Chapter V: Part 5

“Mrs. Morgan,” Esmond answered quickly, in his decisive, impressive manner, “I liked it far more than anybody, because, from my peculiar position, I am able to appreciate its value better and to see more possibility in it than any one here. I am going to prove that to you.” The moment we were inside the camp Esmond turned to his host. “I don’t want to impose on your hospitality, and I won’t make any move without your consent, but I’d like to explain to you who I am and what I want to do.”

Everybody looked surprised, and conversation stopped. “Yes,” Morgan answered tentatively.

“Perhaps you know my name, if you’re theatre-goers,” the stranger went on. “I’m Charles Esmond, the theatrical manager, and I have quite a lot of stock companies and theatres more or less under my control. Looking out for new stars isn’t my business nowadays, but it used to be, and I haven’t lost my scent for a good thing, and the minute I heard that boy whistle I knew he was a good thing. He does what is called double-tongue whistling, and that in itself is not common. But that is only incidental—it’s the quality of his performance that is extraordinary. I have heard the best people that are known at the business—it’s a limited business—and I’ve never heard any one who touches this guide of yours. Take that young fellow and put him on the stage and he’d make a hit for us, and for himself he’d make what would seem a big fortune in little or no time. I’d like to talk to him—now—to-night. May I?”

Impetuosity is peculiarly winning when it is backed by knowledge, and Morgan laughed and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Surely,” he said. “It’s interesting to run into an adventure up here in the wilderness. The boy is a good guide and I like him, yet I would not stand in the way of making his fortune for anything. Bob—” But Master Bob’s long legs were already chasing each other out of the low doorway in a rush after Zoëtique. In three minutes he was back with the man in tow.

Zoëtique Vézina was perhaps twenty-two years old, a stocky, well-built chap of five feet ten or so, with deep, powerful shoulders and a small waist and a body that moved with the grace of efficient muscles. His face was roughly carved and of his class, but he held his head with an air that had pride and sensitiveness both in it, and when he spoke and smiled the commonplace modelling of his features lighted with a gentleness and a spirit which made you understand his whistling. There was character and shading back of this ordinary-looking block of humanity. He wore blackened _bottes sauvages_ of caribou leather, laced with thongs of hide through huge brass eyelets; his trousers looked as if they might have been somebody’s dinner clothes five years before—somebody not particularly his shape; his coarse red and blue striped sweater was belted with a broad band of black leather around a waist as trim as a girl’s. He pulled a nondescript felt hat from a shock head of dark hair as he entered, and his blue eyes gazed about half startled and half friendly.

We sat and listened as if at a play, while Charles Esmond, the great theatrical manager, conspicuous on two continents, interviewed this unknown backwoodsman. He did it in fluent French, with his own charm of manner, but it took some time to make Zoëtique understand what he was offering, and when he did understand, to our astonishment he did not respond. Esmond mentioned a salary to begin with so large that I gasped, and to the guide, accustomed to two dollars a day in good times, it must have seemed fabulous. Morgan voiced my thought when he put in a quiet, reassuring word.

“The _m’sieur_ will do what he says, Zoëtique. I know all about the _m’sieur_, and he is to be relied on.”

“_Merci, m’sieur_,” the man answered with ready French politeness, but his expression did not change.

His bright, light-blue eyes simply lifted a second to smile at Walter, and dropped to the floor again. All of us waited as he stared at one knot-hole—a minute, two minutes, three minutes we waited in silence while Zoëtique considered that knot-hole.

At last, “I don’t want to hurry you,” Esmond said, “yet I would like to know by to-morrow. It’s the chance of your life, you understand. You couldn’t make as much money here in forty years as you could make in a winter or two in New York. I do not see why you should hesitate five minutes. But think it over—talk it over with your friends. I will wait till you pass our camp with your _messieurs_ to-morrow morning.” He smiled his sudden, fascinating smile at the guide, and the contrast between the two was sharp and picturesque—the finished, handsome man of the world and the awkward, ill-clothed child of the people. “I know it must be startling to you,” Esmond said kindly. “You will have to collect your ideas a bit. But you must answer as I wish. I will wait till morning.”

Then the guide lifted his clear, light eyes and met the other’s slightly pitying gaze with unexpected dignity. “The _m’sieur_ need not wait,” he said serenely. “I know my answer at this time. The _m’sieur_ is very good to me, and I am glad that he is content with my poor whistling. I would be happy to make all that great money—_mais—oui!_—but I cannot go to New York as the _m’sieur_ wishes.”

“You cannot go?” Esmond repeated in surprise, and we all stared.

Zoëtique’s gentle tones went on firmly. “But no, m’sieur. I have the intention to marry myself in the spring, and this winter I build my house. Alixe, my _fiancée_, would be disappointed if I should not build our house this winter.”

“But, man, you’ll have money enough to build a dozen houses—you can build one ten times as fine—you can pay men to build it for you, think of that!”

Zoëtique smiled—his smile was winning, but very self-contained, and the tilt of his head was assured. “It would be another thing, _m’sieur_. Alixe-_là_, she would be disappointed.”

Esmond argued. Patiently, with amusement first, and then a bit hotly, but the guide never lost his gentle respectfulness of manner or his firmness. Walter Morgan put in another word.

