CHAPTER TEN
EVEN so authoritative and cocksure a lady as Mrs. Evans had no idea how prophetic were her parting words to Frances, nor how soon the prophecy they contained was to be fulfilled; but as she climbed the hill to the Missionary's cabin two or three mornings later, there was an air of I-told-you-so importance about her, which, perhaps, was only natural under the circumstances.
Frances sat in her doorway in the dancing light and shade of the quivering aspens which grew thickly about the cabin. Several chipmunks, a magpie, and a blue- jay or so, fed amicably from a bowl of cooked oatmeal without the door; but Frances Benson's gaze was not on them, nor on the open Bible on her knee. It was fixed on the ethereal blue deeps above the tree tops. Her lips moved slightly, and in her eyes were the exalted dreams, the unseeing rapture of the mystic who has bridged time and space, joy and sorrow, with prayer.
As Mrs. Evans approached, the Missionary's gaze dropped from the skies and looked through and beyond that feminine epitome of practicality.
"It's all love and beauty, Mrs. Evans, the whole universe." Her finger traced the lines in the Bible and her voice thrilled. "'If we love not our brother whom we have seen, how shall we love God, whom we have not seen?'"
Mrs. Evans looked at her with protecting pride and admiration. "That's all right, Miss Benson; but we got to get away from God to man this morning. Marthy Thomas has got a soul problem, and 'course she don't know what to do with it no more 'n a kitten. She sent Vi'let an' Clemency over with a note a while back, and I just loped on to find you."
She held out a crumpled bit of paper whereon was scrawled in painful characters:
Mis Evans, won't you get Missioner and come here. I'm in a muss and suffortin for it.
Frances smoothed it out and read it. "Poor Mrs. Thomas," she exclaimed, her eyes becoming practical the moment there was work for her hands to do. She picked up her hat, and leaving the door open for the jays and the chipmunks to enter at will, she and Mrs. Evans set out for the newly painted Thomas residence. There, in the cool, white kitchen, Mrs. Landvetter and Mrs. Nitschkan were busying themselves preparing tea and coffee, while Mrs. Thomas sat beside a table, limp and dejected. There was a droop to her mouth like a child's, and her eyes slowly filled and brimmed over with tears which she occasionally wiped away with a wet handkerchief rolled into a tight ball.
"Well, here we are," said Mrs. Evans with loud cheerfulness, as she and Miss Benson entered. "Now, one of you girls pour us out a cup apiece, an' Mis' Thomas, you jus' begin at the beginning and tell Missioner all about it. She'll get you out of any scrape you're in, won't you, Missioner?"
"I'll try," said Frances, with sincere kindliness.
Mrs. Thomas gulped convulsively once or twice and rolled and unrolled her handkerchief. "It's about the Perfessor," she wailed. "At first, he was awful nice. He come to see me often an' he certainly talked lovely. He quoted poetry and everything, like Thomas never did even before we was married; an' then he got to askin' me how I was fixed an' I told him. He said he had to know before he could foretell the futur' for me, an' then he was nicer than ever. He come right out an' said he loved me so that he couldn't sleep at nights for thinkin' of me."
Upon the faces of her listening friends dawned that faintly sarcastic expression which women assume on learning that a man is actually blinded by the fascinations of one of their sex. Having no illusions concerning each other, they cannot but regard with contempt this pitiable evidence of masculine dementia.
The practical, shrewd kindliness had gradually faded from Frances's eyes, leaving them puzzled and a little impatient. There occurred to her no remedy in the whole pharmacopœia of a soul doctor which can minister to a woman's infatuation.
And as she listened to Mrs. Thomas's tale, the spirit of warm helpfulness with which she had sought one in trouble, congealed to something perfunctory and professional, while her impatience was becoming vital. As for Mrs. Thomas, she was about to acquire the bitter knowledge that while in sickness or in sorrow, women turn instinctively to one another, feeling intuitively that they will thus find the truest comfort, the completest understanding of their needs; in love, they must fly to the wilderness, for they stand alone, aloof, alien to feminine sympathy.
