A STATE OF MIND
Up the narrow valley, over the unbroken sweep of treetops, arose tumbled
peaks; and above the Golden Dome, pushing straight upward into the
flawless blue of heaven, towered a cloud, its inky convolutions edged
with silver.
Jones inspected the thunderhead with disapproval; Ellis offered his rod,
and, being refused, began some clever casting, the artistic beauty of
which was lost upon Jones.
One trout only investigated the red-and-white fly; and, that fish safely
creeled, Ellis turned to his companion:
"Three years ago, when I last came here, this reach was more prolific.
But there's a pool above that I'll warrant. Shall we move?"
As they passed on upstream Jones said: "There's no pool above, only a
rapid."
"You're in error," said Ellis, confidently. "I've known every pool on
the Caranay for years."
"But there is no pool above--unless you mean to trespass."
"Trespass!" repeated Ellis, aghast. "_Trespass_ in the free Caranay
forests! You--you don't mean to say that any preserve has been
established on the Caranay! I haven't been here for three years.... _Do_
you?"
"Look there," said Jones, pointing to a high fence of netted wire which
rose above the undergrowth and cut the banks of the stream in two with a
barrier eight feet high; "that's what stopped me. There's their
home-designed trespass notice hanging to the fence. Read it; it's worth
perusal."
Speechless, but still incredulous, Ellis strode to the barrier and
looked up. And this is what he read printed in mincing "Art Nouveau"
type upon a swinging zinc sign fashioned to imitate something or other
which was no doubt very precious:
OYEZ!
Ye simple livers of ye simpler life have raised thys barrier
against ye World, ye Flesh and ye Devyl. Turn back in Peace and
leave us to our Nunnery.
YE MAIDS AND DAMES OF VASSAR.
"What the devil is that nonsense?" demanded Ellis hoarsely.
"Explained on our next tree," remarked Jones, wiping his eyeglasses
indifferently.
An ordinary trespass notice printed on white linen was nailed to the
flank of a great pine; and, below this, a special warning, done in red
on a white board:
NOTICE!
This property belongs to the Vassar College Summer School.
Fishing, shooting, trapping, the felling of trees, the picking of
wild flowers, and every form of trespass, being strictly
forbidden, all violators of this ordinance under the law will be
prosecuted. One hundred dollars reward is offered for evidence
leading to the detection and conviction of any trespasser upon
this property.
THE DIRECTORS OF THE VASSAR SUMMER SCHOOL.
"Well?" inquired Jones, as Ellis stood motionless, staring at the sign.
The latter slowly turned an enraged visage toward his companion.
"What are you going to do?" repeated Jones, curiously.
"Do? I'm going to fish the Caranay. Come on."
"Trespass on Vassar?" asked Jones.
"I'm going to fish the Caranay, my old and favorite and beloved
stream," retorted Ellis, doggedly. "Do you suppose a dinky zinc
sign in this forest can stop me? Come on, Jones. I'll show you a
trout worth tossing this Caranay Belle to." And he looped on a
silver-and-salmon-tinted fly and waded out into the rapids.
Jones lighted his pipe and followed him, giving his views of several
matters in a voice pitched above the whispering rush of the ripples:
"That's all very well, Ellis, but suppose we are pinched and fined? A
nice place, these forests, for a simple liver to lead a simple life in!
Simple life! What? And some of these writers define the 'simple life' as
merely a 'state of mind.' That's right, too; I was in a state of mind
until I met you, let me tell you! They're perfectly correct; it is a
state of mind."
He muttered to himself, casting an anxious eye on the thundercloud which
stretched almost to the zenith over the Golden Dome and shadowed Lynx
Peak like a pall.
"Rain, too," he commented, wading in Ellis's wake. "There's a most
devilish look about that cloud. I wish I were a woodchuck--or a shiner,
or an earnest young thing from Vassar. What are we to do if pinched with
the goods on us, Ellis?"
The other laughed a disagreeable laugh and splashed forward.
"Because," continued Jones, wiping the spray from his glasses, "the
woods yonder may be teeming with these same young things from Vassar.
Old 'uns, too--there's a faculty for that Summer School. You can never
tell what a member of a ladies' Summer School faculty would do to you. I
dare say they might run after you and frisk you for a kiss--out here in
the backwoods."
"Do you know anything about this absurd Summer School?" asked Ellis,
halting to wait for his companion.
