PINK PEARLS
Peoplewho like to dream geologic dreams of the figures and forms that moved in the long night of ancient Chaos are fond of tracing out some connection between the Hudson River and its neighbor, the woodland winding Hackensack. Not much narrower than the Tiber, and certainly wider than the little trickles that are left of the classic rivers of Greece, it has little personality for the general inhabitants of New York or New Jersey. Only to those who make friends of the hidden and search out the obscure is revealed the romance of the little river. The Hudson, grown conventional and well turned out, like a handsome mother, accustomed to hotel life, has a daughter, always at her side, yet elusive and wayward. These two, separated by mountain walls and palisade doors and lovely stretches of dreaming hills, meadows and road-crossed flats, have some common secret origin that they cannot alter nor disguise.
The nobler river is, however, destined to become the Path of Commerce, the trail of the great white Foot of Civilization, while the little Hackensack, punctuated here and there with history of the Colonials and with midnight escapes and sorties, winding by old sandstone houses with ancient roofs, still keeps reticence, a lovely inaccessibility. Screenedby maples, green hemlocks and alders in some haunts, in others she is a broad tranquil sheet of green crystal or a copper sunset path that leads into vine-hung bowers or spreads out into bare flats where the reeds rear tasseled heads.
Here the blue herons keep their silent vigils, the eagles have nests; here the muskrats drag blue mussel shells along the mossy banks and scatter the tiny pink pearls that sometimes reward hunters, who follow the azure iridescence. The cardinal flower and blue gentian blaze their quiet little trails along the sedges and Indian pipe glimmers in the back thicket. Pitcher plant and sundew, a thousand tiny lanterns of multi-colored berries, all the lush tenting and blossomy fragrance of grapes and hazelnut, and a hundred secret water plants—these are the things that go on living, where the birds bathe and the snakes lie languid and the turtles meet for their boggy conferences.
Sard's plan was to make the trip up the Hackensack by themselves. After lunch she stole out to the garage to find Colter, who was washing the depot car.
"Anyone using this this afternoon?" Sard indicated the long black body.
The man paused. He shut off the hose. "I think not. Judge Bogart has gone off with a friend for golf; Mr. Dunce took the roadster." There were invariably long pauses between Colter's sentences. "You wish to use it?"
"Yes." Sard thought a moment. "We want tojoin Mr. Dunstan's party up the Hackensack. You spoke of having been up that stream once, and said you knew where we could get a canoe. Would you, could you take us up?"
Squeezing out a sponge, Colter stood there without answering. He looked at the dripping sponge so dazedly that Sard thought he had not heard. "You know how to manage a canoe?" she asked. "We could get along with one boat, going up-stream toward the big race above West Morris. Why, Colter, what is the matter?"
"Going up-stream in a boat," repeated Colter thickly. "That's all over; going up a woodland stream in a boat. No—coming down—with him—dead!" The man did not look at her. "Where—where was it?" he asked. He stood clenching his hands, his eyes staring; he turned, not seeing the girl, though his deep fire-blue eyes burnt into hers. "Where was it?" he asked tensely.
The thing was so strange in its utter irrelevance that Sard, though she had seen him like this before, could hardly keep from rubbing her eyes. As in a dream she saw Colter's hand go out; it was as if he tried to push something away. "A boat," he muttered, "a boat and a stream that was walled with vines. Wait—wait!" He breathed rapidly, his head lifted as if he desperately tried to recall something; then he suddenly turned his eyes on the girl, shook his head and groaned. He passed his hand over his eyes and looked at her, smiling very gently.
"I couldn't get it," he said simply, half apologetically; "sometimes a little of it comes in parts. Did I startle you?" he asked with a look of concern.
"No—no——" she stammered. He had been like that the day she had found him sitting with his feet in the gutter muttering to himself. She waited with self-possession that surprised her, then asked quietly, "Was it something you wanted to tell me, something that you remembered?"
The man looked at her, his eyes now clear and rational. "No," gently, "I did not remember. You see that is my trouble, I do not know. I can remember nothing, nothing connected, not even who I am."
"You do not know who you are?" asked the girl awed. "Isn't there a book or a watch or something with your name?"
But he seemed not to hear her. He stood there lost in thought; finally, with a sigh, he seemed to give it up and turned to her. "What time shall I have the car around, Miss Bogart?"
"At four." The girl watched him for a moment and she said, "We wanted you to go with us. We wanted you to take charge of the expedition." She was a little uncertain.
"Certainly, Miss Sard." Colter said it gravely, cheerfully, with the machine-like acquiescence of the trained gardener or chauffeur. Sard turned and walked away, and he as quietly went back to his work, but through the young being, in that strange phase of a woman's mind and body that we call "intuition," went the baffling cadence of a man's voice,a cadence of doubt, terror and then the patient and controlled, "Very well, Miss Sard."
Something of tradition in the girl tried to drown it. Dismayed, she realized how this thing possessed her, how this voice rang in her physical being, "Very well, Miss Sard." She drew herself up. Was she, then, a woman of birth, a girl of two years' college training to be affected by the mere voice of a vagabond, a tramp, an unshaven ne'er-do-well?
As the two girls got into their camping things, Sard outlined the afternoon's programme. "And I want to suggest—let's see what you think—I don't suppose we should treat Colter quite like a common person; well, one can see that he's not exactly a man of all work."
Minga pinned back the flap of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter. "It would be improper to treat him otherwise," Minga decided with what for her was rather austere decision. "He isn't common exactly, but queer, and that's worse; Sard," went on Minga with an air of superiority, "I don't see how you could have picked him up like that and carted him in your nice clean car to that boarding-house place; Dunce says you all but helped carry him and gave directions and all—Ugh—and then lied to your father, pretending all this about a common workman."
Sard's face darkened. "I didn't lie," she said in a low voice. "I picked him up because I had seen him there sitting, hour after hour, with that queer dazed look, so wretched, shaken and awful. I'll admit he looked dreadful, but somehow his eyes didn't lookdirty; something that was awfully clean spoke through all his wretchedness, and when I heard him tell those stupid policemen that he 'couldn't remember,' his voice got to me—got to me——" Sard restlessly wandered about the room unable to express what she meant. "I suddenly felt that I, well, I knew him, and," announced the girl defiantly, "I've somehow felt that way ever since. I just knew. I admit it's queer, Minga."
"It's queer, all right," Minga said succinctly, "and so are you." She stuck her scarf inside her boyish little jacket and struck an attitude in her boots and knickerbockers.
"Fluffy Fiddlestick, the film heroine, is now going to give the Hackensack the once-over," she announced. "Talk about screen stuff; all this that you say about this tramp man, Sard, is worse than any screen story I ever saw, and you so demure! It isn't lying, but it's letting things lie for you; you got that bank person at Morris to suggest Colter to Judgie. Does Aunt Reely know you're responsible for his being here? A regular Gentleman John, and nobody but you in the secret." Minga, with quite an injured air, picked up her wrist-watch and fastened it on; she eyed herself in the mirror. "Do I need lipstick, no? Would the turtles appreciate red lips?"
