CHAPTER IX

At breakfast next day, Rose came in late.

“What, overslept yourself?” said her father, as she went the round of the table with her morning kisses.

“Yes; I couldn’t get to sleep.”

“And what kept you awake?” said Miss Anne, who still, to the surprise of all, appeared almost daily at the morning meal. “A penny for your thoughts.”

“I was guessing a riddle; but I took it into my sleep unanswered.”

“A good many riddles have been answered in sleep,” said Miss Anne. “Was yours?”

“No. Oh, no, Master Ned; I shall not tell it.”

“That’s the hardest riddle ever was,” cried the boy. “I have to guess what the riddle is, and then what the answer is.”

“You will never, never know.”

“May we ask twenty questions about it?” said Dick. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“I should be puzzled. To what kingdom do morals belong?”

“Why, who ever heard of mineral or vegetable morals?”

“The last might admit of illustration,” said Miss 129Anne; and she began to consider within herself the people she knew who had what she called vegetable morals.

“Is there a man in your riddle?” cried Jack.

“A Boss-town man,” said Dick, with a grin.

“Pinch him, Jack,” said Rose.

“Oh!” cried Dick, responsive to the promptly applied punishment, and making a wry face. “You would be awfully good at a Jersey courtship, Rose, especially if you got Jack to help.”

“A good friend at a pinch,” said Jack. And so these foolish people rattled on, and by and by Mrs. Lyndsay said:

“Rose, you have not told us anything about Mrs. Maybrook and those poor Colketts. I did not ask you last night, you were so sleepy.”

“Don’t ask me now,” said Rose. “I never saw such a horrible creature as that woman.”

“But her child is dead!” said Mrs. Lyndsay, with gentle inconsequence.

“I think her altogether hateful,” insisted Rose.

“Altogether hateful?” cried Anne. “I like these complete natures. It must simplify things in life so satisfactorily. Amiability would become so useless an effort. To be altogether and hopelessly aside from the possibilities of affection or respect might save a deal of moral exertion.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Mrs. Lyndsay; “or, if I do, I am very sure that it isn’t a nice thing to say. “Wouldn’t it be as simple and better to be altogether lovable?”

“No, no,” cried Anne; “you have tried that, and 130does it really pay, dear?” Margaret was a trifle uncertain as to the compliment, and Anne, much delighted at her game of what she called mental cat’s-cradle, was about to go on, when Pierre came in.

“Ah, here is the mail,” said Lyndsay, and emptied out the bag on a side-table.

“I have been yearning for a newspaper,” said Anne.

“Not I,” cried her brother, as he walked around the table distributing the letters. “Ah,” he said, “my friend North. He was to have joined us with his wife next week, Anne; but Clayborne is dead. You will all be sorry to hear that. North says—it is, as usual, interesting. Shall I read it?”

“Oh, certainly, Archie,—all of it. I am very sorry. It will be a great loss to Dr. North.”

“And to our too small world of letters,” added Lyndsay.

“He says, ‘We—that is, Vincent and I—had spent two hours with our old friend in that great book-clad room we all know. We came away talking of his vast knowledge of medieval men and things. I had chanced to say I wondered how a gentleman in the fifteenth century spent a day, and he had at once told it all in curious detail—as to hours, dress, diet, and occupations. I left Vincent and went back for a book I had meant to borrow. When I entered, Clayborne was seated as usual with a little book in his hand. As he did not stir, I went up to him. The book was kept open by his palm. I stooped over him and saw that the book was Fulke Greville’s on Democracy. He was dead. He had noiselessly gone out, without 131stir of a finger. He must have been receiving ideas, dealing with them, and then—’ See, Margaret, this is his symbol of death. ‘I suppose, dear Lyndsay, you will think it strange that I sat still a half-hour beside my dead friend. I never felt the other world so close; it seemed within touch. At last—as the great frame began to stiffen—the book fell. I took it, marked the place, and put it in my pocket.’

“The rest,” said Lyndsay, “is of less interest.”

“A happy exit,” said Anne.

“I cannot think that,” returned Margaret. “I should want to know that I was dying.”

“One rarely does,” said her husband. “You get muddled, and say and do foolish and ill-bred things. I sympathize with a friend of mine who gave orders that he was to be left to die alone.”

“How horrible! How unnatural!”