“Think carefully before you decide to give up so much money as this means, Zoëtique. As the _m’sieur_ says, it is a chance for all of your life.”

The young fellow’s alert, bright eyes flashed gratitude. “But yes, _m’sieur_. I understand. However, one knows that to make money is not always to be happy—is it not the truth, _m’sieur_? We are a poor people, we others, _habitants_, and yet we are content. I am afraid to lose the happiness that I have, in that great city which I do not know. Here—I know. I am strong”—he pushed his big shoulders forward and smiled proudly as he felt their muscles. “I am capable and can work hard—I have planned my life, and I have the things which I wish. Why should I risk all that for—I do not know what? I thank the _m’sieur_”—he turned his blue glance on Esmond with a self-possession which the cosmopolitan might not have bettered. “I thank also my _m’sieur_ much for all his goodness to me.” He stood up, his shabby old hat crushed in his hand. “I thank madame and every one for their good wishes. I am content that madame and the _messieurs_ found pleasure in my poor whistling. Good night, madame—good night, _messieurs_.”

He had made his bow, as his peasant ancestors had been taught to make theirs in old France two hundred years before, with deep respect, with hat in hand and head bent. Here was a man who knew when he had enough. The question was closed. He was gone.

The next year it was in September that the Morgans asked me to their camp. Air like cooled wine breathed life into me as my canoe flew down Lac Lumière to the double paddle-beat of Godin and Josef, who had been sent to the club to fetch me. Sunshine lay over the lake and laughed back at us from the hills, where flecks of gold through green tree-tops told that the birches had caught the frost. One peculiarity of the woods is that at whatever time you go to them they persuade you at once, with a wordless, answerless logic, that it is their best season.

“This is better than August,” I called out to Walter and Margaret Morgan, standing smiling on the quay, while Bob kicked chips toward me in welcome.

“A thousand times better,” they called back together, and Bob stopped his gattling to respond classically:

“Golly, you bet!”

And it certainly was—till the next August at least. There were no flies, and one could fish without tar oil or citronella; each breath pumped energy into the lungs; the snap of the water made a man laugh and shriek aloud as he plunged into the lake in the morning with air at forty-five degrees; the fishing and hunting were at their best.

Down by the mouth of the little Rivière à la Poêle—the “Frying-pan River”—the trout were massing for the _frayage_, the spawning, and there in the cool of the evening, when the shallow water was dim in the low light—at about six o’clock, perhaps—they jumped like mad things for the fly. You had but to paddle across the lake and through the rushes, slower and slower, till the rustling against the boat slid into silence as you halted; you had but to pull loose a few feet of line with your left hand and to listen to the whir of it spinning out as you put your right wrist into the cast; you had but to drop the flies over the mystery of the brown water by the edge of the lily-pads—gingerly, it must be understood; cautiously, for this is the first cast for a year; carefully, man, with a tiny lift of the rod-tip as the flies fall so that the Parmachene Belle on the tail takes water first, and the Reuben Wood touches not too soon, and the black hand-fly skims with its snell clear of the pool. Such fitting small precautions, such pleasant proprieties, were all one had to observe at the mouth of the river “A la Poêle.”

The sweet water would meet your searching with a smile as inscrutable as Mona Lisa’s—with the smile it had worn, careless of your existence, all these centuries; up the river you would hear the dull boom of the rapids, the nearer, busy monotone of the falling stream. The utter quiet of the woods, with its deep undertone of teeming life, would fold you in—there is nothing stiller. Peace and silence and the tranquil pool—only the steady swish of the line as you cast.

Suddenly a wild lashing and splashing and spraying; the bubble, bubble, bubble of broken water; a white and scarlet flashing that comes and goes where the black hand-fly holds taut to the water; a thrill and tug on your wrist that brings your heart to your mouth. You have struck automatically; he is on; you are playing your first fish of the season.

“_Pas trop fort_,” Godin remarks calmly from the stern; “not too hard, _m’sieur_. It is a big one.”

Probably, for the candidates, a presidential election is more exciting than this—certainly it lasts longer—yet I doubt very much if any quarter-hour of it carries more of a thrill. You feel Godin’s sense of the importance of the situation by the way he handles the boat. With light manœuvres of the paddle, not to disturb the pool too much, he works you, towing the fish, to a place where the water is clear and you can play his rushing lordship without fear of getting him tangled about lily-roots, and so pulling loose from the fly.

The fight is well on—it is the contest of a man’s brain, working with the awkward tools of a man’s muscles, in an unaccustomed situation, against a wonderful expert and gymnast in his own element. The outcome is always a doubtful one—it is a fair fight—that is where the thrill comes in. The long runs when you must give line with a swiftness beyond thinking; the lightning rushes toward the boat when your reel must work faster than your brain or you lose him; the lifting, the lowering of the rod that must be done by a sense acquired in many such battles, a sense come to be instinct more than reason; the whisper in the muscles that tells you not to pull him when he sulks; that tells you not to let him get line enough to shake free—all these phases and a hundred more which fishermen know were in that fight of mine on September ninth with my big record trout, down at the mouth of the Rivière à la Poêle. I won. I landed him, and he weighed five and a quarter pounds by the scales. It was my first fish of the season, and Godin was almost as pleased as I with this good beginning. We kept at it, of course, and we had what would have seemed good luck on other days, for a spotted fellow of two pounds, and three more of a pound and a half soon decorated the bottom of the boat. But the battle of the giants had led off; we had trapped the patriarch first. And, seeing this, and happy enough with our afternoon’s work as it was, Godin and I fell to talking.

