On Lake Kippewa.
On Lake Kippewa.
On Lake Kippewa.
I
"It is not a place for everyone," said the priest, quietly, as he led the way under drooping peppers. "These children are orphans of good family. Their excellent mother died a year ago; but they are poor, and I have promised to find them a guest to fill their bedroom. A few dollars will be a blessing to them."
His glance, practised in such measurement, added—"And you are a gentleman—a man to be trusted.
"The house is plain but comfortable. Francisca, like her mother, is an admirable housekeeper," he remarked as he led his guest into the paradise of roses.
The Professor, noting the sweet unkemptness of it, had his New England doubts, but he had none when Francisco, bareheaded, warm, and beautiful, came up from irrigating the oranges, "kissed the hands" of the Professor, and turning his own supple palms outward made him a present of the house and all in it, which at that moment included Francisca, standing under the roses of the porch, and more beautiful even than Francisco.
The professional ears were pricked at the soft organ-tones of speech. If he should not decide to take the Chair, at least his time need not be lost, he argued. That, indeed, had been his motive for seeking a Spanish household.
When he packed his trunk in Boston a Spanish dictionary was included, as became a professor of languages; and now as he unpacked it in the little roof-bedroom with the red, round eyes of oranges staring levelly in, and a drifting cascade of perfume and green and white outside, he was well content.
Perhaps it was that foreign ancestress of his, to whom he was fond of ascribing his bent for languages, who made this foreign corner of his own country so instantly attractive to him.
When he went downstairs later he stepped into an open world. There were untold windows, all wide to the air, and through the green curtains of vines nodded the heads of many roses. Francisca, and the ancient relative to whom the orphans gave a home, and who served as a nominal duenna, were giving the last touches to a table laid in the corner of the broad veranda, which ran about three sides of the house. The grassy space it enclosed was of brave Bermuda, brown, but never-dying, and returning green thanks for a cupful of water. The Professor's foot came to love the touch of that thick carpet in after days.
Beyond, the orange-grove stretched to the lime-hedge, and over that the peppers drooped their ferny branches.
Nothing in all the place was trimmed. Where the long trailing arms of the Lady Banksia fell by their own weight, or clambered by their own daring, there they remained. The Professor stooped under the same trailing branch each time he passed around the veranda. A dozen times he took out his knife impatiently to cut it, but an involuntary compunction arrested his hand. It was so in keeping with the place—it was so in keeping with Francisco and Francisca.
And with an incredible ease and swiftness, the Professor found himself growing in keeping, too.
In another corner of the deep rose-covered veranda all his writing materials quickly congregated. An Indian basket of oranges stood on the little stand by the hammock's elbow, near the rocking-chair in which Francisca sat daily, converting fine linen into finer lace, and cultivating the Professor's Spanish at the same time.
Francisca "kept the house," not with semi-yearly upheavals and the terrible cleanliness of the Professor's ancestral memories, but in a leisurely, sweet fashion of her own, leaving much to the sun and air, ignoring brasses and other troublous matters, perhaps, but never failing—wiseFrancisca!—to put a rose in her hair, and to set hot, savoury dishes with tropical names before her men-folk. Therefore no man ever found a flaw in Francisca's housekeeping.
Had there been twenty men beneath her roof, each would have been her peculiar care. Her manner to her young brother had a caressing sweetness which a New England girl would have kept for her lover or conscientiously forborne him—for his soul's sake.
As for Francisco, sixteen, brown, slender, wearing his peaked sombrero with consummate grace (a gift he shared in common with every wood-cutter andrancheroof the pure blood), he was the Professor's companion in every walk, every blood-stirring lope across the openmesa, every delicious climb up the chaparral-sided hills or the ferny cañons. The boy grew into his heart; and in return Francisco loved him as boys and Southerners can love, with adoration.
It was only a short time after he came among them that the Professor stopped one morning on his way out of the breakfast-room (in which they never breakfasted!) to examine a quaint inlaid guitar, hanging by faded ribbons against the wall.
"It is Francisco's," said Francisca. "He plays beautifully; but he has never played since our mother died—he hung it here then."
"That is not well," said the Professor. "You should win him to play again."
That evening, in the moonlight on the porch, Francisca laid a tender hand upon her brother's head as he sat on the step below. Her hands seemed made for such a purpose.
"Francisco, the Señor asks if you never mean to play your guitar again."
Francisco was silent a moment, looking at the stars.
"Perhaps," he replied. "Some day, when we are very happy again—not yet." Then turning his head, he touched the caressing hand lightly with his lips.
"At thy wedding—or mine—querida," he said, lightly, and rising abruptly, went into the house.
"He cannot bear yet to hear her spoken of," said Francisca, following him with moist eyes.
"I was—ahem!—very fond of my mother. She died when I was a boy," said the Professor.
"But ours was with us only a little year ago. She sat where you sit, and looked at us with her beautiful soft eyes.
"And you—you had not even a sister." Francisca looked at him as if she would like to make up that deficiency of tenderness—perhaps to strokehishead, as she did Francisco's.
