stated. "And, mother, I pointed out that I'm not the Almighty, even on
joints, I haven't looked at that game leg yet. I said it _might_ be
curable."
"That boy" looked up, smiling, with long years of loneliness and
lameness written in the back of his glance. "Please don't make 'em stop,
doctor," he begged. "I won't spoil easily. I haven't any start. And this
is a fairy-story to me--wonderful people like you letting me--letting me
belong. I can't believe I won't wake up. Don't you imagine it will go
to my head. It won't. I'm just so blamed--grateful."
The deep young voice trailed, and the doctor made haste to answer.
"You're all right, my lad," he said, "As soon as lunch is over you come
into the surgery and I'll have a glance at the leg." Which was done.
After half an hour David came out, limping, pale and radiant. "I can't
believe it," he spoke breathless. "He says--it's a simple--operation.
I'll walk--like other men. I'll be right for--the service." He choked.
At that Mrs. Cabell sped across the room and put up hands either side of
the young face and drew it down and kissed the lad whom she did not,
this morning, know to be in existence. "You blessed boy," she whispered,
"you shall fight for America, and you'll be our soldier, and we'll be
your people." And David, kissing her again, looked over her head and saw
Eleanor glowing like a rose, and with a swift, unphrased shock of
happiness felt in his soul the wonder of a heaven that might happen.
Then they were all about the fire, half-crying, laughing, as people do
on top of strong feelings.
"Aunt Basha did it all," said David. "If Aunt Basha hadn't been the most
magnificent old black woman who ever carried a snow-white soul, if she
hadn't been the truest patriot in all America, if she hadn't given
everything for her country--I'd likely never have--found you." His eyes
went to the two kind and smiling faces, and his last word was a whisper.
It was so much to have found. All he had dreamed, people of his own, a
straight leg--and--his heart's desire--service to America.
Mrs. Cabell spoke softly, "I've lived a long time and I've seen over and
over that a good deed spreads happiness like a pebble thrown into water,
more than a bad one spreads evil, for good is stronger and more
contagious. We've gained this dear kinsman today because of the nobility
of an old negro woman."
David Lance lifted his head quickly. "It was no small nobility," he
said. "As Miss Cabell was saying--"
"I'm your cousin Eleanor," interrupted Miss Cabell.
David lingered over the name. "Thank you, my cousin Eleanor. It's as you
said, nothing more beautiful and wonderful has been done in wonderful
America than this thing Aunt Basha did. It was as gallant as a soldier
at the front, for she offered what meant possibly her life."
"Her little two hundred," Eleanor spoke gently. "And so cross at the
idea of being paid back! She wanted to _give_ it."
David's face gleamed with a thought as he stared into the firelight,
"You see," he worked out his idea, "by the standards of the angels a
gift must be big not according to its size but according to what's left.
If you have millions and give a few thousand you practically give
nothing, for you have millions left. But Aunt Basha had nothing left.
The angels must have beaten drums and blown trumpets and raised Cain all
over Paradise while you sat in the bank, my cousin Eleanor, for the
glory of that record gift. No plutocrat in the land has touched what
Aunt Basha did for her country."
Eleanor's eyes, sending out not only clear vision but a brown light as
of the light of stars, shone on the boy. She bent forward, and her
slender arms were about her knee. She gazed at David, marveling. How
could it be that a human being might have all that David appeared to her
to have--clear brain, crystal simplicity, manliness, charm of
personality, and such strength and beauty besides!
"Yes," she said, "Aunt Basha gave the most. She has more right than any
of us to say that it's her country." She was silent a moment and then
spoke softly a single word. "America!" said Eleanor reverently.
America! Her sound has gone out into all lands and her words into the
end of the world. America, who in a year took four million of sons
untried, untrained, and made them into a mighty army; who adjusted a
nation of a hundred million souls in a turn of the hand to unknown and
unheard of conditions. America, whose greatest glory yet is not these
things. America, of whom scholars and statesmen and generals and
multi-millionaires say with throbbing pride today: "This is my country,"
but of whom the least in the land, having brought what they may, however
small, to lay on that flaming altar of the world's safety--of whom the
least in the land may say as truly as the greatest, "This is my country,
too."
