At breakfast next day, Rose came in late.
“What, overslept yourself?” said her father, as she went the round of
the table with her morning kisses.
“Yes; I couldn’t get to sleep.”
“And what kept you awake?” said Miss Anne, who still, to the surprise of
all, appeared almost daily at the morning meal. “A penny for your
thoughts.”
“I was guessing a riddle; but I took it into my sleep unanswered.”
“A good many riddles have been answered in sleep,” said Miss Anne. “Was
yours?”
“No. Oh, no, Master Ned; I shall not tell it.”
“That’s the hardest riddle ever was,” cried the boy. “I have to guess
what the riddle is, and then what the answer is.”
“You will never, never know.”
“May we ask twenty questions about it?” said Dick. “Animal, vegetable,
or mineral?”
“I should be puzzled. To what kingdom do morals belong?”
“Why, who ever heard of mineral or vegetable morals?”
“The last might admit of illustration,” said Miss Anne; and she began to
consider within herself the people she knew who had what she called
vegetable morals.
“Is there a man in your riddle?” cried Jack.
“A Boss-town man,” said Dick, with a grin.
“Pinch him, Jack,” said Rose.
“Oh!” cried Dick, responsive to the promptly applied punishment, and
making a wry face. “You would be awfully good at a Jersey courtship,
Rose, especially if you got Jack to help.”
“A good friend at a pinch,” said Jack. And so these foolish people
rattled on, and by and by Mrs. Lyndsay said:
“Rose, you have not told us anything about Mrs. Maybrook and those poor
Colketts. I did not ask you last night, you were so sleepy.”
“Don’t ask me now,” said Rose. “I never saw such a horrible creature as
that woman.”
“But her child is dead!” said Mrs. Lyndsay, with gentle inconsequence.
“I think her altogether hateful,” insisted Rose.
“Altogether hateful?” cried Anne. “I like these complete natures. It
must simplify things in life so satisfactorily. Amiability would become
so useless an effort. To be altogether and hopelessly aside from the
possibilities of affection or respect might save a deal of moral
exertion.”
“I don’t think I understand,” said Mrs. Lyndsay; “or, if I do, I am very
sure that it isn’t a nice thing to say. “Wouldn’t it be as simple and
better to be altogether lovable?”
“No, no,” cried Anne; “you have tried that, and does it really pay,
dear?” Margaret was a trifle uncertain as to the compliment, and Anne,
much delighted at her game of what she called mental cat’s-cradle, was
about to go on, when Pierre came in.
“Ah, here is the mail,” said Lyndsay, and emptied out the bag on a
side-table.
“I have been yearning for a newspaper,” said Anne.
“Not I,” cried her brother, as he walked around the table distributing
the letters. “Ah,” he said, “my friend North. He was to have joined us
with his wife next week, Anne; but Clayborne is dead. You will all be
sorry to hear that. North says—it is, as usual, interesting. Shall I
read it?”
“Oh, certainly, Archie,—all of it. I am very sorry. It will be a great
loss to Dr. North.”
“And to our too small world of letters,” added Lyndsay.
“He says, ‘We—that is, Vincent and I—had spent two hours with our old
friend in that great book-clad room we all know. We came away talking of
his vast knowledge of medieval men and things. I had chanced to say I
wondered how a gentleman in the fifteenth century spent a day, and he
had at once told it all in curious detail—as to hours, dress, diet, and
occupations. I left Vincent and went back for a book I had meant to
borrow. When I entered, Clayborne was seated as usual with a little book
in his hand. As he did not stir, I went up to him. The book was kept
open by his palm. I stooped over him and saw that the book was Fulke
Greville’s on Democracy. He was dead. He had noiselessly gone out,
without stir of a finger. He must have been receiving ideas, dealing
with them, and then—’ See, Margaret, this is his symbol of death. ‘I
suppose, dear Lyndsay, you will think it strange that I sat still a
half-hour beside my dead friend. I never felt the other world so close;
it seemed within touch. At last—as the great frame began to stiffen—the
book fell. I took it, marked the place, and put it in my pocket.’
“The rest,” said Lyndsay, “is of less interest.”
“A happy exit,” said Anne.
“I cannot think that,” returned Margaret. “I should want to know that I
was dying.”
“One rarely does,” said her husband. “You get muddled, and say and do
foolish and ill-bred things. I sympathize with a friend of mine who gave
orders that he was to be left to die alone.”
“How horrible! How unnatural!”
