started. Every day's delay at Challis meant an abridgment of the
bridegroom's leave, and the wedding was now but a fortnight away. It
began to seem preposterous that he should go at all, and the colonel
was annoyed with himself for his enthusiasm over the plan in the first
place. Mrs. Bogardus's watchfulness of dates told the story of her
thoughts, but she said nothing.
“Mamsie is restless,” said Christine, putting an arm around her mother's
solid waist and giving her a tight little hug apropos of nothing. “I
believe it's another case of 'mail-time fever.' The colonel says it
comes on with Moya every afternoon about First Sergeant's call. But
Moya is cunning. She goes off and pretends she isn't listening for the
bugle.”
“'First Sergeant or Second,' it's all one to me,” said Mrs. Bogardus. “I
never know one call from another, except when the gun goes off.”
“Mamsie! 'When the gun goes off!' What a civilian way of talking. You
are not getting on at all with your military training. Now let me give
you some useful information. In two seconds the bugle will call the
first sergeant--of each company--to the adjutant's office, and there
he'll get the mail for his men. The orderly trumpeter will bring it to
the houses on the line, and the colonel's orderly--beautiful creature!
There he goes! How I wish we could take him home with us and have him
in our front hall. Fancy the feelings of the maids! And the rage on the
noble brow of Parkins--awful Parkins. I should like to give his pride a
bump.”
Mother and daughter were pacing the colonel's veranda, behind a partial
screen of rose vines--October vines fast shedding their leaves. Every
breeze shook a handful down, which the women's skirts swept with them as
they walked. Mrs. Bogardus turned and clasped Christine's arm above the
elbow; through the thin sleeve she could feel its cool roundness. It was
a soft, small, unmuscular arm, that had never borne its own burdens, to
say nothing of a share in the burdens of others.
“Get your jacket,” said the mother. “There is a chill in the air.”
“There is no chill in me,” laughed Christine. “You know, mamsie, you
aren't a girl. I should simply die in those awful things that you wear.
Did you ever know such a hot house as the colonel keeps!”
“The rooms are small, and the colonel is--impulsive,” Mrs. Bogardus
added with a smile.
“There is something very like him about his fire-making. I should know
by the way he puts on wood that he never would have “--Mrs. Bogardus
checked herself.
“A large bank account?” Christine supplied, with her quick wit, which
was not of a highly sensitive order.
“He has a large heart,” said her mother.
“And plenty of room for it, bless him! The slope of his chest is like
the roof of a house. The only time I envy Moya is when she lays her head
down on it and tries to meet her arms around him as if he were a tree,
and he strokes her hair as if his hand was a bough! If ever I marry a
soldier he shall be a colonel with a white mustache and a burnt-sienna
complexion, and a sword-belt that measures--what is the colonel's
waist-measure, do you suppose?”
Mrs. Bogardus listened to this nonsense with the smile of a silent
woman who has borne a child that can talk. Moya had often noticed how
uncritical she was of Christine's “unruly member.”
“It isn't polite to speak of waist-measures to middle-aged persons like
your mother and the colonel,” she said placidly. “You like it very much
out here?”
“Fascinating! Never had such a good time in my whole life.”
“And you like the West altogether? Would you like to live here?”
“Oh, if it came to living, I should want to be sure there was a way
out.”
“There generally is a way out of most things. But it costs something.”
Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost
oracular.
“Army people are sure of their way out,” said Christine, “and I guess
they find it costs something.”
“Why do they buy so many books, I wonder? If I moved as often as they
do, I'd have only paper covers and leave them behind.”
“You are not a reader, mummy. You're a business woman. You look at
everything from the practical side.”
“And if I didn't, who would?” Mrs. Bogardus spoke with earnestness. “We
can't all be dreamers like Paul or privileged persons like you. There
has to be one in every family to say the things no one likes to hear and
do the things nobody likes to do.”
“We are the rich repiners and you are the household drudge!” Christine
shouted, laughing at her own wit.
“Hush, hush!” her mother smiled. “Don't make so much noise.”
“I should like to know who's to be the drudge in Paul's privileged
family. It doesn't strike me it's going to be Moya. And Paul only
drudges for people he doesn't know.”
