THE OTHER CAMP
That compact, as Miles stood waiting before the library fire, seemed
reward enough, not only for their lesser troubles of last night, but
for whatever might come, of greater. The words, the clasp of hands,
the whole twilight scene, still occupied his thoughts so busily that
when the latch clicked and Tony entered, he had formed no plan for the
expected interview.
“Morning,” called the sailor. Fresh and hearty as though he had slept
all night, he wore somehow a thoughtful aspect; and his first movement
was toward the window, where he paused to study the chessmen. They
stood as Richard Bissant had left them, but now, touched by winter
sunshine, formed a little plot of brightness, thick-set, like white and
scarlet hyacinths.
“He’d have won that time.” Tony shook his head, musing. “Yes, if--A
losing game we play, though, in this world, isn’t it?” Again he shook
his head, adding inconsequently, “One point, Miles: be happy while
you’re young.”
His left side brushed a corner of the bookshelf. He winced, and nursed
his arm, which moved clumsily.
“Lame there,” he explained, without turning. “I stumbled last night,
and hit her a clip.”
“On our friend’s knife?” suggested Miles.
Tony whipped about with a droll face of consternation.
“That fool been blabbing already?” he cried. “He can’t be out of bed
yet!”
Miles laughed.
“Come, Tony,” he said quietly. “We must have a talk. We should have
had, long before.”
“You beat me!” Although Tony chuckled and flung himself into the
armchair carelessly, the light in his large gray eyes twinkled hard and
wary. “I’m sharp in a way, but you big, long, quiet chaps--Humph! What
is it? Carry on!”
Miles came readily to the point.
“I was on the island last night,” he began, “saw all your squabble
there, and looked into your chest afterward. So I’ll own up to
eavesdropping, if you will to smuggling.”
The sailor gave a short laugh, either scornful or temporizing.
“What?” he asked, as though rather amused than offended. “Smuggling
what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” answered Miles. “That’s your affair. I don’t know,
and don’t want to. If it’s to go on--” He faltered, but spoke warmly,
remembering the quarrel and Tony’s outburst of generous anger. “One
thing certain. If it’s to go on--I like you better than ever, Tony,
but--you can’t keep this house for headquarters.”
In high good humor, Tony rapped out an oath and hammered the arm of his
chair.
“You’re the sort,” he laughed, his teeth flashing white, his eyes
brimming with jovial admiration. “Might have known how you’d take it.
By the Lord, there’s no tattle-tale blood in you! You’ll do, buster!
Chuck me out, but stay friends. That the idea? Right you are! And
devilish sorry I’ll be to go.”
By one of his sudden changes, his face, without darkening, fell
entirely serious.
“Do you know, I never saw before--” He pointed his pipe-stem up at the
sombre canvas above the mantel. “The old Commander there--he looks
ready to reef, steer, crack a man’s head, or fire a broadside. Good old
days, those. Never saw before you looked so much alike. But you must
take more on the mother’s side.”
“Maybe,” replied Miles, wondering.
Tony studied them by turns,--the bold, severe face of Hardy’s captain
in the picture, the living face below.
“Head o’ the family,” he said at last. “Must be damned odd. All _my_
life, now--If I hadn’t run loose--Strict ideas, strict ideas! Well,
what’s the odds? I was only going to say, Miles, you’ve grown up.
This last week--that’s it: you’ve grown up.” He rose, with an air of
dejection. “You’re right, too, old chap. I understand. I must clear
out.”
“We’ll miss you, Tony,” Miles began.
“Ye-es?” drawled the wanderer absently. Forcing a doubtful smile, he
surveyed the room. “The time I’ve laid up here--Talk of eye-openers!
What a rum thing it is, after all--a home!”
After this it was Miles who proposed delay, and Tony who would not
listen.
“No,” he repeated. “You struck it, first time. Quit the game or move
out. That’s all fair and square. If I didn’t stand to win or lose--a
good slice, too--why, I’d say quit. No! Finish! Come on, old boy, help
lug my box downstairs!”
