The Marquis sat by the camp-fire peeling potatoes.
To look at him, you never would have taken him for a marquis. His
costume was a pair of corduroy trousers; a blue flannel shirt, patched
at elbows with gray; lumberman's boots, flat-footed, shapeless, with
loose leather legs strapped just below the knee, and wrinkled like the
hide of an ancient rhinoceros; and a soft brown hat with several holes
in the crown, as if it had done duty, at some time in its history, as an
impromptu target in a shooting-match. A red woollen scarf twisted about
his loins gave a touch of colour and picturesqueness.
It was not exactly a court dress, but it sat well on the powerful sinewy
figure of the man. He never gave a thought to his looks, but peeled his
potatoes with a dexterity which betrayed a past-master of the humble
art, and threw the skins into the fire.
“Look you, m'sieu',” he said to young Winthrop Alden, who sat on a
fallen tree near him, mending the fly-rod which he had broken in the
morning's fishing, “look you, it is an affair of the most strange, yet
of the most certain. We have known always that ours was a good family.
The name tells it. The Lamottes are of la haute classe in France. But
here, in Canada, we are poor. Yet the good blood dies not with the
poverty. It is buried, hidden, but it remains the same. It is like these
pataques. You plant good ones for seed: you get a good crop. You plant
bad ones: you get a bad crop. But we did not know about the title in our
family. No. We thought ours was a side-branch, an off-shoot. It was a
great surprise to us. But it is certain,--beyond a doubt.”
Jean Lamotte's deep voice was quiet and steady. It had the tone of
assured conviction. His bright blue eyes above his ruddy mustache and
bronzed cheeks, were clear and tranquil as those of a child.
Alden was immensely interested and amused. He was a member of the Boston
branch of the Society for Ancestral Culture, and he recognized the
favourite tenet of his sect,--the doctrine that “blood will tell.” He
was also a Harvard man, knowing almost everything and believing hardly
anything. Heredity was one of the few unquestioned articles of his
creed. But the form in which this familiar confession of faith came to
him, on the banks of the Grande Decharge, from the lips of a somewhat
ragged and distinctly illiterate Canadian guide, was grotesque enough
to satisfy the most modern taste for new sensations. He listened with an
air of gravity, and a delighted sense of the humour of the situation.
“How did you find it out?” he asked.
“Well, then,” continued Jean, “I will tell you how the news came to me.
It was at St. Gedeon, one Sunday last March. The snow was good and hard,
and I drove in, ten miles on the lake, from our house opposite Grosse
Ile. After mass, a man, evidently of the city, comes to me in the stable
while I feed the horse, and salutes me.
“'Is this Jean Lamotte?'
“'At your service, m'sieu'.'
“'Son of Francois Louis Lamotte?'
“'Of no other. But he is dead, God give him repose.'
“'I been looking for you all through Charlevoix and Chicoutimi.'
“'Here you find me then, and good-day to you,' says I, a little short,
for I was beginning to be shy of him.
“'Chut, chut,' says he, very friendly. 'I suppose you have time to talk
a bit. How would you like to be a marquis and have a castle in France
with a hundred thousand dollars?'
“For a moment I think I will lick him; then I laugh. 'Very well indeed,'
says I, 'and also a handful of stars for buckshot, and the new moon for
a canoe.'
“'But no,' answers the man. 'I am earnest, Monsieur Lamotte. I want to
talk a long talk with you. Do you permit that I accompany you to your
residence?'
“Residence! You know that little farm-house of logs where my mother
lives,--you saw it last summer. But of course it is a pretty good house.
It is clean. It is warm. So I bring the man home in the sleigh. All that
evening he tells the story. How our name Lamotte is really De la Motte
de la Luciere. How there belongs to that name an estate and a title
in France, now thirty years with no one to claim it. How he, being an
AVOCAT, has remarked the likeness of the names. How he has tracked the
family through Montmorency and Quebec, in all the parish books. How he
finds my great-grandfather's great-grandfather, Etienne de La Motte who
came to Canada two hundred years ago, a younger son of the Marquis de la
Luciere. How he has the papers, many of them, with red seals on them. I
saw them. 'Of course,' says he, 'there are others of the family
here to share the property. It must be divided. But it is
large--enormous--millions of francs. And the largest share is yours,
and the title, and a castle--a castle larger than Price's saw-mill at
Chicoutimi; with carpets, and electric lights, and coloured pictures on
the wall, like the hotel at Roberval.'
“When my mother heard about that she was pleased. But me--when I heard
that I was a marquis, I knew it was true.”
Jean's blue eyes were wide open now, and sparkling brightly. He had
put down the pan of potatoes. He was holding his head up and talking
eagerly.
Alden turned away his face to light his pipe, and hide a smile. “Did he
get--any money--out of you?”--came slowly between the puffs of smoke.
“Money!” answered Jean, “of course there must be money to carry on an
affair of this kind. There was seventy dollars that I had cleaned up on
the lumber-job last winter, and the mother had forty dollars from the
cow she sold in the fall. A hundred and ten dollars,--we gave him that.
He has gone to France to make the claim for us. Next spring he comes
back, and I give him a hundred dollars more; when I get my property five
thousand dollars more. It is little enough. A marquis must not be mean.”
Alden swore softly in English, under his breath. A rustic comedy, a joke
on human nature, always pleased him; but beneath his cynical varnish
he had a very honest heart, and he hated cruelty and injustice. He knew
what a little money meant in the backwoods; what hard and bitter toil it
cost to rake it together; what sacrifices and privations must follow
its loss. If the smooth prospector of unclaimed estates in France had
arrived at the camp on the Grande Decharge at that moment, Alden would
have introduced him to the most unhappy hour of his life.
But with Jean Lamotte it was by no means so easy to deal. Alden
perceived at once that ridicule would be worse than useless. The man was
far too much in earnest. A jest about a marquis with holes in his hat!
Yes, Jean would laugh at that very merrily; for he was a true VOYAGEUR.
But a jest about the reality of the marquis! That struck him as almost
profane. It was a fixed idea with him. Argument could not shake it.
He had seen the papers. He knew it was true. All the strength of his
vigorous and healthy manhood seemed to have gone into it suddenly, as if
this was the news for which he had been waiting, unconsciously, since he
was born.
It was not in the least morbid, visionary, abstract. It was concrete,
actual, and so far as Alden could see, wholesome. It did not make Jean
despise his present life. On the contrary, it appeared to lend a zest
to it, as an interesting episode in the career of a nobleman. He was not
restless; he was not discontented. His whole nature was at once elated
and calmed. He was not at all feverish to get away from his familiar
existence, from the woods and the waters he knew so well, from the large
liberty of the unpeopled forest, the joyous rush of the great river, the
splendid breadth of the open sky. Unconsciously these things had gone
into his blood. Dimly he felt the premonitions of homesickness for them
all. But he was lifted up to remember that the blood into which these
things had entered was blue blood, and that though he lived in the
wilderness he really belonged to la haute classe. A breath of romance,
a spirit of chivalry from the days when the high-spirited courtiers of
Louis XIV sought their fortune in the New World, seemed to pass into
him. He spoke of it all with a kind of proud simplicity.
“It appears curious to m'sieu', no doubt, but it has been so in Canada
from the beginning. There were many nobles here in the old time.
Frontenac,--he was a duke or a prince. Denonville,--he was a grand
seigneur. La Salle, Vaudreuil,--these are all noble, counts or barons. I
know not the difference, but the cure has told me the names. And the old
Jacques Cartier, the father of all, when he went home to France, I have
heard that the King made him a lord and gave him a castle. Why not? He
was a capable man, a brave man; he could sail a big ship, he could run
the rapids of the great river in his canoe. He could hunt the bear, the
lynx, the carcajou. I suppose all these men,--marquises and counts and
barons,--I suppose they all lived hard, and slept on the ground, and
used the axe and the paddle when they came to the woods. It is not the
fine coat that makes the noble. It is the good blood, the adventure, the
brave heart.”
“Magnificent!” thought Alden. “It is the real thing, a bit of the
seventeenth century lost in the forest for two hundred years. It is like
finding an old rapier beside an Indian trail. I suppose the fellow
may be the descendant of some gay young lieutenant of the regiment
Carignan-Salieres, who came out with De Tracy, or Courcelles. An amour
with the daughter of a habitant,--a name taken at random,--who can
unravel the skein? But here's the old thread of chivalry running through
all the tangles, tarnished but unbroken.”
This was what he said to himself. What he said to Jean was, “Well,
Jean, you and I have been together in the woods for two summers now, and
marquis or no marquis, I hope this is not going to make any difference
between us.”
“But certainly NOT!” answered Jean. “I am well content with m'sieu', as
I hope m'sieu' is content with me. While I am AU BOIS, I ask no better
than to be your guide. Besides, I must earn those other hundred dollars,
for the payment in the spring.”
