CHAPTER SEVEN
IT was as wild an evening as the afternoon had seemed to presage; the rain was falling in fitful dashes, and the mountain wind was piercingly keen. Frances, however, did not follow her inclination and hasten on to the warm solitude of her cabin; but with her mission firmly in mind, turned up the road toward the home of Mrs. Evans.
After she had knocked at the door and been admitted by one of the children, she found to her relief that Mrs. Evans had also just reached home after her trip to the station and was divesting herself of the heavy wraps she had worn as a protection against the weather. This emotion was speedily mitigated by the sight of Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Landvetter, and Mrs. Nitschkan sitting comfortably about the stove, sipping coffee and engaged in the pleasure of unrestrained and unhampered conversation possible to such well-cemented intimacies.
"Why, Miss Benson!" called Mrs. Evans from an inner room, overhearing the polite and even effusive greeting accorded Frances by the ladies about the fire. "This is sure good of you to come in such a day. Eolanthe, set up a chair for Miss Benson. I'll be out in a second."
"Well, if this ain't a sight for sore eyes," cooed Mrs. Thomas affectionately. "Let me help you off with your gums, Missioner."
"It sure is," agreed Mrs. Nitschkan breezily. "What you want's a steamin' cup of coffee, Missioner; sugar an' cream?" proceeding to pour the strong coffee into a cup, with a necessary accompaniment of noise.
"It vas an awful day, vasn't it?" asked Mrs. Landvetter, looking up from her lace needles and adding her mite to the general cordiality.
"Pretty bad," replied the Missionary, taking a seat, and picking up the baby who had toddled to meet her; "but it's so cheerful in here that you soon forget the weather outside."
"My! I just got soaked to the skin driving up from the station," continued the voice from an inner chamber. "Wait till I get some of these duds off and some dry ones on, and I'll be right out. Celora, did you keep up the fire in the kitchen while I was gone? I wisht you'd stay for supper, Miss Benson; not that there's anything to tempt you, Lord knows; but why can't you stay and take potluck with me and the children? The other ladies say they got to go on."
Frances reflected a moment. This was evidently her opportunity. "I will be glad to," she replied, "if you won't go to any trouble for me."
"It's no trouble, I assure you, Miss Benson." Mrs. Evans, trim as a neat brown wren, appeared and took her place in the circle about the fire. "How would you like some muffins? Now, I'm ready to sit down and chat. Celora, you can break some eggs for mommie."
"Missioner, I seen you goin' to Walt Garvin's this afternoon. What did that big doctor say about Lutie?" asked Mrs. Nitschkan eagerly.
"Yes, dat's vat ve all vant to know," muttered Mrs. Landvetter.
"I didn't see the doctor," returned Frances noncommittally.
The ladies understood that further questioning was unnecessary.
"I'm a givin' her about a month more," affirmed Mrs. Nitschkan, with finality.
"I guess." Mrs. Landvetter slowly shook her head.
Mrs. Thomas sighed heavily. "Ethel says she ain't made no preparations at all. She don't think of one thing but clothes and such, and you all know that nothin' could be perishinger. Ethel feels awful about her unpreparedness; she says she can't sleep at night for thinkin' of it, and she feels all the time like she's called to be a instrument; so the other day, she drug old man Campbell to see Lutie. She reasoned that if he could do what he done for her, he could save a stick or a stone.
"Well, that very same evening, she come into our house cryin' to beat the band. She says that one of Campbell's despairin' spells was comin' on, only she didn't know it, and that after she got him in that red room of the Garvin's he seemed kind o' dazed. He just set there with his wild eyes fixed on Lutie, an' never so much as sayin' one word of comfort or exhortation, jus' every once in a while, he'd hiss out somethin' about Jezebel, or the daughters of Babylon, an' 'wailin' an' gnashin' of teeth.'
"An' while she was doin' her best to get him on another tack, in come that devil child, Angel, an' mocked him to his face, so's you couldn't tell which was which. Well, as a result, Lutie got to laughin' an' cryin' all at once, an' run right into the 'strikes'; an' she clutched hold of Ethel an' screamed: 'Take him away! take him away! he's crazy. Walt! Walt! Walt!' an' Walt run in an' drove 'em all right out. Oh, it must have been something fierce. Ethel was all broke up, I can tell you; but she ain't goin' to back out. She says to me to-day: 'It 'most looks like I got to fight the Devil single-handed for Lutie's soul; but I ain't goin' to let her die in her sins,' she says.
