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BOOKS BY MARY R. S. ANDREWS
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
=The Eternal Masculine.= Illustrated _net_ $1.30
=The Militants.= Illustrated $1.50
=Bob and the Guides.= Illustrated $1.50
=Vive l’Empereur.= Illustrated $1.00
=The Counsel Assigned= _net_ .50
=The Courage of the Commonplace= _net_ .50
=The Lifted Bandage= _net_ .50
=The Perfect Tribute= _net_ .50
THE
ETERNAL MASCULINE
STORIES OF MEN AND BOYS
[Illustration: Jack put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand
carefully for a few trial casts.
[_Page 18_]]
THE
ETERNAL MASCULINE
STORIES OF MEN AND BOYS
BY
MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1913
_Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner’s Sons_
Published October, 1913
[Illustration: Decoration]
In most men worth considering there appears to be, from three to
ninety, an ineradicable boyhood. Give the lad, of six or sixty, a
horse or a boat or a holiday, and he forgets the world and begins
playing.
A list of such men whom one knows would be, happily, an encyclopædia.
This book is dedicated to all such, between the lines of the names
below. You whom I remember in Kentucky, and You in the West, and You
across the room, smoking, and You in the crowded city, and You where
velvet mountains rim the sky-line—will know that You are in this
inscription. So the inscription goes, with many names unnamed, to a
splendid phalanx of young Americans, lately boys in years, graduates
of Yale, friends of mine:
E. Farrar Bateson, Lucius Horatio Biglow, Paul Howard McGregor
Converse, Douglas Fitch Guilford Eliot, William Brown Glover, Allen
Trafford Klots, Francis Ely Norris, George Richardson, Harold
Phelps Stokes, Horace Winston Stokes, Francis Berger Trudeau, James
Thornton, Francis Melzar Watrous, and Paul Shipman Andrews.
CONTENTS
_I._ _The Scarlet Ibis_ 1
_II._ _The Campaign Trout_ 57
_III._ _The Reward of Virtue_ 103
_IV._ _The Sabine Maiden_ 135
_V._ _The Whistling of Zoëtique_ 179
_VI._ _The Young Man with Wings_ 233
_VII._ _Amici_ 285
_VIII._ _The Captains_ 333
_IX._ _Little Marcus_ 395
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Jack put the rod into the man’s hand and held
the hand carefully for a few trial casts_
Frontispiece
Facing
page
_“State the situation now, Izaak Walton,” he
commanded_ 46
_“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward
the trout_ 98
_The alders parted, and out from them stepped
the most magnificent brute I ever saw alive_ 126
_At that moment No. 5 began_ 218
_The beautiful voice, with its haunting under-quality,
floated out over the company of
middle-aged men_ 314
“_Two captains in one canoe are overallowance!_” 366
“_I don’t see why fair play isn’t the thing—the
only thing—for a white man after he
leaves college as much as before_” 378
THE SCARLET IBIS
THE SCARLET IBIS
The boy stopped sharply in the portage, and swung about and glanced
inquiringly at Josef. Light as the sound was, quickly as the boy had
heard it, Josef had heard first. He stood rooted in the path, a line
of lean strength, in vague-colored clothes, his black locks tumbling
from under his battered felt hat, a scarlet bandanna in the belt at
his slim waist pricking the dim light with an explosion of color. His
extraordinary eyes, very light blue, very large, with pupils dilated
over the irises, as animals’ eyes dilate, snapped electrically; his
glance searched the woods to this side and that.
The boy had been trained under Josef and knew his ways; he stood
stock-still as the guide listened, as he sent that concentrated
glance ahead into the confused masses of shadow and brightness and
foliage and water of the Canadian forest. It flashed, that blue
search-light, straight through tangled branches and across bulks of
emerald velvet, which were moss-covered bowlders; it went on deep
into the inscrutable forest—Josef’s glance. And the boy knew that he
was seeing things in those mysterious depths, and reading them as
wild creatures see and read the woodland, as the boy himself, trained
woodsman though he was, might never hope to do. With that, the tense
pose relaxed, the wonderful eyes came back from their exploring
and—gentle, friendly, shy—met the boy’s eyes. Josef smiled.
“M’sieur Jack hears the m’sieur talking?” he asked in French.
Used as he was to his guide, the boy was surprised. “What m’sieur?
What do you mean, Josef?”
Josef waved a careless hand. “There is a m’sieur and a guide. The
landing-net dropped, just now. It was that which one heard. They
fish in the little river, around the next turn, at the Rémous des
Jurons—Profanity Pool—one will see in a moment. The m’sieur, _par
exemple_, is large—a heavy man.”
This in quick, disjointed sentences, as Josef talked—much the same
way as he sprang from one rock to another in a river crossing,
feeling his way, assuring himself of a footing before he tried
the next. Josef was shy even with his own young m’sieur, whom
he had guided for seven years, since M’sieur Jack was a lad in
knickerbockers. It was of his nature to talk in a hurrying low voice,
in short phrases, meeting one’s glance with the gentleness of the
brilliant, great, light eyes, guardedly, ready to spring back into
the cave of his reserve as an alarmed wild creature might hide in its
den. Yet he loved to show M’sieur Jack this gift of his, this almost
second sight in the woods. It gratified him now when the boy spoke.
“How in thunder do you know all that?” he demanded. “I’m not so
blamed slow, and yet I can’t hear any one talking.”
Josef held up his hand dramatically, very Frenchly.
“Listen—_écoutez_!”
