THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION OF AN ANCIENT PROBLEM
In the silence befitting such an extraordinary occasion the company
formed a circle about the camp-fire.
Presently Professor Rawson looked sharply at the damp dragon. "Child!"
she exclaimed, "you ought to take that off this instant!"
"But--but I haven't very much on," protested Molly Sandys with a shiver.
"I'm only dressed as a--a page."
"It can't be helped," retorted the professor with decision; "that dragon
is nothing but soaking pulp except where the tail is on fire!"
Ellis hastily set his foot on the sparks, just as Molly Sandys jumped.
There was a tearing, ripping sound, a stifled scream, and three-quarters
of a page in blue satin and lisle thread, wearing the head and shoulders
of a dragon, shrank down behind Professor Rawson's poncho-draped figure.
"Here's my poncho," cried Ellis, hastily; "I am awfully sorry I ripped
your gown--I mean your pasteboard tail--but you switched it into the
fire and it was burning."
"Have you something for me?" inquired Miss Gay, coloring, but calm; "I'm
not very comfortable, either."
Jones's enraptured eyes lingered on the slim shape in mail; he hated to
do it, but he brought a Navajo blanket and draped in it the most
distractingly pretty figure his rather nearsighted eyes had ever
encountered.
"There," explained Ellis, courteously, "is the shanty. I've hung a
blanket over it. Jones and I will sleep here by the fire."
"Sleep!" faltered Molly Sandys. "I think we ought to be starting----"
"The forests are flooded; we can't get you back to the Summer School
to-night," said Ellis.
Professor Rawson shuddered. "Do you mean that we are cut off from
civilization entirely?" she asked.
"Look!" replied Ellis.
The ridge on which the camp lay had become an island; below it roared a
spreading flood under a column of mist and spray; all about them the
water soused and washed through the forest; below them from the forks
came the pounding thunder of the falls.
"There's nothing to be alarmed at, of course," he said, looking at Molly
Sandys.
The grey eyes looked back into his. "Isn't there, really?" she asked.
"Isn't there?" questioned Miss Gray's brown eyes of Jones's pleasant,
nearsighted ones.
"No," signalled the orbs of Jones through his mud-spattered eyeglasses.
"I'm hungry," observed Professor Rawson in a patient but plaintive
voice, like the note of a widowed guinea-hen.
So they all sat down on the soft pine-needles, while Ellis began his
culinary sleight-of-hand; and in due time trout were frying merrily,
bacon sputtered, ash-cakes and coffee exhaled agreeable odors, and
mounds of diaphanous flapjacks tottered in hot and steaming fragrance on
either flank.
There were but two plates; Jones constructed bark platters for Professor
Rawson, Ellis and himself; Helen Gay shared knife and fork with Jones;
Molly Sandys condescended to do the same for Ellis; Professor Rawson had
a set of those articles to herself.
And there, in the pleasant glow of the fire, Molly Sandys, cross-legged
beside Ellis, drank out of his tin cup and ate his flapjacks; and Helen
Gay said shyly that never had she tasted such a banquet as this forest
fare washed down with bumpers of icy, aromatic spring water. As for
Professor Rawson, she lifted the hem of her poncho and discreetly dried
that portion of the Rhine-maiden's clothing which needed it; and while
she sizzled contentedly, she ate flapjack on flapjack, and trout after
trout, until merriment grew within her and she laughed when the younger
people laughed, and felt a delightful thrill of recklessness tingling
the soles of her stockings. And why not?
"It's a very simple matter, after all," declared Jones; "it's nothing
but a state of mind. I thought I was leading a simple life before I came
here, but I wasn't. Why? Merely because I was _not_ in a state of mind.
But"--and here he looked full at Helen Gay--"but no sooner had I begun
to appreciate the charm of the forest"--she blushed vividly "no sooner
had I realised what these awful solitudes might contain, than,
instantly, I found myself in a state of mind. Then, and then only, I
understood what heavenly perfection might be included in that frayed and
frazzled phrase, 'The Simple Life.'"
"I understood it long ago," said Ellis, dreamily.
"Did you?" asked Molly Sandys.
"Yes--long ago--about six hours ago"--he lowered his voice, for Molly
Sandys had turned her head away from the firelight toward the cooler
shadow of the forest.
"What happened," she asked, carelessly, "six hours ago?"
"I first saw you."
"No," she said calmly; "I first saw you and took your picture!" She
spoke coolly enough, but her color was bright.
"Ah, but before that shutter clicked, convicting me of a misdemeanor,
your picture had found a place----"
"Mr. Ellis!"
"Please let me----"
"No!"
"Please----"
A silence.
"Then you must speak lower," she said, "and pretend to be watching the
stream."
