REVELATIONS
The two skiffs, now paddled, now poled, glided along the green-bronze
waters of the woodland shores; the girls, sitting in the stern, were
silent, this partly from Shipman's suggestion. Minga had started her
customary chatter, but the lawyer laid his big hand on her shoulder.
She looked up to find him, finger on lips, dark eyes smiling into hers.
"If you want to see things," he whispered, "you'll have to be as dumb
as a silent policeman." Minga, remembering the night on South Mountain,
gave a slight involuntary shiver which the man noticed.
"Child!" exclaimed Shipman suddenly. He looked long and intently into
the little face; he must have seen something rare like the blue shell
of an eager little soul-bird, a little shell that must not be broken
too roughly. "Forgive me for everything," he said contritely; "you must
think me an awful sort of brute. Talk as much as you like, you rosebud.
I only meant, well, there are things to see if one is quiet, you know!"
Minga smiled back into his face. It was an uncertain little smile,
shorn of her usual gay sparkle and challenge or the repartee of what
was known as "the Minga line." Seeing this, the lawyer removed his hand
from her shoulder quickly; he reached for his pipe and tobacco and
lighted up for his abstemious afternoon smoke. Minga idly watched his
deliberate movements, the curious impression that he gave of inherent
remorseless power, of so physical and dynamic a kind fed by so enormous
a reservoir of understanding and self-control that the girl might well
feel in awe of it.
Paddle in hand, Shipman stood in the bow of the boat. He dug softly
into the deep flow of the water; they turned the slow curve of an
island, rounding afresh into long avenues of alders and elderberry and
toward the purple gloom of hanging swamp maples. Colter's boat, Sard
leaning eagerly forward, followed. Now and then the two men would halt
and point to some half distinguished object, a great gray hornet's
nest whorled like a ball of paper cinders in the thicket, a blue heron
standing motionless, a mud hen sitting heavily in a dead tree. The long
line of empty mussel shells was strung like big beads over the cushions
of soft moss; a muskrat swam across the stream; a chipmunk, sitting on
his haunches and munching like a cooky, a dark-brown mushroom--here
and there clusters of scarlet amanita, yellow fungus like sponges, the
delicate hanging Clintonia bells, or a thousand filmy patches of moss,
where little trumpets blew and coral lights glowed, and little banners
and transparencies marked the tiny march of plant progress.
Colter, steadily sculling his flat-bottomed craft, looked with evident
delight on these things--his gaunt form stood steadily on its long
legs, there was determined, practiced deliberation in his movements
and his were the eyes that first discovered this and that rarity. The
intense gaze of the man seemed to burn into the dim forest walls of
summer, his ears caught every subdued note, he peered like a sort of
necromancer at a spider web, at a snail lethargically climbing the mud
bank or a patch of sun dew, all its little gummy tentacles alert for
fly-capture.
Minga, turning once, heard him mutter something under his breath; she
stole a startled glance at him as her own boat sped along, and leaned
forward.
"Don't go too fast, we mustn't get too far ahead of Sard; I don't like
to leave her alone with that--that man."
Shipman raised his eyebrows. "Why," using her undertones, "isn't he the
chauffeur? He's all right, isn't he?"
Minga was mysterious; a curious womanly accent of responsibility
sat strangely on this little figure, with pretty legs in trim
knickerbockers and puttees, and dark head of bobbed hair.
"He's just plain queer," objected Minga. "You'd never guess that the
Judge and Miss Reely know nothing about him; that man, you see, is one
of Sard's pickups."
"Pickups." Shipman frowned, while he smiled.
Minga luxuriated in the irregularity of the thing. "Oh," she protested,
"you may think you know Sard, but you don't--nobody," said Minga
solemnly, "knows her as I do. Of course," the little bobbed head shook
wisely, "Sard wouldn't do anything--er--well, you know."
Shipman tried to control his humor. "Of course not," he echoed.
