took one and held it in my hand as I spoke. At that moment No. 5
began. With a whirl of my chair which made the man next me frown with
astonishment, I had twisted toward the stage, the glass crashed to
the floor; the water splashed on a velvet gown and I did not see it;
I saw only a figure which stood there, alone, by the footlights.
* * * * *
Strong, sweet, the song of the loggers on the River Gatineau
rang flute-like through the theatre. The homely words, like meek
handmaidens, followed in my mind the melody:
C’était le vingt-cinq de juillet
Lorsque je me suis engagé
Pour monter dans la rivière
Qu’on appelle la rivière enragé.
I gasped as if I had plunged suddenly into the cold rapids of a
rushing little river. The crowded theatre, the heat, the glare, were
gone; I lay in a canoe in misty moonlight, in deep peace of Canadian
hills, and from the shore floated the bird-notes of Zoëtique’s
whistling.
It took me a minute to get back to earth, and another to explain,
and then I drifted again into the heart of the woods. Stillness,
pure air, running water and rustling trees; brightness and shadow of
long portages, starlight and firelight and sunny lengths of lakes, a
thousand poignant memories, seized me and carried me into a quiet,
keen world, with a joy that was almost pain, as I stared from the box
at Zoëtique’s familiar figure standing back of the footlights.
There was a pause; the Gatineau song was finished, his winning smile
flashed.
“_Excusez-la_,” said Zoëtique.
After the number was over I went back of the scenes and found him,
and talked to him for an unsatisfactory five minutes. He was glad to
see me, but some men whose air I did not like were waiting for
him, and he was uneasy with me in their presence.
[Illustration: At that moment No. 5 began.]
“Are you happy, Zoëtique?” I asked bluntly, as I told him good-by,
and the blue eyes flashed to mine a second with an honest,
half-tragic look. He shrugged his shoulders.
“_’Sais pas, m’sieur._ I am gaining much money. One is never too
happy in this world, is it not? Or in any case, not for too long.”
We arranged that I should pick him up the next night after his
number, and take him to my rooms, and with that I left him.
When I got back to my own place I could not shake off the idea of
Zoëtique. I sat and smoked and considered for an hour, and I came to
see that I was due to meddle in this affair. The boy was out of his
proper atmosphere, and the glimpse I had had of him and of the men
who were his companions had showed me that he was getting into bad
hands. The Morgans were away—he knew no one else. I thought of the
girl in the little French village in Canada eating out her heart for
him, and of the happiness and self-respect and normal life waiting
there for him, and a meteoric vaudeville success did not seem to me
worth while as I thought of those things. So, as I sat smoking alone
at three in the morning in a twelfth-story New York apartment, I
elected to be guardian angel to this backwoods boy and settle him in
a log cabin of his own with a wife who cared for him. I could not
think of anything else as good that fate could give him.
I decided to see Charles Esmond next day and get his consent, as was
only decent, to send the youngster about his business, and if there
was any forfeit to pay I was luckily so situated that I could pay it.
Bright and early I hunted up Esmond, and after a most unpromising
start, including surprise, disgust, reluctance, on his part, I
finally got at the man’s good feeling, and persuaded him.
“I think you’re clean gone off your head,” was his parting remark,
“and I think I’m worse. But you’ve hypnotized me. Take your brat and
ship him back, or I’ll change my mind.” And I left him in a hurry.
I bundled Zoëtique into a taxicab that night the moment he had
finished his whistling, leaving two evil-appearing Frenchmen looking
black at his evasion. I expected enthusiasm over the taxi, but the
lad was too much for me.
“One drives in these wagons every day here,” he remarked calmly. “My
friends tell me it is _comme il faut_.”
“The devil they do,” I responded in stout English. “You must be
spending money like water.”
He shrugged his expressive shoulders. “_Ça coute cher_,” he
acknowledged. “It is expensive. But what will you? One gains money
every night, and one has nothing to save for. It is well to make
pleasure for one’s friends.” And remembering the adventurers I had
seen, I felt confirmed in my opinion that it was also well to snatch
this brand from the burning.
Sophisticated as he had become, Zoëtique showed primitive interest
in my rooms. He went from one thing to another, examining, asking
deferential questions, and listening with deep attention to my
answers. He put every picture in the place under analysis, and at
length he came to a wide frame which held eight photographs set side
by side. I heard him catch his breath as he bent over and saw what
they were, and I heard his long-drawn “_Ah, oui!_” that was yet only
a whisper. He stood like a statue, his head thrown forward, gazing.
