XXVII
In the wilds of the Upper Saguenay! By the lake that, in this narration at least, shall have no name. It is long, narrow, winding at its southern extremity; at its northern, it is expanded pool-like among forest-covered heights the reflection of which darkens and apparently deepens it where its waters touch the marginal wilderness! In camp by the margin of the lake, beneath some ancient pines, rare in that region, and surrounded by the spicy fragrance of balsam, spruce and cedar, that came to us warm from the depths of the seemingly illimitable forest behind us!
What a day, that one of our arrival! We journeyed by steamer across Lake St. John. We came by canoe on the river, by portage; and again by canoe on river or lake, as it happened. We camped for one night in the open. On the second day there were several portages; many of our camp belongings were borne on the backs of sturdy Montagnais, friends of old André, and led by André the Second, a strapping youth of sixty. There followed a journey of nine miles up the lake, our lake; and, then, at last, in the glow of sunset, we had sight of old André coming to welcome us in his canoe that floated, a "brown leaf", on the golden waters! I heard the soft grating of the seven keels on the clear shining yellow sands of a tiny cove—and Mr. Ewart was first ashore, helping each of us out, welcoming each to this special bit of his beloved Canadian earth.
"Our home for ten weeks, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, giving me both hands. "Steady with your foot—you must learn to know the caprices of your own canoe—"
"My own?"
"Yes, this is yours for the season; we don't poach much on one another's canoe preserves here in Canada. This is our fleet."
"The whole seven?"
"Yes; André the First and André the Second have three between them, big ones; you, Jamie and I have one each, and there is one for Mrs. Macleod if she will do me the honor of allowing me to teach her to paddle."
"This is great, mother!" said Jamie who had not ceased to wring old André's hand since the two found firm footing. "But first I must teach her to swim, Ewart."
Poor Mrs. Macleod! I doubt if her idea of camping out was wholly rose-colored at that moment, for she was tired with the excitement, and constant travel in canoe and on foot of the last two days.
"The camp will be the safest place for me at present," she said, trying to appear cheerful, but glancing ruefully at the three rough board huts, gray and weather beaten.
"You 've done nobly, Mrs. Macleod, I appreciate your effort; and if you 'll take immediate possession of the right hand camp—it's yours and Miss Farrell's—I hope you will find a little comfort even in this wilderness. I 'll just settle with these Montagnais comrades, for after supper they will be on their way back to Roberval." Jamie interrupted him to say:
"Mother, here 's André, André, mon vieux camarade. This is my mother, André; I told you about her last year."
Old André's hand, apparently as steady as her own, was extended to meet Mrs. Macleod's. I saw how expressive was that handclasp. The only words she spoke were in her rather halting French:
"My son's comrade—he is mine, I hope, André."
What a smile illumined that parchment face! It was good to see in the wilderness; it was humanly comprehensive of the entire situation.
"This is Miss Farrell," said Jamie; "she lives with us, André, in Lamoral."
Never shall I forget the look, the voice, the words with which he made me welcome.
"I have waited many years for you to come. I am content,
moi
."
He heaved a long sigh of satisfaction. I think only Mrs. Macleod heard the words, for Jamie had run up to the camp. André took our special suit cases and carried them to the hut.
We took possession and found everything needed for our comfort. Tired as we were, we could not rest until we had unpacked and settled ourselves with something like regularity for the night. And, oh, that first supper in the open! The sun was setting behind the forest; the lake waters, touched with faint color on the farther shore, were without a ripple; the ancient pines above us quiet. And, oh, that first deep sleep on my bed of balsam spruce! Oh, that first awakening in the early morning, the glory of sunrise, the sparkle and dance of the lake waters in my eyes!
Oh, that joy of living! I experienced it then in its fulness for the first time; and my sleep was more refreshing, my awakening more joyful, because of the near presence of the man I loved with all my heart.
It was a new heaven for me—because it was a new earth!
