The New Missioner/Chapter 2

LL that afternoon Frances Benson sat in her room in the Thorn House, the mountain hotel to which she had been directed by the Bishop before her arrival in Zenith, and where, since the tenure of her stay seemed so uncertain, she had since remained.

It was a bare, uncarpeted little room, with two small windows framing magnificent pictures of the narrow plain and the towering mountains beyond; a comfort- less chamber with a few pieces of pine furniture which gave evidence of long and hard usage. So illy put together were the rough board partitions separating the rooms, that it seemed to Frances that by night or day she was never able to secure the privacy for which she longed. About her there were always footfalls and voices, laughter and oaths. She was coughing constantly from the tobacco smoke which floated through the cracks in the walls and wavered in long, blue lines across the room. It was only when out upon the hillsides that she ever felt herself alone.

Longing for peace and silence, bruised in body and soul, she had returned to the inn after the scene at Mrs. Nitschkan's, and, unheeding the raucous summons of the dinner bell, had slowly dragged herself up the stairs to the unquiet chamber. For an hour or two she had sat there, one arm flung over the table and head bent upon it, dully conscious of a bodily ache and of the black waves of depression which rose rhythmically, monotonously, like the sullen waters of an incoming tide, and swept over her soul, engulfing its hope and quenching its light.

All the tense force, the poise, the courage, expressed in every line and pose of her body was gone. It was as if the spirit had withdrawn itself and left only the nerveless, crumpled, unstable flesh. At last she lifted her head and looked dejectedly, almost dazedly, about her.

"I didn't meet it right," she murmured; "I didn't meet it right. I put myself on their level. There didn't seem to be any other way; but there must have been—only I didn't have light enough to see it. Yes, there must have been another way, but I'm so weak"

She drew toward her a Bible on the table, and, opening it, bent above it, her pale cheek leaning on her hand. Thus she read until the room had so filled with shadows that she could not discern the words, then soothed and calmed, she arose to light the lamp. Sad still, but with regained poise, she was able to review the situation. If she was incapable yet of rejoicing, she at least found relief in the thought that one question was definitely decided: she was to stay in Zenith, and she did not have to confess defeat to the Bishop.

But the lamp chimney she was adjusting almost fell from her hands, for she was startled by a quick knock upon the door, and the landlady's daughter, without waiting to be bidden, announced two visitors, Mr. Herries and Mr. Campbell.

Upon Frances's request that they enter, there appeared two old men, whom she remembered to have seen in the little church on one or two previous Sundays. The first to come forward from the gloom of the doorway was Herries, a tall, bowed figure with a keen, aquiline, intellectual face, and a quantity of snowy hair which fell across his brow. His clumsy, patched boots and rough clothes betrayed his poverty, while his seamed, twisted hands bespoke the hardest toil. Close behind him followed Campbell, a withered stump of a man, who crouched, a huddled little figure in the chair Frances offered him, his feet failing to touch the floor by an inch or two. He did not speak, even in answer to her greeting, but watched her every movement with strange, wild eyes peering from a mat of tangled whiskers and grey hair.

"We have come," said Herries, with a certain unctuous formality, a sort of solemn hilarity, "to congratulate you upon your victory." There was a sardonic gleam of excitement in his piercing blue eyes.

"Amen!" It was one deep, fervent note, rich, vibrating, resonant, like the mellow tone of a bell, from the little man at his side. "We have heard that you have this day been given the grace to vanquish the hosts of the Egyptians which have been arrayed against you."

Frances flushed to the roots of her hair.

"Why—why" she stammered helplessly. "Who knew"

Alexander Herries laughed discordantly. "Who knew?"—his speech as well as that of Campbell was marked by a strong Scotch accent—"who knew? The hills, the trees, the very rocks. If you breathe in Zenith, it is known. You have always lived in cities where you get to know the things that happen. Go to the wilderness to know yourself. Strange shapes will rise and mock you, yourself, yourself, always yourself—a thousand selves you never dreamed of; but come to the little, hidden villages to know men and women—aye, and you will read a sorry tale!" He mused a moment, his face grown bitter. "Yes," his voice changing, "a good many of the boys are broke to-night on account of you, Missioner—the betting was all against you; but there isn't one of them that's not taking off his hat to you, now. You were supposed to pack up and clear out to-night. The Aid Society had spoken." The habitual sneer on his crooked mouth deepened.

"The Aid Society!" she repeated uncomprehending.

"So. The Ladies' Aid Society of Zenith. One of the kitchens in hell where considerable broth is brewed. Is it not so, Campbell?"

"Aye." Again the mellow note boomed from the huddled figure beside him.

Frances sat for a moment in painful embarrassment. She had no wish to discuss the events of the day.

"Wasn't it your cabin I saw a day or two ago, on Corona mountain?" she asked Campbell, in an endeavour to draw him into the conversation and change the subject; but although she spoke directly to him, she saw at once that his thoughts were far away. His eyes were clear and apparently returning her gaze; but the clearness seemed only of the surface; behind, it was as if a veil had fallen.

"No," replied Hemes, speaking for him. "He lives with Mrs. Landvetter—Mrs. Landvetter, about whose neck ye have put a halter." He laughed in harsh glee. "He has strange powers, has the little man. With a bit of wire in one hand and certain numbers that he can use, he can locate ore. 'Tis true," nodding; "I have seen him do it more than once. And he has a strange knowledge of things unseen. Some call him mad. Oh,"—carelessly, seeing her embarrassment,—"he does not hear you."