"He said," continued Mrs. Thomas, with tearful pride, "that he couldn't even eat 'less he was with me; but I'll tell you what, he certainly did make up for it then. They hasn't been an evening that he's et with me that I haven't been cookin' all day an' not enough left to feed the chickens."
"Hm-m-m, I bet you got to keep cookin' between him an' Willie Barker an' Dan Mayhew. It seems to me they keep the path to your gate warm," cried Mrs. Nitschkan rollickingly.
A faint, pink flush crept up Mrs. Thomas's face. "Willie Barker says he's got too much respect for me to try an' be steady company until my term of mourning is up; but he says he don't think it's right to the living to mourn for the dead; an' as for Dan Mayhew, he comes to talk business."
"How much does he know of this here Hartshorn?" asked Mrs. Evans pointedly.
"He don't know nothin'," returned Mrs. Thomas reluctantly.
The women cast meaning glances at one another over their cups.
"Vell, vy don' you go to him an' get him to shoo dis feller off, if you vants to get rid of him? " asked Mrs. Landvetter, with Teuton common sense.
"I do' know if I do want to get rid of him," murmured Mrs. Thomas forlornly. "He can be awful nice; an' our courtship was just like a book until I hesitated about the money. Then he come every day and said it made him feel real impatient to see me actin' like I didn't trust him. It's the insurance money, you know. He says he wouldn't lay a finger on a penny of it; but he's got to save me from a awful fate he sees hangin' over me. He says he sees it in the stars an' in the crystal, an' that it's wrote on the cards too plain not to believe. It's something sudden, like bein' struck by lightning, if I don't get that money out of my hands before the third of June. He says the only way he sees to save me, is to give him the money an' not ask any questions about it for six months.
"He's awful cross with me because I do' know what to do, an' he comes over every day 'most, an' sets there in that chair you're in, Mis' Evans, an' glares at me with them gimlet eyes, until I'm so scared I 'most die. An'"—at this point Mrs. Thomas's sobs were unrestrained—"he says that this must be kept so awful secret, for if ever he hears of me tellin' a livin' soul, he'll work some kind of a conjurin' game on me, an' also publish the letters I wrote him in the Mount Tabor Review."
"Well, what the devil do you care?" asked Mrs. Nitschkan.
Mrs. Thomas flamed like a peony and caught her breath once or twice before she answered. "They're so awful soft," she said at last.
Frances gave a quick exclamation of impatience. "Oh, Mrs. Thomas! How could you do anything so foolish? How did you happen to meet this man in the first place?"
"There wasn't nothing doin' here," Mrs. Thomas said simply. "Willie Barker an' Dan Mayhew wasn't droppin' in then. Oh," she wailed, with something like despair in her voice, "I thought I was goin' to like bein' a widow; but it's terrible lonesome. When I first got free, I thought I was goin' to have the time of my life; but it ain't so much fun as I thought it was goin' to be not to have Thomas jawin' me all day long."
"Vell, you can't neffer tell," remarked Mrs. Landvetter, in surprised consternation, her lace needles poised in air.
It was noticeable during the interview with this woman she had come to succour, that Frances's eyes had grown constantly harder, and now, something like contempt shadowed them. Her will, her executive ability, her skill, born of intuition and long practice in disentangling "soul problems," were powerless when opposed to the soft, immovable, wavering force which she now encountered. To the woman floundering in the bog of mistakes, mud-stained, worn with the struggle, she stretched forth her loving hands; but for one so elemental, so naïvely expressing her natural impulses as Mrs. Thomas, she had neither sympathy nor comprehension.
The narrowness of which Mr. Herries had once accused her, the inherent narrowness of the feminine nature, its unswerving devotion to the traditional dogmas of womanliness, now expressed itself in every line of her face and figure.
"I don't think a woman has any call to talk as you are doing," she said with grave reproof.
Mrs. Thomas exhibited the obstinacy of the meek. "I'd like to know why not?" she cried defiantly. "I'd like to know what right you got to judge me, Miss Benson. You don't know the lonesomeness of bein' a widow."
"Do you mean to say that you are contemplating a second marriage, not two months after your husband's death?" asked Frances, aghast.
But Mrs. Thomas had endured to the limit. "I don't care," in childish wrath. "You'd be a contemplatin' a second, or a third, or any old kind if you knew the lonesomeness of bein' a widow. An' I bet if you was to tell the truth," shrilly and amid streaming tears, "you'd want somebody to love you just the same as I do."
The scarlet crept up Frances's neck; but compressing her lips, she merely looked icily and remotely over the head of this possessor of a "soul problem," beyond her ken.
"Mrs. Thomas," she said curtly, "your behaviour and your sentiments make me ashamed of my sex."
"I don't care," reiterated Mrs. Thomas. "I don't care. It's your sex an' my sex that's talkin'. There ain't no woman livin' that don't want a man to love her." She put her head on the table and sobbed afresh.
The women exchanged scornful and shocked glances over her head. "I guess we'd best leave you to yourself, Marthy Thomas," said Mrs. Evans, rising. "If you're in such a frame of mind that you've got to sass the Missioner, you'll be throwin' things at the rest of us. An' Thomas hardly cold in his grave yet! My!" as she closed the door behind the little party of visitors. "Ain't she the limit? Lord save me from them that don't know their own minds."
"But she's certain'y in the devil of a scrape," argued Mrs. Nitschkan good-naturedly. "Say the word, girls," rolling up her sleeves and feeling tentatively her swelling muscles, "an' I'll go over to Mount Tabor an' do up the Perfessor."
"That would never do, Nitschkan," Mrs. Evans hastily replied. "What we got to do is to work on this end of the line."
Frances, who had walked silently down the little path leading to the paling gate, now spoke. "I agree with Mrs. Evans," she spoke slowly. "I do not think it is worth while trying to do anything more with Mrs. Thomas. She is completely under that man's influence. As for him," she added grimly, "a good, strong man should deal with him."
"That is so," responded Mrs. Evans emphatically, "but I don't know one that's got any call to mix in, unless it's Dan Mayhew. He's her trustee, an' he might do something with her."
"Dan's an awful sensible man," said Mrs. Landvetter gloomily. "You go an' tell him de way she carry on, and he won't be trustee no more. Den how she goin' to get along?"
"Goodness only knows," answered Mrs. Evans desperately. "Still, we can't stop to think about that. What we got to do is to try as hard as we can to get her out of this muss. Ain't that so, Miss Benson?"
"I think so," replied Frances in a depressed tone.
"She showed me a letter from him last night, women dear," chuckled the irrepressible Nitschkan, "in which he said that she wasn't to hesitate no longer, as the danger was at hand, an' he called her his blue-eyed beauty. A big ox like her with a front tooth gone!"
"My Lord!" sighed Mrs. Evans. "Who'd have any patience? Well, girls, I heard Sile say that Dan was workin' on his prospect, so it's no use stoppin' at his law office. Up we'll have to go."
It was something of a climb, up through a trail bordered with the pink and blue penstemon all abloom in the sparkling, balsamic June air; but these were hardy mountain women, and it was not long before they reached the prospect where Dan Mayhew was hard at work with pick and shovel in a hole about twenty feet deep.
"Hello, Dan," called the breezy voice of Mrs. Nitschkan, as the women peered over the rim of his embryo mine.
"Hello, girls," he answered heartily, throwing down his tools and pushing his hat further back on his head, the better to see his visitors. "Come to call on me? What's in the wind now? Want a divorce apiece? Wait till I climb up since I ain't got electric elevators running yet; I can entertain you better up there. What do you think o' them for samples?" He threw some bits of quartz into Mrs. Landvetter's lap. "Looks like 'The Marthy' was goin' to have a futur', don't it?"
