Part 11

We opened the door, held by a simple latch, and found ourselves in the pleasantest of rooms, just twenty feet by fifteen. The walls and the floor had been much whitened and smoothed by the axe. The place smelt vaguely of pitch and strongly of balsam. There was a fireplace--the fire all laid, a bunk to lie on, a chair to sit on, a table to write on, a broom to sweep with. And neatly set upon clean shelves were various jams in glass, and meats, biscuits, and soups in tins. There was also a writing (on birch bark) over the shelves, which read: "Help yourself."

We took down the shutters from the windows and let in floods of autumn sun. Then we lighted the fire, and ate crackers and jam.

It hurt a little to learn at the mouth of our guide that the cabin belonged to a somewhat notorious and decidedly crotchety New York financier who controlled the salmon-fishing in those waters. I had pictured it as built for a pair of eminently sensible and supernaturally romantic honeymooners or for a poet. And I wanted to carry away that impression. For in such a place love or inspiration must have lasted just as long as the crackers and jam. And there is no more to be said of a palace.

One day Mary Darling and Sam Langham visited the new cabin. And Sam said: "If one of the happy pair happened to know something of cooking, what a place for a honeymoon!"

Shortly afterward, Phyllis and Herring came that way, and Herring said: "If I was in love, and knew how to use an axe, I'd build just such a house for the girl I love and make her live in it. I believe I will, anyway."

"Believe what?" asked Phyllis demurely. "Believe you will make her live in it?"

"Yes," he said darkly--"no matter who she is and no matter how afraid of the mice and spiders with which such places ultimately become infested."

Lee and Renier visited the cabin, also. They remarked only that it had a wonderfully smooth floor, and proceeded at once thereon, Lee whistling exquisitely and with much spirit, to dance a maxixe, which was greatly admired by the ex-outlaws.

Maud came often with the Carolinians, and as for Eve, she came once or twice all by herself.

Jealousy is a horrid passion. It had never occurred to Eve Darling that she was or ever could be jealous of anybody. And she wasn't--exactly. But seeing her sisters always cavaliered by attractive men and slipping casually into thrilling and even dangerous adventures with them disturbed the depths of her equanimity. It was delightful, of course, to be made much of by Arthur and to go upon excursions with him as of old. But something was wanting. Arthur's idea of a pleasant day in the woods was to sit for hours by a pool and attempt to classify the croaks of frogs, or to lie upon his back in the sun and think about the girl in far-off China whom he loved so hopelessly.

Thanks to her excellent subordinate, and to her own administrative ability, Laundry House made fewer and fewer encroachments upon Eve's leisure. And often she found that time was hanging upon her hands with great heaviness. Memory reminded her that things had not always been thus; for there are men in this world who think that she was the most beautiful of all the Darlings.

It was curious that of all the men who had come to The Camp, Mr. Bob Jonstone had the most attraction for her. They had not spoken half a dozen times, and it was quite obvious that his mind, if not his heart, was wholly occupied with Maud. Wherever you saw Maud, you could be pretty sure that the Carolinians, hunting in a couple, were not far off. Of the two, Colonel Meredith was the more brilliant, the more showy, and the better-looking. Added to his good breeding and lazy, pleasant voice were certain Yankee qualities--a total lack of gullibility, a certain trace of mockery, even upon serious subjects. Mr. Jonstone, on the other hand, was a perfect lamb of earnestness and sincerity. If he heard of an injustice his eyes flamed, or if he listened to the recital of some pathetic happening they misted over. Once beyond the direct influence of his cousin there was neither mischief in him nor devilment. It was for this reason, and in this knowledge, that he had put his newly acquired moneys in trust for himself.

In the little house by the lake where the cousins still slept, conversation seldom flagged before one or two o'clock in the morning. Having said good-night to each other at about eleven, one or the other was pretty sure to let out some new discovery about the Darlings in general and Maud Darling in particular, and then all desire for sleep vanished and their real cousinly confidences began.

