Already the healing power of the wilderness had begun its work, and as the days passed Jean gradually recovered the tone and balance of mind that had been so much disturbed. Without knowing it he had been under a strain for a long time, that tension of brain and nerve so characteristic of modern life, which the strongest and most ambitious must endure, when they forsake the old ways and go out into the unknown to make new paths wherein the feet of generations to come may safely tread. In the vanguard of progress they do the work of pioneers; in breaking new ground they are themselves broken; and the army of civilisation marches on over their graves.
But Jean Baptiste had left his place in the front rank, and gone to the rear, to the very remotest rear, where there were no people and neither sight nor sound of war, where the forest was his hospital and Nature his physician. What wonder that he grew to love the quiet retreat, and to wish that he might never hear the battle-call again?
By night he slept a dreamless sleep, undisturbed by the cry of the loon, the hoot of the owl, the wail of the lynx, or any call of birds or beasts that hunt by night. He was up with the dawn, and out in the open, refreshed and strong, with bright eyes and a joyous heart, breathing the fragrant morning air, rejoicing in the free movement of every limb, his whole being expanding in the growing light, and leaping up to meet the rising sun.
To Jean the wilderness was as the garden of the Lord. All the trees that he loved were there, all the wild flowers of the season, with ferns and mosses of many kinds; there were bubbling springs and clear streams, shallow ponds and deep lakes, dense thickets and open glades, narrow glens and broad valleys, low ridges and high mountains, whence he could look out upon a sea of forest-clad hills stretching away and beyond to meet the circle of the sky.
But it was the lake by the cabin that Jean loved most of all, and there he spent many hours of every day in his birch canoe; plying long strokes of the paddle; skimming along here and there; exploring creeks and bays or floating in the shade of a rocky point, at the mouth of a stream or by a sunken log, while he cast a fly upon the water to lure the wary trout. When the lake was calm he could see not only the rocks and trees of the shore, but his own thoughts and feelings reflected there; for it was a mirror to his soul. When a wind came up and ruffled the surface with little dancing waves, his thoughts seemed to dance and sparkle in their turn; and he would sing the song of the voyageur to the hum of the breeze and the lapping of the waves. When a white squall came, raising great waves capped with foam, the soul of Jean Baptiste was stirred to its depths and rose up to meet the foe; as with a strong grip on the tough paddle he held the canoe to the wind and rode out the storm; mounting on the crest of the waves, beating down into the trough, splashed and buffeted, rocked and tossed; but all the time pushing on toward the lee shore, where at last he lay in calm water, serenely watching the tempest as it passed.
Like the human heart, the lake was never twice the same. Even at dawn it varied with the breeze, the mist, the clouds, the rain, the light of the waning moon, the gleam of the morning star. All the days were different, each from the others; so also the nights. Now the lake was a crystal, now a pearl, now of a pale turquoise blue, now blue like a sapphire or green as an emerald; and often, at sunset, it was like an opal with fire in its heart, changing soon to violet and purple tints, and then taking on the deep indigo of the evening sky, shot with points and threads of gold. Even on sunless days, when the clouds hung low and rain fell, there was a pensive beauty in the lake, like the sweet, pale face of a nun trying to forget the light and love of bygone days in thinking of the glory that should appear in the eternal world. Truly, thought Jean, it was good to be in the wilderness, and gladly would he live and die beside a lake like this.
Jean was alone in the forest, and yet he had many companions. One who goes carelessly through the Laurentian woods sees few signs of life, and hears few sounds; though many eyes watch him, and many creatures come out of hiding when he has passed by. To Jean, trained in woodcraft from his early years, the timid creatures showed themselves and spoke in many tongues. Not only the bold blue jay and the camp-robber came about the cabin; but the red-headed woodpecker, the chickadee, the wren and the waxwing came; the crossbill, too, the linnet and the wood-thrush--all curious to see the strange being that lived there, and eager to pick up any crumbs that might be lying about. Chipmunks came every day; sometimes red squirrels; now and then a marten; and often, in the twilight, a porcupine came, shuffling along, rattling his quills, and nosing about for scraps of fish and bacon to add to his meagre diet of bark and roots.
Not far from the cabin was a pond where a colony of beavers played and worked every night, diving, swimming and splashing about, slapping the water with their tails, climbing about on the embankment, or venturing into the woods to eat pieces of juicy bark or to gnaw patiently at the trunks of young birches that were to be timber for building and a store of food for the long winter. There were mink and otter, too, in various places; and Jean would have made war on them as enemies of the trout, but that he wished to leave them for trapping later in the year, when the skins would be in prime condition and would fetch high prices in the fur market at Quebec.
All the wild animals came, at one time or another, to the lake. Almost every evening Jean saw red deer drinking there; occasionally a caribou; and once a moose, with great branching horns and outstretched muzzle, calling loudly to his mate, came to the end of the point, plunged into the water, and swam over to the other side. There were lynx and wild-cat in the forest that at times made a fearful noise by night. There were foxes, too; a few lone wolves; and now and then a vagabond bear, seeking for honey, nests of ants, raspberries and blueberries, catching a hare or a marmot now and then, and glad to make a meal of dead fish or carrion when he could find such dainties.
