The Storm Women
THE new day was one of fog and of stillness and then a cold wind that Jamie did not care to face. Just at evening when he looked from the back veranda and down across the stretch before him, he realized that the thing he had wanted to see was going to hap pen. There were heat flashes across the horizon. Forked tongues of light were beginning to flicker up and there was an ominous stillness, and away up to the north and west he could see big black clouds beginning to mass and to gather.
Jamie straightened up. “A storm!” he said to himself. “The storm! By all that’s good and peaceful, I’ll see it from the throne if it’s the last thing that I ever do!”
He looked over the garden, putting away several things that high wind might damage; he carefully closed the windows and locked the doors, and then he went into the closet on the back porch and ransacked the Bee Master’s belongings for suitable clothing. He laid out the bee coat and the old overcoat, and then he found a heavy raincoat that was precisely what he wanted.
He put the bee coat on, and carrying the overcoat and the raincoat and wearing the old broad-brimmed hat, he locked the back door behind him and slowly made his way down the back walk, across the sands, and climbed the throne. Putting on the overcoat and spreading the raincoat so that he could draw it around him, he dropped into the niche he had prepared for himself and drew his covers snugly so that he would not chill. Then he sat watching the coming storm in intent eagerness.
He did not know that he was matching forces. He did not realize that for two years the storm that wracks the soul and body of a man even to destruction had been raging in his battered breast, in his heart, in his brain. He did not know that he had dimly realized the strength, the terror, the futility of it. He did not know why he wanted to see the sky reach down and the sea rise up and do their utmost. He did not know that he wanted to compare the storm that may sweep the heart of a man with the kind of storm that may sweep the world. He honestly tried to protect himself so that he would not hasten what might be in store for him. He did not want to fail, when the Bee Master had trusted him with the home and the possessions and the occupation that were all he had of his very own, and he did not know that as the storm drew nearer, as the clouds grew blacker, as the heat waves resolved themselves into definite flashes of lightning, as the night closed down black as velvet around him, he did not realize that his moral and mental forces were rising with the tide of the storm, that all the remnants of manhood left in his shaken body were gathering together for some sort of culmination, just as presently the storm would reach its height and then subside.Without moving a muscle, almost breathlessly, he lay back in his rocky nook and wondered exactly how high the tide would rise. He had not informed himself as to whether the point of rock might be surrounded. He thought it would be an unprecedented storm that would sweep over it. At any rate, he was taking the chance. He might have asked Margaret Cameron whether that point ever was completely submerged. He was certain that it was high above any level to which man had seen the ocean lift, that it must be safe.
At the point where Jamie realized that he was having the best time he had had since the guns were booming and the rage of battle was smashing and he had been able to deliver what he considered a few effective blows, each of which he had invariably accompanied by a grinding shout, “In the name of the Forty-second Highlanders!”; just when his blood really was tingling and his spirits were answering to the smash of the waves that were flinging spray to his feet, to the roar of the thunder and the crash of the lightning; just when the fight was going good and Jamie was a Forty-second Highlander and with a sword of magic was cutting off the heads of innumerable Germans with each sword thrust of lightning, the most astounding ching happened to him that ever had happened in all the years of his existence. All around him and enveloping him there came slowly and faintly creeping a strange odour.
Jamie dropped from the sky battle to every-day realities and turned his head to the right. Delicately as when he was creeping belly down toward the Germans in No Man’s Land, hunting a lost comrade or scouting enemy locations, he sniffed the night air. The first absolute information that he felt he could rely on that his nostrils telegraphed to his brain was “sage.” He took another sniff and recognized the lavender flower of the beaches: “Sand verbena,” one of the most subtle and exquisite faint odours in all nature, and then a whiff of primrose crept up. And then, just when the crack that seemed to split the heavens wide was followed by the boom of the reverberating thunder, there came to Jamie’s ears a wrenching sobbing that was the most pitiful thing he ever had heard. Still as death he sat in his wrappings, his head turned, his nose and his ears alert; and by and by, sniffing and listening, he reached his conclusion: The throne that he had thought so wonderful, that he had preempted, that he had meant to occupy on many a night of communion in his effort to make his peace with God, was not his personal throne. He was an interloper. Someone else was familiar with the winding way that reached the eminence from the back. Someone else had a fight that needed the healing of God through Nature to help him to wage. Beside him was someone who smelled of the sage of the mountains, of the lavender and the gold flowers of the beaches, and this someone else had the voice of a woman, not the cracked voice, not the breathless voice of an old woman. God knew Jamie had heard women cry, the women of France, the women of Belgium, the women of England! He was an expert on all kinds and varieties of sobs of anguish that could be wrenched from the frame of a mother, a wife, a sister, a sweetheart.
