Читать книгу The Call of the South - Robert Lee Durham - Страница 13

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It was a morning in late September that Elise and Rutledge went for their last canoe ride on the mighty river. Mrs. Phillips and her daughters were to leave for home on an early afternoon train, and Mrs. Rutledge and Evans for Montreal an hour later.

It was a day to live. By an occasional splash of yellow or red among the green that lined the riverside and clothed the diminutive island in the stream, Summer gave notice that in thirty days Nature must find another tenant; and a taste of chill in the air was Winter's advance agent looking over the premises and arranging to decorate them in the soberer grays and browns for the coming of his serious and mighty master.

The lassitude of the hot days was gone, and life and impulse were in the autumn breeze. There was not a suggestion of melancholy or decay or death in earth, air or sky. It was more as if a strong man was risen from drowsy sleep and stretching his muscles and breathing a fresh air into his lungs for a day of vigorous doing. Not exhaustion but strength, not languor but briskness, not the end but the beginning, was indicated in every breath and aspect of Nature.

It was a morning not to doubt but to believe: and Rutledge felt the tightening spring in mind and body and heart, and the bracing influence made his love and his hopes to vibrate and thrill. As with easy strokes he sent the canoe through the water he drank in the fresh beauty of Elise as an invigorating draught. She was so en rapport with the morning and the sunlight and the life as she sat facing and smiling upon him, her cheeks aglow with health and her face alight with the exquisite keenness of joy in living, that she seemed to him the incarnate spirit of the day.

The crisp tingle in the air was not without its spell upon Elise. No blood could respond more quickly than hers to Nature's quickening heart-beats, and it sang in her pulses with unaccustomed sensations that morning. She looked upon Rutledge as he smartly swung the paddle, and was struck with the strength he seemed to possess without the coarse obtrusion of muscle. She accredited the easiness of his movements to the smooth water, in which he had kept the canoe because of his desire to be as little distracted as possible from contemplation of Elise's charms and graces. The swing of his body and arms was as graceful as if he had learned it from a dancing-master, and there was a touch of daintiness about it which was his only personal trait that Elise had positively designated in her mind as not belonging to her ideal man. She did not object to it on its own account, but surmised it might have its origin in some vague unmanly weakness—and weakness in a man she despised.

She had talked to him of a score of things since they had embarked, passing rapidly from one to another in order to keep him away from the one subject he seemed attracted to from any point of the conversational compass. At the moment she had been so clearly impressed with his almost feminine gracefulness the conversation was taking a dangerous swerve, she thought; and for a minute she was at a loss how to divert the course of language from the matter nearest his heart. In a blind effort to do so she unthinkingly challenged him to prove his sterner strength which she had never seen put to the test.

"It's easy going here, isn't it?" she said. "What a pity we couldn't have one visit to the island before we go away."

"Do you wish to go there?" asked Rutledge.

"I would like to," she replied, "but of course we cannot attempt it without an experienced canoe-man. It is about time for us to return; don't you think so?"

"That depends on whether you really want to go to the island," returned Rutledge, who was quick to see and resent the intimation that he was not equal to the business of putting her across the racing water between them and the small cluster of trees and shrubs growing among a misshapen pile of rocks nearly across the river.

"I am told no one but these half-breed guides have ever tried the passage," he continued. "Not because it is so very dangerous, I suppose, but because it is too small to attract visitors to try the rough water."

"They can get to it easily from the other side, can't they? It seems so near to that," said Elise.

"No. Jacques tells me that the narrow water on the other side runs like a race-horse, and has many rocks to smash the canoe. Even going from this side I would prefer to leave you here, Miss Phillips, and of course that would make the visit without inducement to me."

"You allow your carefulness of me and your politeness to me to reason you out of the danger," said Elise, without any sinister purpose; but Rutledge recalled Helen Phillips' words about Elise and heroes, and became uncomfortable.

"I used them to reason you out of the danger," he replied. "If the argument does not appeal to you I am ready for your orders."

"Then let's go over," said Elise, prompted half by the challenge in his eyes and half by her subconscious desire to see him vindicate his feminine grace.

"I admit I am a coward," Rutledge remarked as he turned the canoe toward the island.

"Oh, if you confess to being afraid!" said Elise in mingled surprise and pity. "I certainly cannot insist. Let's return to the hotel."

