XXXVII—THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
IF what I have just written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of melodrama, I have produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game and I was using all the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I have said, I proposed to operate on human nature. After all, I was in no position to demand anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we were making in regard to the treasure we had recovered and concealed. I had a healthy fear of what the courts might do to us in a case where stolen property had been hidden. It was up to me to cultivate a spirit of generosity in them—and that was why I went down again, though every nerve and fiber in my racked body made protest. But I went down under better conditions.
The tug had powerful pumps and a considerable quantity of good hose. She was manageable in shoal water, and by means of her hawsers and well-set kedges we were able to swing her in, for the day’s work, fairly close to the wreck.
There is no need of further dwelling on details—and it would be necessary to supply the details by somebody’s word of mouth—somebody who watched me, for I don’t remember much of what happened. I was a lunatic, I suppose; my human machinery was operated by a single mania. As I look back I am unable to separate the nightmare from the reality with any amount of clarity. Therefore, we’ll allow all that to hang in limbo, seeing that this is a plain yam and not a study of psychology.
However, I can remember flashes through the dark curtain, and of a few of these I will make mention, for they have a bearing on the tale.
There was a period when I was in the mood for babbling. I could feel my dry tongue clacking away inside my jaws like a clapper in a wooden box and wholly beyond my control. That tongue was telling all my story about my love and longing and ambition in my boyhood days—telling the story to somebody who patted my cheek and crooned sympathy—somebody who did not annoy me by dispute when I said that I would never live to see Levant again—somebody who promised to carry there the three rings and tell my story and fulfil my requests. It was a dream full of agony for me—rather it may be called a dreaming reality. I wanted to stop that clacking tongue. I wasn’t operating it. It was telling a lot of truth which I did not want published. It was putting me in wrong, I felt, just as if some enemy were tattling about me. It was mine and I hated it furiously for what seemed to be betrayal of me. I wasn’t standing for what the tongue said.
Then there was a period when I forgave the tongue many of its past offenses, because, at last, it did good service for me in man-talk to men. It was steady and convincing and I was conscious that it had helped me to win in some big matter. Then, later, there was a time when there were shots and shoutings and dismal trouble of some sort. And, last of all, in the blurred imaginings, mixed with the real, came the long-drawn-out, misty, groping, wondering consciousness that I was out of strife and trouble and agony. But I could not come out of the shadow—I knew that many days and nights came and went while I was trying to grasp something which I could know was reality.
I was dreaming that I was back in my old room in Dodovah Vose’s tavern, and that dream seemed to last for days. Then all at once I woke up and I was truly in that room.
By the open window sat Capt. Rask Holstrom and he was junking up a Red Astrachan apple with his jackknife. He poised a cube of the fruit on the tip of the blade; looked me square in the eyes, and asked, in a matter-of-fact way, if I was feeling more like myself that day.
There was no doubt about my being in Dodovah Vose’s tavern! I made sure before I opened my mouth. There was the old quaint smell of the place, and I could always trust my nose. For my ears there was the whining squeak of the windmill pump in the stable-yard. I touched the irregular seams of the silk crazy-quilt, and, to delight my eyes, the brass handles of the ancient high-boy in the corner blinked back the radiance of the afternoon sunlight. All my senses were satisfied, for I could almost taste, as the breeze flicked my lips, the savor of fried chicken which came floating in through the window. And after my senses told me what they did, I felt at ease and dismissed all the shadows and imaginings. Never did a man come back to his right balance of mind in more commonplace fashion.
I decided to be just as matter-of-fact as Captain Rask. I told him I felt pretty fair. Parts of my hands were bandaged and I was aware that my feet were tied up.
“Have another apple?”
So I had been eating apples from Dodovah Vose’s orchard! I used to steal from his trees—especially the early-autumn fruit. I must have been giving the impression that I was pretty nigh all right, even though the kink in my brain had kept me on the side-track so far as I was concerned, personally.
The captain junked an apple into quarters, pared them, and gave me the fruit. I think Eve tempted Adam with a Red Astrachan!
The captain sat and rocked and munched. Confound his old pelt, why didn’t he start in and tell me what had happened?
He clacked his knife shut after a time and yawned.
“So, as I was telling you before you had your nap, Kama and I may as well move on. There isn’t much more that’s sensible we can do for you.” I wondered just what they had done!
“Where is Kama?” I called her “Kama” quite naturally; it seemed to me that my clattering tongue had been that familiar for a long time.
