THE LOYALTY OF JIM
If it must be my lot to dream out a life of insubstantial visions, that
were well. But it appeared not unreasonable that I should keep at least
one ponderable dog by me, as an emblem of something I had missed through
one too many shuffle of the cards before this big game began. Yet Miss
Lansdale had clearly resolved to deprive my dreaming of even this slight
support of realness. I tried always to remember, in her behalf, that she
did not know the circumstances, and she herself very soon discovered
that she did not know Jim. The assaults she made upon his fidelity
proved her to be past-mistress of tactics and strategy. No possible
approach to his heart did she leave untried. She flattered and petted,
lured, cajoled, entreated; she menaced, commanded, stormed, raged.
Drawing inspiration from a siege celebrated in antiquity, she sought to
secrete her forces--not in a horse of wood, but within the frames of
numerous fowl, picked to the bone but shredded over so temptingly with
fugitive succulence as to have made a dog of feelings less fine her
slave for life.
It was not until the desperate woman had, in the terminology of Billy
Durgin, been "baffled and beaten at every turn," that I could get into
communication with her on a basis at all acceptable to a free-necked
man. Having proved to the last resource of her ingenuity that Jim was
more than human in his loyalty, she seemed disposed to admit, though
grudgingly enough, that I myself might be not less than human to have
won him so utterly. And thereafter I found it often practicable to
associate with her on terms of apparent equality.
She surrendered, I believe, on a day when she had thought to lure Jim
into her boat,--fatuously, for was I not a distinguishable figure in the
landscape? Her hopes must have been high, for she had but lately
repleted him with chicken-bones divinely crunchable, and then bestowed
upon him a charlotte russe, an unnatural taste for which she had
succeeded in teaching him.
With something of a swagger,--she swaggered in a rather starchy white
dress that day, and under a garden hat of broad rim,--she had enticed
him to the water's edge, so that I must have been nervous but for
knowing the dog through and through.
Her failure was so crushing, so swift, so entire, that for an instant I
almost failed to rejoice in her open humiliation. Seated in the boat,
oars poised, she invited Jim with soft speech and a smile that might
have moved an iron dog without occasioning any remark from me; but Jim,
noting, with one paw already in the boat, that I was not to be of the
party, turned quickly from her and came to me with his head down. His
informing and well-feathered tail signalled to Miss Lansdale that she
seemed to have forgotten herself.
At that moment, I think, the woman abandoned all her preposterous hopes;
then, too, I think, she learned the last and bitterest lesson which
great fighters must learn, to embellish defeat with an air of urbane
acceptance. Miss Lansdale relaxed--she melted before my eyes to an
aspect that no victor who knew his business could afford to despise.
I clambered in. Jim followed, remarking amiably to the woman as he
passed her on his way to the bow of the boat, "I _thought_ you couldn't
have meant _that_!"
And Defeat rowed Jim and me; rowed us past the feathered marge of green
islands quite as if nothing had happened. But I knew it _had_ happened,
for Miss Lansdale was so nearly human that I presently found myself
thinking "Miss Kate" of her. She not only answered questions, but, what
amazed me far more, she condescended to ask them now and then. To an
observer we might have seemed to be holding speech of an actual
friendliness--speech of the water and the day; of herself and the dog
and a little of me.
At length, as I caught an overhanging willow to rest her arms a moment,
I felt bold enough to venture words about this assumption of amity which
was so becoming in her. I even confessed that she was reminding me of
certain distinguished but truly amiable personages who are commonly to
be found in the side-show adjacent to the main tent. "Particularly of
the wild man," I said, to be more specific, for my listener seemed at
once to crave details.
"There is a powerfully painted banner swelling in the breeze outside,
you know. It shows the wild man in all his untamed ferocity, in his
native jungle, armed with a simple but rather promising club. A dozen
intrepid tars from a British man-of-war--to be seen in the offing--are
in the act of casting a net over him. It's an exciting picture, I assure
you, Miss Lansdale. The net looks flimsy, and the wild person is not
only enraged but very muscular--"
"I fail to see," she interrupted, with a slight lapse into what I may
call her first, or Lansdale, manner.
"Of course you fail! You have to go inside to see," I explained kindly.
"But it only costs a dime, which is little enough--the hired enthusiast,
indeed, stationed just outside the entrance, reminds us over and over
again that it is only 'the tenth part of a dollar,' and he sometimes
adds that 'it will neither make nor break nor set a man up in business.'
He is a flagrant optimist in small money matters, ever looking on the
bright side."
