"I'm glad!"
"Ye see it's this way, Kate. He's shying heaps at Ashcroft, the first town he ever seen, where there's a bit of sidewalk, electric lights, and waitresses. I had to kiss the fluffy one to show him they don't bite.
"Then thar's the railroad. By that time he's getting worldly, all 'you-can't-fool-me,' and 'not-half-so-slick-as-our-ranch' until we comes to his first tunnel, and he jumps right out of his skin. After that he wants everybody to know he's a cow-boy wild and lone, despising the tenderfoot passengers right through the two hundred and fifty miles to Vancouver. At the depot he points one ear at the liners in port, and the other ear at them sky-scraping, six-story business blocks up street. He feels he'd ought to play wolf, shoot up saloons, and paint the town, but he's getting scary as cats because there's too many people all at once. He loses count, thinks there's three horns goes to one steer, and wants to hold my hand. That's when a motorcar snorts in his ear; a street-car comes at him ears back, teeth bare, and tail a-waving; and a lady axes him what time the twelve o'clock train leaves. Then he hears a band play, and it's too much—he just stampedes for the woods. When I rounds him up next afternoon, he's just ate a candy store, he's gorged to the eyes, and trying to make room for ice-cream. The next two days Billy's close-herded, and fed high to give his mind a rest. He seen the sea, pawed the wet of it, snuffed the big smell—yes, and the boy near crying. Town men who can't smell, or see, or hear, or feel with their hands, would have some trouble understanding what the sea means to a sort of child like that.
"He's willing to start work as a millionaire, but don't feel no holy vocation for groceries. So in theend he runs away, out of that frying-pan into the—wall, the rest ain't clearly known, although the police has a clue. It seems my wolf cub leads some innocent yearling astray down by the harbor, said victim being the crimp from a sailors' boarding-house. To prove he's fierce, Billy has a skinful of mixed drinks, and this stranger is kind enough to take him to see a beautiful English bark which is turning loose for Cape Horn. Seems the ship takes a notion to Billy, and the captain politely axes him to work. He's been shanghaied."
"This will kill his mother."
"Not if she thinks her son's another Joseph getting rich."
"Oh, it's too awful!"
"Wall, maybe I'm a fool, Kate, but seems to me that this young person had to be weaned from running after a woman, before he'd any chance to be a man."
Kate's Narrative
Jesse allowed that the upper forest does look "sort of wolfy." He would post relays of ponies along the outward trail, so that he and McGee could ride the eighty miles back in a single march. If the doctor survived that, he would be here in forty-eight hours, perhaps in time.
I made Jesse take his revolver, yes, loaded it myself, and he promised a signal shot from the rim-rock to give me the earliest news of his return. He put out the light, he kissed me good-by, and was gone.
From the inner edge of the bed I could see through the window, and watched Orion rising behind the cliffs. The night turned pale, then for a long time the great gaunt precipice was revealed in tender primrose light and amber shade. I heard our riders saddle, mount, and canter away for theday's work. The two Chinamen went off also on some domestic errand. The sunrise caught the pines upon the rim-rock into points of flame. I heard a distant shot, and fell asleep.
The widow had stumped about nearly all night, weary to the tip of her wooden leg, poor soul, so when I woke again and crept to the lean-to door, it was a relief to find that she had gone to sleep. She had left me a saucepan full of bread and milk which I warmed, and it warmed me nicely.
Mrs. O'Flynn asleep is like peace after war. Dressing in stealth, I prayed for peace in our time, then with a sweet enjoyment of fresh guilt, stole out into the sunshine.
Instead of Jesse's whistling, Mick's barking, the altercations in the new ram-pasture where our cow-boys live, the snuffles of old Jones, our yard was filled with the exact opposite. Of course each sound has its opposite, its shadow, making a gap in the chorus of things heard, and when all the homely voices are replaced by gaps, one feels the desolation of the high lonesome. Yet I fled away lest the widow's vengeful stump should overtake me. I was so tired of being in bed.
The silver spring, the glade of marigolds, the brier-rose brake, are all most necessary before one ventures into the cathedral grove, for it is not well to pass direct from any worldly home into a holy place. And yet I felt that something was badly wrong, for evil persons must have come in the night and stretched the trail to double its usual length. I was very angry, and I shall tell my husband.
I reached the grove, at this cool hour so like a green lagoon where coral piers branch up to some ribbed vault. The waves of incense, the river's organ throb, the glory in the windows, gave me peace, but the choir of the winds had gone away, and for once in that sweet solitude I was lonely. My sitting is at the root of the governess tree, and Jesse's under the great father pine. If he were only there, how it would ease the pain. I needed him so badly as I sat there, trying to make him present in my thoughts. He had gone away, and the squirrel who lives in the widow tree, had taken even his match ends. Only the cigar stubs were left, which would, of course, be bad for the squirrel's children. I wasn't well enough to call but I left my nut.
Close by is the terrific verge of the inner cañon, and sitting at the very edge of death I saw into the mists.
It was so foolish, why should I be frightened of death, such a coward in bearing pain? And yet I had better confess the truth, that presently I ran away screaming, my skirt torn by brambles, my feet caught in the roots. Only when I passed the place where by anemones live, and beyond the east door of the grove came out into full sunlight, I could go no farther but fell to the ground exhausted. Yes, it was very silly, and that blind panic shamed me as I looked up at the crescent of silvery birch trees who hold court at the foot of the upper cliff.
Something small and black was coming toward me, a clergyman too, and nervous, because he twiddled his little hat.
"Are you in pain?" he asked.
"Are you a fairy?" I answered, wondering. I couldn't think of anything else at the moment, for our lost ranch is so far from everywhere.
"No, madam," he said quite gravely. "I'm only a curate. May I sit down?"
My heart went out to him, for he was so little, so old, English like me, but with the manner of thegreat world. When he sat down he took care not to hurt one of my flowers.
"I fear I'm trespassing," he said, "in your royal gardens. May I introduce myself? My name is Nisted—Jared Nisted, once an army chaplain, now a tourist."