“No, no,” cried Anne; “it is you who are ‘un-natured.’ But imagine dying with such a dull book in hand! I was wondering what book I should want to have last seen on earth.”

“I can think of but one, Anne.”

“Oh, that is not one book. Why call it a book? It is the books of many men. Besides,—and this is terrible, Margaret,—I should like it to have been some very earthsome book,—I had to coin an adjective,—and I should like it to be like Ned’s friend—several.”

Margaret was critically silent. All this was in a way unpleasant to her, as the unusual is always to some people.

“I do not think,” said Lyndsay, “I know with what thoughts I should like to go hand in hand out of life. 132He was a fine, irritable old fellow. The critics won’t bother him now.”

“Who can tell? There may be archangelic critics, for all we know,” returned Anne. “However, perhaps one won’t mind it. You know what Hafiz says: ‘Happy are the dead, for they shall inherit the kingdom of indifference.’”

“Anne! Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Lyndsay.

“Between papa’s Aurelius and Aunt Anne’s Persian poets,” said Rose, in haste to intervene, “the fairy-land of bewilderment is never far away.”

“I have the wicked worldliness, brother, to want to know how Mr. Clayborne left his money. Wasn’t he rich?”

“Yes. Wait a moment. He divided it, North says, between him—that is North, dear; I am glad of that; it will be in wise hands—and, really, that queer creature, St. Clair; but he was clever enough to put his share in trust.”

“I am very glad. That too delightful man!” exclaimed Rose. “Do you remember, Aunt Anne, the morning we spent with him at the Louvre? It was like walking about with some Greek sculptor. He seemed to be away in Athens while he talked.”

“It was certainly interesting,” said her aunt. “A trifle naturalistic at times, I thought.”

“Was he? I don’t know. We used to wonder, mama, if he ever really cared for Alice Leigh. After that morning I made up my mind he never did. He spent ten minutes comparing her head and neck to that of the Diana.”

“What a feminine test!” said Lyndsay. “If a man 133were to tell you that you looked like the Venus of Melos, Rose, would you say, ‘No, sir; you can’t care for me. It is impossible. I shall always,’ etc., etc.—the usual formula?”

“You are too bad, Pardy! My convictions are unshaken. Mr. St. Clair told me; he did not tell her. If he had told her, I know he would have said it in that soft, convinced way. She would have liked it.”

“I see,” said Lyndsay; “it becomes clearer.”

“Why do men sneer at him? I think him—well, I think him indescribably attractive. The word ‘fascinating’ would answer. And I am sorry for poor Mrs. North; oh, I am! Fascinating—yes, that is what I should call him, and oddly unconventional.”

“I think you young folks are too apt to use that word ‘fascinating,’” said her mother. “I have no liking for these men who can fascinate, and can’t hold fast to the affections of any one.”

At this Anne burst into inextinguishable laughter, and, with one hand pressed on the aching side which was so apt to check her wilder mirth, she held out the other to the astonished Mrs. Lyndsay, exclaiming:

“A forfeit—a pun from Margaret. Five cents—ten cents; a forfeit!”

“And what did I say?”

“Oh!” cried Rose.—“the dear mama! She said—she said a man who could fascinate and not hold on to one. Oh, mama, how could you?”

“But I didn’t. I never meant such a thing.”

“Yes! yes!” they cried; and, laughing, got up from table amidst continued protests from the innocent punster.

134Rose followed her father on to the porch.

“Mrs. Maybrook will be over at ten. She wants to see you. I told her you would not fish to-day.”

“What is it she wants?”

“I do not know. Something serious, I fancy.”

“No new trouble for her, I hope. By the way, old Polycarp’s bowman is sick to-day and cannot go with you. Anne, for a wonder, wishes to go on the water. Ned shall take Pierre. Not to disappoint you, I sent Polycarp early up to the clearings to get a bowman. He will be back shortly. Good luck to you!” And he went in to his letters, while Rose arranged her fishing-basket, put in it a couple of books, and sat down to look over the bright assortment of feathered lures in her father’s fly-book. Now and then she glanced up the river, but no boat appeared.

Meanwhile Mrs. Maybrook came, and went. Rose heard her father say to her, as she went out:

“No; it must not be left in doubt.” He was of opinion that it might mean little; but it might, on the other hand, mean much. Many are tempted, and few fall. The idea of crime on this quiet river seemed almost absurd to him. He added, “I shall mention it, you may feel sure of that, Mrs. Maybrook. A Lady Macbeth in business up here is queer enough.”

