“You didn’t place me before?”
“Place you—well, I just didn’t, sir,” Jack smiled broadly. “You know,
I thought you were so darned extravagant about that Leonard rod.” And
Bradlee smiled too, pleased with the comrade-like confidence. He laid
a fatherly hand on Jack’s arm.
“State the situation now, Izaak Walton,” he commanded.
So Jack, stammering a bit at first, forgetting himself soon, and,
launching out into a perfectly regardless wealth of law language
which flowed quaintly from his young mouth, set forth his case.
There was a small railroad, it appeared, running twelve miles, from
Skaneateles to Skaneateles Junction, wholly within the State. At
Skaneateles Junction the road joins the New York Central. A train
was made up at Skaneateles, consisting of engine, tender, caboose,
four local freight cars, and one freight car billed through to
Chicago, via New York Central and Lake Shore. A brakeman on this
train was injured between Skaneateles and Skaneateles Junction by
the negligence of the railroad company, but also because of his own
negligence.
“You see,” finished Jack, addressing the great railway magnates and
the interstate commerce commissioner as man to man, “the question
to be settled is whether that small road is engaged in interstate
commerce, so that the brakeman may recover in an action against it in
spite of his contributory negligence.”
[Illustration: “State the situation now, Izaak Walton,” he commanded.]
Billion Bradlee, whose nod shook Wall Street; Judge Carroll, who,
with his associates, decided every day vast questions of national
commerce; and the two powerful railway men listened with careful
attention. The four pair of keen eyes were fixed on the boy’s
face. The boy went on. His whole personality was focussed now on
his argument, and, though in the vague margin of consciousness there
might have been a knowledge of the incongruity between such an
audience and a case in a law-school moot court, yet the glow of his
intense interest in his affair reduced such thoughts to a dim fringe.
The boy went on, unembarrassed, throwing his free power into his
statement.
“You see, sir—you see, Judge Carroll, the act of 1898 speaks of
‘common carriers by railroads, while engaged in commerce between
any of the States,’ being liable to any employee for injuries while
‘employed by such carrier in such commerce.’ The fact of contributory
negligence does not bar a recovery in such actions.”
Conway Fitzhugh, who handled railroads in three States, spoke
consideringly. “It’s an interesting question. I believe it has never
been decided,” he said, and the president of the I. S. I. & O. Z. D.
followed him up quickly.
“Possibly there has been no final test case. But if such a position
as Mr. Vance sets forth is maintained—if the brakeman could
recover—then there is no such thing as the domestic trade of a
State. Congress may take the entire control of the commerce of the
country.”
Bradlee, leaning back in his chair, laid down his knife and fork, and
the perfectly cooked bird on his plate was left untasted. His keen
blue glance swept across the table to Jack’s face. Jack, bright-eyed,
flushed, slashed off a manful bit of partridge and stowed it away
before he answered.
“There’s that view of it, sir, of course,” he answered the mighty
Howell respectfully but firmly—and Bradlee chuckled. He remembered
a fishing lesson up a little lost river and the odd sensation of
being talked to as a novice. He wondered how Howell would take these
fearless tactics. The lad went on: “But there’s a good deal of
authority on the other side. ‘The Constitution gives Congress plenary
power to regulate interstate commerce,’ you see—doesn’t it, Judge
Carroll? I think that’s a quotation from one of your opinions, sir.
And you may use the analogy of the Safety Appliance act—under that
it has been held that a railroad wholly within a State, not even
touching the boundary line, may be engaged in interstate traffic.
Then there was an example—let’s see—what was that?—it was a perfect
peach,” mused Jack, and the four dignitaries waited, regarding him
seriously. “Oh, yes—I know,” he flashed at them joyfully. “You’ll
remember this, of course, Judge Carroll. The Senate was monkeying
with the question—I mean to say, the question arose in the Senate.
Senator Bacon supposed a case—he said, take a purely local train from
Richmond to Alexandria. Clearly that train would not be engaged in
interstate commerce. A trainman injured must sue under the Virginia
law. Now suppose a man at Orange Court House puts on a box of cigars
consigned to Baltimore—does that immediately change the character of
the train? After that may a trainman injured sue under the United
States act? Senator Dolliver seemed to believe he could.”