“Oh, I guess she’s just resting up a little in her room. She is bound to be nursing you most of the time, though you don’t need so much attention, so far as I can see. Do you know, Ross, in spite of what you and I were saying to each other yesterday, that girl o’ mine still insists that your mind isn’t right, and that you’re off the hooks. She says there’s something that hasn’t come back to you!”
God bless that girl’s intuition! I felt the tears coming into my eyes.
“Women folks are always seeing something a man can’t see—because it isn’t there for him to see!” declared the captain. “I have made her keep her mouth shut best I could! Nice thing it would be to have it go out in business circles that you’re a lunatic. That old hippohampus uncle of yours would try to get himself appointed your guardian. He makes believe to be a great friend of yours, I know, when he calls, but I reckon he’s only hiding that old grudge that Vose has told me about. There’s your friend, Ross—Vose! He’s the old boy to tie to!” I was getting considerable information from Capt. Rask Hol-strom without weakening his confidence in my sanity.
“And then, outside of Vose, it has really been a good thing for you to get back here near your girl,” pursued the captain. “Now you take Kama on that point! I say women folks have too much imagination. When you told me you wanted the Kingsley girl to stay away from you till you was fit to look at, why, then you was showing hard, ordinary common sense. In spite of all that Kama or anybody else said about her coming in here, I done just what you asked me to do—for I believe in men standing by each other. But, as I have told you, Kama was bound to have it that a screw was loose because you didn’t want your girl first thing! And Kama has been bound and determined to hang on here till she is sure you’re all right with your girl. But I can’t see that your girl is in any great pucker about you! She hasn’t showed up!” The sweat started out on me. Into what sort of a tangle had my affairs been drawn?
“But I’ve got a good girl, even if she is flighty in her thoughts—as I suppose girls’ nature is about this lovey-dove business. I used to sit and hear you talk to her on the Zizania about those three rings and that girl back in Levant—all mush, mush right in the middle of that wind-up job—and, I swear, if I didn’t think you were crazy then, though she wouldn’t have it that way! Said you were all right. Kama and I never did seem to agree very well on much of anything. After the settlement with the underwriters, when you were right as a trivet and wanted to stay on the Coast, then she insisted that you were out of your head—as I don’t mind telling you noe when we’re going—and she fairly picked you up and lugged you back here. You were too sick to help yourself, you know! Made me help her do it! For you and your girl, said she! I ain’t sure but what you was a little delirious there at times. But being here with Vose has done you good. However, I like West the best. So as I say, I reckon Kama and I will pack up and start back. Furthermore, you know, I’m summonsed for that trial.” I merely stared at the old gossiper.
“I don’t want to be too hard on those critters,” he said, musingly. “There was a big temptation and Marcena Keedy knew how to stir ’em up. When he lolloped that word ‘gold’ around in his mouth he always made me drool.”
Didn’t I remember, also? Only too well!
“No, I’m going to use some discretion in my testimony,”
Captain Rask chatted on. “I have been running over in my mind what happened. Now, if you’re a mind to, let me kind of rehearse it over to you so that you can check up my memory. I’ll hate to have any law-sharks tangle me on the stand. If I make a slip catch me up on it.”
I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in my heart.
He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened to—wonderful because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my fortune; wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the first time was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising narrative without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew the happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order to collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared and munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did not dare to prod him.
I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In this yarn I have been telling what I do know—not what I have heard from another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of the Golden Gate treasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the jettisoned gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had been secretly organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody battle which had been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful guards. Keedy would not fight—he had prodded the other poor devils to do that—and the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when the Zizania was on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom. So, there’s enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself!
And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another apple I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I had in the world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly fearful as a straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank credits and is afraid to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving one’s self away becomes terror pretty vital!
“However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the stand that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the faithful ones—especially you, for you could give out a better line of talk—when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters and added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even the Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone to board with him. Clear consciences—that’s what we’ve got, Ross!”
But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally must be plenty more where that came from!
“Do all the folks here—do the people in Levant know how well we’re fixed?” I faltered.
“Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing time.”
So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was!
And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out of the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question.
I don’t know just how wild I looked while I sat there, but I know I felt wild. Then Kama Holstrom came into the room.
I was conscious that my features were not obeying my volition. I had not been able to make that clacking tongue of mine behave; now my face was just as disobedient. I wanted with all my heart to beam gratitude and joy on her, but I seemed to be trying to manage a stiff mask. If she had turned and escaped in sheer fright I would not have blamed her.
