The New Missioner/Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
BESET by an intense physical and mental weariness, the week which followed Lutie's death remained in Frances's memory as a season of gloom and confusion, punctuated by the comments of Mrs. Nitschkan and her circle, the sobs of Ethel and the platitudes of Carrothers, to whom Garvin had made public amends for past affronts by asking him to conduct the funeral services.
But far more than Ethel's tears or Mrs. Thomas's sighs did Carrothers's consolatory offices, confined to remarks of a tritely comforting nature, wear upon Frances's spirit; and yet, had she but known it, the "lunger preacher" showed her a real, if unconscious, mercy by reserving his most stirring commonplaces for the burst of oratory which he felt fitly signalised so ornate and flower-decked an occasion as Lutie's funeral.
As he announced at the close of an hour's shrill and stumbling address, his few words were invested with a double significance, and served, not only to pay tribute to the dead, but were also a valedictory to his profession.
His voice shook plaintively and tears filled his eyes as he attributed this act of renunciation to his failing health, which required an outdoor occupation for its restoration. But it is doubtful if he was wholly deserving of the sympathy he thus exacted, for as a shepherd of souls he had ever found the pasturage offered him poor and scant; and the carpentering trade, to which he now eagerly turned, satisfied all the yearnings of his soul and gave play to the real skill of his hands.
To the censorious, it may have appeared that Carrothers dwelt more upon his transit from one activity to another than upon Lutie's passing from life to death; but Zenith was not disposed to cavil. The double-barrelled oration, the elaborate preparations, the heavily gorgeous ceremonial, all satisfied to the full the village sense of importance. If the eyes of the world were not upon the camp now, they should be, and that reflection was in itself ample cause for pride; but through those wearing days preceding the funeral Frances was conscious of an ever-increasing admiration for Garvin. He was constantly appealed to to decide matters of opinion—the proper width of satin ribbon—roses or lilies—which of the various costly laces should enshroud the frail figure which lay in sculptured, alabaster indifference to the gauds with which she had struggled so feverishly to conceal and decorate the menacing shape of Death.
Garvin gave to these matters his complete, if often perplexed, consideration. It was evident that he was determined that everything, even down to the smallest detail, should be directed in accordance with what Lutie would have preferred and what he personally loathed; but as soon as the last possible tribute, the most infinitesimal grain of "mint, anise, and cummin" had been paid, he had clasped Frances's hand strongly for a moment, muttered some broken words of appreciation of her kindness, and journeyed away, none knew whither. That he had taken Angel with him, in charge of two Chinese servants, was, however, a matter of heartfelt congratulation throughout the village.
"My patience!" said Mrs. Thomas, shaking her head solemnly. "Every woman in this camp ought to be right down on her marrow-bones praisin' the Lord that Walt didn't ask none of us to keep that child while he was gone. He told several of my gentlemen friends that he was going away, an' one of 'em mentioned it the other evenin' while I was entertainin' callers, just spoke of it casual-like, you know, the way men do. My patience! It give me such a turn that I mos' fainted dead away. I says real quick to Dan Mayhew, 'Hand me that newspaper to fan with.' 'Air you sick, Marthy?' he asks. 'Not but what I may be worse,' I answers; an' I tell you I spoke from my heart.
"Well, I bore up as well as I could all evening, all the time tryin' my hardest to think what was the best to do, 'cause, as you girls all know, Walt's awful good, an' our men are all more or less obligated to him, an' if he should be goin' to ask me to keep Angel, I didn't see how I could refuse. I thought an' thought about it all night, an' the next mornin' I got up bright an' early, tore my bed to pieces, an' made it up all fresh, turnin' the covers back, ready to jump in at a moment's notice. Then I called the children together, an' I says, very solemn: 'Now, I want you kids to listen to what Mommie says, an' it's this: I may be took very sick before the day's over; I can't tell yet; but if the Lord should see fit to afflict me, which you'll know by me groanin' in bed, you ain't to show no surprise. If you do, it's a lickin' apiece. You mind now.'"
Her three bosom friends nodded sympathetically. Mrs. Landvetter sighed deeply and clicked her lace needles together, always with her an unfailing sign of mental perturbation. "Ven I heard he go, I tremble all over like yelly for two whole days," she murmured.
"I went a-fishin'," said Mrs. Nitschkan happily.
"I wasted no time in layin' out a strip of red flannel," remarked Mrs. Evans decisively, "pinned it round my arm, so as to have it handy to tie my face up in if Walt come a-knockin' at the door. There's nothin' like an ulcerated tooth in such emergencies. It stands for itself. It don't need no explanations, an' it's known to last a week or more, an' take your mind off everything else."
