by John Buchan
An unpleasing recollection followed on the thrill. The sight of the moving salmon reminded him of an interview which had preceded his departure. His last term’s school reports had been shocking, and his father had had a good deal to say about them.
Donald was not an academic success. He was a keen field naturalist, and for his age cast an uncommonly straight line. Like all his contemporaries, he knew a good deal about radio sets and automobile engines, and would joyfully tinker all day with any machine. He was a master of fluent, ungrammatical French, acquired in his holidays at Bellefleurs. But in orthodox schooling he was a hopeless laggard. His Latin was an outrage, he abhorred the name of mathematics, and what smattering of geography he possessed he owed to his postage-stamp collection. Literature, except for tales of pirates, left him cold. But in the past term it was in history that he had chiefly fallen down. “He seems to be quite unconscious of the past,” his housemaster had written. “The world for him begins with the invention of the internal-combustion engine. All the centuries are telescoped into one hideous jumble. He actually believes that the Romans only left England at the Reformation.” Donald remembered the beastly words, which he had not quite understood when they had been read aloud to him, in a tone of slow disgust.
His father had been very serious on this point, rather to Donald’s surprise, for he had expected him to pounce on his deficiency in Latin. “If you don’t know where you come from.” he had said, “you will never know where you are, or where you are going.” And then he had added something which had stuck in the boy’s memory.
You are a fisherman. Well, you know that if your back cast is not good your forward cast will be a mess.”
Donald would fain have kept his mind on the cruising salmon, but these words of his father’s kept coming back to him. They seemed more convincing than the ordinary talk of parents and schoolmasters. He knew only too well the importance of a back cast and how difficult it was to get a good one when the larches crowded down to the river’s edge.
He turned up the wide gravel shore, facing a gorgeous sunset which made the river flaming gold and the forest a conflagration. It was the most wonderful evening that he ever remembered. Though it was early July there were no black flies or mosquitoes about. That was a queer feature of the Manitou valley, for most of the neighbouring countryside seemed to be in the dominion of Beelzebub the God of Flies, and Petits Capucins, the next parish, was almost uninhabitable in summer.
But the Manitou was like no other river. Most of the neighbouring streams had peat-brown waters, but the Manitou’s were gin-clear, the colour of the grey granite rocks. Also it was not one river, but many. For three miles up from the sea it swung in noble curves through a shallow valley of woods and meadows. That was Donald’s father’s salmon water, and there was no better on the continent. Beyond that was a waterfall, which fish could not climb, and then twenty miles of deep canyons and rapids, which a canoe well handled could descend. After that the Manitou split into feeders, one coming from the Grand Lac de Manitou, which was full of big trout. The main one flowed from a strange tableland of moss and scrub and berries, which only a few hunters had visited, and to which the caribou herds came in the fall. After that, beyond the Height of Land, there was no human dwelling between you and the Pole.
In the glow of the sunset Donald saw three figures in front of him, whose heads, being silhouetted against a shining pool of the river, seemed to be decked with aureoles. One was large and two were small, and they were moving slowly up-stream along the shingle. Donald knew who they were. He broke into a trot, found a patch of sand where his boots were noiseless, and surprised one of the smaller figures by suddenly punching it between the shoulders.
The figure gasped, turned round and crowed with delight. “Donald!” it cried. “You have come back! Oh, I am glad!”
It was a boy about Donald’s age, but half a head shorter, a slim, sunburnt child with sloe-black eyes. His name was Aristide Martel, and with him was his sister Simone, his elder by a year, whose crown of dark hair was on a level with Donald’s sandy thatch. Both in winter would be robed like little Father Christmases in homespun blanket coats and thick stockings and fur caps; but in summer their dress was like a South Sea Islander’s, the minimum required by convention. Face and neck and legs were brown as nuts and plentifully scratched by brambles. They were the children of Celestin Martel, who had a big farm on the mantelpiece of flat land above the beach, and whose forbears had come to Canada from Normandy when Louis XIV was King of France. Aristide was still at the village school, but soon he would go to the city and then to Laval, for he was destined for the law, like his great-uncle the judge. Simone had already gone from Bellefleurs to the Sisters at St. Anne’s, and was now home on her first summer holiday.
