Chapter IV (5)

It had hung about Rainger’s neck. That same awful stillness of the heights was on Charron as he felt within it a little metal prong headed by a carved ball.

A silver hairpin . . . .

“I can’t stick it up now the other hairpin’s lost. P’raps I’ve given _that_ to someone else, you old silly!”

The remembered words beat upon him in hammer-blows, for all their music of laughter and speech. He looked about him half-stupidly, thinking to see beside him the elfish, teasing face in the cloud of loosened hair. He saw only the ice-veins in the rock, a single fan of golden lichen the avalanche had spared, and then that other face—Jack’s face—frowning now, flushed a little with returning life, trembling back to consciousness.

And all those long months Jack had worn against his heart that other silver hairpin from Maisie’s fair head. Traitor, that he was, to Charron—to Laure. Or was there another traitor! Had he taken it, or had Maisie given it to him?

Charron shrank and twisted as he had writhed away from the snow-slide. But no space could separate him from that doubt. It leapt full-armed to life. It came irresistibly as a tide, drowning every foothold of faith in a moment, washing away every barrier, laying waste the soul. He turned heavily in that aching stillness. He wanted to tear the bag from its cord, grind it into a little scrap of rubbish, and throw it into the deep—that was his first thought. He had let it fall again on Rainger’s breast; he laid a twitching, ice-cold hand on it; and Rainger lifted his own hand and laid it over Charron’s.

“Will!” he said, faintly. Then, in a stronger voice: “Did the slide catch me? I don’t remember. My head’s very bad. Did I go over with it?”

“Yes.”

“And you hauled me out again?”

“Yes.”

Rainger smiled. “Good old boy!” he whispered. “You’d never go back on a chum, would you, Will? I’ll be all right in a little while. I guess I was stunned. Might have been dead but for you, eh?”

“I—wish you had been . . . .”

“Will!”

“I—wish I’d left you to lie there,—you vile thief!”

An appalled wonder settled on Rainger’s face. He raised himself to his elbow, still staring at Charron; got to his knees, then to his feet. They faced each other, those two ragged, battered men, at a yard’s distance. For long minutes neither moved, neither spoke. Then Charron stretched out a shaking hand to the little bag Rainger had covered with his own.

“Tell me where you got it!” he said, thickly.

“What? What? Are you _mad_, Will?”

“The hairpin. Maisie’s silver hairpin. The other one,—in the bag round your neck!”

“You _are_ mad! There’s no hairpin there!”

“Show me! _Show_ me!”

Rainger’s face hardened. He answered, harshly enough: “No! You can take my word for it!”

“You—vile—liar!” said Charron, heavily, and came nearer.

“Will, old fellow, you’re sick, you’re not yourself . . . .”

“I’m not myself. I shall never be myself again. You and Maisie have . . . . killed me.”

“Will, for God’s sake, listen!”

“To more lies? I felt it there under the canvas; felt the prongs and the ball on the top carved with little silver roses. Maisie’s other pin. She said: ‘P’raps I’ve given that to someone else, you old silly . . . .’ Had she, Jack, _had_ she? Or did you pick it up? I could forgive you then, for you couldn’t help loving her, could you, though I’d be sorry for Laure? Tell me if you found it or if she gave it to you. Tell me . . . . Only tell me the truth, no more lies! All these two years and nothing but lies. Jack!”

Through white lips, Rainger said: “I shall neither speak to you, nor lie to you, as you say, again.” And there was something implacable in his quietness; he was quick to pity where he loved; but doubt was to him the unpardonable sin against any love. And Will—Will!—had refused to believe him.

“You _shall_ tell me if you found it or if she gave it to you!”

Rainger was silent. He had his own dumb devil of pride, which would have kept him silent then, though the world fell.

“Jack! If I _kneel_ to you . . . . ?”

Silent still, and almost with wonder, Rainger stared at the man who doubted. And there rose up against Charron all the bitter longing and desolation of those exiled years. Something seemed poised above him, rushing down on him; an avalanche of darkness such as no hill ever loosed on man. He staggered forward, crying terribly: “You shall tell, if I have to tear the truth out of you with my hands!” He flung himself, panting, on Rainger, bore him backwards. They fell together and rolled to the lip of the ledge. Charron was uppermost. A swift and dreadful energy was his, a sureness of strength. He thrust Rainger outward till his unsupported head was over the sheer fall, the swept rock, and the spruce far below. “Tell now!” he said.

Rainger’s head went back, his eyelids fluttered, he was near fainting again. The edge of rock burnt the back of his neck like hot metal. His anger fell away. He felt that he must keep very quiet, or Will would have something to be sorry for . . . . The thought came mechanically; he could not have spoken to save either Will or himself.

“Did you find it? Did she give it to you?”

Rainger’s senses wavered. He heard the words from a distance. Yet those were Will’s hands brutally grasping him, that was Will’s savage, panting breath. The edge of pain passed to his shoulders and scorched there. His neck was an agony. He was beyond speech then, even if his hurt faith would have let him speak. The sky rode upon his eyes, beneath him the earth swam in vast abysses of silver and amethyst. The universe swung and poised, ready to crush him; then, steadied to a calm star. He knew he could not lose the star. Nearly gone, his eyes rested on it. He just breathed the word: “Laure . . . .”

He was aware of a cry going past him. He felt himself drawn suddenly to safety and laid down. He felt no more. Once again the world went out in a sweep of many waters; but even there he knew his star was with him, and would be with him to the end.