"Inside?" suggested my listener, with some impatience. I had regretted
my beginning and had meant to shirk a finish if she would let me; but it
seemed I must go on.
"Well, inside there's a hand-organ going all the time, you know--"
"The wild man?" she insisted, like a child looking ahead for the real
meat of the story one is telling it.
"I'm getting to him as fast as I consistently can. The wild man sits
tamely in a cheap chair on a platform, with a row of his photographs
spread charmingly at his feet. Of course you are certain at once that he
is no longer wild. You know that a wild man whose spirit had not been
utterly broken would never sit there and listen to that hand-organ eight
hours every day except Sunday. The fluent and polished gentleman in
charge--who has a dyed mustache--assures us that we have nothing to fear
from this 'once ferocious monster of the tropic jungle, with his bestial
craving for human flesh,' but that seems a mere matter of form, with the
hand-organ going in our ears--"
"Really," Miss Lansdale began--or tried to.
"One moment, please! The scholarly person goes on to relate the
circumstances of the wild person's capture--substantially as depicted
upon the canvas outside--and winds up with: 'After being brought to this
country in chains he was reclaimed from his savage estate, was given a
good English education, and can now converse intelligently upon all the
leading topics of the day. Step up, ladies and gentlemen' he concludes,
with a rather pointed delicacy, 'and you will find him ready and willing
to answer all proper questions.'"
Miss Lansdale dropped her oars into the water, dully, I thought. I
released the willow that had moored us, but I persisted.
"And he always _does_ answer all proper questions, just as the gentleman
said he would. Doubtless an improper question would be to ask him if he
weren't born tame on our own soil, of reputable New England parents; but
I don't know. I have always conducted myself in his presence as a
gentleman must, with the result that he has never failed to be chatty.
He is a trifle condescending, to be sure; he does not forget the
difference in our stations, but he does not permit himself to study me
with eyes of blank indifference, nor is he reticent to the verge of
hostility. Of course he feels indifferent to me,--nothing else could be
expected,--but his captors have taught him to be gracious in public.
And, really, Miss Lansdale, you seemed strangely tame and broken to-day
yourself. You have not only received a good English education, but you
answer all proper questions with a condescension hardly more marked than
that of the wild person's. I can only pray you won't resume a manner
that will inevitably recall him to me to your own disadvantage."
She rowed in silence against the gentle current, but she lifted her eyes
to me with a look that was not all Lansdale. There was Peavey in it. And
she smiled. I had seen her smile before, but never before had she seen
me at those times. That she should now smile for and at me seemed to be
a circumstance little short of epoch-making.
I cannot affirm that there was even one moment of that curiously short
afternoon when she became wholly and frankly a Peavey. But more than
once did this felicity seem to impend, and I suspected that she might
even have been more graciously endowed than with a mere Peavey capacity
in general. I believed that if she chose, she might almost become a Miss
Caroline Peavey. This occurred to me when she said:--
"I only brought you along for your dog."
It was, of course, quite like a Lansdale to do that; but much liker a
Peavey to tell it, with that brief poise of the opened eyes upon one's
own.
"Don't hold it against Jim," I pleaded. "It's my fault. I'm obliged to
be most careful about his associates. I've brought him up on a system."
"Indeed? It would be interesting to know why you object--" she bridled
with a challenge almost Miss Caroline in its flippancy.
"Well, for one thing, I have to make sure that he doesn't become
worldly. Lots of good dogs are spoiled that way. And I've succeeded very
well, thus far. To this moment he believes everything is true that ought
to be true; or, if not, that something 'just as good' is true, as the
people in drug stores tell one."
"And you are afraid of me--that I'll--"
"One can't be too careful about dogs, especially one that believes as
much as that one does. Frankly, I _am_ afraid of you. You have such a
knowing way of fighting off moments that might become Peavey."
"I don't quite understand--"
"Of course you don't, but that's of little consequence--to Jim. He
doesn't understand either. But you see he has a fine faith now that the
world is all Peavey--he learned it from me. Of course, I _know_ better,
but I pretend not to, and often I can fool myself for half an hour at a
time. And of course I shouldn't care to have that dog find out that this
apparently Peavey world--flawlessly Peavey--has a streak of Lansdale
running through it--that it has even its moments of curious, hard
suspicion, of distrust, of downright disbelief in all the good
things,--in short, its Miss Katherine Lansdale moments, if you will
pardon that hastily contrived metaphor."
Perceiving that further concealment would be unavailing, I added quite
openly: "Now, young woman, you see that I know your secret. I felt it in
the dark of our first meeting; it has since become plainer,--too plain.
