CHAPTER FOUR
IT did not take Frances long to come to a decision about the cabin on Corona. The day after her call on Mr. Garvin she formally leased it, with the intention of taking possession at once; but her plans were, if not frustrated, delayed for a short time, by the not unexpected death of Mrs. Thomas's husband, who, after a winter's struggle with miner's consumption, had finally yielded to his stronger adversary.
For a few days, at any rate, Frances found every moment of her time occupied in consoling the widow and attending to the details of the elaborate funeral which Mrs. Thomas and Zenith regarded as the due of the man who had been so considerate as to leave his widow "property."
It was therefore a week or two later before the missionary could regard herself as finally settled. Her cabin was about half a mile above the village on the mountain side, with a ledge of protecting rock above the roof. It consisted of but two rooms; but no mistress of an ancestral domain had ever felt more pride and joy in her possessions than Frances experienced when her simple preparations for housekeeping were concluded.
She had always lived in a "room," and this was a home. Garvin had had the walls freshly whitewashed, and she had driven ten miles over the mountains to Mount Tabor, a neighbouring and larger village, and selected her simple furnishings. In one room was her narrow bed, a chest of drawers, a table with her few books, and a chair or two. The other room, into which the outer door opened, contained her little cooking stove; behind it shelves ran up to the ceiling; on these gleamed her few and dainty cooking utensils and dishes. There was still room for three or four chairs and the small dining table with its trimmed lamp in the centre, her workbox and one or two books and papers. It was all so plain, so simple, and withal expressed such satisfying and exquisite neatness, that it held the gracious charm of order and repose.
Frances stood on a chair before the window adjusting the new swiss curtains she had just completed. Finishing her task, she jumped down and stepped back the better to view the result, her face dimpling with pleasure and her eyes full of an almost girlish joy. A home at last—her home; and her world without, a wonderful new world!
She threw open the door and stood on the threshold. It was early, early spring. Over there, across the road, patches of snow still lingered among the trees; but on the high branches there was the faint tracery of delicate green tassels. About ten feet from her door the earth broke sharply away into a deep, rocky gulch. A little bridge spanned this, and a mountain brook rippled and gurgled over the rocks eternally. It soothed her to sleep at night, and she awoke each morning to its fresh, pure music. Between a break in the trees she could see the tip of a snowy peak.
Oh, splendid hills of strength! She drew a long breath of content. She was settled here. She had won the respect of the people: her face drooped a little at the remembrance of her methods. Ah, well,—resolutely putting that from her,—she meant to win their love also.
A shout aroused her from her musings, and she looked up to see old Alexander Herries coming across the bridge. He had been of real assistance in helping her to arrange her few possessions, and now she welcomed him with a smile of pleasure.
"Good-morning, Mr. Herries!" she cried. "I'm all settled. I've got a home at last. Come in."
She made him sit down in the easy chair, and pointed out the completeness of her arrangements, listening with a smile and a blush while he admired the results to which he had contributed.
"The chimney draws well?" he asked.
"Perfectly. And have you been down to the village so early?"
"I have. I needed some coffee and sugar. In the store I heard the usual gossip, and more, aye, and more." He leaned forward, and she shrank back a little from the eager malice of his expression. "'Tis something new to-day. Sile Evans and his wife have quarrelled and parted. He's taken the Beebee cabin, the first above the mine."
"Mr. Evans and his wife!" she repeated. "What a pity! Why, they have three or four little children."
"Sure. I am surprised," he owned, wagging his jaw. "I thought she had succeeded in clipping his claws and pulling his teeth. There must have been one or two left, though, and he balked at losing them." He laughed, and his mirth, as always, struck unpleasantly on her ear. It was so discordantly bitter. "But," noting her grave face, "I got something else beside gossip at the store. Here,"—he drew a small whistle from his pocket,—"when 'tis any bit of mending or tinkering you'll be wanting done, ye can just let me know. Sound on that, and I'll be with you in five minutes."
Touched by his kindness, she reproached herself for the harsh judgment of him of a moment before, and thanked him warmly.
"'Tis unnecessary," he said, although well pleased at her evidence of gratitude, "and thanks take up good time. I'll be going soon, for you're to have a visitor. I heard the Widow Thomas telling some of her friends in the store that she meant to pay you a call this morning. The widow!" his mouth twisting. "She'll be a widow about two months."
"She's very handsome," said Frances.
"When you get to know her, you'll find her every variety of the feminine fool," he replied, with his customary scornful emphasis.
"Oh, Mr. Herries!" she remonstrated, distress in her eyes; "you are very severe."
"I'm honest, ye mean. Bah! 'Tis a world of lies!" He stared moodily at the ground, working his jaw. When he looked up his face had softened. "Well, I heard you met little Angel. Now, let me tell you, there's somebody. Aye, a wonderful child!"