He woke, from swoon or sleep, to a world grown darker. The air was cold, and solemn with an utter quietness. The hills were silvering in moonlight before the day had entirely faded from them. Many stars were there, a great company of witnesses. He sat up; and saw at his feet the black shape of a man crouched upon the rock.

“Will . . . .”

Charron lifted his head slowly from his knees. His face was changed as if years had passed over him. He said slowly: “Do you remember? You’re speaking to a man who would have killed you an hour back.”

“I remember. Is it so long?”

“Yes.” The dead voice altered; he went on, hurriedly. “I have sat here with you. I have not touched you. I am not—fit to touch you. I’ve waited; not knowing if you’d live or die . . . . You can never forgive me, of course. It’s past that. But if you could give me the charity you’d show to any cur, the kindness you have for a lost husky or a hungry Siwash . . . . and then let me go . . . .”

The broken, humble voice died away. After a long silence, Rainger said: “Then you did not look?”

“No.”

“Come and look now, then. I was wrong too, Will. I should have spoken.”

Charron crept to his side. Rainger lifted the little canvas bag and shook something from it into his hand. This he held out to Charron.

“This is what was in it, Will.” Charron’s very life was in abeyance as he looked and looked again.

“Two long needles,” went on Rainger’s quiet voice, “their points stuck in a shrivelled chestnut that Laure picked up in the woods one day. They’re the only needles I’ve got whose points will go through leather. I keep ’em that way round my neck so they won’t get rusty. That’s your silver hairpin, Will.”

After a long time Charron moved. He sank slowly to his face, and lay there with his hands clasped over his head. Presently, he began to cry as a tired child cries, with sobs and broken words. Rainger waited, silently. When that passion had also spent itself, he too, moved. He took from his belt the pouch containing the hoarded gold-dust, and laid it by Charron’s hand. “This is yours, Will,” he said, gently.

Charron looked up. His eyes rested on the compassion of his friend’s face, as Rainger’s eyes had rested on his star.

“I guess this has decided for us, Will. You’re the one who will take the dust and go out and see your girl this winter; for you’re the one who needs to go the most.”

Charron looked at him, still with breathless, humble questioning.

“It’s this way, Will. Laure and I, we’re secure of each other. We can wait. Two years—five years—twenty; if it’s God’s will we can afford to wait a lifetime, and know it will make no difference. She trusts me as I trust her. Love like that—casts out fear.” He finished, almost with tenderness. “If I’d seen you with anything of hers—the most intimate, the most dear things,—in your hands, on your heart, I’d have known there was some explanation. Even then I _couldn’t_ have doubted her . . . . or you.

“But it’s not that way with you. Your love isn’t self-sustaining. It needs to see, to touch, to _know_; or else it doubts and suffers. Take the dust and go and see Maisie. But—don’t teach her to doubt, poor child.”

“Jack . . . .”

“Ours is the stronger, you see, Will. And the strong things of life can always afford to wait. It’s you who must go and I who must stay, because your need’s the greater of the two.”

He rose unsteadily to his feet, and waited a moment. But there was no word from Charron, flung before him in the dust of the soul. Rainger turned away and took a few steps down the giddy ledge, holding to the rocks as he went. But in a little while he paused, and turned again, and called, wistfully: “Will!”

Some sort of a broken answer. Rainger, his eyes on his serene star, smiled a little.

“I’m kind of—knocked about, Will. Won’t you come and help me home?”

He stood patiently in the clear, kind twilight, till, with a great sobbing cry, Charron rose and ran to him, and put a strong arm around him, holding him as though he would never let him go. And so, under the eternal patience of the stars, they went slowly down together to their home.

THE DESERT ROAD

Cuthbertson, urging his jaded horse over the last of the weary miles from the mines to Los Santos, always pulled up at old Juana’s hut. He had pulled up one day when new to the work and the land, deathly sunsick; and Juana had dragged him into the shadow of the wall, and given him water, and finally tramped into the town for the superintendent’s buggy and mules. Cuthbertson never found out why she had done this, but he was grateful, in the silent way he had early learned of the desert. Since then she always had cool water for him, and a skin spread in the shade. And sometimes she would talk to him in brief Spanish. He was the only white man to whom she ever spoke; and she spoke to him because she thought him like the Rainmaker.

If you asked anyone in Los Santos how long Juana had been there, they said, “God knows.” Cuthbertson thought it quite likely that God did know, and kept account of it.

There were peach-orchards round Los Santos, and the sound of running water, and a pleasant acreage of alfalfa fields. But green life stopped where the water stopped; and westward of the last irrigation ditch lay the desert, oldest of all things save the sea. When the east wind blew by day across Los Santos, the scent and bloom of the orchards was breathed out into the sands. But at sunset, when the west wind brought the bitterness of the alkali-wastes, the little town seemed to cower and shrink beleaguered in the heart of the vast night. Only the steady sound of running water, like the footfall of a sentry, stood between Los Santos and the eternal threat of the sand.

The road ran through the town and out into the desert. It paused at the mines, then went on and was lost in the coloured hills of the far distance. No rain fell on these hills, which were like great jewels worn brittle and thin with ceaseless wind and sun. If a man had business with the desert, he went by that road; sometimes he returned by it. Between the town and the mines, beside a tiny pool that dried to white dust in the heats, was Juana’s hut.

When there was water in the pool, she grew a few melons and a patch of corn. When it dried, she carried water from the tanks, miles away. She had a pot hanging under the roof of her hut to keep cool, and in the drip of it, gray lizards and snakes and earth-coloured birds would gather silently. They were voiceless creatures of the voiceless waste, but not more dumb than old Juana.

Every evening she climbed to the crest of a long wave of sand and watched the sun going down at the end of the desert road. She saw the night sweeping inwards visibly with a movement that was as a sound, the sound of great wings trailed along the sand. Then the stars glowed out in the transparent heights of darkness, the lights of Los Santos, twinkling within their defences, were answered over the curve of the world by the one high light from the mines. Then she went home and slept, knowing that that day no word would come from the Rainmaker.

Once, looking at Cuthbertson with her grave eyes, she said, in the speech he but half understood, “Hate is more patient than day or night, the sand is more patient than hate, and love waits longer than the sand.”

Cuthbertson leaned his head back in the shadow. Westward a mirage danced in the heat, and the crumbling dry hills seemed to lift from blue water and green reeds. He said, “I don’t like the sand, Juana.”

Old Juana laid her hand on her breast. “It takes youth and strength, wit and the memory of many gods. I’m only an old woman of the sands.” Her eyes glinted at him like a snake’s. “Only an old woman. . . But the desire of the heart is stronger than the sand.”

Cuthbertson sighed, thinking of the machinery abandoned at Lost Mesa when the water dried. “We’ve found nothing stronger than the sand,” he said grimly, “but tell me about it, anyway.” He had a queer liking for the old woman, and he was grateful; besides, if she would talk, he might profit to the extent of a paper for the Smithsonian.

Juana looked out over the desert. After a time she said, “It is a long time since I was a girl, and the young men fluted to me in the cool of the evening, and in the maize-dance my shadow was blest. Like a shadow at midday was the Rainmaker to me. He was my husband.”

Cuthbertson shifted in the shadow so that he faced her, and his long boots creaked.

“There was no town then, and no mines. Only the cuttings of the Lost People in the mesas, and this little pool. We came here, my man and I, together. He said, ‘Stay here and rest, it is a good place. I am going to look for turquoise in the hills, and when I find another good place, I will send word. Then follow.’ He touched my long black hair and smiled upon me, and went. I watched him as he walked down the road into the wings of the sunset. Then I went back to my water-jars and waited.”

She was silent so long that Cuthbertson said, lazily, “Well, Juana, what’s the rest of it?”

“There is no more. I am waiting still for that word that tells me to follow. But it does not come. Somewhere between here and there”—she pointed to the vacant glare,—“the sand took him.”

“The sand. . . ?”

“Yes. Perhaps. The wind blew and the moving sand took him while he slept. Or perhaps the water had gone. I do not know. But if he lived, I should have seen his face, heard his voice. And I see him only in dreams, hear him only when the wind blows on the Lost Tombs of the mesas. There are many such.”

“And—you’re still waiting for word from him?”

“There is nothing else to do.” Juana would say no more.

Cuthbertson rode into Los Santos silently that night, thinking of many things, and the Smithsonian was not one of them. He went to bed early at the superintendent’s house, where he stayed; the superintendent’s daughter had found him an inattentive listener to her songs; he slept to the faint whispering of blown sand on the iron roof. Sand and yellowed peach-leaves rustled on the floor of his room. And he dreamed all night of a nameless Indian who had gone to look for turquoise in the hills, years and years ago. He dreamed too of Juana. “Is there anyone,” he found himself crying with a kind of passion to the night, “who’d wait like that for me. . . ?” And he rode on his way before breakfast without saying good-bye to the superintendent’s daughter. Somehow, old Juana had set him a new standard of the soul.

After that, as he rode into the hills in the endless search for water and wealth, he thought very much of Juana and the Rainmaker. Old Juana being an established fact, his thoughts went chiefly to the nameless dead man who still lived for one old woman. Riding up the stony Arroyos, through the wine-red gateways of the hills, the sun blistering his bridle-hand and the hot southwest drying his lungs, he began to reconstruct the Rainmaker’s journey from the pool beside Los Santos. It amused him to map it out mentally and in time this mental map grew to be a very minute and logical thing. Then, after the manner of men who lead lonely lives in places where the wind gives death and the sun madness, he began to see his own imaginings.

The first time this happened, he rode to Mesa City for a case of assorted medicines. He dosed himself variously; but the doses did not affect whatever obscure brain-cells or nerve centres were thrown out of balance. They went on busily at their work of building for Cuthbertson the bodily likeness of the Rainmaker.

As the thing went on, and his mind remained otherwise unshaken, Cuthbertson began to regard it scientifically, as befitted one who kept Smithsonian Reports in his packing-case of a room at the mines. He had methodical notes in a diary:—

“April 7. Found reputed spring near Presidio Pass. Water strongly impregnated mineral salts. (Cf. Analyst’s report on sample). Horse would not drink of it. Saw Rainmaker again. Hallucination commenced 11.45, continued until 12.4. He walked parallel with me at a distance of about 25 feet. Headband of antelope skin, circlets of copper or gold, large turquoise on right wrist. Appearance very vivid, as it has been from the beginning. Thought at first it was real Indian, like the one I rode down last week thinking he was an apparition, and had to pacify with 2 dols. (Mexican). Noticed at last that the hair, which is very long did not move in the wind. Face seemed turned away as usual, or somehow indistinct. Letter from Macnamara re sale of machinery at Lost Mesa. Bay pony injured.

