The Ruling Passion Part 14

"Well, then," continued Jean, "I will tell you how the news came to me.

It was at St. Gedeon, one Sunday last March. The snow was good and hard, and I drove in, ten miles on the lake, from our house opposite Grosse Ile. After ma.s.s, a man, evidently of the city, comes to me in the stable while I feed the horse, and salutes me.

"'Is this Jean Lamotte?'

"'At your service, m'sieu'.'

"'Son of Francois Louis Lamotte?'

"'Of no other. But he is dead, G.o.d give him repose.'

"'I been looking for you all through Charlevoix and Chicoutimi.'

"'Here you find me then, and good-day to you,' says I, a little short, for I was beginning to be shy of him.

"'Chut, chut,' says he, very friendly. 'I suppose you have time to talk a bit. How would you like to be a marquis and have a castle in France with a hundred thousand dollars?'

"For a moment I think I will lick him; then I laugh. 'Very well indeed,'

says I, 'and also a handful of stars for buckshot, and the new moon for a canoe.'

"'But no,' answers the man. 'I am earnest, Monsieur Lamotte. I want to talk a long talk with you. Do you permit that I accompany you to your residence?'

"Residence! You know that little farm-house of logs where my mother lives,--you saw it last summer. But of course it is a pretty good house.

It is clean. It is warm. So I bring the man home in the sleigh. All that evening he tells the story. How our name Lamotte is really De la Motte de la Luciere. How there belongs to that name an estate and a t.i.tle in France, now thirty years with no one to claim it. How he, being an AVOCAT, has remarked the likeness of the names. How he has tracked the family through Montmorency and Quebec, in all the parish books. How he finds my great-grandfather's great-grandfather, Etienne de La Motte who came to Canada two hundred years ago, a younger son of the Marquis de la Luciere. How he has the papers, many of them, with red seals on them. I saw them. 'Of course,' says he, 'there are others of the family here to share the property. It must be divided. But it is large--enormous--millions of francs. And the largest share is yours, and the t.i.tle, and a castle--a castle larger than Price's saw-mill at Chicoutimi; with carpets, and electric lights, and coloured pictures on the wall, like the hotel at Roberval.'

"When my mother heard about that she was pleased. But me--when I heard that I was a marquis, I knew it was true."

Jean's blue eyes were wide open now, and sparkling brightly. He had put down the pan of potatoes. He was holding his head up and talking eagerly.

Alden turned away his face to light his pipe, and hide a smile. "Did he get--any money--out of you?"--came slowly between the puffs of smoke.

"Money!" answered Jean, "of course there must be money to carry on an affair of this kind. There was seventy dollars that I had cleaned up on the lumber-job last winter, and the mother had forty dollars from the cow she sold in the fall. A hundred and ten dollars,--we gave him that.

He has gone to France to make the claim for us. Next spring he comes back, and I give him a hundred dollars more; when I get my property five thousand dollars more. It is little enough. A marquis must not be mean."

Alden swore softly in English, under his breath. A rustic comedy, a joke on human nature, always pleased him; but beneath his cynical varnish he had a very honest heart, and he hated cruelty and injustice. He knew what a little money meant in the backwoods; what hard and bitter toil it cost to rake it together; what sacrifices and privations must follow its loss. If the smooth prospector of unclaimed estates in France had arrived at the camp on the Grande Decharge at that moment, Alden would have introduced him to the most unhappy hour of his life.

But with Jean Lamotte it was by no means so easy to deal. Alden perceived at once that ridicule would be worse than useless. The man was far too much in earnest. A jest about a marquis with holes in his hat!

Yes, Jean would laugh at that very merrily; for he was a true VOYAGEUR.

But a jest about the reality of the marquis! That struck him as almost profane. It was a fixed idea with him. Argument could not shake it.

He had seen the papers. He knew it was true. All the strength of his vigorous and healthy manhood seemed to have gone into it suddenly, as if this was the news for which he had been waiting, unconsciously, since he was born.

