CHAPTER XITSHOTI-NON-DA-WAGA
InstantlyGeraldine knew that she had blundered. The lesson of the value of silence she had not quite learned, although she was making strides. After two weeks of “non-committalishness,” as Mrs. Wells had styled it, she had committed herself thoroughly. It was now the turn of her own ears to burn. During the late dinner and after she went to her room she flamed at the thought of her silly speech. And it was not as if the thing had come from her impromptu; she had thought it all out carefully; planned even the order of the words! With a phrase she would squelch this exquisite self-centred gentleman. In the silent rehearsal on the train the words appeared to have a smashing, annihilating power. It seemed almost too cruel to use them.... And their effect had been a comic confession of girlish inability to take a general discussion impersonally! In a smile and a look the man had accused her of laying her mind bare, of giving herself away by protesting too much.
In the morning the anger was gone, evaporated; chagrin and mild humiliation took its place. In that mood she met Richard at breakfast.
“I was outrageously angry with you last night,” she confessed. They sat opposite. Mrs. Wells was too busy getting into domestic harness again to have evena subliminal ear open; and Walter, as usual, remained aloof.
“Yes,” he appeared to have forgotten the cause; “so you were. Was it my fault?”
“I don’t suppose it was anyone’s fault,” she replied; “that is, according to your view of things. It was like a gust of wind. It swept over me. I present it to your collection of interesting ‘mental facts.’ Your suggestion that all women eventually make eyes at you——”
“Oh, did I say that? Not all! It wouldn’t be true to say all.”
“Well, the majority of them, even the old ones, you said——”
“Oh, no; not all,” he gazed out of the window towards a rolling view of the Lake several hundred feet below them, “for I distinctly remember a good old coloured cook who didn’t.... But then I was only a child.”
She laughed. “Last night I couldn’t have seen the humour of anything. Do you know, Sir Richard, I could have struck you last night? If I had had my riding crop in my hand I would have lashed you across the face. Now, psychologist explain that brain storm, if you can.”
He did not turn his head from the window. The scenery took all his eyes. In the darkness of the previous night he was aware that the carriage had been travelling up a considerable grade, but he was not prepared for this elevation of about four hundred feet above the level of the Lake. The house—the Southern mansion type—turned its four enormous Ionic columns half-way about so as to enjoy the vista down the blue Keuka and the far ridges of high, misty hills.
“How can you keep your eyes away from that wonderful view?” he asked.
“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” She moved her chair. “And don’t believe for a moment that I think lightly of it. I was born in the room just above this—my own room, now—and that view has coloured my whole life. Nothing in Europe was half so good to me, becausethat”—she threw a touch of a kiss to the Lake—“that is home.”
“I quite understand you,” he spoke appreciatively, “although I never had the sensation of home.... It must be thrilling ... to be able to come—home.”
“You poor boy.”
Curiosity about his possible past came over her. It was not the first time, but she withheld the question that rose to her mind. Besides, the mother was hovering near. And, besides again, he must not now be asked to tell anything, not while he was a guest in this house.
“I don’t intend to exhibit ‘Red Jacket’ to you,” she covered her exclamation quickly; “it must unfold itself. There are dozens of views, but you must come upon them unawares; and each has an inexhaustible pack of scenes—I am always discovering new ones. ‘Red Jacket’ is a crafty old Indian; he’ll remain stolid and silent as stone until you are ready to commune with him. Those four great columns outside, for instance; they are never the same. At first you will glance at them and pass under, unless you wonder why they put such huge columns on a dwelling-house. Maybe you’ll make the usual joke and ask if this is the post-office or the Carnegie library. You’ll be here a long while before they grow big and you grow small; and then you’ll pass them some moonlight night with a little reverence; and on stormy nights you’ll be glad of them and feel, oh, so protected when you are safe inside.”
She talked with a smiling casualness—hesitating here and there for a word—which took the eloquence out of the speech, but left all of the affection and all of the poetry.
“You are very dangerous,” he spoke with decision abruptly. “Your song of home is stirring primitive instincts in me. Look out, or I may stick a bread knife in my belt and stalk down that long hill to the cottage I see at the edge of the Lake and run amuck among some good man’s daughters. You are arousing my domestic instincts. Please don’t force me to marry somebody in self-defence.”
