A Cry in the Wilderness
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So aged André, guide and voyageur, his parchment face alight with inward joy, fared forth to seek that City in the West.
For you who love the sunlight on the wave, who hail with joy the sunrise ever new; for you to whom the starlight brings a thought of that high peace that guides the wanderer; for you who watch the coming of the day with eyes that see the miracle of life; for you who share in all the fair delights of sunlight, moonlight, starlight, twilight, dawn, and feel their charm in every mood and tense of nature's perfecting—for you alone I sing this voyage over inland seas.
By sunlight, moonlight, starlight, André fared along the river called "the Queen's Highway"; and soon there frowned upon him, dark, superb, the crested towering headland of Tourmente that signals to the Plains of Abraham. And ever westwards, west by south, he fared until he saw the shipping of Quebec like some huge cobweb outlined intricate in black against the golden gleaming west.
The sunset gun resounded in mid-air as André anchor dropped below the town. The man-of-war's huge bulk belched answering flame, and ere the cannon's echoing roar had ceased, a sharp report was heard, a pigmy sound that woke its pigmy echo from the Rock. So André fired salute and quickly ran aloft his tiny Union Jack. 'Twas seen along the quays; the sailors cheered and cheered, until Pierre bayed musical response.
Then André, when the moon had fully risen, stretched out along the stern and smoked his pipe, Pierre at his feet, and watched the Rock that, like a jewel many facetted, now held, now flashed at every point the lights along the Terrace in the Upper Town. He heard a merry song, a peal of bells, a strain of distant music, plash of oars—then silence. One by one the lights went out; the moon was riding high and full above the scarp and ramparts of the Citadel; beneath, the river rolled its silvered flood.
Then onwards, ever onwards toward the West fared steadily this old French voyageur, and as he passed the dreaded Raven Cape he trolled a catch, "Un noir corbeau", to ward all ill and evil from his sturdy craft. So sped unharmed, swift-paddling toward the broad and sunlit shallows of Saint Peter's lake, and ever westwards to the Royal Isle where Montreal's green height looks down upon its shadowy reflex in Saint Lawrence's wave.
On, on he sped and ever to the West, land-locked at times in prairie-bound canals; then pulling vigorously, the rapids past, along the River's narrowing polished curve, with oar stroke, swift and sweeping, keeping time to hit of merry raftsmen on the Sault.
Fresh-hearted André! All the wholesome joys to which his simple life was consecrate were his as on he voyaged; his eventide brought joy and calm and light-of-evening peace. But once he would have tarried—as alights a wearied sea-mew on some lonely isle—when, paddling slow and noiselessly he steered his craft among the leafy waterways of that Arcadian Venice of our North: the Thousand Isles. His woodsman's heart beat high when, gliding silently past sunny glades and darkling glens, he heard the wavelets lap the crinkling sands and saw the water glint against the slopes fringed deep with June's lush green.
At times he paused, the paddle braced, and leaned thereon his weight; the while, his lungs inflate, he drew deep breaths of fragrance balsamic that flowed in counter currents, sensate, warm, from out the depths of cedar thickets gray, and red, and white. And then away, away he sped past gardens gay with summer blooms, past emerald lawns set round by sapphire waves. And here and there an islet laughed at him—a tiny patch of verdure overhung by one white birch that glistered in the sun.
And every night a strange enchantment wrought upon his spirit when, beneath the stars, on some long reach that narrowed suddenly, embraced by banks converging, forest clad, the dugout drifted 'twixt two firmaments. Then André dreamed of pool and river reach and ancient pine o'er-hanging torrents wild, far distant on the Upper Saguenay; and summer dwellers on those Fortunate Isles were ware at midnight of a singing voice and fragment of a song, like some last chord drawn lingeringly across responsive strings:
"Je cherche, je cherche, là bas, là bas,La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;Si je la trouve, quand je seraiDe mon retour je chante toujoursLes gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."Ontario, Ontario, all hail thou lovely Lake that in thy breast doth hide the many secrets of Niagara! Upon thy waves, soft thrilling joyously with rush of thunderous waters from afar, see, like a gull, the white three-cornered sail dip lightly to the fair breeze from the North!
"Là bas, là bas," sang André o'er and o'er, and e'en Pierre bayed long into the West, awoke shrill echoes from the border farms at early dawn, and told his nightly tale to waning summer moons till cliff and shore gave back the sound in echoes manifold.
