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Page 23
In not so many words as I have written, but in clear pictures which
comprehended the words, Memory, that temperamental goddess of moods,
had, at the prick of the word "Huron," shaken out this soft-colored
tapestry of the forest, and held it before my eyes. And as she withdrew
this one, others took its place and at length I was musing profoundly,
as I put more of something on my plate and tucked it away into my
anatomy. I mused about Rafael, the guide of sixty, who had begun a life
of continued labor at eight years; I considered the undying Indian in
him; how with the father who was "French of Picardy"--the white blood
being a pride to Rafael--he himself, yes, and the father also, for he
had married a "_sauvagess_," a Huron woman--had belonged to the tribe
and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael's proud carriage, his
classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French
mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and
the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I
reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the
world. "_On a vu de le mis�re_," Rafael had said: "One has seen
trouble"--shaking his head, with lines of old suffering emerging from
the reserve of his face like writing in sympathetic ink under heat. And
I marvelled that through such fire, out of such neglect, out of lack of
opportunity and bitter pressure, the steel of a character should have
been tempered to gentleness and bravery and honor.
For it was a very splendid old boy who was cooking for me and greasing
my boots and going off with me after moose; putting his keen ancestral
instincts of three thousand years at my service for three dollars a
day. With my chances would not Rafael have been a bigger man than I? At
least never could I achieve that grand air, that austere repose of
manner which he had got with no trouble at all from a line of unwashed
but courageous old bucks, thinking highly of themselves for untold
generations, and killing everything which thought otherwise. I laughed
all but aloud at this spot in my meditations, as a special vision of
Rafael rose suddenly, when he had stated, on a day, his views of the
great war. He talked plain language about the Germans. He specified why
he considered the nation a disgrace to humanity--most people, not
German, agree on the thesis and its specifications. Then the fire of his
ancient fighting blood blazed through restraint of manner. He drew up
his tall figure, slim-waisted, deep-shouldered, every inch sliding
muscle. "I am too old to go on first call to army," said Rafael. "Zey
will not take me. Yes, and on second call. Maybe zird time. But if time
come when army take me--I go. If I may kill four Germans I will be
content," stated Rafael concisely. And his warrior forebears would have
been proud of him as he stated it.
My reflections were disturbed here by the American general at the next
table. He was spoken to by his waiter and shot up and left the room,
carrying, however, his napkin in his hand, so that I knew he was due to
come back. A half sentence suggested a telephone. I watched the
soldierly back with plenty of patriotic pride; this was the sort of
warrior my country turned out now by tens of thousands. With that he
returned, and as I looked up into his face, behold it was Fitzhugh.
My chair went banging as I sprang toward him. "Jim!"
And the general's calm dignity suddenly was the radiant grin of the boy
who had played and gone to school and stolen apples with me for a long
bright childhood--the boy lost sight of these last years of his in the
army. "Dave!" he cried out. "Old Davy Cram!" And his arm went around my
shoulder regardless of the public. "My word, but I'm glad!" he
sputtered. And then: "Come and have dinner--finish having it. Come to
our table." He slewed me about and presented me to the three others.
In a minute I was installed, to the pride of my friend the head waiter,
at military headquarters, next to Fitzhugh and the Frenchman. A campact
r�sum� of personal history between Fitzhugh and myself over, I turned to
the blue figure on my left hand, Colonel Raffr�, of the French, army. On
his broad chest hung thrilling bits of color, not only the bronze war
cross, with its green watered ribbon striped with red, but the blood-red
ribbon of the "Great Cross" itself--the cross of the Legion of Honor. I
spoke to him in French, which happens to be my second mother tongue, and
he met the sound with a beaming welcome.
"I don't do English as one should," he explained in beautiful Parisian.
"No gift of tongues in my kit, I fear; also I'm a bit embarrassed at
practising on my friends. It's a relief to meet some one who speaks
perfectly French, as m'sieur."
M'sieur was gratified not to have lost his facility. "But my ear is
getting slower," I said. "For instance, I eavesdropped a while ago when
you were talking about your Huron soldiers, and I got most of what you
said because you spoke English. I doubt if I could if you'd been
speaking French."
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