Jones smiled; and she thought his expression very attractive.
“No,” he said, “fame crowns the man who, celebrated only for his wealth, names hotels, tug-boats, and art galleries after himself. Thus are Immortals made.”
She laughed, standing there gracefully as a boy, her hands resting on her narrow hips. She laughed again. A tug-boat, a hotel, and a cigar were named after her father.
“Fame is an extraordinary thing,” she said. “But liberty is still more wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Liberty is only comparative,” he said, smiling. “There is really no such thing as absolute freedom.”
“You have all the freedom you desire, haven’t you?”
“Well — I enjoy the only approach to absolute liberty I ever heard of.”
“What kind of liberty is that?”
“Freedom to think as I please, no matter what I’m obliged to do.”
“But you do what you please, too, don’t you?”
“Oh, no!” he said smiling. “The man was never born who did what he pleased.”
“Why not? You choose your own work, don’t you?”
“Yes. But once the liberty of choice is exercised, freedom ends. I choose my profession. There my liberty ends, because instantly I am enslaved by the conditions which make my choice a profession.”
She was deeply interested. A mossy log lay near them; she seated herself to listen, her elbow on her knee, and her chin cupped in her hand. But Jones became silent.
“Were you not in that funny little boat that passed the inlet about three hours ago?” she asked.
“The Orange Puppy? Yes.”
“What an odd name for a boat — the Orange Puppy!”
“An orange puppy,” he explained, “is the name given in the Florida orange groves to the caterpillar of a large swallow-tail butterfly, which feeds on orange leaves. The butterfly it turns into is known to entomologists as Papilio cresphontes and Papilio thoas. The latter is a misnomer.”
She gazed upon this young man in undisguised admiration.
“Once,” she said, “when I was nine years old, I ran away from a governess and two trained nurses. They found me with both hands full of muddy pollywogs. It has nothing to do with what you are saying, but I thought I’d tell you.”
He insisted that the episode she recalled was most interesting and unusual, considered purely as a human document.
“Would you tell me what you are doing down here in these forests?” she asked, “ — as we are discussing human documents.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am investigating several thousand small caterpillars which are feeding on the scrub-palmetto.”
“Is that your business?”
“Exactly. If you will remain very still for a moment and listen very intently you can hear the noise which these caterpillars make while they are eating.”
She thought of the Chihuahua, and it occurred to her that she had rather tired of seeing things eat. However, except in Europe, she had never heard things eat. So she listened.
He said: “These caterpillars are in their third moult — that is, they have changed their skin three times since emerging from the egg — and are now busily chewing the immature fruit of the scrub-palmetto. You can hear them very plainly.”
She sat silent, spellbound; and presently in the woodland stillness, all around her she heard the delicate and continuous sound — the steady, sustained noise of thousands of tiny jaws, all crunching, all busily working together. And when she realized what the elfin rustle really meant, she turned her delighted and grateful eyes on Jones. And the beauty of them made him exceedingly thoughtful.
“Will you explain to me,” she whispered, “why you are studying these caterpillars, Mr. Jones?”
“Because they are spreading out over the forests. Until recently this particular species of caterpillar, and the pretty little moth into which it ultimately turns, were entirely confined to a narrow strip of jungle, only a few miles long, lying on the Halifax River. Nowhere else in all the world could these little creatures be found. But recently they have been reported from the Dead Lake country. So the Smithsonian Institution sent me down here to study them, and find out whither they were spreading, and whether any natural parasitic enemies had yet appeared to check them.”
She gazed at him, fascinated.
“Have any appeared?” she asked, under her breath.
“I have not yet found a single creature that preys upon them.”
“Isn’t it a very arduous and difficult task to watch these thousands of little caterpillars all day long?”
“It is quite impossible for me to do it thoroughly all alone.”
“Would you like to have me help you?” she asked innocently.
Which rather bowled him over, but he said:
“I’d b-b-be d-d-delighted — only you haven’t time, have you?”
“I have three days. I’ve brought a tent, you see, and everything necessary — rugs, magazines, blankets, toilet articles, bon-bons, books — everything, in fact, to last three days.... I wonder how that tent is put up. Do you know?”
He went over to the canoe and gazed at the tent.
“I think I could pitch it for you,” he said.
“Oh, thanks so much! May I help you? I think I’ll put it here on this pretty stretch of white sand by the water’s edge.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do,” he said, gravely.
“Why?”
“Because the lagoon is tidal. You’d be awash sooner or later.”
“I see. Well, then, anywhere in the woods will do — —”
“Not anywhere,” he said, smiling. “High water leaves few dry places in this forest; in fact — I’m afraid that my shack is perched on the only spot which is absolutely dry at all times. It is a shell mound — the only one in the Dead Lake region.”
“Isn’t there room for my tent beside yours?” she asked, a trifle anxiously.
“Y-es,” he said, in a voice as matter of fact as her own. “How many will there be in your party?”
“In my party! Why, only myself,” she said, with smiling animation.
