mansion is decorated with the coats-of-arms of several nations.
England's is there, Germany's, Spain's, Portugal's, as well as our own
Eagle; while upon days when our own exiled hearts beat most proudly--4th
of July and 22d of February--our star-spangled banner floats from his
roof-top as well as from our own, the only two, of course, in our ville.
Our ville, so important to us, has scarcely an existence for our home
government, and administrative changes there float over us like clouds
of heaven, without touching us in their changefulness. Thus Père S----,
though so courteous and cordial to Americans, has been long years
forgotten at Washington, whence every living servitor of the
administration that appointed him our consul here has long since passed
away forever. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, nearly
eighty years ago. He received his appointment in 1837, and held it
through fourteen administrations since Van Buren, without ever returning
to America, till he faded away one little month ago and was buried in
the parish cemetery of Saint-Léonard by a Lutheran pastor brought over
for the occasion from Havre. No church-bells tolled for his death, and
the street-children did not go on their way singing, as they always do,
to the sound of funeral bells.
"_Viens, corps, ta fosse t'attend!_" for Pere S---- was a heretic,
and could not have slept in consecrated ground had he died before the
République Française removed religious restrictions from all
burial-places. All the consular corps in all the region round about
followed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hung
their flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories of
the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this
life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a
century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, who
sometimes said to us, with yearning, pathetic voice,--
"I am an American; I am here only till I make my fortune. When I am rich
enough I shall go _Home_. I shall die and be buried at Home,--when
I am rich enough."
Temperament is Fate. Père S----'s temperament of Harpagon fated him to
die as he had lived,--a man without a country.
MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.
THE PRIMITIVE COUPLE.
I.
PARADISE.
The island in Magog Lake was like a world by itself. Though there were
but fifteen or twenty acres of land in it, that land was so diversified
by dense woods, rocks, verdant open spots, and smooth shore-rims that it
seemed many places in one.
Adam's tent was set in the arena of an amphitheatre of hills, upon
close, smooth sward sloping down to the lake-margin of milk-white sand.
Beyond the lake stood up a picture as heavenly to man's vision as the
New Jerusalem appearing in the clouds.
This was a mountain bounded at the base by two spurs of the lake, and
clothed by a plumage of woods, except upon spaces near the centre of its
slope. Here green fields disclosed themselves and two farm-houses were
nested, basking in the light of a sky which deepened and deepened
through infinite blues.
Though it was high noon, dew yet remained upon the abundance of ferns
and rock-mosses on those heights around the camp. The tent stood open at
both ends, framing a triangular bit of lake-water and shore. Within it
were a table piled with books, an oval mirror hung over a toilet-stand,
garments suspended along a line, a small square rug overlying the sward,
and camp-chairs.
The two cots had been stripped of their blankets--which were out sunning
upon a pole--and set in the thickest shade, and upon one of these cots
Eva was stretched out, having a pillow under her head. Her dress was of
a green woollen stuff, and barely reached the instep of her low shoes. A
mighty bunch of trailing ferns, starred with furry azure flowers and
ox-eyed daisies, was fastened from her neck to her girdle. She had drawn
her broad sun-hat partly over the bewitching mystery of her eyes and
forehead, to keep the sky-glow at bay, but left space enough through
which to search the whole visible world, and her face was smiling with
pure joy. To be alive beside Lake Magog was sufficient; and she was both
alive and beloved.
She thought within herself how indescribable all this beauty was. A
pleasant wind smelling of world-old fern-loam fanned her. There were
neither mosquitoes nor flies to sting, and, had there been, Adam was
provided with a bottle of pennyroyal oil, wherewith he would anoint her
face and hands, kissing any lump planted there before he came to the
rescue.
Eva felt sure she never wanted to go back to civilization again. Days
and days of shining weather, fog-or dew-drenched in the morning,
wine-colored or opaline in the evening; cool, starry nights, so cool, so
dense with woods-shade that they drove her to hide her head in the
blankets under Adam's arm; glowing noons, when the world swam in
ecstasy; long pulls at the oars from point to point of this magic lake,
she holding the trolling-line at the stern of the boat, her husband
sometimes resting and leaning forward to get her smile at nearer range
upon his face; plunges into the warm lake-water in the afternoon when
time stood still in a trance of satisfaction:--what a honeymoon she was
having! Why should it ever end? There were responsible folks enough to
carry the world's work forward. Two people might be allowed to spend
their lives in paradise, if a change of seasons could only be prevented.
