FOUGÈRE'S COVE
FOUGÈRE'S COVE
THEIR TRUE LOVE
Even Zabette, with her thousand wrinkles, was young once. They say her lips were red as wild strawberries and her hair as sleek as the wing of a blackbird in spring. All the old people of St. Esprit remember how she used to swing along the street on her way to mass of a Sunday, straight, proud, agile as a goat, with her dark head flung back, and a disdainful smile on her lips that kept young men from being unduly forward. The country people, who must have their own name for everything and everybody, used to call her "la belle orgueilleuse," and sometimes, "the highstepper"; and though they had to laugh at her a little for her lofty ways, they found it quite natural to address her as mademoiselle.
But all these things one only knows by hearsay. Zabette does not talk much herself. So far as she is concerned, you might never guess that she had a story at all. She lives there in the little dormer-windowed cottage beyond the post-office with Suzanne Benoît. For thirty-three years now the two women have lived together; and it is the earnest prayer of both of them that when the time for going arrives, they may go together.
These two good souls have the reputation, all over the country, of immense industry and thrift. Suzannekeeps three cows, and her butter is famous. Zabette—she was a Fuseau, from the Grande Anse—takes in washing of the better class. Nobody in St. Esprit can do one of those stiff white linen collars so well as she. Positively, it shines in the sun like a looking-glass. If you notice the men going to church, you can always pick out those who have their shirts and collars done by Zabette Fuseau. By comparison, the others appear dull and very commonplace.
"But why must Zabette do collars for her living?" you are asking. "Why has she not a man of her own to look out for her, and half a dozen grown up children? Did she never marry, then—this belle orgueilleuse?"
No. Never. But not on account of that pride of hers; at least not directly. If you go into the pretty little living-room of the second cottage beyond the post-office—the one with such a show of geraniums in the front windows—you will guess half the secret, for just above the mantelpiece, between two vases of artificial asters, hangs the daguerreotype portrait of a young man in mariner's slops. The lineaments have so faded with the years that it is difficult to make them out with any assurance. It is as if the portrait itself were seeking to escape from life, retreating little by little, imperceptibly, into the dull shadows of the ground, so that only as you look at it from a certain angle can you still clearly distinguish the small dark eyes, the full moustache, the round chin, the square stocky shoulders of the subject. Only the two rosyspots added by the daguerreotypist to the cheeks defy time and change, indestructible token of youth and ardor.
A little frame of immortelles encloses the portrait. And directly in front of it, on the mantelpiece, stands a pretty shell box, with the three words on the mother-of-pearl lid: "À ma chérie." What is in the box—if anything—no one can tell you for a certainty, though there are plenty of theories. "Love letters," say some; and others, with a pitying laugh, "Old maid's tears."
Zabette and Suzanne hold their tongues. I think I know what the treasure of the box is; for I had the story directly from a very aged woman who knew both the "girls" when they were young; and she vouched for the truth of it by all the beads of her rosary. This is how it went.
Zabette Fuseau was eighteen, and she lived at the Grand Anse, two miles out of St. Esprit; and the procession of young fellows, going there to woo, was like a pilgrimage, exactly. Among them came one from far down the coast, a place called Rivière Bourgeoise. He was a deep sea fisherman, from off a vessel which had put in at St. Esprit for repairs, mid-course to the Grand Banks; and on his first shore leave Maxence had caught sight of la belle orgueilleuse, who had come into town with a basket of eggs; and he had followed her home, at a little distance, sighing, but without the courage to address her so long as they were in the village. He was a very handsome young fellow, with abrown, ruddy skin, and the most beautiful dark curly hair and crisp moustache imaginable.
Zabette knew he was behind her; but she would not turn; not she; only walked a little more proudly and gracefully, with that swinging movement of hers, like a vessel sailing in a head wind. At last, when they had reached the Calvaire at the end of the village, he managed to get out his first word.
"Oh!" he cried, haltingly. "Mademoiselle!"
She turned half about and fixed her dark proud eyes upon him, while her cheeks crimsoned.
"Well, m'sieur?"
He could not speak, and the two stared at each other for a long time in silence, while the thought came to her that this was the man for whom she was destined.
"Had you something to say to me?" she repeated, finally, in a tone that tried to be severe, but was really very soft.
He nodded his curly head, and licked his lips hard to moisten them.
"I cannot wait any longer," she protested, after a while. "They need me at home."
She turned quickly again, as if to go; but her feet were glued to the ground, and she did not take a step.
"Oh, s'il vous plaît, mam'selle!" he cried, to hold her. "You think I am rude. But I did not mean to follow you like this. I could not help it. You are so beautiful."
The look he gave her with those words sank deep into her heart and rooted itself there forever. In vain,for the rest of her life, she might try to tear it out; there was a fatality about it. Zabette, fine highstepper that she was, had been caught at last. She knew that she ought to send the handsome young sailor away; but her tongue would not obey her. Instead, it uttered some very childish words of confusion and pleasure; and before she knew it, there was her man walking along at her side, with one hand on his heart, declaring that she was the most angelic creature in the world, that he was desperately in love with her, that he could not live without her, and that she must promise then and there to be his, or he would instantly kill himself. The burning, impassioned look in his eyes struck her with dismay.
"But I cannot decide all in a moment like this," she protested, in a weak voice. "It would be indecent. I must think."
