.. ' PS CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE PS 3117 Rq"*" ""'™"">' ■■""■"» 3 1924 022 207 165 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022207165 THE RULING PASSION ' I am the keeper of the light.' THE RULING PASSION TALES OF NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE BY HENRY VAN DYKE St WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. APPLETON CLARK NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MDCCCCI Copi/right, 1901, by Charles Scrihner's Sons & hA'^^'Xh- •A A WRITER'S REQUEST OF HIS MASTER XJOBP, let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell a story without a meaning. Make me respect my ma- terial so much that I dare not slight my work. Help me to deal very honestly with words and with people becaicse they are both alive. Show me that as in a river, so in a writing, clearness is the best quality, and a little that is pure is worth more than much that is mixed. Teach m£ to see the local colour with- out being blind to the inner light. Give me an ideal that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom of the real. Keep me from caring more for books than for folks, for ^irt than for life. Steady me to do my full stint of work as ii-ell as I can: and when that is done, stop me, pay what wages Thou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a gratefvd Amen. PREFACE An every life worth writing about there is a rul- ing passion, — "the very pulse of the machine." Un- less you touch that, you are groping around outside of reality. Sometimes it is romantic love: Nature's master- piece of interested benevolence. In almost all lives this passion has its season of empire. Therefore, and rightly, it is the favourite theme of the story- teller. Romantic love interests almost everybody, because almost everybody knows something about it, or would like to know. But there are other passions, no less real, which also have their place and power in human life. Some of them come earlier, and sometimes they last longer, than romantic love. They play along- side of it and are mixed up with it, now checking it, now advancing its flow and tingeing it with their own colour. vii PREFACE Just because love is so universal, it is often to one of the other passions that we must look for the distinctive hue, the individual quality of a life-stoiy. Granted, if you will, that everybody must fall in love, or ought to fall in love, How will he do it? And what will he do afterwards? These are questions not without interest to one who watches the human drama as a friend. The ■1 answers depend upon those hidden and durable de- sires, aflFections, and impulses to which men and women give themselves up for rule and guidance. Music, nature, children, honour, strife, revenge, money, pride, friendship, loyalty, duty, — to these objects and others like them the secret power of personal passion often turns, and the life uncon- sciously follows it, as the tides in the sea follow the moon in the sky. When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the way and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, slight events are PREFACE significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real plot. What care I how many "hair-breadth 'scapes" and "moving accidents" your hero may pass through, unless I know him for a man? He is but a puppet strung on wires. His kisses are wooden and his wounds bleed sawdust. There is nothing about him to remember except his name, and perhaps a bit of dialect. Kill him or crown him, — what differ- ence does it make.'' But go the other way about your work: " Take the least man of all mankind, as I; Look at his head and heart, find ham and why He differs from his fellows utterly" — and now there is something to tell, with a meaning. If you tell it at length, it is a novel, — a painting. K you tell it in brief, it is a short story, — an etch- ing. But the subject is always the same: the unseen, mysterious, ruling passion weaving the stuff of hu- man nature into patterns wherein the soul is im- aged and revealed. PREFACE To tell about some of these ruling passions, sim- ply, clearly, and concretely, is what I want to do in this book. The characters are chosen, for the most part, among plain people, because their feel- ings are expressed with fewer words and greater truth, not being costumed for social effect. The scene is laid on Nature's stage because I like to be out-of-doors, even when I am trying to think and learning to write. "Avalon," Princeton, July 22, 1901, CONTENTS /. A Lover of Musk 1 II. The Reward of Virtue 49 III. A Brave Heart ^ 85 IV. The Gentle Life 119 V. A Friend qfJusticp 141 VL The White Blot 175 VIL A Year ofNohUity ' 213 VIII. The Keeper of the Light Z&5 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY W. APPLETON CLARK "/ am the keeper of the Ught"" Frontispiece Perfectly content if she looked up now and then Facing page l6 "Denyouplay on de violon — laFdis one — listen"" 38 "He has given me a light for my pipe again" 80 "Bvti to fight — that is another affair^ 94 ^Btct I ''II he selling him gladly'" 144 The whole river rushed down upon the canoe 232 '^He winks,"" she said, "old one-eye winks beauti- fuOy" 272 A LOVER OF MUSIC A LOVER OF MUSIC I He entered the backwoods village of Bytown liter- ally on the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was some- thing more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if you wiU, the time and the manner of his arrival. It was the last night of December, some thirty- five years ago. All the city sportsmen who had hunted the deer under Bill Moody's direction had long since retreated to their homes, leaving the little settlement on the border of the Adirondack wilder- ness wholly under the social direction of the natives. The annual ball was in full swing in the dining- room of the hotel. At one side of the room the tables and chairs were piled up, with their legs pro- jecting in the air like a thicket of very dead trees. S THE RULING PASSION The huge stove in the southeast comer was blushing a rosy red through its thin coat of whitewash, and exhaling a furious dry heat flavoured with the smell of baked iron. At the north end, however, winter reigned; and there were tiny ridges of fine snow on the floor, sifted in by the wind through the cracks in the window-frames. '^^^ But the bouncing girls and the heavy-footed guides and lumbermen who filled the ball-room did not appear to mind the heat or the cold. They balanced and "sashayed" from the tropics to the arctic circle. They swung at comers and made "ladies' change" all through the temperate zone. They stamped their feet and did double-shuffles un- til the floor trembled beneath them. Tlie tin lamp- reflectors on the walls rattled like castanets. There was only one drawback to the hilarity of the occasion. The band, which was usually imported from Sandy River Forks for such festivities, — a fid- dle, a comet, a flute, and an accordion, — had not arrived. There was a general idea that the mail- sleigh, in which the musicians were to travel, had been delayed by the storm, and might break its way A LOVER OF MUSIC through the snow-drifts and arrive at any moment. But Bill Moody, who was naturally of a pessimistic temperament, had offered a different explanation. "I tell ye, old Baker's got that blame' band down to his hotel at the Falls now, makin' 'em play fer his party. Them music fellers is onsartin; can't trust 'em to keep anythin' 'cept the toon, and they don't alluz keep that. Guess we might uz well shet up this ball, or go to work playin' games." At this proposal a thick gloom had fallen over the assembly; but it had been dispersed by Serena Moody's cheerful offer to have the small melodion brought out of the parloiur, and to play for dancing as well as she could. The company agreed that she was a smart girl, and prepared to accept her per- formance with enthusiasm. As the dance went on, there were frequent comments of approval to en- courage her in the labour of love. "Sereny's doin' splendid, ain't she.?" said the other girls. To which the men replied, "You bet! The play- in' 's reel nice, and good 'nough fer anybody — outside o' city folks." 5 THE RULING PASSION But Serena's repertory was weak, though her spirit was willing. There was an unspoken sentiment among the men that "The Sweet By and By" was not quite the best tune in the world for a quaxiriUe. A Sunday-school hymn, no matter how rapidly it was rendered, seemed to fall short of the necessary vivacity for a polka. Besides, the wheezy little organ positively refused to go faster than a certain gait. Hose Ransom expressed the popular opinion of the instrument, after a figure in which he and his part- ner had been half a bar ahead of the music from start to finish, when he said: "By Jolly! that old maloney may be chock full o' relijun and po'try; but it ain't got no dance into it, no more 'n a saw-mill." This was the situation of aflFairs inside of Moody's tavern on New Year's Eve. But outside of the house the snow lay two feet deep on the level, and shoulder- high in the drifts. The sky was at last swept clean of clouds. The shivering stars and the shrunken moon looked infinitely remote in the black vault of heaven. The frozen lake, on which the ice was three 6 A LOVER OF MUSIC feet thick and solid as rock, was like a vast, smooth bed, covered with a white counterpane. The cruel wind still poured out of the northwest, driving the dry snow along with it like a mist of powdered diamonds. Enveloped in this dazzling, pungent atmosphere, half blinded and bewildered by it, buffeted and yet supported by the onrushing torrent of air, a man on snow-shoes, with a light pack on his shoulders, emerged from the shelter of the Three Sisters' Islands, and staggered straight on, down the lake. He passed the headland of the bay where Moody's tavern is ensconced, and probably would have drifted on beyond it, to the marsh at the lower end of the lake, but for the yellow glare of the ball-room win- dows and the sound of music and dancing which came out to him suddenly through a lull in the wind. He turned to the right, climbed over the low wall of broken ice-blocks that bordered the lake, and pushed up the gentle slope to the open passage- way by which the two parts of the rambling house were joined together. Crossing the porch with the 7 THE RULING PASSION last remnant of his strength, he lifted his hand to knock, and fell heavily against the side door. The noise, heard through the confusion within, awakened curiosity and conjecture. Just as when a letter comes to a forest cabin, it is turned over and over, and many guesses are made as to the handwriting and the authorship before it occurs to any one to open it and see who sent it, so was this rude knocking at the gate the occasion of argument among the rustic revellers as to what it might portend. Some thought it was the arrival of the belated band. Others supposed the sound be- tokened a descent of the Corey clan from the Upper Lake, or a change of heart on the part of old Dan Dunning, who had refused to attend the ball because they would not allow him to call out the figures. The guesses were various; but no one thought of the pos- sible arrival of a stranger at such an hour on such a night, until Serena suggested that it would be a good plan to open the door. Then the unbidden guest was discovered lying benumbed along the threshold. There was no want of knowledge as to what should be done with a half-frozen man, and no lack 8 A LOVER OF MUSIC of ready hands to do it. They carried him not to the warm stove, but into the semi-arctic region of the parlotir. They rubbed his face and his hands vigorously with snow. They gave him a drink of hot tea flavoured with whiskey — or perhaps it was a drink of whiskey with a httle hot tea in it — and then, as his senses began to return to him, they rolled him in a blanket and left him on a sofa to thaw out gradually, while they went on with the dance. Naturally, he was the favourite subject of conver- sation for the next hour. "Who is he, anyhow.'' I never seen 'im before. Where 'd he come from.?" asked the girls. "I dunno," said Bill Moody; "he did n't say much. Talk seemed all froze up. Frenchy, 'cordin' to what he did say. Guess he must a come from Canady, workin' on a lumber job up Raquette River way. Got bounced out o' the camp, p'raps. All them Frenchies is queer." This summary of national character appeared to command general assent. "Yaas," said Hose Ransom, "did ye take note 9 THE RULING PASSION how he hung on to that pack o' his'n all the time? Wouldn't let go on it. Wonder what 'twuz? Seemed kinder holler 'n light, fer all 'twuz so big an' wropped up in lots o' coverin's." "What's the use of wonderin'?" said one of the younger boys; "find out later on. Now's the time fer dancin'. Whoop 'er up!" So the sound of revelry swept on again in full flood. The men and maids went careering up and down the room. Serena's willing fingers laboured patiently over the yellow keys of the reluctant me- lodion. But the ancient instrument was weakening under the strain; the bellows creaked; the notes grew more and more asthmatic. "Hold the Fort" was the tune, "Money Musk" was the dance; and it was a preposterously bad fit. The figure was tangled up like a fishing-line after trolling all day without a swivel. The dancers were doing their best, determined to be happy, as cheer- ful as possible, but all out of time. The organ was whirring and gasping and groaning for breath. Suddenly a new music filled the room. The right time — the real old joyful "Money 10 A LOVER OF MUSIC Musk," played jubilantly, triumphantly, irresistibly — on a fiddle! The melodion gave one final gasp of surprise and was dumb. Every one looked up. There, in the parlour door, stood the stranger, with his coat ofi^, his violin hugged close under his chin, his right arm making the bow fly over the strings, his black eyes sparkling, and his stockinged feet marking time to the tune. "Dcmsez! dcmsez,"" he cried, "en avant! Don' spik'. Don' res'! Ah '11 goin' play de feedle fo' yo' jess moch yo' lak', eef yo' h'only danse!" The music gushed from the bow like water from the rock when Moses touched it. Tune followed tune with endless fluency and variety — polkas, galops, reels, jigs, quadrilles; fragments of airs from many lands — "The Fisher's Hornpipe," "Charlie is my Darling," "Marianne s'en va-t-au Moulin," "Petit Jean," "Jordan is a Hard Road to Trabbel," woven together after the strangest fas^on and set to the liveliest cadence. It was a magical performance. No one could with- stand it. They all danced together, like the leaves 11 THE RULING PASSION on the shivering poplars when the wind blows through them. The gentle Serena was swept away from her stool at the organ as if she were a lit- tle canoe drawn into the rapids, and Bill Moody stepped high and cut pigeon-wings that had been forgotten for a generation. It was long after mid- night when the dancers paused, breathless and ex- hausted. "Waal," said Hose Ransom, "that 's jess the high- tonedest music we ever had to Bytown. You're a reel player, Frenchy, that's what you are. What's your name.? Where 'd you come from.? Where you goin' to.!* What brought you here, anyhow.?" "Moif" said the fiddler, dropping his bow and taking a long breath. "Mah nem Jacques Tremblay. All '11 ben come fraum Kebeck. Were goin'.? Ah donno. Prob'ly Ah '11 stop dis place, eef yo' lak' dat feedle so moch, hein?" His hand passed caressingly over the smooth brown wood of the violin. He drew it up close to his face again, as if he would have kissed it, whi his eyes wandered timidly aroimd the circle of listen- ers, and rested at last, with a question in them, on 12 A LOVER OF MUSIC the face of the hotel-keeper. Moody was fairly warmed, for once, out of his customary temper .of mistrust and indecision. He spoke up promptly. "You kin stop here jess long 's you like. We don' care where you come from, an' you need n't to go no fu'ther, 'less you wanter. But we ain't got no use for French names round here. Guess we 'U call him Fid- dlin' Jack, hey, Sereny? He kin do the chores in the day-time, an' play the fiddle at night." This was the way in which Bytown came to have a lover of music among its permanent inhabitants. II jAcauEs dropped into his place and filled it as if it had been made for him. There was something in his disposition that seemed to fit him for just the role that was vacant in the social drama of the settle- ment. It was not a serious, important, responsible part, like that of a farmer, or a store-keeper, or a professional hunter. It was rather an addition to the regular programme of existence, something unan- nounced and voluntary, and therefore not weighted 13 THE RULING PASSION with too heavy responsibilities. There was a touch of the transient and uncertain about it. He seemed like a perpetual visitor; and yet he stayed on as steadily as a native, never showing, from the first, the slight- est wish or intention to leave the woodland village. I do not mean that he was an idler. Bytown had not yet arrived at that stage of civilization in which an ornamental element is supported at the public expense. He worked for his living, and earned it. He was full of a quick, cheerful industry; and there was nothing that needed to be done about Moody's es- tablishment, from the wood-pile to the ice-house, at which he did not bear a hand willingly and well. "He kin work like a beaver," said Bill Moody, talking the stranger over down at the post-office one day; "but I don't b'lieve he's got much ambition. Jess does his work and takes his wages, and then gits his fiddle out and plays." "Tell ye what," said Hose Ransom, who set up for the village philosopher, "he ain't got no 'magina- tion. That 's what makes men slack. He don't know what it means to rise in the world; don't care fer 14> A LOVER OF MUSIC anythin' ez much ez he does fer his music. He's jess like a bird; let him have 'nough to eat and a chance to sing, and he 's all right. What 's he 'mag- ine about a house of his own, and a barn, and sich things?" Hosea's illustration was suggested by bis own ex- perience. He had just put the profits of his last summer's guiding into a new bam, and his imagina- tion was already at work planning an addition to his house in the shape of a kitchen L. But in spite of his tone of contempt, he had a kindly feeling for the unambitious