Jacques dropped into his place and filled it as if it had been made for him.There was something in his disposition that seemed to fit him for just the role that was vacant in the social drama of the settlement.It was not a serious, important, responsible part, like that of a farmer, or a store-keeper, or a professional hunter.It was rather an addition to the regular programme of existence, something unannounced and voluntary, and therefore not weighted with too heavy responsibilities.There was a touch of the transient and uncertain about it.He seemed like a perpetual visitor; and yet he stayed on as steadily as a native, never showing, from the first, the slightest wish or intention to leave the woodland village.
I do not mean that he was an idler.Bytown had not yet arrived at that stage of civilization in which an ornamental element is supported at the public expense.
He worked for his living, and earned it.He was full of a quick, cheerful industry; and there was nothing that needed to be done about Moody's establishment, from the wood-pile to the ice-house, at which he did not bear a hand willingly and well.
"He kin work like a beaver," said Bill Moody, talking the stranger over down at the post-office one day; "but I don't b'lieve he's got much ambition.Jess does his work and takes his wages, and then gits his fiddle out and plays.""Tell ye what," said Hose Ransom, who set up for the village philosopher, "he ain't got no 'magination.That's what makes men slack.He don't know what it means to rise in the world; don't care fer anythin' ez much ez he does fer his music.He's jess like a bird; let him have 'nough to eat and a chance to sing, and he's all right.What's he 'magine about a house of his own, and a barn, and sich things?"Hosea's illustration was suggested by his own experience.He had just put the profits of his last summer's guiding into a new barn, and his imagination was already at work planning an addition to his house in the shape of a kitchen L.
But in spite of his tone of contempt, he had a kindly feeling for the unambitious fiddler.Indeed, this was the attitude of pretty much every one in the community.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.Ithink 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 CANOT--go wid de boys in de woods--mek' dem dance at ma MUSIQUE.
