Complete weird tales of.., p.594
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 594
“‘Here and there a lusty trout;
Here and there a Grayling—’
“Ah, Tennyson knew. And that reminds me, Alida,” I continued, preparing to recount a personal adventure with a grayling in Austria— “that reminds me — —”
I turned around to find I had been addressing the empty and somewhat humid atmosphere. My daughter Alida stood some distance away, gazing absently at a tank full of small fry; and Captain Vicômte Torchon de Cluny stood beside her, talking. Perhaps he was explaining the habits of the fish in the tank.
My daughter Dulcima and Captain de Barsac I beheld far down the arcades, strolling along without the faintest pretence of looking at anything but each other.
“Very well,” thought I to myself, “this aquarium is exactly the place I expect to avoid in future—” And I cheerfully joined my daughters as though they and their escorts had long missed me.
Now, of course, they all expressed an enthusiastic desire to visit every tank and hear me explain the nature of their contents; but it was too late.
“No,” said I, “it is damp enough here to float all the fishes in the Seine. And besides, as we are to ‘see’ the Rive Droite, we should hasten, so that we may have at least half an hour to devote to the remainder of France.”
From the bowels of the earth we emerged into the sunshine, to partake of an exceedingly modest luncheon in the Trocadero restaurant, under the great waterfall.
Across the river a regiment of red-legged infantry marched, drums and bugles sounding.
“All that territory over there,” said De Barsac, “is given up to barracks. It is an entire quarter of the city, occupied almost exclusively by the military. There the streets run between miles of monotonous barracks, through miles of arid parade grounds, where all day long the piou-pious drill in the dust; where the cavalry exercise; where the field-artillery go clanking along the dreary streets toward their own exercise ground beyond the Usine de Gaz. All day long that quarter of the city echoes with drums beating and trumpets sounding, and the trample of passing cavalry, and the clank and rattle of cannon. Truly, in the midst of peace we prepare for — something else — we French.”
“It is strange,” said I, “that you have time to be the greatest sculptors, architects, and painters in the world.”
“In France, monsieur, we never lack time. It is only in America that you corner time and dispense it at a profit.”
“Time,” said I, “is at once our most valuable and valueless commodity. Our millionaires seldom have sufficient time to avoid indigestion. Yet, although time is apparently so precious, there are among us men who spend it in reading the New York Herald editorials. I myself am often short of time, yet I take a Long Island newspaper and sometimes even read it.”
We had been walking through the gardens, while speaking, toward a large crowd of people which had collected along the river. In the centre of the crowd stood a taxicab, on the box of which danced the cabby, gesticulating.
When we arrived at the scene of disturbance the first person I saw distinctly was our acquaintance, the young man from East Boston, hatless, dishevelled, all over dust, in the grasp of two agents de police.
“He has been run over by a taxi,” observed De Barsac. “They are going to arrest him.”
“Well, why don’t they do it?” I said, indignantly, supposing that De Barsac meant the chauffeur was to be arrested.
“They have done so.”
“No, they haven’t! They are holding the man who has been run over!”
“Exactly. He has been run over and they are arresting him.”
“Who?” I demanded, bewildered.
“Why, the man who has been run over!”
“But why, in Heaven’s name!”
“Why? Because he allowed himself to be run over!”
“What!” I cried. “They arrest the man who has been run over, and not the man who ran over him?”
“It is the law,” said De Barsac, coolly.
“Do you mean to tell me that the runner is left free, while the runnee is arrested?” I asked in deadly calmness, reducing my question to legal and laconic language impossible to misinterpret.
“Exactly. The person who permits a vehicle to run over him in defiance of the French law, which says that nobody ought to let himself be run over, is liable to arrest, imprisonment, and fine — unless, of course, so badly injured that recovery is impossible.”
Now at last I understood the Dreyfus Affaire. Now I began to comprehend the laws of the Bandarlog. Now I could follow the subtle logic of the philosophy embodied in “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass!”
This was the country for me! Why, certainly; these people here could understand a man who was guilty of stealing his own pig.
