Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Why, this way: The Vassar undergraduates, who formerly, after commencement, scattered into all the complexities of a silly, unprofitable, good old summer time, now have a chance to acquire simplicity and a taste for the rudimentary pleasures and pursuits they have overlooked in their twentieth-century gallop after the complex.”

  Ellis sullenly freed his line and glanced up at the clouds. It was already raining on the Golden Dome.

  “So,” continued Jones, “the Summer School took to the woods along with the rest of the simple-minded. I hear they have a library; doubtless it contains the Outlook and the Rollo books. They have courses in the earlier and simpler languages — the dead ‘uns — Sanskrit, Greek, Latin; English, too, before it grew pin-feathers. They have a grand-stand built of logs out yonder where the mosquito hummeth; and some trees and a pond which they call a theatre devoted to the portrayal of the great primitive and simple passions and emotions. They have also dammed up the stream to make a real lake when they give tank-dramas like Lohengrin and the Rheingold; and the papers say they have a pair of live swans hitched to a boat — that is, a yellow reporter swears they have, but he was discovered taking snapshots at some Rhine-wine daughters, and hustled out of the woods — —”

  He paused to watch Ellis hook and play and presently land a splendid trout weighing close to two pounds.

  “It’s an outrage, an infernal outrage, for such people to dam the Caranay and invade this God-given forest with their unspeakable tin signs!” said Ellis, casting again.

  “But they’re only looking for a simpler life — just like you.”

  Ellis said something.

  “That,” replied Jones, “is a simple and ancient word expressing tersely one of the simplest and most primitive passions. You know, the simple life is merely a “state of mind”; you’re acquiring it; I recognize the symptoms.”

  Ellis made another observation, more or less mandatory.

  “Yes, that is a locality purely mythical, according to our later exponents of theology; therefore I cannot accept the suggestion to go there — —”

  “Confound it!” exclaimed Ellis, laughing, as he landed a trout, “let up on your joking. I’m mad all through, and it’s beginning to rain. When that thunder comes nearer it will end the fishing, too. Look at Lynx Peak! Did you see that play of lightning? There’s a corker of a storm brewing. I hope,” he added, savagely, “it will carry away their confounded dam and their ridiculous lake. The nerve of women to dam a trout stream like the Caranay.... What was that you said?”

  “I said,” hissed Jones in a weird whisper, “that there are two girls standing behind us and taking our pictures with a kodak! Don’t look around, man! They’ll snap-shoot us for evidence!”

  But the caution was too late; Ellis had turned. There came a click of a kodak shutter; Jones turned in spite of himself; another click sounded.

  “Stang!” breathed Jones as two young girls stepped from the shelter of a juniper brush and calmly confronted the astonished trespassers.

  “I am very sorry to trouble you,” said the taller one severely, “but this is private property.”

  Ellis took off his cap; Jones did the same.

  “I saw your signs,” said Ellis, pleasantly. Jones whispered to him: “The taller one is a corker!” and Ellis replied under his breath: “The other is attractive, too.”

  “You admit that you deliberately trespassed?” inquired the shorter girl very gravely.

  “Not upon you — only upon what you call your property,” said Ellis, gaily. “You see, we really need the trout in our business — which is to keep soul and body on friendly terms.”

  No answering smile touched the pretty grey eyes fixed on his. She said gravely: “I am very sorry that this has happened.”

  “We’re sorry, too,” smiled Jones, “although we can scarcely regret the charming accident which permits us — —”

  But it wouldn’t do; the taller girl stared at him coldly from a pair of ornamental brown eyes.

  Presently she said: “We students are supposed to report cases like this. If you have deliberately chosen to test the law governing the protection of private property no doubt our Summer School authorities will be willing to gratify you before a proper tribunal.... May I ask your names?” She drew a notebook from the pocket of her kilted skirt, standing gracefully with pencil poised, dark eyes focused upon Jones. And, as she waited, the thunder boomed behind the Golden Dome.

  “It’s going to rain cats and dogs,” said Jones, anxiously “and you haven’t an umbrella — —”

  The dark-eyed girl gazed at him scornfully. “Do you refuse your name?”

