Chapter 3

“Ah, but befo dose taim', dere was wuss taim' dan dat--in Canada. Nobody don' know 'bout dat. I lak to tell you, 'Ose, but I can't. No, it is not possible to tell dat, nevair!”

It came into Hose's mind that the case was serious. Jack was going to die. He never went to church, but perhaps the Sunday-school might count for something. He was only a Frenchman, after all, and Frenchmen had their own ways of doing things. He certainly ought to see some kind of a preacher before he went out of the wilderness. There was a Canadian priest in town that week, who had come down to see about getting up a church for the French people who worked in the mills. Perhaps Jack would like to talk with him.

His face lighted up at the proposal. He asked to have the room tidied up, and a clean shirt put on him, and the violin laid open in its case on a table beside the bed, and a few other preparations made for the visit. Then the visitor came, a tall, friendly, quiet-looking man about Jacques's age, with a smooth face and a long black cassock. The door was shut, and they were left alone together.

“I am comforted that you are come, mon pere,” said the sick man, “for I have the heavy heart. There is a secret that I have kept for many years. Sometimes I had almost forgotten that it must be told at the last; but now it is the time to speak. I have a sin to confess--a sin of the most grievous, of the most unpardonable.”

The listener soothed him with gracious words; spoke of the mercy that waits for all the penitent; urged him to open his heart without delay.

“Well, then, mon pere, it is this that makes me fear to die. Long since, in Canada, before I came to this place, I have killed a man. It was--”

The voice stopped. The little round clock on the window-sill ticked very distinctly and rapidly, as if it were in a hurry.

“I will speak as short as I can. It was in the camp of 'Poleon Gautier, on the river St. Maurice. The big Baptiste Lacombe, that crazy boy who wants always to fight, he mocks me when I play, he snatches my violin, he goes to break him on the stove. There is a knife in my belt. I spring to Baptiste. I see no more what it is that I do. I cut him in the neck--once, twice. The blood flies out. He falls down. He cries, 'I die.' I grab my violin from the floor, quick; then I run to the woods. No one can catch me. A blanket, the axe, some food, I get from a hiding-place down the river. Then I travel, travel, travel through the woods, how many days I know not, till I come here. No one knows me. I give myself the name Tremblay. I make the music for them. With my violin I live. I am happy. I forget. But it all returns to me--now--at the last. I have murdered. Is there a forgiveness for me, mon pere?”

The priest's face had changed very swiftly at the mention of the camp on the St. Maurice. As the story went on, he grew strangely excited. His lips twitched. His hands trembled. At the end he sank on his knees, close by the bed, and looked into the countenance of the sick man, searching it as a forester searches in the undergrowth for a lost trail. Then his eyes lighted up as he found it.

“My son,” said he, clasping the old fiddler's hand in his own, “you are Jacques Dellaire. And I--do you know me now?--I am Baptiste Lacombe. See those two scars upon my neck. But it was not death. You have not murdered. You have given the stroke that changed my heart. Your sin is forgiven--AND MINE ALSO--by the mercy of God!”

The round clock ticked louder and louder. A level ray from the setting sun--red gold--came in through the dusty window, and lay across the clasped hands on the bed. A white-throated sparrow, the first of the season, on his way to the woods beyond the St. Lawrence, whistled so clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he were repeating to these two gray-haired exiles the name of their homeland. “Sweet--sweet--Canada, Canada, Canada!” But there was a sweeter sound than that in the quiet room.

It was the sound of the prayer which begins, in every language spoken by men, with the name of that Unseen One who rules over life's chances, and pities its discords, and tunes it back again into harmony. Yes, this prayer of the little children who are only learning how to play the first notes of life's music, turns to the great Master musician who knows it all and who loves to bring a melody out of every instrument that He has made; and it seems to lay the soul in His hands to play upon as He will, while it calls Him, OUR FATHER!

Some day, perhaps, you will go to the busy place where Bytown used to be; and if you do, you must take the street by the river to the white wooden church of St. Jacques. It stands on the very spot where there was once a cabin with a curved roof. There is a gilt cross on the top of the church. The door is usually open, and the interior is quite gay with vases of china and brass, and paper flowers of many colours; but if you go through to the sacristy at the rear, you will see a brown violin hanging on the wall.

Pere Baptiste, if he is there, will take it down and show it to you. He calls it a remarkable instrument--one of the best, of the most sweet.

But he will not let any one play upon it. He says it is a relic.

II. THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

I

When the good priest of St. Gerome christened Patrick Mullarkey, he lent himself unconsciously to an innocent deception. To look at the name, you would think, of course, it belonged to an Irishman; the very appearance of it was equal to a certificate of membership in a Fenian society.