After a while I put a hand on his shoulder and pointed to one of the
prints. It was a snap-shot of himself and of me, taken an August
morning on a little, lonely river. Zoëtique stood upright in the
stern of the canoe, poling it through the shallows. His athletic
figure swung with a sure balance; the wind swayed the grasses and
floated the ends of the bandanna about his throat. I held my hat on
my head as the breeze caught it, and he smiled broadly to see me.
The spire of a tall spruce in the distance cut into the sky. It was
one of those lucky amateur photographs which wing the spirit and
the drawing combined. It takes perhaps a thousand films to produce
one, but no professional work comes near the effect when such a one
succeeds.
A tremor went through his shoulder as my hand fell on it. “Which is
more pleasure for you and me, Zoëtique, to drive in a taxicab in New
York, like to-night, or to be together _en canot_, like that?” I
asked him.
The boy turned and shot at me a wild look, and with that he dropped
into a chair by my writing-table and laid his head on his arms and
sat motionless. I waited two or three minutes. Then I drew up a seat
and sat down near him, and at the top of the rough head I fired my
opening shot.
“I want you to go home, Zoëtique,” I said quietly. That brought him
up staring.
“_Mais, m’sieur—mais—c’est b’en impossible_,” he stammered at me,
startled.
So then I talked to him like a Dutch uncle, as a man of forty can
talk to a lad of twenty-three. I told him, to begin with, that it was
arranged with Mr. Esmond that he might go to-morrow if he would. I
told him that while he was making money he was not saving any; that
he was doing no good here, and was throwing away his life—and he
agreed with pathetic readiness.
“One is not absolutely happy in this city, _m’sieur_,” he agreed.
“One gets drunk every night, and it is not good for the health. At
home I got drunk rarely, _m’sieur_—me—oh, but rarely. Perhaps at the
_fête de Noël_, and when one finished logging in the spring—_c’est
tout_. Not always as often—it is better for the health like that.”
It was not the psychological moment to lecture, but I put away a
reflection or two at this point for Zoëtique’s later service.
“Yes, it is bad for the health, Zoëtique,” I answered with restraint.
“It is bad for one in several ways. One is not so much of a man when
one gets drunk. I’m glad you think with me that Canada is the place
for you.”
There was deep silence. I felt distinctly the stone wall at which we
had arrived, and I knew it must be taken down rock by rock. I knew
that the question of the girl was coming.
“I cannot go, _m’sieur_.”
“Why not?”
“There are other things. It is difficult to say. The _m’sieur_ is
good to me. It makes nothing to me if the _m’sieur_ knows. But it
is a small affair—to all but me—and it would be _ennuyant_ to the
_m’sieur_ to hear about it.”
“It would not be _ennuyant_ at all, Zoëtique,” I said. “But I know
already. Godin told me.”
“Ah!” He was wondering as to how much I knew.
“I know about your trouble with Alixe, and that it got worse and not
better as time went on, until you were not happy with each other any
more. I was sorry to hear that, for it is not a little thing to have
a woman love one as Alixe loves you.”
Zoëtique, with his eyes glued on his great hands, which lay before
him on the table, shook his head. “_M’sieur_ is mistaken. Alixe does
not love me.”
“Yes. She does. More than ever.”
The boy’s head lifted, and he flashed an inquiring glance. Then a
look of sick disgust came over his face and he shook his head again
sullenly.
“_M’sieur_ is mistaken,” he repeated. “She does not care—Alixe.”
But I persisted. “I know, Zoëtique. I have heard news since you have
heard. Alixe cares for you still—she has always cared. She is sorry
for the wrong things she has done—she would not do them again. She
loves you.”
Then the suppressed soreness of his soul broke out. It was no longer
as guide to _m’sieur_, it was as man to man he talked. “_m’sieur_,”
he said roughly, “I know. You do not know. Is it that a woman loves
a man when she is ready to think him false, ready to believe he
means bad things when he does not imagine anything bad? Is it that a
woman loves a man when she says words to him that hurt as if one had
cut with a knife? Is it that she loves him when she will not listen
when he tries to make all right again? Is it that a woman loves a
man when”—his light eyes blazed—“when she plays with other men—lets
others be to her what only one should be—does that show love? Is it
that a woman loves a man when these things are the truth?”
