Part 30 (2/2)
Behind it all lay his secret. There came one day a man who discovered it.
It was Pierre, the half-breed adventurer. There was no point in all the wild northland which Pierre had not touched. He loved it as he loved the game of life. He never said so of it, but he never said so of the game of life, and he played it with a deep subterranean joy. He had had his way with the musk-ox in the Arctic Circle; with the white bear at the foot of Alaskan Hills; with the seal in Baffin's Bay; with the puma on the slope of the Pacific; and now at last he had come upon the trail of Labrador. Its sternness, its moodiness pleased him. He smiled at it the comprehending smile of the man who has fingered the nerves and the heart of men and things. As a traveller, wandering through a prison, looks upon its grim cells and dungeons with the eye of unembarra.s.sed freedom, finding no direful significance in the clank of its iron, so Pierre travelled down with a handful of Indians through the hard fastnesses of that country, and, at last, alone, came upon the bay of Belle Amour.
There was in him some antique touch of refinement and temperament which, in all his evil days and deeds and moments of shy n.o.bility, could find its way into the souls of men with whom the world had had an awkward hour. He was a man of little speech, but he had that rare persuasive penetration which unlocked the doors of trouble, despair, and tragedy.
Men who would never have confessed to a priest confessed to him. In his every fibre was the granite of the Indian nature, which looked upon punishment with stoic satisfaction.
In the heart of Labrador he had heard of Gaspard, and had travelled to that point in the compa.s.s where he could find him. One day when the sun was fighting hard to make a pathway of light in front of Gaspard's hut, Pierre rounded a corner of the cliff and fronted Gaspard as he sat there, his eyes idling gloomily with the sea. They said little to each other--in new lands hospitality has not need of speech. When Gaspard and Pierre looked each other in the eyes they knew that one word between them was as a hundred with other men. The heart knows its confessor, and the confessor knows the shadowed eye that broods upon some ghostly secret; and when these are face to face there comes a merciless concision of understanding.
”From where away?” said Gaspard, as he handed some tobacco to Pierre.
”From Hudson's Bay, down the Red Wolf Plains, along the hills, across the coast country, here.”
”Why?” Gaspard eyed Pierre's small kit with curiosity; then flung up a piercing, furtive look. Pierre shrugged his shoulders.
”Adventure, adventure,” he answered. ”The land”--he pointed north, west, and east--”is all mine. I am the citizen of every village and every camp of the great north.”
The old man turned his head towards a spot up the sh.o.r.e of Belle Amour, before he turned to Pierre again, with a strange look, and said: ”Where do you go?”
Pierre followed his gaze to that point in the sh.o.r.e, felt the undercurrent of vague meaning in his voice, guessed what was his cue, and said: ”Somewhere, sometime; but now only Belle Amour. I have had a long travel. I have found an open door. I will stay--if you please--hein? If you please?”
Gaspard brooded. ”It is lonely,” he replied. ”This day it is all bright; the sun s.h.i.+nes and the little gay waves crinkle to the sh.o.r.e. But, mon Dieu! sometimes it is all black and ugly with storm. The waves come grinding, booming in along the gridiron rocks”--he smiled a grim smile--”break through the teeth of the reefs, and split with a roar of h.e.l.l upon the cliff. And all the time, and all the time,”--his voice got low with a kind of devilish joy,--”there is a finger--Jesu! you should see that finger of the devil stretch up from the bowels of the earth, waiting, waiting for something to come out of the storm. And then--and then you can hear a wild laugh come out of the land, come up from the sea, come down from the sky--all waiting, waiting for something! No, no, you would not stay here.”
Pierre looked again to that point in the sh.o.r.e towards which Gaspard's eyes had been cast. The sun was s.h.i.+ning hard just then, and the stern, sharp rocks, tumbling awkwardly back into the waste behind, had an insolent harshness. Day perched garishly there. Yet now and then the staring light was broken by sudden and deep shadows--great fissures in the rocks and lanes between. These gave Pierre a suggestion, though why, he could not say. He knew that when men live lives of patient, gloomy vigilance, they generally have something to watch and guard. Why should Gaspard remain here year after year? His occupation was nominally a pilot in a bay rarely touched by vessels, and then only for shelter. A pilot need not take his daily life with such brooding seriousness.
In body he was like flexible metal, all cord and muscle. He gave the impression of bigness, though he was small in stature. Yet, as Pierre studied him, he saw something that made him guess the man had had about him one day a woman, perhaps a child; no man could carry that look unless. If a woman has looked at you from day to day, something of her, some reflection of her face, pa.s.ses to yours and stays there; and if a child has held your hand long, or hung about your knees, it gives you a kind of gentle wariness as you step about your home.
Pierre knew that a man will cherish with a deep, eternal purpose a memory of a woman or a child, when, no matter how compelling his cue to remember where a man is concerned, he will yield it up in the end to time. Certain speculations arranged themselves definitely in Pierre's mind: there was a woman, maybe a child once; there was some sorrowful mystery about them; there was a point in the sh.o.r.e that had held the old man's eyes strangely; there was the bay with that fantastic ”finger of the devil” stretching up from the bowels of the world. Behind the symbol lay the Thing what was it?
Long time he looked out upon the gulf, then his eyes drew into the bay and stayed there, seeing mechanically, as a hundred fancies went through his mind. There were reefs of which the old man had spoken. He could guess from the colour and movement of the water where they were. The finger of the devil--was it not real? A finger of rock, waiting as the old man said--for what?
Gaspard touched his shoulder. He rose and went with him into the gloomy cabin. They ate and drank in silence. When the meal was finished they sat smoking till night fell. Then the pilot lit a fire, and drew his rough chair to the door. Though it was only late summer, it was cold in the shade of the cliff. Long time they sat. Now and again Pierre intercepted the quick, elusive glance of his silent host. Once the pilot took the pipe from his mouth, and leaned his hands on his knees as if about to speak. But he did not.
Pierre saw that the time was ripe for speech. So he said, as though he knew something: ”It is a long time since it happened?”
Gaspard, brooding, answered: ”Yes, a long time--too long.” Then, as if suddenly awakened to the strangeness of the question, he added, in a startled way: ”What do you know? Tell me quick what you know.”
”I know nothing except what comes to me here, pilot,”--Pierre touched his forehead, ”but there is a thing--I am not sure what. There was a woman--perhaps a child; there is something on the sh.o.r.e; there is a hidden point of rock in the bay; and you are waiting for a s.h.i.+p--for the s.h.i.+p, and it does not come--isn't that so?”
Gaspard got to his feet, and peered into Pierre's immobile face. Their eyes met.
”Mon Dieu!” said the pilot, his hand catching the smoke away from between them, ”you are a droll man; you have a wonderful mind. You are cold like ice, and still there is in you a look of fire.”
”Sit down,” answered Pierre quietly, ”and tell me all. Perhaps I could think it out little by little; but it might take too long--and what is the good?”
Slowly Gaspard obeyed. Both hands rested on his knees, and he stared abstractedly into the fire. Pierre thrust forward the tobacco-bag.
His hand lifted, took the tobacco, and then his eyes came keenly to Pierre's. He was about to speak.... ”Fill your pipe first,” said the half-breed coolly. The old man did so abstractedly. When the pipe was lighted, Pierre said: ”Now!”
”I have never told the story, never--not even to Pere Corraine. But I know, I have it here”--he put his hand to his forehead, as did Pierre--”that you will be silent.” Pierre nodded.
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