Mrs. Skagg's Husbands and Other Stories

  THE PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

  She was a Klamath Indian. Her title was, I think, a compromise betweenher claim as daughter of a chief, and gratitude to her earliest whiteprotector, whose name, after the Indian fashion, she had adopted. "Bob"Walker had taken her from the breast of her dead mother at a time whenthe sincere volunteer soldiery of the California frontier were impressedwith the belief that extermination was the manifest destiny of theIndian race. He had with difficulty restrained the noble zeal of hiscompatriots long enough to convince them that the exemption of oneIndian baby would not invalidate this theory. And he took her to hishome,--a pastoral clearing on the banks of the Salmon River,--where shewas cared for after a frontier fashion.

  Before she was nine years old, she had exhausted the scant kindliness ofthe thin, overworked Mrs. Walker. As a playfellow of the young Walkersshe was unreliable; as a nurse for the baby she was inefficient. Shelost the former in the trackless depths of a redwood forest; she baselyabandoned the latter in an extemporized cradle, hanging like a chrysalisto a convenient bough. She lied and she stole,--two unpardonable sinsin a frontier community, where truth was a necessity and provisions werethe only property. Worse than this, the outskirts of the clearingwere sometimes haunted by blanketed tatterdemalions with whom shehad mysterious confidences. Mr. Walker more than once regretted hisindiscreet humanity; but she presently relieved him of responsibility,and possibly of bloodguiltiness, by disappearing entirely.

  When she reappeared, it was at the adjacent village of Logport, inthe capacity of housemaid to a trader's wife, who, joining some littleculture to considerable conscientiousness, attempted to instruct hercharge. But the Princess proved an unsatisfactory pupil to even soliberal a teacher. She accepted the alphabet with great good-humor,but always as a pleasing and recurring novelty, in which all interestexpired at the completion of each lesson. She found a thousand usesfor her books and writing materials other than those known to civilizedchildren. She made a curious necklace of bits of slate-pencil, sheconstructed a miniature canoe from the pasteboard covers of her primer,she bent her pens into fish-hooks, and tattooed the faces of heryounger companions with blue ink. Religious instruction she received asgood-humoredly, and learned to pronounce the name of the Deity witha cheerful familiarity that shocked her preceptress. Nor could herreverence be reached through analogy; she knew nothing of the GreatSpirit, and professed entire ignorance of the Happy Hunting-Grounds.Yet she attended divine service regularly, and as regularly asked for ahymn-book; and it was only through the discovery that she had collectedtwenty-five of these volumes and had hidden them behind the woodpile,that her connection with the First Baptist Church of Logport ceased. Shewould occasionally abandon these civilized and Christian privileges, anddisappear from her home, returning after several days of absence with anodor of bark and fish, and a peace-offering to her mistress in the shapeof venison or game.

  To add to her troubles, she was now fourteen, and, according to the lawsof her race, a woman. I do not think the most romantic fancy would havecalled her pretty. Her complexion defied most of those ambiguous similesthrough which poets unconsciously apologize for any deviation from theCaucasian standard. It was not wine nor amber colored; if anything, itwas smoky. Her face was tattooed with red and white lines on one cheek,as if a duo-toothed comb had been drawn from cheek-bone to jaw, and, butfor the good-humor that beamed from her small berry-like eyes and shonein her white teeth, would have been repulsive. She was short and stout.In her scant drapery and unrestrained freedom she was hardly statuesque,and her more unstudied attitudes were marred by a simian habit of softlyscratching her left ankle with the toes of her right foot, in moments ofcontemplation.

