Part 3

"You see dat rapid?" said Joe, after an early camp on the portage, as we went down to look at the boiling cauldron below, "I tink I always remember him. One time I work in a shanty back on dat leetle stream we pass dis afternoon. De shanty was mos' ready to break up, and good many de men was go down on de drive. Dere was only one foreman for all de gangs, 'cause so many men been laid off. Dat mornin' de foreman tell dis man 'I want you for do dis,' an' dose men 'I want you for do dat,' sen' dis man here and dat man dere, an' he pick six men an' he say 'I want you for take de batteau—dat's de big row-boat—'wid forty-five chains, to de gang for fix de boom in de pond down below,' and he say 'Dat rapid dere, don' none you dam fools try for run him. I tell you dat batteau ain't like de canoe, an' de chains won't help you swim; so I want you for portage de whole t'ing.' So de men take de batteau, and de foreman say, 'You, Joe, you an' your chum an' Big Jule, you take de big canoe, an' you go down for help on de boom.'

"So we start an' follow de batteau, an' of course you can't see ver' far in de river, he is so crooked. I was in de bow, an' I see dem men in de batteau, 'bout two acres ahead, 'fore we get to de bend. Well, we come to de head dis portage and we see nobody dere. I take out my pack an' put de tump-line on my head, an' my chum say 'Dem fellers make de portage pretty quick.' I go down wid my pack, and start up de portage once more, for bring de canoe, me an' Big Jule. W'en I get to de head of de portage, my chum, he come run up all out of breat', an' he say 'I see a hat an' a oar in de water down by de foot de rapid!'

"Den I know w'at's de matter. Me an' Big Jule we have de canoe on our heads for carry it down de portage, but we don't say one word. We jus' turn de canoe down and I jump in de bow, an' my chum in the middle, an' Big Jule for steer, an' we run de rapid. We t'ink maybe somebody hang on de rock; but fore we know it we strike jus' where dey strike, on a side jam w'ere de logs pile up. I jump out, an' my chum he jump out, an' we catch de canoe an' let her swing, an we holler to Jule to jump, an he jump jus' in time I tell you, for the canoe go under de jam an' smash, cr-r-ack all to piece. I never so near de en' of my life till I die, sure. Well, we go back an' tell de foreman, and he sen' some men for shut down de dam, up in de lac, an' we look for dem feller four days. We look way down below, but we no fine 'em, an' de mornin' de fift' day, I was stan' up in de bow, an' I see black spot come up an' bob up an down in de eddy right down dere, an' in fifteen minute we have dem six feller out on dis san' bar. Dey was all in a bunch. It was hot, and dey look awful.

"Well, sir, after dat you not hear one word in de shanty at night. De mens come in, an' dey jus' sit an' say not one word, an' good many de young lads git fright, an' leave de drive an go home. O, I t'ink I remember dis rapid pretty sure."

Joe's boyhood experience of the Gatineau stood us in good stead all the way down. He remembered perfectly all the rapids, knew which could be run and which could not. "W'en you see de swells run black over de rock, don't you be fright' dat you strike," said he, "but if de water be white, den you look out." And he showed how, along the edge of the rough water, there is often a liquid path, not more than the width of the canoe, which may be followed with perfect safety.

Another half-day's run brought us to a lumber shanty, with its tell-tale smoke.

"Quay!" shouted the cook, which is good Algonquin for "Hello!" And then I realized that weeks of constant out-of-door existence had transformed me into a good enough imitation of an Indian to deceive a lumberman.

"Don't I know you?" asked Joe of the cook, not deigning to reply in the Algonquin tongue. And then the white man on shore and the half-red man in the stern of the canoe recognized each other as camp-mates on some by-gone excursion down the river in escort of a few thousand logs.

"What shanty you from?" asked the cook, turning to me inquiringly. "Didn't I see you with Gilmour's boss last year?"

Explanations followed, and the canoe which had come all the way around from Mattawa secured the undivided attention of the lumber crew when they came to supper that evening.

The next day brought us down to the Desert village, where we left my beloved canoe on the bank, and took a stage coach.

