Our first notice of their proximity was the sight of a raft with an
arm-chair tied in the centre of it, stranded upon the rocks in a long,
fierce rapid. Imagine how this looked to us after we had been five days
in the wilderness! An arm-chair sitting up sedately in the middle of
the rapids! What did it mean? Perhaps some vagrant artist had been
exploring the river, and had fixed his seat there in order to paint a
picture. Perhaps some lazy fisherman had found a good pool amid those
boiling waters, and had arranged to take his ease while he whipped that
fishy place with his flies. The mystery was solved when we rounded the
next point; for there we found the berry-pickers taking their nooning
in a cluster of little slab-shanties. They were friendly folks, men,
women, and children, but they knew nothing about the river; had never
been up farther than the place where the boys had left their raft in
the high water a week ago; had never been down at all; could not tell
how many falls there were below, nor whether the mouth was five or
fifty miles away. They had come in by the road, which crossed the river
at this point, and by the road they would go back when the berries were
picked. They wanted to know whether we were prospecting for lumber or
thinking of going into the berry business. We tried to explain the
nature of our expedition to them, but I reckon we failed.
These were the only people that we really met on our journey, though we
saw a few others far off on some bare hill. We did not encounter a
single boat or canoe on the river. But we saw the deer come down to the
shore, and stand shoulder-deep among the golden-rod and purple asters.
We saw the ruffled grouse whir through the thickets and the wild ducks
skitter down the stream ahead of us. We saw the warblers and the
cedar-birds gathering in flocks for their southward flight, the
muskrats making their houses ready for the winter, and the porcupines
dumbly meditating and masticating among the branches of the young
poplar-trees. We also had a delightful interview with a wild-cat, and
almost a thrilling adventure with a bear.
The boy and I had started out from camp for an hour of evening fishing.
He went down the stream some distance ahead of me, as I supposed,
(though, as I afterward found, he had made a little detour and turned
back). I was making my way painfully through a spruce thicket when I
heard a loud crash and crackling of dead branches. "Hallo!" I cried;
"have you fallen down? Are you hurt?" No answer. "Hallo, Teddy!" I
shouted again; "what's the matter?" Another tremendous crash, and then
dead silence.
I dropped my rod and pushed as rapidly as possible in the direction
from which the sound had come. There I found a circle about fifty feet
in diameter torn and trampled as if a circus had been there. The ground
was trodden bare. Trees three and four inches thick were broken off.
The bark of the larger trees was stripped away. The place was a ruin. A
few paces away, among the bushes, there was a bear trap with some claws
in it, and an iron chain attached to the middle of a clog about four
feet long. The log hovel in which the trap had been set, we found
later, a little way back on an old wood road. Evidently a bear had been
caught there, perhaps two or three days before we came. He had dragged
the trap and the chained clog down into the thicket. There he had
stayed, tearing up things generally in his efforts to escape from his
encumbrance, and resting quietly in the intervals of his fury. My
approach had startled him and he had made the first crash that I heard.
Then he lay low and listened. My second inconsiderate shout of "Hallo,
_Teddy_!" had put such an enormous fear into him that he dashed through
the trees, caught the foolishly chained clog across two of them, and,
tearing himself loose, escaped with the loss of a couple of toes. Thus
ended our almost adventure with a bear. How glad the old fellow must
have been!
The moral is this: If you want a bear, you should set your trap with
the clog chained at one end, not around the middle: then it will trail
through the woods and not break loose. But the best way is not to want
a bear.
Our last camp was just at the head of Holmes's Fall, a splendid ravine
down which the river rushes in two foaming leaps. Here in the gray of
the morning we lugged our canoes and our camp-kit around the cataract,
and then launched away for the end of our voyage. It was full of
variety, for the river was now cutting its course through a series of
ridges, and every mile was broken with rapids and larger falls. There
was but one other place, however, where we had to make a portage. I
believe it was called Grand Falls. After that, the stream was smooth
and quiet. The tall maples and ashes and elms stood along the banks as
if they had been planted for a park. The first faint touch of autumn
colour was beginning to illuminate their foliage. A few weeks later the
river would be a long, winding avenue of gold and crimson, for every
tree would redouble its splendour in the dark, unruffled water.
