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Title: Thomas Jefferson Brown

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Release date: October 24, 2007 [eBook #23181]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS JEFFERSON BROWN ***




Produced by David Widger






THOMAS JEFFERSON BROWN

By James Oliver Curwood

Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Co




I

There are not many who will remember him as Thomas Jefferson Brown. For
ten years he had been mildly ashamed of himself, and out of respect for
people who were dead, and for a dozen or so who were living, he had the
good taste to drop his last name. The fact that it was only Brown didn't
matter.

"Tack Thomas Jefferson to Brown," he said, "and you've got a name that
sticks!"

It had an aristocratic sound; and Thomas Jefferson, with the Brown cut
off, was still aristocratic, when you came to count the red corpuscles
in him. In some sort of way he was related to two dead Presidents, three
dead army officers, a living college professor, and a few common people.
He was legitimately born to the purple, but fate had sent him off on a
curious ricochet in a game all of its own, and changed him from Thomas
Jefferson Brown into just plain Thomas Jefferson without the Brown.

He was one of those specimens who, when you meet them, somehow make you
feel there are a few lost kings of the earth, as well as lost lambs. He
was what we called a "first-sighter"--that is, you liked him the instant
you looked at him. You knew without further acquaintance that he was a
man whom you could trust with your money, your friendship--anything you
had. He was big, with a wholesome brown face, blond hair, and gray
eyes that seemed always to be laughing and twinkling, even when he was
hungry. He carried about with him a load of cheerfulness so big that it
was constantly spilling over on other people.

There was a time when Thomas Jefferson Brown had little white cards
with his name on them. That was when he went to college, and his lungs
weren't so good. It was then that some big doctor told him that if he
wanted to live to have grandchildren, the best thing for him to do was
to "tramp it" for a time--live out of doors, sleep out of doors, do
nothing but breathe fresh air and walk. That doctor was Fate, playing
his game behind a pair of spectacles and a bumpy forehead. He saved
Thomas Jefferson Brown, all right; but he turned him into plain Thomas
Jefferson.

For Thomas Jefferson Brown never got over taking his medicine. He kept
on tramping. He got big and broad and happy. Somewhere, perhaps in a
barn, he caught a microbe that made him dislike ordinary work. He would
set to and help a farmer saw wood all day, just for company and grub;
but you couldn't hire him to go into an office, or settle down to
anything steady, for twenty-five dollars a day. He had a scientific name
for the thing that was in him--the _wanderlust_ bug, I think he called
it; and he said it was better than the Chinese lady-bugs that the
government imports to save California fruit.

The nearest Thomas Jefferson ever came to going back to Thomas Jefferson
Brown was when he took a job at braking on the Southern Pacific. That
held him for three, days less than two weeks.

"The _wanderlust_ bug wouldn't stand for it," he explained.

Right after that he struck a farmer's house where the farmer was sick,
almost dying, with three little kids and a frail little woman trying
to keep things up. He worked like ten men for more than a month on that
farm, and when he went away he wouldn't take a cent. That's the sort of
ne'er-do-well Thomas Jefferson was.

He wouldn't beg. He'd go three days without grub, and laugh all the
time. It was mostly in the country and in small villages that he made
his living. He could play seven different kinds of instruments without
any instruments at all. Did it all with his mouth. And the kids--they
went wild over him. In return for his entertainment, Thomas Jefferson
wasn't ashamed to take whatever came to him in the way of odd nickels
and dimes.

Once the manager of a vaudeville house heard him on a street corner, and
offered him a job at fifty a week if he'd sign a contract for a dozen
weeks.

"Good Lord," said Thomas Jefferson, "I wouldn't know what to do with six
hundred dollars!"

The next week he was cooking in a lumber-camp for his board. That's
Thomas Jefferson--or, rather, that's what he was.

And now we're coming to the girl who killed the bug in Thomas
Jefferson--and rescued the king. She was born swell. She has blue
eyes--the sort that can light up a dark day, and can make your head turn
dizzy when they smile at you. And she's got the right sort of hair to
go with 'em--red and gold and brown all mixed up, until you can't tell
which is which; the sort that makes you wonder if some big artist hasn't
been painting a picture for you, when you see it out in the sunshine.

She comes of a titled family, but she'd want to die to-morrow if Thomas
Jefferson Brown didn't worship her from the tips of her little toes to
the top of her pretty head. She thinks he's a king. And he is--one of
those great, big, healthy kings that nature sometimes grows when it has
half a chance.




II

It's curious how the whole thing happened. Thomas Jefferson wandered up
to Portland at the time we were fitting out a ship for a whaling cruise.
We saw him imitating a banjo for a lot of kids down on the wharf, and
the minute our eyes lit on him--Tucker's and mine--we liked him. It
isn't necessary to go into the details of what happened after that. Just
a week later, when Thomas Jefferson and I were shaking hands for the
last time, a queer sort of look came into his eyes, and he said:

"Bobby, you're the first man I ever knew that makes me feel like crying
when you leave me."