He had crossed the pool now, and worked into the river, and was paddling slowly up it, where birch-trees hung over and met across brown running water, foam-spotted from rapids above. I cast at intervals, leisurely, as we floated up-stream, and the intermittent bright flight of the flies punctuated the guide’s clear-cut French sentences. A sudden thought of last year came to my mind.

“Godin,” I asked, and watched the Parmachene Belle flash delicately scarlet toward a lily-leaf. “Godin, where is Zoëtique this year?”

“_Ah—oui_,” the voice came from behind me. “I was about to tell the _m’sieur_ of that. The _m’sieur_ had an interest in Zoëtique, eh?”

“Certainly, I have an interest in him,” I answered. “I meant to ask M’sieur Morgan about him this afternoon, but I forgot.”

“_Ah—oui_,” said Godin again, and no more. There was a note of importance in his tone, and I rose to it.

“Well, what is it, then? Why isn’t he here? Where is he?” I threw over my shoulder.

Godin cleared his throat for heavy conversation. “_Zoëtique est à New York_,” he announced.

My flies came slapping against the boat. I certainly was surprised. “In New York?” I repeated.

“_Ah, oui, m’sieur_,” said Godin again. “The _m’sieur_ who was here last year, the strange _m’sieur_ who wished that he should go to New York to whistle—that _m’sieur_ sent again to search for him in the springtime, and Zoëtique was content to go.”

“But I thought he was so decided about not going. I thought he was to be married, and was satisfied to stay here. I thought he didn’t care about making money—I thought—” and I stopped.

“It is the truth, _m’sieur_. All that was quite true—last year,” said Godin. “But one changes. Things arrive, and one’s life changes, and so it happens that one changes. It was like that with Zoëtique. It was that he had a quarrel with his girl—with his _fiancée_. It was that which altered the opinion of Zoëtique. I know all about that affair—me—for it is I that am the cousin of that girl, and she has talked to me. She has explained to me about what happened, _comme il faut_. I am sorry for her and sorry also for Zoëtique—both the two. It is most unhappy. But”—Godin shrugged his shoulders with the philosophy which most of us can feel in another’s tragedy. “But—what can one do? It is _malheur_—too bad—but it is life.”

“Can you tell me about it, Godin?” I asked.

“But yes, _m’sieur_—most certainly. Yet it is a long story—_m’sieur_ may be _ennuyé_. I will recount to _m’sieur_ all the things which are of importance—is it not?”

“As you think best.” So Godin began, clearing his throat as always in preparation for vocal effort. It was an ordinary enough little history, of a high-spirited, light-hearted girl, full of coquetry, vain perhaps, quick-tempered and jealous and exacting, but all that from thoughtlessness, not from the heart, and with the good qualities of her defects. For Godin made me see, with his simple yet keen analysis of his cousin, that brighter side also, which each one of us has. He made me see a girl who was honest and warm-hearted and large-minded enough to acknowledge herself in the wrong and to do right with a will when she saw it—a woman strong and deep enough to keep the current of love alive like a flowing river on whose surface dead branches and bad things indeed collect and cover the bright rippling for a moment, yet whose rushing stream can sweep such _débris_ easily away. He told me from how little the trouble had begun; how Alixe had imagined slights that Zoëtique had never meant; how the man had tried to be patient at first, and then resented what he could not understand—cavalier treatment which he knew to be undeserved; how each had said things hard to forget; how another man and another girl had come into the breach and made it wider, and how at last the two, who really loved each other still, were so warped from the way of happiness that each was wretched and unnatural with the other, and that all comfort in each other’s presence was gone.

I remembered the proud lift of Zoëtique’s head and his responsive quick smile, and the delicate, close searching of his blue, alert eyes, as Godin told me that he was _vif_—I understood how the big, strong fellow, with a soul sensitive as a child’s, a heart modest and secretly distrustful of its own power to hold affection—how he might have felt at the end that he had given all that was in him to a woman who did not care, who held him lightly, who played with him as he had seen her play with other men. So it did not surprise me when Godin went on to narrate how, when a letter had come again from Mr. Esmond, Zoëtique had suddenly cut loose from everything and had gone off, with a few curt words to Alixe for all good-by, to find a new way of life in New York.

There had been news from him once or twice, telling of his immediate success, of the astonishing gayeties of a great city, of his own happiness and absorption in them, and how he had already almost forgotten the narrow interests of the Canadian village. It was the letter that a sore and angry man would write, I reflected—hitting blindly as hard as he could, harder than he knew, at the hand that had hurt him.

“Do you believe he is as happy as all that?” I asked, thinking aloud.

Godin shrugged his talkative shoulders.