With that there was a battle of the gods. Even Bradlee dropped his
spectator’s attitude and descended into the arena, for the point was
one which held a vital interest for each of the four, and the lad had
opened the ball with a dance of distinguished authorities. Moreover,
he had the literature of the question at his fingers’ ends, and his
shining spear, bright and new, flashed back and forth in the thick of
the fray so readily, so accurately, that no thought of difference in
age entered the minds of the older men any more than it did his own.
It was suggestive of certain remarks of Kipling’s calling attention
to the fact that
“There is neither East nor West nor border nor breed nor birth
When two strong men meet face to face, though they come from the
ends of the earth.”
So the four captains of industry, men at the very crest of
international careers, and the lad not yet at the beginning of his
career, bringing only his eager brain and hard-won young knowledge
and the tremendous impulse of his enthusiasm, debated together as
equals and gave and took pleasure and strength. And the boy soaked
in experience and ideas at every delighted pore, till at last the
lunch was over, and Jack, due at an engagement, had to leave before
the grandees, and stood up to say good-by. In his manly, boyish way
he expressed his appreciation of their help, and, as he towered above
them all in his young vigor and bright good looks, each one felt,
perhaps, that he had unconsciously given as much as he had gotten,
and that an impulse of generous new life had swept like a rushing
wind into the world-worn minds from his contact.
“I can’t begin to thank you, sir,” he said, his hand in his host’s,
and Bradlee’s arm across his shoulder half-caressingly. “I can’t
possibly tell you how I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been simply great. I—I’ve
never had such a bully time in my life,” he exploded, and the others
laughed quiet little laughs of older men, but their eyes were very
friendly as they looked at him.
“We shall be interested to hear if you win your case,” the mighty
autocrat Howell said. “Bradlee must let us know.”
“Send me a telegram, Jack,” ordered Bradlee.
“I sure will,” promised Jack heartily, “if you’d like it, sir,” and,
flushed and radiant and smiling, was gone.
About four o’clock the door in Jim Fletcher’s room up-town—where a
club of three law-students held their meetings for study, and where
the confrère from Cambridge was expected this afternoon to battle
with them over a special question—opened, and three bent heads lifted
from a table littered with papers and legal-looking volumes to regard
Jack Vance.
“Come in,” Fletcher threw at him. “You’re late. We’re half through.
What are you grinning about?”
Jack shut the door inside with an air of reserved electricity which
arrested the workers at the table. He came and stood over them and
they all stared up at him; there appeared to be something to wait for.
“Gee!” spoke Jack at last. “Guess whom I’ve been lunching with.”
Carl Harrison drew a law-book toward him. “Don’t care,” he stated
with disapproval. “Get to work, Jack; we’ve got a tough one on
to-day.” But Joe Lewis and Jim were interested.
“What’s up?” Joe asked. “Get it out of your system, Johnny. Who?”
Jack stuck a thumb in each waistcoat pocket and looked “chesty.”
“Oh,” he flung at them casually with his lips pursed and his eyes
dancing. “Nothing uncommon. I simply lunched at the Lawyers’ Club
down-town with four of me pals—Billion Bradlee—W. R. H., you know,
the railroad king, and Judge Carroll, of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, and the president of the I. S. I. & O. Z. D., Mr. Howell,
and Conway Fitzhugh, the Southern railway magnate—just us five,
that’s all. We had some business to talk over.”
And Jack, grinning consumedly, agitating his fingers from the thumb
fulcrums, posing his slim figure as near as might be to resemble a
bay-windowed alderman, grinned more and watched the effect.
“Come off,” responded Jim Fletcher.
“Stop your monkey-shines,” said Carl.
But Joe Lewis asked curiously: “What do you mean, Jack? Give us
straight dope.”
And with that Jack, chuckling very much, told the tale, to the wonder
and amusement and awe of the three lads. And then, with a dizzying
shift from boyishness to the stress of the battle of life, the shouts
of laughter and light-hearted chaffing stopped short, and the four
bent, grave and responsible, over the law-books, and the work of the
day went on.
And the days went on and the Harvard Law School and its events went
on, varying from mere recitations to trials in the moot courts, till
a Thursday came, three weeks after the luncheon at the Lawyers’ Club.
There was an important meeting that day in the impressive offices of
W. R. H. Bradlee. People had travelled from long distances to that
meeting; there was a man there from Texas, and Hugh Arkendale had
come from San Francisco on purpose, and Conway Fitzhugh had left his
home in New Orleans two days before for it. Bradlee, opening the
meeting, was making a short speech setting forth its purpose and
importance. He had just begun when a rap came at the door. Every one
looked up in astonishment; these men were as unaccustomed to being
interrupted in their councils as the gods of Olympus.