“What’s this?” Mrs. Wells caught a word. “Marry in self-defence? What an ungracious remark, Richard. I trust, if you do marry, you’ll marry for the good of your immortal soul. You know it isn’t good for a man to be alone; therefore it is bad; and therefore, a lost soul.”
She was recovering some of her old spirit. “Red Jacket” had done that. Since five o’clock she had been wandering in and out among her hardy perennials, and every blossom had given her courage. But the old vim and assurance was gone; only the external imitation remained. She looked almost as imposing and masterful as of old; but the aggressive force was no longer there. In its place had come a permanent yielding sweetness, a charming thing; and, better still, a long-belated sense of humour.
“Bravo!” cried Richard, “you are a theologian, Mrs. Wells. Any seminary would pass you, except possibly Union and Harvard Divinity; and they might, because they believe in everything. Jerry has been letting me into some of the secrets of ‘Red Jacket.’ It begins already to domesticate me. But I see that ‘Red Jacket’ has deep roots.”
“You don’t ask questions and bring us out,” Mrs. Wells beamed at him. “‘Red Jacket’ was built by my grandfather. He came with his slaves from Virginia in 1818. George Alexander’s great-grandmother was my grandfather’s ‘Mammy.’ You’ll find black folks all over this country who are the result of that migration. Grandfather Wells was a close friend of Red Jacket the Seneca Chief. Red Jacket—the Indian, not the house—was born just below us on the Lake; he was a friend of the whites, you know, and was most helpful in thwarting old Tecumseh. Grandfather was made a member of the Seneca tribe. We have a heap of mementoes of that in ‘Grandfather’s Room’ upstairs.”
“Really!” Richard’s eyes widened. “When may I see them?”
“Wait, I’ll get you the key.” The mother was on the way when Geraldine interrupted.
“Now, mother, you’re spoiling it. Don’t let’s get the key. Let it wait. I don’t want to personally conduct Richard about like a Freneau party. Let him find out things for himself. If we tell him everything it will spoil the surprise.”
The mother agreed reluctantly, and so did Richard.
“All right,” he settled back. “I’m game. I hate to be told things. I do like to find them out for myself. May I go anywhere?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wells; “only be careful of the under——”
“S-sh!” Jerry warned.
“Ah-ha!” Richard cried. “Mystery, plot and underground passages! I am in luck. And I do hope there’s heaps of danger.”
“Don’t be too sure you’ve guessed,” laughed Geraldine. “‘Red Jacket’ was one of the ‘stations’ ofthe Underground Railway which spirited negroes from the South. This was one of the last ‘stations’ before Canada. No! I won’t tell you any more. You are free to go anywhere you please, but I wouldn’t try to walk off Bluff Point after dark. It is only an eight-hundred foot drop to the Lake.”
Richard elected to go first to the porch and sit in the guardianship of the four Ionic columns. The Lake is nearly a mile wide at this point and the view swept southeast over a lengthened vista of water and rolling vineyards.
“Would you like to be introduced?” Geraldine nodded towards the great columns, which shot straight up to the roof-trees. “The farthest one is ‘Tshoti,’ the second is ‘Non,’ the one to your left is ‘Da,’ and the last one is ‘Waga.’ Put together they say Tshoti-non-da-waga, ‘People of the Mountains.’ That is what the Seneca tribe call themselves, and here among the mountains they lived and ruled.”
“My Indian history is rather shaky—but I’m eager to brush up,” said Richard. “The Senecas were one of the Six Nations, weren’t they?”
“Yes; they were the leaders of the Six Nations!”
She was standing as she spoke, gazing off far across the Lake. She was brown and broad-cheeked, as so many Virginians are. In that setting she took character; and her pride as she said, “They were the leaders of the Six Nations!” caused Richard to wonder. Great-grandfather Wells, friend of Chief Red Jacket, had been received into the Seneca tribe. Could it be a touch of Indian blood that gave the erect figure, the dark skin and the swart hair?
“Are you a Seneca maiden, I wonder?” he asked.
