Читать книгу Bram Stoker: The Complete Novels - A to Z Classics - Страница 42

For several weeks the life on the Shasta was ideal, and Mrs. Elstree’s heart rejoiced to see the changes it was working in Esse. Her languidness seemed to have disappeared, and she was now bright, brisk, and alert, for ever devising new ways of passing the time, and helping with invention and design to improve the place. Le Maistre, who had a pretty mechanical aptitude of his own, had designed a new water supply for the house, and was already carrying it into execution. From the rocky basin which stood up the mountain nearly three hundred feet above the house, he was to lay a series of logs, pierced with great augers, now being brought up from San Francisco on purpose. These were to be joined together, and would convey so easily applicable as well as so abundant a supply that Esse had designed several fountains for round the house, each of which would throw up a fair sheet of water to a considerable height. Thus from whatever way the wind blew, something of the cooling spray could be borne to the house. In this work Dick was of great use, not only by his lending a hand himself, but by being able to induce the Indians to help. A few nondescript settlers of lower down the mountain were glad to earn a little money, and altogether muscular power was not wanting. Dick was only present now and again, for his hunting pursuits took him away sometimes for a few days at a time. But his time was not wasted in so far as the household was concerned, for it was he who kept the larder supplied with fresh meat. There was always abundance of all sorts of game, and a very liberal supply of necessaries had been laid in; the garden afforded a good supply of fruit and vegetables, and altogether no need for comfort was lacking.

Esse’s great amusement was with the Indians. She very soon learned that their village was in a deep cleft which lay between the house and the western side of the mountain. As a little rocky peak lay between them, it was not possible to see even the smoke of their fires. On the near side to them, but on the far side of the rock, Dick’s cabin stood on a rocky shelf beside a spring. From it he could see the whole western slope of the mountain, and by it he could on his many journeys make for the most direct way home. His proximity kept the Indians in order; for with the dominance of a Caucasian he made himself to some degree regulator of his neighbour’s affairs. Indeed, he stood with regard to the Indians somewhat in the relation of a British justice of the peace to the village community. This dominance was a great comfort to Mrs. Elstree, who had at the first some doubts as to the physical security of her party, removed so far as they were from any means of help. An incident which occurred shortly after her arrival had not tended to allay her fears.

She had been taking a siesta in a hammock slung between two of the sun-dial trees, and was in the semi-lethargic condition of one who is sleeping for mere luxury, not need — such a sweetly overpowering condition as is only to be felt in the open air — when she noticed one of the Indians approach stealthily. He was one of the most brainless looking of the tribe, and in general a sort of butt of the rest. His face was in fact only removed a degree above idiocy, and this by the cunning twinkle of his eyes. His character, as it often happens amongst Indians, was shown in his name, Hi’-oh’, which means Heap (or always) Hungry in the Shoshonie dialect.

Half amused, and half in that adventurous state of mind when fear becomes a sort of intellectual tickling — a sort of continuation of her dreams — Mrs. Elstree lay still, pretending slumber. He approached with increasing stealthiness, keeping always behind some tree trunk, till he had reached the head of the hammock. Now, when he was out of her sight, Mrs. Elstree became seriously alarmed, but by a great effort she lay still, though her heart beat like a trip-hammer. The seconds seemed to be years, and in the agonising suspense she could hear — or thought she could — the blood running through the veins of her neck. Then slowly and cautiously a pair of copper-coloured hands stole gently down the netting of the hammock, and with deft movement the fingers began inserting themselves under her head. With a tremendous effort she lay quite still, for she felt that it was too late now to do anything if harm to her were intended. Her only grain of consolation — and it necessitated a new effort to suppress the smile which it caused — was that her scalp would be different from the general run of such curios. She had once seen, in a chest full of scalps, in the collection of a friend who was an amateur of Indian trophies, a scalp of a woman’s golden hair, and she herself, in common with all who had seen it, felt more pity for the late owner of those yellow tresses, than for all the original proprietors of the dark ones put together. She could in her mind’s eye see her own tresses hanging up in a wigwam, or helping to trim a buck’s festal costume, and already she had begun to hope that his earth-colours would match her hair. Here her thoughts were cut short by a strange sensation. The hands were lifting her head and holding it balanced; then it was laid down again softly, and the hands were withdrawn. Once more she conquered a strong impulse to start up, for she thought it better not to appear to have noticed. So she lay still awhile, breathing softly. Then she yawned, raised her arms, turned over, and as if waking, assumed a sitting posture. She looked around keenly; but there was no sign of an Indian about the place.

