Chapter 15

Anyway, it was Oswald's grand new wardrobe trunk that had been predestined from the world's beginning to set him talkative about his little flower with bones and a voice; this same new wardrobe trunk that was the pride of his barren life and his one real worry because he might sometime lose the keys to it.

It's an affecting tale. It begun the night Oswald wanted the extra table put in his room. They'd come in that day with a good haul of the oldest inhabitants round here that had passed to their long rest three million years ago--petrified fishworms and potato bugs, and so forth, and rocks with bird tracks on 'em. Oswald was as near human as I'd seen him, on account of having found a stone caterpillar or something--I know it had a name longer than it was; it seemed to be one like no one else had, and would therefore get him talked about, even if it had passed away three million years before the Oregon Short Line was built.

And Oswald went on to ask if he could have this extra table in his room, because these specimens of the disturbed dead was piling up on him and he wanted to keep 'em in order. He had lighted one of his terrible cigars; so I said I would quickly go and see about a table. I said that with his venomous cigar going I would quickly have to go and see about something or else have my olfactory nerve resected, which was a grand scientific phrase I had brightly picked out and could play with one finger. It means having something done so you can't smell any more.

The Prof laughed heartily, but Oswald only said he hadn't supposed I would feel that way, considering the kind of tobacco my own cigarettes was made of, though he was sorry and would hereafter smoke out of doors. He took a joke like a child taking castor oil. Anyway, I went out and found a spare table in the storeroom, and the Chink took it to Oswald's room.

The fateful moment was at hand for which Nature had been conspiring all these ages. The Chink held the table up against him, with the legs sticking out, and Oswald went ahead to show him where to put it. Close by the door, inside his room, was the lovely, yawning new trunk. Oswald must of been afraid one of the table legs would spear it and mar its fair varnish. He raised one hand to halt the table, then closed the trunk tenderly, snapped the lock, and moved it over into the corner, beyond chance of desecration.

Then he give careful directions for placing the table, which had to be carried round the foot of the bed and past another table, which held marine fossils and other fishbones. It was placed between this table and still another, which held Oswald's compass and microscope and his kill-kare kamp stove and his first-aid kit and his sportsman's belt safe--all neatly arranged in line. I had followed to see if there was anything more he needed, and he said no, thank you. So I come out here to look over my mail that had just come.

Ten minutes later I felt the presence of a human being and looked up to see that Oswald, the oldest living boy scout, was dying on his feet in the doorway there. His face looked like he had been in jail three years. I thought he had seen a ghost or had a heart shock. He looked as if he was going to keel over. He had me scared. Finally he dragged himself over to the table here and says faintly:

"I believe I should like a severe drink of whisky!"

I didn't ask any questions. I saw it must be some private grief; so I got the whisky. It happened I had just one bottle in the house, and that was some perfectly terrible whisky that had been sent me by mistake. It was liquid barbed wire. Even a little drink of it would of been severe. Two drinks would make you climb a tree like a monkey. But the stricken Oswald seemed able to outfight it. He poured out half a tumblerful, drunk it neat and refused water. He strangled some, for he was only human after all. Then he sagged down on the couch and looked up at me with a feeble and pathetic grin and says:

"I'm afraid I've done something. I'm really afraid I have."

He had me in a fine state by this time. The only thing I could think of was that he had killed the Prof by accident. I waited for the horrible details, being too scared to ask questions.

"I'm afraid," he says, "that I've locked the keys of my new trunk inside of it. I'm afraid I really have! And what does one do in such a case?"

I nearly broke down then. I was in grave danger of fatal hysterics. I suffered from the reaction. I couldn't trust myself; so I got over to the door, where my face wouldn't show, and called to the Prof and Lydia. I now heard them out on the porch. Then I edged outside the door, where people wouldn't be quite so scared if I lost control of myself and yelled.

Then these two went in and listened to Oswald's solemn words. The Prof helped me out a lot. He yelled good. He yelled his head off; and under cover of his tumult I managed to get in a few whoops of my own, so that I could once more act something like a lady when I went in.

