The Pines of Lory/Chapter 2
II
FROTH OF THE SEA
An hour later, as the Maid of the North was steaming for the open sea, the man from Africa and his new acquaintance formed a group on the after deck.
The day was a rare one, even for early June. Across the surface of the water–now a sparkling, joyful blue–the air came free and full of life. This air was exhilarating. It inspired Father Burke to tell a funny anecdote, and he did it well. For not only did Father Burke possess a sense of humor, but his heavy, benevolent face, white hair, and deep voice gave unusual impressiveness to whatever he chose to utter. Even Mr. Appleton Marshall, a victim of acute Bostonia, eluded for a time his own self-consciousness. He soon went below, however, to revel, undisturbed, in a conservative local paper. Mr. Patrick Boyd,–or Pats, as we may as well call him,–being always of a buoyant spirit, added liberally to the general cheer.
The young lady regarded this addition to her party with a peculiar interest. She knew that the mention of his name in his own family was for years a thing forbidden. Just how bad he was, or how innocent, she had never learned. And now, as she studied, furtively, this exile of uncertain reputation, and as she recognized the open nature, the fortitude, the tranquil spirit, all unmistakably written in his emaciated, sunburnt face, her curiosity was quickened. She knew that Sally, his elder sister,–her own intimate friend,–had persisted in a correspondence with her brother against her father’s wishes. And that, perhaps, was in his favor. At least, he had a good mouth and honest eyes. His neck, his hands, and his legs were preternaturally thin, and she wondered if the gap between his collar and his throat told a truthful story of South African fever. If so, the change had been appalling. However, neither bullets nor fever had reduced his spirits.
The conversation touched on many things. When she happened to say that this was her first visit to the Boyds’ Canadian house, he replied:
“And mine too.”
“Have you never seen it?” she asked in surprise.
“Never. My father bought this place about ten years ago, and I have been away over thirteen years.”
“I had forgotten you had been away so long.”
With a smile and a slight inclination of his head, he replied:
“That you should know of my existence is a flattering surprise. Any mention of my name, I understand, was a state’s prison offence until my father died.”
“Not quite so bad as that.”
“A man’s fame is not apt to flourish when corked up in a bottle and laid away in a closet, with ‘Poison’ on the label.”
Here was a chance to gratify a natural curiosity, and he seemed willing to throw light on the mystery. She was about to offer the necessary encouragement, when Father Burke took the conversation into less personal fields. It may have been the contagion of this young man’s cheerfulness, or the reaction on the lady’s part from an acute religious tension, but the priest had noticed Miss Marshall was awakening to a livelier enjoyment of her surroundings. The spontaneity and freedom of her laughter, on one or two occasions, had caused him a certain uneasiness. Not that Father Burke was averse to merriment. Too much of it, however, for this particular maiden and at this critical period, might cause a divergence from the Holy Roman path along which he now was escorting her. So he gave some interesting facts concerning this summer residence of the Boyds, winding up with the information that the hunting and fishing, all about there, were unusual.
“But we women cannot hunt and fish all day!”
“Perhaps it’s like Heaven,” said Pats, “where there’s nothing to do except to realize what a good time you are having.”
“I hope that is not your idea of a woman’s ambition.”
“What better business on a summer’s day?”
“Many things,” replied the priest, “if she has a soul to expand and a mind to cultivate.”
“But I was speaking of the natural, unvarnished woman we all enjoy and are not afraid of.”
Miss Marshall, in a politely contemptuous manner, inquired, “Then, personally, you find the intelligent woman of high ideals less congenial than–the other kind?”
“I find the superior woman with a gift of language is a thing that makes brave men tremble. I think wisdom should be tempered with mercy.”
After a pause, and with a touch of sarcasm, she replied:
“That is quite interesting. A fresh point of view always broadens the horizon.”
Ignoring her tone, he answered in an off-hand, amiable way:
“Of course there is no reason why a woman should not enter politics or anything else, if she wishes. And there is no reason why a rose should not aspire to be a useful potato. But potatoes will always be cheaper than roses.”
She smiled wearily and leaned back. As their eyes met he detected a look of disappointment–perhaps at her discovery of yet one more man like all the others, earthy and superficial. But she merely said, and in a gentle tone:
“You forget that while all men are wise, all women are not beautiful.”
With a deep sigh he replied, “The profundity of your contempt I can only guess at. Whatever it is, I share it. We are a poor lot.
“‘At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan.’
Which is all true except the last line.”
She smiled. “You are too severe. I consider man the highest form of animal life–after the dog and the elephant.”
“Then where does woman come in?”
“Oh–as man’s satellite she is hard to place. Her proper position might be anywhere between the peacock and the parrot.”
