Castle Nowhere
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Constance Fenimore Woolson >> Castle Nowhere
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9 Produced by Alan Millar, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Scans for this book are from
The Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.
CASTLE NOWHERE
BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
Not many years ago the shore bordering the head of Lake Michigan, the
northern curve of that silver sea, was a wilderness unexplored. It is
a wilderness still, showing even now on the school-maps nothing save
an empty waste of colored paper, generally a pale, cold yellow
suitable to the climate, all the way from Point St. Ignace to the iron
ports on the Little Bay de Noquet, or Badderknock in lake phraseology,
a hundred miles of nothing, according to the map-makers, who, knowing
nothing of the region, set it down accordingly, withholding even those
long-legged letters, 'Chip-pe-was,' 'Ric-ca-rees,' that stretch
accommodatingly across so much townless territory farther west. This
northern curve is and always has been off the route to anywhere; and
mortals, even Indians, prefer as a general rule, when once started, to
go somewhere. The earliest Jesuit explorers and the captains of
yesterday's schooners had this in common, that they could not, being
human, resist a cross-cut; and thus, whether bark canoes of two
centuries ago or the high, narrow propellers of to-day, one and all,
coming and going, they veer to the southeast or west, and sail gayly
out of sight, leaving this northern curve of ours unvisited and alone.
A wilderness still, but not unexplored; for that railroad of the
future which is to make of British America a garden of roses, and turn
the wild trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company into gently smiling
congressmen, has it not sent its missionaries thither, to the
astonishment and joy of the beasts that dwelt therein? According to
tradition, these men surveyed the territory, and then crossed over
(those of them at least whom the beasts had spared) to the lower
peninsula, where, the pleasing variety of swamps being added to the
labyrinth of pines and sand-hills, they soon lost themselves, and to
this day have never found what they lost. As the gleam of a camp-fire
is occasionally seen, and now and then a distant shout heard by the
hunter passing along the outskirts, it is supposed, that they are in
there somewhere surveying still.
Not long ago, however, no white man's foot had penetrated within our
curve. Across the great river and over the deadly plains, down to the
burning clime of Mexico and up to the arctic darkness, journeyed our
countrymen, gold to gather and strange countries to see; but this
little pocket of land and water passed they by without a glance,
inasmuch as no iron mountains rose among its pines, no copper lay
hidden in its sand ridges, no harbors dented its shores. Thus it
remained an unknown region, and enjoyed life accordingly. But the
white man's foot, well booted, was on the way, and one fine afternoon
came tramping through. 'I wish I was a tree,' said this white man, one
Jarvis Waring by name. 'See that young pine, how lustily it grows,
feeling its life to the very tip of each green needle! How it thrills
in the sun's rays, how strongly, how completely it carries out the
intention of its existence! It never, has a headache, it--Bah!
what a miserable, half-way thing is man, who should be a demigod, and
is--a creature for the very trees to pity!' And then he built his
camp-fire, called in his dogs, and slept the sleep of youth and
health, none the less deep because of that Spirit of Discontent that
had driven him forth, into the wilderness; probably the Spirit of
Discontent knew what it was about. Thus for days, for weeks, our white
man wandered through the forest and wandered at random, for, being an
exception, he preferred to go nowhere; he had his compass, but never
used it, and, a practised hunter, eat what came in his way and planned
not for the morrow. 'Now am I living the life of a good, hearty,
comfortable bear,' he said to himself with satisfaction.
'No, you are not, Waring,' replied the Spirit of Discontent, 'for you
know you have your compass in your pocket and can direct yourself back
to the camps on Lake Superior or to the Sault for supplies, which is
more than the most accomplished bear can do.'
'O come, what do you know about bears?' answered Waring; 'very likely
they too have their depots of supplies,--in caves perhaps--'
'No caves here.'
'In hollow trees, then.'
'You are thinking of the stories about bears and wild honey,' said the
pertinacious Spirit.
'Shut up, I am going to sleep,' replied the man, rolling himself in
his blanket; and then the Spirit, having accomplished his object,
smiled blandly and withdrew.