At one place, where there were a few cleared fields bordering on the
river, we saw two or three houses and barns, and supposed we were near
the end of our voyage. This was about nine o'clock in the morning; and
we were glad because we calculated that we could catch the ten o'clock
train for Bar Harbor. But that calculation was far astray. We skirted
the cleared fields and entered the woodland again. The river flowed,
broad and leisurely, in great curves half a mile long from point to
point. As we rounded one cape after another we said to each other,
"When we pass the next turn we shall see the village." But that
inconsiderate village seemed to flee before us. Still the tall trees
lined the banks in placid monotony. Still the river curved from cape to
cape, each one like all the others. We paddled hard and steadily. Ten
o'clock passed. Every day of our journey we had lost something--a
frying-pan, a hatchet, a paddle, a ring. This day was no exception. We
had lost a train. Still we pushed along against the cool wind, which
always headed us, whether we turned north, or east, or south; wondering
whether the village that we sought was still in the world, wondering
whether the river came out anywhere, wondering--till at last we saw,
across a lake-like expanse of water, the white church and the
clustering houses of the far-famed Whitneyville.
It was a quaint old town, which had seen better days. The big
lumber-mill that had once kept it busy was burned down, and the
business had slipped away to the prosperous neighbouring town of
Machias. There were nice old houses with tall pillars in front of them,
now falling into decay and slipping out of plumb. There were shops that
had evidently been closed for years, with not even a sign "To Let" in
the windows. Our dinner was cooked for us in a boarding-house, by a
brisk young lady of about fifteen years, whose mother had gone to
Machias for a day in the gay world. With one exception that pleasant
young lady was the only thing in Whitneyville that did not have an air
of having been left behind.
The exception was the establishment of Mr. Cornelius D----, whose
"General Store" beside the bridge was still open for business, and
whose big white house stood under the elm-trees at the corner of the
road opposite the church, with bright windows, fresh-painted walls, and
plenty of flowers blooming around it. He was walking in the yard,
dressed in a black broadcloth frock-coat, with a black satin necktie
and a collar with pointed ends,--an old-fashioned Gladstonian garb.
When I heard him speak I knew where he came from. It was the rich
accent of Killarney, just as I had heard it on the Irish lakes two
summers ago. But sixty years had passed since the young Cornelius had
left the shores of the River Laune and come to dwell by the
Kowahshiscook. He had grown up with the place; had run the lumber-mill
and the first railroad that hauled the lumber from the mill down to
tide-water; had become the owner of the store and the proprietor of
some sixteen miles of timber-land along the river-front; had built the
chief house of the village and given his children a capital education;
and there he still dwelt, with his wife from Killarney, and with his
tall sons and daughters about him, contented and happy, and not at all
disposed to question the beneficent order of the universe. We had
plenty of good talk that afternoon and evening, chiefly about the Old
Country, and I had to rub up my recollections of Ross Castle and
Kenmare House and all the places around Lough Leane, in order to match
the old man's memory. He was interested in our expedition, too. He had
often been far into the woods looking after his lumber. But I doubt
whether he quite understood what it was that drew the boy and me on our
idle voyage from Nicatöus to the sea.
HIS OTHER ENGAGEMENT
Among the annals of the Petrine Club, which has for its motto the wise
words of St. Peter, "I go a-fishing," there are several profitable
tales. Next to the story of Beekman De Peyster's fatal success in
transforming a fairly good wife into a ferocious angler, probably the
most instructive is the singular adventure that befell Bolton
Chichester in taking a brief vacation while he was engaged to be
married. And having already told the former story as an example of the
vicissitudes of "Fisherman's Luck," I now propose to narrate the latter
as a striking illustration of what may happen to a man who takes "a day
off."
Chichester is known among his intimate friends as "Chinchin." This
nominal appendix was given to him not in allusion to his habits of
speech, for he is rather a small talker, but with reference to the
prominence of that feature of his countenance which is at once the
organ of utterance, the instrument of mastication, the sign of
firmness, and (at least in the Gibsonian period of facial architecture)
the chief point of manly beauty.
Point is an absurd word to apply to Chichester's chin. It might better
be called a surface, a region, a territory. Smooth, spacious, square,
kept always in perfect order and carried with a what-do-I-care-for-that
air, it gives him a most distinguished appearance, and makes you think,
when you meet him, that you are in the presence of a favourite matinée
actor, the hero of a modern short-story, or a man of remarkable
decision of character.