  “No — oh, not at all!” said Jones hastily; “my name is Jones — —”

  The scorn deepened. “And — is this Mr. Smith?” she inquired, looking at Ellis.

  “My name is Jones,” said Jones so earnestly that his glasses fell off. “And what’s worse, it’s John Jones.”

  Something in his eye engaged her attention — perhaps the unwinking innocence of it. She wrote “John Jones” on her pad, noted his town address, and turned to Ellis, who was looking fixedly, but not offensively, at the girl with the expressive grey eyes.

  “If you have a pad I’ll surrender to you,” he said, amiably. “There is glory enough for all here, as our admiral once remarked.”

  The grey eyes glimmered; a quiver touched the scarlet mouth. But a crash of nearer thunder whitened the smile on her lips.

  “Helen, I’m going!” she said hastily to her of the brown eyes.

  “That storm,” said Ellis calmly, “has a long way to travel before it strikes the Caranay valley.” He pointed with his rod, tracing in the sky the route of the crowding clouds. “Every storm that hatches behind the Golden Dome swings south along the Black Water first, then curves and comes around by the west and sweeps the Caranay. You have plenty of time to take my name.”

  “But — but the play? I was thinking of the play,” she said, looking anxiously at the brown eyes, which were raised to the sky in silent misgiving.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so,” said Ellis, “there is ample time for your outdoor theatricals — if you mean that. You need not look for that storm on the upper Caranay before late this afternoon. Even then it may break behind the mountains and you may see no rain — only a flood in the river.”

  “Do you really think so?” she asked.

  “I do; I can almost answer for it. You see, the Caranay has been my haunt for many years, and I know almost to a certainty what is likely to happen here.”

  “That is jolly!” she exclaimed, greatly relieved. “Helen, I really think we should be starting — —”

  But Helen, pencil poised, gazed obdurately at Ellis out of brown eyes which were scarcely fashioned for such impartial and inexorable work.

  “If your name is not Smith I should be very glad to note it,” she said.

  So he laughed and told her who he was and where he lived; and she wrote it down, somewhat shakily.

  “Of course,” she said, “you cannot be the artist — James Lowell Ellis, the artist — the great — —”

  She hesitated; brown eyes and grey eyes, very wide now, were concentrated on him. Jones, too, stared, and Ellis laughed.

  “Are you?” blurted out Jones. “Great Heaven! I never supposed — —”

  Ellis joined in a quartet of silence, then laughed again, a short, embarrassed laugh.

  “You don’t look like anything famous, you know,” said Jones reproachfully. “Why didn’t you tell me who you are? Why, man, I own two of your pictures!”

  To brown-eyes, known so far as “Helen,” Ellis said: “We painters are a bad lot, you see — but don’t let that prejudice you against Mr. Jones; he really doesn’t know me very well. Besides, I dragged him into this villainy; didn’t I, Jones? You didn’t want to trespass, you know.”

  “Oh, come!” said Jones; “I own two of your pictures — the Amourette and the Corrida. That ought to convict me of almost a
nything.”

  Grey-eyes said: “We — my father — has the Espagnolita, Mr. Ellis.” She blushed when she finished.

  “Why, then, you must be Miss Sandys!” said Ellis quickly. “Mr. Kenneth Sandys owns that picture.”

  The brown eyes, which had widened, then sparkled, then softened as matters developed, now became uncompromisingly beautiful.

  “I am dreadfully sorry,” she said, looking at her notebook. “I trust that the school authorities may not press matters.” Then she raised her eyes to see what Jones’s expression might resemble. It resembled absolutely nothing.

  After a silence Miss Sandys said: “Do you think Helen, that we are — that we ought to report this — —”

  “Yes, Molly, I do.”

  “I’m only an architect; fine me, but spare my friend, Ellis,” said Jones far too playfully to placate the brown-eyed Helen. She returned his glance with a scrutiny devoid of expression. The thunder boomed along the flanks of Lynx Peak.

  “We — we are very sorry,” whispered Miss Sandys.

  “I am, too,” replied Ellis — not meaning anything concerning his legal predicament.

