Spider Boy/Chapter 10
Jack on this occasion made no further references to Ambrose's adventures in Hollywood, offered him no more advice. The fact remained that he had already expressed himself so definitely on the subject that repetition would not have revealed his opinions more clearly. It is not strange, therefore, that Ambrose should sit up considering his friend's views and their implications for a long time after he had retired to his little room, chaste and white in the candlelight. A Spanish chest of drawers, a bed, a chair, and a crucifix were the only furniture. The silence outside was broken into sporadically by the singing of a burro or the hooting of an owl.
It was dreadfully confusing to Ambrose to find Jack in agreement with the creatures of Hollywood. He had expected his friend to support him in his intransigent attitude, but his friend, inexplicably, had failed him in this crisis. With Jack behind him, Ambrose felt that he could have bucked the entire moving picture industry. Alone, especially with Jack on the side of the enemy, he was not so sure what he could do. If Jack persisted in his opposition Ambrose would have no moral support whatever, a reflection which convinced him that if further efforts were made to enlist his services in the ranks of the cinema he would lack the resolution to longer fight. The worst of it was that he now believed that any one of his friends would take exactly the same stand that Jack had taken. He must seem absolutely a fool to refuse to accept the amount of money that had been offered him.
He had one consolation, it came to him at last. He remembered that he was in a haven, hundreds of miles from the spot where playwrights were seduced to become prostitutes for the motion pictures. Unless Jack nagged him—and he suspected it was not in Jack's nature to do this—he could live here very happily for a time. No one could do anything about him, after all. No one, as a matter of fact, knew his whereabouts. To avoid furnishing a clue he would not send for his bags at present. If he purchased a few necessities, he could easily do without his suitcases in this out-of-the-way place. Consoled by this train of reasoning he was able to fall into a refreshing sleep.
In the morning his peace of mind received further support. Jack refrained from any reference to the unwelcome subject, chatting at breakfast about his collection of Indian silver. Later he led Ambrose out to the patio from whence they climbed a rude ladder to the roof of the adobe. Here Ambrose was offered a superb view of the snow-capped mountains, the fields below, the silver-domed capitol of Santa Fe, the towers of the cathedral, and, dotted here and there, the yellow and red adobe houses which somehow fitted into the friendly landscape as the habitations of the peasants do in Tuscany. Burros toiled up the steep distant paths and Mexican women in bright-hued shawls walked with burdens on their heads.
What do you want to do? Jack demanded. We can lounge around the patio or walk about Santa Fe or drive to the Santo Domingo Pueblo or to Taos, to see Edith Dale. If we go to Taos we might stop on the way at the Bouquet Ranch for lunch: Mrs. Crist is worth a special visit. Or we might go to Chimayo to watch them make bad modern blankets and look in on the divine old Spanish chapel at Sanctuario.
There seemed to be plenty of delightful things to do. Ambrose further reflected that wherever he was likely to go around this country the natives would babble in a language that he could not understand: consequently he would feel as isolated as if he had remained here in the house alone with Jack. He left the choice of diversion to his host.
Later in the morning, however, a lady publicist living at Santa Fe telephoned to ask Jack if he could bring his distinguished guest to lunch, an invitation which Jack accepted without consulting Ambrose.
But how did she learn I was here?
Oh, everybody knows everything about everybody in Santa Fe. Whether it is relayed telepathically through the mountain air or whether the servants gossip I don't know. Anyway we have no secrets from each other. We learned long ago it would be impossible to have and so we don't try.
Marna Frost lived in another adobe house, painted pink. The interior was hung exclusively with Indian and Spanish trophies: beaded moccasins and belts, splendid, ancient feather head-dresses, tassels of scarlet peppers and of multi-coloured ears of corn, ranging from black to magenta, sconces of embossed tin, and Spanish santos, tortured conceptions of the locally favourite saints, painted in vegetable colours on wood. The more elaborate of these were carved out in three dimensions and stood on the mantel-shelf.
Jack had described Marna Frost to Ambrose with some thoroughness. She was a poet of the New England school who had suffered several unfortunate experiences of the heart. One affair in particular had left her avowedly bereft of future desire for the companionship of man—at least the white man. Her compensation had been the discovery of the Indian, an entirely fortuitous revelation made to her during a casual visit to the Southwest. The Indian had proved so entirely satisfactory that she had disposed of her old home at Stockbridge in the Berkshires, furnished with pine in accordance with the best local traditions, and removed permanently to Santa Fe where, within a surprisingly short time, she had built up and decorated a new home that seemingly had succeeded in obliterating all memory of her unhappy past.