Anyhow, Eva was soaking up present joy. She half closed her eyes, and
whispered fragmentary words, feeling that her heart was a censer of
incense, swinging off clouds of thanksgiving at every beat.
Adam came from the spring with a dripping pail. A fret-work of cool
drops stood all over the tin surface, even when he set the pail beside
his heated stove. That water had been filtered through moss and pebbles
and chilled by overlaced boughs until its nature was glacial.
The cooking-stove stood quite apart from the tent, under a tree. Blue
woodsmoke escaped from its pipe and straight-way disappeared. A covered
pot was already steaming, and Adam filled and put the kettle to boil.
Not far from the stove was a stationary table, made of boards fastened
upon posts. The potato-cellar and the cold-chest were boxes sunk in the
ground. Some dippers, griddles, and pans hung upon nails driven in the
tree.
Adam spread the table with a red cloth, brought chairs from the tent,
and came and leaned over Eva's cot. He was a sandy-haired, blue-eyed,
hardy-looking Scotchman, gentlemanly in his carriage, and bearing upon
his visible character the stamp of Edinbro' colleges and of Calvinistic
sincerity. He wore the Highland cap or bonnet, a belted blouse,
knickerbockers, long gray stockings, and heavy-soled shoes.
"Well, Mrs. Macgregor," said Adam, giving the name a joyful burr in his
throat, "my sweethairt. I must have a look of your eyes before you taste
a bit of my baked muskalunge."
"Well, Mr. Macgregor. And will I get up and set the table and help put
on dinner?"
"No, my darling. It's all ready,--or all but a bit of fixing."
"I am so happy," said Eva, "so lazy and happy, it doesn't seem fair to
the rest of the world."
"There is at this time no rest of the world," responded Adam. "Nothing
has been created but an island and one man and woman. Do you belaive
me?"
"I would if I didn't see those farm-houses, and the boats occasionally
coming and going on the lake; yes, and if you didn't have to row across
there for butter and milk, and to Magog village for other supplies."
"That's a mere illusion. We live here on ambrosial distillations from
the rocks and muskalunge from the lake. I never came to Canada from old
Glazka town, and never saw Loch Achray, or Loch Lomond, or any body of
water save this, since I was created in God's image without any
knowledge of the catechism. And let me see a mon set foot on this
strond!"
"Oh, you inhospitable creature!"
"I but said let me see him."
"Yes, but I know what you meant. You meant you didn't want anybody."
"My wants are all satisfied, thank God," said Adam, lifting his cap. "I
have you, and the breath o' life, and the camp-outfit."
"And the mountains, and the lake, and the rocks, and the woods," added
Eva. "I never could have believed there were such sublime things in the
world if I hadn't seen them."
"Neither could I," owned the Scotchman. "Especially such a sublime thing
as me wife."
Eva struck at him, restraining her palm from bringing more than a pat
upon his cheek.
"How your little hand makes me tremble!" said Adam, drawing his breath
from chest-depths. "Will I ever grow to glimpse at you without having
the blood spurt quick from me hairt, or to touch you without this
faintness o' joy? And don't mock me wi' your eyes, bonnie wee one, for
it's bonnie wee one you'll be to me when you're a fat auld woman the
size of yonder mountain. And _that_ changes the laughter in your eyes."
"I didn't suppose you ever _could_ call me a fat old woman."
"I'll be an auld man then meself, me fiery locks powthered with ashes,
and my auld knees knocking one at the ither," laughed Adam.
"But hand in hand we'll go,"
sang Eva,
"And sleep thegither at the foot,
Joh--n Ander--son, my jo--o."
"Oh, don't!" said Adam, with a sudden grasp on her wrist. "My God! one
must go first; and I could naither leave you nor close these eyes of
yours." He put his other hand across his eyelids, his lower features
wincing. "Sweetheart," said Adam, removing it, and taking her head
between his palms, "for what we have already received the Lord make us
duly thankful. And shut up about the rest. And there's grace said for
dinner: excepting I didn't uncover me head. Excuse me bonnet."
"Take off your ridiculous bonnet," said Eva, emerging from the eclipse
of a long kiss, "and drag me out of my web. If I am to be your helpmeet,
make me help."
"You naidn't lift a finger, my darling. I don't afford and won't have a
sairvant in the camp, so I should sairve you myself."