At first she was a little startled, and then a queer kind of doubt came upon her as to whether she had not been asleep and dreamed the whole thing. As there was no trace of an Indian, she remained in doubt, not liking to tell any one, lest it might cause ill feeling. Dick was away; but the day after he returned, and she took the opportunity of being alone with him to ask his opinion of the transaction. To her surprise, but also to her relief, Dick burst into his characteristic roar of laughter.

“Wall, durn my skin!” said he, “but that is the all-firedest funniest rascal I ever kem across. I guess now what was in Heap Hungry’s thick head when he made a proposition to me that we should work a gold mine together: ‘Hi’-oh’ knows,’ sez he, ‘of a gold mine, much gold on top. If much gold on top, mucher gold under that, waugh!’ He is a cunnin’ beggar, too; wouldn’t take any chances over his gold mine, but wanted to make cert if it was gold.”

“But I don’t understand!” said Mrs. Elstree.

Dick slapped his thigh again in his emphatic way, and roared with laughter:

“Why, marm, don’t ye see. You was the gold mine! With the golden hair atop, he thought as how yer skull would be gold, an’ he wanted to make sure before ringin’ me in, so’s we’d kill you together and wash up fair!”

Mrs. Elstree shuddered, but she laughed nevertheless; she felt when Dick took so grim a thing jocularly it would not do for her to make new troubles.

But she was seriously disturbed in her mind all the same. She was not accustomed to Indians, and their ways and their proximity, combined with the possibilities of such ideas as had been brought to her notice, made her anxious. It might be all very well to have a terrible penalty afterwards exacted by one’s friends; but scalping was not a pleasant matter to contemplate, and the battle between the edge of a tomahawk and the human skull was not altogether a fair one.

Esse got on very well with the Indians. They had the idea that she was somehow or other under the special protection of Dick, and she was herself so kind to them, that to show her their eagerness to serve came easy. At first they amused her, and then, when she knew them a little better, they disgusted her. In fact, she went with them through somewhat of those phases with which one comes to regard a monkey before its place in the scale of creation is put in true perspective. Now and again she grew furiously indignant when there came under her notice some instance of their habitual and brutal cruelty to their squaws and children, their dogs and their horses. At first she used to speak to Dick, and to please her he would rate and threaten them; but she soon began to see that this was not quite fair to the hunter, as it created a certain sullenness towards him, which augured badly for future peace. So she gradually began to realise that, in spite of their ragged relics of a higher civilization, they were but little better than savages, and with the savage instincts which could not be altered all at once. Dick, who was, like all hunters, a close observer of little things, noticed the change in her bearing, and spoke of it in his own frank way:

“Guess, Little Missy, you’re gettin’ the hang of the Indian. He ain’t of much account nohow, and ye can’t bet money on him more’n on a yaller dog. Though he ain’t so bad as those think that don’t know him. There’s times when the cruelty of that lot of ours makes me so mad, I want to wipe them all out; but I know all the same that there isn’t one of them, man, woman, or child, that wouldn’t stand between me and death. Ay, or between any of you and death either. Guess, you’re about beginnin’ to size up the noble red man without his frills!”

The member of the party who got on best with the Indians was Miss Gimp. Le Maistre they respected and looked up to on account of his big beard; and for Mrs. Le Maistre they had the respect and affection which goes with the enjoyment of toothsome delicacies. But Miss Gimp ruled amongst them like a princess. No matter how she rated them for their imperfect costume, or their dirty ways, or their cruelty, they never made reply except their grave obeisance; and the point of her umbrella made, without evoking remonstrance, indentations in their bodies. Whenever they saw her stiff skirts moving along the sward — for Miss Gimp adhered loyally to the traditions of her youth and wore hoops — albeit of an undefined pattern — they would glide up as near as they could, keeping furtively in the shelter of the trees. So long as they were allowed, they would hang around her, looking like a lot of spectres who had seen better days. At first this used to annoy her, but it very soon became a source of pride, for human nature very soon becomes accustomed to the deference of inferiors. Miss Gimp, in her mind, regarded them as in some sort a kind of royal cohort, and began to treat them with added disdain, such as is supposed to be the attribute of royalty. They were perpetually sneaking round the house, and if they saw her at a window would wait patiently for hours in the hope of her coming out. Both Mrs. Elstree and Esse saw with amusement this perpetual attention on their part, but never said anything to her about it. Esse noticed that it used to give the most intense amusement to Dick whenever he chanced to see it, and that he often hurried away with a purple face; and she, listening, would hear the forest echoing to his explosive laughter. One day she followed him and came upon him sitting upon the trunk of a fallen tree, slapping his thighs, and with his long hair tossing about as he shook his head in a paroxysm of laughter. He did not hear her approach, and for a few moments she stood looking at him, at first a little indignant that he should be making such a fool of himself; but then the contagion of his laughter took her, and she too burst out in a wild peal. He instantly started to his feet, all his instincts of protection and aggression awake, and for the moment sobered into a grim seriousness. When, however, he saw who it was, the lines of his face relaxed, and he said:

“Wall, an’ it’s you, Little Missy. Durn! if I hadn’t kem away by myself I’d have busted — jest busted with laughter. The old lady takes the Indians like she was a queen, an’ all the while it ain’t her they’re after at all. There ain’t one of them that wouldn’t take and put a tomahawk through her skull or skelp her so far as the queenin’ racket is concerned.”

“Then what is it they are after, Dick?”

“It’s the parrot! Nothin’ else than that durned parrot!” and again Dick went off into fits of laughter.

When he recovered his breath, he went on:

“Did ye notice Kim lately — the parrot, I mean — they’ve all been tryin’ to get near him, and jest now one of them went up nigh him, an’ as soon as he got near up, the durned bird says ‘How!’ jest as well as if he was a Christian or an Indian. The man was so took back that he was like to drop. They all thought he was a god before, but nothin’ in this world would make them disbelieve it now!”

“But how does this affect Miss Gimp?”

“Why, don’t ye see, Little Missy, that she has the charge of him; she’s the sachem, the medicine-man, the witch, and they want to make themselves solid with her because they think she can square him. There isn’t one of them that likes her; but, all the same, they’d go a good length to please old Yam-pi, as they call her.”

“What is Yam-pi? What does it mean?” said Esse, inquisitively.

“It means, in Shoshonie, ‘Leather Legs,’ or ‘the old woman with boots,’” said Dick, and he laughed again.

Esse came away from the wood not altogether pleased with Dick. There seemed to be an overpowering levity in his character which did not altogether suit her idea of him, based originally on his fine physique. A woman who likes a man wants to respect him, and as Dick was the only male in the place, for of course Indians and servants did not count, she felt that she had to think of him now and then.

One morning Miss Gimp was in a state of suppressed excitement which at once arrested Esse’s attention. At breakfast she could not remain still, but buzzed and fluttered about everyone and everything in an unusual way. Mrs. Elstree with her usual placidity did not notice anything out of the common, or, if she did, kept it to herself. Esse had therefore the sweet interest of a secret, and she carefully noticed every detail of the companion, and very shortly came to the conclusion that she had a secret which she was simply bursting to tell someone — anyone. With true feminine perversity she therefore, at once and sternly, made up her mind that she would not assist in the unfolding at all. If Gimp wanted to tell anything she would have to do so altogether on her own initiative. It would of course have been quite a different thing if Gimp had a secret which she didn’t want to tell; in such case Esse would have had to make the overtures and do the entire corkscrew business herself. Therefore it was that the games of hide-and-seek, run-away-and-follow, were so prolonged that morning until they would have afforded the most exquisite enjoyment to any third party who had been in the secret. Esse stayed all the early forepart of the morning with her mother, nothing could take her away, lured Miss Gimp never so wisely; and when she did go out it was at a time when Miss Gimp was absorbed in some household duty and could not follow her. She went into the wood, and when Miss Gimp followed and called after her softly, she did not answer; so hour after hour Miss Gimp had to bear in her breast the burden of her untold secret. After lunch Esse’s heart relented, and she strolled out to the seat on the rocks so that Miss Gimp could follow her. She sat down, and within a few minutes the amanuensis sat alongside her and had entered on her theme. Esse noticed that she had put on a veil, an adornment — or concealment — so rare with her that it became at once noticeable. Esse sat down and waited. She had allowed the first step to be taken and had to be wooed into accepting the next. Miss Gimp looked up at her under her eyelids with a very tolerable imitation of bashfulness, simpered, sighed, looked up and down several times, turned warily round to see that there was no one else within earshot, gave a premonitory cough, and opened proceedings:

“It is a very strange thing!” said she.

“Indeed?”

“Yes, my dear; and the worst of it is that it is so embarrassing. One doesn’t wish to make anyone unhappy, much less to ruin their lives!”

After a pause, which Esse filled up with another “Indeed,” Miss Gimp went on:

“I have been told that young men take such matters so to heart that they grow wild, and go out and drink, and do all manner of dreadful things!”