And what of nights within some sheltered cove when storm and darkness claimed both sea and sky? And what of days when furious cross-winds rose, and smote the lake that hissed and writhed and roared beneath the scourge that welted its white breast? Then André crossed himself and told his beads; Pierre crouched low adown within the hull; the dugout rocked safe moored within the cove or, drawn up on a strip of pebbly beach, with softly-grating keel in rhythmic beats told off the lapsing surges till the West translucent 'neath the lifting cloud mass gleamed, and in the sedges near the shore he heard the reed birds whistle plaintively and low.
Three moons had waxed and waned since, far away upon the Upper Saguenay, the pools foreshadowed substance of those haunting dreams of glories human eye had never seen—thrice thirty days ere André neared his goal. At last, emerging from the narrow strait of savage Mackinac, he set his sail and voyaged ever southwards day by day with many a tack cajoling every breeze. The white fish leaped within the dugout's wake; the gulls' harsh cry was heard above the mast; at times a passing steamer's paddles throbbed an hour and broke the dead monotony of sea and sky on lonely Michigan.
On silent sea, neath silent skies he voyaged, till lo! one silent morn ere rise of sun, the light mists, veiling yet disclosing, crept slow-curling o'er the surface of the Lake to meet the brightening east, and there dissolved in sudden glory, leaving André rapt, with dripping oars suspended and with eyes intent upon a vision marvellous!—The softened radiance of breaking day shone clear, subdued, on dome and tower and arch, on rich facade and many-columned gate of that ethereal Wonder-City white, the fundaments of which in amethyst and chrysopras were seen deep down beneath the surface of the Lake that, motionless, reflected heaven on earth and earth in heaven!
And André, gazing so, bared his gray head, the slow tears coursing down his furrowed cheeks, and, folding on his breast his calloused hands, prayed low and fingered o'er his wellworn beads.
Old André moored his dugout to the pier, and leaving tragic-eyed Pierre within as sentinel, slow-blinking towards the east, he turned his steps to that high-columned gate, the prototype of heaven on this our earth, and passed beneath the portal as the sun rose o'er the Lake in gorgeous crimson state.
X
I can still hear in memory the sudden hiss from a bursting air-pocket in the forelog; it broke the silence which followed Jamie's reading. At the sound, it seemed as if we drew a freer breath.
Was it Jamie Macleod who was sitting there with flushed cheeks, bright eyes, dilated pupils, and eager inquiring look which asked of his friends their approval or criticism? Or was it some changeling spirit of genius that for the time being had taken up its abode in the frail tenement of his body?
His mother leaned to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
"My dear boy," was all she said, for they were rarely demonstrative with each other; but, oh, the pride and affection in her voice! I saw Jamie's mouth twitch before he smiled into her eyes.
"You 've made us live it, Boy," said the Doctor quietly and with deep feeling; "but I never thought you could do it—not so, for all the faith I 've had in you."
Jamie drew a long breath of relief; he spoke eagerly:
"It was the trial trip, Doctor, and I did hope it would stand the test with you and Ewart."
Mr. Ewart rose and crossed the hearth to him. He held out his strong shapely hand. Jamie's thin one closed upon it with a tense nervous pressure, as I could see.
"I congratulate you, Macleod." The tone of his voice, the address as man to man, expressed his pride, his love, his admiration.
Jamie smiled with as much satisfaction as if for the first time there had been conferred upon him manhood suffrage, the freedom of the city of London, and a batch of Oxford honors. Then, satisfied, he turned to me. I spoke lightly to ease the emotional tension that was evident in all the rest of us:
"You 've imposed upon me, Jamie Macleod. You 're classed henceforth with frauds and fakirs! How could I know when you were scrapping with me the last three weeks over such prosaic things as rag carpets, toilet sets and skins, that you were harboring all this poetry!"
"Then you think it's poetry? You 've found me out!" Jamie said, showing his delight. "Honestly, Marcia, you like it? I want you to, though I say it as should n't."
"Yes, I do," I answered earnestly; "I can understand the song the better for it."
"What song?" the Doctor asked, before Jamie could speak.
"'O Canada, pays de mon amour'," I quoted.
"You know that?" Mr. Ewart spoke quickly.
