wh-whale,” he blew out with difficulty, and at the picture the words
recalled, the three youngsters laid hold on each other, and sagged
together in laughter. I thought the tale was ended.
“You’re all crazy in the head,” Bob remarked tersely. “But take your
time and enjoy yourselves.”
“Me for brevity,” Buck then proclaimed, with dignity. “You see, it
was this way, Mrs. Morgan. Bob broke for cover when he heard his
friends coming—his _friends_, you see, I regret to state, whom he’d
urged to visit him and—”
“Instead of which he puts on ladies’ clothes and runs,” Hal Harriman
broke out. “We don’t know yet why he wears ladies’ clothes. Does he
prefer them?”
“Bobby, wh-why?” Donnie breathed at him. “We d-didn’t have t-time to
ask him up there, M-Mrs. M-Morgan.”
“Time! Gosh! I _beg_ your pardon, Mrs. Morgan!”
“I don’t mind slang a bit,” I reassured the genius. “But I do want to
know what happened.”
The genius had the floor. “You see, Mrs. Morgan, when we came out of
the portage he was right there; he had only just heard us because
of the noise of the rapids.” So far Mr. Harriman’s speech was of
irreproachable formality, but with that the rush of the tale caught
him. “So there the sad old goat was lepping from rock to rock in his
kilties, like a Sabine maiden escaping from her lovers. But such
lepps no maiden ever put up, Sabine or otherwise; he looked like
he had a hundred legs and all of ’em—excuse me, Mrs. Morgan, _beg_
pardon—I should say that when we emerged from the woods and when Bob
became aware of us—Oh, holy cats!” The English as she is wrote left
the boy again. “Oh, gee! He lepp one too many and slid on a rock and
rolled down clawing and scraping. Did you scrape, Bobby?”
“Did I?” murmured Bob, and patted his anatomy.
“He went into the p-pool with a waterspout, and I’m afr-fr-fraid he
got wet,” Donnie put in. “Then he l-landed.”
“He didn’t; you’ve skipped the best,” Buck interrupted. “He _tried_
to land and to rise like Venus from the waves—sort of, don’t you
know, Mrs. Morgan. And we, being naturally irritated, chastised him
with rocks. Not many, Mrs. Morgan; just a few soft little ones to
remind him that he ought to be glad to see us. Remember we threw
rocks at you, Bobby?”
“Rocks! Gosh! Look at my shins!” responded Bob mournfully.
“Anyway,” Buck went on, “then he landed, us pelting him with mud, at
that time—gobboons of mud. Where he landed there was a pile of sticks
and stuff—”
“Old _chaussée de castor_, beaver dam,” Bob hastened to explain
learnedly.
“All right—have it that way. It was the moth-eatenest rat-trap I ever
met. Bob turned a handspring and crouched behind it, and grabbed a
long, varnished pole out of the mess.”
“Varnished!” snapped Bob scornfully. “That was a beaver pole and
they’d chewed the bark off.”
“My son, that’s not the point—ain’t it?” reasoned Buck with dignity.
“You grabbed the pole and we charged you over the rocks—pointed,
slippery rocks, Mrs. Morgan. And as we got near enough our host—our
_host_!” with telling emphasis—“poked us off those rocks with that
pole. It takes only a small poke, Mrs. Morgan, to knock a man at a
crucial moment off a little rock that’s slippery. We got some of
our feet wet that way,” he reflected, glancing down. “Donnie fixed
him,” he went on. “Didn’t you, Donnie, you idiot?” And he patted the
stammerer affectionately.
“I d-did,” Donnie acknowledged, modest but firm.
The account went on.
“You wouldn’t notice it, Mrs. Morgan, but Donnie’s got a brain, and
sometimes he works it. He did this time. He withdrew and nobody
missed him, being such as he is, and he ran down the portage and
found another crossing and got over and doubled up the river. He came
behind Bob and Bob didn’t notice because of the battle, but we saw
him coming and we kept Bobby in play till he got close, and then—”
“And th-then I th-threw my arms around him and c-clasped him to my
heart b-backward,” Donnie cut in. “F-fellows, d-didn’t he yell when
he f-felt me?”
Again the three rolled on each other, while Bob threw sand at them,
and grinned.
The tale proceeded.
“They went over together, cracking that old dam effect—if that’s what
it calls itself—into a million stars.”
“I s-saw the s-stars,” Donnie indorsed.
“And Bobby was taken at last and had to shake hands with his guests.”
“Had to?” objected Bob politely. “Delighted to see you.”