I entirely mistook the expression on her face when she stood there and stared at me. Her eyes were wide with what appeared to be terror. Her lips parted and her cheeks grew pale. Then she ran to the side of the bed, plumped down on her knees, set both her little hands about one of mine and cried, “Thank the good God! You have come back—you have come back!”
And that’s how a woman knows.
The balm of her tears bathed my hand when she put her forehead down and hid her face. It was not white any longer—the warm color flooded it and I ought to have been content for a time with what I could bring in the compass of my gaze. But I wanted to have a blessing from her eyes, and when I struggled to lift her face she suddenly released my hand and hurried to the window and sat down.
“I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself that way,” she panted. “But when I saw your eyes I knew you had come back—and it has been so long—and the others haven’t understood!”
“When I came to myself, just now, Kama, your father was here and I didn’t confess to him. What I know now and what you have known all along we must keep to ourselves.”
“Yes! Nobody has believed what I was so sure of!”
We sat there in silence for a long time.
“Do you remember?” she asked, almost whispering the question.
“Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.”
I was the first to break another silence:
“I know from what he said how faithful and self-sacrificing—”
“You force me to remind you how much we owe to you, sir. It makes me very uncomfortable. It’s twitting me of a debt which father and I can never pay. Please don’t!”
So there was conversation closed on that point; I did not feel like making Kama Holstrom uncomfortable.
“It’s all coming about just as it should. It will be all right from now on,” she said, after a time.
She had recovered all her usual serenity; she was the girl of the Zizania, cool and distant. I was irritated by her manner. That aloofness was not a square deal between folks who had been through what we had suffered together. It seemed to me that I was not being treated right—first that matter-of-fact manner of Captain Rask and now this coolness on the daughter’s part. Her first greeting had given me an appetite for more of the same sort. Of course, I didn’t expect to be welcomed back from the shadows with a brass band and speeches—but some kind of hankering or dissatisfaction was gnawing inside me and I felt ugly and cross and childish.
“I haven’t intended to go too far in anything, sir. But I have been so anxious to help all I could—forgive me, but father and I do owe you so much! Don’t scowl so! I’ll not mention debts again. I hope you won’t think I was too eager—and that I meddled. But I went to her! I did not want her to misunderstand! It was due you and due myself—and her. So I have explained everything. I have told her the story. It will come about all right—just as you hope—I am sure! I did not intend to stay here—but I have been worrying about—But now you can speak for yourself!”
She rattled it off so fast I couldn’t get in a word. She looked relieved when she had finished—as if she had been carrying around something very disagreeable and had handed it over to somebody for keeps. And I was obliged to wait quite a while before I dared to trust myself to reply to her. What she had handed to me seemed to be about as gratifying as if she had dropped a sea-crab down the back of my neck and then sat back and expected me to give her three cheers.
“Look-a-here!” I yapped. “Where did you get the notion that I wanted you or anybody else to act as my attorney over there?” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the Kingsley house.
“But your head was not right—I knew it,” she stammered. “I was afraid there would be a misunderstanding—and after what you made me promise on the Zizania—”
“Don’t you know that I was as crazy as a coot?”
“But I knew that deep down in your heart you must love her.”
“A crazy man doesn’t tell the truth.”
“Oh, he does when he is revealing his real soul.”
“I wasn’t revealing any soul. I was babbling away—and I knew I was talking fool talk and I couldn’t stop my tongue. I didn’t mean that guff. And now you have got this thing all tangled up by talking to Celene Kingsley. I can do my own love-making!” That temper of mine was working in fine shape. And Kama Holstrom was no wilting daisy in temperament!
“From what I know of you myself, and what others—I call no names—have said, you are about as well qualified in that direction as a catfish.” She jumped up and stamped her foot.
“But I know now what love—”
“Mr. Sidney, you have just insulted me because I tried to be your friend. And your sweetheart,” she sneered, “has no better manners than you! She has not even thanked me for bringing you to her! I do not understand! I shall go to her at once and tell her that you are in your right senses at last. After this you handle your own love affairs. Don’t you mention the word ‘love’ to me again!” She marched out and banged the door so violently behind her that all the brass handles on the old high-boy were left jingling shrilly—as if the high-boy had gone into a spasm of giggles over my comeuppance!
In a few minutes the kindly face of Dodovah Vose appeared at the door, his eyes full of solicitude.
“Fall out of bed?” he inquired.
“No, out of heaven,” I snapped. He came in and shut the door and showed anxiety.