Esse’s curiosity was now becoming interested; she had a vague idea that Miss Gimp had some kind of hallucination as to a love affair, but she could not quite make out yet what was its special direction. She felt herself thinking a phrase which she had several times heard Dick use, “How many kinds of a durn’d fool was it that she was makin’ of herself?” Her monotonous “Indeed” was hardly adequate to the situation, so she added with as little tendency towards laughter as she could manage.

“Poor young man! You must not let him suffer too much!”

Miss Gimp sighed and wiped a phantom tear from her cheek as she said in a far-away manner.

“Oh, poor Dick! Poor dear Dick! I fear he has much suffering before him! — Did you speak?” she added in a different tone, for Esse had on the instant been taken with a sudden and very violent cough which made her in a short space of time grow almost purple in the face.

The shock was too much when Miss Gimp apostrophised the man who was the victim of unhappy attachment, and in her mind’s eye rose the burly figure of Grizzly Dick, driven crazed for love, painting red spots all over the town of Sacramento. The figure changed instantly to the same man sitting amongst the forest trees, slapping his thighs and roaring with laughter as he thought of Miss Gimp and the parrot, and the relative places which they held in Indian esteem. Miss Gimp bridled somewhat, and seemed more than ever to justify her Indian name; but Esse, who really liked her, found her risibility checked by her genuine concern for her, apologised for the interruption, and asked her to go on. So, with as many “flirts and flutters” as Poe’s famous bird of ill omen, Miss Gimp began her story.

“It has surprised — surprised me very much, to find little offerings placed outside my window. Most odd things, my dear — wild turkeys and young fawns, hare, bear-meat, and sometimes fruit of an edible kind, potatoes, honey, and such like. I wondered who could have put them there!”

Here she simpered in a way that would have looked artificial in a girls’ school on the day when male relatives are received. Then she went on with marked inconsequentiality:

“It would be a sin — a perfect sin to drive to desperation such a fine figure of a man!”

Esse had expected to find her laughter uncontrollable as the story went on, but instead she felt something beginning to overpower her which was much nigher akin to tears. How could she but feel sorrow for the poor, dear old thing who with all her oddities was as loyal and as true as the sunlight. She knew that whatever was the cause of her error, there was no possibility of her manifest wishes being carried out. Then came a doubt. “How did she herself know this?” with the consequent answer, “Because Dick was already” — the thought was completed in her mind with an overpowering rush of blood to her face, which Miss Gimp must have noticed only that she was coyly turning away and simpering all to herself.

It is commonly thought that men and women become transformed and glorified in and by great moments. This may be so, but the common idea of great moments is not so true to Nature. There are great moments for all the Children of Adam; but they are not always great through the force of external facts. The dramatic moment in real life does not always come amongst picturesque and suitable surroundings. It is the conjuncture of spiritual and mundane suitabilities which makes the opportunity of the dramatist; but to others, who are the puppets of the great dramatic poet Nature, the moments of transfiguration come as they came to St Paul. The Great Light which turns the thoughts of men inwards, and reveals to themselves the secret springs of their own actions, has many moral and psychical and intellectual manifestations. The pagans whose imagination wrought into existence the whole theology of Olympus, had a subtle insight into the human heart when they showed the familiar figure of Cupid shooting his sweetly poisoned arrows at them that slept.

Such a crucial moment was now for Esse. She had come to that great temple of the hillside to laugh — to laugh at the brain-sick, love-sick fancies of an old woman whose whole being seemed a mockery of the possibilities of love; and she had remained to pray, with a bitter pang of hope and fear. In the whirling of her thought she got glimpses into her own soul which made her cheeks burn, even while half in a fainting mood she felt the solid earth slipping beneath her feet. Her mind must have been earnestly occupied, for she did not hear Miss Gimp go on with her story. It was strange to her that after a pause of mental blankness, during which she sat still, she felt the roaring in her ears pass away and realised that Miss Gimp was speaking — speaking with the volubility of one who has entered on a congenial theme and is under its sway:

“Of course, my dear, Dick being a hunter thinks that he should make his — he! he! — offerings of a suitable kind. It is most embarrassing, for a girl can’t put a leg of a deer, or a bear ham, or a wild turkey, into a jewel case, or lock it up in a drawer, so that she can take it out when no one is looking and kiss it. In fact there is no sense in kissing a ham or a leg of raw meat at all, and if you lock it up in a drawer it doesn’t smell very nice, even if it does not go bad altogether. The matter is now getting serious. I assure you, my dear, that my room is beginning to get into a shocking state. I am positively afraid to open the lower section of my chest of drawers, for I put the first of the — the offerings in there; and there’s a very suspicious odour from it already. I wish you’d advise me, my dear, what I ought to do!”

