Chapter XI A Moonlight Picnic
They were all jubilant during dinner at the prospect of the moonlight picnic. When they emerged ‘The Indiana’ waited at the dock, illuminated with colored lanterns. The camp-fire burned brightly as usual. Haller sat on the steps with a lantern, ready to light them down to the lake.
“Just eight,” said Stillwater, looking at his watch.
“No hurry,” assured Mrs. Bunker. “This is to be an all-night affair.”
Haller chuckled.
“Dissipation in the woods—fancy!” remarked Lord Stafford.
The electric lights on the balcony were arranged to give only a subdued glow. Glen played his mandolin softly while coffee was served, his eyes fixed on Lord Canning and Indiana, who were talking in a very gay, lively strain.
“The Pacific coast is a great hunting ground, Lord Stafford,” began Stillwater. “I’ve heard stories about bands of elk that once roamed the San Joaquin Valley in California, living on plains same as the buffaloes—miles away from anything like cover.”
“Remarkable!” said Lord Stafford, while Haller listened with open-mouthed surprise.
“You see there was no demand for them before the discovery of gold, but when the miners came they wanted meat. And then there were travelling bands of bloodthirsty explorers. They and the miners murdered everything in sight—the white man generally does. I was told that the great novelist Dumas landed there in 1849, and one of his first performances was to kill an elk in Sacramento Valley.”
“Indeed, an interesting fact! These vast herds of elk retreated—where?”
“To the Great Red Woods.”
“Haller,” called Glen, “I’d like to climb White Face to-morrow; it’s such clear weather.”
“’Tis clear,” replied Haller. “Liable to have snow on White Face.”
“Are you going to put me in your book?” asked Indiana. “Am I the type of American woman you will describe?”
“I am not going to put you in my book,” answered Lord Canning. “I am going to put you—well, never mind. You are not the type—you are a type.”
“That’s so,” assented Indiana. “The states are too large for any one distinctive type of woman. We all have that ‘must-be-up-and-doing’ kind of spirit. You call it ‘nervous activity.’ The Southern girl is neutrally active; the Eastern girl aggressively active.”
“The Western girl—” suggested Lord Canning.
“Judge for yourself.” She stood before him, her hands clasped behind her. “Physically light weight, but strong. I can climb a tree, vault a fence, ride a horse bareback, straddle and side-saddle. Mentally light-weight, but bright, with an enormous faculty for devouring literature, good, bad and indifferent. I love good music, and the impressionist school of painting. Character undeveloped; politically, an expansionist. I believe in the imperialistic policy, in annexation—stretching out and grabbing everything I can get.”
“Bravo! Charming!” exclaimed Lord Canning, clapping his hands. “You are most interesting.”
“As a study—or—or—a woman.”
“Both,” said Lord Canning. “When I cease to study your imperfections, I commence to love them.” He bent over her, looking into her eyes. Glen struck a discord on the mandolin.
“I suggest that we start,” interrupted Mrs. Bunker.
Lord Canning stood seriously gazing into the fire in the hall, while the ladies donned their wraps. His face brightened when he saw Indiana on the little balcony behind the Persian rug. She had put on a long white circular. The hood, edged with swansdown, made a pretty frame for her little flushed face. Her eyes, with their dilating pupils, looked dark under the yellow hair.
“Come down, little snow maiden! Or, are you afraid you will melt away in the heat of the fire?”
He met her at the foot of the stairs, and took her hand in a tender pressure. Mrs. Bunker coughed slightly behind them, and Indiana ran quickly out on the balcony, leaving Lord Canning under the amused fire of Mrs. Bunker’s bright eyes. She shook her finger at him, and would have followed Indiana, but Lord Canning did not wish to be taken so lightly.
“Mrs. Bunker,” he said in a low, intense voice, grasping the balustrade, “one moment, if you please. It may not be considered anything in America when a man of my age is seen holding the hand of such a very young girl, but, I am not a believer in light sentiment—flirting, perhaps, would be the term. I love your granddaughter!”
“It’s easy enough to see that,” laughed Mrs. Bunker. It was always amusing to her when people took themselves so seriously. “You have my good wishes. I have always thought very highly of you.”
She held out her hand, which he pressed gratefully in his. “Thank you, Mrs. Bunker. Have you any idea if—if she cares for me?”
“The little minx is too smart for me,” answered Mrs. Bunker.
“She is so non-committal,” said Lord Canning. “I know she esteems me and all that; at times, I have fancied that I even interest her. But as to—” he gazed gloomily into the fire. “Well, it will be necessary for me to clinch things very soon, time is passing with dangerous rapidity—but still passing. Mrs. Bunker, when I met you in Cannes over a year ago, I did not know what a great influence you were fated to throw on my life. If she loves me, I will never forget that it is through you—”
“Don’t thank me—yet,” said Mrs. Bunker, shrewdly. “Wait until you’re married a year.”
“Oh, I have no fears on that score,” asserted Lord Canning, with a very self-confident air.
“You don’t know Indiana. If you attempted to cross her, she’d tear your hair out!”
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Lord Canning, laughing heartily. “Don’t think you can frighten me by a little thing like that!”
“If I thought so,” reflected Mrs. Bunker, “I wouldn’t have told you, no matter how true it might be. Oh, nothing would stop you now, Lord Canning!”
“Nothing! I have lived a very matter-of-fact life—never very miserable, or the other extreme. I have had great satisfaction in my work. Now it’s time I snatched a little happiness.”
“Indeed it is,” said Mrs. Bunker, in a soothing voice. Men, to her, were like big children—to be humored.
They had moved gradually toward the fire. “These logs,” continued Lord Canning, “are a magnet towards which my eyes have been drawn every night since I came. If you knew what I see in them—such a sweet domestic picture, a vision of true happiness!”
“Well, don’t depend too much on Indiana’s domesticity,” said Mrs. Bunker.
“We generally gauge a daughter by her mother, in England,” stated Lord Canning.
“Well, it’s different over here. The young generation are so precocious—so far ahead of the mothers.”
“I do not call it an advance. The daughters would do well to copy their mothers in their allegiance to the home. I hope, if Indiana does me the honor to consent—”
“Well, you can have that out with her. She may be a model of domesticity, but you never know how a girl’s going to develop. You can’t be sure of everything”—she laughed mockingly—“that’s the risk of marriage.”
“I am staking everything on this one card—marriage,” said Lord Canning.
“Why will you men play so high?” queried Mrs. Bunker, laughing again, as she swept out on the balcony.
“Why?” echoed Lord Canning, looking into the fire. His dark eyes smiled at what he saw there—the picture he had described in the glowing logs, had been his answer. “Yes, it is time I snatched a little happiness—how little, after all! The rest of my natural life seems short enough to love her in.”
“We’re going, Lord Canning,” called Mrs. Bunker.
He hurried out, offering his arm to Indiana, as the procession followed Haller down to the boat-house. The lake by moonlight was a scene of such mysterious beauty that no one felt inclined to talk. Lord Canning was somewhat disposed to question the reality of his surroundings. He was drifting down a silvery sea of enchantment, Indiana’s white-robed form at his side. Oblivious of criticism, he scarcely took his eyes from her young face, etherealized in the moonlight. Glen watched his loverlike attitude, with growing anger. To the various camps along the lake, the illuminated launch, passing with the faint strains of the mandolin, presented quite a fairy-like spectacle. Later, driving through the country, they were all talkative and lively, regaling the night with choruses, Glen playing and singing with a gayety he was far from feeling. Stillwater, who drove, complied, unhesitatingly, to a request for the old road. Lord Canning sat silent and spellbound the entire way, watching the stream winding before him—touched with tremulous waves of silver; the little islands dreaming in a moonlit haze.
William had been sent over to prepare, early in the afternoon. When the party arrived, the falls were illuminated by colored lanterns, decorating the rustic bridges, and hanging from the trees. They added a fantastic beauty to the natural wildness of the spot.
“I’m sure I am dreaming,” said Lord Canning, as he stood alone with Indiana on one of the rustic bridges, listening to the roar of the waters and watching the many-colored lights trembling on the moonlit falls. “Studying late into the night, I fell asleep in my library at home. Jennings will come in soon and poke the fire, and I shall awake—in England!”
At twelve they sat down to a large supper-table. Kitty, Flash, and the two guides were in attendance. Lord Canning related some interesting adventures, and Stillwater taxed his memory for humorous experiences, which met with the hearty appreciation of his guests, who were very susceptible to the dry wit of the American. Glen complied whenever he was asked to sing, between the stories, but otherwise he was distinctly out of tune with the prevailing high spirits. He had been wrought up to the highest pitch of jealousy, by the absence of Lord Canning and Indiana from the rest, before supper. The entire evening appealed to him more as a nightmare than a festivity.
“Friends,” began Stillwater, in response to a toast from Lord Canning, “I’m in the best of health and spirits. My family are all around me”—he rested his hand on his wife’s head—“I hope to keep them so, for many a long day. We can’t reckon on the future, but to-night I’m a happy man!” He kissed his wife, whose eyes had filled with a quick rush of tears.
Indiana jumped up and threw herself upon his breast, with a very sure premonition that she would soon leave him.
“Our host again!” proposed Lord Stafford.
