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Page 52
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. Dick 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 Dick'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 "ambitionn�." Dick'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 Dick. "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 Passes. "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 damned 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 platitudes.
"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.
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