"Think!" he retorted, bitterly. "Oh, very well. Then you do not love me!"
"Ah, but I do!" she cried, all trembling.
With that he took her in his arms and kissed her, and nothing more was heard about suicide or any such subject.
"But we must not tell any one yet," she pleaded. "They would not understand."
He agreed, with the utmost readiness. "We will not tell a soul. It shall be exactly as you wish. But I may come and see you?"
"Oh, certainly," she responded. "Often,—that is, every day or two,—at Grande Anse; and perhaps wemay happen to meet sometimes in the village, as well."
"TheSoleilwill be delaying at St. Esprit for two weeks," he explained, as they walked along, hand in hand. "She put in for some repairs. By the end of that time, perhaps"—
"Oh, no, not so soon as that," she interrupted. "We must let a longer while pass first."
She gazed at him yearningly. "You will be returning by here in the autumn, at the end of the season on the Banks?"
"We are taking on three men from St. Esprit," he answered. "We shall stop here on the return to set them ashore. That will be in October, near the end of the month, if the season is good."
She sighed, as if dreading some disaster; and they looked at each other again, and the look ended in a kiss. It is not by words, that new love feeds and grows.
Before they reached the Grande Anse he quitted her; but he gave her his promise to come again that evening. He did—that evening, and two evenings later, and so on, every other evening for those two weeks. Zabette's old mother took a great fancy to him, and gave him every encouragement; but the old père Fuseau, who had sailed many a voyage, in younger days, round the Horn, would never speak a good word for him—and perhaps his hostility only increased the girl's attachment.
"A little grease is all very well for the hair of a young man," he would say. "But this scented pomade they use nowadays—pah!"
"You object then to a sailor's being a gentleman?" demanded the girl haughtily.
"Yes, I do," roared the old père Fuseau. "Have a care, Zabette."
Nevertheless, the two lovers found plenty of chances to be alone together; and they would talk, in low voices, of their happiness and of the future, which looked very bright to Zabette, despite all the uncertainties of the sea.
"When we put in on the return from the Banks," said Maxence, "you will be at the wharf to meet me; and that very day we will announce our fiancailles. What an astonishment for everybody!"
"And then," she asked—"after that?"
"After that, I will stay ashore for a while. They can do without me on theSoleil. And at the end of a month"—he told her the rest with a kiss; and surely Zabette had never been so happy in her life.
But for the time being the affair was kept very, very secret, so that people might not get to gossiping. Even those frequent expeditions of Maxence to the Grande Anse were not remarked, for he always came after dusk: and when the fortnight was over and theSoleilonce more was ready for sea, the two sweethearts exchanged keepsakes, and he left her.
"I will send you a letter from St. Pierre Miquelon," he said, to cheer her, while he wiped away her tears with a silk handkerchief.
"Do you promise?" she asked.
He promised. Three weeks later the letter arrived; and it told her that his heart was breaking for his dearlittle Zabette. "Sois fidèle—be true," were the last words. The letter had a perfume of pomade about it, and she carried it all summer in her bodice, taking it out many times a day to scan the loving words again.
In St. Esprit, when the fishing fleet begins to return from the Banks, they keep an old man on the lookout in the church tower; and as soon as he sights a vessel in the offing, he rings the bell.
It was the fourth week in October that year before the bell was heard; and then rapidly, two or three at a time, the schooners came in. First theDame Blanche, which was always in the lead; then theÊtoile, theDeux Frères, theLottie B., and theMilo. Every day, morning or afternoon, the bell would ring, and poor Zabette must find some excuse or other to be in town. Down at the wharf there was always gathered an anxious throng, watching for the appearance of the vessel round the Cape. And when she was visible at last, there would be cries of joy from some, and silence on the part of others. Zabette was among the silent. When she saw the happiness about her, tears would swim unbidden in her eyes; but of course she did not lose heart, for still there were several vessels to arrive, and no disasters had been reported by the earlier comers. People noticed her, standing there with expectant mien, and they wondered what it could be that brought her; but it was not their habit to ask questions of the fine highstepper.
There was another young girl on the wharf, too, who had the air of looking for some one—a certainSuzanne Benoît, from l'Étang, three miles inshore, a very pretty girl, with a mild, appealing look in her brown eyes. Zabette had seen her often here and there; but she had no acquaintance with her. At the present moment, strangely enough, she felt herself powerfully drawn to this Suzanne. It came to her, somehow, that the girl had come thither on a mission similar to her own, she was so silent, and had not the look of those who had waited on the wharf in previous years. And so, one afternoon, when two vessels had rounded the Cape and were entering the harbor, amid a great hubbub of expectancy,—and neither of them was theSoleil,—Zabette surprised a look of woe in the face of the other which she could not resist. She went over to her, with some diffidence, and offered a few words of sympathy.
"You are waiting for some one, too?" she asked her.
The eyes of the other filled quickly to overflowing. "Yes," she answered. "He has not come yet."
"You must not worry," said Zabette, stoutly. "There are always delays, you know. Some are ahead; others behind; it is so every year."
The girl gave her a grateful look, and squeezed her hand. "It is a secret," she murmured.
Zabette smiled. "I have a secret too."
"Then we are waiting together," said Suzanne. "That makes it so much easier!"
