Isaac

by Arthur Sherburne Hardy

 

Isaac

BY ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY

ISAAC was a person of dignity. No one ever thought of calling him Ike. There was nothing in his appearance or bearing to indicate that he would resent such familiarity. He was mildness personified. Some people must be handled gingerly, like set traps, which a jar might let loose. Isaac inspired respect rather than caution.

Yet he was not an educated man. He spoke the French of the Canadian border better than most university men speak the Boulevard variety, an accomplishment acquired, like all his accomplishments, without aid from books, But he was an omnivorous reader of all printed matter, from the torn fragment of a newspaper to the borrowed volume bound in tree-calf. He never appeared to apply any knowledge derived from books, to practical ends. It is doubtful if he regarded books as a source of knowledge. They were amusement pure and simple, tales of another world than his.

No one knew where Isaac came from. He had no relatives and no sweetheart. He was not sullen or shy. He mingled with other people, but he did not mix. He was so even-tempered that he seemed to have no affections, no favorites. Perhaps this explains part of his fondness for novels. They were literally fiction for him, fairy tales of a world lying close at hand, but in which he had no more share than in the life of the dwellers of Mars.

Isaac always reminded me of a wild animal. If you wish to understand a wild animal you must catch it alone, when unconscious of being under observation. I never should have obtained the least clue to Isaac if I had not now and then caught him alone. When alone he soliloquized. That was one clue.

I remember once seeing him trying to unravel a tangle in a line. He did not know I was within hearing, and he swore audibly. I had never heard him swear.

"Isaac," I said, "I never knew you swore."

"I never swore at no man in my life," he replied.

It was true. He confined himself to things, and to these only when alone.

I subsequently discovered a peculiarity in his swearing. He personified things. He gave them souls. And when they misbehaved he consigned them to perdition without hesitation. Whether he restricted himself to this mild form of profanity—I never heard him refer to the Deity—under his breath, as it were, when he supposed he was not overheard, out of deference to a general sentiment against the use of strong language or because of scruples of his own, I cannot say. He certainly did not suggest the idea of a man who was holding himself in, who would some day break loose; but rather of a traveler on a road parallel to other roads, living his own life and going his own way—of a man looking over a fence at his neighbors, conversing with them when necessary, but making no excursions and encouraging no incursions.

Isaac always voted—no one knew how. This public act, like his private acts, possessed the same element of detachment that characterized all his contacts with the world—till Maggie Olliver appeared on the horizon.

Isaac never blamed Maggie. If he had ever heard that ungallant proverb Cherchez la femme, nothing in his conduct justified the supposition that he approved it. Till Maggie's appearance he had got along without any of the emotions associated with the myth of Eros. I never knew him to do a mean thing. His only criticism was the criticism of silence, and he never dealt in blame. If he did not blame Maggie, it was not so much because of chivalry as of philosophy—a rude natural philosophy which took things as they came—not fatalistic, for he never neglected precautions, but submissive, letting it rain when it rained, and damning it softly when it rained too hard.

Isaac was the best guide in the region. He was so far above rivalry that he provoked no jealousy. But he knew where the fox would run and what broke the twig on the dead limb. His dogs loved him. It was strange, because he never caressed them. He cared for their sore feet. They came to him to have the quills of the porcupine taken from their noses and mouths. They laid their heads on his knee and followed his heel as a shadow does, but I never saw him stroke one with his hand, or strike one, either. But it was clear that he was their god—I say god, rather than friend. A dog, as every one knows, is the only creature that has seen its god.

My wife was responsible for Maggie's advent on the scene. We had had a strenuous winter, and when the time for my annual few weeks in the woods arrived she expressed the desire to go with me. I was delighted. She is a good fisherwoman, a fair shot, and a splendid companion. Now, however good a thing a woman in the woods may be, it's not the same thing as going in alone; and one of the first questions growing out of the difference was the question of a cook. I had always taken in a guide to act in that capacity, but I was doubtful whether a guide would measure up to my wife's standard. So we engaged Maggie from some one who "knew all about her." How does any one dare to say he knows all about any one else!

We had abandoned butlers in town. It was trying to give them up, for a man-servant is unquestionably useful about a house, to say nothing of style. But it was less trying to give up the butler than to confront the problems constantly arising out of the propinquity of the sexes below-stairs. Why I should have thought it less dangerous to introduce a woman among men than a man among women I do not know.

