along. The girl knew him, and said good morning in that civil, hold-off
fashion a good woman uses to a man she thinks may come to liking her too
well, or that she may come to like too well, when the facts are against
any happy result. So there was three of us, that took our little share
of what followed, gathered together early in the game.
I liked Saxton from the jump. He had more faults than any other man I
ever seen. He was the queerest, contrariest cuss, and yet such a
gentleman; he had such a way, and such talents, that when you were mad
enough to kill him, you couldn't help but feel glad you knew him to get
mad at. Somehow, he steered clear of meanness. There was a sort of
nobility in his capers, even when his best friends would have to admit
they didn't seem to be of a size for a full-grown man. I don't know how
to express myself. He often played a poor part; but darned if he didn't
carry it off well, because it was him; I think that's the nearest I can
come to it; good or bad, large or small, he was always Saxton, never
attempting to put on anything different. And vain! Well, Heaven preserve
us! And, on the other hand, not vain, neither. 'Twas like this. Among
the things he did well enough to be high-class was playing the violin.
He had a style and a go in it all his own, but he hadn't spent the time
to learn some of the stunts that go with the trade. All the same, his
natural gifts got him a job to play in concerts. The boss of the affair
was a German, the kind of a man who had a soul to realize that Saxton
made music, but had a head to go crazy over his slam-dashery. Now,
Saxton grew excited whilst playing, and cut loose on his own hook,
letting the poor perspiring Dutchman and the rest of the orchestra keep
up to his trail the best they could. At these opportunities the Dutchman
went home in a cab, frothing at the mouth. You see, he understood it was
great stuff, as far as Saxton was concerned, so he cussed the cab-driver
and the cab-horse, and the people on the street, being an honest sort of
Dutchman, if limited; but, also, he had a pride in his gang, and he felt
entitled to a show, here and there.
At last there come a big occasion. Saxton was half sick and loaded up on
champagne and coffee to pull through the evening. I have his own word
for it, the mixture done wonders. Right in the middle of a piece by a
gentleman whose name I don't recall, as it's spelt with all the tail-end
of the alphabet, and sounds like rip-sawing a board, Saxton throws dull
care away and wanders into regions of beautiful sounds hitherto
unexplored. Now and then the tall and melancholy gent with the
bull-fiddle would scratch out a note or two, and the drummer got in a
lick here and there, while the flute man toodle-oodled around to head
off Saxy; but, on the whole, that orchestra was worse lost than so many
West Pointers trying to catch an Apache who ain't longing for home. They
sat and let old Saxton ramp by himself, laying low to hit her up strong
on the last note. And they did,--but they misguessed the note. Saxton
ground his teeth yet, recalling the finish. "It was my best," said he.
"I was inspired that night,--and then, for that assortment of garlic and
sausage to smash me!"
Well, he heaved his fiddle at the poor leader, and called him a barrel
of sauerkraut afloat on a sea of beer, right before the whole audience.
It is perhaps unnecessary to state that he and the orchestra parted
company. Now he was off for Panama,--quit fiddling forever. Done with
it. Going to take up a _man's_ work, he said. He didn't mention the
variety, but rolled out the statement as if it was a joy. In the
meantime, he was painting pictures and writing a novel. The pictures
never got finished, and the novel hasn't come out, but those things
didn't make him any less entertaining; and, as usual, what did get done
of them was almighty well done, and done in a way only Arthur Saxton
could do. I never see such a man to stamp himself on anything he put his
hand to. And when he was working, if you said the least thing against
the job, he wanted trouble with you; but the next day he'd smoke his
pipe and tear it apart worse than you possibly could. That was Saxy:
first crack, spoiled kid; second thought, clear-headed man.
The three of us, Mary and him and me, walked the deck day after day,
talking of everything, from what fine weather it was to religion. Once
Saxton called our attention to the wind in the rigging. Afterward I knew
it sounded like Injun chants and coyotes howling, but Saxton asked if we
didn't notice how much it was like the songs the children sing in play.
He said those songs must have been handed down from far-off days--when
we whites were savages, hopping around hollering hye-ee yah, hye-ee yah,
and calling on the ladies, dressed in a streak of red paint. I don't
know about that, though. No child in this world can be as mournful
enjoying himself as a cow-puncher with all night before him and seven
hundred verses to get through; there's puncher songs would make a strong
man curl up and die.