"You mistake me," Rutledge replied as he sent the light craft on toward the rapids. "My cowardice is in permitting you to bully me into carrying you into some danger. I should have the courage to refuse."

"You would have me believe in your courage, then, whether you choose danger or avoid it. That is artful," Elise rejoined.

The word "artful" nettled Rutledge, and he put his resentment into the strokes which sent the canoe forward. If Elise Phillips could believe of him that he would attempt to establish a reputation for courage by a trick of words, words would be inadequate, of course, to defend him from the imputation. There was no chance now to convince her, he thought, save to try the passage. So, despising the weakness which would not let him point the canoe homeward, he set his strength against the increasing current, and soon lost thought of the argument in the zest of sparring with the river.

Elise became absorbedly interested in the contest and in his handling of the boat. The interest of both became more and more intense as the water began to slap the canoe viciously and toss them with careless strength. A wave rolling over a sunken rock rushed upon them with a gurgle and swash and passed under the canoe with a heave and splash that tilted them uncomfortably and threw a hatful of water over the side. Another came with a more impatient toss, and Elise crouched upon the seat to preserve her equilibrium. Rutledge looked round at her face, which was unsmiling but without fear, and asked:

"Shall we go back?"

"No," the girl answered.

They soon found that the water was swifter than they had judged it from the shore, and that they had not put across far enough up-stream to make the island easily. They were nearing it, but the current was becoming boisterous and they were drifting faster and faster down-stream. Swifter water and rougher met the canoe at every paddle-stroke. Rutledge with his back to Elise dropped on one knee in the water in the canoe bottom and gave every energy to his work. If Elise had not been with him he would have liked nothing better.

As for the girl, she would not insist on this wild ride again, but, being in, she was having many thrills of pleasure. Rutledge's manner gave her confidence that they would reach the island, but with how much discomfiture she was as yet uncertain. She was drenched with water from the slapping waves and the swiftly flying paddle, which was Rutledge's only weapon against the wrath of the river. She saw in his resolute efforts that their situation was at least serious if not dangerous, and she hardly took her eyes from him; but with her closest scrutiny she did not detect the slightest indecision or apprehension.

Only once did fear come to her, and that but for a moment. The struggle was now quick and furious. They were in the mad whirl of crushing water that tore alongside the island and was ripped and ground among the bullying rocks. She heard Rutledge stifle a cry as he sent the canoe out with a back-stroke that almost threw her overboard, and the rioting current slammed them past a jagged vicious-looking rock just under the river's surface which would have smashed their cockle-shell to splinters. When she looked down upon it as they were shot past she thought for an instant of death and dead men's bones. Then—

"Out! Quick—now!" yelled Rutledge, as with a strength that seemed as much of will as of muscle, he shoved the canoe's nose up against the island and held it for a moment against the fury of the water.

Elise rose at his sharp command and leaped lightly out upon a bare rock, giving the canoe a back kick which sent it swinging around broad across the current. As it swung off Rutledge, seeing no favourable place below him to make another landing, quickly gave his end of the boat a cant toward the island, dropped the paddle in the canoe, grabbed the mooring chain and jumped for the land. He jumped and alighted unsteadily but without further mishap than so far capsizing the canoe that it shipped enough water to more than half submerge it and threaten to sink it. With his effort to draw it up on the rock and save it from sinking entirely, the water in the canoe rushed to the outer end, sending that completely under and floating the paddle out and away. He yanked the canoe up on the island and, turning, looked straight into Elise's eyes for ten seconds without speaking.

"Why don't you say it?" the young woman asked with amused defiance.

"Say what?" inquired Rutledge.

"What you are dying to tell me."

"I love you," answered Rutledge simply.

"Oh! You—you—impudent—you horrible!" cried Elise with a gasp. "To presume I would invite you to tell me—that! How dare you!"

"I dare anything for you," said Rutledge. "I love you and—"

"Stop! Not another word on that subject—lest your presumption become unbearable! You know very well, Mr. Stupidity, that I expected you to say 'I told you so.'"

"I have told you—so—your—exp—"

"Stop, I say! I will not listen to another word. Your persistence is almost—insulting!"

"Insulting!" said Rutledge in amazement. "Then pardon me and I'll not offend again;" and he turned to take a look at the fast-riding paddle as it turned and flashed far down the river.