His nephew drank the toast, feeling a sense of guilt that he was destined so shortly to ruffle the calm sea of Stillwater’s domestic horizon.
“My distinguished guests have announced their intention of returning to England”—holding Indiana against his breast. “May they find their dear ones well and happy, and Godspeed to them!”
“Godspeed to them!” echoed Glen. “And a quick leave-taking!” he thought grimly.
Mrs. Bunker’s happy philosophy was colored for the moment with a tinge of pessimism. “What a blind game it is,” she whispered to Lord Canning. “He may be wishing ‘Godspeed’ to the baby I laid in his arms. Look at Indiana, she hasn’t raised her head.”
“Well, Indiana,” said Stillwater, “aren’t you going to drink ‘Godspeed’ to them?” He held the glass to her lips, raising her head from his breast. Their eyes were all upon her,—Lord Canning’s tenderly anxious, his uncle’s laughing, Mrs. Bunker’s significant, and Glen’s suspicious and jealous.
“Godspeed to them!” she repeated, gaily raising her glass.
When they finally arose from supper, Glen immediately disappeared. “I must get away from that awful white light,” he thought, walking restlessly through the dark woods. “It’s beating on my brain and driving me mad.” His soul foreboded very truly that Indiana was lost to him. The soul is our Cassandra. It mourns and prophecies, while the heart is forever holding a carnival. A young girl decking herself with flowers for a fete. There is a shrouded form behind her in the mirror. It whispers, “Those flowers are blossoms of death. The fete for which you are robing, is a funeral.” But, unhearing, unseeing, thinking of lovers and dancing, she decks herself in the mirror, a song on her lips.
Scarcely knowing where his feet were leading him, he found himself on the bridge directly over the falls. “She never notices me—I don’t exist for her!” He looked down into the falls. “Living’s only a fever after all—a mad fever of longing and jealousy. I’d gladly end it, down there—if it wasn’t for the folks. Ambition! glory! I’d fling them all to the winds for the choice of pressing her little yellow head to my heart, just once, to still this horrible throbbing! If I had been brought home wounded and dying, she’d have sobbed beside me, and I’d have comforted her in my weak arms. Then she might have said, ‘I love you, Glen dear!’ just to make me happy—before the end. I would have fallen peacefully asleep then, blessing her. A happy death, to have died for my country, holding her to my breast, as my life bled away. Better than this—this fever called ‘living’.”
A hand was laid on his shoulder. “We’re going home, my boy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry”—he pressed his hand to his forehead—“I’m sorry that you were obliged to look for me.”
Stillwater scrutinized Glen’s set, white face. “The Englishmen are going. Things will come your way—soon.”
“They’ll never come my way,” sighed Glen, “except, perhaps, when I’ve ceased to care.”
“Nonsense!”
“It seems to me that nothing is worth what I’ve been suffering—not even Indiana.”
“She isn’t,” assured Stillwater, unhesitatingly, delighted at this conclusion. “Turn over a new leaf. Show her you’re indifferent. She’ll think all the more of you.”
Lord Stafford was patting the ponies, while Haller arranged the harness.
“If you’ll be kind enough to jump in, Lord Stafford,” cried Mrs. Bunker, “we may reach home in time for breakfast! Come now, Haller, you’ve been fumbling long enough with that harness!”
Haller grinned at Lord Stafford. “That woman’s full of life,” he remarked, “I admire her.”
“The devil you do!” exclaimed Lord Stafford.
As they started they all sung “On the Banks of the Wabash.”
The moon was fading when they embarked on ‘The Indiana.’
“The lake presents an unearthly appearance in this silver twilight,” remarked Lord Canning. “It is vanishing quickly. There’s still a parting gleam touching the dark pines here and there—lingering like the last caress of a dying hand. Everything is becoming vague. The world is fading away from us. How fascinating—these last few moments before the dawn. Ah, it is breaking! That suggestion of dark shore—this pale light on the black lake. Why, we are on the River Styx. Haller doesn’t look unlike Charon. I can see you dimly, Miss Stillwater—a little ghost in your white cloak. We are all ghosts.” He lowered his voice. “I am positive that Mr. Masters sitting there, with his mandolin, could not present a more tragic figure if his eternal punishment were to play for the amusement of all the shades crossing to Hades!”
Indiana laughed. Glen bit his lips savagely. It sounded to him like the mocking laugh he had heard in his dreams, on the farm in the West, that miserable week when he had exiled himself.
The morning mists floated above them, growing denser. The clouds reflecting in the glassy lake, exposed only a fringe of red foliage. Gradually the mists were tinged with a faint opaline glow, deepening gradually. The sun rose as they neared Camp Indiana.