The red man, apparently, had immediately rewarded her. If he did not greet her approach with enthusiasm, at any rate he did not attempt to run away. Gradually then, this interest in, and an ensuing sentimentalized rationalization of, individuals broadened so that it embraced whole tribes and eventually the race itself. Marna Frost enthusiastically devoted herself to the cause, visiting Washington to beard the legislature on behalf of her protégés, lecturing at large and sending forth from her pink house quantities of pamphlets of a propagandist nature. So ardent had she become in this her chosen field, that she was soon dubbed the Little Mother of the Indian, an appeilation which seemed inexact as a physical description of this Amazon.
Marna Frost, indeed, stood nearly six feet tall and was built proportionately. Her massive ankles were set on pedestal-like feet. Her face, clean-cut beneath piles of coarse red hair, streaked with iron-grey, resembled the face of a horse, her great Roman nose ploughing down between her furrowed cheeks. Rugged was the adjective that would have adequately described this woman of fifty, but from coast to coast in the homes of representatives and senators she was known as the Little Mother of the Indian. Usually a profanely abusive epithet preceded the diminutive adjective.
After listening to the foregoing description, Ambrose was actually relieved when he met the woman. Her manner did not appear to be unduly aggressive. She seemed infinitely less dangerous on the whole than the females of Hollywood with their predatory instincts. Her surprisingly gentle greeting more than made up for her weather-beaten appearance. She asked Ambrose pleasant questions about his play, questions which did not task his limited talent for articulate explanation. It was only after they were seated at table, eating an excellent luncheon of Mexican dishes in her attractive dining-room, which had been furnished by despoiling the humble interiors of local farmers, that she broached her favourite topic. Jack had warned him that this might prove tiresome, but Ambrose, who had never even considered the Indian before save in his literary or historical aspects, found it absorbing. The customs and habits, religious and social, of these Pueblo tribes to which she had given her special allegiance, became for the moment of vast importance to him. He was thrilled to learn that two tribes had lived for centuries—perhaps for thousands of years—twenty-five miles apart, never intermarrying, speaking different languages, each tribe even with its distinctive costume. It was solely in the practice of religion that the Indian of one tribe met his brother of the other on the same ground, and even here there were disagreements.
The Indian derives from the soil, Miss Frost was saying as she lighted a cheroot, and to the soil he returns thanksgiving. Unless we realize this we cannot comprehend him. All his prayers are directed towards the earth. His whole being is in communication with it. That is why the Hopis dance their snake dance. Through the lustrated serpents which they take in their mouths they send their yearly message back to Mother Earth. In the spring, at the Taos Pueblo, no wheel is permitted to roll over the ground. It is believed that a rolling wheel would crush the pregnant Mother's offspring.
More and more Ambrose fell under the spell of the soft voice of the Little Mother of the Indian as she detailed further peculiarities of the noble redskin. When she described his manifold sufferings at the hands of white politicians, Ambrose was almost ready to weep in sympathy. Bereft of his land whenever oil or any other valuable commodity was discovered on it, tossed at some senator's whim from a fertile valley where his ancestors had ploughed for generations into an arid desert, in face of all adversity he maintained a stoic indifference. At the end of this discourse Ambrose received with enthusiasm Marna Frost's apparently impersonal but none the less warm proposal that they should all go together on the morrow to visit the Pueblo at Santo Domingo.
Ambrose's initial experience with the Indian was disillusioning. These particular Indians did not appear to be very clean, either in their personal appearance or in their households. The pieces of rotting flesh, strung on lines too low for passing heads to miss, hanging thus till eventually they were tossed into the pot, did not incline Ambrose towards assenting to Marna Frost's cordial invitation to assist at lunch on a future occasion with some of the more friendly of her protégés. A casual word more than betrayed his feeling.
But they are clean! Marna declared passionately. I tell you that they belong to the earth and the earth belongs to them. As for the rest, bathing is the curse of civilization. We wash our personalities out in the morning tub.
Some of the handsomer men, picturesque with their hair bobbed in front and at the sides, and tied in a peculiar knot at the back, their gay-coloured garments, and their high, red deer-skin moccasins, fastened with buttons of wrought silver, in form so like the shoes of renaissance Italian pages, gave him a more favourable view of the aborigines. The rows of adobe huts with the glamorous inhabitants standing before them, or sitting, cross-legged, drilling turquoise, the great rounded kivas with their projecting ladders, leading into the depths, silhouetted against the blue sky, and particularly the Spanish church with two enchanting piebald horses painted on the wall of the balcony that adorned the façade, completely won his heart, but recently disordered by so many disagreeable emotions. Like a refrain, dominating his impressions, through all that he observed, ran Marna Frost's stately explanation: All the old men do it: it's an old tribal custom.
With her red friends Marna Frost conversed fluently in Spanish, now and then interjecting a few words in their own familiar tongue. Rather it might be said that she addressed them, as it could not be said that they reciprocated to any great extent. For the most part they replied with little monosyllabic grunts. It was pretty and romantic, this relationship, and Ambrose felt that he too would like to play about a little with these gentle redskins. The fact that he could understand neither of their languages awarded them additional merit in his eyes. In this mood he was easily betrayed into expressing an unwonted degree of appreciation, avowing himself as a deathless admirer of Santo Domingo and describing the day, not untruthfully, as one of the high spots in a career which, until lately, had been singularly free of high spots.
