The New Missioner/Chapter 15

UGUST the Spinner, robed in floating, purple hazes, her distaff wound with silver cobwebs, had journeyed up the mountain sides to meet her sister, September, on the summits—September, the painter, with her crown of scarlet and gold leaves and her palette set with brilliant colours.

On the first day of the new queen's reign Frances had gone alone to Garvin's library, and now stood in the handsome, spacious, rather austere room, aimlessly drawing books from the shelves, turning the pages, scanning them with unseeing eyes and putting them back again. For the last week she had suffered a feeling of depression, slight at first, but deepening day by day, until it became an obsessing unrest and longing for which she could find no name; but which "kindled by night and subdued her" until, this first day of September, she felt disconsolate, almost to tears.

Ever since the day when she had started to follow Ethel and old Andrew Campbell up the road, she had known this reaction of feeling, and she was peculiarly unable to cope with it, inasmuch as she had never been a woman of moods. Her poise was the habit of years, won by the choice of an occupation which imposed on her a constant self-control. So long had she invited others to come and lean on her that their weakness, drawing on her strength, had so augmented her calm security of self that she entirely forgot the tiger of temperament chained in the deeps of her nature. But now it lifted its head and stirred in sleep.

We speak always in extremes—pain, pleasure; light, darkness; joy, sorrow. These are stimulants and goads. When pain grips us we rise to the conflict and struggle to find relief. We spring to welcome joy; but there is a state of feeling, or more fitly, a lack of feeling where both pain and pleasure are lost from our consciousness. Perhaps without warning or premonition, the dish of life is suddenly without salt or savour; the vibrating light and colour of the universe is washed out to one grey, colourless monotone, the dull day merges into a black, stifling night without a star, without one breeze of freshness.

When we suffer, we strive to find words to express our anguish. "I am a companion to owls and a brother to dragons"; but the groper in the grey world mutters with Job: "A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness."

The days of the outer world were still as gold and purple as those in which Frances had rejoiced; but she could no longer enter the heart of their splendour and warm her hands at the inner glow. The bloom was off the summer; no longer the maternal arms of her mother, Earth, enfolded her. In her effort to throw off this deadening apathy, she would read and reread the books she had loved; but they were without meaning; or she would walk miles in her futile attempts to recapture the mood of yesterday, to feel again her nearness to Nature and rid herself of this body of death—the sense of isolation from all natural sights and sounds.

But even in the pine forests, those leagues of scented gloom, where whispers and intimations of unfathomable mysteries had reached her, she knew no mitigation of her weary ennui. Sometimes the wind in the pine tops was like the distant booming of cathedral bells, and again like the solemn surges of the sea; but it could not call back her spirit from the wastes of desolation. She was numb almost to deadness.

It was in this mood that she stood in the library, idly fingering the books, and remaining entirely uninterested in their contents. There is repose and serenity in the very atmosphere of a library; but Frances was too half-hearted and recent a student to accept that balm, that divine solace with which great books heal their lovers. A feeling of profound loneliness swept over her. What was the matter? she asked herself. Why, why, had this wonderful revelation come to her in these mountains, this lifting of the veil which showed to her eager vision her new worlds and worlds? And then, just as she had begun to live in their courts and palaces, the curtain had fallen and she was thrust into the isolation of the "world without any order."

A wave of self-pity foreign to her nature broke over her, and the unusual tears smarted in her eyes. She dropped her face in her hands and then lifted it quickly as the handle of the door turned, the curtain was thrust aside and Garvin stood on the threshold. Frances's heart gave one quick throb, and although she stood perfectly still, she began to tremble violently from head to foot, gazing straight at him with wide, doubting eyes, in the depths of which a light slowly dawned.

He remained for a moment in the doorway peering into the room, and evidently accustoming his eyes to the somewhat shadowy light. "Ah!" He drew a deep breath of satisfaction. "They told me you were here, but I couldn't see you at first. It seems too good to be true."

"I—I—" she faltered, "didn't expect you," still gazing at him half-unbelievingly.

