The Adventures of a Modest Man

"Trespass on Vassar?" asked Jones.

"I'm going to fish the Caranay, my old and favorite and beloved stream," retorted Ellis, doggedly. "Do you suppose a dinky zinc sign in this forest can stop me? Come on, Jones. I'll show you a trout worth tossing this Caranay Belle to." And he looped on a silver-and-salmon-tinted fly and waded out into the rapids.

Jones lighted his pipe and followed him, giving his views of several matters in a voice pitched above the whispering rush of the ripples:

"That's all very well, Ellis, but suppose we are pinched and fined? A nice place, these forests, for a simple liver to lead a simple life in! Simple life! What? And some of these writers define the 'simple life' as merely a 'state of mind.' That's right, too; I was in a state of mind until I met you, let me tell you! They're perfectly correct; it is a state of mind."

He muttered to himself, casting an anxious eye on the thundercloud which stretched almost to the zenith over the Golden Dome and shadowed Lynx Peak like a pall.

"Rain, too," he commented, wading in Ellis's wake. "There's a most devilish look about that cloud. I wish I were a woodchuck – or a shiner, or an earnest young thing from Vassar. What are we to do if pinched with the goods on us, Ellis?"

The other laughed a disagreeable laugh and splashed forward.

"Because," continued Jones, wiping the spray from his glasses, "the woods yonder may be teeming with these same young things from Vassar. Old 'uns, too – there's a faculty for that Summer School. You can never tell what a member of a ladies' Summer School faculty would do to you. I dare say they might run after you and frisk you for a kiss – out here in the backwoods."

"Do you know anything about this absurd Summer School?" asked Ellis, halting to wait for his companion.

"Only what the newspapers print."

"And what's that? I've not noticed anything about it."

"Why, they all tell about the scope of the Vassar Summer School. It's founded" – and he grinned maliciously – "on the simple life."

"How?" snapped Ellis, clambering up out of the water to the flat, sandy shore of an exquisite pool some forty rods in length.

"Why, this way: The Vassar undergraduates, who formerly, after commencement, scattered into all the complexities of a silly, unprofitable, good old summer time, now have a chance to acquire simplicity and a taste for the rudimentary pleasures and pursuits they have overlooked in their twentieth-century gallop after the complex."

Ellis sullenly freed his line and glanced up at the clouds. It was already raining on the Golden Dome.

"So," continued Jones, "the Summer School took to the woods along with the rest of the simple-minded. I hear they have a library; doubtless it contains the Outlook and the Rollo books. They have courses in the earlier and simpler languages – the dead 'uns – Sanskrit, Greek, Latin; English, too, before it grew pin-feathers. They have a grand-stand built of logs out yonder where the mosquito hummeth; and some trees and a pond which they call a theatre devoted to the portrayal of the great primitive and simple passions and emotions. They have also dammed up the stream to make a real lake when they give tank-dramas like Lohengrin and the Rheingold; and the papers say they have a pair of live swans hitched to a boat – that is, a yellow reporter swears they have, but he was discovered taking snapshots at some Rhine-wine daughters, and hustled out of the woods – "

He paused to watch Ellis hook and play and presently land a splendid trout weighing close to two pounds.

"It's an outrage, an infernal outrage, for such people to dam the Caranay and invade this God-given forest with their unspeakable tin signs!" said Ellis, casting again.

"But they're only looking for a simpler life – just like you."

Ellis said something.

"That," replied Jones, "is a simple and ancient word expressing tersely one of the simplest and most primitive passions. You know, the simple life is merely a "state of mind"; you're acquiring it; I recognize the symptoms."

Ellis made another observation, more or less mandatory.

"Yes, that is a locality purely mythical, according to our later exponents of theology; therefore I cannot accept the suggestion to go there – "

"Confound it!" exclaimed Ellis, laughing, as he landed a trout, "let up on your joking. I'm mad all through, and it's beginning to rain. When that thunder comes nearer it will end the fishing, too. Look at Lynx Peak! Did you see that play of lightning? There's a corker of a storm brewing. I hope," he added, savagely, "it will carry away their confounded dam and their ridiculous lake. The nerve of women to dam a trout stream like the Caranay… What was that you said?"

"I said," hissed Jones in a weird whisper, "that there are two girls standing behind us and taking our pictures with a kodak! Don't look around, man! They'll snap-shoot us for evidence!"

But the caution was too late; Ellis had turned. There came a click of a kodak shutter; Jones turned in spite of himself; another click sounded.

"Stang!" breathed Jones as two young girls stepped from the shelter of a juniper brush and calmly confronted the astonished trespassers.

"I am very sorry to trouble you," said the taller one severely, "but this is private property."

Ellis took off his cap; Jones did the same.

"I saw your signs," said Ellis, pleasantly. Jones whispered to him: "The taller one is a corker!" and Ellis replied under his breath: "The other is attractive, too."

"You admit that you deliberately trespassed?" inquired the shorter girl very gravely.

"Not upon you – only upon what you call your property," said Ellis, gaily. "You see, we really need the trout in our business – which is to keep soul and body on friendly terms."

No answering smile touched the pretty grey eyes fixed on his. She said gravely: "I am very sorry that this has happened."

"We're sorry, too," smiled Jones, "although we can scarcely regret the charming accident which permits us – "

But it wouldn't do; the taller girl stared at him coldly from a pair of ornamental brown eyes.

Presently she said: "We students are supposed to report cases like this. If you have deliberately chosen to test the law governing the protection of private property no doubt our Summer School authorities will be willing to gratify you before a proper tribunal… May I ask your names?" She drew a notebook from the pocket of her kilted skirt, standing gracefully with pencil poised, dark eyes focused upon Jones. And, as she waited, the thunder boomed behind the Golden Dome.

"It's going to rain cats and dogs," said Jones, anxiously "and you haven't an umbrella – "

The dark-eyed girl gazed at him scornfully. "Do you refuse your name?"

"No – oh, not at all!" said Jones hastily; "my name is Jones – "

The scorn deepened. "And – is this Mr. Smith?" she inquired, looking at Ellis.

"My name is Jones," said Jones so earnestly that his glasses fell off. "And what's worse, it's John Jones."

Something in his eye engaged her attention – perhaps the unwinking innocence of it. She wrote "John Jones" on her pad, noted his town address, and turned to Ellis, who was looking fixedly, but not offensively, at the girl with the expressive grey eyes.

"If you have a pad I'll surrender to you," he said, amiably. "There is glory enough for all here, as our admiral once remarked."

The grey eyes glimmered; a quiver touched the scarlet mouth. But a crash of nearer thunder whitened the smile on her lips.

"Helen, I'm going!" she said hastily to her of the brown eyes.

"That storm," said Ellis calmly, "has a long way to travel before it strikes the Caranay valley." He pointed with his rod, tracing in the sky the route of the crowding clouds. "Every storm that hatches behind the Golden Dome swings south along the Black Water first, then curves and comes around by the west and sweeps the Caranay. You have plenty of time to take my name."

"But – but the play? I was thinking of the play," she said, looking anxiously at the brown eyes, which were raised to the sky in silent misgiving.

"If you don't mind my saying so," said Ellis, "there is ample time for your outdoor theatricals – if you mean that. You need not look for that storm on the upper Caranay before late this afternoon. Even then it may break behind the mountains and you may see no rain – only a flood in the river."

"Do you really think so?" she asked.

"I do; I can almost answer for it. You see, the Caranay has been my haunt for many years, and I know almost to a certainty what is likely to happen here."