“See here, son, you seem to have a turn for the worse all of a sudden. You’ve been gaining fine. But your eyes look crazy to-day. And what you just said—”
Say, I came nigh bawling out Dodovah Vose, right then! Nobody seemed to know anything about my case except Kama Holstrom—and she knew too blamed much! I rolled myself out of bed and stood on my feet.
“My Lawd!” gasped my old friend, “you mustn’t do that. It’s against her orders. You’re sartain out of your head!”
“Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred knuckles against it—and the pain in the knuckles made me all the uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed and fussed over any longer. I have been nursed too much already. They’re even nursing my own private business—and making it sicker all the time. From now on I’m going to tend to my own affairs. Mr. Vose, help me get these bandages off my feet!”
He stood back and flapped his hands and protested. I knew he felt that I had become a lunatic, and so I convinced him by walking up and giving him a good, sane stare.
“Do you think I’m going to stay in bed the rest of my life—a man who has so much to live for as I have?”
“That’s right—a man who is wuth—”
At last somebody was going to post me on my financial status—satisfy my wild eagerness to find out! And I stopped him.
“Shut up,” I fairly barked. “I don’t want to be reminded of that every five minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Vose. But get my clothes.”
I had made up my mind that only one voice in all the world should tell me what my sacrifice had wrung from the Pacific for my own self! Silly notion, eh? No matter. I felt that a certain pair of lips would bless the information when it passed them.
A half-hour later I was dressed after a fashion. I walked down-stairs, or it may be better to say that I scuffed and skated down, for I could not squeeze my feet into shoes and was provided with a pair of Dodovah Vose’s slippers—carpet affairs with a hectic rose on each instep.
I found Captain Holstrom on the porch with my uncle Deck; their chairs were tipped back and they were confabbing in most amiable fashion. My uncle grinned at me, and I floundered for words because I wasn’t sure what I had said to him prior to my awakening or just what our diplomatic relations were. His grin encouraged me.
“Damn it,” he ejaculated, “I’ve said right along it was best for you to be up and around. But Cap’s girl would have it t’other way. Feel all right, sonny?”
“I’ll feel better, Uncle Deck, if I’m sure that you and I will never have any more misunderstandings. As we have said—”
I stopped there and waited, figuring that I had left about the right kind of an opening to find out what we had said. My uncle arose and clapped my shoulder.
“Sonny, I tell you again, now when you stand man-fashion in front of me, that the night when I took my first trick at sitting up with you we fixed it all! For I found out how you felt, underneath, about him! And about the whole proposition!” He nudged me. “I’m taking my comfort these days watching him. No more liberty than old Potter Crabtree’s clay-grinding hoss—around and around in an everlasting circle. I hope he’ll live long enough to pay his debts—that means a considerable stretch of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t trig his wheel for all the world!”
That was how it stood, eh? And I let it stand, for I wasn’t just sure what my private sentiments were in regard to Judge Kingsley at that time. Furthermore, I had some very special business of my own on my mind. I turned to Captain Rask.
“Where is Kama?”
“Reckon she’s over saying good-by to your girl.”
My uncle stared at me—I must have been telling him things when he sat up with me.
Saying good-by! Then she probably had told her father that she was ready to go away. I started across the village square, sliding along in my huge slippers like a man walking on snow-shoes. I banged the big knocker on the front door of Judge Kingsley’s mansion and the maid admitted me. I was not bashful that day—I walked right into the sitting-room.
If I am any judge of expressions I did not interrupt any amiable and confidential tête-à-tête. The two girls rose and, after a few moments of constraint, Celene Kingsley asked me to be seated. I told her that I preferred to stand; I reckon that I wasn’t sure that I could sit down; the stiffness of the whole situation made me feel as if I did not have any joints.
“I have finished my errand,” declared Kama. The red was in her cheeks and there was no encouragement for me in her eyes. “I will say, Mr. Sidney, that I have apologized to Miss Kingsley for meddling in matters between you two. I thought I understood and I have tried to help. I deserve exactly what I have received! I assure you both that I will keep out of the way after this.” She started for the door, but I was standing where I could block her. I supplemented my interference by an appeal to the lady of the mansion.
“Will you ask Miss Holstrom to remain for a moment?” I entreated. And Miss Holstrom did remain, biting her lower lip with impatience.
“I haven’t had much time for thinking on what to say,” I confessed. “I don’t know how to talk to ladies very well, anyway.”