“Come,” thundered Bradlee in a terrible voice, and an alarmed clerk
slid hurriedly in and held out a telegram.
“Orders”—he murmured—“any message from”—and the name was a gurgle and
the clerk bolted.
Billion Bradlee flopped the paper open, and, as if a bar of
rollicking sunlight had broken into the dull atmosphere, his face lit
up, as he read it, with a smile, a most unfitting smile. His clear,
keen blue eyes flashed about the company a second, and then, like
a boy, quite unlike a great financier plying his mighty trade, he
tossed the yellow scrap to Fitzhugh.
“Good news,” he spoke—he was shaking a bit with inward laughter, it
seemed. “Read that, Conway.”
The bald-headed general counsel of four railways put on his glasses,
while the rest of the august company watched him and waited
curiously. With careful, deliberate enunciation, in a businesslike
tone and manner, the general counsel read aloud—a picked company
of the most important men in America listening—these somewhat
bewildering words:
* * * * *
“Landed my trout Scarlet Ibis top of the heap glory be won every
blamed thing sure am grateful to you and high mucky-mucks kindly pass
on thanks and accept most. J. C. Vance.”
There was a momentary astonishment on the face of Conway Fitzhugh as
he stared over the yellow paper at Bradlee; the varied expressions
of surprise on the dozen faces of the other men were a psychological
assortment; Fitzhugh suddenly arrived with a jostle of quick laughter.
“Oh—that boy!” he said, and handed the telegram back across the
table. “That delightful boy—I’m glad he won his case. Give him my
congratulations.”
“A youngster—a friend of mine—and of Fitzhugh’s—” Bradlee explained
vaguely to no one in particular, but the smile and the look of clean
pleasure were still there, and every one felt at once as if a draught
of sweet air had found its way into the room and had refreshed them.
“Now, gentlemen,” said W. R. H. Bradlee, “as I was saying—”
THE CAMPAIGN TROUT
THE CAMPAIGN TROUT
Josef and I were lifting our canoe into Lac Lumière from the Dammed
Little River when we saw paddles flash up the lake. The “_garçons_,”
Blanc and Zoëtique, the brace of younger guides, had been out to the
club for mail; as that happened only once in ten days we hustled.
I ought to mention that the Dammed Little River is not so named
entirely for love of blasphemy, but because it is little and is
dammed—it was over that dam that we lifted the canoe. I’ll grant you,
however, that it may add a tang to the harmless stream to call it by
the fierce name, and also it makes you feel pleasantly like a perfect
devil to swear that way without sin. Anyhow that’s where we were
that September afternoon, Josef and I, just back from a two days’
hunting-trip to Lac Sauvage country. I’d missed a moose, and I knew I
was going to get jeered when I got back to camp and told my brother
Walter, who never leaves much to reproach himself with when there’s
an opening for jeerings. But I might as well face the music; and
besides, there was the first mail for ten days a mile ahead between
two glints of sunlight coming and going—the paddles. So we hustled,
as aforesaid.
But Blanc and Zoëtique paddling the home-stretch are hard to beat,
and they had landed minutes before we got there, and were making
oration with Walter on the porch. He detached himself with difficulty
to greet me.
“Hello, Bob,” he threw at me, and “_Bon jour_, Josef. Glad to see
you. Any luck? Wait a moment and I’ll talk to you.”
I sat myself on a bench and stretched my hunting-boots over the
landscape and waited per order. It’s good for the soul to hear Walter
talk French. He was enthroned in the one store chair, a red rocker,
in the middle of the big camp porch, and I’ll tell how he looked, for
local color’s sake. He’s a lot older than I to begin with—over forty,
while I’m only at Yale—and they made him a judge the minute he cut
his teeth—the youngest in the State. He sat there appearing pretty
prosperous, with his nice beefy color, and his dark-gray clothes, and
his dark-gray hair, for his honors have gone to the outside of his
head only. He’s a trifle too embonpointish around the hips, but great
men often have a rush of dignity to the waist-line, I notice. The
light splashed on his spectacles so that they were all you could see
of his eyes, but the glasses seemed full of earnestness, and there
was a deep line in the middle of his forehead which comes when he’s
most awfully serious. He was this time. I’d have bet on it, when I
saw his pipe sitting on his knee like an interrogation-point upside
down.