“Moya is a girl you can expect anything of. She is a wonderful mixture
of opposites. She has the Irish quickness, and yet she has learned to
obey. She has had the freedom and the discipline of these little lordly
army posts. She is one of the few girls of her age who does not measure
everything from her own point of view.”
“Is that a dig at me, ma'am?”
At that moment Moya came out upon the porch.
She was very striking with the high color and brilliant eyes that
mail-time fever breeds. Christine looked at her with freshly aroused
curiosity, moved by her mother's unwonted burst of praise. The faintest
tinge of jealousy made her feel naughty. As Moya went down the board
walk, the colonel's orderly came springing up the steps to meet her with
the mail-bag. He saluted and turned off at an angle down the embankment
not to present his back to the ladies.
“Did you see that! He never raised his eyes. They are like priests. You
can't make them look at you.” Moya looked at Christine in amazement.
The man himself might have heard her. It was not the first time
this privileged guest had rubbed against garrison customs in certain
directions hardly worth mentioning. Moya hesitated. Then she laughed
a little, and said: “Only a raw recruity would look at an officer's
daughter, or any lady of the line.”
“Oh, you horrid little aristocrat! Well, I look at them, when they are
as pretty as that one, and I forgive them if they look at me.”
Moya turned and hovered over the contents of the mail-bag. In the
exercise of one of her prerogatives, it was her habit to sort its
contents before delivering it at the official door.
“All, all for you!” she offered a huge packet of letters, smiling, to
Mrs. Bogardus. It was faced with one on top in Paul's handwriting. “All
but one,” she added, and proceeded to open her own much fatter one in
the same hand. She stood reading it in the hall.
Mrs. Bogardus presently followed and remained beside her. “Could I speak
to your father a moment?” she asked.
“Certainly, I will call him,” said Moya.
“Wait: I hear him now.” The study door opened and Colonel Middleton
joined them. Mrs. Bogardus leading the way into the sitting-room, the
colonel followed her, and Moya, not having been invited, lingered in the
hall.
“Well, have the hunters started yet?” the colonel inquired in his breezy
voice, which made you want to open the doors and windows to give it
room. “Be seated! Be seated! I hope you have got a long letter to read
me.”
Mrs. Bogardus stood reflecting. “The day this letter was mailed they got
off--only two days ago,” she said. “Could I reach them, Colonel, with a
telegram?”
“Two days ago,” the colonel considered. “They must have made Yankee Fork
by yesterday. Today they are deep in the woods. No; I should say a man
on horseback would be your surest telegram. Is it anything important?”
“Colonel, I wish we could call them back! They have gone off, it seems
to me, in a most crazy way--against the judgment of every one who knows.
The guide, this man whom they waited for, refused, it appears, to go
out again with another party so late in the fall. But the Bowens were
determined. They insisted on making arrangements with another man. Then,
when 'Packer John,' they call him, heard of this, he went to Paul and
urged him, if he could not prevent the others from going, to give up the
trip himself. The Bowens were very much annoyed at his interference,
and with Paul for listening to him. And Paul, rather than make things
unpleasant, gave in. You know how young men are! What silly grounds are
enough for the most serious decisions when it is a question of pride or
good faith. The Bowens had bought their outfit on Paul's assurance that
he would go. He felt he could not leave them in the lurch. On that, the
guide suddenly changed his mind and said he would go with them sooner
than see them fall into worse hands. They were, in a way, committed to
the other man, so they took _him_ along as cook--the whole thing done in
haste, you see, and unpleasant feelings all around. Do you call that a
good start for a pleasure trip?”
“It's very much the way with young troops when they start
out--everything wrong end foremost, everybody mad with everybody else. A
day in the saddle will set their little tempers all right.”
“That isn't the point,” Mrs. Bogardus persisted gloomily. As she spoke,
the two girls came into the room and stood listening.
“What is the point, then?” Christine demanded. “Moya has no news; all
those pages and pages, and nothing for anybody or about anybody!”
“'Such an intolerable deal of sack to such a poor pennyworth of bread,'”
the colonel quoted, smiling at Moya's bloated envelope.
“But what do you think?” Mrs. Bogardus recalled him. “Don't you think
it's a mistake all around?”