They walked back to the street, arm in arm, as if they had always been bosom friends. And the nextday they were both at the wharf again. The afternoon was bleak; but as usual they were in their best clothes.
"Oh, it does not seem as if I could wait any longer," whispered Suzanne, confidingly. "I do hope it will be theSoleilthis time."
"TheSoleil!" exclaimed Zabette, joyfully. "You are waiting for theSoleil?"
And at the other's nod, she went on. "How lovely that we are expecting the same vessel. Oh, I am sure it will come to-day—or certainly to-morrow."
The two girls felt themselves very close together, now that they had shared so much of their secret; and it made the waiting less hard to bear.
"Is he handsome, your man?" asked Suzanne, timidly.
"Ravishing," replied Zabette, eagerly. "And yours?"
Suzanne sighed with adoration. "Beyond words," was her reply—and the girls exchanged another of those pressures of the hand which mean so much where love is concerned. "He has the most beautiful moustache in the world."
"Oh, no," protested Zabette, smilingly. "Mine has a more beautiful one yet, and such crisp curly hair, and dark eyes."
Her companion suddenly looked at her. "Large eyes or small?" she asked in a strange voice.
"Oh," replied Zabette, doubtfully. "Not too large. I would not fancy ox eyes in a man."
Suzanne freed herself and stood facing her with a flash of hatred in her mild face which Zabette could not understand.
"And his name!" she demanded, harshly. "His name, then!"
Zabette smiled a little proudly. "That is my secret," she replied. "But, Suzanne, what is the matter?"
"It is not your secret," laughed the other, bitterly. "It is not your secret. It is my secret."
"What do you mean?" cried Zabette, with a sudden feeling of terror at the girl's drawn face.
"His name is Maxence!" Suzanne's laugh was like bones rattling in a coffin.
It seemed to Zabette as if a flash of lightning had cleft her soul in two. That was the way the truth came to her. She drew back like a viper ready to strike.
"Oh, I hate you!" she cried, and turned on her heel, white to the eyes with anger and shame.
But Suzanne would not leave her. She followed to the other side of the wharf, and as soon as she could speak again without attracting attention, she said, more kindly:
"I am very sorry for you, Zabette. It is too bad you were so mistaken. Why, he was engaged to me the very second day he came ashore."
Zabette stifled back a cry, and retorted, icily, "He was engaged to me the first day. He followed me all the way to the Grande Anse."
Suzanne's eyes glittered, this time. "He followed me all the way to l'Étang. He is mine."
Zabette brought out, through white lips, "Leave me alone. He was mine first."
"He was mine last," retaliated the other, undauntedly. "The very morning he went away, he came to see me. Did he come to you that day? Did he? Did he?"
Zabette ignored her question. "He wrote me a letter from St. Pierre Miquelon," she announced, crisply. "So that settles it, first and last."
The hand of Suzanne suddenly lifted to her bosom, as if feeling for something. "My letter was written at St. Pierre, too."
For an instant they glared at each other like wild animals fighting over prey. Neither said a word. Neither yielded a hair. Each felt that her life's happiness was at stake. Zabette had thought that this chit of a girl from l'Étang was mild and timid; but now she realized that she had met her match for courage. And the thought came to her: "When he sees us, let him choose."
She was not conscious of having uttered the words. Perhaps her glance, swiftly directed toward the Cape, conveyed the thought to her rival. At all events the answer came promptly and with complete self-assurance:
"Yes, let Maxence choose."
Just at that moment the first vessel appeared at the harbor entrance, while the bell redoubled its jubilation in the church tower on the hill.
"TheMercure!" cried an old woman. "Thank God!"
And a few minutes later, there was theAnne-Marie, all sail set over her green hull; and then a vessel which at first no one seemed to recognize.
"Which is that?" they asked. "Oh, it must be—yes, it is theSoleil, from Rivière Bourgeoise. She has several men from here aboard."
With eyes that seemed to be starting from her head, Zabette watched theSoleilentering the harbor. She could distinguish forms on deck. She saw handkerchiefs waving. At last she could begin to make out the faces a little. But she did not discover the one she sought. Holding tight to a mooring post, unable to think, unable to do anything but watch, it seemed to her that hours passed before the schooner cast anchor and a boat was put over. There were four persons in it: the mate and the three men from St. Esprit. They rowed rapidly to the wharf; and the three men threw up their gunny sacks and climbed the ladder, one after the other.
The mate was just about to put off again when Zabette spoke to him. She leaned over the edge of the wharf, reaching out a detaining hand.
"M'sieur!"
At the same instant the word was uttered by another voice close by. She looked up and saw Suzanne, very white, in the same attitude.
"What is it, mesdemoiselles?" asked the mate, touching his vizor.
As if by concerted arrangement came the question from both sides.
"And Maxence?"
The man answered them seriously and directly, perceiving from their manner that his reply was of great import to these two, whatever the reason for it might be.
"Maxence?—But we do not know where he is. There was a fog. He was out in a dory, alone. We picked up the dory the next day. Perhaps"—he shrugged his shoulders incredulously—"perhaps he might have been picked up by another vessel. Who can say?"
The girls gave him no answer. They reeled, and would have fallen, save that each found support in the other's arms. Sinking to the string piece of the wharf, they buried their faces on each other's shoulders and sobbed. Happy fathers and mothers and sweethearts, gathered on the wharf, looked at them in wonder, and left them alone, ignorant of the cause of their grief. So a long time passed, and still they crouched there, tight clasped, with buried heads.
