Part 4 (1/2)
The other canoe followed immediately. They found the two buckboards waiting, and scrambled in, explaining to the drivers the necessity for the utmost haste. Chichester's horse was a scrawny, speedy little beast, called _Le Coq Noir_, the champion trotter of the region. ”_He, Coq!_” shouted the driver, flouris.h.i.+ng his whip, at the top of the first long hill; and they started off at a breakneck pace. They pa.s.sed through the village of _Sacre Coeur_ a mile and a half ahead of the other wagon. But on the first steep _cote_ beyond the village, the inevitable happened. The buckboard went slithering down the slippery slope of clay, struck a log bridge at the bottom with a resounding thump, and broke an axle clean across. The wheel flew off, and the buckboard came to the ground, and Chichester and the driver tumbled out. The Black c.o.c.k gave a couple of leaps and then stood still, looking back with an expression of absolute dismay.
There was nothing to do but wait for the other buckboard, which arrived in ten or fifteen minutes. ”Will you have the kindness to lend me your carriage?” said Chichester elaborately. ”Oh, don't talk! Get out quick.
You can walk!” They changed horses quickly, and Chichester took the reins and drove on. Quarter past eleven; half past; quarter to twelve--and three miles yet to go! It was barely possible to do it. And perhaps it would have been done, if at that moment the good little Black c.o.c.k had not stumbled on a loose stone, gone down almost to his knees, and recovered himself with a violent wrench--lame! Chichester was a fair runner and a good walker. But he knew that the steep sandy hills which lay between him and Tadousac could never be covered in fifteen minutes. He gave the reins to the driver, leaned back in the seat, and folded his arms.
At twenty-five minutes past twelve the buckboard pa.s.sed slowly down the main street of Tadousac, b.u.mped deliberately across the bridge, and drew up before the hotel. The little white chapel on the other side of the road was shut, deserted, sleeping in the sunlight. On the long hotel piazza were half a dozen groups of strangers, summer visitors, evidently in a state of suppressed curiosity and amus.e.m.e.nt. They fell silent as the disconsolate vehicle came to a halt, and Arthur Asham, the Harvard brother, in irreproachable morning costume and perfect form, moved forward to meet it.
”Well?” said Chichester, as he stepped out.
”Well!” answered the other; and they went a few paces together on the lawn, shaking hands politely and looking at each other with unspoken interrogations.
”I'm awfully sorry,” Chichester said, ”but it couldn't be helped. A chapter of accidents--I'll explain.”
”My dear fellow,” answered young Asham, ”what good will that do? You needn't explain to me, and you can't explain to Ethel. She is in her most lofty and impossible mood. She'll never listen to you. I'm awfully sorry, too, but I fear it's all over. In fact, she has driven down to the wharf with the others to wait for the Quebec boat, which goes at one. I am staying to get the luggage together and bring it on to-morrow. She gave me this note for you. Will you read it?”
Asham politely turned away, and Chichester read:
MY DEAR MR. CHICHESTER:
Fortunate indeed is the disillusion which does not come too late.
But the bridegroom who comes too late is known in time.
You may be sure that I have no resentment at what you have done; I have risen to those heights where anger is unknown. But I now see clearly what I have long felt dimly--that your soul does not keep time with the music to which my life is set. I do not know what _other engagement_ kept you away. I do not ask to know. I know only that ours is at an end, and you are at liberty to return to your fis.h.i.+ng. That you will succeed in it is the expectation of
Your well-wisher, E. ASHAM.
Chichester's chin dropped a little as he read. For the first time in his life he looked undecided. Then he folded the note carefully, put it in the breast pocket of his coat, and turned to his companion.
”You will be going up in to-morrow's boat, I suppose. Shall we go together?”
”My dear fellow,” said Arthur Asham, ”really, you know--I should be delighted. But do you think it would be quite the thing?”
BOOKS THAT I LOVED AS A BOY
”It is one thing,” said my Uncle Peter, ”to be perfectly honest. But it is quite another thing to tell the truth.”
”Are you honest in that remark,” I asked, ”or are you merely telling the truth?”
”Both,” he answered, with twinkling eyes, ”for that is an abstract remark, in which species of discourse truth-telling is comparatively easy. Abstract remarks are a great relief to the lazy honest man. They spare him the trouble of meticulous investigation of unimportant facts.
But a concrete remark, touching upon a number of small details, is full of traps for the truth-teller.”
”You agree, then,” said I, ”with what the Psalmist said in his haste: 'All men are liars'?”
”Not in the least,” he replied, laying down the volume which he was apparently reading when he interrupted himself. ”I have leisure enough to perceive at once the falsity of that observation which the honest Psalmist recorded for our amus.e.m.e.nt. The real liars, conscious, malicious, wilful falsifiers, must always be a minority in the world, because their habits tend to bring them to an early grave or a reformatory. It is the people who want to tell the truth, and try to, but do not quite succeed, who are in the majority. Just look at this virtuous little volume which I was reading when you broke in upon me.
It is called 'Books that Have Influenced Me.' A number of authors, politicians, preachers, doctors, and rich men profess to give an account of the youthful reading which has been most powerful in the development of their manly minds and characters. To judge from what they have written here you would suppose that these men were as mature and discriminating at sixteen as they are at sixty. They tell of great books, serious books, famous books. But they say little or nothing of the small, amusing books, the books full of fighting and adventure, the books of good stuff poorly written, in which every honest boy, at some time in his life, finds what he wants. They are silent, too, about the books which as a matter of fact had a tremendous influence on them--the plain, dull school-books. For my part, if you asked me what books had influenced me, I should not be telling the truth if my answer left out Webster's Spelling-Book and Greenleaf's Arithmetic, though I did not adore them extravagantly.”
”That's just the point, Uncle Peter,” said I, ”these distinguished men were really trying to tell you about the books that delighted and inspired their youth, the books that they loved as boys.”
”Well,” said my Uncle Peter, ”if it comes to love, and reminiscences of loving, that is precisely the region in which the exact truth is least frequently told. Maturity casts its prim and clear-cut shadow backwards upon the vague and glittering landscape of youth. Whether he speaks of books or of girls, the aged reminiscent attributes to himself a delicacy of taste, a singleness and constancy of affection, and a romantic fervour of devotion, which he might have had, but probably did not. He is not in the least to blame for drawing his fancy-picture of a young gentleman. He cannot help it. It is his involuntary tribute to the ideal. Youth dreams in the future tense; age, in the past participle.
”There is no kind of fiction more amiable and engaging than the droll legends of infancy and pious recollections of boyhood. Do you suppose that Wordsworth has given us a complete portrait of the boy that he was, in 'The Prelude'? He says not a word about the picture of his grandmother that he broke with his whip because the other children gave him a 'dare,' nor about the day when he went up into the attic with an old fencing-foil to commit suicide, nor about the girl with whom he fell in love while he was in France. Do you suppose that Stevenson's 'Memories and Portraits' represent the youthful R. L. S. with photographic accuracy and with all his frills? Not at all. Stevenson's essays are charming; and Wordsworth's poem is beautiful,--in streaks it is as fine as anything that he ever wrote: but both of these works belong to literature because they are packed full of omissions,--which Stevenson himself called 'a kind of negative exaggeration.' No, my dear boy, old Goethe found the right t.i.tle for a book of reminiscences when he wrote _'Wahrheit und Dichtung_.' Truth and poetry,--that is what it is bound to be. I don't know whether Goethe was as honest a man as Wordsworth and Stevenson, but I reckon he told about as much of the truth. Autobiography is usually a man's view of what his biography ought to be.”