PERPLEXITIES
What had he done?
Ignorant why his simple question should have had such strange results,
that piercing look made Adrian feel the veriest culprit, and he
hastened to leave the room and the cabin. Hurrying to the beach he
appropriated Margot's little canvas canoe and pushed out upon the
lake. From her and Pierre he had learned to handle the light craft
with considerable skill and he now worked off his excitement by swift
paddling, so that there was soon a wide distance between him and the
island.
Then he paused and looked around him, upon as fair a scene as could
be found in any land. Unbroken forests bounded this hidden Lake
Profundis, out of whose placid waters rose that mountain-crowned,
verdure-clad Island of Peace, with its picturesque home, and its
cultured owner, who had brought into this best of the wilderness the
best of civilization.
"What is this mystery? How am I concerned in it? For I am, and mystery
there is. It is like that mist over the island, which I can see and
feel but cannot touch. Pshaw! I'm getting sentimental, when I ought to
be turning detective. Yet I couldn't do that--pry into the private
affairs of a man who's treated me so generously. What shall I do? How
can I go back there? But where else can I go?"
At thought that he might never return to the roof he had quitted, a
curious homesickness seized him.
"Who'll hunt what game they need? Who'll catch their fish? Who'll keep
the garden growing? Where can I study the forest and its furry people,
at first hand, as in the Hollow? And I was doing well. Not as I hope
to do, but getting on. Margot was a merciless critic, but even she
admitted that my last picture had the look, the spirit of the woods.
That's what I want to do, what Mr. Dutton, also, approved; to bring
glimpses of these solitudes back to the cities and the thousands who
can never see them in any other way. Well--let it go. I can't stay and
be a torment to anybody, and some time, in some other place, maybe----
Ah!"
What he had mistaken for the laughter of a loon was Pierre's halloo.
He was coming back, then, from the mainland where he had been absent
these past days. Adrian was thankful. There was nothing mysterious or
perplexing about Pierre, whose rule of life was extremely simple.
"Pierre first, second, and forever. After Pierre, if there was
anything left, then--anybody, the nearest at hand;" would have
expressed the situation; but his honest, unblushing selfishness was
sometimes a relief.
"One always knows just where to find Pierre," Margot had said.
So Adrian's answering halloo was prompt, and turning about he watched
the birch leaving the shadow of the forest and heading for himself. It
was soon alongside and Ricord's excited voice was shouting his good
news:
"Run him up to seven hundred and fifty!"
"But I thought there wasn't money enough anywhere to buy him!"
Pierre cocked his dark head on one side and winked.
"Madoc sick and Madoc well are different."
"Oh! you wretch. Would you sell a sick moose and cheat the buyer?"
"Would I lose such a pile of money for foolishness? I guess not."
"But suppose, after you parted with him, he got well?"
Again the woodlander grinned and winked.
"Could you drive the king?"
"No."
"Well, that's all right. I buy him back, what you call trade. One do
that many times, good enough. If----"
Pierre was silent for some moments, during which Adrian had steadily
paddled backward to the island, keeping time with the other boat, and
without thinking what he was doing. But when he did remember, he
turned to Pierre and asked:
"Will you take me across the lake again?"
"What for?"
"No matter. I'll just leave Margot's canoe and you do it. There's time
enough."
"What'll you give me?"
"Pshaw! What can I give you? Nothing."
"That's all right. My mother, she wants the salt," and he kicked the
sack of that valuable article, lying at his feet. "There. She's on the
bank now and it's not she will let me out of sight again, this long
time."
"You'd go fast enough, for money."
"Maybe not. When one has Angelique Ricord for mere---- Umm."
But it was less for Pierre than for Adrian that Angelique was waiting,
and her expression was kinder than common.
"Carry that salt to my kitchen cupboard, son, and get to bed. No.
You've no call to tarry. What the master's word is for his guest is
nothin' to you."
Pierre's curiosity was roused. Why had Adrian wanted to leave the
island at nightfall, since there was neither hunting nor fishing to be
done? Sport for sport's sake, that was forbidden. And what could be
the message he was not to hear? He meant to learn, and lingered,
busying himself uselessly in beaching the canoes afresh, after he had
once carefully turned them bottom side upward; in brushing out
imaginary dirt, readjusting his own clothing--a task he did not often
bother with--and in general making himself a nuisance to his impatient
parent.
But, so long as he remained, she kept silence, till unable to hold
back her rising anger she stole up behind him, unperceived, and
administered a sounding box upon his sizable ears.
"Would you? To the cupboard, miserable!" and Adrian could not repress
a smile at the meekness with which the great woodlander submitted to
the little woman's authority.
"Xanthippe and Socrates!" he murmured, and Pierre heard him. So,
grimacing at him from under the heavy sack, called back: "Fifty
dollar. Tell her fifty dollar."
"What he mean by fifty dollar?" demanded Angelique.