He was a big broad-shouldered fellow, as he stood among his callers, who sat about the yawning hole on convenient boulders. One of the strong men of this earth—a fitting type to stand erect in the stern and savage mountains, and to wrest from them the secret of their hidden treasures.
"Fine," said Mrs. Landvetter, leisurely examining the specimens. "Great! Dere's a streak of peacock."
"Le's see." Mrs. Evans scanned the bits of rock professionally. "Good, Dan, if the streak don't pinch. I'm kind o' 'fraid you struck a pocket, though."
"Oh, we all know Mrs. Evans knows more about mining than Sile," commented Mayhew good-naturedly. "Now he thinks 'The Marthy' 's goin' to be a great mine. Sorry I have no seats but boulders to offer you ladies. When 'The Marthy' pans out you shall all have plush rockers."
The constant iteration of the name "Marthy" seemed to react upon feminine nerves. Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Landvetter and the Missionary glanced uneasily at one another. It remained for Mrs. Nitschkan, with her lack of nerves, to solve the problem, for, at Mayhew's words, she threw her head back with a great burst of laughter, showing every squirrel-white tooth in her head. "The Marthy! The Marthy!" she cried. "Why, Dan, it's the Marthy we've come to see you about."
"Hello, girls," he answered heartily
Mayhew's expression changed. "What's the matter with Mrs. Thomas?" he asked quickly, looking from one to the other.
"Oh, dere ain't nottin' de matter wid her, dat is" said Mrs. Landvetter, and then paused in embarrassed silence, attempting to extricate her lace work from her pocket.
"Well, what it is then?" asked Mayhew impatiently. "You girls got something on your minds, or you wouldn't be up here."
"That is true, Mr. Mayhew. We have something on our minds, and we thought it best to come directly to you," said the Missionary, decisively. "We are all very much worried about Mrs. Thomas."
"What's the matter with her?" anxiously. "Is she sick?"
"No, she is quite well; but" Miss Benson tried to speak kindly. "She has gotten into quite a serious entanglement with this fortune teller over in Mount Tabor, Professor Hartshorn."
"What do you mean by your 'serious entanglement'?" growled Mayhew. "Speak plain, Missioner."
"I mean," replied the Missionary, with a tightening of the lips and a heightened colour, "that she is completely under the influence of this man, and that he is using that influence to extort money from her. She has promised to give him, day after to-morrow, all that remains of the two thousand dollars her husband left her."
Mayhew's eyes glared from under his brows, but he looked from one woman to another in a dazed fashion.
"It's straight, Dan," corroborated Mrs. Evans. "He's just hypnotised her, an' now she's in this box."
"Well, why wasn't I told before?" asked Mayhew. "What did you let her get into it for? How did she ever meet him?"
"She went to get her fortune told," began Mrs. Evans.
"She's so lonesome, bein' a widow, an' she wanted somebody to love her," mimicked Mrs. Nitschkan in a small voice, imitating closely Mrs. Thomas' lisp and coy manner.
The three mountain women rocked back and forth on their boulders with bursts of laughter.
"Aw, for the Lord's sake! " exclaimed Mayhew disgustedly. "I wisht women had some sense. Missioner, can you tell me what this is all about?"
"It's just as these ladies say," remarked Frances coldly. She had small sympathy for the culprit and was actuated in her present course solely by a sense of duty. "Mrs. Thomas explained to us that she was lonesome after her husband's death, and with a desire for excitement went to see this Professor Hartshorn. He at once made love to her, and now informs her that he sees in his crystals, and his stars, and cards, some terrible calamity impending unless she gives him her money. He has so succeeded in frightening her that I do not think she will dare to refuse his demand."
