Читать книгу Bram Stoker: The Complete Novels - Bram Stoker, Bram Stoker - Страница 40

When Mrs. Elstree was told that a suitable summer home had been found for her, a certain weight was lifted from her mind. The Doctor whom she had consulted in San Francisco as to her daughter’s health was emphatic in his direction that Esse should spend the coming summer high up on some mountain side, and that she should have iron and other natural tonics suitable to her anaemic condition. Dr. De Young suggested that on some of the spurs of Shasta, a spot might be found where the air was sufficiently bracing, and where the waters which lower down made the valleys green and bright with their crystal purity had the requisite volcanic qualities. Mrs. Elstree had passed by Shasta Mountain once, on her way from British Columbia, and had fallen somewhat under its spell.

It is certainly a wonderful mountain, and has a personality which is rare amongst mountains. The Matterhorn has such a quality, and so have Ranier and Mount Hood; but mountains generally have as little individuality as the items of a dish of peas.

An energetic friend volunteered to make search on Shasta, and after a fortnight’s absence telegraphed:

Have found very spot for you and agreed purchase subject your approval — made deposit; price all told two thousand dollars; strongly advise purchase.

She immediately wired:

Purchase. Cheque sent payable to you.

The friend was a wise, astute and business-like agent, and when he returned to San Francisco just after an even month’s absence he brought with him the deeds of the estate. As to its beauties he would say nothing except an energetic “Wait. I may be wrong!” When further pressed he added:

“I went there to purchase for you, not myself; but if you don’t care about the buy, wire me and I’ll take the whole outfit at ten premium!”

The journey from San Francisco seemed to gain new beauty from experience. As the train, after leaving Sacramento, wound its way by the brawling river, its windows brushed by the branches of hazel and mountain-ash, the whole wilderness seemed like the natural pleasaunce of an old-world garden. The road took its serpentine course up and above its own track, over and over again, and the bracing air made the spirits of all the party more eager for a sight of the new summer home. The only exception was Miss Gimp, a good-hearted lady who had been governess of Esse up to the previous year, when she had arrived at her sixteenth birthday, and was now her mother’s secretary and companion. Miss Gimp was not altogether satisfied with the whole affair. She had not been consulted about the purchase, she had not even been asked, as an accessory after the fact, if she approved; and worst of all, she had not been there to see that everything was in good order. Mr. Le Maistre, who was Mrs. Elstree’s male factotum, steward, butler, agent, handy-man, engineer and courier, had gone on a week before with the furniture and household effects of all kinds and supplies wherewith to stock the pantry and wine-cellar. He was to meet them at Edgewood, with horses and ponies, and a suitable guide to bring them to the new house. As he had taken the Saratoga trunks, the present party went flying light as to baggage, and had only to look after their travelling bags and wraps. The live stock was in the special care of Miss Gimp and consisted of a terrier, three Persian cats, and a parrot.

It was but a little after mid-day when the train, winding up through the clearings, drew near the station at Edgewood. The scene was not altogether a promising one. There were too many old meat and vegetable tins scattered about; too many rugged tree-stumps sticking out of the weedy ground, already bare in patches under the heats of the coming summer; insufficient attention to pleasant detail everywhere, and an absolute lack of picturesqueness in the inclined plane formed of rough timber beside the track, and used for purposes of firing and watering the engines. In fact, the whole of the little clearing was in that stage of development when beauty stands equally apart from nature and utility. But there was one sufficient compensation for all the immediate squalor. Beyond, in the distance, rose the mighty splendour of Shasta Mountain, its snow-covered head standing clear and stark into the sapphire sky, with its foothills a mass of billowy green, and its giant shoulders seemingly close at hand when looked at alone, but of infinite distance when compared with the foreground, or the snowy summit.