“I think I should like to live in Paris again,” I said to my daughters; then I approached the young man from East Boston and bade him cheer up.
He was not hurt; he was only rumpled and dusty and hopping mad.
“I shall pay their darned fine,” he said. “Then I’m going to hire a cab and drive it myself, and hunt up that cabman who ran over me, by Judas!”
* * *
That night I met Williams at the Café Jaune by previous and crafty agreement; and it certainly was nice to be together after all these years in the same old seats in the same café, and discuss the days that we never could live again — and wouldn’t want to if we could — alas!
The talk fell on Ellis and Jones, and immediately I perceived that Williams had skillfully steered the conversation toward those two young men — and I knew devilish well he had a story to tell me about them.
So I cut short his side-stepping and circling, and told him to be about it as I wanted to devote one or two hours that night to a matter which I had recently neglected — Sleep.
“That Jones,” he said, “was a funny fellow. He and Ellis didn’t meet over here; Ellis was before his time. But they became excellent friends under rather unusual circumstances.
“Ellis, you know, was always getting some trout fishing when he was over here. He was a good deal of a general sportsman. As for Jones — well, you remember that he had no use for anything more strenuous than a motor tour.”
“I remember,” I said.
* * *
CHAPTER XIII
A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE
WELL, THEN, THE way that Ellis and Jones met each other — and several other things — was this. It chanced to be in the northern forests, I believe — both were fishing, neither knew the other nor was even aware of their mutual proximity.
Then the wind changed abruptly, blowing now from the south; and with the change of wind Ellis fancied that he smelled green wood burning. A few minutes later he was sure of it; he stood knee-deep in the stream sniffing uneasily, then he lifted his trout-rod, reeled in his line, and waded silently shoreward, his keen nose twitching.
Ah! There it was — that misty bluish bloom belting a clump of hemlocks. And the acrid odor grew, impregnating the filtered forest air. He listened, restless eyes searching. The noise of the stream filled his ears; he tightened the straps of his pack, shortened his trout rod, leaving line and cast on, and crawled up the ravine, shoulder-deep in fragrant undergrowth, until the dull clash of flashing spray and the tumult of the falls were almost lost in the leafy depths behind.
Ranker, stronger, came the pungent odor of smoke; halting to listen he heard the hissing whisper of green wood afire; then, crawling up over an enormous boulder, he saw, just beyond and below, a man in tweeds, squatting on his haunches, and attempting to toss a flapjack over a badly constructed camp-fire.
The two young men caught sight of one another at the same instant; alert, mistrustful, each stared at the other in questioning silence while the first instinct of unpleasant surprise lasted.
“How are you?” said the man, cautiously.
“Good-morning,” replied Ellis. “When the wind turned I scented your fire down the stream. Thought I’d see what was burning.”
“Are you up here fishing?” inquired he of the tweeds.
“Yes; came here by canoe to the forks below. I am out for a week by myself. The Caranay water is my old-time trail.... Looks like a storm, doesn’t it?”
“Anything doing with the trout?”
“Not much; two in the falls pool that come an ounce short of the pound. I should be glad to divide — if you are shy on trout.”
Again they regarded one another carefully.
“My name,” said the man by the fire, “is Jones — but that can’t be helped now. So if you’ll overlook such matters I’ll be glad of a trout if you can spare one.”
“My name is Ellis; help yourself.”
The man by the fire glanced at the burnt flapjack, scraped it free from the pan, tossed it into the bushes, and straightened to his full height.
“Come into camp, Mr. Ellis,” he said, politely. The freemasonry of caste operates very quickly in the wilderness; Ellis slid down the boulder on the re-enforced seat of his knickerbockers, landing, with hob-nailed shoes foremost, almost at the edge of the fire. Then he laid his rod aside, slipped the pack to the ground, unslung his creel, and, fishing out a handkerchief, mopped his sunburnt countenance.