"I suppose something about that 'show' business of his. It is his
ambition, you know, and I must admit I believe he'd be a success at
it."
"Pouf! There is more better business than the 'showin'' one, of takin'
God's beasties into the towns and lettin' the foolish people stare.
The money comes that way is not good money."
"Oh! yes. It's all right, fair Angelique. But what is the word for
me?"
"It is: that you come with me, at once, to the master. He will speak
with you before he sleeps. Yes. And Adrian, lad!"
"Well, Angelique?"
"This is the truth. Remember. When the heart is sore tried the tongue
is often sharp. There is death. That is a sorrow. God sends it. There
are sorrows God does not send but the evil one. Death is but joy to
them. What the master says, answer; and luck light upon your lips."
The lad had never seen the old housekeeper so impressive nor so
gentle. At the moment it seemed as if she almost liked him, though,
despite the faithfulness with which she had obeyed her master's wishes
and served him, he had never before suspected it.
"Thank you, Angelique. I am troubled, too, and I will take care that I
neither say nor resent anything harsh. More than that, I will go away.
I have stayed too long, already, though I had hoped I was making
myself useful. Is he in his own study?"
"Yes, and the little maid is with him. No. There she comes, but she is
not laughin', no. Oh! the broken glass. Scat, Meroude! Why leap upon
one to scare the breath out, that way? Pst! 'Tis here that tame
creatures grow wild and wild ones tame. Scat! I say."
Margot was coming through the rooms, holding Reynard by the collar she
made him wear whenever he was in the neighborhood of the hen-house,
and Tom limped listlessly along upon her other side. There was trouble
and perplexity in the girl's face, and Angelique made a great pretense
of being angry with the cat, to hide that in her own.
But Margot noticed neither her nor Adrian, and sitting down upon the
threshold dropped her chin in her hands and fixed her eyes upon the
darkening lake.
"Why, mistress! The beast here at the cabin, and it nightfall? My poor
fowls!"
"He's leashed, you see, Angelique. And I'll lock the poultry up, if
you like," observed Adrian. Anything to delay a little an interview
from which he shrank with something very like that cowardice of which
the girl had once accused him.
[Illustration: HER PETS ON EITHER SIDE OF HER]
The housekeeper's ready temper flamed, and she laid an ungentle touch
upon the stranger's shoulder.
"Go, boy. When Master Hugh commands, 'tis not for such as we to
disobey."
"All right. I'm going. And I'll remember."
At the inner doorway he turned and looked back. Margot was still
sitting, thoughtful and motionless, the firelight from the great
hearth making a Rembrandt-like silhouette of her slight figure against
the outer darkness and touching her wonderful hair to a flood of
silver. Reynard and the eagle, the wild foresters her love had tamed,
stood guard on either side. It was a picture that appealed to Adrian's
artistic sense and he lingered a little, regarding its "effects," even
considering what pigments would best convey them.
"Adrian!"
"Yes, Angelique. Yes."
When the door shut behind him Angelique touched her darling's shining
head, and the toil-stiffened fingers had for it almost a mother's
tenderness.
"Sweetheart, the bedtime."
"I know. I'm going. Angelique, my uncle sent me from him to-night. It
was the first time in all my life that I remember."
"Maybe, little stupid, because you've never waited for that, before,
but were quick enough to see whenever you were not wanted."
"He---- There's something wrong and Adrian is the cause of it.
I--Angelique, you tell me. Uncle did not hear, or reply, anyway. Where
is my father buried?"
Angelique was prepared and had her answer ready.
"'Tis not for a servant to reveal what her master hides. No. All will
come to you in good time. Tarry the master's will. But, that silly
Pierre! What think you? Is it fifty dollar would be the price of the
tame blue herons? Hey?"
"No. Nor fifty times fifty. Pierre knows that. Love is more than
money."
"Sometimes, to some folks. Well, what would you? That son will
be havin' even me, his old mother, in his 'show,' why not? As a
cur'osity--the only livin' human bein' can make that ingrate mind.
Yes. To bed, my child."
Margot rose and housed her pets. This threat of Pierre's, that
he would eventually carry off the "foresters" and exhibit their
helplessness to staring crowds, always roused her fiercest
indignation; and this result was just what Angelique wanted, at
present, and she murmured her satisfaction:
"Good. That bee will buzz in her ear till she sleeps, and so sound
she'll hear no dip of the paddle, by and by. Here, Pierre, my son,
you're wanted."
"What for now? Do leave me be. I'm going to bed. I'm just wore out,
trot-trottin' from Pontius to Pilate, lugging salt, and----" he
finished by yawning most prodigiously.
"Firs'-rate sign, that gapin'. Yes. Sign you're healthy and able to do
all's needed. There's no bed for you this night. Come. Here. Take this
basket to the beach. If your canoe needs pitchin', pitch it. There's
the lantern. If one goes into the show business he learns right now
to work and travel o' nights. Yes. Start. I'll follow and explain."