Part 4

Five-and-twenty years ago--before the canal was thought of, and when the Duluth of the present, with its backing of twenty thousand miles of railway, was a dream just beginning to be realized--Minnesota Point was believed to have a great future. Close to its shoulder a town site was staked out, and little wooden houses were built at a great rate. Corner lots on that sand spit were at a premium. The "boom" was on. The smash of '73 knocked the bottom out of everything for a while. When good times came again the town site moved on westward a half-mile or so and settled itself on the mainland. The little houses on the Point were out of the running and were taken up by Swedes--who were content, as Americans were not, to live a few steps away from the strenuous centre of that inchoate metropolis. That time the "boom" was a genuine one. The new city had come to stay. In course of time, to meet its growing trade requirements, the canal was cut which made the Point an island--and after that the Point was dead for good and all.

Nowadays it is only in summer that a little life, other than that of its few inhabitants, shows itself on Minnesota Point--when camping-parties and picnic-parties go down by three miles of shaky tramway to Oatka Beach. During all the rest of the year that sandy barren, with its forlorn decaying houses and its dreary growth of pines stunted by the harsh lake winds, is forgotten and desolate. Now and then is heard the cry of a gull flying across it slowly; and always against its outer side--with a thunderous crash in times of storm, in times of calm with a sad soft lap-lapping--surge or ripple the deathly cold waters of Lake Superior: waters so cold that whoever drowns in them sinks quickly--not to rise again (as the drowned do usually), but for all time, in chill companionship with the countless dead gathered there through the ages, to be lost and hidden in those icy depths.

The ghastly coldness of the water in which it is merged seems to have numbed the Point and reconciled it to its bleak destiny. It has accepted its fate: recognizing with a grim indifference that its once glowing future has vanished irrevocably into what now is the hopelessness of its nearly forgotten past.

II

George Maltham, wandering out on the Point one Sunday morning in the early spring-time--he had just come up from Chicago to take charge of the Duluth end of his father's line of lake steamers and was lonely in that strange place, and was the more disposed to be misanthropic because he had a headache left over from the previous wet night at the club--came promptly to the conclusion that he never had struck a place so god-forsakenly dismal. Aside from his own feelings, there was even more than usual to justify this opinion. The day was grey and chill. A strong northeast wind was blowing that covered the lake with white-caps and that sent a heavy surf rolling shoreward. A little ice, left from the spring break-up, still was floating in the harbour. Under these conditions the Point was at its cheerless worst.

Maltham had crossed the canal by the row-boat ferry. Having mounted the sodden steps and looked about him for a moment--in which time his conclusion was reached as to the Point's god-forsaken dismalness--he was for abandoning his intended explorations and going straight-away back to the mainland. But when he turned to descend the steps the boat had received some waiting passengers--three church-bound Swedish women in their Sunday clothes--and had just pushed off. That little turn of chance decided him. After all, he said to himself, it did not make much difference. What he wanted was a walk to rid him of his headache; and the Point offered him, as the rocky hill-sides of the mainland conspicuously did not, a good long stretch of level land.

Before him extended an absurdly wide street--laid out in magnificent expectation of the traffic that never came to it--flanked in far-reaching perspective by the little houses which sprang up in such a hurry when the "boom" was on. In its centre was the tramway, its road-bed laid with wooden planks. The dingy open tram-car, in which the church-bound Swedish women had come up to the ferry, started away creakingly while he stood watching it. That was the only sight or sound of life. For some little time, in the stillness, he could hear the driver addressing Swedish remarks of an encouraging or abusive nature to his mule.

Taking the planked tramway in preference to the rotten wooden sidewalks full of pitfalls, Maltham walked on briskly for a mile or so--his headache leaving him in the keen air--until the last of the little houses was passed. There the vast street suddenly dribbled off into a straggling sandy road, which wound through thickets of bushy white birch and a sparse growth of stunted pines. The tramway, along which he continued, went on through the brush in a straight line. The Point had narrowed to a couple of hundred yards. Through rifts in the tangle about him he could see heaps of storm-piled drift-wood scattered along the lake-side beach--on which the surf was pounding heavily. On the harbour side the beach was broken by inthrusts of sedgy swamp. Presently he came to a sandy open space in which, beside a weather-worn little wooden church, was a neglected graveyard that seemed to give the last touch of dreariness to that dismal solitude.

The graveyard was a waste of sand, save where bushy patches of birch had sprung up in it from wind-borne seeds. Swept by many storms, the sandy mounds were disappearing. Still marking the graves were a few shabby wooden crosses and a dozen or so of slanting or fallen wooden slabs. Once these short-lived monuments had been painted white and had borne legends in black lettering. But only a Swedish word or a Swedish name remained here and there legible--for the sun and the wind and the rain had been doing their erasing work steadily for years. One slab alone stood nearly upright and retained a few partly decipherable lines in English. But even on that Maltham could make out only the scattered words: "Sacred.... Ulrica.... Royal House of Sweden ... ever beloved ... of Major Calhoun Ashley," and a date that seemed to be 1879.