The tall figure was the curé of the parish, Father Laflamme, who was the brother of Madame Martel, and the uncle of Simone and Aristide. He was a man nearer sixty than fifty, as lean as a heron, and his face was tanned and furrowed by weather like the bark of an elm. A wonderful face it was, with its high cheek-bones and aquiline nose, very grave in repose, but sometimes breaking into a winning smile, for if the mouth was stern the eyes were merry. Like all Quebec priests he wore the cassock, and, since he had a weakness in his left leg, his movement along the shingle was like the fluttering of a big dark, wounded bird.
Father Laflamme had been only four years in Bellefleurs. All his youth and early middle life had been spent in distant places, as far away as the Mackenzie river and the Barren Lands north of the Churchill. He had been a missionary priest, and his miraculous winter journeys with dog teams had become a legend in the Northland. Often he had coquetted with death, and his lame leg was a memento of an adventure when his canoe capsized and he was carried over a waterfall and dashed on the rocks beneath. No man, it was said, knew the Indians as he did — Plains Crees, Wood Crees, Swamp Crees, Chippewyans, and even remote folk like Dogribs and Yellowknives. Now that he was at home in a civilised place his energy had not abated, for he took an interest in everything from the children’s prayers to the introduction of better milk cows. The parish loved him but was slightly bewildered by his ways, for on a Thursday, which was his holiday in the week, he did not go visiting his brother priests, but limped through the woods, watching birds and flowers, about which he knew enough to fill a library. But all reverenced him, including his Bishop, who, during his annual visits, behaved to him as to a wise superior. Children and dogs adored him, and Simone and Aristide were inordinately proud of their uncle.
He laid a gnarled brown hand on Donald’s head. “Bless you, my son,” he said, “and what is your news from the great world? I will tell you mine. The snow geese this April found a new halting-place. Six miles east of Petits Capucins I saw ten thousand in the air at once.”
This was exciting, but Donald only nodded. He knew what the next question would be. Grown-ups had a sad monotony in their conversation.
“How did you find school? Is there perhaps at last something that interests you?”
“No,” said Donald. “I’m rotten at Latin — and I can’t multiply right — and history! — that’s a bore if you like.”
“A bore!” said the priest. “I am surprised, for last summer I thought you had the makings of an historian. When I told you of the Hudson’s Bay you remembered everything, and, indeed, corrected my memory.”
“That was different. I couldn’t help remembering that. But my goodness! those beastly Greeks and Romans — and the English parliaments — and the Fathers of Confederation!”
The priest laughed. “Why do you dislike the Fathers? They were your own Canadian people.”
How do you mean?” Donald asked, with a puzzled face.
Father Laflamme laughed again. “I don’t think that in your school they teach history very well.”
The children seized upon Donald, one hanging on each arm, and a breathless confabulation began. Simone said little, for she felt that the new world of the Sisters at St. Anne’s nee
ded a good deal of explanation before Donald would understand. But Aristide chattered happily about birds and beasts, and how he had shot the rapids of the Petit Manitou alone on a cedar log, and how he had made friends with a half-breed who knew the way to the almost mythical Rivière de l’Enfer and had promised to take him there.... As for Donald, after a few eager enquiries about fishing, he had only one topic. The splendours of the motion pictures had captured his heart, and he had become a raging film fan.
