"'Only one person in the world can ever matter to me—now.'"
He found her, smiling, triumphant, beside the big casement at the end of the hallway.
"Now are you convinced?" she said. "Just look at the snowdrifts. Are you satisfied?"
"No," he said, quietly—too quietly by far. She looked up at him, a quick protest framed on her red lips. Something—perhaps the odd glimmer in his eyes—committed her to silence. From silence the stillness grew into tension; and again the rushing sense of unreality surged over them both, leaving their senses swimming.
"There is only one thing in the world I care for now," he said.
"Ye-yes."
"And that is to have you think well of me."
"I—I do."
"—And each day—think better of me."
"I—will—probably——"
"And in the end——"
She neither stirred nor turned her eyes.
"—In the end—Listento me."
"I am wi-willing to."
"Because it will be then as it is now; as it was when even I didn't know it—as it must be always, for me. Only one person in the world can ever matter to me—now.... There's no escape from it for me."
"Do—do you wish to—escape?"
"Cecil!" he said under his breath.
"They're dancing, below," she said leaning over the gallery, one soft white hand on the polished rail, the other abandoned to him—carelessly—as though she were quite unconscious where it lay.
"They are dancing," she repeated, turning toward him—which brought them face to face, both her hands resting listlessly in his.
A silence, then:
"Do you know," she said, "that this is a very serious matter?"
"I know."
"And that it's probably one of those dreadful, terrible and sudden strokes of Fate?"
"I know."
"And that—that it serves me right?"
He was smiling; and she smiled back at him, the starry beauty of her eyes dimming a trifle.
"You say that you have chosen a 'Voice,'" she said; "and—do you think that you would be the last man to go to sleep?"
"The very last."
"Then—I suppose I must make my choice.... I will ... some day.... And, are you going to dance with me?"
He raised her hands, joining them together between his; and she watched him gravely, a tremor touching her lips. In silence their hands fell apart;he stepped nearer; she lifted her head a little—a very little—closing her lids; he bent and kissed her lips, very lightly.
That was all; they opened their eyes upon one another, somewhat dazed. A bell, very far off, was sounding faintly through the falling snow—faintly, persistently, the first bell for Christmas morning.
Then she took the edges of her silken gown between thumb and forefinger, and slowly, very slowly, sank low with flushed cheeks, sweeping him an old-time curtsey.
"I—I wish you a Merry Christmas," she said.... "And thank you foryourwish.... And you may take me down, now"—rising to her slim and lovely height—"and I think we had better dance as hard as we can and try to forget what our families are likely to think of what we've done.... Don't you?"
"Yes," he said seriously, "I do."
"Andthat'swhat comes of running after trains, and talking to fat conductors, and wearing chinchilla furs, and flouting the Mystic Three!" added Williams throwing away his cigar.
"In my opinion," said I, "a man who comes to see Paris in three months is a fool, and kin to that celebrated ass who circum-perambulated the globe in eighty days. See all, see nothing. A man might camp a lifetime in the Louvre and learn little about it before he left for Père Lachaise. Yet here comes the United States in a gigantic "mônome" to see the city in three weeks, when three years is too short a time in which to appreciate the Carnavalet Museum alone! I'm going home."
"Oh, papa!" said Alida.
"Yes, I am," I snapped. "I'd rather be tried and convicted in Oyster Bay on the charge of stealingmy own pig than confess I had 'seen Paris' in three months."
We had driven out to the Trocadero that day, and were now comfortably seated in the tower of that somewhat shabby "palace," for the purpose of obtaining a bird's eye view of the "Rive Droite" or right bank of the Seine.
Elegant, modern, spotless, the Rive Droite spread out at our feet, silver-gray squares of Renaissance architecture inlaid with the delicate green of parks, circles, squares, and those endless double and quadruple lines of trees which make Paris slums more attractive than Fifth Avenue. Far as the eye could see stretched the exquisite monotony of the Rive Droite, discreetly and artistically broken by domes and spires of uncatalogued "monuments," in virgin territory, unknown and unsuspected to those spiritual vandals whose hordes raged through the boulevards, waving ten thousand blood-red Baedekers at the paralyzed Parisians.
"Well," said I, "now that we have 'seen' the Rive Droite, let's cast a bird's-eye glance over Europe and Asia and go back to the hotel for luncheon."
My sarcasm was lost on my daughters because they had moved out of earshot. Alida was looking through a telescope held for her by a friend of Captainde Barsac, an officer of artillery named Captain Vicômte Torchon de Cluny. He was all over scarlet and black and gold; when he walked his sabre made noises, and his ringing spurs reminded me of the sound of sleigh-bells in Oyster Bay.
My daughter Dulcima was observing the fortress of Mont-Valerien through a tiny pair of jewelled opera-glasses, held for her by Captain de Barsac. It was astonishing to see how tirelessly De Barsac held those opera-glasses, which must have weighed at least an ounce. But French officers are inured to hardships and fatigue.
"Isthata fortress?" asked Dulcima ironically. "I see nothing but some low stone houses."