Professor Rawson gleefully scraped her plate and snuggled up in her
poncho. She was very happy. When she could eat no more she asked Jones
what his theory might be concerning Wagner's influence on Richard
Strauss, and Jones said he liked waltzes, but didn't know that the man
who wrote The Simple Life had anything to do with that sort of thing.
And Professor Rawson laughed and laughed, and quoted a Greek proverb;
and presently arose and went into the shanty, dropping the blanket
behind her.
"Don't sit up late!" she called sleepily.
"Oh, _no_!" came the breathless duet.
"And don't forget to feed the swan!"
"Oh, _no_!"
A few minutes later a gentle, mellow, muffled monotone vibrated in the
evening air. It was the swan-song of Professor Rawson.
Ellis laid fresh logs on the blaze, lighted a cigarette, and returned to
his seat beside Molly Sandys, who sat, swathed in her poncho, leaning
back against the base of a huge pine.
"Jones _is_ right," he said; "the simple life--the older and simpler
emotions, the primal desire--_is_ a state of mind."
Molly Sandys was silent.
"And a state of--heart."
Miss Sandys raised her eyebrows.
"Why be insincere?" persisted Ellis.
"I'm not!"
"No--no--I didn't mean you. I meant everybody----"
"I'm somebody----"
"Indeed you _are_!"--much too warmly; and Molly Sandys looked up at the
evening star.
"The simple life," said Ellis, "is an existence replete with sincerity.
Impulse may play a pretty part in it; the capacity for the enjoyment of
simple things grows out of impulse; and impulse is a child's reasoning.
Therefore, impulse, being unsullied, unaffected in its source, is to be
respected, cherished, guided into a higher development, so that it may
become a sweet reasonableness, an unerring philosophy. Am I right, Miss
Sandys?"
"I think you are."
"Well, then, following out my theorem logically, what is a man to do
when, without an instant's warning, he finds himself----"
There was a pause, a long one.
"Finds himself where?" asked Molly Sandys.
"In love."
"I--I don't know," she said, faintly. "Doesn't the simple life teach him
what is--is proper--on such brief acquaintance----"
"_I_ didn't say the acquaintance was brief. I only said the love was
sudden."
"Oh--then I--I don't know----"
"M-Mo-Mi-M-M----"
He wanted to say "Molly," and he didn't want to say "Miss Sandys," and
he couldn't keep his mouth shut, so that was the phonetic result--a
muttering monotone which embarrassed them both and maddened him till he
stammered out: "The moment I saw you I--I can't help it; it's the
simplest thing to do, anyhow--to tell you----"
"Me!"
"You, M-M-Mo-Mi-M----" He couldn't say it.
"Try," she whispered, stifling with laughter.
"Molly!" Like a cork from a popgun came the adored yet dreaded name.
Molly turned scarlet as Miss Gay and Jones looked up in pure amazement
from the farther side of the camp-fire.
"_Don't_ you know how to make love?" she whispered in a fierce little
voice; "_don't_ you? If you don't I am going off to bed."
"Molly!" That was better--in fact, it was so low that she could scarcely
hear him. But she said: "Doesn't Helen Gay look charming in her tin
armour? She _is_ the dearest, sweetest girl, Mr. Ellis. She's my cousin.
Do you think her pretty?"
"Do you know," whispered Ellis, "that I am in dead earnest?"
"Why, I--I hope so."
"Then tell me what chance I stand. I am in love; it came awfully
quickly, as quickly as you snapped that kodak--but it has come to
stay----"
"But I am not in--love.
"That is why I speak. I can't endure it to let you go--Heaven knows
where----"
"Only to New York," she said, demurely, and, in a low voice, she named
the street and the number. "In an interval of sanity you shall have an
opportunity to reflect on what you have said to me, Mr. Ellis. Being
a--a painter--and a rather famous one--for so young a man--you are, no
doubt, impulsive--in love with love--_not_ with a girl you met six hours
ago."
"But if I _am_ in love with her?"
"We will argue that question another time."
"In New York?"
She looked at him, a gay smile curving her lips. Suddenly the clear,
grey eyes filled; a soft, impulsive hand touched his for an instant,
then dropped.
"Be careful," she said, unsteadily; "so far, I also have only been in
love with love."
Stunned by the rush of emotion he rose to his feet as she rose, eye
meeting eye in audacious silence.
Then she was gone, leaving him there--gone like a flash into the
camp-hut; he saw the blanket twitching where she had passed behind it;
he heard the muffled swan-song of her blanket-mate; he turned his
enchanted eyes upon Jones. Jones, his elbows on the ground, chin on his
palms, was looking up into the rapt face of Helen Gay, who sat by the
fire, her mailed knees gathered up in her slim hands, the reflection of
the blaze playing scarlet over her glittering tin armour.