Passing over this argument, Eva crept up on the stretcher and had him
lift her to the ground. Her shape was very slender and elegant, and when
the two passed each an arm across the other's back to walk together
school-girl fashion, Adam's grasp sloped far downward. She did not quite
reach his shoulder.
They made coffee, and served up their dinner in various pieces of
pottery. The baked muskalunge was portioned upon two plates and
surrounded with stewed potato. Potatoes with scorched jackets, enclosing
their own utmost fragrance, also came out of the ashes. Adam poured
coffee for Eva into a fragile china cup, and coffee for himself into a
tin pint-measure. The sugar was in a glass fruit-jar, and the cream came
directly off a pan in the cold-box. They had pressed beef in slices,
chow-chow through the neck of the bottle, apricot jam in a little white
pot, baker's rolls, and a cracked platter heaped with wild strawberries.
Around the second point of Magog Island, down one whole stony hill-side,
those strawberries grew too thick for stepping. The hugest, most deadly
sweet of cultivated berries could not match them. You ate in them the
light of the sky and the ancient life of the mountain.
"I never was so hungry at home," said Eva, accepting a finely-done bit
of fish with which her lord fed her as a nestling. "Perhaps things taste
better eaten out of unmatched crockery and under a roof of leaves. I
wouldn't have a plate different in the whole camp."
"Nor would I," said Adam.
She looked across at the mountain-panorama, for, though stationary, it
was also forever changing, and the light of intense and burning noon was
different from the humid veil of morning.
"And yonder goes a sail," she tacked to the end of her
mountain-observations.
"Heaven speed it!" responded Adam, carrying his cup for a second filling
to the coffee-pot on the stove. "Will ye have a drop more?"
"Indeed, yes. I don't know how many drops more I shall drink. We get so
fierce and reckless about our victuals. Will it be the spirit of the old
counterfeiters who used to inhabit this island entering into us?"
suggested Eva, using the English-Canadian idiom of the western
provinces.
"Without doot. It was their custom never to let a body leave this strond
alive, and they can only hairm us by making us eat oursels to death."
"Nearly a hundred years ago, wasn't it, they lived here and made
counterfeit money and drew silly folks in to buy it of them? When I hear
the rocks all over this island sounding hollow like muffled drumming
under our feet, I scare myself thinking that gang may be hid hereabouts
yet and may come and peep into the tent some night."
"Behind them all the army of bones they drowned in Magog watther or
buried in the island," laughed Adam. "It's not for a few old ghosts we'd
take up our pans and kettles and move out of the Gairden of Eden. I'll
keep you safe from the counterfeiters, my darling, never fear."
"You said heaven speed that sail yonder; but the man has taken it down
and is rowing in here."
"Then he's an impudent loon. Who asked him?"
"The sight of our tent, very likely. And maybe it will be some friend of
ours, stopping at the Magog House. He wears a white helmet-hat; and
isn't that a yachting-suit of white flannel?"
"He comes clothed as an angel of light," said Adam.
They both watched the figure and the boat growing larger in perspective.
Features formed in the blur under the rower's hat; his individuality
sprung suddenly from a shape which a moment ago might have been any
man's.
"Oh, Adam, it will be Louis Satanette from Toronto," exclaimed Eva.
"And what's a Toronto man doing away up on Lake Magog?"
"What will a Glasgow man be doing away off here on Lake Magog?"
"Camping with his wife, and getting more religion than ever was taught
in the creeds."
"I'm not so sure of that, then."
"Because I don't love a Frenchman?"
"A French-Canadian. And a member of Parliament, too. Think of that at
his age! They say in Toronto he is one of the most promising men in the
provinces."
"Can he spear a salmon with a gaff, and does he know a pairch from a
lunge? And he couldn't be a Macgregor, anyhow, if he was first man in
Canada."
Eva laughed, and, forming her lips into a kiss, slyly impressed the same
upon the air, as if it could reach Adam through some invisible pneumatic
tube. He was not ashamed to make a return in kind; and, the boat being
now within their bay, they went down to the sand to meet it.
II.
FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which
Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the
tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse
under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no
human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.
He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after
his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she
came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and
unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up
shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.
Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be
told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to
the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of
that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for
days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with
you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried
helplessly long after I woke."
Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an
adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the
grasp of emotion.
When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there.
She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew.
Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes
in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her
little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of
mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds
were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song
when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first
time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for
her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam
helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at
the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.
He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in,
dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one
sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over
their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the
tent.