"I tried to cheer her up the best I could. I says: 'Well, Ethel, you never know what means the Lord's goin' to take. Maybe somebody'll go to raisin' a roughhouse somewheres an' put a bullet through one or two of her husbands, an' then Walt can marry her at the eleventh hour.' I told that to Ethel to cheer her up; but I couldn't put much faith in it myself. Things don't happen that slick." Mrs. Thomas sighed more heavily than before, and peered into the depths of her coffee cup with as much of an expression of tragedy as her soft, indefinite features could assume.
"What's the matter, Marthy?" inquired Mrs. Nitschkan robustly. "You ain't got nothin' to bother about except how to spend that two thousand Seth left you to do as you please with."
"Dere's only one way to spend it," chuckled Mrs. Landvetter; "put it down in your stockin' an' keep it there."
"Listen to old Mis' Miser," scoffed Mrs. Evans. "Well, Marthy, what are you goin' to do with it?"
"I'm a thinkin' of doin' up the parlour," scanning the faces of her friends for signs of approval.
"Gosh a'mighty!" murmured Mrs. Nitschkan, with a portentous yawn. "I wouldn't waste good money that-a-way. Get yourself a horse an' cart, pile the kids in an' jant around havin' a good time. You'd better believe I would. I'd bake up a mess of meat turnovers and doughnuts, and the Devil could go a-courtin' for all of me. I'd have a picnic every day in the year."
"Ah, shut up, Nitschkan!" said Mrs. Evans. "Don't go puttin' such ideas in Mis' Thomas's head. Every woman don't want to go a-gipsyin' like you. Some of us has got a little respectability and domestication. You go ahead, Marthy, an' get your parlour fixed up. Have some style about you, an' for the land's sake, whitewash the kitchen ceiling; it's scaling something fierce."
"You'd get more fun out of a horse and cart," Mrs. Nitschkan asserted, a teasing gleam in her small bright eyes.
"Maybe you would." Mrs. Evans emphasised the pronoun; "but it wouldn't make no show when folks come to the house. You know everybody'll want to know what you done with Thomas's insurance," speaking authoritatively to Mrs. Thomas, "an' you know yourself it'll look frivolous to show them a horse an' a cart, with the house needin' paint, and the nap all off the plush in the parlour set, an' the pillow shams on the parlour bed only scalloped, not a shred of lace on 'em. It wouldn't look right honest, Mis' Thomas, when Thomas done so well by you an' left you all that he did."
In truth, Thomas had electrified Zenith by leaving to his widow what was regarded in that remote village as a comfortable fortune, for he had been one who had enjoyed a bout with the earth for its fruits; and what he had gained he clutched tight from the grasp of his seeking fellows.
The estate then of which Mrs. Thomas was the important, if depressed, legatee, comprised a half interest in the "Zenobia," a prospect with an excellent showing on Eureka Mountain; a patch of land down in the valley which was devoted to melon culture, and three well-rented houses on Sunshine Avenue. This property was left in trust for the widow and the children in the hands of Dan Mayhew, the village lawyer and notary public; but a life insurance of two thousand dollars was bequeathed exclusively to Mrs. Thomas, to be used as she saw fit, and it was the proper disposal of this sum which was at present troubling her vague and unpractical soul.
"I'll tell you what," said Mrs. Nitschkan, rising to her feet and buttoning her coat about her; "I'll be honest, woman dear, and tell the truth. I never had no use for Thomas in life. I can see him yet, lookin' at me with that black, twisted smile of his'n and sayin' things that you couldn't 'a' helped swattin' him for if he'd had his lights.
"That hole where his lungs ought to have been was all that saved him from me again and again; but I do say this, and I'll say it loud enough for everyone to hear, that the way he's left you, woman dear, is an example to every man in the camp. Maybe you think I ain't rubbed it into Jack."
