For a moment the father could not answer. Then difficult tears of manhood and maturity forced their way from his eyes and unheeded rolled down his cheeks. With a step he put his arms about the boy as if the boy were a child, and the boy threw his about his father"s shoulders.
For a long second the two tall men stood so. The woman, standing apart, through the shipwreck of her earthly life was aware only of happiness safe where sorrow and loss could not touch it. What was separation, death itself, when love stronger than death held people together as it held Hugh and her boys and herself? Then the older Hugh stood away, still clutching the lad"s hand, smiling through unashamed tears.
"Hugh," he said, "in all America there"s not a man prouder of his son than I am of you. There"s not a braver soldier in our armies than the soldier who"s to take my name into France." He stopped and steadied himself; he went on: "It would have broken my heart, boy, if you had failed--failed America. And your mother--and Brock and me. Failed your own honor. It would have meant for us shame and would have bowed our heads; it would have meant for you disaster. Don"t fear for your courage, Hugh; the Lord won"t forsake the man who carries the Lord"s colors."
Young Hugh turned suddenly to his mother. "I"m at peace now. You and Dad--honor me. I"ll deserve respect from--my country. It will be a wall around me--And--" he caught her to him and crushed his mouth to hers--"dearest--Brock will hold my hand."
THE SILVER STIRRUP
In the most unexpected spots vital sparks of history blaze out. Time seems, once in a while, powerless to kill a great memory. Romance blooms sometimes untarnished across centuries of commonplace. In a new world old France lives.
It is computed that about one-seventh of the French-Canadian population of Canada enlisted in the great war. The stampede of heroism seems to have left them cold. A Gospel of the Province first congealed the none too fiery blood of the _habitants_, small farmers, very poor, thinking in terms of narrowest economy, of one pig and ten children, of painstaking thrift and a bare margin to subsistence. Such conditions stifle world interests. The earthquake which threatened civilization disturbed the _habitant_ merely because it hazarded his critical balance on the edge of want. The cataclysm over the ocean was none of his affair. And his affairs pressed. What about the pig if one went to war?
And could Alphonse, who is fourteen, manage the farm so that there would be vegetables for winter? Tell me that.
When in September, 1914, I went to Canada for two weeks of camping I had heard of this point of view. d.i.c.k Lindsley and I were met at the Club Station on the casual railway which climbs the mountains through Quebec Province, by four guides, men from twenty to thirty-five, powerfully built chaps, deep-shouldered and slim-waisted, lithe as wild-cats. It was a treat to see their muscles, like machines in the pink of order, adjust to the heavy _pacquetons_, send a canoe whipping through the water. There was one exception to the general physical perfection; one of d.i.c.k"s men, a youngster of perhaps twenty-two, limped. He covered ground as well as the others, for all of that; he picked the heaviest load and portaged it at an uneven trot, faster than his comrades; he was what the _habitants_ call "ambitionne." d.i.c.k"s canoe was loaded first, owing to the fellow"s efficiency, and I waited while it got away and watched the lame boy. He had an interesting face, aquiline and dark, set with vivid light-blue eyes, shooting restless fire. I registered an intention to get at this lad"s personality. The chance came two days later. My men were off chopping on a day, and I suddenly needed to go fishing.
"Take Philippe," offered d.i.c.k. "He handles a boat better than any of them."
Philippe and I shortly slipped into the Guardian"s Pool, at the lower end of the long lake of the Pa.s.ses. "It is here, M"sieur," Philippe announced, "that it is the custom to take large ones."
By which statement the responsibility of landing record trout was on my shoulders. I thought I would have a return whack. My hands in the snarly flies and my back to Philippe I spoke around my pipe, yet spoke distinctly.
"Why aren"t you in France fighting?"
The canoe shivered down its length as if the man at its stern had jumped. There was a silence. Then Philippe"s deep, boyish voice answered.
"As M"sieur sees, one is lame."