So Maggie came to our camp on Faraway Lake.

She was a pretty girl, or rather woman, with eyes that looked straight into yours. Isaac's never did. They were not evasive or in the least shifty. It was simply a habit of his when talking to look at his boots or some distant point on the horizon. I did not mind that in the least, but Maggie did. You have seen two young dogs at play. They tumble over each other till they become exhausted. But did you ever see a small dog who wanted to have some fun with a big dog who wanted peace? Dignity then becomes a provocation. The little fellow cannot let the other alone. This was the case with Isaac and Maggie. Isaac simply went about his business. The coming of Maggie was no more to him than an earthquake on Jupiter.

Isaac was not only guide and cook—as cooks go in the woods—but also an expert with the needle. I once asked him why he did not marry. He replied, "A man what can cook and sew has no call to."

That was before Maggie "called."

He was sitting one evening on the floor extension of his lean-to, before his own log fire. The dogs were curled up as near the blaze as possible without being singed. Every now and then a snap from a log sent the sparks up toward their fellows in the sky and made the dogs rise, turn twice, and lie down again at a more respectful distance. This was the hour I loved most, when, tired but not weary, I sat in the glow of the fire with my pipe, listening to the noises of the night—the whispering of leaves, the creaking of rubbing limbs, the leap of a fish in the lake, the splash of a muskrat at the water's edge, the far cry of a loon, the soft note of the owl, and sometimes the querulous conversation of Bruin with her young. Doubtless Isaac heard all these voices of the night, and many more. But it was his repair hour, the hour for putting tackle in order, for cleaning guns and mending clothes. On this particular evening he was putting a patch on his corduroys. Nothing in the relative positions of his and Maggie's abodes explained her presence in his vicinity. But Isaac was a magnet to Maggie. Frequently, like Pippa, she passed by; and on this occasion naturally, merely to see his big fingers manipulating a needle was reason enough for pause—and scorn.

"What yer doin' with them pants?" she asked, one hand on hip.

He did not look up. If he had he would have seen the glow of the fire on Maggie's cheek, and the red-brown of her neck circled by the yellow handkerchief which constituted her evening dress. "Here," she said, carrying out her own orders, "give 'em to me."

Maggie's grammar was excellent. But she made concessions to Isaac, as mothers do to babes.

It was the first time I had ever seen any one deliberately interfere with Isaac. In treading on dangerous ground Maggie proved her courage superior to that of the angels. She also escaped the fate of fools, for he made no protest and expressed no surprise. He simply took a gun from the rack and began to clean it. When, a little later, Maggie returned with the corduroys, he hung them up silently on a nail, precisely as he would have done if he had finished the patch himself. A less tactful person than Maggie would have asked for thanks, or loitered for general conversational purposes. But like a prudent sapper, having dug the first parallel, she retired to the main redoubt and bided her time.

On another occasion I heard this scrap of conversation:

"Do you like your flapjacks done brown?"

"I ain't partikeler as to that, ma'am."

"You likes 'em one way or the other, don't you?"

Silence.

With a natural solicitude for Isaac's comfort, I afterward asked him if Maggie's catering for the guides' table was all it should be. His reply was evasive—and unusual, because tinged with mild resentment.

"She's a meddlesome sort of critter," he said, turning away.

I have not attempted to describe Maggie. I would rather have her stand in the light of her own actions than in any artificial illumination of mine. It matters little whether her hair was black or brown. I suppose Isaac knew the color of her eyes—but only because nothing visible lay outside the range of his observation. She wasted no ammunition, as a coquette is apt to do, and her silences could contain more communication than speech. To see her about her work when Isaac brought the day's supply of fuel for the stove—an equipment unknown to the camp before the advent of my wife—was a lesson in tactics. Her red woolen skirt tucked up about the waist-line, an absent-minded accompaniment of song hovering about her as a humming-bird hovers about a flower, she was the personification of contentment and indifference. Like herself, her "kitchen" was a marvel of neatness. A little stream running before the props of its bark roof was her water system. The spring from which it issued was her refrigerator. Numerous copper vessels dazzled the eyes when the low afternoon sun slanted through the trees to the places where they hung. I have seen Isaac, when she took her "afternoon out," stand at the entrance to her workshop with the contemplative air of one who receives a revelation. Was he thinking of Maggie? I thought not. He was only studying her domestic habits and methods as he studied those of other animals.

