Three More John Silence Stories
Page 12
swear that the porridge, thetea, the Swedish "flatbread," and the fried fish flavoured with pointsof frizzled bacon, were better than any meal eaten elsewhere that day inthe whole world.
The first clear day in a new camp is always a furiously busy one, and wesoon dropped into the routine upon which in large measure the realcomfort of every one depends. About the cooking-fire, greatly improvedwith stones from the shore, we built a high stockade consisting ofupright poles thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with moss andlichen and weighted with rocks, and round the interior we made lowwooden seats so that we could lie round the fire even in rain and eatour meals in peace. Paths, too, outlined themselves from tent to tent,from the bathing places and the landing stage, and a fair division ofthe island was decided upon between the quarters of the men and thewomen. Wood was stacked, awkward trees and boulders removed, hammocksslung, and tents strengthened. In a word, Camp was established, andduties were assigned and accepted as though we expected to live on thisBaltic island for years to come and the smallest detail of the Communitylife was important.
Moreover, as the Camp came into being, this sense of a communitydeveloped, proving that we were a definite whole, and not merelyseparate human beings living for a while in tents upon a desert island.Each fell willingly into the routine. Sangree, as by natural selection,took upon himself the cleaning of the fish and the cutting of the woodinto lengths sufficient for a day's use. And he did it well. The pan ofwater was never without a fish, cleaned and scaled, ready to fry forwhoever was hungry; the nightly fire never died down for lack ofmaterial to throw on without going farther afield to search.
And Timothy, once reverend, caught the fish and chopped down the trees.He also assumed responsibility for the condition of the boat, and did itso thoroughly that nothing in the little cutter was ever found wanting.And when, for any reason, his presence was in demand, the first place tolook for him was--in the boat, and there, too, he was usually found,tinkering away with sheets, sails, or rudder and singing as he tinkered.
'Nor was the "reading" neglected; for most mornings there came a soundof droning voices form the white tent by the raspberry bushes, whichsignified that Sangree, the tutor, and whatever other man chanced to bein the party at the time, were hard at it with history or the classics.
And while Mrs. Maloney, also by natural selection, took charge of thelarder and the kitchen, the mending and general supervision of the roughcomforts, she also made herself peculiarly mistress of the megaphonewhich summoned to meals and carried her voice easily from one end of theisland to the other; and in her hours of leisure she daubed thesurrounding scenery on to a sketching block with all the honesty anddevotion of her determined but unreceptive soul.
Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the wilds, became I know notexactly what. She did plenty of work in the Camp, yet seemed to have novery precise duties. She was everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes sheslept in her tent, sometimes under the stars with a blanket. She knewevery inch of the island and kept turning up in places where she wasleast expected--for ever wandering about, reading her books in shelteredcorners, making little fires on sunless days to "worship by to thegods," as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive and bathe in, andswimming day and night in the warm and waveless lagoon like a fish in ahuge tank. She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her hair down andher skirts caught up to the knees, and if ever a human being turned intoa jolly savage within the compass of a single week, Joan Maloney wascertainly that human being. She ran wild.
So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong spirit of the placethat the little human fear she had yielded to so strangely on ourarrival seemed to have been utterly dispossessed. As I hoped andexpected, she made no reference to our conversation of the firstevening. Sangree bothered her with no special attentions, and after allthey were very little together. His behaviour was perfect in thatrespect, and I, for my part, hardly gave the matter another thought.Joan was ever a prey to vivid fancies of one kind or another, and thiswas one of them. Mercifully for the happiness of all concerned, it hadmelted away before the spirit of busy, active life and deep contentthat reigned over the island. Every one was intensely alive, and peacewas upon all.
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Meanwhile the effect of the camp-life began to tell. Always a searchingtest of character, its results, sooner or later, are infallible, for itacts upon the soul as swiftly and surely as the hypo bath upon thenegative of a photograph. A readjustment of the personal forces takesplace quickly; some parts of the personality go to sleep, others wakeup: but the first sweeping change that the primitive life brings aboutis that the artificial portions of the character shed themselves oneafter another like dead skins. Attitudes and poses that seemed genuinein the city drop away. The mind, like the body, grows quickly hard,simple, uncomplex. And in a camp as primitive and close to nature asours was, these effects became speedily visible.
Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the simple life when it issafely out of reach, betray themselves in camp by for ever peering aboutfor the artificial excitements of civilisation which they miss. Some getbored at once; some grow slovenly; some reveal the animal in mostunexpected fashion; and some, the select few, find themselves in veryshort order and are happy.
And, in our little party, we could flatter ourselves that we allbelonged to the last category, so far as the general effect wasconcerned. Only there were certain other changes as well, varying witheach individual, and all interesting to note.
It was only after the first week or two that these changes becamemarked, although this is the proper place, I think, to speak of them.For, having myself no other duty than to enjoy a well-earned holiday, Iused to load my canoe with blankets and provisions and journey forth onexploration trips among the islands of several days together; and it wason my return from the first of these--when I rediscovered the party, soto speak--that these changes first presented themselves vividly to me,and in one particular instance produced a rather curious impression.
In a word, then, while every one had grown wilder, naturally wilder,Sangree, it seemed to me, had grown much wilder, and what I can onlycall unnaturally wilder. He made me think of a savage.
To begin with, he had changed immensely in mere physical appearance, andthe full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and thegeneral air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace hiscustomary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that Ihardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and hismanner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence inhimself. He now had some claims to be called nice-looking, or at leastto a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyesof the opposite sex.
All this, of course, was natural enough, and most welcome. But,altogether apart from this physical change, which no doubt had also beengoing forward in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in hispersonality that came to me with a degree of surprise that almostamounted to shock.
And two things--as he came down to welcome me and pull up thecanoe--leaped up in my mind unbidden, as though connected in some way Icould not at the moment divine--first, the curious judgment formed ofhim by Joan; and secondly, that fugitive expression I had caught in hisface while Maloney was offering up his strange prayer for specialprotection from Heaven.
The delicacy of manner and feature--to call it by no milder term--whichhad always been a distinguishing characteristic of the man, had beenreplaced by something far more vigorous and decided, that yet utterlyeluded analysis. The change which impressed me so oddly was not easy toname. The others--singing Maloney, the bustling Bo'sun's Mate, and Joan,that fascinating half-breed of undine and salamander--all showed theeffects of a life so close to nature; but in their case the change wasperfectly natural and what was to be expected, whereas with PeterSangree, the Canadian, it was something unusual and unexpected.
It is impossible to explain how he managed gradually to convey to mymind the impression that
something in him had turned savage, yet this,more or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was not that heseemed really less civilised, or that his character had undergone anydefinite alteration, but rather that something in him, hitherto dormant,had awakened to life. Some quality, latent till now--so far, at least,as we were concerned, who, after all, knew him but slightly--had stirredinto activity and risen to the surface of his being.
And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as I could get, it was butnatural that my mind should continue the intuitive process andacknowledge that John Silence, owing to his peculiar faculties, and thegirl, owing to her singularly receptive temperament, might each in adifferent way have divined this latent quality in his soul, and fearedits manifestation later.
On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it now seems equallynatural that the same process, carried to its logical conclusion, shouldhave wakened some deep instinct in me that, wholly without directionfrom