CHAPTER NINETEEN
MISS EVELYN SOURRIER was enjoying her experience in Zenith as much, if not more, than anything she had ever known in all her varied and agreeable existence. The freedom of the life, the absence of blue china standards, the peculiarities of the people she met in this remote mining village all delighted her. Especially did she profess herself charmed with Frances and her home.
The tiny cabin nestling against the ledge of rock, with the aspens quivering over it, the brook that foamed down the deep gully before the door, the black-robed, composed figure of the Missionary herself, all appealed to her imagination. The picture seemed so complete, so suited to its environment, and Frances, so reserved, so controlled, showing only glimpses of the woman in occasional, revealing glances of her dark eyes, and her strange, sweet, unexpected smiles, had become to Evelyn a fascinating puzzle.
Consequently, during the second week that Garvin's guests remained with him, there was scarcely a day that this light-hearted, laughing girl did not climb the hill to the Missionary's door and beg to be allowed to make herself a cup of tea. She loved to play with Frances's dainty kitchen utensils, all stowed away, fair and shining, in the little cupboard behind the stove. It made her feel as if she were a child again and playing with her dolls.
But Frances's little cabin was not the only one in which she sipped tea. She had, with a most endearing grace of manner, made herself very much at home in Zenith, and the consensus of the camp's opinion was duly expressed by Mrs. Thomas:
"I mus' say for her," remarked that lady, with a judicial air of giving the devil his due, "that she's always called on me as one lady might on another. I ain't seen no signs of any soup kitchen airs or any totin' around of red flannels, like you read about in them English novels. 'Course it's kind o' sad to think of Walt havin' all them high-jinks goin' on at the house an' Lutie hardly cold in her grave; but then not bein' really married, Walt don't have to keep up a show of mournin' like a man's bound to for a wife."
But if Zenith consented to forego for once her cherished rights of criticism and voice approval of Miss Sourrier, the English girl expressed an equally flattering opinion of Zenith as she sat on the Missionary's doorstep, sipping her third cup of tea.
"I do like it here," she said, with a sigh of content. "Freedom, open air, good sport—what more could one ask? It's just the life I love; and was there ever such a delicious, quaint camp? I am fascinated by everyone, but most of all by that strange, beautiful creature they call the Black Pearl. I've watched her standing in her gate or working in her garden day after day, looking out at the mountains with those great, shadowy eyes of hers, or talking to that dandy-looking gambler—what's his name? Bob Flick—and I have never seen anyone who has so stirred my imagination as she. I lie awake at night to make up romances about her. They say that she was a wonderful dancer, known all over the Southwest, and that she gave it up to marry that ripping-looking husband of hers. Isn't that a romance in itself?"
She paused a moment to spread some bits of biscuit on the edge of her gown to lure nearer the chipmunks peering at her with bright, bead-like eyes from behind the rocks, and then scampering off, speedily to return.
When she spoke again it was of Garvin, describing with a very real enthusiasm some incident in which she considered that he had shown courage and exceptional powers of resource.
"Father and I have drifted about the world a lot, and of course known quantities of men; but Mr. Garvin is really one of the most remarkable men I've ever known; so simple, so natural, so cultivated, too, with no nonsense about him. Millionaires are usually so objectionable." Her interest and admiration vibrated through her low, charming voice.
"Everyone likes and admires him," said Frances, her eyes bent on her sewing, and in an endeavour to speak naturally her voice, even to herself, sounded cold and constrained; but Evelyn was apparently oblivious of her lack of enthusiasm.
"I sometimes fear my high spirits must jar on him so soon after his wife's death. He often seems preoccupied and distrait."
His wife! Frances threw her a quick glance, but Evelyn's eyes were innocent.
"Do tell me about her," she continued. "Was he very much in love with her? Mrs. Thomas was telling me the other day about her demand for laces and jewels and all that sort of thing up to almost the last moment before her death, and how Mr. Garvin strove to gratify every wish. He would be that way, wouldn't he? But she must have been very silly."
Frances drew a sigh of relief. Zenith had been discreet.
"Lutie was very lovable." It was almost a formula.
"Oh, he is wonderful, wonderful!" murmured the English girl. She crumbled some more biscuit in her hand and threw it to the chipmunks, and Frances gazed at her with eyes that took in every detail. The pale gold of her faultlessly dressed hair, the smooth, firm outline of an incomparably tinted cheek; the delicate, high-bred nose; eyes set in the head like jewels, sapphire eyes that had only looked on pleasant things; the long, graceful limbs, supple with every form of outdoor exercise; the slender, white hands, now folded about her knees, and her beautifully modelled feet.
She was indeed a princess of a fairy tale, and Frances mentally saw herself beside this radiant creature, plain, quiet, without even the redeeming touch of youth; and the dagger of jealousy pierced her heart.
"I never saw such an Aladdin," continued Evelyn enthusiastically. "All he has to do is to rub his lamp and there is whatever he wishes. A day or two ago I happened to say that if the mountains had a lack, it was roses. He smiled, and we drifted into something else; but this morning great boxes, positively bales of them, came. I never saw so many roses in my life before. The house is transformed into an English rose-garden."
A shadow fell across Frances's face, a shadow that remained during the rest of the day, until toward evening she saw Herries staggering up the hill with an enormous box on his shoulder. "I guess Walt's cornered the rose market," he said, twisting his mouth after his accustomed fashion. "He's got a whole houseful of them on the flats, and now he's sent you a houseful." He put the box down and took off the lid.
"Oh, if I could only keep them always!" she cried, her eyes grown moist and radiant at the sight of their beauty.
"You may," said Herries. "You will be able to perform that miracle if you wish. You may have them fresh every day if you like." He glanced at her half-humorously, half wistfully from under his shaggy brows and spoke with obvious meaning.
"Where, where shall I put them all?" she asked, flushing painfully. "I have no beautiful vases. We shall have to use common things, like buckets and pails."
Herries helped her arrange the flowers in anything they could find that would hold water, and when they had finished the roses filled every space of her narrow chamber. The long, green stems with their shining leaves fell across each other and made a lattice, while the roses that starred them glowed against her white-washed walls like a crimson arabesque of love. The fragrance seemed to blow from the heart of June, and Frances, sitting alone in the evening, felt herself actually permeated by the sweetness, and the spell of beauty and colour and fragrance became every moment more potent.
Then through the deepening twilight she saw Garvin and Evelyn strolling up the hill together. The English girl wore some kind of a gauzy, white gown which defined her tall, Diana-like figure. She was hatless, and above the coils of her fair hair was a wreath of roses arranged like a coronet. As they passed Frances's cabin there floated back to her the sound of Evelyn's soft and musical laughter.
The Missionary sat for a few moments in silence, and then went into her little inner chamber, and, lighting a candle, scanned her own reflection in her small mirror.
She held the light high, and in the faint, flickering flame of the candle the shadows about her eyes were accentuated and the lines deepened. She could not see the soul which gave life and character to her face; she could only see the hollows of the temples, the sombre eyes, the square outlines of the jaw in a face never beautiful according to any canons of beauty.
She put the candle down, and resting her elbows on the bureau, sunk her chin in her hands and gazed long at her own reflection. From the dim depths of her being another self seemed to rise and ask probing, imperative questions.
"Do you love him?"
"Do I love him?" she murmured, shaken by such a tide of passionate emotion as she had never known. "Do I love him?" The question itself was an affirmation.
The fragrance and colour in which she had lived and moved and breathed all day wrought their spell, and the shadowy self, the woman who worked and planned and thought, retired to some far limbo of consciousness, while the woman who loved asserted herself, the jealousy of which she had felt the first pang when she heard Evelyn Sourrier's laughter ached like a dagger working its slow, twisting way through her heart, and the cruel, implacable feminine—the gliding, sinuous, subtle serpent of the feminine—rose and whispered.
