THE EXPEDITION
DEAR WATTS:
Pudge wants me to write and thank you for your letter. He was
fascinated with the arrow-heads and listened with his accustomed
solemnity to your remarks about "minding mother." An hour afterward
I found him putting cold cream, which I have expressly forbidden him
to touch, all over the kitten. Upon remonstrance he said blandly,
"You didn't tell me not to put cold cream on the kitten, Mother, and
she didn't say anything." It was all so funny and he was so naughty
afterward! It opened up strange thoughts of all the responsibilities I
shall have with him. I wondered if when Pudge grows up the first thing
he will hear will be all the sad and ugly stories that are told of his
father and if he will believe that they cast an irrevocable shadow on
his own life. I have known young fellows who went steadily to the bad
because their fathers were weak in some way. They thought they were
foredoomed!
I don't even know whether to go on letting him have his own name, his
father's name, now disgraced and tragic, but how can I stop things?
He is his father, he has his mouth, the beautiful, fateful mouth that
always made me feel as if I were a ship, wrecked on it, and he has his
hair and his voice and his reckless and beseeching ways. Oh, Watts,
you saved my husband, all there was to save, brought him back home;
though you couldn't save him from himself.
Thanks for the arrow-heads, Watts, and please write me when you like.
You seem to think I might not care to hear. I have known why it was
always Pudge you wrote to, but I have grown a little stronger, a
little less like a wounded animal that wants to bite the hand held out
to it. I hope your mountain top still holds the peace you first found
there.
It was this letter that Watts Shipman saved until after his dinner,
cooked by himself on a camp-fire out under the trees and served deftly
and frugally with a sort of hermit cleanliness and economy. His pipe
lit, the russet head of Friar Tuck on his knee, the man read and reread
the pages. The deep eyes with their curiously grave and faithful look
were puzzled, the long hands gripped once or twice on the paper, and
the mouth curled down on the pipe-stem with a look of bafflement and
grim disappointment.
"Pshaw!" Watts kicked away a twig. He changed his position on the log
upon which he sat. Putting the letter safely in an inside pocket,
he got out his knife and cut rather restlessly into a long smear of
yellow lichen on a tree. "It's rather queer that a woman can talk like
that, hold out her signal of distress and then not tell you she needs
you--it's a queer thing," said Watts solemnly to his dog. "It's a queer
thing, only a good woman can withhold her _self_; a bad woman can be
subtle and elusive, a funny little beast, plotting, dreaming greedy,
little clawing dreams and setting out her little poison traps for you,
but a good woman merely draws the veil and you--well, Tuck, all you can
do is to go home!"
Watts spoke the last words so loudly that Friar Tuck rose once. "Woof,
woof," he barked loudly into his master's face. Watts laughed. "Hush,
you baby, I know I said 'go home,' but I'm not going home, Tuck, no
sir, not to those comfortable, luxurious bachelor apartments, not until
I've roughed it a little longer and get the wisdom and rightness of the
woods into me. For we can't take another whole summer off like this,
boy, for a long time. We've got to make it last, you old blasé clubman."
The evening grew late. A very light breeze moved the tops of the
hemlocks and their pointed heads moved darkly like nodding cowls,
their brooding spell took the restlessness out of Shipman and he gazed
lovingly up into their fronded gloom. "Thank God for trees, the great
brotherhood of the woodland priests," he murmured. Watts filled his
pipe, gazing affectionately at those dark brothers, saying softly, "The
Greeks got you better than we do, the souls and conscience of you; they
trained their minds to regard you as some great principle connected
with man and woman and so it was easy for them to imagine you as gods
and goddesses. But we," grumbled the lawyer, "we with our superb logic
and 'practical' minds have crystallized you into just 'trees,' things
that we plant for our shade and cut down for our fuel and on which we
grow fruit. Friends," said the man softly, as he went to one tree trunk
and laid his arm around it, "walk with us like teachers; be one with
us, take us farther and farther into your counsels and your mysteries
and your reticences." Watts Shipman laughed a little, then a guttural
sound from Friar Tuck roused him from his revery.
"You did that before," pointing his pipe at the russet head and solemn
eyes. "You," accusingly, "did that before." Friar Tuck groveled and
whined. Watts, leaning over to pat him, laughed.
