by John Buchan
THE OLD LOVE
THE little countries are shaped by men
And moulded by human hands. —
But you cannot trace on my ancient face
The scars of the little lands.
They come, they pass, like shadows on grass,
Or a child’s play on the sands.
Dawns and dusks and storms and suns
Have spun my tapestry,
From the lakes of the South to the snows of the North,
From the East to the Western sea,
Which lays its arts on my children’s hearts,
And brings them back to me.
Far they may travel and fine they may fare,
And new loves come with the years;
But a scent or a sound will call them back,
And my voice will speak in their ears,
And the old love, the deep love,
Will dim their eyes with tears.
To each will come a remembered scene,
Bright as in childhood’s day;
Dearer than all that lies between
Those blue hills far away.
* * * *
They will remember the fragile Springs
Ere the horn of Summer blows,
And the rapturous Falls when the year burns out
In ashes of gold and rose,
And the Winters brimmed with essential light
From the crystal heart of the snows. —
The tides run in from the opal seas
Through the thousand isles of the West,
And the winds that ride the mountain side
Ruffle the tall trees’ crest —
Forests old when the world was young,
And dark as a raven’s breast.
Morning leaps o’er the Prairie deeps,
Girdled with gold and fire;
In the hot noon the cornland sleeps,
And the drowsy crickets choir; —
The dews fall, and the sun goes down
To a fierce mid-ocean pyre.
In the wild hay mead the dun deer feed
And the long hill-shadows lie;
The regiments of prick-eared firs
March to the saffron sky;
There is no sound but the lap of the lake,
And at even the loon’s cry.
The cold Atlantic gnaws by my feet
As a famished wolf at a bone,
The wind-blown terns old tales repeat
Of sailormen dead and gone,
And the apple-blossom and salt spray meet
On the skirts of Blomidon.
Mile-wide rivers roll to the sea,
And my lakes have an ocean’s moods,
But the little streams are the streams for me
That dance through the scented woods,
And by bar and shingle and crag and lea
Make song in the solitudes.
* * * *
Far and wide my children roam,
And new loves come with the years,
But a scent or a sound will bring them home,
And my voice will speak in their ears,
And the old love, the deep love,
Will dim their eyes with tears.
CHAPTER II. The Gold of Sagné
ONCE upon a time Donald had had a craze for minerals, not unnatural in the son of a famous mining engineer. He had been given a cabinet as a birthday present, and had stuffed it with the fruits of his amateur prospecting. With a geological hammer he had tapped every boulder around Bellefleurs, and had laboriously washed for gold the sands of the unfruitful Manitou. In the process he had picked up much curious knowledge. He knew the russet bloom on a rock face which meant iron, the greens and blues of copper, the rose-pink of silver, and the canary yellow of pitchblende. Also he carried in his pocket as a sort of mascot a sample of gold-bearing quartz from a lode in the North of extreme richness. It was not much to look at, for it resembled nothing so much as a bit of frozen haggis.
All day he had ranged the countryside, his lunch in his pocket, with Simone and Aristide. First every corner of the farm had to be visited. Celestin Martel had his hay cut and coiled and was preparing to stack it. The little fields of wheat and oats had made good growth and were within a month of harvest. Joe Petit-Pont, shepherd, cattleman, and jack-of-all-trades, was already shearing the few sheep, whose wool would be spun and woven in the long winter months.
They inspected their favourite haunts in the woods, and Donald noted with approval that a bear had made his winter lair in the cave which last year had been the headquarters of the pirate chief Blind Eye, the Terror of the St. Lawrence. The afternoon was very hot and the children had swum in a warm pool of the Manitou, the salt water of the shore being still unpleasantly cold. Then they had arrived at the Martels’ house for a late tea, with bread and butter and blueberry jam and the crispest cookies in the world.
