 | Castle nowhere |  |
CASTLE NOWHERE.
NOT many years ago the shore bordering the head
of Lake Michigan, the northern curve of that
silver sea, was a wilderness unexplored. It is a wilderness
still, showing even now on the school-maps
nothing save an empty waste of colored paper, generally
a pale, cold yellow suitable to the climate, all
the way from Point St. Ignace to the iron ports on
the Little Bay de Noquet, or Badderknock in lake
phraseology, a hundred miles of nothing, according to
the map-makers, who, knowing nothing of the region,
set it down accordingly, withholding even those
long-legged letters, “Chip-pe-was,” “Ric-ca-rees,” that
stretch accommodatingly across so much townless territory
farther west. This northern curve is and always
has been off the route to anywhere; and mortals, even
Indians, prefer as a general rule, when once started,
to go somewhere. The earliest Jesuit explorers and
the captains of yesterday's schooners had this in common,
that they could not, being human, resist a crosscut;
and thus, whether bark canoes of two centuries
all, coming and going, they veer to the southeast or
west, and sail gayly out of sight, leaving this northern
curve of ours unvisited and alone. A wilderness
still, but not unexplored; for that railroad of the
future which is to make of British America a garden
of roses, and turn the wild trappers of the Hudson's
Bay Company into gently smiling congressmen, has it
not sent its missionaries thither, to the astonishment
and joy of the beasts that dwell therein? According
to tradition, these men surveyed the territory, and
then crossed over (those of them at least whom the
beasts had spared) to the lower peninsula, where,
the pleasing variety of swamps being added to the
labyrinth of pines and sand-hills, they soon lost
themselves, and to this day have never found what
they lost. As the gleam of a camp-fire is occasionally
seen, and now and then a distant shout heard
by the hunter passing along the outskirts, it is supposed
that they are in there somewhere, surveying
still.
Not long ago, however, no white man's foot had penetrated
within our curve. Across the great river and
over the deadly plains, down to the burning clime of
Mexico and up to the arctic darkness, journeyed our
countrymen, gold to gather and strange countries to
see; but this little pocket of land and water passed
they by without a glance, inasmuch as no iron mountains
sand ridges, no harbors dented its shores. Thus it remained
an unknown region, and enjoyed life accordingly.
But the white man's foot, well booted, was on
the way, and one fine afternoon came tramping through.
“I wish I was a tree,” said to himself this white man,
one Jarvis Waring by name. “See that young pine,
how lustily it grows, feeling its life to the very tip of
each green needle! How it thrills in the sun's rays,
how strongly, how completely it carries out the intention
of its existence! It never has a headache, it —
Bah! what a miserable, half-way thing is man, who
should be a demigod, and is — a creature for the very
trees to pity!” And then he built his camp-fire, called
in his dogs, and slept the sleep of youth and health,
none the less deep because of that Spirit of Discontent
that had driven him forth into the wilderness; probably
the Spirit of Discontent knew what it was about. Thus
for days, for weeks, our white man wandered through
the forest and wandered at random, for, being an exception,
he preferred to go nowhere; he had his compass,
but never used it, and, a practised hunter, eat what
came in his way and planned not for the morrow.
“Now am I living the life of a good, hearty, comfortable
bear,” he said to himself with satisfaction.
“No, you are not, Waring,” replied the Spirit of Discontent,
“for you know you have your compass in your
pocket and can direct yourself back to the camps on
more than the most accomplished bear can do.”
“O come, what do you know about bears?” answered
Waring; “very likely they too have their depots of
supplies, — in caves perhaps —”
“No caves here.”
“In hollow trees, then.”
“You are thinking of the stories about bears and
wild honey,” said the pertinacious Spirit.
“Shut up, I am going to sleep,” replied the man,
rolling himself in his blanket; and then the Spirit,
having accomplished his object, smiled blandly and
withdrew.
Wandering thus, all reckoning lost both of time and
place, our white man came out one evening unexpectedly
upon a shore; before him was water stretching
away grayly in the fog-veiled moonlight; and so successful
had been his determined entangling of himself
in the webs of the wilderness, that he really knew not
whether it was Superior, Huron, or Michigan that
confronted him, for all three bordered the eastern end
of the upper peninsula. Not that he wished to know;
precisely the contrary. Glorifying himself in his ignorance,
he built a fire on the sands, and leaning back
against the miniature cliffs that guard the even beaches
of the inland seas, he sat looking out over the water,
smoking a comfortable pipe of peace, and listening,
meanwhile, to the regular wash of the waves. Some
not; to Jarvis Waring everything seemed to keep time,
from the songs of the birds to the chance words of a
friend; and during all this pilgrimage through the wilderness,
when not actively engaged in quarrelling with
the Spirit, he was repeating bits of verses and humming
fragments of songs that kept time with his footsteps,
or rather they were repeating and humming themselves
along through his brain, while he sat apart and listened.
At this moment the fragment that came and
went apropos of nothing was Shakespeare's sonnet,
I summon up remembrance of things past.”
in keeping time with their regular wash, dragged
its syllables so dolorously that at last the man woke
to the realization that something was annoying him.
“When to — the ses — sions of — sweet si — lent thought,”
“O double it, double it, can't you?” said the man,
impatiently; “this way: —
`When to the ses — sions of sweet si — lent thought, te-tum, — te-tum,
te-tum.'”
But no; the waves and the lines persisted in their
own idea, and the listener finally became conscious of
a third element against him, another sound which kept
their obstinacy, — the dip of light oars somewhere out
in the gray mist.
I sum — mon up — remem — brance of — things past,”
and went duly on, sighing the lack of many
things they sought, away down to that “dear friend,”
who in some unexplained way made all their “sorrows
end.” Even then, while peering through the fog and
wondering where and what was this spirit boat that
one could hear but not see, Waring found time to
make his usual objections. “This summoning up remembrance
of things past, sighing the lack, weeping
afresh, and so forth, is all very well,” he remarked to
himself, “we all do it. But that friend who sweeps
in at the death with his opportune does of comfort is
a poetical myth whom I, for one, have never yet met.”
“That is because you do not deserve such a friend,”
answered the Spirit, briskly reappearing on the scene.
“A man who flies into the wilderness to escape —”
“Spirit, are you acquainted with a Biblical personage
named David?” interrupted Waring, executing a
flank movement.
The Spirit acknowledged the acquaintance, but cautiously,
as not knowing what was coming next.
“Did he or did he not have anything to say about
or did he not express wishes to sail thither in person?”
“David had a voluminous way of making remarks,”
replied the Spirit, “and I do not pretend to stand up
for them all. But one thing is certain; whatever he
may have wished, in a musical way, regarding wildernesses
and mountain-tops, when it came to the fact he
did not go. And why? Because he —”
“Had no wings,” said Waring, closing the discussion
with a mighty yawn. “I say, Spirit, take yourself off.
Something is coming ashore, and were it old Nick in
person I should be glad to see him and shake his
clawed hand.”
As he spoke, out of the fog and into the glare of the
fire shot a phantom skiff, beaching itself straight and
swift at his feet, and so suddenly that he had to withdraw
them like a flash to avoid the crunch of the sharp
bows across the sand. “Always let the other man
speak first,” he thought; “this boomerang of a boat
has a shape in it, I see.”
The shape rose, and, leaning on its oar, gazed at
the camp and its owner in silence. It seemed to be an
old man, thin and bent, with bare arms, and a yellow
handkerchief bound around its head, drawn down almost
to the eyebrows, which, singularly bushy and
prominent, shaded the deep-set eyes and hid their
expression.
“But, supposing he won't, don't stifle yourself,”
continued Waring; then aloud, “Well, old gentleman,
where do you come from?”
“Nowhere.”
“And where are you going?”
“Back there.”
“Could n't you take me with you? I have been
trying all my life to go nowhere, but never could
learn the way; do what I would, I always found
myself going in the opposite direction, namely, somewhere.”
To this the shape replied nothing, but gazed on.
“Do the nobodies reside in Nowhere, I wonder,”
pursued the smoker; “because if they do, I am afraid
I shall meet all my friends and relatives. What a pity
the somebodies could not reside there! But perhaps
they do; cynics would say so.”
But at this stage the shape waved its oar impatiently
and demanded, “Who are you?”
“Well, I do not exactly know. Once I supposed
I was Jarvis Waring, but the wilderness has routed
that prejudice. We can be anybody we please; it is
only a question of force of will; and my latest character
has been William Shakespeare. I have been trying
to find out whether I wrote my own plays. Stay to
supper and take the other side; it is long since I have
had an argument with flesh and blood. And you are
that, — are n't you?”
But the shape frowned until it seemed all eyebrow.
“Young man,” it said, “how came you here? By
water?”
“No; by land.”
“Alongshore?”
“No; through the woods.”
“Nobody ever comes through the woods.”
“Agreed; but I am somebody.”
“Do you mean that you have come across from Lake
Superior on foot?”
“I landed on the shore of Lake Superior a month or
two ago, and struck inland the same day; where I am
now I neither know nor want to know.”
“Very well,” said the shape, — “very well.” But
it scowled more gently. “You have no boat?”
“No.”
“Do you start on to-morrow?”
“Probably; by that time the waves and `the sessions
of sweet silent thought' will have driven me
distracted between them.”
“I will stay to supper, I think,” said the shape,
unbending still further, and stepping out of the skiff.
“Deeds before words then,” replied Waring, starting
back towards a tree where his game-bag and
knapsack were hanging. When he returned the skiff
had disappeared; but the shape was warming its
moccasined feet at the fire in a very human sort of
way. They cooked and eat with the appetites of the
shape's name was Fog, Amos Fog, or old Fog, a
fisherman and a hunter among the islands farther
to the south; he had come inshore to see what that
fire meant, no person had camped there in fifteen
long years.
“You have been here all that time, then?”
“Off and on, off and on; I live a wandering life,”
replied old Fog; and then, with the large curiosity
that solitude begets, he turned the conversation back
towards the other and his story. The other, not
unwilling to tell his adventures, began readily; and
the old man listened, smoking meanwhile a second
pipe produced from the compact stores in the knapsack.
In the web of encounters and escapes, he
placed his little questions now and then; no, Waring
had no plan for exploring the region, no intention
of settling there, was merely idling away a summer
in the wilderness and would then go back to civilization
never to return, at least, not that way;
might go west across the plains, but that would be
farther south. They talked on, one much, the other
little; after a time, Waring, whose heart had been
warmed by his flask, began to extol his ways and
means.
“Live? I live like a prince,” he said. “See these
tin cases; they contain concentrated stores of various
kinds. I carry a little tea, you see, and even a
then on a wet night.”
“Did you buy that sugar at the Sault?” said the
old man, eagerly.
“O no; I brought it up from below. For literature
I have this small edition of Shakespeare's sonnets,
the cream of the whole world's poetry; and when I
am tired of looking at the trees and the sky, I look
at this, Titian's lovely daughter with her upheld salver
of fruit. Is she not beautiful as a dream?”
“I don't know much about dreams,” replied old
Fog, scanning the small picture with curious eyes;
“but is n't she a trifle heavy in build? They dress
like that nowadays, I suppose, — flowered gowns and
gold chains around the waist?”
“Why, man, that picture was painted more than
three centuries ago.”
“Was it now? Women don't alter much, do they?”
said old Fog, simply. “Then they don't dress like
that nowadays?”
“I don't know how they dress, and don't care,”
said the younger man, repacking his treasures.
Old Fog concluded to camp with his new friend
that night and be off at dawn. “You see it is late,”
he said, “and your fire 's all made and everything
comfortable. I 've a long row before me to-morrow:
I 'm on my way to the Beavers.”
“Ah! very intelligent animals, I am told. Friends
of yours?”
“Why, they 're islands, boy; Big and Little Beaver!
What do you know, if you don't know the Beavers?”
“Man,” replied Waring. “I flatter myself I know
the human animal well; he is a miserable beast.”
“Is he?” said old Fog, wonderingly; “who 'd have
thought it!” Then, giving up the problem as something
beyond his reach, — “Don't trouble yourself if
you hear me stirring in the night,” he said; “I am
often mighty restless.” And rolling himself in his
blanket, he soon became, at least as regards the
camp-fire and sociability, a nonentity.
“Simple-minded old fellow,” thought Waring, lighting
a fresh pipe; “has lived around here all his
life, apparently. Think of that, — to have lived around
here all one's life! I, to be sure, am here now; but
then, have I not been —” And here followed a
revery of remembrances, that glittering network of
gayety and folly which only young hearts can weave,
the network around whose border is written in a
thousand hues, “Rejoice, young man, in thy youth, for
it cometh not again.”
