Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

We were off; Jonathan, as usual, wading up to his chest or perched on a bit of boulder above some dark, slick rapid; I preferring water not more than waist-deep, and not too far from shore to miss the responses of the wood-folk to my passing: soft flurries of wings; shy, half-suppressed peepings; quick warning notes; light footfalls, hopping or running or galloping; the snapping of twigs and the crushing of leaves. Some sounds tell me who the creature is,—the warning of the blue jay, the whirr of the big ruffed grouse, the thud of the bounding rabbit,—but many others leave me guessing, which is almost better. When a very big stick snaps, I always feel sure a deer is stealing away, though Jonathan assures me that a chewink can break twigs and “kick up a row generally,” so that you’d swear it was nothing smaller than a wild bull.

So we fished that day. When I caught a bass, which was seldom, I whooped and waved it at Jonathan, and when I caught a shiner, which was rather often, I waved it too, just to keep his mind occupied. Hours passed, and we met at a bend in the river where the deep water glides close to shore.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Now you speak of it, yes.”

“Shall we go back?”

“How can I tell? Now, if we only had that watch we’d know whether we ought to be hungry or not.”

“What does that matter, if we _are_ hungry? Besides, if you’d had a watch, you’d have had to carry it in your teeth. You know perfectly well you wouldn’t have brought it, anyway.”

“Well—then, at least when we got back, we should have known whether we ought to have been hungry or not. Now we shall never know.”

“Never! Oh! Look there, Jonathan! We’re going to catch it!” A sense of growing shadow in the air had made me look up, and there, back of the steep-rising woods, hung a blue-black cloud, with ragged edges crawling out into the brightness of the sky.

“Sure enough! The bass’ll bite now, if it really comes. Wait till the first drops, and see what you see.”

We had not long to wait. There came that sudden expectancy in the air and the trees, the strange pallor in the light, the chill sweep of wind gusts with warm pauses between. Then a few big drops splashed on the dusty, sun-baked stones about us.

“Now! Wade right out there, to the edge of that ledge—don’t slip over, it’s deep. I’ll go down a little way.”

I waded out carefully, and cast, in the smooth, dark water already beginning to be rain-pocked. It was surprisingly shivery, that storm wind! I glanced toward shore to look for shelter—I remembered an overhanging ledge of rock—then my line went taut! I forgot about shelter, forgot about being chilly; I knew it was a good bass.

I got him in—too big to go through the hole in my creel—cast for another—and another—and yet another. The rain began to fall in sheets, and the wind nearly blew me over, but who could run away from such fishing? The surface of the river, deep blue-gray, seemed rising everywhere in little jets to meet the rain. Rapids, eddies, still waters, weedy edges, all looked alike; there were neither waves nor swirls nor glassy slicks, but all were roughly furry under the multitudinous assaults of the fierce rain-drops. The sky was mottled lead-color, the wind blew less strongly, but cold—cold. And under that water the bass were biting, my rod was bending double, my reel softly screaming as I gave line, and one after another I drew the fish alongside and dipped them out with my landing net.

Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped biting. I waited long minutes; nothing happened, and all at once I realized that I was very wet and very cold. Wading ashore, I saw Jonathan shivering along up the narrow beach toward me, his shoulders drawn in to half their natural spread, neck tucked in between his collar-bones, knees slightly bent.

“You can’t be cold?” I questioned as soon as he was near enough to hear me through the slash of the rain and wind.

“No, of course not; are you?”

We didn’t discuss it, but ran up the bank to the rock-ledge and crouched under it, our teeth literally chattering.

“Did you ever see such fishing?” I managed to stammer.

“Great! But oh, _why_ didn’t I bring the whiskey bottle?”

“Let’s run for camp! We can’t be wetter.”

We crawled out into the rain again, and first sprinted and then dog-trotted along the river edge. No bird notes now in the woods beside us, no whirring of wings; only the rain sounds: soft swishings and drippings and gusty showerings, very different from the flat, flicking sounds when rain first starts in dry woods.

Camp looked a little cheerless, but a blazing fire, started with dry stuff we had stowed inside the tent, changed things, and dry clothes changed them still more, and we sat within the tent flaps and ate ginger-snaps in great contentment of spirit while we waited for the rain to stop.

It did stop, and very soon the fish were sizzling in the pan.

“Of course, if we had a watch, now—” suggested Jonathan, as he carefully tucked under the pan little sticks of just the right length.

“What should we know more than we do now—that we’re hungry?” I asked.

“Well, for one thing, we’d know what time it is,” replied Jonathan tranquilly.

“And for another we’d know whether it’s dinner or supper I’m cooking,” I supplemented. “But does it matter? You won’t get anything different, no matter which it is—just fish is what you’ll get. And pretty soon the sun will be out, and you can set up a stick and watch the shadow and make a sundial for yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t really care which it is.”

“Do you suppose I don’t know that! And meanwhile, you might cut the bread and make some toast,—there are some good embers on your side under the pan,—and I’ll get the butter, and there we’ll be.”

By the time the toast was made and the fish curling brownly away from the pan, the sun had indeed come out, at first pale and watery, then clear, and still high enough in the heavens to set the soaked earth steaming fragrantly with its heat. Odors of hemlock and wet earth mingled with odors of toast and fried fish.

“Um-m! Smell it all!” I said. “What a lot we should miss if we didn’t eat in the kitchen!”

“Or cook in the dining-room—which?”