Slowly, softly, as nearly without sound as possible, he turned to face this woman. She had found her seat where he had first sat. She probably did not know that another seat had been made, beyond the place to which she must have been accustomed, or she never could have found it in the darkness of the storm. She must have been familiar with that point through other storms, or she never would have sought it when that one was raging at its fiercest.
As Nature wore herself out and began gradually to ease in the storm she was waging, another amazing thing happened to Jamie. The raving wind that had been sweeping from the west was gradually shifting to the north and it began blowing something across his face, something that was soft, something that was silken, something that was tugging and pulling and plastering to him with the driving spray and the beating rain. In dumbfounded bewilderment he worked a hand to the surface and softly touched his cheeks, and across them there was streaming the silken banner of a woman’s hair. Jamie realized that when that woman learned that there was a man there, she probably would be so frightened that she might throw herself into the boiling sea a few feet below them. He was afraid to speak, afraid to move, and the one thing that he did not figure on was that there might be beside him a pair of nostrils sensitive as his own, and that there might very presently emanate from him an odour that would become discernible to someone else.Just how that would have worked out, Jamie never knew because at the instant that his hand crept higher to work the blinding hair from his eyes, a long, low flash of lightning struck the breast of the ocean and for one instant lighted the rock like day. In that instant Jamie saw the white face and the big, wide eyes of a woman, eyes that he would remember while remembrance remained with him, a face that by no possibility could he ever forget. The sharp gasp of astonishment at his presence there, where any one accustomed to the rock might well have supposed there would be no one, his quick ear told him came from a woman accustomed to self-control. She had not screamed. She had not jumped. It was merely the catching of a breath.
Jamie was in a measure prepared. He had been trying to plan something. He was not taken unaware as she was. What he had meant to say, what he had thought would be a wise thing to say, never was uttered.
What he heard himself saying was: “Don’t be startled! What hurts you so? Let me help you.”
Then a voice that was going to take a place in Jamie’s mentality along with the eyes and the face-a deep, rich contralto voice with a touching quaver of pathos through it, a voice shaken with emotion and accented with tones native to his ears-answered him: “Why did you come here?”
Jamie replied: “Very possibly for the same reason you did.”
The voice answered: “Oh!”Jamie combed the streaming locks from his cheeks and his lips with his fingers and sat tightly holding them in his hand. And he who had gone out to compare the battle of Nature with the battle of his soul, forgot all about himself as he said to the girl beside him: “Did anybody ever tell you that a trouble shared is a trouble half endured?”
Then he laughed a deep burry Scotch laugh. He threw out his right arm and felt to the north until he circled the shoulders of the woman beside him.
“You aren’t half covered,” he said, “and you are drenched! Creep over here in the protection of my coat. And then, because it is night, and because I know that your soul is wracked and maybe your body tortured, tell me the truth. I’m sure I can help you. There is always a way. I can think of something.”
Jamie never forgot that when his arm reached across the shoulder beside him there was no shrinking, no repulsion, no hesitation. It took one more flash of lightning to show him that the woman he was trying to comfort was young. She was not beautiful, but she was luringly human. Plastered with rain, wrenched with grief, he had no right to judge her.
“I mean it,” he said, taking up the thread of his thought again. “I mean it. If you will tell me, I promise to help you.”
“But—but how can you help me?” said a voice, every tone of which Jamie registered as it fell on his ear.
“I don’t know,” said Jamie. “I don’t know how I can help you, because I don’t know what you need. I only know that I can help you, that I will help you if you will tell me what it is that troubles you.”
In the long silence that followed, Jamie manipulated the Bee Master’s raincoat to the best advantage possible and tightened the grip of his right arm. At last, above the rumbling of the subsiding storm, above the crashing of the waves below them, Jamie heard again the voice for which he was waiting.