"Well, you do know he's not a common man?" Sard asked, obstinately.
"Mercy, I don't know anything," retreated Minga easily. "Now, how do we get by Auntie's bower in these knickers?"
As they slipped together down the back stairs, Sard chuckled. "The funny part of it is Aunt Reely is reconciled to knickers; so is that queer Mrs. Spoyd. You see, they know that the English countesses and princesses wear them, and they sit studying all the different women's knickers in the fashion sheets and secretly wonder if they couldn't wear them themselves. I heard Mrs. Spoyd say, dreamingly, 'Well, my dearrrrr, I suppose we shall soon have stylish Stouts in the—er—camping trousers also,' and Aunt Reely sighed, 'We must try to adapt ourselves.' They are getting to be very popular!"
The girls went giggling down the steps and out the kitchen way, Sard glancing at the kitchen clock. "We ought to be able to get up-stream before Dunce and his party; they're starting way down-stream back of Spencerville. I'm going to embark above the West Morris station; here's supper and the tea basket, and I've told Maggie and Dora to have something hot in case we come in late."
It was like college days, like bacon bats and beach parties and Saturday hikes, and the girls' spirits rose. They bowed brightly to Colter, appearing with the depot car. In some way the man, clean and shaven, long limbed, clad neatly in faded old shirt and khaki trousers with dark tie carefully tied, was not a disagreeable figure as he gathered up the luncheon things and thermos bottles and waited for Sard's signal. The girl herself took the wheel, and Minga perched beside her. The novelty of the thing worked on the restless mind of the girl under the scarlet tam-o'-shanter. "Wait till Cinny sees this," Minga murmured nervously, "and—and Gertrude! How'll they take the Colter addition to a party—he really looks all right, doesn't he? Those queer clothes set right, and his hair is brushed back like other people's, and his hands look good and kind, somehow. How old do you suppose he is?" she whispered. "About twice as old as Dunce?"
"Hush!" Sard turned a sharp corner carefully. "About thirty-seven, maybe forty." The eyes of both the girls widened at this antique possibility, but Sard remembered that there had been a professor at college who had seemed like a boy, almost as young as Dunce, and he was thirty-five.
There was a curious lift in Sard's head, in her eyes a flying look of adventure; her figure, light, alert, sat at the steering gear with a look of power and repose; her wistful profile had lines that were resolute and composed, as if waiting for some stuff of life on which to try their power; all about her in the windy press of their speed was the buoyant look of physical action, green trees, brown vital roads like veins full of the blood of Wanderlust and adventure; like them, the girl was ardent, fresh, a thing pure and intense as fire, yet sober and clean as water. In her belted coat and rough hat and the flying strands of hair, she drove in confident direction, over the damp woodland roads, over the swamps and bridges of the Morris turnpike, a very figure of Advance, so thought a man, who stood to let them pass, then let his arm fly up in hasty flourish. "Winged Victory!" he breathed.
"Hello!" Watts' hand flew to his hat and he waved it; then as the girls, with friendly greeting, slowed down, he turned back to parley. "Hold up your hands," he ordered gruffly. "Give me your wristwatches; no quarter."
It was all part of their feeling of quest and adventure, and they liked the tall lawyer for the little highway gesture as he stood there, his face lined with dust and sunburn, his costume showing rents and wrinkles of cross-country walking. The two wideawake faces smiled at him as he glanced tentatively at the gray-clad figure at the back of the car, but there was no introduction, though the lawyer paused for it. The man sitting there did not turn, but had a quiet position of relaxation. Sard reddened slightly.
"We're off on a lark," they explained. "Have you seen Dunce and his gang? We hope we've stolen a march on them; we're further up the river, we think."
"Going for some of those little pink pearls," explained Minga, "and we want to get ahead of 'em."
Shipman's amused eyes ran over the outfit. The excited girls, the silent man with tea basket and the thermos bottles; he looked sympathetic.
"Little pink pearls?" eyeing Minga teasingly, "are you going to pick them off the trees, or take them out of the turtles' mouths? How much food have you there, anything substantial?"
"Loads," they assured him; "we're stocked up for the Bible multitude; we have loaves and fishes and everything."
Still the older man hesitated. It was a little audacious, but he tried his luck at playing "young."
"Take me with you?" glancing at the averted face of Colter and questioningly raising his eyebrows.
The two girls accepted his self-invitation gaily. "Take you, won't we though? We need another man." Sard glanced back at the figure in the back. "This is Colter, whom we brought to help us with the boat and all that; he knows the Hackensack."
Watts Shipman nodded in his usual friendly way, and Minga, wide-eyed, observed that Colter's recognition was of the same order, a quiet, courteous friendliness. The little figure in the scarlet cap leaned eagerly toward the famous lawyer. Shipman and Minga seemed on surprisingly good terms. Purposely the lawyer kept any memory of their last encounter out of his manner and eyes.
"Do you really know where the pink pearls are?"
For answer Watts, standing in the road, took a little phial from his pocket and displayed it. On a bed of cotton were four or five tiny seed pearls of cream color and soft rose. The two girls opened their eyes with delight.
"Goodness," the worldly Minga was impressed. "Why don't Tiffany or somebody come up and get these? There might be a fortune in the Hackensack."
"They've had men up here," interposed Colter quietly, "but there wasn't enough in it for them."
The party turned and looked at him questioningly; Colter took the phial Shipman handed him. "Yousee, they never grow very large," he explained, examining a pearl that rolled into his hand. "There is some substance lacking, but whatever it is, the reason isn't known, I think."
"Just the same, it will be fun to hunt for them." Shipman was as eager as a boy. "I have an extra skiff at that little house you see by the bridge up yonder; suppose I bring that; we can have a flotilla," he nodded to Colter, who nodded back.
"Surely," he agreed.
The voice, courteous of inflection, assured in enunciation, arrested the lawyer's attention as it had arrested Sard's. As the girls slipped to the ground, moving about the car, captivating in their trim camping costumes, the lawyer, his eye taking in their assured grace, the lithe precision of their movements, swept a curious eye over their companion.
The newly-shaven chin, the dark red hair brushed back and hands with nails that had once been well-shaped and cared for, mystified him with the sense of hidden identity, and yet he got no sense of purposeful concealment. Somehow the man seemed like a person who moved in a dream; what he said and did was done automatically, as if the Self had no abiding interest in his activities. The lawyer was conscious of a certain sense of mystery as he turned to assist with the tea basket and things.
"Can I help?"
"Thanks, if you'll bear a hand with those bottles." As Shipman grasped the things held out to him he looked for a moment full into the other's eyes, eyesthat met his quite quietly, too, but with an awful look of question.
"I am a gentleman," said those eyes—"do you know me, have you ever seen me—who am I?"
