第15章

It is the best thing that the good God gives to us; something to work for; something to play with.It makes a man more gentle and more strong.And a woman,--her heart is like an empty nest, if she has not a child.It was the darkest day that ever came to Angelique and me when our little baby flew away, four years ago.But perhaps if we have not one of our own, there is another somewhere, a little child of nobody, that belongs to us, for the sake of the love of children.Jean Boucher, my wife's cousin, at St.Joseph d'Alma, has taken two from the asylum.Two, m'sieu', I assure you for as soon as one was twelve years old, he said he wanted a baby, and so he went back again and got another.That is what I should like to do.""But, Pat," said I, "it is an expensive business, this raising of children.You should think twice about it.""Pardon, m'sieu'," answered Patrick; "I think a hundred times and always the same way.It costs little more for three, or four, or five, in the house than for two.The only thing is the money for the journey to the city, the choice, the arrangement with the nuns.

For that one must save.And so I have thrown away the pipe.Ismoke no more.The money of the tobacco is for Quebec and for the little found child.I have already eighteen piastres and twenty sous in the old box of cigars on the chimney-piece at the house.

This year will bring more.The winter after the next, if we have the good chance, we go to the city, the goodwife and me, and we come home with the little boy--or maybe the little girl.Does m'sieu'

approve?"

"You are a man of virtue, Pat," said I; "and since you will not take your share of the tobacco on this trip, it shall go to the other men; but you shall have the money instead, to put into your box on the mantel-piece."After supper that evening I watched him with some curiosity to see what he would do without his pipe.He seemed restless and uneasy.

The other men sat around the fire, smoking; but Patrick was down at the landing, fussing over one of the canoes, which had been somewhat roughly handled on the road coming in.Then he began to tighten the tent-ropes, and hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of the stakes.Then he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, and cut it an inch too short.Then he went into the men's tent, and in a few minutes the sound of snoring told that he had sought refuge in sleep at eight o'clock, without telling a single caribou story, or making any plans for the next day's sport.

II

For several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, trying the fishing.We explored all the favourite meeting-places of the trout, at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-holes, but we did not have remarkable success.I am bound to say that Patrick was not at his best that year as a fisherman.He was as ready to work, as interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked steadiness, persistence, patience.Some tranquillizing influence seemed to have departed from him.That placid confidence in the ultimate certainty of catching fish, which is one of the chief elements of good luck, was wanting.He did not appear to be able to sit still in the canoe.The mosquitoes troubled him terribly.He was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take plenty of the largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry.He even went so far as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I did formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose.

He was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous resolve held firm.

There was one place in particular that required very cautious angling.It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du Milieu--an open space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, in the midst of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by clear, shallow water.Here the great trout assembled at certain hours of the day; but it was not easy to get them.You must come up delicately in the canoe, and make fast to a stake at the side of the pool, and wait a long time for the place to get quiet and the fish to recover from their fright and come out from under the lily-pads.

It had been our custom to calm and soothe this expectant interval with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to meditation and a foe of "Raw haste, half-sister to delay." But this year Patrick could not endure the waiting.After five minutes he would say:

"BUT the fishing is bad this season! There are none of the big ones here at all.Let us try another place.It will go better at the Riviere du Cheval, perhaps."There was only one thing that would really keep him quiet, and that was a conversation about Quebec.The glories of that wonderful city entranced his thoughts.He was already floating, in imagination, with the vast throngs of people that filled its splendid streets, looking up at the stately houses and churches with their glittering roofs of tin, and staring his fill at the magnificent shop-windows, where all the luxuries of the world were displayed.He had heard that there were more than a hundred shops--separate shops for all kinds of separate things: some for groceries, and some for shoes, and some for clothes, and some for knives and axes, and some for guns, and many shops where they sold only jewels--gold rings, and diamonds, and forks of pure silver.Was it not so?