Jack listened, Josef smiling at him broadly, alert, vivid. The little
river ran at their left, brown-pooled, foam-splashed, tumbling over
rocks, blurring all sounds. Overhead, in the tall white birches, in
the lower spruce-trees, the wind rustled, and brushed with a feathery
music the edges of the tinkling water noises. It seemed, as one
walked along the portage—the old, old Indian trail—all beautiful
peace and stillness; but when one stopped to listen there was a whole
orchestra of soft instruments playing, and any one sound was hard to
disentangle. Jack threw his whole soul into the effort before he made
out, through the talking water and the wind sounds, an intermittent
note which he could place as a man’s speech some distance away.
“I hear it,” he cried out.
Josef smiled indulgently; he liked to teach woodcraft to his young
m’sieur; also M’sieur Jack was a good scholar; there was no other
m’sieur of the club, young or old, to whom he would give the bow
of his canoe in going through a difficult rapids; he had done that
with M’sieur Jack. Yes, and also M’sieur Jack could tell if a male
or female beaver had gnawed the chips around a birch-trunk by the
tooth-marks in the wood; Josef had taught him that. And M’sieur
Jack was also _capable_ to portage a canoe like a guide, tossing
the heavy boat to his shoulders unaided and swinging off down a
trail as silently, as swiftly as an Indian; and he could tie up a
_pacqueton_—and make camp in a rain—and skin a moose; these things
and others M’sieur Jack could do, and Josef was proud of him. But
M’sieur Jack could not see into the woods like Josef and he was not
as quick at hearing sounds—of that also Josef was proud. So he smiled
and waited for the question sure to come. “What the dickens makes you
think he’s a big man—_un homme pesant_?” asked Jack.
They were moving forward along the trail, Jack leading, and throwing
his sentences in an undertone, as instinct teaches one to speak in
the woods, over his shoulder to Josef. And for answer Josef flung
out his muscular arm, in its faded blue calico sleeve, and pointed
ahead. Jack stumbled on a root as he followed the pointing hand, and,
recovering, caught sight of a tan-colored sweater far in front, even
now barely in range of sight, hung on a tree by the path.
“It is not warm to-day, _par exemple_; a m’sieur who is not somewhat
fat would not feel the walking in this portage—so as to take off
that,” Josef reasoned softly, in jerks.
“Did you see that—away back there? Well, I’ll be—” staccatoed
the lad, and Josef grinned with pleased vanity. “Josef, you’re a
wizard,” the boy went on. “But never mind, my son, you’ll get fooled
some time. I’ll bet he didn’t drop the landing-net. I’ll bet it
was his leader-box or his cigarette-case. No landing-net. _À bas_,
landing-nets! You’ll see!”
And Jack kicked at a rotten stump and sent it crashing in slow ruin,
as if the vitality in him were overflowing through his long legs. So
the two, the boy born into a broad life which faced from babyhood
the open door of opportunity, and the boy scarcely five years older,
born to a narrow existence, walled about with a high, undoored wall
of unending labor—these two swung on brotherly, through the peace
and morning freshness of the forest, and in the levelling reality of
nature were equals.
The river sang. One saw it—out of the corner of the eye as one
walked—brown in the pools, white where it tumbled over the rocks;
the rocks speckled it with their thousand gray hummocks; grasses
grew on them; a kingfisher fled scolding across the water and on
down-stream; in the trail—the portage—it was all shimmering misty
greens, with white sharp ranks of birch-trees; the wind murmured and
blew against one’s face. Through such things the two stalwart lads
walked on and were happy. The unconcerned gray stones of the rapids,
which had looked exactly the same on the morning when Pharaoh’s
daughter had found little Moses in the bulrushes, would look exactly
the same, likely, two thousand years from now—for world-making is a
long business and the Laurentian hills are the grandfathers of the
planet, and stones reel off twenty centuries with small aging—these
immemorial nobodies of an obscure little Canadian river had seen
nothing pass by in their long, still lives blither or more alive than
the two lads, gentleman and peasant, with their “morning faces” and
their loping pace of athletes.
Around a turn they halted as by one brain order. Something moving.
In Broadway a man in rapid motion is lost in a sea of men in rapid
motion; in the woods a man lifts a slow finger and is so conspicuous
that the mountains seem to shout a startled “Look!” The man at
the edge of Profanity Pool leaned forward and lunged at his flies
hanging tangled around his rod; he said “Damn!” The two boys, whom
his movement had brought to a standstill, unseen, motionless in the
shade of the narrow portage, shook with silent laughter.
With that Jack stepped forward, breaking a twig purposely, and came
out on the rocks. The man looked up and saw him, a bright-faced, tall
lad, claret and brown as to complexion, clean-limbed and strong as
to build. Something in him drew a smile to the man’s face—it was not
unlikely to be so.
“_Bon jour_,” Jack said with a haul at his cap, and stuffing it into
his pocket further; and then “Good-morning, sir. Any luck?”
The man stared at him. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” he inquired.
And Jack, pausing one second, went off into a shout of deep laughter
which set the mountain echoes ringing, and Josef, discreet in the
background, stepped back a pace so that the strange m’sieur might not
see him laughing also. When M’sieur Jack laughed it was impossible to
keep as serious as one should.
Squatting in the shadows beyond the m’sieur was something shading
off into rocks and foliage; a face stared over the bushes of the
“_thé sauvage_”—the Indian tea shrub with its dim pink flowers. So
hidden, so motionless was the man that Jack did not see him for the
first instant—but Josef had seen him; there had been a brief half-nod
of recognition on both sides before the messieurs had spoken. Jack
caught sight of him.
“It is you, Adelard Martel?” he demanded; Jack was likely to know
most of the guides in the club. “Why haven’t you got a big fish for
your m’sieur? They are here,” he threw at him cheerfully.
