Part 12

Mr. Bob Jonstone stepped slowly forward. His thin face had a bluish, steely look; and his eyes glinted wickedly like a rattlesnake's. Being one against four, he made no declaration of war. He came upon them secretly from behind. And first he struck a thin neck just below a leathery ear, and then a fat neck.

He was not a strong man physically. But high-strung nerves and cold, collected loathing and fury are powerful weapons.

The thin man and the fat man with the whispering voice lay face down on the beach and passed from insensibility into stupefied, drunken sleep. But with the other two, Mr. Jonstone had a bad time of it, for he had broken a bone in his right hand and the pain was excruciating. Often, during that battle, he thought of the deadly automatic in his pocket. But if he used that, it meant that a woman's name would be printed in the newspaper.

The fat men fought hard with drunken fury. Their strength was their weight, and they were always coming at him from opposite sides. But an empty whiskey bottle caught Mr. Jonstone's swift eye and made a sudden end of what its contents had begun. He hit five times and then stood alone, among the fallen, a bottle neck of brown glass in his hand.

Then he lifted his voice and spoke aloud, as if to the island:

"They'll not trouble you now. What else can I do?"

"God bless you for doing what you've done! I'm a fool girl, and I thought I was all alone and I went in swimming, and they came and I hid on the island. And I--I haven't got my things with me!"

"Couldn't you get ashore without being seen? These beasts won't look. And I won't look. You can trust me, can't you?"

"When you tell me that nobody is looking I'll come ashore."

"Nobody is looking now."

He heard a splash and sounds as of strong swimming. And he was dying to look. He took out his little automatic and cocked it, and he said to himself: "If you do look, Bob, you get shot."

Ten minutes passed.

"Are you all right?" he called.

"Yes, thank you, all right now. But how can I thank you? I don't want you to see me, if you don't mind. I don't want you to know who I am. But I'm the gratefulest girl that ever lived; and I'm going home now, wiser than when I came, and, listen----"

"I'm listening."

"I think I'd almost die for you. There!"

Mr. Jonstone's hair fairly bristled with emotion.

"But am I never to see you, never to know your name?"

The answer came from farther off.

"Yes, I think so. Some time."

"Do you promise that?"

Silence--and then:

"I _almost_ promise."

* * * * *

Having assured himself that the drunken men were not dead, Mr. Jonstone sighed like a furnace and started down the mountain.

His hand hurt him like the devil, but the pain was first cousin to delight.

XXVII

The Camp was much concerned to hear of poor Mr. Jonstone's accident. A round stone, he said, had rolled suddenly under his foot and precipitated him down a steep pitch of path. He had put out his hands to save his face and, it seemed, broken a bone in one of them. And at that, the attempted rescue of his face had not been an overwhelming success.

It was not until the doctor had come and gone that Mr. Jonstone told his cousin what had really happened. Colonel Meredith was much excited and intrigued by the narrative.

"And you've no idea who she was?" he asked.

"No, Mel; I've thought that the voice was familiar. I've thought that it wasn't. It was a very well-bred Northern voice--but agitated probably out of its natural intonations. Voices are queer things. A man might not recognize his own mother's voice at a time when he was not expecting to hear it."

"Voices," said Colonel Meredith, "are beautiful things. This wasn't a motherly sort of voice, was it?"

"But it might be," said Mr. Jonstone gently. "I wonder if they've anything in this place to make a fellow sleep. Bromide isn't much good when you've a sure-enough sharp pain."

"You feel mighty uncomfortable, don't you, Bob?"

The invalid nodded. He was pale as a sheet, and he could not keep still. He had received considerable physical punishment and his entire nervous system was quivering and jumping.

"I'll see if anybody's got anything," said Colonel Meredith, and he went straight to the office, where he found Maud Darling and Eve.

"My cousin is feeling like the deuce," he said. "He won't sleep all night if we don't give him something to make him. Do you know of any one that's got anything of that sort--morphine, for instance?"

"The best thing will be to take the _Streak_ and get some from the doctor," said Maud. "Let's all go."