All these and many more, the hunter and the hunted, came and went; some with rush and clamour; others silently and on tiptoe; but always leaving some token of their presence by which Jean knew that they had been near. In the evening and morning twilight he caught glimpses of them as they passed; by night he knew them by the sounds they made, the odours they exhaled, or their bright eyes glowing in the dark; by day he saw their tracks in the soft earth, the marks of teeth and claws on the trees, the remains of their feasts, and all the signs of life and death that tell the joyous and fearful tragedy of the forest.
Jean had a mind to take part in the tragedy, to be one of the characters of the play; and the more he thought of it the more alluring it seemed. Not only could he lead an independent and enjoyable life in the woods; but he could obtain a good income from the sale of skins; and even accumulate a small fortune, if he had good luck. He had traversed the forest in every direction for a distance of twenty miles or more, and had carefully estimated the probable catch of a winter's work. There was scarcely a pond in all that region where there were not scores of muskrats; and although the price of a single skin was not high, they would be worth a good sum in the aggregate. Of more valuable fur-bearing animals there was that old stand-by, the beaver; with the skunk, the mink and the otter; squirrel and weasel; wild-cat and lynx; wolf and bear; red fox and hare--all of which were well worth taking for the skins alone, not to mention the meat, which was excellent food in the cold weather.
Then there was the marten, or Hudson Bay sable, a rare and valuable fur; and finally, and most highly prized of all, the black or silver fox, which often sold for fabulous sums; as much as a thousand dollars being paid, at times, for a single skin. In his explorations Jean had seen the marten several times; and knew of a place on a sandy hillside that was the home of a whole family of silver foxes; for one morning he had seen father, mother and four cubs playing, like kittens, on the carpet of pine-needles near their hole. Yes, he could make a good living in the wilderness, preying upon the beasts of prey.
Cruel? True; yet no man can say that without hypocrisy but the vegetarian; he who eats neither meat nor fish; wears neither wool, silk, leather, nor garments trimmed with fur. But if we must defend the trapper, let us say that for every fox that he takes a hundred hares are kept alive; and that by killing a single otter he saves the lives of a thousand trout. Moreover, while the beasts resemble man in some respects, they are by no means human. They suffer some pangs when they come to die, but during their lifetime they are not continually haunted by the thought of death. The king of terrors has no terror for them; and at the end they lay down their life without regret, and with no fear of torment in any life to come. It is as though the good God in pity had given them compensation for having withheld the gift of reason: the knowledge of good and evil which is at once the glory and the shame of man, the source of his profoundest joy and sorrow, his salvation and damnation. Which of them would not rather be one of the beasts that perish, than a man, made in the image of God, fated to follow evermore the gleam of an ideal that might lead to the heights of eternal glory, or the bottomless abyss of eternal degradation and loss?
As for Jean Baptiste he accepted cheerfully the law of life and death as it was in the wilderness. He would live there, as the others did, according to his strength and cunning; and he would kill, too, not wantonly, but for a purpose; and when his strength failed, through sickness, accident or old age, he would lie down to die, as they did; with a few moans, perhaps, but without any vain regrets. What is death, after all, that men should fear it so? In the midst of the amenities of civilised life it seems a dreadful thing to die; but in the forest it is the merest incident. The good God cares for sparrows; gives them food and drink and everything else that they need; and after a while takes away their breath. So also He cares for man. The generations come and go; the earth abides; and God lives. Life and death, both are good; for living or dying we are the Lord's. Thus Jean Baptiste learned the lesson of the wilderness.
At the same time Jean was learning another lesson; for he was getting a distant view of himself and his past life; and seeing everything, as he thought, in the true perspective. He was lifted up, at times, into a kind of third heaven; where he had such a vision of eternal values, that the world of men, with all their thoughts and feelings, their words and deeds, seemed little and far away. The friends and neighbours seemed like puppets in a show, and his own part in the play as vain and futile as the rest. The work that he had done, the plans that he had made, the ends for which he had striven, no longer seemed desirable or worth while. He cared no longer for the opinion of men, whether good or bad; for any help that they might give him, or any harm that they might do. No longer did he hate his enemies or love his friends. The place where he had lived and the people he had known had lost all power over him; for the thought of them caused neither satisfaction nor regret, neither joy nor sorrow, neither hope nor fear. His own personality, even, had lost its value; for the memory of the past was fading away; the outlook was narrowing; and he was living in the present only; borne along upon the tide of time, his individuality lost in the great ocean of existence of which he was so small a part. He was intoxicated by the thin air of those altitudes, and deceived by the illusions of the mountain-top.
From this plane of thought Jean descended suddenly and with something of a shock to solid earth, on one of those cold, grey days of August that come to remind us that summer is passing, and that soon the snows of winter will begin to fall. Instinctively he went about the cabin and found many gaping chinks that should be filled with moss. He looked at the wood-pile, and saw that it was almost gone. He examined his store of provisions, and saw that it was running low. Firearms, fishing-tackle, traps, snowshoes, traineau, clothes, moccasins--all required attention, for the cold season was coming, and it was necessary to be prepared. Already the beavers were preparing for the winter, and the human animal knew that he must do the same; for the wilderness is kind to those who keep her commandments, but implacably cruel to those who will not live according to her law. So Jean determined to rest and play no more; laid philosophy aside; spent the day in the forest, chopping dry wood for fuel; and in the evening, by the light of a blazing fire, he sat down to mend the traps of Michel Gamache.