“April 18. Sale of machinery fallen through; advised scrapping for old iron. Mac too thrifty make money here. Rode out to the Presidio pools again. Saw Rainmaker suddenly, walking along sand on parallel course as usual. Exceptional that he really does walk instead of sliding along like a magic-lantern picture. Have an idea that the face is not turned so far aside as it was. Don’t like this. Apparition somewhat indistinct otherwise against violent stratification. Had to shoot bay pony. Ordered new safety razor.

“April 25. During hallucinations, which are becoming more frequent, pulse and respiration remain normal. It must be overwork. Rainmaker joined us to-day three miles east of the pools. Very vivid, but only lasted ten minutes. Face undoubtedly being turned towards me. Apparitions coincide remarkably with supposed route of journey. (Logical effect of conscious on sub-conscious ideas or vice versa). Sand moving badly in prevalent winds, lower end of Presidio drifting up. Should I tell Juana?”

But he kept silence, as a lonely child keeps silence over the visualization of his imaginary play-fellows. He was keenly interested, and only at times a little afraid. The apparition always came after a day of unusual fatigue, and in exactly the same way. He began to watch for it as for a friend. . . Turning some rock wall or corner of desert, he would find himself riding parallel with an Indian, who walked through the sand about twenty-five feet away as a tired man walks. Then Cuthbertson would say to his pony “There’s the Rainmaker,” and watch. The pony never paid any attention, and the moving figure never came any nearer. Through it there always ran a certain flicker of uncertainty, as through a mirage. And, like a mirage, it shook and thinned and went out.

Perhaps it was the lonely child, coming to the surface in the lonely man that made Cuthbertson, as the vision passed, lift his hand to the brim of his Stetson with a soft “Vaya con Dios,—go with God.”

The machinery at Lost Mesa found a purchaser at last, and Cuthbertson, through three blinding hot weeks, had to see it taken apart and numbered and packed on mule-back to the Los Santos line. Mules died and men sickened, heads grew light and tempers uncertain. For these three weeks, Cuthbertson lived at the mines; he had no thought to spare by day or night for the Rainmaker.

On the last day he rode back from Lost Mesa to the mines, alone and tired out, sitting his tired pony like a sack. The hills reeled in the afternoon heat, the desert was a grayish glare under a sky so hot it had no colour in it. Cuthbertson was waiting thirstily for the hour when the mesas would suddenly stand up in the evening like the foundations of some apocalyptic city forgotten of God, and the dark sweep in on the world like a wave foamed with stars. He looked about him as he rode, as though half-consciously waiting for something. He was waiting for the Rainmaker. Presently, as he turned down a shallow arroyo grown with mummied yuccas, he saw the little white dazzle of the eyes that preceded the vision.

“There’s the Rainmaker,” he said as usual, the man clear in his brain. “But I didn’t think he’d been so far west.” The Rainmaker was walking through the sand as a tired man walks. With a little jump of the pulses, Cuthbertson saw that the face of the apparition was turned fully towards him.

He sickened for one strange instant, fearing, with a fear as old as the desert, the shadow of his own dream. But the face, seen uncertainly through the flicker of the heat, was only that of a young Indian of the sands; lean, grave, watchful. The headband gleamed with copper or gold, the hair fell long and straight. And beneath it the eyes were directed, not at Cuthbertson, but intently beyond him to the east, along the desert road.

“I know,” said Cuthbertson, quick as thought, “you’re looking for Juana. . .”

He reined in. But the figure moved on, still looking to the east. Against an outcrop of honey-yellow rock it broke and went out. Cuthbertson shook up his horse and followed slowly.

The rock was surrounded with great waves of loose sand that drifted perpetually before the prevailing winds. Sometimes it was buried, then in a few days, bared to the sky. Now as Cuthbertson stooped from the saddle, he saw that the wind had uncovered a little worn hollow in the rock, and in it a pale glitter of colour. He dismounted. The glitter of colour was a piece of turquoise veined with gold.

He had it in his hand. Then, slowly, he stooped and took out what else there was from the keeping of the desert. These things he tied in his handkerchief and fastened to the saddle, and his brown fingers shook a little over the knot. Mounting he rode on. But at the foot of the arroyo he looked back gravely, his hand at the hat-brim.

“Rest with God,” said Cuthbertson.

It was late before he stopped at old Juana’s hut. She sat just within, her chin on her knees, staring out at the low steady stars.

“Juana.” Cuthbertson’s voice was very tired.

“Come in, señor.” Her eyes gleamed in the dusk, alert and watchful as a snake’s. Her face slowly puckered into wrinkles of kindness. But Cuthbertson would not enter.

“It’s the sand, Juana,” he said, and now his voice was not quite steady. “It has given up something,—something it had hidden for a long, long time under a yellow rock beyond the last pools. It has spoken, Juana. Perhaps the word is for you, perhaps for someone else. I don’t know. You told me once the sand gripped hard as the grave.”

Old Juana raised her head. “But the hold of the heart is stronger,” she said, in the language Cuthbertson scarcely understood. But her eyes commanded him. Silently he stooped across the hut’s threshold, laying the beautiful veined turquoise at her feet. And with it what had once been a man’s hand.