The infinite skies have borne away!”
in many hearts unexpressed, and sighed itself away
in this heart of our Jarvis Waring that still foggy
evening on the beach.
The middle of the night, the long watch before
dawn; ten chances to one against his awakening!
A shape is moving towards the bags hanging on the
distant tree. How the sand crunches, — but he sleeps
on. It reaches the bags, this shape, and hastily
rifles them; then it steals back and crosses the sand
again, its moccasined feet making no sound. But, as
it happened, that one chance (which so few of us ever
see!) appeared on the scene at this moment and
guided those feet directly towards a large, thin, old
shell masked with newly blown sand; it broke with
a crack; Waring woke, and gave chase. The old man
was unarmed, he had noticed that; and then such
a simple-minded, harmless old fellow! But simple-minded,
harmless old fellows do not run like mad
if one happens to wake; so the younger pursued.
He was strong, he was fleet; but the shape was
fleeter, and the space between them grew wider.
Suddenly the shape turned and darted into the
water, running out until only its head was visible
above the surface, a dark spot in the foggy moonlight.
Waring pursued, and saw meanwhile another
dark spot beyond, an empty skiff which came rapidly
inshoreward until it met the head, which forthwith
took to itself a body, clambered in, lifted the oars,
and was gone in an instant. “Well,” said Waring,
still pursuing down the gradual slope of the beach,
“will a phantom bark come at my call, I wonder?
But no; the perfidious beach at this instant shelved
off suddenly and left him afloat in deep water.
Fortunately he was a skilled swimmer, and soon
regained the shore, wet and angry. His dogs were
whimpering at a distance, both securely fastened to
trees, and the light of the fire had died down; evidently
the old Fog was not, after all, so simple as
some other people!
“I might as well see what the old rogue has taken,”
thought Waring; “all the tobacco and whiskey, I 'll
be bound.” But nothing had been touched save the
lump-sugar, the little book, and the picture of Titian's
daughter! Upon this what do you suppose Waring
did? He built a boat.
When it was done, and it took some days and was
nothing but a dug-out after all (the Spirit said that),
he sailed out into the unknown; which being interpreted
means that he paddled southward. From the
conformation of the shore, he judged that he was in a
deep curve, protected in a measure from the force of
wind and wave. “I 'll find that ancient mariner,” he
said to himself, “if I have to circumnavigate the entire
lake. My book of sonnets, indeed, and my Titian picture!
Would nothing else content him? This voyage
I undertake from a pure inborn sense of justice —”
“Now, Waring, you know it is nothing of the kind,”
said the Spirit who had sailed also. “You know you
and you know you may hit a steamer off the islands;
besides, you are curious about this old man who steals
Shakespeare and sugar, leaving tobacco and whiskey
untouched.”
“Spirit,” replied the man at the paddle, “you fairly
corrupt me with your mendacity. Be off and unlimber
yourself in the fog; I see it coming in.”
He did see it indeed; in it rolled upon him in columns,
a soft silvery cloud enveloping everything, the
sunshine, the shore, and the water, so that he paddled
at random, and knew not whither he went, or rather
saw not, since knowing was long since out of the question.
“This is pleasant,” he said to himself when the
morning had turned to afternoon and the afternoon to
night, “and it is certainly new. A stratus of tepid
cloud a thousand miles long and a thousand miles
deep, and a man in a dug-out paddling through!
Sisyphus was nothing to this.” But he made himself
comfortable in a philosophic way, and went to the only
place left to him, — to sleep.
At dawn the sunshine colored the fog golden, but
that was all; it was still fog, and lay upon the dark
water thicker and softer than ever. Waring eat some
dried meat, and considered the possibilities; he had
reckoned without the fog, and now his lookout was
uncomfortably misty. The provisions would not last
more than a week; and though he might catch fish,
somewhere; any land, however desolate, would give
him a fire; but this fog was muffling, and unless he
stumbled ashore by chance he might go on paddling
in a circle forever. “Bien,” he said, summing up, “my
part at any rate is to go on; I, at least, can do my
duty.”
“Especially as there is nothing else to do,” observed
the Spirit.
Having once decided, the man kept at his work with
finical precision. At a given moment he eat a lunch,
and very tasteless it was too, and then to work again;
the little craft went steadily on before the stroke of
the strong arms, its wake unseen, its course unguided.
Suddenly at sunset the fog folded its gray draperies,
spread its wings, and floated off to the southwest, where
that night it rested at Death's Door and sent two
schooners to the bottom; but it left behind it a released
dug-out, floating before a log fortress which
had appeared by magic, rising out of the water with
not an inch of ground to spare, if indeed there was
any ground; for might it not be a species of fresh-water
boat, anchored there for clearer weather?
“Ten more strokes and I should have run into it,”
thought Waring as he floated noiselessly up to this
watery residence; holding on by a jutting beam, he
reconnoitred the premises. The building was of logs,
square, and standing on spiles, its north side, under
in white, and from one of them peeped the top
of a rose-bush; there was but one story, and the roof
was flat. Nothing came to any of these windows,
nothing stirred, and the man in the dug-out, being
curious as well as hungry, decided to explore, and
touching the wall at intervals pushed his craft noiselessly
around the eastern corner; but here was a blank
wall of logs and nothing more. The south side was
the same, with the exception of two loopholes, and
the dug-out glided its quietest past these. But the
west shone out radiant, a rude little balcony overhanging
the water, and in it a girl in a mahogany chair,
nibbling something and reading.
“My sugar and my sonnets, as I am alive!” ejaculated
Waring to himself.
The girl took a fresh bite with her little white teeth,
and went on reading in the sunset light.
“Cool,” thought Waring.
And cool she looked truly to a man who had paddled
two days in a hot sticky fog, as, clad in white, she sat
still and placid on her airy perch. Her hair, of the
very light fleecy gold seldom seen after babyhood, hung
over her shoulders unconfined by comb or ribbon, falling
around her like a veil and glittering in the horizontal
sunbeams; her face, throat, and hands were
white as the petals of a white camelia, her features
infantile, her cast-down eyes invisible under the fullorbed
motionless; it accorded with his theories that the only
woman he had seen for months should be calmly eating
and reading stolen sweets. The girl turned a page,
glanced up, saw him, and sprang forward smiling; as
she stood at the balcony, her beautiful hair fell below
her knees.
“Jacob,” she cried, gladly, “is that you at last?”
“No,” replied Waring, “it is not Jacob; rather Esau.
Jacob was too tricky for me. The damsel Rachel, I
presume!”
“My name is Silver,” said the girl, “and I see you
are not Jacob at all. Who are you, then?”
“A hungry, tired man who would like to come
aboard and rest awhile.”
“Aboard? This is not a boat.”
“What then?”
“A castle, — Castle Nowhere.”
“You reside here?”
“Of course; where else should I reside? Is it not
a beautiful place?” said the girl, looking around with
a little air of pride.
“I could tell better if I was up there.”
“Come, then.”
“How?”
“Do you not see the ladder?”
“Ah, yes, — Jacob had a ladder, I remember; he
comes up this way, I suppose?”
“He does not; but I wish he would.”
“Undoubtedly. But you are not Leah all this
time?”
“I am Silver, as I told you before; I know not
what you mean with your Leah.”
“But, mademoiselle, your Bible —”
“What is Bible?”
“You have never read the Bible?”
“It is a book, then. I like books,” replied Silver,
waving her hand comprehensively; “I have read five,
and now I have a new one.”
“Do you like it, — your new one?” asked Waring,
glancing towards his property.
“I do not understand it all; perhaps you can explain
to me?”
“I think I can,” answered the young man, smiling
in spite of himself; “that is, if you wish to learn.”
“Is it hard?”
“That depends upon the scholar; now, some
minds —” Here a hideous face looked out through
one of the little windows, and then vanished. “Ah,”
said Waring, pausing, “one of the family?”
“That is Lorez, my dear old nurse.”
The face now came out on to the balcony and
showed itself as part of an old negress, bent and
wrinkled with age.
“He came in a boat, Lorez,” said Silver, “and yet
you see he is not Jacob. But he says he is tired
waiting for father.”
The old woman smiled and nodded, stroking the
girl's glittering hair meanwhile with her black hand.
“As soon as the sun has gone it will be very
damp,” said Silver, turning to her guest; “you will
come within. But you have not told me your
name.”
“Jarvis,” replied Waring, promptly.
“Come, then, Jarvis.” And she led the way
through a low door into a long narrow room with a
row of little square windows on each side all covered
with little square white curtains. The walls and
ceiling were planked, and the workmanship of the
whole rude and clumsy; but a gay carpet covered
the floor, a chandelier adorned with lustres hung
from a hook in the ceiling, large gilded vases and a
mirror in a tarnished gilt frame adorned a shelf over
the hearth, mahogany chairs stood in ranks against
the wall under the little windows, and a long narrow
table ran down the centre of the apartment from end
to end. It all seemed strangely familiar; of what
did it remind him? His eyes fell upon the table-legs;
they were riveted to the floor. Then it came to him
at once, — the long narrow cabin of a lake steamer.
“I wonder if it is not anchored after all,” he
thought.
“Just a few shavings and one little stick, Lorez,”
the damp.”
Up flared the blaze and spread abroad in a moment
the dear home feeling. (O hearth-fire, good
genius of home, with thee a log-cabin is cheery and
bright, without thee the palace a dreary waste!)
“And now, while Lorez is preparing supper, you
will come and see my pets,” said Silver, in her soft
tone of unconscious command.
“By all means,” replied Waring. “Anything in
the way of mermaidens?”
“Mermaidens dwell in the water, they cannot live
in houses as we can; did you not know that? I
have seen them on moonlight nights, and so has Lorez;
but Aunt Shadow never saw them.”
“Another member of the family, — Aunt Shadow?”
“Yes,” replied Silver; “but she is not here now.
She went away one night when I was asleep. I do
not know why it is,” she added, sadly, “but if people
go away from here in the night they never come
back. Will it be so with you, Jarvis?”
“No; for I will take you with me,” replied the
young man, lightly.
“Very well; and father will go too, and Lorez,”
said Silver.
To this addition, Waring, like many another man
in similar circumstances, made no reply. But Silver
did not notice the omission. She had opened a door,
and blossom, flowers growing everywhere, — on the
floor, up the walls, across the ceiling, in pots, in
boxes, in baskets, on shelves, in cups, in shells, climbing,
crowding each other, swinging, hanging, winding
around everything, — a riot of beauty with perfumes
for a language. Two white gulls stood in the
open window and gravely surveyed the stranger.
“They stay with me almost all the time,” said the
water-maiden; “every morning they fly out to sea
for a while, but they always come back.”
Then she flitted to and fro, kissed the opening
blossoms and talked to them, tying back the more
riotous vines, and gravely admonishing them.
“They are so happy here,” she said; “it was dull
for them on shore. I would not live on the shore!
Would you?”
“Certainly not,” replied Waring, with an air of
having spent his entire life upon a raft. “But you
did not find all these blossoms on the shores about
here, did you?”
“Father found them, — he finds everything; in his
boat almost every night is something for me. I hope
he will come soon; he will be so glad to see you.”
“Will he? I wish I was sure of that,” thought
Waring. Then aloud, “Has he any men with him?”
he asked, carelessly.
“O no; we live here all alone now, — father, Lorez,
and I.”
“But you were expecting a Jacob?”
“I have been expecting Jacob for more than two
years. Every night I watch for him, but he comes
not. Perhaps he and Aunt Shadow will come together,
— do you think they will?” said Silver, looking
up into his eyes with a wistful expression.
“Certainly,” replied Waring.
“Now am I glad, so glad! For father and Lorez
will never say so. I think I shall like you, Jarvis.”
And, leaning on a box of mignonette, she considered
him gravely with her little hands folded.
Waring, man of the world, — Waring, who had been
under fire, — Waring the impassive, — Waring the unflinching,
— turned from this scrutiny.
Supper was eaten at one end of the long table; the
dishes, tablecloth, and napkins were marked with an
anchor, the food simple but well cooked.
“Fish, of course, and some common supplies I can
understand,” said the visitor; “but how do you obtain
flour like this, or sugar?”
“Father brings them,” said Silver, “and keeps them
locked in his storeroom. Brown sugar we have always,
but white not always, and I like it so much!
Don't you?”