Lydia, the porch wren, was the only one to take Oswald's bereavement at all decent. The chit was sucking a stick of candy she had shoved down into a lemon. Having run out of town candy, one of the boys had fetched her some of the old-fashioned stick kind, with pink stripes; she would ram one of these down to the bottom of a lemon and suck up the juice through the candy. She looked entirely useless while she was doing this, and yet she was the only one to show any human sympathy.

She asked the stricken man how it happened, and he told the whole horrible story--how he always kept the keys hanging on this little brass hook inside the trunk so he would know where they was, and how he had shut the trunk in a hurry to get it out of the way of the table legs, and the spring lock had snapped. And what did one do now--if anything?

"Why, it's perfectly simple! You open it some other way," says Lydia.

"Ah, but how?" says Oswald. "Those trunks are superbly built. How can one?"

"Oh, it must be easy," says Lydia, still clinging to her candy sour. "I'll open it for you to-morrow if you will remind me."

"Remind you?" says Oswald in low, tragic tones. You could see he was never going to think of anything else the rest of his life.

By this time the Prof and I had controlled our heartless merriment; so we all traipsed in to the scene of this here calamity and looked at the shut trunk. It was shut good; no doubt about that. There was also no doubt about the keys being inside.

"You can hear them rattle!" says the awed Oswald, teetering the trunk on one corner. So each one of us took a turn and teetered the trunk back and forth and heard the imprisoned keys jingle against the side where they was hung.

"But what's to be done?" says Oswald. "Of course something must be done." That seemed to be about where Oswald got off.

"Why, simply open it some other way," says Lydia, which seemed to be about where she got off, too.

"But how?" moans the despairing man. And she again says:

"Oh, it must be too simple!"

At that she was sounding the only note of hope Oswald could hear; and right then I believe he looked at her fair and square for the first time in his life. He was finding a woman his only comforter in his darkest hour.

The Prof took it lightly indeed. He teetered the trunk jauntily and says:

"Your device was admirable; you will always know where those keys are." Then he teetered it again and says, like he was lecturing on a platform: "This is an ideal problem for the metaphysical mind. Here, veritably, is life itself. We pick it up, we shake it, and we hear the tantalizing key to existence rattle plainly just inside. We know the key to be there; we hear it in every manifestation of life. Our problem is to think it out. It is simple, as my child has again and again pointed out. Sit there before your trunk and think effectively, with precision. You will then think the key out. I would take it in hand myself, but I have had a hard day."

Then Lydia releases her candy long enough to say how about finding some other trunk keys that will unlock it. Oswald is both hurt and made hopeful by this. He don't like to think his beautiful trunk could respond to any but its rightful key; it would seem kind of a slur against its integrity. Still, he says it may be tried. Lydia says try it, of course; and if no other key unlocks it she will pick the lock with a hairpin. Oswald is again bruised by this suggestion; but he bears up like a man. And so we dig up all the trunk keys and other small keys we can find and try to fool that trunk. And nothing doing!

"I was confident of it," says Oswald; he's really disappointed, yet proud as Punch because his trunk refuses coldly to recognize these strange keys.

Then Lydia brings a bunch of hairpins and starts to be a burglar. She says in clear tones that it is perfectly simple; and she keeps on saying exactly this after she's bent the whole pack out of shape and not won a trick. Yet she cheered Oswald a lot, in spite of her failures. She never for one instant give in that it wasn't simple to open a trunk without the key.

But it was getting pretty late for one night, so Oswald and Lydia knocked off and set out on the porch a while. Oswald seemed to be awakening to her true woman's character, which comes out clad in glory at times when things happen. She told him she would sure have that trunk opened to-morrow with some more hairpins--or something.