But in effect, from the turned-up toes of his bottes sauvages to the ends of his black mustache, the proprietor of this name was a Frenchman--Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in Normandy. Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft from the Green Isle. A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had drifted up the Saguenay into the Lake St. John region, and married the daughter of a habitant, and settled down to forget his own country and his father's house. But every visible trace of this infusion of new blood had vanished long ago, except the name; and the name itself was transformed on the lips of the St. Geromians. If you had heard them speak it in their pleasant droning accent,--“Patrique Moullarque,”--you would have supposed that it was made in France. To have a guide with such a name as that was as good as being abroad.

Even when they cut it short and called him “Patte,” as they usually did, it had a very foreign sound. Everything about him was in harmony with it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt in French--the French of two hundred years ago, the language of Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong woodland flavour. In short, my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat, did not have a drop of Irish in him, unless, perhaps, it was a certain--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you have heard this story of his virtue, and the way it was rewarded.

It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles back from St. Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself, as commonly happens in the real stories which life is always bringing out in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the plot. But Patrick readily made me acquainted with what had gone before. Indeed, it is one of life's greatest charms as a story-teller that there is never any trouble about getting a brief resume of the argument, and even a listener who arrives late is soon put into touch with the course of the narrative.

We had hauled our canoes and camp-stuff over the terrible road that leads to the lake, with much creaking and groaning of wagons, and complaining of men, who declared that the mud grew deeper and the hills steeper every year, and vowed their customary vow never to come that way again. At last our tents were pitched in a green copse of balsam trees, close beside the water. The delightful sense of peace and freedom descended upon our souls. Prosper and Ovide were cutting wood for the camp-fire; Francois was getting ready a brace of partridges for supper; Patrick and I were unpacking the provisions, arranging them conveniently for present use and future transportation.

“Here, Pat,” said I, as my hand fell on a large square parcel--“here is some superfine tobacco that I got in Quebec for you and the other men on this trip. Not like the damp stuff you had last year--a little bad smoke and too many bad words. This is tobacco to burn--something quite particular, you understand. How does that please you?”

He had been rolling up a piece of salt pork in a cloth as I spoke, and courteously wiped his fingers on the outside of the bundle before he stretched out his hand to take the package of tobacco. Then he answered, with his unfailing politeness, but more solemnly than usual:

“A thousand thanks to m'sieu'. But this year I shall not have need of the good tobacco. It shall be for the others.”

The reply was so unexpected that it almost took my breath away. For Pat, the steady smoker, whose pipes were as invariable as the precession of the equinoxes, to refuse his regular rations of the soothing weed was a thing unheard of. Could he be growing proud in his old age? Had he some secret supply of cigars concealed in his kit, which made him scorn the golden Virginia leaf? I demanded an explanation.

“But no, m'sieu',” he replied; “it is not that, most assuredly. It is something entirely different--something very serious. It is a reformation that I commence. Does m'sieu' permit that I should inform him of it?”

Of course I permitted, or rather, warmly encouraged, the fullest possible unfolding of the tale; and while we sat among the bags and boxes, and the sun settled gently down behind the sharp-pointed firs across the lake, and the evening sky and the waveless lake glowed with a thousand tints of deepening rose and amber, Patrick put me in possession of the facts which had led to a moral revolution in his life.

“It was the Ma'm'selle Meelair, that young lady,--not very young, but active like the youngest,--the one that I conducted down the Grande Decharge to Chicoutimi last year, after you had gone away. She said that she knew m'sieu' intimately. No doubt you have a good remembrance of her?”

I admitted an acquaintance with the lady. She was the president of several societies for ethical agitation--a long woman, with short hair and eyeglasses and a great thirst for tea; not very good in a canoe, but always wanting to run the rapids and go into the dangerous places, and talking all the time. Yes; that must have been the one. She was not a bosom friend of mine, to speak accurately, but I remembered her well.

“Well, then, m'sieu',” continued Patrick, “it was this demoiselle who changed my mind about the smoking. But not in a moment, you understand; it was a work of four days, and she spoke much.

“The first day it was at the Island House; we were trolling for ouananiche, and she was not pleased, for she lost many of the fish. I was smoking at the stern of the canoe, and she said that the tobacco was a filthy weed, that it grew in the devil's garden, and that it smelled bad, terribly bad, and that it made the air sick, and that even the pig would not eat it.”

I could imagine Patrick's dismay as he listened to this dissertation; for in his way he was as sensitive as a woman, and he would rather have been upset in his canoe than have exposed himself to the reproach of offending any one of his patrons by unpleasant or unseemly conduct.

“What did you do then, Pat?” I asked.

