CHAPTER XVI
THE COUNCIL FIRE
"Across the lake in golden glory, The fairy gleams of sunlight glow. Another day of joy is ending, The clouds of twilight gather low."
Another day of joy, indeed! Without peril of rattlesnake--or marplotnickum to spoil it!
"'Varnish right--and aeroplane wrong!' That's what _he_ said whenthey laid that trap to get us out of the cave, without any fuss. But Isay it's: 'Varnish right--and puzzle wrong!' All wrong!" snapped Pemroseto herself again and again, repeating an old saying during the weekfollowing that first Get Together. "Nobody--nobody has a right to driftaround as a puzzle, these days! If ever I get a chance, see me snub himhar-rd--though he did rescue me twice! Well, thank goodness! it was theScoutmaster, not he, who played Jack at a Pinch in Tory Cave."
And it was the Scoutmaster, in days gone by, with the help of his boys,who had built the great stone fireplace in the girls' bungalow in whicha brilliant Council Fire was now blazing. Across the lake the goldenglory stole, and girls came tip-toeing to the hearth-flame in soft,ceremonial dress, fringed and beaded, the firelight, like dawn, flushingthe pearl of their headbands,--and Pem forgot the enigma of thateighteen-year-old youth who seemed to have a trick of bobbing up, nowand again, under the lee of a summer holiday, like some menacing spar toleeward of a vessel in fair sail.
Well! to recall Stud's figure of speech, nobody was "whistling jigs" tohis milestone heart now--or trying to. The fire was the fiddler; and waxwas not softer or more responsive than the pliant breasts on which itsmusic fell.
"I watched a log in the fireplace burning."
They whispered it one to another and under the spell of itstransfiguring lay, bent forward, they witnessed the last act in apine-tree pantomime.
A dazzling transformation scene it was: in the glow they could see,summed up, each transition of light and heat that went before: dawn'stender flame, the fierce blaze of high noon, ruby rays of eveningstreaming now across the Bowl--hill-girt lake without--gathered, allgathered, in a golden age behind them to feed the sap of a noble tree,here poured forth, amid a radiant ballet of flame and spark, to furnishlife, light--inspiration--to a Council Fire.
"I watched a log in the fireplace burning, Oh! if I, too, could only be Sure to give back the love and laughter, That Life so freely gave to me!"
Tanpa, the Guardian, softly breathed it. And in the eye of more than onegirl the wish was transmuted into a tear,--into something more tender,more transported, than a laugh, as the log, in a final spurt, gave all,and fell, like a tired dancer, upon the broad hearth, its rosy chiffonscrumpled and fading into the pale gray of wood-ashes.
"There it goes!" The eyes of Pemrose were a patchwork now, flameembroidered upon their shining blue; oh! if she were to give forth whatLife gave to her, which of her Camp Fire Sisters would have such richesto reflect?
It had been hers--hers--to share the dream of a great inventor, to lookforward with him to the pioneering moment--the beginning of that whichwould surely, in time, draw the Universe visibly together--the momentwhen the Thunder Bird should fly.
She never qualified that dream by an _if_, wherever the funds toequip it might come from--or even if it had to wait a dozen years,Toandoah's triumph, like that fortune "hung up--" for the great Bird tomake its new migration to the moon, in proof that space was nobarrier--when the Thunder Bird, giving all, as the log had done, woulddrop its skeleton upon the desert of that silent satellite.
But there were steps to be taken in the meantime--exciting steps in theladder of success. Those patchwork eyes, looking into the flame now,counted them, one by one, and hung in breathless anticipation upon thefirst: upon the moment, so soon to come off, when old Greylock wouldreally send back a shout of gladness, for on his darkling summit thehand of a Camp Fire Girl of America would press the button and loose thelesser Thunder Bird to fly up the modest distance of a couple of hundredmiles, or so, with its diary in its head, and send back the novel recordof its flight.
"I--do--believe that my father sleeps with one eye open, thinking ofthat golden egg, as he calls it--the little recording apparatus," shesaid, when the White Birch Group, as one, asked that the special programfor this ceremonial meeting should be a talk from an inventor's daughterupon this most daring enterprise of the age. "He says that if_that_ does not drift back to earth safely with the crow-likeparachute--if anything should happen to it, to the two little wheels,with the paper winding from one on to the other, all dashed with pencilmarks--the world would call him a fool's mate.... If it did!" Pem'steeth were clinched. "But, of course, without the record, there would benothing to show how high the little rocket had really flown--showing thebigger one the road," with an excited gasp.