"He was so good, so brave!" sobbed Suzanne.
"I loved him so much," repeated Zabette, over and over.
"I shall die without him," moaned Suzanne.
"So shall I," responded the other. "I cannot bear to live any longer."
"If only I had a picture of him, that would be some comfort," said the poor girl from l'Étang.
"I have one," said Zabette, sitting up straight and putting some orderly touches to her disarrangedmouchoir. "He gave it to me the very last night."
Suzanne looked at her enviously, and mopped her red eyes. "All I have," she sighed, "is a little shell box he brought me, with the motto,À ma chérie. He gave me that the very last morning of all. It is very beautiful, but no one but me has seen it yet."
"You must show it to me sometime," said Zabette. "I have a right to see it."
"If you will let me look at the picture," consented the other, guardedly.
"Yes, you may look at it," said Zabette, "so long as you do not forget that it belongs to me."
"To you!" retorted the other. "And have you a better right to it than I, seeing that he would have been my husband in a month's time? You are a bad, cruel girl; you have no heart. It is a mercy he escaped the traps you set for him—my poor Maxence!"
A thousand taunting words came to Zabette's lips, but she controlled herself, rose to her feet with a show of dignity, and quitted the wharf. She resolved that she would never speak to that Benoît girl again. To do so was only to be insulted.
She went back to her home on the Grande Anse and endeavored to take up her everyday life again as though nothing had happened. She hid her grief from the neighbors, even from her own parents, who had never suspected the strength of her attachment for Maxence. By day she could keep herself busy about the house, and the secret would only be a dull pain; but at night, especially when the wind blew, it would gnaw and gnaw at her heart like a hungry beast.
At last she could keep it to herself no longer. She must share her misery. But there was only one person in the world who could understand. She declared to herself that nothing would induce her to go to l'Étang; and yet, as if under a spell, she made ready for the journey.
"Where are you going, my Zabette?" asked her old mother.
"To l'Étang," she answered. "I hear there is a girl there who makes a special brown dye for wool."
"Well, the walk will do you good, ma fille. You have been indoors too much lately. You are growing right pale and ill-looking."
"Oh, it is nothing, maman. I never feel very brisk, you know, in November. 'Tis such a dreary month."
She took a back road across the barrens to l'Étang. Scarcely any one traveled it except in winter to fetch kindling wood from the scrub fir that grew there. Consequently Zabette was much surprised, after walking about a mile and a half, to discover that some one was approaching from the opposite direction—a woman, with a red shawl across her shoulders. Gradually the distance between them lessened; and then she saw, with a start, that it was Suzanne Benoît. Her knees began to tremble under her. When they met, at last, no words would come to her lips: they only looked at each other with questioning, hunted eyes, then embraced, weeping, and sat down silently on a moss-hummock beside the road. Zabette had not felt so comforted since the disaster of October. For the first time she couldlet the tears flow without any fear of detection. At last she said, very calmly:
"I have brought the picture."
She drew it out from under her coat, and held it on her knees, where Suzanne could see it.
"And here is the shell box," rejoined her companion. "I do not know how to read, me; but there are the words—À ma chérie. It's pretty—hein?"
Each gazed at the other's treasure.
"Ah," sighed Suzanne, mournfully. "How handsome he was to look at—and so true and brave!"
"I shall never love another," said Zabette, with sad conviction—"never. Love is over for me."
"And for me," said Suzanne. "But we have our memories."
"Mine," corrected Zabette. "You are forgetting."
"Did he ever give you a present that saidÀ ma chérie?" demanded Suzanne, pointedly.
The other explained blandly: "You cannot say anything, my dear, on the back of a tintype.—But I have my letter from St. Pierre."
She showed it.
"Even if I cannot read mine," declared the girl from l'Étang, hotly, "I know it is fully as nice as yours. Nicer!"
"Oh, can I never see you but you must insult me!" cried Zabette. "Keep your old box and your precious letter from St. Pierre Miquelon. What can they matter to me?"
Without a word of good-by she sprang to her feetand set out for the Grande Anse. She did not see the Benoît girl again that winter; but she could not help thinking about her, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with bitter hatred. The young men came flocking to her home, as usual, vying with one another in attentions to her, for not only was Zabette known as the handsomest girl in three parishes, but also as an excellent housekeeper—"good saver, rare spender."
She would not encourage any of them, however.
"If I marry," she said to herself, "it is giving Maxence over to that l'Étang girl. She will crow about it. She will say, 'At last he is mine altogether. She has surrendered.' No, I could not stand that."
So that winter passed, and the next summer, and other winters and summers. Zabette did not marry; and after a time she began hearing herself spoken of as an old maid. The young men flocked to other houses, not hers. At the end of twelve years both her father and mother were dead, and she was alone in the world, thirty, and unprovided for.
It was, of course, fated, that these two women whose lives had been so strangely entangled should drift together again, sooner or later. So long as both were young and could claim love for themselves, jealousy was bound to separate them; but when they found themselves quite alone in the world, no longer beautiful, no longer arousing thoughts of love in the breast of another, the memory of all that was most precious in their lives drew them together as surely as a magnet draws two bits of metal.