"Just the same," Minga was dramatic, "she goes around picking up queer
people and sick dogs and babies and spending her money on them and
getting them into hospitals and oh, awful things," said Minga, darkly.
"She knows girls that haven't husbands and well----" she gave a gesture
which though vague was eloquent.
The lawyer led her on. "So Miss Sard picked up this vagabond."
"Well, maybe not a vagabond," Minga looked over her shoulder warily,
"a tramp, sort of, and he might be crazy. I heard him," she went on
mysteriously, "use Latin words a moment ago and then look around, oh,
so strangely."
"Sure thing," Shipman, with equal solemnity, nodded; "anyone who uses
Latin or Greek these days is mad, of course; but it's a divine madness.
I use it myself. I'm a little mad, you know." He bent amused eyes on
his companion. "How did you know it was Latin?"
Minga looked back a little exultantly; the coquette in her never
very far away from the surface, rose to his teasing. "I know some,"
announced this young person with a toss; "for instance," Minga became
rather glib at the game they were playing, this was her "line," "I know
all the conjugations of the verb 'amo.'"
"Well done," said Shipman idly. He smiled perfunctorily, but the great
lawyer did not seem particularly anxious to take up this gay little
gauntlet; he was thoughtful, prodding the creek water rather viciously.
"You think Colter might be a college man in disguise," he said
abruptly, "wandering around studying sociological problems, no? That
sort of thing is a fad these days, isn't it?" Just then Sard hailed
them.
"I hear the Gertrude-bunch down-stream," she called in laughing
triumph. "We've beat them to it; that's Dunce's queer yelp. Now," said
the girl briskly, "suppose we get out on the shores of this big 'race'
ahead here and make a fire and have our supper and wait until they turn
up, then we can give them coffee, and we can all go down-stream in a
procession and slam home in the machines together."
Minga nodded approvingly; the youngster had been a little overawed
by the society of a man so much older than herself; now the prospect
of a few young howlers and slangers of her own set revived her. "The
very thing," she said. At the same time Minga realized that it would
impress Gertrude and Cinny to see her being propelled in a skiff by the
well-known barrister, Watts Shipman. All her funny little appreciations
of life were concentrated upon keeping Shipman apparently her slave
until these ladies should appear. They would think him awfully old, of
course, but then, he was a famous lawyer and "popular," or as Minga
construed him, "important," and that would be good for Gertrude and
Cinny. The small intriguer waited in a highly feminine manner for
Shipman to assist her out of the skiff.
Suddenly there was an exclamation from Colter, who had found a large
mussel hanging on a half-submerged tree trunk. He methodically opened
it with his knife and had just cut out from the jelly-like substance
within a smooth oval as big as a grain of barley. "A beauty," breathed
Colter, as he bent soberly down to the water to wash it. The group
watched him take a bit of chamois from his pocket and polish it;
somehow Sard was not surprised to see the long sensitive hand go into
another pocket and produce a magnifying glass. The girl, who had been
watching him gravely, felt a curious exultation that the other man
should see her protégé so detached and calm in his movements. She
looked curiously into his face, noting with a kind of pang, a wonder,
all the lines of sweetness and self-control, laid over with a strange
patience. She felt triumphant--suddenly Colter turned toward her, and
with a little bow, put in her hand the little misshapen pearl. "A shape
like folded light, embodied air," he murmured.
Sard stared. "Why, that is Emerson." Then wonderingly, "You read that
in my little book?"
He smiled. Colter's smile was pleasant, with a row of not too regular,
but very white teeth. "I used to know it by heart," he confessed; he
seemed to forget Shipman and Minga, standing there observing. Once more
the strange look came over his face, and he said rather eagerly, "For
a time it seemed to open a door, but I----" Suddenly the man turned
sharply, so sharply that the girl was startled. "Where was that?" he
demanded thickly. "When did it happen? What was it that made my head
cloud and the long illness? Who was I before that? Where was I then?"
