Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  There was no path, and little undergrowth except on hammock land and along water courses.

  Huge trees towered above them — both kinds of oak, hickory, palmetto, giant magnolias, pines, gum trees. Everywhere birds flitted; everywhere butterflies were flying through the alternate bands of sunlight and shadow. Lizards careered over the dead leaves and raced up trees, chasing one another round and round the trunk.

  “It all looks very wonderful to me,” said Gray to his slender companion: “I left Washington in a flurry of snow last week.”

  “Snow,” she repeated. “I should like to see it — see it falling — see the world white and cool with it.”

  “You’ll go north some day?”

  “I don’t know how I am to get there. We haven’t any money at all, you know — except a very little that father has, and what I can earn by rounding up wild hogs for the smokehouse.”

  He said laughingly:

  “You’ll go North some day, somehow — even if you have to marry a Yankee to do it.”

  “Marry? I?” She forced a smile. “Pretty girls in silks and jewels and laces marry. Look at me, Mr. Gray.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I am not wearing evening dress in these woods, am I?”

  “But you have it to wear.” She looked out into the forest vista, and her grey eyes became serious and remote. “What a delightful place the outside world must be,” she said, “cities, people, steamboats, music, lights at night everywhere — I saw electric lights at Fort Coquina—”

  She checked herself abruptly: there came a sudden rustle among the dead leaves in the close-grown hammock — a scurry among the saw-palmettos.

  “Silence,” she motioned, “I want to see.” And, one small hand resting lightly on his arm to keep him in his place, she leaned quietly forward, peering into the thicket. Minute after minute she stood there, motionless. And at last, from the tangle, came a questioning grunt.

  “Wild pigs,” she whispered, “yearlings. Look!”

  Then he saw three good-sized, shaggy beasts come out into an open space — black, wild looking, heavily furred with thick, coarse hair. And he could see no difference between these razorbacks and the wild boar of the Old World.

  Suddenly their round, furry ears were pricked forward; they stood at gaze for a moment, then with savage grunts they wheeled and scrambled back into the hammock, crashing away through palmetto scrub and brier patch.

  “Unbranded,” she said. “Anybody can shoot them. I’ll have to try to put our brand on those yearlings this week or the crackers north of our line will surely rope or shoot them.”

  “But how do you catch them to brand them?” he asked curiously.

  “Oh, I get my niggers and the dogs and then we ride them down and rope them.”

  “Ride down those wiry beasts? Why, they run like rabbits! I should think it would take some riding to overtake them.”

  “It does. They get into such terrible places — swamps and branches and brier swales.”

  “Is it safe work for you?” he asked.

  “Safe? Oh, yes.”

  “But a headlong gallop through these woods is not what I’d call exactly safe. Besides, they’re certainly surly and fierce looking brutes.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t do to let a tusker catch you — or a big wild sow with pigs. She’d tear you to pieces with her teeth, even if she has no tusks.”

  “Then it isn’t safe,” he insisted.

  “Yes, it is. I don’t propose to let any sow or boar catch me!” she retorted, laughing. “That’s why I’m going after Ole Hawg tomorrow.”

  “Ole Hawg?”

  “That’s what we call him in the forest. He’s a very big grey boar — almost as big as a hammock bear — and as shaggy as a goat. He’s so old — that’s why he’s grey — and his tusks! Why, the lower pair flare out like curved knives, and the upper pair almost meet over his bristly nose. And he’s a devil, Mr. Gray. He goes alone — everything is afraid of him — he’d kill anything, or try to. That’s why I want to get him out of the way.”

  After a moment he said:

  “Does your father approve of your hunting such a beast as this?”

  “Approve?” She laughed. “I am not a child.”

  “I know. But a creature like that is very dangerous.” She halted, turned to him gaily:

  “The best sport is in going after something you’re a little afraid of,” she said. “My first panther scared me badly. So did my first bear. Even my first wildcat gave me buck fever. I missed him. But I think I’ll shoot straight at Ole Hawg.... Especially if you are near me.”