My face was flaming—I could hardly control my voice—I felt sure that I was committing a dreadful sin in point of etiquette and all that—but once more I was playing a big game in my life—bigger, even, for the sake of my happiness than when I offered to go down after the remainder of the treasure of the Golden Gate. I was operating again on human nature—and that nature was in the complex little personality of Kama Holstrom who pressed impatiently at my elbow, frowning at me. I knew with all my heart and soul that unless she stood in the presence of Celene Kingsley and myself—as she then stood—and heard the truth about my boyhood folly, my cause was lost; because the pride of a girl makes the way of a man with a maid a mighty doubtful proposition.
“May I hope that you have found out that I am not the scoundrel you believed me to be?”
“I know the truth now. My father is wiser! I am trying to find words—”
She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me, and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression—but, good heavens, there wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was like when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon!
As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not come into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more illusions as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! Never had she given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me had been plainly inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that piece of brazen idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had been careful to keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been doing some swift and coherent thinking on my way from the tavern.
In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real thing out of a dream—and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a pitiful object as I stood there between them—I deserved punishment at the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise.
I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a spark of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s daughter; I knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion one pours forth to the true mate.
Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad seeking release from the old love before taking on the new.
Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster.
So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of humanity as there were in Levant that day.
“I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks.
It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she was cooler than the other two in the party.
She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp.
“Don’t you understand, dear?”
“No,” faltered the poor girl.
“I hoped you could understand without obliging me to speak. I hoped you would guess when I refused to discuss certain matters with you—I made you angry, and I’m sorry.”
“I know I meddled—”
“My dear, I understood you all the time! I understood my old school friend, too!” She reached out her hand and drew me close to Kama. “He has been very noble in his help in a great trial in my family, dear! I owe my happiness to him. And I’m speaking out, rather boldly—rather bluntly, because I want to help him in obtaining his great happiness. I know what must happen to make him happy.” She put Kama’s hand in mine. “Now, my dear, do not force me to disparage one of the best young men I have ever known by telling you that I never dreamed of him as a husband—nor was I anything else to him except a school-day fancy, a—”
“An inspiration to set me on the way to make something of myself,” I insisted.
“And now—say it, Ross Sidney, or you’re a coward—say it, and let me hear it! She deserves it!”
“I have found out that real love differs from boyhood fancies—and I—I—want to—”
She gently pushed us toward the door while I was stammering.
“You want to tell a dear girl the sweetest story in the world, Ross Sidney! My blessing on you both. Good night!”
We did not speak to each other for some time after we were out of doors together. I took her arm in gentle manner and led her steps away from the tavern. We could see its lights in the early dusk, and I wanted to keep away from lights for a time.
I was glad the autumn dusk had settled—a sliver of new moon was a comforting sight for a lover.
“I guess neither of us knows very well how to talk about love, Kama,” I told her, hobbling along beside her as best I could. The judge’s orchard was shaded by the evening’s gloom, and when I turned down there she did not resist.
“I’m sure I’m mighty awkward about making love,” I went on, “but God knows I want to learn how.”
“Why do you think I can do any better as a tutor in love than as an attorney?” she asked.
“Because I’ll be such a willing pupil, dear.”
“I heard you inform Miss Kingsley with a great deal of earnestness just now that you have found out what real love is like.” She couldn’t keep all the naughty teasing from her tone, though her voice trembled. “Who is the fortunate one?”
Then I caught her to me, and with her warm cheek close to mine and her lips near and never denying caresses, I told her and I convinced her.
“I think,” she admitted, after a long time and after many words there in the blessed shadows, “that you are entitled to your diploma, Ross. You are showing me that you know more than your tutor. But is there a woman who is not jealous when she is in love? Here!” She pressed into my hand a little packet; it contained the three rings. I drew her along to the cleft tree. I dropped them into the hollow.
“One for fancy, one for folly, one for the freakish dreams of boyhood!” I told her. “All buried! Come back to the tavern, precious girl! I want you to tell Dodovah Vose how to decorate the parlor for the wedding!”
She reached on tiptoe and plucked two apples from the old tree. She gave one to me.
“An apple of gold from the only woman in the world,” I said.
“Don’t say ‘gold’ to me, Ross! Don’t! A boy of your age with half a million safe in the bank—”
There was my news at last! I kissed the lips which told me!
Then, eating the sweet fruit of our new knowledge of life and of each other, we went on our way up through the whispering trees toward the welcoming, glowing windows of the old tavern.