As we carried the luggage to the village hotel, at three o'clock on the afternoon of October 30th, the first flakes of snow began to float softly down, and the splendid Canadian summer was at an end.

FRANCISCO AND FRANCISCA

By Grace Ellery Channing

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER APPLETON CLARK

"It is not a place for everyone," said the priest, quietly, as he led the way under drooping peppers. "These children are orphans of good family. Their excellent mother died a year ago; but they are poor, and I have promised to find them a guest to fill their bedroom. A few dollars will be a blessing to them."

His glance, practised in such measurement, added—"And you are a gentleman—a man to be trusted.

"The house is plain but comfortable. Francisca, like her mother, is an admirable housekeeper," he remarked as he led his guest into the paradise of roses.

The Professor, noting the sweet unkemptness of it, had his New England doubts, but he had none when Francisco, bareheaded, warm, and beautiful, came up from irrigating the oranges, "kissed the hands" of the Professor, and turning his own supple palms outward made him a present of the house and all in it, which at that moment included Francisca, standing under the roses of the porch, and more beautiful even than Francisco.

The professional ears were pricked at the soft organ-tones of speech. If he should not decide to take the Chair, at least his time need not be lost, he argued. That, indeed, had been his motive for seeking a Spanish household.

When he packed his trunk in Boston a Spanish dictionary was included, as became a professor of languages; and now as he unpacked it in the little roof-bedroom with the red, round eyes of oranges staring levelly in, and a drifting cascade of perfume and green and white outside, he was well content.

Perhaps it was that foreign ancestress of his, to whom he was fond of ascribing his bent for languages, who made this foreign corner of his own country so instantly attractive to him.

When he went downstairs later he stepped into an open world. There were untold windows, all wide to the air, and through the green curtains of vines nodded the heads of many roses. Francisca, and the ancient relative to whom the orphans gave a home, and who served as a nominal duenna, were giving the last touches to a table laid in the corner of the broad veranda, which ran about three sides of the house. The grassy space it enclosed was of brave Bermuda, brown, but never-dying, and returning green thanks for a cupful of water. The Professor's foot came to love the touch of that thick carpet in after days.

Beyond, the orange-grove stretched to the lime-hedge, and over that the peppers drooped their ferny branches.

Nothing in all the place was trimmed. Where the long trailing arms of the Lady Banksia fell by their own weight, or clambered by their own daring, there they remained. The Professor stooped under the same trailing branch each time he passed around the veranda. A dozen times he took out his knife impatiently to cut it, but an involuntary compunction arrested his hand. It was so in keeping with the place—it was so in keeping with Francisco and Francisca.

And with an incredible ease and swiftness, the Professor found himself growing in keeping, too.

In another corner of the deep rose-covered veranda all his writing materials quickly congregated. An Indian basket of oranges stood on the little stand by the hammock's elbow, near the rocking-chair in which Francisca sat daily, converting fine linen into finer lace, and cultivating the Professor's Spanish at the same time.

Francisca "kept the house," not with semi-yearly upheavals and the terrible cleanliness of the Professor's ancestral memories, but in a leisurely, sweet fashion of her own, leaving much to the sun and air, ignoring brasses and other troublous matters, perhaps, but never failing—wise Francisca!—to put a rose in her hair, and to set hot, savoury dishes with tropical names before her men-folk. Therefore no man ever found a flaw in Francisca's housekeeping.

Had there been twenty men beneath her roof, each would have been her peculiar care. Her manner to her young brother had a caressing sweetness which a New England girl would have kept for her lover or conscientiously forborne him—for his soul's sake.

As for Francisco, sixteen, brown, slender, wearing his peaked sombrero with consummate grace (a gift he shared in common with every wood-cutter and _ranchero_ of the pure blood), he was the Professor's companion in every walk, every blood-stirring lope across the open _mesa_, every delicious climb up the chaparral-sided hills or the ferny cañons. The boy grew into his heart; and in return Francisco loved him as boys and Southerners can love, with adoration.

It was only a short time after he came among them that the Professor stopped one morning on his way out of the breakfast-room (in which they never breakfasted!) to examine a quaint inlaid guitar, hanging by faded ribbons against the wall.