“No; I care nothing for it,” said Waring, remembering
the few lumps and the little white teeth.
The old negress waited, and peered at the visitor out
of her small bright eyes; every time Silver spoke to
said nothing.
“She lost her voice some years ago,” explained the
little mistress when the black had gone out for more
coffee; “and now she seems to have forgotten how to
form words, although she understands us.”
Lorez returned, and, after refilling Waring's cup,
placed something shyly beside his plate, and withdrew
into the shadow. “What is it?” said the young man,
examining the carefully folded parcel.
“Why, Lorez, have you given him that!” exclaimed
Silver as he drew out a scarlet ribbon, old and
frayed, but brilliant still. “We think it must have
belonged to her young master,” she continued in a low
tone. “It is her most precious treasure, and long ago
she used to talk about him, and about her old home in
the South.”
The old woman came forward after a while, smiling
and nodding like an animated mummy, and taking the
red ribbon threw it around the young man's neck, knotting
it under the chin. Then she nodded with treble
radiance and made signs of satisfaction.
“Yes, it is becoming,” said Silver, considering the
effect thoughtfully, her small head with its veil of
hair bent to one side, like a flower swayed by the
wind.
The flesh-pots of Egypt returned to Jarvis Waring's
mind; he remembered certain articles of apparel left
Under the pretence of examining the vases,
he took an early opportunity of looking into the round
mirror. “I am hideous,” he said to himself, uneasily.
“Decidedly so,” echoed the Spirit in a cheerful voice.
But he was not; only a strong dark young man of
twenty-eight, browned by exposure, clad in a gray
flannel shirt and the rough attire of a hunter.
The fire on the hearth sparkled gayly. Silver had
brought one of her little white gowns, half finished,
and sat sewing in its light, while the old negress came
and went about her household tasks.
“So you can sew?” said the visitor.
“Of course I can. Aunt Shadow taught me,” answered
the water-maiden, threading her needle deftly.
“There is no need to do it, for I have so many
dresses; but I like to sew, don't you?”
“I cannot say that I do. Have you so many dresses,
then?”
“Yes; would you like to see them? Wait.”
Down went the little gown trailing along the floor,
and away she flew, coming back with her arms full,
— silks, muslins, laces, and even jewelry. “Are they
not beautiful?” she asked, ranging her splendor over
the chairs.
“They are indeed,” said Waring, examining the
garments with curious eyes. “Where did you get
them?”
“Father brought them. O, there he is now, there he
is now! I hear the oars. Come, Lorez.”
She ran out; the old woman hastened, carrying a
brand from the hearth; and after a moment Waring
followed them. “I may as well face the old rogue at
once,” he thought.
The moon had not risen and the night was dark;
under the balcony floated a black object, and Lorez,
leaning over, held out her flaming torch. The face of
the old rogue came out into the light under its yellow
handkerchief, but so brightened and softened by loving
gladness that the gazer above hardly knew it. “Are
you there, darling, well and safe?” said the old man,
looking up fondly as he fastened his skiff.
“Yes, father; here I am and so glad to see you,”
replied the water-maiden, waiting at the top of the
ladder. “We have a visitor, father dear; are you not
glad, so glad to see him?”
The two men came face to face, and the elder started
back. “What are you doing here?” he said, sternly.
“Looking for my property.”
“Take it, and begone!”
“I will, to-morrow.”
All this apart, and with the rapidity of lightning.
“His name is Jarvis, father, and we must keep him
with us,” said Silver.
“Yes, dear, as long as he wishes to stay; but no
doubt he has home and friends waiting for him.”
They went within, Silver leading the way. Old
Fog's eyes gleamed and his hands were clinched. The
younger man watched him warily.
“I have been showing Jarvis all my dresses, father,
and he thinks them beautiful.”
“They certainly are remarkable,” observed Waring,
coolly.
Old Fog's hands dropped, he glanced nervously towards
the visitor.
“What have you brought for me to-night, father
dear?”
“Nothing, child; that is, nothing of any consequence.
But it is growing late; run off to your
nest.”
“O no, papa; you have had no supper, nor —”
“I am not hungry. Go, child, go; do not grieve
me,” said the old man in a low tone.
“Grieve you? Dear papa, never!” said the girl,
her voice softening to tenderness in a moment. “I
will run straight to my room. — Come, Lorez.”
The door closed. “Now for us two,” thought Waring.
But the cloud had passed from old Fog's face, and
he drew up his chair confidentially. “You see how
it is,” he began in an apologetic tone; “that child is the
darling of my life, and I could not resist taking those
things for her; she has so few books, and she likes
those little lumps of sugar.”
“And the Titian picture?” said Waring, watching
him doubtfully.
“A father's foolish pride; I knew she was lovelier,
but I wanted to see the two side by side. She is lovelier,
is n't she?”
“I do not think so.”
“Don't you?” said old Fog in a disappointed tone.
“Well, I suppose I am foolish about her; we live here
all alone, you see: my sister brought her up.”
“The Aunt Shadow who has gone away?”
“Yes; she was my sister, and — and she went away
last year,” said the old man. “Have a pipe?”
“I should think you would find it hard work to live
here.”
“I do; but a poor man cannot choose. I hunt, fish,
and get out a few furs sometimes; I traffic with the
Beaver Island people now and then. I bought all this
furniture in that way; you would not think it, but they
have a great many nice things down at Beaver.”
“It looks like steamboat furniture.”
“That is it; it is. A steamer went to pieces down
there, and they saved almost all her furniture and
stores; they are very good sailors, the Beavers.”
“Wreckers, perhaps?”
“Well, I would not like to say that; you know we
do have terrible storms on these waters. And then
there is the fog; this part of Lake Michigan is foggy
half the time, why, I never could guess; but twelve
water here and outside, shifting slowly backwards and
forwards from Little Traverse to Death's Door, and up
into this curve, like a waving curtain. Those silks,
now, came from the steamer; trunks, you know. But
I have never told Silver; she might ask where were
the people to whom they belonged. You do not like
the idea? Neither do I. But how could we help the
drowning when we were not there, and these things
were going for a song down at Beaver. The child
loves pretty things; what could a poor man do?
Have a glass of punch; I 'll get it ready in no time.”
He bustled about, and then came back with the full
glasses. “You won't tell her? I may have done
wrong in the matter, but it would kill me to have the
child lose faith in me,” he said, humbly.
“Are you going to keep the girl shut up here forever?”
said Waring, half touched, half disgusted; the
old fellow had looked abject as he pleaded.
“That is it; no,” said Fog, eagerly. “She has been
but a child all this time, you see, and my sister taught
her well. We did the best we could. But as soon as
I have a little more, just a little more, I intend to
move to one of the towns down the lake, and have
a small house and everything comfortable. I have
planned it all out, I shall have —”
He rambled on, garrulously detailing all his fancies
and projects while the younger man sipped his punch
into a doze, woke and listened awhile longer, and
then, wearied out, proposed bed.
“Certainly. But, as I was saying —”
“I can hear the rest to-morrow,” said Waring, rising
with scant courtesy.
“I am sorry you go so soon; could n't you stay a
few days?” said the old man, lighting a brand. “I am
going over to-morrow to the shore where I met you.
I have some traps there; you might enjoy a little
hunting.”
“I have had too much of that already. I must
get my dogs, and then I should like to hit a steamer
or vessel going below.”
“Nothing easier; we 'll go over after the dogs early
in the morning, and then I 'll take you right down
to the islands if the wind is fair. Would you like to
look around the castle, — I am going to draw up the
ladders. No? This way, then; here is your room.”
It was a little side-chamber with one window high
up over the water; there was an iron bolt on the
door, and the walls of bare logs were solid. Waring
stood his gun in one corner, and laid his pistols by
the side of the bed, — for there was a bed, only a rude
framework like a low-down shelf, but covered with
mattress and sheets none the less, — and his weary
body longed for those luxuries with a longing that only
the wilderness can give, — the wilderness with its beds
shut him in safely; he was young and strong, and
there were his pistols. “Unless they burn down their
old castle,” he said to himself, “they cannot harm
me.” And then he fell to thinking of the lovely
childlike girl, and his heart grew soft. “Poor old
man,” he said, “how he must have worked and stolen
and starved to keep her safe and warm in this far-away
nest of his hidden in the fogs! I won't betray
the old fellow, and I 'll go to-morrow. Do you
hear that, Jarvis Waring? I 'll go to-morrow!”
And then the Spirit, who had been listening as
usual, folded himself up silently and flew away.
To go to sleep in a bed, and awake in an open boat
drifting out to sea, is startling. Waring was not without
experiences, startling and so forth, but this exceeded
former sensations; when a bear had him, for
instance, he at least understood it, but this was not
a bear, but a boat. He examined the craft as well as
he could in the darkness. “Evidently boats in some
shape or other are the genii of this region,” he said;
“they come shooting ashore from nowhere, they sail
in at a signal without oars, canvas, or crew, and now
they have taken to kidnapping. It is foggy too, I 'll
warrant; they are in league with the fogs.” He
looked up, but could see nothing, not even a star.
“What does it all mean anyway? Where am I?
Who am I? Am I anybody? Or has the body gone
Finding himself partly dressed, with the rest of his
clothes at his feet, he concluded that he was not yet
a spirit; in one of his pockets was a match, he struck
it and came back to reality in its flash. The boat
was his own dug-out, and he himself and no other
was in it: so far, so good. Everything else, however,
was fog and night. He found the paddle and began
work. “We shall see who will conquer,” he thought,
doggedly, “Fate or I!” So he paddled on an hour
or more.
Then the wind arose and drove the fog helter-skelter
across to Green Bay, where the gray ranks
curled themselves down and lay hidden until morning.
“I 'll go with the wind,” thought Waring, “it
must take me somewhere in time.” So he changed
his course and paddled on. The wind grew strong,
then stronger. He could see a few stars now as the
ragged dark clouds scudded across the heavens, and he
hoped for the late moon. The wind grew wild, then
wilder. It took all his skill to manage his clumsy
boat. He no longer asked himself where he was or
who; he knew, — a man in the grasp of death. The
wind was a gale now, and the waves were pressed
down flat by its force as it flew along. Suddenly
the man at the paddle, almost despairing, espied a
light, high up, steady, strong. “A lighthouse on one
of the islands,” he said, and steered for it with all
hour he felt the beach under him, and landed on a
shore; but the light he saw no longer. “I must be
close in under it,” he thought. In the train of the
gale came thunder and lightning. Waring sat under
a bush watching the powers of the air in conflict,
he saw the fury of their darts and heard the
crash of their artillery, and mused upon the wonders
of creation, and the riddle of man's existence. Then
a flash came, different from the others in that it
brought the human element upon the scene; in its
light he saw a vessel driving helplessly before the gale.
Down from his spirit-heights he came at once, and all
the man within him was stirred for those on board,
who, whether or not they had ever perplexed themselves
over the riddle of their existence, no doubt
now shrank from the violent solution offered to
them. But what could he do? He knew nothing
of the shore, and yet there must be a harbor somewhere,
for was there not the light? Another flash
showed the vessel still nearer, drifting broadside on;
involuntarily he ran out on the long sandy point
where it seemed that soon she must strike. But
sooner came a crash, and a grinding sound; there
was a reef outside then, and she was on it, the rocks
cutting her, and the waves pounding her down on
their merciless edges. “Strange!” he thought. “The
harbor must be on the other side I suppose, and yet
there was the light high up behind him, burning
clearly and strongly, while the vessel was breaking
to pieces below. “It is a lure,” he said, indignantly,
“a false light.” In his wrath he spoke aloud; suddenly
a shape came out of the darkness, cast him down, and
tightened a grasp around his throat. “I know you,”
he muttered, strangling. One hand was free, he drew
out his pistol, and fired; the shape fell back. It
was old Fog. Wounded? Yes, badly.
Waring found his tinder-box, made a blaze of drift-wood,
and bound up the bleeding arm and leg
roughly. “Wretch,” he said, “you set that light.”
Old Fog nodded.
“Can anything be done for the men on board?
Answer, or I 'll end your miserable life at once; I
don't know why, indeed, I have tried to save it.”
Old Fog shook his head. “Nothing,” he murmured;
“I know every inch of the reef and shore.”
Another flash revealed for an instant the doomed
vessel, and Waring raged at his own impotence as
he strode to and fro, tears of anger and pity in his
eyes. The old man watched him anxiously. “There
are not more than six of them,” he said; “it was
only a small schooner.”