Every one who has lived in the woods knows how swiftly Nature's tragic forces gather at the rendezvous. A few minutes late in entering a carry, and a plain trail is changed to a hopeless maze of stumps, briers, and swamp, through which one flounders in Plutonian darkness. A puff of wind leaps from the top of the cliff, and the leach of the mainsail is under water. Who would have suspected that in Maggie, singing to herself as she kneaded the dough for the morrow's baking, the human forces which make for tragedy were slumbering as the forces slumber in the coils of the spring?

It was Mary who tampered with the spring. Mary was my wife's maid.

We had not been long in camp when my wife sprained her ankle. It was not a serious matter. Quiet, cold applications, and time were all that was needed. Meanwhile, to avoid all interference with my sport, in the goodness of her heart she insisted upon sending for Mary. With three women and a cooking-stove in camp, life was becoming somewhat complicated. But, of course, I acquiesced, and Isaac was sent out to meet Mary at the head of Ragged Lake, where the stage road ended; and about eleven o'clock in the evening he staggered into camp with Mary's one hundred and thirty pounds in his arms and Mary's limp hands clasped about his bronzed neck.

I had hitherto associated tragedy with brutal, sordid, cruel persons, like Bill Sykes, or with weak mortals devoid of moral sensibility. I had seen the gaudy rose-in-the-hair type in opera, but never in real life till I saw Maggie's face when Isaac stumbled from the darkness into the firelight with Mary's white face on his shoulder and Mary's arms around his neck. I was reminded of a day when from the lower vine-clad slopes of Etna I looked up and saw the smoke rising from the crater.

The stage had been delayed, and it was nightfall when Isaac started over the mile carry between Ragged and Clear lakes. To make matters worse, Mary had brought in so much impedimenta that two loads were necessary, and there was nothing for her to do but wait at the near end of the carry till Isaac returned with the second load. It was Mary's first experience with night in the woods. She was not familiar with its sounds or its silences—and she was alone. The wail of a wildcat, far more terrified at finding Mary sitting on a log at the head of the carry than Mary herself, completely unnerved her. In spite of my wife's instructions, she was not properly dressed for the woods. When Isaac returned he found her trembling with cold and terror. He wrapped her in a blanket and deposited her in the bottom of the canoe, with the injunction that she was not to move. He was a marvel with the paddle, and no packs were ever adjusted to a mule's back with a nicer balance than the loads in his canoe. It was a short distance from shore to shore, and only a quarter-mile carry separated Clear Lake from our camp on Faraway. All went well till they came to the landing, when Mary, in her eagerness and her ignorance of the statics of a canoe, lost her balance. A few swallows of lake water were nothing to Isaac. But it was different with Mary. She had reached the limit of her endurance. And when Isaac, with his usual conscientiousness, had rescued everything, even to the half-dozen oranges in the paper bag, the two loads had become three, the third nearly as inanimate as the other two.

It was not long before Mary was sitting by the camp-fire clothed in dry garments, but not altogether in her right mind. There is something fatal to sanity in being saved, and Mary was under the delusion that Isaac had saved her life. She accordingly invested him with all the qualities that go to make up the savior in romance, and thereafter never wearied in showing her gratitude, which, like pity, is next of kin to love. Her gratitude made no visible impression on Isaac, but it transformed Maggie. I have often wondered how innocent Mary really was. If innocent, she was not discreet. Her mission was to take care of my wife. She performed this mission with fidelity, but it did not so entirely absorb her time and energy as to prevent sundry little ministrations on behalf of Isaac. I was amused, but not disturbed, Isaac was so stolid, so unsuspecting, so immune.

Thoughtful as ever, my wife would not hear of any interference with the routine of my camp-life. I was to come and go as before. She had Mary and plenty of books.

These books were Maggie's undoing.