"It is Francisco's," said Francisca. "He plays beautifully; but he has never played since our mother died—he hung it here then."

"That is not well," said the Professor. "You should win him to play again."

That evening, in the moonlight on the porch, Francisca laid a tender hand upon her brother's head as he sat on the step below. Her hands seemed made for such a purpose.

"Francisco, the Señor asks if you never mean to play your guitar again."

Francisco was silent a moment, looking at the stars.

"Perhaps," he replied. "Some day, when we are very happy again—not yet." Then turning his head, he touched the caressing hand lightly with his lips.

"At thy wedding—or mine—_querida_," he said, lightly, and rising abruptly, went into the house.

"He cannot bear yet to hear her spoken of," said Francisca, following him with moist eyes.

"I was—ahem!—very fond of my mother. She died when I was a boy," said the Professor.

"But ours was with us only a little year ago. She sat where you sit, and looked at us with her beautiful soft eyes.

"And you—you had not even a sister." Francisca looked at him as if she would like to make up that deficiency of tenderness—perhaps to stroke _his_ head, as she did Francisco's.

There was abundant leisure for the Professor's studies, for the long, gorgeous wonderland of summer was upon them, and most people were at Santa Catalina, or in the high Sierras, taking an exchange of paradises.

The days rounded through their delicious sequence of perfumed dawns alive with birds, and middays of still air and shadowed lawns, to the infinite twilights and great moons.

In the evenings—the evenings of Southern California—they sat out under the vines, watching these enormous yellow and orange moons, and Francisca sang Californian songs.

Thus the days passed; punctuated by a talk with the Padre, a ride, a stroll, or some playful share in the labor of irrigating the oranges—the one form of labor Francisco ever seemed engaged in; but these he irrigated perpetually.

The Professor missed nothing; he desired nothing. The intoxication of living in close touch with the sun and air, and Earth in her summer mood, has never been half told. Every fibre of his being rejoiced in that long summer.

The little ranch of five acres—all that remained of five hundred—was large enough to hold his content. We do not know that the Garden of Eden was larger. He wrote hopefully to the Faculty concerning that Chair, and with laudable moderation to his principal correspondent in the East: "California has a charm impossible to analyze. I wish you were here." And then he paused, pondered, and carefully erased the last sentence, but not so perfectly but that Miss Dysart by dint of holding it up to the window-pane deciphered it, and sat biting her pencil gravely a space thereafter.

To wake in the morning and know the sun would shine all day; not to be withered by the heat or chilled by the wind, but subtly flattered and caressed by a climate which was only another Francisca; to be wooed to large thoughts and visions by the landscape; not to feel the press and friction of a narrow life and arbitrary customs, and yet to be conscious through all this space and tranquillity of the forward impetus of a vigorous young life all about him—this sufficed. The opportunities for usefulness were great in a place destined to detain every soul who lingered a rash year within its borders—and to make of the next generation natives.

In lieu of caressing the land itself, he often caressed Francisco, its breathing type, drawing the lad to him with an arm about his slender shoulders.

And Francisca, the other breathing type, regarded them both with that smile of tenderness which has in it so much of the maternal. When all is said, the wisest man remains something of a child to any woman, though she is but an inexperienced girl, and he may have forgotten more out of books than she will ever know.

One day Francisco, running lightly up the path and steps to where Francisca sat filling a bowl with roses, and the Professor sat watching her, dropped an envelope upon the table.

"This is all your mail, Señor," said Francisco, gayly.

The Professor opened, glanced, and fell into a brown study, from which he woke to encounter Francisca's eyes over the bowl of roses.

"Is anything the matter?" asked those eyes anxiously.

"Nothing," the Professor replied to them. "An old friend of mine is coming out unexpectedly—is on her way to Santa Barbara."

"That is pleasant for you," said Francisca, sweetly. "And the days are cooler; she will be sure to like our country."

"She is coming to-morrow," said the Professor, rising abruptly. "I must go at once to the hotel."

"We will send many roses to her room; and Francisco shall pick the large Indian basket full of fruit—she will be so tired with the long journey."

"Thank you," murmured the Professor, vaguely.