“Silence!” shouted Waring; “each man of the six
now suffering and drowning is worth a hundred of such
as you!”
“That may be,” said Fog.
Half an hour afterwards he spoke again. “They 're
about gone now, the water is deadly cold up here.
The wind will go down soon, and by daylight the
things will be coming ashore; you 'll see to them,
won't you?”
“I 'll see to nothing, murderer!”
“And if I die, what are you?”
“An avenger.”
“Silver must die too then; there is but little in
the house, she will soon starve. It was for her that
I came out to-night.”
“I will take her away; not for your sake, but for
hers.”
“How can you find her?”
“As soon as it is daylight I will sail over.”
“Over? Over where? That is it, you do not
know,” said the old man, eagerly, raising himself on
his unwounded arm. “You might row and sail
about here for days, and I 'll warrant you 'd never
find the castle; it 's hidden away more carefully than
a nest in the reeds, trust me for that. The way lies
through a perfect tangle of channels and islands and
marshes, and the fog is sure for at least a good half
of the time. The sides of the castle towards the
channel show no light at all; and even when you 're
once through the outlying islets, the only approach
is masked by a movable bed of sedge which I contrived,
marsh by another way. No; you might float around
there for days, but you 'd never find the castle.”
“I found it once.”
“That was because you came from the north shore.
I did not guard that side, because no one has ever
come that way; you remember how quickly I saw
your light and rowed over to find out what it was.
But you are miles away from there now.”
The moon could not pierce the heavy clouds, and
the night continued dark. At last the dawn came
slowly up the east and showed an angry sea, and an
old man grayly pallid on the sands near the dying
fire; of the vessel nothing was to be seen.
“The things will be coming ashore, the things will
be coming ashore,” muttered the old man, his anxious
eyes turned towards the water that lay on a
level with his face; he could not raise himself now.
“Do you see things coming ashore?”
Waring looked searchingly at him. “Tell me the
truth,” he said, “has the girl no boat?”
“No.”
“Will any one go to rescue her; does any one know
of the castle?”
“Not a human being on this earth.”
“And that aunt, — that Jacob?”
“Did n't you guess it? They are both dead. I
rowed them out by night and buried them, — my
The child knows nothing of death. I told
her they had gone away.”
“Is there no way for her to cross to the islands or
mainland?”
“No; there is a circle of deep water all around the
castle, outside.”
“I see nothing for it, then, but to try and save your
justly forfeited life,” said Waring, kneeling down with
an expression of repugnance. He was something of a
surgeon, and knew what he was about. His task over,
he made up the fire, warmed some food, fed the old
man, and helped his waning strength with the contents
of his flask. “At least you placed all my property in
the dug-out before you set me adrift,” he said; “may
I ask your motive?”
“I did not wish to harm you; only to get rid of
you. You had provisions, and your chances were as
good as many you had had in the woods.”
“But I might have found my way back to your
castle?”
“Once outside, you could never do that,” replied the
old man, securely.
“I could go back along-shore.”
“There are miles of piny-wood swamps where the
streams come down; no, you could not do it, unless
you went away round to Lake Superior again, and
struck across the country as you did before. That
almost over. You would not risk a Northern snow-storm,
I reckon. But say, do you see things coming
ashore?”
“The poor bodies will come, no doubt,” said Waring,
sternly.
“Not yet; and they don't often come in here, any
way; they 're more likely to drift out to sea.”
“Miserable creature, this is not the first time, then!”
“Only four times, — only four times in fifteen long
years, and then only when she was close to starvation,”
pleaded the old man. “The steamer was honestly
wrecked, — the Anchor, of the Buffalo line, — honestly,
I do assure you; and what I gathered from her
— she did not go to pieces for days — lasted me a
long time, besides furnishing the castle. It was a god-send
to me, that steamer. You must not judge me,
boy; I work, I slave, I go hungry and cold, to keep
her happy and warm. But times come when everything
fails and starvation is at the door. She never
knows it, none of them ever knew it, for I keep the
keys and amuse them with little mysteries; but, as
God is my judge, the wolf has been at the door, and
is there this moment unless I have luck. Fish?
There are none in shore where they can catch them.
Why do I not fish for them? I do; but my darling
is not accustomed to coarse fare, her delicate life
must be delicately nourished. O, you do not know,
and eyes are not what they were. That very night
when I came home and found you there, I had just
lost overboard my last supplies, stored so long, husbanded
so carefully! If I could walk, I would show
you my cellar and storehouse back in the woods.
Many things that they have held were honestly
earned, by my fish and my game, and one thing and
another. I get out timber and raft it down to the
islands sometimes, although the work is too hard for
an old man alone; and I trade my furs off regularly
at the settlements on the islands and even along the
mainland, — a month's work for a little flour or sugar.
Ah, how I have labored! I have felt my muscles
crack, I have dropped like a log from sheer weariness.
Talk of tortures; which of them have I not felt, with
the pains and faintness of exposure and hunger racking
me from head to foot? Have I stopped for snow
and ice? Have I stopped for anguish? Never; I
have worked, worked, worked, with the tears of pain
rolling down my cheeks, with my body gnawed by
hunger. That night, in some way, the boxes slipped
and fell overboard as I was shifting them; just slipped
out of my grasp as if on purpose, they knowing all
the time that they were my last. Home I came,
empty-handed, and found you there! I would have
taken your supplies, over on the north beach, that
night, yes, without pity, had I not felt sure of those
me with scorn? You are thinking of those dead men?
But what are they to Silver, — the rough common
fellows, — and the wolf standing at the castle door!
Believe me, though, I try everything before I resort
to this, and only twice out of the four times have
I caught anything with my tree-hung light; once it
was a vessel loaded with provisions, and once it was
a schooner with grain from Chicago, which washed
overboard and was worthless. O, the bitter day
when I stood here in the biting wind and watched
it float by out to sea! But say, has anything come
ashore? She will be waking soon, and we have miles
to go.”
But Waring did not answer; he turned away. The
old man caught at his feet. “You are not going,” he
cried in a shrill voice, — “you are not going? Leave
me to die, — that is well; the sun will come and burn
me, thirst will come and madden me, these wounds
will torture me, and all is no more than I deserve.
But Silver? If I die, she dies. If you forsake me,
you forsake her. Listen; do you believe in your
Christ, the dear Christ? Then, in his name I swear
to you that you cannot reach her alone, that only I
can guide you to her. O save me, for her sake! Must
she suffer and linger and die? O God, have pity and
soften his heart!” The voice died away in sobs, the
weak slow sobs of an old man.
But Waring, stern in avenging justice, drew himself
from the feeble grasp, and walked down towards
the boats. He did not intend fairly to desert the miserable
old creature. He hardly knew what he intended,
but his impulse was to put more space between them,
between himself and this wretch who gathered his
evil living from dead men's bones. So he stood gazing
out to sea. A faint cry roused him, and, turning,
he saw that the old man had dragged himself half
across the distance between them, marking the way
with his blood, for the bandages were loosened by his
movements. As Waring turned, he held up his hands,
cried aloud, and fell as if dead on the sands. “I am
a brute,” said Waring. Then he went to work and
brought back consciousness, rebound the wounds, lifted
the body in his strong arms and bore it down the
beach. A sail-boat lay in a cove, with a little skiff in
tow. Waring arranged a couch in the bottom, and
placed the old man in an easy position on an impromptu
pillow made of his coat. Fog opened his
eyes. “Anything come ashore?” he asked faintly, trying
to turn his head towards the reef. Conquering
his repugnance, the young man walked out on the
long point. There was nothing there; but farther
down the coast barrels were washing up and back
in the surf, and one box had stranded in shallow
water. “Am I, too, a wrecker?” he asked himself,
as with much toil and trouble he secured the booty
Old Fog, revived by the sight, lay propped at the
stern, giving directions. Waring found himself a child
obeying the orders of a wiser head. The load on
board, the little skiff carrying its share behind, the
young man set sail and away they flew over the
angry water; old Fog watching the sky, the sail, and
the rudder, guiding their course with a word now and
then, but silent otherwise.
“Shall we see the castle soon?” asked Waring, after
several hours had passed.
“We may be there by night, if the wind does n't
shift.”
“Have we so far to go, then? Why, I came across
in the half of a night.”
“Add a day to the half and you have it. I let you
down at dawn and towed you out until noon; then I
spied that sail beating up, and I knew there would be
a storm by night, and — and things were desperate
with me. So I cast you off and came over to set the
light. It was a chance I did not count on, that your
dug-out should float this way; I calculated that she
would beach you safely on an island farther to the
south.”
“And all this time, when you were letting me
down — By the way, how did you do it?”
“Lifted a plank in the floor.”
“When you were letting me down, and towing
me out, and calculating chances, what was I, may I
ask?”
“O, just a body asleep, that was all; your punch
was drugged, and well done too! Of course I could
not have you at the castle; that was plain.”
They flew on a while longer, and then veered short
to the left. “This boat sails well,” said Waring, “and
that is your skiff behind I see. Did you whistle for
it that night?”
“I let it out by a long cord while you went after the
game-bag, and the shore-end I fastened to a little stake
just under the edge of the water on that long slope
of beach. I snatched it up as I ran out, and kept hauling
in until I met it. You fell off that ledge, did n't
you? I calculated on that. You see I had found out
all I wanted to know; the only thing I feared was
some plan for settling along that shore, or exploring it
for something. It is my weak side; if you had climbed
up one of those tall trees you might have caught sight
of the castle, — that is, if there was no fog.”
“Will the fog come up now?”
“Hardly; the storm has been too heavy. I suppose
you know what day it is?” continued the old man,
peering up at his companion from under his shaggy
eyebrows.
“No; I have lost all reckonings of time and place.”
“Purposely?”
“Yes.”
“You are worse than I am, then; I keep a reckoning,
although I do not show it. To-day is Sunday, but
Silver does not know it; all days are alike to her.
Silver has never heard of the Bible,” he added, slowly.
“Yes, she has, for I told her.”
“You told her!” cried old Fog, wringing his hands.
“Be quiet, or you will disturb those bandages again.
I only asked her if she had read the book, and she
said no; that was all. But supposing it had not been
all, what then? Would it harm her to know of the
Bible?”
“It would harm her to lose faith in me.”
“Then why have you not told her yourself?”
“I left her to grow up as the flowers grow,” said old
Fog, writhing on his couch. “Is she not pure and
good? Ah, a thousand times more than any church
or school could make her!”
“And yet you have taught her to read?”
“I knew not what might happen. I could not
expose her defenceless in a hard world. Religion is
fancy, but education is like an armor. I cannot tell
what may happen.”
“True. You may die, you know; you are an old
man.”
The old man turned away his face.
They sailed on, eating once or twice; afternoon
came, and then an archipelago closed in around them;
through, across and back, in and out they wound, now
rowing, now poling, and now and then the sail hoisted
to scud across a space of open water. Old Fog's face
had grown gray again, and the lines had deepened
across his haggard cheek and set mouth; his strength
was failing. At last they came to a turn, broad and
smooth like a canal. “Now I will hoist the sail
again,” said Waring.
But old Fog shook his head. “That turn leads directly
back into the marsh,” he said. “Take your oar
and push against the sedge in front.”
The young man obeyed, and lo! it moved slowly
aside and disclosed a narrow passage westward; through
this they poled their way along to open water, then
set the sail, rounded a point, and came suddenly
upon the castle. “Well, I am glad we are here,” said
Waring.
Fog had fallen back. “Promise,” he whispered with
gray lips, — “promise that you will not betray me to
the child.” And his glazing eyes fixed themselves on
Waring's face with the mute appeal of a dying animal
in the hands of its captor.
“I promise,” said Waring.
But the old man did not die; he wavered, lingered,
then slowly rallied, — very slowly. The weeks had
grown into a month and two before he could manage
his boat again. In the mean time Waring hunted and
reef with Fog on a bed in the bottom of the boat,
coming back loaded with the spoil; not once only, not
twice did he go; and at last he knew the way, even
through the fog, and came and went alone, bringing
home the very planks and beams of the ill-fated
schooner. “They will make a bright fire in the evenings,”
he said. The dogs lived on the north shore, went
hunting when their master came over, and the rest of
the time possessed their souls in patience. And what
possessed Waring, do you ask? His name for it was
“necessity.” “Of course I cannot leave them to
starve,” he said to himself.
