THE LOYALTY OF JIM
If it must be my lot to dream out a life of insubstantial visions, that were well. But it appeared not unreasonable that I should keep at least one ponderable dog by me, as an emblem of something I had missed through one too many shuffle of the cards before this big game began. Yet Miss Lansdale had clearly resolved to deprive my dreaming of even this slight support of realness. I tried always to remember, in her behalf, that she did not know the circ.u.mstances, and she herself very soon discovered that she did not know Jim. The a.s.saults she made upon his fidelity proved her to be past-mistress of tactics and strategy. No possible approach to his heart did she leave untried. She flattered and petted, lured, cajoled, entreated; she menaced, commanded, stormed, raged.
Drawing inspiration from a siege celebrated in antiquity, she sought to secrete her forces--not in a horse of wood, but within the frames of numerous fowl, picked to the bone but shredded over so temptingly with fugitive succulence as to have made a dog of feelings less fine her slave for life.
It was not until the desperate woman had, in the terminology of Billy Durgin, been "baffled and beaten at every turn," that I could get into communication with her on a basis at all acceptable to a free-necked man. Having proved to the last resource of her ingenuity that Jim was more than human in his loyalty, she seemed disposed to admit, though grudgingly enough, that I myself might be not less than human to have won him so utterly. And thereafter I found it often practicable to a.s.sociate with her on terms of apparent equality.
She surrendered, I believe, on a day when she had thought to lure Jim into her boat,--fatuously, for was I not a distinguishable figure in the landscape? Her hopes must have been high, for she had but lately repleted him with chicken-bones divinely crunchable, and then bestowed upon him a charlotte russe, an unnatural taste for which she had succeeded in teaching him.
With something of a swagger,--she swaggered in a rather starchy white dress that day, and under a garden hat of broad rim,--she had enticed him to the water"s edge, so that I must have been nervous but for knowing the dog through and through.
Her failure was so crushing, so swift, so entire, that for an instant I almost failed to rejoice in her open humiliation. Seated in the boat, oars poised, she invited Jim with soft speech and a smile that might have moved an iron dog without occasioning any remark from me; but Jim, noting, with one paw already in the boat, that I was not to be of the party, turned quickly from her and came to me with his head down. His informing and well-feathered tail signalled to Miss Lansdale that she seemed to have forgotten herself.
At that moment, I think, the woman abandoned all her preposterous hopes; then, too, I think, she learned the last and bitterest lesson which great fighters must learn, to embellish defeat with an air of urbane acceptance. Miss Lansdale relaxed--she melted before my eyes to an aspect that no victor who knew his business could afford to despise.
I clambered in. Jim followed, remarking amiably to the woman as he pa.s.sed her on his way to the bow of the boat, "I _thought_ you couldn"t have meant _that_!"
And Defeat rowed Jim and me; rowed us past the feathered marge of green islands quite as if nothing had happened. But I knew it _had_ happened, for Miss Lansdale was so nearly human that I presently found myself thinking "Miss Kate" of her. She not only answered questions, but, what amazed me far more, she condescended to ask them now and then. To an observer we might have seemed to be holding speech of an actual friendliness--speech of the water and the day; of herself and the dog and a little of me.
At length, as I caught an overhanging willow to rest her arms a moment, I felt bold enough to venture words about this a.s.sumption of amity which was so becoming in her. I even confessed that she was reminding me of certain distinguished but truly amiable personages who are commonly to be found in the side-show adjacent to the main tent. "Particularly of the wild man," I said, to be more specific, for my listener seemed at once to crave details.
"There is a powerfully painted banner swelling in the breeze outside, you know. It shows the wild man in all his untamed ferocity, in his native jungle, armed with a simple but rather promising club. A dozen intrepid tars from a British man-of-war--to be seen in the offing--are in the act of casting a net over him. It"s an exciting picture, I a.s.sure you, Miss Lansdale. The net looks flimsy, and the wild person is not only enraged but very muscular--"
"I fail to see," she interrupted, with a slight lapse into what I may call her first, or Lansdale, manner.
"Of course you fail! You have to go inside to see," I explained kindly.
"But it only costs a dime, which is little enough--the hired enthusiast, indeed, stationed just outside the entrance, reminds us over and over again that it is only "the tenth part of a dollar," and he sometimes adds that "it will neither make nor break nor set a man up in business."
He is a flagrant optimist in small money matters, ever looking on the bright side."
"Inside?" suggested my listener, with some impatience. I had regretted my beginning and had meant to shirk a finish if she would let me; but it seemed I must go on.
"Well, inside there"s a hand-organ going all the time, you know--"
"The wild man?" she insisted, like a child looking ahead for the real meat of the story one is telling it.
"I"m getting to him as fast as I consistently can. The wild man sits tamely in a cheap chair on a platform, with a row of his photographs spread charmingly at his feet. Of course you are certain at once that he is no longer wild. You know that a wild man whose spirit had not been utterly broken would never sit there and listen to that hand-organ eight hours every day except Sunday. The fluent and polished gentleman in charge--who has a dyed mustache--a.s.sures us that we have nothing to fear from this "once ferocious monster of the tropic jungle, with his b.e.s.t.i.a.l craving for human flesh," but that seems a mere matter of form, with the hand-organ going in our ears--"
"Really," Miss Lansdale began--or tried to.
"One moment, please! The scholarly person goes on to relate the circ.u.mstances of the wild person"s capture--substantially as depicted upon the canvas outside--and winds up with: "After being brought to this country in chains he was reclaimed from his savage estate, was given a good English education, and can now converse intelligently upon all the leading topics of the day. Step up, ladies and gentlemen" he concludes, with a rather pointed delicacy, "and you will find him ready and willing to answer all proper questions.""