He did not hear Francisca's caution to her brother: "Do not pick any of the heliotrope, Francisco, for the heavy scent may be disagreeable to an old lady—and only the very choicest peaches—old people must be careful what they eat." But this was not needed for his confusion.

"How well you are looking!" exclaimed Miss Dysart, as she stepped from the train the next morning, with a critical glance at the Professor.

"The only climate on earth," replied the Professor, laughing to hide a shade of embarrassment; "and you—you are looking well, too."

Distinctly well, in her immaculate shirtwaist and sailor-hat, without touch of travel or dust about her.

"Oh, all climates suit me—even our own," Miss Dysart answered, lightly.

"Only one trunk, thank you; I am a 'transient.' And so this is your earthly paradise. Is that ferny thing a pepper-tree?"

She was so much absorbed in the landscape all through the short drive that the Professor ended by feeling quite at his ease. At the hotel door she dismissed him graciously.

"You may come back after lunch, if you like, and show me something of your paradise."

"Of course," said the Professor with unnecessary alacrity.

As he walked back he had a sensation as if a cool breeze from the Back Bay, at once bracing and chilling, had suddenly begun to blow across the summer air. The same sensation recurred later in the day when he found himself strolling with her under the drooping peppers to the Mission and through the town. Had they not often planned it—ages ago?—or had not _he_ planned it in his mind—at least it had been tacitly understood, and—here it was.

She was looking admirably, too. The little precision of her starched collar and cuffs, and severe hat and correct gown, were an echo of his native city. She was the best type of the things he liked and approved and believed in.

And her mood was the bright mood of comradeship he always enjoyed. She faced the semi-tropical world with fresh, appreciative eyes, and her sense of humor was like his native air re-breathed. So singly did the place occupy her that the Professor expanded gradually and his tongue lost its knot.

"And you regret nothing here?" said Miss Dysart at last, suddenly.

"Nothing," replied the Professor, emphatically—and stopped.

"That is what it is to have a foreign grandmother. You do not even miss the symphony concerts—the Greek play—the Sunday afternoons."

The Professor laughed rather drearily.

"It is the same thing, I suppose, which leads the scarlet geranium to be a climber here, and calla-lilies to grow wild, and heliotrope to run up to the house-eaves. What a poem of a place!" she exclaimed, stopping. "And what a beautiful creature!"

"This is—er—where I am staying," replied the Professor, all his impediments returned. "That is Francisco—he _is_ a handsome lad; and that is his sister, Miss Francisca, on the veranda. Pray come in and see the roses."

Miss Dysart followed him with composure, and gave her gloved hand cordially to Francisca.

"I have heard so much of your paradise," she said, "but I did not know it could be so true."

A bewildered expression crossed Francisca's face as the two advanced, but it passed, and her manner was as perfect as Miss Dysart's own. So was Francisco's, who placed a chair, and drew a rose-branch to shield the visitor's eyes from the sun—his own reflecting the blankness of Francisca's. Francisca had to call him twice to pass the wine she poured in the quaint old glasses, and which they could never conceivably be too poor to offer a guest.

As Miss Dysart sat sipping her wine politely—she was not fond of wine—she felt, as she looked, like one in a foreign land. The Professor, seated discreetly behind, noted this with a smile. But Francisco and Francisca were as much a part of the landscape as any rose in it.

The conversation turned, as conversations infallibly will, to the transcontinental journey, with the "You remember this—you saw that" of travellers.

Francisco and Francisca listened silently, only when Miss Dysart turned to the latter, she said with a kind of proud humility: "Ah! I know nothing of these things. I only know—this," with a gesture about her.

Miss Dysart and the Professor looked at her, and the value of "these things" was differently visible in their eyes.

"How beautiful she is!" thought the Boston girl.

"How much she knows and has seen!" thought Francisca.

The Professor's thoughts are not recorded. What he said was playful, but with an undertone which was not lost on one of his hearers. "'These things' are not worth your rose-garden, Miss Francisca—saying nothing of the rest of the _rancho_."

"Ah! it is nice of you to say so," replied Francisca, "but I do not believe it—nor does Miss Dysart."

Miss Dysart kept her lids discreetly lowered.

