It was Honoré, shamefaced but laughing, back from the war within
twenty-four hours! Clethera heard the broom-handle strike the floor as
one hears the far-off fall of a spar on a ship in harbor. She put her
palms together, without flying into his arms or even offering to shake
hands.
“You come back?” she cried out, her voice sharpened by joy.
“The war is end',” said Honoré. “Peace is declare' yesterday!” He
threw his bundle down and looked fondly around the rough walls. “All
de peop' laugh at me because I go to war when de war is end'!”
“They laugh because de war is end'! I laugh too?” said Clethera,
relaxing to sobs. Tears and cries which had been shut up a day and
a night were let loose with French abandon. Honoré opened his arms
to comfort her in the old manner, and although she rushed into them,
strange embarrassment went with her. The two could not look at each
other.
“It is de 'omesick,” she explained. “When you go to war it make me
'omesick.”
“Me, too,” owned Honoré. “I never know what it is before. I not mind
de fighting, but I am glad de war is end', account of de 'omesick!”
He pushed the hair from her wet face. The fate of temperament and the
deep tides of existence had them in merciless sweep.
“Clethera,” represented Honoré, “the rillation is not mix' bad with
Jules and Melinda.”
Clethera let the assertion pass unchallenged.
“And this house, it pretty good house. You like it well as de hudder?”
“It have no loft,” responded Clethera, faintly, “but de chimney not
smoke.”
“We not want de 'omesick some more, Clethera—eh? You t'ink de fools is
all marry yet?”
Clethera laughed and raised her head from his arm, but not to look at
him or box his ear. She looked through the open door at an oblong of
little world, where the land was an amethyst strip betwixt lake and
horizon. Across that beloved background she saw the future pass: hale,
long years with Honoré; the piled up wood of winter fires; her own
home; her children—the whole scheme of sweet and humble living.
“You t'ink, after all de folly we have see' in de family, Clethera,
you can go de lenk—to get marry?”
“I go dat lenk for you, Honoré—but not for any hudder man.”
THE BLUE MAN
The lake was like a meadow full of running streams. Far off indeed it
seemed frozen, with countless wind-paths traversing the ice, so level
and motionless was the surface under a gray sky. But summer rioted in
verdure over the cliffs to the very beaches. From the high greenery
of the island could be heard the tink-tank of a bell where some cow
sighed amid the delicious gloom.
East of the Giant's Stairway in a cove are two round rocks with
young cedars springing from them. It is easy to scramble to the
flat top of the first one and sit in open ambush undetected by
passers. The world's majority is unobservant. Children with their
nurses, lovers, bicyclists who have left their wheels behind,
excursionists—fortunately headed towards this spot in their one
available hour—an endless procession, tramp by on the rough,
wave-lapped margin, never wearing it smooth.
Amused by the unconsciousness of the reviewed, I found myself
unexpectedly classed with the world's majority. For on the east round
rock, a few yards from my seat on the west round rock, behold a man
had arranged himself, his back against the cedars, without attracting
notice. While the gray weather lightened and wine-red streaks on the
lake began to alternate with translucent greens, and I was watching
mauve plumes spring from a distant steamer before her whistles could
be heard, this nimble stranger must have found his own amusement in
the blindness of people with eyes.
He was not quite a stranger. I had seen him the day before; and he was
a man to be remembered on account of a peculiar blueness of the skin,
in which, perhaps, some drug or chemical had left an unearthly haze
over the natural flush of blood. It might have appeared the effect of
sky lights and cliff shadows, if I had not seen the same blue face
distinctly in Madame Clementine's house. He was standing in the middle
of a room at the foot of the stairway as we passed his open door.
So unusual a personality was not out of place in a transplanted
Parisian tenement. Madame Clementine was a Parisian; and her house,
set around three sides of a quadrangle in which flowers overflowed
their beds, was a bit of artisan Paris. The ground-floor consisted of
various levels joined by steps and wide-jambed doors. The chambers,
to which a box staircase led, wanted nothing except canopies over the
beds.
