“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the trout.
“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the trout.
“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the trout.
We went back to camp that night, and by careful observations my brother hadn’t a regret in theworld, and crowns and principalities and governorships weren’t on his mind, which was et up by a huge gloat over his fish. He was the most deeply satisfied man I ever saw, that night, after he’d “thrown away the governorship”—see Spafford as above. We trotted along back and unpacked our “butin,” and settled down, much like that emperor of Russia and his thirty thousand men who drew their swords and put them up again. We stayed a week, and not an uneasy glance did I surprise in Walter, but once and again an amused one with a chuckle onto it, as something recalled the Spafford episode. We got no mail and he seemed not to care. At length we broke camp definitely, and paddled down the lake in the sunshine of a glorious cold September morning, looking back longingly to where our long, low log palace, barred and empty, blinked blind, reproachful windows at us through the trees. We did hate to leave—we always do.
We got to the club-house at five in the afternoon, and everything was dead quiet; not even Demerse, the steward, was in sight. So we wandered up through the birches to the big house and stood a moment onthe veranda to watch the guides bring up thepacquetons. Walter was bossing it, so I just stared at the last wild-woods picture I’d see for a year. Around the cup of Lac à la Croix in front of us were two sets of mountains: one stretched calm miles of greenness and sunshine into the horizon; its double dipped deep in water upside down, and the wind zigzagged wet silver across the submerged spruce spires. With that, out of the spruce spires as it appeared, leaped Demerse panting before us, excited, much-grinning.
“Bon jour, Demerse,” said Walter cheerfully, and shook hands and went on bossing the guides. “Godin,je veux que vous faisait”—he began. But Demerse wasn’t to be corked that way. Not much.
“Bon jour, m’sieur le gouverneur,” he burst forth. “Mes félicitations à votre Excellence. On est b’en content de ces nouvelles, m’sieur le gouverneur,” and he grinned and panted more.
“What the devil are you talking about?” remarked Walter impolitely, and instantly translated, with that friendly comic grin of his which nobody seems to resist. “Quaw le diable est-ce que vous disez, Demerse?”he said. With that Demerse burst into the club-house and brought forth bunches of papers. It was so. They’d nominated the old rascal, whether he would or not. We read that first, and Walter was interested enough and pleased enough to satisfy even Mr. Spafford. Then I lit on a head-line in huge letters, which read:
“‘Consider the Contrast. Candidates of Different Calibre. Holloway Leaves Sick Child to Make Speeches. Morgan Says’”—and then I yelped, and joy got in my legs, and I threw down the paper and leaped a leap in mid-air.
“Read it, cub; read it, you young cuss,” Walter fired at me, and I read:
“Morgan says: ‘It would be nice to be Governor, but it’s necessary to finish the job I’m on.’”
In small type below was the story about the fish. All straight, too. Spafford in deep disgust had told it to Mr. Engelhardt, and the chairman had been quick to see how to use it as a campaign catch. Holloway, Walter’s rival, had left his small boy, about to be operated on, to get to the convention, and was awfully criticised for it; so the picture ofimmovable old Walter sticking to his fishing made a grand set-off to Holloway’s nervousness.
We found it in paper after paper. Mr. Engelhardt said afterward that the simple account of Spafford’s despair and Walter’s solid-rock front of determination to get that trout first, and then attend to the governorship, but to get the trout first anyhow—that the account of that did more for the nomination than Walter’s presence could have done. It seemed to tickle the people to have him look after the job on hand, and be impervious to everything else till he put that through—and that’s the way the old chap is. Single-minded. I brought him up rather well, if I do say it, and I only hope this governor job—for he’s elected now, you see—isn’t going to spoil our camping-trip next summer. So does Walter.