The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

Dorthe darted through the hissing waves, undismayed by the darkness or the screaming wind; she and the ocean had been friends since her baby days.  When a breaker finally tossed her on the shore, she scrambled to the bank, then stood long endeavouring to pierce the rain for sight of the vessel.  But it was far out in the dark.  Dorthe was alone on the island.  For a time she howled in dismal fashion.  She was wholly without fear, but she had human needs and was lonesome.  Then reason told her that when the storm was over the ship would return to seek her; and she fled and hid in the banana grove.  The next morning the storm had passed; but the ship was nowhere to be seen, and she started for home.

The wind still blew, but it had veered.  This time it caught the sand from the skeletons, and bore it rapidly back to the dunes.  Dorthe watched the old bones start into view.  Sometimes a skull would thrust itself suddenly forth, sometimes a pair of polished knees; and once a long finger seemed to beckon.  But it was an old story to Dorthe, and she pursued her journey undisturbed.

She climbed the mountain, and went down into the valley and lived alone.  Her people had left their cooking utensils.  She caught fish in the creek, and shot birds with her bow and arrow.  Wild fruits and nuts were abundant.  Of creature comforts she lacked nothing.  But the days were long and the island was very still.  For a while she talked aloud in the limited vocabulary of her tribe.  After a time she entered into companionship with the frogs and birds, imitating their speech.  Restlessness vanished, and she existed contentedly enough.

Two years passed.  The moon flooded the valley one midnight.  Dorthe lay on the bank of the creek in the fern forest.  She and the frogs had held long converse, and she was staring up through the feathery branches, waving in the night wind, at the calm silver face which had ignored her overtures.  Upon this scene entered a man.  He was attenuated and ragged.  Hair and beard fell nearly to his waist.  He leaned on a staff, and tottered like an old man.

He stared about him sullenly.  “Curse them!” he said aloud.  “Why could they not have died and rotted before we heard of them?”

Dorthe, at the sound of a human voice, sprang to her feet with a cry.  The man, too, gave a cry—­the ecstatic cry of the unwilling hermit who looks again upon the human face.

“Dorthe!  Thou?  I thought thou wast dead—­drowned in the sea.”

Dorthe had forgotten the meaning of words, but her name came to her familiarly.  Then something stirred within her, filling her eyes with tears.  She went forward and touched the stranger, drawing her hand over his trembling arms.

“Do you not remember me, Dorthe?” asked the man, softly.  “I am the priest—­was, for I am not fit for the priesthood now.  I have forgotten how to pray.”

She shook her head, but smiling, the instinct of gregariousness awakening.

He remembered his needs, and made a gesture which she understood.  She took his hand, and led him from the forest to her cave.  She struck fire from flint into a heap of fagots beneath a swinging pot.  In a little time she set before him a savoury mess of birds.  He ate of it ravenously.  Dorthe watched him with deep curiosity.  She had never seen hunger before.  She offered him a gourd of water, and he drank thirstily.  When he raised his face his cheeks were flushed, his eyes brighter.

He took her hand and drew her down beside him.

“I must talk,” he said.  “Even if you cannot understand, I must talk to a human being.  I must tell some one the story of these awful years.  The very thought intoxicates me.  We were shipwrecked, Dorthe.  The wind drove us out of our course, and we went to pieces on the rocks at the foot of this island.  Until to-night I did not know that it was this island.  I alone was washed on shore.  In the days that came I grew to wish that I, too, had perished.  You know nothing of what solitude and savagery mean to the man of civilization—­and to the man of ambition.  Oh, my God!  I dared not leave the shore lest I miss the chance to signal a passing vessel.  There was scarcely anything to maintain life on that rocky coast.  Now and again I caught a seagull or a fish.  Sometimes I ventured inland and found fruit, running back lest a ship should pass.  There I stayed through God knows how many months and years.  I fell ill many times.  My limbs are cramped and twisted with rheumatism.  Finally, I grew to hate the place beyond endurance.  I determined to walk to the other end of the island.  It was only when I passed, now and again, the unburied dead and the pottery that I suspected I might be on your island.  Oh, that ghastly company!  When night came, they seemed to rise and walk before me.  I cried aloud and cursed them.  My manhood has gone, I fear.  I cannot tell how long that terrible journey lasted,—­months and months, for my feet are bare and my legs twisted.  What kind fate guided me to you?”

He gazed upon her, not as man looks at woman, but as mortal looks adoringly upon the face of mortal long withheld.

Dorthe smiled sympathetically.  His speech and general appearance struck a long-dormant chord; but in her mind was no recognition of him.