It was after mass, one Sunday, that Zabette sought out her rival finally and found the courage to propose a singular plan.
"You are alone, Suzanne," she said. "So am I. We are both poor. Come and live with me."
"And you will give me Maxence?" asked Suzanne, a little hardly.
"No. But I will give you half of him. See, why should we quarrel any more? He is dead. Let us be reasonable. After this he shall belong to both of us."
Still thevieille fillefrom l'Étang held back, though her eyes softened.
"All these years," she said, with a remnant of defiance—"all these years he has been mine. I did not get married, me, because that would have let him belong to you."
Zabette sighed wearily. "And all these years I have been saying the same thing. And yet I could never forget the shell box and your letter from St. Pierre Miquelon. Come, don't you see how much easier it will be—how much more natural—if we put our treasures together: all we have of Maxence, and call himours?"
Suzanne was beginning to yield, but doubtfully. "If it would be proper," she said.
"Not if he were living, of course," replied the other, with assurance. "The laws of the church forbid that. But in the course of a lifetime a husband may have more than one wife. I do not see why, when a husband is dead, two wives should not have him. Do you?"
"I will come," said Suzanne, softly and gratefully. "I am so lonely."
Three years later the two women moved from the Grande Anse into the village, renting the little cottage with the dormer windows in which they have lived ever since. You must look far to find so devoted a pair. They are more than sisters to each other. If their lives have not been happy, as the world judges happiness, they have at least been illumined by two great and abiding loves,—which does not happen often,—that for the dead, and that for each other.
GARLANDS FOR PETTIPAW
Towns, like persons, I suppose, wake up now and then to find themselves famous; but I doubt if any town having this experience could be more amazed by it, more dazed by it, than was Three Rivers, one day last March, when we opened our newspapers from Boston and Montreal and lo, there was our own name staring at us from the front page! Three Rivers is in the Province of Quebec, on the shore of the Bay de Chaleurs; but we receive our metropolitan papers every day, only thirty-six hours off the presses; and this makes us feel closely in touch with the outside world. Until the railroad from Matapedia came through, four years ago, mail was brought by stage, every second day. The coming of the railroad had seemed an important event then; but it had never put Three Rivers on the front page of the BostonHerald.
The news-item in question was to the effect that the S. S.Maid of the North, Captain Pettipaw of Three Rivers, P. Q., had been torpedoed, forty miles off Fastnet, while en route from Sydney, N. S., to Liverpool, with a cargo of pig-iron. The captain and crew (said the item) had been allowed to take to the boats; but only one of the two boats had been heard from. Thatone was in command of the mate, and had been rescued by a trawler.
Captain Pettipaw of Three Rivers!OurCaptain Pettipaw! How well we knew him; and who among us had ever thought of him as one likely to make Three Rivers figure on the front page of the world's news! Yet this had come to pass; and even amid the anxiety we felt as to the fate of Captain Joe, we could but be agreeably conscious of the distinction that had come to our little community. All that afternoon poor Mrs. Pettipaw's house was thronged with neighbors who hurried over there, newspaper in hand, ready to congratulate or to condole as might seem most called for.
"Poor Mrs. Pettipaw" or "poor Melina" was the way we always spoke of her, partly, I suppose, because of her nine children, and partly because—I hesitate to say it—she was Captain Joe's wife. But now that it seemed so very likely she might be his widow, our hearts went out to her the more. You see Captain Joe was, in our local phrase, "one of those Pettipaws." Pettipaws never seemed to get anywhere or to do anything that mattered. Pettipaws were always behindhand. Pettipaws were always in trouble, one way or another. It was a family characteristic.
Only five or six years ago Captain Joe's new schooner, theMelina P., had broken from her harbor moorings under a sudden gale from the northwest and driven square on the Fiddle Reef, where she foundered before our eyes. Other vessels were anchored close by theMelina P.; but not one of them broke loose. All the Captain's savings for years and years had goneinto the new schooner, not to speak of several hundreds borrowed from his fellow-townsmen.
And the very next winter his house had burned to the ground; and the seven children—there were only seven then—had been parceled out amongst the neighbors for six or seven months until, about midsummer, the new house was roofed over and the windows set; and then the family moved in, and there they lived for several more months, "sort of camping-out fashion," as poor Melina cheerfully put it, while Captain Joe was occasionally seen putting on a row of shingles or sawing a board. At last, after the snow had begun to fly, the neighbors came once more to the rescue. A collection was made for the stricken family; carpenters finished the house; a mason built the chimney and plastered the downstairs partitions; curtains were donated for the windows; and the Pettipaws spent the winter in comfort.
The following spring Captain Joe got a position as second officer on a coastwise ship out of Boston, and the affairs of the family began to look up. From that he was promoted to the captaincy of a little freighter plying between Montreal and the Labrador; and the next we knew, he was in command of a large collier sailing out of Sydney, Nova Scotia. Poor Melina appeared in a really handsome new traveling suit, ordered from the big mail order house in Montreal; and the young ones could all go to church the same Sunday, and often did.
For the last year or two we had ceased to make frequent inquiries after Captain Joe; he had droppedpretty completely out of our life; and the thought that he might be holding a commission of special dangerousness had never so much as entered our minds. But poor Melina's calmness in the face of the news-item surprised everyone. It was like a reproach to her neighbors for not having acknowledged before the worth of the man she had married. It had not required a German torpedo to teach her that. And as for his safety, that apparently caused her no anxiety whatever.