“Sometimes,” I said, and Zoëtique stared at me in dumb anger.
I went on. I tried to show him in simple words how each of us has a
Doctor Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde more or less evenly developed in his or
her make-up, and how at times the bad gets into the saddle and rides;
how this devil of wrong-headedness holds possession and makes man and
woman lose perspective, so that the brain does not see the ugliness
of the words the mouth speaks; how it is most often to the ones we
care for most that such things are said, because our very sense of
love for them puts us off our guard. I asked him also—remembering
something from a long time ago—if he had not perhaps put bad meaning
into speeches that were innocent—if his imagination had not been
partly responsible.
“_’Sais pas_,” said Zoëtique, and shrugged his shoulders. “One
accustomed oneself to have her words hurt—it might be that one jumped
before the whip fell.”
His face was bitter—this end of my job was no sinecure. I talked
along, trying to put my finger on the thin part of the boy’s armor.
I drew on Godin’s description, and pointed out how the girl was
high-spirited and imaginative, and how some unmeant slight, most
likely, had set her to thinking that his love had grown less. How her
treatment of him, so bewildering and insulting, was thus an assertion
of her dignity—foolish and mistaken, yet only, at the end, a woman’s
self-respect. How her exactions, her air of calling him to account
which had so galled him, were the poisonous flowers which had sprung
in the shadow between them. I tried to make him see how such bad
exotics would wither in five minutes of sunlight. I talked like a
whole committee of grandfathers to Zoëtique Vézina that night. But at
one time I thought I should have to give it up, for he simply shook
his head.
“One does not put one’s hand into a trap to be cut off twice,” he
said over and over.
Finally I violated Godin’s confidence. “Boy,” I said, “won’t you
understand that you’re throwing away the most loyal wife a man could
have? She is above the ordinary girl—you know it. If her faults are
bigger than another’s, her virtues are bigger, too. She will never
get into this hole again—you may wager your life on that. She is
clever—she has learned her lesson. She will not risk shipwreck twice.
And—I know this, for she has said it—she will never marry any one but
you. The other man was a plaything—she tried to pique you with him.
It is a foolish trick, but women and men will do it to the end of
time.”
I wondered then if he suspected ever so dimly what buried memories
made me want to save another man’s life from this foolishness. I
looked squarely at him and met his eyes.
“Zoëtique,” I flung at him, out of the bottom of my soul, “do you
love her?”
The bright light eyes wavered, looked miserably back at me—yet
straight and honest. I waited, and out of the bottom of the lad’s
soul came the reluctant answer:
“But yes, _m’sieur_, I love her.”
“Then, for Heaven’s sake, man, go to her and be happy!”
Once more the muscular arms were flung out on my writing-table and
the dark head fell on them, but this time the bitterness was gone
from the pose. The room was still for a minute, and then he lifted
his face and it was smiling, and a tear was wet on his cheek.
“_M’sieur_ has won—I will do as _m’sieur_ wishes,” he said,
embarrassed, laughing, and the rest of that interview was as
uninteresting as the nations which have no history.
True love is no hot-house plant, and, like moss on the trees, it
grows warmest where north winds are cold; but, for all that, it
does not take to being sandpapered, and if one walks on it with
hobnailed boots it is likely to die down. Yet it is true that deep
roots may with cultivation sprout again—may even sprout thicker if
cared for tenderly. All the same, it is ill-advised to try more than
one episode of hobnails and sandpaper. Zoëtique and Alixe, learning
it painfully, learned this lesson thoroughly, and I think that never
again will they take liberties with their affection for each other.
That it has sprung plentifully from the trodden roots I am led to
believe from strangely spelled French letters which reach me from
time to time. My conscience as a meddler is much soothed by these
letters.
As for the other side of my meddling—a few nights ago I dined at the
Lambs’ Club, and across the room was Charles Esmond, with a galaxy of
stars shining about him. At the end of dinner he picked up his coffee
and came over with it to us, smoking like a chimney as he came. He
set down the cup and took my hand, and then shook his fist at me and
laughed at my host—fascinating and unexpected as I remembered him in
the Canadian camp.