"Only as I have heard it through the graphophone, in the cabaret below the steamboat landing."
"I say, Marcia, that's rough on the song!—Gordon," he exclaimed, "do you sing it for us, do; then she 'll know how it ought to sound."
"It's the only possible epilogue for the 'Odyssey'—what a capital title, Boy! Sing it, Ewart."
"Wait till I have a piano."
"You don't need it. You used to sing it in camp."
"But I had André's violin."
"I have it! Pierre will fiddle for you." Jamie jumped to his feet. "Hark!"
We listened. Sure enough, from some room behind the kitchen offices, probably in the summer kitchen, we could hear the faint but merry sounds of a violin.
"They 're celebrating your home-coming, Ewart! I knew they were up to snuff when Angélique gave me an order for a half a dozen bottles of the 'vin du pays', you remember, Marcia? They 're at it now. I might have known it, for they have n't come in to say good night."
"Let's have them all in then," said Mr. Ewart. "They 'll stay up as long as we do."
"Will you sing for them?" Mrs. Macleod put the question directly to her host.
"For you and them, if you wish it," was the cordial reply. "Jamie, you 're master of ceremonies and have had something up your sleeve all this evening; I know by your looks. Bring them in."
Jamie laughed mischievously. "Oh, I 'll bring them in," he said. I knew then that, unknown to his mother and me, he had planned a surprise.
"Get Cale in, if you can," Mr. Ewart called after him.
"Oh, Cale 's abed before this; he does n't acknowledge you as his lord of the manor, not yet."
"That was remarkable, Gordon," said the Doctor, as soon as the door closed on Jamie.
"Yes, he has given me a surprise. Of course you realized that whole description was in metre?"
"I was sure of it after the first page or two, but I could scarcely trust my ears. What the boy has done is to make of it a true Canadian idyl. I wish Drummond might have heard it."
"I believe Jamie knows 'The Habitant' book of poems by heart. Have you ever read it, Miss Farrell?"
"Yes, in New York; and Jamie has promised to give me a copy for a Christmas remembrance."
"I 'll add one to it," said the Doctor, "'The Voyageur,' then you will probe a little deeper into Ewart's love and mine for Canada."
"Oh, thank you; these two will be the beginning of my private library."
"I 'll give you an autograph copy of 'Johnnie Courteau,' if you like; I knew Drummond," said Mr. Ewart.
To say I was pleased, would not express the pleasure those two men gave me in just thinking of me in this way. I thanked them both, a little stiffly, I fear, for I am not used to gifts; but my face must have shown them how genuine was my feeling for the favors. They both saw my slight confusion and interpreted it, for Mr. Ewart said, smiling:
"If you don't mind I will add to the unborn library Drummond's other volume; I 'm going to try to live up to Cale's expectation of me concerning your connection with books. They will help you to remember this evening."
"As if I needed anything to remember it!" I exclaimed, at ease again. "It's like–it's like—"
"Like what, Marcia?" Mrs. Macleod put this question.
"Tell us, do," the Doctor added; "don't keep me in suspense; my temperament can't bear it." He looked at me a little puzzled and wholly curious. I was glad to answer both Mrs. Macleod and him truthfully:
"Like a new lease of life for me." My smile answered the Doctor's, and I was interested to see that the same wireless message I was transmitting again across the abyss of time, failed again of interpretation. I turned to Mrs. Macleod.
"I think I may be needed in the kitchen." I rose to leave the room.
"Are you in the secret too?" Mr. Ewart asked.
"No, but I 've been recalling certain commissions Angélique gave me—extra citron, pink coloring for cakes, and powdered sugar for which, as yet, we have had no use in the house. But I want to be in the secret, for Jamie—"
The sentence remained unfinished, for Jamie flung open the door with a flourish, and stout Angélique, flushed with responsibility and the "vin du pays", entered carrying a huge round platter, whereon was a cake of noble proportions ornamented with white frosting in all sorts of curlycues and central "Félicitations" in pink. Behind her came Marie with a tin tray, laid with an immaculate napkin—one of our new ones—filled with pressed wine-glasses and decanters of antiquated shape. Following her was little Pete, carrying on each arm an enormous wreath of ground pine and bittersweet. Big Pete brought up the rear, his face glowing, his black eyes sparkling, his earrings twinkling. He was tuning his violin.