"I think I won't," said Eve, looking wonderfully cool and serene. "But I'll walk down to the float and see you off. What a pity for a man to get laid up by an accident that might have been avoided by a little attention!"

Colonel Meredith stiffened.

"I am sorry to contradict a lady," he said, "but my cousin has given me the particulars of his accident, and it was of a nature that could hardly have been avoided by a man. I think, Miss Maud, if you will order a launch, I had better tell my cousin where I am going, in case he should feel that he was being neglected."

"Don't bother to do that," said Eve. "I'll get word to him."

"Oh, thank you so much, will you?"

"He's lying down, I suppose."

"Yes; he has retired for the night."

"I'll send one of the men," said Eve, "or Sam Langham."

So they went one way and Eve went the other, walking very quickly and smiling in the night.

"Mr. Jonstone--oh, Mr. Jonstone! Can you hear me?"

With a sort of shudder of wonder Mr. Jonstone sat up in his bed.

"Yes," he said, "I do hear you--unless I am dreaming."

"You're not dreaming. You are in great pain, owing to an accident which could hardly have been avoided by a man, and can't sleep."

"I am in no pain now."

"Colonel Meredith has gone to Carrytown for something to make you sleep, so you aren't to fret and feel neglected if he doesn't come back to you at once."

"Just the same it's a horrible feeling--to be all alone."

"But if some one--any one were to stay within call----?"

"If _you_ were to stay within call it would make all the difference in the world."

"You don't know who I am, do you?"

"I don't know what you look like, and I don't know your name. But I know who you are. And once upon a time--long years ago--you promised, you half promised, to tell me the other things."

"My name is a very, very old name, and I look like a lot of other people. But you say you know who I am. Who am I?"

Mr. Bob Jonstone laughed softly.

"It's enough," said he, "that I know. But are you comfortable out there? You're on the porch, aren't you?"

"No; I'm standing on the ground and resting my lazy forehead against the porch railing."

"I'd feel easier if you came on the porch and made yourself comfortable in a chair, just outside my window. And we could talk easier."

"But you're not supposed to talk."

"Listening would be good for me."

There was a sound of light steps and of a chair being dragged.

"I wish you wouldn't sit just round the corner," said Mr. Jonstone presently. "If you sat before the window, sideways, I could see your profile against the sky."

"I'm doing very well where I am, thank you."

"But, please, why shouldn't I see you? Why are you so embarrassed at me?"

"Wouldn't you be embarrassed if you were a girl and had been through the adventure I went through? Wouldn't you be a little embarrassed to see the man who helped you, and look him in the face?"

"Don't you ever want me to see you? Because, if you don't, I will go away from this place in the morning and never come back."

"Somehow, that doesn't appeal to me very much either."

"I am glad," said Mr. Jonstone quietly.

"How does your hand feel?"

"Which hand?"

"The one you hurt."

"It feels very happy, and the other hand feels very jealous of it."

"Seriously--are you having a pretty bad time?"

"I am having the time of my life--seriously--the time that lucky men always have once in their lives."

"Are you very impatient for the morphine?"

"I shall not take it when it comes. It is far better knowing what one knows, remembering what one remembers, and looking forward to what a presumptuous fool cannot help but look forward to--it is far better to keep awake; to lie peacefully in the dark, knowing, remembering, and looking forward."

"And just what are you looking forward to?"

"To a long life and a happy one; to the sounds of a voice; to a sudden coming to life of the whole 'Oxford Book of Verse'; to seeing a face."

There was a long silence.

"Are you there?"

"Yes; but you mustn't talk."

"I think you are tired. Please don't stay any more if you are tired."

"I'm not tired."

"Then perhaps you are bored."

"I'm not bored."

"Then what are you?"

"You keep quiet."

When, at last, Colonel Meredith came, important with morphine and the doctor's instructions, he found his cousin Mr. Bob Jonstone sleeping very quietly and peacefully, a much dog-eared copy of the "Oxford Book of Verse" clasped to his breast.

Unfortunately the colonel, after putting out the light again, bumped into a table, and Mr. Jonstone waked.

"That you, Mel?"

"Yes, Bob; sorry I waked you. Did Miss Darling send word explaining that I should be quite a while coming back?"