But the man did not answer with a smile, as most people answered Jack
Vance. The dark, furtive eyes shot a resentful glance at the large
man who still struggled with his fishing-tackle. “M’sieur—is not
lucky,” he brought out with the broad, soft accent of a _habitant_,
and looked down sulkily, displeased, and then flashed up an angry
glance. “There was a big one—_b’en gros_—three minutes ago. He rose
to the fly. One would have had him grabbed—_poigné_—in a second.
But _v’là_, M’sieur slipped and fell backward and knocked me the
landing-net out of my hand, and the big one saved himself—_se
sauvait. Comme ça_”—with a swift gesture of disgust.
“The landing-net?” The boy turned and looked at Josef and laughed,
and Josef’s big light eyes flashed satisfaction.
The strange m’sieur broke in with a nod toward his guide. “Something
wrong with that fellow,” he commented. “He seems angry that I can’t
catch fish.”
Jack leaned over and swept in one of the curly, bobbing snells of
the m’sieur’s leader as he answered. “May I help you?” he asked with
friendliness of a brother craftsman. “It’s the dickens of a job to do
this alone. Adelard ought”—and he stopped and shook his head fatherly
at the sullen-faced guide. “He’s sore as a crab because you haven’t
had luck,” he explained. “They’re all that way. It’s a personal
question—if their messieurs are lucky, you see. He’ll be another
question when you take a five-pounder.”
The big man lowered the butt of his rod suddenly, thereby mixing
up all the whirls of catgut which Jack had skilfully untangled; he
looked at the boy with a heart-broken expression; he looked as if he
were going to cry.
“But I can’t,” he said sorrowfully. “I don’t know how to fish. And I
want to so much. It’s my first vacation in six years, and I haven’t
got but a week. I thought it was easy to fish, that anybody could do
it. And I don’t know how to tie the leader on, and the reel falls
out of the—the reel-plate or something. And if I touch the automatic
spring it all snaps up before I can wink, and the leader runs down
the rod through the rings and it’s the very devil. I hit a rock and
broke a tip the first thing and had to put in another. It took me
half an hour to put the stuff together and then that happened. And
the flies tangle—all the time. And my guide despises me! I thought
fishing was fun!”
The man’s voice was a wail in the last sentences. Something in the
boy’s friendly youthfulness had made it possible to pour out this
tale of woe where with another wayfarer the unlucky fisherman would
have kept his bitter counsel. His instinct was not wrong. The thought
shot into Jack’s mind that here was a poor man, probably not able to
afford vacations, who had put his hard-earned money into one and was
failing to get the good of it. Like a young knight to a maiden in
distress the boy rushed to the rescue.
“Now that’s just too darned bad,” he brought out heartily. “But you
know, sir, it’s easy enough to set it all straight. Fishing _is_
fun—almost the best fun going. I don’t want to butt in, but—you
see I’ve been at this sort of thing all my days”—one thought
involuntarily of Methuselah—“and I can’t help knowing the trick. I’m
not a crack exactly, but—well, it’s second nature to me, and I’d
simply love to show you if you wouldn’t think me fresh to offer.”
“Fresh!” the older man repeated. “If you would give me a few points
I’d bless you. But you’re off on a trip yourself—I can’t take your
time”—and the boy cut in there with joyful assurances, which there
was no mistaking, as to his pleasure in helping.
“We’re just on a casual two days’ tramp, Josef and I,” he explained.
“Nothing to do so’s you’d notice it. We left the canoe and the pack
down at the lake and dashed up here for a fish or so.” By this he had
the stranger’s rod in hand, a Leonard rod, the boy knew at a glance,
about four ounces in weight, the last word in expense and perfection
of rods. “Gosh, he blew himself!” was the inward comment Jack made.
Josef was somehow present at the psychological distance from the butt
as the boy held it in his hand, and while he set the reel more firmly
into the plate and pushed the nickel ring down strongly Josef’s
delicate, coarse finger-tips were untwisting the three bright flies
from an extraordinarily thorough tangle. Adelard Martel watched
sulkily out of the Indian tea-bushes; the large m’sieur watched,
wondering. With that the lines were free, and Jack swung the butt
about into Josef’s ready hand, and suddenly had the junction of
leader and fish-line in his mouth and was chewing at it with energy.
“Tied wrong,” he commented thickly, and then had it out and drew
the softened strings from their knot. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll
show you how to put a leader into a snell.” He held the loop of
transparent cord in his left hand and poised the green line above it.
“Like this—down you go inside—up you go outside—across you go—then
down outside, up—and pull her tight. There you are!” He slid the
cross-loop down, and with a jerk it was all undone. “Just as easy to
take out as to put in, you see. Want to do it yourself, sir?” And the
man, as enchanted as a small boy, fumbled a bit and learned the knot.
“Now we’re off,” Jack announced, glancing backward to assure his
recover, and sent a skilful line into Profanity Pool.
Perhaps no harder place to fish was in the club. The pool, a black
hole in the river, was thirty odd feet long and varied in width from
twenty to five feet, irregularly. At the right a large log stretched
over the water lengthwise, and under its shadow lurked the big trout.
Also under it were snags where, once hooked, the fish ran to hide,
and catch the line about the wood, and tear loose. One must keep a
fish away from this log at all hazards. Yet across from it were sharp
rocks apt to cut fish-line.
“The hole is chock-full of Scyllas and Charybdises, all right,”
Jack remarked, pointing out the geography to his pupil. “I reckon
Profanity Pool isn’t a misnomer. Lots of cuss-words spilled into this
water, they do say.”
