XXII
Early the next morning Colonel Meredith and his cousin Bob Jonstonepresented themselves at the office dressed for walking. Butter would nothave melted in their mouths.
"Can you come now and help us pick out a site for the tent?" asked theyouthful colonel.
Maud was rather busy that morning, but she closed her ledger, selected awalking-stick, and smiled her willingness to aid them.
"It will seem more like real camping-out," said Mr. Jonstone, "if wedon't pitch our tent right in the midst of things. Suppose we take aboat and row along the shores of the lake, keeping our eyes peeled."
Maud was not averse to going for a row with two handsome and agreeableyoung men. They selected a guide boat and insisted on helping her in andcautioning her about sitting in the middle. Maud had almost literallybeen brought up in a guide boat, but she only smiled discreetly. Thecousins matched for places. As Maud sat in the stern with a paddle forsteering, Colonel Meredith, who won the toss, elected to row stroke. BobJonstone climbed with gingerness and melancholy into the bow. Not onlywas he a long way from that beautiful girl, but Meredith's head andshoulders almost completely blanketed his view of her.
"We ought to row English style," he said.
"What is English style, and why ought we to row that way?"
"In the American shells," explained Jonstone, "the men sit in themiddle. In the English shells each man sits as far from his rowlock aspossible."
"Why?" asked Meredith, who understood his cousin's predicamentperfectly.
"So's to get more leverage," explained Jonstone darkly.
"It's for Miss Darling to say," said Meredith. "Which style do youprefer, Miss Darling, English or American?"
"I think the American will be more comfortable for you both and saferfor us all," said she.
"There!" exclaimed the man of war, "what did I tell you?"
"But--" continued Maud.
"I could have told you there would be a 'but,'" interrupted Jonstonetriumphantly.
"But," repeated Maud, "I'm coxswain, and I want to see what every man inmy boat is doing."
So they rowed English style.
"It's like a dinner-party," explained Maud to Colonel Meredith, whoappeared slightly discomforted. "Don't you know how annoying it is whenthere's a tall centrepiece and you can't see who's across the table fromyou?"
"Even if you don't want to look at him when you have found out who heis," agreed Meredith. "Exactly."
They came to a bold headland of granite crowned with a half-dozen oldpines that leaned waterward.
"That's rather a wonderful site, I think," said Maud.
"Where?" said the gentlemen, turning to look over their shoulders. Then,"It looks well enough from the water," said Jonstone, "but we ought notto choose wildly."
"Let us land," said Colonel Meredith, "and explore."
They landed and began at once to find reasons for pitching the tent onthe promontory and reasons for not pitching it.
"The site is open and airy," said Jonstone.
"It is," said Colonel Meredith. "But, in case of a southwest gale, ourtent would be blown inside out."
A moment later, "How about drinking-water?" asked the experiencedmilitary man.
"I regret to say that I have just stepped into a likely spring," saidJonstone.
"We must sit down and wait till it clears."
When the spring once more bubbled clean and undefiled Mr. Jonstonescooped up two palmfuls of water and drank.
"Delicious!" he cried.
Colonel Meredith then sampled the spring and shook his head darkly.
"This spring has a main attribute of drinking-water," he said; "it iswet. Otherwise----"
"What's the matter with my spring?" demanded his cousin.
"Silica, my dear fellow--silica. And you know very well that silica to aman of your inherited tendencies spells gout."
Jonstone nodded gravely.
"I'm afraid that settles it." And he turned to Maud Darling. "I can keepclear of gout," he explained, "only just as long as I keep my systemfree from silica."
"Do you usually manage to?" asked Maud, very much puzzled.
"So far," he said, "I have _always_ managed to."
"Then you have never suffered from gout?"
"Never. But now, having drunk at this spring, I have reason to fear theworst. It will take at least a week to get that one drink out of mysystem."
And so they passed from the promontory with the pine-trees to a littlecove with a sandy beach, from this to a wooded island not much biggerthan a tennis-court. In every suggested site Jonstone foundmultitudinous charms and advantages, while Colonel Meredith, from thedepths of his military experience, produced objections of the firstwater. For to be as long as possible in the company of that beautifulgirl was the end which both sought.
Maud had gone upon the expedition in good faith, but when its trueobject dawned upon her she was not in the least displeased. The veryobvious worship which the Carolinians had for her beauty was not sopersonal as to make her uncomfortable. It was rather the worship of twoartists for art itself than for a particular masterpiece. Of the sixbeautiful Darlings Maud had had the least experience of young men. Shewas given to fits of shyness which passed with some as reserve, withothers as a kind of common-sense and matter-of-fact way of looking atlife. The triplets, young as they were, surpassed the other three inconquests and experience. And this was not because they were more lovelyand more charming but because they had been a little spoiled by theirfather and brought into the limelight before their time. Furthermore,with the exception of Phyllis, perhaps, they were maidens of action towhom there was no recourse in books or reflection. Such accomplishmentsas drawing and music had not been forced upon them. They could not havemade a living teaching school. But Lee and Gay certainly could havetaught the young idea how to shoot, how to throw a fly, and how to comein out of the wet when no house was handy. As for Phyllis, she wouldhave been as like them as one pea is like two others but for the factthat at the age of two she had succeeded in letting off a 45-90 riflewhich some fool had left about loaded and had thereby frightened herearly sporting promises to death. But it was only of weapons, squirmingfish, boats, and thunder storms that she was shy. Young gentlemen had noterrors for her, and she preferred the stupidest of these to thecleverest of books.