"Next to Gibraltar," said De Barsac, "it is the most powerful fortress in the world, mademoiselle. It garrisons thousands of men; its stores are enormous; it dominates not only Paris, but all France."
"But where are the cannon?" asked Dulcima.
"Ah—exactly—where? That is what other nations pay millions to find out—and cannot. Will you take my word for it that there are one or two cannon there—and permit me to avoid particulars?"
"You might tell me where just one little unimportant cannon is?" said my daughter, with the naïve curiosity which amuses the opposite and still more curious sex.
"And endanger France?" asked De Barsac, with owl-like solemnity.
"Thank you," pouted Dulcima, perfectly aware that he was laughing.
Their voices became low, and relapsed into that buzzing murmur which always defeats its own ends by arousing parental vigilance.
"Let us visit the aquarium," said I in a distinct and disagreeable voice. Doubtless the "voice from the wilderness" was gratuitously unwelcome to Messieurs De Barsac and Torchon de Cluny, but they appeared to welcome the idea with a conciliatory alacrity noticeable in young men when intruded upon by the parent of pretty daughters. Dear me, how fond they appeared to be of me; what delightful information they volunteered concerning the Trocadero, the Alexander Bridge, the Champ de Mars.
The aquarium of the Trocadero is underground. To reach it you simply walk down a hole in France and find yourself under the earth, listening to the silvery prattle of a little brook which runs over its bed of pebblesabove your head, pouring down little waterfalls into endless basins of glass which line the damp arcades as far as you can see. The arcades themselves are dim, the tanks, set in the solid rock, are illuminated from above by holes in theground, through which pours the yellow sunshine of France.
Looking upward through the glass faces of the tanks you can see the surface of the water with bubbles afloat, you can see the waterfall tumbling in; you can catch glimpses of green grass and bushes, and a bit of blue sky.
Into the tanks fall insects from the world above, and the fish sail up to the surface and lazily suck in the hapless fly or spider that tumbles onto the surface of the water.
It is a fresh-water aquarium. All the fresh-water fish of France are represented here by fine specimens—pike, barbels, tench, dace, perch, gudgeons, sea-trout, salmon, brown-trout, and that lovely delicate trout-like fish calledl'Ombre de Chevallier. What it is I do not know, but it resembles our beautiful American brook-trout in shape and marking; and is probably a hybrid, cultivated by these clever French specialists in fish-propagation.
Coming to a long crystal-clear tank, I touched the glass with my finger-tip, and a slender, delicate fish, colored like mother-of-pearl, slowly turned to stare at me.
"This," said I, "is that aristocrat of the waters called the 'Grayling.' Notice its huge dorsal fin, its tender and diminutive mouth. It takes a fly like atrout, but the angler who would bring it to net must work gently and patiently, else the tender mouth tears and the fish is lost. Is it not the most beautiful of all fishes?
"'Here and there a lusty trout;Here and there a Grayling—'
"Ah, Tennyson knew. And that reminds me, Alida," I continued, preparing to recount a personal adventure with a grayling in Austria—"that reminds me——"
I turned around to find I had been addressing the empty and somewhat humid atmosphere. My daughter Alida stood some distance away, gazing absently at a tank full of small fry; and Captain Vicômte Torchon de Cluny stood beside her, talking. Perhaps he was explaining the habits of the fish in the tank.
My daughter Dulcima and Captain de Barsac I beheld far down the arcades, strolling along without the faintest pretence of looking at anything but each other.
"Very well," thought I to myself, "this aquarium is exactly the place I expect to avoid in future—" And I cheerfully joined my daughters as though they and their escorts had long missed me.
Now, of course, they all expressed an enthusiasticdesire to visit every tank and hear me explain the nature of their contents; but it was too late.
"No," said I, "it is damp enough here to float all the fishes in the Seine. And besides, as we are to 'see' the Rive Droite, we should hasten, so that we may have at least half an hour to devote to the remainder of France."
From the bowels of the earth we emerged into the sunshine, to partake of an exceedingly modest luncheon in the Trocadero restaurant, under the great waterfall.
Across the river a regiment of red-legged infantry marched, drums and bugles sounding.
"All that territory over there," said De Barsac, "is given up to barracks. It is an entire quarter of the city, occupied almost exclusively by the military. There the streets run between miles of monotonous barracks, through miles of arid parade grounds, where all day long thepiou-piousdrill in the dust; where the cavalry exercise; where the field-artillery go clanking along the dreary streets toward their own exercise ground beyond the Usine de Gaz. All day long that quarter of the city echoes with drums beating and trumpets sounding, and the trample of passing cavalry, and the clank and rattle of cannon. Truly, in the midst of peace we prepare for—something else—we French."
"It is strange," said I, "that you have time to be the greatest sculptors, architects, and painters in the world."
"In France, monsieur, we never lack time. It is only in America that you corner time and dispense it at a profit."
"Time," said I, "is at once our most valuable and valueless commodity. Our millionaires seldom have sufficient time to avoid indigestion. Yet, although time is apparently so precious, there are among us men who spend it in reading the New YorkHeraldeditorials. I myself am often short of time, yet I take a Long Island newspaper and sometimes even read it."
