The Ruling Passion Part 2

Having delivered himself of these sentiments in a loud voice, much to the interruption of the music, he marched over to the table on which Fiddlin' Jack was sitting, and grabbed the violin from his hands.

"Gimme that dam' fiddle," he cried, "till I see if there's a frog in it."

Jacques leaped from the table, transported with rage. His face was convulsed. His eyes blazed. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a carving-knife from the dresser behind him, and sprang at Corey.

"TORT DIEU!" he shrieked, "MON VIOLON! Ah'll keel you, beast!"

But he could not reach the enemy. Bill Moody's long arms were flung around the struggling fiddler, and a pair of brawny guides had Corey pinned by the elbows, hustling him backward. Half a dozen men thrust themselves between the would-be combatants. There was a dead silence, a scuffling of feet on the bare floor; then the danger was past, and a tumult of talk burst forth.

But a strange alteration had pa.s.sed over Jacques. He trembled. He turned white. Tears poured down his cheeks. As Moody let him go, he dropped on his knees, hid his face in his hands, and prayed in his own tongue.

"My G.o.d, it is here again! Was it not enough that I must be tempted once before? Must I have the madness yet another time? My G.o.d, show the mercy toward me, for the Blessed Virgin's sake. I am a sinner, but not the second time; for the love of Jesus, not the second time! Ave Maria, gratia plena, ora pro me!"

The others did not understand what he was saying. Indeed, they paid little attention to him. They saw he was frightened, and thought it was with fear. They were already discussing what ought to be done about the fracas.

It was plain that Bull Corey, whose liquor had now taken effect suddenly, and made him as limp as a strip of cedar bark, must be thrown out of the door, and left to cool off on the beach. But what to do with Fiddlin' Jack for his attempt at knifing--a detested crime? He might have gone at Bull with a gun, or with a club, or with a chair, or with any recognized weapon. But with a carving-knife! That was a serious offence. Arrest him, and send him to jail at the Forks? Take him out, and duck him in the lake? Lick him, and drive him out of the town?

There was a mult.i.tude of counsellors, but it was Hose Ransom who settled the case. He was a well-known fighting-man, and a respected philosopher.

He swung his broad frame in front of the fiddler.

"Tell ye what we'll do. Jess nothin'! Ain't Bull Corey the blowin'est and the mos' trouble-us cuss 'round these hull woods? And would n't it be a fust-rate thing ef some o' the wind was let out 'n him?"

General a.s.sent greeted this pointed inquiry.

"And wa'n't Fiddlin' Jack peacerble 'nough 's long 's he was let alone?

What's the matter with lettin' him alone now?"

The argument seemed to carry weight. Hose saw his advantage, and clinched it.

"Ain't he given us a lot o' fun here this winter in a innercent kind o'

way, with his old fiddle? I guess there ain't nothin' on airth he loves better 'n that holler piece o' wood, and the toons that's inside o' it.

It's jess like a wife or a child to him. Where's that fiddle, anyhow?"

Some one had picked it deftly out of Corey's hand during the scuffle, and now pa.s.sed it up to Hose.

"Here, Frenchy, take yer long-necked, pot-bellied music-gourd. And I want you boys to understand, ef any one teches that fiddle ag'in, I'll knock h.e.l.l out 'n him."

So the recording angel dropped another tear upon the record of Hosea Ransom, and the books were closed for the night.

III

For some weeks after the incident of the violin and the carving-knife, it looked as if a permanent cloud had settled upon the spirits of Fiddlin' Jack. He was sad and nervous; if any one touched him, or even spoke to him suddenly, he would jump like a deer. He kept out of everybody's way as much as possible, sat out in the wood-shed when he was not at work, and could not be persuaded to bring down his fiddle. He seemed in a fair way to be transformed into "the melancholy Jaques."

It was Serena who broke the spell; and she did it in a woman's way, the simplest way in the world--by taking no notice of it.

"Ain't you goin' to play for me to-night?" she asked one evening, as Jacques pa.s.sed through the kitchen. Whereupon the evil spirit was exorcised, and the violin came back again to its place in the life of the house.

But there was less time for music now than there had been in the winter.