The last, of course, is the correct interpretation of the sign. Bolton
Chichester is the most decided man that I have ever known. He can make
up his mind more quickly, on a greater variety of subjects, and adhere
to each determination more firmly, than all the other members of the
Petrine Club put together. For this reason we always anticipated for
him a large success in life, and some even predicted that he would
become President of the United States--unless he made up his mind to do
something else on the way to the White House. At all events, we felt
sure, he would get what he wanted; and when he became decidedly
attentive to Ethel Asham it was taken for granted that he would woo,
win, and marry her in short order.
She was rather a difficult person, to be sure; the eldest daughter of
that cryptic old millionaire, Watson Asham, who lived in New York and
resided, for purposes of taxation, at West Smithfield; a graduate of
Brainmore College; president of the Social Settlement of Higher
Lighters; a frequent contributor in brief fiction to the Contrary
Magazine; a beauty of the tea-after-tennis type; the best dancer in St.
Swithin's Lenten Circle, and the most romantic creature that ever took
up the cause of Progress with a large P. It would not be fair to call
her strong-minded, because the adjective seems to imply some kind of a
limitation in her strength. She was even stronger in her impulses than
in her mind; original in every direction; in fact, originality was a
kind of convention with her. It was wonderful how many things she
accomplished; but then she never lost any time; she was precise,
punctual, inevitable in her sweet, feminine, self-possessed way; and
her varied and surprising programme went through on schedule time,
while she cherished in her heart the dream of a romance in the style of
"The Prisoner of Zenda."
Naturally, such a many-sided young woman would be difficult to please;
and a number of eligible young men had acquired personal knowledge of
the fact. But the difficulty seemed to attract Chichester. He went at
it in his bold, decided manner, with his chin forward; and he
conquered. After the February campaign no one was surprised to hear, in
March, that the engagement of Miss Ethel Asham to Mr. Bolton Chichester
was announced, and that the wedding would occur in June.
The place was not specified. Conjectures were hazarded that it might be
Dunfermline Abbey, the Castle of Chillon, Bridal Veil Falls in the
Yosemite, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, or St. George's, Hanover
Square. Little Pop Wilson, the well-known dialect novelist of the
southeastern part of northern Kentucky, suggested that there was
something to be said in favor of the Mammoth Cave--"always cool, you
know. Artificial lights, pulpit rock, stalactites--all that sort of
thing!" Even this was felt to be within the bounds of possibility. The
one thing that was not open to doubt was that the wedding would
certainly be celebrated in an original way and a romantic place, at
precisely the appointed hour. If anyone had foretold that it would be
broken off, and that the reason given would be "another engagement" on
the part of Mr. Bolton Chichester, we should have laughed in the face
of such a ridiculous prophet and advised him to take something to cool
his brain.
Yet this is exactly what happened; and the secret of that other
engagement is the subject of this brief, simple, but I hope not unmoral
narrative.
Chichester had been with the Ashams at the residential farm-house in
West Smithfield during the first fortnight of April, and had devoted
the remainder of that showery month to his affairs in the city,
diversified with a few afternoons of trout-fishing on Long Island: for
like all the members of the Petrine Club he was a sincere angler. It
was during this period that Ethel took up, in her daily correspondence
with him, the question of the cruelty of angling. She was not yet quite
clear in her mind upon the subject, but she wanted him to consider it
seriously; and she quoted Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Aurora W. Chime's
book, "The Inwardness of the Outward." Chichester promised to consider
it.
The second week in May they spent together at a house-party near
Portland, Maine; and he tried the landlocked salmon in Sebago Lake,
twice. Ethel continued the subject of the cruelty of angling, in
conversation, and illuminated her increasing conviction with references
to the Reverend Wilbur Short's "Tales of Strange Things in Woods and
Waters," and "Songs of the Scaly," by Alonzo Sweetbread.
"You would not allow any difference of thought or feeling to mar the
perfect chord of our love, would you, Bolton dear?" she asked.
"Of course not," said Bolton.
"Then promise me faithfully that you will think about this pastime
which gives so much anguish to the innocent fish--think about it very,
very seriously."
"I do. I have to. It costs me seven or eight hundred a year."
