II
To those who have had no experience in running rapids, no adequate conception can be given touching what can with truth be called one of the most exciting experiences that man can pass through. The very velocity with which the flight is made is enough of itself to make the sensation startling. The skill which is required on the part of the boatman is of the finest order. Eye and hand and readiest wit must work in swift connection. Some who read these lines perhaps have—shall we say—enjoyed the sensation which we have always found impossible to describe in words? These, at least, will appreciate the difficulty of our task, and also the peril which surrounded the trapper and his companion.
The first flight down which the boat glanced was a long one. The river bed sloped away in a straight direction for nigh on to fifty rods, and at an angle so steep that the water, although the bottom was rough, fairly flattened itself as it ran; and the channel where the current was the deepest gave forth a serpentine sound as it whizzed downward. The smoke, which hung heavily over the stretch from shore to shore, was too dense for the eye to penetrate a yard. Amid the smoke sparks floated, and brands, crackling as they fell, plunged through it into the steaming water. Guidance of the frail craft was, as the trapper had predicted, out of the question; the two men could only keep their position as they went streaming downward. They kept their seats like statues, knowing well that their safety lay in allowing their light shell to follow, without the least interruption, the pressure of the swift current.
Half down the flight the volume of smoke was parted, by some freak of the wind, from shore to shore, and for a couple of rods they saw the water, the blazing banks, the fiery tree-tops and each other. The trapper turned his face, blackened and stained by the grimy cinders, toward his companion and gave one glance, in which humor and excitement were equally mingled. His mouth was open, but the words were lost in the roar of the flame and the rush of the water. He had barely time to toss a hand upward, as if by gesture he would make good the impossibility of speech, before face and hand alike faded from Herbert's eyes as the boat plunged again into the smoke.
The next instant the boat launched down the final pitch of the declivity and shot far out into the smooth water that eddied in a huge circle in the pool below. The smoke was at this point less compact, for through it the blazing pines on either flamed partially into view.
"It's the devil's own work, boy, for sartin," cried the trapper, "and the fool or the knave that started the fire oughter be toasted. I trust the pups will be reasonable and come down with the current. Has the fire touched ye anywhere?"
"Not much," answered Herbert. "A brand struck me on the shoulder and opened a hole in my shirt,—that's all. How do you feel?"
"Fried, boy; yis, actally fried. Ef this infarnal heat lasts, I'll be ready to turn afore we reach the second bend."
"How goes the stream below?" asked Herbert.
"All clear for a while," answered the trapper, "all clear for a while. Put yer strength into the paddle till we come to the varge below, for the fire be runnin' fast, and it's agin reason for a mortal to stand this heat long."
"Shall we run out of the smoke at the next flight?" asked Herbert.
"I think so, boy; I think so," answered the trapper. "The maples grow to the bank at the foot of the next dip, and it isn't in the natur' of hard wood to make smoke like a balsam."
He would have said more, but his companion had nodded to him as he had ended the sentence, for they had come to the last flight of the rapids, and the great pool lay glimmering through the branches of the trees below.
The old man knew what was meant and said: "I know it, boy, I know it. Take the east run, for the water be deeper that way, and the boat sets deep. I won't trouble ye, for ye know the way. Lord! how the water biles! Now's yer time, boy,—to the right with ye! to the right! Sweep her round and let her go!"
Away and downward swept the boat. The strong eddies caught it, but the controlling paddle was stronger than the eddies and kept it to the line of its safest descent. Past rocks that stood in mid current, against which the swift-going water beat and dashed—past mossy banks and shadowed curves where the great eddies whirled—down over miniature falls into bubbles and froth the light craft swept, and with a final plunge and leap jumped the last cascade, and, darting out into the great basin, ran shoreward.
It touched the beach, and the trapper and Herbert rose to their feet; but for a moment neither stirred, for in front of them, not thirty feet away, at the line where the sand and the green mosses met, and looking directly at them, stood a man and a girl!