She but voiced the universal feminine sentiment in Zenith. There had been no hesitation, no slack work in the endeavour to rub it into every separate Jack.
"Well, it's time we was moving on. Pull yourself out of that chair, Landvetter. Come, Marthy. Stop in soon an' see me, Missioner."
"And me," echoed Mrs. Thomas.
"Und me," from Mrs. Landvetter.
"Say, Missioner," said Mrs. Evans, after she had returned from seeing her guests to the front door, "I was tellin' the girls just before you come in, a preacher come to camp to-night. I drove him up to the Thorn House a while back. He's a lunger, of course. I told him about you, and he says he was goin' to call on you to-morrow. He's a tall, spindlin' fellow, kind of meek-looking; sort of nice, too."
Frances looked up with considerable interest. "That will be very nice," she said. "Perhaps he will help with the Sunday school and preach occasionally. That will give you a chance to hear some real sermons. That is, if he is well enough to preach."
"Oh, I guess so; his voice sounded strong; but, Missioner," looking meditatively at her guest, with a softening of her bead-like eyes, "your preachin's good enough for us; it's real comfortin' and helpful."
"Oh, I can't preach." Francis drew back in genuine humility and coloured deeply. "I can only talk a little of the things that have helped me, and that I think may help some of you; but to really preach—why, Mrs. Evans, I couldn't."
"Well, call it what you please," amiably, "it suits me. Oh, say, Missioner," her quick mind flying off in another direction, "Shock O'Brien and his wife come yesterday."
"Did they?" responded Frances.
"Yes, I drove 'em up from the station; but that's all the good it did me. I got neither sight nor sound of her. Shock was like a kid, he almost hugged me, an' then introduced her; but she jus' bowed, as stiff as you please. Her face was all tied up in a veil an' she had on one of them big, loose coats, an' I couldn't tell no more'n the man in the moon what she looked like.
"They've taken that nice little frame house of Marthy Thomas's on Sunshine Avenue, and Shock was out paintin' it this morning. It'll seem funny to see a painted house in Zenith, won't it?
"The boys that seen this here 'Black Pearl,' as they call her, says she's a beauty."
"Is she?" said Frances dreamily, and evidencing no especial interest. Indeed, she scarcely heard; her mind was busy with the problem before her, the task she had set herself to perform.
The rain drove wildly against the windows, the wind shrieked about the house, and Frances thought of Silas Evans in his lonely cabin, and nerved herself to speech. Moistening her lips nervously, once or twice, she drove, as was her wont, straight at the subject she had in mind.
"Mrs. Evans," looking steadily at her hostess, "I saw Mr. Evans to-day."
The tiny woman she addressed drew herself up with a hauteur worthy of a duchess. "Eolanthe," to the child who leaned against her knee, "run and get mommie a pail of water from the well. Now, Miss Benson," turning to the Missionary with flashing eyes, "there is some subjects that I can't feel had better be discussed. Sile Evans is one of them."
Frances's dark eyes dwelt on the fire a moment, a puzzled expression in their depths; then she turned to Mrs. Evans with a pleading embarrassment of manner, foreign to her usual composure.
She turned to Mrs. Evans with a pleading embarrassment of manner
"Oh, I wish I could get some light!" she cried, clasping her hands tight together. "I've prayed and prayed for light about this matter, but none has been vouchsafed me. I know that it is entirely your own affair, and that I haven't a particle of call to meddle; but oh!—the hardest thing about right is to be sure that it is right, and not an unwarrantable interference in someone's else business. When I lie awake at night and bother over my sins, it's not the bad things I've done that torment me, it's the way I've meddled in other folk's business, trying to do them good, and Satan only knows all the harm I've done."
Mrs. Evans's eyes hardened. She carefully untied her apron and then tied it again with an air of unalterable resolution.
"We might just as well settle this matter now, Miss Benson," she said crisply, "an' then we'll have it over an' done with. I don't take no steps without first considering them, and when I decide a thing, I decide it. I ain't one to do a thing and then wish I hadn't. What I do, I do once an' fer all, an' I guess Sile Evans knows that well enough without comin' whining to you."