  I think I have already shown enough to indicate the incongruity of herexistence with even the low standard of civilization that obtainedat Logport in the year 1860. It needed but one more fact to prove thefar-sighted poetical sagacity and prophetic ethics of those sincereadvocates of extermination, to whose virtues I have done but scantjustice in the beginning of this article. This fact waspresently furnished by the Princess. After one of her periodicaldisappearances,--this time unusually prolonged,--she astonished Logportby returning with a half-breed baby of a week old in her arms. Thatnight a meeting of the hard-featured serious matrons of Logport was heldat Mrs. Brown's. The immediate banishment of the Princess was demanded.Soft-hearted Mrs. Brown endeavored vainly to get a mitigation orsuspension of the sentence. But, as on a former occasion, the Princesstook matters into her own hands. A few mornings afterwards, a wickercradle containing an Indian baby was found hanging on the handle ofthe door of the First Baptist Church. It was the Parthian arrow of theflying Princess. From that day Logport knew her no more.

  It had been a bright clear day on the upland, so clear that the rampartsof Fort Jackson and the flagstaff were plainly visible twelve miles awayfrom the long curving peninsula that stretched a bared white arm aroundthe peaceful waters of Logport Bay. It had been a clear day upon thesea-shore, albeit the air was filled with the flying spume and shiftingsand of a straggling beach whose low dunes were dragged down by the longsurges of the Pacific and thrown up again by the tumultuous trade-winds.But the sun had gone down in a bank of fleecy fog that was beginning toroll in upon the beach. Gradually the headland at the entrance of theharbor and the lighthouse disappeared, then the willow fringe thatmarked the line of Salmon River vanished, and the ocean was gone. Afew sails still gleamed on the waters of the bay; but the advancingfog wiped them out one by one, crept across the steel-blue expanse,swallowed up the white mills and single spire of Logport, and, joiningwith reinforcements from the marshes, moved solemnly upon the hills. Tenminutes more and the landscape was utterly blotted out; simultaneouslythe wind died away, and a death-like silence stole over sea and shore.The faint clang, high overhead, of unseen brent, the nearer call ofinvisible plover, the lap and wash of undistinguishable waters, and themonotonous roll of the vanished ocean, were the only sounds. As nightdeepened, the far-off booming of the fog-bell on the headland atintervals stirred the thick air.

  Hard by the shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill,stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shorehad equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly ofdriftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building--theordinary log-cabin of the settler--was the half-round pilot-house ofsome wrecked steamer, while the other gable terminated in half of abroken whale-boat. Nailed against the boat were the dried skins of wildanimals, and scattered about lay the flotsam and jetsam of many years'gathering,--bamboo crates, casks, hatches, blocks, oars, boxes, part ofa whale's vertebrae, and the blades of sword-fish. Drawn up on the beachof a little cove before the house lay a canoe. As the night thickenedand the fog grew more dense, these details grew imperceptible, and onlythe windows of the pilot-house, lit up by a roaring fire within the hut,gleamed redly through the mist.

  By this fire, beneath a ship's lamp that swung from the roof, twofigures were seated, a man and a woman. The man, broad-shouldered andheavily bearded, stretched his listless powerful length beyond a brokenbamboo chair, with his eyes fixed on the fire. The woman crouchedcross-legged upon the broad earthen hearth, with her eyes blinkinglyfixed on her companion. They were small, black, round, berry-like eyes,and as the firelight shone upon her smoky face, with its one stripedcheek of gorgeous brilliancy, it was plainly the Princess Bob and noother.

  Not a word was spoken. They had been sitting thus for more than anhour, and there was about their attitude a suggestion that silence washabitual. Once or twice the man rose and walked up and down the narrowroom, or gazed absently from the windows of the pilot-house, but neverby look or sign betrayed the slightest consciousness of his companion.At such times the Princess from her nest by the fire followed him witheyes of canine expectancy and wistfulness. But he would as inevitablyreturn to his contemplation of the fire, and the Princess to herblinking watchfulness of his face.

  They had sat there silent and
undisturbed for many an evening in fairweather and foul. They had spent many a day in sunshine and storm,gathering the unclaimed spoil of sea and shore. They had kept these muterelations, varied only by the incidents of the hunt or meagre householdduties, for three years, ever since the man, wandering moodily over thelonely sands, had fallen upon the half-starved woman lying in the littlehollow where she had crawled to die. It had seemed as if they wouldnever be disturbed, until now, when the Princess started, and, with theinstinct of her race, bent her ear to the ground.

  The wind had risen and was rattling the tarred canvas. But in anothermoment there plainly came from without the hut the sound of voices.Then followed a rap at the door; then another rap; and then, before theycould rise to their feet, the door was flung briskly open.

  "I beg your pardon," said a pleasant but somewhat decided contraltovoice, "but I don't think you heard me knock. Ah, I see you did not. MayI come in?"

  There was no reply. Had the battered figurehead of the Goddess ofLiberty, which lay deeply embedded in the sand on the beach, suddenlyappeared at the door demanding admittance, the occupants of the cabincould not have been more speechlessly and hopelessly astonished than atthe form which stood in the open doorway.

  It was that of a slim, shapely, elegantly dressed young woman. Ascarlet-lined silken hood was half thrown back from the shining mass ofthe black hair that covered her small head; from her pretty shouldersdropped a fur cloak, only restrained by a cord and tassel in her smallgloved hand. Around her full throat was a double necklace of large whitebeads, that by some cunning feminine trick relieved with its infantilesuggestion the strong decision of her lower face.

  "Did you say yes? Ah, thank you. We may come in, Barker." (Here a shadowin a blue army overcoat followed her into the cabin, touched its caprespectfully, and then stood silent and erect against the wall.) "Don'tdisturb yourself in the least, I beg. What a distressingly unpleasantnight! Is this your usual climate?"

  Half graciously, half absently overlooking the still embarrassed silenceof the group, she went on: "We started from the fort over three hoursago,--three hours ago, wasn't it, Barker?" (the erect Barker touched hiscap,)--"to go to Captain Emmons's quarters on Indian Island,--I thinkyou call it Indian Island, don't you?" (she was appealing to theawe-stricken Princess,)--"and we got into the fog and lost our way; thatis, Barker lost his way," (Barker touched his cap deprecatingly,) "andgoodness knows where we didn't wander to until we mistook your lightfor the lighthouse and pulled up here. No, no, pray keep your seat, do!Really I must insist."

  Nothing could exceed the languid grace of the latter part of thisspeech,--nothing except the easy unconsciousness with which she glidedby the offered chair of her stammering, embarrassed host and stoodbeside the open hearth.

  "Barker will tell you," she continued, warming her feet by the fire,"that I am Miss Portfire, daughter of Major Portfire, commanding thepost. Ah, excuse me, child!" (She had accidentally trodden upon the bareyellow toes of the Princess.) "Really, I did not know you were there. Iam very near-sighted." (In confirmation of her statement, she put toher eyes a dainty double eyeglass that dangled from her neck.) "It's ashocking thing to be near-sighted, isn't it?"

  If the shamefaced uneasy man to whom this remark was addressed couldhave found words to utter the thought that even in his confusionstruggled uppermost in his mind, he would, looking at the bold, darkeyes that questioned him, have denied the fact. But he only stammered,"Yes." The next moment, however, Miss Portfire had apparently forgottenhim and was examining the Princess through her glass.

  "And what is your name, child?"

  The Princess, beatified by the eyes and eyeglass, showed all her whiteteeth at once, and softly scratched her leg.

  "Bob?"

  "Bob? What a singular name!"

  Miss Portfire's host here hastened to explain the origin of thePrincess's title.

  "Then YOU are Bob." (Eye-glass.)

  "No, my name is Grey,--John Grey." And he actually achieved a bow whereawkwardness was rather the air of imperfectly recalling a forgottenhabit.

  "Grey?--ah, let me see. Yes, certainly. You are Mr. Grey the recluse,the hermit, the philosopher, and all that sort of thing. Why, certainly;Dr. Jones, our surgeon, has told me all about you. Dear me, howinteresting a rencontre! Lived all alone here for seven--was it sevenyears?--yes, I remember now. Existed quite au naturel, one might say.How odd! Not that I know anything about that sort of thing, you know.I've lived always among people, and am really quite a stranger, I assureyou. But honestly, Mr.--I beg your pardon--Mr. Grey, how do you likeit?"

