CHAPTER XV

Carington had slept off his brief ill-humor, and the friends were in a happier mood as they flitted downstream next day to breakfast with the Lyndsays.

At the Cliff Camp things were not so entirely joyful. Mrs. Lyndsay, after a talk about the simple bill of fare with the black cook they had brought with them, paid a furtive visit to Jack, who was condemned to such tranquillity as was possible, even in bed, for a human machine as restless. She administered a tender scolding, and left him with a book or two. Next she softly opened Rose’s door, and, finding her comfortable and smiling, said, “No, dear, you are to keep still to-day,” and left her to reflect that, on the whole, she was as well satisfied not to meet the “two single gentlemen rolled into one” before the entire family. However clearly the matter had been explained, there remained, and she colored as she thought of it, the remembrance of certain things she had said to her bowman. Nor was it quite pleasing to imagine herself discussed by these two strangers over their evening meal. The scene in the boat—“She would like to have him always as her bowman!” The scene on the beach! And then the 205obligation! The debt to an unknown man! In what currency should such debts be paid? She smiled, as she quoted to herself:
What need
Good turns be counted as a servile bond
To bind their doers to receive their meed?

Then, having no other more consoling thought on hand, she began to recall how the novelists had dealt with these situations. A man saves your life! What then? As far as she remembered, it always ended in the woman giving the man what he saved—a life!—her life! She would have liked to have certain books to see precisely what they did say, or Aunt Anne, who was herself and generally all books beside. As she played with these questions, a little amused or a trifle annoyed, Miss Anne knocked, and was welcomed.

“Aunt Anne,” she cried merrily, “what would you do for a man who saves you from a horrible mauling by a bear, or possibly from death?”

“The novelists marry them. That cancels the debt, or makes the woman in the end regret the man’s skill and strength.”

“Aunty, that is very cheap cynicism for you, and at eight A. M.! What will you be at dinner?”

“I repent, dear. I hate the sneer—easy and obvious. I am always penitent over verbal wickednesses that are mere children of habit, and have no wit to excuse them. Is the question, dear, worth considering?”

“Oh, but seriously—”

206“I mean seriously. Would it not depend on the moral make of the people concerned? Clearly, when those involved are of one world, likely to meet,—to have continuous relations of some sort,—it must lead to close friendship when the debt of life is merely between man and man.”

“Yes; but when a woman owes an unknown person—a man in her own class—an obligation like this? She must feel it—really feel it, as I do.”

“My dear, you are a little absurd. Many debts remain unpaid, and should so remain. How do you pay your debts to Shakspere? And, after all, this is a small affair—Mr. Carington was in no peril.”

“No, it wasn’t that. The thing involved courage and decision. Papa has told me all of it—all. And the ball went only a couple of feet over dear Ned and myself. Any one but a brave and positive man would have hesitated—and, just a moment more! It is dreadful to think of it! Dreadful!”

“Your gratitude is quite too analytical for me, dear.”

“But do you believe, aunty, with mama, that there cannot be true, simple friendships between man and woman?”

“Man and woman? A large question.”

“Yes.”

“Certainly, I believe there can be—more likely, more easy, more possible with us than in Europe. I know of many such, where what was in youth a friendship, limited by conventions, became, as years went on, a larger, deeper, more valuable relation, and yet only and always a friendship.”

207“Thank you!”

“I think myself that when women—married women—grow wise, they will want their husbands to have women friends. Margaret would say, ‘That is an old maid’s opinion.’ Nevertheless, it is mine, and, as I have chosen never to marry, it is valuable. The old maid is a sort of neutral, with the wisdom of both sexes.”

“I should like to choose my husband’s female friends.”

“Should you? I have not talked it out yet, but now I must go. I want to see how your creditor behaves. He may be a true Shylock and want—how many pounds do you weigh, dear?”

“You are horrid, aunty! I certainly do not think you have settled my questions.”

“How can I? or you? or he, for that matter? Time, dear, not only answers letters, but also doubts and difficulties. As a consulting physician, I am told, he is unsurpassed. You are, naturally, in a state of unease to-day, and had better wait until you see what kind of a draft on the bank of gratitude you are called on to pay, or honor, if you like the word better. I don’t know whether, nowadays, commercial men use the word, or the thing. You might send him a silver pitcher, the inscription to be, ‘To my preserver, from the preserved,’ or else—”

“Go away, bad aunty!” cried Rose, laughing. Once alone, she began upon her coffee and rolls, and wished it was next month, and thus, like Carington, turned over her hot chestnuts to pussy-cat time. They were too hot for her.

