VII
THE LOVE AFFAIR OF HAPPY CAL AND ELVIREY SMETTERS
Mrs Elvirey Smetters
VII
THE LOVE AFFAIR OF HAPPY CAL AND ELVIREY SMETTERS
“Happy Cal” had been a member of the widely scattered colony of derelicts along the wild coast for many years; in fact, he was its beginning, for when he came through the sand-hills and gathered the driftwood to build his humble dwelling, there were no human neighbors.
The circling gulls, the crows, and the big blue herons that stalked along the wave-washed beach looked curiously at the intruder into their solitudes. The blue-jays scolded boisterously, and many pairs of concealed eyes peered at him slyly from tangled masses of tree roots that lay denuded upon the slopes of the wind-swept dunes.
Nature’s slow and orderly processes of generation and decay were now to be disturbed by a new element, for man, who changes, destroys, and makes ugly the fair world he looks upon, had entered these sanctuaries. The furred and feathered things instinctively resented the advent of the despoiler. They heard strange noises as rusty nails were pounded, and odd pieces of gray, smooth wood were fashioned into the queer-looking structure that obtruded itself among the undulations of the sand.
Happy Cal was human wreckage. He had been thrown upon this desolate shore by the cruel forces of a social system which he was unable to combat. They had cast him aside and he had sought isolation. As he expressed it, “there was too much goin’ on.”
Cal’s stories of his early life, and his final escape from a heartless world, incited derisive comment from his friend Sipes.