CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE days that followed Garvin's return remained in Frances's memory like a cloud of rainbow-hued bubbles blown into an atmosphere of strained honey. She was environed, encompassed, enfolded by sympathy and understanding; and in addition, she had the constant intellectual stimulation of a mind infinitely more comprehensive and cultivated than her own. This delightful companionship revealed not only Garvin to her, but herself to herself.
No matter what the demands of his affairs, and they were many, there was not a day when he and she did not read or walk together. Sometimes these strolls led them to the sunlit, open flats, where the butterflies drifted and the wind and sun beat upon their faces; and again, they wandered in the dim seclusion of the forest.
One afternoon they had climbed far up to the roofs of the world. Frances had never been so high. Below her lay the vast, sunflooded sea of atmosphere, the ranges lifting their peaks above it, as islands from the sea. For a moment she felt a sense of panic, a horror of the immensity before her, and almost yielded to the impulse to fling herself flat upon the bare mountain side, and hide from her eyes this terrifying glimpse of infinity; but this was quickly succeeded by a sweep of exhilaration, an impelling desire to lift herself on her toes and spread her arms and fly—fly out into the vast blueness before her. She thought of Garvin with a great heart-throb of admiration. She was here on this mountain top with one of the lords of life. Her mind reverted to Campbell, and his profound belief in the unseen kingdom. Then she turned quickly from the thought. Beside her was one of the real conquerors. Had he not struggled mightily with the mountains and subdued them—these stern and savage mountains which brooded always over their hidden treasures? Could he not go into the marts of the world and buy, buy, buy, and yet leave his great, golden hoard almost untouched?
So long was she silent that Garvin leaned forward to interrupt her reverie; but the wind blew the words from his mouth in an opposite direction. He laughed and looked at her. The same wind had blown the great coils of her hair down, and tossed it about her like a storm cloud. In its shadow he saw a flush rise upon her cheek, that carnation, the very thought of which had made his heart throb. For a moment, or an eternity, they gazed into each other's eyes; and then she caught her hair and busied herself in an embarrassed and futile attempt to wind it about her head; but the wind still baffled her efforts, and Garvin's eyes were still upon her, so she took refuge in a flight as hasty as she could make it, down the hill.
Among the trees she achieved something like an arrangement of her hair and became herself again, if anything, a thought more sedate and reserved than before. Down low on the mountain the air was mild, there was a soft languor in the touch of the wind on one's cheek; the earth lay in a sort of dreaming brightness, and the hillsides were like vast, changing mosaics of colour, inwrought, overlaid, inlaid with the gold of the aspens, the crimson and flame of the maples, the green gloom of the pines; and from farther purple mountains rose the white peaks, sharply, coldly distinct against the deep, bending blue of the sky.
There are certain temperaments so susceptible to colour that it acts upon them as an intoxicant, and Frances was one of these. "Oh, the glory of it! The wonder of it!" she whispered. Then as if seeking relief from the unbearable splendour, she turned her gaze down toward the village basking lazily in the afternoon sun.
"I wish things looked more tidy down there." She sought refuge in the commonplace.
"Yes," agreed Garvin. "By the way," diffidently, "I noticed last Sunday that the church is pretty shabby. Do you think they would let a sinner like me have it painted?"
She clasped her hands impulsively and looked at him with grateful, delighted eyes. "Oh, if you only would! You say that the church needs painting. Well, I noticed that you were there last Sunday and the Sunday before, and I—I am glad."
He twisted his mouth into a queer little smile as he looked at the sun-drenched ranges: "M—m—yes," he said drily, "I'll always be there when you're going to preach. I can't promise as much to Carrothers."
"Oh, I can't preach!" She was really abashed now, the colour tinged her cheek and she drew back and spoke deprecatingly. "I sometimes talk a little, just of the things that come to me to say," she explained eagerly.
"That's it!" He turned his gaze from the mountains to look directly at her and nod emphatically: "That's the reason we come to hear you, because you speak from the heart. Your great, big heart," he added, but it was under his breath.
