第13章

It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles back from St.Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself, as commonly happens in the real stories which life is always bringing out in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the plot.But Patrick readily made me acquainted with what had gone before.Indeed, it is one of life's greatest charms as a story-teller that there is never any trouble about getting a brief resume of the argument, and even a listener who arrives late is soon put into touch with the course of the narrative.

We had hauled our canoes and camp-stuff over the terrible road that leads to the lake, with much creaking and groaning of wagons, and complaining of men, who declared that the mud grew deeper and the hills steeper every year, and vowed their customary vow never to come that way again.At last our tents were pitched in a green copse of balsam trees, close beside the water.The delightful sense of peace and freedom descended upon our souls.Prosper and Ovide were cutting wood for the camp-fire; Francois was getting ready a brace of partridges for supper; Patrick and I were unpacking the provisions, arranging them conveniently for present use and future transportation.

"Here, Pat," said I, as my hand fell on a large square parcel--"here is some superfine tobacco that I got in Quebec for you and the other men on this trip.Not like the damp stuff you had last year--a little bad smoke and too many bad words.This is tobacco to burn--something quite particular, you understand.How does that please you?"He had been rolling up a piece of salt pork in a cloth as I spoke, and courteously wiped his fingers on the outside of the bundle before he stretched out his hand to take the package of tobacco.

Then he answered, with his unfailing politeness, but more solemnly than usual:

"A thousand thanks to m'sieu'.But this year I shall not have need of the good tobacco.It shall be for the others."The reply was so unexpected that it almost took my breath away.For Pat, the steady smoker, whose pipes were as invariable as the precession of the equinoxes, to refuse his regular rations of the soothing weed was a thing unheard of.Could he be growing proud in his old age? Had he some secret supply of cigars concealed in his kit, which made him scorn the golden Virginia leaf? I demanded an explanation.

"But no, m'sieu'," he replied; "it is not that, most assuredly.It is something entirely different--something very serious.It is a reformation that I commence.Does m'sieu' permit that I should inform him of it?"Of course I permitted, or rather, warmly encouraged, the fullest possible unfolding of the tale; and while we sat among the bags and boxes, and the sun settled gently down behind the sharp-pointed firs across the lake, and the evening sky and the waveless lake glowed with a thousand tints of deepening rose and amber, Patrick put me in possession of the facts which had led to a moral revolution in his life.

"It was the Ma'm'selle Meelair, that young lady,--not very young, but active like the youngest,--the one that I conducted down the Grande Decharge to Chicoutimi last year, after you had gone away.

She said that she knew m'sieu' intimately.No doubt you have a good remembrance of her?"I admitted an acquaintance with the lady.She was the president of several societies for ethical agitation--a long woman, with short hair and eyeglasses and a great thirst for tea; not very good in a canoe, but always wanting to run the rapids and go into the dangerous places, and talking all the time.Yes; that must have been the one.She was not a bosom friend of mine, to speak accurately, but I remembered her well.

"Well, then, m'sieu'," continued Patrick, "it was this demoiselle who changed my mind about the smoking.But not in a moment, you understand; it was a work of four days, and she spoke much.

"The first day it was at the Island House; we were trolling for ouananiche, and she was not pleased, for she lost many of the fish.

I was smoking at the stern of the canoe, and she said that the tobacco was a filthy weed, that it grew in the devil's garden, and that it smelled bad, terribly bad, and that it made the air sick, and that even the pig would not eat it."I could imagine Patrick's dismay as he listened to this dissertation; for in his way he was as sensitive as a woman, and he would rather have been upset in his canoe than have exposed himself to the reproach of offending any one of his patrons by unpleasant or unseemly conduct.

"What did you do then, Pat?" I asked.

"Certainly I put out the pipe--what could I do otherwise? But Ithought that what the demoiselle Meelair has said was very strange, and not true--exactly; for I have often seen the tobacco grow, and it springs up out of the ground like the wheat or the beans, and it has beautiful leaves, broad and green, with sometimes a red flower at the top.Does the good God cause the filthy weeds to grow like that? Are they not all clean that He has made? The potato--it is not filthy.And the onion? It has a strong smell; but the demoiselle Meelair she ate much of the onion--when we were not at the Island House, but in the camp.

"And the smell of the tobacco--this is an affair of the taste.For me, I love it much; it is like a spice.When I come home at night to the camp-fire, where the boys are smoking, the smell of the pipes runs far out into the woods to salute me.It says, 'Here we are, Patrique; come in near to the fire.' The smell of the tobacco is more sweet than the smell of the fish.The pig loves it not, assuredly; but what then? I am not a pig.To me it is good, good, good.Don't you find it like that, m'sieu'?

I had to confess that in the affair of taste I sided with Patrick rather than with the pig."Continue," I said--"continue, my boy.