Pats shook his head, slowly and sadly. “That’s an awful utterance!”
“But it enables you to realize her vanity in aspiring to the wisdom of man.”
Father Burke laughed. “Fighting the Boer, Captain Boyd, is a different thing from skirmishing with the American girl.”
“Indeed it is! For on the battle-field there is always one chance of victory. But I have not been fighting the Boers. I was trying to help the Boers against the English.”
“Ah, good!” said the priest. “You were on the right side.”
But the lady shook her head. “I don’t know about that. I should have joined the English and fought against the Boers.”
“But, my dear child,” exclaimed Father Burke, “the cause of the Boers is so manifestly the cause of right and justice! They were fighting for their freedom,–the very existence of their country.”
“Possibly, but the English officers are very handsome, and so stylish! And the Boers are common creatures–mostly farmers.”
Pats regarded her in surprise. “That doesn’t affect the principle of the thing. Even a farmer has rights.”
“Principles are so tiresome!” and she looked away, as if the subject wearied her.
“Does it make no difference with your sympathies,” he asked with some earnestness, “whether a man is in the right or in the wrong? Would you have had no sympathy for the Greeks at Marathon?”
She raised her eyebrows, and with a faint shrug replied, “I am sure I don’t know. Was that an important battle?”
“Very.”
“In South Africa?”
Pats thought, at first, this question was in jest. She looked him serenely in the face, however, and he saw nothing in her eyes but the expectation of a serious answer to a simple question. Before he was ready with a reply, she inquired:
“Were you at that battle?”
He was so bewildered by this question, and from such a woman, that for a moment he could not respond. Father Burke, however, in his calm, paternal voice, gave the required facts.
“The battle of Marathon was fought about twenty miles from Athens between the Greeks and invading Persians nearly five hundred years before Christ.”
“Ah, yes, to be sure!” she murmured, indifferently, her eyes looking over the sea.
Pats, who was sitting in front of his two companions, regarded her in surprise. As she finished speaking, he turned away his head, but still watching her from the corners of his eyes. Her own glance, with an amused expression, went at once to his face, as he anticipated. He laughed aloud in a frank, boyish way as their eyes met. “I knew you had some sinister motive in that speech. You almost fooled me.”
And she smiled as she retorted, “I was merely trying to please you. You say you are averse to intelligence in a woman.”
“Well, I take it all back. I am averse to nothing in a woman, except absence.”
Father Burke took all this in, and he disapproved. Captain Boyd was by no means the sort of man he would have selected for companion to this maiden. The young man’s appreciation of the lady herself was too honest and too evident. It bore, to the observant priest, suspicious resemblance to a tender passion unskilfully concealed. Perilous food for a yearning spirit! Of course she was heavenly minded, and spiritual to the last degree, at present; but she was mortal. And the soul of a girl like Elinor Marshall was too precious an object to be thrown away on a single individual–above all, on a Protestant. Was it not already the property of The Church? And then, there was little consolation in the knowledge that she was to be in constant intercourse with this man for a week, and during that time beyond all priestly influence.
The Maid of the North, until she passed Deer Island, bore a cheerful band of passengers. Then, in the open sea, she turned her nose a little more to the north, and while riding the waves as merrily as ever, she did it with a greater variety of motion. And this variety of motion, a complex, unhallowed shifting of the deck, first sidewise down, then lengthwise up, then all together and further down–with a nauseating quiver–was emphasized by zephyrs from the engine-room and kitchen–zephyrs redolent with oil and cooking and bilge water. All these, in time, began to trifle with the interiors of certain passengers, and to paralyze their mirth.
Among early victims was Mr. Appleton Marshall. After storing his mind with the financial news and social gossip of the morning paper, he had rejoined his friends. Sitting beside his niece, he participated, at intervals, in the conversation, his manner becoming more and more distant until, at last, it vanished altogether. To all who cared to see, it was plain that this stately and usually complacent gentleman was losing interest in external matters.
He seemed annoyed when a steward, about one o’clock, appeared on deck and rang a bell, announcing dinner. At this summons Patrick Boyd took out his watch and was obviously astonished at the flight of time.
“I had forgotten my friend,” he exclaimed, and he hurried below.
At the dinner-table Elinor Marshall sat between her confessor and her uncle, the latter clinging bravely to his post through the soup and fish. Then, after watching for a moment the various viands as they rose and fell with the heaving of the ship, accompanied, as it seemed to him, by a similar rising and sinking of his own digestive apparatus, he remarked, with some severity, that he felt no hunger. And he left the table with dignity, yet with a certain expedition. As the uncle disappeared, Patrick Boyd came in and took a seat opposite the lady and the priest.