But in the morning she rushed to Oswald and said they would have the blacksmith up to open it. He would be sure to open it in one minute with a few tools; and how stupid of her not to of thought of it before! I liked that way she left Oswald out of any brain work that had to be done. So they sent out to Abner to do the job, telling him what was wanted.

Abner is a simple soul. He come over with a hammer and a cold chisel to cut the lock off. He said there wasn't any other way. Oswald listened with horror to this cold-blooded plan of murder and sent Abner sternly away. Lydia was indignant, too, at the painful suggestion. She said Abner was a shocking old bounder.

Then Oswald had to go out to his field work; but his heart couldn't of been in it that day. I'll bet he could of found the carcass of a petrified zebra with seven legs and not been elated by it. He had only the sweet encouragement of Lydia to brace him. He was depending pathetically on that young woman.

He got back that night to find that Lydia had used up another pack of hairpins and a number of the tools from my sewing machine. All had been black failure, but she still said it was perfectly simple. She never lost the note of hope out of her voice. Oswald was distressed, but he had to regard her more and more like an object of human interest.

She now said it was a simple matter of more keys. So the next day I sent one of the boys down to Red Gap; and he rode a good horse to its finish and come back with about five dozen nice little trunk keys with sawed edges. They looked cheerful and adequate, and we spent a long, jolly evening trying 'em out. Not one come anywhere near getting results.

Oswald's trunk was still haughty, in spite of all these overtures. Oswald was again puffed up with pride, it having been shown that his trunk was no common trunk. He said right out that probably the only two keys in all the world that would open that lock was the two hanging inside. He never passed the trunk without rocking it to hear their sad tinkle.

Lydia again said, nonsense! It was perfectly simple to open a trunk without the right key. Oswald didn't believe her, and yet he couldn't help taking comfort from her. I guess that was this girl's particular genius--not giving up when everyone else could see that she was talking half-witted. Anyway, she was as certain as ever, and I guess Oswald believed her in spite of himself. His ponderous scientific brain told him one thing in plain terms, and yet he was leaning on the words of a chit that wouldn't know a carboniferous vertebra from an Upper Silurian gerumpsus.

The keys had gone back, hairpins was proved to be no good, and scientific analysis had fell down flat. There was the trunk and there was the keys inside; and Oswald was taking on a year in age every day of his life. He was pretty soon going to be as old as the world if something didn't happen. He'd got so that every time he rocked the trunk to hear the keys rattle he'd shake his head like the doctor shakes it at a moving-picture deathbed to show that all is over. He was in a pitch-black cavern miles underground, with one tiny candle beam from a possible rescuer faintly showing from afar, which was the childish certainty of this oldest living débutante that it was perfectly simple for a woman to do something impossible. She was just blue-eyed confidence.

After the men left one morning on their hunt for long-defunct wood ticks and such, Lydia confided to me that she was really going to open that trunk. She was going to put her mind on it. She hadn't done this yet, it seemed, but to-day she would.

"The poor boy has been rudely jarred in his academic serenity," says she. "He can't bear up much longer; he has rats in his wainscoting right now. It makes me perfectly furious to see a man so helpless without a woman. Today I'll open his silly old trunk for him."

"It will be the best day's work you ever done," I says, and she nearly blushed.

"I'm not thinking of that," she says.

The little liar! As if she hadn't seen as well as I had how Oswald was regarding her with new eyes. So I wished her good luck and started out myself, having some field work of my own to do that day in measuring a lot of haystacks down at the lower end of the ranch.

She said there would be no luck in it--nothing but cool determination and a woman's intuition. I let it go at that and went off to see that I didn't get none of the worst of it when this new hay was measured. I had a busy day, forgetting all scientific problems and the uphill fight our sex sometimes has in bringing a man to his just mating sense.

I got back about five that night. Here was Miss Lydia, cool and negligent on the porch, like she'd never had a care in the world; fresh dressed in something white and blue, with her niftiest hammock stockings, and tinkling the ukulele in a bored and petulant manner.

"Did you open it?" I says as I went in.