  “I shall be near,” he said gravely, Without any apparent reason a lump had come into his throat. He swallowed in silence and walked on beside her.

  “It’s a curious thing, friendship, isn’t it?” she mused, slipping one arm under his and holding to his sleeve as she walked. “Just this morning I was thinking how many friends I had — the dogs, the horses, my hens and ducks and turkeys — and Scipio and Rosa. And still I seemed to be so lonely.... But now — that I have you, too — it all seems perfect.... Do you feel that way, too?”

  “Of course I do,” he replied cordially, conscious again of the threatening lump in his throat.

  “You really like me.”

  “Yes — certainly.”

  “Much?”

  “Very much.... Very, very much. You know that, don’t you?”

  He was becoming conscious of the warmth of her arm and hand clasping his arm — and was annoyed with himself for noticing it or that her nearness to him was subtly disturbing him — so soft and gentle the contact seemed.

  And there was something — some faint, warm fragrance about her — from her skin or hair perhaps; or it may have been her breath, which he noticed even amid the confusing sweetness of wild jasmine odour and the scent from opening magnolia and china flower.

  “Your Iris moth,” she said, “is supposed to feed on magnolia. Father said so. We are in the magnolia forest now.”

  He looked about him at the dark straight trunks, the splendid glossy foliage set with countless snowy chalices breathing perfume in the amber half-light of the woods.

  “Shall we search?” he asked.

  “Yes; let us look about a bit—” releasing his arm from her light clasp. But when he approached a great tree and began to examine the bark, she went there too, and presently took possession of his arm again.

  “Such a moth as that,” he said, “must resemble a heap of jewels when resting on a tree trunk. Evidently it requires no protective colouring.”

  “Would you be very happy if you discovered one?”

  “Happy?” He laughed. “Nothing on this earth could make me as happy. But the chance is not one in a million, I fancy.”

  She said:

  “Do you know what would make me happier than anything in the world?”

  “No. What?”

  “To find that moth for you.”

  He remained silent, stupidly so, the lump in his throat surprising him. And what was happening to him, anyway? How had he become so swiftly entangled in a friendship of a few hours’ birth — already an intimacy — if this young girl’s confidence in her new friendship could be so termed.

  He understood, of course, that her loneliness, her isolation, magnified and exaggerated his importance to her — coloured him suddenly in rainbow tints, made of his coming a magic thing.

  What confused and disturbed him was that he was conscious of responding to the unconscious appeal of her loneliness — to her candour, her fearless liking for him.

  He no longer was aware of her shabbiness, of her limp, ragged riding clothes, worn boots, and the rusty spurs.

  Only concerned him her narrow delicate wrist and hand hanging from the shrunken sleeves — the slim but rounded figure under the dingy, misfitting habit, the honest grey eyes, and winning mouth — and the fresh, sweet youth of her, ardent, frank, innocent.

  In possession of his arm — youth seeking youth insti
nctively, unreasoningly, after lifelong deprivation — she searched the bark of the trees they stopped at, talking continually in a happy and almost childish monologue, content with the world and with her first glimpse of its meaning.

  “Ole Hawg must die,” she chattered on; “he’s a bad old boar and he’ll get somebody yet and slash him all to pieces.... You and I must shoot him — you and I together.... What is your name, anyway?”

  “Jim.”

  “Am I to say that?”

  “Do you care to?”

  She looked at him and laughed:

  “I don’t know.... Yes.... Unless you think you’re too old.”

  “Old!” he said, amused.

  “Oh, you’re not, I know! But I’m younger. You don’t think I’m too young to call you Jim?”

  “No, Celia.”

  She laughed and he felt the momentary pressure of her hand on his arm.

  It was growing late when they returned. A squashy, messy, greasy dinner, mitigated only by fruit, was what Gray sat down to on the veranda.

  Red level rays from the setting sun lighted the table to a rosy glow and made pink the limp white gown that Celia wore.

