All day we were in a state of expectancy. The mosquitoes were very bad,
and had it not been for the excitement of the P---- person I should have
given up and gone home. I wanted mashed potatoes and lima beans with
butter dressing, and a cup of hot tea, and muffins, and ice--in fact,
I cannot think of anything I did not want, except rabbits and fish and
puffballs and such blackberries as the birds did not fancy. Although we
were well enough--almost too well--the better I felt the hungrier I got.
Tish thought the time had now come to rest and invite our souls. She
set the example that day by going out on a flat rock in the lake and
preparing to think all the things she'd been waiting most of her life
to consider.
"I am ready to form my own opinions about some things," she said.
"I realize now that all my life the newspapers and stupid people and
books have formed my opinions. Now I'm going to think along my own
lines. Is there another life after this? Do I really desire the
suffrage? Why am I a Baptist?"
Aggie said she would like to invite her soul that day also, not to form
any opinions,--Tish always does that for her,--but she had to get some
clothes in September and she might as well think them out.
So it happened that I was alone when I met the P---- person's young
woman.
I had intended to wander only a short way along the trail, but after I
had gone a mile or two it occurred to me as likely that the spring-wagon
driver would come back that way before long out of curiosity, and I
thought I might leave a message for him to bring out some fresh eggs and
leave them there. I could tell Tish I had found a nest, or perhaps,
since that would be lying, I could put them in a nest and let her find
them. I'd have ordered tea, too, if I could have thought of any way to
account for it.
"I'm going to do some meditating myself to-day," I remarked, "but I
think better when I'm moving. If I don't come back in an hour or so
don't imagine I've been kidnaped."
Tish turned on her stone and looked at me.
"You will not be kidnaped," she said shortly. "I cannot imagine any one
safer than you are in that costume."
Well, I made my way along the trail as rapidly as I could. It was twenty
miles there and back and I've seen the day when two city blocks would
send me home to soak my feet in hot water. But the sandals were easy to
walk in and my calico skirt was short and light.
I had no paper to write my message on, of course, but on the way I
gathered a large white fungus and I scraped a note on it with a pin.
With the fungus under my arm I walked briskly along, planning an omelet
with the eggs, if we got any, and gathering mushrooms here and there. It
was the mushrooms that led me to the discovery of a camping-place that
was prehistoric in its primitiveness--a clearing, surrounded by low
bushes, and in the center a fireplace of stones with a fire smouldering.
At one side a heap of leaves and small twigs for a bed, a stump for a
seat, and lying on top of it a sort of stone axe, made by inserting a
sharp stone into the cleft of a sapling and tying it into place with a
wild-grape tendril. Pegged out on the ground to cure was a rabbit skin,
indifferently scraped. It made our aluminum kettle and canvas tepee look
like a marble-vestibuled apartment on Riverside Drive.
The whole thing looked pitiful, hungry. I thought of Tish sitting on a
stone inviting her soul, while rabbits came from miles round to stick
their heads through our nooses and hang themselves for our dinner; and
it seemed to me that we should share our plenty. I thought it probable
that the gentleman of the woods lived here, and from the appearance of
the place he carried all his possessions with him when he wore his
bathing-trunks. If I had been in any doubt, the sight of Aggie's wire
hairpin, sharpened and bent into a serviceable fishhook, decided me. I
scratched a message for him on another fungus and left it:--
If you need anything come to the Indian tepee at the lake. We have
no clothing to spare, but are always glad to help in time of trouble.
(Signed) ONE OF THE SIMPLE LIFERS.
I went on after that and about noon reached our point of exodus from the
wagon. I was tired and hot and I kept thinking of my little dining-room
at home, with the electric fan going, and iced cantaloupe, and nobody
worrying about her soul or thinking her own thoughts, and no rabbits.
Our suitcases were safe enough in the hollow tree, and I thought the
spring wagon had been back already, for there were fresh tracks. This
discouraged me and I sat down on a log to rest. It was then that I heard
the girl crying.
She was crying softly, but in the woods sounds travel. I found her on
her face on the pine needles about twenty yards away, wailing her heart
out into a pink automobile veil, and she was so absorbed in her misery
that I had to stoop and touch her before she looked up.
"Don't cry," I said. "If you are lost, I can direct you to a
settlement."
She looked up at me, and from being very red and suffused she went quite
pale. It seems that with my bare legs and sandals and my hair down,
which was Tish's idea for making it come in thick and not gray, and what
with my being sunburned and stained with berries, she thought I was a
wild woman. I realized what was wrong.
"Don't be alarmed," I said somewhat grimly. "I'm rational enough; if I
hop about instead of walking, it's because I'm the tomb of more rabbits
than I care to remember, but aside from that I'm all right. Are you
lost?"
She sat up, still staring, and wiped her eyes.
"No. I have a machine over there among the trees. Are there--are there
plenty of rabbits in the woods?"
"Thousands." She was a pretty little thing, very young, and dressed in a
white motor coat with white shoes and hat.
"And--and berries?"
"There aren't many berries," I admitted. "The birds eat 'em. We get the
ones they don't fancy."
Now I didn't think for a moment that she was worried about my diet, but
she was worried about the food supply in the woods, that was sure. So I
sat down on a stump and told her about puffballs, and what Tish had read
about ants being edible but acid, and that wood mice, roasted and not
cooked too dry, were good food, but that Aggie had made us liberate the
only ones we had caught, because a man she was once engaged to used to
carry a pet mouse in his pocket.
Nothing had really appealed to her until I mentioned Mr. Wiggins. Then
unexpectedly she began to cry again. And after that I got the whole
story.