"You like strange people, don't you, Mr. Herries? I have heard you mention almost everyone in Zenith, and you have only spoken a good word for two—Angel and Mr. Campbell."
"Humph! And why do you think that is so?" lifting his head and fixing her with his piercing gaze. "Because they are no shams. They live and act from within. They are natural. Why, did ye know"—with a touch of pride—"that I am the only person in Zenith that little Angel will have anything to do with? She and I wander over the hills all day sometimes. She won't have Campbell about," with a chuckle. "Her mother says she's to go to Sunday school." He gave a great laugh.
"Well, why not?" asked Frances coldly. "I certainly think from what I saw of the child, and the way I heard her talk, that it will be the best thing for her."
"You do?" turning his head sidewise and looking at her attentively. "Do you understand Angel at all, I wonder."
"Understand her!" She looked puzzled. "No," slowly, "I don't think I do."
"It is not a question of think," he answered bluntly. "You do not; and never will. She is outside of you."
Frances pondered this statement for a time in silence. "Mr. Herries," she said at last, and with apparent irrelevance, "I want to ask you something. Why have you been so kind and helpful to me? You do not care for religion, nor for the work I am here to do. I have thought sometimes that it was only because I succeeded in gaining ascendency over a group of women whom you detest. That I gained the ascendency is true; but it was by methods I am ashamed of."
"Humph!" he scoffed. "I care nothing for your methods. I like force, character, whether scrupulous or unscrupulous; but if you'll have the truth, take it. Your principal recommendation is that you're neither a coward nor a liar. I hate 'em both. Ah-h-h!" holding up his hand as she was about to interrupt him. "Maybe you've told a lie now and then—few of us haven't; what of that? It's that in your nature, to the very marrow of your bones; you're true. But,"—his face lighting with queer, malicious glee,—"you're narrow, just the same. There's two or three of us in Zenith that ye'll never understand, and one of 'em's little Angel. Listen!" his quick ear catching the sound of footsteps on the bridge, "here's the Widow."
There was a hesitating knock, and Frances opened the door to admit the tall figure of Mrs. Thomas, clad all in new and becoming black. On seeing Mr. Herries, she hesitated a moment on the threshold, and then, modestly lowering her eyelids and letting her mouth assume a more decided droop, she entered.
Adjusting her new crape veil over the back of her chair, she sat smoothing her gloves, equally new, and sighing heavily from time to time.
"It's most the first time I been in anyone's house," she said, addressing Herries, who had risen to go upon her entrance, "an' it's awful hard." She shook her head slightly from side to side, and fluttered her broad white eyelids at him. "But don't let me frighten you off, Mr. Herries. I couldn't 'a' passed that door if there'd been anybody else but you."
But Herries, unheeding this flattering remark, and with one sardonic glance at the missionary, quickly departed, and Mrs. Thomas, in spite of her anxiety to maintain what she considered the proper deportment of one so recently bereaved, was incapable of long concealing the important object of her visit.
"Say, Missioner, what do you think!" she cried excitedly, not only casting aside those trappings of woe,—her handkerchief and her gloves,—but also her expression of profound grief. "The girls sent me to tell you something. They felt it might kind o' take my mind off things, so I come to say that you been elected to the Ladies' Aid Society."
Frances's mind reverted to Herries's words: "One of the kitchens in hell where considerable broth is brewed."
"The Ladies' Aid Society!" she repeated dubiously.
"My land, yes!" cried Mrs. Thomas, aghast at this lack of enthusiasm. "I guess you don't quite know about it. Well, you ain't nobody in Zenith unless you're in it, and it's awful hard to get in, I can tell you. We kept Ethel waiting three months, an' we ain't never let Mis' Garvin through yet."
Truth to say, the Ladies' Aid Society was so important a factor in the life of Zenith, that it is deserving a word or two of explanation.
As the centres of culture have their woman's clubs, their Lenten lectures, classes in this or that, morning bridge, matinees, and afternoon teas, so Zenith included and combined them all in the Ladies' Aid Society, obliterating the boundaries separating these various manifestations of the eternal feminine, but retaining the spirit of each.
A narrow interpretation of the name and purpose of the organisation might seem to limit its activities to the worthy, if uninteresting, altruism of the good Samaritan; but to the initiated this would appear as the unimaginative, uninspired reading of a purist in phrasing. Although ostensibly what its name proclaimed, the Society was also a forum for the discussion of events of the hour and a foyer for the display of fashions. It served not only as a weekly excuse for such feathers and furbelows as Zenith could muster; it was also an exchange for borrowing and lending, for "news and pottage," the gossip of the bazaar; and this was but the half, for the keen edge of interest was constantly whetted by its politics, its cabals, its intrigues, which not infrequently flamed into swift debate and impassioned and acrimonious oratory.