There was abundant leisure for the Professor's studies, for the long, gorgeous wonderland of summer was upon them, and most people were at Santa Catalina, or in the high Sierras, taking an exchange of paradises.
The days rounded through their delicious sequence of perfumed dawns alive with birds, and middays of still air and shadowed lawns, to the infinite twilights and great moons.
In the evenings—the evenings of Southern California—they sat out under the vines, watching these enormous yellow and orange moons, and Francisca sang Californian songs.
Thus the days passed; punctuated by a talk with the Padre, a ride, a stroll, or some playful share in the labor of irrigating the oranges—the one form of labor Francisco ever seemed engaged in; but these he irrigated perpetually.
The Professor missed nothing; he desired nothing. The intoxication of living in close touch with the sun and air, and Earth in her summer mood, has never been half told. Every fibre of his being rejoiced in that long summer.
The little ranch of five acres—all that remained of five hundred—was large enough to hold his content. We do not know that the Garden of Eden was larger. He wrote hopefully to the Faculty concerning that Chair, and with laudable moderation to his principal correspondent in the East: "California has a charm impossible to analyze. I wish you were here." And then he paused, pondered, and carefully erased the last sentence, but not so perfectly but that Miss Dysart by dint of holding it up to the window-pane deciphered it, and sat biting her pencil gravely a space thereafter.
To wake in the morning and know the sun would shine all day; not to be witheredby the heat or chilled by the wind, but subtly flattered and caressed by a climate which was only another Francisca; to be wooed to large thoughts and visions by the landscape; not to feel the press and friction of a narrow life and arbitrary customs, and yet to be conscious through all this space and tranquillity of the forward impetus of a vigorous young life all about him—this sufficed. The opportunities for usefulness were great in a place destined to detain every soul who lingered a rash year within its borders—and to make of the next generation natives.
In lieu of caressing the land itself, he often caressed Francisco, its breathing type, drawing the lad to him with an arm about his slender shoulders.
And Francisca, the other breathing type, regarded them both with that smile of tenderness which has in it so much of the maternal. When all is said, the wisest man remains something of a child to any woman, though she is but an inexperienced girl, and he may have forgotten more out of books than she will ever know.
One day Francisco, running lightly up the path and steps to where Francisca sat filling a bowl with roses, and the Professor sat watching her, dropped an envelope upon the table.
"This is all your mail, Señor," said Francisco, gayly.
The Professor opened, glanced, and fell into a brown study, from which he woke to encounter Francisca's eyes over the bowl of roses.
"Is anything the matter?" asked those eyes anxiously.
"Nothing," the Professor replied to them. "An old friend of mine is coming out unexpectedly—is on her way to Santa Barbara."
"That is pleasant for you," said Francisca, sweetly. "And the days are cooler; she will be sure to like our country."
"She is coming to-morrow," said the Professor, rising abruptly. "I must go at once to the hotel."
"We will send many roses to her room; and Francisco shall pick the large Indian basket full of fruit—she will be so tired with the long journey."
"Thank you," murmured the Professor, vaguely.
He did not hear Francisca's caution to her brother: "Do not pick any of the heliotrope, Francisco, for the heavy scent may be disagreeable to an old lady—and only the very choicest peaches—old people must be careful what they eat." But this was not needed for his confusion.
"How well you are looking!" exclaimed Miss Dysart, as she stepped from the train the next morning, with a critical glance at the Professor.
"The only climate on earth," replied the Professor, laughing to hide a shade of embarrassment; "and you—you are looking well, too."
Distinctly well, in her immaculate shirtwaist and sailor-hat, without touch of travel or dust about her.
"Oh, all climates suit me—even our own," Miss Dysart answered, lightly.
"Only one trunk, thank you; I am a 'transient.' And so this is your earthly paradise. Is that ferny thing a pepper-tree?"
She was so much absorbed in the landscape all through the short drive that the Professor ended by feeling quite at his ease. At the hotel door she dismissed him graciously.
"You may come back after lunch, if you like, and show me something of your paradise."
"Of course," said the Professor with unnecessary alacrity.
As he walked back he had a sensation as if a cool breeze from the Back Bay, at once bracing and chilling, had suddenly begun to blow across the summer air. The same sensation recurred later in the day when he found himself strolling with her under the drooping peppers to the Mission and through the town. Had they not often planned it—ages ago?—or had notheplanned it in his mind—at least it had been tacitly understood, and—here it was.
She was looking admirably, too. The little precision of her starched collar and cuffs, and severe hat and correct gown, were an echo of his native city. She was the best type of the things he liked and approved and believed in.
And her mood was the bright mood of comradeship he always enjoyed. She faced the semi-tropical world with fresh, appreciative eyes, and her sense of humorwas like his native air re-breathed. So singly did the place occupy her that the Professor expanded gradually and his tongue lost its knot.
"And you regret nothing here?" said Miss Dysart at last, suddenly.
"Nothing," replied the Professor, emphatically—and stopped.