We had been walking through the gardens, while speaking, toward a large crowd of people which had collected along the river. In the centre of the crowd stood a taxicab, on the box of which danced the cabby, gesticulating.
When we arrived at the scene of disturbance the first person I saw distinctly was our acquaintance, the young man from East Boston, hatless, dishevelled, all over dust, in the grasp of two agents de police.
"He has been run over by a taxi," observed De Barsac. "They are going to arrest him."
"Well, why don't they do it?" I said, indignantly,supposing that De Barsac meant the chauffeur was to be arrested.
"They have done so."
"No, they haven't! They are holding the man who has been run over!"
"Exactly. He has been run over and they are arresting him."
"Who?" I demanded, bewildered.
"Why, the man who has been run over!"
"But why, in Heaven's name!"
"Why? Because he allowed himself to be run over!"
"What!" I cried. "They arrest the man who has been run over, and not the man who ran over him?"
"It is the law," said De Barsac, coolly.
"Do you mean to tell me that therunneris left free, while therunneeis arrested?" I asked in deadly calmness, reducing my question to legal and laconic language impossible to misinterpret.
"Exactly. The person who permits a vehicle to run over him in defiance of the French law, which says that nobody ought to let himself be run over, is liable to arrest, imprisonment, and fine—unless, of course, so badly injured that recovery is impossible."
Now at last I understood the Dreyfus Affaire.Now I began to comprehend the laws of the Bandarlog. Now I could follow the subtle logic of the philosophy embodied in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass!"
This was the country for me! Why, certainly; these people here could understand a man who was guilty of stealing his own pig.
"I think I should like to live in Paris again," I said to my daughters; then I approached the young man from East Boston and bade him cheer up.
He was not hurt; he was only rumpled and dusty and hopping mad.
"I shall pay their darned fine," he said. "Then I'm going to hire a cab and drive it myself, and hunt up that cabman who ran over me, by Judas!"
That night I met Williams at the Café Jaune by previous and crafty agreement; and it certainly was nice to be together after all these years in the same old seats in the same café, and discuss the days that we never could live again—and wouldn't want to if we could—alas!
The talk fell on Ellis and Jones, and immediately I perceived that Williams had skillfully steered the conversation toward those two young men—and I knew devilish well he had a story to tell me about them.
So I cut short his side-stepping and circling, and told him to be about it as I wanted to devote one or two hours that night to a matter which I had recently neglected—Sleep.
"That Jones," he said, "was a funny fellow. He and Ellis didn't meet over here; Ellis was before his time. But they became excellent friends under rather unusual circumstances.
"Ellis, you know, was always getting some trout fishing when he was over here. He was a good deal of a general sportsman. As for Jones—well, you remember that he had no use for anything more strenuous than a motor tour."
"I remember," I said.
Well, then, the way that Ellis and Jones met each other—and several other things—was this. It chanced to be in the northern forests, I believe—both were fishing, neither knew the other nor was even aware of their mutual proximity.
Then the wind changed abruptly, blowing now from the south; and with the change of wind Ellis fancied that he smelled green wood burning. A few minutes later he was sure of it; he stood knee-deep in the stream sniffing uneasily, then he lifted his trout-rod, reeled in his line, and waded silently shoreward, his keen nose twitching.
Ah! There it was—that misty bluish bloom belting a clump of hemlocks. And the acrid odor grew, impregnating the filtered forest air. He listened, restless eyes searching. The noise of the stream filled his ears; he tightened the straps of his pack, shortenedhis trout rod, leaving line and cast on, and crawled up the ravine, shoulder-deep in fragrant undergrowth, until the dull clash of flashing spray and the tumult of the falls were almost lost in the leafy depths behind.
Ranker, stronger, came the pungent odor of smoke; halting to listen he heard the hissing whisper of green wood afire; then, crawling up over an enormous boulder, he saw, just beyond and below, a man in tweeds, squatting on his haunches, and attempting to toss a flapjack over a badly constructed camp-fire.
The two young men caught sight of one another at the same instant; alert, mistrustful, each stared at the other in questioning silence while the first instinct of unpleasant surprise lasted.
"How are you?" said the man, cautiously.
"Good-morning," replied Ellis. "When the wind turned I scented your fire down the stream. Thought I'd see what was burning."
"Are you up here fishing?" inquired he of the tweeds.
"Yes; came here by canoe to the forks below. I am out for a week by myself. The Caranay water is my old-time trail.... Looks like a storm, doesn't it?"
"Anything doing with the trout?"
"Not much; two in the falls pool that come an ounce short of the pound. I should be glad to divide—if you are shy on trout."
Again they regarded one another carefully.
"My name," said the man by the fire, "is Jones—but that can't be helped now. So if you'll overlook such matters I'll be glad of a trout if you can spare one."
"My name is Ellis; help yourself."
The man by the fire glanced at the burnt flapjack, scraped it free from the pan, tossed it into the bushes, and straightened to his full height.