He cast, varying his line, varying his direction, with easy skill,
over the dark, wild water, all the time telling how and why.
“With the forearm, you know, sir. Don’t put your shoulder into it.
And stop a second on your recover, when the line’s back of you. Don’t
monkey with it too fast—give it time to straighten out; and don’t
slap the water with the flies. That scares ’em. Let the tail-fly
touch first, and just as it’s touching lift the tip of the rod a
scrap—see!” He illustrated with finished delicacy. “Then it goes down
softly. Hi!”
A liquid swash, a break of white foam, an upward snap of the wrist—a
trout was on.
“That’s too blamed bad—I didn’t mean to take anything,” he
murmured regretfully, but he played it all the same, and in three
or four minutes Josef had landed it and held it up wordlessly—a
_Salmo fontinalis_ of a pound and a half, with scarlet fins and
gold-and-silver-spotted stomach. The stranger was tingling with
excitement.
“That’s something like!” he brought out, and then meekly, anxiously,
“May I fish now?”
And Jack, smiling his old-young smile, put the rod into the man’s
hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial casts. Then “Let
her go,” he commanded, and the large m’sieur, trembling with
eagerness, was fishing. Jack, standing by with his hands in his
trousers pockets, his whole soul on the performance, criticised with
frankness. “Now, that’s rotten, sir. Don’t recover that nervous way;
that’s what tangles ’em. Just—sort of—rhythmic; back slow—pause—cast;
lift the tip a scrap as you touch; just a shiver of the wrist does
it. Now—tip up—don’t sag the line; draw the flies along, and wiggle
’em alluringly as they come; don’t let ’em go under—bad, bad! You
can’t fool fish if you drown your flies. Oh, well—the tail-fly may
sink a bit if you’re after big ones”—and so the illustrated lecture
went on, Jack thoroughly enjoying himself in the rôle of instructor.
“Ginger!” he brought out suddenly in an interval, “my brother would
throw a fit if he saw me teaching fishing. He’s a shark at it,
you know. He’s forgotten more than I ever knew. Josef”—turning on
the guide—“_M’sieur va s’amuser de moi en professeur de la pêche,
n’est-ce pas?_” And Josef, showing his teeth in a short grin,
answered promptly, “_Oui, M’sieur_,” and attended to business.
The large m’sieur was learning fast. One saw that he had not missed a
word of the boy’s lesson or the reason for any point of piscatorial
finesse. He made mistakes certainly, and was awkward, as is any
beginner at the wonderful world-old game, which has to get into the
nerves and the blood before one plays it well ever. Yet he took hold
as a trained mind takes hold of whatever problem, with a certain
ability and sureness.
“I rather think you must do some things very well, sir,” Jack
remarked encouragingly, after a bout of unflinching reprimand as to
vicious tendencies of the scholar. “You caught that idea about not
getting the line too close, at once. You must be used to doing things
well.”
The stranger lifted his keen, clear blue eyes a second and shot a
glance at the boy. “Possibly one thing,” he answered briefly, and
cast again.
Half a dozen small trout lay on the rocks, strung on a forked willow
branch, the vivid, pointed leaves crisp on one side of it, cut by the
resentful Adelard, now charmed by the turn of events and eager to be
included in them. But the big fish did not rise.
“Bad time of day,” Jack explained. “Hole’s fussed up, too. Have to
let it get quiet before the sockdologers will take notice.” He turned
to the older man with a certain brotherly manner of his, a manner
which lacked in no point of respect, but was yet simply unconscious
of any difference of age—a manner which made older men like the lad
and like themselves better, too. “If I were you,” advised Jack, “I’d
stop now and come back early to-morrow morning, by gray light, and
have a try at them. Maybe you’d get an old he-one then.”
A short lecture followed on the taking down of rods, and the
etiquette of winding a leader about one’s hat, so that the pull is
always from the last fly.
“Where are you going now?” asked the large m’sieur as he and Adelard
stood, their _butin_ packed, ready to move on.
Jack laughed and looked at Josef, who laughed also and shrugged
his shoulders. “We don’t know exactly,” the boy said. “We’re just
‘loungin’ ’round and sufferin’,’ like Brer Fox. I rather think we’ll
ramble up-stream and take the new trail the guardian cut last winter
to Lac Creux. I’ve never been there. And then come back and put up
our tent on your lake for the night, if you don’t mind, sir. It’s
down there now, with the canoe, at the mouth of this little river,”
and he stamped a boot caressingly into the brown water, as one pats
an animal in speaking of it.
“Put up with me over-night,” suggested the m’sieur. “I’ve plenty of
room; it would be a great pleasure. Then you needn’t bother with your
tent or your kit.”
The clear eyes met the man’s with frank, pleased surprise; Jack never
got used to the astonishing goodness of people in wanting him about.
“Why, we’ll do that with bells on, if you’d really like us, sir,” he
agreed heartily.
Ten minutes later the two lads were swinging again through the
shifting mystery of the portage, following the narrowing river
farther and farther up-stream, while the large m’sieur and Adelard,
now in a pleasanter humor, progressed down-stream to the lake and the
camp.