"That is what it is to have a foreign grandmother. You do not even miss the symphony concerts—the Greek play—the Sunday afternoons."
The Professor laughed rather drearily.
"It is the same thing, I suppose, which leads the scarlet geranium to be a climber here, and calla-lilies to grow wild, and heliotrope to run up to the house-eaves. What a poem of a place!" she exclaimed, stopping. "And what a beautiful creature!"
"This is—er—where I am staying," replied the Professor, all his impediments returned. "That is Francisco—heisa handsome lad; and that is his sister, Miss Francisca, on the veranda. Pray come in and see the roses."
Miss Dysart followed him with composure, and gave her gloved hand cordially to Francisca.
"I have heard so much of your paradise," she said, "but I did not know it could be so true."
A bewildered expression crossed Francisca's face as the two advanced, but it passed, and her manner was as perfect as Miss Dysart's own. So was Francisco's, who placed a chair, and drew a rose-branch to shield the visitor's eyes from the sun—his own reflecting the blankness of Francisca's. Francisca had to call him twice to pass the wine she poured in the quaint old glasses, and which they could never conceivably be too poor to offer a guest.
As Miss Dysart sat sipping her wine politely—she was not fond of wine—she felt, as she looked, like one in a foreign land. The Professor, seated discreetly behind, noted this with a smile. But Francisco and Francisca were as much a part of the landscape as any rose in it.
The conversation turned, as conversations infallibly will, to the transcontinental journey, with the "You remember this—you saw that" of travellers.
Francisco and Francisca listened silently, only when Miss Dysart turned to the latter, she said with a kind of proud humility: "Ah! I know nothing of these things. I only know—this," with a gesture about her.
Miss Dysart and the Professor looked at her, and the value of "these things" was differently visible in their eyes.
"How beautiful she is!" thought the Boston girl.
"How much she knows and has seen!" thought Francisca.
The Professor's thoughts are not recorded. What he said was playful, but with an undertone which was not lost on one of his hearers. "'These things' are not worth your rose-garden, Miss Francisca—saying nothing of the rest of therancho."
"Ah! it is nice of you to say so," replied Francisca, "but I do not believe it—nor does Miss Dysart."
Miss Dysart kept her lids discreetly lowered.
"By the way," she said, "I have someone to thank for a portion of a rose-garden myself. I don't suppose the hotels furnish that."
"Miss Francisca—" began the enlightened Professor.
"The Señor," interposed Francisca, quickly, "naturally wished you to have a Californian welcome. Francisco and I carried them down for him."
This time Miss Dysart raised her lids and looked straight at the girl before her.
"Thank you," she said, quietly.
"But if you care for roses," said Francisca, rising, "you must look at ours in the garden. We are proud of our roses, though it is not the rose season," she added; "for that you must come in April and May."
"Thanks!" exclaimed Miss Dysart, "but when one is used to one's roses by the half-dozen, this will do!"
"You shall have as many as you like every day, of course," said Francisca. "Or, perhaps," she added, quietly, "you will like to come and gather them yourself. The garden is yours."
"'Gather ye roses while ye may!'—you are most kind. I will take this one now, if I may," replied Miss Dysart, bending above a great white Lyonnaise.
And now as he unpacked it ... he was well content.—Page 277.
And now as he unpacked it ... he was well content.—Page 277.
And now as he unpacked it ... he was well content.—Page 277.
"Just the rose I should expect you tochoose," said the Professor, cutting it for her.
"Pray, why?" inquired Miss Dysart a little sharply.
"It is such a calm, vigorous, upright rose—a kind of apotheosis of our own New England roses. A well-bred rose; it does not straggle, nor shed its petals untidily. It would not look out of place in Boston;—and it has not too much color."
"You prefer these, I suppose," remarked the girl, coolly, glancing at his hand. The Professor looked down guiltily.
"I have been gleaming after you ladies. This is your Mermet."
"Thank you!" replied Miss Dysart dryly replacing the pink bud in her belt.
But the red rose remained in his hand.
Miss Dysart turned away abruptly. "What a place for a Flower Mission!"
Francisca looked puzzled. "Flower Mission—what is that?"
"The depth of your ignorance, Miss Francisca!" exclaimed the Professor. "You see, Mildred, Nature runs a Flower Mission on such a large scale that she deprives us of that—as well as many other legitimate philanthropies."
"Ah!" said Francisca, "now I do know what a Flower Mission is. It must be very helpful. And we do so little good with all these—only to dress the church."
"And welcome strangers," suggested Miss Dysart.
"My sister is always giving flowers away, and fruit," declared Francisco. "The Señor and the Padre know if that is true."
"But only for pleasure, thou foolish one," said Francisca, smiling at him.
Francisco did not smile back. He remained grave, and bowed their guest farewell, with hiscaballeroair, without a word.
"What a beautiful, solemn boy!" exclaimed Miss Dysart as she walked down the street.
"Francisco? Oh, he can be merry enough; you must allow for the effect of a visitor from Boston."