At that there was a roar in the big, deep, fresh young voices, and at
the end Donnie’s slow tones, which were yet never ignored, put in.
“We thought it was so g-good of B-Bobby to ask us all up here to have
a nice time in a q-quiet way. He said it would be q-quiet, but he
could promise us a hearty w-welcome. He s-said he wanted to see us so
m-much.”
“So he jabs us into the river with a pole!”
“Frostiest reception I ever got.”
And other comments.
* * * * *
We had a week with the lads. Buck killed a caribou, and Hal Harriman
missed one, and Donnie took a five-and-a-half-pound trout. Some of
them got ducks and partridges; and all had general good fishing;
there were long, rough tramps to remember, and trips to unknown
lakes; there was much swimming, but always with care for the clothes
to be worn later. The great god Pan did not again pose as a half-done
Venus. I could not tell which boy I liked best, but in Walter’s case
there was an intimacy with Donnie. It began over photography, when
Walter took the youngster into his room one day to show him films and
prints made in the woods. We heard sounds of laughter and Donnie’s
slow tones urging something, but while we were in camp the secret of
the interview was not divulged. It came out a month later in a letter
from New Haven.
* * * * *
“DEAR MARGARET: I’ll get even with Walter some time if it takes a
leg. What do you suppose he let me in for? Listen to this, if you
please, and learn what a beast you’ve carelessly married. You know
that day he and Donnie were chuckling and whispering in camp and
wouldn’t let us in, and had the films out? Well, I know now what they
were up to—do I know? Gosh!
“The running for the fraternities began yesterday. You see, before a
fellow is taken into a society he has to spend a week running around
and doing exactly what the upper classmen of that society tell him,
no matter how crazy it is. Buck and Donnie, for instance, had to go
into Huyler’s, dressed in weird clothes, and propose simultaneously
to the candy girl, and both had to burst into tears when she refused
them. That’s just a sample.
“Well, two days ago I got a hint that I’d better appear in Billy
Brent’s room—Donnie’s older brother, you know, a junior. So up I
went, grinning but shivering. There was a bunch of juniors there, and
I saw by their joyful faces that I was going to get mine strong.
“I didn’t make any mistake. I was handed two packages and told that
they were photographs, and I was to go from room to room and peddle
them earnestly for five cents apiece. I was to say to each fellow
that they were pictures of Yale’s favorite son in his two favorite
costumes, and I was to plead and insist importunately and use every
effort of every sort to make the fellows buy one at least, and five
if possible, without consideration of personal pride. I supposed they
were of the president, don’t you know, or some big bug, and I thought
I was getting off rather easy. I grabbed the packages—there were
about two hundred in the two—and then Billy Brent said:
“‘You’d better look at your wares, Morgan, so you can sell ’em with
more enthusiasm.’
“I looked. They were me, both of ’em—me as the great god Pan—you’ve
seen it—a sylvan life study—in the earliest known costume, gleaming
by glimpses through sheltering foliage—and thank the cats for the
foliage! With that whittled tootling machine in a pose at my mouth—a
hundred of that! Also me as a Sabine maiden in your darned gray
corduroy petticoat, fishing. I didn’t ever know that had been taken.
It seems Walter snapped it up the river, at the very moment the
fellows came around the bend, and just before I took to the woods.
Likely you’ve seen it.
“Walter gave both the films to Donnie and he passed them on to Billy
with the suggestion.
“So I started on my weary way, and knocked at door after door of
the ‘Hutch,’ and all around the street, and was treated first as a
white man, and then as I went on begging and insisting importunately,
as was my duty, to get twenty-five cents out of each fellow—why,
of course, they turned on me and kicked me out in time. Everybody
bought one—that was easy fruit, but it was harder than the dickens
to squeeze out the other twenty cents—I couldn’t do it but a few
times. Al Nelson took a dozen for dinner cards and that helped—though
humiliating. But I’ve still got seventy-five on my hands, and after I
go over to Commons in a few minutes from now, and feed my face, I’ve
got to start out and beg and insist importunately some more. It’s a
cruel and unusual punishment, and you watch me get even with Walter
when I get home. You might as well mention to him that if I live and
keep my health I’ve got a hunch he’d better cheer up, for the worst
is yet to come.
With love to yourself,
BOB.”