It seems she was in love with a young man who was everything a young man
ought to be and had money as well. But the money was the barrier really,
for the girl's father wouldn't believe that a youth who played polo, and
did not have to work for a living, and led cotillons, and paid calls in
the afternoon could have really good red blood in him. He had a man in
view for her, she said, one who had made his money himself, and had to
have his valet lay out his clothes for fear he'd make a mistake. Once
the valet had to go to have a tooth pulled and the man had to decline
a dinner.
"Father said," finished the little girl tearfully, "that if
Percy--that's his name, and it counted against him too--that if Percy
was a real man he'd do something. And then he hap-happened on a book of
my small brother's, telling how people used to live in the woods, and
kill their own food and make their own fire--"
"The 'Young Woodsman,' of course," I put in.
"And how the strong survived, but the weak succumbed, and he said if
Percy was a man, and not a t-tailor's dummy, he'd go out in the woods,
j-just primitive man, without anything but a pair of bathing trunks,
and keep himself alive for a month. If he s-stood the test father was
willing to forget the 'Percy.' He said that he knew Mr. Willoughby could
do it--that's the other man--and that he'd come in at the end of the
time with a deed for the forest and mortgages on all the surrounding
camps."
"And Percy agreed?"
"He didn't want to. He said it took mentality and physical endurance as
well as some courage to play polo. Father said it did--on the part of
the pony. Then s-some of the men heard of it, and there were bets on
it--ten to one he wouldn't do it and twenty to one he couldn't do it. So
Percy decided to try. Father was so afraid that some of the campers and
guides would help him that he had notices sent out at Mr. Willoughby's
suggestion offering a reward if Percy could be shown to have asked any
assistance. Oh, I know he's sick in there somewhere, or starving
or--dead!"
I had had a great light break over me, and now I stooped and patted the
girl on the shoulder.
"Dead! Certainly not," I said. "I saw him last night."
"Saw him!"
"Well, not exactly saw him--there wasn't much light. But he's alive and
well, and--do you really want him to win?"
"Do I?" She sat up with shining eyes. "I don't care whether he owns
anything in the world but the trunks. If I didn't think I'd add to his
troubles I'd go into the woods this minute and find him and suffer with
him."
"You'd have to be married to him first," I objected, rather startled.
But she looked at me with her cheeks as red strawberries. "Why?" she
demanded. "Father's crazy about primitive man--did primitive man take
his woman to church to be married, with eight bridesmaids and a
reception after the ceremony? Of course not. He grabbed her and carried
her off."
"Good Heavens! You're not in earnest?" "I think I am," she said slowly.
"I'd rather live in the woods with Percy and no ceremony than live
without him anywhere in the world. And I'll bet primitive man would have
been wiped off the earth if he hadn't had primitive woman to add her
wits to his strength. If Percy only had a woman to help him!"
"My dear," I said solemnly, "he has! He has, not one, but three!"
It took me some time to explain that Percy was not supporting a harem in
the Maine woods; but when at last she got my idea and that the other two
classed with me in beauty and attractiveness, she was overjoyed.
"But Percy promised not to ask for help," she said suddenly.
"He needn't. My dear, go away and stop worrying about Percy--he's all
right. When is the time up?"
"In three weeks."
"I suppose father and the Willoughby person will come to meet him?"
"Yes, and all the fellows from the club who have put money up on him.
We're going to motor over and father's bringing the physical director of
the athletic club. He's not only got to survive, but he's got to be in
good condition."
"He'll be in good condition," I said grimly. "Does he drink and smoke?"
"A little, not too much. Oh, yes, I had forgotten!" She opened up a
little gold cigarette case, which she took from her pocket, and
extracted a handful of cigarettes.
"If you are going to see him," she said, "you might put them where he'll
find them?"
"Certainly not."
"But that's not giving them to him."
"My dear child," I said sternly, "Percy is going to come out of these
woods so well and strong that he may not have to work, but he'll want
to. And he'll not smoke anything stronger than corn-silk, if we're to
take charge of this thing."
She understood quickly enough and I must say she was grateful. She was
almost radiant with joy when I told her how capable Tish was, and that
she was sure to be interested, and about Aggie's hay fever and Mr.
Wiggins and the rabbit snares. She leaned over and kissed me
impulsively.
"You dear old thing!" she cried. "I know you'll look after him and make
him comfortable and--how old is Miss Letitia?"
"Something over fifty and Aggie Pilkington's about the same, although
she won't admit it."
She kissed me again at that, and after looking at her wrist watch she
jumped to her feet.
"Heavens!" she said. "It's four o'clock and my engine has been running
all this time!"
She got a smart little car from somewhere up the road, and the last I
saw of her she was smiling back over her shoulder and the car running on
the edge of a ditch.
"You are three darlings!" she called back. "And tell Percy I love
him--love him--love him!"
I thought I'd never get back to the lake. I was tired to begin with, and
after I'd gone about four miles and was limping with a splinter in my
heel and no needle to get it out with, I found I still had the fungus
message to the spring-wagon person under my arm.
It was dark when I got back and my nerves were rather unstrung, what
with wandering from the path here and there, with nothing to eat since
morning, and running into a tree and taking the skin off my nose. When I
limped into camp at last, I didn't care whether Percy lived or died, and
the thought of rabbit stew made my mouth water.
It was not rabbit, however. Aggie was sitting alone by the fire, waving
a brand round her head to keep off mosquitoes, and in front of her,
dangling from the spit, were a dozen pairs of frogs' legs in a row.