While dressing that first morning, André's welcoming words came back to me: "I have waited many years for you to come." And the look on his face. What did he mean? I recalled that Jamie quoted him, almost in those very words, when he told us of that episode of "forest love" which bore fruit in the wilderness of the Upper Saguenay.
Why should he welcome me with just those words? How many years had he "waited"? Had there been no woman in camp since then? It was hardly possible. I determined to ask Mr. Ewart, as soon as I should have the opportunity, if there had been women here before us, and to question André, also, as to what he meant by his words, but not until I should know him better. He would tell me.
And André told me, but it was after long weeks of intimate acquaintance with the forest and with each other; after the fact that I was becoming all in all to the master of Lamoral, was patent to each of my friends in camp. I saw no attempt on Mr. Ewart's part to hide this fact. I believe I should have despised him if he had. Yet never once during those first five weeks did he mention my journal. Rarely was I alone with him; twice only on the trails through the forest; once in the canoe to the lower end of the lake and on the return; that was all. Never a word of love crossed his lips—but his thought of me, his manner, his care of me, his provision for my enjoyment of each day, his delight in my delight in his "camp", his pleasure in the fact that I was not only regaining what I had lost by the fearful illness of the year before—Doctor Rugvie told him of that—but storing up within my not over powerful body, balm, sunshine, ozone, and health abundant for the future.
And what did I not learn from him! And from André with whom I spent hours out of every day! What forest lore; what ways of cunning from the shy forest dwellers; what tricks of line and bait for the capricious trout, the pugnacious
ouananiche
, the lazy pickerel! What haunts of beaver I was shown! How I watched them by the hour, lying prone in my Khaki suit of drilling,—short skirt, high laced-boots,—my feminine "bottes sauvages" as André called them,—and bloomers,—from some cedar covert.
Those five weeks were one long dream-reality of forest life, and this was despite flies and mosquitoes which we treated in a scientific manner.
One of the Montagnais brought us the mail once a week from Roberval. The first of August he brought up a telegram that announced the Doctor would be with us the next day. Mr. Ewart decided to meet him at the last portage. André the Second went with him. They would be back just after dark that same day, he said. André the First was left to reign supreme in camp during his absence.
"I am only as old as my heart, mademoiselle; you know that is young, and you make it younger while you are here," he said that afternoon, when he and I were trimming the camp with forest greens for the Doctor's coming, and Jamie was laying a beacon pile near the shore, just north of the camp where there was no underbrush or trees. André told us its light could be seen far down the lake.
After supper I lay down in my hammock-couch, swung beneath the pines at the back of the camp. As I rocked there in the twilight, counting off the minutes of waiting by my heartbeats, I heard Jamie and André talking as they smoked together, and rested after the exertions of the day.
"How came you to think of it, André?"
"How came le bon Dieu to give me eyes—and sight like a hawk?"
"But why are you so sure?"
"Why? Because what I see, I see. What I hear, I hear. It is the same voice I hear in the forest; the same laugh like the little forest brook; the same face that used to look at itself in the pool and smile at what it saw there; the same eyes—non, they are different. I found those others in the wood violets; these match the young chestnuts just breaking from the burrs after the first frost."
"But, André, it was so many years ago."
"To me it is as yesterday, when I see her paddling the canoe and swaying like a reed in the gentle wind."
"And you never knew her name?"
"No. She was his 'little bird', his 'wood-dove' to him; and to her he was 'mon maître', always that—'my master' you say in English which I have forgotten, so long I am in the woods. They were so happy—it was always so with them."
There was a few minutes of silence, then Jamie spoke.
"Has Mr. Ewart ever spoken to you about what you told us that night in camp, André—about that 'forest love'?"
"No, the seignior has never spoken, but,"—he puffed vigorously at his pipe,—"he has no need to speak of it; he thinks it now."
