Le Voyage

LE VOYAGE / Norman havers WHAT YOU HAVE DONE is really wonderful. Fed me, put me up in your room, given me what you call a second set of clothes, but perfect so far as I can see. I was at the end of everything. And you haven't even asked me who I am. Tm delighted I could help a fellow, I said. It was very little. Tm delighted, really, just to have an intelligent person to talk French to. Your French is magnificent. Thank you. What I was starting to tell you, Tm embarked upon a kind of adventure. Tm at the start of a new career, you see. Tm a journalist, and my editor has sent me out to the frontier to bring back travel sketches. I don't know, I think I can keep up with it. I hope so. It's the first time I've been out of New York. I've been given a hundred dollars expense money. We were in Louisville, waiting for our supper, sitting in the open doorway of the tavern, the Ohio River flowing strongly in our view. He was a man about sixty, speaking a highly cadenced and somewhat archaic French, his voice a rich baritone I could have listened to forever. You say it is little you have done for me, but I will remember you forever in my prayers. Especially if you could now do one more thing, and that is, help me return to my wife and son, which is the single thing I most desire in this world. My hand happened to be in my pocket, and I felt speculatively at my money pouch. I had not yet dipped into the hundred dollars. I probably would not need every penny. Where do they live? I asked. Ah, mon Vieux! he exclaimed. He rose. I rose. We embraced. How my Guardian Spirit was watching out for me when it brought me to this town, to this very tavern in all the world, where you happened to be supping—an American who by some miracle can speak French! They live in St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany, where I was myself born, and now, at the end of my adventures, propose to complete my days. Brittany! Yes, my very dear friend, Brittany. For a few dollars I can get passage on flat-boats down this river to the Mississippi, and The Missouri Review · 71 thence to New Orleans, where I can find a ship for France, and by agreeing to work part of my passage—I am an exceUent saUor— I can make the entire journey for—let me calculate—seventy-five doUars. But of course I cannot arrive a pauper, so in your kindness you will need to give me another twenty-five dollars to have in my pocket. At this moment the first course of our meal arrived, and our attention was so taken up with enjoying it—he had been close to starving, and had still not fully recruited himself—that further serious conversation ceased. We lingered over each course in the French way, while the day darkened into night outside the door. To my reUef, he seemed to have forgotten this business about Brittany, instead listening whUe I held forth about my journaUstic work. I was beginning to outUne to him my plans for entering the wilderness, when suddenly he interrupted me. Have you ever heard down here, he said,—I think perhaps it is in your history books—of the great war between the Jibeways, or, more correctly, the O'chibbuoy, and the Nadowessies, or Nadouessious, as we call them? They were constantly fighting over fur trading territories north-west of the great lake, but one time the Jibeways came to the Nadowessies in peace, and ended by steaUng some of their women, particularly the chief's beautiful new wife, and that launched the final attack in which the Jibeways were completely destroyed. Every child has heard about that war, I said. Even though it took place long before I was born. There is the famous story. A Canadian was with the Nadowessies, a man who was known as a trickster...