But these confidences had their limits, for neither confessed to being sentimentally interested in the young lady, whereas, within limits, they both were. And each enjoyed the satisfaction of believing (quite erroneously) that he deceived the other. I do not wish to convey the impression that they were actually in love with her.

When you are really in love, you are also in love before breakfast. That is the final test. And when love begins to die, that is the time when its weakening pulse is first to be concerned. What honest man has not been mad about some pretty girl (in a crescendo of madness) from tea time till sleep time and waked in the morning with no thought but for toast and coffee the soonest possible? and gone about the business of the morning and early afternoon almost heart-whole and fancy-free, and relapsed once more into madness with the lengthening of the shadows? A man who proposes marriage to a girl until he has been in love with her for twenty-four consecutive hours is a light fellow who ought to be kicked out of the house by her papa. As for the girl, let her be sure that he is bread and meat to her, comfort and rest, demigod and man, wholly necessary and not to be duplicated in this world, before she even says that she will think about it.

In the early morning there would arise in the house of the Carolinians the sounds of whistling, of singing, laughter, scuffling, and running water. So that a girl who really wanted either of them must, in listening, have despaired.

As for Maud Darling, she was disgusted with herself--theoretically. But practically she was having the time of her life. In theory, she felt that no self-respecting girl ought to be unable to decide which of the two young men she liked the better. In practice, she found a constant pondering of this delicate question to be delightful. It was very comfortable to know that the moment she was free to play there were two pleasant companions ready and waiting.

Sentiment and gayety attended their goings and comings. The Carolinians, fortified by each other's presence, were veritable Raleighs of extravagant devotion. In engineering, for instance, so that Maud should not have to step in a damp place, there were displayed enough gallantry and efficiency to have saved her from an onslaught of tigers. If the trio climbed a mountain, Maud gave herself up to the heart-warming delight of being helped when help was not in the least necessary. In short, she behaved as any natural young woman would, and should. She flirted outrageously. But in the depths of her heart a genuine friendship for the Carolinians was conceived and grew in breadth and strength. What if they did out-gallant gallantry?

XXV

One Sunday, Eve, from her window--she was rather a lazy girl that Sunday--witnessed the following departures from the camp. Sam Langham and Mary in a guide boat, with fishing-tackle and an immense hamper which looked like lunch. Herring and Phyllis could be seen hoisting the sails on the knockabout. Herring had never sailed a boat and was prepared to master that simple art at once. Lee and Renier were girt for the mountain. Renier appeared to have a Flobert rifle in semihiding under his coat, and it was to be feared that if he saw a partridge, he would open fire on it, close season though it was. He and Lee would justify this illegal act by cooking the bird for their lunch. Gay commandeered the _Streak_ and departed at high speed toward Carrytown. She had in one hand a sheet of blue-striped paper, folded. It resembled a cablegram. And Eve thought that it must be of a very private nature, or else Gay would have telephoned it to the Western Union office, instead of carrying it by hand. The next to depart from the camp was Arthur. He moved dreamily in a northwesterly direction, accompanied by Uncas, the chipmunk, and Wow, the dog. Other guests made departures.

All of which Eve, half dressed and looking lazily from her window, lazily noted, remarking that for her Sunday was a day of rest and that she thanked Heaven for it. And she did not feel any differently until Maud and the Carolinians walked out on the float and began to pack a guide boat for the day.

Then her lazy, complacent feelings departed, and were succeeded by a sudden, wide-awake surge of self-pity. She felt like Cinderella. Nobody had asked her to go anywhere or do anything, and nobody had even thought of doing so. When she was dead they would gather round her coffin and remember that they hadn't asked her to go anywhere or do anything, and they would be very sorry and ashamed and they would say what a nice girl she had been, and how she had always tried to give everybody a good time.