“I certainly do think he ought to be told,” said Dorothy.

These bits of talk much puzzled Rose. As to Dorothy, she lingered a while to chat with Anne, who sat with her hands in her lap in that entire idleness which more than any other thing on earth exasperated Margaret Lyndsay. Below, on the beach, Ned was preparing, 135a little troubled because the other boys were not to go with him, while they, quite reconciled to the decree of parental fate, were gaily launching their canoe, and singing, as they poled up-stream:
“I would not gi’e my bonny Rose,
My bonny Rose-a-Lyndsaye,
For all the wealth the ocean knows,
Or the wale of the lands of Lyndsaye.”

Then Rose waved her handkerchief, and, much disappointed, again took her field-glass and still saw no canoe. At last Mrs. Lyndsay came out, and they sat in the pleasant sunshine, the mother sewing with even constancy, which as seriously annoyed Anne as her own absence of all manual employ did the little mother.

Very soon Anne became engaged in her usual amusement of recklessly tangling some one in the toils of statements, arguments, and opinions in which she herself had no serious belief; since, I should add, this bright, humorous, and strangely learned creature was, under all, a woman of strong views and deliberately won religious beliefs.

When Rose, distracted from her regrets at the loss of the forenoon fishing, began to hear the talk, Anne had just said:

“I don’t see how the world could go on at all without fibs.”

Upon which Mrs. Lyndsay, despite years of acquaintance with her sister-in-law, pricked her finger and dropped her thimble, and took to her fan.

“You see, there is no commandment against it, Margaret.”

136“But, Anne, ‘Thou shalt not hear false witness,’” said Mrs. Lyndsay.

“But suppose I tell a harmless fib about myself, or praise some one I should like to—to slap?”

“It’s all false witness, I reckon,” said Dorothy. “If I ain’t my own neighbor, I’d like to know who is?”

Anne smiled. That this fly was not easily meshed in her sophistical web only excited the spider.

“It would be a horrid addition to one’s responsibilities to be one’s own neighbor. I should move away. After all, Margaret, isn’t the chief use of habitual truthfulness to enable one at need to lie with useful probability of being believed?”

By this time Mrs. Lyndsay was nearly past the possibility of remonstrance. She let fall the work she had resumed, and, rocking steadily, began to fan herself with deliberate slowness. A little she suspected this baited snare; but not to seize it was beyond her power of self-control.

“I am thankful my boys are not here. You will say it is a jest. Whether it is a jest or not, it is equally the kind of thing which should not be said—ever,” and here she shut the fan with decision, as if that also closed the argument.

“I was thinking I’m rather on Miss Anne’s side,” said Dorothy. “There’s a heap of righteousness in some lies. Now, if I hadn’t been a dreadful truth-speaking woman a good many years, my Hiram wouldn’t believe me now; and the fact is I just stuff that man full of lies nowadays. I just chuck them around like you feed chickens. I tell him he looks 137better every day, and how he is getting stronger. Miss Anne, I shouldn’t wonder a bit if the Lord loved a right cheerful liar.”

“Good gracious!” said Margaret Lyndsay. “Dorothy, how can a good woman like you say such things?”

“I can. And he’s a-failing before my very eyes,” she added, upon which she became silent. A tear or two dropped down her cheeks. “Now, wouldn’t you lie, Mrs. Lyndsay, if you was me?”

Anne looked up with interest as to what the answer might be.

“I might; I would,” said Margaret. “I am afraid I should.” Then she put a sympathetic hand on her friend’s knee, while Anne looked grave, and Rose watched Dorothy, with instant pity in her heart.

But this was not Dorothy’s common way.

“My lands! I’ve been making a fool of myself!” She had the aversion of the strong to the alms of sympathy. As she spoke she rose. “Come over and see me when you feel right good, Miss Anne. I do love a talk—and my roses! I’ve got a lot of them to blooming this year, and if that isn’t enough to make a woman happy, what is?”

With this she said good-by and went down to the beach. Anne watched with envy, in which was no unkindliness, the vigor with which the dugout shot forth from the shore. “A fine nature, that. It does one good to talk to her. Example is a strange medicine. It is hard to analyze its value. Because she endures with patience, I may. Yes; my helps are larger.”

