Thirty years brought many changes to Bytown. The wild woodland
flavour evaporated out of the place almost entirely; and instead of an
independent centre of rustic life, it became an annex to great cities.
It was exploited as a summer resort, and discovered as a winter resort.
Three or four big hotels were planted there, and in their shadow a score
of boarding-houses alternately languished and flourished. The summer
cottage also appeared and multiplied; and with it came many of the
peculiar features which man elaborates in his struggle toward the finest
civilization--afternoon teas, and amateur theatricals, and claw-hammer
coats, and a casino, and even a few servants in livery.
The very name of Bytown was discarded as being too American and
commonplace. An Indian name was discovered, and considered much more
romantic and appropriate. You will look in vain for Bytown on the map
now. Nor will you find the old saw-mill there any longer, wasting a vast
water-power to turn its dripping wheel and cut up a few pine-logs into
fragrant boards. There is a big steam-mill a little farther up the
river, which rips out thousands of feet of lumber in a day; but there
are no more pine-logs, only sticks of spruce which the old lumbermen
would have thought hardly worth cutting. And down below the dam there is
a pulp-mill, to chew up the little trees and turn them into paper, and a
chair factory, and two or three industrial establishments, with quite a
little colony of French-Canadians employed in them as workmen.
Hose Ransom sold his place on the hill to one of the hotel companies,
and a huge caravansary occupied the site of the house with the white
palings. There were no more bleeding-hearts in the garden. There were
beds of flaring red geraniums, which looked as if they were painted; and
across the circle of smooth lawn in front of the piazza the name of the
hotel was printed in alleged ornamental plants letters two feet long,
immensely ugly. Hose had been elevated to the office of postmaster, and
lived in a Queen Antic cottage on the main street. Little Billy Ransom
had grown up into a very interesting young man, with a decided musical
genius, and a tenor voice, which being discovered by an enterprising
patron of genius, from Boston, Billy was sent away to Paris to learn to
sing. Some day you will hear of his debut in grand opera, as Monsieur
Guillaume Rancon.
But Fiddlin' Jack lived on in the little house with the curved roof,
beside the river, refusing all the good offers which were made to him
for his piece of land.
“NON,” he said; “what for shall I sell dis house? I lak' her, she
lak' me. All dese walls got full from museek, jus' lak' de wood of dis
violon. He play bettair dan de new feedle, becos' I play heem so long.
I lak' to lissen to dat rivaire in de night. She sing from long taim'
ago--jus' de same song w'en I firs come here. W'at for I go away? W'at I
get? W'at you can gif' me lak' dat?”
He was still the favourite musician of the county-side, in great request
at parties and weddings; but he had extended the sphere of his influence
a little. He was not willing to go to church, though there were now
several to choose from; but a young minister of liberal views who had
come to take charge of the new Episcopal chapel had persuaded Jacques
into the Sunday-school, to lead the children's singing with his violin.
He did it so well that the school became the most popular in the
village. It was much pleasanter to sing than to listen to long
addresses.
Jacques grew old gracefully, but he certainly grew old rapidly. His
beard was white; his shoulders were stooping; he suffered a good deal
in damp days from rheumatism--fortunately not in his hands, but in his
legs. One spring there was a long spell of abominable weather, just
between freezing and thawing. He caught a heavy cold and took to his
bed. Hose came over to look after him.
For a few days the old fiddler kept up his courage, and would sit up in
the bed trying to play; then his strength and his spirit seemed to fail
together. He grew silent and indifferent. When Hose came in he would
find Jacques with his face turned to the wall, where there was a tiny
brass crucifix hanging below the violin, and his lips moving quietly.
“Don't ye want the fiddle, Jack? I 'd like ter hear some o' them
old-time tunes ag'in.”
But the artifice failed. Jacques shook his head. His mind seemed to turn
back to the time of his first arrival in the village, and beyond it.
When he spoke at all, it was of something connected with this early
time.
“Dat was bad taim' when I near keel Bull Corey, hein?”
Hose nodded gravely.
“Dat was beeg storm, dat night when I come to Bytown. You remember dat?”
Yes, Hose remembered it very well. It was a real old-fashioned storm.
“Ah, but befo dose taim', dere was wuss taim' dan dat--in Canada. Nobody
don' know 'bout dat. I lak to tell you, 'Ose, but I can't. No, it is not
possible to tell dat, nevair!”
