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Page 21
I was on my way to camp in a club a hundred miles north of the
gray-walled town when I drifted into the little dining-room for dinner
one night in early September in 1918. The head-waiter was an old friend;
he came to meet me and piloted me past a tableful of military color,
four men in service uniforms.
"Some high officers, sir," spoke the head waiter. "In conference here, I
believe. There's a French officer, and an English, and our Canadian
General Sampson, and one of your generals, sir."
I gave my order and sat back to study the group. The waiter had it
straight; there was the horizon blue of France; there was the Englishman
tall and lean and ruddy and expressionless and handsome; there was the
Canadian, more of our own cut, with a mobile, alert face. The American
had his back to me and all I could see was an erect carriage, a brown
head going to gray, and the one star of a brigadier-general on his
shoulders. The beginnings of my dinner went fast, but after soup there
was a lull before greater food, and I paid attention again to my
neighbors. They were talking in English.
"A Huron of Lorette--does that mean a full-blooded Indian of the Huron
tribe, such as one reads of in Parkman?" It was the Englishman who
asked, responding to something I had not heard.
"There's no such animal as a full-blooded Huron," stated the Canadian.
"They're all French-Indian half-breeds now. Lorette's an interesting
scrap of history, just the same. You know your Parkman? You remember how
the Iroquois followed the defeated Hurons as far as the Isle d'Orl�ans,
out there?" He nodded toward where the big island lay in the darkness of
the St. Lawrence. "Well, what was left after that chase took refuge
fifteen miles north of Quebec, and founded what became and has stayed
the village of Indian Lorette. There are now about five or six hundred
people, and it's a nation. Under its own laws, dealing by treaty with
Canada, not subject to draft, for instance. Queer, isn't it? They guard
their identity vigilantly. Every one, man or woman, who marries into the
tribe, as they religiously call it, is from then on a Huron. And only
those who have Huron blood may own land in Lorette. The Hurons were, as
Parkman put it, 'the gentlemen of the savages,' and the tradition lasts.
The half-breed of today is a good sort, self-respecting and brave, not
progressive, but intelligent, with pride in his inheritance, his
courage, and his woodscraft."
The Canadian, facing me, spoke distinctly and much as Americans speak; I
caught every word. But I missed what the French general threw back
rapidly. I wondered why the Frenchman should be excited. I myself was
interested because my guides, due to meet me at the club station
tomorrow, were all half-breed Hurons. But why the French officer? What
should a Frenchman of France know about backwaters of Canadian history?
And with that he suddenly spoke slowly, and I caught several sentences
of incisive if halting English.
"Zey are to astonish, ze Indian Hurong. For ze sort of work
special-ment, as like scouting on a stomach. Qu-vick, ver' qu-vick, and
ver' quiet. By dark places of danger. One sees zat nozzing at all
af-frightens zose Hurong. Also zey are alike snakes, one cannot catch
zem--zey slide; zey are slippy. To me it is to admire zat courage
most--personnel--selfeesh--because an Hurong safe my life dere is six
mont', when ze Boches make ze drive of ze mont' of March."
At this moment food arrived in a flurry, and I lost what came after. But
I had forgotten the Ch�teau Frontenac; I had forgotten the group of
officers, serious and responsible, who sat on at the next table. I had
forgotten even the war. A word had sent my mind roaming. "Huron!" Memory
and hope at that repeated word rose and flew away with me. Hope first.
Tomorrow I was due to drop civilization and its tethers.
"Allah does not count the days spent out of doors." In Walter Pater's
story of "Marius the Epicurean" one reads of a Roman country-seat called
"Ad Vigilias Albas," "White Nights." A sense of dreamless sleep distils
from the name. One remembers such nights, and the fresh world of the
awakening in the morning. There are such days. There are days which
ripple past as a night of sleep and leave a worn brain at the end with
the same satisfaction of renewal; white days. Crystal they are, like the
water of streams, as musical and eventless; as elusive of description as
the ripple over rocks or brown pools foaming.
The days and months and years of a life race with accelerating pace and
youth goes and age comes as the days race, but one is not older for the
white days. The clock stops, the blood runs faster, furrows in gray
matter smooth out, time forgets to put in tiny crow's-feet and the extra
gray hair a week, or to withdraw by the hundredth of an ounce the oxygen
from the veins; one grows no older for the days spent out of doors.
Allah does not count them.
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