“And hear that song sparrow! Doesn’t it sound as if the rain had washed his song a little cleaner and clearer?”

There followed the wonderful afterlight that a short, drenching rain leaves behind it—a hush of light, deeply pervasive and friendly. The sunshine slanted across the gleaming wet rocks in the river, lit up the rain-darkened trunks of the hemlocks, glinted on the low-hanging leaves, and flashed through the dripping edges of sagging fern fronds. As twilight came on, we canoed across to the side of the river where the road lay—the other side was steep and pathless woods—and walked down to the nearest farmhouse to buy eggs for the morning. Back again by the light of a low-hung moon, and across the dim water to our own island and the embers of our fire.

“Oh, Jonathan! We never asked them what time it was!” I said. “I meant to—for your sake—I thought you’d sleep better if you knew.”

“Too bad! Probably I should have. I thought of it, of course, but was afraid that if I asked it would spoil your day.”

“It would take something pretty bad to spoil a day like this one,” I said.

* * * * *

Two days later the weather turned still and warm, the bass refused to bite, and even the sunfish lay, shy or wary or indifferent, in their shallow, sunny pools, so we resolved to walk down the river to the post-office, four miles away, for possible mail. As we sat on the steps of the little store, looking it over,—“Here’s news,” said Jonathan; “Jack and Molly say they’ll run up if we want them, day after to-morrow—up on the morning train, and back on the evening.”

“Good! Tell them to come along.”

“No—it’s to-morrow—letter’s been here since yesterday. I’ll telegraph.”

As we tramped home we planned the day. “We’ll meet them and all walk up together,” said Jonathan.

“We’d better catch some bass and leave them all hooked in a pool, ready for them to pull out,” I added; “otherwise they may not catch any. And maybe you’d better meet them and I’ll have dinner ready when you get back.”

“Nonsense! You come, and we’ll all get dinner when we get back. That’s what they’re coming for—to see the whole thing.”

“But if it’s late—they’ve got to get back for that down train.”

“Well—time enough.”

“Oh, Jonathan! What about catching that train?”

“They’ll have watches—watches that go.”

“But what about our meeting them? The train arrives at 10:15, they said. What does 10:15 look like in the sky, I wonder!”

“Or rather, what does 8.45 look like? It takes an hour and a half to get there, counting crossing the river.”

“Yes—dear me! Well, Jonathan, we’ll just have to get up early and go, and then wait.”

“Or else take our watch to the farmhouse and set it.”

“Jonathan, I will not! I’d rather start at daylight.”

Which was very nearly what we did. The morning opened with a sun obscured, and I felt sure it was stealing a march on us and would suddenly burst out upon us from a noonday sky. We breakfasted hastily, ferried across to shore, and set a swinging pace down the road. As we walked, the sun burned through the mist, and our shadows came out, dim, long things, striding with the exaggerated gait that shadows have, over the grassy banks to our right.

“I think,” said Jonathan, “it may be as late as seven o’clock, but perhaps it’s only six.”

When we reached the station, the official clock registered 8.30. We strolled over to the store-and-post-office and got more letters—one from Molly and Jack saying thank you they’d come. “They don’t entirely understand our mail system up here,” said Jonathan. We got some ginger-cookies and some milk and had a second breakfast, and finally wandered back to the station to wait for the train. It came, bearing the expected two, and much friendliness. “Get our letter? There, Jack! He said you wouldn’t, but I said you would. I made him send it … four miles to walk? What fun!”

It was fun, indeed, and all went well until after dinner, when Jack—saying, “Well, maybe we’d better be starting back for that train”—drew out his watch. He opened it, muttered something, put it to his ear, then began to wind it rapidly. He wound and wound. We all laughed.

“Looks as if you hadn’t remembered to wind it last night,” said Jonathan, glancing at me.

“I haven’t done that in months, hang it! Give me the time, will you, Jonathan?” said Jack.

“Sorry!” Jonathan was smiling genially. “Mine’s run down too. It stopped at twenty-two minutes before five—A. M., I think.”

“What luck! And Molly didn’t bring hers.”

“You told me not to,” Molly flicked in.

“So here we are,” said Jonathan, “entirely without the time of day.”

“But plenty of real time all round us,” I said. “Let’s use it, and start.” I avoided Jonathan’s eye.

We reached the station with an hour and ten minutes to spare—bought more ginger-cookies and more milk. As we sat eating them in the midst of the preternatural calm that marks a country railroad station outside of train times, Molly remarked brightly,—

“Well, I don’t see but we got on just as well without a watch, didn’t we, Jack? Why do we need watches, anyway? Do _you_ see?” she turned to us. “Jack does everything by his watch—eats and breathes and sleeps by it—”

Jack returned, watch in hand—he had been getting railroad time from the telegraph operator. “Want to set yours while you think of it?” he asked Jonathan.

“Sorry—thank you—didn’t bring it,” said Jonathan.

“By George, man, what’ll you do?” Real consternation sounded in Jack’s tones.

“Oh, we’ll get along somehow,” said Jonathan. “You see, we don’t have many engagements, except with the bass, and they never meet theirs, anyhow.”

When the train had gone, I said, “Jonathan, why didn’t you tell them it was my whim?”

“Oh, I just didn’t,” said Jonathan.

As Jonathan had predicted, we did get along somehow—got along rather well, on the whole. There are, of course, some drawbacks to an unwatched life. You never want to start the next meal till you are hungry, and after that it takes one or two or three hours, as the case may be, to go back to camp and get the meal ready, and by that time you are almost hungrier than you like being. But except for this, and the little matter of meeting trains, it is rather pleasant to break away from the habit of watching the watch, and it was with real regret that, on the last night of our camp, we took our watch to the farmhouse to set it.

“Run down, did it? Guess you forgot to wind it. Well—we do forget things sometimes, all of us do,” the farmer’s wife said comfortingly as she went to look at the clock. “Twenty minutes to seven, our clock says. It’s apt to be fast, so I guess you won’t miss any trains. Father he says he’d rather have a clock fast than slow any day, but it don’t often get more than ten minutes wrong either way.”

And to us, after our two weeks of camp, ten minutes’ error in a clock seemed indeed slight.

“Jonathan,” I said, as we walked back along the road, “I hate to go back to clock time. I like real time better.”

“You couldn’t do so many things in a day,” said Jonathan.

“No—maybe not.”

“But maybe that wouldn’t matter.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t,” I said.

VIII

The Ways of Griselda

“Of course you don’t know what her name is,” I said, as we stood examining the sleek little black mare Jonathan had just brought up from the city.

“No. Forgot to ask. Don’t believe they’d have known anyway—one of a hundred or so.”

“Well, we’ll name her again. Dear me—she’s rather plain! Probably she’s useful.”

“Hope so,” said Jonathan. Then, stepping back a little, in a slightly grieved tone, “But I don’t call her plain. Wait till she’s groomed up—”

“It’s that droop of her neck—sort of patient—and the way she drops one of her hips—if they are hips.”

“But we want a horse to be patient.”

“Yes. I don’t know that I care about having her _look_ so terribly much so as this. I think I’ll call her Griselda.”

“Now, why Griselda?”

“Why, don’t you know? She was that patient creature, with the horrid husband who had to keep trying to see just how patient she was. It’s a hateful story—enough to turn any one who brooded on it into a militant suffragette.”

“But you can’t call a horse Griselda—not for common stable use, you know.”

“Call her ‘Griz’ for short. It does very well.”

Jonathan jeered a little, but in the family the name held. Our man Hiram said nothing, but I think in private he called her “Fan” or “Beauty” or “Lady,” or some such regulation stable name.

Called by any name, she pleased us, and she _was_ patient. She trotted peacefully up hill and down, she did her best at ploughing and haymaking and all the odd jobs that the farm supplied. She stood when we left her, with that same demure, almost overdone droop of the neck that I had first noticed. When I met Jonathan at the station, she stood with her nose against a snorting train, looking as if nothing could rouse her.

“Good little horse you got there,” remarked the station agent. “Where’d you find her?”

“Oh, I picked her out of a bunch down in the city,” said Jonathan casually. “I didn’t think I knew much about horses, but I guess I was in luck this time.”

“Guess you know more about horses than you’re sayin’.” And Jonathan, thus pressed, admitted with suitable reluctance that he _had_ now and then been able to detect a good horse by his own observation.

On the way home he openly congratulated himself on his find. “I really wasn’t sure I knew how to pick out a horse,” he remarked, in a glow of retrospective modesty, “but I certainly got a treasure this time.”

Griz had been with us about two weeks, and all went well. Then another horse was needed for farm work, and one was sent up—one Kit by name—a big, pleasant, rather stupid brown mare.

“They do say two mares don’t git on so well together as a mare ’n a horse,” remarked Hiram.

“But these are both such quiet creatures,” I protested, to which Hiram made no answer. Hiram seldom made an answer unless fairly cornered into it.

For two or three days after the new arrival nothing happened, so far as we knew, except that Griz always laid her ears back, and looked queer about her under lip, whenever Kit was led in or out of the stall next her, while Kit always huddled up close to her manger whenever Griz was led past her heels. Once or twice Griz slipped her halter in the stall, and Hiram said there was a place on Kit that looked as if she had been kicked, but when we scrutinized Griz, neck a-droop and eyes a-blink, we found it hard to think ill of her. Besides, Jonathan was now fairly committed to the opinion that he had “got a treasure this time.” “Kit may have hurt herself lying down,” he suggested, and again Hiram made no answer.

Then one night, sometime during the very small, very dark, and very sleepy hours, we were awakened by awful sounds. “What is it? What _is_ it?” I gasped.

Crash! Bang! Boom! The trampling of hoofs!—heavy, hollow pounding!—the tearing and splintering of wood!—all coming from the barn, though loud enough, indeed, to have come from the next room.

Jonathan was up in an instant muttering, “Where are my rubber boots?—and my coat?”

“Jonathan! _what_ a combination!”

But he was gone, and I heard the snap of the lantern and the slam of the back door almost before the rocking-chair in the sitting-room that he had hit—and talked to—had stopped rocking. Then I heard him calling outside Hiram’s window and then he ran past our window, out to the barn. I wished he had waited for Hiram, but I had an undercurrent of pleasure in hearing him run. Jonathan’s theory is that there is never any hurry, and now and then I like to have this notion jolted up a little.

Meanwhile the awful sounds had ceased. There was the rumble of the stable door, a pause, and Jonathan’s voice in conversational tones. Next came the flashing of Hiram’s lantern, and the _tromp, tromp, tromp_, in much quicker tempo than usual, of Hiram’s heavy boots. Hiram’s theory was a good deal like Jonathan’s, so this also gave me pleasure. Finally, there came the flash of another lantern, and I recognized the quick, short step of Mrs. Hiram. I smiled to myself, picturing the meeting between her and Jonathan, for I knew just how Jonathan was costumed. In two minutes I heard her steps repassing, and in five minutes Jonathan returned. He was chuckling quietly.