She turned swiftly and posed like a statue.
“You should see me in my birch canoe,” she spoke after a second or two. “For your private joy I’ll braid my hair in two thick plaits and put on a genuine Tshoti-non-da-waga costume out of ‘Grandfather’s Room.’ Then youwillwonder. Oh, my dear Sir Richard, you are not the only one to have mysterious pasts!”
Instantly he took up the jest—if it were a jest—and parodied Longfellow at her:
“Tell me, tell me, lovely maidenOf the Tshoti-non-da-waga,Do you still sneak up behind oneWith a scalping-knife extendedFor to—uh—lift one’s curling ringlets?”
“Tell me, tell me, lovely maidenOf the Tshoti-non-da-waga,Do you still sneak up behind oneWith a scalping-knife extendedFor to—uh—lift one’s curling ringlets?”
“Tell me, tell me, lovely maiden
Of the Tshoti-non-da-waga,
Do you still sneak up behind one
With a scalping-knife extended
For to—uh—lift one’s curling ringlets?”
She was quick to answer in equally bad doggerel:
“No! nor does the lovely maidenOf the Tshoti-non-da-waga——”
“No! nor does the lovely maidenOf the Tshoti-non-da-waga——”
“No! nor does the lovely maiden
Of the Tshoti-non-da-waga——”
She stopped for a moment to get the next lines smooth, and then went on swiftly:
“Roll her eyes or fall in love withEvery thing that struts in trousers.”
“Roll her eyes or fall in love withEvery thing that struts in trousers.”
“Roll her eyes or fall in love with
Every thing that struts in trousers.”
“Good shot!” he cried. “Hey, Walter!” Walter had lunged along after Richard. He seemed to enjoy being present, so long as he was not bothered. “Hey, Walter, what do you think of that for poetry? It’s enough to make old Ralph Waldo Longfellow turn over with envy.”
“Huh!” Walter sniffed in a very, very knowing way. “You’re all right—you two!”
There was something almost sinister in his look. He had sized them up, it said.
“What do you mean?” Geraldine began to flame again.
“Jerry!” Richard caught her arm and pressed it significantly.
“Oh, I’m on!” Walter snapped. “Go to it, you two. It’s all right. It’sallright, I tell you. I don’t care. I’m no squealer, I tell you. Go ahead; on’y no use puttin’ up no bluff with me.”
In a moment Jerry was standing before him, her eyes blazing. She was about to seize Walter and shake him. But Richard followed quickly and put his arm completely about her shoulders and held her to him.
“There now, Jerry,” he soothed. “OfcourseWalter’s on. Why shouldn’t he be? He’s a good sport, and he might as well be in this, too. I’ll have no secrets from Walter. I tell him everything. It’s the only way to treat pards——” Richard’s pressure on her arm was telling her to join in the stratagem, that it was the only thing to do; but it took her several bewildering seconds before she comprehended. Then she made amends; her dramatic instinct came to the fore, and she laughed softly.
“Walter, you’re a keen one,” she nodded towards him, and slowly disengaged herself from Richard’s grip. “You’ve got the mind of a——”
“Tshoti-non-da-waga,” Richard put in quickly for fear she would spoil all with a too ironic figure.
“Well, that’s not what I was going to say,” she considered, “but it will do.”... She moved briskly to re-enter the house. “Prowl around, Richard. I’ve a duty or two in the house and then let’s all go down to the Lake. I’m keen for a swim in real water.”
“But Walter doesn’t swim,” Richard objected. She stopped at the doorway. Geraldine was not always considerate of Walter, but Richard remembered that the care of Walter was his chief claim to “Red Jacket.”
“Never mind me,” Walter crouched in his chair sullenly.
“Haven’t you a boat?” Richard turned to the boy.
“No!” he growled. “Can’t have nothin’ ’round here.”
“Mother would not hear of owning a sail-boat,” Geraldine explained; “we’ve always had to go passenger on somebody else’s.”
“Who owns that sloop over there?” he asked.
“That’s George Alexander’s. And it isn’t a sloop,” corrected Geraldine; “it’s a cat-boat.”
“Well, let’s confiscate it for Walter.”