"Only what the newspapers print."
"And what's that? I've not noticed anything about it."
"Why, they all tell about the scope of the Vassar Summer School. It's
founded"--and he grinned maliciously--"on the simple life."
"How?" snapped Ellis, clambering up out of the water to the flat, sandy
shore of an exquisite pool some forty rods in length.
"Why, this way: The Vassar undergraduates, who formerly, after
commencement, scattered into all the complexities of a silly,
unprofitable, good old summer time, now have a chance to acquire
simplicity and a taste for the rudimentary pleasures and pursuits they
have overlooked in their twentieth-century gallop after the complex."
Ellis sullenly freed his line and glanced up at the clouds. It was
already raining on the Golden Dome.
"So," continued Jones, "the Summer School took to the woods along with
the rest of the simple-minded. I hear they have a library; doubtless it
contains the _Outlook_ and the Rollo books. They have courses in the
earlier and simpler languages--the dead 'uns--Sanskrit, Greek, Latin;
English, too, before it grew pin-feathers. They have a grand-stand built
of logs out yonder where the mosquito hummeth; and some trees and a pond
which they call a theatre devoted to the portrayal of the great
primitive and simple passions and emotions. They have also dammed up the
stream to make a real lake when they give tank-dramas like Lohengrin and
the Rheingold; and the papers say they have a pair of live swans hitched
to a boat--that is, a yellow reporter swears they have, but he was
discovered taking snapshots at some Rhine-wine daughters, and hustled
out of the woods----"
He paused to watch Ellis hook and play and presently land a splendid
trout weighing close to two pounds.
"It's an outrage, an infernal outrage, for such people to dam the
Caranay and invade this God-given forest with their unspeakable tin
signs!" said Ellis, casting again.
"But they're only looking for a simpler life--just like you."
Ellis said something.
"That," replied Jones, "is a simple and ancient word expressing tersely
one of the simplest and most primitive passions. You know, the simple
life is merely a "state of mind"; you're acquiring it; I recognize the
symptoms."
Ellis made another observation, more or less mandatory.
"Yes, that is a locality purely mythical, according to our later
exponents of theology; therefore I cannot accept the suggestion to go
there----"
"Confound it!" exclaimed Ellis, laughing, as he landed a trout, "let up
on your joking. I'm mad all through, and it's beginning to rain. When
that thunder comes nearer it will end the fishing, too. Look at Lynx
Peak! Did you see that play of lightning? There's a corker of a storm
brewing. I hope," he added, savagely, "it will carry away their
confounded dam and their ridiculous lake. The nerve of women to dam a
trout stream like the Caranay.... What was that you said?"
"I said," hissed Jones in a weird whisper, "that there are two girls
standing behind us and taking our pictures with a kodak! Don't look
around, man! They'll snap-shoot us for evidence!"
But the caution was too late; Ellis had turned. There came a click of a
kodak shutter; Jones turned in spite of himself; another click sounded.
"Stang!" breathed Jones as two young girls stepped from the shelter of a
juniper brush and calmly confronted the astonished trespassers.
"I am very sorry to trouble you," said the taller one severely, "but
this is private property."
Ellis took off his cap; Jones did the same.
"I saw your signs," said Ellis, pleasantly. Jones whispered to him: "The
taller one is a corker!" and Ellis replied under his breath: "The other
is attractive, too."
"You admit that you deliberately trespassed?" inquired the shorter girl
very gravely.
"Not upon you--only upon what you call your property," said Ellis,
gaily. "You see, we really need the trout in our business--which is to
keep soul and body on friendly terms."
No answering smile touched the pretty grey eyes fixed on his. She said
gravely: "I am very sorry that this has happened."
"We're sorry, too," smiled Jones, "although we can scarcely regret the
charming accident which permits us----"
But it wouldn't do; the taller girl stared at him coldly from a pair of
ornamental brown eyes.
Presently she said: "We students are supposed to report cases like this.
If you have deliberately chosen to test the law governing the protection
of private property no doubt our Summer School authorities will be
willing to gratify you before a proper tribunal.... May I ask your
names?" She drew a notebook from the pocket of her kilted skirt,
standing gracefully with pencil poised, dark eyes focused upon Jones.
And, as she waited, the thunder boomed behind the Golden Dome.