The sand had dealt with it so long that it was no more terrible than a child’s toy of bone and leather. The night-wind moved it as it lay, lightly as the yellowed leaves of the peach-orchards, on Juana’s mat. A small square agate, bound in gold wire, shifted on the forefinger. Cuthbertson showed it silently.

“It is the Rainmaker’s ring,” said Juana at last. “The word has come.”

Cuthbertson bent his head. “There was nothing more. Just the turquoise in a little hollow and the curved hand,—kind of keeping it. . .”

“He was keeping it for me,” said old Juana quietly.

“There was nothing else. The rest had been taken by the sand, long ago.” His horse shifted restlessly outside, and he moved to leave. He was deadly tired in body and soul, lonely of heart.

The old woman sat motionless, but her eyes glowed. “It is the word,” she said again contentedly. “I have waited a long time. Now I can go.”

“Go with God,” answered Cuthbertson in deep Spanish as he mounted and rode on to Los Santos.

And when he was out of hearing, Juana wept. She placed her water-jug where the lizards might reach it, and scattered her ground corn on the sand. What the desert had restored to her she hid in her bosom with little murmured words. Behind her the lights of Los Santos twinkled within the guarding water, and ahead the lonely light from the mines shone across the curve of the world. But as she went down the desert road her face was to the stars. Before her the clear dusk parted as in welcome, it closed behind her like a tender barrier to be passed no more. Above her was the infinite heaven and the hosts of it. Under her feet the sand that took all things, youth and strength and the works of all men’s hands, but might not wholly take love.

Old Juana was going at last to join the Rainmaker in a good place.

LA TRISTESSE

This is not really the story of a child, though it began when Hypolite caught the measles at dancing-class. And when he was getting better, his uncle, who kept a business-like eye upon his health and his manners, sent him to Madame Dulac at Saint Jacques de Kilkenny, to grow strong in the air of the hills.

Hypolite was a little boy at the time, quiet and brown, with eyes like bronze-purple pansies. It was not his fault that his surname was Gibbs. Even at that age, he preferred to have it ignored. Madame called him “M’sieur Hypolite,” or “le petit sieur.” But then, Madame had served and loved his mother when that mother was Geneviève de Lempriere, before she married Anthony Gibbs, and before Hypolite was born, or Madame herself took boarders. To Hypolite, two white shafts in a cemetery outside Montreal represented that ill-sorted father and mother. But before he had been a week in the village, his French began to return to him.

“It is yours by right,” said Madame, who would hear nothing of the Gibbses. “What wouldst thou for thy dinner, mon ange?”

Madame fed him royally and made a baby of him, and told him stories of the long-ago days, and spoke to him of his mother. In a little while, the Gibbs part seemed to have dropped out of his life. He loved Madame, and Telephore who chopped the wood and André who worked in the garden. But most of all he loved Félice.

Félice was Madame’s help in the kitchen, a girl who belonged to nobody, for whom nobody cared. Perhaps the incipient artist in Hypolite first rejoiced in her; she made an impression on him never effaced. His canvas in last year’s Salon, that canvas full of brown and gold, was a far-off memory of her.

“She was Dian,” I have heard Hypolite say “Dian; not the stately goddess, queen of Nature, but the ever-young Artemis, slender as her own white crescent.”

Hypolite ran about the straggling village and made friends with the children; and climbed the little hill beyond the Calvary, and looked at the great river running to the sea, wishing he might follow it.

“There are many nice things here,” he said, invading the kitchen for cakes, “and nice people. André is nice and Telephore is nice, and so is m’sieur le curé. But Maxime is nicest. I went to-day to see him. He lives in a little cabin all covered with vines, and he has two fields covered with mustard and flowers. He is tall and he has blue eyes. I picked some of his flowers and he came out and talked to me, and told me his name and I told him mine. Then his dog came out, his black big dog he calls Sorrow,—La Tristesse. Why does he call it La Tristesse? It is a nice dog and licked my hands.”

Madame looked up from her cake and crossed herself, with wide eyes. “Hast thou made friends with Sorrow, mon petit?” she asked, gazing at him strangely. “I am grieved. Maxime and La Tristesse are not for thee.”

“It is a very nice dog,” said Hypolite, in the gruff tone that was his sole heritage from the Gibbses. Félice was beating eggs at the table. Her long gray eyes turned lazily towards the child, and then were bent upon her bowl again. Her wrists fascinated Hypolite as she whipped the froth, they were so small and strong and firm, sunburned to a creamy brown. He watched them while he ate the cake, and wondered what her cold eyes had tried to tell him.

“Why am I not to make friends with Maxime’s La Tristesse?” he demanded of old Telephore.

Telephore stared at him as Madame had done, and made the little sign against evil. “La Tristesse?” he said. “La Tristesse? If you make friends with Sorrow, Sorrow will abide with you.”

“But she has not abided with me,” put in Hypolite patiently, “she abides with Maxime.”

Telephore crossed his scarred, knotted hands upon the haft of the axe and leaned his chin upon them. “Not always,” he said in a low voice, “ah! not always. Henri l’Ecossais, he was a strong man last Michaelmas. He stopped to speak with Maxime at his door, and patted on the head that La Tristesse, brute of ill name and ill omen. And she, that La Tristesse, she follows him home, beating with her tail and begging him to look at her, as some dogs will. And he laughs, and gives her bones, and she sleeps a night in his stable. In the morning she goes home, drifting like a black ghost down the road. And Henri, little monsieur, what of Henri? In three days, look you, he is seized with a chill and a weariness, and in a week he is dead,—mon Dieu!—dead! And that is not all. If I had my will, Maxime and La Tristesse should be—eh! sent from here.”