"Pray let poor Boston alone! What an absolute partisan you have become!"
"Have I? Perhaps it is only my mean effort to hide our consciousness of inferiority. We have no Missions here—except Franciscan ones."
"We! our!" repeated Miss Dysart, emphatically. "Have you ceased to be a New Englander already? Is this the effect of this remarkable climate?"
"I am afraid—it is," replied the Professor, meekly.
And as he walked home that eastern breeze blew more keenly still. As one turns to the sun, he turned to the house hopefully. Only Francisco was still sitting on the top step gazing gloomily into space. The Professor laid an affectionate hand on the boy's shoulder.
"What is the matter, Francisco? Are you not well?"
"There is nothing, Señor," was the melancholy reply.
The Professor fidgetted restlessly about the veranda and lawn, feeling as if the whole place had been subtly changed. There was no Spanish that afternoon, either; Francisca was apparently too busy, for she did not come out at all.
In the evening, however, she was idle enough. Francisco and she sat on the steps and watched the moonlight make patterns on the walk below. The Professor had gone to call on Miss Dysart, inwardly reviling the social necessity which demanded starched linen and a black coat on such a night. It was still early when Francisca with some light word of excuse, and the little caress to her brother nothing could have made her forget, rose and went in.
It was not even late when the Professor with eager feet came up the path, all inlaid with the ferny tracery of shadows from the pepper-boughs. The veranda, apparently deserted, greeted him silently, and he stood a moment battling with an immense disappointment. It seemed to him that he had lost forever an evening out of his life.
Slowly he mounted the steps, and on the threshold he paused again. A long tendril of the Banksia swayed in the half-shadow, and surely his ears caught a suppressed sobbing breath. He made one step toward it.
"Francisca!"
"It is I, Señor," replied the melancholy voice of Francisco; and the boycame forward into the moonlight. "Did you wish anything, Señor?"
"Nothing," replied the Professor, mendaciously, his cheeks warm in the darkness.
"Good-night, Francisco!"
Francisca "kept the house."—Page 277.
Francisca "kept the house."—Page 277.
Francisca "kept the house."—Page 277.
"Good-night, Señor!" returned the boy in the same melancholy tone.
Long after the Professor's light was extinguished, the lad lay watching the night away in the hammock.
The stamp of that vigil was on his face the next morning when he asked the Professor to advise him as to some orange-trees at the farther end of the ranch. The Professor, who had also passed a white night, gave a haggard consent. Francisca alone appeared fresh and smiling. The best artists do not adorn the stage.
There seemed nothing particular the matter with the grove, when they had reached it.
"Which are the trees in question?" asked the Professor, who at that moment wished all oranges in a climate much too tropical for them.
"Señor," replied Francisco, facing him—andit struck the Professor the boy had grown tall overnight—"do you love my sister?"
"Francisco!" exclaimed the Professor, violently, and the blood began to pound in his ears.
"I must know, Señor. When you spoke of an old friend, we thought, Francisca and I, of an old woman—and now here has come this young lady from your home, one of your people—and she calls you by your name, and you call her by hers. She has come because she cares for you, and you spend your time with her, and yet, Señor, you gave her back her rose and kept my sister's!"
There was a guilty movement of the Professor's hand toward his breast-pocket, instantly checked.
"When you came home last night you called my sister by name. Señor, this cannot be! I am not jealous; you have a right to love this other, but I must know. I do not say for a moment," he added, proudly, "that Francisca has thought of you, but she is very young. She might come to care, and—I will not have it so!"
"Francisco!" exclaimed the Professor again.
"We are poor now," said Francisco, lifting his head, "but my people were great people when yours, Señor—the Americans—were nobody!"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the Professor, sharply, catching at a tangible point of remonstrance with relief. "My people were never 'nobody'—they were New Englanders."
Francisco bowed.
"Francisco," said the Professor, in a different tone, "I thought you loved me—I thought you trusted me."
"What has that to do with it, Señor?" inquired Francisco, sternly. "It is of my sister I think. If you do not love her you must go away at once."
"I will be answerable to your sister only," began the Professor.
"Pardon me, Señor, you will be answerable tome. I am the head of the family. Francisca is only a child," said this other child.
The Professor was silent. When he spoke, at last, he was answering himself rather than Francisco.
"I will go!"
Francisco winced, but did not flinch.
He made a gesture for the Professor to lead the way back, which the Professor did like a blind man. He could not have told whether his bitterness was toward the boy or himself. Half way he stopped.
"What am I to tell her?"
"You can have business—and she will understand."
The Professor ground his teeth, and going to his room, began grimly flinging things into his trunk. He was furious with Francisco, with himself, with the climate which could lead a man to this.
He ate his lunch in silence. So did Francisco. Men have these refuges. Francisca the woman, with a thread of speech, kept that silence from bursting. After lunch the Professor finished packing, wrote a brief note declining the Chair, and went down to buy his ticket. All the way down the landscape cried out to him.
As he left the station with his ticket in his hand he encountered Miss Dysart on the threshold with her purse in hers.