"Open it?" she says, kind of blank. "Oh, you mean that silly old trunk! Yes, I believe I did. At least I think I did."

It was good stage acting; an audience would of thought she had forgotten. So I took it as calm as she did and went in to change.

By the time I got out the men was just coming in, the Prof being enthusiastic about some clamshells of the year six million B. C. and Oswald bearing his great sorrow with an effort to do it bravely.

Lydia nodded distantly and then ignored the men in a pointed way, breaking out into rapid chatter to me about the lack of society up here--didn't I weary of the solitude, never meeting people of the right sort? It was a new line with her and done for effect, but I couldn't see what effect.

Supper was ready and we hurried in to it; so I guess Oswald must of forgot for one time to shake his trunk and listen to the pretty little keys. And all through the meal Lydia confined her attentions entirely to me. She ignored Oswald mostly, but if she did notice him she patronized him. She was painfully superior to him, and severe and short, like he was a little boy that had been let to come to the table with the grown-ups for this once. She rattled along to me about the club dances at home, and how they was going to have better music this year, and how the assembly hall had been done over in a perfectly dandy colour scheme by the committee she was on, and a lot of girlish babble that took up much room but weighed little.

Oswald would give her side looks of dumb appeal from time to time, for she had not once referred to anything so common as a trunk. He must of felt that her moral support had been withdrawn and he was left to face the dread future alone. He probably figured that she'd had to give up about the trunk and was diverting attention from her surrender. He hardly spoke a word and disappeared with a look of yearning when we left the table. The rest of us went out on the porch. Lydia was teasing the ukulele when Oswald appeared a few minutes later, with great excitement showing in his worn face.

"I can hear the keys no longer," says he; "not a sound of them! Mustn't they have fallen from the hook?"

Lydia went on stripping little chords from the strings while she answered him in lofty accents.

"Keys?" she says. "What keys? What is the man talking of? Oh, you mean that silly old trunk! Are you really still maundering about that? Of course the keys aren't there! I took them out when I opened it to-day. I thought you wanted them taken out. Wasn't that what you wanted the trunk open for--to get the keys? Have I done something stupid? Of course I can put them back and shut it again if you only want to listen to them."

Oswald had been glaring at her with his mouth open like an Upper Triassic catfish. He tried to speak, but couldn't move his face, which seemed to be frozen. Lydia goes on dealing off little tinkles of string music in a tired, bored way and turns confidentially to me to say she supposes there is really almost no society up here in the true sense of the word.

"You opened that trunk?" says Oswald at last in tones like a tragedian at his big scene.

Lydia turned to him quite prettily impatient, as if he was something she'd have to brush off in a minute.

"Dear, dear!" she says. "Of course I opened it. I told you again and again it was perfectly simple. I don't see why you made so much fuss about it."

Oswald turned and galloped off to his room with a glad shout. That showed the male of him, didn't it?--not staying for words of gratitude to his saviour, but beating it straight to the trunk.

Lydia got up and swaggered after him. She had been swaggering all the evening. She acted like a duchess at a slumming party. The Prof and I followed her.

Oswald was teetering the trunk in the old familiar way, with one ear fastened to its shiny side.

"It's true! It's true!" he says in hushed tones. "The keys are gone."

"Naughty, naughty!" says Lydia. "Haven't I told you I took them out?"

Oswald went over and set limply down on his bed, while we stood in the doorway.

"How did you ever do it?" says he with shining eyes.

"It was perfectly simple," says Lydia. "I simply opened it--that's all!"

"I have always suspected that the great secret of life would be almost too simple when once solved," says the Prof.

"It only needed a bit of thought," says the chit.

Then Oswald must of had a sudden pang of fear. He flew over and examined the lock and all the front surface of his treasure. He was looking for signs of rough work, thinking she might of broken into it in some coarse manner. But not a scratch could he find. He looked up at Lydia out of eyes moist with gratitude.

"You wonderful, wonderful woman!" says he, and any one could know he meant it from the heart out.