REVELATIONS
Thetwo skiffs, now paddled, now poled, glided along the green-bronze waters of the woodland shores; the girls, sitting in the stern, were silent, this partly from Shipman's suggestion. Minga had started her customary chatter, but the lawyer laid his big hand on her shoulder. She looked up to find him, finger on lips, dark eyes smiling into hers. "If you want to see things," he whispered, "you'll have to be as dumb as a silent policeman." Minga, remembering the night on South Mountain, gave a slight involuntary shiver which the man noticed.
"Child!" exclaimed Shipman suddenly. He looked long and intently into the little face; he must have seen something rare like the blue shell of an eager little soul-bird, a little shell that must not be broken too roughly. "Forgive me for everything," he said contritely; "you must think me an awful sort of brute. Talk as much as you like, you rosebud. I only meant, well, there are things to see if one is quiet, you know!"
Minga smiled back into his face. It was an uncertain little smile, shorn of her usual gay sparkle and challenge or the repartee of what was known as "the Minga line." Seeing this, the lawyer removed his hand from her shoulder quickly; he reached for hispipe and tobacco and lighted up for his abstemious afternoon smoke. Minga idly watched his deliberate movements, the curious impression that he gave of inherent remorseless power, of so physical and dynamic a kind fed by so enormous a reservoir of understanding and self-control that the girl might well feel in awe of it.
Paddle in hand, Shipman stood in the bow of the boat. He dug softly into the deep flow of the water; they turned the slow curve of an island, rounding afresh into long avenues of alders and elderberry and toward the purple gloom of hanging swamp maples. Colter's boat, Sard leaning eagerly forward, followed. Now and then the two men would halt and point to some half distinguished object, a great gray hornet's nest whorled like a ball of paper cinders in the thicket, a blue heron standing motionless, a mud hen sitting heavily in a dead tree. The long line of empty mussel shells was strung like big beads over the cushions of soft moss; a muskrat swam across the stream; a chipmunk, sitting on his haunches and munching like a cooky, a dark-brown mushroom—here and there clusters of scarlet amanita, yellow fungus like sponges, the delicate hanging Clintonia bells, or a thousand filmy patches of moss, where little trumpets blew and coral lights glowed, and little banners and transparencies marked the tiny march of plant progress.
Colter, steadily sculling his flat-bottomed craft, looked with evident delight on these things—his gaunt form stood steadily on its long legs, there was determined, practiced deliberation in his movements andhis were the eyes that first discovered this and that rarity. The intense gaze of the man seemed to burn into the dim forest walls of summer, his ears caught every subdued note, he peered like a sort of necromancer at a spider web, at a snail lethargically climbing the mud bank or a patch of sun dew, all its little gummy tentacles alert for fly-capture.
Minga, turning once, heard him mutter something under his breath; she stole a startled glance at him as her own boat sped along, and leaned forward.
"Don't go too fast, we mustn't get too far ahead of Sard; I don't like to leave her alone with that—that man."
Shipman raised his eyebrows. "Why," using her undertones, "isn't he the chauffeur? He's all right, isn't he?"
Minga was mysterious; a curious womanly accent of responsibility sat strangely on this little figure, with pretty legs in trim knickerbockers and puttees, and dark head of bobbed hair.
"He's just plain queer," objected Minga. "You'd never guess that the Judge and Miss Reely know nothing about him; that man, you see, is one of Sard's pickups."
"Pickups." Shipman frowned, while he smiled.
Minga luxuriated in the irregularity of the thing. "Oh," she protested, "you may think you know Sard, but you don't—nobody," said Minga solemnly, "knows her as I do. Of course," the little bobbed head shook wisely, "Sard wouldn't do anything—er—well, you know."
Shipman tried to control his humor. "Of course not," he echoed.
"Just the same," Minga was dramatic, "she goes around picking up queer people and sick dogs and babies and spending her money on them and getting them into hospitals and oh, awful things," said Minga, darkly. "She knows girls that haven't husbands and well——" she gave a gesture which though vague was eloquent.
The lawyer led her on. "So Miss Sard picked up this vagabond."
"Well, maybe not a vagabond," Minga looked over her shoulder warily, "a tramp, sort of, and he might be crazy. I heard him," she went on mysteriously, "use Latin words a moment ago and then look around, oh, so strangely."
"Sure thing," Shipman, with equal solemnity, nodded; "anyone who uses Latin or Greek these days is mad, of course; but it's a divine madness. I use it myself. I'm a little mad, you know." He bent amused eyes on his companion. "How did you know it was Latin?"
Minga looked back a little exultantly; the coquette in her never very far away from the surface, rose to his teasing. "I know some," announced this young person with a toss; "for instance," Minga became rather glib at the game they were playing, this was her "line," "I know all the conjugations of the verb 'amo.'"
"Well done," said Shipman idly. He smiled perfunctorily, but the great lawyer did not seem particularly anxious to take up this gay little gauntlet; he was thoughtful, prodding the creek water rather viciously. "You think Colter might be a college man in disguise," he said abruptly, "wandering around studying sociological problems, no? That sort of thing is a fad these days, isn't it?" Just then Sard hailed them.
"I hear the Gertrude-bunch down-stream," she called in laughing triumph. "We've beat them to it; that's Dunce's queer yelp. Now," said the girl briskly, "suppose we get out on the shores of this big 'race' ahead here and make a fire and have our supper and wait until they turn up, then we can give them coffee, and we can all go down-stream in a procession and slam home in the machines together."
Minga nodded approvingly; the youngster had been a little overawed by the society of a man so much older than herself; now the prospect of a few young howlers and slangers of her own set revived her. "The very thing," she said. At the same time Minga realized that it would impress Gertrude and Cinny to see her being propelled in a skiff by the well-known barrister, Watts Shipman. All her funny little appreciations of life were concentrated upon keeping Shipman apparently her slave until these ladies should appear. They would think him awfully old, of course, but then, he was a famous lawyer and "popular," or as Minga construed him, "important," and that would be good for Gertrude and Cinny. The small intriguer waited in a highly feminine manner for Shipman to assist her out of the skiff.
Suddenly there was an exclamation from Colter, who had found a large mussel hanging on a half-submerged tree trunk. He methodically opened it with his knife and had just cut out from the jelly-like substance within a smooth oval as big as a grain of barley. "A beauty," breathed Colter, as he bent soberly down to the water to wash it. The group watched him take a bit of chamois from his pocket and polish it; somehow Sard was not surprised to see the long sensitive hand go into another pocket and produce a magnifying glass. The girl, who had been watching him gravely, felt a curious exultation that the other man should see her protégé so detached and calm in his movements. She looked curiously into his face, noting with a kind of pang, a wonder, all the lines of sweetness and self-control, laid over with a strange patience. She felt triumphant—suddenly Colter turned toward her, and with a little bow, put in her hand the little misshapen pearl. "A shape like folded light, embodied air," he murmured.
Sard stared. "Why, that is Emerson." Then wonderingly, "You read that in my little book?"