The farmhouse was Donald’s notion of a perfect dwelling. His father’s lodge was fresh and spacious and smelt sweetly of new-cut timber, but Madame Martel’s was a thing on an altogether higher plane. It had mystery and queer corners. The door was of oak two hundred years old, and had three windows on each side of it. It opened into a spacious chamber, raftered with beams from the great white pines which had once filled the valley. There was a hearth like a chapel, and above an array of muskets which may have done duty under Montcalm. There was a big, old spinning-wheel for wool and a small spinning-wheel for flax. This was dining-room, parlour, and workshop of the household, for in the far corner was a bench where Celestin, who was a handy man, played the part of carpenter, metal worker, and maker of bottes sauvages. The floor was of soft wood painted in some dark tint and varnished, and on it lay many bright-coloured, home-made rugs. Beyond was a spacious kitchen, and on either side guest-rooms, while a staircase in a corner led to a nest of upper bedrooms under the steep roof.
But the charm of the place to Donald was the bewitching smell. It never varied, and when he returned to Bellefleurs it came to his nostrils like the tang of salt to a man long homesick for the sea. Sometimes at school and at home he caught a suggestion of it, and it made him want to cry. It was too subtle to analyse, but there was cooking in it — reminiscences of Madame’s famous pea-soup and partridge-with-cabbage; burning logs, and old timber, and tobacco, and home-spun wool, and fresh-cut wood, and tar and paraffin and Lord knows what else; and fragrant whiffs of pine and salt from the out-of-doors.
“Monsieur Negogue come for you soon,” Madame told Donald. All the parish gave the Indian the title of Monsieur. She insisted on speaking English when Donald was there, for the benefit of her offspring.
“Yeh! The sea trout may be in the Sea-pool.” He dived into his pockets and produced a collection of oddments, including a battered fly-book, in which he sought furiously. “I don’t believe I’ve got the right kind of fly for this weather. You want something to give’m dry. These things are like feather dusters.”
Simone and Aristide looked on apathetically. They were not greatly interested in sea trout.
Madame cast a glance at the contents of Donald’s pockets, displayed beside his tea-cup. “Monsieur Negogue he say you bring your lucky stone.”
Donald held up the dingy mottled thing and regarded it critically.
“It’s gold, you know,” he told his hostess. “At least, it has gold in it, though it don’t look much like it.”
“It is like a cold sausage,” said Madame.
“My father says it’s like a frozen haggis. It comes from the Gloriana Mine away up in the North. There’s acres of that stuff underground, and they dig it out like stones from a quarry. Gloriana is going to be the richest gold mine in the world.”
“But you go fishing! What does Monsieur Negogue want with the little stone? The trout will not eat it.”
Donald shovelled back the junk into his pocket, all but his fly-book, in which he was searching furiously when Negog appeared. The Indian stood like a statue in the open door, making no sound or sig
n, but everyone in the room was at once aware of his presence. Donald got hastily to his feet.
“Thank you very much for tea, Madame,” he said. “Are Simone and Aristide coming?”
“No. They go down to the village to the feast-day of their cousin.”
Donald retrieved his rod and net from a corner. “Come on, Negog. The sun will soon be off the Sea-pool.”
“But not off the Priest’s pool.”
“The Priest’s pool is no use. You said yourself that it was only good in a spate, and then only for salmon.”
“I think that to-night it will be good,” was the grave answer. “Have you your little lucky stone?”
“Yeh, but what do you want with it? We’re not fishing for cod so that we need a sinker.”
Donald could never walk down to the river; he always ran. But Negog’s walking pace was easily as fast as his jerky rushes. He had been right in his guess; the Sea-pool was more than half in dusk, for a ridge of mountain shut off from it the westering sun. But the Priest’s pool, a long canal-like stretch above a short rapid, was all molten gold. Not a ripple or flurry of wind disturbed its silence. Wherever the sea trout were, they were not there.
Donald regarded the place disdainfully while Negog busied himself in collecting bits of dead-wood from the shingle and twigs from the adjacent covert. Presently he had a little heap of fuel to which he added some dried herbs from his pocket.
“What on earth are you up to?” Donald demanded. “We don’t need a smudge. There’s not a fly in the landscape!”