All rose to greet them; but ignoring us, with intense seriousness, they ranged themselves in a row near the door. They still held their offerings. Pierre, drawing his bow across the strings, nodded his head. Thereupon they began to sing, and sang with all their hearts and vocal powers to the accompaniment of the violin:
"O Canada, pays de mon amour!"
With the first words, Mr. Ewart's voice, full, strong, vibrant with patriotism, joined them; his fine baritone seemed to carry the melody for all the others. The room rang to the sound of the united voices. I saw Cale at the door, listening with bent head. Jamie stood beside him, triumphant and happy at the success of his surprise party.
How Angélique sang! Her stout person fairly quivered with the resonance of her alto. Marie's shrill treble rose and fell with regular staccato emphasis. Pierre, father, roared his bass in harmony with Pierre, son's falsetto, and beat time heavily with his right foot.
At the finish, the Doctor started the applause in which Jamie and Cale joined. With a sigh of absolute satisfaction, Angélique presented her cake to Mr. Ewart who, taking it from her with thanks, placed it on the library table and paid her the compliment of asking her to cut it. Marie passed around the tray and decanted the "vin du pays". Little Peter, following instructions given him in the kitchen, hung a wreath from each corner of the mantel. Compliments and congratulations on the cake, the wine, the wreaths, the song, the master's home-coming, the refurbished manor house, were exchanged freely, and we all talked together in French and English. My broken French was understood because they were kind enough to guess at my meaning—the most of it.
Then the healths were drunk, to Mr. Ewart, to the Doctor, to Jamie, Mrs. Macleod and me; and we drank theirs. Finally, Mr. Ewart went to Cale, whom Jamie had persuaded to step over the threshold, and gave his health, touching glasses with him:
"To my fellow laborer in the forest." He repeated it in French for the benefit of the French contingent.
Cale, touching glasses, swallowed his wine at one gulp and abruptly left the room. He half stumbled over little Pierre who was sitting in the corner by the door, supremely happy in the remains of his huge piece of cake, which at his special request was cut that he might have the pink letters "Félici", and in the two lumps of white sugar which Mr. Ewart dropped into a glass of wine highly diluted with water.
Oh, it was good to see them! It was good to hear their merry chat; to be glad in their rejoicing over the return and final settlement of Mr. Ewart among them, their "lord of the manor", as they persisted in calling him to his evident disgust and amusement. But their joy was genuine, a pleasant thing to bear witness to in these our times.
And if Father Pierre in his exuberance of congratulation repeated himself many times; if Angélique asked Mr. Ewart more than once if the cake was exactly to his taste; if Marie grew doubly voluble with her "Dormez-biens", and little Pierre was discovered helping himself uninvited to another piece of cake—an act that roused Angélique to seeming frenzy—Mr. Ewart closed an eye to it all, for, as they trooped, still voluble, out of the room, he knew as well as we that their measure of happiness was full, pressed down and running over. Oh, their bonhomie! It was a revelation to me.
The embers were still bright in the fireplace but the candles were burning low in the sconces; it was high time at half-past eleven for the whole household to say good night.
"A home-coming to remember, Gordon," I heard Doctor Rugvie say, as I left the room.
"I can't yet realize it; but I 've dreamed—"
I caught no more, for the door closed upon them.
The two men must have talked together into the morning hours, for I heard them come upstairs long after I was in bed. Not until the house was wholly quiet could I get to sleep.
XI
I was up betimes the next morning, but Cale had been before me and taken up the offending rag carpet from the passageway. When I went into the kitchen, Angélique told me that the seignior—she persisted in calling him that—and the Doctor had had their coffee and early doughnuts and were off in the pung, the seignior driving; that they said they would be at home for dinner. I found Cale and Pierre, acting under orders in the early morning, taking the trunks up to the bedrooms, placing the guns in the racks, removing the various sporting implements to a room behind the kitchen, and the chests to a storeroom. At breakfast we three were alone together as usual. The four dogs were absent.
Mrs. Macleod and I spent the entire forenoon bringing order again into the various rooms. In the meantime, Jamie was dreaming and reading in the living-room. I had been there just a month and a day, and could not help wondering who would pay me! I needed the money for some heavier clothing.