“Not at all, if they have a good man. This flat-footed fellow, John,
will take command, as he should. There is no danger in the woods at any
season unless the party gets rattled and goes to pieces for want of a
head.”
“Father!” exclaimed Moya. “You know there is danger. Often, things have
happened!”
“Why, what could happen?” asked Christine, with wide eyes.
“Many things very interesting could happen,” the colonel boasted
cheerfully. “That is the object of the trip. You want things to happen.
It is the emergency that makes the man--sifts him, and takes the chaff
out of him.”
“Take the chaff out of Banks Bowen,” Moya imprudently struck in, “and
what would you have left?” She had met Banks Bowen in New York.
“Tut, tut!” said the colonel. “Silence, or a good word for the
absent--same as the”--The colonel stopped short.
“You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!”
Christine's face turned red.
“Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, I
beg your pardon; this is only for argument.”
“I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are
chaff!” Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her
speech.
“You need not go fancying things, Moya,” she cried, in answer to a
quizzical look. “As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so
high!”
“You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady,
and not know them as Paul will, after a week in the woods with them.”
The colonel had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He was
considering, privately, whether he had not better send a special
messenger on the young men's trail. His assurances to the women left
a wide margin for personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside
from the lateness of the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-assorted
company for the woods. There was a wide margin also for suspense, as all
mail facilities ceased at Challis.
VIII
A HUNTER'S DIARY
Early in November, about a week before the hunters were expected home, a
packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed
by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the
party were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family
audience which did not include her father.
“To-day,” one of the first entries read, “we halt at Twelve-Mile Cabin,
the last roof we shall sleep under. There are pine-trees near the cabin
cut off fifteen feet above the ground, felled in winter, John tells us,
_at the level of the snow!_
“These cabins are all deserted now; the tide of prospecting has turned
another way. The great hills that crowd one another up against the sky
are so infested and overridden by this enormous forest-growth, and the
underbrush is so dense, it would be impossible for a 'tenderfoot' to
gain any clear idea of his direction. I should be a lost man the moment
I ventured out of call. Woodcraft must be a sixth sense which we lost
with the rest of our Eden birthright when we strayed from innocence,
when we ceased to sleep with one ear on the ground, and to spell our way
by the moss on tree-trunks. In these solitudes, as we call them,
ranks and clouds of witnesses rise up to prove us deaf and blind. Busy
couriers are passing every moment of the day; and we do not see, nor
hear, nor understand. We are the stocks and stones. Packer John is our
only wood-sharp;--yet the last half of the name doesn't altogether fit
him. He is a one-sided character, handicapped, I should say, by some
experience that has humbled and perplexed him. Two and two perhaps
refused to make four in his account with men, and he gave up the
proposition. And now he consorts with trees, and hunts to live, not
to kill. He has an impersonal, out-door odor about him, such as the
cleanest animals have. I would as soon eat out of his dry, hard, cool
hand, as from a chunk of pine-bark.
“It is amusing to see him with a certain member of the party who tries
to be fresh with him. He has a disconcerting eye when he fixes it on a
man, or turns it away from one who has said a coarse or a foolish thing.
“'The jungle is large,' he seems to say, 'and the cub he is small. Let
him think and be still!'”
“Who is this 'certain member' who tries to be 'fresh'?” Christine
inquired with perceptible warmth.
“The cook, perhaps,” said Moya prudently.
“The cook isn't a 'member'!--Well, can't you go on, Moya? Paul seems to
need a lot of editing.” Moya had paused and was glancing ahead, smiling
to herself constrainedly.
“Is there more disparagement of his comrades?” Christine persisted.
“Christine, be still!” Mrs. Bogardus interfered. “Moya ought to have the
first reading of her own letter. It's very good of her to let us hear it
at all.”
“Oh dear, there's no disparagement. Quite the contrary! I'll go on with
pleasure if you don't mind.” Moya read hurriedly, laughing through her
words:--
“'If you were here, (Ah, _if_ you were here!) You should lend me an
ear--One at the least Of a pair the prettiest'--which is, within a foot
or two, the rhythm of 'Wood Notes.' Of course you don't know it!”
“This is a gibe at me,” Moya explained, “because I don't read Emerson.
