Part 20 (1/2)
”All men are children,” said Isabel, indulgently. ”Tie up the boat and we'll go after widgeon.”
They landed and stole softly over the larger reach of marsh-land, Isabel in the lead as she knew every hole. It was ten minutes before she raised her hand and pointed to a wilted but still effective screen. Under cover of this they crawled towards a large pond on which ducks were resting but by no means asleep. Before the guns were shouldered they had taken flight; so few were brought down on the wing that Gwynne's interest revived, and he followed Isabel eagerly towards another pond with a better blind. Here they were more wary and more fortunate, and Isabel took a curious pleasure in watching the manifest bliss of her companion.
She had never seen him look really happy before. Upon his return to Capheaton from his triumphant battle on the hustings he had been as impa.s.sive as his traditions demanded. On the morning of his engagement he had looked rather silly to her detached eye; and immediately after, tragedy and trouble and infinite vexation had claimed him. But this evening, with his cap pushed back, his nostrils distended, his eyes sparkling, he looked like any other young fellow to whom the present was all. Isabel reflected somewhat cynically that it was the opportunity to kill something that had effected this momentary reconciliation with life. But she was too good a sportswoman not to understand his mood, and when he had waded into the lake and returned flushed and triumphant with his bag, she complimented him so warmly that he laughed aloud in sheer delight.
”We have enough for once,” she began, but he would not hear of returning to the boat even for the refreshment of tea, and they went on and on until their feet were as weary as their shoulders under the burden that was Isabel's part to string while her partner enjoyed himself.
”But we must really go,” she announced, finally. ”We have a long stretch out in the open creek after we leave the slough, and it is not so easy to keep the channel after dark. I have lost track of things and don't remember what time the moon rises. You can come every day if you like; and four in the morning is the best time if you are energetic enough--”
”I would get up at midnight--stay up all night. But I am quite willing to return now--and not for tea. I should like several of these ducks for supper, if your j.a.p is less haughty than mine.”
Their way lay through the middle of the marsh-land. It was not until they reached the slough that she uttered a loud sharp cry. The boat was at least three feet below them and there was nothing at either end but mud.
Isabel stamped both feet in succession and flung her burden to the ground. ”Why, _why_ did I take Mac's word?” she exclaimed, furiously.
”He always makes mistakes about the tide--he hasn't an inch of memory left. Why didn't I look at the calendar? Or think? This comes of going off for three weeks instead of staying at home and attending to business. I had a confused idea that this was the 'good week.' Great heavens!”
Gwynne had watched her with considerable interest and curiosity. But he answered, soothingly: ”Well, what of it? The tide turns, doesn't it.” It happened that he had had no experience of marsh-lands.
”Yes--in six hours.”
”Six hours! Well, what of it? It is all in the day's work. Look at it as a jolly adventure.” It was his first opportunity to console and he hastened to take advantage of it. ”We have tea and sandwiches, warm enough clothing, and the weather is perfection. If we get stiff and chilly we can walk--”
”Walk? In these rubber boots? I am nearly dead already.” She had a wild impulse to drop her head on his shoulder and weep; but her pride flew to the front and she shrugged her shoulders and remarked, airily: ”I don't really mind anything much except being an idiot. However, I'll make it up to you. I can cook ducks better than Chuma. You make the tea.”
Gwynne made a fire out of decayed tule weed and driftwood, then climbed down into the boat and brought up the provisions and utensils intended for an earlier interlude. The tea warmed and stimulated both, and they knelt by the fire and toasted the ducks at the end of the boat-hook, scowling with a preternatural earnestness both were too hungry to observe. Then they fell to, and it is doubtful if either had ever eaten with a keener relish. They were obliged to use their fingers, and, as they had no salt, to shred the ham and wrap it about the morsels of duck, but to such minor matters they gave not a thought, and consumed four teals and every sc.r.a.p they had brought from home, as well as another pot of tea. Isabel, recalling the injured air of her father, uncle, and brother-in-law when their comfort was rudely disturbed, warmed to Gwynne, who was good-humored and amused. Even the reflection that he had roughed it in far worse straits than this, or that had he the legal right to grumble he might possibly use it, did not alter the pleasant impression he made as he tramped out the fire, washed his hands in the marsh gra.s.s, and then stretched himself full length with his pipe. She lit a cigarette, but had not smoked half its length when she sprang to her feet.
”Look!” she said. ”We must get into the boat. It is getting damper every moment, and the fog will make us feel as if we were in our graves if we don't sit on something dry.”
She had pointed northward, and Gwynne saw a phantom mountain moving along the level surface of the marsh with the quiet plodding motion of a s.h.i.+p under full sail in a light breeze. The curious combination of images fascinated him, and he watched the stealthy silent progress of this night visitor from the tule lands of the north, that looked as if it might have obliterated the world. As he jumped down into the boat he saw before him, on three sides of him, the sparkling night. Then as Isabel laid her hands on his shoulders and he lifted her down, the fog swept over them, and there was nothing to do but sit and watch the glow of pipe and cigarette; even their own outlines were barely visible.