Between laughter and tears and mortification, Eve finished dressing, set her lovely jaw, and went out into the delicious, cool calm of the mountain morning. She could still hear the voices of many of the departing ones; and the rattling and creaking of the knockabout's blocks and rigging. She heard Herring say to Phyllis: "I think it would be better if I could make the boom go out on this side, but I can't." Phyllis's answer was a cool, contented laugh. It was as if she said: "Hang the boom! _We're_ here!"

Have you ever had the feeling that you would like to board a swift boat, head for the open sea, and never come back? Or that you could plunge into some boundless, trackless forest and keep straight on until you were lost, and died (beautifully and painlessly), and were covered with beautiful leaves by little birds?

Eve enjoyed (and suffered from) a hint of this latter feeling. She ate a light breakfast (it would be better not to begin starving till she was actually lost in the boundless, trackless forest), selected a light, spiked climbing-stick with a crooked handle, headed for one of the northeasterly mountains, and was soon deep in the shade of the pines and hemlocks.

After a few miles, the trail that she followed split and scattered in many directions, like the end of an unravelled rope. She followed an old lumber road for a long way, turned into another that crossed it at an angle of forty-five degrees, took no account of the sun's position in the heavens or of the marked sides of trees. If she came to a high place from which there was a view, she did not look at it. She just kept going--this way and that, up and down. In short, she made a conscious, anxious effort to lose herself. The easterly mountain toward which she had first headed kept bobbing up straight ahead. And always there was the knowledge in the back of her head of the exact location of The Camp, and of all the other landmarks, familiar to her since early youth.

"Drag it!" she said, at length, her eyes on the mountain. "I'll climb the old thing, put melancholy aside, and call this a good, if unaccompanied, Sunday."

The morning coolness had departed. It was one of those hot, breathless, mountain forenoons that kill the appetite and are usually followed, toward the late afternoon, by violent electrical disturbances.

Eve was not as fit as she had supposed, or as she thought. As a matter of fact, she was setting too fast a pace, considering the weather and the angle of the mountain slope; and she was as wet as if she had played several hard sets of tennis with a partner who stood in one corner of the court and let her do all the running.

As she climbed, reproaching her wind for being so short, she remembered that the hollow tip of this particular northeastern mountain was filled with a deep pool of water. Nobody had ever called it a lake. The map called it a pond; but it wasn't even that--it was a pool. Springs fed it just fast enough to make up for the evaporation. It had no outlet. It was shaped like a fat letter O. At one end was a little beach of white sand. Indeed, the bottom of the pool was all firm, smooth, and clean, and the whole charming little body of water was surrounded by thick groves of dwarf mountain trees and bushes. Not content with being a perfect replica, in miniature, of a full-grown Adirondack lake, this pool had in its midst an island, a dozen feet in diameter, densely shrubbed and shaded by one diminutive Japanesque pine.

When Eve came to the pool, hot, tired, and rather bothered at the thought of the long walk back to camp, she had but the vaguest idea of just why the Lord had placed such a pool on top of a mountain, impelled her to climb that mountain, and made the day so piping hot.

Eve stood a little on the sand beach. She felt hotter and hotter, and the pool looked cooler and cooler. Presently, a heavenly smile of solution brightened her flushed, warm face, and she withdrew into a shady clump of bushes. From this there came first the exclamation "Drag it!" then a sound of some sort of a string being sharply broken in two, and then there came from the clump of bushes Eve herself, looking for all the world like a slice of the silver moon.

And as you may have seen the silver moon slip slowly into the sea, so Eve vanished slowly into the pool--all but her shapely little round head, with its crisp bright-brown hair and its lovely face, happy now, exhilarated, and eager as are the faces of adventurers.

And Eve thought if one didn't have to eat, if one didn't end by being cold, if one could make time stand still--she would choose to be always and forever a slice of the silver moon, lolling in a mountain pool.

She had the kind of hair that wets to perfection. But it was not the sort of permanent wave which lasts six months or so, costs twenty-five dollars, and is inculcated by hours of alternate baking and shampooing. Eve had always had a permanent wave. She feared neither fog nor rain, nor water in any form of application. And so it was that, now and then, as she lolled about the pool, she disappeared from one fortunate square yard of surface and reappeared in another.