"Yes, I can understand how anxious he must be about the safe return ofthe egg--or the log--whichever you choose to call it--the first recordfrom space, anyway." Tanpa's tone was almost equally excited. "And ofcourse the wind may play pranks with the parachute--drift it away downthe mountainside!"
"So that we'd lose it in the darkness--oh-h!" Pem shivered upon thethought. "But we'll all be on the lookout to prevent that, as many of usas are there--and that won't be more than a picked few, Dad says, towitness this first experiment.... When--when the real Thunder Birdflies, though--" she turned those patchwork eyes now, sky-blue,flame-red, upon her companions--"you'll all--all-ll be there. And, oh!won't it--won't it be a sight to watch--it--tear?"
Drooping towards the fire-glow, lips parted in entranced assurance, theslight figure became lost in the same dream which had held it monthsbefore in a February Pullman, while a daring flame, like a red-cappedpearl diver, plunging into the mystery of that fairy thing, thatgleaming stole about her neck brought out milky flashes ofluster--together with those New Jerusalem tints, jade and gold and ruby.
Finished now it was, the pearl-woven prophecy--fair record to go down toposterity!
In faith--such faith as had inspired Penelope, faithful wife, of old, toweave and unravel her endless web, steadfast in the belief of herhusband's return, so the girlish fingers upon the loom had wrought thetranscendent story to a finish.
To a finish even to the sprinkling of gold pieces, the yellow bonanza,coming from somewhere, to gorge the Thunder Bird, for its record flight;to a finish even to the celestial climax, the little blue powder-flashlighting up the dear, fair face of Mammy Moon!
But of one climax, more celestial still, Pemrose Lorry could not speak,not even to these her Camp Fire Sisters: of the evening of the secondwreck--the wreck of hope after that third installment of a disappointingwill had been read--when she had taken the four feet and a half of pearlpoem to her father's workshop, the grim hardware laboratory, and out ofthe home of light, which she herself hardly understood, in her young,young heart, had told him, doubtful of the future, that she knew theinvention would win out--the Thunder Bird go where nothing earthly hadever gone before.
And he had whispered something--something surpassing--about a Wise Womanwho saved a city.
It made sacred every thought now, and humbled it, too, in the breast ofthis little sixteen-year-old girl, with the mingled yarn in hernature--the mingling spice in her name.
Others had these fair stoles, too, the history of their girlish liveswoven in pearls of typical purity, crossed by vivid representations ofevents. Drooping to their knees, in symbolic beauty, finishing with thesoft leather fringes on which a breeze sweeping down the wide chimneyplayed, they flashed here and there in the high colors of adventure--thequaintly symbolized adventure tale.
But none could match the theme of the two little primitive figures uponthe mounttain-top, the inventor looking through a tube, the comet-likestreak of fire above them: the opening of a highroad through Space,--thefirst step towards a federation of the heavenly bodies.
The record to go down to posterity!
Yet old Earth had still her individual romance of seedtime and harvest,sun and storm, peril and deliverance.
Emblematically depic
ted these were in the pearl strip of a girl, with awinsome reflection of Andrew's thistle-burr in her speech. Born "farawa' in bonnie Scotland", the thistle and America's goldenrod blenttheir purple and gold upon her young shoulders; there was an idealizedplow, representing the peaceful agricultural calling of her father,--anda jump from peace to peril in the primitively symbolized scene of ashipwreck through which she had been with him when crossing the Atlanticin a sailing vessel.
"We had all to take to the boats, you see," said Jennie McIvor, "for theship was leaking so badly that she couldn't keep afloat but a wee bitlonger; and we had a verra rough time until we were picked up."
A rough time, indeed, typified by the wildly driven little canoes--themost primitive form of the boat--tossed upon stiff water-hills, broodingabove them the quaint, corkscrew figure, with the eye in its head, ofTa-te, the tempest.
Somehow, this eye--the spying wind's eye--haunted Pemrose that night,curled up in a previous suggestion of the Guardian's which, momentarily,had twisted itself, snake-like, around her heart.