Most boys in their early teens come suddenly on something which fires their imagination. To a few it is music; to many a book; but Donald was deaf to sweet airs, and he was an inconstant reader. The first films which he had seen had merely disgusted him with their languishing ladies and demented lovers, and the comedians had left him cold, for small boys do not laugh too readily. He was sceptical, too, of the circus exploits of cowboys and desperadoes. But he had lately seen pictures which had ravished his soul. He had witnessed the pomp and glory of the old French Court, and armoured men going into battle, Nelson at Trafalgar, and Drake attacking the Armada, and marvellous Romans racing their chariots in cities of white marble. His memory was a happy confusion of glowing pictures and sounding names. He laboured to describe their wonders to Simone and Aristide, who had never in their innocent lives been inside a cinema house. But he had much the same difficulty that Simone felt about the life at St. Anne’s. That splendid world was wholly outside his hearers’ ken, and his bubbling enthusiasm could not bridge the gap.
“In spite of yourself you are a lover of the past. But one need not go to the motion pictures for these revelations. There are better ways.”
Donald would have demanded an explanation from Father Laflamme, but a shout from Aristide distracted him. “Ho! there is old Negog!”
The boy scampered over the shingle to greet a figure descending from the riverside scrub.
It was a tall man wearing the garb of the summer woods — moccasins and old jean trousers, and a shirt of caribou-skin so dressed as to be soft as velvet. His high-boned face was scarcely darker than Father Laflamme’s, but he had the low forehead of the Indian and the deep-set eyes, slanted ever so little, which told of some far-off Asian origin. His long, straight black hair was tied behind his head with a deerskin fillet. Donald recognised his father’s guide, and raced after Aristide.
Donald’s father always said that Negog was the best fishing guide on the North American continent. He knew as if by instinct where salmon lay, and he was a superb gaffer. Also he was an expert white-water man and could work a canoe in rapids which would spell death to another. His name meant in the Montagnais tongue “Salmon-spear,” but Negog was not a Montagnais. He was a Cree whose people had drifted eastward from the south-west corner of Hudson’s Bay into the wild land between the bay and the Labrador. That had been the hunting-ground of his parents, but he himself had moved south until he had fetched up at Bellefleurs and found there his summer profession. But each fall he disappeared and did not return until the snow geese came up from Georgia. In winter he was a trapper whose lines were set in outland places, about the head waters of the Rupert and Eastmain rivers and as far as the Labrador border. Mushing with dog-teams and tramping incredible miles in the long narrow Cree snowshoes, he had penetrated to places which no white man had ever seen. So Father Laflamme said, and Father Laflamme knew.
Negog had a solemn face and a rare, kindly smile. He was also a man of few words. Only to children would he talk, and sometimes, after a good day’s fishing, to Donald’s father. Then he would tell wonderful tales in his funny stilted English learned in a mission school. He spoke of the beasts of the Northland as if they were blood brothers, whom by an ancient “gentleman’s agreement” he was permitted to kill within decent bounds; for your Indian trapper, knowing that his future livelihood depends upon moderation, will never deplete a district. Bear and fox, beaver and mink and fisher, he knew their ways like those of his own tribe. He could tell you of rivers so fierce that, compared with them, the great Peribonka was a sluggish canal, and of mysterious lakes hidden in trackless forests. One story used to give Donald nightmares. There was a lake, said Negog, so deep that it stretched down to Hell, where the devils lived. Sometimes a grey trout or an ouananiche, when hooked, would dive deep into the abyss, and there the devils devoured it, so that the fisherman drew up only the backbone and fleshless head with the line in the dead jaws.
Negog greeted the priest with a deep ceremonial bow which he accorded to few. Had he been wearing a war bonnet its feathers would have swept the ground. He was in one of his silent moods, and this the children recognised, for they left his side to dabble their feet in the seductive shallows of the river. The two men stood together, looking up-stream to where the Manitou three miles off emerged from its canyon.
Now this is the way of the Manitou. It flows due south for most of its course, but just before it comes in sight of salt water, it makes a right-angled turn to the east. Therefore the two watchers looked straight into the sunset. There was no high land to hide the sun, only a low fir-clad ridge, and its slanting beams lit the river from end to end with a long trail of light. Each pool was a deep topaz, each shallow a ripple of pale gold. The colours were fading in the fast-coming twilight, but in their ebb they gave the scene a more delicate mystery so that it seemed outside the mortal world.