And with the box in the stern of his boat, he shoved off from shore
that very afternoon. He had shipped oars, and stretched forward his
powerful arms for the first stroke, when suddenly he tossed back a
startling farewell.
“I’ll come see you, Miles,” he laughed. “Better not return it, though.
Abe might not understand; and the drunken blighter gives me trouble
enough already.”
“What!” called Miles, with a strange misgiving. “You mean--You’re not
going to Kilmarnock?”
“Kilmarnock!” retorted Florio. “And have that fat fool Quinn talk me
inside out to the whole village? No fear--You needn’t look so glum,
though. Alward’s won’t be bad, for a poor exile. Why, there’s a girl
there that--” He grinned, wagged his head with a most rascally whistle,
squared his great shoulders, and then, favoring the wounded fore-arm,
rowed out to swing against the current.
“Cheer up, Commander!” he shouted from the distance. “Don’t forget, we
stay friends!”
Gloomily enough, however, the young master of the shore returned alone
among his hummocks, and climbed his glittering winter field. “I’ve
made a mess of it,” he thought miserably. They were now two in the
house who had been four. Yet as numbers are not presences, the life
within had abated, not merely by half, or more than half, but by an
immeasurable void. Nor did the greater loss include the smaller; for in
like disproportion Miles missed his friend the adventurer, at once, and
afterward, more searchingly than he expected. Smuggling he could regard
with all the tolerance of a borderer; so that as vacant days followed
lengthening toward spring, he came sometimes to feel that he had
banished a live companion for a dead scruple. In the contrary mood--and
this was no less dismal--he saw plainly what a dangerous spirit he had
quartered on his best ally.
His promise to her, meantime, went by default; till on a snowbound
morning of more than usual loneliness, he set aside Tony’s wish,
buckled on his snowshoes, rounded the headland to Alward’s, and knocked
at her door. Little good, however, came of this expedition. Abram,
scowling, blocked his entrance. He caught a glimpse into a small room,
bare, but surprisingly neat, from the unseen corner of which came
a familiar voice, saying, with the comfortable inflection of a man
thoroughly at home, “You know, Anna, a girl like you--”
The very voice that Tony could use for making friends; and now, heard
only, unqualified by look or gesture, it somehow rang not so true.
Instantly, however, it broke off.
“What’s up?” called Tony, and heaved through the doorway.
“Oh, it’s you!” he said coldly. “Hold on, I’ll come with you.”
They went back together along the shore, plodding side by side, but
talking at random, with constraint; and when they parted at the upper
tower, it was on vague though evident terms of division.
“I’ll do all the neighboring.” Tony spoke sulkily as a boy. “Thought I
asked you not to come?”
After this ripple of incident, the winter days once more fell stagnant,
or at the best, moved on sluggish and imperceptible. Rain came at
last, however, and thaws, and warm sea fogs devouring the snow more
silently than either, and more swiftly. Then one by one, like spies
of Nature stealing into the land, followed the slow and potent
changes, yearly forgotten, yearly striking to the core of remembrance
and delight. Hushing sounds of water rose from the gullies on still
mornings; brown knolls, from day to day, heaved and widened; the ice
moved out to sea, a white and broken flotilla, while the river cleared
again to shining blue; snow forsook the hills, forsook the shore, and
clung raggedly under the cedars in thick, worn plates of ice. Then,
too, the earliest fly woke buzzing in the southern window, and at
noon the house, with door swung wide, stood open to all the reviving
sounds and nameless stirrings of the valley. Now and again, a stray cow
gamboled ridiculously down the field, her bell clanking, her shoulder
bearing a leathern scar where, all winter long, she had chafed her
stanchion. And over the graves, the birch grew blurred above the hill.
In all this time the outcast made no attempt at his “neighboring;” and
Miles, without understanding, accepted their alienation. Even pride,
however, could not keep him from being lonely,--more than ever lonely,
in these mild days and nights of spring. He wandered by himself,
framing and rejecting plans, no less discontented with the present than
sorely puzzled by the future.
