A Cry in the Wilderness Part 20

"Have you seen anything of this?" Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod.

"I 've neither seen nor heard anything of this kind," she replied with an amazed look at her son. Jamie smiled again, this time quizzically.

"What's this you 've been keeping from your mother, Boy?"

"Oh, Jamie, do read it to us!" I begged.

Jamie laughed aloud then, much to the two men's delight, as I could see, and said--tease that he is:

"I 've been waiting for Marcia to ask me; she is n't apt to ask favors of any one; but I say,--" he looked half shamefacedly at his friends,--"it's rough on me to read anything of mine before such critics as you and Gordon, Doctor Rugvie."

"Do you good," growled the Doctor; "get you used to publicity. If we have a genius in the family, it's best he should sprout his pin feathers in our presence before he becomes a full-fledged Pegasus. We could n't hold you down then, you know."

"You 've had a lot of faith in me, Doctor--you and Ewart; after all, Oxford mightn't have done what that has for me. I 'll read it--but I shall feel like a fool, I know."

"It won't hurt you to feel that way once in a while at twenty-three; it's educative," said the Doctor dryly.

In the general laughter that followed, Jamie left the room. He was gone but a minute. When he came in, I saw he was nervous. He cleared his throat once or twice, after taking his seat at the left of the fireplace, and glanced anxiously at the candles; but they were fresh at nine, and good for two hours longer. Doctor Rugvie looked at his watch.

"Half-past ten; I 'll keep time, Jamie."

"What do you call it, Jamie?" Mr. Ewart asked, to ease the evident embarra.s.sment in which the young Scotsman found himself.

"'Andre's Odyssey'."

"Good! I like that," said the Doctor; "that's just what it was.

Nothing like a good t.i.tle to work up to."

"Of course, I embellished a little here and there, but I stuck to the facts and in many places to Andre's words; and I tried to make the whole in Andre's spirit."

"Intentions all right, Boy--let us judge of the result," said the Doctor. He settled comfortably in his chair, leaned his head on the back and gazed steadily at the wooden ceiling; but I think he managed to keep an eye on Jamie.

And, oh, that bright eager face, the firelight enhancing its brightness! The hand that trembled despite his effort at control, the slight flush on the high cheek bones from which the summer's tan had not yet house-worn! The expressive unsteady voice that gradually steadied itself as, in the interest of reading, self-consciousness was forgotten!

I bent low over my crochet; I did not want to look again at him, for I was glad, so glad for him, for his mother, for his two friends, who had had such faith in him, for myself that I could count him as a friend.

This was, indeed, the beginning of fulfilment.

IX

For five and twenty years no man had seen in Tadoussac old Andre's face nor heard his voice upon the river's lower course. Both long and late within their icy caves the winters dwelt. The spring-tides, messaging the wild emanc.i.p.ated water's glee, rushed down to meet the short-lived summer joy, and autumn after autumn fled with torch of flaming leaf, reversed, death-heralding, far up the Saguenay's dark winding gorge--yet Andre came no more in all that time.

And now, behold them both, in Tadoussac! old Andre and his dog, Pierre, le brave, or was it Pierre's son?--lean-ribbed, thin-haunched and tragic-eyed, with fell of wolf, Pierre! How well they all remembered him, le brave! The frosts were in his bones, oh, long ere this; so Pierre's offspring, then?--as large as life! And Andre, too, old guide and voyageur!

Of notches six times ten had Andre cut within the shaft of one great pine that sings above that wonderful caprice of pool, and quiet river reach, and torrent wild, men long have called the Upper Saguenay. That very day when his boy's heart beat wild to suffocation, as upon the bank he landed his first salmon--nom de Dieu, no sunset glow e'er equalled in his eyes that palpitant and silver-scaled ma.s.s of vibrant rose!--the sap from that first notch had oozed; and now they said in Tadoussac that Andre never knew his age!

Oh, fools! What matter of a few years more or less? He counted all his years by his heart's youth, as here he was in Tadoussac to prove.

"And whither away?"--"To see Mere Guillardeau?"--"To visit once again in Richelieu-en-Bas?"--"Or else Trois Rivieres where long ago the maskinonge leaped for him?" "To see the Seigniory of Lamoral where lived his grandpere's seignior, lived and died?"--"A pilgrimage?

Sainte Anne de Beaupre, then?"--"Or Indian Lorette just by Quebec?"

