Part 6 (1/2)
Endormez ma p't.i.te enfant Jusqu'a l'age de quinze ans!
Quand elle aura quinze ans pa.s.se Il faudra la marier Avec un p't.i.t bonhomme Que viendra de Rome.
”Hola! Patrick,” I cried; ”good luck to you! Is it a girl or a boy?”
”SALUT! m'sieu',” he answered, jumping up and waving his pipe. ”It is a girl AND a boy!”
Sure enough, as I entered the door, I beheld Angelique rocking the other half of the reward of virtue in the new cradle.
III. A BRAVE HEART
”That was truly his name, m'sieu'--Raoul Vaillantcoeur--a name of the fine sound, is it not? You like that word,--a valiant heart,--it pleases you, eh! The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It is like the lottery.”
Silence for a few moments, broken only by the ripple of water under the bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us, and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian voyageur, was pus.h.i.+ng the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must keep still to get it. A single ill-advised comment, a word that would raise a question of morals or social philosophy, might switch the narrative off the track into a swamp of abstract discourse in which Ferdinand would lose himself. Presently the voice behind me began again.
”But that word VAILLANT, m'sieu'; with us in Canada it does not mean always the same as with you. Sometimes we use it for something that sounds big, but does little; a gun that goes off with a terrible crack, but shoots not straight nor far. When a man is like that he is FANFARON, he shows off well, but--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you hear what happened between this man Vaillantcoeur and his friend Prosper Leclere at the building of the stone tower of the church at Abbeville.
You remind yourself of that grand church with the tall tower--yes? With permission I am going to tell you what pa.s.sed when that was made. And you shall decide whether there was truly a brave heart in the story, or not; and if it went with the name.”
Thus the tale began, in the vast solitude of the northern forest, among the granite peaks of the ancient Laurentian Mountains, on a lake that knew no human habitation save the Indian's wigwam or the fisherman's tent.
How it rained that day! The dark clouds had collapsed upon the hills in shapeless folds. The waves of the lake were beaten flat by the las.h.i.+ng strokes of the storm. Quivering sheets of watery gray were driven before the wind; and broad curves of silver bullets danced before them as they swept over the surface. All around the homeless sh.o.r.es the evergreen trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon--storm-lover--laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream.
It seemed as if we were a thousand miles from everywhere and everybody.
Cities, factories, libraries, colleges, law-courts, theatres, palaces,--what had we dreamed of these things? They were far off, in another world. We had slipped back into a primitive life. Ferdinand was telling me the naked story of human love and human hate, even as it has been told from the beginning.
I cannot tell it just as he did. There was a charm in his speech too quick for the pen: a woodland savour not to be found in any ink for sale in the shops. I must tell it in my way, as he told it in his.
But at all events, nothing that makes any difference shall go into the translation unless it was in the original. This is Ferdinand's story. If you care for the real thing, here it is.
I
There were two young men in Abbeville who were easily the c.o.c.ks of the woodland walk. Their standing rested on the fact that they were the strongest men in the parish. Strength is the thing that counts, when people live on the edge of the wilderness. These two were well known all through the country between Lake St. John and Chicoutimi as men of great capacity. Either of them could shoulder a barrel of flour and walk off with it as lightly as a common man would carry a side of bacon. There was not a half-pound of difference between them in ability. But there was a great difference in their looks and in their way of doing things.
Raoul Vaillantcoeur was the biggest and the handsomest man in the village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare.
Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and break his paddle--which he often did. He had more muscle than he knew how to use.
Prosper Leclere did not have so much, but he knew better how to handle it. He never broke his paddle--unless it happened to be a bad one, and then he generally had another all ready in the canoe. He was at least four inches shorter than Vaillantcoeur; broad shoulders, long arms, light hair, gray eyes; not a handsome fellow, but pleasant-looking and very quiet. What he did was done more than half with his head.
He was the kind of a man that never needs more than one match to light a fire.
But Vaillantcoeur--well, if the wood was wet he might use a dozen, and when the blaze was kindled, as like as not he would throw in the rest of the box.
Now, these two men had been friends and were changed into rivals. At least that was the way that one of them looked at it. And most of the people in the parish seemed to think that was the right view. It was a strange thing, and not altogether satisfactory to the public mind, to have two strongest men in the village. The question of comparative standing in the community ought to be raised and settled in the usual way. Raoul was perfectly willing, and at times (commonly on Sat.u.r.day nights) very eager. But Prosper was not.
”No,” he said, one March night, when he was boiling maple-sap in the sugar-bush with little Ovide Rossignol (who had a lyric pa.s.sion for holding the coat while another man was fighting)--”no, for what shall I fight with Raoul? As boys we have played together. Once, in the rapids of the Belle Riviere, when I have fallen in the water, I think he has saved my life. He was stronger, then, than me. I am always a friend to him. If I beat him now, am I stronger? No, but weaker. And if he beats me, what is the sense of that? Certainly I shall not like it. What is to gain?”
Down in the store of old Girard, that night, Vaillantcoeur was holding forth after a different fas.h.i.+on. He stood among the cracker-boxes and flour-barrels, with a background of shelves laden with bright-coloured calicoes, and a line of tin pails hanging overhead, and stated his view of the case with vigour. He even pulled off his coat and rolled up his s.h.i.+rt-sleeve to show the knotty arguments with which he proposed to clinch his opinion.
”That Leclere,” said he, ”that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself one of the strongest--a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward.