THE CAMP HEAVEN
And I was very glad indeed that he did not go with me for that toilet
to my hands, for it might have happened that a noise would have
deprived me of a very beautiful thing that I discovered, through a
window under a vine of roses that opened upon that back porch.
A very pretty young girl, with hair the color of the maize in the
fields, lay upon a white bed beneath a quilt of many colors. Her
sleeping garment was drawn back from her breast, against which lay a
little human person drinking therefrom with much energy. The eyes of
the mother were closed and her arm held the babe loosely as if in a
deep dreaming. I softly poured the water into the basin, made clean my
hands and quietly withdrew into the kitchen, with much care that I did
not awaken her. On my cheeks I could feel a deep glow of color, and
something within my heart pounded with force against my own breast
under its gay red coat of a hunting man. I could not raise my eyes to
those of my Gouverneur Faulkner and I ate not as much of that good
breakfast as Robert Carruthers could have consumed if the woman in his
heart had not been so stirred.
And all of that long day in the soft early spring which was bursting
into a budding and a flowering under the feet of our horses and above
our heads in the trees, it was the woman Roberta that rode at the side
of my Gouverneur Faulkner, with her heart at an ache under her coat of
a man. It was with a difficulty that I forced my eyes to meet and make
answer to the merriment and joy of the woods in his deep ones; and I
was of a great gladness when the descending of the sun brought a
moon-silvered twilight down upon us from the young green branches of
the large trees of the forest through which we rode.
"Time to make camp. We've got to old Jutting Rock. You are halfway up
between heaven and earth, youngster," said my Gouverneur Faulkner as
he drew to a halt his horse in front of me and pointed down into the
dim valley that lay at our feet.
"I am glad that we have made this Camp Heaven," I answered to him as I
slid from my horse, ungirthed him, and drew from his back the heavy
saddle he had worn for the day, as I had been taught by my father to
do after a day's hunting, if no grooms came immediately. "Is it that
you have hunger, my Gouverneur Faulkner?"
"Only about ten pounds of food craving," he made answer to me with a
large laugh that was the first I had ever heard him to give forth.
"I'll rustle the fire and water if you'll open the food wallet and
feed the horses."
"Immediately I will do all of that," I made an answer to him and
because of the happiness of that laugh he had given forth, a gladness
rose in my heart that made me again that merry boy Robert.
And it was with a great industry for a short hour that we prepared the
Camp Heaven for a sojourn of a night. Upon a very nice hot fire I put
good bacon to cook and my Gouverneur set also the pot of coffee upon
the coals. Then, while I made crisp with the heat the brown corn
pones, with which that Granny Bell had provided us, he brought a large
armful of a very fragrant kind of tree and threw it not far into the
shadow of the great tree which was the roof to our Camp Heaven.
"Bed," he said as he came and stood beside the fire in a large
towering over me. I dropped beyond rescue a fragment of that corn
bread into the extreme heat of the coals, but I said with a great
composure and a briefness like unto his words:
"Supper."
"Why is it that a man thinks he wants more of life's goods than
fatigue, supper and bed, do you suppose, boy?" questioned my
Gouverneur Faulkner to me as at last in repletion he leaned back
against our giant rooftree, between two of whose hospitable large
roots we had made our repast, and lighted a pipe of great fragrance
which he had taken from his pocket.
"I would not possess happiness even though I had this nice supper, if
I was alone in this great forest, Your Excellency; I would have fear,"
I answered him with a small laugh as I took my corduroy knees into my
embrace and looked off into that distant valley below us which was
beginning to glow with stars of home lights.
"Didn't I tell you once that you don't count, that you are just
myself, youngster? You ought not to know I am here. I don't know you
exist except as a form of pleasure of which I do not ask the reason,"
was the answer that my Gouverneur Faulkner made to me.
"I excuse myself away with humbleness for impertinence, Your
Excellency," I returned to him.
"If you tried, do you think you could call me Bill, just for to-night,
boy?" was the answer he made to my excuses as he puffed a beautiful
ring of smoke at me.
"I could not," I answered with an indignation.
"I heard you call Sue Tomlinson 'Sue' the first night you danced with
her."
"But that Mademoiselle Sue is a woman, my Gouverneur Faulkner," I
answered with haste.
"That's the reason that women get at us to do us, youngster; we don't
approach them as human to human but we go up on their blind side and
they come back at us in the dark with a knife." And as he spoke all of
the gayness of joy was lost from the voice of my beloved Gouverneur
and in its place was a bitterness.
"With pardon I say that it is not a truth of all women, Your
Excellency," I answered with pride as my head went up high at his
condemnation of the sex of which I was one.