  Brown-eyes looked at Jones; there was a little inclination of her pretty head as she passed them. A moment later the two young men stood alone, caps in hand, gazing fixedly into the gathering dimness of Caranay forest.

  CHAPTER XV

  FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

  “Ellis,” said Jones, earnestly, as they climbed to the camp and stood gazing at the whitening ashes of their fire, “the simple life is a state of mind. I’m in it, now. And — do you know, Ellis, that — I — I could learn to like it?”

  Ellis prodded the back-log, and tossed on some dry sticks.

  “Great Heaven!” breathed Jones, “did you ever see such eyes, Ellis?”

  “The grey ones? They’re very noticeable — —”

  “I meant — well, let it go at that. Here be two of us have lost a thousand shillings to-day.”

  “And the ladies were not in buckram,” rejoined Ellis, starting a blaze. “Jones, can you prepare trout for the pan with the aid of a knife? Here, rub salt in ’em — and leave all but two in that big tin — dry, mind, then cover it and sink it in the spring, or something furry will come nosing and clawing at it. I’ll have things ready by the time you’re back.”

  “About our canoes,” began Jones. “I’ve daubed mine with white lead, but I cut it up badly. Hadn’t we better attend to them before the storm breaks?”

  “Get yours into camp. I’ll fetch mine; it’s cached just below the forks. This storm may tear things.”

  A quarter of an hour later two vigorous young men swung into camp, lowered the canoes from their heads and shoulders, carried the strapped kits, poles and paddles into the lean-to, and turned the light crafts bottom up as flanking shelters to headquarters.

  “No use fishing; that thunder is spoiling the Caranay,” muttered Ellis, moving about and setting the camp in order. “This is a fine lean-to,” he added; “it’s big enough for a regiment.”

  “I told you I was an architect,” said Jones, surveying the open-faced shanty with pride. “I had nothing else to do, so I spent the time in making this. I’m a corker on the classic. Shall I take an axe and cut some wood in the Ionic or Doric style?”

  Ellis, squatting among the provisions, busily bringing order out of chaos, told him what sort of wood to cut; and an hour later, when the echoing thwacks of the axe ceased and Jones came in loaded with firewood, the camp was in order; hambones, stale bedding, tin cans, the heads and spinal processes of trout had been removed, dishes polished, towels washed and drying, and a pleasant aroma of balsam tips mingled with the spicy scent of the fire.

  “Whew!” said Jones, sniffing; “it smells pleasant now.”

  “Your camp,” observed Ellis, “had all the fragrance of a dog-fox in March. How heavy the air is. Listen to that thunder! There’s the deuce to pay on the upper waters of the Caranay by this time.”

  “Do you think we’ll get it?”

  “Not the rain and wind; the electrical storms usually swing off, following the Big Oswaya. But we may have a flood.” He arose and picked up his rod. “The thunder has probably blanked me, but if you’ll tend camp I’ll try to pick up some fish in a binnikill I know of where the trout are habituated to the roar of the fork falls. We may need every fish we can get if the flood proves a bad one.”

  Jones said it would suit him perfectly to sit still. He curled up close enough to the fire for comfort as well as æsthetic pleasure, removed his eyeglasses, fished out a flask of aromatic mosquito ointment, and solemnly began a facial toilet, in the manner of a comfortable house cat anointing her countenance with one paw.

  “Ellis,” he said, blinking up at that young man very amiably, “it would be agreeable to see a little more of — of Miss Sandys; wouldn’t it? And the other — —”

  “We could easily do that.”

  “Eh? How?”

  “By engaging an attorney to defend ourselves in court,” said Ellis grimly.

  “Pooh! You don’t suppose that brown-eyed girl — —”

  “Yes, I do! She means mischief. If it had rested with the other — —”

  “You’re mistaken,” said Jones, warmly. “I am perfectly persuaded that if I had had half an hour’s playful conversation with the brown-eyed one — —”

  “You tried playfulness and fell down,” observed Ellis, coldly. “If I could have spoken to Miss Sandys — —”

  “What! A girl with steel-grey eyes like two poniards? A lot of mercy she would show us! My dear fellow, trust in the brown eye every time! The warm, humane, brown eye — the emotional, the melting, the tender brown — —”

  “Don’t trust it! Didn’t she kodak twice? You and I are now in her Rogues’ Gallery. Besides, didn’t she take notes on her pad? I never observed anything humane in brown eyes.”

