THE ETERNAL MASCULINE

STORIES OF MEN AND BOYS

Jack put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial casts.

[Page 18]

THE ETERNAL MASCULINE

STORIES OF MEN AND BOYS BY MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1913

Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner’s Sons Published October, 1913

In most men worth considering there appears to be, from three to ninety, an ineradicable boyhood. Give the lad, of six or sixty, a horse or a boat or a holiday, and he forgets the world and begins playing.

A list of such men whom one knows would be, happily, an encyclopædia. This book is dedicated to all such, between the lines of the names below. You whom I remember in Kentucky, and You in the West, and You across the room, smoking, and You in the crowded city, and You where velvet mountains rim the sky-line—will know that You are in this inscription. So the inscription goes, with many names unnamed, to a splendid phalanx of young Americans, lately boys in years, graduates of Yale, friends of mine:

E. Farrar Bateson, Lucius Horatio Biglow, Paul Howard McGregor Converse, Douglas Fitch Guilford Eliot, William Brown Glover, Allen Trafford Klots, Francis Ely Norris, George Richardson, Harold Phelps Stokes, Horace Winston Stokes, Francis Berger Trudeau, James Thornton, Francis Melzar Watrous, and Paul Shipman Andrews.

ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 1]

THE SCARLET IBIS

THE SCARLET IBIS

The boy stopped sharply in the portage, and swung about and glanced inquiringly at Josef. Light as the sound was, quickly as the boy had heard it, Josef had heard first. He stood rooted in the path, a line of lean strength, in vague-colored clothes, his black locks tumbling from under his battered felt hat, a scarlet bandanna in the belt at his slim waist pricking the dim light with an explosion of color. His extraordinary eyes, very light blue, very large, with pupils dilated over the irises, as animals’ eyes dilate, snapped electrically; his glance searched the woods to this side and that.

The boy had been trained under Josef and knew his ways; he stood stock-still as the guide listened, as he sent that concentrated glance ahead into the confused masses of shadow and brightness and foliage and water of the Canadian forest. It flashed, that blue search-light, straight through tangled branches[Pg 4] and across bulks of emerald velvet, which were moss-covered bowlders; it went on deep into the inscrutable forest—Josef’s glance. And the boy knew that he was seeing things in those mysterious depths, and reading them as wild creatures see and read the woodland, as the boy himself, trained woodsman though he was, might never hope to do. With that, the tense pose relaxed, the wonderful eyes came back from their exploring and—gentle, friendly, shy—met the boy’s eyes. Josef smiled.

“M’sieur Jack hears the m’sieur talking?” he asked in French.

Used as he was to his guide, the boy was surprised. “What m’sieur? What do you mean, Josef?”

Josef waved a careless hand. “There is a m’sieur and a guide. The landing-net dropped, just now. It was that which one heard. They fish in the little river, around the next turn, at the Rémous des Jurons—Profanity Pool—one will see in a moment. The m’sieur, par exemple, is large—a heavy man.”

This in quick, disjointed sentences, as Josef talked—much the same way as he sprang from one rock to another in a river crossing, feeling his way, assuring[Pg 5] himself of a footing before he tried the next. Josef was shy even with his own young m’sieur, whom he had guided for seven years, since M’sieur Jack was a lad in knickerbockers. It was of his nature to talk in a hurrying low voice, in short phrases, meeting one’s glance with the gentleness of the brilliant, great, light eyes, guardedly, ready to spring back into the cave of his reserve as an alarmed wild creature might hide in its den. Yet he loved to show M’sieur Jack this gift of his, this almost second sight in the woods. It gratified him now when the boy spoke.

“How in thunder do you know all that?” he demanded. “I’m not so blamed slow, and yet I can’t hear any one talking.”

Josef held up his hand dramatically, very Frenchly. “Listen—écoutez!”

Jack listened, Josef smiling at him broadly, alert, vivid. The little river ran at their left, brown-pooled, foam-splashed, tumbling over rocks, blurring all sounds. Overhead, in the tall white birches, in the lower spruce-trees, the wind rustled, and brushed with a feathery music the edges of the[Pg 6] tinkling water noises. It seemed, as one walked along the portage—the old, old Indian trail—all beautiful peace and stillness; but when one stopped to listen there was a whole orchestra of soft instruments playing, and any one sound was hard to disentangle. Jack threw his whole soul into the effort before he made out, through the talking water and the wind sounds, an intermittent note which he could place as a man’s speech some distance away.

