CHAPTER VI
CONSTANCE SHERRILL
In the morning a great change had come over the lake. The wind stillblew freshly, but no longer fiercely, from the west; and now, frombefore the beach beyond the drive, and from the piers and breakwatersat the harbor mouth, and from all the western shore, the ice haddeparted. Far out, a nearly indiscernible white line marked theice-floe where it was traveling eastward before the wind; nearer, andwith only a gleaming crystal fringe of frozen snow clinging to theshore edge, the water sparkled, blue and dimpling, under the morningsun; multitudes of gulls, hungry after the storm, called to one anotherand circled over the breakwaters, the piers, and out over the water asfar as the eye could see; and a half mile off shore, a little workboat--a shallop twenty feet long--was put-put-ing on some errand alonga path where twelve hours before no horsepower creatable by man couldhave driven the hugest steamer.
Constance Sherrill, awakened by the sunlight reflected from the waterupon her ceiling, found nothing odd or startling in this change; itroused her but did not surprise her. Except for the short periods ofher visits away from Chicago, she had lived all her life on the shoreof the lake: the water--wonderful, ever altering--was the first sighteach morning. As it made wilder and more grim the desolation of astormy day, so it made brighter and more smiling the splendor of thesunshine and, by that much more, influenced one's feelings.
Constance held by preference to the seagoing traditions of her family.Since she was a child, the lake and the life of the ships had delightedand fascinated her; very early she had discovered that, upon the lake,she was permitted privileges sternly denied upon land--an arbitrarydistinction which led her to designate water, when she was a littlegirl, as her family's "respectable element." For while her father'sinvestments were, in part, on the water, her mother's property all wason the land. Her mother, who was a Seaton, owned property somewhere inthe city, in common with Constance's uncles; this property consisted,as Constance succeeded in ascertaining about the time she was nine, oflarge, wholesale grocery buildings. They and the "brand" had been inthe possession of the Seaton family for many years; both Constance'suncles worked in the big buildings where the canning was done; and,when Constance was taken to visit them, she found the place mostinteresting--the berries and fruit coming up in great steamingcauldrons; the machines pushing the cans under the enormous faucetswhere the preserves ran out and then sealing the cans and pasting thebright Seaton "brand" about them. The people there wereinteresting--the girls with flying fingers sorting fruit, and the menpounding the big boxes together; and the great shaggy-hoofed horseswhich pulled the huge, groaning wagons were most fascinating. Shewanted to ride on one of the wagons; but her request was promptly andcompletely squashed.
It was not "done"; nor was anything about the groceries and the canningto be mentioned before visitors; Constance brought up the subject onceand found out. It was different about her father's ships. She couldtalk about them when she wanted to; and her father often spoke of them;and any one who came to the house could speak about them. Ships,apparently, were respectable.
When she went down to the docks with her father, she could climb allover them, if she was only careful of her clothes; she could spend aday watching one of her father's boats discharging grain or anotherunloading ore; and, when she was twelve, for a great treat, her fathertook her on one of the freighters to Duluth; and for one delightful,wonderful week she chummed with the captain and mates and wheelmen andlearned all the pilot signals and the way the different lighthouseswinked.
Mr. Spearman, who recently had become a partner of her father's, wasalso on the boat upon that trip. He had no particular duty; he wasjust "an owner" like her father; but Constance observed that, while thecaptain and the mates and the engineers were always polite andrespectful to her father, they asked Mr. Spearman's opinion aboutthings in a very different way and paid real attention--not merelypolite attention--when he talked. He was a most desirable sort ofacquisition; for he was a friend who could come to the house at anytime, and yet he, himself, had done all sorts of exciting things. Hehad not just gone to Harvard and then become an owner, as Constance'sfather had; at fifteen, he had run away from his father's farm backfrom the east shore of little Traverse Bay near the northern end ofLake Michigan. At eighteen, after all sorts of adventures, he hadbecome mate of a lumber schooner; he had "taken to steam" shortly afterthat and had been an officer upon many kinds of ships. Then UncleBenny had taken him into partnership. Constance had a most excitingexample of what he could do when the ship ran into a big storm on LakeSuperior.
Coming into Whitefish Bay, a barge had blundered against the vessel; aseam started, and water came in so fast that it gained on the pumps.Instantly, Mr. Spearman, not the captain, was in command and, from theway he steered the ship to protect the seam and from the scheme hedevised to stay the inrush of water, the pumps began to gain at once,and the ship went into Duluth safe and dry. Constance liked that in aman of the sort whom people knew. For, as the most activepartner--though not the chief stockholder--of Corvet, Sherrill andSpearman, almost every one in the city knew him. He had his bachelor"rooms" in one of the newest and most fashionable of the apartmentbuildings facing the lake just north of the downtown city; he hadbecome a member of the best city and country clubs; and he was welcomedquickly along the Drive, where the Sherrills' mansion was coming to beconsidered a characteristic "old" Chicago home.
But little over forty, and appearing even younger, Spearman wasdistinctly of the new generation; and Constance Sherrill was only oneof many of the younger girls who found in Henry Spearman refreshingrelief from the youths who were the sons of men but who could neverbecome men themselves. They were nice, earnest boys with all sorts ofserious Marxian ideas of establishing social justice in the plantswhich their fathers had built; and carrying the highest motives intothe city or national politics. But the industrial reformers, Constancewas quite certain, never could have built up the industries with whichthey now, so superiorly, were finding fault; the political purifierseither failed of election or, if elected, seemed to leave politicspretty much as they had been before. The picture of Spearman,instantly appealed to and instantly in charge in the emergency,remained and became more vivid within Constance, because she never sawhim except when he dominated.
And a decade most amazingly had bridged the abyss which had separatedtwelve years and thirty-two. At twenty-two, Constance Sherrill wasfinding Henry Spearman--age forty-two--the most vitalizing andinteresting of the men who moved, socially, about the restrictedellipse which curved down the lake shore south of the park and up AstorStreet. He had, very early, recognized that he possessed the vigor andcourage to carry him far, and he had disciplined himself until thecoarseness and roughness, which had sometimes offended the little girlof ten years before, had almost vanished. What crudities still cameout, romantically reminded of his hard, early life on the lakes. Hadthere been anything in that life of his of which he had not toldher--something worse than merely rough and rugged, which could strikeat her? Uncle Benny's last, dramatic appeal to her had suggested that;but even at the moment when he was talking to her, fright for UncleBenny--not dread that there had been anything wrong in Henry'slife--had most moved her. Uncle Benny very evidently was not himself.As long as Constance could remember, he had quarreled violently withHenry; his antagonism to Henry had become almost an obsession; andConstance had her father's word for it that, a greater part of thetime, Uncle Benny had no just ground for his quarrel with Henry. Amost violent quarrel had occurred upon that last day, and undoubtedlyits fury had carried Uncle Benny to the length of going to Constance ashe did.
Constance had come to this conclusion during the last gloomy and stormydays; this morning, gazing out upon the shining lake, clear blue underthe wintry sun, she was more satisfied than before. Summoning hermaid, she inquired first whether anything had been heard since lastnight of Mr. Corvet. She was quite sure, if her father had had word,he would have awakened her; and t
here was no news. But Uncle Benny'sson, she remembered, was coming to breakfast.
Uncle Benny's son! That suggested to Constance's mother only somethingunpleasant, something to be avoided and considered as little aspossible. But Alan--Uncle Benny's son--was not unpleasant at all; hewas, in fact, quite the reverse. Constance had liked him from themoment that, confused a little by Benjamin Corvet's absence andSimons's manner in greeting him, he had turned to her for explanation;she had liked the way he had openly studied her and approved her, asshe was approving him; she had liked the way he had told her ofhimself, and the fact that he knew nothing of the man who proved to behis father; she had liked very much the complete absence of impulse toforce or to pretend feeling when she had brought him the picture of hisfather--when he, amazed at himself for not feeling, had looked at her;and she had liked most of all his refusal, for himself and for hisfather, to accept positive stigma until it should be proved.
She had not designated any hour for breakfast, and she supposed that,coming from the country, he would believe breakfast to be early. Butwhen she got downstairs, though it was nearly nine o'clock, he had notcome; she went to the front window to watch for him, and after a fewminutes she saw him approaching, looking often to the lake as thoughamazed by the change in it.
She went to the door and herself let him in.
"Father has gone down-town," she told him, as he took off his things."Mr. Spearman returns from Duluth this morning, and father wished totell him about you as soon as possible. I told father you had come tosee him last night; and he said to bring you down to the office."
"I overslept, I'm afraid," Alan said.
"You slept well, then?"
"Very well--after a while."
"I'll take you down-town myself after breakfast."
She said no more but led him into the breakfast room. It was adelightful, cozy little room, Dutch furnished, with a single widewindow to the east, an enormous hooded fireplace taking up half thenorth wall, and blue Delft tiles set above it and paneled in the wallsall about the room. There were the quaint blue windmills, the fishingboats, the baggy-breeked, wooden-shod folk, the canals and barges, thedikes and their guardians, and the fishing ship on the Zuyder Zee.
Alan gazed about at these with quick, appreciative interest. Hisquality of instantly noticing and appreciating anything unusual was,Constance thought, one of his pleasantest and best characteristics.
"I like those too; I selected them myself in Holland," she observed.
She took her place beside the coffee pot, and when he remainedstanding--"Mother always has her breakfast in bed; that's your place,"she said.
He took the chair opposite her. There was fruit upon the table;Constance took an orange and passed the little silver basket across.
"This is such a little table; we never use it if there's more than twoor three of us; and we like to help ourselves here."
"I like it very much," Alan said.
"Coffee right away or later?"
"Whenever you do. You see," he explained, smiling in a way thatpleased her, "I haven't the slightest idea what else is coming orwhether anything more at all is coming." A servant entered, bringingcereal and cream; he removed the fruit plates, put the cereal dish andtwo bowls before Constance, and went out. "And if any one in BlueRapids," Alan went on, "had a man waiting in the dining-room and atleast one other in the kitchen, they would not speak of our activitieshere as 'helping ourselves.' I'm not sure just how they would speak ofthem; we--the people I was with in Kansas--had a maidservant at onetime when we were on the farm, and when we engaged her, she asked, 'Doyou do your own stretching?' That meant serving from the stove to thetable, usually."
He was silent for a few moments; when he looked at her across the tableagain, he seemed about to speak seriously. His gaze left her face andthen came back.
"Miss Sherrill," he said gravely, "what is, or was, the _Miwaka_? Aship?"
He made no attempt to put the question casually; rather, he had made itmore evident that it was of concern to him by the change in his manner.
"The _Miwaka_?" Constance said.
"Do you know what it was?"
"Yes; I know; and it was a ship."
"You mean it doesn't exist any more?"
"No; it was lost a long time ago."
"On the lakes here?"
"On Lake Michigan."
"You mean by lost that it was sunk?"
"It was sunk, of course; but no one knows what happened to it--whetherit was wrecked or burned or merely foundered."
The thought of the unknown fate of the ship and crew--of the ship whichhad sailed and never reached port and of which nothing ever had beenheard but the beating of the Indian drum--set her blood tingling as ithad done before, when she had been told about the ship, or when she hadtold others about it and the superstition connected with it. It wasplain Alan Conrad had not asked about it idly; something about the_Miwaka_ had come to him recently and had excited his intense concern.
"Whose ship was it?" he asked. "My father's?"
"No; it belonged to Stafford and Ramsdell. They were two of the bigmen of their time in the carrying trade on the lakes, but their linehas been out of business for years; both Mr. Stafford and Mr. Ramsdellwere lost with the _Miwaka_."
"Will you tell me about it, and them, please?"
"I've told you almost all I can about Stafford and Ramsdell, I'mafraid; I've just heard father say that they were men who could haveamounted to a great deal on the lakes, if they had lived--especiallyMr. Stafford, who was very young. The _Miwaka_ was a great new steelship--built the year after I was born; it was the first of nearly adozen that Stafford and Ramsdell had planned to build. There was somedoubt among lake men about steel boats at that time; they had begun tobe built very largely quite a few years before, but recently there hadbeen some serious losses with them. Whether it was because they werebuilt on models not fitted for the lakes, no one knew; but several ofthem had broken in two and sunk, and a good many men were talking aboutgoing back to wood. But Stafford and Ramsdell believed in steel andhad finished this first one of their new boats.
"She left Duluth for Chicago, loaded with ore, on the first day ofDecember, with both owners and part of their families on board. Shepassed the Soo on the third and went through the Straits of Mackinac onthe fourth into Lake Michigan. After that, nothing was ever heard ofher."
"So probably she broke in two like the others?"