Was he real, or had I imagined him? "My name is Kate," I answered. "My husband would be ever so pleased to make you welcome. But he's away."
"And are you lonely?"
"Not now." Somehow the pain and fear were gone as though they dared not stay in the serene presence of this dear old saint. "Are you sure," I ventured, "that you're not a—"
"Fairy? Believe me, dear lady, I'm a very commonplace little person.
"A humble admirer of yours, one Tearful George, has been kind enough to bring me here in his buck-board, which has complaining wheels, a creaky body, and such a wheezy horse. He, Tearful George I mean, contracted for seventy-five dollars to bring me to paradise and back; but as we creaked our passage through that weird black forest, I feared my guide had taken the pathway which leads to the other place. I confess, the upper forestfrightened me, and now, having come to paradise, I don't want to go back." He sighed. "George," he added, "is making camp up yonder. Mrs. Smith, will you laugh at me very much if I tell you a fairy tale? It's quite a nice one."
"Oh, do!" I begged.
"Well," he began, "you know where the three birch trees are all using a single pool as their mirror?"
Of course these were the Three Graces. Mrs. O'Flynn and I had known for months past that the spot was haunted.
"Each of them," said my visitor, "seems to think the others quite superfluous."
That was true. I asked him if any one was there.
"A lady, yes."
"That's the minx," I whispered. "She's a fairy. But don't tell my husband. You know he laughs at me for being so superstitious."
"Indeed. Fact is, Mrs. Smith, she was bathing, and George insisted, most stupidly I think, on watering his horse at that pool. I mounted guard, with my back turned, of course, and tried to persuade the good man to water his horse elsewhere. He couldn't see any sanguinary lady in the rosypool, and you know the poor fellow has but a very meager choice of words. He reviled me, and my progenitors, and if you'll believe me, my dear mother was not at all the sort of person George described. He made me feel so plain, too, with his candor about my personal appearance. And all that time, while George made my flesh creep with his comments, the lady in the pool was splashing me. I'm still quite damp."
"Did the horse see?"
"Do horses wink, Mrs. Smith? Do they smile? Can they blush? The Graces shook their robes above our heads, the squirrels gossiped, the rippled pool caught glints from the rising sun, and a flight of humming-birds came whirring, as though they had been thrown in George's face. Them sanguinary birds, he said, was always getting in the ruddy way. As to the old horse, he kicked up his heels and pranced off sidewise down the glen, and the man followed, rumbling benedictions."
I explained that my dear husband can not see the minx, that my servant dare not look.
"I doubt," said Father Jared, with regret, "that very few fairies nowadays are superstitious enough to believe in us poor mortals."
For that I could have kissed him.
"They used," the dear old man went on, "to believe in our forefathers, but there is a very general decline of faith. It is not for us to blame them. What fairy, for example, could be expected to believe in Tearful George? He chews tobacco."
"Oh, tell me more about her. Did she speak to you? She's fearfully dangerous. We had a ranch-hand here who went quite fey, possessed, I think. I'm frightened of her now."
"She thinks," he retorted, "that you're a wicked woman."
"Me?"
"Yes, you. She said you would run away, and you did. I am to tell you that's very unwise."
"Please tell the minx to mind her own business."
"What is her business?" he asked mildly.
"Being a fairy, I suppose. I'll never forgive her for what she did to Billy. Besides," I added, "she makes fun of us."
"No wonder, for we humans are so stupid."
"She's full of mischief."
"Of course." The old man's eyes twinkled and blinked as though—I can't set words to fit that puzzled memory. He had told me twice that he was nota fairy. "I am to tell you from my lady, that she is not the minx. Winds, waves, and living things," he said, "are full of mischief and laughter. The sun has room to sparkle even in a tear, and Heaven touches our lips with every smile, for joy is holy. Spirits, angels, fairies, are only thoughts which have caught the light celestial, mirror-thoughts which shine in Heaven's glory. Children, and happy people see that light, which never shines on any clouded soul."
"My soul is clouded. Help me."
"I wonder," he smiled with his old kind eyes. "Have you a sense of humor? Ah,—there. Then you need never worry, or run away. As sunshine and rain are to the dear earth, so are laughter and tears to every living soul. Humor, dear, is the weather in which the spirit lives."
"But sorrow and tears?"
"Why, how can the sun make rainbows without rain?"
"You'll praise pain next!"
"That is a sacrament," he answered gravely, "the outward sign of inward grace. For how else can God reach through selfishness down to the soul in need?"
My pain had come back, but it was welcome now.
On the left were the solemn pines, and at their feet white flowers; on the right were my fair birch trees; and the glade between lay in warm sunshine.
"Lift up your hearts," whispered the priest, and I saw my trees, which in winter storm and summer sun alike show their brave faces to the changing sky.
"We lift them up unto the Lord," they seemed to answer.
"It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty," he responded, then looked as it seemed into my very soul.
I saw the dear priest's face through tears, but when I brushed them away the mist remained. He seemed remote, awful, and beautiful.
"There is a place," he said, "where souls awaiting incarnation, rest, and from that place they come, borne by messengers. A messenger was waiting in these woods, no evil spirit, my daughter, but one who came bearing a child to you. She stands august and lovely at your back, and in her arms the soul of a man-child, just on the verge of incarnation, waits at the boundary of the spirit land.
"'The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.'
"That light is all around you, and I must go. This very ground is holy. Fare you well."
* * * * * *
Two days had passed since my dear Jesse left, then through the long day I waited in the house, and the blue gloom of night swept up the glowing cliff. It was then I heard the signal shot from the rim-rock, and told my baby David that his father was coming home.
Jesse's Memoir
The book of our adventures which we began together, was to go on through all our years. We were too young to think how it must some time finish at our parting, that one of us two was to be left, with only the broken end, the pity of Christ, and every word a stabbing memory.
