CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE divine day through which Frances had dreamed proved to be only a weather-breeder, for the next day an early and unexpected storm set in.
A storm!—the breeze of Fate, for it had a curious effect upon the Missionary's destinies. She had been invited to Mrs. Landvetter's to sup and spend the evening, and in spite of the threatening skies had gone, for she very largely ignored the weather; but the storm increased so steadily in violence that after supper, as they sat about the hearth, she began to fear she might not be able to make her way to the cabin that night.
"Mein gracious! How dat vind blow!" exclaimed Mrs. Landvetter, as a cold gust from the peaks rattled the narrow windows and the rain beat wildly upon the roof.
"Look how de water creep under de door, und de lamps flare up!" nodding at the thin flames which rose suddenly and then fell in the two oil-lamps on the newly scoured deal table. "Vell, I hope dis drive Mis' Nitschkan home. You can't go back to-night, Missioner. You got to sleep mit Ethel."
"I'm afraid I will have to stay if it will not inconvenience you, Ethel," returned Frances.
"You know it won't. I'm awful glad to have you," said the girl who leaned against the rough stone chimney. Her tone, though sincere, was preoccupied, and it was evident that something rested heavily on her mind.
"Oh, I wish it would stop!" she cried, glancing nervously toward Campbell, who sat huddled on a low stool before the stove, and with restless fingers turned the leaves of the Bible on his knee. "It's sure to bring on one of his spells. I've seen it comin' ever since the wind began to blow."
"Oh, yes, alvays," was the phlegmatic response of Mrs. Landvetter, as she adjusted the pins in the lace pillow on her lap.
But again the wind rose, and so madly that the stout door of the cabin tore at its iron bolt and the windows rattled until it seemed as if the glass would break.
While the women stared apprehensively at the growing pool of water under the door, Andrew Campbell suddenly cast his Bible upon the floor, and with wild, strange eyes peering from his mat of grey hair and tangled whiskers, watched the white slant of rain drive against the panes.
On such nights as these one of those waves of despair which occasionally broke on his partly eclipsed brain was especially prone to sweep over him, and now, in an almost incoherent storm of words, he began to pour out his grief.
"It was nigh this time of the year," his speech marked by a stronger Scotch accent than usual and broken by sobs, "and my wife, Ruth, and my son, we were a' up in our cabin on Corona—ah, but we were happy!—happy!" He lost himself in haggard reverie. "Aye, that was it," with passionate conviction; "we were too happy—we had turned our thoughts from God—we had forgotten. It had been raining for a week—but the creek had kept its banks.
"Ethel, listen, listen!" clutching her arm with tense fingers, as the wind again shrieked about the cabin. "The wind was like that—we paid no heed. Ruth stirred the parritch for our supper—then there came a mighty roaring, like that of the sea—it was a' dark in a moment. The teembers o' the cabin strained and snapped—and we were a' out in the cold, cold water. Ethel—I—I—" he writhed in the torture of remembrance—"I—was saved; and—they—were lost."
At his first words the girl had flown to him, and kneeling by his side had thrown one arm protectingly about him; and now she patted him rhythmically on the back, murmuring, "There, there," as if soothing a baby. Her pale face, with its pretty cleft mouth and big grey eyes, was pressed against the old man's arm and her ashen-fair hair overflowed his shoulder.
Frances leaned forward with pitiful gaze, as if anxious to help; but Mrs. Landvetter considered her two boarders with unsoftened, ruminative eyes, as she methodically placed and replaced her lace pins.
"Vell, dat is yours," was her deep-voiced, indifferent comment. "Efferybody has got deirs comin' to dem. Look at me! I vas forty-nine last Lady's Day, und I ain't neffer had a silk dress." She paused in her work and lost herself in the interest of her narrative. "Vonce, ven I vork in de onion field pretty steady yet, I beg some money from mein mutter und valk two miles to town. I vas goin' to haf a silk vaist like de odder girls. Yust as I got to de store door poppy, he caught me. He valk me home und gif me a goot beatin', I tell you; und I ain't neffer got my silk dress yet."