"Tuck, old chap, why do you cringe so? I've never hit you, nor as far
as I know has any other man. Why do you act so humbly? You know as much
as I do, the only difference is that you don't know you know, and I do;
but, after all, I only think I know, and that doesn't prove anything,
so cheer up, _mon vieux_;" but at a distinctly menacing growl from
the dog, Watts walked to the edge of the cliff to where his lamp was
placed, and stared into the darkness.
"Shut up, you old barometer, no one can be coming up the mountain
road at this hour, anyway not on this spur." The man peered at his
leather-cased wrist-watch. "After eleven o'clock, and no one uses that
mountain road at night; the driving's rotten and the walking's too
craggy and storm-bitten for anything but snakes and foxes. Unless----"
Watts thought of the mysterious ways of moving-picture campers. Going
to the edge of the height on which the organ builder's house stood,
he peered down to the road curving far underneath. "By all that's
American!" he breathed; "by the Great Original Flapper!"
For a long line of cars was ascending the steep mountain road, winding
in and out of the turns. The young drivers, leaning out, cheered to
each other, calling challenges, experimenting with different gears,
and bawling advice and congratulations on the climbing power of their
machines. The lateness of the hour seemed no curb to their haste
or their assurance, nor did the impassable road rouse a feeling of
insecurity. They were merely interested in the one car that should
reach the top first.
In Dunstan's roadster Minga was advocating a swift rush that should
pass the car ahead and gain the summit speedily. Sard and the young
lawyer tried by their own prudence to communicate that saving quality
to the others; here a driver shook his fist at some dare-devil
brother, who passed him close to the ledge, thereby badly crowding his
neighbors, who in turn swished into the road gutter until passed by one
or two speed cranks trying to beat each other.
When at last every car had reached the summit there were confident
giggles, little gasps from the girls and a catcall of triumph, a
harassed ejaculation from the masculine drivers.
As they parked the machines in an orderly row on the mountain top, the
great lights glared and the black forms crouched in powerful bulk on
the uneven roadway, while the short-skirted, jaunty figures alighted
with mingled sighs and stretches of relief.
"Moon's doing pretty well to-night," said Dunstan. He kissed his hand
to it, calling up to the sky, "All right, Mr. God, we like your little
old scout moon. Some sky-dynamo, what? Savez? We like it!"
They moved about, pawing with their feet, seeking out the path over the
mountain top. Their shadows were elongated in the moonlight, for them
there were adventure and mystery in the bushes all about; scents of
spearmints and bay and the curious smell of rocky plants came to them.
One lad sniffed the air. "I smell chewing-gum," he announced.
"I smell home brew stills," shouted another youth, as he leaped up
and grasped a branch like a young monkey. "Right-o, lead on to your
treasure cave and your fair women slaves."
"We got the fair women slaves right here," insisted another cub person;
"all we need now is a cave and the cavemen will proceed to register.
Look your prettiest, maidens. Put on your skins, your other skins, and
your necklaces."
The hilarity, rather artificial, was the organized hilarity of the
"young" groups of the day; like the cheers of the colleges, the
competitive "rah-rahs" of directed "sides," the "fun" was stimulated by
rather jaded fun-leaders; so, as they entered the wooded plateau where
the organ builder's house stood, they were fairly howling and bawling
with self-conscious youth and the sense of "whooping it up."
"Oh, Watts Shipman," shouted a Yale sophomore. "Oh, Watts Shipman, put
out your head."
"Oh, you criminal lawyer," howled another boy, "free the slaves, burn
the Bastille, burn the pastilles--Rah--Rah--Rah! We want Terence,
the great cut-throat of the Hudson," and so in the pale sanctity of
the moonlight the group stumbled on, plunging, exhilarated, a little
uncertain and undecided and becoming increasingly silly. At some not
very emphatic shrieks, giggles and rather over-done kissing sounds,
Sard turned sharply. The girl, hatless, a little glint in her eyes,
faced them. "I don't like this; you know it's--it's not sensible."
"Ah," they said, "ah, the lady doesn't like it."
"I think we ought to take this thing more seriously," Sard continued
with a little short breath of indignation, adding more gently, "We
don't really know what we're up against. I've heard that Watts Shipman
is terribly reserved. We don't want to antagonize him."
