CASE II: THE CAMP OF THE DOG
I
Islands of all shapes and sizes troop northward from Stockholm by thehundred, and the little steamer that threads their intricate mazes insummer leaves the traveller in a somewhat bewildered state as regardsthe points of the compass when it reaches the end of its journey atWaxholm. But it is only after Waxholm that the true islands begin, so tospeak, to run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course of ahundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart ofthis delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summerholiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mereround button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainousstretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitouscliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between nowider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretchedlike the open sea for miles.
Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, themajority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, theircoast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays,with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the water's edgeand led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into thevery heart of primitive forest.
The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue ofpaying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in apicturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a merereef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-boundmonsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea. The fourth, which weselected because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for anchorage,bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall have what description isnecessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent wasconcerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of ahundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees.
It was in the blaze of an evening in July, the air clear as crystal, thesea a cobalt blue, when we left the steamer on the borders ofcivilisation and sailed away with maps, compasses, and provisions forthe little group of dots in the Skaegard that were to be our home for thenext two months. The dinghy and my Canadian canoe trailed behind us,with tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when the point ofcliff intervened to hide the steamer and the Waxholm hotel we realisedfor the first time that the horror of trains and houses was far behindus, the fever of men and cities, the weariness of streets and confinedspaces. The wilderness opened up on all sides into endless blue reaches,and the map and compasses were so frequently called into requisitionthat we went astray more often than not and progress was enchantinglyslow. It took us, for instance, two whole days to find ourcrescent-shaped home, and the camps we made on the way were sofascinating that we left them with difficulty and regret, for eachisland seemed more desirable than the one before it, and over all laythe spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the turmoil of the world,and the freedom of open and desolate spaces.
And so many of these spots of world-beauty have I sought out and dweltin, that in my mind remains only a composite memory of their faces, atrue map of heaven, as it were, from which this particular one standsforth with unusual sharpness because of the strange things that happenedthere, and also, I think, because anything in which John Silence playeda part has a habit of fixing itself in the mind with a living andlasting quality of vividness.
For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of the party. Some privatecase in the interior of Hungary claimed his attention, and it was nottill later--the 15th of August, to be exact--that I had arranged to meethim in Berlin and then return to London together for our harvest ofwinter work. All the members of our party, however, were known to himmore or less well, and on this third day as we sailed through the narrowopening into the lagoon and saw the circular ridge of trees in a goldand crimson sunset before us, his last words to me when we parted inLondon for some unaccountable reason came back very sharply to mymemory, and recalled the curious impression of prophecy with which I hadfirst heard them:
"Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you can," he had said asthe train slipped out of Victoria; "and we will meet in Berlin on the15th--unless you should send for me sooner."
And now suddenly the words returned to me so clearly that it seemed Ialmost heard his voice in my ear: "Unless you should send for mesooner"; and returned, moreover, with a significance I was wholly at aloss to understand that touched somewhere in the depths of my mind avague sense of apprehension that they had all along been intended in thenature of a prophecy.
In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July evening, as was onlynatural behind the shelter of the belt of woods, and we took to theoars, all breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our islandhome, yet all talking in somewhat hushed voices of the best place toland, the depth of water, the safest place to anchor, to put up thetents in, the most sheltered spot for the camp-fires, and a dozen thingsof importance that crop up when a home in the wilderness has actually tobe made.
And during this busy sunset hour of unloading before the dark, the soulsof my companions adopted the trick of presenting themselves very vividlyanew before my mind, and introducing themselves afresh.
In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense singular. In theconventional life at home they certainly seemed ordinary enough, butsuddenly, as we passed through these gates of the wilderness, I saw themmore sharply than before, with characters stripped of the atmosphere ofmen and cities. A complete change of setting often furnishes astartlingly new view of people hitherto held for well-known; theypresent another facet of their personalities. I seemed to see my ownparty almost as new people--people I had not known properly hitherto,people who would drop all disguises and henceforth reveal themselves asthey really were. And each one seemed to say: "Now you will see me as Iam. You will see me here in this primitive life of the wildernesswithout clothes. All my masks and veils I have left behind in the abodesof men. So, look out for surprises!"
The Reverend Timothy Maloney helped me to put up the tents, longpractice making the process easy, and while he drove in pegs andtightened ropes, his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without atie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out forthe life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age,muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, andmore, without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting downsaplings for the tent-poles was a delight to see, and his eye in judgingthe level was unfailing.
Bullied as a young man into a lucrative family living, he had in turnbullied his mind into some semblance of orthodox beliefs, doing thehonours of the little country church with an energy that made one thinkof a coal-heaver tending china; and it was only in the past few yearsthat he had resigned the living and taken instead to cramming young menfor their examinations. This suited him better. It enabled him, too, toindulge his passion for spells of "wild life," and to spend the summermonths of most years under canvas in one part of the world or anotherwhere he could take his young men with him and combine "reading" withopen air.
His wife usually accompanied him, and there was no doubt she enjoyedthe trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of thewilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The onlydifference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regardedit as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, sheplayed at camping out with her clothes and body. None the less, she madea splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over the firewe had built among the stones was to understand that her heart was inthe business for the moment and that she was happy even with the detail.
Mrs. Maloney at home, knitting in the sun and believing that the worldwas made in six days, was one woman; but Mrs. Maloney, standing withbare arms over the smoke of a wood fire under the pine trees, wasanother; and Peter Sangree, the Canadian pupil, with his pale skin, andhis loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in veryunfavourable contrast as he scraped
potatoes and sliced bacon withslender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than aknife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed, too, withwilling pleasure, for in spite of his general appearance of debility hewas as happy to be in camp as any of them.
But more than any other member of the party, Joan Maloney, the daughter,was the one who seemed a natural and genuine part of the landscape, whobelonged to it all just in the same way that the trees and the moss andthe grey rocks running out into the water belonged to it. For she wasobviously in her right and natural setting, a creature of the wilds, agipsy in her own home.
To any one with a discerning eye this would have been more or lessapparent, but to me, who had known her during all the twenty-two yearsof her life and was familiar with the ins and outs of her primitive,utterly un-modern type, it was strikingly clear. To see her there madeit impossible to imagine her again in civilisation. I lost allrecollection of how she looked