Since I lost Kate is four years to-night, and in all that time till now, I never dared to enter the house where once she lived with me, her poor fool Jesse. To-day, I unlocked the door. The sunlight, glinting through chinks in the boarded windows, fell in long dust-streaks on rat-eaten furniture, gray cobweb, scattered ashes. There was the puppy piano, green with mold, her work-basket, half eaten, her writing-table littered with rat-gnawed paper. The pages are yellow, the ink is rusty brown, but thepast is alive in every line, the living past, the sunny warm-scented land of memory, all full of love and glory and delight, and agony which can not be taken from me.
If she were here with me in the old log cabin, she should not see me mourning, or afraid to face the past, or dreading to set an end to our book. She expected courage, and I will face it out, write the last chapter in our Book of Life, then bury it all, lest any one should see. I warm and burn my hands at the fires of memory, and if the fine sweet pain were taken from me, what should I have left but cobweb, and ashes, dust, and the smell of rats.
How wonderful it is to think that a great lady, and this ignorant callous brute shown up in the rotted manuscript, should ever have been man and wife together! When I think of what I was—illiterate, slovenly, lazy, selfish, brutal, meanly jealous, ignorantly cruel, I see how it was right that she should leave me. It has taken me bitter lonely years to realize that I was unworthy to be her servant while she tamed me. So much the greater mystery is the love which made amends for my shortcomings, made her think me better than I was, a something for which she sacrificed herself, and inself-sacrifice became like the great angels which she saw in dreams.
Then came the letter from Polly herself, which sent me crazy, so that my lady read every word of it, without being warned.
"Opium, Jesse, an overdose of opium did the trick, and paint to make me look like a corpse, and blood from the butcher's shop poured over my face as I laid there. You was no husband for such as me with Brooke around, the man I'd kept. Shucks, did ye think I'd be such a puke as to set, with yer dead-line round me, screaming if men came near, with all Abilene grinning, and you drunk as Noah? That was no way to treat a lady. That was no cinch for me as could buy cow-boys, all I'd a mind to. Pshaw, it makes me sick at the stummick to think I married you. I only done it for a joke."But you jest mark my words on the dead thieving, no foreign woman from London, England, shall have you while you're mine. I heerd of this Mrs. Trevor daring to call you her husband. She's not your wife, she's not Mrs. Jesse Smith, she's not a married woman, but a poorthing, and her child,what's he? I've had my revenge on her, and you, and I'm coming to rub it in. I'm at Ashcroft, I am, coming on the same coach as this letter, coming tolive in your home. If I don't love you, no other woman shall. It's Fancy Brooke, the man you calls Bull Durham, what give you dead away, he, and the news he got by mail, since you let him get off alive, youfool. That ought to splash yer."And if I didn't love, d'ye reckon that I'd care?"Your deserted true wife,"Polly Smith."P. S.—I'll be to your ranch Monday."
"Opium, Jesse, an overdose of opium did the trick, and paint to make me look like a corpse, and blood from the butcher's shop poured over my face as I laid there. You was no husband for such as me with Brooke around, the man I'd kept. Shucks, did ye think I'd be such a puke as to set, with yer dead-line round me, screaming if men came near, with all Abilene grinning, and you drunk as Noah? That was no way to treat a lady. That was no cinch for me as could buy cow-boys, all I'd a mind to. Pshaw, it makes me sick at the stummick to think I married you. I only done it for a joke.
"But you jest mark my words on the dead thieving, no foreign woman from London, England, shall have you while you're mine. I heerd of this Mrs. Trevor daring to call you her husband. She's not your wife, she's not Mrs. Jesse Smith, she's not a married woman, but a poorthing, and her child,what's he? I've had my revenge on her, and you, and I'm coming to rub it in. I'm at Ashcroft, I am, coming on the same coach as this letter, coming tolive in your home. If I don't love you, no other woman shall. It's Fancy Brooke, the man you calls Bull Durham, what give you dead away, he, and the news he got by mail, since you let him get off alive, youfool. That ought to splash yer.
"And if I didn't love, d'ye reckon that I'd care?
"Your deserted true wife,"Polly Smith.
"P. S.—I'll be to your ranch Monday."
Kate's Narrative
My husband was still at dinner when we heard a horseman come thundering in, the old cargador, Pete Mathson, spurring a weary horse across the yard. Jesse took the letter, and while he read, I had a strange awful impression of days, months, years passing, a whirlwind of time. My man was growing old before my eyes, and it is true that within a few hours his hair was flecked with silver. When the letter fell from his hands he walked away, making no sound at all.
I sat on my little stool and took the letter. The paper felt like something very offensive, so that I had to force myself to read, and even then withoutunderstanding one word, I went and washed my hands and face, why I don't know, except that it was better not to make a scene. I came back to my stool.
Pete stood in the doorway very nervous about his hat, as though he tried to hide it away. I remember telling him quite gravely that I like to see a hat.
"Cap Taylor, ma'am," he was saying, "told me to get here first by the horse trail, so I rode hell-for-leather. They'll be another hour comin' by road."
"Another hour?"
"A stranger's driving. Mebbe more'n an hour."
Then Jesse came back.
* * * * * *
Jesse's Narrative
I found my lady seated on her stool, that letter in her hands, while Pete, uneasy, clicked his spurs in the doorway. I asked if he'd take a message.
"Burning the trail," he said.
"Say, if she comes, I'll kill her."
"Not that," my lady whispered, so I knelt down by her, and she stroked my forehead.
"I didn't catch your words," said Pete.
"Promise," my lady whispered, "there must be no murder."
"Tell her, Pete," said I, "there'll be no murder. I can't let her off with that—give her fair warning."
Pete rode away slow.
"Wife," I whispered—we spoke in whispers, because it was the end of the world to us two—"you trust me?"
She kissed my forehead.
"Tell me," she said, "one thing. Polly was not dead?"
"She shammed dead. She's alive, Kate. She's coming here. Take David away. Take him to South Cave, to Father Jared's camp."
"What will you do?"
"Lock the house before it's defiled."
"And then, dear?"
"When she's gone, I'll come to the cave, too."