He smiled. Colter's smile was pleasant, with a row of not too regular, but very white teeth. "I used to know it by heart," he confessed; he seemed to forget Shipman and Minga, standing there observing. Once more the strange look came over his face, and he said rather eagerly, "For a time it seemed to open a door, but I——" Suddenly the man turned sharply, so sharply that the girl was startled. "Where was that?" he demanded thickly. "When did it happen? Whatwas it that made my head cloud and the long illness? Who was I before that? Where was I then?"
With a furious blush he shook his head as though to shake off a fatal spell; he turned to Shipman and Minga. "I—I beg your pardon; I shouldn't have spoken. It comes over me like that; I forgot for the moment."
Watts Shipman stood strangely quiet. The lawyer's look was that of a man who himself gropes for a clue and yet is suspicious. "But, yes," he said quietly, not without a slight touch of patronage, "if there is anything you want to straighten out, speak out, don't be afraid of us."
But Colter groaned. His look first of horror was altered to that of great mental struggle. The hands clenching at his side, the fine face blunted and torn by some doubt and fear; it was all too much for the girl who had rescued him. Sard started toward him; she put out her hand as to protect. "Hush!" she said, "you must not try to remember;" then, soothingly, "try to keep your mind just where it is now. Here! With us!"
The man turned slowly toward her; he straightened up obediently, looking from face to face, then all around the scene where they stood; the clear "race" murmuring about them, the little sandy shore, the tea baskets and shawls tumbled on the ground; he passed his hand over his face and, half-groaning, a baffled expression as of a half-formed word broke from his lips. "Did I frighten you?" he asked piteously. "I am afraid I frightened you. I—Iwas——" He groaned, and it was a groan like human tears.
Sard, who was trembling now in every limb, denied it stoutly, but Minga looked resentful and suspicious. The older girl who had originally guessed what was the matter with Colter, that complete forgetfulness had swept his mind blank of vital things, felt her own sense of dismay. That the man was not playing at this thing, that he had altogether lost his sense of personal identity, she was sure, but back of that, what lay back of that? Then with a hot shame she remembered the tenderness that had come into her voice as she said, "Hush," to this man; as if she had spoken to a child.
But now the voices down the river were coming closer. There was much far-off shouting and singing in unfinished snatches of songs; the sound of a ukulele and a mandolin played, the one with tripping assured fingers, the other very much out of tune with clumsy effort to produce harmonies. The staccato chatter and gabble of two girl voices sounded oddly in the dense woods of swamp maple; now and then shrill laughter or an artificial scream jarred on the ears of the up-stream party. Minga, still absorbed in her search for possible pearls, hardly noticed this, but Shipman, with a face as immovable as an Indian's, gave it some inquiry.
"Who are in your brother's party?" he asked at last. "Our friend Dunce of the repartee and—er—who else?"
"Oh, Cynthia Bradon," Minga returned, "andGertrude, the girl we call the 'road hog,' you know. She's about the most modern girl I know," said Minga with an air of congratulation; "nothing stops her—she's sort of impulsive, you know, and yet crafty; it's quite a queer combination."
Shipman thought it might be a very queer combination. "There's a whopper, that mussel down there," he bared his hairy arm and reached down for it. "Looks as if there might be a whole pearl necklace in that."
But when they cut it open the pearl was too small to be of much account, so they scooped about in the dark water for others. As they worked, Minga poured out a good deal about Cynthia and Gertrude. The lively scarlet-capped girl had forgotten how all the way down South Mountain that night she had sworn to Dunstan that she hated Shipman and had called him a murderer and a man who would for sheer joy commit Terence O'Brien and any other fugitive to the electric chair for the glee of watching him done to death. Now, on her knees, she turned her sparkling blue eyes on the lawyer's dark face; they rested there like flowers magnetized by the deep stream of his being.
"If you get a big pearl like Sard's, I'll love you—all my life," she said softly. Minga was trying the little iridescent antennæ with which a woman tests the toughness of a man's surface, but something genuine stirred in her, and when the great lawyer turned to look more closely into her face she had the grace to wince a little.
"That's an engagement ring you wear, isn't it?" Watts asked cheerfully. "Some nice little cub spending his lunch money on flowers and candy for you."
Minga tried to blush, but the time-honored suffusion somehow would not work; the girl's own consciousness, her involuntary registry as of something "wrong with the mechanism" did not escape the lawyer; he threw back his head and the forest rang with his glee.
"No, that's something you've lost, you modern girls, you don't know how to blush. It was a wonderful thing your mothers laid up just the way they used to store up old wine, and it worked. Ye Gods! how it worked! But you—a little bit too much soul-enamel, Mademoiselle, to say nothing of these other things you put on your lovely little faces."
Minga bent her head; if she couldn't blush she could, at least, simulate shyness, and girls who hope to be moving-picture actresses know how to simulate most things; many of them are perfectly satisfied with simulation for reality. Shipman went on teasing about the engagement ring. "Tawny Troop," said he, "was a very good name, an excellent name, something like a wandering singer, didn't Minga think, or an acrobat; and did the good Tawny make enough money to support a wife?"
"His father is a big motion picture producer," said Minga with dignity. She became calm and explanatory, "and he dances my line of dancing. I work up my line, you know, and so to keep him from the other girls I am engaged to him; but we don't either ofus want to make it public," said Minga; "we know too much of life," with a world-wearied air. "I think one should be sure of a person, don't you? But Tawny is a good dancer," and, with an indescribable complacence, "this is a rather nice ring."
"I shall congratulate the son of the Producer," said Watts mockingly. "Does Prince Tawny go so far as to plan to produce anything himself? By Jove! Here's your big pearl, a hummer! Well, now," the lawyer was triumphant, "I've made good, anyway."
But an older man attracted for a moment by a vivid little face always makes the mistake of speaking to depths that do not exist behind that face while he blunders on little vanities that do exist. Watts had seemed too irreverent about the engagement. He had not treated Minga as a valuable person to envy another man the possession of; this by all the books and plays that Minga knew anything about, was the proper way to treat an engaged girl—there must be envy from both men and women, heart-burning and backbiting jealousies, else why be engaged? As the lawyer practically cut the pearl out of its bed, washed it and with a mock ceremonious bow handed it to her with the disrespectful suggestion: "My wedding present," Minga tingled in a way that he had made her tingle before. With a slight, bored gesture, the girl took the tiny treasure, held it a moment in her hand, then with a sudden curl of the lip, and an unlovely mocking in the eyes tossed it far from her, back into the forest. Minga stood there smiling atthe man who had given it to her. She had a look of diablerie older than the history of woman.
"Why, you little——" for a moment the dark brows beetled, then Shipman laughed, while Minga stared insolently into his face. She glanced over her shoulder.
"Oh, I wish we could have supper," she fretted. "I'm so fed up with this place. Sard, have we got to stay here all night? It's getting dark. Oh! I wish the Bunch would come along. I'm tired of old people!"
There was no doubt but that the Bunch were coming; the catcalls, the yelps of laughter and frantic strumming of instruments came nearer and nearer. Watts, sitting idly on the bank watching Sard and Colter set out the supper, winced once or twice. There was something blatant and raw in the voices of the girls that even at that distance suggested squalid things. The great lawyer had heard maudlin women under many circumstances. Watts, like many another professional man, knew that there was nothing more awful in its debauchery and spiritual nakedness than a civilized woman under drugs or loose emotion.
