intense happiness of it, how Brock had come smiling. "And Hugh, the only
thing he said, two or three times over, was, 'I'm coming to take
Hughie's hand.'"
The lad turned upon her a shining look. "I know, mother. I didn't hear,
of course, but I knew, when I saw him, it was for me, too. And I'm
ready. I see my way now. Mother, get Dad."
Hugh, the elder, still sleeping in his room at the far side of the
house, opened heavy eyes. Then he sprang up. "Evelyn! What is it?"
"Oh, Hugh--come! Oh, Hugh! Brock--Brock--" She could not say the words;
there was no need. Brock's father caught her hands. In bare words then
she told him.
"My dear," urged the man, "you've had a vivid dream. That's all. You
were thinking about the boys; you were only half awake; Mavourneen began
to cry--the dog means Brock. It was easy--" his voice faltered--"to--to
believe the rest."
"Hugh, I _know_, dear. Brock came to tell me. He said he would." Later,
that day, when a telegram arrived from the War Office there was no new
shock, no added certainty to her assurance. She went on: "Hughie saw
him. And Mavourneen. But I can't argue. We still have a boy, Hugh, and
he needs us--he's waiting. Oh, my dear, Hughie is going to France!"
"Thank God!" spoke Hugh's father.
Hand tight in hand like young lovers the two came across to the room
where their boy waited, tense. "Father--Dad--you'll give me back your
respect, won't you?" The strong young hand held out was shaking.
"Because I'm going, Dad. But you have to know that I was--a coward."
"_No_, Hugh."
"Yes. And Dad, I'm afraid--now. But I've got the hang of things, and
nothing could keep me. Will you, do you despise me--now--that I still
hate it--if--if I go just the same?"
The big young chap shook so that his mother, his tall mother, put her
arms about him to steady him. He clutched her hand hard and repeated,
through quivering lips, "Would you despise me still, Dad?"
For a moment the father could not answer. Then difficult tears of
manhood and maturity forced their way from his eyes and unheeded rolled
down his cheeks. With a step he put his arms about the boy as if the boy
were a child, and the boy threw his about his father's shoulders.
For a long second the two tall men stood so. The woman, standing apart,
through the shipwreck of her earthly life was aware only of happiness
safe where sorrow and loss could not touch it. What was separation,
death itself, when love stronger than death held people together as it
held Hugh and her boys and herself? Then the older Hugh stood away,
still clutching the lad's hand, smiling through unashamed tears.
"Hugh," he said, "in all America there's not a man prouder of his son
than I am of you. There's not a braver soldier in our armies than the
soldier who's to take my name into France." He stopped and steadied
himself; he went on: "It would have broken my heart, boy, if you had
failed--failed America. And your mother--and Brock and me. Failed your
own honor. It would have meant for us shame and would have bowed our
heads; it would have meant for you disaster. Don't fear for your
courage, Hugh; the Lord won't forsake the man who carries the Lord's
colors."
Young Hugh turned suddenly to his mother. "I'm at peace now. You and
Dad--honor me. I'll deserve respect from--my country. It will be a wall
around me--And--" he caught her to him and crushed his mouth to
hers--"dearest--Brock will hold my hand."
THE SILVER STIRRUP
In the most unexpected spots vital sparks of history blaze out. Time
seems, once in a while, powerless to kill a great memory. Romance blooms
sometimes untarnished across centuries of commonplace. In a new world
old France lives.
* * * * *
It is computed that about one-seventh of the French-Canadian population
of Canada enlisted in the great war. The stampede of heroism seems to
have left them cold. A Gospel of the Province first congealed the none
too fiery blood of the _habitants_, small farmers, very poor, thinking
in terms of narrowest economy, of one pig and ten children, of
painstaking thrift and a bare margin to subsistence. Such conditions
stifle world interests. The earthquake which threatened civilization
disturbed the _habitant_ merely because it hazarded his critical balance
on the edge of want. The cataclysm over the ocean was none of his
affair. And his affairs pressed. What about the pig if one went to war?
And could Alphonse, who is fourteen, manage the farm so that there would
be vegetables for winter? Tell me that.