“Anything else you’re short of, Mr. Jones?” he asked, pleasantly. “I’m just in from the settlements, and I can let you have a pinch of almost anything.”
“Have you plenty of salt?” inquired Jones, wistfully.
“Plenty; isn’t there anything else? Bacon? Sugar?”
“Matches?”
Ellis looked at him keenly; good woodsmen don’t run short of matches; good woodsmen don’t build such fires.
“Certainly,” he said. “Did you have an accident?”
“No — that is, several boxes got wet, and I’ve been obliged to sit around this confounded fire for fear it might go out — didn’t dare fish very far from it.”
He looked gloomily around, rubbed his forehead as though trying to recollect something, and finally sat down on a log.
“Fact is,” he said, “I don’t know very much about the woods. Do you? Everything’s gone wrong; I tore my canoe in the Ledge Rapids yesterday. I’m in a fix.”
Ellis laughed; and his laugh was so pleasant, so entirely without offence, that young Jones laughed, too, for a while, then checked himself to adjust his eyeglasses, which his mirth had displaced.
“Can you cook?” he asked, so seriously that Ellis only nodded, still laughing.
“Then, for Heaven’s love, would you, when you cook your own breakfast over that fire, cook enough for two?”
“Why, man, I believe you’re hungry,” said Ellis, sharply.
“Hungry? Well, I don’t know whether you would call it exactly hunger, because I have eaten several things which I cooked. I ought not to be hungry; I tried to toss a flapjack, but it got stuck to the pan. Fact is, I’m a rotten cook, and I guess it’s simply that I’m half starved for a decent meal.”
“Why, see here,” said Ellis, rising to his feet, “I can fix up something pretty quick if you like.”
“I do like. Yonder is my cornmeal, coffee, some damp sugar, flour, and what’s left of the pork. You see I left it in a corner of the lean-to, and while I was asleep a porcupine got busy with it; then I hung it on a tree, and some more porcupines invited their relatives, and they all climbed up and nearly finished it. Did you suppose that a porcupine could climb a tree?”
“I’ve heard so,” said Ellis, gravely, busy with the stores which he was unrolling from his own blanket. The guilelessness of this stray brother appalled him. Here was a babe in the woods. A new sort of babe, too, for, in the experience of Ellis, the incompetent woodsman is ever the loudest-mouthed, the tyro, the most conceited. But this forest-squatting innocent not only knew nothing of the elements of woodcraft, but had called a stranger’s attention to his ignorance with a simplicity that silenced mirth, forestalled contempt, and aroused a curious respect for the unfortunate.
“He is no liar, anyway,” thought Ellis, placing a back-log, mending the fire, emptying the coffee pot, and settling the kettle to boil. And while he went about culinary matters with a method born of habit, Jones watched him, aided when he saw a chance; and they chatted on most animatedly together as the preparations for breakfast advanced.
“The very first day I arrived in the woods,” said Jones, “I fell into the stream and got most of my matches wet. I’ve had a devil of a time since.”
“It’s a good idea to keep reserve matches in a water-tight glass bottle,” observed Ellis, carelessly, and without appearing to instruct anybody about anything.
“I’ll remember that. What is a good way to keep pork from porcupines?”
Ellis mentioned several popular methods, stirred the batter, shoved a hot plate nearer the ashes, and presently began the manufacture of flapjacks.
“Don’t you toss ‘em?” inquired Jones, watching the process intently.
“Oh, they can be tossed — like this! But it is easier for me to turn them with a knife — like this. I have an idea that they toss flapjacks less often in the woods than they do in fiction.”
“I gathered my idea from a book,” said Jones, bitterly; “it told how to build a fire without matches. Some day I shall destroy the author.”
Presently Jones remarked in a low, intense voice: “Oh, the fragrance of that coffee and bacon!” which was all he said, but its significance was pathetically unmistakable.