His headache had gone, but it had left him heavy and dejected. That fragmentary epitaph increased his sombreness. Even had he been in a cheerful mood he could not have failed to perceive the pathetic irony of it all. There was more than the ordinary cruelty of death and forgetfulness, he thought, about that grave so desolate of one who had been connected--it did not matter how--with a "royal house," and who was described in those almost illegible lines as "ever beloved." That was human nature down to the hard pan, he thought; and with a half-smile and a half-sigh over the fate of that poor dead Ulrica he turned away from the graveyard and walked on. Half-whimsically he wondered if he had reached the climax of the melancholy which brooded over that dreary sand spit. As he stated the case to himself, short of finding a man lying murdered among the birch-bushes it was not likely that he would strike anything able to raise that graveyard's hand!

The murdered man did not materialize, and the next out-of-the-way sight that he came across--when he had walked on past the dingy and forgotten-looking little church--was a big ramshackling wooden house of such pretentious absurdity that his first glimpse of it fairly made him laugh. Its square centre was a wooden tower of three stories, battlemented, flanked by two battlemented wings. A veranda ran along the lower floor, and above the veranda was a gallery. Some of the windows were boarded over; others had scraps of carpet stuck into their glassless gaps--and all had Venetian shutters (singularly at odds with the climate of that region) hanging dubiously and with many broken slats. The paint had weathered away, and bricks had fallen from the chimney-tops--a loss which gave to the queer structure, in conjunction with lapses in its wooden battlements, a sadly broken-crested air. As a whole, it suggested a badly done caricature of an old-fashioned Southern homestead--of which the essence of the caricature was finding it in that bleak Northern land.

III

Maltham had come to a full stop in front of this absurd dwelling, which was set a little back from the road in a dishevelled enclosure, and as he stood examining in an amused way its various eccentricities he became aware that from one of the lower windows a man was watching him.

This was disconcerting, and he turned to walk on. But before he had gone a dozen steps the front door opened and the man came outside. He was dressed in shabby grey clothes with a certain suggestion of a military cut about them; but in spite of his shabbiness he had the look of a gentleman. He was sixty, or thereabouts, and seemed to have been well set up when he was younger--before the slouch had settled on his shoulders and before he had taken on a good many unnecessary inches about his waist. From where he stood on the veranda he hailed Maltham cordially:

"Won't yo' come in, suh? I have obsehved youah smiles at my old house heah-- No, no, yo' owe me no apology, suh," he went on quickly, as Maltham attempted a confused disclaimer. "Yo' ah quite justified in laughing, suh, at my foolish fancy--that went wrong mainly because the Yankee ca'pentah whom I employed to realize it was a hopelessly damned fool. But it was a creditable sentiment, suh, which led me to desiah to reproduce heah in godfo'saken Minnesotah my ancestral home in the grand old State of South Cahrolina--the house that my grandfatheh built theah and named Eutaw Castle, as I have named its pore successeh, because of the honorable paht he bo' in the battle of Eutaw Springs. The result, I admit, is a thing to laugh at, suh--but not the ideah. No, suh, not the ideah! But come in, suh, come in! The exterioh of Eutaw Castle may be a failuah; but within it, suh, yo' will find in this cold No'th'en region the genuine wahm hospitality of a true Southe'n home!"

Maltham perceived that the only apology which he could offer for laughing at this absurd house--the absurdity of which became rather pathetic, he thought, in view of its genesis--was to accept its owner's invitation to enter it. Acting on this conclusion, he turned into the enclosure--the gate, hanging loosely on a single hinge, was standing open--and mounted the veranda steps.

As he reached the top step his host advanced and shook hands with him warmly. "Yo'ah vehy welcome, suh," he said; and added, after putting his hand to a pocket in search of something that evidently was not there: "Ah, I find that I have not my cahd-case about me. Yo' must pehmit me to introduce myself: Majoh Calhoun Ashley, of the Confedehrate sehvice, suh--and vehy much at youahs."

Maltham started a little as he heard this name, and the small shock so far threw him off his balance that as he handed his card to the Major he said: "Then it was your name that I saw just now in--" And stopped short, inwardly cursing himself for his awkwardness.