Alden tried to make him promise to give nothing more to the lawyer
until he had something sure to show for his money. But Jean was
politely non-committal on that point. It was evident that he felt the
impossibility of meanness in a marquis. Why should he be sparing or
cautious? That was for the merchant, not for the noble. A hundred, two
hundred, three hundred dollars: What was that to an estate and a title?
Nothing risk, nothing gain! He must live up to his role. Meantime he was
ready to prove that he was the best guide on the Grande Decharge.
And so he was. There was not a man in all the Lake St. John country who
knew the woods and waters as well as he did. Far up the great rivers
Peribonca and Misstassini he had pushed his birch canoe, exploring the
network of lakes and streams along the desolate Height of Land. He knew
the Grand Brule, where the bears roam in September on the fire-scarred
hills among the wide, unharvested fields of blueberries. He knew the
hidden ponds and slow-creeping little rivers where the beavers build
their dams, and raise their silent water-cities, like Venice lost in the
woods. He knew the vast barrens, covered with stiff silvery moss, where
the caribou fed in the winter. On the Decharge itself,--that tumultuous
flood, never failing, never freezing, by which the great lake pours all
its gathered waters in foam and fury down to the deep, still gorge of
the Saguenay,--there Jean was at home. There was not a curl or eddy
in the wild course of the river that he did not understand. The quiet
little channels by which one could drop down behind the islands while
the main stream made an impassable fall; the precise height of the water
at which it was safe to run the Rapide Gervais; the point of rock on the
brink of the Grande Chute where the canoe must whirl swiftly in to the
shore if you did not wish to go over the cataract; the exact force of
the tourniquet that sucked downward at one edge of the rapid, and of the
bouillon that boiled upward at the other edge, as if the bottom of the
river were heaving, and the narrow line of the FILET D'EAU along which
the birch-bark might shoot in safety; the treachery of the smooth, oily
curves where the brown water swept past the edge of the cliff, silent,
gloomy, menacing; the hidden pathway through the foam where the canoe
could run out securely and reach a favourite haunt of the ouananiche,
the fish that loves the wildest water,--all these secrets were known to
Jean. He read the river like a book. He loved it. He also respected it.
He knew it too well to take liberties with it.
The camp, that June, was beside the Rapide des Cedres. A great ledge
stretched across the river; the water came down in three leaps, brown
above, golden at the edge, white where it fell. Below, on the left bank,
there was a little cove behind a high point of rocks, a curving beach
of white sand, a gentle slope of ground, a tent half hidden among the
birches and balsams. Down the river, the main channel narrowed and
deepened. High banks hemmed it in on the left, iron-coasted islands on
the right. It was a sullen, powerful, dangerous stream. Beyond that, in
mid-river, the Ile Maligne reared its wicked head, scarred, bristling
with skeletons of dead trees. On either side of it, the river broke away
into a long fury of rapids and falls in which no boat could live.
It was there, on the point of the island, that the most famous fishing
in the river was found; and there Alden was determined to cast his fly
before he went home. Ten days they had waited at the Cedars for the
water to fall enough to make the passage to the island safe. At last
Alden grew impatient. It was a superb morning,--sky like an immense blue
gentian, air full of fragrance from a million bells of pink Linnaea,
sunshine flattering the great river,--a morning when danger and death
seemed incredible.
“To-day we are going to the island, Jean; the water must be low enough
now.”
“Not yet, m'sieu', I am sorry, but it is not yet.”
Alden laughed rather unpleasantly. “I believe you are afraid. I thought
you were a good canoeman--”
“I am that,” said Jean, quietly, “and therefore,--well, it is the bad
canoeman who is never afraid.”
“But last September you took your monsieur to the island and gave him
fine fishing. Why won't you do it for me? I believe you want to keep me
away from this place and save it for him.”
Jean's face flushed. “M'sieu' has no reason to say that of me. I beg
that he will not repeat it.”
Alden laughed again. He was somewhat irritated at Jean for taking the
thing so seriously, for being so obstinate. On such a morning it was
absurd. At least it would do no harm to make an effort to reach the
island. If it proved impossible they could give it up. “All right,
Jean,” he said, “I'll take it back. You are only timid, that's all.
Francois here will go down with me. We can manage the canoe together.
Jean can stay at home and keep the camp. Eh, Francois?”
Francois, the second guide, was a mush of vanity and good nature, with
just sense enough to obey Jean's orders, and just jealousy enough to
make him jump at a chance to show his independence. He would like very
well to be first man for a day,--perhaps for the next trip, if he had
good luck. He grinned and nodded his head--“All ready, m'sieu'; I guess
we can do it.”