"Why, now?" There was eager curiosity in Jamie's voice, and I knew well in what direction his thoughts were headed. I smiled to myself, and listened as eagerly as he for André's answer.
"I have eyes that see; it is again the 'forest love' with him—"
"Again?" Jamie interrupted him; his voice was suddenly a sharp staccato. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean what I say. The forest knows its own. She has come again; and my old eyes, that still see like the hawk, are glad at the sight of her—and of him. Have I not prayed all these years that Our Lady of the Snows might bless her—and
her child
?" There was no mistaking the emphasis on the last words.
"André,"—Jamie's voice dropped to an excited whisper, but I caught it,—"you mean that?"
"I mean
that
," he said.
I heard him rise; I heard his steps soft on the cedar-strewn path. Jamie must have followed him, for in a moment I heard him calling from the shore:
"Mother, Marcia, come on! André says it's time to light the beacon."
I joined Mrs. Macleod, and in the dusk we made our way over to the pile of wood.
"You are to light it, mademoiselle," said André, handing me the flaming pine knot. I obeyed mechanically, for André's words were filling all the night with confusing sounds that seemed to echo conflictingly from shore to shore.
"Just here, by the birch bark, mademoiselle."
The beacon caught; there was no wind. The bark snapped, curled and shrivelled; the branches crackled; the little flames leaped, the fire crept higher and higher till it lighted our faces and the waters in the foreground. We waited and watched till we heard a faint "hurrah", and soon, in the distance, a calcium light burned red and long. We went down again to the cove. Jamie was with his mother; I walked behind with André.
"André," I whispered to him, "when you first saw me you said, 'I have waited many years for you to come'. Why did you say that?"
"Why? Because I desired to speak the truth."
"Am I like some one you have seen before? Tell me."
"Yes."
"Who was she?"
"I do not know."
"Will you tell me sometime what you do know of her?"
"Yes, I will tell you."
"Soon?"
"When you will?"
"To-morrow?"
"As you please. I will take you to the tree, my tree—and to hers; you shall see for yourself."
"Thank you, André."
"I must watch the fire," he said, and retraced his steps. Dear old André! It was such a pleasure to be able to talk with him in his own tongue.
We heard the dip of the paddles, a call—our camp call. In a few minutes the Doctor was with us.
I made excuse the next afternoon to go fishing with André. I kept saying to myself:
"This thing is impossible; there can be no connection between me and any woman who may have been here in camp, and Mr. Ewart says several have been here to his knowledge. What if I do look like some other woman who, years ago, lived and loved here in this wilderness? What have I to do with her? I 'll settle this matter once for all and to my satisfaction; André will tell me. He is romantic; and that girl made a deep impression on him, especially in those circumstances. Now the thought of her has become a fixed idea."
The Doctor sulked a little because he was not of my party.
"I don't approve of your
solitude à deux
parties; they 're against camp rules."
"Just for this once. André is going to show me something I have wanted to see ever since I came."
He was still growling after I was in the canoe.
"Only this once!" I cried, waving my hand to him before we dipped the paddles.
"She used to wave her hand like that," said André, paddling slowly until I got well regulated to his—what I called—rhythm.
I stared at him. Was this an obsession with him? It began to look like it.
We landed on the north shore of the lake. I followed him along a trail, that led through a depression between two heights, upwards to a heavily wooded small plateau overlooking the lake. I followed his lead for another quarter of a mile through these woods. I could see no trail. Then we came into a path, a good one. I remarked on it.
"Yes: I have made it these many years. I come here every year."
We heard the rush of a near-by torrent. The air swept cool over through the woods and struck full on our faces. In a few minutes we were facing it—a singing mass of water pouring down the smooth face of a rock like the apron of a dam; the face was inclined at an angle of fifty degrees. The torrent plunged into a basin set deep among rocks. Above this pool, above the surrounding trees, towered one great pine. André led me to it.