"You don't know what you are talking about, youngster. They all think
I am cold and pass me along, except a few experienced ladies
who--shall I say?--adventure for graft with me. I've been too busy
really to love or let love but I know 'em and you don't. Let's stop
talking about what concerns neither of us and go to bed. See this
young cedar tree? I'm going to throw my blanket across it and with
these extra boughs I'll make a genuine cradle for each of us on the
opposite sides of the trunk. Then we'll cover with your blanket and be
as comfortable as two middies in their hammocks in a man of war. This
is a piece of woodcraft of my own invention and I'm proud of it, old
scout."
And while he talked my Gouverneur Faulkner had prepared those cradles
of our blankets unstrapped from the saddles of the horses at feeding
time, seated himself upon the edge of one of them and began to pull
from his feet his riding boots. "Take off your boots and your coat,
youngster, and turn in. I'll take the windward side and you can
bivouac against the fire. Good night!" As he finished speaking my
Gouverneur Faulkner rolled beneath that blanket upon the outer edge
and left for me the hammock next to the fire, sheltered from a cool
wind that had begun to come up from the valley.
Almost immediately, so that I should not have a fright, I lifted the
blanket and crawled into the branches of the fragrant tree. Even as I
did so I perceived a loud breathing of deep sleep from my Gouverneur
Faulkner; but to me came no repose.
Awake through the bright night, I lay there in the sweet branches of
the young tree beside the great Gouverneur of one of the greatest
states of America and perceived clearly the pass to which my course of
lies and dishonor had led me. And from that wild daredevil, Roberta,
Marquise of Grez and Bye, was born the honest woman Roberta who must
extricate herself from a situation not to be longer endured, even if
discovery was not upon me.
"I will finish this journey with my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner," I
counseled myself, "upon which it is of a certainty that this plot for
his ruin in the world of his politics will be averted, and I will
return to the home of my Uncle, the General Robert. If I be not
discovered in my woman's estate in a few days' space of time I will
endeavor to do some piece of loving kindness that will keep me in the
memory of all who have given me love, from poor black Bonbon up to His
Excellency himself here beside me, and then I will go into those
trenches of France to give my life for my country, perhaps not as a
soldier but as a good nurse of the Red Cross. And never, never, must
any living person who has loved Robert Carruthers know that he is a
human of dishonor. Nannette will be true to my directions to hide my
secret, and wee Pierre will keep it forever because I go to fight for
France as he cannot. I will put with great firmness into the mind of
Pierre that he is to be of a great devotion to my Uncle, the General
Robert, through life.
"And what will you do for that great Gouverneur Faulkner, from whom
each day you have stolen more and more affection with your false
attitude of much loyalty, to keep from him grief at the loss of you?"
I asked myself with a sob in my heart.
"Forgive me, my beloved chief. When away from you I must die of a
coldness," I said to myself in a very low tone into the moonlight.
"Cold? Do you want the whole blanket, youngster? Snuggle into your
cradle closer," suddenly answered me my Gouverneur Faulkner as he
reached his long arm across the tree trunk to tuck in the blanket
about me and again he was immediately in the deep sleep from which my
spoken words had but partly awakened him. And then at his bidding I
did settle myself down into the fragrant boughs and I wept myself also
into a deep sleep.
The round sun was high over that Old Harpeth hill when I opened my
eyes. For a moment I did not see clearly and then I looked straight
into the deep eyes of my Gouverneur Faulkner. which for that first
time I had been able to see to be the color of violets in the
twilight. He was seated beside me smoking the fragrant pipe and
looking down at me with a great wonderment that was mingled with as
great a tenderness.
"Boy," he asked softly, "are you sure God has got that pattern of you
put away carefully in France?"
Before I could make answer to him a picture flashed into my mind. When
still a child one morning I opened my eyes to find my loved father
bending over me and in the hollow of his arm he held my mother in her
breakfast gown of lace and ribbons. He spoke:
"Some day, Celeste, a man will bend over her and watch her waken. God
grant it will be with the love--that produced that beauty. Look at
that love curl!"
And at the recall of that picture of me into my mind, my hands flew to
my face to find that same treacherous curl had descended to my cheek
from the mop above. With a fury of embarrassment I sprang to my feet
from under that blanket.
"I have a great hunger," I said as I observed a very crisp breakfast
to be prepared upon the coals of the fire. "I must have a fragment of
bacon upon the instant." And I bent over the fire to obtain what I had
demanded for a cover to my confusion.
"No, you don't, until you've washed that face and those hands that
still have the supper smudge on them, in the pool down there. I left
the soap and the dry sleeves and bosom of a flannel shirt for you.
Don't you pack towels in a kit in your country?" With which laughing
answer my Gouverneur Faulkner denied unto me an immediate breakfast.
"You thought him to admire the love curl, while he was remarking the
soil upon your face, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye," I laughed to
myself as I plunged my face into the icy pool.