”I fancy it will go home when the moon rises,” said Isabel, with a little s.h.i.+ver. ”Are you cold?” she asked, solicitously.
”No,” replied a tart voice. ”Why didn't you let me ask that? You are not my mother. We can make tea at intervals. How long do you suppose the tide has been out?”
”About two hours.”
”I am quite comfortable and have never resented any adventure. And this is the appropriate time and place for a certain story. As I remarked before I shall not know you until I have heard it. Pasts are dead walls.”
”It is not necessary that you should know me.”
”I think otherwise. You are my one friend among eighty millions of aliens, or ought to be. I shall continue to feel a superior sort of acquaintance until you have taken me into your confidence.”
There was a movement of the fog that he inferred was a shrug. ”Very well,” she replied, without a break in her cool even voice. ”I suppose I shall enjoy talking about myself. It is not often I have had the opportunity to indulge in a monologue in my family, and you certainly are at my mercy. If you attempt to flee you will be mired like the boat, and I could not pull you out.”
He had never felt the least curiosity about the past history or the inner life of a mortal before, and in normal circ.u.mstances Isabel's would not have appealed to him. But her instrumentality in changing the whole current of his life had alarmed his masculinity into a resolve to demonstrate his superiority if it came to a contest of wills; given birth to a subtle a.s.sumption of proprietors.h.i.+p, indifferent in material things, but pressing towards the guarded chambers of the spirit. Isabel, vaguely uneasy earlier in the day, began to appreciate the advance of an outer and powerful force upon her precious freedom, and resented it. And while she made up her mind that if it came to a silent contest of wills, hers at least should not be conquered, she reflected that the deeper intimacy, certain to ensue if she gave him her confidence, would insure her a firmer and subtler hold upon his destinies.
X
”Of course I lived two lives before my father's death. My days were sufficiently filled with him, to say nothing of making both ends meet; for even after my uncle's death, I had only a small income until the day of my complete liberty came. I slept soundly enough when I was not following my father about the house with a candle, or about the hills with a lantern. But such a life preyed upon my spirits. I imagined myself both melancholy and bitter and grew unhealthily romantic. But from the conditions of my life I had two escapes--in books and in dreams. My father hated company more and more and I rarely left him for a dance or one of those church festivities where all the young people of my set were sure to meet. I knew that I was regarded as rather a tragic figure, and this enhanced my morbid egoism. I wonder if I shall ever be as really happy again!
”During the year following my father's death I lived out here alone, but with my hands tied by the executors of my uncle's will. I felt myself quite the enchanted princess and put in most of my time dreaming about the prince. I suppose no girl ever had such wild and impossible notions of love. That is to say most girls have, but I had peculiar opportunities for indulgence and elaboration. At the same time I despised or disliked every man I knew or ever had known--with the possible exception of Judge Leslie. Not only had I found all the men of my little personal world weak, or selfish, or tyrannical, but those I knew almost as well were narrow, or commonplace, or uninterested in anything but local politics or making money, or both combined. Not but that Rosewater is the world in little. You never read of any old Italian duchy where there was more jealousy and intrigue; more silent and tense, or open and gnas.h.i.+ng struggle for supremacy than is centered in these three banks. They have prevented the town from increasing in size and importance, in spite of its prosperity, through their machinations against one another. If a stranger comes to the town intending to invest his money in some one of the flouris.h.i.+ng industries, or to introduce another, the banker to whom he brings a letter, or whom he happens to meet first, terrifies him with tales of the rapacity and dishonorable methods of his rivals; and the other two, who fear that the first will get the stranger's business, warn him that Mr. Colton, for instance, never gave an hour's mercy. The three have made slow, sure, dogged fortunes, but each has prevented the others from becoming millionaires, and Rosewater from taking its proper place as county seat. And they are all afraid of new-comers, new capital, of authority pa.s.sing out of their hands. They are careful not to charge exorbitant rates of interest, and every farmer and merchant in the county borrows from them; partly from habit, partly because the banks are uncommonly sound. They foreclose without mercy, but that does not frighten their old patrons, who have the perennial optimism of the country. The only capital they have not succeeded in frightening off is that controlled by the great corporations. One or two have wedged their way in and others will follow in time. Doubtless when the younger men get the reins in their hands they will trim with the times, but the older seem to be Biblical if not Christian, and the consequence is that most of the younger have left for a wider field.
”Finally the day came when I could turn my back on California, and I felt sure that I should remain away for ten years at least. I thought that the liberty I had longed for all my life was mine at last. In a conducted tour, I soon discovered, there was little liberty, to say nothing of privacy. Before I had been two days in the train I was made to feel that there was something wrong with a person that showed a disposition to retire into herself. She was either aristocratic, or had something to hide, unless she responded to the confidences natural to people of that cla.s.s. As there were just eighteen in the party, of course I always had a room partner, and there was not a woman in the entire company that I would have known from choice. However, it was excellent discipline, not unenlightening, and the end came in six weeks.