"Mr. Spearman and your father both thought so; but nobody ever knew--nowreckage came ashore--no message of any sort from any one on board. Avery sudden winter storm had come up and was at its worst on themorning of the fifth. Uncle Benny--your father--told me once, when Iasked him about it, that it was as severe for a time as any he had everexperienced. He very nearly lost his life in it. He had just finishedlaying up one of his boats--the _Martha Corvet_--at Manistee for thewinter; and he and Mr. Spearman, who then was mate of the _MarthaCorvet_, were crossing the lake in a tug with a crew of four men toManitowoc, where they were going to lay up more ships. The captain andone of the deck hands of the tug were washed overboard, and theengineer was lost trying to save them. Uncle Benny and Mr. Spearmanand the stoker brought the tug in. The storm was worst about five inthe morning, when the _Miwaka_ sunk."
"How do you know that the _Miwaka_ sunk at five," Alan asked, "if noone ever heard from the ship?"
"Oh; that was told by the Drum!"
"The Drum?"
"Yes; the Indian Drum! I forgot; of course you didn't know. It's asuperstition that some of the lake men have, particularly those whocome from people at the other end of the lake. The Indian Drum is inthe woods there, they say. No one has seen it; but many people believethat they have heard it. It's a spirit drum which beats, they say, forevery ship lost on the lake. There's a particular superstition aboutit in regard to the _Miwaka_; for the drum beat wrong for the _Miwaka_.You see, the people about there swear that about five o'clock in themorning of the fifth, whi
le the storm was blowing terribly, they heardthe drum beating and knew that a ship was going down. They counted thesounds as it beat the roll of the dead. It beat twenty-four before itstopped and then began to beat again and beat twenty-four; so, later,everybody knew it had been beating for the _Miwaka_; for every othership on the lake got to port; but there were twenty-five altogether onthe _Miwaka_, so either the drum beat wrong or--" she hesitated.
"Or what?"
"Or the drum was right, and some one was saved. Many people believedthat. It was years before the families of the men on board gave uphope, because of the Drum; maybe some haven't given up hope yet."
Alan made no comment for a moment. Constance had seen the blood flushto his face and then leave it, and her own pulse had beat as swiftly asshe rehearsed the superstition. As he gazed at her and then away, itwas plain that he had heard something additional about the_Miwaka_--something which he was trying to fit into what she told him.
"That's all anybody knows?" His gaze came back to her at last.
"Yes; why did you ask about it--the _Miwaka_? I mean, how did you hearabout it so you wanted to know?"
He considered an instant before replying. "I encountered a referenceto the _Miwaka_--I supposed it must be a ship--in my father's houselast night."
His manner, as he looked down at his coffee cup, toying with it,prevented her then from asking more; he seemed to know that she wishedto press it, and he looked up quickly.
"I met my servant--my father's servant--this morning," he said.
"Yes; he got back this morning. He came here early to report to fatherthat he had no news of Uncle Benny; and father told him you were at thehouse and sent him over."
Alan was studying the coffee cup again, a queer expression on his facewhich she could not read.
"He was there when I woke up this morning, Miss Sherrill. I hadn'theard anybody in the house, but I saw a little table on wheels standingin the hall outside my door and a spirit lamp and a little coffee poton it, and a man bending over it, warming the cup. His back was towardme, and he had straight black hair, so that at first I thought he was aJap; but when he turned around, I saw he was an American Indian."
"Yes; that was Wassaquam."
"Is that his name? He told me it was Judah."
"Yes--Judah Wassaquam. He's a Chippewa from the north end of the lake.They're very religious there, most of the Indians at the foot of thelake; and many of them have a Biblical name which they use for a firstname and use their Indian name for a last one."
"He called me 'Alan' and my father 'Ben.'"
"The Indians almost always call people by their first names."
"He said that he had always served 'Ben' his coffee that way before hegot up, and so he had supposed he was to do the same by me; and alsothat, long ago, he used to be a deck hand on one of my father's ships."
"Yes; when Uncle Benny began to operate ships of his own, many of theships on the lakes had Indians among the deck hands; some had allIndians for crews and white men only for officers. Wassaquam was onthe first freighter Uncle Benny ever owned a share in; afterwards hecame here to Chicago with Uncle Benny. He's been looking after UncleBenny all alone now for more than ten years--and he's very much devotedto him, and fully trustworthy; and besides that, he's a wonderful cook;but I've wondered sometimes whether Uncle Benny wasn't the only cityman in the world who had an Indian body servant."
"You know a good deal about Indians."
"A little about the lake Indians, the Chippewas and Pottawatomies innorthern Michigan."
"Recollection's a funny thing," Alan said, after considering a moment."This morning, after seeing Judah and talking to him--or rather hearinghim talk--somehow a story got running in my head. I can't make outexactly what it was--about a lot of animals on a raft; and there wassome one with them--I don't know who; I can't fit any name to him; buthe had a name."
Constance bent forward quickly. "Was the name Michabou?" she asked.
He returned her look, surprised. "That's it; how did you know?"
"I think I know the story; and Wassaquam would have known it too, Ithink, if you'd ask him; but probably he would have thought it impiousto tell it, because he and his people are great Christians now.Michabou is one of the Indian names for Manitou. What else do youremember of the story?"
"Not much, I'm afraid--just sort of scenes here and there; but I canremember the beginning now that you have given me the name: 'In thebeginning of all things there was only water and Michabou was floatingon the raft with all the animals.' Michabou, it seemed, wanted theland brought up so that men and animals could live on it, and he askedone of the animals to go down and bring it up--"
"The beaver," Constance supplied.
"Was the beaver the first one? The beaver dived and stayed down a longtime, so long that when he came up he was breathless and completelyexhausted, but he had not been able to reach the bottom. Then Michabousent down--"
"The otter."
"And he stayed down much longer than the beaver, and when he came up atlast, they dragged him on to the raft quite senseless; but he hadn'tbeen able to reach the bottom either. So the animals and Michabouhimself were ready to give it up; but then the little muskrat spokeup--am I right? Was this the muskrat?"
"Yes."
"Then you can finish it for me?"
"He dived and he stayed down, the little muskrat," Constance continued,"longer than the beaver and the otter both together. Michabou and theanimals waited all day for him to come up, and they watched all throughthe night; so then they knew he must be dead. And, sure enough, theycame after a while across the body floating on the water and apparentlylifeless. They dragged him onto the raft and found that his littlepaws were all tight shut. They forced open three of the paws and foundnothing in them, but when they opened the last one, they found onegrain of sand tightly clutched in it. The little muskrat had done it;he'd reached the bottom! And out of that one grain of sand, Michaboumade the world."
"That's it," he said. "Now what is it?"
"The Indian story of creation--or one of them."
"Not a story of the plain Indians surely."
"No; of the Indians who live about the lakes and so got the idea thateverything was water in the first place--the Indians who live on theislands and peninsulas. That's how I came to know it."
"I thought that must be it," Alan said. His hand trembled a little ashe lifted his coffee cup to his lips.
Constance too flushed a little with excitement; it was a surprisinglyclose and intimate thing to have explored with another back into theconcealments of his first child consciousness, to have aided another inthe sensitive task of revealing himself to himself. This which she hadhelped to bring back to him must have been one of the first storiestold him; he had been a very little boy, when he had been taken toKansas, away from where he must have heard this story--the lakes. Shewas a little nervous also from watching the time as told by the tinywatch on her wrist. Henry's train from Duluth must be in now; and hehad not yet called her, as had been his custom recently, as soon as hereturned to town after a trip. But, in a minute, a servant entered toinform her that Mr. Spearman wished to speak to her. She excusedherself to Alan and hurried out. Henry was calling her from therailroad station and, he said, from a most particularly stuffy boothand, besides having a poor connection, there was any amount of noiseabout him; but he was very anxious to see Constance as soon aspossible. Could she be in town that morning and have luncheon withhim? Yes; she was going down-town very soon and, after luncheon, hecould come home with her if he wished. He certainly did wish, but hecouldn't tell yet what he might have to do in the afternoon, but pleasewould she save the evening for him. She promised and started to tellhim about Alan, then recollected that Henry was going to see her fatherimmediately at the office.
Alan was standing, waiting for her, when she returned to the breakfastroom.
"Ready to go down-town?" she asked.
"Whenever you are."
"I'll be ready in a minute. I'm planning to drive; are you afraid?"
He smiled in his pleasant way as he glanced over her; she had becomeconscious of saying that sort of thing to tempt the smile. "Oh, I'lltake the risk."
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