“I can’t tell you,” said the woman, whose breast was still heaving, whose shoulders were still quivering. “I can’t tell a stranger in the darkness, in the storm, what it is that is hurting me!”
“Oh, yes, you can,” said Jamie, casually. “Better now than at any other time. If it is anything you aren’t proud of, the darkness will cover you. If it’s anything you are afraid of, you may depend on the strength there is in my right arm. If it is anything that as much of a man as I am can do for you, I want you to understand that you are my mother or my sister, or any relationship that you can think of that a man who is trying to be fairly decent wouldn’t violate. I’ll give you my word of honour that I will not follow you; I will not make any effort to learn who you are or where you come from. If you came here to-night intending to throw yourself into the undertow that sucks down from these rocks, you needn’t be any too sure that I didn’t come with the same intention. I’ll admit that I’ve thought about it. I’ve got a storm of my own in my breast. I’ve got my wounds that are still open and bleeding. There’s nothing about me that you need hesitate over. I’m just telling you that your voice is young, and your face is young, and your body is strong, and in some way there can be healing managed for young hearts that are breaking, and I do believe that trouble shared is trouble at least half endured. Tell me.”
Jamie could almost feel the thinking process that was going on in the mind of the woman whom he was trying to shelter and to support.
“It’s a long story,” said the rich voice at last, “and it’s a story that’s got what the world calls shame in it. And the world is right in calling what there is in it shame, because I am ashamed. I couldn’t sit here in broad sunlight and let you shelter me, and look at me, and tell you. I could only tell you in such darkness and turmoil as this, and you can’t possibly do any good, but there is this about it: If you came and weathered the storm and resolved that you could go on with what you call an open wound in your breast, I’ll promise you that I’ll not go over the rock. I’ll promise you that I’ll find my way back to the friends I left; that I’ll go home; that I’ll take up my work; that I’ll do the best I can.”
“That’s fine,” said Jamie, “as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough to do you any more good than the good of saving your soul alive, because we don’t get life at our own volition in this world, and we have no right to give it up until the God who gave it says we have lived it. What I am offering to do is to take the burden that’s crushing you, off your heart. Isn’t there a little bit of shelter in the arm across your shoulders? Doesn’t my voice sound sincere? I haven’t the least objection in the world to telling you who I am, where I come from, or where I am going when I leave this rock. I have told you that I will not follow you. If there is anything in to-night that you would blush for to-morrow, I will not intrude myself, but I do beg you to believe me when I say that I know I can help you, if you will tell me.”
And that was a very bold and daring statement for Jamie, with six months to live and nothing in his pockets, to make to any woman in distress. Yet he made it in the utmost confidence and there was something in his voice that carried conviction. Before he knew precisely what had happened to him, the thing for which he had striven occurred. The length of his frame he felt the relaxation of the taut muscles beside him. He bent to extend the shelter of the raincoat.
“That’s a good girl,” he said, in exactly the same tone he would have used to a six-year-old. “Now, go on and tell me what happened to you. You needn’t make it a long story. You could probably tell it in ten words if you chose. What hurt you? How can it be fixed?”
Again he could sense the intense thinking.
“All right,” said the voice beside him. “What I need above everything else on earth at this minute is a marriage certificate, and a wedding ring, and a name for an unborn child. My need is desperate. That’s all. Now; go ahead and make good your boast!”
“All right,” said Jamie smoothly, instantly. “The proposition you have put me is almost the easiest thing I could manage. I’ve got a name and it is of no particular use to me, and I haven’t much time left in which to use it. I’ve strength enough to manage a license and a marriage ceremony, if it’s necessary. If you pledge me your word of honour that the trouble in your heart can be healed by giving you a name I am going to quit using shortly, you will grant I was right when I told you I could settle your difficulty. I’ve been wondering for days past what I might do that would be something fine and shining that I could lay at the feet of the Master when I go farthest West, as I am going very soon, to render my last account, and you have opened the way. I think it would be very decent, I think it would be something the Master would approve if I left my name to a little child that is making its way toward earth and facing a heritage you wouldn’t want for it.”
Then suddenly Jamie felt the woman in his arms merging her form with his. He felt her hands on his breast. He felt them reaching to find his face. He felt the hot breath of her voice.
