Cupid of Campion. Finn Francis James
ha, ha!” screamed Clarence. His silvery laughter, clear and sweet, was caught up by the echoes and came back translated into the merriment of elfland.
Much as the echoes seemed to appreciate his burst of glee, it did not appeal at all to the wrathful guide. His face had grown red as a turkey-cock’s; his fists doubled, and he was on the point of assaulting the unsuspecting Clarence.
“Oh, hark, oh, hear!” cried Clarence with a gesture and in a voice so high and ringing that Abe was startled, and paused in the execution of his revenge.
“Did you hear ’em?”
“Hear what?”
“The echoes. They’re the horns of elfland, you know.”
“The what!” exclaimed Abe. He had a dread of the unknown word.
“The horns of elfland faintly blowing.”
“You’re blowing yourself. Here you” – Abe stooped, picked up a small twig and placed it on one shoulderband of his blue overalls – “Knock that chip off’n my shoulder!”
Clarence surveyed his offended companion severely.
“Abe, come on; let’s go up. You know, I owe you a dollar. If you were to put one of my beautiful blue eyes into mourning, I think I’d claim that dollar for damages and then where would you be?”
“Well, then, you stop using them big words.”
“All right, Abe.”
With an occasional shout to set the wild echoes flying, the two pursued their steep upward way. For the most part, there was no conversation.
When they reached the waterfall, nothing would do Clarence but at the risk of life and limb to get under the hollow rock, over which fell the water in a wide but thin stream, and, extending his head and opening his mouth, catch what drops he could as they fell.
“Abe!” he suddenly said, “I think I know now where the goddess of adventure lives.”
“Eh? What?”
“If ever I wish to communicate with that bright-eyed lady, I’ll address my letters thus:
“‘To the Goddess of Adventure,
The Bright-eyed Waterfall,
Pictured Rocks,
Iowa, U. S. A.’”
“You drop that goddess of adventure. I don’t believe in no such foolishness as that.”
“All right, Abe, if you don’t believe in her, she doesn’t exist. Now for the top.”
Up they went, with quick steps and, as regards Clarence, steady breathing. Abe was puffing. Loose living had reached out into the future and gained for him the “far off interest of years.” Abe belonged to that steadily increasing class of Americans who, growing up without recognition of any law of God or man are destined to be short-lived in the land.
Presently, they were at the summit.
“Look,” cried Abe, his sulkiness yielding momentarily to a spark of enthusiasm. He led the way forward a few feet and paused.
“Oh-h-h-h-!” cried Clarence.
Far, far below, the river rolled its flashing length, the broad river, silvery in the sun, the broad river with its green wooded islands, its lagoons, its lesser streams, its lakes. To the southeast another body of water, yet more silvery, emptied itself into the Mississippi. Beside both and around both and all the way that eye could see up and down the Mississippi River rose the full-bosomed hills, older than the Pyramids, holding their secrets of the past in a calm not to be broken till the day of judgment. Between the hills and the river, on the Wisconsin side, lay the valley, rich in golden grain, dotted here and there with granary and farm-house. It was in very deed a panorama beautiful in each detail, doubly so in its variety.
“What river is that?” asked Clarence.
“What! Don’t you know that? I thought from the way you were talking that you knew everything. That’s the Wisconsin River.”
“You don’t say! Why, that’s where Marquette came down. Think of that, Abe. Marquette came down that river and discovered the upper Mississippi. He must have passed right near to where we’re standing.”
“I’ve been round this river all my life, and I never heard of no Marquette. Who was he?”
“He was a priest.”
“A Catlic?”
“Yes, and a Jesuit.”
“I hate those dirty Catlics,” growled Abe, spitting savagely.
Behold, gentle reader, Abe’s religion. He hated Catholics, and in doing so felt consciously pious. He belongs, it must be sadly confessed, to the largest church in the backwoods of America; the Great Unlettered Church. So worldly a thing as a railroad has been known to put their religion to flight.
“I’m not a Catholic myself,” said Clarence, losing for the moment his light manner, “and I believe they’re superstitious and away behind the times; but I don’t hate them. Anybody who reads books knows that there have been splendid men and women who were good Catholics. A Church that has lived and kept fully alive for nineteen hundred years is not to be sneezed at.”
“Sneezed at! What do you want to sneeze at it for? What good would that do? We ought to blow it up.”
“My son,” said Clarence, raising his head, tilting his chin and assuming a paternal air, “I’m beginning to despair of you. A moment ago, you remember, I said you were a literalist. Well, it’s worse than that. You’re a pessimist.”
At this Abe broke into a torrent of profanity. In this particular sort of diction he showed a surprising facility.
“Excuse me, friend,” said Clarence, “for breaking in upon your exquisite soliloquy; but would you mind telling me what that big building over there in the distance is? It seems to be across the river from McGregor.”
“That,” said Abe with some unction in his tones, “is Champeen College.”
“Champeen College?”
“Yes, the Catlics are trying to run it, but them guys doesn’t even know how to spell it. They leave out the H. I saw their boat – a fellow told me about it – and sure enough they didn’t have no H.”
Clarence pondered for a few moments.
“Look here,” he said presently. “Perhaps you mean Champion College.”
“That’s just what I said; Champeen College.”
“You say Champeen; you mean Champion.”
“That’s what I’ve said all along – Champeen College.”
Again Clarence reflected.
“Oh!” he said, breaking into a smile, “I think I’ve got it. Leaving out that H you have Campion College. That’s it, I’ll bet; and Campion was a wonderful Jesuit priest, famous in history and novel. He died a martyr.”
Hereupon the butcher’s boy proceeded to express his sentiments on the Jesuits. He declared them at some length and with no little profanity.
“I think,” observed Clarence calmly, when Abe had stopped more for want of breath than of language, “that it’s about time to start down, if we want to have that swim. Be good enough, gentle youth, to lead the way.”
Their descent was along another roadway, south of the one by which they had come up. In parts, the path was so steep that it was difficult to keep one’s foothold.
Abe led sullenly. He was deep in thought. The problem of beginning life again was facing him, beginning life with one pair of ancient overalls, a shirt, a jack-knife, shoes that had seen better days, and, in prospect, the handsome sum of one dollar. There was no question of his beginning life at McGregor. There confronted him, indeed, a difficulty, apparently insurmountable, in showing his face there at all. Abe figured to himself an irate boat-owner