"Didn't you?" He had walked down the room toward her, and now he gently and still smilingly took from her the book which she had involuntarily clasped against her breast; the hands he thus released he caught tightly and warmly in his.

"I'm so glad!" he said deeply. "Missioner, do you know how glad? I've dreamed of finding you here, but I never thought I really would. Why, do you know, I was so childishly anxious that you should be the first person I should speak to, that I pretended not to see the boys as I drove up from the station."

In spite of her flushing confusion, Frances could not fail to notice a great change in him. He was a different man from the Garvin of the lagging step and the perplexed eyes she had previously known. This Garvin was younger; the old dejection and weariness had vanished, the stoop had gone from his shoulders, the furrows from his brow. The sad lines about his mouth were effaced.

"I am so glad," he said, speaking again, "that you have made use of my books. Have you enjoyed them?"

"Enjoyed them!" He did not appear to remember that he still held her hands, and now she drew them away, catching at the topic he suggested, to cover her embarrassment. "Your books have opened a new world to me." She spoke eagerly, happily, entirely forgetful of the fact that a few moments before she had been a companionless wanderer in the grey world. "Suppose you had suddenly found a new star, full of all the most wonderful things you had ever dreamed of."

"So through my books a new planet has swum into your ken?" he murmured, plainly delighted; but as he continued to gaze at her, he quickly forgot her words. There was no one in all the world like her. She was the most individual creature he had ever known. He liked the severe straight lines of that nun-like black gown, the stiff white collar, and the white cuffs turned back over the sleeves. He liked that shining blue-black hair brushed smoothly back from her brow, and the great plaits wound around the back of her head. He liked best of all that almost ascetic reserve of expression in a face which could sparkle and break and quiver and grow vivid with feeling. He could fancy the glow of carnation on that smooth, pale cheek—there was a catch at his heart at the thought.

And if she had noted a change in him, he was equally quick to read an alteration in her. She seemed irradiated by some soft inner happiness—it dated since his coming, had he but known it. There was a light in the dark depths of her eyes, and her mouth showed a tremulous and almost constant tendency to break into those sweet and curving smiles of which he had hitherto caught but rare and fleeting glimpses; but the smiles held something now of a hidden gaiety and even mischief, which charmed while it continued to puzzle him.

"You really have grown rested," he said at last, with a long breath of satisfaction. "I can tell that by your looks."

"You, too," she responded happily. "And Angel? How is she? Where is she?"

"Oh, Angel!" he laughed heartily. "It would fill a book to tell you of Angel's performances. And such a company as we were. I got a nurse for her in Denver, intending to send Wang and Lee back; but Angel wouldn't hear of it, and really, before we got far, I found that I needed them all. The moment that we reached the door here, she scampered off to find Herries and inquire for her beasts. I was so thankful that we didn't have to travel with a whole menagerie that I didn't mind our retinue of servants; and think of it! the only additions to our household are a frightened, chattering monkey and another screaming, swearing parrot!"

Frances laughed. "Mr. Herries will be delighted to see her back; he has been really lonely without her."

"There is a curious sympathy between them; both oddities," he smiled. "Well, how is everything in the village? Anybody struck a bonanza?"

"No," she shook her head. "No one except myself, and I have in these books."

This time his smile was so tender, so comprehending that she flushed slightly under its caress.

"I saw Mrs. O'Brien standing in that loud garden of hers looking out at the mountains as if she hated them. She was standing just so when I left. Has she never moved since?"

Frances welcomed this change of subject. "She does hate them, I believe. She complains that they shut her in. I cannot understand that. They have meant the 'freer step, the fuller breath, the wide horizon's grander view' to me."

"To you, yes." He spoke meditatively and looked beyond her as if, for the moment, he forgot her presence. "But the Pearl is different. She always was an odd, capricious creature. I never understood her, and I don't believe anyone else ever did. I don't believe she understands herself." He pondered this a moment. "I met Dan Mayhew down in Denver, and he told me that Bob Flick is here. I'm sorry. Bob's been devoted to the Pearl for years, and O'Brien's an impulsive, mad sort of a fellow."

