CHAPTER XXIII

When on her return Rose went into their cabin she happened to glance at the clock. Then she said:

“What time is your watch, Aunt Anne?” Being told, and discovering that the two timekeepers were unanimous in opinion, she smiled a little, and went on into her own room. Here she went straight to the small mirror and—why, who shall say?—inspected herself briefly, saying, aloud:

“You were a rather big fool, to-day, Miss Lyndsay, and next time you will have your own watch.”

Presently, remembering what he had done with the rose, she concluded that men were hateful. She had seen a good deal of the world, and had had her full share of earnest admiration at home and abroad, so that she was by no means ignorant as to the cause of the gentle tumult in her bosom. She wanted to wish that this man would let her alone, and be but a friendly and pleasant companion. Also she more sincerely desired that the race of bears had been omitted from Noah’s menagerie.

At last she made her toilet, and went out to dinner, where Dick asked, with cruel promptness, why she had not brought that big Boston man over to dine.

298“Because I did not ask him.”

“That’s not a reason, Rosy,” said Ned. “I wish he had come.”

“And I don’t,” remarked Jack.

“Why not?” said Lyndsay, coldly.

Jack flushed as he caught Anne’s eye. “Oh, you can’t like everybody.”

Anne said, in a quiet aside, “Jackey, your giants are not all dead,” and he was silent.

“Mr. Carington was at Dorothy’s when I got there. He came to pay for the milk they get. By the way, papa, he told me to say that on Thursday he had to go to Mackenzie, and that he would call as he went by and get the draft you wanted cashed, and please to leave word how you wanted it. Oh, I forgot, he said afterward that you could tell him to-morrow night; and, Pardy, he wants you to let Jack go with him on Friday, to look for a bear they have seen some distance back of the camp, above the burnt lands.”

Meanwhile Anne was quietly glancing at her niece’s face. Now this proposal was fire-hot embers to Master Jack.

“Oh, I can’t go! Hang bears!” he said.

“He did not tell me to tell you, Jack; but he did say he had been hard on you, and I think so, too.”

And now Anne Lyndsay put on her glasses.

“Well, Jack,” said his father, “how is it?”

“Am I to take my rifle, Rose?”

“Yes,—I think he said so.”

“His trust in this family must be large,” said Lyndsay.

299“Do you think I ought to go?” said this young hypocrite.

“Yes, but don’t shoot him!”

And now Rose was dreadfully aware of her aunt’s inspection, and made haste to add, with embarrassment more felt than seen, “What a budget! Oh, I quite forgot, Aunt Anne, I took your roses into my room. Dorothy gave them to me for you.” As she spoke she left the table, and, returning, put the flowers by her aunt. “I was to tell you there were only half a dozen,” and here she made a full, though brief, stop; “but that it was all she had. She seemed to think it hardly worth while sending so few. You know how nice she is; but, dear me, I have made a speech of congressional length,—and I am so hungry!”

In fact she had talked at the last with accelerated speed, having made, as she well knew, a sad blunder into undesirable arithmetical verities.

And now Lyndsay said, “It was very kind of Carington. You must be quite exhausted by the carrying of so many messages!”

“It isn’t all,” said Rose; “Mrs. Maybrook wishes to borrow the book, Pardy, in which is the history of Mrs. Macbeth.”

“Indeed!” he returned; “that is droll,” and fell to thinking.

Then Mrs. Lyndsay said, “You must be very warm, dear: you look quite overheated.”

Here Anne let drop her eye-glasses, and began to consider the number of her roses, but said nothing.

On Monday, after a most successful day on the 300river, in which both camps had nearly equal good luck, the two men from the island came down in the evening, through a fine moonlight, to the lower camp. They were now in that easy stage of acquaintanceship with the Lyndsays when people begin to make agreeable discoveries as to other people who are common friends.

Carington watched his chance and caught Jack alone.

“You are going with me, I hope?”

“Yes. Papa says he wants me to go.”

Carington was very quick to catch the accent of lingering discontent.

“By the way,” he said, “I was rather sharp on you the other day. I don’t want you to think I thought you did quite the right thing; but I liked your pluck, even if it was out of place, and I understood the temptation. Suppose we forget it all. Be ready on Thursday night—pretty late. I shall get back here by eleven, I hope, and will pick you up. I can give you a bed and a blanket, and early Friday we will be off for a day. I can’t promise you a bear, but I think we shall both like the tramp.”

“I’ll be ready, and I’m much obliged, too.”

Jack was enchanted, and by and by confided to Rose in a corner his exalted opinion of Mr. Carington, nor was he altogether satisfied with her “Oh, yes, he’s quite a nice kind of a man.”

“You were to have seen, Mr. Ellett, how foolish we can be,” said Rose, as they stood by the door. “I also promised Mr. Carington that experience.”

“And are we not to have it, after all?”

301“No. Papa and I had arranged some very neat situations for your discomfiture; but papa finally decided that they were too difficult, or at least needed some preparation.”

“But I should really like it. I can do a little at it myself, and Fred used to be a very clever actor. But, then, he does so many things well. Do you do many things well?”

“Everything,” said the young woman. “We do everything well here in this family, even to liking our friends better than other people like their friends.”

“Don’t you think our friends’ friends are often great troubles? I think a fellow’s friends ought not to have any friends. That is, a man’s friends should not be the friends of his friends. That wouldn’t be so bad now, would it, if it wasn’t a bit mixed?”

Hearing Rose’s merriment, as poor Ellett endeavored to untangle his sentence, Anne and Carington turned to join them.

“What is the fun, Oliver?” said Carington.

“I’ve made an overrun,” said Ellett. “When I try to talk too fast, I am very apt to do it.”

“And what is an ‘overrun’?” asked Anne Lyndsay.

“When you are casting for striped bass, the reel runs very easy, and the bait is heavy, and if you don’t check the reel with a thumb, as the line runs out, and then stop it as the bait drops on the sea, the reel runs on, and the line gets into a tangle, such as is really unimaginable. It takes hours to get it clear. Hence Ellett’s comparison.”

302“That is a noble idea,” cried Miss Anne. “An intellectual overrun!”

“You see,” said Ellett, much pleased, “everything is underneath that ought to be on top, and the inside of the line gets snarled in loops of the outside, and there’s a sidewise tangle, and—”

“Wouldn’t it be advisable to stop at this point?” said Fred.

“Shouldn’t wonder.” And he reflected upon the excellence of his comparison.

The night was clear and pleasant, and, as they talked, they went out and sat on the porch, where presently Lyndsay joined the group.

“Miss Lyndsay,” said Carington, “tells us you gave up the plots. I am not too sorry. How do you play the game?”

“Oh, two or three of us devise situations, and when we announce them, the others act them. It is an Italian game, I believe, and quite amusing. You may treat the situations seriously or lightly. It is easiest to keep to the key-note on which you start, and not try too hard to be funny. Puns and quibbles, coming in of a sudden, disturb the other actor, unless he be well used to it.”

“I never pun,” said Anne; “but to be forbidden I regard as an invasion of human rights.”

“Oh, they are not forbidden!”

“Then they should be, except to Wendell Holmes. Only the worst puns are endurable. When Alice Fox told Dr. North his horse ‘Roland’ was well named, because he was to carry good news to Aix, I considered that the climax of verbal murder.”

303“No, there is a worse one,” cried Rose; “but that I shall never, never tell.”

“Pardon me,” said Carington, “was not Mrs. Fox that delightful widow with the pleasant name,—I recall it now, ‘Westerley,’ Mrs. Westerley? There was some queer story about her wanting to marry a country doctor who came to grief, or did some queer things, I forget what.”

“Yes; she married Colonel Fox, at last.”

“Married once,” said Lyndsay, “engaged once, and at last lucky enough to capture that fine fellow. How many love-affairs she had in between—who shall say?”

“And a sweeter, better woman never was,” returned Anne. “I could explain her life; but I have no mind to betray the secrets of my sex.”

“She attained wisdom at last,” said Lyndsay, “for I heard her tell Fox once that married men should have every year one month for a bachelor honeymoon.”

As they laughed, Mrs. Lyndsay, who had just come onto the porch, said, “That is like her; but I do think it is only an echo of the discontent with our decent, old-fashioned notions as to marriage. I hope, Rose—” and here Mrs. Lyndsay stopped short. Anne looked up.

