Joy in the Morning Part 7

Dr. Cabell lifted his eyes from his chop. "You'll spoil that boy," he stated. "And, mother, I pointed out that I'm not the Almighty, even on joints, I haven't looked at that game leg yet. I said it _might_ be curable."

"That boy" looked up, smiling, with long years of loneliness and lameness written in the back of his glance. "Please don't make 'em stop, doctor," he begged. "I won't spoil easily. I haven't any start. And this is a fairy-story to me--wonderful people like you letting me--letting me belong. I can't believe I won't wake up. Don't you imagine it will go to my head. It won't. I'm just so blamed--grateful."

The deep young voice trailed, and the doctor made haste to answer.

"You're all right, my lad," he said, "As soon as lunch is over you come into the surgery and I'll have a glance at the leg." Which was done.

After half an hour David came out, limping, pale and radiant. "I can't believe it," he spoke breathless. "He says--it's a simple--operation.

I'll walk--like other men. I'll be right for--the service." He choked.

At that Mrs. Cabell sped across the room and put up hands either side of the young face and drew it down and kissed the lad whom she did not, this morning, know to be in existence. "You blessed boy," she whispered, "you shall fight for America, and you'll be our soldier, and we'll be your people." And David, kissing her again, looked over her head and saw Eleanor glowing like a rose, and with a swift, unphrased shock of happiness felt in his soul the wonder of a heaven that might happen.

Then they were all about the fire, half-crying, laughing, as people do on top of strong feelings.

"Aunt Basha did it all," said David. "If Aunt Basha hadn't been the most magnificent old black woman who ever carried a snow-white soul, if she hadn't been the truest patriot in all America, if she hadn't given everything for her country--I'd likely never have--found you." His eyes went to the two kind and smiling faces, and his last word was a whisper.

It was so much to have found. All he had dreamed, people of his own, a straight leg--and--his heart's desire--service to America.

Mrs. Cabell spoke softly, "I've lived a long time and I've seen over and over that a good deed spreads happiness like a pebble thrown into water, more than a bad one spreads evil, for good is stronger and more contagious. We've gained this dear kinsman today because of the n.o.bility of an old negro woman."

David Lance lifted his head quickly. "It was no small n.o.bility," he said. "As Miss Cabell was saying--"

"I'm your cousin Eleanor," interrupted Miss Cabell.

David lingered over the name. "Thank you, my cousin Eleanor. It's as you said, nothing more beautiful and wonderful has been done in wonderful America than this thing Aunt Basha did. It was as gallant as a soldier at the front, for she offered what meant possibly her life."

"Her little two hundred," Eleanor spoke gently. "And so cross at the idea of being paid back! She wanted to _give_ it."

David's face gleamed with a thought as he stared into the firelight, "You see," he worked out his idea, "by the standards of the angels a gift must be big not according to its size but according to what's left.

If you have millions and give a few thousand you practically give nothing, for you have millions left. But Aunt Basha had nothing left.

The angels must have beaten drums and blown trumpets and raised Cain all over Paradise while you sat in the bank, my cousin Eleanor, for the glory of that record gift. No plutocrat in the land has touched what Aunt Basha did for her country."

Eleanor's eyes, sending out not only clear vision but a brown light as of the light of stars, shone on the boy. She bent forward, and her slender arms were about her knee. She gazed at David, marveling. How could it be that a human being might have all that David appeared to her to have--clear brain, crystal simplicity, manliness, charm of personality, and such strength and beauty besides!

"Yes," she said, "Aunt Basha gave the most. She has more right than any of us to say that it's her country." She was silent a moment and then spoke softly a single word. "America!" said Eleanor reverently.

America! Her sound has gone out into all lands and her words into the end of the world. America, who in a year took four million of sons untried, untrained, and made them into a mighty army; who adjusted a nation of a hundred million souls in a turn of the hand to unknown and unheard of conditions. America, whose greatest glory yet is not these things. America, of whom scholars and statesmen and generals and multi-millionaires say with throbbing pride today: "This is my country,"

but of whom the least in the land, having brought what they may, however small, to lay on that flaming altar of the world's safety--of whom the least in the land may say as truly as the greatest, "This is my country, too."

THE SWALLOW

The Chateau Frontenac at Quebec is a turreted pile of masonry wandering down a cliff over the very cellars of the ancient Castle of St. Louis. A twentieth-century hotel, it simulates well a mediaeval fortress and lifts against the cold blue northern sky an atmosphere of history. Old voices whisper about its towers and above the clanging hoofs in its paved court; deathless names are in the wind which blows from the "fleuve,"

the great St. Lawrence River far below. Jacques Cartier's voice was heard hereabouts away back in 1539, and after him others, Champlain and Frontenac, and Father Jogues and Mother Marie of the Conception and Montcalm--upstanding fighting men and heroic women and hardy discoverers of New France walked about here once, on the "Rock" of Quebec; there is romance here if anywhere on earth. Today a new knighthood hails that past. Uniforms are thick in steep streets; men are wearing them with empty sleeves, on crutches, or maybe whole of body yet with racked faces which register a h.e.l.l lived through. Canada guards heroism of many vintages, from four hundred years back through the years to Wolfe's time, and now a new harvest. Centuries from now children will be told, with the story of Cartier, the tale of Vimy Ridge, and while the Rock stands the records of Frenchmen in Canada, of Canadians in France will not die.