Her companions hastened to pay her their accustomed tribute of admiration. No matter what the perplexities of the situation, they were so easily dominated by Mrs. Evans that her awed friends could almost see the eagle's wings with which she soared above all mundane difficulties.
"We ain't all got your wits, Effie," Mrs. Thomas gently reminded her, "but in our poor weak way we done the best we could. I had a kind of a scare that the burden might fall on Missioner, an' I knew if it did, all the half-saved souls in this camp would jus' fall back into the pit, 'cause she'd have time for nothin' but that devil child."
"That's true as you're alive!" agreed Mrs. Nitschkan, rising and buttoning her man's coat about her burly figure. "But entertainin' as you ladies are, I got to go home an' finish my house-cleanin'."
Had a bolt of lightning fallen from a clear sky it would have produced about the same effect as this apparently simple and matter-of-fact announcement. An expression of dismay spread over each slightly paling face, furtive glances were exchanged, and one or two of the ladies opened their mouths as if about to speak, and then hastily closed them; but if Mrs. Nitschkan noticed these signs of consternation, she had reasons of her own for ignoring them, and it was not until she was well out of sight that her companions permitted themselves a free expression of opinion.
"She's a-goin' a-gipsyin' again!" said Mrs. Thomas in a tense, sibilant whisper. "You all know there ain't nothin' else on earth or heaven that can ever make her clean house. Yes, she's a-fixin' to go gipsyin'. Effie," turning appealingly to Mrs. Evans, "can't you stop her?"
"I ain't never been able to before," replied Mrs. Evans shortly, with a tightening of the lips. It was always bitter to her to admit failure.
"Still, she von't neffer leave until after de raspberry festival," advanced Mrs. Landvetter hopefully. "She von't neffer go till she see how dat turn oudt; vedder Myrtie or Susie gets Preacher."
Mrs. Evans threw her one steel-hard, flashing glance. "They's no question of that kind, Mrs. Landvetter," she answered haughtily. "That matter is practically settled. Myrtle, for all she's so brazen, has no show."
"'Course," agreed Mrs. Thomas, in hasty and specious compromise. "It's what we've all said time an' time again, times without number," her imagination soaring. "But, girls, trouble is comin' thick an' fast on us if Sadie is really thinkin' of goin' gipsyin'. It's worse most than havin' to take care of Angel, for it means her four kids, the worst here or anywheres else, turned loose on this camp."
But to explain in a measure this seemingly imminent catastrophe with which Mrs. Nitschkan's friends felt themselves unable to cope: For some reason, perhaps the call of her gipsy blood, at intervals of two or three years, the mountain woman became beset with longing for a life more thoroughly in the open than the one she enjoyed. She was one of those restless, variable beings to whom the "long, brown path," with its thousand possibilities and surprises, makes an irresistible appeal.
When this desire of the hills came upon her, she stayed not upon the order of her going, but joyously rose up to follow her vagrant impulses.
After some slight pretence of setting her house in order, which she dignified by the name of house-cleaning, she would depart, taking with her a camping outfit, and would be gone a month, six weeks, two months, at last returning hale, tanned, and hearty, full of new life and laughter, her larder enriched with bear and venison, fish and fowl, and her tongue quick with a score of fisherman's and hunter's yarns to enliven the evenings for her husband and the lean, brown prospectors, when they gathered in her cabin to play poker and pinochle through the long winter nights.
"It ain't no use sayin' a word to her," Mrs. Thomas continued to mourn. " Last time we got wind of her traipsin' off, we got the Bishop to talk to her, an' he did; but as near as I can make out she jus' twisted him around her finger. He says to her in that mild way he has, he says: 'Mis' Nitschkan, frankly now, do you think you ought to evade your sacred duties of wife an' mother, by takin' to the woods this way?'
"'Gosh a'mighty!' answers Nitschkan, as quick as you please, 'when I been in the woods I see the mother birds shove the young ones outen the nest an' make 'em learn to fly, whether they wanted to or not. They was give their wings to fly with, wasn't they? Now, Bishop, kids was give their hands, an' feet, an' eyes to use, an' the way to teach 'em anything is to make 'em use 'em, an' give their mommie a chanst to rest sometimes. Them kids'll get along all right, if you don't bother.'
"An' would you believe it, the Bishop says to me afterward: 'I do' know,' he says, 'if Mis' Nitschkan ain't a-showin' a beautiful trust, leavin' her children in the hands of the Lord like that.' But, as I told him, right to his face, too, I wisht she'd take to showin' her trust some way that wouldn't wear her friends to the bone.