“I hear it,” he cried out.

Josef smiled indulgently; he liked to teach woodcraft to his young m’sieur; also M’sieur Jack was a good scholar; there was no other m’sieur of the club, young or old, to whom he would give the bow of his canoe in going through a difficult rapids; he had done that with M’sieur Jack. Yes, and also M’sieur Jack could tell if a male or female beaver had gnawed the chips around a birch-trunk by the tooth-marks in the wood; Josef had taught him that. And M’sieur Jack was also capable to portage a canoe like a guide, tossing the heavy boat to his shoulders unaided and swinging off down a trail as silently, as swiftly as an Indian; and he could tie up a pacqueton—and[Pg 7] make camp in a rain—and skin a moose; these things and others M’sieur Jack could do, and Josef was proud of him. But M’sieur Jack could not see into the woods like Josef and he was not as quick at hearing sounds—of that also Josef was proud. So he smiled and waited for the question sure to come. “What the dickens makes you think he’s a big man—un homme pesant?” asked Jack.

They were moving forward along the trail, Jack leading, and throwing his sentences in an undertone, as instinct teaches one to speak in the woods, over his shoulder to Josef. And for answer Josef flung out his muscular arm, in its faded blue calico sleeve, and pointed ahead. Jack stumbled on a root as he followed the pointing hand, and, recovering, caught sight of a tan-colored sweater far in front, even now barely in range of sight, hung on a tree by the path.

“It is not warm to-day, par exemple; a m’sieur who is not somewhat fat would not feel the walking in this portage—so as to take off that,” Josef reasoned softly, in jerks.

“Did you see that—away back there? Well,[Pg 8] I’ll be—” staccatoed the lad, and Josef grinned with pleased vanity. “Josef, you’re a wizard,” the boy went on. “But never mind, my son, you’ll get fooled some time. I’ll bet he didn’t drop the landing-net. I’ll bet it was his leader-box or his cigarette-case. No landing-net. À bas, landing-nets! You’ll see!”

And Jack kicked at a rotten stump and sent it crashing in slow ruin, as if the vitality in him were overflowing through his long legs. So the two, the boy born into a broad life which faced from babyhood the open door of opportunity, and the boy scarcely five years older, born to a narrow existence, walled about with a high, undoored wall of unending labor—these two swung on brotherly, through the peace and morning freshness of the forest, and in the levelling reality of nature were equals.

The river sang. One saw it—out of the corner of the eye as one walked—brown in the pools, white where it tumbled over the rocks; the rocks speckled it with their thousand gray hummocks; grasses grew on them; a kingfisher fled scolding across the water and on down-stream; in the trail—the portage—it was all shimmering misty greens, with white sharp[Pg 9] ranks of birch-trees; the wind murmured and blew against one’s face. Through such things the two stalwart lads walked on and were happy. The unconcerned gray stones of the rapids, which had looked exactly the same on the morning when Pharaoh’s daughter had found little Moses in the bulrushes, would look exactly the same, likely, two thousand years from now—for world-making is a long business and the Laurentian hills are the grandfathers of the planet, and stones reel off twenty centuries with small aging—these immemorial nobodies of an obscure little Canadian river had seen nothing pass by in their long, still lives blither or more alive than the two lads, gentleman and peasant, with

their “morning faces” and their loping pace of athletes.

Around a turn they halted as by one brain order. Something moving. In Broadway a man in rapid motion is lost in a sea of men in rapid motion; in the woods a man lifts a slow finger and is so conspicuous that the mountains seem to shout a startled “Look!” The man at the edge of Profanity Pool leaned forward and lunged at his flies hanging[Pg 10] tangled around his rod; he said “Damn!” The two boys, whom his movement had brought to a standstill, unseen, motionless in the shade of the narrow portage, shook with silent laughter.

With that Jack stepped forward, breaking a twig purposely, and came out on the rocks. The man looked up and saw him, a bright-faced, tall lad, claret and brown as to complexion, clean-limbed and strong as to build. Something in him drew a smile to the man’s face—it was not unlikely to be so.

“Bon jour,” Jack said with a haul at his cap, and stuffing it into his pocket further; and then “Good-morning, sir. Any luck?”

The man stared at him. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” he inquired.

