CHAPTER XIXON THE TOP OF THE WORLD
Conover woke from a quaint dream of being buried alive in an ill-fitting coffin. And dawning consciousness proved the dream to have been but a mild exaggeration. For he was ensconced in a sleeping car berth. Gray light was peeping through the lowered shade. Much-breathed air, mingled with black dust pressed down upon the Fighter’s lungs. From a nearby section came the fretful whine of a baby. The stiff berth-curtains swished awkwardly inward and out, to the swing of the car.
Caleb performed, with ease born of long practise, that contortionist feat known as “Dressing in the berth.” Then, scrambling out, he lurched down the narrow, dark aisle toward the washroom at the rear. The place was already full of half-clad, red-eyed, touseled men. Some were washing, others painfully scraping lather from their jaws with safety razors; still others ransacking bag or suit case for clean linen. One early bird had completed his toilet and was lounging in a leather-and-wicker chair, trying to translate a pink time table; meanwhile industriously filling the semi-airtight compartment with cigarette smoke.
Conover surveyed his taciturn fellow sufferers;glanced over the too-populous room, from the rack-frieze of neatly triangular folded towels to the ash-and-cuspidor strewn carpet; then he slouched out into the relatively fresh air of the aisle. He looked at his watch. The hour was six-thirty. At seven they were due at Raquette Lake station. The car was last of the train. It occurred to Caleb to take his first glimpse of the Adirondacks. He walked to the rear door and looked out.
Behind him wound the single track of the little spur road. On either side it was lined by dark evergreens that stretched away in an endless vista of monochrome until the silver mist that hung low over everything blotted them from vision. The train seemed to be ploughing its way straight into the untrodden wilderness; to be the first alien that ever had intruded upon the vast mystic solitudes of green and gray.
Caleb looked long and without stirring. Then as the negro porter chanced to come near, the watcher’s pent up volume of emotion found vent in one pregnant sentence:
“Here, you!” he hailed. “I’ll give you a dollar if you can rustle me a cup of hot coffee!”
Out into the clinging mist, onto a long wooden platform, tumbled the travelers; Caleb in the first rank. There, drawn up to halt their onset, comic opera chorus-like, were ranged the vociferating station clerks of the lake’s various hotel-camps. A breath of keen balsam-tinged air bit to Conover’svery lungs. Instinctively he threw out his chest drinking in great gulps of strange ozone. From out of the swirling mist before him rose of a sudden a slight, girlish figure that ran forward with a glad little cry and caught both his hands.
“Oh, you’re here! You’rehere!” rejoiced Desirée, careless of bystanders. “Mrs. Hawarden said I’d catch my death if I was on the lake so early. But I got up at the screech of dawn, and came. Isn’t it all wonderful? This mist will burn up in a little while and then you’llsee! And do Billy and Aunt Mary still like farm life? Oh, it’s so good—sogood—to see you! Come. The Antlers launch is around the other side of the station.”
Clinging gleefully to one of his big arms, the girl piloted him through the scurrying groups and the luggage heaps, to a nearby dock where a half score of waiting launches panted. From one of the largest fluttered a dark blue flag with the name “Antlers” picked out on it in white. Into the launch they piled; Desirée still talking in pretty, eager excitement.
“This is the south end of the lake,” she was explaining. “There’s the store over yonder—that farthest red building—and there’s the Raquette Lake House. We had a dance there one night. And out there—” with a wave toward the wall of shining vapor, “is where we’re going. It’s only a mile. We’ll start as soon as the rest can get aboard. Oh, Iwishthe mist was gone, so you could see the islands, and old Blue Mountain keeping guard over—”
“It’s pretty damp on the water for you, ain’t it?” he interrupted, drawing her mackintosh closer about her shoulders. “This fog’s wet.”
“Nobody ever catches cold, up here on the top of the world!” she disclaimed. “And itisn’tfog. It’s just a little mountain mist. In another half-hour it will rise.”
“Just the same,” he argued, “I wish you had come in a carriage, instead of bein’ on the water so early.”