He glanced down at Frances and noticed, to his surprise and slight chill, that her expression had changed. It was as if she had mentally withdrawn from him. Her mouth had set in rather severe lines and her brow was grave.

"I must go," she said, half turning from him and drawing on her gloves.

"But why?" he strove to stay her, and then seeing that her determination held, caught at another plea. "You are going to take some books with you, are you not?" Seeing her hesitate. "Of course you are, and you are going to let me carry them for you."

"No," a little shyly. "I am sure you have a great many things to look after; and I must stop a minute at Mrs. Evans's."

"Oh, no! Not this morning; not the first morning I have come back. Here, let me select some books for you." He fumbled over the shelves. "You see, I want to make the most of my time. I have so many things to talk over with you, and after the next fortnight, I will be more or less occupied for a week or so. There are some Eastern and English men coming up to investigate some properties here, and I have asked them to be my guests."

"Ah, yes. Are there many in the party?"

"Five or six. Brown, Edgerton, Watrous, Sourrier,—an Englishman,—and his daughter, a beautiful creature, Miss Evelyn Sourrier, Diana, as we called her on our recent trip. She's a mighty huntress."

"Ah, yes." Frances's voice sounded strangely flat and toneless in her own ears.

"I think you will like her; I am sure of it."

She drew back a little. "I thank you; but please don't ask me to meet your guests or to take part in any entertainment you may arrange for them. I couldn't. I know nothing of social life or observances. Please, please, remember that I am only a Missionary, that I have been for years a slum Missionary."

"Nonsense!" He spoke strongly; and then seeing her evident discomfort, smiled. "Nonsense! I'm afraid you've grown morbid, and no wonder, shut up in this God-forsaken village with all these freaks. Come out into the sunshine, Missioner—Missioner," lingering tenderly on the word.

With a lifting of the heart, she obeyed him, and out into the glory of the golden day they stepped together. The hillsides lay in smiling repose; the bloom was on the earth again. Frances remembered the open sesame which admitted her to the splendid worlds. Her lips trembled with smiles, her voice rippled with laughter.

Garvin was full of humorous anecdote concerning Angel and his recent journey, and so quickly did the time fly that they seemed scarcely to have started across the flats before they turned into Sunshine Avenue. There, their attention was immediately and involuntarily arrested by a scene of unwonted activity in Mrs. Nitschkan's front yard, which was also absorbing the interest of the greater part of Zenith's feminine population, who hastily leaving the stove and the washtub and all that they might contain, leaned far over their front gates, determined to lose no whit of the proceedings before their eyes.

Before the gipsy's door and amid the tin cans and broken crockery which adorned her lawn stood two shaggy burros, answering respectively to the names of Jemmy and Jerry, and with the sad and patient stoicism of their kind, allowed themselves to be laden with burdens heavy and grievous to be borne.

With a skill betokening long experience Mrs. Nitschkan herself was busily occupied in adjusting various cumbersome objects upon the backs fitted to bear them.

Hard upon her heels were the children, who, as she arranged her camping outfit, were fetching and carrying with a zeal and alacrity which suggested that they expected immediately to enjoy the rewards of service.

"Here, Captola," ordered the gipsy cheerily, "you and Josh had best strap that cookstove on the off side of Jerry, to balance the tent, an' you, Celia, can fetch Mommie her fishin' rods an' gun. I guess I'll load 'em on to Jemmy."

Gathered about the front gate, that was maintained upon its hinges by a frayed bit of rope, were gathered Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Thomas, and Mrs. Landvetter, and if attitude and expression may be taken as indications of inner emotions, these ladies were evidencing strong disapproval of their friend's activities.

As Frances and Garvin drew near, Mrs. Evans lifted up her voice to demand the purpose of these elaborate preparations: "What does all this mean, Mis' Nitschkan?" she asked in sharp, rasped tones.

"Jus' what you can see," replied her friend airily, arranging some blankets and provisions more securely on Jerry's back.