Silver came and went about the castle, at first wilfully,
then submissively, then shyly. She had folded
away all her finery in wondering silence, for Waring's
face had shown disapproval, and now she wore always
her simple white gown. “Can you not put up your
hair?” he had asked one day; and from that moment
the little head appeared crowned with braids. She
worked among her flowers and fed her gulls as usual,
but she no longer talked to them or told them stories.
In the evenings they all sat around the hearth, and
sometimes the little maiden sang; Waring had taught
her new songs. She knew the sonnets now, and
chanted them around the castle to tunes of her own;
Shakespeare would not have known his stately measures,
dancing along to her rippling melodies.
The black face of Orange shone and simmered with
glee; she nodded perpetually, and crooned and laughed
to herself over her tasks by the hour together, — a low
chuckling laugh of exceeding content.
And did Waring ever stop to think? I know not.
If he did, he forgot the thoughts when Silver came and
sat by him in the evening with the light of the hearth-fire
shining over her. He scarcely saw her at other
times, except on her balcony, or at her flower-window
as he came and went in his boat below; but in the
evenings she sat beside him in her low chair, and laid
sometimes her rose-leaf palm in his rough brown hand,
or her pretty head against his arm. Old Fog sat by
always; but he said little, and his face was shaded by
his hand.
The early autumn gales swept over the lakes, leaving
wreck and disaster behind; but the crew of the castle
stayed safely at home and listened to the tempest cosily,
while the flowers bloomed on, and the gulls brought
all their relations and colonized the balcony and window-sills,
fed daily by the fair hand of Silver. And
Waring went not.
Then the frosts came, and turned the forests into
splendor; they rowed over and brought out branches,
and Silver decked the long room with scarlet and gold.
And Waring went not.
The dreary November rains began, the leaves fell,
and the dark water surged heavily; but a store of
hearth blazed high. And still Waring went not.
At last the first ice appeared, thin flakes forming
around the log foundations of the castle; then old Fog
spoke. “I am quite well now, quite strong again; you
must go to-day, or you will find yourself frozen in here.
As it is, you may hit a late vessel off the islands that
will carry you below. I will sail over with you, and
bring back the boat.”
“But you are not strong enough yet,” said Waring,
bending over his work, a shelf he was carving for Silver;
“I cannot go and leave you here alone.”
“It is either go now, or stay all winter. You do
not, I presume, intend to make Silver your wife, —
Silver, the daughter of Fog the wrecker.”
Waring's hands stopped; never before had the old
man's voice taken that tone, never before had he even
alluded to the girl as anything more than a child. On
the contrary, he had been silent, he had been humble,
he had been openly grateful to the strong young man
who had taken his place on sea and shore, and kept
the castle full and warm. “What new thing is this?”
thought Waring, and asked the same.
“Is it new?” said Fog. “I thought it old, very old.
I mean no mystery, I speak plainly. You helped me
in my great strait, and I thank you; perhaps it will be
counted unto you for good in the reckoning up of your
life. But I am strong again, and the ice is forming.
wife?”
Waring looked up, their eyes met. “No,” he replied
slowly, as though the words were being dragged out of
him by the magnetism of the old man's gaze, “I certainly
have no such intention.”
Nothing more was said; soon Waring rose and went
out. But Silver spied him from her flower-room, and
came down to the sail-boat where it lay at the foot of
the ladder. “You are not going out this cold day,”
she said, standing by his side as he busied himself
over the rigging. She was wrapped in a fur mantle,
with a fur cap on her head, and her rough little shoes
were fur-trimmed. Waring made no reply. “But I
shall not allow it,” continued the maiden, gayly. “Am
I not queen of this castle? You yourself have said it
many a time. You cannot go, Jarvis; I want you
here.” And with her soft hands she blinded him
playfully.
“Silver, Silver,” called old Fog's voice above, “come
within; I want you.”
After that the two men were very crafty in their
preparations.
The boat ready, Waring went the rounds for the last
time. He brought down wood for several days and
stacked it, he looked again at all the provisions and
reckoned them over; then he rowed to the north shore,
visited his traps, called out the dogs from the little
“I shall leave you for old Fog,” he said; “be good
dogs, and bring in all you can for the castle.”
The dogs wagged their tails, and waited politely on
the beach until he was out of sight; but they did not
seem to believe his story, and went back to their house
tranquilly without a howl. The day passed as usual.
Once the two men happened to meet in the passageway.
“Silver seems restless, we must wait till darkness,”
said Fog in a low tone.
“Very well,” replied Waring.
At midnight they were off, rowing over the black
water in the sail-boat, hoping for a fair wind at dawn,
as the boat was heavy. They journeyed but slowly
through the winding channel, leaving the sedge-gate
open; no danger now from intruders; the great giant,
Winter, had swallowed all lesser foes. It was cold,
very cold, and they stopped awhile at dawn on the
edge of the marsh, the last shore, to make a fire and
heat some food before setting sail for the islands.
“Good God!” cried Waring.
A boat was coming after them, a little skiff they
both knew, and in it, paddling, in her white dress, sat
Silver, her fur mantle at her feet where it had fallen
unnoticed. They sprang to meet her, knee-deep in the
icy water; but Waring was first, and lifted her slight
form in his arms.
“I have found you, Jarvis,” she murmured, laying
and the hand she had tried to clasp around his neck
fell lifeless. Close to the fire, wrapped in furs, Waring
held her in his arms, while the old man bent over her,
chafing her hands and little icy feet, and calling her
name in an agony.
“Let her but come back to life, and I will say not
one word, not one word more,” he cried with tears.
“Who am I that I should torture her? You shall
go back with us, and I will trust it all to God, — all
to God.”
“But what if I will not go back, what if I will not
accept your trust?” said Waring, turning his head
away from the face pillowed on his breast.
“I do not trust you, I trust God; he will guard
her.”
“I believe he will,” said the young man, half to
himself. And then they bore her home, not knowing
whether her spirit was still with them, or already gone
to that better home awaiting it in the next country.
That night the thick ice came, and the last vessels
fled southward. But in the lonely little castle there
was joy; for the girl was saved, barely, with fever,
with delirium, with long prostration, but saved!
When weeks had passed, and she was in her low
chair again, propped with cushions, pallid as a snow-drop,
weak and languid, but still there, she told her
story, simply and without comprehension of its meaning.
“I could not rest that night,” she said, “I know not
why; so I dressed softly and slipped past Orange
asleep on her mattress by my door, and found you
both gone, — you, father, and you, Jarvis. You never
go out at night, and it was very cold; and Jarvis had
taken his bag and his knapsack, and all the little
things I know so well. His gun was gone from the
wall, his clothes from his empty room, and that picture
of the girl holding up the fruit was not on his
table. From that I knew that something had happened;
for it is dear to Jarvis, that picture of the girl,”
said Silver with a little quiver in her voice. With a
quick gesture Waring drew the picture from his pocket
and threw it into the fire; it blazed, and was gone in
a moment. “Then I went after you,” said Silver with
a little look of gratitude. “I know the passage through
the south channels, and something told me you had
gone that way. It was very cold.”
That was all, no reasoning, no excuse, no embarrassment;
the flight of the little sea-bird straight to its
mate.
Life flowed on again in the old channel, Fog quiet,
Silver happy, and Waring in a sort of dream. Winter
was full upon them, and the castle beleaguered with his
white armies both below and above, on the water and
in the air. The two men went ashore on the ice now,
and trapped and hunted daily, the dogs following.
Fagots were cut and rough roads made through the
for a lifelong residence, the young man and the old,
as they came and went together, now on the snow-crust,
now plunging through breast-deep into the light
dry mass. One day Waring said, “Let me see your
reckoning. Do you know that to-morrow will be
Christmas?”
“Silver knows nothing of Christmas,” said Fog,
roughly.
“Then she shall know,” replied Waring.
Away he went to the woods and brought back evergreen.
In the night he decked the cabin-like room,
and with infinite pains constructed a little Christmas-tree
and hung it with everything he could collect or
contrive.
“It is but a poor thing, after all,” he said, gloomily,
as he stood alone surveying his work. It was indeed
a shabby little tree, only redeemed from ugliness by a
white cross poised on the green summit; this cross
glittered and shone in the firelight, — it was cut from
solid ice.
“Perhaps I can help you,” said old Fog's voice behind.
“I did not show you this, for fear it would
anger you, but — but there must have been a child on
board after all.” He held a little box of toys, carefully
packed as if by a mother's hand, — common toys, for
she was only the captain's wife, and the schooner a
small one; the little waif had floated ashore by itself,
and Fog had seen and hidden it.
Waring said nothing, and the two men began to tie
on the toys in silence. But after a while they warmed
to their work and grew eager to make it beautiful; the
old red ribbon that Orange had given was considered
a precious treasure-trove, and, cut in fragments, it
gayly held the little wooden toys in place on the green
boughs.
Fog, grown emulous, rifled the cupboards and found
small cakes freshly baked by the practised hand of the
old cook; these he hung exultingly on the higher
boughs. And now the little tree was full, and stood
bravely in its place at the far end of the long room,
while the white cross looked down on the toys of the
drowned child and the ribbon of the slave, and seemed
to sanctify them for their new use.
Great was the surprise of Silver the next morning,
and many the questions she asked. Out in the world,
they told her, it was so; trees like that were decked
for children.
“Am I a child?” said Silver, thoughtfully; “what
do you think, papa?”
“What do you think?” said Waring, turning the
question.
“I hardly know; sometimes I think I am, and sometimes
not; but it is of no consequence what I am as
long as I have you, — you and papa. Tell me more
about the little tree, Jarvis. What does it mean?
What is that white shining toy on the top? Is there
a story about it?”
“Yes, there is a story; but — but it is not I who
should tell it to you,” replied the young man, after a
moment's hesitation.
“Why not? Whom have I in all the world to tell
me, save you?” said fondly the sweet child-voice.
They did not take away the little Christmas-tree,
but left it on its pedestal at the far end of the long
room through the winter; and as the cross melted
slowly, a new one took its place, and shone aloft in
the firelight. But its story was not told.
February came, and with it a February thaw; the
ice stirred a little, and the breeze coming over the
floes was singularly mild. The arctic winds and the
airs from the Gulf Stream had met and mingled, and
the gray fog appeared again, waving to and fro.
“Spring has come,” said Silver; “there is the dear
fog.” And she opened the window of the flower-room,
and let out a little bird.
“It will find no resting-place for the sole of its
foot, for the snow is over the face of the whole earth,”
said Waring. “Our ark has kept us cosily through
bitter weather, has it not, little one?” (He had
adopted a way of calling her so.)
“Ark,” said Silver; “what is that?”
“Well,” answered Waring, looking down into her
blue eyes as they stood together at the little window,
“it was a watery residence like this; and if Japheth,
— he was always my favorite of the three — had
have come down at all, but would have resided permanently
on Ararat.”
Silver looked up into his face with a smile, not
understanding what he said, nor asking to understand;
it was enough for her that he was there. And
as she gazed her violet eyes grew so deep, so soft,
that the man for once (give him credit, it was the
first time) took her into his arms. “Silver,” he
whispered, bending over her, “do you love me?”
“Yes,” she answered in her simple, unconscious
way, “you know I do, Jarvis.”
No color deepened in her fair face under his ardent
gaze; and, after a moment, he released her, almost
roughly. The next day he told old Fog that he
was going.
“Where?”
“Somewhere, this time. I 've had enough of Nowhere.”
“Why do you go?”
“Do you want the plain truth, old man? Here
it is, then: I am growing too fond of that girl, — a
little more and I shall not be able to leave her.”
“Then stay; she loves you.”
“A child's love.”
“She will develop —”
“Not into my wife if I know myself,” said Waring,
curtly.
Old Fog sat silent a moment. “Is she not lovely
and good?” he said in a low voice.
“She is; but she is your daughter as well.”
“She is not.”
“She is not! What then?
“I — I do not know; I found her, a baby, by the
wayside.”
“A foundling! So much the better, that is even
a step lower,” said the younger man, laughing roughly.
And the other crept away as though he had been
struck.
Waring set about his preparations. This time Silver
did not suspect his purpose. She had passed out
of the quick, intuitive watchfulness of childhood.
During these days she had taken up the habit of
sitting by herself in the flower-room, ostensibly with
her book or sewing; but when they glanced in through
the open door, her hands were lying idle on her lap
and her eyes fixed dreamily on some opening blossom.
Hours she sat thus, without stirring.
Waring's plan was a wild one; no boat could sail
through the ice, no foot could cross the wide rifts made
by the thaw, and weeks of the bitterest weather still
lay between them and the spring. “Along-shore,”
he said.