“A carriage!” she scoffed merrily. “Wheredo you think you are? These,” pointing to the docked rowboats, canoes and launches clustering about them, “are the ‘carriages’ of the Adirondacks. Why, except for the white trunk-chariot steed at the Antlers, there probably isn’t a horse within three miles of here. It’s Venice all over again, in that. Aren’t you atallglad to see me?” she continued, dropping her voice and noting the man’s puzzled, unenthusiastic mien. For an instant, some of the happy light ebbed in the eyes that had been so brimful of joyous welcome.
Caleb roused himself with an impatient shake at his own seeming apathy.
“Glad to see you!” he echoed. “Glad?Well, say, you little girl, it’s the gladdest thing that’s happened to me since the day you left Granite. An’ I’d be just as glad even if it was in some worse place than a wet boat all stalled up with mist. Gee! But the tan makes you look prettier’n a whole picture album!”
“Mrs. Hawarden says my hands are disgracefully brown,” said Desirée, the happiness running back toher eyes at his rough praise. “And my face is as black as an Arab’s, I suppose.”
“It’s the prettiest between here an’ Granite, all right,” he declared stoutly. “Here, let me pull that sweater thing higher up around your throat. What a funny littlekidface you’ve got, anyhow, Dey!”
He looked at her with frank delight. The girl’s head was bare; the mist clinging like frost crystals to her shimmering aura of hair. Out of a flushed, bronzed countenance glowed the wide, child-like eyes that Caleb had once declared were two sizes too big for her face—and in whose depths Caine had more poetically located “twin springs of hidden laughter.”
It wasgoodto see her. And the man’s business cares, his social plans, his matrimonial campaign itself, faded into nothingness. He was here, by her side. That was enough. And doubly he realized how poignant had been the ache of aloneness at his heart, during every day of her absence. There was a new peace, an utter content, that enwrapped him now that he was once more beside her. He did not try to analyze the emotion. But he knew it mastered him as nothing else had ever done. He knew it; and, satisfied to look no farther ahead, he was glad.
The launch had churned clear of the dock and was beating to northward through the mist barrier. Shadowy shores slipped past them. To their left, out of the fog, loomed the boathouse of a camp. Beyond its float men and girls in shiny bathing suits were splashing about in the water. Caleb trailed his hand overthe launch side. At the nip of the icy water he accorded the swimmers such a glance as he might have bestowed on the martyrs of old.
A wind danced down from the north, playfully tearing the lake vapors to silver tatters. A lance of white sunlight struck through the flying mist-reek. Out of the obscurity leaped an island; emerald green, sparkling with diamonds of moisture. Then another, and another. The mainland’s vague shores took shape and beauty. Broad reaches of water flashed azure and pale gold under the swift caress of wind and sun.
“See!” cried Desirée. “Isn’t it perfect?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “It is.”
“Butlook!” she commanded. “You haven’t once taken your eyes from my face. How can you say—?”
“What I said goes,” he answered curtly. “There’s nothin’ to take back.”
Conover’s first day at the Antlers was pleasant; for he and Desirée were together from morning to night. He was welcomed with effusive cordiality by Jack Hawarden; with graceful tolerance by the lad’s mother. The big tent wherein he was quartered was near enough to the Hawarden cottage to make the trip to and fro seem as nothing. More and more strongly as the day wore on did he feel as though he had reached some long-sought Mecca. The beauty of the “top of the world” was lost on him; but the beauty of the girl had in a moment became an integral part of hisevery thought. He was dully surprised at himself. Heretofore he had always taken Desirée as much for granted as he had taken the sunlight itself. To her he had turned for whatever was happiest and restful in his life; had done it unthinkingly, as part of his established routine. But now, after two months of separation from her, he grasped for the first time all her presence had meant to him.
The mighty silences of the mountains—the tumbled miles of multi-shaded green, strewn with fire-blue lakes—all these carried no message to the hard-headed Fighter, the man of cities. But ever he caught himself staring at Desirée in awed wonder; as though some veil between them had of a sudden been snatched away.
That first afternoon he and she went for a long walk where the twisting red-brown trail wound half aimlessly through the still forest; and she lectured him with a sternness that he found delicious, upon his lack of appreciation for the vistas, nooks and leafy sanctums she pointed out. Before supper she made him take her out on the lake, in one of the long, slender guide-boats, whose over-lapping oar handles he found so hard to manage. In midstream she bade him stop rowing, and pointed to the west. Against a green-gold background of sky, long crimson cloud-streamers flickered.