“Certainly I put out the pipe--what could I do otherwise? But I thought that what the demoiselle Meelair has said was very strange, and not true--exactly; for I have often seen the tobacco grow, and it springs up out of the ground like the wheat or the beans, and it has beautiful leaves, broad and green, with sometimes a red flower at the top. Does the good God cause the filthy weeds to grow like that? Are they not all clean that He has made? The potato--it is not filthy. And the onion? It has a strong smell; but the demoiselle Meelair she ate much of the onion--when we were not at the Island House, but in the camp.

“And the smell of the tobacco--this is an affair of the taste. For me, I love it much; it is like a spice. When I come home at night to the camp-fire, where the boys are smoking, the smell of the pipes runs far out into the woods to salute me. It says, 'Here we are, Patrique; come in near to the fire.' The smell of the tobacco is more sweet than the smell of the fish. The pig loves it not, assuredly; but what then? I am not a pig. To me it is good, good, good. Don't you find it like that, m'sieu'?”

I had to confess that in the affair of taste I sided with Patrick rather than with the pig. “Continue,” I said--“continue, my boy. Miss Miller must have said more than that to reform you.”

“Truly,” replied Pat. “On the second day we were making the lunch at midday on the island below the first rapids. I smoked the pipe on a rock apart, after the collation. Mees Meelair comes to me, and says: 'Patrique, my man, do you comprehend that the tobacco is a poison? You are committing the murder of yourself.' Then she tells me many things--about the nicoline, I think she calls him; how he goes into the blood and into the bones and into the hair, and how quickly he will kill the cat. And she says, very strong, 'The men who smoke the tobacco shall die!'”

“That must have frightened you well, Pat. I suppose you threw away your pipe at once.”

“But no, m'sieu'; this time I continue to smoke, for now it is Mees Meelair who comes near the pipe voluntarily, and it is not my offence. And I remember, while she is talking, the old bonhomme Michaud St. Gerome. He is a capable man; when he was young he could carry a barrel of flour a mile without rest, and now that he has seventy-three years he yet keeps his force. And he smokes--it is astonishing how that old man smokes! All the day, except when he sleeps. If the tobacco is a poison, it is a poison of the slowest--like the tea or the coffee. For the cat it is quick--yes; but for the man it is long; and I am still young--only thirty-one.

“But the third day, m'sieu'--the third day was the worst. It was a day of sadness, a day of the bad chance. The demoiselle Meelair was not content but that we should leap the Rapide des Cedres in canoe. It was rough, rough--all feather-white, and the big rock at the corner boiling like a kettle. But it is the ignorant who have the most of boldness. The demoiselle Meelair she was not solid in the canoe. She made a jump and a loud scream. I did my possible, but the sea was too high. We took in of the water about five buckets. We were very wet. After that we make the camp; and while I sit by the fire to dry my clothes I smoke for comfort.

“Mees Meelair she comes to me once more. 'Patrique,' she says with a sad voice, 'I am sorry that a nice man, so good, so brave, is married to a thing so bad, so sinful!' At first I am mad when I hear this, because I think she means Angelique, my wife; but immediately she goes on: 'You are married to the smoking. That is sinful; it is a wicked thing. Christians do not smoke. There is none of the tobacco in heaven. The men who use it cannot go there. Ah, Patrique, do you wish to go to the hell with your pipe?'”

“That was a close question,” I commented; “your Miss Miller is a plain speaker. But what did you say when she asked you that?”

“I said, m'sieu',” replied Patrick, lifting his hand to his forehead, “that I must go where the good God pleased to send me, and that I would have much joy to go to the same place with our cure, the Pere Morel, who is a great smoker. I am sure that the pipe of comfort is no sin to that holy man when he returns, some cold night, from the visiting of the sick--it is not sin, not more than the soft chair and the warm fire. It harms no one, and it makes quietness of mind. For me, when I see m'sieu' the cure sitting at the door of the presbytere, in the evening coolness, smoking the tobacco, very peaceful, and when he says to me, 'Good day, Patrique; will you have a pipeful?' I cannot think that is wicked--no!”

There was a warmth of sincerity in the honest fellow's utterance that spoke well for the character of the cure of St. Gerome. The good word of a plain fisherman or hunter is worth more than a degree of doctor of divinity from a learned university.

I too had grateful memories of good men, faithful, charitable, wise, devout,--men before whose virtues my heart stood uncovered and reverent, men whose lives were sweet with self-sacrifice, and whose words were like stars of guidance to many souls,--and I had often seen these men solacing their toils and inviting pleasant, kindly thoughts with the pipe of peace. I wondered whether Miss Miller ever had the good fortune to meet any of these men. They were not members of the societies for ethical agitation, but they were profitable men to know. Their very presence was medicinal. It breathed patience and fidelity to duty, and a large, quiet friendliness.