208Miss Anne went out on the porch, and began watching, with the interest she took in almost all earthly pursuits, Ned’s efforts to tie a salmon-fly, while Dick, beside him, was feeding the drosera’s hairy leaves with minute black gnats, and considering, through a lens, the ferocious certainty with which the vegetable monster closed upon the captives cast among its sensitive limbs. Presently Dick said to her:

“Aunt Anne, is father very angry with Jack?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, because—because he really didn’t have time to think—and it wasn’t cowardly.”

“No, it wasn’t that.”

“But I ran away.” He had a vague feeling that to prove himself to have gone amiss would be to lessen the enormity of Jack’s conduct.

“You went into the wood to call the men, and were the first back on the beach, my Prince Rosy-locks. You are a first-rate liar; but, as you are a Lyndsay, you are not a coward, and you had better kick yourself well for insulting Dick Lyndsay!
I may not turn, I may not flee,
Though many be the spears;
I should not face with better grace
The army of my fears.

I do not blame Jacky as much as your father does. I understand him, I think.”

“He feels awfully, Aunt Anne.”

“That will do no harm, Dick.” The boy turned again to the drosera and his lens.

209Anne was herself so entirely brave that not even the prospect of the coming of added pain had ever been able to make her timid. All forms of courage were to her intelligibly beautiful, knowing as she did that if its mere instinctive form be meaningless, it is, in its higher developments, the knightly defense of all the virtues. She pulled Dick’s ear, playfully, and said, finally:

“Jack will be out at noon. The less you say about it, the better.”

“I guess so,” remarked Dick.

“Ah, here comes Mr. Carington. Now, boys, behave yourselves at breakfast. No nonsense, mind! This is to be a very pretty-behaved family; we will make up for it at lunch.”

The two gentlemen were in turn presented. There were the ordinary greetings, and no word of allusion to the day before, except that Mrs. Lyndsay, in a quiet aside, said to Carington:

“I shall not be quite comfortable until I say how much I thank you—for all of us—all.”

“That is more than enough,” he returned. “How is Miss Lyndsay?”

“Wonderfully well!” And presently they went in to breakfast.

“Here by me, please, Mr. Carington. Anne, sit next to Mr. Carington. This seat, Mr. Ellett—on the left.”

The boys, a little subdued, contented themselves with quiet inspection of the new guests, and the talk slipped readily, in skilful hands, from the subjects of fish and the weather, and flies and rods, to other less 210trivial matters. Anne was unusually silent. She was studying the unconscious Carington, who soon noted the absence of Jack, and as quickly understood its meaning.

“Yes,” said Lyndsay, “these Gaspé men are most interesting. They are clever, competent, and inherently kindly, really good fellows; but their trouble is, and it does not trouble them, that they have no persistent energy. I confess that, being myself, at least while here, without energy, I like its absence.”

“Isn’t it a vast relief, after the endless restlessness of our people,” said Anne, “to fall among folks who are contented, and home-loving, and so uncomplicated?”

“I certainly think so,” said Carington. “And what a surprise it is to meet the stray descendants of loyalists hereabouts and on the 'St. John’s’—I ought to say the ‘Aroostook,’ there are so many ‘St. John’s.’ Some of the best of the Canadians are descendants of those people; but, for the most part, those who settled in certain quarters of Lower Canada are down again to the level of mere laborers or fishermen.”

“And no better off,” said Ellett. “I mean no more energetic than—well, than I am. I hate the very word energy. I quite share your opinions, Miss Lyndsay. There is a nice little conundrum about that word—sounds better in French. But, pardon me, I never repeat conundrums, or make puns.”

“I am so sorry. Are you past persuasion?”

“Entirely.”

“Even as a personal confidence?”

“That is another matter. It will keep. I think, Mr. Lyndsay, you were about to say—”

211“I forget. But no matter. One may talk about, and about things, at breakfast especially. It is pleasant to feel that you may kick—that any one concerned may kick—the foot-ball of talk without reference to a goal.”

“I don’t think my friend Carington would agree to that,” said Ellett. “He likes talk to be well feathered, and go straight home—”

“And I like it,” cried Anne, “to be well feathered, and go zigzag home, or not, like a bird.”

“And, for my part, aside from Ellett’s calumnious nonsense,” laughed Carington, “I have no social creed as to good talk. If it bears sharp analysis, it is probably poor talk.”

“But,” said Anne, “there are some essentials. One must reverse the great maxim that it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Mrs. Lyndsay regarded the maiden lady with a look of reprobation, in which were trial, judgment, and execution. She reserved her verbal attack for a better occasion, while Anne, unconscious of offense, went on, “Wasn’t it Mr. Lowell, Archie, who said at our table, when you questioned him as to the best talkers he had met, ‘Oh, the best are those who meet you’? I thought that delicately put.”

“But then he added,” said Lyndsay, “when you mentioned G. M. as on the whole the most remarkable of dinner talkers, that he had not the essential conversational art of punctuation. That his sentences were like those of Judge Jeffries, eternal How one spoils such a thing in the telling! We all smiled at it a little. Our friend himself liked an 212audience, and to have, at times, the royal freedom of unbroken talk. North, a friend of ours, Mr. Carington, has a theory that breakfast talks are the best.”

“I should think so,” said Ellett, and then began to think he had been rather critical, and added, “I mean—well, I usually breakfast alone, and a fellow can’t talk to himself.”

“This fellow can,” cried Anne.

“He meant,” said Lyndsay, “that breakfast talk is apt to be general and gay; but that at dinner you have the cares of the day on your back. It takes a little effort, or a little champagne, to get up steam.”

“But I have no cares,” said Ellett.

“Then,” cried Miss Lyndsay, “we will all dine with you, and you shall do all the talking.”

“That would suit my sister admirably,” laughed her brother. “Did you ever notice how silent many of these woodmen are?”

“Yes,” said Carington, “that is true. The woodland life has the same effect upon me.”

“That’s curious,” remarked Miss Lyndsay. “Certain people blast me with utter dumbness. It might be useful if it were kept up long enough to form a habit. I mention that to anticipate my brother. One does sometimes say what one doesn’t want to say—but, oh, I do think one much more often wants dreadfully to say what one had better not say.”

“I think that is true,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, with reminiscent gravity.

“Which? or both?” said Anne, in an aside.

“By the way,” said Lyndsay, “talking of these unlucky relics of the royalists, and, in fact, of too many 213on these coasts, the most energetic of us would succumb to their environment.”

“Yes; there is that poor devil, Colkett,” said Carington, “a good hunter, a hard worker—I am told, a first-rate lumberman—and yet always in want.”

“To judge from my daughter’s account,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “the wife is his difficulty.”

By this time the boys were at ease.

“What is an ‘environment,’ Aunt Anne?” said Ned. “Is a wife an environment?”

Ellett laughed. “Sometimes she is.”

“Environments are surroundings—a man’s surroundings.” She always answered the boys seriously.

“But does a wife surround a man?” urged Ned, oblivious of his place as a boy among elders in his keen pursuit of a meaning.

“I should think so!” said Carington. “Wait till your turn comes! You will see!”

“I am quite sure Dorothy Maybrook is a fair illustration,” said Anne. “It is a good sermon on the conduct of the matrimonial life to see that woman what she calls ‘p’int’ poor old Hiram.”

“An interesting person,” returned Carington. “Don’t you think so?”

“It hurts a fellow to see a woman as placid as that,” remarked Ellett. Whereupon Miss Anne adjusted her glasses, and took a look at the small, rotund man.

“Why?” she said. “Why does it hurt you?”

He hesitated a trifle, and then replied, “Well, it sort of knocks all the excuses out of a fellow’s life.”

214“Certainly,” laughed Anne. “She doesn’t pet her moods,” and she concluded that there was something in the ruddy gentleman, who looked so pleased at what he had said.

“I have known her under many circumstances,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “and I doubt if she has any moods.”

“I rather suspect,” said Lyndsay, “that Mrs. Maybrook’s equality of temper is partly natural, and partly a singularly intelligent acquired capacity to make the best of her surroundings.”

“Environment,” said Ned, under his breath, and now satisfied.

“Really, Rose knows more about her than even my wife, who has known her longer; but Rose has a curious way of getting at people, and I have seldom seen Rose so carried away by any one.”

“I envy people the power of understanding people on short acquaintance. I like everybody at first, and then, by and by, I have to change my mind. Now, Carington—”

“Nonsense!” cried his friend.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Anne. She thought Mr. Ellett oddly frank.

“From all I can hear,” said Carington, “Mrs. Maybrook must be a kind of female Marcus Aurelius.” This was quite too much for the boys, who began to laugh; and then, as Lyndsay and his wife followed their example, Miss Anne felt obliged to explain, in her amusing way, why this remark had so unaccountably disturbed the nerves of the household. Lyndsay defended himself with seriousness. As they rose to have their cigars outside, Ned said:

215“We are going up to the beach, father. Rose lost a pin there. May we take lunch, mama? There is plenty of brass knocker from breakfast.”