“You wouldn’t!” she was panting. “Oh! you wouldn’t! You wouldn’t get me a marriage license! You wouldn’t stand through a ceremony with me! You wouldn’t let me use your name?”
Jamie found the hand on his face and gripped it tight with his left hand. He had presence of mind to tighten his grasp around the shoulders yielding to him. He was enough of a Scotsman to command the situation.
“You are mighty right I would!” he said. “I’m telling you true. Here, if you don’t believe me, I’ll convince you,” and he shifted the hand he held until the finger of it could touch the bandages across his breast. “You feel that?” he asked. “You’re not touching the body of a man. Those are bandages covering the body of a man, and under those bandages there’s an open wound that will never heal. I am telling you true. There’s no one on earth who is closely related to me. There’s no one to care what I do with my name or with the few remaining months of my life. The nearest I can come to a family is a mother and a father, and they are both in Heaven, and if either of them were here this minute, they would say: ‘Cover the shame baby with your name, Jamie!’”
“Jamie!” said the voice beside him a little breathlessly. “There isn’t a sweeter name in all the world that could be given to a little child, if it happened to be a boy. But it’s too big a sacrifice! It’s a thing that shouldn’t be asked of any man, no matter how free, no matter how willing!”
“Well,” said Jamie, “I’m telling you I am free. I’ll prove it by citing to you records you can look up. I’m part of the aftermath of war. You can find my name if you look in the proper place for it. I’ll tell you right here that it’s James Lewis MacFarlane, and from the time I can remember, my mother and father made it Jamie. I ran away from a hospital a few days ago because my case was hopeless and I wouldn’t go where they wanted to send me. You know Camp Kearney? You know the village of tents that means the White Plague? I hadn’t it and I wouldn’t go there, so I ran away. I got as far as the apiary just below here on the mountain-side and I couldn’t drag any farther. I was staggering toward the Bee Master to ask him to help me, but he beat me to it and asked me to help him. I thought I couldn’t, but I did. I helped him to the hospital in time for his operation. I am staying in his house, taking care of his property. I am telling you truly what my name is, where you can find me. I am telling you that you may have my name any time you want to claim it.”
“To-morrow?” said the girl, breathlessly. “May I claim it to-morrow?”
“Any time you say, any place,” said Jamie. “Tell me where you want me to go and what you want me to do.”
And then, quite before Jamie knew at all what was happening to him or what was going to happen, he felt another shift of position of the woman in his arms, and for the next second he was in her arms. Hands had found the sides of his head and his face was turned up and a wet, cold salty face was laid against his, cold lips were touching his cheeks and a breathless voice was saying: “Oh! you’re good! You’re good! I didn’t know there was a man like you in the whole world! Will you meet me to-morrow at three o’clock at the Marriage Bureau in Los Angeles? Will you truly have a marriage license made out? Will you stand beside me through a ceremony that will mean life and the lifting of a black burden?”
“I will!” said Jamie. “Don’t give yourself another minute’s worry. Dry your eyes and cheer up! I’ll be right there as sure as God is in His Heaven and there’s any justice for women in all this world. And if I am not there, you can know that the red tiger has eaten through to my vitals until I cannot get there—but you needn’t worry, because I shall be there. God wouldn’t give me this shining chance and then snatch it away from me.”
“Will you sit here, right in this spot, for a few minutes more?” asked the girl.
“I’ll sit here all night if you tell me to,” said Jamie, calmly, and it was not so calmly either because his heart was tearing until he was afraid it would fall out of the opening above it, and his blood was racing as blood had never raced in his veins. The girl in his arms might be cold and clammy and salt pasted, but he was neither cold nor clammy. He got one more tight hug and one more kiss—which happened to land squarely on the tip of his nose—not the location in which he wanted it in the least—and then she was gone and he heard swift feet going down the back of the rock and his trained ears could hear the first few footfalls across the dark beach.
He sat there and waited and looked down into the boiling surf and out over the battling sea, and by and by, he calmed himself so that he could think straightly and evenly, and then he said: “Such quick action as this seems to indicate that my time is short, and if there is a big thing that I have a chance of doing in this world, I’ve got to do it and do it quickly. So to-morrow afternoon at three o’clock, I’ll start on what appeals to me as the shining part of my Great Adventure.”