THE SWALLOW
The Château Frontenac at Quebec is a turreted pile of masonry wandering
down a cliff over the very cellars of the ancient Castle of St. Louis. A
twentieth-century hotel, it simulates well a mediæval fortress and lifts
against the cold blue northern sky an atmosphere of history. Old voices
whisper about its towers and above the clanging hoofs in its paved
court; deathless names are in the wind which blows from the "fleuve,"
the great St. Lawrence River far below. Jacques Cartier's voice was
heard hereabouts away back in 1539, and after him others, Champlain and
Frontenac, and Father Jogues and Mother Marie of the Conception and
Montcalm--upstanding fighting men and heroic women and hardy discoverers
of New France walked about here once, on the "Rock" of Quebec; there is
romance here if anywhere on earth. Today a new knighthood hails that
past. Uniforms are thick in steep streets; men are wearing them with
empty sleeves, on crutches, or maybe whole of body yet with racked faces
which register a hell lived through. Canada guards heroism of many
vintages, from four hundred years back through the years to Wolfe's
time, and now a new harvest. Centuries from now children will be told,
with the story of Cartier, the tale of Vimy Ridge, and while the Rock
stands the records of Frenchmen in Canada, of Canadians in France will
not die.
Always when I go to the Château I get a table, if I can, in the smaller
dining-room. There the illusion of antiquity holds through modern
luxury; there they have hung about the walls portraits of the worthies
of old Quebec; there Samuel Champlain himself, made into bronze and
heroic of size, aloft on his pedestal on the terrace outside, lifts his
plumed hat and stares in at the narrow windows, turning his back on
river and lower city. One disregards waiters in evening clothes and
up-to-date table appointments, and one looks at Champlain and the
"fleuve," and the Isle d'Orléans lying long and low, and one thinks of
little ships, storm-beaten, creeping up to this grim bigness ignorant
of continental events trailing in their wake.
I was on my way to camp in a club a hundred miles north of the
gray-walled town when I drifted into the little dining-room for dinner
one night in early September in 1918. The head-waiter was an old friend;
he came to meet me and piloted me past a tableful of military color,
four men in service uniforms.
"Some high officers, sir," spoke the head waiter. "In conference here, I
believe. There's a French officer, and an English, and our Canadian
General Sampson, and one of your generals, sir."
I gave my order and sat back to study the group. The waiter had it
straight; there was the horizon blue of France; there was the Englishman
tall and lean and ruddy and expressionless and handsome; there was the
Canadian, more of our own cut, with a mobile, alert face. The American
had his back to me and all I could see was an erect carriage, a brown
head going to gray, and the one star of a brigadier-general on his
shoulders. The beginnings of my dinner went fast, but after soup there
was a lull before greater food, and I paid attention again to my
neighbors. They were talking in English.
"A Huron of Lorette--does that mean a full-blooded Indian of the Huron
tribe, such as one reads of in Parkman?" It was the Englishman who
asked, responding to something I had not heard.
"There's no such animal as a full-blooded Huron," stated the Canadian.
"They're all French-Indian half-breeds now. Lorette's an interesting
scrap of history, just the same. You know your Parkman? You remember how
the Iroquois followed the defeated Hurons as far as the Isle d'Orléans,
out there?" He nodded toward where the big island lay in the darkness of
the St. Lawrence. "Well, what was left after that chase took refuge
fifteen miles north of Quebec, and founded what became and has stayed
the village of Indian Lorette. There are now about five or six hundred
people, and it's a nation. Under its own laws, dealing by treaty with
Canada, not subject to draft, for instance. Queer, isn't it? They guard
their identity vigilantly. Every one, man or woman, who marries into the
tribe, as they religiously call it, is from then on a Huron. And only
those who have Huron blood may own land in Lorette. The Hurons were, as
Parkman put it, 'the gentlemen of the savages,' and the tradition lasts.
The half-breed of today is a good sort, self-respecting and brave, not
progressive, but intelligent, with pride in his inheritance, his
courage, and his woodscraft."
The Canadian, facing me, spoke distinctly and much as Americans speak; I
caught every word. But I missed what the French general threw back
rapidly. I wondered why the Frenchman should be excited. I myself was
interested because my guides, due to meet me at the club station
tomorrow, were all half-breed Hurons. But why the French officer? What
should a Frenchman of France know about backwaters of Canadian history?