The old man looked at her with a dawning interest in his distraught eyes, sympathy softening the anguish of his gaze. "And you have suffered? I never thought that," he muttered, shaking his head.
"Vell," with a wink at the girl, "I ain't neffer had a silk dress. Ain't dat straight, Ethel?"
"Oh, la!" cried Ethel, a glow of excitement on her face. "Silk dresses! I have had a plenty of them in my time, five and six at once." She gave a final pat to the old man and rose to her feet. "The kind that stand alone, some of 'em. You know," vivaciously. "Why, Missioner, I've had things 'most as fine as Lutie's. Satins, brocades, failles, grosgrains, taffetas, all kinds, anything I wanted. My!" with a reminiscent, vain little laugh, "I certainly had my share of the vanities of the world, 'fore I give 'em all up for Christ's sake.
"Why, the day of the very night that I was convicted of sin—that was down to the Springs, y' know, Missioner, an' I thought, poor blind sinner that I was, that I was havin' the time of my life—Tom, a gentleman friend of mine, had just struck a pocket of free gold, an' we was celebratin'. I was keepin' his roll for him. The boys all knew that they could trust me to any extent" (in a parenthesis of pride).
"Oh, I ain't tryin' to say a good word for myself—anyone whose sins was as scarlet as mine had better not try that on; but I never stole a cent, an' I wouldn't lie to please you.
"Well, that morning Tom give me his roll—he was a awful generous fellow—an' he says: 'Ethel, it's as much yours as it's mine, little girl; peel off what you like.'
"Well, 'course I took him up. I peeled off a hundred and fifty then and there an' blew in every cent for lingery. I always was crazy about lingery. Why, Mis' Landvetter, I bought me one petticoat that was nothing but insertion an' lace ruffles clean to the waist—lace this wide, y' know," measuring the depth of her fingers. "And I never put it on, neither; for that very night I heard Mr. Campbell here speakin' to a crowd on the street, an' every word he said went right home," placing her hand to her heart, "and I knew I was saved by the blood of the Lamb.
"But, la! men don't know what temptation is. When the devil gets after me, he keeps whisperin' of pretty things. He tries to get me into stores, jus' to see 'em an' finger 'em." She laughed triumphantly. "He had me so tight he didn't want to give me up, did he, Mr. Campbell?"
But Campbell paid no heed to their talk, his thoughts were occupied with the plaint to which Mrs. Landvetter had given utterance. Having laid bare to her the anguish of his soul, he assumed that her secret despair had risen up and answered it. That her cause of grief was slight to absurdity, he did not pause to analyse—perhaps was incapable of doing so. He simply accepted her words that "efferybody has deirs comin' to dem." He had his sorrow; she had hers. It mattered little what form it took, whether it were the terror by night, or the destruction that wasteth at noonday. His was the loss of wife, home, and child; hers the ungratified longing for a silk dress.
His mind thus withdrawn from his own trouble, he sat more calmly, pondering over this revelation in a nature which he had never suspected of ethical yearnings, and suddenly felt himself drawn to the hard, unsympathetic hausfrau by the ties of a common understanding.
Mrs. Landvetter's thoughts, however, were busy with things far removed from silk dresses. Her ideas had gained a new impetus, and all night her shrewd wits were working over a plan by which Campbell's usefulness to herself might be considerably augmented.
The next morning she arose with her plan fully matured and the determination to put it into execution as speedily as possible.
The storm was so violent that its fury had exhausted itself before daybreak, and the sun shone upon a freshly washed, if somewhat desolate, world. Great branches had blown from the trees, and the leaves lay over the ground so thickly that it surprised one to see that any still remained upon the boughs.
"Campbell, he tracks out pretty soon now," remarked Mrs. Landvetter to Ethel and Frances, as they stood watching her hang out the clothes which she had risen before dawn to wash. "I got a plan for him, und I vant you und Missioner, Ethel, to kind o' coax him into it."
Ethel looked at her with quick suspicion. "What scheme you tryin' to work off on him now?" she asked sharply.