fiddler. Indeed, this was the attitude of pretty much every one in the commxmity. A few men of the rougher sort had made fun of him at first, and there had been one or two attempts at rude handling. But Jacques was de- termined to take no offence; and he was so good- humoured, so obliging, so pleasant in his way of whistling and singing about his work, that all un- friendliness soon died out. He had literally played his way into the afiections of the village. The winter seemed to pass more swiftly and merrily than it had done before the vio- IS THE RULING PASSION lin was there. He was always ready to bring it out, and draw all kinds of music from its strings, as long as any one wanted to listen or to dance. ^ It made no difference whether there was a room- ful of listeners, or only a couple, Fiddlin' Jack was just as glad to play. With a little, quiet audience, he loved to try the quaint, plaintive aii? of the old French songs — "A la Claire Fontaine," "Un Cana- dien Errant," and "Isabeau s'y Promene" — and bits of simple melody from the great composers, and fa- miliar Scotch and English ballads — things that he had picked up heaven knows where, and into which he put a world of meaning, sad and sweet. He was at his best in this vein when he was alone with Serena in the kitchen — she with a piece of sew- ing in her lap, sitting beside the lamp; he in the comer by the stove, with the brown violin tucked under his chin, wandering on from one air to an- other, and perfectly content if she looked up now and then from her work and told him that she liked the tune. Serena was a pretty girl, with smooth, silky hair, and eyes of the colour of the nodding harebells that 16 A LOVEE OF MUSIC blossom on the edge of the woods. She was slight and delicate. The neighbours called her sickly; and a great doctor from Philadelphia who had spent a summer at Bytown had put his ear to her chest, and loofeed grave, and said that she ought to winter in a mild climate. That was before people had discovered the Adirbijidacks as a sanitarium for consumptives. But the inhabitants of Bytown were not in the way of paying much attention to the theories of physicians in regard to climate. They held that if you were rugged, it was a great advantage, almost a virtue; but if you were sickly, you just had to make the best of it, and get along with the weather as well as you could. So Serena stayed at home and adapted herself very cheerfully to the situation. She kept indoors in winter more than the other girls, and had a quieter way about her; but you would never have called her an invalid. There was only a clearer blue in her eyes, and a smoother lustre on her brown hair, and a brighter spot of red on her cheek. She was particularly fond of reading and of music. It was this that made her so glad of the arri^fel of the 17 THE RULING PASSION violin. The violin's master knew it, and turned to her as a sympathetic soul. I think he liked her eyes too, and the soft tones of her voice. He was a sen- timentalist, this little Canadian, for all he was so meiTy; and love — but that comes later. " Where 'd you get your fiddle, Jack?" said Se- rena, one night as they sat together in the kitchen. "Ah '11 get heem in Kebeck," answered Jacques, passing his hand lightly over the instrument, as he always did when any one spoke of it. "Vair' nice violon, hein? Wat you t'ink? Ma h'ole teacher, to de College, he was gif me dat violon, w'en Ah was gone away to de woods." "I want to know! Were you in the College? What'd you go off to the woods for?" "Ah '11 get tire' fraum dat teachin' — read, read, read, h'all taim'. Ah '11 not lak' dat so moch. Rader be out-door — run aroun' — paddle de canot — go wid de boys in de woods — mek' dem dance at ma musique. A-a-ah! Dat was fon ! P'raps you t'ink dat not good, hein? You t'ink Jacques one beeg fool. Ah suppose?" "I dunno," said Serena, declining to commit her- self, but pressing on gently, as women do, to the 18 A LOVER OF MUSIC point she had in view when she began the talk. "Dunno's you're any more foolish than a man that keeps on doin' what he don't like. But what made you come away from the boys in the woods and travel down this way.?" A shade passed over the face of Jacques. He turned away from the lamp and bent over the violin on his knees, fingering the strings nervously. Then he spoke, in a changed, shaken voice. "Ah '11 tole you somet'ing, Ma'amselle Serene. You ma frien'. Don' you h'ask me dat reason of it no more. Dat 's somet'ing vair' bad, bad, bad. Ah can't nevair tole dat — nevair." There was something in the way he said it that gave a check to her gentle curiosity and turned it into pity. A man with a secret in his life? It was a new element in her experience; like a chapter in a book. She was lady enough at heart to respect his silence. She kept away from the forbidden ground. But the knowledge that it was there gave a new interest to Jacques and his music. She embroidered some strange romances around that secret while she sat in the kitchen sewing. 19 THE RULING PASSION Other people at By town were less forbearing. They tried their best to find out something about Fiddlin' Jack's past, but he was not compaunicative. He talked about Canada. All Canadians do. But about himself? No. If the questions became too pressing, he would try to play himself away from his inquisitors with new tunes. If that did not succeed, he would take the violin under his arm and slip quickly out of the room. And if you had followed him at such a time,^ you would have heard him drawing strange, melan- choly music from the instrument, sitting alone in the barn, or in the darkness of his own room in the garret. Once, and only once, he seemed to come near be- traying himself. This was how it happened. There was a party at Moody's one night, and Bull Corey had come down from the Upper Lake and filled himself up with whiskey. Bull was an ugly -tempered fellow. The more he drank, up to a certain point, the steadier he got on his legs, and the more necessary it seemed for him tOj fight somebody. The tide of his pugnacity 20 A LOVER OF MUSIC that night took a straight set toward Fiddlin' Jack. Bull began with musical criticisms. The fiddling did not suit him at all. It was too quick, or else it was too slow. He failed to perceive how any one could tolerate such music even in the infernal regions, and he expressed himself in plain words to that effect. In fact, he damned the performance without even the &,intest praise. i But the majority of the audience gave him no j.support. On the contrary, they told him to shut up. And Jack fiddled along cheerfully. Then Bull returned to the attack, after having fortified himself in the bar-room. And now he took national grounds. The French were, in his opinion, a most despicable race. They were not a patch on the noble American race. They talked too much, and their language was ridiculous. They had a con- demned, fool habit of taking off their hats when they spoke to a lady. They ate frogs. Having delivered himself of these sentiments in a loud voice, much to the interruption of the music, he marched over to the table on which Fiddlin' Jack was sitting, and grabbed the violin from his hands. 21 THE RULING PASSION "Gimme that dam' fiddle," he cried, "till I see if there's a frog in it." Jacques leaped from the table, transported with rage. His face was convulsed. His eyes blazed. He snatched a carving-knife from the dresser behind him, and sprang at Corey. "Tort Dieu!"" he shrieked, "mon vwilon! Ah '11 keel you, beast!" But he could not reach the enemy. Bill Moody's^ long arms were flung around the struggling fiddler, and a pair of brawny guides had Corey pinned by the elbows, hustling him backward. Half a dozen men thrust themselves between the would-be com- batants. There was a dead silence, a scuffling of feet on the bare floor; then the danger was past, and a tumult of talk burst forth. But a strange alteration had passed over Jacques. He trembled. He turned white. Tears poured down his cheeks. As Moody let him go, he dropped on his knees, hid his face in his hands, and prayed in his own tongue. "My God, it is here again! Was it not enough that I must be tempted once before.'' Must I have 22 A LOVER OF MUSIC the madness yet another time? My God, show the mercy toward me, for the Blessed Virgin's sake. I am a sinner, but not the second time; for the love of Jesus, not the second time! Ave Maria, gratia plena, orapro me!'" The others did not understand what he was say- ing. Indeed, they paid little attention to him. They saw he was frightened, and thought it was with fear. They were already discussing what ought to be done about the fracas. It was plain that Bull Corey, whose liquor had now taken efiFect suddenly, and made him as limp as a strip of cedar bark, must be thrown out of the door, and left to cool off on the beach. But what to do with Fiddlin' Jack for his attempt at knifing — a detested crime? He might have gone at Bull with a gun, or with a club, or with a chair, or with any recognized weapon. But with a carving-knife! That was a serious offence. Arrest him, and send him to jail at the Forks? Take him out, and duck him in the lake? Lick him, and drive him out of the town? There was a multitude of counsellors, but it was 23 THE RULING PASSION Hose Ransom who settled the case. He was a well- known fighting-man, and a respected philosopher. He swxmg his broad frame in front of the fiddler. "Tell ye what we'll do. Jess nothin'! Ain't Bull Corey the blowin'est and the mos' trouble-us cuss 'round these hull woods .!" And wouldn't it be a fust-rate thing ef some o' the wind was let out 'n him?" General assent greeted this pointed inquiry. "And wa'n't Fiddlin' Jack peacerble 'nough 's long 's he was let alone? What's the matter with lettin' him alone now?" The argument seemed to carry weight. Hose saw his advantage, and clinched it. "Ain't he given us a lot o' fun here this winter in a innercent kind o' way, with his old fiddle? I guess there ain't nothin' on airth he loves bietter'n that holler piece o' wood, and the toons that 's in- side o' it. It's jess like a wife or a child to him. Where's that fiddle, anyhow?" Some one had picked it deftly out of Corey's hand during the scuffle, and now passed it up to Hose. "Here, Frenchy, take yer long-necked, pot-bellied 24 A LOVER OF MUSIC music-gourd. And I want you boys to understand, ef any one teches that fiddle ag'in, I'll knock hell out'n him." So the recording angel dropped another tear upon the record of Hosea Ransom, and the books were closed for the night. Ill Foe some weeks after the incident of the violin and the carving-knife, it looked as if a permanent cloud had settled upon the spirits of Fiddlin' Jack. He was sad and nervous; if any one touched him, or even spoke to him suddenly, he would jump like a deer. He kept out of everybody's way as much as possible, sat out in the wood-shed when he was not at work, and could not be persuaded to bring down his fiddle. He seemed in a fair way to be transformed into "the melancholy Jaques." It was Serena who broke the spell; and she did it in a woman's way, the simplest way in the world — by taking no notice of it. "Ain't you goin' to play for me to-night?" she 25 THE RULING PASSION asked one evening, as Jacques passed through the kitchen. Whereupon the evil spirit was exorcised, and the violin came back again to its place in the life of the house. But there was less time for music now than there had been in the winter. As the snow vanished from the woods, and the frost leaked out of the ground, and the ice on the lake was honeycombed, breaking away from the shore, and finally going to pieces altogether in a warm southeast storm, the Sports- men's Retreat began to prepare for business. There was a garden to be planted, and there were boats to be painted. The rotten old wharf in front of the house stood badly in need of repairs. The fiddler proved himself a Jack-of-all-trades and master of more than one. In the middle of May the anglers began to arrive at the Retreat — a quiet, sociable, friendly set of men, most of whom were old-time acquaintances, and familiar lovers of the woods. They belonged to the "early Adirondack period," these disciples of Walton. They were not very rich, and they did not put on much style, but they understood how to have a good 26 A LOVER OF MUSIC time; and what they did not know about fishing was not worth knowing. Jacques fitted into their scheme of life as a well- made reel fits the butt of a good rod. He was a steady oarsman, a lucky fisherman, with a real genius for the use of the landing-net, and a cheer- ful companion, who did not insist upon giving his views about artificial flies and advice about casting, on every occasion. By the end of June he found himself in steady employment as a guide. He liked best to go with the anglers who were not too energetic, but were satisfied to fish for a few hours in the morning and again at sunset, after a long rest in the middle of the afternoon. This was just the time for the violin; and if Jacques had his way, he would take it with him, carefully tucked away in its case in the bow of the boat; and when the pipes were lit after lunch, on the shore of Round Island or at the mouth of Cold Brook, he would dis- course sweet music until the declining sun drew near the tree-tops and the veery rang his silver bell for vespers. Then it was time to fish again, and the flies danced merrily over the water, and the great speckled 27 THE RULING PASSION trout leaped eagerly to catch them. For trolling all day long for lake-trout Jacques had little liking. "Dat is not de sport," he would say, "to hoi' one r-r-ope in de 'and, an' den pool heem in wid one feesh on free hook, h'all tangle h'up in hees mout' — dat is not de sport. Bisside, dat leef not taim' for la musique.'" Midsummer brought a new set of guests to the Retreat, and filled the ramshackle old house to over- flowing. The fishing fell off, but there were picnics and camping-parties in abundance, and Jacques was in demand. The ladies liked him; his manners were so pleasant, and they took a great interest in his •music. Moody bought a piano for the parlour that suCimer; and there were two or three good players in the house, to whom Jacques would listen with delight, sitting on a pile of logs outside the parlour- windows in the warm August evenings. Some one asked him whether he did not prefer the piano to the violin. "iVow," he answered, very decidedly; "dat piano, he vairee smart; he got plentee word, lak' de leetle yellow bird in de cage — 'ow you call heem.?— :de 28 A LOVER OF MUSIC cdnnarie. He spik' moch. Bot dat violon, he spik' more deep, to de heart, lak' de rossignol. He mak' me feel more glad, more sorree — dat fo' w'at Ah lak' heem de bes'!" Through all the occupations and pleasures of the summer Jacques kept as near as he could to Serena. If he learned a new time, by listening to the piano — some simple, artful air of Mozart, some melan- choly echo of a nocturne of Chopin, some tender, passionate love-song of Schubert — it was to her that he would play it first. If he could persuade her to a boat-ride with him on the lake, Sunday evening, the week was complete. He even learned to know the more shy and delicate forest-blossoms that she preferred, and would come in from a day's guiding with a tiny bunch of belated twin-flowers, or a few purple-fringed orchids, or a handful of nodding stalks of the fragrant pyrola, for her. So the summer passed, and the autumn, with its longer hunting expeditions into the depth of the wilderness; and by the time winter came around again, Fiddlin' Jack was well settled at Moody's as a regular Adirondack guide of the old-fashioned 29 THE RULING PASSION type, but with a diiFerence. He improved in his English. Something of that missing quality whiclj Moody called ambition, and to which Hose Ransom gave the name of imagination, seemed to awaken within him. He saved his wages. He went into busi- ness for himself in a modest way, and made a good turn in the manufacture of deerskin mittens and snow-shoes. By the spring he had nearly three hun- dred dollars laid by, and bought a piece of land from Ransom on the bank of the river just above the village. The second summer of guiding brought him in enough to commence building a little house. It was of logs, neatly squared at the comers; and there was a door exactly in the middle of the facade, with a square window at either side, and another at each end of the house, according to the common style of architecture at Byto^vn. But it was in the roof that the touch of distinc- tion appeared. For this, Jacques had modelled after his memory of an old Canadian roof. There weis a delicate concave sweep in it, as it sloped downward from the peak, and the eaves projected pleasantly 30 A LOVER OF MUSIC over the front door, making a strip of shade wherein it would be good to rest when the afternoon sun shone hot. He took great pride in this eflPort of the builder's art. One day at the beginning of May, when the house was nearly finished, he asked old Moody and Serena to stop on their way home from the village and see what he had done. He showed them the kitchen, and the living-room, with the bed-room partitioned off from it, and sharing half of its side window. Here was a place where a door could be cut at the back, and a shed built for a summer kitchen — for the coolness, you understand. And here were two stoves — one for the cooking, and the other in the living-room for the warming, both of the newest. "An' look dat roof. Dat 's lak' we make dem in Canada. De rain ron off easy, and de sun not shine too strong at de door. Ain't dat nice.'' You lak' dat roof, Ma'amselle Serene, hein.?" Thus the imagination of Jacques unfolded itself, and his ambition appeared to be making plans for its accomplishment. I do not want any one to sup- pose that there was a crisis in his affair of the heart. 31 THE RULING PASSION There was none. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether anybody in the village, even Serena herself, ever dreamed that there was such an affair. Up to the point when the house was finished and furnished, it was to be a secret between Jacques and his violin; and they found no difficulty in keeping it. Bytown was a Yankee village. Jacques was, after all, nothing but a Frenchman. The native tone of religion, what there was of it, was strongly Metho- dist. Jacques never went to church, and if he was anything, was probably a Roman Catholic. Serena was something of a sentimentalist, and a great reader of novels; but the international love-story had not yet been invented, and the idea of getting married to a foreigner never entered her head. I do not say that she suspected nothing in the wild flowers, and the Sunday evening boat-rides, and the music. She was a woman. I have said already that she liked Jacques very much, and his violin pleased her to the heart. But the new building by the river.'' I am sure she never even thought of it once, in the way that he did. Well, in the end of June, just after the furniture 32 A LOVER OF MUSIC had come for the house with the curved roof, Se- rena was married to Hose Ransom. He was a young widower without children, and altogether the best fellow, as well as the most prosperous, in the settle- ment. His house stood up on the hill, across the road from the lot which Jacques had bought. It was painted white, and it had a narrow front porch, with a scroll-saw fringe around the edge of it; and there was a little garden fenced in with white palings, in which Sweet Williams and pansies and blue lupines and pink bleeding-hearts were planted. The wedding was at the Sportsmen's Retreat, and Jacques was there, of course. There was nothing of the disconsolate lover about him. The novm he might have confessed to, in a confidential moment of intercourse with his violin; but the adjective was not in his line. The strongest impulse in his nature was to be a giver of entertainment, a source of joy in others, a recognized element of delight in the little world where he moved. He had the artistic temperament in its most primitive and naive form. Nothing pleased him so much as the act of pleasing. Music was the THE RULING PASSION means which Nature had given him to fulfil this de- sire. He played, as you might say, out of a certain kind of selfishness, because he enjoyed making other people happy. He was selfish enough, in his way, to want the pleasure of making everybody feel the same delight that he felt in the clear tones, the merry cadences, the tender and caressing flow of his violin. That was consolation. That was power. That was success. And especially was he selfish enough to want to feel his ability to give Serena a pleasure at her wed- ding — a pleasure that nobody else could give her. When she asked him to play, he consented gladly. Never had he drawn the bow across the strings with a more magical touch. The wedding guests danced as if they were enchanted. The big bride- groom came up and clapped him on the back, with the nearest approach to a gesture of aflection that backwoods etiquette allows between men. "Jack, you're the boss fiddler o' this hull county. Have a drink now.? I guess you're mighty dry." "Mercif non,^ said Jacques. "I drink only de mu- seek dis night. Eef I drink two fings, I get dronk." 34 A LOVER OF MUSIC In between the dances, and while the supper was going on, he played quieter tunes — ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked. After supper came the final reel; and when that was woimd up, with immense hilarity, the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to shout a noisy farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the road toward the house with the white palings. When they came back, the fiddler was gone. He had slipped away to the little cabin with the curved roof. All night long he sat there playing in the dark. Every tune that he had ever known came back to him — grave and merry, light and sad. He played them over and over again, passing round and round among them as a leaf on a stream follows the eddies, now backward, now forward, and returning most fre- quently to an echo of a certain theme from Chopin — you remember the nocturne in G mvnor, the sec- ond one? He did not know who Chopin w£is. Perhaps he did not even know the name of the music. But the air had fallen upon his ear somewhere, and had stayed in his memory; and now it seemed to say something to him that had an especial meaning. ■ S5 THE RULING PASSION At last he let the bow fall. He patted the brown wood of the violin after his old fashion, loosened the strings a little, wrapped it in its green baize cover, and hung it on the wall. "Hang thou there, thou little violin," he mur- mured. "It is now that I shall take the good care of thee, as never before; for thou art the wife of Jacques Tremblay. And the wife of 'Osee Ransom, she is a friend to us, both of us; and we will make the music for her many years, I tell thee, many years — for her, and for her good man, and for the children — yes?'' But Serena did not have many years to listen tc the playing of Jacques Tremblay: on the white porch, in the summer evenings, with bleeding-hearts abloom in the garden; or by the winter fire, while the pale blue moonlight lay on the snow with- out, and the yellow lamplight filled the room with homely radiance. In the fourth year after her mar- riage she died, and Jacques stood beside Hose at the funeral. There was a child — a little boy — ^delicate and blue-eyed, the living image of his mother. Jacques appointed himself general attendant, nurse in ex- 36 A LOVER OF MUSIC traordinary, and court musician to this child. He gave up his work as a guide. It took him too much away from home. He was tired of it. Besides, what did he want of so much money.'' He had his hoiise. He could gain enough for all his needs by making snow-shoes and the deerskin mittens at home. Then he could be near little Billy. It was pleasanter so. When Hose was away on a long trip in the woods, Jacques would move up to the white house and stay on guard. His fiddle learned how to sing the pret- tiest slumber songs. Moreover, it could crow in the morning, just like the cock; and it could make a noise like a mouse, and like the cat, too; and there were more tunes inside of it than in any music-box in the world. As the boy grew older, the little cabin with the curved roof became his favourite playgroimd. It was near the river, and Fiddlin' Jack was always ready to make a boat for him, or help him catch minnows in the mill-dam. The child had a taste for music, too, and learned some of the old Canadian songs, which he sang in a curious broken patois, while his delighted teacher accompanied him on the violin. 37 THE RULING PASSION But it was a great day when he was eight years old, and' Jacques brought out a small fiddle, for which he had secretly sent to Albany, and pre- sented it to the boy. "You see dat feedle, Billee? Dat's for you! You mek' your lesson on dat. When you kin mek' de museek, den you play on de cioZow— ^Mk' dis one — listen!" Then he drew, the bow across the strings and dashed into a medley of the j oiliest airs imaginable. The boy took to his instruction as kindly as could have been expected. School interrupted it a good deal; and play with the other boys carried him away often; but, after all, there was nothing that he liked much better than to sit in the little cabin on a win- ter evening and pick out a simple tune after his teacher. He must have had some talent for it, too; for Jacques was very proud of his pupil, and prophe- > sied great things of him. "You know dat little Billee of 'Ose Ransom," the fiddler would say to a circle of people at the hotel, where he still went to play for parties; "you know dat small Ransom boy? Well, I'm tichin' heem play SS Den you play on de ato/ora— lak' dis one — listen I " 1 A LOVER OF MUSIC de feedle; an' I tell you, one day he play better dan hees ticher. Ah, dat's gr-r-reat t'ing, de museek, ain't it? Mek' you laugh, mek' you cry, mek' you dance! Now, you dance. Tek' your pardnerre. En avatit! Kip' step to de museek!" IV Thirty years brought many changes to Bytown. The wild woodland flavour evaporated out of the place al- most entirely; and instead of an independent centre of rustic life, it became an annex to great cities. It was exploited as a summer resort, and discovered as a winter resort. Three or four big hotels were planted there, and in their shadow a score of boarding-houses alternately languished and flourished. The summer cottage also appeared and multiplied; and with it came many of the peculiar features which man elab- orates in his struggle toward the finest civilization — afternoon teas, and amateur theatricals, and claw- hammer coats, and a casino, and even a few servants in livery. The very name of Bytown was discarded as being THE RULING PASSION too American and commonplace. An Indian name was discovered, and considered much more romantic and appropriate. You will look in vain for Bytown on the map now. Nor will you find the old saw-mill there any longer, wasting a vast water-power to turn its dripping wheel and cut up a few pine-logs into fragrant boards. There is a big steam-mill a little farther up the river, which rips out thousands of feet of lumber in a day; but there are no more pine-logs, only sticks of spruce which the old lumbermen would have thought hardly worth cutting. And down be- low the dam there is a pulp-mill, to chew up the little trees and turn them into paper, and a chair factory, and two or three industrial establishments, with quite a little colony of French-Canadians em- ployed in them as workmen. Hose Ransom sold his place on the hill to one of the hotel companies, and a huge caravansary occu- pied the site of the house with the white palings. There were no more bleeding-hearts in the garden. There were beds of flaring red geraniums, which looked as if they were painted; and across the circle of smooth lawn in front of the piazza the name of 4,0 A LOVER OF MUSIC the hotel was printed in alleged ornamental plants — letters two feet long, immensely ugly. Hose had been elevated to the office of postmaster, and lived in a Queen Antic cottage on the main street. Little Billy Ransom had grown up into a very interest- ing young man, with a decided musical genius, and a tenor voice, which being discovered by an enter- prising patron of genius, from Boston, BiUy was sent away to Paris to learn to sing. Some day you will hear of his debut in grand opera, as Monsieur GuUlaume Hanson. But Fiddlin' Jack lived on in the little house with the curved roof, beside the river, refusing all the good offers which were made to him for his piece of land. "JVore," he said; "what for shall I sell dis house.? I lak' her, she lak' me. All dese walls got full from museek, jus' lak' de wood of dis violon. He play bet- tair dan de new feedle, becos' I play heem so long. I lak' to lissen to dat rivaire in de night. She sing from long taim' ago — ^jus' de same song w'en I firs' come here. Wat for I go away? Wat I get? Wat you can gir me lak' dat?" 41 THE RULING PASSION He was still the favourite musician of the county- side, in great request at parties and weddings; but he had extended the sphere of his influence a little. He was not willing to go to church, though there were now several to choose from; but a young minis- ter of liberal views who had come to take charge of the new Episcopal chapel had persuaded Jacques into the Sunday-school, to lead the children's sing- ing with his violin. He did it so well that the school became the most popular in the village. It was much pleasanter to sing than to listen to long ad- Jacques grew old gracefully, but he certainly grew old rapidly. His beard was white; his shoulders were stooping; he suffered a good deal in damp days from rheumatism — fortunately not in his hands, but in his legs. One spring there was a long spell of abom- inable weather, just between freezing and thawing. He caught a heavy cold and took to his bed. Hose came over to look after him. For a few days the old fiddler kept up his courage, and would sit up in the bed trying to play; then his strength and his spirit seemed to fail together. He 42 A LOVER OF MUSIC grew silent and indifferent. Wlien Hose came in he would find Jacques with his face turned to the wall, where there was a tiny brass crucifix hanging below the violin, and his lips moving quietly. "Don't ye want the fiddle, Jack.? I'd like ter hear some o' them old-time tunes ag'in." But the artifice failed. Jacques shook his head. His mind seemed to turn back to the time of his first arrival in the village, and beyond it. When he spoke at all, it was of something connected with this early time. "Dat was bad taim' when I near keel Bull Corey, hein.?" Hose nodded gravely. "Dat was beeg storm, dat night when I come to Bytown. You remember dat?" Yes, Hose remembered it very well. It was a real old-fashioned storm. "Ah, but befo' dose taim', dere was wuss taim' dan dat — in Canada. Nobody don' know 'bout dat. I lak' to tell you, 'Ose, but I can't. No, it is not pos- sible to tell dat, nevair!" It came into Hose's mind that the case was se- THE RULING PASSION rious. Jack was going to die. He never went to church, but perhaps the Sunday-school might count for something. He was only a Frenchman, after all, and Frenchmen had their own ways of doing things. He certainly ought to see some kind of a preacher before he went out of the wilderness. There was a Canadian priest in town that week, who had come down to see about getting up a church for the French people who worked in the mills. Perhaps Jack would like to talk with him. His face lighted up at the proposal. He asked to have the room tidied up, and a clean shirt put on him, and the violin laid open in its case on a table beside the bed, and a few other preparations made for the visit. Then the visitor came, a tall, friendly, quiet- looking man about Jacques's age, with a smooth face and a long black cassock. The door was shut, and they were left alone together. "I am comforted that you are come, mon p^re^ said the sick man, "for I have the heavy heart. There is a secret that I have kept fof many years. Sometimes I had almost forgotten that it must be told at the last; but now it is the time to speak. 44 A LOVER OF MUSIC I have a sin to confess — a sin of the most grievous, of the most unpardonable." The hstener soothed him with gracious words; spoke of the mercy that waits for all the penitent; urged him to open his heart without delay. "Well, then, man pere, it is this that makes me fear to die. Long since, in Canada, before I came to this place, I have kiUed a man. It was — " The voice stopped. The httle round clock on the window-sill ticked very distinctly and rapidly, as if it were in a hurry. "I will speak as short as I can. It was in the camp of 'Poleon Gautier, on the river St. Maurice. The big Baptiste Lacorabe, that crazy boy who wants always to fight, he mocks me when I play, he snatches my violin, he goes to break him on the stove. There is a knife in my belt. I spring to Bap- tiste. I see no more what it is that I do. I cut him in the neck — once, twice. The blood flies out. He falls down. He cries, 'I die.' I grab my violin from the floor, quick; then I run to the woods. No one can catch me. A blanket, the axe, some food, I get from a hiding-place down the river. Then I travel, 45 THE RULING PASSION travel, travel through the woods, how many days I know not, till I come here. No one knows me. I give myself the name Tremblay. I make the music for them. With my violin I live. I am happy. I for- get. But it all returns to me — now — at the last. I have murdered. Is there a forgiveness for me, mon The priest's face had changed very swiftly at the mention of the camp on the St. Maurice. As the story went on, he grew strangely excited. His lips twitched. His hands trembled. At the end he sank on his knees, close by the bed, and looked into the countenance of the sick man, searching it as a for- ester searches in the undergrowth for a lost trail. Then his eyes lighted up as he found it. "My son," said he, clasping the old fiddler's hand in his own, "you are Jacques Dellaire. And I — do you know me now? — I am Baptiste Lacombe. See those two scars upon my neck. But it was not death. You have not murdered. You have given the stroke that changed my heart. Yovu- sin is forgiven — and mine also — by the mercy of Grod! " The round clock ticked louder and louder. A 46 A LOVER OF MUSIC level ray from the setting sun — red gold — came in through the dusty window, and lay across the clasped hands on the bed. A white-throated sparrow, the first of the season, on his way to the woods beyond the St. Lawrence, whistled so clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he were repeating to these two gray-haired exiles the name of their homeland. "Sweet — sweet — Canada, Camada, Canada!^ But there was a sweeter sound than that in the quiet room. It was the sound of the prayer which begins, in every language spoken by men, with the name of that Unseen One who rules over life's chances, and pities its discords, and tunes it back again into har- mony. Yes, this prayer of the little children who are only learning how to play the first notes of life's mu- sic, turns to the great Master musician who knows it all and who loves to bring a melody out of every instrument that He has made; and it seems to lay the soul in His hands to play upon as He will, while it calls Him, Our Father! • •••■••• Some day, perhaps, you will go to the busy place 4.'? THE RULING PASSION where Bytown used to be; and if you do, you must take the street by the river to the white wooden church of St. Jacques. It stands on the very spot where there was once a cabin with a curved roof. There is a gilt cross on the top of the chtirch. The door is usually open, and the interior is quite gay with vases of china and brass, and paper flowers of many colours; but if you go through to the sacristy at the rear, you wiU see a brown violin hanging on the wall. Pere Baptiste, if he is there, will take it down and show it to you. He calls it a remarkable instrument — one of the best, of the most sweet. But he will not let any one play upon it. He says it is a relic. THE REWARD OF VIRTUE THE REWARD OF VIRTUE I When the good priest of St. Gerome christened Patrick Mullarkey, he lent himself unconsciously to an innocent deception. To look at the name, you would think, of course, it belonged to an Irishman; the very appearance of it was equal to a certificate of membership in a Fenian society. But in effect, from the tumed-up toes of his hottes sauvages to the ends of his black mustache, the pro- prietor of this name was a Frenchman — Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been bom in Normandy. Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft from the Green Isle. A wandering lumberman from County Keriy had drifted up the Saguenay into the Lake St. John re- gion, and married the daughter of a habitant, and settled down to forget his own country and his father's house. But every visible trace of this infu- sion of new blood had vanished long ago, except the 51 THE RULING PASSION name; and the name itself was transfonned on the lips of the St. Geromians. If you had heard them speak it in their pleasant droning accent, — "Pat- rique Moullarque,'" — you would have supposed that it was made in France. To have a guide with such a name as that was as good as being abroad. Even when they cut it short and called him "Patte," as they usually did, it had a very foreign sound. Everything about him was in harmony with it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt in French — the French of two hundred years ago, the language of Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong woodland flavour. In short, my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat, did not have a drop of Irish in him, unless, per- haps, it was a certain — well, you shall judge for yourself, when you have heard this story of his vir- tue, and the way it was rewarded. It was on the shore of the Lac k la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles back from St. Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself, as commonly happens in the real stories which life is always bringing out in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the 52 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE plot. But Patrick readily made me acquainted with what had gone before. Indeed, it is one of life's greatest charms as a story-teller that there is never any trouble about getting a brief resum^ of the ar- gument, and even a listener who arrives late is soon put into touch with the cotirse of the narrative. We had hauled our canoes and camp-stufF over the terrible road that leads to the lake, with much creaking and groaning of wagons, and complaining of men, who declared that the mud grew deeper and the hills steeper every year, and vowed their custom- ary vow never to come that way again. At last our tents were pitched in a green copse of balsam trees, close beside the water. The delightful sense of peace and freedom descended upon our souls. Prosper and Ovide were cutting wood for the camp-fire; Francois was getting ready a brace of partridges for supper; Patrick and I were unpacking the provisions, arrang- ing them conveniently for present use and future transportation. "Here, Pat," said I, as my hand fell on a large square parcel — "here is some superfine tobacco that I got in Quebec for you and the other men on this 53 THE RULING PASSION trip. Not like the damp stuff you had last year — a little bad smoke and too many bad words. This is tobacco to burn — something quite particular, you understand. How does that please you.?" He had been rolling up a piece of salt pork in a cloth as I spoke, and courteously wiped his fingers on the outside of the bundle before he stretched out his hand to take the package of tobacco. Then he answered, with his unfailing politeness, but more solemnly than usual: "A thousand thanks to m'sieu'. But this year I shall not have need of the good tobacco. It shall be for the others." The reply was so unexpected that it almost took my breath away. For Pat, the steady smoker, whose pipes were as invariable as the precession of the equinoxes, to refuse his regular rations of the sooth- ing weed was a thing unheard of. Could he be grow- ing proud in his old age.'' Had he some secret supply of cigars concealed in his kit, which made him scorn the golden Virginia leaf.-* I demanded an explana- tion. "But no, m'sieu'," he replied; "it is not that, most 54, THE REWARD OF VIRTUE assuredly. It is something entirely different — some- thing very serious. It is a reformation that I com- mence. Does m'sieu' permit that I should inform him of it?" Of course I permitted, or rather, warmly encour- aged, the fullest possible imfolding of the tale; and while we sat among the bags and boxes, and the sim settled gently down behind the sharp-pointed firs across the lake, and the evening sky and the wave- less lake glowed with a thousand tints of deepening rose and amber, Patrick put me in possession of the facts which had led to a moral revolution in his life. "It was the Ma'm'selle Meelair, that young lady, • — not very young, but active like the youngest, — the one that I conducted down the Grande De- charge to Chicoutimi last year, after you had gone away. She said that she knew m'sieu' intimately. No doubt you have a good remembrance of her.?" I admitted an acquaintance with the lady. She was the president of several societies for ethical agi- tation — a long woman, with short hair and eye- glasses and a great thirst for tea; not very good in a 55 THE RULING PASSION canoe, but always wanting to run the rapids and go into the dangerous places, and talking all the time. Yes; that must have been the one. She was not a bosom friend of mine, to speak accurately, but I remembered her well. "Well, then, m'sieu'," continued Patrick, "it was this demoiselle who changed my mind about the smoking. But not in a moment, you understand; it was a work of four days, and she spoke much. "The first day it was at the Island House; we were trolling for ouananiche, and she was not pleased, for she lost many of the fish. I was smoking at the stern of the canoe, and she said thalj the tobacco was a filthy weed, that it grew in the devil's garden, and that it smelled bad, terribly bad, and that it made the air sick, and that even the pig would not eat it." I could imagine Patrick's dismay as he listened to this dissertation; for in his way he was as sensitive as a wom3,n, and he would rather have been upset in his canoe than have exposed himself to the reproach of offending any one of his patrons by unpleasant or unseemly conduct. 56 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE "What did you do then, Pat?" I asked. "Certainly I put out the pipe — what could I do otherwise? But I thought that what the demoiselle Meelair has said was very strange, and not true — exactly; for I have often seen the tobacco grow, and it springs up out of the ground like the wheat or the beans, and it has beautiful leaves, broad and green, with sometimes a red flower at the top. Does the good God cause the filthy weeds to grow like that? Are they not all clean that He has made? The potato — it is not filthy. And the onion? It has a strong smell; but the demoiselle Meelair she ate much of the onion — when we were not at the Island House, but in the camp. "And the smell of the tobacco — this is an affair of the taste. For me, I love it much; it is like a spice. When I come home at night to the camp-fire, where the boys are smoking, the smell of the pipes runs far out into the woods to salute me. It says, 'Here we are, Patrique; come in near to the fire.' The smell of the tobacco is more sweet than the smell of the fish. The pig loves it not, assuredly; but what then? I am not a pig. To me it is good, 57 THE RULING PASSION good, good. Don't you find it like that, m'sieu'?" I had to confess that in the affair of taste I sided vdth Patrick rather than with the pig. "Continue," I said — "continue, my boy. Miss Miller must have said more than that to reform you." "Truly," replied Pat. "On the second day we were making the lunch at midday on the island be- low the first rapids. I smoked the pipe on a rock apart, after the collation. Mees Meelair comes to me, and says: 'Patrique, my man, do you comprehend that the tobacco is a poison.? You are committing the murder of yourself.' Then she tells me many things — about the nicoline, I think she calls him: how he goes into the blood and into the bones and into the hair, and how quickly he will kill the ca*- And she says, very strong, 'The men who smoke th tobacco shall die!'" "That must have frightened you well, Pat. I suj pose you threw away your pipe at once." "But no, m'sieu'; this time I continue to smoke for now it is Mees Meelair who comes near the pip voluntarily, and it is not my offence. And I remen ber, while she is talking, the old bonhomme Michau 58 THE REWARD OP VIRTUE at St. G^rome. He is a capable man; when he was young he could carry a barrel of flour a mile without rest, and now that he has seventy-three years he yet keeps his force. And he smokes — it is astonishing how that old man smokes! All the day, except when he sleeps. If the tobacco is a poison, it is a poison of the slowest — like the tea or the coflFee. For the cat it is quick — yes; but for the man it is long; and I am still young — only thirty -one. "But the third day, m'sieu' — the third day was the worst. It was a day of sadness, a day of the bad chance. The demoiselle Meelair was not content but that we should leap the Rapide des Cedres in canoe. It was rough, rough — all feather-white, and the big rock at the corner boUing like a kettle. But it is the ignorant who have the most of boldness. The demoi- selle Meelair she was not solid in the canoe. She made a jump and a loud scream. I did my possible, but the sea was too high. We took in of the water about five buckets. We were very wet. After that we make the camp; and while I sit by the fire to dry my clothes I smoke for comfort. "Mees Meelair she comes to me once more. *Pat- 59 THE RULING PASSION rique,' she says with a sad voice, 'I am sorry that a nice man, so good, so brave, is married to a thing so bad, so sinful!' At first I am mad when I hear this, because I think she means Angelique, my wife; but immediately she goes on: 'You are married to the smoking. That is sinful; it is a wicked thing. Chris- tians do not smoke. There is none of the tobacco in heaven. The men who use it cannot go there. Ah, Patrique, do you wish to go to the hell with your pipe?'" "That was a close question," I commented; "your Miss Miller is a plain speaker. But what did you say when she asked you that?" "I said, m'sieu'," replied Patrick, lifting his hand to his forehead, "that I must go where the good God pleased to send me, and that I would have much joy to go to the same place with our cure, the Pere Morel, who is a great smoker. I am sure that the pipe of comfort is no sin to that holy man when he returns, some cold night, from the visiting of the sick — it is not sin, not more than the soft chair and the warm fire. It harms no one, and it makes quiet- ness of mind. For me, when I see m'sieu' the cui« 60 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE sitting at the door of the presbytere, in the evening coolness, smoking the tobaxico, very peaceful, and when he says to me, 'Good day, Patrique; will you have a pipeful?' I cannot think that is wicked — no! There was a warmth of sincerity in the honest fel- low's utterance that spoke well for the character of the cure of St. Gerome. The good word of a plain fisherman or hunter is worth more than a degree of doctor of divinity from a learned university. I too had grateful memories of good men, faith- ful, charitable, wise, devout, — men before whose vir- tues my heart stood uncovered and reverent, men whose lives were sweet with self-sacrifice, and whose words were like stars of guidance to many souls, — and I had often seen these men solacing their toils and inviting pleasant, kindly thoughts with the pipe of peace. I wondered whether Miss Miller ever had the good fortune to meet any of these men. They were not members of the societies for ethical agita- tion,' but they were profitable men to know. Their very presence was medi^n^al. It breathed patience and fidelity to duty, and a large, quiet friendliness. 61 THE RULING PASSION "Well, then," I asked, "what did she say finally to turn you? What was her last argument? Come, Pat, you must make it a little shorter than she did." "In five words, m'sieu', it was this: 'The tobacco causes the poverty.' The fourth day — you remind yourself of the long dead-water below the Rapide Gervais? It was there. All the day she spoke to me of the money that goes to the smoke. Two piastres the month. Twenty-four the year. Three hundred — yes, with the interest, more than three hundred in ten years! Two thousand piastres in the life of the man ! But she comprehends well the arithmetic, that demoiselle Meelair; it was enormous! The big farmer Tremblay has not more money at the bank than that. Then she asks me if I have been at Quebec? No. If I would love to go? Of course, yes. For two years of the smoking we could go, the goodwife and me, to Quebec, and see the grand city, and the shops, and the many people, and the cathedral, and perhaps the theatre. And at the asylum of the or- phans we could seek one of the little found children to bring home with us, to be our own; for m'sieu' knows it is the sadness of our house that we have no THE REWARD OF VIRTUE child. But it was not Mees Meelair who said that — no, she would not understand that thought." Patrick paused for a moment, and rubbed his chin reflectively. Then he continued: "And perhaps it seems strange to you also, m'sieu', that a poor man should be so hungry for children. It is not so everywhere: not in America, I hear. But it is so with us in Canada. I know not a man so poor that he would not feel richer for a child. I know not a man so happy that he would not feel happier with a child in the house. It is the best thing that the good God gives to us; something to work for; something to play with. It makes a man more gentle and more strong. And a woman, — her heart is like an empty nest, if she has not a child. It was the darkest day that ever came to Angelique and me when our little baby flew away, four years ago. But perhaps if we have not one of our own, there is another somewhere, a little child of nobody, that belongs to us, for the sake of the love of chil- dren. Jean Boucher, my wife's cousin, at St. Joseph d'Alma, has taken two from the asylum. Two, m'sieu', I assure you; for as soon as one was twelve 6S THE RULING PASSION years old, he said he wanted a baby, and so he went back again and got another. That is what I should like to do." "But, Pat," said I, "it is an expensive business, this raising of children. You should think twice about it." "Pardon, m'sieu'," answered Patrick; "I think a hundred times and always the same way. It costs little more for three, or four, or five, in the house than for two. The only thing is the money for the journey to the city, the choice, the arrangement with the nuns. For that one must save. And so I have thrown away the pipe. I smoke no more. The money of the tobacco is for Quebec and for the little foimd child. I have already eighteen piastres and twenty sous in the old box of cigars on the chimney- piece at the house. This year wiU bring more. The winter after the next, if we have the good chance, we go to the city, the goodwife and me, and we come home with the little boy — or maybe the little girl. Does m'sieu' approve.''" "You are a man of virtue, Pat," said I; "and since you wiU not take your share of the tobacco on 64 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE this trip, it shall go to the other men; but you shall have the money instead, to put into your box on the mantel-piece." After supper that evening I watched him with some curiosity to see what he would do without his pipe. He seemed restless and uneasy. The other men sat around the fire, smoking; but Patrick was down at the landing, fussing over one of the canoes, which had been somewhat roughly handled on the road coming in. Then he began to tighten the tent-ropes, and hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of the stakes. Then he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, and cut it an inch too short. Then he went into the men's tent, and in a few min- utes the sound of snoring told that he had sought refuge in sleep at eight o'clock, without telling a single caribou story, or making any plans for the next day's sport. II Foe [Several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, trying the fishing. We explored all 65 THE RULING PASSION the favourite meeting-places of the trout, at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-holes, but we did not have remarkable success. I am bound to say that Patrick was not at his best that year as a fisherman. He was as ready to work, as interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked steadiness, persist- ence, patience. Some tranquillizing influence seemed to have departed from him. That placid confidence in the ultimate certainty of catching fish, which is one of the chief elements of good luck, was wanting. He did not appear to be able to sit still in the canoe. The mosquitoes troubled him terribly. He was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take plenty of the largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry. He even went so far as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I did formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose. He was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous resolve held firm. There was one place in particular that required very cautious angling. It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du Milieu — an open space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, in THE REWARD OF VIRTUE the midst of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by clear, shallow water. Here the great trout assembled at certain hours of the day; but it was not easy to get them. You must come up delicately in the canoe, and make fast to a stake at the side of the pool, and wait a long time for the place to get quiet and the fish to recover from their fright and come out from under the lily-pads. It had been ovur custom to calm and soothe this expectant interval with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to medita- tion and a foe of "Raw haste, half-sister to delay." But this year Patrick could not endure the waiting. After five minutes he would say: "But the fishing is bad this season! There are none of the big ones here at all. Let us try another place. It will go better at the Riviere du Cheval, perhaps." There was only one thing that would really keep him quiet, and that was a conversation about Que- bec. The glories of that wonderful city entranced his thoughts. He was already