I felt a hotness emerging from my flannel collar and rushing up my face as I bent over that d.a.m.ned Silver Doctor that wouldn"t loose its grip on the Black Hackle. I didn"t see the Black Hackle or the Silver Doctor for a moment. "Beg pardon," I growled. "I forgot." I mumbled plat.i.tudes.
"M"sieur le Docteur has right," Philippe announced unruffled. "One should fight for France. I have tried to enlist, there are three times, explaining that I am "_capable_" though I walk not evenly. But one will not have me. Therefore I have shame, me. I have, naturally, more shame than another because of Jeanne."
"Because of Jeanne?" I repeated. "Who is Jeanne?"
There was a pause; a queer feeling made me slew around. Philippe"s old felt hat was being pulled off as if he were entering a church.
"But--Jeanne, M"sieur," he stated as if I must understand. "Jeanne d"Arc. _Tiens_--the Maid of France."
"The Maid of France!" I was puzzled. "What has she to do with it?"
"But everything, M"sieur." The vivid eyes flamed. "M"sieur does not know, perhaps, that my grandfather fought under Jeanne?"
"Your grandfather!" I flung it at him in scorn. The man was a poor lunatic.
"But yes, M"sieur. My grandfather, lui-meme."
"But, Philippe, the Maid of Orleans died in 1431." I remembered that date. The Maid is one of my heroic figures.
Philippe shrugged his shoulders. "Oh--as for a _grandpere_! But not the _grandpere a present_, he who keeps the grocery shop in St. Raymond.
Certainly not that grandfather. It is to say the _grandpere_ of that _grandpere_. Perhaps another yet, or even two or three more. What does it matter? One goes back a few times of grandfathers and behold one arrives at him who was armorer for the Maid--to whom she gave the silver stirrup."
"The silver stirrup." My Leonard rod b.u.mped along the bow; my flies tangled again in the current. I squirmed about till I faced the guide in the stern. "Philippe, what in h.e.l.l do you mean by this drool of grandfathers and silver stirrups?"
The boy, perfectly respectful, not forgetting for a second his affair of keeping the canoe away from the fish-hole, looked at me squarely, and his uncommon light eyes gleamed out of his face like the eyes of a prophet. "M"sieur, it is a tale doubtless which seems strange to you, but to us others it is not strange. M"sieur lives in New York, and there are automobiles and trolley-cars and large buildings _en ma.s.se_, and to M"sieur the world is made of such things. But there are other things. We who live in quiet places, know. One has not too much of excitement, we others, so that one remembers a great event which has happened to one"s family many years. Yes, indeed, M"sieur, centuries. If one has not much one guards as a souvenir the tale of the silver stirrup of Jeanne. Yes, for several generations."
The boy was apparently unconscious that his remarks were peculiar.
"Philippe, will you tell me what you mean by a silver stirrup which Jeanne d"Arc gave to your ancestors?"
"But with pleasure, M"sieur," he answered readily, with the gracious French politeness which one meets among the _habitants_ side by side with sad lapses of etiquette. "It is all-simple that the old grandfather, the ancient, he who lived in France when the Maid fought her wars, was an armorer. "_ca fait que_"--_sa fak_, Philippe p.r.o.nounced it--"so it happened that on a day the stirrup of the Maid broke as her horse plunged, and my grandfather, the ancient, he ran quickly and caught the horse"s head. And so it happened--_ce fait que_--that my grandfather was working at that moment on a fine stirrup of gold for her harness, for though they burned her afterwards, they gave her then all that there was of magnificence. And the old follow--_le vieux_--whipped out the golden stirrup from his pocket, quite prepared for use, so it happened--and he put it quickly in the place of the silver one which she had been using. And Jeanne smiled. "You are ready to serve France, Armorer."
"She bent then and looked _le vieux_ in the face--but he was young at the time.
""Are you not Baptiste"s son, of Doremy?" asked the Maid.