"Sadie Nitschkan!"—Mrs. Evans's voice was magisterial—" we want to know somethin' an' we want to know the truth. Are you goin' gipsyin' again?"

"I sure am." The answer was decisive, if indifferent.

"An' leave your husband and kids to shift for theirselves an' in the care of the entire camp—which means us—while you go traipsin' over the hills like a wild woman?" Mrs. Evans's shrill tones rang a crescendo of incredulous, indignant remonstrance.

Mrs. Nitschkan paused a moment in her packing, to stand with arms akimbo, measuring in humorous, faintly sardonic contemplation, the group at the gate.

"Gosh a'mighty! What are you gettin' so hot for, Evans? Jack's up at the prospect doin' assessment work for a while, an' if a lot of half-grown kids can't look after theirselves an' keep the roof over their heads, I don't know when they're goin' to learn. You girls kind o' keep an eye on 'em an' they'll be all right. Come on, Bob, we might as well be movin'."

"She's a-takin' Bob, the only one that's got any idea of behavin'," groaned Mrs. Thomas. "But if they get sick, Mis' Nitschkan," she pleaded desperately, "an' you know that all flesh is grass enough to do that now an' then, why, where air we, an' where air you?"

"How kin I tell?" answered the Amazon happily, leading Jerry carefully through the gate, while her lad followed her with Jemmy. " But," emphatically, "they ain't goin' to get sick. These kids is tough as whip-cord. Here you," turning to the children with a last admonition, "now you take care of things an' do right, an' we'll bring you somethin' nice; but If you don't, it's a lickin' apiece. So long, girls."

The women turned to each other with lacklustre eyes and elongated faces.

"Well, we certainly got our work cut out for us," sighed Mrs. Thomas, with the finality of despair, as they watched their sturdy friend starting afoot and light-hearted in her quest of the open road, leading one reluctant burro herself, while her equally sturdy boy tugged at the rope of its companion, their faces set toward the black, mysterious pines at the foot of the shining peaks.

"What'd happen to us poor women if we'd shirk our responsibilities like what she does?" cried Mrs. Thomas, settling her sunbonnet with impatient hands. "An' yet she gets along as good as the rest of us. I never go to Denver for a day, but what I come home to find my kids in bed with a ketchin' disease, or with some of their legs an' arms broke."

"I'll bet there ain't a bakin' of bread in the house," snapped Mrs. Evans.

"Nor a stick of vood in de shed," ruminated Mrs. Landvetter gloomily. "Now you know how long our vood piles is goin' to last."

But their annoyance was far from communicating itself to the four deserted children. They danced gaily about, singing with clear, shrill voices: "Mommie's gone a-gipsyin'! Mommie's gone a-gipsyin'!" in a very ecstasy of freedom. Loosed of moral band and tether, they realised to the full that the world was theirs for purposes of experimentation; but their joy was not shared by their mother's friends. On the contrary, the expression of it seemed to plunge the three ladies into still deeper gloom, and it was not until they had slightly recovered from the blow of the gipsy's departure, and were sadly turning homeward, that the significance of the two figures strolling up the hill toward Frances's cabin, struck them.

"My patience!" cried Mrs. Thomas excitedly. "Did you see that? Walt Garvin's back, an' walkin' with Missioner, the first thing!"

Mrs. Evans gazed at her with exasperation; her protective instincts were always aroused where Frances was concerned. "Well, she ain't a-walkin' an' talkin' to him your way, Marthy Thomas. She's in a hand-to-hand grapple with the devil for his soul."

"Huh!" Mrs. Thomas scoffed unbelievingly. "That's a old man-trick. If they can't get around you no other way, they begin beggin' you to save their souls."

"Before you take to criticism' others," returned Mrs. Evans icily, "you better be lookin' to your own behaviour. You ain't yet explained about Dan Mayhew."

Mrs. Thomas twisted her shoulders impatiently. "I ain't made up my mind," she muttered sullenly. "They's others; an' I told you once, it's more fun bein' a widow than I thought."