Carington had slept off his brief ill-humor, and the friends were in a
happier mood as they flitted downstream next day to breakfast with the
Lyndsays.
At the Cliff Camp things were not so entirely joyful. Mrs. Lyndsay,
after a talk about the simple bill of fare with the black cook they had
brought with them, paid a furtive visit to Jack, who was condemned to
such tranquillity as was possible, even in bed, for a human machine as
restless. She administered a tender scolding, and left him with a book
or two. Next she softly opened Rose’s door, and, finding her comfortable
and smiling, said, “No, dear, you are to keep still to-day,” and left
her to reflect that, on the whole, she was as well satisfied not to meet
the “two single gentlemen rolled into one” before the entire family.
However clearly the matter had been explained, there remained, and she
colored as she thought of it, the remembrance of certain things she had
said to her bowman. Nor was it quite pleasing to imagine herself
discussed by these two strangers over their evening meal. The scene in
the boat—“She would like to have him always as her bowman!” The scene on
the beach! And then the obligation! The debt to an unknown man! In what
currency should such debts be paid? She smiled, as she quoted to
herself:
What need
Good turns be counted as a servile bond
To bind their doers to receive their meed?
Then, having no other more consoling thought on hand, she began to
recall how the novelists had dealt with these situations. A man saves
your life! What then? As far as she remembered, it always ended in the
woman giving the man what he saved—a life!—her life! She would have
liked to have certain books to see precisely what they did say, or Aunt
Anne, who was herself and generally all books beside. As she played with
these questions, a little amused or a trifle annoyed, Miss Anne knocked,
and was welcomed.
“Aunt Anne,” she cried merrily, “what would you do for a man who saves
you from a horrible mauling by a bear, or possibly from death?”
“The novelists marry them. That cancels the debt, or makes the woman in
the end regret the man’s skill and strength.”
“Aunty, that is very cheap cynicism for you, and at eight A. M.! What
will you be at dinner?”
“I repent, dear. I hate the sneer—easy and obvious. I am always penitent
over verbal wickednesses that are mere children of habit, and have no
wit to excuse them. Is the question, dear, worth considering?”
“Oh, but seriously—”
“I mean seriously. Would it not depend on the moral make of the people
concerned? Clearly, when those involved are of one world, likely to
meet,—to have continuous relations of some sort,—it must lead to close
friendship when the debt of life is merely between man and man.”
“Yes; but when a woman owes an unknown person—a man in her own class—an
obligation like this? She must feel it—really feel it, as I do.”
“My dear, you are a little absurd. Many debts remain unpaid, and should
so remain. How do you pay your debts to Shakspere? And, after all, this
is a small affair—Mr. Carington was in no peril.”
“No, it wasn’t that. The thing involved courage and decision. Papa has
told me all of it—all. And the ball went only a couple of feet over dear
Ned and myself. Any one but a brave and positive man would have
hesitated—and, just a moment more! It is dreadful to think of it!
Dreadful!”
“Your gratitude is quite too analytical for me, dear.”
“But do you believe, aunty, with mama, that there cannot be true, simple
friendships between man and woman?”
“Man and woman? A large question.”
“Yes.”
“Certainly, I believe there can be—more likely, more easy, more possible
with us than in Europe. I know of many such, where what was in youth a
friendship, limited by conventions, became, as years went on, a larger,
deeper, more valuable relation, and yet only and always a friendship.”
“Thank you!”
“I think myself that when women—married women—grow wise, they will want
their husbands to have women friends. Margaret would say, ‘That is an
old maid’s opinion.’ Nevertheless, it is mine, and, as I have chosen
never to marry, it is valuable. The old maid is a sort of neutral, with
the wisdom of both sexes.”
“I should like to choose my husband’s female friends.”
“Should you? I have not talked it out yet, but now I must go. I want to
see how your creditor behaves. He may be a true Shylock and want—how
many pounds do you weigh, dear?”
“You are horrid, aunty! I certainly do not think you have settled my
questions.”
“How can I? or you? or he, for that matter? Time, dear, not only answers
letters, but also doubts and difficulties. As a consulting physician, I
am told, he is unsurpassed. You are, naturally, in a state of unease
to-day, and had better wait until you see what kind of a draft on the
bank of gratitude you are called on to pay, or honor, if you like the
word better. I don’t know whether, nowadays, commercial men use the
word, or the thing. You might send him a silver pitcher, the inscription
to be, ‘To my preserver, from the preserved,’ or else—”
“Go away, bad aunty!” cried Rose, laughing. Once alone, she began upon
her coffee and rolls, and wished it was next month, and thus, like
Carington, turned over her hot chestnuts to pussy-cat time. They were
too hot for her.