“And die of cold and hunger,” answered Fog.
“Old man, why are you not afraid of me?” said
Waring, pausing in his work with a lowering glance.
so choose, of your castle of logs?”
“But you will not so choose.”
“Do not trust me too far!”
“I do not trust you, — but God.”
“For a wrecker and a murderer, you have, I must
say, a remarkably serene conscience,” sneered Waring.
Again the old man shrank, and crept silently away.
But when in the early dawn a dark figure stood on
the ice adjusting its knapsack, a second figure stole
down the ladder. “Will you go, then,” it said, “go
and leave the child?”
“She is no child,” answered the younger man, sternly;
“and you know it.”
“To me she is.”
“I care not what she is to you; but she shall not
be more to me.”
“More to you?”
“No more than any other pretty piece of waxwork,”
replied Waring, striding away into the gray
mist.
Silver came to breakfast radiant, her small head
covered from forehead to throat with the winding
braids of gold, her eyes bright, her cheeks faintly
tinged with the icy water of her bath. “Where is
Jarvis?” she asked.
“Gone hunting,” replied old Fog.
“For all day?”
“Yes; and perhaps for all night. The weather is
quite mild, you know.”
“Yes, papa. But I hope it will soon be cold again;
he cannot stay out long then,” said the girl, gazing out
over the ice with wistful eyes.
The danger was over for that day; but the next
morning there it was again, and with it the bitter
cold.
“He must come home soon now,” said Silver, confidently,
melting the frost on one of the little windows
so that she could see out and watch for his
coming. But he came not. As night fell the cold
grew intense; deadly, clear, and still, with the stars
shining brilliantly in the steel-blue of the sky. Silver
wandered from window to window, wrapped in her fur
mantle; a hundred times, a thousand times she had
scanned the ice-fields and the snow, the lake and the
shore. When the night closed down, she crept close
to the old man who sat by the fire in silence, pretending
to mend his nets, but furtively watching her every
movement. “Papa,” she whispered, “where is he, —
where is he?” And her tears fell on his hands.
“Silver,” he said, bending over her tenderly, “do I
not love you? Am I not enough for you? Think,
dear, how long we have lived here, and how happy
we have been. He was only a stranger. Come, let us
forget him, and go back to the old days.”
“What! Has he gone, then? Has Jarvis gone?”
hands and dilated eyes. Of all the words she had heard
but one; he had gone! The poor old man tried to
draw her down again into the shelter of his arms, but
she seemed turned to stone, her slender form was rigid.
“Where is he? Where is Jarvis? What have you
done with him, — you, you!”
The quick unconscious accusation struck to his
heart. “Child,” he said in a broken voice, “I tried to
keep him. I would have given him my place in your
love, in your life, but he would not. He has gone,
he cares not for you; he is a hard, evil man.”
“He is not! But even if he were, I love him,” said
the girl, defiantly.
Then she threw up her arms towards heaven (alas!
it was no heaven to her, poor child) as if in appeal.
“Is there no one to help me?” she cried aloud.
“What can we do, dear?” said the old man, standing
beside her and smoothing her hair gently. “He
would not stay, — I could not keep him!”
“I could have kept him.”
“You would not ask him to stay, if he wished to
go?”
“Yes, I would; he must stay, for my sake.”
“But if he had loved you, dear, he would not have
gone.”
“Did he say he did not love me?” demanded Silver,
with gleaming eyes.
Old Fog hesitated.
“Did he say he did not love me? Did Jarvis say
that?” she repeated, seizing his arm with grasp of fire.
“Yes; he said that.”
But the lie meant to rouse her pride, killed it; as
if struck by a visible hand, she swayed and fell to the
floor.
The miserable old man watched her all the night.
She was delirious, and raved of Waring through the
long hours. At daylight he left her with Orange,
who, not understanding these white men's riddles, and
sorely perplexed by Waring's desertion, yet cherished
her darling with dumb untiring devotion, and watched
her every breath.
Following the solitary trail over the snow-covered
ice and thence along-shore towards the east journeyed
old Fog all day in the teeth of the wind, dragging a
sledge loaded with furs, provisions, and dry wood;
the sharp blast cut him like a knife, and the dry
snow-pellets stung as they touched his face, and clung
to his thin beard coated with ice. It was the worst
day of the winter, an evil, desolate, piercing day; no
human creature should dare such weather. Yet the
old man journeyed patiently on until nightfall, and
would have gone farther had not darkness concealed
the track; his fear was that new snow might fall
deeply enough to hide it, and then there was no more
hope of following. But nothing could be done at
with the snow for walls and roof, and a hot fire that
barely melted the edges of its icy hearth. As the
blaze flared out into the darkness, he heard a cry, and
followed; it was faint, but apparently not distant, and
after some search he found the spot; there lay Jarvis
Waring, helpless and nearly frozen. “I thought you
farther on,” he said, as he lifted the heavy, inert body.
“I fell and injured my knee yesterday; since then
I have been freezing slowly,” replied Waring in a
muffled voice. “I have been crawling backwards and
forwards all day to keep myself alive, but had just
given it up when I saw your light.”
All night the old hands worked over him, and they
hated the body they touched; almost fiercely they
fed and nourished it, warmed its blood, and brought
back life. In the dawning Waring was himself again;
weak, helpless, but in his right mind. He said as
much, and added, with a touch of his old humor,
“There is a wrong mind you know, old gentleman.”
The other made no reply; his task done, he sat
by the fire waiting. He had gone after this fellow,
driven by fate; he had saved him, driven by fate.
Now what had fate next in store? He warmed
his wrinkled hands mechanically and waited, while
the thought came to him with bitterness that his
darling's life lay at the mercy of this man who
had nothing better to do, on coming back from the
was mistaken; the man had something better to do,
and did it. Perhaps he noted the expression of the
face before him; perhaps he did not, but was thinking,
young-man fashion, only of himself; at any rate
this is what he said: “I was a fool to go. Help me
back, old man; it is too strong for me, — I give it up.”
“Back, — back where?” said the other, apathetically.
Waring raised his head from his pillow of furs.
“Why do you ask, when you know already? Back to
Silver, of course; have you lost your mind?”
His harshness came from within; in reality it was
meant for himself; the avowal had cost him something
as it passed his lips in the form of words; it had not
seemed so when in the suffering, and the cold, and
the approach of death, he had seen his own soul face
to face and realized the truth.
So the two went back to the castle, the saved lying
on the sledge, the savior drawing it; the wind was
behind them now, and blew them along. And when
the old man, weary and numb with cold, reached the
ladder at last, helped Waring, lame and irritable, up
to the little snow-covered balcony, and led the way
to Silver's room, — when Silver, hearing the step,
raised herself in the arms of the old slave and looked
eagerly, not at him, no, but at the man behind, — did
he shrink? He did not; but led the reluctant, vanquished,
defiant, half-angry, half-shamed lover forward,
almost unwilling, so strong was the old opposing determination
that lay bound by love's bonds.
Silver regained her life as if by magic; not so Waring,
who lay suffering and irritable on the lounge in
the long room, while the girl tended him with a joy
that shone out in every word, every tone, every motion.
She saw not his little tyrannies, his exacting demands,
his surly tempers; or rather she saw and loved them
as women do when men lie ill and helpless in their
hands. And old Fog sat apart, or came and went unnoticed;
hours of the cold days he wandered through
the forests, visiting the traps mechanically, and making
tasks for himself to fill up the time; hours of the cold
evenings he paced the snow-covered roof alone. He
could not bear to see them, but left the post to Orange,
whose black face shone with joy and satisfaction over
Waring's return.
But after a time fate swung around (as she generally
does if impatient humanity would but give
her a chance). Waring's health grew, and so did
his love. He had been like a strong man armed,
keeping his palace; but a stronger than he was come,
and, the combat over, he went as far the other way,
and adored the very sandals of the conqueror. The
gates were open, and all the floods were out.
And Silver? As he advanced, she withdrew. (It
is always so in love, up to a certain point; and
country of commonplace.)
This impetuous, ardent lover was not the Jarvis
she had known, the Jarvis who had been her master,
and a despotic one at that. Frightened, shy, bewildered,
she fled away from all her dearest joys, and
stayed by herself in the flower-room with the bar
across the door, only emerging timidly at meal-times
and stealing into the long room like a little wraith;
a rosy wraith now, for at last she had learned to
blush. Waring was angry at this desertion, but only
the more in love; for the face had lost its infantile
calm, the violet eyes veiled themselves under his
gaze, and the unconscious child-mouth began to try
to control and conceal its changing expressions, and
only succeeded in betraying them more helplessly
than ever. Poor little solitary maiden-heart!
Spring was near now; soft airs came over the ice
daily, and stirred the water beneath; then the old
man spoke. He knew what was coming, he saw it
all, and a sword was piercing his heart; but bravely
he played his part. “The ice will move out soon,
in a month or less you can sail safely,” he said,
breaking the silence one night when they two sat
by the fire, Waring moody and restless, for Silver
had openly repulsed him, and fled away early in the
evening. “She is trifling with me,” he thought, “or
else she does not know what love is. By heavens,
mind had journeyed when Fog spoke. “In a month
you can sail safely, and I suppose you will go for
good this time?”
“Yes.”
Fog waited. Waring kicked a fallen log into place,
lit his pipe, then let it go out, moved his chair forward,
then pushed it back impatiently, and finally
spoke. “Of course I shall take Silver; I intend to
make Silver my wife.”
“At last?”
“At last. No wonder you are glad —”
“Glad!” said old Fog, — “glad!” But the words
were whispered, and the young man went on unheeding.
“Of course it is a great thing for you to have
the child off your hands and placed in a home so
high above your expectations. Love is a strange
power. I do not deny that I have fought against it,
but — but — why should I conceal? I love Silver with
all my soul, she seems to have grown into my very
being.”
It was frankly and strongly uttered; the good
side of Jarvis Waring came uppermost for the moment.
Old Fog leaned forward and grasped his hand. “I
know you do,” he said. “I know something of men,
and I have watched you closely, Waring. It is for
and thankful for it, very thankful.”
“And you have reason to be,” said the younger
man, withdrawing into his pride again. “As my
wife, Silver will have a home, a circle of friends,
which — But you could not understand; let it pass.
And now, tell me all you know of her.”
The tone was a command, and the speaker leaned
back in his chair with the air of an owner as he
relighted his pipe. But Fog did not shrink. “Will
you have the whole story?” he asked humbly.
“As well now as ever, I suppose, but be as brief
as possible,” said the young man in a lordly manner.
Had he not just conferred an enormous favor, an
alliance which might be called the gift of a prince,
on this dull old backwoodsman?
“Forty years ago or thereabouts,” began Fog in a
low voice, “a crime was committed in New York
City. I shall not tell you what it was, there is no
need; enough that the whole East was stirred, and a
heavy reward was offered for the man who did the
deed. I am that man.”