Telephore’s face was as superstitious and cruel as the faces of some of Millett’s peasants, and he muttered to himself as the bright blade of his axe fell upon the wood, and the sweet white chips flew in showers like a tiny snowstorm.

“But that is all foolishness,” said the round-eyed Hypolite, in the lordly tone Saint Jacques de Kilkenny had taught him. “La Tristesse is a nice dog, though she is long and black and cries with her eyes. Once I had a little guinea-pig, un cochon d’Inde, black as Sorrow; but it died of an indigestion.”

“Foolishness, is it?” muttered Telephore. “Then, little monsieur, there are many fools in Saint Jacques. As for the cochon d’Inde, that was different. Gabrielle has a little sucking-pig, and no one is troubled by it, though it visited every house in Saint Jacques. But this Sorrow of Maxime’s—foolishness, is it? Eh, well! Pray the good saints you may not be taught its wisdom.”

Telephore was cross and would not talk any more. André professed to have no opinion at all about La Tristesse. So, as was his way, Hypolite decided to go to headquarters for information.

He crossed one of Maxime’s thriftless fields, and went up the path to the cabin. Once the path led through a garden of flowers, but now garden and fields were all one, overrun with blossoms grown small and hardy and wild, which could not be found elsewhere in Saint Jacques. La Tristesse was lying by the door, in the sun, licking a long red scratch on her side. She put her lank paws on Hypolite’s shoulders and thrust her melancholy nose against his cheek.

“Are you come for more flowers?” asked Maxime, rising from among the wild raspberry canes. “There are pretty flowers in the field beyond the patch of barley. I shall grow oats there next year, they are prettier than the barley, but the flowers are best. My grandfather brought the seeds of some of them from the other side of the world, and a few braved our snows and frosts. Pick all you want, little monsieur.” He laughed at Hypolite, showing his white teeth, and yawned and stretched himself. He was tall and strong, with a fine tanned face and eyes of Breton blue softened by many dreams, and he was shabby to the point of rags.

“Thank you,” said Hypolite politely. “But I did not come for flowers to-day. I came to ask why you call your dog Sorrow? Pardon, m’sieur, if I am too curious.”

Maxime bowed, ready laughter in his eyes. “I am honoured with monsieur’s interest,” said he. “I call her Sorrow because she has the look of it, as any one of these—ganders of Saint Jacques would understand. I found her roaming in the woods, starved, all over of a tremble. I took her home and fed her. That is all there is about her. She would harm no one. Yet, because of her colour and her melancholy she is a witch and a loupgarou and I know not what besides.” He laughed angrily and touched Sorrow’s side gently. “Look you here!” he cried, “this was done last night. It is the mark of a bullet,—of a silver bullet, perhaps, they are such fools.” Hypolite touched the scratch too, with fingers light and tender, and Maxime’s face softened again.

“We have no friends, La Tristesse and I,” he said sadly. “I suppose it is because we do not work or go to church. But those stuffy saints—And why should I work? I have no one to work for, but myself.”

“I’m not very fond of work,” confessed Hypolite. “My uncle says I must go into an engineer’s office when I leave college, but I do not want to. I would rather paint pictures full of pretty colours.”

“And I,” said Maxime, “I also love pretty colours. When I want them, I look at the fields and the skies and the hills, and I am content.” They smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

“And I am a friend to you and La Tristesse if you will have me,” said Hypolite.

“Monsieur honours us,” said Maxime simply, “but Loneliness and Sorrow are an ill pair of friends.”

Hypolite dined with Maxime and La Tristesse, under the vines, with leaves for plates; dined off bread and baked potatoes and little trout from the brook and wild raspberries. “It is poor fare,” said Maxime shyly, “but the air and the sun make it sweet.”

“It is lovely,” answered Hypolite ecstatically. “I should like to have baked potatoes in a little oven and catch little fish for my dinner always. Oh, always.”

“The bread is soft and white,” went on Maxime, “feast-day bread, such as you are used to eating.”

“It is the same as Madame Dulac’s,” said Hypolite with his mouth full.

“It is the same as Madame’s,” repeated Maxime, laughing.

Madame scolded Hypolite for the first time, when she heard where he had been. “It is an ill place,” she cried, “and those who dwell in it have an evil name. That black thing, called a dog, ran and barked at one of Gabrielle’s cows yesterday, and already the cow has sickened. Go not near that La Tristesse, I beg of you, child, nor near her master.”

“La Tristesse is a very nice dog,” repeated Hypolite in the voice of the Gibbses, presenting so stony a front to her shrill vexation that Madame broke into tears and flounced away. When she had gone, Félice slipped over to the child, and, without any change in her small, cold, beautiful face, kissed him. He gasped; feeling as if he had been kissed by a flower, so cool and soft were her lips.

Gabrielle’s cow died, and the whispers against La Tristesse changed to silence, which was a bad sign. Hypolite did not know that there were very few people in Saint Jacques who would have gone to Maxime’s door after dark.

And then the rumours began again, but this time they came from the woods. In the village there was silence and listening. But from the woods there issued a new dread,—a dread of night and loneliness and the sickness that strikes therein. Telephore first put it into words.