"What is the matter?" she exclaimed, after one glance. "Where are you going?"
"Home," answered the Professor. "I was coming to tell you."
Miss Dysart opened her lips, then closed them again, and turning without a word they walked on until the bend of the road threw them from the town into the country lane. There she stopped.
"Whyare you going? You must have reasons."
"I have reasons—" He stopped, smitten with the conscious absurdity that she who was his principal reason had scarcely crossed his mind all day.
"Business—it—it is impossible for me to stay," he wound up, lamely.
"Whyis it impossible?"
The Professor looked at her and anathematised the climate again.
"I—really cannot explain, Mildred," he said. "But there are reasons why—I feel obliged to go."
Drawn by Walter Appleton Clark.Francisco and Francisca listened silently.—Page 280.
Drawn by Walter Appleton Clark.Francisco and Francisca listened silently.—Page 280.
Drawn by Walter Appleton Clark.
Francisco and Francisca listened silently.—Page 280.
Miss Dysart's cheeks flushed, and she looked a moment at the wide valley before them.
"I feel that you are making the mistake of your life," she said, in a low voice.
He could not have told whether his bitterness was toward the boy or himself.—Page 284.
He could not have told whether his bitterness was toward the boy or himself.—Page 284.
He could not have told whether his bitterness was toward the boy or himself.—Page 284.
The Professor made a vague gesture.
"But you will not go," she said, quietly. "You will think better of it. You will not do yourself so much wrong."
"I shall go. I have bought my ticket."
"I will buy it of you. I was on the way to buy one myself."
"You were—!" He looked at her in his turn. "We shall travel together, then."
"We shall do nothing of the kind. What is the use? If you go back you will simply break down again. You have your work here. You love this country."
The Professor's eyes swept mutely over the valley and hills, and the girl watched him jealously.
"You love it more than New England," she said, with a touch of bitterness.
"Differently!" exclaimed the poor Professor; "differently!"
"You love itmore," persisted the New England girl.
The Professor drew a long breath. "Can I help it? One is affection—fondness; the other—" He stopped abruptly.
Her lips were closed tightly.
"Oh, you will suffer intolerable homesickness—you are homesicknow. And then it isallof no use—Everard, you must stay; you must think better of it. Stay and take that Chair! There cannot be any business so pressing. It will be no use—not the slightest use for you to go."
In her earnestness she put her hand on his, but instantly withdrew it. Her troubled eyes looked straight into his, and the Professor's looked straightly back. But he shook his head, and suddenly she looked away.
"And you?"
"Oh, I," she answered, lightly; "I am a thorough-going dyed-in-the-wool New-Englander. I was brought up to go to church on Sunday and clean house twice a year, and have a proper respect for calling cards. I shall go on and join aunty at Santa Barbara, and get home in time for all my clubs and classes. Besides, I have been meaning to tell you, I am going to take a year in the College Settlement."
"A year in the College Settlement!" echoed the Professor, vaguely.
"Yes; that will suit me better than—this. Don't forget to send Francisco with the ticket! Good-by!"
She gave him her hand frankly, and once more their eyes encountered.
"If I had had a French grandmother, you see—it might have been different with me," she said with a touch of mirthfulness. "Andthatat least is true," she concluded to herself, looking so straight ahead that she walked a space beyond the hotel without seeing.
The Professor, going in the opposite direction, went like a man under sentence.
That "intolerable homesickness" was already upon him; but he was determined to go. He, too, was a New Englander. It is a great thing to have inherited principles.
He was determined to go—all the way up under the hanging peppers—all the way beside the scented limes; nor did his determination falter as he turned into the accustomed path under the oranges, and the sight and perfume of a thousand roses stormed him all at once.
There in the wonted place Francisca sat, steadily drawing the threads with unsteady fingers. Her lips might be a little pale, but they smiled. Even the rose was not missing from her hair.
Francisco, perfectly miserable and perfectly proud, rose mutely from the steps to salute the Señor.
The Señor with two gentle hands lifted the boy from his path, and made two steps to the chair—one touch drew the lace from the brave fingers.
"Francisca," said the Professor. "Francisca—Francisca!"
This was the only explanation he ever made, but in fact it was a perfect statement of the case.
If it needed any elaboration it might be held to receive it when Francisca, stooping—long afterward—to recover the abused lace, picked up with it something else.
"What is this?" she said, a little puzzled.
"Oh, that," said the Professor, "that is Miss Dysart's ticket! She is going away to-morrow."
"Ah!" said Francisca only.
"Francisco is to take it to her, and by the way, where is the dear lad?" He made a movement to rise, but Francisca stopped him, raising his hand in hers.
Out on the twilight air already heavy with sweet odors, came floating the sound of a guitar, low, but inexpressibly joyous and tender.
Francisca's eyes filled with tears, but "CaroFrancisco!" she only said.
Drawn by Henry Hutt."Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway."—Page 289.
Drawn by Henry Hutt."Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway."—Page 289.
Drawn by Henry Hutt.
"Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway."—Page 289.
Fishing Decorations
There's a sound that rings in my ears to-day,That echoes in vague refrain,The ripple of water o'er smooth-washed clay,Where the wall-eyed pike and the black bass play,That makes me yearn, in a quiet way,For my old fly-rod again.Back to the old home haunts again,Back where the clear lake lies;Back through the woodsWhere the blackbird broods,Back to my rod and flies.I'm longing to paddle the boat to-day,Through water-logged grass and reeds;Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway;Where the air is cool, and the mist is gray;Where ripples dance in the same old way,Under the tangled weeds.Back on the old oak log again,Back by the crystal brook;Back to the bait,And the silent wait,Back to my line and hook.I wish I could wade by the water's edge,Where the fallen leaves drift by;Just to see, in the shadow of the ledge,How dark forms glide, like a woodman's wedge,Through driftwood piles and the coarse marsh sedge,And to hear the bittern cry.Back where the tadpoles shift and sink,Back where the bull-frogs sob;Back just to floatIn the leaky boat,Back to my dripping bob.Oh, it's just like this on each misty day,It's always the same old painThat struggles and pulls in the same old wayTo carry me off for a little stayBy the water's edge, in sticky clay,To fish in the falling rain.Back to my long black rubber boots,Back to my old patched coat;Back to my rodAnd the breath of God—Home—and my leaky boat.
There's a sound that rings in my ears to-day,That echoes in vague refrain,The ripple of water o'er smooth-washed clay,Where the wall-eyed pike and the black bass play,That makes me yearn, in a quiet way,For my old fly-rod again.Back to the old home haunts again,Back where the clear lake lies;Back through the woodsWhere the blackbird broods,Back to my rod and flies.I'm longing to paddle the boat to-day,Through water-logged grass and reeds;Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway;Where the air is cool, and the mist is gray;Where ripples dance in the same old way,Under the tangled weeds.Back on the old oak log again,Back by the crystal brook;Back to the bait,And the silent wait,Back to my line and hook.I wish I could wade by the water's edge,Where the fallen leaves drift by;Just to see, in the shadow of the ledge,How dark forms glide, like a woodman's wedge,Through driftwood piles and the coarse marsh sedge,And to hear the bittern cry.Back where the tadpoles shift and sink,Back where the bull-frogs sob;Back just to floatIn the leaky boat,Back to my dripping bob.Oh, it's just like this on each misty day,It's always the same old painThat struggles and pulls in the same old wayTo carry me off for a little stayBy the water's edge, in sticky clay,To fish in the falling rain.Back to my long black rubber boots,Back to my old patched coat;Back to my rodAnd the breath of God—Home—and my leaky boat.
There's a sound that rings in my ears to-day,That echoes in vague refrain,The ripple of water o'er smooth-washed clay,Where the wall-eyed pike and the black bass play,That makes me yearn, in a quiet way,For my old fly-rod again.
There's a sound that rings in my ears to-day,
That echoes in vague refrain,
The ripple of water o'er smooth-washed clay,
Where the wall-eyed pike and the black bass play,
That makes me yearn, in a quiet way,
For my old fly-rod again.
Back to the old home haunts again,Back where the clear lake lies;Back through the woodsWhere the blackbird broods,Back to my rod and flies.
Back to the old home haunts again,
Back where the clear lake lies;
Back through the woods
Where the blackbird broods,
Back to my rod and flies.
I'm longing to paddle the boat to-day,Through water-logged grass and reeds;Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway;Where the air is cool, and the mist is gray;Where ripples dance in the same old way,Under the tangled weeds.
I'm longing to paddle the boat to-day,
Through water-logged grass and reeds;
Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway;
Where the air is cool, and the mist is gray;
Where ripples dance in the same old way,
Under the tangled weeds.
Back on the old oak log again,Back by the crystal brook;Back to the bait,And the silent wait,Back to my line and hook.
Back on the old oak log again,
Back by the crystal brook;
Back to the bait,
And the silent wait,
Back to my line and hook.
I wish I could wade by the water's edge,Where the fallen leaves drift by;Just to see, in the shadow of the ledge,How dark forms glide, like a woodman's wedge,Through driftwood piles and the coarse marsh sedge,And to hear the bittern cry.
I wish I could wade by the water's edge,
Where the fallen leaves drift by;
Just to see, in the shadow of the ledge,
How dark forms glide, like a woodman's wedge,
Through driftwood piles and the coarse marsh sedge,
And to hear the bittern cry.
Back where the tadpoles shift and sink,Back where the bull-frogs sob;Back just to floatIn the leaky boat,Back to my dripping bob.
Back where the tadpoles shift and sink,
Back where the bull-frogs sob;
Back just to float
In the leaky boat,
Back to my dripping bob.
Oh, it's just like this on each misty day,It's always the same old painThat struggles and pulls in the same old wayTo carry me off for a little stayBy the water's edge, in sticky clay,To fish in the falling rain.