When in September, 1914, I went to Canada for two weeks of camping I had
heard of this point of view. Dick Lindsley and I were met at the Club
Station on the casual railway which climbs the mountains through Quebec
Province, by four guides, men from twenty to thirty-five, powerfully
built chaps, deep-shouldered and slim-waisted, lithe as wild-cats. It
was a treat to see their muscles, like machines in the pink of order,
adjust to the heavy _pacquetons_, send a canoe whipping through the
water. There was one exception to the general physical perfection; one
of Dick's men, a youngster of perhaps twenty-two, limped. He covered
ground as well as the others, for all of that; he picked the heaviest
load and portaged it at an uneven trot, faster than his comrades; he was
what the _habitants_ call "ambitionné." Dick's canoe was loaded first,
owing to the fellow's efficiency, and I waited while it got away and
watched the lame boy. He had an interesting face, aquiline and dark, set
with vivid light-blue eyes, shooting restless fire. I registered an
intention to get at this lad's personality. The chance came two days
later. My men were off chopping on a day, and I suddenly needed to go
fishing.
"Take Philippe," offered Dick. "He handles a boat better than any of
them."
Philippe and I shortly slipped into the Guardian's Pool, at the lower
end of the long lake of the Passes. "It is here, M'sieur," Philippe
announced, "that it is the custom to take large ones."
By which statement the responsibility of landing record trout was on my
shoulders. I thought I would have a return whack. My hands in the snarly
flies and my back to Philippe I spoke around my pipe, yet spoke
distinctly.
"Why aren't you in France fighting?"
The canoe shivered down its length as if the man at its stern had
jumped. There was a silence. Then Philippe's deep, boyish voice
answered.
"As M'sieur sees, one is lame."
I felt a hotness emerging from my flannel collar and rushing up my face
as I bent over that damned Silver Doctor that wouldn't loose its grip on
the Black Hackle. I didn't see the Black Hackle or the Silver Doctor for
a moment. "Beg pardon," I growled. "I forgot." I mumbled platitudes.
"M'sieur le Docteur has right," Philippe announced unruffled. "One
should fight for France. I have tried to enlist, there are three times,
explaining that I am '_capable_' though I walk not evenly. But one will
not have me. Therefore I have shame, me. I have, naturally, more shame
than another because of Jeanne."
"Because of Jeanne?" I repeated. "Who is Jeanne?"
There was a pause; a queer feeling made me slew around. Philippe's old
felt hat was being pulled off as if he were entering a church.
"But--Jeanne, M'sieur," he stated as if I must understand. "Jeanne
d'Arc. _Tiens_--the Maid of France."
"The Maid of France!" I was puzzled. "What has she to do with it?"
"But everything, M'sieur." The vivid eyes flamed. "M'sieur does not
know, perhaps, that my grandfather fought under Jeanne?"
"Your grandfather!" I flung it at him in scorn. The man was a poor
lunatic.
"But yes, M'sieur. My grandfather, lui-même."
"But, Philippe, the Maid of Orleans died in 1431." I remembered that
date. The Maid is one of my heroic figures.
Philippe shrugged his shoulders. "Oh--as for a _grandpère_! But not the
_grandpère à present_, he who keeps the grocery shop in St. Raymond.
Certainly not that grandfather. It is to say the _grandpère_ of that
_grandpère_. Perhaps another yet, or even two or three more. What does
it matter? One goes back a few times of grandfathers and behold one
arrives at him who was armorer for the Maid--to whom she gave the silver
stirrup."
"The silver stirrup." My Leonard rod bumped along the bow; my flies
tangled again in the current. I squirmed about till I faced the guide
in the stern. "Philippe, what in hell do you mean by this drool of
grandfathers and silver stirrups?"
The boy, perfectly respectful, not forgetting for a second his affair of
keeping the canoe away from the fish-hole, looked at me squarely, and
his uncommon light eyes gleamed out of his face like the eyes of a
prophet. "M'sieur, it is a tale doubtless which seems strange to you,
but to us others it is not strange. M'sieur lives in New York, and there
are automobiles and trolley-cars and large buildings _en masse_, and to
M'sieur the world is made of such things. But there are other things. We
who live in quiet places, know. One has not too much of excitement, we
others, so that one remembers a great event which has happened to one's
family many years. Yes, indeed, M'sieur, centuries. If one has not much
one guards as a souvenir the tale of the silver stirrup of Jeanne. Yes,
for several generations."
The boy was apparently unconscious that his remarks were peculiar.
"Philippe, will you tell me what you mean by a silver stirrup which
Jeanne d'Arc gave to your ancestors?"