Now, says Saxton, what makes children and savages, who have a clear
field to amuse themselves as they see fit, pick, with deliberate choice,
such melancholy tunes? And he said it was because nature always hit on
that; wind in rigging, wind in trees, waterfalls, the far-off hum of the
city, all sad, sad.
I asked him, if it was natural, where did we get the idea it was sad? It
struck me that if a thing was natural, it was natural, not sad, nor
nothin' else.
He said, because nature was sad. Mary said, no such a thing; nature
wasn't sad--there were the flowers and green fields, also natural, and
pleasant and cheerful to the eye; there was more blue sky than gray, and
as for the savage being sad, why, that might be, but it wasn't sad to
think that men were working out of savagery into civilization.
So then Saxton gave civilization one for its Ma, and talk brisked up.
Civilization stood for Dutchmen that ran orchestras to Saxton, and he
didn't spare her feelings none. I was glad Civvy, old girl, was no
friend of mine. According to him, of all the mistakes so foolish that to
think of bettering it was like building a hole with no rim around it,
civilization stood first and foremost.
Mary got red in the face and her eyes shone. They had it up one side and
down the other, forgetting me entirely. Finally Saxton told her she
wasn't talking honestly, that she hated civilization worse than he did,
and it was plumb hypocrisy for her to set up in its defense; whereupon
she replied that _she_ hadn't wasted her time and talents, anyhow; that
she wasn't throwing things up the first little obstacle that came in the
way. Which didn't seem to be just the answer one might expect to the
charge, but finished Saxton plenty.
He drew himself up proud. "If every topic had to turn to
personalities--" said he.
"I didn't begin the personalities," said Mary. "You called me a fraud."
"I never did!" cries Saxton. "I said you were defending a cause you
didn't believe in!"
"And that isn't a fraud? I admire your distinctions."
Saxton chewed his mustache and swallowed. He made her a low bow and
said, in a tone of voice to flatten her out: "I am glad Miss Smith finds
something admirable in me!"
Mary's lip curled hard and contemptuous. It _was_ kiddish.
"There'd be plenty in you to admire if you let it have liberty," she
said. "The trouble is that your follies seem worth it, to you."
"Follies! You let me off lightly. Why not absurdities, idiocies?"
"Pick your name," she said, throwing away her interest with a sweep of
her hand.
"There is one folly you give me great cause to regret," he answered her,
his manhood coming back to him, "but yet I never do."
"Oh!" she jeered at him. "You should renounce them all. If I understand
your meaning, that is the least excusable--you have some reason for the
others."
Later I understood the cruelty of that speech. It was cruel to be kind,
but it was mighty cruel and a doubtful kindness. It woke old Saxton up.
He took a breath and shook. He put a hand on her shoulder, standing
straight and tall--a handsome, slim critter, if ever there lived one.
"Listen!" he said, quiet, but all of him in it. "You shall care for me,
just as I am--you understand? A fool, and a this, and a that--but you
shall care."
A look in her eyes--the kind of defy that grows of being scart--showed
his talk wasn't all air.
But it went in a second, and she whirled on him. "Why don't you
advertise your intentions?" she demanded. "If I had an idea I should be
so persecuted--"
"Don't say persecuted, little girl," he answered her softly. "Let's be
friends the rest of the trip. I'll trouble you no more,--by sea," he
finished, smiling.
She gripped the rail and looked out over the waters. Again her eyes
turned to him for a second. He was worth it. That dark, long face of
his, set off with his red neckerchief, made something for any woman to
look at. And we're not always so darned fond of reasonable people as we
make out.
"If only--" she began, then bit back whatever it was. "Well, as you
say," she wound up, "let us be friends. Isn't it foolish for us to
quarrel so, Will?" she asked, turning to me. "I think you must feel
we're both ridiculous."
"I don't care whether you are or not," I said. "I like you both."
Saxton looked pleased 'way back in his dark eyes. "That's the boy for my
money!" he said. And then we three began to laugh.
"It's all too beautiful to quarrel in," he said, waving an arm around.
"To feel sorrowful on such a day, savage or civilized, really is
ridiculous."
She couldn't help giving him one last jab,--I make a guess he turned
happy too soon to please her. If she didn't like him, she liked somebody
who so much resembled him that she wanted to have him around to remind
her.
"Mr. Saxton's sorrows are soon healed," she said. "That's a valuable
disposition."
"I take _that_ as friendly, because I must," said he, smiling in a way,
as with the other things he did, that was beautiful in a fashion of its
own. She tried to buck against it, to keep sneering; but something so
young and joyful was in his face, she couldn't help smiling back at him.