Oh, it's just like this on each misty day,
It's always the same old pain
That struggles and pulls in the same old way
To carry me off for a little stay
By the water's edge, in sticky clay,
To fish in the falling rain.
Back to my long black rubber boots,Back to my old patched coat;Back to my rodAnd the breath of God—Home—and my leaky boat.
Back to my long black rubber boots,
Back to my old patched coat;
Back to my rod
And the breath of God—
Home—and my leaky boat.
Fishing Decorations
D
Daniel Webster cut from the seal a morsel of meal eight inches long by two inches square. He crowded out of sight as much of the delicacy as his mouth and part of his œsophagus would hold—about six inches—and sliced off the visible two inches with a blow of his knife.
"I never knew before," commented Praed, "why the Eskimo nose was so snubby. I now see it all. It is a beautiful example of the law of survival. If you touch an Eskimo anywhere, you draw blood. The long-nosed men of the Stone Age slashed their skins at meal-times and died of hemorrhage. Only the short-nosed men could live. Even Daniel carves perilously close to his lovely snub—and if Daniel's nose were a little shorter it would be a cavity."
"Just so," I replied, indifferently. Praed's jaunty talk jarred upon me, and his superior tone toward the Eskimos displeased me. He was attached to the Relief Party as botanist. I believe he was a Professor of Natural History in some Western college. He had climbed a mountain in the Canadian Rockies, a minor peak, no difficult ascent. I am told that a carriage road has recently been opened to the summit. But the mountain was a virgin peak and bore a living glacier, and Praed wrote for the papers about it and made a great achievement of his exploit. Upon the strength of his reputation he assumed to direct the policy of the Relief Expedition, and when the leader refused to fall in with his views, Praed grumbled, and once or twice approached open insubordination. The leader, a modest fellow, took his unruly botanist quietly, but several members of the party told me the man worried him.
However, when it suited his purpose, Praed could be humble enough. He discovered my irritation at once and evidently thought to soothe it.
"Oh, come now, old fellow," he said. "Don't take your Eskimos too seriously; I admire them as much as you do. Here, Daniel—Dahlgren, how do you say 'I like you' in Husky-tongue?"
"Iblee pee-yook amishuwa," answered I, in the pidgin-Eskimo we had learned to use during our year in the Far North.
"Iblee kumook amistwa," repeated Praed. Daniel received the communication with that heavy gravity which had won him his nick-name; his birth-name was Meeoo. Praed shrugged his shoulders.
"I never shall learn the lingo," he sighed. "Tell him I am going to give him this knife."
"Ooma pilletay iblee savik," I translated.
Daniel received the knife without comment. I caught a flash of pleasure in his eye, but it escaped Praed.
"He doesn't seem very grateful," he said. "I despair of the aborigine. He has no sense of humor, no gratitude, apparently no more affection than his dogs. He is pure selfishness. He is homely, he is fearfully unclean—"
"Professor Praed," I interrupted, "youarrived in Greenland three days ago. After you have knocked about with these fellows for a month you will change your opinions. As for dirt, eight or nine months in every year that bay is skimmed over with a little matter of five or six feet of ice. Until your party came, there was not a hatchet in the tribe to cut baths. In winter all these little streams that you see disappear. The Husky has to melt ice for drinking-water, and that is no light affair for him. In summer, it's true, he might bathe; perhaps you would like to try it."
"Those are all very well as excuses," responded Praed; "but they don't remove facts. Your dear friends are disgustingly soiled. And I am going to accept your invitation to take a bath."
He did accept it. He said he was accustomed to cold water, every morning (implying in his tone, that he feared I wasn't); that he had been baptized in the Susquehanna River through a hole in the ice, and that he guessed he could stand a summer sea in Greenland. He took off his clothes, swam out to a berg, grounded some forty feet off the beach, climbed hurriedly upon the ice, and danced up and down and shouted until we put off in a boat and rescued him. For three days afterward he shivered under blankets and drank up the little store of whiskey that remained in our supplies.
I was not sorry that this object-lesson had occurred. Our expedition had lived for nineteen months among the Eskimos. Two or three of us, whose chief duty was hunting, had learned to know the Innuit as one knows brothers. In a savage land you choose your friends, not because they can judge a picture or say witty things about their neighbors, but because they will go through any emergency by your side. More than once Daniel or one and another of our Eskimo comrades had saved us from death; more than once we had interposed between a Husky and the Kokoia. It was not pleasant to hear the cock-a-whoop members of the Relief Party, with their amateur knowledge of Arctic conditions, classify our comrades among the Greenland fauna.
But the Relief Party got on well with the Eskimos. They had a cargo of knives, hatchets, saws, needles, scissors, wooden staves, and all things that represent wealth to the Innuit. These things they distributed freely among the settlements; it was but natural that they should win the hearts of the Husky-folk.
Praed reappeared after his chill with a triumphant air, bearing bead necklaces and mirrors—for trading, he said. The Eskimos, however, shook their heads at these gewgaws, and Praed had to fall back upon useful articles. He obtained for himself the office of chief distributor, and waxed popular in the tribe.