"But you must think in a different way. Put yourself in the place of
the fish."
"I did once. Fellow with a rod and line tried to land me in the tank at
the gymnasium. Lots of fun. Never had a better fight."
"But suppose you had a hook in your mouth. How would you like that?"
"Better than the dentist's chair, I'm sure. I spent three afternoons
there, last month."
"You're absurd," said Ethel, "you're perverse. Don't hold your chin up
in that aggravating way. I don't believe--you--love----"
The rest of the conversation followed the usual course, which may be
supplied from the pages of any of the fifteen-cent magazines, and ended
with a promise on the part of Chichester that he would think again, and
very, very seriously.
Meantime, you will understand, the preparations for the wedding had
been going forward, in the regular way, modified, however, in one most
important particular by Ethel Asham's passion for romantic originality.
She insisted that the day and the place should be left entirely to her.
She did not wish to have the ordinary, commonplace, fashionable wedding
performance. She wanted something really and truly poetic and fitting,
something to remember. She had a plan. The wedding should be in June?
Yes. And she would be ready? Yes. And all the family, at least, should
be there? Yes. But she asked that she might keep the secret of the
precise time and the exact place as long as possible; it would make it
all seem so much more spontaneous and natural.
The situation was a little peculiar, I grant you, and somewhat
embarrassing to the rest of the family, including Chichester. But he
took it like a man, and backed Ethel up with the utmost decision, just
as if her idea was what he had always thought of and determined to do.
What was his chin for, if he could not give her a firm support in a
thing like this? As a matter of fact he did not care in the least where
the wedding might be. A man never does. It does not seem to be his
business. Ethel's paternal parent, however, had some misgivings which
must be satisfied.
"Is it a church?" he growled; "none of your dusty, shabby little Higher
Light shrines, eh?"
"Yes, it's a church," said Ethel solemnly, "and a very old and
beautiful church."
"And a Christian ceremony," he insisted; "parson, robes,
prayer-book--regular thing--no sideshow performance, eh?"
"Of course," said she, "what do you think? Do you suppose that just
because I see things in an original way, I don't know what's proper? I
like to hear the Swami Abikadanda talk; and I don't want a regular
cut-and-dried wedding; but I'm not going to take any risks about a
thing like that. The clergyman will be there, and you will give me
away, and Gladys and Victoria will be the bridesmaids, and Arthur will
be the best man, and Howard and Willis----"
"Well, well," grunted her father, with his chuckling laugh, "it's all
right, I suppose, seeing that it's your wedding. Have it your own way
while you can." For the old man had formed his idea of the significance
of Chichester's chin.
So it was settled that the affair should remain unsettled for every one
except Ethel; and the whole family was plunged into a cheerful state of
evasion, prevarication, and downright falsification; and Chichester
grinned and smoothed the left side of his chin with his forefinger and
said, "What do I care for that? It's all right, I know," and everybody
predicted that Ethel Asham was about to do something very original.
In the middle of June she marshalled her party for a little Canadian
_giro_. There were her father and mother; and the inseparable twins,
Gladys and Victoria, one of whom always laughed when the other was
amused; and the three preternaturally important brothers, representing
the triple-x output of Harvard, Yale and Columbia; and Aunt Euphemia
van Benschoten, who had inherited the van Benschoten nose, a block on
Fifth Avenue, and a pew in St. Mark's church (two of which possessions
she was entitled to devise by will); and Miss Nancy Bangs, Ethel's most
intimate friend; and the Reverend Oriel Bellingham Jenks, her favourite
clergyman of the period; and--oh, yes! of course--there was Bolton
Chichester.
It was quite a large party. They went first to Niagara, which Pop
Wilson said was "premature, if not improper." Then they went down
through the Thousand Islands, where Ethel pointed out the inhuman and
cruel expression of the many fishermen, to which Chichester answered,
"I don't know that it's cruel to catch pickerel, but it's certainly
childish."
Then they descended the ridiculous rapids of Lachine, which splashed
and murmured around them like a very mild surf at Shelter Island. They
spent a couple of days in looking for the antiquities of Montreal,
trying to find the romantic atmosphere of New France under the _ancien
régime_. Then they went to Quebec, and found it.