""Yes, Jeanne," said my _grandpere_.
""Then keep the silver stirrup to remember our village, and G.o.d"s servant Jeanne," she said, and gave it to him with her hand."
If a square of Gobelin tapestry had emerged from the woods and hung itself across the gunwale of my canvas canoe it would not have been more surprising. I got my breath. "And the stirrup, what became of it?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders. "_Sais pas_," he answered with French nonchalance. "One does not know that. It is a long time, M"sieur le Docteur. It was lost, that stirrup, some years ago. It may be a hundred years. It may be two hundred. My grandfather, he who keeps the grocery shop, has told me that there is a saying that a Martel must go to France to find the silver stirrup. In every case I do not know. It is my wish to fight for France, but as for the stirrup or Jeanne--_sais pas_."
Another shrug. With that he was making oration, his light eyes flashing, his dark face working with feeling, about the bitterness of being a cripple, and unable to go into the army.
"It is not _comme il faut_, M"sieur le Docteur, that a man whose very grandfather fought for Jeanne should fail France now in her need.
Jeanne, one knows, was the saviour of France. Is it not?" I agreed. "It is my inheritance, therefore, to fight as my ancient grandfather fought." I looked at the lame boy, not knowing the repartee. He began again. "Also I am the only one of the family proper to go, except Adolphe, who is not very proper, having had a tree to fall on the lungs and leave him liable to fits; and also Jacques and Louis are too young, and Jean Baptiste he is blind of one eye, G.o.d knows. So it is I who fail! I fail! Jesus Christ! To stay at home like a coward when France needs men!"
"But you are Canadian, Philippe. Your people have been here two hundred years."
"M"sieur, I am of France. I belong there with the fighting men." His look was a flame, and suddenly I know why he was firing off hot shot at me. I am a surgeon.
"What"s the matter with your leg?" I asked.
The brilliant eyes flashed. "Ah!" he brought out, "One hoped--If M"sieur le Docteur would but see. I may be cured. To be straight--to march!" He was trembling.
Later, in the shifting sunshine at the camp door, with the odors of hemlocks and balsams about us, the lake rippling below, I had an examination. I found that the lad"s lameness was a trouble to be cured easily by an operation. I hesitated. Was it my affair to root this youngster out of safety and send him to death in the _debacle_ over there? Yet what right had I to set limits? He wanted to offer his life; how could I know what I might be blocking if I withheld the cure? My job was to give strength to all I could reach.
"Philippe," I said, "if you"ll come to New York next month I"ll set you up with a good leg."
In September, 1915, d.i.c.k and I came up for our yearly trip, but Philippe was not with us. Philippe, after drilling at Valcartier, was drilling in England. I had lurid post cards off and on; after a while I knew that he was "somewhere in France." A grim gray card came with no post-mark, no writing but the address and Philippe"s labored signature; for the rest there were printed sentences: "I am well. I am wounded. I am in hospital. I have had no letter from you lately." All of which was struck out but the welcome words, "I am well." So far then I had not cured the lad to be killed. Then for weeks nothing. It came to be time again to go to Canada for the hunting. I wrote the steward to get us four men, as usual, and Lindsley and I alighted from the rattling train at the club station in September, 1916, with a mild curiosity to see what Fate had provided as guides, philosophers and friends to us for two weeks. Paul Sioui--that was nice--a good fellow Paul; and Josef--I shook hands with Josef; the next face was a new one--ah, Pierre Beaurame--one calls one"s self that--_on s"appelle comme ca. Bon jour!_ I turned, and got a shock.
The fourth face, at which I looked, was the face of Philippe Martel. I looked, speechless. And with that the boy laughed. "It is that M"sieur cannot again cure my leg," answered Philippe, and tapped proudly on a calf which echoed with a wooden sound.
"You young cuss," I addressed him savagely. "Do you mean to say you have gone and got shot in that very leg I fixed up for you?"