So we walked the deck and talked about everything in the best of humors.
VII
"SAVE ME, ARTHUR!"
The first part of the _Matilda's_ trip slid by, day after day, like a
happy dream. We had weather that couldn't be bettered; days of sunlight
and pretty sailing breezes; nights picked out of heaven. The moon was in
her glory. I like high land better than I do the ocean, but few sights
can beat a full moon swelling over the glitter of water. There's also a
snugness, a cozy, contented feeling, aboard a small boat, that you can't
get elsewhere, except in a prairie camp. I suppose it's the contrast
between so much space of sky and land or water, where people are not,
and the little spot where they are, that makes your partners rise in
value.
Of course, the fact that it was my first cutaway puts a gilt edge on all
that time, yet one other thing, a new thing, that made all my life
different for me, must get its credit. That was music,--good music. Back
home they weren't much in the musical line. I think I can remember when
mother used to play the piano some, but her life soon jarred all that
out of her. Bar here and there a man with a mouth-organ or a concertina,
and a fiddler to do dance-tunes, the only thing that stood for music to
me was the singing in father's church. I have since thought that anybody
who could stand that once a week was certainly a good Christian. I
remember one Sunday the preacher told us about heaven, and how it was a
steady line of harps and hymn-tunes. I put in the rest of that Sunday
bewildered. I didn't want to go to hell, and after that description of
heaven I wasn't anxious to go there, neither. Looked like the hereafter
was dark and uncertain.
But when I first heard Saxton, with his fiddle; Barbado Joe, the nigger
cook, with the guitar; and Mary singing, my soul just laid on its back
and purred. I was standing at the rail, thinking, kind of misty
kid-fashion, one moonlit night, when there came a ripple of little notes
from the guitar, with three wind-up chords like spring water in the
desert. Then old Sax's fiddle 'way, 'way up; so light, so delicate, so
sweet and pretty that shivers ran down my back. I stiffened like a
pointer-pup first smelling game. "Here's something," I thought,
"something that's me, all right, but I don't understand yet." And then,
Mary's voice rose gorgeous out of the bigness of sky and moonlight and
water; it filled the whole empty world, without an effort. Me and the
moon and the waves stopped dead and listened. Even the _Matilda_ trod
the water gently.
I turned and looked at Mary. There's no way for me to tell you what a
picture she made. If I say she was beautiful, you'll think of some woman
you know, and that's wrong, for there never was another like Mary. She
was always beautiful, but never else had quite the touch as when lost in
her singing. Man, she was Paradise itself, and when she opened her lips
and sang, you entered the gates thereof.
Of course, everybody's heard good singing, the same as everybody's seen
handsome faces, but once in a while you strike a face or a voice that's
beyond all guessing. You'd never believed it, if you hadn't seen or
heard it.
She sang as easily as you think,--opened her lips and it rolled out.
And, in spite of power that could ring the air for miles and never seem
loud, a deep something trembled underneath that was the very soul of
pity and womankindness, and another little something floated high and
joyful above it like the laugh of a child. Yes, sir. That voice was
food, drink, and clean blankets. When she stopped, I thought I never
wanted to hear a sound again. But I didn't know the limit of old Sax.
With her voice quivering in his heart, he grabbed up his wooden box and
made a miracle. Sure, it was different; but just as sure he tore a hole
in you. His eyes were on Mary, backing the story the violin was telling.
She was giving way, too. Her eyes would meet his, as if she couldn't
help herself. He'd promised not to speak, but that didn't stop the old
fiddle from making out the prettiest kind of case.
[Illustration: "He grabbed up his wooden box and made a miracle"]
She sat with her chin in her hand, breathing deep. The violin would give
a tug at her, and, as I say, her eyes would turn to Sax, and then she'd
force them away again, over the water, slowly down to the deck once
more. She was frightened. I don't blame her, for Sax was out of himself.
He towered there in the moonlight making those inhumanly beautiful
sounds, his face burning white and his eyes burning black, fire clean
through, fire in every soople muscle, fire pulsing out of every heave of
his shoulders, one handsome and scary figure. There was something so
out-and-out wild in him, I swear he looked as if he could call up devils
from the sea.
Well, when a man does get beyond the ordinary he scares the rest of the
tribe. If two fellows start to fight, the bystanders will try to
separate them. It's kind of instinct--I've done it many a time myself,
when it would have been better to let the boys whack 'emselves
good-natured instead of keeping the grudge sour on their stomachs.
Anyway, I can't blame Mary for feeling leery of Sax when I confess that
he put creeps in my spine. He seemed to grow till he filled the bow of
the boat; the fiddle sung in my ears till I couldn't think straight;
heavy medicine in it, you bet. Mary got whiter and whiter. I saw her
constantly wetting her lips, and her hand went to her heart. The whole
night was changed. The air was full of war and uneasiness. I wish to
Heaven I knew how it might have ended, if nothing interrupted, because
Saxton was doing magic. It was the queerest feeling I ever had. What
Mary's feelings were I'd give something to know, but just when things
were the tightest old Jesse come up and pulled my sleeve.
"Get the girl below quiet," he says. "Hell will be loose in a minute."
I stared at him. Coming on top of my queer sensations, it gummed my
works. Jesse pointed to the sou'east.
A cloud was flying north, the center of it black, but wisps and
streamers flew out white in the moonlight like steam from an explosion.
To the north of it lay another storm, huge and heavy, black as death,
except where lightning sprayed through it.
"Wind, Jesse?" I says.
"The last time I see a thing like that, boy," he says, "I made land
three days later, aboard a hencoop--the only one of a hull ship's
company. Get that girl below."
I thought quick, as he walked away. The fiddle had stopped. A wicked
silence lay on everything. Old man Fear put his cold feet on me. I
looked again at the mass to s'utherd. It boiled and turned and twisted.
Big gusts of black and white shot crazily out to nowhere--she was
climbing! Then I looked at the group. Mary sat white and still. Sax
stood behind her, his fiddle by his side, holding the bow like a sword.
He was white and still, too, and looking up to where the moon was going
out. Their backs were turned to the devilry that threatened us.
I stepped forward,--easy as possible, and spoke to her.
"You're not looking well, Mary," I said. "Hadn't you better go down?"
That was before my poker days. Playing a four-flush gives a man control
of his face and voice. She heard what I wanted to hide at once, being
naturally sharp as a needle and tuned high that night.
"What's the matter?" says she.
"Matter?" says I, laughing gaily. "Why, I don't want to see you
sick--come along like a good girl."
"Tell me why I should, and I will," she says. Well, what was the use?
Hadn't she the right to know? When old Jesse said trouble was turning
the corner, you could expect the knock on the door. He had the
reputation of being the most fearless as well as the most careful
skipper in the coast trade. He never took a chance, if there was nothing
in it, and he'd take 'em all, if there was.
Sax bent to us. "What's up?" says he. I didn't say a word--pointed
behind him. He looked for a full five seconds.
"Tornado, by God!" he says in a sort of savage whisper.
He took the violin and bow in those thin strong hands of his and
crumpled 'em up, and threw the pieces overboard. I'll swear he felt what
I did--that he _had_ called up a devil from the sea.
Then he put a hand on Mary's shoulder. "Go below, sweetheart," he said.
"But you'll call me--you'll let me--" she says, an agony in her eyes.
"You ought to know that I will be with you, if there's no need of me
here," he said. We stood stock-still for a minute. It had come with such
a stunning bang.
"There is great danger, Mary," said Saxton. "But you'll be brave, my
dear?"
"I will, Arthur," she answered. Then her eyes filled with panic and she
caught him around the neck. "Save me, Arthur! Save me!" she cried. "Oh,
I don't want to die!"
Never in his life had Arthur Saxton stood up more of a man and
gentleman. He put his hand on her head and looked courage into her. "Nor
do I want to die while there's a chance of you," he said. "Now you'll
believe and trust me, and go with Will?"
I think he kissed her--I don't remember. That hell aloft was sudsing
fast to us, and I was dancing inside to do something beside wait for a
drowning. Anyhow, old Jesse's voice ripped out ferocious; there was a
rattle of blocks, and I put Mary below at the bottom of the step, picked
up a lantern for her, told her we'd watch out more for her than we would
for ourselves, and seeing how utterly God-forsaken the poor girl looked,
I kissed her, too.
"Don't leave me, Will! Oh, don't!" she cried; "I can't stand it!"
"I must," I pleaded. "Mary, think! I may be some use."
She gripped herself. "That is so. Go, Will."
It hurt to go. The lantern made a dim light in which her face half
showed. The shadows shifted black, here and there. From above came a
grinding, shattering sort of roar, like a train crossing a bridge. It
was horrible to leave a woman alone to face it. But then came a scurry
and trampling of feet on deck; yells and orders. That was my place.
"Good-by! God save you!" I said, caught her hand for a good-by, and
jumped up the stair.
I was just in time. They slammed the hatch down almost on my heels.
"Mary's there!" I screamed in Jesse's ear.
"It's her only chance!" he roared back.
On deck that machinery roar drowned everything. It rattled the bones in
your body. The deck sung to it. You felt the humming on your feet. It
dumbed and tortured you at the same time, like a fever-dream. You
couldn't think for it, and your temper was spoiled entirely.
Lightning! My God! It was zippitty-flash-flash-flash, so fast and
fearful that the whole world jumped out into broad day and back a
hundred times a minute. Heaven send I'll never see another such sight as
the sea those flashes showed. Under the spout it was as if somebody had
run a club into a snake-hole. You got it, to the least crinkle, in the
lightning blasts. There were walls of water like Niagara Falls, jumbled
up, falling, smashing together. If it hit us square we'd vanish.
Saxton stood near me. He passed me a rope and signed for me to make
myself fast. I couldn't do it. I must be free. I thought of Mary, below,
and shook. What must she feel? We couldn't get down to her now, and that
made me sick. Saxton fastened the rope around me. He put his mouth to my
ear and shouted, "You never could hold without it!"
I let him do what he liked. All desire to do anything myself, one way or
the other, was rattled out of me.
"How is she?" he shrieked again. I could just hear him at a one-inch
range.
"All right,"! said.
"Make a little prayer to Himmel," he says, "for here it comes!"
Here it come. Something that looked like the Atlantic up-ended loomed
over the bows. The wind struck me flat on my back, in one grand crash of
snapping wood, roaring water, thunder, and the fall of the pillars of
the world. The ocean swept over me, yet I rose high in the air. I felt
that the _Matilda_ was turning a back somersault. The rope nearly cut me
in half. Just when my lungs were pumping so I couldn't hold my breath a
heart-beat longer, the wind suddenly cut over my face. Man! It hit like
a fire-engine stream! I turned and swallowed some of it before we went
down into the deep again. After that, it was plain disorderly conduct.
Part of the time I was playing at home, a little boy again, and part of
the time I was having a hard time trying to sleep in strange lands. But
the next thing I can swear to is that the moon was shining, and the
_Matilda_ jumping like a horse. In spite of the aches and pains all over
me, I just lay still for a minute and let it soak in that I was still on
board this pretty good old world. Next, I thought of Mary and the rest
of them and scrambled to my feet. I was dizzy--a three-inch cut across
the top of my head gave reason enough for that, let alone the rest of
the racket--and one eye was swelled shut. Otherwise, barring a sprained
arm, a raw circle around me where the rope cut, a black-and-blue spot
the size of a ham on my right leg, and all the skin off my knuckles, I
was the same person.
Saxton got himself up. We stared at each other.
"Hello!" says he.
"Hello!" says I.
"Well, what the devil are you doing alive?" he says. He meant it, too.
It seemed to astonish him greatly. This made me mad.
"Well, I guess I have a right to," I says. At this we both laughed very
hard. So hard I couldn't stop, till he grabbed me by the arm.
"Mary!" he says.
We both tried to cast our moorings. The knots were jammed beyond fingers
and teeth. He took out a knife and we cut loose. On the way to the hatch
we come across Jesse sitting up straight, staring out to sea. He put his
hand to his head and put it down again, looking at his fingers. What he
found so interesting in the fingers I don't know, but he couldn't take
his eyes off of them.
"Hurt, Jesse?" we asked him.
He turned a face like a child's to us. "My," he says, "wasn't it wet!"
"Come on!" says Sax; "he's all right!"
We pulled the scuttle off by main strength.
"Mary!" we called. "Mary!"
"Yes!" she answered. The relief was so sweet my knees weakened. She came
to the stair and looked up. Durned if the old lantern wasn't burning.
That knocked me. I remembered lighting that lantern several hundred
years ago, and here it was, still burning!
"Are you hurt?" said Saxton.
"Not--no, not much," she answered. "But nearly dead from fright--is it
over?"
"All over, thank God!" says Sax. "We only caught the edge of it, or--
The moon is shining now. There's a heavy sea still, but that's harmless
if the boat isn't strained--do you want us to stay with you?"
She looked up and laughed--a great deal nearer being sensible than
either Sax or me.
"If I could stand the other, I can stand this alone--where's your
promise, Arthur? You never came near me."