Mrs. Landvetter took a clothespin from between her teeth and pinned up a sheet to the line. "Vell," she began slowly, "I don't see no reason vy, instead of sellin' my laces to dose agents dat takes deir money oudt before I gets mine, I shouldn't get dat old Campbell to peddle 'em ven he goes over de mountains, hein?"
"He won't like it," replied Ethel, "and he won't do it. Oh, I know," as the German woman was about to interrupt her, "you think anything's good enough for him. You just see a little, half-cracked, withered stump of a man, don't you, like most folks does around here? But if he'd wrestled for your soul like he done for mine, you'd see Christ's messenger, same as I do. And he shan't go for to peddle." She turned toward the gate.
"But, Ethel, yet," explained Mrs. Landvetter, snatching at her gown, "tink how goot it vould be for him. Dose vimmen dat he shows de lace to dey looks after him some. Dey gif him a bed und a meal now und den. He can't look after hisself."
"That is true," said Frances, struck by the reasonableness of this presentation.
"I know it," admitted Ethel, with reluctance, "an' maybe I will ask him to help you out. Mind, I ain't promisin', though; I got to think it over." She walked abruptly to the gate with brooding eyes and compressed lips.
"I haf so mooch laces," continued Mrs. Landvetter to Frances; "ten yards in de pineapple pattern, und twelve in de roses point, und eight in de flur de lisses, und mooch odders. I tink I make dat old man sell dem all right," with an emphatic nod of her head.
"I really think it is rather a good idea, Mrs. Landvetter," said Frances thoughtfully. "As you say, he would be well taken care of."
"Dat is so. Dat is what I say." And feeling sufficiently bolstered by Frances's approbation, she lost no time in notifying Campbell of her project for making him useful. He shook his shaggy head and thrust out an obstinate lower jaw.
"Am I to peddle laces, woman? I gang to the mountains for meditation on the meesteries and for the finding of ore by means of my gift. And I will not peddle laces."
For a day or two he remained obstinate, in defiance of her rough pleading, and consequently she deemed it wise to defer discussion of the subject until Ethel came home a day or two later. Then she turned her batteries on the girl, until Ethel sought the Missionary for counsel. Frances, still impressed by Mrs. Landvetter's reasoning, threw the weight of her influence on the side of the latter. Consequently, when the old man mentioned the subject with shamefaced apology, Ethel was ready with her answer.
"I know, she spoke to me about it, Mr. Campbell, and it don't seem right, indeed it don't. For my part, I don't think you ought to do a thing but stand in the pulpit and preach. Still, I'd feel a sight easier about you if you would undertake to sell her laces. It wouldn't be peddlin', really it wouldn't, Mr. Campbell; it would just be accommodatin' a friend."
He considered this view of the question with a brightening face and finally accepted it. "Ah, well," with resignation, "say no more about it. I will do it."
So one morning, when the sun lay mellowly over the aspens, whose leaves were turning to gold under the sharp touch of discipline administered by the frost, and the maples were hung with thousands of serrated, scarlet banners, which floated and gleamed through the pines, austerely dark, permanently green, old Andrew Campbell trudged up the road toward the shining, snow-clad peaks, his wire in his hand and Mrs. Landvetter's laces snugly stowed away in his pack.
And as he pursued his wanderings, he drew these forth from time to time with wonderful results, for the women on whose hearthstones he sat regarded him with an almost superstitious awe and prized his wares above their value. By day he prospected with his wire and his cabalistic figures; at nightfall, in the isolated cabins, he expounded his "meesteries" and casually and somewhat reluctantly exhibited Mrs. Landvetter's laces.
His very indifference increased the eagerness of his purchasers. They recognised in him a different type of peddler from the usual brisk, business-like, anxious-to-sell variety. He drifted into their cabins and spoke to them prophet-wise of things alien to their intelligence, but which roused in them their latent veneration for the seer.
And in the different villages where he sojourned briefly, he wandered into the gambling houses, as naïvely sure of his welcome as in the cabins. In fact, these constituted his market places, for this unworldly old man, to whom life's realities were its mysteries, was well known among the worshippers of the blind Madonna of chance.