WHO WAS HE? The two men asked this question a thousand times mentally in the next two months, and once afterward they asked it aloud, as they looked into each other's eyes across a grave. But to the question, whether spoken or silent, no answer ever came.
The world has its enigmas, and he was one.
Amid the jabbering crowd we chaff and chatter with, we meet occasionally a man who never chaffs nor chatters,—a man who sees all things; perhaps because of this, suffers all things, but says nothing at all. The sphinxes are still extant. The old time ones were of stone and bronze; the modern ones are of flesh and blood; that's all the difference. Nay, not quite all; for the secrets that the ancients held smothered within the folds of their stony silence were only such as nature revealed to them from her desert posts,—the secrets of sunrises and starry nights and simoons that swept the sandy plain and of civilizations, the murmurs of whose rising and the crash of whose sudden overthrow, they needs must hear. But the secrets that men hear today, and by hearing of which are made silent, are the secrets of lives being lived, of hearts being broken, of intentions so noble and failures so bitter as to make men sceptical whether God keeps watch over the passing events on the earth.
Was he young? No. Was he old? No, again. How old was he? Forty, perhaps; it may be fifty. The two men who stood looking at him never thought of his age, neither then nor afterward; never thought whether he was old or young. There are people who have no age to those who know them. Is it because their bodies so little represent them? A friend has been away—for years. He returns; enters your room; you shake his hand heartily in welcome. And then you stand off and look at him. You look at his hair and note the gray in it—at the wrinkles in his face—the dozen and one marks that denote change—and say, "you've grown old, old boy;" and so we judge most men, and so they should be judged. Why? Because they are not great and strong and soul-large enough to dwarf their bodies out of sight and dwindle them into insignificance.
But now and then you meet one whose mind represents him, whose soul is so gloriously finished that, as in the case of a great painting, you do not think of the frame around it, nor take notice of it at all. He is so strong vitally; so great in living force—in vital energies—in moving and persuading power—that he is to you like an immense, endless, all-conquering Life, wholly independent of his embodiment, who might exist in any form,—angel, archangel, spirit, winged or wingless, supernal or infernal, and still, in all forms, in all places, in all moral states would remain true to himself and be the same. There are some, I say, who are like this,—who are not of the earth, earthy, nor of the body, but of the spirit, whether good or bad, spiritual: angel or demon, always.
Do you know one such? No? Perhaps not, for they are rare, very rare. But some such there are, and if you do not know one, or one like to such a one, I ask you if you do not think of him as I have said? Body! what is body to such a man? what is a formation of clay deftly mingled in its chemistry round about such an indomitable indwelling spirit? Does the old rain-sodden nest photograph the bird, the swiftness and glory of whose wings lived in it once? What is age to such a one? What has he to do with the passing of years? Such a one is young and old both, from the beginning of his career forever onward. He has the freshness of youth, the strength of manhood, and the sagacity of age, fixed permanently in his structure, as nature fixes her colors in the fibre of the ash and the oak. Such have no age. How silly to ask how old he is. If you ask me, I should answer, Who can tell? Their earthly parents say they were born on such and such dates. Were they? Or had they lived as Mary's Son had, ages before they took—for God's wise purpose—flesh? Who can tell?
"Heresy?" I'm not writing a sermon, I am writing a story, and I seek to make my readers think. That would not be essential if I were sermonizing. Good people don't want that kind of preaching.
But to return. Was he young? Was he old? Neither then nor ever after did Herbert and the trapper think of him as having age; and yet he was with them, and his body had all the marks which reveal to the noticing eye the measure of man's days. This is the young man's description of him:
"Tall, straight, and well-formed; large in size, but shapely, hair brown with gray in it; in all the face a look of great power, reserved, but ready to act; eyes of changeable color, that took the shade of the emotion that chanced to come and look out of them; when unoccupied, cold, gray, and meaningless as a window-pane behind which no face is; and over all the countenance the look of great gravity, divided by but the slightest line from sadness."