After a finish to the breakfast, my Gouverneur Faulkner gave to me the
information that we must tether the good horses and make the remainder
of the journey by walking, which we did for hardly a short hour.
"The wildcat still is straight up Turkey Gulch and we'll have to
scramble for it. It's hid like the nest of an old turkey hen," he said
to me as we set out upon the mounting of a very steep precipice.
"What is that word, 'wildcat still'?" I asked as I slid over a great
rock with emerald moss encrusted, and struggled beside my Gouverneur
Faulkner through a heavy underbrush of leafy greenness.
"A place where men make whiskey in defiance of the law of their
State," he answered me as he held aside a long branch of green that
was pink tipped, so that I might slip thereunder without a scratching.
"Are you not the law of the State, my Gouverneur Faulkner?" I asked of
him as I pulled myself by his arm through the thickness.
"I'm all that, but I'm the son of Old Harpeth and Jim Todd's blood
brother first. Some day I'll smoke Jim out of his hole and get him a
good job. Now, wait a minute and see what happens," and as he spoke my
Gouverneur Faulkner stood very still for a long minute. As I sat at
his side upon the fallen trunk of a large tree I regarded him with
admiration, because he had the aspect of some beautiful, lithe animal
of the woods as he listened with a deep attention. Then very quickly
he put his two long fingers to his mouth, and behold the call of a
wild bird came from between his lips. Twice it was repeated and then
he stood again in deep attention. I made not even a little breathing
as I too listened.
Then came three clear notes of that same wild bird in reply from not
very far up the mountain from us.
"That's Jim, the old turkey; come on!" said my Gouverneur Faulkner as
he again began to break through the leafy barriers of the low trees.
And in a very short space of time a man emerged from a little path
that led behind a tall cliff of the gray rocks. He was a very large
and a very fierce man and I might have had a fright of him if his blue
eyes had not held such a kindness and joy in them at the sight of my
Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Howdy, Bill," he said with no handshake or other form of a comrade's
greeting.
"Howdy, Jim," returned my Gouverneur Faulkner in a manner of the same
indifference but with also an expression in his face of delight at the
sight of his blood brother, that Mr. Jim Todd.
"That thar boy a shet-mouth?"
"He's Bob, and as hard as a nut," was the introduction I had from my
Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Then come on," with which command that wild man led us around the
tall cliff of gray rock, over which climbed a sweet vine of rosy
blossoming, which I now know to call a laurel, and we arrived in front
of a small and low hut that was built against the rocks. A clear,
small stream made a very noisy way past the door of the hut, but save
for its clamor all was silent.
"Where are the boys?" asked my Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Hid in the bushes. I've got the man tied back in the still room. I
'low he ain't no revenue but they 'low different. Come back and see if
you kin make out his gibberish."
"Come on, Robert," said my Gouverneur Faulkner to me as he followed
the wild Jim into the hut and back into a room that was as a cave cut
into the rock. And I, Robert Carruthers, followed him--to my death.
Seated upon a rude bench in that cave room, bound with a rope of great
size, disheveled and soiled, but with all of the nobility of his great
estate in his grave face, was my adored friend, Capitaine, the Count
de Lasselles! As we entered he rose beside the bench and in that
rising displayed a chain by which one of his feet was made fast to the
rock of the wall.
"Good morning, sir," said my Gouverneur Faulkner, as if greeting a
gentleman upon the street of that city of Hayesville.
"Also a good morning, sir," made reply my poor Capitaine, the Count de
Lasselles. And he stood with a fine and great courtesy waiting for my
Gouverneur Faulkner to state to him what his visit could portend, as
would he have done in his regimental room at Tour.
And as he stood, for that very long minute, there expired the last
moments of the life of Robert Carruthers. A stream of light fell from
the little window high in the rock upon his luckless head as he stood
as if frozen into a statue of great fear. And as he so stood, the eyes
of the Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, fell upon him and he started
forward as far as the length of the chain by which he was bound would
allow him and from there held out his hand to the frozen boy standing
in the stream of light from high heaven.
"My most beautiful lady Roberta, do I find that it is you who have
come to my rescue?" he questioned. "I lost you, _mon enfant_, in
that great New York."
"My beloved Capitaine, how is it that I find you thus?" I exclaimed as
I went to within his reach and allowed that he take my two hands in
his poor shackled ones and put warm kisses of greeting upon them.
And it was while I was shedding tears of pity for the imprisonment of
that great man of France in that mountain hut in America, as he kissed
my hands, that I raised my eyes to encounter a cold lightning as of a
flash on steel, from under the black brows of my Gouverneur Faulkner
of the State of Harpeth, that again froze the blood in my heart.
"You?" he asked of me in a voice that was of the same coldness and
sharpness as that steel, and his beautiful mouth was set into one
straight line as he flung into my face that one word.