  She had quietly taken his chair and thrown her cloak and hood over itsback, and was now thoughtfully removing her gloves. Whatever were thearguments,--and they were doubtless many and profound,--whatever theexperience,--and it was doubtless hard and satisfying enough,--by whichthis unfortunate man had justified his life for the last seven years,somehow they suddenly became trivial and terribly ridiculous before thissimple but practical question.

  "Well, you shall tell me all about it after you have given me somethingto eat. We will have time enough; Barker cannot find his way backin this fog to-night. Now don't put yourselves to any trouble on myaccount. Barker will assist?"

  Barker came forward. Glad to escape the scrutiny of his guest, thehermit gave a few rapid directions to the Princess in her native tongue,and disappeared in the shed. Left a moment alone, Miss Portfire tooka quick, half-audible, feminine inventory of the cabin. "Books, guns,skins, ONE chair, ONE bed, no pictures, and no looking-glass!" She tooka book from the swinging shelf and resumed her seat by the fire as thePrincess re-entered with fresh fuel. But while kneeling on the hearththe Princess chanced to look up and met Miss Portfire's dark eyes overthe edge of her book.

  "Bob!"

  The Princess showed her teeth.

  "Listen. Would you like to have fine clothes, rings, and beads likethese, to have your hair nicely combed and put up so? Would you?"

  The Princess nodded violently.

  "Would you like to live with me and have them? Answer quickly. Don'tlook round for HIM. Speak for yourself. Would you? Hush; never mindnow."

  The hermit re-entered, and the Princess, blinking, retreated into theshadow of the whale-boat shed, from which she did not emerge even whenthe homely repast of cold venison, ship biscuit, and tea was served.Miss Portfire noticed her absence: "You really must not let me interferewith your usual simple ways. Do you know this is exceedingly interestingto me, so pastoral and patriarchal and all that sort of thing. I mustinsist upon the Princess coming back; really, I must."

  But the Princess was not to be found in the shed, and Miss Portfire, whothe next minute seemed to have forgotten all about her, took her placein the single chair before an extemporized table. Barker stood behindher, and the hermit leaned against the fireplace. Miss Portfire'sappetite did not come up to her protestations. For the first time inseven years it occurred to the hermit that his ordinary victual might beimproved. He stammered out something to that effect.

  "I have eaten better, and worse," said Miss Portfire, quietly.

  "But I thought you--that is, you said--"

  "I spent a year in the hospitals, when father was on the Potomac,"returned Miss Portfire, composedly. After a pause she continued: "Youremember after the second Bull Run--But, dear me! I beg your pardon; ofcourse, you know nothing about the war and all that sort of thing, anddon't care." (She put up her eye-glass and quietly surveyed his broadmuscular figure against the chimney.) "Or, perhaps, your prejudices--Butthen, as a hermit you know you have no politics, of course. Please don'tlet me bore you."

  To have been strictly consistent, the hermit should have exhibited nointerest in this topic. Perhaps it was owing to some quality in thenarrator, but he was constrained to beg her to continue in such phrasesas his unfamiliar lips could command. So that, little by little, MissPortfire yielded up incident and personal observation of the contestthen raging; with the same half-abstracted, half-unconcerned air thatseemed habitua
l to her, she told the stories of privation, of suffering,of endurance, and of sacrifice. With the same assumption of timiddeference that concealed her great self-control, she talked ofprinciples and rights. Apparently without enthusiasm and without effort,of which his morbid nature would have been suspicious, she sang thegreat American Iliad in a way that stirred the depths of her solitaryauditor to its massive foundations. Then she stopped and asked quietly,"Where is Bob?"

