bed had I,
A shrine of Jesus, where I knelt alone:
And now alone I bid the world good-bye."
The Curé turned his head away. "Go on," he said sadly. "Chief John has lost his right hand. Go on."
"Henri Rouget"
"Aged thirty years," again interrupted the Curé. "Henri Rouget, idiot; as young as the morning. For man grows old only by what he suffers, and what he forgives, and what he sins. What have you to say for Henri Rouget, my François?"
And François read:
"I was a fool; nothing had I to know
Of men, and naught to men had I to give.
God gave me nothing; now to God I go,
Now ask for pain, for bread,
Life for my brain: dead,
By God’s love I shall then begin to live."
The priest rose to his feet and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder.
"Do you know, François," he said, half sadly, "do you know, you have the true thing in you. Come often to me, my son, and bring all these things—all you write."
While the Curé troubled himself about his future, François began to work upon a monument for the grave of a dozen soldiers of Pontiac who were killed in the War of the Patriots. They had died for a mistaken cause, and had been buried on the field of battle. Long ago something would have been done to commemorate them but that three of them were Protestants, and difficulties had been raised by the bigoted. But François thought only of the young men in their common grave at St. Eustache. He remembered when they went away one bright morning, full of the joy of an erring patriotism, of the ardour of a weak but fascinating cause: race against race, the conquered against the conquerors, the usurped against the usurpers.
In the space before the parish church it stands—a broken shaft, with an unwound wreath straying down its sides; a monument of fine proportions, a white figure of beaten valour and erring ardour of youth and beautiful bad ambition. One Saturday night it was not there, and when next morning the people came to Mass it was there. All night had François and his men worked, and the first rays of the morning sun fell on the tall shivered shaft set firmly in its place. François was a happy man. All else that he had done had been wholly after a crude, staring convention, after rule and measure—an artisan’s, a tombstone-cutter’s labour. This was the work of a man with the heart and mind of an artist. When the people came to Mass they gazed and gazed, and now and then the weeping of a woman was heard, for among them were those whose sons and brothers were made memorable by this stone.
That day at the close of his sermon the Curé spoke of it, and said at the last: "That white shaft, dear brethren, is for us a sign of remembrance and a warning to our souls. In the name of race and for their love they sinned. But yet they sinned; and this monument, the gift and work of one young like them, ardent and desiring like them, is for ever in our eyes the crucifixion of our wrong ambitions and our selfish aims. Nay, let us be wise and let us be good. They who rule us speak with foreign tongue, but their hearts desire our peace and a mutual regard. Pray that this be. And pray for the young and the daring and the foolish. And pray also that he who has given us here a good gift may find his thanks in our better-ordered lives, and that he may consecrate his parts and talents to the redeeming actions of this world."
And so began the awakening of François Lagarre; and so began his ambition and his peril.
For, as he passed from the church, the Seigneur touched him on the shoulder and introduced him to his English grandniece, come on a visit for the summer, the daughter of a London baronet. She had but just arrived, and she was feeling that first home-sickness which succeeds transplanting. The face of the young worker in stone interested her; the idea of it all was romantic; the possibilities of the young man’s life opened out before her. Why should not she give him his real start, win his gratitude, help him to his fame, and then, when it was won, be pointed out as a discoverer and a patron?
All these things flashed through her mind as they were introduced. The young man did not read the look in her eyes, but there was one other person in the crowd about the church steps who did read it, whose heart beat furiously, whose foot tapped the ground angrily—a black-haired, brown-eyed farmer’s daughter, who instantly hated the yellow hair and rosy and golden face of the blue-eyed London lady; who could, that instant, have torn the silk gown from her graceful figure.
She was not disturbed without reason. And for the moment, even when she heard impertinent and incredulous fellows pooh-poohing the monument, and sharpening their rather dull wits upon its corners, she did not open her lips, when otherwise she would have spoken her mind with a vengeance; for Jeanne Marchand had a reputation for spirit and temper, and she spared no one when her blood was up. She had a touch of the vixen—an impetuous, loving, forceful mademoiselle, in marked contrast to the rather ascetic François, whose ways were more refined than his origin might seem to warrant.
"Sapré!" said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; "it’s like a timber of cheese stuck up. What’s that to make a fuss about?"
"Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any fool could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!"
"Pish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that François has a rattle in his capote. He’d spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block."
But Jeanne could not bear this—the greasy whopping butcher-man!
"What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can’t write his name," she said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn’t remember that François Lagarre made his brother’s tombstone, and charged him nothing for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it! No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba’tiste the fighter, as brave as Caroche is a coward! He doesn’t remember the verse on Ba’tiste’s tombstone, does he?"
François heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in the crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he would not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant nothing against François, the young man recited the words slowly—an epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid bully.
Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot’s Memory, he said:
"Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken,
Wrestling I’ve fallen, and I’ve rose up again;
Mostly I’ve stood—
I’ve had good bone and blood;
Others went down, though fighting might and main.
Now death steps in—
Death the price of sin.
The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain,
One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken."
"Good enough for Baptiste," said Duclosse the mealman.
The wave of feeling was now altogether with François, and presently he walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd dispersed. Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening she was unhappy, for she saw François going towards the house of the Seigneur; and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every three or four days she saw the same thing.
Meanwhile François worked as he had never before worked in his life. Night and day he was shut in his shop, and for two months he came with no epitaphs for the Curé, and no new tombstones were set up in the graveyard. The influence of the lady at the Seigneury was upon him, and he himself believed it was for his salvation. She had told him of great pieces of sculpture she had seen, had sent and got from Quebec City, where he had never been, pictures of some of the world’s masterpieces in sculpture, and he had lost himself in the study of them and in the depths of the girl’s eyes. She meant no harm; the man interested her beyond what was reasonable in one of his station in life. That was all, and all there ever was.