Before him stood Zoëtique and Blanc, dressed in odds and ends;
trousers under their armpits, multiple suspenders, slouch hats,
a red bandanna, an axe in Zoëtique’s belt, and a caribou-skin
knife-sheath with buckskin fringe in Blanc’s. Rummage-sale effects.
For all that Zoëtique’s got a figure which any athlete might envy,
deep-shouldered, small-waisted, musclely—and Blanc moves like a
greyhound, all steel springs and lightness. They stood respectfully
in front of the red rocking-chair, and behind them two miles of lake
stretched from the camp porch to the everlasting hills. In musical,
incorrect French, with the nice polite manner all these _habitants_
have, Zoëtique was getting to the end of a story, as I gathered,
about a fish. That made it clear why Walter’s soul-depths were
bubbling and he couldn’t pay attention to me. He’s keen for fishing.
He’d rather fish than be President—rather than shoot the biggest bull
moose on record. He had the package of letters in his hands, the
first in ten days; around him were piled rolls of newspapers, and he
hadn’t heard a new in all that time—but nothing mattered. Nothing but
Zoëtique’s fish-story.
When Zoëtique’s crisp, rippling sort of low voice stopped, Walter
leaned forward and got ready with anxious care to talk. To talk
French was a necessity, for the men didn’t understand English, and
I could see him working his intellect. He usually helps himself to
the French dictionary and kicks it, and calls that conversation, but
this was different. This was about a fish—it was important to be
understood.
“_Si je comprenne_, Zoëtique. _Comme celà. Vous l’avez view sortir à
le Remous Doré, yune gros poison—gros grosse—vous disons celà?_”
I yelped a short yelp. The guides canvassed the sentence with perfect
gravity. I could see them guessing. “View” they recognized as
“_vu_,” I was sure; and “yune poison,” was a fish, “_un poisson_”;
these transformations they’d run up against before. But “_sortir_”
stumped them a minute. They looked at each other trying to remember
if they’d seen a big fish go out—_sortir_. Then Blanc got it—it was
“jump”—“_sauter_.”
“But, yes, M’sieur, it is true that one saw a big fish jump—at the
Golden Pool—as one passed. A very big one—_b’en gros_—_gros de
même_”—and the knotty hands of Blanc measured a hearty three feet.
“Great Scott!” gasped Walter excitedly, taking it all verbatim as he
does a fish-story. “Holy Moses! it’s a six-pounder, at least!”
And with that the French language was batted through a game. A
Parisian would have sobbed. But Walter got his questions out of his
system, and I pulled him from one or two sad holes by the boots.
And then the _garçons_ raconté-d over again for me how they had
been passing the Golden Pool—the _Remous Doré_—on their way up from
the club with the mail and provisions, and had been brought to a
dead stop by an enormous splash in the water. Zoëtique specified
that it was “_épouvantable_,” and Blanc, with gestures of hands and
shoulders, told how he was so scared blue that he spilled into a
two-foot hole, and the pack slid off him. Then the trout came up
again, and concerning that appearance they gave measurements. They
had him half the length of a canoe, and ten pounds heavy, by egging
each other on a little, and Walter didn’t doubt a syllable; he didn’t
want to.
“_Je vous dites ce que nous faisait_,” he addressed them
enthusiastically.
Then he arranged, with further language, that the three, he and Blanc
and Zoëtique, should go down to the Golden Pool the next afternoon
and collar that fish. Then he let the men loose, and they dissolved
into the woods toward their own camp, and Walter glared at me
joyfully through his goggles.
“Bob, it’s a sockdologer; it’s the one that nibbled at my fly two
weeks ago, and I couldn’t get him on. But it was hot, then, and low
water, and lots of flies for the fish to fill up on. Now it’s cold,
and they’re gathering in the deep holes, and the flies are frozen
out—I’ll get him.”
“Please the pigs, you will,” agreed I. “Sounds like an old he-one,
doesn’t it? And Zoëtique never does lie as well as the rest. Give me
my letters, won’t you?” and with that he came to.
“Well, Bobby, I haven’t heard about your trip. Did you have a good
time? How was the water on _Lac à l’Isles_? Have the beaver raised
it? And did you see anything? Get a shot?”