“How did you find your friend?” Father Burke inquired.
“Discouraged.”
“Poor fellow! Nothing serious, I hope.”
“No. But he doesn’t quite understand this starting right off again on another voyage.”
“Is he–er–is his mind affected?”
This question appeared to surprise Captain Boyd. “No. But they have fastened him to a windlass, near the engine-room, and he resents it.”
This reply merely intensified the curiosity of the questioner.
“Did you say they have fastened him?”
“Yes. It seems to be a rule of the boat.”
The young lady also opened her eyes. After a pause, she inquired, in a low voice, “Is he dangerous?”
“No, indeed! Not at all!”
“Then why tie him?”
“It is a rule of the boat, as I said.”
“A rule of the boat to tie passengers?”
At this question Pats smiled, for a light broke in upon him. “My friend is a dog. I thought I told you.”
“A dog!” and she seemed to find diversion in the seriousness with which Father Burke accepted the explanation. “I love dogs. Why shouldn’t I go down and see him?”
“The honor would be appreciated.”
“I will go after dinner. What sort of a dog is he?”
“A setter.”
“And what is his name?”
Pats hesitated. “Do you really wish to know?”
“Of course!”
“Well, his full name is Jan Bartholomeus Van Vlotens Couwenhorn Van der Helst Poffenburgh.”
“Then he is Dutch.”
“Yes. He was the property of four officers, and each owner bestowed a portion of his name.”
“What do you call him for short?”
“Solomon.”
“Solomon!”
“At first we called him Jan, but the other three sponsors objected. They said it was favoritism. So we all agreed on Solomon for every day use.”
“And he never resented it?”
“No. He understood it as a tribute to his extraordinary wisdom.”
She seemed amused. “Is he so very remarkable?”
“Well,” said Pats, laying down his knife and fork, and giving his whole attention to the subject, “as to general intelligence, foresight, logic, and a knowledge of human nature, he is a wonder, even for a dog. And when it comes to dignity and tact, ease of manner and freedom from personal vanity, why–the other Solomon was a beginner.”
She nodded and smiled approval. “I know something of dogs and men, and I can easily believe it. Certain men exist, however, who are mentally superior to dogs. But it’s the moral gulf between the two species that is so disheartening.”
“All owing to the fatal power of speech.”
“Possibly.”
“I am sure of it. If dogs could talk, they would abuse the power, as humans do, and soon descend to the human level. They would lose the dignity that silence alone bestows, and become bores–like the rest of us.” With a deferential movement of his head toward the priest, he added, “Except as they apply to myself, these remarks are in no way personal.”
As Father Burke, with a perfunctory smile, bowed acknowledgment, the girl at his side inquired, with a serious face, “Well, what can be done?”
Pats, with equal seriousness, replied, “How would it do to establish an institute for the propagation of silence?”
“The millennium would be in sight!” she exclaimed.
“And instead of rhetoric and declamation teach economy in words; show the pupils by illustration and example how much better they look when their mouths are not open.”
“A very sensible idea! And award medals to those who attain the highest flights of silence.”
“The very thought is restful,” said Pats. “And would you mind if I offered Solomon a professorship?”
“Not at all! It would look rather well in the catalogue, ‘Solomon Boyd, Instructor in Moral Philosophy and Deportment.’”
With a glance at the mirthless face of the reverend gentleman beside her, she added, “And on the dome of the college shall be a colossal statue of Father Burke, in solid gold. He has not uttered a word in half an hour.”
The priest answered pleasantly, but the tone of the conversation had given him little pleasure. Folly was in the air, and Elinor Marshall, to his surprise, seemed in harmony with it. Heretofore he had known her as a thoughtful, serious-minded woman, with a leaning to melancholy; and this unexpected and evidently enjoyable flight–or plunge–into pure nonsense, caused him a distinct uneasiness. The girl was brightening up, even becoming merry; a state of mind that never leads to a nunnery.
In this conversation, which ran on with rare intervals of seriousness until the meal was ended, Father Burke took no part. And when the younger people had gone below for their interview with Solomon, he decided, after long reflection, that considering the gravity of the case his obvious duty was to drop a word in the lady’s ear concerning this new acquaintance. The rest of the Boyds–the two sisters–were good Catholics, and from them there was nothing to fear. But if he, Father Burke, could counteract the influence of this interesting heretic, it would be a pious work. He must find his opportunity for an earnest conversation, and before she landed.
The more he meditated, the more anxious he became. But Fate, the practical joker,–the fickle, the ruthless, the forever mocking,–was only waiting to lay his enemy at his feet.