As the snow vanished from the woods, and the frost leaked out of the ground, and the ice on the lake was honeycombed, breaking away from the sh.o.r.e, and finally going to pieces altogether in a warm southeast storm, the Sportsmen's Retreat began to prepare for business. There was a garden to be planted, and there were boats to be painted. The rotten old wharf in front of the house stood badly in need of repairs. The fiddler proved himself a Jack-of-all-trades and master of more than one.

In the middle of May the anglers began to arrive at the Retreat--a quiet, sociable, friendly set of men, most of whom were old-time acquaintances, and familiar lovers of the woods. They belonged to the "early Adirondack period," these disciples of Walton. They were not very rich, and they did not put on much style, but they understood how to have a good time; and what they did not know about fis.h.i.+ng was not worth knowing.

Jacques fitted into their scheme of life as a well-made reel fits the b.u.t.t of a good rod. He was a steady oarsman, a lucky fisherman, with a real genius for the use of the landing-net, and a cheerful companion, who did not insist upon giving his views about artificial flies and advice about casting, on every occasion. By the end of June he found himself in steady employment as a guide.

He liked best to go with the anglers who were not too energetic, but were satisfied to fish for a few hours in the morning and again at sunset, after a long rest in the middle of the afternoon. This was just the time for the violin; and if Jacques had his way, he would take it with him, carefully tucked away in its case in the bow of the boat; and when the pipes were lit after lunch, on the sh.o.r.e of Round Island or at the mouth of Cold Brook, he would discourse sweet music until the declining sun drew near the tree-tops and the veery rang his silver bell for vespers. Then it was time to fish again, and the flies danced merrily over the water, and the great speckled trout leaped eagerly to catch them. For trolling all day long for lake-trout Jacques had little liking.

"Dat is not de sport," he would say, "to hol' one r-r-ope in de 'and, an' den pool heem in wid one feesh on t'ree hook, h'all tangle h'up in hees mout'--dat is not de sport. Bisside, dat leef not taim' for la musique."

Midsummer brought a new set of guests to the Retreat, and filled the ramshackle old house to overflowing. The fis.h.i.+ng fell off, but there were picnics and camping-parties in abundance, and Jacques was in demand. The ladies liked him; his manners were so pleasant, and they took a great interest in his music. Moody bought a piano for the parlour that summer; and there were two or three good players in the house, to whom Jacques would listen with delight, sitting on a pile of logs outside the parlour windows in the warm August evenings.

Some one asked him whether he did not prefer the piano to the violin.

"NON," he answered, very decidedly; "dat piano, he vairee smart; he got plentee word, lak' de leetle yellow bird in de cage--'ow you call heem--de cannarie. He spik' moch. Bot dat violon, he spik' more deep, to de heart, lak' de Rossignol. He mak' me feel more glad, more sorree--dat fo' w'at Ah lak' heem de bes'!"

Through all the occupations and pleasures of the summer Jacques kept as near as he could to Serena. If he learned a new tune, by listening to the piano--some simple, artful air of Mozart, some melancholy echo of a nocturne of Chopin, some tender, pa.s.sionate love-song of Schubert--it was to her that he would play it first. If he could persuade her to a boat-ride with him on the lake, Sunday evening, the week was complete.

He even learned to know the more shy and delicate forest-blossoms that she preferred, and would come in from a day's guiding with a tiny bunch of belated twin-flowers, or a few purple-fringed orchids, or a handful of nodding stalks of the fragrant pyrola, for her.

So the summer pa.s.sed, and the autumn, with its longer hunting expeditions into the depth of the wilderness; and by the time winter came around again, Fiddlin' Jack was well settled at Moody's as a regular Adirondack guide of the old-fas.h.i.+oned type, but with a difference. He improved in his English. Something of that missing quality which Moody called ambition, and to which Hose Ransom gave the name of imagination, seemed to awaken within him. He saved his wages. He went into business for himself in a modest way, and made a good turn in the manufacture of deerskin mittens and snow-shoes. By the spring he had nearly three hundred dollars laid by, and bought a piece of land from Ransom on the bank of the river just above the village.

The second summer of guiding brought him in enough to commence building a little house. It was of logs, neatly squared at the corners; and there was a door exactly in the middle of the facade, with a square window at either side, and another at each end of the house, according to the common style of architecture at Bytown.

