* * * * *
In response to a letter sent to him in January, John was at the station
when I stepped off the train one crisp morning a week after I wrote,
but it was a metamorphosed John who stood before me. He was muffled up
in a heavy overcoat and fur cap. He wore a gray suit, new high-topped
boots, and leather fur-backed gloves. I hardly recognized him. Much
as I was delighted with these evidences of his comfort, there was
an inward pang, for the picturesque and fishy John, who had been
one of the joys of former years, was gone. This was a reincarnation.
The strange toggery seemed discordant. Somehow his general air, and
the protuberance of his high coat collar above the back of his head,
suggested an Indian chief, great in his own environment, who had been
rescued out of barbarism and debased by an unwelcome civilization. He
was like some rare old book that had been revised and expurgated into
inanity.
“I got yer letter,” said the old man, after our greetings, “an’ ’ere
I am! I yelled out at ye, fer I didn’t think you’d know me. What d’ye
think o’ all this stuff them ol’ fellers ’as got hooked on me?”
Napoleon, sleek and apparently happy, with a new blanket over him, was
standing near the country store, hitched to a light bobsled.
I congratulated the old man and inquired about our mutual friends.
After we had put the baggage and some supplies from the store into
the sled, we adjusted ourselves comfortably under a thick robe,
and Napoleon trotted away on the road, with a merry jingle of two
sleigh-bells on his new harness.
There were no tracks on the road after we got into the wooded hills,
except those made by Napoleon and the sled a couple of hours before,
and the cross trails of rabbits and birds that had left the tiny marks
on the snow, in their search for stray bits of food that the frost and
winter winds might have spared for their keeping.
Nature in her nudity is prodigal of alluring charms on her winter
landscapes. The forests, cold, still, and bare, stretched away over the
undulating contours of the dunes in their mantle of snow. The lacery of
naked branches, silvered with frost, was etched against the moody sky.
He who is alone in the winter woods is in a realm of the spirit where
the only borders are the limits of fancy. The big trees, like sentinels
grim and gray, seem to keep watch and ward over the treasures that lie
in the hush of the frozen ground, where a mighty song awaits the wand
of the South Wind. The winding sheet that lies upon the white hills
hides the promise as well as the sorrow. The great mystery of earth’s
fecundity that is under the chaste raiment of the snow is the mystery
of all life, and to it the questioning soul must ever come. The message
of our loved ones, who are under the white folds, may be among the
petals of the flowers when they open.
[Illustration: ON THE WHITE HILLS
(_From the Author’s Etching_)]
When we descended the steep road to the beach, we saw Shipmates’ Rest
in the distance. Saunders came out to greet us on our arrival. He was
enveloped in a heavy reefer, and wore a rather sporty-looking new cap.
He conducted us into what was once the fish shanty, but, alas, what a
change! It had been almost entirely rebuilt. There were five rooms. A
stairway led to a trap door in the roof, above which was a railed-in,
covered platform. A stone fireplace had replaced the old stove, and
there was a large new cook stove in the kitchen, where Narcissus
reigned supreme. I was struck with the almost immaculate cleanliness
of the place. While the architecture was nerve-racking, and seemed to
pursue lines of the most resistance, it looked very comfortable.
“Sipes is out hunt’n rabbits. He’ll be back shortly,” said Saunders.
“You jest hang up yer things an’ make yerself to home. Cookie’s out
back undressin’ some fowls, an’ ’e’ll be glad to see you.”
Narcissus soon appeared with a grin on his honest face.
“Ah ce’t’nly am glad to see you down heah again!” he exclaimed. “Ah
was just fixin’ some chick’ns, an’ tomorrow we’ll have a fracassee with
dumplin’s. Chick’ns have to wait ovah night in salt watah fo’ they ah
cooked, but we got pa’tridges fo’ today. Ah you fond of them?”
Idle questions, propounded simply to make conversation, often inspire
doubt of normal mentality. I had brought a new mouth organ and a
ukelele for him from the city, and his delight over the little gifts
quite repaid their cost.
My old friend Sipes arrived during the next hour, without any
rabbits, and we had a happy reunion over the delicately roasted
partridges. There were six of them, with little bits of bacon on their
breasts--like decorations for valor on the field.
Sipes presided at the head of the table with the air of a medieval
robber baron who had returned to his castle from a successful foray.
A napkin was tied around his neck, and he wielded his knife and fork
with impressive gusto. Prosperity had begun to bubble. I was told the
prices of everything in sight, and informed of the cost of the glass
that he had used to make a small skylight in the north room, so as to
adapt it for a studio. In the fall I had jokingly alluded to something
of this kind, but had no idea that it would be included in the plans.
Compensation was grandly refused.
“You’r’ in on all this, an’ we want you to stick ’round ’ere w’en you
ain’t got nothin’ else to do. You knowed us w’en we didn’t ’ave a
dollar, an’ you thought jest as much of us, so you quit talkin’ ’bout
payin’ fer sky-view glass. There’s nothin’ doin’!”
During the afternoon we heard intermittent strains of “Money-Musk”
from the new mouth organ in the kitchen, accompanied by experimental
fingering of the ukelele. Narcissus had devised an ingenious framework,
which he had put on his head, to hold the mouth organ in place, and
enable him to use his hands for the other instrument, but it was only
partially successful.
One of the objects of the winter visit was to make some sketches of
Saunders and Narcissus for this volume, which had been neglected during
the fall. They seemed pleased, and were willing models. Saunders
insisted on wetting and combing his hair carefully, and getting into
stilted attitudes. He was finally persuaded to let his hair alone
and wear his old cap. He was anxious that his ancient meerschaum pipe
should be in the picture. It seeped with the nicotine of many years.
“The tobaccy that’s been puffed in that ol’ pipe ’ud cover a ten-acre
lot,” he declared, and I believed him. “You can’t show that in the
pitcher, but you c’n make it look kind o’ dark like. Gener’ly I smoke
‘Bosun’s Delight’ an’ it’s pretty good. It’s strong stuff an’ none of
it ever gits swiped.”
When the drawing was finished he criticized it severely, which was
quite natural, for no human being is entirely without vanity. Portrait
artists, like courtiers, must flatter to succeed.
Narcissus also wanted a pipe in his picture. He thought it would look
better than a mouth organ, and, as it was much easier to draw, I
humored him. He posed with unctuous ceremony, and assumed some most
serious and baffling expressions.
Sipes watched the proceedings with interest, and enlivened them with
running comment.
“I been through all that lots o’ times. You fellers ain’t got nothin’
on me, an’ if you ever git in a book you’ll look like a couple o’ horse
thieves. I know wot e’ done to me.”
The disapproval of these particular sketches was probably deserved. It
is a fact, however, that, while readily admitting limitations in other
fields of knowledge, there are few people who hesitate to criticize any
kind of art work authoritatively. Their immunity from error seems to
them remarkable, and to be the result of a natural instinct that they
have possessed from childhood. “I know what I like” is a common and
much abused expression. They who use it usually do not know what they
like or what they ought to like. The phrase covers infinite ignorance,
with a complacent disposition of the subject. The assumption of
critical infallibility is complete before a portrait of the critic.
Many otherwise intelligent critics respect only age and established
art dogma. The dead masters haunt pedantic essayists and opulent
purchasers, who accept embalmed opinions that they would be incapable
of forming for themselves. Extended consideration of this subject is
out of place amid the landscapes of Duneland, where the shades of
the justly revered old painters may have deserted their madonnas and
be wielding spiritual brushes, charged with elusive tints that flow
unerringly upon canvases as tenuous as the evening mists. On them
filmy portraits of the old dwellers along the shore may take form and
vanish with the morning light, for in these rugged faces are the same
attributes that made humanity picturesque centuries ago. If one of
these portraits could suddenly materialize, it would bring a staggering
price, if there was no suspicion that a modern had painted it. Some
stray rhymester has aptly said:
“_If Leonardo done it,_
_It is a masterpiece._
_If Mr. Lucas made it,_
_’Tis but a mass o’ grease._”
“We gotta git some pitchers fer them walls,” declared Sipes, “an’ you
buy ’em fer us. Git some colored ones that’s got boats in ’em, an’ some
fight’n scenes. I’d like to git a nice smooth han’-painted pitcher o’
John L. Sullivan, an’ I don’t care wot it costs!”
The old man wanted these things to enjoy. His purse pride had not yet
suggested the idea of posing as a connoisseur and condescending patron
of the enshrined dead, without love or understanding of what they did,
but the germs were there that might enthrall him in the future, for
affluence sometimes begets strange vanities.
Great masses of ice had been tumbled and heaped along the shore by the
winter waves, and we saw little of the lake, except when we climbed
the bluffs. The winds howled over the desolate beach at night in
angry portent, and one morning a driving storm came out of the north.
Occasionally, from somewhere out above the waves that thundered against
the ice, we could hear plaintive cries of gulls that groped through the
blinding snow. The drifts piled high against the bluffs on the wild
coast. The flying flakes were swept along in thick clouds by the fury
of the gale. The house was almost buried. The wind subsided after about
twenty-four hours, but the snow continued and fell ceaselessly for
three days.
When the skies cleared we opened the trap door to the “crow’s nest,”
the covered platform over the roof, and looked out over the white
waste. A few straggling crows accented the immaculate expanse, the blue
billows were pounding the ice packs, and a part of the mast of the
_Crawfish_ protruded in the foreground, but everything else was white
and still.
We were snowbound for ten days, but contentment reigned at Shipmates’
Rest. We dug deep paths that enabled us to reach our water supply, and
to communicate with Napoleon in his cosy little barn in the ravine.
The plentiful supply of canned goods, that Narcissus had wisely laid
in, was drawn upon for sustenance.
“Them air-tights is life savers!” exclaimed Sipes, as he mixed up some
lobster, lima beans, ripe olives, and prunes on his plate. “Wot’s the
use o’ monkeyin’ with them fresh things w’en you c’n git grub like this
that’s all cooked an’ ready? All ye need is a can opener to live up as
high as ye want to go. Gimme some o’ that pineapple fer this lobster,
an’ pass John them dill pickles!”
“You better let Cookie chop up that mess fer you an’ squirt some
lollydop on it, an’ eat it with a spoon,” advised Saunders; “yer git’n’
it all over us!”
“It’s too bad they can’t can pie,” said Sipes, “but we got pudd’n’s.
Hi, there, Cookie, fetch some o’ them little brown cans an’ tap ’em!”
Narcissus appeared with a delicious cranberry pie, “with slats on it,”
and the pudding was forgotten.
“This is the life!” continued the old man, as he broke some crackers
into his coffee, “wot do we care fer expense?”
Our evenings were spent in various interesting ways. John and Narcissus
had grown very fond of each other, and they spent much time playing
checkers. Numberless sound waves went out into the dark, over the cold
snow, that came from music, laughter, and rattling poker chips.
There are many hardships in this life, both real and imaginary, but
being snowbound at Shipmates’ Rest is not one of them.
A typical January thaw set in, and the warm sunshine released us from
our feathery bondage. The _Crawfish_ was floated out on to the still
lake, and we voyaged to the little town at the mouth of the river,
from where I took the train for the grimy, noise-cursed city--cursed,
indeed, for the unnecessary and preventable dirt and noise in most of
our cities would hardly be tolerated in Hades.
It was August when I again visited Shipmates’ Rest. There was a lazy
calm on the lake, and a delicate and peculiar odor from the evaporating
water. Scattered flocks of terns, nimble-winged and graceful, skimmed
over the surface, and dipped, with gentle splashes, for minnows that
basked in the sun. The still air over the sandy bluffs shimmered in the
heat.
I found my friends in the lake, where they had gone to get cool, and
soon joined them.
There were more transformations on the beach. A mouse-colored donkey
stood in the shade of the house, regarding us with wise and sleepy
eyes. A black puppy gambolled at the water’s edge, clamoring for
attention. A cow, which I recognized as “Spotty,” stood in the creek
that flowed out of the ravine, peacefully chewing her cud and switching
flies with her abbreviated tail. A couple of white pigs were squealing
and grunting in a pen near the little barn, and about a dozen fluffy
brown hens, attended by a dignified rooster, were wandering over the
sand after stray insects. A tall flag-pole extended above the “crow’s
nest” on top of the house.
All these things were explained at length, as we stood out on the
smooth sandy bottom, with the cool water around our necks.
“That anamile wot’s huggin’ the house,” said Sipes, “is to hitch to the
windlass w’en we have to haul the boat out. Cookie calls ’im Archibald,
but ’is real name’s Mike. He goes ’round an’ ’round with the pole, like
we used to do, an’ winds up the rope. W’en we want to run the boat in
the lake, we got a block an’ tackle wot’s lashed to that spile out’n
the water. We take the rope out from the boat to it, an’ run it back to
the windlass, an’ Mike winds ’er out fer us. That kind o’ work ain’t
fit fer nobody but a jackass, an’ ’e wouldn’t do it if ’e had money.
Mike strays ’round the country a good deal at night fer young cabbage
an’ lettuce an’ things, but he’s gener’ly ’ere on deck in the mornin’.
Cookie bought ’im an’ the pup in the village this summer. We gotta have
a pup, but he’s a cusséd nuisance. W’en ’e’s in ’e yelps to git out,
an’ the minute ’e’s out ’e howls an’ scratches to git in. It takes
’bout all o’ one feller’s time to ’tend ’im, but ’e’s lots o’ company.
He’ll bark if anybody snoops ’round at night. They’s val’ables ’ere an’
we gotta look out. We call ’im Coonie, an’ ’e’s some dog. Cookie’s
teachin’ ’im a lot o’ tricks, an’ w’en ’e grows up ’e’ll be good to
chase patritches out o’ the brush.
“We bought Spotty off o’ the Ancient up the river, an’ Cookie towed ’er
in ’long the road through the hills with a rope. Somehow I alw’ys liked
that ol’ girl, an’ we gotta have milk.
“Them squealers is to eat wot’s left out o’ the kitchen, an’ next
winter they’ll quit squealin’. Them hens is from the village, too,
an’ their business is to make aigs. Next year we’ll have slews o’
young chicks, an’ some w’ite ducks. Cookie’s got a rubber thing wot ’e
fastens on that rooster’s bill ev’ry night w’en ’e puts ’im to bed, so
’e can’t crow an’ roust us out in the mornin’.
“We got a compass an’ a binnacle an’ a new spy-glass up in the crow’s
nest. Me an’ Bill an’ John set an’ smoke up there in the shade an’ see
fellers work’n way off, an’ watch Mike windin’ up the boat.”
“Tell ’im ’bout the motor, long as yer goin’ to keep this up all day,”
interrupted Saunders.
“Oh, yes. We got a new one wot’s built in aft o’ the cab’n. It’s got
two cylinders, an’ it works fine. We buried the old one up ’side o’
Cal’s dog. It ’ad to be that er us. Bill, you keep still w’en I’m
talk’n!
“The mast an’ them halyards over the house is to fly signals. W’en
we’r’ up er down the beach, er out buzz’n on the lake, Cookie runs up
the mess flag w’en it’s dinner time. He uses red with w’ite edges fer
chops an’ steaks, an’ the w’ite one with a round yellow splotch in
the middle means aigs wot’s been poached. He flys that, an’ a square
o’ calico under it, w’en we’r’ goin’ to have corn beef hash an’ aigs
on top of it. He runs up a big bunch o’ cotton cords w’en ’e’s made
oggrytong speggetties, an’ w’en the flag’s plain brown, it means beans.
There’s no knowin’ wot that cookie’s goin’ to do next.”
A cool breeze came up in the evening and we built our usual fire on
the beach, more for its subtle cheer than its heat, and talked over
reminiscences of the big snow-storm, and things that had happened since.
The old sailors were in a state of opulent bliss. All of their desires
were satisfied, except, as Sipes expressed it, “git’n even with two er
three fellers I know of,” and happiness reigned in their simple hearts.
Out of the tempests of many seas, their battered ship had come, and
was anchored in a haven of tranquillity. The languor that comes with
satiety and completion was stealing gently over them. Life presented no
riddles, and they were without illusions. So far as their capacity for
enjoyment extended, the fair earth and the fulness thereof was theirs.
The great blue lake, the floating clouds, the jewelled fire of the
sunsets, and the star-decked firmament belonged to them, as much as to
anybody else. Title deeds to the sands, vine-clad hills, woods, and to
the open fields, where suppliant petals drink the rain, could not add
to their sense of possession.
Every comfort was around them that their limitations could require.
They were spared the inanities and shallow snobbery of “society,” and
the many other ills that come with existence in a sphere of vanity and
hypocrisy. The gates of higher knowledge were not opened to them. Art,
science, and literature lay in garnered hoards far beyond their ken,
but after their lives are closed, who may judge of the futility, or
award the laurel?
Into this happy Arcady--this land of the heart’s desire and hope’s
fruition--softly prowled the onion-skinner. Like an evil wind upon
a flowery lea, he crept out of the north over the wide waters. He
landed at the beach with a boat on the still morning of a day that had
promised to be bright and fair. Eveless though this garden was, Satan
had entered.
Horatius T. Bascom was a man of perhaps forty-five. His closely cropped
moustache was slightly gray. Under it was a mouth like a slit in a
letter-box. It seemed to have a certain steel-trap quality that savored
of acquirement but not disbursement. His eyes had a shrewd, greedy
expression, and, when he frowned, small wrinkles formed between them
that somehow suggested the lines of the dollar sign--that sordid mark
that disfigures great characters and destroys small ones.
He was the type of man who signs his business letters with a rubber
stamp facsimile signature, to facilitate legal evasion in the future.
Such letters, insulting to the recipient, are also often stamped with a
small inscription to the effect that they were “dictated, but not read”
by the cautious sender. Altogether his personality was such as to
prompt one to protect his watch pocket with one hand and his scarf pin
with the other while talking with him.
“Hello, boys!” he called out glibly, as he walked up to our group. “You
seem quite cosy around here. Have some cigars.” He produced a handful
and passed them around. We all happened to be smoking, and Sipes was
the only one who accepted the proffered weed. He put it in his pocket,
with the remark that he would “smoke it some other time”--a phrase
that the giver always inwardly resents, but the wily old man may have
intended it to offend.
We were not particularly enthusiastic over his descent into our little
circle.
“You look pretty cosy yerself,” said Sipes; “how much did you git fer
that big jool you gouged us out of?”
“I sold it at a loss. It had a small imperfection that I didn’t notice
when I bought it. You certainly got the best of that bargain.”
“They wasn’t no imperfection in yer bunch o’ bunk w’en you was buyin’
it.”
We kept rather quiet and let our caller lead the conversation, hoping
that the object of his visit would finally unravel from the tangle
of his small talk. Coonie sniffed around him a few times, and, with
unerring instinct, retreated under the house.
The atmosphere of hostility that enveloped his coming gradually
dissipated during the forenoon, and he was invited to join us when
Narcissus announced lunch.
“Now what you fellows ought to do,” he declared, “is to go up the river
again and drag it more thoroughly. I think you’d find some more pearls
there that would put you well on your feet financially. You could buy
some land on the bluff and along the shore and have a larger place.
This property will all be much more valuable some day. You could have
an automobile, and keep more servants. If you had a bigger and better
boat you could put a small crew on it and go anywhere in the world you
wanted to.”
He outlined methods of using money that dazzled imagination. Like Moses
of old, Sipes and Saunders were shown a land of allurement, from what
seemed to them a towering height. It could be theirs, if they had the
price, and the price was in the lily-margined channel of the Winding
River.
Like most of the rest of humanity, the onion-skinner craved “unearned
increment,” and he hoped to inveigle his hearers into procuring it for
him. The echo of the coin’s ring--a sound that encircles the world--was
in the voice of the tempter, and the old mariners listened as to a
siren’s song.
“I’ll go with you, if you’d like to have me,” he declared, “and I’ll
pay you a good price for your pearls, as I did before.”
“I’ll tell ye wot we’ll do,” said Sipes. “We ain’t busy now, an’ we’ll
take the _Crawfish_ up to our ol’ camp. We’ll take Cookie ’long an’
keep things up. You c’n go out with the flatboat an’ fish fer jools.
We’ll stick ’round an’ watch you work, if we don’t git too tired, and
we’ll give you a fifth o’ wot you git. We’ll sell our jools to somebody
else, an’ w’en you sell your share you c’n fix up with us fer our time.
If you don’t find nothin’ you won’t have to pay us much anyway, so
it’ll be a good thing fer you.”
While the proposition might have excited the onion-skinner’s
admiration, from a professional point of view, he failed to see its
advantages to him. He suggested that it might be well to think matters
over for a few days, and that he “might drop around again the latter
part of the week.”
We helped him push his boat into the lake, and he rowed away, leaving a
writhing serpent of discontent at Shipmates’ Rest.
“They’s a good deal in wot that feller says,” declared Sipes. “I don’t
think nothin’ o’ him, but jest think wot we c’d do if we had two bar’ls
o’ cash-money instid o’ one! We c’d branch out an’ buy this whole
cusséd shore. We’d stick up signs and nobody’d dast come on it!”
Saunders was virulent and profane in his comment on “fellers that ain’t
satisfied with wot they got, w’en they got all they need, er ever
oughta have,” but finally admitted that “they’s a lot more things we
might do if we c’d find some more o’ them big pearls.”
That evening the old cronies departed into the moonlight for
consultation. John and I sought our couches early. Narcissus took his
new mouth organ and ukelele, and strolled off up the beach with Coonie.
They had evidently returned sometime before midnight, for I heard loud
imprecations being bestowed on the pup by Saunders, who had found him
chewing up a deck of cards on the floor, when he and Sipes had come in
later. Doubtless Coonie had been ennuied and distrait, and had longed
for occupation. With all his sins, he was a lovable little dog, and his
good nature and affection made him irresistible. He was fully forgiven
in the morning.