Wandering thus, all reckoning lost both of time and place, our white
man came out one evening unexpectedly upon a shore; before him was
water stretching away grayly in the fog-veiled moonlight; and so
successful had been his determined entangling of himself in the webs
of the wilderness, that he really knew not whether it was Superior,
Huron or Michigan that confronted him, for all three bordered on the
eastern end of the upper peninsula. Not that he wished to know;
precisely the contrary. Glorifying himself in his ignorance, he built
a fire on the sands, and leaning back against the miniature cliffs
that guard the even beaches of the inland seas, he sat looking out
over the water, smoking a comfortable pipe of peace, and listening
meanwhile to the regular wash of the waves. Some people are born with
rhythm in their souls, and some not; to Jarvis Waring everything
seemed to keep time, from the songs of the birds to the chance words
of a friend; and during all this pilgrimage through the wilderness,
when not actively engaged in quarrelling with the Spirit, he was
repeating bits of verses and humming fragments of songs that kept time
with his footsteps, or rather they were repeating and humming
themselves along through his brain, while he sat apart and listened.
At this moment the fragment that came and went apropos of nothing was
Shakespeare's sonnet,
'When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past.'
Now the small waves came in but slowly, and the sonnet in keeping time
with their regular wash, dragged its syllables so dolorously that at
last the man woke to the realisation that something was annoying him.
'When to--the ses--sions of--sweet si--lent thought,'
chanted the sonnet and waves together.
'O double it, double it, can't you?' said the man impatiently, 'this
way:--
"When to the ses--sions of sweet si--lent thought, te-tum,
--te-tum, te-tum."
But no; the waves and the lines persisted in their own idea, and the
listener finally became conscious of a third element against him,
another sound which kept time with the obstinate two and encouraged
them in obstinacy,--the dip of light oars somewhere out in the gray
mist.
'When to--the ses--sions of--sweet si--lent thought,
I sum--mon up--remem--brance of--things past,'
chanted the sonnet and the waves and the oars together, and went duly
on, sighing the lack of many things they sought away down to that
'dear friend' who in some unexplained way made all their 'sorrows
end.' Even then, while peering through the fog and wondering where and
what was this spirit boat that one could hear but not see, Waring
found time to make his usual objections. 'This summoning up
remembrance of things past, sighing the lack, weeping afresh, and so
forth, is all very well,' he remarked to himself, 'we all do it. But
that friend who sweeps in at the death with his opportune dose of
comfort is a poetical myth whom I, for one, have never yet met.'
'That is because you do not deserve such a friend,' answered the
Spirit, briskly reappearing on the scene. 'A man who flies in the
wilderness to escape--'
'Spirit, are you acquainted with a Biblical personage named David?'
interrupted Waring, executing a flank movement.
The spirit acknowledged the acquaintance, but cautiously, as not
knowing what was coming next.
'Did he or did he not have anything to say about flying to
wildernesses and mountain-tops? Did he or did he not express wishes to
sail thither in person?'
'David had a voluminous way of making remarks,' replied the Spirit,
'and I do not pretend to stand up for them all. But one thing is
certain; whatever he may have wished, in a musical way, regarding
wildernesses and mountain-tops, when it came to the fact he did not
go. And why? Because he--'
'Had no wings,' said Waring, closing the discussion with a mighty
yawn. 'I say, Spirit, take yourself off. Something is coming ashore,
and were it old Nick in person I should be glad to see him and shake
his clawed hand.'
As he spoke out of the fog and into the glare of the fire shot a
phantom skiff, beaching itself straight and swift at his feet, and so
suddenly that he had to withdraw them like a flash to avoid the crunch
of the sharp bows across the sand. 'Always let the other man speak
first,' he thought; 'this boomerang of a boat has a shape in it, I
see.'
The shape rose, and, leaning on its oar, gazed at the camp and its
owner in silence. It seemed to be an old man, thin and bent, with bare
arms, and a yellow handkerchief bound around its head, drawn down
almost to the eyebrows, which, singularly bushy and prominent, shaded
the deep-set eyes, and hid their expression.
'But supposing he won't, don't stifle yourself,' continued Waring; then
aloud, 'Well, old gentleman, where do you come from?'
'Nowhere.'
'And where are you going?'
'Back there.'
'Couldn't you take me with you? I have been trying all my life to go
nowhere, but never could learn the way: do what I would, I always
found myself going in the opposite direction, namely, somewhere.'
To this the shape replied nothing, but gazed on.
'Do the nobodies reside in Nowhere, I wonder,' pursued the smoker;
'because if they do, I am afraid I shall meet all my friends and
relatives. What a pity the somebodies could not reside there! But
perhaps they do; cynics would say so.'
But at this stage the shape waved its oar impatiently and demanded,
'Who are you?'
'Well I do not exactly know. Once I supposed I was Jarvis Waring, but
the wilderness has routed that prejudice. We can be anybody we please;
it is only a question of force or will; and my latest character has
been William Shakespeare. I have been trying to find out whether I
wrote my own plays. Stay to supper and take the other side; it is
long since I have had an argument with flesh and blood. And you are
that,--aren't you?'