"Come into camp, Mr. Ellis," he said, politely. The freemasonry of caste operates very quickly in the wilderness; Ellis slid down the boulder on the re-enforced seat of his knickerbockers, landing, with hob-nailed shoes foremost, almost at the edge of the fire. Then he laid his rod aside, slipped the pack to the ground, unslung his creel, and, fishing out a handkerchief, mopped his sunburnt countenance.
"Anything else you're short of, Mr. Jones?" he asked, pleasantly. "I'm just in from the settlements, and I can let you have a pinch of almost anything."
"Have you plenty of salt?" inquired Jones, wistfully.
"Plenty; isn't there anything else? Bacon? Sugar?"
"Matches?"
Ellis looked at him keenly; good woodsmen don't run short of matches; good woodsmen don't build such fires.
"Certainly," he said. "Did you have an accident?"
"No—that is, several boxes got wet, and I've been obliged to sit around this confounded fire for fear it might go out—didn't dare fish very far from it."
He looked gloomily around, rubbed his forehead as though trying to recollect something, and finally sat down on a log.
"Fact is," he said, "I don't know very much about the woods. Do you? Everything's gone wrong; I tore my canoe in the Ledge Rapids yesterday. I'm in a fix."
Ellis laughed; and his laugh was so pleasant, so entirely without offence, that young Jones laughed, too, for a while, then checked himself to adjust his eyeglasses, which his mirth had displaced.
"Can you cook?" he asked, so seriously that Ellis only nodded, still laughing.
"Then, for Heaven's love, would you, when you cook your own breakfast over that fire, cook enough for two?"
"Why, man, I believe you're hungry," said Ellis, sharply.
"Hungry? Well, I don't know whether you would call it exactly hunger, because I have eaten several things which I cooked. I ought not to be hungry; I tried to toss a flapjack, but it got stuck to the pan. Fact is, I'm a rotten cook, and I guess it's simply that I'm half starved for a decent meal."
"Why, see here," said Ellis, rising to his feet, "I can fix up something pretty quick if you like."
"Idolike. Yonder is my cornmeal, coffee, some damp sugar, flour, and what's left of the pork. You see I left it in a corner of the lean-to, and while I was asleep a porcupine got busy with it; then I hung it on a tree, and some more porcupines invited their relatives, and they all climbed up and nearly finished it. Did you suppose that a porcupine could climb a tree?"
"I've heard so," said Ellis, gravely, busy with the stores which he was unrolling from his own blanket. The guilelessness of this stray brother appalled him. Here was a babe in the woods. A new sort of babe, too, for, in the experience of Ellis, the incompetent woodsman is ever the loudest-mouthed, the tyro, the most conceited. But this forest-squatting innocent not only knew nothing of the elements of woodcraft, but had called a stranger's attention to his ignorancewith a simplicity that silenced mirth, forestalled contempt, and aroused a curious respect for the unfortunate.
"He is no liar, anyway," thought Ellis, placing a back-log, mending the fire, emptying the coffee pot, and settling the kettle to boil. And while he went about culinary matters with a method born of habit, Jones watched him, aided when he saw a chance; and they chatted on most animatedly together as the preparations for breakfast advanced.
"The very first day I arrived in the woods," said Jones, "I fell into the stream and got most of my matches wet. I've had a devil of a time since."
"It's a good idea to keep reserve matches in a water-tight glass bottle," observed Ellis, carelessly, and without appearing to instruct anybody about anything.
"I'll remember that. What is a good way to keep pork from porcupines?"
Ellis mentioned several popular methods, stirred the batter, shoved a hot plate nearer the ashes, and presently began the manufacture of flapjacks.
"Don't you toss 'em?" inquired Jones, watching the process intently.
"Oh, they can be tossed—like this! But it is easier for me to turn them with a knife—like this. Ihave an idea that they toss flapjacks less often in the woods than they do in fiction."
"I gathered my idea from a book," said Jones, bitterly; "it told how to build a fire without matches. Some day I shall destroy the author."
Presently Jones remarked in a low, intense voice: "Oh, the fragrance of that coffee and bacon!" which was all he said, but its significance was pathetically unmistakable.
"Pitch in, man," urged Ellis, looking back over his shoulder. "I'll be with you in a second." But when his tower of browned and smoking flapjacks was ready, and he came over to the log, he found that his host, being his host, had waited. That settled his convictions concerning Jones; and that was doubtless why, inside of half an hour, he found himself calling him Jones and not Mr. Jones, and Jones calling him Ellis. They were a pair of well knit, clean-limbed young men, throat and face burnt deeply by wind and sun. Jones did not have much hair; Ellis's was thick and short, and wavy at the temples. They were agreeable to look at.
"Have another batch of flapjacks?" inquired Ellis, persuasively.
Jones groaned with satisfaction at the prospect, and applied himself to a crisp trout garnished with bacon.
"I've tried and tried," he said, "but I cannot catch any trout. When I found that I could not I was horrified, Ellis, because, you see, I had supposed that the forest and stream were going to furnish me with subsistence. Nature hasn't done a thing to me since I've tried to shake hands with her."
"I wonder," said Ellis, "why you came into the woods alone?"