Waring pushed back his chair, a horror came over
him, his hand sought for his pistol; but the voice
went on unmoved. “Shall I excuse the deed to you,
boy? No, I will not. It was done and I did it;
that is enough, the damning fact that confronts and
silences all talk of motive or cause. This much only
was not added, and there was no gain for
the doer; only loss, the black eternal loss of everything
in heaven above, on the earth beneath, or in
the waters that are under the earth, for hell itself
seemed to spew me out. At least so I thought as I
fled away, the mark of Cain upon my brow; the
horror was so strong upon me, that I could not kill
myself, I feared to join the dead. I went to and fro
on the earth, and walked up and down in it; I fled
to the uttermost parts of the sea, and yet came back
again, moved by a strange impulse to be near the
scene of my crime. After years had passed, and
with them the memory of the deed from the minds
of others, though not from mine, I crept to the old
house where my one sister was living alone, and
made myself known to her. She left her home, a
forlorn place, but still a home, and followed me with
a sort of dumb affection, — poor old woman. She was
my senior by fifteen years, and I had been her pride;
and so she went with me from the old instinct,
which still remained, although the pride was dead,
crushed by slow horror. We kept together after that,
two poor hunted creatures instead of one; we were
always fleeing, always imagining that eyes knew us,
that fingers pointed us out. I called her Shadow,
and together we took the name of Fog, a common
enough name, but to us meaning that we were nothing,
night, but in the morning gone. At last one day the
cloud over my mind seemed to lighten a little, and
the thought came to me that no punishment can endure
forever, without impugning the justice of our
great Creator. A crime is committed, perhaps in a
moment; the ensuing suffering, the results, linger on
earth, it may be for some years; but the end of it
surely comes sooner or later, and it is as though it
had never been. Then, for that crime, shall a soul
suffer forever, — not a thousand years, a thousand
ages if you like, but forever? Out upon the monstrous
idea! Let a man do evil every moment of
his life, and let his life be the full threescore years
and ten; shall there not come a period in the endless
cycles of eternity when even his punishment
shall end? What kind of a God is he whom your
theologians have held up to us, — a God who creates
us at his pleasure, without asking whether or not we
wish to be created, who endows us with certain wild
passions and capacities for evil, turns us loose into a
world of suffering, and then, for our misdeeds there,
our whole lives being less than one instant's time
in his sight, punishes us forever! Never-ending
tortures throughout the countless ages of eternity for
the little crimes of threescore years and ten! Heathendom
shows no god so monstrous as this. O great
Creator, O Father of our souls, of all the ills done
and thy goodness, is it not the greatest? The
thought came to me, as I said, that no punishment
could endure forever, that somewhere in the future I,
even I, should meet pardon and rest. That day I
found by the wayside a little child, scarcely more than
a baby; it had wandered out of the poorhouse, where
its mother had died the week before, a stranger passing
through the village. No one knew anything about
her nor cared to know, for she was almost in rags,
fair and delicate once they told me, but wasted with
illness and too far gone to talk. Then a second
thought came to me, — expiation. I would take this
forlorn little creature and bring her up as my own
child, tenderly, carefully, — a life for a life. My
poor old sister took to the child wonderfully, it
seemed to brighten her desolation into something
that was almost happiness; we wandered awhile
longer, and then came westward through the lakes,
but it was several years before we were fairly settled
here. Shadow took care of the baby and made her
little dresses; then, when the time came to teach her
to sew and read, she said more help was needed, and
went alone to the towns below to find a fit servant,
coming back in her silent way with old Orange, another
stray lost out of its place in the world, and
suffering from want in the cold Northern city. You
must not think that Silver is totally ignorant; Shadow
was a good old family as old families go in this new
country of ours, where three generations of well-to-do
people constitute aristocracy. But religion, so called,
I have not taught her. Is she any the worse for
its want?”
“I will teach her,” said Waring, passing over the
question (which was a puzzling one), for the new idea,
the strange interest he felt in the task before him, the
fair pure mind where his hand, and his alone, would be
the first to write the story of good and evil.
“That I should become attached to the child was
natural,” continued old Fog; “but God gave it to me to
love her with so great a love that my days have flown;
for her to sail out over the stormy water, for her to
hunt through the icy woods, for her to dare a thousand
deaths, to labor, to save, to suffer, — these have been
my pleasures through all the years. When I came
home, there she was to meet me, her sweet voice calling
me father, the only father she could ever know.
When my poor old sister died, I took her away in
my boat by night and buried her in deep water; and
so I did with the boy we had here for a year or two,
saved from a wreck. My darling knows nothing of
death; I could not tell her.”
“And those wrecks,” said Waring; “how do you
make them balance with your scheme of expiation?”
The old man sat silent a moment; then he brought
will not have them brought up in that way, I tell you
I will not! Have I not explained that I was desperate?”
he said in an excited voice. “What are one or
two miserable crews to the delicate life of my beautiful
child? And the men had their chances, too, in spite
of my lure. Does not every storm threaten them with
deathly force? Wait until you are tempted, before
you judge me, boy. But shall I tell you the whole?
Listen, then. Those wrecks were the greatest sacrifices,
the most bitter tasks of my hard life, the nearest
approach I have yet made to the expiation. Do you
suppose I wished to drown the men? Do you suppose
I did not know the greatness of the crime? Ah, I
knew it only too well, and yet I sailed out and did the
deed! It was for her, — to keep her from suffering;
so I sacrificed myself unflinchingly. I would murder
a thousand men in cold blood, and bear the thousand
additional punishments without a murmur throughout
a thousand ages of eternity, to keep my darling safe
and warm. Do you not see that the whole was a self-immolation,
the greatest, the most complete I could
make? I vowed to keep my darling tenderly. I have
kept my vow; see that you keep yours.”
The voice ceased, the story was told, and the teller
gone. The curtain over the past was never lifted
again; but often, in after years, Waring thought of this
strange life and its stranger philosophy. He could not
judge them. Can we?
The next day the talk turned upon Silver. “I
know you love her,” said the old man, “but how
much?”
“Does it need the asking?” answered Waring with
a short laugh; “am I not giving up my name, my life,
into her hands?”
“You could not give them into hands more pure.”
“I know it; I am content. And yet, I sacrifice
something,” replied the young man, thinking of his
home, his family, his friends.
Old Fog looked at him. “Do you hesitate?” he
said, breaking the pause.
“Of course I do not; why do you ask?” replied
Waring, irritably. “But some things may be pardoned,
I think, in a case like mine.”
“I pardon them.”
“I can teach her, of course, and a year or so among
cultivated people will work wonders; I think I shall
take her abroad, first. How soon did you say we
could go?”
“The ice is moving. There will be vessels through
the straits in two or three weeks,” replied Fog. His
voice shook. Waring looked up; the old man was
weeping. “Forgive me,” he said, brokenly, “but the
little girl is very dear to me.”
The younger man was touched. “She shall be as
dear to me as she has been to you,” he said; “do not
fear. My love is proved by the very struggle I have
harder against himself than I have in this old castle
of yours. I kept that Titian picture as a countercharm.
It resembles a woman who, at a word, will
give me herself and her fortune, — a woman high in the
cultivated circles of cities both here and abroad, beautiful,
accomplished, a queen in her little sphere. But all
was useless. That long night in the snow, when I
crawled backwards and forwards to keep myself from
freezing, it came to me with power that the whole
of earth and all its gifts compared not with this love.
Old man, she will be happy with me.”
“I know it.”
“Did you foresee this end?” asked Waring after a
while, watching, as he spoke, the expression of the
face before him. He could not rid himself of the belief
that the old man had laid his plans deftly.
“I could only hope for it: I saw that she loved
you.”
“Well, well,” said the younger man, magnanimously,
“it was natural, after all. Your expiation has ended
better than you hoped; for the little orphan child you
have reared has found a home and friends, and you
yourself need work no more. Choose your abode here
or anywhere else in the West, and I will see that you
are comfortable.”
“I will stay on here.”
“As you please. Silver will not forget you; she
and then into Switzerland,” continued Waring, going
back to himself and his plans with the matter-of-course
egotism of youth and love. And old Fog listened.
What need to picture the love-scene that followed?
The next morning a strong hand knocked at the door
of the flower-room, and the shy little maiden within
had her first lesson in love, or rather in its expression,
while all the blossoms listened and the birds looked
on approvingly. To do him justice, Waring was an
humble suitor when alone with her; she was so fair, so
pure, so utterly ignorant of the world and of life, that
he felt himself unworthy, and bowed his head. But
the mood passed, and Silver liked him better when the
old self-assertion and quick tone of command came
uppermost again. She knew not good from evil, she
could not comprehend or analyze the feeling in her
heart; but she loved this stranger, this master, with
the whole of her being. Jarvis Waring knew good
from evil (more of the latter knew he than of the former),
he comprehended and analyzed fully the feeling
that possessed him; but, man of the world as he was,
he loved this little water-maiden, this fair pagan, this
strange isolated girl, with the whole force of his nature.
“Silver,” he said to her, seriously enough, “do you
know how much I love you? I am afraid to think
what life would seem without you.”
“Why think of it, then, since I am here?” replied
Silver. “Do you know, Jarvis, I think if I had not
loved you so much, you would not have loved me,
and then — it would have been — that is, I mean —
it would have been different —” She paused; unused
to reasoning or to anything like argument, her
own words seemed to bewilder her.
Waring laughed, but soon grew serious again. “Silver,”
he said, taking her into his arms, “are you sure
that you can love me as I crave?” (For he seemed
at times tormented by the doubt as to whether she
was anything more than a beautiful child.) He held
her closely and would not let her go, compelling her
to meet his ardent eyes. A change came over the
girl, a sudden red flashed up into her temples and
down into her white throat. She drew herself impetuously
away from her lover's arms and fled from the
room. “I am not sure but that she is a watersprite,
after all,” grumbled Waring, as he followed her.
But it was a pleasure now to grumble and pretend
to doubt, since from that moment he was sure.
The next morning Fog seemed unusually cheerful.
“No wonder,” thought Waring. But the character
of benefactor pleased him, and he appeared in it
constantly.
“We must have the old castle more comfortable;
I will try to send up furniture from below,” he remarked,
while pacing to and fro in the evening.
“Is n't it comfortable now?” said Silver. “I am
sure I always thought this room beautiful.”
“What, this clumsy imitation of a second-class
Western steamer? Child, it is hideous!”
“Is it?” said Silver, looking around in innocent
surprise, while old Fog listened in silence. Hours of
patient labor and risks not a few over the stormy lake
were associated with each one of the articles Waring
so cavalierly condemned.
Then it was, “How you do look, old gentleman!
I must really send you up some new clothes. — Silver,
how have you been able to endure such shabby rags
so long? All the years before I came, did it never
force itself upon you?”
“I do not know, — I never noticed; it was always
just papa, you know,” replied Silver, her blue eyes
resting on the old man's clothes with a new and perplexed
attention.
But Fog bore himself cheerily. “He is right, Silver,”
he said, “I am shabby indeed. But when you
go out into the world, you will soon forget it.”
“Yes,” said Silver, tranquilly.
The days flew by and the ice moved out. This is
the phrase that is always used along the lakes. The
ice “moves out” of every harbor from Ogdensburg
to Duluth. You can see the great white floes drift
away into the horizon, and the question comes,
Where do they go? Do they not meet out there the
all join hands and sink at a given signal to the bottom?
Certainly, there is nothing melting in the
mood of the raw spring winds and clouded skies.
“What are your plans?” asked old Fog, abruptly,
one morning when the gulls had flown out to sea,
and the fog came stealing up from the south.
“For what?”
“For the marriage.”
“Aha!” thought Waring, with a smile of covert
amusement, “he is in a hurry to secure the prize, is
he? The sharp old fellow!” Aloud he said, “I
thought we would all three sail over to Mackinac;
and there we could be married, Silver and I, by the
fort chaplain, and take the first Buffalo steamer;
you could return here at your leisure.”
“Would it not be a better plan to bring a clergyman
here, and then you two could sail without me?
I am not as strong as I was; I feel that I cannot
bear — I mean that you had better go without me.”
“As you please; I thought it would be a change
for you, that was all.”
“It would only prolong — No, I think, if you
are willing, we will have the marriage here, and then
you can sail immediately.”
“Very well; but I did not suppose you would be
in such haste to part with Silver,” said Waring, unable
to resist showing his comprehension of what he
waiving further discussion, — “And where shall we
find a clergyman?” he asked.
“There is one over on Beaver.”
“He must be a singular sort of a divine to be
living there!”
“He is; a strayed spirit, as it were, but a genuine
clergyman of the Presbyterian church, none the less.
I never knew exactly what he represented there, but
I think he came out originally as a sort of missionary.”
“To the Mormons,” said Waring, laughing; for he
had heard old Fog tell many a story of the Latter-Day
Saints, who had on Beaver Island at that time
their most eastern settlement.
“No; to the Indians, — sent out by some of those
New England societies, you know. When he reached
the islands, he found the Indians mostly gone, and
those who remained were all Roman Catholics. But
he settled down, farmed a little, hunted a little, fished
a little, and held a service all by himself occasionally in
an old log-house, just often enough to draw his salary
and to write up in his semiannual reports. He is n't a
bad sort of a man in his way.”
“And how does he get on with the Mormons?”
“Excellently. He lets them talk, and sells them
fish, and shuts his eyes to everything else.”
“What is his name?”
“Well, over there they call him the Preacher, principally
because he does not preach, I suppose. It is a
way they have over on Beaver to call people names;
they call me Believer.”
“Believer?”
“Yes, because I believe nothing; at least so they
think.”
A few days later, out they sailed over the freed
water, around the point, through the sedge-gate growing
green again, across the channelled marsh, and out
towards the Beavers, — Fog and Waring, armed as if
for a foray.
“Why?” asked Waring.
“It 's safer; the Mormons are a queer lot,” was the
reply.