"But with pleasure, M'sieur," he answered readily, with the gracious
French politeness which one meets among the _habitants_ side by side
with sad lapses of etiquette. "It is all-simple that the old
grandfather, the ancient, he who lived in France when the Maid fought
her wars, was an armorer. '_Ça fait que_'--_sa fak_, Philippe pronounced
it--'so it happened that on a day the stirrup of the Maid broke as her
horse plunged, and my grandfather, the ancient, he ran quickly and
caught the horse's head. And so it happened--_çe fait que_--that my
grandfather was working at that moment on a fine stirrup of gold for her
harness, for though they burned her afterwards, they gave her then all
that there was of magnificence. And the old follow--_le vieux_--whipped
out the golden stirrup from his pocket, quite prepared for use, so it
happened--and he put it quickly in the place of the silver one which she
had been using. And Jeanne smiled. 'You are ready to serve France,
Armorer.'
"She bent then and looked _le vieux_ in the face--but he was young at
the time.
"'Are you not Baptiste's son, of Doremy?' asked the Maid.
"'Yes, Jeanne,' said my _grandpère_.
"'Then keep the silver stirrup to remember our village, and God's
servant Jeanne,' she said, and gave it to him with her hand."
If a square of Gobelin tapestry had emerged from the woods and hung
itself across the gunwale of my canvas canoe it would not have been more
surprising. I got my breath. "And the stirrup, what became of it?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders. "_Sais pas_," he answered with French
nonchalance. "One does not know that. It is a long time, M'sieur le
Docteur. It was lost, that stirrup, some years ago. It may be a hundred
years. It may be two hundred. My grandfather, he who keeps the grocery
shop, has told me that there is a saying that a Martel must go to France
to find the silver stirrup. In every case I do not know. It is my wish
to fight for France, but as for the stirrup or Jeanne--_sais pas_."
Another shrug. With that he was making oration, his light eyes flashing,
his dark face working with feeling, about the bitterness of being a
cripple, and unable to go into the army.
"It is not _comme il faut_, M'sieur le Docteur, that a man whose very
grandfather fought for Jeanne should fail France now in her need.
Jeanne, one knows, was the saviour of France. Is it not?" I agreed. "It
is my inheritance, therefore, to fight as my ancient grandfather
fought." I looked at the lame boy, not knowing the repartee. He began
again. "Also I am the only one of the family proper to go, except
Adolphe, who is not very proper, having had a tree to fall on the lungs
and leave him liable to fits; and also Jacques and Louis are too young,
and Jean Baptiste he is blind of one eye, God knows. So it is I who
fail! I fail! Jesus Christ! To stay at home like a coward when France
needs men!"
"But you are Canadian, Philippe. Your people have been here two hundred
years."
"M'sieur, I am of France. I belong there with the fighting men." His
look was a flame, and suddenly I know why he was firing off hot shot at
me. I am a surgeon.
"What's the matter with your leg?" I asked.
The brilliant eyes flashed. "Ah!" he brought out, "One hoped--If M'sieur
le Docteur would but see. I may be cured. To be straight--to march!" He
was trembling.
Later, in the shifting sunshine at the camp door, with the odors of
hemlocks and balsams about us, the lake rippling below, I had an
examination. I found that the lad's lameness was a trouble to be cured
easily by an operation. I hesitated. Was it my affair to root this
youngster out of safety and send him to death in the _débâcle_ over
there? Yet what right had I to set limits? He wanted to offer his life;
how could I know what I might be blocking if I withheld the cure? My job
was to give strength to all I could reach.
"Philippe," I said, "if you'll come to New York next month I'll set you
up with a good leg."
In September, 1915, Dick and I came up for our yearly trip, but Philippe
was not with us. Philippe, after drilling at Valcartier, was drilling
in England. I had lurid post cards off and on; after a while I knew that
he was "somewhere in France." A grim gray card came with no post-mark,
no writing but the address and Philippe's labored signature; for the
rest there were printed sentences: "I am well. I am wounded. I am in
hospital. I have had no letter from you lately." All of which was struck
out but the welcome words, "I am well." So far then I had not cured the
lad to be killed. Then for weeks nothing. It came to be time again to go
to Canada for the hunting. I wrote the steward to get us four men, as
usual, and Lindsley and I alighted from the rattling train at the club
station in September, 1916, with a mild curiosity to see what Fate had
provided as guides, philosophers and friends to us for two weeks. Paul
Sioui--that was nice--a good fellow Paul; and Josef--I shook hands with
Josef; the next face was a new one--ah, Pierre Beauramé--one calls one's
self that--_on s'appelle comme ça. Bon jour!_ I turned, and got a shock.