floating, in imagination, with the vast throngs of people that filled its splen- did streets, looking up at the stately houses and 67 THE RULING PASSION churches with their glittering roofs of tin, and star- ing his fill at the magnificent shop-windows, where all the luxuries of the world were displayed. He had heard that there were more than a hundred shops — separate shops for all kinds of separate things: some for groceries, and some for shoes, and some for clothes, and some for knives and axes, and some for guns, and many shops where they sold only jewels^gold rings, and diamonds, and forks of pure silver. Was it not so? He pictured himself, side by side with his good- wife, in the saJle a manger of the Hotel Richelieu, ordering their dinner from a printed bill of fare. Side by side they were walking on the Dufferin Ter- race, listening to the mtisic of the military band. Side by side they were watching the wonders of the play at the Theatre de T^toUe du Nord. Side by side they were kneeling before the gorgeous altar in the cathedral. And then they were standing silent, side by side, in the asylum of the orphans, looking at brown eyes and blue, at black hair and yellow curls, at fat legs and rosy cheeks and laughing mouths, while the Mother Superior showed off the 68 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE little boys and girls for them to choose. This affair of the choice was always a delightful difficulty, and here his fancy loved to hang in suspense, vibrating between rival joys. Once, at the Riviere du Milieu, after considerable discourse upon Quebec, there was an interval of si- lence, during which I succeeded in hooking and playing a larger trout than usual. As the fish came up to the side of the canoe, Patrick netted him deftly, exclaiming with an abstracted air, "It is a boy, after all. I like that best." Our camp was shifted, the second week, to the Grand Lac des Cedres; and there we had extraor- dinary fortune with the trout: partly, I conjecture, because there was only one place to fish, and so Pat- rick's uneasy zeal could find no excuse for keeping me in constant motion all around the lake. But in the matter of weather we were not so happy. There is always a conflict in the angler's mind about the weather — a struggle between his desires as a man and his desires as a fisheiman. This time our prayers for a good fishing season were granted at the ex- pense of our suffering human nature. There was a 69 THE RULING PASSION conjunction in the zodiac of the signs of Aqxiarius and Pisces. It rained as easily, as suddenly, as pene- tratingly, as Miss Miller talked; but in between the showers the trout were very hungry. One day, when we were paddling home to our tents among the birch trees, one of these unexpected storms came up; and Patrick, thoughtful of my com- fort as ever, insisted on giving me his coat to put around my dripping shoulders. The paddling would serve instead of a coat for him, he said; it would keep him warm to his bones. As I slipped the gar- ment over my back, something hard fell from one of the pockets into the bottom of the canoe. It was a brier-wood pipe. "Aha! Pat," I cried; "what is this.'' You said you had thrown all your pipes away. How does this come in yoiu: pocket.'"' "But, m'sieu'," he answered, "this is different. This is not the pipe pure and simple. It is a sou- venir. It is the one you gave me two years ago on the Metabetchouan, when we got the big caribou. I could not reject this. I keep it always foi the remem- brance." 70 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE At this moment my hand fell upon a small, square object in the other pocket of the coat. I pulled it out. It was a cake of Virginia leaf. Without a word, I held it up, and looked at Patrick. He began to explain eagerly: "Yes, certainly, it is the tobacco, m'sieu'; but it is not for the smoke, as you suppose. It is for the vir- tue, for the self-victory. I call this my little piece of temptation. See; the edges are not cut. I smell it only; and when I think how it is good, then I speak to myself, 'But the little found child will be better!' It will last a long time, this little piece of tempta- tion; perhaps xmtil we have the boy at our house — or maybe the girl." The conflict between the cake of Virginia leaf and Patrick's virtue must have been severe during the last ten days of our expedition; for we went down the Riviere des Ecorces, and that is a tough trip, and full of occasions when consolation is needed. After a long, hard day's work cutting out an aban- doned portage through the woods, or tramping miles over the incredibly shaggy hiUs to some outlying pond for a caribou, and lugging the saddle and hind 71 THE RULING PASSION quarters back to the camp, the evening pipe, after supper, seemed to comfort the men unspeakably. If their tempers had grown a Uttle short under stress of fatigue and hunger, now they became cheerful and good-natured again. They sat on logs before the camp-fire, their stockinged feet stretched out to the blaze, and the puffs of smoke rose from their lips like tiny salutes to the comfortable flame, or like in- cense burned upon the altar of gratitude and con- tentment. Patrick, I noticed about this time, liked to get on the leeward side of as many pipes as possible, and as near as he could to the smokers. He said that this kept away the mosquitoes. There he would sit, with the smoke drifting full in his face, both hands in his pockets, talking about Quebec, and debating the comparative merits of a boy or a girl as an addition to his household. But the great trial of his virtue was yet to come. The main object of our trip down the River of Barks — the terminus ad quern of the expedition, so to speak — was a bear. Now the bear as an object of the chase, at least in Canada, is one of the most il- 72 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE lusory of phantoms. The manner of hunting is sim- ple. It consists in walking about through the woods, or paddling along a stream, until you meet a bear; then you try to shoot him. This would seem to be, as the Rev. Mr. Leslie called his book against the deists of the eighteenth century, "A Short and Easie Method." But in point of fact there are two princi- pal difficulties. The first is that you never find the bear when and where you are looking for him. The second is that the bear sometimes finds you when — but you shall see how it happened to us. We had hunted the whole length of the River of Barks with the utmost pains and caution, never going out, even to pick blueberries, without having the rifle at hand, loaded for the expected encounter. Not one bear had we met. It seemed as if the whole ursine tribe must have emigrated to Labrador. At last we came to the mouth of the river, where it empties into Lake Kenogami, in a comparatively civilized country, with several farm-houses in full view on the opposite bank. It was not a promising place for the chase; but the river ran down with a little fall and a lively, cKfeerful rapid into the lake, 73 THE RULING PASSION and it was a capital spot for fishing. So we left the rifle in the case, and took a canoe and a rod, and went down, on the last afternoon, to stand on the point of rocks at the foot of the rapid, and cast the flj. We caught half a dozen good trout; but the sun was stiU hot, and we concluded to wait awhile for the evening fishing. So we turned the canoe bottom up among the bushes on the shore, stored the trout away in the shade beneath it, and sat down in a convenient place among the stones to have another chat about Quebec. We had just passed the jewehy- shops, and were preparing to go to the asylum of the orphans, when Patrick put his hand on my shoulder with a convulsive grip, and pointed up the stream. There was a huge bear, like a very big, wicked, black sheep with a pointed nose, making his way down the shore. He shambled along lazily and un- concernedly, as if his bones were loosely tied to- gether in a bag of fur. It was the most indifferent and disconnected gait that I ever saw. Nearer and nearer he sauntered, while we sat as still as if we 74 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE had been paralyzed. And the gun was in its case at the tent! How the bear knew this I cannot tell; but know it he certainly did, for he kept on until he reached the canoe, sniffed at it suspiciously, thrust his sharp nose under it, and turned it over with a crash that knocked two holes in the bottom, ate the fish, licked his chops, stared at us for a few moments without the slightest appearance of gratitude, made up his mind that he did not like oiu: personal appearance, and then loped leisurely up the mountain-side. We could hear him cracking the underbrush long after he was lost to sight. Patrick looked at me and sighed. I said nothing. The French language, as far as I knew it, seemed trifling and inadequate. It was a moment when noth- ing could do any good except the consolations of philosophy, or a pipe. Patrick pulled the brier-wood from his pocket; then he took out the cake of Vir- ginia leaf, looked at it, smelled it, shook his head, and put it back again. His face was as long as his arm. He stuck the cold pipe into his mouth, and pulled away at it for a while iu silence. Then his 75 THE RULING PASSION countenance began to clear, his mouth relaxed, he broke into a laugh. "Sacred bear!" he cried, slapping his knee; "sa- cred beast of the world! What a day of the good chance for her, M! But she was glad, I suppose. Perhaps she has some cubs, he? Bajette!"" Ill This was the end of oiu- hunting and fishing for that year. We spent the next two days in voyaging through a half-dozen small lakes and streams, in a farming country, on our way home. I observed that Patrick kept his souvenir pipe between his lips a good deal of the time, and puffed at vacancy. It seemed to soothe him. In his conversation he dwelt with peculiar satisfaction on the thought of the money in the cigar-box on the mantel-piece at St. Gerome. Eighteen piastres and twenty sous already ! And with the addition to be made from the tobacco not smoked during the past month, it would amount to more than twenty-three piastres; and all as safe in the cigar-box as if it were in the bank at Chicou- 76 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE timi! That reflection seemed to fill the empty pipe with fragrance. It was a Barmecide smoke; but the fumes of it were potent, and their invisible wreaths framed the most enchanting visions of tall towers, gray walls, glittering windows, crowds of peoplfe, regiments of soldiers, and the laughing eyes of a little boy — or was it a little girl? When we came out of the mouth of La Belle Riviere, the broad blue expanse of Lake St. John spread before us, calm and bright in the radiance of the sinking sun. In a curve on the left, eight miles away, sparkled the slender steeple of the church of St. Gerome. A thick column of smoke rose from somewhere in its neighbourhood. "It is on the beach," said the men; "the boys of the village accustom themselves to bum the rubbish there for a bonfire." But as our canoes danced lightly forward over the waves and came nearer to the place, it was evident that the smoke came from the village itself. It was a conflagration, but not a general one; the houses were too scattered and the day too stUl for a fire to spread. What could it be? Perhaps the black- smith shop, perhaps the bakery, perhaps the old 77 THE RULING PASSION tumble-down bam of the little Tremblay? It was not a large fire, that was certain. But where was it precisely? The question, becoming more and more anxious, was answered when we arrived at the beach. A handful of boys, eager to be the bearers of news, had spied us far off, and ran down to the shore to meet us. "Patrique! Patrique!" they shouted in English, to make their importance as great as possible in my eyes. "Come 'ome kveek; yo' 'ouse ees hall burn'!" "Wat!'' cried Patrick. "MonjeeT And he drove the canoe ashore, leaped out, and ran up the bank toward the village as if he were mad. The other men followed him, leaving me with the boys to imload the canoes and pull them up on the sand, where the waves would not chafe them. This took some time, and the boys helped me willingly. "Eet ees not need to ^urry, m'sieu'," they assured me; "dat 'ouse to Patrique Moullarque ees hall bum' seence free hour. Not'ing lef bot de hash." 78 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE As soon as possible, however, I piled up the stuiF, covered it with one of the tents, and leaving it in charge of the steadiest of the boys, took the road to the village and the site of the Maison Mullarkey. It had vanished completely: the walls of square(? logs were gone; the low, curved roof had fallen; the door-step with the morning-glory vines climbing up beside it had sunken out of sight; nothing remained but the dome of the clay oven at the back of the house, and a heap of smouldering embers. Patrick sat beside his wife on a flat stone that had formerly supported the corner of the porch. His shoulder was close to Angelique's — so close that it looked almost as if he must have had his arm around her a moment before I came up. His passion and grief had calmed themselves down now, and he was quite tranquil. In his left hand he held the cake of Virginia leaf, in his right a knife. He was cutting off delicate slivers of the tobacco, which he rolled together with a circular motion between his palms. Then he pulled his pipe from his pocket and filled the bowl with great deliberation. "What a misfortune!" I cried. "The pretty house 79 THE RULING PASSION is gone. I am so sorry, Patrick. And the box of money on the mantel-piece, that is gone, too, I fear — all your savings. What a terrible misfortune! How did it happen .f" "I cannot tell," he answered rather slowly. "It is the good God. And he has left me my Angelique. Also, m'sieu', you see" — here he went over to the pile of ashes, and pulled out a fragment of charred wood with a live coal at the end — "you see" — puff, puff — "he has given me" — puff, puff — "a light for my pipe again" — puff, puff, puff! The fragrant, friendly smoke was pouring out now in full volume. It enwreathed his head like drifts of cloud around the rugged top of a mountain at sim- rise. I could see that his face was spreading into a smile of ineffable contentment. "My faith!" said I, "how can you be so cheer- ful.? Your house is in ashes; your money is burned up; the voyage to Quebec, the visit to the asylum, the little orphan — how can you give it all up so easily.?" "Well," he replied, taking the pipe from his mouth, with fingers curling around the bowl, as if 80 " He has given me a light for my pipe." THE REWARD OF VIRTUE they loved to feel that it was warm once more — "well, then, it would be more hard, I suppose, to give it up not easily. And then, for the house, we shall build a new one this fall; the neighbours will help. And for the voyage to Quebec — without that we may be happy. And as regards the little orphan, I will tell you frankly" — here he went back to his seat upon the flat stone, and settled himself with an air of great comfort beside his partner — "I tell you, in confidence, Angelique demands that I prepare a particular furniture at the new house. Yes, it is a cradle; but it is not for an orphan." IV It was late in the following summer when I came back again to St. G^rome. The golden-rods and the asters were all in bloom along the village street; and as I walked down it the broad golden sunlight of the short afternoon seemed to glorify the open road and the plain square houses with a careless, homely rap- ture of peace. The air was softly fragrant with the odoiu: of balm of Gilead. A yellow warbler sang from 81 THE RULING PASSION a little clump of elder-bushes, tinkling out his con- tented song like a chime of tiny bells, "Sweet — sweet — sweet — sweeter — sweeter — sweetest!"" There was the new house, a little farther back from the road than the old one; and in the place where the heap of ashes had lain, a primitive garden, with marigolds and lupines and zinnias all abloom. And there was Patrick, sitting on the door-step, smoking his pipe in the cool of the day. Yes; and there, on a many-coloured counterpane spread beside him, an infant joy of the house of MuUarkey was sucking her thumb, while her father was humming the words of an old slumber-song: Sainte Marguerite, Veillez ma petite/ Endormez ma p'tite enfant Jusqu'd I' age de quinse ans! QuuTid elle aura quinze ans passS Iljimdra la marier Avec un p'tit bonhomme Que viendra de Rome. "Hola! Patrick," I cried; "good luck to you! Is it a girl or a boy?" 82 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE "Sahit! m'sieu'," he answered, jumping up and waving his pipe, "It is a girl and a boy!" Sure enough, as I entered the door, I beheld Angdlique rocking the other half of the reward of virtue in the new cradle. 83 A BRAVE HEART A BRAVE HEART X HAT was truly his name, m'sieu' — Raoul Vaillant- coeur — a name of the fine sound, is it not? You like that word, — a valiant heart, — it pleases you, eht The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It is like the lottery." Silence for a few moments, broken only by the ripple of water under the bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us, and the slish, slish of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must keep still to get it. A single ill-advised comment, a word that would raise a question of morals or social philosophy, might switch the narrative off the track into .a swamp of abstract discourse in which Ferdi- 87 THE RULING PASSION nand would lose himself. Presently the voice behind me began again. "But that word vaillant, m'sieu'; with us in Can- ada it does not mean always the same as with you. Sometimes we use it for something that sounds big, but does little; a gun that goes off with a terrible crack, but shoots not straight nor far. When a man is like that he is Janfaron, he shows off well, but — well, you shall judge for yourself, when you hear what happened between this man VaUlantcceur and his friend Prosper Leclere at the building of the stone tower of the church at Abbeville. You re- mind yourself of that grand church with the tall tower — yes.'' With permission I am going to teU you what passed when that was made. And you shall decide whether there was truly a brave heart in the story, or not; and if it went with the name." Thus the tale began, in the vast solitude of the northern forest, among the granite peaks of the ancient Laurentian Moimtains, on a lake that knew no human habitation save the Indian''s wigwam or the fishennan^s tent. How it rained that day! The dark clouds had 88 A BRAVE HEART collapsed upon the hills in shapeless folds. The waves of the lake were beaten flat by the lashing strokes of the storm. Quivering sheets of watery gray were driven before the wind; and broad curves of silver bullets danced before them as they swept over the surface. All around the homeless shores the ever- green trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient mise:^. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon — storm-lover — •^j;ighed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream. It seemed as if we were a thousand miles from everywhere and everybody. Cities, factories, libraries, colleges, law-courts, theatres, palaces, — what had we dreamed of these things.'' They were far off, in an- other world. We had slipped back into a primitive life. Ferdinand was telling me the naked story of human love and human hate, even as it has been told from the beginning. I cannot tell it just as he did. There was a charm in his speech too quick for the pen: a woodland savour not to be found in any ink for sale in the shops. I must tell it in my way, as he told it in his. THE RULING PASSION But at all events, nothing that makes any dif- ference shall go into the translation unless it was in the original. This is Ferdinand's story. If you care for the real thing, here it is. There were two young men in Abbeville who were easily the cocks of the woodland walk. Their stand- ing rested on the fact that they were the strongest men in the parish. Strength is the thing that counts, when people live on the edge of the wil- derness. These two were well known all through the country between Lake St. John and Chicoutimi as men of great capacity. Either of them could shoul- der a barrel of flom* and walk off with it as lightly as a common man would cany a side of bacon. There was not a half-pound of difference between them in ability. But there was a great difference in their looks and in their way of doing things. Raoul Vaillantcoeur was the biggest and the handsomest man in the village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as a bull-moose in 90 A BRAVE HEART December. He haxi natural force enough and to spare. Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and break his paddle — which he often did. He had more muscle than he knew how to use. Prosper Leclere did not have so much, but he knew better how to handle it. He never broke his paddle — imless it happened to be a bad one, and then he generally had another all ready in the canoe. He was at least four inches shorter than VaUlantcoeur; broad shoulders, long arms, light hair, gray eyes; not a handsome fellow, but pleas- ant-looking and very quiet. What he did was done more than half with his head. He was the kind of a man that never needs more than one match to light a fire. But Vaillantcoeur — well, if the wood was wet he might use a dozen, and when the blaze was kindled, as like as not he would throw in the rest of the box. Now, these two men had been friends and were changed into rivals. At least that was the way that one of them looked at it. And most of the people in 91 THE RULING PASSION the parish seemed to think that was the right view. It was a strange thing, and not altogether satis- factory to the public mind, to have two strongest men in the village. The question of comparati\% standing in the community ought to be raised and settled in the usual way. Raoul was perfectly willing, and at times (commonly on Saturday nights) very eager. But Prosper was not. "No," he said, one March night, when he was boiling maple-sap in the sugar-bush with little Ovide Rossignol (who had a lyric passion for hold- ing the coat while another man was fighting) — "no, for what shall I fight with Raoul.'' As boys we have played together. Once, in the rapids of the Belle Riviere, when I have fallen in the water, I think he has saved my life. He was stronger, then, than me. I am always a friend to him. If I beat him now, am I stronger .'* No, but weaker. And if he beats me, what is the sense of that.'' Certainly I shall not like it. What is to gain.?" Down in the store of old Girard, that night, Vaillantcceur was holding forth after a different fashion. He stood among the cracker-boxes and 92 A BRAVE HEART flour-barrels, with a background of shelves laden with bright-coloured calicoes, and a line of tin pails hanging overhead, and stated his view of the case with vigour. He even pulled off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeve to show the knotty arguments with which he proposed to clinch his opinion. "That Leclere," said he, "that little Prosper Le- clere! He thinks himself one of the strongest — a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward. If he is clever .f" Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying- pan. But he is afraid. He has not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He swims away. Bah!" "How about that time he cut loose the jam of logs in the Rapide des Cedres.?" said old Girard from his comer. Vaillantcoeur's black eyes sparkled and he twirled his mustache fiercely. "Saprie!"" he cried, "that was nothing! Any man with an axe can cut a log. But to fight — that is another afiair. That demands the brave heart. The strong man who will not fight is a coward. Some day I will put him through the miU — THE RULING PASSION you shall see what that small Leclere is made of. Sacredam!^ « Of course, affairs had not come to this pass all at once. It was a long history, beginning with the time when the two boys had played together, and Raoul was twice as strong as the other, and was very proud of it. Prosper did not care; it was all right so long as they had a good time. But then Prosper began to do things better and better. Raoul did not understand it; he was jealous. Why should he not always be the leader.'' He had more force. Why should Prosper get ahead.'' Why should he have better luck at the fishing and the hunting and the farming? It was by some trick. There was no justice in it. Raoul was not afraid of anything but death; and whatever he wanted, he thought he had a right to have. But he did not know very well how to get it. He would start to chop a log just at the spot where there was a big knot. He was the kind of a man that sets hare-snares on a caribou-trail, and then curses his luck because he catches nothing. 94 ,«" But to fight— that is another affair. A BRAVE HEART Besides, whatever he did, he was always thinking most about beating somebody else. But Prosper cared most for doing the thing as well as he could. If any one else could beat him — well, what differ- ence did it make.'' He would do better the next time. If he had a log to chop, he looked it all over for a clear place before he began. What he wanted was, not to make the chips fly, but to get the wood split. You are not to suppose that the one man was a saint and a hero, and the other a fool and a ruffian. No; that sort of thing happens only in books. Peo- ple in Abbeville were not made on that plan. They were both plain men. But there was a difference in their hearts; and out of that difference grew all the trouble. It was hard on Vaillantcoeur, of com-se, to see Leclere going ahead, getting rich, clearing off the mortgage on his farm, laying up money with the notary Bergeron, who acted as banker for the parish — it was hard to look on at this, while he himself stood still, or even*^ slipped back a little, 95 THE RULING PASSION got into debt, had to sell a bit of the land that his father left him. There must be some cheating about it. But this was not the hardest morsel to swallow. The great thing that stuck in his crop was the idea that the little Prosper, whom he could have whipped so easily, and whom he had protected so loftily, when they were boys, now stood just as high as he did as a capable man — perhaps even higher. Why was it that when the Price Brothers, down at Chi- coutimi, had a good lumber-job up in the woods on the Belle Riviere, they made Leclere the boss, in- stead of Vaillantcoeur? Why did the cure Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady the strain of the biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick for the building of the new chvu-ch? It was rough, rough! The more Raoul thought of it, the rougher it seemed. The fact that it was a man who had once been his protSge, and still in- sisted on being his best friend, did not make it any smoother. Would you have liked it any better on that accoimt.'' I am not telling you how it ought to have been, I am telling you how it was. This isn't 96 A BRAVE HEART Vaillantcoeur's account-book; it's his story. You must strike your balances as you go along. And all the time, you see, he felt sure that he was a stronger man and a braver man than Prosper. He was hungry to prove it in the only way that he could understand. The sense of rivalry grew into a passion of hatred, and the hatred shaped itself into a blind, headstrong desire to fight. Everything that Prosper did well, seemed like a challenge; every success that he had was as hard to bear as an insult. All the more, because Prosper seemed unconscious of it. He refused to take offence, went about his work quietly and cheerfully, turned off hard words with a joke, went out of his way to show himself friendly and good-natured. In reality, of course, he knew well enough how matters stood. But he was resolved not to show that he knew, if he could help it; and in any event, not to be one of the two that are needed to make a quarrel. He felt very strangely about it. There was a pre- sentiment in his heart that he did not dare to shake off. It seemed as if this conflict were one that would threaten the happiness of his whole life. He still kept 97 THE RULING PASSION his old feeling of attraction to Raoul, the memory of the many happy days they had spent together; and though the friendship, of course, could never again be what it had been, there was something of it left, at least on Prosper's side. To struggle with this man, strike at his face, try to maim and disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground with him, like two dogs tearing each other, — the thought was hateful. His gorge rose at it. He would never do it, unless to save his life. Then.? Well, then, God must be his judge. So it was that these two men stood against each other in Abbeville. Just as strongly as Raoul was set to get into a fight, just so strongly was Prosper set to keep out of one. It was a trial of strength between two passions, — the passion of friendship and the passion of fighting. Two or three things happened to put an edge on Raoul's hunger for an out-and-out fight. The first was the affair at the shanty on Lac des Caps. The wood-choppers, like sailors, have a way of putting a new man through a few tricks to initi- ate him into the camp. Leclere was bossing the job, with a gang of ten men from St. Raymond under 98 A BRAVE HEART him. VaillantcoBur had just driven a team in over the snow with a load of provisions, and was lomig- ing around the camp as if it belonged to him. It was Sunday afternoon, the regular time for fan, but no one dared to take hold of him. He looked too big. He expressed his opinion of the camp. "No fun in this shanty, hi? I suppose that little Leclere he makes you others work, and say your prayers, and then, for the rest, you can sleep. H6! Well, I am going to make a little fun for you, my boys. Come, Prosper, get your hat, if you are able to climb a tree." He snatched the hat from the table by the stove and ran out into the snow. In front of the shanty a good-sized birch, tall, smooth, very straight, was still standing. He went up the trunk like a bear. But there was a dead balsam that had fallen against the birch and lodged on the lower branches. It was barely strong enough to bear the weight of a light man. Up this slanting ladder Prosper ran quickly in his moccasined feet, snatched the hat from Raoul's teeth as he swarmed up the trunk, and ran down again. As he neared the ground, the 99 THE RULING PASSION balsam, shaken from its lodgement, cracked and fell. Raoul was left up the tree, perched among the branches, out of breath. Luck had set the scene for the lumberman's favourite trick. "Chop him down! chop him down!" was the cry; and a trio of axes were twanging against the birch tree, while the other men shouted and laughed and pelted the tree with ice to keep the prisoner from climbing down. Prosper neither shouted nor chopped, but he grinned a little as he watched the tree quiver and shake, and heard the rain of "sacrSs!^ and "maiir ditsT that came out of the swaying top. He grinned — until he saw that a half-dozen more blows would fell the birch right on the roof of the shanty. "Are you crazy?" he cried, as he picked up an axe; "you know nothing how to chop. You kill a man. You smash the cabane. Let go!" He shoved one of the boys away and sent a few mighty cuts into the side of the birch that was farthest from the cabin; then two short cuts on the other side; the tree shivered, staggered, cracked, and swept in a great arc toward the deep snow-drift by the brook. 100 A BRAVE HEART As the top swung earthward, Raoul jumped clear of the crashing branches and landed safely in the feather-bed of snow, buried up to his neck. Nothing was to be seen of him but his head, like some new kind of fire-work — sputtering bad words. Well, this was the first thing that put an edge on Vaillantcoeur's hunger to fight. No man likes to be chopped down by his friend, even if the friend does it for the sake of saving him from being killed by a fall on the shanty-roof. It is easy to forget that part of it. What you remember is the grin. The second thing that made it worse was the bad chance that both of these men had to fall in love with the same girl. Of course there were other girls in the village beside Marie Antoinette Girard — plenty of them, and good girls, too. But somehow or other, when they were beside her, neither Raoul nor Prosper cared to look at any of them, but only at 'Toinette. Her eyes were so much darker and her cheeks so much more red — bright as the berries of the mountain-ash in September. Her hair hung down to her waist on Sunday in two long braids, brown and shiny like a ripe hazelnut; and her voice 101 THE RULING PASSION when she laughed made the sound of water tumbling over little stones. No one knew which of the two lovers she liked best. At school it was certainly Raoul, because he was bigger and bolder. When she came back from her year in the convent at Roberval it was certainly Prosper, because he could talk better and had read more books. He had a volume of songs full of love and romance, and knew most of them by heart. But this did not last forever. 'Toinette's manners had been polished at the convent, but her ideas were still those of her own people. She never thought that knowledge of boolis could take the place of strength, in the real battle of life. She was a brave girl, and she felt sure in her heart that the man of the most courage must be the best man after all. For a while she appeared to persuade herself that it was Prosper, beyond a doubt, and always took his part when the other girls laughed at him. But this was not altogether a good sign. When a girl really loves, she does not talk, she acts. The current of opinion and gossip in the village was too strong for her. By the time of the aifair of the "chopping- 102 A BRAVE HEART down" at Lac des Caps, her heart was swinging to and fro like a pendulum. One week she would walk home from mass with Raoul. The next week she would loiter in the front yard on a Saturday even- ing and talk over the gate with Prosper, until her father called her into the shop to wait on cus- tomers. It was in one of these talks that the pendulum seemed to make its last swing and settle down to its resting-place. Prosper was telling her of the good crops of sugar that he had made from his maple grove. "The profit will be large — more than sixty pias- tres — and with that I shall buy at Chicoutimi a new four-wheeler, of the finest, a veritable wedding- carriage — if you — if I — 'Toinette? Shall we ride together.?" His left hand clasped hers as it lay on the gate. His right arm stole over the low picket fence and went around the shoulder that leaned against the gate-post. The road was quite empty, the night al- ready dark. He could feel her warm breath on his neck as she laughed. 103 THE RULING PASSION «K you! If I! If what? Why so many ifs in this fine speech? Of whom is the wedding for which this new carriage is to be bought? Do you know what Raoul Vaillantcoeur has said? 'No more wedding in this parish till I have throAim the little Prosper over my shoulder !'" As she said this, laughing, she turned closer to the fence and looked up, so that a curl on her fore- head brushed against his cheek. "Batdche! Who told you he said that?" "I heard him, myself," "Where?" "In the store, two nights ago. But it was not for the first time. He said it when we came from the church together, it will be four weeks to-morrow." "What did you say to him?" "I told him perhaps he was mistaken. The next wedding might be after the little Prosper had mea- sured the road with the back of the longest man in Abbeville." The laugh had gone out of her voice now. She was speaking eagerly, and her bosom rose and fell with quick breaths. But Prosper's right arm had 104 A BRAVE HEART dropped from her shoulder, and his hand gripped the fence as he straightened up. "Toinette!" he cried, "that was bravely said. And I could do it. Yes, I know I could do it. But, man Dieu, what shall I sa,j? Three years now, he has pushed me, every one has pushed me, to fight. And you — but I cannot. I am not capable of it." The girl's hand lay in his as cold and still as a stone. She was silent for a moment, and then asked, coldly, "Why not.?" "Why not.