There is something in great mountains which seems now and then to set at defiance all the laws of perspective. The magnitude of the quantities, the transparency of cloudless skies, the lack of regulating sense of the spectator’s eye in dealing with vast dimensions, all tend to make optical science like a child’s fancy. Up at the present height, nearly three thousand feet, the bracing air began to tell on their spirits. Even Esse’s pale cheeks began, to her mother’s great delight, to show some colour, and her dark eyes flashed with unwonted animation, as they ranged over the splendid prospect. She rushed up to Le Maistre, who was signalling some men on the far side of the clearing to bring the horses which were tethered in the shelter of the great pine-trees, and exclaimed:

“Where is our place? Point it out to me; I am simply perishing to know all about it!”

Le Maistre turned round, and then pointed to the northern shoulder of the mountain.

“There, miss, on the left hand of the mountain, a little way below that sharp curve that looks like an old volcano!”

Esse looked, and her heart leaped high. On the northern shoulder of the great mountain lay a little plateau where could be seen in the distance the green undulation of forest with here and there a great conifer towering out of the mass. As it lay to the western side of the mountain, it was manifest that it must command the whole range of the seaboard. There was this added charm, that just below it was a thin white line of rushing water, so that there must be some lake or tarn at hand. Mrs. Elstree shared in the joy when Esse ran towards her impulsively, calling out:

“Hurry, mother! hurry, or we’ll never get there!”

It was many a long day since Esse had shown so much interest in anything, and the mother’s heart was glad that already the mountain had begun its invigorating work.

It took a little time to get the little caravan in order, and Mrs. Elstree utilised the time in making Esse take something to eat. A cup of tea was soon made ready by the obliging wife of the station-master, and some San Franciscan sandwiches formed the rest of the improvised meal. As soon as she could do so without altogether disappointing her mother, Esse hurried out and found Le Maistre, with his companions, ready to set out when the word should be given. Le Maistre was himself somewhat of a picturesque figure, for he was a tall, fine man, with good features, and a black beard tinged with grey; and he was dressed in a suitable compromise between his domestic occupation and the requirements of his new surroundings. He had riding trousers and high boots, a flannel shirt, and a short cutaway coat; altogether he looked like a Western version of an English squire. But his glories entirely paled before the picturesque appearance of his companions. Some of these were Indians, bronze-coloured, black-haired, high cheek-boned, lithe fellows who made announcement to all men of the fact of their being civilised by the nondescript character of their attire. Some had old red coats of the British infantry, and some the ragged remains of fashionable trousers; but they still wore some of their barbaric feathers, trinkets and necklaces of bone and teeth; and most of them had given themselves a mild coat of paint in honour of the occasion. They were all armed with rifles, and their lassos hung over their arms.

The most picturesque figure of the group by far was, however, a tall, handsome mountaineer who stood leisurely fastening a new whip lash beside a sturdy little Indian pony at the head of the cavalcade. He was dressed in a deerskin shirt marked with the natural variations of the tanning, and stained with weather, and with fringes cut in its own stuff at neck and sleeve. It was beautifully embroidered in front and round the neck with fine Indian work of bead and quill. He wore his fair hair long so that it fell over his shirt collar and right down his back. In his belt of dressed deerskin was a huge bowie knife and two revolvers; buckskin breeches and great riding boots, with big Mexican spurs, completed his dress. The saddle of his mustang was of the heavy cowboy pattern, with flaps to cover the rider’s feet; a Winchester rifle and a curled-up raw-hide lasso lay across the saddle. There was about him a free and resolute bearing — the easy natural carriage of one conscious of his power, and that complete absence of fear, and even of misgiving, which mark the King of Beasts in his own sphere. Le Maistre called him up:

“Hi! Dick!”

The man turned and came forward with the long, easy, swaying stride of a mountaineer, and as he came raised his beaver-skin cap. Le Maistre introduced him:

“This is Dick, Miss Esse. He is a neighbour up at Shasta, and has kindly undertaken to Mr. Hotteridge to look after us all. It’s no mean thing either, Miss, in a place where there are still lots of grizzlies, and the Indians are — well, you see yourself what they are! This man they call Grizzly Dick because he’s killed so many!”