“I guess Griz got all she needed—didn’t know either of ’em had so much spunk in ’em.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t know, exactly, but when I opened that door, there was Griz, just inside, no halter on, head down, meek as Moses, as far away from Kit’s heels as she could get—she’s got the mark of them on her leg and her flank.”

“Is she hurt?—or Kit?”

“No, not so far as we can see, not to amount to anything—except maybe Griz’s feelings.”

“And what about Mrs. Hiram’s feelings?”

Jonathan laughed aloud. “I was inside with Kit, and she called out to know if she could help.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Not on your life.’ ”

“So that was why she came back. Did you really say,‘Not on your life,’ or did you only imply it in your tone, while you actually said, ‘No, thank you very much’?”

“I really said it. At least, I don’t remember conversations the way you do, but I didn’t feel a bit like thanking anybody, and I don’t believe I did.”

“Well, I wish I’d heard you. One misses a good deal—”

“You can see the stable to-morrow. That’ll keep. They must have had a time of it! The walls are marked and splintered as high as I can reach. And I don’t believe Kit’ll cringe when Griz passes her any more.”

“Of course you remember Hiram _said_ two mares didn’t usually get on very well, and even when they’re chosen by a good judge of horses—”

* * * * *

After that the two did get along peaceably enough, and Jonathan assured me that all horses had these little affairs. One day we drove over to the main street of the village on an errand.

“Will she stand?” I questioned.

“Better hitch her, perhaps,” said Jonathan, getting out the rope. He snapped it into her bit-ring, then threw the other end around a post and started to make a half-hitch. But as he drew up the rope it was suddenly jerked out of his hand. He looked up and saw Griselda’s patient head waving high above him on the end of an erect and rebellious neck, the hitch-rope waggling in loops and spirals in the air, and the whole outfit backing away from him with speed and decision. He was so astonished that he did nothing, and in a moment Griz had stopped backing and stood still, her head sagging gently, the rope dangling.

“Well—I’ll—be—” I didn’t try to remember just what Jonathan said he would be, because it doesn’t really matter. We both stared at Griz as if we had never seen her before. Griz looked at nothing in particular, she blinked long lashes over drowsy, dark eyes, and sagged one hip.

“She’s trying to make believe she didn’t do it—but she did,” I said.

“Something must have startled her,” said Jonathan, peering up and down the deserted street. Two roosters were crowing antiphonally in near-by yards, and a dog was barking somewhere far off.

“What?” I said.

“You never can tell, with a horse.”

“No, apparently not,” I said, smiling to myself; and I added hastily, as I saw Jonathan go forward to her head, “_Don’t_ try it again, please! I’ll stay by her while you go in. _Please!_” For I had detected on Jonathan’s face a look that I very well knew. It was the same expression he had worn that Sunday he led the calf to pasture. He made no answer, but stood examining the hitch-rope.

“No use,” he said, quietly releasing it and tossing its coil into the carriage, “It’s too rotten. If it snapped, she’d be ruined.”

I breathed freer. I privately hoped that all the hitch-ropes at the farm were rotten.

“Griz stands perfectly well without hitching,” I said as we drove home, “Why do you force an issue?”

“I didn’t. She did. She’s beaten me. If I don’t hitch her now, she’ll know she’s master.”

“Oh, dear!” I sighed. “Let her _be_ master! Where’s the harm? It’s just your vanity.”

“Perhaps so,” said Jonathan.

When he agrees with me like that I know it’s hopeless.

The next night he wheeled in at the big gate bearing about his shoulders a coil of heavy rope.

“It looks like a ship’s cable,” I said.

“Yes,” he responded, leaning his bicycle against his side, and swinging the coil over his head. “I want it for mooring purposes. Think it’ll moor Griz?”

“Jonathan!” I exclaimed, “you won’t!”

“Watch me,” said Jonathan, and he proceeded to explain to me the working of the tackle.

One end had a ring in it, and as nearly as I remember, the plan was to put the rope around her body, under what would be her arm-pits if she had arm-pits,—horses’ joints are never called what one would expect, of course,—run the end through the ring, then forward between her legs and through the bit-ring.

“Then, when she sets back, it cuts her in two,” he concluded cheerfully.

“But you don’t _want_ her in two,” I protested.

“She won’t set back,” he responded; “at least, not more than once. To-morrow’s Sunday; I’ll have to hitch her at church.”

I hoped it would rain, so we needn’t go, but we were having a drought and the morning dawned cloudless. We reached the church just on the last stroke of the bell. The women were all within; the men and boys lounging in the vestibule were turning reluctant feet to follow them.

“You go right in,” said Jonathan, “I’ll be in soon.”

I turned to protest, but he was already driving round to the side, and a hush had fallen over the congregation within that made it embarrassing to call. Besides, one of the deacons stood holding open the door for me.

I slipped into a pew near the back, with the apologetic feeling one often has in an old country church—a feeling that one is making the ghosts move along a little. They did move, of course,—probably ghosts are always polite when one really meets them,—and I sat down. Indeed, I was thinking very little of ghosts that day, or of the minister either. My ears were cocked to catch and interpret all the noises that came in through the open windows on my left. My eyes wandered in that direction, too, though the clear panes revealed nothing more exciting than flickering maple leaves and a sky filmed over by veils of cloud.