  “See anything?” asked the Doctor, eating fried chicken as a man eats who has no sense of taste and is thinking of anything except what he’s doing.

  “No,” admitted Gray, “I saw nothing resembling our Iris moth.”

  “And you never will in this region. Celia, did you take him to the magnolia woods?”

  “Yes. We saw nothing. Tomorrow we are going out to kill Ole Hawg.”

  “Good idea. Clear him out, Celia,” nodded her father, absently swallowing a bit of pork. Then he rose from the table and went back to his collecting boxes.

  “Nomenclature is another thing that infuriates me,” he remarked; “every Tom, Dick and Harry has a shy at it, and the result is sickening. Sometimes I’ve a mind to knock down every family, subfamily, and species and erect a brand-new structure founded on common sense, and with a sensible and systematic nomenclature of my own.”

  “Why not?” said Gray, smiling.

  “Maybe I will some day. The idea, for instance, of lumping structurally different genera — but, Oh, damn it! What’s the use? When the time comes I’ll have something to say about the diurnal Lepidoptera of Iris Creek. I’ve forty notebooks full already. I’ve over forty more devoted to the life histories alone of the Noctuida? of this region. Some day I’ll publish ‘em. Then we’ll see!”

  Gray nodded, but he was looking rather intently at Celia Stevens, who sat with her childlike head resting on her hand, gazing out into the sunset forest.

  During the next two weeks they hunted Ole Hawg afoot and ahorse, but did not run across him, although they jumped and rode down, roped and branded dozens of other wild hogs.

  It was a mad, exhilarating, and somewhat reckless business, this furious, headlong galloping through the forest with Scipio, mounted, cracking his lash and cheering on the hounds, and Celia riding like a lithe and graceful demon through branch, over hammock, swale, and swamp. Gray rode his level best to keep up with her, and be in at the roping and branding when the hounds held to the squealing, snarling, biting pig, and Scipio passed the ropes, and Celia built the fire and set the iron to heat in the quick-leaping blaze.

  And in the course of the next two weeks, the furry black hide of many a wild hog was marked as property of the house of Stevens. Many a singed and demoralized razorback went shying and bucketting and caracolling away through the forest wearing a neat fleur-de-lis on his withers. Scores of razorbacks were rounded up and driven back from the northern boundary — all marked with the home brand.

  “Any cracker who shoots branded pigs is liable to stop a charge of buckshot,” explained Celia blandly. “But I wouldn’t do that; I’d only dust them with quail shot, wouldn’t I, Scipio?”

  “I done see you duss ‘em, Miss Celia,” grinned Scipio.

  “Did you ever do that?” inquired Gray, amazed.

  “Once. The Crawfords started in to cut loose in the hickory woods and gallop everything piggy across the boundary; and I saw my pin money going and dozens of my newly branded razorbacks stampeding over the line. So when I heard the dogs I rode out in front of them and lashed every hound off the scent till they ran scuttling and ki-yiing and yelping in every direction. And then I saw Wilfred Crawford, afoot, streaking off across the swale, and I dusted his leather breeches with number twelve. I reckon he thought he was murdered,” she continued, laughing, “for I never did hear such howling.”

  “What did you do then?” asked Gray, aghast, and trying to reconcile such proceedings with the youthful, grey-eyed, softly feminine rider beside him.

  “Why, then I saw Alfred Crawford pull up his horse and begin fiddling with his sawed-off shotgun — to frighten me, I reckon. And I said: ‘You’ll end in the chain gang, that’s what you’ll do!’ And I rode into him so hard that his horse spilled him; and Alfred ran one way and his horse ran home, I reckon. And that’s all the Crawfords have ever bothered me — except I’d like to know whether the hams they smoke ever wore overcoats with my trade-mark on them.”

  Her unfeigned laughter and Scipio’s boisterous mirth, provoked by the memory of these episodes, offered to Gray a new angle from which to scrutinize Celia Stevens.

  Whatever opinion he might entertain concerning the propriety of her behaviour, there could be very little doubt that she was a good deal of a girl.