It was obvious that Miss Frost regarded these naïve outbursts with approval, but she contented herself for the moment with adding extra prods to his imagination, stimulating him thereby to further feats of commendation.
It was only on the drive back to Santa Fe that Marna Frost suddenly and surprisingly became more personal.
You were made for this life, Mr. Deacon, she cried. It is your duty to devote yourself to it in the future.
Ambrose stared at her with as much amazement as if nothing had yet amazed him during this western hegira.
We must arrange it at once, she announced firmly if dispassionately. For the moment, of course, you are visiting Jack, but to work together we must live under the same roof, break bread together. Fortunately, my house is quite large enough to permit us to carry out such a plan. When you are not in Washington attacking the House of Representatives you shall make your home with me. Who knows what may come of it? . . . She rewarded him with a terrifying smile, apparently intended to be coy. . . . Together we may accomplish treble what I had set out to accomplish alone. There should, indeed, be no problem that the two of us together could not solve.
But Miss Frost, protested Ambrose, again besieged by alarm, I am out here to rest. I am going . . .
You have given me evidence today, Marna Frost insisted, of your devotion to the cause. Your better nature will not permit you to ignore the call. However little influence my poor power of speech may have on you, you cannot refuse the plea of a great race.
Hang it, Marna, Jack put in, the race isn't calling Ambrose. Can't you leave him alone? He's had enough trouble. After all he's a playwright.
I have considered that fact, Marna Frost remarked gravely. It is one of the reasons I have come to my decision. Think what dramas, what ballets and masques, he can write about the Indian to be shown around the country! His very important connections with Hollywood will indubitably make it possible for us to create a vast moving picture . . .
Don't speak to Ambrose about moving pictures! Jack interjected.
Jack . . . Marna Frost employed a more severe inflection . . . I know all about your antipathy towards Indians. You laugh at them and their plight. Your indifference practically amounts to a scandal. Under the circumstances there are times when it would be difficult for me to maintain my relationship with you, were it not for my sense of humour. With Mr. Deacon it is different. I have tested Mr. Deacon. His feeling for the Indian is mine. We are alike in this and I know we could work together. I had a premonition of this before he came out here. Now that I have met him I am certain of it. He is my man.
And he done me wrong, Jack muttered into Ambrose's ear, too low for Marna Frost to hear. Well, at least, he went on, now addressing the Little Mother of the Indian, give him a day or so to think it over. I haven't seen Ambrose for months. He is my guest. I want him with me for a few days.
Very well, announced Marna Frost with a studied dignity. I am never unreasonable. I am entirely willing to give him a few days with you, but my mind is made up and nothing will change it. Furthermore, Mr. Deacon, I am convinced that you are with me at heart, although on the surface you show evidences of vacillation.
For the remainder of the drive, over the broad, sun-burned mesa, round and round La Bajada hill, across the plain with the turquoise mines in the distance, Marna Frost remained silent, and it was only very much later, after they had dropped Miss Frost before her home, that Ambrose spoke.
Everybody west of the Rocky Mountains is crazy, he avowed. Everybody!
Jack laughed. Don't mind the antique horse, he said. A touch of the old fire is burning in her. She's spent most of her life dashing after this man or that.
You don't mean . . . !
I do, indeed. The mythological bird is lusting for you.
Unless she was wild about you she wouldn't let you touch her Indians with a vaulting pole. She's going to take you off to her mountain fastnesses and eat you up.
Jack, Ambrose announced resolutely, I'm going back to New York. I'm safe in New York.
Jack laughed uproariously. Don't take the old gal seriously, he advised. What can she do, after all, if you are unwilling? She can't kidnap you. Just tell her you won't go.
I can't, Ambrose confessed. I just can't tell anybody I won't do anything. I guess I'm not made that way. I'm going back to New York.
Well, I'll tell her then, Jack assured him. Then, Hello, what's this?
They had driven up before Jack's adobe. Standing in the doorway, his revolver in its holster, stood the sheriff.
Well, Ed, what's the matter? Jack inquired, as he descended from the car, followed by Ambrose.
Hello, Jack. Got a Mr. Deacon stoppin' with you?
Sure. Right here. This is Deacon.
Ambrose Deacon?
Certainly. Jack's reply was more curt.
The sheriff looked puzzled and scratched his head.
I guess I got to take him, he announced.
Take me! My God, what for? Ambrose demanded.
Jack was practical. Have you got a warrant? he asked.
The sheriff fumbled in his coat-pocket and drew out a telegraph form which he handed to Jack.
It was addressed to the Sheriff of Santa Fe and it was signed by the Chief of Police at Los Angeles. Jack read the message aloud: