CHAPTER XLI
IN MIC-CO'S LODGE
The rooms of Mic-co's lodge opened, in the fashion of the old Pompeianvillas, upon a central court roofed only by the Southern sky. Thiscourt, floored with split logs, covered with bearskin rugs andfurnished in handmade chairs of twisted palmetto and a rude table,years back Mic-co and his Indian aides had built above a clear, lazystream. Now the stream crept beneath the logs to a quiet open pool inthe center where lilies and grasses grew, and thence by its own channelunder the logs again and out. Storm coverings of buckskin were rolledabove the outer windows and above the doorways which opened into thecourt.
Here, when the moon rose over the lonely lodge and glinted peacefullyin the tilled pool, Mic-co listened to the tale of his young guest. Itwas a record of bodily abuse, of passion and temptation, which few menmay live to tell, but Mic-co neither condoned nor condemned. He smokedand listened.
"Let us make a compact," he said with his quiet smile. "I may questionwithout reserve. You may withhold what you will. That is fair?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever endured hardship of any kind?"
"I have hunted in the Arctics," said Carl. "There was a time when foodfailed. We lived for weeks on reindeer moss and rock tripe. I havebeen in wild territory with naturalists and hunters. Probably I haveknown more adventurous hardship than most men."
Mic-co nodded.
"I fancied so," he said. "What is your favorite painting?" he askedunexpectedly.
The answer came without an instant's hesitation.
"Paul Potter's 'Bull.'"
"A thing of inherent virility and vigor, intensely masculine!" saidMic-co with a smile, adding after an interval of thought, "but there isa danger in over-sexing--"
"I have sometimes thought so. The over-masculine man is too brutal."
"And the over-feminine woman?"
"Kindly, sentimental, helpless and weak. I have lived with such anaunt since I was fifteen. No, I beg of you, do not misunderstand me!I blame nothing upon her. Like many good women whose minds are blockedoff in conventional squares, she is very loyal and sympathetic--andvery trying. The essence of her temperament is ineffectuality. Mycousin and I were a wild, unmanageable pair who rode roughshod overprotest. That Aunt Agatha was not in fault may be proved by my cousin.She is a fine, true, splendid woman."
An ineffectual aunt in the critical years of adolescence! Mic-co didnot suggest that his cousin's sex had been her salvation.
So nights by the pool Mic-co plumbed the depths of his young guest withthe fine, tired eyes.
"Tell me," he said gently another night; "this inordinate sensitivenessof which you speak. To what do you attribute it?"
Carl colored.
"My mother," he said, "was courageous and unconventional. Sherecognized the fact that marriage and monogamy are not the ethicalanswers of the future--that though ideal unions sometimes result, it isnot because of marriage, but in spite of it--that motherhood is theinalienable right of every woman with the divine spark in her heart, nomatter what the disappointing lack of desirable marriage chances in herlife may be. Therefore, when the years failed to produce her perfectand desirable human complement, she sought a eugenic mate and bore me,refusing to saddle herself to a meaningless, man-made partnership withinfinite possibilities of domestic hell in it, merely as a sop to theworld-Cerberus of convention. Marriage could have added nothing to herlofty conceptions of motherhood--but I--I have been keenly resentfuland sensitive--for her. I think it has been the feeling that no oneunderstood. Then, after she died, there was no one--only Philip. Isaw him rarely."
"And your cousin?"
"She had been taught--to misunderstand. There was always that barrier.And she is very high spirited. Though we were much together asyoungsters she could not forget."
A singular maternal history, a beautiful, high-spirited, intolerantcousin who had been taught to despise his mother's morality! Whatwarring forces indeed had gone to the making of this man before him.
"You have been lonely?"
"Yes," said Carl. "My mother died when I needed her most. Later whenI was very lonely--or hurt--I drank."
"And brooded!" finished Mic-co quietly.
"Yes," said Carl. "Always." He spoke a little bitterly of the wildinheritance of passions and arrogant intolerance with which Nature hadsaddled him.
"All of which," reminded Mic-co soberly, "you inflamed by intemperatedrinking. Is it an inherited appetite?"
"It is not an appetite at all," said Carl.
"You like it?"
"If you mean that to abandon it is to suffer--no. I enjoyed it---yes."