"But I can't preach," still explaining. "I wouldn't know how to put a real sermon together. The only way I can talk at all is that somebody comes to me in trouble and I get to studying how I can help them. And then I pray, pray, pray for a message for them and for all who suffer. Oh, Mr. Garvin!" clasping her hands on her heart, the mystical light coming into her eyes, "our troubles all seem different, but really they are all the same—and a message for one is a message for all. And after I pray, I wait, and the message always comes, and I just get up in that little, tumble-down church and tell about it; but I couldn't preach to save my life. I often wish I could give you a real sermon," wistfully.
He looked at her with wonder, even a curious speculative awe. "That is why we come," he said. "If you gave us a real sermon, I guess none of us would be there. We've heard too many of them," with a short laugh. "It is you we wish to hear."
"Oh, no!" with a deepening of the eyes, a strange incredulous smile, as if she spoke from some secret conviction. "It isn't me! It's the Word that's drawing you."
"Maybe it is," he answered, influenced for the moment by her belief. "Maybe," he sighed, and then smiled in amused scorn of himself. "Well, well, let it go at that. Then you think I'll be allowed to paint the church?"
"Indeed, yes," gratefully. "Oh, look at the shadows on the hills, Mr. Garvin, you can see them move."
He nodded assent, then he smiled. "Well, I took you to a high mountain this afternoon, even if I didn't show you the kingdoms of the world."
"Perhaps you did." Her voice was low, her face was turned away from him. She shivered slightly.
"You are cold." His tones held a tender solicitude, so tender, that it frightened her.
"It is getting chilly," she cried nervously. "It is growing late. I showed you the shadows on the hills, long ago. Hurry, we must get home!"
And not only were there afternoons and mornings when they loitered up the trails; but long evenings when the hunter's moon swung up above the black mass of the hills like a great, silver flower, and by its light Frances would watch Garvin's tall figure hasten up the road with eager feet. Then they would sit in her cabin, the wood fire crackling in her little stove, and talk over the books they were reading together; and of life, always less of books and more of life, and finally more and more of themselves and of their personal experiences, and the colour and impulse these had given to existence. And under the steady light of Garvin's sympathy and understanding, Frances opened, petal by petal, in the joy of self-revelation, drawing from some inner, and often unsuspected sanctuary, her inmost thoughts and feelings.
But not always did they sit alone. Mr. Herries was often a sardonic third, Ethel and Mr. Campbell came frequently, as did Carrothers; and Mrs. Landvetter, Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Thomas were wont to climb the hill almost daily to discuss Mrs. Nitschkan's reprehensible conduct, and their growing irritation regarding it.
"Something's got to be done to bring Nitschkan back," affirmed Mrs. Evans, with her customary emphasis, one mild afternoon as the ladies sat sewing in the pleasant open space before Frances's cabin. "Yesterday my Rupert Hentzau come toddling home with his little face all painted blue on one side, an' red on the other; an' with house paint, too. He said he'd been playin' Injun with them Nitschkan brats."
"It might have et into the brain," said Mrs. Thomas, with the relish of one who loved to sup on horrors. "Gee! You ain't had it all, Mis' Evans. I've sewed buttons up an' down them Nitschkan backs until I'm dizzy. Captola come to my house yesterday without a button on her; jus' stuck as full of pins as a porcupine."
"My vood pile is 'most all gone," sighed Mrs. Landvetter, "und dey haf broke two of my vindow panes. Ven I catch dose devils I gif each of dem a dollar's vort of vippings."
"It's weeks since she left," said Mrs. Evans dispiritedly, "an' old man Johnson seen her a day or two ago, an' he says she's shot a bear an' was talkin' of pushin' on still further; never said a word about comin' home. She's somewhere up in the North Park now, an' there's no hope of gettin' her back before the snow flies."
The women involuntarily paused in their sewing to gaze out resentfully upon the September splendour of the narrow plateau and its enclosing mountains. The hills swam in purple hazes; the aspens fluttered their shimmering gold through the scarlet of the maples and the dark green of the pines. Begrudgingly, the group thought of Mrs. Nitschkan, enjoying to the full her wild freedom, rising from her bed on the earth to inhale great "draughts of space," alive to the tips of her fingers, fooling with dangers, and embracing rough discomforts for the robust love of them, instinct with the gay, fresh sentiment of the road, tossing the light coin of her jovial greetings to the passers-by.
It was a fleeting vision; but sufficient to arouse in each feminine' breast the scorn of the housed and tended beast for the forager of the woods a scorn eternally mingled with an unsubdued and primitive envy.