The fourth face, at which I looked, was the face of Philippe Martel. I
looked, speechless. And with that the boy laughed. "It is that M'sieur
cannot again cure my leg," answered Philippe, and tapped proudly on a
calf which echoed with a wooden sound.
"You young cuss," I addressed him savagely. "Do you mean to say you have
gone and got shot in that very leg I fixed up for you?"
Philippe rippled more laughter--of pure joy--of satisfaction. "But, yes,
M'sieur le Docteur, that leg _même_. Itself. In a battle, M'sieur le
Docteur gave me the good leg for a long enough time to serve France. It
was all that there was of necessary. As for now I may not fight again,
but I can walk and portage _comme il faut_. I am _capable_ as a guide.
Is it not, Josef?" He appealed, and the men crowded around to back him
up with deep, serious voices.
"Ah, yes, M'sieur."
"_B'en capable!_"
"He can walk like us others--the same!" they assured me impressively.
Philippe was my guide this year. It was the morning after we reached
camp. "Would M'sieur le Docteur be too busy to look at something?"
I was not. Philippe stood in the camp doorway in the patch of sunlight
where he had sat two years before when I looked over his leg. He sat
down again, in the shifting sunshine, the wooden leg sticking out
straight and pathetic, and began to take the covers off a package. There
were many covers; the package was apparently valuable. As he worked at
it the odors of hemlock and balsam, distilled by hot sunlight, rose
sweet and strong, and the lake splashed on pebbles, and peace that
passes understanding was about us.
"It was in a bad battle in Lorraine," spoke Philippe into the sunshiny
peace, "that I lost M'sieur le Docteur's leg. One was in the front
trench and there was word passed to have the wire cutters ready, and
also bayonets, for we were to charge across the open towards the
trenches of the Germans--perhaps one hundred and fifty yards, eight
_arpents_--acres--as we say in Canada. Our big guns back did the
preparation, making what M'sieur le Docteur well knows is called a
_rideau_--a fire curtain. We climbed out of our trench with a shout and
followed the fire curtain; so closely we followed that it seemed we
should be killed by our own guns. And then it stopped--too soon, M'sieur
le Docteur. Very many Boches were left alive in that trench in front,
and they fired as we came, so that some of us were hit, and so terrible
was the fire that the rest were forced back to our own trench which we
had left. It is so sometimes in a fight, M'sieur le Docteur. The big
guns make a little mistake, and many men have to die. Yet it is for
France. And as I ran with the others for the shelter of the trench, and
as the Boches streamed out of their trench to make a counter attack with
hand-grenades I tripped on something. It was little Réné Dumont, whom
M'sieur le Docteur remembers. He guided for our camp when Josef was ill
in the hand two years ago. In any case he lay there, and I could not let
him lie to be shot to pieces. So I caught up the child and ran with him
across my shoulders and threw him in the trench, and as he went in there
was a cry behind me, 'Philippe!'
"I turned, and one waved arms at me--a comrade whom I did not know very
well--but he lay in the open and cried for help. So I thought of Jeanne
d'Arc, and how she had no fear, and was kind, and with that, back I
trotted to get the comrade. But at that second--pouf!--a big noise, and
I fell down and could not get up. It was the good new leg of M'sieur le
Docteur which those _sacrés_ Boches had blown off with a hand-grenade.
So that I lay dead enough. And when I came alive it was dark, and also
the leg hurt--but yes! I was annoyed to have ruined that leg which you
gave me--M'sieur le Docteur."
I grinned, and something ached inside of me.
Philippe went on. "It was then, when I was without much hope and weak
and in pain and also thirsty, that a thing happened. It is a business
without pleasure, M'sieur le Docteur, that--to lie on a battle-field
with a leg shot off, and around one men dead, piled up--yes, and some
not dead yet, which is worse. They groan. One feels unable to bear it.
It grows cold also, and the searchlights of the Boches play so as to
prevent rescue by comrades. They seem quite horrible, those lights. One
lives, but one wishes much to die. So it happened that, as I lay there,
I heard a step coming, not crawling along as the rescuers crawl and
stopping when the lights flare, but a steady step coming freely. And
with that I was lifted and carried quickly into a wood. There was a hole
in the ground there, torn by a shell deeply, and the friend laid me
there and put a flask to my lips, and I was warm and comforted. I looked
up and I saw a figure in soldier's clothing of an old time, such as one
sees in books--armor of white. And the face smiled down at me. 'You will
be saved,' a voice said; and the words sounded homely, almost like the
words of my grandfather who keeps the grocery shop. 'You will be saved.'