"I shan't antagonize him," came a fresh high voice. "I shall vamp him.
I shall twine around him like the ivy in the snow."
They all chuckled. Minga, clad in scarlet sweater and skirt, with the
orange silk handkerchief bound around her curls, suddenly slid into
a bright patch of moonlight where the trees were thinnest, making a
natural stage setting.
"I am terribly reserved," shrieked Minga in high falsetto. "I am the
primmest little prune in the county. But I am some little dancer and
don't you forget it, and I will dance his eyes out of his head. Ladies
and gents," announced Minga, "the Pocahontas Pep. Watch me!"
They stood there watching her prowling paces and archly bold postures.
The slender form bent almost backward, the eyes filled with imaginary
passion and adventure and fear. When she ended with a lovely fantastic
rush and stampede, it is quite certain that that grave Indian maiden,
the estimable Pocahontas, would have been as much fascinated as anyone
else. At the catcalls and whoops of applause, Sard again held up her
hand.
"Minga," she pleaded, "Dunce, please, all of you." Sard was very
positive.
The solemn lawyer youth in the background, silently adoring her,
brightened as her voice took on asperity and decision.
"This is really silly," she scolded; "it's--it's not the way to do
things. Didn't we come up here to try to save Terence O'Brien?" she
demanded.
"Sure," soothed one of the boys. "Right-o!" added one or two more.
"Well then," said Sard, "if I know a thing of Watts Shipman from what
I've heard Father say," she dropped her voice to persuasive entreaty.
"No, really, Minga! Dunce! we won't get a thing out of that man if we
act like this; he's very hard to deal with; he's cold and aloof and----"
"An altogether haughty and disagreeable person," said a deep voice.
The group turned quickly, and there in the moonlight, his hand on the
suspicious Friar Tuck's collar, stood the lawyer.
There was a moment's silence; a sort of shiver ran through the young
people. It was a sensation they quickly recognized, but to which they
could give no name; the voice and presence of spiritual poise, the
calm, inexorable deliberation of assured authority.
"How do you do, everybody?" said Watts quietly, as quietly as he stood
there waiting.
That "everybody," grave as it was, contained an informal welcome
that Minga was quick to recognize. She, who took hurdles as soon as
they were presented, now tried to jump the barrier of this stranger's
powerful personality. She stepped forward, a funny little figure in
scarlet, opposite to the tall khaki-clad repose of the man.
"How do you do, Mr. Shipman?" came the little voice in the moonlight.
Minga was glib at these numbers. "I've--we've heard so much about you,
awfully glad to meet you; you know my cousin, Mrs. Ledyard, she's told
me just lots about you."
Watts swept a swift glance at the girl.... "Yes," he took Minga in and
smiled, not unsympathetically, "I know Mrs. Ledyard well; I am glad to
meet a cousin of hers. It's Miss Gerould, isn't it? I am so glad to see
you."
"Well," Minga, even before his indulgence, felt an unaccountable
awkwardness; the erstwhile Pocahontas shifted from one foot to another
while she dug both hands in the patch pockets of her tennis skirt.
"I--we--er--just came up," she began; "we all sort of--thought we'd
like to know you."
Now the owl-eyed youth stepped forward with the grand manner of the
college debater.
"We come on behalf of Terence O'Brien," he began. At the superior
manner and the name, the great lawyer stiffened ever so imperceptibly,
but suddenly the owl-eyed also lost courage, so that it was Sard who
was forced to lucidify things.
"We hope we aren't intruding." The girl's voice was even and poised.
Watts looked at her with interest.
"We are in great distress and trouble about something and we believed
that you could--that you would help us."
"This is Judge Bogart's daughter," announced one of the boys with the
society drawl of the "important" introduction.
The lawyer, standing there, bowed. The moonlight disguised the look of
curiosity, of humor, in his eyes; he scanned this awed group in rather
fantastic outdoor get-up.
"It's a little late for calling, isn't it?" he suggested; then, seeing
a slight resentment on the part of the owl-eyed, whom he instantly
recognized as a struggler along his own difficult path of the law, he
relented.