Kate took David, letting me kiss him, letting me kiss her, even knowing everything, let me take her into my arms. She was very white, very quiet. She even remembered to take her servant, and the two Chinamen, making some excuse to get them away. I locked the house and the old cabin. Then I made the long call to Ephrata, and went to the ApexRock, calling until he answered from among the dog-tooth violets. He climbed straight up the steep rocks, whimpering, because I'd scarcely called him once in fourteen months. He rubbed against me, forgetting he hefted eleven hundred pounds, and I had to scratch his neck before we started up to the house, then to the left along the wagon track just past Cathedral Grove.
The wagon was swinging round the end of the grove at a canter, and when I let out a yell for the last warning, the woman only snatched at the driver's whip to flog the team faster. Then I turned loose my bear, he rearing up nine feet or so to inspect that outfit.
The horses shied into the air, then off at a gallop straight for the edge of the cliffs. The woman was shot out as the wagon overturned, the driver caught for a moment while his wagon went to match-wood. He lay in the wreckage stunned, but the horses went blind crazy, taking that twelve hundred feet leap into the Fraser Rapids. So I had aimed, and as I'd promised my lady to do no murder, I kept my bear beside me.
The driver was awake and staggering to his feet. He would have talked, only my bear was with me,hard to hold by the roach hair. The man needed no telling, and after he escaped from my ranch, I did not see him there in the years which followed.
The woman, standing in the wreckage of her trunks, wanted to talk. We herded her, Eph and I, to the foot of the pack-trail, which leads up by steep jags to the rim-rock of the upper cliffs, then on through the black pines to Hundred Mile. We herded her up the pack-trail, my bear and I, and pointed her on her way, alone, afoot. If she lived through that eighty miles, she would remember the way, the way which is barred.
* * * * * *
Kate's Narrative
I was waiting for Jesse until the low sun shone into the cave. All that letter, which had been a blur of horror, cleared now before my mind, but Father Jared held me by the hands, drawing the pain away. He had given me tea, he had made me a very throne of comfort in front of his camp-fire. David slept in my lap, and now while the dear saint held my hands, and I looked through the smoke out toward the setting sun, he spoke of quaint sweet doings in his hermitage. He spoke as a worldly anchorite with a portable bath, of his clumsy attempts to patch a worn-out cassock, and how the squirrels tried to superintend his prayers at even-song. Then the sun caught the walls of the cave and the roof to glowing beryl and ethereal ruby, the smoke was a rose-hued thread of light, and the deep cañon at our feet filled with a shadowy sea of flooding amethyst.
"Kate, it is even-song. We see the steep way of to-morrow's journey, the pain and sorrow from here to the next hill. But presently our way shall be revealed from star to star. We pass from earthly sunshine and fretted time, into the timeless ageless glory of the heavens. We sleep in Heaven, and when we wake again we rise filled with the presence of the Eternal to put immortal power into our daily service."
The sun had set, and the first star just shone out, as Jesse came, standing at the mouth of the cave, dark against the glory. I could not see his face.
The father released me, turning to my dear man. "Jesse," he said, "won't you shake hands with me?
"You see," he said, "I made a mistake myself, thinking a priest should be celibate to win love from on high. But in its fullest strength God's love comesthrough a woman to shine upon our life—and so I've missed the greatest of His gifts. Your wife has told me everything, and I'm so envious. Won't you shake hands? I've been so lonely. Won't you?"
But my man stood in the mouth of the cave, as though he were being judged.
"This filth," he said, "out of the past. Filth!"
His voice sounded as though he were dead.
"The law," he said. "I've come to find out what's the law?"
"Man's law?"
"I suppose so."
"But I don't know. I'm only a very ignorant old man; your friend, if you'll have me."
"What do you think?"
"So far as I see, Jesse, the woman can arraign you on a charge of bigamy. Moreover, if you seek divorce she can plead that there's equal guilt, from which there's no release."
"And that's the law?"
"Man's law. But, Jesse, when you and Kate were joined in holy matrimony, was it man's law which said, 'Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder.' What has man's law to do with the awful justice of Almighty God?
"And here, my son, I am something more than a foolish old man." He rose to his feet, making the sign of the cross. "I am ordained," he said, "a barrister to plead at the bar of Heaven. Will you not have me as your adviser, Jesse?"
"Whom God hath joined," Jesse laughed horribly, "that harlot and I."
"She swore to love, honor and obey?"
"Till death us part!"
"And that was perjury?"
"A joke! A joke!"
"That was not marriage, my son, but blasphemy, the sin beyond forgiveness. The piteous lost creature has never been your wife. She tried to break her way into our poor world of life and love. It is forbidden and she was fearfully wounded. To-day she tried again, and is there, in that forest, with the falling night."
"I told her what she is, straight from the shoulder."
"Who made her so?"
Jesse lowered his head.
"Who made her the living accusation of men's sins? She is the terrible state's evidence, God's evidence, which waits to be released in the Day ofJudgment. You told her straight from the shoulder. Judge not that ye be not judged. Remember that of all the men she knew on earth, you only can plead not guilty."
"Because I married her?" asked Jesse humbly.
"Because you tried. You gave her your clean name, your pure life, your manhood, an act of knightly chivalry. Arthur, Galahad, Perceval, Launcelot, and many other gentlemen who are now at rest, will seek your friendship in the after life. You are being tried as they were tried in that fierce flame of temptation which tests the finest manhood.
"Only a cur would blame the weak. Only a coward would accuse the lost. But in your manhood remember her courage, Jesse. Forgive as you hope for pardon. Keep your life clean, from every touch of evil, but to the world stand up for the honor of the name you gave her."
"I will."
"You forgive?"
"Yes."
"You will pray for her?"
"I will pray."
"And now the hardest test has still to come. For your wife's honor and for the child, you must keeptheir names stainless, clear of all reproach while you await God's judgment. They must leave you, Jesse."
"Oh, not that, sir!"
"Can they stay here in honor?"
"No."
"Can you run away?"
"Never!"
"Then you must part."
Jesse covered his face with his hands, and there against the deepening twilight I saw shadows reaching out from him, as though—slowly the shadows took form of high-shouldered wings and mighty pinions sweeping to the ground.
He looked up, and behold he was changed.
"Pray for me, sir!" he whispered.