Elise was glad of the chance to gather her wits together and prepare a defence against this abrupt method of wooing. Indeed she was on the defensive against her own heart. One fact alone, however, would justify her deliberation: that she was not certain of her own mind. Friendship may halt and consider, admiration may sit in judgment; but love that questions, or is of two minds, or hesitates, is not love.

She turned away from him and the river to give attention to this new problem which was of more immediate interest to her than the question of how they were to get away from the island. Rutledge came to her after awhile.

"Miss Phillips," he said, "I have the honour to report that, while we are prisoners on this island now, our imprisonment will not be lengthy. Fortunately I saw Jacques on the other side of the river and made him understand, I think, that we have lost our paddle. At any rate he put off toward the hotel at great speed, and will be down with another canoe I hope before you become tired of your island." And he added, as if to relieve the tense situation: "While we wait I shall be glad to show you over the premises and to talk about anything that you may prefer to discuss."

Elise could not tell from the formal manner of Rutledge's words whether he was really offended or humourously stilted in his speech. She could be as coldly polite as any occasion demanded; but, believing that she had effectually put an end to his love-making for the day, she met his formality of manner in her naturally charming and friendly spirit.

"Sit down here then, and tell me where you learned to handle a canoe. I did not know canoeing was a Southern sport."

"It is not," Rutledge said, taking the place she gave him at her feet. "I was never in a canoe till I came here this summer."

"Now, Mr. Rutledge, don't ask too much of credulity. One surely cannot become skilful without practice."

"I did not mean that I have never been on the water before," said Rutledge; "but in my country we do not have these curved and graceful canoes. We navigate our rivers with the primitive dugout or pirogue. I have used one of those on my father's Pacolet plantation since I was a boy. The dugout is made by hollowing out a section of a tree. That makes the strongest and best boat, for it never leaks or gets smashed up. It is very narrow and shallow, however, and it takes some skill to handle it in a flood."

"Were you ever in a flood?—a worse flood than this?" asked Elise.

"Yes. When our little rivers get up they are as bad as this or worse. I have seen them worse. During the great flood on the Pacolet some years ago, when railroad bridges, mill dams, saw-mills, cotton mills, houses, barns, cotton bales, lumber, cattle, men, women and children were all engulfed in one watery burial, the little river was for six hours a monster—a demon."

"Tell me about that," Elise said; and to entertain her Rutledge told her at length the story of that cataclysm of piedmont South Carolina. He went into the details without which such description is only awful, not interesting. Many were the incidents of heroism and hairbreadth escapes and unspeakable calamity which he related; and he told the stories with such vividness of portraiture, dramatic fire and touches of pathos that, with the roar of many waters actually pounding upon her ear-drums, Elise could close her eyes and see the scenes he depicted.

In looking upon the pictures he drew with such living interest she found herself straining her tight-shut eyes in search of his figure among the throng that lined the river-bank or fought the awful flood. Time after time as he described an act of heroic courage in words that burned and glowed and crackled with the fire that could stir only an eye-witness or an actor in the unstudied drama he was reproducing, she would clothe the hero with Rutledge's form, identify his distinctive gestures and movement and catch even the tones of his voice as it shouted against the booming of the waters: but with studied regularity and distinctness Rutledge at some point in every story, incidentally and apparently unconsciously, would make it plain that the hero of that incident was a person other than himself.

He might have told her, indeed, many things to his own credit: especially of a desperate ride and struggle in one of those dugouts which he had volunteered to make in order to prevent an old negro man adrift on a cabin-top from going over Pacolet Dam Number 3, where so many unfortunates went down and came not up again; but at no time could Elise infer from his speech that he was the hero of his own story. Her word "artful" still rankled in his memory, and he swore to his own soul that she should never, never hear him utter a word that might show he possessed or claimed to possess courage.

The only method by which Elise could deduce from his words the conclusion that Rutledge was of courageous heart was that courage seemed such a commonplace virtue among the people of his section that he probably possessed his share of it. Her curiosity was finally aroused to know whether by any artifice she might induce him to tell of his own exploits, which his very reticence persuaded her must be many and interesting, and she brought all her powers into play to draw him out: but to no purpose. She refrained from any direct appeal to him in fear that a personal touch might turn the conversation along dangerous lines; and Rutledge, having been properly rebuked, waited for some intimation of permission before presuming to discuss other than impersonal themes.