Dick took the compliment with true Indian stoicism, and simply turned to Esse and held out a huge brown hand. As she placed her little one in it he wrung it with such strength and exuberant vitality, that she felt almost inclined to cry out as he spoke:

“How d’ye, Little Missy. Glad ter see ye. You’n me’ll be pards I guess. When ye want anything, count me in every time!”

While he was speaking, Mrs. Elstree drew close and held out her hand, saying:

“Glad to see you, Mr. Grizzly Dick. I hope you’re going to take me on in the little game!”

She showed her dazzling white teeth, her blue eyes flooded with merriment, and her tangle of gold hair shook like the fleck of falling sunshine. Dick rubbed his brown palm on the thigh of his buckskin breeches, and then took her hand in his with a grip that made her wince. When she withdrew her cramped fingers, she said:

“By the way, are you Mr. Grizzly Dick or Mr. Dick Grizzly? If that is your friendly shake, I must look out for a real grizzly when I want a mild one!”

Dick threw back his head and laughed with a glee and a resonance which plainly showed that not only his heart, but all his other vital organs were sound. Then Esse and her mother mounted, and Dick, sending two Indians ahead, rode beside them on their way to Shasta.

The sun was hot, and when they rode through clearings between the trees, the air seemed to hold the heat till it quivered from the moist ground to the tree tops high above them; but there was a delicious sweetness and fragrance from the pines, and the rarefied air of the high plateau braced them to the pitch of joyousness. Esse felt that she could never forget that journey; there was such an adventurous, picnicing air about everything, that she was afraid of losing a moment of the time.

For most part of the journey of that day, the snow cap of Shasta was hidden from them by the great trees that seemed to rise all round them; but every now and then, on surmounting a ridge that whilst its ascent was being made seemed itself like a mountain, they caught a glimpse of the noble dome before them rising in silent grandeur. In the early part of the afternoon their path was almost entirely through the forest, where the hoofs of the ponies fell silently on the mass of pine needles. There were myriads of anthills, sometimes rising in open spaces of the glade like little brown mounds of moving items — coherent masses of strenuous endeavour — or piled against and around the fir-trees, up and down whose rugged stems the armies of the ants seemed to be ever moving. More than once they had to make a long and deep descent into a valley, in order to cross a stream which looked from above like a silver thread, but which when they reached it had to be forded with the greatest care. But still the way they were winning was upward, and each time they emerged from a stretch of forest the air was appreciably colder, due both to the height they had climbed, and to the oncoming night.

Towards evening, they picked out a spot for a camp on a little spur of rocky ground overlooking a deep valley. There were here only a few tall pines whose bare and rugged appearance bore witness to their constant exposure. How they ever came to be there was a wonder to Mrs. Elstree, till she saw the spring of sweet water which bubbled up close to their roots, and trickling away fell over the precipice into the valley below. The instant the word was given, the preparation for the bivouac began. Some of the Indians took from their ponies the material for a little bell-tent, such as soldiers use, and in what appeared to Esse to be an incredibly short time, had it fixed, pegged down and banked up with earth from a trench which they dug round it. At the same time some of the others had got wood, and lighted a fire over which they had hung the cooking-pot for their evening’s meal. Le Maistre had in the meantime busied himself with his own preparations for dinner. He had lighted a small fire in a circle of loose stones, and placed over it what looked like a square box, which presently began to give out appetising odours. A rough table was formed from a log, and campstools were placed beside it; and before Esse could get over her wonderment at the whole scene, she found that dinner was ready to be served. The evening was now close at hand, and the beauty of the scene arrested the hungry mortals who had the privilege of seeing it. The sun was sinking like a great red globe into the Pacific, and from the great height at which they were, the rays reached them from over a far stretch of the earth below them, now shrouded in the black shadow of the evening. High above and beyond them, when they looked back, the rosy light fell on the snowy top of the mountain, and lit it with a radiance that seemed divine.

And then the sun seemed to pass from them, and they too were hidden in the shadow of the night; but still the light fell on the mountain till the darkness, creeping up, seemed to wipe it out. When the last point of light had faded from the white peak, which the instant after seemed like the ghost of itself, they looked down, and seemed to realise that the night was upon them.