Jones coyly pounced upon another flapjack, folded it neatly and inserted one end of it into his mouth. This he chewed reflectively; and when it had vanished according to Fletcher, he said:
"If I tell you why I came here I'll begin to get angry. This breakfast is too heavenly to spoil. Pass the bacon and help yourself."
Ellis, however, had already satisfied his hunger. He set the kettle on the coals again, dumped into it cup and plate and fork, wiped his sheath-knife carefully, and, curling up at the foot of a hemlock, lighted his pipe, returning the flaming branch to the back-log.
Jones munched on; smile after smile spread placidly over his youthful face, dislodging his eyeglasses every time. He resumed them, and ate flapjacks.
"The first time my canoe upset," he said, "I lost my book of artificial flies. I brought a box of angle-wormswith me, too, but they fell into the stream the second time I upset. So I have been trying to snare one of those big trout under the ledge below——"
Ellis's horrified glance cut him short; he shrugged his shoulders.
"My friend, I know it's dead low-down, but it was a matter of pure hunger with me. At all events, it's just as well that I caught nothing; I couldn't have cooked it if I had."
He sighed at the last flapjack, decided he did not require it, and settling down with his back against the log blissfully lighted his pipe.
For ten minutes they smoked without speaking, dreamily gazing at the blue sky through the trees. Friendly little forest birds came around, dropping from twig to branch; two chipmunks crept into the case of eggs to fill their pouched chops with the oats that the eggs were packed in. The young men watched them lazily.
"The simpler life is the true existence," commented Ellis, drawing a long, deep breath.
"What the devil is the simpler life?" demanded Jones, with so much energy that the chipmunks raced away in mad abandon, and the flock of black-capped birds scattered to neigbouring branches, remarking in unison, "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee."
"Why, you're leading the simpler life now," said Ellis, laughing, "are you not?"
"Am I? No, I'm not. I'm not leading a simple life; I'm leading a pace-killing, nerve-racking, complex one. I tell you, Ellis, that it has taken just one week in the woods to reveal to me the complexity of simplicity!"
"Oh, you don't like the life?"
"I like it all right, but it's too complex. Listen to me. You asked me why anybody ever let me escape into the woods. I'll tell you.... You're a New Yorker, are you not?"
Ellis nodded.
"All right. First look on this picture: I live in the Sixties, near enough to the Park to see it. It's green, and I like it. Besides, there are geraniums and other posies in my back yard, and I can see them when the laundress isn't too busy with the clothes-line. So much for themise en scène; me in a twenty-by-one-hundred house, perfectly contented; Park a stone's toss west, back yard a few feet north. My habits? Simple enough to draw tears from a lambkin! I breakfast at nine—an egg, fruit, coffee and—I hate to admit it—theSun. At eleven I go down-town to see if there's anything doing. There never is, so I smoke one cigar with my partner and then we lunch together. I then walk uptown—walk, mindyou. At the club I look at the ticker, or out of the window. Later I play cowboy or billiards for an hour. I take one cocktail—one, if you please. I converse." He waved his pipe; Ellis nodded solemnly.
"Then," continued Jones, "what do I do?"
"I don't know," replied Ellis.
"I'll tell you. I call a cab—one taxi, or one hansom, as the state of the weather may suggest—I drive through the Park, pleasantly aware of the verdure, the squirrels, and the babies; I arrive at my home; I mount to the library and there I select from my limited collection some accursed book I've always heard of but have never read—not fiction, but something stupefying and worth while. This I read for exactly one hour. I then need a drink. I then dress; and if I'm dining out, out I go—if not, I dine at home. Twice a week I attend the theatre, but I neutralise that by doing penance at the opera every Monday during the season.... There, Ellis, is the story of a simple life! Look onthatpicture. Now look onthis: Me in the backwoods, fly-bitten, smoke-choked, a half-charred flapjack in my fist, a porcupine-gnawed rind of pork on a stick, attempting to broil the same at a fire, the smoke of which blinds me. Me, again, belly down, peering hungrily over the bank of a stream, attemptingto snatch a trout with a bare hook, my glasses slipping off repeatedly, the spectre of starvation scourging on me. Me, once more, frantic with indigestion and mosquitoes, lurking under a blanket, the root of a tree bruising my backbone; me in the morning, done up, shaving in icy water and cutting my chin; me, half shaved, searching for a scrap of nourishment, gauntly prowling among cold and greasy fry-pans! Ellis!Whichis the simpler life, in Heaven's name?"
Ellis's laughter was the laughter of a woodsman, full, infectious, but almost noiseless. The birds came back and teetered on adjacent twigs, cheeping in friendly unison; a chipmunk, chops distended, popped up from the case of eggs like a striped jack-in-a-box, not at all afraid of a man who laughed that way.
"Howdid you ever come into the woods?" he asked at length.