“Alors I give de convenable beds,” said Madame Clementine, in mixed
French and English, as she poked her mattresses. “Des bons lits! T'ree
dollar one chambre, four dollar one chambre—” she suddenly spread her
hands to include both—“seven dollar de tout ensemble!”
It was delightful to go with any friend who might be forced by crowded
hotels to seek rooms in Madame Clementine's alley. The active, tiny
Frenchwoman, who wore a black mob-cap everywhere except to mass, had
reached present prosperity through past tribulation. Many years before
she had followed a runaway husband across the sea. As she stepped
upon the dock almost destitute the first person her eyes rested on
was her husband standing well forward in the crowd, with a ham under
his arm which he was carrying home to his family. He saw Clementine
and dropped the ham to run. The same hour he took his new wife and
disappeared from the island. The doubly deserted French-speaking woman
found employment and friends; and by her thrift was now in the way of
piling up what she considered a fortune.
The man on the rock near me was no doubt one of Madame Clementine's
permanent lodgers. Tourists ranting over the island in a single day
had not his repose. He met my discovering start with a dim smile and
a bend of his head, which was bare. His features were large, and his
mouth corners had the sweet, strong expression of a noble patience.
What first impressed me seemed to be his blueness, and the blurredness
of his eyes struggling to sight as Bartimeus' eyes might have
struggled the instant before the Lord touched them.
Only Asiatics realize the power of odors. The sense of smell is
lightly appreciated in the Western world. A fragrance might be
compounded which would have absolute power over a human being. We
get wafts of scent to which something in us irresistibly answers. A
satisfying sweetness, fleeting as last year's wild flowers, filled the
whole cove. I thought of dead Indian pipes, standing erect in pathetic
dignity, the delicate scales on their stems unfurled, refusing to
crumble and pass away; the ghosts of Indians.
The blue man parted his large lips and moved them several instants;
then his voice followed, like the tardy note of a distant steamer that
addresses the eye with its plume of steam before the whistle is heard.
I felt a creepy thrill down my shoulders—that sound should break so
slowly across the few yards separating us! “Are you also waiting,
madame?”
I felt compelled to answer him as I would have answered no other
person. “Yes; but for one who never comes.”
If he had spoken in the pure French of the Touraine country, which is
said to be the best in France, free from Parisianisms, it would not
have surprised me. But he spoke English, with the halting though clear
enunciation of a Nova Scotian.
“You—you must have patience. I have—have seen you only seven summers
on the island.”
“You have seen me these seven years past? But I never met you before!”
His mouth labored voicelessly before he declared, “I have been here
thirty-five years.”
How could that be possible!—and never a hint drifting through the
hotels of any blue man! Yet the intimate life of old inhabitants is
not paraded before the overrunning army of a season. I felt vaguely
flattered that this exclusive resident had hitherto noticed me and
condescended at last to reveal himself.
The blue man had been here thirty-five years! He knew the childish joy
of bruising the flesh of orange-colored toadstools and wading amid
long pine-cones which strew the ground like fairy corn-cobs. The white
birches were dear to him, and he trembled with eagerness at the first
pipe sign, or at the discovery of blue gentians where the eastern
forest stoops to the strand. And he knew the echo, shaking like
gigantic organ music from one side of the world to the other.
In solitary trysts with wilderness depths and caves which transient
sight-seers know nothing about I had often pleased myself thinking the
Mishi-ne-macki-naw-go were somewhere around me. If twigs crackled or a
sudden awe fell causelessly, I laughed—“That family of Indian ghosts
is near. I wish they would show themselves!” For if they ever show
themselves, they bring you the gift of prophecy. The Chippewas left
tobacco and gunpowder about for them. My offering was to cover with
moss the picnic papers, tins, and broken bottles, with which man who
is vile defiles every prospect. Discovering such a queer islander as
the blue man was almost equal to seeing the Mishi-ne-macki-naw-go.
Voices approached; and I watched his eyes come into his face as he
leaned forward! From a blurr of lids they turned to beautiful clear
balls shot through with yearning. Around the jut of rock appeared
a bicycle girl, a golf girl, and a youth in knickers having his
stockings laid in correct folds below the knee. They passed without
noticing us. To see his looks dim and his eagerness relax was too
painful. I watched the water ridging against the horizon like
goldstone and changing swiftly to the blackest of greens. Distance
folded into distance so that the remote drew near. He was certainly
waiting for somebody, but it could not be that he had waited
thirty-five years: thirty-five winters, whitening the ice-bound
island; thirty-five summers, bringing all paradise except what he
waited for.
Just as I glanced at the blue man again his lips began to move, and
the peculiar tingle ran down my back, though I felt ashamed of it in
his sweet presence.
“Madame, it will—it will comfort me if you permit me to talk to you.”
“I shall be very glad, sir, to hear whatever you have to tell.”
“I have—have waited here thirty-five years, and in all that time I
have not spoken to any one!”
He said this quite candidly, closing his lips before his voice ceased
to sound. The cedar sapling against which his head rested was not more
real than the sincerity of that blue man's face. Some hermit soul, who
had proved me by watching me seven years, was opening himself, and I
felt the tears come in my eyes.
“Have you never heard of me, madame?”
“You forget, sir, that I do not even know your name.”
“My name is probably forgotten on the island now. I stopped here
between steamers during your American Civil War. A passing boat put in
to leave a young girl who had cholera. I saw her hair floating out of
the litter.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed; “that is an island story.” The blue man was
actually presenting credentials when he spoke of the cholera story.
“She was taken care of on the island until she recovered; and she was
the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Southern family trying to get home
from her convent in France, but unable to run the blockade. The nun
who brought her died on shipboard before she landed at Montreal, and
she hoped to get through the lines by venturing down the lakes. Yes,
indeed! Madame Clementine has told me that story.”
He listened, turning his head attentively and keeping his eyes half
closed, and again worked his lips.
“Yes, yes. You know where she was taken care of?”
“It was at Madame Clementine's.”
“I myself took her there.”
“And have you been there ever since?”
He passed over the trivial question, and when his voice arrived it
gushed without a stammer.
“I had a month of happiness. I have had thirty-five years of waiting.
When this island binds you to any one you remain bound. Since that
month with her I can do nothing but wait until she comes. I lost her,
I don't know how. We were in this cove together. She sat on this rock
and waited while I went up the cliff to gather ferns for her. When
I returned she was gone. I searched the island for her. It kept on
smiling as if there never had been such a person! Something happened
which I do not understand, for she did not want to leave me. She
disappeared as if the earth had swallowed her!”
I felt a rill of cold down my back like the jetting of the spring
that spouted from its ferny tunnel farther eastward. Had he been
thirty-five years on the island without ever hearing the Old Mission
story about bones found in the cliff above us? Those who reached them
by venturing down a pit as deep as a well, uncovered by winter storms,
declared they were the remains of a woman's skeleton. I never saw the
people who found them. It was an oft-repeated Mission story which had
come down to me. An Indian girl was missed from the Mission school and
never traced. It was believed she met her fate in this rock crevasse.
The bones were blue, tinged by a clay in which they had lain. I tried
to remember what became of the Southern girl who was put ashore, her
hair flying from a litter. Distinct as her tradition remained, it
ended abruptly. Even Madame Clementine forgot when and how she left
the island after she ceased to be an object of solicitude, for many
comers and goers trample the memory as well as the island.
Had his love followed him up the green tangled height and sunk so
swiftly to her death that it was accomplished without noise or outcry?
To this hour only a few inhabitants locate the treacherous spot. He
could not hide, even at Madame Clementine's, from all the talk of a
community. This unreasonable tryst of thirty-five years raised for the
first time doubts of his sanity. A woman might have kept such a tryst;
but a man consoles himself.
Passers had been less frequent than usual, but again there was a
crunch of approaching feet. Again he leaned forward, and the sparks
in his eyes enlarged, and faded, as two fat women wobbled over the
unsteady stones, exclaiming and balancing themselves, oblivious to the
blue man and me.
“It is four o'clock,” said one, pausing to look at her watch. “This
air gives one such an appetite I shall never be able to wait for
dinner.”