THE WHISTLING OF ZOËTIQUE
THE WHISTLING OF ZOËTIQUE
As when a child shakes a kaleidoscope the bits of colored glass shift
from one distinct pattern into another, so when I think of the events
which came of Zoëtique Vézina’s gift of whistling, the little story
falls into two or three sharply defined pictures, so different from
each other, so linked, so filled with life, that, simple as it is,
the tale appears to me dramatic enough to tell exactly as it happened.
It is a far cry from the moonlit stillness of an August night on a
Canadian lake—a dark amphitheatre of hills guarding the sky-line, a
road of light across the water, canoes floating black on silver—from
that to the crowded glare of a New York theatre. Yet the span of life
reaches easily across such distances, and the stage-settings of the
play I am to tell were such. It was the last night of a fortnight’s
visit to the Morgans’ camp, and they, as well as I, were going back
to civilization next day. There was a ceremony to be celebrated
which had become a custom of last nights, they explained to me—the
guides gave a concert. It was always clear and always moonlight on a
last night in camp—by law, young Bob Morgan gave me to understand.
In any case, it was invariable, and here was this cloudless, bright
evening to back up his assertion. There were two methods of giving
the concert: either the _messieurs_, which included Mrs. Morgan,
stayed in camp and the men paddled about at a picturesque distance,
and serenaded them from boats; or else the messieurs went out in the
canoes and the guides “howled from the underbrush,” as Bob put it.
To-night, the air was so warm and the wet moonlight lay in such thick
splashes over the water that no one wanted to stay on land. It gave a
man a greedy feeling that he must get “_au large_” and loot jewelry
and broken gold out of the night. So the canvas canoes slid from the
quay with musical wooden and liquid noises, and off we drifted, two
and two, into the perspective of a dream.
There were six of us, with the two strangers. Fishing down a deep
bay of Lac Lumière that afternoon, Walter Morgan and I had dropped
suddenly, around a corner, on a camp—two tents, two _messieurs_, four
guides.
“The devil!” said Morgan, and I, though it was not my business to do
the swearing, repeated the words.
It is the theory when one gets into camp that one has discovered an
earth without inhabitants, and proof to the contrary is accounted
a rudeness. We wished not to know that people lived, and it was
immaterial and irrelevant—what Bob Morgan would sum up as “fresh”—of
these unknown ones to thrust knowledge upon us. All the same, there
were tents, guides, and an unmistakable _monsieur_ in aggressive
sporting clothes on the shore, and, within ten feet of our boat’s
nose, another boat with a bored-looking Montagnais Indian paddling
it, and in the bow a man with a rod whose first cast explained the
Indian’s expression. A fisherman does not catalogue when he sees
another man cast, but he knows the details, and he knows their
summary—a greenhorn or an expert. Morgan was a crack, and I had
studied under him, and before his slow “Good-day” greeted the
stranger we were both aware that the rod weighed at least nine
ounces, that the leader was too light for it, that a Yellow Sally for
a hand-fly and a Scarlet Ibis for the tail were flies that, in this
light, made a blot on a man’s character; that the man was casting
from his neck down, and getting the flies in a mess as might be
expected; that the thirty feet of line out was all and more than all
that he could handle; and that, last and worst, the person who would
fish for trout in that spot, at a little outlet, where the water
was shallow and warm, in the month of August, was, as a fisherman,
beneath contempt. I could hear Walter Morgan’s opinion of the person
in that “Good day” when it came.
But I was to see his manner change. The stranger, his back toward us,
at my friend’s voice arrested his line half-way through a convulsive
recover, and the three flies fell in a heap about his shoulders—one
caught in his brand-new corduroy hat, and the hook of another went
into his thumb. He whirled about his brilliant tan-leather clad
shoulders with a lurch which missed upsetting the boat, Montagnard
and all, but neither episode disturbed him.
“Good day,” he returned cordially, with a smile which at once made a
difference about an uninhabited earth. He went on quickly. “Am I in
your way? I’m a greenhorn, and I don’t know other people’s rights,
but I mean well. I’ve never had such fun in all my life,” he confided
in us with a rush, like a small boy having too good a time to keep to
himself. “I’ve never fished before, and it’s the greatest thing in
the world. I caught a trout a while ago. Do I do it all right?” he
inquired wistfully. “I wish you’d tell me if anything’s wrong.”
A Roman candle exploded inside of Morgan could not have left him
more scattered. The outcome was that we landed in a spirit of eager
friendliness and partook of other spirits with this attractive
débutant and his partner, who seemed a person of equal ignorance and
equal, though quieter, enthusiasm. That this latter was a well-known
playwright we made out shortly, and there was at once a free exchange
of names among us, but our first acquaintance we did not then place.