He fell asleep suddenly and profoundly.  As Dorthe watched, she gradually recalled the appearance of the old who had lain screaming on the ground drawing up their cramped limbs.  She also recalled the remedy.  Not far from the edge of the forest was a line of temascals, excavations covered with mud huts, into which her people had gone for every ill.  She ran to one, and made a large fire within; the smoke escaped through an aperture in the roof.  Then she returned, and, taking the emaciated figure in her arms, bore him to the hut and placed him in the corner farthest from the fire.  She went out and closed the door, but thrust her head in from time to time.  He did not awaken for an hour.  When he did, he thought he had entered upon the fiery sequel of unfaith.  The sweat was pouring from his body.  The atmosphere could only be that of the nether world.  As his brain cleared he understood, and made no effort to escape:  he knew the virtues of the temascal.  As the intense heat sapped his remaining vitality he sank into lethargy.  He was aroused by the shock of cold water, and opened his eyes to find himself struggling in the creek, Dorthe holding him down with firm arms.  After a moment she carried him back to the plain and laid him in the sun to dry.  His rags still clung to him.  She regarded them with disfavour, and fetched the Chief’s discarded plumage.  As soon as he could summon strength he tottered into the forest and made his toilet.  As he was a foot and a half taller than the Chief had been, he determined to add a flounce as soon as his health would permit.  Dorthe, however, looked approval when he emerged, and set a bowl of steaming soup before him.

He took the temascal twice again, and at the end of a week the drastic cure had routed his rheumatism.  Although far from strong, he felt twenty years younger.  His manhood returned, and with it his man’s vanity.  He did not like the appearance of his reflected image in the still pools of the wood.  The long beard and head locks smote him sorely.  He disliked the idea of being a fright, even though Dorthe had no standards of comparison; but his razors were at the bottom of the sea.

After much excogitation he arrived at a solution.  One day, when Dorthe was on the other side of the mountain shooting birds,—­she would kill none of her friends in the fern forest,—­he tore dried palm leaves into strips, and setting fire to them singed his hair and beard to the roots.  It was a long and tedious task.  When it was finished the pool told him that his chin and head were like unto a stubbled field.  But he was young and well-looking once more.

He went out and confronted Dorthe.  She dropped her birds, her bow and arrow, and stared at him.  Then he saw recognition leap to her eyes; but this time no fear.  He was far from being the gorgeous apparition of many moons ago.  And, so quickly does solitude forge its links, she smiled brightly, approvingly, and he experienced a glow of content.

The next day he taught her the verbal synonym of many things, and she spoke the words after him with rapt attention.  When he finished the lesson, she pounded, in a wondrous mortar, the dried flour of the banana with the eggs of wild fowl, then fried the paste over the fire he had built.  She brought a dish of nuts and showed him gravely how to crack them with a stone, smiling patronizingly at his ready skill.  When the dinner was cooked, she offered him one end of the dish as usual, but he thought it was time for another lesson.  He laid a flat stone with palm leaves, and set two smaller dishes at opposite ends.  Then with a flat stick he lifted the cakes from the fry-pan, and placed an equal number on each plate.  Dorthe watched these proceedings with expanded eyes, but many gestures of impatience.  She was hungry.  He took her hand and led her ceremoniously to the head of the table, motioning to her to be seated.  She promptly went down on her knees, and dived at the cakes with both hands.  But again he restrained her.  He had employed a part of his large leisure fashioning rude wood forks with his ragged pocket-knife.  There were plenty of bone knives on the island.  He sat himself opposite, and gave her a practical illustration of the use of the knife and fork.  She watched attentively, surreptitiously whisking morsels of cake into her mouth.  Finally, she seized the implements of civilization beside her plate, and made an awkward attempt to use them.  The priest tactfully devoted himself to his own dinner.  Suddenly he heard a cry of rage, and simultaneously the knife and fork flew in different directions.  Dorthe seized a cake in each hand, and stuffed them into her mouth, her eyes flashing defiance.  The priest looked at her reproachfully, then lowered his eyes.  Presently she got up, found the knife and fork, and made a patient effort to guide the food to its proper place by the new and trying method This time the attempt resulted in tears—­a wild thunder shower.  The priest went over, knelt beside her, and guided the knife through the cake, the fork to her mouth.  Dorthe finished the meal, then put her head on his shoulder and wept bitterly.  The priest soothed her, and made her understand that she had acquitted herself with credit; and the sun shone once more.

An hour later she took his hand, and led him to the creek in the forest.