'It is the very measure of a marching chorus,' he goes on to say, 'where
the step is broken by rocks and tree-roots;'--and he is chanting it
to himself (to her it was in the original) as they go in single file
through these 'haughty solitudes, the twilight of the gods!'”
“'Haughty solitudes'!” Christine derided.
Mrs. Bogardus sighed with impatience, and Moya's face became set. “Well,
here he quotes again,” she haughtily resumed. “Anybody who is tired of
this can be excused. Emerson won't mind, and I'm sure Paul won't!” She
looked a mute apology to Paul's mother, who smiled and said, “Go on,
dear. I don't read Emerson either, but I like him when Paul reads him
for me.”
“Well, I warn you there is an awful lot of him here!” Moya's voice was a
trifle husky as she read on.
“Old as Jove, Old as Love'”
“I thought Love was young!”--Christine in a whisper aside.
“'Who of me Tells the pedigree? Only the mountains old, Only the waters
cold, Only the moon and stars, My coevals are.'”
Moya sighed, and sank into prose again. “There is a gaudy yellow moss
in these woods that flecks the straight and mournful tree-trunks like a
wandering glint of sunlight; and there is a crêpe-like black moss that
hangs funeral scarfs upon the boughs, as if there had been a death in
the forest, and the trees were in line for the burial procession. The
grating of our voices on this supreme silence reminds one of 'Why will
you still be talking, Monsieur Benedick?--nobody marks you.'
“There are silences, and again there are whole symphonies of sound. The
winds smites the tree-tops over our heads, a surf-like roar comes up
the slope, and the yellow pine-needles fall across the deepest darks as
motes sail down a sunbeam. One wearies of the constant perpendicular,
always these stiff, columnar lines, varied only by the melancholy
incline where some great pine-chieftain is leaning to his fall supported
in the arms of his comrades, or by the tragic prostration of the 'down
timber'--beautiful straight-cut English these woodsmen talk.
“Last evening John and I sat by the stove in the men's tent, while the
others were in the cabin playing penny-ante with the cook (a sodden
brute who toadies to the Bowens, and sulks with John because he objected
to our hiring the fellow--an objection which I sustained, hence his
logical spite includes me). John was melting pine gum and elk tallow
into a dressing for our boots. I took a mean advantage of him, his hands
being in the tallow and the tent-flap down, and tried on him a little
of--now, don't deride me!--'Wood Notes.' It is seldom one can get the
comment of a genuine woodsman on Nature according to the poets.'”
Moya read on perfunctorily, feeling that she was not carrying her
audience with her, and longing for the time when she could take her
letter away and have it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine,
in this sudden new freak of distrustfulness, would be sure to
misunderstand.
“'For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
Will be time enough to die.
Then will yet my Mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field;
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.'”
“That is beautiful,” Mrs. Bogardus murmured hastily. “Even I can
understand that.” Moya thanked her with a glance.
“And what did the infallible John say?” Christine inquired.
“John looked at me and smiled, as at a babbling infant”--
“Good for John!”
“Christine, be still!”
“John looked at me and smiled,” Moya repeated steadily. Nothing could
have stopped her now. She only hoped for some further scattering mention
of that “certain member” who had set them all at odds and spoiled what
should have been an hour's pure happiness. “'You'll get the pillow all
right,' he said. 'It might not be a green one, nor I wouldn't bank much
on the flowers; but you'll be tired enough to sleep without rocking
about the time you trust to Nature's tuckin' you in and puttin' victuals
in your mouth. I never _see_ nature till I came out here. I'd seen
pretty woods and views, that a young lady could take down with her
paints; but how are you going to paint that?'--he waved his tallow-stick
towards the night outside. 'Ears can't reach the bottom of that
stillness. That's creation before God ever thought of man. Long as I've
been in the woods, I never get over the feeling that there's _something
behind me_. If you go towards the trees, they come to meet you; if you
go backwards, they go back; but you can't sit down and sit still without
they'll come a-creeping up and creeping up, and crowding in'--
“He stirred his 'dope' awhile, and then he struck another note. 'I've
wintered alone in these mountains,' he said, 'and I've seen snowslides
pounce out of a clear sky--a puff and a flash and a roar; an' trees four
foot across snappin' like kindlin' wood--not because it hit 'em; only
the breath of it struck them; and maybe a man lying dead somewheres
under his cabin timbers. That's no mother's love-tap. Pillows and
flowers ain't in it. But it's good poetry,' he added condescendingly.
“I have not quoted him right, not being much of a snap-shot at dialect;
and his is an undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand and
Western ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in
his eye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses
his thoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body
informs his clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head,
his shoes grip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like
a cast after Rodin. They are repousséed by the hard bones and sinews
underneath. I can think of nothing but the clothing of Millet's peasants
to compare with this exterior of John's. He is himself a peasant of the
woods. He has not the predatory instincts. If he could have his way, not
a shot would be fired by any of us for the mere idle sport of killing.
Shooting these innocent, fearless creatures, who have not learned that
we are here for their destruction, is too like murder and treachery
combined. Hunger should be our only excuse. My forbearance, or weakness,
is a sort of unspoken bond between us. But I am a peasant, too, you
know. I do not come of the lordly, arms-bearing blood. I shoot at a live
mark always under protest; and when I fairly catch the look in the great
eye of a dying elk or black-tail, it knocks me out for that day's hunt.”
“Paul is perfectly happy!” Christine broke in. “He has got one of his
beloved People to grovel to. They can sleep in the same tent and eat
from the same plate, if you like. Why, it's better than the East Side!
He'll be blood brother to Packer John before they leave the woods.”
Moya blushed with anger.
“You have said enough on that subject, Christine.” Mrs. Bogardus bent
her dark, keen gaze upon her daughter's face. “Come”--she rose. “Come
with me!”
Christine sat still. “Come!” her mother repeated sternly. “Moya,”--in
a different voice,--“your letter was lovely. Shall you read it to your
father?”
“Hardly,” said Moya, flushing. “Father does not care for descriptions,
and the woods are an old story to him.”
Mrs. Bogardus placed her hands on the girl's shoulders and gave her one
of her infrequent, ceremonious kisses, which, like her finest smile, she
kept for occasions too nice for words.
IX
THE POWER OF WEAKNESS
Christine followed her mother to their room, and the two faced each
other a moment in pale silence.
Mrs. Bogardus spoke first. “What does this mean?”--her breath came
short, perhaps from climbing the stairs. She was a large woman.
“What does what mean? I don't understand you, mother.”
“Ah, child, don't repulse me! Twice you and Moya have nearly quarreled
about those men. Why were you so rude to her? Why did you behave so
about her letter?”
“Paul is so intolerant! And the airs he puts on! If he is my own brother
I must say he's an awful prig about other men.”
“We are not discussing Paul. That is not the question now. Have you
anything to tell me, Christine?”
“To tell you?--about what, mother?” Christine spoke lower.
“You know what I mean. Which of them is it? Is it Banks?--don't say it
is Banks!”
“Mother, how can I say anything when you begin like that?”
“Have you any idea what sort of a man Banks Bowen really is? His father
supports him entirely--six years now, ever since he left the law school.
He does nothing, never will do anything. He has no will or purpose in
life, except about trifles like this hunting-trip. As far as I can see
he is without common sense.”
Christine stood by the dressing-table pleating the cover-frilling with
her small fingers that were loaded with rings. She pinched the folds
hard and let them go. “Why did no one ever say these things before?”
“We don't say things about the sons of our friends, unless we are
compelled to. They were implied in every way possible. When have I asked
Banks Bowen to the house except when everybody was asked! I would never
in the world have come out in Mr. Borland's car if I had known the
Bowens were to be of the party.”
“That made no difference,” said Christine loftily.
“It was all settled before then, was it?”
“Have I said it was settled, mother? He asked me if I could ever care
for him; and I said that I did--a little. Why shouldn't I? He does what
I like a man to do. I don't enjoy people who have wills and purposes. It
may be very horrid of me, but I wouldn't be in Moya's place for worlds.”
“You poor child! You poor, unhappy child!”
“Why am I unhappy? Has Paul added so much to our income since he left
college?”
“Paul does not make money; neither does he selfishly waste it. He has a
conscience in his use of what he has.”
“I don't see what conscience has to do with it. When it is gone it's
gone.”