“No, no,” cried Anne; “it is you who are ‘un-natured.’ But imagine dying
with such a dull book in hand! I was wondering what book I should want
to have last seen on earth.”
“I can think of but one, Anne.”
“Oh, that is not one book. Why call it a book? It is the books of many
men. Besides,—and this is terrible, Margaret,—I should like it to have
been some very earthsome book,—I had to coin an adjective,—and I should
like it to be like Ned’s friend—several.”
Margaret was critically silent. All this was in a way unpleasant to her,
as the unusual is always to some people.
“I do not think,” said Lyndsay, “I know with what thoughts I should like
to go hand in hand out of life. He was a fine, irritable old fellow. The
critics won’t bother him now.”
“Who can tell? There may be archangelic critics, for all we know,”
returned Anne. “However, perhaps one won’t mind it. You know what Hafiz
says: ‘Happy are the dead, for they shall inherit the kingdom of
indifference.’”
“Anne! Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Lyndsay.
“Between papa’s Aurelius and Aunt Anne’s Persian poets,” said Rose, in
haste to intervene, “the fairy-land of bewilderment is never far away.”
“I have the wicked worldliness, brother, to want to know how Mr.
Clayborne left his money. Wasn’t he rich?”
“Yes. Wait a moment. He divided it, North says, between him—that is
North, dear; I am glad of that; it will be in wise hands—and, really,
that queer creature, St. Clair; but he was clever enough to put his
share in trust.”
“I am very glad. That too delightful man!” exclaimed Rose. “Do you
remember, Aunt Anne, the morning we spent with him at the Louvre? It was
like walking about with some Greek sculptor. He seemed to be away in
Athens while he talked.”
“It was certainly interesting,” said her aunt. “A trifle naturalistic at
times, I thought.”
“Was he? I don’t know. We used to wonder, mama, if he ever really cared
for Alice Leigh. After that morning I made up my mind he never did. He
spent ten minutes comparing her head and neck to that of the Diana.”
“What a feminine test!” said Lyndsay. “If a man were to tell you that
you looked like the Venus of Melos, Rose, would you say, ‘No, sir; you
can’t care for me. It is impossible. I shall always,’ etc., etc.—the
usual formula?”
“You are too bad, Pardy! My convictions are unshaken. Mr. St. Clair told
me; he did not tell her. If he had told her, I know he would have said
it in that soft, convinced way. She would have liked it.”
“I see,” said Lyndsay; “it becomes clearer.”
“Why do men sneer at him? I think him—well, I think him indescribably
attractive. The word ‘fascinating’ would answer. And I am sorry for poor
Mrs. North; oh, I am! Fascinating—yes, that is what _I_ should call him,
and oddly unconventional.”
“I think you young folks are too apt to use that word ‘fascinating,’”
said her mother. “I have no liking for these men who can fascinate, and
can’t hold fast to the affections of any one.”
At this Anne burst into inextinguishable laughter, and, with one hand
pressed on the aching side which was so apt to check her wilder mirth,
she held out the other to the astonished Mrs. Lyndsay, exclaiming:
“A forfeit—a pun from Margaret. Five cents—ten cents; a forfeit!”
“And what did I say?”
“Oh!” cried Rose.—“the dear mama! She said—she said a man who could
fascinate and not hold on to one. Oh, mama, how could you?”
“But I didn’t. I never meant such a thing.”
“Yes! yes!” they cried; and, laughing, got up from table amidst
continued protests from the innocent punster.
Rose followed her father on to the porch.
“Mrs. Maybrook will be over at ten. She wants to see you. I told her you
would not fish to-day.”
“What is it she wants?”
“I do not know. Something serious, I fancy.”
“No new trouble for her, I hope. By the way, old Polycarp’s bowman is
sick to-day and cannot go with you. Anne, for a wonder, wishes to go on
the water. Ned shall take Pierre. Not to disappoint you, I sent Polycarp
early up to the clearings to get a bowman. He will be back shortly. Good
luck to you!” And he went in to his letters, while Rose arranged her
fishing-basket, put in it a couple of books, and sat down to look over
the bright assortment of feathered lures in her father’s fly-book. Now
and then she glanced up the river, but no boat appeared.
Meanwhile Mrs. Maybrook came, and went. Rose heard her father say to
her, as she went out:
“No; it must not be left in doubt.” He was of opinion that it might mean
little; but it might, on the other hand, mean much. Many are tempted,
and few fall. The idea of crime on this quiet river seemed almost absurd
to him. He added, “I shall mention it, you may feel sure of that, Mrs.
