Part 8 (1/2)
The two dogs, whose attention had been a little distracted by the backward vision of Andre conveying something to his mouth, returned to their duty with a jerk, and the other dogs behind all rang their little bells suddenly as they felt the swerve of the leaders back into the track. For there was a track over the ice toward Pere Michaux's island, and another stretching off due eastward--the path of the carrier who brought the mails from below; besides these there were no other ice-roads; the Indians and hunters came and went as the bird flies. Pere Michaux's island was not in sight from the village; it was, as the boys said, round the corner. When they had turned this point, and no longer saw the mission church, the little fort, and the ice-covered piers, when there was nothing on the sh.o.r.e side save wild cliffs crowned with evergreens, then before them rose a low island with its bare summer trees, its one weather-beaten house, a straight line of smoke coming from its chimney. It was still a mile distant, but the boys ran along with new vigor. No one wished to ride; Andre, leaving his place, took hold with the others, and the empty sled went on toward the hermitage at a fine pace.
”You could repose yourself there, mademoiselle,” said Antoine, who never thoroughly approved the walking upon her own two feet kept up--nay, even enjoyed--by this vigorous girl at his side. t.i.ta's ideas were more to his mind.
”But I like it,” said Anne, smiling. ”It makes me feel warm and strong, all awake and joyous, as though I had just heard some delightful news.”
”But the delightful news in reality, mademoiselle--one hears not much of it up here, as I say to Jacqueline.”
”Look at the sky, the ice-fields; that is news every day, newly beautiful, if we will only look at it.”
”Does mademoiselle think, then, that the ice is beautiful?”
”Very beautiful,” replied the girl.
The cold air had brought the blood to her cheeks, a gleaming light to her strong, fearless eyes that looked the sun in the face without quailing. Old Antoine caught the idea for the first time that she might, perhaps, be beautiful some day, and that night, before his fire, he repeated the idea to his wife.
”Bah!” said old Jacqueline; ”that is one great error of yours, my friend. Have you turned blind?”
”I did not mean beautiful in my eyes, of course; but one kind of beauty pleases me, thank the saints, and that is, without doubt, your own,”
replied the Frenchman, bowing toward his withered, bright-eyed old spouse with courtly gravity. ”But men of another race, now, like those who come here in the summer, might they not think her pa.s.sable?”
But old Jacqueline, although mollified, would not admit even this. A good young lady, and kind, it was to be hoped she would be content with the graces of piety, since she had not those of the other sort. Religion was all-merciful.
The low island met the lake without any broken ice at its edge; it rose slightly from the beach in a gentle slope, the snow-path leading directly up to the house door. The sound of the bells brought Pere Michaux himself to the entrance. ”Enter, then, my children,” he said; ”and you, Antoine, take the dogs round to the kitchen. Pierre is there.”
Pierre was a French cook. Neither conscience nor congregation requiring that Pere Michaux should nourish his inner man with half-baked or cindered dishes, he enjoyed to the full the skill and affection of this small-sized old Frenchman, who, while learning in his youth the rules, exceptions, and sauces of his profession, became the victim of black melancholy on account of a certain Denise, fair but cold-hearted, who, being employed in a conservatory, should have been warmer. Perhaps Denise had her inner fires, but they emitted no gleam toward poor Pierre; and at last, after spoiling two breakfasts and a dinner, and drawing down upon himself the epithet of ”imbecile,” the sallow little apprentice abandoned Paris, and in a fit of despair took pa.s.sage for America, very much as he might have taken pa.s.sage for Hades _via_ the charcoal route. Having arrived in New York, instead of seeking a place where his knowledge, small as it was, would have been prized by exiled Frenchmen in a sauceless land, the despairing, obstinate little cook allowed himself to drift into all sorts of incongruous situations, and at last enlisted in the United States army, where, as he could play the flute, he was speedily placed in special service as member of the band.
Poor Pierre! his flute sang to him only ”Denise! Denise!” But the band-master thought it could sing other tunes as well, and set him to work with the score before him. It was while miserably performing his part in company with six placid Germans that Pere Michaux first saw poor Pierre, and recognizing a compatriot, spoke to him. Struck by the pathetic misery of his face, he asked a few questions of the little flute-player, listened to his story, and gave him the comfort and help of sympathy and s.h.i.+llings, together with the sound of the old home accents, sweetest of all to the dulled ears. When the time of enlistment expired, Pierre came westward after his priest: Pere Michaux had written to him once or twice, and the ex-cook had preserved the letters as a guide-book. He showed the heading and the postmark whenever he was at a loss, and travelled blindly on, handed from one railway conductor to another like a piece of animated luggage, until at last he was put on board of a steamer, and, with some difficulty, carried westward; for the sight of the water had convinced him that he was to be taken on some unknown and terrible voyage.