Mrs. Landvetter broke the silence with a sharp click of her needles. "Vell, dere must be some vay of vorkin' it to get her back," hopefully.
"Yes," agreed Mrs. Evans, who had been unwontedly silent. "There's always a way out of everything, an' I thought of a way out of this; but it's got to be worked cautious."
"How vould it do to send vord to her dat Jack's kind o' took mit some odder girl?" advanced Mrs. Landvetter. "Hein?"
"Wnat'd she care?" Mrs. Thomas's tone was infinitely scornful. "She ain't like the rest of us self-sacrificing, submissive women, that wins a man through our weakness and dependence, an' then get ignored and neglected or worse, that is, if we don't look sharp an' ain't ready to hand 'em out as good as they give. Now, Mis' Nitschkan, she'll tramp off gipsyin' without sayin' by your leave to anybody. She'll do a day's work in the mines or shoot deer to beat any of 'em, win the boys' money from 'em night after night; an' what do they say, 'Oh, Mis' Nitschkan, she's a good feller!' Whereas, if 'twas us, they'd say: 'Disgustin'!' 'Disgraceful!' Why, even Dan Mayhew, he was holdin' forth last night like a fool man loves to, an' like any other fool woman, I was hangin' on his words like they was gospel."
"'A woman's place,' he says, loud and argumentative, 'is stayin' at home an' mindin' the house and kids.'"
"'What about Mis' Nitschkan?' I asked real mild an' innocent."
"'Oh, she's different,' he answers, 'an' she's all right, too, you bet.' My Lord! Sometimes I think there ain't no justice in the world."
"Oh, I've heard the same talk from Sile," affirmed Mrs. Evans. "The other night I says: '’Course, Mis' Nitschkan's one of my best friends, but she certainly is a figure of fun in them man's clothes.'"
"'They suit her,' Sile answers. 'An' I guess they suit Jack, too,' he says real spiteful. 'After he's married, a man ain't hankerin' to see so much ribbon an' lace fixin's when he knows he's got to pay for 'em no matter how the ore's runnin'.'"
"Ain't they the low dogs now!" murmured Mrs. Thomas. "How'd ever us poor women get even with 'em, if we didn't have a skillet or a pan handy now an' then?"
"Well, every one of our kids is gettin' demoralised by those Nitschkan Injuns, an' what we got to do is to get her here, an' get her to stay; an' us girls got to manage it." Mrs. Evans's tone was final.
Apparently the manner in which the delicate and difficult matter was to be managed was speedily decided upon, and a definite plan for campaign mapped out, for a few evenings later as the dusk was falling, the little band of women knocked at the kitchen door of the Nitschkan cabin.
"Come in," said a gruff voice, and they entered to find Mr. Nitschkan, heavy and bearded, sitting alone. His chair was tilted back against the rough log walls; his pipe was in his mouth and he was, to outward seeming, absorbed in meditations from which he had no desire to be aroused.
A hastily cleared table, whereon a smoky lamp was dimly burning, indicated that Celia and Captola had swiftly disposed of the supper things after a cursory method known as a lick and a promise, and, as their shouts without betokened, had joined the boys.
The ladies greeted Mr. Nitschkan pleasantly: but without changing his position, he viewed them with a glance of apprehensive suspicion from under his lowered eyelids, merely growling a responsive "How do," without removing his pipe from his mouth.
It suited his visitors, however, to ignore his lack of cordiality and the unrelenting hostility of his glance.
"Well, Jack," said Mrs. Thomas, with an ingratiating smile, "us girls got to thinkin' you'd be feelin' kind o' lonesome with Mis' Nitschkan gone so long, so we thought it would be real neighbourly to look in on you, without waitin' for an invitation." She laughed softly at her joke, as she threw aside her cape.
"Yes," added Mrs. Evans genially. "Yes, indeed, an' knowin' Celia an' Captola was young an' inexperienced, we brought a little somep'n along to help you out in your lunch pail. Mis' Landvetter, jus' kindly lay the things out on the table."
Mrs. Landvetter began to unpack a large basket and spread the various articles it contained in a delectable array, tabulating them as she proceeded. "Two of Mis' Thomas's best cakes, gold und silver, und chocolate. You see, Marthy remembered your taste, Jack; und a half dozen of Mis' EfFens's saucer pies, all kinds; und six of mein meat turn-ofers, und plummy duff, und a loaf of salt risin', und a loaf of plain bread."