“It looks as if the wind were on fire,” she breathed in ecstasy.
And he, after a perfunctory glance and a word ofacquiescence, bent again to his oars. The lake was dotted with boats of the “sunset fleet.” The occupants of a dark blue St. Lawrence skiff hailed them. Caleb, in obedience to Desirée’s gesture rowed closer. The oarsman of the other boat proved to be Jack Hawarden who was returning with his mother from a climb of the Crags.
“Isn’t this sunset well worth traveling all the way from Granite to see?” called Jack.
“Itiskind of pretty,” assented Caleb.
“‘Pretty!’” repeated Mrs. Hawarden in gentle scorn. “What a word for such a scene! It brings out all that is highest and most beautiful in one!” she went on soulfully. “I wish, instead of rowing back to the Antlers to supper, I might drift on here forever.”
“You’d be li’ble to get rather hungry after a few hours of it, I guess,” volunteered Caleb, feeling he was somehow beyond his depth.
“Hungry!” shuddered Mrs. Hawarden, loath to come down to earth. “I should be feasting on the sunset. What more could anyone want?”
“Well, ma’am,” suggested Conover, dubiously, “if you leave it to me, I’d rather just now have a tripe sandwich.”
“Come, Jack,” said Mrs. Hawarden coldly. “I think we’ll go in.”
“Oh, howcouldyou!” laughed Desirée, in mock despair, as Caleb and she followed. “Why, her veryboatradiates disgust. She’ll never forgive you forspoiling her rhapsody. A tripe sandwich! Howcould—?”
“It was the first thing that came into my head,” he excused. “An’ this mountain air’s put an edge on my ap’tite that I could shave with. A tripe sandwich would taste good. I’m sorry if I—”
“If it had been anything less hideously plebeian!” she insisted. “Even roast shoulder of tripe would have sounded better. Oh, tripe doesn’t have shoulders, though, does it?”
“It may, for all I know,” he returned. “But, say, Dey, have I made you mort’fied? Honest, I didn’t mean to.”
“Ioughtto scold you,” she answered. “But, for letting me see that look on poor Mrs. Hawarden’s face, I forgive you everything.”
Jack Hawarden, entering Conover’s tent a half hour later, found the Fighter struggling into a dinner jacket.
“For heaven’s sake,” urged the lad, “take that thing off. Except at dances they’re never worn here. There’s a rumor that the boys ran a stranger into the lake, one summer, for coming to supper in evening dress.”
“First thing that’s struck me right since I came,” grunted Caleb, eagerly beginning to shed the tabooed garments. “I’ll get into something comf’table in half a minute if you’ll wait for me that long.”
“The Granite papers keep us posted on your doings,”said Jack, seating himself on the bed. “You’ve made the old State sit up this summer.”
“I’ll have it standin’ on its hind legs an’ beggin’, before I’m done,” chuckled Conover. “I’m only just beginnin’. How you gettin’ on with Dey?”
“How do you mean?” asked Jack, uneasily.
“Got her to take your view of the marryin’ problem?”
“No,” said the boy. “I haven’t.”
“Too bad! Been here all summer with her, an’ had moonlight an’ all that sort of thing to your favor. I sh’d think if you was ever goin’ to make her fall in love with you—”
“I know,” interrupted Jack soberly. “I counted on all that, but—”
“Can’t get her to see it your way?”
“Not yet. Sometimes I’m afraid I never shall. But I shan’t give up. All my life I shall care for her and try to make myself worthy of her, whether she ever gets to caring or not.”
“Good book-talk,” commented the Fighter, “but it has a kind of a square sound to it, too. Well, good luck to you! You can’t say I haven’t given you all the chances there was.”
“I appreciate it, sir,” answered the boy. “And soon or late I mean to win. I—I asked her once more since we came up here—It was about a month ago. But it seemed to make her unhappy. And I don’t want to spoil her summer. So I am waiting.I’ll wait for years, if I have to. Some day she may learn to care.”