And Jack, pausing one second, went off into a shout of deep laughter which set the mountain echoes ringing, and Josef, discreet in the background, stepped back a pace so that the strange m’sieur might not see him laughing also. When M’sieur Jack laughed it was impossible to keep as serious as one should.

Squatting in the shadows beyond the m’sieur was[Pg 11] something shading off into rocks and foliage; a face stared over the bushes of the “thé sauvage”—the Indian tea shrub with its dim pink flowers. So hidden, so motionless was the man that Jack did not see him for the first instant—but Josef had seen him; there had been a brief half-nod of recognition on both sides before the messieurs had spoken. Jack caught sight of him.

“It is you, Adelard Martel?” he demanded; Jack was likely to know most of the guides in the club. “Why haven’t you got a big fish for your m’sieur? They are here,” he threw at him cheerfully.

But the man did not answer with a smile, as most people answered Jack Vance. The dark, furtive eyes shot a resentful glance at the large man who still struggled with his fishing-tackle. “M’sieur—is not lucky,” he brought out with the broad, soft accent of a habitant, and looked down sulkily, displeased, and then flashed up an angry glance. “There was a big one—b’en gros—three minutes ago. He rose to the fly. One would have had him grabbed—poigné—in a second. But v’là, M’sieur slipped and fell backward and knocked me the landing-net out[Pg 12] of my hand, and the big one saved himself—se sauvait. Comme ça”—with a swift gesture of disgust.

“The landing-net?” The boy turned and looked at Josef and laughed, and Josef’s big light eyes flashed satisfaction.

The strange m’sieur broke in with a nod toward his guide. “Something wrong with that fellow,” he commented. “He seems angry that I can’t catch fish.”

Jack leaned over and swept in one of the curly, bobbing snells of the m’sieur’s leader as he answered. “May I help you?” he asked with friendliness of a brother craftsman. “It’s the dickens of a job to do this alone. Adelard ought”—and he stopped and shook his head fatherly at the sullen-faced guide. “He’s sore as a crab because you haven’t had luck,” he explained. “They’re all that way. It’s a personal question—if their messieurs are lucky, you see. He’ll be another question when you take a five-pounder.”

The big man lowered the butt of his rod suddenly, thereby mixing up all the whirls of catgut which Jack had skilfully untangled; he looked at the boy[Pg 13] with a heart-broken expression; he looked as if he were going to cry.

“But I can’t,” he said sorrowfully. “I don’t know how to fish. And I want to so much. It’s my first vacation in six years, and I haven’t got but a week. I thought it was easy to fish, that anybody could do it. And I don’t know how to tie the leader on, and the reel falls out of the—the reel-plate or something. And if I touch the automatic spring it all snaps up before I can wink, and the leader runs down the rod through the rings and it’s the very devil. I hit a rock and broke a tip the first thing and had to put in another. It took me half an hour to put the stuff together and then that happened. And the flies tangle—all the time. And my guide despises me! I thought fishing was fun!”

The man’s voice was a wail in the last sentences. Something in the boy’s friendly youthfulness had made it possible to pour out this tale of woe where with another wayfarer the unlucky fisherman would have kept his bitter counsel. His instinct was not wrong. The thought shot into Jack’s mind that here was a poor man, probably not able to afford vacations,[Pg 14] who had put his hard-earned money into one and was failing to get the good of it. Like a young knight to a maiden in distress the boy rushed to the rescue.

“Now that’s just too darned bad,” he brought out heartily. “But you know, sir, it’s easy enough to set it all straight. Fishing is fun—almost the best fun going. I don’t want to butt in, but—you see I’ve been at this sort of thing all my days”—one thought involuntarily of Methuselah—“and I can’t help knowing the trick. I’m not a crack exactly, but—well, it’s second nature to me, and I’d simply love to show you if you wouldn’t think me fresh to offer.”

“Fresh!” the older man repeated. “If you would give me a few points I’d bless you. But you’re off on a trip yourself—I can’t take your time”—and the boy cut in there with joyful assurances, which there was no mistaking, as to his pleasure in helping.

