Part 10

“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.

A boy came into the box swinging a tray of glasses of ice-water. I 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.

“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.