A few men of the rougher sort had made fun of him at first, and there had been one or two attempts at rude handling. But Jacques was determined to take no offence; and he was so good-humoured, so obliging, so pleasant in his way of whistling and singing about his work, that all unfriendliness soon died out.
He had literally played his way into the affections of the village. The winter seemed to pass more swiftly and merrily than it had done before the violin was there. He was always ready to bring it out, and draw all kinds of music from its strings, as long as any one wanted to listen or to dance.
It made no difference whether there was a roomful of listeners, or only a couple, Fiddlin’ Jack was just as glad to play. With a little, quiet audience, he loved to try the quaint, plaintive airs of the old French songs—“A la Claire Fontaine,” “Un Canadien Errant,” and “Isabeau s’y Promene”—and bits of simple melody from the great composers, and familiar Scotch and English ballads—things that he had picked up heaven knows where, and into which he put a world of meaning, sad and sweet.
He was at his best in this vein when he was alone with Serena in the kitchen—she with a piece of sewing in her lap, sitting beside the lamp; he in the corner by the stove, with the brown violin tucked under his chin, wandering on from one air to another, and perfectly content if she looked up now and then from her work and told him that she liked the tune.
Serena was a pretty girl, with smooth, silky hair, end eyes of the colour of the nodding harebells that blossom on the edge of the woods. She was slight and delicate. The neighbours called her sickly; and a great doctor from Philadelphia who had spent a summer at Bytown had put his ear to her chest, and looked grave, and said that she ought to winter in a mild climate. That was before people had discovered the Adirondacks as a sanitarium for consumptives.
But the inhabitants of Bytown were not in the way of paying much attention to the theories of physicians in regard to climate. They held that if you were rugged, it was a great advantage, almost a virtue; but if you were sickly, you just had to make the best of it, and get along with the weather as well as you could.
So Serena stayed at home and adapted herself very cheerfully to the situation. She kept indoors in winter more than the other girls, and had a quieter way about her; but you would never have called her an invalid. There was only a clearer blue in her eyes, and a smoother lustre on her brown hair, and a brighter spot of red on her cheek. She was particularly fond of reading and of music. It was this that made her so glad of the arrival of the violin. The violin’s master knew it, and turned to her as a sympathetic soul. I think he liked her eyes too, and the soft tones of her voice. He was a sentimentalist, this little Canadian, for all he was so merry; and love—but that comes later.
“Where’d you get your fiddle, Jack? said Serena, one night as they sat together in the kitchen.
“Ah’ll get heem in Kebeck,” answered Jacques, passing his hand lightly over the instrument, as he always did when any one spoke of it. “Vair’ nice VIOLON, hein? W’at you t’ink? Ma h’ole teacher, to de College, he was gif’ me dat VIOLON, w’en Ah was gone away to de woods.”
“I want to know! Were you in the College? What’d you go off to the woods for?”
“Ah’ll get tire’ fraum dat teachin’—read, read, read, h’all taim’. Ah’ll not lak’ dat so moch. Rader be out-door—run aroun’—paddle de CANOE—go wid de boys in de woods—mek’ dem dance at ma MUSIQUE. A-a-ah! Dat was fon! P’raps you t’ink dat not good, hem? You t’ink Jacques one beeg fool, Ah suppose?”
“I dunno,” said Serena, declining to commit herself, but pressing on gently, as women do, to the point she had in view when she began the talk. “Dunno’s you’re any more foolish than a man that keeps on doin’ what he don’t like. But what made you come away from the boys in the woods and travel down this way?”
A shade passed over the face of Jacques. He turned away from the lamp and bent over the violin on his knees, fingering the strings nervously. Then he spoke, in a changed, shaken voice.
“Ah’l tole you somet’ing, Ma’amselle Serene. You ma frien’. Don’ you h’ask me dat reason of it no more. Dat’s somet’ing vair’ bad, bad, bad. Ah can’t nevair tole dat—nevair.”
There was something in the way he said it that gave a check to her gentle curiosity and turned it into pity. A man with a secret in his life? It was a new element in her experience; like a chapter in a book. She was lady enough at heart to respect his silence. She kept away from the forbidden ground. But the knowledge that it was there gave a new interest to Jacques and his music. She embroidered some strange romances around that secret while she sat in the kitchen sewing.
Other people at Bytown were less forbearing. They tried their best to find out something about Fiddlin’ Jack’s past, but he was not communicative. He talked about Canada. All Canadians do. But about himself? No.
If the questions became too pressing, he would try to play himself away from his inquisitors with new tunes. If that did not succeed, he would take the violin under his arm and slip quickly out of the room. And if you had followed him at such a time, you would have heard him drawing strange, melancholy music from the instrument, sitting alone in the barn, or in the darkness of his own room in the garret.
Once, and only once, he seemed to come near betraying himself. This was how it happened.
There was a party at Moody’s one night, and Bull Corey had come down from the Upper Lake and filled himself up with whiskey.
Bull was an ugly-tempered fellow. The more he drank, up to a certain point, the steadier he got on his legs, and the more necessary it seemed for him to fight somebody. The tide of his pugnacity that night took a straight set toward Fiddlin’ Jack.
Bull began with musical criticisms. The fiddling did not suit him at all. It was too quick, or else it was too slow. He failed to perceive how any one could tolerate such music even in the infernal regions, and he expressed himself in plain words to that effect. In fact, he damned the performance without even the faintest praise.
But the majority of the audience gave him no support. On the contrary, they told him to shut up. And Jack fiddled along cheerfully.
Then Bull returned to the attack, after having fortified himself in the bar-room. And now he took national grounds. The French were, in his opinion, a most despicable race. They were not a patch on the noble American race. They talked too much, and their language was ridiculous. They had a condemned, fool habit of taking off their hats when they spoke to a lady. They ate frogs.
Having delivered himself of these sentiments in a loud voice, much to the interruption of the music, he marched over to the table on which Fiddlin’ Jack was sitting, and grabbed the violin from his hands.
“Gimme that dam’ fiddle,” he cried, “till I see if there’s a frog in it.”
Jacques leaped from the table, transported with rage. His face was convulsed. His eyes blazed. He snatched a carving-knife from the dresser behind him, and sprang at Corey.
“TORT DIEU!” he shrieked, “MON VIOLON! Ah’ll keel you, beast!”
But he could not reach the enemy. Bill Moody’s long arms were flung around the struggling fiddler, and a pair of brawny guides had Corey pinned by the elbows, hustling him backward. Half a dozen men thrust themselves between the would-be combatants. There was a dead silence, a scuffling of feet on the bare floor; then the danger was past, and a tumult of talk burst forth.
But