With a furious blush he shook his head as though to shake off a fatal
spell; he turned to Shipman and Minga. "I--I beg your pardon; I
shouldn't have spoken. It comes over me like that; I forgot for the
moment."
Watts Shipman stood strangely quiet. The lawyer's look was that of a
man who himself gropes for a clue and yet is suspicious. "But, yes,"
he said quietly, not without a slight touch of patronage, "if there is
anything you want to straighten out, speak out, don't be afraid of us."
But Colter groaned. His look first of horror was altered to that of
great mental struggle. The hands clenching at his side, the fine face
blunted and torn by some doubt and fear; it was all too much for the
girl who had rescued him. Sard started toward him; she put out her hand
as to protect. "Hush!" she said, "you must not try to remember;" then,
soothingly, "try to keep your mind just where it is now. Here! With us!"
The man turned slowly toward her; he straightened up obediently,
looking from face to face, then all around the scene where they stood;
the clear "race" murmuring about them, the little sandy shore, the tea
baskets and shawls tumbled on the ground; he passed his hand over his
face and, half-groaning, a baffled expression as of a half-formed word
broke from his lips. "Did I frighten you?" he asked piteously. "I am
afraid I frightened you. I--I was----" He groaned, and it was a groan
like human tears.
Sard, who was trembling now in every limb, denied it stoutly, but Minga
looked resentful and suspicious. The older girl who had originally
guessed what was the matter with Colter, that complete forgetfulness
had swept his mind blank of vital things, felt her own sense of dismay.
That the man was not playing at this thing, that he had altogether lost
his sense of personal identity, she was sure, but back of that, what
lay back of that? Then with a hot shame she remembered the tenderness
that had come into her voice as she said, "Hush," to this man; as if
she had spoken to a child.
But now the voices down the river were coming closer. There was much
far-off shouting and singing in unfinished snatches of songs; the sound
of a ukulele and a mandolin played, the one with tripping assured
fingers, the other very much out of tune with clumsy effort to produce
harmonies. The staccato chatter and gabble of two girl voices sounded
oddly in the dense woods of swamp maple; now and then shrill laughter
or an artificial scream jarred on the ears of the up-stream party.
Minga, still absorbed in her search for possible pearls, hardly noticed
this, but Shipman, with a face as immovable as an Indian's, gave it
some inquiry.
"Who are in your brother's party?" he asked at last. "Our friend Dunce
of the repartee and--er--who else?"
"Oh, Cynthia Bradon," Minga returned, "and Gertrude, the girl we call
the 'road hog,' you know. She's about the most modern girl I know,"
said Minga with an air of congratulation; "nothing stops her--she's
sort of impulsive, you know, and yet crafty; it's quite a queer
combination."
Shipman thought it might be a very queer combination. "There's a
whopper, that mussel down there," he bared his hairy arm and reached
down for it. "Looks as if there might be a whole pearl necklace in
that."
But when they cut it open the pearl was too small to be of much
account, so they scooped about in the dark water for others. As they
worked, Minga poured out a good deal about Cynthia and Gertrude. The
lively scarlet-capped girl had forgotten how all the way down South
Mountain that night she had sworn to Dunstan that she hated Shipman
and had called him a murderer and a man who would for sheer joy commit
Terence O'Brien and any other fugitive to the electric chair for the
glee of watching him done to death. Now, on her knees, she turned her
sparkling blue eyes on the lawyer's dark face; they rested there like
flowers magnetized by the deep stream of his being.
"If you get a big pearl like Sard's, I'll love you--all my life," she
said softly. Minga was trying the little iridescent antennæ with which
a woman tests the toughness of a man's surface, but something genuine
stirred in her, and when the great lawyer turned to look more closely
into her face she had the grace to wince a little.
"That's an engagement ring you wear, isn't it?" Watts asked cheerfully.
"Some nice little cub spending his lunch money on flowers and candy for
you."