About six o’clock that evening the large m’sieur, whose name,
incidentally, was Bradlee, spread a gray camp blanket on the
pine-needles in front of his immense walled tent, and stretched it
with care to the foot of a peculiarly luxurious stump—a stump of
the right shape and angle and consistency to make a good back for
a man to loll against. There is a large difference in the comfort
of stumps. Mr. Bradlee sighed an unbroken sigh of satisfaction
as he felt his weight settle rightly into curves of stump and of
pine-needles and knew that his confidence in both had not betrayed
him. It was the only manner of Morris-chair he had about, and it
seemed of importance. He had been tramping all the afternoon, and he
was tired and wanted luxury; he found it on the gray blanket, with
his back against the spruce stump. Luxury, it is said, is a matter
of contrast; this man’s scale of such things possibly began at a
different point in New York; here in Canada, after a day’s heavy
labor in portage and canoe, after coming back grimy and sweating and
black-fly-bitten and footsore—after those things, a plunge in the
lake and dry flannel clothes and a gray blanket and a stump realized
luxury. So he sighed contentedly and shifted his leg to feel how
comfortably the muscles ached in repose, as he drew his crowning
happiness out of his pocket, that long brown happiness called a
cigar. Yet he was conscious as he lit it, and pulled the first
delicious puff, that he was still unsatisfied.
“I wish that cub would come,” Bradlee murmured half-aloud.
Behold, around the corner of the spruce point which guarded the bay,
dark on the silvery water, a canoe shot forward, swift, silent.
Bradlee with one long pull took his cigar from his mouth and held
it as he watched. It was a picture to remember—the blue sky with
pink and copper cotton-batting clouds; below that the band of dark
woods, sunlight gone from them, crowding to the lake; below that
the gray shimmer of water and the dark bulk of the canoe, and the
double paddle flash of the stroke of the two powerful lads under
which the canoe leaped toward him out of the hills. The indescribable
intoxication of the Canadian mountain air was about him, immense,
pervading; he heard the beat of the paddles and the long swish of
the water after each bound of the canoe; now Jack missed a stroke
and shot his paddle high in the air in salute, but did not break the
infinite quiet with a spoken word.
“Most boys would have howled their heads off at sight; this one
respects the sanctuaries,” thought the man.
With that the springing boat was close and he got up and stood at
the water’s edge and the bow crushed, with a soothing sound which
canoe people know, up the wet sand. Jack arose, stretched his legs,
and stepped out, tall and dirty and happy; bare-headed, bare-armed,
the gray flannel shirt décolleté around his strong neck, his face
streaked with mother earth, and with blood of murdered black flies,
but bright with that peace which shines from faces which nature has
smoothed for a while.
“Glad to see you, young man; hope you have an appetite,” spoke
Bradlee cordially, and felt the place all at once illumined by a
buoyant presence.
“_Have_ I?” responded Jack. “Just you watch me, sir.”
Shortly, on the sand by the lake-edge, under a wide-branched
pine-tree, the table was spread, with trout still sizzling in the
frying-pan and flapjacks and maple sugar and thin fried potatoes and
other delicacies of camp, which Adelard and his confrère, Louis,
brought in relays, laughing joyfully at the enormous hunger of the
young m’sieur. Then, while the guides ate their dinner, while the
night settled down like some mammoth bird into its nest over the
lonely miles of mountains and the quiet stretch of lake, the man and
the boy sat by the bubbling birch fire and “smelled wood smoke at
twilight,” and talked fishing. Jack was very great at expounding, and
it was seldom he had such a chance; he made the most of it. The older
man listened as to the Law and Gospel; it was a memorable evening.
The Bradlee fishing-tackle was had out and looked over.
“You’ve got some splendid things,” Jack announced in his
uncompromising young voice, and regretted to himself the unnecessary
extravagance of a poor man. “But the trouble is, there’s a lot
that’s—excuse me for saying it—trash. I reckon you just went to a
shop and bought what they told you, didn’t you?”
“Exactly.”
“Too bad.” Jack’s wise head shook sorrowfully. “Wish I could have
been along. I could have saved you hunks of money. An automatic
reel’s a crime, too, you know. Not sportsmanlike. However—you’ll
know, yourself, next time.”
“Thanks to you,” said Bradlee humbly.
“Oh, gee, no,” protested Jack. “You’ll just learn, doing it. Let’s
see about that cast for to-morrow morning. Now, I’d admire to have a
Parmachene Belle—that’s good in these waters.”
The fine, big, new fly-book was opened, and the man flapped a thick
leaf or two and nervously drew out a brown fly. Jack had been
teaching him the names.
“Oh no!” the boy threw at him. “That’s a Reuben Wood. Hard to
remember till you get used to them, isn’t it, though? Here is your
Parmachene—see, with the white and red feathers? Put her on for a
hand-fly, wouldn’t you, sir?”
Bradlee obeyed with pathetic promptness, fumbling a bit, but getting
fly and snell together ultimately.
“That’s—all—right!” approved the boy. “Now—let’s see. A Silver
Doctor—this fellow? Don’t you think? I’ve had great luck with that
fly. It’s a pretty decent fly.” The owner of the fly-book took his
orders and annexed the Silver Doctor to the leader.
“Now—tail-fly. That’s important. Let—me—see.”
But the willing horse suddenly took the bit in his mouth. Bradlee
pointed out a patch of scarlet with his forefinger. “I want that
one,” he stated.
The boy laughed. “The Scarlet Ibis?” he inquired, like a kind but
pitying father. “That wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. That’s too—crude, you
see. That’s good for very dark days and very wild waters, where no
one has ever fished, and they’re not educated. I’m afraid they’d know
better than a Scarlet Ibis at Profanity Pool.”
But the man, so docile up to now, acquired a setness about the mouth.
“I want the Scarlet Ibis. I like the name of it, and red is the color
I like, and I have an idea it will bring me luck.”
There was something in the large m’sieur, when he spoke in this way,
which made one see that he was accustomed to manage things; this was
different from the meek scholar of the kindergarten class in fishing.
Jack yielded at once and with cordiality.
“Of course, if you’ve got a hunch,” he agreed with his young-elderly
benevolence. “Maybe it will bring you luck.”