"He'll get his head broke before night," threatened Mayhew. "My Lord!" mopping his brow with a blue and white cotton handkerchief and looking desperately at the row of women before him. "What was you women a-thinkin' of, sittin' around doin' nothin' and lettin' her get into such a scrape?"
"My patience!" cried Mrs. Evans, while her sisters gasped and gazed at one another. She sprang to her feet and drew up her tiny figure to the fullest. "You must think we ain't got nothin' to do, Dan Mayhew, but look after that overgrown baby. Maybe you think we ain't got husbands and childern an' houses to mind. Oh, yes; we ought to let them go to look after Marthy Thomas, that ain't got sense enough to tend to her own business."
"Is that true?" said Mayhew, surveying her angrily and speaking with icy sarcasm. "Well, I guess there's a good many men in the camp, includin' poor Sile Evans, that wishes there was more like her. You all think you're too smart to mind your own business and got to stick your fingers in everybody else's pie. I guess if the truth was known you drove her to this. It speaks a lot for her friends, don't it, that she got so lonesome that she had to run to some fakir for consolation?"
"Vy vasn't you around to do some of the consolin', Dan?" asked Mrs. Landvetter hardily.
"She was wantin' to be loved," roared Mrs. Nitschkan. A suppressed giggle ran through the feminine part of the group with the exception of the Missionary.
"Well, it's a pity some of the rest of you didn't," he exclaimed doggedly. "Oh, you're Miss Know-it-alls. If she'd 'a' been treated right by you women," he continued accusingly, "she wouldn't 'a' gone traipsin' around to fakirs. You didn't show her no human sympathy. You're a cold-blooded lot. Oh, I know the whole of you, 'ceptin' Missioner. I could read your pedigrees from the beginning. It couldn't be expected that you'd understand her. She ain't made of the same kind of clay that you are. She's trustin', that's what she is, trustin' and confidin'; but what's the use of trustin' in flint an' confidin' in ice?"
"My Gawd, Dan Mayhew! Air you a-jumpin' on us 'cause Marthy Thomas is a d. f.?" asked Mrs. Evans shrilly.
He wheeled on her savagely. "You ought to be scrunched 'twixt a man's thumb an' finger like you was a flea, which you are," contemptuously. "I've asked you and you ain't give me any good answer—what did you ever let her get in such a muss for? Oh, yes," interrupting the clamour of voices; "you could 'a' helped if you'd wanted to. I know how much she thinks of all of you; but you couldn't lift a finger to help her, could you? That would be puttin' yourselves out some, wouldn't it? You couldn't do nothing but sit around and knock her behind her back."
"You are not just to us, Mr. Mayhew." Frances attempted to speak with dignity, but her lip trembled.
He made a scornful gesture, as if renouncing them all; but it was plain from his absorbed gaze bent on the ground, his knotted brow, that he was oblivious to their presence.
Mrs. Evans fidgetted uneasily. "Dan," she said at last, "get over your mad and tell us what had best be done."
"I know what I'm a-going to do," he cried, with resolution, picking up his hat and coat from the ground. "I'm goin' to Mount Tabor to drive that skunk out of the mountains. Then I'm a-comin' back and ask the best, the most trustin' and confidin' woman in the world to marry me. Good-morning, ladies." He walked lightly and rapidly down the trail before them.
The faces of the women left behind him were pale and stunned.
With a quick gesture of self-reproach the Missionary laid one hand against her cheek, as with the strange, sad eyes of the mystic she gazed above the swaying pine tops into the depths of the blue, blue sky.
"Oh, I haven't met it right. This was Mrs. Thomas's soul problem, and I didn't help her solve it. I just got mad and quit."
"Such is life," murmured Mrs. Landvetter, with some vague attempt at consolation. "You can't neffer tell."
"Take it back, Landvetter," returned Mrs. Nitschkan practically, brushing a bit of adhering clay from her short skirt. "Take it back. Life ain't nothin' so cantankerous. You mean, 'such is men.'"