And with that he suddenly spoke slowly, and I caught several sentences
of incisive if halting English.
"Zey are to astonish, ze Indian Hurong. For ze sort of work
special-ment, as like scouting on a stomach. Qu-vick, ver' qu-vick, and
ver' quiet. By dark places of danger. One sees zat nozzing at all
af-frightens zose Hurong. Also zey are alike snakes, one cannot catch
zem--zey slide; zey are slippy. To me it is to admire zat courage
most--personnel--selfeesh--because an Hurong safe my life dere is six
mont', when ze Boches make ze drive of ze mont' of March."
At this moment food arrived in a flurry, and I lost what came after. But
I had forgotten the Château Frontenac; I had forgotten the group of
officers, serious and responsible, who sat on at the next table. I had
forgotten even the war. A word had sent my mind roaming. "Huron!" Memory
and hope at that repeated word rose and flew away with me. Hope first.
Tomorrow I was due to drop civilization and its tethers.
"Allah does not count the days spent out of doors." In Walter Pater's
story of "Marius the Epicurean" one reads of a Roman country-seat called
"Ad Vigilias Albas," "White Nights." A sense of dreamless sleep distils
from the name. One remembers such nights, and the fresh world of the
awakening in the morning. There are such days. There are days which
ripple past as a night of sleep and leave a worn brain at the end with
the same satisfaction of renewal; white days. Crystal they are, like the
water of streams, as musical and eventless; as elusive of description as
the ripple over rocks or brown pools foaming.
The days and months and years of a life race with accelerating pace and
youth goes and age comes as the days race, but one is not older for the
white days. The clock stops, the blood runs faster, furrows in gray
matter smooth out, time forgets to put in tiny crow's-feet and the extra
gray hair a week, or to withdraw by the hundredth of an ounce the oxygen
from the veins; one grows no older for the days spent out of doors.
Allah does not count them.
It was days like these which hope held ahead as I paid earnest attention
to the good food set before me. And behold, beside the pleasant vision
of hope rose a happy-minded sister called memory. She took the word
"Huron," this kindly spirit, and played magic with it, and the walls of
the Château rolled into rustling trees and running water.
I was sitting, in my vision, in flannel shirt and knickerbockers, on a
log by a little river, putting together fishing tackle and casting an
eye, off and on, where rapids broke cold over rocks and whirled into
foam-flecked, shadowy pools. There should be trout in those shadows.
"Take the butt, Rafael, while I string the line."
Rafael slipped across--still in my vision of memory--and was holding my
rod as a rod should be held, not too high or too low, or too far or too
near--right. He was an old Huron, a chief of Indian Lorette, and woods
craft was to him as breathing.
"A varry light rod," commented Rafael in his low voice which held no
tones out of harmony with water in streams or wind in trees. "A varry
light, good rod," paying meanwhile strict attention to his job. "M'sieu
go haf a luck today. I t'ink M'sieu go catch a beeg fish on dat river.
Water high enough--not too high. And cold." He shivered a little. "Cold
last night--varry cold nights begin now. Good hun-ting wedder."
"Have you got a moose ready for me on the little lake, Rafael? It's the
1st of September next week and I expect you to give me a shot before the
3d."
Rafael nodded. "Oui, m'sieur. First day." The keen-eyed, aquiline old
face was as of a prophet. "We go get moose first day. I show you." With
that the laughter-loving Frenchman in him flooded over the Indian
hunter; for a second the two inheritances played like colors in shot
silk, producing an elusive fabric, Rafael's charm. "If nights get so
colder, m'sieur go need moose skin kip him warm."
I was looking over my flies now, the book open before me, its
fascinating pages of color more brilliant than an old missal, and maybe
as filled with religion--the peace of God, charity which endureth, love
to one's neighbor. I chose a Parmachene Belle for hand-fly, always good
in Canadian waters. "A moose-skin hasn't much warmth, has it, Rafael?"
The hunter was back, hawk-eyed. "But yes, m'sieu. Moose skin one time
safe me so I don' freeze to death. But it hol' me so tight so I nearly
don' get loose in de morning."