One day, a fortnight or so after the episode of the bath, Daniel's wife, Megipsu, came running up the beach.
"The man with gifts is at my tupik. He desires something. I do not understand him. Will you come?"
I found Praed holding out the skirt of his coat toward Megipsu's little daughter.
"Like this," he was repeating. "Make me a coat. Scion of a savage race, if I had you at home, I should chastise you. You are stupid."
The child stared blankly at him.
"What is it, Professor Praed?" I asked.
His face turned red, and his reply came hesitatingly.
"Well, you see," he said, "your Greenland climate is not what I expected. When the wind is quiet, everything is warm. When the gale comes up in the afternoon, it is cold. Now the—the fur clothes; their odor is as the odor of abattoirs. At first I didn't comprehend the evident joy you have in them. But, on the whole, you seem so comfortable in all weathers, that I thought I'd try a suit myself. You see, I don't like to be lumbered with a leather jacket all the time."
"Hm!" reflected I, "Praed is learning his Greenland." All I suggested, however, was that if he minded the smell he might carry his leather coat out with him and leave it upon a rock until he should need it.
"And have it stolen," he said, with a glance of pity.
I perceived that he had a great deal of Greenland yet to learn. The most northern Eskimos do not steal. I arranged with Megipsu for a sealskin suit, however, to cost two pairs of scissors, a packet of sail-needles, a hunting-knife, a cracker-box, and Praed's wooden signal-whistle, which Megipsu fancied. In a week the Professorappeared in the silvery clothes. He was highly enthusiastic. I listened patiently while he explained the garments.
"You see, when it is warm," he said, "I can loosen the draw-string and throw back the hood, and a draught of air comes in from the bottom and goes out at the neck and carries off the perspiration. When the wind rises, snap! I haul in the draw-string, cover my head, and I am hermetically sealed. Not a chill can touch me."
"Precisely," I agreed. I had been wearing Eskimo clothes for a year and two months. "I understand," I added, "that you are going oogsook-hunting with Meeoo."
"Yes," he laughed. "I'm going to show the untutored savage the superiority of the rifle over the harpoon."
He learned more about Greenland upon that expedition. There was a floe, perhaps a mile wide, anchored near the mouth of the bay by half a dozen grounded bergs. To this floe the Eskimo and the white man set forth in kayaks. It was midnight when they left and we were asleep, but the Huskies at the village told us that the Professor couldn't manage his canoe, and finally had to permit Daniel to tow him.
Next night they returned with a seal. The Professor had many words of praise for a country where the sun never sets and there is no loss of working-time, but nothing to say about the hunting. At last he confessed that Daniel had killed the seal.
"Thephoca barbatais a wary animal," he protested. "He will not permit a white face to approach. Two or three of the creatures were taking sun-baths upon the floe, but before I could creep within shooting distance they flopped into the water—a most ungraceful gait. All Arctic animals seem to be clumsy. I fired at one seal and I think I hit him, but he, too, dived. At last I resigned the rifle to Daniel. The savage squirmed over the ice like a worm. When the seals lifted their heads, Daniel lifted his. It is not surprising that he deceived them. His black muzzle looks precisely like that of the seal, and he wears a seal's fur. But his methods would never do in civilization. It took him half a day to crawl across that ice-floe."
"But he shot the seal," someone put in.
"No," replied the Professor. "That's just the point. He wormed himself along until he could almost reach the creature, and then sprang upon it and clubbed it to death with the butt."
I do not think Praed fully appreciated the marvellous adroitness of the hunter, nor the thoughtfulness of the man in saving a cartridge. He never seemed to comprehend that a charge of powder and bullet is worth more to an Eskimo than a diamond is to a bride at home. However, he began after that to treat the Huskies somewhat as if they were human beings.
His complete enlightenment as to the Eskimo character came all in a blaze at the end of our stay in Greenland. Our work there was done. Our explorations had been successful, our scientific collections were almost completed. There were only the loose ends to be gathered up.
The Professor had seen some desirable flowers in a valley across a glacier. Near that same glacier, in the preceding summer, I, who was acting as mineralogist of the main party, had piled a few specimens in a cranny to be carried to camp later, and I thought I might as well have them. We started forth together. Daniel and one or two other Huskies went with us for comradeship.
At the edge of the glacier we halted. It was a stupendous thing, crawling through a gap in the hills down into the sea like a section of the Midgard serpent. Halfway up the flank, I remember, there was a round hole, and out of it spouted a waterfall, red with basaltic mud. One of the Æsir might have made such a wound with his spear.
The back of the monster was rugged with crevasses.
"You can't cross here," I counselled. "You'd better try farther up, where it's smoother. I'll climb the cliff and take an observation, while you wait here and eat your luncheon. It doesn't do to hurry too much in Greenland."
I was almost an hour making my way up the crags to a point where I could take a bird's-eye view of the mass of ice. It was not a wide glacier—the cliffs opposite were not more than four miles away—but the great number of icebergs it threw off bore witness to the rapidity of its motion.