"What are these girls like?" he inquired sharply of Sard.
The girl for a moment did not answer; Minga giggled.
"Like Paprika and Chutney," she burst into a half-laugh, looking meaningly at Sard.
"Sounds a good deal like one of Cinny's jags; now where would she get anything——"
"Hush." The other girl's worried look stopped Minga. But the rebuke in it seemed to nettle the restless little creature, who jumped to her feet stamping her foot. "Oh, I'm half dead with this old place," said Minga. "I'm cold, too. I'm going to explore the forest; want to come?" looking over her shoulder at Shipman.
At his smiling negative, Minga pouted. "All right, then I'll go by myself." She made as if to burst through the wall of swamp-maples, looking tantalizingly back at the lawyer; but Colter, glancing up, interfered.
"There are bogs around here," he warned, "quick-sands; one can't go very far without trouble."
Minga, shaking her head, started forward, half laughing back at the two men who with concern watched her. "Catch me if you can, anybody," she called to them. "I'm the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I'm Marco Polo, I'm going to explore, I tell you. Who follows?"
One of the most interesting things of the decade is that the coolest, most blasé girl of the time will under the right combination of circumstances play exactly the same game of sex that all her cave ancestors played before her. Minga, the emancipated, the independent and wilful, the haughty and undisciplined, was now courting a very special thrill, the old cave-woman thrill of expectancy to be captured and mastered. Modern women of maturer age realize that in asserting their superiority in general biological ascent they are losing this thrill. It is extremely edifying tostudy the devices by which they seek to experience while they theoretically disclaim it; a sort of eat-your-cake-and-have-it idea that must necessarily result in some very queer psychoses.
The little scarlet figure, peering through the bushes, deliberately grinned her challenge at Shipman; the tall, composed man, looking on with appreciation, deliberately grinned back, but the more mature grin was a little forced. Watts Shipman understood, he understood very perfectly, he therefore did not pursue; it was Colter who with a worried exclamation darted after the girl rapidly disappearing in the swamp brush.
Sard, also standing up, suddenly noticed that it was growing toward twilight.
She stood there looking so lovely, with her worried eyes, the fine toss of her head, the lips parted, that Shipman instinctively drew near to her. "I wish we had gone with Dunstan," said the girl half to herself. Sard looked over to the lawyer. "You remember my brother?" she asked simply. "It was he who took Minga home that night," blushing a little in this new comradeship, to remember her own stiffness and aloofness that night.
"You're very fond of him?" Watts asked.
"Yes," Sard sighed. "I wish I could steer him right, but," the girl drew her brows together, "none of us seem able to help each other much." She looked at the lawyer smiling. "Sometimes," she confessed, "I worry."
"Of course you worry," said Watts softly. Thelawyer liked being near her. He felt her clear honesty pouring all over him. Soft, pellucid, like the refreshment of clean water: "Of course you worry, but you will get tired if we keep on standing here. Sit down; let me take care of you."
The girl smiled; she very gladly let him take care of her. Sard, every inch of her capable and alert, had yet the power of those really powerful among women, that of letting a man show toward her his own best, the thing bred in him by his muscular superiority, the mother-taught sacred thing of his chivalry.
Watts, marveling at the grace of the girl, at her lovely calmness and steadiness, spread out the shawls on the bank. He piled the cushions back of her; he collected twigs and lighted a little fire. "It will be a beacon for them to find their way back," he said. "I rather fancy that little witch, Minga, will put your man through his paces; but he seems resourceful."
"They will be back soon," agreed Sard dubiously.
The lawyer looked at her at last. "I don't care if they don't come back too soon," he said in a curious voice. Shipman felt suddenly young, and it was twilight and there were bird notes in the woods.
"Oh, but we must have supper and get back before Aunt Reely begins to worry."
"But," he said, "this is the time to talk to you, the time I've been waiting for." Then as he saw her little questioning glance, "It's been on my mind to talk to you about Terence O'Brien. The trial comes off next week. I have got to tell you, Miss Bogart, that his chances are very slim. But let's not talk aboutthat. What I really want is," said Shipman slowly, his eyes fixed steadily on hers, "what I really want is to have you tell me all about this mystery man of yours. Tell me," he begged, "all about Colter!"
SOPHISTICATION
TellingShipman "all about Colter" was, Sard found, not so easy. To eyes fixed upon hers with inscrutable powers of judgment, it was difficult to find words for the story. Yet, as the girl, her forehead slightly knotted, described the half-bent figure of the vagabond, surrounded by a curious little ring of village loafers, half prodded, half jeered into mumbled answers to questions as to what he was doing there, Shipman responded easily to the passion for decency and justice that had swept over her who had driven her car close up to the group. The picture of Sard dominating the half respectful, half resentful loafers, getting them to lift the dazed man into the car, was vivid. Shipman could see the calm young ascendency, the smiling way of giving directions, ignoring comments. The lawyer could visualize the whole thing, country smirks and all, as she related how she and Lowden had driven Colter to the little boarding-house, arranged for a room and the attendance of a physician and finally left her own visiting card and address and the sentence scribbled, "Come to this address when you are able to work."
There was something so divine in this unconscious recital of pure humanity that the man, sitting there, had no droll look of question, nor raised eyebrow ofinexpediency. The fresh eyes of the girl sought his for comment.
"I don't approve," he said slowly, "but I admire."
"But why don't you approve?"
Shipman looked into the young eyes, wondering at their brown brook-like centers, slightly tremulous with tiny shifting lights of gold. As the girl laughed, they deepened into a curious maternal gleam, a hint of motherliness. Fascinated by the clear purity of her, realizing how little she could grasp of the hundred cheap misinterpretations of her acts, he kept silent.
"Wouldn't you have 'approved' if you had been in Colter's place?"
The lawyer straightened. After all, he was years older than she, even winged victories could come to grief; there were draggled wings and things that could not be victories. He saw the saucy inference and became somber, so somber that he had no answer to match his mood. Sard chose to be glibly interrogative.
"You must have seen that he is not a common man?" determinedly.
"You couldn't have known that when you picked him up," was the slightly testy reply. "People can't do these things; the world is slimy, putrid, about all such things. The only thing that keeps the Augean stables livable is people like you that don't know the slimy things exist. I'm not at all sure," said the lawyer, with a big brotherly air, "that you had any right to carry the thing so far without your father's knowledge. Suppose this man had been a stool-pigeon, one of the bands that tour the country with plans for house-breaking." As Shipman said the words he was tearing stray leaves in his hands, watching the drooping face, hating himself for casting a shadow on it.
"You have seen that he is a gentleman," returned Sard steadily. If she had been an older woman she would have played lightly with the thing, half caressing the man in his chivalrous disapproval of her. But the lovely thing about Sard was that she took no such ways. While youth is youth it plays the game squarely, directly, standing outside of its own little fortress of personality, demanding, "Who goes there—friend or foe?" and unhesitatingly letting down the portcullis for those who show the right colors even though they keep their visors down.