“Pitch in, man,” urged Ellis, looking back over his shoulder. “I’ll be with you in a second.” But when his tower of browned and smoking flapjacks was ready, and he came over to the log, he found that his host, being his host, had waited. That settled his convictions concerning Jones; and that was doubtless why, inside of half an hour, he found himself calling him Jones and not Mr. Jones, and Jones calling him Ellis. They were a pair of well knit, clean-limbed young men, throat and face burnt deeply by wind and sun. Jones did not have much hair; Ellis’s was thick and short, and wavy at the temples. They were agreeable to look at.
“Have another batch of flapjacks?” inquired Ellis, persuasively.
Jones groaned with satisfaction at the prospect, and applied himself to a crisp trout garnished with bacon.
“I’ve tried and tried,” he said, “but I cannot catch any trout. When I found that I could not I was horrified, Ellis, because, you see, I had supposed that the forest and stream were going to furnish me with subsistence. Nature hasn’t done a thing to me since I’ve tried to shake hands with her.”
“I wonder,” said Ellis, “why you came into the woods alone?”
Jones coyly pounced upon another flapjack, folded it neatly and inserted one end of it into his mouth. This he chewed reflectively; and when it had vanished according to Fletcher, he said:
“If I tell you why I came here I’ll begin to get angry. This breakfast is too heavenly to spoil. Pass the bacon and help yourself.”
Ellis, however, had already satisfied his hunger. He set the kettle on the coals again, dumped into it cup and plate and fork, wiped his sheath-knife carefully, and, curling up at the foot of a hemlock, lighted his pipe, returning the flaming branch to the back-log.
Jones munched on; smile after smile spread placidly over his youthful face, dislodging his eyeglasses every time. He resumed them, and ate flapjacks.
“The first time my canoe upset,” he said, “I lost my book of artificial flies. I brought a box of angle-worms with me, too, but they fell into the stream the second time I upset. So I have been trying to snare one of those big trout under the ledge below — —”
Ellis’s horrified glance cut him short; he shrugged his shoulders.
“My friend, I know it’s dead low-down, but it was a matter of pure hunger with me. At all events, it’s just as well that I caught nothing; I couldn’t have cooked it if I had.”
He sighed at the last flapjack, decided he did not require it, and settling down with his back against the log blissfully lighted his pipe.
For ten minutes they smoked without speaking, dreamily gazing at the blue sky through the trees. Friendly little forest birds came around, dropping from twig to branch; two chipmunks crept into the case of eggs to fill their pouched chops with the oats that the eggs were packed in. The young men watched them lazily.
“The simpler life is the true existence,” commented Ellis, drawing a long, deep breath.
“What the devil is the simpler life?” demanded Jones, with so much energy that the chipmunks raced away in mad abandon, and the flock of black-capped birds scattered to neigbouring branches, remarking in unison, “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee.”
“Why, you’re leading the simpler life now,” said Ellis, laughing, “are you not?”
“Am I? No, I’m not. I’m not leading a simple life; I’m leading a pace-killing, nerve-racking, complex one. I tell you, Ellis, that it has taken just one week in the woods to reveal to me the complexity of simplicity!”
“Oh, you don’t like the life?”
“I like it all right, but it’s too complex. Listen to me. You asked me why anybody ever let me escape into the woods. I’ll tell you.... You’re a New Yorker, are you not?”
Ellis nodded.
“All right. First look on this picture: I live in the Sixties, near enough to the Park to see it. It’s green, and I like it. Besides, there are geraniums and other posies in my back yard, and I can see them when the laundress isn’t too busy with the clothes-line. So much for the mise en scène; me in a twenty-by-one-hundred house, perfectly contented; Park a stone’s toss west, back yard a few feet north. My habits? Simple enough to draw tears from a lambkin! I breakfast at nine — an egg, fruit, coffee and — I hate to admit it — the Sun. At eleven I go down-town to see if there’s anything doing. There never is, so I smoke one cigar with my partner and then we lunch together. I then walk uptown — walk, mind you. At the club I look at the ticker, or out of the window. Later I play cowboy or billiards for an hour. I take one cocktail — one, if you please. I converse.” He waved his pipe; Ellis nodded solemnly.