Lydia was still superior and languid, and covered up a slight yawn. She said she was glad if any little thing she could do had made life pleasanter for him. This has been such a perfectly simple thing--very, very far from wonderful.

Oswald now begun to caper round the room like an Airedale pup, and says let's have the keys and open the trunk up, so he can believe his own eyes.

Then Lydia trifled once more with a human soul. She froze in deep thought a long minute then says:

"Oh, dear! Now what did I do with those wretched old keys?"

Oswald froze, too, with a new agony. Lydia put a hand to her pale forehead and seemed to try to remember. There was an awful silence. Oswald was dashed over the cliff again.

"Can't you think?" says the wounded man. "Can't you remember? Try! Try!"

"Now let me see," says Lydia. "I know I had them out in the living room--"

"Why did you ever take them out there?" demands Oswald in great terror; but the heroine pays no attention whatever to this.

"--and later, I think--I think--I must have carried them into my room. Oh, yes; now I remember I did. And then I emptied my wastebasket into the kitchen stove. Now I wonder if they could have been in with that rubbish I burned! Let me think!" And she thought again deeply.

Oswald give a hollow groan, like some of the very finest chords in his being had been tore asunder. He sunk limp on the bed again.

"Wouldn't it be awkward if they were in that rubbish?" says Lydia. "Do you suppose that fire would destroy the silly things? Let me think again."

The fiend kept this up for three minutes more. It must of seemed longer to Oswald than it takes for a chinch bug to become a carboniferous Jurassic. She was committing sabotage on him in the cruellest way. Then, after watching his death agony with cold eyes and pretending to wonder like a rattled angel, she brightens up and says:

"Oh, goody! Now I remember everything. I placed them right here." And she picked the keys off the table, where they had been hid under some specimens of the dead and gone.

Oswald give one athletic leap and had the precious things out of her feeble grasp in half a second. His fingers trembled horrible, but he had a key in the lock and turned it and threw the sides of the grand old monument wide open. He just hung there a minute in ecstasy, fondling the keys and getting his nerve back. Then he turns again on Lydia the look of a proud man who is ready to surrender his whole future life to her keeping.

Lydia had now become more superior than ever. She swaggered round the room, and when she didn't swagger she strutted. And she says to Oswald:

"I'm going to make one little suggestion, because you seem so utterly helpless: You must get a nice doormat to lay directly in front of your trunk, and you must always keep the key under this mat. Lock the trunk and hide the key there. It's what people always do, and it will be quite safe, because no one would ever think of looking under a doormat for a key. Now isn't that a perfectly darling plan?"

Oswald had looked serious and attentive when she begun this talk, but he finally got suspicious that she was making some silly kind of a joke. He grinned at her very foolish and again says: "You wonderful woman!" It was a caressing tone--if you know what I mean.

Lydia says "Oh, dear, won't he ever stop his silly chatter about his stupid old trunk?" It seems to her that nothing but trunk has been talked of in this house for untold ages. She's tired to death of the very word. Then she links her arm in mine in a sweet girlish fashion and leads me outside, where she becomes a mere twittering porch wren once more.

Oswald followed, you can bet. And every five minutes he'd ask her how did she ever--really now--open the trunk. But whenever he'd ask she would put the loud pedal on the ukulele and burst into some beachy song about You and I Together in the Moonlight, Love. Even the Prof got curious and demanded how she had done what real brains had failed to pull off--and got the same noisy answer. Later he said he had been wrong to ask. He said the answer would prove to be too brutally simple, and he always wanted to keep it in his thought life as a mystery. It looked like he'd have to. I was dying to know myself, but had sense enough not to ask.

The girl hardly spoke to Oswald again that night, merely giving him these cold showers of superiority when he would thrust himself on her notice. And she kept me out there with her till bedtime, not giving the happy trunk owner a chance at her alone. That girl had certainly learned a few things beyond fudge and cheese straws in her time. She knew when she had the game won.