The moralists tell us that what we get out of any experience depends upon what we bring to it. What I brought to it that morning was a mind agog, attuned to receive these expected outside sounds. To all such sounds the service within was merely a background—a background which didn’t know its place, since it kept pushing itself more or less importunately into the foreground. I sat there, of course, with perfect propriety of demeanor, but my reactions were something like this:—

_Hymn 912_ … seven stanzas! horrors! oh! _omit the 3d, 5th, and 6th_—well, I should hope so!… I can’t hear a thing while this is going on!… He hasn’t come in yet! _Scripture reading for to-day_—why can’t he give us the passage and let us read it for ourselves?—well, his voice is rather high and uneven, I think I could make out Jonathan’s through the loopholes in it.… There! What was that, I wonder! Sounded like shouting,—oh, why can’t he talk softly! _Let us unite in prayer._ Ah! now we’ll have a long, quiet time, anyway!… if only he wouldn’t pray quite so loud! Why pray aloud at all, anyway? I like the Quaker way best: a good long strip of silence, where your thoughts can wash around in any fashion that—There! No—yes—no—it’s just people going by on the road.… Maybe he’s in the back of the church now, waiting for the close of the prayer. Seems as if I had to look.… Well, he isn’t.… _For thy name’s sake, amen._

And then the collection, with an organ voluntary the while—now why an organ voluntary? Why not leave people to their thoughts some of the time?

And at last, the sermon:—_The text to which I wish to call your attention this morning_—my attention, forsooth! My attention was otherwise occupied. Ah! A puff of warm, sweet air from behind me, and the soft, padding noise of the swinging doors, apprised me of an incomer. A cautious tread in the aisle—I moved along a little to make room.

In a city church probably I should have thrown propriety to the winds and had the gist of the story out of him at once, but in a country church there are always such listening spaces,—the very pew-backs and cushions seem attentive, the hymnals creak in their racks, and the little stools cry out nervously when one barely touches them. It was too much for me. I was coerced into an outer semblance of decorum. However, I snatched a hasty glance at Jonathan’s face. It was quite red and hot-looking, but calm, very calm, and I judged it to be the calm, not of defeat nor yet of settled militancy, but of triumph. I even thought I detected the flicker of a grin,—the mere atmospheric suggestion of a grin,—as if he felt the urgent if furtive appeal in my glance. At any rate, Jonathan was all right, that was clear. And as to Griz—whether she was still one mare or two half-mares—it didn’t so much matter. And now for the sermon! I gathered myself to attend.

As we stood up for the last hymn, I whispered, “How did it go?”

“All right. She’s hitched,” was the answer.

After church there was the usual stir of sociability, and when I emerged into the glare of the church steps, I saw Jonathan driving slowly around from the rear. Griz walked meekly, her head sagged, her eyes blinked.

“Good quiet little horse you’ve got there,” said a deacon over my shoulder; “don’t get restless standing, the way some horses do.”

“Yes, she’s very quiet,” I said.

I got in, and at last, as we drove off, the flood-gates of my impatience broke:—

“Well?” I said,—“well?”

“Well—” said Jonathan.

“_Well? Tell_ me about it!”

“I’ve told you. I hitched her.”

“How did you hitch her?”

“Just the way I said I would.”

“Didn’t she mind?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did she make a fuss?”

“Not much.”

“What do you mean by much?”

“Oh, she set back a little.”

“Do any harm?”

“No.”

“Hurt herself?”

“Guess not.”

“Jonathan, you drive me distracted—you have no more sense for a story—”

“But there was nothing in particular—”

“Now, Jonathan, if there was nothing in particular, _why_ didn’t you get into church till the sermon was begun, and why were you so red and hot?”

Jonathan smiled indulgently. “Why, of course, she didn’t care about being hitched. I thought you knew that. But it was perfectly easy.”

And that was about all I could extract by the most artful questions. I took my revenge by telling Jonathan the deacon’s compliment to Griz. “He said she didn’t get restless standing, the way so many horses did. I thought of mentioning that you were a rather good judge of horses, in an amateur way, but then I thought it might seem like boasting, so I didn’t.”

After that, of course, I didn’t really deserve to hear the whole story, but the next night I happened to be in the hammock while Jonathan was talking to a neighbor at the front gate, and he was relating the incident with detail enough to have satisfied the most hungry gossip. Only thus did I learn that Bill Howard, who had wound the rope twice round the post to give himself a little leeway, was drawn right up to the post when she set back; that they had been afraid the headstall would tear off; that they had been rather nervous about the post, and other such little points, which I had not been clever enough to elicit by my questions.

Now, why? Probably a man likes to tell a story when he likes to tell it. I find myself wondering how much Odysseus told Penelope about his adventures when she got him to herself for a good talk. Is it significant that his really long story was told to the King of the Phæacians?

As to Griz:—it would perhaps not be worth while to recount her subsequent history. It was a curious one, consisting of long stretches of continuous and ostentatious meekness, broken by sudden flare-ups which, after their occurrence, always seemed incredible. She never again “set back” when Jonathan was the one to hitch her, but this was a concession made to him personally, and had no effect on her general habits. We talked of changing her name, but could never manage it. We thought of selling her, but she was too valuable—most of the time. And when we finally parted from her our relief was deeply tinged with regret.

I have sometimes wondered whether such flare-ups were not the natural and necessary means of recuperation from such depths of meekness. I have even wondered whether the original Griselda may not have—but this is not a dissertation on early Italian poetry, nor on the nature of women.