But the season was a bad one. Mr. Campbell found it difficult to arouse interest even in the few claims he took up. The wire, too, proved singularly capricious; and although the old man stood patiently on the rocks for hours at a time repeating his magical numbers, his divining rod seldom trembled in his hand.
Then, too, the days, although still golden, were growing shorter, and there was a nipping touch in the air which warned the old prospector that the snow would soon drift over his trails, and that to turn his face homeward were the part of discretion; when suddenly, by one of those sardonic jests of Fate, which sometimes tempt one to believe one's self but a pawn on the chessboard in a match game between the powers of good and evil, his progress was unexpectedly delayed.
Longer than was his wont, Campbell had tarried in one camp where he hoped the ore might prove responsive to his quest; and there in the garishly decorated saloons he gave the people the benefit of his mysticism and the opportunity of purchasing his claims—opportunities, in the main, neglected or ignored.
But this sordid, squalid little mining village, with its magnificent environment of snow-capped summits, whispering pines, and mellow sunlight, was experiencing a long-anticipated, infrequent excitement. There came a fair or festival week, and Mr. Campbell, dazed but interested, found himself jostled, hurried along by a tide of men and women, hailed by name, the centre of laughing groups. The village for the nonce had become the magnetic lodestone of those effervescent spirits from neighbouring camps on whom the hills had for months laid their repressive spell.
It was all so strange and disturbing that Campbell lost what little sense he had of life's everyday proportions. For hours during the day, and until long after midnight, he wandered about, possessed by the spirit of excitement and restlessness in the air.
At last, during one of his peregrinations, he paused before the window of a shop, his attention arrested by the sumptuous display behind the glass.
"Man, man," he murmured; "that is silk, and Mrs. Landvetter has never had a silk dress. Why," with brightening eyes, "I will take her one; it will be a surprise for her. But," his face falling, "it will doubtless be very costly."
He drew out an old wallet from an inner pocket and, untying the string which bound it, carefully examined its contents. It held but a little silver, and he shook his head sadly as he wound the string around it once more and thrust it back. "The pity of it! The pity of it! But," he considered, his face suddenly alight, "I have money from the sale of her foolish lacework, the miserable money that she will hoard away in a stocking because she does not know that there are silk dresses so near her."
Finally, under the spur of this suggestion, he drifted within and asked to look at silk pieces. Bolt after bolt was unrolled for his inspection and held up to catch the light.
"Beautiful selection, sir," said the clerk genially.
"Aye," agreed Campbell. "I was thinking of a lady," he continued slowly and impressively, "who has never had a silk dress."
"Well, judging from the standpoint of women, that lady has never really lived," remarked the clerk. "You ought to set that straight, right off. Now, just because we're selling at closing-out prices, I'm going to let you have your choice of anything here."
"I do not know what colour she would prefer," demurred Campbell; "whether the yellow or the red."
"How old's the lady?" asked the clerk, leaning across the counter.
Mr. Campbell considered. "Forty-nine last Lady's Day," he said carefully, "whatever Papist festival that may be."
"Then she'll want black," the clerk spoke with decisive finality. "I bet all these years she's had her heart set on a black silk dress."
His arguments were more than convincing; but although visibly wavering, Mr. Campbell held to his original intention of prudence. "This is an important matter to decide," he said with dignity; "I must discuss it with my wife."
But Ruth, mythical and complaisant counsellor, evidently viewed the question in the same light as himself. There seemed to arise no misgivings as to his ethical right to spend Mrs. Landvetter's money for a silk dress.
Campbell, in his scrupulous delicacy, would have starved to death before he would have taken a penny of the sum to buy himself a crust of bread; but in the instance before him he saw only the opportunity of granting to a fellow-being a long-cherished heart's desire. Therefore he returned to the store the following day and for the sum of twenty-five dollars purchased the silk dress, with accompanying buttons, thread, linings, etc., which the clerk assured him were necessary for the proper making of a gown.