Then the priest raised his hand, and gave him the benediction.
* * * * * *
Jesse Closes the Book
It is years now since my lady left me. Never has an ax touched her trees, or any human creature entered her locked house. The rustle of her dress is in the leaves each fall, the pines still echo to hervoice. I hear her footsteps over the new snow, I feel her presence when I read her books. I know her thoughts are spirits haunting me, and all things wait until she comes back. Not until I lost my lady did I ever hear that faint, thin, swaying echo when her grove seemed to be humming tunes. At times when dew was falling, I have heard the pattering of millions and millions of little feet, just as she said, making the grass bend.
The papers often have pictures of my lady, the last as the Electra of Euripides. I love her most of all in the Grecian robes, for once she dreamed that she and I had been Greeks in some lost forgotten life. Perhaps this is not our only life, or our last life, and we may be mated in some place yet to come, where we shall not part.
Tears drop on the paper, and shame poor fool Jesse. The Book says that He shall wipe away all tears. If my bear had only lived, I should not have been so lonely. I wonder if—God help me, I can't write more. The book is finished.
Kate Reviews the Book
The book is not finished. This book of Jesse's life and mine is not finished while she who set us asunder is allowed to live. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, "I will repay." We wait.
What impulse moved my man after four years to enter that tragic house? He read our book, so piteously stained, this heap of paper scrawled with rusty ink. He added parts of a chapter, which I have finished. It is all blotted with tears, this record of his life—childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, humor, passion—veritable growth of an immortal spirit—annals of that love which lifteth us above the earth—and then!
What did the woman gain who stole our happiness? A fairy gold, changing to ashes at the glint of day, for which she lost her soul.
Caught in the leaves there is a long pine needle.So it was among the bull pines of Cathedral Grove that Jesse sought to bury this record. Then knowing that his life was not all his to bury, he sent me this dear treasure, so breaking the long, long silence.
How precious are even the littlest memories of love! Here is the muddy footprint of our kitten, and Jesse's "witness my hand." Here is a scrap of paper, inked and rinsed to reveal some secret writing of those poor outlaws. Pages of wrath from our visitors' book—and the long pine needle.
"Belay thar!" as Jesse said. "We're hunting happiness while sorrow's chasing us. Takes a keen muzzle and runaway legs to catch up happiness, while sorrow's teeth is reachin' for yo' tail."
So I must try to catch up happiness. I have notes here of dear Father Jared, made at the time when he was bringing me with Baby David home. I remember we sat in our deck chairs on the sunny side of the ship, watching a cloud race out in mid-Atlantic. We talked of home.
"You see, my dear"—I copy from my notes—"we have in our blessed isles an atmosphere lending glamour to all things, whether a woman's skin or a slum town. Why, British portraiture and landscape are respected, even by our own art critics, and theyare far from lenient." I replied that I wanted air, air for King David.
"Now when we come to air, that's very serious. North of the Tweed the air produces Scotchness, across St. George's Channel it makes Irishness. Then in the principality of Wales it makes most people Welsh, to say nothing of the Yarkshire vintage, or Zummerzet, or the 'umble 'omes of the East Anglians."
"But that's not what I mean. Some places are so relaxing."
"Or bracing, or just damp, eh? Do you know, my dear, that at Frognall End mushrooms are fourpence a pound."
"That has nothing to do with it."
"Are you sure?" The delicious fairy-look came to his eyes. "Of course they prefer the Russian kind of mushrooms with red tops—warmer to sit on. That's why they love Russia, and Russian hearts stay young. And besides, they like to live where people are really and truly superstitious.
"That's what's so wrong with England. Ah, these board schools! I want to dig up all the board schools and plant red mushrooms. Then, of course, the fairies will each have an endowedmushroom, the children will be properly taught how to stay young, and we shall live happily ever afterward.
"Do you know I called on the prime minister, and, politics apart, he's not at all a bad fellow. We quite agreed, especially about drowning the Board of Education, but then the nonconformist conscience would get shocked, while as to the treasury—bigots, my dear, are getting more bigotty every day."
I was getting mixed.
"So you see, Kate, with mushrooms at fourpence a pound, it stands to reason that they're very plentiful at Frognall End, with fairies in strict proportion: one mushroom—one fairy, that is in English weather. In a dry season, of course, theycansit on the ground, although it wouldn't be quite the thing; whereas in wet weather they really require their mushrooms—and you know they're much too careless to clear up afterward. Yes, at Frognall End young David would get what modern children need so very badly—some wholesome uneducation."
This the father explained in all its branches.
1. Consider the lilies.
2. Take no thought for the morrow.
3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the pure, the merciful, the peacemakers.
4. Suffer the little children to come unto me.
"You see," he added wistfully, "the churches have to preach a heap of doctrines piled twenty centuries high—with truth squashed flat beneath. The poor are very worrisome, too, and there's such a lot of heathen to convert. Why, all of our educated people belong to societies for reforming their neighbors, and yet—and yet—well, fairies have a nicer time than curates."
Frognall End, where my saint is curate-in-charge, is on the river near Windsor, and there I went to live with Baby David. It was there I learned that heartache is a cultivated plant not known along the hedge-rows, that peace may be found as long as the gorse blooms, that love grows lustiest where it has least soil. For the rest, please see the Reverend Jared Nisted'sFairylandwhich is full of most important information for all who are weary and heavy-laden. Its text is from the Logia of Christ: "Raise the stone, and thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood and I am there."
From the first my Heaven-born was interested in milk, later in a growing number of worldly things,but it was not until last winter by the fireside that we really had serious tales all about Wonderland. It's a difficult place to reach, but when you get down the cliff, and feel your neck to make quite sure it's not broken, you come to the witch who has a wooden leg. She lives in the Dust House, where the Dust Fairies want to sleep, only she will worry them with her broom. When they are worried, they dance with the Sunbeam Fairy who comes in through the window, and never breaks the glass.
