Stories by American Authors Volume VI Part 11

THE HEARTBREAK CAMEO.

By LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY.

"It is a cameo to break one's heart!" said Mrs. Dalliba, as she toyed with the superb jewel. "The cutting is unmistakably Florentine, and yet you have placed it among your Indian curiosities. I do not understand it at all."

Mrs. Dalliba was a connoisseur in gems; she had travelled from one extremity of Europe to the other; had studied the crown jewels of nearly every civilized nation, haunted museums, and was such a frequent visitor at the jewellers' of the Palais Royal, that many of them had come to regard her as an individual who might harbor burglarious intentions. She was a very harmless specialist, however, who, though she loved these stars of the underworld better than any human being, could never have been tempted to make one of them unfairly her own, and she seldom purchased, for she never coveted one unless it was something quite extraordinary, beyond the reach of even her considerable fortune.

Meanwhile few of the larger jewelry houses had in their employ lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba. She pursued her studies for the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics, cameos, and intaglios. And yet the Crevecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser heads than Mrs. Dalliba's, adept though she was. It was cut from a solid heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure white, shading down through exquisite gradations into deep green, and representing Aphrodite rising from the sea; the white foam rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the drops of spray from her hands and her wind-blown hair; the foamy waves were beautifully cut with their intense hollows and snowy crests; it was evidently the work of a cultivated as well as a natural artist; it was not surprising that Mrs. Dalliba should insist that it could not have been executed out of Italy.

But Prof. Stonehenge was right too; it was a stone of the chalcedonic family, resembling sardonyx, except in color; others, similar to it both in a natural state and wrought into arrow-heads, had been found along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Superior. This seemed to have been brought away from its a.s.sociates by some wandering tribe, for it had been discovered in Central Illinois. The nearest point at which other relics belonging to the same period had been found was the site of Fort Crevecoeur, near Starved Rock, Illinois. After all, the stone only differed from the arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented size--and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its discovery. No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by scientific research at Crevecoeur had been found with a gem for a heart--a gem that glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped with human bone. Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never felt so strong a desire to possess and wear any jewel as now; but when Prof.

Stonehenge told how the uncanny thing rattled within the white ribs of the skeleton in which it was found, she allowed the gem to slip from her hand, while something of its own pale green flickered in the disgusted expression which quivered about the corners of her mobile mouth. The cameo was a mystery which had baffled geologist, antiquarian, and sculptor alike, for Father Francis Xavier had gone down to his grave with his secret and his cameo hidden in his heart. He had kept both well for two centuries, and when the heart crumbled in dust it took its secret with it, leaving only the cameo to bewilder conjecture.

Its story was, after all, a simple one. On the southern sh.o.r.e of Michillimackinac, in the romantic days of the first exploration of the great lakes by the Courreurs de Bois and pioneer priests, had settled good Pere Ignace, a devoted Jesuit missionary. The old man was revered and loved by the Indians among whom he dwelt. His labors blossomed in a little village, called from his patron saint the mission of St. Ignace, that displayed its cl.u.s.ter of white huts and wigwams like the petals of a water-lily on the margin of the lake. Just back of the village was a round knoll which served as a landmark on the lake, for the sh.o.r.e near St. Ignace was remarkably level. On the summit of this mound the good father had reared a great white cross, and at its foot the superst.i.tious Indians often laid votive offerings of strongly incongruous character.

Here he had lived and taught for many years, succeeding in instructing his little flock in the French tongue, and in at least an outward semblance of the Catholic religion. Even the rude trappers, who came to trade at regular intervals, revered him, and lived like good Christians while at the mission, so as not to counteract his teaching by their lawless example. Here Pere Ignace was growing old, and even this gra.s.shopper of a spiritual charge was becoming a burden. His superior, at Montreal, understood this, and sent him an a.s.sistant.

Very unlike Father Ignatius was Pere Francois Xavier, a man with all the fire and enthusiasm of youth in his blood--just the one for daring, hazardous enterprises; just the one to undergo all the privation and toil of planting a mission; to undertake plans requiring superhuman efforts, and to carry them through successfully by main force of will. A better a.s.sistant for Father Ignatius could not have been found. It was force, will, and intellect in the service of love and meekness; only there was a doubt if the servant might not usurp the place of the master, and the sway of love be not materially advanced by its new ally.

Indeed, if the truth had been known, even the Bishop of Montreal had felt that Father Francis Xavier was too ambitious a character to reside safely in too close proximity to himself; and engrossing employment at a distance for him, rather than the expressed solicitude for Father Ignatius, prompted this appointment. The results of the following year approved the arrangement. The mission received a new accession of life; its interests were pushed forward energetically.

Father Francis Xavier devoted himself to an acquisition of the various Indian dialects, and to excursions among the neighboring tribes.