IX

A Rowboat Pilgrimage

We were glad that the plan of the rowboat cruise dawned upon us almost a year before it came to pass. We were the gainers by just that rich length of expectancy.

For the joy that one gets from any cherished plan is always threefold: there is the joy of looking forward, the joy of the very doing, and the joy of remembering. They are all good, but only the last is eternal. The doing is hedged between limits, and its pleasures are often confused, overlaid with alien or accidental impressions. The joy of the forward look is pure and keen, but its bounds, too, are set. It begins at the moment when the first ray of the plan-idea dawns on one’s mind, and it ends with the day of fulfillment. If the dawn begins long before the day, so much the better.

It was early fall, and we had come in from a day by the river, where we had tramped miles up, to one of its infrequent bridges, and miles down on the other bank. Now we sat before the fire, talking it over.

“If we only had a boat!” I said.

“Boat! What do you want a boat for? You wouldn’t want to sit in a boat all day.”

“Who said I would? But I want to get into it, and float off, and get out again somewhere else. That’s my idea of a boat.”

“Oh, of course, a boat would be handy—”

“Handy! You talk as if it was a buttonhook!”

“Well?”

“Well—of course it _is_ handy—as you call it—but a boat means such a lot of things—adventure, romance. When you’re in a boat—a little boat—anything might happen.”

“Yes,” said Jonathan, drawing the logs together, “that’s just the way your family feels about it when you’re young.”

Then we both laughed, and there was a reminiscent pause.

“What became of your boat?” I asked finally.

“Sold. You kept yours.”

“Yes. It’s in the cellar, there at Nantucket. I could have it sent on.”

“Cost as much as to buy a new one.”

“A new one wouldn’t be as good.” I bristled a little. Any one who has owned a boat is very sensitive about its virtues.

“How big?”

“How should I know? A little boat—maybe twelve feet.”

“Two oars?”

“Four.”

“Round bottom?”

“Yes. She’d ride anything.”

“Well”—Jonathan suddenly expanded—“here’s an idea now! How would you like to have it sent on to the mainland, and then row it the rest of the way—along the Rhode Island and Connecticut shores?”

I sat straight up. “Jonathan! Let’s do it now!”

Jonathan chuckled. “My! What a hurry she’s in!”

“Well, let’s!”

“We couldn’t. The boat will have to be overhauled first.”

“Oh, dear! I suppose so.”

“We could do it next spring, and go up the trout streams.”

“Think of that!” I murmured.

“Or in September and get the shore hunting—the salt marshes.”

“Oh, which?—which?” Already I was following our course along curving beaches and amongst the yellow marshlands. But Jonathan’s mind was working on more practical details.

“Twelve feet, you said?”

“About that.”

“Pretty close stowing for our dunnage—still—let’s see—two guns—”

“Or the rods, if we went in the spring.”

“And rubber coats, and blankets—”

“Jonathan! Should we camp?”

“Might have to.”

“Let’s, anyway.”

“How does that coast-line run? Where’s a map?”

All we had were some railroad maps and an old school geography—just enough to tantalize us—but we fell upon them eagerly. It is curious what a change comes over these dumb bits of colored paper at such times. Every curve of the shore, every bay and headland came to life and spoke to us—called to us.

* * * * *

We decided on the September plan, and for the next eleven months our casual talk was starred with inapropos remarks like these:—

“Jonathan, I know we shall forget a can-opener.”

“Better write it down while you think of it. And have you put down a hatchet?”

“The camera! It isn’t on the list!”

“Hang it! Those charts haven’t come yet!”

“What can we take to look respectable in when we go ashore?”

Meanwhile the little boat was stirred out of its long sleep in the cellar, overhauled, and painted, and shipped to a port up in Narragansett Bay. And on the last day of August we found ourselves walking down through the little town. Following the instructions of wondering small boys, we came to a gate in a board fence, opened it and let ourselves into a typical New England seaport scene—a tiny garden, ablaze with sunshine and gorgeous with the yellows and lavenders of fall flowers, and a narrow brick path, under a grape-vine arch, leading down to the sand and the wharf and the sparkling blue waters of the bay. As we passed down through the garden, we saw a little boat, bottom up, dazzling white in the sun.

“There it is!” I said, with a surge of reminiscent affection.

“That little thing!” said Jonathan. “I thought you said twelve feet.”

“Well, isn’t it? Anyway, I said _about_. And it’s big enough.”

He was spanning its length with his hands.

“Eleven foot six. Oh, I suppose she’ll do. My boat was fourteen.”

“Now, don’t be so patronizing about your boat. Wait till you see how mine behaves.”

He dropped the discussion and got her launched. Is there anything prettier than a pretty boat floating beside a dock!

The next morning when we came down we found her half full of water. “She’ll be all right now she’s soaked up,” said Jonathan, and we baled her dry and went off to get our stuff.

I delayed to buy provisions, and when I came back I found Jonathan standing on the float surrounded by plunder of all sorts. He answered my hail rather solemnly.

“See here! When this stuff’s all stowed, where are we going to sit? That’s what’s worrying me.”

“Why, won’t it go in?”

“Go! It wouldn’t go in two boats.”

I came down the plank. “Well, let’s eliminate.”

We eliminated. We took out extra shoes and coats and “town clothes,” we cut down as far as we dared, and expressed a big bundle home. The rest we got into two sailor’s dunnage bags, one waterproof, the other nearly so, and one big water-tight metal box. Then there were the guns, and the provisions, and the charts in a long tin tube, and there was a lantern—a clumsy thing, which we lashed to a seat. It was always in the way and proved of very little use, but we thought we ought to take it.