My time was come, so I unbosomed my sorrow, and Walter was decent
at first and said we all knew what it was to miss, and likely the
sights of my rifle were wrong, as Josef suggested, and shooting from
a canoe was hell anyhow, and these Frenchmen couldn’t hold a boat
still—and all such things. When you shoot crooked there are just so
many excuses from which your friends will choose comfort to offer
up to you, and you knew beforehand which. But the feeling left is
the same. If you’ve missed, you’ve missed, and nothing alters that
fundamental grief and the yearning for blood and one more shot, which
remains. And conversely, if you’ve hit you don’t give a button how
easy the shot was, or how many times you pumped your gun to do it.
There’s a profound peace in the pit of your being that religion is
powerless to bestow.
So as Walter ran over the reasons why I couldn’t possibly have hit I
appreciated his courtesy, and rejoiced to be let off, but I was sore
all the same. Besides, there was a gleam behind the spectacles which
gave me a good hunch that I wouldn’t be let off forever. A moose—to
miss an old bull moose the size of a barn! I couldn’t forgive myself,
whatever Walter said, and even if the rifle was gone queer, which it
was. I’ll mention in passing that not long after I killed one bigger
than the first, but that’s quite another story. I told about my trip,
and began on my letters, and Walter took to the newspapers. I heard
him laughing in a few minutes, and I looked at him.
“What’s up?”
He glanced at me over a paper, grinning sheepishly. “They’re talking
about me for governor.”
“Hey!” I hurled at him, for I was surprised. “You!” And I got up and
kicked before him a little. “You! Hooray! Glory has come upon us. And
me associating with you just as free—!” Then I sat down. “Tell me
what it says,” said I.
Walter read some paragraphs from different papers, and it sure did
appear like a promising young boom.
“Why, look here, Walter,” I gasped. “What’s the likes of you doing in
the wilderness? Oughtn’t you to be down there fussing? Why don’t you
beat it for the settlements to-morrow—oughtn’t we to go home?”
But Walter frowned evilly. “Go home? Not much. I’m going to take that
fish at the Golden Pool to-morrow,” he snapped at me. “Besides, if
they need me they’ll let me know. Whatever happens, I mean to get my
fish to-morrow.”
Then I addressed him. “That’s too ridiklis,” said I. “An afternoon’s
fishing—and us candidates for governor! Why, you make me laugh. I’m
in charge of you, my good man—”
“Oh, are you?” he inquired sarcastically.
“I am that. See?” So I punched him about a bit till he yelled for
mercy. I can handle him since he got his embonpoint. I’m in training,
and he isn’t.
“Don’t—don’t,” he howled; and then, as I slowed down, “I do dislike
physical demonstration,” said Walter. And I gave him a dig that
rounded his sentence up with a squeal.
“That’s all,” I stated. “Just wanted to put you in your place. Am I
in charge?”
“Yes, yes—leave me alone, Bob,” he threw at me hurriedly, and just at
that second I happened to look out at the lake.
I stood petrified. There was a canoe on it. Now our own guides
and canoes were all in camp, and we’re away beyond everybody’s
passing. Nobody comes to Lac Lumière unless they come to see us. Who
under heaven could be coming to see us? It was five-thirty in the
afternoon, and nobody from another camp would arrive at that hour,
for it would be too late to get back anywhere. One doesn’t walk
portages after dark in Canada. So I was petrified. It was a canoe all
right, however, and the paddles were flashing fast; it would be at
our dock in five minutes.
“What the devil does that mean?” Walter growled, and I lit into the
camp and brought out my telescope, and in half a minute it was on the
canoe.
“Two guides—don’t know ’em,” I reported. And then I shrieked in
agony, “For cat’s sake—for cat’s sake!”
Walter got excited. “Who is it—what is it?” he threw at me.
“That’s what I say,” answered I. “Who is it? what is it? It’s, a,
straw, hat!”
“A straw hat?” Walter repeated, dazed-like.
For, you see, nature may abhor a vacuum, but I’m willing to bet she
doesn’t abhor it a patch on the way she does a stiff hat. And there
it sat in the middle of nature, the lake gurgling around; dingy,
regulation guides dipping paddles bow and stern; outraged mountains
rising up green and sanctified at the horizon; and, in the centre of
the stage, a shiny straw hat. It was too much. I dropped the glass
and doubled with too-muchness. And Walter glued an eye to the lookout.
“It’s a straw hat,” he admitted, and reserved judgment, and went
down to the dock, me following in all maidenly modesty.