“When the girls come in from golf at five we will have some tea,” said
the other.
Returning beach gadders passed us. Some of them noticed me with a
start, but the blue man, wrapped in rigid privacy, with his head sunk
on his breast, still evaded curious eyes.
I began to see that his clothes were by no means new, though they
suited the wearer with a kind of masculine elegance. The blue man's
head had so entirely dominated my attention that the cut of his coat
and his pointed collar and neckerchief seemed to appear for the first
time.
He turned his face to me once more, but before our brief talk could be
resumed another woman came around the jut of cliff, so light-footed
that she did not make as much noise on the stones as the fat women
could still be heard making while they floundered eastward, their
backs towards us. The blue man had impressed me as being of middle
age. But I felt mistaken; he changed so completely. Springing from
the rock like a boy, his eyes glorified, his lips quivering, he met
with open arms the woman who had come around the jut of the Giant's
Stairway. At first glance I thought her a slim old woman with the kind
of hair which looks either blond or gray. But the maturity glided into
sinuous girlishness, yielding to her lover, and her hair shook loose,
floating over his shoulder.
I dropped my eyes. I heard a pebble stir under their feet. The tinkle
of water falling down its ferny tunnel could be guessed at; and the
beauty of the world stabbed one with such keenness that the stab
brought tears.
We have all had our dreams of flying; or floating high or low, lying
extended on the air at will. By what process of association I do not
know, the perfect naturalness and satisfaction of flying recurred to
me. I was cleansed from all doubt of ultimate good. The meeting of the
blue man and the woman with floating hair seemed to be what the island
had awaited for thirty-five years.
The miracle of impossible happiness had been worked for him. It
confused me like a dazzle of fireworks. I turned my back and bowed my
head, waiting for him to speak again or to leave me out, as he saw fit.
Extreme joy may be very silent in those who have waited long, for
I did not hear a cry or a spoken word. Presently I dared to look,
and was not surprised to find myself alone. The evergreen-clothed
amphitheatre behind had many paths which would instantly hide climbers
from view. The blue man and the woman with floating hair knew these
heights well. I thought of the pitfall, and sat watching with
back-tilted head, anxious to warn them if they stirred foliage near
where that fatal trap was said to lurk. But the steep forest gave no
sign or sound from its mossy depths.
I sat still a long time in a trance of the senses, like that which
follows a drama whose spell you would not break. Masts and cross-trees
of ships were banded by ribbons of smoke blowing back from the
steamers which towed them in lines up or down the straits.
Towards sunset there was a faint blush above the steel-blue waters,
which at their edge reflected the blush. Then mist closed in. The sky
became ribbed with horizontal bars, so that the earth was pent like a
heart within the hollow of some vast skeleton.
I was about to climb down from my rock when two young men passed by,
the first strollers I had noticed since the blue man's exit. They
rapped stones out of the way with their canes, and pushed the caps
back from their youthful faces, talking rapidly in excitement.
“When did it happen?”
“About four o'clock. You were off at the golf links.”
“Was she killed instantly?”
“I think so. I think she never knew what hurt her after seeing the
horses plunge and the carriage go over. I was walking my wheel
down-hill just behind and I didn't hear her scream. The driver said he
lost the brake; and he's a pretty spectacle now, for he landed on his
head. It was that beautiful old lady with the fly-away hair that we
saw arrive from this morning's boat while we were sitting out smoking,
you remember.”
“Not that one!”
“That was the woman. Had a black maid with her. She's a Southerner. I
looked on the register.”
The other young fellow whistled.
“I'm glad I was at the links and didn't see it. She was a stunning
woman.”
Dusk stalked grimly down from eastern heights and blurred the water
earlier than on rose-colored evenings, making the home-returning
walker shiver through evergreen glooms along shore. The lights of the
sleepy Old Mission had never seemed so pleasant, though the house was
full of talk about that day's accident at the other side of the island.
I slipped out before the early boat left next morning, driven by
undefined anxieties towards Madame Clementine's alley. There is a
childish credulity which clings to imaginative people through life. I
had accepted the blue man and the woman with floating hair in the way
which they chose to present themselves. But I began to feel like one
who sees a distinctly focused picture shimmering to a dissolving view.