He said it just like one of the kids he'd tickled half to death on the
wharf. There was a little jerking in his throat, and there came into his
face a look so gentle that it made me think of a girl.

"Why don't you come along on this cruise with me?" I said.

Thomas Jefferson gave a sudden start, and a queer expression came into
his eyes, as if he saw something out on the sea that had startled him.
Then he laughed. You could hear that laugh of Thomas Jefferson's three
blocks away, and sunshine in winter couldn't bring more cheer than the
sound of it. He looked at me for a moment, and then said:

"Bobby, I'll go!"

It wasn't forty-eight hours before Thomas Jefferson had a first mortgage
on every soul aboard the "Sleeping Sealer," from the cap'n to the oiler
down in the engine-room. He was able, all right, but you couldn't have
made an able seaman out of him in a hundred years. For all that, he did
the work of three men. The first thing you heard when you woke up in the
morning was his whistle, and the last thing you heard at night was his
laugh or his song. He did everything, from cooking to telling us why
Germany couldn't lick England, and how the United States could clean up
the map of the earth if Congress would spend less money on job-making
bureaus and a little more on war-ships.

Then we discovered what was in the old alligator-skin valise he carried.
It was books. Half the time he didn't have to read to us, but just
talked off the stuff he'd learned by heart. We got to know a lot before
the trip was half begun, just by associating with Thomas Jefferson
Brown--or Thomas Jefferson, as he was then.

We spent three months up about the Spicer Islands, and then came down
toward Southampton Land. Thomas Jefferson was the happiest man aboard
until we caught sight of a coast, and then the change began. After that
he'd get restless whenever land hove in sight.

Six weeks later we came down into Roes Welcome Sound, planning to get
out through Hudson Strait before winter set in. The fact that we were
almost homeward bound didn't seem to affect Thomas Jefferson. I saw the
beginning of the end when he said to me one day:

"Bobby, I've never seen this northern country. It's a big, glorious
country, and I'd like to go ashore."

There wasn't any use arguing with him. The cap'n tried it, we all tried
it, and at last Thomas Jefferson prepared to take his leave of us at
Point Fullerton, just eight hundred miles north of civilization, where
there's an Eskimo village and a police station of the Royal Northwest
Mounted. He came to me the day before we were going to take him ashore,
and said:

"Bobby, why don't you come along? Let's chum it, old man, and see what
happens."

When he went ashore, the next day, I went with him, and we each took
three months' supply of grub and our pay. From that hour there began the
big change--the change which turned Thomas Jefferson back into Thomas
Jefferson Brown, and which it took a girl to finish.

It came first in his eyes, and then in his laugh. After that he seemed
to grow an inch or two taller, and he lost that careless, shiftless way
which comes of what he called the _wanderlust_ bug. There wasn't so
much laughter in his eyes, but something better had taken its place--a
deeper, grayer, more thoughtful look, and he didn't play those queer
things with his mouth any more.

The police at Point Fullerton hardly had a glimpse of him as the
big, sunny, loose-jointed giant, Thomas Jefferson. He had become a
bronze-bearded god, with the strength of five men in his splendid
shoulders, and a port to his head that made you think of a piece of
sculpture.

"You can't be anything but a _man_ up here, Bobby," he said one day, and
I knew what he meant. "It's not the air, it's not the cold, and it's not
the fight you make to keep life in your body," he added, "but it's
God! That's what it is, Bobby. There's not a sound or a sight up here,
outside of that little cabin, that's human. It's all God--there's
nothing else--and it makes you think!"




III

It was spring when we came down to Fort Churchill, and it was summer
when we struck York Factory. It was the middle of one of those summer
days when strawberries ripen even up there, that the last prop fell out
from under Thomas Jefferson, and he became Thomas Jefferson Brown. He
met Lady Isobel. The title did not really belong to her, for she was
only the cousin of Lord Meton; but Thomas Jefferson Brown called her
that from the first.

It was down close to the boats, where their launch lay, and the wind had
frolicked with Lady Isobel's hair until it rippled about her face
and shoulders like a net of spun gold. She was bareheaded, and he was
bareheaded, and they stared for a moment, her blue eyes flashing into
his gray ones; and then there came into her face a color like rose, and
he bowed, as one of the old-time Presidents might have bowed to a
hair-powdered beauty in the days when the Capitol was young.

That was the beginning, and to his honor be it said that Thomas
Jefferson Brown never revealed that he was a gentleman born, though his
heart was stricken with love at that first sight of Lady Isobel's lovely
face. Lord Meton wanted a man--one who could handle a canoe and shoulder
two hundred pounds of duff; and "Tom" became the man, working like a
slave for a month; but always with the pride and bearing of a king.