“Pardon me,” said Carington, “my dear fellow; but what on earth is ‘brass knocker’?”

Lyndsay laughed. “That is a family bit of my Scotch education. The lowland Scotchman calls the relics of a meal the ‘brass knocker,’ because once, I suppose, the poor relations, who came to get the remains of a feast, were expected to knock, and not to ring.”

“How curious. Yes, thank you, I will smoke. Mrs. Lyndsay?”

“Oh, my women are angelic about that!”

“Indeed, if we were fallen angels,” said Anne, “we could hardly be more used to it.” Then she said, “I hope we may see you and Mr. Ellett often. I must go and tell Rose what a pleasant chat we have had.”

As she turned, she swayed a little, so as to touch Mr. Carington. “Pardon me,” she said, “I am not over-strong, and it now and then makes me awkward.” She was really in extreme pain. “Good-by.”

He stepped aside to let her pass, struck, as she moved away, with her pallor. It was a sign of unusual liking in this woman when she permitted herself the least allusion to her own feebleness.

Carington was in the gayest of moods as their canoe went up the river.

“He has very good cigars,” remarked Ellett.

“Admirable! And the air up here, I have noticed, keeps them in first-rate condition. Cigars are a good deal like people, Oliver—they are unaccountably changeable. Ever notice that?”

216“Yes; but a pipe is an unchanging friend. Cigars are like women. That’s a good idea!”

“Bother your ideas! What interesting people! It seemed to me a wholesome atmosphere—strong and true and honest. Master Jack did not appear. I suppose he was in disgrace.”

“Very likely.”

“That boy Ned is a quaint little fellow.”

“We only wanted the sister and that scamp to make up the entire family.”

“I am not so sure about the scamp—the black sheep; I fancy he is hardly more than brown. I was rather hard on him; but I was angry enough to have thrashed him, and yet I couldn’t help liking his pluck.”

“It was rather out of place, Fred.”

“Yes. To know when to fear, and what to fear, is wisdom.”

“I think you have it to-day, Fred. You are afraid of that girl.”

“Upon my word, you do have at times the most remarkable flashes of intelligence. You are right.”

“But why? The awkwardness of the affair seems to me to lie on the lady’s side.”

“I wish it were not. She is young, and—well, rather pretty, and of course she will be effusive, and enthuse, and then there will be a few tears, and I shall feel like a fool!”

“It’s a great thing, Fred, to have no imagination. Now, it wouldn’t trouble me in the least. She will just say, ‘I am so much obliged, Mr. Carington,’ and you will say, ‘Oh, it really doesn’t matter, Miss Lyndsay.’ 217People don’t go splashing their emotions about like a wet dog shaking off the water on everybody. Good notion, that!”

“You are a social and consolatory Solomon. Give me your tobacco. I shall go back to-morrow and have it over. Will you fish the upper pool this afternoon?”

“Either.”

“Hang your politeness, Oliver. There is nothing gives as much trouble as ‘either.’ It ought to be kicked out of society.”

“Then the lower pool.”

“Good!”

There was a little interchange of views at the Cliff Camp as to their guests; a certain pleasantness of relief at finding Carington one who could confer an immense obligation and appear totally to ignore it. Perhaps, of all of them, Anne the best appreciated this; for she understood, as did neither her brother nor his simple and direct wife, that Rose felt and must deeply feel a sense of indebtedness, and the difficulty of at once putting herself into the right relations with the man who had, without peril to himself, left on her a debt which could never be canceled. It was easy to say about it to Rose too much or too little; but, with her usual clearness of head as to matters of conduct, Miss Lyndsay now held her tongue, nor did Rose tempt her to speak further.

As to Jack, he came out of his room at one, adding an hour out of pure dislike to having any one think he cared. Anne spoke to him, as he passed her, a mere “How are you, Jack?” but he merely answered, 218“Good morning, Aunt Anne,” and went at once to the barrel in which he had left his cub. It was gone; but whither he never knew. Then he came in to get his rifle, a gift from Anne on his last and fifteenth birthday. That, too, was gone. Upon this he got a crust of bread, and betook himself to the woods, where the black flies were more active than his conscience. At last he climbed a high dead pine, and sat in the wind, and saw, far away on the river, his father’s canoe. He felt that he had been ill-used, and then, remembering Rose on the beach, with the blood about her, had an hour or so of a boy’s unhappiness. Toward evening he found a woodchuck’s burrow, which he resolved to dig out; and, somewhat comforted, at last wandered back to the cabin, all other emotions having given way before the overwhelming hunger to which, in his wrath, he had needlessly condemned himself.