Minga tried to blush, but the time-honored suffusion somehow would
not work; the girl's own consciousness, her involuntary registry as
of something "wrong with the mechanism" did not escape the lawyer; he
threw back his head and the forest rang with his glee.
"No, that's something you've lost, you modern girls, you don't know
how to blush. It was a wonderful thing your mothers laid up just the
way they used to store up old wine, and it worked. Ye Gods! how it
worked! But you--a little bit too much soul-enamel, Mademoiselle, to
say nothing of these other things you put on your lovely little faces."
Minga bent her head; if she couldn't blush she could, at least,
simulate shyness, and girls who hope to be moving-picture actresses
know how to simulate most things; many of them are perfectly satisfied
with simulation for reality. Shipman went on teasing about the
engagement ring. "Tawny Troop," said he, "was a very good name, an
excellent name, something like a wandering singer, didn't Minga think,
or an acrobat; and did the good Tawny make enough money to support a
wife?"
"His father is a big motion picture producer," said Minga with dignity.
She became calm and explanatory, "and he dances my line of dancing. I
work up my line, you know, and so to keep him from the other girls I
am engaged to him; but we don't either of us want to make it public,"
said Minga; "we know too much of life," with a world-wearied air. "I
think one should be sure of a person, don't you? But Tawny is a good
dancer," and, with an indescribable complacence, "this is a rather nice
ring."
"I shall congratulate the son of the Producer," said Watts mockingly.
"Does Prince Tawny go so far as to plan to produce anything himself?
By Jove! Here's your big pearl, a hummer! Well, now," the lawyer was
triumphant, "I've made good, anyway."
But an older man attracted for a moment by a vivid little face always
makes the mistake of speaking to depths that do not exist behind that
face while he blunders on little vanities that do exist. Watts had
seemed too irreverent about the engagement. He had not treated Minga
as a valuable person to envy another man the possession of; this by
all the books and plays that Minga knew anything about, was the proper
way to treat an engaged girl--there must be envy from both men and
women, heart-burning and backbiting jealousies, else why be engaged?
As the lawyer practically cut the pearl out of its bed, washed it and
with a mock ceremonious bow handed it to her with the disrespectful
suggestion: "My wedding present," Minga tingled in a way that he had
made her tingle before. With a slight, bored gesture, the girl took the
tiny treasure, held it a moment in her hand, then with a sudden curl of
the lip, and an unlovely mocking in the eyes tossed it far from her,
back into the forest. Minga stood there smiling at the man who had
given it to her. She had a look of diablerie older than the history of
woman.
"Why, you little----" for a moment the dark brows beetled, then Shipman
laughed, while Minga stared insolently into his face. She glanced over
her shoulder.
"Oh, I wish we could have supper," she fretted. "I'm so fed up with
this place. Sard, have we got to stay here all night? It's getting
dark. Oh! I wish the Bunch would come along. I'm tired of old people!"
There was no doubt but that the Bunch were coming; the catcalls, the
yelps of laughter and frantic strumming of instruments came nearer and
nearer. Watts, sitting idly on the bank watching Sard and Colter set
out the supper, winced once or twice. There was something blatant and
raw in the voices of the girls that even at that distance suggested
squalid things. The great lawyer had heard maudlin women under many
circumstances. Watts, like many another professional man, knew that
there was nothing more awful in its debauchery and spiritual nakedness
than a civilized woman under drugs or loose emotion.
"What are these girls like?" he inquired sharply of Sard.
The girl for a moment did not answer; Minga giggled.
"Like Paprika and Chutney," she burst into a half-laugh, looking
meaningly at Sard.
"Sounds a good deal like one of Cinny's jags; now where would she get
anything----"
"Hush." The other girl's worried look stopped Minga. But the rebuke in
it seemed to nettle the restless little creature, who jumped to her
feet stamping her foot. "Oh, I'm half dead with this old place," said
Minga. "I'm cold, too. I'm going to explore the forest; want to come?"
looking over her shoulder at Shipman.