Half an hour had passed, when suddenly the mountain stillness was broken by men's voices.

Eve was at the opposite side of the pool from where she had left her clothes. Between her and the approaching voices was the little island. She landed hastily upon this and hid herself among the bushes.

Three gross, fat men and one long, lean man, with a face like leather and an Adam's apple that bobbed like a fisherman's float, came down to the beach, sweating terribly, and cast thereon knapsacks, picnic baskets, hatchets, fishing-tackle, and all the complicated paraphernalia of amateurs about to cook their own lunch in the woods.

All but one had loud, coarse, carrying voices, and they all appeared to belong to the ruling class. They appeared, in short, to have neither education nor refinement nor charm nor anything to commend them as leaders or examples. Eve wondered how it was possible for them to find pleasure even in each other's company. They quarrelled, wrangled, found fault, abused each other, or suddenly forgot their differences, gathering about the fattest of the fat men and listening, almost reverently, while he told a story. When he had finished, they would throw their heads far back and scream with laughter. He must have told wonderfully funny stories; but his voice was no more than a husky whisper, so that Eve could not make head or tail of them.

After a while the whispering fat man produced from one of the baskets four little glasses and a fat dark bottle. And shortly after there was less wrangling and more laughter.

The thin man with the leathery face and the bobbing Adam's apple put a fishing-rod together, tied a couple of gaudy flies to his leader, and began to cast most unskilfully from the shores of the pool, moving along slowly from time to time.

The fat men, occasionally calling to ask if he had caught anything, busied themselves with preparations for lunch. One of them made tremendous chopping sounds in the wood and furnished from time to time incommensurate supplies of fire-wood. Smoke arose and a kettle was slung.

Meanwhile Eve, cowering among the bushes, for all the world like her famous ancestress when the angel came to the garden, did not quite know what to do. She had only to lift her voice and explain, and the men would go away for a time. She felt sure of that. She had been brought up to believe in the exquisite chivalry of the plain American man.

But there was something about the four which repelled her, which stuck in her throat. She did not wish to be under any sort of obligation to any of them. And so she kept mousy-quiet, and turned over in her mind an immense number of worthless stratagems and expedients.

Have you ever tried to lie on the lawn under a tree and read for an hour or two--incased in all your buffer of clothes? Try it some time--without the buffers. Try it in the buff. And then imagine how comfortable Eve was on the island. Imagine how soft it felt to her elbows, for instance. And imagine to yourself, too, that it was not an uninhabited island--but one upon which an immense gray spider had made a home and raised a family.

From time to time the inept caster of flies returned to the camp-fire, always in answer to a boisterous summons from his friends. And after each visit, his leathery face became redder and his casting more absurd.

Finally his flies caught in a tree, his rod broke, and he abandoned the gentle art of angling for that time and place. Meanwhile steam ran from the kettle and mingled with the smoke of the fire. The sound of voices was incessant. Ten minutes later the gentlemen were served.

Midway of the meal, some of which was burnt black and some of which was quite raw, there was produced a thermos bottle as big as the leg of a rubber boot. And a moment later, icy-cold champagne was frothing and bubbling in tumblers.

In that high air, upon a thick foundation of raw whiskey, the brilliant wine of France had soon built a triumphant edifice, so that Eve, cold now, miserable, and frightened, felt that the time for an appeal to chivalry was long since past.

Far from their wives and constituents, the four politicians were obviously not going to stop short of complete drunkenness. Indeed, it was an opportunity hardly to be missed. For where else in the woods could nature be more exquisite, dignified, and inspiring?

It got so that Eve could no longer bear to watch them or to listen to them. Pink with shame, fury, hatred, and fear, she stuffed her fingers in her ears and hid her face.