But the shape frowned until it seemed all eyebrow. 'Young man,' it
said, 'how came you here? By water?'
'No; by land.'
'Alongshore?'
'No; through the woods.'
'Nobody ever comes through the woods.'
'Agreed; but I am somebody.'
'Do you mean that you have come across from Lake Superior on foot?'
'I landed on the shore of Lake Superior a month or two ago, and struck
inland the same day; where I am now I neither know nor want to know.'
'Very well,' said the shape,--'very well.' But it scowled more gently.
'You have no boat?'
'No.'
'Do you start on to-morrow?'
'Probably; by that time the waves and "the sessions of sweet silent
thought" will have driven me distracted between them.'
'I will stay to supper, I think,' said the shape, unbending still
farther, and stepping out of the skiff.
'Deeds before words then,' replied Waring, starting back towards a
tree where his game-bag and knapsack were standing. When he returned
the skiff had disappeared; but the shape was warming its moccassined
feet in a very human sort of way. They cooked and eat with the
appetites of the wilderness, and grew sociable after a fashion. The
shape's name was Fog, Amos Fog, or old Fog, a fisherman and a hunter
among the islands farther to the south; he had come inshore to see
what that fire meant, no person having camped there in fifteen long
years.
'You have been here all that time, then?'
'Off and on, off and on; I live a wandering life,' replied old Fog;
and then, with the large curiosity that solitude begets, he turned the
conversation back towards the other and his story.
The other, not unwilling to tell his adventures, began readily; and
the old man listened, smoking meanwhile a second pipe produced from
the compact stores in the knapsack. In the web of encounters and
escapes, he placed his little questions now and then; no, Waring had
no plan for exploring the region, no intention of settling there, was
merely idling away a summer in the wilderness and would then go back
to civilization never to return, at least, not that way; might go west
across the plains, but that would be farther south. They talked on,
one much, the other little; after a time, Waring, whose heart had been
warmed by his flask, began to extol his ways and means.
'Live? I live like a prince,' he said. 'See these tin cases; they
contain concentrated stores of various kinds. I carry a little tea,
you see, and even a few lumps of white sugar as a special treat now
and then on a wet night.
'Did you buy that sugar at the Sault?' said the old man, eagerly.
'O no; I brought it up from below. For literature I have this small
edition of Shakespeare's sonnets, the cream of the whole world's
poetry; and when I am tired of looking at the trees and the sky, I
look at this, Titian's lovely daughter with her upheld salver of
fruit. Is she not beautiful as a dream?'
'I don't know much about dreams,' replied old Fog, scanning the small
picture with curious eyes 'but isn't she a trifle heavy in build? They
dress like that nowadays, I suppose,--flowered gowns and gold chains
around the waist?'
'Why, man, that picture was painted more than three centuries ago.'
'Was it now? Women don't alter much, do they?' said old Fog, simply.
'Then they don't dress like that nowadays?'
'I don't know how they dress, and don't care,' said the younger man,
repacking his treasures.
Old Fog concluded to camp with his new friend that night and be off at
dawn. 'You see it is late,' he said, 'and your fire's all made and
everything comfortable. I've a long row before me to-morrow: I'm on my
way to the Beavers.'
'Ah! very intelligent animals, I am told. Friends of yours?'
'Why, they're islands, boy; Big and Little Beaver! What do you know,
if you don't know the Beavers?'
'Man,' replied Waring. 'I flatter myself I know the human animal well;
he is a miserable beast.'
'Is he?' said old Fog, wonderingly; 'who'd have thought it!' Then,
giving up the problem as something beyond his reach,--'Don't trouble
yourself if you hear me stirring in the night,' he said; 'I am often
mighty restless.' And rolling himself in his blanket, he soon became,
at least as regards the camp-fire and sociability, a nonentity.
'Simple-minded old fellow,' thought Waring, lighting a fresh pipe;
'has lived around here all his life apparently. Think of that,--to
have lived around here all one's life! I, to be sure, am here now; but
then, have I not been--' And here followed a revery of remembrances,
that glittering network of gayety and folly which only young hearts
can weave, the network around whose border is written in a thousand
hues, 'Rejoice, young man, in thy youth, for it cometh not again.'
'Alas, what sighs from our boding hearts
The infinite skies have borne away!'
sings a poet of our time; and the same thought lies in many hearts
unexpressed, and sighed itself away in this heart of our Jarvis Waring
that still foggy evening on the beach.