"Why may I not call you Helen?" he was saying.
"Why should you, Mr. Jones?"
The infatuated pair were oblivious of him. _Should_ he sneeze? No; his
own case was too recent; their attitude fascinated him; he sat down
softly to see how it was done.
"If--some day--I might be fortunate enough to call you more than
Helen----"
"Mr. Jones!"
"I can't help it; I love you so--so undauntedly that I have got to tell
you _something_ about it! You don't mind, do you?"
"But I _do_ mind."
"Very much?"
Ellis thought: "Is _that_ the way a man looks when he says things like
that?" He shuddered, then a tremor of happiness seized him. Molly Sandys
had emerged from the hut.
Passing the fire, she came straight to Ellis. "It's horrid in there.
Don't you hear her? It's muffled, I know, because she's taken the swan
to bed with her, and it's asleep, too, and acting as though Professor
Rawson's head were a nest-egg. I am not sleepy; I--I believe I shall sit
up by this delightful fire all night. Make me a nest of blankets."
Jones and Helen were looking across the fire at them in silence; Ellis
unrolled some blankets, made a nest at the foot of the pine full in the
fire-glow. Swathed to her smooth white throat, Molly sank into them.
"Now," she said, innocently, "we can talk. Helen! Ask Mr. Jones to make
some coffee. Oh, _thank_ you, Mr. Jones! Isn't this perfectly delicious!
So simple, so primitive, so sincere"--she looked at Ellis--"so jolly. If
the simple life is only a state of mind I can understand how easy it is
to follow it to sheerest happiness." And in a low voice, to Ellis: "Can
_you_ find happiness in it, too?"
Across the fire Helen called softly to them: "Do you want some toasted
cheese, too? Mr. Jones knows how to make it."
A little later, Jones, toasting bread and cheese, heard a sweet voice
softly begin the Swan-Song. It was Helen. Molly's lovely, velvet voice
joined in; Ellis cautiously tried his barytone; Jones wisely remained
mute, and the cheese sizzled a discreet tremolo. It was indeed the
swan-song of the heart-whole and fancy-free--the swan-song of the
unawakened. For the old order of things was passing away--had passed.
And with the moon mounting in silvered splendor over the forest, the
newer order of life--the simpler, the sweeter--became so plain to them
that they secretly wondered, as they ate their toast and cheese, how
they could have lived so long, endured so long, the old and dull
complexity of a life through the eventless days of which their hearts
had never quickened to the oldest, the most primitive, the simplest of
appeals.
And so, there, under the burnished moon, soberly sharing their toasted
cheese, the muffled swan-song of the incubating maiden thrilling their
enraptured ears, began for them that state of mind in the inviolate
mystery of which the passion for the simpler life is hatched.
"If we only had a banjo!" sighed Helen.
"I have a jew's-harp," ventured Jones. "I am not very musical, but every
creature likes to emit some sort of melody."
Ellis laughed.
"Why not?" asked Helen Gay, quickly; "after all, what simpler instrument
can you wish for?" And she laughed at Jones in a way that left him
light-headed.
So there, in the moonlight and the shadows of the primeval pines,
Jones--simplest of men with simplest of names--produced the simplest of
all musical instruments, and, looking once into the beautiful eyes of
Helen, quietly began the simplest of all melodies--the Spanish Fandango.
And for these four the simple life began.
* * * * *
I waited for a few moments, but Williams seemed to consider that there
was nothing more to add. So I said:
"Did they marry those two girls?"
He glanced at me in a preoccupied manner without apparently
understanding.
"Did they marry 'em?" I repeated, impatiently.
"What? Oh, yes, of course."
"Then why didn't you say so?"
"I didn't have to say so. Didn't you notice the form in which I ended?"
"What's that got to do with it? You're not telling me a short story,
you're telling me what really happened. And what really happens never
ends artistically."
"It does when I tell it," he said, with a self-satisfied smile. "Let
Fate do its worst; let old man Destiny get in his work; let Chance fix
up things to suit herself. I wait until that trio finishes, then _I_
step in and tell the truth in my own way. And, by gad! when I get
through, Fate, Chance, and Destiny set up a yell of impotent fury and
Truth looks at herself in the mirror in delighted astonishment, amazed
to discover in herself attractions which she never suspected."
"In other words," said I, "Fate no longer has the final say-so."
"Not while the short-story writer exists," he grinned. "It's up to him.
Fate slaps your face midway in a pretty romance. All right. But when I
make a record of the matter I pick, choose, sort, re-assort my box of
words, and when things are going too rapidly I wink at Fate with my
tongue in my cheek and round up everybody so amiably that nobody knows
exactly what did happen--and nobody even stops to think because
everybody has already finished the matter in their own minds to their
own satisfaction."
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