"What do you mean?" I was only half listening, for a brown hackle and a
Montreal were competing for the middle place on my cast, and it was a
vital point. But Rafael liked to tell a story, and had come by now to a
confidence in my liking to hear him. He flashed a glance to gather up my
attention, and cleared his throat and began: "Dat was one time--I go on
de woods--hunt wid my fader-in-law--_mon beau-père_. It was mont' of
March--and col'--but ver' col' and wet. So it happen we separate, my
fador-in-law and me, to hunt on both side of large enough river. And I
kill moose. What, m'sieur? What sort of gun? Yes. It was rifle--what one
call flint-lock. Large round bore. I cast dat beeg ball myself, what I
kill dat moose. Also it was col'. And so it happen my matches got wet,
but yes, ev-very one. So I couldn' buil' fire. I was tired, yes, and
much col'. I t'ink in my head to hurry and skin dat moose and wrap
myself in dat skin and go sleep on de snow because if not I would die, I
was so col' and so tired. I do dat. I skin heem--_je le plumait_--de
beeg moose--beeg skin. Skin all warm off moose; I wrap all aroun' me and
dig hole and lie down on deep snow and draw skin over head and over
feet, and fol' arms, so"--Rafael illustrated--"and I hol' it aroun' wid
my hands. And I get warm right away, warm, as bread toast. So I been
slippy, and heavy wid tired, and I got comfortable in dat moose skin and
I go aslip quick. I wake early on morning, and dat skin got froze tight,
like box made on wood, and I hol' in dat wid my arms fol' so, and my
head down so"--illustrations again--"and I can't move, not one inch. No.
What, m'sieur? Yes, I was enough warm, me. But I lie lak dat and can't
move, and I t'ink somet'ing. I t'ink I got die lak dat, in moose-skin.
If no sun come, I did got die. But dat day sun come and be warm, and
moose skin melt lil' bit, slow, and I push lil' bit wid shoulder, and
after while I got ice broke, on moose skin, and I crawl out. Yes. I
don' die yet."
Rafael's chuckle was an amen to his saga, and at once, with one of his
lightning-changes, he was austere.
"M'sieur go need beeg trout tonight; not go need moose skin till nex'
wik. Ze rod is ready take feesh, I see feesh jump by ole log. Not much
room to cast, but m'sieur can do it. Shall I carry rod down to river for
m'sieur?"
In not so many words as I have written, but in clear pictures which
comprehended the words, Memory, that temperamental goddess of moods,
had, at the prick of the word "Huron," shaken out this soft-colored
tapestry of the forest, and held it before my eyes. And as she withdrew
this one, others took its place and at length I was musing profoundly,
as I put more of something on my plate and tucked it away into my
anatomy. I mused about Rafael, the guide of sixty, who had begun a life
of continued labor at eight years; I considered the undying Indian in
him; how with the father who was "French of Picardy"--the white blood
being a pride to Rafael--he himself, yes, and the father also, for he
had married a "_sauvagess_," a Huron woman--had belonged to the tribe
and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael's proud carriage, his
classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French
mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and
the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I
reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the
world. "_On a vu de le misère_," Rafael had said: "One has seen
trouble"--shaking his head, with lines of old suffering emerging from
the reserve of his face like writing in sympathetic ink under heat. And
I marvelled that through such fire, out of such neglect, out of lack of
opportunity and bitter pressure, the steel of a character should have
been tempered to gentleness and bravery and honor.
For it was a very splendid old boy who was cooking for me and greasing
my boots and going off with me after moose; putting his keen ancestral
instincts of three thousand years at my service for three dollars a
day. With my chances would not Rafael have been a bigger man than I? At
least never could I achieve that grand air, that austere repose of
manner which he had got with no trouble at all from a line of unwashed
but courageous old bucks, thinking highly of themselves for untold
generations, and killing everything which thought otherwise. I laughed
all but aloud at this spot in my meditations, as a special vision of
Rafael rose suddenly, when he had stated, on a day, his views of the
great war. He talked plain language about the Germans. He specified why
he considered the nation a disgrace to humanity--most people, not
German, agree on the thesis and its specifications. Then the fire of his
ancient fighting blood blazed through restraint of manner. He drew up
his tall figure, slim-waisted, deep-shouldered, every inch sliding
muscle. "I am too old to go on first call to army," said Rafael. "Zey
will not take me. Yes, and on second call. Maybe zird time. But if time
come when army take me--I go. If I may kill four Germans I will be
content," stated Rafael concisely. And his warrior forebears would have
been proud of him as he stated it.