“These fellers around here,—these youngsters that’s spendin’ the summer at thehotel,” queried Caleb. “Isn’t int’rested in any of them, is she?”
“I think not, sir. She’s nice to all of them, just as she is to me. And there isn’t another girl half so popular. But I don’t think she cares. I’m sure she doesn’t.”
Conover wondered why Hawarden’s report gave him an indefinable sense of relief. He thought the matter over for a moment; then shook his head.
“‘We’re keepin’ ’em waitin’,’” he said, slapping his hair with the heavy military brushes on his table. “Come along—”
As he turned to leave, the canvas curtains slowly parted and a gold-red collie stepped into the tent. He glanced about him with the air of one quite at home, and proceeded, with majestic friendliness, to walk across to where Conover stood.
“What’s the measly dog doin’ in here?” demanded Caleb, somewhat taken aback at the visit.
“Why, it’s Rex,” answered Jack, as though that statement explained everything. “He goes wherever he wants to. Desirée thinks the world of him.”
Caleb, mollified, moved nearer to the dog and proceeded to pat the downy fur of his head.
Rex, without the least appearance of rudeness, moved quietly away.
“That’s like all dogs,” grumbled Caleb. “An’mals just natch’lly hate me. I don’t know why; unless maybe because I don’t like ’em. What’s he got in his mouth?”
“His ball,” laughed the boy. “He always carries one around. We figured out the other day that he’s stolen at least eighty tennis balls this season. He has them ‘planted’ all over the place. One under my bed, another in the hotel woodbox and so on. Then whenever he gets lonely he roots one of them out and hunts up somebody to play ball with him. And we usually do it. I don’t know why.”
They had left the tent and were walking along the wooden path toward the dining room; Rex trotting just in front of them, and making them adjust their pace on the narrow footway to his. At the walk’s end, the dog suddenly bolted; and with ears tucked backward and tail flying, scampered across to where Desirée was just emerging from the Hawarden cottage. Caleb joined the girl and her chaperone; and the quartette started once more to the dining room. Conover and Desirée led the way, Rex placidly thrusting himself between them, as they walked.
“Don’t you think he’s a beauty?” asked Desirée. “He’s—oh, look!”
A baby, perhaps two years old, was weaving a tortuous way, under convoy of her nurse toward the tents. At sight of Rex, the child deserted her lawful escort and made a wild, toddling rush for the dog. Six feet away from him she halted, a gold-and-white fluff ofirresolute babyhood, scared at her own temerity. Rex had paused at her approach and stood wagging his tail, patiently awaiting the next move. The baby, eyeing him with furtive longing, made the first advance.
“How-do?” she said, politely, ducking her head in a propitiatory obeisance at the marvellous gold-red creature in her path.
As Rex did not reply to the salutation in any language she could understand, the baby repeated her remark, a shade more dubiously.
“You darling little thing!” cried Desirée. “He’s forgotten how to talk or he’d answer you. You want to pat him, don’t you? He won’t bite. Come along. See, I’m holding him for you,” and she buried a white hand in the warm fur of the dog’s neck.
Thus encouraged, the child came nearer, with mincing, uncertain steps, ever ready to turn and flee should the seemingly quiescent monster show the slightest inclination to turn and rend her. At length, in a burst of dashing heroism, she put one pudgy hand on his head in a gingerly caress. Rex sat down in the path and with a monumental calm suffered the familiarity. The baby with a squeal of delight at her immunity, took his furry head to her breast and squeezed it with arms that scarce met about the dog’s soft throat. Then she ventured on a grandstand play. Looking, to make sure all saw her, she thrust one small finger into the dog’s half-open mouth. Rex laid back his ears and rolled up his eyes in beatific quiescence.
“The beauty!” applauded Desirée. “See, Caleb!He’s trying to look like a Numidean lion. He worships children. Look at him!”
“You forget, Desirée,” said Mrs. Hawarden, in icy pleasantry. “Rex is not a tripe sandwich. To a rare soul like Mr. Conover’s, even a sunset,—to say nothing of a mere dog and a child—must yield to the charms of supper. Come. We’re all keeping him.”
“I had an idee,” muttered Caleb, as he passed her on the way to the dining room, “that it was ’tother way round.”