"Lunatic friends and fool books persuaded me I was missing something. I read all about how to tell a woodcock from a peacock; how to dig holes in the ground and raise little pea vines, and how to make two blades of grass grow where the laundress had set a devastating shoe. Then I tired of it. But friends urged me on, and one idiot said that I looked like the victim of a rare disease and gave me a shotgun—whetherto shoot myself or the dicky birds I'm not perfectly certain yet. Besides, as I have a perfect hatred of taking life, I had no temptation to shoot guides in Maine or niggers in South Carolina, where the quail come from. Still, I was awake to the new idea. I read more books on bats and woodchucks; I smelled every flower I saw; I tried to keep up," he said, earnestly; "by Heaven, I did my best! And now, look at me! Nature hands me the frozen mitt!"
Ellis could only laugh, cradling his knees in his clasped and sun-tanned hands.
"I am fond of Nature; I admire the geraniums in my backyard," continued Jones, excitedly. "I like a simple life, too; but I don't wish to pursue a live thing and eat it for my dinner. The idea is perfectly obnoxious to me. I like flowers on a table or in the Park, but I don't want to know their names, or the names of the creatures that buzz and crawl over them, or the names of the birds that feed on the buzzy things! I don't; I know I don't, and I won't! Nature has strung me; I shall knock Nature hereafter. This is all for mine. I'll lock up and leave the key of the fields to the next Come-on lured into the good green goods by that most accomplished steerer, Mrs. Nature. I've got my gilt brick, Ellis—I'm going home to buy a card to hang overmy desk; and on it will be the wisest words ever written:
"'Who's Loony Now?'"
"But, my dear fellow——"
"No, you don't. You're an accomplice of this Nature dame; I can tell by the way you cook and catch trout and keep your matches in bottles. One large and brilliant brick is enough for one New York man. The asphalt for mine—and a Turkish bath."
After a grinning silence, Ellis arose, stretched, tapped his pipe against a tree trunk, and sauntered over to where his rod lay. "Come on; I'll guarantee you a trout in the first reach," he said, affably, slipping ferrule into socket, disentangling the cast and setting the line free.
So they strolled off toward the long amber reach which lay a few yards below the camp, Jones explaining that he didn't wish to take life from anything except a mosquito.
"We've got to eat; we'd better stock up while we can, because it's going to rain," observed Ellis.
"Going to rain? How do you know?"
"I smell it. Besides, look there—yonder above the mountains. Do you see the sky behind the Golden Dome?"
Up the narrow valley, over the unbroken sweep of treetops, arose tumbled peaks; and above the Golden Dome, pushing straight upward into the flawless blue of heaven, towered a cloud, its inky convolutions edged with silver.
Jones inspected the thunderhead with disapproval; Ellis offered his rod, and, being refused, began some clever casting, the artistic beauty of which was lost upon Jones.
One trout only investigated the red-and-white fly; and, that fish safely creeled, Ellis turned to his companion:
"Three years ago, when I last came here, this reach was more prolific. But there's a pool above that I'll warrant. Shall we move?"
As they passed on upstream Jones said: "There's no pool above, only a rapid."
"You're in error," said Ellis, confidently. "I've known every pool on the Caranay for years."
"But there is no pool above—unless you mean to trespass."
"Trespass!" repeated Ellis, aghast. "Trespassin the free Caranay forests! You—you don't mean to say that any preserve has been established on the Caranay! I haven't been here for three years....Doyou?"
"Look there," said Jones, pointing to a high fence of netted wire which rose above the undergrowth and cut the banks of the stream in two with a barrier eight feet high; "that's what stopped me. There's their home-designed trespass notice hanging to the fence. Read it; it's worth perusal."
Speechless, but still incredulous, Ellis strode to the barrier and looked up. And this is what he read printed in mincing "Art Nouveau" type upon a swinging zinc sign fashioned to imitate something or other which was no doubt very precious:
Oyez!
Ye simple livers of ye simpler life have raised thys barrier against ye World, ye Flesh and ye Devyl. Turn back in Peace and leave us to our Nunnery.
Ye simple livers of ye simpler life have raised thys barrier against ye World, ye Flesh and ye Devyl. Turn back in Peace and leave us to our Nunnery.
Ye Maids and Dames of Vassar.
"What the devil is that nonsense?" demanded Ellis hoarsely.
"Explained on our next tree," remarked Jones, wiping his eyeglasses indifferently.
An ordinary trespass notice printed on white linen was nailed to the flank of a great pine; and, below this, a special warning, done in red on a white board:
Notice!
This property belongs to the Vassar College Summer School. Fishing, shooting, trapping, the felling of trees, the picking of wild flowers, and every form of trespass, being strictly forbidden, all violators of this ordinance under the law will be prosecuted. One hundred dollars reward is offered for evidence leading to the detection and conviction of any trespasser upon this property.
This property belongs to the Vassar College Summer School. Fishing, shooting, trapping, the felling of trees, the picking of wild flowers, and every form of trespass, being strictly forbidden, all violators of this ordinance under the law will be prosecuted. One hundred dollars reward is offered for evidence leading to the detection and conviction of any trespasser upon this property.
The Directors of the Vassar Summer School.
"Well?" inquired Jones, as Ellis stood motionless, staring at the sign. The latter slowly turned an enraged visage toward his companion.