"Well, you girls know how quick I am to feel things, an' for the past week or two I been sensin' trouble, smellin' it like, y' know. Here's Bob Flick up here, an' everybody knows he's been crazy about the Black Pearl for years; an' Shock O'Brien as jealous as can be. I tell you it means a shootin' affray or somethin'."
Mrs. Evans's eyebrows twitched impatiently: "You mean a shootin' scrape or a cuttin' affray, Marthy. Don't you never read the papers? But I guess there's no danger of such things. I guess you think trouble's comin' 'cause you feel kind o' uneasy yourself. Marthy," with an irritated and accusing glance, "it's been some time since Dan Mayhew sassed your best friends and throwed it in their faces that he was goin' down to ask you to marry him; but although he sits in your parlour night after night, you ain't seen fit to confide in them as have hauled you out of too many bogs to be receivin' any such treatment."
At this indictment of her sins of omission Mrs. Thomas's pink and white face flushed deeply and she pouted like a child.
"I ain't made no choice," twisting her handkerchief between her fingers. "It's—it's more fun bein' a widow than I thought it was goin' to be, an'," in defiant pride, "they's more than Dan Mayhew wants me; they's—they's"
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Evans contemptuously, "I make no doubt you're willin' to waste your time on a dozen of 'em. Seth not six months in his grave, an' you a-entertainin' callers every evenin'. No wonder you're the talk of the camp."
Mrs. Thomas stirred rebelliously. "I don't care, I don't care," she cried; "they're bound to talk about somebody. It ain't so long since they was clatterin' their tongues over you, Effie Evans."
Mrs. Evans winced, but nevertheless maintained her habitual attitude of superior and slightly contemptuous aloofness. "They ain't never spoke light of me with any man," she said with meaning.
The blow drew blood. "That's your blamed luck," retorted Mrs. Thomas bitterly. "You know very well what the Psalmist or somebody, I don't just remember who,—says,—I heard it once in a recitation, 'Be you chaste as ice an' pure as snow, there's always somebody mean an' ornery enough to throw mud at you.'"
"Vell, vell, vell," put in Mrs. Landvetter soothingly, "this ain't a-decidin' vat ve goin' to do about Mis' Nitschkan."
"I don't see nothin' to do at the present time," said Mrs. Evans, "unless we lay the matter before Missioner; she might have some influence with Sadie."
"That's so," assented Mrs. Thomas, with restored cheerfulness; "it's her business to be always ready with spiritual advice an' to bear our burdens for us; though I will say, an' I got a right to say it, for no one feels kinder to her than I do, that she don't always take to burden-bearin' as cheerful an' willin' as a person ought to that's got that privilege."
The three then, having decided upon this course of action, wasted no time in acquainting Frances with the nature of this especial burden they proposed to bind upon her shoulders; but although she listened, as always, patiently to the plaints borne her, the matter of Mrs. Nitschkan's impending gipsying appeared too remote and unimportant an event to command her entire attention; and if the worried little group had realised how quickly she dismissed the subject from her mind, they would have considered Mrs. Thomas fully justified in her criticisms. There were, however, several reasons, reasons more potent and obscure than Frances herself dreamed, for her unusual preoccupation. Not given to introspection—the circumstances of her life had precluded that—she ascribed this strange, new absorption to one cause—the inheritance of wealth which had suddenly befallen her, as with unwonted playfulness she described it to Herries. A poor treasure to the average gold-seeker, but one which the old man at least appreciated; for the mine-owner had left his house open in the care of servants during his absence, and in those last few words with Frances, just before his departure, had besought her to make free use of his library, and she had, with a grateful heart, accepted his invitation.
She had always been fond of reading, but her life had been too busy a one, her faculties too much trained in one direction—the effort "to soothe and to solace, to help and to heal the sick world that leaned on her"—to permit her to give either time or an undivided attention to books; but Garvin's interest and enthusiasm had aroused and stimulated hers, and she was becoming more and more conscious of developing mental powers which demanded nutriment, and stretched out eager tentacles toward the rich sustenance on his shelves.
With the end in view of obtaining time for reading, she had, with her usual energy and by the exercise of her superior executive ability, so far succeeded in systematising her work that she was able, for the first time in her life, to claim as her own several hours a day. These she devoted to the new and fascinating diversion of reading books; and now and again occurred seasons when, during the long brilliant days of summer, and sometimes far into the fresh, cool nights, she read, read with the avidity of the eager and seeking mind long deprived of food.