138As Mrs. Maybrook walked up to her house she thought over, as was the habit of her lonely life, the talk she had had with Mr. Lyndsay and its occasion. In her younger days of wandering, Hiram and she had lived long amidst rough people in the West, among miners and loose ruffians of all degrees of wickedness. Thus the idea of crime was not so unfamiliar as to strike her as it did Lyndsay. She had seen men shot, and had been where murder and plunder were common. She had overheard a half-evolved scheme of villainy, one to be easily thwarted; nor, knowing, as she did, Colkett and his wife, did it greatly amaze her. Still, it was rare to hear of crime on the river. She had found more or less explanation of this wickedness in what she remembered of the Colketts, and had said in explanation to Mr. Lyndsay:

“She was a right fine-looking woman when she married Joe Colkett; but she never was less than bad. She’s about the only one I ever came across that would give her man—that is, her first man—drink, and buy it for him, too, till she poisoned him. When the children came, and two were idiots, like drunkards’ brats are, as every one knows, she put it all on her first man—Fairlamb was his name. At last she was left with them, and nothing to do but get another man. She’d have married ’most any one to keep those children. That’s the only good about her; but the funny thing is the way that stump of a fellow does love her. He does, though!”

“A queer story!” said Lyndsay.

Now, as she walked homeward, she said to herself, “But who on earth was that Lady Macbeth Mr. 139Lyndsay talked about? It must be a book. I forgot to ask. Think I’d like to read it. I’ll ask Miss Anne. The way a woman p’ints a man is the thing. Guess I’ve always p’inted Hiram straight, thank the Lord! I wonder if he’s seen about mending that scythe?”

Meanwhile, by noon, came lazily back Polycarp and the canoe, without a bowman. Lyndsay was vexed. There had been no one at the clearings who could be had. Pierre, when he came in, must go down with the mail. Said Lyndsay:

“Go back at once. Stop at the Island Camp. There seems to be a lot of men about there. I saw four canoes on the shore. The lumbermen are driving on that reach. Some one said a photographer was camped there. He can’t want both of his men. Don’t ask the gentlemen for a man; I don’t know them. Now, mind what I say. Find somebody; I’ll pay him a dollar for his half-day, but don’t come back without a bowman.”

“It’s a great thing the way you p’int a man, papa,” said Rose. “Mrs. Maybrook has the trick of it.”

“He’ll find some one now. You had better fish the rock stretch, a mile above the Island Camp. The Indian knows, and no one has cast a fly there yet. Be careful not to get on Mr. Carington’s water. Watch Polycarp, or he’ll let you fish down to the bay. They are all born poachers, these fellows.”

Polycarp said “Yes,” and no more, and poled doggedly away up the river, not over well pleased. At the camp he beached his canoe. The photographer had gone. The lumbermen could none of 140them get leave; and the Indian, pleased at the prospect of a lazy half-day with his pipe, was on his way back to his canoe, when the tent-fly of the larger canvas home was parted, and he heard:

“Halloa! Want anything?”

“Want man for bow to pole down at Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay he goin’ a-fishin’, and my man sick—hurt leg. No much good.”

“Well, ask the lumbermen.”

“No make any use.” At this appeared a second man, also, like the first, in knickerbockers. He wore a glass on one eye, and looked Polycarp over curiously. Then he went back, and lay down with a novel and a pipe.

“Hold on!” said Carington. “Take one of our men; Mr. Ellett isn’t going to fish to-day.” Then his face lit up with a quick look of merriment. “What fun! I’ll go myself!”

“You wouldn’t do that? I wouldn’t do that!” said a voice from the tent. Now, opposition was to this young man like fuel to fire.

“Why not?” he said.

“Might be awkward.”

“Oh, you be hanged! Look here, my man, what’s your name?”

“Polycarp.”

“Well, you antique saint, I mean to go down with you and pole for your Mr.—what’s his name? oh, Lyndsay, is it? I can pole. Don’t be afraid. Here’s a dollar if you don’t let on,—tell, I mean.”

The Indian grinned.

“This is a spree, Polyglot—Poly-carp—Poly-salmon, 141or whatever your multitudinous fishy name is. Do you know what a spree is?”

“Plenty heap whisky,” said the Indian.

“Well, there are varieties. Can you hold your tongue?”

“Yes—can hold tongue.”

“You can fib a bit?”

“Heap much.”

“Then remember I am one of the men up here, no matter who.”

“Well, of all the absurd things!” said the mentor within the tent.

“By St. Botolph, as they say in Boston, I need a little absurdity to make a decent average after a fortnight with you, you confounded old conventional et c?tera.” And, talking or laughing, he presently emerged in pretty well soiled velveteens, a dingy jacket, slouched felt hat, and his trousers stuffed in his long boots.

“Are you really going?” said Ellett.

“I am. Come along, Polycarp. I fancy I’m dressed in character. What fun! He will want to pay me,” and he whistled as he pushed the bow out into the stream and sat down to paddle.

Meanwhile Mr. Oliver Ellett considered his vanishing friend from afar with mingled feelings of dismay and admiration. “That is a very remarkable man. I couldn’t possibly have done that. I think there are several brief insanities besides anger.” Then, as if surprised at his own cleverness, he added, “I wish Carington had heard that. Confound it!” and he smote an army of unseen midges who had taken advantage 142of his abstraction to prey on the ruddy cheeks, which, with a slight tendency to stoutness of girth, gave him a look of youthfulness he much detested.

“What was it Fred said last night about remorse and midges? Confound it, I forget. Blank the things! Get a smudge, Steve,—two smudges!” And he retired again to the tent and his novel.

He had been drowsily considering the fates of a despairing young woman for a half-hour or more, when he was aware of an unfamiliar voice outside of the tent. Steve, the guide, an honest, good-tempered Gaspé man, was heard to say:

“Mr. Carington—he went away a bit back. I didn’t see him, sir. I was getting cedar bark for smudges.”

“Where did he go?”

“Michelle, where is Mr. Carington? Where did he go?”

‘The bowman, fully prepared, replied at once:

“I don’t rightly know.”

At this Mr. Ellett bounded from his mattress, and appeared without. The voice he heard first was unmistakably that of a man of his own world.

“Beg pardon,” he said; “I was dozing. I am Mr. Oliver Ellett. Won’t you come in?”

“No, thank you. I have but a few minutes. I am Mr. Lyndsay, from the Cliff Camp. I came to see Mr. Carington. Is he here?”

“No. He has gone off somewhere.”

“On the river?”

143“I don’t think he is fishing. Perhaps, if you were to come in and wait a little, he might turn up.”

But this Lyndsay declined. He had run up with Pierre’s canoe, and must return to get rid of some yet unanswered letters and be in time to fish the lower pool.

At last, after a little chat about the salmon, he said: “Are you not Oliver Ellett’s son, of Boston? I think it must be so: the resemblance is strong. We were classmates at Harvard.”

“Yes,” said Ellett; “he was my father.”

“He was stroke-oar in my boat. If you are as good a fellow—oh, if you are half as good a fellow—we shall be glad to see you and your friend at the Cliff Camp.”

“It will give us great pleasure; and what shall I say to Carington?”

“That can wait. By the way, I sent that Indian of mine to the lumbermen to get a bowman for half a day. I trust he did not trouble you. I gave him strict orders. I saw he had been successful. We passed him as I came up.”

“Yes, he got some one,” said Ellett. “It was not one of our men.” And so, with further talk of flies and fish, he carefully conducted Mr. Lyndsay to his canoe, and was relieved to hear him tell Pierre to land him on the far shore.

“One feels the need to use one’s legs here. Meet me at the timber brow,” he said to Pierre. “I shall walk fast. Good-by, Mr. Ellett, and come soon to see us.”

144Ellett stood a moment, and then went back to his tent. “I wonder whom he is to pole for? It isn’t Mr. Lyndsay. Christopher Columbus! What a lot of mischief you are responsible for! No wonder Fred says you have pretty near as much sin to your count as that fair explorer who discovered the new world of wickedness. By George! If it should be the woman! He stared at her, Sunday, through his glass as they went by, until I told him it wasn’t decent. He said it did bring her pretty close. Well, I never heard of falling in love through a telescope. Now, that wasn’t a bad idea at all.” He had no high estimate of himself, and was occasionally overcome at his own cleverness. “This beats my novel all to bits. More smudge, Michelle!”

Meanwhile the canoe ran down-stream, Fred Carington in the bow, and Polycarp, with his changeless, coppery visage, astern.

As the Indian had by no means hurried himself, the morning was past and luncheon long over when Rose saw the canoe returning. Lyndsay had not come back. At all events, she would have the afternoon fishing.