"Which Miss Darling?"

"Which? Why, Miss Eve."

"Yes, she sent word."

"And how have you been?"

"I took a turn for the better shortly after you left. A little while ago I lighted a candle, and read a little and got sleepy. And now I think I'll go to sleep again."

"You don't need the morphine?"

"No, Mel. Thank you. Good-night."

"Good-night."

"Mel?"

"What is it?"

"Isn't Eve about the oldest name you know?"

"Oldest, I guess, except Adam and Lilith. You go to sleep."

And Colonel Meredith tiptoed out of the room, murmuring: "Seems to be a little shaky in his upper stories."

XXVIII

A point of land just across the lake from the camp belonged to the Darlings' mother, the Princess Oducalchi. One night the light of fires and lanterns appeared on this point and the next morning it was seen to be studded here and there with pale-brown tents. The Darlings were annoyed to think that any one should trespass on so large a scale on some one else's land. In a code of laws shot to pieces with class legislation, trespassers are, of course, exempt from punishment; their presence and depredations in one's private melon-patch are none the less disagreeable, and Arthur Darling, as his mother's representative, was peculiarly enraged.

Arthur, in his idle moments, when, for instance, he was not studying the webs of spiders or classifying the cries of frogs, sometimes let his mind run on politics and the whole state of the Union. In such matters, of course, he was only a tyro. Why should the puny and prejudiced population of Texas have two votes in the Senate when the hordes of New York have but two? Why, in a popular form of government, should the minority do the ruling? Why should not a hard-working rich man have an equal place in the sun with a man who, through laziness and a moral nature twisted like a pretzel, remains poor? Why should education be forced on children in a country where education, which means good manners and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, amounts practically to disfranchisement?

Arthur, in his political ruminations, could never get beyond such questions as these. If A has paid for and owns a piece of land, why is it not A's to enjoy, rather than B's, whose sole claim thereto is greater strength of body than A, and the desire to possess those things which are not his?

At least, Arthur could row across to the point and protest in his mother's name. If the trespassers were gentlefolk who imagined themselves to have camped upon public land, they would, of course, offer to go and to pay all damages--in which event, Arthur would invite them to stay as long as they pleased, only begging that they would not set the woods on fire. If, however, the trespassers belonged to one of the privileged classes for whose benefit the laws are made and continued, he would simply be abused roundly and perhaps vilely. He would then take a thrashing at the hands of superior numbers, and the incident would be closed.

Colonel Meredith, seeing Arthur about to embark on his mission, offered help and comfort in the emergency.

"Just you wait till I fetch my rifle," he said; "and if there's any trifling, we'll shoot them up."

"Shoot them up!" exclaimed Arthur. "If we shot them up, we'd go from here to prison and from prison to the electric chair."

"In South Carolina," Colonel Meredith protested, "if a man comes on our land and we tell him to get off and he won't, we drill a hole in him."

"And that's one of the best things about the South," said Arthur. "But we do things differently in the North. If a man comes on my land and I tell him to get off and he says he won't, then I have the right to put him off, using as much force as is necessary. And if he is twice as big as I am and there are three or four of him, you can see, without using glasses, how the matter must end."

"Then all you are out for is to take a licking?"

"That is my only privilege under the law. But I hope I shall not have to avail myself of it. Where there are so many tents there must be money. Where there is money there are possessions, and where there are possessions, there are the same feelings about property that you and I have."

"Still," said Colonel Meredith, "I wish you'd take me along and our guns. There is always the chance of managing matters so that fatalities may be construed into acts of self-defense."

"Get behind me, you man of blood!" exclaimed Arthur, laughing, and he leaped into a canoe, and with a part of the same impulse sent it flying far out from the float. Then, standing, he started for the brown tents with easy, powerful strokes, very earnest for the speedy accomplishment of a disagreeable duty. That anything really pleasant might come of his expedition never entered his head.

"Arthur gone to put them off?"

"Why, yes! Good-morning, Miss Gay."

"Good-morning, yourself, Colonel Meredith, and many of them. Want to look?"

"Thank you."

Colonel Meredith focussed the glasses upon the brown tents.