The intrusion of an accident to a stranger at another hotel continued
this morning, for as I took the long way around the bay before turning
back to Clementine's alley I met the open island hearse, looking like
a relic of provincial France, and in it was a coffin, and behind it
moved a carriage in which a black maid sat weeping.
Madame Clementine came out to her palings and picked some of her
nasturtiums for me. In her mixed language she talked excitedly about
the accident; nothing equals the islander's zest for sensation after
his winter trance when the summer world comes to him.
“When I heard it,” I confessed, “I thought of the friend of your blue
gentleman. The description was so like her. But I saw her myself on
the beach by the Giant's Stairway after four o'clock yesterday.”
Madame Clementine contracted her short face in puzzled wrinkles.
“There is one gentleman of red head,” she responded, “but none of
blue—pas du tout.”
“You must know whom I mean—the lodger who has been with you
thirty-five years.”
She looked at me as at one who has either been tricked or is
attempting trickery.
“I don't know his name—but you certainly understand! The man I saw in
that room at the foot of the stairs when you were showing my friend
and me the chambers day before yesterday.”
“There was nobody. De room at de foot of de stair is empty all season.
Tout de suite I put in some young lady that arrive this night.”
“Madame Clementine, I saw a man with a blue skin on the beach
yesterday—” I stopped. He had not told me he lodged with her. That was
my own deduction. “I saw him the day before in this house. Don't you
know any such person? He has been on the island since that young lady
was brought to your house with the cholera so long ago. He brought her
to you.”
A flicker of recollection appeared on Clementine's face.
“That man is gone, madame; it is many years. And he was not blue at
all. He was English Jersey man, of Halifax.”
“Did you never hear of any blue man on the island, Clementine?”
“I hear of blue bones found beyond Point de Mission.”
“But that skeleton found in the hole near the Giant's Stairway was a
woman's skeleton.”
“Me loes!” exclaimed Madame Clementine, miscalling her English as she
always did in excitement. “Me handle de big bones, moi-même! Me loes
what de doctor who found him say!”
“I was told it was an Indian girl.”
“You have hear lies, madame. Me loes there was a blue man found beyond
Point de Mission.”
“But who was it that I saw in your house?”
“He is not in my house!” declared Madame Clementine. “No blue man is
ever in my house!” She crossed herself.
There is a sensation like having a slide pulled from one's head;
the shock passes in the fraction of a second. Sunshine, and rioting
nasturtiums, the whole natural world, including Clementine's puzzled
brown face, were no more distinct to-day than the blue man and the
woman with floating hair had been yesterday.
I had seen a man who shot down to instant death in the pit under the
Giant's Stairway thirty-five years ago. I had seen a woman, who,
perhaps, once thought herself intentionally and strangely deserted,
seek and meet him after she had been killed at four o'clock!
This experience, set down in my note-book and repeated to no one,
remains associated with the Old World scent of ginger. For I remember
hearing Clementine say through a buzzing, “You come in, madame—you
must have de hot wine and jahjah!”
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
Maurice Barrett sat waiting in the old lime-kiln built by the British
in the war of 1812—a white ruin like much-scattered marble, which
stands bowered in trees on a high part of the island. He had, to the
amusement of the commissioner, hired this place for a summer study,
and paid a carpenter to put a temporary roof over it, with skylight,
and to make a door which could be fastened. Here on the uneven floor
of stone were set his desk, his chair, and a bench on which he could
stretch himself to think when undertaking to make up arrears in
literary work. But the days were becoming nothing but trysts with her
for whom he waited.
First came the heavenly morning walk and the opening of his study,
then the short half-hour of labor, which ravelled off to delicious
suspense. He caught through trees the hint of a shirt-waist which
might be any girl's, then the long exquisite outline which could
be nobody's in the world but hers, her face under its sailor hat,
the blown blond hair, the blue eyes. Then her little hands met his
out-stretched hands at the door, and her whole violet-breathing self
yielded to his arms.