“_’Sais pas_,” he said. “My cousin Alixe, she is not happy. One does not know it—the world—but I know, for she has told me. She will never marry—she says it, and she is not a girl to change her mind. It is easy for her to flirt with this man and that—oh, yes! for she is a girl who draws the _garçons_. But for love—it is another matter. She will not love any but Zoëtique. It is _malheur_, for she is a good _ménagère_—a good worker—and she should marry. But it is that she will not do. It was to me she said that she was proud to have loved Zoëtique and proud that he should once have loved her and that she would rather have that pride than marry another. It is not reasonable—but it is Alixe. She goes about her affairs, oh, but certainly. One does not know that she still loves him—but I know it. She will not marry—it is certain. But as to Zoëtique—_’sais pas_. He gains _b’en d’argent_. He sees life. He amuses himself well. It is much. When one is light-hearted it is much. Yet when the heart is heavy all that makes nothing. It is a _garçon_—a fellow—of much heart always. Always he was faithful to his friends, Zoëtique. It seems _drôle_ to me that he can so soon have lost the _souvenir_ of his place and the people to whom he was accustomed. It is _drôle_ that. Yet one cannot tell.” He shrugged his shoulders again as if to slip the whole question off them with the movement. “_’Sais pas._”

* * * * *

In late November the days in the Morgans’ camp had become a page of past life, a page illuminated with blue and gold, hazy with romance, bright with adventure, marginally illustrated with the mighty shade of the bull moose I had shot, with the pink and silver vanishing glory of my five-pound trout, with flying pictures of black duck and partridges which had fallen to my gun; a page to be turned to and dreamed over, again and again, yet a page of the past for all that.

On an evening, then, of November, I went out to dinner and to the theatre afterward. It was to a vaudeville which was attracting attention that we were taken. I do not care for vaudeville, and I merely suffered the numbers to pass as civilly as I might, talking between them, during them if I could, to one or two people of the party who were more interesting. The big placard in the glare of the footlights was shifted, read No. 5. I turned my chair sidewise in the back of the box and leaned forward to the woman in front of me.

“Don’t watch this number—talk to me,” I suggested. “It’s an educated pig who does sums.”

“You’re trying to deceive me,” the woman said, and laughed, and picked up her fluttering play-bill. “No. 5—why, it isn’t a pig at all, it’s whistling.”

“Then, for heaven’s sake, talk to me,” I begged. “Some things I can live through, but fifteen minutes of whistling with no relief—talk to me. It’s life and death.”

“Look at the name,” she answered irrelevantly. “What a queer name—it starts out to be Zoroaster and gets side-tracked. This must be the wonderful whistling Mrs. Schuyler talked about—we must listen—they say it’s the best thing in the evening, and is making a sensation.”

“Let it—I don’t want to hear it,” I answered from a soul immune to vaudeville sensations, and I did not glance at the programme.

A boy came into the box swinging a tray of glasses of ice-water. I took one and held it in my hand as I spoke. At that moment No. 5 began. With a whirl of my chair which made the man next me frown with astonishment, I had twisted toward the stage, the glass crashed to the floor; the water splashed on a velvet gown and I did not see it; I saw only a figure which stood there, alone, by the footlights.

* * * * *

Strong, sweet, the song of the loggers on the River Gatineau rang flute-like through the theatre. The homely words, like meek handmaidens, followed in my mind the melody:

C’était le vingt-cinq de juillet
Lorsque je me suis engagé
Pour monter dans la rivière
Qu’on appelle la rivière enragé.

I gasped as if I had plunged suddenly into the cold rapids of a rushing little river. The crowded theatre, the heat, the glare, were gone; I lay in a canoe in misty moonlight, in deep peace of Canadian hills, and from the shore floated the bird-notes of Zoëtique’s whistling.

It took me a minute to get back to earth, and another to explain, and then I drifted again into the heart of the woods. Stillness, pure air, running water and rustling trees; brightness and shadow of long portages, starlight and firelight and sunny lengths of lakes, a thousand poignant memories, seized me and carried me into a quiet, keen world, with a joy that was almost pain, as I stared from the box at Zoëtique’s familiar figure standing back of the footlights.

There was a pause; the Gatineau song was finished, his winning smile flashed.

“_Excusez-la_,” said Zoëtique.

After the number was over I went back of the scenes and found him, and talked to him for an unsatisfactory five minutes. He was glad to see me, but some men whose air I did not like were waiting for him, and he was uneasy with me in their presence.

“Are you happy, Zoëtique?” I asked bluntly, as I told him good-by, and the blue eyes flashed to mine a second with an honest, half-tragic look. He shrugged his shoulders.

“_’Sais pas, m’sieur._ I am gaining much money. One is never too happy in this world, is it not? Or in any case, not for too long.”

We arranged that I should pick him up the next night after his number, and take him to my rooms, and with that I left him.

When I got back to my own place I could not shake off the idea of Zoëtique. I sat and smoked and considered for an hour, and I came to see that I was due to meddle in this affair. The boy was out of his proper atmosphere, and the glimpse I had had of him and of the men who were his companions had showed me that he was getting into bad hands. The Morgans were away—he knew no one else. I thought of the girl in the little French village in Canada eating out her heart for him, and of the happiness and self-respect and normal life waiting there for him, and a meteoric vaudeville success did not seem to me worth while as I thought of those things. So, as I sat smoking alone at three in the morning in a twelfth-story New York apartment, I elected to be guardian angel to this backwoods boy and settle him in a log cabin of his own with a wife who cared for him. I could not think of anything else as good that fate could give him.