"You couldn't kill the Captain," she repeated, with a quiet, untroubled smile, which was as much as to say that anything else might happen to a Pettipaw, but not that.
The rest of us admired her faith without being able to share it. Poor Melina rarely had leisure to read a newspaper, and she did not know much about the disasters of the war zone. And so, instinctively, everyone began to say the eulogistic things about Captain Joe that had never been said—though now we realized they ought to have been said—while he was with us.
"He was such a good man," said Mrs. Thibault, the barrister's wife. "So devoted to his home. I remember of how he would sit there on the doorstep for hours, watching his little ones at their play. Poor babies! Poor little babies!"
"Such a brave man, too; and so witty!" said John Boutin, our tailor. "The stories he would tell, my! my! Many a day in the shop he'd be telling storiesfrom dinner till dark, without once stopping for breath as you might say. It passed the time so nice!"
"And devout!" added Mrs. Fougère, the postmistress. "A Christian. He loved to listen to the church-bells. I remember like it was yesterday his saying to me, 'The man,' he said, 'who can hear a church-bell without thinking of religion, is as good as lost, to my thinking.'"
"Not that he went to church very often," said Boutin.
"His knee troubled him," explained Mrs. Fougère.
Early in the evening came the cable message that justified poor Melina's confidence. Eugénie White—the Whites used to be Le Blancs, but since Eugénie came back from Boston, they have taken the more up-to-date name—Eugénie came flying up the street from the railroad station, waving the yellow envelope and spreading the news as she flew. The message consisted of only one word: "Safe"; but it was dated Queenstown, and it bore the signature we were henceforth to be so proud of: Joseph Pettipaw.
Two days later theHeraldcontained a notice of the rescue by a Norwegian freighter of the Captain of theMaid of the North; but we had to wait ten days for the full story, which occupied two columns in one of the Queenstown journals and almost as much in the DublinPost, with a very lifelike photograph of Captain Joe. It was a wonderful story, as you may very likely remember, for the American papers gave it plenty of attention a little later.
It had been a calm, warm day, but with an immense sea running. Before entering the war zone Captain Joe had made due preparation for emergencies. The ship's boats were ready to be swung, and in each was a barrel of water and a supply of biscuit and other rations. The submarine was not sighted until it was too late to think of escaping; the engines were reversed; and when the German commander called out through his megaphone that ten minutes would be allowed for the escape of the crew, all hands hurried to the lee side and began piling into the boats. The mate's was lowered away first and cleared safely.
The Captain was about to give the order for the lowering of his own boat, when the only woman in the party cried out that her husband was being left behind. It was the cook, who was indulging in an untimely nap, his noonday labors in the galley being over. In her first excitement Martha Figman had failed to notice his absence, but had made for the boat as fast as she could, carrying her three-year-old child.
"Be quick!" called out the commander of the submarine. "Your time is up!"
"Oh, Captain, Captain, don't leave him," implored the desperate woman. "He's all I have!"
Then Captain Joe did the thing that will go down in history. He seized the little girl and held her aloft in his arms and called out to the Germans:
"In the name of this little child, grant me three more minutes."
"Two!" replied the commander.
Captain Joe leaped to the deck and rushed aft, burst open the cook's cabin, and hauled Danny Figman, quite sound asleep, out of his berth. The poor rascal was only partly dressed, but there was no time to make him presentable. A blanket and a sou'wester had to suffice. Still bewildered, he was dragged on deck and ordered to run for his life.
A few seconds later the boat lowered away with its full quota of passengers; the men took the oars, cleared a hundred yards safely; and then there was a snort, a white furrow through the waves, an explosion; theMaid of the Northlisted, settled, and disappeared. The submarine steamed quickly out of sight; and the two boats were all that was left as witness of what had happened.
On account of the terrible seas that were running, the boats soon became separated; and for sixty-two hours Captain Joe bent his every energy to keeping his boat afloat, for she was in momentary danger of being swamped, until on the third morning the Norwegian was sighted, came to the rescue, and carried the exhausted occupants into Queenstown.
Three Rivers, you may depend, had this story by heart, and backward and forward, long before Captain Joe returned to us; for not only did it appear in those Irish journals, but also on the occasion of the Captain's arrival in New York in several metropolitan papers, written up with great detail, and with a picture of little Tina Figman in the Captain's arms.
"This is the Captain," ran the print under the picture,"who risked his life that a baby might not be fatherless."
You can imagine how anxious we were by this time in Three Rivers to welcome that Captain home again; not one of us but wanted to make ample amends for the injustice we had done him in the past. But we had to wait several weeks, for even after the owners had brought Captain Joe and his crew back to New York on the St. Louis, still he had to go to Montreal for a ten days' stay, to depose his evidence officially and to wind up the affairs of the torpedoed ship. But at last he was positively returning to us; and extensive preparations were undertaken for his reception.