-* Because of the old friendship. Because he pulled me out of the river long ago. Because I am still his friend. Because now he hates me too much. Because it would be a black fight. Because shame and evil would come of it, whoever won. That is what I fear, 'Toinette!" Her hand slipped suddenly away from his. She stepped back from the gate. "Tiens! You have fear, Monsieur Leclere! Truly? I had not thought of that. It is strange. For so strong a man it is a little stupid to be afraid. Good- night. I hear my father calling me. Perhaps some one in the store 'who wants to be served. You must 105 THE RULING PASSION tell me again what you are going to do with the new carriage. Good-night!" She was laughing again. But it was a different laughter. Prosper, at the gate, did not think it soimded like the running of a brook over the stones. No, it was more the noise of the dry branches that knock together in the wind. He did not hear the sigh that came as she shut the door of the house, nor see how slowly she walked through the passage into the stora II Theee seemed to be a great many rainy Saturdays that spring; and in the early summer the trade in Girard's store was so brisk that it appeared to need all the force of the establishment to attend to it. The gate of the front yard had no more strain put upon its hinges. It fell into a stiff propriety of open- ing and shutting, at the touch of people who under- stood that a gate was made merely to pass through, not to lean upon. That summer Vaillantcceur had a new hat — a 106 A BRAVE HEART black and shiny beaver — and a new red-silk cravat. They looked fine on Corpus Christi day, when he and 'Toinette walked together as fiancees. You would have thought he would have been con- tent with that. Proud, he certainly was. He stepped like the cure's big rooster with the topknot — almost as far up in the air as he did along the ground; and he held his chin high, as if he liked to look at things over his nose. But he was not satisfied aU the way through. He thought more of beating Prosper than of getting 'Toinette. And he was not quite sure that he had beaten him yet. Perhaps the girl still liked Prosper a little. Per- haps she still thought of his romances, and his chansons, and his fine, smooth words, and missed them. Perhaps she was too silent and dull some- times, when she walked with Raoul; and sometimes she laughed too loud when he talked, more at him than with him. Perhaps those St. Raymond fellows still remembered the way his head stuck out of that cursed snow-drift, and joked about it, and said hpw clever and quick the little Prosper was. Perhaps — 107 THE RULING PASSION ah, mandit! a thousand times perhaps! And only one way to settle them, the old way, the sure way, and all the better now because Toinette must be on his side. She must understand for sure that the bravest man in the parish had chosen her. That was the summer of the building of the grand stone tower of the church. The men of Abbe- ville did it themselves, with their own hands, for the glory of God. They were keen about that, and the cure was the keenest of them all. No sharing of that glory with workmen from Quebec, if you please! Abbeville was only forty years old, but they al- ready understood the glory of God quite as well there as at Quebec, without doubt. They could build their own tower, perfectly, and they would. Be- sides, it would cost less. -* Vaillantcoeur was the chief carpenter. He at- tended to the afFair of beams and timbers. Leclere was the chief mason. He directed l^e aflfair of dress- ing the stones and laying them. That required a very careful head, you imderstand, for the tower must be straight. In the floor a little crookedness did not matter; but in the wall — that might be 108 A BRAVE HEART serious. People have been killed by a falling tower. Of course, if they were going into chiu:ch, they would be sure of heaven. But then think — what a disgrace for AbbeviUe! Every one was glad that Leclere bossed the rais- ing of the tower. They admitted that he might not be brave, but he was assuredly careful. Vaillantcoeur alone grumbled, and said the work went too slowly, and even swore that the sockets for the beams were too shallow, or else too deep, it made no difference which. That Mte Prosper made trouble always by his poor work. But the friction never came to a blaze; for the cure was pottering about the tower every day and all day long, and a few words from him would make a quaiTel go off in smoke. "Softly, my boys!" he would say; "work smooth and you work fast. The logs in the river run well when they run all the same way. But when two logs cross each other, on the same rock — psst! a jam! The whole drive is himg up! Do not run crossways, my children." The walls rose steadily, straight as a steamboat pipe — ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet; it was time to 109 THE RULING PASSION put in the two cross-girders, lay the floor (rf the belfiy, finish off the stonework, and begin the pointed wooden spire. The cure had gone to Quebec that very day to buy the shining plates of tin for the roof, and a beautiful cross of gilt for the pin- nacle. Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls. Vaillantcceur came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen were standing about. "Look here, you Leclere," said he, "I tried one of the cross-girders yesterday afternoon and it would n't go. The templet on the north is crooked — crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down again. I suppose we must trim it off some way, to get a level bearing, and make the tower weak, just to match your sacri bad work, eh.''" "Well," said Prosper, pleasant and quiet enough, "I'm sorry for that, Raoul. Perhaps I could put that templet straight, or perhaps the girder might be a little warped and twisted, eh.'' What.? Suppose we measure it." Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and had corkscrewed itself out of 110 A BRAVE HEART shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode over to them. "It's a dam' lie," he said, sullenly. "Prosper Le- clere, you slipped the string. None of your sacri cheating! I have enough of it already. Will you fight, you cursed sneak?" Prosper's face went gray, like the mortar in the trough. His fists clenched and the cords on his neck stood out as if they were ropes. He breathed hard. But he only said three words: "No! Not here." "Not here? Why not? There is room. The cur^ is away. Why not here?" "It is the house of le bon Dieu. Can we build it in hate?" "Polisson! You make an excuse. Then come to Girard's, and fight there." Again Prosper held in for a moment, and spoke three words: "No! Not now." "Not now? But when, you heart of a hare? Will 111 THE RULING PASSION you sneak out of it until you turn gray and die? When will you fight, little musk-rat?'" "When I have forgotten. When I am no more your friend." Prosper picked up his trowel and went into the tower. Raoul bad-worded him and every stone of his building from foundation to cornice, and then went down the road to get a bottle of cognac. An hour later he came back breathing out threat- enings and slaughter, strongly flavoiu-ed with raw spirits. Prosper was working quietly on the top of the tower, at the side away from the road. He saw nothing until Raoul, climbing up by the ladders on the inside, leaped on the platform and rushed at him like a crazy lynx. "Now!" he cried, "no hole to hide in here^ rat! rU squeeze the lies out of you." He gripped Prosper by the head, thrusting one thumb into his eye, and pushing him backward on the scafiblding. Blinded, half maddened by the pain. Prosper thought of nothing but to get free,, He swung his long arm upward and landed a heavy blow on 112 A BRAVE HEART Raoul's face that dislocated the jaw; then twisting himself downward and sideways, he fell in toward the wall. Raoul plunged forward, stumbled, let go his hold, and pitched out from the tower, arms spread, clutching the air. Forty feet straight down! A moment — or was it an eternity?-— of horrible silence. Then the body struck the rough stones at the foot of the tower with a thick, soft dunt, and lay crumpled up among them, without a groan, without a movement. When the other men, who had hurried up the ladders in terror, found Leclere, he was peering over the edge of the scaffold, wiping the blood from his eyes, trying to see down. "I have killed him," he muttered, "my friend! He is smashed to death. I am a murderer. Let me go, I must throw myself down!" They had hard work to hold him back. As they forced him down the ladders he trembled like a poplar. But VaiUantcoeur was not dead. No; it was in- credible — to fall forty feet and not be killed — they talk of it yet all through the valley of the Lake St. 113 THE RULING PASSION John— it was a miracle! But Vaillantcoeur Imd broken only a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs — for one like him that was but a hagatelle. A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few months of nursing, and he would be on his feet again, almost as good a man as he had ever been. It was Leclere who put himself in charge of this. "It is my affair," he said — "my fault! It was not a fair place to fight. Why did I strike.'' I must at- tend to this bad work." "Mais, sacre bleu!"" they answered, "how could you help it.!" He forced you. You did not want to be killed. That would be a little too much." "No," he persisted, "this is my affair. Girard, you know my money is with the notary. There is plenty. Raoul has not enough, perhaps not any. But he shall want nothing — you understand — nothing! It is my affair, all that he needs — but you shall not tell him— no! That is all." Prosper had his way. But he did not see Vaillant- coeur after he was carried home and put to bed in his cabin. Even if he had tried to do so, it would have been impossible. He could not see anybody. 114 A BRAVE HEART One of his eyes was entirely destroyed. The inflam- mation spread to the other, and all through the autumn he lay in his house, drifting along the edge of blindness, while Raoul lay in his house slowly getting well. The curd went from one house to the other, but he did not carry any messages between them. If any were sent one way they were not received. And the other way, none were sent. Raoul did not speak of Prosper; and if one mentioned his name, Raoul shut his mouth and made no answer. To the cure, of course, it was a distress and a misery. To have a hatred like this unhealed, was a blot on the parish; it was a shame, as well as a sin. At last — it was already winter, the day before Christmas — the curd made up his mind that he would put forth one more great effort. "Look you, my son," he said to Prosper, "I am going this afternoon to Raoul Vaillantcoeur to make the reconciliation. You shall give me a word to carry to him. He shall hear it this time, I promise you. Shall I tell him what you have done for him, how you have cared for him?" 115 THE RULING PASSION "No, never," said Prosper; "you shall not take that word from me. It is nothing. It will make worse trouble. I will never send it." "What then.?" said the priest. "Shall I tell him that you forgive him?" "No, not that," answered Prosper, "that would be a foolish word. What would that mean.? It is not I who can forgive. I was the one who struck hardest. It was he that fell from the tower." "Well, then, choose the word for yourself. What shall it be.? Come, I promise you that he shall hear it. I will take with me the notary, and the good man Girard, and the little Marie Antoinette. You shall hear an answer. What message?" "Mon p^re,"" said Prosper, slowly, "you shall tell him just this. I, Prosper Leclere, ask Baoul VaiUant- cceur that he will forgive me for not fighting with him on the ground when he demanded it." Yes, the message was given in precisely those words. Marie Antoinette stood within the door, Bergeron and Girard at the foot of the bed, and the curd spoke very clearly and firmly. Vaillantcoeur rolled on his pillow and turned his face away. Then 116 A BRAVE HEART he sat up in bed, grunting a little with the pain in his shoulder, which was badly set. His black eyes snapped like the eyes of a wolverine in a comer. "Forgive.?" he said, "no, never. He is a coward. I will never forgive!" A little later in the afternoon, when the rose of sunset lay on the snowy hills, some one knocked at the door of Leclere's house. "Entrez!"" he cried. "Who is there? I see not very well by this light. Who is it.''" "It is me," said 'Toinette, her cheeks rosier than the snow outside, "nobody but me. I have come to ask you to tell me the rest about that new carriage — do you remember?" Ill The voice in the canoe behind me ceased. The rain let up. The sUsh, slish of the paddle stopped. The canoe swung sideways to the breeze. I heard the rap, rap, rap of a pipe on the gunwale, and the quick scratch of a match on the under side of the thwart. 117 THE RULING PASSION "What are you doing, Ferdinand?" "I go to light the pipe, m'sieu'." "Is the story finished?" "But yes — but no — I know not, m'sieu'. As you will." "But what did old Girard say when his daughter broke her engagement and married a man whose eyes were spoiled?" "He said that Leclere could see well enough to work with him in the store." "And what did Vaillantcoeur say when he lost his girl?" "He said it was a cmsed shame that one could not fight a blind man." "And what did Toinette say?" "She said she had chosen the bravest heart in Abb^viUe." "And Prosper — what did he say?" "M'sieu', I know not. He said it only to Toi- nette." 118 THE GENTLE LIFE THE GENTLE LIFE iJo you remember that fair little wood of silver birches on the West Branch of the Neversink, some- what below the place where the Biscuit Brook runs in? There is a mossy terrace raised a couple of feet above the water of a long, still pool; and a very pleasant spot for a friendship-fire on the shingly beach below you; and a plenty of painted trilliums and yellow violets and white foam-flowers to adorn your woodland banquet, if it be spread in the month of May, when Mistress Nature is given over to em- broidery. It was there, at Contentment Corner, that Ned Mason had promised to meet me on a certain day for the noontide lunch and smoke and talk, he fish- ing down Biscuit Brook, and I down the West Branch, until we came together at the rendezvous. But he was late that day — good old Ned! He was occasionally behind time on a trout stream. For he went about his fishing very seriously; and if it was fine, the sport was a natural occasion of delay. But 121 THE RULING PASSION if it was poor, he made it an occasion to sit down to meditate upon the cause of his failure, and tried to overcome it with many subtly reasoned changes of the fly — which is a vain thing to do, but well adapted to make one forgetful of the flight of time. So I waited for him near an hour, and then ate my half of the sandwiches and boiled eggs, smoked a solitary pipe, and fell into a light sleep at the foot of the biggest birch tree, an old and trusty friend of mine. It seemed like a very slight sound that roused me: the snapping of a dry twig in the thicket, or a gentle splash in the water, differing in some indefinable way from the steady murmur of the stream; something it was, I knew not what, that made me aware of some one coming down the brook. I raised myself quietly on one elbow and looked up through the trees to the head of the pool. "Ned will think that I have gone down long ago," I said to myself; "I will just lie here and watch him fish through this pool, and see how he manages to spend so much time about it." But it was not Ned's rod that I saw poking out through the bushes at the bend in the brook. It was 122 THE GENTLE LIFE such an affair as I had never seen before upon a trout stream: a majestic weapon at least sixteen feet long, made in two pieces, neatly spliced together in the middle, and all painted a smooth, glistening, hope- ful green. The line that hung from the tip of it was also green, but of a paler, more transparent colour, quite thick and stiff where it left the rod, but taper- ing down towards the end, as if it were twisted of strands of horse-hair, reduced in number, until, at the hook, there were but two hairs. And the hook — there was no disguise about that — it was an una- bashed bait-hook, and well baited, too. Grently the line swayed to and fro above the foaming water at the head of the pool; quietly the bait settled down in the foam and ran with the current around the edge of the deep eddy under the opposite bank; sud- denly the line straightened and tautened; sharply the tip of the long green rod sprang upward, and the fisherman stepped out from the bushes to play his fish. Where had I seen such a figure before.'' The dress was strange and quaint — broad, low shoes, gray woollen stockings, short brown breeches tied at the 123 THE RULING PASSION knee with ribbons, a loose brown coat belted at the waist like a Norfolk jacket; a wide, rolling collar with a bit of lace at the edge, and a soft felt hat with a shady brim. It was a costume that, with all its oddity, seemed wonderfully fit and familiar. And the face.'' Certainly it was the face of an old friend. Never had I seen a countenance of more quietness and kindliness and twinkling good humour. "Well met, sir, and a pleasant day to you," cried the angler, as his eyes lighted on me. "Look you, I have hold of a good fish; I pray you put that net under him, and touch not my line, for if you do, then we break all. Well done, sir; I thank you. Now we have him safely landed. Truly this is a lovely one; the best that I have taken in these waters. See how the belly shines, here as yellow as a marsh- marigold, and there as white as a foam-flower. Is not the hand of Divine Wisdom as skilful in the colour- ing of a fish as in the painting of the manifold blos- soms that sweeten these wild forests.?" "Indeed it is," said I, "and this is the biggesi trout that I have seen caught in the upper waters ol the Neversink. It is certainly eighteen inches long, U4> THE GENTLE LIFE " and should weigh close upon two pounds and a half." "More than that," he answered, "if I mistake not. But I observe that you call it a trout. To my mind, it seems more like a char, as do all the fish that I have caught in your stream. Look here upon these curious water-markings that run through the dark green of the back, and these enamellings of blue and gold upon the side. Note, moreover, how bright and how many are the red spots, and how each one of them is encircled with a ring of purple. Truly it is a fish of rare beauty, and of high esteem with persons of note. I would gladly know if it be as good to the taste as I have heard it