It was not in the least morbid, visionary, abstract. It was concrete, actual, and so far as Alden could see, wholesome. It did not make Jean despise his present life. On the contrary, it appeared to lend a zest to it, as an interesting episode in the career of a n.o.bleman. He was not restless; he was not discontented. His whole nature was at once elated and calmed. He was not at all feverish to get away from his familiar existence, from the woods and the waters he knew so well, from the large liberty of the unpeopled forest, the joyous rush of the great river, the splendid breadth of the open sky. Unconsciously these things had gone into his blood. Dimly he felt the premonitions of homesickness for them all. But he was lifted up to remember that the blood into which these things had entered was blue blood, and that though he lived in the wilderness he really belonged to la haute cla.s.se. A breath of romance, a spirit of chivalry from the days when the high-spirited courtiers of Louis XIV sought their fortune in the New World, seemed to pa.s.s into him. He spoke of it all with a kind of proud simplicity.

"It appears curious to m'sieu', no doubt, but it has been so in Canada from the beginning. There were many n.o.bles here in the old time.

Frontenac,--he was a duke or a prince. Denonville,--he was a grand seigneur. La Salle, Vaudreuil,--these are all n.o.ble, counts or barons. I know not the difference, but the cure has told me the names. And the old Jacques Cartier, the father of all, when he went home to France, I have heard that the King made him a lord and gave him a castle. Why not? He was a capable man, a brave man; he could sail a big s.h.i.+p, he could run the rapids of the great river in his canoe. He could hunt the bear, the lynx, the carcajou. I suppose all these men,--marquises and counts and barons,--I suppose they all lived hard, and slept on the ground, and used the axe and the paddle when they came to the woods. It is not the fine coat that makes the n.o.ble. It is the good blood, the adventure, the brave heart."

"Magnificent!" thought Alden. "It is the real thing, a bit of the seventeenth century lost in the forest for two hundred years. It is like finding an old rapier beside an Indian trail. I suppose the fellow may be the descendant of some gay young lieutenant of the regiment Carignan-Salieres, who came out with De Tracy, or Courcelles. An amour with the daughter of a habitant,--a name taken at random,--who can unravel the skein? But here's the old thread of chivalry running through all the tangles, tarnished but unbroken."

This was what he said to himself. What he said to Jean was, "Well, Jean, you and I have been together in the woods for two summers now, and marquis or no marquis, I hope this is not going to make any difference between us."

"But certainly NOT!" answered Jean. "I am well content with m'sieu', as I hope m'sieu' is content with me. While I am AU BOIS, I ask no better than to be your guide. Besides, I must earn those other hundred dollars, for the payment in the spring."

Alden tried to make him promise to give nothing more to the lawyer until he had something sure to show for his money. But Jean was politely non-committal on that point. It was evident that he felt the impossibility of meanness in a marquis. Why should he be sparing or cautious? That was for the merchant, not for the n.o.ble. A hundred, two hundred, three hundred dollars: What was that to an estate and a t.i.tle?

Nothing risk, nothing gain! He must live up to his role. Meantime he was ready to prove that he was the best guide on the Grande Decharge.

And so he was. There was not a man in all the Lake St. John country who knew the woods and waters as well as he did. Far up the great rivers Peribonca and Missta.s.sini he had pushed his birch canoe, exploring the network of lakes and streams along the desolate Height of Land. He knew the Grand Brule, where the bears roam in September on the fire-scarred hills among the wide, unharvested fields of blueberries. He knew the hidden ponds and slow-creeping little rivers where the beavers build their dams, and raise their silent water-cities, like Venice lost in the woods. He knew the vast barrens, covered with stiff silvery moss, where the caribou fed in the winter. On the Decharge itself,--that tumultuous flood, never failing, never freezing, by which the great lake pours all its gathered waters in foam and fury down to the deep, still gorge of the Saguenay,--there Jean was at home. There was not a curl or eddy in the wild course of the river that he did not understand. The quiet little channels by which one could drop down behind the islands while the main stream made an impa.s.sable fall; the precise height of the water at which it was safe to run the Rapide Gervais; the point of rock on the brink of the Grande Chute where the canoe must whirl swiftly in to the sh.o.r.e if you did not wish to go over the cataract; the exact force of the tourniquet that sucked downward at one edge of the rapid, and of the bouillon that boiled upward at the other edge, as if the bottom of the river were heaving, and the narrow line of the FILET D'EAU along which the birch-bark might shoot in safety; the treachery of the smooth, oily curves where the brown water swept past the edge of the cliff, silent, gloomy, menacing; the hidden pathway through the foam where the canoe could run out securely and reach a favourite haunt of the ouananiche, the fish that loves the wildest water,--all these secrets were known to Jean. He read the river like a book. He loved it. He also respected it.