My reflections were disturbed here by the American general at the next
table. He was spoken to by his waiter and shot up and left the room,
carrying, however, his napkin in his hand, so that I knew he was due to
come back. A half sentence suggested a telephone. I watched the
soldierly back with plenty of patriotic pride; this was the sort of
warrior my country turned out now by tens of thousands. With that he
returned, and as I looked up into his face, behold it was Fitzhugh.
My chair went banging as I sprang toward him. "Jim!"
And the general's calm dignity suddenly was the radiant grin of the boy
who had played and gone to school and stolen apples with me for a long
bright childhood--the boy lost sight of these last years of his in the
army. "Dave!" he cried out. "Old Davy Cram!" And his arm went around my
shoulder regardless of the public. "My word, but I'm glad!" he
sputtered. And then: "Come and have dinner--finish having it. Come to
our table." He slewed me about and presented me to the three others.
In a minute I was installed, to the pride of my friend the head waiter,
at military headquarters, next to Fitzhugh and the Frenchman. A campact
résumé of personal history between Fitzhugh and myself over, I turned to
the blue figure on my left hand, Colonel Raffré, of the French, army. On
his broad chest hung thrilling bits of color, not only the bronze war
cross, with its green watered ribbon striped with red, but the blood-red
ribbon of the "Great Cross" itself--the cross of the Legion of Honor. I
spoke to him in French, which happens to be my second mother tongue, and
he met the sound with a beaming welcome.
"I don't do English as one should," he explained in beautiful Parisian.
"No gift of tongues in my kit, I fear; also I'm a bit embarrassed at
practising on my friends. It's a relief to meet some one who speaks
perfectly French, as m'sieur."
M'sieur was gratified not to have lost his facility. "But my ear is
getting slower," I said. "For instance, I eavesdropped a while ago when
you were talking about your Huron soldiers, and I got most of what you
said because you spoke English. I doubt if I could if you'd been
speaking French."
The colonel shrugged massive shoulders. "My English is defective but
distinct," he explained. "One is forced to speak slowly when one speaks
badly. Also the Colonel Chichely"--the Britisher--"it is he at whom I
talk carefully. The English ear, it is not imaginative. One must make
things clear. You know the Hurons, then?"
I specified how.
"Ah!" he breathed out. "The men in my command had been, some of them,
what you call guides. They got across to France in charge of troop
horses on the ships; then they stayed and enlisted. Fine soldier stuff.
Hardy, and of resource and of finesse. Quick and fearless as wildcats.
They fit into one niche of the war better than any other material. You
heard the story of my rescue?"
I had not. At that point food had interfered, and I asked if it was too
much that the colonel should repeat.
"By no means," agreed the polite colonel, ready, moreover, I guessed,
for any amount of talk in his native tongue. He launched an epic
episode. "I was hit leading, in a charge, two battalions. I need not
have done that," another shrug--"but what will you? It was snowing; it
was going to be bad work; one could perhaps put courage into the men by
being at their head. It is often the duty of an officer to do more than,
his duty--_n'est-ce-pas?_ So that I was hit in the right knee and the
left shoulder _par exemple_, and fell about six yards from the German
trenches. A place unhealthy, and one sees I could not run away, being
shot on the bias. I shammed dead. An alive French officer would have
been too interesting in that scenery. I assure m'sieur that the
_entr'actes_ are far too long in No Man's Land. I became more and more
displeased with the management of that play as I lay, very badly amused
with my wounds, and afraid to blink an eye, being a corpse. The Huns
demand a high state of immobility in corpses. But I fell happily
sidewise, and out of the extreme corner of the left eye I caught a
glimpse of our sand-bags. One blessed that twist, though it became
enough _ennuyant_, and one would have given a year of good life to turn
over. Merely to turn over. Am I fatiguing m'sieur?" the colonel broke
in.
I prodded him back eagerly into his tale.