reputed." "It is even better," I replied; "as you shall find, if you will but try it." Then a curious impulse came to me, to which I yielded with as little hesitation or misgiving, at the time, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "You seem a stranger in this part of the coun- try, sir," said I; "but unless I am mistaken you are no stranger to me. Did you not use to go a-fishing 125 THE RULING PASSION in the New River, with honest Nat. and R. Roe, many years ago? And did they not call you Izaak Walton?" His eyes smiled pleasantly at me and a little curve of mei-riment played around his lips. "It is a secret which I thought not to have been discovered here," he said; "but since you have lit upon it, I will not deny it." Now how it came to pass that I was not astonished nor dismayed at this, I cannot explain. But so it was; and the only feeling of which I was conscious was a strong desire to detain this visitor as long as possible, and have some talk with him. So I grasped at the only expedient that flashed into my mind. "WeU, then, sir," I said, "you are most heartily welcome, and I trust you will not despise the only hospitality I have to offer. If you will sit down here among these birch trees in Contentment Comer, I will give you half of a fisherman's luncheon, and will cook your char for you on a board before an open wood-fire^ if you are not in a hurry. Though I be- long to a nation which is reported to be curious, I will promise to trouble you with no inquisitive ques- 126 THE GENTLE LIFE tions; and if you will but talk to me at your will, you shall find me a ready listener." So we made ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I busied myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of board that I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up before the fire to broil, my new companion entertained me with the sweetest and friendliest talk that I had ever heard. "To speak without offence, sir," he began, "there was a word in your discourse a moment ago that seemed strange to me. You spoke of being 'in a hurry'; and that is an expression which is unfa- miliar to my ears; but if it mean the same as being in haste, then I must tell you that this is a thing which, in my judgment, honest anglers should learn to forget, and have no dealings with it. To be in haste is to be in anxiety and distress of mind; it is to mistrust Providence, and to doubt that the issue of all events is in wiser hands than ours; it is to dis- turb the course of nature, and put overmuch con- fidence in the importance of our own endeavours. "For how much of the evil that is in the world 127 THE RULING PASSION Cometh from this plaguy habit of being in haste! The haste to get riches, the haste to climb upon some pinnacle of worldly renown, the haste to resolve mysteries — from these various kinds of haste are be- gotten no small part of the miseries and afflictions whereby the children of men are tormented: such as quarrels and strifes among those who would over- reach one another in business; envyings and jeal- ousies among those who would outshine one another in rich apparel and costly equipage; bloody rebel- lions and cruel wars among those who would obtain power over their fellow-men; cloudy disputations and bitter controversies among those who would fain leave no room for modest ignorance and lowly faith among the secrets of religion; and by all these mis- eries of haste the heart grows weary, and is made weak and dull, or else hard and angry, while it dwelleth in the midst of them. "But let me tell you that an angler's occupation is a good cure for these evils, if for no other reason, because it gently dissuadeth us from haste and lead- eth us away from feverish anxieties into those ways which are pleasantness and those paths which are 128 THE GENTLE LIFE peace. For an angler cannot force his fortune by eagerness, nor better it by discontent. He must wait upon the weather, and the height of the water, and the hunger of the fish, and many other accidents of which he has no control. If he would angle well, he must not be in haste. And if he be in haste, he will do well to unlearn it by angling, for I think there is no surer method. "This fair tree that shadows us from the sun hath grown many years in its place without more unhap- piness than the loss of its leaves in winter, which the succeeding season doth generously repair; and shall we be less contented in the place where God hath planted us? or shall there go less time to the mak- ing of a man than to the growth of a tree.? This stream flpweth wimpling and laughing down to the great sea which it knoweth not; yet it doth not fret because the future is hidden; and doubtless it were wise in us to accept the mysteries of life as cheerfully and go forward with a merry heart, considering that we know enough to make us happy and keep us honest for to-day. A man should be well content if he can see so far ahead of him as the next bend 129 THE RULING PASSION in the stream. What lies^beyond, let him trust in^ the hand of God. »"But as concerning riches, wherein should you ' ^nd I be happier, this pleasant afternoon of May, had we all the gold in Croesus his coffers? Would the sun shine for us more bravely, or the flowera give forth a sweeter breath, or yonder warbling vireo, hidden in her leafy choir, send down more pure and musical descants, sweetly attuned by natu- ral magic to woo and win oiu: thoughts from vanity and hot desires into a harmony with the tranqi^ij^ thoughts of God.? And as for fame and power, trust me, sir, I have seen too many men in my time that lived very unhappily though their names were upon all lips, and died very sadly though their power was felt in many lands; too many of these great ones have I seen that spent their days in disquietude and ended them in sorrow, to make me envy their con- ditions or hasten to rival them. Nor do I think that, by all their perturbations and fightings and runnings to and fro, the world hath been much bettered, or even greatly changed. The colour and complexion of mortal life, in aJl things that are es- 130 THE GENTLE LIFE sential, remain the same under Cromwell or undei Charles. The goodness and mercy of God are still over all His works, whether Presbytery or Episco- pacy be set up as His interpreter. Very quietly and peacefully have I lived under several polities, civil and ecclesiastical, and under all there was room enough to do my duty and love my friends and go a-fishing. And let me tell you, sir, that in the state wherein I now find myself, though there are many things of which I may not speak to you, yet one thing is clear: if I had made haste in my mortal concerns, I should not have saved time, but lost it; for all our afiairs are under one sure dominion which moveth. them forward to their concordant end: wherefore ^He thai: believeth shall not make haste,'' and, above all, not when he goeth a-angling. "But tell me, I pray you, is not this char cooked yet? Methinks the time is somewhat overlong for the roasting. The fragrant smell of the cookery gives me an eagerness to taste this new dish. Not that I am in haste, but — "Well, it is done; and well done, too! Marry, the flesh of this fish is as red as rose-leaves, and as sweet 131 THE RULING PASSION as if he had fed on nothing else. The flavour of smoke from the fire is but slight, and it takes nothing from the perfection of the dish, but rather adds to it, Being clean and delicate. I like not these French cooks who make all dishes in disguise, and set them forth with strange foreign savom's, like a masquerade. Give me my food in its native dress, even though it be a little dry. If we had but a cup of sack, now, or a glass of good ale, and a pipeful of tobacco.? "What! you have an abundance of the fragrant weed in your pouch.'' Sir, I thank you very heartily! You entertain me like a prince. Not like King James, be it understood, who despised tobacco and called it a 'lively image and pattern of hell'; nor like the Czar of Russia who commanded that all who used it should have their noses cut off; but like good Queen Bess of glorious memory, who disdained not the incense of the pipe, and some say she used one herself; though for my part I think the custom of smoking one that is more fitting for men, whose frailty and need of comfort are well known, than for that fairer sex whose innocent and virgin spirits stand less in want of creature consolations. THE GENTLE LIFE "But come, let us not trouble our enjoyment with careful discrimination of others' scruples. Your to- bacco is rarely good; I '11 warrant it comes from that province of Virginia which was named for the Virgin Queen; and while we smoke together, let me call you, for this hour, my Scholar; and so I will give you four choice rules for the attainment of that unhastened quietude of mind whereof we did lately discourse. "First: you shall learn to desire nothing in the world so much but that you can be happy with- out it. "Second: you shall seek that which you desire only by such means as are fair and lawful, and this will leave you without bitterness towards men or shame before God. "Third: you shall take pleasure in the time while you are seeking, even though you obtain not imme- diately that which you seek; for the purpose of a journey is not only to arrive at the goal, but also to find enjoyment by the way. "Fourth: when you attain that which you have desired, you shall think more of the kindness of 133 THE RULING PASSION your fortune than of the greatness of your skill. This will make you grateful, and ready to share with others that which Providence hath bestowed upon you; and truly this is both reasonable and profit- able, for it is but little that any of us would catch in this world were not our luck better than our deserts. "And to these Four Rules I will add yet another — Fifth: when you smoke your pipe with a good con- science, trouble not yourself because there are men in the world who will find fault with you for so doing. If you wait for a pleasure at which no sour- complexioned soul hath ever girded, you will wait long, and go through life with a sad and anxious mind. But I think that God is best pleased with us when we give little heed to scoffers, and enjoy His gifts with thankfulness and an easy heart. "Well, Scholar, I have almost tired myself, and, I fear, more than almost tired you. But this pipe is nearly burned out, and the few short whiffs that are left in it shall put a period to my too long dis- course. Let me tell you, then, that there be some men in the world who hold not with these my opin- 134 THE GENTLE LIFE ions. They profess that a life of contention and noise and public turmoil, is far higher than a life of quiet work and meditation. And so far as they fol- low their own choice honestly and with a pure mind, I doubt not that it is as good for them as mine is for me, and I am well pleased that every man do enjoy his own opinion. But so far as they have spoken ill of me and my opinions, I do hold it a thing of little consequence, except that I am sorry that they have thereby embittered their own hearts. "For this is the punishment of men who malign and revile those that differ from them in religion, or prefer another way of living; their revilings, by so much as they spend their wit and labour to make them shrewd and bitter, do draw all the sweet and wholesome sap out of their lives and turn it into poison; and so they become vessels of mockery and wrath, remembered chiefly for the evil things that they have said with cleverness. "For be sure of this, Scholar, the more a man giveth himself to hatred in this world, the more will he find to hate. But let us rather give oiu'selves to charity, and if we have enemies (and what honest 135 THE RULING PASSION man hath them not?) let them be ours, since they must, but let us not be theirs, since we know better. "There was one Franck, a trooper of Cromwell's, who wrote ill of me, saying that I neither under- stood the subjects whereof I discoursed nor believed the things that I said, being both silly and preten- tious. It would have been a pity if it had been true. There was also one Leigh Hunt, a maker of many books, who used one day a bottle of ink whereof the gall was transfused into his blood, so that he wrote many hard words of me, setting forth selfishness and cruelty and hypocrisy as if they were qualities of my disposition. God knew, even then, whether these things were true of me; and if they were not true, it would have been a pity to have answered them; but it would have been still more a pity to be angered by them. But since that time Master Hunt and I have met each other; yes, and Master Franck, too; and we have come very happily to a better understanding. "Trust me, Scholar, it is the part of wisdom to spend little of your time upon the things that vex and anger you, and much of your time upon the 136 THE GENTLE LIFE things that bring you quietness and confidence and good cheer. A fr iend ma de is better than an enemy punished. There is more of God in the peaceable beauty of this little wood-violet than in all the angry disputations of the sects. We are nearer heaven when we listen to the birds than when we quarrel with our fellow-men. I am sure that none can enter into the spirit of Christ, his evangel, save those who willingly follow his invitation when he says, 'Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and rest a whUe.'' For since his blessed kingdom was first established in the green fields, by the lakeside, with humble fishermen for its subjects, the easiest way into it hath ever been through the wicket-gate of a lowly and grateful fellowship with naiture. He . that feels not the beauty and blessedness and peace of the woods and meadows that God hath bedecked with flowers for him even while he is yet a sinner, how shaU he learn to enjoy the unfading bloom of the celestial country if he ever become a saint? "No, no, sir, he that departeth out of this world without perceiving that it is fair and full of innocent sweetness hath done little honour to the every-day 137 THE RULING PASSION miracles of divine beneficence; and though by mercy he may obtain an entrance to heaven, it will be a strange place to him; and though he have studied all that is written in men's books of divinity, yet be- cause he hath left the book of Nature unturned, he will have much to learn and much to forget. Do you think that to be blind to the beauties of earth pre- pareth the heart to behold the glories of heaven? Nay, Scholar, I know that you are not of that opin- ion. But I can tell you another thing which per- haps you knew not. The heart that is blest with the glories of heaven ceaseth not to remember and to love the beauties of this world. And of this love I am certain, because I feel it, and glad because it is a great blessing. "There are two sorts of seeds sown in our remem- brance by what we call the hand of fortune, the fruits of which do not wither, but grow sweeter for- ever and ever. The first is the seed of innocent plea- sures, received in gratitude and enjoyed with good companions, of which pleasures we never grow weary of thinking, because they have enriched our hearts. [The second is the seed of pure and gentle sorrows, 138 THE GENTLE LIFE borne in submission and with faithful love, and these also we never forget, but we come to cherish them with gladness instead of grief, because we see them changed into everlasting joys. And how this may be I cannot tell you now, for you would not understand me. But that it is so, believe me: for if you believe, you shall one day see it yourself. "But come, now, our fidendly pipes are long since burned out. Hark, how sweetly the tawny thrush in yonder thicket touches her silver harp for the even- ing hymn! I will follow the stream downward, but do you tany here until the friend comes for whom you were waiting. I think we shall all three meet one another, somewhere, after sunset." I watched the gray hat and the old brown coat and long green rod disappear among the trees around the curve of the stream. Then Ned's voice sounded in my ears, and I saw him standing above me laughing. "Hallo, old man," he said, "you're a sound sleeper! I hope you've had good luck, and pleasant dreams." 1S9 A FRIEND OF JUSTICE A FRIEND OF JUSTICE I JLt was the black patch over his left eye that made all the trouble. In reality he was of a disposition most peaceful and propitiating, a friend of justice and fair dealing, strongly inclined to a domestic life, and capable of extreme devotion. He had a vivid sense of righteousness, it is true, and any violation of it was apt to heat his indignation to the boiling- point. When this occurred he was strong in the back, stiiF in the neck, and fearless of consequences. But he was always open to friendly overtures and ready to make peace with honour. Singularly responsive to every touch of kindness, desirous of affection, secretly hungry for caresses, he had a heart framed for love and tranquillity. But nature saw fit to put a black patch over his left eye; wherefore his days were passed in the midst of conflict and he lived the strenuous life. How this sinister mark came to him, he never knew. Indeed it is not likely that he had any 143 THE RULING PASSION idea of the part that it played in his career. The attitude that the world took toward him from the beginning, an attitude of aggressive mistrust, — the role that he was expected and practically forced to assume in the drama of existence, the role of a hero of interminable strife, — must have seemed to him altogether mysterious and somewhat absurd. But his part was fixed by the black patch. It gave him an aspect so truculent and forbidding that all the elements of warfare gathered around him as hornets aroimd a sugar barrel, and his appearance in public was like the raising of a flag for battle. "You see that Pichou," said Macintosh, the Hud- son's Bay agent at Mingan, "you see yon big black- eye deevil? The savages caU him Pichou because he's ugly as a lynx — Haid comme un pichou.'' Best sledge- dog and the gurliest tyke on the North Shore. Only two years old and he can lead a team already. But, man, he's just daft for the fighting. Fought his mother when he was a pup and lamed her for life. Fought two of his brothers and nigh killed 'em both. Every dog in the place has a grudge at him, and hell 's loose as oft as he takes a walk. I 'm loath 14,4, (iffl(r;iOB^i