There's a fairy mare called Jones, who lost her Christian name in a fit of temper, and always searches for it with her hind legs. There's a fairy bear who is not a truly grizzly, though he does live in a grizzly bear skin even when it's ever-so-hot weather. He's a great hunter, too, and likes sportsmen so much that they keep getting fewer, andfewer, andFEWER. The last sportsman was a fairy Doctor called McGee, who perched all day long in a tree, like the fowls-of-the-air, practising bird-calls, while the fairy bear sat underneath taking care of his rifle.
Wonderland is full of stories, especially about Mr. Man. When Mr. Man was stolen away by robbers, and tied up with fiddle-strings in a ferry-house, well—David flatly refused to go to bed until we'd come to the ferry across Dream River.
David's dog came of an alliance between two noble families, so his name is Whiskers Retriever-Dachshund, Esq., P.T.O. David's cat, who died expensively in a pail of cream, was Mrs. Bull Durham. Ginger was a squirrel in the garden, and the dago was a badger who lived a long way off beyond the grumpy cow. Dog, cat, squirrel and badger were all of them robbers, but David would have been quite wretched if he had caught them doing anything dishonest.
Did I mention Mr. Man? He was a hero who lived in fairyland, and didn't believe in fairies, who spoke with a slow, sweet, Texan drawl, who loved and protected all living creatures except politicians, who believed in God, in Mother England, and in Uncle Sam, and who always wrote long letters to his mother. David said his funny prayers for mother, and Whiskers, and all kind friends "and make me good like Mr. Man in Wonderland. Amen. Now, tell me some wobbers, mummie."
Although David has decided to be a tram conductor, he still takes some little interest in other walks of life. Once on the tow-path he asked anold gentleman who was fishing, what he was fishing for, and got the nice reply: "I often wonder." And it was on this path beside the Thames, that one day last November he made a big friendship. His nurse was passing a few remarks with a young man who asked the way to my house, and baby went ahead pursuing his lawful occasions. Curious to know what it felt like to be a real fish, he was stepping into the river to see about it, when the young man interfered.
"Leggo my tail," said David wrathfully, then with sudden defiance, "I got my feet wet anyway, so there!"
"That's so," the young man agreed.
"I say," David grew confident. "Mummie says it's in the paper, so it's all right."
"What's that, sonny?"
"A little boy what went in to see about some fishes, and that man what swum and swum, and I saw'd his picture in the paper. So now 'tend you look de udder way."
"Why, I can't see nothen."
"Youcansee. The game is for me to jump in, and you swim."
"But I can't swim. I'm a sailor."
"Oh, weally? Then what's your name?"
"It's Billy O'Flynn."
"No, but that's weally my guinea-pig, the pink one—Billy O'Flynn. You're not a fairy, Billy?"
"Why, what does you know about fairies?"
"Most truthfully, you know? I don't believe in fairies, but then it pleases mummie."
So Billy sat on his heel making friends with the heaven-born, and Patsy, the nurse, came behind him, craving with cotton-gloved hands to touch the sailor's crisp, short, golden hair, and David gravely tried on the man's peaked cap.
"Yes," Billy agreed, "fairies is rot when there's real gals about, with rosy cheeks a-blushin' an' cotton gloves."
"Lawks! 'Ow you sailors does fancy yourselves," said Patsy, her shy fingers drawn by that magnetic gold of the man's hair.
"Climb on my back and ride," said young O'Flynn to David, "I'll be a fairy horse."
"The cheek of 'im!" jeered Patsy, "fairy 'orse indeed!"
Oh, surely the fairies were very busy about them, tugging at heartstrings, while Billy and Patsy fell head over ears in love, and my pet cupid had themboth for slaves. David rode Billy home, by his august command straight into my brown study, where I sat in my lazy chair.
Was it my voice telling baby to go and get dry feet? Was it my hand grasping Billy's horny paw? For I heard my roaring cañon, saw my cliffs, my embattled sculptured cliffs, and once more seemed to walk with Jesse in Cathedral Grove. I could hear my dear man, speaking across the years, "Say, youngster, when you sawed off that table leg to make your mother's limb, what did you do with the caster?"
I laughed, I cried. Oh, yes, of course I made a fool of myself. For this dear lad came out of Wonderland, this heedless ruffian who knew of my second marriage, who had such a tale to tell of "Madame Scotson." Oh, haven't you heard? Her precious Baby David is illegitimate! Couldn't I hear my neighbor, Mrs. Pollock, telling that story at the Scandal Club? Then a discreet paragraph from Magpie inHome Truthswould be libel enough to brand a public singer. My mother would suggest ever so gently that in the interests of the family, my retirement to a warmer climate—say Italy, would be sosuitable. And madame's illegitimate sonwould be barred from decent schools. Oh, I could see it all!
With his pea-jacket thrown open, wiping his flushed face with a red handkerchief, shifting from one foot to the other in torment of uneasiness, blowing like some sea beast come up from the deeps to breathe, Billy consented not to run away from my hysterics.
Feeling ill-bred and common, I begged Billy's pardon, made him sit down, tried ever so hard to put him at his ease. Poor lad! His father condemned as a felon, his mother such a wicked old harridan, his life, to say the very least, uncouth. Yet somehow out of that rough savage face shone the eyes of a gentleman, and there was manliness in all he said, in everything he did. After that great journey for my sake, how could I let him doubt that he was welcome?
"I know I'm rough," he said humbly, "but you seem to understand. You know I'm straight. You won't mind straight talk unless you're changed, and you're not changed—at least not that way, mum."
Changed! Ah, how changed! The looking-glass had bitter things to tell me, and crying makes me such a frump. I never felt so plain. And theeyes of a young man are often brutally frank to women.
"Don't mind about me, Billy. Say what you've come to tell me."
"Been gettin' it ready to say ever since I started for England. Look here, mum,Iwant to go back to the beginning, to when I was a kid, an' mother kep' that hash house in Abilene. D'ye mind if I speak—I mean about this here Polly?"
I set my teeth, and hoped he would be quick.
"Well, ye see, mum, she only done it for a joke, and the way Jesse treated her—"
"I can't hear this."
"You don't mind if I say that mother and me haven't no use for Jesse?"
"I know that."
"Well, mother put her up to the idea. To get shut of him, she shammed dead. I helped. I say she done right, mum. If she'd let it go at that, I'd take her side right now."
"Billy, was that a real marriage?"
"It was that. She's Jesse's wife all right."
There was something which braced me in his callous frankness. "I hoped," I said. "Go on."
"Well, mother hated Jesse somethin' chronic. Afterward when—well, she had to run for the British possessions, and we met up with Jesse again by accident. He give us a shack and some land, but mother an' me had our pride. How wouldyoulike to take charity? Mother hated him still worse, and don't you imagine I'd go back on her. She's my mother.
"Then you married Jesse. Of course, mother and me both knew that Polly was alive. Father knew too—and father was around when no one but us ever seen him. We knew that Polly was alive, and mother would have given Jesse dead away, only we stopped her. Father said it was none of our business. Father liked Jesse, I thought the world of you, so when mother wrote to Polly, we'd burn her letters."
What an escape for us!
"Then you saved mother from burning in that shack, and afterward she hated Jesse worse, because she couldn't hit him for fear of hurting you. Oh, she was mad because she'd got fond of you.
"And you took us into your ranch. Charity again, and you sailin' under Protestant colors, both of yez. The way mother prayed for Jesse was enough to scorch his bones." Billy chuckled. "I ain't religious—I drink, and mother's professin' Catholic cuts no figure with me.
"Then there's the fightin' between father's gang and Jesse's. Dad got hung, Jesse got the dollars. Rough, common, no-account, white trash, like mother an' me, hears Jesse expounding the Scriptures. We ain't got no feelings same as you."
Poor lad! Poor savage gentleman!
"You saved me from murdering Jesse, and got me away from that ranch. Since then I've followed the sea. There's worse men there than Jesse. I seen worse grub, worse treatment, worse times in general since I quit that ranch. Five years at sea—"
There was the glamour, the greatness of the sea in this lad's eyes, just as in Jesse's eyes. Sailors may be rugged, brutal, fierce—not vulgar. Men reach out into spaces where we sheltered women can not follow.
"Suppose I've grown," said Billy. "Well, mum, I got a notion to go home. Signed as A. B. in a four-masted barkClan Innesout o' Glasgow, for Vancouver with general cargo. I quit her at Vancouver, made Ashcroft by C. P. R., blind baggage mostly, then hit the road afoot. I thought I'd take my departure from the Fifty-Nine."
"The old bush trail?"
"Hard goin', but then I expected, of course,mother'd be there at the ranch, and you, mum, an' Jesse, of course, and—"
"Jones?"
Dreading his news, I fought for this one little respite before he came to all I feared. If Jesse lived, if he only lived! But at thought of the old ranch life, Billy lapsed to a sheepish grin with one quaint glint of mischief. Then with the utmost gravity he asked me if Patsy, my nursemaid, "was claimed".
"There's many a little craft dips her colors for one who wants me to stand by, but still—"
"Patsy is free."
"Faix! Can't help it, I backed my tawps'l."
"Proposed?"
"Save us! It's time to offer a tow when they're union down, and a danger to navigation. Um. I'm off my course."
"You must have found things changed when you got to the ranch."
"Didn't get there. I'd news at Hat Creek, and kep' the road main north. Mother wasn't at the ranch any more. She'd poisoned Jesse's bear. Oh, mum, I don't want to hurt."
"Go on, dear lad."
"Mother'd took up with Polly at Spite House."
"Spite House?"
"It's the Ninety-Nine Mile House. There's a sign-board right across the road:—
THE NINETY-NINEMRS. JESSE SMITHHOTEL, STORE, LIVERY.
"She did that to spite Jesse, and they call the place Spite House."
Just then the maid brought in the tea things, so, cowardly as usual, I played hostess, delaying all the news I dared not face. We gossiped of Captain Taylor's half-bred child, Wee James at school down East, of Tearful George married to that dreadful young person at Eighty Mile House who scratched herself at meals, so Jesse said. At the Hundred-and-Four, where Hundred Mile Hill casts its tremendous shadow on the lowlands northward, Pete Mathson and his wife were making new harness for the Star Pack-train. There a shadow fell on our attempt at gossip—why does the conversation always stop at twenty minutes past? Billy began to tell me about Spite House.
Spite House! How right Father Jared was. "Sword versus dragon," he told us, "is heroic: sword versus cockroach is heroics. Don't draw your sword on a cockroach."
This much I tried to explain to young O'Flynn, whose Irish blood has a fine sense of humor. But the smile he gave me was one of pity, turning my heart to ice. "Jesse," he said, "made that mistake. That's why I've come six thousand miles to warn you. Howly Mother, if I'd only the eddication to talk so I'd be understood!
"I'm going to try another course. See here, mum. You've heered tell of Cachalot whales. They runs say eighty tons for full whales—one hundred fifty horse-power, dunno how many knots, full of fight to the last drop of blood. That stands for Jesse.
"And them sperm whales is so contemptuous of the giant squid they uses her for food. She's small along of a sperm whale, but she's mean as eight python snakes with a devil in the middle. That'll do for Polly.
"Well, last voyage I seen one of them she-nightmares strangle a bull Cachalot, and the sight turned me sick as a dog. Now, d'ye understand what Polly's doing? I told you I hated Jesse. I told youstraight to your face why I hated him. And now, mum, I'm only sorry for poor Jesse."
It was then, I think, that I began really to be terrified. Never in the old days at the ranch had Billy been off his guard even with me. Now he let me know his very heart. I could not help but trust him, and it was no small uneasiness which had brought the lad to England.
I had fought so hard, schooling myself to think of Jesse as of the dead, with reverent tenderness. Little by little I had filled a bleak and empty widowhood with mother duties, womanly service, my holy art of song, and harmless fairies, making the best of it while age and plainness were my destiny. But now of a sudden my poor peace was shattered, and that gift of imagination which had imagined even contentment, played traitor and made havoc. Laws, conventions, mean respectabilities, seemed only cobwebs now. Love swept them all away, and nothing mattered. Jesse! Jesse!