The Indian sniffed the light wind which brought the scent of pines from the hills.
“For a moon I think it blow from the west,” he said, “and there will be no rain. Evenings will be bright like this. It is weather for La langue Traverse.”
“Doubtless,” said the priest. “Only none of us are going to take the road.”
“Not the road by feet. I mean La Longue Traverse of thinking that journeys backways. For a week at sunset, perhaps two weeks, each pool will be the Lac à l’Eau Dorée.”
Father Laflamme frowned and then turned sharp eyes on Negog. When he spoke it was in Cree, with the hard risping consonants and the broad vowels, which was the Indian’s native speech.
“I have heard of it. Once I was shown it — in the swamp country of the Clearwater. It is a mystery which I cannot fathom. They say it is a secret known to your nation alone.”
“Not to my nation. To my house.” The Indian in his own tongue spoke with ease and dignity. “Long ago, before Christ came to the Cree people, my family was the priest-house, and some old things are remembered.”
Father Laflamme was still frowning.
“It is magic, and the Church forbids magic.”
“Nay, Father,” said the Indian, “it is not magic. It is a power which in old days some had and some lacked, but which all admitted. Today Time is like this river here. You see the waters for an instant, but you cannot see whence they come or whither they go. But to some of our fathers Time at certain moments was a lake which could be scanned from end to end. To them all Time was one.”
Father Laflamme laughed.
“That is what philosophers are now saying.
But if Time is one, you can see the future as well as the past.”
“We cannot see the things that are yet to be,” said Negog emphatically. “That would make man like God. Once maybe, some few men had that gift, but not to-day. The further end of the lake is misty. The most to be seen is some little way down the trail of the past, and that is possible only for those of my own house — and for young children.”
Father Laflamme shook his head.
“It sounds like a miracle, and miracles cannot be wrought by human hands.”
“It is no miracle. It is a gift which God has given to a few of us. It is like reading a book, only it is a book which cannot lie.”
“But you work some magic?”
“Not so. All that is needed is the clear pool with the setting sun on it, the Eau Dorée.”
“No more?”
“I also make my fire. Of herbs. That is needed to prepare the mind of him who would make La Longue Traverse. Smells are the best guides to memories, an
d it is memories I would evoke. A man’s mind is the mind also of his ancestors, and what they saw is hidden away somewhere in his heart.”
“That is true.”
“Listen, Father; the things that have been are everywhere about us. They are at the back of all our minds. If we can call up their spirits I will see what another father has seen, and another will see what was in my father’s memory. Also they cling to certain places like a morning mist. We breathe them and eat them and drink them, and we do not know it. Yet sometimes it is possible to give knowledge.”
The priest brooded for a little.
“The boy Donald is at a critical age,” he said at last. “He is like an acorn tossed in a stream. If it is anchored on the shore to good soil it may grow into a strong tree.”
The Indian nodded.
“You think as I think,” the priest continued. “I am not concerned with Simone and Aristide, for they have that in their blood which binds them to the past. But the boy Donald needs roots. He has an imagination which kindles easily, and just now he is crazed about the motion pictures which they have in the cities. We shall do him a kindness if we can open the door behind him and show him his heritage.”
“That was my thought,” said Negog, “for I love the child as if he were my own, and to his father I owe all.”
* * * *
Meanwhile the children were happily skirmishing in the river shallows. The talk between Negog and Father Laflamme, which Donald did not hear and, if he had heard, would not have understood, was a momentous thing for him. It was to make that summer holiday at Bellefleurs an epoch in his life. Looking back, it seemed to him that its high lights were the catching of his first Arctic char and his first salmon, but the real marvels were Negog’s doing, and of that he was quite unconscious. For true magic comes secretly and is not remembered; otherwise we should find the world too dismal when it had gone.