Mary, Maud, and Eve had wasted a great part of their young lives uponeducation. They could play the piano pretty well (you couldn't tellwhich was playing); they sang charmingly; they knew French and German;they could spell English, and even speak it correctly, a power whichthey had sometimes found occasion to exercise when in the company offoreign diplomatists. The change in their case from girlhood to youngwomanhood had been sudden and prearranged: in each case a tremendousball upon a given date. The triplets had never "come out."
If Lee or Gay had been the victim of the present conspiracy, thegentlemen from Carolina would have found their hands full andoverflowing. They would have been teased and misconstrued within an inchof their lives; but Maud Darling was genuinely moved by the candor andchivalry of their combined attentions. There was a genuine joyousness inher heart, and she did not care whether they got her home in time forlunch or not. And it was only a strong sense of duty which caused her topoint out the high position attained by the sun in the heavens.
With reluctance the trio gave up the hopeless search for a camp site andstarted for home upon a long diagonal across the lake. It was just then,as if a signal had been given, that the whole surface of the lake becameruffled as when a piece of blue velvet is rubbed the wrong way, and astrong wind began to blow in Maud's face and upon the backs of therowers.
Several hours of steady rowing had had its effect upon unaccustomedhands. It was now necessary to pull strongly, and blisters grew swiftlyfrom small beginnings and burst in the palms of the Carolinians. Maudcame to their rescue with her steering paddle, but the wind, bent uponhaving sport with them, sounded a higher note, and the guide boat nolonger seemed quick
to the least propulsion and light on the water, butas if blunt forward, high to the winds, and half full of stones. She didnot run between strokes but came to dead stops, and sometimes, duringstrong gusts, actually appeared to lose ground.
The surface of the lake didn't as yet testify truly to the full strengthof the wind. But soon the little waves grew taller, the intervalsbetween them wider, and their crests began to be blown from them inwhite spray. The heavens darkened more and more, and to the northeastthe sky-line was gradually blotted out as if by soft gray smoke.
"We're going to have rain," said Maud, "and we're going to have fog. Sowe'd better hurry a little."
"Hurry?" thought the Carolinians sadly. And they redoubled theirefforts, with the result that they began to catch crabs.
"Some one ought to see us and send a launch," said Maud.
At that moment, as the wind flattens a field of wheat to the ground, thewaves bent and lay down before a veritable blast of black rain. It wouldhave taken more than human strength to hold the guide boat to hercourse. Maud paddled desperately for a quarter of a minute and gave up.The boat swung sharply on her keel, rocked dangerously, and, once morelight and sentient, a creature of life, made off bounding before thegale.
"We are very sorry," said the Carolinians, "but the skin is all off ourhands, and at the best we are indifferent boatmen."
"The point is this," said Maud: "Can you swim?"
"I can," said Colonel Meredith, "but I am extremely sorry to confessthat my cousin's aquatic education has been neglected. Where he livesevery pool contains crocodiles, leeches, snapping-turtles, andwater-moccasins, and the incentive to bathing for pleasure is slight."
"Don't worry about me," said Mr. Jonstone. "I can cling to the boatuntil the millennium."
"We shan't upset--probably," said Maud. "It will be better if you twosit in the bottom of the boat. I'll try to steer and hold her steady.This isn't the first time I've been blown off shore and then on shore. Isuppose I ought to apologize for the weather, but it really isn't myfault. Who would have thought this morning that we were in for a storm?"
"If only you don't mind," said Colonel Meredith. "It's all _our_ fault.You probably didn't want to come. You just came to be friendly and kind,and now you are hungry and wet to the skin----"
"But," interrupted Bob Jonstone, "if only you will forget all that andthink what pleasure we are having."
"I can't hear what you say," called Maud.
"I beg your pardon," shouted Mr. Jonstone. "I didn't quite catch that.What did Miss Darling say, Mel?"
"She said she wanted to talk to me and for you to shut up."
Mr. Jonstone made a playful but powerful swing at his cousin, and theguide boat, as if suddenly tired of her passengers, calmly upset andspilled them out.
A moment later the true gallantry of Mr. Bob Jonstone showed forth inglorious colors. Having risen to the surface and made good his hold uponthe overturned boat, he proposed very humbly, as amends for causing theaccident, to let go and drown.
"If you do," said Maud, excitement overcoming her sense of theridiculous, "I'll never speak to you again."
Colonel Meredith opened his mouth to laugh and closed it a littlehastily on about a pint of water.