While indeed it only confirmed her woman's intuition, Elise was unconsciously happier because of Rutledge's blunt statement of his love, for it made certain a fact that was not displeasing to her. Yet she would hold him at arm's length, for she could with sincerity bid him neither hope nor despair. The glamour of her day-dreams made the reading of her heart's message uncertain. Rutledge had not the glittering accessories that attended the wooer of her visions; and yet as he talked to her she was mentally placing him in every picture her mind drew of the future, and was impressed that whether in the soft scenes where knightly gallantry and grace wait upon fair women, or in the stern dramas where bitter strength of mind and heart and body is poured out in libation to the god of grinding conflict, he, in every scene, looked all that became a man.

Rutledge's flow of narrative and Elise's absent-minded reverie were broken in upon by the hail of Jacques, who was approaching them from almost directly up-stream. His canoe was doing a grapevine dance as he pushed it yet farther across the river and dropped rapidly down to a landing on the far side of the island.

"Sacre! Wrong side!" he exclaimed when he came across and saw where Rutledge had pulled his canoe out of the water. "Here I lose two canoe sometime. How you mek him land?"

Rutledge did not answer the question but set about getting his canoe across the island to the point designated by Jacques as the place for leaving it. He had no desire to stay longer since all hope of further tête-à-tête with Elise was gone; and in a few minutes they were ready to embark.

"No hard pull, but kvick paddle lak feesh-tail," said Jacques in explaining the course by which they were to return, the which was plainly beset with numberless rocks and shoals.

"Sweem out seex times befor I lairn road," he added as a comforting proof of the thoroughness of his knowledge. The return was a simple matter of dropping off from the far side of the island, floating down a few rods, and then picking along through the rocks across the river as the canoe gathered speed down-stream.

"Miss Phillips," Rutledge said when they were ready, "perhaps you had better take ship with Jacques. He knows the road."

Their rescuer looked pleased at the honour, and turned to pull his canoe within easier reach.

"No, thank you," she said to Rutledge. "I prefer to go with you."

Rutledge caught his breath at the loyalty and the caress in her voice, and ungratefully wished Jacques at the bottom of the river. He handed her into his canoe with a tenderness that was eloquent; and Jacques, seeing through the game which robbed him of the graceful young woman for a passenger, put off just ahead of them, saying:

"I go fairst. Follow me shairp."

It was no easy task to follow that canoe; and Elise, as she watched the precision with which Rutledge used the "kvick paddle lak feesh-tail," was convinced that such skill had not gone to waste at the Pacolet flood. As she looked at him when the rough water was past and he was sending the canoe up the river with even swing again, graceful as before, her eyes had a light in them that would have gladdened his heart to see.

They landed near the hotel and hurried straight to it upon Elise's plea that she was late and must hurry to dress for her train. Rutledge walked beside her down the long hall of the hotel, and at the foot of the stairway, feeling that opportunity was slipping past him, he stopped her short with—

"Your answer, Elise! In heaven's name, your answer!"

Elise was again startled by his abruptness, and her unrestrained heart's impulse sent a look of tenderness to her eyes that would have crowned Rutledge's life with all happiness, had not that glamour of her daydreams, fateful, insistent, overclouded and banished it in a moment. She looked at him confusedly a moment more, then took a quick step away from him, hesitated, and, turning quickly, said:

"There is no answer,"—and fled up the stairs.

Rutledge turned away dazed by the reply to his heart's question. "There is no answer!"—as if he were a "Buttons" who had carried to her ladyship an inconsequential message which deserved no reply. He could not get his mind to comprehend the import of it; and he was walking back down the hallway with a vexed frown upon his face trying to untangle his thoughts, when Helen Phillips passed him and, seeing him in such a mood after his parting ride with Elise, prodded him with—

"None but heroes need apply, Mr. Rutledge. I warned you."

Rutledge passed on with an irritated shrug of the shoulders; and Helen, laughing, ran to tease Elise for a history of the morning's ride and the reason "why Mr. Rutledge is so grumpy." Little satisfaction did she get from Elise, however, for that young woman evinced as much of reticence as Rutledge had shown of irritation.

"I told him none but heroes need apply," laughed Helen.

"What do you know of heroes?" asked Elise with a snap.