At his smiling negative, Minga pouted. "All right, then I'll go by
myself." She made as if to burst through the wall of swamp-maples,
looking tantalizingly back at the lawyer; but Colter, glancing up,
interfered.
"There are bogs around here," he warned, "quick-sands; one can't go
very far without trouble."
Minga, shaking her head, started forward, half laughing back at the two
men who with concern watched her. "Catch me if you can, anybody," she
called to them. "I'm the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I'm Marco Polo,
I'm going to explore, I tell you. Who follows?"
One of the most interesting things of the decade is that the coolest,
most blasé girl of the time will under the right combination of
circumstances play exactly the same game of sex that all her cave
ancestors played before her. Minga, the emancipated, the independent
and wilful, the haughty and undisciplined, was now courting a very
special thrill, the old cave-woman thrill of expectancy to be captured
and mastered. Modern women of maturer age realize that in asserting
their superiority in general biological ascent they are losing this
thrill. It is extremely edifying to study the devices by which they
seek to experience while they theoretically disclaim it; a sort of
eat-your-cake-and-have-it idea that must necessarily result in some
very queer psychoses.
The little scarlet figure, peering through the bushes, deliberately
grinned her challenge at Shipman; the tall, composed man, looking on
with appreciation, deliberately grinned back, but the more mature
grin was a little forced. Watts Shipman understood, he understood
very perfectly, he therefore did not pursue; it was Colter who with a
worried exclamation darted after the girl rapidly disappearing in the
swamp brush.
Sard, also standing up, suddenly noticed that it was growing toward
twilight.
She stood there looking so lovely, with her worried eyes, the fine toss
of her head, the lips parted, that Shipman instinctively drew near to
her. "I wish we had gone with Dunstan," said the girl half to herself.
Sard looked over to the lawyer. "You remember my brother?" she asked
simply. "It was he who took Minga home that night," blushing a little
in this new comradeship, to remember her own stiffness and aloofness
that night.
"You're very fond of him?" Watts asked.
"Yes," Sard sighed. "I wish I could steer him right, but," the girl
drew her brows together, "none of us seem able to help each other
much." She looked at the lawyer smiling. "Sometimes," she confessed, "I
worry."
"Of course you worry," said Watts softly. The lawyer liked being near
her. He felt her clear honesty pouring all over him. Soft, pellucid,
like the refreshment of clean water: "Of course you worry, but you will
get tired if we keep on standing here. Sit down; let me take care of
you."
The girl smiled; she very gladly let him take care of her. Sard,
every inch of her capable and alert, had yet the power of those
really powerful among women, that of letting a man show toward her
his own best, the thing bred in him by his muscular superiority, the
mother-taught sacred thing of his chivalry.
Watts, marveling at the grace of the girl, at her lovely calmness and
steadiness, spread out the shawls on the bank. He piled the cushions
back of her; he collected twigs and lighted a little fire. "It will be
a beacon for them to find their way back," he said. "I rather fancy
that little witch, Minga, will put your man through his paces; but he
seems resourceful."
"They will be back soon," agreed Sard dubiously.
The lawyer looked at her at last. "I don't care if they don't come back
too soon," he said in a curious voice. Shipman felt suddenly young, and
it was twilight and there were bird notes in the woods.
"Oh, but we must have supper and get back before Aunt Reely begins to
worry."
"But," he said, "this is the time to talk to you, the time I've been
waiting for." Then as he saw her little questioning glance, "It's been
on my mind to talk to you about Terence O'Brien. The trial comes off
next week. I have got to tell you, Miss Bogart, that his chances are
very slim. But let's not talk about that. What I really want is," said
Shipman slowly, his eyes fixed steadily on hers, "what I really want is
to have you tell me all about this mystery man of yours. Tell me," he
begged, "all about Colter!"