The two friends appeared promptly for dinner and brought with them appetites sharpened by the increasing cold. They had been in Richelieu-en-Bas and arranged for a telephone for the manor, called on some English friends visiting at the new manor house in the village, and stopped at some of the seigniory farmhouses on the way home. I found Mère Guillardeau had been remembered at this early date.
"Are you busy this afternoon, Miss Farrell?" said the Doctor, as we rose from our first meal together and went into the living-room.
"Not unless Mrs. Macleod needs me?" I looked at her inquiringly.
"No, there is nothing more, Marcia; you did a good day's work in a few hours this morning," she replied in answer to my look.
"Can I be helpful to you in any way?" I said, turning again to the Doctor.
"Yes—I think you can." He smiled quizzically, looking down upon me from his substantial height. "You may not know—of course you don't, how could you know, never having heard much of an old fellow like me—"
"Oh, have n't I?"
"Have you? Then the Boy here has been giving me away. Has he ever told you I am something of a whip?"
"No, not that."
"Well, then, I am going to prove it to you. I propose to show the two French coach horses how to draw a pung,—Ewart does n't yet own a sleigh, you know in Canada,—and I wish you would lend me your company for an hour or so."
If the Doctor expected an enthusiastic response he must have been disappointed. Not that I did n't want the ride in the pung, but it occurred to me that here was my opportunity, offered without my seeking it, to ask of him all that I had been planning to ask during many weeks. As this door of opportunity was so suddenly opened to me, I felt the chill of the unknown creeping towards me over its threshold. I answered almost with hesitation:
"Certainly, I will go, unless Mrs. Macleod—"
"Mrs. Macleod says she does n't need you." He spoke quickly, his keen eyes holding mine for a moment.
"I say, that's a jolly cool way you have at times, Marcia!" Jamie exploded in his usual fashion when he is ruffled. "But you 'll get used to it, Doctor—I have."
"A martyr, eh, Boy?" The Doctor looked amused.
"Well, rather—at times."
"Don't mind Jamie's martyrdoms, Doctor Rugvie; tell me when you want me to be ready."
"In half an hour. I don't want to start too late; be sure to take enough wraps."
I left them to go upstairs, wondering on the way what wraps I should take—I, who possessed only sufficient clothing to help out a New York winter, but no furs, no fur coat, no warm moccasins, no mittens, only an unlined gray tweed ulster that with a grey sweater had done duty for four years.
"I want my pay more than I want a pung ride," I growled, as I was trying to make the one thick veil I owned do double duty for head and ears protector. I folded a square of newspaper and laid it over my chest under my sweater; I put on two pairs of stockings. Thus fortified against the Canadian cold, I went downstairs promptly on time.
Mr. Ewart came out into the passageway; the Doctor was talking with Mrs. Macleod in the living-room.
"Why, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, "I see you don't realize our climate; you can't go without more wraps—"
He hesitated, grew visibly embarrassed. I knew by his manner he had unwittingly probed my poverty to the quick, and I crimsoned with shame; yes, I was ashamed that my lack should thus be made known to him—ashamed as when Delia Beaseley's keen eyes read my need of money.
"Oh, I don't need to bundle up—I have been accustomed to go without such heavy clothing," I said, with ready lie to cover my confusion.
The Doctor came out and took his fur-lined coat from a wooden peg under the staircase. Mr. Ewart turned abruptly and reached for something on an adjoining peg; it was a fur coat of Canadian fox, soft and fine and warm.
"You are to wear this, otherwise the Doctor won't let you go," he said quickly, decidedly, shaking it down and holding it ready for me to slip in my arms.
For a second, a second only, I hesitated, searching for some excuse to give up the drive and so avoid acceptance of this favor; then I slipped into it, much to Jamie's delight who, appearing at the living-room door, cried out:
"My, Marcia, but you 're smart in Ewart's togs! We 'll have some of our own if this is the kind of weather they treat us to in Canada. I 've been hugging the fire all the morning."
He saved the situation for me and I was grateful to him; but Mr. Ewart looked at him, almost anxiously, saying:
"I should have been getting the heater put up this forenoon, instead of rushing off the first thing this morning. A poor host thus far, Jamie, but I 'll make good hereafter."
The Doctor looked me over carefully.
"You 're safeguarded with that; the sleeves are so long and ample they are as good as a modern muff—go back, Boy,"—he spoke brusquely, as he opened the outer door,—"this is no place for you."