Miss Anne went out on the porch, and began watching, with the interest
she took in almost all earthly pursuits, Ned’s efforts to tie a
salmon-fly, while Dick, beside him, was feeding the drosera’s hairy
leaves with minute black gnats, and considering, through a lens, the
ferocious certainty with which the vegetable monster closed upon the
captives cast among its sensitive limbs. Presently Dick said to her:
“Aunt Anne, is father very angry with Jack?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, because—because he really didn’t have time to think—and it
wasn’t cowardly.”
“No, it wasn’t that.”
“But I ran away.” He had a vague feeling that to prove himself to have
gone amiss would be to lessen the enormity of Jack’s conduct.
“You went into the wood to call the men, and were the first back on the
beach, my Prince Rosy-locks. You are a first-rate liar; but, as you are
a Lyndsay, you are not a coward, and you had better kick yourself well
for insulting Dick Lyndsay!
I may not turn, I may not flee,
Though many be the spears;
I should not face with better grace
The army of my fears.
I do not blame Jacky as much as your father does. I understand him, I
think.”
“He feels awfully, Aunt Anne.”
“That will do no harm, Dick.” The boy turned again to the drosera and
his lens.
Anne was herself so entirely brave that not even the prospect of the
coming of added pain had ever been able to make her timid. All forms of
courage were to her intelligibly beautiful, knowing as she did that if
its mere instinctive form be meaningless, it is, in its higher
developments, the knightly defense of all the virtues. She pulled Dick’s
ear, playfully, and said, finally:
“Jack will be out at noon. The less you say about it, the better.”
“I guess so,” remarked Dick.
“Ah, here comes Mr. Carington. Now, boys, behave yourselves at
breakfast. No nonsense, mind! This is to be a very pretty-behaved
family; we will make up for it at lunch.”
The two gentlemen were in turn presented. There were the ordinary
greetings, and no word of allusion to the day before, except that Mrs.
Lyndsay, in a quiet aside, said to Carington:
“I shall not be quite comfortable until I say how much I thank you—for
all of us—all.”
“That is more than enough,” he returned. “How is Miss Lyndsay?”
“Wonderfully well!” And presently they went in to breakfast.
“Here by me, please, Mr. Carington. Anne, sit next to Mr. Carington.
This seat, Mr. Ellett—on the left.”
The boys, a little subdued, contented themselves with quiet inspection
of the new guests, and the talk slipped readily, in skilful hands, from
the subjects of fish and the weather, and flies and rods, to other less
trivial matters. Anne was unusually silent. She was studying the
unconscious Carington, who soon noted the absence of Jack, and as
quickly understood its meaning.
“Yes,” said Lyndsay, “these Gaspé men are most interesting. They are
clever, competent, and inherently kindly, really good fellows; but their
trouble is, and it does not trouble them, that they have no persistent
energy. I confess that, being myself, at least while here, without
energy, I like its absence.”
“Isn’t it a vast relief, after the endless restlessness of our people,”
said Anne, “to fall among folks who are contented, and home-loving, and
so uncomplicated?”
“I certainly think so,” said Carington. “And what a surprise it is to
meet the stray descendants of loyalists hereabouts and on the 'St.
John’s’—I ought to say the ‘Aroostook,’ there are so many ‘St. John’s.’
Some of the best of the Canadians are descendants of those people; but,
for the most part, those who settled in certain quarters of Lower Canada
are down again to the level of mere laborers or fishermen.”
“And no better off,” said Ellett. “I mean no more energetic than—well,
than I am. I hate the very word energy. I quite share your opinions,
Miss Lyndsay. There is a nice little conundrum about that word—sounds
better in French. But, pardon me, I never repeat conundrums, or make
puns.”
“I am so sorry. Are you past persuasion?”
“Entirely.”
“Even as a personal confidence?”
“That is another matter. It will keep. I think, Mr. Lyndsay, you were
about to say—”
“I forget. But no matter. One may talk about, and about things, at
breakfast especially. It is pleasant to feel that you may kick—that any
one concerned may kick—the foot-ball of talk without reference to a
goal.”
“I don’t think my friend Carington would agree to that,” said Ellett.
“He likes talk to be well feathered, and go straight home—”
“And I like it,” cried Anne, “to be well feathered, and go zigzag home,
or not, like a bird.”
“And, for my part, aside from Ellett’s calumnious nonsense,” laughed
Carington, “I have no social creed as to good talk. If it bears sharp
analysis, it is probably poor talk.”
“But,” said Anne, “there are some essentials. One must reverse the great
maxim that it is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Mrs. Lyndsay regarded the maiden lady with a look of reprobation, in
which were trial, judgment, and execution. She reserved her verbal
attack for a better occasion, while Anne, unconscious of offense, went
on, “Wasn’t it Mr. Lowell, Archie, who said at our table, when you
questioned him as to the best talkers he had met, ‘Oh, the best are
those who meet you’? I thought that delicately put.”