"It's going to rain cats and dogs," said Jones, anxiously "and you
haven't an umbrella----"
The dark-eyed girl gazed at him scornfully. "Do you refuse your name?"
"No--oh, not at all!" said Jones hastily; "my name is Jones----"
The scorn deepened. "And--is this Mr. Smith?" she inquired, looking at
Ellis.
"My name _is_ Jones," said Jones so earnestly that his glasses fell off.
"And what's worse, it's John Jones."
Something in his eye engaged her attention--perhaps the unwinking
innocence of it. She wrote "John Jones" on her pad, noted his town
address, and turned to Ellis, who was looking fixedly, but not
offensively, at the girl with the expressive grey eyes.
"If you have a pad I'll surrender to you," he said, amiably. "There is
glory enough for all here, as our admiral once remarked."
The grey eyes glimmered; a quiver touched the scarlet mouth. But a crash
of nearer thunder whitened the smile on her lips.
"Helen, I'm going!" she said hastily to her of the brown eyes.
"That storm," said Ellis calmly, "has a long way to travel before it
strikes the Caranay valley." He pointed with his rod, tracing in the sky
the route of the crowding clouds. "Every storm that hatches behind the
Golden Dome swings south along the Black Water first, then curves and
comes around by the west and sweeps the Caranay. You have plenty of time
to take my name."
"But--but the play? I was thinking of the play," she said, looking
anxiously at the brown eyes, which were raised to the sky in silent
misgiving.
"If you don't mind my saying so," said Ellis, "there is ample time for
your outdoor theatricals--if you mean that. You need not look for that
storm on the upper Caranay before late this afternoon. Even then it may
break behind the mountains and you may see no rain--only a flood in the
river."
"Do you really think so?" she asked.
"I do; I can almost answer for it. You see, the Caranay has been my
haunt for many years, and I know almost to a certainty what is likely to
happen here."
"That is jolly!" she exclaimed, greatly relieved. "Helen, I really think
we should be starting----"
But Helen, pencil poised, gazed obdurately at Ellis out of brown eyes
which were scarcely fashioned for such impartial and inexorable work.
"If your name is not Smith I should be very glad to note it," she said.
So he laughed and told her who he was and where he lived; and she wrote
it down, somewhat shakily.
"Of course," she said, "you cannot be the _artist_--James Lowell Ellis,
_the_ artist--the great----"
She hesitated; brown eyes and grey eyes, very wide now, were
concentrated on him. Jones, too, stared, and Ellis laughed.
"_Are_ you?" blurted out Jones. "Great Heaven! I never supposed----"
Ellis joined in a quartet of silence, then laughed again, a short,
embarrassed laugh.
"You _don't_ look like anything famous, you know," said Jones
reproachfully. "Why didn't you tell me who you are? Why, man, I own two
of your pictures!"
To brown-eyes, known so far as "Helen," Ellis said: "We painters are a
bad lot, you see--but don't let that prejudice you against Mr. Jones; he
really doesn't know me very well. Besides, I dragged him into this
villainy; didn't I, Jones? You didn't want to trespass, you know."
"Oh, come!" said Jones; "I own two of your pictures--the Amourette and
the Corrida. That ought to convict me of almost anything."
Grey-eyes said: "We--my father--has the Espagnolita, Mr. Ellis." She
blushed when she finished.
"Why, then, you must be Miss Sandys!" said Ellis quickly. "Mr. Kenneth
Sandys owns that picture."
The brown eyes, which had widened, then sparkled, then softened as
matters developed, now became uncompromisingly beautiful.
"I am dreadfully sorry," she said, looking at her notebook. "I trust
that the school authorities may not press matters." Then she raised her
eyes to see what Jones's expression might resemble. It resembled
absolutely nothing.
After a silence Miss Sandys said: "Do you think Helen, that we are--that
we ought to report this----"
"Yes, Molly, I do."
"I'm only an architect; fine me, but spare my friend, Ellis," said
Jones far too playfully to placate the brown-eyed Helen. She returned
his glance with a scrutiny devoid of expression. The thunder boomed
along the flanks of Lynx Peak.
"We--we are very sorry," whispered Miss Sandys.
"I am, too," replied Ellis--not meaning anything concerning his legal
predicament.
Brown-eyes looked at Jones; there was a little inclination of her pretty
head as she passed them. A moment later the two young men stood alone,
caps in hand, gazing fixedly into the gathering dimness of Caranay
forest.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]