A look of pleased anticipation dispelled the gloom of Mr. Nitschkan's face. The suspicion vanished from his eyes. He brought his chair to its legs with a thud, removed his pipe and cheerfully knocked out its ashes on the edge of the stove.
"That certain is neighbourly," he said, his glance fixed appreciatively upon the varied and appetising exhibit upon the table. "I wouldn't hardly have expected it of you;" again distrust wavered in his eyes. "Here, Mis' Evans, that chair might give down, take this one. Celia an' Captola ain't no great shakes, I can tell you that," grumblingly.
"What do you hear from Mis' Nitschkan, Jack?" asked Mrs. Evans with casual interest, feeling that the moment had arrived when she might open the lead to which her trained lieutenants would tactfully play up.
"I don't hear nothin'," responded Mr. Nitschkan in a matter-of-fact tone, feeling in his coat pocket for some loose tobacco, and prodding it into the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.
"My, Jack! The backs of your hands is all split!" cried Mrs. Thomas with sudden solicitude.
"I know it;" he looked at them ruefully; "but I couldn't find a thing in this house to rub 'em with."
"My patience! an' me with a box of Rocky Mountain salve in my pocket!" exclaimed the tiny Mrs. Evans, lifting her trim calico skirt, and drawing a tin box from a huge pocket in her stuff petticoat. "Here, let me rub some on. A man certain does need a woman to look after him. Has Sadie sent any word when she'll be back?"
"Sadie? Oh, she'll come when she gets ready," he replied with philosophic indifference.
Mrs. Evans elevated her eyebrows and shook her head two or three times. "Well, course we think the world an' all of Sadie, Jack; but jus' between ourselves, this ain't no way to act. This camp ain't what it was ten years ago. Folks is got to act more formal every day, an' when a wife leaves her man for months at a time an' goes traipsin' over the mountains, they will talk."
Nitschkan was conscious of a dull perplexity, a growing distrust of his own customary and hitherto unquestioned standards. "Oh, that's all right," he answered with a bluff assumption of ease. "Sadie, she's kind o' different. She can't be penned up all year in four walls; she's got to get out an' get a breath of air, or she'd give right out;" he was repeating a formula long impressed upon his mind.
"I do' know if it's all right," Mrs. Thomas was gravely questioning. "Maybe a home-keepin' body like me's all wrong; but how Sadie Nitschkan kin go off a-gipsyin' leavin' you here all alone with those dev—wild kids to look after, is more'n I kin understand. The house is goin' to wrack an' ruin; nothin' to eat 'cept'n what two half-grown girls cooks fer you, an' your poor hands all bust open to the bone on the backs of 'em. How kin she do it?" There was the moisture of tears in Mrs. Thomas's blue eyes.
There was a moment's silence while Mr. Nitschkan, holding his pipe with loose fingers, abstractedly rubbed the bowl of it in the palm of his other hand. His head was bent upon his chest, and his ruminative gaze was fixed upon a knothole in the floor, with the resentful expression of one who has suddenly discovered a grievance.
"Vell, vell, vell! Ye didn't come here to make you feel bad," cried Mrs. Landvetter cheerily, laying aside her knitting. "Now it aind't sociable to sit here all de efening mitout a drop of anything. Here, girls, you get busy. Git dat jar of cream out of de basket, Mis' Thomas, und you, Effens, you vas a master hand at makin' de coffee. Now, Jack," bustling about, "vich vill you haf—a slice of pie or a piece of cake?"
"Oh, give him both," exclaimed Mrs. Thomas, with unctuous generosity. "Here," cutting a huge piece first of the cake and then of the pie, "here, I'll put your plate down, an' Mis' Evans 'll pour your coffee. Now, sit right up to the table," patting his shoulder with a maternal and protecting hand.
Mr. Nitschkan, with something of the sensation of the Porter of Bagdad when he awoke to find himself in the palace of the Princess of China, now completely threw off the surly suspicion of the early evening, and allowed himself to expand in this grateful and comforting atmosphere of feminine consideration and sympathy.
"My Lord! It does a man good to get his teeth in vittles like these," he said, when he had finished the last bite of pie and sat gazing with glistening eyes at the remaining half on the pie plate.