Presently people began to gossip, and a story crept round that, in a new shed which he had built behind his shop, François was chiselling out of stone the nude figure of a woman. There were one or two who professed they had seen it. The wildest gossip said that the figure was that of the young lady at the Seigneury.
François saw no more of Jeanne Marchand; he thought of her sometimes, but that was all. A fever of work was on him. Twice she came to the shed where he laboured, and knocked at the door. The first time, he asked who was there. When she told him he opened the door just a little way, smiled at her, caught her hand and pressed it, and, when she would have entered, said: "No, no, another day, Jeanne,!" and shut the door in her face.
She almost hated him because he had looked so happy. Still another day she came knocking. She called to him, and this time he opened the door and admitted her. That very hour she had heard again the story of the nude stone woman in the shed, and her heart was full of jealousy, fury, and suspicion. He was very quiet, he seemed tired. She did not notice that. Her heart had throbbed wildly as she stepped inside the shed. She looked round, all delirious eagerness for the nude figure.
There it was, covered up with a great canvas! Yes, there were the outlines of the figure. How shapely it seemed, even inside the canvas!
She stepped forward without a word, and snatched at the covering. He swiftly interposed and stopped her hand.
"I will see it," she said.
"Not to-day," he answered.
"I tell you I will." She wrenched her hand free and caught at the canvas. A naked foot and ankle showed. He pinioned her wrists with one hand and drew her towards the door, determination and anger in his face.
"You beast, you liar!" she said. "You beast! beast! beast!"
Then, with a burst of angry laughter, she opened the door herself. "You ain’t fit to know," she said; "they told the truth about you. Now you can take the canvas off her. Good-bye!" With that she was gone.
The following day was Sunday. François did not attend Mass, and such strange scandalous reports had reached the Curé that he was both disturbed and indignant. That afternoon, after vespers (which François did not attend), the Curé made his way to the sculptor’s workshop, followed by a number of parishioners.
The crowd increased, and when the Curé knocked at the door it seemed as if half the village was there.
The chief witness against François had been Jeanne Marchand. That very afternoon she had told the Curé, with indignation and bitterness, that there was no doubt about it; all that had been said was true.
François, with wonder and some confusion, admitted the Curé. When M. Fabre demanded that he be taken to the new workshop, François led the way. The crowd pushed after, and presently the place was full. A hundred eyes were fastened upon the canvas-covered statue, which had been the means of the young man’s undoing.
Terrible things had been said—terrible things of François, and of the girl at the Seigneury. They knew the girl for a Protestant and an Englishwoman, and that in itself was a sort of sin. And now every ear was alert to hear what the Curé should say, what denunciation should come from his lips when the covering was removed. For that it should be removed was the determination of every man present. Virtue was at its supreme height in Pontiac that day. Lajeunesse the blacksmith, Muroc the charcoal-man, and twenty others were as intent upon preserving a high standard of morality, by force of arms, as if another Tarquin were harbouring shame and crime in this cedar shed.
The whole thing came home to François with a choking, smothering force. Art, now in its very birth in his heart and life, was to be garroted. He had been unconscious of all the wicked things said about him: now he knew all!
"Remove the canvas from the figure," said the Curé sternly. Stubbornness and resentment filled François’s breast. He did not stir.
"Do you oppose the command of the Church?" said the Curé, still more severely. "Remove the canvas."
"It is my work—my own: my idea, my stone, and the labour of my hands," said François doggedly.
The Curé turned to Lajeunesse and made a motion towards the statue. Lajeunesse, with a burning righteous joy, snatched off the canvas. There was one instant of confusion in the faces of all—of absolute silence. Then the crowd gasped. The Curé’s hat came off, and every other hat followed. The Curé made the sign of the cross upon his breast and forehead, and every other man, woman, and child present did the same. Then all knelt, save François and the Curé himself.
What they saw was a statue of Christ, a beautiful benign figure; barefooted, with a girdle about his waist: the very truth and semblance of a man. The type was strong and yet delicate; vigorous and yet refined; crude and yet noble; a leader of men—the God-man, not the man-God.
After a moment’s silence the Curé spoke. "François, my son," said he, "we have erred. ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have followed each after his own way, but God hath laid on Him’—he looked towards the statue—‘the iniquity of us all.’"
François stood still a moment gazing at the Curé, doggedly, bitterly; then he turned and looked scornfully at the crowd, now risen to their feet again. Among them was a girl crying as if her heart would break. It was Jeanne Marchand. He regarded her coldly.
"You were so ready to suspect," he said.
Then he turned once more to the Curé. "I meant it as my gift to the Church, monsieur le Curé—to Pontiac, where I was born again. I waked up here to what I might do in sculpture, and you—you all were so ready to suspect! Take it, it is my last gift."
He went to the statue, touched the hands of it lovingly, and stooped and kissed the feet. Then, without more words, he turned and left the shed and the house.
Pouring out into the street the people watched him cross the bridge that led into another parish—and into another world: for from that hour François Lagarre was never seen in Pontiac.
The statue that he made stands upon a little hill above the valley where the beaters of flax come in the autumn, through which the woodsmen pass in winter and in spring. But François Lagarre, under another name, works in another land.
While the Curé lived he heard of him and of his fame now and then, and to the day of his death he always prayed for him. He was wont to say to the little Avocat whenever François’ name was mentioned:
"The spirit of a man will support him, but a wounded spirit who can bear?"