  Within the next two weeks this conclusion became certainty. Once, when suddenly all around him the palmetto scrub clattered with the deadly castanets of a rattler, and instinct had nearly jerked him back straight into the aroused diamond-back over which he had just stepped unknowingly her cool, clear voice halted him:

  “Don’t move, Jim!” And bang! — the whistling charge went ripping through the scrub, and the shattered snake was tumbling and twisting around his paralyzed feet.

  And once he thought somebody had hurled a handful of gravel at his flat shooting helmet; and the next instant he found himself on the ground, her arms frantically clasping his throat and shoulders, rolling over and over with her down the hammock slope and into the sparkling water of a branch. From which they emerged on the other bank, dripping with black silt, but safe from the dusky whirlwind of hornets whose enormous grey paper nest he had scraped with his helmet as he passed.

  Once, also, he found a black, crimson and yellow Elaps, and he picked it up and set it in the palm of his hand. It had already begun the ominous, uneasy, sidling movement, when Celia sauntered up.

  Fortunately he wore leather-tipped shooting gloves; fortunately, also, the fangs of the Elaps are almost microscopic, which accounts for the chewing habit of the venomous little thing.

  The snake had already seized Gray’s forefinger; and the girl did not even hesitate, but clutched the harlequin behind its unobtrusive head with her bare hand, tore it loose, and flung it to the ground.

  Wherefore, in the light of these and similar incidents, he concluded that she was a good deal of a girl.

  Every morning and evening her father jeered at him as he went forth to the magnolia woods to search for the great, jewelled moth. Always with him, gay and undaunted, went Celia, frankly happy to share any obloquy and scorn levelled at this young man, her friend.

  From the very beginning her quick liking for him, her rapid advance in the unknown art of friendship, had caused him concern as well as surprise.

  But the progress of Celia was quicker than his own credulity and comprehension; and a young girl’s pure and generous friendship was already fast developing into a passionate attachment.

  Not that she realized it; not that her innocence was ignorance, either. She had heard of things. But it was her confidence in this man — her friend — the first she had ever had — that made it impossible for her even to dream that he might mistake her.

  She did things without thought or hesitation, which would have instantly damned her among the godly. And Gray didn’t know ho
w to tell her not to, dreading to awaken to consciousness and comprehension the whitest soul he had ever known.

  She formed the habit of trotting into his room as soon as she sprang from her own bed, and of perching at the foot of his, swathed in a blanket, until he awoke, At night she sometimes got up and sauntered in to see if he slept or whether he was willing to converse with her.

  Once, much worried, he took the Doctor out to the orange grove and suggested that he prescribe a more conventional routine for the girl.

  “Young man,” said the Doctor, looking Gray very quietly in the eye, “your conduct in this matter stamps you as what I had already labelled you. You need not worry, sir. Neither I nor my daughter have mistaken you. Therefore, I shall decline to inoculate her with the unhappy constraint incident to a wisdom as yet unnecessary to her security. But I thank you for your delicacy.” And, gazing at a tuft of citrous leaves enclosed in a bag of mosquito netting: “The caterpillars inside that bag, sir, are the hybrid progeny of Papüio turnus, var. Glaucus; and of Papilio palomedes — naturally fathered by the latter.”

  “Very interesting,” murmured Gray, thinking hard and fast of something more deeply significant than caterpillars — of an interest to him far more vital. For he had never been in love and he was beginning to wonder somewhat anxiously if he would know enough to recognize the malady when it attacked him — if it ever did. Or whether he was incapable of any passion except the overwhelming desire for the jewelled Sphinx Iris.

  And, thinking very, very hard, he concluded that this ruling desire was his master passion, and that within his heart there remained no room for any other desire.

  Somewhat grimly reconciled to this conclusion, he went out every day to his magnolia forest, examined trunk after trunk, spread sheets and beat the glossy foliage with long poles, examined droppings that might indicate the presence of some high feeding larvae, set tallow dips afloat in pails of water.