There was such a delightful air of seriousness about Miss Gimp as she made her strange disclosure, and it seemed so absolutely out of harmony with the ridiculous matter, that Esse felt once more an almost overpowering desire to laugh. She felt that she could not overcome it if she remained where she was, so she started up briskly, and, taking Miss Gimp by the arm, called out:

“Come along quick! — We must look over the jewel casket, and see what can be done.”

Miss Gimp would rather have sat still and nursed her sentiment, but she was overborne by Esse’s spirits and energy; and so hand in hand, like a pair of children, they raced to the house.

When they went into Miss Gimp’s room there was no possibility of mistaking the odour. Even a properly arranged larder is not always the most pleasant of places, but a lady’s bedroom is in no way adapted for the storage of dead flesh. Esse for a moment felt qualmish, and would have decamped at once only that Miss Gimp had silently and mysteriously locked the door, and so she remained, supported solely by the humour of the situation. Miss Gimp walked on tip-toe over to the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer.

“Here is the last,” she said as she lovingly surveyed a fine wild turkey which was huddled into the drawer, wings and neck and tail twisted about ruthlessly. She put in her hand and began to stroke its feathers, whilst she sighed pensively.

The idea of a hunter’s bride was strongly fixed in her mind, and with it a tenderness towards all belonging to his craft. Esse now wanted to see the job over so she asked:

“And where is the first?”

Miss Gimp pulled out the lowest drawer of all and disclosed to Esse’s gaze a horrible looking leg of deer meat all blue, damp and sodden; and which had been rudely hacked from the carcase. The look and the smell almost turned Esse faint, and with a sudden jerk she shut up the drawer. What an awful thing to send you!’ was all she could say. Miss Gimp was pathetically apologetic in her manner as she said:

“Well, it is an odd way of showing affection. If it had been a nice gold specimen now, or one of those opals in the matrix, like the one that was presented to your mother in Mexico, or a slab of onyx, one would understand it better. But the dear man has his own ways I suppose! He is a fine figure of a man, isn’t he?”

This she said in a burst of something like rapture. Esse tried to cut this short — the new light still shone round her enough to make it seem unfair to let the other woman show her heart, more especially when her hopes were so baseless; so she turned the conversation to what was to be done with the offerings. Miss Gimp was beginning to be seriously alarmed about being found out, on one side as hoarding the provisions in such a ridiculous way, and on the other of being laughed at if she broached the subject at all; so she was glad to embrace Esse’s suggestion that they should during the darkness of the evening take out the gifts and bury them.

This fell deed was achieved before they went to bed that night, and Miss Gimp slept peacefully, with the consciousness of a weight taken off her mind.

The next morning Esse came across Dick, who was for once in a way in a tearing rage. She asked him the cause, and he told her:

“It’s that durned crowd — dirty, thievin’ scoundrels; an’ I believe that Heap Hungry is at the bottom of it. I’d make some of them own up, but that it don’t suit me to quarrel with them just now. I’ll lay for them some night an’ I’ll put a hole through some of them.”

“What have they been stealing?”

“Not much — nothin’ of any value, but it’s the beginnin’, and I mean to stop it right here. An Indian is real pizon when he gets off the square, and this may be only one in the lot; but it’s a beginnin’, and I won’t stand it!”

Esse began to have an understanding, so she asked again:

“What did they steal, Dick?”

“Oh, only some meat and such like. A week ago I had a buck hangin’ up, an’ in the night the durned thieves came and hacked a leg off it; last night it was a turkey. By gum, Little Missy, what air you laughin’ at now?” for Esse had gone off in peals of laughter after his own manner.

At first he was annoyed, but in a few seconds the anger of his face disappeared; then his features relaxed into a grin and the pent up whirlwind burst, and Esse’s laughter was drowned in the volume of his stentorian tones. When Esse recovered her breath she told him what she had found out, and as Dick’s laughter broke out afresh at every step of the doing, of Heap Hungry’s stealing the meat and placing it in Miss Gimp’s window as an offering to the parrot, of her taking it to herself and as a love gift from Dick, and of the mysterious burying. Then she suggested that to complete the circle Dick should come each night and dig up the offering and use it either for himself or for Mrs. Elstree’s household. The humour of the idea took hold of Dick, and his imagination was so manifestly touched that Esse got a little frightened lest he should in some way betray the secret. She was only made easy when he solemnly swore not to betray the secret in any way.

And so this night Dick went to his cabin shaking with laughter; and Esse put her head on her pillow filled with a secret but fearful exultation that Dick and she shared a secret between them.