But it was in the roof that the touch of distinction appeared. For this, Jacques had modelled after his memory of an old Canadian roof. There was a delicate concave sweep in it, as it sloped downward from the peak, and the eaves projected pleasantly over the front door, making a strip of shade wherein it would be good to rest when the afternoon sun shone hot.

He took great pride in this effort of the builder's art. One day at the beginning of May, when the house was nearly finished, he asked old Moody and Serena to stop on their way home from the village and see what he had done. He showed them the kitchen, and the living-room, with the bed-room part.i.tioned off from it, and sharing half of its side window.

Here was a place where a door could be cut at the back, and a shed built for a summer kitchen--for the coolness, you understand. And here were two stoves--one for the cooking, and the other in the living-room for the warming, both of the newest.

"An' look dat roof. Dat's lak' we make dem in Canada. De rain ron off easy, and de sun not s.h.i.+ne too strong at de door. Ain't dat nice? You lak' dat roof, Ma'amselle Serene, hein?"

Thus the imagination of Jacques unfolded itself, and his ambition appeared to be making plans for its accomplishment. I do not want any one to suppose that there was a crisis in his affair of the heart. There was none. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether anybody in the village, even Serena herself, ever dreamed that there was such an affair. Up to the point when the house was finished and furnished, it was to be a secret between Jacques and his violin; and they found no difficulty in keeping it.

Bytown was a Yankee village. Jacques was, after all, nothing but a Frenchman. The native tone of religion, what there was of it, was strongly Methodist. Jacques never went to church, and if he was anything, was probably a Roman Catholic. Serena was something of a sentimentalist, and a great reader of novels; but the international love-story had not yet been invented, and the idea of getting married to a foreigner never entered her head. I do not say that she suspected nothing in the wild flowers, and the Sunday evening boat-rides, and the music. She was a woman. I have said already that she liked Jacques very much, and his violin pleased her to the heart. But the new building by the river? I am sure she never even thought of it once, in the way that he did.

Well, in the end of June, just after the furniture had come for the house with the curved roof, Serena was married to Hose Ransom. He was a young widower without children, and altogether the best fellow, as well as the most prosperous, in the settlement. His house stood up on the hill, across the road from the lot which Jacques had bought. It was painted white, and it had a narrow front porch, with a scroll-saw fringe around the edge of it; and there was a little garden fenced in with white palings, in which Sweet Williams and pansies and blue lupines and pink bleeding-hearts were planted.

The wedding was at the Sportsmen's Retreat, and Jacques was there, of course. There was nothing of the disconsolate lover about him. The noun he might have confessed to, in a confidential moment of intercourse with his violin; but the adjective was not in his line.

The strongest impulse in his nature was to be a giver of entertaininent, a source of joy in others, a recognized element of delight in the little world where he moved. He had the artistic temperament in its most primitive and naive form. Nothing pleased him so much as the act of pleasing. Music was the means which Nature had given him to fulfil this desire. He played, as you might say, out of a certain kind of selfishness, because he enjoyed making other people happy. He was selfish enough, in his way, to want the pleasure of making everybody feel the same delight that he felt in the clear tones, the merry cadences, the tender and caressing flow of his violin. That was consolation. That was power. That was success.

And especially was he selfish enough to want to feel his ability to give Serena a pleasure at her wedding--a pleasure that n.o.body else could give her. When she asked him to play, he consented gladly. Never had he drawn the bow across the strings with a more magical touch. The wedding guests danced as if they were enchanted. The big bridegroom came up and clapped him on the back, with the nearest approach to a gesture of affection that backwoods etiquette allows between men.

"Jack, you're the boss fiddler o' this hull county. Have a drink now? I guess you 're mighty dry."

"MERCI, NON," said Jacques. "I drink only de museek dis night. Eef I drink two t'ings, I get dronk."

In between the dances, and while the supper was going on, he played quieter tunes--ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked. After supper came the final reel; and when that was wound up, with immense hilarity, the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to shout a noisy farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the road toward the house with the white palings. When they came back, the fiddler was gone. He had slipped away to the little cabin with the curved roof.