"Them devil-squids," he was saying, "has a habit of throwing out ink to fog the water, so you won't see what they're up to until they lash out to grapple. That's where they're so like this Polly. She's a fat, hearty, good-natured body, and it's the surest factshe's kind to men in trouble. Anybody can have a drink, a meal and a bed, no matter how broke he is; and Spite House is free hospital for the district. She'll sit up nights nursing a sick man, and, till I went an' lived there, I'd have sworn she was good as they make 'em. That's the ink.
"Then you begins to find out, and what I didn't see, mother would tell me. She'd been three years there. Besides, I seen most of what we calls sailor towns, and I'd thought I'd known the toughest there was in the way of boardin'-houses; but rough house in 'Frisco itself is holiness compared with what goes on there under the sign of Mrs. Jesse Smith. That name ain't exactly clean."
"That's enough, I think, if you don't mind. I'd rather have news about our old friends—Captain Taylor, for instance, and Iron Dale, and how is dear Doctor McGee?"
"Dear Doctor McGee, is it? Well, you see he lived within a mile of Polly. She got him drinkin', skinned him at cards, then told him he'd best shoot himself. The snow drifts through his house.
"And Iron Dale? Oh, of course, he was Jesse's friend, too. I'd forgot. She got him drunk and went through him. That money was for payinghis hands at the Sky-line—wasn't his to lose, so he skipped the country. The mines closed down and there wasn't no more packing contracts for Jesse."
I began to understand what Billy meant, and it was with sick fear I asked concerning my dear man's stanchest friend, his banker, Captain Boulton Taylor.
"You'd better know, mum." There was pain in the lad's face, reluctance in his voice. "Being the nearest magistrate, he tried to down Polly for keeping a disorderly house. But then, as old man Taylor owned, he didn't know enough law to plug a rat hole. There ain't no municipality, so Spite House is outside the law. But Polly's friends proved all the good she done to men who was hurt, or sick, or broke. Then she showed up how her store and hotel was cutting into the trade of Hundred Mile House. She brung complaints before the government, so Taylor ain't magistrate now. The stage stables got moved from Hundred Mile to Spite House. The post-office had to follow. Now he's alone with only a Chinaman. He's blind as a bat, too, and there's no two ways about it—Bolt Taylor's dying."
"Is there no justice left?"
"Dunno about that. Sheusesa lot of law."
I dared not ask about Jesse. To sit still was impossible, to play caged tiger up and down the room would only be ridiculous. Still, Billy's poisonous tobacco excused the opening of a window, so I stood with my back turned, while a November night closed on the river and the misty fields.
How could I leave my baby? How could I possibly break with Covent Garden—where my understudy, a fearsome female, ravened for the part? The cottage would never let before our river season. "Madame Scotson has been called abroad on urgent private business."
"Of course," the lad was saying, "when Polly got to be postmistress, she handled Jesse's letters, held the envelopes in the steam of a kettle until they'd open, and gummed them when she was through—if she sent them on. She found out who he dealt with and got them warned not to trust him. There's no letters now."
"She wouldn't dare!"
"No? You remember he sent you that book you wrote together at the ranch?"
"You know that!"
"I read it at Spite House. She had a heap offun in the barroom with Jesse's letter. Her cat eyes flamed like mad."
"There was no letter."
"She made a paper house of it, and set it alight to show how Jesse burned her home in Abilene. She was drunk, too, that night. But that's nothin'. Glad you didn't hear them yarns she put about the country. Jesse wasn't never what I'd call popular, but he ain't even spoken to now by any white man. His riders quit, his Chinamen cleared out. Then she bought Brown's ferry, had the cable took away, the scow sent adrift, and Surly Brown packed off. She'd heard that Jesse lived by his rifle, so she's cut him off from his hunting grounds. There's nothing left to hunt east of the Fraser."
"He's starving?"
"Shouldn't wonder."
"Billy!"
"Yes'm."
"How soon can I get a ship?"
"None before Saturday."
"Go on. Tell me the worst."
"The signs may read coarse weather or typhoon. I dunno which yet. She's been locatin' settlers along them old clearings in the black pine and, judging by samples I'd seen, she swept the jails."
"Why more than one?" I asked, "why all that expense when one would do?"
"Who'd blackmail Polly afterward? She's no fool. She says straight out in public she'd shoot the man who killed him. But them thugs is planted in hungry land, they see his pastures the best in the district, and you know as well as I do he's a danger to all robbers. Why, even when sportsmen and tourists comes along his old gun gets excited. He hates the sight of strangers, anyway.
"Now, all these years she's goading him to loose out and break the law. That's why she's got the constable protecting her at Spite House. Once she can get him breaking the law she has all them thugs—so many dollars a head—as witnesses. It ain't murder she wants. She says that when she went to his ranch that time Jesse sent her a message by old Mathson, 'I won't let her off with death.'
"She won't let him off with death. Twice she has put him to shame in public. She'll never rest until she gets him hanged. There's only one thing puzzles me. I see it's his silence, the waiting, which makes Polly wake up and screech at night. But I dunno myself—has Jesse lost his nerve?"
"How do you know all this?"
"She told mother everything."
"And your mother told you. Why?"
"Because—say, mum, you remember the thing your husband called Bull Durham?"
"Brooke."
"Fancy Brooke, the thing which Polly kept like a pet lap-dog. The thing which turned state's evidence to hang my poor old dad. Brooke's come to Spite House as Polly's manager. Yes, now you know why mother's got no more use for Polly—told me I'd best come to you and give you warning. That thing is at Spite House, and mother's gone."
"I see it all now. But one last question. How did you get to England?"
"Do you remember, mum, that my poor dad just thought the world of Jesse?"
"I remember, a legacy for you,—some ponies."
"Well, Jesse found out somehow that I was at Spite House. He sent me the value of them ponies, with only a receipt for me to sign. I reckon, mum, that ruined and well-nigh starving, he rode a hundred and sixty miles through the black pines, because he's honest. That's why I spent the money comin' to you. I wants to help."