  Jones polished his nose with the mosquito salve.

  “How do you know what she wanted my picture for?” he asked, annoyed. “Perhaps she means to keep it for herself — if that grey-eyed one lets her alone — —”

  “Let the grey-eyed one alone yourself,” retorted Ellis, warmly.

  “You’d better, too. Any expert in human character can tell you which of those girls means mischief.”

  “If you think you’re an expert—” began Ellis, irritated, then stopped short. Jones followed his eyes.

  “Look at that stream,” said Ellis, dropping his rod against the lean-to. “There’s been a cloudburst in the mountains. There’s no rain here, but look at that stream! Yellow and bank-full! Hark! Hear the falls. I have an idea the woods will be awash below us in an hour.”

  They descended to the ledge which an hour ago had overhung the stream. Now the water was level with it, lapping over it, rising perceptibly in the few seconds they stood there. Alders and willows along the banks, almost covered, staggered in the discolored water; drift of all sorts came tumbling past, rotten branches, piles of brush afloat, ferns and shrubs uprooted; the torrent was thick with flakes of bark and forest mould and green-leaved twigs torn from the stream-side.

  From the lower reaches a deer came galloping toward the ridges; a fox stole furtively into the open, hesitated, and slunk off up the valley.

  And now the shallow gorge began to roar under the rising flood; tumbling castles of piled-up foam whirled into view; the amber waves washed through the fringing beech growth, slopping into hollows, setting the dead leaves afloat. A sucking sound filled the woods; millions of tiny bubbles purred in the shallow overflow; here and there dead branches stirred, swung and floated.

  “Our camp is going to be an island pretty soon,” observed Ellis; “just look at — —”

  But Jones caught him by the arm. “What is that?” he demanded shakily. “Are there things like that in these woods?”

  At the same instant Ellis caught sight of something in midstream bearing down on them in a smother of foam — an enormous lizard-like creature fl
oundering throat-deep in the flood.

  “What is it, Ellis? Look! It’s got a tail ten feet long! Great Heaven, look at it!”

  “I see it,” said Ellis, hoarsely. “I never saw such a thing — —”

  “It’s opening its jaws!” gasped Jones.

  Ellis, a trifle white around the cheekbones, stared in frozen silence at the fearsome creature as it swept down on them. A crested wave rolled it over; four fearsome claws waved in the air; then the creature righted itself and swung in toward the bank.

  “Upon my word!” stammered Ellis; “it’s part of their theatrical property. Lord! how real it looked out yonder. I knew it couldn’t be alive, but — Jones, see how my hands are shaking. Would you believe a man could be rattled like that?”

  “Believe it? I should say I could! Look at the thing wabbling there in the shallows as though it were trying to move its flippers! Look at it, Ellis; see how it seems to wriggle and paddle — —”

  The words froze on his lips; the immense creature was moving; the scaled claws churned the shallows; a spasm shook the head; the jaws gaped.

  “Help!” said a very sweet and frightened voice.

  Ellis got hold of one claw, Jones the other, almost before they comprehended — certainly before, deep in the scaly creature’s maw, they discovered the frightened but lovely features of the grey-eyed girl who had snap-shot them.

  “Please pull,” she said; “I can’t swim in this!”

  Almost hysterically they soothed her as they tugged and steered the thing into the flooded forest.

  “Mr. Ellis — please — please don’t pull quite so hard,” she called out.

  “Oh, did I hurt you?” he cried so tenderly that, even in the shock of emotions, Jones was ashamed of him.

  “No, you don’t hurt me, Mr. Ellis; I’m all right inside here, but I — I — you must not pull this papier-mâché dragon to pieces — —”

  “What do I care for the dragon if you are in danger?” cried Ellis, excitedly.

  But it was a frightened and vexed voice that answered almost tearfully: “If you pull too hard on the pasteboard legs something dreadful may happen. I — this dragon is — is about the only clothing I have on!”