“It is said,” he told André in a whisper, “that far to the north there is a deserted village. When that village was full of people, there came to their doors a black dog, long and gaunt and wretched. They took pity on that dog-thing and fed it for three days, and then it went away. But it had left a gift for those people. La Picotte struck them, coming silently as is her wont. They died like flies those people that fed the black dog, and the few that were left ran away.”

André stared, his face growing gray with vague horror. He was slower than Telephore.

“If I were you,” said Telephore with a sort of frightened sneer, “I would change the name of Maxime’s La Tristesse. Maybe she is only biding her time.”

Two or three days afterward, Hypolite went to see Maxime. It was early evening and he moved through a golden world. “I have never forgotten anything of that evening,” he said long afterward. The sky was golden, the air was golden, and everywhere about the fields was the golden glow of mustard. But in front of Maxime’s cabin there was a black little crowd of people, and in the road stood Maxime, facing them fiercely, his hand upon Sorrow’s head. There were boys there, throwing stones, and one or two of the shouting men had old shotguns.

I ran to them, and I think I was screaming with anger. But Telephore was in the crowd, and he caught me in his arms gently, and made me keep still; though I kicked, and bit his hands, and my teeth were as sharp as a squirrel’s. When they saw me, the men who had the guns, lowered them as if ashamed, and the boys stopped throwing stones.

Josef, Gabrielle’s husband, was speaking. “We will not harm you,” he said, “but if you would stay among us, you must shoot that black brute you call your dog, there under your hand.”

“I will not shoot her for any of you cowards of Saint Jacques,” cried Maxime at that. The crowd growled threateningly.

“Then go!” cried Josef, “you and your dog-thing!”

“I shall never forget how Maxime looked, his head thrown back and his eyes like points of blue fire, facing the men who were casting him out of his home. I thought he was going to fight them all. He looked down at Sorrow, cowering beside him and trusting him, and I think he yielded for her sake. He laughed very bitterly.

“I will go,” he said, and they shrank from his eyes. “Sorrow has been my companion and my friend, she has shared my food and my fire, and with Sorrow will I go. She is more faithful to me than any other.”

And then a girl pushed suddenly through the crowd, and stood in front of Maxime. It was Madame’s Félice, and she was laughing aloud. I had never heard her laugh before. “If you go, I will go with you,” she said.

Maxime’s face was suddenly strange and wild at the sight of her. “You—you—you?” he cried. “You—you, O heart of my life, star of my dreams?”

I think he forgot all about the angry crowd on an instant.

“Yes, I,” laughed Félice. “I have seen your heart in your eyes, Maxime, and now you may see my heart in mine. What is the need of words? If you go, I go with you.”

“There is a kind priest at Terminaison,” said Maxime, hot and fierce, his blue eyes on her gray ones that were no longer cold.

Félice laughed still. It seemed as if she could not stop laughing for very happiness, but her beautiful creamy cheeks showed no blush, “As you like,” she answered; “we will go to the curé if it pleases you. But if you go, I go also. I am faithful as La Tristesse.”

“Come then,” said Maxime. And that was all. They forgot the people who were watching them, awed and silent before this strange divine thing shown forth in their midst. Maxime never even looked back at his little cabin, and Félice never looked from his face. They moved away down the road together, hand in hand into the great golden sunset, and Sorrow following them, leaping and frisking. That was absolutely all, and it was over in five minutes. But think of the wonder of it,—a flower of Greece in her golden days, a vision of Italy, a dream of ancient France, there suddenly showing forth for all men to see.

They went unmolested down the lonely road. Once Félice shook her slim arms above her head as if in a very ecstacy of joy. Once Sorrow jumped up to lick her hand.

Yes, they went, and were hidden in the golden mist of sunset, and were gone. Nor did I ever hear of them or see them again,—Maxime, with his blue eyes, his gentle hands, his long lazy body, his rags and tatters; Sorrow, black and faithful as her namesake; Félice, beautiful as the ever-youthful Artemis. Nor can it be said that I saw them go. For I was down on my face, crying so that my tears made little gray runnels in the dust of the road,—crying for the loss of the most beautiful thing I had ever known.

WHITE MAGIC

Lobelia is the new residential suburb on the outskirts of a new town, which is itself on the outskirts of most things. The Big Woods come right down to the streets of Lobelia; bears have been seen on Frontenac Boulevard. Yes, Lobelia is pretty new. But not so new that you’d expect to smell kinnikinnick there.

Yet, one June evening, a savour of that tobacco plant passed along Frontenac Boulevard and down Centre Street and up Magnetwan Avenue. Here and there, an old-timer, relegated to carpet slippers and a back bedroom, sniffed it, and dreamed of prairie and poplar-bluff and the Blackfoot brave outside the H.B.C. Store. Leigh Harvey, busy lifting dandelions from his beautiful lawn, with a dental-looking instrument, dropped it and knelt motionless in the growing dew. He set his big hands on his hip, because they trembled suddenly. To himself, he whispered, “It _couldn’t_ be him—come at last—after all these years.”

He drew a deep breath. The smell was yet in the air. He raised his keen eyes slowly from the dandelions and looked across the hedge that screened his new iron fence.

At the base of the gaudy fence a man was sitting, smoking a little, blackened corncob pipe. He was a mere kernel of a little brown, old man, within the husks of many formless garments. On the grass edge beside him was a pedlar’s basket.

Leigh Harvey, leading citizen of Lobelia, rose silently to his feet. He was shaking. His strong mouth twitched. His eyes were guarded, watchful, but triumphant.