Converts were made in astonishing numbers, and they brought liberal gifts to the little church from their simple possessions. Father Ignatius had never thought to barter with the trappers and traders, but his colleague did; large church warehouses were erected, and the mission soon had revenues of importance. Away in the interior Father Xavier had discovered there was a silver mine; but this discovery, for the present, he made no attempt at exploiting. He had secured it to the church by t.i.tle deed and treaty with the chief who claimed it; had visited it and a.s.sured himself that it would some day be very valuable, and he contented himself with this for the present, and even managed to forget its acquisition in his yearly report sent to Montreal. Father Francis Xavier was something of a geologist; his father was a Florentine jeweller, and the son had studied as his apprentice, not having at first been destined for the church. Even after taking holy orders, Father Francis Xavier had labored over precious stones designed for ecclesiastical decoration. His specialty had been that of a gem engraver, and his long white fingers were remarkably skilful and delicate. This northern region, with all its wealth of precious stones, was a great jewel casket for him, and he became at once an enthusiastic collector.

Before the coming of his a.s.sistant, Father Ignatius had managed his own simple housekeeping in all its most humble details. Now they had the services of an Indian maid of all work, who had been brought up under the eyes of Father Ignatius, and whom the old man regarded rather as a daughter than as a servant. Her moccasined feet fell as silently as those of spirits as she glided about their lodge. She never sang at her work, and rarely spoke, but she smiled often with a smile so childlike as to be almost silly in expression. Father Ignatius loved the silent smile, and a word from him was always sure to bring it; but it angered Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so far away from innocence and smiles and childhood himself, that the sight of them irritated him. The young Indian girl had a long and almost unp.r.o.nounceable name. Pere Ignace had baptized her Marie, and the new name had gradually taken the place of the old.

One day, as she was silently but dexterously putting to order the large upper room, which served Pere Francis Xavier as study and dormitory, she paused before his collection of agates and minerals, and stroking the stones, said in her soft French and Indian patois, "Pretty, pretty."

Father Xavier was seated at the great open window, looking over the top of his book away across the breezy lake. He heard the words, and knew that she was looking at him from the corner of her eye, but his only reply was a deeper scowl and a lowering of his glance to the printed page. The silly smile which he felt sure was upon her face faded out, but the girl spoke again, and this time more resolutely, determined to attract his attention. "Pretty stones. Marie's father many more, much prettier--much."

Father Xavier laid down his book. He was all attention. "Where did your father get them?" he asked.

"In the mountains climb, in the mines dig, in the lake dive, he seek them all the time summer."

"What does he do with them?"

"Cuts them like _mon pere_," and Marie imitated in pantomime the use of the hammer and chisel. "Cut them all time winter, very many."

"What does he do that for?" asked the priest, surprised.

"All the same you," replied the girl--"make arrow-heads."

"Oh! he makes arrow-heads, does he? Mine are not arrow-heads, but I should like to see what your father does. Does he live far from here?"

"Marie take you to-night in canoe."

"Very well, after supper."

She had often taken him out upon the lake before, for she managed their birch-bark canoe with more skill than himself, and it was convenient to have some one to paddle while he fished or read or dreamed. She rowed him swiftly up the lake for several miles, then, fastening the canoe, led the way through a trail in the forest. The sun was setting, and "the whispering pines and the hemlocks" of the forest primeval formed a tapestry of gloom around the paternal wigwam as they reached it. Black Beaver, her father, reclined lazily in the door, watching the coals of the little fire in front of his tent. He was always lazy. It was difficult to believe that he ever climbed or dug or dived for agates as Marie had said, so complete a picture he seemed of inaction. The girl spoke a few words to him in their native dialect, and he grumblingly rose, shuffled into the interior of the wigwam, and brought out two baskets. One was a shallow tray filled with the finished heads in great variety of material and color. There were white carnelian, delicately striped with prophetic red, blood-stone deep colored and hard as ruby, agates of every shade and marking, flinty jasper, emerald-banded malachite, delicate rose color, and purple one made from sh.e.l.ls, and various crystals with whose names Father Francis Xavier was unfamiliar.

There was one shading from dark green through to red, only a drop of the latter color on the very tip of the arrow where blood would first kiss blood. Father Xavier looked at it in wondering admiration, and at last asked Black Beaver what he called it.

"It is a devil-stone," replied the Indian. "More here," and he opened the deeper basket in which were stored the unground and uncut stones, and placed a superb gem in Father Xavier's hand. He had ground it sufficiently to show that it was in two layers, white and green; in this there was no touch of red, but in every other respect it was the handsomer stone.

"Will you sell it to me?" asked the priest. "How much?"

The Indian smiled with an expression strangely like that of his daughter, and put it back with alacrity in his basket, saying, "Me no sell big devil-stone. No money buy."

"What do you mean to do with it?" asked Father Xavier.

"Make arrow-head--very hungry--no blood;" and he indicated the absence of the red tint. "Very hungry--kill very much--never have enough!"

"Then you mean to keep it and use it yourself?"

"No," said the other. "Me no hunt game--hunt stones."