So Herbert described him; but he always used to add: "Remember, this was only his body, and therefore no description at all."
The girl? Why, certainly, you shall know of her, and from the same authority:
"The girl that was with this strange man was not a girl merely, but both girl and woman; for she was at that age when the sweet simplicity of the one, and the full charm of the other, come into union, and a time, at least, stand in attractive alliance. She was of medium height, and perfectly formed. Her hair was brown, as were her eyes, that were large and mild of look; and over all her face was such an expression of gentleness and peace as I never saw on any other woman's face, and she loved the man with so great a love that it made her life and took it both."
For a moment Herbert and the trapper stood looking at the man and girl, who were standing on the edge of the beach, looking silently at them; and then the trapper said, still standing in the boat:
"We would not run agin ye so sudden-like had we seed ye, friend; and ef our company be not pleasant to ye, we will move on, and camp on some clump furder down," and the old man placed his paddle against the beach as if he would breast the boat out into the pool.
"I beg you not to do so," answered the man on the beach; "you have as good a right to this camp-ground as we, and I dare say a better one, as we are but strangers to the woods; while you, old man, look as if you had made them your home for years."
"Ye speak the truth, friend," replied the trapper. "Yis, the woods be my home; and ef livin' in 'em gives man a right, few would gainsay my claim. Yis, it's thirty years agone sence I hefted the fust trout from this pool, and br'iled him on the bank there,—and a toothsome supper he made for me, too. Lord-a-massy, boy," exclaimed the old man, half turning toward his companion, "what a thing memory be! Thirty year!—and I've seed some wanderin' sence then,—but I remember as though I'd eat him last night jest how that trout tasted. You're sartin, friend, that we won't distarb ye ef we come ashore?"
"No, no, old man," answered the other, "come ashore, you and your companion. Our camp is the other side of the balsam thicket there, and after you have built your own, we will come down and pass an hour with you, unless we should disturb you in your occupation or your pleasure."
"I be a man of the woods, as ye see," replied the trapper, "and Henry, here, be my companion; and though his home be in the city, he has consorted with me so much that he's fallen into my habits,—though it should be said to his credit that the Lord gin him nateral gifts in that direction; and when we be roamin', we take but leetle with us, and our camp be quickly made. No, no; we will have leetle to offer ye and the lady, but ef, when the sun darkens back of the mountain there, ye will honor an old man by yer comin', ye shall taste some venison that's waited three days for the mouth and is tender, as it should be. And ef the pool here will make its name good, ye shall have a trout cooked as the hunter cooks it when the fire is hot and the wet moss plenty."
"We will certainly come," answered the man. "I came into the woods to avoid men, not to meet them; but your face is honest and open as the day, old man; and your head is white as is the head of wisdom. I shall be glad to talk with you, and I doubt not your companion is as educated as you are knowing."
"I've seed the comin' and goin' of seventy year sence I've been on the arth," answered the trapper, stroking his head with the peculiar motion of the aged when speaking of their age reflectively; "and much have I seed of the passions of my kind, and many be the lessons that natur' has larnt me; and ef the convarse of an old man who has lived leetle in the clearin' would be pleasant to ye, yer comin' will be welcome.—Yis, yis, boy, I seed it. Ye had better j'int yer rod, and I will start a fire. Ye know the size ye want, and ye'll find 'em out there where the bubbles make the letter S."
The two strangers retired toward their own camp, and our friends set about their several tasks. Herbert proceeded to joint his rod and the trapper to make a rude fire-place from the stones that lined the bank at the water's edge.