"That yo' saw in the little graveyahd, on the tomb of my eveh-beloved wife, suh," the Major replied--with a quaver in his voice which compelled Maltham mentally to reverse his recent generalizations. The Major was silent for a moment, and then continued: "Heh grave is not yet mahked fitly, suh, as no doubt yo' obsehved. Cihcumstances oveh which I have had no control have prevented me from erecting as yet a suitable monument oveh heh sacred remains. She was my queen, suh"--his voice broke again--"and of a line of queens: a descendant, suh, from a collateral branch of the ancient royal house of Sweden. I am hoping, I am hoping, suh, that I shall be able soon to erect oveh heh last resting-place a monument wo'thy of heh noble lineage and of hehself. I am hoping, suh, to do that vehy soon."

The Major again was silent for a moment; and then, pulling himself together, he looked at Maltham's card--holding it a long way off from his eyes. "Youah name is familiar to me, suh," he said, "though fo' the moment I do not place it, and I am most happy to make youah acquaintance. But come in, suh, come in. I am fo'getting myself--keeping you standing this way outside of my own doah."

He took Maltham cordially by the arm and led him through the doorway into a wide bare hall; and thence into a big room on the right, that was very scantily furnished but that was made cheerful by a rousing drift-wood fire. Over the high mantel-piece was hung an officer's sword with its belt. On the buckle of the belt were the letters C. S. A. Excepting this rather pregnant bit of decoration, the whitewashed walls were bare.

The Major bustled with hospitality--pulling the bigger and more comfortable of two arm-chairs to the fire and seating Maltham in it, and then bringing out glasses and a bottle from a queer structure of unpainted white pine that stood at one end of the room and had the look of a sideboard gone wrong.

"At the moment, suh," he said apologetically, "my cellah is badly fuhnished and I am unable to offeh yo' wine. But if yo' have an appreciative taste fo' Bourbon," he went on with more assurance, "I am satisfied that yo' will find the ahticle in this bottle as sound as any that the noble State of Kentucky eveh has produced. Will yo' oblige me, suh, by saying when!"

Not knowing about the previous wet night, and its still lingering consequences, the promptness with which Maltham said "when" seemed to disconcert the Major a little--but not sufficiently to deter him from filling his own glass with a handsome liberality. Holding it at a level with his lips, he turned toward his guest with the obvious intention of drinking a toast.

"May I have a little water, please?" put in Maltham.

"I beg youah pahdon, suh. I humbly beg youah pahdon," the Major answered. "I am not accustomed to dilute my own liquoh, and I most thoughtlessly assumed that yo' would not desiah to dilute youahs. I trust that yo' will excuse my seeming rudeness, suh. Yo' shall have at once the bevehrage which yo' desiah."

While still apologizing, the Major placed his glass on the table and went to the door. Opening it he called: "Ulrica, my child, bring a pitcheh of fresh wateh right away."

Again Maltham gave a little start--as he had done when the Major had introduced himself. In a vague sub-conscious way he felt that there was something uncanny in thus finding living owners of names which he had seen, within that very hour, scarcely legible above an uncared-for grave. But the Major, talking on volubly, did not give him much opportunity for these psychological reflections; and presently there was the sound of footsteps in the hall outside, and then the door opened and the owner of the grave-name appeared.

IV

Because of the odd channel in which his thoughts were running, Maltham had the still odder fancy for an instant that the young girl who entered the room was the dead Ulrica of whom the Major had spoken--"a queen, and of a line of queens." And even when this thought had passed--so quickly that it was gone before he had risen to his feet to greet her--the impression of her queenliness remained. For this living woman bearing a dead name might have been Aslauga herself: so tall and stately was she, and so fair with that cold beauty of the North of which the soul is fire. Instinctively he felt the fire, and knew that it still slumbered--and knew, too, that in the fulness of time, being awakened, it would glow with a consuming splendour in her dark eyes.

All this went in a flash through his mind before the Major said: "Pehmit me, Mr. Maltham, to present yo' to my daughteh, Miss Ulrica Ashley." And added: "Mr. Maltham was passing, Ulrica, and did me the honeh to accept my invitation to come in."

She put down the pitcher of water and gave Maltham her hand. "It was very kind of you, sir," she said gravely. "We do not have many visitors, and my father gets lonely with only me. It was very kind of you, sir, indeed." She spoke with a certain precision, and with a very slight accent--so slight that Maltham did not immediately notice it. What he did notice, with her first words, was the curiously thrilling quality of her low-pitched and very rich voice.

"And don't you get lonely too?" he asked.

"Why no," she answered with a little air of surprise. And speaking slowly, as though she were working the matter out in her mind, she added: "With me it is different, you see. I was born here on the Point and I love it. And then I have the house to look after. And I have my boat. And I can talk with the neighbours--though I do not often care to. Father cannot talk with them, because he does not know Swedish as I do. When he wants company he has to go all the way up to town. You see, it is not the same with us at all." And then, as though she had explained the matter sufficiently, she turned to the Major and asked: "Do you want anything more, father?"