“Well, then,” I asked, “what did she say finally to turn you? What was her last argument? Come, Pat, you must make it a little shorter than she did.”

“In five words, m'sieu', it was this: 'The tobacco causes the poverty.' The fourth day--you remind yourself of the long dead-water below the Rapide Gervais? It was there. All the day she spoke to me of the money that goes to the smoke. Two piastres the month. Twenty-four the year. Three hundred--yes, with the interest, more than three hundred in ten years! Two thousand piastres in the life of the man! But she comprehends well the arithmetic, that demoiselle Meelair; it was enormous! The big farmer Tremblay has not more money at the bank than that. Then she asks me if I have been at Quebec? No. If I would love to go? Of course, yes. For two years of the smoking we could go, the goodwife and me, to Quebec, and see the grand city, and the shops, and the many people, and the cathedral, and perhaps the theatre. And at the asylum of the orphans we could seek one of the little found children to bring home with us, to be our own; for m'sieu knows it is the sadness of our house that we have no child. But it was not Mees Meelair who said that--no, she would not understand that thought.”

Patrick paused for a moment, and rubbed his chin reflectively. Then he continued:

“And perhaps it seems strange to you also, m'sieu', that a poor man should be so hungry for children. It is not so everywhere: not in America, I hear. But it is so with us in Canada. I know not a man so poor that he would not feel richer for a child. I know not a man so happy that he would not feel happier with a child in the house. It is the best thing that the good God gives to us; something to work for; something to play with. It makes a man more gentle and more strong. And a woman,--her heart is like an empty nest, if she has not a child. It was the darkest day that ever came to Angelique and me when our little baby flew away, four years ago. But perhaps if we have not one of our own, there is another somewhere, a little child of nobody, that belongs to us, for the sake of the love of children. Jean Boucher, my wife's cousin, at St. Joseph d'Alma, has taken two from the asylum. Two, m'sieu', I assure you for as soon as one was twelve years old, he said he wanted a baby, and so he went back again and got another. That is what I should like to do.”

“But, Pat,” said I, “it is an expensive business, this raising of children. You should think twice about it.”

“Pardon, m'sieu',” answered Patrick; “I think a hundred times and always the same way. It costs little more for three, or four, or five, in the house than for two. The only thing is the money for the journey to the city, the choice, the arrangement with the nuns. For that one must save. And so I have thrown away the pipe. I smoke no more. The money of the tobacco is for Quebec and for the little found child. I have already eighteen piastres and twenty sous in the old box of cigars on the chimney-piece at the house. This year will bring more. The winter after the next, if we have the good chance, we go to the city, the goodwife and me, and we come home with the little boy--or maybe the little girl. Does m'sieu' approve?”

“You are a man of virtue, Pat,” said I; “and since you will not take your share of the tobacco on this trip, it shall go to the other men; but you shall have the money instead, to put into your box on the mantel-piece.”

After supper that evening I watched him with some curiosity to see what he would do without his pipe. He seemed restless and uneasy. The other men sat around the fire, smoking; but Patrick was down at the landing, fussing over one of the canoes, which had been somewhat roughly handled on the road coming in. Then he began to tighten the tent-ropes, and hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of the stakes. Then he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, and cut it an inch too short. Then he went into the men's tent, and in a few minutes the sound of snoring told that he had sought refuge in sleep at eight o'clock, without telling a single caribou story, or making any plans for the next day's sport.

II

For several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, trying the fishing. We explored all the favourite meeting-places of the trout, at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-holes, but we did not have remarkable success. I am bound to say that Patrick was not at his best that year as a fisherman. He was as ready to work, as interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked steadiness, persistence, patience. Some tranquillizing influence seemed to have departed from him. That placid confidence in the ultimate certainty of catching fish, which is one of the chief elements of good luck, was wanting. He did not appear to be able to sit still in the canoe. The mosquitoes troubled him terribly. He was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take plenty of the largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry. He even went so far as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I did formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose. He was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous resolve held firm.

There was one place in particular that required very cautious angling. It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du Milieu--an open space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, in the midst of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by clear, shallow water. Here the great trout assembled at certain hours of the day; but it was not easy to get them. You must come up delicately in the canoe, and make fast to a stake at the side of the pool, and wait a long time for the place to get quiet and the fish to recover from their fright and come out from under the lily-pads. It had been our custom to calm and soothe this expectant interval with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to meditation and a foe of “Raw haste, half-sister to delay.” But this year Patrick could not endure the waiting. After five minutes he would say:

“BUT the fishing is bad this season! There are none of the big ones here at all. Let us try another place. It will go better at the Riviere du Cheval, perhaps.”