Walter looked up with interest. His “pard” had the right spirit. Alone the boy would not have had courage, but the big man’s blue eye spoke a determination that was contagious.
“All right,” said Walter, and got on his feet.
“I’ll make it up with Mrs. Wells,” Richard explained. “Walter’s got to have a boat, a real boat—what do you call them—class something or other?”
“Class A scows.”
“That’s it. We are going to have one, Walt, if I have to crib the money somewhere. But for the present you fix up that ‘cat’ down there and let her go. If you don’t come home alive, I’ll break the news to the home folks. Go along, old boy.” Geraldine had gone into the house. “And when you get back, feeling just right for it, we’ll have a little nip, eh? Just a teeny one—or maybe two teeny ones, eh? When we changed cars at Elmira I blew myself—Jerry’s money; good joke!—for a quart of something guaranteed all pure food.”
“I know,” said Walter, and added, “saw it in your room this morning.”
“Did you! Good! Well, go to it, old man; and don’t forget to work up a proper thirst.”
Walter grinned and sauntered down the hill. He understood. It was a bribe to keep him quiet. Oh, that Richard Richard was a smart one, a good fellow to keep next to! He wasn’t straight with others, but what did Walter care? Something crooked about this Richard Richard—too glib and good-looking to be anything but crooked—but Walter was done with good people. He was a bad man and Richard was his sort. All right. He would not squeal, but he would have to get his “divvy.” That’s all he cared about. So long as they let him alone and gave him his share, they could make off with the whole shooting match.... Nice little revenge on mother, too; she thought herself so smart, and now she was being taken in all right.... Go to jail, eh? He wondered if Richard Richard was clever enough to keep out of jail. He hoped so. He would never “squeal.” As far as Walter was concerned there’d be no killing of golden-egg geese.
From the porch Richard could see the boy—in spite of his twenty-two years one could think of him only as a boy—as he stumbled slowly down the hill, disappeared for a few minutes in a growth of striking Lombardy poplar on the very water’s edge, and pushed out in a tender to George Alexander’s cat-boat. He watched the tender made fast to the floating buoy, saw the sail go creaking up, fill and send the boat like a live thing out towards Bluff Point and the main branch of the Lake.
Lake Keuka—Keuka is Seneca for “crooked”—is shaped like a bent-over “Y” with Penn Yan at the right-hand upper tip, “Red Jacket” at the left and Bluff Point protruding into the stem. From the porchRichard could see the whole length of the left-hand branch of the Y and a mile or so on to the farther shore of the “stem.” It was a soul-filling sight; but he had room enough left in his soul to consider Walter and to begin the perfecting of a plan for getting him on his feet, first physically and then mentally.
He was in the midst of what looked like splendid strategy when Geraldine appeared dressed for a swim. She wore an easy-fitting suit which stopped at the knees, a brown stuff—like taffeta silk, guessed Richard, it being the only silk he knew by name exceptcrêpe de Chine; and as it melted down into brown stockings and brown moccasins and up into a brown band about the hair, Jerry stood revealed an Indian princess. That is what he told her—that and other things—after he had recovered from the delight of looking at her. He said all this in the presence of Mrs. Wells, who had come out under the shelter of Tshoti and his three sentinels to take an enforced rest in a “rocker.”
“Your bathing suit, Richard, is down at ‘Lombardy,’” said Jerry, “just back of that row of Lombardy poplars, Mrs. Norris’ cottage. She keeps extra suits for us and lets us track our wet feet all over her house. Mrs. Norris is a gem and a saint; if you don’t worship her we’ll all hate you, won’t we, mother?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” mother rocked away. “Phœbe Norris is a saint, if there ever was one on earth. She lived ten years with a crazy husband, took care of him and kept him easy in his mind until he fortunately died for her. And now she lives for others. She rents her vineyard out on half-shares, which gives her all she wants in this world.”
“So she spends her time preparing for the next?” Richard queried.
“Oh, she’s not that kind of saint!” Both women laughed at the thought. “She’s——”
“Mother!” admonished Geraldine. “Please let Richard discover us properly. You are for ever guide-booking him. Phœbe Norris could never be explained with words.”