“We’re just on a casual two days’ tramp, Josef and I,” he explained. “Nothing to do so’s you’d notice it. We left the canoe and the pack down at the lake and dashed up here for a fish or so.” By this he had the stranger’s rod in hand, a Leonard[Pg 15] rod, the boy knew at a glance, about four ounces in weight, the last word in expense and perfection of rods. “Gosh, he blew himself!” was the inward comment Jack made. Josef was somehow present at the psychological distance from the butt as the boy held it in his hand, and while he set the reel more firmly into the plate and pushed the nickel ring down strongly Josef’s delicate, coarse finger-tips were untwisting the three bright flies from an extraordinarily thorough tangle. Adelard Martel watched sulkily out of the Indian tea-bushes; the large m’sieur watched, wondering. With that the lines were free, and Jack swung the butt about into Josef’s ready hand, and suddenly had the junction of leader and fish-line in his mouth and was chewing at it with energy.

“Tied wrong,” he commented thickly, and then had it out and drew the softened strings from their knot. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll show you how to put a leader into a snell.” He held the loop of transparent cord in his left hand and poised the green line above it. “Like this—down you go inside—up you go outside—across you go—then down[Pg 16] outside, up—and pull her tight. There you are!” He slid the cross-loop down, and with a jerk it was all undone. “Just as easy to take out as to put in, you see. Want to do it yourself, sir?” And the man, as enchanted as a small boy, fumbled a bit and learned the knot. “Now we’re off,” Jack announced, glancing backward to assure his recover, and sent a skilful line into Profanity Pool.

Perhaps no harder place to fish was in the club. The pool, a black hole in the river, was thirty odd feet long and varied in width from twenty to five feet, irregularly. At the right a large log stretched over the water lengthwise, and under its shadow lurked the big trout. Also under it were snags where, once hooked, the fish ran to hide, and catch the line about the wood, and tear loose. One must keep a fish away from this log at all hazards. Yet across from it were sharp rocks apt to cut fish-line.

“The hole is chock-full of Scyllas and Charybdises, all right,” Jack remarked, pointing out the geography to his pupil. “I reckon Profanity Pool isn’t a misnomer. Lots of cuss-words spilled into this water, they do say.”

[Pg 17]

He cast, varying his line, varying his direction, with easy skill, over the dark, wild water, all the time telling how and why.

“With the forearm, you know, sir. Don’t put your shoulder into it. And stop a second on your recover, when the line’s back of you. Don’t monkey with it too fast—give it time to straighten out; and don’t slap the water with the flies. That scares ’em. Let the tail-fly touch first, and just as it’s touching lift the tip of the rod a scrap—see!” He illustrated with finished delicacy. “Then it goes down softly. Hi!”

A liquid swash, a break of white foam, an upward snap of the wrist—a trout was on.

“That’s too blamed bad—I didn’t mean to take anything,” he murmured regretfully, but he played it all the same, and in three or four minutes Josef had landed it and held it up wordlessly—a Salmo fontinalis of a pound and a half, with scarlet fins and gold-and-silver-spotted stomach. The stranger was tingling with excitement.

“That’s something like!” he brought out, and then meekly, anxiously, “May I fish now?”

[Pg 18]

And Jack, smiling his old-young smile, put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial casts. Then “Let her go,” he commanded, and the large m’sieur, trembling with eagerness, was fishing. Jack, standing by with his hands in his trousers pockets, his whole soul on the performance, criticised with frankness. “Now, that’s rotten, sir. Don’t recover that nervous way; that’s what tangles ’em. Just—sort of—rhythmic; back slow—pause—cast; lift the tip a scrap as you touch; just a shiver of the wrist does it. Now—tip up—don’t sag the line; draw the flies along, and wiggle ’em alluringly as they come; don’t let ’em go under—bad, bad! You can’t fool fish if you drown your flies. Oh, well—the tail-fly may sink a bit if you’re after big ones”—and so the illustrated lecture went on, Jack thoroughly enjoying himself in the rôle of instructor. “Ginger!” he brought out suddenly in an interval, “my brother would throw a fit if he saw me teaching fishing. He’s a shark at it, you know.

He’s forgotten more than I ever knew. Josef”—turning on the guide—“M’sieur va s’amuser de moi en professeur de la pêche, n’est-ce pas?” And Josef,[Pg 19] showing his teeth in a short grin, answered promptly, “Oui, M’sieur,” and attended to business.

The large m’sieur was learning fast. One saw that he had not missed a word of the boy’s lesson or the reason for any point of piscatorial finesse. He made mistakes certainly, and was awkward, as is any beginner at the wonderful world-old game, which has to get into the nerves and the blood before one plays it well ever. Yet he took hold as a trained mind takes hold of whatever problem, with a certain ability and sureness.