And the large m’sieur, smiling inwardly, felt that he had been
allowed the Scarlet Ibis by an indulgent superior, yet liked the lad
no less.
When the thick mists that had blanketed the lake all night were
blowing in streamers along the shore and curving to the alders in
the damp morning wind; when the forest was a black mass below, but
dividing above into spires of spruce-trees under the mystical glow
which fast loosed the night-bound shadows; when the grasses in the
little beaver meadows were stiff with cold, wet silver, the man and
the boy, leaving the guides in camp, started up-stream to Profanity
Pool. It was hard to follow the portage at first, so dark it was;
a hush was through the woods; no breeze stirred here away from the
lake; no little beast rustled; no bird fluttered; the underworld
was fast asleep. One felt like a knight of Arthur adventuring into a
Merlin-guarded forest.
Even when the two fishermen reached the pool it was dark enough
to make the footing uncertain as one crossed from rock to rock,
to the sand-bar where the Indian tea-bushes grew, their small
old-rose-colored blossoms frosted with dew, and over them in the dim
light the same mysterious stillness, as if the night’s sleep were not
yet ended. Also it was very cold; the chill crept through sweaters
and flannel shirts, through flesh and blood and into the bones and
the marrow, as they sat down to put the rod together. Instinctively
they spoke in low voices, not to waken the drowsy forest. Then arrows
of sunlight shot and caught in the tops of the spruces and crept ever
downward. One could see the quiet pool now, and the dark, wet log
lying lengthwise, and the brown water; not a stir of life on that
level surface, yet under it the great trout must be waking.
The large m’sieur, casting, with his whole heart in his forearm,
suddenly was aware of a small tentative resistance somewhere on the
leader threading a shimmering way across the pool. Like an electric
connection his wrist thrilled in response and the delicate mechanism
answered again with a light jerk.
“Steady,” spoke Jack’s deep, authoritative voice. “Something’s after
it—don’t jerk. It’s a big one. Recover—don’t get flustered—slow.
That’s a peach. Draw the fly slowly—it’s dark yet—let the tail-fly
go under a little—not too quick—he’s after it—let him take hold.
_Strike!_”
With an appalling suddenness Bradlee was aware of a mighty pull of
unseen live strength applied to the gossamer structure of his rod
and line, and his wrist flew up antiphonally with a good will which
luckily did not break everything concerned. The fish had taken the
fly under water, as a big one will; he was on—Bradlee had hooked him.
But there was small time to dwell on that point, for the fight had
begun without preliminaries. Straight for the log ran the invisible
streak of force, and Jack cried out in horror:
“Keep him away—don’t let him get under.”
The large m’sieur’s lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes
gleamed savagely, as he lifted the tip and held the struggling
fish on the very edge of the danger zone. The boy, following every
pulse-throb, murmured “Good work,” and with that there was a sound
as of a mighty garment ripping and the trout was off headlong to the
foot of the pool.
“Give him line—quick,” the boy thundered.
And Bradlee, lowering the rod a bit, let the line run out—and behold
the trout turned suddenly in his tracks and rushed back. Only luck
saved him on that manœuvre; before Jack had cried breathlessly “Reel
up,” the man had the tip lifted and his finger on the spring—for he
was learning fast—and the line was snapping back in handfuls—yet
there was slack for at least two seconds and it was pure chance
that the fish did not shake loose. There was a space of quiet after
this—dangerous quiet. The big trout was “sulking.” Somewhere down in
the bottom he lay, planning fight in his cloudy fish brain, and it
was equally dangerous to let him go on and to stir him up. He might
be burrowing under a rock with a sharp edge which would cut the
leader; he might rise at an inopportune touch and get free with one
unexpected effort; everything was dangerous.
“Just wait,” Jack advised. Two minutes of masterly inactivity and
then, out of patience, enraged, the enemy rose to the top and flung
himself this way and that, tearing, rushing, shaking his head
from side to side in a very hopeful effort to shake out the fly.
Fisherman’s luck certainly carried the large m’sieur through that
peril, for the most expert rodsman can do little but hold on to
his tackle in such tornadoes. The fit wore past, however, and was
succeeded by a determined attempt, in a series of rushes, to get
under the big log. Jack stood close at Bradlee’s side and counselled
him through the sharpness of this battle, and Bradlee’s keen mind
bent to the execution of his orders with all there was in it. Add to
this that the trout was uncommonly well hooked inside the throat, and
one sees that the event was not impossible. The time came at length
when it was evident that the prey was tiring. The rushes were shorter
and executed with less vim, and the great back came up to the surface
at times and flopped over limply.
“Gee!” commented Jack, “it’s the best fight I’ve seen in moons. He’s
a sockdologer, sure Mike! All of four pounds, sir—look at him—did
you see him then?”
With that there was a sharp revival of energy and a dash to the end
of the pool, and a double back, repeating the manœuvre with which
operations had begun. The last ten minutes of playing a fish have a
peculiar danger in the relaxing effort of the fisherman. Not only
does the creature struggle less vigorously and so throw one off
guard, but the strain has told and one is tired, and then, often,
comes an unexpected strong rush which proves successful—the fish is
gone.
The large m’sieur, ignorant of what to expect, did not presume, did
not relax, and was not taken off his guard. The boy glanced at the
set face many times with benignant approval, as the man, silent,
intent, fought the flagging fight as earnestly, as watchfully, as at
its beginning.