When they came in sight of the islands, the younger
man scanned them curiously. Some years later an expedition
composed of exasperated crews of lake schooners,
exasperated fishermen, exasperated mainland settlers,
sailed westward through the straits bound for
these islands, armed to the teeth and determined upon
vengeance and slaughter. False lights, stolen nets,
and stolen wives were their grievances; and no aid
coming from the general government, then as now
sorely perplexed over the Mormon problem, they took
justice into their own hands and sailed bravely out,
with the stars and stripes floating from the mast of
their flag-ship, — an old scow impressed for military
came scudding into the harbor, the wild little village
existed in all its pristine outlawry, a city of refuge for
the flotsam vagabondage of the lower lakes.
“Perhaps he will not come with us,” suggested
Waring.
“I have thought of that, but it need not delay us
long,” replied Fog; “we can kidnap him.”
“Kidnap him?”
“Yes; he is but a small chap,” said the old man,
tranquilly.
They fastened their boat to the long log-dock,
and started ashore. The houses of the settlement
straggled irregularly along the beach and inland towards
the fields where fine crops were raised by the
Saints, who had made here, as is their custom everywhere,
a garden in the wilderness; the only defence
was simple but strong, — an earthwork on one of the
white sand-hills back of the village, over whose rampart
peeped two small cannon, commanding the harbor.
Once on shore, however, a foe found only a living,
moving rampart of flesh and blood, as reckless a set of
villains as New World history can produce. But this
rampart came together only in times of danger; ordinary
visitors, coming by twos and threes, they welcomed
or murdered as they saw fit, or according to
the probable contents of their pockets, each man for
himself and his family. Some of these patriarchal gentlemen
as they passed along; but the worn clothes not promising
much, they simply invited them to dinner; they
liked to hear the news, when there was nothing else
going on. Old Fog excused himself. They had business,
he said, with the Preacher; was he at home?
He was; had anything been sent to him from the
East, — any clothes, now, for the Indians?
Old Fog had heard something of a box at Mackinac,
waiting for a schooner to bring it over. He was glad
it was on the way, it would be of so much use to the
Indians, — they wore so many clothes.
The patriarchs grinned, and allowed the two to pass
on. Waring had gazed within, meanwhile, and discovered
the plural wives, more or less good-looking, generally
less; they did not seem unhappy, however, not
so much so as many a single one he had met in more
luxurious homes, and he said to himself, “Women of
the lower class are much better and happier when well
curbed.” It did not occur to him that possibly the
evil tempers of men of the lower class are made
more endurable by a system of co-operation; one reed
bends, breaks, and dies, but ten reeds together can
endure.
The Preacher was at home on the outskirts, — a little
man, round and rosy, with black eyes and a cheery
voice. He was attired entirely in blanket-cloth, baggy
trousers and a long blouse, so that he looked not unlike
arctic as to upper rigging. “Are you a clergyman?”
said Waring, inspecting him with curious eyes.
“If you doubt it, look at this,” said the little man;
and he brought out a clerical suit of limp black cloth,
and a ministerial hat much the worse for wear. These
articles he suspended from a nail, so that they looked
as if a very poor lean divine had hung himself there.
Then he sat down, and took his turn at staring. “I do
not bury the dead,” he remarked after a moment, as
if convinced that the two shabby hunters before him
could have no other errand.
Waring was about to explain, but old Fog stopped
him with a glance. “You are to come with us, sir,”
he said courteously; “you will be well treated, well
paid, and returned in a few days.”
“Come with you! Where?”
“Never mind where; will you come?”
“No,” said the little blanket-man, stoutly.
In an instant Fog had tripped him up, seized a
sheet and blanket from the bed, bound his hands and
feet with one, and wrapped him in the other. “Now,
then,” he said shouldering the load, “open the door.”
“But the Mormons,” objected Waring.
“O, they like a joke, they will only laugh! But if,
by any chance, they should show fight, fire at once,”
replied the old man, leading the way. Waring followed,
his mind anything but easy; it seemed to him
and glanced furtively around as they skirted the town
and turned down towards the beach. “If any noise
is made,” Fog had remarked, “I shall know what
to do.”
Whereupon the captive swallowed down his wrath
and a good deal of woollen fuzz, and kept silence. He
was no coward, this little Preacher. He held his own
manfully on the Beavers; but no one had ever carried
him off in a blanket before. So he silently considered
the situation.
When near the boat they came upon more patriarchs.
“Put a bold face on it,” murmured old Fog.
“Whom do you suppose we have here?” he began,
as they approached. “Nothing less than your little
Preacher; we want to borrow him for a few days.”
The patriarchs stared.
“Don't you believe it? — Speak up, Preacher; are
you being carried off?”
No answer.
“You had better speak,” said Fog, jocosely, at the
same time giving his captive a warning touch with
his elbow.
The Preacher had revolved the situation rapidly,
and perceived that in any contest his round body
would inevitably suffer from friend and foe alike. He
was not even sure but that he would be used as a
missile, a sort of ponderous pillow swung by one end.
you see, dear brethren; I don't care about walking
to-day.”
The patriarchs laughed, and followed on to the boat,
laughing still more when Fog gayly tossed in his load
of blanket, and they could hear the little man growl
as he came down. “I say, though, when are you going
to bring him back, Believer?” said one.
“In a few days,” replied Fog, setting sail.
Away they flew; and, when out of harbor, the captive
was released, and Waring told him what was
required.
“Why did n't you say so before?” said the little
blanket-man; “nothing I like better than a wedding,
and a drop of punch afterwards.”
His task over, Fog relapsed into silence; but Waring,
curious, asked many a question about the island
and its inhabitants. The Preacher responded freely in
all things, save when the talk glided too near himself.
The Mormons were not so bad, he thought; they had
their faults, of course, but you must take them on the
right side.
“Have they a right side?” asked Waring.
“At least they have n't a rasping, mean, cold, starving,
bony, freezing, busy-bodying side,” was the reply,
delivered energetically; whereat Waring concluded the
little man had had his own page of history back somewhere
among the decorous New England hills.
Before they came to the marsh they blindfolded
their guest, and did not remove the bandage until he
was safely within the long room of the castle. Silver
met them, radiant in the firelight.
“Heaven grant you its blessing, maiden,” said the
Preacher, becoming Biblical at once. He meant it,
however, for he sat gazing at her long with moistened
eyes, forgetful even of the good cheer on the table;
a gleam from his far-back youth came to him, a snow-drop
that bloomed and died in bleak New Hampshire
long, long before.
The wedding was in the early morning. Old Fog
had hurried it, hurried everything; he seemed driven
by a spirit of unrest, and wandered from place to place,
from room to room, his eyes fixed in a vacant way
upon the familiar objects. At the last moment he
appeared with a prayer-book, its lettering old, its
cover tarnished. “Have you any objection to using
the Episcopal service?” he asked in a low tone. “I
— I have heard the Episcopal service.”
“None in the world,” replied the affable little
Preacher.
But he too grew sober and even earnest as Silver
appeared, clad in white, her dress and hair wreathed
with the trailing arbutus, the first flower of spring,
plucked from under the vanishing snows. So beautiful
her face, so heavenly its expression, that Waring,
as he took her hand, felt his eyes grow dim, and he
forever.
“We are gathered together here in the sight of
God,” began the Preacher solemnly; and old Fog,
standing behind, shrank into the shadow, and bowed
his head upon his hands. But when the demand
came, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this
man?” he stepped forward, and gave away his child
without a tear, nay, with even a smile on his brave
old face.
“To love, cherish, and to obey,” repeated Silver in
her clear sweet voice.
And then Waring placed upon her finger the little
ring he himself had carved out of wood. “It shall
never be changed,” he said, “but coated over with
heavy gold, just as it is.”
Old Orange, radiant with happiness, stood near, and
served as a foil for the bridal white.
It was over; but they were not to start until noon.
Fog put the Preacher almost forcibly into the boat
and sailed away with him, blindfolded and lamenting.
“The wedding feast,” he cried, “and the punch!
You are a fine host, old gentleman.”
“Everything is here, packed in those baskets. I
have even given you two fine dogs. And there is
your fee. I shall take you in sight of the Beavers,
and then put you into the skiff and leave you to row
over alone. The weather is fine, you can reach there
to-morrow.”
Remonstrance died away before the bag of money;
old Fog had given his all for his darling's marriage-fee.
“I shall have no further use for it,” he thought,
mechanically.
So the little blanket-man paddled away in his skiff
with his share of the wedding-feast beside him; the
two dogs went with him, and became good Mormons.
Old Fog returned in the sail-boat through the channels,
and fastened the sedge-gate open for the outgoing
craft. Silver, timid and happy, stood on the
balcony as he approached the castle.
“It is time to start,” said the impatient bridegroom.
“How long you have been, Fog!”
The old man made no answer, but busied himself
arranging the boat; the voyage to Mackinac would
last two or three days, and he had provided every
possible comfort for their little camps on shore.
“Come,” said Waring, from below.
Then the father went up to say good by. Silver
flung her arms around his neck and burst into tears.
“Father, father,” she sobbed, “must I leave you? O
father, father!”
He soothed her gently; but something in the expression
of his calm, pallid face touched the deeper
feelings of the wakening woman, and she clung to
him desperately, realizing, perhaps, at this last moment,
how great was his love for her, how great
his desolation. Waring had joined them on the balcony.
her grief, but the girl turned from him and clung to
the old man; it was as though she saw at last how
she had robbed him. “I cannot leave him thus,” she
sobbed; “O father, father!”
Then Waring struck at the root of the difficulty.
(Forgive him; he was hurt to the core.) “But he
is not your father,” he said, “he has no claim upon
you. I am your husband now, Silver, and you must
come with me; do you not wish to come with me,
darling?” he added, his voice sinking into fondness.
“Not my father!” said the girl. Her arms fell,
and she stood as if petrified.
“No, dear; he is right. I am not your father,”
said old Fog, gently. A spasm passed over his features,
he kissed her hastily, and gave her into her
husband's arms. In another moment they were afloat,
in two the sail filled and the boat glided away. The
old man stood on the castle roof, smiling and waving
his hand; below, Orange fluttered her red handkerchief
from the balcony, and blessed her darling
with African mummeries. The point was soon rounded,
the boat gone.
That night, when the soft spring moonlight lay
over the water, a sail came gliding back to the castle,
and a shape flew up the ladder; it was the bride
of the morning.
“O father, father, I could not leave you so, I
made him bring me back, if only for a few days!
O father, father! for you are my father, the only father
I can ever know, — and so kind and good!”
In the gloom she knelt by his bedside, and her
arms were around his neck. Waring came in afterwards,
silent and annoyed, yet not unkind. He
stirred the dying brands into a flame.
“What is this?” he said, starting, as the light fell
across the pillow.
“It is nothing,” replied Fog, and his voice sounded
far away; “I am an old man, children, and all
is well.”
They watched him through the dawning, through
the lovely day, through the sunset, Waring repentant,
Silver absorbed in his every breath; she lavished
upon him now all the wealth of love her
unconscious years had gathered. Orange seemed to
agree with her master that all was well. She came
and went, but not sadly, and crooned to herself some
strange African tune that rose and fell more like a
chant of triumph than a dirge. She was doing her
part, according to her light, to ease the going of the
soul out of this world.
Grayer grew the worn face, fainter the voice,
colder the shrivelled old hands in the girl's fond
clasp.
“O Jarvis, Jarvis, what is this?” she murmured,
fearfully.
Waring came to her side and put his strong arm
around her. “My little wife,” he said, “this is Death.
But do not fear.”
And then he told her the story of the Cross; and,
as it came to her a revelation, so, in the telling, it
became to him, for the first time, a belief.
Old Fog told them to bury him out in deep water,
as he had buried the others; and then he lay placid,
a great happiness shining in his eyes.
“It is well,” he said, “and God is very good to
me. Life would have been hard without you, darling.
Something seemed to give way when you said
good by; but now that I am called, it is sweet to
know that you are happy, and sweeter still to think
that you came back to me at the last. Be kind to
her, Waring. I know you love her; but guard her
tenderly, — she is but frail. I die content, my child,
quite content; do not grieve for me.”
Then, as the light faded from his eyes, he folded
his hands. “Is it expiated, O God? Is it expiated?”
he murmured.
There was no answer for him on earth.
They buried him as he had directed, and then they
sailed away, taking the old black with them. The
castle was left alone; the flowers bloomed on through
the summer, and the rooms held the old furniture
bravely through the long winter. But gradually the
steal across the lake, and wave their gray draperies
up into the northern curve; but the sedge - gate is
gone, and the castle is indeed Nowhere.
| Castle nowhere | |