He knew it too well to take liberties with it.

The camp, that June, was beside the Rapide des Cedres. A great ledge stretched across the river; the water came down in three leaps, brown above, golden at the edge, white where it fell. Below, on the left bank, there was a little cove behind a high point of rocks, a curving beach of white sand, a gentle slope of ground, a tent half hidden among the birches and balsams. Down the river, the main channel narrowed and deepened. High banks hemmed it in on the left, iron-coasted islands on the right. It was a sullen, powerful, dangerous stream. Beyond that, in mid-river, the Ile Maligne reared its wicked head, scarred, bristling with skeletons of dead trees. On either side of it, the river broke away into a long fury of rapids and falls in which no boat could live.

It was there, on the point of the island, that the most famous fis.h.i.+ng in the river was found; and there Alden was determined to cast his fly before he went home. Ten days they had waited at the Cedars for the water to fall enough to make the pa.s.sage to the island safe. At last Alden grew impatient. It was a superb morning,--sky like an immense blue gentian, air full of fragrance from a million bells of pink Linnaea, suns.h.i.+ne flattering the great river,--a morning when danger and death seemed incredible.

"To-day we are going to the island, Jean; the water must be low enough now."

"Not yet, m'sieu', I am sorry, but it is not yet."

Alden laughed rather unpleasantly. "I believe you are afraid. I thought you were a good canoeman--"

"I am that," said Jean, quietly, "and therefore,--well, it is the bad canoeman who is never afraid."

"But last September you took your monsieur to the island and gave him fine fis.h.i.+ng. Why won't you do it for me? I believe you want to keep me away from this place and save it for him."

Jean's face flushed. "M'sieu' has no reason to say that of me. I beg that he will not repeat it."

Alden laughed again. He was somewhat irritated at Jean for taking the thing so seriously, for being so obstinate. On such a morning it was absurd. At least it would do no harm to make an effort to reach the island. If it proved impossible they could give it up. "All right, Jean," he said, "I'll take it back. You are only timid, that's all.

Francois here will go down with me. We can manage the canoe together.

Jean can stay at home and keep the camp. Eh, Francois?"

Francois, the second guide, was a mush of vanity and good nature, with just sense enough to obey Jean's orders, and just jealousy enough to make him jump at a chance to show his independence. He would like very well to be first man for a day,--perhaps for the next trip, if he had good luck. He grinned and nodded his head--"All ready, m'sieu'; I guess we can do it."

But while he was holding the canoe steady for Alden to step out to his place in the bow, Jean came down and pushed him aside. "Go to bed, dam'

fool," he muttered, shoved the canoe out into the river, and jumped lightly to his own place in the stern.

Alden smiled to himself and said nothing for a while. When they were a mile or two down the river he remarked, "So I see you changed your mind, Jean. Do you think better of the river now?"

"No, m'sieu', I think the same."

"Well then?"

"Because I must share the luck with you whether it is good or bad. It is no shame to have fear. The shame is not to face it. But one thing I ask of you--"

"And that is?"

"Kneel as low in the canoe as you can, paddle steady, and do not dodge when a wave comes."

Alden was half inclined to turn back, and give it up. But pride made it difficult to say the word. Besides the fis.h.i.+ng was sure to be superb; not a line had been wet there since last year. It was worth a little risk. The danger could not be so very great after all. How fair the river ran,--a current of living topaz between banks of emerald! What but good luck could come on such a day?

The canoe was gliding down the last smooth stretch. Alden lifted his head, as they turned the corner, and for the first time saw the pa.s.sage close before him. His face went white, and he set his teeth.