"I don't like to butt in," said Shipman, "but—but I'd rather have you think a little more, yet. I don't know; if you did think you wouldn't be you and you are——" The man muttered the end of the sentence; he suddenly recollected himself, rose restlessly and walked over toward the line of swamp maples walling the inner woods back of the stream. He peered a little anxiously into the rapidly glooming vistas. "I think, Miss Girl, that you had better go a little slow," was all he said.
Shipman, himself, had been making a surreptitious study of Colter, and had to admit that the man, though apparently aged through some kind of exposure and deathless sorrow, had every evidence of good breeding and clean life. There had been a curious muscularthinness to the long body that had spelled fundamental good health, though his cheeks were sunken and his hands nervous. Shipman had seen from the very beginning that Judge Bogart's man of all work at one time had physical training: riding, perhaps, cross-country walking; very much of a man, yet undoubtedly some ne'er do well who for reasons best known to himself had been willing to put himself under a girl's protection and affect so silly a disease as amnesia. Shipman balked at the amnesia theory. The lawyer half grimaced at the possibilities of Sard's awakening and disappointment. He cast about for some way in which he could warn the impulsive girl at his side yet help her in what she believed.
"People talk about training girls for the home," said Sard. She was standing close by him now. "Why don't they see that the World is our home? All our own separate little homes are just so many leaves and petals on the great World-Flower. It isn't enough to know how to run a little house with two floors and a bathroom and a kitchen," said the girl. "We must train our minds and our muscles to be ready to help anywhere; in foreign countries—to make homes in Hell, if need be."
It was said not recklessly or rantingly, but with a New Conviction, the conviction of clean, honest youth awake to the larger demand of the future and anxious not to be surprised or appalled, but to meet those demands. Shipman, something young and aching in his own breast, something that had not been touched for years, looked down upon the tawny head so close tohis shoulder; he caught his breath, "Winged Victory," he murmured.
"What?" asked practical Sard.
For answer the lawyer growled, "Nothing." He wandered restlessly about pulling back the low screening maple branches, peering into the depths of the woods where low sunset bird notes sounded over the wild geraniums and the ferns sent out strange bracken scents.
"Miss Bogart, do you know the character of the swamps through this section? Are there quick-sands?"
The girl stared. "I don't know," then suddenly startled, "Why?"
"Just because,"—the man was listening intently—"H'm! Yes, that's your man Colter's voice. I thought I heard it once before. Do you suppose he needs us?" He looked smilingly at her, anxious not too greatly to disturb her. "Would Miss Minga take chances with a bog or whatever? She'd do almost any fool thing, wouldn't she?"
"Chances—Minga!" Sard laughed while she frowned. "That's all Minga ever takes—chances; her life is like a little patchwork quilt, full of queer little bright pieces that don't match." Now the girl herself listened, staring into her companion's face, noting its strength and grimness. "I—I like him, sort of," admitted Sard to herself. Aloud she said, "Why, that's funny; just now I thought I heard someone too, but it was down there," indicating the direction of the canoes that could be heard fartherdown the creek. The sound of the mandolins and ukuleles had stopped, but wrangling voices sounded from time to time and once more came the raucous screams that Shipman had noted earlier in the afternoon.
"That's Cinny," said Sard, frowning in good earnest. "Ugh!" said the girl irritatedly, "I wish she wouldn't be so queer. I wish——"
"What do you wish?" asked Shipman quietly. He had the quality of the man whom she had seen that first night at the organ builder's house, a quality of control and strength that a woman might lean on. Half unconsciously Sard did lean on it; a worried look had come over her face. "I feel responsible for Minga," she admitted, "for all of them; they're so queer, so almost horrid sometimes. I get fussed wondering how they'll turn out—they—they seem to have no Law."
"They have the Law-of-the-Pack, apparently," said Shipman, laughing. He, too, remembered that night at the organ builder's house. He recalled the defiant young faces fixed upon him as he had disciplined one of their number. Shipman recalled the incident with some satisfaction. He thought particularly of Minga. "Little fiend, I'd like to—but that was just it—what did one do to little fiends like Minga?"
His own frown was puzzled as he realized that it was getting late and that Minga and Colter were missing, yet what to do? Wait for the young lady to conclude her vagaries, or go forth after her and so pander to the vain little thing who had hidden herself in orderto force him to search for her. Shipman half laughed at the unaccountable thoughts that had stolen into his mind; all Minga needed was to be well kissed, kissed very hard indeed. The lawyer, standing straight, drew a short breath. "H'm, perhaps it was time to get back to the mountain top, to Friar Tuck, to a plaster cast and a few old books and a pipe and some memories. By Jove, it was time to get back!"
Suddenly Sard reached out and grasped the lawyer's arm. "Listen," she said eagerly. "There!"
The touch, vigorous and arresting, sobered while it thrilled him; he flushed like a guilty boy. The lawyer, lost in cases and evidence and books, had not had companionship with a woman like this for years; it was like being with a young wind-blown tree or a sun-spangled fountain. It was so fresh and spontaneous and unconscious that it made him feel clumsy, lost, like some uncouth being that must find a new soul or else miss out on this companionship. The touch brought back things, college day things that were vital, almost Pagan in their care-free élan, so that his eyes deepened, almost snapped as he, in his turn, grasped the girl's hand. "There!" He mocked her. His hand closed on her fingers.
But Sard seemed not to notice; she was listening intently; suddenly her eyes widened and she turned toward him. "That was Colter," she said decisively. "Hark! Yes—he needs help—he is calling; we must go."
Pausing, her face flushed and earnestly fixed upon him, the famous lawyer suddenly realized untrammeled girlhood in all its essence of fineness and freedom; what he did not notice was that at the sound of the far-off voice of the man in the forest, her whole being had expanded like a light and that she stood for a moment like a young mother whose child cries.
"Coming!" she called.
Turning, they plunged through the green walls of the swamp. Sard put her brown hands to her mouth.
"Coming!" she called.
Meanwhile two canoes rounded the little green promontory that walled in the "race" and floated in toward the small beach where Sard's party were encamped. One of these, propelled by Dunstan Bogart, moved slowly, halted now and then by the movements of a girl leaning in the stern. This girl's idea of humor seemed to be to lean forward and grasp the paddle as it went in the water. From side to side the two leaned, Dunstan trying to evade the paddle-grasper amid the snorts and chuckles of them both. Suddenly the paddle was arrested in mid-air.
"Pshaw! somebody has been here ahead of us! Look at those traps on the bank there."
Dunstan, his face unlike its usual merry self, a somewhat sodden look to his faun eyes, looked about for the advance pearl hunters. Jumping out, he kicked the empty mussel shells about, he reached forward and inspected the picnic trappings and thermos bottles. "Sandwiches!" he called out to the others. "They haven't had supper, whoever they are; look, there's a pile of driftwood for their fire," then with a whistle, "Holy Cat—I say, Gert, here's my sister's thermosbottle; look at the monogram, S. B. And that's Minga's plaid steamer rug. I know, because I got her a pillow to match. Say, for heaven's sake! Let's get out of here; we don't want to piggy-mix in their party. Pshaw! they've beat us to it, pearls and all!"
