When Dr. Rich had broken his news to his wife, they both breathed
easier. And Mrs. Rich could feel still more relief coming. She had said
nothing about her occasional shortness of breath, but she looked forward
eagerly to the pure cold air of the north. And now that the college year
was over and the faculty scattered, there need be no sadness of a
farewell dinner.
There were persons in the faculty who were conscious of nitrogen, but
the Riches were not. They were literary and easily deceived. They took
their nitrogen as it came, and really thought it was peas and beans and
eggs. They never stopped to think that they were constantly inhaling and
exhaling nitrogen without brushing a single electron off its surface.
Only Horatio was an exception. He knew the stuff. He was going to raise
it as cow-peas and plow it under. He had no farm as yet, but a tenancy
had been promised him on the Canadian side of the St. Mary’s, and when
his folks were all packed up to leave Warrenville forever, he went ahead
by train to open the cabin for them.
The rest of the family followed by steamer. The evening was pleasant as
they watched the Chicago river widen before them into Lake Michigan.
Their first objective was Mackinac island, famous long before the days
of railroads, the point at which three great lakes meet. They lie like a
clover leaf, and the cabin of Dr. Rich stood by the channel that
connects the uppermost leaflet with the other two.
To change the figure to that which appears in a certain fountain, Lake
Superior is a brimming shell from which a spillway leads the water down.
The beauty spreads westward into Michigan, and eastward into Huron.
Thence it narrows into Erie, drops with a roar and a rainbow into
Ontario, and rushes to the sea. The Riches dwelt by the first spillway,
which forms part of the boundary between the United States and Canada.
It is called the St. Mary’s river, and is perhaps the only waterway
along which bear and moose peer from their covert at great steamers
going by. No other stream carries so great a tonnage through so wild a
country. Iron comes down, and coal goes up, and there are points where a
lump of either can be tossed ashore as the great steam barge slips past.
From Mackinac they took a smaller steamer to Sault Sainte Marie, and
then retraced their course till they reached a small pier known as Upper
Encampment. Here they expected to see Horatio, but saw instead their old
Scotch friend, George Gillies, keeper of the lights.
“Why,” said Mrs. Rich, “where’s Horatio?”
“He gied me the key, and said he was going across the river, hunting.”
“But Horatio never hunts out of season.”
“Well, now, he might be hunting a cow on his new farm, or he might be
hunting berries for your supper.” So said George Gillies, but went away
looking grave.
When they entered the log cabin, with its fire of silvery birch
crackling cheerfully in the fireplace, Mrs. Rich found a note on the
table:
Yes, Dearest,
The gray squirrel has gone a-hunting. He knows how you used to
worry when he first carried a gun, but please remember that he
never had an accident. He has gone with some of the Canadian
boys to Camp Valcartier.
Couldn’t help it, mother, and couldn’t bear to say good-by.
Father will understand. He himself went hunting.
Tell Jeanie I love her and love her star. Please God, we’ll
unify it by the use of nitrogen, and please God, I’ll come back
safe.
I hope you will find everything all right at the cabin. I’ve
added some picric acid to the medicine closet in case of burns.
Horatio.
Mother dearest, I love you.
Mrs. Rich sat down on the old haircloth sofa and seemed a little faint.
She was smiling bravely, but her lips were so blue that her husband
brought her a glass of water with a little brandy in it.
Then she showed him the news.
“I was afraid of it,” he said. “I hoped we’d get here before it
happened.”
Jean seized the note and read it. Then she laid it carefully on the
table and knelt beside her mother.
Next morning Dr. Rich had a physician come down from Sault Sainte Marie
to see his wife. After that he kept a tiny hypodermic syringe where he
could lay a hand on it.
Twin-flowers were faintly blushing on Jean’s island, which was called
the Duckling, but they faded before any news came from Horatio.
Eglantine came and blushed more deeply, bringing his first letter.
Horatio wrote of his preparations as if Germans were wild wolves.
Over behind the hill balsams were fragrant in the August sun, unaware
that in South America there is another fragrant balsam, named tolu,
whence toluene. Hewn out among the balsams lay Dr. Rich’s garden, on
which he had labored for nearly half a century. In it were sweet peas of
every hue, and green peas now ready to eat. The nodules on the roots had
stored up nitrogen along with ravishing colors and delicious taste. But
little the old soldier suspected that the grandsons of his comrades were
taking toluene out of tar, to mix with nitrogen and pack into shrapnel.
Nor, when he lovingly surveyed the yellow crystals that his son had left
him to soothe the pain of burns, did he suspect that Americans were
filling bombs with that stuff and shipping them to France for the
ammunition dumps of the Canadian army.
September, and rock-rose shone with goldenrod like ore among the quartz.
Then came a letter from France. Horatio had ceased to hate the Germans,
but still stuck to his theory of unifying earth by nitrogen. The only
way to persuade men that earth is holy was to show them the leveling
effect of explosives. The war was pretty terrible, but he thought it
much less terrible than might have been expected in an age so
scientific.
Jean had seen for a month that there was no returning to college. Her
mother needed her, and she was happy to stay. Studying chemistry was out
of the question, but she would perfect herself in Ojibway and she would
read Lucretius.
The latter enterprise was quickly accomplished. She who loved her Vergil
had no difficulty with the hexameters of the great forerunner of
chemistry. It interested her to think of everything as made of atoms,
and it was more decent to regard Iphigenia’s soul as made of atoms than
to cut Iphigenia’s throat.
She had dried a lot of blueberries in the Indian fashion, and canned
three sorts of berries, and made jelly of choke-cherries. So she sent
Horatio a Thanksgiving box of goodies all the way to France.
By way of silent comfort she had received a gift from a young Indian,
the Bluebird. It was a collie pup who lacked a name. She dubbed him
Agricola, in honor of Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus.
Agricola understood three languages perfectly, and she thought she’d
better teach him Latin.