"What do you make them out to be?"

"I can make out a sort of nigger carrying tea into one of the tents. And there's a young lady in black. She seems to be walking down to the shore to meet your brother. And now she's waving her hand to him."

"The impudent thing," exclaimed Gay. "What's my brother doing?"

"He's paddling as if he expected to cross a hundred yards of water in a second. If the young lady comes any closer to the water, she'll get wet."

Suddenly blushing crimson, he thrust the field-glasses back into Gay's hands, and cried with complete conviction that he was "blessed."

In the bright field of magnification, hastily focussed to her own vision, Gay beheld her brother and the young woman in black tightly locked in each other's arms.

XXIX

To Arthur, half-way across the lake, considering just what he should say to the trespassers, the sudden sight of the person whom of all persons in the world he least expected and most wanted to see was a staggering physical shock. He almost fell out of his canoe. And if he had done that he might very likely have drowned, so paralyzing in effect were those first moments of unbelievable joy and astonishment. Then she waved her hand to him and swiftly crossed the beach, and he began to paddle like a madman. When the canoe beached with sudden finality, Arthur simply made a flying leap to the shore and caught her in his arms.

Then he held her at arm's length, and if eyes could eat, these would have been the last moments upon earth of a very lovely young woman.

Then a sort of horror of what he had done and of what he was doing seized him. His hands dropped to his sides and the pupils of his eyes became pointed with pain. But she said:

"It's all right, Arthur; don't look like that. My husband is dead."

"Dead?" said Arthur, his face once more joyous as an angel's. "Thank God for that!"

And why not thank God when some worthless, cruel man dies? And why not write the truth about him upon his tombstone instead of the conventional lies?

"But why didn't you write to me?" demanded Arthur.

"It had been such a long time since we saw each other. How did I know that you still cared?"

"But how could I stop caring--about you?"

"Couldn't you?"

"Why, I didn't even try," said Arthur. "I just gave it up as a bad job. But how, in the name of all that's good and blessed, do you happen to be in this particular place at this particular time? Did you, by any chance, come by way of the heavens in a 'sweet chariot'? I came to eject trespassers, and I find you!"

"And I came to spy on you, Arthur, and to find out if you still cared. And if you didn't, I was going to tie a stone round my neck and lie down in the lake. Of course, if I'm a trespasser----"

They had moved slowly away from the shore toward the tents. From one of these a languid, humorous voice that made Arthur start hailed them. And through the fly of the tent was thrust a beautiful white hand and the half of a beautiful white arm.

"I can't come out, Arthur," said the voice; "but good-morning to you, and how's the family?"

"Of all people in the world," exclaimed Arthur; "my own beautiful mamma!" And he sprang to the extended hand and clasped it and kissed it.

"Your excellent stepfather," said the voice, "is out walking up an appetite for breakfast. I hope you will be very polite to him. If it hadn't been for him, Cecily would have stayed in London, where we found her. He wormed her secret out of her and brought her to you as a peace-offering."

There was a deep emotion in Arthur's voice as he said:

"Then there shall always be peace between us."

The hand had been withdrawn from the light of day; but the languid, humorous voice continued to make sallies from the brown tent.

"We didn't want to be in the way; so, remembering this bit of property, we just chucked our Somali outfit into a ship, and here we are! I was dreadfully shocked and grieved to hear that you were all quite broke and had started an inn. In New York it is reported to be a great success, is it?"

"Why, I hope so," said Arthur; "I don't really know. Mary's head man. Maud keeps the books; the triplets keep getting into mischief, and Eve, so far as I know, keeps out. As for me, I had an occupation, but it's gone now."

"What was your job, Arthur?"

"My job was to have my arm in imagination where it now is in reality."

"Cecily!" exclaimed the voice. "Is that boy hugging you publicly? Am I absolutely without influence upon manners even among my own tents?"

"Absolutely, Princess!" laughed Cecily.

"Then the quicker I come out of my tent the better! You'll stop to breakfast, Arthur?"

"With pleasure, but shan't I get word to the girls? Of course, they would feel it their duty to call upon you at once."