"What are you going to do?" repeated Jones, curiously.
"Do? I'm going to fish the Caranay. Come on."
"Trespass on Vassar?" asked Jones.
"I'm going to fish the Caranay, my old and favoriteand beloved stream," retorted Ellis, doggedly. "Do you suppose a dinky zinc sign in this forest can stop me? Come on, Jones. I'll show you a trout worth tossing this Caranay Belle to." And he looped on a silver-and-salmon-tinted fly and waded out into the rapids.
Jones lighted his pipe and followed him, giving his views of several matters in a voice pitched above the whispering rush of the ripples:
"That's all very well, Ellis, but suppose we are pinched and fined? A nice place, these forests, for a simple liver to lead a simple life in! Simple life! What? And some of these writers define the 'simple life' as merely a 'state of mind.' That's right, too; I was in a state of mind until I met you, let me tell you! They're perfectly correct; it is a state of mind."
He muttered to himself, casting an anxious eye on the thundercloud which stretched almost to the zenith over the Golden Dome and shadowed Lynx Peak like a pall.
"Rain, too," he commented, wading in Ellis's wake. "There's a most devilish look about that cloud. I wish I were a woodchuck—or a shiner, or an earnest young thing from Vassar. What are we to do if pinched with the goods on us, Ellis?"
The other laughed a disagreeable laugh and splashed forward.
"Because," continued Jones, wiping the spray from his glasses, "the woods yonder may be teeming with these same young things from Vassar. Old 'uns, too—there's a faculty for that Summer School. You can never tell what a member of a ladies' Summer School faculty would do to you. I dare say they might run after you and frisk you for a kiss—out here in the backwoods."
"Do you know anything about this absurd Summer School?" asked Ellis, halting to wait for his companion.
"Only what the newspapers print."
"And what's that? I've not noticed anything about it."
"Why, they all tell about the scope of the Vassar Summer School. It's founded"—and he grinned maliciously—"on the simple life."
"How?" snapped Ellis, clambering up out of the water to the flat, sandy shore of an exquisite pool some forty rods in length.
"Why, this way: The Vassar undergraduates, who formerly, after commencement, scattered into all the complexities of a silly, unprofitable, good old summer time, now have a chance to acquire simplicity and a taste for the rudimentary pleasures and pursuitsthey have overlooked in their twentieth-century gallop after the complex."
Ellis sullenly freed his line and glanced up at the clouds. It was already raining on the Golden Dome.
"So," continued Jones, "the Summer School took to the woods along with the rest of the simple-minded. I hear they have a library; doubtless it contains theOutlookand the Rollo books. They have courses in the earlier and simpler languages—the dead 'uns—Sanskrit, Greek, Latin; English, too, before it grew pin-feathers. They have a grand-stand built of logs out yonder where the mosquito hummeth; and some trees and a pond which they call a theatre devoted to the portrayal of the great primitive and simple passions and emotions. They have also dammed up the stream to make a real lake when they give tank-dramas like Lohengrin and the Rheingold; and the papers say they have a pair of live swans hitched to a boat—that is, a yellow reporter swears they have, but he was discovered taking snapshots at some Rhine-wine daughters, and hustled out of the woods——"
He paused to watch Ellis hook and play and presently land a splendid trout weighing close to two pounds.
"It's an outrage, an infernal outrage, for such people to dam the Caranay and invade this God-givenforest with their unspeakable tin signs!" said Ellis, casting again.
"But they're only looking for a simpler life—just like you."
Ellis said something.
"That," replied Jones, "is a simple and ancient word expressing tersely one of the simplest and most primitive passions. You know, the simple life is merely a "state of mind"; you're acquiring it; I recognize the symptoms."
Ellis made another observation, more or less mandatory.
"Yes, that is a locality purely mythical, according to our later exponents of theology; therefore I cannot accept the suggestion to go there——"
"Confound it!" exclaimed Ellis, laughing, as he landed a trout, "let up on your joking. I'm mad all through, and it's beginning to rain. When that thunder comes nearer it will end the fishing, too. Look at Lynx Peak! Did you see that play of lightning? There's a corker of a storm brewing. I hope," he added, savagely, "it will carry away their confounded dam and their ridiculous lake. The nerve of women to dam a trout stream like the Caranay.... What was that you said?"
"I said," hissed Jones in a weird whisper, "that there are two girls standing behind us and takingour pictures with a kodak! Don't look around, man! They'll snap-shoot us for evidence!"
But the caution was too late; Ellis had turned. There came a click of a kodak shutter; Jones turned in spite of himself; another click sounded.
"Stang!" breathed Jones as two young girls stepped from the shelter of a juniper brush and calmly confronted the astonished trespassers.
"I am very sorry to trouble you," said the taller one severely, "but this is private property."
Ellis took off his cap; Jones did the same.
"I saw your signs," said Ellis, pleasantly. Jones whispered to him: "The taller one is a corker!" and Ellis replied under his breath: "The other is attractive, too."
"You admit that you deliberately trespassed?" inquired the shorter girl very gravely.