It was not long before Mary discovered Isaac's passion for literature. I became aware of her discovery one night on hearing a low, monotonous murmur, a sound new to the woods. It did not disturb me, for I am a sound sleeper, but it roused my curiosity, and I stole to the door of my tent—to see Mary, seated on the platform of Isaac's lean-to, reading aloud the latest novel from New York. It was a pretty picture. To begin with, Mary was a pretty girl, and gratitude heightened her prettiness. The dogs were lying about her in various attitudes. One had his head in her lap. Another was a cushion for her very inappropriate high-heeled slippers. Over all played the flickering lights and shadows of the fire. A stranger to the facts would have said it was a scene of pure domesticity. Isaac went on steadily and methodically with his work. If he prolonged it, I knew it would be for the sake of the story and not on account of Mary; and I crept back to bed devoutly thankful that he was not as other men are.

I think it was about a week after Mary came that Maggie stopped singing. This made no particular impression on me, because about the time Maggie stopped Mary began. I remember, too, that one evening, when smoking my pipe on the seat just over the landing, I heard voices on the beach below.

It was Maggie who spoke first.

"Children! My sister Annie was the prettiest girl in the village. She had cheeks like pinks and eyes like those stars up there. She stepped like a deer. Just to hear her laugh made you light-hearted. She doesn't sing now. Her cheek's yellow and hollow, and her eyes have sunk back in her head. Two children hanging onto her skirts and the baby in her arms, she just drags one foot after the other. You pays for children, and you pays high."

"But it's sweet to bring life into the world," said Mary. "If your cheek grows flabby you have another soft one against your breast, and little hands a-clinging to you—and your man loves you just the same—perhaps more."

"Your man loves to suck the honey from your lips, and, when that's gone, I tell you love's gone, too."

"If I find my man, I'd be willing to try."

"Well, you won't find him here."

"I dunno," said Mary.

After that the end came quickly.

It came at night, when the dogs were asleep at Mary's feet. From time to time a low moan or a twitching of a limb told they were dreaming of the chase. And from time to time Mary's voice fell away, and her eyes wandered from the book to a rugged, listening face, as if she were dreaming too.

Afterward, when it was all over, I asked Maggie what possessed her, what she had really meant to do. She could not tell. The peacefulness of the scene before Isaac's fire, the thoughts it suggested, were beyond endurance. The light on Mary's face, the light of happiness, burned her. And that low, persistent voice, going on and on, like dripping water, bored drop by drop into her heart till something gave way. She did not know—she only remembered seeing the knife on the shelf, and then—

It was then Isaac looked up—his ear was keener than Mary's—and saw Maggie. She stood where the flare of the fire and the blackness of the wood met, the blood gone from her lips, a cruel light in her eyes—the light that comes when reason goes and humanity drops to the level of the beast.

When I ask my wife whether Mary knew, she replies, "Of course she knew." She certainly knew now, seeing Maggie's face and the knife in her hand.

Isaac had risen slowly to his feet. There was a drawl in his voice.

"Give me yer knife. Ye might cut yerself."

The knife dropped from her hand, all the fire in her heart chilled by his quiet, even voice. "You'd better git back home—" He spoke to Mary, but he was looking at Maggie. His look held her fast. She met it with one half of pleading, half of terror. What was he going to do with her? "You go in there," he said, motioning with his head toward his lean-to. She obeyed, mastered. Then he took trembling Mary "home." "Being alone," he said, calling one of the dogs, "ye can have Spot for company."

Returning to his own fireside, he sat down on the platform and took out his pipe. It occurred to him after a while that it was not lighted. He stooped to the embers, took a live coal between his thumb and finger, and sat back again, deep in thought.

What was Maggie thinking of? She could see his back outlined against the firelight. He did not speak. Her silence matched his. Was she afraid? or wise? Was she a prisoner held for justice? or was the fact that she was sitting on Isaac's blankets in Isaac's lean-to suggestive of another kind of captivity?

Once he moved, to replenish the fire. The knife lay where it fell, untouched. The fire died down. The red fires of dawn came over the hills, marched across the lake, and filled the recesses of the lean-to before he knocked the ashes from his pipe for the last time. When the sun appeared he drew a long breath.

"Maggie"—he had always called her "marm"—"come here."

She came.

"Sit down."

She obeyed. He reached for a stick and began to stir the fire.

"Who told ye yer could twist me round yer little finger?"

"Nobody told me, Isaac."

He neither took her hand nor touched her lips. But Maggie seemed satisfied.