The wind that blew through the open windows and doors of the lodgestirred the moonlit water lilies in the pool. To Carl they were paleand unreal like the wraith of the days behind him. Like a reflectedcenser in the heart of the bloom shone the evening star. The peace ofit all lay in Mic-co's fine, dark, tranquil face as he talked, subtlymoulding another's mind in the pattern of his own. He did not preach.Mic-co smoked and talked philosophy.
Carl had known but little respect for the opinions of others. He wasto learn it now. He was to find his headstrong will matched by onestronger for all it was gentler; his impudent philosophy punctured by awisdom as great as it was compassionate; his own magnetic power toinfluence as he willed, a negligible factor in the presence of a manwhose magnetism was greater.
Mic-co had said quietly by the pool one night that he had been adoctor--that he loved the peace and quiet of his island home--thatyears back the Seminoles had saved his life. He had since devoted hisown life to their service. They were a pitiful, hunted remnant of agreat race who were kindred to the Aztec.
He seemed to think his explanation quite enough. Wherefore Carl asquietly accepted what he offered. There was much that he himself waspledged to withhold. Thus their friendship grew into something fineand deep that was stronger medicine for Carl than any preaching.
"My mother and I were _friends_!" said Carl one night. "When I was alad of ten or so, as a concession to convention she married the manwhose name I bear, a kindly chap who understood. He died. After thatwe were very close, my mother and I. We rode much together and talked.I think she feared for me. There was peace in my life then--like this.That is why I speak of it. I needed a friend, some one like her withbrains and grit and balance that I could respect--some one who wouldunderstand. There are but few--"
"She spoke of your own father?"
"No. I do not even know his name. We were pledged not to speak of it.I fancied as I grew older that she was sorry--"
The subject was obviously painful.
"And you've never been honestly contented since?" put in Mic-co quickly.
"Once." Carl spoke of Wherry. "They were weeks of genuine hardship,those weeks at the farm, but it's singular how frequently my mind goesback to them."
"Ah!" said Mic-co with glowing eyes, "there is no salvation like workfor the happiness of another. That I know."
So the quiet days filed by until Mic-co turned at last from the healingof the mind to the healing of the body.
"Let us test your endurance in the Seminole way," he said one morningby the island camp fire where his Indian servants cooked the food forthe lodge. Beyond lay the palmetto wigwams of the Indian servants whoworked in the island fields of corn and rice and sugar cane, made wildcassava into flour, hunted with Mic-co and rode betimes with the islandexports into civilization by the roundabout road to the south whichskirted the swamp. Off to the west, in the curious chain of islands,lay the palmetto shelter of the horses.
Mic-co placed a live coal upon the wrist of his young guest and quietlywatched. There was no flinching. The coal burned itself out upon themotionless wrist of a Spartan.
Thereafter they rode hard and hunted, day by day. Carl worked in thefields with Mic-co and the Indians, tramped at sunset over miles ofisland path fringed with groves of bitter orange, disciplining his bodyto a new endurance
. A heavy sweat at the end in a closed tent ofbuckskin which opened upon the shore of a sheltered inland lake,hardened his aching muscles to iron.
Upon the great stone heating in the fire within the sweat-lodge anIndian lad poured water. It rose in sweltering clouds of steam aboutthe naked body of Mic-co's guest, who at length plunged from the tentinto the chill waters of the lake and swam vigorously across to towelsand shelter.
Carl learned to pole a cypress canoe dexterously through miles of swamptangled with grass and lilies, through shallows and deep pools darkenedby hanging branches. He learned to tan hides and to carry a deer uponhis shoulders. Nightly he plunged from the sweat-lodge into the lakeand later slept the sleep of utter weariness under a deerskin cover.
So Mic-co disciplined the splendid body and brain of his guest to thestrength and endurance of an Indian; but the quiet hours by the poolbrought with them the subtler healing.
Carl grew browner and sturdier day by day. His eyes were quieter.There was less of arrogance too in the sensitive mouth and less ofcareless assertiveness in his manner.
So matters stood when Philip rode in by the southern trail with Sho-caw.
Now Philip had wisely waited for the inevitable readjustment, trustingentirely to Mic-co, but with the memory of Carl's haggard face andhaunted eyes, he was unprepared for the lean, tanned, wholly vigorousyoung man who sprang to meet him.
"Well!" said Philip. "Well!"
He was shaken a little and cleared his throat, at a loss for words.
"You--you infernal dub!" said Carl. It was all he could trust himselfto say.
It was a singular greeting, Mic-co thought, and very eloquent.
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