Maybrook. A Lady Macbeth in business up here is queer enough.”
“I certainly do think he ought to be told,” said Dorothy.
These bits of talk much puzzled Rose. As to Dorothy, she lingered a
while to chat with Anne, who sat with her hands in her lap in that
entire idleness which more than any other thing on earth exasperated
Margaret Lyndsay. Below, on the beach, Ned was preparing, a little
troubled because the other boys were not to go with him, while they,
quite reconciled to the decree of parental fate, were gaily launching
their canoe, and singing, as they poled up-stream:
“I would not gi’e my bonny Rose,
My bonny Rose-a-Lyndsaye,
For all the wealth the ocean knows,
Or the wale of the lands of Lyndsaye.”
Then Rose waved her handkerchief, and, much disappointed, again took her
field-glass and still saw no canoe. At last Mrs. Lyndsay came out, and
they sat in the pleasant sunshine, the mother sewing with even
constancy, which as seriously annoyed Anne as her own absence of all
manual employ did the little mother.
Very soon Anne became engaged in her usual amusement of recklessly
tangling some one in the toils of statements, arguments, and opinions in
which she herself had no serious belief; since, I should add, this
bright, humorous, and strangely learned creature was, under all, a woman
of strong views and deliberately won religious beliefs.
When Rose, distracted from her regrets at the loss of the forenoon
fishing, began to hear the talk, Anne had just said:
“I don’t see how the world could go on at all without fibs.”
Upon which Mrs. Lyndsay, despite years of acquaintance with her
sister-in-law, pricked her finger and dropped her thimble, and took to
her fan.
“You see, there is no commandment against it, Margaret.”
“But, Anne, ‘Thou shalt not hear false witness,’” said Mrs. Lyndsay.
“But suppose I tell a harmless fib about myself, or praise some one I
should like to—to slap?”
“It’s all false witness, I reckon,” said Dorothy. “If I ain’t my own
neighbor, I’d like to know who is?”
Anne smiled. That this fly was not easily meshed in her sophistical web
only excited the spider.
“It would be a horrid addition to one’s responsibilities to be one’s own
neighbor. I should move away. After all, Margaret, isn’t the chief use
of habitual truthfulness to enable one at need to lie with useful
probability of being believed?”
By this time Mrs. Lyndsay was nearly past the possibility of
remonstrance. She let fall the work she had resumed, and, rocking
steadily, began to fan herself with deliberate slowness. A little she
suspected this baited snare; but not to seize it was beyond her power of
self-control.
“I am thankful my boys are not here. You will say it is a jest. Whether
it is a jest or not, it is equally the kind of thing which should not be
said—ever,” and here she shut the fan with decision, as if that also
closed the argument.
“I was thinking I’m rather on Miss Anne’s side,” said Dorothy. “There’s
a heap of righteousness in some lies. Now, if I hadn’t been a dreadful
truth-speaking woman a good many years, my Hiram wouldn’t believe me
now; and the fact is I just stuff that man full of lies nowadays. I just
chuck them around like you feed chickens. I tell him he looks better
every day, and how he is getting stronger. Miss Anne, I shouldn’t wonder
a bit if the Lord loved a right cheerful liar.”
“Good gracious!” said Margaret Lyndsay. “Dorothy, how can a good woman
like you say such things?”
“I can. And he’s a-failing before my very eyes,” she added, upon which
she became silent. A tear or two dropped down her cheeks. “Now, wouldn’t
you lie, Mrs. Lyndsay, if you was me?”
Anne looked up with interest as to what the answer might be.
“I might; I would,” said Margaret. “I am afraid I should.” Then she put
a sympathetic hand on her friend’s knee, while Anne looked grave, and
Rose watched Dorothy, with instant pity in her heart.
But this was not Dorothy’s common way.
“My lands! I’ve been making a fool of myself!” She had the aversion of
the strong to the alms of sympathy. As she spoke she rose. “Come over
and see me when you feel right good, Miss Anne. I do love a talk—and my
roses! I’ve got a lot of them to blooming this year, and if that isn’t
enough to make a woman happy, what is?”
With this she said good-by and went down to the beach. Anne watched with
envy, in which was no unkindliness, the vigor with which the dugout shot
forth from the shore. “A fine nature, that. It does one good to talk to
her. Example is a strange medicine. It is hard to analyze its value.
Because she endures with patience, I may. Yes; my helps are larger.”