I decided to see Charles Esmond next day and get his consent, as was only decent, to send the youngster about his business, and if there was any forfeit to pay I was luckily so situated that I could pay it. Bright and early I hunted up Esmond, and after a most unpromising start, including surprise, disgust, reluctance, on his part, I finally got at the man’s good feeling, and persuaded him.

“I think you’re clean gone off your head,” was his parting remark, “and I think I’m worse. But you’ve hypnotized me. Take your brat and ship him back, or I’ll change my mind.” And I left him in a hurry.

I bundled Zoëtique into a taxicab that night the moment he had finished his whistling, leaving two evil-appearing Frenchmen looking black at his evasion. I expected enthusiasm over the taxi, but the lad was too much for me.

“One drives in these wagons every day here,” he remarked calmly. “My friends tell me it is _comme il faut_.”

“The devil they do,” I responded in stout English. “You must be spending money like water.”

He shrugged his expressive shoulders. “_Ça coute cher_,” he acknowledged. “It is expensive. But what will you? One gains money every night, and one has nothing to save for. It is well to make pleasure for one’s friends.” And remembering the adventurers I had seen, I felt confirmed in my opinion that it was also well to snatch this brand from the burning.

Sophisticated as he had become, Zoëtique showed primitive interest in my rooms. He went from one thing to another, examining, asking deferential questions, and listening with deep attention to my answers. He put every picture in the place under analysis, and at length he came to a wide frame which held eight photographs set side by side. I heard him catch his breath as he bent over and saw what they were, and I heard his long-drawn “_Ah, oui!_” that was yet only a whisper. He stood like a statue, his head thrown forward, gazing.

After a while I put a hand on his shoulder and pointed to one of the prints. It was a snap-shot of himself and of me, taken an August morning on a little, lonely river. Zoëtique stood upright in the stern of the canoe, poling it through the shallows. His athletic figure swung with a sure balance; the wind swayed the grasses and floated the ends of the bandanna about his throat. I held my hat on my head as the breeze caught it, and he smiled broadly to see me. The spire of a tall spruce in the distance cut into the sky. It was one of those lucky amateur photographs which wing the spirit and the drawing combined. It takes perhaps a thousand films to produce one, but no professional work comes near the effect when such a one succeeds.

A tremor went through his shoulder as my hand fell on it. “Which is more pleasure for you and me, Zoëtique, to drive in a taxicab in New York, like to-night, or to be together _en canot_, like that?” I asked him.

The boy turned and shot at me a wild look, and with that he dropped into a chair by my writing-table and laid his head on his arms and sat motionless. I waited two or three minutes. Then I drew up a seat and sat down near him, and at the top of the rough head I fired my opening shot.

“I want you to go home, Zoëtique,” I said quietly. That brought him up staring.

“_Mais, m’sieur—mais—c’est b’en impossible_,” he stammered at me, startled.

So then I talked to him like a Dutch uncle, as a man of forty can talk to a lad of twenty-three. I told him, to begin with, that it was arranged with Mr. Esmond that he might go to-morrow if he would. I told him that while he was making money he was not saving any; that he was doing no good here, and was throwing away his life—and he agreed with pathetic readiness.

“One is not absolutely happy in this city, _m’sieur_,” he agreed. “One gets drunk every night, and it is not good for the health. At home I got drunk rarely, _m’sieur_—me—oh, but rarely. Perhaps at the _fête de Noël_, and when one finished logging in the spring—_c’est tout_. Not always as often—it is better for the health like that.”

It was not the psychological moment to lecture, but I put away a reflection or two at this point for Zoëtique’s later service.

“Yes, it is bad for the health, Zoëtique,” I answered with restraint. “It is bad for one in several ways. One is not so much of a man when one gets drunk. I’m glad you think with me that Canada is the place for you.”

There was deep silence. I felt distinctly the stone wall at which we had arrived, and I knew it must be taken down rock by rock. I knew that the question of the girl was coming.

“I cannot go, _m’sieur_.”

“Why not?”

“There are other things. It is difficult to say. The _m’sieur_ is good to me. It makes nothing to me if the _m’sieur_ knows. But it is a small affair—to all but me—and it would be _ennuyant_ to the _m’sieur_ to hear about it.”

“It would not be _ennuyant_ at all, Zoëtique,” I said. “But I know already. Godin told me.”

“Ah!” He was wondering as to how much I knew.

“I know about your trouble with Alixe, and that it got worse and not better as time went on, until you were not happy with each other any more. I was sorry to hear that, for it is not a little thing to have a woman love one as Alixe loves you.”

Zoëtique, with his eyes glued on his great hands, which lay before him on the table, shook his head. “_M’sieur_ is mistaken. Alixe does not love me.”

“Yes. She does. More than ever.”

The boy’s head lifted, and he flashed an inquiring glance. Then a look of sick disgust came over his face and he shook his head again sullenly.

“_M’sieur_ is mistaken,” he repeated. “She does not care—Alixe.”