It was she Garvin loved, not the English girl—but she, Frances. It seemed to her now that she must always have known it, from the first moment they had gazed into each other's eyes; but, nevertheless, she hated the English girl. She could have torn the roses from Evelyn's hair. There were no roses in her hair. No; but if there were, she would not wear them as did Evelyn. Her roses, she instinctively knew, would never be plucked in a demure English garden and blown upon by the wholesome winds of the breezy down. The woman who loved smiled scornfully at the thought. She craved the musky, heavy-headed roses grown in the very heart of the Venusberg.
Herries's words came back to her. He had said she could wear roses if she would. Well, she would. She tore down the tightly pinned-up braids and let them hang over her shoulder, great glistening black coils that swung heavily almost to the floor. Hastily she pinned above each ear a cluster of red roses. With hurried fingers she removed the waist of her gown; her shoulders were still white and firm, her throat a smooth column. Oh, they were not unfitted for the display of jewels! But not diamonds; she would not wear those cold, sparkling jewels that Lutie loved, but blood-red rubies, and opals with hearts of fire gleaming through faint mist films—symbols of power.
The serpent whispered the old, eternal feminine lure, and the passion for adornment, stronger and more vital because so long repressed, came upon her. Was she not beloved by one of earth's conquerors? And he, and she would go out into the world from these mountains where he had amassed his great golden hoard. Go out magicians who could transmute gold to beauty, and colour, and luxury, and power; and the kingdoms of the world should be theirs.
The serpent whispered as ever of the apple, and the eternal feminine stretched forth her hand—when there came a loud, though tremulous, knocking upon the door. Frances paused only to lift the roses from her hair and ran to answer the summons.
"Who is there?" she called, her fingers on the bolt.
"It is me, Ethel," was the sobbing answer.
The Missionary made haste to unbar the door, and the girl stumbled over the threshold. "Oh, Missioner!" she cried. "Save me, save me! The Devil's got me; he's got me for everlasting!"
Her face was sodden with tears, her hair fell wildly over it; brokenly, she poured forth her story of what had happened, and Frances from her almost incoherent words gradually gathered an impression of the actual occurrence.
Mr. Campbell had finally returned from his wanderings. About sunset he stood in the doorway of Mrs. Landvetter's cabin, and Ethel, bubbling with a voluble welcome, had sprung to meet him. She had caught, she explained to Frances, an immediate impression of something new in his expression, something responsive, almost buoyant. It was as if the blight which had so long overfallen him had been partly erased. There he stood, smiling, mysterious, alert.
"Oh, I am so glad to see you back," she cried. "Oh, I tell you I have missed you; but the change has done you good. You do look well."
"Aye, and I have some surprises for you all," with a certain sly glee, as he placed the long, narrow package on the table. "I have a vairse which will take me the winter to ponder oot, and I have something for Mrs. Landvetter—something she has wished for a' her life!"
"For pity's sake! Ain't you the kindest little man!" said Ethel tenderly. "To remember her after the way—but still now, that ain't Christian. There she is now," as Mrs. Landvetter passed the window and threw open the door, a billet of wood in her hard, red arms. When she saw Campbell a smile widened the corners of her mouth, and avarice shone in her eyes.
"Vell, Mr. Campbell, how you vas? Excoose me, v'ile I puts down dis vood und den I gif you a hand. Veil, vell! So, so. You didn't get lost, nor nuttin', hein? Sit down v'ile I make you a cup of coffee."
With a sly glance at Ethel, Campbell took his old seat on the stool, his cherished package laid carefully across his knees.
Mrs. Landvetter was aware that there were certain formalities prescribed by etiquette to be observed before she could put the one paramount question; but she determined to make these as brief as possible. Consequently, a generous piece of wood was thrust into the stove, and the coffee pot was filled and put on to boil, with an obvious bustle.
And now for the formalities. "Vell, wie gechts in de mountains? De wire done goot, I guess?"
Her boarder thrust out his lower jaw. "No," he returned. "It was not good."
"Dat vas too bad. But de vetter; he vas nice, vasn't he?"
"Beautiful," assented Mr. Campbell.