"But delightful of you to climb way up here. Rather wicked roads, I'm
afraid; some able driving." With a hospitable gesture he led the way to
the clearing in front of his house. Few of the young people had been
up here before; there were looks of frank curiosity and expressions
of wonder that a modern clubman should choose to live in the organ
builder's old rookery.
"Well, it has its charm," explained Watts, his grim mouth was humorous,
"but I shan't ask you in; not while the moon's like this! Now, if you
fellows will drag out rugs and some cushions for the girls----" He was
busy receiving his midnight guests, as if all were quite usual.
And quite usual it seemed to the young night hawks. The boys, sitting
on stumps, rolled cigarettes or filled pipes; Minga and Gertrude also
lit cigarettes, but the former, at Sard's amused glance, tossed hers
away; the thing, still smouldering, dropped on some dried pine needles.
Shipman slowly turned from the owl-eyed and his look went directly to
the little wisp of smoke.
"Your cigarette is still burning," he gestured toward it, then
courteously, "I am fire warden here; won't you please put it out?"
It was as if he assumed that a modern girl would prefer to do this
herself, but Minga wilfully misunderstood him. The little scarlet
figure seated on the log resented the authority back of the deep kind
gaze bent upon her. It was a stinging new experience for Minga to be
reminded of a duty, an experience like a smart blow on the lithe little
body, only it had none of the brutality a blow must have; perhaps that
was why it stung. Minga hunched one shoulder; her eyes snapped as she
turned away.
"You can put it out yourself," was her pert remark.
There was a nervous giggle, then a sudden silence. The scene in the
moonlight was significant. The loafing, negligent forms of the smoking
youths, Sard standing vibrant, clear, but irresolute and waiting.
Dunstan, the charmed faun look in his eyes, prone at Minga's feet.
The culprit flushed and annoyed, the girls frankly open-mouthed and
uncomprehending. Again the owlish-eyed tried to take command.
"Allow me," with opera bouffe effect. He started toward the smoking
cigarette, but, bowing very slightly with an almost curt gesture of
refusal, Watts prevented him.
"I am sorry, but in the capacity of fire warden, it is my duty to see
that an ordinary camp regulation is obeyed." He turned to the provoked
girl and, with very slight but intentional irony, asked, "Do you know
the meaning of that word 'obey,' Miss Minga?"
Slowly the girl rose and stared into his face. Deciding to say
nothing, she gradually stiffened and a hard look came into her eyes.
"I--refuse--to--I," she tried for a lofty tone, but her voice was flat
and childish, "I--I am not accustomed----"
"Exactly," said Watts quietly. "The Mede and the Persian haven't been
successful with you in that, have they?--though they've let you become
so charming. You see," he smiled, "I've heard of you, Miss Minga."
At this the group writhed; one or two giggled a little uncertainly.
"Insulting," breathed one lad dramatically. He put his hand first into
one pocket and then the other; another cub person solemnly took out and
considered a revolver but their host took little notice.
"You see," said Watts, with an air of imparting information, "I believe
in obedience--of course, I shan't order you to put out the cigarette,
Miss Gerould, but obliged as I am to you all for this--er--interest,
yet after all you are my guest and, well, guests, even in America,
still like to consider the preferences of the host and my preference is
to observe forest laws."
There was an indeterminate silence. Loyalty to Minga, and their quick
moving picture sense of outrage, made them wish to murder this man,
who was so quiet and so direct. "Who," thought the owl-eyed, "was this
stranger to command them all, order them around?" Yet the thought
Watts had just expressed seemed to them rather obvious; they had come
uninvited into this man's camp. It seemed only decency to observe the
rules. As they stood uncomfortably irresolute, they saw with wide-open
eyes a strange thing happen.
Watts Shipman stood in front of their little friend in scarlet, not
touching her, only looking at her. Very slowly and calmly the man
motioned toward the cigarette smouldering on the turf; very quietly,
almost imperceptibly, he motioned the girl toward it. Minga rose like
one in a trance, her eyes fixed unwillingly on those of the lawyer.
Putting out one little canvas-shod foot, at first irresolutely, then
with sudden vehemence she rubbed the burning cigarette into the ground
till all saw that it was extinguished. The girl turned her face in the
moonlight. It was broken with rage. "_I hate you. I hate you_," she
breathed. Her teeth seemed to chatter with her sudden fury.