While we worked, some loungers gathered on the wharf above and watched us with that tolerant curiosity that loungers know so well how to assume. As we got in and took up our oars, one of them called out, “Now, if you only had a little motor there in the stern, you’d be all right.”

“Don’t want one,” said Jonathan.

“What? Why not?”

“Go too fast.”

“Eh? What say?”

“Go—too—fast.”

“He heard you,” I said, “but he can’t believe you really said it.”

The oars fell into unison, there was the dip of their blades, the grating chunk of the rowlocks—_dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk_. As we fell into our stroke the little boat began to respond, the water swished at her bows and gurgled under her stern. The wharf fell away behind us, the houses back of it came into sight, then the wooded hills behind. The whole town began to draw together, with its church steeples as its centers.

“She does go!” remarked Jonathan.

“I told you! Look at us now! Look at that buoy!”

_Dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk_—the red buoy swept by us and dropped into the blue background of dancing waves.

“Are we really off? Is it really happening?” I said joyously.

“Do you like it?” said Jonathan over his shoulder.

“No. Do you?” To such unwisdom of speech do people come when they are happy.

But there were circumstances to steady us.

“What I’m wondering,” said Jonathan, “is, what’s going to happen next—when we get out there.” He tilted his head toward the open bay, broad and windy, ahead of us. “There’s some pretty interesting water out there beyond this lee.”

“Oh, she’ll take it all right. It’s no worse than Nantucket water. It couldn’t be. You’ll see.”

We did see. In half an hour we were in the middle of upper Narragansett Bay, trying to make a diagonal across it to the southwest, while the long rollers came in steadily from the south, broken by a nasty chop of peaked, whitecapped waves. We rowed carefully, our heads over our right shoulders, watching each wave as it came on, with broken comments:—

“That’s a good one coming—bring her up now—there—all right, now let her off again—hold her so—there’s another coming—see?—that big one, the fifth, the fourth, away—row, now—we beat it—there it goes off astern—see it break! Here’s another—look out for your oar—we can’t afford to miss a stroke—oh, me! Did that wet you too? My right shoulder is soaked—my left isn’t—now it is!”

But half an hour of this sort of thing brought about two results—confidence in the little boat, which rode well in spite of her load, and confidence in each other’s rowing. We found that the four oars worked together, our early training told, and we instinctively did the same things in each of the varied emergencies created by wind and wave. There was no need for orders, and our talk died down to an exclamation now and then at some especially big wave, or a laugh as one of us got a drenching from the white top of a foaming crest.

It was not an easy day, that first one.… It seems, sometimes, as if there were little imps of malignity that hovered over one at the beginning of an undertaking—little brownies, using all their charms to try to turn one back, discouraged. If there be such, they had a good time with us that long afternoon. First they had said that we shouldn’t load our boat. Then they sent us rough water. Then they set the boat a-leak.

For leak it did. The soaking over night had done no good. It had, indeed, been “thoroughly overhauled” and pronounced seaworthy, but there was the water, too much to be accounted for as spray, swashing over the bottom boards, growing undeniably and most uncomfortably deeper. The imps made no offer to bale for us, so we had to do it ourselves, losing the much-needed power at the oars, while one of us set to work at the dip-and-toss, dip-and-toss motion so familiar to any one who has kept company with a small boat.

“I wish my mother could see me now—” hummed Jonathan.

“I wouldn’t wish that.”

“Why not?”

“What would they all think of us if they could see us this minute?”

“Just what they have thought for a long time.”

I laughed. “How true that is, teacher!” I said.

Finding us still cheerful, the imps tried again.

“Jonathan—do you know—I do believe—my rowlock socket is working loose.”

He cast a quick look over his shoulder without breaking stroke. Then he said a few words, explicit and powerful, about the man who had “overhauled” the boat. “He ought to be put out in it, in a sea like this, and left to row himself home.”

“Yes, of course, but instead, here we are. It won’t last half an hour longer.”

It did not last ten minutes. There it hung, one screw pulled loose, the other barely holding.

“Take my knife—you can get it out of my hip pocket—and try to set up that screw with the big blade.”

I did so, and pulled a few strokes. Then—“It’s come out again. It’s no use.”

“We make blamed poor headway with one pair of oars,” said Jonathan.

He meditated.

“Where are the screw-eyes?” he said after a moment.

“Oh, good for you! They’re in the metal box. I’ll get them.”

I drew in my useless oars, turned about and cautiously wriggled up into the bow seat.

“Look out for yourself! Don’t bullfrog out over the bow. I can’t hold her any steadier than this.”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

With one hand I gripped the gunwale, with the other I felt down into the box and finally fished out the required treasures. I worked my way back into my own seat and tried a screw-eye in the empty, rusted-out hole.

“Does it bite?”

“I don’t know about biting, but it’s going in beautifully—now it goes hard.”

“Perhaps I can give it a turn.”

“Perhaps you can’t! Don’t you stop rowing. If this boat wasn’t held steady, she’d—I don’t know what she wouldn’t do.”

“If you stick something through the eye you can turn it.”

“Yes. I’ll find something. Here’s the can-opener. Grand! There! It’s solid. Now I’ll do the other one the same way. Hurrah for the screw-eyes!”

“You thought of bringing them,” said Jonathan magnanimously.