Gertrude, lying back in the canoe, smoking, raised her head. There was a gold serpent bracelet around one of her brown arms, and around the waist of her thin green jersey another huge gold serpent twined. She made a strange exotic picture in the leafy dimness of the late afternoon. Her dark hair, brilliant cheeks and lips suggested Eastern things; one instinctively put her against some background of pyramids and sphinxes. When she spoke, however, the illusion vanished; Gertrude employed the "chewing gum" accent in all its undiscipline of inflections and jawful mouthings. She had only to open her mouth and one knew that however subtle and old the soul that lay within her, the brain that controlled that soul had only one idea, to get things, and to get them quickly.
"Why get out?" she asked indolently. "I thought we were booked till midnight." Gertrude had prepared her golden snakes for a forest moonlight.
"Well, if you think it's fair to Cinny." At this the girl in the second boat sat up staring about her. Her fair hair was tousled, her eyes were dull, and her mouth hung loosely.
"What's the matter with Cinny?" she demanded. "I'm all right—I'm a li'l' slipp—sleepy, that's all. Dunce, who's got the chawclets? I want some more." With a burst of silly laughter the girl lay down again,her eyelids drooping heavily, the young, full lips pushed out in a coarse way, hateful to see.
The other youth brought his boat with this burden alongside the bank where the first campers had piled their belongings. "Wouldn't it be more fun to hang around?" this youth asked. "The fair lady can sleep there and we can just say she's tired out, sunburn and all—y' know. Whassay we sort of stay and watch the fun?" this fellow asked. The speaker, resplendent in a white college sweater, with its ostentatious chest letter, had a curious old man's look of importance and prestige. On his hands were two extremely ornate rings of cabalistic designs drawn by himself. His tie was prodded with a gold nugget, his wrist-watch was a sort of disease of jewels, he had in every motion he made the self-conscious assurance of the fop, the sort of man who is trained in boyhood by silly women to "appear well" in hotels. "I don't care when I meet my fiancée," he winked at Gertrude.
Tawny Troop, Minga's betrothed, well up in the essential attitudes of good sportsmanship, yet now by his very way of handling his paddle, showed the Miss Nancy, the jeunesse dorée spirit that one felt would take him a certain successful distance and then with some untimely revelation utterly betray him.
"I think we should remain here." Tawny spoke as one accustomed to being obeyed; his voice was soft and his inflection pampered, but his tones had all the assurance that is given by a large bank account.
Dunce looked at the man irritably. "All right," he growled, "remain then." Dunstan was thinking of thegeneral mess of things should Minga return. Instinctively downright himself, the lad could not bear the suggestion of intrigue that he knew Gertrude gloried in. There was something so worried and resentful in the deep brown eyes that the girl still in the boat beckoned to him. Gertrude reached up a long, well-shaped arm, sleeve rolled to the elbow. She plucked at Dunstan, trying to pull him down to her. "Poor little boy, come and be petted," she laughed. It was the laugh of an old soul in a young body. All the manner and experience of the woman of the low lights and intimate perfumes was in Gertrude's gesture. For answer the boy, standing on shore, kicked the bow of the boat away from him; he sent it slanting into the center of the "race," where it wobbled about; the girl, eyebrows raised, took up the paddle and lazily shoved it back.
"You beast! Why did you do that?" Gertrude's mouth was large and apt to be a little over-delicious in some of her planned scenes; but now it was hard bitted, twitching, like the mouth of a wicked horse; her eyes, long and liquid, were artificially enhanced with violet shadows and her face set between great rolls of lacquered hair, had moments of extreme craft seen under a curious mask of self-indulgent ease and gluttony. She reached over and, taking a chocolate, bit into it with white teeth that seemed to have a meaning of their own, her mocking eyes fixed on the sulky boy on the bank.
"Have some delirium tremens?" Gertrude waved the box of chocolates. It was a gift from Tawny andcontained three pounds of candy filled with varying liquors, French and Greek condensations that were rather intense for the American head.
Dunstan glowered scornfully down on the girl. "Ah! Why don't you stop eating that rat poison?" he demanded fretfully. He turned to Tawny Troop, now tickling Cinny's sleepy face with a grass blade. "You thing in the bath-towel sweater, you thought it was funny to bring doped candy, I suppose. They like that at the Chinamen's balls and the other festivities you frequent, hey? Aw, old stuff, old stuff!"
The tones were purposely insulting, but at first the Troop merely chuckled for answer. Then he leaned forward and kissed Cinny lightly. At this, something latent in Dunstan seemed to take fire—he turned and muttered things uncomplimentary. "Aw," he snarled, "aw, cut it out."
"Now, Dunce, now, Tiger!" this from Gertrude. But the boy turned to her with an ugly look in his eyes. "Well, Gertrude Farum," said Dunstan slowly and impressively, "now that we're here where decent girls are, don't you think you'd better take a day off, clean up, burn up the trash—y' know?"
Disgust was quivering all over the boy's face, but his own accent was also thick, his eyes heavy; he had had his share of the doped candy and something else from the absurd gold flask that Tawny sported. Dunstan, to his shame, had also had his share of such diversion as this frivolous society afforded. Suddenly at sight of the things belonging to his sister and the girl staying with her, all the clean gentleman in him roseup and accused him, and he suddenly found himself entangled with things which he did not know how to unravel.
But Troop, the exquisite, now spoke up. He appealed to the girls.
"By heck! the darned lobster. Say, I think he ought to apologize. Gert—Cin—don't yew? Yep, by heck, I do. Say, man, you're, by heck, you're rotten insulting. I'll tell the world you ought to be crowned. You're rotten insulting, I'll tell the little old world!"
Dunstan heard the squeaking voice in silence. The afternoon had been long and hot. Things had risen in him that made his veins seem full of fire. He looked this way and that, like a trapped creature that smells clean water and wants to get to it. His ears were singing, his eyes burning, and he dreaded both the return of the two decent girls whom he loved and a possible evening spent with the two girls before him. He tried to speak but he knew that his own accent was thick and uncertain, and he could have burst into tears. There was Cinny lying abandoned, disheveled, her small beautiful form too well revealed by the large meshed transparent jersey she wore, her white face soggy and debauched, her corn-silk hair dampened and matted. A sense of degradation came to Dunstan. The fact that the other two could not and would not feel this obsessed him. Cinny was such a little fool. He stood on the bank and raged childishly.
"We couldn't be commoner if we were wharf rats! I've seen Chinatown people behaving better than—than we have. We're a lot of vile pigs." It wascharacteristic of Dunstan that he included himself in the indictment. He turned toward the snake-wreathed Gertrude.
"You knew that stuff was drugged, and you fed it to us all," the boy, staring disgustedly on the three, half sobbed in his frenzy. He went to the bank's edge nervously, gesticulating. "It was a rotten trick, and I—well, I know that we've behaved like swine, and I'll say so. Yes, I don't care, I'll bawl us out. I'll bawl myself out—I'll——" Poor Dunstan flung out his arms in a passionate gesture.
"Aw!" they jeered. "Aw, say!" But the beringed Tawny also rose. He stood wobbling his canoe, stabbing at the water aimlessly, and the oratorical manner he maintained would have been funny, had not his very words revealed his befuddled condition.
"Well, I can tell you," he swore solemnly, "that you insult these ladies. Yes, sir! That's it, you insult 'em. If I had a gun I'd crown you—yes. That's it, you insult these ladies." Tawny's tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth; he wet his lips. With a surly squint of the eyes, he faced the youth on the bank.
"These ladies" did not seem particularly resentful on their own account. But the squalidness of it all, the silly and disgusting company in which he found himself, burned up into Dunstan's head. The boy almost hopped as he strode toward Tawny.
"Why, you hound!" he shrieked. "Who are you to say that, you moving-picture Polly. I insult 'em, do I? What did you do, you rotter? You broughtthat infernal gold tank of yours and this sick stuff; you knew those girls couldn't—couldn't—" Suddenly Dunstan, with long arm, reached forward to the seat by Gertrude. Snatching the candy box he tossed it into the creek, all its remaining chocolate-covered contents avalanching forth. He turned on the aghast Troop. "Aw," he breathed, "aw, you worsted monkey, you'll not bring candy like that again to nice girls. When you come here again leave your cute candy with the Chinks where it belongs."
But Tawny was now aroused. This was an attack on a sensitive point. Getting all his jewelry straight, pulling down his monogrammed white sweater, he rose, as one towering on the rostrum and stood feet planted wide apart in the wobbling craft. He met Dunstan's scorn with answering derision. "Yah—nice girls?" he queried in his turn. "Nice, what? Oh, come on! Nice girls, I'll say!" mimicked the sarcastic Tawny. He regarded his suave finger-nails and over them cast one eye on the recumbent Cinny, the other on the snake-wreathed Gertrude. He sneered back at his antagonist. "Nice girls; root for 'em by your lonesome. Nobody else'll help you. Nice girls, nothing!"
This was too much for Dunstan. The trip for him had been miserable anyway. He had found the party which he had entered with a slight measure of distrust to be entirely dominated by the Exquisite, and the subsequent unwholesome revelations of Cinny the lackadaisical, and Gertrude the importunate, had beguiled him into that dubious activity known as "being a goodsport." Dunstan, out of a very clean straightforward heritage, felt somehow vulgarized, degraded. Perspiring, he waited like a crouching panther for the other man to meet him on shore.
"Cinny!" shrieked Gertrude, with her hard laugh. "Wake up, Honey, here's something worth while! Dunstan, the great chewing-gum champion, is going to meet Tawny Troop, the cutest little evader in the Hackensack Backwaters. Who holds the odds?" Cinny put up an indifferent hand to her fair hair, one of the cushions fell overboard, also a ukulele. Gertrude, with an exclamation, paddled over and rescued these; she leaned over to Cinny, saying sharply:
"What's the matter with you? Why can't you sit up and behave? Don't you realize that Sard and Minga are around here somewhere?" Gertrude leaned close over to the other girl, whispering very distinctly. "Cinny, we'll have to see that we are not any sportier than they are. Of course, no one knows what they've been doing. Dunce is really mad, and if he gets talking—you know that Minga is engaged to Tawny." But she spoke to deaf ears.
"Leave me alone," murmured Cinny.
Dunstan, seeing the whole squalid meaning of his party, burst into flames. He strode to the other boy now getting out and meeting him on the shore. With a grip like that of a young gorilla, Dunstan seized the Exquisite Troop by his silken shirt collar. "Come out, you sissy," he snarled, "come out here, you piece of pallid pie-crust. You feed girls drugged candy, do you? Well, you'll get fed, fed up nicely."
But Tawny Troop was not the son of a moving-picture producer for nothing. After all there was a grand stand with two ladies in it. The Troop gesture meant something; with a sound as much like an answering snarl as he could make it, Tawny drew up in magnificent hauteur. This attitude greatly irritated the other. "Ah! Come on, you marionette," he muttered. Dunstan cast about for something that should rouse the other. "You paid escort, you Messenger Boy." It was cub rage, but it was adolescent cub, and it was somehow significant.
The girl Cinny rose slowly on her elbow staring at them with heavy eyes. Gertrude clapped her hand over her mouth to keep back a howl. The two boys clinched, and it was an ugly clinch.
Dunstan's hand went straight to the throat of the other. Here they met and the lad seemed to forget all fair rules of fighting. A look of crazy joy came into the hot brown eyes. Oh, this was a man's size job! a good thing to do. Then Dunce saw the horrible look of Tawny's face changing under his hands; yes, but was this the way? Suddenly by some strange underground channel of thought awakened by emotion, Dunstan remembered the morning in the dining-room his own jeering aside under his father's sternness and "be hanged by the neck till you are dead"—that was what his father had said when—men—when men were sentenced for murder. Terence O'Brien, poor Terry, young, young! Dunstan looked again at the face under his hands; it was colored dark; this was the right way!—to throttle like this!
Then the boy looked about at the trees, at the white faces of the girls, voiceless, and his hands, flaccid, suddenly fell away. "We'll stop," he said thickly, "we'll stop. I don't want to fight. Oh! I don't want to, don't want to fight!"
Tawny, a look of relief hiding some other look, staggered against a tree, where he gasped wretchedly. "You, you coward!" he shrieked, choking. Something like a frightened sob gulped out of him; then there was a sound of footsteps in the thicket behind them. Four forms emerged. Sard first, alert and making straight for the ready built fire, which she quickly and deftly lighted; Shipman next, and after them Colter with a small form held in his arms, covered with mud and soaked in black ooze, Minga with face and hair a mass of slime.
There was very little explanation. The fire blazed up and the little figure wrapped in rugs given something hot to drink. The others stood around and watched her. Gertrude, with a hard stare, turned in the firelight to Tawny. The girl was one cold glitter of gold snakes and swamp dark eyes. "Your fiancée?" she questioned, smiling. She was ironical. While the other party waited for Minga's resuscitation, the quartette started to get under way. But on the down-creek trip it was Tawny who paddled Gertrude's boat, and they soon outstripped Dunstan, who came more slowly with Cinny asleep at his feet.
The moon spotted the black of the forest and spread silver on the waterways. All around the slow-movingcanoes were the waiting ones, the little wood creatures who come out innocently for their pure trysts and unwitting obediences to the great laws they honestly serve. These stayed cleanly apart from the canoes with their human freight, the strange mystical human beings who are torn between their two great allegiances, the animal and the spiritual. But only Dunstan saw these things, and paddled solemnly and felt like crying and wondered what serene wisdom the summer night withheld.