But while he was holding the canoe steady for Alden to step out to his
place in the bow, Jean came down and pushed him aside. “Go to bed, dam'
fool,” he muttered, shoved the canoe out into the river, and jumped
lightly to his own place in the stern.
Alden smiled to himself and said nothing for a while. When they were a
mile or two down the river he remarked, “So I see you changed your mind,
Jean. Do you think better of the river now?”
“No, m'sieu', I think the same.”
“Well then?”
“Because I must share the luck with you whether it is good or bad. It is
no shame to have fear. The shame is not to face it. But one thing I ask
of you--”
“And that is?”
“Kneel as low in the canoe as you can, paddle steady, and do not dodge
when a wave comes.”
Alden was half inclined to turn back, and give it up. But pride made it
difficult to say the word. Besides the fishing was sure to be superb;
not a line had been wet there since last year. It was worth a little
risk. The danger could not be so very great after all. How fair the
river ran,--a current of living topaz between banks of emerald! What but
good luck could come on such a day?
The canoe was gliding down the last smooth stretch. Alden lifted his
head, as they turned the corner, and for the first time saw the passage
close before him. His face went white, and he set his teeth.
The left-hand branch of the river, cleft by the rocky point of the
island, dropped at once into a tumult of yellow foam and raved downward
along the northern shore. The right-hand branch swerved away to the
east, running with swift, silent fury. On the lower edge of this
desperate race of brown billows, a huge whirlpool formed and dissolved
every two or three minutes, now eddying round in a wide backwater into a
rocky bay on the end of the island, now swept away by the rush of waves
into the white rage of the rapids below.
There was the secret pathway. The trick was, to dart across the
right-hand current at the proper moment, catch the rim of the whirlpool
as it swung backward, and let it sweep you around to the end of the
island. It was easy enough at low water. But now?
The smooth waves went crowding and shouldering down the slope as if they
were running to a fight. The river rose and swelled with quick, uneven
passion. The whirlpool was in its place one minute; the next, it was
blotted out; everything rushed madly downward--and below was hell.
Jean checked the boat for a moment, quivering in the strong
current, waiting for the TOURNIQUET to form again. Five seconds--ten
seconds--“Now!” he cried.
The canoe shot obliquely into the stream, driven by strong, quick
strokes of the paddles. It seemed almost to leap from wave to wave. All
was going well. The edge of the whirlpool was near. Then came the crest
of a larger wave,--slap--into the boat. Alden shrank involuntarily from
the cold water, and missed his stroke. An eddy caught the bow and shoved
it out. The whirlpool receded, dissolved. The whole river rushed down
upon the canoe and carried it away like a leaf.
Who says that thought is swift and clear in a moment like that? Who
talks about the whole of a man's life passing before him in a flash of
light? A flash of darkness! Thought is paralyzed, dumb. “What a fool!”
“Good-bye!” “If--” That is about all it can say. And if the moment
is prolonged, it says the same thing over again, stunned, bewildered,
impotent. Then?--The rocking waves; the sinking boat; the roar of the
fall; the swift overturn; the icy, blinding, strangling water--God!
Jean was flung shoreward. Instinctively he struck out, with the current
and half across it, toward a point of rock. His foot touched bottom.
He drew himself up and looked back. The canoe was sweeping past, bottom
upward, Alden underneath it.
Jean thrust himself out into the stream again, still going with the
current, but now away from shore. He gripped the canoe, flinging his
arm over the stern. Then he got hold of the thwart and tried to turn it
over. Too heavy! Groping underneath he caught Alden by the shoulder and
pulled him out. They would have gone down together but for the boat.
“Hold on tight,” gasped Jean, “put your arm over the canoe--the other
side!”
Alden, half dazed, obeyed him. The torrent carried the dancing, slippery
bark past another point. Just below it, there was a little eddy.
“Now,” cried Jean; “the back-water--strike for the land!”
They touched the black, gliddery rocks. They staggered out of the
water; waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep; falling and rising again. They
crawled up on the warm moss....
The first thing that Alden noticed was the line of bright red spots on
the wing of a cedar-bird fluttering silently through the branches of the
tree above him. He lay still and watched it, wondering that he had never
before observed those brilliant sparks of colour on the little brown
bird. Then he wondered what made his legs ache so. Then he saw Jean,
dripping wet, sitting on a stone and looking down the river.
He got up painfully and went over to him. He put his hand on the man's
shoulder.
“Jean, you saved my life--I thank you, Marquis!”
“M'sieu',” said Jean, springing up, “I beg you not to mention it. It was
nothing. A narrow shave,--but LA BONNE CHANCE! And after all, you were
right,--we got to the island! But now how to get off?”