"Aw, take the rest, Jack," urged Mrs. Thomas. "It'll do you good. Like enough you ain't had much to stay you lately."
He took a deep draught of coffee and wiped his mouth meditatively on the back of his hand. Then an impulse of gallantry stirred within him, a desire to express his gratitude for the neighbourly offices of his wife's friends. "I hope Evans 'preciates his blessings."
Mrs. Landvetter rattled her knitting needles together and drew a deep, rasping breath which was almost a groan; Mrs. Evans tossed her head and lifted her eyebrows with the slight, scornful smile of the femme incomprise.
"He ain't like you, Jack," gently explained Mrs. Thomas, "with a heart as big as a bushel basket an' pleased to death with any little thing that's done fer you."
"That's so," affirmed Mr. Nitschkan emphatically, unable to withstand the heady wine of Mrs. Thomas's glance. "I always was that way—ready to 'preciate, and—well, jus' all heart; but," with a heavy sigh, "when a man's wife leaves him two or three months at a time with a lot of kids wild as Injuns hellin' around—what's he goin' to do?"
He sat with his head in his hand, stabbing the table with his knife. Not having hitherto regarded himself as an injured being, he was enjoying to the full the passion of self-pity into which his visitors' commiseration had swept him.
The ladies sighed in unison.
"Now, I'll tell you, Jack," Mrs. Evans felt that the moment had come for forcing him to take action. "This ain't right fer Sadie, an' it ain't right fer the kids, an' it ain't right fer you."
"Praise Gawd, it ain't!" interrupted Mrs. Thomas fervently.
Mrs. Evans silenced her with a glance. "Now, Jack, you got to see what all the rest of us sees so plain,—that Sadie's got to be made to come back an' they's only one way to do it. Scare her good by pretendin' that you're terrible mad at her, an' that you ain't goin' to take her back at all, unless she comes home at once. Now, Dan Mayhew's goin' up to the Park to-morrow; an' he'll take a letter for you if you ask him to."
Mr. Nitschkan scratched his head. "What shall I say?" he murmured helplessly.
"Jus' say," continued his mentor, pursuing her advantage, "that you'll have no more to do with her; that she shan't come in the house nor see the kids nor anything, if she don't come the minute she gets that letter. Otherwise, she can spend the rest of her life gipsyin' if she's a mind to."
"If this dratted weather wouldn't hold out," fretted Mrs. Thomas. "Any other year, the snow would be flyin' before this time; but there ain't no justice in the world, even the weather's got to turn in an' accommodate Mis' Nitschkan. An' when she does come," with growing petulance, "she'll santer in sayin' she's had the time of her life, an' it's a pity us girls hadn't her taste for country life, then we wouldn't be gruntin' an' groanin' all the time—an' us wore to frazzles with her Injun kids! She's snapped her fingers good an' strong in your face, Jack Nitschkan, an' you bet, she'll probably go off for six months next year."
"Well, what kin I do?" growled Nitschkan in shame-faced irritation.
"You can be a man, that's what!" said Mrs. Evans with ringing significance, "an' you can let Sadie Nitschkan know that you're master in your own house. You can make it so hot for her that she'll give up any thought of gipsyin' for some years to come."
Nitschkan fidgetted uneasily. "Might as well talk sense," he muttered gruffly. "It ain't so easy to make it hot fer her."
Mrs. Evans arose and throwing her cape about her fastened it with impatient fingers. "Sadie Nitschkan has got to be disciplined," she said firmly. "Brace up, Jack, an' show some spirit an' we'll think of a way to help you manage it. Come, girls! So long, Jack!"
"So long, girls, an' thank ye. Here, I'll see you to the gate."
After gallantly assisting his visitors to pick their way through broken crockery and entangling wires, Mr. Nitschkan closed the gate thoughtfully behind them, called the children in, and peremptorily sent them to bed; and then sought diligently, and with final success among pots and pans for pen, ink and paper. Spreading these before him on the kitchen table, he sat, far into the night, with tongue in cheek and pen gripped tightly in his unaccustomed fingers, composing the letter which was to bring his wife to a sense of her neglected duties.
"I calkilate this'll fetch her in about a week, givin' Dan time to see her an' her time to get here," he said, when he had finished, viewing the work of his hand and brain with immense satisfaction.