Dinner was waiting them, so as soon as the entire landscape was blotted out, they bethought them of their hunger. By the time they had sat down at the rude table the Indians had lighted some pine branches and stood round holding them as torches.

It was a wonderful sight. The red flare of the burning pine threw up the red trunks of the great pine-trees so that they seemed to tower towards the very skies, until they were lost in distance, and behind them their black shadows seemed to fall into the depths of the valley. Esse felt like some barbaric empress, and could not take her mind off the picturesque and romantic aspect of the whole thing. It seemed a piece of nightmare projection of the present on the past whenever Le Maistre, in the course of the meal, changed his enamelled tin plates, or brought a fresh variety of food from his mysterious box. Mrs. Elstree was full of the beauty of the scene; and as she looked at the happiness on her daughter’s face, and noted the quick eagerness which had already taken the place of the habitual languor, she felt a great peace stealing over her, much as sleep creeps over a wearied child.

Esse did not stay longer at the table than was necessary. In the thoughtlessness of her youth she overlooked the fact that the others of the party were hungry, and, only for her mother’s whispered warning, she would at once have joined the group awaiting round the camp fire the completion of the cookery. The Indians sat on one side of the fire and ate their meat half cooked — part of a little deer which Dick had shot, on purpose for the meal, just before sunset. Le Maistre and Dick sat together at the opposite side of the fire, and took their dinner with the larger deliberation of the Caucasian. Still, there were not many courses to be served, and it was not long till both men had got out their pipes and were beginning to enjoy a smoke. The Indians had already lit their corn-cobb pipes, and were in high enjoyment, squatted down close enough to the fire to have begun the cookery of a white man. When Esse saw the puffs of smoke she at once went over to the fire. Le Maistre jumped to his feet and took his pipe from his mouth; but Dick sat still and smoked on. Esse said, as she came close:

“If you stop smoking I shall go away; and I want to come and ask you things.”

Le Maistre at once sat down and resumed his pipe, and Esse sat on a broken trunk and watched the fire. All the while Miss Gimp was sitting with Mrs. Elstree, asking questions as to the best way of finishing a new pattern of crochet which had hitherto baffled her. Esse’s first question to Dick was:

“Why have we chosen this spot to camp in? Suppose a high wind were to come, wouldn’t it blow the tent over the precipice?”

“That’s true enough, Little Missy, but there ain’t no high wind a-comin’ up the canon to-night — nothin’ more than the sea-wind which is keepin’ the smoke off this here camp. An’ even if it did come, well, we’ve got fixin’s on to these trees that I reckon’ll see the night through. As to choosin’ this spot, where is there a better? See, we’ve shelter from the big trees, an’ water here to hand, so with a fire across the neck of this rock, and one man to watch it, where’s the harm to come from, and how’s it goin’ to reach us?”

“I see,” said Esse, and was silent for a while, taking in and assimilating her first lesson in woodcraft.

After a little bit she strolled away to the northern side of the precipice, and stood at the edge, wrapt in the glorious silence. A little way off the great fire, which the Indians had heaped with branches, leaped and threw lurid lights on its own smoke, which, taken by the west wind, seemed to bend over and disappear into the darkness of the valley like falling water. Overhead was the deep dark blue of the night, spangled with stars that seemed through the clear air as if one had only to stretch out a hand to touch them; and high away to the south rose the snow-cap of Shasta gleaming ghostly white.

After a while the silence itself became oppressive, as though the absence of sound were something positive which could touch the nervous system. Esse listened and listened, straining her ears for any sound, and at length the myriad and mystic sounds of the night began to be revealed; the creaking of branches and the whispering rustle of many leaves; the fall of distant water; and now and then the far away sound of some beast of the night began to come through the silence. And so, little by little, the life of the night, which is as ample and multitudinous as the life of the day, had one but knowledge to recognise its voices, became manifest; and as the experience went into Esse’s mind, as it must ever go into the mind of man or woman when it is once realised, the girl to whom the new life was coming felt that she had learned her second lesson in woodcraft.