“Dick,” said he to my friend, “this chap is a common burglar—don’t
give him any more dinner. He burgled the best number out of the best
vaudeville I ever staged—plain stole the boy without remorse—the
most marvellous whistler the profession has ever seen. I’d have
made a mint of money off the fellow—he was just beginning to make
a sensation. And this man you’re feeding lifted him, inside of
twenty-four hours, and shipped him back to Canada to the girl he’d
left behind him.” He proceeded to make an anecdote five minutes in
length and telling practically all I have told, from the gist of what
I have spun out so long.
When I got back to my rooms that night I found in my mail a
birch-bark enveloped photograph of my lovers, now married. Zoëtique,
in store clothes which took all the good looks out of him, sat solemn
in a chair with a cheap derby hat on his head, and Alixe stood behind
him, her hand on his shoulder—smiling, dark-eyed, and graceful.
I looked at the heroine hard and long, and then I unlocked a drawer
and took out an old photograph of another dark-eyed girl, and put
them side by side and let myself dream how it would be if that hand
were sometimes on my shoulder, if those eyes smiled, so, to be at my
side—if we had not quarrelled. I do not often let myself have this
dream, because it makes work and play harder for a day or two.
I look forward to a month in Canada next summer, and I expect to have
a guide who will turn the woods upside down to get me good fishing
and hunting, as is the just reward of a successful meddler. And in
the intervals of serious business I expect to listen without paying
admission to the “best number of the best vaudeville ever staged”—No.
5—Zoëtique’s whistling.
THE YOUNG MAN WITH WINGS
THE YOUNG MAN WITH WINGS
What if some morning when the stars were paling,
And the dawn whitened, and the East was clear,
Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence
Of a benignant spirit standing near:
And I should tell him, as he stood beside me,
“This is our earth—most friendly earth and fair;
Daily its sea and shore, through sun and shadow,
Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air;
“There is blest living here—loving and serving,
And quest of truth, and serene friendships dear;
But stay not, Spirit! Earth has one destroyer,—His
name is Death—flee, lest he find thee here.”
And what if then, while the still morning brightened,
And freshened in the elm the Summer’s breath,
Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel,
And take my hand, and say: “My name is Death.”
Sill’s verses occurred to the bishop as he lay awake in the night.
A thing had startled him during the day, and sleep had not come
promptly as ordinarily. He listened, aware of each shading of sound,
to the pleasant, dim noises of the midnight world. A thin wind
rustled the trees outside his windows, it might be as if a crowd of
light-footed ladies in silk petticoats passed unendingly by; far off
in the road hoof-beats approached rapidly and rapidly died away; a
dog—little Café, for he knew his voice—sent a shower of light, futile
barks after the distant horse; a shutter somewhere banged aimlessly
at intervals. Each accustomed impression, unnoted on common nights,
reached his brain as a revelation, because of that which Everingham,
the village doctor, had said in the afternoon.
So he lay awake and thought about the new prospect. It excited him
as the prospect of a trip to Europe might excite him. However,
Everingham was not certain; he had asked for a consultation, and the
bishop had telegraphed Jim Fletcher, as he had called him since the
two had roomed together at college fifty years back, to come down
when it was possible. And Jim—Doctor James Austin Fletcher, as he was
known over all America—Jim, to the bishop, had answered that he would
be in Lancaster to-morrow at eleven. Jim would settle it. Meantime,
what was the use of staying awake? The fact seemed to verge on
emotionalism. He had believed himself free of that. He had believed
himself free, moreover, of a thought which had once poisoned his
days—free, but here it was following him, and in his veins throbbed
the old uneasiness, familiar yet for all the years between. “It’s not
my affair now,” he spoke aloud, as if reasoning, and then words came
to him which he knew well, and he said them and peace came with them.
He turned toward the square of the window where the opal night poured
in and lay on his forehead and filtered to his nerves; with that the
rhythm of Sill’s verses caught and rocked him as his mother would
have rocked him seventy years before, and he went quietly to sleep.
For an hour he slept dreamlessly, and then, at about one o’clock of
the morning it might have been, through the hushed chambers of his
brain there moved a presence from beyond them. The bishop put out
his long, strong fingers as if in greeting, and a smile came on the
sleeping face—the dream was pleasant. Some one, whom he was glad to
see, stood by him, by the bed in the big, airy room, and smiled
down at him. And it surprised the bishop only a very little that his
visitor, the tall young man, had wings. He could plainly see the
face, a face which he knew. The wings were a touch uncommon, but why
not? The figure was more beautiful because of them—it was good to see
them. Why did he know the face? And with that the young man spoke
three words:
“Go to Lancaster.” And the bishop woke up.