One afternoon, when he had taken these perplexities for another airing,
he fell as it were into an April daydream by the river, leaning both
elbows on the quarter-deck rail. Along the verge, and scattered among
the rotten planks, peeped the russet tops of young fiddle-head ferns,
which to his brooding eyes seemed almost visibly to uncurl, as a
kitten’s paws uncurl, intense with drowsy and voluptuous life. Pale
blades of grass were tenderly thrusting upward from edges of the warm
rocks. And yet a damp scent of last year’s leaves, that perished slowly
in the hollows, sternly and wholesomely reminded him how the world
cherishes to destroy, and destroys to cherish infinitely. Solemnity
closed down upon him, while still a kind of beatific spell ran through
his veins. For a long time, and for no cause, he recalled only the
winter night when they had leaned together on the rail, watching.
By strong effort, at last, he denied this memory, repulsed this
longing, and cleared the decks of his mind.
“I must go away.” He fell back on the promise doggedly. And the
thought was like lead in his shoes, that once would have winged them.
“As quick as summer comes, and Ella can tend lamps, I’m off. That’s the
plain course--”
Voices were coming, at the first sound of which he sprang upright.
Through the evergreen wall pierced the quick utterance of Tony, angrily
imploring.
“Treat me this way, like dirt?” he was urging. “And all because a
fellow likes you, and tells you so? Honestly, I mean it, Anna. And what
right have I given you to think--”
“Right!” The girl’s voice also trembled, but as though with helpless
fury. “What right have _you_ to hunt and drive me like--like--Oh! And
I was coming here just to be rid of you!”
“You can’t, my dear,” said the other, cajoling. “You can’t, and that’s
a fact. Come now--”
A cry echoed among the evergreens as in an empty room.
“Go back, I hate the sight of you! Go back and let me alone! I wish I
was a man, to kill you!”
Miles had sprung to the path among the firs. It widened before him into
a little alley of green shadows, where the girl stood facing Tony, her
hand raised to strike. As Miles broke through upon them, she wheeled
with the same look, the same cry, as when he had rowed out to her in
the fog. The sailor fell back. The malignant flush that darkened his
face was new and ugly; and yet in his eyes a conflicting change, still
more new and lighted with a saving honesty, continued to blaze. If his
anger were black as smoke, through it flickered some higher emotion.
“Hiding in the bushes?” he sneered. “You seem fond of that.”
Miles found himself unexpectedly at high tension.
“It’s my own shore!” he cried, choking. “You be off!”
He had run in close. They seemed on the point of clinching, when the
girl darted between them, and with a swiftness that had the effect of
strength, caught Miles by the arm, and flung Tony staggering backwards.
“For shame!” she cried. “Like a pair of wild savages! I’m ashamed
of you both!” From under the high arched brows, her eyes sent out a
dangerous light. She turned but the one shaft at Tony. “You go!”
He stood his ground, and retorted bitterly:
“Oh, I see. There _is_ something between you.”
“No!” She dropped the arm that she had clung to. And at the word or the
movement, Miles understood, with a strange triumph, his late repulse
from Alward’s Cove. “No, there’s nothing. But there’s one thing,
Captain Florio. This man’s real, and I believe him clear through. And
the way I believe you is just skin-deep, and the rest all hollow!”
Tony made a little plausible gesture of submission, as foreign as it
was graceful.
“Short and sweet, that is,” he answered. “Not true, all the same. I’m
honest my own way, if I don’t parade it like a God’s miracle. I meant
all I said, Anna; it’s a pity you can’t take it so.”
He turned away, a jaunty penitent, swung his wide shoulders edgewise
into the gap, and disappeared among the firs. The whisking of the
boughs died into silence; and next moment the girl’s courage had fallen
slack.
“Oh, what shall I do?” she whispered, as if alone. Her face she held
averted; but Miles could see her head shaken like a daffodil on the
stalk, and feel the hand tremble which had caught his arm again. “Where
can I go? And it’s in the same house with me--They’re always there.”
“Anna,” he ventured; and as her hand dropped suddenly, “Haven’t I as
good a right to call you so? Come, we’re old friends. Tell us.”
She would not turn.
“It’s--oh, it’s nothing!”
“If it should be anything?” he persisted. “If you--won’t you come tell
me then?”
She looked up and away in a flash; but he had caught the lustre of
brimming eyes.
“There’s nobody else I could--”
“Oh!” he cried in a whirl. “To hear you say that--”
Footsteps crossed the quarter-deck, and scuffed in the path behind them.
“Hello! Ex-scuse me!” called a hearty though nasal voice. Like an aged
Puck out of the bushes, Hab the teamster peered shiftily into their
cover. The girl was away like a fawn.
The teamster’s head remained as though he were imbedded in the
evergreens. Wagging it, he broke into batrachian song:--
“A young man come a-seekin’ her,
For to make her his dear,
An’ he to his trade
Was a ship’s carpenteer!”
“Didn’t think it of ye, Mile,” he added mournfully, then winked. “Ella
stated you was down here. But she don’t figger what was up, and bless
ye, I’ll never give it away.” He looked behind him, called “Here he is,
Mr. Furfey,” and entered the lane.
A stranger followed him.
“Here, Mile,” continued Habakkuk, with a flourish. “This feller’s the
gentleman I drove all the ways down here to interduce, name of Furfey.”
It was a brisk, insignificant person who stepped forward, a smirking
little man, half shabby and half prosperous, plainly an American,
but not of the countryside. His interruption had thrown Miles into a
passion of disappointment; yet even a more fortunate arrival might
not have helped the man. His hand was too moist and loose, his pale
face too shrewdly wrinkled, and his smile, like the cold stare of his
bulbous blue eyes, too calculating; even his trite compliments seemed a
piece of insinuation. Altogether, Miles disliked him on sight, as one
dislikes a grub or an earwig.
They returned together to the deck, where Old-Hab left them to confer.
For some time the stranger made little use of his chance, but though
all too ready and familiar, chattered and questioned trivially, with a
studied inconsequence.
“Come,” Miles broke in at last impatiently. “I don’t see yet. Please
tell me what I can do for you.”
The man became very confidential.
“I’ll be frank with you,” he promised glibly. “We’ll come square
to it. Ain’t that right? I may have dealin’s with a man over here,
likely--man named Florio. Now, you’re so high spoke of all round,
I store by your opinion. See? So I come to you, like this, and
says,--between us, mind,--what d’ ye think about him?”
Miles considered. From the first mention, he vaguely saw trouble ahead
for Tony; then, not at all vaguely, saw how that trouble might at least
send Tony packing. The sooner the happier; toward just such a riddance
his wishes ran like fire. To speak the mere truth, to aid the law:
and in the same thought he stood confounded at his own baseness. The
loyalty might all be on one side, yet--
“Better see Florio yourself,” he answered. “You can judge. He lives up
in the next cove.”
The stranger argued long, and surrendered reluctantly.
“Well,” he sighed, “I s’pose that’s right, if you’re so stubborn to it.
I’ll go see him.”
He slouched away, and plunged among the bushes. Miles, climbing toward
the house, paused halfway on the slope, to look down thoughtfully at
the shore. Seldom had he encountered so many persons there in one day;
never so many problems. Life, like the fiddle-heads, seemed to unfold
into complexities. The river sparkled through chinks in the grove, and
dazzled broadly across a distant gap, where the path swung bare to the
headland. It was the one pass to Alward’s. But the stranger did not
darken it, either going or coming.
“He’ll wait down there,” thought Miles, “then come lying back, and say
he can’t find Tony. Spying! And I couldn’t tell him!”
He could not, the fact was adamant--not even to save the hostage in the
other camp.
[Illustration]