Suppose Ta-te should prove cruel to her, as to Jennie whom she hadeventually spared! Suppose, on the great night of the first experimentwith Toandoah's little rocket, Ta-te, jealous of a rival in the smallThunder Bird which could out-soar all the winds of Earth--out-soar eventhe air, their cradle--should meanly seize upon the black, silkparachute, light as soot, anchored to the golden egg, the littlerecording apparatus! Suppose it should whirl both off, away from theeager hands stretched out to claim them, hide them in a dark recess ofthe mountain side, maybe, where they could not be found fordays,--possibly never!
Ta-te _could_ play fast and loose with her father's reputation, sheknew; at least, with the witness to his success as an inventor.
"If the wind should do that," she thought, "then the World, some part ofit--the horrid World--will say that Mr. Hartley Graham's last thoughtsabout that mile-long will were wise ones: that it was better--better toleave all that money 'hung up' awaiting the possible return of thatmadcap younger brother--who'll make ducks and drakes of it, mostlikely--than--than to turn it over to a Thunder Bird," with a faintflash of a smile, "in spite, oh! in spite of the fact that daringvolunteers--skilled aviators--are wild to take passage in the far-flyingBird."
Yes! even that youthful hotspur who used the cream of rough-edged paper,and was willing to try anything once, though it should be once for all.
The girl's thought reverted to him now as she gazed into the bungalowfire, seeing in the gusty flicker of every log that menacingspiral,--the brooding wind's eye.
It claimed her, that wild, red eye, even while her companions of theWhite Birch Group were excitedly discussing their picturesque plans forthe morrow; for the celebration of their annual festival in honor of thebirch trees bursting into leaf, for the odes, the songs, the dances, theplanting, each, of a silvery sapling.
It mesmerized her, did Ta-te's eye, with its setting of flame, even tothe exclusion of enthusiasm about the big dance--the joyous Together--inthe evening, of which Una raved in anticipation now and again, and forwhich these two friends and rivals in the matter of eyelashes hadbrought their prettiest party dresses.
The elders presiding over the destinies of both had given a happyconsent to Tanpa's invitation, and the two were now the guests for a fewdays of the mountain Group at their camp on the egg-shaped Bowl.
The sigh of the mountain breeze came soothingly across the lake to lulltheir slumbers as they lay down to rest, side by side, in the littlebungalow cots of which a dozen ranged the length of the great water-sidedormitory half-open, half-screened.
Yet Pem fell asleep imploring Ta-Te--and lost the little recordaltogether in her dreams!
Up and down old Greylock she plodded, looking for it, hand in hand withToandoah,--but ever it eluded them!
Muttering, bereft, she tossed; then for a moment awoke, blinkingly satup, to see the moonlight flickering--Mammy Moon's own smile--upon thepearl-woven prophecy beside her, from which she could hardly be partedby night or day.
Sleep again! And now it was not only the diary but the Thunder Bird,itself, that was lost,--astray in space, and she with it!
She was trying to catch it by the fiery tail-feathers when, all of asudden--all of a sober sudden--those feathers became soft, flopping,buffeting,--real.
They brushed her parted lips. They flopped against her cheek. They evenmopped the dews of slumber from her eyes.
"Hea-vens! W-what is it-t?"
Wildly she sat up--a second time--to see the dawn poking at her with apink finger and the lake shimmering without, a great pearl found by themorning in an iridescent oyster-shell of mist.
And, within, a bumping, buffeting something, soft as moss, dun-gray asterror--blundering into every sleeper's face, as if testing its warmth,bowling its way along the line of cots.
"Cluck! Cluck! Flutter! Flutter! Awake! Awake! I'm lost! I'm lost!" itsaid.
"What is it? _What is it?_"
Never was such an exciting reveille as girl by girl boundedup--elastic--fingering a brushed, a tickled cheek.
The answer was a screech that made the morning blush, as if a ghost hadinvaded the Tom Tiddler's ground of open day light.
Una shrieked in echo.
Morale was undermined. Cots were vacated. Maiden jostled maiden, allcolliding upon a gaping question that fanned sensation sky-high--untilthe bungalow fairly rocked upon a hullabaloo.
Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl Page 17