He smiled broadly at the convincingness of dreams in general, at
the distinctness with which the imagined voice still sounded in his
brain: “Go to Lancaster.”
It was exactly as if some one had wakened him with the command. But
the face was gone, and he could not recall it. Puzzled, smiling, he
fell asleep. It might have been half an hour later that the dream
came again. Again the tall figure, bringing, it seemed, an atmosphere
of unlimited easy power, stood by him; and the bishop, looking up
unafraid, saw a light on the face as if to emphasize—to impress it on
his memory. And again the clear voice spoke the same three words:
“Go to Lancaster.”
And the bishop woke up. Through him there appeared to be an infusion
of the strength which had been a vivid impression from the dream. He
felt suddenly young, filled with energy. It was a long time since he
had felt like this—Everingham said the malady had most likely been
gripping him for years. Was it possible that he was shaking it off?
That he was going to get well, in spite of Everingham’s croaking?
Well, Jim would settle that to-day. A man could trust Jim. In the
meantime it was a great thing to have this glorious spasm of health,
whatever it might mean. It cleared the brain—and the bishop fell to
thinking. As he opened the door of his mind there met him the thought
which he had said was not now his affair. Back of it was a procession
of very old memories. He had not for years let himself review these
in detail, yet the details were sharp. With his fresh sense of
buoyancy he went back now to events which had shaped his career.
The foundations of lives are mostly alike, and mostly of elemental
stuffs. On these rise superstructures of infinite architecture:
a hovel of odds and ends here, a grim walled castle there, or a
stately palace, or buildings filled with machinery, or sunshiny
homes—there is never an end to the sorts. But under all the sorts lie
masses of primeval rock, called by a few names such as Ambition and
Love and Hate and Remorse and Honor and others. The bishop’s business
was with foundations, and he uncovered now in the night those under
the dwelling he had made for himself. He found there one jagged
rock, which cut him as he passed over it; its name was Remorse. In
the crystal of his life was one cloud which darkened the light. The
bishop thought, as he had thought many times before, of a man who had
“found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully and
with tears.” He clinched his strong fist.
“If I might set that one thing right—if I might find him and tell
him, and make amends with all that I have, then I could go,” he spoke
aloud.
With that he felt a desire to turn over his memories and put them in
decent order, and he bent his mind to consider the old, long story.
Wide-awake, clear-headed, with his new strength pulsing in him, he
went over it all, and perhaps an hour passed, and at the end his
mind rested, relieved. He put away the unrest; he thought happily of
every-day things, of this big, pleasant place of his which he loved,
the sunshiny garden, the shady driveway, where he mounted his horse
of a morning. And the horse, Billy, and the joyful big dogs, and
the little dog, Café, who was always so ridiculously glad when he
came back from his ride—he had a great affection for them all. The
gentleness of such thoughts about him, again he fell asleep.
And as soon as he slept it seemed the young man with wings stood
again by the bedside, a shaft of strong light on the face; and again
he spoke, imperatively:
“Go to Lancaster.”
And at once the bishop awoke. As before, he could not remember the
face which he had seen so distinctly a moment ago; but flowing
through him was still the strange tide of strength, and with it an
uncontrollable conviction that he must obey this command—he must go
to Lancaster. He laughed at himself.
“Ridiculous!” he said aloud, attempting to break the spell by the
sound of his own voice.
But the dream would not let him alone, and the new energy pushed
with it. Against his will, against his judgment, much against his
sense of humor he began to dress. Suddenly, “That settles it,” he
said. Lancaster lay across the river from the bishop’s place; the
only way to get over was by a ferry, and the ferryman lived on the
farther side. He could not get to Lancaster. “I’ll go back to bed,”
he said, and sat motionless. He could not go back to bed. There was
an impulsion, which would not be put down, to get dressed, to ride to
Lancaster. He was astonished, displeased. “I must be losing my mind,”
he said; and went on dressing.
He stole down softly, not to waken the household; it was a quarter
after three o’clock. He found the key of the stable, then turned into
the dining-room and groped in the dim place for the sugar-bowl, and
dropped three or four white lumps into his pocket.