Reduced to its last analysis, the Aid Society was easily symbolised as the feminine brain of Zenith, passionately protected from the rough, disintegrating touch of man, who for some reason regarded it as a menace to his material comfort and mental supremacy, and ever sought to dissolve it.
But perhaps its meaning, its hold upon the affections, and its place in the life of Zenith are more clearly presented in the words of Mrs. Thomas, than by any contradictory and halting descriptions.
"How'd ever us poor women bear our lives without the Aid Society?" she asked Frances indignantly. "It gives us somethin' to dress up for, once a week, an' somethin' to sharpen our wits on an' loosen our tongues over, at the same time. Besides, we're a-doin' for the heathen in the uttermost parts of the earth, an' the poor that's always with you—when you don't set the dog on 'em."
She sighed virtuously, and again smoothed her black gloves on her knee.
"An' now that you're one of us, Missioner, Mis' Nitschkan an' Mis' Landvetter 'n' me thought you'd like to come with us this morning to pay a call on Mis' Evans. You know she's separated, either temporary or permanent, from Sile, an' she likes things done very formal, so us girls are sort of goin' in a body to show we stand by her."
Even Frances Benson, assenting and pinning on her hat before her small mirror, little realised how sweeping was her victory, a victory of fear, perhaps; but nevertheless, very complete.
"This is sure nice," cooed Mrs. Thomas, tucking her arm comfortably under that of her companion as they walked over the bridge and down the road. "You been a true friend to me in my trouble, and I ain't going to forget it."
"I'm sorry about Mrs. Evans," murmured Frances.
"Aw, men are the deuce, ain't they?" advanced Mrs. Thomas philosophically. "Best let 'em alone, if you can, only that ain't so easy. And yet," generously, "they're sort o' nice, too. Gentlemen have always been very kind to me, 'ceptin' poor Seth, of course; but then, you can't hardly call husbands 'gentlemen,' can you?"
Gaining the village, the ladies paused to pick up Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Landvetter, and the four, in a somewhat cocky-locky, and goosey-poosey procession, set out for the home of Silas Evans, now in possession of his wife and four children.
It was one of the trimmest and best cared for in the village, with none of the laissez-aller, the indifference to its blue china, which characterised most of the houses in Zenith, whose owners apparently were quite content to live down to the tin cans and entangling wires about the doorsteps, undisturbed by any aesthetic yearnings toward blue pottery.
However, the front yard but presaged the immaculate order maintained within the house. Adhering to the unwritten laws prescribed by Mrs. Evans's precise formality, her guests never permitted themselves the luxury of following their vagrant impulses and running in at the back door. They habitually knocked upon the front door, and were admitted into a dining-room spotless and shining, the floor covered with a bright rag carpet, the stove ever polished and black. Upon the walls were worked texts and framed photographs, while the window was gay with blooming plants, geraniums, portulaca, German ivy, and begonia.
In these pleasant surroundings sat the mistress of the house in a fresh calico gown and a white collar. Her flying moments were never wasted, and she was now busily occupied in cutting down the garments of her elder daughter Eolanthe, to fit the younger, Celora.
At the first knock heralding the arrival of her four visitors, she sprang forward and opened the door.
"Good-morning, Nitschkan!" she cried hospitably, as that masculine and breezy lady of the mountains entered. "How are you?"
"Able to set up and take my beef tea," chuckled Mrs. Nitschkan. "Let the door ajar, here comes the other girls."
"Come right in, ladies," called their hostess heartily. "I hope you brought your sewing with you. Missioner, this is an honour. Take this rocker."
"Sewin'! Well, just 'cause I hate it more'n pizen, I got some to do, worse luck," responded Mrs. Nitschkan. "The last time we was sewin' on those duds for worse heathen than ourselves, the Bishop, he says to me, 'Don't look so down in the mouth, Mis' Nitschkan, you're doin' the Lord's work.' 'Well,' I says, 'I ain't so sure of it. If it's the Lord's work for a woman to set all day an' stick a needle in an' out of a piece o' goods, why, I'm boun' to disagree with him.'"
"You vas born to disagree, Nitschkan," said Mrs. Landvetter, from the rocking chair before the stove, where she had deposited her huge bulk. She was, as usual, knitting lace in the elaborate and intricate pattern she loved, counting the stitches as she talked. "One—two—three—four—five. Yes, you vas born to disagree, and den it's de odder fellow dat gets hurt."
Mrs. Nitschkan laughed.
"Well, las' Sunday, when Missioner, here, give out in church, 'Thou shalt build up the old waists,' I couldn't help givin' Celia a nudge that nearly sent her off the seat. 'That's my tex', all right,' I whispered to myself. God knows it's what I've been a-doin' fer the last week. My kids is the crankiest monkeys that ever was, in the way their clothes has to be made."
"All kids is cranky," said Mrs. Evans succinctly. "An' the Lord knows the men is."