  The hermit started. He would look for her. But Bob, for some reason,was not forthcoming. Search was made within and without the hut, but invain. For the first time that evening Miss Portfire showed some anxiety."Go," she said to Barker, "and find her. She MUST be found; stay, giveme your overcoat, I'll go myself." She threw the overcoat over hershoulders and stepped out into the night. In the thick veil of fog thatseemed suddenly to inwrap her, she stood for a moment irresolute, andthen walked toward the beach, guided by the low wash of waters on thesand. She had not taken many steps before she stumbled over some darkcrouching object. Reaching down her hand she felt the coarse wiry maneof the Princess.

  "Bob!"

  There was no reply.

  "Bob. I've been looking for you, come."

  "Go 'way."

  "Nonsense, Bob. I want you to stay with me to-night, come."

  "Injin squaw no good for waugee woman. Go 'way."

  "Listen, Bob. You are daughter of a chief: so am I. Your father had manywarriors: so has mine. It is good that you stay with me. Come."

  The Princess chuckled and suffered herself to be lifted up. A fewmoments later and they re-entered the hut, hand in hand.

  With the first red streaks of dawn the next day the erect Barker touchedhis cap at the door of the hut. Beside him stood the hermit, also justrisen from his blanketed nest in the sand. Forth from the hut, freshas the morning air, stepped Miss Portfire, leading the Princess by thehand. Hand in hand also they walked to the shore, and when the Princesshad been safely bestowed in the stern sheets, Miss Portfire turned andheld out her own to her late host.

  "I shall take the best of care of her, of course. You will come and seeher often. I should ask you to come and see me, but you are a hermit,you know, and all that sort of thing. But if it's the correct anchoritething, and can be done, my father will be glad to requite you for thisnight's hospitality. But don't do anything on my account that interfereswith your simple habits. Good by."

  She handed him a card, which he took mechanically.

  "Good by."

  The sail was hoisted, and the boat shoved off. As the fresh morningbreeze caught the white canvas it seemed to bow a parting salutation.There was a rosy flash of promise on the water, and as the light craftdarted forward toward the ascending sun, it seemed for a moment upliftedin its glory.

  Miss Portfire kept her word. If thoughtful care and intelligent kindnesscould regenerate the Princess, her future was secure. And it reallyseemed as if she were for the first time inclined to heed the lessonsof civilization and profit by her new condition. An agreeable change wasfirst noticed in her appearance. Her lawless hair was caught in a net,and no longer strayed over her low forehead. Her unstable bust wasstayed and upheld by French corsets; her plantigrade shuffle was limitedby heeled boots. Her dresses were neat and clean, and she wore a doublenecklace of glass beads. With this physical improvement there alsoseemed some moral awakening. She no longer stole nor lied. With thepossession of personal property came a respect for that of others. Withincreased dependence on the word of those about her came a thoughtfulconsideration of her own. Intellectually she was still feeble, althoughshe grappled sturdily with the simple lessons which Miss Portfire setbefore her. But her zeal and simple vanity outran her discretion, andshe would often sit for hours with an open book before her, which shecould not read. She was a favorite with the officers at the fort, fromthe Major, who shared his daughter's prejudices and often yielded to herpowerful self-will, to the subalterns, who liked her none the less thattheir natural enemies, the frontier volunteers, had declared waragainst her helpless sisterhood. The only restraint put upon her was thelimitation of her liberty to the enclosure of the fort and parade; andonly once did she break this parole, and was stopped by the sentry asshe stepped into a boat at the landing.

  The recluse did not avail himself of Miss Portfire's invitation. Butafter the departure of the Princess he spent less of his time in thehut, and was more frequently seen in the distant marshes of Eel Riverand on the upland hills. A feverish restlessness, quite opposed to hisusual phlegm, led him into singular freaks strangely inconsistent withhis usual habits and reputation. The purser of the occasional steamerwhich stopped at Logport with the mails reported to have been boarded,just inside the bar, by a strange bearded man, who asked for a newspapercontaining the last war telegrams. He tore his red shirt into narrowstrips, and spent two days with his needle over the pieces and thetattered remnant of his only white garment; and a few days afterwardthe fishermen on the bay were surprised to see what, on nearer approach,proved to be a rude imitation of the national flag floating from a sparabove the hut.