The middle of the night, the long watch before dawn; ten chances to
one against his awakening! A shape is moving towards the bags hanging
on the distant tree. How the sand crunches,--but he sleeps on. It
reaches the bags, this shape, and hastily, rifles them; then it steals
back and crosses the sand again, its moccasined feet making no sound.
But, as it happened, that one chance (which so few of us ever see!)
appeared on the scene at this moment and guided these feet directly
towards a large, thin, old shell masked with newly blown sand; it
broke with a crack; Waring woke and gave chase. The old man was
unarmed, he had noticed that; and then such a simple-minded, harmless
old fellow! But simple-minded, harmless old fellows do not run like
mad if one happens to wake; so the younger pursued. He was strong, he
was fleet; but the shape was fleeter, and the space between them grew
wider. Suddenly the shape turned and darted into the water, running
out until only its head was visible above the surface, a dark spot in
the foggy moonlight. Waring pursued, and saw meanwhile another dark
spot beyond, an empty skiff which came rapidly inshore-ward, until it
met the head, which forthwith took to itself a body, clambered in,
lifted the oars, and was gone in an instant.
'Well,' said Waring, still pursuing down the gradual slope of the
beach, 'will a phantom bark come at my call, I wonder? At any rate I
will go out as far as he did and see.' But no; the perfidious beach at
this instant shelved off suddenly and left him afloat in deep water.
Fortunately he was a skilled swimmer, and soon regained the shore wet
and angry. His dogs were whimpering at a distance, both securely
fastened to trees, and the light of the fire had died down: evidently
the old Fog was not, after all, so simple as some other people!
'I might as well see what the old rogue has taken,' thought Waring;
'all the tobacco and whiskey, I'll be bound.' But nothing had been
touched save the lump-sugar, the little book, and the picture of
Titian's daughter! Upon this what do you suppose Waring did? He built
a boat.
When it was done, and it took some days and was nothing but a dug-out
after all (the Spirit said that), he sailed out into the unknown;
which being interpreted means that he paddled southward. From the
conformation of the shore, he judged that he was in a deep curve,
protected in a measure from the force of wind and wave. 'I'll find
that ancient mariner,' he said to himself, 'if I have to
circumnavigate the entire lake. My book of sonnets, indeed, and my
Titian picture! Would nothing else content him? This voyage I
undertake from a pure inborn sense of justice--'
'Now, Waring, you know it is nothing of the kind,' said the Spirit who
had sailed also. 'You know you are tired of the woods and dread going
back that way, and you know you may hit a steamer off the islands;
besides, you are curious about this old man who steals Shakespeare and
sugar, leaving tobacco and whiskey untouched.'
'Spirit,' replied the man at the paddle, 'you fairly corrupt me with
your mendacity. Be off and unlimber yourself in the fog; I see it
coming in.'
He did see it indeed; in it rolled upon him in columns, a soft silvery
cloud enveloping everything, the sunshine, the shore, and the water,
so that he paddled at random, and knew not whither he went, or rather
saw not, since knowing was long since out of the question. 'This is
pleasant,' he said to himself when the morning had turned to afternoon
and the afternoon to night, 'and it is certainly new. A stratus of
tepid cloud a thousand miles long and a thousand miles deep, and a man
in a dug-out paddling through! Sisyphus was nothing to this.' But he
made himself comfortable in a philosophic way, and went to the only
place left to him,--to sleep.
At dawn the sunshine colored the fog golden, but that was all; it was
still fog, and lay upon the dark water thicker and softer than ever.
Waring eat some dried meat, and considered the possibilities; he had
reckoned without the fog, and now his lookout was uncomfortably misty.
The provisions would not last more than a week; and though he might
catch fish, how could he cook them? He had counted on a shore
somewhere; any land, however desolate, would give him a fire; but this
fog was muffling, and unless he stumbled ashore by chance he might go
on paddling in a circle forever. 'Bien,' he said, summing up,
'my part at any rate is to go on; I, at least can do my duty.'
'Especially as there is nothing else to do,' observed the Spirit.
Having once decided, the man kept at his work with finical precision.
At a given moment he eat a lunch, and very tasteless it was too, and
then to work again; the little craft went steadily on before the
stroke of the strong arms, its wake unseen, its course unguided.
Suddenly at sunset the fog folded its gray draperies, spread its
wings, and floated off to the southwest, where that night it rested at
Death's Door and sent two schooners to the bottom; but it left behind
it a released dug-out, floating before a log fortress which had
appeared by magic, rising out of the water with not an inch of ground
to spare, if indeed there was any ground; for might it not be a
species of fresh-water boat, anchored there for clearer weather?
