“Is he always like that?” suddenly demanded the Mixer, pointing at me.
“Oh, Bill’s all right when you get him out with a crowd,” explained
the other. “Bill’s really got the makings of one fine little mixer.”
They both regarded me genially. It was vastly puzzling. I mean to say,
I was at a loss how to take it, for, of course, that sort of thing
would never do with us. And yet I felt a queer, confused sort of
pleasure in the talk. Absurd though it may seem, I felt there might
come moments in which America would appear almost not impossible.
As I went out Cousin Egbert was telling her of Paris. I lingered to
hear him disclose that all Frenchmen have “M” for their first
initial, and that the Louer family must be one of their wealthiest,
the name “A. Louer” being conspicuous on millions of dollars’ worth of
their real estate. This family, he said, must be like the Rothschilds.
Of course the poor soul was absurdly wrong. I mean to say, the letter
“M” merely indicates “Monsieur,” which is their foreign way of
spelling Mister, while “A Louer” signifies “to let.” I resolved to
explain this to him at the first opportunity, not thinking it right
that he should spread such gross error among a race still but
half-enlightened.
Having now a bit of time to myself, I observed the construction of
this rude homestead, a dozen or more detached or semi-detached
structures of the native log, yet with the interiors more smartly done
out than I had supposed was common even with the most prosperous of
their scouts and trappers. I suspected a false idea of this rude life
had been given by the cinema dramas. I mean to say, with pianos,
ice-machines, telephones, objects of art, and servants, one saw that
these woodsmen were not primitive in any true sense of the word.
The butler proved to be a genuine blackamoor, a Mr. Waterman, he
informed me, his wife, also a black, being the cook. An elderly
creature of the utmost gravity of bearing, he brought to his
professional duties a finish, a dignity, a manner in short that I have
scarce known excelled among our own serving people. And a creature he
was of the most eventful past, as he informed me at our first
encounter. As a slave he had commanded an immensely high price, some
twenty thousand dollars, as the American money is called, and two
prominent slaveholders had once fought a duel to the death over his
possession. Not many, he assured me, had been so eagerly sought after,
they being for the most part held cheaper--“common black trash,” he
put it.
Early tiring of the life of slavery, he had fled to the wilds and for
some years led a desperate band of outlaws whose crimes soon put a
price upon his head. He spoke frankly and with considerable regret of
these lawless years. At the outbreak of the American war, however,
with a reward of fifty thousand dollars offered for his body, he had
boldly surrendered to their Secretary of State for War, receiving a
full pardon for his crimes on condition that he assist in directing
the military operations against the slaveholding aristocracy.
Invaluable he had been in this service, I gathered, two generals,
named respectively Grant and Sherman, having repeatedly assured him
that but for his aid they would more than once in sheer despair have
laid down their swords.
I could readily imagine that after these years of strife he had been
glad to embrace the peaceful calling in which I found him engaged. He
was, as I have intimated, a person of lofty demeanour, with a vein of
high seriousness. Yet he would unbend at moments as frankly as a child
and play at a simple game of chance with a pair of dice. This he was
good enough to teach to myself and gained from me quite a number of
shillings that I chanced to have. For his consort, a person of
tremendous bulk named Clarice, he showed a most chivalric
consideration, and even what I might have mistaken for timidity in one
not a confessed desperado. In truth, he rather flinched when she
interrupted our chat from the kitchen doorway by roundly calling him
“an old black liar.” I saw that his must indeed be a complex nature.
From this encounter I chanced upon two lads who seemed to present the
marks of the backwoods life as I had conceived it. Strolling up a
woodland path, I discovered a tent pitched among the trees, before it
a smouldering campfire, over which a cooking-pot hung. The two lads,
of ten years or so, rushed from the tent to regard me, both attired in
shirts and leggings of deerskin profusely fringed after the manner in
which the red Indians decorate their outing or lounge-suits. They were
armed with sheath knives and revolvers, and the taller bore a rifle.
“Howdy, stranger?” exclaimed this one, and the other repeated the
simple American phrase of greeting. Responding in kind, I was bade to
seat myself on a fallen log, which I did. For some moments they
appeared to ignore me, excitedly discussing an adventure of the night
before, and addressing each other as Dead Shot and Hawk Eye. From
their quaint backwoods speech I gathered that Dead Shot, the taller
lad, had the day before been captured by a band of hostile redskins
who would have burned him at the stake but for the happy chance that
the chieftain’s daughter had become enamoured of him and cut his
bonds.
They now planned to return to the encampment at nightfall to fetch
away the daughter, whose name was White Fawn, and cleaned and oiled
their weapons for the enterprise. Dead Shot was vindictive in the
extreme, swearing to engage the chieftain in mortal combat and to cut
his heart out, the same chieftain in former years having led his
savage band against the forest home of Dead Shot while he was yet too
young to defend it, and scalped both of his parents. “I was a mere
stripling then, but now the coward will feel my steel!” he coldly
declared.
It had become absurdly evident as I listened that the whole thing was
but spoofing of a silly sort that lads of this age will indulge in,
for I had seen the younger one take his seat at the luncheon table.
But now they spoke of a raid on the settlement to procure “grub,” as
the American slang for food has it. Bidding me stop on there and to
utter the cry of the great horned owl if danger threatened, they
stealthily crept toward the buildings of the camp. Presently came a
scream, followed by a hoarse shout of rage. A second later the two
dashed by me into the dense woods, Hawk Eye bearing a plucked fowl.
Soon Mr. Waterman panted up the path brandishing a barge pole and
demanding to know the whereabouts of the marauders. As he had
apparently for the moment reverted to his primal African savagery, I
deliberately misled him by indicating a false direction, upon which he
went off, muttering the most frightful threats.
The two culprits returned, put their fowl in the pot to boil, and
swore me eternal fidelity for having saved them. They declared I
should thereafter be known as Keen Knife, and that, needing a service,
I might call upon them freely.
“Dead Shot never forgets a friend,” affirmed the taller lad, whereupon
I formally shook hands with the pair and left them to their childish
devices. They were plotting as I left to capture “that nigger,” as
they called him, and put him to death by slow torture.
But I was now shrewd enough to suspect that I might still be far from
the western frontier of America. The evidence had been cumulative but
was no longer questionable. I mean to say, one might do here somewhat
after the way of our own people at a country house in the shires. I
resolved at the first opportunity to have a look at a good map of our
late colonies.
Late in the afternoon our party gathered upon the small dock and I
understood that our host now returned from his trouting. Along the
shore of the lake he came, propelled in a native canoe by a hairy
backwoods person quite wretchedly gotten up, even for a wilderness.
Our host himself, I was quick to observe, was vogue to the last
detail, with a sense of dress and equipment that can never be
acquired, having to be born in one. As he stepped from his frail craft
I saw that he was rather slight of stature, dark, with slender
moustaches, a finely sensitive nose, and eyes of an almost austere
repose. That he had much of the real manner was at once apparent. He
greeted the Flouds and his own family with just that faint touch of
easy superiority which would stamp him to the trained eye as one that
really mattered. Mrs. Effie beckoned me to the group.
“Let Ruggles take your things--Cousin Egbert’s man,” she was saying.
After a startled glance at Cousin Egbert, our host turned to regard me
with flattering interest for a moment, then transferred to me his
oddments of fishing machinery: his rod, his creel, his luncheon
hamper, landing net, small scales, ointment for warding off midges, a
jar of cold cream, a case containing smoked glasses, a rolled map, a
camera, a book of flies. As I was stowing these he explained that his
sport had been wretched; no fish had been hooked because his guide had
not known where to find them. I here glanced at the backwoods person
referred to and at once did not like the look in his eyes. He winked
swiftly at Cousin Egbert, who coughed rather formally.
“Let Ruggles help you to change,” continued Mrs. Effie. “He’s awfully
handy. Poor Cousin Egbert is perfectly helpless now without him.”
So I followed our host to his own detached hut, though feeling a bit
queer at being passed about in this manner, I mean to say, as if I
were a basket of fruit. Yet I found it a grateful change to be serving
one who knew our respective places and what I should do for him. His
manner of speech, also, was less barbarous than that of the others,
suggesting that he might have lived among our own people a fortnight
or so and have tried earnestly to correct his deficiencies. In fact he
remarked to me after a bit: “I fancy I talk rather like one of
yourselves, what?” and was pleased as Punch when I assured him that I
had observed this. He questioned me at length regarding my association
with the Honourable George, and the houses at which we would have
stayed, being immensely particular about names and titles.
“You’ll find us vastly different here,” he said with a sigh, as I held
his coat for him. “Crude, I may say. In truth, Red Gap, where my
interests largely confine me, is a town of impossible persons. You’ll
see in no time what I mean.”
“I can already imagine it, sir,” I said sympathetically.
“It’s not for want of example,” he added. “Scores of times I show them
better ways, but they’re eaten up with commercialism--money-grubbing.”
I perceived him to be a person of profound and interesting views, and
it was with regret I left him to bully Cousin Egbert into evening
dress. It is undoubtedly true that he will never wear this except it
have the look of having been forced upon him by several persons of
superior physical strength.
The evening passed in a refined manner with cards and music, the
latter being emitted from a phonograph which I was asked to attend to
and upon which I reproduced many of their quaint North American
folksongs, such as “Everybody Is Doing It,” which has a rare native
rhythm. At ten o’clock, it being noticed by the three playing dummy
bridge that Cousin Egbert and the Mixer were absent, I accompanied our
host in search of them. In Cousin Egbert’s hut we found them, seated
at a bare table, playing at cards--a game called seven-upwards, I
learned. Cousin Egbert had removed his coat, collar, and cravat, and
his sleeves were rolled to his elbows like a navvy’s. Both smoked the
brown paper cigarettes.
“You see?” murmured Mr. Belknap-Jackson as we looked in upon them.
“Quite so, sir,” I said discreetly.
The Mixer regarded her son-in-law with some annoyance, I thought.
“Run off to bed, Jackson!” she directed. “We’re busy. I’m putting a
nick in Sour-dough’s bank roll.”
Our host turned away with a contemptuous shrug that I dare say might
have offended her had she observed it, but she was now speaking to
Cousin Egbert, who had stared at us brazenly.
“Ring that bell for the coon, Sour-dough. I’ll split a bottle of
Scotch with you.”
It queerly occurred to me that she made this monstrous suggestion in a
spirit of bravado to annoy Mr. Belknap-Jackson.