As Mrs. Maybrook walked up to her house she thought over, as was the
habit of her lonely life, the talk she had had with Mr. Lyndsay and its
occasion. In her younger days of wandering, Hiram and she had lived long
amidst rough people in the West, among miners and loose ruffians of all
degrees of wickedness. Thus the idea of crime was not so unfamiliar as
to strike her as it did Lyndsay. She had seen men shot, and had been
where murder and plunder were common. She had overheard a half-evolved
scheme of villainy, one to be easily thwarted; nor, knowing, as she did,
Colkett and his wife, did it greatly amaze her. Still, it was rare to
hear of crime on the river. She had found more or less explanation of
this wickedness in what she remembered of the Colketts, and had said in
explanation to Mr. Lyndsay:
“She was a right fine-looking woman when she married Joe Colkett; but
she never was less than bad. She’s about the only one I ever came across
that would give her man—that is, her first man—drink, and buy it for
him, too, till she poisoned him. When the children came, and two were
idiots, like drunkards’ brats are, as every one knows, she put it all on
her first man—Fairlamb was his name. At last she was left with them, and
nothing to do but get another man. She’d have married ’most any one to
keep those children. That’s the only good about her; but the funny thing
is the way that stump of a fellow does love her. He does, though!”
“A queer story!” said Lyndsay.
Now, as she walked homeward, she said to herself, “But who on earth was
that Lady Macbeth Mr. Lyndsay talked about? It must be a book. I forgot
to ask. Think I’d like to read it. I’ll ask Miss Anne. The way a woman
p’ints a man is the thing. Guess I’ve always p’inted Hiram straight,
thank the Lord! I wonder if he’s seen about mending that scythe?”
Meanwhile, by noon, came lazily back Polycarp and the canoe, without a
bowman. Lyndsay was vexed. There had been no one at the clearings who
could be had. Pierre, when he came in, must go down with the mail. Said
Lyndsay:
“Go back at once. Stop at the Island Camp. There seems to be a lot of
men about there. I saw four canoes on the shore. The lumbermen are
driving on that reach. Some one said a photographer was camped there. He
can’t want both of his men. Don’t ask the gentlemen for a man; I don’t
know them. Now, mind what I say. Find somebody; I’ll pay him a dollar
for his half-day, but don’t come back without a bowman.”
“It’s a great thing the way you p’int a man, papa,” said Rose. “Mrs.
Maybrook has the trick of it.”
“He’ll find some one now. You had better fish the rock stretch, a mile
above the Island Camp. The Indian knows, and no one has cast a fly there
yet. Be careful not to get on Mr. Carington’s water. Watch Polycarp, or
he’ll let you fish down to the bay. They are all born poachers, these
fellows.”
Polycarp said “Yes,” and no more, and poled doggedly away up the river,
not over well pleased. At the camp he beached his canoe. The
photographer had gone. The lumbermen could none of them get leave; and
the Indian, pleased at the prospect of a lazy half-day with his pipe,
was on his way back to his canoe, when the tent-fly of the larger canvas
home was parted, and he heard:
“Halloa! Want anything?”
“Want man for bow to pole down at Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay he goin’
a-fishin’, and my man sick—hurt leg. No much good.”
“Well, ask the lumbermen.”
“No make any use.” At this appeared a second man, also, like the first,
in knickerbockers. He wore a glass on one eye, and looked Polycarp over
curiously. Then he went back, and lay down with a novel and a pipe.
“Hold on!” said Carington. “Take one of our men; Mr. Ellett isn’t going
to fish to-day.” Then his face lit up with a quick look of merriment.
“What fun! I’ll go myself!”
“You wouldn’t do that? I wouldn’t do that!” said a voice from the tent.
Now, opposition was to this young man like fuel to fire.
“Why not?” he said.
“Might be awkward.”
“Oh, you be hanged! Look here, my man, what’s your name?”
“Polycarp.”
“Well, you antique saint, I mean to go down with you and pole for your
Mr.—what’s his name? oh, Lyndsay, is it? I can pole. Don’t be afraid.
Here’s a dollar if you don’t let on,—tell, I mean.”
The Indian grinned.
“This is a spree, Polyglot—Poly-carp—Poly-salmon, or whatever your
multitudinous fishy name is. Do you know what a spree is?”
“Plenty heap whisky,” said the Indian.
“Well, there are varieties. Can you hold your tongue?”
“Yes—can hold tongue.”
“You can fib a bit?”
“Heap much.”
“Then remember I am one of the men up here, no matter who.”
“Well, of all the absurd things!” said the mentor within the tent.
“By St. Botolph, as they say in Boston, I need a little absurdity to
make a decent average after a fortnight with you, you confounded old
conventional _et cætera_.” And, talking or laughing, he presently
emerged in pretty well soiled velveteens, a dingy jacket, slouched felt
hat, and his trousers stuffed in his long boots.
“Are you really going?” said Ellett.
“I am. Come along, Polycarp. I fancy I’m dressed in character. What fun!
He will want to pay me,” and he whistled as he pushed the bow out into
the stream and sat down to paddle.
Meanwhile Mr. Oliver Ellett considered his vanishing friend from afar
with mingled feelings of dismay and admiration. “That is a very
remarkable man. I couldn’t possibly have done that. I think there are
several brief insanities besides anger.” Then, as if surprised at his
own cleverness, he added, “I wish Carington had heard that. Confound
it!” and he smote an army of unseen midges who had taken advantage of
his abstraction to prey on the ruddy cheeks, which, with a slight
tendency to stoutness of girth, gave him a look of youthfulness he much
detested.
“What was it Fred said last night about remorse and midges? Confound it,
I forget. Blank the things! Get a smudge, Steve,—two smudges!” And he
retired again to the tent and his novel.
He had been drowsily considering the fates of a despairing young woman
for a half-hour or more, when he was aware of an unfamiliar voice
outside of the tent. Steve, the guide, an honest, good-tempered Gaspé
man, was heard to say:
“Mr. Carington—he went away a bit back. I didn’t see him, sir. I was
getting cedar bark for smudges.”
“Where did he go?”
“Michelle, where is Mr. Carington? Where did he go?”
‘The bowman, fully prepared, replied at once:
“I don’t rightly know.”
At this Mr. Ellett bounded from his mattress, and appeared without. The
voice he heard first was unmistakably that of a man of his own world.
“Beg pardon,” he said; “I was dozing. I am Mr. Oliver Ellett. Won’t you
come in?”
“No, thank you. I have but a few minutes. I am Mr. Lyndsay, from the
Cliff Camp. I came to see Mr. Carington. Is he here?”
“No. He has gone off somewhere.”
“On the river?”
“I don’t think he is fishing. Perhaps, if you were to come in and wait a
little, he might turn up.”
But this Lyndsay declined. He had run up with Pierre’s canoe, and must
return to get rid of some yet unanswered letters and be in time to fish
the lower pool.
At last, after a little chat about the salmon, he said: “Are you not
Oliver Ellett’s son, of Boston? I think it must be so: the resemblance
is strong. We were classmates at Harvard.”
“Yes,” said Ellett; “he was my father.”
“He was stroke-oar in my boat. If you are as good a fellow—oh, if you
are half as good a fellow—we shall be glad to see you and your friend at
the Cliff Camp.”
“It will give us great pleasure; and what shall I say to Carington?”
“That can wait. By the way, I sent that Indian of mine to the lumbermen
to get a bowman for half a day. I trust he did not trouble you. I gave
him strict orders. I saw he had been successful. We passed him as I came
up.”
“Yes, he got some one,” said Ellett. “It was not one of our men.” And
so, with further talk of flies and fish, he carefully conducted Mr.
Lyndsay to his canoe, and was relieved to hear him tell Pierre to land
him on the far shore.
“One feels the need to use one’s legs here. Meet me at the timber brow,”
he said to Pierre. “I shall walk fast. Good-by, Mr. Ellett, and come
soon to see us.”
Ellett stood a moment, and then went back to his tent. “I wonder whom he
is to pole for? It isn’t Mr. Lyndsay. Christopher Columbus! What a lot
of mischief you are responsible for! No wonder Fred says you have pretty
near as much sin to your count as that fair explorer who discovered the
new world of wickedness. By George! If it should be the woman! He stared
at her, Sunday, through his glass as they went by, until I told him it
wasn’t decent. He said it did bring her pretty close. Well, I never
heard of falling in love through a telescope. Now, that wasn’t a bad
idea at all.” He had no high estimate of himself, and was occasionally
overcome at his own cleverness. “This beats my novel all to bits. More
smudge, Michelle!”
Meanwhile the canoe ran down-stream, Fred Carington in the bow, and
Polycarp, with his changeless, coppery visage, astern.
As the Indian had by no means hurried himself, the morning was past and
luncheon long over when Rose saw the canoe returning. Lyndsay had not
come back. At all events, she would have the afternoon fishing.