The Ruling Passion: Tales of Nature and Human Nature. Henry Van Dyke

III

       Table of Contents

      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 passed 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 shore, 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 fishing was not worth knowing.

      Jacques fitted into their scheme of life as a well-made reel fits the butt 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 shore 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 fishing 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, passionate 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 passed, 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-fashioned 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 partitioned 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 shine 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