Always when I go to the Chateau I get a table, if I can, in the smaller dining-room. There the illusion of antiquity holds through modern luxury; there they have hung about the walls portraits of the worthies of old Quebec; there Samuel Champlain himself, made into bronze and heroic of size, aloft on his pedestal on the terrace outside, lifts his plumed hat and stares in at the narrow windows, turning his back on river and lower city. One disregards waiters in evening clothes and up-to-date table appointments, and one looks at Champlain and the "fleuve," and the Isle d'Orleans lying long and low, and one thinks of little s.h.i.+ps, storm-beaten, creeping up to this grim bigness ignorant of continental events trailing in their wake.

I was on my way to camp in a club a hundred miles north of the gray-walled town when I drifted into the little dining-room for dinner one night in early September in 1918. The head-waiter was an old friend; he came to meet me and piloted me past a tableful of military color, four men in service uniforms.

"Some high officers, sir," spoke the head waiter. "In conference here, I believe. There's a French officer, and an English, and our Canadian General Sampson, and one of your generals, sir."

I gave my order and sat back to study the group. The waiter had it straight; there was the horizon blue of France; there was the Englishman tall and lean and ruddy and expressionless and handsome; there was the Canadian, more of our own cut, with a mobile, alert face. The American had his back to me and all I could see was an erect carriage, a brown head going to gray, and the one star of a brigadier-general on his shoulders. The beginnings of my dinner went fast, but after soup there was a lull before greater food, and I paid attention again to my neighbors. They were talking in English.

"A Huron of Lorette--does that mean a full-blooded Indian of the Huron tribe, such as one reads of in Parkman?" It was the Englishman who asked, responding to something I had not heard.

"There's no such animal as a full-blooded Huron," stated the Canadian.

"They're all French-Indian half-breeds now. Lorette's an interesting sc.r.a.p of history, just the same. You know your Parkman? You remember how the Iroquois followed the defeated Hurons as far as the Isle d'Orleans, out there?" He nodded toward where the big island lay in the darkness of the St. Lawrence. "Well, what was left after that chase took refuge fifteen miles north of Quebec, and founded what became and has stayed the village of Indian Lorette. There are now about five or six hundred people, and it's a nation. Under its own laws, dealing by treaty with Canada, not subject to draft, for instance. Queer, isn't it? They guard their ident.i.ty vigilantly. Every one, man or woman, who marries into the tribe, as they religiously call it, is from then on a Huron. And only those who have Huron blood may own land in Lorette. The Hurons were, as Parkman put it, 'the gentlemen of the savages,' and the tradition lasts.

The half-breed of today is a good sort, self-respecting and brave, not progressive, but intelligent, with pride in his inheritance, his courage, and his woodscraft."

The Canadian, facing me, spoke distinctly and much as Americans speak; I caught every word. But I missed what the French general threw back rapidly. I wondered why the Frenchman should be excited. I myself was interested because my guides, due to meet me at the club station tomorrow, were all half-breed Hurons. But why the French officer? What should a Frenchman of France know about backwaters of Canadian history?

And with that he suddenly spoke slowly, and I caught several sentences of incisive if halting English.

"Zey are to astonish, ze Indian Hurong. For ze sort of work special-ment, as like scouting on a stomach. Qu-vick, ver' qu-vick, and ver' quiet. By dark places of danger. One sees zat nozzing at all af-frightens zose Hurong. Also zey are alike snakes, one cannot catch zem--zey slide; zey are slippy. To me it is to admire zat courage most--personnel--selfeesh--because an Hurong safe my life dere is six mont', when ze Boches make ze drive of ze mont' of March."

At this moment food arrived in a flurry, and I lost what came after. But I had forgotten the Chateau Frontenac; I had forgotten the group of officers, serious and responsible, who sat on at the next table. I had forgotten even the war. A word had sent my mind roaming. "Huron!" Memory and hope at that repeated word rose and flew away with me. Hope first.

Tomorrow I was due to drop civilization and its tethers.

"Allah does not count the days spent out of doors." In Walter Pater's story of "Marius the Epicurean" one reads of a Roman country-seat called "Ad Vigilias Albas," "White Nights." A sense of dreamless sleep distils from the name. One remembers such nights, and the fresh world of the awakening in the morning. There are such days. There are days which ripple past as a night of sleep and leave a worn brain at the end with the same satisfaction of renewal; white days. Crystal they are, like the water of streams, as musical and eventless; as elusive of description as the ripple over rocks or brown pools foaming.