“Oh, I see!” But he didn’t.
They lugged the tent back among the trees to the low shell mound, where in the centre of a ring of pines and evergreen oaks his open-faced shack stood, thatched with palmetto fans. She gazed upon the wash drying on the line, upon a brace of dead ducks hanging from the eaves, upon the smoky kettle and the ashes of the fire. Purest delight sparkled in her blue eyes.
Erecting her silk tent with practiced hands, he said carelessly:
“In case you cared to send any word to the yacht — —”
“Did I say that I came from the yacht?” she asked; and her straight eyebrows bent a trifle inward.
“Didn’t you?”
“Will you promise me something, Mr. Jones?”
The things he was prepared to promise her choked him for a second, but when he regained control of his vocal powers he said, very pleasantly, that he would gladly promise her anything.
“Then don’t ask me where I came from. Let me stay three days. Then I’ll go very quietly away, and never trouble you again. Is it a promise?”
“Yes,” he said, not looking at her. His face had become very serious; she noticed it — and how well his head was set on his shoulders, and how his clipped hair was burned to the color of crisp hay.
“You were Harvard, of course,” she said, unthinkingly.
“Yes.” He mentioned the year.
“Not crew?”
“No.”
“Baseball?”
“‘Varsity pitcher,” he nodded, surprised.
“Then this is the third time I’ve seen you.... I wonder what it is about you — —” She remained silent, watching him burying her water bottles in the cool marl.
When all was in order, he smiled, made her a little formal bow, and evinced a disposition to retire and leave her in possession.
“I thought we we
re going to work at once!” she said uneasily. “I am quite ready.” And, as he did not seem to comprehend, “I was going to help you to examine the little caterpillars, one by one; and the minute I saw anything trying to bite them I was going to call you. Didn’t you understand?” she added wistfully.
“That will be fine!” he said, with an enthusiasm very poorly controlled.
“You will show me where the little creatures are hiding, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will! Here they are, all about us!” He made a sweeping gesture over the low undergrowth of scrub-palmetto; and the next moment:
“I see them!” she exclaimed, delighted. “Oh, what funny, scrubby, busy little creatures! They are everywhere — everywhere! Why, there seem to be thousands and thousands of them! And all are eating the tiny green bunches of fruit!”
They bent together over a group of feeding larvæ; he handed her a pocket microscope like his own; and, enchanted, she studied the tiny things while he briefly described their various stages of development from the little eggs to the pretty, pearl-tinted moth so charmingly striped with delicate, brown lines — a rare prize in the cabinet of any collector.
V
Through the golden forest light of afternoon, they moved from shrub to shrub; and he taught her to be on the watch for any possible foes of the neat and busy little caterpillars, warning her to watch for birds, spiders, beetles, ichneumon flies, possibly squirrels or even hornets. She nodded her comprehension; he went one way, she the other. For nearly ten minutes they remained separated, and it seemed ages to one of them anyway.
But the caterpillars appeared to be immune. Nothing whatever interfered with them; wandering beetles left them unmolested; no birds even noticed them; no gauzy-winged and parasitic flies investigated them.
“Mr. Jones!” she called.
He was at her side in an instant.
“I only wanted to know where you were,” she said happily.
The sun hung red over the lagoon when they sauntered back to camp. She went into her tent with a cheerful nod to him, which said:
“I’ve had a splendid time, and I’ll rejoin you in a few moments.”
When she emerged in fresh white flannels, she found him writing in a blank-book.
“I wonder if I might see?” she said. “If it’s scientific, I mean.”
“It is, entirely.”
So she seated herself on the ground beside him, and read over his shoulder the entries he was making in his field book concerning the day’s doings. When he had finished his entry, she said:
“You have not mentioned my coming to you, and how we looked for ichneumon flies together.”
“I — —” He was silent.
She added timidly: “I know I count for absolutely nothing in the important experiences of a naturalist, but — I did look very hard for ichneumon flies. Couldn’t you write in your field book that I tried very hard to help you?”
He wrote gravely:
“Miss Cassillis most generously volunteered her invaluable aid, and spared no effort to discover any possible foe that might prove to be parasitic upon these larvæ. But so far without success.”
“Thank you,” she said, in a very low voice. And after a short silence: “It was not mere vanity, Mr. Jones. Do you understand?”
“I know it was not vanity, even if I do not entirely understand.”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Please.”
“It was the first thing that I have ever been permitted to do all by myself. It meant so much to me.... And I wished to have a little record of it — even if you think it is of no scientific importance.”
“It is of more importance than — —” But he managed to stop himself, slightly startled. She had lifted her head from the pages of the field book to look at him. When his voice failed, and while the red burned brilliantly in his ears, she resumed her perusal of his journal, gravely. After a while, though she turned the pages as if she were really reading, he concluded that her mind was elsewhere. It was.
Presently he rose, mended the fire, filled the kettle, and unhooked the brace of wild ducks from the eaves where they swung, and marched off with them toward the water.