"I should hope so--as an older woman I should expect that much of them. But, princess or no princess, I refuse to stand on ceremony. In my most exalted and aristocratic moments I can never forget that I am their mother. So after breakfast _I_ shall call on _them_."

At this moment, very tall and thin, in gray Scotch tweeds, carrying a very high, foreheady head, there emerged from the forest Prince Oducalchi, leading by the hand his eight-year-old son, Andrea, and singing in a touching, clear baritone something in Italian to the effect that a certain "Mariana's roses were red and white, in the market-place by the clock-tower!"

Andrea wore a bright-red sweater, carried a fine twenty-bore gun made by a famous London smith, and looked every inch a prince. He had all the Darling beauty in his face and all the Oducalchi pride of place and fame.

"Mr. Darling, I believe?" asked the prince, his left eyebrow slightly acockbill. "I have not had the pleasure of seeing you for some years, but I perceive that you are by way of accepting my peace-offering."

"I was never just to you," said Arthur, a little pale and looking very proud and handsome, "and you have been very good to my mamma and you have been very good to me. Will you forgive me?"

"I cannot do that. There has been nothing to forgive. But I will shake hands with you with all the pleasure in the world--my dear Cecily, does he come up to the memories of him? Poor children, you have had a sad time of it in this merry world! I may call you 'Arthur'? Arthur, this is your half-brother, Andrea. I hope that you will take a little time to show him the beautiful ways of your North Woods."

Arthur shook hands solemnly with the small boy, and their stanchly met eyes told of an immediate mutual confidence and liking.

"I've always wanted a brother in the worst way," said Arthur.

"So have I," piped Andrea.

And then Princess Oducalchi came out of her tent, and proved that, although her daughters resembled her in features, simplicity, and grace and dignity of carriage, they would never really vie with her in beauty until they had loved much, suffered much, borne children into the world, and remembered all that was good in things and forgotten all that was evil.

"Mamma," said Arthur, "is worth travelling ten thousand miles to see any day, isn't she?"

"On foot," said Prince Oducalchi, "through forests and morasses infested with robbers and wild beasts."

The princess blushed and became very shy and a little confused for a few moments. Then, with a happy laugh, she thrust one hand through her husband's arm, the other through Arthur's, and urged them in the direction of the tent, where breakfast was to be served.

Andrea followed, with Cecily holding him tightly by the hand.

"If we had not been buried in Somaliland at the time," said Arthur's mother, "we would never have let this 'Inn' happen. I'm sure you were against it, Arthur?"

"Of course," said he simply. "But with sister Mary's mind made up, and the rest backing her, what could a poor broken-hearted young man do? And it has worked out better than I ever hoped. I don't mean in financial ways. I, mean, the sides of it that I thought would be humiliating and objectionable haven't been. Indeed, it's all been rather a lark, and Mary insists upon telling me that we are a lot better off than we were. We charge people the most outrageous prices! It's enough to make a dead man blush in the dark. And the only complaint we ever had about it was that the prices weren't high enough. So Mary raised them."

"But," objected Prince Oducalchi, "you, and especially your sisters, cannot go on being innkeepers forever. You, I understand, for instance"--and his fine eyes twinkled with mirth and kindness--"are thinking of getting married."

"I am," said Arthur, with so much conviction that even his Cecily laughed at him.

"When I divorced your poor father," said the princess, "he happened to be enjoying one of his terrifically rich moments. So, in lieu of alimony, he turned over a really huge sum of money to me. When I married Oducalchi and told him about the money, he made me put it in trust for you children, to be turned over to you after your father's death. So you see there was never any real need to start the Inn--but of course we were in Africa and so forth and so on-- If you've finished your coffee, I'm dying to see the girls. And I'm dying to tell them about the money, and to send all the horrid guests packing!"

"Some of the horrid guests," said Arthur, "won't pack. Of course, the girls think that I only study frogs and plants; but it's a libel. When two and two are thrust into my hands, I put them together, just as really sensible people do. You will find, mamma, a sad state of affairs at the camp."

Princess Oducalchi began to bristle with interest and alarm.

"Andrea," said his father, "have a canoe put overboard for me."

Andrea rose at once and left the breakfast tent.