There was nothing superstitious in Frances Benson's nature, and yet, as she sat in the dimly lighted room with the two old men, the one with his clear, unseeing eyes, the other, sardonic, mocking, and strong, a man of passions and prejudices, she was conscious of a faint awe, a creeping chill.

But as she turned her gaze from one to the other, Campbell's face changed, he passed his hand across his eyes and looked at Frances with a kindly and intimate scrutiny.

"Ruth likes her," he said simply, addressing Herries. "She says" He broke off and listened intently, his eyes again becoming veiled.

"He means his wife," explained Herries. "She's been dead ten years. He thinks she's with him much of the time. He had a cabin in Pepper Gulch. People had been living there for fifty years, when in a February there was a thaw and then a sudden freshet, and before they knew it the flood was upon them, the cabin was swept away and his wife and son were drowned. By some miracle he was saved."

He spoke as freely as before, quite as if Campbell were not in the room, and Frances, glancing apprehensively at the old visionary, saw that he had again journeyed to his far country.

But before she could avert her glance he had returned to the mundane.

"Do you feel the spirit of the mountains?" he asked her. "Was it that which drew you here?"

"The spirit of the mountains," she repeated, "the spirit of the mountains?" But she echoed his question mechanically and with her lips. His words vibrated all through her consciousness, as if some unknown chord of her being had been struck and awakened to music. She looked at him with quick response. With this mad, old man one could—nay must—speak soul to soul; he permitted no other speech.

"When the train rolled through the plains," she went on eagerly, the fetters of her habitual self-restraint falling from her, "I seemed to be waiting, waiting. I had never been in the mountains before."

She stopped in the full tide of her eagerness. She forgot to speak. The mental impression transcended words. She saw again those narrow gorges up which the engine drawing the train had slowly panted, higher, higher, always higher, the way ever growing darker; great rocks overhung the road and were flung about in strange shapes. A dark, terrible region, haunted by hideous dreams of avarice and sordid seeking. She shivered. Then came the narrow plains and rocky hills, and suddenly she lifted her head, her eyes dilating—the blue ranges and the white, awful peaks.

"And ye heard the message?" he asked again, insistent, inexorable.

"The message?" she whispered. Her mouth quivered, the words seemed drawn from unsounded depths of her nature: "'Behold I show you a mystery'"—her scarcely audible speech was broken by pauses—"'a new heaven and a new earth.'"

"Aye. You were drawn,"—one deep note of satisfaction. "So was Ethel. Do you know Ethel?"

"Ethel?" she repeated, vaguely startled by the thought that he might again be referring to a friend in that strange world whose boundaries he passed so easily. "Ah," in quick recollection, "do you mean the Salvation Army girl who spoke to me one Sunday night after church? She said that her name was Ethel." She remembered a slender girl with a pale, pretty face, big grey eyes and a cleft, scarlet mouth. The bonnet of the Army covered her ashen, fair hair.

"The same," muttered Herries, nodding his head and speaking with some pride. "She was a brand the little man snatched from the burning. Mad or sane, he saved Ethel. One night when he was down at the Springs he felt moved to preach in the streets,—he often does,—and Ethel, who was passing in her silks and satins with the paint thick upon her face, stopped to listen."

"I saw her," Campbell cried; "maybe there were others, but I saw only her, and the Word came to me strong and terrible. 'This night thou shalt demand her soul, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against thee.' And I spoke to her the Word as it was given me, and she listened. Then I saw the Fiend in visible form come from the shadows and pluck at her elbow and whisper in her ear; and I groaned, for I thought I should have to fight long and hard; but the Word came: 'Stand thou still and see the salvation of the Lord!' And I spoke no more; but she ran to me, and knelt at my feet and her tears poured down her cheeks. After that she tarried no longer by the rivers of Babylon; she came here and joined the Army."

"Yes," said Herries, nodding his head affirmatively, "that's so. Some thinks him mad; but mad or sane, he saved Ethel. But, Missioner, we must keep you no longer. Rise, Campbell, we must go."

An idea, she regarded it afterwards as an inspiration, came to Frances as she sat there. "Wait one moment. I want to ask you something," she exclaimed, impulsively following them to the door. "Do either of you know where I can get a little cabin to live in? There is so much noise and confusion here in the hotel, and now"—with one of her quick smiles—"that I am going to remain here, I want a place of my own."

Herries pondered a moment with lower jaw pushed forward. "There is a cabin of Garvin's on Corona about a quarter of a mile below mine. It's empty now, and he might rent it to you."

"On Corona!" delightedly. "I should like that. Who is Mr. Garvin, and where can I find him?"

"Walt Garvin," said Herries, "is the biggest mine owner in these parts"

"An unbeliever!" said Campbell.

Herries twisted his mouth. "The biggest mine owner in these parts. He owns the Crescent Consolidated, the Mont d'Or, the Gold Bug and half a dozen others. He struck it rich about five years ago; and he's a white fellow. I'll show you where he lives." He walked over to the narrow-paned window. "Do you see those lights twinkling yonder on the flat?" he asked, pointing with one great, rugged forefinger.

"Yes."

"Well, that's his house."

"His palace," came the arresting, accusing, stern tones of Campbell; "the palace that he built for his light-o'-love."