"Nothing mo', my child--except that an extra place is to be set at table. Mr. Maltham will dine with us, of co'se."

At this Maltham protested a little; but presently yielded to Ulrica's, "You will be doing a real kindness to father if you will stay, Mr. Maltham," backed by the Major's peremptory: "Yo' ah my prisoneh, suh, and in Eutaw Castle we don't permit ouah prisonehs to stahve!" The matter being thus settled, Ulrica made a little formal bow and left the room.

"The wateh is at youah sehvice, suh," said the Major as the door closed behind her. "I beg that yo' will dilute youah liquoh to youah liking. Heah's to youah very good health, suh--and to ouah betteh acquaintance." He drank his whiskey appreciatively, and as he set down his empty glass continued: "May I ask, suh, if yo' ah living in Duluth, oh mehly passing through? I ventuah to ask because a resident of this town sca'cely would be likely to come down on the Point at this time of yeah."

"I began to be a resident only day before yesterday," Maltham answered. "I've come to take charge here of our steamers--the Sunrise Line."

"The Sunrise Line!" repeated the Major in a very eager tone. "The biggest transpo'tation line on the lakes. The line of which that great capitalist Mr. John L. Maltham is president. And to think, suh, that I did not recognize youah name!"

"John L. Maltham is my father," the young man said.

"Why, of co'se, of co'se! I might have had the sense to know that as soon as I looked at youah cahd. This is a most fo'tunate meeting, Mr. Maltham--most fo'tunate for both of us. I shall not on this occasion, when yo' ah my guest, enteh into a discussion of business mattehs. But at an eahly day I shall have the honeh to lay befo' yo' convincing reasons why youah tehminal docks should be established heah on the Point--which a beneficent Providence cleahly intended to be the shipping centeh of this metropolis--and prefehrably, suh, as the meahest glance at a chaht of the bay will demonstrate, heah on my land. Yo' will have the first choice of the wha'ves which I have projected; and I may even say, suh, that any altehrations which will affo'd mo' convenient accommodations to youah vessels still ah possible. Yes, suh, the matteh has not gone so fah but that any reasonable changes which yo' may desiah may yet be made."

Remembering the sedgy swamps beside which he had passed that morning, Maltham was satisfied that the Major's concluding statement was well within the bounds of truth. But he was not prepared to meet off-hand so radical a proposition, and while he was fumbling in his mind for some sort of non-committal answer the Major went on again.

"It is not fo' myself, suh," he said, "that I desiah to realize this magnificent undehtaking. Living heah costs little, and what I get from renting my land to camping pahties and fo' picnics gives me all I need. And I'm an old man, anyway, and whetheh I die rich oh pore don't matteh. It's fo' my daughteh's sake that I seek wealth, suh, not fo' my own. That deah child of mine is heh sainted motheh oveh again, Mr. Maltham--except that heh motheh's eyes weh blue. That is the only diffehrence. And beside heh looks she has identically the same sweet natuah, suh--the same exquisite goodness and beauty of haht. When my great loss came to me," the Major's voice broke badly, "it was my love fo' that deah child kept me alive. It breaks my haht, suh, to think of dying and leaving heh heah alone and pore."

Maltham had got to his bearings by this time and was able to frame a reasonably diplomatic reply. "Well, perhaps we'd better not go into the matter to-day," he said. "You see, our line has traffic agreements with the N. P. and the Northwestern that must hold for the present, anyway. And then I've only just taken charge, you know, and I must look around a little before I do anything at all. But I might write to my father to come up here when he can, and then he and you could have a talk."

The Major's look of eager cheerfulness faded at the beginning of this cooling rejoinder, but he brightened again at its end. "A talk with youah fatheh, suh," he answered, "would suit me down to the ground-flo'. An oppo'tunity to discuss this great matteh info'mally with a great capitalist has been what I've most desiahed fo' yeahs. But I beg youah pahdon, suh. I am fo'getting the sacred duties of hospitality. Pehmit me to fill youah glass."

It seemed to pain him that his guest refused this invitation; but, finding him obdurate, he kept the sacred duties of hospitality in working order by exercising them freely upon himself. "Heah's to the glorious futuah of Minnesotah Point, suh!" he said as he raised his glass--and it was obvious that he would be off again upon the exploitation of his hopelessly impossible project as soon as he put it down. Greatly to Maltham's relief, the door opened at that juncture and Ulrica entered to call them to dinner; and he was still more relieved, when they were seated at table, by finding that his host dropped business matters and left the glorious future of Minnesota Point hanging in the air.

At his own table, indeed, the Major was quite at his best. He told good stories of his army life, and of his adventurous wanderings which ended when he struck Duluth just at the beginning of its first "boom"; and very entertaining was what he had to tell of that metropolis in its embryotic days.