“Yet I think a fire will be good.”
The Indian put a match to the pile and then sprinkled on it a yellowish powder from a skin bag. Instantly a flame sprang up, a queer purple flame which changed suddenly to saffron. Donald’s curiosity was roused, and he came over to watch it. Oddly enough there was scarcely any smoke, but there was an odour which did not come from pine or cedar — a harsh, bitter astringent smell which made the boy feel a little dizzy. It slightly confused his brain, but it seemed to wake all his senses to a special keenness. He smelled scents which he would normally have missed, of dried shingle, of the river water, of the meadow of wild hay on the farther bank, of a patch of resinous junipers on a near bluff. He seemed to hear, too, very distant sounds, like the ripple of the almost tideless Gulf a mile away, and the jingle of Monsieur Martel’s cow-bells on the upland pasture. Negog had taken the lucky stone from Donald’s pocket and had placed it in Donald’s right hand, clasping the fingers over it.
“Look at the river!” the Indian said sharply.
Donald turned to the Manitou and slowly approached the edge of the golden trough. He was no longer thinking about sea trout.
* * * *
He was looking at a motion picture, one without captions. He did not need any explanatory words, for he seemed to recognise each scene and to know precisely what it meant. What language was spoken did not matter, for, whatever it was, he understood it perfectly. Donald was always a little slow in getting the hang of the ordinary picture at the start, but here his comprehension was so complete and immediate that he might himself have been the producer.
Two men were sitting on a stone terrace. There was a glimpse of grey gables behind them, and small slotted windows, round which a big vine clustered. In front was a rough, much-trodden courtyard, and beyond it the bosky edge of a wood. But the trees were not so thickly set as to prevent shafts of the evening sun making a striped pattern on the earth of the yard.
The two men had a table between them on which were set wine and a dish of filberts. They seemed much of an age, but time had dealt differently with each. One, who wore rough country clothes and had the points of his breeches and doublet undone for comfort, was as lean as a crane, and his high-boned face was deeply weathered. His hair, though he was well on in middle life, was still thick and ungrizzled. Some form of rheumatism had bent his shoulders and given his neck a twist to the side, but he looked a man who could still play an active part in the field, or on shipboard, or on the world’s highways. He spoke with a hard risp in his voice, after the fashion of Breton folk.
The other was shorter and plumper, but it was an unhealthy plumpness. His face was pale, as if he dwelt too much indoors. His head had once been tonsured, but a general baldness was overtaking him. He wore the dark gown of the scholar, which he had tucked up like an apron round his knees. His speech was softer and slower than that of his companion — the famous sing-song of Touraine.
A soldier and a priest, one would have labelled the two at first sight — and yet not quite a soldier or quite a priest. In each the commanding feature was the eyes. The former’s were those of a leader of men, quick, eager, imperious. The latter’s were those of a master of his own soul.
The man in the gown spoke.
“What imp prompted you, Jacques, to bury yourself here in a forest? An old sailorman should live within sight of the sea.”
“Not so, my good Francis. In half an hour I can hobble to a little hill from which I get a prospect of salt water. But I have had enough of Neptune. A seaman spends his days being buffeted with spray, but at night he snores in a cubicle like a cupboard. This house of Limoilon is my cubicle, for I am old and drowsy.”
The other laughed. “Like me you have eaten of the Herb Pantagruelion. My ship, like yours, has come to port. Poor Brother Francis Rabelais of the Orders of St. Francis and St. Benedict and St. Hippocrates has been to Rome and is shrived of his errors. By the grace of the Pope he is now Curé of Meudon and St. Christophe and in favour with God and man.”
A kindly smile wrinkled the sailor’s face.
“But you have not yet found your Abbey of Theleme, my friend. That is what we all spend our lives in seeking. We see its towers far away and waste our strength in straining towards them; but half-way the grave yawns for us.