It wasn't difficult to see what was happening. Lord Meton saw, and
understood; but he knew that the proud blood in Lady Isobel was an
invulnerable armor that would protect her from indiscretion. And as for
Thomas Jefferson Brown--

"Bobby," he said, standing up straight and tall, "if she can only love a
gentleman, and not a man, what's the use of playing cards?"

One day, when he had to carry Lady Isobel ashore from a big York boat,
something inside him got the best of his arms, and he held her tight--so
tight that her eyes came down to his with a frightened look, and he
heard a breath come from her that was almost a sob. They gazed at each
other for a moment, and it was then that Thomas Jefferson Brown told her
that he loved her--not in words, but in a way that she understood.

When he set her down on shore she was as white as death. From that day
she treated him a little coolly--up to the last moment, out on the bay.

It was a bright, sunshiny day when the three--Lord Meton, Lady Isobel,
and Thomas Jefferson Brown--set off in a big birchbark canoe, bound for
Harrison's Island, a dozen miles out from the mainland. But you can't
tell much about sunshine and calm on Hudson Bay. They're like a jealous
woman's smile, masking something hidden. Four miles out, the wind came
up; midway between the island and the mainland, it was a small gale.
Even at that, Thomas Jefferson Brown would have made it all right if the
beat of the sea hadn't broken a rotten thread under the bow, letting the
birch seam part with a suddenness that sent a little spurt of water up
into Lady Isobel's face.

What? No, this isn't going to have the regulation hero-act end, in
which Thomas Jefferson Brown saves the life of the lady he loves. It's
something different--something that Thomas Jefferson Brown never guessed
at when the water spurted in, and Lady Isobel turned to him with a
little scream, her beautiful blue eyes wide and filled with horror.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "Here, take this jacket and hold it down
tight over the seam. We'll reach the island, all right."

Lady Isobel held the jacket over the hole, and Thomas Jefferson Brown
put a strength into his paddle that threatened to crack off the handle.
After a minute or two, he saw a little trickle of water, beginning to
ooze in about the edges of the jacket. He leaned back for an instant,
and signaled Lord Meton to bend over toward him.

"Take off your clothes," he said, so low that Lady Isobel couldn't hear.
"Can you swim?"

"Not a stroke," said Lord Meton, and his face went as white as chalk;
but it was no whiter than Thomas Jefferson Brown's.

When a birchbark seam begins to part there's no power on earth that will
hold it when the canoe is heavily loaded. A few minutes later, the water
was gushing in by the quart about Lady Isobel's feet. She fought hard
to hold it back. When at last she saw that it was hopeless, she turned
again, to see Lord Meton in his underwear, and Thomas Jefferson Brown
stripped of everything but his shirt and his buckskin trousers, which
don't water-sog. He laughed straight into her face, as if it was all an
amusing joke; and then, suddenly, he began playing that banjo thing with
his mouth.

It was all so strange, with the beat of the sea, the wail of the wind,
and Thomas Jefferson Brown sitting there as if nothing were happening,
that Lady Isobel just stared in astonishment, while the water gushed in
about her. At last he put down his paddle, and stretched out both hands;
and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that her two hands
should come out to meet his.

"Listen," he said, and his eyes were telling her again what they told
her on the day when he brought her in from the York boat. "You'll do as
I tell you, won't you? And you won't be afraid?"

For an instant Lady Isobel looked at Lord Meton, shrinking and shivering
in the stern of the canoe; and then she looked back to the other man's
face, and blue fires seemed to leap into her eyes.

"With _you_--no, I'm not afraid," she said.

She leaned toward him, nearer and nearer, as the water rose about them,
looking straight into his eyes. They both knew in that moment that it
was the man and the woman who had triumphed, and that for them the lady
and the gentleman were dead.

"I'm not afraid--with you," she said again.

Her lips trembled, and her golden hair swept over his breast, and Thomas
Jefferson Brown bent down and kissed her once upon the mouth. Then he
said, as if he were speaking to a little girl:

"Do not be afraid, and hold to the edge of the canoe when it fills. The
wind will carry us to Harrison's Island."

He turned to Lord Meton, and repeated the words; and just then the
birchbark began to settle under them. With one hand gripping the side,
Thomas Jefferson Brown leaped over the sea. Lower and lower settled the
canoe with almost a scream, Lord Meton cried above the wind:

"Good Lord, it won't hold us up!"

For a few moments Thomas Jefferson relieved the canoe of his weight, and
the bark rose again, slowly. Then, with a gasp, he clutched at the side
again, and into Lady Isobel's drenched face, half hid the wet veil of
her shining hair.

"The canoe won't hold us all up," he said trying to smile. "But it will
hold two--you two and the wind is taking it to the island, four miles to
the island, and I may be make it."