“C—­c—­ruck!  C—­c—­ruck!” she cried.

“C—­c—­ruck!  C—­c—­ruck!” came promptly from the rushes.  She looked at him triumphantly.

“Curruck,” he said, acknowledging the introduction.

She laughed outright at his poor attempt, startling even him with the discordant sound.  She sprang to his side, her eyes rolling with terror.  But he laughed himself, and in a few moments she was attempting to imitate him.  Awhile later she introduced him to the birds; but he forbore to trill, having a saving sense of humour.

The comrades of her solitude were deserted.  She made rapid progress in human speech.  Gradually her voice lost its cross between a croak and a trill and acquired a feminine resemblance to her instructor’s.  At the end of a month they could speak together after a fashion.  When she made her first sentence, haltingly but surely, she leaped to her feet and executed a wild war dance.  They were on the plain of the dead.  She flung her supple legs among the skeletons, sending the bones flying, her bright hair tossing about her like waves of fire.  The priest watched her with bated breath, half expecting to see the outraged warriors arise in wrath.  The gaunt dogs that were always prowling about the plain fled in dismay.

The month had passed very agreeably to the priest.  After the horrors of his earlier experience it seemed for a time that he had little more to ask of life.  Dorthe knew nothing of love; but he knew that if no ship came, she would learn, and he would teach her.  He had loved no woman, but he felt that in this vast solitude he could love Dorthe and be happy with her.  In the languor of convalescence he dreamed of the hour when he should take her in his arms and see the frank regard in her eyes for the last time.  The tranquil air was heavy with the perfumes of spring.  The palms were rigid.  The blue butterflies sat with folded wings.  The birds hung their drowsy heads.

But with returning strength came the desire for civilization, the awakening of his ambitions, the desire for intellectual activity.  He stood on the beach for hours at a time, straining his eyes for passing ships.  He kept a fire on the cliffs constantly burning.  Dorthe’s instincts were awakening, and she was vaguely troubled.  The common inheritance was close upon her.

The priest now put all thoughts of love sternly from him.  Love meant a lifetime on the island, for he would not desert her, and to take her to Santa Barbara would mean the death of all his hopes.  And yet in his way he loved her, and there were nights when he sat by the watch-fire and shed bitter tears.  He had read the story of Juan and Haidée, by no means without sympathy, and he wished more than once that he had the mind and nature of the poet; but to violate his own would be productive of misery to both.  He was no amorous youth, but a man with a purpose, and that, for him, was the end of it.  But he spent many hours with her, talking to her of life beyond the island, a story to which she listened with eager interest.

One night as he was about to leave her, she dropped her face into her hands and cried heavily.  Instinctively he put his arms about her, and she as instinctively clung to him, terrified and appealing.  He kissed her, not once, but many times, intoxicated and happy.  She broke from him suddenly and ran to her cave; and he, chilled and angry, went to his camp-fire.

It was a very brilliant night.  An hour later he saw something skim the horizon.  Later still he saw that the object was closer, and that it was steering for the harbour.  He ran to meet it.

Twice he stopped.  The magnetism of the only woman that had ever awakened his love drew him back.  He thought of her despair, her utter and, this time, unsupportable loneliness; the careless girl with the risen sun would be a broken-hearted woman.

But he ran on.

Spain beckoned.  The highest dignities of the Church were his.  He saw his political influence a byword in Europe.  He felt Dorthe’s arms about him, her soft breath on his cheek, and uttered a short savage scream; but he went on.

When he reached the harbour three men had already landed.  They recognized him, and fell at his feet.  And when he told them that he was alone on the island, they reëmbarked without question.  And he lived, and forgot, and realized his great ambitions.

Thirty years later a sloop put into the harbour of the island for repairs.  Several of the men went on shore.  They discovered footprints in the sand.  Wondering, for they had sailed the length of the island and seen no sign of habitation, they followed the steps.  They came upon a curious creature which was scraping with a bone knife the blubber from a seal.  At first they thought it was a bird of some unknown species, so sharp was its beak, so brilliant its plumage.  But when they spoke to it and it sprang aside and confronted them, they saw that the creature was an aged woman.  Her face was like an old black apple, within whose skin the pulp had shrunk and withered as it lay forgotten on the ground.  Her tawny hair hung along her back like a ragged mat.  There was no light in the dim vacuous eyes.  She wore a garment made of the unplucked skins of birds.  They spoke to her.  She uttered a gibberish unknown to them with a voice that croaked like a frog’s, then went down on her creaking knees and lifted her hands to the sun.