“Quite true, my dear,” the mother smiled at the thought, “quite true.... It does my soul good to get into an American ‘rocker’ at last.” She shifted the topic easily; and then shifted again at the vision of Jerry before her, one of the many signs of the change that had come over her. “Isn’t it strange, Richard, that my girl should be the athlete and my boy should not even be able to swim?”
“Why should he need to swim?” Richard had laid his plan and went resolutely to put it into execution. “Very few sailors can swim. Walter’s a born sailor. Do you know that you are going to buy him a boat and let him lift the Lake cup?”
“Eh?” she turned to this confident man with a touch of her old resentment towards being managed. “I said he should never own a boat or sail it alone until——”
“Of course you did,” Richard interrupted, glancing down upon the Lake where Walter was plainly coming about on his second tack. “We all say a lot of foolish things. And now you’re going to buy him one and let him employ that mind of his. If you don’t,” he raised his voice to drown the beginning of a protest, “you will send him to the devil as certain as if you had signed his commission. Weak as he is, he’s got your Virginia determination; and when he goes to the devil it will be on the gallop. I know; for I am a strong man, but he almost succeeded in breaking down my grip on the roperail on theVictoria—all by sheer will, too—and if he had——”
Mrs. Wells ceased rocking. She looked helplessly at Richard, mutely begging him not again to force that picture into her mind.
“Well,” he spoke calmly, “you are going to give up, aren’t you—for the sake of that boy?”
Walter had broken a tack suddenly in the middle of the Lake, obviously to take quick advantage of a change of wind.
“Yes—I suppose so.”
“Good! Now let’s go the whole way forward. Not only are you going to let him have the boat, but you are going to tell him so—without a word about the past; just as if the matter had never come up before—and you are going to give him the money so that he may buy it himself.”
She protested faintly that that would only be tempting him.
“It’s a risk, I admit,” Richard agreed. “I’ll be frank; we run a chance. But my conviction is that what that boy needs first is our faith in him. I have a bottle of whisky in my room, put there purposely to see if he would keep his word with me. He told me he wouldn’t touch it except when I—well, uh, he said he wouldn’t touch it. I had faith and put the stuff right out in the open; went off and left him alone with it. Not a drop touched!... You will do this, won’t you?... It’s part of my plan to put him on his feet.”
The splotch of white, Walter’s sail, was growing increasingly smaller; evidently he was making for the narrows which led into the main body of water.
Yes, she would do as he suggested, although it went against the grain to give in.
“Of course it does,” he cheered her; “we’re all built that way, but, let me tell you, the joy you will experience in giving up will compensate you for life. Blessed are those who occasionally give in, for they shall inherit the joy of living.”
They left Mrs. Wells silent and stationary on the porch. Down the driveway and across the State Road Jerry marched on silently. She was disturbed more than she wished to express. So she kept slightly in advance of the man and started ahead. He had achieved his little victory so easily, but he had no conception of what that surrender revealed to the daughter. She had never before seen her mother so weak, so mentally benumbed. Who in the past would have dared accost her as this guest had jauntily done? The sharp satiric tongue would have withered him; he would have been struck in a dozen vital spots before he had half been aware of any attack at all; and the indescribable “manner”—poise, bearing, what you will—would have quelled him.
But this worried woman on the porch had seemed eager to give up and get rid of a vexing gentleman. There was something very pitiful in the contrast and it filled Jerry with foreboding. She stopped as she crossed the State Road and looked back. Mrs. Wells had begun slowly to rock; soon she was going her regular pace, a sign, Richard hoped, that she had cast upon him all her burdens. Farther down the hill they could see her bobbing forward and back between the massive stolidity of “Da” and “Waga.”
Concerning her mother Jerry could not bring herself to speak aloud; nor would she disclose in feature or tone any hint of her fear. There were other things on her mind, however, which couldproperly be brought forth to the light of familiar conversation.
“We’ve been interrupted horribly lately,” she began. “If it keeps up I’ll be irritated and show my claws at you again.”
“I see you have claws;” but his eyes were on the steep road.
“I blow up,” she admitted.... “If I had struck you last night it would have hurt, and I should have meant it to hurt; but the moment after I should have been terrifically sorry. Why should I have flared up so, I wonder?”