He knew that he never could make it; no man could swim so far in the
chill waters of Hudson Bay; but he spoke as if his words were "I'm going
to let go and try. Isobel, my love, will you kiss me?"

She threw one arm about his neck. Meton, clutching with frantic terror
to the canoe saw nothing of what happened, nor did he hear the sobbing
cry of Lady Isobel's heart as she kissed Thomas Jefferson Brown, once,
and then three times, before he dropped back into the sea again.

"Good-by, sweetheart!" he said.

In the eyes that looked up at her, in his eyes in the one last look of
love that he said, "Good-by." Lady Isobel saw the truth, and stretched
out her arm to him.

"Stop! Come back! Take me with you!" she cried. "I want to go with you!"

And there, in the wildness of that sea, four miles from shore, Thomas
Jefferson Brown seemed to heave himself up out of the water, as if the
strength of a thousand swimmers had suddenly come to him. He let out a
cry of triumph, of love, of joy; and he came back and gripped the canoe
again, his gray eyes flashing, his face glowing with a strange flush.

"You want to go with me?" he said. "Come!"

He held up his arms, and with a cry that wasn't fear Lady Isobel went
into them, while Thomas Jefferson Brown called to Lord Meton:

"Stick to the canoe! It will take you to the island!"




IV

The shore was a low, dark streak, four miles away--an appalling distance
away; but as she clung lightly to his shoulders, as Thomas Jefferson
Brown told her to do, the horror and the fear of the big sea went out
of Lady Isobel's brave little heart. She put her face down against his
neck, pulled back his wet hair, and kissed him. God bless all such true
hearts, wherever they be!

"We'll make it, Tom--we'll make it!" she told him a hundred times.

He felt the warm caresses of her lips, the thrilling love of her voice,
and he knew that she was ready to die with him.

He swam in a strange way--a wonderfully strange way--did Thomas
Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and
shoulders clear; and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no
test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved, his
face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring
him, her sweet lips kissing him--still kissing him.

He was doing a thing that she knew no other man in the world could do.
She kept telling him so, while the land drew nearer and nearer, until at
last she cried out in joy that she could see the little bushes along the
shore.

"Another mile, Tom!" she said. "Only another mile, and then--"

"And then--" he said.

"And then--life!" she cried. "Life for you and me!"

He went on, seeming to grow stronger as the shore drew nearer. It was
wonderful; but at last, when they came to the beach, he dropped down
like a dead man. Lady Isobel caught his head to her dripping breast, and
rocked him back and forth, sobbing a paean of love and pride, while far
out she saw the canoe and Lord Meton drifting shoreward.

A few minutes later, Thomas Jefferson Brown went out into the sea again,
until he was not much more than a speck, and brought in the canoe and
Lord Meton, while Lady Isobel stood to her knees in the water, praising
her God that from riches and splendor she had come out into a wilderness
to find such a man as this.

After that, at York Factory, there was nothing left for Thomas Jefferson
Brown to do but to reveal himself, and when Lord Meton discovered that
there ran as good blood through his rescuer's veins as through his
own, he gripped hands with the man who had saved him, and gave his
congratulations cm the spot. But it made no difference to Isobel. If
anything, she was a little disappointed.

Thomas Jefferson Brown arranged to go back with them on their yacht. The
wedding would take place in London, a quiet affair. One day Isobel and
her lover came along hand in hand, and Thomas Jefferson Brown said to
me:

"Bobby, you're going to be best man."

"Not best man," Lady Isobel added, "but second best, Bobby. There's only
one best man in the world!"

But I haven't been able to come to the point of this story yet--the
remarkable part of it. Two weeks later, when we were up the river
and our canoe struck a snag, I discovered that Thomas Jefferson Brown
"couldn't swim a stroke!"

"Good Lord!" I said, but waited.

Back at the post, Thomas Jefferson Brown took me into his little room,
and said:

"Bobby, you've found that I can't swim, and I'm going to trust you with
a great secret. Love can accomplish miracles; and love did--out there.
For when I let go of the canoe, Bobby, I knew that I was going straight
down to my death. But a wonderful thing happened." He brought a little
map from a drawer. "Look at this map, Bobby. See all those little marks
off Harrison's Island--figures--twos and threes and fives, and
nothing above sixes? That's the depth of water for five miles out from
Harrison's Island, at low tide; and it was low tide when I jumped from
the canoe. That's all, Bobby. _I waded ashore_. But what would be the
good of saying anything about it when it brought me love like hers?"

Yes, what would be the use? For Thomas Jefferson Brown stepped out
deliberately to go to his death, and found life. He's a hero and a man,
is Thomas Jefferson Brown, even if fate did step in to make heroism a
little easy for him at the time!







End of Project Gutenberg's Thomas Jefferson Brown, By James Oliver Curwood



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