'Ten more strokes and I should have run into it,' thought Waring as he
floated noiselessly up to this watery residence; holding on by a
jutting beam, he reconnoitred the premises. The building was of logs,
square, and standing on spiles, its north side, under which he lay,
showed a row of little windows all curtained in white, and from one of
them peeped the top of a rose-bush; there was but one storey, and the
roof was flat. Nothing came to any of these windows, nothing stirred,
and the man in the dug-out, being curious as well as hungry, decided
to explore, and touching the wall at intervals pushed his craft
noiselessly around the eastern corner; but here was a blank wall of
logs and nothing more. The south side was the same, with the exception
of two loopholes, and the dug-out glided its quietest past these. But
the west shone out radiant, a rude little balcony overhanging the
water, and in it a girl in a mahogany chair, nibbling something and
reading.
'My sugar and my sonnets, as I am alive!' ejaculated Waring to
himself.
The girl took a fresh bite with her little white teeth, and went on
reading in the sunset light.
'Cool,' thought Waring.
And cool she looked truly to a man who had paddled two days in a hot
sticky fog, as, clad in white, she sat still and placid on her airy
perch. Her hair, of the very light fleecy gold seldom seen after
babyhood, hung over her shoulders unconfined by comb or ribbon,
felling around her like a veil and glittering in the horizontal
sunbeams; her face, throat and hands were white as the petals of a
white camellia, her features infantile, her cast-down eyes invisible
under the full-orbed lids. Waring gazed at her cynically, his boat
motionless; it accorded with his theories that the only woman he had
seen for months should be calmly eating and reading stolen sweets. The
girl turned a page, glanced up, saw him, and sprang forward smiling;
as she stood at the balcony, her beautiful hair fell below her knees.
'Jacob,' she cried gladly, 'is that you at last?'
'No,' replied Waring, 'it is not Jacob; rather Esau. Jacob was too
tricky for me. The damsel, Rachel, I presume!'
'My name is Silver,' said the girl, 'and I see you are not Jacob at
all. Who are you, then?'
'A hungry, tired man who would like to come aboard and rest awhile.'
'Aboard? This is not a boat.'
'What then?'
'A castle,--Castle Nowhere.'
'You reside here?'
'Of course; where else should I reside? Is it not a beautiful place?'
said the girl, looking around with a little air of pride.
'I could tell better if I was up there.'
'Come, then.'
'How?'
'Do you not see the ladder?'
'Ah, yes,--Jacob had a ladder, I remember; he comes up this way, I
suppose?'
'He does not; but I wish he would.'
'Undoubtedly. But you are not Leah all this time?'
'I am Silver, as I told you before; I know not--what you mean with
your Leah.'
'But, mademoiselle, your Bible--'
'What is Bible?'
'You have never read the Bible?'
'It is a book, then. I like books,' replied Silver, waving her hand
comprehensively; 'I have read five, and now I have a new one.'
'Do you like it, your new one?' asked Waring, glancing towards his
property.
'I do not understand it all; perhaps you can explain to me?'
'I think I can,' answered the young man, smiling in spite of himself;
'that is, if you wish to learn.'
'Is it hard?'
'That depends upon the scholar; now, some minds--' Here a hideous face
looked out through one of the little windows, and then vanished. 'Ah,'
said Waring, pausing, 'one of the family?'
'That is Lorez, my dear old nurse.'
The face now came out on to the balcony and showed itself as part of
an old negress, bent and wrinkled with age.
'He came in a boat, Lorez,' said Silver, 'and yet you see he is not
Jacob. But he says he is tired and hungry, so we will have supper,
now, without waiting for father.'
The old woman smiled and nodded, stroking the girl's glittering hair
meanwhile with her black hand.
'As soon as the sun has gone it will be very damp,' said Silver,
turning to her guest; 'you will come within. But you have not told
me-your name.'
'Jarvis,' replied Waring promptly.
'Come, then, Jarvis.' And she led the way through a low door into a
long narrow room with a row of little square windows on each side all
covered with little square white curtains. The walls and ceiling were
planked and the workmanship of the whole rude and clumsy; but a gay
carpet covered the floor, a chandelier adorned with lustres, hung from
a hook in the ceiling, large gilded vases and a mirror in a tarnished
gilt frame adorned a shelf over the hearth, mahogany chairs stood in
ranks against the wall under the little windows and a long narrow
table ran down the centre of the apartment from end to end. It all
seemed strangely familiar; of what did it remind him? His eyes fell
upon the table-legs; they were riveted to the floor. Then it came to
him at once,--the long narrow cabin of a lake steamer.
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