In those weeks of Garvin's absence she went through many books, tearing the heart from some of them, and deeply pondering and rereading others. She was too familiar with the Bible not to turn instinctively to the best and most sincere literature; but she was also too lacking in any universal range of acquirement or cultivation, too fully of her own time, adequately to appreciate the great masters of earlier eras, those mellow men of the world whose style but reflected the polished and tempered steel of their minds.
It was to more modern masters, to Emerson and Hawthorne that she naturally and finally turned. To Emerson the mystic in her made quick response, and not only the mystic, but the lover of unhampered, independent thought and action. To her he was always "the friend and helper of all who would live the life of the spirit"; and throughout her life, phrases and para- graphs from his essays remained in her memory as shining strands of living light.
She would sometimes sit beside her table far into the night reading his pages, until the lamp burned dim and low; but it was by some instinctive selection of a fitting environment that she reserved Hawthorne for the soft, scented gloom of the pine glades, or the rocky ledges of the hillsides, where the sound of the plashing, falling water sang in her ears and the wind whirled the sun-flecked, flickering shadows of the aspens over her open book. With the wood-silence about her, the wind stirring the hair on her brow, she read those mysterious, beauty-haunted pages, her imagination captured and enthralled until she did not feel the wind, nor see the shadows chase and fly. Into the tales she plunged as might one into some deep, limpid pool, and rose invigorated with the cold, pure refreshment of the "ethereal water."
But she did not always read. There were hours when she wandered up the slopes of the hillsides and into the depths of pine gloom, when she stood on the edge of steeps which fell away so sharply and abysmally that the eye plunged happily through the dense bracken and the brown and purple trunks of the giant pines into the deeps of deer-haunted shadow. Again she would wander to some more level spot, where the pines grew low and spreading, their branches twisted and distorted into strange and grotesque shapes by the mighty mountain winds; but if bent and stunted, they were strong. They had prevailed, and stood but the more deeply rooted in the soil, ever sending out new buttresses against the rushing legions of the enemy. Their flat, mossy tops they spread in air, black, green, blue, russet, silver, in the sea of sunlight they floated on; but beneath the branches brooded the peace won through resistance, and in the long aisles was the dim, mysterious light of the pine woods, sunlight falling through close-meshed nets of green.
It was always very still there; the foot sank noiselessly into the faded brown carpet of last year's needles, and there was fragrance, austere, balsamic—and music.
About the high, white peaks the winds roar and scream, or wail and mourn down the gulches, or whisper and murmur among the aspens and maples; but in the pine forests it sings the songs of the sea; sometimes the rippling melody of the surf washing softly against the shore, and again the organ roll of the solemn, majestic ocean surges; but always the sea music.
Ah, there is magic in the pine forests! One hears untranslatable harmonies; one sees strange subtleties of colour, and the fragrance is the complement of both. Frances loved the pine glooms. She would sometimes spend hours within the shadowy aisles, an ascetic, black-robed figure, with pale, uplifted face, drawn back, it would seem, by the weight of hair; but there was nothing ascetic in her glowing eyes and smiling mouth as she listened to the sea-music the wind sang to the pines, and inhaled the pine fragrance with a rapture which no flower scents could give her; until the grey, shack- ling chrysalis of her past life would fall from her and she would feel the soar and lift of wings, while from some depth of being there welled the thrilling impulse of joy.
And daily the world as she had known it in her busy, practical life—a sordid, cruel, and ugly fact—became to her as fugitive and unsubstantial as a smoke wreath. Its boundaries, once so fixed and solid, melted into new and bewildering vistas. She awakened each morning to golden mirages pictured on rainbow horizons. What wonder that her face changed, her smile and her eyes deepened, until Zenith speculated freely upon probable causes. She had a beautiful secret singing in her heart; a secret with an inner meaning still unsuspected by herself. She thought it whispered to her of new worlds, fair, shining worlds of light and beauty, to which she, a shabby, plain, uneducated little Missionary, had discovered the open sesame.
Garvin, too, held the key. Of that she was sure. Had not his face shone and his eyes brightened whenever he spoke to her of books and of nature? It was a secret they two held together.
At last she knew a deep, personal happiness, never dreaming that the causes to which she attributed it were inadequate. But for her, old things were forever passed away and all things were made new. Her nights were white, her days were gold. New streams of life and joy flowed to her from illimitable sources, washing away old conceptions and revealing to her fresh and shimmering dawns of wonder.
We treat birth and death as vast, far-off events; one the beginning, the other the close of all earthly experiences; but in reality they are daily and hourly episodes in consciousness tending to one end—life. To stagnate is to perish; to stretch out welcoming hands to to-morrow with whatever it may bring is to continue to exist. "Ye must be born again!" is the fiat of life; but equally so is St. Paul's triumphant pæan: "I die daily."