It seemed to me that the voice was young and gentle and like a woman's.
"'Who are you?' I asked, and I had a strange feeling, afraid a little
M'sieur, yet glad to a marvel. I got no answer to my question, but I
felt something pressed into my hand, and then I spoke, but I suppose I
was a little delirious, M'sieur, for I heard myself say a thing I had
not been thinking. 'A Martel must return to France to find the silver
stirrup'--I said that, M'sieur. Why I do not know. They were the words I
had heard my grandfather speak. Perhaps the hard feeling in my hand--but
I cannot explain, M'sieur le Docteur. In any case, there was all at once
a great thrill through my body, such as I have never known. I sat up
quickly and stared at the figure. It stood there. M'sieur will probably
not believe me--the figure stood there in white armor, with a sword--and
I knew it for Jeanne--the Maid. With that I knew no more. When I woke it
was day. I was still lying in the crater of the shell which had torn up
the earth of a very old battle-field, but in my hand I held
tight--this."
Philippe drew off the last cover with a dramatic flourish and opened the
box which had been wrapped so carefully. I bent over him. In the box,
before my eyes, lay an ancient worn and battered silver stirrup. There
were no words to say. I stared at the boy. And with that suddenly he had
slewed around clumsily--because of his poor wooden leg--and was on his
knees at my feet. He held out the stirrup.
"M'sieur le Docteur, you gave me a man's chance and honor, and the joy
of fighting for France. I can never tell my thanks. I have nothing to
give you--but this. Take it, M'sieur le Docteur. It is not much, yet to
me the earth holds nothing so valuable. It is the silver stirrup of
Jeanne d'Arc. It is yours."
* * * * *
In a glass case on the wall of my library hangs an antique bit of
harness which is my most precious piece of property. How its story came
about I do not even try to guess. As Philippe said the action of that
day took place on a very old battle-field. The shell which made the
sheltering crater doubtless dug up earth untouched for hundreds of
years. That it should have dug up the very object which was a tradition
in the Martel family and should have laid it in the grasp of a Martel
fighting for France with that tradition at the bottom of his mind seems
incredible. The story of the apparition of the Maid is incredible to
laughter, or tears. No farther light is to be got from the boy, because
he believes his story. I do not try to explain, I place the episode in
my mind alongside other things incredible, things lovely and spiritual,
and, to our viewpoint of five years ago, things mad. Many such have
risen luminous, undesirable, unexplained, out of these last horrible
years, and wait human thought, it may be human development, to be
classified. I accept and treasure the silver stirrup as a pledge of
beautiful human gratitude. I hold it as a visible sign that French blood
keeps a loyalty to France which ages and oceans may not weaken.
THE RUSSIAN
The little dinner-party of grizzled men strayed from the dining-room and
across the hall into the vast library, arguing mightily.
"The great war didn't do it. World democracy was on the way. The war
held it back."
It was the United States Senator, garrulous and incisive, who issued
that statement. The Judge, the host, wasted not a moment in
contradicting. "You're mad, Joe," he threw at him with a hand on the
shoulder of the man who was still to him that promising youngster,
little Joe Burden of The School. "Held back democracy! The war! Quite
mad, my son."
The guest of the evening, a Russian General who had just finished five
strenuous years in the Cabinet of the Slav Republic, dropped back a step
to watch, with amused eyes, strolling through the doorway, the two
splendid old boys, the Judge's arm around the Senator's shoulders,
fighting, sputtering, arguing with each other as they had fought and
argued forty odd years up to date.
Two minutes more and the party of six had settled into deep chairs, into
a mammoth davenport, before a blazing fire of spruce and birch. Cigars,
liqueurs, coffee, the things men love after dinner, were there; one had
the vaguest impression of two vanishing Japanese persons who might or
might not have brought trays and touched the fire and placed tiny tables
at each right hand; an atmosphere of completeness was present, one did
not notice how. One settled with a sigh of satisfaction into comfort,
and chose a cigar. One laughed to hear the Judge pound away at the
Senator.
"It's all a game." Dr. Rutherford turned to the Russian. "They're
devoted old friends, not violent enemies, General. The Senator stirs up
the Judge by taking impossible positions and defending them savagely.
The Judge invariably falls into the trap. Then a battle. Their battles
are the joy of the Century Club. The Senator doesn't believe for an
instant that the war held back democracy."