"What will you do with it?" asked the puzzled priest.

"Give it away," said Black Beaver--"give away to greatest--"

"Chief?" asked Father Xavier.

Black Beaver shook his head.

"Friend then?"

"No," grunted the arrow-head maker--"give away to big _enemy_!"

"What did he mean by that?" Father Xavier asked of Marie on their way back to the mission. And the girl explained the superst.i.tion that Indians of their own tribe never killed an enemy with ordinary weapons, for fear that his soul would wait for theirs in the Happy Hunting Grounds; but if he was shot with a devil-stone, the soul could not fly upward, but would sink through all eternity, until it reached the deepest spot of all the great lakes under the stony gaze of the Doom Woman.

When he inquired further as to the whereabouts of the Doom Woman's residence he ascertained that she was only a sharp cliff among "the pictured rocks of sandstone" of the upper lake--a cliff that viewed from either side maintained its resemblance to a female profile looking sternly down at the water beneath it, which was here believed to be unfathomable. The Doom Woman still exists. Strange to say, under its sharp-cut features a steamer has since been wrecked and sunk, and its expression of gloomy fate is now awfully appropriate. Marie had visited "the great Sea Water" with her father. Nature's t.i.tanic and fanciful frescoing and cameo-cutting had strongly wrought upon her impressionable mind, and the old legends and superst.i.tions of paganism had been by no means effaced by the very slight veneer of Christianity which she had received at the mission.

From this evening Father Xavier's manner toward her changed. Her smile no longer seemed to irritate him, and a close observer might have noticed that she smiled less than formerly. He talked with her more, paid closer attention to her studies, made her little presents from time to time, and spoke to her always with studied gentleness that was quite foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his stones, spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she had learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of making little boxes which she decorated with a rude mosaic of small sh.e.l.ls, and Father Xavier noticed that these gradually acquired more taste and were arranged with some eye to the harmonies of color, while the forms were copied with Chinese accuracy from patterns on the bindings of his books or the borders of the religious pictures. Marie was developing under an art education which, if carried far enough, might effect great things. She even managed his graving tools with a good deal of accuracy, copying designs which he set her, until he wondered what his father would have thought of so apt an apprentice.

Suddenly, one morning in midsummer, Marie announced that she should leave them. Her father was going on a long expedition for stones to the head of Lake Superior, and she did not know when she might return. As she imparted this information she watched Father Xavier from the corner of her eye, and something of the old childish smile reappeared as he showed that he was really annoyed.

The summer pa.s.sed profitably for the Black Beaver, and he began to think of returning to St. Ignace with his small store of valuable stones before the fall gales should set in. He was just a few days too late.

When within sight of Michillimackinac a storm arose driving them out upon the open lake, and playing with their canoe as though it were a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l. When the storm abated a cloudy night had set in; no land was visible in any direction; they had completely lost their direction, and knew not toward which point to seek the sh.o.r.e. Paddling at hazard might take them further out into the centre of the lake, and indeed they were too worn with battling with the storm to do any more than keep the tossed skiff from capsizing. Morning dawned wet and gray, after a miserable night; they were drenched to the skin, and almost spent with weariness and hunger, and now that a wan and ghostly daylight had come they were no better for it, for an impenetrable fog shut them in on every side. Marie and her mother began to pray. The Black Beaver sat dogged and inert, with upturned face, regarding the sky.

The day wore by wearily; some of the time they paddled straight onward, with sinking hearts, knowing not toward what they were going, and at others rested with the inaction of despair. When the position of the bright spot which meant the sun told that it lacked but an hour of sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing, the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife and daughter shuddered when they heard it, as would any one, for a more unearthly and discordant cry was never uttered by man or beast; but they had double reason to shudder; it was the death cry of their nation.

"We can never live through another night," said he, and he covered his face with his arms.

"Father," said Marie, "try what power there is in the white man's G.o.d.

Say that you will give Him your devil-stone if He will save us now."

"The priest may have it," said the Black Beaver, and he uncovered his face and sat up as though expecting a miracle. And the miracle came. The sun was setting behind them, and in front, somewhat above the horizon, the clouds parted, forming a circle about a white cross which hung suspended in the air. They all saw it distinctly, but only for a few moments; then the clouds closed and the vision vanished. With new hope the little party rowed toward the spot where they had last seen it, and through the fog they could dimly discern the outlines of the coast--they were nearing land. A little further on, and a village was visible, which gained a more and more familiar aspect as they approached. Night settled down before they reached it, but ere their feet touched the land they had recognized the mission of St. Ignace. The cross was not a vision.

The clouds had parted to show them the great white landmark and sign which Father Ignatius had raised upon the little knoll.

The next day the Black Beaver unearthed his devil-stone, and fastening a silver chain to it, was about to carry it away and attach it to the cross, which was already loaded with the gifts of the little colony; but Marie took it from his hand. "I will give it to the good priest myself,"

she said. "He may see fit to place it on the image of the Virgin in the church."