The days and months and years of a life race with accelerating pace and youth goes and age comes as the days race, but one is not older for the white days. The clock stops, the blood runs faster, furrows in gray matter smooth out, time forgets to put in tiny crow's-feet and the extra gray hair a week, or to withdraw by the hundredth of an ounce the oxygen from the veins; one grows no older for the days spent out of doors.

Allah does not count them.

It was days like these which hope held ahead as I paid earnest attention to the good food set before me. And behold, beside the pleasant vision of hope rose a happy-minded sister called memory. She took the word "Huron," this kindly spirit, and played magic with it, and the walls of the Chateau rolled into rustling trees and running water.

I was sitting, in my vision, in flannel s.h.i.+rt and knickerbockers, on a log by a little river, putting together fis.h.i.+ng tackle and casting an eye, off and on, where rapids broke cold over rocks and whirled into foam-flecked, shadowy pools. There should be trout in those shadows.

"Take the b.u.t.t, Rafael, while I string the line."

Rafael slipped across--still in my vision of memory--and was holding my rod as a rod should be held, not too high or too low, or too far or too near--right. He was an old Huron, a chief of Indian Lorette, and woods craft was to him as breathing.

"A varry light rod," commented Rafael in his low voice which held no tones out of harmony with water in streams or wind in trees. "A varry light, good rod," paying meanwhile strict attention to his job. "M'sieu go haf a luck today. I t'ink M'sieu go catch a beeg fish on dat river.

Water high enough--not too high. And cold." He s.h.i.+vered a little. "Cold last night--varry cold nights begin now. Good hun-ting wedder."

"Have you got a moose ready for me on the little lake, Rafael? It's the 1st of September next week and I expect you to give me a shot before the 3d."

Rafael nodded. "Oui, m'sieur. First day." The keen-eyed, aquiline old face was as of a prophet. "We go get moose first day. I show you." With that the laughter-loving Frenchman in him flooded over the Indian hunter; for a second the two inheritances played like colors in shot silk, producing an elusive fabric, Rafael's charm. "If nights get so colder, m'sieur go need moose skin kip him warm."

I was looking over my flies now, the book open before me, its fascinating pages of color more brilliant than an old missal, and maybe as filled with religion--the peace of G.o.d, charity which endureth, love to one's neighbor. I chose a Parmachene Belle for hand-fly, always good in Canadian waters. "A moose-skin hasn't much warmth, has it, Rafael?"

The hunter was back, hawk-eyed. "But yes, m'sieu. Moose skin one time safe me so I don' freeze to death. But it hol' me so tight so I nearly don' get loose in de morning."

"What do you mean?" I was only half listening, for a brown hackle and a Montreal were competing for the middle place on my cast, and it was a vital point. But Rafael liked to tell a story, and had come by now to a confidence in my liking to hear him. He flashed a glance to gather up my attention, and cleared his throat and began: "Dat was one time--I go on de woods--hunt wid my fader-in-law--_mon beau-pere_. It was mont' of March--and col'--but ver' col' and wet. So it happen we separate, my fador-in-law and me, to hunt on both side of large enough river. And I kill moose. What, m'sieur? What sort of gun? Yes. It was rifle--what one call flint-lock. Large round bore. I cast dat beeg ball myself, what I kill dat moose. Also it was col'. And so it happen my matches got wet, but yes, ev-very one. So I couldn' buil' fire. I was tired, yes, and much col'. I t'ink in my head to hurry and skin dat moose and wrap myself in dat skin and go sleep on de snow because if not I would die, I was so col' and so tired. I do dat. I skin heem--_je le plumait_--de beeg moose--beeg skin. Skin all warm off moose; I wrap all aroun' me and dig hole and lie down on deep snow and draw skin over head and over feet, and fol' arms, so"--Rafael ill.u.s.trated--"and I hol' it aroun' wid my hands. And I get warm right away, warm, as bread toast. So I been slippy, and heavy wid tired, and I got comfortable in dat moose skin and I go aslip quick. I wake early on morning, and dat skin got froze tight, like box made on wood, and I hol' in dat wid my arms fol' so, and my head down so"--ill.u.s.trations again--"and I can't move, not one inch. No.

What, m'sieur? Yes, I was enough warm, me. But I lie lak dat and can't move, and I t'ink somet'ing. I t'ink I got die lak dat, in moose-skin.

If no sun come, I did got die. But dat day sun come and be warm, and moose skin melt lil' bit, slow, and I push lil' bit wid shoulder, and after while I got ice broke, on moose skin, and I crawl out. Yes. I don' die yet."

Rafael's chuckle was an amen to his saga, and at once, with one of his lightning-changes, he was austere.

"M'sieur go need beeg trout tonight; not go need moose skin till nex'