Perhaps it is as well, for such treasure is not for a single mortal. I and De Roberval have opened the trail and in each succeeding generation someone will carry it a little farther, so that one day at last God’s purpose will be fulfilled.”
“Beyond doubt the Herb Pantagruelion!” said Rabelais. “But tell me of that part of the Indies they call Canada.” He turned his head to the house-wall on which had been hung the horns and mask of a big moose. “That is the deer you call the tarande, is it not?”
Jacques Cartier nodded. “Such is the Indian name.”
“It looks like one of the beasts in St. John’s Apocalypse. If that is the common run of deer in your Canada, you will need a nation of Gargantuas to cope with them. How would a haunch of that venison taste, think you?”
“Do not speak of Canada,” said Cartier. “Canada is only an outlier. The true empire is that of Sagné, which runs from the ocean to the sunset.”
“You have seen this Sagné?”
“From afar off. At the Isle of Orleans and at Stadacona I heard of its wonders, and saw indeed the river which bears its name descending between mighty precipices to the sea. But from the mountain at Hochelaga I looked into its confines. North there were hills firred to the tops with forests, and west the valleys of great rivers — so great that compared to them your Loire is only a trickle.”
“Did you find the Emperor?”
Cartier shook his head. “His home was twenty days distant. There was no time left me for the journey in the short Indian summer.”
“And the gold? That is the first question we stay-at-homes ask of the adventurer.”
Again Cartier shook his head, this time ruefully. “I brought back ten casks of it, and seven of silver, and seven quintals of precious stones. At least, so I fondly imagined. But the King’s assayers find little value in the metal, and my jewels were but crystals. ‘Diamonds of Canada’ is now the word of reproach. Little wonder, Francis. The treasures of that kingdom lie not at its fringes, but at the heart of it, and I never got near the heart. But beyond doubt the treasure is there. What I brought home was indubitably the Mother of Gold and the Mother of Silver, and where the Mothe
r is the offspring is not far away.”
He rose and limped into the house, whence he returned with a brass-bound chest which he opened with a key from a chain at his girdle. From it he took a handful of ore specimens.
“See,” he said. “That is red copper, and that is lead; that is silver and also its Mother. And that is raw ore of gold.”
(Donald recognised in the junk pieces of iron pyrites, and copper pyrites, and galena, and zinc blende.)
Cartier fingered the dingy oddments lovingly, scooping them up and dropping them from hand to hand. He replaced them in the chest, and took from it a little bag of chewed caribou skin, with writing on its soft white surface. He untied the mouth of it and extracted a stone exactly like that which Donald was now clutching. Part of it had become polished from friction, and Cartier wet his finger and moistened it so that it shone dully.
“What is that?” Rabelais asked. “Is the Philosopher’s Stone found at last? It is like the sloughed skin of a snake.”
“It is gold,” said Cartier solemnly. “Or at any rate it is the clue to gold. You must know, Brother Francis, that gold is found commonly in the gravel of the streams, or in the rifts of the rocks. But to Hochelaga there came a man from the north, a priest and counsellor of the Emperor, and he told me of a place where gold had interpenetrated the rock so that it could be quarried like sandstone. He said that the secret of how to extract the metal had once been known to his people, but was now lost; that it once existed was proved by the great quantity of gold ornaments they possessed which could not have been fashioned from the slender dust and nuggets of the streams. He gave me this piece of gold rock.”
Rabelais’s eyes opened wide. “What do the assayers say?”
“I lent them the fragment, but they can make nothing of it. Their skill does not reach so far. Yet they are ready to admit that it might hold gold.”
Cartier pointed to the skin bag. “This I leave to my descendants, and maybe some day fortune will smile on one of them and tell him the secret. See, I have written how to find the place. Fifteen days’ journey from Hochelaga up the river of the Ottawa Indians to the lake which is called in their tongue Deep and Slow, and then five days overland through the forests towards the Pole star. Then a man will come to a land where gold is everywhere, not in dust or lode, but in the plain stone of the country. He who finds that will find a richer Indies than the King of Spain’s.”