He leaned across his new iron gate with the gold knobs on it, and said, “Hallo, there!”

His voice was rough with emotion held in check—for four years. The old pedlar looked up sideways, cautiously. He twitched the shiny cloth cover off the big basket.

“Boot-laces,” he began, mechanically, “pipes, ver’ cheap pipes, plugs, machine-oil, stickin’-plaster, spools, ver’ nice handkerchiefs.”

He shook a faded rag out of the basket. Harvey leaned over the gate, his new gold watch-chain tinkling against the iron—a stalwart figure in shirt-sleeves. “You come far?” he said, as carelessly as he could.

“Ver’ long way, boss.”

The old man pointed north with his pipe-stem. He dangled the faded handkerchief.

“You travel about much this way?”

“All over, boss.” The old man’s hands began to refold the red handkerchief.

“Stop!” said Harvey, suddenly. “I want to buy that.”

“Ver’ nice handkerchief.”

A silver coin changed hands. The old man shook the ashes from his pipe into his palm, and scattered them to the winds. He began to strap his basket.

“You haven’t,” said Harvey, slowly—“you haven’t got any more—houses and gardens in there?”

The quick glance of the black eyes was wary.

“This,” went on Harvey, indicating the house behind him, the finest in Lobelia—“this here came out of a basket like that.”

The old face creased slowly into a hundred doubtful wrinkles. With a gesture that said, “That may be a good joke, but it’s beyond me,” the pedlar went on covering his basket. Harvey was beset by a fear that the old man would yet slip out of his hold.

“Stop a bit!” he said, desperately. “I want to ask you, did you ever know a feller called Gammett?”

“I forget, boss. I know fellers all over.”

The old man was sending Harvey the swift, impenetrable glances of a wild thing frightened. He was strapping his basket quickly. Harvey, gripping the gate in excitement, spoke commandingly.

“Wait! I’ve got something to tell you. Wait!”

The old pedlar hesitated, then silently acquiesced. He squatted once more at the foot of the fence, relighted his pipe, and prepared to listen. Once more, with the faint blue spiral of kinnikinnick smoke, the lost years came down on Harvey like a wave.

“There was a man,” began Harvey, abruptly, “a man who was down and out, five years ago.”

The pedlar glanced up at him.

“Most fellers bin that,” he suggested.

“Most fellers been that,” agreed Harvey, slowly. “But not many have the bad luck this one did. And one can’t rightly say it was his fault. He’d fought it. My faith, how he’d fought his luck for years! But it just seemed that everything he touched went wrong. Year by year he went down, and down, and a little bit farther down. He tried farmin’, but he hadn’t enough capital to tide over the bad seasons. He tried prospectin’, and his health gave out. At last,” he said, quietly, “this feller got so far down that he was workin’ for a Chinaman—for a Chink that kep’ a little store way up in the hills.”

“When that job failed,” Harvey went on, after a silence, “Gammett got him.”

He glanced at the old pedlar’s back, every fold of the rags covering it instinct with listening.

“If you _don’t_ know Gammett,” he went on again, “I’ll have to tell you. Gammett had a store, too—a big store. He made a fortune by helping people. Yes, he was very helpful, was Gammett. If a man was in bad luck, or ill, or’d been on the bust and spent all his money, Gammett was right there, ready for help. He’d supply goods, would Gammett—at his own prices. Many a feller that Gammett helped in the bad years has spent all he made in the good years payin’ off Gammett. Yes, every down-and-outer in the hills got on Gammett’s books sooner or later.

“This feller, this down-and-outer I was telling about, he was on Gammett’s books, and Gammett ground him hard. Gammett got him. And I hope”—Harvey’s big fist gripped and quivered on the gilded iron—“I hope Death and Judgment’s got Gammett!”

After a moment the heat went out of him. He glanced keenly at the pedlar’s back.

“_If_ you’d been at Gammett’s store,” he said, “one autumn day five years ago; _if_ you’d been sitting on a log in front of the store waitin’ to see Gammett on the quiet to sell him some poached mink pelts, then you’d have seen this feller I’m telling about. He was sitting on the log, too. Sitting there with his head in his fists, staring at two little parcels on the ground between his boots. There was a pound of tea in one. There was some rolled-oats in the other. He’d just given Gammett his silver watch for ’em, the last thing he had left, the very last. He hadn’t even hope or courage left. He was down and out.”

The pedlar on the other side of the fence took his pipe out of his mouth with a soft “cloop.” He turned his old head and stared at Harvey steadily, with impenetrable eyes. Harvey met the long look as steadily. By-and-by the old man turned away and resumed his listening.

In a low voice, Harvey said:

“There _was_ another man sitting on that log. He was an old man even then. He looked kind of poor, but not so’s he was worryin’ any about it. He had a brown face, like yours; a long coat, like yours; and a big basket, like your basket.

“After a bit, them two on the log got talking. And the down-and-outer, he told that old man just what I’ve been telling you.

“He told him more. Why, I dunno. It just happens sometimes that when a feller’s beat out, he’ll talk. This feller talked. He said, ‘It ain’t for myself I mind so much; it’s for _her_.’

“‘You married?’ ses the old man. And the down-and-outer, he says, ‘Yes; eight years ago. We haven’t been apart since. But the life’s too rough for her.’”

Harvey glanced back at the house. He went on, after a moment: