their rude encampment and gypsy life, although he had been one of Li
Tee's oppressors in the past. But that stolid pagan had a philosophical
indifference which might have passed for Christian forgiveness, and
Jim's native reticence seemed like assent. And, possibly, in the minds
of these two vagabonds there might have been a natural sympathy for this
other truant from civilization, and some delicate flattery in the fact
that Master Skinner was not driven out, but came of his own accord.
Howbeit, they fished together, gathered cranberries on the marsh, shot
a wild duck and two plovers, and when Master Skinner assisted in the
cooking of their fish in a conical basket sunk in the ground, filled
with water, heated by rolling red-hot stones from their drift-wood fire
into the buried basket, the boy's felicity was supreme. And what an
afternoon! To lie, after this feast, on their bellies in the grass,
replete like animals, hidden from everything but the sunshine above
them; so quiet that gray clouds of sandpipers settled fearlessly around
them, and a shining brown muskrat slipped from the ooze within a few
feet of their faces--was to feel themselves a part of the wild life in
earth and sky. Not that their own predatory instincts were hushed by
this divine peace; that intermitting black spot upon the water, declared
by the Indian to be a seal, the stealthy glide of a yellow fox in the
ambush of a callow brood of mallards, the momentary straying of an elk
from the upland upon the borders of the marsh, awoke their tingling
nerves to the happy but fruitless chase. And when night came, too soon,
and they pigged together around the warm ashes of their camp-fire, under
the low lodge poles of their wigwam of dried mud, reeds, and driftwood,
with the combined odors of fish, wood-smoke, and the warm salt breath of
the marsh in their nostrils, they slept contentedly. The distant lights
of the settlement went out one by one, the stars came out, very large
and very silent, to take their places. The barking of a dog on the
nearest point was followed by another farther inland. But Jim's dog,
curled at the feet of his master, did not reply. What had HE to do with
civilization?
The morning brought some fear of consequences to Master Skinner, but no
abatement of his resolve not to return. But here he was oddly combated
by Li Tee. “S'pose you go back allee same. You tellee fam'lee canoe go
topside down--you plentee swimee to bush. Allee night in bush. Housee
big way off--how can get? Sabe?”
“And I'll leave the gun, and tell Dad that when the canoe upset the gun
got drowned,” said the boy eagerly.
Li Tee nodded.
“And come again Saturday, and bring more powder and shot and a bottle
for Jim,” said Master Skinner excitedly.
“Good!” grunted the Indian.
Then they ferried the boy over to the peninsula, and set him on a trail
across the marshes, known only to themselves, which would bring him
home. And when the Editor the next morning chronicled among his news,
“Adrift on the Bay--A Schoolboy's Miraculous Escape,” he knew as little
what part his missing Chinese errand boy had taken in it as the rest of
his readers.
Meantime the two outcasts returned to their island camp. It may have
occurred to them that a little of the sunlight had gone from it with
Bob; for they were in a dull, stupid way fascinated by the little white
tyrant who had broken bread with them. He had been delightfully selfish
and frankly brutal to them, as only a schoolboy could be, with the
addition of the consciousness of his superior race. Yet they each
longed for his return, although he was seldom mentioned in their scanty
conversation--carried on in monosyllables, each in his own language, or
with some common English word, or more often restricted solely to signs.
By a delicate flattery, when they did speak of him it was in what they
considered to be his own language.
“Boston boy, plenty like catchee HIM,” Jim would say, pointing to a
distant swan. Or Li Tee, hunting a striped water snake from the reeds,
would utter stolidly, “Melikan boy no likee snake.” Yet the next two
days brought some trouble and physical discomfort to them. Bob
had consumed, or wasted, all their provisions--and, still more
unfortunately, his righteous visit, his gun, and his superabundant
animal spirits had frightened away the game, which their habitual quiet
and taciturnity had beguiled into trustfulness. They were half starved,
but they did not blame him. It would come all right when he returned.
They counted the days, Jim with secret notches on the long pole, Li Tee
with a string of copper “cash” he always kept with him. The eventful
day came at last,--a warm autumn day, patched with inland fog like blue
smoke and smooth, tranquil, open surfaces of wood and sea; but to their
waiting, confident eyes the boy came not out of either. They kept a
stolid silence all that day until night fell, when Jim said, “Mebbe
Boston boy go dead.” Li Tee nodded. It did not seem possible to these
two heathens that anything else could prevent the Christian child from
keeping his word.
After that, by the aid of the canoe, they went much on the marsh,
hunting apart, but often meeting on the trail which Bob had taken, with
grunts of mutual surprise. These suppressed feelings, never made known
by word or gesture, at last must have found vicarious outlet in the
taciturn dog, who so far forgot his usual discretion as to once or twice
seat himself on the water's edge and indulge in a fit of howling. It had
been a custom of Jim's on certain days to retire to some secluded place,
where, folded in his blanket, with his back against a tree, he remained
motionless for hours. In the settlement this had been usually referred
to the after effects of drink, known as the “horrors,” but Jim had
explained it by saying it was “when his heart was bad.” And now it
seemed, by these gloomy abstractions, that “his heart was bad” very
often. And then the long withheld rains came one night on the wings of
a fierce southwester, beating down their frail lodge and scattering
it abroad, quenching their camp-fire, and rolling up the bay until it
invaded their reedy island and hissed in their ears. It drove the game
from Jim's gun; it tore the net and scattered the bait of Li Tee, the
fisherman. Cold and half starved in heart and body, but more dogged and
silent than ever, they crept out in their canoe into the storm-tossed
bay, barely escaping with their miserable lives to the marshy peninsula.
Here, on their enemy's ground, skulking in the rushes, or lying close
behind tussocks, they at last reached the fringe of forest below the
settlement. Here, too, sorely pressed by hunger, and doggedly reckless
of consequences, they forgot their caution, and a flight of teal fell to
Jim's gun on the very outskirts of the settlement.
It was a fatal shot, whose echoes awoke the forces of civilization
against them. For it was heard by a logger in his hut near the
marsh, who, looking out, had seen Jim pass. A careless, good-natured
frontiersman, he might have kept the outcasts' mere presence to himself;
but there was that damning shot! An Indian with a gun! That weapon,
contraband of law, with dire fines and penalties to whoso sold or gave
it to him! A thing to be looked into--some one to be punished! An Indian
with a weapon that made him the equal of the white! Who was safe?
He hurried to town to lay his information before the constable, but,
meeting Mr. Skinner, imparted the news to him. The latter pooh-poohed
the constable, who he alleged had not yet discovered the whereabouts
of Jim, and suggested that a few armed citizens should make the chase
themselves. The fact was that Mr. Skinner, never quite satisfied in his
mind with his son's account of the loss of the gun, had put two and
two together, and was by no means inclined to have his own gun possibly
identified by the legal authority. Moreover, he went home and at once
attacked Master Bob with such vigor and so highly colored a description
of the crime he had committed, and the penalties attached to it, that
Bob confessed. More than that, I grieve to say that Bob lied. The Indian
had “stoled his gun,” and threatened his life if he divulged the theft.
He told how he was ruthlessly put ashore, and compelled to take a trail
only known to them to reach his home. In two hours it was reported
throughout the settlement that the infamous Jim had added robbery with
violence to his illegal possession of the weapon. The secret of the
island and the trail over the marsh was told only to a few.
Meantime it had fared hard with the fugitives. Their nearness to
the settlement prevented them from lighting a fire, which might have
revealed their hiding-place, and they crept together, shivering all
night in a clump of hazel. Scared thence by passing but unsuspecting
wayfarers wandering off the trail, they lay part of the next day and
night amid some tussocks of salt grass, blown on by the cold sea-breeze;
chilled, but securely hidden from sight. Indeed, thanks to some
mysterious power they had of utter immobility, it was wonderful how they
could efface themselves, through quiet and the simplest environment. The
lee side of a straggling vine in the meadow, or even the thin ridge
of cast-up drift on the shore, behind which they would lie for hours
motionless, was a sufficient barrier against prying eyes. In this
occupation they no longer talked together, but followed each other with
the blind instinct of animals--yet always unerringly, as if conscious
of each other's plans. Strangely enough, it was the REAL animal
alone--their nameless dog--who now betrayed impatience and a certain
human infirmity of temper. The concealment they were resigned to, the
sufferings they mutely accepted, he alone resented! When certain scents
or sounds, imperceptible to their senses, were blown across their
path, he would, with bristling back, snarl himself into guttural and
strangulated fury. Yet, in their apathy, even this would have passed
them unnoticed, but that on the second night he disappeared suddenly,
returning after two hours' absence with bloody jaws--replete, but still
slinking and snappish. It was only in the morning that, creeping on
their hands and knees through the stubble, they came upon the torn and
mangled carcass of a sheep. The two men looked at each other without
speaking--they knew what this act of rapine meant to themselves. It
meant a fresh hue and cry after them--it meant that their starving
companion had helped to draw the net closer round them. The Indian
grunted, Li Tee smiled vacantly; but with their knives and fingers they
finished what the dog had begun, and became equally culpable. But that
they were heathens, they could not have achieved a delicate ethical
responsibility in a more Christian-like way.
Yet the rice-fed Li Tee suffered most in their privations. His habitual
apathy increased with a certain physical lethargy which Jim could not
understand. When they were apart he sometimes found Li Tee stretched
on his back with an odd stare in his eyes, and once, at a distance, he
thought he saw a vague thin vapor drift from where the Chinese boy was
lying and vanish as he approached. When he tried to arouse him there
was a weak drawl in his voice and a drug-like odor in his breath. Jim
dragged him to a more substantial shelter, a thicket of alder. It was
dangerously near the frequented road, but a vague idea had sprung up in
Jim's now troubled mind that, equal vagabonds though they were, Li Tee
had more claims upon civilization, through those of his own race who
were permitted to live among the white men, and were not hunted to
“reservations” and confined there like Jim's people. If Li Tee was “heap
sick,” other Chinamen might find and nurse him. As for Li Tee, he had
lately said, in a more lucid interval: “Me go dead--allee samee Mellikan
boy. You go dead too--allee samee,” and then lay down again with
a glassy stare in his eyes. Far from being frightened at this, Jim
attributed his condition to some enchantment that Li Tee had evoked from
one of his gods--just as he himself had seen “medicine-men” of his own
tribe fall into strange trances, and was glad that the boy no longer
suffered. The day advanced, and Li Tee still slept. Jim could hear the
church bells ringing; he knew it was Sunday--the day on which he was
hustled from the main street by the constable; the day on which the
shops were closed, and the drinking saloons open only at the back door.
The day whereon no man worked--and for that reason, though he knew it
not, the day selected by the ingenious Mr. Skinner and a few friends as
especially fitting and convenient for a chase of the fugitives. The bell
brought no suggestion of this--though the dog snapped under his breath
and stiffened his spine. And then he heard another sound, far off and
vague, yet one that brought a flash into his murky eye, that lit up the
heaviness of his Hebraic face, and even showed a slight color in his
high cheek-bones. He lay down on the ground, and listened with suspended
breath. He heard it now distinctly. It was the Boston boy calling, and
the word he was calling was “Jim.”
Then the fire dropped out of his eyes as he turned with his usual
stolidity to where Li Tee was lying. Him he shook, saying briefly:
“Boston boy come back!” But there was no reply, the dead body rolled
over inertly under his hand; the head fell back, and the jaw dropped
under the pinched yellow face. The Indian gazed at him slowly, and then
gravely turned again in the direction of the voice. Yet his dull mind
was perplexed, for, blended with that voice were other sounds like the
tread of clumsily stealthy feet. But again the voice called “Jim!” and
raising his hands to his lips he gave a low whoop in reply. This
was followed by silence, when suddenly he heard the voice--the boy's
voice--once again, this time very near him, saying eagerly:--
“There he is!”
Then the Indian knew all. His face, however, did not change as he took
up his gun, and a man stepped out of the thicket into the trail:--
“Drop that gun, you d----d Injin.”
The Indian did not move.
“Drop it, I say!”
The Indian remained erect and motionless.
A rifle shot broke from the thicket. At first it seemed to have missed
the Indian, and the man who had spoken cocked his own rifle. But the
next moment the tall figure of Jim collapsed where he stood into a mere
blanketed heap.
The man who had fired the shot walked towards the heap with the easy air
of a conqueror. But suddenly there arose before him an awful phantom,
the incarnation of savagery--a creature of blazing eyeballs, flashing
tusks, and hot carnivorous breath. He had barely time to cry out “A
wolf!” before its jaws met in his throat, and they rolled together on
the ground.
But it was no wolf--as a second shot proved--only Jim's slinking dog;
the only one of the outcasts who at that supreme moment had gone back to
his original nature.
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN
Mr. Jackson Potter halted before the little cottage, half shop, half
hostelry, opposite the great gates of Domesday Park, where tickets of
admission to that venerable domain were sold. Here Mr. Potter revealed
his nationality as a Western American, not only in his accent, but in
a certain half-humorous, half-practical questioning of the
ticket-seller--as that quasi-official stamped his ticket--which was
nevertheless delivered with such unfailing good-humor, and such frank
suggestiveness of the perfect equality of the ticket-seller and the
well-dressed stranger that, far from producing any irritation, it
attracted the pleased attention not only of the official, but his wife
and daughter and a customer. Possibly the good looks of the stranger had
something to do with it. Jackson Potter was a singularly handsome young
fellow, with one of those ideal faces and figures sometimes seen in
Western frontier villages, attributable to no ancestor, but evolved
possibly from novels and books devoured by ancestresses in the long
solitary winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier. A
beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent blonde curls,
poised on a shapely neck and shoulders, was more Greek in outline
than suggestive of any ordinary American type. Finally, after having
thoroughly amused his small audience, he lifted his straw hat to the
“ladies,” and lounged out across the road to the gateway. Here he
paused, consulting his guide-book, and read aloud: “St. John's
gateway. This massive structure, according to Leland, was built
in”--murmured--“never mind when; we'll pass St. John,” marked the page
with his pencil, and tendering his ticket to the gate-keeper, heard,
with some satisfaction, that, as there were no other visitors just
then, and as the cicerone only accompanied PARTIES, he would be left to
himself, and at once plunged into a by-path.
It was that loveliest of rare creations--a hot summer day in England,
with all the dampness of that sea-blown isle wrung out of it, exhaled
in the quivering blue vault overhead, or passing as dim wraiths in the
distant wood, and all the long-matured growth of that great old garden
vivified and made resplendent by the fervid sun. The ashes of dead and
gone harvests, even the dust of those who had for ages wrought in it,
turned again and again through incessant cultivation, seemed to move
and live once more in that present sunshine. All color appeared to be
deepened and mellowed, until even the very shadows of the trees were as
velvety as the sward they fell upon. The prairie-bred Potter, accustomed
to the youthful caprices and extravagances of his own virgin soil, could
not help feeling the influence of the ripe restraints of this.
As he glanced through the leaves across green sunlit spaces to the
ivy-clad ruins of Domesday Abbey, which seemed itself a growth of
the very soil, he murmured to himself: “Things had been made mighty
comfortable for folks here, you bet!” Forgotten books he had read as a
boy, scraps of school histories, or rarer novels, came back to him as he
walked along, and peopled the solitude about him with their heroes.
Nevertheless, it was unmistakably hot--a heat homelike in its intensity,
yet of a different effect, throwing him into languid reverie rather than
filling his veins with fire. Secure in his seclusion in the leafy chase,
he took off his jacket and rambled on in his shirt sleeves. Through the
opening he presently saw the abbey again, with the restored wing where
the noble owner lived for two or three weeks in the year, but now given
over to the prevailing solitude. And then, issuing from the chase, he
came upon a broad, moss-grown terrace. Before him stretched a tangled
and luxuriant wilderness of shrubs and flowers, darkened by cypress and
cedars of Lebanon; its dun depths illuminated by dazzling white statues,
vases, trellises, and paved paths, choked and lost in the trailing
growths of years of abandonment and forgetfulness. He consulted his
guide-book again. It was the “old Italian garden,” constructed under the
design of a famous Italian gardener by the third duke; but its studied
formality being displeasing to his successor, it was allowed to fall
into picturesque decay and negligent profusion, which were not, however,
disturbed by later descendants,--a fact deplored by the artistic writer
of the guide-book, who mournfully called attention to the rare beauty of
the marble statues, urns, and fountains, ruined by neglect, although one
or two of the rarer objects had been removed to Deep Dene Lodge, another
seat of the present duke.
It is needless to say that Mr. Potter conceived at once a humorous
opposition to the artistic enthusiasm of the critic, and, plunging
into the garden, took a mischievous delight in its wildness and the
victorious struggle of nature with the formality of art. At every step
through the tangled labyrinth he could see where precision and order
had been invaded, and even the rigid masonry broken or upheaved by the
rebellious force. Yet here and there the two powers had combined to
offer an example of beauty neither could have effected alone. A passion
vine had overrun and enclasped a vase with a perfect symmetry no
sculptor could have achieved. A heavy balustrade was made ethereal with
a delicate fretwork of vegetation between its balusters like lace. Here,
however, the lap and gurgle of water fell gratefully upon the ear of
the perspiring and thirsty Mr. Potter, and turned his attention to more
material things. Following the sound, he presently came upon an enormous
oblong marble basin containing three time-worn fountains with grouped
figures. The pipes were empty, silent, and choked with reeds and water
plants, but the great basin itself was filled with water from some
invisible source.
A terraced walk occupied one side of the long parallelogram; at
intervals and along the opposite bank, half shadowed by willows, tinted
marble figures of tritons, fauns, and dryads arose half hidden in the
reeds. They were more or less mutilated by time, and here and there only
the empty, moss-covered plinths that had once supported them could be
seen. But they were so lifelike in their subdued color in the shade that
he was for a moment startled.
The water looked deliciously cool. An audacious thought struck him. He
was alone, and the place was a secluded one. He knew there were no other
visitors; the marble basin was quite hidden from the rest of the garden,
and approached only from the path by which he had come, and whose entire
view he commanded. He quietly and deliberately undressed himself under
the willows, and unhesitatingly plunged into the basin. The water was
four or five feet deep, and its extreme length afforded an excellent
swimming bath, despite the water-lilies and a few aquatic plants that
mottled its clear surface, or the sedge that clung to the bases of the
statues. He disported for some moments in the delicious element, and
then seated himself upon one of the half-submerged plinths, almost
hidden by reeds, that had once upheld a river god. Here, lazily resting
himself upon his elbow, half his body still below the water, his
quick ear was suddenly startled by a rustling noise and the sound of
footsteps. For a moment he was inclined to doubt his senses; he could
see only the empty path before him and the deserted terrace. But the
sound became more distinct, and to his great uneasiness appeared to
come from the OTHER side of the fringe of willows, where there was
undoubtedly a path to the fountain which he had overlooked. His clothes
were under those willows, but he was at least twenty yards from the bank
and an equal distance from the terrace. He was about to slip beneath the
water when, to his crowning horror, before he could do so, a young girl
slowly appeared from the hidden willow path full upon the terrace. She
was walking leisurely with a parasol over her head and a book in her
hand. Even in his intense consternation her whole figure--a charming
one in its white dress, sailor hat, and tan shoes--was imprinted on his
memory as she instinctively halted to look upon the fountain, evidently
an unexpected surprise to her.
A sudden idea flashed upon him. She was at least sixty yards away;
he was half hidden in the reeds and well in the long shadows of the
willows. If he remained perfectly motionless she might overlook him at
that distance, or take him for one of the statues. He remembered also
that as he was resting on his elbow, his half-submerged body lying on
the plinth below water, he was somewhat in the attitude of one of the
river gods. And there was no other escape. If he dived he might not be
able to keep under water as long as she remained, and any movement
he knew would betray him. He stiffened himself and scarcely breathed.
Luckily for him his attitude had been a natural one and easy to keep.
It was well, too, for she was evidently in no hurry and walked slowly,
stopping from time to time to admire the basin and its figures. Suddenly
he was instinctively aware that she was looking towards him and even
changing her position, moving her pretty head and shading her eyes
with her hand as if for a better view. He remained motionless, scarcely
daring to breathe. Yet there was something so innocently frank and
undisturbed in her observation, that he knew as instinctively that she
suspected nothing, and took him for a half-submerged statue. He breathed
more freely. But presently she stopped, glanced around her, and, keeping
her eyes fixed in his direction, began to walk backwards slowly until
she reached a stone balustrade behind her. On this she leaped, and,
sitting down, opened in her lap the sketch-book she was carrying, and,
taking out a pencil, to his horror began to sketch!
For a wild moment he recurred to his first idea of diving and swimming
at all hazards to the bank, but the conviction that now his slightest
movement must be detected held him motionless. He must save her the
mortification of knowing she was sketching a living man, if he died
for it. She sketched rapidly but fixedly and absorbedly, evidently
forgetting all else in her work. From time to time she held out her
sketch before her to compare it with her subject. Yet the seconds seemed
minutes and the minutes hours. Suddenly, to his great relief, a distant
voice was heard calling “Lottie.” It was a woman's voice; by its accent
it also seemed to him an American one.
The young girl made a slight movement of impatience, but did not look
up, and her pencil moved still more rapidly. Again the voice called,
this time nearer. The young girl's pencil fairly flew over the paper,
as, still without looking up, she lifted a pretty voice and answered
back, “Y-e-e-s!”
It struck him that her accent was also that of a compatriot.
“Where on earth are you?” continued the first voice, which now appeared
to come from the other side of the willows on the path by which the
young girl had approached. “Here, aunty,” replied the girl, closing her
sketch-book with a snap and starting to her feet.
A stout woman, fashionably dressed, made her appearance from the willow
path.
“What have you been doing all this while?” she said querulously. “Not
sketching, I hope,” she added, with a suspicious glance at the book.
“You know your professor expressly forbade you to do so in your
holidays.”