The questions multiplied. "Come, tell us all." And Andre told them all.

"'Tis true," he said, "that there upon the Upper Saguenay strange tales are rife. From o'er the distant sea the English came to camp within the wilds, and I was guide. I listened to their tales whene'er the camp-fire crackled and the snow, the feather-snow that melted from the pines, fell hissing on the glowing arch of logs."

How Andre loved that sound! How dear to him was that one time in all the year's full round, when freeze the nights, the sap grows chill and numb; when warms the rising sun at early dawn and that sweet ichor runs! It kept him young; within him stirred his youthful forest hopes and joys with that first mounting life. And loud he laughed, nor gave the secret of his youth, his woodsman's lasting joys.

He told them how with mien impa.s.sive he had listened well, reflected long on what the English said, till May clouds, mirrored in the darkling pools, foreshadowed substance for those haunting dreams of glories human eyes had never seen; for far away upon the Lake there stood a city marvellous, the English said,--and they to Andre never yet had lied,--and who beheld it saw with naked eye the glories of the New Jerusalem.

And Andre, marking how the little runs were earlier loosened from their icy chains, how soft beneath the black and sodden leaves the water trickled free with here and there a bubble rising, proving spring had come--old Andre, listening so, the echo caught of that far song of storm-tossed Michigan as its wild waters, mingling with the rest, pursued their steady seaward course and swept with undertones enticing past the gorge of Saguenay and sang in Andre's ear:

"Viens, viens, tu trouveras La bas, la bas, Le royaume cher et merveilleux Du bon Dieu."

What wonder that his simple woodsman's heart was moved to quick response! That ere one moon had waxed and waned his dugout was prepared for its long journey inland, west by south, along the waterway of two great Lands! He showed it now in Tadoussac with pride: this fruit of two Canadian winters' toil. Its ample hull was s.h.i.+ny black with age. Its prow sharp-nosed and long to cleave, pike-like, the rapids' wave, capricious, treacherous. Its stern was truncated like tail of duck, the waters never closed but on it pressed, and sped it on the river's lower course.

For twenty years he watched the st.u.r.dy growth of one great tree that towered above its mates; and when the n.o.ble bole, both straight and strong, was grown to such proportions that he deemed it fit to brave the rapids, such its curve, he laid the monarch low, and hewed, and shaped, and burned, and thickly overlaid with pitch, and launched it on the Lower Saguenay--a fine, well-balanced craft, his floating camp; and this was thirty years or more agone.

His destination now made known, upon the river bank a crowd eyed him agape. With pride he showed to wondering Tadoussac how he had made provision for his voyage.

Along one side was lashed a sapling pine with seamless sail, three-cornered and close furled; 'twas fas.h.i.+oned from the stout flap of a tent. Along the other stretched two pockets strong of moose skin, hair side out to shed the rain. The topmost one he filled with ample store of salmon smoked on his own spit of ash, and good supply of that brown wrinkled leaf whose qualmy fragrance, issuing from the bowl of his loved pipe, had ever proved in camp and wild the solace of his lonely life.

Within the other pocket he had placed his comrade-breadwinner, his trusted gun. Its s.h.i.+ning barrel glistened cunningly from out the soft black depths, and knowingly, for many a winged voyager of the air would it bring low to beat the lucent wave to crimson froth before the voyage were done. Both oars and paddles of well-seasoned ash he laid within the dugout's ample hulk.

Then he was ready to set out, and seek that s.h.i.+ning wonder-city by the Lake--a "New Jerusalem", the English said, and they to Andre never yet had lied. His old-time friends were gathered at the pier to bid him on his quest "G.o.d Speed". They cast the painter loose.

"Adieu--adieu," a hand clasp here and there, and then again: "Adieu!"

Pierre, with forepaws stemmed against the prow, bayed musical farewell.

Old Andre turned and murmuring, "Adieu," broke forth exultantly in joyous song:

"Je chercherai La bas, la bas La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse; Si je la trouve, quand je serai De mon retour, Elle chante toujours, mon ame joyeuse,-- Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."

So aged Andre, 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, Andre 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 s.h.i.+pping of Quebec like some huge cobweb outlined intricate in black against the golden gleaming west.

The sunset gun resounded in mid-air as Andre 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 Andre 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 Andre, 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 pa.s.sed the dreaded Raven Cape he trolled a catch, "_Un noir corbeau_", to ward all ill and evil from his st.u.r.dy 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.