“Them’s um,” Jack indorsed proceedings, as the big fish flopped
listlessly at the surface, and the fisherman yet held his line
delicately taut, yet led the live weight at its end this way and
that. “Them’s um. Don’t take your eye off him or he’ll fool you
yet,” and finished with a manner of squeal: “Holy mackerel, but he’s
a he-one—I’ll bet he’s close on five.”
At which premature gloating the trout rose for one last fling and
shook his mighty head and slashed with his tail and threw his strong,
flexible body in a hundred directions at once, whipping the brown
water into foam. The boy, crouching with the landing-net at the
water’s edge, followed the infinitely quick scintillations with his
eyes; the man, lifting, lowering his rod, keeping the line not too
tight, not too loose, followed them, as mere human muscles might,
with his playing wrist; with that the long, shining body, brown and
gold and silver and pink and scarlet and spotted, stopped struggling,
floated limply half out of water, and the large m’sieur, flushed,
anxious, drew him slowly inshore. Jack, with the net deep in the
pool four feet to the right of the defeated king of it, waited till
he was close—yet not too close—till a clock in his brain sounded the
psychological second, and then—swoop; the net rushed through the
brown water, deep under the trout and up with a sure curve. There
was a mad flopping and struggling, but the big fellow was in the
meshes and Jack lifted him up, both fists gripping the handle of the
heavy-weighted net, and held him so at arm’s length high in air.
“Gosh!” said Jack.
The large m’sieur did not say anything, but he lowered the butt of
his rod with hands that shook, and brought out a sigh that appeared
to wander up in stages from his boots. His face radiated a solemn
happiness several flights farther down than words; his eyes were
glued to the landing-net with its freight of glory. He sat down on
the rocks with his boots casually trailing in the water and sighed
profoundly again.
“I caught him,” he stated.
“Sure,” agreed Jack. “You took him, that’s as certain as the
Pyramids. What’s more, you did it in style. The way you played that
fish, sir, was good enough for anybody. You may not have experience,”
Jack allowed candidly, “but I’ll be hanged if you haven’t got
promise. You’re a wonder, sir—a plain wonder.”
By now Jack was squatting before the net, laid on a flat stone; his
hunting-knife was out of the leather-fringed caribou-skin sheath on
his hip, and he had it in his right hand, the dull side of the blade
down, while with his left he gathered the net tighter around the
still flopping great trout. The wet, dull nose, the staring eyes were
uppermost. Jack gave a sharp rap on the back of the neck two or three
times repeated, and the king of Profanity Pool, with a long shiver,
was still. Then with big-handed dexterity he drew back the meshes and
pulled him out, a splendid, shining creature twenty-two inches long.
The large m’sieur, watching the boy’s expert work, made a sudden
movement. “What fly is he on?” he threw at Jack.
Jack, carefully withdrawing the net from its twists and double twists
around the tail, around the leader and the flies, bent swiftly,
examining. There was the Parmachene Belle, tied in a yard or two
of wet net-meshes; there was the Silver Doctor, having run in a
half-second a complicated course through a system of the same and
caught itself in the snell of the Parmachene. That was all. The
lad gave a whoop that set echoes ringing in the dark hills about
Profanity Pool and the gully of the little river.
“Gosh!” shouted Jack, while the large m’sieur grinned triumphantly,
“it’s the Scarlet Ibis!”
* * * * *
Three months later, on a day in November, a tall young man in good
clothes, with a clean face and a hat, swung along a street up-town in
New York City. The setting and the costume were changed, yet a person
who might have met the bare-headed, gray-shirted, earth-streaked
woodsman and his guide in the Canadian forest in August might still
have known this correct city character as Jack Vance. The freedom of
the woods had not yet left his buoyant heels, nor the breeziness of
the hills his physiognomy; by these signs he was the same. But his
mind was working harder than it had on that morning when he and Josef
had found the large m’sieur fishing by Profanity Pool; his eyes were
absent-minded and intense; if one might have listened to his thoughts
as his long pace lifted them and him over the pavement, it might be
that some such sentence as this would have come to the light:
“Now how in thunder am I to tell if that’s interstate commerce or if
it isn’t?” Jack was thinking.
With the same whole-heartedness that he had put into his fishing,
into his woodcraft, the boy had now flung himself into the study of
the law at that hot-house for starting the delicate green sprouts
which are to grow into trees of justice, the Harvard Law School. He
was in New York for what he would have described as a “bat” of some
days, yet his work fermented in his brain in his holiday. He was
finding law, as one mostly finds things done with all one’s might, a
joy and delight. Yet for all the fun of it he was badly puzzled just
now, and anxious as well as eager. After exhausting the sources of
information he needed more light.
“If I only knew a man who had a practical hold on it,” his mind went
on, throwing out tentacles to search for help, “an older man—a clever
man, a man who—” he stopped short; a brain tentacle had touched
something in the dimness. Why had there come to him in a flash the
familiar atmosphere of the woods, of fishing, of Josef and the little
river and—in a flash again he had arrived. “Profanity Pool! The large
m’sieur—Mr. Bradlee! He said he was a railroad man—he said I was to
call him up and lunch with him; he said if ever he could help me
about anything he’d do it—by the sign of the Scarlet Ibis. Ginger!
I’m glad I thought of him. The very chap!”
He dashed into a drug-store and rushed to the telephone-booth. Here
he was—Bradlee—W. R. H.—that was the man. Wall Street—yes. And he
took down the receiver and gave a number. It was a bit roundabout
getting Mr. Bradlee. It seemed that the approach to him was guarded
by an army of clerks and secretaries.
“He must think he’s mighty precious,” Jack complained to himself.
One must send a name—“Mr. Vance,” Jack said simply. So that when at
last a voice out of the long wire was speaking, the words “Yes—this
is Mr. Bradlee,” came with impersonal iciness. But Jack was not given
to being snubbed; his theory of the friendliness of mankind prevented
that, along with other discomforts. “Oh, hello, Mr. Bradlee,” he
threw back eagerly. “I hope I’m not butting into business. This is
Jack Vance.”
“Who?” The chilly tone was a bit impatient.
“Jack Vance—of the Montagnard Club—we went fishing—don’t you
remember—?”
The identification was cut short by a shout at the other end of
the telephone in which there was no iciness or impatience at all.
“Oh—Jack Vance—why, Great Scott, boy, it’s you, is it? I’m delighted
to hear your voice. I was thinking about you yesterday and of how you
fell down on the fly question. The Scarlet Ibis was crude, was it?
What have you got to say about that now?”
Jack’s great pealing laughter went down the telephone wires in
response. “You certainly pasted me on that, sir,” he agreed
cheerfully, and then, “I want to know if I can bother you with
a question or two about railroads,” he began, and explained the
situation briefly. He had been assigned to argue a case in one of the
moot courts—the mock trials of the students—of the law school; it
was his first case; he wanted to win it “the worst way”; he was at a
standstill about a railroad question; he needed the point of view of
a practical experience.
“You’re a railroad man, aren’t you, sir?” Jack asked.
There was a second’s hesitation at the other end of the wire, and the
answer came as if the speaker were smiling. “Well, yes—I’m called
that.” And Mr. Bradlee’s friendly voice went on: “Tell you what, my
son—we can’t discuss law over the telephone. Will you come down to
lunch to-morrow at the Lawyers’ Club?”
“Why, I’d simply love to do it, thank you,” Jack agreed joyfully.
“Good. One o’clock. Come to my office. Possibly I may find—somebody
who will help me advise you. We’ve got to win that case if it takes a
leg—it’s a sort of Scarlet Ibis case, I consider, you see.” And with
light-hearted laughter again at both ends of the wire the telephone
was hung up.
Promptly at one next day a tall young man of fresh color was handed
along with distinguished courtesy from one to another of such an
array of officials as guards the valuable time of magnates in great
offices.
“Gee!” remarked Jack casually as he landed at last in the private
office and the very presence of Mr. Bradlee. “Gee, this is ‘some’
different from Adelard Martel and the tent, isn’t it, Mr. Bradlee?”
On the wall of the office, in a frame behind a bulging glass,
hung one of the ugliest and one of the most satisfactory personal
possessions which earth affords, a trophy trout set up by experts.
Its weight, five and three-quarters pounds, was marked clearly in
a corner, above the date, August 7, 19—. Hooked in the grim black
mouth gleamed a red fly. This work of art was examined, criticised,
and appreciated by the visitor before he took his way with his
host through the swarming life of down-town to the great Equitable
Building, which held the famous club restaurant.
Three men were waiting in the reading-room as the two went in, three
grizzled, important personages, who rose up and greeted Jack’s large
m’sieur as one entitled to consideration.
“I want to present Mr. Vance to you,” said Bradlee. “Mr. Howell—Judge
Carroll—Mr. Fitzhugh.”
And Jack, gripping the hands held out with his friendly,
bone-breaking hand-clasp, failed to see the wonder at his youth on
the men’s faces, for the wonder in his own mind that the large
m’sieur had found him worthy to meet these bully old chaps, who
were quite evidently somebodys. Somebodys—who? He wondered further.
Shortly he found out.
“I asked you three here,” Bradlee began, waving a comprehensive
oyster-fork, “to meet Mr. Vance, for a purpose.”
A bar of red crept up the clear brown of the boy’s cheeks. He had not
realized that these dignified persons had come to meet him! He would
have described himself as “rattled.”
Bradlee went on: “It will advance the purpose if I mention who you
all are. Jack, Mr. Howell is the president of the I. S. I. & O. Z.
D.; Judge Carroll, whom I luckily caught in town for the day, is
on the Interstate Commerce Commission; and Mr. Fitzhugh is general
counsel of four railways in the West and South. If anybody knows what
you want to find out, these gentlemen do.”
“Holy mackerel!” said Jack simply, and flushed scarlet having
said it, and murmured etiquettically something about “Certainly
am mighty grateful.” But the four, at the awe in the tone, at the
untrammelled expletive, at something winning and indescribable in
the lad’s embarrassment, broke into sudden laughter, and Bradlee,
well pleased, knew that the charm which he had felt in the youngster
was working. With that he was telling, what most men like to hear,
a fish story—the story of the Scarlet Ibis. Plenty of raps for his
autocratic ways the boy got as the large m’sieur told the tale, and
once or twice the deep-toned young laughter rang out in a shout which
made people all over the dining-room turn and stare and smile. Jack
did not see that, but the elder men saw, and laughed too, and loved
the boy for it, as older men do love youth and unconsciousness and
joy of living.
“So you see,” Mr. Bradlee finished, “Izaak Walton Vance slipped up on
the fly and the humble scholar guessed right. But the lad gave me the
best time I’ve had for twenty years, bar none, and he taught me how
to fish—I consider that worth anywhere from ten to forty million. So
I’m his debtor to a large amount, and I want you three gentlemen to
help me to pay an instalment on my debt. I want you to help the boy
win his case in his moot court up at the Harvard Law School. That’s
what you’re here for.”
“Speaking for myself, it will be a pleasure if I can help Mr. Vance,”
Fitzhugh enunciated with elaborate Southern courtesy. “And speaking
for people in general, they certainly are likely to do what Billion
Bradlee asks.”
The lad swung about and flashed a startled look at his host. “Are
you—” he began and stopped.