The good priest was surprised and touched to see the tears of the little man, stained, weazened, and worn with travel and grief; he took him over to the hermitage in his sharp-pointed boat, which skimmed the crests of the waves, the two sails wing-and-wing, and Pierre sat in the bottom, and held on with a death-grasp. As soon as his foot touched the sh.o.r.e, he declared, with regained fluency, that he would never again enter a boat, large or small, as long as he lived. He never did. In vain Pere Michaux represented to him that he could earn more money in a city, in vain he offered to send him Eastward and place him with kind persons speaking his own tongue, who would procure a good situation for him; Pierre was obstinate. He listened, a.s.sented to all, but when the time came refused to go.
”Are you or are you not going to send us that cook of yours?” wrote Father George at the end of two years. ”This is the fifth time I have made ready for him.”
”He will not go,” replied Pere Michaux at last; ”it seems that I must resign myself.”
”If your Pere Michaux is handsomer than I am,” said Dr. Gaston one day to Anne, ”it is because he has had something palatable to eat all this time. In a long course of years saleratus tells.”
Pere Michaux was indeed a man of n.o.ble bearing; his face, although benign, wore an expression of authority, which came from the submissive obedience of his flock, who loved him as a father and revered him as a pope. His parish, a diocese in size, extended over the long point of the southern mainland; over the many islands of the Straits, large and small, some of them unnoted on the map, yet inhabited perhaps by a few half-breeds, others dotted with Indian farms; over the village itself, where stood the small weather-beaten old Church of St. Jean; and over the dim blue line of northern coast, as far as eye could reach or priest could go. His roadways were over the water, his carriage a boat; in the winter, a sledge. He was priest, bishop, governor, judge, and physician; his word was absolute. His party-colored flock referred all their disputes to him, and abided by his decisions--questions of fis.h.i.+ng-nets as well as questions of conscience, cases of jealousy together with cases of fever. He stood alone. He was not propped. He had the rare leader's mind. Thrown away on that wild Northern border? Not any more than Bishop Chase in Ohio, Captain John Smith in Virginia, or other versatile and autocratic pioneers. Many a man can lead in cities and in camps, among precedents and rules, but only a born leader can lead in a wilderness where he must make his own rules and be his own precedent every hour.
The dogs trotted cheerfully, with all their bells ringing, round to the back door. Old Pierre detested dogs, yet always fed them with a strange sort of conscientiousness, partly from compa.s.sion, partly from fear. He could never accustom himself to the trains. To draw, he said, was an undoglike thing. To see the creatures rush by the island on a moonlight night over the white ice, like dogs of a dream, was enough to make the hair elevate itself.
”Whose hair?” Rast had demanded. ”Yours, or the dogs'?” For young p.r.o.nando was a frequent visitor at the hermitage, not as pupil or member of the flock, but as a candid young friend, admiring impartially both the priest and his cook.
”Hast thou brought me again all those wide-mouthed dogs, brigands of unheard-of and never-to-be-satisfied emptiness, robbers of all things?”
demanded Pierre, appearing at the kitchen door, ladle in hand. Antoine's leathery cheeks wrinkled themselves into a grin as he unharnessed his team, all the dogs pawing and howling, and striving to be first at the entrance of this domain of plenty.
”Hold thyself quiet, Rene. Wilt thou take the very sledge in, Lebeau?”
he said, apostrophizing the leaders. But no sooner was the last strap loosened than all the dogs by common consent rushed at and over the little cook and into the kitchen in a manner which would have insured them severe chastis.e.m.e.nt in any other kitchen in the diocese. Pierre darted about among their gaunt yellow bodies, railing at them for knocking down his pans, and calling upon all the saints to witness their rapacity; but in the mean time he was gathering together quickly fragments of whose choice and savory qualities Rene and Lebeau had distinct remembrance, and the other dogs antic.i.p.ation. They leaped and danced round him on their awkward legs and shambling feet, bit and barked at each other, and rolled on the floor in a heap. Anywhere else the long whip would have curled round their lank ribs, but in old Pierre's kitchen they knew they were safe. With a fiercely delivered and eloquent selection from the strong expressions current in the Paris of his youth, the little cook made his way through the snarling throng of yellow backs and legs, and emptied his pan of fragments on the snow outside. Forth rushed the dogs, and cast themselves in a solid ma.s.s upon the little heap.
”Hounds of Satan?” said Pierre.