And so she sat thinking and thinking, weaving from the very fabric of the night such dreams as are ever the elixir of a young maiden’s life, till she forgot where she was, and all about the wonders of the day that had passed, and wandered at will through such starlit ways as the future opened for her.

She was recalled to her surroundings by some subtle sense of change around her. The noises of the night and the forest seemed to have ceased. At first she thought that this was because her ears had become accustomed to the sounds; but in a few seconds later she realised the true cause; the moon was rising, and in the growing light the sounds, which up to then had been the only evidence of Nature’s might, became at once of merely ordinary importance. And then, all breathless with delight, Esse, from her high coign of vantage on the brow of the great precipice, saw what looked like a ghostly dawn.

Above the tree-tops, which became articulated from the black mass of a distant hill as the light shone through the rugged edge, sailed slowly the great silver moon. With its coming the whole of Nature seemed to become transformed. The dark limit of forest, where hill and valley were lost in mere expanse, became resolved in some uncertain way into its elements. The pale light fell down great slopes, so that the waves of verdure seemed to roll away from the light and left the depths of the valleys wrapped in velvety black. Hill-tops unthought of rose in points of light, and the great ghostly dome of Shasta seemed to gleam out with a new, silent power.

Esse had begun to lose herself again in this fresh manifestation of Nature’s beauty when her mother’s voice recalled her to herself. She went over to the tent and found her busily engaged with Miss Gimp in arranging matters for the night. The tent was so tiny that there was just room for the three women to lie comfortably on the piles of buffalo and bear rugs which were laid about; and Esse having seen her own corner fixed, went out and stood by the fire where Dick and Le Maistre still sat smoking and talking. She had taken a bearskin robe with her, and this she spread on the ground, near enough to hear the men talk, and sat on it, leaning back on one elbow, and gazed into the fire. She did not feel sleepy; but sleep had been for many a day an almost unknown luxury. For hours every night had she lain awake and heard the clocks chime, and sometimes had seen the dark meet with the dawn, but when sleep had come, it had come unwillingly, with lagging and uncertain step. But for very long she had not known that natural, healthy sleep which comes with silent footstep, and makes no declaration of his intent. The bright firelight flickered over her face, now and again making her instinctively draw back her head as a collapsing branch threw out a fresh access of radiance. And she thought and thought, and her wishes and imaginings became wrought into her strange surroundings. All at once she sat up with sudden impulse as she heard Dick’s voice in tones of startling clearness:

“Guess Little Missy’s fallen asleep. You’d better tell her mother to get her off to bed!”

With the instinctive obedience of youth and womanhood to the voice of authority she rose, swaying with sleep, and saying good-night passed into the tent. Here she found her mother wrapping herself in her blanket for the night. Esse made her simple toilet, and in a few minutes she too was wrapped in her blanket and was settling down to sleep. Then Miss Gimp put out the dark lantern which was close to her hand, and in a very few minutes, what she would have denied as being a snore, proclaimed that she slept. Mrs. Elstree was lying still, and breathed with long, gentle breaths. Esse could not go to sleep at once, but lay awake listening. She heard some sounds as of men moving, but nothing definite enough to help her imagination in trying to follow what was happening outside. She raised herself softly, and unlooping one of the flaps of the tent looked out.

The fire still blazed but with the strong settled redness, that shows that there is a solid base of glowing embers underneath the flame, and round it were stretched several dark figures wrapped in gaily coloured blankets. In the whole camp was only one figure upright) at the neck of the little rocky promontory stood a tall figure leaning on a Winchester rifle, seeming to keep guard over the camp. He was too far off to be touched by the firelight, but the moonlight fell on the outline of his body and showed the long fair hair falling on the shoulders of his embroidered buckskin shirt. When he turned she could see the keen eagle eyes looking out watchfully.

Esse crept back to her bed, and, with a contented sigh, fell asleep.