“You thought of using them,” said I, not to be outdone.

* * * * *

And so again the imps were foiled. But they hung over us, they slapped us with spray, they tossed the whitecaps, jeering, at our heads, over our shoulders, into our laps. They put up the tides to tricks of eddies and back-currents, so that they hindered instead of helping, as by calculation they should have done. They laid invisible hands on our oars and dragged them down, or held them up as the wave raced by, so that we missed a stroke. Once, in the lee of an island, we paused to rest and unroll our chart and get our bearings, while the smooth rise and fall of the ground swell was all there was to remind us of the riot of water just outside. Then we were off again, and the imps had us. They were busy, those imps, all that long, windy, wave-tossed, wonderful day.

For it was wonderful, and the imps were indeed frustrate, wholly frustrate. We pulled toward the quiet harbor that evening with aching muscles, hair and clothes matted with salt water, but spirits undaunted. Hungry, too, for we had not been able to do more than munch a few ship’s biscuit while we rowed. Wind, tide, waves, all against us, boat leaking, oars disabled—and still—“Isn’t it great!” we said, “great—great!”

Dusk was closing in and lights began to blink along the western shore. We beached on a sandy point and asked our way,—where could we put up for the night? Children, barelegged, waded out around the boat, looking at us and our funny, laden craft, with curious eyes. Yes, they said, there was an inn, farther up the harbor, where we saw those lights—ten minutes’ row, perhaps. We pulled off again, stiffly.

“Tired?” said Jonathan. “I’ll take her in.”

“Indeed you won’t! Of course I’m tired, but I’ve got to do something to keep warm. And I want to get in. I want supper. They’ll all be in bed if we don’t hurry.”

Our tired muscles lent themselves mechanically to their work and the boat slid across the quiet waters of the moonlit harbor. The town lights grew bigger, wharves loomed above us, and soon we were gliding along under their shadow. The eddies from our oars went _lap-lap-lapping_ off among the great dark spiles and stirred up the keen smell of salt-soaked timbers and seaweed. Blindly groping, we found a rickety ladder, tied our boat and climbed stiffly up, and there we were on our feet again, feeling rather queer and stretchy after seven hours in our cramped quarters.

Half an hour later we were sitting in the warm, clean kitchen of the old inn, and a kindly but mystified hostess was mothering us with eggs and ham and tea and pie and doughnuts and other things that a New England kitchen always contains. While we ate she sat and rocked energetically, questioning us with friendly curiosity and watching us with keen though benevolent eyes.

“Rowed, did you? Jim!” calling back over her shoulder through a half-open door, “did you hear that? These folks have rowed all the way across the bay this afternoon—yes—rowed. What say? Yes, _she_ rowed, too. They say they’re goin’ on to-morrow, round Judith.”

“Say, now,” she finally appealed to us in frank perplexity, “what’re you doin’ it for?”

“We like it,” said Jonathan peacefully.

“Like it, do you? Well, now, if that don’t beat all! Say—you know? I wouldn’t do that, what you’re doin’, not if you paid me. Have another cup o’ tea, do.”

The next morning she bade us good-bye with the air of entrusting us to that Providence which is known to have a special care for children and fools.

In fact, through all the varying experiences of our cruise, one thing never varied. That was, the expression on the faces of the people we met. Wind and water and coast and birds all greeted us differently with each new day, but no matter how many new faces we met, we found in them always the same look—a look at once friendly and quizzical, the look one casts upon nice children for whose antics one is not responsible, the look one casts upon very small dogs. Why? Is it so odd a thing to like to row a little boat? If it had been a yacht, now, or even a motor-boat, the expression would have been different. Apparently the oars were what did it.

On that particular morning, word of our doings must have got abroad, for as we stepped out on the brick sidewalk of the shady main street a little crowd was waiting for us. It was a funny procession:—Jonathan first, with the guns and the water-jug, then a boy with a wheelbarrow, on which were piled the two dunnage bags, the metal box, the lantern, the axe, the chart tube, and a few other things. An old man and some boys followed curiously, then I came, with two big baking-powder cans, very gorgeous because the red paper was not yet off them, full of provisions pressed on us by our friendly hostess. Tagging behind me, came an old woman, a big girl, and a half-dozen children. It was the kind of escort that usually attends the hand-organ and monkey on their infrequent visits.

We loaded up the boat and pulled off, a little stiff but fairly fit after all. The group waved us off and then stood obviously talking us over. One of the men called after us, with a sudden inspiration, “Pity ye’ hevn’t got a _motor_ in there!”

Though we didn’t want to be a motor-boat, we were not above receiving courtesies from one, and when the Providence tacitly invoked by our hostess sent one chugging along up to us, with the proposal to take us in tow, we accepted with great contentment. The morning was not half over when we made our next landing, and looked up the captain who was to tow us “around Judith.”

For in the matter of Point Judith our friends and advisers had been unanimously firm. There should be a limit, they said, even to the foolishness of a holiday plan. With a light boat, we might have braved their disapproval, but loaded as we were, we decided to be prudent.

“I’d hate to lose the guns,” said Jonathan.

“Yes, and the camera,” I added.

So we accepted the offer of a good friend’s knockabout, and sailed around the dreaded Point with our little boat tailing behind at the end of her rope. We saw no water that we could not have met in her, but, as our friends did not fail to point out, that proved nothing whatever.

At Stonington we were left once more to our little boat and our four oars, and there we pulled her up and caulked her.