Thus lying, there came to her after quite a long interval, dimly, a shout and a howl of laughter with an entirely new intonation. She looked up then and saw the thin man, waist-deep in the bushes, just where she had left her clothes, making faces of beastly mystery at his companions, beckoning to them and urging them to come look. They went to him, presently, staggering and evil.

And then they scattered and began to hunt for her.

XXVI

"Tired?" queried Mr. Bob Jonstone, with some indignation. "I'm not a bit tired. I haven't had enough exercise to keep me quiet. And if it wasn't your turn to make the fire, your privilege, and your prerogative, I'd insist on chopping the wood myself. No," he said, leaning back luxuriously, "I find it very hard to keep still. This walking on the level is child's play. What I need to keep me in good shape is mountains to climb."

"Like those we have at home," said Colonel Meredith, and if he didn't actually wink at Maud, who was arranging some chops on a broiler, he made one eye smaller than the other.

"What's wrong with _this_ mountain?" asked Maud.

"Why, we are only half-way up, and the real view is from the top!"

"Of course," said Colonel Meredith, "if you want to see the view, don't let us stop you. We'll wait for you. Won't we, Miss Maud?"

She nodded, her eyes shining with mischief.

"But," the colonel continued, "Bob is a bluff. He's had all the climbing he can stand. Nothing but a chest full of treasure or a maiden in distress would take him a step farther."

"After lunch," said Mr. Jonstone, "I shall."

"Do it now! Lunch won't be ready for an hour. Any kind of a walker could make the top of the mountain and be back in that time. But I'll bet you anything you like that you can't."

"You will? I'll bet you fifty dollars."

"Done!"

Mr. Jonstone leaped to his feet in a business-like way, waved his hand to them, and started briskly off and up along the trail by which they had come, and which ended only at the very top of the mountain. It wasn't that he wanted any more exercise. He wanted to get away for a while to think things over. He had learned on that day's excursion, or thought he had, that two is company and that three isn't. The pleasant interchangeableness of the trio's relations seemed suddenly to have undergone a subtle change. It was as if Maud and Colonel Meredith had suddenly found that they liked each other a little better than they liked him.

So it wasn't a man in search of exercise or eager to win a bet who was hastening toward the top of a mountain, but a child who had just discovered that dolls are stuffed with sawdust. He suffered a little from jealousy, and a little from anger. He could not have specified what they had done to him that morning, and it may have been his imagination alone that was to blame, but they had made him feel, or he had made himself feel, like a guest who is present, not because he is wanted but because for some reason or other he had to be asked.

He walked himself completely out of breath and that did his mind good. Resting before making a final spurt to the mountain-top, he heard men's voices shouting and hallooing in the forest. The sounds carried him back to certain coon and rabbit hunts in his native state, and he wondered what these men could be hunting. And having recovered his breath, he went on.

He came suddenly in view of a great round pool of water in the midst of which was a tiny island, thickly wooded. Just in front of him a fire burned low on a beach of white sand.

Upon the beach, his back to Jonstone, stood a tall, thin man who appeared to be gazing at the island. Suddenly this man began to shout aloud:

"She's on the island! She's on the island!"

From the woods came the sound of crashings, scramblings, and oaths, and, one by one, three fat men, very sweaty and crimson in the face, came reeling out on the beach, and ranged themselves with the thin man, and looked drunkenly toward the island.

"She's hiding on the island, the cute thing," said the thin man.

"Did you see her?"

"I saw the bushes move. That's where she is."

"How deep's the water?"

"I'll tell you in about a minute," said the thin man. He threw his coat from him, and, sitting down with a sudden lurch, began to unlace his boots.

"Maybe you don't know it," he said, "but I'm some swimmer, I am."

There was a moment of silence and then there came from the island a voice that sent a thrill through Mr. Bob Jonstone from head to foot. The voice was like frightened music with a sob in it.

"Won't you please go away!"

"Good God," he thought, "they're hunting a woman!"

The drunken men had answered that sobbing appeal with a regular view-halloo of drunken laughter.