Dear, delightful old Quebec, with her gray walls and shining tin roofs;
her precipitous, headlong streets and sleepy squares and esplanades;
her narrow alleys and peaceful convents; her harmless antique cannon
on the parapets and her sweet-toned bells in the spires; her towering
château on the heights and her long, low, queer-smelling warehouses
in the lower town; her spick-and-span _caléches_ and her dingy
trolley-cars; her sprinkling of soldiers and sailors with Scotch accent
and Irish brogue and Cockney twang, on a background of _petite bourgeoisie_
speaking the quaintest of French dialects; her memories of an
adventurous, glittering past and her placid contentment with the
tranquil grayness of the present; her glorious daylight outlook over
the vale of the St. Charles, the level shore of Montmorenci, the green
Isle d'Orleans dividing the shining reaches of the broad St. Lawrence,
and the blue Laurentian Mountains rolling far to the eastward--and at
night, the dark bulk of the Citadel outlined against the starry blue,
the trampling of many feet up and down the wooden pavement of the
terrace, the chattering and the laughter, the music of the military
band, and far below, the huddled housetops, the silent wharves, the
lights of the great warships swinging with the tide, the intermittent
ferry-boats plying to and fro, the twinkling lamps of Levis rising
along the dim southern shore and reflected in the lapsing, curling,
seaward-sliding waves of the great river! What city of the New World
keeps so much of the charm of the Old?
The camp which Samuel de Champlain made in the wilderness three hundred
years ago, has become one of the last refuges of the romantic dream and
the courtly illusion, still haunted by the shades of impecunious young
noblemen with velvet cloaks and feathered hats and rapiers at their
hips; of delicate, high-spirited beauties braving the snowy wildwood in
their silks and laces; of missionary monks, tonsured and rope-girdled,
pressing with lean faces and eager eyes to plant the banner of the
Church upon the shores of the West and win the fiery crown of
martyrdom. Other figures follow them--gold-seekers, fur-traders,
empire-builders, admirals and generals of France and England,
strugglers for dominion, soldiers of fortune, makers of cunning plots,
and dreamers of great enterprises--and round them all flows the
confused tide of war and love, of intrigue and daring, of religious
devotion and imperial plot. The massive walls of the old city have been
broken, the rude palaces have vanished in fire or sunken in decay, but
the past is still indomitable on Cape Diamond, and the lovers of
romance can lose themselves in pleasant reveries among the winding
streets and on the lofty, sun-bathed ramparts of Quebec.
It was there, in a shady corner of the Grand Battery, that Ethel
disclosed to her mother and Chichester and the Reverend Father
Bellingham Jenks her plan for the wedding; since, indeed, it was hardly
possible to keep it a secret any longer.
"The day after to-morrow, you know," said she, "we are going to take
the Saguenay boat for Tadousac. Do you know that village curving along
the cliff at the base of the Mamelons; and the half-circle of the bay
opening out into the big St. Lawrence, full of sunshine and blue water;
and the steep, shaggy mountains of the Saguenay in the background; and
the tiny old mission chapel of the Jesuit Fathers where the same bell
has been ringing for nearly three hundred years? I was there the summer
after I graduated; and I've never forgotten it. It's a picture and a
dream. That is where I want to have my wedding. I don't believe that
anybody else would have thought of it. Perhaps it's more than a hundred
years since the last Indian wedding was held in that little deserted
chapel; but it's all right, kept in good order, just as a relic beside
the big new church. I think"--turning to the clergyman--"that it will
be perfectly delightful and original to have you marry me there, at
high noon, on the last day of June."
Well, of course, there was a good deal of astonishment and confusion
and reluctance when this extraordinary plan came out. No one had
imagined precisely this turn in Ethel's originality. Her mother was in
a state of paralyzed dismay at an idea so wildly unconventional; the
twins and her brothers and Miss Nancy Bangs bubbled over with practical
difficulties and protests; Father Bellingham Jenks was doubtful and
embarrassed. "Would it be possible--decorous--regular? The Roman
Branch, you know, has not yet openly acknowledged the Anglican position
in The Church. Might not objections arise--misunderstanding--refusal of
permission to use the chapel? I should hesitate very much, you know!"
But Ethel carried things through with her usual sweet, sparkling
high-handedness; and Chichester supported her with irresistible
determination, as if he had decided on exactly this thing years ago.