"By the way," she said, "I have someone to thank for a portion of a rose-garden myself. I don't suppose the hotels furnish that."

"Miss Francisca—" began the enlightened Professor.

"The Señor," interposed Francisca, quickly, "naturally wished you to have a Californian welcome. Francisco and I carried them down for him."

This time Miss Dysart raised her lids and looked straight at the girl before her.

"Thank you," she said, quietly.

"But if you care for roses," said Francisca, rising, "you must look at ours in the garden. We are proud of our roses, though it is not the rose season," she added; "for that you must come in April and May."

"Thanks!" exclaimed Miss Dysart, "but when one is used to one's roses by the half-dozen, this will do!"

"You shall have as many as you like every day, of course," said Francisca. "Or, perhaps," she added, quietly, "you will like to come and gather them yourself. The garden is yours."

"'Gather ye roses while ye may!'—you are most kind. I will take this one now, if I may," replied Miss Dysart, bending above a great white Lyonnaise.

"Just the rose I should expect you to choose," said the Professor, cutting it for her.

"Pray, why?" inquired Miss Dysart a little sharply.

"It is such a calm, vigorous, upright rose—a kind of apotheosis of our own New England roses. A well-bred rose; it does not straggle, nor shed its petals untidily. It would not look out of place in Boston;—and it has not too much color."

"You prefer these, I suppose," remarked the girl, coolly, glancing at his hand. The Professor looked down guiltily.

"I have been gleaming after you ladies. This is your Mermet."

"Thank you!" replied Miss Dysart dryly replacing the pink bud in her belt.

But the red rose remained in his hand.

Miss Dysart turned away abruptly. "What a place for a Flower Mission!"

Francisca looked puzzled. "Flower Mission—what is that?"

"The depth of your ignorance, Miss Francisca!" exclaimed the Professor. "You see, Mildred, Nature runs a Flower Mission on such a large scale that she deprives us of that—as well as many other legitimate philanthropies."

"Ah!" said Francisca, "now I do know what a Flower Mission is. It must be very helpful. And we do so little good with all these—only to dress the church."

"And welcome strangers," suggested Miss Dysart.

"My sister is always giving flowers away, and fruit," declared Francisco. "The Señor and the Padre know if that is true."

"But only for pleasure, thou foolish one," said Francisca, smiling at him.

Francisco did not smile back. He remained grave, and bowed their guest farewell, with his _caballero_ air, without a word.

"What a beautiful, solemn boy!" exclaimed Miss Dysart as she walked down the street.

"Francisco? Oh, he can be merry enough; you must allow for the effect of a visitor from Boston."

"Pray let poor Boston alone! What an absolute partisan you have become!"

"Have I? Perhaps it is only my mean effort to hide our consciousness of inferiority. We have no Missions here—except Franciscan ones."

"We! our!" repeated Miss Dysart, emphatically. "Have you ceased to be a New Englander already? Is this the effect of this remarkable climate?"

"I am afraid—it is," replied the Professor, meekly.

And as he walked home that eastern breeze blew more keenly still. As one turns to the sun, he turned to the house hopefully. Only Francisco was still sitting on the top step gazing gloomily into space. The Professor laid an affectionate hand on the boy's shoulder.

"What is the matter, Francisco? Are you not well?"

"There is nothing, Señor," was the melancholy reply.

The Professor fidgetted restlessly about the veranda and lawn, feeling as if the whole place had been subtly changed. There was no Spanish that afternoon, either; Francisca was apparently too busy, for she did not come out at all.

In the evening, however, she was idle enough. Francisco and she sat on the steps and watched the moonlight make patterns on the walk below. The Professor had gone to call on Miss Dysart, inwardly reviling the social necessity which demanded starched linen and a black coat on such a night. It was still early when Francisca with some light word of excuse, and the little caress to her brother nothing could have made her forget, rose and went in.

It was not even late when the Professor with eager feet came up the path, all inlaid with the ferny tracery of shadows from the pepper-boughs. The veranda, apparently deserted, greeted him silently, and he stood a moment battling with an immense disappointment. It seemed to him that he had lost forever an evening out of his life.