"Not upon you—only upon what you call your property," said Ellis, gaily. "You see, we really need the trout in our business—which is to keep soul and body on friendly terms."
No answering smile touched the pretty grey eyes fixed on his. She said gravely: "I am very sorry that this has happened."
"We're sorry, too," smiled Jones, "although we can scarcely regret the charming accident which permits us——"
But it wouldn't do; the taller girl stared at him coldly from a pair of ornamental brown eyes.
Presently she said: "We students are supposed to report cases like this. If you have deliberately chosen to test the law governing the protection of private property no doubt our Summer School authorities will be willing to gratify you before a proper tribunal.... May I ask your names?" She drew a notebook from the pocket of her kilted skirt, standing gracefully with pencil poised, dark eyes focused upon Jones. And, as she waited, the thunder boomed behind the Golden Dome.
"It's going to rain cats and dogs," said Jones, anxiously "and you haven't an umbrella——"
The dark-eyed girl gazed at him scornfully. "Do you refuse your name?"
"No—oh, not at all!" said Jones hastily; "my name is Jones——"
The scorn deepened. "And—is this Mr. Smith?" she inquired, looking at Ellis.
"My nameisJones," said Jones so earnestly that his glasses fell off. "And what's worse, it's John Jones."
Something in his eye engaged her attention—perhaps the unwinking innocence of it. She wrote "John Jones" on her pad, noted his town address, and turned to Ellis, who was looking fixedly, but notoffensively, at the girl with the expressive grey eyes.
"If you have a pad I'll surrender to you," he said, amiably. "There is glory enough for all here, as our admiral once remarked."
The grey eyes glimmered; a quiver touched the scarlet mouth. But a crash of nearer thunder whitened the smile on her lips.
"Helen, I'm going!" she said hastily to her of the brown eyes.
"That storm," said Ellis calmly, "has a long way to travel before it strikes the Caranay valley." He pointed with his rod, tracing in the sky the route of the crowding clouds. "Every storm that hatches behind the Golden Dome swings south along the Black Water first, then curves and comes around by the west and sweeps the Caranay. You have plenty of time to take my name."
"But—but the play? I was thinking of the play," she said, looking anxiously at the brown eyes, which were raised to the sky in silent misgiving.
"If you don't mind my saying so," said Ellis, "there is ample time for your outdoor theatricals—if you mean that. You need not look for that storm on the upper Caranay before late this afternoon. Even then it may break behind the mountains and you may see no rain—only a flood in the river."
"Do you really think so?" she asked.
"I do; I can almost answer for it. You see, the Caranay has been my haunt for many years, and I know almost to a certainty what is likely to happen here."
"That is jolly!" she exclaimed, greatly relieved. "Helen, I really think we should be starting——"
But Helen, pencil poised, gazed obdurately at Ellis out of brown eyes which were scarcely fashioned for such impartial and inexorable work.
"If your name is not Smith I should be very glad to note it," she said.
So he laughed and told her who he was and where he lived; and she wrote it down, somewhat shakily.
"Of course," she said, "you cannot be theartist—James Lowell Ellis,theartist—the great——"
She hesitated; brown eyes and grey eyes, very wide now, were concentrated on him. Jones, too, stared, and Ellis laughed.
"Areyou?" blurted out Jones. "Great Heaven! I never supposed——"
Ellis joined in a quartet of silence, then laughed again, a short, embarrassed laugh.
"Youdon'tlook like anything famous, you know," said Jones reproachfully. "Why didn't you tell me who you are? Why, man, I own two of your pictures!"
To brown-eyes, known so far as "Helen," Ellis said: "We painters are a bad lot, you see—but don't let that prejudice you against Mr. Jones; he really doesn't know me very well. Besides, I dragged him into this villainy; didn't I, Jones? You didn't want to trespass, you know."
"Oh, come!" said Jones; "I own two of your pictures—the Amourette and the Corrida. That ought to convict me of almost anything."
Grey-eyes said: "We—my father—has the Espagnolita, Mr. Ellis." She blushed when she finished.
"Why, then, you must be Miss Sandys!" said Ellis quickly. "Mr. Kenneth Sandys owns that picture."
The brown eyes, which had widened, then sparkled, then softened as matters developed, now became uncompromisingly beautiful.
"I am dreadfully sorry," she said, looking at her notebook. "I trust that the school authorities may not press matters." Then she raised her eyes to see what Jones's expression might resemble. It resembled absolutely nothing.
After a silence Miss Sandys said: "Do you think Helen, that we are—that we ought to report this——"
"Yes, Molly, I do."
"I'm only an architect; fine me, but spare myfriend, Ellis," said Jones far too playfully to placate the brown-eyed Helen. She returned his glance with a scrutiny devoid of expression. The thunder boomed along the flanks of Lynx Peak.
"We—we are very sorry," whispered Miss Sandys.
"I am, too," replied Ellis—not meaning anything concerning his legal predicament.
Brown-eyes looked at Jones; there was a little inclination of her pretty head as she passed them. A moment later the two young men stood alone, caps in hand, gazing fixedly into the gathering dimness of Caranay forest.