"I have been coming here so many years—count," he said, pointing to the notches from the butt upwards to a height beyond my reach.
This was the tree about which Jamie had sung, notched year after year by André, since he was ten, that he might know his age. And what an age! I counted: "Eighty notches."
"Oh, André, all those years?"
"But yes—and so many more." He held up his ten fingers.
"And Mère Guillardeau will be a hundred her next birthday?"
He nodded. "Yes; my sister is no longer in her first youth."
He began to count backwards and downwards. I counted after him: "Twenty-seven." By the last notch there was a deep gash.
"What is this?"
"Twenty-seven years ago she was here, she whom you are like. I have waited twenty-seven years."
"Tell me about it; I am ready to hear."
"Come here." He beckoned to me from a group of trees, tamaracks, on the other side of the path. He went behind one. I followed him.
"Read," he said. And I read with difficulty, although the lettering was cut deep, one word "Heureuse", and a date "1883. 9. 10."
"'Heureuse'," I repeated. "Happy—happy; oh, I know how happy!"
He looked at me significantly for a moment, and I knew that his "fixed idea" had possession of him. He regarded me, Marcia Farrell, as the child of that "forest love" of nearly twenty-seven years ago.
"You say true; they were happy." Without preliminaries he told me the story he had related to Mr. Ewart and Jamie last year.
"Has Mr. Ewart or Jamie ever seen this tree, André?"
"No. I have told them both of my tree and the notches—but never of this other. You are the first to see it since her blue eyes watched him cut those letters. I have shown it to neither my young comrade nor to the seignior."
"And you say I am so like her?"
"As like as if you were her own child?"
He put up his hand suddenly to "feel the wind". There was a sudden strange movement among the tree tops.
"Come, come quickly, mademoiselle; we must get back. The wind is shifting to the southwest. It is blowing hot. I know the sign. The seignior will not want you to be out even with old André with this wind on the lake."
I looked at the pool; it was black. The singing waters of the torrent showed unearthly white against the intensified green. The sky became suddenly overcast with swiftly moving clouds. In a moment the wind was all about us; the sound of its going through the forest filled the air with a confused roar. The great trees were already swaying, as we ran down the trail to the lake—and found Mr. Ewart just drawing his canoe and ours high up and away from the already uneasy water. He was breathing quickly.
"There 's a storm coming, André—we saw it from the other side of the lake; coming hard, too, from the southwest. The lake will not be safe till it is over. We will stay here in the open even if we get wet. It is not safe in the woods; the trees are already breaking. I hear the crash of the branches."
"And the seignior did not trust mademoiselle with me?" Evidently he was disgruntled. "True, I am no longer in my first youth" (I saw Mr. Ewart suppress a smile), "but years give caution, seignior—and I have many more than you."
Mr. Ewart laughed pleasantly. The sound of it dissipated André's anger—the quick resentment of old age.
"True, mon vieux camarade, you have the years; but I stand between you and mademoiselle when it comes to a matter of years. I must care for you both."
"I am content that it should be so,
moi
." He squatted by the canoes which he lashed to a small boulder.
No rain fell, but the wind was terrific in its force. We were obliged to lie flat on the sand. The air was filled with confused torrents of sound, so deafening that we could not make ourselves heard one to the other. It was over in ten minutes. The sky cleared, the sun shone; the lake waters subsided; the sounds died away, and very suddenly. In the minute's calm that followed it seemed as if, in all that land, there were no stirring of a leaf, a twig, or fin of fish, or wing of fowl. There was again a sudden change of wind, and we knew the very moment when the upper air currents, cool and crisp with a touch of Arctic frost, swept down upon the earth and brought refreshment. In another quarter of an hour there was no trace of the storm on the lake; but behind us, on each side of the trail, we saw great trees uprooted.
"I can leave you and André now, and with a clear conscience, to your fishing," he said, as he ran down his canoe.