Watts held out both hands. "I'm sorry," he said simply, "but I think
you know that I have done right."
The group of youngsters stood silent and amazed in the moonlight. They
had beheld a thing as rare in America as lions and tigers; they had
witnessed the power of just, quiet and inexorable spiritual authority,
compelling obedience. Minga, looking around for sympathy, read no
answering rebellion in their eyes. With a strange, an almost animal
cry, the girl darted over to Dunstan Bogart. "Oh, Dunce," she choked,
almost screaming, "get me away from here--get me away, I tell you!"
She turned and dashed out of the circle into the rough mountain road,
where they saw her stumbling like a driven thing; Dunstan Bogart,
without an instant's hesitation, following her. The boy's eyes were
glittering, his head held high in a sort of pride of championship. In
a moment their car, tightly braked, was edging cautiously down the
rock-hewn road.
When at last they reached the levels, the boy suddenly reaching over,
put his hand on his companion's, who sat rigid, immovable beside him.
Minga looked at him fiercely a second time, with eyes that were hot
with tears; she sobbed, "Oh, I'm _wild_." When they pulled up at the
Bogarts' garage she drew a long, shuddering breath, and her champion,
staring amazedly at her, saw her face drenched with angry crying.
"Pshaw!" said Dunstan. "What do you care--that old granny on the
mountain top! Why should you care?"
"I wish I was home," said Minga, fiercely. "Oh, I wish I was home."
The sheltering tenderness of the Mede and Persian would have been very
grateful just then to their little daughter.
"Minga," said Dunce earnestly, "I could have brained that brute; so
could the other chaps. What business had he to--- He'll get his yet."
"I hate him, I hate him," repeated the girl viciously. She twisted her
handkerchief in her hands and her eyes grew wide with something now
unaccountable. While she fought for self-possession, the boy beside
her, with a tenderness he hardly understood, stroked the soft, curly
head; he uttered clumsy words of comfort.
"Any man," said Dunstan, "any man who would do such a thing is a pretty
low sort of cur."
"He isn't just a cur," objected Minga miserably; "a cur could--couldn't
make me f-feel like this."
"Well, he's a comic supplement,"--Dunce snapped his teeth viciously,
"he's a--an Egyptian obelisk," raged the boy, "and I'd like to cut some
more hieroglyphics on him."
So the two sat in the little roadster, arrested in their impulsive
pampered lives by one of the greatest laws that has ever been laid on
humanity, the Law of Obedience, incoherent in their inner warrings of
hurt pride, they tried to sustain each other. Dunstan's awkward arm
went once around Minga's little red-clad figure; he strove in a callow
way to be tender, but only for a moment.
For a tempestuous Minga stood up straight in the car.
"For Heaven's sa-sake," she demanded with a slight sob, "For Heaven's
sake,"--gulp--"what do you think this is, Dunce Bogart, one of
those petting parties? Do you think I'm a park lady or one of those
Sunday-school picnic vamps?"
Dunce looked sheepishly determined. "You remember what I said that
first night," he said solemnly, "that I'd kiss you again--and
better--that's what you'll--you'll feel, some day."
To her disdainful silence he went on, "Well, I haven't yet, but I'm
going to; you wait." He wagged his head.
But there was a little distressed quiver in her voice, and the
essential manhood in Dunstan answered it with gentleness. He himself
rose and the two climbed soberly down out of the car. Through the great
trees they saw the cathedral moonlight still silvering all the world
and the sleep and quiet, the majesty of the night, touched them. They
saw depths of life that they had never fathomed; depths that saddened
and frightened them. Together they softly closed the garage doors,
together they entered the dark house and crept slowly up-stairs.
"Good-night, Minga," said Dunstan softly. "Do you care that--that I was
there----" The boy looked solemnly at her.
The girl, pausing at the door of her room, lifted her head and looked
at him. "You were the only decent person on the whole trip," she said
softly. She put her hand in his; it was cold and little. Dunstan,
wondering, felt it tremble.
When a boy goes to bed remembering a girl's trembling hand does he ever
ask himself who made that hand tremble, or does he always feel sure
that it was he who stirred the young life to quivering?