However, it took no time at all to see that two such whole-hearted
babes in the woods had probably never before arrived, as such, at
the approximate age of fifty. They were wax in the hands of their
guides, and their guides were “doing” them without remorse. Morgan,
pleased with the virgin soil, began gardening; he sowed seeds of
woodcraft and of fishcraft which took root before his eyes, and,
charmed with the business, he invited the two to dinner that night.
That we were breaking camp next day, while they were just beginning
their trip, was a point of genuine regret on both sides.
We hurried back to our log castle to see that pea soup and partridges
and flapjacks and other delicacies were assured in force for
the meal to come, and in an hour or two the meal did come, and
I cannot recollect a gayer function. As with the San Francisco
earthquake, there was not a dull moment from start to finish, and
again and again I saw Morgan look at his wife triumphantly with the
“Trust-me-to-bring-home-pleasant-people” expression of a man who has
sometimes been less fortunate.
The dining-room was a moss-covered point; the water rippled about two
sides of it, forest made its other walls, and a roof of birch bark
its ceiling. This greenwood hall rang with laughter spontaneous as
children’s, till the silver lake gleamed leaden through tree trunks,
and purple hills turned black, and a rim of round moon rose into the
twilight, big, over the shoulder of the lowest mountain. Then Godin,
head guide and butler, lighted his _lumières électriques_—his candles
arranged as a chandelier—and by their swinging light we finished
a feast of the gods with maple sirup and delicate “mushi frite,”
while the French-Canadian guides sat grouped in Rembrandt lights and
shadows about the kitchen fire and laughed, too, to hear the peals
which, at everything and nothing, rang across the lake to the lonely
hills. Certainly in entertaining these strangers we had entertained
angels unawares—angels of light-heartedness—for our sides ached when
we slid from the board benches that were dining chairs and went down
where the canoes lay beached, where guides evolved out of shadow to
slip the boats into the water, to hold them steady, to direct our
stumbling with deferential French syllables, as we embarked.
Two hundred yards down the lake, the “camp of the _messieurs_”
stretched its log front of sixty feet. The lamplight shone ruddily
through windows red-curtained, the door from the broad gallery stood
open, the bare low room, as we entered, had the qualities which
make a place attractive—space, brightness, order, and comfort. Many
a time in a New York drawing-room I have thought of the charm of
that big camp with its silver-brown bark of walls and ceiling, its
scarlet cotton curtains, its rough floor, and rustic furniture; I
have remembered how it breathed hospitality and the joy of life, and
I have wondered what people wanted of more. Into this room we went,
the three Morgans and Dr. Davidge and Mr. Esmond and I. Pipes and
cigars were going in a moment, and soon young Bob was sent to find
out the plans for the concert. He came back kicking his boyish long
legs ecstatically. “It’s going to be a peach,” he announced. “Dr.
Davidge’s guides sing, all four of them, and Henri, the old fellow,
has a mouth-organ, and Zoëtique is going to whistle. It’ll be the
pickles all right.”
“I didn’t know Zoëtique whistled,” said Walter Morgan. “I never heard
him.”
Nor had I, but Bob hastened to enlighten us. “I have,” he said, “and
it’s a wonder. Never heard anything like it. Godin says he’s the
best whistler in Saint Raymond, and they always make him do it for
parties, as a side show. Wait till you hear him—I’ll bet you’ll like
it.”
Mr. Esmond looked up. “Really good whistling is rare,” he said, and
then added as if to himself, “but of course this isn’t that sort.”
“How are they to arrange, Bob?” asked his sister. “Are they going out
on the lake, or shall we?”
“Oh, they said just as the _messieurs_ wished; so I settled it,”
Bob answered in a lordly way. “It was such a whooping good night, I
thought it would be the stunt to go out ourselves, and bum around in
the canoes.”
So it was that in half an hour we drifted down the shore toward the
point where the blaze from the guides’ camp shone and disappeared by
glimpses, a star of orange fire in the trees above, an orange bar of
fire in the water below. The men’s voices in excited conversation,
as conversation is always with French Canadians, floated out to us;
we caught words which showed the forest road of their thoughts—such
words as “_caribou_,” and “_carabine_,” and “_gros poisson de cinq
livres_,” and “_un m’sieur qui tire b’en_,” and there would be a hush
while one deep voice told a story and then all together would break
out in an abandonment of laughter. Suddenly some one, going outside
the range of firelight, caught sight of the fleet on the lake, and
there was a quick word—“_les messieurs_” and “_les canots_”—and then
a silence.
Walter Morgan called from invisibility. “Godin,” he called—Godin was
head guide.
“_Oui, M’sieur_,” came back with respectful good-will from among
the trees. I listened closely now, for it is a pity to lose any of
Morgan’s French.
“_Est-ce que vous êtes mangé_?” he demanded cheerfully, and Bob gave
a snort—Bob knows French.
But Godin knew better than that—he knew his _m’sieur_ and what he
meant. “_Mais oui, M’sieur, on a fini de dîner_,” he responded
promptly, shifting the sentence graciously.
“_Êtes-vous preparry pour nous donner un concert?_” Morgan went
on, not bothering particularly to pronounce according to French
models—“concert,” especially, being done in honest English.
There was an embarrassed ripple from among the trees—the strange
guides believed that _M’sieur_ was making a joke, and that it was
civil to encourage him. But Godin understood.
“_Oui, M’sieur_,” his polite tones came back. “One will sing a song
or two with pleasure, if the _messieurs_ desire it.”
There was an undertone of talking back and forth, as we waited, and
a little self-conscious laughing, a little chaffing evidently, and
then a tremendous clearing of throats and trying of keys up and down
the scale. A second’s silence and a voice which we of the camp knew
for Blanc’s swung out over the water, musical, for all its occasional
sharpness. It was one of the old _voyageur_ songs he sang, filled
with the sadness which the gay souls seemed to crave in their music.
C’est longtemps que j’ai t’aimé,
Jamais je ne t’oublierais.
The refrain came over and over through so many verses that I wished
some one would choke Blanc and let the concert go on. Yet it was far
from painful to lie in a canoe, with young Bob wielding a skilful
paddle for my benefit, and listen to soft French words sprinkled over
a sapphire night—on the whole, let Blanc pursue the subject through
ten more stanzas if he must.
He came to an end; there was great hand-clapping from the floating
audience; then from the hidden performers more earnest undertones of
discussion as to the next number. We waited, smiling to ourselves,
and soon the notes of old Henri’s mouth-organ sounded from the grove
of spruce trees. I suppose a mouth-organ is not a high form of
instrument, but I am glad that I am not too musical to have found it
pretty that night. I had a vision, too, in my mind, of the grizzled,
labor-worn face, and the knotted hands which held the cheap toy, and
a thought came to me of a narrow life which had known little but hard
work, to which this common music meant operas and oratorios. It was
nice music, too—old Henri had a soul, and he put it heartily into
his mouth-organ. We clapped that number and encored it, and the man
played the second tune with a vim that showed pleasure. And while
arrangements were making for the next event I heard Esmond talking in
his canoe to Mrs. Morgan.
“It’s too charming for words,” he said. “I’ve never known anything at
all like it. The old-world simplicity—the quaintness—the good-will
and earnestness of it. I didn’t know such people existed outside of
books. Why, if you could get this atmosphere on a stage—”
With that a preliminary silence and the clearing of a throat warned
us that the performance was about to continue. A young voice rang out
over the water with manly vigor and pleasant distinctness—one caught
every word:
C’était le vingt-cinq de juillet
Lorsque je me suis engagé
Pour monter dans la rivière
Qu’on appelle la rivière enragé.
On a monté dans la rivièr-e
En canot dans la Gatineau;
Plus souvent les pieds à ter-re,
Avec la charge de sur le dos.
The _chanson_ went on to tell in not too artistic rhymes the story of
a logger on the River Gatineau. The words were a bit bald in spots,
yet they bubbled with picturesqueness—the rhymer had told what he
knew, and that had kept the song simple and strong. But the words
were beside the question. Far from an accomplished musician, I yet
knew in a few bars that the air was out of the common, and probably
very old. I knew that many of the songs of the _habitants_ came with
their ancestors from France, a hundred, three hundred years ago, and
this one had an ancient ring.
The song ended—it was rather long—there was a second’s pause, and
then a frank, manly voice, the voice of the singer, spoke from the
stage of the spruce grove.
“_Excusez-la_,” said the voice.
It was prettier than I can describe. What was implied was so plain
and so graceful—and only a Frenchman could have said it without
self-consciousness. “What I have done is poor, but it is all I can
do. I hope you will let it please you. It is my best, excuse it,” the
two gracious words asked from us.
I looked at Mr. Esmond—he seemed petrified—he could not even clap,
as the rest of us did. “I never knew anything like it,” I heard him
murmur.