It was the traditional female attitude, probably, he suggested, carefully keeping from the suggestion made to her at the time that her vehement protest of independence was the sure sign of the beginning of dependence; the female bristles most and kills less, because, he supposed, they grow angry for protection and not as hunters. Traditional female attitude and also the common human sensitiveness to words. He need not tell her what he thought of that. She was insulted again! Always permitting herself to be insulted. Even the gods should not be able to insult via words. But humans like to be insulted. She protested. He insisted; it feeds their pride, he said, and arouses their combativeness, both great human delights. Every human and every nation is eager to be insulted; it’s the hard job in life not to insult them.
Well, perhaps. But he had been so irritatingly calm; so serene; so confident of his ability to charm.
But why not be confident if one does charm?
Who is proud now?
Not he! No more proud of his ability to charm than he is of his ability to eat an omelette. Why shouldone be proud of so universal a quality? Look about you, he adjured her, at the successful matings—he did not mean marriages. The dog’s-meat man is fondling the hand of the cook with the scraggly hair! “Beefy face and grubby hand!” Men kill one another for the veriest drabs of women, and women grow desperate with jealousy over the blankest of males. Everyone has charm; the Lord knows why he distributed it so generally.
“Mawnin’, M’s Geraldine!” a happy, shining darkey plumped at them from among the grapes.
“Good-morning, Bolivar,” she waved a hand.
“Mawnin’, M’s Geraldine!” called a voice a little below on the other side of the road. Through the corn another black head peeped out.
“Good-morning, Saul.”
There were several other “Good-mawnin’s,” to each of which Geraldine responded with the name of the black salutatorian.
At table and near the house Richard had noted the coming and going of many negroes. Mrs. Wells had said that nearly one hundred years ago her grandfather Wells had brought his slaves with him from Virginia. In that time there must have been much marrying and giving in marriage. Had the progeny of this prolific race stayed on at “Red Jacket”? It seemed so. He was about to ask her, but her mind was tenaciously on her flare-up of the night before. With the greatest attempt at tactfulness she was trying to show him how lightly she had conceived the matter—she would cure her blunder of speech by more speech!
“Well, you made me angry, and I showed my claws. I’m glad I didn’t scratch, because it is all over now and I am not in the least angry with you.”
“You must be angry with me often,” he talked and slid along the pebbly incline; “it’s a sign of affection. I believe the Serbian word for darling is almost the same as ‘I’ll strangle you.’ Loving and strangling are very close together. I don’t know why. The two electric currents are charged, I suppose, and the slightest contact starts a flash and a shock.”
“But I was angry with Walter, too,” she said, “a few moments ago, when he made that absurd suggestion about us. And here we are combining for his good—not our own.”
There were many things he might have said here. He had his own opinion of the cause of her anger, but he did not care to broach it. Was she going to make eyes at him after all, and hardly before he had got settled in this beautiful place? He did not care to leave just yet.
He decided to avoid the dangerous topic, over which she fluttered with such obvious interest.
Mrs. Phœbe Norris was not at home, but her house was open to the four winds. In a neat little room Richard found bathing suits of many sizes, and managed to discover a fitting combination of upper and nether garments.
A whir and a splash told him that Geraldine had taken her plunge and was throwing herself about in joyous abandon. Out of his window he soon saw her, going at a swift pace, hand over hand, a splendid “crawl” stroke.
The sight gave him a quick thrill. Here, too, was a swimmer, not a dabbler in pools, but possibly one who could do a long journey with him. It was pleasant to swim for miles alone; but it would be a new and rare experience to troll along with a companion. He hurried his preparation in anticipation.
She was swimming past the floating dock when he prepared to dive.
“Come on!” she challenged, and struck out into the Lake.
He dived and followed. Both were using the long side-stroke, and after several minutes there seemed to be no diminution of the space between them. As she swung her head from side to side she would look back occasionally and smile at him tantalizingly.
“Come on!” she seemed to say; “if you can.”
As they got out beyond the shore trees she noticed about a mile away the white spot of Walter’s sail coming down towards them before a light breeze, and altered her direction and made towards it.