Mrs. Landvetter sighed with relief. She had paid her mint and anise and cummin to Mrs. Grundy. "Und," leaning eagerly forward and speaking with an almost tremulous jocularity, "und haf you brought all mein laces back, or haf you lost dem?"
"I have sold them a'."
"Effery piece?" she screamed incredulously. "Effery piece?"
"Every piece," he answered.
"Vell, you vas a goot liddle man. Und how mooch did dey bring; how mooch?"
"Twenty-five dollars."
"Twenty-five dollars? Mein Gott, you vas de best effer!" hugging herself and rocking back and forth in her glee. "Twenty-five dollars! Und now," with outstretched, visibly itching fingers, "v'ere is de money?"
"It's a' in this package." He slowly unrolled the paper from the silk. "There it is!"
The huge German woman looked at him for a moment in astonishment. "Vat you givin' me, Campbell?" she asked roughly.
He still smiled. "You have never had a silk dress in your life," his words tumbled over each other at the thought of the magnitude of the joy he was conferring, "and I have bought you one with the money I got from the sale of your laces."
Mrs. Landvetter looked at him a moment with a purpling face. Then she sprang at him. "You bought dat silk mit my money? Den, by Gott, I break your head!" She rushed toward the pile of wood on the hearth, and seizing a thick stick, struck blindly in the air.
But Ethel, lithe and quick, had sprung from her seat at the table, picking up something as she ran—something that gleamed long and shining in her hand.
"Don't you touch him, or I'll kill you!" she threatened, catching the larger woman by the arm. Her face was dead white, her narrowed eyes glittered like a cat's, her gasping voice was scarcely audible. "You—it ain't the first time I've used a knife! The jury has let me off twice, an' they would again, you bet. Drop that stick, I tell you! Drop it!" Then, as Mrs. Landvetter wavered, but still held her ground, she bent the long thin blade almost double and let it snap back in the older woman's face.
The mighty Hun recoiled, but still snarling and showing her fangs. "I vant my money," she muttered stubbornly; "und, by Gott, I get it out of him!"
"Yes, I know you, you dirty coward. You'll wait till I'm gone and then take it out of him, and rattle him so that he won't never get straight again. Well, you won't get the chance; for I'll pay you your old money now. I'll take the silk off your hands. It ain't the first time I've wore silk, by a long sight!"
She tore open her gown and drew a chamois bag from her bosom. Unfastening it, she counted out some crumpled bills and loose silver. "There's your money," contemptuously; "twenty-five dollars. Put it down in your stocking now. Get it safe, do!"
"V'ere you get it, Ethel?" Mrs. Landvetter clutched the money, fawned over it, and yet feared to hold it.
"None of your damn business where I got it! You drop that wood and go on out to your washtubs!" She stamped her foot, and then, seeing the other hesitate, motioned with her knife toward the door. "Go on, I say!"
As Mrs. Landvetter closed the door behind her Ethel threw her weapon on the table and ran to old Andrew Campbell, who crouched upon the floor close to the wall, holding his grey head with his hands.
"Come, come," she crooned brokenly; "come with Ethel."
He said no word, but at the sound of her voice, arose feebly, and passively let her lead him to his dark little room off the kitchen. She had almost to lift him upon his bunk, and then she knelt beside him, spent with her fury, shaken with hysterical tears.
At last he turned his haggard face with its wild, miserable eyes to hers. "I do not care if she shook me," he muttered hoarsely; "I do not care if she did not like the silk. But I cannot forgive her, and I can never pray again, and I cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"But," Ethel checked her sobs to soothe him, "if you don't care that she shook you, and if you don't care that she didn't like the silk, what makes you feel so bad?"
"Because," he answered with solemn anguish, "she lifted a great stick and struck my Ruth; and I can never forgive her." His words trailed as he lapsed into despair.
Ethel was bewildered for a moment, and then, with a dawning comprehension of his trouble, she looked about her helplessly. There seemed no way in which she could minister to this mind diseased.