"That's true enough," commented Mrs. Thomas devoutly. "Myrtle Swanstrom was askin' me the other day what I thought of marriage. 'It's a quick jump,' I says, 'from molasses to snake-root.'"
"You hit the nail on the head that time," responded Mrs. Evans. "Mis' Thomas, will you see to the tea and coffee. Everything's ready on the lower shelf and the kittle's boilin'. Which will you take, Missioner? Tea. Mis' Thomas, make a specially nice cup for Missioner. Well," drawing a long breath, "I suppose you've heard about my trouble with Sile, girls?"
Mrs. Thomas groaned as she poured the coffee and passed the cups. Mrs. Landvetter sighed and counted her stitches lugubriously; but Mrs. Nitschkan threw her head back with an habitual, devil-may-care gesture:
"Gosh A'mighty! what does that matter?" she cried. "Dogs an' men is just alike. You got to beat 'em, an' every once in a while drive 'em off the place, before you get any good out of 'em."
"Well, I jus' got tired of the way things was goin', an' Sile an' me had it out," narrated Mrs. Evans. "I told him in the first place to let that cut-throat lease, he signed, alone. Any fool miner in the camp ought to have known the minute he put eyes on Brown and his fox-grin, that he might as well sell himself to the devil as sign one of his contracts. Well, you know what men are, and you know just how easy one man can get around another, an' you all know that men ain't got no more sense than children, for all they're as obstinate as mules. Well, where are we now? So deep in debt at the store that I'm ashamed to show my face. But what can you expect? Sile hadn't no bringin' up to speak of. You all know what his folks was. I read him the family pedigree good an' strong the night we quit."
"What did he do?" asked Mrs. Nitschkan, leaning forward eagerly, "hit you?"
"You bet he didn't. Hit a McKenzie? Well, I guess not! Here, ladies, let me fill your cups again. I'll tell you,"—pausing with uplifted coffee-pot, while the frown deepened between her brows,—"I could 'a' bore the lease, perhaps, but that sister of his,—that cat of a Mary Ellen,—no, indeed!"
"La! la! la!" exclaimed Mrs. Landvetter. "Und how vas dat?"
"Why, I went clean over to Mount Tabor the other day to collect the rent from the house my father left me. Well, I knocked an' knocked, and at last she come to the door. 'Oh!' says she, 'Mis' Evans?' as formal as that, you see. 'Won't you come in?' 'No, Mary Ellen,' I says, 'I will not come in. The door-step's good enough for me, an' what I've got to say is this: "I want my rent."' She didn't say a word, but kind o' looked down, an' I went right on. 'Now look here, Mary Ellen,' I says, 'right's right and wrong's wrong. You've always been slack with your rent, and I've never pressed you, as I might another, seein' as you're Sile's sister; but my stock of patience is about used up. You've got a house full of lodgers, an' every one of 'em working, an' there ain't no reason why you should hold back the rent on me.'"
"'The boys is havin' bad luck,' she says, sort o' sullen.
"'Bad luck nothin'!' I says. 'They've been workin' in the best payin' mines around. If they've had any bad luck, it's playin' faro. I'll tell you where the money's gone,' I says. 'It's gone buyin' pink organdies and feather boas. That's where it's gone.'
"'It's none of your business what I buy,' she snapped, 'an' I'll pay your old rent when I get good an' ready, an' not before. Get off my steps,' she says; 'I scrubbed 'em fresh this morning.'
"Well, girls, my blood boiled; but I didn't lose my temper. I says quite cool, 'I'll not get off your steps till I choose, an' I may conclude to stay all night an' call the marshal an' have the things moved out into the street.'
"'Aw, you dirty cat!' she says, an' made a lunge at me an'—an' did this with her low-bred nails." She pointed to a scarlet line which ran from her eye to her chin, noticeably, if temporarily, marring her good looks.
"Girls, you know I'm no coward; but something just seemed to come over me,—maybe it was the words you spoke in church last Sunday, Missioner. 'Don't put yourself on a level with this rent-robbing creature. Don't forget you're a lady.' An', girls, I just turned on that step, give her one kick an' walked off."
"Well," commented Mrs. Nitschkan disappointedly, "we all know you ain't no coward, but you'd better believe I'd 'a' done her up when I had the chance. Still," hopefully, "there's more ways of killin' a cat than by chokin' her with butter."
"My! my!" muttered Mrs. Landvetter; "vell, you can't neffer tell."
"Say," broke in Mrs. Evans eagerly, "is it true that Sile's up bachin' on Corona, in old man Beebee's cabin, an' that he's gone to work at the Mont d'Or?"
"Yes," affirmed Frances, since no one else seemed to know. "It must be. I saw him going to work this morning. He—he—doesn't look very happy."
"I hope he ain't," said Mrs. Evans emphatically. "He don't deserve to be."