The preparations for the forthcoming repast went forward rapidly. The pool kept its reputation good and yielded abundantly to the solicitation of Herbert's flies. The trout were large and in excellent condition and were quickly made ready for the trapper's treatment. A large piece of bark, peeled from a giant spruce standing near, and laid upon the ground, served for the table,—against the dark bark of which the tin dishes freshly scoured in the sand of the beach gleamed bright. The venison and trout were cooked as only one accustomed to the woods can do it, and the trapper contemplated the work of his skill with pleased complacency. At each plate Herbert had placed a bunch of checkerberries, and a small bouquet of small but exceedingly fragrant flowers adorned the centre of the bark table.
At this moment the man and girl drew near.
"I trust," said the man, as they approached, "that we have not kept you waiting by our tardiness?"
"Yer comin' be true to a minit," answered the trapper, glancing up at the western mountain, the top of whose pines the lower edge of the sun had just touched. "The meat be ready. We sartinly can't boast of the bark or the dishes," he continued, "but the victuals be as good as natur' allows, and yer welcome be hearty."
"We could ask no more," said the man, courteously, "and one might almost think that the hand of woman had adorned the table."
"The posies be the boy's doin'," replied the trapper, glancing at Herbert; "he has a likin' for their color and smell, and I never knowed him to eat without a green sprig or a bunch of bright moss or some sech thing on the bark."
"I am sure I do not like them any better than you do," answered Herbert, smiling, and looking pleasantly into the old man's face.
"They be of the Lord's makin'," responded the trapper. "They be of the Lord's makin', and it be fit thet mortals should love 'em, as I conceit. I've lived a good deal alone," he continued, "but I've never lived in a cabin yit that didn't have a few leetle flowers, or a tuft of grass, or a speck of green somewhere about it. They sort of make company for a man in the winter evenin's, and keep his thoughts in cheerful directions."
"Your sentiments do honor to your nature," responded the other, "and I am glad to meet with one of your age, who, having lived among the beauties of Nature, has not allowed them to become commonplace and unworthy of notice. Many in the cities show less refinement."
"I conceit it is a good deal in the breedin'," answered the trapper. "There be some that don't know good from evil in natur',—leastwise, they don't seem to have any eyes to note the difference; and what isn't born in a man or a dog you can't edicate into him. The breedin' settles more p'ints that the missioners dream, as I jedge. But come, friends, the victuals be coolin', and the mouth loves a warm morsel."
"I am certain," said the man, as they were partaking of the repast, "that I never tasted a piece of venison so finely flavored before."
"I've cooked the meat for nigh on to sixty year," answered the trapper, "and have larnt not to spoil the sweetness of natur' by overdoin' it. It's a quick aim that brings the buck to the camp, and a quick fire that puts the steak on to the plate ready for the mouth.—trust, lady, that ye enjoy the victuals?"
"I do, indeed," answered the girl, "and if the cooking were less perfect, I should count this as a feast."
"Yis, yis; I understand ye," answered the old man. "The sound of the tumblin' water be pleasant, and the eye eats with the mouth," and he glanced at the green woods that stretched away, and the brightly-colored clouds that hung like fleece of gold in the western sky.
"The barbarian eats from a trough," remarked Herbert; "civilize him, and he erects a table; and as you add to his refinement, he adorns that table until the furniture of it magnifies the feast and the guests think more of the beauty of the adornments than of the food they swallow."
And so with pleasant converse the meal progressed. Soon the sun declined and darkness began to thicken in the pines. The table was moved to one side, the dishes cleansed and the fire lighted for the evening. With the darkness silence had fallen upon the group,—not that silence which is awkward and oppressive, or which comes from lack of thought, but that fine silence, rather, which is only the thin shadow of the reflective mood, and because the thought is inward and overfull.
And so the four sat in silence by the fire. Above, a few great stars shone warmly. Here and there the rapids flashed white through the gloom. From a huge pine on the other side of the pool a horned owl challenged the darkness with his ponderous call.
Suddenly the man broke the silence,—broke it with a question which led to a remarkable conversation, and a tragical result. And the question was this:—
"Friend, answer me this question: If a man take a life, should he give his own life in atonement for the dreadful deed?"