“But then he added,” said Lyndsay, “when you mentioned G. M. as on the
whole the most remarkable of dinner talkers, that he had not the
essential conversational art of punctuation. That his sentences were
like those of Judge Jeffries, eternal How one spoils such a thing in the
telling! We all smiled at it a little. Our friend himself liked an
audience, and to have, at times, the royal freedom of unbroken talk.
North, a friend of ours, Mr. Carington, has a theory that breakfast
talks are the best.”
“I should think so,” said Ellett, and then began to think he had been
rather critical, and added, “I mean—well, I usually breakfast alone, and
a fellow can’t talk to himself.”
“This fellow can,” cried Anne.
“He meant,” said Lyndsay, “that breakfast talk is apt to be general and
gay; but that at dinner you have the cares of the day on your back. It
takes a little effort, or a little champagne, to get up steam.”
“But I have no cares,” said Ellett.
“Then,” cried Miss Lyndsay, “we will all dine with you, and you shall do
all the talking.”
“That would suit my sister admirably,” laughed her brother. “Did you
ever notice how silent many of these woodmen are?”
“Yes,” said Carington, “that is true. The woodland life has the same
effect upon me.”
“That’s curious,” remarked Miss Lyndsay. “Certain people blast me with
utter dumbness. It might be useful if it were kept up long enough to
form a habit. I mention that to anticipate my brother. One does
sometimes say what one doesn’t want to say—but, oh, I do think one much
more often wants dreadfully to say what one had better not say.”
“I think that is true,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, with reminiscent gravity.
“Which? or both?” said Anne, in an aside.
“By the way,” said Lyndsay, “talking of these unlucky relics of the
royalists, and, in fact, of too many on these coasts, the most energetic
of us would succumb to their environment.”
“Yes; there is that poor devil, Colkett,” said Carington, “a good
hunter, a hard worker—I am told, a first-rate lumberman—and yet always
in want.”
“To judge from my daughter’s account,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “the wife is
his difficulty.”
By this time the boys were at ease.
“What is an ‘environment,’ Aunt Anne?” said Ned. “Is a wife an
environment?”
Ellett laughed. “Sometimes she is.”
“Environments are surroundings—a man’s surroundings.” She always
answered the boys seriously.
“But does a wife surround a man?” urged Ned, oblivious of his place as a
boy among elders in his keen pursuit of a meaning.
“I should think so!” said Carington. “Wait till your turn comes! You
will see!”
“I am quite sure Dorothy Maybrook is a fair illustration,” said Anne.
“It is a good sermon on the conduct of the matrimonial life to see that
woman what she calls ‘p’int’ poor old Hiram.”
“An interesting person,” returned Carington. “Don’t you think so?”
“It hurts a fellow to see a woman as placid as that,” remarked Ellett.
Whereupon Miss Anne adjusted her glasses, and took a look at the small,
rotund man.
“Why?” she said. “Why does it hurt you?”
He hesitated a trifle, and then replied, “Well, it sort of knocks all
the excuses out of a fellow’s life.”
“Certainly,” laughed Anne. “She doesn’t pet her moods,” and she
concluded that there was something in the ruddy gentleman, who looked so
pleased at what he had said.
“I have known her under many circumstances,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “and I
doubt if she has any moods.”
“I rather suspect,” said Lyndsay, “that Mrs. Maybrook’s equality of
temper is partly natural, and partly a singularly intelligent acquired
capacity to make the best of her surroundings.”
“Environment,” said Ned, under his breath, and now satisfied.
“Really, Rose knows more about her than even my wife, who has known her
longer; but Rose has a curious way of getting at people, and I have
seldom seen Rose so carried away by any one.”
“I envy people the power of understanding people on short acquaintance.
I like everybody at first, and then, by and by, I have to change my
mind. Now, Carington—”
“Nonsense!” cried his friend.
“Indeed!” exclaimed Anne. She thought Mr. Ellett oddly frank.
“From all I can hear,” said Carington, “Mrs. Maybrook must be a kind of
female Marcus Aurelius.” This was quite too much for the boys, who began
to laugh; and then, as Lyndsay and his wife followed their example, Miss
Anne felt obliged to explain, in her amusing way, why this remark had so
unaccountably disturbed the nerves of the household. Lyndsay defended
himself with seriousness. As they rose to have their cigars outside, Ned
said:
“We are going up to the beach, father. Rose lost a pin there. May we
take lunch, mama? There is plenty of brass knocker from breakfast.”
“Pardon me,” said Carington, “my dear fellow; but what on earth is
‘brass knocker’?”
Lyndsay laughed. “That is a family bit of my Scotch education. The
lowland Scotchman calls the relics of a meal the ‘brass knocker,’
because once, I suppose, the poor relations, who came to get the remains
of a feast, were expected to knock, and not to ring.”
“How curious. Yes, thank you, I will smoke. Mrs. Lyndsay?”
“Oh, my women are angelic about that!”
“Indeed, if we were fallen angels,” said Anne, “we could hardly be more
used to it.” Then she said, “I hope we may see you and Mr. Ellett often.
I must go and tell Rose what a pleasant chat we have had.”
As she turned, she swayed a little, so as to touch Mr. Carington.
“Pardon me,” she said, “I am not over-strong, and it now and then makes
me awkward.” She was really in extreme pain. “Good-by.”
He stepped aside to let her pass, struck, as she moved away, with her
pallor. It was a sign of unusual liking in this woman when she permitted
herself the least allusion to her own feebleness.
Carington was in the gayest of moods as their canoe went up the river.
“He has very good cigars,” remarked Ellett.
“Admirable! And the air up here, I have noticed, keeps them in
first-rate condition. Cigars are a good deal like people, Oliver—they
are unaccountably changeable. Ever notice that?”
“Yes; but a pipe is an unchanging friend. Cigars are like women. That’s
a good idea!”
“Bother your ideas! What interesting people! It seemed to me a wholesome
atmosphere—strong and true and honest. Master Jack did not appear. I
suppose he was in disgrace.”
“Very likely.”
“That boy Ned is a quaint little fellow.”
“We only wanted the sister and that scamp to make up the entire family.”
“I am not so sure about the scamp—the black sheep; I fancy he is hardly
more than brown. I was rather hard on him; but I was angry enough to
have thrashed him, and yet I couldn’t help liking his pluck.”
“It was rather out of place, Fred.”
“Yes. To know when to fear, and what to fear, is wisdom.”
“I think you have it to-day, Fred. You are afraid of that girl.”
“Upon my word, you do have at times the most remarkable flashes of
intelligence. You are right.”
“But why? The awkwardness of the affair seems to me to lie on the lady’s
side.”
“I wish it were not. She is young, and—well, rather pretty, and of
course she will be effusive, and enthuse, and then there will be a few
tears, and I shall feel like a fool!”
“It’s a great thing, Fred, to have no imagination. Now, it wouldn’t
trouble me in the least. She will just say, ‘I am so much obliged, Mr.
Carington,’ and you will say, ‘Oh, it really doesn’t matter, Miss
Lyndsay.’ People don’t go splashing their emotions about like a wet dog
shaking off the water on everybody. Good notion, that!”
“You are a social and consolatory Solomon. Give me your tobacco. I shall
go back to-morrow and have it over. Will you fish the upper pool this
afternoon?”
“Either.”
“Hang your politeness, Oliver. There is nothing gives as much trouble as
‘either.’ It ought to be kicked out of society.”
“Then the lower pool.”
“Good!”
There was a little interchange of views at the Cliff Camp as to their
guests; a certain pleasantness of relief at finding Carington one who
could confer an immense obligation and appear totally to ignore it.
Perhaps, of all of them, Anne the best appreciated this; for she
understood, as did neither her brother nor his simple and direct wife,
that Rose felt and must deeply feel a sense of indebtedness, and the
difficulty of at once putting herself into the right relations with the
man who had, without peril to himself, left on her a debt which could
never be canceled. It was easy to say about it to Rose too much or too
little; but, with her usual clearness of head as to matters of conduct,
Miss Lyndsay now held her tongue, nor did Rose tempt her to speak
further.
As to Jack, he came out of his room at one, adding an hour out of pure
dislike to having any one think he cared. Anne spoke to him, as he
passed her, a mere “How are you, Jack?” but he merely answered, “Good
morning, Aunt Anne,” and went at once to the barrel in which he had left
his cub. It was gone; but whither he never knew. Then he came in to get
his rifle, a gift from Anne on his last and fifteenth birthday. That,
too, was gone. Upon this he got a crust of bread, and betook himself to
the woods, where the black flies were more active than his conscience.
At last he climbed a high dead pine, and sat in the wind, and saw, far
away on the river, his father’s canoe. He felt that he had been
ill-used, and then, remembering Rose on the beach, with the blood about
her, had an hour or so of a boy’s unhappiness. Toward evening he found a
woodchuck’s burrow, which he resolved to dig out; and, somewhat
comforted, at last wandered back to the cabin, all other emotions having
given way before the overwhelming hunger to which, in his wrath, he had
needlessly condemned himself.