It came into Hose's mind that the case was serious. Jack was going to
die. He never went to church, but perhaps the Sunday-school might count
for something. He was only a Frenchman, after all, and Frenchmen had
their own ways of doing things. He certainly ought to see some kind of
a preacher before he went out of the wilderness. There was a Canadian
priest in town that week, who had come down to see about getting up a
church for the French people who worked in the mills. Perhaps Jack would
like to talk with him.
His face lighted up at the proposal. He asked to have the room tidied
up, and a clean shirt put on him, and the violin laid open in its case
on a table beside the bed, and a few other preparations made for the
visit. Then the visitor came, a tall, friendly, quiet-looking man about
Jacques's age, with a smooth face and a long black cassock. The door was
shut, and they were left alone together.
“I am comforted that you are come, mon pere,” said the sick man, “for I
have the heavy heart. There is a secret that I have kept for many years.
Sometimes I had almost forgotten that it must be told at the last; but
now it is the time to speak. I have a sin to confess--a sin of the most
grievous, of the most unpardonable.”
The listener soothed him with gracious words; spoke of the mercy that
waits for all the penitent; urged him to open his heart without delay.
“Well, then, mon pere, it is this that makes me fear to die. Long since,
in Canada, before I came to this place, I have killed a man. It was--”
The voice stopped. The little round clock on the window-sill ticked very
distinctly and rapidly, as if it were in a hurry.
“I will speak as short as I can. It was in the camp of 'Poleon Gautier,
on the river St. Maurice. The big Baptiste Lacombe, that crazy boy who
wants always to fight, he mocks me when I play, he snatches my violin,
he goes to break him on the stove. There is a knife in my belt. I
spring to Baptiste. I see no more what it is that I do. I cut him in
the neck--once, twice. The blood flies out. He falls down. He cries, 'I
die.' I grab my violin from the floor, quick; then I run to the woods.
No one can catch me. A blanket, the axe, some food, I get from a
hiding-place down the river. Then I travel, travel, travel through the
woods, how many days I know not, till I come here. No one knows me. I
give myself the name Tremblay. I make the music for them. With my violin
I live. I am happy. I forget. But it all returns to me--now--at the
last. I have murdered. Is there a forgiveness for me, mon pere?”
The priest's face had changed very swiftly at the mention of the camp
on the St. Maurice. As the story went on, he grew strangely excited.
His lips twitched. His hands trembled. At the end he sank on his knees,
close by the bed, and looked into the countenance of the sick man,
searching it as a forester searches in the undergrowth for a lost trail.
Then his eyes lighted up as he found it.
“My son,” said he, clasping the old fiddler's hand in his own, “you are
Jacques Dellaire. And I--do you know me now?--I am Baptiste Lacombe.
See those two scars upon my neck. But it was not death. You have not
murdered. You have given the stroke that changed my heart. Your sin is
forgiven--AND MINE ALSO--by the mercy of God!”
The round clock ticked louder and louder. A level ray from the setting
sun--red gold--came in through the dusty window, and lay across the
clasped hands on the bed. A white-throated sparrow, the first of the
season, on his way to the woods beyond the St. Lawrence, whistled so
clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he were repeating to these two
gray-haired exiles the name of their homeland. “Sweet--sweet--Canada,
Canada, Canada!” But there was a sweeter sound than that in the quiet
room.
It was the sound of the prayer which begins, in every language spoken by
men, with the name of that Unseen One who rules over life's chances,
and pities its discords, and tunes it back again into harmony. Yes,
this prayer of the little children who are only learning how to play
the first notes of life's music, turns to the great Master musician who
knows it all and who loves to bring a melody out of every instrument
that He has made; and it seems to lay the soul in His hands to play upon
as He will, while it calls Him, OUR FATHER!
Some day, perhaps, you will go to the busy place where Bytown used to
be; and if you do, you must take the street by the river to the white
wooden church of St. Jacques. It stands on the very spot where there was
once a cabin with a curved roof. There is a gilt cross on the top of
the church. The door is usually open, and the interior is quite gay with
vases of china and brass, and paper flowers of many colours; but if
you go through to the sacristy at the rear, you will see a brown violin
hanging on the wall.
Pere Baptiste, if he is there, will take it down and show it to you. He
calls it a remarkable instrument--one of the best, of the most sweet.
But he will not let any one play upon it. He says it is a relic.