“The recipe seems to work well. They are very happy. I propose some day to start a company to insure the permanency of the married state. It ought to pay. They insure everything nowadays, from boilers to window-glass,” she added.

“That’s so,” said Ellett. “Now, the interviews of 304the examiner of that company with the young couples wouldn’t be a bad situation to play.”

“Admirable,” laughed Lyndsay.

“But don’t you want to hear our plots? You will see what you have escaped.”

“By all means,” replied Carington.

“Well, here is one. Mr. Sludge, the medium, calls up Shakspere to ask if he wrote Bacon’s essays.”

“If that is a specimen,” cried Carington, “I still less regret. The probability of Shakspere having been in Bacon’s pay as essayist strikes me as a delightful alternation to put into the Shakspere discussion.”

“It is a trifle tough,” said Anne. “I should like to ask for it at the next spiritual séance. I myself am strongly of the opinion that Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakspere’s plays. Just turn some of her correspondence with James into blank verse, and see how dramatic it is, and how humorous.”

“Repeat some of it for Mr. Carington, aunt,” said Rose. “It is really interesting.”

“Certainly, if I can recall it. Ah, here is one. I have made but little change in her words,—hardly any:
‘I praise God that you uphold ever a regal rule.
Since God then hath made kings,
Let them not unmake their authority.
Let little rivers and small brooks acknowledge
Their spring, and flow no further than their banks.’

“There is another:
‘Else laws resemble cobwebs, whence great bees
Get out by breaking, and small flies stick fast
For weakness.’

305“I like this one,” said Miss Anne:
“‘For they be actions rather, and not words,
Which paint out kings and truly in their colors.
There be so many viewers of their facts
That their disorders (do) permit no shade,
Nor will abide excuses.’”

“Oh,” cried Carington, “that last is like Tennyson. ‘The fierce light that breaks upon a throne.’ Is there more?”

“Tell us,” said Rose, “the one about a treaty—she ‘mislikes,’ I think that is what she says. I liked that one.”

“I think I can:
‘Touching an instrument you’d have me sign,
I do assure you, though I play on some,
And have been brought up to know musick well,
Yet this discord would be of gross account,
Such as for well-tuned musick were not fit.
Go teach your new raw counsellors better manners
Than to advise you such a paring off
Of ample meanings.’”

“How pleasantly that takes one back to Hamlet and the pipe!” said Lyndsay. “It ought to settle the question of authorship.”

“I begin to agree with you, Miss Anne,” said Ellett.

“Don’t forget to ask your medium about Queen Bess, aunty,” cried Rose.

“I? Indeed I shall.”

“Have you any belief in that business of spiritual manifestations, Mr. Lyndsay?” asked Carington.

“None. Not I. It is one mass of self-deceit and fraud. I have seen too much of it.”

306“I have a strong belief in the circulating medium,” cried Anne. “It seems rather essential as a means of inspiring the other mediums. But what are the rest of your situations, Archie?”

“Oh, there is one more Shaksperian situation.”

“Well.”

“Mr. Shakspere appears at midnight in Mr. Browning’s study and asks what the mischief he means by—”

“For shame, Pardy!” broke in Rose; “we won’t hear any more. They are horrid.”

“I guess we are out of it,” said Jack. “I’m audience.”

“Oh, there is one for you. The ghost of a murdered bear appears to Master Jack Lyndsay and wishes to know if he can spell ‘responsibility.’”

“Good for you, Jack,” cried Dick.

“Wait till I catch you to-morrow, Redhead.” But there was much laughter, and Jack felt that on the whole it was not undesirable for his bear to pass into the limbo of jokes.

“And now, boys, be off with you and dream over that last situation. Good night,” and they trooped away, merry, to their tent on the cliff.

“Jack is a very good actor,” said Lyndsay; “but children are apt to be fairly good actors and then to lose the gift. Ned is even better. The boys are fond of charades, and what we like best is to take the names of poets from Chaucer to Crabbe,—we have pretty well exhausted the list.”

“I have seen in France,” said Ellett, “a harder game than your plots. Two or three scenes are allowed, 307and what each is to include is stated. Then the actors endeavor to go through with each act so as to fulfil its dramatic purpose.”

“I trust,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “no one will introduce that game.”

“It would be charming,” cried Rose.

“Come in, Archie,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “and let us have our piquet. Anne and Rose will furnish quite as much talk as will suffice. I must have my revenge.”