"Oh, Mrs. Evans!" exclaimed Frances, "you mustn't think that—indeed, you mustn't. He never said a word about you—never. But I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. No woman could."
She paused a moment, seeing Mrs. Evans's face grow colder and more resentful; and in that moment, Herries' words of the night before came to her like a message—"Use your woman's wits. You are only strong when you employ the weapons that come natural to you!"
Last night she had rejected the suggestion as unworthy. To-day, in view of the immediate circumstances, it seemed legitimate, even Heaven-sent. Her chin lifted slightly, her eyes had quickened with that exultant consciousness of power that came to her in such moments. She drew a long breath, and without altering her position or unclasping her folded hands, her figure seemed in some subtle way to become informed with authority. It was woman to woman now, woman who knew instinctively how to reach her own sex and meant consciously and completely to use that knowledge.
"You know," Frances's voice was low and even, "what that wretched little cabin is, where the boards don't meet by half an inch. There was his poor bunk in the corner, with the thin, torn bedding, the broken-down stove and no fire in it, the rusty, dirty pots and pans. It all looked so wretched for a man like him. You've always made him so comfortable that he's helpless when it comes to taking care of himself. He has a dreadful cold, and he seemed so sick and forlorn that I just had to come to you."
Mrs. Evans again untied her apron and this time cast it from her. "For the land's sake, Miss Benson," with visible impatience, "I'd 'a' thought you might at least have turned in and washed the dishes for him."
"Why, no," hesitated Frances, pursuing her design, "I would not have liked to suggest it."
Mrs. Evans gave a short laugh. "Well, all I can say is that Christianity seems a mighty funny thing now-a-days. Sile is not used to baching and he never was handy. I should think common charity would have made you want to clean up a bit."
She took the bowl of muffin batter from the child at the table and began to beat it furiously. "Celora, set the table right off, an' for Heaven's sake, take Rupert Hentzau out of my way! I never see such a child for gettin' under your feet. What kind of a bed did you say Sile was sleepin' on, Miss Benson? Just a cot under the window, and torn bed-clothes, eh? Old man Beebee's, I'll be bound, an' nobody ever did rightly know what the old man died of. In under the window, too. Well, Miss Benson," bitterly, "I should think for a perfessor like you, your conscience would be kind of sore this evening. Did you say Sile had a cold?"
"I noticed how hoarse he was and asked him about it," replied Frances meekly. She might have justly resented Mrs. Evans's tone and manner; but the heart of woman knew the heart of woman, and recognised the primitive voice. "He said that he had been suffering from a severe cold and indigestion."
"What kind of a cold was it?" standing with arms akimbo, "in his head or on his chest?"
"He seemed very hoarse, he could hardly speak."
"For pity's sake! I'll tell you what it is, he's caught his death sleepin' up there in that tumble-down cabin on old man Beebee's bed, an' starvin' himself to death. He can't cook no more than Rupert Hentzau, an' now he's got a cold on his lungs. It means pleurisy to-night as sure as fate. Celora, get me the cough mixture from the top shelf of the closet under the stairs, an' the covered basket. An' you never done a thing for him, Miss Benson? Well, I guess I've seen enough of what they call, 'the missionary sperit' to last me quite a while."
"You were my friend," said Frances, slowly.
Mrs. Evans cocked her head scornfully. "I don't think it's no time to be talkin' that way, Miss Benson, when a human being's at the point of death. And let me tell you, that you nor nobody else in this village is in any position to judge Silas Evans. If there ever was a good man it's him; the kindest, truest, best husband that any woman ever had; and just because he's had a streak of hard luck, everybody's against him. It makes me sick!"
"But the children!" cried Frances, shooting the last arrow in her quiver, as she watched her hostess tie on a hood and slip into a jacket. "Surely, you are not going out on such a night as this!"
Mrs. Evans gave her one glance of unspeakable contempt. "I guess I don't need no old maid to tell me my duty as a married woman," icily. "Let me pass, if you please." But at the door, she paused with her hand on the latch, and looked backward. "I would take it kindly," she said, "if you'd look after the kids till Sile and I get back."
And the Missionary prepared supper and played with the children, with a song in her heart. She had paid the first instalment on a debt.