He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of Louis
Satanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman was a beautiful, versatile
fellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like an
angel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touch
up his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm,
marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sun
and wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamed
equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a
blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a
broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a
flower,--if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful
nerve of manliness.
Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on the
island, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam rose
early and trolled for lunge in deep water under the cliff. In the
afternoon they all plunged into the lake, Eva swimming like a
cardinal-flower afloat. Adam was careful to keep near her, and finally
to help her into the boat, where she sat with her scarlet bathing-dress
shining in the sun and her drenched hair curling in an arch around her
face.
All these days flashed before Adam while he put a slow foot out on the
tent-rug.
There was nobody about the camp when he had made his morning toilet and
unclosed the tent-flaps, so he built a fire in the stove, hung the
bedding to sun, and set out the cots. A blueness which was not humid
filtered itself through the air everywhere, and fold upon fold of it
seemed rising from invisible censers on the mainland.
Eva hailed him from the lake. She came rowing across the sun's track.
The water was fresh and blue, glittering like millions of alternately
dull and burnished scales.
Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with more
reticence than usual.
"You don't know where I have been, laddie," exclaimed Eva. "Look at all
the fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket sagged
down with gold-streaked quartz. I went around to the other side of the
island, where the counterfeiters' hole is, to look into it while the
morning sun on the lake threw a reflection."
"There's nothing wonderful to be seen there."
"How will we know that? The rocks sound hollow all about, and there may
be a great cavern full of counterfeiters' relics. Oh, Adam, I saw Louis
Satanette's sail!"
"He comes early this morn."
"I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore. He says
we'll explore the counterfeiters' hole, and let us go directly after
breakfast."
"What is it worth the exploring?" said Adam. "Four rocks set on end, and
you crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back out
again. It's but a burrow, and ends against the hill's heart of rock.
I've to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk."
The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting and
sifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray. As if there was not
enough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the foot
of the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water. He
looked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish or
two glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook dropped
in as his excuse for loitering.
The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were
covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.
Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the
earth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at their
summit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from
every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a
lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if
it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure
would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a
vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so
haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.
The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from
his listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws
in the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all in
white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant
exhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past
Adam.
"What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.
"Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."
"You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using the
double Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."
Adam thought of her when she was _not_ on the lookout. He also thought
of her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as he
pulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.
"I'll go in presently," he muttered.
"Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving the
upward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks a
repetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.
"I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."
"Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too close
to the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke has
overcome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"
"The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting his
position impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graat
dail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."
Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:
"Well, _au revoir_. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. It
will be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not wind
enough to lift it."
"Good-day to ye," responded Adam. "We'll likely shift camp before you're
this way."
"In so short a time?" exclaimed Louis.
"In so lang a time. I'm soul-sick of it. It's lone; it's heavy. The
fine's too great for the pleasure of the feight. Look, now,--there were
two rough laddies up Glazka way, in my country, and they came to fists
aboot a sweethairt, the fools. But when they are stripped and ready, one
hits the table wi's hond, and says he, 'Ay, Georgie, I'm wullin' to
feight ye, but wha's goin' to pay the fine?'"
Louis Satanette laughed again, but as if he did not know just what was
meant."
"It's a cautious mon, is the Scotchmon," said Adam, "but no' so slow,
after all."
"Oh, never slow!" said Louis. "Very, very fast indeed, to leave this
paradise in the midst of the summer."
"'Farewell to lovely Loch Achray,'" sighed Adam:
"Where shall we find, in any land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"
Louis made a sign of adieu and dipped his oars.
"It's only _au revoir_," said he, shooting past. "Be very, very far from
parting with Magog too early."
"'So lone a lake, so sweet a strand,'" repeated Adam, dropping his head
back against the stern.
He did not move while the sound of the other's oars died away behind
him. He did not move while the afternoon shadows spread far over the
water.
The long Canadian twilight advanced stage by stage. First, all Magog
flushed, as if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine.
Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endless
succession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainland
mountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, with
slow and irregular strokes, Adam pulled away from the cliff, and brought
his keel to grate the sand in front of his tent.
Eva was sitting there on a rock, huddling a shawl around her.
"Oh, Adam Macgregor!" she began, in a low voice, "and do you condescend
to bring your wraith back to me at last?"
"It's nothing but my wraith," said Adam, lifting his eggs and butter and
milk, and stepping from the boat. "The mon in me died aboot noon."
Eva walked along by his side to the cool-box, where he deposited his
load.
"What is the matter with you, laddie, that you look and talk so
strangely?"