But I persisted. “I know, Zoëtique. I have heard news since you have heard. Alixe cares for you still—she has always cared. She is sorry for the wrong things she has done—she would not do them again. She loves you.”

Then the suppressed soreness of his soul broke out. It was no longer as guide to _m’sieur_, it was as man to man he talked. “_m’sieur_,” he said roughly, “I know. You do not know. Is it that a woman loves a man when she is ready to think him false, ready to believe he means bad things when he does not imagine anything bad? Is it that a woman loves a man when she says words to him that hurt as if one had cut with a knife? Is it that she loves him when she will not listen when he tries to make all right again? Is it that a woman loves a man when”—his light eyes blazed—“when she plays with other men—lets others be to her what only one should be—does that show love? Is it that a woman loves a man when these things are the truth?”

“Sometimes,” I said, and Zoëtique stared at me in dumb anger.

I went on. I tried to show him in simple words how each of us has a Doctor Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde more or less evenly developed in his or her make-up, and how at times the bad gets into the saddle and rides; how this devil of wrong-headedness holds possession and makes man and woman lose perspective, so that the brain does not see the ugliness of the words the mouth speaks; how it is most often to the ones we care for most that such things are said, because our very sense of love for them puts us off our guard. I asked him also—remembering something from a long time ago—if he had not perhaps put bad meaning into speeches that were innocent—if his imagination had not been partly responsible.

“_’Sais pas_,” said Zoëtique, and shrugged his shoulders. “One accustomed oneself to have her words hurt—it might be that one jumped before the whip fell.”

His face was bitter—this end of my job was no sinecure. I talked along, trying to put my finger on the thin part of the boy’s armor. I drew on Godin’s description, and pointed out how the girl was high-spirited and imaginative, and how some unmeant slight, most likely, had set her to thinking that his love had grown less. How her treatment of him, so bewildering and insulting, was thus an assertion of her dignity—foolish and mistaken, yet only, at the end, a woman’s self-respect. How her exactions, her air of calling him to account which had so galled him, were the poisonous flowers which had sprung in the shadow between them. I tried to make him see how such bad exotics would wither in five minutes of sunlight. I talked like a whole committee of grandfathers to Zoëtique Vézina that night. But at one time I thought I should have to give it up, for he simply shook his head.

“One does not put one’s hand into a trap to be cut off twice,” he said over and over.

Finally I violated Godin’s confidence. “Boy,” I said, “won’t you understand that you’re throwing away the most loyal wife a man could have? She is above the ordinary girl—you know it. If her faults are bigger than another’s, her virtues are bigger, too. She will never get into this hole again—you may wager your life on that. She is clever—she has learned her lesson. She will not risk shipwreck twice. And—I know this, for she has said it—she will never marry any one but you. The other man was a plaything—she tried to pique you with him. It is a foolish trick, but women and men will do it to the end of time.”

I wondered then if he suspected ever so dimly what buried memories made me want to save another man’s life from this foolishness. I looked squarely at him and met his eyes.

“Zoëtique,” I flung at him, out of the bottom of my soul, “do you love her?”

The bright light eyes wavered, looked miserably back at me—yet straight and honest. I waited, and out of the bottom of the lad’s soul came the reluctant answer:

“But yes, _m’sieur_, I love her.”

“Then, for Heaven’s sake, man, go to her and be happy!”

Once more the muscular arms were flung out on my writing-table and the dark head fell on them, but this time the bitterness was gone from the pose. The room was still for a minute, and then he lifted his face and it was smiling, and a tear was wet on his cheek.

“_M’sieur_ has won—I will do as _m’sieur_ wishes,” he said, embarrassed, laughing, and the rest of that interview was as uninteresting as the nations which have no history.

True love is no hot-house plant, and, like moss on the trees, it grows warmest where north winds are cold; but, for all that, it does not take to being sandpapered, and if one walks on it with hobnailed boots it is likely to die down. Yet it is true that deep roots may with cultivation sprout again—may even sprout thicker if cared for tenderly. All the same, it is ill-advised to try more than one episode of hobnails and sandpaper. Zoëtique and Alixe, learning it painfully, learned this lesson thoroughly, and I think that never again will they take liberties with their affection for each other. That it has sprung plentifully from the trodden roots I am led to believe from strangely spelled French letters which reach me from time to time. My conscience as a meddler is much soothed by these letters.

As for the other side of my meddling—a few nights ago I dined at the Lambs’ Club, and across the room was Charles Esmond, with a galaxy of stars shining about him. At the end of dinner he picked up his coffee and came over with it to us, smoking like a chimney as he came. He set down the cup and took my hand, and then shook his fist at me and laughed at my host—fascinating and unexpected as I remembered him in the Canadian camp.

“Dick,” said he to my friend, “this chap is a common burglar—don’t give him any more dinner. He burgled the best number out of the best vaudeville I ever staged—plain stole the boy without remorse—the most marvellous whistler the profession has ever seen. I’d have made a mint of money off the fellow—he was just beginning to make a sensation. And this man you’re feeding lifted him, inside of twenty-four hours, and shipped him back to Canada to the girl he’d left behind him.” He proceeded to make an anecdote five minutes in length and telling practically all I have told, from the gist of what I have spun out so long.