When he returned, the ducks were plucked and split for broiling. He found her seated as he had left her, dreaming awake, idle hands folded on the pages of his open field book.
For dinner they had broiled mallard, coffee, ash-cakes, and bon-bons. After it she smoked a cigarette with him.
Later she informed him that it was her first, and that she liked it, and requested another.
“Don’t,” he said, smiling.
“Why?”
“It spoils a girl’s voice, ultimately.”
“But it’s very agreeable.”
“Will you promise not to?” he asked, lightly.
Suddenly her blue eyes became serious.
“Yes,” she said, “if you wish.”
The woods grew darker. Far across the lagoon a tiger-owl woke up and began to yelp like a half-strangled hobgoblin.
She sat silent for a little while, then very quietly and frankly put her hand on Jones’s. It was shaking.
“I am afraid of that sound,” she said calmly.
“It is only a big owl,” he reassured her, retaining her hand.
“Is that what it is? How very dark the woods are! I had no idea that there could be such utter darkness. I am not sure that I care for it.”
“There is nothing to harm you in these woods.”
“No bears and wolves and panthers?”
“There are a few — and all very anxious to keep away from anything human.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you mind if I leave my hand where it is?”
It appeared that he had no insurmountable objections.
After the seventh tiger-owl had awakened and the inky blackness quivered with the witch-like shouting and hellish tumult, he felt her shoulder pressing against his. And bending to look into her face saw that all the colour in it had fled.
“You mustn’t be frightened,” he said earnestly.
“But I am. I’m sorry.... I’ll try to accustom myself to it.... The darkness is a — a trifle terrifying — isn’t it?”
“It’s beautiful, too,” he said, looking up at the firelit foliage overhead. She looked up also, her slender throat glimmering rosy in the embers’ glare. After a moment she nodded:
“It is wonderful.... If I only had a little time to accustom myself to it I am sure I should love it.... Oh! What was that very loud splash out there in the dark?”
“A big fish playing in the lagoon; or perhaps wild ducks feeding.”
After a few minutes he felt her soft hand tighten within his.
“It sounds as though some great creature were prowling around our fire,” she whispered. “Do you hear its stealthy tread?”
“Noises in the forest are exaggerated,” he said carelessly. “It may be a squirrel or some little furry creature out hunting for his supper. Please don’t be afraid.”
“Then it isn’t a bear?”
“No, dear,” he said, so naturally and unthinkingly that for a full second neither realised the awful break of Delancy Jones.
When they did they said nothing about it. But it was some time before speech was resumed. She was the first to recover. Perhaps the demoralisation was largely his. It usually is that way.
She said: “This has been the most perfect day of my entire life. I’m even glad I am a little scared. It is delicious to be a trifle afraid. But I’m not, now — very much.... Is there any established
hour for bedtime in the woods?”
“Inclination sounds the hour.”
“Isn’t that wonderful!” she sighed, her eyes on the fire. “Inclination rules in the forest.... And here I am.”
The firelight on her copper-tinted hair masked her lovely eyes in a soft shadow. Her shoulder stirred rhythmically as she breathed.
“And
here you live all alone,” she mused, half to herself.... “I once saw you pitch a game against Yale.... And the next time I saw you walking very busily down Fifth Avenue.... And now — you are — here.... That is wonderful.... Everything seems to be wonderful in this place.... Wh-what is that flapping noise, please?”
“Two herons fighting in the sedge.”
“You know everything.... That is the most wonderful of all. And yet you say you are not famous?”
“Nobody ever heard of me outside the Smithsonian.”
“But — you must become famous. To-morrow I shall look very hard for an ichneumon fly for you — —”
“But your discovery will make you famous, Miss Cassillis — —”
“Why — why, it’s for you that I am going to search so hard! Did you suppose I would dream of claiming any of the glory!”
He said, striving to speak coolly:
“It is very generous and sweet of you.... And, after all, I hardly suppose that you need any added lustre or any additional happiness in a life which must be so full, so complete, and so care-free.”
She was silent for a while, then:
“Is your life then so full of care, Mr. Jones?”
“Oh, no,” he said; “I get on somehow.”
“Tell me,” she insisted.
“What am I to tell you?”
“Why it is that your life is care-ridden.”
“But it isn’t — —”
“Tell me!”
He said, gaily enough: “To labour for others is sometimes a little irksome.... I am not discontented.... Only, if I had means — if I had barely sufficient — there are so many fascinating and exciting lines of independent research to follow — to make a name in — —” He broke off with a light laugh, leaned forward and laid another log on the fire.
“You can not afford it?” she asked, in a low voice; and for the moment astonishment ruled her to discover that this very perfect specimen of intelligent and gifted manhood was struggling under such an amazingly trifling disadvantage. Only from reading and from hearsay had she been even vaguely acquainted with the existence of poverty.
“No,” he said pleasantly, “I can not yet afford myself the happiness of independent research.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 673