You know too much--far more than is good for either Jim or me to know.
You can't believe enough--all those things that Jim and I have found it
best to believe. I myself always fear that I shall be led into ways of
unbelief in your presence. That is why I can't trust Jim with you alone,
and why I could hardly trust myself there without Jim's sustaining
looks--that is why, in fact, that I shall try to shun you in all but
your approximately Peavey moments. I trust now that this shall be the
last time I must ever speak bitterly in your presence. You are
sufficiently warned."
While I spoke she had ceased rowing, and we drifted with the current. A
long time we drifted, and I rejoiced to see that I had taunted Miss
Lansdale into something like interest. I saw that she was uncertain as
to the degree of seriousness I had meant my words to convey. Once she
began as if they were wholly serious, and once again as if they had been
wholly unserious. If she at last appeared to suspect that she must
effect a compromise, I dare say she was as nearly correct as I could
have put her with any words I knew.
"But you had that dog from the first," she at length decided to say,
clearly in self-defence, "and still you are worried and obliged to guard
him from evil companions."
"You confess," I exclaimed in triumph.
"You had him as a puppy. Could you have expected so much of him if he
had run wild, in a world where any number of good dogs learn unbelief,
where they are shocked into it, all in a moment?"
"I didn't have myself from the first," I reminded her, "and I believe
only a few trifles less than Jim does. I know that robins ascend without
visible means, for example, if you run at them; but I believe it's good
to run at them just the same, even more enjoyable than if they sat still
to be caught."
"We were speaking of dogs," said Miss Lansdale. "At any rate Jim had
_you_ from the first."
"Let us keep to dogs, then," I answered. "Meantime, if you listen to me,
you'll soon be in deep water, when we've both lost the taste for
adventure. This current will take us over the dam in about seven
minutes, I should judge."
She fell to the oars again with a dreaming face, in which Lansdale and
the other were so well blended that it was indeed the face of visions
that had long been coming to me.
"You remind me again of the wild gentleman," I said, after a long look
at her, a look which she was good enough to let me see that she
observed.
"_Et ego in Arcadia vixi_--and I, too, was netted in my native jungle."
I saw that she, too, essayed the feat of being both light and serious
without letting the seam show.
"I mean about pictures," I explained. "The gentlemanly curator of the
side-show always says of the wild man thoughtfully, 'I _believe_ he has
a few photographs for sale.' He is always right--the wild man does have
them, though I should not care to say that they're worth the money; that
depends upon one's tastes, of course--by the way, Miss Lansdale, I have
long had a picture of you."
"Has mother--"
"No--long before I became a fellow-slave with Clem--long before there
was a juvenile mother or even a Clem in Little Arcady."
"May I ask how you got it?"
"Certainly you may! I don't know."
"May I see it?" I thought she felt a deeper interest than she cared to
reveal.
"Unfortunately, no. If you only could see it, you would see that it is
almost a perfect likeness--perhaps a bit more Little Miss than you could
be now--but it's unmistakably true."
"I lost such a picture once," she said with a fall of her eyes. "Where
is the one you have?"
"Sometimes it's behind my eyes and sometimes it is out before them."
"Nonsense!"
"To be sure! Only Jim and I, trained and hardened in the ways of belief,
are equal to a feat of that sort."
"I see no merit in believing that."
"I don't know that there is, especially--not in believing this
particular thing, but the power for belief in general which it
implies--you see I am unprejudiced."
"Why should you want to believe it?"
I should have known, without catching the glint of her eyes under the
hat brim, that a Peavey spoke there.
"If you could see the thing once, you'd understand," I said, an answer,
of course, fit only for a Peavey.
"At all events, you'll not keep it long." The words were Peavey enough,
but the voice was rather curiously Lansdale.
"I have made as little effort to keep it as I did to acquire it," I
said, "but it stays on, and I've a notion it will stay on as long as Jim
and I are uncorrupted. But it shan't inconvenience you," I added
brightly, in time to forestall an imminent other "Nonsense!"
Being thus neatly thwarted, she looked over my shoulder and bent to her
oars, for we had again drifted toward the troubled waters of the dam.
"I warned you--if you listened to me," I reminded her.
"Oh, I've not been listening--only thinking."
"Of course, and you were disbelieving. It's high time you put us ashore.
I want to believe, and I want not to be drowned. So does Jim,--_both_ of
'em."
She pointed the boat to our landing, and as she leaned her narrow
shoulders far back she shot me; one swift look. But I could see much
farther into the water that floated us.