Miss Lansdale dropped her oars into the water, dully, I thought. I released the willow that had moored us, but I persisted.
"And he always _does_ answer all proper questions, just as the gentleman said he would. Doubtless an improper question would be to ask him if he weren"t born tame on our own soil, of reputable New England parents; but I don"t know. I have always conducted myself in his presence as a gentleman must, with the result that he has never failed to be chatty.
He is a trifle condescending, to be sure; he does not forget the difference in our stations, but he does not permit himself to study me with eyes of blank indifference, nor is he reticent to the verge of hostility. Of course he feels indifferent to me,--nothing else could be expected,--but his captors have taught him to be gracious in public.
And, really, Miss Lansdale, you seemed strangely tame and broken to-day yourself. You have not only received a good English education, but you answer all proper questions with a condescension hardly more marked than that of the wild person"s. I can only pray you won"t resume a manner that will inevitably recall him to me to your own disadvantage."
She rowed in silence against the gentle current, but she lifted her eyes to me with a look that was not all Lansdale. There was Peavey in it. And she smiled. I had seen her smile before, but never before had she seen me at those times. That she should now smile for and at me seemed to be a circ.u.mstance little short of epoch-making.
I cannot affirm that there was even one moment of that curiously short afternoon when she became wholly and frankly a Peavey. But more than once did this felicity seem to impend, and I suspected that she might even have been more graciously endowed than with a mere Peavey capacity in general. I believed that if she chose, she might almost become a Miss Caroline Peavey. This occurred to me when she said:--
"I only brought you along for your dog."
It was, of course, quite like a Lansdale to do that; but much liker a Peavey to tell it, with that brief poise of the opened eyes upon one"s own.
"Don"t hold it against Jim," I pleaded. "It"s my fault. I"m obliged to be most careful about his a.s.sociates. I"ve brought him up on a system."
"Indeed? It would be interesting to know why you object--" she bridled with a challenge almost Miss Caroline in its flippancy.
"Well, for one thing, I have to make sure that he doesn"t become worldly. Lots of good dogs are spoiled that way. And I"ve succeeded very well, thus far. To this moment he believes everything is true that ought to be true; or, if not, that something "just as good" is true, as the people in drug stores tell one."
"And you are afraid of me--that I"ll--"
"One can"t be too careful about dogs, especially one that believes as much as that one does. Frankly, I _am_ afraid of you. You have such a knowing way of fighting off moments that might become Peavey."
"I don"t quite understand--"
"Of course you don"t, but that"s of little consequence--to Jim. He doesn"t understand either. But you see he has a fine faith now that the world is all Peavey--he learned it from me. Of course, I _know_ better, but I pretend not to, and often I can fool myself for half an hour at a time. And of course I shouldn"t care to have that dog find out that this apparently Peavey world--flawlessly Peavey--has a streak of Lansdale running through it--that it has even its moments of curious, hard suspicion, of distrust, of downright disbelief in all the good things,--in short, its Miss Katherine Lansdale moments, if you will pardon that hastily contrived metaphor."
Perceiving that further concealment would be unavailing, I added quite openly: "Now, young woman, you see that I know your secret. I felt it in the dark of our first meeting; it has since become plainer,--too plain.
You know too much--far more than is good for either Jim or me to know.
You can"t believe enough--all those things that Jim and I have found it best to believe. I myself always fear that I shall be led into ways of unbelief in your presence. That is why I can"t trust Jim with you alone, and why I could hardly trust myself there without Jim"s sustaining looks--that is why, in fact, that I shall try to shun you in all but your approximately Peavey moments. I trust now that this shall be the last time I must ever speak bitterly in your presence. You are sufficiently warned."
While I spoke she had ceased rowing, and we drifted with the current. A long time we drifted, and I rejoiced to see that I had taunted Miss Lansdale into something like interest. I saw that she was uncertain as to the degree of seriousness I had meant my words to convey. Once she began as if they were wholly serious, and once again as if they had been wholly unserious. If she at last appeared to suspect that she must effect a compromise, I dare say she was as nearly correct as I could have put her with any words I knew.
"But you had that dog from the first," she at length decided to say, clearly in self-defence, "and still you are worried and obliged to guard him from evil companions."
"You confess," I exclaimed in triumph.
"You had him as a puppy. Could you have expected so much of him if he had run wild, in a world where any number of good dogs learn unbelief, where they are shocked into it, all in a moment?"
"I didn"t have myself from the first," I reminded her, "and I believe only a few trifles less than Jim does. I know that robins ascend without visible means, for example, if you run at them; but I believe it"s good to run at them just the same, even more enjoyable than if they sat still to be caught."
"We were speaking of dogs," said Miss Lansdale. "At any rate Jim had _you_ from the first."
"Let us keep to dogs, then," I answered. "Meantime, if you listen to me, you"ll soon be in deep water, when we"ve both lost the taste for adventure. This current will take us over the dam in about seven minutes, I should judge."
She fell to the oars again with a dreaming face, in which Lansdale and the other were so well blended that it was indeed the face of visions that had long been coming to me.
"You remind me again of the wild gentleman," I said, after a long look at her, a look which she was good enough to let me see that she observed.
"_Et ego in Arcadia vixi_--and I, too, was netted in my native jungle."
I saw that she, too, essayed the feat of being both light and serious without letting the seam show.
"I mean about pictures," I explained. "The gentlemanly curator of the side-show always says of the wild man thoughtfully, "I _believe_ he has a few photographs for sale." He is always right--the wild man does have them, though I should not care to say that they"re worth the money; that depends upon one"s tastes, of course--by the way, Miss Lansdale, I have long had a picture of you."
"Has mother--"