But again she turned her perplexed, despairing glance toward the bed where Campbell lay; and as she gazed at that waif—conquered, overwhelmed, beaten by life—the light of love shone in her eyes and in her sad, pitying smile.
"Listen, Mr. Campbell," bending above him and speaking with imperative, tender distinctness. "It wasn't your Ruth who got hit. It was me—just only Ethel. She give me a whack across the arm, and you've got us mixed up. How could you? Why, your Ruth stood beside you all the time."
He half raised himself in the bed, new hope dawning in his eyes. But they clouded again with suspicion. His trembling hands plucked at her sleeve. "Let me see," he said, "where she struck you."
Her lips paled; then she lifted her head with a reckless laugh. "It don't show yet, dear; but it will be all black and blue by to-morrow. You'll see." Smiling tenderly at him, she rose to her feet and walked to the small, narrow window. Leaning her head against the rough sash, she looked out upon the grey of the hills now blurred in twilight. Her fair hair fell about her white face, her scarlet mouth drooped forlornly. At last she turned, and with the instinctive idea of seeking comfort somewhere, had struggled blindly, almost unconsciously, up the hill to Frances's cabin.
" Listen, Mr. Campbell"
"And, oh, Missioner," she wailed with a hysterical, choking catch in her voice, "I ain't never lied nor stole till to-day. No matter what else I've done, I've always been a lady that way. But," with the last abandonment of despair, "I guess if I could fall so low as to steal what I collected for the Army, I needn't let a little thing like a lie stick in my throat." She dropped her face in her hands. "I've tried to raise myself; I've tried to be somebody—but what's the use! It seems like even God was against me."
For answer, Frances gathered the girl's trembling, sob-racked body in her arms and held her closely, warmly against her heart, smoothing back the hair from the damp brow, and crooning over her as a mother might have done, murmuring tender, consoling words. At last, when Ethel lay against her quiet, but exhausted, she placed her gently in a chair and left her for a moment, to return presently with a roll of bills in her hands.
"There, Ethel," she said, "is twenty-five dollars. It is yours. The Army is paid back now, and you owe it nothing. You owe me nothing either, for you have given me the happiness of helping you."
Ethel's dazed eyes lightened. She stretched out an eager and yet hesitating hand toward the money; and then her face fell again into its woful lines. "But it don't wipe out the sin," she cried; "it don't wipe out the sin!" and fell again into her wild weeping.
"Listen! Stop crying! Listen to me!" Frances's voice was imperative now. "You sinned to spare Mr. Campbell suffering. You sinned because you couldn't at the cost to yourself. You sinned through love, Ethel, and those sins are quickly forgiven, blotted out. See how easily even I could help you. Ah, Ethel, I wonder that I call them sins"—she forgot the girl. "'’Tis man's perdition to be safe,'" her thought turning to her beloved Emerson, "'even from what he or anyone else might call sin—when he ought to forget himself wholly'" She was far beyond Ethel now, and the girl plucked at her sleeve.
"But I backslid," she persisted, still hysterically self-accusing. "I thought I was redeemed; and I'm just as bad as ever. I went for Mrs. Landvetter with a knife. I can't understand it. I thought my feet was planted on a rock, and I slid back just as easy. I thought I was on the rock so solid that the gates of Hell couldn't prevail against me; an' I slid back just as easy. Oh, I can't understand it!"
"Nor I," said Frances sadly; "nor any of us. Come, Ethel, you must stay with me to-night and rest."
It was not a difficult matter to persuade the worn-out girl to remain with her, and the Missionary quickly helped her to undress, soothing and comforting her meanwhile and sitting beside her until Ethel closed her heavy eyes in sleep.
Then with swift, light movements, Frances gathered up the roses she had torn from her hair and bosom, and which lay, scattered and fading about the floor, and carried them out into the night.
On her little bridge, with the cool wind blowing about her, she buried her face in them for a moment, inhaling, in one deep breath, all their beauty and fragrance. "I do not understand it either, Ethel, how—we—can—slip—backward," she murmured, and then cast the roses into the shallow, rushing water of the stream.