“Certainly, my dear,” and he went in with his wife.

“Some time we must really try those plots,” said Rose. “Papa is too fond of the difficult ones. Imagine Hamlet furnishing evidence to the Psychical Society about his father’s ghost!”

“Does any one believe in ghosts nowadays?” asked Ellett.

“Pardy does,—look!” she said, laughing, and pointing through the open window. Lyndsay was pushing off from a burning candle the tall spikes of wax which stood unmelted on one side. “We are laughing at you, papa,” she cried.

“Are you?” he said, turning from his game. “I can’t stand a ghost in the candle: it is another relic of my Scotch education, Mr. Carington. It is bad luck to have a ghost on the candle. I have lost the belief, but the habit remains.”

“I fancy we all keep some of these little pet superstitions,” said Carington.

“I assure you, we are rather proud of ours,” returned Anne.

308The chat went on, grave and gay by turns, and at last Lyndsay came back, saying:

“I retire after a sad defeat.”

“My papa plays cards abominably, Mr. Carington. He writes verses better.”

“Rose! Rose! None of that nonsense.”

“The fact is, when we were talking about the charades of poets’ names, I meant to repeat the endings papa made for some of them, but, when I mentioned it to him, he shook his head like a China mandarin, and I weakly gave up. He is doing it now,” and she laughed. “Oh, I am even with you at last, Pardy, because you left me yesterday in the anguish of ungratified curiosity. This is my vengeance.”

“It is incomplete,” said Carington.

“Blush, Pardy, but tell us the verses.” Lyndsay declared that the verse was hardly worth a fight.

“I can recall only two,” he said. “Here is one:
The fight was lost. On hill and glen
Thick lay the ranks of fallen men;
And sullen through the narrow gorge
Went back the standard of St. George.
Then in the saddle rose the ’Squire,
And shook his pennoned spear on high,
And called his broken band again,
And taught them how to die,
And won a name, and little knew
That where his country’s banner flew
By hill or dale, on ocean blue,
In centuries to come,
That name the lifted pennon won
Should live as deathless as the sun.

309“Of course these words were meant only for the children,” said Rose; “I like this better:
A Smith who beat the gold of song
To voices pleasant, sweet and strong:
What royal jewelries he wrought
With simple words and kindly thought!
A careless, foolish, wasteful soul,
Too fond, alas, of pipe and bowl;
Vain of his looks, his waistcoat’s set,
Oppressed with duns, o’erwhelmed with debt,
Crushed with distasteful Grub Street work,
The friend of Reynolds and of Burke,
He smiling bore the gibes of Johnson,
And loitered in the shop of Tonson;
And well or ill, or drunk or sober,
In youth or age’s drear October
Went smiling, jesting, laughing through,
If friends were false or friends were true.
And fared he well, or fared he ill,
Left but kind words to greet us still,
And modest humor’s gentlest play,
That bids no maiden turn away,
And many a cool, clear, ringing line,
Still heard through all those noisy years,
And wholesome as a wayside spring,
And sweet with smiles, or sad with tears.”

“That is really a nice bit of character-sketching,” said Carington, as he rose. “We must try the postponed plots some other time.”

“I think my father and you and Mr. Ellett could manage the ghost scene.”

“Perhaps we may have a chance next winter,” he returned. “I have a bridge to build near your good city, and shall certainly see you all as I go and come.” 310Rose made no reply. The gap in the talk was filled by Miss Anne:

“That we shall be glad of.”

“And,” added Lyndsay, coming out, “we shall hold you to it. There is a little old Madeira still left.”

“Your fellows in the war drank all that would have been mine,” said Carington. “You owe me principal and interest.”

“We shall be honest; and we shall look to see you also, Mr. Ellett,” said Rose.

“Good night.” And they went to their boats. As they poled away in the night, Carington said to himself, “If those railway directors but knew it, I would pay for the privilege of building their bridge. However, skew bridges are difficult: it will take a good while.” And he lit his pipe.

“What are you thinking over, Fred?”

“Oh, about the difficulty of constructing a cantilever skew bridge.”

“What a word! Good gracious! It suggests a dreadful pun.”

“Don’t,” cried Carington. “Come alongside, and give me some baccy.”