I felt positively grateful to him for not insisting on taking me back with him; it would have hurt old André's pride as well as feelings.
"We 'll bring home fish enough for supper," I said with fine amateur assurance.
"I warn you 'We are seven' plus the two Montagnais; they stay to-night."
"If I don't make good, André will." And André smiled in what I thought a particularly significant way.
We watched the swift course of his canoe over the lake. Just as he was about to round a small promontory, that would hide him from our sight, he stood up, and swung the dripping paddle high above his head. I waved my hand in answering greeting.
André turned to me with a smile. "The seignior has a look of that other—but he is not the same."
What an obsession it was with this man of ninety! I watched him preparing lines and bait. The canoe had passed from sight.
"André," I said, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "I want to go back to camp."
"As you please, mademoiselle. I can fish on that side as well as this." Upon that he put up his pipe,—I verily believe it was still alive and his pockets must have been lined with asbestos,—and we embarked on our little voyage.
I used my paddle mechanically, for I was thinking: "Is it for one moment probable I have any connection with that girl? Is that past, I am trying so hard to eliminate from my life, to present itself here as a quantity with which I must reckon—here in my life in this wilderness? Is there no avoiding it? André is so sure. Jamie knows he is sure; Mr. Ewart knows this too. They can say nothing to me about it—it is a matter of such delicacy; and they do not know who I am; even my journal does not tell that, and I knew this when I gave it into his hands.
"But the Doctor—he knows. He knows from Cale and Delia Beaseley. He knows who I am; in all probability knows this very day, from those papers in his possession, my father's name; but he knows nothing of this new complication that André has brought about by his insistence that I am like some woman who camped here many years ago—
"Twenty-seven years! That must have been just before I was born—and the date—and that word 'heureuse' with a queer capital H—oh—"
Perhaps it was a groan that escaped my lips, for, like a searchlight, the logic of events illumined each factor in that tragedy in which my mother—
My paddle fouled—the canoe careened—
"Sit still, for the love of God, sit still!" André fairly shrieked at me.
"It's all right, André," I said quietly, to calm him.
"They say the lake has no bottom just here, mademoiselle—and if I had lost you for him—" he muttered, and continued to mutter, easing himself of his fright by swearing softly. He soon regained his composure; but was still frowning when I glanced behind me.
What had this searchlight shown me?
Just this:—that "heureuse" is French for happy—and the capital made it a proper name, "Happy". This word told me its own story. According to what Cale had said—and I had all detailed information from him—no trace of my mother was found although detectives had been put to work. She had simply dropped out of sight, not to come to the surface until that night in December when she tried to end her young life from the North River pier. Was she not for a part of that year and three months here in these wilds?
Oh, what a far, far cry it must have been from this Canadian wilderness not made by man, to that other hundreds of miles away—that great metropolis, man made!
We paddled for the rest of the way in silence.
That evening we sat late around the camp fire, and before we separated for the night Mr. Ewart said, turning to me:
"I want a promise from you, Miss Farrell."
"What is it?"
"Caution, caution!" said the Doctor.
"That you will make no more
solitude à deux
excursions, as John calls them, with old André. He is old, despite his seeming strength, and his age is beginning to tell on him. I see that he has failed much since last year."
"You 're right there, Gordon; she should not risk it with him," said Jamie, emphatically. "I 've noticed the change from last year when I have been out with him on the trails. Why, he fell asleep only the other day with his line in his hand and his bait in the water!"
"Did you see that?" said Mr. Ewart. "It happened, too, the other day with me. I was amazed, but not so much as I was last week when we were in the woods making the north trail. He sat down to smoke and, actually, his pipe dropped from his hand. I trod out the fire or there would have been a blaze. Apparently he was asleep. I watched him for an hour, when he seemed to come to himself. It was not a sleep; it was a lethargy. You say it is often so, John—the beginning of the end. We must not let him know anything of this—dear old André!"
"He is already immortalized in