As he was coming by the St. Lawrence steamer,Lady of Gaspé, the principal decorations were massed in the vicinity of the government wharf. If I tell you that well nigh three hundred dollars had been collected for this purpose from the good people of Three Rivers, you can form some idea of the magnitude of the effort. A double row of saplings had been set up along the wharf and led thence to the Palace of Justice; and the full distance, an eighth of a mile, was hung with red and tricolor bunting. Then there were three triumphal arches, one at the head of the wharf, one at the turn into the street, and one in front of the post-office. These arches were very cleverly built, with little turrets at the corners, the timber-work completely covered with spruce-branches; and each arch displayed a motto. Mrs. Fougère and Eugénie White had devised the mottoes, little John Boutin had traced theletters on cotton, and Mrs. Boutin had painted them. The first read: "Honor to Our Hero." The second was in French, for the reason that half our population still use that language by preference, and it read: "Honneur à notre Héro"; and the third arch bore the one word, ornately inscribed: "Welcome."
All the houses along the way were decorated with geraniums and flags; and as the grass was already very green (it was June) and the willows and silver-oaks beginning to leave out, it may fairly be said that Three Rivers was a beauty spot.
Seeing that no one can tell beforehand when a steamer is going to arrive, the whole town was in its best clothes and ready at an early hour of the morning. The neighbors trooped in at poor Melina's, offering their services in case any of the children still needed combing, curling, or buttoning; and all through the forenoon the young people were climbing to the top of St. Anne's hill to see if there was any sign of theLady of Gaspé; but it was not till three in the afternoon that the church-bell, madly ringing, announced that the long-expected moment was about to arrive.
I wish I could quote for you in full the account of that day's doings which appeared in our local sheet, the BonaventureRecord, for it was beautifully written and described every feature as it deserved, reproducingverbatimthe Mayor's address of welcome, Father Quinnan's speech in the Palace, and the Resolutions drawn up by ten representative citizens and presented to Captain Pettipaw on a handsomely illuminatedscroll, which you may see to-day hanging in the place of honor in his parlor.
But let my readers imagine for themselves the arrival of the steamer, the cheer upon cheer as Captain Joe came gravely down the gang-plank; the affecting meeting between him and poor Melina and the nine little Pettipaws, the littlest of whom he had never seen, and several of whom had grown so in these last four years that he had the names wrong, which caused happy laughter and happy tears on all sides. Then the procession to the Palace! There was an orchestra of four pieces from Cape Cove; and a troop of little girls, in white, scattered tissue-paper flowers along the line of march.
The Mayor began his speech by saying that an honor had come to our little town which would be rehearsed from father to son for generations. Father Quinnan took for his theme the three words: "Father, Husband, Hero"; and he showed us how each of those words, in its highest and best sense, necessarily comprised the other two. And the exercises closed with a very enjoyable piano duet which you doubtless know: "Wandering Dreams," by some foreign composer.
People watched Captain Joe very closely. It would have been only natural if, returning to us in this way, he should have remembered a time, not so long before, when the attitude of his fellow-citizens had been extremely cool. But if he remembered it, he gave no sign; and he smiled at everyone in a grave, thoughtful manner that made one's heart beat high.
"He has aged," whispered Mrs. Fougère. "But his face is noble. It reminds me of Napoleon, somehow."
"To me he looks more like that American we see so often in the papers—Bryan. So much dignity!" This from Mrs. Boutin.
We appreciated the Captain's freedom from condescension the more when we heard from his own lips, that same evening, a recital of the honors that had been showered upon him during the past weeks. The Mayor of Queenstown had had him to dinner; Lady Derntwood, known as the most beautiful woman in Ireland, had entertained him for three days at Derntwood Park, and sent an Indian shawl as a present to his wife. On theSt. Louishe had sat at the Captain's right hand; in New York he had been interviewed and royally fêted by the newspaper-men; and at Montreal the owners had presented him with a gold watch and a purse of $250. Also, they had offered him another ship immediately.
"Oh, you're going again!" we exclaimed; and the words were repeated from one to another in admiration—"He's going again!" But Captain Joe smiled thoughtfully.
"I told them I didn't mind being torpedoed," he said ('Oh, no! Certainly not! Mind being torpedoed; you! Captain Joe!') "but—"
"But what, Captain?"
"But I said as I couldn't bear for to see a little child exposed again in an open boat for sixty-four hours."
"But Captain, wouldn't they give you a ship without a child?"
"Theysaidthey would," he replied, doubtfully, shaking his head.
"Then what will you be doing next?" we asked, mentally reviewing the various fields in which he might add laurels to laurels.
He meditated a little while and then replied: "Home'll suit me pretty good for a spell."
Well, that could be understood, certainly. Indeed, it was to his credit. We remembered Father Quinnan's speech. The husband, the father, had their claim. A little stay at home, in the bosom of loved ones, yes, to be sure, it seemed fitting and right, after the perils of the sea.
And yet, why was it, as we took down the one-eighth-mile of bunting that night, there was a faint but perceptible dampening of our enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the reaction from the strain and excitement of the day, for it had been, there was no denying it, a day of days for Three Rivers; a day, which, as Father Quinnan had said, would be writ in letters of gold in Memory's fair album. This day was ended now, and night came down upon a very proud and very tired little community.
If this were a fancy story instead of a record of things that came to pass last year on the Gaspé Coast, my pen should stop here; but as it is, I feel under a plain obligation to pursue the narrative.
I've no doubt that many other towns in the history of the world have faced precisely the same problem that Three Rivers faced in the months following: namely, what to do with a hero when you have one. Oh, if you could only set them up on a pedestal in front of the Town Hall or the post-office andkeepthem there! A statue is so practicable. Once in so often, say on anniversaries, you can freshen it up, hang it with garlands and bunting, and polish the inscription; and then the school-children can come, and somebody can explain to them about the statue, and why we should venerate it, and what were the splendid qualities of the hero which we are to try to imitate in our own lives. I hope that all cities with statues realize their happy condition.
For two or three weeks after the Great Day Three Rivers still kept its air of festivity. The triumphal arches could be appreciated even from the train, and many travelers, we heard, passing through, leaned out of the windows and asked questions of the station agent.
Wherever Captain Joe went, there followed a little knot of children, listening open-mouthed for any word that might fall from his lips; and you could hear them explaining to one another how it was that a man could be torpedoed and escape undamaged. At first no one of lesser importance than the Mayor or the Bank Manager presumed to walk with him on the street; and he was usually to be seen proceeding in solitary dignity to or from the post-office, head a littlebowed, one hand in the opening of his coat, his step slow and thoughtful, while the children pattered along behind.
But the barrier between the Captain and his fellow-townsmen was entirely of their own creation, it transpired, for he was naturally a sociable man, and now more than ever he craved society, being sure of a deferential hearing. Once established again in Boutin's tailor-shop and pool-parlor, he seemed disposed never to budge from it; and as often as you might pass, day or night, you could hear him holding forth to whatever company happened to be present. It was impossible not to gather many scraps of his discourse, for his voice was as loud as an orator's.
"And Lady Derntwood—no, it was Lady Genevieve, Lady Derntwood's dairter by her first husband and fully as beautiful as her mother, she said to me, 'Captain,' she said, 'when I read that about the little girl—For the sake of this little child, grant me three minutes!—the tears filled my eyes, and I said to my maid, who had brought me myTimeson the breakfast tray, "Lucienne," I said, "that is a man I should be proud to know!"'—and that's a fact sir, as true as I'm settin' here, for Lucienne herself told me the same thing. A little beauty, that Lucienne: black hair; medium height. We used to talk French together."
Or another time you would hear: "And they said to me, 'Captain,' they says, 'and are you satisfied with the gold watch and chain and with the little purse we have made up for you here, not pretending, of course,for one minute,' they says, 'that 'tis any measure of the services you have rendered to us or to your country. We ask you,' they says, 'are you satisfied?' And I said, 'I am,' and the fact is, I was, for the watch I'd lost was an Ingersoll, and my clothes put together wouldn't have brought a hundred dollars."
So the weeks went by; and the triumphal arches, on which the mottoes had run a good deal, were taken down and broken up for kindling; and still Captain Joe sat and talked all day long and all night long, too, if only anybody would listen to him. But listeners were growing scarce. His story had been heard too often; and any child in town was able to correct him when he slipped up, which often happened. The two hundred and fifty dollars was spent long since, and now the local merchants were forced to insist once more on strictly cash purchases, and many a day the Pettipaw family must have "done meagre," as the French say. Unless all signs failed, they would be soon living again at the charge of the community. Close your eyes if you like, sooner or later certain grim truths will be borne home to you. A leopard cannot change his spots, nor a Pettipaw his skin. Before our very eyes the honor and glory of Three Rivers, the thing that was to be passed from generation to generation, was vanishing: worse than that, we were becoming ridiculous in our own eyes, which is harder to bear, even, than being ridiculous in the eyes of others.
There was one remedy and only one. It was plain to anybody who considered the situation thoughtfully.Captain Joe must be got away. So long as your hero is alive, he can only be viewed advantageously at a distance. At all events, if he is a Pettipaw.
It was proposed that we should elect him our local member to the provincial Parliament. It might be managed. We suggested it to him, dwelling upon the opportunities it would afford for the exercise of his special talents which, we said, were being thrown away in a little town like Three Rivers. He conceded that we spoke the truth; "but," he said, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "I am a sailor born and bred, and my health would never stand the confinement. Never!"
Next it was found that we could secure for him the position of purser on the S. S.Lady of the Gaspé. But this offer he refused even more emphatically.
"Purser!—Me!" There was evidently nothing more to be said.
Writing to Montreal, Father Quinnan learned that if he so wished Captain Pettipaw might have again the command of the little freighter that ran to the Labrador; and the proposition was laid before him with sanguine expectations. Again he declined.
"The Labrador! Thank you! They wouldn't even know who I was!"
"You could tell them, Captain."
"What good would that do?"
No answer being forthcoming to this demand, still another scheme had to be sought. It was the Mayor who finally saved the day for Three Rivers. He instigated a Patriotic Fund, to which every man, womanand child contributed what he could, and with the proceeds a three-masted schooner of two hundred tons burden was acquired (she had been knocked down for a song at a sheriff's sale at Campbellton); she was handsomely refitted, rechristened, and presented, late in October, to Captain Joe, as a tribute of esteem from his native town.
It is not for me to say just how grateful the Captain was, at heart; but he accepted the gift with becoming dignity; and before the winter ice closed the Gulf (so expeditiously had our plans been carried out) theGloriawas ready to sail with a cargo of dry fish for the Barbadoes.
The evening previous to her departure there was a big farewell meeting in the Palace of Justice, with speeches by the Mayor and Father Quinnan, a piano duet, and an original poem by Eugénie White, beginning: