Zoëtique, whistle it—_sifflez-le, sifflez_,” he called, and added an
explanatory word to us. “It’s twice as good when he whistles; it’s a
decent tune sung, but wait till you hear him whistle—it’s a peach.”
Presently the whistle came.
I think there is not any other whistling like that in the
world—certainly I have never heard any, and many people who should
know have said the same. The canoes lay motionless, the people in
them hardly breathed, and out from the spruces, over the track of
the moon, floated to us the sweetest sound I have ever heard made
by a human being. Birds on a dewy morning throw out notes as clear
and silvery, but bird-notes are weak and are haphazard. These came
freighted with the vigor of a man, with the thought of humanity;
there was in them the gladness of youth, a rapture of artistic
fulfilment; and, beyond what any words can say, there was in them
a personality impossible to say—a personality cramped into a
narrow life which spread its wings unashamed in these sounds of
loveliness. He whistled the air that he had sung, the old French air
of unexpected harmonies, and it was as if a magic flute repeated the
logger song of the “River Gatineau, which one called the raging river
in the springtime.”
He stopped, and out of the dark hill beyond us floated an echo like
the ghost of a flute of long ago.
There was deep stillness for a second, and Zoëtique’s unconcerned,
clear voice broke it.
“_Excusez-la_” he said.
For a moment we were too stirred to join Bob’s energetic hand
clapping. “Don’t you like it?” the youngster demanded. “I think it’s
great. For cat’s sake, why don’t you encourage the lad?”
And, so adjured, we broke into as great a storm of applause as six
people can manage, and, after, we discussed the sensation of the
evening from boat to boat while the performers arranged further
their hand-to-mouth programme. The concert went on; there were
choruses, charming to listen to, in the ten men’s voices, all sweet
with the musical sense of these people; there were separate solos,
“_A l’école du Roi_,” “_Au clair de la lune_,” “_Alouette, gentille
alouette_,” and others characteristically _voyageur_ and _habitant_;
and old Henri was made to play again on his mouth-organ. But the hero
of the concert was the whistler, and three times more he was called
before the curtain—which is to say that three times more from out of
the mysterious darkness of the trees the flute notes flooded full
down the moon-path and thrilled the misty air about us. And each
time, at the end came Zoëtique’s unconscious, honest little speech of
two words:
“_Excusez-là._”
It was only Mr. Esmond, I remarked, who did not discuss the whistling
as we paddled back to “the camp of the _messieurs_,” where the
lamplight through the scarlet-curtained windows of the long front
sent out a comfortable glow to welcome us. It seemed to me that
Esmond was strangely silent for a man as talkative as he had
shown himself. Even Mrs. Morgan could not make him express enthusiasm
as to the hit of the evening.
“I’m afraid you didn’t like our whistling gentleman as much as we
did,” she complained at last, as I helped her out of the canoe.
“Mrs. Morgan,” Esmond answered quickly, in his decisive, impressive
manner, “I liked it far more than anybody, because, from my peculiar
position, I am able to appreciate its value better and to see more
possibility in it than any one here. I am going to prove that to
you.” The moment we were inside the camp Esmond turned to his host.
“I don’t want to impose on your hospitality, and I won’t make any
move without your consent, but I’d like to explain to you who I am
and what I want to do.”
Everybody looked surprised, and conversation stopped. “Yes,” Morgan
answered tentatively.
“Perhaps you know my name, if you’re theatre-goers,” the stranger
went on. “I’m Charles Esmond, the theatrical manager, and I have
quite a lot of stock companies and theatres more or less under my
control. Looking out for new stars isn’t my business nowadays, but
it used to be, and I haven’t lost my scent for a good thing, and
the minute I heard that boy whistle I knew he was a good thing. He
does what is called double-tongue whistling, and that in itself
is not common. But that is only incidental—it’s the quality of his
performance that is extraordinary. I have heard the best people that
are known at the business—it’s a limited business—and I’ve never
heard any one who touches this guide of yours. Take that young fellow
and put him on the stage and he’d make a hit for us, and for himself
he’d make what would seem a big fortune in little or no time. I’d
like to talk to him—now—to-night. May I?”
Impetuosity is peculiarly winning when it is backed by knowledge,
and Morgan laughed and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder.
“Surely,” he said. “It’s interesting to run into an adventure up here
in the wilderness. The boy is a good guide and I like him, yet I
would not stand in the way of making his fortune for anything. Bob—”
But Master Bob’s long legs were already chasing each other out of the
low doorway in a rush after Zoëtique. In three minutes he was back
with the man in tow.
Zoëtique Vézina was perhaps twenty-two years old, a stocky,
well-built chap of five feet ten or so, with deep, powerful shoulders
and a small waist and a body that moved with the grace of efficient
muscles. His face was roughly carved and of his class, but he
held his head with an air that had pride and sensitiveness both
in it, and when he spoke and smiled the commonplace modelling of
his features lighted with a gentleness and a spirit which made you
understand his whistling. There was character and shading back of
this ordinary-looking block of humanity. He wore blackened _bottes
sauvages_ of caribou leather, laced with thongs of hide through
huge brass eyelets; his trousers looked as if they might have been
somebody’s dinner clothes five years before—somebody not particularly
his shape; his coarse red and blue striped sweater was belted with
a broad band of black leather around a waist as trim as a girl’s.
He pulled a nondescript felt hat from a shock head of dark hair as
he entered, and his blue eyes gazed about half startled and half
friendly.
We sat and listened as if at a play, while Charles Esmond, the great
theatrical manager, conspicuous on two continents, interviewed this
unknown backwoodsman. He did it in fluent French, with his own charm
of manner, but it took some time to make Zoëtique understand what he
was offering, and when he did understand, to our astonishment he did
not respond. Esmond mentioned a salary to begin with so large that
I gasped, and to the guide, accustomed to two dollars a day in good
times, it must have seemed fabulous. Morgan voiced my thought when he
put in a quiet, reassuring word.
“The _m’sieur_ will do what he says, Zoëtique. I know all about the
_m’sieur_, and he is to be relied on.”
“_Merci, m’sieur_,” the man answered with ready French politeness,
but his expression did not change.
His bright, light-blue eyes simply lifted a second to smile at
Walter, and dropped to the floor again. All of us waited as he stared
at one knot-hole—a minute, two minutes, three minutes we waited in
silence while Zoëtique considered that knot-hole.
At last, “I don’t want to hurry you,” Esmond said, “yet I would like
to know by to-morrow. It’s the chance of your life, you understand.
You couldn’t make as much money here in forty years as you could make
in a winter or two in New York. I do not see why you should hesitate
five minutes. But think it over—talk it over with your friends. I
will wait till you pass our camp with your _messieurs_ to-morrow
morning.” He smiled his sudden, fascinating smile at the guide, and
the contrast between the two was sharp and picturesque—the finished,
handsome man of the world and the awkward, ill-clothed child of the
people. “I know it must be startling to you,” Esmond said kindly.
“You will have to collect your ideas a bit. But you must answer as I
wish. I will wait till morning.”
Then the guide lifted his clear, light eyes and met the other’s
slightly pitying gaze with unexpected dignity. “The _m’sieur_ need
not wait,” he said serenely. “I know my answer at this time. The
_m’sieur_ is very good to me, and I am glad that he is content
with my poor whistling. I would be happy to make all that great
money—_mais—oui!_—but I cannot go to New York as the _m’sieur_
wishes.”
“You cannot go?” Esmond repeated in surprise, and we all stared.
Zoëtique’s gentle tones went on firmly. “But no, m’sieur. I have the
intention to marry myself in the spring, and this winter I build my
house. Alixe, my _fiancée_, would be disappointed if I should not
build our house this winter.”
“But, man, you’ll have money enough to build a dozen houses—you can
build one ten times as fine—you can pay men to build it for you,
think of that!”
Zoëtique smiled—his smile was winning, but very self-contained,
and the tilt of his head was assured. “It would be another thing,
_m’sieur_. Alixe-_là_, she would be disappointed.”
Esmond argued. Patiently, with amusement first, and then a bit hotly,
but the guide never lost his gentle respectfulness of manner or his
firmness. Walter Morgan put in another word.
“Think carefully before you decide to give up so much money as this
means, Zoëtique. As the _m’sieur_ says, it is a chance for all of
your life.”
The young fellow’s alert, bright eyes flashed gratitude. “But yes,
_m’sieur_. I understand. However, one knows that to make money is
not always to be happy—is it not the truth, _m’sieur_? We are a poor
people, we others, _habitants_, and yet we are content. I am afraid
to lose the happiness that I have, in that great city which I do not
know. Here—I know. I am strong”—he pushed his big shoulders forward
and smiled proudly as he felt their muscles. “I am capable and can
work hard—I have planned my life, and I have the things which I
wish. Why should I risk all that for—I do not know what? I thank the
_m’sieur_”—he turned his blue glance on Esmond with a self-possession
which the cosmopolitan might not have bettered. “I thank also my
_m’sieur_ much for all his goodness to me.” He stood up, his shabby
old hat crushed in his hand. “I thank madame and every one for
their good wishes. I am content that madame and the _messieurs_
found pleasure in my poor whistling. Good night, madame—good night,
_messieurs_.”
He had made his bow, as his peasant ancestors had been taught to make
theirs in old France two hundred years before, with deep respect,
with hat in hand and head bent. Here was a man who knew when he had
enough. The question was closed. He was gone.
The next year it was in September that the Morgans asked me to their
camp. Air like cooled wine breathed life into me as my canoe flew
down Lac Lumière to the double paddle-beat of Godin and Josef, who
had been sent to the club to fetch me. Sunshine lay over the lake and
laughed back at us from the hills, where flecks of gold through green
tree-tops told that the birches had caught the frost. One peculiarity
of the woods is that at whatever time you go to them they persuade
you at once, with a wordless, answerless logic, that it is their best
season.
“This is better than August,” I called out to Walter and Margaret
Morgan, standing smiling on the quay, while Bob kicked chips toward
me in welcome.
“A thousand times better,” they called back together, and Bob stopped
his gattling to respond classically:
“Golly, you bet!”
And it certainly was—till the next August at least. There were no
flies, and one could fish without tar oil or citronella; each breath
pumped energy into the lungs; the snap of the water made a man laugh
and shriek aloud as he plunged into the lake in the morning with air
at forty-five degrees; the fishing and hunting were at their best.
Down by the mouth of the little Rivière à la Poêle—the “Frying-pan
River”—the trout were massing for the _frayage_, the spawning, and
there in the cool of the evening, when the shallow water was dim in
the low light—at about six o’clock, perhaps—they jumped like mad
things for the fly. You had but to paddle across the lake and through
the rushes, slower and slower, till the rustling against the boat
slid into silence as you halted; you had but to pull loose a few feet
of line with your left hand and to listen to the whir of it spinning
out as you put your right wrist into the cast; you had but to drop
the flies over the mystery of the brown water by the edge of the
lily-pads—gingerly, it must be understood; cautiously, for this is
the first cast for a year; carefully, man, with a tiny lift of the
rod-tip as the flies fall so that the Parmachene Belle on the tail
takes water first, and the Reuben Wood touches not too soon, and the
black hand-fly skims with its snell clear of the pool. Such fitting
small precautions, such pleasant proprieties, were all one had to
observe at the mouth of the river “A la Poêle.”
The sweet water would meet your searching with a smile as inscrutable
as Mona Lisa’s—with the smile it had worn, careless of your
existence, all these centuries; up the river you would hear the dull
boom of the rapids, the nearer, busy monotone of the falling stream.
The utter quiet of the woods, with its deep undertone of teeming
life, would fold you in—there is nothing stiller. Peace and silence
and the tranquil pool—only the steady swish of the line as you cast.
Suddenly a wild lashing and splashing and spraying; the bubble,
bubble, bubble of broken water; a white and scarlet flashing that
comes and goes where the black hand-fly holds taut to the water; a
thrill and tug on your wrist that brings your heart to your mouth.
You have struck automatically; he is on; you are playing your first
fish of the season.
“_Pas trop fort_,” Godin remarks calmly from the stern; “not too
hard, _m’sieur_. It is a big one.”
Probably, for the candidates, a presidential election is more
exciting than this—certainly it lasts longer—yet I doubt very much
if any quarter-hour of it carries more of a thrill. You feel Godin’s
sense of the importance of the situation by the way he handles the
boat. With light manœuvres of the paddle, not to disturb the pool too
much, he works you, towing the fish, to a place where the water is
clear and you can play his rushing lordship without fear of getting
him tangled about lily-roots, and so pulling loose from the fly.
The fight is well on—it is the contest of a man’s brain, working with
the awkward tools of a man’s muscles, in an unaccustomed situation,
against a wonderful expert and gymnast in his own element. The
outcome is always a doubtful one—it is a fair fight—that is where
the thrill comes in. The long runs when you must give line with a
swiftness beyond thinking; the lightning rushes toward the boat
when your reel must work faster than your brain or you lose him;
the lifting, the lowering of the rod that must be done by a sense
acquired in many such battles, a sense come to be instinct more than
reason; the whisper in the muscles that tells you not to pull him
when he sulks; that tells you not to let him get line enough to
shake free—all these phases and a hundred more which fishermen know
were in that fight of mine on September ninth with my big record
trout, down at the mouth of the Rivière à la Poêle. I won. I landed
him, and he weighed five and a quarter pounds by the scales. It was
my first fish of the season, and Godin was almost as pleased as I
with this good beginning. We kept at it, of course, and we had what
would have seemed good luck on other days, for a spotted fellow of
two pounds, and three more of a pound and a half soon decorated the
bottom of the boat. But the battle of the giants had led off; we had
trapped the patriarch first. And, seeing this, and happy enough with
our afternoon’s work as it was, Godin and I fell to talking.
He had crossed the pool now, and worked into the river, and was
paddling slowly up it, where birch-trees hung over and met across
brown running water, foam-spotted from rapids above. I cast at
intervals, leisurely, as we floated up-stream, and the intermittent
bright flight of the flies punctuated the guide’s clear-cut French
sentences. A sudden thought of last year came to my mind.
“Godin,” I asked, and watched the Parmachene Belle flash delicately
scarlet toward a lily-leaf. “Godin, where is Zoëtique this year?”
“_Ah—oui_,” the voice came from behind me. “I was about to tell the
_m’sieur_ of that. The _m’sieur_ had an interest in Zoëtique, eh?”
“Certainly, I have an interest in him,” I answered. “I meant to ask
M’sieur Morgan about him this afternoon, but I forgot.”
“_Ah—oui_,” said Godin again, and no more. There was a note of
importance in his tone, and I rose to it.
“Well, what is it, then? Why isn’t he here? Where is he?” I threw
over my shoulder.
Godin cleared his throat for heavy conversation. “_Zoëtique est à New
York_,” he announced.
My flies came slapping against the boat. I certainly was surprised.
“In New York?” I repeated.
“_Ah, oui, m’sieur_,” said Godin again. “The _m’sieur_ who was here
last year, the strange _m’sieur_ who wished that he should go to New
York to whistle—that _m’sieur_ sent again to search for him in the
springtime, and Zoëtique was content to go.”
“But I thought he was so decided about not going. I thought he was
to be married, and was satisfied to stay here. I thought he didn’t
care about making money—I thought—” and I stopped.
“It is the truth, _m’sieur_. All that was quite true—last year,” said
Godin. “But one changes. Things arrive, and one’s life changes, and
so it happens that one changes. It was like that with Zoëtique. It
was that he had a quarrel with his girl—with his _fiancée_. It was
that which altered the opinion of Zoëtique. I know all about that
affair—me—for it is I that am the cousin of that girl, and she has
talked to me. She has explained to me about what happened, _comme
il faut_. I am sorry for her and sorry also for Zoëtique—both the
two. It is most unhappy. But”—Godin shrugged his shoulders with the
philosophy which most of us can feel in another’s tragedy. “But—what
can one do? It is _malheur_—too bad—but it is life.”
“Can you tell me about it, Godin?” I asked.
“But yes, _m’sieur_—most certainly. Yet it is a long story—_m’sieur_
may be _ennuyé_. I will recount to _m’sieur_ all the things which are
of importance—is it not?”
“As you think best.” So Godin began, clearing his throat as always
in preparation for vocal effort. It was an ordinary enough little
history, of a high-spirited, light-hearted girl, full of coquetry,
vain perhaps, quick-tempered and jealous and exacting, but all that
from thoughtlessness, not from the heart, and with the good qualities
of her defects. For Godin made me see, with his simple yet keen
analysis of his cousin, that brighter side also, which each one of
us has. He made me see a girl who was honest and warm-hearted and
large-minded enough to acknowledge herself in the wrong and to do
right with a will when she saw it—a woman strong and deep enough
to keep the current of love alive like a flowing river on whose
surface dead branches and bad things indeed collect and cover the
bright rippling for a moment, yet whose rushing stream can sweep such
_débris_ easily away. He told me from how little the trouble had
begun; how Alixe had imagined slights that Zoëtique had never meant;
how the man had tried to be patient at first, and then resented
what he could not understand—cavalier treatment which he knew to be
undeserved; how each had said things hard to forget; how another man
and another girl had come into the breach and made it wider, and how
at last the two, who really loved each other still, were so warped
from the way of happiness that each was wretched and unnatural with
the other, and that all comfort in each other’s presence was gone.
I remembered the proud lift of Zoëtique’s head and his responsive
quick smile, and the delicate, close searching of his blue, alert
eyes, as Godin told me that he was _vif_—I understood how the big,
strong fellow, with a soul sensitive as a child’s, a heart modest and
secretly distrustful of its own power to hold affection—how he might
have felt at the end that he had given all that was in him to a woman
who did not care, who held him lightly, who played with him as he had
seen her play with other men. So it did not surprise me when Godin
went on to narrate how, when a letter had come again from Mr. Esmond,
Zoëtique had suddenly cut loose from everything and had gone off,
with a few curt words to Alixe for all good-by, to find a new way of
life in New York.
There had been news from him once or twice, telling of his immediate
success, of the astonishing gayeties of a great city, of his own
happiness and absorption in them, and how he had already almost
forgotten the narrow interests of the Canadian village. It was the
letter that a sore and angry man would write, I reflected—hitting
blindly as hard as he could, harder than he knew, at the hand that
had hurt him.
“Do you believe he is as happy as all that?” I asked, thinking aloud.
Godin shrugged his talkative shoulders.
“_’Sais pas_,” he said. “My cousin Alixe, she is not happy. One does
not know it—the world—but I know, for she has told me. She will never
marry—she says it, and she is not a girl to change her mind. It is
easy for her to flirt with this man and that—oh, yes! for she is a
girl who draws the _garçons_. But for love—it is another matter.
She will not love any but Zoëtique. It is _malheur_, for she is a
good _ménagère_—a good worker—and she should marry. But it is that
she will not do. It was to me she said that she was proud to have
loved Zoëtique and proud that he should once have loved her and
that she would rather have that pride than marry another. It is
not reasonable—but it is Alixe. She goes about her affairs, oh, but
certainly. One does not know that she still loves him—but I know it.
She will not marry—it is certain. But as to Zoëtique—_’sais pas_. He
gains _b’en d’argent_. He sees life. He amuses himself well. It is
much. When one is light-hearted it is much. Yet when the heart is
heavy all that makes nothing. It is a _garçon_—a fellow—of much heart
always. Always he was faithful to his friends, Zoëtique. It seems
_drôle_ to me that he can so soon have lost the _souvenir_ of his
place and the people to whom he was accustomed. It is _drôle_ that.
Yet one cannot tell.” He shrugged his shoulders again as if to slip
the whole question off them with the movement. “_’Sais pas._”
* * * * *
In late November the days in the Morgans’ camp had become a page of
past life, a page illuminated with blue and gold, hazy with romance,
bright with adventure, marginally illustrated with the mighty shade
of the bull moose I had shot, with the pink and silver vanishing
glory of my five-pound trout, with flying pictures of black duck and
partridges which had fallen to my gun; a page to be turned to and
dreamed over, again and again, yet a page of the past for all that.
On an evening, then, of November, I went out to dinner and to the
theatre afterward. It was to a vaudeville which was attracting
attention that we were taken. I do not care for vaudeville, and I
merely suffered the numbers to pass as civilly as I might, talking
between them, during them if I could, to one or two people of the
party who were more interesting. The big placard in the glare of the
footlights was shifted, read No. 5. I turned my chair sidewise in the
back of the box and leaned forward to the woman in front of me.
“Don’t watch this number—talk to me,” I suggested. “It’s an educated
pig who does sums.”
“You’re trying to deceive me,” the woman said, and laughed, and
picked up her fluttering play-bill. “No. 5—why, it isn’t a pig at
all, it’s whistling.”
“Then, for heaven’s sake, talk to me,” I begged. “Some things I can
live through, but fifteen minutes of whistling with no relief—talk to
me. It’s life and death.”
“Look at the name,” she answered irrelevantly. “What a queer name—it
starts out to be Zoroaster and gets side-tracked. This must be the
wonderful whistling Mrs. Schuyler talked about—we must listen—they
say it’s the best thing in the evening, and is making a sensation.”
“Let it—I don’t want to hear it,” I answered from a soul immune to
vaudeville sensations, and I did not glance at the programme.