When I got back to my rooms that night I found in my mail a birch-bark enveloped photograph of my lovers, now married. Zoëtique, in store clothes which took all the good looks out of him, sat solemn in a chair with a cheap derby hat on his head, and Alixe stood behind him, her hand on his shoulder—smiling, dark-eyed, and graceful.

I looked at the heroine hard and long, and then I unlocked a drawer and took out an old photograph of another dark-eyed girl, and put them side by side and let myself dream how it would be if that hand were sometimes on my shoulder, if those eyes smiled, so, to be at my side—if we had not quarrelled. I do not often let myself have this dream, because it makes work and play harder for a day or two.

I look forward to a month in Canada next summer, and I expect to have a guide who will turn the woods upside down to get me good fishing and hunting, as is the just reward of a successful meddler. And in the intervals of serious business I expect to listen without paying admission to the “best number of the best vaudeville ever staged”—No. 5—Zoëtique’s whistling.

THE YOUNG MAN WITH WINGS

THE YOUNG MAN WITH WINGS

What if some morning when the stars were paling,
And the dawn whitened, and the East was clear,
Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence
Of a benignant spirit standing near:

And I should tell him, as he stood beside me,
“This is our earth—most friendly earth and fair;
Daily its sea and shore, through sun and shadow,
Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air;

“There is blest living here—loving and serving,
And quest of truth, and serene friendships dear;
But stay not, Spirit! Earth has one destroyer,—His
name is Death—flee, lest he find thee here.”

And what if then, while the still morning brightened,
And freshened in the elm the Summer’s breath,
Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel,
And take my hand, and say: “My name is Death.”

Sill’s verses occurred to the bishop as he lay awake in the night. A thing had startled him during the day, and sleep had not come promptly as ordinarily. He listened, aware of each shading of sound, to the pleasant, dim noises of the midnight world. A thin wind rustled the trees outside his windows, it might be as if a crowd of light-footed ladies in silk petticoats passed unendingly by; far off in the road hoof-beats approached rapidly and rapidly died away; a dog—little Café, for he knew his voice—sent a shower of light, futile barks after the distant horse; a shutter somewhere banged aimlessly at intervals. Each accustomed impression, unnoted on common nights, reached his brain as a revelation, because of that which Everingham, the village doctor, had said in the afternoon.

So he lay awake and thought about the new prospect. It excited him as the prospect of a trip to Europe might excite him. However, Everingham was not certain; he had asked for a consultation, and the bishop had telegraphed Jim Fletcher, as he had called him since the two had roomed together at college fifty years back, to come down when it was possible. And Jim—Doctor James Austin Fletcher, as he was known over all America—Jim, to the bishop, had answered that he would be in Lancaster to-morrow at eleven. Jim would settle it. Meantime, what was the use of staying awake? The fact seemed to verge on emotionalism. He had believed himself free of that. He had believed himself free, moreover, of a thought which had once poisoned his days—free, but here it was following him, and in his veins throbbed the old uneasiness, familiar yet for all the years between. “It’s not my affair now,” he spoke aloud, as if reasoning, and then words came to him which he knew well, and he said them and peace came with them. He turned toward the square of the window where the opal night poured in and lay on his forehead and filtered to his nerves; with that the rhythm of Sill’s verses caught and rocked him as his mother would have rocked him seventy years before, and he went quietly to sleep.

For an hour he slept dreamlessly, and then, at about one o’clock of the morning it might have been, through the hushed chambers of his brain there moved a presence from beyond them. The bishop put out his long, strong fingers as if in greeting, and a smile came on the sleeping face—the dream was pleasant. Some one, whom he was glad to see, stood by him, by the bed in the big, airy room, and smiled down at him. And it surprised the bishop only a very little that his visitor, the tall young man, had wings. He could plainly see the face, a face which he knew. The wings were a touch uncommon, but why not? The figure was more beautiful because of them—it was good to see them. Why did he know the face? And with that the young man spoke three words:

“Go to Lancaster.” And the bishop woke up.

He smiled broadly at the convincingness of dreams in general, at the distinctness with which the imagined voice still sounded in his brain: “Go to Lancaster.”

It was exactly as if some one had wakened him with the command. But the face was gone, and he could not recall it. Puzzled, smiling, he fell asleep. It might have been half an hour later that the dream came again. Again the tall figure, bringing, it seemed, an atmosphere of unlimited easy power, stood by him; and the bishop, looking up unafraid, saw a light on the face as if to emphasize—to impress it on his memory. And again the clear voice spoke the same three words:

“Go to Lancaster.”

And the bishop woke up. Through him there appeared to be an infusion of the strength which had been a vivid impression from the dream. He felt suddenly young, filled with energy. It was a long time since he had felt like this—Everingham said the malady had most likely been gripping him for years. Was it possible that he was shaking it off? That he was going to get well, in spite of Everingham’s croaking? Well, Jim would settle that to-day. A man could trust Jim. In the meantime it was a great thing to have this glorious spasm of health, whatever it might mean. It cleared the brain—and the bishop fell to thinking. As he opened the door of his mind there met him the thought which he had said was not now his affair. Back of it was a procession of very old memories. He had not for years let himself review these in detail, yet the details were sharp. With his fresh sense of buoyancy he went back now to events which had shaped his career.

The foundations of lives are mostly alike, and mostly of elemental stuffs. On these rise superstructures of infinite architecture: a hovel of odds and ends here, a grim walled castle there, or a stately palace, or buildings filled with machinery, or sunshiny homes—there is never an end to the sorts. But under all the sorts lie masses of primeval rock, called by a few names such as Ambition and Love and Hate and Remorse and Honor and others. The bishop’s business was with foundations, and he uncovered now in the night those under the dwelling he had made for himself. He found there one jagged rock, which cut him as he passed over it; its name was Remorse. In the crystal of his life was one cloud which darkened the light. The bishop thought, as he had thought many times before, of a man who had “found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully and with tears.” He clinched his strong fist.

“If I might set that one thing right—if I might find him and tell him, and make amends with all that I have, then I could go,” he spoke aloud.

With that he felt a desire to turn over his memories and put them in decent order, and he bent his mind to consider the old, long story. Wide-awake, clear-headed, with his new strength pulsing in him, he went over it all, and perhaps an hour passed, and at the end his mind rested, relieved. He put away the unrest; he thought happily of every-day things, of this big, pleasant place of his which he loved, the sunshiny garden, the shady driveway, where he mounted his horse of a morning. And the horse, Billy, and the joyful big dogs, and the little dog, Café, who was always so ridiculously glad when he came back from his ride—he had a great affection for them all. The gentleness of such thoughts about him, again he fell asleep.

And as soon as he slept it seemed the young man with wings stood again by the bedside, a shaft of strong light on the face; and again he spoke, imperatively:

“Go to Lancaster.”

And at once the bishop awoke. As before, he could not remember the face which he had seen so distinctly a moment ago; but flowing through him was still the strange tide of strength, and with it an uncontrollable conviction that he must obey this command—he must go to Lancaster. He laughed at himself.

“Ridiculous!” he said aloud, attempting to break the spell by the sound of his own voice.

But the dream would not let him alone, and the new energy pushed with it. Against his will, against his judgment, much against his sense of humor he began to dress. Suddenly, “That settles it,” he said. Lancaster lay across the river from the bishop’s place; the only way to get over was by a ferry, and the ferryman lived on the farther side. He could not get to Lancaster. “I’ll go back to bed,” he said, and sat motionless. He could not go back to bed. There was an impulsion, which would not be put down, to get dressed, to ride to Lancaster. He was astonished, displeased. “I must be losing my mind,” he said; and went on dressing.

He stole down softly, not to waken the household; it was a quarter after three o’clock. He found the key of the stable, then turned into the dining-room and groped in the dim place for the sugar-bowl, and dropped three or four white lumps into his pocket.

Billy’s eyes gleamed over the low door of the box stall; when his master spoke Billy whinnied softly as if he understood and would be quiet. He blew a clean breath in the bishop’s face, and as the door slid he doubled up his forefoot to shake hands. It was the best “good morning” Billy could say, and he got his sugar for it. The bishop placed the saddle and buckled the girths, and Billy put down his big, gentle head and pushed his nose into the bridle, proud of his accomplishment. “Good Billy,” and the bishop smiled, and patted him, and mounted with a spring such as he had not given for five years. He would have to turn back when he got to the river, as Higgins would be asleep on the farther side; but he would have a ride and see the sun rise. He had never felt more like it; he was delighted that he had been imposed upon by that overbearing young man with wings. What was the lost identity of that face? The bishop puzzled over this as Billy cantered along, plunging and snorting with joy to be out in the freshness.

The garden lay in the half-darkness; it was late June, and there were roses; a lattice arch loomed heavy with honeysuckle, and the damp smell met him like a wall; down by the stream there were rows of vague lilies. Everything was quiet, yet awake—waiting for him. It seemed as if some joyful secret was abroad which only he knew—and maybe Billy. The gray, long road was in it, and the branches bent, whispering it, and the cold, wet leaves of the trees that touched him were full of significance. The world was his alone, a world opening in his hand. Sometimes, not often, the glory of the star we live on comes fresh, and suddenly it is not words but a reality that we are part of the glory and of the fight, a cog in the scheme, each least one. The bishop, in the brightening morning, with no sound on earth but the wind and Billy’s hoof-beats, threw out his arm boyishly.

“_Si la jeunnesse savait—si la vieillesse pouvait_”—he said aloud. “I am old—I know, and to-day I am young—I can. It’s a good day. Something good is to happen to-day.”

The ferryman’s house was on the Lancaster side, but a hut was on this shore, where he sat often in the daytime. Out of this rose a man’s figure, and stood with arms stretched and head back in a giant yawn.

“What business have you got over here at this hour, Higgins?” the bishop demanded with asperity.

“Well—well, sir,” Higgins stammered through the yawn, and the bishop laughed.

“Me! I’m waitin’ fo’ Squire Fassett. County Co’t to-day; las’ month I slep’ over, an’ the Squire, he come in early with his cattle, and had the devil’s own—excuse me, sir—had a hell of a time—excuse me, sir—I’m sleepy—had a right bad job wakin’ me. He talked some about shootin’, so I thought I’d sleep handy over this side.”

“Good,” the bishop said thoughtfully. “You’ll ferry me over? I can get to Lancaster?”