  One evening, as the fog began to drift over the sand-hills, the reclusesat alone in his hut. The fire was dying unheeded on the hearth, forhe had been sitting there for a long time, completely absorbed in theblurred pages of an old newspaper. Presently he arose, and, refoldingit,--an operation of great care and delicacy in its tatteredcondition,--placed it under the blankets of his bed. He resumed his seatby the fire, but soon began drumming with his fingers on the arm of hischair. Eventually this assumed the time and accent of some air. Thenhe began to whistle softly and hesitatingly, as if trying to recalla forgotten tune. Finally this took shape in a rude resemblance, notunlike that which his flag bore to the national standard, to YankeeDoodle. Suddenly he stopped.

  There was an unmistakable rapping at the door. The blood which had atfirst rushed to his face now forsook it and settled slowly around hisheart. He tried to rise, but could not. Then the door was flung open,and a figure with a scarlet-lined hood and fur mantle stood on thethreshold. With a mighty effort he took one stride to the door. The nextmoment he saw the wide mouth and white teeth of the Princess, and wasgreeted by a kiss that felt like a baptism.

  To tear the hood and mantle from her figure in the sudden fury thatseized him, and to fiercely demand the reason of this masquerade, washis only return to her greeting. "Why are you here? did you steal thesegarments?" he again demanded in her guttural language, as he shook herroughly by the arm. The Princess hung her head. "Did you?" he screamed,as he reached wildly for his rifle.

  "I did?"

  His hold relaxed, and he staggered back against the wall. The Princessbegan to whimper. Between her sobs, she was trying to explain that theMajor and his daughter were going away, and that they wanted to send herto the Reservation; but he cut her short. "Take off those things!" ThePrincess tremblingly obeyed. He rolled them up, placed them in the canoeshe had just left, and then leaped into the frail craft. She would havefollowed, but with a great oath he threw her from him, and with onestroke of his paddle swept out into the fog, and was gone.

  "Jessamy," said the Major, a few days after, as he sat at dinner withhis daughter, "I think I can tell you something to match the mysteriousdisappearance and return of your wardrobe. Your crazy friend, therecluse, has enlisted this morning in the Fourth Artillery. He's asplendid-looking animal, and there's the right stuff for a soldier inhim, if I'm not mistaken. He's in earnest too, for he enlists in theregiment ordered back to Washington. Bless me, child, another gobletbroken; you'll ruin the mess in glassware, at this rate!"

  "Have you heard anything more of the Princess, papa?"

  "Nothing, but perhaps it's as well that she has gone. These cursedsettlers are at their old complaints again about what they call 'Indiandepredations,' and I have just received orders from head-quarters tokeep the settlement clear of all vagabond aborigines. I am afraid,my dear, that a strict construction of the term would include yourprotegee."

  The time for the de
parture of the Fourth Artillery had come. The nightbefore was thick and foggy. At one o'clock, a shot on the rampartscalled out the guard and roused the sleeping garrison. The new sentry,Private Grey, had challenged a dusky figure creeping on the glacis, and,receiving no answer, had fired. The guard sent out presently returned,bearing a lifeless figure in their arms. The new sentry's zeal, joinedwith an ex-frontiersman's aim, was fatal.

  They laid the helpless, ragged form before the guard-house door, andthen saw for the first time that it was the Princess. Presently sheopened her eyes. They fell upon the agonized face of her innocentslayer, but haply without intelligence or reproach.

  "Georgy!" she whispered.

  "Bob!"

  "All's same now. Me get plenty well soon. Me make no more fuss. Me go toReservation."

  Then she stopped, a tremor ran through her limbs, and she lay still. Shehad gone to the Reservation. Not that devised by the wisdom of man, butthat one set apart from the foundation of the world for the wisest aswell as the meanest of His creatures.